RTHK: Jamaicans demand slavery payment as UK royals visit

Jamaican activists on Tuesday held a protest to demand slavery reparations as Britain's Prince William and his wife Kate prepared to visit the island nation as part of a Caribbean tour that has fueled renewed scrutiny of the British Empire's colonial legacy.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge visited Belize over the weekend to start a week-long tour that coincides with Queen Elizabeth's 70th year on the throne. They were due to arrive in Jamaica on Tuesday and will then travel to the Bahamas.

The tour comes some four months after Barbados became a republic by removing the queen as head of state. Jamaica's government has started proceedings that could lead it to follow the same path, although that may take years.

Dozens gathered outside the British High Commission in Kingston, singing traditional Rastafarian songs and holding banners with the phrase "seh yuh sorry"  a local patois phrase urging Britain to apologise.

"I am a descendant of great African ancestors, I owe it to them to be here," customer service worker Hujae Hutchinson, 27, said at the rally, where activists read out 60 reasons for reparations. Jamaica celebrates 60 years of independence in August.

"I want to make the British crown recognise that they have committed a great crime against the African people and that they must apologise and give back what they have taken from the ancestors."

A letter published ahead of the visit, and signed by 100 Jamaicans politicians, lawyers and artists, said reparations were necessary "to begin a process of healing, forgiveness, reconciliation and compensation."

Marlene Malahoo Forte, who was Jamaica's attorney general until January, in December told the local newspaper Jamaica Observer that she had received instructions from Prime Minister Andrew Holness to reform the constitution to become a republic.

That process would require a referendum, per Jamaica's constitution, making it more complicated than in smaller Barbados, which was able to make the change via an act of parliament.

The government last year announced plans to ask Britain for compensation for forcibly transporting an estimated 600,000 Africans to work on sugar cane and banana plantations that created fortunes for British slave holders.

Jamaica lawmaker Mike Henry has proposed reparations of 7.6 billion pounds. He has said the figure is derived from a 20 million-pound payment that Britain's government made in 1837 to compensate slave owners in British colonies for the emancipation of enslaved people following the 1833 abolition of slavery. (Reuters)

This story has been published on: 2022-03-22. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Japanese trainee programmes lack applicants

Many labour exporting countries are facing difficulties finding applicants for the trainee programmes in Japan.













Vietnamese trainees attending a course before flying to Japan



Director of Esuhai Company, Le Long Son, said that they have just resumed the sending of Vietnamese trainees to Japan after two years suspension due to the Covid-19 pandemic.



"About 1,400 people who were ready to fly to Japan for these programmes have been unable to go due to the pandemic over the past two years," Son said. "After receiving many orders from Japanese partners again, we have recently contacted those people and conducted interviews with 600 others for the coming programmes. However, many of them have cancelled their plans for Japan to take other jobs during the long waiting period."



Son expressed worries that Japanese partners would turn to other markets if his company could not send enough applicants at this time.



Sharing the same worries, director of Dung Giang Company, Nguyen Manh Ha, also said that they were facing challenges in finding people for the trainee programmes with Japanese partners.



"Many people have left the programmes after having to wait for too long last year," Ha explained. "Our Japanese partners want to have trainees for various careers including nursing, food processing, and engineering but it has become difficult for us to attract applicants."



Ha added that it would take eight months of training for people who want to do nursing work in Japan. After this training, they will be introduced to sign a contract with a Japanese company and can earn VND50 million monthly from the third year working in the country.



Japan resumed the reception of Vietnamese workers from last November after a long suspension due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.



In 2020, Vietnam sent nearly 83,000 workers to Japan, accounting for more than half of the total workers Vietnam sent abroad. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, over 5,000 workers had to return to Vietnam within the first six months of that year.
The Syrian crisis has completed its eleventh year, while the horizon for a near solution is still blocked in front of the Syrians. The various efforts to resolve the Syrian crisis, including the Geneva and Astana meetings, only resulted in more tension. In addition, the voices of Syrians of various political orientations and intellectual affiliations are calling for the promotion of Syrian dialogue without excluding any component, as the only way to solve the Syrian crisis. It also affirms that it is not possible to exit the crisis in a "safe manner" without resolving the Kurdish issue.

It is not possible to get out of the crisis "in a safe way" without resolving the Kurdish issue

The leader of the Peaceful Change Movement, Fateh Jamous, called in a statement to our agency to adhere to a serious dialogue to resolve the Syrian crisis: "I think that the Kurdish national issue in Syria is a central issue among several important issues. Without serious dialogue, the democratic issue will remain incomplete and lame. I think this matter outside external interventions, the internal parties must be owned by the internal Syrian national opposition, the authority, the service community and the majority bloc of civil society. Without this dialogue and a democratic solution to this issue, we will never be able to get out of the crisis in a safe manner.

Jamous added that the focus should be on the internal dialogue tracks. Before the regime that is not serious about dialogue or by external parties that focus on fascist fundamentalism to occupy the seat of the Syrian dialogue.

All terorrities occupied by Turkey must be liberated

For his part, the Secretary-General of the Syrian Change and Renaissance Party, Mustafa Qalaji, noted "the experience of the Autonomous Administration located in northern and eastern Syria, in al-Shahba canton and Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood in Aleppo city, is an experience that has to do with building society and with true Syrian national affiliation."

Qalaji said that the Syrian people have been cohesive with all its components since ancient times: "The issue of is new to the Syrians. In the past, the Syrian people were cohesive and united, and this experience is repeating the ball again in the midst of this crisis."

Qalaji pointed out the need to liberate the Syrian lands from the occupation: "All we want is for all the occupied lands to be liberated by Turkey or any other parties, especially the bride of the cities that is Afrin."

A

ANHA
Editors note: The Helena Independent Record has been receiving daily emails from Valerie Hellermann of Helena, who is executive director with Hands On Global and now helping Ukrainian refugees. She is among the members of Hands on Global who traveled to Siret, Romania, on the Ukraine-Romania border, to establish a medical relief team for those fleeing the Russia-Ukraine conflict. It is not clear where she is based now. This is the latest in a series of emails Hellermann has sent to the newspaper and others. Portions of this email have been edited for clarity.

Met with the head of ministry of health for western Ukraine today at the humanitarian distribution center, where international (nongovernmental organizations) NGOs and governments shipments came.

From there, volunteers sort and ship out to the areas of need.

When we asked about the drivers he said they were heroes. As the humanitarian corridors are not honored and it is extremely dangerous.

I am posting a very disturbing image of a child injured in a bombing because there is an urgent need for trauma supplies and medicines and complex orthopedic supplies. Please pass this on to any doctors, hospitals, medical supply companies you might know.

The health minister told me the medical doctors have remained in the areas being bombed to treat patients but are desperate for supplies. There is a shortage of food and water and many places are without electricity. It is so difficult for people.

Our driver gives us daily reports from the Ukrainian news as we drive everyday. I asked if there was anything that Ukraine would give up -- Crimea -- to appease Putin. He said "No," because they would not give up on those people living there and Russia has no right to dictate to Ukraine.

Absolutely understand.

This would never be tolerated in the USA and we would never consider giving up Montana to Canada or Texas to Mexico.

Today we were able to arrange pick up of bandages and antibiotics to Kharkiv, we stacked 5 boxes in the hotel lobby and they were picked up by a driver, one of the Ukraine heroes. We continue to treat the internally displaced people in the shelters.

Today was calm, no air raid alarms.

Yesterday there were 3.

We are preparing to transition the next team. Our Norwegian provider arrives tomorrow afternoon and our Danish nurse leaves tomorrow evening.

Valerie Hellermann

Executive Director

Hands On Global

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief.

Do justly, now. Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obliged to complete the work,

but neither are you free to abandon it.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 4 Angry 0
Editors note: The Helena Independent Record received these recent emails from Valerie Hellermann, who is executive director with Hands On Global and now helping Ukrainian refugees. She is among the members of Hands on Global who traveled to Siret, Romania, on the Ukraine-Romania border, to establish a medical relief team for those fleeing the Russia-Ukraine conflict. It is not clear where she is based now. These are the latest in a series of emails Hellermann has sent to the newspaper and others. Portions of this email have been edited for clarity.

Tuesday

A warm sunny day today. The team went across to Ukraine and I stayed in Romania. I spent the day buying medications and organizing medications and doing the paperwork. I arranged a shipment from Omars to Kharkiv for tomorrow

We are preparing to transition to team 2. First person, Lina, will arrive from Norway on Thursday. We worked with her in Lesvos and are excited to have her.

I want to share some of the beauty I saw today; the kindness, the solidarity and the presence of compassion. I went to the Romanian side of the border to wait for my team to return. I was there for an hour and watched as refugees came across.

As soon as they crossed from border control they are greeted by volunteers who take their baggage and carry it. They walk 200 feet and someone is there from the Israeli NGO (nongovernmental organization) offering food. There are signs and volunteers from several countries offering directions as to where they can stay, where their pets can be fed and vaccinated and where the buses come and where they go.

It is so heartwarming to watch.

A woman came across with her elderly husband and maybe her grandkids and was greeted by some family members who waited for her. There were tears and hugs. A volunteer appeared with juice boxes and cookies for the kids, water for the man and another appeared with stuffed bears for the kids.

Amazing generosity. It gives me faith in humanity.

We do care

Tomorrow again I go to Ukraine. We have a morning meeting (with) the ministry of health.

Monday

Crossing the border from Romania to Ukraine today we met a woman going back into Ukraine, she was crying.

She had just brought her daughter to Romania and was leaving to return to Kyiv because she had an invalid mother there. She had to return to care for her because there was nobody else. Her journey was going to be very dangerous.

At the shelter today there was an air raid and we had to leave everything and go to the bomb shelter.

It was a western Ukraine air raid warning indicating airplanes had entered western Ukraine airspace. People in the shelter were on their phones frantically checking in with friends and families waiting to hear where the bombs dropped and if everyone was OK.

We were told these air raids happen almost nightly but we were rattled finding ourselves in an air raid shelter. We were there for almost 3 hours. Waiting, waiting, waiting.

The word is still that (Chernivtsi) is still a safe city but Putins war is unpredictable.

Our team is reconsidering our mission. It is painful because there are over 50,000 IDPs (internally displaced people) in (Chernivtsi) and we have a schedule to visit 33 shelters and provide care. We dont know what to do.

Due to the air raid we left (Chernivtsi) in the dark.

At one point on our drive another air raid warning and there were no lights we drove in the dark except our headlights. Tomorrow we stay in Romania and work on medical shipments as we assess our situation.

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 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
The first boats of the year carrying invasive mussels through Montana were intercepted last weekend.

Three boats carrying invasive zebra or quagga mussels were discovered at a Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks inspection station near Anaconda. The boats had been out of the water for some time, and the mussels were not viable, the agency said.

One boat was coming from Michigan heading for Yakima, Wash., another other was coming from Florida heading for the Seattle area, and the third boat was coming from Ohio heading to British Columbia.

A few inspection stations opened in the last few weeks with other scheduled to open early next month.

All watercraft coming into Montana are required to have an inspection for invasive species prior to launching. Inspections may be arranged by calling 406-444-2440.

Montana is set to be designated free of invasive mussels as the state moves to delist Tiber Reservoir as a mussel-positive waterbody. Waters infested with invasive mussels have seen a multitude of consequences, from negative impacts on fisheries and other aquatic life to significant costs associated with cleaning and keeping infrastructure clear of the mollusks.

The agency is taking public comment through March 25 to consider stripping "known existence of aquatic invasive mussels, from the agencys rulebook on invasive species.

In 2016 mussel larvae were detected during water sampling at Tiber. A suspected positive sample was also detected at Canyon Ferry Reservoir that same year  Canyon Ferry was delisted two years ago.

Love 1 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 1 Angry 1
Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen hailed a federal judges ruling this week to block new deportation rules set out by the Biden administration.

Arizona, Ohio and Montana challenged the new policy in November in federal court against Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorka. The guidance ordered DHS officials to prioritize deportations of immigrants who pose a threat to national safety.

The states argue DHS bypassed Congress immigration statutes by issuing its own policy. Montana has staked its claim in federal immigration issues as a state that suffers from drug addiction propelled by Mexican drug cartels.

On Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Michael Newman of Ohio granted the states motion to block DHS from carrying out certain provisions of the new policy while the legal proceedings play out.

This is a great victory for the rule of law, border security and public safety across the country, Knudsen said in a press release, adding that drugs from Mexico end up in Montana communities.

Newman also denied a motion by DHS to dismiss the states case. The judge acknowledged the executive branchs significant authority over immigration, but noted Congress, too, has broad powers over the matter.

 Can the executive displace clear congressional command in the name of resources allocation and enforcement goals? Newman wrote. Here, the answer is no.

Love 79 Funny 2 Wow 2 Sad 3 Angry 9

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.
As the adage goes: everyone is entitled to their own opinion, just not their own facts. The fact is, the recent opinion piece signed by the Lincoln County commissioners (Helena IR, March 3) concerning the establishment of a scientifically justified selenium standard is long on opinion and painfully short on facts.

Ignoring the facts, the commissioners aim to weaken our water quality standards for Montanas treasured Lake Koocanusa and the Kootenai River in order to satisfy a foreign mining company that is harming our water, fish and communities.

The commissioners make the erroneous claim that the process to establish the standard was rushed over three months and excluded the public, including themselves. In reality, the commissioners have been involved, alongside many of us for the better part of a decade in public meetings, to achieve this standard. They participated throughout a robust, and transparent, rulemaking process, years of data collection, community discussions, and development of the protective standard.

The commissioners once again falsely state that the new selenium standard is more stringent than federal guidelines. Again, not true. Montana regulators applied the federal standard for acceptable levels of selenium in fish tissue and used peer-reviewed scientific models to determine a protective water threshold to protect Koocanusas fish. To be clear, the state standard is the federal standard. It relies upon six years of local data collection and is based on toxic levels of selenium in Koocanusa right now. The objective is to protect fish in Koocanusa. Given these facts, any call to weaken the standard is a move against protecting fish and communities in Montana and ignores our downstream neighbors in Idaho.

The commissioners distort the facts about the federal guidelines for selenium standards. Those guidelines clearly recommend site-specific standards based on local data. After six years of investigating selenium in Lake Koocanusa, a diverse team of selenium experts found that the local data requires a standard of 0.8 ug/L to protect fish and aquatic life. The sad fact is that several species of fish in the reservoir already exceed the Environmental Protection Agencys toxicity threshold for selenium. To be crystal clear, selenium is already at toxic levels in the reservoir because Teck Coals Canadian mines have been leaching selenium into the reservoir for decades.

Contrary to what the commissioners published in their error-filled letter, Lake Koocanusa has been listed as impaired under Montanas 303(d) list due to selenium contamination since 2012. This listing was a precursor to the six-year process that Montana and British Columbia embarked on to design a shared, protective selenium standard.

With respect to Idahos standard, the science is clear that selenium toxicity bioaccumulates in the food web, and that it concentrates more in slow moving waters than in fast moving waters. That is why both Montana and Idaho adopted 3.1 ug/L in the Kootenai River, and 0.8 ug/L was needed for the slow-moving reservoir in Montana. In plain language, lakes are more vulnerable to selenium toxicity than rivers, and Lake Koocanusa is a worst-case scenario because it has been receiving selenium from Canada for several decades. Another very important and overlooked fact is that Idaho also recently listed the Kootenai River as impaired due to selenium, in both fish and water.

Given that the source of this problem is entirely Canadian, and that Montanans gain nothing from weakened standards except more pollutants from mining, why are the commissioners defending Teck Coal and attacking a standard designed to protect Montanas waters? This is the very same company that has been fined millions of dollars for releasing contaminants into rivers flowing into Koocanusa and the Kootenai, has repeatedly failed to meet water quality objectives in B.C., and is the subject of an investigation into a westslope cutthroat trout population collapse.

The facts are: Montanas best interest is in holding international polluters accountable for the selenium flowing into our states waters from Canadian mining operations. The peer-reviewed scientifically robust process for establishing this standard included years of data collected by some of the top selenium experts in the world. The resulting standard was adopted to protect Koocanusas waters and the aquatic life that support our businesses and way of life. Its a Montana-made solution that we should support and be proud of, not undermine with misinformation.

David Brooks, executive director, Montana Trout Unlimited; Andrew Gorder, legal director, Clark Fork Coalition; Ellie Hudson-Heck, conservation assistant, Idaho Conservation League; Derf Johnson, Clean Water Program director and staff attorney, Montana Environmental Information Center.

Love 4 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
Since its formation in 2020, the Big Sky Passenger Rail Authority (BSPRA) has been successful in touting its mission to reestablish rail passenger service through southern Montana. Enthusiasm for the project was heightened in November 2021 with the passage of Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), which  for the first time in its 51-year history  has designated significant funding for Amtrak, Americas intercity rail passenger service.

But often lost in press releases by the BSPRA and in recent news articles are what should be the primary goals for the funding: Fixing the Amtraks infrastructure and placing it on a path of sustainability.

Contrary to highways, waterways and airports which receive recurring lavish funding from numerous government entities, Amtrak has always been a shoestring operation since its 1971 inception, and relies on private infrastructure (i.e. Americas freight railroads) for most of its routes, including in Montana.

Amtrak is currently broken. In the Northeast  where Amtrak owns and maintains its own trackage  routes need upgrades to handle more traffic and to repair deferred maintenance, some of which goes back to damage caused by Hurricane Sandy in 2012. On other routes (like the Empire Builder through northern Montana) trains operate short of rolling stock with equipment over 40 years old. Many station facilities remain noncompliant with ADA guidelines, and the host freight railroads are undercompensated for operating Amtrak trains, resulting in timekeeping issues. Without repairing and stabilizing the Amtrak we have, adding additional routes like a North Coast Hiawatha is counterproductive.

Based on a 2009 study done by Amtrak, restoring the North Coast Hiawatha would cost about $1.4 billion in 2022 dollars. Much has changed in railroad operations since 2009 (during the Great Recession), so indeed a new study to determine cost would be needed. Even with that hefty price tag, the 2009 study dramatically understated cost for stations and some track infrastructure. The capital costs alone for this one route will consume a good portion of the funding available for new services.

The elephant in the room rarely mentioned by proponents of new routes is that operations funding is not perpetual. (For Amtraks current Chicago-West Coast routes  according to questionable Amtrak accounting  thats about $55 million annually per train.) The IIJA covers operations funding for only six years, covering 90% the first year declining to 30% by the sixth year before being discontinued. Any shortfall and funding beyond the sixth year must be covered by Congress in the annual Amtrak appropriation. This is why the North Coast Hiawatha was discontinued in 1979: It (and other trains) were added over the course of the decade; When Congress declined to no longer fully fund all the routes, some were discontinued. The same thing could happen again, possibly even to long-established, well-patronized trains such as the Empire Builder.

We must urge that our elected and appointed officials see that the Amtrak we have is fixed and strengthened before building on a house of cards.

Mark Meyer has been a passenger train advocate for over 50 years. He had a 40-year career in railroad operations at Burlington Northern and BNSF. He is a native of Cut Bank, and now lives in Portland, Oregon.

Love 3 Funny 1 Wow 0 Sad 2 Angry 0
DECATUR  Decatur could see more food trucks in the central business district in the near future.

Currently, food trucks are only permitted downtown during special events, festivals and celebrations. Outside of downtown, food truck vendors obtain a food handling permit from the Macon County Health Department and must set up on private parking lots.

During its meeting Monday, a majority of the Decatur City Council indicated a preference to make the rules for food trucks operating downtown similar to those in other areas of the city.

"The more food options available for Decatur residents in the areas that people frequent, the better the quality of life for the citizens and the more customers for businesses in those areas," Councilman David Horn said.

Under one draft ordinance, food trucks would be regulated as they are outside the city center except with provisions limiting them to three hours of sales per day and barring them from locating within 200 feet of an existing brick-and-mortar restaurant.

Some council members, however, indicated a willingness to tinker with the hours.

A second draft proposal would only allow food trucks to operate within the area bounded by Wood, Eldorado, Church and Franklin streets when part of a special event.

This basically means a local sponsoring organization would have to take responsibility for instructing food trucks where to park, make arrangements for electricity and toilets and collect trash after the event.

City Manager Scot Wrighton said he would come back with an ordinance ready in the near future.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
DECATUR  The Farm Progress Show will continue to call Decatur home.

Farm Progress announced Wednesday that it has extended its contract through 2031 with Brush College, LLC, to continue as a biennial location for the outdoor agricultural showcase that attracts visitors from around the world.

According to Matt Jungmann, Farm Progress Show manager, few details of the contract changed.

"There are some very small, behind-the-scenes things that no one will ever notice," he said. "It's just an extension to keep Farm Progress Show every year on the odd year in Decatur."

The show is held at Progress City USA, adjacent to Richland Community College.

Since being selected in 2005 as the first permanent site to host the Farm Progress Show, the relationship between Richland Community College (owner of Brush College LLC) and Farm Progress has grown into a great partnership opening tremendous opportunities for the Decatur region and the companies participating in the show. We look forward to hosting the future shows, said Greg Florian, vice president of finance and administration at RCC.

The contract enables Farm Progress to continue to carry out its mission to provide world-class ag experiences in both Illinois and Iowa for decades to come. After a successful launch of a permanent site in Decatur, Farm Progress constructed a similar location in Boone, Iowa. The show alternates between the sites, with the next show in Decatur set for Aug. 2931, 2023.

By keeping our deep roots in both Illinois and Iowa, its an opportunity for us to continue our legacy and support of the industry, said Don Tourte, senior vice president of sales and events for Farm Progress. Were delighted to retain our location in Decatur and our partnership with Brush College to bring together the agricultural community.

The show attracts thousands of visitors for the three-day event, in addition to crews and exhibitors who arrive more than a month before the show and several weeks after. According to Jungmann, it has a $17 million impact on the community each year it is held in the city.

The event also relies heavily on local volunteers, which provides needed cash for the groups they represent to fund their programs.

The Decatur Regional Chamber of Commerce recognizes the economic impact the Farm Progress show has had on the Decatur community over the years," said its president, Mirinda Rothrock. "Solidifying Progress City USA as a biennial location for years to come directly affects our local businesses, from our hospitality partners to restaurants and retail. The economic boost is undeniable and we are thrilled they have chosen to continue this partnership.

The first show at Decatur's permanent site, which was initially built in just 305 days, was held in 2005 and since then has continued to grow.

In addition to the financial benefits to local businesses, the presence of the show in Decatur has provided benefits to local students.

During last years show, Richland and FBi Buildings enjoyed a partnership featuring the raising and lowering of a new building that would be designated as the future home to Richlands Agriculture program. Shortly after the show ended, the materials and roof for the 144 x 80-foot building were moved to the new ag building site, just north of the main campus.

Jess Smithers, director of Agricultural Programs, says this partnership created just another piece of RCCs commitment to growth of its agricultural program. The new classroom and laboratory space will enable us to deliver high quality educational experiences which prepare and connect students to careers in Central Illinois largest and its most important industry  agriculture.

He also added, it will be a key component in attracting and training the local talent needed to serve our agricultural community.

Additionally, the show creates opportunities for Richlands agricultural students to enjoy unique internship opportunities, giving them unparalleled educational experiences in their field. Students from local districts get unique opportunities as well, including those who take part in the Dwayne O. Andreas Ag Academy.

Scott Perry contributed to this report.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
Todays Highlight in History:

On March 23, 1919, Benito Mussolini founded his Fascist political movement in Milan, Italy.

On March 23:

In 1775, Patrick Henry delivered an address to the Virginia Provincial Convention in which he is said to have declared, Give me liberty, or give me death!

In 1806, explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, having reached the Pacific coast, began their journey back east.

In 1933, the German Reichstag adopted the Enabling Act, which effectively granted Adolf Hitler dictatorial powers.

In 1942, the first Japanese-Americans evacuated by the U.S. Army during World War II arrived at the internment camp in Manzanar, California.

In 1965, Americas first two-person space mission took place as Gemini 3 blasted off with astronauts Virgil I. Gus Grissom and John W. Young aboard for a nearly 5-hour flight.

In 1981, the U.S. Supreme Court, in H.L. v. Matheson, ruled that states could require, with some exceptions, parental notification when teenage girls seek abortions.

In 1993, scientists announced theyd found the renegade gene that causes Huntingtons disease.

In 1994, Aeroflot Flight 593, an Airbus A310, crashed in Siberia with the loss of all 75 people on board; it turned out that a pilots teenage son who was allowed to sit at the controls had accidentally disengaged the autopilot, causing loss of control.

In 1998, Titanic tied an Academy Awards record by winning 11 Oscars, including best picture, director (James Cameron) and song (My Heart Will Go On).

In 2003, during the Iraq War, a U.S. Army maintenance convoy was ambushed in Nasiriyah; 11 soldiers were killed, including Pfc. Lori Ann Piestewa; six were captured, including Pfc. Jessica Lynch, who was rescued on April 1, 2003.

In 2010, claiming a historic triumph, President Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act, a $938 billion health care overhaul.

In 2012, urging Americans to do some soul searching, President Barack Obama injected himself into the emotional debate over the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin in Florida, saying, If I had a son, hed look like Trayvon. The U.S. Army formally charged Staff Sgt. Robert Bales with 17 counts of premeditated murder in the deaths of 17 villagers, more than half of them children, during a shooting rampage in southern Afghanistan. Pope Benedict XVI landed in Mexico to throngs of faithful who lined more than 20 miles of his route into the city of Leon.

In 2017, abandoning negotiations, President Donald Trump demanded a make-or-break vote on health care legislation in the House, threatening to leave Obamacare in place and move on to other issues if the next days vote failed. (Trump and GOP leaders ended up pulling their bill when it became clear it would fail badly.)

In 2020, President Donald Trump said he wanted to reopen the country for business in weeks, not months; he asserted that continued closures could result in more deaths than the coronavirus itself. Britain became the latest European country to go into effective lockdown, as Prime Minister Boris Johnson ordered the closure of most retail stores and banned public gatherings.

In 2021, a cargo ship the size of a skyscraper ran aground and became wedged in the Suez Canal; hundreds of ships would be prevented from passing through the canal until the vessel was freed six days later. Israeli voters took part in parliamentary elections that would leave Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu without a majority, forcing him from office. George Segal, nominated for an Oscar for his role in Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf, died in California at 87; he had worked into his late 80s on the ABC sitcom The Goldbergs.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
SPRINGFIELD  A fun fact I like to throw out when in the company of politically astute friends and acquaintances is that I was born during the era of Illinois House Speaker Lee Daniels, R-Elmhurst.

It's somewhat of a special designation seeing that Daniels' speakership only lasted from 1995 to 1997, a brief interlude in the 36-year reign of House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, the longest-serving House speaker in American history.

Think about that. Madigan at the time of his ouster in 2021 had been speaker for at least 90% of the lives of those 40 and under.

In a way, he became a fact of life for those of us who grew up in Illinois, a constant amid a rotating cast of governors, Senate presidents, Chicago mayors and other key players in state politics and government.

Elected every two years by the constituents of his small legislative district on Chicago's Southwest Side and continually reelected speaker by House Democrats, Madigan became the most powerful politician in the state.

This can be summed up by one question that loomed over almost every issue at the Capitol for nearly 40 years: "What does the speaker think?"

Veteran Chicago Tribune reporter Ray Long seeks to answer this question and more in his new book, "The House that Madigan Built: The Record Run of Illinois' Velvet Hammer," published by University of Illinois Press and released earlier this week.

The 240-page biography is an instant must-read for anyone seeking to understand the major developments in Illinois state government and politics over the past 40 years.

Stylistically, it is more like Mike Royko's "Boss" than Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylors "American Pharaoh," the two must-read biographies that chronicle the life and times of former Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley, Madigan's political godfather.

By this, I mean that its a tight but thorough read that does not seek to address every somewhat relevant detail of Madigans life, just the highlights and lowlights that get at the essence of Madigan and the clout that he accumulated and managed over the years.

I thought that what I ought to do is not write a biography where I'm talking about all of his different activities  growing up or what cereal he ate or anything like that, Long told me in an interview last week. I wanted to write about big moments and big issues that had an impact on the state of Illinois and helped illustrate his power.

There are not necessarily any previously unknown details about Madigan in the book, but it serves to contextualize how Madigan used the levers of government and politics to amass power likely never to be held again by a legislative leader anywhere.

Long explains in great detail how Madigan's unilateral rule over the House, unmatched political operation, control of campaign cash and army of patronage workers all combined to buttress both Madigan's real and perceived power.

This power was exercised quietly and often in the shadows, hence Madigan's nickname "The Velvet Hammer."

"He was kind of viewed as a guy who can wear you down slowly and softly like water dripping over a rock over a thousand years," Long said.

"He took a subtler approach to crushing somebody," he added.

There are several highlights, such as the story of June 30, 1988, when Madigan "made time stand still," allowing for the House to meet a midnight deadline to approve funding to build a new stadium for the Chicago White Sox, who were threatening to bolt for Florida.

Madigan worked Democrats and Gov. Jim Thompson worked Republicans on the House floor to round up the necessary 60 votes to save the Sox.

The roll call had been open for several minutes until the 60th vote was secured. The actual time? 12:03 a.m. The time declared in the House chamber? 11:59 p.m.

When a reporter asked Thompson about this discrepancy, he said "the speaker said it passed at 11:59 p.m." Immediately after the vote, Madigan bet that no judge would challenge the result  and none of them did.

Long also goes through several Madigan power plays, including some waged against the seven governors with whom he served.

There's a chapter on "Operation Cobra," Madigan's stealth plan to temporarily raise the state's income tax in 1989. It passed the House in less than a day with only Democratic votes.

Long said that the legislative attack "caught Thompson totally surprised," writing that it was "the biggest raw power play I ever saw Speaker Madigan pull off."

By contrast, when lawmakers voted in 2017 to approve a Madigan-backed plan to end the state's two-year budget impasse, Long said that Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner "knew it was coming and he couldn't do anything about it because Madigan outmaneuvered him politically."

And of course, there's a section on the impeachment and removal of Gov. Rod Blagojevich following his indictment on federal corruption charges.

Along with Madigan's highs, Long also spotlights his lows.

On the policy front, this includes the failure to properly fund the state's pension systems. Though Madigan tried in 2013, his plan was declared unconstitutional by the Illinois Supreme Court.

Today, the state's unfunded pension liability is north of $130 billion.

And then there's the speaker's ultimate fall, with cracks starting to show in 2018 during the #MeToo movement. Some members of his inner circle were accused of sexual harassment and the speaker faced questions about his handling of the issue.

Then came the federal probe into hiring practices at utility giant Commonwealth Edison. The feds charged the utility with bribery in June 2020, alleging it awarded jobs and contracts to associates of Madigan in exchange for favorable treatment.

Months later, Madigan consigliere Mike McClain and three others were charged. This was enough for enough House Democrats to drop their support of Madigan and thus deny him another term as speaker.

Long's book ends here somewhat abruptly, almost as if part of the story remained to be written. He confirms this in the last paragraph of the epigraph, calling it "the first draft of Madigan's highs and lows."

This would prove to be a prudent prediction as Madigan earlier this month was indicted on federal corruption and racketeering charges in relation to the ComEd scandal.

Could there be a second edition forthcoming with these new details?

"It's writing itself right now, so I'll be watching," Long said.

Like Royko did with Daley, Long writes with the clean copy and authority of a veteran newsman who had a front-row seat to Madigans record run.

That's because he did, first covering Madigan as an intern for the Alton Telegraph in 1981  Madigans first year as a legislative leader and just two years before he began his record run as speaker  and still reporting on him to this day at the Tribune.

Long utilized his decades of reporting on Madigan along with that of several statehouse colleagues. Throwing in analysis from longtime Illinois political observers, he paints a picture of a colorful period of Illinois politics and government and the man at the center of it all.

Just as "Boss" was a story about Chicago as much as it was about Daley, "The House that Madigan Built" is a story about Illinois as much as it is about Madigan.

Long told me that the book "could work as kind of a historical look back at what Illinois went through when Madigan was a major player there." He added that he felt it was "important to do this while he was still a permanent figure in Illinois."

When he started writing the book in 2018, he figured that Madigan would still be speaker when it eventually came out. But, as readers will find, Long did what good reporters do best.

"I just followed the story," Long said.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
Editorial: NATO proves its worth

Once again, NATO has proved it is far from obsolete.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization struggled in the years following the end of the Cold War to find its purpose and define its mission. The alliance withstood years of former President Donald Trump's attempts to bully its members and tear it down. But now NATO has been roused by Russia's brutal invasion of peaceful, democratic Ukraine, which declared its independence from the old Soviet Union more than 30 years ago.

Ukraine, to be clear, is not a NATO member, though it has petitioned for admission for years. It is, however, a critical buffer between the rest of Europe and a revanchist Russia, which has now dropped any pretense of civility and shown it is willing to take the country by sheer force, no matter the cost to Ukraine's civilians or to Russia itself. The ruthless bombing of the port city of Mariupol, where a hospital complex and an art school sheltering hundreds of civilians were targeted, signals how far Russian President Vladimir Putin is willing to go.

NATO has responded forcefully. In a recent meeting, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said that "today we have tasked our military commanders to develop options across all domains  land, air, sea, cyber and space. On land, our new posture should include substantially more forces in the eastern part of the Alliance, at higher readiness, with more pre-positioned equipment and supplies.

Mary Curtin, diplomat-in-residence and global policy chair at the University of Minnesota's Humphrey School of Public Affairs, spent 25 years in the State Department as a foreign service officer and served as a political counselor in Warsaw, Poland, for years. A noted expert on NATO and European affairs, Curtin said that Putin has made little secret of his bitterness about the Soviet Union's demise and his stubborn refusal to accept the independence of countries such as Ukraine.

That, she said, serves as a reminder of why NATO is so critical. Putin's aggression against Ukraine, she said, is no isolated incident, but part of a calculated, long-range effort. One of his first actions as prime minister in 1999 was to order the air bombing of Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, resulting in that city's near complete destruction. He invaded nearby Georgia in 2008 and seized Crimea in 2014. Early this year he moved troops into Kazakhstan to violently suppress protests in that former Soviet state.

"Ultimately, I think he would like to gather up as many pieces of the old Soviet Union as possible," Curtin said. NATO members, she said, have "for a very long time" been taking more seriously the threat Putin poses."

To that end, she said, despite withholding membership in the alliance NATO countries have been training and supplying the Ukrainian military for years. "We're seeing a highly motivated, skillful Ukrainian resistance that shows years of training they have been receiving from NATO forces," she said. NATO members, led by the U.S., have also moved swiftly to impose sweeping and painful sanctions against Russia.

The strength of NATO, first formed in 1949 by the U.S., Canada and Western European nations, has only grown over time. It is now 30 members strong, with substantial military resources that include forces in Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, with critical air bases. There's a NATO Response Force of 20,000 troops, and a special joint task force formed after Russia's incursion into Crimea in 2014. In a worst-case scenario, it can draw on the combined military forces of its member nations  3.5 million troops.

Trump was wrong to undermine this alliance. He was wrong to cozy up to Putin. Recently, in a shameless attempt at backpedaling on his earlier claim that Putin's invasion of Ukraine was "genius," Trump said that Putin had "changed."

Does he mean that Putin is different from the man who attacked Chechnya? Who seized Crimea? Who invaded Georgia? Who poisoned Russian officer-turned-dissident Alexander Litvinenko? Different from the KGB agent he once was? Why does this matter? Because former security adviser John Bolton has said Trump came close to pulling the U.S. out of NATO in 2018, and might have succeeded had he been reelected.

President Joe Biden, by contrast, has openly labeled Putin a war criminal. He has been forthright in his support of aid for Ukraine and vowed to "defend every inch" of NATO territory  a welcome message to valued allies.

Leadership matters. Alliances such as NATO matter. On such things peace may depend.

StarTribune (Minneapolis)

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
BRISTOL, Va.  Burlington Stores has donated $5,000 to Van Pelt Elementary for school supplies through the nonprofit agency AdoptAClassroom.org.

Burlington has a new location in The Highlands shopping center, at 16680 Highlands Center Dr., a couple of miles from the school, according to a written statement from Bristol Virginia Public Schools.

The donation will provide $130 in supplies to each teachers classroom at Van Pelt.

On behalf of the Bristol Virginia Public Schools, I would like to welcome our new local Burlington store and thank them and AdoptAClassroom.org for their generous donation to our school, Superintendent Keith Perrigan said in the statement. Our teachers are so excited to purchase the tools they need for to support our students and their learning. We are thankful for the generous support we received from Burlington and AdoptAClassroom.org.

Each time Burlington opens a new store, Burlington celebrates by adopting and funding a local school. A grand opening is planned for the new Burlington store on April 8, according to the companys website.

Burlington Stores Inc., is based in New Jersey and operates more than 840 stores nationwide.
"The Goodbye Coast" by Joe Ide; Mulholland Books (320 pages, $28)



Few writers had more influence on crime fiction than Raymond Chandler. His seven novels about Los Angeles private detective Philip Marlowe were published in the mid-20th century and have shaped countless contemporary mystery writers.

Chandler influenced me, too. I first read him while I was a college English major and, despite being knee-deep in Chaucer and Joyce, I had a conversion experience that lives on in my abiding love for the mystery novel.

The heart of Chandlers novels is Marlowe, tough and wisecracking and cynical and smart, and always a man who lives by his own principles. Hes a man who cant be bought, working in Los Angeles, a city where everything, and everybody, is for sale.

In recent years, several novelists have brought Marlowe back  Robert B. Parker wrote about him twice, in "Poodle Springs" and "Perchance to Dream," as have Benjamin Black ("The Black-Eyed Blonde") and Lawrence Osborne ("Only to Sleep").

The latest writer to reboot Marlowe is Joe Ide, in his new book "The Goodbye Coast."

Ide has won a stack of awards for his first five novels about genius PI Isaiah IQ Quintabe, whos a reimagining of Sherlock Holmes in contemporary Los Angeles.

The Marlowe we meet in "The Goodbye Coast" echoes Chandlers original in many ways. He washed out of the police force because of his attitude, hes a loner without long-term romantic attachments, and hes a snappy dresser: He was wearing a dove-gray suit, obviously handmade, black silk tie undone, a milky-white Egyptian cotton shirt, thread count in the 180 to 200 range, and bespoke oxfords, shined but not shiny.

Hes wearing that outfit as the book begins, when he consults with Hollywood star, or mostly former star, Kendra James about her runaway stepdaughter, Cody. If youre a Chandler fan, that setup will remind you of "The Big Sleep." Although Ides title evokes "The Long Goodbye," and Kendras recently murdered husband, Terry, shares a name with a dead man in that book, "The Goodbye Coast" resonates in many ways with "The Big Sleep." And that bad, bad runaway daughter is one of them.

Kendra is a beauty but a highly unpleasant person  Grace Kelly without the grace, thought Marlowe. But Marlowe agrees to take the case.

It doesnt take him long to find Cody, and then he wishes he could get rid of her. Shes 17, colossally entitled and ruthlessly manipulative. Dealing with her, as one character says, is like taking a wolverine to the dentist. And it quickly becomes clear that someone is trying to kill her, too.

Cody refuses to go home to her stepmothers; she hates Kendra even more than she hates most people and accuses her of murdering Terry. So Marlowe has to find a way to protect her while he figures out exactly whats going on.

So he takes her to stay with his father. Wait, Marlowe has a father? In Chandlers books Marlowes past was pretty much blank, and readers learned nothing about his family. Ide takes a different tack, giving Marlowe a father whos very much alive and kicking.

Emmet Marlowe is a distinguished LAPD homicide detective, currently on suspension because since his beloved wife, Addie, died of cancer hes been on a three-year bender. But even drunk hes a smart and experienced cop, and he takes Codys case seriously, despite her vitriolic attitude.

Meanwhile, Marlowe accepts another case involving a missing child. A young woman named Ren Stewart has traveled from her home in England to try to find her 7-year-old son, whos been brought to L.A. by her sketchy ex-husband. Marlowe is smitten: Dark hair, dark eyes, with an angular, aristocratic face. A young Charlotte Rampling.

Later, Marlowe will have a chance to admire Rens skills with a shotgun. In between will come the Russian gangsters and the Hollywood types who launder their money, and much, much more. It all takes place in a vividly rendered Los Angeles, which Ide, an Angeleno himself, knows as well as Chandler did.

At first I was unsure about Emmet  his character seemed so outside of my idea of Marlowe. But through him Ide offers a thoughtful look at how Marlowe might have come to be the man he is, both in Chandlers books and in this one. Its good to have him back.
BRISTOL, Tenn.  The Bristol Tennessee School Board presented the Bristol Tennessee City Council with plans to renovate part of Tennessee High School during a joint meeting at the councils work session Tuesday. But the council said they do not believe the $44 million project is currently economically feasible.

The renovation plan is focused on redesigning the educational spaces at Tennessee High occupied by the Career and Technical Education (CTE) program, as well as creating more accessible shared spaces for Tennessee High students.

Tennessee High, which was constructed in 1939, has not seen any renovations since 1978. Dr. Annette Tudor, the director of schools for the Bristol, Tennessee school system, said she believes the redesign of Tennessee High addresses the accessibility and flow issues at the facility, from disjointed shared spaces to compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

We believe that all students at Tennessee High School should have access to all the facilities [in the school]. You will notice that weve made some significant changes to the flow in the building so that all students can readily and easily access the cafeteria and the library. Those are not easy to access now, Tudor said. Our goal is to prepare our youth for college and career. We need this facility to be able to do that. Its [currently] not fully ADA accessible. There is one elevator thats hard to get to, got to go through the library on the third floor in order to get to it.

Don Shell, the CEO of Community Tectonics Architects who designed the renovation plan, gave City Council a virtual tour through 3D renderings of the proposed redesign of Tennessee Highs three-floor Career and Technical Education building with its various classrooms and offices, the library and the cafeteria that would all be connected by an open courtyard and a series of multipurpose spaces.

The projected cost of the Tennessee High renovation plan presented by the Bristol, Tennessee School Board to the City Council is $44 million. That is $24 million over the budget City Council had proposed for this project in prior discussions with the School Board.

Vince Turner, the vice mayor of Bristol Tennessee, pointed out that he understands the need from the School Board for a new high school but also stressed that the city has already had to delay plans for a new fire station due to the rising regional and national construction prices.

I understand that you cant afford to think you cant afford not to do it. But we have put off our fire station because of the cost, Turner said. I thought we originally talked about $20 [million].

Councilwoman Lea Powers believes City Council should continue having conversations with the School Board about Tennessee High renovations and proposed the idea of bringing other potential collaborators to the table.

We know that this is this is one option, a beautiful option, but you know, are there other options? Powers asked. We all want an outstanding CTE facility. We all want the high school to be the very best that it can be for our students. Realizing that the price tag is more than what we have wanted to do, that conversation involves collaboration, bringing other partners to the table.

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.
BRISTOL, Va.  Mayor Anthony Farnum said Tuesday he hopes Bristol, Virginia is reaching a turning point with its landfill issues.

On Tuesday an 11-member panel of nationally recognized landfill experts completed its visit to the Twin City and will begin preparing a report with recommendations about how to address odor and emission issues with the quarry landfill which have plagued this region for more than a year.

At its meeting Tuesday, the City Council unanimously approved a three-year contract with SCS Engineers to carry out a comprehensive integrated solid waste facility management agreement and provide professional engineering services regarding all aspects of the landfill.

Were encouraged, were optimistic. This [landfill] is our top priority, Farnum said after the meeting. I think everyone in the community has been frustrated at the length of time this has been going on. Its affecting everyone in our whole community.

I think it could be a turning point. Its not just the city of Bristol involved in this. Now its our expert panel, our discussions with DEQ and EPA, our local legislators are making sure everyone is aware of the issue in Richmond; the citizens  HOPE for Bristol  is spreading awareness, the mayor said.

SCS has been working with the city since Jan. 2021 overseeing its landfill gas well monitoring operations after the city discovered issues with reporting. Prior to that, the company performed a financial analysis of the landfill in 2018 and 2019, City Manager Randy Eads said after the meeting.

They are familiar with the landfill. Theyre familiar with the city, Eads said.

SCS was selected after the city conducted a request for proposals and received four applicants, SCS Engineers, current vendor Draper Aden Associates, Geosyntec Consultants and S&ME Engineering.

Eads and city CFO Tamrya Spradlin were part of an evaluation committee that included three people from Fairfax County with backgrounds in landfill operations  James Patterson, former public works director in Fairfax County; John Kellas, deputy director of public works; and Stephen Aitcheson, former solid waste manager.

I was connected with those people through state agencies, and they suggested that we reach out to them to help us evaluate the proposals, Eads told the council. Committee members, excluding Stephen Aitcheson, then ranked each proposal based on the RFPs criteria. SCS Engineers was ranked first and negotiations began.

Eads said the fee schedule of SCS was deemed to be advantageous to the city.

Councilman Bill Hartley noted this contract went well beyond previous agreements and includes a litany of services and responsibilities related to possible fixes at the landfill, some of which may still be proposed by the expert panel.

It includes designing a system to remove benzene from the wet well and sewer system, solid waste permit amendments, leachate and gradient water sampling, sidewall liner extension and mobilization, communication with regulatory agencies, review existing data in records and permits and see if any of those records could be deemed deficient and recommend changes to correct any deficiencies.

Additionally SCS is to evaluate and advise the city whether an early closure or temporary closure of the landfill is possible by engineering and environmental standards, including financial analysis for the closure of the current landfill, by May 31, with up to one 30-day extension, Eads said.

Hartley also asked about cost.

I think their hourly fee will be advantageous compared to the previous hourly fee. There may be some things that are more expensive, some things that are less expensive. Overall, I think it will be relatively the same based on the scope of services that have been asked, Eads said. I anticipate a significant increase for professional services in this line item, based on the situation the city finds itself in.

The citys current contract with Draper Aden Associates requires a 30-day notice for early termination, so SCS Engineers is expected to assume that role in late April, Eads told the council.

In other matters, the council approved an extension on the closing date of city-owned property along Lee Highway, the former Pepsi plant property, from March to April 19, to allow BVU Authority to complete its right-of-way. The site is slated to be the future location of a Waffle House.

The council also approved a plan to use federal CDBG funds to tear down five dilapidated, vacant houses and a dilapidated out-building. The entire process is expected to take two to three months to complete.

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.
BRISTOL, Va.  Mayor Anthony Farnum said Tuesday he hopes Bristol Virginia is reaching a turning point with its landfill issues.

On Tuesday an 11-member panel of nationally recognized landfill experts completed its visit to the Twin City and will begin preparing a report with recommendations about how to address odor and emission issues with the quarry landfill which have plagued this region for more than a year.

At its meeting Tuesday, the City Council unanimously approved a three-year contract with SCS Engineers to carry out a comprehensive integrated solid waste facility management agreement and provide professional engineering services regarding all aspects of the landfill.

Were encouraged, were optimistic. This (landfill) is our top priority, Farnum said after the meeting. I think everyone in the community has been frustrated at the length of time this has been going on. Its affecting everyone in our whole community.

I think it could be a turning point. Its not just the city of Bristol involved in this. Now its our expert panel, our discussions with DEQ and EPA, our local legislators are making sure everyone is aware of the issue in Richmond; the citizens  HOPE for Bristol  is spreading awareness, the mayor said.

SCS has been working with the city since Jan. 2021 overseeing its landfill gas well monitoring operations after the city discovered issues with reporting. Prior to that, the company performed a financial analysis of the landfill in 2018 and 2019, City Manager Randy Eads said after the meeting.

They are familiar with the landfill. Theyre familiar with the city, Eads said.

SCS was selected after the city conducted a request for proposals and received four applicants, SCS Engineers, current vendor Draper Aden Associates, Geosyntec Consultants and S&ME Engineering.

Eads and city CFO Tamrya Spradlin were part of an evaluation committee that included three people from Fairfax County with backgrounds in landfill operations  James Patterson, former public works director in Fairfax County; John Kellas, deputy director of public works and Stephen Aitcheson, former solid waste manager.

I was connected with those people through state agencies and they suggested that we reach out to them to help us evaluate the proposals, Eads told the council. Committee members, excluding Stephen Aitcheson, then ranked each proposal based on the RFPs criteria. SCS Engineers was ranked first and negotiations began.

Eads said the fee schedule of SCS was deemed to be advantageous to the city.

Councilman Bill Hartley noted this contract went well beyond previous agreements and includes a litany of services and responsibilities related to possible fixes at the landfill, some of which may still be proposed by the expert panel.

It includes designing a system to remove benzene from the wet well and sewer system, solid waste permit amendments, leachate and gradient water sampling, sidewall liner extension and mobilization, communication with regulatory agencies, review existing data in records and permits and see if any of those records could be deemed deficient and recommend changes to correct any deficiencies.

Additionally SCS is to evaluate and advise the city whether an early closure or temporary closure of the landfill is possible by engineering and environmental standards, including financial analysis for the closure of the current landfill, by May 31, with up to one 30-day extension, Eads said.

Hartley also asked about cost.

I think their hourly fee will be advantageous compared to the previous hourly fee. There may be some things that are more expensive, some things that are less expensive. Overall, I think it will be relatively the same based on the scope of services that have been asked, Eads said. I anticipate a significant increase for professional services in this line item, based on the situation the city finds itself in.

The citys current contract with Draper Aden Associates requires a 30-day notice for early termination so SCS Engineers is expected to assume that role in late April, Eads told the council.

In other matters, the council approved an extension on the closing date of city-owned property along Lee Highway, the former Pepsi plant property, from March to April 19, to allow BVU Authority to complete its right-of-way. The site is slated to be the future location of a Waffle House.

The council also approved a plan to use federal CDBG funds to tear down five dilapidated, vacant houses and a dilapidated out-building. The entire process is expected to take two to three months to complete.

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.
Hickory Village Memory Care was struck by several bullets Monday night. No one at the village was injured.

Around 9:30 p.m. Monday, a round of bullets was fired outside the memory care center on Third Avenue Southeast, breaking a front window, according to a report from the Hickory Police Department.

There were no arrests in the case as of Tuesday afternoon. Police spent part of the day Tuesday examining bullet casings and gathering evidence in front of the memory care center and the parking lot of a church near the center.
Imagine being a patient of a doctor, one whom you loved and trusted, one who also murdered and mutilated his own father.

Such an experience forms the basis for a new book, The Other Dr. Gilmer: Two Men, A Murder, and an Unlikely Fight for Justice, by Benjamin Gilmer.

This very real tragedy happened to the patients of the Cane Creek Family Health Center near Asheville where the doctor-murderer, Dr. Vince Gilmer, practiced medicine until June 2004, when one day he strangled his father with a rope, cut off his fingers, and left the body on the side of a road in Virginia.

Vince Gilmer returned to the clinic after the murder and practiced medicine as if nothing happened for several days until he was arrested for murder.

Several years after Vinces arrest and trial and imprisonment in the Wallens Ridge, Virginia, prison, the books author, Dr. Benjamin Gilmer, a graduate of Davidson College and East Carolina Universitys medical school, began to work at the Cane Creek clinic.

Naturally, there was confusion. The two doctors were not related, but understandably the patients thought there must be some connection.

Over time, Benjamins patients told him more and more about Vince. They said he was a fine doctor and a wonderful person. Vince took special care, sometimes taking troubled patients on walks or giving them great big bear hugs.

Benjamin became more curious about his predecessor with the shared name. His curiosity developed into a compulsion to find out how and why and what actually happened to Vince. "Something wasn't right, he says, I couldn't let it go."

He began to visit the prison at Wallens Ridge, where Vince was incarcerated.

These visits convinced Benjamin that Vince had serious mental health issues not recognized by or of concern to the prison officials. Without treatment, Vince would never get better and the demons of his mental illness would destroy him.

Benjamin also read hundreds of pages of transcripts of Vinces murder trial. Vince had tried to represent himself. He succeeded only in convincing the judge and jury that he was faking mental illness. They thought he was using the skills and knowledge of a sane physician to try to act mentally disturbed and avoid responsibility for a brutal murder.

From his study of Vinces situation, Benjamin believed that Vince had multiple conditions that could have caused his mental illness. Most important to him was a finding that Vince suffered from Huntingtons Disease, an inherited condition that ravages its victims and causes bizarre conduct.

If Vinces condition had been known at the time of his trial, Benjamin believed that he would have, at worst, been found not guilty by reason of insanity. Rather than petition for a new trial which would have taken years, Benjamin and his advisers and volunteer professionals asked Virginia governors for clemency.

First, they petitioned Gov. Terry McAuliffe, hoping he would act before he left office in January 2018. He did not. So Benjamins volunteer legal helpers pointed to McAuliffes successor, Ralph Northam, a physician and a neurologist. They thought he would be understanding.

The book ends on a sad note. As his term ended in January 2022, Northam rejected the clemency petition for Vince.

At the end of his book, Benjamin writes, It is difficult not to react to this latest setback with anger and disillusionment ... I am filled with fury and sadness  for Vince, his family, for all the mentally ill people in prison just like him.

A sad ending for this book.

But there is more to the story. Somehow, Governor Northam got and read a pre-publication copy of The Other Dr. Gilmer and was convinced to grant Vince clemency, just in time.

Others who read this fine book will, like Northam, be transformed.

D.G. Martin is a retired lawyer who worked a number of years in the UNC system.
" " Nyx is often depicted as a shadowy figure in Greek mythology. delcarmat/Shutterstock

In Greek mythology, the goddess Nyx was one of the oldest deities in the universe, born in the first moments of creation from the yawning abyss of Chaos. Nyx was the personification of night and was so ancient and powerful that even mighty Zeus was afraid to cross her.

We spoke with Daniel Turkeltaub, a classics professor at Santa Clara University, to learn more about the mist-shrouded figure of Nyx, the chariot-riding queen of night and mother of death, deceit and dreams.

Advertisement

A Primordial Female Force of Good and Evil

Nyx (whose name Turkeltaub says should be pronounced as "nooks") is one of the "primordial" gods  protogenoi in Greek  who were born of Chaos, the gaping void that existed before creation. According to Hesiod's "Theogony," an epic poem dating from the eighth century B.C.E., Nyx's sisters and brothers were Gaia (Earth), Tartarus (the Pit), Eros (Love) and Erebus (Darkness).

Through a "union in love" with her dark brother Erebus, Nyx gave birth to two "luminous" offspring, Aether (Divine Air) and Hemera (Day). Then things took a turn. In Hesiod's cosmology, Nyx next self-conceived a brood of baddies that included the Keres (spirits of Violent Death), Moros (Doom), Oizys (Misery), Apate (Deceit), Nemesis (Retribution) and the Moirai (the three "ruthless and avenging" Fates).

Hesiod attached negative descriptors to Nyx like "deadly Night" and "evil Night," but the ancient goddess was also the mother of more positive offspring like Hypnos (Sleep), the Oneiroi (Dreams), Geras (Old Age), Thanatos (Peaceful Death) and Philotes, which could mean either Friendship or Sex. "It is a nocturnal activity," says Turkeltaub.

Advertisement

Nyx Was a Charioteer of the Sky

" " This terra cotta vase shows Helios (the Sun) rising in his quadriga (4-horse chariot); above, Nyx (Night) drives away to the left and Hemera (Day) to the right. This vase can be seen at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Metropolitan Museum of Art

Few ancient images of Nyx survive, but a stunning one comes from a terracotta vase at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York dating from 500 B.C.E.

The painted scene shows the hero Heracles offering a sacrifice to Helios (the Sun) as it rises. On either side of Helios are Nyx and Hemera, the goddesses of night and day, who each ride horse-drawn chariots in opposite directions as dawn breaks.

The ancient Greeks developed a sophisticated mythology to explain the unknown workings of the natural world, like the alternation of night and day.

"In Greek mythology, Nyx and her daughter Hemera share an abode at the end of the earth," says Turkeltaub. "When one leaves on her chariot, the other enters."

Here's how Hesiod describes it:

"Nyx (Night) and Hemera (Day) draw near and greet one another as they pass the great threshold of bronze. And while the one is about to go down into the house, the other one comes out the door. And the house never holds them both within; but always one is without the house passing over the earth, while the other stays at home and waits until the time for her journeying come."

In the vase painting, Nyx is swathed in gauzy robes, and there's a dark cloud or mist above her head. Hesiod describes her resting place in Tartarus as "the awful home of murky Night wrapped in dark clouds."

Advertisement

Even Zeus Knew Not to Mess With Nyx

There aren't many "stories" associated with Nyx, says Turkeltaub, but the ancient Greek author Homer makes a passing reference in his epic poem, the "Iliad," that shows us the respect and even fear that Nyx commanded.

In this part of the "Iliad," the powerful goddess Hera hatched a plan to "lay in love" with Zeus, but she needed help from Hypnos, the god of Sleep and son of Nyx. If Hypnos would just lull Zeus into a deep slumber, Hera promised him thrones of gold.

Hypnos wasn't having it, though. He said that he played the same trick for Hera once before when she wanted to meddle in the Trojan War, and it didn't go well. Zeus woke up angry and "beat the gods up and down his house" in search of Hypnos, writes Homer.

Hypnos thought he was finished "had not Nyx (Night) who has power over gods and men rescued me," writes Homer. "I reached her in my flight, and Zeus let be, though he was angry, in awe of doing anything to swift Nyx's displeasure."

In other words, Zeus knew better than to tick off Nyx.

"The other gods do not mess with Nyx," says Turkeltaub. "She has a power that precedes Zeus. Nyx is a looming ancestral mother figure with a primordial power that other gods respect and revere."

Now That's Cool While no statues of Nyx survive, there may have been a temple dedicated to her in the Greek coastal city of Megara. Turkeltaub says that the ancient Greek geographer Pausanias described a "temple to Night" at the acropolis in Megara where Nyx was believed to prophesy the future.
Easy Like Sunday, a restaurant specializing in breakfast and lunch, will be coming to the Village of Cross Keys by next spring.

Caves Valley Partners, owner and developer of the retail, residential and office complex in North Baltimore, said Wednesday it signed a lease with the restaurant owners for the 2,700-square-foot space where Village Square Cafe recently closed.

Advertisement

Easy Like Sunday is one of six leases recently signed, including a handful of soon-to-be-announced office tenants, said Arsh Mirmiran, who is leading redevelopment for Caves Valley. The developer also is negotiating with several other restaurants and plans to bring in a 3,000- to- 5,000-square-foot gourmet market.

Easy Like Sunday plans to serve breakfast, lunch and brunch, with a focus on locally-sourced ingredients and gourmet coffees.

Advertisement

Sean MacCuish, 37, the restaurants owner with his wife Anna, 29, described the Cross Keys concept as an elevated breakfast and brunch space, focused on traditional breakfast cuisine with basic eggs, meat, potatoes, French toast, but elevated items.

The owners, who also operate an Easy Like Sunday in Charlotte, North Carolina, expect the menu to include dishes such as shrimp and grits, blueberry ricotta lemon pancakes, fried chicken and cornmeal pancakes and craft mimosas and cocktails.

We dont like to get too far away from the classics, because every breakfast lover can appreciate the simplicity of pancakes and eggs  its the use of quality ingredients such as cage-free eggs and 100% maple syrup that makes all the difference, MacCuish said, adding that the restaurant also will have a bit more emphasis on lunch and some Baltimore favorites, including seafood.

Anna MacCuish grew up in Baltimore, the daughter of owners of G&A Restaurant. The diner, known for its Coney Island hot dogs, started in a Highlandtown rowhouse in 1927 and after closing last summer relocated several weeks ago to Philadelphia Road in White Marsh.

Sean MacCuish, Easy Like Sundays head chef, comes from San Diego and has worked in the restaurant industry since he was 16, working his way up from dishwasher to kitchen and front-of-the-house jobs. Just before the pandemic hit in February 2020, he and his wife opened their first restaurant, the Easy Like Sunday concept in Charlotte, where they found an ideal location and had family nearby.

The restaurant caught on, winning a best new brunch spot award. When they were ready to expand, they looked to Baltimore to be closer to Anna MacCuishs parents and other family.

With a team in place to run the Charlotte restaurant, the couple plans to relocate to and raise their family in Baltimore.

The Evening Sun Daily Get your evening news in your e-mail inbox. Get all the top news and sports from the baltimoresun.com. >

Advertisement

Sean MacCuish said he was impressed by ongoing redevelopment of Cross Keys, originally developed in 1965 by Jim Rouse and acquired in July 2020 by Caves Valley.

During a visit to Baltimore, We went by and checked it out and fell in love with their vision, Sean MacCuish said.

Caves Valley has been renovating and signing new office and retail tenants. A residential developer plans to begin construction of a 300-unit apartment building later this year or by early next year, Mirmiran said. The office space is about 90 percent occupied.

The office leasing has been really, really steady, and were working on getting retail leasing caught up, he said.

He said Easy Like Sunday will help continue Cross Keys long-standing tradition as a power breakfast and lunch meeting spot.

Easy Like Sunday is a perfect fit for Cross Keys, Mirmiran said in an announcement. The vibe, the local roots, and the creative menu will draw customers from throughout Baltimore.
Thursday, March 24

All eight Republican candidates running in the May 17th Primary for Cabarrus County Commissioner will participate in a candidate forum at the Copperfield Room located at 270 Copperfield Blvd NE Ste 203 in Concord. The forum will begin at 7 p.m. and will be hosted by the Cabarrus Republican Men's Club and Cabarrus Republican Women's Club. All Registered Republicans and unaffiliated voters are welcome to attend. The event is free.

Friday, March 25

The Concord Duplicate Bridge face-to-face games through Concord Parks and Recreation at Hartsell Recreation Center, 60 Hartsell School Road, at noon. Cost is $5 per player. You must have a partner and provide proof of vaccination.

Heavenly Hot Dogs at Mount Olivet United Methodist Church, 301 Mount Olivet Road, will be offered from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Free delivery for orders of more than $15, and takeout is available. Homemade desserts and chicken noodle soup are available. For more information, visit www.mtochurch.com or call 704-782-8846.

Hot dogs at McGill Baptist Church, 5300 Poplar Tent Road, will be sold along with fried bologna and barbecue sandwiches and desserts from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Saturday, March 26

The Piedmont Farmers Market is open from 9 a.m. to noon at 518 Winecoff School Road. It features lots of local produce, meat, flowers and other products.

Hot Dogs at Center United Methodist Church at 1119 Union St. S., are offered on the second and fourth Saturday of each month from 11 a.m. until 2 p.m. Dine in and take out. Call-in orders are welcome at 704-782-1785.

Monday, March 28

The Concord Duplicate Bridge face-to-face games through Concord Parks and Recreation at Hartsell Recreation Center, 60 Hartsell School Road, at noon. Cost is $5 per player. You must have a partner and provide proof of vaccination.

Tuesday, March 29

Vietnam War 50th Commemoration Ceremony Honoring Vietnam War Veterans will be at American Legion Post 51 on 165 Wilshire Ave. SW in Concord. The program, which includes a social gathering and refreshments, will last from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. The program is sponsored by the Cabarrus Black Boys Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution and The Cabarrus Veterans Coalition. To RSVP, call 703-371-6850 by March 15. A memorial service at Vietnam Veterans Park will be open to the public at 2 p.m. The park is at 760 Orphanage Road in Concord. An RSVP is not required.

Friday, April 1

The Concord Duplicate Bridge face-to-face games through Concord Parks and Recreation at Hartsell Recreation Center, 60 Hartsell School Road, at noon. Cost is $5 per player. You must have a partner and provide proof of vaccination.

Heavenly Hot Dogs at Mount Olivet United Methodist Church, 301 Mount Olivet Road, will be offered from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Free delivery for orders of more than $15, and takeout is available. Homemade desserts and chicken noodle soup are available. For more information, visit www.mtochurch.com or call 704-782-8846.

Hot dogs at McGill Baptist Church, 5300 Poplar Tent Road, will be sold along with fried bologna and barbecue sandwiches and desserts from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Saturday, April 2

The Piedmont Farmers Market is open from 9 a.m. to noon at 518 Winecoff School Road. It features lots of local produce, meat, flowers and other products..

Monday, April 4

The Concord Duplicate Bridge face-to-face games through Concord Parks and Recreation at Hartsell Recreation Center, 60 Hartsell School Road, at noon. Cost is $5 per player. You must have a partner and provide proof of vaccination.

Wednesday, April 6

The Cabarrus Senior Center Photo Club is alive and clicking away. If you like taking photos, come join us on the first and third Wednesdays of the month from 1:30-3 p.m. at the Cabarrus Senior Center, 331 Corban Ave. SE, Concord, and share your photographic creativity. Whether you are a seasoned photographer or strictly amateur, all are welcome.

Thursday, April 7

Learn the art of basket weaving, and be ready for Spring and Summer by completing a Spring Flowers Basket! Supplies are provided with several color choices. The basket will be perfect for holding a pot of tulips, ivy or other plants. This beautiful basket is perfect for a beginner or advanced weaver. The class will be held from 9:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. at NC Cooperative Extension, 715 Cabarrus Avenue West, Concord, NC 28027 and the cost is $26. Register Online at: go.ncsu.edu/registercabarrus or pay in person at 715 Cabarrus Avenue West, Concord, NC 28027. Checks payable to: Cabarrus County. Class size is limited. For additional details contact 704-920-3310 weekdays.

Friday, April 8

The Concord Duplicate Bridge face-to-face games through Concord Parks and Recreation at Hartsell Recreation Center, 60 Hartsell School Road, at noon. Cost is $5 per player. You must have a partner and provide proof of vaccination.

Heavenly Hot Dogs at Mount Olivet United Methodist Church, 301 Mount Olivet Road, will be offered from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Free delivery for orders of more than $15, and takeout is available. Homemade desserts and chicken noodle soup are available. For more information, visit www.mtochurch.com or call 704-782-8846.

Hot dogs at McGill Baptist Church, 5300 Poplar Tent Road, will be sold along with fried bologna and barbecue sandwiches and desserts from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Saturday, April 9

The Piedmont Farmers Market is open from 9 a.m. to noon at 518 Winecoff School Road. It features lots of local produce, meat, flowers and other products.

Hot Dogs at Center United Methodist Church at 1119 Union St. S., are offered on the second and fourth Saturday of each month from 11 a.m. until 2 p.m. Dine in and take out. Call-in orders are welcome at 704-782-1785.

Monday, April 11

The Concord Duplicate Bridge face-to-face games through Concord Parks and Recreation at Hartsell Recreation Center, 60 Hartsell School Road, at noon. Cost is $5 per player. You must have a partner and provide proof of vaccination.

Wednesday, April 13

A 6-week series of "MED Instead of MEDS" for Better Health! begins. Eating the Mediterranean way is not only healthy, it is delicious and satisfying.The class will include weekly food tastings of Med recipes, and you will receive weekly recipes to try at home. The series will meet weekly on Wednesdays beginning on April 13 and concluding on Wednesday, May 18 from 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m. at NC Cooperative Extension , Cabarrus County Center, 715 Cabarrus Avenue West, Concord, NC 28027. Cost is $ 18.00 for the series. Register Online at: go.ncsu.edu/registercabarrus or pay by mail or in person at 715 Cabarrus Avenue West, Concord, NC 28027. Checks are payable to: Cabarrus County. Details contact 704-920-3310 weekdays.

Friday, April 15

The Concord Duplicate Bridge face-to-face games through Concord Parks and Recreation at Hartsell Recreation Center, 60 Hartsell School Road, at noon. Cost is $5 per player. You must have a partner and provide proof of vaccination.

Heavenly Hot Dogs at Mount Olivet United Methodist Church, 301 Mount Olivet Road, will be offered from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Free delivery for orders of more than $15, and takeout is available. Homemade desserts and chicken noodle soup are available. For more information, visit www.mtochurch.com or call 704-782-8846.

Hot dogs at McGill Baptist Church, 5300 Poplar Tent Road, will be sold along with fried bologna and barbecue sandwiches and desserts from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Saturday, April 16

The Piedmont Farmers Market is open from 9 a.m. to noon at 518 Winecoff School Road. It features lots of local produce, meat, flowers and other products.

Monday, April 18

The Concord Duplicate Bridge face-to-face games through Concord Parks and Recreation at Hartsell Recreation Center, 60 Hartsell School Road, at noon. Cost is $5 per player. You must have a partner and provide proof of vaccination.

Wednesday, April 20

The Cabarrus Senior Center Photo Club is alive and clicking away. If you like taking photos, come join the members on the first and third Wednesdays of the month from 1:30-3 p.m. at the Cabarrus Senior Center, 331 Corban Ave. SE, Concord, and share your photographic creativity. Whether you are a seasoned photographer or strictly amateur, all are welcome.

Thursday, April 28

"Scams and Illegal Jams" is a program offered for the community, hosted by Cabarrus County Extension and Community Association (ECA). The program will feature Cabarrus County Sheriff Vann Shaw and local attorney Jazmin Caldwell and will be held at Cabarrus Arena and Events Center , Cabarrus Rooms, located on Highway 49. Doors will open at 9:15 a.m. for registration and to join the "Win Me Opportunities"! Program will begin at 10 a.m. Door prizes will be included. Please register in advance by calling NC Cooperative Extension, Cabarrus Center at 704-920-3310 weekdays.

Got news or events?

Does your community group or nonprofit agency have an upcoming event that would be of interest to the public? Email it to mplemmons@independenttribune.com.
The Untappd Beer Festival  known for having a bit of a difficult past in Charlotte  is coming back this June to give it another shot in a new location in Elizabeth and split into two sessions.

This year, festival goers will be able to sip unlimited beer samples from more than 300 choices provided by 100 of the social networking platforms highest rated breweries while listening to live music. Charlotte-area breweries participating include Amor Artis Brewing, Free Range Brewing, Legal Remedy Brewing, Legion Brewing, Lenny Boy Brewing Co., Lost Worlds Brewing, Salud, Olde Mecklenburg Brewing, Traust Brewing, Weathered Souls Brewing and more.

After an extremely successful Untappd Beer Festival last year in San Diego, we couldnt be more excited to return home to Charlotte, said Talia Spera, Untappds vice president for festivals and live events.

2022 festival details

WHEN: Saturday, June 18. Session one VIP entry starts at 11 a.m., with doors open for general admission at noon and closing at 3:30 p.m. Session two VIP entry starts at 5:30 p.m., with general admission starting at 6:30 p.m. and wrapping up for the night at 10 p.m.

TICKETS: Tickets go on sale at 9 a.m., Friday March 25. Early Bird discounted tickets will be available while supplies last or through Monday, March 28 at 8 a.m., when prices increase.

COST: General admission is $60, while VIP entry is $150. All entrants get a souvenir tasting cup. VIP ticket holders get an hour extra at the festival, along with access to the VIP section, VIP only pours and a lanyard.

DONATION OPTION: You can also tack on a donation to Ales for ALS with your ticket purchase, which is a national fundraising campaign to raise money and awareness for ALS, or Lou Gehrigs disease.

Untappd in Charlotte

In 2019, the inaugural event in Charlotte went less than perfectly. Some tents didnt get their kegs on time for VIP admission, leaving patrons who paid extra with fewer choices. Other attendees cited admission lines that wrapped around the building, long beer lines and broken signature souvenir cups  and thats not including complaints about others getting turned away during a storm coinciding with the rain-or-shine festival, when beer sales were put on hold. It was being called the Fyre Festival of Charlotte, CharlotteFive reported at the time, and tweets about the conditions were trending nationally.

In 2020, the event was rescheduled and then canceled over COVID-19, along with most other events. Untappd gave it another shot and rescheduled for Bank of America Stadium in April 2021, but was later postponed indefinitely.
The report includes an examination into the online disinformation and misinformation environment in Australia and the ACMAs assessment of the Australian Code of Practice for Disinformation and Misinformation.

The ACMA says the report finds that most Australians are concerned about, and have experienced, online misinformation.

The propagation of falsehoods and conspiracies undermines public health efforts, impacts businesses, causes harm to democratic institutions, and in some cases, incites individuals to carry out acts of violence, the ACMA states.

The digital platform industry in Australia, steered by the industry association, DIGI, navigated a range of complex matters to put in place a voluntary industry-developed code of practice to address this issue.

The ACMAs report identifies several opportunities for industry to make improvements to the Code and raises concerns regarding the quality of platform reporting and the strength of administrative processes.

In recognition that addressing misinformation is a joint responsibility, an action group will be established to bring together key stakeholders across government and the private sector to collaborate on emerging issues and best practice responses, the ACMA said.

The ACMA added that since the Code commenced, the industry has established a web portal to accept complaints by members of the public who are concerned platforms are not meeting their obligations under the code, appointed an independent assessor to review the members activity reports, and appointed a panel to review the code and its administration. The second annual reports on actions taken under the Code are due to be published in May.

The ACMA says it will continue to monitor platforms measures and the implementation of code arrangements to inform additional advice to government by the end of the 202223 financial year.

The Federal Government says it will introduce legislation this year to combat harmful disinformation and misinformation online.

The legislation will provide the ACMA with new regulatory powers to hold big tech companies to account for harmful content on their platforms.

Minister for Communications Urban Infrastructure Cities and the Arts Paul Fletcher, made the announcement of the new powers while releasing a the ACMA report.

ACMAs report highlights that disinformation and misinformation are significant and ongoing issues, Fletcher said.

Digital platforms must take responsibility for what is on their sites and take action when harmful or misleading content appears. This is our Governments clear expectationand just as we have backed that expectation with action in recently passing the new Online Safety Act, we are taking action when it comes to disinformation and misinformation.

Minister Fletcher said the Government welcomed all five of the recommendations made in ACMAs report.

Fletcher advised that the ACMA will be given new information-gathering powers to incentivise greater platform transparency and improve access to Australia-specific data on the effectiveness of measures to address disinformation and misinformation.

In addition, the Government advised that the ACMA will be given reserve powers to register and enforce industry codes or make industry standards. This will encourage platforms to be ambitious in addressing the harms of disinformation and misinformation, while providing ACMA with the ability to hold platforms to account should their voluntary efforts prove inadequate or untimely.

Fletcher said these measures build on the actions the Morrison Government and industry have already taken.

The Government Response to the ACCCs Digital Platforms Inquiry Final Report indicated that the Government would ask the major digital platforms to develop a voluntary code of conduct for disinformation and news quality. The Australian Code of Practice on Disinformation and Misinformation was developed by industry with oversight by the ACMA.

The Code was launched in February, 2021, and commits signatories to take action to reduce the impact of harmful disinformation and misinformation on their services.

The Government says it has carefully considered additional measures put in place by industry to combat harmful misinformation and disinformation in relation to COVID, and more recently the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The Government says it acknowledges the positive steps taken by industry, but believes more protections must be provided to Australians online.

The Government will consult on the scope of the new powers in the coming weeks ahead of introducing legislation into the Parliament in the second half of 2022, they advised.
COMPANY NEWS: Dubber Corporation Limited (ASX: DUB) (Dubber) is pleased to announce that its Unified Call Recording (UCR) and Voice AI platform has been selected by Denmarks Nuuday for unified call recording and voice AI for mobile and unified communications (UC) customers.

Nuuday is Denmarks largest telecommunications service provider, part of the national carrier TDC Group/TDC Holding A/S. Dubber services will be available for TDC Erhvervs (a Nuuday brand) customers on their mobile and Unified Communications (UC) solutions in the first half of 2022. The deployment will also provide for the migration of all existing on-premise call recordings to the Dubber cloud platform, maintaining or exceeding compliance standards under legacy customer agreements.

Dubber UCR services will also be immediately available on TDC Scale, Nuudays Unified Communications solution for enterprise customers, while migrating existing recording services, and call recording data to the Dubber platform. This implementation will enable Nuuday customers to seamlessly add Dubber products to their existing Nuuday UC services while allowing for the rollout of additional Dubber solutions onto the TDC Scale service.

John Henriksen, CEO, TDC Erhverv: Our new partnership with Dubber will provide a scalable and secure solution to meet our customers call recording requirements, across their mobile and Unified Communications services. Dubbers solutions will easily integrate with our existing infrastructure and service offerings for all Danish businesses, reinforcing our ambition to constantly innovate to meet customers needs. With UC transforming the way businesses communicate, solutions like Dubber provide much-needed, secure and compliant functionality.

Steve McGovern, CEO, Dubber: Nuuday is a recognised industry leader and one of the most progressive carriers in the European unified communications sector, with one of the largest customer bases on its Cisco/Broadworks UC network. We are delighted to be upgrading Nuudays existing recording installed base to the Dubber platform. These legacy services will now have all the inherent benefits of Dubbers cloud platform, including fully compliant storage, search, transcription, and sentiment analysis - providing Dubber with an accretive increase to our ARR. Provisioning of the Dubber Platform across a broad addressable market will also enable Nuuday to utilise AI to transform data into valuable insights, driving revenue, retention, and differentiation. In addition, Dubbers cloud-native, simple-to-deploy call recording platform provides Nuuday with an infinitely scalable solution that will grow as their customer needs grow.

Our agreement with Nuuday is another important milestone in establishing Dubber as the defacto call recording and conversational AI service for a telecommunications service provider. Through our innovative technology and partnering approach, we can deliver scale, carrier-grade performance and integration in the cloud, and the partnering model to enhance revenue for our service provider customers significantly, added McGovern.

The Nuuday agreement will provide an accretive revenue stream for Dubber, with additional revenues determined by uptake of the services by Nuuday customers. This ASX announcement has been approved for release to ASX by Steve McGovern, CEO & Managing Director.

About Dubber:

Dubber is unlocking the potential of voice data from any call or conversation directly from the network. Dubber is the world's most scalable Unified Call Recording service and Voice Intelligence Cloud adopted as core network infrastructure by multiple global leading telecommunications carriers in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. Dubber allows service providers to offer recording from virtually any source - turning them into AI-enriched insights for compliance, revenue, customer and people intelligence. Dubber is a disruptive innovator in the multi-billion-dollar call recording industry. Its Software as a Service offering removes the need for on-premise hardware, applications or costly and limited storage.
If there's one thing we know about the Internet, it's that there can be a lot of conflict, snarkiness and smart-a behaviour from all sides, whether it is gaming, politics, or just discussion about well, anything really. So new stats from Reddit about gamers seeking a "low sodium" diet are making me thirsty to learn more.

We all know people whose mission in life is to be uppity, snarky, rude know-it-alls who embody the idea that attack is the best form of defence, in all situations, at all times. Whether they're insecure or just like that, who knows - I'm not a psychologist, but we've all come across such drama queens at one point or another in our lives.

Gravitating away from such toxicity at warp speed is the obvious answer, and while it's not always easy, because bullies can be persistent, it is obviously very possible.

So, it was interesting to see stats from Reddit, provided by its PR company in Australia, noting that "ver the past few months, Reddit has seen an influx of interest in 'low sodium' communities as gamers are rejecting the culture of criticism and saltiness that too often plagues the community and other online spaces."

Naturally, the company thought sharing some stats and examples of such communities would be worth sharing, and given you're reading this article, I thought it was worthwhile, too!

Reddit notes these traffic and mention increases "dont just signal a longing for nostalgia, but more precisely a longing for when gaming wasnt filled with expensive DLC, delays, system incompatibilities, release let downs and community debate.



"What likely comes next is the continued rise of cosy gamers and gentle-gaming like Animal Crossing and Untitled Goose Game which is ultimately a means to satisfy gamers moving away from the drama, hype and salt."

So, what are the traffic figures showing, and what are some of the communities listed?

Here's what Reddit has shared:



Traffic

r/lowsodiumcyberpunk -- +30% in views over the last few months / amassing +2M views a month (the most popular low-sodium gaming community)

r/lowsodium2042 -- +2,000% in views over between November and January 2022

r/lowsodiumhalo -- +250% in views in January 2022

Engagement

Conversations in gaming subreddits are up +39% from October until January 2021 / low sodium counterparts are up +131% (ex. r/halo vs. r/lowsodiumhalo)

Gaming subreddits are seeing a +31% increase in unique authors over the last four months, while contributors to low sodium counterparts are up +52%

Sentiment

Between October and January 2022, positive-tagged conversation is up +126% in low sodium gaming communities

Discussion coded as joyful is up +115% in low sodium gaming communities over the last four months

Negative-tagged words are 43% less likely to appear in the low sodium gaming subreddits compared to their larger counterparts. Additionally, anger is 46% less likely to

surface in low sodium gaming subreddits (i.e. number of angry-tagged words in low sodium relative to overall conversation volume vs. gaming subreddits)

Retro Gaming

r/RetroGaming is up +48% in views YoY

r/ChipTunes up +82% in views YoY

r/PixelArt up +92% in views YoY

Mentions of "Pixel Art" across the platform is up +50% YoY

r/IndieGaming is up +55.5% in views YoY

r/IndieGames is up +41% in views YoY

So, if you want to be a winner on the decency podium, as well as doing good for your health in general, going "low sodium" avoids all that odium!
One in 10 people in Illinois struggle with hunger every day, including one in eight children. The Illinois Deer Donation Program, a new pilot project to expand community access to venison protein is coming this fall to 12 east-central Illinois counties.

University of Illinois Extension educators coordinating the program are on the hunt for meat processors, hunters and hunting organizations, and food pantries in and around Clay, Coles, Cumberland, DeWitt, Douglas, Effingham, Fayette, Jasper, Macon, Moultrie, Piatt, and Shelby counties to join them.

The project will engage hunters to donate their deer and meat processors to produce ground venison, which will go to area food pantry clients. Clients will receive recipes and resources from Illinois Extension to help them prepare venison at home, which might be unfamiliar to some individuals and families.

Increasing food access in our communities is our number one priority, said Meredith Probst, Extension educator. We are excited to bring this opportunity to central Illinois. While partnering with local businesses and hunters, we can expand the availability of lean protein.

Organizations and community members are also encouraged to donate to the program. Donations will go toward reimbursing meat processors for their time and effort. For more about the program, to express your interest to be a partner, and to donate, visit go.illinois.edu/deerdonation.

The program is funded in part by the Health Equity Achieved Together Project, a multi-disciplinary collaboration with University of Illinois Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Education.

For more information on University of Illinois Extension programming in Coles, Cumberland, Douglas, Moultrie and Shelby county, visit web.extension.illinois.edu/ccdms/index.html or call 217-849-3931.

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.
The latest step in matching job-seekers and business  a list of workforce credentials  was unveiled Tuesday by a group of state economic and education agencies at NCcareers.org.

The goal is providing high school and college students with non-degree employment credentials and certifications that businesses are seeking foremost involving in-demand, high-wage careers.

The list is endorsed by the N.C. Workforce Credentials Advisory Council and can be found at nccareers.org/credentials. The list was drawn from a series of industry working groups and surveys.

The employment categories are: agricultural and natural resources; architecture and construction; arts, audio/visual technology and communications; business, management and administration; finance; health sciences; hospitality and tourism; human services; information technology; law, public safety, corrections and security; manufacturing; marketing; and transportation, distribution and logistics.

More than 130 credentials are included in the first edition.

The council is made up of representatives from the governors office, the states Community College System, Department of Public Instruction, Commerce, the N.C. Association of Workforce Development Boards and myFutureNC. Employers and business groups also participate on the council.

We want to train workers for jobs that will help put more money in their pockets and knowing which credentials are valued by todays employers gives people a competitive advantage, Gov. Roy Cooper said in a statement.

The non-degree credentials are focused on industry or trade standards organizations that often require specialized technical skills.

The council said identifying priority non-degree credentials accomplishes several important goals, including:

* Helping policymakers incentivize credentials that align with business needs and spur economic growth;

* Connecting students and adult learners with in-demand credentials that produce competitive and household-sustaining wages; and

* Providing an opportunity for businesses to weigh in on the workforce skills that matter most for their industry.

State education, business and policy leaders have set a goal that by 2030, 2 million North Carolinians between ages of 25 and 44 will hold either a post-secondary degree or a high-quality credential.

As the Community College System continues to build partnerships with companies to fuel the states job engine, the collaboration of this councils members will allow us to work efficiently to adapt this list of credentials to meet workforce needs, said Thomas Stith, the systems president.

This credentials list is a great resource for students and adult learners to use as they chart their next steps.

Catherine Truitt, the states superintendent of public instruction, said the credentials list provides an important starting place both in and outside of North Carolinas classroom, as it allows us to identify, inform and expose students to the skills needed to support their growth and launch them into a successful future be it college, career or military.

The council said it would take input from businesses on an annual basis to refine the existing list.

The first application period for businesses to provide new input opens this month. The council plans to gather information from employers in sectors not yet analyzed, such as energy and agriculture.

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.
Atlas Restaurant Group is reviving James Joyce Irish Pub in Harbor East after it was shut down in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, the restaurant group announced Wednesday.

James Joyce pub, named for the acclaimed 20th-century Irish novelist, resided on President Street for 18 years until December 2020, when its doors closed, and the building has since been vacant.

Advertisement

The restaurant was owned and operated by Washington-area restaurateur Jimmy Fagan from 2002 to 2020. Joe Sweeney, director of marketing and public relations for Atlas Restaurant Group, said the company has reversed the Irish pubs fate by leasing the vacant space.

The restaurant group plans to reopen James Joyce in late summer with a similar menu and nightly live music as a staple. Some menu items will be updated, and minor renovations will be made to the interior. The pub is known for its imported Irish furniture and decorations.

Advertisement

Irish pubs are known for being places that the community can gather to enjoy food, drinks and friendly conversation, Alex Smith, president and CEO of Atlas Restaurant Group, said in a statement. While James Joyce remained shuttered, the neighborhood and city were missing an important and unique concept that was successful as a result of their neighborly hospitality, which we look forward to continuing.

The restaurant group operates 17 bars and eateries in the city, with eight restaurants in Harbor East.
Chef Anthony Bonner has overhauled the lunch and dinner menus at Sir Winston Wine Loft & Restaurant, 104 W. Fourth St., inside the Hotel Indigo.

Bonner, a longtime Winston-Salem chef, started work at Sir Winston in January and has spent the last two months reworking the menu and restaurant as a whole. When they brought me in, they told me to create a wine list and menu the way I wanted it. They said, Do what you need to do.

The result, he said, is a menu that is more comfort food at somewhat lower prices. When I got here it was $46 for a filet  nobody was buying it. We brought the price down (to $35) and now were selling more, Bonner said.

Though the new menu has been out just a week, Bonner said, he already is seeing a couple keepers. The jambalaya pasta has taken off, he said, referring to the $22 dinner entree with chicken, shrimp and andouille sausage with a Cajun cream sauce.

The grilled artichokes ($12) also are doing extremely well, he said.

Other dinner items include marinated flank steak ($24), herb roasted chicken ($24), and Lowcountry salmon ($25).

Both the lunch and dinner menus have three burgers ($16 to $18), the Sir Winston Deluxe, Creole and Chorizo. The Sir Winston is an 8-ounce patty. The Creole and Chorizo have 4-ounce beef patties plus andouille and chorizo sausage, respectively.

Other lunch items include a vegetarian Banh Mi Sandwich ($14), flank steak sandwich ($14) and Cobb salad ($14).

We hope people will come try lunch  at a lower price point  and then come back for dinner if they like it, Bonner said.

Other items available at both lunch and dinner include red pepper dip ($12), French onion soup ($8) and Brussels sprout tacos ($14).

Winston-Salem diners may recognize Bonner as the longtime chef/manager of the Village Taverns original location in Reynolda Village. Bonner left Village Tavern in 2019 after 12 years to take care of his wife, Karen, who was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer.

She was originally given two years to live, but weve been blessed. She just went to the doctor, and there was no evidence of cancer, he said.

The Bonners journey included a trip to Peru to receive treatment with indigenous medicines after rejecting chemotherapy treatments. I just needed to take time to be with her. But, God bless, shes still here. We took a leap of faith. But when we came back from Peru, we had a different set of eyes, Anthony Bonner said.

Since leaving Village Tavern, he also worked at K&W for a time  including through its Chapter 11 bankruptcy and downsizing period in 2021. He also had been working on plans to open his own restaurant. He still hopes to do that someday but said those plans are on the backburner.

Right now, he is focused on putting Sir Winston on its feet. The restaurant seems to have struggled to find a strong client base since opening in 2019.

Bonner said he wants to focus on customer service and community involvement, and he is hoping that his solid knowledge of Winston-Salems restaurant scene will stand him in good stead. He wants Sir Winston to get involved in more events. He also is planning such things as sidewalk cooking and free samplings to help boost Sir Winstons presence downtown.

You have to show you have the passion and personality (to attract and retain customers), Bonner said. You have to give them a personal touch. I think maybe that was missing before. Im hoping I can change that here  because this is a people business.

336-727-7394 @mhastingsWSJ

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.
For horn players looking to show off their stuff, Steve Blake says, salsa is hard to beat.

With salsa, the arrangements are created so that the horns are integral to the musical form, the saxophonist said. In a lot of R&B stuff, the horn section is often playing backgrounds. Occasionally, youll have an intro or a horn solo. But in salsa, the forms are baked into the format. As a horn player, its a lot of fun to play because of that.

Blake has played with The Temptations and The Four Tops, but locally is probably best known for performing with the Winston-Salem group West End Mambo.

In a recent interview, he spoke about the early days of West End Mambo, about trying to book post-pandemic gigs and about being inspired by bootleg jazz recordings.

How did you get your start in music?

I grew up in Winston-Salem, was born in Little Rock, Ark.

I went to UNC-Chapel Hill for a couple of years. I had gotten more and more interested in music there and really got into jazz. There was a guy from New York City in the dorms there, who would bring bootleg recordings of jazz performances. And we got a chance to hear a lot of cutting edge stuff like Mahavishnu Orchestra. And I worked my way backwards from the fusion stuff to John Coltrane and Charlie Parker.

I wound up at UNC-Charlotte, about 1973 or 1974, and we had a little jazz band down there, and then went to a two-year jazz program at the University of Maine at Augusta. I eventually graduated from Berklee College of Music in 1980.

How did you get involved with West End Mambo?

I played with some local jazz folks like Joe Robinson and Matt Kendrick in the 80s and 90s.

As far as West End Mambo, Andrew Valentine, who came from Ukraine, put the band together for a gig. He happened to live next door to a Cuban timbalero (someone who plays timbale drums), and sort of threw this band together on a whim, and we picked up a few gigs.

Andrew, who was bassist for the band, started going back and forth to Ukraine, and I inherited the band, and the guys in the band decided we were interested in continuing it. That was around 1998. Cesar (Oviedo), who played bass and salsa piano, got involved, and the band evolved from a Latin jazz venture to a full-blown salsa band. The Buena Vista Social Club had hit about the same time we were launching the band in that direction.

Who are some of your musical influences?

As far as the band is concerned, the Buena Vista Social Club, Johnny Pacheco, El Gran Combo.

How would you describe your music?

We arent doing a lot of original material but rather covers of classic salsa. Were trying to capture the energy and feeling of those styles, as opposed to some of the more romantic stuff, which came after that. Theres a little bit more of an energy and an edge to the old-school stuff. What were really trying to do is capture that energy. Weve done some recordings, but live performances are where its at.

And its great to have a place where folks can dance. When we go down to Charlotte or Raleigh or even Roanoke, Va., there is substantial salsa dance happening in those areas.

Can you tell me about playing with The Temptations and The Four Tops?

Ive played in the horn section with them. Ive done a few road trips. Theres a contractor out of Charlotte who contracted their horn sections back in the 90s. I played some of those shows. They were a lot of fun. They have a nine-piece horn section.

If you could open a show for any artist, who would it be and why?

Well, right now, Im just looking for any gig I can find. During the pandemic, we were able to do outdoor gigs, but that season ended in November. Right now, were booking stuff for the summer, but were still waiting for the indoor venues.

Whats the funniest or weirdest thing that has ever happened at one of your shows?

We had a keyboard player, a young guy from New York, who went off on a timbalero. The timbalero had studied charanga in Cuba, which is very old-school society music. Its not salsa music. And the keyboard player went off on him in the middle of a gig because he was dragging. But if youve played in bands, youve seen that kind of thing before. It happens.

Do you have a favorite song you like to play?

One of my favorites is Abran Paso, which was transcribed from a Larry Harlow chart.

I also like Don Goyo by El Gran Combo, which is a classic. And it has excellent horn arrangements. Very simple, but very effective.

Whats next for you?

Getting back to playing. Thankfully we are booking stuff for the spring and especially the summer. Im looking forward to getting back out there. Were busiest during the outdoor festival season.
An autopsy provided more details Tuesday about the cause of death of a Mount Tabor High School student who was fatally shot last year at the school.

The cause of death for William Chavis Renard Miller, 15, was a gunshot wound to his abdomen, according to autopsy report.

The bullet penetrated Millers liver, pancreas, small bowel and abdominal aorta, according to the autopsy. The bullet broke into three fragments, which were recovered next to Millers lower spine.

Dr. Tiffany ONeill, a Forsyth County medical examiner, conducted the autopsy Sept. 2, 2021, at Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center.

Search warrants alleged that Maurice T. Evans walked up to William Chavis Renard Miller Jr. on Sept. 1, 2021, at the school, shot Miller once in the chest and ran off.

The shooting happened at 12:07 p.m. Mount Tabor High School and local schools were placed on immediate lockdown.

Miller later died at an nearby hospital.

A massive law enforcement presence consisting of Forsyth County sheriffs deputies and Winston-Salem police officers converged onto Mount Tabors campus. The incident rattled the nerves of students and parents throughout the city and county.

Evans was arrested six hours after the shooting. Evans, who turned 16 on Nov. 30, is charged with murder in connection with Millers death.

Evans will be tried as an adult, but a trial date has not been set.

Evans is being held at a juvenile detention center.

After the shooting, the sheriffs office increased its school resource officers within the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools.

In the weeks after the shooting, deputies seized handguns from students at seven schools, including Mount Tabor, and a shooting happened near, but not on, the campus of Parkland High School.

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 state audit released Wednesday determined that Golden Leaf Foundation did not properly monitor the handling of $83 million in COVID-19 pandemic federal funds distributed through the states Rapid Recovery loan program.

As a result, it was not able to ensure that loan recipients used funds in accordance with the 2020 COVID-19 Recovery Act. The timeframe for the audit was March 27, 2020, through June 1, 2021.

Those funds were designed specifically to help small businesses pay for employee compensation, mortgage or rent, utilities and other operating costs and expenses.

Golden Leaf said it provided 1,257 small business loans, the majority of which went to businesses with nine or fewer employees.

Auditors determined that:

* There was an increased risk that loan recipients could have misused the funds without the misuse being detected and corrected in a timely manner.

* Golden Leaf would be unable to recapture misused loan funds and provide those funds as loans to other small businesses experiencing economic hardship caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

* Golden Leaf would be limited in its ability to know whether the loans were achieving legislatively intended results.

The audit listed that Golden Leaf had at least 99 small businesses on its loan waiting list as of September. Of those businesses, 10 received loans by November, while 63 businesses were removed because of available funding and 26 were removed for other reasons.

Auditors said Golden Leafs management did not develop a method for determining loan recipient compliance. Its contract with N.C. Pandemic Recovery Office did not require monitoring.

Specifically, Golden Leaf did not require loan recipients to submit spending reports with supporting documentation, independently verify recipient spending, nor ensure that loan recipients did not receive other federal assistance, representing a duplication of benefits.

According to the audit, Golden Leaf management stated that it did not have adequate staff to monitor the number of loans, as well as management considered the risk of loan misuse to be low.

The key recommendation is that Golden Leaf management should monitor loan recipient spending to ensure coronavirus relief funds are being in accordance with the Recovery Act.

Specifically, management should develop a method for determining loan recipient compliance.

Auditors also recommended state legislators should consider including monitoring requirements in future legislation regarding the spending of coronavirus relief funds or other emergency relief funds.

Background

The Rapid Recovery loan program debuted in May 2020, shortly after the legislature passed a $1.5 billion COVID-19 relief package that contained a larger commitment to small business loans.

At that time, legislators chose to go with the Senates $125 million funding commitment to a program offering low-interest loans to small businesses in North Carolina. It was later reduced to $83 million during the 2021 session.

Golden Leaf was put in charge of distributing the state-funded emergency loans to small businesses, which would be up to $50,000 and require no payments for up to six months with a loan term of up to 66 months.

Businesses could not have more than 100 employees and had to be based in North Carolina.

The package has the requirement that the Golden Leaf Foundation provide $15 in matching funds for every $125 the state contributes. Golden Leaf already has been the conduit for $15 million in small-business loans for a total fund of $90 million in the House bill.

Gov. Roy Cooper said he supported the initiative, in part because it can act quickly to get funding to small business owners.

Golden Leaf response

Scott Hamilton, Golden Leafs chief executive, said in a formal response to the audit that the state Rapid Recovery Loan program allowed for borrower certification to affirm borrower compliance with eligible uses of loan proceeds.

The Recovery Act also set the level of administrative funding to implement the program with the level of monitoring designed in the statute, Hamilton wrote.

Golden Leaf believes it would be contrary to the intent of the General Assembly to monitor borrower spending in connection with this program.

Hamilton said that requiring businesses to prepare and submit requests on the use of loan proceeds and to provide supporting documentation to a lender or other administering entity is very unusual in small business lending and would have been inconsistent with borrower expectations.

Requiring businesses to submit reports regarding how they spent loan proceeds and to provide invoices, receipts and payroll records to document those expenditures would have placed additional burdens on those businesses during a period of extraordinary financial stress.

Hamilton said that had the legislation or contract included a requirement to monitor the business use of loan proceeds, staffing levels for each entity would have increased to accommodate that requirement, and additional administrative funds would have been required and requested from the General Assembly.

State auditors response

State auditor Beth Wood cited four instances where Hamiltons response to the audit could potentially mislead the reader.

For example, Wood said the Recovery Act does not consider the borrower certification as a method to determine compliance.

In effect, by using the borrower certification and doing nothing more, Golden Leafs method for determining that a business complied with program requirements was simply to obtain the business word that it complied.

Wood considered as potentially misleading Hamiltons contention that requiring borrowers to submit reports as to the use of their loan proceeds is unusual and inconsistent with borrower expectations.

She pointed to Hamiltons response in which he said borrowers are to make available records supporting use of loan proceeds to entities with oversight of the funds.

When Hamilton said monitoring requirements would have placed additional reporting burdens on borrowers, Wood said federal regulations required Golden Leaf to establish a method for determining loan recipient compliance and to take corrective actions for non-compliance.

Wood said Golden Leaf did not provide evidence that monitoring would cause additional burdens.

Wood disputed Hamiltons interpretation of the monitoring intent of the General Assembly, saying the law requires Golden Leaf to administer the program, including a method to determine compliance with program requirements.

The governor, legislature and the citizens of North Carolina should consider this clarification when evaluating Golden Leafs response to the audit finding and recommendations, Wood said.

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.
Jefferson rebuttal

A letter writer published on March 20 attempted to correct a prior letter writers understanding of who is the source of Americans unalienable rights (God-given rights).

The letter writer mocked the prior writer for believing that God our Creator gives us our unalienable rights. The letter writer insisted instead that our rights come from our Constitution, whose authors were inspired by the European Enlightenment.

Im unqualified to respond with the same erudition as that writer, so Ill instead allow one of those Enlightenment philosophers, Thomas Jefferson, to offer a rebuttal.

In Americas national creed, the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson wrote these ageless words  We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights 

There, that was easy.

Joe Muster

Clemmons

Its about politics

I appreciate the March 15 letter Needed specifics and agree with the writer that we need more information before jumping to conclusions about banned books.

The writer, a teacher, says shes served on several review committees  which worked. But she thinks theyre different today, that some parents have abdicated their responsibility and expected schools to provide the sum total of their childrens education.

I suspect that is not true. I suspect that this is one more in a series of wedge issues that have been created to scare parents and win votes for Republicans.

One important clue is in the name of one of the organizations quoted in the March 8 article Activism grows after school book bans. Its No Left Turn in Education, as if left is inherently objectionable. This is a conservative group motivated not by concern for children, but by politics, pure and simple.

We also see this in the fact that most of the books raising objections have LGBTQ characters or Black points of view  but theres no objection for, say, violence. This isnt about children. Its about suppressing liberal views.

No parent wants their child to be exposed too early to information that is inappropriate. But Id trust experienced educators and rational, well-educated parents to judge those matters much sooner than I would trust conservative parents who fear that a cartoon picture of a naked human body is going to turn their children gay. Thats just ignorant.

Bonnie G. Vaughn

Winston-Salem

Trump-style politics

Mick Scotts March 13 column Find the cost of freedom about Christian support for authoritative, Trump-style politics made me think.

When I hear people say they are fundamentalist Christians or Christian conservatives, I assumed they want to move the calendar back to the 1900s or so. Back when they traveled to the next town to buy their alcohol. Back when they handled snakes in church and women couldnt vote. Before civil rights, before gay rights, before any rights other than for white men. When Black people couldnt eat in white restaurants.

Now I think they want to go back before Christ and replace the Constitution with the Old Testament and give up on democracy.

If they succeed, they will take their wrath out on people they hate: minorities, immigrants, people of other faiths, non-heterosexuals. No more voting, unless for ceremony.

They say they are Christians, but they dont act like it. Maybe they could take the time to read the New Testament and decide if they really want to be Christians. Maybe mull over love your neighbor as yourself, turn the other cheek and cast the first stone.

If Christs teachings are too tolerant and forgiving, they could stay Old Testament, and make it our nations only book  rip out the New Testament. Alternatively, they could convert to fundamentalist Islam  its intolerance seems right up their alley. Either way, these people are no good for our democracy.

John Wooding

Winston-Salem
LOS ANGELES  Three other politicians discovered their campaigns got dirty money from Nigerian billionaire Gilbert Chagoury and got rid of it, a process where they formally disgorge the money by donating it to charity.

The reason Nebraska Rep. Jeff Fortenberry didnt do the same right away?

A prosecutor told him not to, according to his former attorney.

Trey Gowdy, who represented Fortenberry during the investigation into whether he received foreign funds, testified Wednesday that he suggested to prosecutors that Fortenberry would return the funds to the donors, after learning that the money probably came from Chagoury.

Gowdy said Assistant U.S. Attorney Mack Jenkins, the lead prosecutor in the case, told him that Fortenberry shouldnt return it to the donors, in part because it could tip off the donors that they were under federal investigation. When Gowdy asked what Fortenberry should do instead, he said, Jenkins didnt give any suggestions.

When you hear that something is going to hurt an investigation, and your purpose is to assist that investigation, youre not going to do it, Gowdy said.

Day 5 of Fortenberry's federal trial marked the end of the government's case, and the beginning of Fortenberry's defense. As told through the first week of trial, the entire saga started with Fortenberrys support of In Defense of Christians, a group devoted to protecting Christians and other religious minorities in the Middle East.

The A, B and C of IDC were Eli Ayoub, Toufic Baaklini and Chagoury, all of whom are of Lebanese descent. Chagoury used both Ayoub and Baaklini, who are U.S. citizens, to funnel money to the campaigns of U.S. politicians, including: former presidential candidate Mitt Romney, California Rep. Darrell Issa, former Nebraska Rep. Lee Terry and Fortenberry. It is illegal for elected U.S. officials to accept donations from foreigners.

The others disgorged the money from their campaigns. Prosecutors have pointed out that Fortenberry took 2 years to do the same.

He didnt do it even after he noticed that most of the money raised at a February 2016 fundraiser in Los Angeles came from the same family. Seeing the same last name on the donor forms, Fortenberry asked Baaklini if he should be concerned  and Baaklini told him not to sweat it.

Fortenberry also didnt get rid of the money after a June 2018 phone call in which Ayoub told him that Baaklini had provided $30,000 in cash for the fundraiser and that the cash probably came from Chagoury.

He also didnt get rid of the money after the March 2019 FBI interview at his Lincoln home, prosecutors said.

Then came the second FBI interview in July 2019.

John Littrell, a Fortenberry attorney, asked Gowdy if he would agree with Fortenberrys comment in July 2019 that he was horrified at finding out that it was Chagourys money.

Asked to describe Fortenberrys reaction, Gowdy said: Shock and anger. It was shock, with a subtext of anger.

Part of the subtext of Gowdys testimony Wednesday was this: The attorney seemed to regret that he had allowed Fortenberry to be interviewed by the feds in July 2019.

A former federal and district attorney, as well as congressman, Gowdy said he believed that Fortenberry was trending toward a witness and that the government just wanted to size him up in terms of his reliability and credibility.

In reality, Fortenberry was the subject of the investigation. The FBI had taped the June 2018 phone call between Fortenberry and Ayoub. And FBI agents had taped the Lincoln interview and already had suspected him of lying.

An attorney asked Gowdy if he knew that the FBI had secretly recorded all of those events.

No, he testified, with a smirk.

Did he believe the feds were just sizing up Fortenberry as a witness?

One-hundred percent, Gowdy said emphatically.

Defense attorneys also introduced an FBI memo that they say shows the FBI had predetermined, even before the Lincoln interview, that they were going to charge Fortenberry. In the memo, agent Todd Carter wrote that he would approach Fortenberry and interview him about his conversations with Ayoub and his knowledge of the source of the $30,000 campaign contribution.

Case agents will also seek to indict Fortenberry with misprision (concealment) of felony and conduit contributions. In addition, if case agents determine from the interview that Fortenberry is making false statements, he will be charged with false statements.

A second FBI agent on the case, Edward Choe, testified that he hadnt seen that memo and that he didnt share the opinion that Fortenberry automatically would be charged.

And prosecutors argued that such memos are typical. Any criminal charges are subject to change, depending on what happens in the course of interviews and investigations, they say.

At that point, Choe said, agents had been continually checking to see if Fortenberry had gotten rid of the illegal campaign money. He hadnt.

Another memo caused a stir Wednesday. Prosecutor Jamari Buxton told the judge that he wanted to introduce a memo that Fortenberry had sent to the U.S. House of Representatives clerk just last week, seeking to vote by proxy in the House because of the ongoing public health emergency. Fortenberrys note made no mention of the real reason he can't attend: this trial.

It would counter any notion that Fortenberry is steadfastly honest, Buxton said.

Judge Stanley Blumenfeld Jr. considered it but ultimately decided against it. He said it would take too much evidence to establish why it was written and the process Congress uses during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In other testimony, Fortenberrys chief of staff, Andy Braner, testified that his boss is the countrys last great statesman and "a visionary."

The nine-term congressman is so scrupulous that, Braner said, he once made Braner replace an office-stamp on a piece of mail. Fortenberry handed him a stamp from his wallet.

Were not going to have the taxpayers pay for my personal mail, Fortenberry told Braner.

Another time in 2019, Braner said, a visitor from the Middle East tried to hand Braner an envelope of cash in recognition of all the work Fortenberry had done in the Middle East. Braner refused.

Two days later, Braner informed the congressman of the interaction.

Fortenberry was irate, Braner said. He said, Call the (House) Sergeant at Arms and get him up here. Were going to tell him everything and make sure that doesnt happen again. 

Prosecutors noted that the Middle East envoy had offered Braner cash just a month after the FBI had interviewed Fortenberry about his campaign receiving another foreigner's cash. Hence the outrage, Buxton suggested.

Another House member told the jury that she has always known Fortenberry as an honorable person.

Rep. Anna Eshoo, a Democrat, said Fortenberry came across the aisle, literally, to meet her. He wanted to talk about a cause he thought she would share.

Eshoo, a half-Armenian, half-Assyrian representative from Northern California, said Fortenberry was sincere: He wanted her input on the issue of protecting religious minorities in the Middle East.

Thats how I got to meet and work with Jeff, Eshoo said. I think he brings honor to what he does. ... Hes faith filled. Hes honest. His word is always good  I cant say that about all members of Congress.

Whether his word is always good is a question for the federal jury. Jurors are expected to begin deliberating the case Thursday or Friday. Fortenberry is charged with two counts of lying to the FBI and one count of trying to conceal his knowledge about the true source of the $30,000 campaign donation.

Fortenberrys defense team is expected to continue Thursday to put the FBI on trial for its handling of the probe. Attorney Ryan Fraser blasted the FBI for showing up unannounced to the Fortenberry home and lying to Celeste Fortenberry, the congressman's wife, about why they were there. Jeff Fortenberry had called then-Lincoln Police Chief Jeff Bliemeister to send two officers to his house to screen and monitor the FBI agents. Bliemeister is expected to testify Thursday.

When FBI agents showed up, Fraser said, Fortenberry was exhausted, having just returned from a trip to Africa where he was briefed on elephant poaching.

You would expect the FBI to warn you if you were the victim of an illegal foreign campaign donation, asked Littrell.

Oh I would hope so, Eshoo said.

She paused, correcting herself.

I would think so, she said. Not just hope.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 1 Sad 0 Angry 0
LOS ANGELES  Rep. Jeff Fortenberry spoke with Dr. Eli Ayoub twice in 2018, asking him both times if he would hold another fundraiser on Fortenberry's behalf.

Maybe something similar to the one Ayoub held in February 2016 in L.A. Maybe something smaller, more intimate.

But when FBI agents showed up at Fortenberrys home nine months later, Fortenberry said he had a hard time placing Ayoub.

I dont know if I know him, Fortenberry said.

I think his name is Ayoub, Elias, FBI agent Todd Carter responded.

Im not placing him, Fortenberry said. I may have (met him). I cant say I have.

Fortenberry thought some more.

If its Ayoub, he may have given me a political contribution, he said.

Ayoub did much more. Ayoub testified Monday that he took a brown paper bag of $30,000 cash from an associate of Nigerian billionaire Gilbert Chagoury and distributed it to friends and relatives. He had them write checks to Fortenberrys campaign at a fundraiser the doctor held on behalf of the Nebraska congressman.

Day 4 of Fortenberrys federal trial Tuesday delved into whether the congressman lied to FBI agents investigating the funneling of foreign money into U.S. politicians campaigns. Chagoury, a controversial figure who has been connected to corruption in Nigeria, had used Ayoub to steer money to several Republicans, including Fortenberry.

It is illegal for U.S. politicians to accept foreign money. Fortenberry, a nine-term congressman representing Nebraskas 1st District, is charged with one count of concealing the source of illegal contributions to his campaign and two counts of lying. If convicted, the 61-year-old would face up to five years in prison on each charge, though supervised release also would be a possibility.

Fortenberrys defense team says the congressman had no knowledge, direct or otherwise, that he had received foreign money. And Tuesday, they cast the lying charges as a reach.

The real liars are the agents who interviewed Fortenberry, attorney Ryan Fraser suggested.

Fraser and attorney Glen Summers accused the FBI agent and an IRS agent, James OLeary, of ambushing the Fortenberrys at their Lincoln home in the March 2019 interview.

Fortenberry had just returned that week from a trip to Nairobi, where he was being briefed on elephant poaching. At the time of his return, eastern Nebraska was experiencing massive flooding and Fortenberry had toured some of the affected areas that Saturday.

He wasnt home when agents first showed up at 1 p.m. When the agents returned that evening, two Lincoln police officers were waiting for them.

Fortenberry explained that he had called then-Lincoln Police Chief Jeff Bliemeister because two people claiming to be federal agents had knocked on his door.

We have gotten death threats against us, Fortenberry told the agents who eventually stepped into the living room, according to an agents video played Tuesday.

Sit down, Fortenberry told the agents. Were gonna have a little conversation before we have a conversation.

Because of the nature of your inquiry ... the surprising lack of professionalism you have shown ... this has resulted in us calling the local police chief and wasting their time.

As the three sat down, Carter began to give the standard admonition that Fortenberry needed to be candid with agents.

I want to remind you that lying to the FBI is illegal, Carter said.

You lied to me, Fortenberry shot back. You said you were from Omaha.

In Omaha, yes, Carter said. Not from Omaha, correct.

The L.A.-based agents later testified that they sometimes lie to gain access to people, to get them to talk. Hence their representation to Celeste Fortenberry that day that they needed to talk to her husband about a national security matter. And also their false statement that they already had spoken to Fortenberrys office about what they were going to talk about.

Its common for us to use ruses, OLeary testified.

After expressing his displeasure, Fortenberry settled into a chair in his living room. The agents apologized for the confusion they created and asked Fortenberry if the Lincoln police officers could leave.

I want them present, he insisted.

Unbeknownst to Fortenberry, something else was present: Carter had a camera planted somewhere on him or his belongings, perhaps in a briefcase or satchel. The video was grainy and tilted.

But the audio was clear  and prosecutors say it was damning.

Carter got to the point. They were investigating In Defense of Christians, a group that Fortenberry supported.

Toufic Baaklini, a Chagoury go-between, had founded the group in 2014 and Fortenberry had spoken at In Defense of Christians banquets as it fought for one of his principal causes: protecting religious minorities in the Middle East.

In return  and Fortenberry says unbeknownst to him  Chagoury had funneled $30,000 in cash to Fortenberrys campaign. He did so through a Los Angeles fundraiser put on by Ayoub and, indirectly, by Baaklini.

During that interview, Carter concealed something else. That FBI agents had recorded a June 2018 phone call Fortenberry had made in which he asked Ayoub if he would hold a second fundraiser. During that phone call, Ayoub had told Fortenberry three times that the fundraiser was funded with $30,000 cash that probably came from Chagoury.

Carter showed Fortenberry a photo of Ayoub. Asked a few times, Fortenberry said he couldnt place him. The defense pointed out that agents had been using a 10-year-old photo of Ayoub that showed him with dyed-black hair and black eyebrows. Ayoub, 77, now has silver hair and silver eyebrows.

But prosecutors said Carter made it clear he was talking about Ayoub  a man Fortenberry had just spoken by phone with. A man who had just told Fortenberry that Baaklini had injected money, probably Chagourys money, to Fortenberrys campaign.

And Fortenberry was evasive, they say.

Carter asked: Are you aware if Baaklini ever provided any money to anyone to conduct conduit contributions?

Fortenberry: No, Im not aware.

Carter: Are you aware of any foreign nationals giving direction or orders for the purpose of conducting illegal campaign contributions?

Fortenberry: You know, no.

As agents pressed Fortenberry, the congressman leaned forward in his chair. He put his elbows on his knees.

Well, at this point youre starting to accuse me of something, he said. I dont know what youre digging for but Im trying to help.

Fortenberry paused.

I think youre leading somewhere here and youre not making me comfortable. Ive been trying to help you with whatever you need. ... Its not clear to me what youre doing now so we have to call a timeout.

Fortenberrys attorney, Fraser, said his client was clearly thrown off by the dated photo of Ayoub. Eventually, Fraser noted, Fortenberry recognized who the agents were referring to and described a couple of conversations with Ayoub. One was a trip to Nebraska so Ayoub, a graduate of Creighton University Medical School, could visit relatives. The other was another possible fundraiser in Los Angeles.

I had done a previous, um, fundraiser with (Ayoub) out there, Fortenberry said. I thought it would be nice to do it again. But that didnt happen.

The defense has suggested that Fortenberry wasnt hiding anything and clearly had no idea his campaign had received foreign money  evidenced by the fact that he was openly disclosing his desire for a second fundraiser. Prosecutors counter that Fortenberry didnt come clean about Ayoub until 32 minutes into the FBI interview.

Any explanation that Fortenberry didnt realize the agents were talking about Ayoub was undercut three months later by Fortenberry himself.

Fortenberry asked for a second interview. In July 2019, he and his then-attorney, former Rep. Trey Gowdy, sat down with prosecutor Mack Jenkins in Washington. Prosecutors have indicated that they thought Fortenberry would come clean at that interview.

But prosecutors now argue that Fortenberry dug himself a deeper hole, contradicting some of his responses to the agents questions in the Lincoln interview.

At the second interview, Fortenberry acknowledged what he wouldn't in the Lincoln interview. That Ayoub told him on the June 2018 phone call that the amounts, as I recall, the amounts wouldnt be as large because Gilbert (Chagoury) wouldnt be involved.

Jenkins: And that was (Ayoub's) response to you asking about another fundraiser?

Fortenberry: Yeah. ... That was discomforting to me, so I ended the conversation.

In reality, prosecutors say, Fortenberry did not end the conversation. Instead, he went on to ask for a second fundraiser.

As for the first fundraiser, Fortenberry insisted in the D.C. interview with Jenkins that everything about this event was standard and engaging and people being generous.

A bit later, Jenkins asked: And youre aware that foreign nationals cant contribute to campaigns?

Why wouldnt I know that? Fortenberry scoffed. Im a member of the United States Congress.

Jenkins: Youd be surprised.

Fortenberry: Its my obligation to know that. Im a lawmaker in charge of a political campaign.

Jenkins asked how he acted on the information that Chagoury probably provided $30,000 in cash.

I didnt have any more events, Fortenberry said. That was how I acted on it.

But, Jenkins noted, Fortenberry continued to talk about another event during the June 2018 phone call with Ayoub, even after Ayoub told him it may have been Chagoury's cash.

And prosecutors say Fortenberry failed to act as other politicians had when told they had received Chagourys money, which is disgorge the money by donating it to charity.

After the June 2018 phone call, it took Fortenberry more than a year  and two interviews with federal agents  before he got rid of the money.

In the D.C. interview, Jenkins asked Fortenberry if it was weird that Ayoub had told him that his campaign had received $30,000 in cash and that the money probably came from Chagoury.

That would have been horrifying," Fortenberry said. "Not weird. Horrifying.

And, Fortenberry said, he would have disowned that money immediately.

Prosecutors are expected to wrap up their case Wednesday morning. The defense has told the judge it will put on about a day of testimony.

Love 0 Funny 2 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
The state said the killing was first-degree murder. That Barnes kicked his way into the house, just as he'd threatened to do in texts later deleted, after she told him their relationship was over and not to come home.
The Maryland Attorney Generals Office on Tuesday released body camera footage from a January incident in Crofton in which an officer shot and killed a 20-year-old man after a confrontation with police.

The video documents the Jan. 30 encounter on Danville Court, where Anne Arundel County Police say shortly after 4 a.m., officers responded to a call from a woman who said her son, Dyonta Quarles Jr., had assaulted her and prevented her from leaving the residence.

Advertisement

While Quarles initially complied with orders to stay down, according to police, he then fought back and began to bite county police officer J. Ricci as officers attempted to detain him, and Ricci fired his gun at Quarles.

The police department and the attorney generals office declined to state Riccis first name. The police department and the local Fraternal Order of Police lodge declined to comment on the footage, citing the ongoing investigation.

Advertisement

The footage, which the Independent Investigations Division of the attorney generals office aims to release within 14 days of an incident, was delayed by more than a month, as investigators had to interview more witnesses, according to the office.

The first section of the 25-minute video, which includes graphic violence and expletives, shows the incident from Riccis point of view, as he and two other officers entered the home and went upstairs to a bedroom where Quarles mother was locked inside with her son. After police kicked in the locked bedroom door, Quarles initially laid face down on the floor, but proceeded to jump up and sat on a bed.

The officers then warned Quarles that he was gonna get Tased. Quarles is seen in the footage charging at Ricci and striking him in the face several times as the sound of a Taser is heard.

Ricci suffered from a traumatic brain injury and injuries to his face as a result of the assault, according to the attorney generals office.

Officers then got Quarles on the ground. After a pause, during which Ricci is heard breathing heavily, police started to place handcuffs on Quarles, but he began to struggle and then began to bite Ricci. Another officer deployed a Taser again.

Shoot him! Shoot him! Shoot that m-----------, Ricci said in the footage. Shortly after, three gunshots are heard. In footage from another officers camera, Ricci is seen firing at Quarles lower body at close range while his hand is stuck in Quarles mouth.

Subsequent footage shows a bloodied Ricci crawling away from Quarles and falling to the ground, then being treated as other officers check Quarles body for signs of life. Officers told Quarles mother he was breathing at that point, but he was later declared dead at the scene. Ricci was taken to a trauma center in serious condition.

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. >

The attorney generals office has yet to complete its probe of the incident and forward the results to the Anne Arundel County States Attorneys Office, and did not say when that would happen. Since the attorney generals office became responsible for investigations into the use of deadly force by police in October, they have only completed one investigation, which was a fatal vehicle crash.

Advertisement

These investigations are complex, and are expected to take months, said Thomas Lester, a spokesperson for the Independent Investigations Division of the attorney generals office.

As that office continues to investigate whether criminal charges should be filed against Ricci, a statewide civil rights committee is planning to review the footage and forward its recommendations for policy changes to Anne Arundel County Executive Steuart Pittman, a Democrat, and county police Chief Amal Awad.

The Caucus of African American Leaders Public Safety Committee, which is made up of current and former law enforcement officers as well as citizens and activists, according to its leadership, will be reviewing the footage from the Crofton confrontation in which Quarles was killed. Quarles is Black.

Our overarching goal is to bridge the relationship of community and police department, and criminal justice systems executives, said Joshua Hatch, who chairs the committee. He said he plans to circulate the camera footage as a priority to hear policy recommendations from the group, which aims to be a mediator for community and police relations as a seed of distrust has been sown in recent years.

One of the most pressing issues in America today is police and community relations, said Carl Snowden, a longtime civil rights advocate who is the convener of the Caucus of African American Leaders. He noted that the committees members have the expertise in law enforcement needed to recommend policy changes.

Transparency must be the hallmark of any police department, Snowden said.
A former University of Virginia lacrosse player who fatally beat his girlfriend in 2010 has been ordered by a jury to pay $15 million in a wrongful death lawsuit. George Huguely V is currently serving a 23-year prison sentence in the killing of Yeardley Love after being convicted of second-degree murder in 2012. Huguely and Love both played lacrosse at UVA and had an on-again, off-again relationship before Huguely drunkenly killed her. The lawsuit sought $29.5 million in compensatory damages, plus $1 million in punitive damages. The jury ruled that $7.5 million in compensatory damages should be given to both Love's sister and her mother. Punitive damages weren't awarded.
SCOTTSBLUFF -- Nebraska State Patrol investigators have arrested a Minatare police officer who they say stole weapons from the department.

The patrol said Bryan Martinez, 32, was arrested at his home in Gering on Tuesday afternoon on suspicion of theft by unlawful taking and issuing or passing a bad check.

In a news release, the patrol said the investigation began in January when a local retailer reported that Martinez had written a bad check. Investigators discovered several firearms missing from the Minatare Police Department and allege Martinez sold three weapons to a local pawn shop.

Martinez, who has served with other agencies in the area, is also employed by the Sioux County Sheriffs Office, Thomas said.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
BURLINGTON  Three new firefighters are being added to the Burlington Fire Department, after a closed-door meeting of the City Council about the department.

The City Council met in a closed session March 15 to discuss what the meeting agenda described as a possible reorganization of the fire department.

The council invoked an exemption to Wisconsins open meetings law that allows for closed-door discussion of employment, promotion, compensation or performance of any public employee.

Officials said later the council discussed creating three new firefighter positions during the hourlong closed meeting, then voted to approve the new full-time positions to replace three part-time positions.

The change would increase, from nine to 12, the number of full-time firefighters on the city payroll.

Mayor Jeannie Hefty and Assistant City Administrator Megan Watkins both declined to say why the agenda cited a possible reorganization of the Fire Department.

Hefty referred questions to Fire Chief Alan Babe, who could not be reached for comment.

Other members of the City Council and the Police and Fire Commission also could not be reached for comment.

Watkins stated in an email that no applications have been received for the three new firefighter positions. Watkins said applications would be reviewed later by the Police and Fire Commission.

The starting salary for a firefighter/paramedic is about $52,000 a year.

Asked if increasing the number of full-time firefighters from nine to 12 represented an expansion, Watkins stated: This is not a department expansion. The department is working to ensure enough personnel on shift to provide coverage for calls to service.

According to the citys 2022 budget, approved last fall, the three new firefighter positions would cost the city $326,000 in salaries, benefits and other costs.

The Fire Departments total budget increased from $1.2 million to $1.6 million this year.

The budget noted that efforts are underway to upgrade the Fire Department from advanced EMT service to paramedic service when it comes to providing emergency medical services.

Having these additional employees allows for EMS calls to be responded to quickly, the budget states, and have the ability for additional staff to respond to a fire call that may happen at the same time.

Without the three additional firefighters, the budget states: Operations would be directly impacted because we would not efficiently be able to get out the door quickly for all EMS and fire calls.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
WATERFORD  The public is invited to a candidate forum for people seeking election April 5 to village, town and school board positions.

The forum is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, March 29 at the Waterford Public Library, 101 N. River St.

The event is being hosted by a group called Waterford Area Moderates.

The group has invited candidates running for the Waterford High School Board, Waterford Graded School Board, Waterford Village Board and Waterford Town Board.

The public will be invited to ask questions of the candidates.

The event will be moderated by longtime resident Allen Romanak.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
CALEDONIA  Those hoping to own chickens on residential property in Caledonia have hit a stroke of cluck.

Per the villages amended ordinance 2022-07, which relates to keeping of chickens in single-family residential districts, and which was approved Monday night at the Village Board meeting, Caledonia citizens living on zoned residential property four acres or less in size may keep up to five hens.

The approval came with a unanimous vote after much discussion between residents and the village throughout the past two decades or so. A push to get Caledonia to change its previous code in 2016 failed.

The former code stated that for residential properties, citizens must have five acres or more to keep chickens and they must be housed more than 150 feet from every residence not on that parcel. For agricultural properties, citizens must have two or more acres of zoned agricultural space to keep chickens.

Now, the village allows hens, or female chickens, by permit on property zoned single family residential that also contains an occupied single-family dwelling. Roosters, or male chickens, are prohibited on property permitted for hens.

Slaughtering of chickens is prohibited except on properties properly zoned and approved for such use.

Hen coops are required to house the hens on a property. An accessory building permit is required for all hen coops. There additionally must be at least two nesting boxes per five hens.

No sales of eggs, chicks or chickens are to be made from any residential property.

You better like eggs, Trustee Dale Stillman said.

Discussion

Trustees Holly McManus and Fran Martin got the discussion rolling again last year.

Im really excited, McManus said, addressing the board. Were happy to get you guys on board with this.

In the past, Trustees Kevin Wanggaard and Tom Weatherston expressed opposition to a loosened chicken ordinance, citing vermin and neighbor complaints as potential problems.

They have since both changed their minds. Weatherston wrote in an email to The Journal Times that the amended ordinance is no big deal, just that the original plan was unlimited hens on any size lot. Now there is some control.

Wanggaard did not respond to request for comment on his change of mind.

Village President Jim Dobbs had suggested in August to put the topic before voters on the April ballot as a referendum.

He sent the matter to the villages Legislative and Licensing Committee to determine how to handle it.

They choose to work it out without suggesting a referendum, Dobbs wrote in an email.

At a Legislative and Licensing Committee meeting, both residents and the committee had a more intimate conversation about chickens, McManus told The Journal Times.

She said the Village Board was able to make the ordinance work for citizens and address any worries, such as noise, containment and feces. Each of those concerns were addressed in the ordinance.

I think overall, the board recognized this was something our citizens could benefit from while still maintaining some sort of enforcement of it, she said. By comparing what other jurisdictions have done, there really havent been too many problems. There shouldnt have been a reason why Caledonia was prohibiting residents from keeping chickens  I think the majority of village residents will be responsible chicken owners.

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.
YORKVILLE  Racine County officials and business development leaders expressed confidence Tuesday that a big corporation will eventually invest in the developable land surrounding Foxconn in western Mount Pleasant.

They base that confidence on Mount Pleasant having been a finalist in the state-vs.-state competition to land what is expected to be the largest microchip manufacturing plant in U.S. history, even though Intel picked Ohio over Wisconsin, a decision made public in mid-January.

It is not clear what, in Intel minds, made the site northeast of Columbus, Ohios capital, superior to Mount Pleasant.

The site chosen is remarkably similar to the areas around Foxconn. Both sites include more than 1,000 acres; both are close to city centers, and thus have large workforces in close proximity; both have reliable water and electrical infrastructure already in place; both are on what is currently farmland.

We made an aggressive pitch. And we know from the feedback we got back from Intel that that pitch really resonated, said Jim Paetsch, executive director of the Milwaukee 7 Economic Development Partnership. The Milwaukee 7  referring to the seven southeastern Wisconsin counties of Kenosha, Milwaukee, Ozaukee, Racine, Walworth, Washington and Waukesha  work in collaboration with the Racine County and Wisconsin economic development corporations in attracting new development to the area.

Theres a lot of opinions out there about what made the difference. We dont really know, said Alan Marcuvitz, special development counsel to the Village of Mount Pleasant in relation to Foxconn. We learned a great deal, and I believe that what we learned will bear fruit in the not too distant future.

Marcuvitz continued: When you look at where this property sits, between two major airports, along an improved major Interstate system, that has zoning in place, that has sewer, that has water, that has power: We believe its only a matter of time and patience and hard work to get to where we need to go.

Im hoping the next time we make a report, well be singing hosannas instead of just giving you a news report.

It doesnt sound as though state government actions were at fault. Paetsch, of the Milwaukee 7, said that Gov. Tony Evers administration was supporting the pitch to bring Intel to Mount Pleasant, and that Evers was deeply involved.

Columbus vs. Mount Pleasant

Ohios government was certainly gung-ho to land Intels factory.

Republican Ohio Lt. Gov. Jon Husted told an Ohio news station, WCMH-TV, in January: They (Intel officials) just believed that we were going to be good partners, that Ohio wanted this. They felt that there are some places that wanted to dictate terms to them, that didnt really appreciate what they were up against, that maybe werent going to be as welcoming.

Kathleen Gallagher, executive director of the nonprofit 5 Lakes Institute, speculated in an analysis piece published in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on March 3: The big question: Why did Intel choose to locate its $20 billion chip-making hub in Ohio rather than the Foxconn site in southeastern Wisconsin? This much is clear: Ohio presented Intel with a great location, available land, and a high-level political willingness to build out the ecosystem with incentives ... but Racine Countys K-12 education system ranks poorly, the park is in an EPA (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) non-attainment zone, and political unrest associated with the Kyle Rittenhouse shooting and acquittal probably influenced Intels decision.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 1 Sad 1 Angry 3

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.
Some people were jubilant last week when news broke that the U.S. Senate had unanimously passed the Sunshine Protection Act, legislation to make daylight saving time permanent.

If the bill were to pass the House and be signed into law by the president, there would be no more springing forward, no more falling back.

Sounds great, right?

As is often the case, be careful what you wish for.

The sun rose at 8:27 a.m. on Jan. 7, 1974, Washingtonian.com reported on March 15. Children in the Washington area had left for school in the dark that morning, thanks to a new national experiment during a wrenching energy crisis: most of the U.S. went to year-round daylight saving time beginning on Jan. 6.

It was jet black outside when her daughter was supposed to leave for school, Florence Bauer of Springfield, Virginia, told the Washington Post. Some of the children took flashlights with them.

The House has no immediate plans to take up the Senate-passed bill, but there is bipartisan support for it, NPR.org reported. The Biden administration hasnt taken a position on it.

If the House passes this bill and it becomes law, well face very long, very dark mornings every winter, marriage and family therapists Heather Turgeon and Julie Wright wrote in a story published Friday on the website of The Atlantic magazine, noting that teenagers have a natural delay in their biological clock. Teens waking up for school will miss most of their REM sleep, or dream sleep, which happens in the early-morning hours and is essential to mental health.

Year-round daylight saving time could very well lead to sunrise at 8:27 a.m. in early January, as in 1974. That would mean almost every student, regardless of age, could be waiting for the school bus in the dark.

Author David Prerau has a doctorate from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is one of the worlds foremost experts on daylight saving time. The best answer, he said in a report published Saturday by NPR.org, is to do nothing at all. The current system, which began in 2007, of starting daylight saving time in March and ending it in November is the product of decades of study and compromise, he said. I personally think the current system that we have, with some flaws, is the best system we could have, he said.

The big reason daylight saving time never seems so bad is that the shift happens when the days are getting longer, Turgeon and Wright wrote. When people say they like it, what they really mean is that they like summer.

Most of us do like summer, especially after a Wisconsin winter. Many of us grumbled our way through the switch to daylight saving time earlier this month.

But just how much darkness do you want at the start of your winter days?

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
The call came early Friday morning, from hundreds of miles away. Thats how the Neal family in Virginia Beach, Virginia, learned their beloved son and brother had fallen victim to gun violence in Baltimore.

You know, you get a phone call like that, and you cant accept it, said James Willie Neal Jr., whose son died after a shooting off Madison Avenue in the Reservoir Hill neighborhood. In the beginning, it just doesnt seem real.

Advertisement

Baltimore police responded to the scene around 2:40 a.m. Friday and found James Anthony Neal, 34, collapsed in an alley suffering from multiple gunshot wounds to his head, officials said. He was transported to a hospital and pronounced dead shortly after arriving, police said.

Over the next several hours, two more people were killed, and six others were injured during a spate of daytime gun violence Friday afternoon and evening  including three double shootings that unfolded in neighborhoods across Baltimore: Otterbein, Upton and Langston Hughes. The city recorded two additional homicides during the rest of the weekend.

Advertisement

This continued level of violence is both frustrating and disheartening to all of us working to reduce crime and keep residents safe, Police Commissioner Michael Harrison said in a statement Monday morning. I personally spent a good portion of the weekend at multiple crime scenes.  Our city is better than this.

James Anthony Neal, center, and his parents, Tammy Neal and James Willie Neal Jr. (Photo courtesy of Latasha Neal)

Harrison conferred with investigators Friday afternoon at the Otterbein shooting scene on South Charles Street near the Inner Harbor, but he declined to comment further on that case. One of the victims later died at the hospital.

In his statement, Harrison promised that his officers are working hard to hold perpetrators accountable.

Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott praised the department for a series of weekend arrests, including two suspects charged with attempted murder from previous shootings. He emphasized the importance of policing strategies focused on those who choose acts of violence as their method of conflict resolution.

Even before the recent bloodshed, the Baltimore homicide rate was trending higher than this time last year  76 homicides compared with 65, according to current data from police  and nonfatal shootings are up roughly 40%.

Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 19 Baltimore Police investigate the shooting scene near Charles Street and Conway Street near downtown Baltimore. Two people died and six others were hospitalized after five separate shootings in neighborhoods across Baltimore Friday afternoon (Jerry Jackson/Baltimore Sun)

During a phone interview Tuesday from his home in Virginia Beach, James Willie Neal said he had barely slept since receiving the news about his oldest childs slaying.

I have had so many people calling me, saying: Oh God. They just dont believe it  all these people reaching out because they want to help, he said. I guess were gonna get through this. I dont know.

For now, hes trying to focus on giving his son a proper send-off. The family established an online fundraiser to help cover funeral costs.

Advertisement

The oldest of three siblings, James Anthony Neal radiated kindness and empathy, his family said. He made friends easily and loved to socialize.

His Facebook profile is filled with inspirational quotes, smiling selfies and jokes about 90s cartoon characters.

He had recently been staying with a close friend in Baltimore but was talking about coming back to Virginia Beach, according to his family.

Then, this happened, said his dad, pausing to steady his voice. He choked up again, trying to explain how much he supported his son and always rooted for his success.

James Anthony Neal and his sister, Latasha Neal. (Photo courtesy of James Willie Neal Jr.)

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. >

He said he always wanted to grow up and be like me, said James Willie Neal, a proud Navy veteran who described himself as a devoted family man. He said he let me down a couple times, but I didnt see it that way.

James Anthony Neal was born in Morristown, New Jersey, but the family moved around a lot depending on where his dad was stationed in the Navy. They eventually settled in Virginia Beach.

Advertisement

His younger sister, Latasha Neal, said she remembers him watching anime and pushing her to read all the Harry Potter books. He graduated from high school with honors.

More recently, she said, he became a doting uncle to her children, who adored him.

He was that person who could find something good in everything, she said. He would give the best advice, even if he doesnt always apply it to himself.

Baltimore Police said detectives have not identified a motive in the case, but the investigation is ongoing.

The department asked anyone with information about the case to contact detectives at 410-396-2100 or use the Metro Crime Stoppers tip line at 1-866-7LOCKUP.
Timeline for Killeen police officer arrested

Feb. 24, 2022: KPD Officer James Paul Craigg allegedly injures a 31-year-old woman during a domestic incident in Georgetown, according to an incident report obtained by the Herald.

March 2: Georgetown police notify KPD of the investigation.

March 16: Craigg is arrested on a Class A misdemeanor charge of assault causing bodily injury-family violence, and is booked into the Williamson County Jail. The same day, KPD issues a news release.

March 17: Craigg is released from the Williamson County Jail after posting a bond of $5,000, according to Williamson County Jail records. As of March 23, the case had not been filed with the Williamson County Attorneys Office and an arrest affidavit or criminal complaint could not be obtained.
The state of Maryland reached a $200,000 settlement with a woman who accused a former Baltimore County Sheriffs Office deputy of sexually assaulting her while she was in state custody.

A lawsuit filed by the woman accused the deputy of making inappropriate sexual comments while transporting her from a court hearing in mid-November 2018 and then sexually assaulting her at a holding cell inside a Baltimore County courthouse.

Advertisement

Charged with second-degree rape, Morton Stanley Winkler Jr., now 56, entered an Alford plea last November to a lesser misdemeanor offense, in which he admitted no guilt but acknowledged that there was sufficient evidence to convict on a charge he was a correctional officer who engaged in a sex act with a person in custody. He was sentenced to two years unsupervised probation.

Winkler resigned Nov. 24 from the Baltimore County Sheriffs Office, according to Ruby Hernandez, a chief deputy with the office.

Advertisement

He had been placed on administrative duty when the incident was reported, Hernandez said, and then suspended without pay Jan. 27, 2020, shortly after a grand jury indicted him on the rape charge.

Hernandez said internal records showed Winkler had no other internal affairs cases dating back to 2011.

Winklers attorney in the criminal case, Brian Thompson, told The Baltimore Sun his client maintained his innocence. Thompson said Winkler wouldnt be commenting further.

The settlement, obtained by The Sun due to a public records request, shows the $200,000 payment ends her claims against the state, Baltimore County, the Baltimore County Sheriffs Office and Winkler himself. It was signed and dated Jan. 11 by the woman.

The womans attorney, Loyd Byron Hopkins, said his client was satisfied with the settlement, but he called the resolution of Winklers criminal case extraordinary and abnormal. The Sun does not identify victims of sexual assault.

Winkler received perks in his plea deal, including removing his original rape charge from the states public case search system. In addition to receiving no prison time under the plea deal, first reported by The Daily Record, Winkler is not required to be on the sex offender registry.

Thompson said hes orchestrated similar deals in the past, in which a prosecutor agrees to issue a new charging document and let a defendant plead guilty to the agreed upon new charge. That way, Thompson said, the prior charge can be expunged so it doesnt follow them around for the rest of their life.

Under Marylands expungement law, if you get convicted of a lesser offense in an indictment that includes other charges, you cant expunge the other counts and they stay on the states case search website for the rest of your life, Thompson said.

Advertisement

He called Winklers deal a sound prosecution strategy, as it would prevent Winkler from serving as a corrections officer in the future and avoided a trial Thompson said he was confident he would win.

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. >

Hopkins, the accusers attorney, said the deal was extraordinary in part because the criminal offense Winkler entered an Alford plea to was not within the realm or family of charges for the original crime.

It would have made sense for a lesser plea to be a second-degree assault or a second-, third- or fourth-degree sex offense, he said, but not the misdemeanor of a law enforcement officer engaging in a sex act with a person in custody.

The Baltimore County States Attorneys Office recused itself from the case due to the close working relationship between both agencies, and the Carroll County States Attorneys Office confirmed in 2020 it had accepted the case as a special prosecutor.

The Carroll County States Attorneys Office did not respond to a request for comment.

Hopkins said the prosecutors misled him and his client about the nature of the plea, leading them to believe it was a guilty plea. Had he known it was an Alford, he said, we would have objected and ... we wouldve told the judge we found this insulting.

Advertisement

He added that the Alford plea had a bearing on their civil case.

The state of Maryland covered the settlement cost because when a county sheriffs deputy is transporting a prisoner to and from court, he or she becomes a state employee during that process, Hopkins said.
KEARNEY  Owner Bobby Wilson said earlier this year that supply chain disruptions have severely slowed storm damage repairs of his Cinema 8 theater in south Kearney.

We are hoping to get it done. Its been an absolutely horrible situation, Wilson said.

The wind and rainstorm that clobbered Cinema 8 on July 9, 2020, caused severe damage. Strong winds peeled away the theaters roof, and then monsoon-style rainfall drenched a large part of the theaters interior. As the storm struck, 50 audience members and staff attending the theater had to scramble for shelter. Fortunately, nobody was injured.

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

We had two movies running. We asked people to go to the hallways to get away from the glass windows until the storm passed. It was something else, Wilson said. The noise from the roof was pretty amazing, but everybody cooperated, and then came the smell of gas.

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

Wilson had a complicated challenge just to assess damages to his eight-screen theater. Now hes waiting for equipment and special components to arrive so repairs can be completed.

He said there is damage inside and outside the building, including 10 roof-mounted A/C units and projection and concession stand equipment.

He was anticipating that those components would be replaced in January, but supply chain disruptions left him waiting again.

After the windstorm blew off the roof membrane, the downpour drenched the north side of the theater. By that time Wilson and his staff were herding moviegoers to the inner hallways. They evacuated before drenched ceiling tiles collapsed in the individual theaters.

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

Cinema 8 is affiliated with a theater in Paragould, Arkansas. The Kearney theater opened at 300 S. Third Ave. in 2007. Since then Cinema 8 has weathered several catastrophes, including the 2019 floods, the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 storm and now the supply chain delays.

I wish I had some solid answers about when the theater will be reopening. As soon as I have something solid to talk about Ill call you, he said.
KEARNEY  SkyWest Airlines might be abandoning its air service in Kearney, but City Manager Michael Morgan said the sky isnt falling.

People should keep booking their flights, Morgan said about the situation that began one week ago when SkyWest Airlines announced its plans to drop commuter air service in 31 cities, including Kearney.

Flights from Kearney to Denver and Chicago have been attracting record passenger numbers, but in its announcement to the federal Department of Transportation, SkyWest said a chronic shortage of pilots is causing havoc for the small airline based at St. George, Utah.

Thats because pilots are gaining flight time and experience that allows them to graduate from smaller jetliners like the 50-seat planes that serve Kearney, and land better-paying jobs flying full-size jetliners.

Morgan said SkyWest might be exaggerating the pilot shortage. He told the Kearney City Council Tuesday that SkyWest appears to be reassigning some of its pilots to fly non-federally subsidized routes. Morgan added that a group of the cities slated to lose air service offered to help ease the pilot shortage by accepting cutbacks in air service.

SkyWest wasnt interested, Morgan said.

Morgan said April 11 is the deadline for airlines to submit their proposals. DOT and cities hoping to salvage air service then will closely examine proposals to find the best match for each community, but Morgan believes there arent enough pilots and airlines to go around.

The challenge is, whos going to lose air service, Morgan said. The good news is that SkyWest has never left a city without a replacement airline.

Unpredictable flight schedules during the coronavirus pandemic complicated the situation for smaller carriers like SkyWest. The airline has been scrambling to meet its obligations under the contracts with DOT to provide subsidized Essential Air Service for airports like Kearneys.

To attract pilots, SkyWest is offering $40,000 bonuses and other incentives, but the shortage continues because the young pilots first fly smaller jetliners and generally move up to larger aircraft when they qualify for that work.

SkyWests initial EAS contract to serve Kearney paid the airline $3,675,276 per year from 2018 to 2020. Currently, SkyWests contract pays the airline $3,638,264 annually to serve Kearney with flights to Denver International Airport and Chicago OHare.

Morgan said the current EAS contract runs from Sept. 1, 2020, to Aug. 31, 2023.

Those dates are important, Morgan said, because it gives DOT time to recruit a replacement airline for SkyWest. The time also aids the city of Kearney, which must review proposals from airlines competing to serve Kearney.

SkyWest operates as United Express out of Kearney and other Nebraska airports it serves.

Morgan said its critical that passengers continue flying from the local airport. Kearneys record-breaking passenger counts in 2021 will help DOT with its recruiting to give Kearney leverage to dictate some of the conditions for the EAS contract, such as the size and type of aircrafts the airline will fly and the flight schedule it will keep.

Passenger numbers reached a record 25,238 in 2021. That compares with the COVID-suppressed 11,794 passengers in 2020 and the 21,287 who flew in 2019.

Morgan said he spoke last week with several people who could be key players in Kearneys search for a new airline. They included U.S. Sen. Deb Fischer, the citys airline consultant and representatives of DOT.

Morgan said the current EAS contract expires on Aug. 31. Until that date, DOT can hold SkyWests feet to the fire to keep the obligations of its EAS contracts for subsidized air service.

After that contract runs out theres nothing holding that airline in Kearney, Morgan said.
LEXINGTON  A semi-trailer left Interstate 80 and rolled on its side two miles west of Lexington during the afternoon of Tuesday, March 22.

At 1:25 p.m., law enforcement and the Lexington Volunteer Fire Department were dispatched to mile marker 235 due to a report of a semi on its side in the ditch and unknown injuries.

Dawson County Sheriffs deputies arrived on scene first to find the semi and trailer on its right side in the south ditch along the eastbound lane.

On scene, winds were blowing at 20-25 mph with some gusts reaching 30 mph, measured via anemometer.

Any injuries related to the accident were not disclosed on scene.

Eastbound traffic was directed into the left lane while law enforcement was on scene.

The Dawson County Sheriffs Office was assisted by the Nebraska Department of Transportation.
LOS ANGELES  Rep. Jeff Fortenberry spoke with Dr. Eli Ayoub twice in 2018, asking him both times if he would hold another fundraiser on Fortenberry's behalf.

Maybe something similar to the one Ayoub held in February 2016 in L.A. Maybe something smaller, more intimate.

But when FBI agents showed up at Fortenberrys home nine months later, Fortenberry said he had a hard time placing Ayoub.

I dont know if I know him, Fortenberry said.

I think his name is Ayoub, Elias, FBI agent Todd Carter responded.

Im not placing him, Fortenberry said. I may have (met him). I cant say I have.

Fortenberry thought some more.

If its Ayoub, he may have given me a political contribution, he said.

Ayoub did much more. Ayoub testified Monday that he took a brown paper bag of $30,000 cash from an associate of Nigerian billionaire Gilbert Chagoury and distributed it to friends and relatives. He had them write checks to Fortenberrys campaign at a fundraiser the doctor held on behalf of the Nebraska congressman.

Day 4 of Fortenberrys federal trial Tuesday delved into whether the congressman lied to FBI agents investigating the funneling of foreign money into U.S. politicians campaigns. Chagoury, a controversial figure who has been connected to corruption in Nigeria, had used Ayoub to steer money to several Republicans, including Fortenberry.

It is illegal for U.S. politicians to accept foreign money. Fortenberry, a nine-term congressman representing Nebraskas 1st District, is charged with one count of concealing the source of illegal contributions to his campaign and two counts of lying. If convicted, the 61-year-old would face up to five years in prison on each charge, though supervised release also would be a possibility.

Fortenberrys defense team says the congressman had no knowledge, direct or otherwise, that he had received foreign money. And Tuesday, they cast the lying charges as a reach.

The real liars are the agents who interviewed Fortenberry, attorney Ryan Fraser suggested.

Fraser and attorney Glen Summers accused the FBI agent and an IRS agent, James OLeary, of ambushing the Fortenberrys at their Lincoln home in the March 2019 interview.

Fortenberry had just returned that week from a trip to Nairobi, where he was being briefed on elephant poaching. At the time of his return, eastern Nebraska was experiencing massive flooding and Fortenberry had toured some of the affected areas that Saturday.

He wasnt home when agents first showed up at 1 p.m. When the agents returned that evening, two Lincoln police officers were waiting for them.

Fortenberry explained that he had called then-Lincoln Police Chief Jeff Bliemeister because two people claiming to be federal agents had knocked on his door.

We have gotten death threats against us, Fortenberry told the agents who eventually stepped into the living room, according to an agents video played Tuesday.

Sit down, Fortenberry told the agents. Were gonna have a little conversation before we have a conversation.

Because of the nature of your inquiry ... the surprising lack of professionalism you have shown ... this has resulted in us calling the local police chief and wasting their time.

As the three sat down, Carter began to give the standard admonition that Fortenberry needed to be candid with agents.

I want to remind you that lying to the FBI is illegal, Carter said.

You lied to me, Fortenberry shot back. You said you were from Omaha.

In Omaha, yes, Carter said. Not from Omaha, correct.

The L.A.-based agents later testified that they sometimes lie to gain access to people, to get them to talk. Hence their representation to Celeste Fortenberry that day that they needed to talk to her husband about a national security matter. And also their false statement that they already had spoken to Fortenberrys office about what they were going to talk about.

Its common for us to use ruses, OLeary testified.

After expressing his displeasure, Fortenberry settled into a chair in his living room. The agents apologized for the confusion they created and asked Fortenberry if the Lincoln police officers could leave.

I want them present, he insisted.

Unbeknownst to Fortenberry, something else was present: Carter had a camera planted somewhere on him or his belongings, perhaps in a briefcase or satchel. The video was grainy and tilted.

But the audio was clear  and prosecutors say it was damning.

Carter got to the point. They were investigating In Defense of Christians, a group that Fortenberry supported.

Toufic Baaklini, a Chagoury go-between, had founded the group in 2014 and Fortenberry had spoken at In Defense of Christians banquets as it fought for one of his principal causes: protecting religious minorities in the Middle East.

In return  and Fortenberry says unbeknownst to him  Chagoury had funneled $30,000 in cash to Fortenberrys campaign. He did so through a Los Angeles fundraiser put on by Ayoub and, indirectly, by Baaklini.

During that interview, Carter concealed something else. That FBI agents had recorded a June 2018 phone call Fortenberry had made in which he asked Ayoub if he would hold a second fundraiser. During that phone call, Ayoub had told Fortenberry three times that the fundraiser was funded with $30,000 cash that probably came from Chagoury.

Carter showed Fortenberry a photo of Ayoub. Asked a few times, Fortenberry said he couldnt place him. The defense pointed out that agents had been using a 10-year-old photo of Ayoub that showed him with dyed-black hair and black eyebrows. Ayoub, 77, now has silver hair and silver eyebrows.

But prosecutors said Carter made it clear he was talking about Ayoub  a man Fortenberry had just spoken by phone with. A man who had just told Fortenberry that Baaklini had injected money, probably Chagourys money, to Fortenberrys campaign.

And Fortenberry was evasive, they say.

Carter asked: Are you aware if Baaklini ever provided any money to anyone to conduct conduit contributions?

Fortenberry: No, Im not aware.

Carter: Are you aware of any foreign nationals giving direction or orders for the purpose of conducting illegal campaign contributions?

Fortenberry: You know, no.

As agents pressed Fortenberry, the congressman leaned forward in his chair. He put his elbows on his knees.

Well, at this point youre starting to accuse me of something, he said. I dont know what youre digging for but Im trying to help.

Fortenberry paused.

I think youre leading somewhere here and youre not making me comfortable. Ive been trying to help you with whatever you need. ... Its not clear to me what youre doing now so we have to call a timeout.

Fortenberrys attorney, Fraser, said his client was clearly thrown off by the dated photo of Ayoub. Eventually, Fraser noted, Fortenberry recognized who the agents were referring to and described a couple of conversations with Ayoub. One was a trip to Nebraska so Ayoub, a graduate of Creighton University Medical School, could visit relatives. The other was another possible fundraiser in Los Angeles.

I had done a previous, um, fundraiser with (Ayoub) out there, Fortenberry said. I thought it would be nice to do it again. But that didnt happen.

The defense has suggested that Fortenberry wasnt hiding anything and clearly had no idea his campaign had received foreign money  evidenced by the fact that he was openly disclosing his desire for a second fundraiser. Prosecutors counter that Fortenberry didnt come clean about Ayoub until 32 minutes into the FBI interview.

Any explanation that Fortenberry didnt realize the agents were talking about Ayoub was undercut three months later by Fortenberry himself.

Fortenberry asked for a second interview. In July 2019, he and his then-attorney, former Rep. Trey Gowdy, sat down with prosecutor Mack Jenkins in Washington. Prosecutors have indicated that they thought Fortenberry would come clean at that interview.

But prosecutors now argue that Fortenberry dug himself a deeper hole, contradicting some of his responses to the agents questions in the Lincoln interview.

At the second interview, Fortenberry acknowledged what he wouldn't in the Lincoln interview. That Ayoub told him on the June 2018 phone call that the amounts, as I recall, the amounts wouldnt be as large because Gilbert (Chagoury) wouldnt be involved.

Jenkins: And that was (Ayoub's) response to you asking about another fundraiser?

Fortenberry: Yeah. ... That was discomforting to me, so I ended the conversation.

In reality, prosecutors say, Fortenberry did not end the conversation. Instead, he went on to ask for a second fundraiser.

As for the first fundraiser, Fortenberry insisted in the D.C. interview with Jenkins that everything about this event was standard and engaging and people being generous.

A bit later, Jenkins asked: And youre aware that foreign nationals cant contribute to campaigns?

Why wouldnt I know that? Fortenberry scoffed. Im a member of the United States Congress.

Jenkins: Youd be surprised.

Fortenberry: Its my obligation to know that. Im a lawmaker in charge of a political campaign.

Jenkins asked how he acted on the information that Chagoury probably provided $30,000 in cash.

I didnt have any more events, Fortenberry said. That was how I acted on it.

But, Jenkins noted, Fortenberry continued to talk about another event during the June 2018 phone call with Ayoub, even after Ayoub told him it may have been Chagoury's cash.

And prosecutors say Fortenberry failed to act as other politicians had when told they had received Chagourys money, which is disgorge the money by donating it to charity.

After the June 2018 phone call, it took Fortenberry more than a year  and two interviews with federal agents  before he got rid of the money.

In the D.C. interview, Jenkins asked Fortenberry if it was weird that Ayoub had told him that his campaign had received $30,000 in cash and that the money probably came from Chagoury.

That would have been horrifying," Fortenberry said. "Not weird. Horrifying.

And, Fortenberry said, he would have disowned that money immediately.

Prosecutors are expected to wrap up their case Wednesday morning. The defense has told the judge it will put on about a day of testimony.
The citys fire chief is set to retire next month according to a resolution heading before the Finance & Personnel Committee in April.

According to the resolution, Fire Chief Ken Gilliam informed the Police and Fire Commission that he intends to retire Friday, April 15.

The resolution was short-circuited by Mayor Mitch Reynolds to authorize the La Crosse Common Council to appoint an interim chief effective the day after Gilliams retirement.

No candidate has been publicly named and the Police and Fire Commission would lead the search.

Gilliam has served as the citys top firefighter since 2017 when he was chosen to replace former Chief Gregg Cleveland. Gilliam had previously been with the St. Paul Fire Department in Minnesota.

During his time at La Crosse, Gilliam has been instrumental in working to modernize the citys fire stations and facilities, and has most recently worked to create a joint agreement between the La Crosse and Holmen Fire Departments. Gilliam currently serves as Holmens fire chief under that agreement.

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 76-year-old woman who was taken back into custody last month after not answering calls during a computer class from officials was ordered released Tuesday.

After serving 16 years in federal facilities for dealing heroin, Gwen Levi moved to Baltimore to live with her 94-year-old mother, build relationships with her sons and grandchildren, and volunteer at prisoner-advocacy organizations as she searched for a job. She was one of about 4,500 prisoners allowed to serve their sentences at home as the coronavirus swept through federal prisons, killing 240 prisoners and four Federal Bureau of Prisons staff members.

Advertisement

Her release, however, was revoked after she attended a computer word-processing class in Baltimore on June 12 and didnt return calls from officials monitoring her.

Out of contact for more than four hours, according to a Federal Bureau of Prisons report, Levi was accused of escape and sent to the D.C. jail to await transfer back to the federal system. Her case drew attention after reports on former inmates who might have to go back to prison when the pandemic ends.

Advertisement

On Tuesday, court documents showed, a federal judge granted Levi compassionate release, reducing her sentence to time served. Levis request for release was filed before she was sent home last year.

Judge Deborah K. Chasanow, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, wrote that Levi has done well on home confinement, the current question of the missed call notwithstanding.

Because of her release to home confinement, the most pressing initial concerns (COVID, age, and health) were addressed, the opinion said. The court concludes that it would do little (if anything) to serve the goals of sentencing to require her to return to full custody.

Levi, due to be released Tuesday evening, was not immediately available to comment.

In an email, Justice Department spokesman Anthony Coley referred questions about Levi to the Federal Bureau of Prisons. In a tweet after Levis re-incarceration was reported late last month, he said that inmates who have had their transfer to home confinement revoked based on a violation may appeal that decision through the Administrative Remedy Program based on the particular circumstances of their case.

Levis attorney, Sapna Mirchandani of Marylands Office of the Federal Public Defender, said Levi elected to ask for a ruling on a long-pending motion for sentence reduction rather than pursue the appeal.

If Gwen stayed in the BOPs custody, we would go the administrative remedy route, which is a painfully long bureaucratic maze that, in my experience, is a waste of time, she said. The BOP always backs up what the BOP does.

Mirchandani said Levi will have to report to a parole officer for five years, but the terms of her release will be less restrictive. She also will be able to ask for early termination of supervision after one year.

Advertisement

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. >

Kristie A. Breshears, spokeswoman for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, declined to comment on Levis case. The Justice Department had opposed Levis motion for compassionate release, according to Chasanows opinion, noting a criminal history that includes prior felony drug-trafficking and firearms convictions.

It did, however, acknowledge that she likely does not pose a significant danger to the community, the opinion said.

Levis release comes as prisoner-rights advocates press President Bidens administration to prevent inmates sent home during the pandemic from being returned to prison. They are asking for a change in policy established in the final days of Trumps presidency.

On Jan. 15, a binding Justice Department memo called for nearly all people sent home because of the pandemic to return to prison when the public health emergency ends. The White House and the Justice Department have not said whether they plan to rescind the memo.

Breshears said 190 inmates sent to home confinement because of the pandemic have been returned to secure custody  185 for alleged violations, five for alleged new crimes.

Kevin Ring, president of nonprofit prisoner advocacy organization Families Against Mandatory Minimums, said in a statement Tuesday that the bureaus decision to send Levi back to prison was shameful.

Advertisement

She deserves to be home, he said.
Scott Bjerkos announced on May 2 that he is running for Vernon County Sheriff. Bjerkos has served in law enforcement for over 36 years, all wi
A 28-year-old Chicago man has been sentenced to 30 months in federal prison for a weapons charge linked to a drive-by shooting in La Crosse.

Keith T. Jones pleaded guilty Dec. 15, 2021, to being a felon in possession of a firearm. His sentence, imposed by federal district Judge James D. Peterson, also includes three years of supervised release.

Jones was arrested after La Crosse police responded to an Aug. 24, 2020, complaint of shots fired. Police determined that multiple gunshots were fired from a gray minivan, and several residents reported bullet-hole damage to their homes, including a bullet that entered an occupied bedroom.

The following day, police located the minivan, in which Jones was an occupant. Police searched the vehicle and reportedly recovered a loaded Taurus 9 mm handgun and a spent 9 mm shell casing in the drivers seat. The handgun was identified as the same weapon used in the shooting, and further investigation identified Jones as the shooter.

Co-defendant Antwan Taylor, who was also identified in the shooting, previously pleaded guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm and was sentenced to five years in federal prison Dec. 2, 2021.

The charge against Jones was the result of an investigation conducted by the La Crosse Police Department and federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Jones also faces local felony charges of first-degree recklessly endangering and possession of narcotic drugs. His next court date is a May 19 calendar call in La Crosse County Circuit Court.

La Crosse Tribune reporter Steve Rundio can be reached at steve.rundio@lee.net.

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.
La Crosse County will have an open race for sheriff this fall. Incumbent Republican Jeff Wolf announced Wednesday that he wont seek re-election.

After 34 years of service to the citizens of La Crosse County, I have decided to retire and pursue other interests and opportunities, Wolf said in a media release. Being sheriff of this county is truly a privilege and an honor.

Wolf is retiring after one four-year term as sheriff. Prior to his election, he served as chief deputy under his predecessor Steve Helgeson, who supported Wolfs election bid in 2018.

I am proud to have worked for one of the finest sheriffs offices in the state of Wisconsin, Wolf said. The La Crosse County Sheriffs Office has been a leader and innovator on many aspects of law enforcement and corrections. This is only because of the dedication and commitment from every employee of the sheriffs office.

Wolf didnt immediately endorse a successor. He expects at least one member of his current staff will seek the post.

Sheriffs are elected to four-year terms. The partisan primary election is Aug. 9, and the general election is Nov. 8.

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.
About 100 French Island residents met Wednesday afternoon to talk about the ongoing PFAS crisis with community and state leaders while possible solutions continue to be investigated.

So far, more than 500 wells on French Island have been shown to be contaminated with above-recommended levels of PFAS, a toxic group of forever chemicals that are believed to have stemmed from the La Crosse Regional Airport.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Ron Kind, who lives on French Island himself, along with state Sen. Brad Pfaff and Rep. Steve Doyle joined town of Campbell leaders to discuss concerns and gather more information.

The discussion focused mostly on what solutions could be found and funded, and leaders urged that a game plan must be identified before they can go after funding. They requested that residents send letters to representatives and continue speaking out.

But residents expressed restlessness as many have been relying on bottled water for the last year.

My kids still like the flavor of our water better than the Culligan water that were drinking, area plumber Todd Nelson said. He said he has had to put flavoring in his water to tolerate it.

Right now weve got to weather the storm and weve got to work together, he said.

Kind advised that the whichever solution the community chooses to move forward with should be taken directly to Gov. Tony Evers and state DNR Secretary-designee Preston Cole. He advocated for using funds from the states portion of the American Rescue Plan Act and infrastructure bill to help fund the solution.

But that money is likely to be spent sooner than later, he cautioned.

I will say that time is of the essence. Theres only so long well be able to provide households and families with bottled water, Kind said. Its important for us all to work very hard and as quickly as we can to find a workable solution.

Pfaff and Doyle both stated that politics within the state Legislature were preventing help on the PFAS crisis, such as cost-sharing for water testing and establishing stronger state standards for the amount of PFAS in water.

One resident agreed, saying he was sick and tired of hearing about the $676,000 of taxpayer money that has been spent on a state investigation into the 2020 election.

And they cant even help us with our water, he said. He told his neighbors, Think twice when you vote because thats one of the first things we can do is just vote for people that want to help us.

If they dont want to pass legislation for helping us, well vote for someone who will, he said.

Currently, the two major solutions that have emerged to address the widespread contamination include directing city of La Crosse water onto the island  which creates some uneasiness among residents due to long annexation concerns  or somehow extracting the chemicals from the water so that residents can continue to use their existing private wells, though the data on that is still being reviewed.

After the listening session, the Campbell Town Board met to discuss its water agreement with the city of La Crosse. For more information on that meeting and the listening session, visit LaCrosseTribune.com or look for the story in Fridays paper.

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.
U.S. Sen. Mike Braun, R-Ind., would welcome the U.S. Supreme Court rescinding its 1967 ruling that legalized interracial marriage nationwide in favor of allowing each of the 50 states to decide such issues on its own.

Speaking Tuesday on a conference call with Indiana reporters, the Hoosier senator unambiguously declared his belief that many of the high court's key civil rights decisions of the past 70 years were wrongly decided and an improper usurpation of states' rights.

Braun initially limited his claim to the national right to abortion established by the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision he hopes the current, more conservative, Supreme Court will overturn in coming months when it rules in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.

But, when asked by The Times, Braun admitted there are many Supreme Court decisions he believes improperly established federal rights that would be better handled on a state-by-state basis, including Loving v. Virginia that legalized interracial marriage, and Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) establishing a right to privacy concerning contraceptive use.

"You can list a whole host of issues," Braun said. "When it comes down to whatever they are, I'm going to say they're not going to all make you happy within a given state. But we're better off having states manifest their points of view, rather than homogenizing it across the country as Roe v. Wade did."

Specifically concerning interracial marriage, Braun rejected the reasoning of a unanimous Supreme Court that the freedom to marry is a fundamental constitutional right and states depriving Americans of it on an arbitrary basis, such as race, is unconstitutional.

He acknowledged leaving such a question to states is likely to lead to situations where a marriage may be recognized in one state and not in another, but he shrugged it off as "the beauty of the system."

"This should be something where the expression of individual states are able to weigh-in on these issues through their own legislation, through their own court systems. Quit trying to put the federal government in charge," Braun said.

To that end, Braun pointed to the widespread adoption of state laws legalizing individual use of medicinal and recreational marijuana, notwithstanding the fact cannabis remains an illegal controlled substance under federal law.

"That's part of the way that we navigate through issues that are generally going to be divisive, that are generally very vitriolic, and you solve that by not trying to nationalize it," Braun said. "One side of the aisle, out here, wants to do more of that all the time, and I think we've gone far enough there into a variety of issues.

"I think if you're not wanting the Supreme Court to weigh in on issues like that, you're not going to be able to have your cake and eat it, too. I think that's hypocritical."

Braun later walked back his comments by claiming he misunderstood the question, despite the question being asked multiple times in different ways to ensure Braun meant and understood what he said concerning interracial marriage.

"Let me be clear on that issue  there is no question the Constitution prohibits discrimination of any kind based on race, that is not something that is even up for debate, and I condemn racism in any form, at all levels and by any states, entities or individuals," Braun said.

As for the judicial vacancy on the high court, Braun said he hasn't yet decided whether he will vote to confirm Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson and make her the first black woman to serve alongside the eight other Supreme Court justices.

Braun said he wants to see what Jackson says under questioning this week by the Senate Judiciary Committee and then he plans to carefully review her past rulings to see if they conform to his expectations for federal judges.

"She seems well-qualified. But whenever I vote for a Supreme Court justice it's going to be, basically, how are you going to interpret the law," Braun said. "If your record shows that you're going to be kind of an activist there, I don't think that's good, and I don't think the Founders intended it that way."

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected Wisconsins 10-year legislative maps drawn by Gov. Tony Evers and sent the matter back to the states high court, which had adopted the Democratic governors amended proposal.

The rejection of Evers Assembly and Senate district maps by the nations highest court puts the issue back in the hands of the Wisconsin Supreme Court and will further delay the states redistricting process, which state election officials say needs to be resolved in order to prepare for the August primary and November election.

The federal court accepted Evers congressional maps that the state Supreme Court approved, denying a request from Wisconsins Republican congressional lawmakers seeking to block those boundaries.

In an unsigned decision with two liberal justices, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor dissenting, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the state Supreme Court did not properly determine whether Evers maps, which create a new, seventh Black majority Assembly district in Milwaukee, comply with the federal Voting Rights Act.

We agree that the court committed legal error in its application of decisions of this Court regarding the relationship between the constitutional guarantee of equal protection and the VRA, the justices wrote.

Evers issued a statement Wednesday that the maps he drew comply with federal and state laws, including the equal protection clause and the Voting Rights Act, as well as the state Supreme Courts previous ruling that new maps must include minimal changes to existing boundaries.

If we have to go back to the Wisconsin Supreme Court  who have already declared our maps superior to every other proposal  to demonstrate again that these maps are better and fairer than the maps we have now, then thats exactly what well do, Evers said.

The order stipulates that the state Supreme Court is free to take additional evidence if it prefers to reconsider Evers maps, but any new analysis, however, must comply with our equal protection jurisprudence. The majority also notes that the states high court has sufficient time to adopt maps before the Aug. 9 primary.

Sotomayor and Kagan described the decision as unprecedented.

This Courts intervention today is not only extraordinary but also unnecessary, the justices wrote.

The Legislature in its March 7 request for appellate review focused on Evers decision to add a seventh majority-Black Assembly district in Milwaukee, which would dilute the Black majority in the six existing districts. The Legislature argued the state high court never decided whether the seventh district was required by the Voting Rights Act.

The lawmakers claimed Evers used the federal Voting Rights Act as a shield for open and obvious violations of the Constitution.

Evers maps create a total of nine Black majority districts, with two in the Senate and seven in the Assembly. All districts have Black majorities of between 50.09% and 51.39%, according to court filings. The state currently has six majority-Black Assembly districts and two in the Senate, all with a majority range between 51% and 62%.

State Sen. Lena Taylor, D-Milwaukee, also filed a legal challenge to the state Supreme Courts adoption of Evers maps. Taylor, whose district sees its majority drop from 58.4% to 50.62% under Evers boundaries, said the way Evers added a seventh majority-Black Assembly district ultimately waters down the Black vote in all of the districts.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the state court did not properly consider whether a race-neutral alternative that did not add a seventh majority-black district would deny black voters equal political opportunity.

Rick Esenberg, president and general counsel for the conservative law firm Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, said in a statement the U.S. Supreme Courts decision is a critical victory to ensure that our government not make decisions on the basis of race.

UW-Madison Law School associate professor Robert Yablon said the ruling was highly unusual but not entirely surprising.

Although the (Voting Rights Act) aims to ensure fair representational opportunities for communities of color, the court has been cautioning mapmakers to avoid overreliance on race when drawing district lines, he said.

Upcoming elections

With the state Supreme Court now tasked with drafting legislative maps not inconsistent with the U.S. Supreme Courts order, the Wisconsin Elections Commission is sure to face additional delays in implementing new maps for upcoming elections.

From the beginning of the court battle over the states 10-year maps, the commission said in a filing, it had asked the state Supreme Court to put a new redistricting plan in place by March 1.

To properly administer the next election, the commission told the U.S. Supreme Court it needs maps by April 15 in order to record the maps new boundaries in the statewide voter registration system, integrate the new data with voters information and manually review local ward map changes to make sure each voter was in the correct district.

On March 11, the commission told the federal high court that any delay in implementing new maps beyond March 15 would increase the risk of errors in (the statewide voter registration system) and decrease the time available to correct those errors before circulation of nomination papers begins.

This is going to create some real complications for our election process, and I think what were going to see is a flurry of court action coming out of this regarding what the next maps will look like, Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul said in a WisPolitics.com online luncheon Wednesday.

Fair Elections project director Sachin Chheda said in a statement the U.S. Supreme Court is throwing Wisconsins legislative elections into chaos just three weeks before candidates in the November election need to begin gathering signatures.

Never has it been clearer that the U.S. Supreme Court majority will do anything it can to advance Republican interests, rather than the law, the Constitution, and the will of the people, Chheda said.

Ongoing battle

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

Evers ultimately submitted new maps to the court, which reduce but maintain Republican majorities in the Legislature while likely preventing them from claiming a veto-proof supermajority. Those maps were drawn after the state Supreme Court in November ruled it would follow a least change approach from the current maps, which are considered some of the most gerrymandered in the nation.

The states high court issued a 4-3 ruling earlier this month in favor of Evers maps.

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

Evers office has said the governors maps would have elected 44 Democrats and 55 Republicans in the Assembly, and 13 Democrats and 20 Republicans in the Senate. In Congress, Republicans would maintain five seats to Democrats three.

An analysis of Evers congressional maps by PlanScore, a program that predicts precinct-level votes for districts based on past election results and U.S. Census data led by the Campaign Legal Center, a national nonprofit organization that advocates for nonpartisan maps, found that the governors maps maintain two Democratic-leaning U.S. House districts  Districts 2 and 4, which are held by Reps. Mark Pocan, D-Black Earth, and Gwen Moore, D-Milwaukee.

The already competitive 3rd Congressional District, currently held by departing Rep. Ron Kind, D-La Crosse, would lean Republican under the new maps. With the district up for grabs, the Wisconsin Democratic Party is set to hold its first in-person convention since 2019 in La Crosse in June.

In an interview with WKBT, Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler noted the competitive nature of the 3rd Congressional District and said, This is an area where, as Democrats, we need to earn every vote.

The 1st District seat, held by Bryan Steil, R-Janesville, still leans Republican but could become more competitive under new maps.

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

Yablon said the state Supreme Court will likely ask the litigants to weigh in on how to proceed. Going forward, Yablon said, the justices could choose another map besides Evers that the court received, ask for amended maps redrawing the Milwaukee-area Assembly districts at issue, conduct additional factfinding to decide whether Evers map is necessary under the Voting Rights Act or explain that its sticking with Evers map for race-neutral reasons.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 2
With Europe facing its most precarious future since World War II, President Joe Biden will huddle with key allies in Brussels and Warsaw this week as the leaders try to prevent Russias war on Ukraine from spiraling into an even greater catastrophe.

Biden embarked Wednesday on a four-day trip that will test his ability to navigate the continents worst crisis since WWII ended in 1945. There are fears that Russia could use chemical or nuclear weapons as its invasion becomes bogged down in the face of logistical problems and fierce Ukrainian resistance.

Advertisement

I think its a real threat, Biden said of the possibility of Russia deploying chemical weapons. He spoke during a brief exchange with reporters at the White House before departing for Brussels.

Humanitarian challenges are growing as well. Millions of refugees have fled the fighting, mostly by crossing the border into Poland, and the war has jeopardized Ukraines wheat and barley harvests, raising the possibility of rising hunger in impoverished areas around the globe.

Advertisement

Jake Sullivan, Bidens national security adviser, said the president would coordinate with allies on military assistance for Ukraine and new sanctions on Russia.

One new sanctions option that Biden is looking at is to target hundreds of members of the Russian State Duma, the lower house of parliament, according to a U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the move ahead of any announcement. The official added that a final decision hasnt been made and that the new sanctions would be rolled out in coordination with Western allies.

Sullivan added that Biden is working on long-term efforts to boost defenses in Eastern Europe, where more countries fear Russian aggression. The president is also aiming to reduce the continents reliance on Russian energy.

This war will not end easily or rapidly, Sullivan told reporters at a White House briefing on Tuesday. For the past few months, the West has been united. The president is traveling to Europe to make sure we stay united.

Sullivan said Vladimir Putins references to nuclear weapons at the beginning of the conflict are something that we do have to be concerned about, adding that Biden would be talking with allies about potential responses if the Russian leader takes that step.

Sullivans description of Bidens trip was another sign that the crisis is entering a new and uncertain phase.

After the initial invasion failed to topple Ukraines government, the war has become a grinding endeavor for Putin, who is relying on airstrikes and artillery that are devastating civilian communities. Negotiations between Ukraine and Russia have not produced a cease-fire or a path to ending the conflict, and the U.S. continues to rush weapons like anti-tank missiles to Ukrainian forces.

The wars ripple effects are also spreading. Biden warned that Russia could be planning cyberattacks that would affect U.S. companies, and he spoke to Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday to warn him against backing Russia with military or financial assistance. Meanwhile, a top State Department official visited India this week shortly after that country decided to purchase more Russian oil.

Advertisement

This is one of those decisive moments for an American leader that defines their legacy internationally, said Timothy Naftali, a presidential historian at New York University.

Biden departed for Europe as public health officials took note of a global uptick in COVID-19 cases. Confirmed cases of the virus had been falling steadily worldwide since January but rose again last week, due to the more infectious omicron variant and the suspension of COVID protocols in numerous countries in Europe, North America and elsewhere, the World Health Organization reported on Tuesday.

Bidens press secretary, Jen Psaki, announced on Tuesday that she would not travel with Biden to Europe after testing positive for the virus for the second time in five months. Biden was last tested on Tuesday, according to the White House. Psaki said she had two socially distanced meetings with Biden on Monday and that he is not considered a close contact under Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines.

Bidens first stop is Brussels, where hell attend back-to-back-to-back meetings.

NATO is holding a hastily arranged emergency summit, where Biden is expected to reiterate his support for Article 5 of the alliances charter, which commits all members to collective defense if any are attacked.

I think the meeting of all heads of state and government in NATO will provide us with yet another platform to demonstrate our unity, our support to Ukraine, but also our readiness to protect and defend all NATO allies, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told NBCs Meet the Press on Sunday. And by sending that message, we are preventing an escalation of the conflict to a full-fledged war between NATO and Russia.

Advertisement

Biden will also participate in meetings of the European Union and the Group of Seven, which includes the worlds richest democracies.

Hell then travel to Warsaw on Friday to meet Polish officials to discuss the enormous humanitarian strain caused by the Ukrainian refugee crisis. Biden is scheduled to meet with Polish President Andrzej Duda on Saturday.

Duda, whose country suffered a brutal Nazi occupation during World War II, compared Russian actions in Ukraine to Adolf Hitlers infamous SS forces. Visiting Bulgaria on Tuesday, Duda said Putins army is behaving in exactly the same way. He said he hoped that those responsible for attacks on civilians would be brought before international courts.

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. >

Polish leaders have pressed for a Western peacekeeping mission to intervene in Ukraine, a step that the U.S. and other Western allies worry could lead to a broadening of the war. The Polish leadership also wants an increased military presence along NATOs eastern flank.

Sullivan said Bidens trip to Poland is an important opportunity to meet with a frontline and very vulnerable ally. Poland is also host to a growing number of U.S. troops, and Sullivan suggested Biden may visit them as well.

Last week, at NATOs Brussels headquarters, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and his counterparts weighed what defenses to set up on the organizations eastern flank, from Estonia in the north through Latvia, Lithuania and Poland down to Bulgaria and Romania on the Black Sea.

Advertisement

The aim is to deter Putin from ordering an invasion of any of the 30 allies, not just for the duration of the war in Ukraine but into the future.

Putin has demanded that NATO withdraw its forces on its eastern flank and stop expanding.

Bidens visit to Poland follows on Vice President Kamala Harris visit to Warsaw and Bucharest earlier this month. While Harris was in Poland, Duda called on the Biden administration to expedite visa procedures for Ukrainians who have family living in the United States so that they could resettle in the U.S. at least temporarily.

Associated Press writer Vanessa Gera in Warsaw, Poland, contributed to this report.
In the grand scheme of anime conventions, Zenkaikon is pretty small.

But, that's part of what makes it so fun.

Christopher Lloyd, a 23-year-old man living in Lancaster city, says he's excited to return to Zenkaikon for the third time.

"I love the atmosphere and energy there," Lloyd says. "It's just a nice, chill convention." It helps that he lives a short walk away from the Lancaster County Convention Center, where Zenkaikon will be held this weekend.

The convention took a full year off because of the COVID-19 pandemic, coming back last year with virtual panels and programming. This year is Zenkaikon's first in-person event since 2019, nearly three years ago.

Whether or not you attend the convention this weekend, here's everything you should know about this year's Zenkaikon.

A brief history

Zenkaikon formed in 2006 when two conventions, Zentrancon and Kosaikon, merged. The event grew each year, so it had to move to a larger venue, the Valley Forge Radisson Hotel, in 2009. Within a few years, it was yet again moved to a larger location, this time at the Lancaster County Convention Center in downtown Lancaster.

It has been at the convention center every year since 2013 (except for 2020 and 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic).

"We're glad that we're still able to come back and do it again, because Lancaster has been a really great host to us," says Kristyn Souder, spokesperson for Zenkaikon.

Souder, a stay-at-home mom who lives in New Jersey, has attended every year since 2009. As her interest grew, so too did her involvement.

Zenkaikon operates with an all-volunteer staff with people from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and Florida, among other states.

"We just do it, really, because we love it," Souder says. "We're fans, and we like to provide a place for other fans to get together and learn more about anime, Japanese culture and sci-fi."

The basics

Zenkaikon runs from Friday to Sunday, March 25 to 27, at the Lancaster County Convention Center, at 25 S. Queen St. in Lancaster. Some events will also be held at Tellus360, at 24 E. King St. in Lancaster.

At the door, tickets for Friday through Sunday cost $65, tickets for Saturday and Sunday cost $55 and tickets for just Sunday cost $25. Zenkaikon does not offer universal one-day passes.

All attendees must be able to show proof of vaccination, and must be masked, says Souder. If they can't provide proof of vaccination, they will be turned away.

"We had to cancel the last two years for safety reasons, so we're really trying to keep things safe this year," Souder says. "Hopefully in the future, that won't be as necessary."

The convention is family-friendly, but not all events on the schedule are suited for families. The full schedule can be found here. Events for adults are marked accordingly.

Cosplaying, short for costume playing, is encouraged but not required.

"People can get together and express their interests in an open, accepting environment," Souder says. "Some people might not know a lot of other people who are into the same interests as them, or might not feel comfortable expressing themselves ... so this is a great outlet for them."

What to do

There's something for everyone at Zenkaikon.

There are frequent informative panels where experts talk about theories about games, anime, sci-fi, or anything else that interests them. Some examples include "The real world science of One Piece" and "The Sword & The Pen: Writing the Effective Fight Scene in Genre Fiction."

Several themed parties will take place, including a masquerade and a cosplay ball, where people dress as different characters from media and dance together. Some rooms constantly play episodes from different anime.

There are also game rooms set up where people can play video games and board games, or just hang out with their friends.

The dealer's room, or sometimes called the vendor hall, features dozens of artists specializing in different forms of art. There will be prints for sale, as well as other memorabilia, nerd-themed items, clothing pieces, books and more.

"I love going to the dealer's hall and walking around, seeing what everybody has," Lloyd says. "I'll probably pick up quite a few Magic cards while I'm there. ... It's a lot of fun."

Five Interesting Panels Here are five interesting panels on Zenkaikons schedule for 2022. The Good, the Weird, and the Spooky: Dumb Cryptids and Wacky Yokai This panel may be interesting to local folks, given that Lancaster has its very own weird cryptid, the Albatwitch. More information: Friday, March 25 from 2 to 3 p.m. in Live 2. Pepakura: The Art of Papercraft This panel shows attendees how to take a 3D model and turn it into a paper model. "Papercraft is a fun and inexpensive way to build and collect your favorite characters, and has also been adapted as a way to make cosplay armor and props," according to the panel's description. More information: Friday, March 25 from 4:15 to 5:15 p.m. in Live 5. The Mad Science Hour with Jimmy Neutron Voice actor Debi Derryberry will host a panel about "Jimmy Neutron," featuring fun facts and trivia. Derryberry played Neutron in the Academy-Award nominated film "Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius." More information: Saturday, March 26 from 3 to 4 p.m. in Freedom A. From Disney to Rocky Horror: In Defense of the Queer Villain This 18+ panel digs into the reputation of queer villains in media. "We'll unpack the harmful stereotype, but also talk about why this representation is historically significant and why it is okay to celebrate characters that we love who are 'here,' 'queer' and that fill us with fear," according to the panel's description. More information: Saturday, March 25 from 10:30 to 11:30 p.m. in Live 6. All About Ramen: A brief history of ramen and what it's become in the US This panel talks about the importance of ramen in the United States, as well as local ramen recommendations. More information: Sunday, March 27 from 1 to 2 p.m. in Live 3.

What's new?

In former years, Zenkaikon rented out the first floor of Tellus360 for the weekend to host more events. This year, the convention rented out both floors.

Several events, like getting autographs from the convention's guests, or even a 1920s-themed speakeasy party, will be hosted at Tellus360.

Zenkaikon will also feature some of its panels online for those who can't make it to the convention this year, Souder says.

Virtual admission to Zenkaikon costs $15; attendees can register here.

Guests

Several guests with prolific resumes will visit Zenkaikon this year for meet and greets, panels and autographs.

Voice actors include Beau Billingslea (Jet Black, "Cowboy Bebop"), Debi Derryberry (Jimmy, "Jimmy Neutron"), Kari Wahlgren (Jessica, "Rick and Morty") and Mick Wingert (Professor Heimerdinger, "Arcane").

Other guests include disc jockeys Awesomus Prime and Kenzie Black, artists Chalk Twins, author Greg Cox, game show hosts Manly Battleships, cosplay artist Mythril-Arts and comedian Uncle Yo.

For more information about Zenkaikon, visit zenkaikon.com.
Success! An email has been sent with a link to confirm list signup.
THE ISSUE

As LNP | LancasterOnlines Lisa Scheid reported in Lancaster Watchdog on Sunday, The Lancaster County Workforce Development Board is trying to return a $189,413 grant to buy a van that would provide mobile internet and computer access, allowing users to build an online resume and apply for job openings in the states database, as well as access other resources. ... State officials said returning a workforce grant is rare. At least one official expressed dismay at the prospect of canceling the project, according to documents obtained by LNP | LancasterOnline.

Purchasing a van that could have taken resources to far-flung parts of Lancaster County to help people find jobs and help employers find employees would have been an excellent use of state grant money.

In response to the request to return the grant money, state fiscal specialist Debra Walkowiak called it heartbreaking.

When you first told me about it, Walkowiak wrote to Valerie Hatfield, the Lancaster County Workforce Development Boards director of compliance and business engagement, I thought it was such a great idea. ... Hopefully later down the road, Lancaster will be able to go full force with this project again!

Thats our hope, too.

Because Walkowiak was right to see its potential: Its a promising idea. No matter whose it was.

Just consider how the workforce board made its pitch for the grant money, drawn from funds from the federal Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act.

As Scheid reported, the grant application explained that the mobile unit would provide internet access  which is essential, given how patchy broadband access is in parts of the county  as well as training, workshops and other resources to hard-to-reach Lancaster County residents.

One of our primary strategies places an emphasis on meeting individuals where they are,  the application stated. This mobile van will be one of the most significant tools we will have to deliver results on our commitment to this strategy.

Meeting people where they are is not just grant application lingo. Its a solid strategy in a county that, as the grant application noted, occupies 984 square miles.

As the application pointed out, transportation both to access services and get to work has been an issue Lancaster County leaders have been trying to tackle for years, and the pandemic has only magnified how transportation is a barrier for the hardest to reach, most in-need residents.

The grant application noted that the countys public transportation system leaves out access to the entire county border, and only provides central route changes in Lancaster City.

The application also stated that the van would partner with local libraries, employers and community events to bring PA CareerLink directly to job-seekers, with on-the spot career guidance, assistance with creating a PA CareerLink registration, applying for jobs, and more. (CareerLink is a publicly funded service that connects job-seekers and employers.)

This would be a savvy plan. Librarians know how to bring people together, and libraries are often where unemployed people go to use computers in their job searches.

The van would be dubbed Lancaster Link, according to the boards application, and it would be similar to one used by the Central Pennsylvania Workforce Board called The Link, a 5-year-old mobile career center equipped with computers, internet and staffed to help businesses find workers and help job seekers find opportunities, Scheid explained.

If the request to hand back the grant money is tied to the dismissal of the workforce boards former executive director, Cathy Rychalsky, that seems short-sighted, to say the least.

As Scheid reported, Hatfield sought to return the grant in an email to the state Department of Labor & Industry on Jan. 25, hours after Rychalsky resigned in an email to several Lancaster County officials and LNP | LancasterOnline. Rychalskys resignation was denied and the board fired her a week later, Scheid noted. The boards executive committee did not give a reason for terminating Rychalsky.

Were not going to wade into that bizarre series of events.

Hatfield declined to discuss the grant or emails with LNP | LancasterOnlines Scheid, and referred comment to interim Director John Moser, who referred comment to board Chairman G. David Sload.

As Scheid reported, Sload said the van project was Rychalskys idea and was tabled because staff did not know enough about it.

Sloads explanation that it was not a good time for the project, given unresolved questions such as insurance and the turmoil in the wake of Rychalskys dismissal, struck us as a bit vague.

Wed be interested in a fuller explanation of the rationale for returning the grant  a significant amount of money  and scrapping the van project.

Sload told Scheid that the boards staff members generally have authority to seek grants that fit into its strategic plan without prior approval. But he also said that staff typically would have presented information for a vote when it needed to approve the purchase of the van.

The grant was for the first phase of a two-part project: the purchase of the van and the approved wrap of the PA CareerLink logo, Scheid reported. The van would have taken 10 to 12 months to manufacture, which would have been plenty of time for the board to plan for the second phase.

The second phase would have included the purchase of computer equipment, maintenance and inspection of the vehicle, financed through partner contributions, employer sponsorship, federal Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act funds, and private resources, Scheid explained.

Sload said the van project could be reconsidered, perhaps as part of a new three-year strategic plan.

But Lancaster County employers need workers as soon as possible. Unemployed county residents need jobs as soon as possible. And the grant money is available now.

As Scheid reported Sunday, a form submitted by the board notifying the state that it was not accepting the grant included an unauthorized signature and so the board still had access to the money.

Sload said the board has resubmitted the request to cancel the project with the appropriate signatures.

We simply dont understand this.

The Lancaster County Workforce Development Board consists of smart, experienced and very sensible people who represent sectors including adult education, economic development, labor and private business.

They know the challenges faced by people who lack access to job-hunting resources. A vague mention of possibly revisiting the van project down the road doesnt help those folks, or the county employers hoping to fill job openings.
In 1994, in return for Ukraine surrendering its nuclear arsenal, the United States pledged to seek immediate United Nations Security Council action to provide assistance to Ukraine ... if Ukraine should become a victim of an act of aggression. That included aggression by Russia.

Ukraine was relying on Americas commitment when it complied with this agreement in 1994.

Russia has now mercilessly attacked the country that we promised to defend. What is Americas response? Not defense of Ukraine as promised, but only supplies of defensive weapons. Why only defensive weapons? Why not weapons that would allow the Ukrainians to fight Russia on a more level basis?

If the United States wont keep its promise to defend Ukraine, at least give them attack aircraft, anti-ship weapons, counter-battery radar systems and the necessary weapons to hit the sources firing on them.

Norman Johanson

Manheim Township
Congresswoman Maxine Waters Statement on the Nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson to be Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court

I am proud to support the nomination of United States Circuit Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to serve on the United States Supreme Court. I believe, If confirmed, her breadth and depth of experience will make a meaningful and positive impact towards the Courts goal of Equal Justice Under Law.

By every measure, Judge Jackson has the intellect, fitness and temperament to serve as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Following graduation from Harvard University and Harvard Law School, Judge Jackson clerked for three federal jurists, including Justice Stephen Breyer, the person whose seat she will fill on the nations highest court.

After this experience, she served in private practice and then in two other critical legal capacities which make her uniquely qualified to serve on the Supreme Courtservice as a federal public defender and tenure as a Commissioner on the United States Sentencing Commission.

ADVERTISEMENT

These experiences, taken together, reflect a comprehensive body of work which will inure to the benefit of the Supreme Court. And, if confirmed, Judge Jackson will be the first African American woman to serve on the Supreme Courtan important milestone in the centuries-long history of our country. I commend President Joe Biden for selecting this exceptionally well-qualified jurist and for selecting someone who reflects the diversity and promise of our great nation.

And, her confirmation should be swift, as on three prior occasions she has enjoyed bipartisan Senate confirmationto a seat on the United States Sentencing Commission, and to her seat as a Judge on the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, and her current position, as a Judge on the United States Circuit Court for the District of Columbia Circuit. It is clear that Judge Jackson possesses in abundance the background, training and experience to serve the nations high court for decades to come and I urge swift confirmation of this exceptionally well-trained nominee.
Wallace Named County Workforce Development Commissioner

Jeffery T.D. Wallace of LeadersUp has been appointed as a commissioner on the Los Angeles County Workforce Development Board.

The Workforce Development Board provides policy and oversight to the second largest Local Workforce Development Area (LWDA) in California, which services approximately four million residents, 57 of the 88 cities and approximately 150 unincorporated communities within Los Angeles County.

Supervisor Holly J. Mitchell, chair of the L.A. County Board of Supervisors, was responsible for Wallaces appointment to the board. When making the announcement, Mitchell said, I am proud to appoint Jeffery Wallace to represent the Second Supervisorial District on LA Countys Workforce Development Board.

ADVERTISEMENT

Jefferys experience as the CEO of the non-profit LeadersUp, in preparing job seekers with the 21st Century workforce skills they need to succeed along with his commitment to removing barriers to employment that disproportionately impact communities of color and justice system-involved youth, will help further the boards impact in strengthening our workforce during this critical time in the Countys road to recovery.

Responding to the appointment, Wallace said, As one of the largest and most diverse counties in the nation, its tantamount that the L.A. County workforce development system is talent centered, industry-driven and focused on advancing an inclusive and just economy.

I am tremendously thankful for this opportunity to support Supervisor [Holly] Mitchells vision of reimagining workforce development to ensure everyone in L.A. County can thrive, he added.

Also, Wallace said that he believed that his experience leading LeadersUp will prove invaluable in impacting the most vulnerable residents and connecting them to transformative career pathways.
Some Muslim students in southern India have chosen to stay away from school rather than obey a ban on hijabs.

The hijab ban began in January at a government-run junior college in the city of Udupi, in Karnataka province. The junior college is similar to a high school in the United States.

Some students protested the ban by staying outside and attempted to hold classes there. They argued that Muslim students had long been permitted to wear hijabs at school.

More schools in the state soon ordered similar bans. This led to demonstrations by hundreds of Muslim women and counter protests held by Hindu students.

The hijab head covering is worn by many Muslim women to show modesty or as a sign of their religious belief. Opponents consider it a sign of oppression that is forced upon women. That idea is rejected by hijab supporters. They say it has different meanings for different people, including as an expression of Muslim identity.

Six students brought a legal case to have the bans overturned, arguing that they violated their rights to education and religious freedom. But on March 15, an Indian court upheld the ban. In its ruling, the court said it did not consider the hijab a necessary practice of Islam.

The issue has started new debates over the rights of Muslims in India. Muslims make up 14 percent of the countrys 1.4 billion people. Muslim groups have accused the government of pushing them aside as a minority in the population. They see restrictions on hijabs as a worrying sign of Hindu nationalism under Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Modis Bharatiya Janata Party rules the state of Karnataka.

Aliya Assadi is a student in the state. When she was 12, she wore a hijab while representing the state at a karate competition. She won gold at the event. But when she recently tried to wear the head covering to her junior college, she was blocked from entering.

Its not just a piece of cloth, Assadi told The Associated Press (AP). Hijab is my identity. And right now what theyre doing is taking away my identity from me, she said.

To reduce tensions in the state, officials closed schools and colleges for three days. They then ordered a statewide ban on the hijab in classes. The states order said, religious clothing in government-run schools disturbs equality, integrity and public law and order.

Some students gave in and attended with their heads uncovered. Others refused and have been barred from school for nearly two months.

One of those students is 18-year-old Ayesha Anwar, from Udupi. She said she has missed tests and is falling behind in her schoolwork. I feel like we are being let down by everyone, Anwar told the AP.

Ayesha Imtiaz, another student barred from school, said she wears the hijab as a sign of devotion to Islam. But the 20-year-old noted that opinions differ on the issue even among Muslim women.

There are so many of my friends who do not wear a hijab inside the classroom, Imtiaz said. She added, They feel empowered in their own way, and I feel empowered in my own way.

Im Bryan Lynn.

The Associated Press reported this story. Bryan Lynn adapted the report for VOA Learning English.

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

_______________________________________________________________

Quiz - Muslim Students in India Fight School Bans on Head Coverings Start the Quiz to find out Start Quiz

__________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

hijab  n. a head covering worn in public by some Muslim women

modesty  n. the quality of not being too proud of your own skills and successes

practice  n. what people do or how they do it

disturb  v. to worry or cause to be upset

integrity  n. honesty and the ability to do or know what is morally right

devotion  n. great love or loyalty for someone or something

empower  v. to give someone the confidence, skills, freedom, etc. to do something
A top United States military commander told the Associated Press that China has fully militarized at least three islands in the disputed South China Sea.

The islands are among several man-made islands in waters claimed by several countries in East Asia. The U.S. does have any claim in the disputed area. But it said China has deployed anti-ship and anti-aircraft missile systems, laser and jamming equipment, and fighter jets there.

Admiral John Aquilino is the head of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command. He said the actions are against past Chinese promises not to turn the man-made islands into military bases.

I think over the past 20 years weve witnessed the largest military buildup since World War II by the PRC, Aquilino told The Associated Press. They have advanced all their capabilities and that buildup of weaponization is destabilizing to the region.

PRC is a shortened form for the Peoples Republic of China, the countrys official name.

There were no immediate comments from Chinese officials.

China has said its military is for defensive purposes. But the country now has the worlds second-largest military budget after the U.S. China has modernized its forces with offensive weapons like stealth fighters, hypersonic missiles and two aircraft carriers. A third aircraft carrier is being built.

Aquilino spoke with the AP on a U.S. Navy aircraft on Sunday. The plane was on an observation trip near the Chinese-held islands in the South China Seas Spratly archipelago.

During the mission, the U.S. plane was repeatedly warned by Chinese officials that it illegally entered what they said was Chinas territory and ordered the plane to move away. One of the callers said, China has sovereignty over the Spratly islands, as well as surrounding maritime areas. Stay away immediately to avoid misjudgment.

A U.S. Navy pilot radioed back that the plane was carrying out lawful military activities beyond the national airspace of any coastal state. He added: Exercising these rights is guaranteed by international law...

The U.S. airplane flew near the Chinese-occupied islands. Observers could see what appeared to be small cities on the islands with tall and large buildings. There were structures for storage, runways for airplanes, and white round structures that Aquilino said were radars. More than 40 ships could be seen near an island called Fiery Cross. Aquilino said the building of missile stations, aircraft buildings, radar systems and other military structures on Mischief Reef, Subi Reef and Fiery Cross appeared to have been completed.

Aquilino said, They can fly fighters, bombers plus all those offensive capabilities of missile systems.

He said any military or civilian plane flying over the disputed waterway could easily be targeted by the Chinese islands missile system.

So thats the threat that exists, thats why its so concerning for the militarization of these islands, he said. And he added, They threaten all nations who operate in the vicinity and all the international sea and airspace.

China has claimed almost all of the South China Sea by building islands and setting up military bases. Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Malaysia also have territorial claims in parts of the sea. It is estimated that $5 trillion in goods are shipped through the waterway every year.

The U.S. claims no part of the South China Sea. However, it sends planes and warships through the area to protect what it calls freedom of navigation in international waters and airspace.

Aquilino said the territorial conflicts should only be settled peacefully. He noted that the Philippine government successfully brought its dispute with China to international arbitration in 2013. A U.N.-supported court denied Chinas claim to almost all of the South China Sea under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea. China dismissed the ruling.

Aquilino said the U.S. aims to prevent war through deterrence and promote peace and stability. He added, should deterrence fail, my second mission is to be prepared to fight and win. Aquilino leads the largest U.S. command with 380,000 military and civilian personnel covering 36 nations and territories.

Im Mario Ritter, Jr. And I'm Jill Robbins.

Jim Gomez and Aaron Favila reported this story for the Associated Press. Hai Do adapted it for VOA Learning English.

__________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

jamming n. the act of making (a radio signal or broadcast) impossible to understand by sending out signals or messages that weaken or block it

capability n. the ability to do something; the means to carry something out

destabilize v. to cause (something, such as a government) to be unable to continue existing or working in the usual or desired way; to make (something) unstable

archipelago n. a group of islands

mission n. a specific military or naval task

maritime adj. related to the sea

vicinity n. the area around or near a particular place

navigation n. the act of moving in a boat or ship over an area of water

arbitration n. a process of settling an argument or disagreement in which the people or groups on both sides present their opinions and ideas to a third person or group

deterrence n. (politics) the policy of developing a lot of military power so that other countries will not attack your country

We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments section, and visit our Facebook page.
Lapwai, ID (83501)

Today

A few showers early becoming a steady rain for the afternoon. High near 60F. Winds NW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch..

Tonight

A steady rain this evening. Showers continuing overnight. Low 46F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%.
Peninsula Alternative Health employee Lynda Brimer weighs and packs Chem Berry, a cannabis flower, into small packets for sale at the dispensary in Salisbury. (Amy Davis / Baltimore Sun) (Amy Davis / Baltimore Sun)

The people of Maryland do not need a referendum on legalizing cannabis because the citizens of our fine state have already made their intentions clear. (Let Maryland voters have a voice in legalizing pot, March 4)

First and foremost, if you can ante up the money to get your Magical Medical Card, cannabis is legal for you, as The Baltimore Sun Editorial Board correctly concluded some months ago. People without the card are still at risk so a delay for a referendum only prolongs their risk.

Advertisement

Secondly, in 2021, according to state data, all of the dispensaries in the state did over $545 million in retail sales. Thats a lot of weed. People have already voted with their pocketbooks. To need that much cannabis we either have a very sick population or a very happy one. You choose.

Lastly, our states citizens, based on a recent Goucher College poll, overwhelmingly support legalization by a 2 to 1 margin that cuts across party lines.

Advertisement

We dont need a referendum on an issue that is settled. It is a waste of time and money because it is a foregone conclusion on how the vote will go and the delay only hurts the people that can least afford it.

Dudley Thompson, Girdletree

Add your voice: Respond to this piece or other Sun content by submitting your own letter.
The driver who died Friday after he was ejected from his vehicle when it overturned along Highway 101, north of Los Alamos, was identified Thursday by the California Highway Patrol as a 20-year-old Solvang man.
CALmatters is a public interest journalism venture committed to explaining how California's state Capitol works and why it matters. Dan Walters has been a journalist for nearly 60 years, spending all but a few of those years working for California newspapers.
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.
JUNEAU  A plea agreement has been offered to the 45-year-old Milwaukee woman who is accused of putting her newborn daughters lifeless body in a garbage bag before abandoning the body 13 years ago in the woods in the town of Theresa.

Karin S. Luttinen is charged with a felony count of concealing the death of a child. She could face up to 1 years in prison and 2 years of extended supervision if convicted of the offense.

Luttinen said she was unaware she was pregnant until near the end of her pregnancy, according to a criminal complaint, and gave birth to the girl in April 2009 in a bathtub before disposing of the childs body. An autopsy on the newborn  dubbed Baby Theresa by authorities  determined she had died of fetal demise, which indicates a child may have died prior to or shortly after birth.

The plea agreement was filed in Dodge County Circuit Court Office on Friday, the same date as Luttinens initial appearance.

According to the plea agreement, Luttinen would waive her preliminary hearing, which she has already done. In addition, she would enter a guilty or no contest plea to the charge of concealing the death of a child. Luttinens attorney may recommend any sentence, but the prosecution will not recommend a specific sentence.

However, the plea agreement allows the prosecution to recommend some incarceration is appropriate without stating a specific amount of time. The state may discuss the facts and circumstances of the case and any and all considerations related to sentencing. The state also may explain the potential penalties including the maximum sentence in the case.

The defense is not limited to the plea agreement. An arraignment has yet to be scheduled on the court calendar, and if Luttinen enters a not guilty plea, the case would have the possibility of going to trial. The Dodge County District Attorneys Office filed a demand for discovery in the case on Monday, which would be needed if the case would go to trial.

The baby was found by a man cutting wood on a private property on April 29, 2009. Her body was discovered on Lone Road less than a mile from Highway 175 and less than 3 miles from Highway 41.

Authorities found a maxi pad wrapper in the trash bag containing the infant. It was sent to the Wisconsin State Crime Lab and came back with a DNA profile of Baby Theresas then-unidentified mother.

The case was initially charged using the name Jane Doe in 2014 to prevent the statute of limitations from expiring. However it wasnt until Jan. 29, 2021, that Luttinen was first approached about the case. A special agent for the Wisconsin Department of Justice went to speak to the father of the child and Luttinen following a potential match on the family tree DNA results.

According to the complaint, Luttinen initially denied ever being pregnant but submitted a DNA sample. DNA results showed on March 1, 2021, that Luttinen was a major component source for the maxi pad wrappings. DNA markers also showed that Luttinen was the biological mother of Baby Theresa.

DNA testing was done throughout the years, however it wasnt until 2018 when Dodge County Detective Vickie Brugger started speaking to Dodge County Medical Examiner PJ Schoebel about revisiting the investigation using forensic genealogy. Additional genetic analyst was completed and narrowed the search to a specific branch of the family.

Speaking to law enforcement in March 2021, according to the complaint, Luttinen said she did not know she was pregnant until toward the end of her pregnancy.

She was in the bathroom when her water broke, the complaint said, and gave birth to the girl in a bathtub with water in it, which she said she turned on to get more comfortable. According to the complaint, the baby came out head first and face down with the umbilical cord wrapped around the babys neck.

Luttinen told law enforcement she blacked out for 15 minutes and awoke to the tub being empty of water, according to the complaint. She told investigators she was in a panic, drove around aimlessly and decided to place the girls body in the woods as a final resting place, the complaint said.

Follow Terri Pederson on Twitter @tlp53916 or contact her at 920-356-6760.
A suburban village and an East Side neighborhood in Madison are getting their hardware stores back.

And both communities are brimming with anticipation of the return of nuts and bolts, cans of paint, lawn seed and grills.

Niemann Foods, which in early 2021 purchased hardware stores in Sauk City, DeForest, Middleton and at Hilldale in Madison from the Lochner family, will, in the coming weeks, open stores in Cross Plains and on Cottage Grove Road in Madison.

Cross Plains True Value was forced to shutter in 2016 when it lost its lease in a building that was ultimately removed and replaced with Esser Place, a $7.6 million, three-story, 45-unit apartment building with 6,500 square feet of commercial space on Main Street.

The new store, an Ace Hardware scheduled to open April 20, will occupy the 8,300-square-foot space that for years was home to a World of Variety store but which closed in 2018 in a shopping center that is also home to a Piggly Wiggly.

Over on Madisons East Side, the Lochner-owned Ace Hardware, 209 Cottage Grove Road, was forced to close in 2018 following unsuccessful lease negotiations and left the neighborhood without a hardware store for the first time in 50 years. The new store from Niemann Foods will be in the same space but not use the 13,000-square-foot lower level where the Lochner store sold sporting goods and live bait.

Shelving, fixtures and electrical work is underway on the space with the store scheduled to open in early May, said Tyler Johnson, a regional manager for Niemann.

The community is very, very excited about it, Johnson said. Theres so much growth happening and hardware is a huge sell. Being a part of that is pretty exciting.

News of the store has lit up the Facebook page of the Lake Edge Neighborhood Association where residents expressed excitement and surprise. Located in the Lakeside Shopping Center, the former Lochner-owned store opened in 2007 after the Dorn True Value Hardware store closed there after a 10-year run. The site had also been home to a Meikles True Value Hardware and before that, C&P Hardware in the 1960s.

It appeared the shopping center would be demolished when, in late 2020, Threshold Development Group won city permission to raze the center to make way for a $40 million redevelopment with two, four-story buildings that would have delivered 188 apartments, 20,350 square feet of commercial space and parking.

But the project stalled when Threshold was unable to secure the shopping center because the lone remaining tenant at the time, Nerdhaven Arcade, has a long-term lease with the current shopping center owner and the tenant declined a buyout.

Since then, the shopping center has been refilling with more tenants including All Temp Service Heating and Cooling, Shaggy Dogs Grooming, Dianes Draperies and Doll Eyes Lash Spa. Threshold is now proposing to demolish the former Jade Monkey bar building and Exhaust Pros muffler shop, a tattoo shop, all vacant, and the popular Java Cat Coffee shop to make way for a five-story structure offering 69 apartments, a UW Credit Union branch, Java Cat in a new space and underground parking.

The shift in the development means Niemann Foods can continue its expansion where Johnson said the company wants to double its number of hardware stores in Wisconsin in the coming years.

Founded in 1917, Niemann operates more than 100 hardware, grocery, convenience and pet supply stores in Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri, Iowa and Indiana and has more than 3,000 employees that have ownership in the company through an employee stock option purchase plan. After the opening of the stores in Madison and Cross Plains, Niemann will operate 19 Ace Hardware stores throughout the Midwest.

Back in Cross Plains, the addition of a hardware store fills a huge void in Glaciers Edge Square and in the village of 4,187 people, who currently have to drive to Mazomanie or Middleton to shop at a hardware store.

Expected to employ up to 18 people, the Cross Plains Ace Hardware has been filling up with inventory since March 10. Workers have been stocking shelves and setting up displays while stacks of lawn fertilizer sit on pallets outside the store along with storage bins for propane tanks.

The store is being managed by Colin Eiman, who had worked at the Ace store in Sauk City, and who is stoked about more events returning to the village as the community seeks to return to a more normal state as pandemic concerns lessen. A few times each day, customers come into the store thinking its open.

The community has been super welcoming and super excited, Eiman said. I think were getting in at the right time.

Send retail-related tips and story ideas to badams@madison.com or call Barry Adams at 608-252-6148.

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.
Authorities have identified the person who died in a house fire Saturday morning in Juneau County as a 64-year-old man.

A body was found in a Union Center home after the house caught fire, the Juneau County Sheriff's Office said. The Juneau County Medical Examiner's Office and the the University of Wisconsin Forensic Pathology Office identified the man who was found dead as LeRoy C. Siefkes. His cause of death was not released.

The cause of the fire is still under investigation. The Wisconsin Department of Justice's Division of Criminal Investigations is assisting the Juneau County Sheriff's Office in the investigation.

The Union Center Fire Department responded to the fire shortly after 7:30 a.m. Emergency crews were notified that there were potentially two individuals inside the home as it burned, the Sheriff's Office said.

One person was found to be safe in the city of Elroy, but firefighters found Siefkes dead after an extensive search of the building, the Sheriff's Office 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.
Police arrested a 25-year-old La Crosse man accused of attacking a woman Monday on a walking trail in La Crosse.

Joseph A. Grzegorek was referred to the La Crosse County District Attorney on charges of false imprisonment, battery and disorderly conduct.

According to the La Crosse Police Department, officers responded around 2:30 p.m. to the Gundersen Health Walking Trail, where a woman said that Grzegorek chased her from behind, grabbed her, pulled her to the ground and dragged her toward the river.

The woman broke free and got the attention of two people who ran to help her. Grzegorek then turned around and walked away. Police located Grzegorek a short distance away and placed him under arrest.

La Crosse Police Chief Shawn Kudron said the department believes the attack was an isolated incident.

La Crosse police and Gundersen Health continue to partner for the safety of all staff, campus visitors and community members, Kudron said. This egregious act is the type that can have an impact on an entire community and will not be tolerated. We will continue to work with all community members to provide a safe and vibrant community.

Kudron offered the following safety tips for pedestrians: Be alert and aware of the surroundings, always carry a cell phone, let someone else know of your plans and where you are, plan your route, remove any distractions such as earbuds or talking on your phone and trust your instincts.

A search of court records shows Grzegorek with no previous criminal offenses in Wisconsin. He has an initial court appearance scheduled for Wednesday.

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.
Hanoi court jails anti-State propagandist for five years

The Hanoi Peoples Court has sentenced Le Van Dung, a resident in the citys Ha Dong district, to five years in prison for conducting propaganda against the State of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.













Defendant Le Van Dung at the trial on March 23 (Photo: VNA)

At the first-instance trial on March 23, the court also decided to put the defendant, born in 1970 and living in Ha Cau ward, under five-year surveillance after he completes his jail term.



His accessory, Nguyen Van Son, born in 1956 and living in Phuong Tu commune of Hanois Ung Hoa district, received a suspended 18-month prison sentence with 36 months probation for hiding a criminal.



According to the indictment, from March 2017 to September 2018, Dung made and posted 12 video clips, including five that distorted the States guidelines and policies, defamed the peoples administration, and spread fabricated information stirring public concern.



After police launched legal action, Dung fled and was later arrested while hiding at Sons house. Son knew that Dung was being wanted by the investigation agency but still let Dung stay at his home until Dung was uncovered and detained.



At the trial, Dung admitted his acts as pointed out in the indictment but said those acts did not violate the law. Meanwhile, Son pleaded guilty to all of his wrongdoing.



The jury held that this is a serious case that threats national security. Dung was aware that his acts ran counter to the law but still intentionally committed the crime.



Earlier, he had been fined thrice by police of Hoan Kiem district for causing public disorder./.
Bans on megastar Russian athletes, like Victor Ovechkin and Daniil Medvedev, and entertainers, like opera diva Anna Netrebko and conductor Valery Gergiev, have been widely debated (Russian businesses in US face backlash from war in Ukraine, March 17). The emerging consensus is that they should be banned only if they openly supported Mr. Putin in the past and have not explicitly denounced him since the invasion of Ukraine.

We think that standard is too narrow. It may seem unfair to punish any innocent Russian citizens. Yet, if the bans were applied not only to celebrities but to all Russian students, scientists and other workers in the U.S., it would put more pressure on Mr. Putin to stop the slaughter of innocent Ukrainians.

Advertisement

There is no justification in our minds for treating Russians living outside Russia better than innocent Russians within Russia who are already paying a steep price for their countrys aggression in lost income and jobs. Until there is a just peace, when a country flagrantly violates international law and indiscriminately kills innocent civilians, its own citizens must suffer the consequences for their acquiescence to their leaders murderous conduct.

 Kalman Hettleman and Michael Reisch, Baltimore

Advertisement

Add your voice: Respond to this piece or other Sun content by submitting your own letter.
A group seeking to block the military from stationing F-35 fighter jets in Madison is asking the Environmental Protection Agency to intervene.

Safe Skies Clean Water Wisconsin filed a complaint Wednesday alleging federal, state and local leaders violated the Civil Rights Act because the basing decision will disproportionately affect low-income families and people of color who live near Truax Field.

The complaint asks EPA Administrator Michael Regan to block the deployment of the jets or develop a plan to mitigate noise from the jets and groundwater contamination resulting from the use of PFAS-laden firefighting foam at the airport.

Safe Skies leader Steven Klafka said the complaint is asking the Biden administration to do the right thing and honor its commitment to environmental justice, the notion that the negative impacts of policy decisions should not fall disproportionately on disadvantaged communities.

They were clear that they take this seriously, Klafka said.

Other groups signed on to the complaint, including Midwest Environmental Advocates, Wisconsin Environmental Health Network, the Madison teachers union and School Board.

Cardinal-Hickory Creek: Utilities appeal, say power line delays jeopardize clean energy delivery The utilities argue a delay would increase construction costs, compromise reliable operation of the Midwestern power grid, and contribute to ongoing congestion that prevents the delivery of cheap wind energy from Iowa.

According to the Air Forces environmental review, the new  and arguably louder  jets will expose more than 1,000 households to unhealthy levels of noise. City leaders also fear the increased noise could affect as many as 10 schools, including some where large numbers of students are already falling behind their peers.

Hawthorne Elementary School teacher Melina Lozano says the current F-16 noise is already disruptive and fears the initial increase in flight activity will make it worse.

Teaching stops when students are distracted by the loud jets flying over the school throughout the day, Lozano said. Students lose track of the lesson and their learning is interrupted.

Safe Skies also complains the National Guard is not doing enough to clean up toxic forever chemicals that have been found in soil and groundwater under the base and are believed to be connected to contamination of Starkweather Creek, Lake Monona and at least one Madison municipal well.

Wisconsin Legislature: Clean energy bills languish, but advocates see growing acceptance A handful of GOP-sponsored bills almost made it to the finish line, but a package of nearly two dozen Democratic proposals aimed at curbing and adapting to climate change languished without so much as a committee hearing.

The group claims the total cost of the 20-jet squadron could exceed $2 trillion, yet the military has yet to fully fund PFAS cleanup, which may not be completed for more than a decade.

Safe Skies says the government should purchase impacted homes and relocate residents; fund soundproofing for homes, schools and businesses; stop construction on the base until there is a comprehensive program to investigate and clean up PFAS; pay for water filtration; and set up a fish exchange program for contaminated fish from Starkweather Creek and local lakes.

The anti-jet group has filed two federal lawsuits since the Air Force selected the 115th Fighter Wing as one of two units to get F-35s next year, replacing the current fleet of 34-year-old F-16s.

Wisconsin AG sues Johnson Controls over Marinette PFAS contamination Kaul is asking a Marinette County court to hold Johnson Controls responsible for the states costs related to the contamination.

Earlier this year a judge dismissed one of the cases, ruling that the National Guard Bureaus environmental review of construction projects for the jets complied with federal law. The second case challenges the militarys environmental review of the basing decision itself.

Unlike those suits, the EPA petition also faults state and local leaders, including Gov. Tony Evers, Department of Natural Resources Sec. Preston Cole, Dane County Executive Joe Parisi and Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway, who opposed the F-35s.

The group says they were complicit in promoting environmental injustice and environmental racism due to their approval, support or acquiescence in the basing decision.

Spokespeople for the accused officials did not respond to a request for comment.

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.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said this week he might rescind subpoenas issued to mayors and election officials as part of the GOP-ordered review of the 2020 election, but only so that a Republican attorney general elected in November could file criminal charges.

Speaking on WSAU-AM on Tuesday, Vos, R-Rochester, said he is looking into the possibility of withdrawing subpoenas issued over the last several months as part of former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gablemans review, which Vos has allocated $676,000 in taxpayer dollars. Vos has already extended Gablemans contract through the end of April, but backing off on subpoenas could drastically shorten the ongoing review.

The one-party effort has missed previous deadlines due to multiple court challenges to the former justices demands for private meetings with the mayors of the states five largest cities, as well as state election officials and others.

Vos said his concern is that state law provides immunity from prosecution to anyone subpoenaed by the state Legislature.

I am seriously considering pulling back the subpoenas because it makes no sense to give people immunity now that we see that there is so much that has been found that a Republican attorney general could later prosecute, Vos said.

Vos didnt provide specifics on what criminal charges could be pursued and his office did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

When reached by The Associated Press on Wednesday, Vos texted have to wait and see when asked if he was going to withdraw the subpoenas.

A recount, court decisions and multiple reviews have affirmed that President Joe Biden defeated former President Donald Trump in Wisconsin by almost 21,000 votes. Only 24 people out of nearly 3.3 million who cast ballots have been charged with election fraud in Wisconsin.

Despite that, some Republicans, including gubernatorial candidate Rep. Timothy Ramthun, R-Campbellsport, have called for the Republican-controlled Legislature to pursue efforts to decertify the 2020 election results. Gableman has also suggested lawmakers consider doing so, though Vos  who has also made unfounded claims that there was widespread fraud in the election  has repeatedly said such an effort would be illegal and unconstitutional.

I wanted Donald Trump to win as much as anyone else in the state, but I also am not going to break the oath that I have to the constitution.  I dont have the unilateral authority to put Donald Trump back in office. It just cant happen, Vos said. No matter how much people yell or scream or pass resolutions or stomp their foot, it doesnt matter about 2020 and having us with the ability to change the results.

District attorneys in three counties have already declined to file charges against members of the Wisconsin Elections Commission after Racine County Sheriff Christopher Schmaling requested prosecution after the agency waived laws related to absentee voting in nursing homes in the 2020 election.

Gableman has claimed 100% of nursing home residents in Dane and Milwaukee counties voted in 2020, insinuating that their votes were somehow cast fraudulently. A Wisconsin State Journal review found no evidence to corroborate that claim, finding only one Dane County nursing home where all 12 registered voters cast a ballot, and 42% to 91% of registered voters in other facilities casting ballots.

Gableman has issued subpoenas 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.

Gablemans subpoenas have been met with a slew of legal challenges, with Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul filing a lawsuit in October challenging Gablemans authority to demand in-person interviews. Kaul has argued demanding private interviews outside a public setting is illegal.

Republicans have also passed more than a dozen election-related bills as a result of multiple reviews into the 2020 election, but Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has said he wont sign legislation that makes it harder to vote.

Vos said the Legislature will bring back those bills if a Republican governor is elected this fall.

Were going to pass those in the first month and it will be law by Valentines Day of 2023, but youve got to give us a Republican governor to sign the bills, Vos said.

In addition to court battles against Gablemans subpoenas, three other lawsuits have been filed by liberal watchdog group American Oversight seeking records related to the ongoing review.

Judge frustrated about records

Dane County Circuit Judge Valerie Bailey-Rihn on Wednesday repeated frustration that Vos has not produced all the requested emails and text messages related to Gablemans probe. Bailey-Rihn had previously ordered attorneys for Vos to provide the deleted emails and text messages, or explain why they cant be produced. Vos attorney Ronald Stadler told the judge on Wednesday that the work to retrieve Vos deleted emails from his legislative account was ongoing and he would need up to two weeks to review whatever is recovered.

I dont know if Im getting back 200 emails or 200,000 emails, he said.

Bailey-Rihn ordered Stadler to finish searching for emails by April 7. She also scheduled a hearing for that day to hear from his expert witness.

Thats the last extension Im going to give people, she said. Bailey-Rihn said she wants to conclude the case by the time she retires in July.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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.
At long last, the city is moving to fix the infamous hairball intersection at John Nolen Drive, South Blair, East Wilson and Williamson streets Downtown as part of a larger road reconstruction project.

But long-awaited improvements funded by the city and state will require some inconveniences for motorists, bicyclists and pedestrians while work is being done through November.

The project is a full reconstruction of South Blair Street from East Washington Avenue to John Nolen Drive, including new left turn lanes at the clogged and dangerous hairball intersection, dubbed so due to the multiple crossings, signals, railroad tracks and the lack of dedicated left turn lanes that cause traffic to back up and lead to rear-end crashes.

The plans also add medians around the intersection, while an existing driveway to Machinery Row off of Williamson Street will be removed, principal engineer Jim Wolfe said. The driveway is problematic due to poor visibility of path users around the corner of the building, while its location also allows vehicles to make some unexpected turns, he said.

A nearby driveway will be reconstructed, he said.

The work will also include replacement of the sanitary and storm sewers within the project limits, new pedestrian scale lighting on South Blair Street and railroad crossing improvements to allow for the installation of a quiet zone. In a quiet zone, trains must cease the routine sounding of their horns when approaching crossings.

The intersection is now the only train crossing in the core Downtown not improved to a quiet zone.

This project is many, many years in the making, said Ald. Mike Verveer, 4th District. Im confident that the plan now under construction will greatly improve pedestrian and bicycle access to Law Park and the surrounding area. Most important, it will improve safety for all involved.

Starting Monday, Integrity Grading & Excavating will start work at the John Nolen Drive, South Blair Street and East Wilson Street intersection. Northbound South Blair Street will be reduced to one traffic lane, which will result in travel delays during peak travel times for about two weeks.

Around April 1, major excavation will begin. During this time:

South Blair Street will be fully closed to vehicles between East Washington Avenue and East Wilson Street, but one southbound traffic lane on South Blair Street will be maintained during the morning rush hour from 7 to 9 a.m. on weekdays.

Westbound East Washington Avenue traffic will not be allowed to turn left onto Blair Street.

Eastbound John Nolen Drive traffic will be forced to turn right onto Williamson Street.

Construction on South Blair Street is expected to last roughly from April 1 through mid-June, with work on the intersection starting in mid-June and running through November.

Signage suggesting an alternate route using South Broom Street, West Wilson Street and the Outer Loop has been installed by the contractor.

In 2019, the city completed work on the East Wilson and Williamson street legs of the hairball intersection, which are city streets, with the work now primarily on the South Blair Street and John Nolen Drive legs, which are part of state Highway 151.

Next are improvements of East Washington Avenue between Blair and Blount streets in 2023.

Then, in 2026, the city and state will begin the major reconstruction of John Nolen Drive from North Shore Drive to the south, including the replacement of bridges and upgrades to the heavily used Capitol City Trail.

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.
Delivering more financing to a critical project, U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Black Earth, on Tuesday announced $2 million in federal funds for a new, permanent homeless mens shelter on a vacant, city-owned site on the Far East Side.

On March 9, Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway and Dane County Executive Parisi proposed the city and county create the shelter on the 2-acre site at 1902 Bartillon Drive, just off Highway 51 roughly between East Towne Mall and Madison Area Technical College.

The city has already authorized $9 million for construction of a shelter, including $3 million already committed from the county, $4 million from the city, and $2 million in federal American Rescue Plan Act funding. The $2 million announced Tuesday pushes the total to $11 million for building the shelter. Precise cost estimates will emerge as design work progresses.

I was proud to advocate for this shelter and secure $2 million for this facility, Pocan said at a press conference Tuesday afternoon. Its really going to benefit so many people.

Rhodes-Conway will soon introduce a resolution to the City Council seeking approval of the site, directing the Engineering Division to choose architectural and engineering consultants, and directing the Community Development Division to start a process to pick an operator, who would help refine the design, budget and mix of services.

This project is long anticipated, Rhodes Conway said. Were finally going to be able to bring it to fruition. To be able to literally start from the ground up is so important.

In the past two years, the city and county have proposed three permanent sites for the mens shelter: a two-story, 22,584-square-foot former day care center at 4111 East Towne Blvd., which failed because the seller pulled out of a tentative deal; a former big box store at 2002 Zeier Road near East Towne; and now at 1902 Bartillon Drive.

They will spend the coming months creating a temporary shelter at the now city-owned building at 2002 Zeier Road.

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 U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected Wisconsins 10-year legislative maps drawn by Gov. Tony Evers and sent the matter back to the states high court, which had adopted the Democratic governors amended proposal.

The rejection of Evers Assembly and Senate district maps by the nations highest court puts the issue back in the hands of the Wisconsin Supreme Court and will further delay the states redistricting process, which state election officials say needs to be resolved in order to prepare for the August primary and November election.

The federal court accepted Evers congressional maps that the state Supreme Court approved, denying a request from Wisconsins Republican congressional lawmakers seeking to block those boundaries.

In an unsigned decision with two liberal justices, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor dissenting, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the state Supreme Court did not properly determine whether Evers maps, which create a new, seventh Black majority Assembly district in Milwaukee, comply with the federal Voting Rights Act.

We agree that the court committed legal error in its application of decisions of this Court regarding the relationship between the constitutional guarantee of equal protection and the VRA, the justices wrote.

Evers issued a statement Wednesday that the maps he drew comply with federal and state laws, including the equal protection clause and the Voting Rights Act, as well as the state Supreme Courts previous ruling that new maps must include minimal changes to existing boundaries.

If we have to go back to the Wisconsin Supreme Court  who have already declared our maps superior to every other proposal  to demonstrate again that these maps are better and fairer than the maps we have now, then thats exactly what well do, Evers said.

The order stipulates that the state Supreme Court is free to take additional evidence if it prefers to reconsider Evers maps, but any new analysis, however, must comply with our equal protection jurisprudence. The majority also notes that the states high court has sufficient time to adopt maps before the Aug. 9 primary.

Sotomayor and Kagan described the decision as unprecedented.

This Courts intervention today is not only extraordinary but also unnecessary, the justices wrote.

The Legislature in its March 7 request for appellate review focused on Evers decision to add a seventh majority-Black Assembly district in Milwaukee, which would dilute the Black majority in the six existing districts. The Legislature argued the state high court never decided whether the seventh district was required by the Voting Rights Act.

The lawmakers claimed Evers used the federal Voting Rights Act as a shield for open and obvious violations of the Constitution.

Evers maps create a total of nine Black majority districts, with two in the Senate and seven in the Assembly. All districts have Black majorities of between 50.09% and 51.39%, according to court filings. The state currently has six majority-Black Assembly districts and two in the Senate, all with a majority range between 51% and 62%.

State Sen. Lena Taylor, D-Milwaukee, also filed a legal challenge to the state Supreme Courts adoption of Evers maps. Taylor, whose district sees its majority drop from 58.4% to 50.62% under Evers boundaries, said the way Evers added a seventh majority-Black Assembly district ultimately waters down the Black vote in all of the districts.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the state court did not properly consider whether a race-neutral alternative that did not add a seventh majority-black district would deny black voters equal political opportunity.

Rick Esenberg, president and general counsel for the conservative law firm Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, said in a statement the U.S. Supreme Courts decision is a critical victory to ensure that our government not make decisions on the basis of race.

UW-Madison Law School associate professor Robert Yablon said the ruling was highly unusual but not entirely surprising.

Although the (Voting Rights Act) aims to ensure fair representational opportunities for communities of color, the court has been cautioning mapmakers to avoid overreliance on race when drawing district lines, he said.

Upcoming elections

With the state Supreme Court now tasked with drafting legislative maps not inconsistent with the U.S. Supreme Courts order, the Wisconsin Elections Commission is sure to face additional delays in implementing new maps for upcoming elections.

From the beginning of the court battle over the states 10-year maps, the commission said in a filing, it had asked the state Supreme Court to put a new redistricting plan in place by March 1.

To properly administer the next election, the commission told the U.S. Supreme Court it needs maps by April 15 in order to record the maps new boundaries in the statewide voter registration system, integrate the new data with voters information and manually review local ward map changes to make sure each voter was in the correct district.

On March 11, the commission told the federal high court that any delay in implementing new maps beyond March 15 would increase the risk of errors in (the statewide voter registration system) and decrease the time available to correct those errors before circulation of nomination papers begins.

This is going to create some real complications for our election process, and I think what were going to see is a flurry of court action coming out of this regarding what the next maps will look like, Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul said in a WisPolitics.com online luncheon Wednesday.

Fair Elections project director Sachin Chheda said in a statement the U.S. Supreme Court is throwing Wisconsins legislative elections into chaos just three weeks before candidates in the November election need to begin gathering signatures.

Never has it been clearer that the U.S. Supreme Court majority will do anything it can to advance Republican interests, rather than the law, the Constitution, and the will of the people, Chheda said.

Ongoing battle

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

Evers ultimately submitted new maps to the court, which reduce but maintain Republican majorities in the Legislature while likely preventing them from claiming a veto-proof supermajority. Those maps were drawn after the state Supreme Court in November ruled it would follow a least change approach from the current maps, which are considered some of the most gerrymandered in the nation.

The states high court issued a 4-3 ruling earlier this month in favor of Evers maps.

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

Evers office has said the governors maps would have elected 44 Democrats and 55 Republicans in the Assembly, and 13 Democrats and 20 Republicans in the Senate. In Congress, Republicans would maintain five seats to Democrats three.

An analysis of Evers congressional maps by PlanScore, a program that predicts precinct-level votes for districts based on past election results and U.S. Census data led by the Campaign Legal Center, a national nonprofit organization that advocates for nonpartisan maps, found that the governors maps maintain two Democratic-leaning U.S. House districts  Districts 2 and 4, which are held by Reps. Mark Pocan, D-Black Earth, and Gwen Moore, D-Milwaukee.

The already competitive 3rd Congressional District, currently held by departing Rep. Ron Kind, D-La Crosse, would lean Republican under the new maps. With the district up for grabs, the Wisconsin Democratic Party is set to hold its first in-person convention since 2019 in La Crosse in June.

In an interview with WKBT, Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler noted the competitive nature of the 3rd Congressional District and said, This is an area where, as Democrats, we need to earn every vote.

The 1st District seat, held by Bryan Steil, R-Janesville, still leans Republican but could become more competitive under new maps.

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

Yablon said the state Supreme Court will likely ask the litigants to weigh in on how to proceed. Going forward, Yablon said, the justices could choose another map besides Evers that the court received, ask for amended maps redrawing the Milwaukee-area Assembly districts at issue, conduct additional factfinding to decide whether Evers map is necessary under the Voting Rights Act or explain that its sticking with Evers map for race-neutral reasons.

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
Dane Countys Vilas Zoo is closing its bird exhibits through April to protect against a deadly and highly-contagious bird flu that was recently found in Wisconsin, the zoo announced Tuesday.

The zoo is moving its penguins, flamingos and chickens inside of the aviary and closing that building to the public. That means residents wont be able to see the penguins and chickens for at least the next month or so, Vilas Zoo spokesperson Kristin Moala said. Flamingos will still be visible through a viewing window.

Staff are moving the sandhill cranes to the Animal Health Center, a local animal hospital. The cranes also wont be available for the public to view, Moala said.

We have many endangered birds species on grounds and our main priority right now is to do everything we can to protect them, Deputy Zoo Director Joseph Darcangelo said in a statement.

Last week, Wisconsin had its first case of highly pathogenic avian influenza at a commercial chicken flock in Jefferson County. Nearly three million chickens at the farm had to be euthanized to prevent further spread, Vilas Zoo said.

UW-Madison researchers with the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory discovered the case of avian flu. This strain of the virus has not been spreading to humans, but could lead to the euthanizing of millions of birds across the U.S., likely raising prices in the egg and poultry industry, according to the researchers. The lab is working to identify cases and control the spread.

The bird flu strain, called A(H5N1), is spread through migratory birds, particularly waterfowl, that are more resistant to the virus, Moala said. But for farmed poultry and other birds that are not in the wild  such as zoo animals  the virus is highly lethal.

Thats why the Vilas Zoo is being especially cautious, Moala said. The avian flu could decimate the zoos bird population.

Were so close to Lake Wingra. We have a lot of waterfowl that come through, Moala said. Our main concern is making sure that we dont get any positive cases on grounds. It could be very catastrophic for our bird population. If one bird has it, it will spread very rapidly.

Moala noted that the African Penguins at the zoo are endangered, so its especially important to protect that population.

Only animal care staff will be allowed into the aviary building, and they will have to wear protective gear and go through a cleaning, including a foot bath, before entering the building, Moala said. Shoes could track the virus into the aviary. Delivery trucks will have to spray their tires before coming into the zoo.

Were doing everything we can to make sure none of our species get it, Moala said.

The zoo said it will continue to monitor the bird flu outbreak and evaluate when it might be safe to reopen the bird exhibits.

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.
People participate in the March for Life on Capitol Hill in Washington, Friday, Jan. 21, 2022. The March for Life, for decades an annual protest against abortion, arrives this year as the Supreme Court has indicated it will allow states to impose tighter restrictions on abortion with a ruling in the coming months. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib) (Mariam Zuhaib/AP)

It was interesting to read the responses to the bishops letter opposing a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to abortion and implying they were attacking women (Catholic leaders: Maryland bill would expand an already extreme abortion landscape, March 11). Yes, the church has a lot to answer for regarding the sexual abuse scandals and the attitudes of some toward the role of women in the church.

But the bishops letter seemed to strongly emphasize some basic elements of typical Democratic Party platforms. This was best summed up by two sentences in the letter. Women and their children need access to life affirming and affordable health care, housing, gainful employment, prenatal care and child care. As the Catholic Church in Maryland, we remain committed to helping women and children in need not only throughout pregnancy but the whole life of the child.

Advertisement

That is a consistent anti-abortion message. What the bishops could have focused on more is the reality of what abortion is, the ending of human life. They took a more gentle approach.

But what is the argument to support the pro-choice position that the unborn child is not a human life? What is their response to the heartbeat? What is their response to the ever-changing definition of viability? To the question of when does life begin? Shouldnt we be discussing and answering these questions before we establish blanket constitutional amendments?

Advertisement

 L.G. Connor, Ellicott City

Add your voice: Respond to this piece or other Sun content by submitting your own letter.
BOISE  Idaho Lt. Gov. Janices McGeachins chief of staff has informed McGeachin and a state budget administrator that he will resign when the Idaho Legislature adjourns for the year.

Jordan Watters, McGeachins chief of staff, gave McGeachin notice of his resignation on Thursday, according to an email from Watters obtained by the Idaho Capital Sun.

My agreed upon last day of work in this office will be the end of the 2022 legislative session, Watters wrote in an email he sent Monday morning to David Fulkerson, deputy administrator with the Idaho Division of Financial Management.

The resignation comes as McGeachin is facing a projected budget shortfall if she doesnt cut expenses. But even Watters resignation wont be enough to cover the projected shortfall. On Wednesday, Fulkerson told McGeachin and Watters that McGeachins office would still face a projected shortfall of about $6,000 even if both of McGeachins employees stopped working on March 30.

Boise State Public Radio reporter James Dawson tweeted about Watters upcoming resignation earlier on Monday.

The state budget year ends on June 30. Legislative leaders are working to wrap up the legislative session by Friday.

McGeachin is one of eight candidates running for governor in the 2022 Republican primary on May 17.

Love 0 Funny 4 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
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.
TWIN FALLS  Its a pretty plant. Bright yellow petals with green leaves that resemble antlers. Its inconspicuous, only two to three inches tall, hardly seeming like a threat.

But Sean Standley, code enforcement coordinator with the city of Twin Falls, knows better than to misjudge bur buttercup. Although its not listed on the Idaho noxious weed list, its a pain to deal with.

Its considered obnoxious for sure, but its not noxious, Standley said.

After the blooming period, which occurs during early to mid-spring, the flowers are replaced by bur-like seed pods, taking on a malicious appearance. The spiky points can injure smaller wildlife.

And its aggressive. Bur buttercup is invasive, spreading rapidly and outcompeting native plant life, he said. The tiny burs can be transported by shoes, car tires, bicycle tires, clothing, animal paws, wind and more. Any of the burs that are not destroyed results in new plants the following year.

To make matters worse, each bur produces up to 80 seeds, and each plant can have up to 12 burs.

And in one square foot you could have upwards of 150 to 200 plants, thats how thick they can grow, University of Idaho Extension horticulturist Andy West said.

Most often found along roadways or vacant fields, bur buttercup likes dry, bare dirt. Standley said he sees less of the plant in well-maintained yards.

The plants determination to spread drives the city of Twin Falls to require residents to remove it. The root structure isnt very deep, allowing for quick removal using hands or a shovel. Placing it in a garbage bag prevents any of the burs from spreading, Standley said.

Acting fast is vital. Seeds sprout  or germinate  in the early spring when temperatures reach 41 degrees, according to the University of Utah Extension website.

Ive already seen it around the county going to seed, said West, who works in Twin Falls. The thing is, it doesnt take really high temperatures for it to germinate. And once its germinated, within three weeks, it can set flower and within a week it can have viable seeds. Its learned how to survive and take over.

The best time to spray or remove the plant is in January or February, he said. But, people are hesitant to spray chemicals in freezing temperatures.

Nobody wants to spray it until later in the year, but by the time they actually get out there and spray it, its too late, its already set the seed, West said.

Its still worth it to remove it after its gone to seed, he said.

You can at least take care of 90% of next years crop, he said.

Choosing not to remove it can be costly. If the city of Twin Falls contacts a resident regarding bur buttercup, the homeowner has seven to 10 days to address the issue.

We choose to educate before we ever enforce anything, Standley said.

City code allows for a $100 fine if the plant isnt dealt with after 10 days. From there the fine increases to $200 and then $300.

Its much cheaper for a citizen to take care of the weeds on their own than it is to accumulate the fines that the city can enforce, he said.

Not a lot of people know that they are responsible for removing weeds on the front, side and back of their properties, Standley said. City code states that owners or tenants are responsible for preventing weeds from seeding on said private property to the center of any street or alley in all four directions.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
BOISE  Meteorologists with the National Weather Service from across the country recently spent a week in Boise to participate in a training that will prepare them to work on active fires and other hazardous weather events this year.

Home of the National Interagency Fire Center, Boise is a hub for firefighting efforts. But Idaho itself may be hit with severe fires this year based on climate predictions, according to Robyn Heffernan, National Weather Service fire weather science officer.

About 100 meteorologists came to Boise for the training for incident meteorologists, who assist firefighters with their suppression efforts while also attempting to keep personnel safe.

The week-long training program hosts a mix of new trainees hoping to become incident meteorologists as well as program veterans who must complete the training every three years, Heffernan said.

Representatives from various federal agencies with firefighting teams, like the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management, attended the weeks sessions as guests and instructors to assist with the training.

Jeff Tonkin, an incident meteorologist based in Eureka, California, told the Idaho Statesman that incident meteorologists have multiple objectives.

Our tasks are to provide accurate forecasts and weather data information for the goal of suppression by the team and the firefighters, he said. Fires are mainly driven by wind, so accurate wind forecasts are essential to predicting a fires route, he said.

But safety is the key.

The real goal of this program is to provide safety to the firefighters and getting them out of harms way should weather become impactful, he said.

Between fuels, topography and weather  the three elements that affect fires  weather is by far the most dynamic, Heffernan said.

While forecasters always assist firefighters, incident meteorologists will go in person to the scene of a large fire to provide site-specific forecasts, often with weather balloons and Remote Automatic Weather Stations, which can better pinpoint local weather than a regional office.

The supplemental program is volunteer-based, and active meteorologists at local offices must train for roughly three years before becoming certified to be incident meteorologists.

Five meteorologists from Idahos Boise and Pocatello Weather Service offices participated in the training, Heffernan added.

Climate impacts, fire season outlook

Scientists say climate change is causing bigger and more intense fires, and extreme blazes have plagued the West in recent years. The effects of climate change have increased the need for the work that incident meteorologists do, Heffernan said.

If you take the nation as a whole and look at the trend, it is a trend for longer fire seasons, more extreme fire behavior, more impacts when it comes to people and communities and values at risk, she said. Thats what were seeing overall.

Theres definitely a stronger need for incident meteorologists, Tonkin added.

Data released last week from the U.S. Drought Monitor shows 84% of Idaho, including all of Southern Idaho, is in moderate to extreme drought.

In February, meteorologists predicted that Idahos drought conditions will worsen going into the spring and summer. Much of South and East Idaho has below-normal snowpack, according to the Natural Resources Conservation Service within the Department of Agriculture. Irrigated agriculture in Idaho largely relies on snowpack to fill the states reservoirs and provide adequate water for crops throughout the fall.

Scientists predict that snowpack will decline precipitously in the coming decades, which will likely cause increased drought and further reductions in stream flows throughout Idaho.

Though the Interagency Fire Center is forecasting normal wildland fire potential for Idaho in June, Heffernan said that potential will likely increase when the forecast extends to later in the summer. Dry and warm conditions are forecast for the majority of the summer in Idaho, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

We can anticipate that as we get into the latter portions of the summer into early fall, that were going to see the red on this map move up into the Idaho area and see some areas of above normal, she said.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
The introduction of legislation  House Bill 500 and Senate Bill 979  to ban dredging of recyclable oyster shells in the Man-O-War Shoal in the upper Chesapeake Bay is a classic example of hypocrisy and political grandstanding by some Baltimore area state legislators. Its matched by the Baltimore County Council voting unanimously to support H.B. 500 and S.B. 979 (As plans to dredge ancient Chesapeake Bay reef languish, oystermen look elsewhere to seed their catch, Feb. 14).

In both cases, the lawmakers time and attention should instead be focused on the lack of action on the dumping of hundreds of millions of gallons of raw sewage into the bay from the Patapsco and Back River wastewater treatment plants, both of which are in the Baltimore area. This dumping has been occurring for years. The irony is that relatively limited dredging in the Man-O-War Shoal has already been reviewed and deemed acceptable by several independent researchers as well as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. They understand the value of dredging recyclable oyster shells for Bay restoration efforts.

Advertisement

These efforts would not only increase the total oyster population in the bay; they would also increase the capacity of oysters to filter bay pollution from other sources, for example, toxic silt dumping from the Conowingo Dam. Opposition to dredging of oyster shells is counterproductive to implementing an excellent oyster recovery initiative that would immediately help improve and sustain water quality in the bay, which is critical until l more is done on addressing sewage dumping and pollution.

 Robert Newberry, Chestertown

Advertisement

Add your voice: Respond to this piece or other Sun content by submitting your own letter.
KYIV, Ukraine (AP)  One month of war, still defiant. With its government still standing and its outnumbered troops battling Russian forces to bloody stalemates on multiple fronts, Ukraine is scarred, wounded and mourning its dead but far from beaten.

When Russia unleashed its invasion Feb. 24 in Europe's biggest offensive since World War II and brandished the prospect of nuclear escalation if the West intervened, a lightning-swift toppling of Ukraine's democratically elected government seemed likely.

But with Wednesday marking four full weeks of fighting, Russia is bogged down in a grinding military campaign, with untold numbers of dead, no immediate end in sight, and its economy crippled by Western sanctions. U.S. President Joe Biden and key allies are meeting in Brussels and Warsaw this week to discuss possible new punitive measures and more military aid to Ukraine.

Keep scrolling to the end of this story for a gallery of images from the first month of the war in Ukraine

As Biden left the White House on Wednesday for the flight to Europe, he warned there is a "real threat" Russia could use chemical weapons and said he will discuss that danger with the other leaders.

The war's economic and geopolitical shockwaves  with soaring energy prices, fears for global food supplies, and Russia and China aligning in a new world order with echoes of the Cold War  have reverberated across a planet yet to emerge from the COVID-19 crisis.

With his olive-drab T-shirts, unshaven face and impassioned appeals to governments around the world for help, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been transformed into a wartime leader and Russian President Vladimir Putin's No. 1 antagonist. Addressing Japan's parliament on Wednesday, Zelenskyy said four weeks of war have killed thousands, including at least 121 of Ukraine's children.

"Our people cannot even adequately bury their murdered relatives, friends and neighbors. They have to be buried right in the yards of destroyed buildings, next to the roads," he said.

Repeatedly pushed back by hit-and-run Ukrainian units armed with Western-supplied weapons, Russian troops are shelling targets from afar, falling back on tactics they used in reducing cities to ruins in Syria and Chechnya.

Major Russian objectives remain unfulfilled. The capital, Kyiv, has been repeatedly hit but not taken or even encircled.

More shelling and gunfire shook the city Wednesday, with plumes of black smoke rising from the western outskirts, where the two sides battled for control of multiple suburbs. A shopping mall and other buildings were hit, injuring four people, city officials said. Mayor Vitali Klitschko, said at least 264 civilians have been killed in the capital since war broke out.

In the south, the port city of Mariupol has seen the worst devastation of the war, under weeks of siege and bombardment. But Ukrainian forces have prevented its fall, thwarting an apparent bid by Moscow to secure a land bridge from Russia to Crimea, seized from Ukraine in 2014.

Zelenskyy said 100,000 civilians remain in the city, which had a pre-war population of 430,000. It has been shattered by strikes from air, land and sea, and repeated efforts to get desperately needed food and other supplies to those trapped have often failed.

"They bombed us for the past 20 days," said 39-year-old Viktoria Totsen, who fled from Mariupol into Poland. "During the last five days, the planes were flying over us every five seconds and dropped bombs everywhere  on residential buildings, kindergartens, art schools, everywhere."

Zelenskyy, speaking Tuesday in his nightly video address to his nation, said efforts to establish humanitarian corridors for Mariupol residents are almost all being "foiled by the Russian occupiers, by shelling or deliberate terror."

He accused Russian forces of seizing one humanitarian convoy. Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said the Russians were holding captive 11 bus drivers and four rescue workers along with their vehicles.

The head of the International Committee of the Red Cross traveled Wednesday to Moscow for discussions with Russian officials on humanitarian aid, prisoners of war, and other matters.

"The devastation caused by the conflict in recent weeks, as well as eight years of conflict in Donbas, has been vast," Red Cross President Peter Maurer said.

It is not clear how much of Mariupol is still under Ukrainian control. Fleeing residents say fighting continues street by street. In their last update, over a week ago, Mariupol officials said at least 2,300 people had died, but the true toll is probably much higher. Airstrikes in the past week destroyed a theater and an art school where civilians were sheltering.

In the besieged northern city of Chernihiv, Russian forces bombed and destroyed a bridge that was used for aid deliveries and civilian evacuations, regional governor Viacheslav Chaus said.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov insisted that the military operation is going "strictly in accordance with the plans and purposes that were established beforehand."

Putin's aims remain to "get rid of the military potential of Ukraine" and to "ensure that Ukraine changes from an anti-Russian center to a neutral country," Peskov said.

Officially, Russia is calling the campaign a "special military operation." It has effectively outlawed terms such as "invasion" and "war," and police have arrested thousands of antiwar protesters.

But as casualties mount and quick victory is no longer in sight, Russia is having to work to shore up morale. Under a law passed Wednesday, troops in Ukraine will get the same benefits as veterans of previous wars, including tax breaks, discounts on utilities and preferential access to medical treatment

Western officials say that Ukrainian resistance has halted much of Russia's advance and that Putin's forces are facing serious shortages of food, fuel and cold weather gear, with some soldiers suffering frostbite.

Russia's military casualties are unclear, but even conservative estimates by Western officials are in the low thousands.

The U.S. estimates Russia has lost slightly more than 10% of the overall combat capability it had at the start of the fight, including troops, tanks and other equipment. Britain's defense ministry said the war in northern Ukraine is largely "static."

"We have seen indications that the Ukrainians are going a bit more on the offensive now," Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said. He said that was particularly true in southern Ukraine, including near Kherson.

But Russia's far stronger, bigger military has many Western military experts warning against overconfidence in Ukraine's long-term odds. The Kremlin's practice in past wars has been to grind down resistance with strikes that flattened cities, killing countless civilians and sending millions fleeing.

Talks to end the fighting have continued by video. Zelenskyy said negotiations with Russia are going "step by step, but they are going forward."

With no peace, those not yet fighting prepared to do so.

In the western city of Lviv, gun shop owner Zakhar Sluzhalyy said: "Everything's a best-seller these days."

"We're defending our land," he said. "We're fighting for our freedom and that of the rest of Europe."

***

PHOTO GALLERY

Note: The following gallery includes graphic images

Anna reported from Lviv, Ukraine. Associated Press writer Yuras Karmanau in Lviv, and other AP journalists around the world contributed to this report.
Egypts President Abdelfattah al-Sisi Tuesday hosted in the resort city of Sharm El Sheikh both Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces and Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett in a first such meeting between the three leaders since the United Arab Emirates established ties with Israel in 2020.

The meeting according to the Egyptian presidency discussed the fallout from international developments, especially concerning energy and the stability of markets and food sufficiency.

The three leaders also exchanged perspectives and views on the latest developments of regional and international issues, the office of the Egyptian leader added.

The three leaders, according to UAE state-run news agency WAM, also discussed strengthening relations between their countries and the importance of cooperation, coordination and consultation to meet the aspirations of development and stability in the region.

The meeting is the first ever between the three since UAE and Israel established ties in 2020. Egypt is the first Arab country to establish relations with Israel in 1979.
Egypt and Vicat Group, a French cement producer, have reached a final settlement with the Egyptian government over an investment in an effort by the Arab country to attract more foreign direct investments.

The agreement was signed by Minister of International Cooperation Rania Al-Mashat representing the Egyptian government, and Chairman and CEO of the Vicat Group, Guy Sidos.

Per the agreement, the arbitration case between Egypt and the French company before the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) shall end, the Egyptian government said in a statement.

Cabinet Spokesman Nader Saad, Egypt Today reports, said the move comes in light of the governments interest in stimulating private sector investments in the Egyptian market, creating an environment conducive to investment, as well as resolving existing disputes and investment problems.

Vicat, which owns the Sinai Cement Company, had filed an arbitration case against the Egyptian government at the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes, demanding compensation for damage caused to its investments in Egypt.
The 71 deputies appointed to Burkina Fasos transitional legislature took office Tuesday, two months after the coup that toppled President Roch Marc Christian Kabore in a putsch.

This assembly is responsible for voting on the texts of reforms planned during the transition. The session, which opened at the parliamentary headquarters in Ouagadougou, was held in the presence of members of the transitional government appointed on March 6 by the head of state, Lieutenant-Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba.

The deputies, who wore their scarves, were acclaimed as their names were called, before being installed by the oldest member, Jean-Hubert Bazie, who chaired the inaugural session.

The 71 deputies were appointed by the Head of State (21), the defense and security forces (16), civil society organizations (13), representatives of the countrys regions (13, one per region) and by political parties (8).

Included is Luc Adolphe Tiao, the last prime minister of former president Blaise Compaore, ousted by a popular uprising in 2014 after 27 years in power. Former presidential candidate in November 2020, Abdoulaye Soma, leader of the Soleil davenir, also sits in this assembly.

Several civil society figures such as Pascal Zaida, Valentin Yambkoudougou, and Roland Bayala, who were highly critical of the previous government, were also appointed. At midday, teacher-researcher Aboubacar Toguyeni, 58 years old and appointed deputy by the head of state, was elected to head the transitional legislative assembly.
Egypts president hosted Israeli and Emirati leaders on Tuesday, a rare tripartite summit at a time when the war in Ukraine is shaking up energy and food markets and major powers are closing in on a new Iran nuclear deal.

The meeting brought together in Sharm el-Sheikh, a resort on the Red Sea, President Abdelfattah al-Sissi, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and the de facto leader of the United Arab Emirates, Mohammed bin Zayed.

The tripartite meeting, the first of its kind between the three leaders, focused in particular on energy and food security in the context of the war in Ukraine, according to Egyptian presidential spokesman Bassam Radi.

The Gulf oil countries, including the Emirates, are resisting Western pressure to increase production and curb the surge in crude prices caused by the Russia-Ukraine war.

Egypt, which imports 85% of its wheat and 73% of its sunflower oil from Ukraine and Russia, has been hit hard by the unprecedented surge in grain and oil prices.

Egypt, Israel and the Emirates are allies of the United States, but they also have relations with Russia and their position has remained cautious in the face of the war.

On Tuesday, the official news agency of the UAE, WAM, said the meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh focused on strengthening relations as well as the importance of cooperation, coordination and dialogue to meet the aspirations of development and stability in the region.

The meeting also comes against the backdrop of talks between Iran and the major powers on the issue of Irans nuclear program, whose impact of a potential agreement is gauged by Israel and several Arab countries, such as Egypt and the UAE.
After more than a week of negotiations and alliances, followed by sudden reversals, the 52 political and military movements invited to Doha finally formed three groups for the pre-dialogue between the Chadian transitional government and the political and military movements. This will allow Qatar to get to the heart of the matter by holding separate discussions with the various rebel groups.

There is the Rome group, made up of 20 movements, including several that are well established: the Fact, the UFR, the CCMSR and the UFDD. They have set up a group of 14 delegates who will negotiate on their behalf.

The Doha group has 22 politico-military and allied groups, including groups from Sudan and Ndjamena. It has submitted a list of 16 delegates. Finally, there is the Qatar group, which has a dozen movements with 8 delegates.
Guineas junta leader, Colonel Mamady Doumbouya, opened a six-week Conference on Tuesday, which he presented as a historic opportunity to heal the wounds of a troubled past, but which many political organizations have boycotted.

Colonel Mamady Doumbouya, who seized power by force on September 5, 2021 and has since been inaugurated as president, placed the conference under the banner of reconciliation and forgiveness after decades of often brutal history, where we have not stopped hurting each other.

He continued to be silent on the time frame for fulfilling his commitment to return power to elected civilians. Many voices were raised to express skepticism about the meetings, which were vague in content and purpose.

Each of us here in this country has suffered brutality, the wounds are there, gaping; it is time to clean them up, to put bandages on them, said Colonel Doumbouya at the Mohammed-V Palace in Conakry. Based on this observation, I was keen to organize these national meetings, called days of truth and forgiveness, to give an historic opportunity to Guineans to look at themselves in the face, well in the face, eyes in the eyes, and to speak frankly, he added.

The National Alliance for Change and Democracy (ANAD), which brings together some twenty organizations, has decided not to take part.

The National Front for the Defense of the Constitution (FNDC), a collective that orchestrated months of protests in Guinea in 2019-2020, had also said it would stay away.
While the BA.2 variant of the coronavirus appears to be highly infectious, it also appears to be less severe. For most people, that means the protection already afforded by a full vaccine regimen is sufficient to ward off illness, says Mansoor Amiji, university distinguished professor of pharmaceutical sciences and chemical engineering at Northeastern. Credit: Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University

As the BA.2 variant of the coronavirus gains traction around the world, you may be wondering whether you'll need a second COVID-19 booster shot.

While the new varianttechnically a subvariant of the pervasive omicron strain of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19appears to be highly infectious, it also appears to be less severe. For most people, that means the protection already afforded by a full vaccine regimen is sufficient to ward off illness, says Mansoor Amiji, university distinguished professor of pharmaceutical sciences and chemical engineering at Northeastern.

Amiji references two recent studies to back up his analysis. The first, a peer-reviewed study out of Israel, showed relatively little increase in antibody production among young, healthy, healthcare workers after a fourth shot (a second booster) compared to three shots (two-doses of an mRNA vaccine plus a booster). The second, a study out of Qatar, which hasn't yet been peer-reviewed, showed similar results.

"The fourth shot, it seems, may be marginally more protective but not dramatically so," Amiji says. And the Israeli researchers recommended that for healthy adults, a fourth shot isn't necessary at this time, he says.

About 48 percent of eligible American adults, or 93 million people, have gotten booster shots, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than two-thirds of those 65 or older who are eligible have gotten them, the data shows.

Still, Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, both makers of mRNA vaccines, recently asked the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for emergency authorization of second booster shots. Moderna requested emergency authorization for all adults, while Pfizer-BioNTech seeks emergency authorization for a second booster for adults ages 65 and over.

So what's going on? Amiji says that both companies are likely hedging against the potential for new, more aggressive variants to emerge over the summer and fall. Also, recent data show that protection against the coronavirus may wane over time, which is a particular concern for people who are at greater risk of infection and serious illness.

Indeed, Moderna officials have said they're seeking broader authorization so that public-health authorities at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as doctors and healthcare providers, could determine the appropriate use of a second booster for people at higher risk of infection or serious illness.

It's likely that people over 65 and people who are immunocompromised will need second booster shots as the BA.2 variant spreads to the U.S., Amiji says. For younger people, though, whether a second boosteror an annual shot like the flu shotis necessary will depend upon how much the protection from the first three shots wanes over time.

As COVID-19 becomes endemic, public-health and healthcare officials will need to continue to monitor the severity of new viral strains, Amiji says, but it's likely that recommendations for further vaccination will come on a case-by-case basis, rather than the mass vaccination and booster campaigns that have defined the pandemic so far.

"I'm hopeful that when the fall comes, not everyone will need to be vaccinated again," he says. "You'll be able to decide whether it's right for you."

Explore further Moderna seeks US approval of second COVID booster
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

When the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic hit in the first half of 2020, organ transplantation operations fell significantly across all countries. However, evidence is continuing to build that organ donation from patients with past, resolved COVID-19 is safe, and even organs from donors with an active SARS-Cov-2 infection can be considered if their infection was asymptomatic and they died from causes unrelated to COVID-19.

The issues around organ donation and COVID-19 will be presented in a talk at a special meeting on COVID-19 of the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ECCMID 2022) on Wednesday 23 March, ahead of the main congress in Lisbon (23-26 April). The presentation is by Professor Paolo Grossi of the Infectious & Tropical Diseases Unit at the University of InsubriaASST-Sette Laghi, Varese, Italy. He will discuss 30 transplants conducted by his team from donors with past, resolved COVID-19, and a further 38 from donors who had active SARS-CoV-2 infection at the time of their death.

"When COVID-19 arrived, there was a marked worldwide reduction in transplant activity during the first 3 months of the pandemic, with losses stabilising after June, 2020, but decreasing again from October to December, 2020," explains Professor Grossi. "Transplant activity in all countries studied showed an overall decrease during the pandemic. Kidney transplantation was the most affected, followed by lung, liver, and heart transplants. Kidney transplantation is not considered as critical and immediate as a life-saving procedure, thus many centres globally deferred kidney transplants when COVID-19 hit."

In the UK, for the year April 2020-March 2021, the number of transplants fell by 20%, according the organisation NHS Blood and Transplant, that oversees transplantation. And a study published in The Lancet Public Health during 2021 revealed that the overall number of kidney, liver, lung, and heart transplants from human donors fell by 31% during the first wave of COVID-19 across 22 countries. By the end of 2020, the overall decrease was 16%, with more than 11,200 fewer transplants carried out.

It was during May, 2020, that initial protocols were introduced to confront the organ shortage emergency that was deepening with each passing day of the COVID pandemic. It was decided by The Italian National Transplant Centre that donors with past COVID-19 but at least 14 days from clinical recovery, and virus clearance documented by two negative PCR tests 24-48 hours apart and negative bronchoalveolar lavage** before organ procurement, could be carefully assessed for donation. They would ultimately be considered eligible for donation if no permanent end-organ damage had been caused by COVID-19 and appropriate donor organ function was confirmed. Other countries have followed a similar path to Italy in allowing transplantations in these circumstances, although exact regulations vary slightly from country to country.

Professor Grossi explains: "Regardless of donor screening, the centre should have a discussion of risk-benefit with the recipient regarding transplantation during the ongoing pandemic and the recipient must sign a specific informed consent."

Then at the end of 2020, protocols were introduced in Italy (and similar protocols introduced in other countries / recommended by international bodies) in which organs from donors with active SARS-Cov-2 infection, may be considered only if those donors died with asymptomatic infection or who died from causes unrelated to COVID-19.

In these cases ,organs may be offered to patients wait-listed for heart and liver transplantation in severe clinical conditions, where those patients have asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection or a history of resolved COVID-19. In January, 2022, an additional requirement was introduced that recipient patients must have triple-vaccinated with an mRNA vaccine (Pfizer or Moderna)because these are the COVID-19 vaccines are deemed to give the best protectionwith documented evidence of serocoversion (meaning that the vaccines are working and producing antibodies as expected).

Those patients on the waiting list for kidney transplants in Italy must have a history of resolved COVID-19, and also be triple vaccinated with an mRNA vaccine, with documented evidence of serocoversion.

Thus today, unvaccinated patients or those without the completed course of COVID-19 vaccinations would not be considered for organ transplantation in Italy. Many other countries have adopted this same policy, again with variations from country to country. In the U.S., growing numbers of transplant programs have chosen to either stop transplants altogether for patients who refuse to take the COVID vaccines, or give them lower priority on their crowded waiting lists. Other programs, however, say they plan no such restrictionsfor now. It is a fluid and rapidly changing situation.

Protocols were also introduced in Italy in late 2020 (again also introduced in other countries) due to the decrease of liver transplant operations, allowing liver recipients to proceed with their operations even with past resolved or current active COVID-19 infection. Prof Grossi discusses the first 10 patients in this situation to receive liver transplants in the Italian centres, of whom only two had active COVID-19 on transplantation and the other 8 past resolved infection. Of the two actively infected recipients, one subsequently died (from an antibiotic-resistant bacterial infection), but all the other nine patients are still alive.

"As we move deeper into 2022, the transplant community will undoubtedly learn more about using various organs from donors with recent or active COVID-19," explains Prof Grossi.

One of the latest developments in this field is that organ recipients can be transplanted after receiving prophylactic treatment against COVID-19 during the transplant with monoclonal antibodies or antivirals.

Prof Grossi concludes: "Based on growing worldwide experience, we believe that organs from donors with past or active SARS-CoV-2 infection may be safely offered to candidates with immunity against SARS-CoV-2 because of previous infection or vaccination. This might contribute to increase the donor pool."

In Italy today, transplant activity has now returned to almost pre-pandemic levels, with a similar story of progress in other countries.

Explore further Donated kidneys from deceased COVID patients can be safely transplanted

More information: Olivier Aubert et al, COVID-19 pandemic and worldwide organ transplantation: a population-based study, The Lancet Public Health (2021). Journal information: The Lancet Public Health Olivier Aubert et al, COVID-19 pandemic and worldwide organ transplantation: a population-based study,(2021). DOI: 10.1016/S2468-2667(21)00200-0

Provided by European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases
Uninsured Americans will no longer be covered for free COVID-19 tests and treatments because of the budget impasse in Congress, a Biden administration official said Tuesday.

The program was to stop accepting claims at midnight Tuesday, according to Martin Kramer, a spokesman for the Health Resources and Services Administration, the Associated Press reported.

"The lack of funding for COVID-19 needs is having real consequences," Kramer said in a statement. "We have begun an orderly shutdown of the program."

After April 5, the program will have to stop accepting claims for vaccination-related costs, Kramer warned.

The program, which reimburses hospitals, clinics, doctors and other service providers for COVID care for uninsured people, is a victim of the budget battle over Biden's request for an additional $22.5 billion for an ongoing COVID response, the AP reported.

A fact sheet from the White House details further potential fallout from the lack of funding.

It says the government will not have enough money to provide boosters or vaccines targeting specific variants to all Americans, while the supply of monoclonal antibody treatments will be gone by late May. Additionally, certain treatments needed by patients with immune system problems could soon be hard to get, and continuing a robust COVID testing will be again become a challenge.

"COVID is a highly infectious disease, so we want people who think they might be sick to get tested and treated, not only for their health but for the community as well," Larry Levitt, a health policy expert with the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation, told the AP. "If uninsured people now hesitate to get care because of the cost, we'll see more cases and greater inequity."

Another concern is that vaccine providers may reduce their outreach efforts to uninsured people, according to Levitt. There are about 28 million uninsured people in the United States, the AP reported.

COVID cases, hospitalizations and deaths are down dramatically across most of the country, but another surge may be on its way. The Omicron variant BA.2 is spreading in the United States, now accounting for nearly 35 percent of all cases. It's more transmissible than the original Omicron variant, but does not appear to cause more severe disease. Still, if cases continue to climb, an uptick in hospitalizations may well follow.

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 COVID tests

Copyright  2021 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
Jeff Barkers insightful story on the lack of guest workers to help process this years crab harvest (Only one Maryland crab processor won the guest worker lottery, and the rest worry about their futures, March 11) points not only to an issue with the H-2B visa lottery, but the wider problem with immigration in America. Last year marked the smallest number of immigrants entering the U.S. since 2010. Thats at the same time as the country recorded more than 11 million job openings in January 2022.

Immigrants in the United States are hardworking and entrepreneurial, and they often work in positions that would otherwise go unfilled. The 23 million immigrants working in health care, agriculture, food services and other critical industries make up nearly 20% of the essential workforce. Study after study has shown that immigrants tend to be younger, work for longer, and create a substantial number of jobs as entrepreneurs. In 2014 alone, immigrants contributed $328.2 billion in taxes, including $32.9 billion in Medicare taxes and $123.7 billion in Social Security taxes.

Advertisement

Righting these wrongs is not as complicated as some claim. In many cases, the solutions already exist. Lawmakers should significantly expand employment-based immigration by, for example, making available more H-2B visas, which allow foreign-born workers to fill temporary nonagricultural jobs. Policymakers should allow more people of working age to immigrate by removing dependents and children from the numbers of employment-based immigrants who count toward visa caps. Simple solutions are possible  for Maryland and the U.S. workforce.

 Krish OMara Vignarajah

Advertisement

The writer is president and CEO of Baltimore-based Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services.

Add your voice: Respond to this piece or other Sun content by submitting your own letter.
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

The first COVID-19 lockdown in the UK, which began two years ago today on 23 March 2020, had a profound effect in increasing the prevalence of anxiety and depression among the general population, according to a new study.

A detailed systematic review, conducted by psychologists at the University of Bath and published in the British Journal of Clinical Psychology, suggests that depression and anxiety levels in the UK jumped markedly as a consequence of restrictions and isolation.

Whereas prevalence for diagnosed depression pre-pandemic was around 4% of the population, this rose to 32% following lockdown (a jump of nearly 28%). Diagnosed cases of anxiety, which pre-pandemic were around 5%, increased to 31% (a jump of over 26%).

According to the NHS, psychological symptoms of depression include continuous low mood or sadness, feeling hopeless and helpless and having low self-esteem. Diagnosis for anxiety typically includes worrying significantly about daily life, work and social life and finding worries overly stressful, upsetting, and uncontrollable.

The research team, who reviewed data from 14 separate studies involving 46,158 participants, say that heightened levels of depression and anxiety have manifested with people increasingly struggling to think clearly or to sleep.

They say some of the possible causes correlate to increased social isolation, uncertainty about the state of the world, and being under a constant perceived threat of illness or death. And, whilst the COVID lockdown two years ago may seem just a memory now, the team argue that future potential lockdowns could lead to a long-standing problem which urgently needs to be addressed.

In response, the researchers from the Addiction & Mental Health Group (AIM) at the University of Bath are calling for greater evidence-based psychological interventions, like Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). They say it is vital that policymakers and mental health services double their efforts to monitor mental health and provide interventions to support those in need.

Lead researcher, Dr. Gemma Taylor from the University of Bath, explained: "We all know the dramatic toll lockdown had on our lives, and two years on it's a moment to pause and reflect on what some of the long-standing effects this period has had our mental health.

"Our study shows a sharp rise in depression and anxiety as a result of lockdown. These are challenges which cannot be undone overnight. Tackling them will require significantly greater resources to ensure those who need it can access psychological support. Psychological support is not cheap, and services have notoriously been underfunded.

"Whilst there is good news for people's mental health in regard to vaccination rates and the return to some degree of normality in the UK, we need to be mindful of these possible lasting mental health effects that lockdown had on many of us."

Explore further Depression and anxiety tripled during the height of lockdown, new study shows

More information: Luca Marie Dettmann et al, Investigating the prevalence of anxiety and depression during the first COVID19 lockdown in the United Kingdom: Systematic review and metaanalyses, British Journal of Clinical Psychology (2022). Luca Marie Dettmann et al, Investigating the prevalence of anxiety and depression during the first COVID19 lockdown in the United Kingdom: Systematic review and metaanalyses,(2022). DOI: 10.1111/bjc.12360
Drs. Annemarie Dedek, Eve Tsai and Mike Hildebrand (left to right) have shown for the first time that neurons in the spinal cord process pain signals differently in women compared to men. Credit: Justin Tang

A new study published in the journal Brain shows for the first time that neurons in the spinal cord process pain signals differently in women compared to men. The finding could lead to better and more personalized treatments for chronic pain, which are desperately needed, especially in light of the opioid epidemic.

Although it has long been known that women and men experience pain differently, most pain research uses male rodents. The new study is unique because it used female and male spinal cord tissue from both rats and humans (generously donated by deceased individuals and their families).

By examining the spinal cord tissue in the laboratory, the researchers were able to show that a neuronal growth factor called BDNF plays a major role in amplifying spinal cord pain signaling in male humans and male rats, but not in female humans or female rats. When female rats had their ovaries removed, the difference disappeared, pointing to a hormonal connection.

"Developing new pain drugs requires a detailed understanding of how pain is processed at the biological level," said Dr. Annemarie Dedek, lead author of the study and now a MITACS- and Eli Lilly-funded industrial research fellow at Carleton University and The Ottawa Hospital. "This new discovery lays the foundation for the development of new treatments to help those suffering from chronic pain."

This is the first time a sex-related difference in pain signaling has been identified in human spinal cord tissue. Future studies are required to understand how this biological difference may contribute to differences in pain sensation between men and women.

Explore further Researchers identify molecular mechanisms that influence pain processing and sensitivity

More information: Sexual dimorphism in a neuronal mechanism of spinal hyperexcitability across rodent and human models of pathological pain, Brain (2021). Journal information: Brain Sexual dimorphism in a neuronal mechanism of spinal hyperexcitability across rodent and human models of pathological pain,(2021). DOI: 10.1093/brain/awab408

Provided by The Ottawa Hospital
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

Laura Rago wasn't smiling behind her mask as she pulled down the arm of her sweater and got her first shot of a COVID-19 vaccine on a rainy Wednesday afternoon in an otherwise-empty Keystone First Wellness Center. The Ridley woman said she had long been resisting the shot.

But then, earlier this month, she learned she'd need to be vaccinated to chaperone a field trip at her son's school, so she drove to the Chester, Pennsylvania, clinic.

"I was definitely not for this," said Rago, 33, moments after getting her first dose. "But it's all the restrictions. I can't even go on a field trip with my son."

With the number of COVID-19 shots being given per day at an all-time low, public health experts, doctors, and officials are concerned about getting more Americans like Rago vaccinated before the next surge.

At local vaccine clinics, appointments have slowed to five or 10 a day, providers say. The vaccination campaign has stalled in the weeks since the omicron surge, plateauing at rates not seen since the start of the rollout. Though case and hospitalization numbers are currently low, vaccination remains key to preventing future illness and deaths.

Each person who does show up helps nudge the immunity level higher and represents a victory in the eyes of public health leaders. At clinics across the region, providers said the people who are getting vaccinated now are often motivated by employer, school, or business requirements, travel plans, or other incentives. In Philadelphia, the city's $100 reward for vaccinationbeing offered through the end of the monthhas also drawn many.

Nurses said they hear reasons like Rago's regularly.

"The people who are coming now are doing it because they want to do somethingkeep their job, do a field trip, travel," said nurse Carol Von Colln, who gave Rago her shot.

And even now, nearly a year after the vaccine became available to all adults, she and other providers said they still see people who wanted time to contemplate the decision.

"You still do have folks who are coming in and saying, 'I just needed to give it time,' " said Jon Moran, who helps run city vaccine clinics as a Philadelphia Department of Public Health preparedness coordinator.

Nationally, 65% of people of all ages are vaccinated with a primary seriestwo doses of Moderna or Pfizer or one dose of Johnson & Johnson. In Pennsylvania, 67% are vaccinated, as are 75% in New Jersey. Children under 5 aren't yet eligible for shots.

The recent slowdown has been exacerbated by the post-surge relaxation of restrictions and attitudes, which public health experts say has made some think it's no longer important to get vaccinated.

Though the United States is in a lull, parts of Asia are experiencing surges, and a COVID wave partly driven by the BA.2 subvariant is rising in Europe.

This means vaccinationnew shots, second doses, and boostersis particularly urgent now, experts say. Immunization offers people the chance to get protected before the next surge arrivespotentially decreasing the number of hospitalizations and deaths and limiting spread.

A patchwork of state and local officials, public health groups, doctors, pharmacists, and volunteers have been on the front lines of this uphill battle since last spring, when the initial rush for shots subsided. Those left were people who didn't have easy access to a provider or weren't sure whether they needed a vaccine.

Public health organizers have tried a variety of tactics to reach this increasingly narrow group of unvaccinated people, many of whom have been influenced by misinformation. They've knocked on doors, held educational events, and offered vaccine clinics, often incorporating community groups, institutions, and leaders.

And they still draw people like Kevin Robertson, who passed by a city-run clinic at Waterview Recreation Center in East Germantown earlier this month. He had always meant to get his booster shot, so he decided to go in.

He sat down, rolled up his sleeve, and nurse Lola Kwarteng gave him the injection.

"I just happened to be right across the street," said Robertson, 59, who lives in Delaware.

Many providers say their continued outreach is worth it, even if they just reach a couple people like Robertson every day.

"The people who still need doses take a little bit longer, and we're willing to wait for them," said Philadelphia health department spokesperson James Garrow.

At the same clinic was Rana Hightower, 52, dropping in for her second shot. Her job in a nursing home requires it, she said, but she would have been more comfortable not getting vaccinated.

With her was 60-year-old Richard Chestnut, getting his second shotnearly a year after he received the first one. He contracted pneumonia in April, around the time he got the first dose, and then got "jittery" about getting his second one, he said. They live across the street, so they knew the clinic was there when they were ready.

"You don't get that shot, you can die.  You get that shot, you be all right," said Chestnut, who was more cheerful than Hightower about his vaccination. He said they'd helped each other get there: "She pushed me, and I pushed her."

2022 The Philadelphia Inquirer, LLC.

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Figure 1. (a) Analytical model of the structural equation model for longitudinal flu vaccine model and (b) analytical model of the structural equation model for longitudinal MMR and HPV vaccine models. The wave in which variables are collected are shown at the bottom respectively. Exogeneous variables covariances and error terms not shown. Reference category is Atheist. Credit: Journal of Health Psychology (2022). DOI: 10.1177/13591053221082770

Strong philosophical and moral beliefs associated with many religions can contribute to vaccine hesitancy and reduce vaccination rates, a new study shows.

Researchers from four universitiesincluding the University of Michiganexamined attitudes and behaviors for three vaccines: flu, measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) and human-papillomavirus (HPV). They wanted to learn about the relationship with philosophical, spiritual and moral beliefs.

Published in the Journal of Health Psychology, the findings offered guidance in how health agencies can encourage more people to get vaccinations, including those related to COVID-19.

News accounts in recent years have chronicled religious and public health debates about taking vaccines. Few studies have looked at religious affiliations, beliefs and attitudes about vaccinations and self-declared vaccination rates in a large sample, said study co-author Hang Lu, U-M assistant professor of communication and media.

In 2018-2019, more than 3,000 adults nationwide completed four surveys online and by phone regarding their attitudes and behaviors relevant to the three vaccines. They represented diverse religious groups: Protestant, Roman Catholic and Orthodox Catholic, Mormon, "Just" Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist and Hindu, Unitarian, Other, Agnostic, or Nothing in particular.

The study asked, "Does your religion forbid its members from getting vaccines? and "Do you follow what your religion says about vaccines or not? Only 3%mostly Roman Catholics and Protestantssaid their religion did not permit the vaccine, and only half of those said they followed that mandate.

For philosophical views, such as "health is controlled by God," identifying as Protestant, "Just" Christian or Muslim had stronger beliefs related to flu vaccines. Strong philosophical beliefs predicted weaker intentions to encourage others to vaccinate against the flu, as well as a hesitancy to get the vaccine themselves.

When it involved moral beliefs, the opposite occurred: Stronger intentions were present to get vaccinated and encourage others to do the same. Moral beliefs were associated with positive attitudes toward the flu and MMR vaccinations

Lu and colleagues say that if health agencies want to increase vaccination rates, the marketing strategy must change. Rather than targeting a particular religious identity, which will elicit defensive reactions from and create public stigma attached to certain religious groups, it is more fruitful and ethical for public health messages about vaccination to target these specific beliefs.

"Public health messages could frame vaccination recommendations in ways that highlight compatibility with (or absence of direct antagonism toward) these beliefs," Lu said.

Explore further How misinformed vaccine beliefs affect policy views

More information: Ozan Kuru et al, Religious affiliation and philosophical and moral beliefs about vaccines: A longitudinal study, Journal of Health Psychology (2022). Ozan Kuru et al, Religious affiliation and philosophical and moral beliefs about vaccines: A longitudinal study,(2022). DOI: 10.1177/13591053221082770
Figure 1. Overview of the present study. Credit: Tatsufumi Oka et al.

Just as a water filtration system acts to filter contaminants from the water you drink, your kidneys act to filter waste and excess fluid from your blood. In chronic kidney disease (CKD), kidney function is impaired over time, and the resultant build-up of excess fluid and waste has harmful repercussions on overall body function. Researchers in Japan conducted a study of real-world data from patients with CKD to evaluate the impact of a commonly prescribed medication on disease outcome.

In a study published in Hypertension, researchers from Osaka University have demonstrated an association between the use of mineralocorticoid receptor antagonists (MRAs), a class of medicines that acts by suppressing the action of the steroid hormone aldosterone, and an improved renal prognosis in individuals with CKD.

As CKD progresses, the initiation of renal replacement therapy (RRT), which includes dialysis and kidney transplantation, may be necessary for life support in kidney failure. MRAs, which include spironolactone, eplerenone, and potassium canrenoate, are commonly used to reduce swelling, blood pressure, and urine protein levels in people with CKD. However, the association between MRA treatment and the initiation of RRT has not been fully explored in a real-world population, which spurred the research team from Osaka University to undertake a large-scale retrospective study of MRA use in people with CKD.

"We conducted a retrospective analysis of clinical data from over 3,100 individuals with CKD," says lead author Tatsufumi Oka. "We evaluated MRA treatment in various populations of people with CKD, including those with diabetes, heart disease, and severely impaired renal function."

Figure 2. Marginal structural model. Credit: Tatsufumi Oka et al.

The research team employed a marginal structural model to analyze the association between MRA use and the initiation of RRT across multiple patient subgroups.

"Our analysis showed that MRA use was associated with a 28% lower rate of RRT initiation and a 24% lower rate of the combined outcomes of RRT initiation and death," says senior author Jun-Ya Kaimori.

The research team observed a reduced risk for RRT initiation across various subgroups of people with CKD, including those with and without diabetes and those with severely impaired renal function. These findings highlight the association of MRA use and improved renal outcomes in a real-world population of CKD patients with varying health backgrounds. Overall, this study supports the use of MRAs in treatment plans for various groups of people with CKD who are not undergoing dialysis.

Explore further Ischemic stroke in patients with renal impairment

More information: Tatsufumi Oka et al, Mineralocorticoid Receptor Antagonist Use and Hard Renal Outcomes in Real-World Patients With Chronic Kidney Disease, Hypertension (2022). Tatsufumi Oka et al, Mineralocorticoid Receptor Antagonist Use and Hard Renal Outcomes in Real-World Patients With Chronic Kidney Disease,(2022). DOI: 10.1161/HYPERTENSIONAHA.121.18360
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

Among 2,600 patients with opioid use disorder, approximately 5% across both sexes tested positive for COVID-19. In contrast, significantly more males than females presented with an opioid overdose, according to a study in the peer-reviewed Journal of Women's Health.

Caitlin Martin, MD, MPH, from Virginia Commonwealth University, and coauthors, demonstrated sex-related variation in COVID-19 susceptibility by race. Black females and male individuals in the Other racial group had higher odds of having a positive COVID-19 test than their White counterparts. Mortality rates were similar across the sexes.

More individuals with opioid use disorder presented with an opioid overdose than with a positive COVID-19 test, and more individuals died from an opioid overdose than from COVID-19 during the study period.

"Findings highlight the importance of incorporating an intersectionality framework into health investigations and the urgent need for effective, culturally tailored responses in the COVID-19 pandemic and ongoing overdose crisis," concluded the investigators.

"In this retrospective study conducted at a large public health system in Virginia, COVID-19 test positivity rates were similar across sex among individuals with opioid use disorder, whereas males typically have higher rates of COVID-19 in the general population," says Journal of Women's Health Editor-in-Chief Susan G. Kornstein, MD, Executive Director of the Virginia Commonwealth University Institute for Women's Health, Richmond, VA.

More information: Caitlin E. Martin et al, Disparities by Sex in COVID-19 Risk and Related Harms Among People with Opioid Use Disorder, Journal of Women's Health (2022). Journal information: Journal of Women's Health Caitlin E. Martin et al, Disparities by Sex in COVID-19 Risk and Related Harms Among People with Opioid Use Disorder,(2022). DOI: 10.1089/jwh.2021.0457
Credit: Pixabay

As anorexia nervosa rates continue to climb, eating disorder experts are examining the efficiency and availability of treatment options in Australia's health system.

Increased demand for more services creates the need for smarter tailored service provision, says Flinders University Distinguished Professor of Psychology Tracey Wade, highlighting the value of a South Australian "Day Program" format which gives intensive daily treatment but no overnight admission treatments.

Accessible and more targeted professional mental health and welfare services for eating disorders is vital with community prevalence of anorexia nervosa steadily rising over the past two decades.

Australian Institute of Health and Welfare data shows a significant increase in overnight hospital admissions for anorexia nervosa in young Australian females (aged 1529) in the past two decades, but a separate study in Australasian Psychiatry indicated this not reflected in mortality rates and community incidence.

"The good news is that mortality rates and average hospital inpatient length of stay for anorexia nervosa declined during the study period," says Flinders University academic and co-author in the study Dr. Stephen Allison.

Professor Wade, co-author of another study in Nutrients, says improving the quality of targeted services is more important than providing more general services for these conditions and other eating disorders.

A new study of 56 patients using the Statewide Eating Disorder Service in Adelaide, SA assessed whether meal options for a streamlined day program provided adequate support and incentives for young women (average age 25) to self-manage disordered eating conditions including anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa.

The study tentatively concludes that moderate decrease in costs but increasing opportunities for patient autonomy did not negatively impact outcomes.

"Both for hospital, partial hospital day programs and other treatments, we must continue to monitor clinical outcomes, as well as any additional disadvantage to patients including food for meals, staffing levels and patient care," says Professor Wade, director of the Orama Institute for Mental Health and Well-Being and the Blackbird Initiative at Flinders University.

The Matthew Flinders Distinguished Professor of Psychology has been instrumental in setting up the SA Day Program and is a credentialed eating disorder clinician.

The researchers recommended further research on a larger cohort of patients to identify the best formats for specific groups of eating disorders.

Explore further Pandemic paves way for blowout in eating disorders, and need for more research and interventions

More information: Ertimiss Eshkevari et al, Eating Disorder Day Programs: Is There a Best Format?, Nutrients (2022). Ertimiss Eshkevari et al, Eating Disorder Day Programs: Is There a Best Format?,(2022). DOI: 10.3390/nu14040879 Martin Nguyen et al, Increasing hospital admission rates for anorexia nervosa amongst young women in Australia from 1998 to 2018, Australasian Psychiatry (2022). DOI: 10.1177/10398562221077890
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

The Heartland virus is circulating in ticks in Georgia, researchers warned in a study published last week.

The findings, published in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases and led by researchers from Emory University, analyzed virus samples from ticks collected in central Georgia. But the Heartland virus, first identified in Missouri in 2009, has been documented in multiple states across the Midwest and Southeast.

But what does that mean for your next hiking or camping trip? Is it time to be on the lookout for ticks that could carry the virus?

Jonathan Larson, an extension entomologist at the University of Kentucky, explained to USA TODAY that so-called tick seasons can vary across the United States, but "anytime when you're outside from April into August and September, that's kind of the high tick season for a lot of the eastern and southeastern United States."

"You should be thinking about them almost any time of the year. It's something that should be on everybody's mind," he said, explaining that blacklegged deer ticks, the main vectors for Lyme disease, are active as adults from October to May, as long as temperatures don't dip below freezing.

Here's what you need to know about the Heartland virus and steps you can take to protect you and your family from tick-borne illnesses.

What is the Heartland virus?

The Heartland virus spreads to people from an infected tick. As of January 2021, more than 50 cases of Heartland virus disease have been reported in Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Tennessee, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"Heartland virus is one of the many diseases that could be vectored by ticks," Larson said. "It's a viral pathogen, which is different than we see with a lot of tick-borne illnesses, which are often bacteria."

How do you get it?

Humans can get the Heartland virus after being bitten by an infected tick. The Lone Star tick can transmit the virus, but it isn't known if other tick species can transmit it, according to the CDC.

"If you are bitten by a Lone Star tick, there is a possibility that they could have the Heartland virus if they've picked it up from another host, and then they could vector it into you," Larson said.

What are Heartland virus symptoms?

Most people with Heartland virus report fever, fatigue, decreased appetite, headache, nausea, diarrhea and muscle pain, according to the CDC.

Dr. Ross Boyce, assistant professor of medicine in the division of infectious diseases at the University of North CarolinaChapel Hill, told USA TODAY that certain groups, such as elderly, immunocompromised or young people, could be at higher risk for a severe, and even life-threatening, disease from tick-borne illnesses.

But he noted that it's possible only the most severe cases of Heartland virus have been reported.

"With a lot of these insect-borne viruses, whether it's Dengue or West Nile, there's probably a huge iceberg under the surface, under the water, as far as the number of people who get infected that either don't have symptoms or have only mild symptoms," Boyce said.

Are there vaccines to prevent the virus? What about other preventions or treatments?

There are no vaccines or medications that prevent or treat a Heartland virus infection, according to the CDC.

Experts recommend that people avoid tick bites in general to protect against the Heartland virus and try to find a tick on your body early, before it attaches. People can use insect repellants, check their body and their child's body for ticks and more.

"Ticks are smart, and they've evolved such that they're going to move to places on your body that you don't naturally see, so behind your knees and your hairline, under your armpits," Boyce said. "That's why it's often helpful to have someone else look."

He encourages people to take precautions when going outside, including wearing long pants. The CDC advises treating clothing with the insecticide permethrin and using Environmental Protection Agency-registered insect repellents.

What should you do if you see a tick?

If you see a tick on your clothes or shoes and it has not bitten you yet, you "don't have to worry about pathogens," Larson explained.

"It has to actually feed on you for any disease vectoring to occur," he said. "I would just check the rest of your body to make sure you don't find anybody that's making a meal out of you. And if you don't, then you're in the clear."

But if a tick has bitten you, "the longer it's on you, the more likely it is to have passed the pathogen from its guts into your body," Larson said.

"The best thing to do is to take a pair of pointy tweezers, get as close to your skin as possible and grip the head area of the tick and then pull straight up, steadily but not with a jerking motion," he said.

"You don't want to break any parts of the tick off into your body, which could lead to other infections, but you do want to get it out of the skin. Once it's out of there, you can put it in some rubbing alcohol or into hot soapy water, anything that you want to do to try and kill it," he added.

Larson warned against tactics like holding a match head to a tick or pouring alcohol on it.

"When you do that while the tick is feeding on you, you are agitating it, and you're increasing the likelihood that it could sort of regurgitate into you. And that could increase the likelihood of disease transmission happening," he said.

"Here in Kentucky, I've had people tell me 'Oh, I pour bourbon on it to try and get it off,'" he added. "That's a waste of good bourbon."

Explore further Lone Star ticks in Illinois can carry, transmit Heartland virus

(c)2022 USA Today

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Tuberculosis (TB) may have been overtaken by COVID-19 as the world's deadliest infectious disease, but it continues to defy vaccines and antibiotics to wreak a grim global toll.

Here are five things to know about an infection that has scourged the world for tens of thousands of years, ahead of World Tuberculosis Day on Thursday.

40,000 years old

TB first emerged around 40,000 years ago, according to genetic studies.

For a long time, scientists believed that tuberculosis in humans came from TB in cattle, and that it had been transmitted when livestock farming started in the Neolithic Age.

But recent studies paint a different picture, showing that TB already existed in humans before they started to raise cattle. Traces of the illness have been discovered in human remains that are around 11,000 years old.

100 years ago: A vaccine

World TB Day is marked each year on March 24, the anniversary of the announcement of the discovery of the bacillus in 1882 by Nobel laureate Robert Koch of Germany.

It was, however, only in 1921 that France's legendary Pasteur Institute developed the Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccine, which became one of the world's oldest and most trusted jabs.

A century on, the vaccine is still in use and is particularly effective in preventing tuberculosis in children, but results are variable in adults.

Antibiotics not very effective

In the 1940s and 1950s, the discovery of streptomycin and other antibiotics made it possible to treat pulmonary TB, the most common form of the disease amongst adults and teens.

But drug-resistant strains of tuberculosis emerged, forcing doctors to use antibiotic cocktails to efficiently muzzle the bacteria and to apply their treatment over several months.

Some strains are resistant to several TB drugs, forcing the use of alternative treatments for many months and leading in some cases to therapeutic failures.

Second-biggest killer

TB was the world's second-deadliest infectious disease after COVID-19 in 2020 (the latest year for which figures are available), accounting for 1.5 million deaths, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

COVID killed more than 1.8 million people that year, according to an AFP count based on official figures.

Before COVID emerged, TB had occupied the top spot, claiming more lives than HIV/AIDS, which cost 680,000 lives in 2020 according to UNAIDS.

TB is also a major cause of death amongst people living with HIV.

Disruptions in access to healthcare because of the COVID pandemic have erased years of progress toward tackling the curable disease.

As a result TB is on the rise again globally, with the number of deaths rising by seven percent in 2020.

On five continents

TB is present on all five continents, but developing countries are disproportionately affected.

In 2020, two regions accounted for the biggest number of new cases: southeast Asia recorded 43 percent of the new cases and Africa 25 percent, according to the WHO.

Two-thirds of the cases were concentrated in eight countries: Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines and South Africa.

Explore further WHO sounds alarm on TB fight funding

 2022 AFP
The Anne Arundel County Council voted 4-3 along party lines Monday night to increase the salaries for council members next term. Under the measure, council members will get about a $1,000 raise each year over a four-year term.

Democrats Sarah Lacey, Allison Pickard, Andrew Pruski and Lisa Brannigan Rodvien voted in favor of the raise. Republicans Nathan Volke, Amanda Fiedler and Jessica Haire voted against it.

Advertisement

The council appoints seven members to the Salary Standard Commission tasked with recommending salaries for the council chair, vice chair and remaining council members, beginning with the next term. The commission considers a variety of factors including cost of living, median household income in the county and council compensation history.

The commission recommended, and the council approved, raising the starting salary for council members to $42,161 effective in December when then new term starts. Council members will get incremental raises each year until 2025 when they will make $45,402. The council last voted on a salary increase in 2018 when all members, with the exception of former District 7 council member Jerry Walker, voted to raise the council salary, starting members at $38,760 in 2018 with incremental raises capping at $41,133 in 2021.

Advertisement

The commission is appointed near the end of the councils four-year term and has a small window to amend salaries, said Laura Corby, administrative officer for the council.

Volke, whose appointee to the commission  local conservative political pundit and Capital Gazette columnist Brian Griffiths  was the only member to vote against the increase, said he thought council members did not deserve to earn more than certain other county employees.

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

Volke recalled a conversation he had with the president of the fire union in 2018 when he was running for office. The union president told him a starting firefighter made about $39,000 at the time, similar to what the council was slated to make that year.

We have people running into burning buildings, saving other people and working shift work 24 [hours] on, 72 off, said Volke, of Pasadena. When you look at what were paid and what we do versus what some of the other people in this county do and what theyre paid  I just have a hard time giving us a pay increase.

Pickard, from Glen Burnie, and Rodvien, from Annapolis, responded that they hoped Volkes comment suggests he might vote for a budget that includes increases in firefighter salaries this year.

Several members of this council have voted to increase our firefighters salaries for the past three budgets, and I hope Mr. Volke will join us when we do that again in this coming year and for all county employees who worked hard during the pandemic, Rodvien said.

The council members all agreed that the job can be very demanding and requires a lot of time and energy, though it is not technically a full-time job and council members can have other jobs.

The salary increase was important as a way to attract candidates from a variety of demographics, Rodvien said, echoing similar comments she made during the councils discussion on putting a public campaign finance option on the ballot.

Advertisement

We need to make running for public office in the county accessible to everyone, Rodvien said. You shouldnt have to be independently wealthy and sacrifice your education or whatever in order to be a public servant and we really need people from all corners of the county, all backgrounds of the county and that includes, in my opinion, all economic backgrounds of the county.
The University of Montana saw a spike in reports of students being drugged at bars in Missoula last month, prompting the university to send out a campus-wide safety email.

Between Jan. 18 to Feb. 21, five students self-reported being drugged on separate occasions, Student Advocacy Resource Center Director Jen Euell said. These students also notified SARC that others were possibly slipped doses too, totaling 10 individuals targeted in four weeks.

She added that while the SARC has routinely received reports of students being drugged from time to time, the numbers in January and February were at a much higher rate than months past.

The druggings, first reported by the Montana Kaimin, happened off-campus at Missoula bars, UM spokesman Dave Kuntz said. So far, none of the incidents have led to criminal prosecution.

A public safety notice was sent out via email to UMs campus community on Feb. 9 after campus police learned of the high number of dosings. The email, which doesn't provide information on the details of the reports, says We have been hearing increased reports of drug-facilitated assaults in the Missoula community."

UMPD received the reports of the druggings in February from SARC, Kuntz said. The decision to issue a UM alert in non-emergency situations is evaluated based on circumstances that include the location of the crime.

In this particular case, because the number of reports was so significantly higher than in the past and there is an ongoing risk, we felt it was important for UMPD to know, Euell said.

If UM students or employees frequent locations reported as safety concerns, Kuntz said the university wants them to be aware so they can take precautions. The federal Clery Act requires universities to report on-campus crime and to send timely warnings if theres an ongoing threat to public safety. Kuntz explained campus officials ultimately decided the spike in druggings did fall within Clery responsibilities to send out a notification about the uptick in druggings.

"The downtown area is not within our Clery jurisdiction," he said. "However, our students go there regularly, so it was critical to let our students know about this trend. This action was done with one ultimate factor above all else, do what is best to keep our students safe."

SARC is a confidential service on campus  no identifying information or names were released from the center, but it does release data to law enforcement from time to time.

If there are disturbing trends in this information that SARC feels like indicate a danger to the public and our campus community, it is disclosed to UMPD for consideration for a public safety or Clery warning, Kuntz said.

New alert system

The safety email about the druggings piggybacks updates to the universitys safety alert system.

Last semester, the university sent out four alerts notifying its campus community about instances of sexual assault. The alerts were labeled Timely Warnings/Sexual Assaults and provided a few sentences of information about attacks that had happened previously, but were just being reported. The alerts did not detail if the suspects were allowed on campus or if disciplinary action had been taken against them.

Students expressed concern with the alerts, saying their ambiguous language and lack of information was alarming.

Now, text alerts will only be deployed to students where immediate action is required, such as a lock-down or natural disaster.

This change aims to keep the integrity of the text alert. If there is not an imminent public safety threat, UM will email students to let them know about assaults, burglaries and other reports of crime, Kuntz said. Unless there is an immediate threat tied to a report of sexual assault, text alerts wont be sent out about them anymore.

Kuntz also gave the example of black bears on campus  these notifications used to be delivered via text, but now are likely to be delivered as an email.

If you are in need of support as a survivor or secondary survivor of violence, harassment, or discrimination, the UM Student Advocacy Resource Center (SARC) offers free and confidential counseling, advocacy and a 24-hour support line at 406-243-6559. Contacting SARC does not mean you are reporting the crime to Title IX or any other reporting agency

You must be logged in to react.

Click any reaction to login. Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 4 Sad 0 Angry 2

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.
After surviving a horrific aircraft crash at the Stevensville airport in 2017, no one would have thought anything less if Michael Burks decided to never pilot another airplane in his life.

But the fact that he climbed back aboard has turned into a godsend for dozens of families facing some of the most difficult times in their lives.

A month after the crash, Burks flew his first mission for Angel Flight West.

The program connects volunteer pilots with people needing to travel long distances for medical appointments at no cost to the passenger. Burks has just eclipsed his 300 mission mark. In the last two years, he offered free flights 182 times.

Burks hopes that other pilots will join him in helping people in their time of need.

Obviously, passengers and patients are so gracious for what you do, Burks said in an interview at the Hamilton airport where he learned to fly. In return, you find yourself saying thank you for showing you how amazing life is and how strong you are. Its contagious. You get that you have to fight for everything attitude in the two hours you spend in the air with them.

You sit next to a mother of a sick child who tells you her story and you realize just how blessed your life has been, he said. You dont know anything until you talk with a mother who is fighting for the life of her child and what theyve had to give up  For me to be able to alleviate one small aspect of that horrific journey; you just need to tell me where to be.

Angel Flight Wests Montana Wing Leader was recently selected as one of three volunteer pilots to receive the 8th annual AFW Endeavor Award that honors pilots who go above and beyond to serve their communities through donated flights. In 2021, he was selected by the National Aeronautics Association for its Public Benefit Flying Award for Distinguished Volunteer Pilot of 2021.

Burks is a well-known Missoula businessman who helped found the Missoula Maulers in 2005, ran a Christian bookstore for 13 years, and now owns Fuel Fitness gymnasiums in Montana and Idaho.

Burks spent three years working with local filmmaker, Joe McNeal, to produce a 12-minute documentary that they hope will encourage other pilots across the country and the world to volunteer to help.

The documentary, Angels Do Fly West, focuses on the relationship between Burks and Mya Toone and her mother, Carly Brown. Burks flew the family to Seattle nearly 20 times for medical appointments for Toone.

In the video, Brown said her daughter has been through at least 20 surgeries to address a myriad of medical issues. Long drives in a car are painful for her, but for whatever reason, Toone falls asleep soon after takeoff in Burks airplane.

Mya is in so much pain and is so uncomfortable while in a car, Brown said. It means a lot to me to be able to see her relax for a second and not be uncomfortable and be able to get home faster. Its huge. She goes through so much already.

I just dont think that people understand the depth of what families go through and what kids go through and the toll it takes on families, she said. I think if people could step back and see what thing, one flight could do and how it benefits and helps, I think a lot more people would do it.

Burks hopes that other pilots will give it a try.

You have no idea how amazing it feels to bless someone, a kid, a parent or whoever is involved in this program by doing something that you love, Burks said. Doing one mission a month. Spending two or three hours a month. Flying a patient of any age is the most rewarding thing youll ever do. If every pilot in this country did 12 flights a year, there would not be one person left behind. No one would ever have to drive.

McNeal isnt a pilot but hes seen the difference this program can make to anyone that it touches.

When he started working on the documentary, he reached out to other professionals for help. Once they learned about the program, they all offered their services for free.

McNeal attended an Angel Flight West retreat in California with Burks. His crew interviewed about 20 pilots involved in the program.

They were people from all different walks of life, McNeal said. Everyone was there for one reason and one reason only. They wanted to help people. And they were all there to encourage each other to keep doing it.

Burks said that retreat in 2019 was an experience that hell not soon forget.

Things in the world were getting a little rough at that time with people yelling and screaming at one another, Burks said. When we walked into that retreat, there were about 200 people. All the hate, disgust and division was gone. You walk into this room where everyone is high-fiving each other.

All you want to do is be able to bring that to the outside, he said. You want to try to bring that feeling of unity with people who all want the same thing. People can understand that there is a way in this crazy world that people can be happy. It comes from helping others.

To see the documentary, go to go.ravallirepublic.com/AngelsFlyWest

Learn more about Angels Flight West at https://www.angelflightwest.org/

You must be logged in to react.

Click any reaction to login. 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.
The state public defender's office has challenged an order holding the agency in contempt for failing to assign attorneys to defendants quickly enough, contending the lack of a stable workforce is beyond the agency's control.

The Office of the State Public Defender filed its petition with the Montana Supreme Court on Friday, arguing that Yellowstone County District Court Judge Don Harris exceeded his authority when he ordered the agency last month to assign legal representation to defendants within three days, and then held the agency in contempt when it failed to do so. The February contempt order was the second such ruling in six months against OPD, as the agency's longstanding funding struggles have hit a breaking point, particularly in Yellowstone County.

The earlier contempt ruling, according to The Billings Gazette, came after Harris learned more than 650 defendants were without legal representation in Yellowstone County District Court. In that instance, Harris fined OPD $500 per case in his own court, a total that came to $15,000, according to OPD's petition. The agency paid that fine, further depleting OPD's resources.

Harris' Feb. 2 order also included a $500 fine for each of the 17 cases in which OPD had not assigned an attorney within the three-day window established in his earlier order finding the agency in contempt. Those fines, totaling $8,500, were due on March 4. Two days before the fines were due, OPD filed a motion with Harris to pause those fines while their petition with the state Supreme Court plays out. Harris granted the motion the same day, writing that a pause on the collection was "appropriate and reasonable."

Officials from the state public defender's office described the agency's workforce quagmire in an update to state legislators on the Law and Justice Interim Committee on Tuesday. Retaining employees in Billings remains the largest issue facing the office, OPD development and operations bureau chief Brett Schandelson told lawmakers. Attorneys can move laterally within state government and get a different attorney job for $13,000 more annually than they can with OPD, he said. Rates in the private sector are higher yet.

As a result, the office is short 31 employees statewide; 26 of them are attorneys, Rhonda Lindquist, director of the Office of the State Public Defender, told the committee on Tuesday. At the same time, case filings are slightly down, but those that have been filed in recent years are more serious crimes, Schandelson said, requiring more time and effort on each case.

"We are working diligently with the (state) budget office to figure out what we can do to make that look different," Lindquist said.

To help ease that burden, federal COVID aid money redistributed by the state has allowed OPD to contract with a local law firm to handle cases at the city court level. That contract, however, expires in June, Schandelson said.

In the Supreme Court case, OPD argues Harris' actions of sanctioning the agency into compliance is only hurting the situation.

"OPD shares the district court's commitment to the constitutional rights of Montana defendants, but that does not change the undisputed reality that OPD does not have the resources necessary to comply with the contempt order, to say nothing of the frequent situations where conflicts  require OPD to engage in the often lengthy process of locating suitable contract counsel," attorneys for the agency wrote in their petition. " Contempt is not appropriate where the contemnor lacked the ability to comply with the order in the first instance."

The public defenders office filed their petition with the Montana Supreme Court on March 18. While the petition makes no reference to the landmark ruling, March 18 happens to be the anniversary of the Gideon v. Wainwright case in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1963 that states are required to provide legal counsel for defendants who cannot afford them.

Harris has not yet filed a response to the agency's petition.

You must be logged in to react.

Click any reaction to login. Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 1 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.
State officials and local law enforcement are investigating an assault on a patient by another patient at the state psychiatric hospital Monday evening, the state health department confirmed Tuesday.

The attack comes at a moment for the Montana State Hospital where severe understaffing has contributed to the "immediate jeopardy" status imposed by the federal inspectors last month. The facility came in $7 million over budget this year after an increasing reliance on contract staff to supplement the ranks.

A spokesperson for Providence St. Patrick Hospital, which has a Level II trauma center, did not immediately return a call seeking a status update on the victim. Sources say the victim was taken to a Missoula hospital.

Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services spokesperson Jon Ebelt on Tuesday confirmed the department is working with local law enforcement but declined to comment further before the conclusion of its investigation.

DPHHS can confirm a patient-on-patient incident occurred at Montana State Hospital (MSH) Monday evening. At this time, MSH officials are working with local law enforcement and conducting an internal investigation. Until all the facts are known, DPHHS will not be able to comment further.

A detention officer at the Deer Lodge County jail on Tuesday said no one had been booked into the jail on charges related to an assault at the Warm Springs facility.

You must be logged in to react.

Click any reaction to login. Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 1 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 Missoula County Public Schools' Board of Trustees is entering an important election period this spring which will include trustee and operating levy elections for the Elementary District and the High School District. More information regarding the MCPS budget and the request for operating levies is available in the board meeting minutes and from the MCPS administration. Since joining the board nine years ago, I have reviewed the entire budget each year, and I encourage anyone who is interested to do the same. I am convinced that MCPS is an excellent steward of public money and that the proposed operating levies will be well-used to the benefit of our students.

I ask the public to please take the opportunity to review the MCPS budget, and I strongly urge support of the operating levies in the upcoming election.

MCPS serves 8,739 students and employs 1,970 teachers and support staff. Over 90% of the MCPS budget is used for salaries and benefits for teachers and staff. The employees are represented by unions, and the board assigns trustees to participate in the union negotiations as appropriate.

The MCPS Board also reviews textbook purchases, as required by policy. Right now, MCPS is in the process of reviewing the district-wide science curriculum and ensuring that it aligns with state standards. The proposed new science textbooks will be made available for board and public review before the board vote.

The MCPS Board works diligently to follow Montanas Open Meeting Law, which means we only discuss items that are on the agenda and have been noticed to the public. We allow public comment at each meeting, and the commenters sometimes get excited and say all sorts of things. At the March 8 meeting, MCPS was discussing the school schedules, and a commenter brought up the bus company. The Board did not discuss that item because it was not on the agenda. MCPS has a Transportation Committee which reviews the bus contracts each year and includes trustee participation.

In the upcoming year, the MCPS Board will have an inclusive community input process about the bell times and bus schedules. Over the years, MCPS has used this organized public and Trustee collaborative process to reach some very creative and innovative solutions to educational issues.

Diane R. Lorenzen is the chair of the Missoula County Public Schools' Board of Trustees.

You must be logged in to react.

Click any reaction to login. Love 3 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 1
Outgoing Gov. Larry Hogan has thrown his official endorsement behind fellow Republican Kelly Schulz for Marylands next governor, citing their years of close political collaboration and calling Schulz the only candidate able to continue the legacy of his two terms in office.

The governors move Tuesday to endorse Schulz, who spent seven years as a cabinet secretary under Hogan, hardly came as a surprise. Hogan, who is term-limited, has lauded Schulzs credentials repeatedly in response to attacks from Del. Dan Cox, Schulzs leading rival for the Republican nomination and a frequent right-wing critic of Hogan.

Advertisement

Hogan touted his own approval ratings and the states improved economy since he first took office in 2016 while making his pitch Tuesday for Schulz to a hotel ballroom filled with supporters on the Annapolis waterfront.

Every other candidate in the crowded field for governor  nearly a dozen Democrats, three other Republicans, a Libertarian and an independent  want to take us in a completely different direction, Hogan said.

Advertisement

Theres only one candidate who has the experience, the ability and the desire to keep moving Maryland forward, to keep changing Maryland for the better, who can get the job done and continue the legacy, he said.

Schulz, 53, embraced Hogans endorsement and framed her candidacy as a continuation of Hogans leadership toward a safe, steady and prosperous Maryland.

We started on this journey eight years ago, but we have to be able to continue on the path, Schulz said.

Schulz noted that, if elected, she would be the first female governor in the states history.

Schulz was previously a Republican state delegate representing Frederick County before serving as labor and then commerce secretary under Hogan. She resigned from the administration in January to campaign full-time.

She said her running mate for lieutenant governor, Jeff Woolford, couldnt make Tuesdays event because he was serving with the Maryland Air National Guard in Texas.

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

Schulz echoed Hogans rhetoric on violent crime, raising the issue several times in brief remarks to urge harsher punishments as a solution for what she described as perhaps the most pressing issue facing the state.

Were going to treat the criminals like criminals, Schulz said, and the police officers like heroes.

Advertisement

She faces three other contenders for the Republican nomination. In addition to Cox, she faces perennial gadfly candidate  and recently disbarred attorney  Robin Ficker as well as Baltimore County resident Joe Werner.

Former President Donald Trump, who frequently traded barbs with Hogan, boosted Coxs candidacy by offering his endorsement in November. Cox embraced Trumps unfounded claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, unsuccessfully sued Hogan to overturn emergency pandemic restrictions and filed a resolution to impeach Hogan, a stunt quickly and quietly dismissed by his fellow Republican lawmakers.

Schulz brushed aside a question Tuesday about Trumps endorsement of her opponent and said she was more focused on having the most popular governor standing beside her to champion what she said were their accomplishments improving the business climate in the state.

Cox has ignored repeated messages and interview requests from The Baltimore Sun and did so again this week.

A crowded field of at least 11 Democratic candidates are currently jockeying for their partys nomination for governor, including, among others, Comptroller Peter Franchot; Tom Perez, the former U.S. labor secretary and chairman of the Democratic National Committee; Wes Moore, an author and former nonprofit executive; former U.S. Education Secretary John King; former Maryland Attorney General Doug Gansler; and Rushern Baker III, the former executive of Prince Georges County.
Concerned about the catastrophic crash in elk populations locally, I attended the public meeting hosted by Montana Fish, Wildlife, & Parks in Drummond on Jan. 4. About 25 concerned citizens, landowners, and sportsmen attended, conducted by Randy Arnold, the new Region 2 Director. He took lots of time to assure us that our comments, both at the meeting and online, were important and would hold considerable weight in the management proposals. We were told over and over that FWP was there to listen and that our voices were vital in establishing management goals.

At the meeting, it was unanimous by every single attendee that the elk populations in the lower Flint Creek Valley, specifically units 210 and 217, were catastrophically low. Our sheriff commented that in 45 years of hunting here he has never seen so few elk  ever! There was consensus that the four years of the Aug. 15 cow elk rifle seasons had been disastrous for elk populations and should be immediately discontinued. There was agreement that no rifle seasons should be put over the top of archery season. There were zero opinions or comments contrary to those positions. When asked when and how FWP established the local elk population objectives, neither Mr. Arnold nor any other FWP person at the meeting could answer that most basic of questions, and again there was unanimous consensus that the local elk populations need to be drastically increased. Those are the facts from the public meeting on Jan. 4.

Now open the online 2022 regulations and read the management plan to further exterminate our elk herds. Using FWP's own elk counts, in 2017 there were 1,384 elk in unit 217, just before the Aug. 15 cow elk rifle tags were available. In 2020, FWP recorded 688 elk, an astounding confession that in three seasons FWP had overseen the slaughter of over half the elk population. Nobody that lives or hunts here believes there is half that many elk, but let's pretend that there are 688 elk. Here are the 2022 elk permits available for unit 217: 300 private-land antlerless, 160 unit-wide antlerless, 175 either-sex, and 25 youth either-sex tags. That equals 660 permits, a permit for every single elk on the unit. A general tag can also be used in certain seasons, so FWP is permitting well over 100% of the elk in unit 217 for the 2022 season. This is the extinction theory of elk management! FWP has no concern for the long term viability and growth of the elk population, and are perfectly deaf to the unanimous concerns of the Jan. 4 public meeting. Revenue is evidently the major concern.

Overlapping rifle seasons on top of archery season is wrong from a safety, management, and ethical perspective. Archery hunters pay FWP $10 a year for our archery season, and for the fifth year in a row FWP has cheated us archers under the pretext of the clearly unnecessary emergency tool of opening cow elk rifle hunting Aug. 15 overlapping through general archery season. I voiced this concern directly to FWP Director Hank Worsech over the phone and he seemed to agree, but as usual nothing changed.

Despite our unanimous public concerns, FWP continues to manage for the steep decline of our local elk herds. As land use, access, and predator dynamics are changing, the population objectives in these units must be modified dramatically higher under a conservative management plan. The vast majority of us that live and hunt in the lower Flint Creek Valley liked it in 2017 when there were robust and huntable populations of elk. If you get one of these tags and don't even see an elk, much less get one, you can blame the mismanagement of Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks.

We deserve better.

Chris Dahl is a life member of the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, life member of the NRA, and has hunted in the Lower Flint Creek Valley for 30 years. He is the founder and co-owner of Dahl Wholesale based in Drummond.

You must be logged in to react.

Click any reaction to login. Love 2 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 2 Angry 0
Al Murray has mocked Kate Middleton over a witless photo of the royal during a controversial visit to Jamaica.

Middleton and her husband Prince William are currently in the country and have been met with protests and controversy over Britains historical role in the slave trade.

The picture in question features Middleton on one side of a chain-linked fence, with Jamaicans on the other side trying to shake hands with her.

Murray posted the photo and sarcastically captioned it with: YES THATS THE BEST PICTURE YES LETS GO WITH THAT.

He later replied to another tweet questioning whether he would have the same response if it was Meghan Markle in the photo.

Yes because whoever approved that image would have been as docile and witless too, which Im sure you realise was the point I was making, he said.

Comedian Shappi Khorsandi also tweeted: WHAT were the other pictures like????

Others responding to the image called it tone deaf and an embarrassing farce.

The royal couples visit has been met with fierce criticism from Jamaica, with many political leaders demanding an apology and reparations for Britains running of the slave trade in the Caribbean.

There have also been calls for Jamaica to declare itself a republic and remove the Queen as its head of state, as neighbouring island Barbados did in 2021.

YES THAT'S THE BEST PICTURE YES LET'S GO WITH THAT pic.twitter.com/dMUGJihugO  Al Murray - DKMS.ORG.UK  (@almurray) March 23, 2022

Dancehall legend Beenie Man said this week that Jamaicans dont want the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge to visit the country.

The couple had to cancel an earlier visit to a village in Belize over protests relating to Britains role in the slave trade.
Were all tired, and not just physically.

People are tired of slogging away until dark every day when they should be on the playground with their kids or taking invigorating walks with their dogs.

Their kids are tired of getting home in the dark.

The dogs are tired because  well, maybe because dogs are just lazy. (Sorry, Brandy; youre adorable anyway.)

Everyones tired of partisan bickering and unilateral decision-making, tired of the others inability to see things that should be crystal clear. They want more sunlight on how key legislative decisions are being made.

Clearly not all this fatigue  emotional, physical and spiritual  can be laid at the feet of elected officials, but they could go a long way to alleviating some of it. And now, finally, at both state and federal levels, they may be about to do it.

Daylight saving time shall be the official time in this state, reads the bipartisan Iowa House File 2331. Thats followed by an explanation of the solar time of the 90th meridian of longitude west of Greenwich, England, which is followed by a bunch of crossed-out words of existing law and then some 30 paragraphs on insurance contracts relating to the proposed change.

The bill would have it take effect once the federal government grants permission for states to adopt year-round daylight saving time. Either way, the early darkening of skies we all have to suffer through from November to March, aka Standard Time, would be replaced by that extra hour of evening daylight.

For some of us, this prospect feels like a shot in the arm of adrenaline  hope  Vitamin D. Irrationally so, perhaps, because its just one more hour of sunlight a day. But it comes at that very time of day when work life usually shifts to personal life, and it feels like a cruel ruse to have daylight snatched away.

Daylight saving time dates back to World War I

Changing the time twice a year began during World War I, when Germany wanted to save the coal used to power lights by taking more advantage of daylight. In the U.S., daylight saving was abolished after that war before it was reinstated during the 1940s. The government fiddled around with it some more during the oil embargo of the 1970s, and subsequently in 1986 and 2005. But it still always ends in fall.

Fifteen states have already passed legislation or resolutions to make daylight saving time year-round, all contingent on federal approval. On March 15, the U.S. Senate unanimously approved the Sunshine Protection Act of 2021, with almost no warning or debate. The U.S. House held a hearing on a similar measure.

A USA Today op-ed piece authored last March by Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., championed the Senate bill, saying permanent daylight saving time could reduce seasonal depression, heart problems and stroke risks and increase economic activity and energy savings.

Standard time or daylight time? Polling reveals a divide

Still, some people feel equally committed to holding onto standard time. A 2019 Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll found 70% of Americans dont like switching back and forth between times. But 40% would actually prefer keeping standard time while 30% would save daylight.

Registered opposition to the Iowa bill comes from the Iowa Chamber Alliance, several cities chambers of commerce, and the Iowa Broadcasters associations. Brad Epperly, the lobbyist for those groups, said the opposition was based on those chambers being in communities bordering other states and potential problems coordinating schedules.

Only Iowa Mental Health Advocacy was registered for it. For people with brain illnesses like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and schizoaffective disorder, turning the clock forward and backward can both have serious negative effects, lobbyist Leslie Carpenter said.

Changes in structure and schedule can have the most serious impacts on their mental health, she said.

Her 31-year-old son, who has schizoaffective disorder, fears going out when it gets dark in fall.

It makes his voices worse, his paranoia worse, she said. Many times hes gone into psychosis, and that resulted in hospitalization.

Carpenter stressed that her preference for saving daylight is anecdotal and based on observations. She has, she notes, been contacted by a couple of people, one of them a psychologist, who advocate keeping standard time year-round. But she said she has yet to receive any research supporting that preference.

One study claims that an hour more of light in the evenings results in 19 minutes less sleep a night, which in turn interferes with circadian rhythms. Some scientists suggest that without natural light to regulate them, the bodys natural defenses could wear down. Some then make the leap to obesity, metabolic disorders, cardiovascular issues, depression and even cancer.

A New York Times piece says arguments claiming public health benefits either way havent been well studied. Its near impossible to conduct national experiments on the topic, it says. Some results are contradictory. It also says business leaders, academics and U.S. senators of both parties favor standardizing daylight saving.

So do late-night talk show hosts, apparently. The day the U.S. Senate passed the bill, Jimmy Kimmel said he was proud to be an American, and hailed the idea that the sun shall never again set at lunchtime on Christmas Day, and may God bless us, every one.

Jimmy Fallon quipped: Today everyone in the Senate was like, What happens now? Weve never passed a bill before; this is weird.

Murray and Rubio also wrote, Researchers have suggested that wed experience fewer car accidents and evening robberies, thanks to a more regular schedule and the extra hour of sun later in the day.

Look, I really want daylight saving time to be the norm, but the skeptic in me has to question claims like that. They remind me of a late friends reaction every time a weekend storm was forecast, and people went into panic buying so that staples like milk bread and toilet paper disappeared from store shelves.

Dont they keep enough of those things on hand? she asked.

Likewise, that makes me wonder: Couldnt robbers just wait an hour?

After spending much of my childhood criss-crossing the globe between India and America, and adapting to 10-hour or 11-hour time differences, I can testify thats a tough adjustment. But one hour should be manageable for most.

Isnt everyone more resilient and upbeat with more sunlight in their day? Could sticking with daylight saving, especially on cold winter nights like ours, help cure the defiance that leads to partisan standoffs? Well, no, but if I could regularly share a glass of wine on the deck after work with a person of the opposite political persuasion, Im pretty sure wed find some common ground.

One step at a time. First, Let the sunshine in. Then maybe, love, enlightenment, and a new age of Aquarius.

Rekha Basu is an opinion columnist for The Des Moines Register.
Take a look back at some of the memorable events that took place in or affected Burke County, reported in The News Herald in the last 136 years:

1875-83: Broughton Hospital founded

The General Assembly appropriated funds for what would become the Western North Carolina Insane Asylum in Morganton in 1875, due in part to the efforts of 19th-century social reformer Dorothea Dix, who championed the rights of the mentally ill, according to a history of the facility published by the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services and Dix biography.

The hospital accepted its first patient March 29, 1883. Dr. Patrick Livingston Murphy served as its first superintendent.

The name of hospital was changed to the State Hospital at Morganton in 1890, and then to Broughton Hospital in 1959, in honor of Gov. J. Melville Broughton.

Over its history, the hospital grew its campus, buildings, staff and programs to provide a wide variety of services to people of all ages and circumstances dealing with mental health issues. Broughton was accredited by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Health Care Organizations in 1973.

The state broke ground for a new hospital facility on the Broughton campus in 2012. The building was dedicated in 2019.

1883: Town of Glen Alpine founded

The town of Glen Alpine was originally a small settlement called Turkey Tail, according to a history published by the town.

The Western North Carolina Railroad (later the Southern Railroad) was built through this section in 1868, and the little community called Turkey Tail had its beginning then, the history reads. The name Turkey Tail was derived from a tree near the railroad tracks that had the shape of a turkeys tail.

The town was briefly renamed Sigmundsburg in honor of brothers Columbus and Edward Sigmon (Sigmund), who operated a store/post office there, but by 1883, it was known as Glen Alpine Station. Station was dropped from the name in 1896.

1893: Town of Valdese founded

The Waldensians, Protestant refugees from Europe, fled their homeland in the Cottian Alps in Italy to escape religious persecution and immigrated to America, founding the town of Valdese in 1893.

The Rev. Dr. Kevin Frederick wrote about the Waldensian people in his book, With Their Backs Against The Mountains  850 Years of Waldensian Witness, according to a previous <&rdpEm>News Herald</&rdpEm> article. He said 29 Waldensian settlers, including children, arrived May 29, 1893, in Valdese. They had spent all the money they had to make the trip and to make a down payment on 200 acres of cleared land and 10,000 acres of wooded land.

Additional Waldensians arrived later that year. The plan was to sell lumber and raise enough food to sustain them through the winter and spring. Instead, their potato crops failed two years in a row, and they relied on residents of Connelly Springs and the Concord/Charlotte Presbytery for food, clothing and other basic needs.

Their endurance through all that hardship, when they didnt know where their next meal was coming from, was what I would call a witness to the power of their faith, Frederick said. They believed in being in America. None of them said, We cant handle this, were going back to Italy. They stayed and they endured, and as a result, they built a community that at one time in the 30s was the fastest growing community in North Carolina.

1894: N.C. School for the Deaf founded

From the 1840s to the 1890s, deaf students in North Carolina were taught at the Governor Morehead School in Raleigh, which served both blind and deaf students at the time, according to a history published by the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.

By 1890, a movement was afoot to create a separate school for the deaf to alleviate overcrowding at the Raleigh campus, the history reads. Morganton civic leaders, organized by Samuel McDowell Tate, sought the new school, offering the state $5,000 and 100 acres on Spa Hill, a picturesque hilltop setting on the outskirts of town.

Construction began in 1891, and the N.C. School for the Deaf opened with 104 students and eight teachers on Oct. 2, 1894. Edward McKee Goodwin served as the schools first superintendent until his death in 1937.

The Jeter family of Morganton played a prominent role in the schools history, according to a previous News Herald article. Dr. Ireneus Pilmore Jeter, his wife, Nannie McKay Fleming Jeter, and their daughters, Nan Jeter and Mary Tucker Jeter Walker, collectively served the school as teachers, principals or on its board of directors for 75 years.

Today, the North Carolina School for the Deaf campus in Morganton has 19 buildings and students in kindergarten through 12th grade, the history reads.

1898-1906: More Burke County towns incorporated

The time period of 1898-1906 saw major growth in Burke County, illustrated by the incorporation of the town of Icard in 1898, the town of Drexel in 1900, the town of Rutherford College in 1901 and the town of Hildebran in 1906, according to information provided by the North Carolina Room at the Burke County Public Library.

1906: Grace Hospital founded

Grace Hospital in Morganton began as a mission of Grace Episcopal Church, according to a history of the hospital. The Rev. Walter Hughson was rector at the time.

The church hired Maria Purdon Allen of Philadelphia in 1903 as visiting nurse to the missions, the history reads. After Allen wrote an article in a national church publication called The Spirit of the Missions, about the need for a hospital in the area which she believed could be built for $3,000, friends and strangers began sending money for the project. Mrs. George Zabriskie Gray of New York sent $3,000 in memory of her daughter, Grace, then another $2,000, of which $1,000 was designated to build a ward for African-Americans. Hughson took charge of the project, and the first Grace Hospital was built on King Street in Morganton across from the Episcopal rectory. The hospital opened Aug. 1, 1906, with two white wards, one male and one female, with four beds each and a crib, and an annex for black patients with two wards of four beds each. The hospital had an operating room and a dispensary. Mrs. Hughson became the first superintendent of the hospital.

Graces sister hospital, Valdese General Hospital, opened in 1939. The Morganton hospital moved to a larger facility on Sterling Street in the 1970s, where it is known today as UNC Health Blue Ridge  Morganton.

This information was compiled mostly from previous News Herald articles, the North Carolina Room at the Burke County Public Library and various state historical records.
Imagine being a patient of a doctor, one whom you loved and trusted but who also murdered and mutilated his own father.

Such an experience forms the basis for a new book, The Other Dr. Gilmer: Two Men, a Murder, and an Unlikely Fight for Justice, by Benjamin Gilmer.

This very real tragedy happened to the patients of the Cane Creek Family Health Center near Asheville, where the doctor-murderer, Dr. Vince Gilmer, practiced medicine until June 2004, when one day he strangled his father with a rope, cut off his fingers, and left the body on the side of a road in Virginia.

Vince Gilmer returned to the clinic after the murder and practiced medicine as if nothing happened for several days until he was arrested for murder.

Several years after Vinces arrest and trial and imprisonment in the Wallens Ridge, Virginia, prison, the books author, Dr. Benjamin Gilmer, a graduate of Davidson College and East Carolina Universitys medical school, began to work at the Cane Creek clinic.

Naturally, there was confusion. The two doctors were not related, but understandably the patients thought there must be some connection.

Over time, Benjamins patients told him more and more about Vince. They said he was a fine doctor and a wonderful person. Vince took special care, sometimes taking troubled patients on walks or giving them great big bear hugs.

Benjamin became more curious about his predecessor with the shared name. His curiosity developed into a compulsion to find out how and why and what actually happened to Vince.

Something wasnt right, Benjamin said. I couldnt let it go.

He began to visit the prison at Wallens Ridge, where Vince was incarcerated.

These visits convinced Benjamin that Vince had serious mental health issues not recognized by or of concern to the prison officials. Without treatment, Vince would never get better and the demons of his mental illness would destroy him.

Benjamin also read hundreds of pages of transcripts of Vinces murder trial. Vince had tried to represent himself. He succeeded only in convincing the judge and jury that he was faking mental illness. They thought he was using the skills and knowledge of a sane physician to try to act mentally disturbed and avoid responsibility for a brutal murder.

From his study of Vinces situation, Benjamin believed that Vince had multiple conditions that could have caused his mental illness. Most important to him was a finding that Vince suffered from Huntingtons disease, an inherited condition that ravages its victims and causes bizarre conduct.

If Vinces condition had been known at the time of his trial, Benjamin believed that he would have, at worst, been found not guilty by reason of insanity. Rather than petition for a new trial which would have taken years, Benjamin and his advisers and volunteer professionals asked Virginia governors for clemency.

First, they petitioned Gov. Terry McAuliffe, hoping he would act before he left office in January 2018. He did not. So Benjamins volunteer legal helpers pointed to McAuliffes successor, Ralph Northam, a physician and a neurologist. They thought he would be understanding.

The book ends on a sad note. As his term ended in January 2022, Northam rejected the clemency petition for Vince.

At the end of his book, Benjamin writes, It is difficult not to react to this latest setback with anger and disillusionment. ... I am filled with fury and sadness  for Vince, his family, for all the mentally ill people in prison just like him.

A sad ending for this book.

But there is more to the story. Somehow, Northam read a pre-publication copy of The Other Dr. Gilmer and was convinced to grant Vince clemency, just in time.

Others who read this fine book will, like Northam, be transformed.
REC Silicon ASA and Aker Horizons, a longtime investor in REC Silicon, announced Wednesday that Aker Horizons had sold all of its shares in REC Silicon to Hanwha, another REC investor. The company is based in South Korea.

Hanwha is now reported to be REC Silicon's largest investor. Solar Industry reported Wednesday that "Hanwha intends to implement a multi-phase, multi-billion dollar investment plan across the full solar value chain, from polysilicon to solar modules."

REC Silicon, headquartered in Norway, has a plant in the Montana Connections Business Development Park west of Butte. The facility has manufactured electronics grade polysilicon, Silane gas and other products.

REC Silicon shut down its plant in Moses Lake, Washington, in 2019 due to ripple effects of trade wars with China about solar products.

In a news release Wednesday, Kristian Rekke, CEO of Aker Horizons, said Hanwha has the right expertise to contribute to the successful reopening of Moses Lake.

Rekke added, Todays announcement is a major step in rebuilding the U.S. solar supply chain. Hanwha is a leading solar photovoltaic manufacturer globally.

REC Silicon ASA is a holding company that engages in the manufacture and trade of silicon materials. Its products include solar grade polysilicon, electronic grade polysilicon, and silicon gases.

Douglas Moore, chief financial officer for REC Silicon, said Wednesday that its not yet clear how the transaction between Aker Horizons and Hanwha will affect REC Silicon.

Were still trying to work through what it means, Moore said.

He said the REC Silicon plant west of Butte employs slightly more than 200 people.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 1 Sad 0 Angry 2
A jury deliberated more than two hours Tuesday night before convicting a 31-year-old Butte man accused of raping a young woman in her house on a December night in 2019.

The jury found Dillon Patrick Pierce guilty of sexual intercourse without consent, which in this case carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. District Judge Robert Whelan ordered a presentence investigation and set sentencing for May 4.

Pierce listened without emotion as the verdict was read and after hugging two supporters was cuffed and taken to jail. He had been free on bond and his attorney, Suzanne Marshall Malloy, asked that he remain free pending sentencing, but Whelan denied that. He said she could put the request in writing and he would consider it later this week.

The victim lives in Colorado now but was in Butte to testify Monday, and when prosecutors learned a verdict had been reached Tuesday night, they called her so she could be in the courtroom when it was announced.

The woman testified on the first day of the trial Monday that she was too drunk to remember much on the night of Dec. 5, 2019, but knows she awoke in her house with a man on top of her and told him to stop.

Malloy said the woman was so drunk she couldnt recall driving home but was claiming she was raped when she was not.

She invited Mr. Pierce to her home, she asked him to come in for a sexual encounter and he did, Malloy told jurors. She consented.

The woman was in her 20s when the alleged assault took place. The Montana Standard is not naming her to protect potential victims of sexual assault.

In closing arguments Tuesday, lead prosecutor Mike Clague acknowledged the alleged victim drank a lot of alcohol  so much so, he said, there was no way she could have given consent to sex.

But she could recall waking up, he said, and her accounts of what was happening then were consistent during two interviews with police and during a rape exam at the hospital.

The only person during the trial who said it was consensual was the defense attorney, Clague said, and she blamed the victim for everything. Pierce did not take the stand and the defense called none of its own witnesses.

When you drink as much alcohol as she did, you cannot consent, Clague said in an amplified voice. Dont let Ms. Marshall blame this young lady for what Dillon Pierce did.

The woman acknowledges she was drunk and said she did not immediately know it was Pierce who was on top of her when she awoke.

But prosecutors say she exchanged Facebook messages with Pierce earlier that night, told him where she lived, left her door unlocked, and DNA from semen found on items in the bedroom matched Pierce.

The state crime lab completed its DNA profile in November 2020, the match was confirmed the next month and prosecutors filed the rape charge a month later in January 2021.

Prosecutors said the woman called a friend after the alleged assault and several hours later, while at St. James Hospital for an exam, her blood-alcohol content was 0.148 percent. A person is considered drunk at 0.08 percent.

But the woman testified Monday she does recall waking up in her bed that night with someone on top of her having intercourse and telling him to stop. She said she was face down.

He pushed my head down and said I asked for it, she said. My entire body froze.

When it was over, she said she pointed him toward the bathroom and he soon left. She called two friends, among others, one of them called police and an officer came to the house to investigate. Facebook messages were preserved.

She told police she had gone to the Acoma bar around 3 p.m. that day and drank three or four Blue Moon beers. She said she then went to the Dublin and had a mixed drink and had four more mixed drinks at Maloneys and then drove home.

She had received a waving-hand emoji from Pierce around 8:50 p.m. and replied with a message that said, Come drink.

He replies by inviting her to his place, she says hes welcome to join her at Maloneys and he responds by messaging, Ugghhh how and what would I get for doing so there lil lady?

They exchanged more messages and she indicated she was drunk and had to find her vehicle. She then called him but does not remember doing so and then sends messages saying she was home and the door was unlocked. He says he will be over in 20 minutes.

Two of the womans friends testified Monday that she called them and was extremely upset, and on Tuesday, a female police officer who went to the home that night took the stand.

Officer Michelle Knopp had a body cam operating when she arrived and 20 minutes of footage was shown to jurors. It began with the alleged victim answering the door crying and upset.

Audio of what she was saying was unclear at times and Knopp said she was clearly intoxicated, but also showed signs consistent with trauma. They included the woman curling up and clutching a large pillow to her chest.

But she is heard telling the officer she woke up with someone on top of her and when she told him to stop, He said I asked for it, and pushed her face down.

Malloy, the defense attorney, said in opening arguments and through questioning that the woman was extremely intoxicated and actually drank at a bar before hitting the other three that afternoon and night.

A nurse who did a rape exam said she took swabs of secretions found on the alleged victims pelvic area, but the woman would not consent to a vaginal exam, saying she was tired and wanted her gynecologist to do that.

Malloy said the woman could not recall a lot of things that night, including leaving the last bar, calling Pierce, driving home or getting into bed. She couldnt even remember seeing Pierce at the house or recognizing his face, Malloy said.

But the one thing she wants you to believe is that he said, You asked for it, Malloy told jurors. The only thing she wants you to believe is she said no.

Malloy said in the Facebook messages, the woman invited Pierce over, gave him her address and said the door was unlocked.

Consent has to be viewed in light of everything, she said in closing arguments.

She also suggested throughout the trial that the officer who responded that night and a detective who investigated the case failed to ask many obvious questions or do follow-up interviews with bartenders and others.

One of the alleged victims friends texted Dillon later that night and asked if he had gone to her house. He texted back that she had invited him to go drinking but said he did not go to her house.

Love 0 Funny 1 Wow 3 Sad 17 Angry 17

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.
ARCHIVED - Fast route to fines in Spain: Misuse of GPS could cost you dearly



Distractions at the wheel are the main cause of fatal road traffic accidents in Spain

Theres hardly a driver out there who hasnt used a GPS system to get around at some point, be it a built-in navigator, a portable device or one of the many apps available these days on mobile phones. But however handy these tools can be for steering through unfamiliar cities, GPS systems can end up being a danger, not only in terms of road safety but for your pocket too.

You might also like: Hefty fines for driving a dirty car in Spain

This regulation also extends to navigation aids, and drivers will face a 200 euro fine and the loss of six points from their licence if they so much as touch their GPS system while the car is moving.

Reducing distractions at the wheel is one of the main objectives of the DGT with the modification of the Traffic Law; thus, GPS devices can be programmed and placed in a visible position in the vehicle prior to setting off, but they cant be changed or altered by hand once the journey has begun. In order to alter a route, turn off the system or manipulate it in any way, drivers must pull over to a safe spot and bring their car to a complete stop.

According to the latest data, distractions whilst driving have been the top cause of fatal traffic accidents in Spain since 2016.

Image: Wikimedia Commons
MUSCATINE  After two years of being unable to host foreign exchange students because of the global pandemic, Muscatine organizations are hoping to once again welcome international students in the community.

The Stanley Center for Peace and Security, in coordination with the AFS International Program/USA and Rotary Exchange, is seeking families interested in hosting high school exchange students. They would attend Muscatine High School.

Research is clear that one of the best paths to building cultural understanding and acceptance of others is through people-to-people exchange, said Krista Regennitter, Stanley Centers Program Officer for Global Education.

Families can choose to host for three months, or six to nine months. Exchange students are responsible for their own spending money and medical coverage; host families provide daily meals and a place for the student to sleep and study.

Stanley Center staff members hope to promote cultural sharing and learning through these international connections. For many host families, these bonds are long-lasting and life-changing, creating many positive memories.

Hosting international exchange students in Muscatine is an opportunity for our local students, teachers and community to get to know individuals from other countries, building bridges of understanding and developing cultural competencies, which are important pathways to building a peaceful and just world, Regennitter said.

Rotary Chair Mike Wedell said for Rotary Exchange, all types of families, including single parent families and "empty-nest" families, are welcome. He encourages families with middle or high school-aged children to apply, as these host students can then help exchange students settle in and navigate their new school environment.

Host families are asked to be open-minded and supportive, and must have the ability to emotionally support and encourage the students. Wedell added families who offer their student a perspective they may not have in their home country, such as something relating to their personal culture or background, are also highly requested.

We want families to not only help students adapt, but to also see a different side of life, Wedell said. Its all about being able to give and take, and making sure that (the exchange students) have a good experience.

For more information, contact Krista Regennitter, program officer for Global Education at the Stanley Center, at kristar@stanleycenter.org or call 563-299-3602. For Rotary Exchange, Wedell requested they reach out within the next week.

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.
South Africas data centre and hosting market is experiencing unprecedented growth as Internet penetration increases and the country catch up with other regions.

A business website is now a must-have to reach South African consumers and market products and services online.

Nina Triantis, global head of telecoms, media, and technology at Standard Bank, said they expect a data centre boom in the country.

We expect to see a substantial wave of data centre investments across the continent, led by regional economic powerhouses like South Africa, she said.

This inflexion point is partly driven by advances in connectivity and data consumption, particularly as smartphone penetration rises.

The Middle East and Africa is projected to be the fastest-growing region in terms of internet user numbers in the years ahead, she said.

The industry shift towards hosting data closer to where it is consumed will further incentivise investments in South Africa.

Billions are flowing into South Africas data centre market.

Africa Data Centres is investing R4 billion to grow its data centre presence in Johannesburg, while Digital Realty acquired Teraco at a valuation of $3.5 billion.

The increased investment in local data centres bodes well for South Africans as more content is moved into these facilities.

While large enterprises will buy rack space directly from Teraco or Africa Data Centres, most small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) need to go through a hosting provider.

This raises the question of which South African hosting providers serve the SME market the best.

Here are four providers who have developed affordable and reliable hosting products for the SME market.

Afrihost (click here for more)

Afrihost has been providing trusted hosting services for 22 years. It offers shared Linux and Windows hosting, cloud server hosting, cloud enterprise hosting, and managed hosting services. There is even a double-your-money-back guarantee.

Vox (click here for more)

Vox offers a range of hosting services, including co-location, shared web hosting, premium WordPress hosting, and domain registration. It also offers website vulnerability assessments to clients.

Axxess (click here for more)

Axxess offers businesses shared Linux and Windows hosting, WordPress hosting, domain registration, and email-only hosting. It also offers free .co.za domain name registration on selected web hosting services.

Vodacom Business (click here for more)

Vodacom Business offers companies Virtual Hosting with Cloud Manager  a dedicated virtual web or application server in a shared hosting environment. It promises a complete and robust IT cloud platform with the highest levels of availability and responsiveness.
The group claiming responsibility for the attack on TransUnion, N4ughtySecTU, has posted a Cell C customer database as part of a series of leaks to prove their claims.

They have also posted a database containing the personal data of ANC members.

Both databases contain names, ID numbers, and cellphone numbers.

While the ANC database contains limited physical address information, the Cell C dataset includes email addresses, some physical addresses, and bank account information.

The ANC database contains 1,211,447 records, and Cell Cs leaked contract subscriber database contains 1,809,497 records.

According to the metadata of the leaked files, the ANC database is from 21 August 2017, while the Cell C database is dated 3 October 2010.

N4ughtySecTU first informed media that it had infiltrated a TransUnion South Africa fileserver last week.

The group, which claims to be based in Brazil, said they broke in by brute-force guessing usernames and passwords until they found an account whose password was password.

N4ughtySecTU said they made off with 4,328 gigabytes of data, including a TransUnion database for one of its products, and a Department of Home Affairs database containing the identity information of 54 million South Africans.

They have demanded $15 million (R222 million) in cryptocurrency not to leak the data.

TransUnion has maintained that the incident impacted an isolated server holding limited data from its South African business.

It initially stated that the leak only contained telephone numbers, email addresses, identity numbers, and physical addresses.

However, in publicly-posted samples, N4ughtySecTU showed that they also have bank account and vehicle registration information.

TransUnion has not answered MyBroadbands questions about this data, only saying that it believes the 54-million record database N4ughtySecTU has is from a 2017 data incident unrelated to TransUnion.

N4ughtySecTU has disputed this and started posting an increasing amount of samples to prove that they obtained the data from TransUnions server.

This included President Cyril Ramaphosa and his wifes identity numbers and the ID number of Julius Malema.

They have threatened to leak the personal data of President Cyril Ramaphosa and other political figures, as well as the data of judges, prosecutors, police, lawyers, and advocates.

MyBroadband contacted Cell C for comment, which explained that it relies on credit bureaus to decide on the creditworthiness of prospective customers.

Currently, Cell C is not using TransUnion for this service and is not aware of any of their subscriber database on TransUnion being leaked previously, a spokesperson for the company stated.

Cell C takes the security of subscriber data very seriously and in line with privacy laws has measures in place to ensure compliance with such requirements and to mitigate risk, this includes third parties that the company deals with.

The spokesperson said Cell C is engaging with TransUnion, which is busy investigating the breach.

In all cases of identity theft which is currently rife in South Africa and other parts of the world, a breach can have severe implications for consumers, Cell C said.

Citizens are urged to always be extra vigilant at all times to guard against spearfishing and other illegal activities. 

Cell C said that in events like these, it guides customers to apply for protective registration through South African Fraud Prevention Services (SAFPS), which could provide an additional layer of protection.

The ANC did not respond to MyBroadbands request for comment.
Two drivers were hospitalized, one with major injuries, after a head-on collision Wednesday morning outside Calistoga, according to the California Highway Patrol.

The two-vehicle wreck occurred at 6:55 a.m. on the Silverado Trail near Clover Flat Road, CHPs Napa County bureau said in a news release. One driver, 22-year-old Javier Torres of Sonoma, suffered major injuries and was taken by American Medical Response ambulance to Providence Queen of the Valley Medical Center, according to the highway patrol.

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.

Another AMR ambulance took the other motorist, 59-year-old Erik Kiser of Napa, to the Queen with moderate injuries.

According to CHP, Torres was driving south on Silverado Trail in a 2006 Toyota Corolla when his car crossed the center line into the path of Kiser, who was headed north in a 2018 Jeep Cherokee SUV. The impact caused Kisers Jeep to roll over on Silverado Trails east shoulder.

Firefighters extricated Torres from his car before he was taken to the hospital, CHP said.
Here in Calistoga, we have experienced our fair share of traumatic events. Like wildfire evacuations. Weve watched as smoke and fire creep perilously close to our town. Some of us vividly remember the adrenaline rush and heart-pounding fear when someone bangs on your door at 3 a.m. and tells you that you have an hour to pack your belongings and leave town, the scramble in the dark to help neighbors less able than yourself, and then the subsequent wait for days hoping youll have a place to come home to.

Imagine adding bombs dropping and advancing hostile troops to that, and we might have but an inkling of what Ukrainians have been going through for weeks.

This current abhorrence happening half a world away hits home for me in another, more personal way. Despite my last name, Im actually half Ukrainian. My mothers maiden name is Haywrsh, and her parents emigrated to the U.S. sometime in the late 1920s, fleeing the totalitarianism of Stalin and the rise of the Nazi Party. So this latest horrific attack on innocent civilians has a personal significance for me, and instills a deep sense of solidarity.

We sit on the sidelines and watch and read about the suffering and devastation, but there are ways big and small that we can help.

My brother and his wife have given up their new home in Connecticut to Ukrainian artist refugees. (Hes an artist and his wife is a traveling nurse. She went down to Puerto Rico after the hurricane hit in 2017 and is currently trying to raise funds to go to Ukraine.) My brother says they will house about eight artists until they can find a more permanent place to go.

Meanwhile, here in Napa Valley, there are plenty of places that are contributing to support humanitarian efforts in Ukraine.

Tim Carl writes in a story this week that Jennifer Bennett, owner of Lovina, raised nearly $3,000 through a birthday fundraiser on Facebook with all the proceeds going to the World Central Kitchen charity (wck.org/relief/activation-chefs-for-ukraine) that is helping feed those affected by the war.

Another Calistoga restaurateur, Sasan Nayeri, owner of Evangeline, plans to donate a portion of his sales to Ukrainian refugees.

Tim is also collecting a list of businesses supporting Ukrainian humanitarian efforts. Write to him at tfcarl@gmail.com if you know of any others.

Kevin Eisenberg of our local Rotary Club also provided that through April 30 all donations to the Rotary Disaster Response Fund go directly to humanitarian relief efforts in Ukraine and adjoining countries caring for refugees. To donate go to rotary.org/donate hover your cursor over "Our Causes and scroll down to "Disaster Response. Choose Donate Now below For All. Scroll further down for a list of other Rotary activities to support Ukraine.

He also noted that more than 95% of donated funds go directly to the cause and are not lost in administrative costs.

Another effort comes from Mark Lipps who writes a newsletter in Lake County. You can donate a place for refugees to stay through Airbnb.com and they have a method to get involved to provide temporary housing. Since the bombing is now widespread may want to choose a town in Poland on the Ukrainian border. Those refugees need places to stay, he writes.

You can reach Cynthia Sweeney at 942-4035 or csweeney@weeklycalistogan.com.
Mariachis, jazz, art, coffee and movies. Say what you will about my column this week, but it doesn't lack for variety.

***

Dig out that old sombrero and head over to the St. Helena Performing Arts Center for Napa Valley Colleges second annual VIVA Mariachi Festival at 7 p.m. Friday, April 8. The free show features Mariachi Torres. And on second thought, leave the sombrero at home, for the sake of the poor soul sitting behind you.

***

Pianist Mike Greensill is marking the second anniversary of his regular Jazz in the Afternoon concerts, livestreamed on Facebook. Thanks, Mike, for jazzing up our lives during quarantine  and for bringing us the Jazz Biographies Book Club. Join the fun at 3 p.m. Wednesdays and Fridays on Mikes Facebook page.

***

Congratulations to St. Helena High School Principal Ben Scinto on being named a regional Administrator of the Year by the Association of California School Administrators. I dont know him well, but Im told he has a way of putting a smile on peoples faces, which is more than you could have said for the principals of my schooldays (please keep the horse and buggy jokes to yourselves).

***

The St. Helena United Methodist Church is raising money for Ukrainian refugees. Checks made out to St. Helena United Methodist Church or SHUMC, with Ukraine in the memo line, may be sent to 1310 Adams St., St. Helena, CA 94574. Proceeds will aid with food, water and potentially shelter for those civilians displaced by the fighting.

***

The St. Helena Public Library is holding a spring art auction featuring the paintings of Isabel Nichols (1927-2020). Check it out, enjoy the art, place a bid, and support the library.

***

The Model Bakery has launched a proprietary coffee blend. Its described as a multi-layered combination of medium and dark-roasted coffees with aromas of toasted hazelnut, vanilla and cocoa. Also, The blend is medium-bodied with moderate acidity which offers a smooth, buttery finish. As for whether it tastes better than those scrumptious English muffins, youll have to judge for yourself.

***

Do you know anybody with kids ages 0 to 5? Make sure theyre aware of the St. Helena Ninos Activos Playgroup that meets Wednesdays and Fridays from 10 to 11:30 a.m. at the First Presbyterian Church Discovery Room, 1428 Spring St. Its a free bilingual gathering where kids play, listen to a story and enjoy a special activity. Questions? Contact Raquel Vega at rvega@upvalleyfamilycenters.org or 965-5010.

***

All set for Sundays Oscar bash at the Cameo Cinema? Tickets are $45 at cameocinema.com, and the red carpet starts at 3:30. Im betting on The Power of the Dog for the top awards, and Dune for the technical honors. And by betting I mean putting absolutely no money at stake, since Im usually wrong.
UpStage Napa Valleys annual play reading returns with a PlayRead on Thursday, April 7, from 5:30 to 7 p.m. at the St. Helena Public Library.

Luke Myers, local actor and playwright, will be reading his short play, Planet Earth is Blue (and theres nothing we can do)." In 2011 Myers graduated from St. Helena High School, where he participated in St. Helena Drama. He went on to study acting at conservatories in the United States and London, leading to a long list of theater, film and playwriting on his resume.

Following the reading, there will be a sneak peek at UpStages spring production, Dead Mans Cell Phone, by Sarah Ruhl. Stay tuned for May dates for this dark comedy.

Complete with a wine and cheese reception, there is no charge or RSVP required for the UpStage PlayRead event. Donations to UpStage are graciously appreciated. The St. Helena Public Library is located at 1492 Library Lane.
The public hasnt reached consensus on how to route the Napa Valley Vine Trail through downtown St. Helena.

Neither has the City Council.

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.

After more than two hours of public comments and discussion, the St. Helena City Council reached no conclusion Tuesday about the best route. They postponed a vote until their April 26 meeting.

In the meantime, staff will a closer look at the various options and flesh out the concept of bike boulevards, an option introduced just last week. Bike boulevards prioritize bikes and pedestrians over cars, preserve on-street parking, and use traffic-calming measures to reduce vehicular traffic and slow it down to 20 mph or less.

Members of the public have been split among Church Street, Oak Avenue, and a combination of Mills Lane, College Avenue, Pope Street, Starr Avenue, Adams Street and Library Lane.

Its a choice between Church or Oak, said Councilmember Lester Hardy. I dont think either is perfect and Im not sure which is more problematic.

Theres no clear agreement anywhere in town on this topic, said Councilmember Eric Hall, citing survey data. Almost 40 percent of everybody says None of these options are good for me. That means the majority of folks are going to be ticked off with whatever we come up with.

This is one of the most difficult issues weve had to face, said Vice Mayor Paul Dohring.

Councilmember Anna Chouteau was in favor of Church Street and was ready to make that recommendation on Tuesday. Mayor Geoff Ellsworth said he was interested in a non-binary approach and wanted to wait until April.

Residents, landlords, business owners and cyclists have spent months weighing in on how to route the valley-long bike/pedestrian trail through downtown St. Helena.

The Vine Trail plans to apply for an Active Transportation Program Grant in April, and it wants clarification on the route so that the application includes enough detail to be competitive.

The Oak Avenue route drew objections from business owners and landlords who feared the loss of 40 to 50 parking spaces. The Mills Lane option had trouble with an easement. Church Street residents objected to the Church Street route.

An attorney for Safeway also criticized the Church Street route, calling it inconsistent with the General Plan, and said the store would not grant any easements to help with that route.

The Vine Trail amended its Church Street proposal last week, suggesting a bike boulevard. The original proposal had been to convert Church to a one-way street.

Members of the Active Transportation and Sustainability Committee and the Parks and Recreation Commission went in yet another direction, recommending a gap or stop and shop option in which the northbound trail would stop at Mitchell and the southbound trail would stop at Adams or Hunt.

You can reach Jesse Duarte at 967-6803 or jduarte@sthelenastar.com.

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.
In a victory for Pacasos critics, the St. Helena City Council has amended its ban on timeshares to expressly prohibit the companys home co-ownership model.

We have a place for tourists, and its not in our neighborhoods, said Vice Mayor Paul Dohring.

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.

The council passed the new regulations 5-0.

Pacaso sued the city last April after city officials told the company that its activities were banned by St. Helenas prohibition on timeshares.

City officials still maintain that Pacasos co-ownership method was already prohibited under the citys existing timeshare ban. The new ban adopted by the council modifies the definitions of terms like time-share plan and is intended to remove any doubt about the matter.

The ban applies to all residentially zoned property, but it allows timeshares as a conditional use in the Service Commercial and Central Business districts.

Pacaso establishes a limited liability company to take ownership of a house and allows up to eight parties to buy shares in the LLC and use the house for two to 14 days at a time.

In public statements and court filings, Pacaso has insisted that its houses  including four in St. Helena  are not timeshares. The company says its trying to expand access to second-home ownership to people who otherwise couldnt afford it.

Naseem Moeel, public affairs manager for Pacaso and a St. Helena resident, said the new regulations are overly broad. She said they will have unintended consequences for siblings whove inherited a house or friends who share a home but stay there at different times.

Anything short of 100 percent use by a single family threatens to sweep St. Helena property owners into accusations of being a timeshare, Moeel told the council.

Neighbors say Pacaso homes have all the same negative effects as timeshares: loud parties, obnoxious guests, parking problems, and the loss of much-needed housing for locals.

Those critics applauded the citys modified timeshare ban.

It is an excellent document that will protect our residential neighborhoods from further encroachment from companies like Pacaso and their unregulated, transient occupancy timeshares, wrote St. Helena resident Connie Wilson.

Pacaso conducted a public relations campaign over the last week. Residents received mailers, phone calls and text messages encouraging them to tell the council not to adopt the new regulations.

The mailer said the council should focus on the real issues like water, wildfires and the economy. It also said the city shouldnt waste millions of dollars in unnecessary litigation costs at the expense of other priorities.

Anti-Pacaso residents called that message misleading, since it was Pacaso that sued that city, not vice versa. Dohring called it a disinformation campaign.

This is America and we have free speech rights, but I would caution you not to do that in the future, because its not working, he said.

Out of 28 written public comments posted on the citys website, all but two are opposed to Pacaso.

You can reach Jesse Duarte at 967-6803 or jduarte@sthelenastar.com.

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.
When a group of Latino families set out to build their own neighborhood in St. Helena, opponents told them they couldn't do it.

They responded with a familiar rallying cry: Si, se puede (Yes, we can).

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.

More than 50 years later, Lugo Park is one of St. Helenas most close-knit neighborhoods. Some of the original 18 families still live there, having passed down their homes to their children and grandchildren.

It was the American Dream come true, said Oscar De Haro, a second-generation resident of Lugo Park.

Residents gathered last Thursday to collect framed certificates of recognition, handed out by Mayor Geoff Ellsworth and Vice Mayor Paul Dohring, calling Lugo Park a special and vibrant St. Helena neighborhood and wonderful example of what can be accomplished through mutual respect and assistance, tenacity, sacrifice and hard work.

The certificates commemorate the 50th anniversary of the subdivision, which residents celebrated last June with a block party on Kennedy Court.

Lugo Park was a self-help or sweat equity project under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The residents acquired 6 acres at the end of El Bonita Avenue and provided most of the labor to build the 18 homes in exchange for low-interest loans.

The builders were farmworkers with no construction experience.

We started from scratch, said Rosa Gallegos, who was 17 at the time.

Ernest and Hope Lugo spearheaded the project, holding the first organizational meetings in 1966. Three years later they established a nonprofit with help from Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA), Napa County Better Housing and what is now known as Community Action of Napa Valley.

The Gallegos family were among the first to move into their homes, following the Ortizes, the Gastelums and the Lugos.

When we were first building it my dad just wanted to get it done so he didnt care how late we worked, said Gallegos. I remember holding the sheetrock for the ceiling and saying, Dad, my arms are getting tired.

Oscar De Haro said his father, Feliciano, had lived in St. Helena since 1953, when he immigrated as a bracero to work at Charles Krug Winery. He became a legal permanent resident with the help of the Mondavi family, who sponsored him.

He and his wife, Juanita, rented a house on Madrona Avenue. When the Lugo Park opportunity arose, Feliciano attended two and half years of meetings in hopes that his family could own a home.

He knew that once you stopped attending a certain number of meetings, you were out of the running, said Oscar De Haro, now an administrator at Napa Valley College. There were 40-plus people vying for 18 homes, and in the end those who stuck it out were rewarded.

Frank Lugo was in eighth grade when the family home was finished. He went on to spend 30 years working for Charles Krug Winery.

Even back then, farmworkers couldnt afford to buy a house in St. Helena. But the Lugos had a proud history of not accepting the status quo.

My grandfather Oscar marched with Cesar Chavez and all them, Frank Lugo said. My mom did it once in a while too.

The project drew significant community opposition. Neighbors on El Bonita Avenue raised concerns about traffic, sanitation, sewage, and the possibility of a development which would require more maintenance by the city than could be paid for by the citizens who reside within it, as a letter from 30 neighbors stated in 1970.

Months after the city approved the project, a vocal critic of Lugo Park ran for City Council as a write-in candidate and became the top vote-getter. Two other opponents sued the city the same week the project broke ground.

Other residents rallied around the Lugo Park families and bought an ad in the Star to show their support. Among them were Bob and Phoebe Ellsworth, the parents of Mayor Geoff Ellsworth.

The project provided the generational equity that enabled the descendants of the original residents to attain the American Dream, Ellsworth told Lugo Park residents last week.

We want to see if we can do this again in other parts of town, Ellsworth said.

Opponents fears that Lugo Park would become a ghetto and depress nearby property values didnt pan out. De Haro has happy memories of growing up on a cul-de-sac where everybody looked after each others kids, who tended to be around the same age. The third generation of Lugo Park residents  including De Haros own daughters  also grew up playing together.

It was so close-knit, and it still is, he said.

Brenkle Court, an 8-unit housing development nearing completion on McCorkle Avenue, used the same sweat equity model as Lugo Park. De Haro said thats not the only lesson of Lugo Park.

This proves that when you really put effort into something, and youre loyal to your commitment, good things like this happen, De Haro said.

A lot of our youth believe that these things just came out of the blue, that they were just gifts, he continued. They dont understand the hard work and persistence that went into this.  The lesson for our youth is Si, se puede.

You can reach Jesse Duarte at 967-6803 or jduarte@sthelenastar.com.

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.
Here is the holy equation of faith: We are as strong as what we hope.

This season I have invited the Grace Church community to read together a book by scholar, Choctaw elder, and Episcopal Bishop Steven Charleston called "Ladder to the Light." Charleston, who penned the quote above, invites us to climb a spiritual ladder from the dark womb of the earth to the light of a new world. Each rung consists of a spiritual concept we can put into practice. Third on the ladder is the rung of hope.

Charleston continues, I am not talking about wishful thinking. I am not talking about miracles. I am talking about hope as a tool to create light, a spark that can suddenly illuminate the gloom that creeps into our lives  Hope is the catalyst, the tipping point where what we believe becomes what we do.

As an example of hope, Charleston speaks of his ancestors forced march on the Trail of Tears. Beginning with the Choctaw in 1831, the five tribes of the southeast were forcibly removed by the U.S. government to Indian Territory in modern-day Oklahoma. Over 60,000 people were forced from their ancestral homelands to land quite different from their own, and up to a third of them died along the way due to violence, harassment, and the conditions they were subjected to along the way. Nevertheless, Charleston notes, his ancestors walked this Trail of Tears with strength and dignity, and so embodied hope.

By embodying hope, Charleston says, we can step over the threshold of our own fears by hanging on to the third rung of the ladder with all our might, breathing in the confidence the Spirit gives us, and looking into the future. Hope is all about the future, according to Charleston. Hope is the tool we use to create the future.

The world is full of fear right now and the future has perhaps never seemed more uncertain in my lifetime than it does right now. We are teetering on the edge of World War III and a face-off between nuclear superpowers. Yet every generation has known struggle, fear, and uncertainty. And in every generation, there have been those who have embodied hope.

For many around the world the Ukrainian people along with the large number of Russians who have opposed their governments unprovoked invasion of Ukraine have embodied hope over the last month. The Ukrainian people have resisted this invasion against all expectations for one reason: because they have hope. Hope is not the reasonable arithmetic of adding up one sides firepower and subtracting the others. Hope is dynamic, creative, and exponential.

Charleston points out that it is sometimes hard to hold on to hope alone. That has been one of the most devastating aspects of these pandemic years: the sense of isolation. Though we have all suffered together, we have largely suffered apart. It does not have to be that way. Hope creates community, even as community can strengthen our hope.

Here are three ways you can join the Grace community in hope for a better future for Ukraine and for our world:

1. Pray: At 7 p.m. each day members of Grace and our Interfaith partners throughout the Napa Valley are setting our phone alarms to remind us to take a moment (or five, or ten) to be in prayerful intention for peace in Ukraine. Widespread prayerful intention has been shown to make a difference. And it makes a difference to us.

2. Give: Grace has already sent thousands of dollars, much of it raised by members of the wider community, for immediate relief and mid-term resettlement efforts for Ukrainian refugees in Europe through Episcopal Relief and Development. You can make a donation at www.er-d.org or drop a donation off at Graces office.

3. Talk: On Sunday, March 27 at noon Grace will be sponsoring an open forum over Zoom with local therapist and former NBC war correspondent Rebecca Bell called The Torment in Ukraine is Tormenting Us! Contact the church office for a Zoom link.

Charleston finishes the quote I opened with thus: We are as strong as what we hope. A people without hope, even if they possess all the wealth in the world, are weak and easily swayed. On the other hand, a small band of human beings can shift the tides of history if they have sufficient hope in what they see as the future  What we project into our future through faith is not just the wishful thinking of dreamers out of touch with reality; it is the blueprint for a future our faith sees clearly before us. Hope is not a wish, but an intention.

Will you join us in creating more hope?

The Rev. Amy Denney Zuniga is Rector of Grace Episcopal Church, 1314 Spring Street in St. Helena. She may be contacted at revamy@grace-episcopal.org. Grace holds Sunday services in person every Sunday at 8 and 10 a.m. and online at www.grace-episcopal.org, and a Spanish-language Eucharist the last Sunday of the month at 4 p.m. To contact the church office about zoom links and donations, use office@grace-episcopal.org. Copies of Charlestons book "Ladder to the Light" are available in the church office.
Photos by Kathy and Friends (Ron and Pam Rogers, Cassandra Walker, Kathy Bandrowski, Betty Malmgren, and Priscilla Upton) are now on display through April at the Mechanics Bank.

The friendships vary in origin and length of time but a common thread was a Napa Valley College International Education photography trip to Cuba.

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.

We welcomed in the year 2004 together in Cuba, a memorable experience, and have been celebrating birthdays on and off ever since, said Betty Malmgren. While the total Cuba tour group was about 30 students, instructors and guides, different combinations of the photographers pictured above have maintained ties and also traveled together to Vietnam, Costa Rica, Italy, Egypt, and countries in Africa, among other places.

Most members of the birthday lunch group have also been active in the Napa Valley Photographic Society.

This birthday lunch bunch group centers around senior member Kathryne Bandrowski. This show is a tribute to her and a celebration of her photography. Her love for travel and photography continues to inspire us, Malmgren added.

George Bartolome, Napa Valley Photographic Society, provided show support. And the show was made possible by Mechanics Bank, Sergio Calderon, financial services manager. The bank, which showcases local artists and photographers, is at 700 Trancas St., at the intersection with Big Ranch Road, in Napa.

Open Studios deadline

Napa artists: Show your work, get feedback and make sales at Open Studios Napa Valley 2022 coming up on Sept. 17-18 and Sept. 2425. The deadline to apply is April 1.

Artists can choose to participate for one or both weekends. To be eligible to participate in Open Studios you must be a current member of Art Association Napa Valley, and live or work within Napa County, or partner with a participating artist showing in Napa County.

For more information on requirements and fees, visit artnv.org. Questions? Send an email to Frank@artnv.org.

Art Association Napa Valley, is a non-profit organization that supports the artists in Napa County and supplies scholarships for students in art programs.

George Bartolome, Napa Valley Photographic Society, schedules and hangs photography shows at the Mechanics Bank.

Di Rosa and First Street Napa team up

Di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art and First Street Napa have announced a collaboration to celebrate and feature artists who inspire the distinct culture of Napa Valley and the Northern California region. Di Rosa will lend artwork and sculpture for display at First Street Napas new Artist Alley, which will make its public debut this spring.

Di Rosas collaboration with First Street Napa will begin with the lending of large-scale sculptures from its permanent collection for prominent display at Artist Alley. Future plans are in the works for immersive outdoor programs and events.

Artist Alley will provide an immersive experience that features murals, sculpture, film and interactive digital media from local artists and museums.
10/9c

TV nostalgia alert: If you get a little WB (later CW) vibe watching this weeks episode of the medical drama, its all about the casting. One Tree Hill ingenues Hilarie Burton and Bethany Joy Lenz join their former co-star Sophia Bush (now the titular Dr. Sam Griffith) when they arrive at the hospital as sisters, one of whom is showing symptoms of premature heart disease. Typically, Dr. Sam finds a more puzzling medical mystery to solve. As for Sams aggravating father Griff (Jason Isaacs), hes nervously awaiting results of an MRI that might explain the latest fallout from his shooting. Till then, Sam urges him to seek therapy.

Series Premiere

Legendary music producer/executive Clive Davis leverages his access to A-list talent in a four-part music/interview series that includes excerpts from his virtual 2021 pre-Grammys gala events that featured exclusive interviews with superstars. Highlights include full concert performances, many from his renowned Grammy week parties, including Tina Turner, Paul Simon, Bruce Springsteen, Prince, Aretha Franklin, Rod Stewart, Joni Mitchell, Ray Charles, Bee Gees, Willie Nelson and the Notorious B.I.G. Interview subjects include many of these same artists, plus the Queen of Talk herself, Oprah Winfrey.

Special

The durable daytime soap celebrates the 35thanniversary of its 1987 premiere with a special episode dedicated to original heroine Brooke Logan (Katherine Kelly Lang) and the many loves of her life. Jack Wagner (Nick Morone from 2003-2012) and Winsor Harmon (Thorne Forrester from 1996-2016) return for the occasion, along with John McCook, Don Diamont (Bill Spencer) and Thorsten Kaye (Ridge Forrester).

8/7c

After weeks of awkward workarounds to make up for Jeff Garlin having left the long-running sitcom, if not the Goldberg home, they finally have the wisdom to send father Murray out of town. But while hes away, Jane Bales (Leslie Grossman) makes a power grab for Ottoman Empire, and Beverly (Wendi McLendon-Covey) wont stand for that.

Inside Wednesday TV:

The Wonder Years (8:30/7:30c, ABC): Though this reboot of the beloved 1960s-set sitcom tells most of its stories through the eyes of young Dean (Elisha EJ Williams), this week the focus is on his 17-year-old sister Kim (Laura Kariuki), who gets a job at local Birmingham diner. Drama ensues with a racist co-worker and with her ex, Kwame ( Myron Parker Wright ), so its a good thing that Dean has become a regular customer and has her back.

(8:30/7:30c, ABC): Though this reboot of the beloved 1960s-set sitcom tells most of its stories through the eyes of young Dean (Elisha EJ Williams), this week the focus is on his 17-year-old sister Kim (Laura Kariuki), who gets a job at local Birmingham diner. Drama ensues with a racist co-worker and with her ex, Kwame ( ), so its a good thing that Dean has become a regular customer and has her back. The Green Room with Nadia Brown (11 pm/10c, Ovation): Broadway actor Nadia Brown (Harry Potter and the Cursed Child) hosts a creative infotainment series about the importance to the economy at large of the arts and culture industry, still rebounding from the pandemic shutdown. Songs, animation and tongue-in-cheek graphics lend humor and variety to a serious subject.

(11 pm/10c, Ovation): Broadway actor (Harry Potter and the Cursed Child) hosts a creative infotainment series about the importance to the economy at large of the arts and culture industry, still rebounding from the pandemic shutdown. Songs, animation and tongue-in-cheek graphics lend humor and variety to a serious subject. Parallels (streaming on Disney+): A six-part fantasy adventure from France follows four teenage friends who are scattered into different parallel timelines and are desperate to find their way back to their normal lives.
The city of Napa saw a boom in Accessory Dwelling Unit applications last year and approved a total of 60 applications, 15 more than in 2020.

We are doing exceedingly well in ADU production, with our highest number of units permitted since weve been keeping track of such data, said senior planner Michael Walker at a Napa City Council meeting last week.

The citys quantity of approved applications has grown steadily over the years, from three approved applications in 2016 and 17 in 2017, to the 60 in 2021, according to city data.

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.

The citys ADU results are part of a general trend of increasing ADU applications across Napa Countys larger jurisdictions. St. Helena, for example, approved 20 applications in 2021, an increase from the 16 approved a year prior. American Canyon likewise approved 6 applications in 2021, double the 3 approved in 2020.

Yountville and Calistoga are each approving a handful of ADU applications each year, with the quantity of ADU approvals for both jurisdictions staying relatively steady throughout the past five years.

Accessory Dwelling Units  also known as granny flats or in-law units among numerous other occasionally confusing synonyms  are small and self-contained living units that can either be detached or attached to an adjacent single-family home. As a result of California legislation, approvals of such units are done through an administrative, pre-set process that doesnt include discretionary review.

A statewide boom in ADU approvals started with Senate Bill 1069, a California law that required local municipalities to relax regulations on ADU approvals. Framed by legislators as one side of a multi-pronged effort to address Californias housing crisis, the law was passed in 2016 and came into effect in 2017.

Several years of follow-up legislation have helped to smooth the application process even further, generally by removing barriers that may exist in the local government approval process. For example, Assembly Bill 3182  which came into effect last year  requires local governments to approve completed ADU applications if they havent taken action on the application within 60 days.

That same law also required local governments to allow for administrative approvals of one ADU and one junior ADU  essentially a unit thats 500 square feet or smaller that exists entirely within a single-family residence, like a garage  per single-family lot.

Renee Schomp, director of the Napa Sonoma ADU Center  an information hub for homeowners looking to build such units  said the center is focusing on overcoming the more practical barriers that get in the way of people deciding to build an ADU.

The legislative action had to happen for ADU production to start moving forward, she said, but roadblocks such as financing and the complicated process of applying for an ADU at a local government office still exist. Based on the centers research, Schomp added, many homeowners that consider building an ADU encounter considerable difficulty moving forward with the project because of those roadblocks.

Suddenly a homeowner becomes a developer for the first time, Schomp said. The more we can do to support the homeowner, so they dont have to become an expert, the better.

Terence Mulligan, president and CEO of the Napa Valley Community Foundation  which, along with the Sonoma County Community foundation, was behind the creation of the ADU Center  said ADUs are an important part of taking on Napas lack of affordable and workforce housing.

The citys rental unit vacancy rate has hovered below 2% in recent years, hitting 1.7% last year despite the addition of hundreds of apartment units. Napas zoning code identifies a vacancy rate of below 5% as a rental housing shortage, and any rate below 3% as a severe shortage. That compares to a roughly 5.6% national vacancy rate, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

We view the lack of workforce housing to actually be the primary driver of poverty in Napa because so many families spend so much of their income on housing, more than is sustainable, Mulligan said. If youre spending more than 30% of your take-home gross on putting a roof over your head, youre in trouble. And lots of people spend more than 50%.

The community foundation announced it had partnered with Redwood Credit Union last week to create a construction loan program specifically for ADUs, which Mulligan said will potentially open the door to thousands of people who wouldnt otherwise be able to afford constructing an ADU.

Mulligan added that, because of the price of local land  and the community backlash to large housing projects  the traditional way of competing for and securing government funding for affordable housing isnt sufficient for Napa to fill its housing needs.

The cost of land is too precious here for us to solely rely on the traditional way of trying to get a little money on the table from government, Mulligan said. One thing that really appeals to us about this whole other way, this complimentary way of ADUs, is it is a private, citizen-led response to this big public problem of not enough workforce housing.

You can reach Edward Booth at (707) 256-2213.

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.
Jill Techel, a four-term city of Napa mayor, has been named Woman of the Year by Sen. Bill Dodd for her years of service to the Napa community.

Techel served on the Napa City Council for 24 years. She was initially selected by the council to serve on the seat vacated by Mayor Ed Solomon in 1996 when he suddenly died from injuries sustained in a vehicle accident.

As mayor, starting in 2005, Techel presided over a period of tremendous economic growth for the city, particularly in the hotel and hospitality industries. A press release from Sen. Dodds office notes that Techel also helped guide the city through a series of devastating natural disasters, including floods, the 2014 South Napa earthquake and major wildfires.

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.

She led the city through incredible economic transformation and growth, said Dodd in the press release. She also guided it through major challenges, including a deadly earthquake and recent wildfires. Her vision and hard work have been a great benefit to the community. She is an inspiration for the next generation of Napa leaders.

Originally from North Dakota, Techel moved to Napa in 1971. A trained social worker and graduate of the University of North Dakota, she swiftly became involved in various aspects of Napas community, the press release says. She served on numerous boards  including the Napa Valley Unified School District Board of Education  and as a commissioner on the citys Parks and Recreation Commission.

After serving on the council for 24 years, Techel retired in 2020. She's currently the program coordinator of Leadership Napa Valley, which involves participants developing leadership and teamwork skills over a nine-month span. Shes held that position for 25 years, according to the press release.

Adopting the six-mile Napa River- Napa Creek Flood Protection Project, which helped protect downtown Napa from flooding and made the city more walkable, is among Techels proudest accomplishments, the press release says.

Serving Napa for almost 50 years has been very rewarding, Techel said in the press release. I am very proud of the Napa sprit that has moved us past disasters and into the future. I really appreciate being selected Woman of the year and it is especially meaningful coming from Sen. Dodd, who I worked with for many years.

The honor applies across Bill Dodd's Senate District 3, which includes six California counties, including Napa County.

Editor's Note: This item has been modified to state that Jill Techel has been named woman of the year for Bill Dodd's senate district.

You can reach Edward Booth at (707) 256-2213.

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.
Running an events company can be one of the most rewarding jobs of your career. If youre creative, energetic, and highly organized then event planning may be for you. However, setting up your own company and running an office can come with stress and anxiety. Weve gathered some tips for decking out your office so that you can focus on the big stuff like clients and suppliers. Check them out below!

1. Tech And Accessories

You cant work without laptops, phones, and tablets so make sure you stock up on the essentials. As well as the obvious items youll need enough printers, label makers, and scanners to ensure you and your team are waiting in line for table plans, name badges, and vision boards to print. There are a ton of free apps that can serve as a to-do list so digitalize your plans for a more streamlined workload. Portable chargers are accessory necessities as you may need them when youre working off-site without a ton of power points around you. Extra screens will help you do several things at once.

2. Folders And Files

Keeping all of your documents safely stored in files will mean that you can easily transport paperwork from site to site. Keep a stack of spares handy so that you can be highly organized at all times. Purchase post its and sticky tab dividers around so that you can split information into easy-to-find sections such as marketing, supplier lists and passwords. That way you can flick through to the information you need at a moments notice.

3. A Coffee Machine

Events can run long into the night so keep yourself caffeinated with a good quality coffee maker. Whether you prefer freshly ground, quick and easy pods, or simply a great French press, make sure that you have hot drinks on hand to keep you awake and energetic!

4. Ergonomic Seating

While the vents themselves may take place in different locations, youll spend a lot of your pre-planning time holed up in your office so make sure youre comfortable. Ergonomic seating will keep you and your employees from hurting your backs meaning you can stay productive and work harder for longer.

5. Good Lighting

Any office should have good lighting to avoid you and your staff getting eye strain and headaches. If youre feeling rough you wont be performing at your best and correct lighting can make all the difference. Have as much natural lighting flood your office space as possible and purchase natural light lamps to make up for where light is lacking. Your employees will thank you!

6. Plants

Plants are natural air purifiers that have been proven to decrease stress, increase productivity and absorb carbon dioxide in the air. These pretty little toxin reducers will not only boost the oxygen in your environment but are also easy on the eye.

Which of these items will you be adding to your events office? Let us know in the comments!
Bloomberg: UK and Japan will help Asian countries reduce dependence on Russian oil

Dollar, euro gain considerable value in Armenia

FLYONE ARMENIA cancels Yerevan flights to, from Lyon, Paris until June 10

Annual inflation in Turkey reaches 69.97% in April

Armenia population as of January 1 announced

Poland builds 50 kilometers of fence on border with Belarus

Azerbaijan promises Europe gas in the hope of loyalty to Baku's crimes

Australia allocates $1.4 billion to modernize its Navy

Peskov says events unrolling in Armenia are countrys internal affair

Grigoryan: Discussions on setting up Armenia-Azerbaijan commission may be completed in near future

Red Cross: No Azerbaijani detainees in Armenia

Armenia official: Peace agreement with Azerbaijan also means solution to Karabakh issue

Armen Grigoryan: There is need to get answers to questions in order to organize Armenia, Azerbaijan leaders meeting

Security Council chief: Baku's statements on Armenia territories belonging to Azerbaijan do not contribute to peace

Armenia official comments on Azerbaijan president's words about 'Zangezur corridor'

Armen Grigoryan: Armenia and Azerbaijan could exchange enclaves

FT: Erdogan used mediation between Russia and Ukraine

Person dies after being hospitalized from one of tents at France Square in Yerevan

Armenia to get 22.6M loan from International Bank for Reconstruction and Development

Armenia ruling force MP: Oppositions goal is not saving Karabakh but changing of power

President says Artsakh continues to maintain its vision for future, toward independence

Oppositions uncrowded marches show lack of public support, says Armenia ruling force lawmaker

Trade in Armenia increased by about $80 million, PM says

Scuffle breaks out during civil disobedience march in Yerevan, police attempt to apprehend opposition MP

Pashinyan to Bennett: I am hopeful that Armenian-Israeli relations will flourish in near future

Armenia ruling power legislator: This opposition has always run away from truth

Civil disobedience motorcade being held in Yerevan

EU to ban Russians from buying European real estate

US defense industry facing problems due to supply of weapons to Ukraine

Armenia FM holds discussion at Atlantic Council, speaks about process of normalization of relations with Turkey

Newspaper: Armenia opposition MPs to lose their parliamentary mandates?

Newspaper: Artsakh President says we would not have had so many casualties if war had started half year later

Civil disobedience march kicks off in downtown Yerevan

Civil disobedience actions resume in Yerevan

Blinken tests positive for Covid

Denmark, Finland support European Commission proposal on Russian oil sanctions

Bulgaria to seek exemption from EU proposed Russian oil embargo

Biden says he is ready for additional sanctions against Russia

Switzerland braces for serious power shortage

Uruguay freezes ambassador appointment to Ankara after Cavusoglu's gesture

Czech Republic to seek exemption from proposed EU embargo on Russian oil imports

Charles Michel on the likelihood of Moldova's EU membership

Resistance Movement actions to resume tomorrow early morning

Elon Musk is invited to UK Parliament for buying Twitter

Disobedience march reaches France Square, rally starts

US crude oil shipments to Europe hit highest level in April

NEWS.am digest: Large-scale protests being held in Armenia to demand PMs resignation

Armenia Defense Minister meets with Georgian PM

UK bans imposes sanctions on 63 individuals and organizations in Russia

EU plan to completely ban Russian crude oil threatens Hungary's energy security

EU interested in expanding energy cooperation with Azerbaijan

Germany: Gradual EU ban on Russian oil imports could lead to 'supply disruptions'

Opposition demonstration reaches government residences

Aliyev insists so-called Zangezur corridor 'is already a reality'

Slovakia seeks exemption from EU oil embargo for three years

Defense Ministers of Armenia and Georgia sign cooperation program for 2022

Romanian President approves entry of Stryker Brigade and US fighter squadron into country

Dollar goes up, euro also rises in Armenia

EU studying possibility of providing military assistance to Moldova

Public demand for Nikol Pashinyan's resignation

Opposition supporters move toward Armenian parliament building

EU envoys can not agree on Russian oil

Armenia Security Council chief briefs Georgia PM on Karabakh conflict settlement process

Armenia deputy police chief says law enforcement has right detain MPs

Large-scale opposition rally starts in central Yerevan

Many teenagers in New Zealand are illiterate

AFP: EU proposes to impose sanctions on Patriarch Kirill

Arestovich says Israel could supply Ukraine with weapons Azerbaijan used in Karabakh war

Parliament speaker threatens Armenian opposition, clergy

Armenia opposition MP: Ex-President Serzh Sargsyan will not hold office in new government

Beijing closes over 60 subway stations due to COVID-19 outbreak

Bayramov, Roquefeuil discuss Azerbaijan-Armenia relations normalization process

Armenia FM meets with US National Democratic Institute president

Armenia ruling force MP: Opposition will not achieve its goal

Armenia 2nd president Robert Kocharyans son blocking road with citizens in Yerevan

Oklahoma bans almost all abortions

Number of children in Japan falls to record low

Karabakh President meets with of Free Homeland-UCA parliamentary faction members

Armenian judge waves Artsakh flag at Ironman Triathlon (PHOTOS)

There is still lot to do in 'October 27' case, says Armenia Prosecutor General

Ambassador Wiktorin to finance minister: EU ready to continue providing assistance to Armenia government

Armenia Prosecutor General admits there are difficulties in investigation of 'March 1' criminal case

Copper price is stable

3 COVID-19 new cases confirmed in Armenia

American Armenian youth hold protest rally outside Armenia embassy in Washington

Japan protests against North Korean missile

Gold is getting cheaper

U.S.-Armenia Strategic Dialogue issues joint statement

Newspaper: Armenia Patrol Guard Service head to be summoned to Investigative Committee to give explanation

Armenia parliament regular sittings continue

Newspaper: Armenia opposition members falling into National Security Service trap by opening links

Civil disobedience protests resume in Yerevan

Earthquake shakes Armenia-Georgia border zone

Microsoft urges to abandon Internet Explorer

Mark Milley: Potential for significant international conflict between great powers is increasing

EU: Poland fines in rule of law dispute now top $170 million

Putin and Lukashenko discuss ongoing situation

Greece and Bulgaria say new LNG terminal will help reduce dependence on Russia

German vice chancellor calls for rapid construction of LNG terminals

Rally of Resistance Movement takes place in France Square
It is the third day that the supply of natural gas has been stopped in Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh). The command of the Russian peacekeeping contingent continues negotiations with the Azerbaijani side. Samvel Babayan, head of the information and public relations department of the Artsakh State Minister's staff, informed Armenian News-NEWS.am about this.

In the conditions of heavy snowfall, about 120,000 people in Artsakh are left without vital natural gas.

The supply of natural gas to Artsakh was stopped on March 8, when the natural gas pipeline coming from was damaged in the area under the control of the Azerbaijani armed forces.

The Azerbaijani side was creating obstacles for nine days to repairing this damaged natural gas pipeline. And finally on March 16, according to the Artsakh Info Center, thanks to negotiations with the assistance of the Armenian government and Russian peacekeepers, the Azerbaijani side began repairing this natural gas pipeline, and the repair was completed on March 19.

On Monday, however, the Artsakh Info Center informed that the natural gas supply to Artsakh was stopped againand due to the direct interference of the Azerbaijani side.
Most exporters from Armenia see certain risks in the export of goods in Russian rubles. The Minister of Economy, Vahan Kerobyan, said this Wednesday during the National Assembly debates on the bill on amendments to the Law on State Duty.

According to the minister, this issue is being worked out by the Central Banks of Armenia and Russia. Thus, the matter of concluding a ruble-dram "swap" is being decided. And owing to that, Armenian exporterstogether with their Russian partnerswill be able to set the prices of exported goods in Armenian drams.

"They will be able to sell their products in Russiareceiving Armenian drams for that," Kerobyan explained.

He added that after the start of military actions in Ukraine, the Ministry of Economy of Armenia began to work closely with Armenian exporters to find out the respective problems encountered.
Due to the situation in Ukraine, the embassy of Armenia in Romania provides emergency assistance to Armenian citizens as well as to Ukrainian citizens of Armenian descent who are crossing from Ukraine to Romania and are in need of assistance, Armenian News-NEWS.am has learned from the embassy.

According to an order of the Armenian Foreign Minister, a temporary consulate of the Armenian embassy in Romania has been operating since March 1 in the Romanian border city of Botosani. This temporary consulate has already provided the necessary assistance and advice to hundreds of Armenian citizens and Armenians.

Also, the embassy of Armenia in Romania has established close cooperation with the relevant Romanian authorities, owing to which Armenian citizens entry to Romania as well as their return to the homeland is carried out in an urgent and legal manner.

In addition, the embassy and the temporary consulate in Botosani respond to corresponding phone calls around the clock.

Furthermore, humanitarian assistance is provided to Armenian citizens and Armenians.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) of Azerbaijan has unclearly denied its involvement in the suspension of natural gas supply in Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh).

"Armenia's non-constructive approach, baseless allegations reveal the real intentions of that country. We advise Armenia to ensure the fulfillment of the obligations undertaken by trilateral statements, including the withdrawal of the armed forces from the region, and thus contribute to regional peace and security, and not to make baseless statements," said Leyla Abdullayeva, Head of the Press Service Department of the Azerbaijan MFA.

But one can only guess what exactly Abdullayeva considers "baseless allegations."

The supply of natural gas to Artsakh was stopped on March 8, when the natural gas pipeline coming from was damaged in the area under the control of the Azerbaijani armed forces.

The Azerbaijani side was creating obstacles for nine days to repairing this damaged natural gas pipeline. And finally on March 16, according to the Artsakh Info Center, thanks to negotiations with the assistance of the Armenian government and Russian peacekeepers, the Azerbaijani side began repairing this natural gas pipeline, and the repair was completed on March 19.

On Monday, however, the Artsakh Info Center informed that the natural gas supply to Artsakh was stopped againand due to the direct interference of the Azerbaijani side.
Armenia has been chosen as a guest of honor of the 19th Sharjah Heritage Days cultural festival in the United Arab Emirates, not only because of the long-standing and close ties between the Armenian and Arab peoples, but also because of its quality products. The organizer of the festival, chairman Abdulaziz Almusallam of the Sharjah Institute For Heritage, said this in an interview with Armenian News-NEWS.am.

"Especially seeing the work done skillfully in the field of crafts, we always say that this must be the handiwork of an Armenian. Armenians are well versed in work and quality products. Besides, human contacts are important, which I think will develop more and will be lasting," said the chairman of the aforesaid institute, who had visited the Armenian pavilion at the Sharjah Heritage Days.

In 12 halls of the spacious pavilion of Armenia, the cultural heritage of our country is presented: miniature painting, carpet weaving, needlework, embroidery, woodworking, cross-stone making, puppetry, and Armenian costumes.

Armenia is participating in this prestigious festival for the first time as an honorary guest. Chairman Abdulaziz Almusallam of the Sharjah Institute for Heritage hopes that cooperation with Armenia will increase in the near future. The institute is already implementing some programs in Armenia.

"We have many ties with Armenia, which are regulated by agreementsfor example, in the field of translation. In order to exchange experience, we cooperate with the National Gallery of Armenia, we also have close cooperation with the Matenadaran. We are full of hope that the cooperation in other spheres will also deepen," said Abdulaziz Almusallam, noting that Arab culture days may be held in Armenia in the near future.

The Sharjah Heritage Days festival is held in the center of Sharjah and in the eastern regions of the city. During the first week, the festival had more than 102 thousand visitorsboth from the United Arab Emirates and around the world. Chairman Abdulaziz Almusallam of the Sharjah Institute for Heritage considers this year's festival a success.

"This year the festival is special, there is a great involvement of people, the number of visitors is increasing day by day. The event was spread also among social media users. I think the impact of the festival this year is obviously great," said the chairman of the aforesaid institute.

The annual Sharjah Heritage Days festival kicked off this year on March 10 and will continue until March 28. The festival has been held since 2003. It is considered one of the most famous cultural events and is organized within the framework of the UNESCO World Heritage Days.

To note, in order to strengthen the Armenian-Arab friendly relations, the Haghartsin Monastery of Armenia was renovated in 2013 by the benevolence of His Highness Sheikh Dr. Sultan Bin Mohammed Al Qasimi, United Arab Emirates Supreme Council Member and Ruler of Sharjah.
The European Union (EU) has expressed concern over the cessationyet againof natural gas supply to Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh).

The EU concerned about renewed cuts of gas supply to [Artsakh capital] Stepanakert/Khankendi. It is urgently needed to resume supplies to affected local population. The EU calls on authorities in control to enable it, especially in the current harsh weather, Peter Stano, Lead Spokesperson for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy of the EU European Commission, wrote this on Twitter.

Earlier, Armenian News-NEWS.am reported that the supply of natural gas to Artsakh was stopped on March 8, when the natural gas pipeline coming from Armenia was damaged in the area under the control of the Azerbaijani armed forces.

The Azerbaijani side was creating obstacles for nine days to repairing this damaged natural gas pipeline. And finally on March 16, according to the Artsakh Info Center, thanks to negotiations with the assistance of the Armenian government and Russian peacekeepers, the Azerbaijani side began repairing this natural gas pipeline, and the repair was completed on March 19.

On Monday, however, the Artsakh Info Center informed that the natural gas supply to Artsakh was stopped againand due to the direct interference of the Azerbaijani side. Artsakh stated that they have sufficient grounds to assert that during the aforesaid repair of this natural gas pipeline, the Azerbaijani side had installed a valve through which it has now stopped the natural gas supply to Artsakh.
The European Commission has recommended that EU countries jointly buy gas to increase supplies, but warned that the desire to limit wholesale prices will cause problems and undermine efforts to switch to clean energy, Reuters reported.

In May, the European Commission will release a detailed plan to phase out Russian fossil fuels by 2027.

Meanwhile, countries are trying to find ways to quickly curb rising energy bills and find alternative sources in case Russian flows are disrupted.

Brussels on Wednesday proposed a series of options for this, which EU leaders will discuss at a 24-25 March summit.

The Commission recommended EU countries jointly purchase gas from suppliers, following a similar model to how the bloc bought COVID-19 vaccines, with a Commission-led task force of negotiators pooling demand and seeking gas ahead of next winter.

The Commission assessed other options - such as price caps, which Spain and Belgium have called for ahead of the EU leaders' summit.

One option would be for a government-controlled entity to buy electricity and sell to certain consumers below market prices. Another would be to cap power prices and compensate generators for the difference between the cap and the market price.

However, if countries did this individually, it could push power into countries without the cap and cause supply concerns elsewhere, the Commission said.

The European Commission has said that limiting electricity prices could also undermine the case for investment in new renewable energy production, while limiting fuel prices would make fossil fuel producers more competitive. Compensating for such measures would also require major government funding.

Separately, the Commission proposed legislation requiring EU countries to fill their gas storage to at least 90% by Nov. 1 each year from 2023, and 80% this year. That will need approval from EU countries and European Parliament.
Armenia has made every possible diplomatic effort to restore the gas supply to Karabakh as soon as possible, Armenian Minister of Foreign Affairs Ararat Mirzoyan said at a meeting of the National Assembly during the government hour on March 23.

First of all, as the Foreign Minister noted, the Armenian side is in constant contact with its Russian partners.

It's not clear what to call it. After all, this is not an accident on the gas pipeline. In any case, the damaged or closed gas pipeline is located in the area and in the zone of responsibility of Russian peacekeepers, the minister said. Earlier it was reported that the site is under the control of Azerbaijani forces.

Armenia, he said, is also in contact with the "civilized world."

The Foreign Ministry, for example, has already sent a note to its international partners.

And the answers have already been received. Moreover, during the previous gas shutdown, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan held discussions with the US Secretary of State, the President of Russia, and the President of France. And we are already seeing a reaction. However, unfortunately, the issue has not yet been resolved on the spot, the head of the Foreign Ministry said.
There is nothing unacceptable for Armenia in the proposals voiced by Azerbaijan, the Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan said.

His remarks came during the governmental hour in the National Assembly on Wednesday.

According to the Minister, Yerevan's response to Baku has been misinterpreted.

"In particular, they started speculating as if Yerevan had rejected Baku's proposals. I want to say that there is nothing unacceptable for Armenia in Azerbaijan's proposals. Another issue is that those proposals do not reflect the entire agenda of negotiations. We completed the points with our proposals for a comprehensive peace and passed them to the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs. From there, they were passed on to official Baku. At the same time, no response has been received from Baku yet," Mirzoyan said.

As for Armenian proposals, according to the Armenian Foreign Minister they are almost fully presented in an interview with Armenpress news agency. Particularly the issue of the rights of the people and the status of Nagorno Karabakh is a matter of principle for Armenia. According to Mirzoyan, it's impossible to call any agenda full-fledged without taking all the above into account.
Armenia and Turkey should establish diplomatic relations and open borders, said Armenian Minister of Foreign Affairs Ararat Mirzoyan at a meeting of the National Assembly during the government hour on March 23.

According to the minister, the decision to participate in the Antalya Diplomatic Forum turned out to be correct.

We are confident that Armenia and Turkey can and should normalize relations. That is, they must establish diplomatic relations and open borders. The meeting of the Foreign Ministers played a positive role in this process, Mirzoyan noted.

Nevertheless, as the head of the foreign policy department admitted, there are no specific agreements yet.

"But the parties confirmed that they continue the process without any preconditions," the FM said.

In addition, according to the representative of the Government, the parties also discussed current issues. Among them are issues related to the situation on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border.
Israel-Vietnam Chamber of Commerce debuts

A ceremony to inaugurate the Israel-Vietnam Chamber of Commerce was held on March 22 by the Vietnamese Embassy in Israel and the Israel-Asia Chamber of Commerce.









Vietnamese Ambassador Do Minh Hung addresses the inaugural ceremony of Israel-Vietnam Chamber of Commerce (Photo: VNA)



As part of his address at the event, Vietnamese Ambassador Do Minh Hung briefed participants on both sides trade activities and prospects.



Despite the negative impact caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, bilateral relations and trade ties have seen sound development, with the turnover reaching US$1.8 billion, an increase of US$1.6 billion from 2020 and US$1.2 billion from 2019.



The nation has therefore been able to retain its status as Israels largest trade partner in Southeast Asia, he said.



Einat Halevi Levin, president of the Israel-Vietnam Chamber of Commerce, said that the decision to set up the chamber was prompted by the huge co-operation potential and rapid trade growth that exists between the two sides.



The chamber will provide support for the two business communities, with a target of doubling the two-way trade value, she said, adding that it has received major assistance from the Israeli Government.



Representatives from Israeli enterprises have shown a keen interest in investing in the Vietnamese market, a market of roughly 100 million consumers, with many looking to import commodities of all kinds, from machinery, automobiles to food from Vietnam.
Armenian News - NEWS.am presents the daily digest of top news as of 23.03.22:

Kyiv has agreed a deal with Russia to set up nine humanitarian corridors through which civilians can be evacuated, Ukraines deputy prime minister has said.

Iryna Vereshchuk said in a Facebook post that the routes would be opened in the Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kyiv and Luhansk regions.

She did not announce any safe corridor out of the heart of Mariupol, saying instead that people wishing to leave the city would find transport in nearby Berdyansk.

The agreement does not cover the besieged southeastern port city of Mariupol, but includes routes out of Luhansk, where a ceasefire has been announced

Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says about 100,000 civilians remain trapped in Mariupol without food, water and medicine.

He has accused Russian forces attacking Mariupol of thwarting attempts to evacuate civilians from the port city.

Russias security policy dictates that the country would only use nuclear weapons if its very existence were threatened, Russian presidents spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has told CNN.

The Kremlin spokesman made the comment in an English-language interview when asked whether he was confident that the Russian president would not use nuclear weapons.

We have a concept of domestic security and its public, you can read all the reasons for nuclear arms to be used, he said.

So if it is an existential threat for our country, then it [the nuclear arsenal] can be used in accordance with our concept, Peskov added.

Belarus has told some Ukrainian diplomats to leave the country and is closing its neighbors consulate in the city of Brest, according to a report by the countrys state news agency, Belta.

On Tuesday the Belarusian security service, the KGB, accused eight Ukrainian diplomats of espionage.

Polish interior minister Mariusz Kaminski says Warsaw, in turn, has expelled 45 Russian diplomats suspected of spying against the country.

Poland has expelled 45 Russian spies pretending to be diplomats, Kaminski tweeted. We are dismantling the Russian special services network in our country.

Russian ambassador to Poland Sergey Andreyev confirmed the expulsions, telling reporters that the individuals concerned had been given five days to leave Poland.

It is the third day that the supply of natural gas has been stopped in Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh).

In the conditions of heavy snowfall, about 120,000 people in Artsakh are left without vital natural gas.

However, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) of Azerbaijan has unclearly denied its involvement in the suspension of natural gas supply in Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh).

"Armenia's non-constructive approach, baseless allegations reveal the real intentions of that country," said Leyla Abdullayeva, head of the press service department of the Azerbaijan MFA.

But one can only guess what exactly Abdullayeva considers "baseless allegations."

The supply of natural gas to Artsakh was stopped on March 8, when the natural gas pipeline coming from was damaged in the area under the control of the Azerbaijani armed forces.

The Azerbaijani side was creating obstacles for nine days to repair this damaged natural gas pipeline. And finally on March 16, according to the Artsakh Info Center, thanks to negotiations with the assistance of the Armenian government and Russian peacekeepers, the Azerbaijani side began repairing this natural gas pipeline, and the repair was completed on March 19.

On Monday, however, the Artsakh Info Center informed that the natural gas supply to Artsakh was stopped againand due to the direct interference of the Azerbaijani side.

Meanwhile, the EU has already expressed concern over the cessationyet againof natural gas supply to Artsakh.

It is urgently needed to resume supplies to affected local population, Peter Stano, Lead Spokesperson for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy of the EU European Commission, tweeted.

The "Shushi Declaration" has been publicized in the Turkish state official newspaper: Resmi Gazete.

Following its signing by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the document was made public in Resmi Gazete, announcing the entry into force of this declaration, Anadolu Agency reported.

On June 15, 2021, the presidents of Azerbaijan and Turkey signedin the occupied Armenian city of Shushi in Artsakh this unprecedented agreement in bilateral relations.

In Armenia, people are discussing whether a grain shortage should be expected in the country amid the ongoing war in Ukraine, sanctions on Russia and amid decision of the Russian authorities to temporarily limit grain exports.

Based on the analysis made by the Ministry of Economy, the level of wheat self-sufficiency in 2021 is about 26.4% in Armenia.

The 2021 sown area of grain crops was 123,314 hectares, of which wheat was 58,967 hectares. And according to the information received from the provincial halls, about 53,335 hectares of autumn wheat were sown in the fall of 2021.

Also in the provincial halls, the gross harvest of grain crops was about 144,055 tons, of which wheat was about 96,262 tons.

More than 12 million people were infected with the coronavirus infection last week, with more than 32,000 deaths, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported Wednesday night.

The number of detected infections rose 7 percent over the previous seven days, and the number of deaths fell 23 percent.

After a substantial decline since late January, the number of new cases of COVID-19 increased for the second week in a row, with a 7% increase from 14 March to 20 March. At the same time, deaths were declining. In the past seven days, there were 23% fewer deaths than in the previous week. A total of 12,384,300 people were reported to the WHO. There have been 32,959 deaths.

Armenia has reported a total of 422,382 COVID-19 cases, while the death toll has exceeded 8,500.
The meeting of Turkey's National Security Council discussed the processes in the Caucasus within the framework of normalization of relations with Armenia.

The meeting was chaired by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, APA reported.

It was noted that Turkey's determination to protect border security and rights in the Eastern Mediterranean, its balanced position in the processes in the north of the Black Sea, and its persistence in ensuring and maintaining stability in the Balkans and the Caucasus once again demonstrate its contribution to global and regional peace, the statement reads.
US President Joe Biden will announce new sanctions against Russian politicians and businessmen during a series of summits in Brussels, CNN reported.

US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Biden will also discuss the location of NATO forces on its eastern flank and action plans in case Russia might use chemical or nuclear weapons.

Biden will meet with Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg to "check the signals." According to Sullivan, Biden will attend the extraordinary NATO summit for about three hours.

Sullivan said the alliance would discuss the question of NATO's force posture on the Eastern flank. He said leaders would ratify certain decisions taken by defense ministers last week, and task their military and political officials to set out a longer term game plan for what forces and capabilities are going to be required in those eastern flank countries.

The long-term plan will be agreed upon at this summer's NATO summit in Madrid, as previously announced. The new force posture will provide "a long term footprint that is matched to the new security reality," Sullivan said.

He noted that at a subsequent G7 meeting, Biden and his fellow leaders "will agree on an initiative to coordinate on sanctions enforcement.

Biden will also announce a package of sanctions designations tomorrow that relate both to political figures and oligarchs."

And in all his discussions, Biden will consult on potential contingencies surrounding potential cyberattacks or the use of chemical or biological weapons, along with how to deal with the rhetoric and the commentary coming out of Russia on this whole question of the potential use of nuclear weapons.
Hong Kong shuttler Angus Ng pulls out of Swiss Open

Hong Kong's Angus Ng tested positive for coronavirus and will miss the Swiss Open in Basel. Photo: AFP

Hong Kong's top badminton player Angus Ng has withdrawn from the Swiss Open having tested positive for coronavirus after arriving in Basel.



The 27-year-old was hoping to use this tournament to climb back into the world's top ten. He had been seeded sixth.



That leaves world number 17 Lee Cheuk-yiu as Hong Kong's only representative. He plays the Frenchman Toma Junior Popov in the first round.



There have been other Covid-related absences at the Swiss Open. Japan's two-time world champion Kento Momota and Taiwan's world number four Chou Tien-chen will not be competing. China's team have also pulled out.
'HK should scrap flight suspension mechanism'

'HK should scrap flight suspension mechanism'

Representatives of the tourism industry and domestic helper agencies have urged authorities to lift or adjust the flight suspension mechanism, saying it's no longer appropriate to temporarily ban specific flights from landing in Hong Kong just because several passengers tested positive for Covid-19.



Speaking on an RTHK radio show on Wednesday, Thomas Chan, who chairs the Hong Kong Union of Employment Agencies, said more foreign domestic helpers will be able to come to the SAR after officials lift its flight ban on nine countries  including the Philippines  from April 1.



But he said the flight-specific suspension mechanism remains a problem and should be lifted.



Under the mechanism, authorities can stop an airline from flying from a specific destination for two weeks if several infections emerge from the same flight.



In Hong Kong, there are so many infected persons, so for passengers from those countries, [they only account for] very few [cases], Chan said.



For these passengers, it doesnt mean once they go out of the plane they can go everywhere. They still have to be tested in the airport. They still have to be confined in quarantine hotels. So the risk of spreading to the community is very, very slim The suspension scheme is no [longer] suitable for the situation of Hong Kong.



Chan added that there aren't enough quarantine rooms to meet the demand for new arrivals, as some hotels have been turned into community isolation facilities.



Timothy Chui from the Tourism Association, meanwhile, suggested that the government amend the flight halting mechanism by raising the threshold on the number of infections that will trigger a suspension.



He also called on officials to consider converting some hotels back for quarantine purposes to satisfy the demand.



Some infectious diseases experts, like University of Hong Kong microbiologist Ho Pak-leung, also agreed that the flight suspension mechanism can be scrapped or adjusted.



He said inbound Hong Kong residents should be allowed to isolate at home due to the lack of quarantine facilities.
The Russian President explained that Russia plans to abandon all "compromised" currencies in payment settlements, RT reported.

He added that illegitimate decisions by a number of Western countries to freeze Russia's assets destroyed all confidence in their currencies.

"I have decided to implement in the shortest possible time a set of measures to change the payments for - yes let's start with this - for our natural gas supplied to the so-called unfriendly countries in Russian rubles, that is to stop using all compromised currencies for transactions," the Russian President said.

Putin gave the Central Bank and the government a week to determine the procedure for operations for buying rubles on the domestic market for importers of Russian gas.

The President added that Russia will continue to supply gas in accordance with the volumes and pricing principles of the contracts. Only the currency of payment will change, the report said.

--IANS san/

( 189 Words)

2022-03-23-19:16:04 (IANS)
This investment would be made over a period of five years and will lead to an employment generation for about 8,700 software professionals.

The new campus coming up in Hyderabad will be spread over an area of 1.572 million square feet in Rayadurgam. The campus will be ready for inauguration by October 2022.

The leadership team of Qualcomm informed this to Telangana's Information Technology and Industries Minister K.T. Rama Rao, who is currently on a visit to the US.

The leadership team from Qualcomm comprising their CFO, Akash Palkhiwala, VPs James Jean, Laxmi Rayapudi, Parag Agashe, and Senior Director Dev Singh met Rama Rao at their headquarters in San Diego.

During the meeting, the Telangana government agreed to partner with Qualcomm in areas such as agriculture, Smart Cities, digital education, and connected devices.

KTR, as the minister is popularly known, also met electric vehicle company Fisker Inc's Chairman & CEO Henrik Fisker, CFO Geeta Fisker, and the management team.

He thanked the leadership team of Fisker for choosing Hyderabad to set up their IT Development Center. The initial headcount of this upcoming center will be 300 IT professionals.

During the meeting, KTR gave an overview about the EV policy of Telangana. On his invitation, a team from Fisker would visit Hyderabad soon to understand the local EV ecosystem and explore other avenues of collaboration.

Fisker's first EV Car model Ocean will be launched later this year. Upcoming Pear model will be launched in 2023-24. Fisker plans to produce about 2.5 Lakh vehicles per year.

--IANS ms/vd

( 299 Words)

2022-03-22-22:36:03 (IANS)
Mumbai (Maharashtra) [India], March 23 (ANI/PRNewswire): Sunteck Foundation, along with Sunteck Realty, joined hands to organize a sustainable lifestyle drive at Suruchi beach, Vasai (W), in association with leading NGO, United Way Mumbai. Actress Dia Mirza, prominent citizens, and enthusiasts from Mumbai and other parts of the MMR thronged the beach to participate in the sustainable lifestyle drive at Suruchi beach. Rated as one of the cleanest and the most environment-friendly beaches in and around MMR, Suruchi beach - known for its long line of beautiful Suru (Casuarina) trees - is a favorite locale for beach lovers for its magnificent sunset and sunrise views as well as visually alluring scenery around the spot. Families find solace in evenings in the vicinity of the beach to play, relax and enjoy with children while the adventure-loving youth indulge in various aquatic sports. The present sustainability drive is part of Sunteck's ongoing Environmental Social Governance (ESG) initiatives to contribute to the upgradation of the habitat and environment. Sunteck Realty Chairman & Managing Director, Kamal Khetan added, "Our initiative is to maintain the coastal beauty of the pristine Suruchi beach. It is a step forward in ensuring a greener environment for Mumbai and those who long to have a serene and clean beach experience. As responsible corporate, we stay committed to sustainability. We believe 'My coast is indeed My responsibility.' I am highly delighted to say that Sunteck is on a mission to inspire and involve everyone in preserving these gifts from mother nature and our historical legacy." Besides the beautification of the beach, the program has also enhanced the pathways to the beach lined up with palm trees and paver blocks, resembling renowned beaches around the world while significantly improving the visitor experience. United Way, the beautification drive, elicited major fervor: A large gathering of volunteers at the beach besides several enthusiastic locals came to show their support for the facelift drive. Ajay Govale, Vice President of Community Impact at United Way Mumbai, said, "With the support of the Sunteck Foundation, the adoption of Suruchi beach is a commitment to enhancing the state of aesthetics of Suruchi beach. With today's sustainable lifestyle drive, we look forward to creating more significant impact and sensitivity amongst our citizens for our beaches." The successful sustainability initiative has raised much enthusiasm and inspiration among beach lovers. Says Actress and Goodwill Ambassador of United Nations Environment Program, Dia Mirza, "I am thrilled to be associated with Sunteck's sustainable lifestyle drive for its noble goals. As a proud Mumbai resident, I am always eager to preserve its natural beauty. This is a positive step forward in that direction." Sunteck Realty Limited (SRL) is one of the fastest-growing Mumbai-based luxury real estate development companies. SRL has an immaculate track record of having one of the lowest net Debt/Equity ratios, financial prudence and sustainable growth. The company focuses on a city-centric development portfolio of about 50 million square feet spread across 19 projects. Sunteck Realty has differentiated its projects under five brands - 'Signature': Uber luxury residences, 'Signia': Ultra-luxury residences, 'Sunteck City': Premium luxury residences, 'Sunteck World': Aspirational luxury residences, 'Sunteck': Commercial & Retail developments. The company has been a trendsetter in creating iconic destinations such as the flagship project, Signature Island at Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC), SunteckCity in Oshiwara District Centre (ODC), Goregaon and SunteckWorld at Naigaon - The Largest Township of MMR's Western Suburbs. This story is provided by PRNewswire. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/PRNewswire)
Pune (Maharashtra) [India], March 23 (ANI/NewsVoir): The COVID-19 Mega Vaccination Drives, supported by Bajaj Group of Companies, comprising Bajaj Auto Limited, Bajaj Finserv Limited, Bajaj Finance Limited, Bajaj Allianz General Insurance Company Limited and Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance Company Limited, administer over 1 Million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine to the beneficiaries of Pune and Aurangabad districts. A total of 10 lakh vaccine doses were provided to the District Authorities of Pune Municipal Corporation, Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation, Pune Zilla Parishad and the Aurangabad Municipal Corporation. The mega inoculation drives which started in August 2021, were delivered by more than 600 Covid Vaccination Centres (CVCs), spread across the city, rural and slum areas of Pune and Aurangabad with over 5,000 frontline, healthcare workers deployed on-ground to support the initiative. The Bajaj Group of companies in association with the local authorities also conducted a mass awareness and engagement program to encourage the eligible population of the rural and slum areas to come forward for their first and second doses of the vaccine. Commenting on this milestone, Sanjiv Bajaj, Chairman and Managing Director, Bajaj Finserv Limited said, "The pandemic has been a once in a century event that pushed the world into a spiral of unforeseen health crises. But the way the Indian Government stepped up its efforts in running the world's largest vaccination program and being the fastest one to reach the 100-million mark of inoculations has been inspiring and noteworthy. The Bajaj Group supported mega vaccination drives were a big step towards realising the immunization vision of the Government. We salute the constant hard work, commitment and dedication of the frontline workers and local government bodies in Pune and Aurangabad, without whom this 1 million plus inoculation milestone wouldn't have been possible. The Municipal Commissioner of Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC), Vikram Kumar, IAS congratulated stating, "This is truly commendable and testifies the exemplary CSR efforts of the Bajaj companies to support maximum vaccination coverage of the city. From the very start of the pandemic, the Bajaj group of companies stood strong with the communities, government and local authorities to extend the desired help and relief support to those who needed the most and we congratulate them on this achievement. It's important that we all stay united in our goal of building a safer and protected community against COVID-19." Since the onset of the pandemic, the Bajaj group of companies contributed INR 170 crore to support the nationwide fight against COVID-19, which was utilised to alleviate the immediate on-ground challenges as well as to build capabilities and resources, including the installation of 12 oxygen plants to provide more than 5,000 LPM of oxygen supply to the rural and urban hospitals, along with respiratory support equipment like oxygen concentrators, ventilators and BiPaps to help augment their capacity in treating COVID-19 patients, during the first and second waves of the pandemic. To know more, click here. This story is provided by NewsVoir. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/NewsVoir)
Bengaluru (Karnataka) [India], March 23 (ANI/NewsVoir): The dream to pursue higher studies in some of the best Indian and International Universities helps every Oakridger to stay curious and "Be Ambitious" always. Oakridge International School, Bengaluru organized a University Fair for grades 8 to 11, bringing together nearly 16 international universities from across the globe. This event was conducted with the aim to help all aspiring students get more clarity about their choice of courses available in universities in India and abroad. The event started with an extended knowledge-sharing session through three workshops taken by eminent speakers in the industry. The topics were insightful Looking beyond Convention Careers, College Applications - A Winning College Admissions Plan and Marketing yourself through Application Essays, SOP, and LOR. The workshop gathered a lot of appreciation from the parents and students. This was followed by a question-and-answer session wherein the queries by the students regarding subject choices were resolved with the best suggestions to guide them through their initial career choices. In the opening address, Pallavi Mishra, Principal, Oakridge International School, Bengaluru, said, "We encourage our students to go beyond popular choices and identify personal strength and compatibility when selecting colleges. Also, our international curricula focus on real-world learning that ensures the best college placements for Oakridge students." There was personalised career counselling and interactions with the representatives that gave them clarity on what they should watch out for. Students gained from a good insight of the campus life, details of their university like the admission process, courses offered, scholarship programmes such as fees, and contact details. With the intent of fast-tracking a student's career graph in the right direction, Oakridge International School, Bengaluru has always encouraged international mindedness in students through the IB curriculum. 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 23 (ANI/ATK): An initiative that strives to eradicate the hindrances and stagnation disrupting the journey of an Entrepreneurial organization, Entrepreneurs Parliament is here to offer you transformation. Through their mission of amplifying growth, vision to empower and mantra to spiritual wisdom, Entrepreneurs Parliament is the Entrepreneurial Pathfinder. Let's dive into the exploration of this mighty combination of Energy, Framework and Synergy, the Global Innovation and Incubation platform - Entrepreneurs Parliament. The Beginning Let's first discover what marks the beginning of Entrepreneurs Parliament? Astonishingly enough, a fatal accident that paralyzed the whole lower body of Popat. Popat, lying on his hospital bed itself, pondering what the purpose of his life is, kick started his Parliament for the Entrepreneurs, through a simple text message. And that is how it all started with the determination ever so unbreakable. He decided to cultivate all his profound experience of 10-12 years in entrepreneurship into something productive for the aspiring entrepreneurs as a guiding force, instead of giving in to his fate as a limitation. The first steps to success And just as if life had been planning it all through and it all happened for a purpose, that simple entrepreneur quiz in a WhatsApp text format with an attached google form, went viral all over social media, receiving around 9000 responses from eager to learn entrepreneurs in just 24 hours! Taking it all into seriousness, he decided to consult with some entrepreneurs to put this success into a shape, where he was served with a detailed insight into the diverse requirements of entrepreneurs, like investment, raising of capital, marketing strategy, etc. And hence, what he learned was the significance of creating a mutual environment for these interested entrepreneurs to share their thoughts. With the same idea, he now decided to launch a paid course with a business model of just 1000 bucks, to serve these exact requirements to the ones in need, and shared it to these 9000 applicants. And guess what? His Savings account was literally flooded with a lump sum amount of applications, as high as 43 lakhs, even leaving the bank authorities bewildered! What's next? What's next, now that he earned the trust of this many people? It was time for him to perform his share of research to discover what the root problem is, and how he can contribute to solve it. Just as expected, he did the needful and explored the three basic problems that entrepreneurs face in this generation of dynamic business environment, through some detailed surveys that he conducted from reliable sources. 1. To create an innovative business model to sustain the changing terms of the market for a considerable period of time and elevate growth. 2. How to create a solid market to target sales and generate leads from. 3. Creating the engagement for growth and investment. Discovering what the grave problem was, Entrepreneurs Parliament pledged to be an aid to the budding Entrepreneurs in all these concerned fields. They decided to be the initiative that supports the lack of experience in new entrepreneurs through their own years of expertise. Discovery of the purpose And how was the Entrepreneurs Parliament supposed to tap on such needs? 1. By helping the companies with an innovative business plan that will survive the dynamic market situation and drive growth into the business. 2. By creating an ecosystem for entrepreneurs to generate structured online marketing leads from, instead of having to invest on saturated online or offline marketing platforms that ultimately fetch no yield. 3. And lastly, putting the best engagement attracting tools and raising the capital for companies to fetch the required digital presence, through effective channelization of productivity. They believed in the credibility of their adopted functions and the positive effects they are certainly supposed to create on the Entrepreneurial society. The Initiatives for the Entrepreneurs Entrepreneurs Parliament, however, was not only confined to their core functions. Having faith in the power of expansion and out of the box thinking, this startup decided to climb a further stair up towards making it easier for the newbies, through some special initiatives. 1. Establishment of a Global school that facilitates access and education for aspiring Entrepreneurs to structure a fruitful business model, that brings the culture of innovation into their company for the next level of growth. 2. Creating a market access platform to support the budding businesses to receive an exposure, to help them establish a consistent customer acquisition process. 3. Bringing Capital acquisition within the means of new entrepreneurial firms through a private stock exchange. All these initiatives had been real game changers in the industry that took Entrepreneurship aid to a next level, accurately catering all the requirements of the struggling entrepreneurs. Conclusion Helping as many as 90 businesses so far to find their way, Entrepreneurs Parliament raised a capital of around 280 crores in a mere span of just 2-3 years! With several other initiatives being taken over the time, Entrepreneurs Parliament continues to tap on the requirements and betterment of business enterprises through their innovation and updated market strategies. From a GLOBALIZED hostel to a Capital Strategy, they have got your aspirations covered! This 3Ms Company, i.e. Mind, Money and Market, focusses on making it easier for their clients, consistently. Mind for Innovation, Money for Capital and Market for the audience, a full coverage venture indeed! Thus, it's no wonder if over the time this company evolves to be the one stop destination for all entrepreneurs to find solutions to their problems. Definitely making a mark with a journey worth learning lessons from, Popat and his company 'Entrepreneurs Parliament' has come a long way and has a long way to go! This story is provided by ATK. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/ATK)
New Delhi [India], March 23 (ANI/Bloomingdale): According to a commissioned survey conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Kaspersky, IT security leaders seeking to boost internal threat intelligence (TI) programs would prefer to delegate five out of eight major TI aspects to external vendors rather than develop them in-house. For most respondents, quicker threat detection, remediation and response are the main advantages of using external solutions. Threat intelligence has become a must-have for incidents' prevention and an important area for organizations to invest in. At the same time, this new specialty remains challenging for IT security teams because it requires constant tracking, analyzing and interpreting of large amounts of fragmented data in addition to regular reevaluation and adjusting of appropriate skills, sources and tools. The new study, evaluating threat intelligence practices among firms with mature cyber security functions, revealed that although 83% of decision-makers recognize the crucial role of threat intelligence in building a resilient cybersecurity program and plan to invest in the area, TI remains a challenging specialty for all firms. Close to two-thirds of IT security leaders (64%) said their firm struggles to align their threat intelligence program with their risk management program, and 62% face difficulties implementing measurement procedures to track threat intelligence effectiveness. Other major concerns include improving knowledge of the threat landscape, prioritizing multiple stakeholder requirements for information, and identifying gaps in data. To tackle these challenges and improve their threat intelligence program, IT security decision-makers plan to implement a range of measures internally and leverage vendors' offerings. Respondents believe it is more efficient to lean on external vendors for the majority of TI needs. Six in ten (61%) would put support in place for processing raw intelligence information, 60% for collecting human intelligence and 59% for integrating data feeds with other security tools. However, firms still prioritize developing in-house capabilities for choosing and aggregating data sources. The top two benefits of using vendors' support are quicker threat detection, remediation and response (56%) and improved efficiency with automated reporting processes (52%). About half of respondents also said external solutions can reduce the number of breaches and lower associated costs. "Threat intelligence program strengthens a company's defense, contributing to visibility over the threat landscape by providing relevant and applicable insights. Facilitating threat intelligence processing and analysisit enables companies to make timely and fully-informed decisions. However, evaluating TI services and choosing among the innumerable available market options is another challenge that confronts IT security teams", comments Artem Karasev, Product Marketing Lead, Corporate Product Marketing at Kaspersky. "Our experience in threat research suggests that while there are virtually no criteria perfectly applicable for all organizations, the guiding principle for choosing external threat intelligence sources should be quality over quantity". Kaspersky suggests paying special attention to the following points when evaluating external threat intelligence solutions: * Information sources the vendor uses: vendors that aggregate information from around the world can provide more visibility over actual threats and efficiently correlate fragmented activities. * Capability to provide context: contextual data helps reveal the 'bigger picture', further validating and supporting the wide-ranging uses of the data. Relationship context, such as domains associated with the detected IP addresses or URLs for where the file was downloaded from etc., boosts incident investigation and supports better incident 'scoping' by uncovering newly acquired related Indicators of Compromise in the network. * Compatibility with existing solutions: an examination of vendor's delivery methods and integrations systems ensures smooth integration of threat intelligence into existing security operations. * Vendor's experience: proven track record of threats investigation ensures efficacy of proposed solutions. Saying that the findings of the study were not surprising at all, Dipesh Kaura, General Manager, Kaspersky South Asia, adds, "Given the nature of the job, TI is a highly dynamic, highly specialized field in which greater your access to information about what is happening around the world, stronger your security systems can be. For this, it is best to rely on the experts. At Kaspersky, we have a global research team dedicated to spotting and analysing cybersecurity trends in real-time. We have a platform to share their findings with our enterprise clients and the ability to customize our offerings in response to these threats." The full study Mature Threat Intelligence to Build Resilient Cybersecurity Programs is available via the link. Kaspersky is a global cybersecurity and digital privacy company founded in 1997. Kaspersky's deep threat intelligence and security expertise is constantly transforming into innovative security solutions and services to protect businesses, critical infrastructure, governments and consumers around the globe. The company's comprehensive security portfolio includes leading endpoint protection and a number of specialized security solutions and services to fight sophisticated and evolving digital threats. Over 400 million users are protected by Kaspersky technologies and we help 240,000 corporate clients protect what matters most to them. Learn more at www.kaspersky.com. This story is provided by Bloomingdale. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/Bloomingdale)
Gurgaon (Haryana) [India], March 23 (ANI/PR Newswire): Max Bupa Health Insurance Company Limited, one of India's leading standalone health insurance players in India has rebranded itself as Niva Bupa Health Insurance Company Limited. Max Bupa came into being in 2010 as the third standalone health insurance company to be launched in India. It was launched at a time when the health insurance industry in India was at an extremely nascent stage and the awareness and penetration of health insurance in India was abysmally low. Over the years, the Company has not only established itself as one of the most trusted names in the health insurance sector but also made significant contribution towards propelling the growth of the Indian health insurance industry. Over the years, Niva Bupa (formerly known as Max Bupa) has established itself as a trusted health insurance partner and an industry leading brand. Continuing with the legacy of Max Bupa, the rebranded, Niva Bupa will democratize health insurance category by bringing more thrust on customer touch points and introduce host of innovative products and digitally enabled services. The Company will aim to provide financial assurance as well as healthcare access to its customers by focusing on product innovation, customer centricity and digital capability. Going forward, the Company will introduce differentiated insurance products across various customer segments, therby catering to a larger clientele. The company has also been pressing ahead with best-in class digital services, effectively bringing customised health solutions to millions of its customers in India, instantly and without paperwork hassles. The rebranding follows a change in the shareholding pattern of the Company. Max India, the erstwhile majority stakeholder in the Company, sold its share to True North in February 2019. Owing to this change in shareholding pattern, Max Bupa needed to create a new brand identity as part of the transition. The company decided to utilize this as an opportunity to redefine itself. "Following the shareholder transition of Max Bupa from Max India to True North in 2019, , a name change and rebranding were in order. Niva Bupa will firmly stand at the intersection of financial services and healthcare to fulfill the needs and aspirations of millions of people in India. The health insurance industry is poised for a monumental growth, and we will take our new brand identity to our customers with a renewed promise of protection and care. As Niva Bupa, we will look to further strengthen our core brand ethos of customer centricity. Under the new brand Niva Bupa, we will continue to expand our digital and network presence that will allow customers to avail our industry leading products and best-in-class services anytime, anywhere e." said Krishnan Ramachandran, MD and CEO, Niva Bupa. Nimish Agrawal, Senior Vice President and Head Marketing, Niva Bupa said that the rebranding will help position the company as one which offers a humanized experience to its customers, especially in terms of guidance, counseling, and support at the moment of truth. "In our new avatar as Niva Bupa, we will bring a fresh perspective to the narrative around health insurance. We have consciously chosen to move away from the fear appeal which is generally used for this category and rather play the role of an enabler for our customers which would imply that health insurance is for freedom and not constraints. Our brand philosophy is to humanize and de jargonize the health insurance category." Over the years, the company has empanelled over 8000 hospitals across the length and breadth of India and currently boasts of digital capabilities that facilitates cashless claim processing in less than 30 minutes. It caters to a large section of customers with its customised plans for small and big size families as well as plans for individuals and senior citizens. As part of its portfolio of products, the company provides healthcare solutions for specific needs like protection against critical illnesses, corona as well as accident coverage plans which provide for partial and total permanent disability cover. This story is provided by PRNewswire. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/PR Newswire)
New Delhi [India], March 23 (ANI/BusinessWire India): Despite the strides that they have made in society, and in spite of their contributions to the world and to workplaces, women remain a minority in positions of leadership. V-WA 50 aims to change this. Launched by the Vedica Women's Alliance, the initiative recognises, rewards, and amplifies women's achievements by awarding 50 senior women professionals and men who support gender equality. The 1st Annual V-WA 50 garnered almost 200 nominations in 10 categories from across the country. The programme has now opened applications for its second edition in 2022. According to the World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Report 2021, only about 14 per cent of senior and managerial positions are held by women. Through V-WA 50, Vedica strengthens its commitment to making women visible by telling their stories, commemorating their achievements, and building a repository of role models that will inspire the generations of women to come. "V-WA 50 celebrates the under-recognised and unsung contributions that women have been making to the world, and increasingly to workplaces. In a country where women are steadily dropping out of the workforce, the stories of these extraordinary women have the power to change the narrative about women and the workplace in India, and even the world," says Anuradha Das Mathur, Founder of the Vedica Women's Alliance and Founder and Dean of the Vedica Scholars Programme for Women. V-WA 50 will honour senior women professionals of remarkable achievement and exemplary leadership. The award categories include Women Leaders in Finance; Industry; Hospitality; D&I; Science, Tech, and R&D; Marketing and Sales; Fashion and Lifestyle; Health, Pharma, and Wellness; Agriculture and Agtech; and Professional Services. The Lifetime Achievement award will commemorate the legacy of women who have had made a significant impact on their industry and community. Recognising the value of male allies in the journey towards equality, V-WA 50 also applauds men who have furthered inclusion in their organisations through the Men of Impact award. The forum invites industry networks, business hubs, and women's forums to nominate their most promising women leaders. The awardees will be selected by an illustrious jury of industry leaders across sectors. By shining a spotlight on high-achieving women, V-WA 50 aims to spark change by creating role models who will inspire more women towards professional success and generate a multiplier effect on the ecosystem. For more details and to submit nominations, please visit: https://www.v-wa.in/The-V-WA50/ This story is provided by BusinessWire India. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/BusinessWire India)
New Delhi [India], March 23 (ANI/NewsVoir): Indian Hotels Company (IHCL), India's largest hospitality company yesterday announced a framework to drive its sustainability and social impact measures under Paathya. Derived from the Sanskrit term inferring a path, Paathya encapsulates initiatives to lead positive change with IHCL's core values of Trust of all stakeholders, Awareness around the needs of our ecosystem and Joy at heart. Speaking on the occasion, Hon'ble Union Minister of Tourism, Culture and Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER), Government of India, G Kishan Reddy, said, "Sustainable and responsible tourism is the way forward and the Government of India is already working in this direction. The government and the industry together are exploring ideas, solutions, and strategies to face the environmental and societal challenges. I applaud IHCL for its holistic approach of Paathya and for leading the path for the sector." The function was graced by Rupinder Brar, Additonal DG, Ministry of Tourism, Government of India. Taking ahead IHCL's over a century old legacy, Paathya forges a journey focused on Environmental Stewardship, Social Responsibility, Excellence in Governance, Preserving Heritage, Value Chain Transformation, and Sustainable Growth. Puneet Chhatwal, Managing Director & Chief Executive Officer, IHCL, said, "Today, it has become even more important to chart a new tomorrow - one that is more sustainable and inclusive. We believe this is the only way to drive India's journey to being among the top travel and tourism economies. The launch of Paathya is in line with IHCL's commitment to strengthen its resolve of contributing to the society with an integrated approach towards creating sustainable growth and positive impact. This reaffirms our Founder, Jamsetji Tata's vision of keeping community at the heart of business." IHCL has defined several short and long-term goals to be fulfilled by 2030 under Paathya. From 100% elimination of single-use plastic across all its hotels to ensuring 100% of waste water is reused, the company's 100% of hotels will be certified to a global sustainability standard. Representing best practices, 78 IHCL hotels have achieved EarthCheck certification with 47 Platinum recognitions, largest in the global tourism industry. Furthermore, all business meetings and conferences will go green with the introduction of Innergise - Green Meetings, reducing their environmental impact. Taking ahead its commitment to skill building, and create employability for the deserving and the marginalized, IHCL aims to impact the livelihood of over 100,000 youth. Long heralded as the custodian of Indian heritage, IHCL's collaboration with UNESCO, will see adoption of 100% of Intangible Cultural Heritage (IHC) projects in the geographies it operate in. To know more, please visit: www.ihcltata.com; www.tajhotels.com. 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 23 (ANI/BusinessWire India): The Coca-Cola Company, on account of its strategy 'Reduce, Recycle and Replenish', announced that it has exceeded its 2020 water replenish goal. Demonstrating significant improvements in its Water Use Ratio (WUR), the company announced a 32.4 percent reduction in WUR in INSWA. From 2.56 liters of water used to produce a liter of beverage in 2010, it used 1.73 liters in 2020. Additionally, in India and Southwest Asia, through water conservation initiatives undertaken by bottling operations and Coca-Cola India Foundation (Anandana), the Company has created a combined water replenishment potential of 26 billion litres. Water stewardship has long been a business imperative for Coca-Cola. In 2021, the Company announced a new holistic strategy globally to achieve water security for its business, communities and nature everywhere it operates, sources agricultural ingredients for its beverages and touches people's lives by 2030. This strategy focuses on three core priorities: reducing shared water challenges around the world; enhancing community water resilience with a focus on women and girls; and improving the health of priority watersheds. Commenting on this milestone, Devyani Rajya Laxmi Rana, Vice President, Public Affairs, Communications & Sustainability, INSWA said, "Water is essential for life, our communities and the entire ecosystem. World Water Day 2022 presents an opportunity to highlight the importance of groundwater, the water found underground in the cracks and spaces in soil, which can be held in aquifers and extracted by wells or naturally through springs or discharged into lakes or streams. We are humbly proud of our associations and partnerships with NGO's and our bottling partners which have enabled us to replenish over 160% of the water used in our operations in India and South West Asia. It has also furthered our vision of water stewardship by expanding access to clean water and preserve waterways. This achievement is another step in our steadfast approach and commitment towards creating a better shared future." More than a decade ago, the Company set a pioneering goal to replenish the water used in its beverages and their production, consume water more efficiently, and treat the wastewater from production processes. Through the three 'R's strategy of 'Reduce, Recycle and Replenish', not only did it exceed its 2020 replenish goal, but also set a leading example in shared water management inside and outside its operations with INSWA contributing significantly to the Company's water stewardship goals globally. For details refer to the infographic. Through meaningful collaborations with its bottling partners, Non-Government Organizations (NGOs), Civil Society Organization (CSOs), and community members, Anandana - The Coca-Cola India Foundation (CCIF) has been able to make humble contributions through key water replenishment projects for the holistic development of communities in distressed regions across India. While these projects focus on addressing the challenges owing to water scarcity, they have also paid special attention to community participation with a focus on women empowerment, who often reach supervisory roles in village "PaniSamitis" (water committees) to ensure maintenance and sustainability of community water projects. Globally, The Coca-Cola Company is working with four key partners who have provided strategic development and implementation support on groundwater-focused projects around the world: The Nature Conservancy (TNC) Coca-Cola and TNC are jointly pursuing Nature-Based Solutions not only to protect watersheds, but to unlock meaningful benefits for people and the planet. This commitment includes projects focused on maintaining the health of groundwater systems, like the Greater Cape Town Water Fund in South Africa, where water-hogging invasive plant species threaten local municipal water supplies including the Atlantis Aquifer. Coca-Cola and other partners supported a TNC-led project to remove invasive species, clearing the way for the reestablishment of native vegetation and releasing water back to the supply system. TNC also led the development of the watersheds portion of Coca-Cola's 2030 Water Strategy, outlining a goal to make measurable, positive contributions to watershed health and resilience in 100% of the company's priority watersheds. The strategy marks a shift from water replenishment as a standalone goal to improving overall watershed health. The partners are now establishing watershed health plans in priority areas around the world. World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Since 2012, the Coca-Cola Company and WWF have replenished more than 1.4 billion liters of water back into the environment, improving water security in some of the most water-stressed areas of the world. The partners' water stewardship work began in 11 freshwater basins before expanding the program in 50 countries. WaterAid In addition to expanding clean water access through climate-resilient solutions in countries such as Bangladesh, Eswatini, Tanzania and Nigeria, WaterAid and Coca-Cola helped reverse groundwater depletion in Nepal by installing 51 recharge wells and filter chambers. These climate change adaptive measures leverage available rainwater for urban communities during droughts and dry seasons, resulting in groundwater recharge of up to 13 million gallons annually. Global Water Challenge (GWC) Since 2017, GWC, in collaboration with The Coca-Cola Foundation, the Water and Development Alliance (WADA) and Ipsos, has examined the transformative impact of water access on women's empowerment. The coalition-sponsored Ripple Effect Study provided evidence that clean water uniquely empowers women and transforms communities. Using these insights, GWC established the "women for water" platform to mobilize collective action for clean water access for women and communities in 21 countries across Africa, North and South America, the Middle East and Central Asia. Learn more about Coca-Cola's water stewardship strategy and programs This story is provided by BusinessWire India. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/BusinessWire India)
Bengaluru (Karnataka) [India], March 23 (ANI/NewsVoir): The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) India is leading a Disease Surveillance Project in partnership with CHRI (Centre for Health Research and Innovation) that will use publicly available non-personal data to improve India's public health infrastructure's preparedness for disease outbreaks by predicting outbreaks. The project is funded by Siemens Healthineers, India as part of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Speaking on this initiative Dr Vikram Venkateswaran, Healthcare Working Group, IET Future Tech Panel, said, "This is a landmark initiative from the IET Future Tech Panel on a challenge of National importance. We want to be able to demonstrate the power of publicly available data for health surveillance and at the end of the project, build a first of its kind, scalable model. With combined strengths of CHRI, IET and Siemens Healthineers, I am sure we will be able to build a unique solution to scale." Neeraj Jain, Country Director, PATH India said, "The pandemic shed light on the importance of real-time monitoring of disease to meet the healthcare needs of the country. The government's Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme promises to enable tech-enabled monitoring of disease trends, for epidemic prone diseases for early detection and response, thus enabling the prevention of another healthcare crisis. Through this initiative and collaboration, we aim to help bring this mission to fruition." Shekhar Sanyal, Country Head, IET India added, "These kinds of multi-party, industry-partnerships and synergies are key in establishing important data-led, predictive and intuitive healthcare systems that the country needs today. Tech-driven projects will be the cornerstone of lasting social impact, especially in healthcare. This project is a direct step towards solving the Healthy Lives societal challenge from the IET's global strategic plan for 2030." Speaking on the growth of Healthcare IT, Dileep Mangsuli, India Executive Director- Development Centre of Siemens Healthineers said, "The digital health will transform population health in future. Healthcare analytics will become core to healthcare planning and future preparedness. Predictive analytics and forecasting models can be used to prepare for future disease outbreaks. This project is definitely a step in the right direction, and we are happy to be supporting this initiative." Spread over a year, the project aims to feed into the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare's Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme. The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) is one of the world's largest professional societies for engineers, headquartered in the UK. Turning 150 last year, The IET works closely with industry, academia and government in its mission to engineer a better world. In line with this, The IET also has specific global initiatives around key sectors that are relevant to solving problems that impact the society at large. In India, IET works through a large community of engineers and technologists spread across 8 Local Networks in India. Positioned as a neutral platform for volunteers and contributors, IET's strategy is to promote cutting-edge, thought leadership work focussed in areas such as Future technologies, Future of Mobility and Transport, as well as the Future of Work. With members and volunteers, IET drives innovation and change in the fields of engineering and technology by researching, investigating, reviewing and analysing the industry's challenges, proposing solutions that create impact and drive change. Centre for Health Research and Innovation (CHRI) is a PATH affiliate in India that aims to create lasting public health impact across the country. We work on some of the most critical areas of public health including tuberculosis, maternal newborn child health and nutrition, neglected tropical diseases, malaria and vaccines. Our work is spread across India with communities, healthcare professionals, policy makers, innovators, hospitals, laboratories and pharmacists to bring about sustainable, scalable and impactful change in public health. At Siemens Healthineers, we pioneer breakthroughs in healthcare. For everyone. Everywhere. As a leading medical technology company, Siemens Healthineers enables healthcare providers worldwide through its regional companies to increase value by empowering them on their journey towards expanding precision medicine, transforming care delivery, improving the patient experience, and digitalizing healthcare. Siemens Healthineers is continuously developing its product and service portfolio, with AI-supported applications and digital offerings that play an increasingly important role in the next generation of medical technology. Siemens Healthineers also provides a range of services and solutions to enhance healthcare providers' ability to provide high-quality, efficient care to patients. We support healthcare providers across the entire range of patient care - from prevention and early detection to diagnosis and on to treatment and after care; and playing a significant role in transforming care delivery in India. This story is provided by NewsVoir. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/NewsVoir)
Amanda Bynes has broken her silence after a judge ruled to terminate her nearly nine-year-long conservatorship wherein her mother was put in charge of managing her personal and financial affairs. In a statement shared with People Magazine via her lawyer David A. Esquibias, the former actor-turned-fashion student expressed her gratitude while sharing insight into her future plans. "Following today's decision by the judge to terminate my conservatorship, I would like to thank my fans for their love and well wishes during this time. I would also like to thank my lawyer and my parents for their support over the last nine years," said Bynes, 35. "In the last several years, I have been working hard to improve my health so that I can live and work independently, and I will continue to prioritise my well-being in this next chapter. I am excited about my upcoming endeavours -- including my fragrance line -- and look forward to sharing more when I can," she concluded. During the brief hearing, Judge Roger L Lund said, "The conservatorship is no longer needed or required. She has done everything the court has asked." Bynes' mother, Lynn, was granted temporary conservatorship over the star back in August 2013 following a series of concerning behaviour. It came about after the actor, then 27, was placed on an involuntary psychiatric hold for allegedly starting a fire in an elderly woman's driveway. She was placed under another involuntary hold and tweeted in November 2014 that she had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Bynes announced in November 2018 that she had maintained sobriety for the last four years but checked herself back into treatment two months later for a reported "stress-related relapse." However, since then, the 'Hairspray' star is seemingly doing better. Over the last several years, Bynes has been living out of the spotlight as she finishes her degree at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising. She previously earned her associate's degree in 2019 and celebrated the milestone on social media. Since filing to end her conservatorship in February, Bynes has been taking steps towards independence, most recently locating an LA rental to move into with her fiance Paul Michael. (ANI)
Buffalo, WY (82834)

Today

Sunny to partly cloudy. High 71F. Winds ESE at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

Cloudy skies early, then partly cloudy after midnight. Low 51F. Winds WSW at 10 to 20 mph.
The 34-year-old actor and her partner shared the exciting news with her fans and followers via a joint statement posted on Instagram.

Sharing a few shots from their hospital room, the happy parents also revealed their son's name in the caption.

The two are already proud parents to sons Abraham and Donnie, and daughter Margot, reported People magazine.

Cave, widely known for her role as Lavender Brown in the 'Harry Potter' series, revealed earlier this month that she was hospitalised with COVID-19 while in her third trimester.

"Triage, once again," the 34-year-old actor captioned a photo of her legs as she sat propped up on a hospital bed, a monitor strapped to her bare belly.

She added, "Anyone else had covid in 3rd trimester & had it hit them like a tonne [sic] of bricks for weeks?"

The actor announced on Instagram in December that she was expecting her fourth baby with Brown, sharing the exciting news with a series of mirror selfies. "Can't hide this new baby anymore," she captioned the post.

Her partner Brown also announced the news on his Instagram account with a sonogram photo. (ANI)
According to Deadline, a local news website has reported that the star has bought the land near the Little Woods neighbourhood which is close to the I-10 service road.

The current Mayor of New Orleans, Latoya Cantrell, expressed her excitement about the venture via Twitter.

She wrote, "The New Orleans East is making a comeback, bam. New Orleans own Anthony Mackie is opening a HUGE 20-acre film studio! This is INCREDIBLE !! The influx of productions will not only bring economic growth but job opportunities!"

As per Deadline, another news outlet suggests that Mackie's interest in investing in a studio stems from his passion for producing, as he has several producing credits including 'The Banker' and 'Outside The Wire'. (ANI)
According to Variety, the news was confirmed by two Italian production companies Minerva Pictures and Andrea Iervolino and Monica Bacardi's ILBE.

They revealed that both Alec Baldwin and his brother Daniel Baldwin have been cast in two films they are jointly producing, and which will soon shoot in Rome.

Minerva's chief Gianluca Curti divulged that Baldwin will be arriving in Rome on Saturday. While Daniel Baldwin is already in the Italian capital.

The films are titled 'Kid Santa' and 'Billie's Magic World', and both are billed as live-action/animation family Christmas comedies. Curti said that the Baldwin brothers will be in Rome for four weeks for the live-action portion of the shoot of both movies

According to Curti, Alec's involvement on both projects precedes last year's accident while filming 'Rust'

As per Variety, the actor was holding a Colt .45 while preparing for a scene at a ranch near Santa Fe, N.M., on October 21 when his gun went off, killing cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and wounding the film's director, Joel Souza. (ANI)
The fashion icon opted for a comfy yet classy blue pantsuit for the day, paired with white sneakers.

She accessorized her look with an initials necklace and stud earrings.

The store launch was also attended by Anil Kapoor, Harsh Varrdhan Kapoor, and Anshula Kapoor.

For the unversed, Sonam and Anand tied the knot in 2018 in a traditional wedding ceremony in Mumbai. (ANI)
NewSpace India Ltd - the commercial arm of Department of Space - will open the price bids submitted by three parties to make rocket Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) next month, as the next fiscal begins, said a senior official. "The techno-commercial evaluation is on the verge of conclusion. Once that is done, the price bids submitted by the three industry consortiums will be opened," an NSIL official, not wanting to be identified, told IANS. The NSIL has the mandate of building, and launching rockets and satellites through industry partners and also providing space-based services through remote sensing and communication satellites. Last year, the company issued the Request for Proposal (RFP) from industries for making five PSLV rockets of the Indian Space Research Organisation. Three proposals were from Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) and Larsen and Toubro Ltd, Bharat Electronics Ltd, Alpha Design and BEML Ltd, and Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd (BHEL), it is learnt. "Various committees went through the proposals that were received," the official said. Contacted by IANS, ISRO Chairman and Space Secretary S. Somanath, queried about the RFPs, said a decision has to be taken on the modalities. He also said the plan was to source five PSLV rockets from the selected industry but whether the industry players will be enthused to make investments to make that number is the question. According to the NSIL official, the selected consortium will be enabled to use the existing ISRO facilities. Asked about the investment that would be made by the parties who have submitted their proposals, the official said that would be told later. The NSIL official said the selected industry player can use ISRO facilities for a fee, and it is the industry's responsibility to deliver the rocket. Queried about the ISRO role, the official said, the Indian space agency will also have a role in making the rocket in connection with some critical systems. After PSLV, the NSIL will issue an Expression of Interest (EOI) for making the ISRO's small rocket - Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV)-- which is under development. The selection process for SSLV will be simpler as NSIL has the experience in choosing the industry partner for making the PSLV rocket. Further the SSLV is of simpler technology - it is powered by solid fuel motors. Following that will be the EOI for making ISRO's heavier rocket Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mk III (GSLV-MkIII), the official added. Meanwhile NSIL has issued an 'Interest Explanatory Note' to transfer ISRO's technology for making the small satellite - India Mini Satellite-1 (IMS-1) Bus. ISRO's UR Rao Satellite Centre (URSC) has developed a small satellite platform which would enable low cost access to space by providing a dedicated platform for payloads for earth imaging, ocean and atmospheric studies, microwave remote sensing and space science missions with a quick turnaround time. The satellite will have a payload mass of 30kg and a life space of two years. According to NSIL, the Department of Space has authorised for technology transfer of IMS-1 Satellite Platform to suitable entrepreneurs/industry in India. The last date for submission of interest is March 25. --IANS vj/vd ( 533 Words) 2022-03-22-19:50:03 (IANS)
Kashmiris are alienated from the rest of the country because of the policies of the government, CPI Rajya Sabha member Binoy Viswam said on Tuesday. Participating in the debate on the Jammu and Kashmir Budget 2022-23 and two Appropriation Bills for the Union Territory, he said that once Kashmir was known as paradise on the earth, and "where is the paradise now?" "You are ruling J&K through the para-military forces and defence forces. We want you to visit Kashmir and find the reality. What you wanted to show is not real Kashmir. Kashmir is bleeding, hence the democratic process must be initiated in the UT," he said. "You talk to Kashmiri people and try to know their need, and aspirations," he added. Meanwhile, Union Minister Bhupender Yadav raised a point of order saying that some members have used unparliamentary words like "joining hands with the enemy" and "thumping chests", and Congress member L. Hanumanthaiah, who was in the chair, said that he will examine the records and if any such words were used by the members, those will be expunged. Shiv Sena's Priyanka Chaturvedi said that the Budget for J&K has not said anything for Kashmiri Pandits. "A film on the Kashmiri Pandits have come, there had been atrocities on the Kashmiri Pandits, nobody can deny this. But you (government) are doing politics on this issue," she said. She also said that she got a reply from Minister of State for Home Affairs Nityanand Rai that around 6,000 houses were sanctioned for Kashmiri Pandits but so far, only 1,025 houses have been built, while around 3,000 vacancies were created for them but only 1,739 got employment. Chaturvedi stressed that Kashmiri Pandits are not migrants as they are not from other countries and they were forced to leave their homes because of militancy in the erstwhile state. BJP's Anil Jain, while criticising the Opposition for opposing "The Kashmir Files", said that what is shown in the film is only a tip of the iceberg while Trinamool Congress' Nadimul Haque said that wouldn't it have been better had the Budget been discussed in the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly. Samajwadi Party's Ramgopal Yadav asked the government how many Kashmiri Pandits have been rehabilitated in Jammu and Kashmir. About "The Kashmir Files", he said that the speeches of the ruling party leaders are even more dangerous than the film. "Where is the representation of Kashmir in the Upper House and what stops the government from conducting polls once the delimitation has been done. Only the native Kashmiris can understand the state of affairs in the state. Win the confidence of the people. Conduct polls in the state so that the Budget doesn't need to be discussed in Parliament," he said. RJD's Manoj Jha said that the mainstream of the UT was delegitimised while the absence of trust of the people is concerning. He also said that there is alienation in the state. "Digital mode of education collapsed in the state. Half widow term is only used in Kashmir. One cannot tell the truth in Kashmir," he added. Union Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said that "The Kashmir Files" has disclosed the "sins" of some parties and families. Questioning the people who make hue and cry about human right violations, he said are human rights only for terrorists and separatists. Finance Minister Nirmala Sithraman will reply to the debate on Wednesday. --IANS ams/vd ( 584 Words) 2022-03-22-20:50:03 (IANS)
Kurdish filmmaker Lisa Calan, who is the chief guest at the ongoing 26th International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK), has said that her fight is against the Islamic State (ISIS). She was interacting with mediapersons here on Tuesday. Calan, who lives in Turkery, had lost both her legs in an ISIS bomb attack in Turkey on June 5, 2015 while participating in an election rally of the People's Democratic Party, just two days before the Turkish general elections. She said that in that blast, five people lost their lives while several others were injured. Calan said that several filmmakers had come to her support and they started a campaign to raise funds for her treatment abroad titled 'Let's be arms and legs to each other'. She said that after the attack, her will power increased and her strength and resolve to comeback became immense. The filmmaker said that she had got a job in the Diyarbakir City Hall after the attack but was later fired from the post. Calan also said that the attack against her was portrayed as an attack against women and her very presence with prosthetics is a clear message to the perpetrators of violence, i.e., the ISIS. Calan said that she could stand on feet again because of the resolve of the Kurdish people. The Kurdish people are facing several problems in Turkey and they are forced to fight for their claims and rights, including women's rights, education, children's rights etc., she said. The filmmaker said that there is an interesting dynamism in Kurdish people and that they are tired fighting a war for the past 100 years, adding that the ideology and the nation give them the strength to fight. When asked whether she expects the formation of an independent Kurdishthan, Calan said that she expects that it will become a reality one day. The filmmaker also said that most of the Turkish movies are not very political, and do not reflect the minds of the people. Calan said that she is in the process of making a documentary about the survivors of bomb attacks in Turkey, adding that there are many who had lost their limbs and had been in bed after the bomb attacks orchastrated by the ISIS. Calan also said that she would try to make an autobiographical movie in which she will depict the trauma she had undergone, including the painful surgeries that she was subjected to in Germany, Australia and Turkey as well as the struggle to come back after the bomb attack had fatally damaged her legs. The filmmaker said that she is now seeing life from the common man's perspective, while earlier it was through the lens of the upper class with which she had viewed the society. Calan also said that she is thankful to the Kerala government and Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan for honouring her with the 'Spirit of Cinema' award at the IFFK. Her movie 'Language of the Mountains' was screened at the festival on the opening day (March 18). --IANS aal/arm ( 521 Words) 2022-03-22-20:56:01 (IANS)
Police sources said at around 6 p.m., the body of BSF Sub-Inspector Ladup Bomza was found inside his quarters in the camp in Sunderbani area of Rajouri.

"Inquest proceedings have been started into the death of the sub-inspector who belonged to West Bengal. Post-mortem has been conducted at sub-district hospital Sundarbani.

"After completion of medico-legal formalities, the body was handed over to BSF authorities," a police source said.

--IANS sq/vd

( 109 Words)

2022-03-22-21:16:02 (IANS)
AIADMK leader and former Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, O. Panneerselvam while deposing before the Arumughaswamy commission said that V.K. Sasikala, late former chief minister J. Jayalalithaa's aide had told him a few times that the former Chief Minister was doing fine. The one-man commission headed by retired Justice Arumughaswamy was constituted by Panneerselvam -- when he was the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu in 2017, a year after the passing away of Jayalalithaa. He also said that he was not suspicious of Jayalalithaa's death, and was only reflecting the opinion of the people of Tamil Nadu and elsewhere. He deposed for the second consecutive day on Tuesday before the commission that is probing the circumstances that led to the death of the former Chief Minister. "When Jayalalithaa was admitted to Apollo hospital, Sasikala told me a few times that Jayalalithaa was doing fine. I was not aware of the food given to the former Chief Minister. Personally, I still have high regards and respect for V.K. Sasikala," OPS had earlier said. It may be noted that OPS while appearing before the commission on Monday has said that he was not aware of the reasons for the hospitalisation of Jayalalithaa. He had deposed before the commission on Monday as well. "I don't know anything. I don't know what treatment was given to former Chief Minister Jayalalithaa at Apollo hospital and which team of doctors had treated her. I had no knowledge as to why she was even admitted at the hospital. I came to know of it only after hearing from the Chief Secretary in the hospital." Sister-in-law of V.K. Sasikala, Ilavarasi, had also appeared before the Arumughaswamy commission on Monday. The former Chief Minister passed away at a private hospital in 2016 in Chennai following a prolonged illness. --IANS aal/pgh ( 314 Words) 2022-03-22-21:26:02 (IANS)
Warning that the situation of groundwater is indeed alarming across India, Minister of State for Jal Shakti Prahlad Singh Patel on Tuesday said that there is an urgent need for behavioural change to conserve water. "For the effective success of a social cause, people need to have determination and commitment and that requires some inspiration and trust in the leadership. We pledged to make our country open defecation free and we have succeeded in it. This is a classic example of behavioural change. A similar behavioural change is required for water conservation. We need to save every drop of water and the change should come from us," Patel said at an event organised to mark the World Water Day 2022 with the theme 'Groundwater - Making the invisible visible'. The event was organized by FICCI and Dhanuka Group in association with IRMA, VAMNICOM, IIPA's Delhi Regional Chapter and CNRI. NITI Aayog Member Ramesh Chand said: "India accounts for 18 per cent of the world's population, 2.4 per cent of land, and 4 per cent of water. If we look at these ratios, we should have been facing scarcity of land more than water. But it is not so." "There is a gap between the rate at which demand for water is growing and the rate at which the availability is improving. The biggest explanation is that in the last 30 years our cropping pattern, our technique of crop cultivation, and our preferences have turned water-intensive," Chand said. "If we evaluate at a regular interval of a decade, we would find that the quantity of water consumption for producing one kilogram of the crop has increased decade over decade. On the other hand, land used for producing that one kilogram of the crop has reduced over time. We always focused on productivity of crop per hectare or per acre and did not give required attention towards per cubic of water used for growing of crop." Earlier, at an event organised by his Ministry, Patel reminded everyone attending, especially school children, that the day should not end up being just an event but to make a pledge that everyone will actually do something of his or her to save every single drop of water. Coming from the Bundelkhand region that is drought prone, the Minister said, he could not be more happier to share that his home district of Damoh that received water one in every five days, thanks to the efforts being made under the Jal Jeevan Mission, "the drinking water availability to Damoh in Bundelkhand will increase to 65 per cent from just 17 per cent by April this year". --IANS niv/vd A ( 455 Words) 2022-03-22-21:54:05 (IANS)
Buffalo, WY (82834)

Today

Sunshine and a few afternoon clouds. High 71F. NE winds shifting to SE at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

Cloudy skies this evening will become partly cloudy after midnight. Low 51F. Winds WSW at 10 to 20 mph.
Jagadev had been undergoing treatment in a private hospital in Bhubaneswar after being thrashed by an aggrieved mob after the incident. The Banapur police arrested him soon after he was discharged from the hospital, a police official said.

The Banapur police officials produced the Chilika MLA, who has been suspended, before the Bhubaneswar SDJM court this afternoon amid tight security. Later, he was taken to Banapur for further proceedings in the case, the official said.

Jagadev rammed his Land Rover Discovery into a crowd on March 12 morning near the Banapur block office where indirect election for the post of block Chairman was underway. Several people and policemen were injured in the incident.

Following this incident, the irate people thrashed the MLA severely, and he was first admitted in Tangi hospital and later shifted to the hospital in Bhubaneswar.

--IANS bbm/vd

( 180 Words)

2022-03-22-21:56:01 (IANS)
In a major development that could rattle the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government in Maharashtra, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) said on Tuesday that it has attached immovable properties worth around Rs 6.45 core belonging to Pushpak Group entity, Pushpak Bullion, in Thane. These include 11 flats in the Neelambari project in Thane, belonging to Shree Saibaba Grihanirmiti Pvt Ltd, which is owned and controlled by Shridhar Madhav Patankar. Patankar is the brother-in-law of Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray (brother of Thackeray's wife Rashmi Thackeray). The punitive action follows a money-laundering case registered in March 2017 against Pushpak Bullion and other group companies under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), the ED said. Till date, the central probe agency has attached other properties worth Rs 21.46 crore owned by Mahesh Patel, Chandrakant Patel, their family members and companies controlled by them. Subsequent probes revealed that Mahesh Patel had siphoned off and layered funds of a Pushpak Group concern, Pushpak Realty, in connivance with one Nandkishore Chaturvedi, who provided the 'accommodation entry'. Under the garb of a sale, Pushpak Realty transferred funds to the tune of Rs 20.02 crore back to Chaturvedi after layering it through various connected/unconnected entities, said the ED. The ED said Chaturvedi, who operates several shell companies, further transferred these monies through his bogus company, Humsafar Dealer Pvt Ltd, under the cover of extending 'unsecured loans' of more than Rs 30 crore to Shree Saibaba Grihanirmiti Pvt Ltd. Accordingly, the agency said that the money siphoned off by Mahesh Patel in connivance with Chaturvedi was finally parked in the realty projects of the housing company owned/controlled by Patankar, the CM's brother-in-law. The development came soon after Shiv Sena MP and its chief spokesperson Sanjay Raut accused the BJP of letting loose various central probe agencies against the state leaders in a bid to topple the Maha Vikas Aghadi government comprising Shiv Sena-Nationalist Congress Party-Congress. While Thackeray scion, Tourism Minister Aditya Thackeray, said he would not comment till he "got detailed information", senior colleague and Urban Development Minister Eknath Shinde slammed the ED move. "Ever since the MVA came to power, we are witnessing such incidents. In a democracy, such misuse of central agencies is dangerous. We have a majority government and there will be no impact on the MVA. The Shiv Sena is not bothered about these things," said Shinde. In his initial reaction, NCP President Sharad Pawar said the ED action is a political move. "This is all political... A few years ago, no one knew what the ED was," he said. Raut said the ED has been taking tremendous interest and actions "in states where the BJP is not in power" to destabilise the opposition-ruled states. Reacting to the latest ED action, BJP activist and ex-Mumbai MP Kirit Somaiya said that Thackeray's brother-in-law is "involved" in "money laundering scam" with "use of shell companies" and "scamsters will not be spared". In the past one year, the ED has arrested former Home Minister Anil Deshmukh and a sitting minister, Nawab Malik, in connection with various alleged money-laundering cases. (Quaid Najmi can be contacted at: q.najmi@ians.in) --IANS qn/arm ( 536 Words) 2022-03-22-21:58:04 (IANS)
"We are committed to quality and reliable power supply to every household. I urge people to install smart meters and support the government's efforts in bringing reforms in the power sector," he said at a press conference.

Feeders - Peerbagh, Rawalpora F-05 and Rawalpora F-04 - in Srinagar will now get round the clock quality power supply without any scheduled curtailment.

On Monday, the Lt Governor had announced zero scheduled power curtailment to 6,603 households in the areas of Jammu where smart meters have been installed.

While interacting with the media persons, the Lt Governor reiterated government's commitment to generating 3,400 MW power in the next four years, making J&K UT self-sufficient in the power sector.

He said that no serious efforts were made to exploit the power generation potential in the past. However, power generation being targeted for the next four years will be equal to the cumulative capacity installed during the last seven decades, he added.

--IANS zi/vd

( 200 Words)

2022-03-22-22:36:04 (IANS)
After at least 10 persons were charred to death in the violence that allegedly broke out after the murder of a deputy Panchayat Pradhan at Baguti village in West Bengal's Birbhum district, BJP Lok Sabha member Locket Chatterjee said on Tuesday that Bengal is fast turning into 'terrorists' own country'. Addressing a press conference at the party's national headquarters here along with BJP spokesperson Gaurav Bhatia, Chatterjee said, "Bengal is becoming terrorists' own country. I repeat that Bengal is turning into terrorists' own country. It is sad that everyday such terrorist acts are happening in the state. Bengal must be saved." She also said that a delegation of BJP MPs from West Bengal have met Union Home Minister Amit Shah and demanded a fair investigation into the matter. "We met the Home Minister and demanded CBI/NIA investigation into the matter. Amit Shah has sought a report from the state government within 72 hours," she said. Chatterjee also alleged that there is a fight going on within the Trinamool Congress for money and influence over the syndicate, which is the reason behind the violent incidents. Bhatia alleged that most of the violence in West Bengal is being committed by anti-social elements, who enjoy the patronage of the Mamata Banerjee-led government. "The law and order situation in West Bengal has collapsed. Ten persons were killed in Birbhum district, including children and women. Fire brigade personnel said they were being stopped from controlling the fire," Bhatia said. Bhatia further alleged that Mamata Banerjee wants to turn Bengal into 'Badlapur', and demanded a fair and impartial investigation into the incident. Around a dozen houses were set on fire by the mob late on Monday night from which charred bodies were recovered by the police on Tuesday morning. The violence broke out after the killing of Trinamool deputy Panchayat Pradhan Bahadur Shaikh. Chatterjee said, "Six-seven women, two three children have died. Locals are saying that 15 people have died and the police are saying only seven have been killed." --IANS ssb/arm ( 347 Words) 2022-03-22-22:42:02 (IANS)
The Madhya Pradesh government has decided to set up a luxurious old-age home for senior citizens in Bhopal by the end of this year. It would be a government-owned old-age home, which would be available at nominal rates. The government claimed that it would be a first it's kind of old-age home, which will be equipped with luxurious facilities for the inmates. The building will be designed in such a manner that the senior citizens will feel relaxed. It would function under the supervison of the social justice department of the state government, though the management of the old-age home would be handed over to a private firm. The department claimed that the building where the old-age home would be set up is being constructed with an estimated cost of Rs 10 crore in Bhopal. A senior official in the social and justice department said that it would be a pilot project, which is likely to made operational by December this year. If it gets good response from the people, the same facility would be provided in some other district in the future. "There are so many well-equiped old-age homes in the country, which are either run by NGOs or private firms. But here it would be introduced by the state government for senior citizens who can pay the charges," said Prateek Hejala, principal secretary in social justice department. Charges will be fixed as per the facilities demanded by the inmates. As per the 2011 Census, Madhya Pradesh had more than 57 lakh senior citizens. --IANS pd/arm ( 272 Words) 2022-03-22-22:50:04 (IANS)
The display of political solidarity in the state came a day after the Tamil Nadu Assembly unanimously passed a resolution condemning Karnataka for going ahead with the project.

Cutting across party lines, the members of the Karnataka Assembly on Tuesday attacked the neighbouring state over its opposition to the project on the Cauvery river meant for meeting the drinking water requirements of Karnataka.

Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai spoke about his government's plans to move an Assembly resolution soon to counter Tamil Nadu's moves on the issue.

Noting that the outcome of the all-party meeting held last week has been conveyed to Union Jal Shakti Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, Bommai said the ruling BJP in the state would continue lobbying at the Centre for the project.

Terming Tamil Nadu's resolution as 'illegal', Congress leader and former Chief Minister Siddaramaiah urged for pressurising the Central government for granting necessary permission to start the Mekedatu project.

Another former CM and JD(S) leader, H.D. Kumaraswamy, emphasised that Tamil Nadu's approval is not required for implementing the project.

"We only need approvals from the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change," he said.

--IANS pvn/arm

( 222 Words)

2022-03-22-22:54:08 (IANS)
Two suspected NSCN-IM militants were killed while another was injured in an encounter with security forces in Tirap district of Arunachal Pradesh, police said on Tuesday. Police said that after the gun battle with the Naga outfit members at the Kolagoan village of Tirap on Monday night, one cadre was arrested while a large cache of arms and ammunition were recovered. After secret information that NSCN-IM cadres were gathered in the area, police and Assam Rifles launched a joint operation leading to the fierce encounter. Villagers, however, alleged that one of those killed was Retto Khako, 51. Arunachal Citizen's Right expressed deep concerns on the killing of the villager. The National Socialist Council of Nagalim-Isak-Muivah faction also burst out over the incident. In a statement, the NSCN-IM said that what happened in Tirap district has got on the its nerves after the Nginu killing more than a year ago. "But this time round, the NSCN is not going to take the things lying down. NSCN have had enough at the hands of the Assam Rifles, and it is now time to say 'enough is enough'. Two NSCN cadres being gunned down deliberately despite knowing that they are not NSCN-K (YA) members is something we cannot forbear any longer," the statement said. It said that, therefore, a question from NSCN and a decisive answer that should come forth from the Centre is on the status of "the Indo-Naga ceasefire" in Arunachal Pradesh. "Ridiculous enough, on many occasions, the Assam Rifles has gone too aggressive to get the best of the ceasefire ground rules to suit its devilish design against NSCN which exercised a gentlemanly attitude all the way to honour the ground rules," the statement added. --IANS sc/vd ( 300 Words) 2022-03-22-23:14:02 (IANS)
Nagaland Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio on Tuesday urged the negotiating parties to come together and settle the Naga peace talks, adding that if a settlement cannot be reached, there should be fresh mandate by the people as to how to pursue the Naga political issue. Cutting across party lines, all members of the Nagaland Assembly on Tuesday strongly demanded to settle the Naga peace process at the earliest. The Chief Minister pointed out that the Naga political issue is discussed at every session of the Nagaland Assembly as it remains the top agenda of the state government, and also because the representatives of the people need to express the feelings and desires of the people. He stated that 17 resolutions on the Naga political issue have been passed in the Assembly since 1964. Rio said the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) 1958 was imposed in Nagaland even before it attained statehood, and besides the atrocities committed during the insurgency movement in the past, the recent unfortunate incident at Oting village in Mon district led to the Nagaland Assembly passing a resolution on repealing AFSPA. "But if a solution is not arrived at, and insurgency activities continue, the future of the younger generation remains at stake," he remarked. "The Framework Agreement between the government of India and NSCN-IM was signed on August 3, 2015, and the agreed position was signed between the government of India and the Naga National Political Groups (NNPG) on November 17, 2017, and to reach an amicable solution acceptable to both sides, the talks were concluded on October 31, 2019," he said. Rio stated that because settlement could not be made, the 60 elected legislators had come together for early realisation of a solution, and for that on March 9, a consultative meeting with all the stakeholders was held. He lamented that there is trust deficit and that is why there is no common platform, but said that church is one platform where people can come together, as he called on the church leaders and civil societies to make their voice loud and clear on the settlement issue. Rio reiterated that the Naga political issue be pursued through non-violence. Naga People's Front legislator Imkong L. Imchen, while initiating the discussion on the Naga political issue in the Assembly, stated that the continuous delay in coming towards a negotiated settlement has created frustration among the Naga people who are slowly losing faith in the ongoing Naga peace process. He said it has now been 25 years since the talks started and yet there is no sign of progress coming out of the negotiations. If the continuance of election system in the state is creating any negative hindrance in the ongoing political negotiations, the government of India may even invoke Article 356 of the Constitution after the completion of the present tenure of the Assembly in 2023 so as to eliminate any negative hindrance coming from the elected representatives, he said. Several ministers and MLAs discussed the issue in the House, demanding to settle the Naga peace process at the earliest. --IANS sc/arm ( 534 Words) 2022-03-22-23:20:02 (IANS)
"A man who had allegedly issued death threats to three High Court judges following their verdict on hijab issue has been remanded to police custody for eight days by a magistrate here in Bengaluru," said Karnataka Home Minister Araga Jnanendra on Tuesday.

Post the threats the three judges were provided 'Y' category security.

"The state government is taking the matter of threats to judges very seriously, as it amounts challenging the system. The man from Tamil Nadu has been brought to Bengaluru by state police for further investigation," said Jnanendra.

The Karnataka High Court dismissed various petitions challenging a ban on Hijab in education institutions and had said that wearing a Hijab is not an essential religious practice of Islam. (ANI)
"TMC extremists in Rampurhat area under Birbhum District of West Bengal set ablaze multiple houses and as a result of which around 10 women and children were charred alive," reads the NCPCR letter.

NCPCR thought its letter addressed to Birbhum Superintendents of Police Nagendra Nath Tripathi on Tuesday requests him to "ensure the security of children".

As many as eight people were burnt to death in the Rampurhat area of West Bengal's Birbhum on Tuesday after a mob allegedly set houses on fire following the killing of Trinamool Congress leader Bahadur Shaikh.

The Bharatiya Janata Party has sought the resignation of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee over the Birbhum incident and demanded an investigation into the incident by central agencies.

Meanwhile, Director-General of Police (DGP) West Bengal, Manoj Malviya informed that 11 arrests have been made in the case so far.

He further informed that Bahadur Shaikh's murder was reported last night, an hour after which 7-8 houses nearby had caught fire.

A special investigation team has been formed to probe the matter. (ANI)
"Special Investigation Team is of now use. I will meet the President of India over the Birhum incident and will suggest him to consider (imposing) Article 355 in the state. Law and order situation getting worse, people feel unsafe in Bengal," said Chowdhury on Tuesday.

According to Article 355, It shall be the duty of the Union to protect every State against external aggression and internal disturbance and to ensure that the government of every State is carried on in accordance with the provisions of this Constitution.

As many as eight people were burnt to death in the Rampurhat area of West Bengal's Birbhum on Tuesday after a mob allegedly set houses on fire following the killing of Trinamool Congress leader Bahadur Shaikh.

The Bharatiya Janata Party has sought the resignation of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee over the Birbhum incident and demanded an investigation into the incident by central agencies.

Meanwhile, Director-General of Police (DGP) West Bengal, Manoj Malviya informed that 11 arrests have been made in the case so far.

He further informed that Bahadur Shaikh's murder was reported last night, an hour after which 7-8 houses nearby had caught fire.

A special investigation team has been formed to probe the matter. (ANI)
After the poll debacle faced by Congress in Punjab due to infighting, party president Sonia Gandhi asked leaders of Himachal Pradesh to avoid a Punjab-like situation and stay united as the state goes to Assembly polls later this year, said sources. According to sources, Sonia Gandhi took a jibe on party leaders, "You all are sitting together right but otherwise you don't even talk to each other." Congress Himachal Pradesh in-charge Rajiv Shukla was also present in the meeting. Having lost Punjab to Aam Aadmi Party, Congress leaders briefed Sonia Gandhi about the present position of AAP in Himachal Pradesh. "AAP is not an issue in Himachal Pradesh. Only those people who will not get tickets from BJP or Congress will contest from AAP's ticket," said Rajiv Shukla. Sonia Gandhi deliberated on the AAP position in the state with the party leaders and asked them to prepare a poll strategy to take on rivals. "All leaders from Himachal Pradesh promised Sonia Gandhi that they will remain united and a situation like Punjab will not be repeated there. Party leaders assured AICC president that state leaders will accept whatever decision the central leadership takes," said sources. Sources say that state party president and legislature party leader can also be changed if the situation demands. "Central leadership is not changing any officer bearers right now but the option is open," sources added. The Congress had done well in the bypolls held in Himachal Pradesh last year, winning the Mandi Lok Sabha seat and three assembly seats. The party is trying to repeat this success in the upcoming assembly polls. It was also decided in the meeting that the results party witnessed in the Mandi Lok Sabha seat and three other assembly seats will only be repeated if the party moves ahead together with a full proof strategy to take on the BJP. After the demise of Virbhadra Singh, Congress is witnessing a vacuum in the top leadership in the state. There are many leaders trying to take the position of party's face in the hilly state but Anand Sharma is being seen as a frontrunner for that post. However, his being a part of G-23 might emerge as a barrier for his candidature to lead the Congress in Himachal Pradesh. The 68-member Himachal Pradesh Assembly is due for polls in October this year. (ANI)
Petrol and diesel prices were increased by 80 paise a litre in the national capital. The petrol will be sold at Rs 97.01 per litre while it would be Rs Rs 88.27 for diesel today.

In the financial capital of the country, Mumbai, the petrol and diesel prices were raised by 85 paise a litre and it will be sold at Rs 111.67 and Rs 95.85 per litre respectively.

In Chennai, the price of petrol is Rs 102.91 per litre, which was increased by 75 paise and diesel is Rs 92.95 after an increase by 76 paise per litre.

While in Kolkata, the price of petrol was increased by 83 paise per litre and the diesel was increased by 80 paise per litre.

Petrol and diesel will be sold at Rs 106.34 at Rs 91.42 per litre respectively in Kolkata.

Petrol and diesel prices differ from state to state depending on the incidence of value-added tax.

In the first hike in four months, the fuel prices were raised on Tuesday.

Earlier on Tuesday, the Opposition parties created a ruckus in the Rajya Sabha against rising fuel prices in the country.

The Opposition parties, including Trinamool Congress, Shiv Sena and Congress, created pandemonium after the Rajya Sabha Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu rejected their plea to hold a discussion over rising fuel prices under Rule 267. (ANI)
The case has been registered against a man for allegedly sexually exploiting and blackmailing his relative in December 2021 after threatening to throw acid on her, said local Police.

The FIR has been filed in Sultanpuri Police station under section 376 (Punishment for rape) and 506 (Punishment for criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code.

"The accused was earlier jailed for 7 years in connection with an acid attack on the same victim in Uttar Pradesh," said Delhi Police officers.

He was released from jail in 2011. (ANI)
Residents of West Bengal's Bogtui village, where eight people were burnt to death following the killing of Trinamool Congress leader Bhadu Sheikh, have started to flee in fear and lack of confidence in the security measures provided by the police. An air of gloom hangs in the Bogtui village post-arson as most villagers have moved out from their homes and several others are making moves. The villagers are of the view that the police are not providing them with enough security to stay back. "The police cannot provide us security. We are fleeing. My brother-in-law died in the incident. Had there been security by the Police, this incident wouldn't have happened," a villager, Sherin told ANI. Meanwhile, the Birbhum arson has also created a political stir in the state. The Bharatiya Janata Party has sought the resignation of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and has demanded an investigation into the incident by Central agencies. Locket Chatterjee, BJP MP from Hooghly, has also claimed that about 20 people have been killed in the arson, "but no one knows the actual number because no one is being allowed to enter in Birbhum." Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has sought a detailed report from the West Bengal government over the arson incident. The move came after a nine-member delegation of BJP MPs from West Bengal met Union Home Minister Amit Shah and sought his intervention and action against the perpetrators involved in the crime. Amid the row over the incident, Mamata Banerjee urged West Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar "to refrain from making unwarranted statements and allow the administration to conduct an impartial probe." Banerjee said Governor Dhankhar's comments were not forthcoming whenever much more heinous incidents happened in the BJP-ruled States and also in other parts of the country. She said whenever an unfortunate incident happens in West Bengal, Dghankhar leaves no stone unturned to castigate and malign the State government. Dhankhar in a Twitter post had said that horrifying violence and arson orgy at Rampurhat, Birbhum indicates the state is in grip of the violent culture and lawlessness. "Violence at Rampurhat indicates an alarming situation in West Bengal. Law and order situation is nosediving in the state. Bengal is a laboratory of violation of human rights. I want to cooperate with the government, provided lawful procedure takes place," Dhankhar said. As many as eight people were burnt to death in the Rampurhat area of West Bengal's Birbhum on Tuesday after a mob allegedly set houses on fire following the killing of Trinamool Congress leader Bhadu Sheikh. Director-General of Police (DGP) West Bengal, Manoj Malviya informed that 11 arrests have been made in the case so far. He further informed that Bhadu Sheikh's murder was reported last night, an hour after which 7-8 houses nearby had caught fire. A special investigating team has been formed to probe the matter. (ANI)
Calling 'The Kashmir Files' a work of fiction, Jammu and Kashmir People's Conference chairman Sajad Lone on Tuesday said that the maker of the film will drown the country in hatred while also stating that Kashmiri Muslims have suffered 50 times more than Pandits. "There is no doubt about injustice to the Kashmiri Pandits. Kashmiri Muslims have suffered 50 times more than Pandits. You cannot document the pain of just one community. We are all in it together. I have lost my own father to bullets," Lone, a former minister in Jammu and Kashmir, said. He further said that Kashmiri Muslims in the 1990s were as helpless as Pandits. "Everyone has suffered here, although they (the filmmakers) have exaggerated... But the main objective of Vivek Agnihotri (director of the film) is not to show the pain of Pandits but to only sow seeds of hatred between different communities. He doesn't know that Pandits are living with us even today. Has he thought about them? They are our brothers and we love them but in the 1990s we were as helpless as the Kashmiri Pandits," he added. "I appeal to Prime Minister to make him (Vivek Aghintori) Rajya Sabha MP. Otherwise, I don't know what else he will make. There is a new trend now that people like Vivek Aghintori and Anupam Kher are desperate to go to Rajya Sabha. They should be sent to Rajya Sabha, otherwise, they will drown this country in hatred," Lone said while speaking to media persons here. The film, which focuses on the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits from the Valley in the 1990s, has been mired in controversy since its release on March 11 with the BJP and Opposition parties sparring over the portrayal of the incidents. The movie, which was released in theatres on March 11, stars Anupam Kher, Mithun Chakraborty, Pallavi Joshi, Darshan Kumaar, and others. The movie revolves around the killings of Kashmiri Pandits in the 1990s and has been directed by Vivek Agnihotri, known for films like 'Tashkent Files', 'Hate Story' and 'Buddha in a Traffic Jam'. (ANI)
Petrol and diesel prices were hiked by 80 paise per litre for the second consecutive day across the country on Wednesday.

Petrol and diesel prices were increased by 80 paise a litre in the national capital. The petrol will be sold at Rs 97.01 per litre while it would be Rs Rs 88.27 for diesel today.

In the first hike in four months, the fuel prices were raised on Tuesday.

Earlier on Tuesday, the Opposition parties created a ruckus in the Rajya Sabha against rising fuel prices in the country.

The Opposition parties, including Trinamool Congress, Shiv Sena and Congress, created pandemonium after the Rajya Sabha Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu rejected their plea to hold a discussion over rising fuel prices under Rule 267.

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)
An Air Vice Marshal from the Air Force headquarters is carrying out a detailed investigation into the accidental firing of the tactical BrahMos supersonic cruise missile which landed in Pakistan on March 9. Government sources told ANI that the detailed probe by the Air Force officer (equivalent to Major General in the Army) is still going on but prima facie, a Group Captain-rank officer is being seen as blameworthy. The officer was in-charge of the mobile command post of the missile system when the accidental firing happened during a Command Air Staff Inspection (CASI) at its home base. However, the sources said the probe would be finalised in a time-bound manner and final details would be known only after that. The sources said the AVM probing the incident is highly qualified and is in-charge of operations in the Air Force headquarters. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on March 15 had stated in Parliament that a high-level probe has been ordered into the incident involving the accidental launch of a missile that landed in Pakistan. "A missile was unfortunately accidentally launched on March 9. The incident occurred during a routine inspection. We later came to know that it had landed in Pakistan," he had informed Rajya Sabha. Making it clear that the Indian missile system is extremely trustworthy and secure, the Defence Minister had stated that Indian armed forces are experienced in handling such systems. Pakistan has been trying to rake up the issue of accidental missile firing at the international stage without realising that the BrahMos missile is just a tactical system and was unarmed at the time of the incident. The missile also did not cause any major damage to property or any loss of life in the Mian Channu town of Pakistan. India has also regretted the incident. (ANI)
The Indian Army of Poonch Brigade constructed a huge poly house in the district's Seklu village to boost all-weather vegetable cultivation and provided training and awareness to the villagers about the functioning and use of the poly house. The farmers were provided seeds by the horticulture department. The chief of the department praised the project built by the Indian Army. "It's a great project by the Indian Army, which will help numerous poor farmers in the region. The crops can't grow especially when the area is snow-covered, but the main advantage of this poly house is that the weather conditions do not have an effect on the crops inside. The locals can get yields and gain the maximum profits even between the months of January and March", said Satveer Singh, Chief Horticulture Officer of Poonch district. The villagers also thanked the Indian army for the poly house project and said that the demonstrations will practically help them. "The training and seminars helped us learn a lot of new things about agriculture. I have given my land to the Indian Army. It is a great project as the people in my area are really very poor and find it very difficult to earn a livelihood. Now, that we are trained well, we will yield better. I would like to thank the Indian Army for the project", Akaram, a local resident told ANI. The poly house has been built under the Indian Army's 'Operation Sadbhawana'. (ANI)
The construction work of the road was inaugurated by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh in 2020 through virtual mode.

Colonel NK Sharma of the BRO told ANI, "The BRO is constantly focusing on last-mile connectivity. The road will reach the foothills of Kailash Mansarovar."

Dharchula is a town in the Pithoragarh district of Uttarakhand. It is situated at an elevation of 940 metres above sea level.

In 2021, the BRO had said that it has constructed 24 bridges and three roads in four states and two Union Territories, including the road construction in Dharchula.

Dharchula was badly affected due to the cloud burst in Uttarakhand last year.

In August 2021, a motorway connecting Dharchula to the China border in Uttarakhand was closed for 20 days due to damage, causing a lot of trouble to locals as well as Army personnel.

The Central government in recent years has accorded priority to the infrastructure development in the areas near the international borders. (ANI)
It's a great place to visit or shop

The new street is nice but shops have disappeared

I have no reason to go there

Vote

View Results
The Gauhati High Court has rejected a plea by an Assam-based advocate to quash an FIR lodged against him for allegedly praising and glorifying Taliban on his Facebook post in August last year when the US was withdrawing its troops out of Afghanistan. The FIR was lodged by one Saleh Ahmed Laskar, Sub-Inspector of Hailakandi police station on August 26 last year alleging inter-alia amongst others that on August 21, 2021, Md Taher Ahmed Barbhuiya had uploaded one incriminating post in his Facebook account and the same was discovered by the Social Media Cell of Hailakandi police station of which the complainant is one of the members. Hailakandi police alleged in the FIR stated that the name of the Facebook profile user is Advocate Taher Ahmed Barbhuiya has posted in the post "Ek Itihash Srishti Holo, Taliban Zindabad" which means "A history has been created, long live Taliban". Police also alleged in the FIR that, Barbhuiya's post has praised and glorified 'Tehreek-e-Taliban' who was in fact are terrorists and have waged prolonged violent war against a democratically elected government in Afghanistan. Following the FIR, under Sections 120 (B)/153(A)/505(1)(c)/ 505(2) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) R/W Section 39 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act 1967 was registered against the advocate at Lala police station. While the police investigation is in progress, Barbhuiya approached the High Court for quashing the FIR on the grounds that he has not posted any incriminating message in his Facebook account as alleged in the FIR, rather he has written a Facebook post by criticizing the then situations in Afghanistan, where an Afghanistan national was seen handing over his infant to an American soldier over a high barbed wire fencing in an Airport for rescuing. The petition said that he criticized the Taliban and applauded the American soldier for the rescue mission and he has been falsely entangled in the aforesaid police case. He said that the contents of the Facebook posts as mentioned in the FIR is an edited version and manufactured and circulated in his name by some unknown persons and has not deleted any of the posts relating to the situation in Afghanistan. Rejecting the submissions of Barbhuiya's counsel that, Section 39 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act 1967 had wrongly invoked against Barbhuiya, Justice Robin Phukan held that the "assertions made in the FIR, in fact, discloses commission of a cognizable offence by the petitioner." "He has circulated as such toxic statements with intent to incite a community to commit an offence against other class or communities and the petitioner has circulated such statement containing rumours with intent to create and promote feelings of enmity, hatred and ill will between different religious groups and communities on the ground of religion," the court said. "Since this court is not entitled to embark upon an enquiry as to the reliability or genuineness or otherwise of the allegations made in the FIR/complaint...... it cannot be said that the assertions made in the FIR are unbelievable. In the given facts and circumstances on the record, and in view of the submissions made at the Bar, I am of the considered opinion that the assertions made in the FIR, in fact, discloses the commission of a cognizable offence by the petitioner...... I find no merit in this petition and accordingly, the same stands dismissed. The parties have to bear their own cost," the court noted. (ANI)
Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha and senior Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge on Wednesday hit out at Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan for raking up Kashmir issue in the meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), asserting that Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK) is an integral part of India. Kharge said that Imran Khan is facing political challenges in Pakistan and he's resorting to raking up Kashmir to deflect attention. "Imran Khan is facing political compulsions and he is chanting Kashmir-Kashmir. No one is going to listen to Imran Khan. He is talking about giving away India's land to someone else. India is not going to tolerate this," said Kharge. "Pakistan Occupied Kashmir is an integral part of India and we won't let it go. Jammu and Kashmir is and will remain an integral part of India," the Congress leader further said. Kharge's remark came in the backdrop of the Pakistan Prime Minister raking up the Kashmir issue at the OIC meeting in Islamabad. In his keynote address at the inaugural session of the 48th session of the Council of Foreign Ministers (CFM) of the 57-member body of Muslim countries, Khan said, "We have failed both the Palestinians and the people of Kashmir. I am sad to say that we have been able to make no impact at all. They don't take us seriously, we are a divided house and those powers know it." With Opposition leaders moving a no-confidence motion against him, Khan, who is on shaky political grounds, in an attempt to deflect from the attention urged member countries of the OIC to present a united front to make a significant impact on Palestine and Kashmir. At the OIC inaugural address, the Pakistan Prime Minister also raked up the issue of the abrogation of the special status to Kashmir. On August 5, 2019, the government of India had revoked the special Constitutional status of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir under Article 370 of the Constitution and abrogated Article 35A. Pakistan has repeatedly sought to raise the Kashmir issue at the OIC even while India's relations with several key players in West Asia and in the Islamic organisation, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, Indonesia and Bangladesh, have seen marked improvements in recent years. (ANI)
After two years, the Government of India revoked provisions of the Disaster Management Act for COVID containment measures, as per the order issued by the Ministry of Home Affairs on Wednesday. The order copy signed by Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla reads that after taking into consideration the overall improvement in the situation and preparedness of the Government to deal with the pandemic, National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) has taken a decision that there may not be any further need to invoke the provisions of the DM Act for COVID containment measures. Accordingly, after the expiry of the existing Ministry of Home Affairs orders dated February 25, 2022, no further order may be issued by the MHA. However, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MOHFW) advisories on COVID containment measures, including the use of face masks and hand hygiene, will continue to guide the overall national response to the pandemic. "I would like to mention that in view of the nature of the disease, we still need to remain watchful of the situation. Wherever any surge in the number of cases is observed, the States/UTs may consider taking prompt and proactive action at the local level, as advised by MOHFW from time to time," the Home Secretary said in the order. He also advised States and UTs to discontinue the issue of orders and guidelines under the DM Act. "I would, therefore, advise all the States/UTs to consider appropriately discontinuing issue of orders and guidelines under the DM Act, 2005 for COVID containment measures. The States/UTs may continue to follow the SoPs/advisories that have been or are being issued by the MoHFW from time to time for COVID containment measures, vaccination and other related aspects, including observing COVID Appropriate Behaviour," he said in the order. Since March 24, 2020, on the direction of the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), the Ministry of Home Affairs has been issuing Orders and Guidelines under the Disaster Management Act, (DM Act) 2005, for the containment of COVID-19 in the country. The Central Government, in close coordination with the State Governments and Union Territory Administrations (UTS), has taken various proactive measures to deal with the unprecedented global crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic. The MHA order further reads that over the last 24 months, significant capacities have been developed for various aspects of management of the pandemic, such as diagnostics, surveillance, contact tracing, treatment and vaccination, hospital infrastructure and the general public has a much higher level of awareness on the COVID appropriate behaviour. States and UTs have also developed their own capacities and systems and implemented their detailed State/UT specific plans for managing the pandemic, over the last seven weeks or so there has been a steep decline in the number of cases, it said. The total caseload in the country stands at 23,913 only and the daily positivity rate has declined to 0.28 per cent. It is also worth mentioning that with the combined efforts, a total of 181.56 Cr vaccine doses have been administered. (ANI)
Malik, the chief of NCP's Mumbai unit and also the Guardian minister for Parbhani and Gondia districts, is currently in judicial custody in connection with a money laundering case related to underworld don Dawood Ibrahim.

The Special PMLA court has extended the judicial custody of Malik till April 4.

BJP has been pressing for Malik's resignation.

The Maharashtra state Assembly's annual budget session is scheduled to end on March 25. (ANI)
As the country observed the 91st anniversary of the martyrdom of India's legendary freedom fighters Sardar Bhagat Singh, Rajguru, and Sukhdev, Rajya Sabha Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu on Wednesday appealed to the parliamentarians to sensitize fellow citizens of their invaluable contributions to carry forward the legacy of "cooperation, unity, and fraternity". Noting that the freedom that we enjoy today was the outcome of the concerted efforts of all sections of our society, Naidu said, "Energy of the masses was the key element to uproot the colonial establishment from our country." He also said that the achievement of our independence was a "combined effort" of the people of the nation who got united to play their due role with diligence. "Members, to carry forward the legacy of cooperation, unity, and fraternity, it is our bounden duty to sensitize our fellow citizens of the invaluable contributions of our freedom fighters in general and the heroic trio (Sardar Bhagat Singh, Rajguru, and Sukhdev) in particular towards achieving the freedom of our nation," said the Chairman. The celebration of the 'Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav' with one of its themes on freedom struggle is a commendable step in paying our tributes and heartfelt gratitude towards our freedom fighters, said the Chairman, adding "on this day, let us resolve to uphold the cherished values for which these martyrs lived and laid down their lives". Naidu addressed the Upper House soon after it assembled for the day at 11 am, saying "Today is the 91st anniversary of the martyrdom of the legendary heroes of our freedom struggle, Sardar Bhagat Singh, Rajguru, and Sukhdev who laid down their lives on this day in the year 1931 exemplifying great valour, undaunted courage and unflinching patriotism towards our motherland". These martyrs, who were still in their early 20s, Naidu said, laid down their lives, while putting up a strong fight against the oppressive colonial regime. The Chairman said the freedom fighters marched to the gallows with a smile on their faces shouting slogans against British imperialism. "Exhibiting fierce and unflinching courage, these martyrs acted and lived by the lines 'Mera Rang De Basanti Chola' in letter and spirit and had conquered the greatest fear, the fear of death in pursuit of independence from colonial rule." These martyrs not only strived to free our nation from the fetters of colonialism but also envisioned a just and ideal society devoid of communalism, hatred, economic disparity, and retrogressive ideas, Naidu said. "Their vision for our nation was the embodiment of voices, concerns, and aspirations of the young and striving Indians who were steadfast in their efforts in laying the foundations of a new and independent India." The Chairman further noted that the heroic trio has become immortalized for all times for their uncompromising determination and supreme sacrifice and the saga of their bravery and patriotism inspired many and will continue to inspire the generations to come. (ANI)
No injuries have been reported so far, said Mumbai Fire Brigade, which rushed to douse out the fire.

Three fire tenders are present at the spot.

Further details are awaited. (ANI)
According to Adityanath's Office, the Chief Minister has given instructions for immediate assistance to the families of the victims and ordered a probe.

Four children died allegedly after eating toffees in Uttar Pradesh's Kushinagar on Wednesday. After consuming the toffees, all four children had immediately fallen sick and were rushed to the district hospital where they died.

A police probe has been initiated and the cause of death is being investigated.

"The whole matter is being investigated. The guilty will not be spared at any cost. Further investigations will only clear out the doubt of witchcraft in the matter," said Superintendent of Police, Sachindra Patel. (ANI)
The Supreme Court on Wednesday asked Bihar Government to file a report about action taken on an application seeking departmental action against some erring officials in the Muzaffarpur shelter home abuse case. The Bihar Government informed the apex court that action has been taken against erring officials as per Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) recommendations. A bench headed by Chief Justice of India NV Ramana asked Bihar Government to file an action taken report and listed the matter after two weeks. Appearing for Bihar Government, advocate Manish Kumar told the court action has been taken aginst erring officials as per CBI recommendations. He also submitted that he would file the action taken report in this case in a sealed cover. The Court questioned why the report has to be filed in a sealed cover. The counsel of Bihar Government replied that it had submitted these reports only in sealed cover before this court under orders of the apex court and the report concerned juvenile girls. The Court was hearing an application filed by Bihar based journalist Nivedita Jha, seeking direction to Bihar Government to file an Action Taken Report pursuant to the recommendations of the CBI to initiate disciplinary proceedings against erring officers and blacklisting of NGOs mentioned in the petition. Advocate Shoeb Alam was representing the petition in the matter. The application was filed through advocate Fauzia Shakil. According to the application, the petitioner had filed a petition earlier wherein the top court passed a slew of directions and orders in the matter relating to the widespread and persistent abuse of female inmates of shelter homes in Bihar. By its order dated November 28, 2018, the top court had directed the CBI to investigate the affairs of 16 shelter homes in Bihar. Thereafter, the CBI took over the investigation and has submitted chargesheets in 16 shelter home cases other than the Muzaffarpur Shelter Home wherein the trial was concluded and many persons were convicted. The applicant mentioned that post conclusion of the investigation and filing of chargesheets in various cases, the CBI had also recommended for departmental action to be taken against many District Magistrates, officials of the State Governments, etc. and also recommended blacklisting of several NGOs that were running these shelter homes. As per the status report filed by the CBI, the agency upon conclusion of investigation had recommended departmental action against 25 District Magistrates and 37 government officers. "Despite considerable passage of time since such recommendations, neither is there a status report filed disclosing the action taken against these officials nor is there any information publicly available, which demonstrates if and what action (if any) was taken by Respondent No.1 (Bihar Government) against the erring officials," the applicant said. The applicant said that the problem is perpetuating despite the previous intervention of the apex court due to the absence of steps taken pursuant to the CBI recommendations and due to the lack of effective measures being put in place by the state of Bihar. "It is further evident that the respondent state and its officers by their acts of omission and commission are not effectively implementing the provisions of JJ Act and are failing in their duty to check the sexual abuse of hapless and destitute inmates of state-run shelter homes," the applicant said. The Muzzafarpur shelter home incident had come to light in 2018 after the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) filed an affidavit detailing horrifying sexual abuse cases at the shelter homes. (ANI)
Stating that the Children have been worst affected due to the COVDI-19 pandemic, Congress interim president Sonia Gandhi on Wednesday urged the Centre to restart mid-day meal scheme in schools, saying that the children need better nutrition now. Raising the issue during the Zero Hour in Lok Sabha, Sonia Gandhi said, "Children have been the worst affected due to the pandemic. Schools were the first to be closed and the last to be opened. When schools were closed, mid-day meals had stopped. People were given ration under National Food Security Act after the Supreme Court order." The Congress president said that families of children had to face major crises to earn their livelihood "But there was no alternate for dry ration and the cooked meal for children. True that families of children had to face a major crisis to earn a living. Such a crisis was never faced before in past years. As children are returning to school, they need even better nutrition. Mid-day meal will also help in bringing back students who have dropped out of school," she said. Sonia Gandhi further said that as per the National Family Health Survey 2019, the number of weak children under five years increased, which is worrying and the government should do everything possible to stop it. "I urge the Central government to provide hot and cooked food immediately. Mid-day meal should be restarted immediately," she added. (ANI)
The WhatsApp helpline number is 9501200200.

After Bhagwant Mann had sworn in as chief minister on March 16, he had announced that the government will launch a helpline to curb corruption in the state. He said that WhatsApp number will be his personal number and people can send videos or audios and lodge complaints as he will personally look into every corruption case.

Meanwhile, the Punjab CM visited Khatkar Kalan, the ancestral village of Shaheed Bhagat Singh, and paid homage to the freedom fighter.

He said, "On Shaheed Diwas (Martyrs' Day), we are launching the anti-corruption helpline number today where you can lodge complaints and we will take action accordingly."

Mann took the oath of office and secrecy at Khatkar Kalan village in Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar district on March 16. Soon after the swearing-in ceremony, he had said that he would launch an anti-corruption helpline on Martyrs' Day.

In remembrance of Shaheed Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government has announced a state holiday in the state. The AAP government has said that in all the government offices the portraits of Bhagat Singh and Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar will be installed.

In the recently-concluded Punjab elections, the AAP registered a landslide victory, winning 92 seats, pushing the Congress party to distant second at 18 seats. (ANI)
Danny is a writer and a Calaveras County native. He studied creative writing and marketing at San Francisco State University and has previously done work as an automotive journalist. He is happy to be back and writing about the local community.

Comment Policy Calaveras Enterprise does not actively monitor comments. However, staff does read through to assess reader interest. When abusive or foul language is used or directed toward other commenters, those comments will be deleted. If a commenter continues to use such language, that person will be blocked from commenting. We wish to foster a community of communication and a sharing of ideas, and we truly value readers' input.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Wednesday slammed the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) over the postponement of Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) elections and said that Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) will quit politics if the civic body polls are held on time. The Union Cabinet on Tuesday gave its nod to "The Delhi Municipal Corporation (Amendment) Act, 2022", which proposes the unification of three municipal corporations in Delhi. "The manner in which the BJP government at the Center is pressurizing state election commission to postpone the MCD elections is an affront to martyrs and democracy. They are bringing an amendment to delay the polls for months. We all know that the BJP will be wiped out in the MCD elections," said Kejriwal, while speaking to media persons outside the Delhi Assembly He further said that the BJP even while claiming that it is the biggest political party in the world is scared of a small party (AAP) postponing a small election. "If the BJP postpones elections due to fear of losing power in minuscule MCD, then it amounts to muzzle people's voices. I challenge the BJP to conduct the MCD polls on time. We (AAP) will quit politics if the MCD polls are held timely and the BJP wins the elections," Kejriwal said. "The BJP is postponing the MCD elections because all the three corporations of Delhi are being merged. Can elections be postponed because of this? Tomorrow if the BJP senses that the party can lose Gujarat, will they merge Gujarat and Maharashtra to avert polls? Can Lok Sabha elections be postponed by making such an excuse?" he asked. The bill to merge the three civic bodies is likely to come before Parliament in the ongoing budget session. Erstwhile, Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) was trifurcated into three municipal corporations, including South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC), North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC), and East Delhi Municipal Corporation (EDMC), in 2011, as per Delhi Municipal Corporation Amendment Act, 1911 (Delhi Act, 12 Of 2011). Earlier, State Election Commissioner SK Srivastava informed that the Centre has deferred the announcement of polling dates for the MCD election after the central government raised a few issues that are yet to be legally examined by the Election Commission. (ANI)
After Haryana Congress MLAs staged a walkout from the Assembly over the passage of Haryana Prevention of Unlawful Conversion of Religious Bill 2022, Senior Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge said that BJP is trying to polarise every issue in all the states. Kharge, Rajya Sabha Leader of Opposition (LoP), said, "It is a right decision that the Congress MLAs staged a walkout from the Haryana Assembly against the passing of the anti-conversion Bill on Tuesday. The BJP government is working against the Constitution. With the introduction of an anti-conversion Bill, the BJP wants to polarise society. Wherever the BJP is in power, it wants to make law as per its desire even if it is against the principle of democracy and secular." The Haryana cabinet had already approved the Haryana Prevention of Unlawful Conversion of Religious Bill, 2022. The bill was tabled in the Vidhan Sabha on March 4. Reacting to the passage of the anti-conversion Bill, Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar on Tuesday said that religious conversion is a major problem and that 127 cases were reported in the last four years. "We have passed the Prevention of Unlawful Conversions Bill; 127 cases were reported in the last 4 years... Religious conversion is a major problem. If by choice, one can change their religion by law, but the act has been passed for unlawful conversions," Khattar told the media persons. "In 10 days and 50 hours of the session, there were 12 sittings, in which 15 Bills were passed. Eight committees of 74 MLAs were formed to discuss the budget. We have given a new dimension to this budget," he added. (ANI)
After posters were put up across Karnataka against Muslim traders putting up stalls at fairs in temples, Law Minister JC Madhuswamy on Wednesday said that the state government does not encourage the ban and assured of taking action against the miscreants. "Government is not encouraging such behaviour of any ban (Muslims from temple fairs). If banners are put outside premises, we will take action," Madhuswamy said. His statement came in a reply to deputy leader of Opposition in the Karnataka Assembly and Congress leader U T Khadar, who raised the issue that not only in the temple premises but Muslims are not even being allowed to put up stalls on the streets. "I didn't mention any religion... few people are stopping roadside stalls of Muslims. These people are trying to work hard and trying to do business. It's an open market," Khadar said. Demanding action against those putting up the posters, he said, some people are attempting to disturb communal harmony. "Few people are trying to disturb the harmony by putting up banners in public places. People who put up banners don't even name themselves. Police should be stopping this but rather public are removing such banners to maintain harmony. Action should be taken on people who put up such banners," Khadar said. Amid the attempts of several groups to not allow Muslim traders to set up stalls at temples, Karnataka Home Minister Araga Jnanendra has sought reports from police, assuring that the government will keep a close watch on law and order situation in the state. After the hijab row in Karnataka, several temple authorities and organizing committees of fairs have banned Muslim traders from setting up stalls. For years, Muslims have been setting up stalls at such annual fairs at temples. In the backdrop of protest against wearing hijab at educational institutions, some of the temple authorities and organising committees have barred them from participating in the festival, the first such incident in the state. Several organisations objected to the participation of Muslim traders after many of them had closed their shops to protest the Karnataka High Court verdict upholding the state's ban on hijabs at educational institutions. (ANI)
The newly sworn-in Chief Minister of Uttarakhand Pushkar Singh Dhami has by all accounts a challenge on hand to ensure political stability in the state after the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) bagged a simple majority in the state Assembly, besides expediting the completion of key infrastructure projects. Dhami, 46, will be the 11th Chief Minister of Uttarakhand. To avoid the repeat of the fate of former Chief Minister Tirath Singh Rawat, who is a Lok Sabha MP, but had to be replaced as there was no Assembly bypoll within the six months period, Dhami needs to get elected to the state Assembly. Among one of the top challenges for Dhami would be to maintain political stability in the state which has seen a spate of leadership changes in its short history. Dhami, who lost from the Khatima Assembly constituency, led the party's poll effort as Chief Minister during the Assembly polls held last month, and BJP's decision to retain him is seen as recognition of his contributions. While the BJP ranks in the state are known to be faction-ridden, Dhami will have to reconcile the political ambitions of a host of party leaders, which include some who are senior to him. Dhami will also need to fast-track several ongoing infrastructure projects in the state. In his short tenure as the Chief Minister of the hilly state, Dham had inaugurated several development projects. Dhami had said that a total of Rs 137 crore has been spent on the development of the projects being inaugurated today. "We aim to make Uttarakhand the best state in India. PM Modi visited Dehradun yesterday and inaugurated projects worth over Rs 18000 crore," Dhami had said The Uttarakhand government under Dhami had also announced the repeal of the Char Dham Devasthanam Management Act after almost two years of protests against the legislation by priests associated with the shrines in the state. The Act had brought the four shrines of Badrinath, Kedarnath, Gangotri, Yamunotri, and 49 other temples under the purview of a shrine board. Several names, including that of former union minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank, Union Minister of State for Defence Ajay Bhatt, Rajya Sabha member Anil Baluni, MLA Dhan Singh Rawat and Uttarakhand Tourism Minister Satpal Maharaj were among doing the rounds as possible choices for Chief Minister. The son of an ex-serviceman, Dhami was born in 1975 in Kanalichhina village in Pithoragarh district. He holds a law degree and worked as a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) volunteer. He also had been a member of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP). Dhami served as the president of BJP Yuva Morcha in Uttarakhand twice between 2002 and 2008. He is believed to be a protege of former Uttarakhand Chief Minister Bhagat Singh Koshyari. Notably, Dhami belongs to the Kumaun region of the state whereas, the last two chief ministers before him were from the Garhwal region. (ANI)
A total of 808 applications of Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) from West Bengal are pending for Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) registration, informed the Ministry of Home Affairs on Wednesday. This statement came in response to a question asked by MP Mausam Noor from West Bengal in Rajya Sabha on whether there is an inordinate delay in the process of registration of FCRA for NGOs from West Bengal. Minister of State in MHA, Nityanand Rai in a written reply mentioned that there is no such delay. "The details of Associations granted FCRA registration certificate are already available on the FCRA web portal of the Ministry of Home Affairs," he said. Rai further said that as on March 15, 2022, as many as 808 applications of NGOs from West Bengal are pending for FCRA registrations. On being questioned on the effective measures taken by the Government to expedite the process of FCRA registration of various NGOs from West Bengal, Rai replied that the work of registration of NGOs in the entire country is progressing at a normal pace. On December 25, MHA had refused the registration of the Missionaries of Charity's application for renewal of FCRA for not meeting eligibility conditions as some adverse inputs were received. Later, on January 6, the registration was renewed till 2026. The second half of the Budget session of Parliament resumed from March 14 and will conclude on April 8. The first half of the Budget session began on January 31 and concluded on February 11. (ANI)
Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on Wednesday informed the Rajya Sabha that the geographical spread of Naxal violence has reduced to 46 districts in 2021 as compared to 96 districts in 2010. Sharing the details in a written reply, the Union Minister of State for Home Nityanand Rai said the decline in the geographical spread is also reflected in the reduced number of districts covered under the Security Related Expenditure (SRE) Scheme. The number of SRE districts was reduced from 126 to 90 in April 2018 and further to 70 in July 2021, Rai further said. Similarly, the Minister said, the number of districts contributing approximately 90 per cent of the Left Wing Extremism (LWE) or Naxal violence, categorised as most LWE affected districts, came down to 30 from 35 in 2018 and further to 25 in 2021. He mentioned that the steadfast implementation of the National Policy and Action Plan to address LWE- 2015 has also resulted in a consistent decline in violence which has reduced by 77 per cent from an all-time high of 2,258 in 2009 to 509 in 2021. "Similarly, the resultant deaths (Civilians and Security Forces) have reduced by 85 per cent from the all-time high of 1,005 in 2010 to 147 in 2021," said Rai. In data compiled by the MHA, the Minister said a total of 50 security personnel were killed in LWE incidents in 2021 followed by 43 in 2020 and 52 in 2019. Only one security trooper was killed in Bihar in 2019 between 2019 and 2021. Similarly, one security man was killed in LWE incidents in Telangana in 2020 between 2019 and 2021. However, three security personnel were killed in Odisha-- one in 2019 and two in 2020-- between 2019 and 2021. A maximum of 45 security personnel were killed in LWE incidents in Chhattisgarh in 2021 followed by 36 in 2020 and 22 in 2019. Maharashtra and Jharkhand witnessed a sharp decline in LWE incidents and not a single security personnel was killed in such incidents in the state in 2021. The number was three in 2020 against 16 reported in 2019. In Jharkhand, five security personnel were killed in 2021. The number was one in 2020 against 12 in 2019. To address the LWE menace holistically, the Minister said, a National Policy and Action Plan was launched in 2015 to address LWE. "The policy envisages a multipronged strategy involving security-related measures, development interventions, ensuring rights and entitlements of local communities." On the security front, the Central government supports the LWE affected state governments by providing Central Armed Police Forces battalions, helicopters, training, funds for modernisation of State police forces, arms and equipment, sharing of intelligence and construction of Fortified Police Stations, said the Minister. "The Centre also provides funds for capacity building of the LWE affected states under various schemes, like SRE Scheme and Special Infrastructure Scheme (SIS) to fight the LWE menace effectively," he said. Under SIS approved in 2017, projects worth Rs 371 crores have been sanctioned for strengthening Special Forces (SF) and Special Intelligence Branches (SIB) for LWE operations and 250 Fortified Police Stations worth Rs 620 crore in vulnerable LWE affected areas, said Rai. Under the SRE scheme, Rs 2,259 crore has been released to states since 2014-15. On the development front, the Centre has taken several specific initiatives in LWE affected states. Special thrust has been given on expansion of road network, improving telecommunication connectivity, skill development and financial inclusion. More than 10, 300 km of roads have already been constructed in LWE affected areas under specific schemes like Road Requirement Plan (RRP-I) and Road Connectivity Project for LWE affected areas (RCPLWEA). The Minister said a total of 2,343 mobile towers were installed under Phase-I and work order has been issued for 2,542 towers under Phase-II of Mobile Connectivity Project for LWE affected areas, and Rs 3,078 crore has been released to the Most LWE Affected Districts under the scheme Special Central Assistance (SCA) to fill the critical gaps in public infrastructure and services. A special focus has been given on Skill Development and Entrepreneurship of the youth in these areas, said the Minister, adding "47 ITIs and 68 Skill Development Centres (SDC) have been approved under "Skill Development Scheme in 47 districts affected by LWE". For financial inclusion of the local populace in these areas, 1,236 bank branches were opened, 1,077 ATMs installed and 14,230 Banking Correspondents made functional in Most LWE affected districts in the last six years. Further, 4,903 Post Offices have been approved for LWE affected areas in the last five years, of which, 3,053 have been made functional. Apart from the specific schemes for LWE affected areas, the Minister said, MHA works in close coordination with other Ministries for optimum implementation of the flagship schemes of those Ministries in LWE affected areas. (ANI)
Highlighting that the Civil Aviation industry has become a key element of India's economy, Union Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia on Wednesday said that the Government has set a target of creating 220 new airports by 2025. Replying to the demands for grants of the Civil Aviation ministry for 2022-23, Scindia said that India had moved forward in domestic and international travel during the COVID-19 pandemic. "Cargo flights for perishable food items will be increased to 30 per cent with 133 new flights in the coming years," he said. Scindia said the simplification of pilot licence will be done in the coming days with the latest technology. He said that the Government plans to create 33 new domestic cargo terminals, set up 15 new flight training schools for pilots, create more jobs, and increase focus on the drone sector. "With this, Government has set a target of creating 220 new airports by 2025," he said. The minister informed the House that 3.82 lakh passengers per day undertook air travel in the last seven days. He informed the house that Ministry is targeting to triple the passenger throughput from 34.5 crore in 2018-19 to 40 crore in 2023-24. Scindia said 90 flights sent to five countries evacuated students from Ukraine. Scindia thanked the Indian Air Force which conducted 14 sorties and operated 4-C17 Globe Masters during the evacuation. The minister informed the House that 15 per cent of total pilot strength in the country are women. Speaking in the Lok Sabha today, Scindia said, "In all other countries in the world, only 5 per cent of the pilots are female. In India, over 15 per cent of pilots are female. This is another example of women empowerment. There has been a lot of changes in the aviation industry in the last 20-25 years." "Earlier only big cities had airports. Today that has changed completely. This is the reason why the Civil Aviation industry has become a key element of India's economy. The amount of employment generated in the industry is massive," Union Civil Aviation Min Jyotiraditya Scindia said today. The second half of the Budget session of Parliament resumed from March 14 and will conclude on April 8. The first half of the Budget session began on January 31 and concluded on February 11. (ANI)
Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya on Wednesday informed that over 50 lakh beneficiaries aged between 12-14 years have received their first dose of COVID-19 vaccine. "Another feather in the cap of the world's largest vaccination drive. Over 50 lakh youngsters between the 12-14 age group have received their first dose of #COVID19 vaccine Extremely proud of our young warriors! #SabkoVaccineMuftVaccine," tweeted the Union Health Minister. On March 16, the inoculation of children in the age group of 12 to 14 years against COVID-19 started with the Corbevax vaccine. Besides, the government had also decided to waive the condition of comorbidity for those above 60 years in order to receive the precaution dose. "Taking the COVID-19 vaccination campaign forward, under the ' #SabkoVaccineMuftVaccine' campaign led by PM @NarendraModi ji, the COVID vaccination of children in the age group of 12-14 has started from today. All people of 60+ age will also be able to get precaution dose from today. Let's secure the country together, get the vaccine," Health Minister had tweeted. Two doses of Biological E's intramuscular vaccine Corbevax would be administered to the beneficiaries in the 12 to 14 years age group in an interval of 28 days, the government data notified. Meanwhile, the government informed that India's COVID-19 vaccination coverage has exceeded 181.89 crore (1,81,89,15,234) as per provisional reports till 7 am today. The nationwide COVID-19 vaccination started on January 16, 2021. The new phase of universalization of COVID-19 vaccination commenced from June 21, 2021. The vaccination drive has been ramped up through availability of more vaccines, advance visibility of vaccine availability to States and UTs for enabling better planning by them, and streamlining the vaccine supply chain. As part of the nationwide vaccination drive, the Government of India has been supporting the States and UTs by providing them COVID Vaccines free of cost. In the new phase of the universalization of the COVID-19 vaccination drive, the Union Government will procure and supply (free of cost) 75 per cent of the vaccines being produced by the vaccine manufacturers in the country to States and UTs. (ANI)
Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla said on Wednesday that the public representatives and Padma awardees work for the betterment of society, especially the marginalised sections, and sharing of experiences by those honoured with these awards will help the parliamentarians in discharging their duties more efficiently. The Speaker, who inaugurated three- day dialogue programme 'Presentation by Padma Awardees for the benefit of Members of Parliament' in Parliament House Complex, said that contribution of the Padma awardees to various fields will help the country to reach new heights in the next 25 years as efforts are being made for accelerated development. He said both people's representatives and the eminent personalities who have been decorated with Padma awards work "in the same direction of uplifting the deprived and the marginalized sections of society and to bring positive changes in people's lives". "Therefore, sharing of experiences by Padma awardees will immensely help the parliamentarians in discharging their duties more efficiently," the Speaker said. Referring to Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav, Birla said that the country has witnessed growth, prosperity, peace and tranquillity during recent years and has achieved many milestones in the fields of economy, education, health, science and technology. The Speaker said that as India is charting its path for the next 25 years, the "contributions of the Padma awardees in various fields will help the country to reach new heights". Emphasizing the need for sharing best practices among democratic institutions and people's representatives, the Speaker called for regular interaction among people's representatives and domain experts so that their knowledge is enriched further and legislatures becomes a more powerful forum for ensuring accountability of the executive. According to an official release, the Speaker felicitated the Padwa awardees on the occasion and released a booklet "Sarvasrestha Pahal". Lok Sabha Secretary General Utpal Kumar Singh delivered the welcome address. The programme has been organized by the Parliamentary Research and Training Institute for Democracies (PRIDE), Lok Sabha Secretariat. (ANI)
Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chief Mehbooba Mufti on Wednesday again criticized the BJP-led central government for supporting Vivek Agnihotri's latest directorial 'The Kashmir Files' saying that the situation of Kashmiri Pandits would have been different if the party had done something for them in the past eight years. The PDP president also said that everyone faced atrocities in Jammu and Kashmir. "In Jammu and Kashmir, everyone faced atrocities. If the BJP and the PM had done something for the Kashmiri Pandits the way they are promoting the film (The Kashmir Files), their situation would have been different today," Mufti told reporters here today. The film, which focuses on the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits from the Valley in the 1990s, has been mired in controversy since its release on March 11 with the BJP and Opposition parties sparring over the portrayal of the incidents. Earlier on Tuesday, she also accused BJP of "wanting to divide the nation" and "make many Pakistans" and said Congress had kept the nation safe during its rule. In a tweet after the release, Mufti had said the stance of Centre towards the film reflected "ill-intention" and would not contribute to healing old wounds. The movie revolves around the killings of Kashmiri Pandits in the 1990s and has been directed by Vivek Agnihotri, known for films like 'Tashkent Files', 'Hate Story' and 'Buddha in a Traffic Jam'. (ANI)
Comment Policy Calaveras Enterprise does not actively monitor comments. However, staff does read through to assess reader interest. When abusive or foul language is used or directed toward other commenters, those comments will be deleted. If a commenter continues to use such language, that person will be blocked from commenting. We wish to foster a community of communication and a sharing of ideas, and we truly value readers' input.
The BJP MPs held protests carrying placards "We want central government intervention in West Bengal to stop state-sponsored terrorism". The BJP leaders demanded CBI inquiry over the matter.

"We want Centre's intervention. Twelve bodies were recovered so far. Locals saying more people have died. This kind of barbarism should be probed. Twenty-six people were murdered in the last week. Our councillors were killed. An MP was attacked with bomb," West Bengal BJP president Sukanta Majumdar told ANI.

As many as eight people were burnt to death in the Rampurhat area of West Bengal's Birbhum on Tuesday after a mob allegedly set houses on fire following the killing of Trinamool Congress leader Bhadu Sheikh.

Director-General of Police (DGP) West Bengal, Manoj Malviya informed that 11 arrests have been made in the case so far. He further informed that Bhadu Shaikh's murder was reported last night, an hour after which 7-8 houses nearby had caught fire.

A special investigation team has been formed to probe the matter.

Meanwhile, the Calcutta High Court on Wednesday took cognizance of the Birbhum incident.

The Leader of Opposition in the state Assembly Suvendu Adhikari on Tuesday called for President's rule in West Bengal. Further, BJP demanded the resignation of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. (ANI)
A 40-year-old bed-ridden man who developed Elephantiasis in the left leg post a road accident a decade ago received a new lease of life after a successful 'highly specialised and superfine microsurgery' at a hospital in the national capital. The man, Amit Kumar can now walk freely and has resumed his daily activities while also undergoing conservative therapy for rehabilitation at Max Hospital, Patparganj. Kumar had lost all hope of ever getting back a normal life after he developed Elephantiasis (Lymphedema) after an accident 10 years ago. He had visited multiple hospitals across the city and was repeatedly told that there was nothing that could be done to cure his debilitating condition. Highly specialised and superfine microsurgery, Lymphovenous Anastomosis (LVA), is a one-of-its-kind treatment for treating Lymphedema that could be caused due to trauma or common in patients of cancer surgeries or filariasis, as said, the team of doctors led by Dr Manoj Johar, Senior Director and his associate Principal Consultant, Dr Pradeep K Singh, Department of Aesthetic, Reconstructive and Plastic Surgery, Max Hospital, Patparganj. According to doctors Kumar underwent an operation on the left groin which resulted in disruption of the lymph nodes (lymphatics). Following this, he started developing Lymphedema or Elephantiasis because of the accumulation of excessive fluids. The patient consulted with several doctors in the following years, but his situation worsened; which compromised his walking and daily chores along with the psychological trauma. Talking about the case, Dr Johar said, "Lymphedema was traditionally treated with debulking, ablative treatments in which the excess volume of fat and fluid was immediately excised or eliminated via liposuction. These methods, on the other hand, are far from physiological and are frequently disfiguring or only provide brief relief. LVA is relatively new, and is now considered one of the gold standard therapies for lymphedema." Dr Johar led the highly trained team of doctors comprising of Dr Pradeep K Singh & Dr Ankur Bhatia who performed the surgery. He said that the case was a highly challenging case but after multiple attempts, the weight of his leg has finally reduced to 25 kgs from 45 kgs earlier. "We adopted conservative management with manual lymphatic drainage therapy, triple bandaging, and other methods to achieve optimal status. He was taken up for multiple Lymphovenous Anastomosis, and his leg circumference came down from 120 cms to 112 cms, and all the compartments softened up two-month post-surgery. Then we planned reduction surgeries, and after two stages of reduction surgeries, his limb girth is now 65 cms, and the weight of his leg has now reduced to 25 kgs. Using highly specialised microscopes, we were able to magnify the operating area by 40 times. This was a highly challenging case," said Dr Johar. Dr Pradeep K Singh, Principal Consultant, Dept of Aesthetic, Reconstructive and Plastic Surgery, said, "Lymphovenous Anastomosis is a specialised surgery where 0.1-0.2 mm diameter lymph vessels are (joined) anastomosed with nearby veins under a specialised microscope with special super microsurgery instruments, and we bypass the proximal blocked lymphatic pathways and lymph is directly drained into the venous system." Dr Kousar Ali Shah, Sr Vice President, Operations & Head at Max Hospital, Patparganj, congratulated the team of doctors treating Amit for achieving success in such a complicated case. He said that through this method, more such patients suffering from Elephantiasis will be benefitted in the future. "We take pride in pioneering in tertiary and quaternary care. This particular case is a testimony to how super specialised procedures could alter the life of not just the patient but his entire family. I congratulate the team of treating doctors for achieving this feat. Such procedures are bound to help many more patients who suffer from Lymphedema," said Dr Kousar. (ANI)
Rashtriya Janata Dal MLAs staged a protest against the Nitish Kumar-led Bihar government outside the state Assembly on Wednesday over the deaths caused allegedly due to the consumption of illicit liquor in the state and accused the government of selling liquor under its watch. The MLAs raised slogans against the government and vowed to corner the government on the issue in the Assembly. Speaking to ANI, RJD MLA Bhai Virendra said, "The government is lying when it says that the people have died of disease. Why did not the government do the postmortem of the deceased ones? Cremating the deceased without postmortem raises the doubt that the liquor has claimed their lives. The government does not want to face the public and therefore is lying. Liquor is being sold under the watch of the government. We will raise this issue in the Assembly." RJD MLA Mukesh Raushan tied a black ribbon around his eyes as a mark of protest against the government and said that the government cannot see anything. "The government cannot see anything in Bihar. Who will take responsibility for the death of hundreds of people? What kind of liquor ban it is? How long will the Chief Minister be silent?" Raushan said. (ANI)
The district administration of Uttarakhand's Haridwar has issued an order prohibiting the school teachers from carrying mobile phones inside the classrooms. District Magistrate, Vinay Shankar Pandey warned of "strict disciplinary action" if the teachers are found to be in possession of their mobile phones inside the classrooms. This will be applicable to all government and private educational institutes in the district, Pandey said. According to the order, the teachers will have to submit their phones in the Principal's room before entering the classrooms. "We have been observing for quite some time that the teachers were busy with their mobile phones even in the classrooms. We have taken cognisance of their activities such as playing games, chatting. We have been receiving complaints about quite some time from the parents as well as the students. We sent our magistrates to verify the complaints. We have issued an order that the teachers can carry their mobile phones to the schools but they have to deposit them in the Principal's room. They would enter the classroom without their mobile phones," Pandey told ANI. However, the DM informed that an exception can be made in the case of a medical emergency in the teacher's family. "It would be the responsibility of the Principal to ensure its implementation. However, under special circumstances like a medical emergency in the family, a teacher can seek permission from the Principal and keep his/her phone," he added. "In our surprise inspection, if any teacher is found to be using mobile phones or keeping phone inside the classroom, strict disciplinary action would be taken against them and the Principal would also have to take responsibility for the same. The order would be implemented in all the educational institutes in the district," he said. (ANI)
In his message, President Kovind said, "I am happy to note that World Tuberculosis Day is observed every year on March 24, to commemorate the anniversary of Dr Robert Koch's discovery of the Tuberculosis (TB) bacteria in 1882."

The President also informed that the theme of World Tuberculosis Day this year is "It's Time".

"Consistent with the spirit of this theme, India has renewed its commitments and intentions to end TB by 2025, five years ahead of the global targets. This is an ambitious timeline and, given our motivation to eliminate the disease, it is achievable," President Kovind said.

The President of India further urged all stakeholders to come together to achieve a TB-free India and "re-dedicate ourselves towards achieving this goal". (ANI)
MP Santosh Kumar said, "The medium of cinema is the most powerful and inspires people to follow what the actors are doing. I am thankful to the actors and director for participating in the Green India Challenge event."

S.S. Rajamouli, Jr.NTR, Ram Charan said that the promotion of greenery is a program close to their hearts.

Rajamouli said, "Nature and the environment are our favorite activities and whenever it is possible, we will participate in the greenery enhancement programme along with the crew."

Actor Jr. N.T.R. said, "Everyone should be aware of the changes in the environment and educate for the increase of green canopy and strive for the protection of the nature."

Actor Ram Charan said, "I have participated in the Green India Challenge earlier and I get excited every time while planting the saplings."

Efforts of the MP were lauded for instilling a green spirit across the country with the goal of social welfare.

Green India Challenge co-founders Karunakar Reddy, Raghav S, and others participated in the event. (ANI)
Rashtriya Janata Dal leader and son of party supremo Lalu Prasad Yadav, Tejashwi Yadav on Wednesday said there has been an increase in the creatinine level of his father since he arrived in AIIMS, New Delhi from Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS), Ranchi, which is an indication of the increasing infection. Lalu Yadav arrived at AIIMS at around 9 pm on Tuesday after which he was admitted to the emergency ward for observation. He was then admitted to the hospital on Wednesday. According to the official sources at the institute, Lalu is under the cross consultancy and under the observation of doctors of more than four departments that includes neurology, nephrology, cardiology and endocrinology. The doctors continue to monitor his vitals. Speaking to the reporters in Patna, Tejashwi said he had a variation in his creatinine levels that indicate that there is an increase in his infection. "Lalu Prasad Yadav Ji is undergoing treatment in AIIMS, Delhi. His creatinine level was 4.5 when he was in Ranchi. It increased to 5.1 when it was tested in Delhi. It reached 5.9 when tested again. So the infection is increasing," Tejashwi said. The Jharkhand High Court on March 11 differed the hearing on the bail plea of Yadav till April 1 in connection with a fodder scam case. Earlier in February, a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court had sentenced Yadav to five years imprisonment in the fifth fodder scam case and imposed a fine of Rs 60 lakh on him. Slamming the Nitish Kumar government in the state on the alleged deaths caused by hooch, Tejashwi said that the administration is trying to cover up the incident. "It is a matter of concern and is unfortunate. It exposes the people who claim to have 'good governance' in the state. It is shameful that the administration is trying to cover it up. The postmortem is not being done. If it would be done, things would be clear," he said. (ANI)
Bharatiya Janata Party National General Secretary D Purandeswari on Wednesday, who is on a three-day state visit, said the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party is confident about winning the assembly elections in 2023 and bypolls in four Assembly segments in the State in 2022. The Election Commission of India has initiated the process for bypolls in four Assembly segments in the State, which fell vacant because three MLAs resigned, and one MLA was disqualified under the anti-defection law. The BJP on Friday nominated its Tripura unit president Manik Saha as the party's candidate for the lone Rajya Sabha seat from the State. The main Opposition, the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) also announced the name of its candidate for the poll scheduled on March 31. Speaking to reporters today, Purandeswari said, "Our entire attempt is to win the elections, but having said that, we can't be complacent. We are working hard in the ground to make sure that our victory is ensured in the ensuing polls." The senior BJP leader was speaking to the media persons at BJP state headquarters. She said, "After chairing a series of meetings ever since my arrival in the state, I am overwhelmingly satisfied. The BJP government in Tripura led by CM Biplab Kumar Deb is tirelessly working to ensure development for all". On the results of Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council (TTAADC) elections, she said, "The results of TTAADC elections have conveyed the message that the BJP has done its part. But, unfortunately, the allies of BJP failed to open their account. Hence, a report will be placed before the party high command in New Delhi pertaining to the matter". Notably, despite being in power, the BJP-IPFT alliance faced a shocking defeat at the hands of an emergent regional party, Tipraha Indigenous Progressive Regional Alliance (TIPRA) led by Pradyot Kishore Debbarman. While BJP managed to win nine out of eleven seats (an additional three in friendly contests with allies) that it fought alone, its ally Indigenous Peoples Front of Tripura (IPFT) drew a blank. She also hailed Prime Minister Narendra Modi and said, "Today, not only in India, but the entire world is looking at our leadership. Pakistani students, after safely returning from conflict-ridden Ukraine, admitted that they were given free passage after they held the Indian flag in hand. Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina recently thanked PM Modi for saving the students of Bangladesh as well." She also said that she would chair a couple of meetings before her departure to New Delhi on Thursday. The tenure of incumbent Rajya Sabha MP from Tripura, Jharna Das Baidya, will expire on April 2. The last date for filing nominations for the upcoming election is March 21, while scrutiny of papers will take place the next day. (ANI)
According to official sources, in the exercise--Agnishaman-V which lasted for seven days, the Karnataka team came out with flying colours in the overall performance.

The Karnataka State ISD Counter IED Team participated in the national-level exercise as a team for first time. There were 12 States which participated in the event and the the competition was conducted in seven categories.

The Karnataka ISD Counter IED Team came first in all the categories,a) K9 (Dog ) Validation Exercise - Stood Firstb) Written Exam - Stood Firstc) Cognitive Test - Stood Firstd) Exercise Dhamaka I - Road Opening Exercise in LWE - Stood First.e) Exercise Dhamaka ii - Rural Scenario neutralizing IEDs -Stood Firstf) Exercise Dhamaka iii - Urban Scenario in Nuclear Installation neutralizing if various IEDs by Hand - Stood First.g) Exercise Dhamaka iv - Urban Scenario in neutralizing IEDs at Airport, Train and Vehicle and Bus - Stood First.

Karnataka Home Minister Araga Jnanendra had complimented the state ISD team for their feat. (ANI)
The Bihar government has refused to give compensation to the families of the people who died after consuming illicit liquor in the state. Liquor prohibition department minister Sunil Kumar clarified on Wednesday that there is no provision to provide compensation to the families of the people who died due to the consumption of liquor. "Liquor is banned in Bihar. If any person consumes liquor, it is an illegal and criminal act. Hence, how could the state government compensate the deceaseds' families after their deaths due to the consumption of liquor," Kumar said. The clarification from the cabinet minister comes after opposition leaders demanded adequate compensation to the families who lost their loved ones in liquor tragedies. The legislators of both the Houses in the Vidhan Sabha raised the issue. Due to the huge uproar, both the Houses were adjourned twice on Wednesday. Kumar pointed out that the deaths had happened in Bhagalpur, Banka, Madhepura and Siwan districts since Holi but the police are suspecting only two deaths due to probable consumption of poisonous liquor in Bhagalpur district. The viscera reports of the victims are still awaited. "Bihar government is not hiding facts. Whenever deaths due to liquor consumption take place in Bihar, we are taking action against the culprits. In Bhagalpur, we have arrested 5 persons and acted against the accused in Gopalganj as well. We are also taking departmental action against the police officers as well," he said. "The opposition leaders generally work in their own way and level allegations against the state government. As far as deaths due to the consumption of so-called poisonous liquor are concerned, it is absolutely baseless. We are waiting for the viscera reports of two cases of Bhagalpur. Apart from that, the district administrations of Bhagalpur, Banka, Madhepura and Siwan have already submitted their reports to the home department and all of them died due to illness," Kumar said. "The opposition is also blaming us for not conducting a postmortem. I want to point out that if the families of the deceased cremated the bodies before the arrival of the police, how could we do postmortems," he said. In Bihar, 42 persons have lost their lives due to liquor consumption since Holi (March 18) including 22 in Bhagalpur, 12 in Banka, 3 in Madhepura and 5 in Siwan district. --IANS ajk/bg ( 402 Words) 2022-03-23-19:54:05 (IANS)
The ruling BJP in Karnataka quoted the rule book on Wednesday to blunt the opposition attack over the calls to ban Muslim traders from Hindu temple premises and religious fairs in the state's coastal region. During a discussion on the issue in the legislative assembly on Wednesday, Karnataka Law Minister JC Madhuswamy referred to The Hindu Religious Institutions And Charitable Endowments Act and Rules (2002). "As per the rule number 12 of Act, leasing out space near a Hindu religious institution to a person of another faith is prohibited. If the instances of Muslims being banned from doing business have taken place outside the temples' premises, we can examine. However, within the premises, the rules don't permit people from other communities to set up shop," Madhuswamy stated while pointing out that the Congress government of the time had framed these rules. With instances coming to light of Muslim traders being barred from setting up shops and stalls in some temple premises and religious gatherings in Karnataka's coastal districts, the issue was hotly discussed in the legislature on Wednesday. During Zero Hour, Congress members UT Khadar and Rizwan Arshad focused attention on the banners being displayed at religious fairs and temples, prohibiting Muslim traders from setting up shops and stalls at local Hindu fairs. They alleged that such banners are being displayed in public areas too. Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai said that the applicability of the rules has to be examined. --IANS pvn/bg ( 260 Words) 2022-03-23-20:28:02 (IANS)
BSNL Employees Union on Wednesday appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to "drop proposal to merge MTNL with BSNL". The employees union of Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) also suggested the government to take over Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited's (MTNL) Rs 26,000 crore debt and provide financial assistance to BSNL. "We wish to express our serious concern regarding the merger of BSNL and MTNL. The BSNL employees are genuinely concerned that, the merger of MTNL with BSNL will certainly ruin the financial condition of the latter. Due to this reason, right from the beginning, the employees of BSNL have been firmly opposing the merger of BSNL and MTNL," the union said in a letter to the Prime Minister. The union quoted a senior BSNL official as saying that "MTNL is in the ICU and any day it can be declared dead" and "a catastrophe is waiting to happen in MTNL". "We fervently appeal to you to kindly drop the proposal to merge MTNL with BSNL. Alternatively, the government should take over MTNL's debt of Rs 26,000 crore. In addition to this, the government should also provide sufficient financial assistance to BSNL, for the rehabilitation of the networks of MTNL. This demand is being raised because, both the mobile as well as landline networks of MTNL are in a dilapidated condition. Hence, we earnestly urge upon you to kindly look into this issue and to kindly take appropriate action to safeguard the interests of BSNL," the union said. (ANI)
Adherence to NDPE (No Deforestation, No Peat, No Exploitation) policies is not mandatory for import of palm oil into India, the Parliament was told on Wednesday. To a question by Lok Sabha members Vinod Kumar Sonkar and Rajveer Singh alias Raju Bhaiya whether the palm oil imported into India conformed to the environmental norms, Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal said that at present, the government had not made mandatory the NDPE policies for import of palm oil into India. "However, both Malaysia and Indonesia, which are the major suppliers of palm oil to India, have certification schemes to promote sustainability in palm oil production. It is mandatory for palm oil produced in Malaysia to be certified under the Malaysian Sustainable Palm Oil (MSPO). "In addition, Roundtable Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) certification is also gaining importance in Malaysia. Indonesia has also adopted the Indonesian Sustainable Palm Oil (ISPO) standard to promote sustainability in palm oil production. The Government has not received any quality-related complaints in palmolein imported from Malaysia and Indonesia," he added. The Minister also said that India is the largest importer of edible oils i.e., palm oil, in the world with import of edible oils during the last three financial years at 1,50,19,308.54 tonnes in 2018-19, 1,47,22,123.78 in 2019-20, and 1,35,40,020.94 in 2020-21. In order to reduce dependence on imports, the government has launched the National Mission on Edible Oils - Oil Palm (NMEO-OP) with the aim to augment the availability of edible oil in the country by harnessing area expansion and increasing crude palm oil production. --IANS niv/vd ( 276 Words) 2022-03-23-20:32:04 (IANS)
A few days after Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot said that he had lobbied for Sachin Pilot as Union Minister in UPA-2, the latter on Wednesday said that he had ensured a ticket for his son Vaibhav Gehlot in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. "The high command was not very much in favor of this ticket, because a single name had come from Jodhpur, whose father was the sitting Chief Minister, so at that time I advocated Vaibhav's case. I told Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi that Vaibhav has worked in my executive, he should get a chance. "As a state party President at that time, I did not want that Ashok ji, being the new Chief Minister, gets hurt, his morale should not be hurt, so I lobbied the CEC (Central Election Committee). I also told the CEC that Vaibhav should get the ticket. He got the ticket but we could not win the election. We lost the election by a huge margin," he said in a media interaction after attending a cultural programme at Maharani College. A few days back, Gehlot had said: "I had lobbied for Pilot for a minister's post in the second term of UPA. Pilot called and requested cooperation in making him a minister, then I said that I have already given your name to the high command. At that time, this was not told to anyone." Pilot also said that the Congress government will be formed in Rajasthan after the next polls, noting that the time has come when the trend of alternate parties coming to power in Rajasthan should change. --IANS arc/vd ( 285 Words) 2022-03-23-21:34:05 (IANS)
At Sri Lanka's All Party Conference (APC) held in a bid to come out of one of worst economic crises in its history, a former President and an ex-Prime Minster insisted that Sri Lanka should take the help of India and other friendly nations. Presenting his solutions to the current crisis, former Premier Ranil Wickremesinghe said, "The only way for us now is to make an agreement and get closer to the selected friendly nations. They include India, Japan, China and European Union." Meanwhile, former President Maithripala Sirisena, who had initiated the idea of an APC, too suggested that Sri Lanka should get the support of India and other friendly nations. President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who invited all the political parties to rally around the APC to find solutions to the present economic crisis, led the APC on Wednesday, but the main opposition -- United People's Power led by Sajith Premadasa -- and the Marxist outfit Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna refused to join it, claiming that the government was not genuine with its intentions and the APC was just an eyewash for the present crisis. Government affiliated and Tamil represented Ceylon Workers Congress (CWC), parties representing the Muslim community and a number of other outfits too boycotted the APC. However, the United National Party (UNP) represented by its only MP and leader Ranil Wickremesinghe, Sri Lanka Freedom Party led by former President Maithripala Sirisena and the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), the country's main Tamil national party based in the North and the East, joined the APC. Forwarding TNA's proposals for economic recovery, MP M.A. Sumanthiran stated that Tamil diaspora funding to support ailing economy could be a real possibility and assured that the party could act as a bridge to negotiate with the Tamil people abroad, who are willing to bring in their funds and invest in the country. However, MP Sumanthiran representing the former war-torn Northern peninsula claimed that there should be power devolution to the ethnic issue. "There is no development without devolution. That needs to be done and we can move forward," he stated. As suggested by several parties, Finance Minister Basil Rajapaksa announced that a new budget with concessions to financially-burdened people would be presented by next month. --IANS sfl/arm ( 389 Words) 2022-03-23-22:16:02 (IANS)
The consequence of any possible nuclear disaster due to the Russia-Ukraine conflict is not envisaged to have any radiation impact in India, the Parliament was told on Wednesday. Responding to Trinamool Congress Lok Sabha member Sougata Ray's query as to whether the government has taken precautionary measures to counter the nuclear radiation caused by the nuclear disaster, if any, due to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Science and Technology Minister Jitendra Singh said: "The consequence of any possible nuclear disaster due to the Russia-Ukraine conflict is not envisaged to have a radiation impact in India. The Indian Environmental Radiation Monitoring Network (IERMON) established across the country continuously monitors the background radiation level to give early indications of any increase in the radiation level." "In an unlikely scenario of radiation level exceeding acceptable limits within the country, a radiation emergency response plan is available to handle the situation," he said. The Minister replied in negative to Ray's other questions, whether the Russia-Ukraine conflict will impact the safety and security of Kudankulam reactor in Tamil Nadu, and whether any demand has come up to scrap the Kudankulam reactor due to the threat of nuclear radiation. --IANS niv/vd ( 209 Words) 2022-03-23-19:56:04 (IANS)
The BHRC seminar, convened at the Geneva Press Club, was attended by representatives from different oppressed sections from Pakistan who shared their views on the human rights violations of the Baloch people in Pakistan and Iran.

Noting that Pakistan is committing heinous crimes against people in Balochistan, the speakers at the seminar stressed the need to make efforts to address the plight of Baloch people at the international fora.

Some of these prominent speakers included Junaid Qureshi of the European Foundation for South Asian Studies, Hassan Hamdam and Jamshaid Amiri from the BHRC, Dr Lakhu Luhana and Dr Hidayat Bhutto of World Sindhi Congress (WSC), Nasir Aziz Khan of United Kashmir People's National Party, among others.

A short documentary made by BHRC was also played at the seminar to present a historical context of the human rights situation in Balochistan including its current terrible condition.

Notably, 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.

Experts believe that the missing persons may be dead or their mutilated bodies dumped into ditches and may be locked in some detention centers. (ANI)
US national security adviser Jake Sullivan on Tuesday said that the US is closely monitoring China over possible weapon supply to Russia. He also added that the US administration has not seen China provide military equipment to Russia since President Joe Biden spoke with China's President Xi Jinping last Friday. "I can't make predictions going forward. What I can tell you is we have not seen since those meetings or since the President's conversation with Xi, the provision of military equipment by China to Russia, but of course, this is something we are monitoring closely," Sullivan told reporters, reported CNN News. This comes in the backdrop of talks held between Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday. During the talks Biden sought to dissuade Xi from assisting Russia, warning his Chinese counterpart during a 110-minute long video call of the "implications and consequences" for Beijing if it were to provide material support to Moscow. Sullivan asserted, "We will continue to monitor it. And the President made clear to President Xi the implications and consequences of any such provision of equipment and they very well understand." With the Russia-Ukraine war in its fourth week, a new debate whether China is providing military support to Russia or not, has begun with Moscow and Beijing both denying the allegations. Two US officials told CNN last week that Russia has requested military support and economic assistance support from China. Furthermore, According to a US diplomatic cable to allies, China has conveyed some openness to offering help to Russia, reported CNN News. On February 24, Russia began a special military operation in Ukraine after the Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics requested help in defending themselves. What followed the military operation was a slew of sanctions imposed by the western countries targeting the Russian economy. (ANI)
All the escape routes for Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan are closing as the voting date or the no-confidence motion inches closer and if Imran Khan denies to put in his papers and "fight it out" then the situation in Islamabad could turn ugly, forcing Pakistan Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa to stomp hard on his protege. The ambitious army generals are known to uphold the military establishment are in a mood to not let anyone change the winds which are not in favour of the army. If Pakistan Army General Qamar Javed Bajwa were to retire in November this year, Lieutenant General Sahir Shamshad Mirza could take the post of Army chief. Mirza does not exaggerate anything and is known to uphold the military establishment. To cut to the chase, he will not let anyone disturb the equilibrium in favour of the army, reported Inside Over. He was reportedly among the four senior Generals, including Bajwa, who requested Imran Khan to put in his papers after the OIC meeting. Bajwa is keen on ensuring the security situation in the country amid the brewing political battle. In a recent development, Bajwa, with his Brigade 111, the specialized unit earmarked for the protection of the residences of the President and Prime Minister besides key installations for the OIC Council of Foreign Ministers meeting. This is not the only security measure that the General has pursued because the capital is embracing itself for the March 23rd Pakistan Day parade at a time when a no-trust motion vote is scheduled for March 25. The 111 Brigade of the Pakistani Army is key to the security of Islamabad and ambitious Generals of the Army like Pervez Musharraf has used the Brigade in ousting Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. The Brigade is currently led by Brigadier Mehr Omar Khan, an alumnus of the US Army Command and General Staff College at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, reported Inside Over. Though exuding confidence in the failure of the no-trust move, Imran Khan has also intensified meetings with allies ahead of the session. Notably, in the 342-member National Assembly, the Imran Khan government requires at least 172 members to sail through the no-confidence vote. (ANI)
While refusing to rule out the use of nuclear weapons, Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that if there is an existential threat for Russia, the country can use the nukes. In an interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour on Tuesday, when asked under what conditions Putin would use Russia's nuclear capability, Peskov replied, "if it is an existential threat for our country, then it can be," reported CNN News. Moreover, when asked what Putin thought he had achieved in Ukraine so far, Peskov answered, "Well, first of all, not yet. He hasn't achieved yet," adding the special military operation was, "going on strictly in accordance with the plans and the purposes that were established beforehand." During the interview, Peskov stated what Russia desires to achieve from the war in Ukraine. He said, "main goals of the operation" are to "get rid of the military potential of Ukraine," to ensure Ukraine is a "neutral country," to get rid of "nationalist battalions," for Ukraine to accept that Crimea is a part of Russia and accept the breakaway regions of Luhansk and Donetsk. Notably, Crimean was annexed by Russia in 2014 and also accused Ukraine of committing genocide in the regions of Luhansk and Donetsk. On February 24, Russia began a special military operation in Ukraine after the Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics requested help in defending themselves. What followed the military operation was a slew of sanctions imposed by the western countries targeting the Russian economy. (ANI)
Fruit and vegetable exports to the US, Europe surge

Vietnam is boosting fruit and vegetable export to the US and Europe after facing difficulties with the Chinese market.



Nguyen Lam Vien, general director of Vinamit, said that China had tightened its control over the check of the point of origin of imported produce, packaging and quality. Chinas zero-Covid 19 policy had particularly slowed down customs clearance for Vietnamese exports.



Vinamit, which has had business experience in China for 20 years, in response has instead had to seek European partners for export contracts. The firm has seen a growth in European orders.



According to Nguyen Van Thu, general director of GC Food, the companys fruit and vegetables exports have been on the rise. GC Food has built a VND100-billion (USD4.84 million) factory to freeze farm produce as part of these efforts.



Nguyen Dinh Tung, General Director of Vina T&T JS Company, said that Vietnam has many opportunities in Europe as it is the only country in the Asia Pacific region that has signed a free trade agreement with Europe.



After the European Union - Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA) takes effect, import tariffs of some kinds of Vietnamese vegetables and fruits would be reduced to zero.



Vina T&T has increased the export of fruit and vegetables to the EU this year, particularly grapefruit and dragon fruit. The company has planned to export more products to the EU, Tung added.



Nguyen Thanh Binh, chairman of the Vietnam Fruit and Vegetable Association, said that China had been the biggest importer of Vietnamese fruits and vegetables for many years.



However, Vietnams fruit and vegetable export value to China dropped by 19 percent on-year to USD260 million in the first two months of this year. In contrast, the export value of fruit and vegetables to the US grew by 70 percent to USD25 million. While Japan imported fruit and vegetables valued at USD23 million, up 12 percent on-year.



Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Le Minh Hoan said the EU was the biggest importer of fruit and vegetables in the world. However, Vietnamese products accounted for just around 1 percent of the EU's total import value of fruits and vegetables.



The US has licensed the import of Vietnamese grapefruit. The US plans to import more Vietnamese coconuts and star apples in the coming time.
Esther S. Slaff, a retired businessperson who was a member of the Board of the Friends of St. Johns College and an accomplished Chesapeake Bay sailor, died of metastatic thyroid cancer March 9 at BayWoods of Annapolis, a senior living community. The longtime Annapolis resident who earlier had lived at the Chesapeake Harbour Retirement Community was 95.

Patricia S. Pat Maher and her husband had been close friends of Mrs. Slaff and her husband since the early 1990s.

Advertisement

Esther was an absolute delight and had a wide range of interests, recalled Mrs. Maher. And I never saw her angry or depressed and was always so upbeat. She also had a wonderful sense of style when it came to her personal appearance and clothes. She had more fashion sense in one finger than four fashion houses in New York or Paris.

The former Esther May Shapiro, daughter of Charles H. Shapiro, and Thelma Cohen Shapiro, who owned and operated Charles Bridals, was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and raised in nearby Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. She graduated first in her class in 1943 from Elmer L. Meyers High School.

Advertisement

In 1947, she received a bachelors degree in biology from Goucher College, and a year later, she married Robert Bob Slaff, a Wilkes-Barre native.

She met her future husband through a date that had been arranged by Mr. Slaffs mother.

According to my dad, it was a love at first sight, wrote a daughter, Sara Slaff, who lives in Baltimore County near Lake Roland, in a biographical profile of her mother.

He also loved her new Chevy convertible  a gift given to her by her adoring parents, Thelma and Charles, in honor of her college graduation, Ms. Slaff wrote. According to my mom, on their first date she was driving the convertible and he asked her to pull over so that he could drive. They proceeded to get a flat tire. While he was changing it, he suggested she get out of the car to watch how best to change a tire so that she could do it herself in the future.

She got her business acumen while working in her parents bridal business which began in her childhood, her daughter, who is vice president for legal affairs and general counsel for Towson University, said in a telephone interview.

Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 61 Ron Galella, the celebrity photographer whose pursuit of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis resulted in a restraining order against him after he stalked her for years, died at age 91 on April 30, 2022, at his home in Montville, N.J., of congestive heart failure. (Carlo Allegri/AP)

In 1962, Mrs. Slaff and her husband established Inland Marine Co., a marine trade business, far inland from any navigable waters, her daughter said. They sold inflatable boats and were distributors of Seagull Marine Engines, a British manufactured outboard motor, as well as Avon inflatable boats and other equipment from Ireland, France and Scandinavia. They maintained the business while raising their four children.

After Mrs. Slaffs father became ill in the late 1950s, she managed Charles Bridals business office while serving on the board of First Eastern Bank in Wilkes-Barre. On weekends, she and her husband would load their children in the family car and drive four hours to Havre de Grace, where they enjoyed sailing on the Upper Chesapeake Bay.

After surviving Tropical Storm Agnes in 1972, when flooding filled her home with 18 feet of water and Inland Marine Co. with 9 feet of water, she and her husband relocated to a home in Dallas, Pennsylvania.

Advertisement

In 1982, after she and her husband had merged their business with IMTRA Corp., a New England-based marine trade business, she was named vice president. The couple then moved to Annapolis, where they operated the companys branch office.

Their move to Annapolis was transformative  it allowed them to blend their vocation and with their avocation  all boats, all the time, wrote Ms. Slaff. My mother was a very good sailor.

Mrs. Slaff retired from IMTRA Corp. in 1987.

After retiring, she and her husband, who lived in Epping Forest, spent many years exploring the Chesapeake Bay and its many tributaries and rivers in their boat. Even though her husband transitioned to a power boat when he purchased the 30-foot Inmar, she continued skippering her 36-foot sailboat, Auriga, which she did well into her 80s. Then she began sailing on her friend Steve Cohens sailboat, and did so through the summer of 2021.

Mrs. Slaff had been on the board for many years of the Board of the Friends of St. Johns College, which sponsored the annual Arnie Gay Memorial Sail Picnic and The Great Kite Fly that is held on the grounds of the college and features kites made by both children and adults.

The sail picnic, of which she was chair, commemorates the life of Arnold C. Gray, a world-class sailor and Annapolis yachtsman who had competed in some of the worlds most challenging ocean races, and owner of the Arnold C. Gray Yacht Yard on Spa Creek. He died in 1994.

Advertisement

Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 24 Lois H. Feinblatt was a pioneering sex therapist who practiced with the Johns Hopkins Sex and Gender Clinic for more than three decades and was a also a philanthropist. (handout)

The kite fly was established in 1998. To me, the most fun is seeing these children out there, running with their kites after theyve made them, Mrs. Slaff told The Capital in a 2003 interview. That to me is a spectacle.

Mrs. Slaff worked for 30 years as an information volunteer on Thursdays at the National Gallery of Art in Washington.

Afternoon Update Weekdays Updating you on the day's biggest news before the evening commute. >

She enjoyed attending happy hour at the Eastport Yacht Club in Annapolis where she was a member, and participated in many other activities including Water Nymph, a weekly water aerobics class.

After her husband died in 2013, and she was in her 80s, she enjoyed taking kayak trips to the Pacific Northwest, traveling to Europe on art appreciation trips, and visiting family in the West.

Once a week, Mrs. Slaff would meet her friend Mrs. Maher to have dinner, discuss the news, talk politics, and one of her favorite topics  the Supreme Court.

[ F. Patrick Hughes, Baltimore real estate executive and philanthropist, dies ]

She loved talking about the Supreme Court and followed it very closely. She could give NPRs Nina Totenberg a run for her money, Mrs. Maher said. She could cite cases . She was very smart but never oppressive.

Advertisement

Mrs. Slaff, who had moved to BayWoods last year, was a member of Kol Shalom Congregation in Annapolis.

A graveside funeral was held March 13 at Hillcrest Cemetery in Annapolis.

In addition to her daughter, she is survived by a son, Bruce Slaff of Annapolis; another daughter, Amy Slaff Creelman of Newport Beach, California; seven grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren. Another daughter, Susan Slaff Lefkowitz, died in 2016.
Ranjan P Thakur, Principal Secretary in the Industries and Commerce Department in Jammu and Kashmir Government, said that the investments announced by Gulf countries in Kashmir is just a first step and the journey is long with deep investment coming in the future. He also stated that People from the valley are making presentations to the entire delegation visiting India and are showcasing the products made here. Notably, a high-level business delegation from the United Arab Emirates landed in Srinagar on Sunday evening to explore business opportunities. The delegates from UEA who are on a visit to Jammu and Kashmir interacted with artisans from the state expressing eagerness to invest. Speaking to ANI, Abdullah Al Shaibani, the Emirates delegate praised India and especially Jammu and Kashmir for its mesmerizing beauty. "Kashmir is a very nice place. It has beautiful scenery and the people of the Valley are nice. There are a lot of things people can do themselves. We are impressed with our visit to Jammu and Kashmir, people here have a lot of potential," the Emirates delegate said. Earlier on Tuesday, Sinha attended the Gulf Investment Summit and was informed that investment proposals of Rs 27,000 crores have been cleared by the Jammu and Kashmir administration. Entrepreneurs and CEOs from different countries including Dubai, UAE, Holland were present at the summit.Speaking on the occasion, Sinha stated that around six to seven lakh people will get jobs once the investments fructify. "We have cleared investment proposals of Rs 27,000 crores and hope it will cross Rs 70,000 crores in multiple sectors. 6-7 lakh people will get jobs when the investment will fructify," said Sinha while addressing the press conference.Jammu and Kashmir government is hosting a Gulf Investment Summit in Srinagar to strengthen ties and boost investment opportunities in the region. Delegates from over thirty-six countries are attending the event. (ANI)
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been invited to virtually address the NATO summit set to take place on Thursday discussing the Russian invasion of his country. "President Zelensky is invited to address the NATO summit via video link," a NATO official said Tuesday. "This will be an opportunity for allied leaders to hear directly from President Zelensky about the dire situation facing the people of Ukraine because of Russia's aggression," the official added, reported France 24. A meeting of the North Atlantic Council (NAC) at the level of Heads of State and Government will take place on Thursday. The meeting will be in person and will be chaired by the NATO Secretary-General, Jens Stoltenberg. On February 24, Russia began a special military operation in Ukraine after the Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics requested help in defending themselves. What followed the military operation was a slew of sanctions imposed by the western countries targeting the Russian economy. (ANI)
A Uyghur woman has been sentenced to 20-year imprisonment for speaking to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan during his visit to China's Xinjiang region in 2012, said a media report citing the woman's husband. The woman, who spoke for an hour with then Turkey Prime Minister Erdogan during his visit to Urumqi in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) in April 2012, was arrested for her transgression in 2017 and is serving a 20-year prison sentence, Radio Free Asia reported citing her husband. Notably, Turkey shares linguistic and cultural ties with Uyghurs, more than 50,000 of whom have emigrated or escaped to the Middle Eastern country from Xinjiang amid China's crackdown on the ethnic minority. Meryem Emet, an Uyghur woman married to a Turkish citizen, was targeted by Chinese security forces for her hour-long conversation with Erdogan and later imprisoned, the media outlet quoted her husband, Abdullatif Kucar, who lives in Istanbul with their two children. "When Erdogan went to Urumqi, my wife met him, and afterwards, they [Chinese authorities] took her away many times for interrogations," he said. "They have all sorts of excuses to make in order to imprison people who have committed no crime," he said referring to the Chinese authorities. Her arrest in 2017 was part of a wider crackdown by Chinese government authorities on Muslim Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in Xinjiang and drew the attention of the UN human rights office (OHCHR) and international human rights organizations. Xinjiang government authorities were on high alert at the time of Erdogan's 2012 visit and became uneasy when accompanying Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, attended Friday prayers at the Noghay Mosque in Urumqi, exciting many local Uyghurs. Emet was later taken to an internment camp in Kuchar county in southern Xinjiang's Aksu prefecture. However, authorities forced her husband to leave the country before her arrest, and he went to Turkey, leaving his two children in state boarding schools in Urumqi, where they stayed for nearly 20 months. When the Chinese government allowed Kucar to travel to Urumqi in December 2019 to collect the children to take them to Turkey, he found them malnourished and traumatized, one of his relatives said. Kucar, who was allowed to travel to Urumqi in December 2019, went to met Emet who acted like a "statue" and did not respond, making her husband concerned about her wellbeing, the media outlet reported citing a relative, who added that the Chinese government sentenced Emet to 20 years for "marrying a foreigner" and meeting and speaking with Erdogan. Kucar, who has returned to Turkey with his children said that his kids have now regained the Uyghur and Muslim identities they lost while living in the Chinese government-run orphanages. Many Uyghurs who are now Turkish citizens have been unable to get their family members out of Xinjiang, Radio Free Asia reported citing rights activists in Turkey. According to human rights experts, family separations are part of the Chinese government's efforts to eradicate Uyghur culture and language, along with systematic abuse, including arbitrary detentions on trumped-up offences, against members of the predominantly Muslim minority group. The US and some Western countries have declared the abuse of Uyghurs as genocide and crimes against humanity, however, China has repeatedly rejected these claims. (ANI)
As per the official statement, Putin and Zelenskyy reached "no agreement," however, Macron "remains convinced of the need to continue his efforts" as he "stands alongside Ukraine", France 24 reported.

Further, the Kremlin confirmed that Putin and Macron had a call in which they exchanged views about the current Ukraine situation, including the talks between Russian and Ukrainian negotiators.

In the early hours of February 24, Russia launched a special military operation in Ukraine after the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics (DPR and LPR) appealed for help in defending themselves against the Kyiv forces.

Russia said that the aim of its special operation is to demilitarize and "denazify" 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 Donbas, "who have been subjected to abuse, genocide by the Kyiv regime for eight years."

However, the Western countries have strongly condemned Russia's invasion of Ukraine and imposed heavy sanctions on Moscow. (ANI)
"Delighted to receive Foreign Secretary @harshvshringla in New York. Foreign Secretary will participate in the UN Security Council meeting on cooperation between UN and the League of Arab States @arableague_gs," tweeted India's Permanent Representative to the United Nations TS Tirumurti.

The meeting will be chaired by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Minister Khalifa Shaheen. The meeting will focus on cooperation between the UN and regional and subregional organizations (LAS) and will take place on Wednesday (local time).

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and LAS Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul Gheit are the expected briefers at the meeting.

A key issue for the Council is how to strengthen cooperation between the UN and the LAS on peace and security issues facing the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

The briefing will provide Council members with an opportunity to share assessments of and develop effective collaborative solutions to conflicts and crises facing the MENA region, including those in Lebanon, Libya, South Sudan, and Yemen. (ANI)
Succumbing to the pressure of a local Member of Provincial Assembly (MPA) in Pakistan's Punjab province, Lodharan District Police Officer (DPO) refused to register an FIR of a kidnapping, torture and vehicle snatching incident. Even if everything was proved in the initial investigations, the DPO was reluctant to register an FIR on the matter. Rao Ashraf, the complainant, alleged that DPO Abdul Rauf Qaisrani in the presence of a local MPA had said, "Do whatever you want to do. I will not register an FIR of the incident," reported The News International. On March 15, 2022, five people riding a bike intercepted the car of one Ashraf when he was on his way to a court along with his cousin. The accused gave a good thrashing to the victim, tore his clothes and snatched the vehicle. They let the victim's cousin go home. However, they kidnapped Ashraf and took him to a deserted place. The brother of the victim reached out to the police. After receiving the call the Lodhran police responded to the call and recovered the victim but did not do anything to recover the vehicle. The victim approached the DPO on next day and described the incident in detail. The DPO took action and directed the SHO to recover the vehicle within half an hour. As the complainant requested to give a personal hearing and register FIR against them if they were proved guilty, the DPO allegedly straightforwardly refused to register the FIR. The complainant also accused that the local MPA had also allegedly become a hurdle in the way of justice however DPO Abdul Rauf Qaisrani denied the allegation of MPA's intervention. In order to investigate the matter and unearth the truth, The News International also tried to contact the local MPA but his both cell numbers were not responding. (ANI)
In a press release, the Foreign Ministry of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA), said that Lyons stated that she presented a "positive report" of Afghanistan in the UNSC's latest meeting which is an achievement for the interim government of the IEA, Khaama Press reported.

Earlier, the Taliban welcomed the renewal of the UN mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) mandate for Afghanistan for a period of 12 months.

Last week, the UN Security Council extended the mandate for Afghanistan. The resolution was confirmed by 14 votes, with Russia abstaining.

During the meeting, Muttaqi expressed hope that the renewal of the UN mission in Afghanistan's (UNAMA) mandate will not only be concentrated on the humanitarian situation but will also help in the political sphere and will help Afghanistan gain recognition, Khaama Press reported.

Muttaqi further said the extension of the mandate will be a positive step in lifting sanctions on individuals and the economy of Afghanistan.

"Absence of Afghanistan's Permanent Representative to the UN has led to violation of rights of the Afghan people both inside and out of Afghanistan," Khaama Press Muttaqi as saying.

During the meeting, both the parties agreed to continue meeting for resolving issues.

UNAMA is mainly focused on providing aid and assessing the situation of Afghanistan. Based on available numbers, the poverty rate has unprecedently increased as Afghanistan is struggling with a dire humanitarian crisis post-Taliban took control of the nation last August. (ANI)
Taliban authorities in Afghanistan's Helmand province have threatened to retaliate against activists and former government officials in response to recent killings of Taliban commanders, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Tuesday. The Taliban in Helmand have heightened surveillance and said that they would take retaliatory action in response to further attacks on Taliban officials. International law prohibits reprisal attacks - otherwise unlawful attacks taken as an enforcement measure - against civilians. "Taliban leaders in Helmand should not be responding to attacks with threats of unlawful punishments," said Patricia Gossman, associate Asia director at HRW. "Taliban authorities need to prevent retaliatory attacks and ensure that crimes are dealt with through a proper legal process," added Gossman. A Taliban police official in Gereshk, Helmand, told residents that district-level authorities were calling for retaliation and targeting former government officials. According to the rights group, residents have reported an increase in patrols and night raids, along with warnings from local Taliban officials that mass arrests will ensue if attacks continue. Afghan activists told HRW that the Taliban in Helmand have increased their surveillance of individuals and groups they accuse of being "opposed to the Islamic Emirate." The threats follow a spate of attacks in which Taliban members have been abducted or killed. The Taliban have previously carried out revenge killings of former government officials and have been responsible for forcibly disappearances or summarily executing former members of the security forces and others they accuse of being their enemies. The statements heighten concerns that Taliban fighters in the province could use recent attacks as a pretext to commit abuses against perceived critics, including journalists and activists. (ANI)
The Taliban has allowed girls to return to high schools from Wednesday, ending the uncertainty over whether the Islamic group would allow full access to education for girls. Teenage girls across will return to their classrooms after being banned after the Islamic outfit sized power last August. Since taking power, the Taliban have rolled back women's rights in virtually every area, including crushing women's freedom of movement. The vast majority of girls' secondary schools were closed. Universities recently reopened, with new gender segregation rules. But many women are unable to return, in part because the career they studied for is off limits now as the Taliban banned women from most jobs. "Critical period ahead for Afghanistan as school and colleges soon re-open after winter break. UNAMA conducted a discussion on Higher Education yesterday with Mawlawi Abdul Baqi Haqqani. Importance of equal access to quality education for all & guarantees for academic freedom was stressed," the UN Mission in Afghanistan said in a tweet. Heather Barr, former senior Afghanistan researcher, at Human Rights Watch (HRW), said opening girls' secondary schools is hugely important. According to HRW, women and girls are blocked from accessing health care as some healthcare facilities require them to bring a mahram. Reports suggest that women and girls facing violence have no escape route if they can flee only with an abuser escorting them. Allowing girls into schools and other educational institutes has been one of the main demands of the international community. The majority of countries have refused to formally recognise the Taliban amid worries over their treatment of girls and women. and other human rights issues. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Friday had welcomed the plan announced by the Taliban to reopen schools for girls and boys. (ANI)
Washington [US], March 23 (ANI/Sputnik): US President Joe Biden is expected to announce this week new sanctions against more than 300 members of the Russian State Duma over Moscow's special military operation in Ukraine, The Wall Street Journal reported citing American officials. The report said on Tuesday that the Biden administration could announce the sanctions as soon as Thursday when Biden will meet with NATO leaders to discuss the situation in Ukraine. Earlier in the day, US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Biden will announce new sanctions against Russia while he is in Brussels meeting with NATO and European partners. The report, citing US officials, confirmed that the sanctions will be announced in coordination with the European Union and members of the G7. A US official said the planned sanctions packaged are often postponed and changed during the interagency review process prior to being finalized. Russia launched a special military operation in Ukraine on February 24 with the goals of demilitarizing the country, neutralizing nationalist battalions, ensuring Ukraine remains a neutral country and that Crimea is recognized as a part of Russia that cannot be taken away. Russia also seeks to ensure Ukraine also recognizes the Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics are independent states. According to the Sastellum.Al sanctions tracker, Russia has become the most sanctioned country in the world with more than 7,100 restrictive measures imposed against the country since 2014 - a majority of which came after Russia launched its military operation in Ukraine in February. On March 20, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said it had recorded 2,361 civilian casualties since the start of the operation in Ukraine, including 902 deaths and 1,459 injuries. 992 of the total casualties occurred in Donetsk and Luhansk and 1,369 in other regions of Ukraine, according to the OHCHR. (ANI/Sputnik)
A one-alarm fire that damaged an Edgewood apartment building on Monday was ruled an accident, caused by an unspecified electrical/mechanical failure of a furnace, according a news release from the Office of the State Fire Marshall.

The fire broke out shortly after 6 p.m. in a exterior utility room of a three-story apartment building in the 1900 block of Edgewater Drive in Edgewood, when a occupant of the apartment discovered it, according to the state fire marshall. Although the fire alarm and sprinklers did not activate, the smoke alarm was activated.

Advertisement

It took 35 firefighters from the Joppa-Magnolia Volunteer Fire Company 30 minutes to control the fire, the state fire marshall said. No one was injured. The majority of the fire was contained to the utility room located on the balcony of the second-floor apartment, which caused heat, smoke and soot damage to the unit immediately located above and water damage to the unit below, the state fire marshall said.
Sindhi-American activist Fatima Gul on Tuesday highlighted the plight of Sindhi people in Pakistan and said there is no value of minority communities in the country as anyone can violate their rights, especially women. "Anyone can abduct us, rape us, and violate our rights. Anyone can force us into marriages, into a lifetime of sexual slavery, and even brutally kill us," Gul said during the 49th Session of the United Nations Human Rights Council. During the session, Gul questioned who is accountable for the loss of thousands of Sindhi lives? Gul highlighted the case of Sindhi people facing human rights violations and said, "Notan Lal, a Sindhi teacher, was falsely accused by his student for blasphemy. Yet, he was sentenced for life for a crime neither committed nor proved." "On September 15, 2019, Lal, the owner and principal of a private school in Ghotki, was detained after a student accused him of insulting the Prophet Muhammad during an Urdu lesson. Lal was charged with insulting the Prophet Muhammad," according to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) statement. Gul further said that "innocent people are being lynched and burnt alive. Victims of forced conversions are not only minors but are also girls with disabilities like Simran Kumari." "Women are stoned, sexually abused, and threatened in public during Women's March. Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan said it is our fault; however, the world remains silent," Gul pointed out. Sindhi-American activist further brings out the attention to Namrita Kumari case, a Sindhi girl, who was found dead in her dorm. "The initial examination showed signs of murder, later the medical report proved she was sexually abused before being murdered. Despite all the evidence and uproar by the Sindhi community, Pakistani authorities undermined this case. Due to this neglect, the precious life of Nosheen Kazmi was also lost under the same circumstances by the same suspect," she said. Gul pleaded for justice for the Sindhi people. Moreover, in a recent study on the blasphemy issue in Pakistan, a local Think Tank, Centre for Research and Security Studies had revealed that from 1947 to 2021, as many as 89 people were extra-judicially killed over blasphemy accusations in the country. It further stated that a total of 1,287 citizens were accused of committing blasphemy from 2011-21, the period in which Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) remained most active and expanded its support base across the country, reported European Times. Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan's government's failure to control incidents of blasphemy and an apparent soft- corner for the extremist Islamist groups, for political purposes, will have far-wider consequences for Pakistan in the coming months. In addition, the Taliban's victory in Afghanistan has emboldened the hard-line Islamist forces in Pakistan. All these factors are indicating that there will be more incidents of blasphemy killings. (ANI)
The Russian ambassador's statement came in response to statements by Pentagon spokesman John Kirby about the alleged involvement of the Russian Armed Forces in war crimes in Ukraine.

"The feeling is that the Pentagon has already forgotten how, quite recently, aircraft of the United States and their NATO allies bombed the cities of Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Libya [in] live [TV broadcasts] . Washington does not remember the egregious crimes of American military personnel and mercenaries in Afghanistan and Syria either," Antonov said in a statement posted in the Russian diplomatic mission's Telegram channel.

He said Russian Armed Forces' strikes target only Ukrainian military infrastructure facilities.

Russia launched a special military operation in Ukraine on February 24 in response to calls from the Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics (DPR and LPR) for protection against intensifying attacks by Ukrainian troops.

The Russian Defense Ministry said the special operation, which targets Ukrainian military infrastructure, aims to "demilitarize and denazify" Ukraine. Moscow has said it has no plans to occupy Ukraine. Western nations have imposed numerous sanctions on Russia. (ANI/Sputnik)
The United States has named former senior diplomat Joseph Yun to lead stalled talks with three strategically important Pacific Island nations -- Marshall Islands, Micronesia, and Palau. This move by Washington announced on Tuesday, is being seen by analysts as an indication that dealing with China remains a foremost concern despite the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Yun has earlier served as US special envoy for North Korea under former presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump. "In light of the critical nature of these complex negotiations, President Biden is appointing Ambassador Joseph Yun as Special Presidential Envoy for Compact Negotiations. Ambassador Yun has more than 33 years of diplomatic experience, including as the U.S. special representative for North Korea policy and as the United States Ambassador to Malaysia," the US State Departement said in a statement. According to the release, the US has a special and longstanding relationship with the Republic of the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, and the Republic of Palau - collectively known as the Freely Associated States (FAS). "We are currently engaged in negotiating amendments to certain provisions of the Compacts of Free Association with the FAS, and completing the negotiations is a priority for this Administration," the Statement Department said. "The Compacts reflect the close relationships between the United States and the FAS and are a critical source of regional security, stability, and prosperity," it added. The state department said the US wants to strengthen its enduring partnerships with its close Pacific Island partners and ensure a free and open and prosperous Indo-Pacific region. (ANI)
The discussion was held on the topic "Promotion of Tourism between the Government of Bihar and Government of Madhesh Pradesh of Nepal".

The program was aimed at promoting bilateral tourism and overcoming difficulties faced by tourists from both sides and liaisoning between government and private agencies in this regard, the consulate said in a release. Satrughan Mahato, Minister for Industries, Tourism and Forest of Madhesh Pradesh was the chief guest.

The speakers highlighted the linkage of Chitwan National Park, Parsa National Park and Valmiki Tiger Reserve.

It was noted that the tourist destinations in India and Nepal are linked by Ramayana, Buddha and Jain Circuits. The focus was on promoting tourism destinations in Madhesh Pradesh and East and West Champaran districts of Bihar, the consulate release said.

According to the consulate release, the need for establishing a Help Desk at the border was also discussed.

The Minister agreed to look into the matter of improving and streamlining collections of road taxes and other taxes from Indian vehicles in Nepal. He further assured the participants that the points raised were duly noted and appropriate actions will be taken to overcome the issues. (ANI)
China has threatened the United States with retaliatory sanctions after Washington announced visa restrictions on officials over human rights violations in the country. The United States has imposed visa restrictions on Chinese officials for their role in the repression of ethnic and religious minority groups inside and outside China. At a press conference on Tuesday, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin accused the US of "ideological bias". He said, "The US is in no position to pass judgement." "The US statement, full of ideological bias and political lies, maligns and smears China and wantonly imposes restrictions on Chinese officials. It contravenes international law and basic norms governing international relations and grossly interferes in China's internal affairs. We firmly reject it," he said. Wang urged the US to "earnestly reflect upon and rectify its violations". "In the meantime, it should view China's human rights situation in an objective and just manner, stop denigrating and suppressing the Chinese side and immediately revoke its so-called sanctions against Chinese officials. Otherwise, the Chinese side shall take reciprocal countermeasures in response," the Chinese spokesperson added. On Tuesday, the State Department had said that it is barring those Chinese officials from travelling to the US due to their involvement in crackdowns on freedom of speech and religion in China and abroad. "The visa restrictions have been imposed on Chinese officials who are believed to be responsible for, or complicit in, policies or actions aimed at repressing religious and spiritual practitioners, members of ethnic minority groups, dissidents, human rights defenders, journalists, labour organizers, civil society organizers, and peaceful protestors in China and beyond, including within the US," the State Department said in a press statement. While committing to defending human rights around the world, the US said it rejects efforts by Chinese officials to harass, intimidate, resort to surveillance, and abduct members of ethnic and religious minority groups. Further, the US called on the Chinese government to cease its acts of repression, including attempting to silence Uyghur American activists and other Uyghur individuals serving the American people. They also asked the Chinese government to end its crimes against humanity in Xinjiang, repressive policies in Tibet, crackdown on fundamental freedoms in Hong Kong, and other human rights violations. (ANI)
The United Nations on Wednesday condemned reports that the Taliban extended their indefinite ban on allowing female students above the sixth-grade access to schools. The decision of the Taliban came hours after Afghan girls were allowed to return to high schools from Wednesday. Media reports said that girl students above the 6th grade were not to be allowed to enter the classrooms at the beginning of the new school year. "The UN in Afghanistan deplores today's reported announcement by the Taliban that they are further extending their indefinite ban on female students above the 6th grade being permitted to return school," the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said in a tweet. Teenage girls across Afghanistan were supposed to return to schools after being banned by the Islamic outfit earlier. Since taking over power in August last year, the Taliban have rolled back women's rights in virtually every area, including crushing women's freedom of movement. The vast majority of girls' secondary schools were closed. Universities recently reopened, with new gender segregation rules. But many women are unable to return, in part because the career they studied for is now off-limits as the Taliban banned women from most of the jobs. According to HRW, women and girls are blocked from accessing health care as well. Reports suggest that women and girls facing violence have no escape route. Allowing girls into schools and other educational institutes has been one of the main demands of the international community. The majority of countries have refused to formally recognise the Taliban amid worries over their treatment of girls and women and other human rights issues. (ANI)
The head of the US mission to Afghanistan, Ian McCary on Wednesday expressed concern regarding the reports that the Taliban extended their indefinite ban on allowing female students above sixth-grade access to schools. The decision of the Taliban came hours after Afghan girls were allowed to return to high schools from Wednesday. Media reports said that girl students above the sixth grade were not to be allowed to enter the classrooms at the beginning of the new school year. "I'm deeply troubled by multiple reports that the Taliban are not allowing girls above grade 6 to return to school. This is very disappointing and contradicts many Taliban assurances and statements. All Afghan youth deserve to be educated," McCary tweeted. Taking to Twitter, US Special envoy Rina Amiri also said that these reports not only weakens confidence in the Taliban's commitments but further dashes the hopes of families for a better future for their daughters. "The reported failure to open schools for girls above grade 6 across the country not only weakens confidence in the Taliban's commitments but further dashes the hopes of families for a better future for their daughters," Amiri tweeted. Teenage girls across Afghanistan were supposed to return to schools after being banned by the Islamic outfit earlier. Since taking over power in August last year, the Taliban have rolled back women's rights in virtually every area, including crushing women's freedom of movement. The vast majority of girls' secondary schools were closed. Universities recently reopened, with new gender segregation rules. But many women are unable to return, in part because the career they studied for is now off-limits as the Taliban banned women from most of the jobs. According to HRW, women and girls are blocked from accessing health care as well. Reports suggest that women and girls facing violence have no escape route. Allowing girls into schools and other educational institutes has been one of the main demands of the international community. The majority of countries have refused to formally recognise the Taliban amid worries over their treatment of girls and women and other human rights issues. (ANI)
Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan had tried to delay the extension in the tenure of the country's all-powerful army chief Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa, claimed Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly and Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) President Shehbaz Sharif. In an interview with Dawn News, Sharif also alleged that the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) was behind a social media campaign targeting the armed forces. Sharif said Imran Khan intentionally tried to make the process of extension "controversial" but also admitted he had no solid information to back up his claims. "The matter eventually went to the Supreme Court... in the past, army chiefs have been awarded extensions in service... all they had to do was copy-paste [from the previous summary]. No, this was all done as a deception, it was a fraud perpetrated by Imran Khan Niazi. He wanted to delay it, make a controversy out of it," the opposition leader said. According to Sharif, one could watch videos online that featured Imran Khan using "derogatory" language against the Pakistan army. "Nawaz Sharif never talked like this," he added. The interview comes amid media reports that say Imran Khan has fallen out of favour with the Pakistan Army chief. All the escape routes for Pakistan PM are closing as the voting date or the no-confidence motion inches closer and if Imran Khan denies to put in his papers and "fight it out" then the situation in Islamabad could turn ugly, forcing General Bajwa to stomp hard on his protege. The Pakistan Army's top brass has reportedly asked Imran Khan to resign after the conference of the Organization of the Islamic Cooperation (OIC). Pakistan media reports stated that the decision to oust Imran Khan was taken by General Bajwa and three other senior Lt. Generals. It was reported that all four military leaders decided not to give any escape route to Imran Khan. (ANI)
This comes after a staff mission of the international lender held the first round of discussions with tax officials last week and raised the issue of reforms in the personal income tax to raise maximum revenue, the Dawn newspaper reported.

Last year, the ruling government did not accept the same demand of the IMF.

These demands are part of the seventh review of the USD 6 billion of the Fund Extended Fund Facility (EFF).

In the wake of the sixth review, the government withdrew tax exemptions worth Rs 343 billion as against the IMF demand of Pakistani Rupees 700 billion.

The IMF has demanded to reduce the salary income tax slabs from the existing 12 to six with an increase in the rates. According to the Pakistani newspaper, the demand is one of the conditions for consideration in the next budget.

As per one of the proposals the burden of tax payment would be decreased on the lower-income ceiling earning PKR 600,000 per annum, while tax incidence would be increased on those who are earning over PKR 300,000 per month basis, Dawn newspaper reported.

At the same time, it is also proposed to bring reforms in Provident Fund and other allowances for taxation. (ANI)
Moscow [Russia], March 23 (ANI/Sputnik): It is not beneficial for the United States that Russia and Ukraine quickly complete the negotiation process, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Wednesday. "It is difficult to get rid of the impression that American colleagues are holding Kyiv by the hand. If you read [the works of] political scientists, both ours and Western ones, the Americans simply proceed from the fact that it is unprofitable for them that this process be completed quickly. They expect to continue pumping weapons into Ukraine," Lavrov said at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO). The United States apparently wants Russia to be engaged in hostilities as long as possible, the minister added. (ANI/Sputnik)
Advertisement

Advertisement

Brigadier General Janeen Birckhead is commander of the Maryland Army National Guard and deputy commanding general of reserves affairs at the U.S. Army War College. A decorated military veteran, Birckhead was commander of the Task Force Capitol Grounds, where she led 14,000 troops from the Mid-Atlantic region deployed to secure the Nations Capitol for the 59th presidential inauguration in January 2021.

Gov. Hogan appointed Birckhead to lead Marylands COVID-19 Vaccine Equity Task Force in February 2021, tasking her with coordinating the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine in communities with under-served and vulnerable populations. In her civilian life, Birckhead serves as a senior advisor in the Bureau of Trust Funds Administration at the Department of the Interior.

During CHOSEN Community Development Corp.s second annual Womens History Month Recognition Program last week in Aberdeen, Birckhead spoke on the theme of providing healing and promoting hope. Her mother, Fannie Birckhead, who died a month ago, was her example of this, she said. Fannie was a larger-than-life figure to her family who instilled her hope and healing qualities in her children, Birckhead said.

The Aegis spoke with Birckhead after the event to discuss women in the military, her experience leading the Maryland Army National Guards all-female command team, her efforts in combating COVID-19 on the home front, and whats next for her.

Aegis: What was your experience as a woman coming up in the military?

JB: As you know, the military is primarily male focused in most of history. As I commented before [during the CHOSEN program], I talked about Harriet Tubman being a soldier. I actually refer to her as general. If you think about all that time until now, its upward of 200 years.

Its only recently that women in the military have come to the forefront, and [now] we have women in all ranks. It was so difficult to enter into infantry, for instance. Now, we have women in the infantry.

Advertisement

Times have changed, and we are more inclusive. The one good thing about the organization, it realizes it has to change, and it changes itself.

Aegis: What was your biggest challenge?

JB: To get to the highest ranks in the military, you have to command at every level. Command is the epitome of the job you want to do when you are captain or lieutenant. You want to move up the ranks.

Proving yourself as a leader and that you can lead soldiers is probably the hardest thing. To implement plans and analyze and do that in an environment where your leading hundreds of people many times is the most difficult thing.

As I reflect on women getting into infantry, we are looked at like can we do that job. Is she able to lead men? Or is she able to tell men what to do? The only way to overcome that bias is to be successful at it.

Aegis: How much pressure was it to be the first all-female command team and be successful?

Advertisement

JB: It was pressure to be successful, but it was also an understanding that to get there we were already successful. So this is just another stepping-stone to demonstrate to others what women can do. We were confident in ourselves that we did all the jobs we needed to do.

We have been successful in the jobs we need to do. We can lead soldiers. We can lead the general public. We have done all those things.

We just have to make a point to be out there and make ourselves visible, so anyone who looks like us who wants to aspire to be like us can do it.

Aegis: What was the experience like having all females around you as a team?

JB: Its funny that in this case we are all females, and we are all mothers. It came out in some of our personalities. But, being able to tell mom stories about juggling this job and juggling our job as mom.

I think that knowing and understanding when I say I have to do something is automatic. I think that this should be pertinent for people to watch. It should be positive until we are at a time where we dont have to make it such a big deal. We have to continue to tell the story.

Advertisement

Aegis: Whats it like being a part of the vaccination task force? How difficult has it been to work with the community and the government?

JB: On the day to day, it is not difficult because the team is phenomenal. We have professionals who can plan organize and execute. If we could clear out all the other distractors and get into the community to have these one on one conversations, we can be really successful at our job.

Having the governor clear the way and say this equity task force has 100% support. There is a reason why we have an equity task force because we need to get into under-served communities. This is my team that is doing that. Move out the way and let them do their job.

Afternoon Update Weekdays Updating you on the day's biggest news before the evening commute. >

When you have that kind of support, its easier to be successful.

Aegis: What would your advice be for young women trying to go into the military or make something out of themselves?

JB: I am consistent with this. You have to have a plan and a change of plan because things do not go in a straight line. You can be going along and things are fine like I was then my mom gets killed. That was something I was not planning on happening in my life and it certainly has changed my plan. Then, I had to rethink the next steps.

Advertisement

So have a plan and a change of plan. Also, seek out mentors to help you with this plan. Speaking of healing and hope, you cant do it by yourself. Who are the people you lean on when you need healing and hope? You have to have that.

Aegis: What are the next steps of your plan?

JB: The next step to my plan is to ensure my daughter gets through high school. She is a senior in high school, so weve got to graduate and get her to college in September. Thats foremost in my mind.

My mom was her primary caregiver, and they were really close. This is a big change for her, so I want to make sure she is in a good place mentally. Thats my number one right now.
Beijing [China], March 23 (ANI/Sputnik): Russia is an important part of the G20, and no member state of the group has the right to deprive another one of its membership, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said on Wednesday. Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau said last week that Poland can replace Russia in the G20. Commenting on the possibility of excluding Russia from the G20, Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that it is pointless to remark on hypothetical statements. "The G20 is the main forum for international economic cooperation, and Russia is an important member of it. No member of the G20 has the right to deprive another country of its membership," Wang told a briefing. (ANI/Sputnik)
Ahead of EU-China Summit later this year, a group of rights organisations have written a joint letter to EU leaders to express their concerns over China's abysmal abuses, including in Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Tibet. "We are writing to share our concerns and recommendations ahead of the forthcoming European Union (EU) - China summit. While we understand that the main topic of discussions will be the Ukraine crisis and the Chinese government's position on it, we urge you to dedicate adequate time to also discuss those authorities' assaults on human rights both within and increasingly outside China's borders," they wrote in a letter to Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission and Charles Michel, President of the European Council. This letter was jointly written by a number of organisations including Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW), Human Rights Watch, International Campaign for Tibet (ICT), International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and World Uyghur Congress. The rights group said their concerns are consistent with High Representative Borrell's remarks at the recent Munich Security Conference about the need to resist the "revisionist campaign" by the Chinese and other governments against human rights and international institutions. "Since the last EU-China summit, our organizations have published additional information that Chinese authorities are committing mass atrocity crimes targeting Uyghurs and other Turkic communities. Beijing's actions are eliminating Tibetans' cultural, linguistic, and religious rights, and similarly, threaten Hong Kong's once-vibrant civil society and democratic rights," the letter read. Raising concern about the Chinese government's action, they said Beijing has deepened its use of high-tech state surveillance, persecuted or prosecuted countless independent activists. In one of the demands, the right groups asked the EU to suspend the bilateral human rights dialogue and pursue a "shadow" or "structured" human rights dialogue with civil society. They also for international probe into crimes against humanity targeting Uyghurs and other Turkic communities. Furthermore, the group have urged unfettered and reciprocal access to Tibet, and across China, for foreign diplomats, parliamentarians, UN experts, journalists, non-governmental organizations. (ANI)
Pakistan Charge d'Affaires in New Delhi, Aftab Hassan Khan stressed that it is essential to resolve the core issue of Jammu and Kashmir for lasting peace and stability in the region.

"The Charge d'Affaires underlined that Pakistan wishes to have mutually beneficial relations with all its neighbours including India and believes in resolving all outstanding disputes through peaceful means of dialogue and diplomacy," the Pakistan High Commission said in a press release as it observed Pakistan Day.

"For lasting peace and stability in the region, it is essential to resolve the core issue of Jammu and Kashmir in accordance with the UN resolutions and aspirations of the people of Kashmir," the release added.

India has on several occasions said that it desires normal neighbourly relations with Pakistan.

India's consistent position is that issues between India and Pakistan should be resolved bilaterally and peacefully, in an atmosphere free of terror and violence.

New Delhi has maintained that the onus is on Pakistan to create such a conducive environment.

Pakistan continues to sponsor cross border terrorism against India; restrict normal trade, connectivity and people-to-people exchanges; and engage in hostile and fabricated propaganda to vilify India, according to the Ministry of External Affairs annual report.

Last year, both countries had renewed ceasefire understanding between Director Generals of Military Operations (DGMOs).

The understanding held quite well for the first few months, but Pakistan again upped the ante in terms of cross-border infiltrations and ceasefire violations from July 2021. (ANI)
Amid a growing discontent in Nepal against Chinese investments and interference, Chinese Foreign Minister and State Councillor Wang Yi will arrive on a three-day visit to the Himalayan country starting March 25. "At the invitation of Minister for Foreign Affairs Hon. Dr. Narayan Khadka, State Councilor and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China His Excellency Mr. Wang Yi is visiting Nepal from 25 to 27 March 2022," Nepal's Ministry of Foreign Affairs informed in a statement on Monday. Wang's visit to Nepal will follow his participation in a meeting of Organisation of Islamic Cooperation's (OIC) council of foreign ministers in Islamabad. The visit comes just a few weeks after the Nepali parliament ratified the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) compact with the US, against which China had displayed public displeasure. "We will listen to what the Chinese foreign minister has to say," said Prakash Sharan Mahat, spokesperson of the ruling Nepali Congress, adding, "We will continue to enhance our relations with major powers and neighbors based on equality and national interest," reported Kathmandu Post. Following the MCC deal, the foreign ministry in Beijing reportedly concluded in its review that the Chinese presence in Nepal is weakening, hence, Foreign Minister Wang is being sent to Kathmandu to explore ways to turn things around, media reports said. Foreign Minister Wang is expected to hold bilateral talks with his Nepali counterpart Dr. Narayan Khadka and is also expected to talk to various key leaders including President Bidhya Devi Bhandari, Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, and former Prime Ministers and key leaders K P Sharma Oli and Pushpa Kamal Dahal 'Prachanda', the Nepal foreign ministry press release said. Nepal has seen a rising discontent and suspicion among the people against Chinese projects and investments in the country, with recent large-scale protests against Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) project in Eastern Nepal's Jhapa district. Chinese officials say Wang's main agenda in Kathmandu is to reassess Beijing's geopolitical and security challenges, as China no longer feels secure in Nepal. "Implementation of the BRI projects in Nepal is important for Beijing," says a second Kathmandu-based Chinese official who has long liaised between Kathmandu and Beijing. He was also speaking on the condition of anonymity. "But this time Beijing is more worried about the security challenges emanating from the compact's approval," During his visit, Foreign Minister Wang will also take stock of the political climate in Kathmandu, reported The Annapurna Express. (ANI)
Moscow [Russia], March 23 (ANI/Sputnik): A rise in global energy prices will be unpredictable if sanctions are imposed against Russia's oil and gas, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said on Wednesday, noting that the global energy market will collapse without Russian hydrocarbons. "Russia is the largest supplier of energy resources to world markets, the share of Russian energy exports is about 20% of the world level of trade. It is obvious that without Russian hydrocarbons, the gas and oil markets will collapse. An increase in prices for energy resources can be completely unpredictable," Novak told Russian lawmakers. He noted that gas prices in Europe that have recently broken all-time record of over USD 4,000 can rise even more, given that the EU abandoned the Nord Stream 2 project to its own detriment. As of now, the volume of gas in underground gas storage facilities is 26 per cent as compared to 30.6 per cent at the same period of the last year, the official said, adding that this year the risks of not filling UGS facilities are even higher. (ANI/Sputnik)
China took part in the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) meeting here though it is not a part of the OIC, and discussed the historical relations that China and the Muslims share but avoided talking about the Muslim Uyghurs. Reports have highlighted that Muslim Uyghurs in Xinjiang have been ill-treated by the Chinese authorities over the years. The Secretary-General of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), Hissein Brahim Taha met with China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Tuesday, OIC said in a statement. The meeting took place alongside the 48th session of the OIC Council of Foreign Ministers in Pakistan's capital, Islamabad. During the meeting, both sides discussed the historical relation that China and Muslims share and also talked about different ways to promote bilateral dialogue and cooperation in political, economic, cultural, education, health and inter-civilization dialogue issues. They also talked about the area of cooperation, especially in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, between China and other member states. The Chinese Foreign Minister stressed the positive role of OIC in working as the bridge between China and the Muslim world. OIC's Secretary-General praised China for participating in the OIC meeting. The two parties also exchanged their views on a set of regional and international issues of mutual concern. The summit is taking place under the theme, "Building Partnerships for Unity, Justice, and Development." Pakistani media said that over 100 resolutions will be considered during the two-day session. Although the meeting is being convened to promote OIC efforts in Afghanistan, Pakistan is likely to rake up the issue of Kashmir even as it fails to speak about Shia Muslims in the country. (ANI)
CPC on Monday issued a circular to ensure that the achievements of the campaign are further consolidated and expanded, so as to make better use of the wisdom drawn from the major achievements and historical experience of the party over the past century, and to enhance unity, confidence and morale in the party, citing Xinhua, reported People's Daily Online.

The circular stressed the need to strengthen party members' historical confidence and theoretical awareness in the campaign.

It also called on CPC members to improve their political competence and hone their political judgment, thinking and implementation, reported People's Daily Online.

It urged party members to make unremitting efforts to serve the people, carry forward the great founding spirit of the CPC, and advance the Party's self-reform.

Meanwhile, a study revealed that the curriculum of Chinese citizenship education, a part of China's universal education system, has always taught that a good citizen is one who is loyal and obedient to the Chinese Communist Party.

According to the study, citizens were taught that they should subsume their individual goals to the collective, socialist good, "which means following the CPC's leadership", reported the Hong Kong Post.

The curriculum has carried different names over the years, including 'moral education', 'moral character education', 'patriotic education', and 'citizenship education.

Moreover, the Communist Party of China has decided to include "Xi Thought" in the curriculum to put leader, party and the nation first to "cultivate the builders and successors of socialism",

The foreign powers analyse the Chinese effort as an attempt by Xi Jinping to "consolidate" the CCP's role in different areas of society, The Hong Kong Post reported. (ANI)
On the eve of World Tuberculosis (TB) Day, the World Health Organisation called on the national, international and global stakeholders to invest at least USD 3 billion annually in the South-East Asian region to prevent over 1.5 million TB deaths by 2025. World Tuberculosis Day is celebrated on March 24 every year. Dr Poonam Khetrapal Singh, Regional Director, WHO South-East Asia said in the media statement that over 4,100 people died every day due to TB. In 2020, amid the Covid-19 situation, TB killed an estimated 1.5 million people globally, comparatively higher than 2019's 1.4 million deaths. The statement stated that in 2020, the TB and TB-HIV mortality rate has increased by nearly 10 per cent in the South-East Asian region, to over 700,000 lives lost and if it continues then the situation will get worse unless urgent action is taken. It further reads that the WHO has accelerated its effort in the South-East Asian region to end TB. The statement discusses the efforts of different South-East Asian countries in preventing TB. "In October 2021, India, Indonesia and Nepal co-hosted a high-level meeting at which Member States committed to renewing the TB response, building on the legacy of the 2018 Delhi End TB Summit and the region's Statement of Action," Poonam said. She further stated, "At the meeting, Member States endorsed a new Regional Strategic Plan (2021-2025), which among other features, provides a detailed account of funding shortfalls for priority interventions. Between 2015 and 2021, domestic budgets for national TB programmes tripled, from USD 168 million to USD 558 million." Regional Director of WHO also applauded the country's efforts in maintaining the essential health services even during the Covid-19 situation. She also stated that India launched "Jan Andolan" or people's movement in 2020 against TB and Indonesia issued a Presidential Decree in 2021, while both Nepal and Timor-Leste launched high-level initiatives to end TB in their countries. "Achieving the region's USD 3 billion annual investment target is especially important given the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to the 10 per cent increase in TB mortality in the region in 2020, case notification dropped from 3.6 million to 2.6 million, the same level as in 2015," Khetarpal said. She also stated that after five years of growth, the region suffered an economic contraction of -5.4 per cent, which pushed tens of millions of people into extreme poverty and exacerbated the social determinants of health. According to the statement, WHO has listed four steps to prevent TB cases in the South-East Asian nations. The first one is to translate the political momentum into on-the-ground action and results. For this, WHO will support member states to operationalize empowered TB mechanisms. The second one was to increase human resource allocation and engage all care providers. While the third one is to intensify the community engagement in planning, monitoring and implementing the national TB programmes, ensuring the TB services to those people who live and work and are sensitive to their needs. "Fourth, strengthening ongoing research, including Phase 3 clinical trials of a TB preventive vaccine for household contacts of TB patients, as well as a post-TB vaccine to prevent TB recurrence. Increased South-South collaboration for technology transfer and commodity support is especially needed," she said. Since 2017, one of WHO's eight flagship priorities was to end TB by 2030 and for this, WHO has been accelerating its efforts. "Increased investments in ending TB will not only avert new TB cases and deaths but also avoid the loss of more than 31 million disability-adjusted life years in the region between now and 2025. Across the region, traditional and innovative financing mechanisms must be explored," the statement added. (ANI)
Demanding a greater role in the legislative processes of the province, women representing several major political outfits in Balochistan urged their respective parties to issue tickets to women candidates during elections, says a media report. The convention was being held on the topic of "Local Government System, Government Challenges and Opportunities for the Future" jointly organized by Aurat Foundation and South Asia Partnership, Daily Times Pakistan reported on Wednesday. "This initiative would help strengthen democratic system and give rest of the world a message that women are given equal opportunities by the political parties of the country," a member of the convention was quoted as saying. Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Women Wing Balochistan President Zulaikha Mandokhel, Pakistan people's Party's (PPP) Kulsoom Iftikhar, Balochistan National Party-Awami's (BNP-A) Fatima Baloch, Balochistan Awami Party's (BAP) Shania Khan, and former women councilors Nargis Mustafa, Zubeida Parveen, and Fazeela Baloch spoke on the occasion, the report said. BNP Member of Balochistan Assembly Shakeela Naveed Dehwar said that Women Parliamentarian's Caucus Forum has played an active role in legislation regarding women and that more women representatives could further improve it. She further said that the development goals could be easily achieved by making the local government system financially autonomous, the report said. Fauzia Shaheen, Chairperson, Commission on the Status of Women, Balochistan, said that women were playing an active role in all walks of life, including the political arena. The development comes at a time when crimes against women in Pakistan are on the rise. According to the last year's 'Global Gender Gap Report 2021', Pakistan ranked 153 out of 156 countries on the gender parity index, that is, among the last four. It ranked seventh among eight countries in South Asia, only better than Afghanistan. Pakistan's gender gap has even widened by 0.7 per cent points in 2021 compared to 2020. (ANI)
During the two-day visit of Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias to India, the two countries shared views on regional and global issues of mutual interest in the context of new geopolitical and geo-economic realities. Dendias paid an official visit to India on March 22-23, 2022 at the invitation of External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar. This was his first visit to India. Both countries discussed the developments pertaining to the European Union, Eastern Mediterranean, Afghanistan and Ukraine. The two sides conveyed their deep commitment to multilateralism and a rules-based international order. They reaffirmed the importance of the urgent reform of the UN. It was also agreed that the next round of Foreign Office Consultations would be scheduled soon, read the Ministry of External Affairs press release. Both sides noted the importance of the movement of people in an orderly and legal way and signed a Declaration of Intent on Migration and Mobility. Both sides discussed the entire gamut of bilateral relations and explored ways to further strengthen the close and friendly ties between the two countries. The two Ministers expressed hope that the 8th round of the Joint Economic Committee Meeting scheduled in Athens on April 15, 2022 will provide further impetus to trade and investment ties. They appreciated that trade has shown a significant increase, and has crossed USD 1 billion despite the challenges posed by the pandemic, added the release. Both sides agreed to work together to further enhance collaboration in mutually beneficial sectors such as shipping and maritime, information technology, agriculture, new and renewable energy, and pharmaceuticals. India and Greece share close and friendly ties, which are based on shared values of democracy, freedom and rule of law. These ties are characterized by frequent high-level visits including that of the President of India to Greece in 2018, Greek FM to India in 2017 and EAM's visit to Greece in June 2021, said the release. Considering their rich ancient past, the two sides agreed to continue their relationship in the field of culture and education. A Cultural and Education Exchange Programme for the five-year period 2022-2026 was signed during the visit. Meanwhile, the Greek Foreign Minister handed over the Instrument of Ratification of Greece as a signatory to the Framework Agreement on International Solar Alliance, added the release. The two sides discussed the possibility of enhancement of the bilateral relationship to a Strategic Partnership. Detailed discussions were also held on the importance of keeping oceans free and open for movement and trade. Both sides also underlined the need to support and adhere to the Laws of the Seas (UNCLOS). The visit of the Foreign Minister of Greece has contributed to sustaining the momentum of high-level exchanges aimed towards further consolidating the bilateral relations between India and Greece, added the release. (ANI)
Judge Yolanda L. Curtin has been named as county administrative judge for the Circuit Court for Harford County by Court of Appeals of Maryland Chief Judge Joseph M. Getty, effective Wednesday.

Curtin succeeds Judge Angela M. Eaves, who was recently appointed by Governor Hogan to the Court of Appeals of Maryland.

Advertisement

Judge Curtin is an accomplished jurist and well-respected leader who will carry out the Maryland Judiciarys mission to provide fair, efficient and effective justice for all, Getty said in a news release. I am confident that she will serve the people of Harford County, and of Maryland, with honor and distinction.

County administrative judges oversee the administration of the court, budget, and procurement functions, according to a statement from the Maryland Judiciary. They also manage trial calendars to expedite the disposition of cases.

Advertisement

I am honored and grateful to Chief Judge Getty for the trust and confidence he has placed in me to serve as administrative judge, Curtin in the release. It has been a privilege to work alongside Judge Eaves and I congratulate her for achieving such an incredible milestone in her distinguished career. I will continue to build from her dedicated leadership. I look forward to collaborating with my esteemed colleagues on the bench and the incredibly hardworking court staff. Together, we will continue to strive to make the most meaningful impact in the lives of the people of Harford County and the state of Maryland.

Curtin has served as an associate judge at the Circuit Court for Harford County since November 2013, when she was appointed by then-Gov. Martin OMalley to fill the vacancy created by the retirement of Judge Emory A. Plitt.

Afternoon Update Weekdays Updating you on the day's biggest news before the evening commute. >

Curtin serves as a member of the Judicial Councils Equal Justice Committee and is chair of its Diversity and Inclusion Education Subcommittee. She served as a circuit representative for the Third Judicial Circuit for the Conference of Circuit Judges from 2019 to 2020, and as a member of the Judicial Councils Court Access and Community Relations Committee and its Court Technology Committee from 2015 to 2016.

Prior to her judicial appointment, Curtin was an assistant states attorney for Harford County from 1994 to 2004, and an administrative law judge at the Office of Administrative Hearings from 2004 to 2013.

Curtin earned a law degree from Rutgers University in 1992 and a masters in securities regulation from Georgetown University Law Center in 1993. She was admitted to the New Jersey Bar in 1992 and to the Maryland Bar in 1993.

A member of the Harford County Bar Association since 1994, she served as its president from 2015 to 2016, secretary from 2013 to 2015, and the executive council from 2011 to 2016. She has been a member of the Womens Bar Association since 2007, and the Harford County Womens Bar Association since 2015. She is a past member of the Harford County Womens Giving Circle.

Curtin is of Cuban descent and is a member of the Maryland Hispanic Bar Association. She served as a law student mentor, co-chair of the Mentorship Committee and Student Affairs, and a past member of the Montgomery County Summer Scholars Pipeline Program. She also served on the Maryland Hispanic Bar Associations board of directors from 2009 to 2011. In 2016, she received the Maryland Hispanic Bar Associations Outstanding Achievement Award.

She was a member of the Maryland Association of Administrative Law Judiciary from 2012 to 2013, and a member of the National Association of Women Judges from 2007 to 2010. Curtin served as a volunteer lawyer for pro bono assignments with the Maryland Volunteer Lawyers Service from 1994 to 2002.

Advertisement

Curtin has been an adjunct professor at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law since 2002 and is an honorary member of Phi Delta Phi International Legal Fraternity.
Pakistan's Panjgur Deputy Commissioner has asked the Iran government to open the gate at Gar, a border point in the Makran division, for barter trade and supply of edible items and LPG cylinders. Panjgur's DC was speaking at the meeting with the Iranian border authorities in Panjgur on Monday, Pakistani Newspaper Dawn reported. The Pakistani delegation team was led by Panjgur's DC while the Iranian side was headed by Marzaban Grade-I in the meeting and was attended by the senior security officers from both sides. Islamabad also suggested the Iranian authorities open the gates of border posts 169-170 and 171, according to Dawn citing sources. In the meeting, both sides also discussed the issuance of Rahdari or transit permit to the people who have relatives on both sides of the border. They also discussed the water and electricity issue to the Pakistan Customs House and local population adjacent to the border areas. "We also discussed permission for import of spare parts of Iranian vehicles plying in Makran and Rakhshan divisions," the Panjgur deputy commissioner was quoted as saying by Dawn. Ahead of the no-confidence vote, three major coalition partners of the ruling government, Muttahida Qaumi Movement Pakistan (MQM-P), Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) and Balochistan Awami Party (BAP) have decided to stand with the Opposition. Imran Khan's party is facing an internal revolt, with several members of the National Assembly (MNAs) deserting the PTI and joining the opposition ranks.Earlier, around 24 lawmakers announced to vote in favour of the no-trust move and dissociated themselves from the Imran Khan-led Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) government. The Opposition parties in Pakistan had submitted the no-trust motion in the National Assembly secretariat on March 8. While the PTI government has exuded confidence to defeat the no-trust motion, the Opposition is sure that they will oust Khan. Notably, in the 342-member National Assembly, the Imran Khan government requires at least 172 members to sail through the no-confidence vote. (ANI)
Desperate to stay politically relevant in the face of an upcoming no-confidence vote against him, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan is using what may be his last opportunity in the international arena to bring up Kashmir and Palestine, say analysts. Sergio Restelli, an Italian political advisor, author and geopolitical expert, in a blog in The Times of Israel said that Khan faces a series of defections from his party which indicate that he may lose. According to him, Khan PM is using what may be his last opportunity in the international arena to bring up Kashmir and Palestine in the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) meetings held in Islamabad. All Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) meetings, especially those hosted by Pakistan, end up being a forum for bashing India and Israel, as was the 17th extraordinary meeting of OIC Foreign Ministers in December, in Islamabad. Pakistan is the OIC chair for 2022-2023. "Honorable foreign ministers we have failed both the Palestinians and the people of Kashmir I'm sad to say that we have been able to make no impact at all they don't take us seriously. We are a divided house and those powers know it," Khan said in his inaugural speech not specifically naming Israel and India. "We are 1.5 billion people and yet our voice to stop this blatant injustice is insignificant we're not talking about conquering some country we simply talking about the human the human rights of the people of Kashmir and Palestine." he continued, addressing the 48th Organisation of Islamic Cooperation summit in Islamabad. PM Imran Khan started his keynote address by welcoming and congratulating all the visiting foreign ministers and other dignitaries on the designation of March 15 as the International Day to Combat Islamophobia, reported The Times of Israel. China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Monday said Beijing was attending the 48th meeting of OIC's Council of Foreign Ministers for developing a partnership with the Muslim world besides promoting unity and cooperation for multilateralism. Yi is a "special guest" for the OIC summit, which may be Imran Khan's last international engagement as Prime Minister, said Restelli. Meanwhile, Pakistan's parliament will convene on Friday will take up a no-confidence motion against Prime Minister Imran Khan, the lower house speaker's office said on Sunday, heightening fears of political turmoil in the country. In case Khan won't survive the no-confidence motion on Friday, this adds significant concerns to Pakistan's democracy and security. Pakistan, a nuclear power, is now facing tensions with the Taliban, which it supported on the Afghan border. As he loses control of the parliament, Khan has increased his "anti-west", anti-India and anti-Israel rhetoric and grown closer to Russia, China and other dictatorial powers, said Restelli. (ANI)
As Pakistan celebrated Constitution Day, a Baloch organization carried out protests against overwhelming Punjabi domination in the country while launching a social campaign to support freedom for the provinces of Balochistan, Sindh and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. "On 23 March, as the unnatural state of Pakistan observes its constitution day (read Punjabi hegemony day), a campaign will run to remind the world to undo this historical catastrophe and help free the nations of Baluchistan, Pashtunistan and Sindh," Munir Mengal President of Paris based NGO Baloch Voice Association said in a tweet. In a detailed Facebook post, Mengal further said that the three provinces of Sindh, Balochistan, and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa were promised a federal polity at the time of independence but were later suppressed by the Punjabi elite. "At their forced union in 1947, these nations were promised a federal polity and greater autonomy, however, the Punjabi elite has not only denied people their legitimate rights but has instead suppressed and criminalized, through its Punjabi Army, any expression of grievance, autonomy, and self-determination," Mengal said. Talking further on Balochistan, he said, "Pakistan wrested Baluchistan illegally with its military might in 1948. But, the people of Baluchistan never bowed down in front of the occupying Pakistani army and continuously fought with them against this illegal occupation." "The Pakistan army has been committing crimes in Baluchistan. Tens of thousands of civilians have been killed and hundreds of thousands of people have been affected all across Baluchistan. Baluch nationalists continue their movement for the independence of Baluchistan and every day the occupational army is accounted for the crimes it commits on the people," he said. Earlier this month, the Baloch Voice Association in Geneva, Switzerland organized exhibitions, conferences, and seminars to protest against thousands of cases of enforced disappearances in Pakistan's Balochistan region. According to the Human Rights Council of Balochistan, only during the month of December 2021, more than 63 people were abducted and are missing while 37 were killed. According to the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances, an entity established by the Pakistani government, 8122 cases of enforced disappearances have been registered officially. Most of them are still unresolved. Independent local and international human rights organizations put the numbers much higher. 20,000 have reportedly been abducted only from Balochistan, out of which more than 3000 have turned up dead as bullet-riddled dead bodies, bearing signs of extreme torture. Human rights group Amnesty International has called for Pakistani authorities to end the use of enforced disappearances as a tool of state policy, as it releases a new briefing documenting the effect of such illegal abductions on the families of those who go missing. Mengal also talked about the oppression of Pashtuns in the northern province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, saying, "Pashtuns are facing intimidation, threats, and arrests from the Pakistani army for aspiring for the state of Pashtunistan." "At least 70 thousand Pashtuns have been killed in the last 16 years. More than one thousand tribal elders have been killed, thousands of Pashtuns have disappeared showcasing the Pakistan army's gross human rights violations," Mengal said citing a report. (ANI)
Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla said that India will continue to partner with the League of Arab States in combating terrorism and promoting plurality. This statement comes in the backdrop of increasing terrorism in different Gulf countries. Syria is one of the countries where the terrorism incident has increased in the past few years. Shringla was speaking at the United Nations Security Council meeting on the Cooperation between the UN and regional organisations (League of Arab States) on Wednesday. While addressing the UNSC meeting, Shringla stated, "For, over millennia, the Arab world has been a cradle of human civilization. Given its strategic location, developments in the Arab world have influenced our shared history and they continue to have a profound impact globally. The challenges confronted by the region today and how we address them will have a critical bearing on international peace and security." Shringla stated the historical relation that India and the Arab region share. He said, "Trade between India and Arab region through the Indian Ocean had flourished for several centuries even before the advent of modern commerce. The Indian rupee was legal tender in parts of the Arab world not very long ago." "Today, countries from the Arab world are host to more than 9 million Indians and India's wide-ranging partnership with these countries encompasses every aspect of human endeavour- from agriculture, trade, commerce and education to clean energy, counter-terrorism and new technologies," he added. Shringla mentioned the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that India and the League of Arab States signed two decades ago for institutionalizing a regular dialogue process to forge a partnership for the future. He also said that this led to the creation of the India-League of Arab States Forum, during which progressive cooperation in several fields like energy, environmental protection, investment, food security, science and technology and human resource development was agreed upon. Shringla said that several initiatives were taken to deepen the engagement with the League of Arab States and these initiatives have also been conceptualized including the Energy Symposium, Media Symposium and the first edition of the Arab India Energy Forum which was successfully convened a few months ago. "The League of Arab States has contributed positively to security and stability in the region. Its Member States are significant troop and police contributors to UN peacekeeping forces. The Arab States are among the largest donors of humanitarian assistance to countries facing armed conflict in the region. The League has played an important role in the areas of mediation, conflict prevention and resolution in the region," Shringla said. He further stated, "Today's meeting provides us with a valuable opportunity to take a closer look at the cooperation between the United Nations and the League of Arab States. We underline that the League of Arab States can further contribute to our joint endeavour for peace, for the sake of the people of the region, in general, and women and minorities, in particular. We take note of the positive trajectory of the cooperation, including through the UN Liaison Office in Cairo and the practice of annual briefings by the Secretary-General to this Council." Shringla submitted four suggestions and said, "First, there must be greater policy synergy between the two organizations. Regular and frequent consultations with the League of the Arab States and its members on peace initiatives in the region would contribute towards achieving common solutions and meaningful outcomes. Second, efforts must be made to achieve comprehensive coordination at the field level, especially through regular coordination between UN's Special Envoys and Special Representatives and the League of Arab States." He further added, "Third, engagement with the League and its members in post-conflict peacebuilding through reconstruction and economic development is equally important; and Fourth, ensuring the stability of the countries concerned and the region, and the welfare of the people, especially women and minorities, should be at the forefront of all such efforts." Shringla stated that the cooperation between the UN and the League of Arab States is of critical importance when it comes to the Middle East peace process. He further stated that both the organisations need to take the concerted effort to support the reactivation of the Middle East peace process in line with the two-State solution, based on the internationally agreed framework and previous agreements between the parties. Shringla said that India welcomed the agreements for the normalisation of relations between countries in the region, which will contribute to greater peace and stability in the region. "Let me conclude by expressing India's steadfast support for a closer, meaningful and sustained cooperation between the United Nations and the League of Arab States for the benefit of the region. India will continue to partner with the Arab countries in their efforts to achieve regional peace, stability and prosperity and will continue to work with the League of Arab States in combating terrorism and in promoting tolerance and pluralism," Shringla said. (ANI)
The Taliban on Tuesday warned the retired professors at Kabul University to evacuate government homes as soon as possible. "The Taliban have warned the professors at Kabul University to evacuate govt homes as soon as possible, adding that they are 'not joking with anyone'", tweeted local media. The Taliban is cracking down on the Afghan intelligentsia class as they have criticized the Islamic Emirate government on many occasions. A prominent university lecturer, Faizaullah Jalal was detained by the Taliban for criticizing its rule. Jalal, a longtime professor of law and political science at Kabul University, has made several appearances on television talk shows since the US-backed government was pushed out in August last year, blaming the Taliban for the worsening financial crisis and criticizing them for ruling by force, according to Al Jazeera. Spokesperson of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan Zabiullah Mujahid had said that he was provoking people against the system and had disrespected officials of the Taliban, reported The Khaama Press. Jalal's wife Massouda, who had run against former President Hamid Karzai in 2004 as Afghanistan's first woman candidate for the presidency, posted on Facebook that her husband had been arrested by Taliban forces and detained in an unknown location, according to Al Jazeera. Moreover, in the first half of March, an Afghan university professor and political analyst, Sayed Baqir Mohsini who criticized the Taliban had gone missing. According to Mohsini's family, he and a relative of his were on their way to participate in a TV program in the capital city of Kabul when they disappeared, reported Tolo News. Sayed Baqir Mohsini is a university professor and a political analyst who appeared in many TV programs and expressed criticism toward the Taliban's policies. "Arbitrary detentions spread worries among the public... I don't think these detentions will have positive consequences," said Waheed Adalat Jow, head of Nuhzat-e-Bidari Islami Zanan Afghanistan. (ANI)
Taliban's governor of Afghanistan's Ghor province has suspended all activities of aid organizations in the area, criticizing the work of these institutions, according to media reports. Taliban's governor Ahmad Shah Dindost has instructed heads of the sector to monitor all activities of NGOs that are working within the province. "The purpose of these institutions is not to serve the people and all the figures they provide are false," the Taliban governor's office said in a media statement. While the Taliban on the one hand is seeking international recognition of their government, on the other hand they are seen to inflict harm on their civilians. According to reports in some Pakistan vernacular media, female students in some parts of Kabul have taken out street protests after being barred from attending their school classes, and chanting slogans against the Taliban. The Taliban's ministry of education in a statement today announced that all-girls schools will remain close until the next order. The decision of the Taliban came hours after Afghan girls were allowed to return to high schools today. Media reports said that girl students above the sixth grade were not to be allowed to enter the classrooms at the beginning of the new school year. Teenage girls across Afghanistan were supposed to return to schools after being banned by the Islamic outfit earlier. Since taking over power in August last year, the Taliban have rolled back women's rights in virtually every area, including crushing women's freedom of movement. The vast majority of secondary schools for girls were closed. Universities recently reopened, with new gender segregation rules, but many women are unable to return, in part because the career they studied for is now off-limits as the Taliban banned women from most of the jobs. According to Human Right Watch, women and girls are blocked from accessing health care as well. Reports suggest that women and girls facing violence have no escape route. Allowing girls into schools and other educational institutes has been one of the main demands of the international community. The majority of countries have refused to formally recognise the Taliban amid worries over their treatment of girls and women and other human rights issues. (ANI)
The Afghan army forces from the Al-Badr corps seized a large number of military equipment being smuggled into Pakistan. "Al-Badr Corps border forces seized a large number of military equipment being smuggled into Pakistan. The military equipment seized included a large number of weapons and a large quantity of ammunition," tweeted RTA World. Pakistan is reportedly buying US military weapons amid fear that it may fall into the hands of Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a new report has revealed. The US weapons -- which were seized by the Taliban after American troops withdrawal --are being openly sold in shops by Afghan gun dealers who paid government soldiers and Taliban members for guns and ammunition, The New York Times reported. Under a US training and assistance programme -- that had cost American taxpayers more than USD 83 billion through two decades of war -- the equipment was originally provided to the Afghan security forces, the report had said. After the US troops left Afghanistan, the Taliban amassed a large number of weapons. Pentagon officials earlier had pointed out that advanced weaponry was disabled before troops left, but thousands of weapons were still available for the Taliban, according to the NYT report. Meanwhile, top military officers in India feel that these weapons would be first used for violence in Pakistan itself by the ISI-bred terrorist groups before they are able to make their way to India. Senior military officers said the weapons are expected to be provided to terror groups operating in India as well but the security forces are fully prepared to tackle those who would attempt to use them. (ANI)
Shringla congratulated Almarar on the UAE's successful Presidency of the UNSC and the adoption of the Presidential Statement by UNSC on UN-LAS cooperation, Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said.

"(They) also held excellent discussions on further strengthening bilateral ties between India and the UAE," Bagchi said.

The Foreign Secretary also met Dr. Atul Khare, Under-Secretary-General Department of Operational Support of the United Nations on the occasion.

"As one of the largest troop-contributing countries to UN Peacekeeping Operations, reaffirmed India's steadfast commitment to UN Peacekeeping," the MEA spokesperson said. (ANI)
The government on Wednesday rejected the "uncalled reference" to Jammu and Kashmir by the Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi during his speech at the opening ceremony of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and said matters related to the union territory "are entirely the internal affairs of India". Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said other countries including China have no locus standi to comment. "We reject the uncalled reference to India by the Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi during his speech at the Opening Ceremony. Matters related to the Union Territory of Jammu & Kashmir are entirely the internal affairs of India. Other countries including China have no locus standi to comment. They should note that India refrains from public judgement of their internal issues," Bagchi said. His response came in response to media queries on reference to Jammu and Kashmir made by Chinese Foreign Minister in his speech at OIC meet in Pakistan. Addressing the OIC meeting on Tuesday, Wang Yi had said China stands ready to work with Islamic countries to promote multipolarity in the world. "On Kashmir, we have heard again today the calls of many of our Islamic friends. And China shares the same hope," he had said. The 48th Council of the Foreign Ministers (CFMs) of the OIC concluded in Islamabad today. (ANI)
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on Wednesday announced that NATO would supply Ukraine with equipment to counter nuclear, chemical, and biological threats while addressing a press conference on Wednesday. The remarks come ahead of the key NATO summit on Thursday, which will be attended by US President Joe Biden. The alliance will agree to provide Ukraine with "cyber security equipment" and supplies to "protect against chemical, biological, radiological & nuclear threats," The Kyiv Independent reported. At the press briefing, Stoltenberg talked on the course that the upcoming NATO summit could take, including announcements on further support to Ukraine and tougher actions on Russia. NATO chief also accused China of providing political support and of "spreading blatant lies and disinformation" and said Beijing's role in the invasion would be addressed at the summit, CNN reported. He further said that China has questioned the right of independent nations to choose their own path, adding that the alliance is concerned that China could provide "material support for the Russian invasion." "We call on China to condemn the invasion and to engage in diplomatic efforts to find a peaceful way to end this war as soon as possible and not to provide material support [to Russia]," Stoltenberg said. Meanwhile, the humanitarian situation in Ukraine continued to deteriorate, with thousands of refugees continuing to pour across the borders to neighboring western countries. Announcing an economic package for countries hosting the refugees fleeing Ukraine, European Union (EU) Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said, "So far more than 3 million people have left Ukraine. Half of them children. I applaud the enormous generosity of all Europeans, all Member States, and Moldova. We propose to accelerate and inject EUR3.4 billion of liquidity to support EU countries hosting those fleeing the war." On February 24, Russia launched a military operation in Ukraine after the Ukrainian breakaway regions of Donetsk and Luhansk asked for Russian help against Ukrainian forces. Russia maintains that the aim of the military operations is to "demilitarize" and "denazify" Ukraine. In response to Russia's operation, Western countries have rolled out a comprehensive sanctions campaign against Moscow. (ANI)
Ellen Landrum, playing Fastrada, Pippins step mother, dances with her son Lewis and Pippins half-brother, played by Aaron Sorak. Pippin at Centennial High School, March 2022. (Nate Pesce for Baltimore Sun Media/Baltimore Sun Media Group)

Though Jacob Traver has been theater director at Centennial High School for three years, the groups production of Pippin on March 24, 25 and 26, will be the first musical he has directed. While he was able to stage a successful play in the fall of 2019, the COVID-19 pandemic closed the schools production of Chicago a week before opening in March 2020.

That was not a fun day, Traver said.

Advertisement

Even this years show was uncertain, Traver said, as the pandemics surge in January forced him to change plans as Howard County Public Schools canceled all after-school activities for two weeks.

Originally, we were going to do Les Miserables, but we couldnt lose two weeks of rehearsal. Its a big production, Traver said. Also, what would things look like [in March]? Would people see the show?

Advertisement

So, although students auditioned for Les Miserables, their call-backs were for Pippin.

I knew one song, but not really the show at all, said Andy Pavuk, a senior who has the title role of Pippin, a prince who longs for adventure. Its been exciting watching it come together.

As Pippins understudy, Pierce Pearson, a sophomore, was also unfamiliar with the show but is happy to finally be acting onstage instead of online.

Online is nothing like acting in person, Pearson said.

About 70 students are involved with the production of Pippin, at Centennial, Traver said, working backstage, onstage or performing in the orchestra pit.

Its a great group of kids, Traver said. They are very motivated and work well together.

As assistant director for Pippin, this is the first time Samantha Freed, a senior, took a role behind the scenes instead of auditioning to be a cast member.

Ive learned a lot about how to work backstage and behind the scenes, Freed said. It started with how I look at scripts and the cast. Its very different. I am having a great time.

Advertisement

Jaylin Smith, a senior in the role of Leading Player, said high school drama productions are a unique shared experience.

After being away, you realize how much you missed being together, Smith said. Its the little things, like struggling with everybody and spending time getting back into it.

Afternoon Update Weekdays Updating you on the day's biggest news before the evening commute. >

Pippin will be presented by Centennial High School, 4300 Centennial Lane, Ellicott City, at 7 p.m., March 24, 25 and 26; 2 p.m., March 26; and 3 p.m., March 27. Tickets may be purchased at https://hcpss.booktix.com.

Other upcoming Howard County public high school productions include:

Hairspray: March 24-27, Atholton High School, 6520 Freetown Road, Columbia. 410-313-7065.

The Lion King: March 24-27, Long Reach High School, 6101 Old Dobbin Lane, Columbia. 410-313-7117.

Advertisement

You Me and a Song: A Musical Revue: March 31 and April 2, Marriotts Ridge High School, 12100 Woodford Drive, Marriottsville. 410-313-5568.

The Little Mermaid: March 24-27, Reservoir High School, 11550 Scaggsville Road, Fulton. 410-888-8850.

Seussical: April 7-10, Mt. Hebron High School, 9440 Old Frederick Road, Ellicott City. 410-313-2880.
Pakistan's Federal Minister for Water Resources Moonis Elahi blamed mismanagement of water for the shortage crisis in the country. Writing in a message on social networking site Twitter he said that Pakistan's rapidly declining water resources is due to climate change, increasing population and water mismanagement, reported Pakistan Urdu daily Nawaiwaqt. He said that it could lead to severe water shortages in the future. Asking the opponents of Kalabagh Dam that are they aware of this danger? He added that water security is a guarantee of life. The Kalabagh Dam is a proposed hydroelectric dam on the Indus River at Kalabagh in the Mianwali District, Punjab, Pakistan, which has been intensely debated along ethnic and regional lines for over 40 years. Once upon a time, Indus use to bring in crores of acre-feet of water apart from bringing in tons of slit. However, Indus has lost its "ferociousness" and strong waves reported Pahenji Akhbar. As per the Urdu daily, Pahenji Akhbar, after the 1960 Indus Treaty, the distribution of water to provinces have made Indus weaker. The Indus Waters Treaty is a water-sharing agreement between India and Pakistan signed in 1960. It was brokered by the World Bank. Under the treaty signed between India and Pakistan in 1960, all the waters of three rivers, namely Ravi, Sutlej and Beas ( Eastern Rivers) were allocated to India for exclusive use. While, the waters of Western rivers - Indus, Jhelum, and Chenab were allocated to Pakistan except for specified domestic, non-consumptive and agricultural use permitted to India as provided in the Treaty. Today, Indus is amongst "dying" rivers in the world. One major reason that Indus does not reach tail end parts is the building of dams on Indus and diverting Indus water to eastern seas or rivers. When world's water experts see the Indus as a "dying river", there is a campaign in the country to build more dams on the Indus. There is not only a campaign in progress for more dams, but it is being quietly implemented too, reported Pahenji Akhbar. Idrees Rajput said that Diamer-Bhasha Dam works are in progress. If these works are going on with the Sindh Government's consent, then the Sindh government only will have to be held accountable for Sindhis' economic downfall. Diamer-Bhasha Dam is a concreted-filled gravity dam, in the preliminary stages of construction, on the River Indus between Kohistan district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Diamer district in Gilgit Baltistan (Pakistan-occupied Kashmir). "The facts and figures available with us very clearly tell us we do not have additional waters to build new dams on the Indus. Water expert, ANG Abbasi has already said this in his report in 2004. If we want to save Sindh from sea erosion, then there should be no newer dam or new barrage on Indus and let there be water down Kotri and do afforestation and more plantation and have more greenery to check the rise of temperatures," said Rajput. The water crisis has set off a series of protests and may hurt Pakistan's ailing economy as well as going to increase feuds among provinces and turn into a flashpoint for a major internal disturbance, according to Toronto based think tank International Forum for Right and Security (IFFRAS). Farmers in Sindh and Balochistan provinces have started blocking major highways to demand the release of their share of water from the Indus River. The richest and politically-dominated Punjab province is often accused of allocating the highest and most unfair amount of river water to it while leaving other provinces dry, the think tank said. (ANI)
"The Internal Security Agency has compiled a list of 45 identified persons working in Poland under so-called diplomatic cover. These are the individuals who work under a diplomatic status, but actually, conduct intelligence activities against Poland. This list, which has been sent to the foreign ministry, includes employees of Russian intelligence organizations, as well as people who cooperate with them," Stanislav Zharin, spokesman for the Polish secret services' coordinating minister, said earlier today, Sputnik reported.

The order for expulsion was received soon after by the Russian embassy in Warsaw.

"I received a note about the expulsion of 45 of our employees due to activities that are not in accordance with the Vienna Convention," Russian Ambassador to Warsaw Sergey Andreyev told reporters, adding that, "I am staying. I have not been declared persona non grata."

Earlier today, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov had said that Russia will retaliate against the Polish actions.

The development comes amidst an increased intensity of violence in Ukraine, with climbing civilian casualties. The coastal city of Mariupol the southeast is witnessing some of the most brutal fightings, with heavy bombardment.

Meanwhile, Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine's richest oligarch told the Wall Street Journal that his Azovstal and Ilyich metal plants that together employ about 40,000 people, would not operate if Mariupol gets occupied by the Russian forces, reported The Kyiv Independent. (ANI)
External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and his Omani counterpart Sayyid Badr bin Hamad bin Hamood Albusaidi reiterated their commitment to the close strategic partnership between the two nations. "Both sides reaffirmed their commitment to the close Strategic Partnership between India and Oman. Both the Ministers highlighted the high priority accorded by the leadership of both the countries to bilateral relations based on high mutual trust and respect. Both Ministers underscored that as neighbours united by the waters of the Arabian Sea, both countries have an important role in maritime safety and security in the region," the MEA statement said. This comes at a time when the neighbouring country Pakistan, at the OIC meeting, raked up the issue of Kashmir. On the other hand, the UN delegation was in Srinagar for deep investments in the region. This is Sayyid Badr bin Hamad bin Hamood Albusaidi's first visit to India since he was appointed as the Foreign minister of Oman in August 2020, according to the joint statement released by India and Oman's Foreign Minister. According to the statement, both sides noted that they are united by the waters of the Arabian Sea and have an important role in maritime safety and security in the region. Both the ministers recalled the contribution of Late Sultan Qaboos bin Said in the development of close strategic partnership between both the countries and for which he was awarded Gandhi Peace Prize for the year 2019 by the Indian Government as recognition of his visionary leadership, his efforts to promote peace as well as his immense contribution in strengthening India-Oman friendship. "Both the Ministers positively assessed the multi-faceted India-Oman relations that span several areas of cooperation including political, strategic, defence, economy, energy, investment, space, mining, science and technology, culture, consular and humanitarian cooperation," the statement read. Both the Ministers welcomed the decision to implement the proposals for joint cooperation in space, mining, maritime and science and technology sectors. They agreed for holding the Joint Commission Meeting at the level of Commerce Ministers, India-Oman Strategic Consultative Group Meeting (Foreign Office Consultations), and strategic dialogue at an early date. Moreover, the sides also welcomed the timely renewal of longstanding MoUs on military cooperation and maritime issues between India and Oman. Both also welcomed the holding of the 11th Joint Military Cooperation Committee Meeting (JMCC) in New Delhi in February 2022 which was co-chaired by the Defence Secretary of India and Secretary-General of the Ministry of Defence of Oman. The statement further stated, "Attesting to the trust and closeness in defence cooperation, Secretary-General of the Ministry of Defence of Oman became the first foreign dignitary to embark on India's Indigenous Aircraft Carrier - Vikrant." "Both the leaders noted that the first visit of the incumbent Commander of the Royal Navy of Oman (CRNO) to India in February 2022 will help in deepening cooperation between the Indian Navy and the Royal Navy of Oman," the statement added. S. Jaishankar thanked the Omani side for taking care of all the Indians that are residing in Oman during the pandemic and lauded the cooperation between the countries during the COVID pandemic. "EAM noted that Oman was the first country in the region to accord approval to indigenously developed COVAXIN attesting to the close and friendly relations between both the countries. The Ministers expressed gratitude to each other's countries for timely assistance during the pandemic," the statement said. "India's assistance in supplying critical medicines, including Hydroxychloroquine and COVID vaccine and Oman's assistance in providing ventilators, oxygen concentrators and other critical equipment during India's second phase, was a humanitarian gesture well-received by both Sides," the statement added. Both the ministers felt that there is a need to enhance the momentum in trade and investment linkages as the economies of both countries show strong signs of post-pandemic recovery. "Noting the synergy between the National Green Hydrogen Mission launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the vision of Sultan Haitham Bin Tarik to position Oman as a global hub for green Hydrogen and green Ammonia, it was agreed to enhance cooperation in this area," according to the statement. The Ministers also welcomed the signing of MOU between India Post and Oman Post for issuance of the India-Oman Joint Commemorative Stamp that highlighted the old shared cultural heritage between both the countries and will be released in the last quarter of this year. Both Ministers welcomed the signing of the program of scientific and technological cooperation between the two countries within the joint committees' programs. (ANI)
Rajapaksa added that he expects the Indian government to pay special attention to the development of Sri Lanka, reported Daily Mirror.

The financial assistance from India comes as the immediate neighbour Sri Lanka is facing a severe economic crisis with electricity blackouts and a shortage of food and essential goods.

Sri Lanka on Thursday signed USD 1 billion credit line with India for procurement of food, medicines and other essential items.

The agreement was signed between the State Bank of India (SBI) and the Government of Sri Lanka, during Sri Lankan Finance Minister Basil Rajapaksha's two-day visit to India.

Analysts say that foundations have been laid for improving relationships with its immediate neighbours within the SAARC community. Though India has attempted to better relations between the countries, neighbours like Pakistan rebuffed these overtures to further fall into the debt trap of the Chinese government.

While Sri Lanka also signed numerous similar agreements with China, it was quick to understand after the Hambantota debacle that these wide cast loans at negligible interests were a debt trap.

At this critical juncture, Sri Lanka sought Indian support. As has been the case at different times, India intervened to help Sri Lanka tide over the immediate difficulties with a series of economic package announcements like a USD 1 billion line of credit, a currency swap arrangement of USD 400 million and a debt deferral of USD 515 million for two months.

These announcements were necessary for Colombo to escape from the debt trap of loans that China had cast through numerous contractual agreements. Additionally, these would help in the purchase of essential food items, pharmaceutical products and oil for the beleaguered Sri Lankan nationals, who are facing severe economic hardships. (ANI)
Amid the ongoing political turmoil in Pakistan, Sindh Agriculture Minister and Pakistan People's Party (PPP) leader Manzoor Wassan has predicted that Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) President Shahbaz Sharif will be the next prime minister of the country, reported Pak vernacular media. In a statement, Wassan said that the ruling government's coalition partners - Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) have also decided about their future as they will part their way from the current Imran Khan government and join the opposition. He further said that Imran Khan's days will be over before March 28 and preparations are underway to send him to prison, adding that he will be most probably put in Adiala or Khairpur Central Jail, according to Pak vernacular media. The PPP leader further said that the Opposition might form a caretaker government after the success of the no-confidence motion. General elections will be declared after that and Shahbaz Sharif will be the next Prime Minister, he added. Meanwhile, in a big blow to Imran Khan ahead of the no-confidence vote, three major allies of the ruling government - MQM-P, PML-Q and Balochistan Awami Party (BAP) have decided to join the opposition alliance, Geo News reported citing sources. The sources said that all three allies of the ruling government will soon (expectedly till March 25) announce to join the Opposition in the campaign to oust Imran Khan. Imran Khan's party is facing an internal revolt, with several members of the National Assembly (MNAs) deserting the PTI and joining the opposition ranks. Earlier, around 24 lawmakers announced to vote in favour of the no-trust move and dissociated themselves from the Imran Khan-led Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) government. The Opposition parties in Pakistan had submitted the no-trust motion in the National Assembly secretariat on March 8. The crucial session of the National Assembly is summoned on March 25. Notably, in the 342-member National Assembly, the Imran Khan government requires at least 172 members to sail through the no-confidence vote. (ANI)
During the meeting, Assad said reaching an agreement on the nuclear deal has become more important than ever for serving Iran's interests and the regional and global balance, said the report.

For his part, Amir Abdullahian briefed Assad on the ongoing nuclear talks, saying his country has made proposals in line with the rights and interests of the Iranian people, and reaching an agreement requires the West to show serious will in responding to the proposals.

The two sides also discussed bilateral cooperation in combating terrorism. Abdollahian stressed Syria's role in regional stability, reiterating that his country would stand by Syria and its people until it regain control of all territories. (ANI/Xinhua)
Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs in Pakistan, Ali Muhammad Khan, has said that a majority of the ruling PTI Members of National Assembly (MNA) have "genuine" reservations with the government, Geo News reported. "The majority did not take money, they are just upset with the government. But some might have taken money," the PTI leader said while speaking in a talk show aired on a private television channel. As the session for the no-confidence motion against Prime Minister Imran Khan draws close, several PTI lawmakers have expressed reservations -- while some have announced plans to switch camps, Geo News reported. The government's ally in the Centre, the Grand Democratic Alliance (GDA), has assured Imran Khan of complete support ahead of the no-trust motion, while other allies -- BAP, MQM-P and PML-Q -- are still indecisive. In response to a question, the state minister said that no PTI member could be forced out of the party and assured that he and the party's chief whip in the National Assembly, Amir Dogar, would resolve the issues of the dissident MNAs. "We will try to resolve their genuine concerns regarding the governance in Punjab," the minister said, noting that Imran Khan had already told the government lawmakers that a leader is like a "fatherly figure" who seeks resolution. --IANS san/arm ( 228 Words) 2022-03-23-21:44:06 (IANS)
The indiscriminate mining by Chinese companies in Zimbabwe without proper social and environmental assessments has become a matter of concern as it has led to increasing in environmental and infrastructure degradation in the region, according to a media report. Notably, China's engagement with Zimbabwe in the mineral sector is very high and it has secured direct equity interests in copper, coal and manganese reserves, however, indiscriminate mining has become a matter of concern in the country, reported InsideOver. The communities in the mineral-rich Great Dyke region of Zimbabwe have expressed concern over mining leaving trails of open pits which are now death traps for humans and livestock. Similarly, White ASB Gold Mine, operating along the Dohwe river had reportedly encroached into the Dohwe River catchment. The company, which was using heavy equipment in the region, has resulted in massive environmental destruction. Further, communities living in the downstream area along the Dohwe river were concerned regarding their health and safety considering the use of mercury in mining activities. The mining activities by Chinese companies has also caused the displacement of the people. One of the several examples demonstrating this is that of a Chinese Company exploring quarry mining in a village in the Mutoko district of Zimbabwe. The company reportedly asked the villagers to leave their homes to make way for a granite quarry, reported InsideOver. Similarly, people of Dinde village in Zimbabwe opposed the Chinese coal mining project near a wildlife reserve in the Hwange district for the fear of being displaced and their main source of water being polluted by toxic acids. Though the Chinese embassy in Zimbabwe alleged that the companies were working for the betterment of the country, mistrust among locals persists. Contrary to the Zimbabwe government's new statutory provision for environment management (control of alluvial mining) to prevent overexploitation, a Chinese mining company continued to defy the government ban on alluvial gold mining, following which the locals filed an application in the court. However, the application seeking to bar the company from mining was dismissed on technical grounds. Chinese companies have been taking advantage of the loopholes in the mining laws of Zimbabwe. According to the observers, Zimbabwe, which aims to have a green economy by 2030 and reduce its carbon emissions by 33 per cent, is unlikely to achieve its goals amid the hazardous mining activities by Chinese companies. Notably, China now imports USD100 billion worth of base metals from Africa every year and consumes over 25 per cent of the world's supplies. However, with Africa playing a critical role in the provision of key minerals for the Chinese economy, the increasing resentment in African countries against the Chinese investment in mining activities could be an issue of concern for Beijing, reported InsideOver. (ANI)
Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan said on Wednesday that he still holds the trump card on the situation that emerged after the opposition submitted a no-confidence motion against him, and when he reveals the card the opposition leaders will be surprised, Samaa TV reported. Speaking to a group of senior journalists after he held a key political meeting, the Prime Minister said that the "surprise" would be revealed a day before or on the day of the vote on the no-confidence motion. The opposition leaders cannot imagine how few members will be left with them, he said. Khan also said that his coalition partners are not leaving him and they will take into account the public opinion before making a final decision. In response to a question, the Prime Minister said there is no gulf between him and the Chief of the Army Staff. He also said that no one should malign the army to advance their political goals, because if the army had not been there, Pakistan would have been divided into three parts. Khan then ruled out the possibility of him stepping down as the Prime Minister, saying that he would not be pressurised by "thieves". He said if the no-confidence motion against him succeeds, he would not sit at home and people will see how big a storm is kicked up, Samaa TV reported. Khan said that he could have bought the loyalties of MNAs by using about Rs 15 billion from the exchequer as the PTI has four governments one in the centre and three in provinces but he would not do so. --IANS san/arm ( 282 Words) 2022-03-23-22:00:05 (IANS)
Raja Riaz of the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) has accused Imran Khan government of widespread corruption in Pakistan and said that the number of dissident MNAs within the PTI has increased from 24 to 27, reported local media. Riaz, who is a part of the disgruntled Jahangir Tareen group within the PTI and is leading a group of dissident lawmakers, accused the Imran Khan government of taking bribes from government officers to give them lucrative positions in different districts of Punjab, reported Samaa TV. He added that he had informed Prime Minister Imran Khan regarding the seats for deputy commissioner and the district police officer being sold, however, Khan demanded the evidence and he told that no evidence is left for such things. Raza claimed that Punjab chief minister was involved in selling the government positions. "The corruption money went to a hill in Islamabad," the media outlet quoted him as saying. Earlier while speaking from Islamabad's Sindh house where he and other dissident lawmakers were staying, Riaz had said that at least 24 MNAs would not vote in favour of Imran Khan on the no-confidence motion against him. However, the number has now increased to 27, he said on Wednesday, while refusing to name the new members. "We won't disclose the names at the moment, [because] they are putting tremendous pressure on us," the media outlet quoted him as saying. Speaking on the allegations of horse-trading ahead of the no-confidence motion, Riaz said he can say on oath that he has not received money from the opposition in return for his vote against the premier. Meanwhile, in a big blow to Imran Khan ahead of the no-confidence vote, three major allies of the ruling government - Muttahida Qaumi Movement Pakistan (MQM-P), Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) and Balochistan Awami Party (BAP) - have decided to join the opposition alliance, Geo New reported citing sources. Imran Khan's party is facing an internal revolt, with several members of the National Assembly (MNAs) deserting the PTI and joining the opposition ranks. However, in the 342-member National Assembly, the Imran Khan government requires at least 172 members to sail through the no-confidence vote. (ANI)
Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright introduces Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton at a campaign event at Rundlett Middle School, in Concord, N.H., Feb. 6, 2016. 'Theres a special place in hell for women who dont help each other," Albright said. (Jacquelyn Martin / Associated Press)

WASHINGTON  Madeleine Albright fled the Nazis as a child and climbed to the summit of diplomacy and foreign policy in the United States, breaking the glass ceiling as the first female secretary of state and setting the pace for other women to follow.

She has watched her world fall apart, and ever since, she has dedicated her life to spreading to the rest of the world the freedom and tolerance her family found here in America, President Bill Clinton said in announcing his historic choice for Americas top diplomat in December 1996.

Advertisement

Albright, whose family said she died Wednesday of cancer at age 84, was the daughter of a Czech diplomat, and was born just as Adolf Hitlers Germany started its move down a path of conquest. The bleak years that followed uprooted Albrights family and intimidated Europe.

She grew to be outspoken and advised women years later to act in a more confident manner and to ask questions when they occur and dont wait to ask.

Advertisement

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, on Oct. 22, 2009 before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on NATO. (Haraz N. Ghanbari/AP)

It took me quite a long time to develop a voice, and now that I have it, I am not going to be silent, Albright told HuffPost Living in 2010.

Her determination to use her academic background and her instinct for world affairs, combined with a formidable drive, led to her becoming the first woman to head the State Department. She was not part of the presidential line of succession, however, because of her birth outside the United States.

For decades, Albright was a popular professor at Georgetown Universitys School of Foreign Service, where her Modern Foreign Governments was a required course and examined autocracies and the rise and fall of nation states, including in Ethiopia, the Czech Republic and the Soviet Union. A scholar influenced heavily by the Cold War, she also took a profound interest in arms control and was a proponent of combating dictatorships.

Albright remained outspoken after leaving government. She criticized President George W. Bush for using the shock of force rather than alliances to foster diplomacy. She said he had driven away moderate Arab leaders and created the potential for a dangerous rift with European allies.

When the Senate Foreign Relations Committee asked her in January 2007 whether she approved of Bushs proposed surge in U.S. troops in bloodied Iraq, she responded: I think we need a surge in diplomacy. We are viewed in the Middle East as a colonial power and our motives are suspect.

An internationalist, Albright was shaped in part by her background as a refugee. She played a key role in persuading Clinton to go to war against the Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic over his brutal treatment of Kosovar Albanians in 1999.

My mindset is Munich, she said frequently, referring to the German city where the Western allies in 1938 abandoned her homeland to the Nazis.

She helped win Senate ratification of NATOs expansion and a treaty imposing international restrictions on chemical weapons. She led a successful fight to keep Egyptian diplomat Boutros Boutros-Ghali from a second term as secretary-general of the United Nations; he accused her of deception and posing as a friend.

Advertisement

A Democrat, she was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in Clintons first term, but sought to work with Republicans in Congress on issues ranging from Russia to Cuba. As secretary of state she worked with both political parties to reform the State Department and the U.S. Information Agency, which had run Washingtons anti-Soviet messaging since the end of World War II.

Albright advocated a tough U.S. foreign policy, particularly in the case of Milosevics treatment of Bosnia. She once exclaimed to Colin Powell, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: Whats the point of having this superb military youre always talking about if we cant use it?

Albright has known firsthand what tyranny and totalitarianism can do to ordinary people, said Michael Zantovsky, a Czech ambassador to Washington. The lesson of Munich is that you do not appease aggressors, you stick by your friends, and you take a stand for values and principles that you really believe in.

I am an eternal optimist, Albright said in 1998, amid an effort to promote peace in the Middle East. But she said getting Israel to pull back on the West Bank and the Palestinians to rout terrorists posed serious problems.

As secretary of state, she made limited progress at first in trying to expand the 1993 Oslo accords that established the principle of self-rule for the Palestinians on the West Bank and in Gaza.

But in 1998, she played a leading role in formulating the Wye Accords that turned over control of about 40% of the West Bank to the Palestinians. Still, a comprehensive peace in the Middle East between Israel and the Arabs eluded the Clinton administration.

Advertisement

Albright also helped guide U.S. foreign policy during conflicts in the Balkans and the Hutu-Tutsi genocide in Rwanda.

She enjoyed her reputation for plain-speaking. And she turned her love of jewelry into a weapon, telegraphing her messages with the brooch she chose to wear. Called a snake by the Iraqi government under Saddam Hussein, she sported a snake pin during a U.N. debate on Iraq.

When devious, I wear a spider; when ready to sting, a bee, she said.

Marie Jana Korbel was born in Prague on May 15, 1937, the daughter of diplomat Joseph Korbel. The family was Jewish and converted to Roman Catholicism when she was 5. Three of her Jewish grandparents died in concentration camps. Albright later said that she only became aware of her Jewish background after she became secretary of state.

The family returned to Czechoslovakia after World War II, before fleeing again, this time to the United States, in 1948, after the communists rose to power. They settled in Denver, where her father obtained a job at the University of Denver.

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

She married journalist and publishing heir Joseph Albright in 1959, three days after her graduation from Wellesley College. They had three daughters before divorcing in 1983.

Advertisement

Years later, in an interview with biographer Ann Blackman, Albright said: Do powerful women attract men? My own experience happens to be yes, in a way that was not true before.

After college she worked as a journalist and later studied international relations at Columbia University, where she earned a masters degree in 1968 and a doctoral degree in 1976.

Democratic Sen. Edmund S. Muskie launched her career in politics and diplomacy as a legislative assistant in 1976. She later worked for the National Security Council during the Carter administration and advised Democrats on foreign policy before Clintons election. He nominated her as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in 1993.

She was fluent in Russian, French and Czech, and knew some Polish, Serbian and German. When meeting in Moscow in 1997 with Russian President Boris Yeltsin, her grasp of Russian was so secure that Yeltsin waved away the interpreter as not necessary.

Following her service in the Clinton administration, she headed a global strategy firm, Albright Stonebridge, and was chair of an investment advisory company that focused on emerging markets. She also wrote several books.

She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nations highest civilian honor, by President Barack Obama in 2012.
Pakistan Interior Minister Sheikh Rasheed said on Wednesday that Prime Minister Imran Khan is holding his cards close and may announce a major move on March 27, Samaa TV reported. He said that the National Assembly Speaker can hold voting on the no-confidence motion moved against Imran Khan whenever he wants. Rasheed said the National Assembly meeting will be held on March 25, but the session would be adjourned for a day after 'Fateh', as per the tradition, and the voting may be held on March 31 or April 1, as and when the Speaker decides. On Wednesday, Imran Khan chaired a political committee meeting at the PM House, in which he was briefed on important legal and constitutional issues. During the meeting, the political situation of the country and the no-trust motion were discussed. The meeting also reviewed the preparations for the PTI rally scheduled on March 27. The meeting was attended by Rasheed, Information Minister Fawad Chaudhary and other federal ministers. After the meeting, Imran Khan said that he still holds the trump card on the situation that has emerged after the opposition submitted a no-confidence motion against him, and when he reveals the card, the opposition leaders will be surprised, Samaa TV reported. Speaking to a group of senior journalists after the meeting, the Prime Minister said that the "surprise" would be revealed a day before or on the day of the voting on the no-confidence motion. The opposition leaders cannot imagine how few members will be left with them, he said. --IANS san/arm ( 270 Words) 2022-03-23-22:32:04 (IANS)
Danny Coakley of North End Waterfront Health gives out free COVID-19 tests on March 11, 2022 in Boston, Massachusetts. Matt Stone/MediaNews Group/Boston Herald via Getty Images

A more transmissible version of Omicron, named BA.2, has been sweeping Europe.

Because of the way variants have traveled across the Atlantic in the past, there's some concern BA.2 is going to hit the US hard next.

But experts say there's reason to believe that the BA.2 wave will be milder in the US.

Omicron is changing its shape again. Another Omicron subvariant, BA.2, is quickly displacing its relatives in the US.

It is more contagious than its viral peers and predecessors, causing swift damage in Europe and Asia  traveling and infecting at a clip people haven't seen yet. Naturally, that is stoking fears that BA.2 could trigger a new surge in cases in the US. As of publication, BA.2 was already responsible for about a third of cases in the US, and the majority of all cases globally.

But there's reason to think that BA.2's story may play out quite differently in the US than it has in other places.

That's due to a confluence of factors, chief among them the level of hodgepodge immunity to Omicron in the US already, from vaccines, boosters, and earlier infections. All of that, taken together, suggests that BA.2 in the US might behave more quietly, as it did in South Africa.

BA.2 is more transmissible than other Omicrons, and is already sweeping the US

Experts estimate BA.2 is roughly 30-50% more transmissible than the "original" Omicron. For instance, the UK government is reporting that BA.2 has a secondary attack rate of more than 13% among household contacts. (The household attack rate was previously around 10% for other Omicrons.)

"We likely will see an uptick in cases," President Joe Biden's chief medical adviser, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said on ABC's This Week on Sunday, but he added, "hopefully, we won't see a surge. I don't think we will."

Harvard epidemiologist Bill Hanage predicted on Andy Slavitt's "In the Bubble" podcast on Monday that the US will see a new wave, and some areas will be hit harder than others.

Story continues

But, Hanage added: "I don't think it's going to be as dramatic as Europe, because the recent pandemic history has been really quite different, and because most of Europe has been pretty COVID-averse, you know. Whereas parts of the United States have been quite COVID-curious."

Europe suddenly dropped mask mandates  and exposed a COVID-naive population to the new variant

The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, one of the premier disease modeling centers in the US, said in a briefing document "the most important explanation" for Europe being hit hard by BA.2 is that the variant emerged just as people took off their masks and returned to offices and indoor events.

The virus suddenly had a fresh opportunity to infect a lot more people than it did previously in Europe, and given its higher transmissibility, BA.2 quickly found many new people to infect.

In the US, many people have been going maskless and mingling with strangers for far longer  already, it's estimated that around 40% of the country has had an Omicron infection. That exposure wasn't without consequences. Nearly a million US cases of COVID-19 have been fatal so far, equating to the third highest recorded death toll from COVID-19 in the world, per capita. During the peak of the Omicron wave, in late January and early February, more than 3,000 people were dying from the virus in the US each day.

But despite the painful, deadly way it came about, the immunity the US has today is important because there are good indications that a previous Omicron infection  even from a different version of it  does cross-protect most people from BA.2.

More than three-quarters of the US has had some kind of COVID-19 infection at some point during the pandemic, compared to about 55% of the UK, and each survived exposure helps inform the immune system (even if vaccination is by far the safest way to teach it how to fight.)

"The more times we have encountered the spike protein, the more robust our immune response, when it comes to preventing a severe infection, even with a variant which is as wild as Omicron," Hanage said.

Evidence suggests vaccinated people who got Omicron in the first wave will be protected

According to data on a very small group of a few dozen patients, published in the New England Journal of Medicine on March 16, there is decent cross-protection from BA.1 to BA.2 infections.

That means that people who've been vaccinated, boosted, and exposed to Omicron may not be very susceptible to getting infected with BA.2, at least for now.

Dr Ellie Murray, ScD (@EpiEllie) March 21, 2022

Omicron reinfections do happen, of course, but they are exceedingly rare in people who've had Omicron before. And fortunately, for now, hospitalization rates with BA.2 don't appear any worse than they were for other Omicron subvariants.

Looking to the Northeast for clues about what BA.2 will do next

The US's Omicron immunity will, inevitably, wane. And it's not clear how soon that'll happen, or how strong the current immunity really is. That's keeping immunologists very cautious with their predictions.

"We don't know what BA.2 will look like in the US," infectious disease expert Katelyn Jetelina said in her newsletter on Monday. "BA.2 is finishing BA.1's job," she said, which is "making overall global patterns inconsistent."

One possibility that both Jetelina and the IHME think is possible is that BA.2 could prompt a short spike in cases, at least in some areas of the country, but maybe not in others. Jetelina points out that the Northeast currently has the greatest prevalence of BA.2 anywhere in the country, so that may be a good place to look to in forecasting any forthcoming uptick.

For now, the sewers of the Northeast aren't suggesting much of a spike on the horizon. Boston, which has one of the most useful COVID wastewater dashboards in the country, is not seeing any major increase in COVID-19 in the wastewater just yet:

There hasn't been a big spike in Boston's wastewater COVID-19 levels lately, like what was seen when Omicron first hit the city in December and January. Massachusetts Water Resources Authority

But it's worth keeping an eye on wastewater COVID-19 levels, in cities like New Haven and New York too, as they could be beacons for any impending US surge.

As Denmark has so painfully seen, just because BA.2 is no more severe than its predecessors doesn't mean it can't be deadly for vulnerable people, like older adults, especially those that don't yet have boosters.

"Even if we dont have a big BA.2 wave overall, we may still see a surge in risk for high-risk groups," epidemiologist Ellie Murray from Boston University said on Twitter.

One thing all the experts can agree on is that it's better to be on alert for whatever the virus might hurl our way next, and ready our defenses.

"This virus has a habit of flipping the script" Hanage said. "Be prepared for what you're going to do if it does."

Read the original article on Business Insider
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP)  Six teenage girls on a high school lunch break were killed when their small car with only four seats collided with a large truck hauling rocks, the Oklahoma Highway Patrol said Wednesday.

The crash occurred shortly after noon Tuesday in Tishomingo, a rural city of about 3,000 located about 100 miles (160 kilometers) southeast of Oklahoma City, the patrol said. Those killed included the 16-year-old driver, three 15-year-olds, and two 17-year-old passengers, according to the patrol.

While what led to the crash is unknown, it highlighted concerns of teenagers carrying other young passengers.

Just adding a single passenger under age 21 increases the risk of crashing by 44% when the driver is a teen," said William Van Tassel with AAAs national office.

The crash report, released Wednesday morning, said the circumstances of the wreck remained under investigation. But Highway Patrol Trooper Shelby Humphrey said Tuesday night that the girls car was making a right turn when it collided with the truck, KXII-TV reported.

"One of the main concerns and risks of having multiple teenagers in a car is the distractions that come with that, Van Tassel said.

If one of the passengers is over 35 (the risk) goes down by 62%. That implies teens can drive safely when theres an adult in the car," Van Tassel told The Associated Press.

Only the 16-year-old driver and front-seat passenger were wearing seat belts when the 2015 Chevrolet Spark collided with the truck, according to the Highway Patrol.

The unbelted people put everyone at risk," Van Tessel said. "In a crash, the unbuckled people fly around all over the place, injuring others inside the vehicle.

Oklahoma is the only state where passengers who are older than 7 years old and in the back seat of a car do not have to wear a seat belt, said Leslie Gamble, the manger of public and government relations for AAA-Oklahoma.

A 41-member coalition of traffic safety advocates has pushed for a bill to be passed by our state legislators for the past three years without success, Gamble said

Story continues

The crash occurred about a mile (1.6 kilometers) from Tishomingo High School.

Students in the district of about 850 students were in class Wednesday, Tishomingo Public School Superintendent Bobby Waitman said.

Academics are secondary, frankly, at this point to the students knowing that they belong, that they have a safe place, Waitman said.

You'll never fully understand, I don't think we'll ever fully understand a loss like this," Waitman added.

The girls' names weren't released because they are juveniles.

The Highway Patrol identified the driver of the truck as Valendon Burton, 51, of Burneyville, Oklahoma. The report said Burton was not injured.

The National Transportation Safety Board was sending a team, according to NTSB spokesman Peter Knudson.

Waitman said funerals for the students were not yet scheduled and that the district would work with their families to potentially schedule a memorial service on campus.

The crash happened one week after nine people were killed  including six members of a New Mexico colleges golf team and their coach  died in a crash in West Texas. In that crash, the NTSB determined that a 13-year-old boy was behind the wheel of a truck when it blew a tire and struck the van carrying University of the Southwest students.

___

Associated Press writers Jill Bleed in Little Rock, Arkansas, and Tom Krisher in Detroit contributed to this report.
Sheriffs officials arrested an Adelanto man on suspicion of shooting a man from Lucerne Valley during an argument which began at a motel in Victorville.

Sheriffs officials arrested one man on suspicion of shooting another during an argument that began at a motel in Victorville.

Jerry Randolph, 56, of Adelanto remained at the High Desert Detention Center in Adelanto on Tuesday, with bail set at just over $1.7 million, San Bernardino County Sheriffs booking records show.

The Victorville Sheriffs Station reported that on Saturday, deputies were dispatched to Providence St. Mary Medical Center in Apple Valley regarding a patient with a gunshot wound.

Upon arrival, deputies contacted a 35-year-old Lucerne Valley man who had been shot in the ankle after he had gone to Motel 6 on Stoddard Wells Road in Victorville around midnight.

Deputies learned that the men got into an argument in the motel parking lot. The argument moved inside to the lobby area where Randolph threatened to shoot the man.

The man from Lucerne drove to an adjacent parking lot and exited his vehicle. Meanwhile, Randolph retrieved a handgun from his vehicle, approached the man and fired, striking him once in the ankle, sheriffs officials said.

Deputies continued their investigation and a warrant was issued for the arrest of Randolph.

He was located and arrested without incident late Saturday near his residence at the intersection of Green Tree Boulevard and Arrowhead Drive in Victorville, sheriffs booking records show.

Anyone with information about the ongoing investigation is asked by the Sheriff's Department to contact the Victorville Sheriffs Station at 760-241-2911 or Sheriffs Dispatch at 760-956-5001.

Callers wishing to remain anonymous can call the We-Tip Hotline at 1-800-78CRIME (27463) or leave information at www.wetip.com.

Daily Press reporter Rene Ray De La Cruz may be reached at 760-951-6227 or RDeLaCruz@VVDailyPress.com. Follow him on Twitter @DP_ReneDeLaCruz

This article originally appeared on Victorville Daily Press: Police arrest Adelanto man suspected in Victorville shooting
The New York Times

Russias war against Ukraine has leveled cities, killed tens of thousands of people and forced millions of others from their homes. But quietly, some military analysts and Western officials are asking why the onslaught has not been even worse. Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York Times Russia could be going after Ukrainian railways, roads and bridges more aggressively to try to stanch the flow of Western weapons to the front line. It could have bombed more of the infrastructure a
Maryland House Majority Leader Erik Luedtke is pushing a bill to dramatically increase the power of student members of boards of education, popularly known as SMOBs. The result: SMOBs would have essentially the same voting power as adult board members. (The minor exception is that SMOBs would lack power over the suspension or dismissal of school staff.) Currently, only Anne Arundel County grants the student representative the same voting power as adult board members.

The primary problem with bestowing such power on the office of the SMOB is the school staffs excessive control of that office, making it possibly the most corrupt elected office in the United States. The staffs control over student politicos stems from the students dependence on the staff for grades, extracurricular opportunities, college recommendations, and just about everything else that leads to school success. Even some banana republics have administered elections with more actual regard for due process.

Advertisement

Staff power over SMOB elections, from the superintendent down, is exercised in the dark without any hope of transparency, partly because of the rules that protect student privacy. Imagine if you were an adult legislator and a special interest group controlled not only your election prospects but the success of your primary job and prospects for your familys long-term well-being. Who wouldnt recognize that as an intolerable conflict of interest? Indeed, the purpose of Maryland ethics and election laws is to prevent that type of corruption.

School staff leaders love the office of the SMOB because the student is usually the most reliable supporter of their agenda. Its illegal for staff to directly serve on the school board that hires them and negotiates their contracts. But controlling the SMOB is probably even better. Whereas the staff members conflicts of interest would be blatant, the conflicts of interest embedded in the office of the SMOB have been brilliantly hidden.

Advertisement

The staffs love affair with student representatives is indicated by their stealthy lobbying on behalf of the SMOB position. This lobbying includes the mobilization of student advocacy via free use of public buildings, use of school personnel skilled in advocacy and the law during work hours, and free use of school bus transportation to ferry students to the General Assembly. Also indicative is that Majority Leader Luedtke is a former Montgomery County school teacher, was a director of the Montgomery County Education Association, and has a long track record of carrying water on behalf of school staff priorities.

School staff may be pushing this bill now because the last few years of COVID-induced school shutdowns and the resulting impositions on parents have fundamentally changed local school board politics in Maryland. Majority Leader Luedtkes bill would help shore up the staffs control over Maryland school boards.

Along with the students, staff and other General Assembly members who have championed this legislation, Majority Leader Luedtke has failed to act on the most fundamental principle of democracy: that where there is power there must be accountability. Instead, supporters have hidden behind the shibboleths of student privacy and local control. Student privacy is the excuse for staff secrecy; local control for leaving election rules and administration to local staff. In Anne Arundel County, that includes de facto staff veto power over SMOB nominees and de facto staff election administration powers equivalent to those of the independent Maryland State Board of Elections.

If there is a tragedy here, it is that if the SMOB position were made truly accountable, it would lose the staffs forceful political support, without which the Majority Leader Luedtkes bill would never have made it as far as it has. But whereas the student leaders are faced with a Hobsons choice between democratic accountability and make-or-break staff political support, the general voting public faces no such dilemma.

The position of the SMOB has become a Trojan horse to provide school staff with undue influence over public schools. Just as the public made clear that it is an intolerable conflict of interest for staff to serve on school boards, it should oppose Trojan horse SMOBs.

J.H. Snider, president of iSolon.org, often writes about democratic reform politics and policy.
Lila Ammouri and Susan Frazier took a trip to Switzerland where they died (Screengrab/Facebook)

At Pegasos, a voluntary assisted dying association in Basel, Switzerland, death costs 10,000 euros, or just over$11,000.

The figure includes paperwork and consultations, a prescription for the sodium barbiturate Nembutal, an appointment where the drugs are administered, cremation and couriering of the patients ashes home.

The deed is performed in a windowless cocoon room with soft lighting and comfortable sofas. Patients can choose whether to receive a lethal dose through an arm-fed tube which they control, or by drinking the lethal solution, along with an anti-vomiting drug.

Pegasos, based in Basel, Switzerland, offers a complete medical aid in dying service for $11,000 (Pegasos Association)

When the time comes, the patient can play their favourite song while holding the hand of a loved one. If the drug is taken intravenously, they slip off almost immediately and die shortly afterwards.

Doctors will then usually notify Swiss authorities, who attend the clinic afterwards to ensure everything was carried out within the legal framework.

Sisters Lia Ammouri, 54, and Susan Frazier, 4  high-achieving, popular and seemingly healthy, happy medical professionals  travelled to Basel from their home in Arizona via Chicago on 3 February.

Ms Ammouri, a palliative doctor, had dedicated much of her professional life to caring for people at the end of theirs.

Lila Ammouri, a palliative care doctor from Arizona, died by assisted suicide in Switzerland (Findatopdoc.com)

And Ms Frazier, a nurse, had recently been promoted to a senior leadership position at Aetna Health Insurance where they both worked. One colleague recalled her blasting The Final Countdown by Europe every Friday, so excited she was to reach the weekend.

The sisters laughter-filled stories always revolved around each other, friends recalled. Ms Frazier, who had a high-pressure job looking after acutely ill patients, was able to laugh the stress away.

They didnt tell any family or friends they were intending to end their ownlives, even booking return flights back to the US on 13 February and being expected back at work on 15 February.

Friends thought they might have been kidnapped, and that the spelling errors in their text messages was evidence that someone was impersonating them.

Story continues

Friend David Biglari said he became suspicious after he received a text from one of the missing sisters with an uncharacteristic spelling mistake (Fox10)

On Tuesday, a spokesman for the Basel-Landschaft public prosecutors office confirmed to The Independent that the sisters had died by suicide within the legal framework.

The public prosecutors office of the Canton of Basel-Landschaft confirms that the two US women died during their stay in Switzerland. They both committed suicide at an assisted suicide organisation, Michael Lutz told The Independent.

As tributes flowed to the womens sense of humour and kindness, their brother Cal and friends were left with many unanswered questions.

They were really special. They never hurt anybody, Cal Ammouri told The Independent.

Im never going to get over it. Im all alone now.

Pegasos is one of several Swiss-based organisations which offer access to end-of-life medical assisted dying for thousands of foreigners, sometimes referred to as suicide tourists.

At the time of publication, Pegasos had not responded to several questions from The Independent about its end of life programme.

Swiss law tolerates medically assisted dying in certain situations, as long as the patient is over 18, able to administer the dose themselves, and is not being advised by someone trying to pressure them or take advantage of them.

Due to strict laws around assisting suicide in most US states, hundreds of so-called suicide tourists have travelled to Switzerland to die over the past two decades.

Only about one in five Americans live in states that have passed what advocates refer to as medical aid-in-dying legislation.

The Oregon Death with Dignity Act, which came into law in 1997, was the first in the country to offer the terminally-ill the right to self-administer lethal drugs prescribed by a doctor.

Since then eight other states have passed similar laws, including California, Colorado, Hawaii, New Jersey, Maine and New Mexico, while Montana allows assisted dying via a State Supreme Court ruling.

Twelve more states, including Ms Ammouri and Ms Fraziers home state of Arizona, are currently considering bills.

Strict residency requirements make it difficult for terminally ill patients to receive medical aid if their state does not allow it.

Peg Sandeen is CEO of medical aid in dying advocacy group Death with Dignity (Death with Dignity/YouTube)

Peg Sandeen, CEO of advocacy group Death with Dignity, told The Independent: Every year, a few terminally ill individuals manage to move across state lines to a jurisdiction where Death with Dignity is legal. However, this option has proven difficult, both technically and physically, as moving when you are dying is a nearly impossible task.

The lack of mobility from being severely ill makes it hard enough, but finding a doctor willing to prescribe life-ending drugs to a new patient can be a bigger obstacle.

Portland-based non-profit Compassion and Choices filed a lawsuit challenging Oregons residency requirement last October on behalf of physician Nicholas Gideonse, alleging that the law was both discriminatory and profoundly unfair to dying patients at the most critical time of their life.

In the US, legislation around end-of-life care explicitly bans euthanasia, and only mentally-sound, terminally-ill patients can access a doctors prescription for medication they may decide to take to peacefully end their suffering if it becomes unbearable.

New York introduced legislation to allow medical aid in dying laws in 2016. The bill, which narrowly scraped through the health committee by 14-11, would require a patient to make a signed and dated request for the prescription witnessed by at least two individuals who vouch for their capacity to make an informed decision. It has been stalled in the state assembly since 2021.

Critics of medical aid in dying laws argue that those affected by disability or depression could be coerced into making the decision to end their lives, saying there were too few safeguards, and that it diminishes self-determination.

Ms Sandeen says that opposition to the death with dignity movement were typically well-funded national organisations with religious affiliations who cloaked their messages in slippery slope arguments.

According to analysis of medical aid in dying in Oregon shows there have been few complaints about coercion.

In 2019, the outgoing Disability Rights Oregon executive director (DRO), which has federal watchdog powers, wrote that he had never knowingly received a single complaint in the 22 years hed been in the role that a person with disabilities were being coerced to end their lives.

Compassion and Choices provided data showing that in nine states where with end of life legislation, 37 per cent of terminally ill patients who were prescribed a lethal drug didnt end up taking the medication.

Advocates argue that simply by having the prescription on hand, and knowing they can use it should the pain become too great, is an immense palliative relief in itself.

Figures from Oregons Death with Dignity Act report show increasing numbers of prescriptions are going unused (Oregon State Government)

In 2021, 383 Oregonians were issued with prescriptions, but only 238 of those were used, including 20 who had been prescribed the drug in previous years.

Supporters of medical aid in dying also want to see the word assisted suicide removed from descriptions of the practice.

They point to legislation which specifically prohibits suicide in several state laws.

And if a terminally ill person uses medical aid in dying, the death certificate does not list the cause as suicide, but rather the underlying disease the person was suffering with.

For groups like the Swiss-based Dignitas, everyone who is suffering from a terminal illness should be entitled to the right to die on their own terms, in their own home.

Dignitas aim is not that people from all over the world travel to Switzerland, but that other countries adapt their laws to implement end-of-life-options so that people have a choice and do not need to become a suicide tourist, a spokesperson for the Swiss-based group told The Independent.

And Pegasos strongly recommends patients should inform family members if they decide to take their life.

Discussing your plans with family members may lead to people saying what needs to be said before you go, its website states.

This helps bring closure and is infinitely better than leaving a life unspoken for and full of regret.
Mar. 23A decision by a judge to release a man charged with two homicides on a GPS ankle monitor pending trial drew fierce criticism Tuesday from Albuquerque Police Department Chief Harold Medina.

Medina took aim at 2nd Judicial District Judge Stanley Whitaker, who rejected two motions from prosecutors to hold Adrian Avila in jail while he awaits trial on charges including murder, kidnapping and armed robbery.

Avila is accused in two shootings six months apart, an August 2020 case where a teen was killed during a gun robbery and a February 2021 case where a man was killed in front of his home by his brother's kidnappers.

"These people are accused of killing somebody and we're counting on an ankle bracelet to protect the community," Medina said. He said Avila is "at the root of gun violence" and called his release "ridiculous."

Ahmad Assed, Avila's attorney, said Whitaker found that prosecutors failed to demonstrate that no conditions of release for Avila  who has no criminal history  could ensure the safety of the public.

Assed argued in a motion that the prosecution's evidence against Avila in the August 2020 homicide is circumstantial and based largely on cell phone and Snapchat account records that don't reliably establish his involvement.

In addition to wearing a GPS ankle monitor, Whitaker ordered that Avila remain under house arrest and is only allowed to leave his mother's home to attend a charter high school and for educational purposes.

Assed responded that Medina's "irresponsible and reckless" statements" have the potential to poison a jury pool and raise questions about APD's ability to investigate crimes objectively.

"It's outrageous for Albuquerque's chief law enforcement officer, who wasn't even at the hearing, to make a knee-jerk comment that is purely reactionary and pandering," Assed said.

Medina and Assed personally negotiated Avila's surrender to APD, Assed said.

Story continues

Medina said he understands monitoring those accused of property crimes, like car theft, but "there's a line in the sand" that comes with violence. He said he understands judges are following guidelines but argued that those guidelines, like the Arnold tool, which scores a defendant's risk of flight or new crime, need to be fixed.

Several studies have shown the Arnold tool has a good success rate and the state's pretrial detention system, in general, is effective in most cases.

Medina said multiple people have kept committing illegal activity while on house arrest and GPS monitoring, adding that on Tuesday a domestic violence offender was unaccounted for after the batteries died on his GPS device.

APD spokesman Gilbert Gallegos said the courts need to build trust in the community, and not admitting they're doing something wrong in these cases "hurts the whole system."

"We posted this stuff on social media and it's blowing up, people want to blame, they feel something's not right here. I think the courts need to admit that something is wrong and start rebuilding that community trust," he said.

Second Judicial District Attorney Raul Torrez's office said prosecutors plan to appeal Avila's pretrial release.

"We strongly disagree with the Court's assessment that GPS monitoring is sufficient to protect the community from someone like Adrian Avila, who stands accused of not one, but two violent homicides," Torrez's office said in a written statement.
By Prak Chan Thul

PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - A Southeast Asian envoy said on Wednesday he had urged Myanmar's ruling military to show restraint during offensives and was told by the junta leader there would be no access to ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi while her trial was ongoing.

Prak Sokhonn, special envoy for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), said he sought the release of prisoners including Australian economist Sean Turnell, and junta boss Min Aung Hlaing told him he would consider a request to see Suu Kyi and other detainees in future.

Suu Kyi was overthrown by the military in a coup last year that sparked chaos and bloodshed in the country after a decade of tentative democratic reform.

The Nobel laureate is on trial for more than a dozen offences including violating a state secrets act and multiple counts of corruption. She has been found guilty of several crimes already, but has rejected all charges.

Prak Sokhonn said he understood that critics viewed his trip to Myanmar this week as legitimising the junta. But he added he sees the two-day visit as a positive step towards resolving the crisis, which he said could not be done during Cambodia's ASEAN chairmanship this year.

"The Myanmar issue is complicated, it needs a long time to solve, we can't solve it during one chairmanship or the current chairmanship," he told reporters on his return to Cambodia.

"I know of various levels of expectations on the visit, I also know of people who want to see a ceasefire and me meeting all involved parties, and the return to normalcy of democracy," he said.

"I understand reasons behind criticism, they don't want me being giving legitimacy to the state councilors," he said, referring to the junta.

Prak Sokhonn's trip has frustrated opponents to Myanmar's junta because it was centred largely on the generals, with most meetings with other parties cancelled.

ASEAN has barred the generals from attending its summits until they see progress in a five-point "consensus" agreed last year to end the violence.

The United Nations last week said the army had committed war crimes and crimes against humanity and was deliberately targeting civilians. The military has yet to respond.

(Reporting by Prak Chan Thul; Writing by Martin Petty; Editing by Ed Davies and Kanupriya Kapoor)
Attorneys for a group of Republican delegates pressed a judge Wednesday to reject a Maryland General Assembly-approved map of state legislative districts that they say would illegally favor Democrats in elections.

The plaintiffs, including Republican voters and two groups of GOP delegates, told Alan M. Wilner, a retired judge appointed to the case, during a Maryland Court of Appeals hearing that the map is loaded with irregularly-shaped districts that violate a section of the state constitution calling for districts to be compact and to respect natural geographic boundaries.

At the end of the case we are going to ask that the court declare the districts weve challenged unconstitutional, said Strider Dickson, the attorney for Republican state Dels. Mark Fisher of Calvert County, Nic Kipke of Anne Arundel County and Kathy Szeliga, who represents parts of Harford and Baltimore counties. Other challenges, including another from state lawmakers, are being heard simultaneously.

The hearing may last until the end of the week. Wilner said he will then assess all of the evidence before filing a report on the case with the appeals court, which will then rule.

If the map of 141 state delegates and 47 senators is scrapped, the court could order the General Assembly to make a new one. Some plaintiffs have suggested the court substitute in a map offered by a commission created by Republican Gov. Larry Hogan and comprised of Republican, Democrat and independent voters.

Democrats rejected that Hogan-backed map and, on January 27, the General Assembly adopted its own map.

A speedy resolution is critical because the State Board of Elections needs the final district boundaries to prepare ballots and secure polling places. On March 15, the Court of Appeals pushed back the primary election date from June 28 to July 19 because the redistricting challenge remained unresolved.

Also pending is a similar challenge brought by Republicans against the General Assemblys map of Marylands eight congressional districts. That case is in its final stages in Anne Arundel County Circuit Court, but its uncertain when a decision will be rendered.

Story continues

Both cases have included testimony from expert witnesses on both sides testifying about technical issues such as methods for assessing a districts shape.

Dickson, the attorney, wrote in a recent court filing that one legislative district  in the College Park area  is shaped like a boomerang, while another  stretching from south central Howard County into Anne Arundel County  has a shape that defies description.

Democratic leaders maintained during the General Assemblys debate that the new map is fair and in compliance with requirements in the states constitution.

During Wednesdays hearing, Dickson said the plaintiffs have been denied evidence by the state that could have helped the Republicans case.

We have not been given access to the reasons why the districts were drawn the way they were drawn, the attorney told the judge. Us not having access to certain of the information about why districts were drawn hurts very badly a number of our claims.

Dickson was referring to recent requests to compel evidence from the state on who was responsible for the actual drawing or construction of legislative districts, and what criteria was used.

The state attorney generals office, which is defending the map, has asserted legislative privilege, which protects some information about legislative acts from being used in court.

Legislative privilege is dictated by the separation of powers in the constitution, assistant attorney general Andrea Trento said at the hearing.

On Feb. 10, Wilner denied the plaintiffs request for this information, saying legislators and their staffs cannot be compelled to explain their legislative conduct or events that occurred in a legislative session, other than before the legislative body.

Nevertheless, Dickson maintained at the hearing that despite not having that evidence, we still have evidence of clear [state constitutional] violations.
Update: Court documents reveal details on Little Ferry homicide

A 27-year-old woman, who authorities suspect of shooting and killing her younger sister in her family's home in Little Ferry, was taken into custody Monday night, according to the borough's police chief, James Walters.

Police were called to the home on Sand Hill Court on a report of a stabbing around 4 p.m. but arrived to find Omelly Dominguez, 21, dead of what appeared to be a gunshot wound, the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office announced.

By the late afternoon, a large law enforcement presence had gathered on the small dead end street off of Lakeview Avenue.

Police investigating on Sand Hill Court in Little Ferry on Tuesday afternoon, March 22, 2022.

Shortly after 9:15 p.m., Walters said the older sister, who has yet to be identified, is believed to be a resident of Jacksonville, Florida, and was currently being processed. However, he did not specify the charges being filed against her.

Sgt. Alejandro Goez of the New Jersey State Police said troopers stopped and arrested the suspect on the New Jersey Turnpike near mile marker 31 in Cherry Hill. The suspect was turned over to the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office, he said.

For subscribers: When NJ political agent allegedly wanted to off a friend, he hired thief who killed before

Nicholas Katzban is a breaking news reporter for NorthJersey.com. To get breaking news directly to your inbox, sign up for our newsletter.

Email: katzban@northjersey.com

Twitter: @nicholaskatzban

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Little Ferry NJ: Woman killed in shooting on Sand Hill Court
Mar. 22A Baltimore drug dealer was sentenced to over eight years in federal prison on Friday in relation to a fatal overdose in Harford County.

Khalil Shaheed, 28, was convicted on charges of intent to distribute controlled substances, possession of a firearm by a felon and possession of firearms in furtherance of drug trafficking, according to a news release from the Maryland U.S. Attorney's Office.

Advertisement

According to the plea agreement, investigators examined the cellphone of a fatal overdose victim from Harford County who'd purchased heroin from a contact in their phone called "T" at least seven times. The last date the victim bought heroin from "T" was Oct. 14, 2017  three days before the victim's death. In the last conversation with "T," the victim was told to meet in a grocery store bathroom in Baltimore.

The victim's name was not released by officials.

Advertisement

An investigation by multiple law enforcement agencies led to surveilance on Shaheed. On Nov. 9, 2017, investigators watched Shaheed leave his residence in Baltimore and travel to a gas station, where he was followed by a detective into the bathroom. When the detective entered, Shaheed quickly exited with another male subject and left without making any purchases.

Believing they had witnessed Shaheed engage in a drug deal in the gas station bathroom, law enforcement obtained a court order to install a GPS device on Shaheed's vehicle.

The plea agreement stated that investigators executed a search warrant on Shaheed's vehicle and residence on Nov. 16, 2017. In total, investigators seized about 82 grams of cocaine, 55 grams of heroin and 7 grams of fentanyl. They also found two handguns and over $12,000 in cash. Officers also seized a cellphone that was associated with the same phone number saved as "T" in the overdose victim's cellphone.

On Nov. 6, 2019, a federal grand jury indicted Shaheed on charges related to possession with intent to distribute controlled substances in November 2017, and possession of the firearms, and an arrest warrant was issued.

On Nov. 20, 2019, federal investigators located Shaheed at his last residence and observed activity indicative of drug trafficking activity in plain view. The day of his arrest, officers executed another search warrant and found six bags of cocaine and a handgun.

Shaheed's case is part of Project Safe Neighborhoods, a program uniting levels of law enforcement and their communities to reduce violence and make neighborhoods safer.
Three men are dead and three people were injured after a shooting at a North Carolina hotel that involved multiple biker gangs, police said.

The apparent gunfight happened at the Baymont Ramada in Fayetteville on March 19, according to a news release from the Fayetteville Police Department.

A fight among four different motorcycle gangs spurred the shooting, a Fayetteville police spokesperson told McClatchy News.

Hells Angels, Red Devils, Infamous Ryders and La Familia were involved in the altercation and police believe that more than one person fired shots.

When officers arrived on scene at 8:51 p.m., 42-year-old Fayetteville resident William Franklin Davis Sr. was dead, according to police.

Two more victims died from their injuries after being transported to a hospital: 49-year-old Donald Dillenbeck from Vestal, New York and 37-year-old Keith Allan Dickey from Lumber Bridge, North Carolina, police said in the news release.

Three other people were hospitalized for their injuries, the new release said.

Several bikers were fighting outside of a convenience store next to the Baymont Ramada just hours before the shooting occurred, store clerk Robert Hamilton told WVTD.

They were tearing each other up, Hamilton told WVTD. After I called 911, they dispersed. The police are trying to tie it all in together.

The police did not say whether the fight in front of the store was linked to the shooting that occurred hours later. Detectives said that the shooting was not random.

Anyone with information is asked to contact Detective R. Vernon at 910-729-2525 or Crimestoppers at 910-483-8477, according to police.

Fayetteville is about 67 miles south of Raleigh.

Birthday party shooting leaves 2 dead, including 15-year-old, North Carolina cops say

Man who vanished in national forest last year is now facing murder charge, NC cops say

Noose found months after racist graffiti shut down Facebook construction site in Utah

Former employee opened fire on bosss home after he was fired, Washington cops say
MacKenzie Scott is giving away more of her multi-billion-dollar fortune.

The philanthropist confirmed she's donating more than $3.9 billion to a variety of organizations, including Habitat for Humanity and Planned Parenthood.

In a blog posted published on Medium, Scott said this latest round of donations is part of a larger plan to support the needs of underrepresented people from a variety of groups.

"We dont advocate for particular policies or reforms. Instead, we seek a portfolio of organizations that supports the ability of all people to participate in solutions," wrote Scott.

The billionaire donated $436 million to Habitat for Humanity, the nonprofit organization announced. Planned Parenthood confirmed Scott donated $275 million, the largest gift from a single donor in the organization's history.

Habitat for Humanity said it will use Scott's donation to increase the supply of affordable housing, as well as advocate policies and legislation to give more people access to affordable housing.

BIDDING WARS IN NYC: Tenants scramble for apartments, rents skyrocket as COVID-19 deals vanish

RUSSIAN CYBERATTACKS: What small businesses should do

MacKenzie Scott has donated to hundreds of organizations.

"This incredibly generous gift will allow us to dramatically increase capacity and implement programs that will have a multi-generational impact on communities around the U.S. and our global mission for many years to come," Jonathan Reckford, CEO of Habitat for Humanity International, said in a statement.

Habitat for Humanity is a global organization that partners with communities to build or improve housing.

Planned Parenthood Federation of America president and CEO Alexis McGill Johnson said in a statement it will use the gift from Scott to help support "efforts to advance health equity by eliminating racial and structural barriers for our patients in the communities where Planned Parenthood works."

Scott, the ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, donated $2.7 billion last year to 286 groups supporting a variety of causes.

Story continues

In a previous Medium post, Scott called out the increasing concentration of wealth among a smaller group of people.

"We are all attempting to give away a fortune that was enabled by systems in need of change," she wrote in a previous Medium post where she called out the increasing concentration of wealth among a smaller group of people and spotlighted community-centered organizations affecting change.

"Because we believe that teams with experience on the front lines of challenges will know best how to put the money to good use, we encouraged them to spend it however they choose," she continued.

In July 2020, Scott gave more than $1.7 billion to diverse organizations, including historically Black colleges and universities. In December that year, Scott announced she donated an additional $4.2 billion to 384 organizations providing services including food banks, emergency relief funds and debt relief.

Contributing: The Associated Press

Follow Brett Molina on Twitter: @brettmolina23.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: MacKenzie Scott gives $3.9 billion to Planned Parenthood, others
(Shutterstock / GiuseppeCrimeni)

A new book claiming to have solved a mystery surrounding Anne Frank has been pulled by its Dutch publisher.

The decision to recall the book came after its findings involving who betrayed Frank and her family during the Second World War were discredited.

Those investigating the subject for the book, which was published in January, claimed that a Jewish man named Arnold van den Bergh was the one who led to their discovery and ensuing arrest,

However, a report by Second World War experts and Jewish historians have argued that the research featured in Canadian author Rosemary Sullivans book is unverified.

The European Jewish Congress, as well as van den Berghs granddaughter, is now urging publisher HarperCollins to pull its English language edition, stating its publication has tainted the memory of Frank as well as survivors of the Holocaust.

With this story, you are exploiting the story of Anne Frank, you are falsifying history and you are contributing to great injustice, the accuseds granddaughter said.

Frank, who was Jewish, wrote a diary about being in hiding from the Nazis for two years. After getting caught, she died in a concentration camp in 1945.

The book, titled The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation, claimed that van den Bergh had most likely given up Franks location in order to save his family. But, experts have stated that there is not any serious evidence for this grave accusation.

Dutch publishing house Ambo Anthos have now pulled the release from bookshops, offering its sincere apologies to anyone who has been offended by its content.

Anne Frank House (Shutterstock / JJava Designs)

The books chief investigator, Pieter van Twisk defended his teams findings, saying they never claimed to have passed them off as the whole truth.

Our theory is a theory and nothing more, he told Dutch news agency ANP.

The Independent has contacted HarperCollins for comment.
Fans of Netflixs YOU are rallying for the return of a popular character after it was announced that season four began filming earlier this week.

Fan theories around Love Quinn  serial killer Joe Goldbergs (Penn Badgley) murderous love interest (played by Victoria Pedretti)  began circulating on Twitter after the official YOU account shared a picture of a clapperboard on Tuesday night (22 March).

The caption read: feeling YOU-4-ic. YOU Season four is now in production.

The picture was later shared by the shows writer Sera Gamble who also told her followers that the show began filming this week.

*Spoilers for season three below*

Netflix viewers reacted to the production update with excitement over Loves possible return after the character was left for dead at the end of season three.

While Love is shown to be dead in the finale, the series many twists and turns have fuelled speculation that she may still be alive.

if yall dont resurrect love quinn and play another taylor swift song im not watching  leslie (@chloescrain) March 22, 2022

Referencing a scene in season two, one user commented: There was a scene with [Love] where [she] mentions she would want to go to Paris to learn to bake or something soooo...

The shows third season ended with Joe escaping the US to terrorise a new dating pool in Paris.

Multiple Twitter users also wondered whether Cardi B would be making a surprise appearance in season four, referencing the online friendship between the rapper and Badgley that began last year.

In October 2021, the two stars swapped Twitter profile pictures after discovering they were fans of one another. At the time of writing, Badgley and Cardi Bs profile pictures remain unchanged.

According to Netflix viewership data, 111 million people tuned in to watch season three of YOU after it was released on 15 October 2021.

Season four is expected to release later this year.
One protester in Kingston held a sign reading: Kings, Queens and Princesses and Princes belong in fairytales, not in Jamaica!

Anti-colonial protests have followed Prince William and his wife, Princess Catherine, to every Caribbean nation theyve visited in celebration of Queen Elizabeth IIs 70th year on the throne.

According to The Washington Post, instead of warm welcomes, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are being received with calls for reparations, apologies, and considerations to remove the queen as the head of state.

People protest to demand an apology and slavery reparations during a visit to the former British colony by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, Prince William and Kate, in Kingston, Jamaica Tuesday. (Photo: Collin Reid/AP)

The eight-day trip, which began Saturday, marks their first joint official overseas visit since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. Stops include Belize, Jamaica, and the Bahamas. The royals will not be visiting Barbados, which cast off Queen England II as its head of state last year, declaring itself a republic.

An organization called the Advocates Network, made up of 100 leading human rights advocates, professors and attorneys in Jamaica, released an open letter to Prince William upon the royals arrival there on Tuesday.

During her 70 years on the throne, your grandmother has done nothing to redress and atone for the suffering of our ancestors that took place during her reign and/or during the entire period of British trafficking of Africans, enslavement, indentureship and colonization, they wrote, in part.

The letter called on the prince to advocate for atonement and reparations, concluding in a distinctly Jamaican tone: We encourage you to act accordingly and just sey yuh sorry!

The Post reports that protesters in Kingston held signs reading, Kings, Queens and Princesses and Princes belong in fairytales, not in Jamaica! and Who voted for the Queen? Not me.

The very first stop on their tour was canceled Sunday in Belize amid protests over a visit to a farm currently involved in a land dispute.

The protests come after at least two years of global exhaustion amid the coronavirus pandemic, which has disproportionately affected Black people around the world, as well as at least two years of protests against police violence and the rise of white extremism.

Story continues

Additionally, the British royal family has been plagued by issues over the past few years, including the death of Prince Philip, a sex scandal involving Prince Andrew, and the revelation of alleged racism after Prince Harry married the former actress, Meghan Markle, a bi-racial American. The couple has since given up their formal royal roles and live in California.

TheGrio is now on your TV via Apple TV, Amazon Fire, Roku, and Android TV. Also, please download theGrio mobile apps today!

The post British royals Caribbean tour draws calls for reparations, launches anti-colonial protests appeared first on TheGrio.
A 57-year-old Cherokee County father, Howard Newhouse, fatally shot his 19-year-old daughter before killing himself.



The Cherokee County Sheriffs Office responded to a shooting at a home in the Bridge Mill subdivision in Canton, Georgia, at approximately 5:45 p.m. on March 19 and found the bodies of Newhouse and his daughter. The officials confirmed that Newhouse had shot his daughter, Kathryn Newhouse, before committing suicide by shooting himself.



Kathryns mother was reportedly at home during the incident, but she was not injured. The teens brother Chris Newhouse, who woke up to a voicemail from his mother regarding the incident, attributed the incident to his familys mental health.



A tragic culmination of all of these different mental health issues that kind of compounded and led to such a, escalated to a situation that  it shouldnt have happened, but it happened, Chris told WGCL.



Chris apparently had had lunch with his father and sister earlier on Saturday and did not see any signs of anger or violence. He explained that his sister, who identified as a transgender woman, had suffered from psychological disorders for years. She was released from an in-patient mental health institution before the pandemic.



Whenever they pushed her out of that mental health intuition and forced her to come back home, thats when everything really brought a lot of stress and tension upon our family and thats when a lot of the stressful stuff started happening, he added.



Newhouse and his daughter had reportedly been arrested in separate battery cases in the past. Newhouse allegedly held Kathryn down by her throat on a bed on April 9, 2019, but the case was dismissed through a pre-trial diversion program on April 30, 2020.



In another case that occurred on Jan. 28, 2020, Kathryn allegedly struck a cup her father was holding in his hand, which resulted in his glasses being pushed into his face and cutting his nose. The case was also dismissed on the condition of Kathryn completing a mental health treatment, writing an apology and taking a life skills course.



If you or anyone you know is struggling with thoughts of suicide, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255. For a list of international suicide hotlines, click here.

Story continues

Enjoy this content? Read more from NextShark!

'They Question My Ethnicity, My Patriotism': Elaine Chao Slams Democrats for 'Double Standard' on Racism

Obsessive K-Pop Fan Posts Delusional, Terrifying Response to EXO's Chen's Marriage

Thailand Protests: Thai Rappers, Activists Arrested by Authorities For Sedition

'That Wuhan, China, bat thing?': Michelin Star Chef Blasted for Xenophobic Comments in LA Times Op-Ed
The Chicago Sun-Times use of an image of Tokyo residents for a U.S. news story related to COVID-19 stirred online outrage.



The Sun-Times paired their article A new COVID variant is spreading across the US. Heres what you need to know about BA.2 with a featured image of a Japanese crowd in Tokyo wearing face masks.



While the image has now been changed to a sign encouraging the use of face masks in Chicago, journalist Amy S. Choi had shared a screenshot of the Sun-Times Twitter post with the original photo to her Twitter on Sunday. She captioned her tweet, Are you kidding me with this photo. Are you f*cking KIDDING me? We're still doing this?





Are you kidding me with this photo. Are you fucking KIDDING me. Were still doing this? pic.twitter.com/EBzhz8A2pi

 Amy S. Choi  (@awesomechoi) March 21, 2022







Choi and many others who replied to her thread criticized the choice of the image as careless and offensive, saying the publication was adding to the persistent racism and hate crimes experienced by many Asian Americans throughout the pandemic.



[The] article is mostly about rising cases in Europe and the US yet still they chose this photo, a Twitter user replied, along with a screenshot of the article itself.



Is that really even a photo of the US? I mean, it'd be bad enough if it was a photo of the US focused on Asians, but those clothing and mask colors scream Tokyo to me...in which case it's doubly why?!? another user wrote.



One user tagged Sun-Times and said, just wanted to say thanks for directly contributing to someone's grandmother being murdered.



@Suntimes whats up with the racism. Do better, another user tweeted.



In response to the backlash, the publication released a public apology to their Twitter account on Monday.



Over the weekend, the Sun-Times posted a wire story about COVID-19 in the U.S. and inadvertently paired it with a photo of masked Tokyo residents. We know this error has understandably offended readers and have removed the photo and related social media post, the Sun-Times tweeted. Such images can add to the worsening xenophobia and racism that Asian Americans have faced since COVID began. We apologize and vow to do better.



Story continues



Such images can add to the worsening xenophobia and racism that Asian Americans have faced since COVID began. We apologize and vow to do better. (2/2)

 Chicago Sun-Times (@Suntimes) March 21, 2022







The apology did not satisfy some users who further questioned the publications actions.



Yes, do better! Its 2022, there should be no excuse to be using an image like that continue to damage the Asian community! There should be outrage and lawsuits against any and all institutions that do that, one user replied.



This incident highlights a far deeper issue the lack of diversity on your staff and the weak processes which allow such egregious and harmful errors to occur, another user said. Substantive action beyond an apology is neededwhat is your organization doing to ensure this never happens again?

Enjoy this content? Read more from NextShark!

Apple Releases Lulu Wangs Heartwarming Short 'Nian' for Chinese New Year

Sacramento Teacher Gets Death Threats After Using 'Slant-Eyes' to Explain Racism in Zoom Class

4 in 5 Asian American Professionals Have Experienced Discrimination, Survey Says

Germany Finally Reveals First Twin Panda Cubs Born in the Country
The Chicago White Sox avoided arbitration with pitcher Reynaldo Lopez and outfielder Adam Engel, coming to terms on one-year deals Tuesday.

Lopez and the Sox agreed to a $2.625 million deal, while Engel signed a $2 million contract.

The Sox began Tuesday with three arbitration-eligible players in Lopez, Engel and pitcher Lucas Giolito.

Giolito filed at $7.5 million and the Sox at $7.3 million, according to multiple reports.

Asked earlier Tuesday about contracts and being one of the faces of the Sox, Giolito said: The organization knows how I feel about them. Absolutely love the White Sox. Love being a part of this team. I just want something fair.

Giolito went 11-9 with a 3.53 ERA and 201 strikeouts in 31 starts last season. He has received American League Cy Young Award votes each of the last three years.

Lopez had a 4-4 record with a 3.43 ERA in 20 outings (nine starts) in 2021. He bounced back in a big way after having a 6.49 ERA in eight starts in 2020.

Engel battled various injuries (strained right hamstring, left shoulder inflammation) throughout most of last season, appearing in just 39 games. He slashed .252/.336/.496 with seven home runs and 18 RBIs.




Russia on Wednesday received backing from China to continue its membership in the Group of 20.

A Chinese official said that Moscow should still be allowed to attend the next G20 summit amid growing concerns from the U.S. and its western allies about its ongoing conflict with Ukraine, Reuters reported.

China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said during a news conference that Russia is still an "important member" of the G20, adding that the group still needs to find answers to critical issues such as economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

"No member has the right to remove another country as a member. The G20 should implement real multilateralism, strengthen unity and cooperation," Wang told the media.

Russia's ambassador to Indonesia Lyudmila Vorobieva said that Russian President Vladimir Putin intends to attend the upcoming summit in Indonesia in November, according to Reuters.

"It will depend on many, many things, including the COVID situation, which is getting better. So far, his intention is... he wants to," Vorobieva, who currently is the summit's chairperson, said at a news conference.

When asked about rumors of Russia being kicked out of the group, Vorobieva replied that the G20 is a forum to discuss economic issues and not a crisis like Ukraine.

"Of course, expulsion of Russia from this kind of forum will not help these economic problems to be resolved. On the contrary, without Russia it would be difficult to do so," Vorobieva said.

Sources told the news agency the U.S. and its Western allies are assessing whether to keep Russia in the G20 group following its invasion of Ukraine, adding that a potential move to remove Russia would be vetoed by other member nations in that group, Reuters reported.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which began last month, has led to a series of international sanctions being leveled against Russia. U.S. companies in a variety of sectors have also moved to end business with Russia as well.

In a statement, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said group members will have to decide to remove Russia, but added it is not a major priority at the moment, Reuters noted.

"When it comes to the question of how to proceed with the WTO (World Trade Organization) and the G20, it is imperative to discuss this question with the countries that are involved and not to decide individually," Scholz said.
In February, amid Russias unprecedented military buildup on Ukraines borders  and the Biden administrations equally unprecedented strategy of actively declassifying intelligence gathered about Russias intentions to invade its neighbor  national security adviser Jake Sullivan took a question at a White House press briefing about the credibility of the U.S. during the crisis.

How, asked a reporter, could the public trust the U.S. governments claims about Russias intentions in Ukraine given how it had used faulty intelligence to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq?

Sullivan seemed to anticipate the query. There was a fundamental distinction between the disclosure of intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq War and with Ukraine and Russia today, answered Sullivan. In the situation in Iraq, intelligence was used and deployed from this very podium to start a war, Sullivan said, referring to the administration of former President George W. Bush. We are trying to stop a war, to prevent a war, to avert a war.

The U.S. would continue to operate in good faith and share everything that we know to the best of our ability while protecting sources and methods, said Sullivan.

As this interchange revealed, the use  and abuse  of intelligence to justify the U.S. invasion of Iraq has cast a long shadow over U.S. politics, sowing distrust in Americas intelligence community and wider national security bureaucracy.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan. (Yuri Gripas/Abaca/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

And, fairly or not, no U.S. spy agency was more closely associated with Iraq-related intelligence failures than the CIA. Former CIA Director George Tenets reported characterization that the evidence showing Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) was a slam dunk is now immortalized in American politics as a kind of shorthand for hubris and the capacity for official deception.

Though Iraq still lingers in the American consciousness, the CIA finds itself in a very different, and more salutary, position today regarding the intelligence battle over Russias invasion of Ukraine.

Story continues

Current U.S. strategy has also placed great weight on the intelligence community. Its the first time since Iraq and WMDs where the public has been asked to trust the agency during a major foreign policy crisis, said Jeff Asher, a former CIA analyst.

Indeed, unlike with weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the agencys and the wider intelligence communitys analysis about Russias intentions to attack Ukraine (though not the reported prognostications of a quick rout of Kyiv) have been widely borne out. And its warnings about Russian false flag operations being used as a pretext for war look prescient, as Russia continues to float baseless theories about a potential Ukrainian chemical weapons attack.

The lessons that led to todays successes were hard-won, experts told Yahoo News. Over the years, the agencys analytic corps absorbed the failures surrounding 9/11 and the debacle of the Iraq War, said Asher, the former CIA analyst. In fact, studying how the CIA went astray in its analysis of both events is now used as a training module for agency analysts, he says. Those lessons are sort of built into the analytic culture at the CIA now, Asher said.

A U.S. Army sergeant stands guard near a burning oil well in Southern Iraq in 2003. (Arlo K. Abrahamson/U.S. Navy/Getty Images)

The intelligence community has had a generation to think about those things, and what went wrong, Asher said.

The January 2017 intelligence community assessment detailing Russias covert intervention in the 2016 U.S. presidential election was another watershed moment in the CIAs public-facing intelligence efforts, Asher said, and one where its analysts fundamentally got it right.

But the Obama administration, potentially worried about domestic political fallout and the sensitivity of the sourcing, failed to fully exploit this now public information surrounding Russias interference campaign  a lesson the Biden administration seems to have learned with its novel declassification strategy regarding Ukraine, according to Asher.

Agency leadership has also been key in the rebound, with CIA Director Bill Burns  a former career diplomat and Russia hand who has helped craft the Biden administrations disclosure strategy  unusually well-tailored for the current moment, say experts. In a nod to Burnss diplomatic acumen, President Biden even sent the CIA director, a former U.S. ambassador to Moscow, to Russia in November to try and deter Moscow from invading.

Burnss thinking about Russias designs on Ukraine was influenced by his time in Moscow, as was his exposure to Russian President Vladimir Putin's grievance-focused worldview. Understanding the Kremlin was as much about psychology as geopolitics, wrote Burns in his 2019 memoir.

Burns strongly endorsed the administrations declassification strategy in a recent appearance before Congress. In all the years I spent as a career diplomat, I saw too many instances in which we lost information wars with the Russians, he said.

An apartment complex in Kyiv, Ukraine, that was heavily damaged by a Russian attack, March 18. (Chris McGrath/Getty Images)

I think we have had a great deal of effect in disrupting their tactics and their calculations and demonstrating to the entire world that this is a premeditated and unprovoked aggression built on a body of lies and false narratives. So this is one information war that I think Putin is losing, said Burns.

Still, unsurprisingly for a spy service, many of the CIAs contributions on Ukraine have been decidedly less public. The agency has developed a close intelligence-sharing relationship with its Ukrainian counterpart, say former U.S. intelligence officials. The CIA also made a series of covert moves that have helped prepare the Ukrainian security services for the current crisis. Shortly after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, the agency initiated secret paramilitary training programs for Ukrainian special operations personnel in the U.S. and on Ukraines former eastern front. These secret initiatives helped teach forces loyal to Kyiv the skills that have enabled it to mount an unexpectedly fierce resistance to the Russian onslaught, say former officials.

Secret programs notwithstanding, the major revelation of the Ukraine crisis may be how the rapid, ostensibly good-faith dissemination of intelligence can color public discourse and debate during times of intense international stress  and even function as a type of public diplomacy.

Ukraine has shown how the IC [intelligence community] can effectively harness the speed of 21st century information sharing to provide effective messaging in support of U.S. foreign policy objectives, said Asher.

_____

What happened this week in Ukraine? Check out this explainer from Yahoo Immersive to find out.
A robbery suspect from Connecticut is in custody in Clayton County after an hours-long standoff Tuesday afternoon.

The U.S. Marshals Office requested the Clayton County Police Departments help in arresting Jaquan Rosado at 2 p.m.

Investigators learned that Rosado was thought to be armed and dangerous and hiding in a home in the 11000 block of Southwood Drive in Hampton.

[DOWNLOAD: Free WSB-TV News app for alerts as news breaks]

By the time officers arrived, Rosado had barricaded himself inside the home and was refusing to come out.

More than four hours later, at 6:39 p.m., officers were able to take Rosado into custody without anyone being injured.

TRENDING STORIES:

According to police, Rosado was wanted out of Connecticut on a laundry list of charges, including:

Criminal possession of a firearm/defense weapon

Robbery

Three counts of violation of probation

Four counts of failure to appear

Three counts of larceny

Criminal mischief

Attempt to commit larceny

[SIGN UP: WSB-TV Daily Headlines Newsletter]

IN OTHER NEWS:
Placentia Yorba Linda School Board discusses critical race theory

A mix of proponents and opponents to teaching Critical Race Theory are in attendance as the Placentia Yorba Linda School Board discusses a proposed resolution to ban it from being taught in schools in Yorba Linda, Calif. on Nov. 16, 2021. Credit - Robert GauthierLos Angeles Times/Getty Images

When Lisa Schoenberger got up to speak in favor of a mask mandate at a school board meeting in Omaha, Neb., last year, she knew she wasnt going to be popular, so she tried to soften the crowd with a reference to Frozen II, her 5-year-old daughters favorite movie. In one scene, a character confronts a challenge by resolving to do the next right thing.

I share the frustration of all of the people who are really, really tired of this, said Schoenberger, the first attendee at the August meeting to support a mask requirement for students under 12, after more than 30 people had voiced opposition. But when you have a difficult decision, all you can do is the next right thing, she said. And I believe that thats what masking for one more month will do for our children.

Read more: Inside the Fight Over What Kids Learn About American History

Boos erupted before she had finished speaking, prompting a school board member to reprimand the crowd. After nearly three hours of public comments, the mask measure never came to a vote; one board member was absent due to a COVID-19 breakthrough case, and of the board members present, none seconded the motion to take up the proposed rule. Applause broke out as it failed to move forward.

I left that meeting actually less concerned about COVID and more concerned about what the culture of our district was going to look like, says Schoenberger, who after that experience decided to run for a seat on the Millard Public Schools Board of Education, in hopes of encouraging respectful debate and preventing school board meetings from being derailed by partisan politics. That kind of galvanized my desire to serve in this way.

Story continues

Lisa Schoenberger holds her 5-year-old daughter, Clara, as she files to run for school board. Courtesy Lisa Schoenberger

As the pandemic disrupts a third school year, and as school boards around the country cast contentious votes on mask requirements and school curricula, more people are making a similar choice and running for school board to play a role in those decisions.

Run for Something, a group that supports progressive candidates in down-ballot races, is prioritizing school board campaigns this year, endorsing Schoenberger and about a dozen others thus far in an effort to elect board members who will oppose book bans, support diversity initiatives and resist the backlash to so-called critical race theory.

Read more: Meet the Educators Who Saved a Pandemic School Year

Once-sleepy school board meetings have grown combative over pandemic safety measures and social justice issues, and conservative parents and politicians have sought to restrict how race is discussed in classrooms, calling for bans on certain books, targeting those that deal with racism or feature LGBTQ characters.

In January, a woman in Luray, Va., threatened to bring every single gun loaded and ready if her children were required to wear masks at school. In McMinn County, Tenn., the school board voted in January to ban Maus, a Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust, from being taught in classrooms because the book contains objectionable language. Reuters documented 220 instances of death threats and harassment against school board members over decisions related to COVID-19 safety, transgender rights and lessons about racism in the U.S. And the Justice Department launched an effort to combat the rise in harassment and threats against school board members last year.

From boring to battle grounds

Meanwhile, school board races have grown more competitive as once-quiet, non-partisan races evolve into battle grounds between conservatives and progressives. In 2018, 40% of school board candidates running in the countrys 200 largest districts didnt have opponents. But just 24% of candidates ran unopposed in 2021, according to Ballotpedia.

And the issues at the center of these races are shifting. A 2018 survey by the National School Boards Association found that board members ranked student achievement, school funding and teacher quality atop the list of extremely urgent issues; social issuesincluding gender, identity and equalitywas the category most ranked somewhat urgent or not urgent at all.

But lately, the debates coming before school boards focus more on those social issues and exemplify the culture-war issues dividing the nation.

School districts and school boards are where we are now fighting Americas societal battles, said Nick Melvoin, a member of the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education, at a recent event on school board politics. Melvoins 2017 election was among the most expensive school board races in U.S. history, as charter school advocates and teachers unions spent nearly $15 million to support their respective candidates in a race that drew national attention from the charter school movement.

"They understand that determining what kids learn in school can help create the voters they become."

The districts 2020 election surpassed that number, as spending neared $17.5 million, according to the Los Angeles Times. As national debates play out at the school level, Melvoin expects other school board races could draw national attention and big-money donors in the future.

The 1776 Project PAC was launched by Ryan Girdusky in May 2021 with the goal of combating critical race theory in schools and is aiming to support 300 conservative candidates for school board this year. Girdusky, a 34-year-old conservative political consultant and commentator, says he doesnt like the current trajectory of public education. Girdusky opposes diversity, equity and inclusion policies and social-emotional learning programs in schools because he argues they are inspired by critical race theory  a graduate-level academic framework that explores how institutions perpetuate racism.

Run For Something plans to endorse at least 140 education-related candidates this yearincluding those running for local school boards, state boards of education and library boardsaiming to confront what the group sees as a conservative stronghold on school boards.

They understand that determining what kids learn in schools can help create the voters they become, says Run for Something Co-Founder Amanda Litman, noting that the people who win these elections stand to influence far more than bus schedules and teacher pay.

The people who control your school boards determine the kind of curriculum your kids learn in many places, which then determines the kind of citizens they grow up to become.

A personal, emotional fight

Staci Childs decided to run for the Texas State Board of Education this year after witnessing the backlash to critical race theory in the state, including a new law restricting how teachers can discuss race and gender in the classroom.

What really took me over the edge was when I started hearing this rhetoric around critical race theory and how just teaching the accurate depiction of U.S. history is now used as an emotional tactic to try to get people in an uproar, says Childs, an attorney who previously taught reading and U.S. history in Houston public schools.

I want to play a part in what kids learn, I want to make sure theyre learning stuff that will help them when they become adults, and I want to make sure that theyre learning things about themselves and their identities.

Childs, who was endorsed by Run for Something, is campaigning in a May run-off election against Coretta Mallet-Fontenot, an 11th-grade English teacher who is similarly frustrated by the rhetoric around critical race theory.

Staci Childs decided to run for the Texas State Board of Education after growing frustrated by the rhetoric over critical race theory in the state. Courtesy Staci Childs

I dont want teachers teaching under fear or threat, says Mallet-Fontenot. Our kids deserve to know that, quite frankly, America, as we know it, has a complicated history. But the way that you deal with that is to have the conversation. You dont shy away from that.

The backlash over critical race theory might be new, but its not the first time school boards have turned into a battleground for cultural issues.

Adam Laats, a Binghamton University professor who has studied the history of cultural battles over schooling, notes that in the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan clamored to take over school boards, promoting white-nationalist views and encouraging the use of textbooks that celebrated the countrys past. In the 1950s, members of the conservative John Birch Society who opposed communism often disrupted school board meetings.

I would rather have a thousand school board members than one president and no school board members, Ralph Reed, the former leader of the Christian Coalition, said in a 1996 NewsHour interview, arguing that conservative Christians needed to expand local, grassroots organizing in order to raise money, turn out voters and promote their ideals at a time when the U.S. Supreme Court was reinforcing a ban on school prayer and reaffirming abortion rights.

"I want to play a part in what kids learn. I want to make sure they're learning stuff that will help them when they become adults."

The issues that led to heated protests at recent school board meetings have often reflected broader social and cultural changes. Many school districts that removed school resource officers in 2020 or enacted racial equity policies, for example, did so in response to mass demands for racial justice after the death of George Floyd.

And for anyone who objects to such changes, school board meetings offer a far more accessible venue for protest than corporate offices or the halls of Congress.

I cant go up to the NFLs offices if I dont like their changes and complain, Laats says. But I can, on Thursday at 6:30, go down to town hall and sit in the public school board meeting, and I can complain there.

And school-related issues often hit home in a unique way for parents who want their children to be safe and well-educated. At the Omaha school board meeting where Schoenberger spoke last year, many parents offered examples of how their children had been harmed by isolation or pandemic safety restrictions, arguing either that masks caused anxiety or were an essential protection that enabled them to stay in school.

Schools are personal, Litman says. Theres a lot that you can mess with before it gets into peoples homes. But school is the place where its a very personal, emotional fight.

We owe them a real education

As that fight continues to play out in school districts this year, progressive candidates are hoping to regain some of the ground won by conservative candidates who weaponized critical race theory and ran on a platform of giving parents more control of their childrens education.

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, was elected in November after campaigning against critical race theory. In January, he signed an executive order banning inherently divisive concepts from public schools and establishing a hotline where parents can report teachers who violate that order.

Were not going to win every fight, but we should make sure that voters have a very clear, well-defined choice, says Litman.

Schoenberger is expecting that measures related to race or book bans could come before her school board in the future, and she knows she could face backlash and harassment if elected. But that doesnt worry her.

If people who are in this for the right reasons get scared out, if we dont step up, then our schools are going to go in a direction that is quite political, and isnt a place that will serve our students, she says.

We owe them a real education thats comprehensive, and that sometimes deals with topics that are difficult to discuss, she adds. We cant send them out into the world never having had a hard conversation.
ALBANY, N.Y  First Andrew Cuomo launched a TV advertising blitz aimed at redeeming his scandal-scarred name. Then the former New York governor took the pulpit at two Black churches to decry the "cancel culture" he says forced him from office.

Now he has a decision to make.

For Cuomo, the ultimate move in his quick-turn bid to revive his career would be to run for governor in the Democratic primary in June, which he is seriously considering, according to six former aides familiar with his thinking.

One scenario being discussed: He could upend the three-candidate Democratic primary, battle Gov. Kathy Hochul using his dwindling $16 million campaign warchest and hope to twist up the race so much that he comes away with a plurality of the vote and wins.

"He effectively creates a split vote in the primary, and its not impossible," said Democratic strategist Hank Sheinkopf, who has worked on previous Cuomo campaigns but is not involved in the current discussions. "He has nothing to lose."

But time is short. Cuomo has barely two weeks left to get the required 15,000 petition signatures to reach the primary ballot  including at least 100 each he would need from half of New York's congressional districts.

And that's the bare minimum: Every campaign knows it probably needs close to double that to ensure enough valid signatures are approved by the state Board of Elections. Those could be tough requirements to meet in a short time, some Democratic leaders said.

"At a certain point, the clock runs out," a leading Democratic official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to not anger the former governor.

There's one other option: Cuomo could skip the primary and run as an independent in November. He'd face both a Democrat  likely Hochul, who was his hand-picked lieutenant governor  and the winner of the Republican primary.

An independent bid would come with its own, more arduous set of requirements. He'd need 45,000 petition signatures and at least 500 each from half of the state's congressional districts. But it would buy him more time, with petitions not due until the end of May. And even if he fell short in the election, he'd likely win enough votes as an independent to create his own political party, giving him more influence in years to come.

Story continues

A Cuomo bid, some Democrats fear, could disenfranchise party faithful, leading many to stay home on Election Day in November and helping Republicans pick up seats down ballot  particularly battleground House seats in New York that could affect whether Democrats retain control of Congress.

One of the aides, who remains close to Cuomo, said the former governor and his allies are polling whether a race is viable.

An internal poll could be telling. While Cuomo's camp has been buoyed by a recent Emerson Poll that showed him within 4 percentage points of Hochul, other polls have shown her with strong popularity and Cuomo with weak support. A Siena College poll last month had Cuomo with a 60 percent unfavorability rating.

But the Siena poll was before Cuomo's public blitz, which his inner circle has so far been pleased with.



Some Democrats think Cuomo has sought to keep the idea that he might run alive  "I have a lot of options open, and I'm considering them," Cuomo said last week  in order to simply stay relevant, but will ultimately decide against a quixotic run.

His campaign cash would surely dwindle fast; he'd have a hard time raising money; and most of the union and special interest support is already behind Hochul after 11 years of being by Cuomo's side.

"This is all about saving a bit of his reputation, trying to make himself viable again," said Peter Kauffmann, a consultant who helped run Cuomo's campaigns in 2010 and 2014. "And hes going to try to build up enough buzz about himself where he can come in and present this as his choice not to run in a magnanimous way to make himself the hero of his own story."

Cuomo spokesperson Rich Azzopardi declined comment on Cuomo's future, instead referring back to comments the former governor made last week at his public appearances.

If Cuomo were to run, it would be met with a swift rebuke by his opponents that would make his comeback extraordinarily difficult.

Some of the women who accused him of sexual harassment are already warning him not to try to reenter political life; he still faces criticism for underreporting Covid-19 nursing home deaths; and a state agency is trying claw back $5 million from a deal he signed to write a book about the state's Covid response.

Critics said Cuomo's public comeback has been devoid of contrition and has relied on a bevy of mistruths about the allegations against him  spinning a tale that he is victim of a political hit job orchestrated by those who wanted to be governor or opposed his policies.

After all, he resigned in the face of likely impeachment rather than fight to stay in office.

"The more @andrewcuomo tries to make a comeback the more the world gets to see who he really is: A narcissistic bully who cant stand not being in the spotlight," Janice Dean, a Fox News meteorologist and a critic of his nursing home policies after the death of her in-laws to Covid in New York nursing homes, wrote March 9 on Twitter.

Ana Maria Archila, a Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor running with gubernatorial hopeful Jumaane Williams, said Cuomo should still be impeached to thwart any future political aspirations.

"His attempt to return to public office without accepting responsibility or facing real accountability is offensive and grotesque, and he must be stopped," Archila wrote in an op-ed in the New York Daily News.

Perhaps even more blunt, Attorney General Tish James, whose office investigated the sexual harassment allegations, ripped Cuomo's first public speech March 6.

"Even though multiple independent investigations found his victims to be credible, Cuomo continues to blame everyone but himself. Cuomo wasnt railroaded; he quit so he wouldn't be impeached. New Yorkers are ready to move forward from this sick, pathetic man," she said in a statement.

Still, Cuomo has 40 years of New York political experience, and one of his trademarks is always looking for a political opportunity that he could capitalize on.

He might see one now, some current and former advisers hinted.

Hochul is facing a potential rough patch as she tries to negotiate her first budget deal and secure agreements on changes to bail laws sought by moderate Democrats. With New York City facing a crime wave, Cuomo last week urged changes to the bail laws that he himself championed as governor; soon after, Hochul's own proposal leaked to reporters.

A top issue for voters is crime, Sheinkopf said, and Cuomo could capitalize on it: "Everybody whos involved seems to be not dealing with the way he would be perceived as dealing with it."

Another aspect: Cuomo and New York City Mayor Eric Adams have remained friendly, even going out to dinner recently  one of his first sightings in public and a signal that Cuomo still has political clout. And Cuomo touted Adams' efforts to crack down on crime in the city.

Asked Tuesday if he thinks Cuomo should run, Adams did not give a direct answer.

"He has to make his decision," the Democratic mayor, a moderate who ran on an anti-crime message, told reporters after an unrelated event. "As I stated, I thought it was important for him to step down at the time and thought it was the right decision. He can make the determination what he wants to do with his life in the future."
Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty

Petr Fiala has powerful early memories of tanks. In August of 1968, the Soviet Army invaded Czechoslovakia and crushed an uprising against the Soviet Unions dictatorial rule. More than 100 people died in the street while resisting the soldiers.

Back then, Fiala was just 4 years old, but he can still recall his parents shock and distress, which lingered long after the Soviet soldiers had withdrawn to their nearby barracks.

Now, Fiala is 57 and prime minister of the Czech Republic, which split peacefully from Slovakia in 1993. The Soviet invasion that went down in history as the Prague Spring has left Fiala extremely vigilant when it comes to Russia.

This is why Fiala did not hesitate when the idea of going to war-torn Kyiv to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky came up at the European Union summit in Versailles.

I saw the Soviet tanks in the streets of Prague and I know very well what it did to my country for the next 20 years. I dont want to see Russian tanks here or anywhere else in Europe again, Fiala said in an exclusive interview with The Daily Beast.

If we dont beat him [Putin], he will not stop in Ukraine. He will roll on and will recreate the USSR.

A Poison Plot in Prague May Be Pure Propagandaor Business as Usual for Vladimir Putin

Last week, three NATO prime ministers traveled by train to Kyiv to show support for Zelensky in person. Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa joined Fiala on the highly unusual journey into a warzone.

Here in the Czech Republic, Fiala is seen by his adversaries, as well as some of his supporters, as too dry, bookish and almost robotic in his public appearances and speeches. Now the former university professor has done something many people found shockingly brave, and others described as stupidly dangerous. Ignoring the warnings of his secret service, he put on a bulletproof vest and a helmet, and boarded the train to Kyiv.

It was a tense ride. Sirens went off while the train was stopped near the western Ukrainian town of Lviv, warning everyone of an imminent Russian missile strike.

Story continues

The prime minister looked calm but I was afraid; cant say otherwise, Fialas chief of staff Vaclav Smolka told me with a nervous laugh.

They made it to Kyiv unscathed and were transported in a convoy of cars to a bunker-like facility where Zelensky met them. Smolka said it was like a ghost town, and that there were many checkpoints and barricades within the city. The delegation caught glimpses of damaged residential buildings that had been hit by Russian bombs or missiles.

Fiala admits he began to get emotional as he witnessed the scale of the destruction. He had seen some of Zelenskys speeches to the European and British parliaments and to the U.S. Congress, and had felt moved. Meeting Zelensky in-person, Fiala saw obvious exhaustion in him, but he also observed rational determination and strategic thinking.

These qualities of his can be, at the end, decisive and it filled me personally with a great hope, says Fiala.

He came back to Prague with one urgent priorityweapons delivery to Ukraine, especially anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles. If they [Ukranians] have enough of these weapons they can create their own no-fly zone, said Fiala.

But they need these weapons not in months, weeks, not tomorrow, they need them now. I think even rich countries did get it. I have seen in the last 10 days a big shift in their thinking. They did send weapons.

Besides weapons, it is economic sanctions that Fiala and the other leaders from Eastern Europe see as a powerful tool to defy Putin. I think it was us in the East, our storytelling and historical experience, that ultimately led the whole of Europe to impose the sanctions against Putins Russia, Fiala said.

For a brief moment during the interview, Fiala went further back into history, this time evoking a different era: Sept. 30, 1938. On that day, the Munich Agreement was signed, essentially giving Czechoslovakia away to Adolf Hitler. The Western powers thought this would appease Hitler and prevent war in Europe. They miscalculated.

We in Eastern Europe tell our allies in Western Europe that we have to stand up against this [Russian] aggression and remind them that in the past we didnt and it was a disaster, Fiala continued.

No doubt, there is a difference between our historical experience and theirs. Every time we meet now, we try to convey this experience to our western partners. And, I believe that the West is listening this time around.

It is now easy to find Czechs who give Prime Minister Fiala a thumbs up for his attitude toward Putin and for his brave trip to Kyiv.

It makes me very proud. Finally, the head of our state did something extraordinary, showing a lot of courage and a big heart, Prague veteran Kamil Prasny told me as we walked by the Czech National Radio building in Prague, a site that has seen bloody uprisings against both Nazi and Communist regimes in the past.

Prasny recalled the radio broadcast that cried for help in 1968 to defend the station against Russian aggressors so it could still provide Czechoslovaks with independent information. He heeded the call and rushed to the city center to confront the Russian troops. But history tells us the USSR prevailed, and freedom eluded the Czechs and Slovaks for another 21 years. We must support Ukraine now. They do fight for us as well.

Prague appears to be firmly on the side of Ukrainians. Blue and yellow flags can be seen in many windows, on flagpoles or on the front of buses and trams. Even some street signs have been replaced, unofficially. One street in Prague that has been for decades called Russia has been renamed by Prague residents: Russian battleship, go fuck yourself.

It is an allusion to the Ukrainian soldiers on Snake Island who told a Russian Navy vessel in the Black Sea where to go at the start of the conflict. The new signs are now up along the entire two-mile length of this street. Some residents proudly show letters and postcards they have just received with their new address.

Its great to see that the state postal service is on board with this unofficial name and delivers mail to us, to an address that actually doesnt exist, said a young man who was about to jump on his motorbike in front of his building located on the renamed street.

Prime Minister Fiala doesnt use such colorful vocabulary but when it comes to Putin his voice has a steely tinge.

He is a war criminal. We must isolate him, we must isolate the whole of Russia. This is the only way we can win this war. And, I believe Putin will be held accountable for his crimes.

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.
TAMPA  Whats the appropriate punishment when a teenager fires a handgun amid a youthful quarrel, resulting in the wounding of a 9-year-old bystander?

In a Tampa courtroom last month, the possible outcome appeared to be some form of juvenile sanctions  like probation and community service  rather than the heftier penalties regularly dished out to adults.

Judge Michael Williams wouldnt have it.

I am not comfortable doing juvenile sanctions in that situation, he said from the bench.

Juvenile probation would be a nothing sentence, the judge said. Thats acting like it didnt happen, to the court.

Those and other comments Williams made at a Feb. 14 hearing became the basis of arguments from the Hillsborough Public Defenders Office to disqualify him from hearing similar cases.

The office in recent weeks filed motions on behalf of at least six juvenile defendants charged as adults, saying Williams comments illuminated a bias. They argued his words would cause any juvenile appearing before him to fear they would not get a fair trial or hearing.

The judge, who presides over adult-level felony cases, expressed frustration in the hearing at local prosecutors bringing adult charges, then asking for juvenile penalties.

If the State Attorneys Office wants to do juvenile sanctions, leave them in juvenile, he said. Stop filing them here. Because Im tired of you guys coming in here and  asking me to do juvenile sanctions.

On Tuesday, in response to the public defenders requests, Williams disqualified himself from the shooting case, but declined to do so in the rest.

In a written order, he noted that his comments were focused on the states practice of asking for juvenile sanctions in a cases early stages. He denied that he was expressing a position on ever imposing juvenile sanctions in an adult-level case. He also pointed out that he has previously approved juvenile sanctions in other adult cases.

The dispute, and the case from which it arose, raise complicated questions of judicial discretion and how the legal system should address youth violence.

Story continues

A shooting

This all started in the case of a 17-year-old boy known as Theo, who the Tampa Bay Times is not naming in this story because of his age.

Hes accused of firing a gun in a May 13 argument in the Grant Park neighborhood, on Tampas eastern edge. In the crossfire, a 9-year-old boy was wounded.

About a month after the crime, Theo was charged as an adult  a legal process commonly referred to as a juvenile direct file  with aggravated assault and several other offenses.

In January, his public defender filed a plea paper, which noted his intention to plead guilty. The paper also noted that prosecutors were amenable to juvenile sanctions, allowing the teen to avoid an adult sentence.

Williams wanted to know more.

On Feb. 14, Tampa police Detective Alex Christon testified, summarizing the investigation.

The shooting happened after a fight broke out among girls over relationship issues, the detective said. Someone made a phone call to the brother of one of the girls, telling him theyre jumping your sister.

Theo, the brother, showed up minutes later on a bicycle. The fighting continued. Then came gunfire.

Arriving officers found the victim shot. In court, it was said that he later made a full recovery.

The boy was not involved in the argument. He was only there with his older sister and her friend, who were.

The girls told police there was only one shooter. But at the crime scene, officers collected bullet shell casings that came from two different guns, a .40-caliber and a 9 mm.

They would find a .40-caliber handgun in a backpack that was seized from the boys sisters friend. She later admitted shed fired the weapon, the detective testified, but only after someone began shooting at her. She was not arrested or charged.

Theo was alleged to have had the 9 mm.

The bullet that struck the child was not found, so police could not determine which gun actually wounded him.

Judge Williams asked whether law enforcement had a position on what should happen with Theo.

Im neutral, Christon said.

The judge also asked the victims mother what she wanted.

Speaking softly through tears, she seemed unsure.

This is my first time dealing with a situation like this, she said.

The hearing

Lawyers had few answers when Williams asked why the state was OK with juvenile sanctions.

Assistant State Attorney Amanda Torres said she inherited the case from a different prosecutor, who negotiated the agreement with the defense.

I understand the courts frustration, she said.

Assistant Public Defender David Hall said his client had been working and staying out of trouble since his arrest. He also noted that officers who investigated the crime confronted a chaotic scene, and a difficult investigation.

The judge mentioned the problem of gun violence in Tampa, alluding to the 48 homicides that occurred in the city in 2021, more than any other recent year.

Its regrettable that someone brings a firearm to a childhood dispute, the judge said.

Williams remained reluctant to accept the boys plea.

Im just tired of (the State Attorneys Office) filing them up here and then coming in here and asking me to take a juvenile sanction, he said. I take shooting cases differently, I guess, than some people. You pull a firearm and you point it somewhere and you pull that trigger, thats a game-changer for everybody involved. I dont have any sympathy in those types of cases.

He mentioned hed previously presided in the courts juvenile delinquency divisions. He said kids there complete community service, then end their probation early after nine months.

The defense noted it hadnt been established that Theo fired the shot that hit the 9-year-old.

It didnt matter, Williams said. If two people shoot at each other and someone else gets hit, thats on both of them.

The backdrop

All this occurred against a backdrop of a local justice system that in recent years has seen strides to reduce the number of juveniles it charges as adults. Hillsborough once led the state in such cases, with hundreds of kids charged as adults each year.

Hillsborough State Attorney Andrew Warren made reducing the numbers a priority after he took office in 2017. In 2019, juvenile direct file cases reached a low of 33, according to data from Warrens office. But the numbers ticked back up to 46 in 2020, and 61 in 2021.

We believe Judge Williams is a fair and impartial judge, Grayson Kamm, a spokesman for the State Attorneys Office, said in a statement. The office files adult charges to broaden the range of options available, Kamm said, including adult probation and confinement and the ability to detain defendants for longer. He said it is infrequent that the office ultimately agrees to juvenile sanctions after a case is filed in adult court.

He also noted that prosecutors werent specifically asking for juvenile sanctions in the shooting case.

The defense motion to disqualify includes a footnote stating their request was only for the judge to accept a guilty plea, after which the Department of Juvenile Justice could make a sentencing recommendation. The state would be agreeable to juvenile sanctions, if recommended.

While a judge has discretion to accept a plea offer, the decision cant be based on disdain for the juvenile sentencing law or his aggravation on how the State Attorneys Office chooses to exercise its discretion, the note stated.

Did the judges comments cross a line? Its not clear.

Louis Virelli, a professor at Stetson University College of Law, said it would not be disqualifying for a judge to hold a preconceived view of the law and how it should work, as long as the judge was willing to follow the law.

None of our judges are blank slates with respect to the law, Virelli said. Otherwise, they wouldnt be qualified to be judges.
Clay Center, KS (67432)

Today

Showers this morning, becoming a steady rain during the afternoon hours. High around 55F. Winds N at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall near a half an inch..

Tonight

A steady rain this evening. Showers continuing overnight. Low around 50F. Winds NNW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall near a half an inch.
By Patricia Zengerle

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Legislation removing "most favored nation" trade status for Russia over the invasion of Ukraine hit a roadblock in the U.S. Senate on Wednesday, as Democrats and Republicans disagreed about whether it should also include a ban on energy imports.

Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer asked for unanimous consent to quickly approve the measure overwhelmingly passed by the House of Representatives on Thursday. The bill would remove Permanent Normal trade Relations (PNTR) status for Russia and its ally Belarus, paving the way for higher tariffs on imports from the two countries.

"We should move the House bill ASAP," Schumer said.

Republican Senator Mike Crapo objected, arguing that the Senate should not pass the trade bill without also approving a ban on energy imports from Russia that the House passed earlier this month.

Some Republicans also object to a reauthorization of the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act, a law that makes it easier to impose sanctions on Russian officials for human rights violations, saying it would give too much power to the president.

Democrats said President Joe Biden had already issued an executive order covering the energy imports, so adding it would delay passage of the bill for a week or more.

Schumer said he planned to continue talking in order to resolve the issue and pass the legislation as quickly as possible.

(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
Reuters

Russian forces have not only looted and destroyed a laboratory used to monitor nuclear waste at Chernobyl, but an undetonated rocket is now primed to explode at any minute in a Kharkiv nuclear facility, Ukrainian regulators said Wednesday.

The countrys State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate said personnel checking out the nuclear subcritical facility Neutron Source on Wednesday found an object, preliminarily determined to be an unexploded MLRS 9K58 Smerch projectile, which it warns creates a potential danger of a new explosion in the immediate vicinity of a nuclear installation.

While no damage was reported to parts of the facility that would immediately affect safety, regulators said it was impossible to disarm the rocket because of constant battles in the area.

Its a Sh*tshow: Russian Troops Are Now Turning on Each Other

The facility has already repeatedly come under attack by Russian forces, the regulator said, and it came under shelling even as the inspection wrapped up.

Please note that the [nuclear facility], like any other nuclear installation, is not designed for operation in combat conditions. The continuation of its bombing or shelling can lead to severe radiation consequences with contamination of nearby territories, the agency warned.

If conditions at Chernobyl are anything to go by, however, Russian forces are unlikely to heed the regulators warnings.

Just a day before the discovery of the Smerch rocket, regulators said Russian troops who seized the power plantthe site of the worlds worst nuclear disaster in 1986had left it in shambles, with radiation monitors in the contaminated area around the plant no longer working and a crucial laboratory destroyed.

Perhaps more alarmingly, however, Ukrainian authorities said the laboratory that was looted contained highly active samples and samples of radionuclides that are now in the hands of the enemy.

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.
Watch the Oscars LIVE this Sunday at 8 p.m. on Channel 2

Final preparations are underway for the 94th Academy Awards and a long awaited return to Hollywoods glamourous normalcy after a muted ceremony and ratings low last year. Heres everything you need to know about the 2022 Oscars, including where to watch the live show, whos expected to win and what the big controversies are this year.

[DOWNLOAD: Free WSB-TV News app for alerts as news breaks]

WHEN ARE THE OSCARS?

The Oscars will be held on Sunday, March 27, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. The ceremony is set to begin at 8 p.m. ET and will be broadcast live on ABC.

WHO IS HOSTING THE 2022 OSCARS?

Regina Hall, Amy Schumer and Wanda Sykes are taking the stage to co-host the ceremony, which has been without an emcee for the past three years. Producer Will Packer said each woman brings something different to the show.

RELATED STORIES:

WHO IS PRESENTING?

Show producers will continue adding names throughout the week, but at the moment stars expected to hand out awards Oscar night include Lady Gaga, Kevin Costner, Samuel L. Jackson, Zoe Kravitz, Anthony Hopkins, Lily James, Daniel Kaluuya, Mila Kunis, John Leguizamo, Simu Liu, Rami Malek, Lupita Nyongo, Rosie Perez, Chris Rock, Naomi Scott, Wesley Snipes, Uma Thurman, John Travolta, Yuh-jung Youn, Ruth E. Carter, Halle Bailey, Sean Diddy Combs, Jamie Lee Curtis, Woody Harrelson, Shawn Mendes, Tyler Perry and Tracee Ellis Ross.

WHICH MOVIES ARE NOMINATED FOR BEST PICTURE AT THE 2022 OSCARS?

The 10 movies competing for best picture this year are: Belfast; CODA; Dont Look Up; Drive My Car; Dune; King Richard; Licorice Pizza; Nightmare Alley; The Power of the Dog; West Side Story. (Heres the full list of 2022 Oscar nominations. )

WHAT WERE THE MOST SURPISING OSCAR SNUBS?

Story continues

There were a lot of surprises Oscar nominations morning.

[SIGN UP: WSB-TV Daily Headlines Newsletter]

Some exclusions that stood out include Denis Villeneuve, whose Dune got the second most nominations (10) behind The Power of the Dog (12) including best picture, but who failed to get a directing nomination for himself.

The best actress category was especially brutal this year, leaving out Lady Gaga for House of Gucci, Jennifer Hudson for Respect and Caitriona Balfe for Belfast and Renate Reinsve for The Worst Person in the World.

WHAT ARE THE PREDICTIONS FOR THE WINNERS ON OSCAR NIGHT?

The Power of the Dog is the presumed frontrunner for best picture and best director, for Jane Campion, but there is also the possibility that CODA will take best picture. Either way, itll be the first time a streaming service has won best picture. Other likely winners include Will Smith for best actor (King Richard), Jessica Chastain for best actress (The Eyes of Tammy Faye), Troy Kotsur for best supporting actor (CODA) and Ariana DeBose for best supporting actress (West Side Story).

WHAT ELSE CAN WE EXPECT FROM THE OSCARS?

Organizers have promised that they will keep the broadcast to three hours and Packer (whose films include crowd pleasers like Girls Trip) wants to make it as entertaining as possible while still honoring the nominees and winners.

The show will flow, not unlike a movie, in that there will be different themes and a different feel and different energy throughout the night, Packer said in an interview with IndieWire. It will not feel or look or sound like one show for three hours. Its taking you through the course of this cinematic journey.

Best song nominees like Beyonce, Van Morrison and Billie Eilish are also in talks to perform.

ARE THERE ANY CONTROVERSIES THIS YEAR?

The Oscars are so high profile that every year someone is upset about something (especially when changes are involved) but this year the biggest controversy is over the decision to present some awards before the live broadcast begins and edit them into the show later.

The eight awards are for shorts (live action, animated and documentary), editing, score, hair and makeup, sound and production design. The decision has its defenders, but also an army of high-profile detractors, including Campion, Villeneuve, Steven Spielberg, Chastain and Penelope Cruz.
By Scott Murdoch and Makiko Yamazaki

SYDNEY/TOKYO (Reuters) -Hong Kong-based activist fund Oasis Management has voted in favour of a shareholder proposal demanding Toshiba Corp solicit buyout offers from private equity firms, a source with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters on Wednesday.

Oasis also voted against the Japanese industrial conglomerate's plan to break itself up, said the source, who was not authorised to speak to media and declined to be identified.

The upcoming vote at an extraordinary general meeting on Thursday marks a pivotal moment in a long-running battle between Toshiba management and its growing number of foreign shareholders. Each proposal needs 50% of the vote to pass.

Singapore-based 3D Investment Partners, Toshiba's second-largest shareholder, submitted the proposal - a motion that also has the support of its top shareholder Effissimo Capital Management and No. 3 shareholder Farallon Capital Management.

Together, the top three shareholders own around a quarter of Toshiba. All foreign activist funds combined are estimated to hold about 30% while more broadly overseas investors own 50% of the industrial conglomerate.

Oasis, which has not disclosed the size of its stake in Toshiba, declined to comment.

Toshiba said it would continue to make every effort to gain shareholder support for the break-up plan.

(Reporting by Scott Murdoch and Makiko Yamazaki; Editing by Sumeet Chatterjee, Jacqueline Wong and Edwina Gibbs)
By Sinead Cruise, Matt Scuffham and Megan Davies

LONDON/NEW YORK (Reuters) -Global banks including Citigroup Inc, JPMorgan Chase & Co and Societe Generale face pressure to commit to remaining as custodian banks in Russia, as rivals and funds fret they may lose services critical to future investment in the country.

Traders, bankers and executives from three other financial institutions told Reuters they were seeking or had sought reassurances on behalf of clients on each bank's long-term plans for these businesses, which clear, settle and safeguard billions of dollars of Russian holdings.

Custodian banks have departments that look after assets for clients in return for fees.

One London-based banking source, speaking anonymously to respect confidentiality of their large global fund client, said they were in weekly contact with senior executives at Citibank Moscow on the status of their custodian business.

The source said their client was waiting to trade Russian equities when the Moscow Exchange (MOEX) reopens, but they needed the reassurance of having a Western custodian in place.

According to the source, the Citigroup executives said they would serve clients for as long as sanctions permitted.

A source with knowledge of Citi said that major U.S. and international businesses in Moscow use that bank and cutting those customers off would damage client relations. Other bankers said it is crucial to the industry that Citi, a key player, keep operating in Moscow.

Citigroup declined to comment.

A second banker, based in New York, said he had sought assurances from SocGen that they would "stay on the ground" so that his bank could meet custody obligations to clients. Executives at SocGen provided assurances that they would, at least in the near term, the source said.

Citigroup and SocGen, the French parent of Rosbank, have already announced plans to dramatically pare operations in Moscow as part of a sweeping programme of Western sanctions aimed at isolating Russia economically following its invasion of Ukraine.

Story continues

Both banks have said they will aid their clients with the complex tasks of unwinding or reducing exposures to Russia, and said withdrawals will take time to execute.

But neither has made a public statement on the long-term status of their custodian services, leaving some clients nervous for the future.

In an emailed statement, a spokeswoman for SocGen said the group was "conducting its business in Russia with the utmost caution and selectivity, while supporting its historical clients."

SocGen "is rigorously complying with all applicable laws and regulations and is diligently implementing the necessary measures to strictly enforce international sanctions as soon as they are made public."

The bank declined to comment specifically on its custody business in Russia.

JPMorgan Chase & Co also provides similar custody services from its Moscow outpost. The bank has received queries from clients seeking assurances that custody services will continue to be provided, according to a source familiar with the matter. It has previously said it will continue acting as a custodian to its clients.

Bank of New York Mellon Corp has also said it will continue to provide custodian services in Russia.

SHUT OUT

If banks decide to mothball their custody services in Moscow, many Western investors already holding Russian stocks or bonds would have to look elsewhere for a bank to hold those assets, while others keen to exploit a financial market or economic rally when sanctions are lifted could find it harder to pursue those plans.

SocGen, France's third-largest bank, warned stakeholders on March 3 that it could be stripped of its property rights to its business in Russia in a "potential extreme scenario."

Citi, meanwhile, originally said it would operate its Russian business on a more "limited basis" in the wake of the war, which President Vladimir Putin has called "a special military operation."

But by March 14, it said it would accelerate and expand the scope of that retreat by giving up its institutional and wealth management clients in Russia.

Besides transaction services, many of the Moscow-based custody teams are providing add-ons like language translation of central bank documents that are also highly valued by Western clients, the source said.

Russia's central bank said separately on Wednesday that some stock market trading would resume on Thursday, with 33 securities set to be traded on the Moscow Exchange for a limited period of time and with short selling banned.

The challenge for banks in meeting obligations to clients in Russia is getting tougher, and might become even more daunting if sanctions are tightened, with the one-month anniversary of the invasion falling this week.

Russia laid down strict new rules for foreigners seeking permits to buy and sell Russian assets ranging from securities to real estate.

Another New York-based banker described the business of ensuring clients are in compliance with sanctions in relation to securities holdings as a "logistical nightmare" and said his firm had hired 20 new compliance staff in recent weeks.

Global companies, banks and investors have so far disclosed nearly $135 billion in exposure to Russia, company statements show.

U.S. asset managers including Vanguard and Capital Group Companies Inc, which manages the American Funds franchise popular among millions of mom and pop retirement savers, have also disclosed large exposures topping billions of dollars, according to the most recent portfolio information available.

(Reporting by Sinead Cruise in London, and Matt Scuffham and Megan Davies in New YorkAdditional reporting by Paritosh Bansal in New YorkEditing by Matthew Lewis)
Romanian Prime Minister Visit Poland

Prime Minister of Romania Nicolae Ciuca during the Polish-Romanian consultations in Warsaw, Poland, on March 3, 2022. Credit - Mateusz WlodarczykNurPhoto/Getty Images

There are plenty of national heroes that are tricky for outsiders to properly appreciate. Even so, Romanias Vlad Tepes, or Vlad the Impaler, takes some beating. A Wallachian prince from the 15th century, Vlad had a reputation for boiling babies and drinking blood, though his trademark was impaling a foe on a stake in the ground from anus to armpit, thus missing any major organs and prolonging death for up to an agonizing 48 hours. Following a battle against Ottoman soldiers in 1462, Vlad left a screaming forest of impaled thousands as a warning to pursuing troops set on conquering his lands.

Barbaric as these acts certainly were, ask people in Romanias stately capital Bucharest today about Vlads deeds and they will shrug and offer a standard reply: thats what happens if you invade a persons home. It is, of course, a sentiment that has been galvanized by the war launched by Russian President Vladimir Putin in neighboring Ukraine, where millions have fled indiscriminate bombing, more than 500,000 of them across the 400 mi. shared border into Romania.

Portrait of Vlad III the Impaler, or Dracula (1431-1476) who inspired Bram Stoker's novel Dracula. Stefano BianchettiCorbis/Getty Images

Romanian Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca may not endorse Vlads methods but tells TIME that he shares the widely held appreciation for how he played a major role in defending Europe and its values. There was, Ciuca insists in an exclusive written interview, more to the man whose family name, Dracula, inspired Irish novelist Bram Stokers vampiric creation. Beyond the military strategies always used for defense, never for the conquest of other territories, Romanian rulers were also brilliant diplomats, visionaries, peace-seekers.

Read More: A Ukrainian Photographer Documents the Invasion of His Country

The world needs such skills today. How to stop the illegal, unprovoked and brutal aggression against Ukraine, as Ciuca, a former army general, describes it, is the biggest test since the end of the Cold War, promising to open a new chapter of European history. Ciuca says that NATO needs to radically broaden and embolden its mandate to meet this next generation threat.

Story continues

On Thursday, Romanias prime minister will join U.S. President Joe Biden and other world leaders for an extraordinary NATO meeting and E.U. summit in Brussels. Bidens goal, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters, is to meet in person face-to-face and talk about and assess where we are at this point in the conflict. Ciuca, however, is blunter about the stakes, which are no less than the future of the democratic world and the rules-based international order.

Even if few Americans might be able to find Romania on a map, the nation of 19 million is set to have a notable geostrategic role to help navigate the aftermath of Putins invasionwhat Ciuca calls a stark new reality. Even under the rule of communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, Romania was arguably the most independent and Western-looking of the Soviet satellite states, and that deep mistrust of Russian encroachment has only swelled since its 1989 democratic revolution.

Although most famous for its forested Transylvania region and picture-postcard medieval towns, Romania is also the E.U.s leading grains exporter, whose potential to boost capacity could help mitigate global shortages owing to disruptions to Ukrainian production. It also has significant underutilized oil and gas reserves, which could go a small way to help wean Europe off its Russian energy dependence that now funds the Kremlins war machine.

More immediately, Romanians have opened their hearts and homes to the influx of refugees: Church groups, civil society, businesses, and regular people have flocked to border crossings to offer a ride or box of groceries. We dont just say we are good neighbors here, Ciuca says proudly. We show it!

Refugees coming from Ukraine arrive at the North Railway Station in Bucharest, on March 4, 2022. Mihai BarbuAFP/Getty Images)

Ciucas resume makes him serendipitously well suited for a conflict role, despite assuming the job during peacetime 4 months ago. Born in the tiny village of Plenita by the southern border with Bulgaria, he served as chief of Romanias armed forces from 2015 to 2019, and then Defense Minister from 2019 to 2021. His elevation to head of government in November was a messy, uninspiring affair: he emerged as the least objectionable compromise candidate between bickering factions. Even then, Ciuca had to fend off allegations that he plagiarized almost a third of his doctoral thesis. (He has denied it).

Yet it is Ciucas close connections with the U.S. military that have proven invaluable given the present tumult, says a senior Western diplomat in Bucharest, who asked to remain anonymous due to official protocol. Ciuca served alongside U.S. forces in the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan, earning recognition in the International Hall of Fame at the U.S. Army War College, where he studied in 2006. This year marks 25 since the signing of Romanias Strategic Partnership with the U.S. Security is probably the strongest pillar of the [U.S.-Romania] relationship, says the diplomat. Our military and Romanias military are very interoperable. A lot of their officers have gone to our schools.

Romania has been a NATO member since 2004, joining the E.U. three years later. The country is welcoming thousands of troops from alliance members, including the U.S., France, Belgium and Portugal. As well as having the longest land border with Ukraine of any NATO state, Romania has a de facto maritime boundary with Russia since the 2014 annexation of Crimea. As such, Romanias role has swelled in terms of the collective defense of the Black Sea region, NATOs Eastern Flank and the whole Euro-Atlantic space, says Ciuca. We are at the fulcrum of both the security and defense aspects of this crisis, but also of its tragic humanitarian dimension.

Read More: The E.U. Is United Against RussiaWith One Notable Exception

Ciucas praise of the NATO alliance is perhaps unsurprising. He says his missions in Iraq and Afghanistan were essential stepping stones for Romanias U.S. and NATO-aligned security and defense posture. But while both were difficult and complex, he explains, they were nothing like the challenge represented by the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine by Russia. Hundreds of thousands of forces and the vast capabilities represent a threat of a different magnitude.

Nicolae Ciuca (center), then Romania's Chief of General Staff, attends a ceremony marking Romanian Land Forces Day at Fallen Heroes Memorial, in Bucharest, on April 23, 2018. Cristian CristelXinhua News Agency/Getty Images

Ciuca belies the stereotype of the combat-hungry general. He stresses that NATO is a defensive alliance and says it does not serve Ukraine or anyone else to risk an even larger conflict. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly pleaded with the U.S. and NATO to enforce a no-fly zone to prevent Russias aerial assault on his cities. Ciuca is full of praise for his counterpartas somebody that stared down the barrel of a weapon, I respect his courage and conviction, he saysthough warns that a no-fly zone would necessitate direct conflict between Russia and NATO and would be a price too high. However dangerous and odious Russias actions are, NATO needs to avoid playing into an escalatory logic, he says.

That does not mean there should be inaction, however. The Ukraine war has served as a wake-up call to many NATO members, including Romania, which on March 1 boosted defense spending from 2% to 2.5% of GDP. Two days later, Poland unveiled a hike to 3% in 2023. And on Feb. 27, Germany surprised many by announcing an extra $111 billion on defense in 2022, tripling its annual budget. Other defense dawdlers like Italy and Spain are following suit. Lets be clear, defense starts at home, Ciuca says.

Its a shift in tenor welcomed by Romanians who have long sounded the alarm about Russias intentions. In a late 2020 poll, 30% of Romanian respondents said that Russia posed a direct threat to their countryone of the highest rates in Eastern Europe. Theres been dissatisfaction with specific E.U. member states, like Germany and Italy, that have opposed the full range of sanctions against Russia, or that have over time been in favor of doing business with Russia and so propped up the Putin regime, says Oana Popescu-Zamfir, director of the Bucharest-based Global Focus think tank.

Still, its unclear whether the newfound urgency is enough: Since 2000, Russias defense spending has increased by 183% and Chinas by 495%. Ciuca says that NATO must rethink its Strategic Conceptsetting out the blocs fundamental security tasks, challenges and opportunitiesgiven this shift: the structure and elements of its posture from the Baltic to the Black Sea to face the new reality of a massive Russian troop deployment in Ukraine and Belarus. NATO also needs to better prepare for combat in cyberspace and in space, he says, urging investment in fields like quantum computing, artificial intelligence, and autonomous weapons.

But NATO also needs to rethink not only how, but also what it defends. Hybrid actions like covert influencelobbying lawmakers and buying influential sporting franchisesand massive disinformation campaigns, as well as repeated cyber-attacks against E.U. and NATO countries, should be considered as part of a wider campaign against its citizens democratic values and principles and warrant a robust response, Ciuca says. Strengthening strategic communications, while combating malign influence campaigns, should be an essential part of NATOs adaptation, says Ciuca.

Its clear that Ciuca has NATO in his bones. Still, he cant hide the frustration palpable among Eastern Europeans that warnings regarding Russian aggression werent taken seriously enough. In praising Zelensky, he says the Ukrainian president provides now for the Ukrainians and Europe a stark contrast to the hesitations, willingness to eschew responsibilities and avoiding hard and difficult decisions that often characterized the Wests dealings with Russia.

The burning question for the worldwhether or not Russias gambit in Ukraine is successfulis whether its possible to deal with Russia with Putin as leader. The Russian Presidents willingness to target civilians, increasingly unhinged speeches railing at West-leaning scum and traitors, and threats to unleash nuclear war renders fulsome reengagement meaningless. Normalization of relations with the world requires rebuilding trust, says Ciuca. Seeing the sort of Orwellian propaganda and unwillingness to negotiate even to ensure the safety of civilians leaves doubts as to that possibility in the near future.

But the alternative, barring a palace coup or other extraordinary change of leadership in the Kremlin, is shunning Russia long-term. That, however, is also highly undesirable. Ciuca emphasizes that Russia had for years been a valued partner of the E.U., with institutions like the now suspended NATO-Russia council established to deepen security cooperation. Russia is an important country. Russia is also a European country, says Ciuca, emphasizing profound and extensive economic interactions. Nobody wants to ostracize Russia.

Still, Putins actions leave few other options, Ciuca says. An imperialist regime that operates on the logic of spheres of influence and limited sovereignty, that brutally invades neighboring countries, foments separatism and annexes neighboring countries territory, curtails domestic and regional democracy, deploys hybrid actions against other countries, cannot be a respected or even trusted partner.

Its a burning quandary though perhaps one that can be tabled for now. More immediately, the question for Biden, Ciuca and other leaders in Brussels will be how to stop the bloodshed. Sanctions and supplying weapons may have stalled the Russian advance for now but every new escalation will bring calls to deepen involvement. President Zelensky and the whole of Ukraine are very much doing their part, he says. We must continue to do ours.
Formula 1 will meet with Netflix to discuss the future of popular documentary Drive to Survive after accusations that the show faked drama.

The fourth series premiered ahead of the 2022 F1 season and has again returned apparently strong viewership among subscribers to the streaming platform giants.

Credited with causing an expansion of the sports audience, particularly in the US, Drive to Survive has also been criticised for manipulating footage to present certain narratives that may not be true to what happened.

Red Bulls Max Verstappen declined to take part in the latest series and said that the show had faked a few rivalries which dont really exist.

Lando Norris, of McLaren, has also highlighted problems with aspects of the show.

Stefano Domenicali, the CEO of F1, insists that the show is beneficial for the sport, but also believes a dialogue is needed to ensure that both Netflix and the drivers are happy.

There is no question that the Netflix project has had a very successful effect, Domenicali told Motorsport.com Italy.

In order to ignite the interest of a new audience, a tone was used that in some ways focused on dramatising the story.

Its an opportunity, but I think it needs to be understood. We talked about it this weekend [in Bahrain] at a meeting with the teams as well.

A driver who refuses to participate because he feels he is not being represented in the right way is not being constructive; so a dialogue is needed to understand how he can be included in a format that he feels is correct.

We will also talk to Netflix, because it is necessary that the story does not move away from reality, otherwise it no longer fits.

It is a topic that we will address together with the drivers. We have to make sure that a project that has generated such exceptional traction has a language that continues to appeal, but without distorting the image and the meaning of the sport that we live with every day.

Drive to Survive has been praised for having an ability to offer insight into the drivers personalities and enable viewers to relate to the sport and the characters of the grid.

Story continues

F1 reported a 40 per cent increase in American television ratings for the 2021 season, making it the most watched in history in the country.

The Miami Grand Prix has been added to the calendar for 2022, marking the first time since 1984 that two races have been hosted by the US.

Several other sports are set to launch similar documentaries in partnership with Netflix, including golf, tennis and road cycling.
The claim: San Francisco changed the name of Abraham Lincoln High School because 'Black lives didnt matter to him'

The San Francisco school board drew national news coverage in early 2021 amid a push to removed Abraham Lincoln's name off a city high school.

The controversy resurfaced of late on social media  but with a claim that misses on several key facts.

City renames Abraham Lincoln High School because 'Black lives did not matter to him,' a Feb. 10 post says.

The post has proven popular online, accumulating more than 1,400 comments and 800 reactions in the month since its publication. Similar posts on other accounts have also spread widely. The post links to an article by American Web Media.

But the article is outdated and misleading. The San Francisco school board did not rename the high school. Though it initially voted to do so, the board rescinded its decision three months later amid fierce pushback. And the initial decision was based not on Lincolns treatment of Black Americans but on the record of violence against Native Americans during his administration.

Fact check: Video of Ukrainian police dropping riot gear from 2014, not recently

USA TODAY reached out to the Facebook user for comment.

Lincoln's name initially removed over treatment of Native Americans

The initial decision to remove Lincoln's name from the school was part of a districtwide initiative to rename schools with namesakes the district found problematic.

In January 2021, the San Francisco Unified School Districts Board of Education voted to change the name of 44 of its 125 schools with namesakes tied to what it considered colonization, enslavement, genocide, worker exploitation, gender discrimination, human rights abuse, environmental abuse or racism. It originally planned to have all the names changed by April 2021.

Lincoln's name ended up on the list.

Jeremiah Jeffries, chairman of the renaming committee and a first-grade teacher, told the San Francisco Chronicle shortly after the January vote that Lincoln and most other American presidents did not show through policy or rhetoric that Black lives ever mattered to them outside of human capital and as casualties of wealth building.

Story continues

This spawned the claims on social media, but Jeffries also said Lincolns inclusion on the list came after the committee considered his treatment of Native Americans. The renaming committee cited Lincoln's role in sentencing 39 Dakota men to death after a failed uprising in 1862.

Once he met criteria in that way, we did not belabor the point, he said.

Per the Associated Press, Lincoln made this decision after deciding there was evidence that these men had committed murder or rape during the uprising. Lincolns defenders point to the fact that the president commuted the sentences of 264 other American Indian men in this decision.

Lincoln was one of many high-profile names that appeared on the list. The Names Advisory Committee also moved to remove Dianne Feinstein, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Francis Scott Key and Paul Revere, among others, from school sites. A full list can be found on the boards minutes from Sept. 9, 2020.

The name change never happened

The attempt to change the names under a quick timetable sparked widespread public criticism, leading the school board to step back from its decision that April.

The committee's initial decision included incorrect assessments of Revere as a colonist of the Penobscot people and of the name of Alamo Elementary as a reference to the Texas fort rather than the Spanish word for a poplar tree, according to the Associated Press. "

Among the detractors was San Francisco Mayor London Breed, who called the board's decision to rename schools amid continued pandemic-induced school closures offensive. She issued a statement questioning why the board hadnt brought the same urgency and focus to getting our kids back in school.

Many parents also came out against the decision, similarly criticizing the timing and process.

The committee rescinded its January 2021 vote that April, saying it would table the decision to rename any city schools for the time being.

In February, San Francisco residents recalled three members of the school board in the citys first recall vote since 1983. These three  the president, vice president and commissioner  were the only members on the board eligible to be recalled. Parents launched the recall effort in January 2021, galvanized in part by the school boards priorities, which included the renaming committee, according to the Associated Press.

Fact check: Photo shows airstrike in Gaza Strip, not Russian invasion of Ukraine

Our rating: Partly false

Based on our research, we rate PARTLY FALSE the claim that San Francisco changed the name of Abraham Lincoln High School because Black lives didnt matter to him. The school board did vote to change the name of the districts Abraham Lincoln High School following the suggestion of its renaming committee. But that decision was based on Lincoln's treatment of Native Americans, not Black people. And the decision was later reversed amid public outcry, before the school name was actually changed.

Our fact-check sources:

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: Lincoln's name remains on San Francisco high school
News  Headlines

Vietnam sees decline in daily Covid-19 cases
When spring arrives, fragrant flower and sweet fruit festivals cant be far behind.

But in some places, these historic and beloved festivals are occurring sooner than ever as climate change plays havoc with the first dates of spring leafing and blossoming on at least three continents.

Warmer temperatures mean earlier buds and blooms, and that is forcing organizers of some festivals to move their dates forward. A flower festival just isnt the same if the blooms have already vanished.

The National Cherry Blossom Festival, which started Sunday in Washington, D.C., is just one example. Spring festivals also have been moved up to coincide with earlier blooming in Europe and Asia.

Historic photos and records around the globe show how the earlier spring arrivals are changing daily life, said Tim Sparks, a United Kingdom-based environmental statistics researcher. A flowering tree that used to be the focal point in photos of a community or familys annual event now may be long finished blooming before the event arrives.

Bees land on cherry blossoms in bloom in a neighborhood in Washington, March 11, 2022. The National Cherry Blossom Festival is returning with all its pageantry, hailed by organizers as the unofficial start of Washingtons re-emergence from the two years of pandemic lockdown.

When an area experiences more warm days earlier in the year, the plants pay attention, said Theresa Crimmins, director of the USA National Phenology Network and a research professor at the University of Arizona. So many species are cued by how much warmth they are exposed to, she said.

The network tracks flowering dates and other natural events and hopes to persuade people across the country to help expand monitoring to get a better idea of how things are changing.

Tracking the National Cherry Blossom Festival

For 110 years, the National Cherry Blossom Festival has celebrated the gift of Yoshino cherry trees from Japan to the people of the United States. Traditionally, the festival usually started in early to mid-April.

By the 1980s, however, warmer temperatures arrived earlier, and so did the cherry blossoms.

Gradually the festival dates were expanded and moved up to accommodate the earlier blooms. The festival, which in 47 years started in March only 10 times, hasn't started in April since 1994.

Story continues

By the early part of this century, weather records show the 20-year average March temperature had climbed 2 degrees.

Twice in the first eight years of the new century the cherry blossoms peaked before the festival. Peak bloom, tracked by the National Park Service, means 70% of the blooms are open.

For the 2012 festival, the date was moved up again, to the first day of spring every year, said Diana Mayhew, festival president since 2007. Between the date change and its 4-week length, Mayhew said the blossoms usually are in bloom at some point during the festival.

Although the cherry blossoms havent peaked before the festival started since the new date was set, they have done so twice on opening day. This year the blooms peaked on Monday, one day after the start.

Other flower festivals with earlier dates include the Lilac Festival in Rochester, New York and the Virginia Beach Cherry Blossom festival.

The Tulip Time Festival in Holland, Michigan, was feeling the effects of warming temperatures by 1997. The board voted in 2001 to move the festival up one week earlier to coincide with earlier blooms, according to the festival website.

Seeing historic changes over time

In Boston, the Arnold Arboretum at Harvard University has shifted its annual lilac festival forward one or two weeks, said Richard Primack, a professor in the biology department at Boston University.

Primack described buds and blooms as little clocks, driven by temperature and closely tied to the weather over the previous few months. The warmer it is in February and March, the more rapid the development of the flower bud and the sooner it opens.

Cherry blossom festivals in the United States pale in comparison to the cultural extravaganzas in Japan and South Korea, Primack said. Tokyos shift forward in festival dates to late March and early April has been remarkable," he said.

Records of the first blooms there date back more than 1,200 years. Bloom dates were relatively steady until around the time of the Industrial Revolution, when a clear change appears as temperatures started to warm, said Abraham Miller-Rushing, a science coordinator for the National Park Service at Acadia National Park.

In the United Kingdom, the Thriplow Daffodil Weekend in Cambridgeshire has moved from an April event when it started in 1969 to a March weekend, said Sparks, who has studied records for first leafing and first bloom dates dating back to the early 1700s.

In London, a set of more than 70 years of records shows one tree buds out an average of two weeks earlier than it used to, he said.

Sparks and others search for signs of the warming climate in plants in the background of historic photos. For example, he said in photos taken on Armistice Day at the Cenotaph, a World War I monument in London, the trees are bare in the years after the ceremonies started in 1921. In recent years theyre quite green, he said. The differences are really stark.

Miller-Rushing saw similar trends in photos of an annual Memorial Day observance in Boston. A lot of older graduation photos in Boston and New England would be posed in front of flowering Bradford pear trees, he said. Nowadays those plants are way past flowering at graduation.

Watermelons adapt to demand

Dates and temperatures alone dont always tell the full story.

In North Florida, two historic watermelon festivals  Chiefland and Newberry  take place weeks earlier than they did 40 years ago, but the reasons arent as cut and dried as the flower festivals. Seed salesman Terry Parrish said that to meet a growing consumer demand, farmers grow smaller melon varieties than they used to, and seedless varieties, which requires them to plant seedlings rather than seeds.

Seedless watermelons are grown from seedlings.

Growers place the tiny, tender plants in the ground as early as they used to plant seeds, if not earlier, said Bob Hochmuth, a University of Florida regional extension agent for vegetable crops. So the sweet, juicy fruit arrives much earlier.

The influence of warmer temperatures probably means the early planting carries a little less risk than it used to, Hochmuth said. But the fickle nature of weather still means risk is always present.

This year the growers saw a killing frost on a Sunday morning in mid-March. Hochmuth called it the worst-case scenario since Ive been involved in Florida watermelons over 30 years.

He and others said they do see evidence of more wacky extremes in weather and rainfall. Climate scientists say it all points to the same long-term warming trend.

The warming temperatures driving the earlier blooms around the world are more than what could be expected from urbanization and development alone, Primack said, and reflect increases in carbon dioxide levels in the worlds atmosphere.

For the most part, the temperature changes so far are considered relatively modest, he said. But the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel, working on its latest assessment in a worldwide virtual meeting this week, has warned that if the world cant rein in the rising temperatures, the future could bring even greater change.

Contact Dinah Voyles Pulver at dpulver@usatoday.com.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Climate change's disruptive weather patterns force festivals to adapt
Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson fielded questions about her work defending Guantanamo Bay detainees as an attorney, her handling of sex offense cases as a judge and her views of race as a private-school board member during the second day of her confirmation hearings.

The questions yielded occasionally tense exchanges with Republican lawmakers, but none of the topics came as a surprise or are likely to derail the Floridians path to the nations high court.

Jackson, a federal appeals judge who would be both the first Black woman and first Floridian on the court, reflected on her familys path from segregation in Miami to the precipice of the Supreme Court.

She spoke about her work on Guantanamo Bay cases and also defended her record on sex offense cases against criticism from Republicans.

GOP lawmakers had telegraphed these lines of inquiry in social media posts in recent weeks and in their opening statements the day before. Senate Democrats and the White House were ready with rebuttals.

Democrats can confirm President Joe Bidens nominee to the nations high court on their own through Vice President Kamala Harris, who would be able break a tie in the event of a 50-50 party-line vote.

Democratic leaders have repeatedly expressed their desire for a bipartisan vote, but that could be difficult to pull off even if it wont affect Jacksons confirmation.

A testy exchange with Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, who backed Jackson for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit less than a year ago, highlighted that the judge cant count on guaranteed support from Republicans who have supported her in previous confirmations.

The hearing continued well into Tuesday evening and is scheduled to resume with more questioning on Wednesday morning at 9 a.m.

Sen. John Kennedy, R-Louisiana, center, and Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson talk with Owen Stokes, 6, son of Kennedys chief of staff, David Stokes, during a break in a Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing for Jackson on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, March 22, 2022. Jacksons daughter Leila Jackson looks on at right.

Jacksons Guantanamo Bay defense work closely examined

Tuesday marked Jacksons most public and thorough comments since her nomination about her work on behalf of Guantanamo Bay detainees during a period when the law was murky.

Story continues

Jackson served as a federal public defender in Washington, D.C., from 2005 to 2007. Her service followed a 2004 Supreme Court ruling that foreign nationals held at the prison on the U.S. Navy base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had the right to petition federal courts for writs of habeas corpus to determine the legality of their detention.

After 9/11 there were also lawyers who recognized that our nations values were under attack, that we couldnt let the terrorists win by changing who we were fundamentally, Jackson told the Senate Judiciary Committee.

And what that meant was that the people who were being accused by our government of having engaged in actions related to this under our constitutional scheme were entitled to representation, were entitled to be treated fairly. Thats what makes our system the best in the world.

Jackson never traveled to Guantanamo herself, but as an attorney in the offices appellate division she worked on the cases of four detainees Khi Ali Gul, Tariq Mahmoud Alsawam, Jobran Saad Al-Quhtani and Khudai Dad. Dad was released months after his detention began, while the other three were released years after Jackson left the Federal Public Defenders Office.

She also worked on the case of Al-Quhtani when she joined the international law firm Morrison & Foerster. The firm had taken over the Saudi nationals defense before Jackson joined the firm. She testified that she was not involved in bringing the case to the firm.

At Morrison & Foerster, Jackson also worked on amicus briefs on behalf of former federal judges and libertarian-leaning nonprofits, such as the Cato Institute, the Rutherford Institute and the Constitution Project, that challenged the governments power to hold detainees indefinitely. Graham and Jackson had a tense exchange about her role in these briefs.

Graham, who noted his own background representing defendants in military court, said he took no issue with Jacksons public defense work on behalf of the Guantanamo detainees. But he grilled her about her work as a private practice attorney, and he was unsatisfied by Jacksons distinction between her clients views and her own.

If the court had taken the position included in the brief that you signed onto we would have to release these people or try them. And some of them the evidence we cant disclose because its classified. Youre putting America in an untenable position, Graham said.

This is not the way you fight a war. If you tried to do this in World War II, theyd run you out of town. Wed hold enemy combatants as long as theyre a threat. Theres no magic passage of time that you got to let them go.

Scrutiny of sex crime sentencing

Democrats sought to give Jackson a platform to dispute GOP accusations that she took a soft approach to child pornography cases during her nine years as a federal trial court judge after Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, attacked the judge on the issue on Twitter last week.

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, asked Jackson to respond to the criticism. As a mother and a judge who has had to deal with these cases, I was thinking that nothing could be further from the truth, Jackson said.

She discussed reading offenders comments from victims of child sex abuse during sentencing hearings.

I tell them about the adults who were former child sex abuse victims who tell me that they will never have a normal adult relationship because of this abuse, Jackson said. I tell them about the ones who say, I went into prostitution. I fell into drugs because I was trying to suppress the hurt that was done to me as an infant.

Democrats repeatedly pointed to statistics that showed Jacksons sentences in these cases as standard with other judges in both her district and the country as a whole. Only 30% of non-production child pornography offenders receive sentences within the guidelines.

However, Hawley and other Republicans continued to press Jackson on the issue. Hawley pointed to seven cases in which Jackson handed down sentences below federal sentencing guidelines.

Jackson said that the Supreme Court had ruled in 2005 that Congress could not make these guidelines mandatory.

Hawley focused his questions primarily on a 2013 case involving an 18-year-old defendant. Hawley said federal sentencing guidelines recommended up to 10 years, and the federal prosecutor sought two years, but Jacksons sentence was three months.

Im having a hard time wrapping my head around it. Were talking about 8-year-olds and 9-year-olds and 11-year-olds and 12-year-olds. Hes got images of these, the government said it ended up over 600 images, gobs of video footage of these children, but you say this does not signal a heinous or egregious child pornography offense, Hawley said.

Jackson pushed back on Hawleys characterization of her view and defended her sentencing decisions. The evidence that you are pointing to discussing, addressing in this context is evidence that I have seen in my role as a judge and it is heinous. It is egregious. What a judge has to do is determine how long to sentence defendants proportionately consistent with the elements that the statutes include, Jackson said.

White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates on Twitter referred to Hawleys line of questioning as an embarrassing, QAnon-signaling smear, specifically invoking the conspiracy theory whose adherents believe that former President Donald Trump is at war with a secret cabal of pedophiles. Several defendants charged in cases related to the Jan. 6 attack of the Capitol were proponents of the theory.

Jackson repeatedly points to her love of country

When Jackson is given a chance to describe her qualities as a person, she often invokes one specific trait: her patriotism.

The refrain was evident when the judge was asked whether she believes in Martin Luther King Jr.s vision of a post-racial America, where citizens are judged not by the color of their skin but the content of their character.

Jackson noted that her parents were forced to attend segregated schools in Miami, before recounting how different her experience had been.

The fact that we had come that far was to me a testament to the hope and the promise of this country, the greatness of America, she said.

The comments were similar to ones she gave during her opening remarks Monday, when she talked openly about the love she held for America. Combined, the rhetorical approach appears meant to head off any criticism that Jackson is insufficiently appreciative of her home country, a criticism sometimes leveled against the political left.

Republicans try to tie Jackson to critical race theory

Jackson had a far more contentious exchange about race late in the day with Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who noted that he and the judge attended Harvard Law School at the same time.

Cruz pressed the judge about her role as a member of the board of trustees for the Georgetown Day School, contending that the schools curriculum is filled and overflowing with critical race theory. Critical race theory, an academic concept that focuses on the role of race in shaping public policy, has come under intense scrutiny from Republican lawmakers in recent years.

Cruz highlighted several texts in the schools curriculum that he argued contradicted this concept, specifically Antiracist Baby and Stamped (for Kids), two books written by Ibram X. Kendi, the director of Boston Universitys Center for Antiracist Research.

Jackson said the board does not control the curriculum and that critical race theory does not come up in her work as a judge.

She said the private school, which was established in 1945, was founded by three white families and three Black families who chose to create an integrated school community at a time when public schools in Washington, D.C., were segregated by law.

The idea of equality, justice is at the core of the Georgetown Day School mission, Jackson said. And its a private school such that every parent who joins the community does so willingly with an understanding that theyre joining a community that is designed to make sure that every child is valued, every child is treated as having inherent worth and none are discriminated against because of race.

Jackson offered the standard answer on abortion rights

Its not a surprise, but Jackson reiterated that she thinks the Supreme Court has already made the right to an abortion a case of settled law, citing Roe v. Wade and Casey v. Planned Parenthood as two major decisions that affirmed it as such.

Roe and Casey are the settled law of the Supreme Court concerning the right to terminate a womans pregnancy, Jackson said. They have established a framework that the court has reaffirmed.

The judge was quick to note in her response that current Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett gave the same answer during their own recent confirmation hearings. And the issue otherwise didnt come up often during the days session, with Republicans and Democrats alike focusing their attention elsewhere.

That could be because, in large part, conservatives have already placed enough ideological allies on the Supreme Court to at least partially repeal the right to an abortion, as many Democrats expect them to do later this year when the court rules on an Alabama case it heard in December. The court is considering whether to uphold Alabamas ban on abortions after 15 weeks.
The Florida Democratic Party said Tuesday it is moving venues and rescheduling its annual fundraising gala and organizing event after facing criticism over its timing and its decision to host the event at Walt Disney World.

The decision was announced hours after the Florida LGBTQ+ Democratic Caucus said it would skip the event, called Leadership Blue, because it was being held at Disneys Coronado Springs Resort near Orlando. The caucus said The Walt Disney Co. didnt do enough to publicly come out against controversial Florida legislation that would prohibit classroom lessons on sexual orientation or gender identity.

Scheduling Leadership Blue at Disney during Pride Month this year is nothing but tone deaf, Stephen Gaskill, president of the caucus, which has 21 chapters, said in a statement. To put it another way: (Florida Democratic Party)  read the room.

Florida Democratic Party chairperson Manny Diaz said Tuesday evening that the party had gotten feedback that the events dates, originally scheduled for June 17-19, conflicted with Pride Month, Juneteenth and Fathers Day. He did not mention Disney by name in a short statement but said, Our timing was not ideal. We also acknowledge that in our fight for freedom and fairness, we can always do more.

He said the party would share information about rescheduled dates and location once we have explored available options.

Tensions have run high in Florida over House Bill 1557, called the Parental Rights in Education bill but branded the dont say gay bill by opponents. It prohibits classroom lessons on sexual orientation or gender identity in grades K-3, or for older children in ways deemed not age-appropriate.

Proponents of the bill, including Gov. Ron DeSantis, have charged it will protect against injecting sexual instruction and transgenderism into the classrooms of young kids. Critics, including LGBTQ students who protested around the state, say it marginalizes queer youth, an already vulnerable group.

Story continues

Disney, one of the most influential companies in Florida, has come under scrutiny for its position on the bill from all sides.

DeSantis mocked the company as being too woke a day after having a private discussion with Disney CEO Bob Chapek during which Chapek expressed concerns over the bill. That phone call took place the day after the bill passed the Florida Legislature.

Meanwhile, some employees and customers have criticized the company for not taking a more public, forceful stance against the bill. The company has also faced scrutiny over its donations over the years to every sponsor and co-sponsor of the contentious legislation.

Several lawmakers have said that Disney quietly lobbied to soften or stop the bill, but those efforts were unsuccessful. Disney has since announced a pause on all its Florida political contributions.

Walt Disney World did not respond Tuesday evening to an email requesting comment on the Florida LGBTQ+ Democratic Caucus statements on the company and the groups planned boycott.

The intraparty controversy over the Leadership Blue event comes during a year when Democrats desperately need unity if they are to wage competitive races against Florida Republicans, who are generally better funded and more organized, during the midterms.

Gaskill earlier Tuesday called on other officials and candidates to skip the event. In response, agriculture commissioner and Democratic candidate for governor Nikki Fried also applied pressure Tuesday, saying in a statement that Disneys response to the bill was tepid, short-sighted, and disappointing at best and that if the event remained at Disney, she would not attend.

U.S. Rep. Charlie Crist, whos also running for governor, similarly tweeted that given the timing and conversation going on right now at Disney, its prudent the party consider other options.

He did, however, also say that after early mistakes, the company is trying to do the right thing  in the face of Governor DeSantis attacks on our LGBTQ+ community.

Following the Democratic Partys announcement that the fundraiser would be moved, Gaskill released a second statement thanking leaders for the response.

While it may seem like a family squabble that spilled into the street, this situation underscores that the many groups, organizations and individuals that make up the (Florida Democratic Party) can pull together when the cause is right, he said.
Mar. 22A former Alabama pastor now free on $50,000 bond is facing several counts of statutory rape and sexual battery in Grundy County, Tennessee, while he awaits trial in Alabama on other child sex allegations.

Charges in Tennessee against Danny Duane Pitts, 59, of Hartselle, Alabama, stem from an investigation launched Jan. 5 with Tennessee Bureau of Investigation agents working jointly with Hartselle police probing allegations related to incidents that happened between August and November 2019, according to TBI spokesperson Susan Niland.

Pitts is charged with aggravated statutory rape, two counts of sexual battery by an authority figure and statutory rape by an authority figure, Niland said in a news release issued Monday. Pitts surrendered Monday at the Grundy County Jail and was freed the same day, according to Grundy County Sheriff Clint Shrum.

Shrum said Tuesday in a telephone interview he knew little of the case since it arose from a TBI investigation with links to Alabama.

Mike Taylor, 12th Judicial District attorney general, said Alabama's State Bureau of Investigation contacted the TBI on the case since that state's investigation crossed the state line.

In the Tennessee case, Pitts and a 17-year-old boy traveled from Alabama to Grundy County where the alleged abuse took place in 2019, Taylor said Tuesday. Taylor said the teen is believed to have been a member of the church where Pitts worked as pastor in Morgan County, Alabama.

Pitts had no lawyer on record in Grundy County and the name of his lawyer in his Alabama case was not immediately available.

Pitts faces a November trial in Alabama on two counts of sodomy involving another minor in Morgan County, according to court records in Decatur, Alabama.

"It is a case that occurred several years ago and it involved a member of his church, a young man that he had befriended," Morgan County District Attorney Scott Anderson said Tuesday in a telephone interview.

Story continues

"We allege an inappropriate relationship took place that was criminal in nature," Anderson said. He said he couldn't share any further details on the Alabama case as it continues to develop.

"I'm sure the Grundy County DA and I will be exchanging notes," Anderson said.

The investigation in Morgan County was a joint probe involving the Hartselle Police Department, Anderson's office, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and members of the North Alabama Violent Crimes Task Force, according to a Nov. 5 news release from the police department. Pitts was later released on a $500,000 bond.

According to media reports from Huntsville, Alabama, Pitts was the former pastor of GracePoint Church in Decatur.

WHNT News 19 reported in August that a pastor at the church was accused of acting inappropriately toward children at the GracePoint Church in Decatur in several posts on social media, according to the station's website. Several people claimed to have been groomed and abused by a pastor at the church, News 19 reported at the time without naming Pitts.

When Pitts was released from Morgan County custody, conditions of his release required him to wear an ankle monitor, remain in the state and he was ordered to turn over his passport, the station reported.

Morgan County court officials said his trial date on the Alabama charges is Nov. 28.

Pitts has a hearing in Grundy County Circuit Court Friday at 9 a.m., court officials said.

Contact Ben Benton at bbenton@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6569. Follow him on Twitter @BenBenton.
A man who had recently been fired from his job went to his former bosss home and opened fire, Washington police said.

The Shelton man was arrested Tuesday, March 22, after shots were fired at a south Seattle home, the Seattle Police Department said.

The man had been sending his former boss threatening text messages after he was fired, police said.

Officers arrived and learned a former employee of one of the homes residents had opened fire outside the house, striking the home and a vehicle, police said in a news release.

The man was arrested and charged with assault and unlawful possession of a firearm.

Police did not say if anyone was hurt during the shooting and did not identify the man.

Noose found months after racist graffiti shut down Facebook construction site in Utah

Man kills Sonic employees after accusations of fake order led to arrest, NE cops say

Zip line workers senseless death in California may have been preventable, feds say
Someone fired five shots at a Fort Worth Fire Department training tower Tuesday afternoon while 30 fire department personnel were training there, then shot three more times at a fire station, according to a release from the Fort Worth Fire Department.

The fire department said in the release a suspect has already been taken into custody and nobody was hurt in the shooting. The motive and identity of the suspect are not yet available.

While there is no known threat to fire service personnel, the fire department is taking this situation seriously and use precautionary measures at all fire stations, the department said in a release. The safety of our firefighters is a priority and this senseless act of random violence will be handled with the utmost attention and diligence.

The Bob Bolen Public Safety Complex, located at 505 West Felix, is the headquarters and training facility for both Fort Worth police and fire personnel. The shooter fired the five rounds at the 8-story building, used for high rise fire training, from a vehicle before driving less than a mile to Fire Station 17, according to the release.

The shooter then fired three rounds at the building, hitting the structure but not anybody inside, according to the release.

A fire department spokesperson did not immediately reply to a request for information on whether the department has seen any attacks on its people or property in the past year.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey on Tuesday unveiled a proposal to create an Office of Community Safety that would include police, firefighters and violence prevention staff.

"This is our chance to make good on enacting change that can and should and, I hope, will last generations," the mayor told City Council members in a public meeting. "I can't emphasize enough the importance of meeting this moment ... to do right by our residents and businesses."

The mayor's proposal is part of a broader pitch to create a cabinet that would include four high-ranking staffers to help him supervise city departments under a new government structure that hands him more power over their daily operations. It comes at the same time a small group of council members are working on their own effort to create a public safety department.

Both efforts are in their early stages and come months after an election that was watched across the country as people waited to see whether  and how  Minneapolis would fulfill a promise to transform public safety following George Floyd's murder by police.

In that election, voters rejected a proposal that would have replaced the Police Department with a new public safety agency, removed minimum funding requirements for police and granted the council more sway over police operations. Voters approved a separate proposal that handed the mayor more power over city departments' daily operations and prohibited council members from interfering with his efforts to do that.

The city's elected leaders are beginning to debate how they should interpret those election results and best fulfill voters' wishes as they aim to put the bulk of the new, "strong mayor" system of government in place by year's end.

First reactions

Groups that sought to sway Minneapolis voters during the November election offered diverging opinions Tuesday about the mayor's proposal.

Some groups that opposed the effort to replace MPD  and supported the creation of a "strong mayor" system  said they were still digesting Frey's proposal and looked forward to learning more details.

Story continues

"Voters last election made clear their mandate for a more planful approach to public safety in Minneapolis," said Leili Fatehi, campaign manager for All of Mpls, who previously worked for Frey. "And this marks an important move in that direction."

Groups that supported the ballot measure to replace the MPD and opposed efforts to give Frey more power dismissed the new plan as window dressing.

"It's meaningless. It's words on paper right now," said Kenza Hadj-Moussa, a spokesperson for TakeAction Minnesota. "One of the main reasons why we had a ballot amendment in November was to increase public oversight over the Minneapolis Police Department. This doesn't do that."

The mayor's proposal

Frey on Tuesday presented the City Council's Committee of the Whole with his thoughts on how they should set up the new system of government.

The mayor's proposal would create a cabinet with four high-ranking staffers who would report directly to him and help him oversee the other municipal operations. That cabinet would include a chief of staff to oversee the mayor's office, the city attorney and the heads of two new offices focusing on public service and community safety.

The Office of Public Service would include a variety of city offices, such as finance, health, economic and community development, 311, and others. The Office of Community Safety would include 911, fire, police, emergency management and neighborhood safety (a division that also would include the Office of Violence Prevention now housed in the city's health department).

The mayor told council members he believes this structure would allow agencies working on public safety efforts to more efficiently coordinate with each other, while leaving in place a clear chain of command.

Frey, in an interview, said he imagines the person leading the Office of Community Safety as "someone with a safety and law enforcement background."

"We want someone that has a deep understanding of the law," he said. "We want someone who has great expertise as a changemaker, as well as managing a whole lot of people."

Debating how to interpret the vote

In the committee meeting, Council Member Robin Wonsley Worlobah noted that residents spent a lot of time during the past election engaged in a "robust public conversation about whether or not law enforcement or MPD should actually be included in that Department of Public Safety."

Referring to the proposal that would have replaced the MPD, she told the mayor: "I'm somewhat concerned: Is this Office of Community Safety a rebrand of Question 2, which will essentially override the will of the voters?"

Frey called that "over simplistic." He noted that he had supported efforts to better coordinate public safety programs but had opposed the provision in the ballot measure that would have given council members more sway over police.

"It is not the same as Question 2," Frey said. "I do believe it takes items where there is broad consensus and it takes out pieces where there wasn't."

A council proposal

The mayor unveiled his proposal at a time when some council members are finessing their own effort to create a public safety department that could include many of the same divisions.

Some of the council members who support that effort, though, say they believe MPD needs to have better accountability efforts in place before it can effectively fold in with other departments.

"It's very promising to see the direction that he's going in, but it still leaves a lot of questions unanswered around accountability," said Council Member Elliott Payne, who is leading the council's effort. "That's the work we need to get into."

Neither the mayor nor the council can act alone. Payne is pursuing his proposal via an ordinance that would require approval from all 13 council members  and the mayor.

The city's charter, which serves as its constitution, gives council members responsibility for establishing and organizing city departments, meaning parts of Frey's plan likely would need a sign-off from the council as well.

"Let's work together on this,'' Frey told the council Tuesday. "That would be my ask."

Staff writer Alex Chhith contributed to this report.
Mar. 23Unhappy with St. Paul's newly-redrawn ward map, the leadership of the Frogtown Neighborhood Association is demanding that half the 15-member St. Paul Charter Commission resign.

"At least half of your white members can resign immediately while the appropriate entities recruit new members of color," reads a recent letter to the commission, noting the alternative would be for the Frogtown Neighborhood Association to file a human rights complaint.

It was not immediately clear if the association intended to file its concerns with the state's Department of Human Rights, the city's Department of Human Rights and Equal Economic Opportunity or another agency.

While a majority of the city's residents are people of color, all but two or three members of the charter commission are Caucasian.

The letter, dated March 18 and signed by Caty Royce, Danielle Swift and Tia Williams, blames the charter commission for an "over-concentration of white people ... in direct violation of (the state's) Human Rights Act," which bans discrimination that would interfere with the "full utilization of or any benefit from any public service because of race, color, creed, religion, national origin, disability, sex, sexual orientation."

Their letter goes on to say that the charter commission's "over-abundance of white members clearly impairs the voice of the BIPOC community from full utilization of the public service your commission has been charged with shepherding, in this case, the redistricting of wards in St. Paul."

During a public hearing before the commission last week, Swift asked the charter commission to take more time to consider new ward lines, including an 11th-hour proposal from Common Cause that would have shifted immigrant residents living in low-income housing on West Seventh Street in Highland Park from Ward 3 to Ward 2.

That, among other changes to the ward map, would have opened up the possibility of creating a more immigrant-centric Ward 2, which is already home to many Latino residents on the West Side.

Instead, in a race against a statutory deadline, the charter commission adopted a ward map last week that largely preserves the city's existing seven wards intact, with some bleeding at the edges. Summit Brewing, for instance, now sits in Ward 3, which spans Mac-Groveland and Highland Park, instead of Ward 2, which includes downtown St. Paul.

Brian Alton, chair of the commission, had no immediate comment on Tuesday regarding the Frogtown Neighborhood Association's letter.




PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. - More than 100 House Republicans are slated to host a fundraiser for Rep. Liz Cheney's (R-Wyo.) main primary challenger Harriet Hageman.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) told The Daily Caller about the event on Thursday. A Republican source confirmed news of the fundraiser to The Hill.

The event is set to be held at the home of longtime McCarthy advisor and Republican fundraiser Jeff Miller on March 30.

The fundraiser marks a unified effort by House Republicans to oust one of their own members. Cheney irked many in her own caucus last year after she voted to impeach former President Donald Trump for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol.

Despite the backlash within her own party, Cheney has continued to criticize Trump. She is currently serving as one of only two Republican members on the House select committee charged with investigating the events of Jan. 6.

While Trump has vowed to campaign against any Republican who broke with him after the Jan. 6 riot, he has singled Cheney out for particularly fierce criticism. The former president endorsed Hagement last September after meeting with several of Cheney's other Republican challengers.

News of the fundraiser for Hageman comes as House Republicans gather in Florida for their annual retreat, where McCarthy is hoping to unify members around cohesive policy message ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, when the GOP is hoping to recapture its majority in the House.




Former President George W. Bush on Wednesday shared an artistic tribute to Madeleine Albright, saying he is "heartbroken" by the death of the country's first female secretary of State.

Bush honored Albright, who died Wednesday at the age of 84, by sharing a portrait he painted of her that was included in a book released last year.

The 43rd president, who took up painting after leaving the White House in 2009, depicted Albright for his book "Out of Many, One: Portraits of America's Immigrants."

Albright was born in Prague before coming to the United States as a refugee in 1948 following a communist coup in the former nation of Czechoslovakia. She died after a battle with cancer, her family said.

In a Wednesday statement, Bush and wife, Laura, praised Albright as having "lived out the American dream and helped others realize it."

"She served with distinction as a foreign-born foreign minister who understood firsthand the importance of free societies for peace in our world," the 75-year-old former commander in chief said.

"I respect her love of country and public service," Bush said, adding that he considered Albright a friend.

"We send our sincere sympathies to her daughters," Bush said.
CONCORD, NH  Here are some share-worthy stories from the New Hampshire Patch network to talk about tonight. PM Patch NH features stories and information published during the past 24 hours. Thank you for reading Patch in New Hampshire.

Kelsey Small, a woman Adam Montgomery was dating when he was found living in a car, died last week; no new update on Harmony's whereabouts.

U.S. Marshals say New Hampshire fugitive Duron Antwaine Flynn, last known to live in Manchester, should be considered armed and dangerous.

Man accused of DUI on Loudon Road; habitual offender arrested in Penacook; trespass and assault charges at the hospital; warrant arrests.

Salem residents interested in running for 1 of 9 seats to study whether the town should change its political system can sign up on March 30.

Steven Brian Caudle of Liberty, NC, a felon due to stabbing a family member in that state, was arrested in Henniker on Wednesday.

Thrown cup of coffee leads to felony criminal mischief charge; Canaan man incident on reckless conduct accused of not stopping for troopers.

Witnesses say a tractor-trailer sheered off a pole at the corner of Lowell and Orange streets and fled the area; crews are making repairs.

Lawrence LeBoeuf has been selected as the Business Administrator of the Year by the New Hampshire Association of School Business Officials.

Also: DUI arrests near the beach; gunshots outside bar leads to charge; Chris Christie talks tough; new music school director.

Story continues

Also Read

Got a news tip? Send it to tony.schinella@patch.com. View videos on Tony Schinella's YouTube.com channel or Rumble.com channel.

This article originally appeared on the Concord Patch
Mar. 23Global Impact STEM Academy  GISA  celebrated National Agriculture Day on Tuesday, as students conducted a myriad of experiments aimed at exposing them to biological science, one of Ohio's fastest growing career fields.

"Global Impact has a unique and specific industry focus for all that we do, and that is the agriculture industry," said Joshua Jennings, GISA's founding director. "We do our best as an organization to create teaching and learning opportunities for our students to find the relevancy in all that they do through applications of agricultural concepts."

The school has specific curricular components in which students receive technical content in the areas of food, fiber, energy, bioscience and the environment, Jennings said, noting that Ag Day is a celebration of that and the industry as a whole.

The academy has one of the largest Future Farmers of America (FFA) chapters in Ohio, as all of its students are members. In addition, about 60% of GISA's graduates go into agriculture-related fields, Jennings said. Those who opt for other career fields also "even the students who don't go to a specific field of student with ag or directly into employment, I certainly think they have benefited immensely by the teachings, learning and finding relevance through the field of ag, he said.

"That exposure in any way, shape or form will pay dividends to those students in a variety of ways," he said.

Nationally, there are 41,680 people in the biological scientist field with a mean hourly wage of $43.22 and mean annual wage of $89,910, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In Ohio, there are 330 people employed in the biological scientist field with an hourly mean wage of $36.48 and annual mean wage of $75,870.

The data also shows that the Dayton region is the sixth top paying metropolitan area for the biological scientist field with 50 employees, $52.47 hourly mean wage and $109,130 annual mean wage.

Story continues

Bioscience is one of the state's fastest growing occupations with a change of 20.3% and 100 annual openings, according to the 2026 Ohio Job Outlook Employment Projections data by the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services. The number of employees in the field is projected to jump from 880 in 2016 to 1,059 in 2026.

All GISA students were involved in planning Ag Day, said junior Anna Spohler.

"Ag Day is a huge part of our school," she said. "We help plan it, every single grade, every single class, helps us to plan ag day. It's a huge thing for us, getting to work with all the different grades, the 7-12 graders get to work together and we all combine to make this day such a big thing for us and such a special event.ng," she said.

The activities, which are enhanced and adapted from a typical school day, are not only intended to engage the students, but also the guests, Jennings said.

Some of the activities included creek stomping, which allowed students to test chemical and physical qualities of stream health and biodiesel boat racing. Students also created lip balm with soybean byproducts and they explored the anatomy and functions of crops and coffee marketing

Jennings said the academy celebrates National Ag Day each year as their schedule allows. He said they have done that through a variety of ways, but part of the event is inviting local leaders and elected officials to engage with students on the work they're doing that day and throughout the year.

The day is not necessarily to prepare students for anything specific, but to celebrate what the students already engage in on a daily basis. However, Jennings said that events like these does prepare students to engage with adults in sharing and articulating the critical importance of the industry.

Spohler said agriculture is important because it's everywhere.

"It is in the food that you eat, the things that you grow. It's not just farmers, it's not just the soil and the dirt, it is everywhere," she said. "It is made in factories, it is made in homes, it is made in schools. Agriculture is a huge part of our school, it's a huge part of the world... It's something that will continue to grow because it is such an important part of our world."
The worldwide recording industry celebrated its biggest-ever year of growth last year since official reporting began, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) has said.

Subscription streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music were credited as the driving force behind the 18.5 per cent growth in the global recorded music market.

This is the seventh consecutive year of growth and a notable increase from the 7.2 per cent rise in 2020.

According to figures released by the IFPI in its annual global music report, revenues totalled 25.9 billion US dollars (19.6 billion) in 2021.

Last year marked the return of global superstar Adele, who released her fourth studio album, 30, as well as blockbuster releases from the likes of Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran and Billie Eilish.

The UK music market has specifically seen revenue rise by 13.2 per cent  an increase from 2020s 3.8 per cent uplift.

In a press conference announcing the report, IFPI chief executive Frances Moore stated there was no doubt that paid subscription streaming was the driving force behind the growth as it was a positive increase in every country.

Taylor Swift was one of the biggest-selling artists of 2021 (Getty Images)

Dennis Kooker, president of global digital business and US sales at Sony Music Entertainment, said: Absolutely, thats been the core of what weve seen as the growth story for the industry of the last seven years.

I also think it was unique in 2021, were coming from a post-Covid type of environment that impacted other aspects of the recorded music business in a negative way.

So, were seeing a recovery in some of those parts of the business. And you see physical business growing at over 16 per cent and a piece of that is a story about vinyl and physical growth, but its also recovery from the prior year.

The industry body stated that by the end of 2021, there were 523 million users of paid subscription accounts which helped increase the streaming revenues by 21.9 per cent to $12.3bn (9.3bn).

Total streaming figures, including advertising-supported streaming, grew by 24.3 per cent to reach $16.9bn (12.8bn), or 65.0 per cent of total global recorded music revenues.

Story continues

Growth was also supported by physical formats such as CD and vinyl, which had an uptick of 16.1 per cent, coinciding with the reopening of record stores and other retailers after the lifting of lockdowns across the world.

Performance rights  money earned when a song is played in public  also saw an increase of four per cent as the music industry begins to recover from the pandemic.

IFPIs Global Music Report 2022 - the definitive guide to the recorded music market worldwide  is out now. https://t.co/y7Q8uhZHiU #GlobalMusicReport pic.twitter.com/gmc42X85lD  IFPI (@IFPI_org) March 22, 2022

Moore added: Around the world, record companies are engaging at a very local level, to support music cultures and bring on the development of emerging music ecosystems  championing local music and creating the opportunities for it to reach a global audience.

As more markets mature, they join with and contribute to the rich, globally interconnected music world.

Consequently, todays music market is the most competitive in memory. Fans are enjoying more music than ever and in so many different and new ways. This creates enormous opportunities for artists.

Those who choose to partner with a record company do so to benefit from the support of agile, highly responsive global teams of experts dedicated to helping them achieve creative and commercial success and build their long-term careers.

As technologies and the online environment continue to evolve and expand, so too do the creative opportunities to share music experiences.

From the metaverse, to in-game content, record companies have invested in the people and the technologies to deliver new, highly interactive experiences  adding to the evolving ways for artists to make connections with their fans.
In todays heightened culture war, the coffers of the anti-gay movement are overflowing. According to publicly available annual returns, 11 nonprofit groups identified as anti-LGBTQ hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center took in over $110 million in contributions during the financial year ending in 2020.

The dollar amount represents a recent high-water mark for the organizations, whose take of donations, grants and other noncash contributions has increased steadily since 2016, when the same 11 groups reported more than $87 million in such contributions.

In just four years, their total revenue swelled by over 25 percent, with some indication that the positive trend continued into 2021. The multimillion-dollar war chest has bolstered a movement that just a few years ago appeared to be losing ground in Americas decadeslong culture war around lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer rights. Far from retreating, the groups have won significant battles at all levels of American government and society  from local school boards to the federal courts.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, or SPLC, based in Montgomery, Alabama, has tracked the anti-LGBTQ movement for more than a decade. In 2011, the SPLC published its first list of 13 hate groups that propagate known falsehoods and pseudoscience to disparage gender and sexual minorities. Since 2020, the organization has been tracking more than 40 entities, of which many engage in a host of issues beyond LGBTQ rights, like abortion and Covid-related mandates. Several groups are also churches, which are exempt from filing annual returns and therefore do not disclose their finances.

Then, as now, a loose affiliation of fundamentalist churches, conservative law centers and far-right advocacy organizations makes up the anti-LGBTQ movement.

Many of those, while not specifically tied to a church, are rooted in the conservative Christian, biblical sense of human sexuality, said Scott McCoy, the interim deputy legal director for LGBTQ rights and special litigation for the SPLC and the SPLC Action Fund, the groups political action committee.

Story continues

But simply holding a religious belief that views homosexuality or transgender identity as sinful does not automatically land a church or an organization on the SPLCs list of hate groups.

Many of these groups assert that LGBTQ people are a threat to society itself. That kind of extremist rhetoric and belief is part of what goes into our decision-making process, McCoy said. He also pointed to groups that justify violence against LGBTQ people, like Westboro Baptist Church.

'The hard core of the anti-gay movement'

When the SPLC began tracking anti-LGBTQ hate in the early 2010s, the organization noted that a small coterie of groups now comprise the hard core of the anti-gay movement. The same groups  many now flush with financial resources  continue to shape the anti-LGBTQ agenda.

As of today, there probably are five or six key players, McCoy said, highlighting the Family Research Council, the Alliance Defending Freedom, Liberty Counsel and the American College of Pediatricians as parts of the core.

From 2011 to 2021, the total revenue of the Family Research Council  an advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C., that, according to its website, believes homosexual conduct is harmful to the persons who engage in it and is also harmful to society at large  jumped from over $12 million to more than $23 million.

Supreme Court Cake Decision (Sarah Silbiger / CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images file)

During the same period, contributions to the Alliance Defending Freedom, which is based in Scottsdale, Arizona, more than doubled, from over $34.5 million in 2011 to more than $76 million in 2021. According to its website, the group aims to secure generational wins to ensure the law respects Gods creative order for marriage, the family, and human sexuality.

In a statement, Jeremy Tedesco, the senior counsel and senior vice president of corporate engagement at the Alliance Defending Freedom, touted its judicial track record and alleged that the SPLC has destroyed its own credibility because of its blatant partisan agenda.

Alliance Defending Freedom is among the largest and most effective legal advocacy organizations dedicated to protecting the religious freedom and free speech rights of all Americans. Our record since 2011 includes 13 Supreme Court victories, including two wins last year and one upcoming case next term, Tedesco said. Our track record of success is due in large part to those who generously support our work, and increased giving demonstrates the growing movement to protect Americans First Amendment freedoms.

Mat Staver, founder and chairman of the Liberty Counsel, right, speaks outside the Supreme Court on Dec. 12, 2018. (Zach Gibson / Getty Images)

Mat Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, based in Orlando, Florida, said that the organization is neither anti-LGBTQ nor a hate group and that the SPLCs self-appointed hate group list is false and defamatory.

We hate no one and oppose violence and demeaning language or behavior towards anyone, Staver said in a statement. We believe every person is created in the image of God and has inherent dignity and value. Liberty Counsel believes everyone is entitled to religious freedom and freedom of speech.

The Family Research Council and the American College of Pediatricians did not respond to requests for comment. They have previously rejected the accusation that they are hate groups.

'Outliers' who 'wield a pretty big hammer'

The significant flows of contributions to the groups, however, do not reflect a growing antagonism toward the LGBTQ community in broader American society.

Survey after survey confirms that Americans of many different political stripes and religious affiliations have become more supportive of LGBTQ rights over the past decade. According to the 2021 American Values Atlas, more than two-thirds (68 percent) of Americans supported same-sex marriage last year, up from 47 percent a decade before. That included majorities of historically conservative religious groups, like Catholics and Orthodox Christians, and nearly half of all Republicans.

The same survey found even greater public support for protections against discrimination in the workplace and public accommodations for LGBTQ people. In 2021, the American Values Atlas reported that 79 percent of respondents supported such protections.

One group in the American Values Atlas continues to lag behind the rest of the country when it comes to affirming LGBTQ equality: white evangelical Protestants, whose fringe, far-right elements comprise the core of the anti-LGBTQ movement in the U.S. today.

As someone who writes social science, I cant tell you how many sentences I have begun with the words with the lone exception of white evangelical Protestants, said Robert P. Jones, the CEO and founder of the Public Religion Research Institute, or PRRI, the organization behind the American Values Atlas. Whether it is on immigration, LGBTQ issues, abortion  white evangelical Christians are increasingly outliers to the middle of the country, not just to the left.

Jones, a scholar of white Christianity in the U.S., has spent years tracking the cultural and political power of white evangelical Protestants.

I think the biggest marker of change among white evangelicals over the last decade has just been the internal shifts that they have undergone, Jones said. They have shrunk by nearly a third just over the last decade. Today, they are 14.5 percent of the population. And as they have shrunk, they have been hemorrhaging young people. I think that is one of the reasons why they have become increasingly out of step with the middle of the country.

Despite the bleed of parishioners, white evangelicals have managed to maintain their power in electoral politics by solidifying their stake in the Republican Party. Between 2016 and 2020, Pew Research Center found that white evangelical voters support of President Trump rose from 77 percent to 84 percent. Although this voting bloc only accounted for 19 percent of the total electorate in 2020, it made up 34 percent of all Trump voters.

When youre a third of one partys base, you wield a pretty big hammer, Jones said.

Without the broad support of white evangelicals, Pew Research Center observed, Trump would have lost to Joe Biden by more than 20 points in the last presidential election.

James Dobson (David Zalubowski / AP file)

From the start of his foray in national politics, Trump made an effort to woo this key constituency. In 2016, during his first run for the Oval Office, Trump formed a so-called evangelical executive advisory board to help shape his political platform. Among the people in the group of advisers were heavy hitters in evangelical Christianity, as well as the anti-LGBTQ movement, including James Dobson, an Alliance Defending Freedom co-founder and the founder and former leader of the fundamentalist Christian organization Focus on the Family.

We saw this shift throughout Trumps presidency  and it has certainly lasted past it  of the term evangelical becoming more of a political signifier than it is a religious one, that being almost a stand-in for white, Christian nationalist beliefs, said Maggie Siddiqi, the senior director of Religion and Faith at the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank.

It was not just Trump who welcomed evangelical leaders into the highest levels of politics and policy. In 2018, then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., appointed Family Research Council President Tony Perkins to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, an independent, bipartisan commission created by the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 that is dedicated to defending the universal right to freedom of religion or belief abroad. At the time, Heidi Beirich, then the director of the SPLCs Intelligence Project, called Perkins appointment deeply disturbing. His current term on the commission expires in May.

Mitch McConnell,Tony Perkins (Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP file)

Siddiqi noted that among evangelicals, there is some noted resistance to marrying faith with contemporary American politics. For example, in 2019, the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty launched the campaign Christians Against Christian Nationalism, which, among other tenets, holds that conflating religious authority and political authority is idolatrous and often leads to oppression of minority and other marginalized groups.

Still, conservative white evangelicals have found in the modern Republican Party champions for a political agenda that extends well beyond LGBTQ rights. On issues of abortion, religious freedom and, more recently, Covid vaccination mandates, todays GOP has aligned itself with the interests of many white evangelicals, affording the group outsized power in the U.S.s two-party political system.

With so many evangelicals flocking to one side of the political spectrum, Jones said, they have yielded disproportionate influence in the public, by leveraging a political party.

A strategic 'pivot'

At the same time, the political arenas where conservatives and progressives battle over LGBTQ rights and other fraught social issues have continued to evolve.

Theres been a focus downward to more local places like school boards, boards of health, bodies of that nature, said McCoy of the SPLC. Now they are taking up the latest fault lines in the culture war, whether it be mask mandates, LGBTQ school policies or even critical race theory.

There has also been a pivot to targeting the transgender community, said Sharita Gruberg, the vice president for the LGBTQI+ Research and Communications Project at the Center for American Progress.

The groups that are opposed to LGBTQ equality did their message testing and found that attacking gay people is no longer the broadly popular culture war totem that they used in the 90s, Gruberg said. From the bathroom bills in 2015 and 2016 to the bans on trans kids playing school sports, it is easier for these groups to frame attacks to focus on trans kids paired with policies that they say are restoring parental rights. Its a bit of a Trojan horse.

The Parental Rights in Education bill  dubbed the Dont Say Gay bill by its critics  which is on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis desk, is a case in point. If it is signed into law, it would prohibit classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity in the states primary schools. Opponents say the law would harm LGBTQ youths by creating an antagonistic educational environment. But Republican state Rep. Joe Harding, who introduced the bill in the House in January, contends the measure is about empowering parents.

Last month, Harding defended his bill in a blog post for the Family Research Council, an SPLC-designated anti-LGBTQ hate group since 2011.

Gruberg contends that protecting LGBTQ rights nationwide would require federal intervention. Congress is considering the Equality Act, which would amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex, sexual orientation and gender identity. But passage of the law is far from ensured: All Democratic-voting senators and 10 Senate Republicans would need to vote in favor of the measure to overcome the filibuster.

Even then, the law could still meet its demise in the courts. While the Supreme Court has a history of affirming LGBTQ rights, conservatives now command a solid majority.

The most recent addition to the court, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, even has a past with members of the anti-LGBTQ movement. From 2011 to 2016, Barrett gave lectures on five different occasions to the Blackstone Legal Fellowship, the Alliance Defending Freedoms flagship summer program for Christian law students. During her confirmation hearing in 2020, Barrett described her experience with the Blackstone Legal Fellowship as a wonderful one but also said that nothing about any of my interactions  were ever indicative of any kind of discrimination on the basis of anything.

For Jones, the pace at which LGBTQ equality has advanced has created a last stand mentality among white Christian conservatives, who have worked diligently over the decade to shore up their power on the federal bench.

Its that dynamic that is driving the fundraising, he said. Theres a kind of last-stand desperation, an apocalyptic feeling that if we dont do something now, we will lose the country. And if we dont do something to win it back, there will never be another opportunity.

Follow NBC Out on Twitter, Facebook & Instagram
Conservatives are slamming Home Depot on Twitter. Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Conservatives on Twitter are bashing Home Depot, accusing it of going "woke."

A photo of an internal Home Depot worksheet about privilege has gone viral.

The home improvement company told Insider the worksheet was unauthorized.

Home Depot addressed on Wednesday a worksheet defining privilege circulating on social media, noting that the material was an unauthorized document from the retailer's Canadian division.

A day earlier, the "Libs of TikTok" account  an anonymous Twitter handle devoted to mocking liberals  tweeted out a picture of a Home Depot-branded worksheet about "unpacking privilege," saying the home improvement company had "gone woke."

Libs of Tik Tok (@libsoftiktok) March 23, 2022

The sheet defines privilege as "a special benefit or advantage that may be earned or unearned" and describes several types of privilege, including social privilege, white privilege, able-bodied privilege, and cisgender privilege. The tweet went viral, with some Twitter users threatening to avoid shopping at Home Depot in the future.

The sniping at Home Depot earned a backlash of its own. Many commentators saw no issue with a company internally sharing guidelines around fostering tolerance and empathy in the workplace.

But a representative for the home improvement retailer told Insider that the printed material was not an official in-house training material. The worksheet came from the company's Canadian division, according to the representative. They said it was never featured in any company-wide trainings, and did not receive approval from Home Depot's department around corporate diversity, equity, and inclusion.

"While we fully support diversity across our company, this material was not created or approved by our corporate diversity, equity and inclusion department," a Home Depot spokesperson told Insider. "This was a resource in our Canadian division and not part of any required programming."

Story continues

In February, the New York Post interviewed the anonymous woman behind the Libs of TikTok account. She described herself as running a "mini Project Veritas." The concept of privilege, especially as it pertains to racism and critical race theory, has become a cultural flashpoint for the right in the US. Conservative politicians have used the concept as a means of ginning up their base, and have attempted to instigate book bans and pass laws to stifle classroom discussions about race.

This is not the first time that Home Depot has come under fire over politics. In the past, liberal-leaning social media users disavowed the home improvement giant because two out of the company's four founders  Bernie Marcus and Ken Langone  vocally support conservative politicians and provide donations for right-leaning causes. Another founder, Arthur Blank, is a Democrat who has long supported more left-leaning politicians.

Insider previously examined the Federal Election Commission data for Home Depot and its rival Lowe's, and found that both companies predominantly donate to Republican federal candidates, just like most large retailers.

Read the original article on Business Insider
BUDAPEST (Reuters) - Hungary does not support any sanctions on Russian energy shipments as it would endanger Hungary's energy security, foreign minister Peter Szijjarto said on Wednesday at the United Nations Human Rights Council reiterating Hungary's stance.

"It is not Hungary's fault that natural gas and oil from Russia plays a big role in the energy supply of Hungary, Central Europe and all of Europe," Szijjarto said in a speech broadcast on his Facebook page.

(Reporting by Krisztina Than and Anita Komuves; Editing by Toby Chopra)
Idaho governor Brad Little, a Republican, signed a law on Wednesday modeled on Texass ban on abortions at detection of a fetal heartbeat.

The Idaho law allows family members of a preborn child, including the father, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and siblings, to sue an abortion provider for a minimum of $20,000 if they perform an abortion when the fetal heartbeat is discernible. A heartbeat is typically detectable at around six weeks of pregnancy.

I stand in solidarity with all Idahoans who seek to protect the lives of preborn babies, Little wrote in a letter to Idaho Senate president and lieutenant governor Janice McGeachin after signing the legislation.

However, Little also noted that he had concerns with law, writing I fear the novel civil enforcement mechanism will in short order be proven both unconstitutional and unwise.

The law provides for exemptions in cases of incest or rape, however the law also requires a victim seeking an abortion to file a police report beforehand. An abortion is also permitted under the law in case of a medical emergency in which the pregnant womans life is threatened.

I am particularly concerned for those vulnerable women and children who lack the capacity or familial support to report incest and sexual assault, Little wrote. Ultimately, this legislation risks re-traumatizing victims by affording monetary [incentives] to wrongdoers and family members of rapists.

The law was widely backed by Idaho Republicans, who hold supermajorities in the state legislature. The state House passed the law 51-14 last week, with the Senate approving the bill 28-6 earlier in March.

Story continues

There are four abortion providers in Idaho, all of them in the southern part of the state, according to the Idaho Statesman.

The Texas law banning abortions at detection of a fetal heartbeat, on which Idahos legislation is based, went into effect in September 2021 after the Supreme Court declined to take up a challenge against it.

Texass bill allows any private citizen to sue an abortion provider, or anyone who aids in obtaining an abortion, for $10,000. The Idaho law is slightly narrower, allowing only family members to sue, with the target of the suit limited to an abortion provider.

More from National Review
BOISE, Idaho (AP)  Idaho on Wednesday became the first state to enact a law modeled after a Texas statute banning abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy and allowing it to be enforced through lawsuits to avoid constitutional court challenges.

Republican Gov. Brad Little signed into law the measure that allows people who would have been family members to sue a doctor who performs an abortion after cardiac activity is detected in an embryo. Still he said he had concerns about whether the law was constitutional.

I stand in solidarity with all Idahoans who seek to protect the lives of preborn babies, Little wrote in a letter to Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin, who is also president of the Senate.

Yet he also noted: While I support the pro-life policy in this legislation, I fear the novel civil enforcement mechanism will in short order be proven both unconstitutional and unwise."

The law in the conservative state is scheduled to take effect 30 days after the signing, but court challenges are expected. Opponents call it unconstitutional, and note that six weeks is before many women know theyre pregnant.

Advanced technology can detect a first flutter of electric activity within cells in an embryo as early as six weeks. This flutter isnt a beating heart; its cardiac activity that will eventually become a heart. An embryo is termed a fetus after the eighth week of pregnancy, and the actual heart begins to form between the ninth and 12th weeks of pregnancy.

The law allows the father, grandparents, siblings, aunts and uncles of a preborn child to each sue an abortion provider for a minimum of $20,000 in damages within four years after the abortion. Rapists cant file a lawsuit under the law, but a rapists relatives could.

The vigilante aspect of this bill is absurd, said Idaho Democratic Rep. Lauren Necochea. Its impacts are cruel, and it is blatantly unconstitutional.

A Planned Parenthood official called the law unconstitutional and said the group was committed to going to every length and exploring all our options to restore Idahoans right to abortion.

Story continues

I want to emphasize to everyone in Idaho that our doors remain open. We remain committed to helping our patients access the health care they need, including abortion, said Rebecca Gibron of Planned Parenthood Great Northwest, Hawaii, Alaska, Indiana and Kentucky, which operates Idahos three abortion clinics.

Backers have said the law is Idaho's best opportunity to severely restrict abortions in the state after years of trying. Most recently, the state last year passed a six-week abortion ban law, but it required a favorable federal court ruling in a similar case to take effect, and that hasn't happened.

The law is modeled after a Texas law that the U.S. Supreme Court has allowed to remain in place until a court challenge is decided on its merits. The Texas law allows people to enforce the law in place of state officials who normally would do so. The Texas law authorizes lawsuits against clinics, doctors and anyone who aids or abets an abortion that is not permitted by law.

A number of other states are pursuing similar laws, including Tennessee, which introduced a Texas-styled abortion bill last week.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the Biden administration knew the Texas law would lead to other states passing similar laws, and called on Congress to send the president a bill to shut down these radical steps.

This development is devastating for women in Idaho, as it will further impede womens access to health care, especially those on low incomes and living in rural communities, Psaki said in a statement Wednesday.

Republicans in Idaho have super-majorities in both the House and Senate. The measure passed the Senate 28-6 and the House 51-14 with no Democratic support. Three House Republicans voted against the measure.

Little on Wednesday noted his concerns with the legislation.

Deputizing private citizens to levy hefty monetary fines on the exercise of a disfavored but judicially recognized constitutional right for the purpose of evading court review undermines our constitutional form of government and weakens our collective liberties," he wrote.

He said that he worried some states might use the same approach to limit gun rights.

He also noted his concern with the part of the law allowing a rapist's relatives to sue.

Ultimately, this legislation risks retraumatizing victims by affording monetary incentives to wrongdoers and family members of rapists," he wrote.

He concluded the letter by encouraging lawmakers to fix those problems to avoid unintended consequences to ensure the state sufficiently protects the interests of victims of sexual assault.

Little is facing a primary challenge from the far-right in McGeachin, the lieutenant governor, who has been endorsed by former President Donald Trump.

Republican Rep. Steven Harris, the bills sponsor, said in a statement after the vote on March 14: This bill makes sure that the people of Idaho can stand up for our values and do everything in our power to prevent the wanton destruction of innocent human life. ___

This story has been corrected to show that the abortion bill in Tennessee was introduced last week, not this week.
Prosecutor Nick Hermann announces that he is running for re-election in the Prosecutors Office at the Evansville Civic Center Complex in Evansville, Wednesday afternoon, Feb. 2, 2022.

EVANSVILLE, Ind.  The Indiana State Board of Accounts is looking into the transfer of $25,000 in public money by Vanderburgh County Prosecutor Nick Hermann's office to a private nonprofit he runs.

The state agency said Tuesday it is acting in response to a Courier & Press report published Monday. The newspaper reported that Hermann's office made five separate payments of $5,000 from its forfeiture fund to his nonprofit, My Goals Inc., between 2018 and 2020, and there's little indication what it was used for.

"Ive turned it over to the people that would be taking it any further," said Lori Rogers, the State Board of Accounts' compliance director for counties.

For subscribers: Vanderburgh County Prosecutor Nick Hermann gave $25k in public money to nonprofit he runs

The agency could assign an investigation to staff who do yearly audits of local government units or to special investigators who do specific audits  or it could decide it doesn't merit further investigation, Rogers said.

"Anything that they find would be issued  if they do find anything  would be issued in a report," she said.

Forfeiture money comes from the seizure of cash, cars, real estate and other assets from suspects. Contributions of the funds by law enforcement agencies such as the prosecutor's office are publicly reported. But My Goals, which has a stated purpose of helping at-risk youth, is a small nonprofit that is not required by the IRS to account for its finances other than to confirm that it takes in $50,000 or less a year.

The Courier & Press could find no trace of My Goals online beyond its incorporation information. Hermann did not respond to messages seeking records of the groups finances.

More: What we know about spending in the Vanderburgh County Prosecutor's Office

Previously: Prosecutor's office credit cards paid for bra, gourmet strawberries, $10K in staff lunches

In a previous email message, Hermann pointed out that Indiana code allows prosecutors to set up, staff and support a "youth mentoring program" such as My Goals. The statute says prosecutors may "receive and expend charitable contributions, appropriations, and federal, state, local, or private grants" for the organizations.

Story continues

But Indiana Prosecuting Attorneys Council guidelines for spending forfeiture money don't specify giving to nonprofits as an allowable use, and Evansville Police officials said they don't give forfeiture money or any public money to their affiliated nonprofits.

The statute Hermann cited states that any youth mentoring program set up by a prosecutor "is subject to audit" by the State Board of Accounts.

The Courier & Press also reported Monday that My Goals used a prosecutor's office credit card to make at least $4,658 in purchases in 2020 and then reimbursed the money  an arrangement Rogers has said was improper. County Auditor Brian Gerth said he didn't know about it at the time.

Thomas B. Langhorne can be reached by email at tom.langhorne@courierpress.com.

This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: Prosecutor Nick Hermann: State looks into money he gave his nonprofit
Has a movie ever been improved by the insistence that its based on a true story? More often than not, these pronouncements feel as if theyre doing less to contextualize the actual films that follow than they are to compensate for them  that theyre insisting upon a degree of importance that the rest of their running times dont justify and/or pleading for a suspension of disbelief that the rest of their running times dont earn.

The dangers hardly stop there: Malgorzata Szumowskas Infinite Storm is an unusual reminder that such an approach also runs the risk of provoking the exact opposite effect. Remarkable as the true story behind this emotionally detached survival drama might be, the non-fiction label it staples to itself during the opening credits steels viewers for an urgency that never develops, and limits them to .

More from IndieWire

Here are the facts: At the height of a blistering snowstorm on October 17, 2010, a volunteer member of the Pemigewasset Valley Search and Rescue team named Pam Bales stumbled upon a suicidal young man sitting in beach clothes at the edge of a cliff near the summit of Mount Washington, and  in the face of her own doubts and demons  did everything she possibly could to get him down to safety. But Szumowskas film, in its own vague yet belabored way, makes clear from the start that Pam is also in need of saving.

Another of the rugged survivors that Naomi Watts has embodied with delicate grit in the face of so many different horrors (tidal waves, home invaders, dashed Hollywood dreams, etc.), Pam has been living alone in the wilderness of New Hampshire since her two young daughters were killed by a carbon monoxide leak, and her grief is sketched by the absence of any other characteristics. Why does she decide to trudge up Mount Washington (played with threatening grandeur by the Slovenian Alps) in the face of dangerous weather? Its cheaper than therapy, and the mountains always listen and never talk back. Josh Rollins script will tease out the specifics of Pams tragedy in small pieces, but everything well know about her is made clear in a single line.

Story continues

And yet, Szumowska (along with her co-director and cinematographer, Micha Englert) shoots that fateful day with a clinical eye that gradually allows procedure to obscure pathos. From the start, Infinite Storm is more focused on timestamps than it is on Pams frame of mind, though Szumowska renders her heroines semi-reckless sense of abandon in fine detail. Theres only one other car in the parking lot where embarks on the trail, and the hike is so risky that Pam is compelled to wedge a map of her path under her windshield wipers.

And yet, as the movie wordlessly trudges its way up the mountain, it seems to share Pams reluctance for self-reflection. Does she disregard the coming storm because shes an experienced hiker who knows these mountains like the back of her hand, or is the possibility that she might never come down part of her decision to climb in the first place? When she hears cries for help on the wind, does she wonder if they might only be in her mind? Watts stoically determined performance invites such open-ended questions  and what little emotional heat this frostbitten movie is able to generate depends on her character not knowing the answers to them  but Infinite Storm keeps pushing Pam toward her destiny as if it were afraid she might be late.

Despite the refreshingly experiential flavor of Szumowskas approach, her film is handcuffed by the facts of its true story, and Pam remains at such a pronounced emotional remove that it sometimes feels as if shes only hiking up that mountain because the facts of the matter demand that she must. Flashbacks are kept to a minimum, but ditching them entirely might have done more to emphasize the crucible of this one fateful climb. As it stands, Infinite Storm settles for the worst of both worlds, as the harrowing suspense of the situation is dulled by Pams lingering ambivalence towards surviving it.

That becomes twice as true once she comes across John (Billy Howle), whos half-dead and fully delirious by the time she finds him. Pam assigns her non-verbal rescue target a name in the hopes of sparking any kind of response, but hes even less emotionally forthcoming than she is, and just as conflicted about being saved. While John eventually shines a few rays of light on his situation, and the overlap between these two characters is legible in broad strokes, watching Pam drag this lifeless husk of a man down the side of a mountain offers all the insight and excitement of watching someone corral an unruly toddler through a hectic airport.

Szumowska doesnt shy away from the grim slapstick of the whole situation (What a fucking asshole, Pam sighs after the guy shes trying to rescue flings himself off yet another cliff), but theres not a lot to it once the rescue mission reaches a lower altitude, and whatever transcendence these people are meant to offer each other amid the chaos of the universe  a chaos that naturalist John Muir referred to as an infinite storm of beauty  is increasingly supplanted by the tedium of watching them tumble back down to Earth. The remarkable truth of the rescue precludes any chance for poetry, and the postscript that Infinite Storm invents for this story is, in its own way, far less affecting than what happened in real life. Szumowskas film swears that Pam and John saved each other, but its too awed by the fact of what happened to explore what that might actually mean.

Grade: C-

Bleecker Street will release Infinite Storm in theaters on Friday, March 25.

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.
DAMASCUS, Syria (AP)  The foreign ministers of Iran and Syria, two allies of Russia, discussed the war in Ukraine and other developments during a meeting in Damascus on Wednesday. Syria's top diplomat said Moscow is defending its people.

Faisal Mekdad spoke to reporters in Damascus after his Iranian counterpart, Hossein Amirabdollahian, held talks with President Bashar Assad, Mekdad and top security official Maj. Gen. Ali Mamlouk.

Amirabdollahian welcomed the reconciliation approach by the United Arab Emirates toward Syria. He added that Tehran is close to reaching an agreement on its nuclear program with world powers.

Iran is a strong ally of Assad and has sent thousands of Iran-backed fighters from around the region to bolster Syrian government forces against opponents in the 11-year Syrian conflict. Russia has also supported Assad militarily, turning the tide of the war in his favor. The Syria war has killed nearly half a million people and displaced half the countrys pre-war population of 23 million.

Speaking about Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Mekdad said Russia is defending its right in protecting its people (by pushing) away the NATO presence on its direct border.

Russia is defending us all and is defending its sovereignty, Mekdad added.

State news agency SANA said that during Assad's meeting with Amirabdollahian they discussed the conflict in Ukraine and they both agreed that international balance should not be subjected to dangerous shocks through which Western countries threaten international peace and security."

During his visit, Amirabdollahian discussed the latest developments in Irans negotiations to restore Tehrans nuclear deal with world powers. He also discussed Assads visit to the United Arab Emirates last week, which marked his first to an Arab country since the Syria war broke out, and meetings of the constitutional committee in Geneva between the Syrian government and opposition.

Story continues

We welcome and we are satisfied with what some Arab countries are doing by normalizing relations with Syria, Amirabdollahian said.

Amirbdollahian said in Farsi that strategic relations between Iran and Syria are at their best. He later made a rare comment in Arabic, saying: We are in the same trench, and we support Syrias leadership, government and people.

Like Iran, Russia is a strong ally of Syria and joined the war in 2015, which helped Assads forces regain control of much of the country. Russia has hundreds of troops deployed in Syria and an air base on the Mediterranean coast.

Nuclear negotiations nearly reached completion earlier this month before Moscow demanded that its trade with Iran be exempted from Western sanctions over Ukraine, throwing the process into disarray. Negotiators have yet to reconvene in the Austrian capital, and its unclear exactly what hurdles lie ahead.

The Iranian official said he believes that Tehran is close to reaching an agreement over its nuclear program and put the blame for delays on the American side, which he said should take a realistic stance. He did not elaborate.

Amirabdollahians visit comes two weeks after two members of Irans Revolutionary Guard were killed in an Israeli strike near the capital Damascus.

Days later Iran claimed responsibility for a missile barrage that struck near a sprawling U.S. consulate complex in northern Iraq, saying it was retaliation for repeated Israeli strikes in Syria. The Revolutionary Guard said it fired off 12 cruise missiles at what it described as a strategic center of the Israeli spy agency Mossad, a claim denied by Iraqi officials.
TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said on Wednesday he planned to unveil more support measures for Ukraine and strengthen Tokyo's sanctions against Russia at a G7 meeting in Brussels.

Kishida is set to leave for Belgium later on Wednesday to attend the gathering to discuss Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Russia calls its action in Ukraine a "special military operation".

(Reporting by Kiyoshi Takenaka; Editing by Andrew Heavens)
As the use of aircraft like drones, electric vertical take-off and landing vehicles and uncrewed aerial vehicles take off, Japanese startup Terra Drone wants to make sure trafficking the skies doesn't get overlooked.

Our airspace is going to get more crowded than ever, but most companies today are concentrating only on hardware development, said Terra Drone CEO and founder Toru Tokushige, who is also serving as the CEO of Terra Motors, which develops electric vehicles. Theres an urgent need for a global air traffic management solution to enable safe and efficient drone and urban air mobility (UAM) operations, and Terra Drone aims to be the leading player building the digital infrastructure in the sky.

Founded in 2016, Terra Drone develops drone software, hardware and uncrewed aircraft system traffic management solutions. The company said Wednesday it has closed a $70 million (8 billion JPY) Series B round led by Mitsui Corporation. The latest round, which brings its total funding raised to $83 million, comes approximately a year after raising $14.4 million Series A in February 2021.

Other investors SBI Investment, Tokyu Land Corporation, Kushu Electric Power, Seika Corporation, JOIN (Japan Overseas Infrastructure Investment Corporation for Transport & Urban Development) and exiting investor Venture Lab Investment also joined in the round.

Teppei Seki, COO of Terra Drone, said in an interview with TechCrunch that the company will use the Series B to increase its headcount and fuel its global expansion into Europe, the U.S. and Southeast Asia. The funds will also be used to acquire companies in those regions, said Seki, who did not disclose the companys valuation.

The firm acquired a Netherlands-based drone company, Terra Inspectioneering, in 2018 and invested in Belgium's drone company Unifly in 2016.

Additionally, the startup says its proceeds will be used to support autonomous beyond visual line of sight technology for drone and air taxi operations through its uncrewed aircraft system traffic management solutions and strengthen the development of Terras UAM services.

Story continues

When asked about its next plan after Series B, Seki told TechCrunch that Terra Drone considers going public. The company also could raise another funding before its IPO, Seki added.

Terra Drone has about 500 customers including oil and gas companies like Shell, Chevron, BP, ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, Vopak and Japans Inpex Corporation as well as chemical companies like BASF and Kansai Electric Power. Seki told TechCrunch that the firm also provides its inspection services to food company Bunge and survey services to construction companies.

Notably, the oil and gas industry, mainly focusing on rig inspection for safety and better performance, invests approximately $50.76 billion yearly to monitor onshore and offshore pipelines, according to a report by Fortune Business Insights released in February 2022. Terra Drones can identify defects like corrosion in structures, coating failures, and any other structural damages, Seki said. The global drone surveillance market is expected to grow to $476.5 million in 2028, from $142 million in 2021. The global UAM market is projected to increase to $1.5 trillion by 2040, according to Terra's IR deck.

Terra Drone is working on projects with a number of Japanese companies and government such as TEPCO, Japan Airlines, KDDI, Japans leading telco company, Inpex, and Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport. The startup has also been working with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to coordinate crewed and uncrewed aircraft flight management.

Terra Drone

Terra Drone's uncrewed traffic management

Seki told TechCrunch that the companys key specialization and differentiator is its patented technology that enables the drone to press the ultrasonic testing, or ultrasonic thickness probe, against a surface without the scaffold to measure the thickness of walls.

A focus on increasing recurring revenue through the sale of survey-grade hardware and software such as Terra LiDAR (light detection and ranging) and Terra LiDAR Cloud, providing specialized services such as ultrasonic thickness (UT) measurements and non-destructive testing (NDT) using drones through our [subsidiary] Terra Inspectioneering; and a strategic consolidation of overseas business has made us well-positioned for success, Tokushige said. We will be able to scale up operations and innovation faster.

Terra Drone competes with global drone companies, including UKs Sky-Futures, CyberHawk and Malaysias Aerodyne. AirMap and France-based YellowScan, a developer of UAV lidar systems for drones, are also its competitors, Seki mentioned.

Terra Drone has 60 employees, while its subsidiaries have about 500 employees across the globe.




A federal judge ruled on Monday that cruise companies Carnival, Norwegian, MSC Cruises and Royal Caribbean engaged in tourism to Cuba while it was barred by the U.S.

Judge Beth Bloom said the trips, which occurred while travel to Cuba for tourism was banned by U.S. law between 2015 to 2019, did not fall within permitted travel categories, The Associated Press reported.

She said that while cruise lines were given licenses by the federal government to take Americans to Cuba, they were not allowed to be used for tourism, per the AP.

"The fact that OFAC [The Office of Foreign Assets Control] promulgated licenses for traveling to Cuba, and executive branch officials, including the president, encouraged defendants to do so, does not automatically immunize defendants from liability if they engaged in statutorily prohibited tourism," Bloom said, according to the wire service.

The judge also ruled that the companies must pay the descendants of a U.S. businessman for using a Havana terminal that was taken from him after the Cuban revolution, the AP reported.

The case was brought by the company Havana Docks, whose president, Mickael Behn, is the grandson of a businessman, William C. Behn, who had three of his docks confiscated in 1960, according to the AP. Havana Docks is seeking about $9.2 million.

According to court documents, the cruise companies gave millionaire contracts to the Cuban government for the use of the terminal as well as four tours, per the wire service.

From trips with stops in Cuba, the companies made over $1.1 billion, according to court documents, the AP noted.

The judge said the case could go on to trial to determine monetary damages, according to the wire service.

Carnival told The Hill it would not comment due to the case involving multiple companies.

A spokesperson for Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings said the company does not comment on ongoing litigation.

The Hill has reached out to the rest of the cruise companies for comment.

Updated 4:35 p.m.
Mar. 23A Kern County judge heard a motion Tuesday in the murder case of two California City toddlers' adoptive parents which sought to prevent the couple from contacting their biological and adopted children.

Trezell, 35, and Jacqueline West, 32, have pleaded not guilty to two felony charges of second-degree murder, two felony charges of willful cruelty to a child and a misdemeanor charge of falsely reporting an emergency in the deaths of adoptive children Orson, 3, and Orrin West, 4.

The Wests also have two other adopted children and two biological kids. Deputy District Attorneys Bryant Estep and Eric Smith filed a criminal protective order against the Wests to remove their visitation rights with those four children.

Defense attorney Alekxia Torres Stallings said during a morning hearing in Kern County Superior Court the prosecution's motion seeks to stop the parents from talking about the case with the kids, or persuading or intimidating them. The prosecutors provided no evidence that the parents were doing so, other than filing the charges against the Wests, she added.

However, the indictment against the Wests included an allegation that they "induced a minor to commit or assist in the commission of the crime."

It is unclear if Judge Chad A. Louie granted the prosecutors' motion, or adjudicated any other matter regarding the filing, because the public was barred from the afternoon hearing where it was scheduled to be heard. When the public was allowed into the courtroom, Torres Stallings and Tim Hennessy, representing Jacqueline and Trezell West, respectively, said they "received the criminal protective order," but there was no explanation as to what that meant or what was decided.

At the hearing earlier in the day, Torres Stallings said their clients visited their children twice a week for the past 10 months. These meetings were monitored. The Wests also underwent strict drug and alcohol testing while attending parenting classes, she said.

Story continues

After the Wests were in custody, the visitation schedule was modified to one visit per month either in person or virtually, she added. Torres Stallings said she believes the parents will visit the children virtually, thereby removing a need for the criminal protective order.

In another matter, Judge Louie granted the prosecutors' request to modify the gag order to include all motions, declarations and exhibits filed in the case.

A spokeswoman for Kern County Department of Human Services, under which Child Protective Services operates, declined to comment Tuesday, citing the gag order.

However, spokeswoman Jana Slagle previously answered The Californian's emailed questions about custody issues, without speaking directly about the West case.

Removing a child from a parent's custody and then determining the fitness of a parent is a long process, Slagle wrote in the email.

Those legally authorized to remove children include law enforcement and child protective services agencies, Slagle wrote at the time. After the removal, several court hearings ensue and each parent and child are provided with attorneys, she added.

A court must decide if reasonable cause exists to place a child into "protective custody." A foster parent, or an approved relative, can receive the child, she wrote. Throughout the hearing process, the parent is given a "case plan" to follow, asked to continually visit their child and take classes that may address why the child was removed for safety reasons, Slagle previously wrote.

"For example, if a child was being physically abused, the parent would need to attend court-ordered classes to help him (or) her learn new ways to parent and possibly attend anger management, or substance abuse prevention classes," Slagle wrote, not commenting directly on the West case.

Typically, a parent gets a six-month plan to complete, which is monitored by the court, social workers and attorneys. If a parent completes the plan, they can reunite with their children; if not, they could potentially lose custody, she added.

"This is a long process," Slagle wrote.

Visitation orders are often implemented when parents seek to rehabilitate themselves and regain custody of their children, said paralegal Eric Miranda of Kilpatrick & Associates, a law office specializing in child custody and visitation that is not involved in the West case.

"It's to ensure that the relationship doesn't necessarily die with incarceration," Miranda said. "They want to ensure that there's still that familial bond unless there is an absolute 100 percent need to terminate the parental rights. Terminating parental rights is like (a) last-ditch effort."




The name of the Michigan school shooter suspect will not be used during the criminal trial of his parents after a judge granted a prosecutor's request on the matter, The Associated Press reported.

In a motion filed earlier this month, Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald said in a statement that she did not want the shooter's name used in public filings or spoken in court, alleging that 15-year-old teen Ethan Crumbley wanted to be famous, the news outlet noted.

"Shooters want to be famous," the prosecutor said, according to the AP. "It's one of the key motivators for most shooters, and it was definitely a motivator for the Oxford shooter. He wanted to be famous and he wanted to be remembered."

McDonald said that she did not want to potentially contribute to a future school shooting by publicizing his name, adding that prosecutors do not use his name in court briefs or while speaking in court.

"Calling the shooter by name does not appear to be relevant to these proceedings and prohibiting its use does not appear to prejudice the defense in any way," Oakland County Circuit Judge Cheryl Matthews wrote in her ruling, according to the AP.

The development comes as the 15-year-old faces two dozen charges for allegedly killing four students and injuring seven others during a school shooting in Oxford, Mich. in November.

His parents were each charged with involuntary manslaughter, with prosecutors citing the accessibility of the gun and their keeping him in school despite meeting with school officials who outlined concerns about the teen.

The Michigan judge, noting that both parents were being represented by lawyers from the same firm, also assigned them independent counsel, AP reported.

"The appointment of counsel will not be a substitute for the defendants' current counsel of choice or to report back to this court," Matthews noted, according to the news wire.

Shannon Smith declined to comment on behalf of herself and Mariell Lehman, who each represent one of the parents, but she noted that in their written responses they did not object to the teen's name not being used in court or the appointment of independent counsel.

- Updated March 23 at 3:00 p.m.
Mar. 23BEVERLY  A judge has sided with the city of Beverly in a dispute over whether a Lothrop Street family can keep a coop of chickens as emotional support animals for their 8-year-old daughter.

In an 18-page decision Monday, Judge Kathleen McCarthy-Neyman concluded that while there was evidence presented by her family that the chickens had helped the girl cope with anxiety and learning disabilities, there was also evidence presented by the city that the chickens and coop have been causing harm to nearby residents by drawing rodents and creating odors.

The judge denied the family of William Wilson and Irene Tsirozidou and their daughter Raffaele an injunction that would have prohibited the city from enforcing an order to remove the chickens.

Based on what the judge was presented by the couple's attorney, Jeremy Cohen, and the city during a hearing last month, McCarthy-Neyman concluded that the two federal laws cited by the family, the Americans With Disabilities Act and the Fair Housing Act, did not apply in their case.

The judge found the family had not shown that the chickens were "indispensable" to their daughter's "use and enjoyment" of the home, which is required by the Fair Housing Act.

"The plaintiffs submit documentation detailing (Raffaele's) educational challenges, her struggles with anxiety, and her difficulties in social situations," McCarthy-Neyman wrote. "This documentation, as well as (Dr.) Wilson's affidavit, indicate that interacting with and caring for the chickens has helped to alleviate some of these struggles. The court does not discount the positive impact caring for, and spending time with, the chickens has had on (Raffaele's) educational progress and overall well-being," she continued.

However, the family did not provide sufficient evidence to show that the chickens had an effect on the girl's ability to use and enjoy her home, the judge concluded.

Story continues

The judge also pointed to guidance put out by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development in determining whether an animal is a reasonable accommodation called for under federal law. That HUD guidance states that if an animal is not one typically kept in a home, such as barn animals, a monkey or other non-domesticated animals, the applicant has the burden to show the need for that specific type of animal.

Beyond that, HUD also advises that a request for an assistance animal can be denied if the animal poses a threat of harm.

The judge concluded that while the Wilson family disagrees, there is evidence submitted by the city showing the potential for live chickens to carry germs, and that there have been reports of more rats coming to the area by neighbors.

The judge also took into account the fact that the Board of Health would have to pursue its own court action to enter the property to remove the chickens.

"In the court's view, on balance, it is the public, most particularly, the neighbors and abutters in close proximity to the premises (who have legitimate concerns regarding odors, germs and rats) that will suffer, if the court issues the plaintiff's requested injunction.

Cohen wasn't immediately available to comment on the decision Tuesday.

Courts reporter Julie Manganis can be reached at 978-338-2521, by email at jmanganis@salemnews.com or on Twitter at @SNJulieManganis

Courts reporter Julie Manganis can be reached at 978-338-2521, by email at jmanganis@salemnews.com or on Twitter at @SNJulieManganis
Four teens were arrested Wednesday after the burglary of a Lynnwood apartment, according to the Lynnwood Police Department.

Just after 9 a.m. on March 23, the teens, aged 16, 17, 17 and 18, allegedly broke into an apartment at Somerset Village, stealing property including a loaded gun.

All four ran after the incident, dropping the gun along the way.

K9 Chase and his handler, Sergeant Shorthill, located three of the four teens as they hopped fences and ran through yards to escape.

K9 Chase also found the gun ditched in Gold Park.

Officers found the fourth 17-year-old suspect shortly thereafter, with another firearm in his pocket.

All four face residential burglary and theft of a firearm charges.
WASHINGTON  Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson weathered a grueling day of questions during her Senate confirmation hearing Tuesday, for the first time facing hours of grilling from the nearly two dozen senators on the Judiciary Committee.

Jackson projected a measured, thoughtful demeanor throughout the all-day hearing, even as Republicans, at times, grasped at straws as they tried to find a line of attack that would stick. Although there were a few tense moments, day two of the hearing was mostly boring and without surprises.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), a potential 2024 presidential contender, repeatedly pressed Jackson on her views on racism, childrens books and the academic discipline known as critical race theory. He specifically asked if she agrees with a childrens book called Anti-Racist Baby, by Ibrim X. Kendi, which is in the library at a private school in Washington, D.C., at which Jackson was a board member.

This book is one of the most stunning taught at Georgetown Day School, he said, holding up a copy of the book. He says it teaches children that babies are taught to be racist, not born racist, and that they are encouraged to admit if they have been racist and to talk about it.

Do you agree  that babies are racist? Cruz asked.

After a long pause, Jackson said she didnt know of the book and, separately, added that critical race theory is an academic theory taught in law schools, not in elementary schools like Georgetown Day.

Cruz angrily continued to claim that the private school is teaching 4-year-olds about critical race theory  an academic theory taught in graduate school about the ways in which race interacts with various social institutions  and asking Jackson how she was OK with this.

Jackson said again that she hadnt reviewed any of the childrens books he was talking about and that the subject of critical race theory does not come up in her work as a judge. She also, subtly, took a jab at Cruz, saying she was under the impression that his concerns about critical race theory were related to what was being taught in public schools.

Story continues

Georgetown Day School, just like the religious school that Justice [Amy Coney] Barrett was on the board of, is a private school, Jackson said.

Cruz moved on to talking about child porn and sex offenders until his time was up.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) seemed scattered with his questions. He complained about how conservative Supreme Court nominees had been treated in their confirmation hearings and about the Supreme Court nominee he wished that Biden had picked instead of Jackson. He fumed about progressive groups supporting Jackson. He asked Jackson if she thought 9/11 was an act of war (yes) and about her personal feelings on a legal argument she once made in a case involving Guantanamo Bay detainees.

None of this had much to do with Jacksons actual record or her role as a potential justice.

At one point, Graham appeared to invoke questions Democratic senators had asked Amy Coney Barrett about her faith.

On a scale of 1 to 10, how faithful would you say you are? Graham asked mockingly, after asking what her faith was and how important it was to her. Do you attend church regularly?

Jackson said that, although faith played a big role in her life (she said she is Protestant, non-denominational), she was reluctant to talk about it in detail because I want the public to have confidence in my ability to separate out my personal views. Graham said he agreed that judges could separate their religious beliefs with the way they rule.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) questions Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson during a Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing Tuesday. Graham began his questioning by pressing the nominee on her religious faith. (Photo: Andrew Harnik/Associated Press)

Graham concluded it was problematic that progressive groups which would destroy the law as we know it supported Jacksons nomination. He was referring to judicial advocacy groups, such as Demand Justice, that Republicans have routinely brought up as a way to try to associate Jackson with the radical left.

For all his bluster, though, the South Carolina Republican has voted to confirm Jackson three times to other posts: her current seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, a court considered second only to the U.S. Supreme Court; her previous seat on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia; and her previous seat on the U.S. Sentencing Commission.

Still, Graham isnt likely to support Jackson for a seat on the Supreme Court. He said a job on the high court is different from a lower court because Supreme Court justices have more influence in changing the law.

One of the most tense exchanges of the day involved Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), another potential 2024 presidential candidate. The main charge, first launched by the conservative senator last week, is that Jackson went easy on sex offenders. Its one that has been rebutted by several independent fact-checkers as misleading and a distortion.

As a mother and a judge who has had to deal with these cases, I was thinking that nothing could be further from the truth, Jackson said of Hawleys accusations on Tuesday.

Jackson argued that existing sentencing guidelines involving child pornography, which Congress passed in 2003, are outdated because they were written before the ubiquity of the internet, leading to disparities in sentences handed down to offenders. She cited that, according to an opinion written by the late conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, judges must consider other factors in sentencing, such as a defendants age and background.

But Hawley didnt seem satisfied, taking issue with one case of an 18-year-old defendant whom Jackson sentenced to three months in prison after a prosecutor recommended two years.

I am questioning your discretion and judgment. Im not questioning you as a person, Hawley told Jackson.

Im having a hard time wrapping my head around it, he added of the three-month sentence.

Democrats, not surprisingly, went easy on Jackson. They asked her about her views on the importance of certain constitutional rights and often used their time to talk about issues that they care about but that were only tangentially related to Jackson.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) spent most of his time talking about the vast network of secretive, well-funded, conservative dark money groups that have played a major behind-the-scenes role in seating five of the Supreme Courts current justices. He specifically named The Federalist Society and Judicial Crisis Network.

All told, he said, these groups have spent at least $400 million to help select and confirm Justices John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

It shows considerable effort when somebody goes to that much trouble to create that many organizations to hide how much money theyve spent to control the nominations process to the court, Whitehouse said, comparing these groups efforts to Republicans recent attacks on progressive groups, including Demand Justice, which supports Jackson.

That operation is a very different thing than a group rooting for somebody, he said. I want to make sure that difference is clear.

Jackson will appear again before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday for a second round of questions. Shes expected to be confirmed on a quick timeline, perhaps even with one or two GOP senators supporting her for the job.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.

Related...
A federal judge on Monday gave a 15-year prison sentence to a Key West man convicted of laundering nearly $1 million that others swindled out of people they befriended online.

Sean Kerwin Bindranauth, 45, collected the funds that came from promises of romance or investment opportunities and sent it from the U.S. to Nigeria, a jury found after a three-day trial last fall.

Victims included more than a dozen elderly people  generally lonely older women  who were contacted on social media and eventually persuaded to send money, prosecutors said.

The co-conspirators, who were not named, posed as men living on oil rigs, serving in the military, or working in remote locations. They struck up online relationships with strangers to pull off the fraud.

Other victims were fooled into investment scams. One testified at trial that he was misled into believing that sinking $1,000 into cryptocurrency would pay off at $10,000.

People scammed in 2018 and 2019 were instructed to send cash and personal checks or make wire transfers to Bindranauth, who received a percentage of the $900,000 the scheme raised.

A forensic analyst testified that the total loss to victims was impossible to ascertain because of untraceable funds, the U.S. Attorneys Office in South Florida said in a press release.

U.S. District Court Judge K. Michael Moore sentenced Bindranauth, who on Sept. 30, 2021 was found guilty of conspiring to commit money laundering, six counts of substantive money laundering, and conducting an unlicensed money transmitting business.

Bindranauths 15-year prison term will be followed by three years of supervised release.

He had faced up to 20 years for the money laundering conspiracy, 20 years for each money laundering count, and five years for unlicensed money transmitting.

Bindranauth was arrested Sept. 27, 2019, days after a grand jury indictment accused him of money laundering.

https://cue.misitemgr.com/#/main?name=KEYS_money_laundry&uri=https:%2F%2Fcue-webservice.misitemgr.com%2Fwebservice%2Fescenic%2Fcontent%2F259664285&mimetype=x-ece%2Fstory&extra=%7B%22modelURI%22:%7B%22string%22:%22https:%2F%2Fcue-webservice.misitemgr.com%2Fwebservice%2Fescenic%2Fpublication%2Fmiamiherald%2Fmodel%2Fcontent-type%2Fstory%22,%22$class%22:%22URI%22%7D,%22homePublication%22:%7B%22name%22:%22miamiherald%22,%22uri%22:%7B%22string%22:%22https:%2F%2Fcue-webservice.misitemgr.com%2Fwebservice%2Fescenic%2Fpublication%2Fmiamiherald%2F%22,%22$class%22:%22URI%22%7D,%22mimetype%22:%7B%22string%22:%22application%2Fatom%2Bxml;%20type%3Dentry%22,%22$class%22:%22cue.core.MIMEType%22%7D,%22$class%22:%22cue.core.Link%22%7D,%22container%22:false%7D

Story continues

A flight risk

Once Bindranauth received the money, he sent it to Nigeria through several channels, including international money transfer companies like Western Union and MoneyGram, and bank transfers.

Some people mailed cash, which he would use to buy gift cards and relay the information to his co-conspirators in Nigeria.

The gift card part of the scheme was what made it impossible to trace all of the victims losses, prosecutors said.

Bindranauth used Western Union and banks until they blocked him and found mules to make the transfers, according to court filings. In Facebook messenger chats, he discussed how to get around law enforcement and bank investigators.

Homeland Security in Miami investigated the case with help from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

Bindranauth, who worked construction, was born in Guyana but has been in the U.S. for most of his life, according to his detention order deeming him a flight risk signed by a magistrate judge in October 2019.

He was locked up until his trial.

Bindranauth has a criminal history in Monroe County. In January 2018, he pleaded no contest to two counts of felony marijuana possession, for having more than 20 grams, and a judge sentenced him to two years of drug-offender probation.

Man laundered $1M from romance scheme that targeted elderly victims, Keys jury finds
The Kremlin





The Kremlin on Wednesday accused the U.S. of pressuring other countries to remove Russia from the Group of Twenty (G20) forum, though other members are reportedly against to the idea.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said during a press call on Wednesday, "It is well-known that the United States exerts overt and hardly diplomatic pressure on all countries in terms of all-round opposition to our country."

"It's clear that the Americans will continue to apply pressure on different (G20) countries but as we see, a number of states prefer to adhere to their independent, sovereign points of view," he added, according to Reuters.

Sources told the newswire that the U.S. and Western allies were considering whether Russia should remain in the G20. However a G7 source told Reuters it was unlikely that other member countries like Indonesia, India, Brazil, China and South Africa would support this plan.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan touched on the topic of excluding Russia from the group on Tuesday saying the U.S. would consult with its allies in institutions like the G20.

"We believe that it cannot be business as usual for Russia in international institutions and in the international community. But as for particular institutions and particular decisions, we'd like to consult with our Allies, consult with our partners in those institutions before making any further pronouncements," said Sullivan.

Wang Wenbin, spokesperson for China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said on Wednesday that Russia was an "important member" of the G20.

"The G20 is the premier forum for international economic cooperation. It brings together major economies in the world, including Russia, which is an important member of the group. No member has the right to strip another member of its membership," he said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is expected to attend the G20 summit in Bali, Indonesia on Wednesday
Lindsey Graham and John Kennedy Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) repeatedly interrupted Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson during her confirmation hearing on Wednesday, drawing frustrated responses from audience members and other senators on the Judiciary Committee.

Most of Graham's interruptions took place during a tense exchange about Jackson's approach to sentencing in child pornography cases.

After one such interruption, several voices could be heard saying "Let her answer!" and "Come on," while Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said, "Please, let her complete her answer."

Washington Post White House reporter Seung Min Kim tweeted that the audience in the hearing room grew "audibly frustrated" with Graham's interruptions and that she heard one woman mutter "shut up."

During his initial remarks on Monday, Graham expressed frustration that President Biden chose to nominate Jackson rather than Judge Michelle Childs of South Carolina.

"The attacks from the left against Judge Childs was really pretty vicious, to be honest with you," Graham said Monday, adding that he believed 60 or more senators would have voted to confirm Childs.

This is not the first time Graham has become heated during a Supreme Court confirmation hearing.

"This is the most unethical sham since I've been in politics ... this is going to destroy the ability of good people to come forward because of this crap!" he yelled during the 2018 hearings for Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was accused of sexual assault.

You may also like

Putin quotes Jesus to justify invasion of Ukraine

Ted Cruz's example of a non-'controversial' Supreme Court nominee was a controversial slaveholder

Biden is reportedly sending Ukraine old Soviet air defense weapons from America's own secret stockpile
Customers pick up orders at Sunnyside Cannabis Dispensary, March 4, 2021, in Chicago. Chicago-based Cresco Labs, which owns Sunnyside in Lakeview, may get a lot bigger after announcing its proposed acquisition of Columbia Care. (Erin Hooley / Chicago Tribune)

Chicago-based Cresco Labs, one of the largest publicly traded cannabis companies in the U.S., may get a lot bigger after announcing its proposed acquisition Wednesday of Columbia Care in an all-stock merger valued at about $2 billion.

The deal is expected to close at the end of 2022, pending regulatory approval, creating a cannabis cultivation and retail giant with over 180 stores across an 18-market footprint.

Advertisement

The ability to leverage our cultivation, production and brand performance across a much wider footprint is expected to lead to long-term sustainable growth and market share gain, Cresco CEO and founder Charlie Bachtell said during an earnings call Wednesday.

The merger will create the No. 2 cannabis retailer in the U.S. with projected annual sales of more than $1.4 billion. Batchell said the added retail heft will turn the combined companys brand portfolio into the Miller High Life, Coca Cola and Johnnie Walker Blue Label of the cannabis industry.

Advertisement

Founded in 2013, Cresco is in 10 states with 21 production facilities and 49 dispensaries, most of which operate under the Sunnyside banner. In Illinois, Cresco has 10 retail dispensaries  the maximum allowed by the state  and three manufacturing facilities in Joliet, Kankakee and Lincoln.

On Wednesday, Cresco reported full-year revenue of about $822 million for 2021.

New York-based Columbia Care, which started as a medical-only operator 10 years ago, has grown into one of the largest multistate cannabis companies in the U.S. with a footprint in 18 states, including 99 dispensaries and 32 cultivation facilities.

Patient consultant Mickey Nulf hands over product to client Michelle Farina at Columbia Care dispensary, in Chicago's Jefferson Park neighborhood, on June 14, 2019. (Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune)

In Illinois, the company has two dispensaries  Chicagos Jefferson Park neighborhood and suburban Villa Park  which operate under its newly rebranded Cannabist retail banner. Columbia Care also has a 32,000-square-foot cultivation facility in Aurora.

Last year, Columbia Care generated $460 million in revenue, according to financial reports.

As part of the proposed transaction Cresco will have to divest of some assets in New York, Illinois, Ohio, Massachusetts and Florida to comply with state regulations. The divestiture likely includes two dispensaries and a cultivation facility in Illinois. The company said Wednesday it will be working closely with regulators and will provide an update on divestiture plans in the coming quarters.

Cresco and Columbia Care both trade on the Canadian Securities Exchange. The companies are listed in Canada because while recreational cannabis is legal in 18 states, it is still a federally controlled substance in the U.S.

Cannabis research firm Headset projects legal U.S. weed sales to surpass $30 billion this year and reach $45.8 billion by 2025.

Advertisement

In Illinois, sales have been ramping up since the state legalized recreational marijuana in January 2020. The state legalized medical marijuana sales in 2015.

Last year, the states 110 dispensaries sold nearly $1.78 billion in cannabis products, including $1.38 billion in recreational weed and more than $397 million in medical marijuana.

Illinois is projected to generate $2.55 billion in annual cannabis sales by 2025, according to Headset.

rchannick@chicagotribune.com
C-SPAN

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) promised on Monday that the Senate confirmation for Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson wont be a circus.

And yet, by Wednesday afternoon, the conservative lawmaker had thrown overdramatic fits and dramatically stormed off for two straight days after contentious Q&A sessions with President Joe Bidens pick for the high court.

During his second go-round with Judge Jackson, the South Carolina senator once again used his time to air well-worn right-wing grievances, particularly over the way Democrats have supposedly mistreated conservative judicial nominees. At one point, he suggested that Jackson, a Black woman, should be happy about how easy her confirmation process has been.

Referencing the 2003 filibuster of Bush nominee Janice Rogers Brown, who is Black, to the U.S. Court of Appeals, Graham huffed that if you are a person of color, a woman, supported by liberals, it is pretty easy sailing.

Eventually, Graham went down the same misleading road a few other politically-ambitious Republicans have trodden throughout this hearing, berating Jackson over her sentencing in child-porn cases while suggesting she is sympathetic to pedophiles.

Of course, experts have noted that her sentences were pretty mainstream, and even conservative legal experts have labeled attacks against her as disingenuous and meritless to the point of demagoguery.

And yet, Graham bombarded Jackson with pointed questions about her sentences in a handful of cases while repeatedly cutting her off before she could provide a detailed explanationinstead taking the opportunity to further browbeat Jackson.

If youre listening to my voice today and youre on a computer looking at child pornography and you get caught, I hope your sentence is enhanced because the computer and the internet is feeding the beast here, he groused, objecting to Jacksons attempt to explain the antiquated guidelines in some of these cases.

Story continues

Eventually, as he reached the end of his allotted time, Graham pressed Jackson on Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaughs controversial and fiery confirmation hearings.

Asserting that Democrats ambushed Kavanaugh with allegations of sexual assault, Graham insisted he wouldnt treat Jackson that way before asking her to express her feelings about the 2018 hearings.

How would you feel if I had a letter from somebody accusing you of something, a crime, or misconduct, for weeks, and I give it to Sen. Durbin just before this hearings over and not allow you to comment on the accusation? How would you feel about that? Graham wondered.

Senator, Im not sure, a confused Jackson responded. I dont understand the context of the question.

As Graham continued to grill Jackson on the Kavanaugh hearings, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-IL) told the Republican lawmaker that his time was up.

Please, Mr. Chairman, Graham sneered. She filibustered every question I had and she has the right to give an answer but Im trying to make a point in 20 minutes.

After some back-and-forth about Kavanaugh, Jackson said she would like to respond to Graham on her sentencing decisions in child-pornography cases.

The point of the guideline is to assist judges in determining what punishment to provide in cases and they are horrible cases, but the idea is that between the range of punishment that Congress has prescribed, judges are supposed to be providing proportional punishment based on what a person has done, she noted. The sentencing scheme doesnt place everybody at the same level.

Graham continued his pattern of interrupting her, despite Durbin repeatedly reminding him that his allotted time was over. Im going to give the witness is an opportunity to respond to you, senator, Durbin stated.

Finally, exclaimed Graham, who proceeded to cut Jackson off over and over again for the next few minutes.

Ten minutes after Grahams time had expired, the Trump-boosting senator got in one final shot while again suggesting Jackson was going easy on sex offenders.

All I can say is that your view on how to deter child pornography is not my view, he seethed. I think you are doing it wrong and every judge who does what youre are doing is making it easier for the children to be exploited. If you are on a computer looking at a kid in a sexually compromising situation and you get caught I hope no one gives you a break because you used a computer.

The committee chairman chastised Graham for his performance, ultimately prompting the media-savvy senator to cap off his grandstanding with another storm-off.

The conduct described is reprehensible and I think everyone in this room agrees. The fact of the matter is, Im a co-sponsor of your bill, the Internet Act. And I believe we should be doing our job here, Durbin said. But part of our job, we failed in responding to the changing circumstances that face this crime.

The chairman added: What has it been, 15 or 16 years? She is currently not an outlier in sentencing. Seventy percent of federal judges face the same dilemma and wonder why Congress has failed to act and when it will act!

This is our fault? Graham shot back, throwing his hands in the air.

Durbin replied that partially it is as he moved on to Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) to begin her questioning of Jackson.

Graham, as he did the previous day, rose from his chair and appeared to walk off in a huff.

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.
WASHINGTON  The U.S. State Department says Russia has begun the process of expelling several more diplomats from the U.S. embassy in Moscow.

The department said it received a list of diplomats on Wednesday who have been declared persona non grata by the Russian foreign ministry. It didn't say how many diplomats were affected by the order, which generally results in the expulsion of those targeted within 72 hours.

The Russian foreign ministry summoned U.S. Ambassador to Russia John Sullivan on Monday to protest President Joe Bidens description of Russian leader Vladimir Putin as a war criminal over the invasion of Ukraine. After that meeting, Russia warned that it was close to severing diplomatic relations with the United States, which would be an unprecedented move.

The State Department called Wednesdays move Russias latest unhelpful and unproductive step in relations between the countries. It urged Russia to end its unjustified expulsions of U.S. diplomats and staff.

___

KEY DEVELOPMENTS IN THE RUSSIA-UKRAINE WAR:

 NATO estimates that 7,000 to 15,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in four weeks of fighting

 Ukraine's president calls for a worldwide show of support on Thursday to mark one month since Russia invaded.

 The Biden administration has made a formal determination that Russian troops have committed war crimes in Ukraine

 Biden has embarked on a trip to Europe as Russia's war in Ukraine bogs down

 Russian Olympic athletes who participated in a pro-Putin rally are facing a backlash

 Go to https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine for more coverage

___

OTHER DEVELOPMENTS:

LVIV, Ukraine -- Russian troops who occupy the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson seized one of the countrys most prominent theater directors in a fascist manner and took him to an unknown location, Ukraines Culture Minister Oleksandr Tkachenko said.

Witnesses said nine Russian military vehicles pulled up to the home of Oleksandr Kniga early Wednesday and led him out. The Russians warned neighbors that if they came out of their homes, they would be killed, the witnesses said.

Story continues

The whole world should know about this! Tkachenko said on Facebook.

Kniga, 62, is one of the most important and respected theater directors in Ukraine. He founded the international theater festival Melpomene of Tavria.

He was among many in Kherson who oppose the Russian occupation. On Monday, Russian troops used stun grenades and fired in the air to disperse a protest.

___

LVIV, Ukraine -- Speaking on the eve of the NATO summit, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on the alliance to provide effective and unrestricted support to Ukraine, including any weapons the country needs to fend off the Russian invasion.

We ask that the alliance declare that it will fully assist Ukraine to win this war, clear our territory of the invaders and restore peace in Ukraine, he said late Wednesday during his nightly video address to the nation.

Zelenskyy will speak to the NATO summit by video, the presidents office said.

He appealed to Western countries to stay united in the face what he says are Russias efforts to lobby its interests with some partners to bring them over to its side.

We will see who is a friend, who is a partner and who has sold out and betrayed us, he said in an emotional speech. Together we should not allow Russia to break anyone in NATO, the EU or G-7, to break them and drag them to the side of war.

Zelenskyy noted that Ukrainian skies are still not closed to Russian aircraft and missiles and that Ukraine hasnt received the fighter jets or modern air-defense systems it requested. He said Ukraine also needs tanks and anti-ship systems.

It has been a month of defending ourselves from attempts to destroy us, wipe us off the face of the earth, he said. We have lasted six times longer than the enemy had planned  but the Russian troops are destroying our cities, killing civilians indiscriminately, raping women, kidnapping children, shooting refugees, capturing aid columns and looting.

___

LONDON  Britain will send thousands more missiles to Ukraines government as Prime Minister Boris Johnson urged Western allies to boost the supply of military aid to Ukraine.

Johnson is travelling to Brussels on Thursday for talks with NATO and leaders of the Group of Seven. He is expected to provide further details of the new British aid during the visit, including the donation of 6,000 more missiles comprising anti-tank and high-explosive weaponry.

The United Kingdom will work with our allies to step up military and economic support to Ukraine, strengthening their defenses as they turn the tide in this fight, Johnson said.

Britain has already sent more than 4,000 anti-tank weapons to Ukraine.

The U.K. government also says it is providing some 4 million pounds ($5.3 million) in emergency funding to the BBC World Service to counter disinformation in Russia and Ukraine.

___

LVIV, Ukraine  Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called on people around the world to come to your squares, your streets to stand with Ukraine and against the war.

He said late Wednesday in his nightly video address to his people that the war breaks my heart, the hearts of all Ukrainians and every free person on the planet. He called for people to visibly show their support for Ukraine starting from Thursday, exactly one month after Russia launched its invasion.

He said, Come from your offices, your homes, your schools and universities. Come in the name of peace. Come with Ukrainian symbols to support Ukraine, to support freedom, to support life.

Come to your squares, your streets. Make yourselves visible and heard. Say that people matter. Freedom matters. Peace matters. Ukraine matters.

Switching to Russian, Zelenskyy appealed to Russians to leave Russia so as not to give your tax money to the war. Tens of thousands of Russians already have fled Russia since the war began, fearing the intensifying crackdown at home.

___

A senior U.S. defense official said Wednesday that Russian ground forces appear to be digging in and setting up defensive positions between 15-20 kilometers (9-12 miles) outside Kyiv, as they continue to make little to no progress moving toward the city center.

The official said it appears the forces are no longer trying to advance into the city and, in some cases east of Kyiv, Ukrainian troops have been able to push Russian soldiers further away. The official said Russian forces had been 20-30 kilometers (12-19 miles) away to the east and northeast, and are now about 55 kilometers (34 miles) away.

The official said that, instead, Russian troops are exerting more energy and effort in the eastern Donbas region, specifically in Luhansk and Donetsk. The official said the U.S. is seeing Russia prioritize the fight there, in what could be an effort to cut off any Ukrainian troops in those areas and prevent them from moving west to defend other cities.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss military assessments.

The official said the U.S. has seen some activity from Russian ships in the Sea of Azov, including what appears to be efforts to send landing ships ashore with supplies, including vehicles.

Weapons and other security assistance from the U.S. continues to move into Ukraine. The official said that the final shipments from the $350 million package approved by the U.S. will be arriving in Ukraine in the next day or so, and the first shipments from the latest $800 million package will start arriving soon.

___

AP writer Lolita C. Bandor in Washington contributed to this report.

___

A senior Russian official says the countrys nuclear arsenal should help deter the West from intervening in the war in Ukraine.

Dmitry Rogozin, the head of the state corporation Roscosmos, noted in televised remarks Wednesday that the Russian nuclear stockpiles include tactical nuclear weapons along with the nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Rogozin pointed at Russian President Vladimir Putins warning to other countries not to meddle with the Russian action in Ukraine. The Russian Federation is capable of physically destroying any aggressor or any aggressor group within minutes at any distance, Rogozin said.

Putin has warned the West that an attempt to introduce a no-fly zone over Ukraine will draw it into a conflict with Russia. Rogozin in his Wednesdays comments didnt elaborate on what specific action by the West would be seen as meddling in the conflict.

Rogozins statement comes amid Western fears that Russia could use battlefield nuclear weapons against Ukraine amid the stalled Russian offensive. U.S. officials have long warned that Russias military doctrine envisages an escalate to deescalate option of using battlefield nuclear weapons to force the enemy to back down in a situation when Russian forces face an imminent defeat in a conventional conflict. Moscow has denied having such designs.

___

LVIV, Ukraine  A rush to purchase guns and train with them continued in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv on Wednesday.

Among the people lined up at a gun range was Ihor Oprysk, who said he hadnt fired a gun since serving in the Soviet army.

I bought a gun to see how it feels, Oprysk said. To (know how to) shoot nowadays is very important. You need to know about everything.

Gun shop owner Zakhar Sluzhalyy said he had 700 kinds of weapons for sale before the Russian invasion and was now down to 40. Supply chain problems have made it difficult to restock the shop with guns.

The gun (sales) boom started three or four weeks before the war began, Sluzhalyy said.

All guns are best-sellers now, he said as an $800 Kalashnikov rifle adapted for civilian use sat on a counter in front of him.

The war has prompted officials to streamline the monthlong permitting process for gun purchases to two days, he said.

___

ISACCEA, Romania  Refugees crossed the Danube River separating Ukraine and Romania by ferry on Wednesday.

A woman named Anastasia arrived in the small town of Isaccea, Romania, and said she was from Odesa. She said Russian ships had shelled the city from the Black Sea and that she and her family were headed to Constanta, a city on the Black Sea in southeastern Romania.

Its said to be a good city, the sea is not far away, Anastasia said. It feels almost like at home near the Black Sea. Well come back home after the war, of course. We really want to come back. We didnt want to leave, but we have little kids and we have to think about their safety.

___

KYIV, Ukraine  A Russian journalist has been killed by shelling in Kyiv on a reporting assignment.

The independent Russian news outlet The Insider said that Oksana Baulina was killed Wednesday when she was documenting the damage of a Russian shelling of the Podil district of the capital and came under a new strike. It said a civilian was also killed and two people who were accompanying Baulina were wounded and hospitalized.

The Insider said that Baulina had previously worked for the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalnys Anti-Corruption Foundation until she was forced to leave Russia after the organization was designated extremist by the authorities. It said it will continue to cover the war in Ukraine, including such Russian war crimes as indiscriminate shelling of residential areas killing civilians and journalists.

___

BRUSSELS  On the eve of a summit meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden, European Union nations signed off on another 500 million euros ($550 million) in military aid for Ukraine to help stave off the Russian onslaught on its territory.

EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell called the doubling of the EUs military aid since the Feb. 24 beginning of the war another sign of the EUs support to the Ukrainian armed forces to defend their territory and their population.

Borrell had already announced the additional injection of military aid at a March 11 summit in Versailles, but the proposal still had to go through the EUs approval process.

Days after the start of the war, the EU agreed to spend 500 million euros on military supplies for Ukrainian forces in an unprecedented step of collectively supplying weapons to a country under attack.

___

BERLIN  German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has spoken by telephone with Russian President Vladimir Putin and inquired about the current status of efforts by Russia and Ukraine to find a diplomatic solution.

Government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit said in a statement Wednesday night that the chancellor urged Putin to achieve a cease-fire and an improvement of the humanitarian situation in Ukraine as quickly as possible.

After his conversation with Putin, Scholz spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and asked about his assessment of the current situation and the negotiation process. Scholz and Zelenskyy agreed to remain in close contact.

___

WARSAW, Poland  Dozens of orphans and their caregivers from Ukraine who were delayed in Poland have finally boarded a plane for the U.K., where they are being given refuge due to the Russian invasion.

Some 50 youngsters from orphanages in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro were due to fly to London on Monday before traveling on to Scotland. But they were forced to wait in a hotel due to missing paperwork from Ukraine.

Their journey was organized by Scottish charity Dnipro Kids, set up in 2005 by supporters of Hibernian Football Club in the Scottish capital, Edinburgh.

They were flown late Wednesday to London by Virgin Atlantic, which said on Twitter that it operated a special relief flight to take over 50 Ukrainian orphans and eight caretakers away from the conflict in Ukraine.

The effort to offer them temporary refugee status until the war is over has the support of the British government.

___

WASHINGTON  President Joe Bidens top national security adviser says Biden and other world leaders will agree on steps to coordinate enforcement of crippling economic sanctions they have imposed on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.

Biden and other world leaders are set to hold a series of urgent meetings Thursday in Brussels on the month-old war.

The adviser, Jake Sullivan, says additional sanctions against Russian oligarchs and political figures will be announced. He says helping European countries reduce dependence on Russian energy will be a substantial topic of conversation. Announcements on that are expected Friday.

Sullivan says the United States is looking for ways to surge supplies of liquified natural gas to Europe to help make up for supply disruptions. The European Union imports nearly all of the natural gas needed to generate electricity, heat homes and supply industry, with Russia supplying nearly half of EU gas and a quarter of its oil

Sullivan, who is accompanying Biden, spoke to reporters Wednesday aboard Air Force One en route to Brussels.

___

KYIV, Ukraine -- Air raid sirens wailed over the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv at dusk on Wednesday as the city remained under attack from Russian forces.

Barrages of shelling and loud gunfire rocked the city Wednesday, striking a shopping mall and high-rise buildings in the districts of Sviatoshynskyi and Shevchenkivskyi.

Fires from shelling injured four residents, city officials said.

Mayor Vitali Klitschko said at least 264 civilians have been killed in the capital since war broke out.

___

ROME  Italian Premier Mario Draghi says Italy is setting up procedures to accept Russian scientists who want to leave their homeland.

Some 60,000 people fleeing war in Ukraine have arrived in Italy over the last weeks.

The Italian government has allocated funds to help with housing and integration programs for those who have fled due to the war, but Draghi stressed in remarks in the Italian Senate on Wednesday evening that the special assistance doesnt only apply to Ukrainian citizens.

There are refugees who are scientists or university professors, who could come to Italy and could benefit by scholarships, by funds and financing for research, Draghi said.

Among these are Russian scientists who are asking to get out. We must accept them, and I asked the (interior) minister to let them know that they are welcome and to even set up a telephone number they can call so the procedures to welcome these scientists can be set in motion, the premier said.

Draghi didnt provide any number of how many such Russians might pursue the possibility.

___

ODESA, Ukraine  Dozens of volunteers filled sandbags and piled them on the back of trucks at a beach in the Black Sea port city of Odesa on Wednesday. Volunteers have been at the beach filling sandbags since the war began to build barricades around the city.

Merchant sea captain Sivak Vitaliy, 47, carried sandbags over each shoulder and said with a smile, We win.

The father of three daughters, Vitaliy said he had gathered clothes and other items from his apartment to donate to the war effort. With no money or anything else of value to give, he came to the beach Wednesday after learning of the volunteer effort there.

Because they (Ukrainian army) are in their own land, they will not permit anybody to come and take their land and take their lives, Vitaliy said. No matter how bad the situation is in Mariupol, Kharkiv, it doesnt matter. We will win.

___

WASHINGTON  U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken says the Biden administration has made a formal determination that Russian troops have committed war crimes in Ukraine.

Blinken said the assessment was based on a careful review of public and intelligence sources since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine last month.

Americas top diplomat said the United States would share that information with allies, partners and international institutions tasked with investigating allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Blinken made the announcement Wednesday in a statement released as he was traveling to Brussels with President Joe Biden for an emergency summit of NATO leaders.

___

LONDON  Russian Olympic athletes who participated in a rally supporting President Vladimir Putin and the invasion of Ukraine are facing a backlash, with one losing a sponsorship deal and facing a disciplinary investigation.

Medalists from cross-country skiing, gymnastics, figure skating and swimming gathered on stage at the Luzhniki Stadium on Friday as part of the concert and entertainment program around Putins speech.

Olympic champion swimmer Evgeny Rylov is under investigation from the sports governing body, known as FINA, for attending the event.

Rylov also lost his endorsement deal with swimwear manufacturer Speedo because of his involvement in the pro-Putin rally.

Most of the athletes, including Rylov, were pictured wearing jackets with a Z on the chest at the rally. The letter isnt part of the Russian alphabet but has become a symbol of support for Russian troops after it was used as a marker on Russian armored vehicles operating in Ukraine.

Other Olympic medalists athletes in attendance included figure skaters Victoria Sinitsina, Nikita Katsalapov, Evgenia Tarasova and Vladimir Morozov; cross-country skier Alexander Bolshunov; and rhythmic gymnastic twin sisters Dina and Arina Averina.

___

PARIS  Ukrainian refugees lined up outside a welcome center in Paris on Wednesday thats providing food and temporary shelter to people as some await transfer to permanent shelters in Brittany in northwestern France.

The center is run jointly by Paris authorities and several French NGOs. French Prime Minister Jean Castex said on Wednesday that 26,000 Ukrainian refugees had arrived in the country since Feb. 24. While some have remained in France, others have traveled to Spain, Portugal and the United Kingdom, Castex said.

European Union member countries have granted Ukrainians a six-month temporary protection visa, renewable up to a maximum of three years. This Temporary Protection Directive, implemented for the first time in the EU, includes a residence permit, access to the labor market and housing, medical assistance, and access to education for children.

Hayko, a 30-year-old woman from Lviv, arrived in Paris with her friend, Tanja, 31, and their three children after a lengthy trip from Ukraine through Moldova and Romania. They said they left Lviv a few days after the Russian invasion began. They plan to live for now with Tanjas sister-in-law, who lives in Paris.

I have a 7-year-old son, Hayko said. My husband is in Ukraine. He is protecting our country. We dont want to stay here for the rest of our lives. I hope it will only be for a short period of time.

___

UNITED NATIONS  Ukraines U.N ambassador is urging all nations that stand against Russias invasion to vote for a U.N. resolution on the humanitarian consequences of its aggression, saying this will send a powerful message aimed at helping people caught in the conflict and ending Moscows military action.

Russias U.N. envoy countered that the U.N. General Assembly, which is considering the resolution, is just another political anti-Russian show, set this time in an allegedly humanitarian context and urged its 193 member nations to vote against it and support a rival South African draft resolution that focuses solely on humanitarian issues with no political assessment.

Ukraines Sergiy Kyslytsya and Russias Vassily Nebenzia spoke at the start of Wednesdays emergency special session of the General Assembly to consider the rival resolutions on the humanitarian impact of the war, which will mark its one-month anniversary on Thursday. Russia has also called for a vote later Wednesday in the U.N. Security Council on its own humanitarian resolution, which has been widely criticized for not referring to its invasion of Ukraine.

Kyslytsya said the Ukraine-backed assembly resolution, drafted by two dozen diplomats from all parts of the world and co-sponsored by nearly 100 countries, focuses on the urgent need to elevate the humanitarian suffering on the ground and immediate cessation of hostilities by the Russian Federation.

Nebenzia warned that adoption of that resolution will make a resolution to the situation in Ukraine more difficult. Thats because it will likely embolden Ukrainian negotiators and nudge them to maintaining the current unrealistic position, which is not related to the situation on the ground, nor to the need to tackle the root causes of Russias military action, he said.

___

WASHINGTON  A senior NATO military officer says the alliance estimates that Russia has suffered between 30,000 and 40,000 battlefield casualties in Ukraine through the first month of the war, including between 7,000 and 15,000 killed. It is NATOs first public estimate of Russian casualties since the war started Feb. 24.

The military officer, speaking on condition of anonymity under ground rules set by NATO, said the estimate of the number killed is based on a combination of information from the Ukrainian government, indications from Russia, and open-source information.

The U.S. government has largely declined to provide public estimates of Russian or Ukrainian casualties, saying available information is of questionable reliability.

The NATO military officer, in a briefing from the alliances military headquarters in Belgium on Wednesday, said the estimate of 30,000 to 40,000 Russian casualties is derived from what he called a standard calculation that in war an army suffers three wounded soldiers for every soldier killed. The casualties include killed in action and wounded in action, as well as those taken prisoner or missing in action, the officer said.

___

Associated Press Writer Robert Burns in Washington contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON  Lockheed Martin plans to demonstrate its new 5G network technologies at Project Convergence 22, following a successful showing of gear installed on vehicles traversing Florida scrublands.

The defense-contracting giant has applied to test its 5G solutions as a part of the U.S. Armys annual experiment, said David Rohall, a senior program manager on the companys sensors and global sustainment advanced programs team, and hopes to improve its related capabilities in the near future.

Project Convergence 22  the Armys contribution to Joint All-Domain Command and Control, a plan to modernize military communications  is set for this fall. It will, for the first time, include international partners.

The first Project Convergence began in 2020. Since then, the series of experiments has put emerging technologies, like networks, artificial intelligence, robotics and autonomy, to the test.

Lockheed last year equipped a pair of Hummers with 5G-capable open architecture processors, and drove them across its electronic testing site near Orlando International Airport.

We took those two commercial Humvees and connected them through a commercial 5G network on site, Rohall said. We took those Humvees and we put them in different scenarios to drive throughout.

The exercise, completed in November 2021, falls under Lockheed Martins 5G.MIL initiative, designed to integrate and upgrade the fifth-generation gear in the military. The company said the Florida expedition will help its engineers explore 5G applications for ground vehicles.

The 5G.MIL program, Rohall said, represents a large investment in the future for all of our joint warfighters. This technology will advance and bring new capabilities to our airmen, soldiers, Marines and sailors across all the joint domain operations.

Fifth-generation wireless technology is a marked improvement compared to its predecessors, promising faster speeds and boosted bandwidth. Officials believe it will usher in a new era of connectivity.

Story continues

This is an enabling technology to share data securely, resiliently and seamlessly across that battle space, Rohall said.

Lockheed Martin previously joined forces with Microsoft to work on 5G, and in mid-February announced it won a $19.3 million contract to develop a 5G communications network testbed for the U.S. Marine Corps in California.

The defense contractor has also teamed with Verizon to develop 5G systems for battlefield use.
Mar. 22Louisville police are searching for a person of interest in a burglary that took place over the weekend in a home damaged by the Marshall Fire.

The Louisville Police Department issued a news release Monday evening, identifying the "person of interest" as Nathan Liedtke.

According to the release, Louisville Police Sgt. John Brooks witnessed suspicious activity near the entrance to a burned neighborhood around 3 a.m. Saturday.

Brooks noticed a 2007 Chevrolet Colorado truck with Colorado license plate number 534VIW parked in the driveway of a damaged home.

The burglary suspect then fled the home and escaped through the backyard. Items that were taken from the home were found both inside the Chevrolet, as well as along the path that the suspect took on foot.

Police are not releasing what neighborhood the burglary occurred in, nor what was taken from the home at this time.

After the Marshall Fire left several Louisville neighborhoods uninhabitable, the Louisville Police Department instated several security measures to keep the contents of burned areas safe, including a checkpoint and placard system, perimeter fencing, as well as enforcing nighttime closures of certain neighborhoods, and complete closures of others.

Anyone with information about this incident or who may have spotted the truck in the area is asked to contact the Louisville Police Department at 303-441-4444 or the Northern Colorado Crime Stoppers at www.nococrimestoppers.com or 1-800-222-TIPS (8477).
Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has died of cancer





Madeleine Albright, the first female U.S. secretary of State, has died of cancer, her family said Wednesday. She was 84.

"We are heartbroken to announce that Dr. Madeleine K. Albright, 64th U.S. Secretary of State and the first woman to hold that position, passed away earlier today," Albright's family said in a statement.

"The cause was cancer. She was surrounded by family and friends. We have lost a loving mother, grandmother, sister, aunt and friend."

Born in Prague, Albright came to the U.S. as a refugee in 1948 after a Communist coup in Czechoslovakia.

Albright served during the Clinton administration from 1997 to 2001. A career in foreign government service ran in her family, with her father, Josef Korbel, having served as a member of the Czechoslovak foreign service as well as ambassador to Yugoslavia.

Her family remembered her as a "tireless champion of democracy and human rights."

Among her accomplishments as secretary of State, Albright pushed the expansion of NATO eastward into former Soviet nations and helped to reach agreements on the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons among these countries.

State Department spokesperson Ned Price said on Wednesday that Secretary of State Antony Blinken and President Biden had been informed of Albright's death and will likely make statements later that day.

"The impact that she has had on this building is felt every single day in just about every single corridor," Price said. "Of course, she was a trailblazer as the first female secretary of State and quite literally opened doors for a large element of our workforce."

Albright remained engaged in foreign policy all throughout her life, continuing to provide comments on international affairs after she left the White House.

At the time of her death, Albright was a professor at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service and served as chair of the Albright Stonebridge Group, a D.C.-based consulting group on international policy that she founded.

Story continues

In February, just days before Russia's invasion of Ukraine was launched, Albright warned in an op-ed published in The New York Times that Russian President Vladimir Putin would be making a "historic error" if he followed through with an attack.

"Mr. Putin's revisionist and absurd assertion that Ukraine was 'entirely created by Russia' and effectively robbed from the Russian empire is fully in keeping with his warped worldview. Most disturbing to me: It was his attempt to establish the pretext for a full-scale invasion," Albright, who was the first senior U.S. official to meet Putin after he became president of Russia, said in her piece.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Updated at 3:22 p.m.
Joel Merino, right, is wanted for murdering his live-in ex-girlfriend Hannah Choi, left. Fairfax County Police Department

Joel Merino is wanted on suspicion of murdering his ex-girlfriend, Hannah Choi, in Virginia.

Choi's body hasn't been found, but officials say evidence makes them certain she's dead.

The 35-year-old's family has started a GoFundMe to raise money for a reward for tipsters.

Police in Fairfax County, Virginia, continue to search for a 27-year-old man wanted on suspicion of killing his 35-year-old live-in ex-girlfriend and dumping her body in a Maryland park earlier this month.

While Hannah Choi's body hasn't been found, officials said that they've recovered evidence that makes them certain that she was killed by Joel Merino. At a March 15 press conference, Fairfax County Police Chief Kevin Davis called it "unusual" and a "once in a decade circumstance" that his department would have enough evidence to issue an arrest warrant for murder without a body.

Merino is wanted on charges of second-degree murder and the disposal of a body. Officials haven't released much information on Merino, other than to say that he is "fairly transient," may be going by another name, and that there had been no prior calls for service at the home he shared with Choi.

In an interview with Insider on Wednesday, Choi's sister Minna, 31, said that she had only met Merino a couple of times, in passing, after her sister started dating him last summer. Choi says she didn't know much about Merino, and first learned of her sister's break-up after she went missing. Choi says she has since learned that Merino was supposed to move out of her sister's home, which she co-owns, a few days after her sister went missing.

Sgt. Tara Gerhard, a spokesperson for the Fairfax County Police, told Insider on Wednesday that the department had "no significant updates" to the case. She said that investigators were waiting to hear back on digital evidence warrants to plan new searches.

The Fairfax County Police did not immediately respond to Insider's request for an update on the case on Wednesday.

Story continues

According to March 15 press release from the Fairfax County Police Department, Choi was reported missing on Sunday after friends showed up at her house in Alexandria and no one answered the door. They then called police, who entered the home and found nothing amiss other than bedding missing from one of the bedrooms, according to the press release.

Friends and family told police that Choi spent the day prior with Merino.

"Detectives believe during their time together Ms. Choi may have sustained a significant injury. Detectives believe Merino then removed Ms. Choi from the home and transported her to another location," according to the press release.

Officials believe Merino disposed of Choi's body in Piscataway Park in Maryland. WUSA9

Detectives identified a vehicle Merino was driving the night of Choi's disappearance and later found it abandoned in Washington, DC.

Inside the car "detectives discovered evidence to suggest Ms. Choi was harmed prior to her disappearance," according to the press release.

Officials wouldn't elaborate on what kind of evidence they found inside the car at a March 15 press conference but said it made them certain that she had died.

"We know something bad happened, really bad," Major Ed O'Carroll, major crimes commander, said at the press conference. "We have evidence and details that make us believe firmly believe without any doubt that she's deceased."

O'Carroll said that detectives believe Merino went to Piscataway Park in Maryland hours after killing Choi, where they believe he may have dumped her body. Law enforcement agencies have conducted multiple searches of the park, but haven't found Choi's body yet.

After Choi's disappearance, Merino fled the state and was last spotted in Georgia, O'Carroll said at the March 15 press conference. O'Carroll says investigators believe he has since left Georgia, and are not sure about his whereabouts. Officials told WUSA that they haven't ruled out the possibility that Merino has fled the country.

Minna Choi told Insider that she and her parents were in "shock and disbelief" to learn about Hannah's disappearance and likely death.

"My sister, she is not a victim. She was tough. She never would have tolerated abuse of any form and so the fact that even someone as strong as my sister and as tough as my sister would become the victim of domestic violence  that is just incomprehensible to us," Choi said.

She added: "It feels like we're being stuck out in limo because we don't have her body, we don't have her killer, we don't have much about what happened exactly."

The family has set up a GoFundMe to raise money for a reward on information leading to Merino's arrest.

Read the original article on Insider
For more than two years, whenever Ive driven past the Cinemark 18 in Evanston, arguably the go-to multiplex for the Far North Side, I have wondered what it looks like inside right now. How quiet it must be. Is the concession stand sticky? Are the seats dusty? Do lobby posters promise a summer movie season the pandemic stopped before it could start? Like other theaters across the country, the Cinemark 18 was crushed; it closed with the initial round of lockdowns, never reopened and finally shuttered for good a year ago. The hopeful news is that AMC just announced it will reopen the theater later this year. But the existential threat remains: How long can movie theaters stay open?

Two years after those stay-at-home orders, we stream now; theres no going back. And so that trusty old Cinemark 18 plans to reopen as the AMC Evanston 12, with the space formerly occupied by six movie screens developed into something that is not theaters.

Advertisement

Im supposed to be pretending to care about the Oscars on Sunday.

Instead, Im wondering about the future of the medium itself.

Advertisement

For a disquieting hint, I turned to Movie Theaters, a new cemetery slab of a coffee-table book by the French photographers Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre, best known for capturing the evocative ruins of Detroit. Here, for 300 pages, they splay open the crumbling corpses of cinemas that closed, often decades ago. Think of it as a tangible, narrowcasted reboot of virtual doom-scrolling. Or maybe a coast-to-coast funeral procession. Either way, the Chicago area is a little too well represented. There are the decaying walls and flattened seats of the Lawndale Theatre, once a Roosevelt Road fixture, before the building was demolished a decade ago  it hadnt shown a movie in 50 years. There are five pages of the relatively sprightly Uptown Theatre on Broadway, looking just $1 billion, a robust rust-scrubbing and a full repainting away from filling its 4,381 seats.

The Uptown Theater in Chicago. From the book "Movie Theaters" by French photographers Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre. (Prestel / HANDOUT)

You get a single image of the Central Park on Roosevelt, constructed in 1917, one of the first air-conditioned movie houses in the country; the photograph shows a grimy, walled-off balcony divided from the floor seats below  an image taken before the buildings loving, ongoing restoration. Its a success beside the Times Theater in Rockford, which comments on itself: Large signs reading Times curl ornately over a sad, empty facade. That said, according to the Rockford Register Star, even the Times is a-changing, thanks to a real estate firms $14 million scrub, announced in December.

Still, nobody really expects these buildings to become just movie theaters again.

As Marchand and Meffre show with a palpable Euro-irony, the success stories have been mixed blessings. We lost grand movie palaces in the past few decades, but we gained, in those same spaces, a dollar store in Berkeley, California; a storage space for mattresses in Cincinnati; a climbing wall in Denver; a cosmetic shop in Toronto; a gym in Brooklyn. Sometimes, as movie theaters once reflected the dreams of their communities, the refurbishments do the same: Old cinemas became UFO museums in New Mexico, boating museums in New Hampshire, gun-shooting ranges in Texas.

But mostly, considering the evidence in these photos, taken over the past decade, we let theaters rot; collect dust; loose roofs, paint and ornaments. As Ross Melnick, a film professor at the University of California Santa Barbara and co-founder of the Cinema Treasures website, writes in the introduction, its hard to tell from these pictures if were looking at the past or future of movie theaters.

The Kenosha Theater in Wisconsin. From the book "Movie Theaters" by French photographers Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre. (Prestel / HANDOUT)

In an image showing the former balcony of the Varsity in Evanston, among newish ventilation ducts, we see a proscenium arch that resembles Disneys Magic Kingdom. (The building is expected to be developed into a 35-apartment residential complex) The rich midnight blues of the ceiling at the Kenosha Theatre in Wisconsin still pop in places where the ceiling hasnt crumbled into a skeletal lattice of iron framework. Where it hasnt darkened, peeled or succumbed to encroaching tree roots, the bright canary yellow walls of the Gem Theatre in Cairo, down on the Missouri border, are still striking.

On the marquee of the Palace in Gary, Indiana, it still says (minus two letters) Jackson Five Tonite  but the picture was shot in 2009, and the marquee was a cosmetic renovation of its facade, made by Donald Trumps Miss USA pageant, held in Indiana 20 years ago.

Inside the theater?

Advertisement

Theres a painted curtain still hung across the stage, its fading Egyptian scene still clear, but the rest of the room (closed to movie showings since the 1960s) would work only as the already-dressed set of a post-apocalyptic horror movie. (One Connecticut theater in the book even serves as storage for military rations in the event of WWIII.) The insides of many of the theaters in these photos suggest their staffs scattered abruptly. Handwritten sheets of movie schedules are found on desks; there are vintage candy boxes, stacks of marquee lettering and, in one Ohio cinema, a coin-operated bathroom scale.

You might assume whatever calamity befell these places came suddenly, violently.

The Lawndale Theater in Chicago. From the book "Movie Theaters" by French photographers Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre. (Prestel / HANDOUT)

But in fact, many of the theaters in this book have been closed so long, youre looking at several generations of heartaches, everything from the encroachment of TV in the 1950s to antitrust decrees that broke up Hollywoods control of theatrical exhibition to fears of violence in downtown hubs, real estate prices, VHS players, Xboxes, iPhones.

Mostly, youre looking at the long fade-out of a way of life, and a splintering of vibrant communities that happened so long ago the ruins became neighborhood wallpaper. Many of the repurposed theaters found in these pages are in other parts of the country. In the images taken around Illinois, the theaters tend to exist in neighborhoods  the Colony on 59th Street, Ramova on South Halsted, several in downtown Rockford  still responding to suburban flight, decades of divestment and years of real estate redlining.

As a lover of movie theaters, though, the saddest parts of Movie Theaters are not those crumbling cathedrals, many of which opened before the Great Depression and understood how to diversify, serving as launching stages for Benny Goodman (Central Park), tour stops for 1970s rock acts (Uptown) and neighborhood Baptist congregations (Lawndale). At least for me, who came of age in the 70s and 80s, after many movie palaces had sputtered to an end, its painful to see the shoebox-sized screening rooms crumbling. These were unloved spaces, often created by theater companies dicing up vast single-screen properties into tinier houses, to add screenings and maximize profit.

They did what they could.

Advertisement

In the end, everything comes apart.

Times change. Even at the Times Theater in Rockford, should it be restored someday. Its developer is picturing a 900-seat concert venue, and every now and then, movies.

The Central Park Theater in Chicago. From the book "Movie Theaters" by French photographers Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre. (Prestel / HANDOUT)

cborrelli@chicagotribune.com
A man accused of stealing a school bus and going on a joyride before crashing into a womans yard is behind bars, Georgia authorities say.

The crash happened early Tuesday, March 22, at a home on Birch River Point in Dallas, according to the Paulding County Sheriffs Office. The homeowner called 911 just before 4 a.m. to report a school bus had plowed through a fence in her yard.

The 21-year-old driver ... was reportedly intoxicated and subsequently restrained by neighbors until Deputies could arrive, authorities said in a news release.

He broke in through a gate at Moses Middle School that morning, deputies said, and stole one of the buses. He took it on a joyride shortly before the crash.

The driver faces charges including theft by taking, driving under the influence, failure to maintain lane and two counts of hit and run, according to the release. He was booked into the Paulding County Jail where he remained held without bond as of March 23.

Authorities said more charges are possible.

Paulding County is about 30 miles northwest of downtown Atlanta.

Fifth grader rushes to hit school bus brake after driver passes out in Ohio. I had to

13 students injured after school bus rolls over on highway, Alabama cops say

Students jump behind the wheel after school bus driver collapses, Maine police say




NATO estimates that up to 15,000 Russian troops have been killed since the Kremlin's attack on Ukraine began last month, with as many as 40,000 dead, wounded, taken prisoner or missing.

The alliance arrived at those figures based on information from Ukrainian officials, Western intelligence and information gleaned from Russia through official channels or unintentionally, a senior military official from NATO told The Wall Street Journal and The Associated Press.

NATO estimates that roughly 7,000 to 15,000 Russian soldiers have been killed since the attack started on Feb. 24, a major blow to Moscow, which sought to decapitate the Ukrainian government in a matter of days.

But the Russians were quickly mired by fierce Ukrainian opposition and issues with supplies, with the campaign now hitting four full weeks of fighting and NATO warning it is "rapidly approaching" a stalemate.

Ukraine also claims to have killed six Russian generals, while Moscow has only acknowledged one dead.

The new NATO figures mark the first time the alliance has publicly released Russian casualty estimates since the start of the war. U.S. officials have not provided public estimates of Russian or Ukrainian casualties, pointing to the questionable reliability of such information and a fast-moving and ever-changing conflict.

Russia has also closely guarded information on its casualties. The last time it acknowledged such information was on March 2, when it said almost 500 soldiers were killed and nearly 1,600 wounded.

On the Ukrainian side, President Volodymyr Zelensky said Wednesday that thousands of his people had been killed, including at least 121 children.

Zelensky said on March 12 that about 1,300 Ukrainian troops had been killed in action.

The Russian troop death toll has already exceeded the U.S. militaries losses in the first 18 years of the Afghanistan war, when just over 7,000 troops died.

The Kremlin, despite sending more than 150,000 troops into Ukraine, has made limited progress with its ground forces in recent weeks.

Story continues

The Russian troops have been slowed or stopped by Ukrainian units using hit-and-run tactics and Western-supplied weapons, forcing them to destroy cities from afar using bombs and heavy shelling.

Moscow has lost more than 10 percent of its combat force in Ukraine, with major issues with food, fuel and cold weather gear shortages, a senior U.S. defense official told reporters Tuesday.

Ukrainians forces, meanwhile, have continued to defend several major cities including the capitol of Kyiv and have started to move to take back territory Russians had gained in recent days.
Massillon Police Department

MASSILLON  An 18-year-old Washington High student is facing criminal charges, accused of engaging in sex acts with a minor inside the school and a second underage teen at a local park.

A teacher at Washington High reported seeing the Jan. 24 incident between the 18-year-old male and a 14-year-old girl in the hallway near the school's auditorium, according to court and police records.

The older teen was arrested by Massillon police on a warrant Jan. 31 and indicted last month by a Stark County grand jury on two counts of unlawful sexual conduct with a minor, with one being a fourth-degree felony and the other a first-degree misdemeanor. He is scheduled to appear next week in Common Pleas Court for a final pretrial.

More: Cuyahoga Falls officials investigate sexual assault report that preceded students' walkout

More: Massillon mascot Obie to get bronze treatment; anonymous benefactor funds 8-foot statue

Massillon City Schools Superintendent Paul Salvino said the teen remains a student but is not attending in-person classes.

Police report: Teen was warned once before

A teacher who witnessed the pair engaging in sexual acts in January reported the incident to an assistant principal, according to a police report. The school district contacted Massillon police, who interviewed the teen on Jan. 28.

Both students were suspended for five days.

During the police interview, the older teen admitted having sex with the teen, who he considered to be his girlfriend, four times in the hallway before a teacher caught them, according to the police report.

The detective told him sex acts with anyone under the age of 16 is illegal and reminded him this wasn't his first warning, according to the police report.

The indictment also alleges the teen was caught engaging in sexual conduct with a 13-year-old girl at Massillon's Wampler Park in September.

"On Jan. 24, 20022, Washington High School administration was notified of an inappropriate sexual incident between two consensual high school students," Salvino said in a statement Wednesday. "Washington High School administration made contact with our school resource officer who then contacted the Massillon Police Department immediately. Parents were immediately notified. Both students were subsequently disciplined by school administration."

Story continues

Reach Cassandra cnist@gannett.com; Follow on Twitter @Cassienist

Massillon Independent staff writer Amy Knapp contributed to this report.

This article originally appeared on The Repository: Massillon teen indicted for having sex with minor at school, city park
PISCATAWAY, N.J.  A five-alarm fire at the Pepsi complex in New Jersey filled the air with a plume of acrid smoke and forced the closure of roads around the burning complex on Tuesday night.

Firefighters from around the region  including the New Jersey State Forest Fire Service  were on the scene in an effort to control the mammoth blaze Piscataway Mayor Brian C. Wahler said the fire was under control on Tuesday night, less than 4-hours after it was first reported.

Two firefighters had been injured battling the conflagration. One was taken to Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital New Brunswick for heat exhaustion. Another was treated at the scene for a shoulder injury.

Wahler said there has been a significant response from emergency services throughout the region and they would be rotating in and out during the overnight hours. He asked that the public stay away from the scene to allow firefighters and other emergency personnel to be able to do their jobs.

Members of the North Stelton Fire Company, of Piscataway, try to put out a five-alarm fire, at a Pepsi facility on New Brunswick Ave. Tuesday, March 22, 2022

The blaze started outside the facility  which is the companys main bottling plant for the Tri-State Area  although the cause remained unknown and was under investigation, Wahler said.

The fire climbed up the buildings exterior and into the eaves of the roof and got into the interior of the building that way, he said.

A statement from Pepsi media relations read: On Tuesday evening, a fire started outside of the Pepsi plant and warehouse in Piscataway, New Jersey. Details of how the fire started will be investigated.

The statement added: "First responders are on-site working to ensure the fire is controlled and quickly put out. All employees and people who were in the facility have been evacuated with no injuries.

A USA TODAY Network photographer could see flames, some as high as 12 feet, from the street illuminating the night sky. Firefighters were also searching nearby woods for possible hot spots.

This has been here since the late 80s and there had never been a fire here before, Wahler said. If you drink Mountain Dew, it comes from Piscataway, he said.

Story continues

While the fire was under control, there were four trucks to pour water onto the roof and firefighters would be doing so through the night. They were rushing water from New Market Pond to supplement their reserves, he explained.

From what I understand, all the drills theyve done throughout the years paid off, the mayor said.

In a statement posted on Facebook, the municipal government wrote: A major structural fire is occurring in Piscataway and residents are asked to avoid New Brunswick Avenue, Carlton Avenue and Lakeview Avenue to enable first responder vehicles to access it. Please do not drive over to view the site and please stay inside if you can.

This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Pepsi complex in New Jersey scene of massive fire; cause unknown
Sex assaults survivors shouldnt have to battle schools like Eastern Michigan University and the University of Michigan over the time it took them to come forward  thats the idea behind a package of bipartisan bills announced in Lansing on Wednesday.

And it's why Sydney Bakos is speaking out.

Though anonymously referred to as Jane Doe 18 in a federal lawsuit against EMU, Bakos said she finally felt ready to come forward about her 2016 rape at a news conference Wednesday alongside state Rep. Julie Brixie, D-Meridian Township, state Rep. John Damoose, R-Harbor Springs, and state Sen. Curtis Hertel Jr., D-East Lansing, as she welcomed the introduction of House bills 5962-5964 to extend the statute of limitations for civil recourse for survivors of sexual assault.

Sexual assault has psychological impacts that often delays a victims readiness to report the crime, she said at the podium. This is what happened to me. I needed time to heal before I was able to report the assault.

Under the proposed legislation, individuals would have until their 48th birthday, 10 years after the assault, or seven years after discovering their abuse, whatever is latest, to make a claim, according to a news release.

Sydney Bakos, who is suing Eastern Michigan University, speaks at a news conference Wednesday, March 23 in Lansing,

There would be no time limit if a criminal conviction took place, groups like agencies and universities would no longer need to get written notice ahead of an individuals legal filing and there would be a two-year revival period so survivors with claims prior to the legislation have a second shot at filing.

They come as Brixie has cosponsored house bill 4307, sponsored by state Rep. Ryan Berman, R-Commerce Township, to remove the immunity defense for governmental entities in sexual assault cases.

The 24 individuals suing EMU say the school looked the other way on sexual assaults and created a dangerous atmosphere, which the school denies. And members of the group like Bakos say they didnt understand until later  when news of assaults at the school started pouring out  the harm the school had done. The school has argued several cases in the matter are past the statute of limitations, but both parties are now in mediation.

Story continues

The individuals are still suing the school because they argue a claim of fraudulent concealment extends their time frame but the statute of limitations is normally three years, said an attorney for the women, Megan Bonanni of the Royal Oak-based Pitt McGehee law firm.

Survivors who dont have such an extension are forced to bring their cases prematurely if they are able, Bonanni said.

The current law is archaic, Brixie said, and she was motivated to act after the abuses seen in the Larry Nassar case at MSU and seeing friends and neighbors suffer because of Michigan laws that harbor abusers.

She cited data from the nonprofit Child USA that shows the average age for childhood survivors to report abuse is age 52. For child survivors, the current law allows them only until age 28 to file a claim.

The Legislature should not be dictating which survivors have access to justice, she said.

And Damoose said the bills arent an attack on the states great institutions, but rather a sad recognition of the fact that hidden amongst them had been a few terrible predators whose sins must be brought into the light.

Bakos said her assault made her feel unlovable, confused, distrustful and the worst type of loneliness I would never want to put on anyone.

Bakos, in her lawsuit, reports a gang rape by two members of the Delta Tau Delta fraternity and being forced into use of her mouth for an oral sexual assault by one of them later. That man became a Washtenaw County sheriffs deputy and she will face off with him in criminal court, too, while the other man also faces criminal charges.

Bakos called on the Michigan Legislature to pass the bills so sister survivors ready to come forward with civil claims could do so.

Isabelle Brourman, among eight individuals suing U-M over their reports of sexual misconduct by music lecturer Bruce Conforth, also spoke at the news conference Wednesday. She detailed being raped numerous times despite a classmate coming forward with a complaint on Conforth previously. The school has said Conforth admitted to allegations of sexual misconduct and the school was prepared to initiate dismissal proceedings but he resigned.

But Brourman detailed a frustrating back and forth as she has tried to get justice and aid future survivors

Isabelle Brourman, who is suing the University of Michigan, speaks at a March 23 news conference in Lansing.

The process of getting justice is incredibly emotionally draining, she said. While survivors tried to do the hard work of trying to heal. We are also being burdened with the race against time, facing retraumatization and the constant reopening of traumatic wounds before we are emotionally and physically fit to do so.

Hertel spoke to previous attempts to extend the statute, and how survivors had to keep telling their stories and suffer victim-blaming, and yet some survivors were still left out.

Legislators can stand with the survivors, or keep providing perpetrators rocks to hide behind, he said. The goal is to create an environment in which survivors can feel seen and heard when sharing their stories and have no limits to seek justice.

More: Judge prohibits Delta Tau Delta from throwing parties at EMU

More: Lone man suing EMU in sex assaults speaks out

Of this, Brourman said: Michigan law should not continue to be amended each time a new story comes out.  Instead, let's fix it once and for all."

Neither EMU nor U-M immediately responded to requests for comment Wednesday.

Darcie Moran is a breaking news reporter and podcaster for the Detroit Free Press. She has served as an investigative reporter and covered justice issues, crime, protests, wildfires and government affairs. Contact Moran: dmoran@freepress.com. Twitter: @darciegmoran.

Become a subscriber here.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan lawmakers seek to broaden statute of limitations in sex cases
Microsoft has confirmed that it was breached by the Lapsus$ hacking group.

In a blog post on Tuesday  published hours after Lapsus$ posted a torrent file containing partial source code from Bing, Bing Maps and Cortana  Microsoft revealed that a single employee's account was compromised by the hacking group, granting the attackers "limited access" to Microsoft's systems and allowing the theft of the company's source code.

Microsoft added that no customer code or data was compromised.

Our cybersecurity response teams quickly engaged to remediate the compromised account and prevent further activity, Microsoft said. Microsoft does not rely on the secrecy of code as a security measure and viewing source code does not lead to elevation of risk. Our team was already investigating the compromised account based on threat intelligence when the actor publicly disclosed their intrusion. This public disclosure escalated our action allowing our team to intervene and interrupt the actor mid-operation, limiting broader impact.

Microsoft hasnt shared any further details about how the account was compromised but provided an overview of the Lapsus$ group's tactics, techniques and procedures, which the companys Threat Intelligence Center , known as MSTIC, has observed across multiple attacks. Initially, these attacks targeted organizations in South America and the U.K., though Lapsus$ has since expanded to global targets, including governments and companies in the technology, telecom, media, retail and healthcare sectors.

The group, which the technology giant is tracking as DEV-0537, operates with a "pure extortion and destruction model" and, unlike other hacking groups, "doesnt seem to cover its tracks," according to Microsoft, likely a nod to the groups public recruitment of company insiders to help it carry out their targeted attacks. The group uses a number of methods to gain initial access to an organization, which typically focus on compromising user identities and accounts. As well as the recruitment of employees at targeted organizations, these include purchasing credentials from dark web forums, searching public repositories for exposed credentials and deploying the Redline password stealer.

Story continues

Lapsus$ then uses compromised credentials to access a company's internet-facing devices and systems, such as virtual private networks, remote desktop infrastructure, or identity management services, such as Okta, which the hacking group successfully breached in January. Microsoft says that in at least one compromise, Lapsus$ performed a SIM swap attack to gain control of an employee's phone number and text messages to gain access to multi-factor authentication (MFA) codes needed to log in to an organization.

After gaining access to the network, Lapsus then uses publicly available tools to explore an organization's user accounts to find employees that have higher privileges or broader access, and then targets development and collaboration platforms, such as Jira, Slack and Microsoft Teams, where further credentials are stolen. The hacking group also uses these credentials to gain access to source code repositories on GitLab, GitHub and Azure DevOps, as it did with the attack on Microsoft.

In some cases, DEV-0537 even called the organizations help desk and attempted to convince the support personnel to reset a privileged accounts credentials, Microsoft added. The group used the previously gathered information (for example, profile pictures) and had a native-English-sounding caller speak with the help desk personnel to enhance their social engineering lure.

The Lapsus$ gang set up a dedicated infrastructure in known virtual private server (VPS) providers and leverages consumer virtual private network service NordVPN for exfiltrating data  even using localized VPN servers that were geographically close to their targets to avoid triggering network detection tools. Stolen data is then used for future extortion or publicly released.

The Lapsus$ hacking group has made a name for itself over the past few weeks, compromising a number of prominent companies, including Nvidia and Samsung. Earlier this week, its latest victim was outed as Okta after the gang posted screenshots of the identity giants internal systems. Okta confirmed the breach, which it said was the result of Lapsus$ compromising a third-party customer support engineer and said it impacted around 2.5% of its 15,000 customers.

It's currently unclear why Okta didn't notify its customers about the compromise, which occurred during a five-day window in January, until now.

Read more:
WASHINGTON  COVID-19 vaccine-maker Moderna said Wednesday that its trials found the company's shots are effective in babies, toddlers and preschoolers, and that it will ask federal regulators to authorize use of its child-sized two-dose shots in children 6 and younger.

The drugmaker also plans to ask the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to authorize the emergency use of a larger two-dose shot for older children and teens. Similar requests will be made to regulators in Europe, the company said.

But before children in Washington can start taking the shots, a few things still need to happen:

The FDA must authorize the emergency use of the vaccine;

If that happens, the Centers for Disease Control must decide whether to recommend it.

Finally, the Western States Conference will review the study and its authorization before clearing it for use in young Washingtonians.

The nations approximately 18 million children ages 6 months to 5 years  are the only age group not yet approved for COVID-19 vaccines. Though children are less likely to suffer severe COVID-19 symptoms, health experts say young kids are part of the COVID-19 chain and contribute to community transmission, so getting shots in their arms will help reduce coronavirus rates in Washington and elsewhere around the country.

In February, Moderna competitor Pfizer paused its application seeking emergency authorization to offer toddler-sized doses to children under 5. The FDA said at the time it wanted more data on the efficacy of a three-dose series of the vaccine for children ages 6 months to 4 years. A third dose "may provide a higher level of protection in this age group," the company said in a statement.

Pfizer already has received emergency use authorization for its kid-sized doses for school-age children and full-strength doses for those 12 and older.

Vaccinating the nations youngest children has been somewhat of a moving target over the last couple of months, Dr. Bill Muller of Northwestern University, an investigator in Modernas pediatric studies, said in an interview with The Associated Press. Theres still, I think, a lingering urgency to try to get that done as soon as possible.

Story continues

Moderna said early data showed that two weeks after getting the two shots, 6,900 tots enrolled in its study showed youngsters developed virus-fighting antibody levels as strong as young adults getting its full-strength shots, the company said in a news release.

The only side effects, Moderna said, were mild fevers similar to those associated with other common pediatric vaccines.

Children dont generally get as sick with COVID-19 as to adults, but about 400 children younger than five have died from COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic, according to CDC data. Children were hit especially hard by the omicron variant, and children under 5 were hospitalized at higher rates than during the peak of the previous delta surge, according to the CDC.

Omicron was also responsible for some of the youngest COVID fatalities in Washington, including a 10-year-old Lakewood girl who died of the disease in February.

New COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations and deaths have been trending downward as the third year of the pandemic begins and Americans learn to live with the virus. There are a couple of troubling signs, though.

First, stealth omicron, a variant within a variant known as BA.2, has made its way to the United States. Second, an extra-contagious delta-omicron hybrid, commonly called deltacron, may soon push up U.S. cases.

Also, COVID-19 vaccines in general fend dont fend off BA.2 as well as earlier variants, but do offer strong protection against severe COVID-19 illness, according to the CDC.

Scientists are keeping an eye on deltracron, which shows how wily the coronavirus can be. Dr. Eric Topol, the head of Scripps Research Translational Institute, told The Associated Press a deltacron wave is inevitable, especially now that COVID-19 restrictions have been lifted and Americans are returning maskless to restaurants, bars, sporting events and other indoor activities.

Fortunately, though BA.2 is present in Washington, it is not driving an uptick in local cases like it has for some states on the eastern seaboard.

Moderna conducted its trial during the omicron surge. There were no severe illnesses, and the vaccine was about 44 percent effective at preventing any infection in babies up to age 2, and nearly 38 percent effective in preschoolers.

Also Wednesday, Moderna said it is asking the FDA to clear the use of larger doses for older children, and half-sized doses for 6- to 11-year-olds.

Modernas request to expand shots to 12- to 17-year-olds has been stalled for months over FDA concern about a very rare side effect, an inflammation of the heart that sometimes occurs in teens and young adults, mostly males, after receiving either the Moderna or Pfizer vaccine.

Moderna has gotten extra scrutiny because its dosages are far larger than Pfizers. The risk also seems to be linked to puberty, and regulators in Canada, Europe and elsewhere recently expanded Moderna vaccinations to kids as young as 6.

That concern has not been seen in the younger children, Northwesterns Muller told The AP.

The Associated Press contributed reporting.





This article originally appeared on the Lakewood-JBLM Patch
If Kabir Dalawari hadnt faced the music  literally  halfway through his pre-med studies in college, one of his neuroscience lectures might have convinced him to make the pivot.

When the drummer first enrolled at Loyola University, he tacked on a minor in music mostly at the behest of his high school teachers, who recognized his prodigious talent. The rest of his family in Palos Heights, where he grew up, worked in health care; Dalawari assumed he would do the same. But during that particularly rote neuroscience class, Dalawari couldnt stop tapping out a 11/4 groove that seemed to have sewn itself through his own synapses.

Advertisement

Clearly, music wasnt going anywhere. Dalawari dropped the pre-med track for a double major in cognitive science and jazz studies  a lonely road at a school with only a handful of jazz majors, but one that bought back scarce sleeping hours and allowed him to take composition lessons with bassist and Loyola faculty member Matt Ulery. Through his work with Ulery, Dalawari honed the composition chops that led to his debut album, Awareness, out March 25.

I wanted to do all original music for my senior recital because Id been building a portfolio for about two years. And afterward, Matt was like, OK, go record your music, Dalawari remembers with a laugh.

Advertisement

That he did. Gathering a slimmer group than the sextet that played his senior recital, Awareness features a quartet with Dalawari on kit, Ulery on bass, his Loyola classmate Eric Arroyo on piano and Kyle Brooks on alto saxophone. The same group reunites for a record release show at Constellation on March 24.

Chicago jazz musician Kabir Dalawari has a debut album, "Awareness." (Spencer Cole Porter)

Now 23 and one year out of his undergraduate studies, Dalawari headlines Chicagos premier avant-jazz spaces, which he frequented almost nightly back when he was too young to patronize 21+ clubs. Ulery, whos played in Dalawaris quartet at venues like Elastic Arts and Fulton Street Collective (which hosted Dalawaris first outing as a bandleader, while he was still a student at Loyola), says that whenever the younger musician asks him to play a gig, hes going to say yes.

Its rare to have that degree of professional collaboration with a former student. Id say thats rare even with someone coming from out of a music conservatory, not just out of a liberal arts school where a lot of the musicians arent music majors, Ulery says. Its been great to see him finding his voice musically on drums and composition, and to see him getting out there as a bandleader. Hes definitely been one of the highlights of my teaching career.

By sponging up Ulerys tutelage and other musical influences, Dalawari devised an offbeat compositional approach that unites the otherwise varied tracks on Awareness. First, Dalawari plants himself behind the kit or the keyboard, depending on whether pitches or rhythm come to him first. If the former, he writes his harmonies before the melody, moseying through venturesome and sometimes tenuous chord relations. When Dalawaris melodies finally emerge  like when the head floats to the surface nearly three minutes into the pointillistic Expedition, Dalawaris first-ever composition, or when Brookss saxophone coheres into the tumbling motive driving A Moment in Time  they sound inevitable. Themes are tight and cellular, yet wide-open enough to springboard the quartets fanciful improvisations.

For me, at least, chords dictate emotion: If I write the harmony first, I can play any melody notes over it. It forces me to hear things differently, Dalawari says.

The title track is one of a couple of exceptions to the rule. Awareness begins with a tranquil, asymmetric melody right from the jump, played by Brooks. Urged on by Dalawaris kit, the tune breaks into groovy little shimmies every several bars before returning to the same gently unspooling pace as before.

The muse that inspired Awareness, as well as the albums cover art, was Dalawaris younger brother, Amar. Autistic and nonverbal, Amar communicates with Dalawari and his family mostly through an electronic tablet.

He loves to dance. He cant play, but he loves it when I play music  sometimes when Im practicing my mom sends him down, and hes just vibing, Dalawari says, grinning.

Advertisement

To me, the album cover almost looks like water. Thats how I think about my brother, you know: He has this peaceful energy. Its blue, the color for Autism Awareness Month, which is in April.

Chicago jazz drummer and composer Kabir Dalawari's "Awareness" also features Kyle Brooks (alto saxophone), Eric Arroyo (piano) and Matt Ulery (bass).

Dalawari had hoped to release Awareness to coincide with World Autism Awareness Day on April 2. The timing didnt align for the quartets Constellation booking, but Amars spirit still guides everything about the album.

I was like, Sorry, bro, were gonna be a week early, Dalawari jokes.

As for that early neuroscience lecture? It at least gave Dalawari a name for that loping, lopsided tune with the 11/4 groove: Action Potential.

The action potential is a fundamental concept in neuroscience: Its the electrical current that allows us to do anything we want to do, like move our hand, he says. On a graph, it looks like a steady line thats moving up and down a little bit, then it spikes like crazy. It builds up, then lifts off.

Awareness is available for pre-order on all streaming platforms and Dalawaris website, kabirdalawari.com. The album release show is 8:30 p.m. March 24 at Constellation, 3111 N. Western Ave., tickets are $15 at songkick.com

Advertisement

Hannah Edgar is a freelance writer.

The Rubin Institute for Music Criticism helps fund our classical music coverage. The Chicago Tribune maintains complete editorial control over assignments and content.
(Reuters) -Russia on Wednesday condemned what it called a "reckless" Polish proposal to send international peacekeepers into Ukraine and warned that it could lead to a direct clash between Russian and NATO forces.

Poland said last Friday it would formally submit a proposal for a peacekeeping mission in Ukraine at the next NATO summit.

Asked about the initiative, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: "It would be a very reckless and extremely dangerous decision."

He told reporters on a conference call that any possible contact between Russian and NATO forces "could have clear consequences that would be hard to repair".

Russia sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24 in what it called a special operation to degrade its southern neighbour's military capabilities and root out people it called dangerous nationalists.

Ukrainian forces have mounted stiff resistance and the West has imposed sweeping sanctions on Russia in an effort to force it to withdraw its forces.

Speaking in Kyiv last week, Poland's ruling party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski said: "I think that it is necessary to have a peace mission - NATO, possibly some wider international structure - but a mission that will be able to defend itself, which will operate on Ukrainian territory."

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also attacked the proposal in remarks to staff and students at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations on Wednesday.

"This will be the direct clash between the Russian and NATO armed forces that everyone has not only tried to avoid but said should not take place in principle," he said.

(Reporting by Reuters)
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on Wednesday called on China to condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

"For NATO, it is of particular concern that China now, for the first time, has questioned some of the key principles for security, including the right for every nation in Europe to choose his own path," he told reporters in Brussels.

Stoltenberg said that when NATO leaders meet on Thursday he expects them to "call on China to condemn the invasion and to engage in diplomatic efforts to find a peaceful way to end the war as soon as possible".

(Reporting by John Chalmers, Sabine Siebold)
STUTTGART, Germany  NATO members plan to approve additional support for Ukraine in that countrys defense against Russias invasion, including equipment to counter a potential chemical or biological attack.

The support is crucial to protect the alliances own member nations, who would also suffer from contamination if Russia used a chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear (CBRN) weapon against Ukraine, Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Wednesday from Brussels, during a televised press conference.

Any use of chemical weapons would totally change the nature of the conflict, and would be a blatant violation of international law and have far-reaching consequences, Stoltenberg said. I think thats the most important message to convey, that any use of chemical weapons is unacceptable.

Stoltenberg did not immediately provide details on what the CBRN support would include, saying it will be one of several discussion points during Thursdays planned summit with leaders of the 30 member nations. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will virtually address the NATO leaders during the summit in a closed session.

Members are expected to approve new cybersecurity assistance for Ukraine, plus additional support for non-NATO members Georgia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. The role of China in the Ukrainian conflict will also be discussed.

Allies are concerned that China could provide material support for the Russian invasion, Stoltenberg said.

Meanwhile, member nations have deployed four new NATO battle groups in Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia and Hungary, effectively doubling the number of groups positioned along the alliances eastern border. France has offered to lead the group in Romania, while the Czech Republic will lead the additional troops in Slovakia. Bulgaria and Hungary will lead the battlegroups in their respective countries, a NATO spokesperson told Defense News.

NATO has existing battle groups stationed in Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, and Poland, and together the eight battle groups will span NATOs borders from the Baltic to the Black Sea, Stoltenberg said. There are now hundreds of thousands of NATO troops at high readiness alert across the alliance, to include 100,000 U.S. forces across Europe, and 40,000 forces directly under NATO command mostly in the eastern part of the alliance, he added.

Story continues

Those battle groups will be in place as long as is necessary, and NATO is now deliberating how to position its troops for the long term.

This invasion  will have long-term consequences for our security, Stoltenberg said. Its a new normal for our security, and NATO has to respond to that new reality.

Julianne Smith, the U.S. ambassador to NATO, said military advisers would present options in the next months for fresh troop commitments in the eastern alliance countries. Thats because the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act, which limits such deployments, is effectively out the window following Moscows war on Ukraine, she said.

Russia is in clear violation of the pact, Smith said Wednesday during remarks at an event sponsored by the Atlantic Council think tank.

Before making final troop-level recommendations, NATO analysts must take into account how the Ukraine war will develop, and how many forces Russia intends to leave in Belarus, she added.

Smith dampened expectations about a Polish proposal, to be discussed this week, for a NATO peace mission in Ukraine. While the idea is not dead in the water, she said it poses many open questions and would ultimately run up against a pledge by U.S. President Joe Biden and other alliance leaders to refrain from sending troops to Ukraine.

Sebastian Sprenger in Washington contributed to this report.
By Ismael Lopez

MANAGUA (Reuters) -Nicaragua's ambassador to the Organization of American States (OAS) on Wednesday condemned the government of President Daniel Ortega, accusing it of repressing the political opposition, human rights abuses and cracking down on freedom of speech.

Ambassador Arturo McFields said in a video address posted on Twitter by the OAS that he was speaking up on behalf of scores of political prisoners and over 300 people who have died in the country since protests broke out against Ortega in 2018.

"Denouncing the dictatorship of my country is not easy," he said. "But to continue remaining silent and defending the indefensible, is impossible."

McFields, a television journalist who took on his role as OAS ambassador in November, also said he had resigned from the post.

The government, which has long argued that opponents of Ortega have been attempting to oust him with foreign support, dismissed McFields' remarks, saying he did not represent the government and that his declarations were "not valid."

The administration said Nicaragua's ambassador to Washington, Francisco Campbell, was now the OAS representative.

McFields also pointed to the closures of nongovernmental organizations and curbs on the media, and said elections in the Central American country were "not credible."

His comments came the same week that a judge sentenced former presidential candidate Cristiana Chamorro to eight years detention for financial crimes, in a case the opposition said was politically motivated.

Chamorro led Ortega in several polls when she was arrested last June. Ortega won re-election to serve a fourth consecutive term in November after at least 46 opposition figures, including six presidential candidates, were detained.

The United States and the European Union said Ortega's last election was illegitimate and have pressed him to hold new elections and release more than 160 prisoners.

(Reporting by Ismael Lopez; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Bill Berkrot)
Nicolas Cage has defended starring in so many straight-to-VOD films, while explaining what he spent the money on.

In between more well-known roles in films like Mandy and Pig, the actor racked up dozens of credits in films that bypassed cinema releases and became available to rent at home without much fanfare.

These films arrived amid reports that the actor spent the entirety of his $150m fortune and was in deep debt after owing the IRS property taxes of $6.3m.

Now, in a new interview with GQ, Cage explained the basis behind accepting the roles stemmed from a refusal to file for bankruptcy.

Ive got all these creditors and the IRS and Im spending $20,000 a month trying to keep my mother out of a mental institution, and I cant, he said, adding: It was just all happening at once.

However, while acknowledging that some of the films didnt work, the Oscar winner said he stands by every performance he gave.

When I was doing four movies a year, back to back to back, I still had to find something in them to be able to give it my all, he said. Some of them were terrific, like Mandy, but some of them didnt work. But I never phoned it in. So if there was a misconception, it was that  that I was just doing it and not caring. I was caring.

Cage also suggested that Disney, who distributed the National Treasure films, turned its back on Cage following the flop of his films The Sorcerers Apprentice and Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance.

Nicolas Cage called Disney fear-weather friends in Hollywood (Getty Images)

When I talk about fair-weather friends in Hollywood, Im not talking about Jerry Bruckheimer, Cage said, referring to the National Treasure producer. Im talking about Disney. Theyre like an ocean liner. Once they go in a certain direction, youve got to get a million tugboats to try to swivel it back around.

GQ states that Cage finished paying off all his debts a head of appearing in his forthcoming film, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, in which he plays a fictionalised version of himself.

The film will be released on 22 April.
Northern Lakes Economic Alliance President David Emmel (center) presents a special recognition to the City of Charlevoix for gaining the status of Redevelopment Ready Community by the Michigan Economic Development Corporation. Receiving the award is city manager Mark Heydlauff (left) and President of the Charlevoix Area Chamber of Commerce Sarah Van Horn (right).

BOYNE FALLS  The Northern Lakes Economic Alliance symposium and annual showcase will be taking place from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Friday, May 13 at Boyne Mountain Resort.

The event recognizes businesses and organizations that help fulfill the association's mission to help communities retain and create quality jobs in Antrim, Charlevoix, Emmet and Cheboygan counties.

In previous years, the event has been in the form of a luncheon. This year, in addition to the luncheon, the half-day event will include the symposium and showcase for everyone involved in the economic development of Northwest Michigan to take part in the sharing of knowledge of the economic drivers of the region.

The event will include keynote speakers as it has in previous years, but will also include four breakout groups covering four topics relating to Michigans economic growth: the craft brewing industry, the future of energy in Michigan, business and talent attraction and a continued conversation of the keynote topic  the blue economy.

One of the keynote speakers will be John Austin, director of the Michigan Economic Center and the one who coined the phrase blue economy in the State of Michigan, which refers to all economic activity related to Michigans water. Industries like transportation, including ports, ferries and commercial shipping; industries that rely on water supplies like agriculture, manufacturing, ski resorts, energy and beverage manufacturing; as well as growing sustainability industries like water technology products and services, water research and innovation centers, and water placemaking.

Other keynote speakers will be Brad Garmon, director of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources Office of Outdoor Recreation Industry, and Quentin Messer, chief executive director of the Michigan Economic Development Corporation.

The shift to have this symposium and the showcase together is around providing value to our communities and our governments and bringing in some thought leaders on these concepts to really build the discussion around economic and community development in our area, said the association's strategic initiatives manager Sam Bailey. (Blue economy) is a concept that touches every single community in our region. It's an asset that we have a strength in. A lot of industries rely on the quantity and quality of our water and so it's definitely a concept that should be core to the discussion around economic development in our area.

Story continues

The event begins at 8 a.m. with registration, the continental breakfast and networking time. At 9 a.m., the program begins with the three guest speakers. At 11 a.m., the breakout sessions begin and attendees can choose between three panels:

Blue Water Economy with panelists John Austin, Mark Breederland, an educator with MSU Extension and Michigan Sea Grant, and Hans VanSumeren, director of the Great Lakes Water Studies Institute at Northwestern Michigan College

Future of Energy in Michigan, hosted by Consumers Energy expert Carlin Smith and another expert that is to be announced.

Business and Talent Attraction: Growing the Pie with panelists Justin Horvath, president of the Shiawassee Economic Development Partnership, as well as other panelists that are to be announced.

Craft Beverage: An Innovative and Growing Industry with panelists Ben Slocum, co-founder of Beards Brewery, and Chad Munger, owner of Mammoth Distilling, as well as other panelists that are to be announced.

At 12:30 p.m., lunch will be served and the association showcase awards will be announced, followed by final remarks before the end of the event at 1 p.m.

What that final Looking Forward address is really going to be focused (on), if I were to describe it, it would be that vision 2040," said association president David Emmel. "What does our world look like in the year 2040? If you think back, we went through this as communities in Y2K. The year 2000 was a perfect time to reset our thinking about what do our communities need to do? What do they look like 20 years from now?"

Emmel added that "2020 is in the rearview mirror, but we're coming out of a pandemic and the world is different."

"In many ways it's the same, but there are parts of our economy and parts of our world that are different and will never go back to being the way they were," he said. "It's time for us to be thinking 2040, developing those longer term visions and plans about what our communities look like and engaging our appointed elected leaders and our business community leaders to really engage. And it's weaved into that conversation and discussion about how we shape our future.

Tickets for the event are $75 per person, which includes a continental breakfast and lunch and can be purchased through eventbrite.

Winners from last years event included:

Lifetime Achievement Award: Rick Diebold for his 30+ years of service to NLEA, including president of the Antrim County EDC, NLEA Board Chair  twice, impactful influence on legislation and advocate for childrens education.

Lifetime Achievement Award: Eric Grandstaff for his work in broadband development and media, as well as information sciences.

Guts and Grit Award: Nancy Lindsay, of Citizens National Bank, was recognized for her knowledge of the four-county region, marketing expertise, ability to collaborate and talent in training and mentoring others.

Project of the Year: Truestream, a subsidiary of Great Lakes Energy, was awarded Project of Year for its commitment to bring the best fiber technology to the 26 counties they serve throughout Michigan.

This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: NLEA symposium and showcase to discuss 'blue economy' during May event
Northern Ireland border check Belfast - Liam McBurney/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

Non-Irish EU citizens will have to apply online for US-style visa clearance before crossing the border into Northern Ireland from the Republic, under new post-Brexit immigration rules.

Dublin on Wednesday criticised the new controls after MPs voted down an amendment by the House of Lords exempting Northern Ireland from the Nationalities and Borders Bill on Tuesday.

Simon Coveney, Irelands foreign minister, said: This decision is regrettable and contrary to the approach that UK and Irish Governments have supported for many years to protect free movement on the island of Ireland for everyone. Our concern on this has been communicated clearly, but has been ignored.

The Bill requires EU citizens to apply for electronic travel authorisation (ETA) before entering the UK. The amendment was defeated by a majority of 298 MPs to 216 after a government challenge.

The Government said that there would be no physical checks on the Irish border, which would be controversial because of the Brexit agreement to prevent them, as well as The Troubles.

Lord Frost, who negotiated the Withdrawal Agreement with Brussels, said that the new rules were needed and the Irish border was an international border between two different countries.

One could be forgiven for thinking occasionally from Irish government public statements that sometimes they forget that, he said.

Lord Frost - Olivier Hoslet/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

The Withdrawal Agreement moves customs checks on British goods entering Northern Ireland to the Irish Sea to prevent the need for a hard Irish border. Combined with the Common Travel Area, a long-standing agreement for border-free travel between Ireland and the UK, it preserved free movement on the island of Ireland after Brexit.

However, there are fears that the border could be a back door to enter the UK because of the lack of checks.

Brandon Lewis, the Northern Ireland Secretary, said: UK and Irish citizens will continue to be able to travel freely. This new ETA requirement is about protecting the Common Travel Area from abuse.

Story continues

Irish sources said there were no plans to impose a similar requirement on UK nationals crossing into Ireland, which is not part of the EUs passport-free Schengen zone.

British citizens will have to apply for pre-travel clearance to travel to Schengen countries once the EU introduces the European Travel Information and Authorisation System in 2023, but this does not apply to Ireland.

Dublin sources said that the new controls would hurt the all-island economy and harm EU citizens living in Ireland who crossed the border regularly for work. They claimed there had been little to no consultation with Dublin.

The European Commission, which is in negotiations with the UK to cut customs checks on the Irish Sea border, did not comment.

Mary Lou McDonald, the president of Sinn Fein, called on Micheal Martin, the Taoiseach of Ireland, to contact Boris Johnson immediately over the plan.

Are we really suggesting that Polish people who live and work in Lifford now need papers to travel to Strabane, or from Emyvale to Aughnacloy? she said.

It will be devastating for the tourism sector, particularly for counties like Donegal and along the border region.

Matthew OToole, the SDLP member of the Northern Ireland Assembly, said that the plan was xenophobic and Orwellian rubbish.

Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the leader of the DUP, has signalled his support for the government measure.

Lord Dodds of Duncairn, the DUP leader in the House of Lords, said: We supported the government approach on arrangements for non-British and non-Irish visitors travelling to Northern Ireland because we want to protect the Common Travel Area between Ireland and the United Kingdom. We do not want it to be abused as a back door to the rest of the United Kingdom.
Patrons of South Side jazz clubs in the 1950s might have noticed something a bit different about pianist Sun Ras big band  slowly at first, then all at once. Their sounds became more far-out, the synthy buzz of claviolines and Wurlitzers replacing Ras usual uprights. Bit by bit, their clothes changed, black coats and ties refracting into a spectrum of headdresses and capes.

Then, Ra  born Herman Sonny Blount in Birmingham, Alabama, where he lived before moving to Chicago in 1946  started telling people he was from Saturn.

Advertisement

As the years went on, it was hard not to take Ra at his word. The original compositions and arrangements he played with his Arkestra, as he called that big band founded in Chicago, didnt sound like anything else. They still dont.

But just as subtly as they touched down on the South Side, the Arkestra disappeared. In 1961, the band left town to play in Montreal. They never returned to Chicago. The Arkestra settled in New York, then Philadelphia, where theyve been ever since, in a rowhouse once owned by bandleader Marshall Allens father.

Advertisement

On the way home, a New York taxi hit our car and tore it up. We stopped there waiting for them to pay for it, and next thing you know, we were living in New York, Allen remembers with a raspy laugh. Yeah. It was weird.

But the group is soon visiting Chicago, with two performances on March 26 at Constellation.

Marshall Allen, 97, performing with the Arkestra. Allen has led the Arkestra since 1995, succeeding saxophonist John Gilmore. (Sibylle Zerr / HANDOUT)

Allen, whos led the Arkestra since 1995, turns a spry 98 in May. After Ra died in 1993, saxophonist John Gilmore succeeded him as Arkestra bandleader until he died in 1995. Now, not only is Allen the Arkestras figurehead, hes the last surviving member to live through the bands foundational Chicago period.

When we connected over the phone to talk about those years, Allen spoke deliberately, as if tasting every word before he said it. But hes far from guarded, tossing out quips that spark peals of infectious, sandpapery cackles. After dropping a nugget of wisdom, Allen buttons it with the same refrain, as inevitable as a punctuation mark: You see?

One gets the sense Allen doesnt mean it colloquially, either. Today, the Sun Ra Arkestras influence on avant-garde American music and Afrofuturist thought is incontestable. However, while the Arkestra has always drawn a cult following, institutions were slow to recognize their eminence. In the 1990s, Ras former business manager Alton Abraham tried to donate his collection of thousands of manuscripts, writings, photos and ephemera belonging to Ra to Chicago-area archives. He had no takers.

At that time, people werent using the word Afrofuturism with any regularity. None of them could get their head around the idea of setting aside space for someone as insignificant, to them, as Sun Ra, says John Corbett. The co-owner of the Corbett vs. Dempsey art gallery near West Town and author of several volumes on Ra, Corbett accompanied Abraham on his failed mission to place the collection.

After Abrahams death in 1999, that collection would have headed to the landfill had Corbett not taken note and arranged to salvage the material. Since 2007, its been held by the University of Chicagos Special Collections Research Center. The Alton Abraham Papers remain the most centralized trove of firsthand information on the Sun Ra Arkestras Chicago years  that is, except for Marshall Allen.

All the original people are gone. Theyve left me by myself, Allen says, heaving a sigh. So, Ive decided to dedicate the rest of my time to promoting the music. Sun Ra was a great musician, and his music needs to be heard. You see?

Advertisement

Born in Louisville, Kentucky, Allen came to Chicago by way of Europe, where he studied music for a few years after World War II. He joined the army as a fresh-faced 18-year-old in 1942, shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor; a couple of years and a whole lot of life later, Allen was among the troops to liberate concentration camps along the Eastern Front.

You cant even imagine those things. It was horrible, he says.

Allen first heard about the Arkestra at Seymours Record Mart, not far from his job grinding lenses and manufacturing polishing pads for the Revere Camera Company. Joe Segal, the future founder of the Jazz Showcase, worked as a clerk at Seymours at the time. He handed off an Arkestra demo to Allen, who nearly wore out the record. It was unlike anything hed ever heard.

I came back and said, Hey, I like Sun Ra, and (Joe) said, Well, he practices every night up on the South Side, and hes looking for talent. So I got myself together and went over there, Allen says.

It would be some time before Ra trusted him enough to let him in the Arkestra, in 1958. Allen mostly observed the band, attending rehearsals and gigs but was rarely invited to step in for a whole tune. Allen remembers the first number Ra finally invited to play with the group: Spontaneous Simplicity. But for a while, that was it.

Id come out of conservatory, I was up on my reading, my eyes were good, my tone was good  I was a polished musician. Then, I get with Sun Ra, and he turns everything around, Allen says. Suddenly, I dont know nothing  and I didnt! I had to break all those years of training to do something different. Its like life: You might know, but it dont always work.

Advertisement

But Allen was patient. He listened to Ra and studied his philosophies about not just the cosmos but world religions, Ancient Egypt and the African American experience  all of which Ra proselytized through polemical speeches delivered in Washington Park. Allens determination to join the Arkestra cost him plenty of sleep  and, eventually, his camera manufacturing job.

I was coming into work kind of late, so when they laid everybody off, I was one of the first ones out, he remembers with a snort. So, I said, Thats it, and went all the way with Sun Ra.

The Arkestra held extended engagements at the South Sides premier ballrooms, all now long gone: Vincennes Lounge (1954-1955), Budland (1956-1959), Casino Moderne (1957-1958), Queens Mansion (1958-1959) and Wonder Inn (1960-1961). Listeners took note of the far-out sounds. Sun Ra and sidemen have a new concept of music with many progressive ideas and degrees of jazz that is basic and swinging, yet new in sounds, wrote the Chicago Defender in 1959.

The Arkestra plays at a venue. Marshall Allen plays saxophone second from left, with John Gilmore to his right; Sun Ra wears a white helmet in the back, to the far right. (John Corbett / HANDOUT)

At the time the Arkestra made a name for themselves in 1950s Chicago, the state of the world wasnt too far off from our own present moment. An escalating Cold War loomed abroad while racial justice movements fomented at home. The Space Race fueling the former was, to some African American commentators, a distraction from the latter. But to others, it was a lodestar. Pop-cultural visions of gleaming, stainless-steel metropolises became backdrops for a future in which Black people were not just equal but thriving.

Chicago was no exception. Multiple Defender issues from the era document the cosmological craze du jour, from a Space Capers-themed Mardi Gras celebration in 1958 to Mrs. Astronaut pageants. Ras Arkestra, of course, was part of the mix.

Sun Ra and his Outer Space Arkestra (were) featured at Budland Sunday, read a notice in a 1957 Defender issue. Of course, the affair featured Outer Space dancing.

Advertisement

In his 2020 book Sun Ras Chicago: Afrofuturism and the City, urban sociologist and University of Chicago professor William Sites connects those local phenomena with Ras own philosophies while highlighting what set his cosmology apart.

This was the period after the Sputnik launch and the ramping up of a new frontier ideology. But for Sun Ra, outer space was a utopian place for full development and emancipated communal life, specifically for African diasporic peoples  not a place for conquest, Sites says. Its a notion thats increasingly echoed in the decades that follow: We find this kind of Afrofuturism in Africa, we find it in the Caribbean, we find it in many different places. Sun Ra was very much at the center of launching that.

According to an undated form Abraham saved, Ra applied to the NASA Art Program, which solicited applications for projects intended for a future space station. In his application, Ra petitioned the visual- and plastic-arts-oriented program to give his music a shot in space. You know it is said Music soothes the savage beast, and what is called man is very anarchy-minded at present, he wrote.

If Ra received a reply, its lost to time. Luckily, Ras music has resounded mightily on Earth in the decades since. In the past year alone, the once-outre Arkestra has enjoyed institutional recognition that would even boggle the mind of its prescient founder. The Arkestra headlined an Afrofuturism festival at Carnegie Hall in February and was recently nominated for its first-ever Grammy, for 2020s Swirling. The riotous, ebullient album became a bittersweet time capsule: Between when it was recorded and released, on Strut Records, conguero Atakatune and sax player/former Arkestra manager Danny Ray Thompson both died.

I asked Allen if he frequents old Chicago haunts whenever hes in town, or if it calls up too many painful memories of departed Arkestra colleagues. He answers quickly and decisively.

Thats yesterday. The thing we did yesterday is obsolete because its a new day and a new vibration, he says. It depends on the spirit of the city, you see. Sometimes I arrive a day ahead to see people and sit in the vibrations. I cant tell you what were going to play, but Ive got enough music in the book to do whatever I feel that day.

Advertisement

Im not playing for no fame or money  I dont care. Im playing music for people who need something, Allen says. I want to create a better world, no matter how small.

You see?

7 p.m. and 9 p.m. March 26 at Constellation, 3111 N. Western Ave.; tickets $30. More information at constellation-chicago.com

Advertisement

Hannah Edgar is a freelance writer.

The Rubin Institute for Music Criticism helps fund our classical music coverage. The Chicago Tribune maintains complete editorial control over assignments and content.
CITY OF OCONOMOWOC - A city police officer has been charged with sexual assault while on duty.

Scott Thomas Jr., 28, of Watertown was charged March 22 in Waukesha County Circuit Court with fourth-degree sexual assault, a misdemeanor, and misconduct in office, a felony.

If convicted of the sexual assault, he could face up to nine months in jail and a $10,000 fine. If convicted of misconduct in office, he could face three years, six months in jail and a $10,000 fine.

According to the criminal complaint:

Thomas stopped at the victim's house Jan. 9 as a "courtesy" to check on her because he was aware of her pending divorce. The officer and the victim had previously met in a professional capacity.

The victim invited Thomas into her home, where he commented on her appearance and said he could tell she had been working out.

At several points during their visit, Thomas touched the victim, including on her buttocks and the small of her back. He also allegedly initiated a hug and kissed her neck before leaving, the complaint said.

The victim reported the incident to Oconomowoc police, which contacted the Waukesha County Sheriff's Department to investigate the incident.

When asked about the incident during the investigation, Thomas admitted only to stopping at the victim's residence as a courtesy to advise her about snowy conditions on her sidewalk. He noted that officers had been advised to cite homeowners who did not remove snow from their walks in a timely manner. He also said he didn't call out to record his stop at the victim's home because he didn't want to feel obligated to issue a citation. He also said he had not made such stops at any other homes.

Thomas allegedly admitted to touching the victim but not in an inappropriate way. He said he may have inadvertently brushed against the victim, put his hand on the victim's back and hugged the victim, according to the complaint.

Thomas is free on a $1,000 signature bond. Thomas will remain out of jail with the condition that he have no contact with the victim. His preliminary hearing has been set for May 6.

Story continues

Attempts to reach the Oconomowoc Police Department were not returned.

Thomas was previously an officer with the La Crosse Police Department, according to La Crosse Police Assistant Chief Jason Melby. Additional information was not immediately available.

Drew Dawson can be reached at ddawson@gannett.com or (262) 289-1324.

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: Oconomowoc officer charged with sexual assault while on duty
The states recidivism levels among inmates whove been out of prison for less than three years have been on the decline since 2016, and they continue to drop.

Crime is a poison. So, too, is unforgiveness.

Recently, a guest editorial signed by numerous family members whose loved ones were murdered decried Senate Bill 256 and its resulting examination of parole eligibility earlier than originally sentenced. In criticizing this legislation, the families highlight the shortsightedness that has plagued the U.S. criminal justice system for so many embarrassing decades: that people are disposable. They are not. The people who commit crimes are no more disposable than those who are victims of crimes. Its an unsettling truth for those who want to freeze-frame hate.

Ive worked in prisons and jails for 20 years as a chaplain, a college professor and a reentry specialist. Ive sat across from incarcerated individuals in prison who took a charge for their drug-addled mother. Ive counseled individuals who are still too dangerous or mentally unstable to see the light of day. Ive fostered accountability in people who showed up believing they were entitled to wreak life havoc; Ive walked alongside people for years that the world was happy to forget about.

My goal when entering the correctional system two decades ago wasnt to be a friend to the incarcerated as much as it was to understand the problem of mass incarceration and why the U.S. is such a dunce about crime and punishment. What Ive learned is that too many people are making decisions about the criminal justice system who know  and are influenced by those who know  about a thimbleful of whats actually going on.

Mincey Meece is among the individuals who appeared in the recent editorial and the facts presented are true: she committed a horrific murder when she was 16 and deserved to be in prison. However, not one person lamenting her upcoming release has spent a minute with Mincey since she became incarcerated 26 years ago. While their own lives morphed and changed and they became different, more mature and seasoned humans on the planet, they simultaneously assume that Mincey Meece has been frozen in time, the same person today that she was when she was 16  and because of that she should remain in prison. Its a ridiculous and sensational conclusion.

Story continues

Mincey Meece

"Rehabilitation" is a word we throw around a bunch and, in a place where transforming is challenging at best, Mincey has done it  and long before a parole date was a possibility. Ive spent years with her and watched her take responsibility, seek understanding, atone for, and do whatever is within her power to become the best version of herself. She is not the same person she was at 16  NONE OF US IS  and to ignore the possibility that someone can learn from their worst mistakes and grow into someone who benefits our planet is irresponsible.

Its also expensive, and as a taxpayer, I vote to stop paying $35,000/year to cage a human that is capable of contributing good to our society. Once we remove the, "theyre too dangerous or unenlightened to release back to society" argument, were simply left with vengeance.

SB 256 is smart legislation. It doesnt guarantee release; it simply says that maybe a teenager who is raised in chaos wasnt equipped to make decisions and that we have a responsibility to take another look down the path. The alternative is prisons that bust at the seams and unresolved trauma and hate that result in writing off humans in some failed attempt to feel better about our own unresolved trauma and hate.

Its a dizzying failure and time for the U.S. to do better. Lets start right here in Ohio.

Christine Marallen is the chief strategy officer for Damascus Reentry and a member of The Enquirer editorial board. She welcomes any constructive dialogue on criminal justice.

Christine Marallen

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Opinion: Reformed offenders are no more disposable than their victims
Mar. 23State Sen. Daniel Ivey-Soto is about to turn up the heat  on his adversaries and on himself.

He says women accusing him of sexual harassment or worse behavior are using tactics similar to those of former President Donald Trump.

"The messaging by Trump was 'The election is only legitimate if I win.' The messaging here is the legislative process to investigate these complaints is only legitimate if it comes out the way they want," Ivey-Soto said Tuesday in a wide-ranging, hourlong interview.

He says lobbyists who spend countless hours at the Capitol had a hand in creating the legislative policy to investigate harassment complaints. Ivey-Soto, D-Albuquerque, criticized his accusers for challenging the validity of the system before any inquiry had begun.

"I don't know what's going to happen in this process. It's predicated on an idea of evidence being presented and tested," he said.

Ivey-Soto rebutted a series of allegations a day after members of eight organizations called on him to resign or be removed from office by fellow senators. He is in his third term and doesn't stand for reelection until 2024.

He says he is innocent of most accusations against him and perplexed by the vagueness of other allegations. But he's admittedly guilty of aping, sophomoric behavior in one instance.

Ivey-Soto says he referred to Common Cause executives Viki Harrison and Heather Ferguson as "Lips and Hips," descriptions they called sexist and degrading.

"Matthew McConaughey used 'Lips and Hips' for rivals at an ad agency in How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. I guess I've watched too many movies," Ivey-Soto said of why he called the two women by those nicknames.

Still, Ivey-Soto said, his unwelcome language didn't poison his professional dealings with Harrison and Ferguson.

"The gave me their Best in Government Award [in 2015]," Ivey-Soto said. After that, they asked me to emcee a Common Cause awards ceremony."

Story continues

Ivey-Soto said he never really regarded the two women as Lips and Hips.

"I wasn't trying to focus on their physical characteristics. I was repeating a stupid line from a B movie," he said.

Far more serious allegations against Ivey-Soto are that he groped and propositioned female lobbyists. He said the claims stand out mostly because they are so stark.

"I've no context for that. I don't know when it supposedly happened or who's saying it," he said.

Ivey-Soto said he didn't fondle, touch or pursue any woman against her will.

This includes one of his early accusers, lobbyist Marianna Anaya. She says Ivey-Soto sexually harassed her. He counters that she retaliated against him because of a voting rights bill she favored and he amended. It failed in this year's 30-day legislative session.

A lawyer, Ivey-Soto musters quotes that are bound to mobilize his detractors. He did it again while telling me about Anaya.

"There was no sexual advance. I've known she was a lesbian the whole time I've worked with her. I never try to get a Jehovah's Witness to vote, and I've never made a pass at a lesbian. There's just no return on investment."

He says a 28-year-old allegation made this week by Gayle Krueger also is false.

Krueger said Ivey-Soto grabbed her and screamed at her while she was an employee of the University of New Mexico's Graduate and Professional Student Association and he was president of its council.

Ivey-Soto called Krueger a problem employee who headed for a restroom each time he tried to speak with her about a deficiency.

On one occasion, "I blocked her path," Ivey-Soto said. No physical contact ever occurred, he said.

As to another complaint, Ivey-Soto says lobbyist Miranda Viscoli misrepresented what occurred in an argument they had over a firearms bill.

She wrote a column this week stating Ivey-Soto screamed and cursed at her before she was to testify on the bill before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Ivey-Soto's version is different. He said they clashed, quietly enough, after he edited the bill, changing "surrender" of guns by volatile people to the meeker word "transfer."

Ivey-Soto said he left the Judiciary Committee to present a bill before a panel in the House of Representatives.

"Miranda is following me and yapping at me. I've got to testify. I'm trying to focus on that, and I don't want her following me.

"I say, 'Miranda, if you know anything about gun people, they will never surrender their weapons. In the end, what do you care about the words 'transfer' or 'surrender' if you get the same [expletive] thing?' "

The number of confrontations Ivey-Soto has had might lend credibility to his detractors. He says he trusts the statehouse investigative process to be a search for truth that overcomes piling on.

Today's system is different from the Legislature's anti-harassment investigation in a high-profile case from 2018. This time, complainants will have to take an oath to advance their case.

Four years ago, lobbyist Laura Bonar accused then-Rep. Carl Trujillo, D-Santa Fe, of sexually harassing her four to five years earlier.

Bonar's statements about Trujillo weren't made under oath. But a subcommittee of the House of Representatives nonetheless found probable cause on two of four allegations. Trujillo was to face a hearing on those complaints before a House panel.

Bonar would have to testify under oath at the hearing. She refused. The investigation was over, but so was Trujillo's political career.

Bonar wanted Trujillo out of office, and she succeeded. He lost in the Democratic primary a month after Bonar went public with her accusations.

Trujillo had one accuser. Ivey-Soto has many.

"I'm loud and I'm passionate, or excitable, or Cuban or whatever," Ivey-Soto said.

He's also a senator with an enemies list that seems to get longer by the day.

Ringside Seat is an opinion column about people, politics and news. Contact Milan Simonich at msimonich@

sfnewmexican.com or 505-986-3080.
A hospital room. iStock

Four Ukrainian children with cancer are now receiving medical care at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, the U.S. State Department said Tuesday.

After Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, the young patients could no longer receive their cancer treatments. The children, who are between the ages of 9 months and 9 years old, were first evacuated to Poland with members of their immediate family, before being airlifted to the United States.

St. Jude said in a statement it is the first U.S. hospital to receive Ukrainian patients, and in addition to getting cancer care, the kids will receive "trauma-informed psychosocial therapy" and schooling. The State Department, which supported the airlift of the children, said they "represent a small proportion of the thousands of patients whose cancer treatment has been interrupted and, who, even amid a pandemic and with compromised immune systems, were forced to flee their homes."

The United Nations estimates that since Feb. 24, at least 10 million Ukrainians have been displaced from their homes. St. Jude Global's SAFER Ukraine program is working with more than 600 Ukrainian cancer patients, helping them get get their medical records translated and find cancer care in other countries.

You may also like

Putin quotes Jesus to justify invasion of Ukraine

Gen. David Petraeus explains how Ukraine keeps picking off Russian generals

Putin's invasion is hastening Russia's decline. Let's heed the warning.
Sean Hayes, the star of Will & Grace and a co-host with Jason Bateman and Will Arnett of the podcast SmartLess, is now appearing in the hit play Good Night, Oscar at the Goodman Theatre. Hayes, who grew up in Glen Ellyn and started his career at the Pheasant Run resort in St. Charles, plays the actor, musician and raconteur Oscar Levant, here seen as a controversial guest on The Tonight Show with Jack Paar.

Hayes spoke in a rehearsal room at the Goodman Theatre. The following interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Advertisement

Q: You started your career playing piano in Chicago.

A: When I was a kid in Glen Ellyn, a piano teacher moved in across the street and my mom said, do you want to take piano lessons?, and I said, sure, what else am I doing? I studied for about 20 years and thought I was going to be a composer and a musical director and just live forever in the music world. Then I got the gig at Pheasant Run, sitting in the pit, playing for all the shows  classics like West Side Story and Evita. I enjoyed it but I also thought it seemed like it would be more fun up on the stage. So I started auditioning and booking commercials and I did a play at the Organic Theater. I got the bug and thought, well, Im young, I should try LA. So I drove out there and found a friend to be a roommate with. ... In 1998, I got Will & Grace.

Advertisement

Sean Hayes stars as pianist Oscar Levant in playwright Doug Wright's "Good Night, Oscar" at Goodman Theatre, March 17, 2022. (E. Jason Wambsgans / Chicago Tribune)

Q: How many seasons?

A: Eight, and then three in the reboot.

Q: How fast did it change your life?

A: Well, it was on at 9 p.m. on Mondays, or something like that. It built an audience over the first season but it was not that big. And then the same thing happened to us that first summer as what happened to Friends. Remember the days when they used to air reruns? Thats when Will & Grace blew up.

Q: Did you like the fame?

A: Anyone who is pursuing a career to be a working actor wants a little bit of that. Its part of the gig. But as you know, this business comes in waves. Other things come in and become popular.

Q: Will & Grace is often regarded as seminal, groundbreaking.

A: I was an actor looking for a job and it became this thing. At the time, I dont think I absorbed the impact it had on the gay community. Ive said this in many interviews: I dont have the DNA to be a spokesperson for a community. Other people are so much better at that than me. ... But the most rewarding experience that comes from doing the show is all the people who come to me on the street and say I helped them, and made it easier for them to come out, to have a dialogue in their family where there was no opportunity before to even have a dialogue.

Advertisement

Q: Now people talk a lot about your podcast.

A: Jason (Bateman) and I were hanging out at a friends house, thinking we should do a podcast. And then we thought, why dont we just call Will (Arnett) who already had a podcast and schnorr in on his. We decided, lets just do it. Its the pandemic and we were sitting in our pajamas. We did two episodes. Then five. Then 10. Then 100. And we thought, this is a riot, this is fun. .... Everybody needs a purpose. Its like doing this play. ... Thats a segue for you.

Q: Right. Oscar Levant. Whats the back story?

A: I was doing Promises, Promises in New York, sorry you didnt like it, and Beth Williams was one of the producers and she asked what we should do next. And I said Id been told many, many times throughout my life that I should play Oscar Levant. ... He had anxiety, depression, he was very witty and addicted to pills. I wasnt addicted to pills but there still was a lot of things I had in common with him. ... I had found out Steven Spielberg was getting ready to direct a movie about George Gershwin (a close friend of Levants) so I called my agent in LA. and he said Oscar was all over the script. So I sent him, and then Stevens people, a hair and makeup test I had done with me as Oscar Levant. The word I got back was that Steven would love me to do it, but in the end, the film did not get made.

So when Beth and I were developing the play, I had lunch with the writer Doug Wright and he said, you know who wrote that script? I did. So that is how it happened.

Q: So it was your idea. Why the obsession with playing him?

Advertisement

A: I was just drawn to the fear, and the utter challenge, of playing someone who was so opposite from me in terms of physicality, voice and demeanor. And yet there were so many similarities in terms of performing piano and in terms of never feeling good enough. You know, all the actor insecurities. And he was an actor, too, even though he really wanted to be a classical musician.

Q: Oscars relationship with George Gershwin was complicated.

A: Love-hate. It was ... Salieri-Mozart. Oscar revered Gershwin. Funny, you say Oscar but you say Gershwin. That says it all right there. George was very proud of his own success. I think, in his own eyes, Oscar was not blessed by God like Gershwin. ... But as a piano performer, Oscar excelled. Very few could match him. His recording of the Rhapsody in Blue is still the most famous recording of that piece. And he was a great songwriter. Blame It On My Youth is a great song. But nobody knows he wrote it.

Q: The Salieris usually make better stories than the Mozarts.

A: I actually feel I would have been good friends with Oscar.

Q: He would have been on your podcast.

Advertisement

A: Over and over again.

Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.

cjones5@chicagotribune.com
Author and philanthropist MacKenzie Scott has donated $436 million to Habitat for Humanity International and millions of the donation will go to five chapters in Georgia.

It is the largest publicly disclosed donation from Scott since the billionaire philanthropist pledged in 2019 to give away the majority of her wealth. To date, Scott has donated at least $8 billion to various organizations and schools.

[RELATED: Several metro charities receive millions from writer, philanthropist Mackenzie Scott]

Since 1983, Atlanta Habitat has served more than 6,000 family members in over 100 neighborhoods across our various programs and initiatives, said Rosalyn Merrick, interim president and CEO, Atlanta Habitat. We hope this gift will inspire others to contribute to Atlanta Habitats mission. The affordable housing shortage is affecting families throughout our communities, and we are grateful to Ms. Scott and other like-minded champions who are helping us make Atlanta a place where all people have access to quality affordable housing in safe, vibrant neighborhoods with opportunities to thrive.

TRENDING STORIES

Scott previously announced she would no longer reveal which organizations she will donates to or how much. She said she will let the recipients announce the gifts like Habitat for Humanity did this week.

Atlanta Habitat for Humanity will receive $13.5 million, Gwinnett-Walton $2 million, Southern Crescent Habitat $1.25 million and Houston County Habitat $1 million.

Habitat for Humanity will use Scotts donation of unrestricted funds to increase the supply of affordable housing.

According to the Habitat State of Home Affordability study, there is a shortage of over 190,000 affordable and available homes in Georgia.




Two Disney employees hold a rainbow-print Mickey Mouse toy while protesting. Irfan Khan/Getty Images

Dozens of Disney employees staged a walkout on Tuesday in support of the LGBTQ+ community.

They protested Disney CEO Bob Chapek's response to Florida's "Parental Rights in Education" bill.

The bill has been dubbed the "Don't Say Gay" bill by opponents.

Dozens of Disney employees walked out of work on Tuesday to protest the company's handling of a Florida bill dubbed the "Don't Say Gay" bill by opponents.

People walk through Magic Kingdom in Orlando, Florida, in August 2021. Amanda Krause/Insider

The "Parental Rights in Education" bill, which was recently passed by the Florida Senate, has been dubbed the "Don't Say Gay" bill by opponents since it bans the discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten classrooms through third grade.

To the public, Disney initially stayed silent on the bill. The company later shared brief statements with the press and an internal memo to employees, stating that it could make the "biggest impact" by continuing to produce "inspiring content."

It was then revealed that Disney had previously made political donations to some Florida lawmakers who supported the controversial bill.

During Disney's 2022 annual meeting of shareholders in early March, Disney CEO Bob Chapek spoke out about the bill and criticism aimed at the company, saying: "We chose not to take a public position on it because we thought we could be more effective working behind the scenes  engaging directly with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle."

He also shared Disney's plans to meet with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and donate $5 million to groups that support the LGBTQ+ community.

But in the eyes of some fans, employees, and the LGBTQ+ community, the damage had already been done. On Tuesday, dozens of employees walked out of their Disney jobs and protested the ongoing issue.

At least one employee protested outside of Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida.

Nicholas Maldonado protests outside of Disney World on March 22, 2022. Octavio Jones/Stringer/Getty Images

The employee, Nicholas Maldonado, wore a pride flag around his neck as a cape, a rainbow mask across his face, and held a sign that read "Trans Rights Are Human Rights #DisneyDoBetter."

Story continues

In California, dozens of employees gathered outside the Walt Disney Animation studio in protest.

Employees protest outside Walt Disney Animation in Burbank, California, on March 22, 2022. Irfan Khan/Getty Images

Many held signs with messages written in support of the LGBTQ+ community. Others wore rainbow-print clothes and accessories.

Some employees held signs with blunt messages, like "Say Gay."

A Disney employee holds a "Say Gay" sign during the protest on March 22, 2022. Irfan Khan/Getty Images

Many of the protesters' signs also featured the hashtag "#DisneyDoBetter."

The group also walked together down Alameda Avenue while holding their signs and protest materials.

Disney employees during a protest walkout in Burbank, California, on March 22, 2022. Irfan Khan/Getty Images

They walked the street to reach the front of the Walt Disney Company office building.

At the front of the line were two employees holding a rainbow-print Mickey Mouse toy.

Two Disney employees hold a rainbow-print Mickey Mouse toy while protesting. Irfan Khan/Getty Images

The employees, Carlos Lopez Estrada and Juan Pablo Reyes, attached a sign to the Disney mascot that read "I'm walking out too."

Some used famous lines from Disney movies to get their point across.

Disney employees during a walk out on March 22, 2022. Irfan Khan/Getty Images

While walking, two protesters held a sign that read "We don't talk about Bruno. We do talk about LGBTQ+ rights," a reference to Disney's animated film "Encanto."

It wasn't just in-person gatherings. Most Disney properties also posted their support on social media.

Employees gather in front of the Walt Disney Company on March 22, 2022. Irfan Khan/Getty Images

In addition to the employees that walked out, many of the company's social-media accounts posted messages and graphics on Disney's official pages in support of the LGBTQ+ community on Tuesday, including Disney Plus, Hulu, ESPN, FX Networks, and Walt Disney World. Many of the messages specifically included condemnation of legislation that "infringes on basic human rights."

You can read more about the fight over the controversial bill here.

Read the original article on Insider
Influencer calls out Delta over seatbelt sizes (Getty / TikTok @remibader)

Influencer Remi Bader has called out Delta Airlines for its seatbelt sizes in a video showing her unable to buckle the safety harness.

Bader, a plus-size model and body positivity content creator, shared her concern with the airline in a video posted to TikTok this week.

In the clip, it shows Bader sitting in her seat of the plane and holding one side of the seatbelt, which she is unable to fasten to the other.

Delta. Figure it out! Bader wrote in the text caption on the clip, adding in the caption: And no I shouldnt need to ask for an extender. It should just be easy! @delta.

As of Wednesday, the video has been viewed more than 957,000 times, with many of Baders viewers outraged on her behalf.

Yes, why is asking for an extender even a thing just make the belts more accommodating, one viewer wrote in all capital letters.

Another said: What the hell, this is so wrong. Come on people, while someone else wrote: This is why I am always so nervous to fly.

This is such a traumatic experience. I was too embarrassed to ask for an extender when it happened to me, someone else revealed.

The video also prompted viewers to share their own experiences struggling with airline seatbelt sizes, with one person recalling how theyd asked for an extender the last time they flew with the airline and were told by a flight attendant that they didnt have any.

I was asked to move from the exit row once because I needed an extender. Apparently an extender means youre unable to open the exit door, someone else wrote.

According to travel reviewer The Points Guy, Deltas seatbelts range in size from 40 to 45 inches, while other airlines such as American Airlines and JetBlue have longer seatbelts, ranging from 45 to 47 inches and 45 inches, respectively.

Airlines such as Southwest have shorter seatbelts, according to the travel expert, which notes that the airlines seatbelts are 39 inches. Most of the airlines do offer an extender, however, which typically adds 25 inches to the seatbelt.

Story continues

This is not the first time that Bader has called out Delta for its seatbelt length, as she previously created a TikTok about the airline in October 2021, where she discussed a similar negative experience.

According to Bader, who acknowledged that she prefers the airline, Deltas new planes have way shorter seatbelts than they did before, with the TikToker revealing that she couldnt buckle the seatbelt around her body and was freaking out during takeoff.

In the video, Bader then recalled how shed asked a flight attendant about the issue, at which point she was informed that she could ask for an extender. While Bader said she didnt know that was a possibility, she said that she later received numerous messages from her followers about the embarrassment they feel when they have to ask for the extension after she recounted her experience on Instagram.

Bader revealed that she also felt self-conscious in the moment, with the influencer recalling how shed started to feel embarrassed and like there is clearly something wrong with me.

The TikToker concluded the video acknowledging that theres some things in life that are just so simple, and that she thinks making sure seatbelts accommodate all airline passengers is one of them.

Just make longer seatbelts. Why is this an issue? she asked, adding that she thinks the problem needs to change immediately.

According to the Delta Professional website, which notes that the airline offers the option of purchasing an extra seat for personal comfort during a flight, Delta does not require a passenger who needs a seatbelt extender or is unable to lower the armrest to purchase an additional seat. However, the website does add that, in cases where a passenger impedes on another passenger, they may be asked to move to another location that provides additional space, or in the event of a full flight, be asked to take a later flight with available seating.

The Independent has contacted Bader and Delta for comment.




Pope Francis will meet with Canadian Indigenous people this month to discuss their concerns with the gruesome discovery of hundreds of children's bodies buried in church-run Canadian schools.

The schools were intended to assimilate Indigenous children and were mostly run by the Catholic Church between 1831 and 1996.

Many of the children at the residential schools were forcibly separated from their families, and a 2015 report from the Canadian government revealed that the children were at times subjected to physical, sexual and emotional abuse.

On March 28 and 31, the pontiff will meet with representatives from the Inuit, Metis and First Nations communities. Later this year, Francis is expected to visit Canada, where he has been asked to personally apologize for the Catholic Church's role in the schools, Reuters reported.

In June, Francis said he was pained by the discovery of the remains of the children. At that time, however, he did not issue a direct apology, the news service added.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has demanded that the Catholic Church take responsibility and spoken out about the residential schools.

"The news that remains were found at the former Kamloops residential school breaks my heart - it is a painful reminder of that dark and shameful chapter of our country's history. I am thinking about everyone affected by this distressing news. We are here for you," Trudeau tweeted when the remains were discovered.

His tweet referenced the Kamloops Indian Residential School, which was once one of the largest in Canada before it was closed in the late 1970s and was made into a museum.
With Europe facing its most precarious future since World War II, President Joe Biden will huddle with key allies in Brussels and Warsaw this week as the leaders try to prevent Russias war on Ukraine from spiraling into an even greater catastrophe.

Biden embarked Wednesday on a four-day trip that will test his ability to navigate the continents worst crisis since WWII ended in 1945. There are fears that Russia could use chemical or nuclear weapons as its invasion becomes bogged down in the face of logistical problems and fierce Ukrainian resistance.

Advertisement

I think its a real threat, Biden said of the possibility of Russia deploying chemical weapons. He spoke during a brief exchange with reporters at the White House before departing for Brussels.

Humanitarian challenges are growing as well. Millions of refugees have fled the fighting, mostly by crossing the border into Poland, and the war has jeopardized Ukraines wheat and barley harvests, raising the possibility of rising hunger in impoverished areas around the globe.

Advertisement

Jake Sullivan, Bidens national security adviser, said the president would coordinate with allies on military assistance for Ukraine and new sanctions on Russia.

One new sanctions option that Biden is looking at is to target hundreds of members of the Russian State Duma, the lower house of parliament, according to a U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the move ahead of any announcement. The official added that a final decision hasnt been made and that the new sanctions would be rolled out in coordination with Western allies.

Sullivan added that Biden is working on long-term efforts to boost defenses in Eastern Europe, where more countries fear Russian aggression. The president is also aiming to reduce the continents reliance on Russian energy.

This war will not end easily or rapidly, Sullivan told reporters at a White House briefing on Tuesday. For the past few months, the West has been united. The president is traveling to Europe to make sure we stay united.

Sullivan said Vladimir Putins references to nuclear weapons at the beginning of the conflict are something that we do have to be concerned about, adding that Biden would be talking with allies about potential responses if the Russian leader takes that step.

Sullivans description of Bidens trip was another sign that the crisis is entering a new and uncertain phase.

After the initial invasion failed to topple Ukraines government, the war has become a grinding endeavor for Putin, who is relying on airstrikes and artillery that are devastating civilian communities. Negotiations between Ukraine and Russia have not produced a cease-fire or a path to ending the conflict, and the U.S. continues to rush weapons like anti-tank missiles to Ukrainian forces.

The wars ripple effects are also spreading. Biden warned that Russia could be planning cyberattacks that would affect U.S. companies, and he spoke to Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday to warn him against backing Russia with military or financial assistance. Meanwhile, a top State Department official visited India this week shortly after that country decided to purchase more Russian oil.

Advertisement

This is one of those decisive moments for an American leader that defines their legacy internationally, said Timothy Naftali, a presidential historian at New York University.

Biden departed for Europe as public health officials took note of a global uptick in COVID-19 cases. Confirmed cases of the virus had been falling steadily worldwide since January but rose again last week, due to the more infectious omicron variant and the suspension of COVID protocols in numerous countries in Europe, North America and elsewhere, the World Health Organization reported on Tuesday.

Bidens press secretary, Jen Psaki, announced on Tuesday that she would not travel with Biden to Europe after testing positive for the virus for the second time in five months. Biden was last tested on Tuesday, according to the White House. Psaki said she had two socially distanced meetings with Biden on Monday and that he is not considered a close contact under Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines.

Bidens first stop is Brussels, where hell attend back-to-back-to-back meetings.

NATO is holding a hastily arranged emergency summit, where Biden is expected to reiterate his support for Article 5 of the alliances charter, which commits all members to collective defense if any are attacked.

I think the meeting of all heads of state and government in NATO will provide us with yet another platform to demonstrate our unity, our support to Ukraine, but also our readiness to protect and defend all NATO allies, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told NBCs Meet the Press on Sunday. And by sending that message, we are preventing an escalation of the conflict to a full-fledged war between NATO and Russia.

Advertisement

Biden will also participate in meetings of the European Union and the Group of Seven, which includes the worlds richest democracies.

Hell then travel to Warsaw on Friday to meet Polish officials to discuss the enormous humanitarian strain caused by the Ukrainian refugee crisis. Biden is scheduled to meet with Polish President Andrzej Duda on Saturday.

Duda, whose country suffered a brutal Nazi occupation during World War II, compared Russian actions in Ukraine to Adolf Hitlers infamous SS forces. Visiting Bulgaria on Tuesday, Duda said Putins army is behaving in exactly the same way. He said he hoped that those responsible for attacks on civilians would be brought before international courts.

Polish leaders have pressed for a Western peacekeeping mission to intervene in Ukraine, a step that the U.S. and other Western allies worry could lead to a broadening of the war. The Polish leadership also wants an increased military presence along NATOs eastern flank.

Sullivan said Bidens trip to Poland is an important opportunity to meet with a frontline and very vulnerable ally. Poland is also host to a growing number of U.S. troops, and Sullivan suggested Biden may visit them as well.

Last week, at NATOs Brussels headquarters, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and his counterparts weighed what defenses to set up on the organizations eastern flank, from Estonia in the north through Latvia, Lithuania and Poland down to Bulgaria and Romania on the Black Sea.

Advertisement

The aim is to deter Putin from ordering an invasion of any of the 30 allies, not just for the duration of the war in Ukraine but into the future.

Putin has demanded that NATO withdraw its forces on its eastern flank and stop expanding.

Bidens visit to Poland follows on Vice President Kamala Harris visit to Warsaw and Bucharest earlier this month. While Harris was in Poland, Duda called on the Biden administration to expedite visa procedures for Ukrainians who have family living in the United States so that they could resettle in the U.S. at least temporarily.

Associated Press writer Vanessa Gera in Warsaw, Poland, contributed to this report.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Geneva in June 2021. Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images

Putin's foreign minister called the freezing of Russia's currency reserves "thievery."

Sergey Lavrov said that the scale of sanctions after Russia's invasion of Ukraine came as a shock.

He added: "Nobody who was predicting what sanctions the West would pass could have pictured that."

Russia's foreign minister called the freezing of Russia's currency reserves in light of its invasion of Ukraine "thievery" and said the country did not expect that level of sanctions.

Sergey Lavrov spoke to students in Moscow on Wednesday.

According to The New York Times, he said about the West's freezing of Russia's central bank reserves that "nobody who was predicting what sanctions the West would pass could have pictured that. It's just thievery."

The US and European countries were among those that froze Russian reserves.

Russia has about $640 billion in foreign reserves.

Russia's finance minister, Anton Siluanov, said earlier this month that about $300 billion had been frozen.

Other sanctions on Russia include the blocking the trade of luxury goods and heavy sanctions on Russian oligarchs.

Dmitry Peskov, a Kremlin spokesperson, described the sanctions on oligarchs as "state banditry" earlier this month.

Read the original article on Business Insider
A girl who seriously injured during Russian attacks receives treatment at regional children's hospital in Zaporizhzhia. (Getty)

Ukraine has claimed that 121 children have been killed during the course of the Russian invasion, amid reports thousands have been kidnapped and taken across the border.

Since Vladimir Putin's forces entered Ukraine on 24 February, a further 167 children have been wounded, the office of the prosecutor general said on Wednesday.

The figures have not been able to be independently verified.

Ukraine also claimed on Tuesday that 2,389 children had been "kidnapped" by Russia and transported across the border from the eastern oblasts of Donetsk and Luhansk.

The US Embassy in Kyiv cited the Ukrainian foreign ministry, tweeting: This is not assistance. It is kidnapping.

The ministry called it a gross violation of international law.

Nurses tend to a child in a room protected by sandbags at Zaporizhzhia Regional Clinical Children's Hospital. (Getty)

People, mainly women and children, arrive at Przemysl train station after travelling on a train from Ukraine. (Getty)

The claims of kidnapping also cannot be independently verified as the area has been besieged by the invading forces for over two weeks.

In the southern city of Mariupol, more than 100,000 people are believed to be trapped inside the bombard city with no access to food, water, power or heat.

Authorities in Mariupol said several thousand of its residents had been forcibly deported to Russia.

Read more: US Embassy accuses Russia of kidnapping children amid reports it's deporting thousands of Ukrainians by force

Intense Russian air strikes have turned Mariupol into the "ashes of a dead land", the city council said on Tuesday, as street fighting and bombardments raged in the port city.

Both civilians and Ukrainian troops were coming under Russian fire, said regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko.

Russian forces and Russian-backed separatist units had taken about half of the port city, normally home to around 400,000 people, Russia's RIA news agency said, citing a separatist leader.

Watch: Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko says he cries 'every day' at destruction Putin has caused

But in an early morning address, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy held out hope for negotiations, which have yielded little since the invasion began.

Story continues

"It's very difficult, sometimes confrontational," he said. "But step by step we are moving forward."

Putin's incursion into Ukraine has forced more than 3.5 million to flee, brought the unprecedented isolation of Russia's economy, and raised fears of wider conflict in the West unthought-of for decades.

Mariupol has become the focus of the war that erupted when Putin sent his troops over the border on what he calls a "special military operation" to demilitarise Ukraine and replace its pro-Western leadership.

Russia has maintained only military targets are being hit as Putin's forces carry out a "special military operation"  but footage from the scenes of the attacks tell of a different reality.

A nursery in Okhtyrka, 70 miles from Kharkiv, was destroyed when it was bombed on 25 February, just over 24 hours into the invasion.

Polina is among those killed in the invasion, after the car she and her parents were in was shot. (Getty)

Marianna Podgurska, a beauty blogger from Mariupol, gave birth to a baby girl shortly after the bombing. (AP)

Six people died after the Sonechko Nursery and Kindergarten was targeted, including seven-year-old Alisa Hlans and her grandfather, who is said to have been killed in front of her as he tried to rescue the youngster.

Amnesty International claimed the attack was from cluster bombs which were released in the residential area.

In Kyiv a fourth-grade student from Kyiv called Polina, who is thought to be either nine or 10, and her parents, were killed when the car they were in was shot at by Russian troops in Kyiv.

On 9 March, Russia sparked further international condemnation when a children's and maternity hospital in Mariupol was bombed.

Pictures and video from the scene showed heavily pregnant women being pulled from the rubble, covered in injuries.

A six-year-old girl and two adults were reported dead in the immediate aftermath of the attack, which Russia claimed was "fake news", claiming it was a viable military target.

Another woman caught up in the bombing, who was pictured being carried away on a stretcher, was subsequently reported dead five days later alongside her newborn baby.
If youre a Tarrant County property owner who has been financially impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, you can apply to the Texas Homeowner Assistance Fund Program for help with delinquent property taxes.

The Texas Homeowner Assistance Fund Program, administered by the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs, provides financial assistance to qualified Texas homeowners who have fallen behind on their mortgage and related expenses due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Funding for the program is provided by the Homeowner Assistance Fund under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021.

Wendy Burgess, Tarrant County Tax Assessor-Collector, said in a statement for residents to apply for the funds before the program ends or runs out of money.

The release of these funds is very timely and has already helped taxpayers in a test county in Texas, and Tarrant is an early adopter to benefit our taxpayers, Burgess said.

Who qualifies for the Texas Homeowner Assistance Fund Program?

There are four criteria to meet in order to qualify for assistance.

Tarrant County residents who qualify must own and occupy a Texas home as a primary residence. Tarrant County officials said in a release that an existing homestead exemption with the Appraisal District must also be in place.

Qualifying homeowners must have an income at or below 100% of the areas median income or 100% of the median income for the U.S., whichever is greater, and experienced a financial hardship after Jan. 21, 2020, such as lost income or increased expenses from the pandemic.

Homeowners must also have evidence of delinquency, such as an overdue tax statement or a notice from a tax attorney. Those who were late on one or more payments, including property taxes, mortgage, property insurance and HOA/condo fees, also qualify.

How much financial assistance does the program give?

Tarrant County officials said in a release that qualifying homeowners can apply for up to $25,000 that can cover delinquent property taxes and mortgage payments. The funds can also be applied to eligible court costs, abstract fees and other suit-related fees.

Story continues

How do I apply?

If youre a qualifying homeowner, applications can be submitted on texashomeownerassistance.com. Applicants can also check their status on the website.

What documents do I need to apply for the Texas Homeowner Assistance Fund Program?

Applicants must include an approved form of identification, such as a drivers license, Social Security card, military ID, state ID or birth certificate.

Tarrant County officials said a verified income statement must also be submitted. This includes a W2 form, IRS Form 1099, tax return, pay stub and employer attestation.
NEW YORK (AP)  In his first show since 2019, Ralph Lauren transformed a long room at the Museum of Modern Art into a cozy salon Tuesday night to debut a moneyed collection of mostly black and white for men and women.

His models, including Gigi and Bella Hadid, meandered through guests seated on couches and black easy chairs wearing classic tailored white trousers and jackets, cocktail attire and slinky, sequined evening dresses. There were pops of black leather, pinstripes, and plaid in red and black, with a smattering of elevated riding gear and ski-inspired Nordic knits.

The show of opulence for his fall/winter Women's Collection, an upscale line, and his latest for the high-end Purple Label for men was conceived months before war broke out in Ukraine, Lauren acknowledged in his notes. At the time, he said, The tragedy and devastation we are witnessing now was unthinkable.

Guests were asked to dress in cocktail attire, sipping Champagne and nibbling hors doeuvre as Jessica Chastain, Henry Golding, Janelle Monae, Mayor Eric Adams (in a hand-painted overcoat) and other notables had their pictures snapped by an unusually small contingent of photographers.

Monae performed the last time Lauren showed in September 2019 during New York Fashion Week, turning a Wall Street space into a jazzy nightclub of yesteryear. This time, he skipped frenetic fashion week in February and went off-calendar instead. He had intimate togetherness on his mind after his pandemic break, paring down his crowd and going for a relaxed vibe amid coffee tables appointed with stacked books and objets dart.

This moment means a lot to me because it also marks my return back to New York. I havent been in New York since the last show, so its an honor to be here again, Monae, a guest rather than a singer this time around, told The Associated Press.

Gigi opened the show in black trousers and a black V-neck sweater emblazoned with the RL logo over a white button up. Her sister walked in a form-hugging white evening gown with a cut out neck and back.

Story continues

One of Lauren's evening dresses, in black, was adorned with a New York City skyline in silver at the hem. Many of his models wore two-tone spectator shoes in contrasting black and white. Think F. Scott Fitzgerald and the Jazz Age.

Golding was also on hand for Lauren's 2019 show. Its good to see peoples faces, like the world moved on, and I think its about time, he told the AP.

Adams, mayor since January, sported a black coat with a yellow panel on one side painted with African masks, a miniature of himself and a tiny New York street sign.

This is the new mayor wardrobe in New York, he joked. Our city is back. This is the fashion capital.

At the end of the show, after the finale walk for his models, the 82-year-old Lauren emerged from behind an elevated entrance platform and waved, lingering for a moment to take it all in.

So, in the midst of this sadness, we go forward united in our hope for peace, and our hope for the end of this pandemic and a return to being together, he said in his notes. I am so proud to be with you again sharing not only a collection, but an optimism for living that respects the dignity of all.

___

Associated Press Writer John Carucci in New York contributed to this story.

___

Follow Leanne Italie on Twitter at http://twitter.com/litalie




A report commissioned by the city of Los Angeles cleared Mayor Eric Garcetti (D) of allegations that he failed to discipline his former chief of staff, who allegedly sexually harassed and inappropriately touched a Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officer.

The more than 300-page report was reportedly provided to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee before the panel advanced Garcetti's nomination as U.S. ambassador to India in January.

The Los Angeles Times last week first reported on the news that the confidential investigation was handed to the Senate committee. The report was then released publicly.

LAPD Officer Matt Garza is suing Los Angeles over allegations that Garcetti's former chief of staff, Rick Jacobs, made sexual comments to him and sexually harassed him.

Garza, a former bodyguard for the mayor, has also alleged that Garcetti knew about the harassment but did nothing to stop it.

According to the report from the city attorney's office, Jacobs did not act inappropriately and the mayor did not know about or fail to discipline his chief of staff.

"The evidence reflected that to the extent Mr. Jacobs gave hugs, he did so appropriately. In other words, he did not hug overly frequently, too tightly or too long," the report says. "Further, contrary to Ofc. Garza's complaint, Mayor Garcetti did not know about or fail to prevent Mr. Jacobs from engaging in inappropriate touching or comments."

The report, which is not a legal determination, included interviews with 24 witnesses, including the mayor and administrative employees, and a review of documents.

According to the Times, former city employees who filed court depositions saying it was common knowledge that Jacobs acted inappropriately were not interviewed for the city report because they declined or were not contacted by the office.

Garza's attorney, Greg Smith, told the Times on Wednesday that city investigators did not capture the full scope of Garza's allegations.

Story continues

"This is textbook exercise in providing cover to a public official who wants to conceal misconduct," Smith said. "It is clear that the city had no interest in a balanced report."

The Hill has reached out to the mayor's office for comment.

Garza began working for the mayor in 2013 and says Jacobs harassed him from 2014 to 2019. The police officer filed his lawsuit in July 2020, and the litigation is ongoing.
BAGHDAD (AP)  A transgender woman said several men beat her up, threw her in a garbage bin, cut her and set her alight before she was rescued. A gay man said his boyfriend was killed before his eyes. A lesbian woman was stabbed in the leg and said she was warned to stop her immoral behavior.

The accounts are part of a report by Human Rights Watch that accuses armed groups in Iraq of abducting, raping, torturing, and killing lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people with impunity. The Iraqi government, it says, has failed to hold perpetrators accountable.

Released Wednesday, the report by the New York-based organization in collaboration with Iraqi LGBT rights group IraQueer also accuses Iraqi police and security forces of being often complicit in compounding anti-LGBT violence and of arresting individuals due to non-conforming appearance.

It paints a picture of LGBT people besieged from multiple directions. These include extreme violence by family members; harassment in the streets; and digital targeting and harassment by armed groups on social media and same-sex dating applications, it said.

Attacks against LGBT Iraqis have become multi-faceted and the methods of targeting have expanded, Rasha Younes, LGBT rights researcher in the Middle East and North Africa at Human Rights Watch and the reports author, said in response to emailed questions.

Many LGBT people said they felt they were forced to hide who they are to stay alive, the report said.

Across much of the Middle East and North Africa, LGBT people and organizations advocating for LGBT rights face violence and discrimination, and most countries in the region have laws that criminalize same-sex relations, Younes said. Some that dont, use other laws to target LGBT people, she added.

In Iraq specifically, a culture of impunity and relative absence of the rule of law ... allow armed groups to escape punishment for violence against ordinary Iraqis, including LGBT people, she said.

Story continues

Armed groups suspected to have been involved in abuses against LGBT people, according to the report, mostly fall under the Popular Mobilization Forces, a state-sanctioned umbrella group of militias, the most powerful of which are Iranian-backed Shiite groups.

The Interior Ministry spokesman, Maj. Gen. Khaled al-Muhanna, denied any attacks by security forces on gay people. A mid-level commander with a powerful faction within the PMF who was contacted by The Associated Press also rejected the accusations, saying any violence was likely from their families.

The Islamic State group, which at the height of its power controlled large parts of Syria and Iraq, reserved one of its most brutal methods of killing for those suspected of being gay -- throwing them to their death from building rooftops.

The report is based in part on 54 interviews with LGBT Iraqis; Human Rights Watch conducted research for it between June and November of last year.

Two LGBT people interviewed by the AP in Baghdad -- one who identifies as bisexual and another as lesbian -- said they were afraid of sharing photos of themselves on same-sex dating apps, fearing it would be used against them. Both spoke on condition of anonymity fearing reprisal from armed groups and their families.

Fear of blackmail is widespread among LGBT people in Iraq, they said.

When I choose to open myself up to someone I wonder, can I trust them? Or will they use this against me? said the bisexual Iraqi man, a filmmaker living in Baghdad.

Ive lived in fear every day of my life since I discovered myself (to be bisexual), he said.

The lesbian woman, an employee at a foreign embassy, said she confided in only a few close friends. Asked what was the worst that could happen if she opened up to her family, she said: They would kill me.

Loosely defined morality clauses and the absence of anti-discrimination legislation are among the formidable barriers cited by the report as deterring LGBT people from reporting abuses to the police or filing complaints against law enforcement agents. This, it added, creates an environment in which police and armed groups can abuse them with impunity.

In describing an attack against her last year, the transgender woman who said in the report that she was set on fire, added that her attackers wielded razor blades and screwdrivers. I was screaming and tossing and turning from the burns, but I managed to protect my face.

Some Iraqi government officials and religious figures have made anti-LGBT statements that helped fuel violence against LGBT people, the report said, adding that members of armed groups began a campaign of violence against men suspected of same-sex conduct in 2009.

Among its recommendations, it urged Iraqi authorities to investigate reports of violence by armed groups and security forces against perceived or actual LGBT people and punish those found responsible.

___

Fam reported from Cairo. Associated Press writer Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Baghdad contributed reporting.

___

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the APs collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
A Delaware man was convicted Tuesday of the 2018 murder of a West Nyack car dealer.

Rockland County District Attorney Tom Walsh announced that a jury found Eric Ross Jr., a 28-year-old Wilmington resident, guilty of second-degree murder and second-degree criminal possession of a weapon, both felonies, following a two-week trial in County Court.

Prosecutors said that Ross drove to Youbs Auto Sales on Route 59 in West Nyack on the afternoon of Nov. 24, 2018, to confront the owner, Youbens Joseph of Wallkill, about a Hyundai Sonata he had recently purchased from him.

Youbens Joseph.

Ross was upset because he was having issues with the car, prosecutors said.

Ross and Joseph got into a verbal altercation, during which the dealer said there was nothing he could do for Ross.

Moments later, prosecutors said, Ross drew a 9mm Ruger semi-automatic pistol and shot Joseph. He then fled in the Sonata.

Crime: Suspected killer of West Nyack car dealer extradited to New York

Fatal shooting: Car dealer mourned by family as 'kind, trusting person'

West Nyack: Youbens Joseph killed after car deal dispute

Police officers who responded to the scene found the wounded Joseph and had him taken to Westchester Medical Center, where he died the following day.

"The senseless daytime killing of Youbens Joseph across the street from one of the busiest malls in the Hudson Valley left residents in shock and anger," Walsh said in a statement. "This extreme act of violence is never the solution to any dispute. A young man is dead and a family is grieving this tragic loss."

Joseph, 37, was married and a father of three.

The auto-body shop in West Nyack where Clarkstown police say Youbens Joseph was shot in the torso Saturday, Nov. 24, 2018. He died the following day.

Ross was arrested in Quakertown, Pennsylvania, several days after the shooting. Multiple law enforcement agencies searched for his car, and a police officer in Richland, Pennsylvania, saw the Hyundai Sonata parked in a shopping center, police said previously. Ross was arrested about 12 hours later at a relative's house nearby, they said.

Story continues

Clarkstown police previously said that Ross had ties to Rockland and had attended college there and lived there for a couple of years.

Ross' attorney, Jeffrey Schonbrun of New City, could not immediately be reached for comment.

Ross is scheduled to be sentenced on June 28, and he faces a maximum term of 25 years to life in state prison. Walsh said he will recommend a long prison sentence, "which we hope will provide a measure of justice to the victim's family."

This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Delaware man found guilty in shooting of Youbens Joseph in Rockland
(Reuters) - The United States Embassy in Moscow on Wednesday received a list of its diplomats that were declared "persona non grata", a State Department spokesperson said, in what Russian media said was a response to a U.S. move ousting Russian staff at the United Nations.

Washington last month said it was expelling 12 Russian diplomats at the country's U.N. mission in New York over national security concerns, and later announced it would oust an additional Russian at the U.N. who it said was a spy.

Russia, which denies the allegations, told the United States on Wednesday it would throw out an unspecified number of American diplomats in response to the moves, Interfax news agency said.

"The American side was told very firmly that any hostile U.S. actions against Russia would provoke a decisive and comparable response," the agency said.

The move comes as the United States and its allies weigh further sanctions against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.

A State Department spokesperson said: "We can confirm that the U.S. Embassy received a list of diplomats declared 'persona non grata' from the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on March 23."

"This is Russia's latest unhelpful and unproductive step in our bilateral relationship ... Now more than ever, it is critical that our countries have the necessary diplomatic personnel in place to facilitate communication between our governments," the spokesperson said.

Neither the spokesperson nor Interfax specified how many people were affected or when they would have to leave.

(This story corrects spelling in first paragraph)

(Reporting by David Ljunggren and Rami Ayyub; Editing by Gareth Jones and Stephen Coates)
By Jarrett Renshaw and Gabriela Baczynska

BRUSSELS (Reuters) -NATO promised Kyiv new military support and assigned more troops to the alliance's eastern flank while London and Washington stepped up sanctions on Moscow during a trio of summits on Thursday aimed at showing Western unity against Russia's war in Ukraine.

NATO leaders meeting in Brussels agreed to help Ukraine protect itself against any chemical, biological or nuclear attacks, and a U.S. official said allies were working to provide Kyiv with anti-ship missiles.

"The single most important thing is for us to stay unified and the world continue to focus on what a brute this guy is and all the innocent people's lives that are being lost and ruined," U.S. President Joe Biden told a news conference, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"We have to stay fully, totally, thoroughly united."

The United States promised to supply the EU with 15 billion cubic metres more of liquefied natural gas this year than had been planned before, sources told Reuters, as the European bloc seeks to quickly curb its reliance on Russian fossil fuels.

However, support pledges by leaders from countries representing more than half of the world's GDP fell short of satisfying Ukraine's pleas for much more arms and tighter sanctions, including an embargo on Russian energy.

Russia supplies 40% of the EU's gas needs and more than a quarter of its oil imports. Those most dependent on this supply - in particular Germany - are reluctant to take a step that would have a major economic impact.

Speaking to 27 EU leaders via a video call on Thursday night, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy thanked them for sanctions against Russia but said they came too late to prevent Putin from invading on Feb.24.

"Now we are discussing Ukraine's membership in the European Union. At least here, I beg you, don't be late," Zelenskiy said.

He called out Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban for maintaining close ties with Putin as Russia was shelling Ukrainian cities and hoped key sceptics of EU enlargement - Germany, France and the Netherlands - would change tack.

Story continues

In a move that made Europe's dilemma worse, Putin said "unfriendly" countries must start paying for energy supplies in roubles, which would prop up the battered Russian currency.

Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa said "nobody will pay in roubles" and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen rejected what she called "blackmail".

"BARBARISM"

Ukraine is a former Soviet republic whose aspirations to join the EU and NATO drew Moscow's ire. Putin says his "special operation" is aimed at destroying Ukraine's military capabilities and capturing what Russia regards as dangerous nationalists there.

The invasion has killed thousands and driven a quarter of Ukraine's 44 million people from their homes. Russian bombs have hit residential areas, schools and hospitals in Ukrainian cities including Kharkiv and the besieged Azov Sea port of Mariupol.

"Putin has already crossed the red line into barbarism," British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said as London unveiled restrictions on Gazprombank and Alfa Bank. "The harder our sanctions ... the more we can do to help Ukraine."

Canada and Australia also stepped up sanctions on Russia on Thursday as the war entered its second month. But the EU lacked the unanimous support needed to impose more punitive measures, and was struggling to implement those already agreed.

NATO turned down pleas by Kyiv to defend Ukraine's skies by imposing a no-fly zone and said again it will not send troops to Ukraine for fear of being dragged into a full-on military confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia.

NATO leaders said in a joint statement they were "united and resolute in our determination to oppose Russia's aggression, aid the government and the people of Ukraine, and defend the security of all allies."

French President Emmanuel Macron said the world faced an "unprecedented food crisis" that will be even worse in 12 to 18 months as Ukraine, a major grower of wheat, barley, corn and sunflower, will not be able to sow crops.

NATO, which has already beefed up its eastern flank to 40,000 troops spread from the Baltic to the Black Sea, agreed to set up new combat units in Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Slovakia.

The alliance also warned China should "abstain from supporting Russia's war effort in any way, and to refrain from any action that helps Russia circumvent sanctions." The EU would raise that when it holds a summit with China on Apr.1.

Biden said China understood its economic future was more closely tied to the West than to Russia, after warning Beijing it could face consequences for aiding Moscow's war.

(Additional reporting by Sabine Siebold, Marine Strauss, Benoit Van Overstraeten, John Irish, Jan Strupczewski, John Chalmers, Andreas Rinke, Kate Abnett and Bart Meijer, Writing by Ingrid Melander and Gabriela Baczynska; Editing by Frances Kerry, Cynthia Osterman and Lincoln Feast.)
Foreign firms confident in Chinese market despite COVID-19

08:05, March 23, 2022 By Zhou Rui, Xu Xiaoqing, He Xinrong ( Xinhua

* Though facing a new round of COVID-19 flare-ups and uncertainties in the global economic recovery, foreign enterprises have confidence in the Chinese market thanks to a slew of resolute, precise and comprehensive anti-epidemic measures.

* In Shanghai, where over 60,000 foreign-invested enterprises contribute about one-third of the city's tax revenue, a quarter of its GDP, and two-thirds of its foreign trade, promising investment prospects, high-level opening up and the favorable business environment have made the metropolis still an attractive destination for foreign investors.

* Coordinating epidemic prevention and control with economic and social development, Shanghai is making every effort to maintain normal operations, which has enabled factories, including those that are foreign-owned, to run smoothly, contributing to the global manufacturing industry.

SHANGHAI, March 22 (Xinhua) -- Though facing a new round of COVID-19 flare-ups and uncertainties in the global economic recovery, foreign enterprises have confidence in the Chinese market thanks to a slew of resolute, precise and comprehensive anti-epidemic measures.

In Shanghai, where over 60,000 foreign-invested enterprises contribute about one-third of the city's tax revenue, a quarter of its GDP, and two-thirds of its foreign trade, promising investment prospects, high-level opening up and the favorable business environment have made the metropolis still an attractive destination for foreign investors.

The city's actual foreign investment reached more than 2.37 billion U.S. dollars in January, up 26.6 percent year on year, and Shanghai also witnessed the establishment of 276 wholly foreign-owned enterprises in the month, according to the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Commerce.

STRONG GROWTH DESPITE EPIDEMIC

At 7 a.m. Tuesday, a stream of shuttle buses for commuting employees began to enter Tesla's Shanghai Gigafactory.

"Although we encountered a series of problems with inter-provincial transportation, procurement of anti-epidemic materials and staffing, production returned to normal with the help of the local authorities," said Tao Lin, vice president of Tesla.

Residents queue to receive COVID-19 nucleic acid tests at a residential area in Shanghai, March 21, 2022. (Xinhua/Fang Zhe)

Tesla's Shanghai factory exported 33,315 vehicles in February this year, up 339 percent year on year, maintaining its status as one of the U.S. electric carmaker's main export hubs.

Last year, the factory delivered more than 160,000 vehicles to overseas markets, meeting the needs of over 10 countries and regions in Europe and Asia.

"We are fully confident in the future development of the Chinese market," Tao said. "China has always been able to respond to the epidemic effectively while opening its doors firmly. It has become an important engine of global economic growth."

Coordinating epidemic prevention and control with economic and social development, Shanghai is making every effort to maintain normal operations, which has enabled factories, including those that are foreign-owned, to run smoothly, contributing to the global manufacturing industry.

To ensure the non-stop supply of cancer drugs amid the epidemic rebound, nearly 100 employees in a factory of Boehringer Ingelheim, a leading pharmaceutical company, have been living in the factory in Shanghai's Zhangjiang High-tech Park since March 16.

"Cancer drugs are very special, the production of which shall not be suspended," said Wang Bin, general manager of Boehringer Ingelheim Biopharmaceuticals China. "Since the recent resurgence, the whole company has been working together to guarantee the continued supply of anti-cancer medicines."

SWIFT, TARGETED CONTAINMENT

To curb the latest COVID-19 outbreak, Shanghai has carried out a series of swift, stringent and targeted measures including closed-off management in some areas.

"Our office in the Jing'an District was sealed for 48 hours, during which the efficient response of local authorities to the needs of enterprises was impressive," said Fabrice Megarbane, chief executive officer of L'Oreal China.

Employees receive boxed meal at the office of L'Oreal in Jing'an District of Shanghai, March 5, 2022. (Xinhua)

"It was late at night when the closed-off management came to an end. Thanks to the sufficient preparation of the local government, hundreds of taxis were waiting orderly outside our building to send home our employees safely," Megarbane said. "It fully reflected Shanghai's care for foreign-funded enterprises and the increasingly optimized business environment here."

According to the company, L'Oreal achieved double-digit growth on the Chinese mainland last year, growing at twice the industry average.

"We believe the difficulties are temporary, and we have great confidence in Shanghai," said Cao Chilun, president and country manager of Amkor Assembly &Test (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., a semiconductor company.

"Over the past weekend, the plant was temporarily put under closed-off management for 48 hours, but we continued to operate 24 hours a day during the period," Cao said.

According to Cao, their production plans have not been affected by the COVID-19 resurgence to date. "Shanghai's targeted containment measures have minimized the impact on companies."

Cao said there would be no change in the company's investment plans in China. "A new plant is under construction now, which is expected to go into operation in 2023 and increase the existing capacity by 45 percent."

Employees work on a production line of Amkor Assembly &Test (Shanghai) Co., Ltd in Shanghai, March 21, 2022. (Xinhua)

Aiming to further propel opening up, improve its business environment and provide more investment autonomy for foreign enterprises, Shanghai issued procedures to streamline the approval and filing of projects with foreign investment in January.

The procedures that apply to foreign investors, as well as projects newly established or acquired by foreign-invested enterprises involving fixed asset investment in the city, came into effect on March 1.

"Shanghai will continue to provide foreign enterprises with customized services and help them solve practical difficulties in a timely manner," said Gu Jun, director of the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Commerce.

(Web editor: Peng yukai, Liang Jun)
The Chicago City Council authorized a $1,675,000 taxpayer-funded settlement Wednesday for a group of people, including a Black woman dragged from her car by Chicago police, who visited the Brickyard Mall in the days following the murder of George Floyd.

Advertisement

Mia Wright and those who were with her that day sued the city in 2020, alleging excessive force by Chicago police at the Northwest Side mall after the death of Floyd, a Black man who died under the knee of white ex-Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin.

The 34-13 council vote, with scant discussion, came a month after four aldermen blocked the first attempt by City Council to approve the settlement, following a heated debate about Black Chicagoans rights and their treatment by police.

Advertisement

Sign up for The Spin to get the top stories in politics delivered to your inbox weekday afternoons.

Wright and family members said they arrived at the Brickyard Mall in late May 2020 to discover it closed because of civil unrest that occurred across the city in the aftermath of Floyds murder. Police officers suddenly surrounded the car, broke the windows and pulled Wright out of the vehicle by her hair, she said.

While Wright was prone on the ground, an officer placed his knee on her neck, she said. She was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct, though the charge was later dropped.

Mia Wright, center, and her cousin Tnika Tate, right, on June 3, 2020, shortly after Wright said she and her companions were mistaken for looters by Chicago police. The Chicago City Council authorized a $1.7 million settlement to Wright and the others on Wednesday. (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune)

A relative who was with Wright captured the incident on video. Eight police officers were disciplined for the incident, according to city lawyer Caroline Fronczak. Five plaintiffs will share the settlement.

Officers said they thought some members of Wrights group were attempting to break into a store at the mall to steal goods, according to Fronczak, but the officers also acknowledged nobody in the group matched the descriptions of the suspected looters.

During Februarys City Council meeting, approval of the settlement was blocked after four aldermen  Raymond Lopez, Felix Cardona, Nick Sposato and Silvana Tabares  used a parliamentary maneuver to delay the vote.

A week before that, Sposato had wondered why Wright, whom he said lived in the West Sides North Lawndale neighborhood, drove to the Northwest Side mall to shop on a day when Chicago was experiencing extensive, well-publicized public disturbances following the Floyd murder.

Ald. Jason Ervin, shown during the City Council meeting Wednesday. (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune)

Sposatos comments prompted Ald. Jason Ervin, 28th, to ask: Whats wrong with somebody who lives at Pulaski and Cermak coming to the Brickyard to shop?

Advertisement

People do have the right to move about the city or move about the nation as they choose, Ervin said then.

Besides Lopez, Cardona, Sposato and Tabares, the other aldermen voting against the settlement were Brian Hopkins, George Cardenas, Anthony Napolitano, Brendan Reilly, Anthony Beale, Marty Quinn, Ariel Reboyras, James Gardiner and Ed Burke.
(Reuters) - Russia will retaliate if its diplomats are expelled from Poland, the RIA news agency cited the foreign ministry as saying on Wednesday.

Moments earlier, Poland's special services said they had asked the foreign ministry to expel 45 people working for Russia under the cover of diplomatic work.

(Reporting by Reuters)
(Corrects spelling of name to Vorobieva in second paragraph)

JAKARTA (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin intends to attend a G20 summit being hosted by Indonesia later this year, Russia's ambassador in Jakarta said on Wednesday, following calls by some members for the country to be barred from the group.

"Not only G20, many organisations are trying to expel Russia....the reaction of the West is absolutely disproportional," ambassador Lyudmila Vorobieva told a news conference on Wednesday.

The United States and its Western allies are assessing whether Russia should remain within the Group of Twenty (G20) grouping of major economies following its invasion of Ukraine, sources involved in the discussions told Reuters.

(This story has been refiled to correct the spelling of name to Vorobieva in the second paragraph)

(Reporting by Stanley Widianto and Angie Teo; Writing by Ed Davies; Editing by Kanupriya Kapoor)
By Angie Teo and Stanley Widianto

JAKARTA (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin plans to attend the next G20 summit in Indonesia later this year and received valuable backing from Beijing on Wednesday in a pushback to suggestions by some members that Russia could be barred from the group.

The United States and its Western allies are assessing whether Russia should remain within the Group of Twenty major economies following its invasion of Ukraine, sources involved in the discussions told Reuters.

But any move to exclude Russia would probably be vetoed by others in the group, raising the prospect of some countries instead skipping G20 meetings, the sources said.

Russia's ambassador to Indonesia, which currently holds the rotating G20 chair, said Putin intended to travel to the Indonesian resort island of Bali for the G20 summit in November.

"It will depend on many, many things, including the COVID situation, which is getting better. So far, his intention is... he wants to," Ambassador Lyudmila Vorobieva told a news conference.

Asked about suggestions Russia could be kicked out of the G20, she said it was a forum to discuss economic issues and not a crisis like Ukraine.

"Of course expulsion of Russia from this kind of forum will not help these economic problems to be resolved. On the contrary, without Russia it would be difficult to do so."

China, which has not condemned Russia's invasion and criticised Western sanctions, defended Moscow on Wednesday, calling Russia an "important member" of the G20.

The G20 is a group that needs to find answers to critical issues, such as economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said.

"No member has the right to remove another country as a member. The G20 should implement real multilateralism, strengthen unity and cooperation," he told a news briefing.

Indonesia's foreign ministry declined to comment on calls for Russia to be excluded from the G20.

Story continues

Russian President Vladimir Putin sent his troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24 on what he calls a "special military operation" to demilitarise and "denazify" the country. Ukraine and the West say Putin launched an unprovoked war of aggression.

'BUSY WITH SOMETHING ELSE'

Russia is facing an onslaught of international sanctions led by Western countries aiming at isolating it from the global economy, including shutting it out of the SWIFT global bank messaging system and restricting dealings by its central bank.

On Tuesday, Poland said it had suggested to U.S. commerce officials that it replace Russia within the G20 group and that the suggestion had received a "positive response".

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said G20 members would have to decide but the issue was not a priority now.

"When it comes to the question of how to proceed with the WTO (World Trade Organization) and the G20, it is imperative to discuss this question with the countries that are involved and not to decide individually," Scholz said.

"It is quite clear that we are busy with something else than coming together in such meetings. We urgently need a ceasefire."

Russia's participation in the G20 is almost certain to be discussed on Thursday, when U.S. President Joe Biden meets allies in Brussels.

"We believe that it cannot be business as usual for Russia in international institutions and in the international community," U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters.

A European Union source separately confirmed the discussions about Russia's status at G20 meetings.

"It has been made very clear to Indonesia that Russias presence at forthcoming ministerial meetings would be highly problematic for European countries," said the source, adding there was, however, no clear process for excluding a country.

Indonesia's deputy central bank governor, Dody Budi Waluyo, said on Monday Jakarta's position was one of neutrality and it would use its G20 leadership to try to resolve problems, but Russia had a "strong commitment" to attend and other members could not forbid it from doing so.

(Additional reporting by Andrea Shalal and Alex Alper in Washington, Marek Strzeleck in Warsaw, Jan Strupczewski in Brussels, Emma Farge in Geneva, Gayatri Suroyo in Jakarta, Andreas Rinke in Berlin and Yew Lun Tian in Beijing; Writing by Ed Davies and Balazs Koranyi; Editing by Robert Birsel and Mark Heinrich)
(Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will meet the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Peter Maurer, in Moscow in Thursday, the foreign ministry said on Wednesday.

Maurer will be in Moscow for talks on the Ukraine conflict, an ICRC spokesperson said on Tuesday.

"The agenda of the meeting envisages discussion of the key areas of the ICRC's work in the field of humanitarian response," the foreign ministry said in a statement.

(Reporting by Reuters; editing by Guy Faulconbridge)
SANFORD, Maine  The Sanford High School Theater Club presents the sensational musical Mamma Mia!, marking the Sanford premiere of the wildly successful show. Performances will be on April 1 and April 2 at 6:30 p.m., and April 3 at 2 p.m.

Donna and the Dynamos! From left Laila Adawadkar, Grace Davie, and Ella VanGieson perform "Super Trouper."

With songs from ABBA, the show is packed full of best-loved tunes including "Dancing Queen," "Gimme, Gimme, Gimme," "Mamma Mia," Thank You For The Music, "Waterloo," and many more!

"Mamma Mia!" is the story of 20-year-old Sophie and her fiance, Sky, who are about to get married on an island in Greece. Sophie secretly invites the three men who could be her father to the wedding, with the dream of having her real father walk her down the aisle. When they all show up on the island, Sophie tries to figure out which one is her real father. When all three men find out they could be her father, they all offer to walk her down the aisle, with a white wedding youll never forget.

The entire cast and crew learning choreography for the finale, "Waterloo."

Being a part of this production has been a really fun experience," said Hope Abbott-Eaton, who plays Sophie. "It's really great to be a part of something I love doing, with other people who love it as well.

The creativity, hooking the crowd in, stepping outside my comfort zone, being more social, confident and the process of acting for theater is what I love, said Zach Michienzi, who plays Sky.

Students work on the set for "Mamma Mia!" at a sawmill in North Berwick.

I work behind the scenes because I love watching the magic happen over time and seeing it come together from every angle, said Lucille Utgard, who is the general stage manager.

The cast and crew have worked so hard to be able to present this during COVID. Even with the troubles of social distancing and the mask in the rehearsal process, they have been able to pull together an amazing show. They are excited that restrictions have been lifted and they can present the show without masks or social distancing. Not only does the Sanford PAC give the actors and crew a chance to be creative, but it also shows them the top of the line skills that they might not have the opportunity to show in other high schools.

Story continues

Under the direction of Brett Williams, Kristie Baker and Jane Kirton. Mamma Mia has come a long way with the help and support of the cast and crew.

Tickets are $12 with additional discounts given for students and seniors. Visit www.sanfordpac.org to purchase tickets and watch a video trailer for the show.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Sanford High School Theater Club presents Mamma Mia!
A man fatally shot his boss at Winners Freight in Burr Ridge and wounded a female co-worker at the trucking companys suburban Chicago office building Tuesday afternoon before he took his own life as officers were closing in on him, authorities said.

Burr Ridge Police Chief John Madden said officers were called about 3 p.m. to the office building at 16W475 South Frontage Road for a report that a gunman, identified as Jeremy Spicer, 31, of Pine Bluff, Arkansas, had shot two people he worked with.

Advertisement

At a Wednesday morning news conference, Deputy Chief Marc Loftus of the Burr Ridge Police Department said Spicer worked at Winners Freight for about a week and was about to be released over a dispute about pay and property. He shot his boss, Nicola Misovic, 30, who died at a Hinsdale hospital as a result of his injuries, according to a news release from the Burr Ridge Police Department.

Police tape is posted outside the Winners Freight office in Burr Ridge March 23, 2022. Police said a man fatally shot his boss and wounded a female co-worker Tuesday afternoon before he took his own life. (Jose M. Osorio / Chicago Tribune)

Spicer is also accused of shooting a 31-year-old female co-worker who has not been identified. She was taken to Good Samaritan Hospital in Downers Grove and is in stable condition after undergoing surgery, according to the news release.

Advertisement

Loftus said after the shooting at Winners Freight on Tuesday, Spicer went to two other businesses that he worked for  Force Logistics and Egzit Logistics.

Loftus said investigators spoke with the woman prior to her surgery and she said she knew Spicer as a previous employee of the company she works at.

Police said Spicer went to a third logistics company in a building across the street and asked if the owner was in. When he was told the owner wasnt there, he went to another business on 7940 South Madison Street.

He asked the company there if he could come in and use the restroom and they let him, Loftus said. At the same time, Loftus said officers were setting up a perimeter to lock down the area.

After approximately 20 minutes, the employees at the building he was in, got suspicious and asked [Spicer] to leave, Loftus said.

We received a 911 call, but we had a perimeter set up. He was within our perimeter, said Madden. Loftus added that surrounding agencies helped Burr Ridge Police lock down the area while Spicer was holed up in the building on South Madison.

When officers closed in on him, he took his own life by gunshot. He is deceased, Madden said. Spicer used a .40-caliber Glock handgun, police said.

Police also said Spicer was staying at the LaQuinta Inn in Willowbrook while working as a trucker for Winners Freight. A warrant was issued on his room, and an empty holster was recovered, Loftus said.

Advertisement

The motive for the shooting is not clear at this time, police said.

Investigators said the four active crime scenes required a huge amount of police presence, including assistance from the DuPage County Major Crimes Task Force and the DuPage County Sheriffs Office. The investigation is ongoing.




Officials in Shanghai this week dismissed rumors that it had implemented a city-wide lockdown after the Chinese city reported a record COVID-19 infections.

Though new daily infections in the city reportedly reached nearly 1,000 on Tuesday, Shanghai authorities have said that they are taking a "slicing and gridding" approach, in which they screen neighborhoods for infections, opposed to shutting the city down, according to Reuters.

Rumors of a pending lockdown reportedly sparked panic buying on Tuesday night as city residents filled up slots on the "Freshippo" delivery app, the news outlet noted.

"Please do not believe and spread rumors," city government officials reportedly wrote in a statement concerning the lockdown rumors on its Weibo site.

On Wednesday, Shanghai's police said that an investigation has been launched into two individuals who allegedly had been "fabricating" lockdown information in order to "attract attention," Reuters noted.

Wu Jinglei, a Shanghai health official, reportedly said during a news briefing that the city has two stadiums that it is utilizing as quarantine facilities for mild COVID-19 cases and people who are asymptomatic.

About 977 domestically transmitted asymptomatic infections were reported in Shanghai on Tuesday, Reuters reported.
Variable refresh rate (VRR) is coming to the PlayStation 5 in the "coming months," Sony announced. If you have an HDMI 2.1-compatible TV or PC monitor, it will dynamically sync the refresh rate of the display to the PS5 console's graphical output, Sony explained in a blog post. The feature is long overdue, as VRR has been available on the Xbox Series X and Series S consoles since they debuted.

As you're no doubt aware, VRR helps minimize visual artifacts like screen tearing. "Gameplay in many PS5 titles feels smoother as scenes render instantly, graphics look crisper, and input lag is reduced," Sony explained. "Previously released PS5 games can be fully optimized for VRR through a game patch and future games may include VRR support at launch."

Sony confirms VRR is coming to PS5 in the coming months

You'll also be able to apply VRR to PS5 games that don't support it, something that "may improve video quality for some games," Sony said. The results may vary depending on the TV and game you're playing, it added.

Sony only recently unlocked VRR on its HDMI 2.1-equipped TVs in the US and Europe. The PS5 offers 4K at 120Hz, but it's arguably not as well implemented as the Xbox Series X/S consoles.

Sony didn't specify an exact date for the VRR patch, but will share more details as the feature gets closer to release. In the meantime, the latest PS5 release includes a few other new features. That includes the ability to test drive a Voice Command feature that lets you control media playback or find open games, apps and settings; join open or closed parties through the PS App; and enable a dark mode on PS Remote Play. All of those are rolling out later today.
TransAlta Corporation (TSE:TA) insiders who acquired shares over the previous 12 months, can probably afford to ignore the recent 4.4% decline in the stock price. After accounting for the recent loss, the CA$138k worth of shares they purchased is now worth CA$149k, suggesting a good return on their investment.

While we would never suggest that investors should base their decisions solely on what the directors of a company have been doing, we would consider it foolish to ignore insider transactions altogether.

Check out our latest analysis for TransAlta

The Last 12 Months Of Insider Transactions At TransAlta

In the last twelve months, the biggest single purchase by an insider was when insider Michael Novelli bought CA$125k worth of shares at a price of CA$11.14 per share. That means that an insider was happy to buy shares at around the current price of CA$12.09. That means they have been optimistic about the company in the past, though they may have changed their mind. While we always like to see insider buying, it's less meaningful if the purchases were made at much lower prices, as the opportunity they saw may have passed. Happily, the TransAlta insiders decided to buy shares at close to current prices.

TransAlta insiders may have bought shares in the last year, but they didn't sell any. You can see the insider transactions (by companies and individuals) over the last year depicted in the chart below. If you want to know exactly who sold, for how much, and when, simply click on the graph below!

TransAlta is not the only stock insiders are buying. So take a peek at this free list of growing companies with insider buying.

Insider Ownership

For a common shareholder, it is worth checking how many shares are held by company insiders. We usually like to see fairly high levels of insider ownership. Insiders own 0.4% of TransAlta shares, worth about CA$14m. We've certainly seen higher levels of insider ownership elsewhere, but these holdings are enough to suggest alignment between insiders and the other shareholders.

Story continues

So What Does This Data Suggest About TransAlta Insiders?

The fact that there have been no TransAlta insider transactions recently certainly doesn't bother us. On a brighter note, the transactions over the last year are encouraging. Overall we don't see anything to make us think TransAlta insiders are doubting the company, and they do own shares. So while it's helpful to know what insiders are doing in terms of buying or selling, it's also helpful to know the risks that a particular company is facing. At Simply Wall St, we found 1 warning sign for TransAlta that deserve your attention before buying any shares.

Of course, you might find a fantastic investment by looking elsewhere. So take a peek at this free list of interesting companies.

For the purposes of this article, insiders are those individuals who report their transactions to the relevant regulatory body. We currently account for open market transactions and private dispositions, but not derivative transactions.

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.
A St. Paul man was sentenced Tuesday to nearly four years in prison for a New Years Eve shooting at the Mall of America that wounded two people and prompted a 45-minute lockdown at the Bloomington shopping center.

Kahlil Markell Wiley, 18, pleaded guilty earlier this month to one count of second-degree assault, admitting that he fired a single shot in the crowded mall, striking one man in the leg and grazing the shoulder of another, according to a guilty plea filed on March 11 in Hennepin County District Court.

Under Wileys plea agreement with the Hennepin County attorneys office, he was sentenced to 45 months in prison and will have to pay restitution.

In accordance with the Minnesota Sentencing Guidelines, the presumptive sentence for his offense was 36-months, the Hennepin County attorneys office said in a news release. The aggravating factor of shooting the male victim in front of children was the reason for the additional nine months Wiley agreed to.

A second assault charge against Wiley was dropped.

On Dec. 31, Wiley was on the third floor of the Mall of America about 4:50 p.m., when one of the victims and his friend saw Wiley and began to chase him, according to the criminal complaint. Investigators later learned that the man was upset with Wiley over a previous dispute.

The victim told police that as he was chasing Wiley, Wiley turned, pulled out a handgun and shot him in the leg.

A second man  a bystander  was grazed in the shoulder when the bullet fired by Wiley ricocheted off a railing after passing through the first victims leg. The second victim was treated at the scene.

The shooting led to a 45-minute lockdown of the mall and prompted officials to cancel a planned New Years Eve celebration.

Wiley was arrested a few days later during a traffic stop in Roseville. Police found a firearm in his possession.

According to the charges, Wiley admitted to the shooting but said he fired in self-defense.

Story continues

A 19-year-old St. Paul man arrested on suspicion of aiding and abetting Wiley was freed after prosecutors determined Wiley had acted alone.

Related Articles
A St. Anthony Hospital staffer is accused of sexually assaulting two female patients who were under his care in January, prosecutors said at his first court appearance on the charges Wednesday.

Cook County Judge Charles Beach ordered Kevin Childs, 30, held without bail during a livestreamed bond hearing.

Advertisement

Childs is charged with aggravated criminal sexual assault and aggravated criminal sexual abuse, both of which are felonies, Chicago police said.

On Jan. 25, Childs, a patient care technician at St. Anthony Hospital, 2875 W. 19th St. in the citys Lawndale neighborhood, entered a 52-year-old womans room when she requested oxygen and began to check her vitals, Cook County Assistant States Attorney Danny Hanichak said in court.

Advertisement

As part of his duties, Childs gave her a sponge bath, but she also felt him sexually abusing her, Hanichak said.

Three hours later, when she needed help again, he returned to her room and sexually assaulted the woman, who apologized to him, saying she was sorry if she gave him the wrong impression and told him to stop, but he continued, Hanichak said.

The woman immediately summoned a nurse and told her what happened.

A week earlier, on Jan. 18, Childs had entered the room of a 42-year-old severely ill woman who was in the hospital being treated for COVID-19 and heroin withdrawal and had spent several days in the intensive care unit, prosecutors said.

Childs told her he needed to check her vitals, but he sexually assaulted her before telling her hed be back to check her vitals, Hanichak said.

The woman began sobbing an hour later when he returned to her room, and she called for a nurse and contacted her husband.

After checking out against hospital advice, she went to another hospital for treatment and the next day, told a home health care worker what happened, Hanichak said.

On March 21, Childs was placed into custody for both alleged assaults, Hanichak said.

Advertisement

A request for comment from the hospital Wednesday afternoon was not immediately answered.

Childs, who has three misdemeanor convictions, lives with his grandmother and is expecting a child later this year, according to prosecutors and his defense attorney. The defense attorney contended there was no physical evidence that Childs committed the crime, nor did he make any admissions.

After graduating from high school in Chicago, Childs attended Triton Community College for two years and received a certification to be a phlebotomist. He had a new job lined up on April 4, his attorney said.

Before denying bail, Beach said Childs was preying on the most weak in our community, people who are incapable of caring for themselves. In fact, theyre in your care, Beach said.

Childs, of the 10200 block of South Lafayette Avenue, is due back in court on April 11.

rsobol@chicagotribune.com
Netflix/Twitter

Dust off your VHS tape of The Neverending Story, throw on your rattiest pair of high-tops, and pop a few Eggo waffles in the toaster. Its been nearly three years since the third season of Stranger Things premiered and were finally getting a glimpse of the upcoming fourth season.

The first photos from the new season of Netflixs 80s nostalgia-fest show off a darker lookand some questionable hairstyles for its protagonists. In the supposed six months between the events of the third season and the start of the fourth season, the Hawkins gang has aged several years and all gotten bangs.

And on Day 65, we got our first look at ST4. (this is just a taste of the eggo. link in bio to https://t.co/sdbq7ANsMx for full extravaganza.) pic.twitter.com/XvNnd88vLL  Stranger Things (@Stranger_Things) March 23, 2022

When Stranger Things filmed its first season, the ensemble cast of child actors, including Finn Wolfhard, Noah Schnapp, Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin, and breakout star Millie Bobby Brown, were very much tweens, all somewhere around the age of 12. Now, theyre essentially young adults, with the younger kids closer to 20 and the older siblings approaching 30.

According to series creators Matt and Ross Duffer, the unignorable maturity of the cast relative to previous seasons will factor into the tone and themes of the upcoming episodes. In other words, Stranger Things is about to get a lot spookier.

When we pitched it to Netflix all those years ago, we pitched it as the kids areThe Goonies in E.T., Ross Duffer explains during a forthcoming episode of the podcast Present Company With Krisa Smith. Thats their storyline. And the adults are in Jaws and Close Encounters and then the teens are in Nightmare on Elm Street or Halloween. But, this year, we dont have the kids. We cant do The Goonies anymore. And so, suddenly, were leaning much harder into that horror movie territory that we love. It was fun to make that change.

Story continues

Much of the joy of watching Stranger Things comes from the meticulously rendered homages to iconic pop culture moments from the 1980s. Every element of the sci-fi series can be traced to specific cinematic influences, from plotlines inspired by Spielbergian family-friendly creature features to the prominent backdrop of the mall last season a la Fast Times at Ridgemont High. It will be interesting to see if the Duffer brothers decide to go full Friday-the-13th-style slasher flick. (We, personally, would not be mad if they did.)

Stranger Things 3 Gets Invaded by the Russiansand More Gore Than Ever Before

Season four will be unveiled in two volumes with the first batch of episodes dropping on May 27 and the second on July 1. In addition to Wolfhard, Schnapp, Matarazzo, McLaughlin, and Brown, cast members Winona Ryder, David Barbour, Natalia Dyer, Sadie Sink, Joe Keery, Charlie Heaton, Maya Hawke, Priah Ferguson, Cara Buono, and Brett Gelman are all returning. The fourth season will also feature new characters played by Robert Englund, Jamie Campbell Bower, and Eduardo Franco, to name a few.

The action picks up in the aftermath of the Battle of Starcourt. Per the logline, our group of friends are separated for the first timeand navigating the complexities of high school hasnt made things any easier. In this most vulnerable time, a new and horrifying supernatural threat surfaces, presenting a gruesome mystery that, if solved, might finally put an end to the horrors of the Upside Down.

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.
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP)  Taiwan is considering extending its four-month compulsory military service, its defense minister said Wednesday, amid concerns about the self-governing island democracy's tensions with China, which have been underscored by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Defense Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng said the government would not implement any changes immediately but he vowed it would release the results of its internal research regardless of what it decides. Any changes would only be effective a year after being announced and would be made following consultation with legislators, he said.

Currently, we are still in the research stage. This year we will definitely have results, Chiu said.

Some in Taiwan have suggested the four-month compulsory military service should be longer.

In recent years, China has stepped up its military harassment of the self-ruled island, which China claims as its own territory, sending fighter jets flying toward Taiwan on a near-daily basis. Taiwan and China split during a civil war in 1949.

Many experts have drawn comparisons of the Taiwan-China situation to Russias invasion of Ukraine in February. However, the situation does not fit a simple narrative, and experts have so far said military action from China is unlikely. The war in Ukraine did prompt a lawmaker from the ruling Democratic Progressive Party in Taiwan to publicly say it is necessary to extend the mandatory service period.

Russia's war against Ukraine has drawn sympathy in Taiwan, where the public raised more than $10.6 million in five days to help fund Ukrainian refugee relief efforts.

Taiwan has more than 215,000 members in its military, with the majority being volunteers. Taiwanese men over the age of 18 are required to serve for four months in the military.

___

AP senior video producer Johnson Lai contributed to this report.
TAIPEI (Reuters) -Taiwan is considering extending compulsory military service beyond four months, Defence Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng said on Wednesday, as the war in Ukraine renewed discussion about how best to respond to China's military pressure.

Taiwan has been gradually shifting from a conscript military to a volunteer-dominated professional force, but China's growing assertiveness towards the island it claims as its own, as well as Russia's invasion of Ukraine, have prompted debate about how to boost defence.

Answering lawmakers' questions in parliament, Chiu said a proposal to extend military service was still under consideration and there would "definitely" be a plan put forward this year.

"We must consider the enemy situation and our defensive operations in terms of military strength," he said.

Any changes would not come into effect until a year after they were proposed, Chiu added.

Previous governments under the ruling Democratic Progressive Party and the main opposition Kuomintang cut compulsory service for men from more than two years to the current four months to please younger voters as tension eased between Taipei and Beijing.

But China has stepped up its military activities near the island over the past two years or so, seeking to press it to accept its sovereignty claims.

Taiwan's presidential office said in a statement later on Wednesday that the defence ministry was considering everyone's views, but nothing had been finalised.

Training content must be reformed so those undergoing military service are able to effectively respond to the needs of modern warfare, and to strengthen the armed forces' concept of "asymmetric warfare", it added.

President Tsai Ing-wen is overseeing a broad modernisation programme, championing the idea of "asymmetric warfare", to make the island's forces more mobile, agile and harder to attack.

Taiwan's military is dwarfed by that of China's, but strategists hope superior training could help give it the edge in a conflict. The government is also working on a programme to reform reservist training.

Story continues

New weapons are important too.

Lee Shih-chiang, head of the ministry's strategic planning department, speaking at the same session as Chiu, said he expected the first batch of U.S.-made MQ-9 Reaper drones, which can be armed with missiles and operate at long range, will enter service with Taiwan by 2025.

China does not recognise Taiwan's democratically elected government or any claims of Taiwanese sovereignty and has never renounced the use of force to bring the island under Chinese control.

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard and Yimou Lee. Editing by Gerry Doyle, Robert Birsel)
By Charlotte Greenfield

KABUL (Reuters) -The Taliban on Wednesday backtracked on their announcement that high schools would open for girls, saying they would remain closed until a plan was drawn up in accordance with Islamic law for them to reopen.

The u-turn took many by surprise, leaving students in tears and drawing condemnation from humanitarian agencies, rights groups and diplomats at a time when the Taliban administration is seeking international recognition.

Teachers and students from three high schools around the capital Kabul said girls had returned in excitement to campuses on Wednesday morning, but were ordered to go home. They said many students left in tears.

"We all became totally hopeless when the principal told us, she was also crying," said a student, not being named for security reasons.

The last time the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, from 1996 to 2001, they banned female education and most employment.

The international community has made the education of girls a key demand for any future recognition of the Taliban administration, which took over the country in August as foreign forces withdrew.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the Taliban's decision was "a profound disappointment and deeply damaging for Afghanistan."

"The denial of education not only violates the equal rights of women and girls to education," Guterres said in a statement. "I urge the Taliban de facto authorities to open schools for all students without any further delay."

The Ministry of Education had announced last week that schools for all students, including girls, would open around the country on Wednesday after months of restrictions on education for high school-aged girls.

On Tuesday evening a Ministry of Education spokesman released a video congratulating all students on their returning to class.

However, on Wednesday, a Ministry of Education notice said schools for girls would be closed until a plan was drawn up in accordance with Islamic law and Afghan culture, according to Bakhtar News, a government news agency.

Story continues

Suhail Shaheen, a senior Taliban member based in Doha, said the postponed opening of girls' schools was due to a technical issue and the Ministry of Education was working on standardised uniforms for students around the country.

"We hope the uniform issue is resolved and finalised as soon as possible," he said.

Sixteen-year-old Khadija went to school on Wednesday having stayed up all night in excitement after seven months at home. But just minutes after lining up with her classmates for a welcoming speech, the school's assistant manager instead approached the students, crying, and broke the news they had to leave.

"We couldn't believe we face such conditions... it was like a mourning day. Everyone was crying and hugging each other," she said.

Returning home, she unpacked her books from her bag and tried to imagine how she could stay motivated, by teaching younger children in her neighbourhood to help her remember her lessons. Still, she said the disappointment was hard to overcome.

"I would like to be a doctor in the future but for now I have no hope, I am like a dead body," she said.

Local media broadcast footage of girls holding a protest in Kabul.

Many in the international community condemned the decision with the U.N.'s special envoy for Afghanistan formally conveying the organisation's "grave concern and disappointment" to Taliban officials, according to a U.N. statement.

The Taliban is seeking to run the country according to its interpretation of Islamic law while at the same time accessing billions of dollars in aid that it desperately needs to stave off widespread poverty.

"For the sake of the country's future and its relations with the international community, I would urge the Taliban to live up to their commitments to their people," U.S. Special Envoy for Afghanistan, Tom West, said in a tweet.

(Reporting by Kabul Newsroom and Charlotte Greenfield; Additional reporting by Gibran Peshimam and Michelle Nichols in New York; Editing by Michael Perry, Alexandra Hudson and Jonathan Oatis)
Then-state Rep. Edward Acevedo, a Chicago Democrat, watches votes come in on a bill on the House floor on Jan. 8, 2013, at the State Capitol in Springfield. (Michael Tercha / Chicago Tribune)

Shortly before sentencing former Illinois state Rep. Eddie Acevedo on Wednesday to six months in prison, a federal judge said he wanted to know more about the source of income at the heart of the tax evasion case.

Who was paying Acevedo tens of thousands of dollars in 2017 and 2018, as he transitioned from the General Assembly to a contract lobbyist, U.S. District Judge Matthew Kennelly asked. Was he a self-employed consultant of some sort? Did he receive money only from Company A, referenced in vague terms in Acevedos plea agreement, or was he getting paid by others, too?

Advertisement

Ive got careful lawyers on both sides of this case, and Im guessing those words were chosen carefully, Kennelly said about the murky language of the plea.

Kennellys questions were never fully answered, but they put a brief spotlight on what had brought Acevedo to federal court in the first place.

Advertisement

Nearly three years ago, the former Democratic lawmaker and Chicago police officer found himself in the crosshairs of the U.S. attorneys office amid an ongoing investigation involving an alleged scheme by Commonwealth Edison to bribe then-House Speaker Michael Madigan to assist the utility with legislation it wanted in Springfield.

Acevedo is now the first person to be sentenced in the sweeping probe that has so far led to charges against Madigan, two of his closest advisers, and a slew of former ComEd executives and contract lobbyists, many with ties to the former speaker.

Acevedo previously told the Tribune hed been interviewed by federal investigators as part of that probe. But when he was indicted last year, the relatively minor tax charges made no reference to the ComEd investigation or Madigan at all, and when he pleaded guilty in December, his agreement with the government did not contain any indication that hed agreed to cooperate.

Still, the ComEd probe remained an elephant in the courtroom at Acevedos sentencing, which was conducted via videoconference due to ongoing COVID-19 protocols.

In asking for up to a year behind bars, Assistant U.S. Attorney Amarjeet Bhachu said that while Acevedo only skirted paying about $37,000 in taxes over three years, a noncustodial sentence would send a message that evading debts to the Internal Revenue Service would not be taken seriously.

What we have in this country is largely an honor system. We kind of count on everybody to do the right thing, said Bhachu, who is also heading up the ongoing probe into Madigan and ComEd. Why should you bother paying your taxes if at the end of the day there isnt much of a consequence? ... If you do end up running afoul of the legal system, you get this light touch and hopes that youll be better in the future?

Acevedos attorney, Gabrielle Sansonetti, asked for two years of probation, pointing out that the amount of the loss was much lower than in most tax cases brought in the same courthouse. She said Acevedos misdeeds, which came after years of collecting a regular paycheck, were mostly the result of a failure to maintain records as a newly minted independent contractor, where money was coming in from various sources.

Sansonetti also said Acevedos decades in public service should be considered a mitigating factor, and not put him on a higher pedestal of responsibility.

Advertisement

There is nothing special about being a police officer or a legislator to suggest you would have some increased knowledge about filing taxes, Sansonetti said.

But Kennelly disagreed, saying cases that involve public figures and that involve public attention do have a different effect than the standard ones. Acevedos background meant that people were paying attention, the judge said, and a sentence of probation would seem like this person got a pass.

It just seems to me that there is a particular responsibility, as a person who makes laws, as a person who enforces laws ... to comply to those laws, Kennelly said. And Mr. Acevedo didnt do that.

Before he was sentenced, Acevedo, 58, apologized in a brief statement to his family and his former constituents.

Its not the way I wanted to be, its not the way I brought my boys up to be, Acevedo said, appearing before Kennelly via a video link. I let them down, and I let my community down, and Im sorry for that, your honor.

Acevedo must report to prison in June.

Advertisement

Acevedo, a Chicago Democrat, served as Madigans assistant majority leader in the House before retiring in 2017. He went on to work as a consultant paid by former state Rep. John Bradley, a Democrat from Downstate Marion and a onetime contract lobbyist for ComEd. Acevedo told the Tribune he had been paid as much as $5,000 a month by Bradley.

Before Bradley, Acevedo said, he had worked as a consultant for Shaw Decremer, a former Democratic House staffer and campaign operative ousted from Madigans political organization following complaints that he was abusive.

Federal authorities subpoenaed the secretary of state in 2019 for Acevedos lobbying records, as well as those of his two sons and their lobbying firm, Apex Strategy LLC. Acevedo was also named in a grand jury subpoena served on Madigans office in July 2020.

Acevedos sons, Alex and Michael, also were indicted with similar tax charges last year and are awaiting trial.

Alex Acevedos attorney alleged in a court filing last year that it was clear investigators were after Madigan. During a proffer meeting between Alex Acevedo and prosecutors in February 2020, at least 75% of the questions asked by the government pertained to Mr. Madigan and his associates, attorney Ricardo Meza wrote.

Advertisement

However, when (Alex) Acevedos truthful responses did not seem to align with what the government sought to hear, the IRS agent pivoted and began asking Mr. Acevedo questions about his 2016 and 2018 tax returns, Meza wrote in the motion.

According to Edward Acevedos plea agreement, after he discovered he was under criminal investigation by the IRS, he had his accountants work up draft reports for the years in question that contained incomplete information about his consulting businesss income and expenses.

ComEd, meanwhile, agreed in 2020 to pay a record $200 million fine as prosecutors unveiled a criminal complaint charging the company with a yearslong bribery scheme involving jobs, contracts and payments to Madigan allies. Under the terms of a deferred prosecution agreement with the government, the charges against the utility giant will be dropped in three years if the company continues to cooperate.

Prosecutors said the utility attempted to influence and reward Madigan by providing financial benefits to some close to him, often through a key confidant and adviser at the center of the probe. In November 2020, that confidant, former lawmaker Michael McClain, and three others were charged.

Madigan and McClain were both charged in a separate indictment earlier this month with racketeering conspiracy alleging they participated in a range of corrupt schemes, including the ComEd bribery.

The scandal helped end Madigans reign as the nations longest-serving speaker in January 2021. Madigan later resigned from the Illinois House and as Illinois Democratic Party chairman.

Advertisement

jmeisner@chicagotribune.com

rlong@chicagotribune.com
A look at the shareholders of Terramin Australia Limited (ASX:TZN) can tell us which group is most powerful. Insiders often own a large chunk of younger, smaller, companies while huge companies tend to have institutions as shareholders. I generally like to see some degree of insider ownership, even if only a little. As Nassim Nicholas Taleb said, 'Dont tell me what you think, tell me what you have in your portfolio.

With a market capitalization of AU$146m, Terramin Australia 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 institutions are not really that prevalent on the share registry. Let's delve deeper into each type of owner, to discover more about Terramin Australia.

See our latest analysis for Terramin Australia

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Terramin Australia?

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.

Since institutions own only a small portion of Terramin Australia, many may not have spent much time considering the stock. But it's clear that some have; and they liked it enough to buy in. So if the company itself can improve over time, we may well see more institutional buyers in the future. When multiple institutional investors want to buy shares, we often see a rising share price. The past revenue trajectory (shown below) can be an indication of future growth, but there are no guarantees.

Terramin Australia is not owned by hedge funds. Our data suggests that Feng Sheng, who is also the company's Top Key Executive, holds the most number of shares at 39%. When an insider holds a sizeable amount of a company's stock, investors consider it as a positive sign because it suggests that insiders are willing to have their wealth tied up in the future of the company. Meanwhile, the second and third largest shareholders, hold 3.2% and 2.7%, of the shares outstanding, respectively.

Story continues

On further inspection, we found that more than half the company's shares are owned by the top 7 shareholders, suggesting that the interests of the larger shareholders are balanced out to an extent by the smaller ones.

While it makes sense to study institutional ownership data for a company, it also makes sense to study analyst sentiments to know which way the wind is blowing. Our information suggests that there isn't any analyst coverage of the stock, so it is probably little known.

Insider Ownership Of Terramin Australia

The definition of an insider can differ slightly between different countries, but members of the board of directors always count. The company management answer to the board and the latter should represent the interests of shareholders. Notably, sometimes top-level managers are on the board themselves.

I generally consider insider ownership to be a good thing. However, on some occasions it makes it more difficult for other shareholders to hold the board accountable for decisions.

Our information suggests that insiders maintain a significant holding in Terramin Australia Limited. Insiders have a AU$63m stake in this AU$146m business. It is great to see insiders so invested in the business. It might be worth checking if those insiders have been buying recently.

General Public Ownership

The general public-- including retail investors -- own 45% stake in the company, and hence can't easily be ignored. While this group can't necessarily call the shots, it can certainly have a real influence on how the company is run.

Private Company Ownership

It seems that Private Companies own 7.3%, of the Terramin Australia stock. Private companies may be related parties. Sometimes insiders have an interest in a public company through a holding in a private company, rather than in their own capacity as an individual. While it's hard to draw any broad stroke conclusions, it is worth noting as an area for further research.

Public Company Ownership

We can see that public companies hold 3.2% of the Terramin Australia shares on issue. We can't be certain but it is quite possible this is a strategic stake. The businesses may be similar, or work together.

Next Steps:

It's always worth thinking about the different groups who own shares in a company. But to understand Terramin Australia better, we need to consider many other factors. Be aware that Terramin Australia is showing 5 warning signs in our investment analysis , and 3 of those don't sit too well with us...

Of course this may not be the best stock to buy. Therefore, you may wish to see our free collection of interesting prospects boasting favorable financials.

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.
BANGKOK (Reuters) - Thailand has issued rules to ban digital assets from being used to pay for goods and services from April 1, the market regulator said on Wednesday.

The move was in line with earlier discussions between the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Bank of Thailand (BOT) on a need to regulate such activity by digital asset business operators as it could impact the country's financial stability and overall economy, the SEC said in a statement.

Digital asset business operators that provide such services must comply with the new rules within 30 days from the effective date, it said.

The BOT has said repeatedly that it does not support cryptocurrencies as payments. It will hold a briefing on regulatory guidelines for banks' digital asset business later on Wednesday.

In January, the regulator in Indonesia also warned financial firms not to offer and facilitate crypto sales, amid a boom in its usage.

(Reporting by Orathai Sriring; Editing by Kanupriya Kapoor)
Sam and Monica Patterson on their wedding day. Sam and Monica Patterson, Sam and Monica/YouTube

Sam Patterson and Monica Gartner got married in an intimate ceremony in February.

The ceremony was attended by just 10 people and the couple's priest's dog-walking group.

The bride was greeted by golden retrievers after the wedding.

Sam Patterson and Monica Gartner dated for six years across two continents before they tied the knot on February 22.

Sam, from Cheshire in the UK, and Monica, from Long Island in New York, met through a mutual friend in 2015. They started their joint YouTube channel in 2017 to document their long-distance relationship and inspire other couples facing long distance. In 2020 they followed up the channel, which has more than 640,000 subscribers, with a TikTok account, which has more than 2 million followers.

After getting engaged in 2019, Sam and Monica were supposed to get married in 2021 but had to cancel because of the pandemic, they said in a YouTube video.

They were finally able to get married last month, in a ceremony that had just 10 guests and several golden retrievers. The couple spoke with Insider about their special day.

The bride wore a $250 dress from Bloomingdale's, and her priest's dog-walking group watched the ceremony

Sam and Monica had their wedding at a gazebo in a public park in Monica's hometown, Northport. Monica didn't walk down an aisle but was driven with her parents to the gazebo, where Sam and their guests were waiting.

They told Insider that it was just a formality for Sam's visa, as his permanent residence had been in the UK, and that they'd have another ceremony in July for their friends and family. His dad, who is based in the UK, was the only family member able to attend their February ceremony in person; his other family members watched over video calls.

Sam told Insider that they had originally planned to get married "in jeans and T-shirts" before deciding to dress up for the intimate ceremony. Sam purchased a suit from Macy's, while Monica opted for a $250 dress on sale from Bloomingdale's.

Story continues

The dress had spaghetti straps and flares at the hem. Monica said she didn't consider it to be her real wedding dress, as she already had a dress picked out for the July ceremony. She completed the look with hoop earrings, a white shawl, and white heels, and she wore her hair in natural waves.

The couple and their wedding guests. Sam and Monica Patterson.

"My dream has always been to walk down the aisle and for him to see me for the first time," Monica told Insider. "It's in all the romantic movies. So I didn't want to wear a wedding dress."

She added that "the best part of the day" was immediately after the ceremony when she met up with her priest's dog-walking group, who had watched from a distance.

"The priest knew that Monica is the biggest dog lover, and he has a dog and is part of a dog-walking group with people that have a bunch of golden retrievers," Sam told Insider. "He said to them, 'Hey, can you come and make Monica's day and watch the ceremony?'"

Monica with her sister's dog, Bentley. Monica Patterson.

After the ceremony, the couple paid tribute to their former long-distance relationship by going to dinner at a local Japanese restaurant where Sam had shown up and surprised Monica five years ago.

"As an ode to the long-distance part of our relationship, we went back there as our first meal after the wedding, and we took the whole family there," Sam said. "It was very fun, wasn't it? It was very nontraditional."

You can watch the full ceremony on Sam and Monica's YouTube channel.

Read the original article on Insider
TOKYO (AP)  A Tokyo court cited a statute of limitations on Wednesday in rejecting a suit filed by five people seeking North Korea's responsibility over abuses they said they suffered for decades when they were lured to the North by Pyongyang's false promise of living in the paradise on Earth.

The five plaintiffs, including ethnic Koreans and Japanese who had moved to the North under the 1959-1984 repatriation program and have since fled from there, filed the lawsuit in 2018 seeking 100 million yen ($900,000) each in compensation over what they said was illegal solicitation and detainment."

In Wednesday's ruling, the Tokyo District Court focused on whether the court had jurisdiction over the case while staying away from clearly stating whether the repatriation program, which Japan's government also helped with, was illegal.

Instead, the court rejected the case noting the plaintiffs waited too long to take legal action. The plaintiffs went to North between 1960 and 1972, and the 20-year statute of limitations had passed by the time they filed the case, it said.

Judge Akihiro Igarashi also said that a Japanese court had no jurisdiction over their detainment in North Korea.

Kenji Fukuda, a lawyer representing the plaintiffs, said they decided to appeal because "the court didn't respond to the case head on.

I feel like crying," said a plaintiff, Eiko Kawasaki, 79, an ethnic-Korean who was born and raised in Japan and went to the North in 1960. "There should be no statute of limitations for human rights violations.

Kawasaki also urged the court for a speedy trial because time was limited for the elderly plaintiffs.

"It has to be done quickly or we wont be alive for a ruling. Not being able to see the verdict while we are alive means I die without being able to see my children and grandchildren still in the North, she added.

Fukuda said the court did accept most evidence the plaintiffs submitted, including the deceptive campaign held in Japan for the repatriation and living conditions in the North  setting a precedent for a legal case in Japan against North Korea over human rights violations.

Story continues

Fukuda urged the Japanese government to support the victims and negotiate with North Korea in the future on seeking Pyongyang's responsibility. The court had also agreed to symbolically summon North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Hundreds of thousands of Koreans came to Japan, many forcibly, to work in mines and factories during Japans colonization of the Korean Peninsula  a past that still strains relations between Japan and the Koreas.

Today, about half a million ethnic Koreans live in Japan and still face discrimination in school, work and daily lives.

In 1959, North Korea began a massive resettlement program to bring overseas Koreans home to make up for workers killed in the Korean War. The program continued to seek recruits, many of them originally from South Korea, until 1984.

The Japanese government, viewing Koreans as outsiders, also welcomed the resettlement program and helped arrange for people to travel to North Korea. About 93,000 ethnic Korean residents of Japan and their family members responded and moved to North Korea.

The plaintiffs say they believe many of them have died, but their descendants still in North Korea should be rescued. About 150 of them have made it back to Japan, according to a group supporting defectors from the North.

North Korea had promised free health care, education, jobs and other benefits, but none was available and the returnees were mostly assigned manual work at mines, forests or farms, the plaintiffs said.

Kawasaki, born and raised in Kyoto, was 17 when she took a ship to the North in 1960 and was confined there until defecting in 2003, leaving behind her grown children.

The plaintiffs are now concerned about their families still in North Korea. They say they had lost contact with them more than two years ago, apparently due to the pandemic.

I just hope Japanese people still alive in the North will return home, said another plaintiff, Hiroko Saito, 80. She headed to the North with her Korean husband and a baby girl in 1961, until she fled in 2001.

While Japan's government only focuses on the Japanese nationals abducted to the North in the 1970s and '80s, it should equally support those who were in the repatriation program because they are both victims of North Korean human rights abuses, she said.
By Hyunjoo Jin

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Japan's Toyota Motor and Aurora Innovation Inc, a U.S. developer of automated driving systems, have started testing autonomous ride-hailing fleet in Texas, with two safety operators and no passenger on board, Aurora said on Tuesday.

Toyota's Sienna minivans, retrofitted with Aurora's self-driving system, will be tested on highways and suburban streets in the Dallas-Fort-Worth area, with the operation including trips enroute to an airport.

Autonomous vehicle startups are under pressure to generate meaningful revenue from billions of dollars of engineering investment, but scaling up the fleet is a challenge as technological hurdles remain.

"The route showcases Aurora's ability to safely operate at highway speeds, a key technical differentiator that allows it to prioritize popular and lucrative rides," the U.S. company said in a statement.

Aurora's rival Waymo charges passengers of its driverless minivans for rides in limited suburban areas in Phoenix, and airport pickups are not available https://www.reuters.com/article/alphabet-waymo-idCNL1N2R80CD.

Waymo said on Monday it is ready to deploy driverless vehicles in the densely populated San Francisco city, without giving a timeframe for the launch.

Aurora, led by Chris Urmson, a former head of Google's self-driving car project that has since become Waymo, said it plans to continue adding vehicles to the fleet in preparation for commercial launch on ride-hailing networks such as Uber.

Aurora bought Uber's autonomous vehicle unit ATG https://www.reuters.com/article/us-uber-atg-idUKKBN28H2RXin 2020 while the ride-hailing giant had acquired a 26% ownership interest in Aurora.

(Reporting by Hyunjoo Jin; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips)
MIAMI, Fla.  Former Trump adviser Paul Manafort was removed from a plane at Miami International Airport before it took off for Dubai because he carried a revoked passport, officials said Wednesday.

Miami-Dade Police Detective Alvaro Zabaleta confirmed that Manafort was removed from the Emirates Airline flight without incident Sunday night but directed further questions to U.S. Border and Customs Protection. That agency did not immediately respond to an email Wednesday seeking comment.

A lawyer who has represented Manafort did not immediately return a call and email seeking comment Wednesday.

Manafort, 72, led former President Donald Trumps campaign for several months during the 2016 presidential race but was ousted in August of that year after revelations about his business dealings in Ukraine.

He was later indicted on a broad array of financial crimes as part of special counsel Robert Muellers investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. He was convicted by a jury in August 2018 and later pleaded guilty in federal court in Washington.

In May 2020, Manafort was released from a low-security prison where he was serving a more than seven-year federal sentence amid concerns about the coronavirus. Although Manafort had not served long enough to be eligible for release under the guidelines, the Bureau of Prisons decided to free him because of his age and health vulnerabilities, a person familiar with the matter has said. Trump pardoned Manafort in December 2020.

Manaforts removal was first reported by the website Knewz.com.
Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

If Donald Trump were still president, he told Fox Business on Monday, he would threaten Russia with nuclear submarines.

Related: Kid Rock says Donald Trump sought his advice on North Korea and Islamic State

Trump lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden, who is therefore dealing with the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Russias status as a nuclear-armed power has shaped the US response, particularly in Bidens reluctance to take steps, such as a Nato-implemented no-fly zone over Ukraine, that might lead to direct armed confrontation with Russia.

Such caution cuts little ice with Trump.

I listened to him constantly using the N-word, thats the N-word, and hes constantly using it: the nuclear word, Trump told Fox Business on Monday.

In US usage, the N-word typically refers to a racist epithet for Black people.

We say, Oh, hes a nuclear power, Trump said. But were a greater nuclear power. We have the greatest submarines in the world, the most powerful machines ever built 

You should say, Look, if you mention that word one more time, were going to send them over and well be coasting back and forth, up and down your coast. You cant let this tragedy continue. You cant let these, these thousands of people die.

Hundreds of thousands of people would die in any nuclear exchange with Russia.

Trump has already said Biden should threaten Russia with nuclear attack. He has also said the US should put the Chinese flag on F-22 jets and bomb the shit out of Russia, and then say, China did it, we didnt do it, China did it, and then they start fighting with each other and we sit back and watch.

He has also praised Putin as smart and declined invitations to call him evil, stoking speculation about relations between the two men and particularly what was agreed when they met in private in Helsinki in 2018.

Trump has also condemned Putins war in Ukraine as a crime against humanity. Biden has called Putin a war criminal.

When Trump was in power, in 2018, he announced that the US would withdraw from a cold war nuclear weapons treaty which kept US and Russian nuclear weapons out of Europe. It duly did so. New Start, an Obama-era nuclear arms reduction treaty between the US and Russia, remains in place.

Story continues

Analysts have warned that Putin could use a tactical nuclear weapon on the battlefield in Ukraine. The Russian leader has put his nuclear arsenal on high alert.

Related: Putin and Trump have convinced me: I was wrong about the 21st century | Robert Reich

In office, Trump also demonstrated a cavalier attitude to diplomacy regarding North Korea, another nuclear power.

Though he courted the dictator in Pyongyang, Trump also told Kim Jong-un he had a much bigger and more powerful nuclear button and would answer any threats with fire and fury like the world has never seen.

He also asked the rapper Kid Rock and rocker Ted Nugent what he should do about North Korea.

Writing for the Guardian this month, the former US labor secretary Robert Reich said he like many had thought nuclear powers would never risk war against each other because of the certainty of mutually assured destruction.

I bought the conventional wisdom that nuclear war was unthinkable, Reich wrote. I fear I was wrong.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday that the U.S. assesses that Russian forces have committed war crimes in Ukraine and will work to hold them accountable.

"Today, I can announce that, based on information currently available, the U.S. government assesses that members of Russia's forces have committed war crimes in Ukraine," he said in a statement Wednesday.

"We've seen numerous credible reports of indiscriminate attacks and attacks deliberately targeting civilians, as well as other atrocities," Blinken said. "Russia's forces have destroyed apartment buildings, schools, hospitals, critical infrastructure, civilian vehicles, shopping centers, and ambulances, leaving thousands of innocent civilians killed or wounded. Many of the sites Russia's forces have hit have been clearly identifiable as in-use by civilians."

Blinken cited reports of several incidents in beseiged Mariupol, such as the bombing of a maternity hospital and a strike that hit a Mariupol theater, which Blinken said "clearly marked with the word ''  Russian for 'children'  in huge letters visible from the sky."

Antony Blinken, U.S. secretary of state, listens as U.S. President Joe Biden, not pictured, speaks in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Wednesday, March 16, 2022. Biden outlined the United States' assistance to Ukraine following an emotional appeal from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for Biden to lead the world in punishing Moscow for its invasion. Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images / Credit: Bloomberg

Blinken said Russian President Vladimir Putin's forces used the same tactics in Grozny, Chechnya, and in Aleppo, Syria, "where they intensified their bombardment of cities to break the will of the people."

According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, some 100,000 civilians remain in Mariupol, "in inhuman conditions, under a full blockade, without food, without water, without medicine and under constant shelling, under constant bombardment," he said in a video address Tuesday.

"We are trying to organize stable humanitarian corridors for Mariupol residents, but almost all of our attempts, unfortunately, are foiled by the Russian occupiers, by shelling, or deliberate terror," Zelenskyy said.

The secretary of state's statement comes one day after the Defense Department said it had "seen clear evidence that over the last week or so the Russians have deliberately and intentionally targeted civilian infrastructure."

Story continues

Blinken and President Biden are headed Wednesday to Brussels for a NATO summit on Ukraine. NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said Zelenskyy will address world leaders gathering in Brussels Thursday for an extraordinary meeting of the alliance.

On Friday, they will head to Warsaw, Poland, to meet with Polish President Andrzej Duda.

Mr. Biden last week called Putin a "war criminal" for launching the attack in Ukraine.

Haley Ott and Kathryn Watson contributed to this report.

Ukrainian mom shields baby from shelling

Ukrainian cellist performs in front of bombed building

Moderna to seek COVID vaccine authorization for kids under 6
By Humeyra Pamuk and Daphne Psaledakis

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Special Envoy for the Horn of Africa David Satterfield told Reuters on Wednesday the top U.S. priority in the region is the delivery of humanitarian aid to Ethiopia's conflict-ravaged Tigray region, where millions are dependent on it.

"Our efforts are focused squarely on effecting the initiation and sustainment of vital humanitarian assistance to Tigray, as well as maintaining and enhancing our assistance to all other communities in need," Satterfield said in his first interview since taking the job in January.

"There can be no higher priority. ... What we do, what we say - all is focused upon achieving and maintaining that goal."

Satterfield noted that in the last week, attempts to move assistance to affected communities in Ethiopia's Afar region, which neighbors Tigray, were blocked by "local elements out of the deep resentment, distrust of intentions on the part of everyone."

A United Nations convoy of food headed towards the town of Berhale and other border areas in Afar this week was stoned, the drivers were beaten and the food looted in an area under government control, three humanitarian workers told Reuters.

"A convoy carrying food for displaced people in the Afar region was stopped by local communities in Afar over the weekend," said a spokeswoman for the U.N.'s World Food Programme.

"The convoy returned safely to Semera. WFP continues to work with federal and regional authorities as well as local communities to ensure our convoys with food assistance reach all those in need across Northern Ethiopia."

Fighting between Tigrayan and Afar forces has displaced at least 300,000 people since December and blocked food deliveries into Tigray, where millions of people are dependent on aid.

War broke out 16 months ago between Ethiopia's federal troops and forces loyal to the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), which controls the Tigray region.

Story continues

Since then, thousands have been killed and millions displaced. Fighting spread in July from Tigray into the neighboring Amhara and Afar regions before the rebellious Tigray forces were pushed back in December and lost areas they controlled in the two regions. The Tigrayan forces re-invaded Afar in January and still hold a swathe of territory there.

The United States has repeatedly called for a cessation of hostilities.

Satterfield also warned that the United States was prepared to impose further Sudan-related sanctions. The country, which his position also covers, has been rocked for months by protests following an October military coup.

"We are prepared to use and have signaled to all parties our willingness to use sanctions if we believe there is no alternative," Satterfield said.

Political deadlock in Sudan following the coup has contributed to new pressure on a crippled economy and a stand-off between protesters and security forces.

(Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk and Daphne Psaledakis; Editing by Richard Chang)
Ananias Ocampo, 78, an undocumented street vendor who worked for years pushing an ice cream cart in Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood, uses a walker for mobility along 18th Street on Dec. 2, 2021. (Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune)

Editors note: The Chicago Tribune and Injustice Watch teamed up to report on the challenges facing Illinois aging undocumented population. This is the second installment in a four-part series focused on access to health care and housing. Read part one at chicagotribune.com.

For more than a decade, Ananias Ocampo pushed a heavy ice cream cart through the streets of the Pilsen neighborhood as he waited for knee replacement surgery. When it got too cold for ice cream, the 78-year-old would go door-to-door selling homemade cheese even though he depended on a walker. It was a blessing to be able to work, he said in Spanish.

Advertisement

Para leer en espanol, haga clic aqui. 

Even as his pace got slower and he developed Parkinsons disease, he had no option other than to keep working to sustain himself. Like most undocumented immigrants who are ineligible for the federal Medicare and Medicaid programs, Ocampo did not have health insurance. And though he received care at a public hospital, he had to keep waiting for the surgery. Pero nunca perdi la esperanza, he smiled. I never lost hope.

Advertisement

In December 2020, Ocampo got a lifeline when Illinois lawmakers passed a new Medicaid-like program that covers low-income residents age 65 and older, regardless of their immigration status. But it was bittersweet. Unlike standard Medicaid coverage for U.S. citizens, the new health care program does not include funding for long-term care facilities like rehabilitation centers, nursing homes and other home and community-based services.

Ananias Ocampo, 78, reacts to a positive report from Dr. Shilpa Mehta, left, and Dr. Joanna Jaros during an appointment at Cook County Health on March 14, 2022. (Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune)

That means that Ocampo  who lives alone and has no family in Chicago who could take care of him after the intensive surgery  would not qualify to stay at a rehab facility as he recovered.

The street vendor decided to go forward with the surgery when Hilda Burgos, 54, a health care advocate, pledged to care for him after the surgery. She rallied community members to donate essentials, and raised funds to ensure that Ocampo had enough money to pay rent.

[Read more] Aging in the shadows: A crisis of older undocumented workers awaits Illinois 

Unfortunately, there are many more undocumented elders that live alone, or whose families cannot afford or dont have the ability to care for them as they age, Burgos said. That means that even if they now have better access to health care, many more of their needs to better their quality of life are not addressed.

Ocampos case illustrates the promises and pitfalls in Illinois Health Benefits for Immigrant Adults program. As it stands, the program makes critical health services available to a vulnerable population who often leave chronic illnesses unattended due to a lack of insurance, according to health experts. And in May, the program also will be available for unauthorized immigrants age 55 and older.

Ananias Ocampo uses a walker for mobility as he returns to his one-room apartment after a visit to the doctor on Dec. 2, 2021. (Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune)

But the carve-outs for extended care and at-home health care still leave a critical gap in coverage, health experts say, and force the economic and emotional responsibility of caregiving onto undocumented seniors families and communities.

That formula could be a problem for Illinois as the number of seniors living in the U.S. without authorization is set to grow exponentially over the next decade. A recent report by Rush University Medical Center and demographer Rob Paral estimates that the undocumented senior population in the state will hit 55,000 by 2030, up from nearly 4,000 in 2017.

Advertisement

Erendira Rendon, an organizer with Healthy Illinois, said the state and federal governments need to find ways to provide comprehensive health care for this population before it hits crisis levels. Thats because uninsured undocumented immigrants often leave chronic illnesses unattended, leading to overuse of emergency care, which strains safety-net hospitals and ends up costing the state more with higher health care charges overall.

More than 9,000 seniors enrolled in the health care program in its first year  three times as many as advocates had estimated would benefit from the program when they lobbied for the bill in Springfield in spring 2020. The numbers (of enrollees) show the need of this population often living under the shadow. It also shows the potential crisis that this can cause if this issue is not addressed by our leaders in the state, but also federally, Rendon said.

Something to be thankful for

Both Ocampo and Burgos said they are grateful for the health care coverage they had prayed for, despite the programs limitations.

Its a blessing for many of us, said Burgos, who is undocumented and has fibromyalgia, a chronic condition that causes pain all over the body, sleep problems, fatigue, and often emotional and mental distress. When she turns 55 in May, she hopes to become one of the first beneficiaries of the health care programs expansion, which will give her better and faster access to specialists and acute procedures, she said.

The Health Benefits for Immigrant Adults program grew out of a yearslong campaign by Chicago activists and health care leaders to fill the gaps in health coverage for unauthorized immigrants. Advocates put more pressure on lawmakers to create a program covering noncitizen seniors after the COVID-19 pandemic hit. The virus had disproportionately affected low-income Black and Latinx communities, especially older adults who couldnt afford to stop working throughout the health crisis.

Advertisement

Illinois was the first state to fully fund this type of health coverage for undocumented seniors. Shortly after, California approved a program to cover adults 50 and older, and Oregons governor signed a plan to offer health care coverage to low-income adults over age 19 regardless of immigration status. New York state is on the verge of passing a plan similar to Oregons.

[Read more] We look forward to this all year long: Hundreds of immigrants make dayslong road trip to reunite with families in Mexico 

By the end of its first year in December 2021, the Illinois health care program had enrolled more than 6,500 unauthorized seniors and about 2,500 legal permanent residents who obtained their green card within the last five years, which makes them ineligible for standard Medicaid.

State data shows the program covers a diverse group of immigrant seniors across Illinois. Enrollees speak more than 40 languages and live in 51 of the states 102 counties. But most elders covered under the program are Latinx and live in Cook County. To qualify, they must live in a household with an income below the poverty line (just under $27,000 a year for a household of four).

Dr. Shilpa Mehta, left, and Dr. Joanna Jaros examine Ananias Ocampo, 78, during a medical appointment on March 14, 2022. (Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune)

Doctors, health advocates and the senior enrollees themselves say Health Benefits for Immigrant Adults has been nothing short of life-changing.

Dr. Kimberly Dixon, head of geriatric medicine at Stroger Hospital and Ocampos primary care physician, said she recently informed one of her patients  an 80-year-old undocumented woman  that she qualified for coverage under the program. She burst into tears, Dixon said. She didnt need a knee replacement service. She needed something much more mundane and simple. She needed pull ups because she has urinary incontinence.

Advertisement

Stories like that of Dixons patient abound among the programs beneficiaries. But lack of funding in the program for long-term care and community-based health services leaves many behind.

What it means is that (the program) doesnt provide people with any options if they are not safe at home, said Padraic Stanley, program coordinator for health promotion programs at Rush University Medical Center. Stanley co-authored the Rush report that estimated the exponential increase of undocumented seniors in Illinois over the next decade.

So if people are incapacitated to the point where they cant function on their own to do their activities of daily living like cooking, cleaning, eating, bathing, then essentially theres no option for them and the family has to basically work around the clock to provide that for the member, Stanley said. And if theyre not able to, then that person will inevitably end up in the hospital or severely sick or injured.

In a written statement, a spokesperson for the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services said the department would favor members in this population receiving additional home and community-based services. But the issue comes down to money.

The program cost more than $100 million in its first year, according to state data. Unlike Medicaid, state spending for the program is not reimbursed by the federal government.

The department has projected how much it would cost to provide long-term and home health care services  but it refused to share the data requested by Injustice Watch and the Chicago Tribune in a Freedom of Information Act filing.

Advertisement

State lawmakers and policy advocates said they havent seen the numbers the department used to justify the carve-outs. They told us that its too expensive, said state Rep. Delia Ramirez, chief co-sponsor of the legislation that created the Health Benefits for Immigrant Adults program

But advocates say the cost is well worth it. Research shows that providing primary care for unlawfully present seniors reduces the number of emergency hospital visits, which inevitably get paid by the state or charitable reserves at hospitals and health systems.

Ananias Ocampo receives paperwork following an appointment with a dermatologist at Cook County Health on March 14, 2022. At right is advocate and caregiver Hilda Burgos. Ocampo, 78, uses Health Benefits for Immigrant Adults, a Medicaid-like program that benefits immigrants 65 and older regardless of their immigration status. (Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune)

If we dont spend $100 million on (health care for) seniors who are undocumented, its not like the state saved $100 million. If we cut the program tomorrow, those costs are still there. Its just cost shifting. Its someone else absorbing those costs, said Andrea Kovach, a senior attorney at the Shriver Center on Poverty Law.

(Undocumented) seniors are still getting sick. Theyre still having accidents, she said.

Last year, state lawmakers successfully expanded the program to cover undocumented immigrants age 55 to 64. And last month, Ramirez introduced a bill that would extend Medicaid coverage for noncitizen immigrants ages 19 and older who meet the programs income requirements. The proposal, dubbed Healthy Illinois for All, would cover nearly 150,000 low-income immigrants who are not eligible for the state Medicaid program, according to the Shriver Center on Poverty Law. (The state already provides health care for low-income children under age 18 regardless of immigration status.)

Ramirez, who is running for Congress this year, said she and her colleagues behind the program are working to get the Department of Healthcare and Family Services to fill in the programs gaps for seniors. Weve made it clear to HFS that we expect (the carved-out services) to be included as we roll out this next program, she said.

Advertisement

Picking up where the state leaves off

As state lawmakers work to fill gaps in the program for undocumented seniors, community groups, family members and volunteers try to provide the moral, physical and financial support that institutions and government agencies dont provide. But looming over them is a demographic bubble that they say will stretch them thin and leave too many seniors behind.

We need to prepare for this, said Enrique Jimenez, program director at the Latino Alzheimers and Memory Disorders Alliance (LAMDA) in Chicago. We need to prepare better programming, better outreach efforts and resources for this population because theyre not going anywhere.

Ananias Ocampo enjoys lunch at a Back or the Yards neighborhood restaurant Dec. 2, 2021, in Chicago. (Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune)

The alliance serves more than 100 seniors with memory disorders and more than 300 caregivers from Chicago and nearby suburbs. Many of the patients and caregivers are undocumented, Jimenez said. The alliance offers leisure programming for the seniors, like karaoke and Zumba classes, and trains caregivers on how to manage the illnesses.

It can really disrupt the whole family and their quality of life. Its like a domino effect after the illness is detected, said the groups co-founder, Constantina Mizis. Sometimes those caring for the loved one must leave their job to care for them, which then causes economic hardship and thus more stress and trauma. Its a family disease.

Jimenez and Mizis applaud the creation of the Health Benefits for Immigrant Adults program. But as the population they serve grows every year, Jimenez is concerned about the alliances ability to keep up. We are already in need of more resources to serve better and provide more resources to the elders and their families. I worry that as the population grows, we just wont have enough funding, he said.

And even though there are several organizations and nonprofits like LAMDA that offer resources to these growing populations, many undocumented immigrants are afraid to seek help because they fear deportation, or due to language and technology barriers.

Advertisement

Instead, many immigrants without proper documentation, such as Burgos and Ocampo, seek and create community with one another, helping to care for each other, find work, pay off debt, and generally look out for each other.

If I didnt stay, who would?

It didnt take long for Burgos to notice that Ocampo could barely walk when she met him three years ago as he pushed his ice cream cart around Pilsen. She began accompanying him to all of his doctors appointments, eventually helping to land him the long-awaited knee surgery at UI Health. But it was bittersweet news, she said.

The surgeons told Burgos and Ocampo that he would need around-the-clock monitoring after the surgery  but the hospitals social workers told them his insurance didnt cover the aftercare he needed at the hospital, or any other facilities.

I didnt know how, but I decided that I was going to care for him and prayed that God gave me the strength to do it, just like I would care for my son or my father, Burgos said.

When Ocampo awoke from the surgery in October, she was next to him. I felt blessed to have someone like (Burgos), to have a whole community that cares so much for me, he said.

Burgos insisted to his doctors that Ocampo wasnt ready to go home. I practically begged them, I explained to them that his home was not equipped to even live there, let alone recover from the surgery, she said. The hospital relented and kept Ocampo for two more weeks.

Advertisement

Advocate and caregiver Hilda Burgos, right, gives Ananias Ocampo a hug as Ocampo is overwhelmed with emotion after entering his new studio apartment at Resurrection Project in Chicago on Dec. 3, 2021. (Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune)

Once the two weeks were up, Burgos took Ocampo to his apartment, even though he was still in delicate health. Initially, she didnt plan to spend the night, but she couldnt find it in her heart to leave him. She fed him. She bathed him. She cleaned his apartment. And even when Ocampo tested positive for COVID-19 just a few days after coming back from the hospital, she didnt leave.

If I didnt stay, who would? Burgos said.

Since then, Burgos has helped Ocampos secure new housing by advocating for a new city policy that makes it easier for self-employed workers in Chicago to qualify for affordable housing.

But Burgos said that caring for the beloved ice cream vendor by herself took a toll on her already fragile health. After she cared for Ocampo for nearly five weeks, her doctors advised her to rest.

Ocampo has almost fully recovered from the knee replacement surgery to his right joint, and his surgeon told him that he will be ready for a second surgery as soon as May. But Burgos doesnt think she can take care of him again.

Unless he gets approved for a rehab facility that would guarantee that a professional can take care of him while he recovers, Burgos said she doesnt see how Ocampo will be able to get the next surgery.

Advertisement

If no one can take care of me or I cant stay in the hospital until Im able to walk on my own (after surgery), then I just think I wont get it anymore, Ocampo said while walking down 18th street on a warmer day in March. The pain isnt so bad anymore.

larodriguez@chicagotribune.com

carlosballesteros@injusticewatch.org

Below are several nonprofit organizations and institutions that can connect undocumented elders to resources to access health care:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The United States, France, Italy, Germany and Britain said on Wednesday they were disappointed with a decision by Kosovo not to allow eligible citizens to vote in neighboring Serbia's elections next month, warning the move would undermine the Balkan republic's European aspirations.

The five governments said in a joint statement the government in Pristina had rejected a "constructive proposal" they presented to allow eligible Kosovan citizens to vote in Serbia's elections on April 3.

Kosovo earlier banned ethnic Serbs from voting on Kosovan soil in a Serbian national referendum on constitutional amendments in January, against the urging of Washington and the four European nations, who all backed Kosovo's 2008 declaration of independence.

"Such an attitude of the Kosovo Government is not in line with our values and principles and will undermine its European aspirations," the statement on Wednesday said.

The five nations said Serbia had shown "availability to find a solution" and that they expected Kosovo to work to decrease tensions and engage in EU-facilitated dialogue on normalization of relations with Serbia.

"This is crucial to achieve progress towards a comprehensive normalization agreement that will ultimately unlock the EU perspective of Kosovo," the statement said.

Kosovo's Prime Minister Albin Kurti said he was expecting an official letter of request from Serbia.

"There is no agreement (with Belgrade), which is a condition for holding these elections, Kurti told a press conference in Pristina.

A day earlier, Serbia's President Aleksandar Vucic said such a request to the government in Pristina would be tantamount to the recognition of Kosovo.

"I cannot and will not accept independence of Kosovo, despite the price," he said in Belgrade.

Serbs account for around 5% of Kosovo's population in enclaves across the country and in the predominantly Serb northern part of the country. Most of them refuse to recognize Pristina as their capital.

(Reporting by Simon Lewis and Fatos Bytyci in Pristina and Aleksandar Vasovic in Belgrade; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
By Karen Freifeld

(Reuters) -China's ZTE Corp saw its shares soar as much as 60% in Hong Kong on Tuesday after the telecommunications equipment maker completed five years of probation in the United States, marking the end of a U.S. criminal case.

ZTE's probation - imposed in a 2017 guilty plea deal for illegally shipping U.S. technology to Iran, and extended in 2018 - ended on schedule on March 22, despite a possible violation.

An alleged visa fraud had raised the possibility of additional penalties, sending ZTE's stock plummeting earlier this month, but a U.S. judge on Tuesday ruled against further action by the court.

ZTE is still subject to a 2018 settlement agreement with the U.S. Commerce Department.

ZTE suspended trading in its Shenzhen and Hong Kong-listed shares following the ruling and before markets opened Wednesday. Upon resuming trade at 0500 GMT, its Hong Kong stock registered its biggest daily percentage gain since its December 2004 debut.

Its Shenzhen stock rose 10% to its highest since March 10.

ZTE had been accused of violating probation over an alleged conspiracy to commit visa fraud. According to an indictment unsealed last March, a former ZTE research director and a Georgia Institute of Technology professor allegedly conspired to bring Chinese nationals to the U.S. to conduct research at ZTE from at least 2014 through 2018 while on J-1 visas sponsored by the university.

While ZTE has not been charged in the visa case, which is pending in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. District Court Judge Ed Kinkeade held a hearing in Dallas last week on the fraud allegation as a possible violation of ZTE's probation.

In his Tuesday ruling, the judge found ZTE was legally responsible for the actions of the former ZTE director.

But he decided to not take any further action against ZTE, which had already reached the maximum term of probation and, ZTE argued, had already been fined the maximum as well.

As part of its 2017 plea deal, ZTE paid the U.S. $892 million.

Story continues

There was an "open question about legal tools left for the court," the judge wrote.

Despite the favorable ruling, the judge encouraged the government to pursue any reasonable charges and criminal or civil penalties against the company, especially for export compliance matters.

PENALTIES

The visa issue was not the first problem that surfaced for ZTE since the plea deal. In 2018, the U.S. Commerce Department found ZTE made false statements about disciplining executives tied to the illegal shipments to Iran and, as a result, issued a total ban on the company buying U.S. components.

ZTE, which ceased major operations as a result of the ban, paid a $1 billion penalty and agreed to change its leadership and cooperate with a 10-year monitor appointed by the Commerce Department, as part of a settlement lifting the ban.

The judge took action in 2018 over the false statements, too, extending ZTE's probation and a court-appointed monitor from three to five years.

In his Tuesday ruling, the judge noted that ZTE argued the visa-fraud related events occurred more than three years ago, and that new leadership had brought an improved export compliance program.

"The Company has made strides," the judge said, adding that ZTE's export control and compliance programs were effectively "nonexistent" when it was originally sentenced.

He said he considered ZTE's compliance a mitigating factor, but that its record of compliance could be summarized in one word: "sometimes."

ZTE in a statement to Reuters said it was "proud of the significant improvement in the company's compliance program and culture." It said the improvement had been acknowledged over the years.

Evans Rice, a lawyer for ZTE, said in court last week that, in 2020, the court-appointed monitor had recognized "a sea change" in the company's commitment to compliance and cooperation.

The U.S. Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The professor charged in the visa case, Gee-Kung Chang, has pleaded not guilty. The status of the former ZTE research director, Jianjun Yu, is unclear. ZTE said he left the company in 2019.

The case against ZTE was the first of a series of U.S. government actions against major Chinese tech companies that caused tensions in U.S.-China relations.

It was followed by a case, still pending, against Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, the hobbled Chinese telecommunications equipment giant, which was also placed on a U.S. trade blacklist in 2019 for activities contrary to U.S. national security or foreign policy interests.

(Reporting by Karen Freifeld; Editing by Chris Sanders and Christopher Cushing)
By Elias Biryabarema

KAMPALA (Reuters) - A Ugandan court on Wednesday issued an arrest warrant for an international award-winning author who fled to Germany last month to seek treatment for injuries he said were inflicted on him during torture by security personnel, his lawyer said.

Kakwenza Rukirabashaija was arrested at the end of December and held for almost a month before he was charged with communications offences related to tweets that criticised President Yoweri Museveni and his son.

"It is true the court has issued an arrest warrant for him," his lawyer Eron Kiiza told Reuters.

"It's just a continuation of his harassment, because the court could have chosen to try him in his absentia, which is allowed, but they decided to ignore that option."

After his release in January Rukirabashaija said he had been tortured by security personnel while in detention. Images of his body showed torture marks, which provoked public outrage.

He told local broadcaster NTV that he was punched in the stomach, kicked, hit with gun butts and made to dance endlessly, and that his torturers used pliers to tear pieces of flesh from parts of his body.

Police have said they cannot comment on the torture allegations since they were part of Rukirabashaija's court case.

On Feb. 9 he announced he had fled the country, eventually arriving in Germany where he said he would seek treatment.

Rukirabashaija is a satirist who found fame with his novel "Greedy Barbarian", which criticises corruption and political oppression in a fictional country. In Uganda the book was widely interpreted to be a shot at Museveni's government.

Last year he won the PEN Pinter Prize for international writers of courage. He is the second Museveni critic to flee Uganda this year after Stella Nyanzi, a university lecturer and author also announced in January she had fled to Germany.

(Reporting by Elias Biryabarema; editing by Hereward Holland and Mark Heinrich)
LONDON (AP)  The British government said Wednesday that a Dubai government-owned ferry operator at the center of a bitter U.K. labor dispute likely broke the law when it fired 786 crew members without notice to replace them with cheaper contract staff.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson condemned the callous behavior of P&O Ferries and said the company appeared to have broken British labor laws.

We will be taking action, Johnson said, adding that the company could "face fines running into millions of pounds if it is found guilty.

P&O Ferries, which operates in Britain and is owned by a subsidiary of Dubai company DP World, claimed the move was legal because the staff worked on ships registered outside the U.K. The ferry operator acknowledged that the way the dismissals were carried out caused distress for workers and said it had offered generous compensation to those involved.

But the company also said it couldnt have survived without fundamentally changed crewing arrangements and that it took the action to save 2,200 other jobs. The dismissed seafarers are being replaced by cheaper workers employed by a third-party crew provider.

The staff cuts  which came after P&O received millions in British government aid during the COVID-19 pandemic  have caused outrage and sparked protests by trade unions at U.K. ports. P&O canceled all its ferry crossings between Britain, Ireland and continental Europe after the announcement last week, disrupting the movement of both travelers and goods.

Trade unions have long objected to fire and rehire policies that let companies fire staff members and reemploy them on worse terms. Under British labor laws, such extreme action is only meant to be done after extensive employee consultations.

P&O chief executive Peter Hebblethwaite said that restructuring our workforce in this way was not a course of action that we ever wanted to take.

We did this as a last resort and only after full consideration of all other options," he said in a letter to the government.

Story continues

The letter came in response to Business Secretary Kwasi Kwartengs request for information amid outrage from workers and allegations that P&O violated U.K. labor laws. Kwarteng last week said it appeared the company hadnt followed the required process for dismissing large numbers of workers and notified it that failure to do so was a criminal offense that could lead to an unlimited fine.

The National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers reacted angrily to the P&O letter, saying the disgusting statement sought to justify the companys shameful acts.

The ferry operator, a unit of Dubai-government owned logistics giant DP World, said the dismissed crew members worked on eight ships registered in the Bahamas, Bermuda and Cyprus. They were employed by three P&O units incorporated in Jersey, a self-governing crown dependency that isnt part of the U.K.

Crew members employed by two other subsidiaries based in France and the Netherlands werent fired, P&O said.

P&O gave advance notice of the firings to authorities in the countries where the ships are registered, Hebblethwaite said. As a result, P&O doesnt believe it violated U.K. laws.

P&O has announced that it will pay workers 13 weeks salary to compensate for the lack of advance notice, and another 13 weeks salary in lieu of consultation. In addition, P&O says dismissed crew members will receive 2 weeks salary for every year of service, instead of the legally required 1 weeks.

About 575 of the dismissed workers have accepted the severance package, P&O said.

But the RMT union said the package amounted to blackmail and threats because workers will only receive a fraction of the payout unless they give up their legal right to file an action with the employment tribunal.

They have ripped away the jobs, careers and pensions of our members and thrown them on the dole with the threat that if they do not sign up and give away their rights they will lose many thousands of pounds in payments, General Secretary Mick Lynch said in a statement.

___

Jill Lawless contributed to this story.
By Natalia Zinets and Elaine Lies

(Reuters) -Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged Japan on Wednesday to ramp up pressure on Russia with a trade embargo, making an unprecedented direct appeal to parliament that invoked the two nations' shared experience of nuclear disaster.

Speaking to lawmakers by video link in a gesture never previously accorded to a foreign leader, Zelenskiy thanked Japan for leading the way among Asian nations in condemning Russia's invasion of Ukraine and launching sanctions.

The address was covered live by almost all commercial broadcasters, highlighting the rare interest in the war in a country where domestic issues usually dominate headlines.

"An embargo on trade with Russia is necessary," said Zelenskiy, who wore a zipped-up military jacket. "It is necessary to remove companies from the Russian market so that money does not go to the Russian army."

Later, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said he planned to unveil more support measures for Ukraine and strengthen Tokyo's sanctions against Russia at a G7 meeting in Brussels. [L3N2VQ1LN]

Japan's sanctions on 76 individuals, seven banks and 12 other bodies in Russia, imposed in response to the invasion, now cover defence officials and state-owned arms exporter Rosoboronexport.

It has also said it will revoke Russia's trade status of most favoured nation.

Zelenskiy, who received a standing ovation at the end of his speech, thanked Japan for leading the way among Asian nations in condemning the invasion and launching sanctions.

"You were the first in Asia who really began to put pressure on Russia to restore peace, who supported sanctions against Russia, and I urge you to keep doing this," Zelenskiy said.

Responding to the sanctions, Russia, which calls its action in Ukraine "a special operation", withdrew on Tuesday from peace treaty talks with Japan and froze joint economic projects related to the disputed Kuril islands.

Story continues

Known in Japan as the Northern Territories, they are one of the main barriers to a pact between the two nations to formally end World War Two.

Asked on Tuesday about economic cooperation with Russia, Kishida said Japan valued any opportunity to secure inexpensive energy, referring to projects in Sakhalin, following withdrawals by Shell and Exxon Mobil.

A sombre Zelenskiy urged Japan to do more.

"I urge you to unite the efforts of the Asian states, your partners, in order to stabilise the situation, so that Russia seeks peace and stops the tsunami of its harsh invasion."

INVOKING CHERNOBYL

Without citing evidence, Zelenskiy said Russian forces were preparing new attacks from the so-called exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear power station after occupying the defunct plant last month in the early stages of the war.

He gave no details.

"The world is on the verge of many new crises," Zelenskiy added. "The environmental and food challenges are unprecedented."

Kishida sat in the front row of his audience, with Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi and Defence Minister Nobuo Kishi beside him. Later the prime minister told reporters he was touched by Zelenskiy's speech.

Hayashi said Zelenskiy's references to the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 struck a chord.

Japan's triple disaster of March 2011 caused meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant and irradiated a vast swathe of its northeast. The worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl forced tens of thousands of people from their homes.

"We have always said that any kind of attack against a nuclear power plant is absolutely unacceptable," Hayashi told reporters.

"President (Zelenskiy) didnt give the name Fukushima, but he talked about it (the nuclear power plants) and spoke with passion of how strongly the people of Ukraine feel about returning to their home."

(Reporting by Natalia Zinets, Sakura Murakami, Ju-min Park and Kiyoshi Takenaka; Writing by Alessandra Prentice and Elaine Lies; Editing by Timothy Heritage and Clarence Fernandez)
PARIS (Reuters) -French companies including carmaker Renault and retailer Auchan must leave the Russian market, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy told French lawmakers on Wednesday.

"Renault, Auchan, Leroy Merlin must stop being sponsors of the Russian war machine, stop financing the murder of children and women, of rape," Zelenskiy said in an address via video link to France's National Assembly.

"French companies must leave the Russian market."

Seated at a desk in his trademark khaki T-shirt, Zelenskiy received a standing ovation from French lawmakers after his appeal. At his request they also observed a minute of silence in tribute to the victims of the nearly month-long war.

Renault, which has not commented on its exposure to Russia since the start of the invasion of Ukraine, declined to comment on Zelenskiy's appeal.

Sources told Reuters the company's board was set to discuss the situation at a board meeting later on Wednesday.

EXPOSURE

Renault - which controls Avtovaz, Russia's number one carmaker - is among Western firms most exposed to Russia, where it generates 8% of its core earnings, Citibank said.

Two sources familiar with the situation told Reuters that about 10 days ago Renault board members considered different scenarios, but decided to maintain its presence in Russia for now, with the support of its main shareholder, the French state, and in line with international sanctions.

The sources said the company fears that exiting Russia would jeopardise the recovery of the firm, which returned to profit in 2021 after two years of losses. Avtovaz accounted for half of the current profit of its car division last year.

Renault said earlier on Wednesday it was considering again suspending production at its Moscow plant due to logistics issues.

Privately owned retailer Auchan declined to comment. Last week a spokesperson said earlier criticism by Zelenskiy over the group's continued presence in Russia was "extremely surprising".

Story continues

Leroy Merlin, which belongs to the same Mulliez group as Auchan, also declined to comment. Mulliez also owns the Decathlon sports goods chain, which has a large presence in Russia.

French companies that have come under hefty criticism for still operating in Russia also include energy giant Total and food group Danone. Zelenskiy did not name them but asked French firms in general to leave Russia.

Moscow calls its actions in Ukraine a "special operation" to disarm and "denazify" Ukraine. Ukraine and Western allies call this a baseless pretext for a war of choice that has raised fears of wider conflict in Europe.

(Reporting by Tassilo Hummel, Makini Bricel, Jean-Stephane Brosse, Elizabeth Pineau, Gilles Guillaume; Writing by Ingrid Melander and Geert De Clercq; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Gareth Jones)
SPRINGFIELD  The Illinois Senate on Tuesday took the rare step of rejecting one of Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzkers nominees to a state agency, in this case the Prisoner Review Board.

The Democratic-controlled Senates 22-19 vote fell short of the 30 votes needed to confirm Jeffrey Mears nomination to the board, which has duties that include deciding whether prisoners should be released early on parole.

Advertisement

All 18 Senate Republicans voted against Mears confirmation as did one Democrat, Patrick Joyce of Essex. But 18 Democrats sat out the vote, sealing Mears fate.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker at the Thompson Center in Chicago on Feb. 9, 2022. (Terrence Antonio James / Chicago Tribune)

Republican Senators have maintained a drumbeat of criticism of the board under Pritzker for reasons that include what they say is a lack of transparency and an overly lenient attitude toward convicted criminals. The GOP has tried to use the Pritzker administrations handling of the review board as another reason to paint him as being weak on crime and criminal justice issues while heading into this years election.

Advertisement

On the Senate floor Tuesday, Sen. Terri Bryant, a Murphysboro Republican, voiced concern over Mears vote to grant parole for Paula Sims, convicted in 1990 for killing her two daughters, one who was 6 weeks old and the other 13 days old. Last fall, the board granted Sims parole in a 12-1 vote.

Bryant also raised concern about the boards decision to release Zelma King, who was convicted of three homicides, on parole. That decision was made in July on an 8-4 vote, with Mears voting in favor of parole for King.

If you vote yes to confirm this individual, you are voting yes to confirm an individual who released a double murderer of her own children and a triple murderer that included a woman who was murdered, Bryant said.

In a statement following Tuesdays vote, the Pritzker administration praised Mears for his experience in de-escalation and crisis intervention as a hostage negotiator while working downstate at the Shawnee Correctional Center, and accused Republicans of seeking to dismantle a constitutional function of government.

The board had only nine of 15 seats filled before the Senate vote on Mears. Pritzkers office said at least eight members are required for the board to perform certain functions, such as granting clemency petitions.

If we dont appoint enough members to the PRB, if theyre not approved ... the PRB will not be able to have a quorum, Pritzker said Wednesday after an event in Springfield. And that  lack of a quorum wouldnt therefore be able to keep people in prison who are brought back when they violate their parole conditions.

Senate Republicans have criticized the Democratic majority for not holding hearings over the last year on Pritzkers nominees, who take their place on the prisoner review board while awaiting confirmation. Five board members nominated by Pritzker have yet to be confirmed by the Senate.

A source familiar with the Democrats rationale, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter, said the pandemic has played a role in delaying confirmation hearings but also acknowledged some party members have raised concerns about whether Pritzkers nominees are a suitable fit for the board.

Advertisement

Pritzker said Wednesday hes bothered that some fellow Democrats are having reservations about his nominees, and suggested theyre buying into the Republican rhetoric and Facebook fakery.

Its easy to say, this person did something wrong. We ought to keep them in prison. Why would you offer parole to somebody? " Pritzker said.

But the reality is that thats exactly the function. Every person that gets brought up before the Prisoner Review Board is somebody whos done something wrong in their lives. They get brought up before the (board) when its appropriate, Pritzker said. And they have to make the decisions and they cant always make the decision that the Republicans would like to have made.

Five other board nominees up for confirmation appeared before the Senate Executive Appointments Committee Tuesday, but votes on those members had yet to come to a full Senate vote. Under the Illinois Constitution, executive nominees are automatically confirmed if the Senate does not vote to confirm them within 60 session days.

Several senators raised concerns about the boards decision to vote last year in favor of parole for Joseph Hurst and Johnny Veal, two men accused of killing police officers more than 50 years ago. Veal was paroled last year after being convicted in the 1970 fatal shootings of two Chicago cops, Sgt. James Severin and Office Anthony Rizzato. Hurst last year was paroled for his conviction in the 1967 fatal shooting of Chicago police Officer Herman Stallworth.

State Sen. Bill Cunningham, a Chicago Democrat who voted Tuesday in favor of Mears appointment, said he intends next week to vote against the nominations of two other nominees, Oreal James and Eleanor Wilson, who voted last year to grant parole for Hurst and Veal.

Advertisement

Im, personally, of the belief that individuals who kill police officers should serve a life sentence without any possibility of parole, Cunningham, whose district is inhabited by a lot of Chicago police officers, said Tuesday after the Senate adjourned.

Spaulding reported from Chicago. Chicago Tribunes Dan Petrella contributed.

jgorner@chicagotribune.com

cpsaulding@chicagotribune.com
Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks about Russia and Ukraine





Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday said the Biden administration has determined that Russian forces have committed war crimes in Ukraine.

"Our assessment is based on a careful review of available information from public and intelligence sources. As with any alleged crime, a court of law with jurisdiction over the crime is ultimately responsible for determining criminal guilt in specific cases," Blinken said in a statement.

"The U.S. government will continue to track reports of war crimes and will share information we gather with allies, partners, and international institutions and organizations, as appropriate. We are committed to pursuing accountability using every tool available, including criminal prosecutions," Blinken added.

The formal assessment comes a week after President Biden said he believes Russian President Vladimir Putin is a war criminal, something Blinken echoed based on reports on the ground of attacks on civilians.

In Wednesday's announcement, Blinken pointed to "numerous credible reports of indiscriminate attacks and attacks deliberately targeting civilians, as well as other atrocities."

"Russia's forces have destroyed apartment buildings, schools, hospitals, critical infrastructure, civilian vehicles, shopping centers, and ambulances, leaving thousands of innocent civilians killed or wounded," Blinken said. "Many of the sites Russia's forces have hit have been clearly identifiable as in-use by civilians."

News reports in recent days have detailed strikes on a maternity hospital in the city of Mariupol, as well as a theater where civilians were sheltering. Officials have determined that more than 2,400 civilians have been killed in Mariupol alone as of Tuesday, Blinken said, and the United Nations has confirmed more than 2,500 civilian casualties outside of Mariupol.

Prosecution of "war crimes" typically involves a vigorous, often years-long legal process, and international investigators are already beginning to look at Russia's conduct during its invasion of Ukraine.

Story continues

The U.S. assessment is likely to further ratchet up pressure to isolate Moscow from the international community and could further galvanize support for Ukraine.

Officials have warned the attacks on Ukraine could worsen, with Biden, Blinken, national security adviser Jake Sullivan and others raising the possibility of Russia deploying chemical weapons.

It's unclear if the Biden administration can take specific actions in response to the determination of war crimes, but officials had earlier said their documenting evidence of such atrocities would be shared with international investigators and courts that hold jurisdiction to prosecute such cases.

Beth Van Schaack, Ambassador at Large for Global Criminal Justice and who is documenting the war crimes, said it's the intention of the administration to make public what specific instances they have determined to be war crimes, but could not offer a timeline.

"We have to do a full assessment of the information that's available to us and make sure that it doesn't compromise any means and methods of collection, but I think keeping the world apprised of what's happening on the ground in Ukraine is extremely important."

Schaack added that she would not preview any action the administration may take in terms of sanctions related to a war crimes determination, and did not rule out that Putin, as commander in chief of Russia's armed forces, could be held liable for war crimes in a court that holds jurisdiction.

"There are doctrines under international law and domestic law that are able to reach all the way up the chain of command."

Schaack said the U.S. would share information of war crimes "with our friends and allies and with international and multilateral lateral institutions as appropriate," and cited possible legal venues as courts in the U.S., courts in Ukraine, and regional courts.

The ambassador did not rule out sharing evidence with the International Criminal Court, but said "there have been no specific asks."

The U.S. is not a party to the Rome Statute, the treaty that governs where the ICC holds authority, and the Trump administration imposed sanctions on court officials in opposition to their investigations into alleged U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan.

Schaack did not address U.S. sanctions on the court but said that because the U.S. is not a member of the court there are no "affirmative cooperation duties."

While Russia and Ukraine are also not parties to the Rome Statute, the ICC holds jurisdiction of possible crimes committed on Ukrainian territory since Kyiv accepted the courts jurisdiction in two declarations, in 2014 and 2015 and in response to Russia's then-invasion in eastern Ukraine and annexation of the Crimean peninsula.

Updated 3:24 p.m.
Brittney Griner. Michael Gonzales/NBAE/Getty Images

A US embassy official was finally granted access to see Brittney Griner during her Russian detainment.

Ned Price told CNN that Griner is in "good condition" and they are working to ensure she's "treated fairly."

The WNBA star was first detained on February 17 when officials at a Moscow airport accused her of drug offenses.

US State Department Spokesperson Ned Price said American officials have finally been granted access to Brittney Griner  the WNBA star detained in Russia  and that she is in "good condition."

"Within the last couple hours an official from our Embassy has been granted consular access to Britney Griner," Price told CNN on Wednesday morning.

"We were able to check on her condition and we will continue to work very closely with her legal team ... to see to it that she is treated fairly," he added.

Griner. AP Photo/Eric Gay

The 6-foot-9 center has been in Russian custody since February 17, when agents at Sheremetyevo Airport claimed to have found vape cartridges containing hashish oil in her luggage. Since then, Griner's "Russian legal team has seen her multiple times a week," a source close to the situation told Insider last week.

But until Wednesday, Russia had denied American officials' requests for consular visits with Griner during her continued detention. US Congressman Colin Allred of Griner's native Texas had previously spoken out about Russia's repeated refusal to grant access to a US citizen, calling the move "really unusual" and "extremely concerning."

Few details surrounding the two-time Olympic gold medalist's precarious situation have been confirmed. The drug trafficking case being brought against her and the state of her defense remain unclear  but that lack of transparency on the American side is by design, WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert told Insider last week.

Griner. AP Photo/Rick Scuteri

The relative silence from league, team, and US government officials is part of a "say less and push more privately behind the scenes" strategy to get Griner home as quickly as possible, Engelbert confirmed to Insider.

Story continues

"We're in daily contact with her agent, her family, her legal representation," the commissioner added. "So it's everybody coordinating on this and obviously we don't want to do or say anything that is going to jeopardize her safety."

Throughout Griner's detainment, Engelbert has been in contact with "the Biden administration, State Department, other elected officials, organizations with expertise in these matters" and others to help quietly negotiate Griner's release and safe return.

A month to the day after her arrest, Griner was spotted in handcuffs at a Moscow court as her legal team challenged her continued detention:

A source told Insider that Griner's legal team approached Thursday's hearing "with the hopes of having Brittney transferred to house arrest." Instead, the court ruled that the two-time Olympic gold medalist must remain in custody until at least May 19  a decision that "was not unexpected," according to the source.

The person  who is familiar with Griner's legal circumstances but spoke on the condition of anonymity out of concern for Griner's continued safety  stressed that Thursday's proceedings were "not a hearing on the merits" of her drug-related charge, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.

"The investigation is still ongoing," the source said. "Once it has concluded, a trial date will be set. Until then, the court extends detention by periods of time."

Griner (left) palms the ball during the 2021 WNBA Finals. Paul Beaty/AP

"If the investigation is not finished, the May hearing is to contemplate how much longer the court needs to extend," they added.

Though Griner has reportedly voiced concerns about the beds in her jail cell being too small for her 6-foot-9 frame, Russian media outlet TASS claims that she "has no complaints about the conditions of detention" and that she's "calmly accepted the situation in which she found herself."

Griner was headed to Russia in the first place to play for European powerhouse club UMMC Ekaterinburg, as she's done every WNBA off-season since 2014.

Griner (right) competes for Russian club UMMC Ekaterinburg during the WNBA offseason. BSR Agency/Getty Images

About half of WNBA players travel overseas in the winter to supplement their relatively low salaries from the domestic league. Stars command significantly higher salaries abroad than they can possibly earn in the states, and Griner is the quintessential example of that pay divide.

This year, the seven-time WNBA All-Star is set to take home a league-maximum $227,900 annual base salary from the Phoenix Mercury, though she's eligible to make more between bonuses and marketing opportunities should she stay in the US for the winter. She reportedly earns $1 million per season with the UMMC Ekaterinburg, according to The Arizona Republic's Jeff Metcalfe.

Even under ordinary circumstances, this two-season-per-year lifestyle is far from ideal. Without proper time to rest and rehabilitate their bodies, athletes like Griner often find themselves dealing with nagging injuries in addition to accelerated wear and tear that can cut their professional careers short.

Griner. AP Photo/Rick Scuteri

But during moments of international crisis  like the early days of the pandemic or right now, as Russia wages war in Ukraine  WNBA players taking on second jobs overseas becomes all the more perilous. Thanks to the rapidly deteriorating relationship between her home country and her off-season abode, Griner may find herself collateral damage in the fiery feud between two global superpowers.

Even despite the tenuous geopolitical situation, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the US is prepared to "provide every possible assistance" to Griner and other citizens detained abroad, per ESPN.

"There's only so much I can say given the privacy considerations at this point," Blinken said of Griner. "Whenever an American is detained anywhere in the world, we of course stand ready to provide every possible assistance, and that includes in Russia."

Read the original article on Insider
The full U.S. Senate will vote on a bill looking to mitigate risks to the U.S. financial system from El Salvador's adoption of bitcoin (BTC) as legal tender, after the bill was passed out of committee on Wednesday.

The Accountability for Cryptocurrency in El Salvador (ACES) Act was introduced by Sens. James Risch (R-Idaho), Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) and Bill Cassidy (R-La.) on Feb. 16.

As El Salvador has adopted [b]itcoin as legal tender, its important we understand and mitigate potential risks to the U.S. financial system, Risch said in a statement on Wednesday. He added the legislation would require the State and Treasury departments, among other federal agencies, to mitigate risks such as potential empowerment of China and organized criminal organizations.

The bill would also ask the U.S. to monitor remittances from El Salvador.

El Salvador President Nayib Bukele expressed his discontent after the bill passed out of committee.

Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that the U.S. [g]overnment would be afraid of what we are doing here, he tweeted on Wednesday afternoon.

El Salvador adopted bitcoin as legal tender last autumn, launching a government-backed wallet and offering incentives for bitcoin usage. Bukele also announced the country would raise $1 billion through a bitcoin-backed bond, though this issuance was delayed from its initial planned launch of mid-March.
HANOI (Reuters) - A Vietnamese court jailed a prominent social commentator for five years on Wednesday for anti-state activities, his lawyer and state media said, among dozens of activists that rights groups say are being persecuted for criticising the government.

Le Van Dung, 51, was convicted of conducting propaganda against the state of Vietnam, lawyer Ha Huy Son said, in a trial that lasted only a few hours.

Despite sweeping economic reform and increasing openness to social change, Vietnam's ruling Communist Party retains tight media censorship and tolerates little criticism.

Dung was accused of making and uploading 12 videos on the internet to defame the administration and "offend the honour and prestige of the party and state leaders," reported national radio Voice of Vietnam.

Dung, who goes by "Le Dung Vova", regularly broadcast live to thousands of followers on Facebook and YouTube before his arrest in June last year.

"He didn't plead guilty at the trial and will appeal the verdict," his lawyer said.

Vietnam last week objected to the United States granting a prize for courage to a dissident writer who was jailed for nine years last year for anti-state propaganda.

Its foreign ministry described her award as "unobjective and unsuitable".

Ahead of Wednesday's trial, Human Rights Watch deputy Asia director Phil Robertson said Vietnam should drop the charges against Dung, who he said was one of more than 60 people being prosecuted for speaking out.

"Vietnamese authorities persist in treating any sort of criticism of the government as a grave threat to be prosecuted with long prison terms," he said.

"International donors and trade partners of Vietnam should press Hanoi to listen to its critics instead of persecuting them."

(Editing by Martin Petty)
BRUSSELS (AP)  Even before Air Force One touches down in Brussels to bring President Joe Biden to three Ukraine summits on Thursday, Western allies have already found what they are looking for  that all too rare sense of unity.

They have Russian President Vladimir Putin to thank for that.

After Russia's invasion of neighboring Ukraine on Feb. 24 and its brutal war since then over the past month, allies from Washington to Tokyo and Brussels have acted in unison.

And they did it with such staggering speed to hit the Kremlin with unprecedented sanctions and offers of help to Kyiv. That symbolism has the space to trump urgent problem-fixing this week.

With staccato rhythm, Biden will attend a NATO, Group of Seven and European Union summits all within 12 hours of driving around Europe's diplomatic capital from one headquarters to another. The only reason this is possible is because all agree on the major issues so, basically, little time will be needed to paper over deep differences.

On Friday, Biden will be traveling to Poland, the humanitarian hub of the crisis where more than 2 million Ukrainian refugees have arrived, and where U.S. forces have shored up NATO's eastern flank.

WHAT BIDEN WANTS

Beyond the all-important handshakes, group photos and warm scenes of togetherness, Biden will use his time in Brussels to announce new sanctions against Russia while underscoring the importance of closing possible loopholes in the avalanche of Western measures that have already been enacted.

At a time when it is essential to avoid fissures in whats been a largely unified Western response to Russia, the U.S. president will look to press important allies like Poland to dial back the idea of deploying a Western peacekeeping mission to Ukraine. Its an idea that the U.S. and some other NATO members see as too risky as they seek to deny Russia any pretext to broaden the war beyond Ukraines borders.

For his domestic audience, look for Biden to once again underscore the heroics of the Ukrainian military and volunteers who have managed to hold off an imposing Russian military. He will highlight those remarkable efforts  as well as the generosity of the Poles and other allies at the front lines of the humanitarian crisis  as he redoubles his calls for Americans to stand firm against a Russian war that is spurring gas price hikes and adding to inflationary pressures in the U.S.

Story continues

Overall, Biden also wants to revel in the scenes of unity at the headquarters of NATO and the EU, where memories of an unraveling trans-Atlantic bond riven with disputes under former President Donald Trump are far from forgotten.

WHAT NATO WANTS

That show of unity will also be paramount at NATO headquarters, where the United States has traditionally given orders, with the rest, sometimes grudgingly, going along.

The summit on Thursday will be a new opportunity for the 30-nation military organization to publicly show that Washington is consulting its allies, something that was sorely lacking under the Trump administration.

Biden and his counterparts are expected to discuss the kinds of red lines that might draw NATO out of its defensive posture  the worlds biggest security organization has mostly bolstered its own defenses since the invasion a month ago  to respond with force.

Nuclear, chemical or a massive cyberattack appear the most likely triggers, but NATO remains wary of any response that might draw it into a full-scale war with nuclear-armed Russia.

The leaders are also set to discuss the longer-term future of NATOs defenses along its eastern flank, ranging from Estonia in the north, down around western Ukraine to Bulgaria on the Black Sea. Military commanders have been ordered to draw up options.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said last week that the new defense posture would include substantially more land forces at higher readiness, more air power filling NATO skies and aircraft carrier strike groups, submarines and combat ships on a persistent basis" at sea. Expect applause and full support when such issues are raised.

WHAT THE EU WANTS

Even if it gained a brutal enemy on its eastern doorstep, the 27-nation bloc also fully regained an old friend, and it will be able to shake on that friendship when Biden attends a summit of all EU leaders which had already been months in the making.

No European will mind. Together with the Biden administration, the EU has been standing shoulder to shoulder in pushing through four packages of sanctions against Putin, his advisers and oligarchs, cutting deeper than many would have thought. This comes after feeling looked down upon for four years under Trump, who among other things, even slapped sanctions on the EU.

It is to show this message of unity, said Europe Minister Clement Beaune of France, which holds the rotating EU presidency. He also set the scene for more sanctions pressure in a show of solidarity with Ukraine.

At the same time, the EU is hoping Biden won't push demands for sanctions too far for a partner whose trade ties with Russia are far bigger and intricately intertwined.

Sanctions must not hit European states harder than the Russian leadership. That is our principle," German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Wednesday. "Nobody is served if we consciously gamble with our economic base.

Such unity will also help the EU on the global stage since the optics of a strong embrace of Biden will also not be lost on Chinese President Xi Jinping, with whom the EU has a summit set for next week.

WHAT UKRAINE WANTS

There won't be a seat reserved anywhere for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, yet he will be on everyone's mind  not least because he will have a video link at the NATO summit.

It has been crystal clear what he wants from Western allies.

With passion and rhetorical flair, he has pleaded with legislatures in the United States, the EU, Britain, Japan and Canada, for more military and humanitarian aid. But his demands for NATO to enforce a no-fly zone to protect his people have been rejected, with the alliance making clear it won't risk an all-out war with Russia.

He will get the same reply from Scholz.

I hear the voices of those who demand a no-fly zone or NATO peacekeepers in Ukraine, the German leader said Wednesday. "In almost 80 years of post-war history we have successfully avoided the unthinkable - a direct military confrontation between our western defense alliance, NATO, and Russia. It must stay that way.

Zelenskyy has been having a series of conversations with Western leaders in the days before Thursday's summits and he expects them to approve more sanctions to punish Russia and more help for Ukraine.

We will work, we will fight, as hard as we can, to the last, bravely and openly, he said in a video address Wednesday.

____

Lorne Cook in Brussels, Frank Jordans in Berlin, and Aamer Madhani in Washington, contributed to this report.

___

Follow the APs coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
Erik Pendzich/REX/Shutterstock

Warren Buffett has said he doesn't stress higher education in the hiring process, and yet he went to some of the most prestigious schools in the country.

Find Out: Just How Rich Are Elon Musk, Donald Trump and These Other Big Names?

Don't Sink The Ship: 28 CEOs That Have Saved or Sunk Major Corporations

One common thread among the world's most successful and inspiring entrepreneurs and business leaders is that many went to college -- even if only for a short while.

It would appear that for some of the world's top business leaders, college shaped their lives and paid off -- especially considering the company earnings reports that have recently flooded the news.

Here's where the biggest names in business went to college.

Drew Angerer / Getty Images

Jeff Bezos

College: Princeton University

Former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is one of the richest people in the world and, according to Forbes, is the first billionaire to break the 12-figure mark. The son of a single mother, Bezos earned early admission to Princeton, originally intending to practice theoretical physics. After graduation, however, he realized the power of the internet and began selling books online, a small business venture that grew into the world's most powerful online retailer.

Shutterstock.com

Warren Buffett

College: University of Pennsylvania, University of Nebraska and Columbia University

Warren Buffett followed his father's advice and went to the University of Pennsylvania's prestigious Wharton School of Business -- but only reluctantly. The man who has gone on to become the "Oracle of Omaha," arguably the most successful investor of all time, completed his undergraduate education at the University of Nebraska before attending graduate school at Columbia University.

Despite many years of schooling, Buffett doesn't think college is for everyone and doesn't base his hiring decisions on degrees, according to CNBC.

Kathy Hutchins / Shutterstock.com

Elon Musk

College: University of Pennsylvania and Stanford University

Story continues

Elon Musk is the co-founder of PayPal, the creator of SpaceX and the CEO of Tesla. In 1989, however, the South African immigrant entered Queen's University in his mother's native Canada and eventually transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, graduating with a degree in physics and economics in 1995. Musk enrolled at Stanford University but left after just two days to start his first company, Zip2.

Musk was the highest-paid CEO in the world in 2018, according to The New York Times, with compensation totaling nearly $2.3 billion.

JStone / Shutterstock.com

Tim Cook

College: Auburn University and Duke University

Tim Cook earned a bachelor's degree in industrial engineering from Auburn University and an MBA from Duke University, where he was a Fuqua Scholar. Today, he's the CEO of Apple.

Before reaching the executive level at Apple, Cook worked for Compaq and IBM.

JD Lasica / Flickr.com

Marc Benioff

College: University of Southern California

Marc Benioff was a pioneer of cloud computing and now serves as the chairman and co-CEO of Salesforce. He earned a bachelor's degree in business administration from the University of Southern California in 1986. He enjoyed college so much that he never severed ties -- he currently serves on the school's board of trustees.

Scott Olson / Getty Images

Bob Iger

College: Ithaca College

Before he saved Disney, Iger graduated from Ithaca College in 1973, where he cut his teeth in one of the toughest gigs in show business. Intent on landing a television career, Iger spent five hard winter months working as a local weatherman in notoriously frigid Ithaca, New York.

Michael Reynolds/Epa/REX/Shutterstock

Jamie Dimon

College: Tufts University and Harvard University

Harvard graduate Jamie Dimon runs America's largest bank as the CEO of JPMorgan Chase. He's famous -- or infamous -- for protecting that bank by dumping $12 billion in subprime mortgages in 2006, which helped the bank survive the Great Recession.

Dimon graduated from Tufts University in 1978 and later enrolled in Harvard Business School. He parlayed the MBA he earned there in 1982 into a billion-dollar career.

Steve Lagreca / Shutterstock.com

Mary Barra

College: Kettering University and Stanford University

Mary T. Barra -- listed by Forbes as one of the world's most powerful women -- became the first woman to lead a major automaker when she was named CEO of General Motors in 2014. In 2018, she earned $21.9 million in total compensation at GM.

She graduated from Kettering University in 1985 -- it was called General Motors Institute then -- and earned an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 1990.

Nguyen Hung Vu / Flickr.com

Sundar Pichai

College: Stanford University and University of Pennsylvania

Sundar Pichai interviewed with Google on the day the company launched Gmail in 2004. Now he's the company's CEO and the CEO of its parent company, Alphabet, after Google's co-founder Larry Page stepped down in December 2019.

The metallurgical engineering student did so well at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur that he won a scholarship to Stanford. After earning his Master of Science, he earned an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School.

Dan Taylor / Heisenberg Media

Satya Nadella

College: University of Wisconsin and University of Chicago

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is credited with moving the software giant away from a failed mobile strategy and toward winning endeavors such as augmented reality, cloud computing and the purchase of LinkedIn. Nadella has two master's degrees. He earned a Master of Science degree from the University of Wisconsin and an MBA from the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business.

NVIDIA Corporation / Flickr.com

Jensen Huang

College: Oregon State University and Stanford University

Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang is the leader of a company that pioneered computer gaming in the 1990s and invented the GPU card. He earned a BSEE degree from Oregon State University and, like so many others on this list, a master's degree from Stanford.

Mary Altaffer/AP

John Donahoe

College: Dartmouth College and Stanford Graduate School of Business

John Donahoe took over as the CEO of Nike on Jan. 13, 2020, and although he didn't have experience in the apparel industry, he's a whiz in the tech world. He recently was the president and CEO of ServiceNow, an enterprise cloud computing company, and was the president and CEO of eBay from 2008 to 2015. Donahoe earned a bachelor's degree in economics from Dartmouth College and an MBA from Stanford University.

AP/REX/Shutterstock

John Legere

College: University of Massachusetts-Amherst, MIT, Fairleigh Dickinson University and Harvard University

T-Mobile CEO John Legere has more than 30 years of experience in the telecommunications industry -- and he built his career on an impressive academic resume. According to his UMass alumni page, he earned a bachelor's degree in business administration from UMass Amherst, a master's degree as an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an MBA from Fairleigh Dickinson University. He then completed Harvard Business School's Management Development Program.

JD Lasica / Flickr.com

Jack Dorsey

College: New York University and Missouri University of Science and Technology

After a brief stint at the Missouri University of Science and Technology, Jack Dorsey transferred to NYU, where he dropped out. At the age of 29, he was out of work, living in a tiny apartment and unable to find a job -- even at a local shoe store.

He dabbled in fashion, and then the self-taught coder went on to found Twitter. That final act made him one of the richest CEOs in Silicon Valley.

JD Lasica / Flickr.com

Mark Zuckerberg

College: Harvard University

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has weathered a scandalous -- yet financially successful -- past few years. But in 2004, he was a computer programmer and a recent Harvard dropout focused on spreading his emerging online platform from Harvard to campuses across the country and, eventually, the world. Dropping out of college hasn't prevented Zuckerberg from becoming one of the richest people in the world.

More From GOBankingRates

This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com: Where Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and 13 Other CEOs Went To College




The White House on Wednesday marked the 12th anniversary of the Affordable Care Act being signed into law, highlighting both the ways in which it has helped expand access to health care and efforts to strengthen coverage.

"Twelve years ago, I proudly stood beside President Barack Obama as he signed into law the most consequential expansion of health care in generations: the Affordable Care Act," President Biden said in a statement released by the White House.

"With the stroke of a pen - after decades of tireless efforts - millions of Americans gained peace of mind. And because of my Administration's efforts, including passing the landmark American Rescue Plan, we have lowered health care costs and made coverage more accessible than ever before - even amid a global pandemic."

Biden cited investments from the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, which increased the subsidies that help people afford their premiums and also lifted the income cap to allow more people to be eligible for assistance. He also pointed to outreach efforts to Hispanic and Black communities that have led to increases in enrollment.

"As Republicans try to raise health care costs for the middle class, Congressional Democrats and I will do everything in our power to protect and build on Obamacare's landmark achievements," Biden said.

Vice President Harris also spoke by phone with two women, from Pennsylvania and Ohio, on how the Affordable Care Act enhanced coverage for them and their families, according to a video released by the White House.

"It has meant everything for my family. This is the first time in so many years that I don't even think about my health care," one of the women told Harris on the call.

"The president and I, we believe that health care is a right and should not just be a privilege for those who can afford it," Harris says in the video.

The Department of Health and Human Services also promoted the anniversary on Wednesday with an event with health care providers and patients to highlight the benefits of the legislation.

Story continues

And former President Obama, who signed the Affordable Care Act into law, marked the occasion on Twitter by noting that more than 30 million Americans have health care coverage because of the legislation.

"During the pandemic, the Affordable Care Act helped make vaccines and COVID-19 tests available for free, covered emergency hospitalizations, and prevented insurance companies from denying anyone coverage based on a pre-existing condition," Obama tweeted.

The law was at risk in the early months of the Trump administration, with Republicans controlling each level of government, but attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act - often referred to as ObamaCare - failed in Congress.

The enhanced financial assistance under the American Rescue Plan is currently scheduled to expire at the end of this year. Biden's proposed Build Back Better plan would extend it through 2025, but that plan stalled amid concerns from Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) about the package as a whole.
Idaho Governor Brad Little has signed a bill into law banning abortion at six weeks of pregancy, before most women know they are pregnant.

The law  the first in the nation to mirror a restrictive Texas law that bans most abortions in the state  also allows family members of what it calls a preborn child to pursue legal action against abortion providers, with a reward of at least $20,000 plus legal fees, in lawsuits that can be filed up to four years after an abortion.

Unlike the Texas bill, the Idaho measure does include an exception for pregnancies as the result of rape or incest  but only if the woman files a police report and provides it to a physician.

If they fail to do so before an abortion, a rapists family members could sue and collect damages, according to the text of the bill and its legislative sponsor  what opponents argue will allow people to profit from bounties targeting women seeking medical care.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said this development is devastating for women in Idaho, as it will further impede womens access to health care, especially those on low incomes and living in rural communities.

Governor Little said in a statement that the novel civil enforcement mechanism will in short order be proven both unconstitutional and unwise.

Deputizing private citizens to levy hefty monetary fines on the exercise of a disfavored but judicially recognized constitutional right for the purpose of evading court review undermines our constitutional form of government and weakens our collective liberties, the governor said on 23 March.

He also expressed concern over the laws unintended consequences for sexual assault survivors.

Ultimately this legislation risks retraumatizing victims by affording monetary incentives to wrongdoers and family members of rapists, he wrote.

The law is set to take effect in 30 days.

In a statement that notably does not include the word abortion, Ms Psaki said the Texas law and copycat legislation it inspired has had profoundly negative effects  with women forced to travel hundreds of miles to access care, and clinics in neighboring states seeing a significant increase in demand since the law went into effect.

Story continues

Last month, Planned Parenthood reported that Oklahoma abortion providers saw a 2,500 per cent increase in abortion patients with Texas addresses compared to the previous year.

This is unacceptable, which is why [President Joe Biden] directed a whole of government response to protect womens rights that are currently under attack, Ms Psaki said.

Republican officials across the US, emboldened by the US Supreme Courts anticipated ruling in a case that could determine the fate of healthcare protections for women, have filed dozens of bills or have approved laws in place that could immediately or quickly ban abortion in more than 20 states if the decades-old precedent from Roe v Wade is overturned.

Following Decembers opening arguments in a Mississippi case involving a state law that bans the procedure after 15 weeks, the high courts six conservative justices signalled readiness to uphold the law, marking the biggest direct challenge to the constitutional right to abortion care.

The Supreme Court has also declined to intervene to stop the Texas law.

The Biden administration has called on Congress to codify protections in the Roe ruling in an effort to shut down these radical steps, Ms Psaki said.
Federico Scoppa/AFP via Reuters

ROMEFor the last two weeks, Russian oligarch watchers have had their eyes on the Scheherazade mega yacht docked in the posh Marina di Carrara in northern Tuscany. There are growing suspicions that the $700 million, six-deck super-luxurious vesselwith its two helicopter pads, various swimming pools, his-and-hers beauty salons and gold fixtures that would make Donald Trump jealousbelongs to Vladimir Putin.

Until two days ago, its Russian crew, led by British captain Guy Bennett Pearce, whose mother told the Daily Telegraph her son would never work for a murderer, didnt leave the ship. But The Daily Beast has learned that all that changed this week when the Russian crew disappeared overnight, replaced by an entirely British set, who, despite Brexit constraints that would require work visas, seem to have descended out of nowhere.

The crew change caught the attention of Italys General Confederation of Labor, which confirmed to The Daily Beast that the Russians are gone. Yes, they were all Russians until a few days ago, Paolo Gozzani, secretary of the confederation, told The Daily Beast. Today the crew is made up entirely of English. We are monitoring the situation inside the shipyards but not because I care whether it is Putins or not: I am worried about the repercussions that a seizure, or a freezing of assets, could have on the shipyard workers.

Italian financial police, who have already confiscated millions of dollars worth of yachts, villas, and bank accounts tied to sanctions against Russia, are working to untangle reams of documents that may or may not link the ship to Putin. Marianna Ferrante, spokesperson for the Italian Sea Group that manages the port, says the ship arrived about a year ago to be refitted. She says it does not belong to Putinat least not directly.

Wikicommons Media

But Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny says it does. His research team published a video they say proves the yacht belongs to Vladimir Putin, a sentiment shared by U.S. intelligence officials after The New York Times reported alleged ties to the Russian president.

Story continues

The area where the Scheherazadenamed after a key female character in Middle Eastern tale One Thousand and One Nightsis as close to Little Russia as anywhere in Italy. The port is lined with designer shops and a magnet for Russian tourists who flock to Forte dei Marmi resort, which hosts around 500 Russian regulars each summer, according to the local tourist board, which says most have cancelled for the upcoming season. In 2010, the residents petitioned to stop Russians from pushing out the locals, but in the end, the Russian Ruble won out and most of the port workers speak enough Russian to accommodate the numerous Russian yachts that are docked there most of the long Italian summers. The port authority said all the Russian yachts disappeared months before Russias invasion of Ukraine. All but the Scheherazade, which is currently the only vessel in Italian waters without a distinct owner, according to the Italian Financial police.

Francesco De Pasquale, the mayor of Carrara, has grown weary of the interest in the mega ship. He and the leaders of the Italian Sea Group have issued a joint statement denying Putin is the owner. According to the documentation available to the company and following what emerged from the checks carried out by the competent authorities, the 140-meter yacht Scheherazade, currently under construction for maintenance activities, is not attributable to the property of Russian President Vladimir Putin, says the statement, also sent to The Daily Beast.

But the port also conceded that if the Scheherazade were to be seized, it would be disastrous for the ports 400 workers who have already invested hundreds of hours and materials in the mega yacht refit. Inside the yard, 400 direct workers and another 200 work in the related industries, union leader Gazzoni says. If the yacht, which has been carrying out refitting operations for weeks now, were seized it would be a disaster, an immense impact on the work of the workers; the seizure would freeze a huge area of the construction site, who knows for how long, and would prevent new work from coming in.

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.
A Nazi-looted masterpiece is at the heart of Woman on Fire, the latest novel by Deerfield author and journalist Lisa Barr. (Julie Kaplan Photography)

Lisa Barrs latest novel, Woman on Fire, was just released on March 1, and it has already drawn extensive critical acclaim. Even more exciting for the Deerfield author is the news that actor Sharon Stone is going to produce and star in the film version.

Woman on Fire, published by Harper Paperbacks, revolves around a young journalist named Jules Roth who is given the challenging and dangerous assignment of locating a painting stolen by the Nazis more than 75 years earlier. Jules soon becomes embroiled in a major international art scandal.

Advertisement

Barr spoke about what inspired this work.

Ive been a journalist for almost 28 years, Barr said. I was a reporter in the Middle East and all kinds of places. Usually when Im working on fiction or Im writing something creatively, its been inspired by a news event. I was in the middle of working on another book, The Unbreakables, when I saw a news story called The Munich Art Hoard.

Advertisement

Lisa Barrs newest novel, Woman on Fire, will be produced by and star actor Sharon Stone. (Julie Kaplan Photography)

It told of the discovery in 2013, in an elderly mans rundown apartment in Munich, of 1,500 masterpieces. It included paintings by such artists as Picasso, Chagall, and Matisse.

It turns out that this old man was the son of Hitlers art thief, Hildebrand Gurlitt, Barr related. I thought to myself, Wouldnt this be a great place to launch a novel?

Thats where Woman on Fire begins.

Without giving away any spoilers, a ruthless art dealer steals from the robber, Barr revealed.

She wrote the book during the COVID-19 shutdown period.

I wanted to go back to the place of a young journalist, who I was back in my old days  before I had kids, Barr said. I was free and I was taking on any assignment. I was a bit fearless but a little bit too idealistic.

The painting that the young journalist is after, a work called Woman on Fire, may or may not be in The Munich Art Hoard.

It was really important to me on the historical end of it that I showcased the upwards of 600,000 artworks that were confiscated, stolen, looted, destroyed by the Nazis, Barr explained. I use this one painting to kind of represent what happened during the war and how it affected one family and all these layers of people around it to showcase the bigger picture.

Advertisement

The book presents a struggle between two strong woman  the young journalist and an unscrupulous art dealer, each going after the painting for her own reasons, Barr said.

Barrs first book, Fugitive Colors, also deals with stolen art but from the perspective of the artist. That book won the IPPY (Independent Publisher Book Awards) gold medal for Best Literary Fiction 2014 as well as first prize at the Hollywood Film Festival.

Sharon Stone became interested in Woman on Fire after Barr sent the actor an advance copy to read.

I had just read her memoir, The Beauty of Living Twice, and I was so blown away by it, Barr said. I thought, This woman is like the original Woman on Fire. Shes an activist, and she loves the arts, and shes involved with the Holocaust Museum. I thought it was going to be a great connection.

It turns out that it was.

Three week after sending Stone Woman on Fire, Barr received a text message from the actor telling her that she loved the book.

Advertisement

From there it all came together, Barr said.

Barr has impressive journalistic credentials having served as an editor for The Jerusalem Post, managing editor of Todays Chicago Woman, managing editor of Moment magazine, and an editor/reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times.

Currently she is writing full-time and collecting accolades for Women on Fire.

She reported it has been named a USA Today Bestseller, Good Morning America Pick for March, and Barnes and Noble Book of the Month Fiction Pick for March.

Ive had other books. Theyve done well but there was something about this book, Barr declared. I feel like I gave it all I had inside me. Im so honored that people are reading this story and connecting to it and passing it on.

Myrna Petlicki is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.
Destroyed cars seen at a bomb site in Kyiv. Amid Russia's

Destroyed cars pictured at the Retroville mall in Podilskyi district, Kyiv, on March 21, 2022, after a Russian missile struck the previous evening, killing at least 8 people. Credit - Alex Chan Tsz Yuk/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Six days after Russian forces invaded Ukraine, the YouTube account of jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posted a new video.

In a style part investigative journalism, part polemic, the videos hosts report that one of President Vladimir Putins allies, Russian senator Valentina Matviyenko, owns a multimillion-dollar villa on the Italian seafront. The video contrasts the luxurious lifestyle of Matviyenko and her family with footage of dead Russian soldiers, and with images of Russian artillery hitting civilian apartment buildings in Ukraine. A voiceover calls the war senseless and unimaginable. A slide at the end urges Russians to head to squares in their cities to protest at specific dates and times. In less than a week, the video racked up more than 4 million views.

For Russians, Navalnys YouTube channel is a key source of information that contradicts the Kremlin line. It has more than 6.4 million subscribers and is managed by a group of his allies under self-imposed exile in Lithuania. It is a thorn in the side of President Vladimir Putin, and a tonic for a country where TV news is dominated by the misleading narrative that Russias invasion of Ukraine is actually a peace-keeping exercise.

Despite this, YouTube has largely been spared from the Kremlins crackdown on American social media platforms since Russia invaded Ukraine nearly a month ago.

On Monday, a court in Moscow banned Instagram within Russia, labeling its parent company, Meta, an extremist organization. Earlier in March, Russia blocked Twitter and Facebook, too, after the platforms placed restrictions on Russian state-backed media. Instagram was used by over 50% of Russian internet users, according to data provided to TIME by market research firm eMarketer. The app had been a particular venue for activism: Many Russian celebrities spoke out against the invasion of Ukraine in their Instagram stories, and Navalnys Instagram page posted a statement criticizing the war, and calling on Russians to come out in protest.

Story continues

Read More: Its Our Home Turf. The Man On Ukraines Digital Frontline

But YouTube, the most popular social media platform in Russiaused by more than 75% of the countrys internet users according to eMarketerremains accessible, even though it is an even more popular outlet for opposition activists, and has leveled similar bans against Kremlin-funded media outlets. On March 11, YouTubes parent company Google announced that it would block Russian state-backed media globally, including within Russia. The policy was an expansion of an earlier announcement that these channels would be blocked within the European Union. Our Community Guidelines prohibit content denying, minimizing or trivializing well-documented violent events, and we remove content about Russias invasion in Ukraine that violates this policy, Google said in a statement. In line with that, effective immediately, we are also blocking YouTube channels associated with Russian state-funded media, globally.

The move upended years of status quo. YouTube always had the option to ban Russian state media outlets, which would have cut the Kremlin adrift from some of its most effective tools for spreading disinformation both within Russia and in the outside world. But the platform faced a dilemma. Russias government had repeatedly indicated that it would retaliate against any bans of Kremlin-funded media by banning YouTube entirely within the country. That could leave many millions of Russians cut off from independent news and content shared by opposition activists like Navalnys team. (It would also effectively delete 75 million YouTube users, or some 4% of the platforms global totalrepresenting a small but still-significant portion of Googles overall profits.) What emerged was a compromise, of sorts: YouTube and other social media companies would allow RT and Sputnik to remain on their platforms, and Russia would allow sites like YouTube and Instagram to keep operating in Russia.

So after Google announced it was banning Kremlin-backed media on March 11, YouTube users in Russia braced for a retaliatory ban that would take YouTube offline. But such a ban has not yet materialized. Today, YouTube remains the most significant way for tens of millions of ordinary Russians to receive largely uncensored information from the outside world.

Members of the media take photographs of the screen showing Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny at the penal colony during the trial in Pokrov, Vladimir region, Russia on Feb. 15, 2022. Mikhail SvetlovGetty Images

Part of the reason for YouTubes survival amid the crackdown is its popularity, experts say. YouTube is by far and away the most popular social media platform in Russia, says Justin Sherman, a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Councils cyber statecraft initiative. The platform is even more popular than VK, the Russian-owned answer to Facebook. When youre talking about blocking something like Twitter, which is used by a far smaller, albeit influential subset of the Russian population, thats a very, very different question to blocking access to the most popular internet platform in the entire country. Twitter was used by 5% of Russias internet users before it was banned in the country, according to eMarketer.

Still, Sherman says the situation is volatile, with Russia now more likely than ever before to ban YouTube. For an authoritarian government like Russias, part of the decision to allow a foreign platform in your country is that you get to use it to spread propaganda and disinformation, even if people use it to spread truth and organize against you, he says. If you start losing the ability to spread misinformation and propaganda, but people can still use it to spread truth and organize, then all of a sudden, you start wondering why youre allowing that platform in your country in the first place. YouTube did not respond to a request for comment.

Observers say that if Russia were to ban YouTube, it would be devastating for the countrys opposition movement. YouTube especially has been really key for independent media and activists [in Russia] to publish their content, says Natalia Krapiva, a Russian-speaking lawyer at the digital rights group Access Now. It has been very influential to help people see the corruption of the government. If YouTube gets blocked, its going to be harder and harder for people to see that.

How the Kremlin weaponized YouTube

On the same day as Navalnys channel posted the video about Matviyenko, elsewhere on YouTube a very different spectacle was playing out. In a video posted to the channel of the Kremlin-funded media outlet RT, (formerly known as Russia Today,) a commentator dismissed evidence of Russian bombings of Ukrainian cities. She blamed special forces of NATO countries for allegedly faking images of bombed-out Ukrainian schools, kindergartens and other buildings.

The video, along with the rest of RTs channel, has now been removed from YouTube. But until it was banned on March 11, RTs channel boasted of being the most watched news network on YouTube, claiming to have 10 billion cumulative YouTube views. It had more than 4.7 million subscribers on its main channel, and millions more across a network of others.

Before they were banned from the platform, the YouTube channels of Kremlin-funded media were some of the most significant online distributors of Russian disinformation, according to Joan Donovan, an expert on disinformation at Harvard Universitys Shorenstein Center. YouTube has, over the years, been a really important place for spreading Russian propaganda, Donovan said in an interview with TIME days before YouTube banned Russian state-backed media.

Read More: How Putin Is Losing at His Own Disinformation Game in Ukraine



Despite its popularity, Google took only limited steps to tackle Russian state media before 2022, out of the belief that doing so would prompt retaliation that could impact its ability to remain a valuable tool for Russian civil society, says Sherman. But the company did bend to some international pressure. In 2018, YouTube started labeling videos from RT with a notice that they are funded in whole or in part by the Russian government.

Still, Sherman says, historically, Google has preferenced staying in the Russian market, and catering as needed to the Russian government to stay in the market. In July 2021, the Russian government passed a law that would require foreign tech companies with more than 500,000 users to open a local office within Russia. (A similar law passed previously in India had been used by the government there to pressure tech companies to take down opposition accounts and posts critical of the government, by threatening employees with arrest.)

Google complied, opening an office in Russia. Then, in September 2021, as protests mounted against electoral fraud in recent elections, a group of apparent agents, believed to be members of the Russian intelligence service, turned up at the house of Googles most senior executive in Moscow, according to the Washington Post. The apparent agents reportedly demanded that Google take down an app designed by allies of imprisoned opposition leader Navalny to help coordination of protest voting. Within hours, Google removed the app from its app store. (Apple faced similar demands, and also removed the app from its app store.)

The heightened risk to free expression in Russia

Experts say that Russias ongoing crackdown on social media platforms heralds a significant shift in the shape of the Russian internetand a potential end to the era where the Kremlin tolerated largely free expression on YouTube in return for access to a tool that allowed it to spread disinformation far and wide.

Russian Police officers detain a woman holding a poster that reads: "I do not want to kill anyone" during an unsanctioned protest rally against the military invasion on Ukraine, in Central Moscow, Russia on March,6,2022. Konstantin ZavrazhinGetty Images

The result, many fear, is a new system where the biggest losers will be the Russian opposition. If Russians are cut off from access to YouTube, that would do enormous damage to Russian civil society, Sherman says. It would also push Russians more towards domestic platforms like VK, which are far more censored and far more surveilled by the Russian government than anything that the West is providing.

The only hope that many activists have left is that, amid a surging anti-war movement, Putin may not want to take the risk of banning YouTube, the most popular service on the Russian internet. But even so, the public response to such a move would be difficult to predict. Non-politically active people also use YouTube, Krapiva says. If they have these services taken away from them, they might turn against the government. Or they might turn against the West.
LONDON (Reuters) -WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange married his long-term partner Stella Moris inside a British high-security prison on Wednesday at a small ceremony attended by just four guests, two official witnesses and two guards.

Assange is being held in jail while U.S. authorities seek his extradition to face trial on 18 counts relating to WikiLeaks' release of vast troves of confidential U.S. military records and diplomatic cables more than a decade ago.

"I am very happy and very sad. I love Julian with all my heart, and I wish he were here," Moris said outside the gates of Belmarsh prison following the ceremony.

The 50-year-old Australian, who denies any wrongdoing, has been in the southeast London jail since 2019, and before that was holed up in the Ecuadorean Embassy in the British capital for seven years.

While living at the embassy he fathered two children with Moris, a lawyer more than a decade his junior, whom he met in 2011 when she started work on his legal team. Their relationship began in 2015.

The registrar-led nuptials took place during visiting hours at the prison, where some of Britain's most notorious criminals have served sentences, including child murderer Ian Huntley. Afterwards, the guests were asked to leave immediately.

For the occasion, Moris wore a lilac satin wedding dress and Assange a kilt - a nod to his family ties to Scotland - which were created by British fashion designer Vivienne Westwood, who has campaigned against his extradition.

The bridal dress featured an inscription of a personal message from Westwood, and the long veil was embroidered with words such as "valiant", "relentless" and "free enduring love".

"To me, Julian is a pure soul and a freedom fighter," Westwood said.

Outside the jail, Moris cut a wedding cake and gave a speech to supporters who had gathered for the occasion.

"You know what we are going through is cruel and inhuman," she said. "The love that we have for each other carries us through this situation and any other that will come. He is the most amazing person in the world. He is wonderful and he should be free."

Assange suffered a blow earlier this month when he was denied permission to launch an appeal at Britain's Supreme Court against a decision to extradite him. However, he could still challenge the government's ratification of the extradition.

(Reporting by William James and Michael Holden; Editing by David Goodman, Nick Macfie and Mark Heinrich)
FRANKFURT (Reuters) -A pay increase for thousands of workers at Deutsche Bank's retail unit Postbank has been agreed with management, brightening prospects for a wage deal for the broader German industry after months of wrangling and strikes.

The deal, sealed on Tuesday evening, comes as inflation in Germany hovers above 5% and after Deutsche paid its chief executive officer 20% more in 2021 to reward him for the bank's most profitable year in a decade.

Under the deal's terms, workers get a 3.1% pay increase from June 1 and a further increase of 2.1% from February 2023, the Verdi union and Deutsche Bank said. The deal also includes 750-euro ($826) payments in May and January.

The union had asked for a 6% wage increase and other benefits.

"Negotiations took place in an atmosphere of great uncertainty due to the environment of ultra-low interest rates, increasing inflation, and a dramatic geopolitical crisis in Europe," said Michael Ilgner, head of personnel at Deutsche Bank.

Workers went on a strike on Friday, the latest volley in the pay negotiations ahead of Tuesday's third round of talks.

Attention now turns to wage talks for 60,000 workers at Germany's public-sector banks and 140,000 workers at private banks.

Those workers have been seeking a 4.5% pay increase, as well as other rights such as working outside the office. That wage dispute has been going since last year.

High inflation has strengthened the hand of union officials, but banks have faced stiff competition and low profits, which has resulted in efforts to cut costs and reduce headcount.

Germany has more banks per capita than most of its neighbours and other industrialised economies.

($1 = 0.9081 euros)

(Reporting by Frank Siebelt and Tom SimsEditing by Miranda Murray and Mark Potter)
The escalating warnings of a Russian cyberattack on the U.S. cut against one of the war's most perplexing mysteries: Why has the Kremlin held back from unleashing its full hacking might against Ukraine?

Before Vladimir Putin launched his invasion a month ago, security experts warned that the coming conflict could redefine cyber warfare  both for Ukraine and for the United States. But so far, cyberattacks have been of limited importance in a war that Russia has waged using tanks, rockets, missiles and bombardments of civilians.

Im one of those people who over the years has been saying [the next war] would be so much cyber, said Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, the former commanding general of the U.S. Army Europe. Instead its been almost medieval what we have seen, not just sort of a cyber juggernaut that I had expected.

This could quickly change: President Joe Biden said Monday that cyberattacks from an increasingly desperate Russia are coming, while urging U.S. businesses to harden your cyber defenses immediately.



Dmitri Alperovitch, the co-founder of the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, said that despite the lack of major attacks so far, cyber warfare could still be on the horizon.

I do believe that cyber retaliation will still come. I think right now they are still preoccupied with prosecuting this war in Ukraine that is not going well, Alperovitch said of the Russians.

For now, though, Weve seen some cyber operations against Ukraine since the conflict started, but not nearly as many as we would have thought, said Ciaran Martin, the former CEO of the U.K.s National Cyber Security Centre.

The idea that war was moving online primarily, which has been put around for a quarter of a century  certainly at this point in 2022 is not accurate, Martin added. Those who would be pushing that sort of line I think have been pushing a version of cyber that doesnt exist.

So far, hacking assaults on infrastructure in Ukraine have been far less than what everyone acknowledges Russia is capable of.

Story continues

Shortly before the invasion began Feb. 24, a series of attacks temporarily disabled Ukrainian government websites, one of which was blamed on Russian intelligence services by the Biden administration and the United Kingdom. Ukraines government has also linked a Belarusian hacking group to malicious emails sent to Ukrainian military officials, and destructive malware wipers have been found in Ukrainian government and private sector organization websites.

Anne Neuberger, the deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technology, told reporters at the White House on Monday that Russia is continuing to conduct cyberattacks to undermine, coerce and destabilize Ukraine, pointing to the February website attacks.



But it is paradoxical that even as the Russian military has bombarded civilians across the country with bombs, missiles and artillery, blasting apartments, shopping malls and evacuation corridors, its cyberattacks have been limited in scope. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been able to hold video calls with the governments of several NATO countries detailing his nations needs. And even ordinary Ukrainians have been able to share videos of physical devastation by relying on functioning communications infrastructure. Ukrainian leaders have focused on requests for weapons and air power to fight back physically, rather than fighting Russia in cyberspace.

Both Senate Intelligence Vice Chair Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and committee member Angus King (I-Maine) told POLITICO this month that they did not know the reason behind the lack of cyberattacks, with King adding that he really wanted to get the answer.

Without inside knowledge of Putins state of mind, its impossible to definitively figure out the relative importance of these factors. But here is the evidence for each of them:

Russia didnt think it needed massive hacking

Russia has bombed wide swaths of Ukraine, and has cut off numerous areas, including the coastal city of Mariupol, from critical services. These efforts have effectively eliminated the need to use cyberattacks against critical infrastructure in the areas of Ukraine under bombardment.

The reality is that cyber is a fantastic tool for gray-zone conflict, that area between peace and war, where you are trying to hit back at the other party, but you dont want to escalate this to an actual kinetic conflict, Alperovitch said. Once conflict actually begins, once bombs are flying, cyber becomes much less useful.



Other experts agreed, noting that physical attacks can be even more disruptive than cyberattacks.

Physical invasion trumps cyber, Christopher Painter, the former cybersecurity coordinator at the State Department under both the Obama and Trump administrations, said earlier this month during a virtual Center for Strategic and International Studies event. You dont need cyber as much when you have tanks and planes on the ground and men on the ground, so maybe cyber  maybe it isn't the perfect weapon.

It all happened so fast

Another potentially important element is Putins apparent expectation that his troops would take Ukraine in a matter of days, and that he may not have given his military commanders full warning of his plans for Ukraine. Sophisticated cyberattacks, such as those that took down Ukrainian power stations in recent years and the SolarWinds hack that compromised at least a dozen U.S. federal agencies, take months to plan and execute. Dropping bombs on cities arguably takes less advanced strategic planning.

If, as seems to be the case, Putin withheld knowledge of his invasion plans from large sections of the Russian military and intelligence bureaucracy, then they wouldnt have had time to prepare those attacks, and you cant just conjure up a powerful cyberattack overnight, Martin said.

Russia has been trying and failing to do more

One possibility that U.S. officials floated earlier this month was the idea that the United States efforts to strengthen Ukrainian systems against cyberattacks in recent years had blunted some of Russias cyber offense. The New York Times reported earlier this month that U.S. Cyber Command had placed teams in Eastern Europe to interfere with Russian communications and attacks.

Weve worked very, very hard with Ukraine over the past several years, Gen. Paul Nakasone, head of both the National Security Agency and Cyber Command, testified to the Senate Intelligence Committee at a hearing last week. We had hunt forward teams from U.S. Cyber Command in Kyiv. We worked very, very closely with a series of partners at NSA and the private sector to be able to provide that information.



But other experts disagree that U.S. and NATO efforts alone are responsible for the lack of major successful attacks. Alperovitch pointed to confirmed past Russian attacks on U.S. critical infrastructure  such as the SolarWinds espionage hack discovered in late 2020, and the extensive interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election  as illustrating that Washingtons cyber tactics at home alone are not enough to defend U.S. systems.

The reality is the Russian cyber forces carry quite a punch, they are highly capable, and whatever we may have done in Ukraine the last couple of months would not have stopped them, Alperovitch said. If we have some magical defensive capabilities, dont you think we would have used them here to defend our own networks against Russian forces?

Are you going to tell me that in two months we were able to achieve in Ukraine what we werent able to achieve in 30 years here? he added. That is just nonsense.

Putin has something up his sleeve

Some officials argue that Putin might be relying on the cyber threat for its deterrent effect, seeking to intimidate the U.S. into avoiding actions such as allowing the transfer of fighter jets to Ukraine. But once a cyberattack takes place, its ability to deter the U.S. fades.

As Painter warned, Russia could be holding those capabilities in reserve, while Senate Intelligence Chair Mark Warner (D-Va.) told POLITICO last week that we have not seen their A-game tools.

The conflict is still early and we dont underestimate Russias willingness to use cyber to go after Ukraine and to go after us, House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) told reporters earlier this month.

Other nations are learning lessons from the conflict

Its important not to infer that Russias invasion of Ukraine is now the new standard for the conduct of cyberwar. After all, the invasion has not gone as Putin had hoped it would, and Russia is not the only nation with advanced cyber capabilities.

Chinas cyber capabilities likely exceed Russias, and China could look to lessons learned in Ukraine to inform its tactics for a potential invasion of Taiwan.

Arguably, imposing more of an information blackout on Ukraine would have served Russias interests better, both by making it harder for Zelenskyy to cultivate international support, and by disrupting communications within Ukraine. And successful cyberattacks that disrupted transportation and electricity in regions of Ukraine far from the front lines would have made it that much harder to resupply forces with weapons, ammunition, fuel and food.

The Chinese of course are watching this, and they will draw lessons from what could have been done better or differently, Hodges said.
PORT CHARLOTTE, Fla. (AP)  New York Yankees slugger Aaron Judge and five players from the World Series champion Atlanta Braves are among 31 players headed toward salary arbitration hearings that will occur during the regular season after they failed to reach contracts and exchanged figures with their teams.

Judge can become a free agent after the World Series, and the outfielder and the team say they want to discuss a long-term deal to keep him in the Bronx. Judge has asked New York for $21 million, while the Yankees have offered $17 million, up from $10,175,000 last year.

Meanwhile, Atlanta general manager Alex Anthopoulos could wind up with potentially awkward hearings against third baseman Austin Riley, shortstop Dansby Swanson, outfielder Adam Duvall and pitchers Max Fried and Luke Jackson. Anthopoulos told The Athletic on Tuesday that Atlanta's clubhouse was rattled when popular slugger Freddie Freeman left for the Los Angeles Dodgers as a free agent after Anthopoulos traded for Matt Olson from Oakland.

Riley has asked for $4.2 million and been offered $3.95 million, while Swanson wants $10 million vs. the team's offer of $9.2 million. Duvall asked for $10,275,000 vs. $9,275,000, Fried $6.85 million vs. $6.6 million, and Jackson $4 million vs. $3.6 million.

White Sox ace Lucas Giolito asked for $7.5 million but was offered $7.3 million, and Cubs catcher Willson Contreras wants $10.25 million against an offer of $9 million. St. Louis has two key players still without deals in Harrison Bader ($4.8 million vs. $3.8 million) and Tyler O'Neill ($4.15 million vs. $3.4 million).

Arbitration-eligible players who didn't reach agreement with their teams are set to have their cases heard by three-person panels over video conference after opening day, a scheduling oddity necessitated by baseballs 99-day lockout that pushed back the start of spring training and the regular season.

The deadline to swap arbitration numbers was delayed from mid-January until Tuesday. No dates have been set for hearings, which usually occur in February. Teams and players can continue to negotiate and may agree on a deal at any time.

Story continues

If teams and players dont agree to a salary before opening day, the player will be paid at the rate proposed by the club and salary would be adjusted retroactively, if necessary.

Batting champion Trea Turner and the Los Angeles Dodgers agreed to a $21 million, one-year deal. Acquired last July from Washington, Turner hit .328 with 28 homers and 32 stolen bases last season. He's set to become a free agent after this season.

Juan Soto, Turner's ex-teammate who is still with Washington, agreed to a $17.1 million, one-year deal  an $8.6 million raise. The 23-year-old Soto hit .313 with 29 homers and a .999 OPS last year.

The Blue Jays signed new third baseman Matt Chapman to a $25 million, two-year deal, six days after getting him in a trade with Oakland. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. got $7.9 million in his first season of arbitration eligibility.

Among other notable one-year deals signed Tuesday: NL Cy Young Award winner Corbin Burnes ($6.5 million), Boston star Rafael Devers ($11.2 million), Milwaukee closer Josh Hader ($11 million), New York Mets slugger Pete Alonso ($7.4 million), Cleveland ace Shane Bieber at $6 million and Cincinnati trade target Luis Castillo ($7.35 million),

Some other players who did not strike a deal before Tuesday's deadline: Baltimore's John Means and Trey Mancini; Cincinnati's Lucas Sims; Colorado's Kyle Freeland; Detroit's Spencer Turnbull; Kansas City's Andrew Benintendi and Nicky Lopez; Miami's Jesus Aguilar, Pablo Lopez, Jacob Stallings and Joey Wendle; Milwaukees Adrian Houser; the Mets' Chris Bassitt; Minnesota's Luis Arraez and Gary Sanchez; Philadelphia's Zach Eflin; Pittsburgh's Bryan Reynolds and Kevin Newman; Seattle's Adam Frazier, Mitch Haniger and Jesse Winker; Washington's Victor Robles.

___

Follow Jake Seiner: https://twitter.com/Jake_Seiner

___

More AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/MLB and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports
YouTube divers have helped solve a case from nearly two decades ago. 6abc Philadelphia/YouTube

The divers on the Adventures with Purpose YouTube channel may have found the body of a missing man.

They discovered the car of a man who went missing in 2003 in a lake in Ridley Township, Pennsylvania.

Police confirmed there was a body inside the car, and they were waiting on identification.

A team of YouTube divers from the group Adventures with Purpose may have helped police in Ridley Township, Pennsylvania get closer to solving a missing persons case from nearly two decades ago.

On March 20, the team posted a livestream on their channel saying they believed they had found the car belonging to James Amabile, who went missing in 2003, submerged 24 feet underwater in Darby Creek. They also found a body in the driver's seat.

"We are confident we have discovered not only Mr Amabile's vehicle, but his human remains as well," said Doug Bishop, one of the divers in the video.

The Adventures with Purpose YouTube channel was was founded by Jared Leisek in 2019 as a way to clean up lakes and rivers, but the team has since shifted focus to targeting cold cases. The group has over two million subscribers on YouTube, and its amateur investigation videos have become widely viewed. In February, the team found a woman's car submerged in a Florida pond 10 months after she was reported missing, also with a body inside.

Police confirmed in a statement on Facebook that a man's body was found in the vehicle, and the license plate matched "a missing person entry from December of 2003." Authorities have not yet identified the person and the department did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

"The investigation is continuing," the police department stated in its March 20 Facebook post. "The Delaware County Medical Examiner's Office is examining the human remains for positive identification. At this time we will not be releasing the identity of the missing person. The family has been advised of Police findings. Due to the sensitive nature of this discovery, the missing person's family requests privacy while the investigation is ongoing."

Story continues

Amabile disappeared in December 2003 after placing a call to the babysitter who was looking after his two daughters to say he was running late, according to CBS News.

"We believe and the family believes that we have definitely closed this case for them," Bishop continued in the video. "The medical examiner is going to have to do an exact identification before we can say for sure we have found Jimmy. He was known as Jimmy. His family is very extremely grateful."

Amabile's brother Stephen Amabile later told The Philadelphia Inquirer that he believed his brother, who was diabetic, may have driven into the lake after experiencing low blood sugar and making a wrong turn.

"It's my brother," he said of the findings. "They found him."

Read the original article on Insider
Chelsea's Russian owner Roman Abramovich applauds his players after they defeated Arsenal 6-0, in the English Premier League soccer match between Chelsea and Arsenal at Stamford Bridge stadium in London on March 22, 2014 (AP)

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky urged Joe Biden to not sanction Roman Abramovich as the Chelsea owner may be able to help with Russian peace talks, a report says.

The US Treasury Department was prepared to sanction the oligarch earlier this month along with the United Kingdom and European Union, but was told by the White House to hold off, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Mr Zelsneky had asked the president to wait on sanctioning Mr Abramovich, who has a close relationship with Vladimir Putin, as Ukraines leaders believe he might be a crucial go-between with Moscow, an official told the newspaper.

On the call Mr Biden reportedly spoke with Mr Zelensky on a range of sanctions that the White House intended to implement.

We are not going to read out private conversations between President Biden and President Zelensky, said Emily Horne, a spokeswoman for the White Houses National Security Council.

Earlier this month Mr Abramovich had all his assets frozen in the UK and European Union, while the US has already targeted wealthy oligarchs with its Western allies in an attempt to raise pressure on Mr Putin.

For the negotiations, and in the interest of them succeeding, it is not helpful commenting on the process nor on Mr. Abramovichs involvement, a spokesperson for Mr Abramovich said in a statement.

As previously stated, based on requests, including from Jewish organizations in Ukraine, he has been doing all he can to support efforts aimed at restoring peace as soon as possible.
TOKYO (AP)  Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in a virtual address to Japan's parliament on Wednesday, called on the lawmakers to keep up sanctions against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine to pressure Moscow into seeking peace.

Zelenskyy praised Japan for becoming the first Asian country to sanction Russia and asked Tokyo to go even further. He said trade with Russia should be banned and that foreign companies should withdraw from the Ukrainian market in order to prevent their investments from flowing into Russia.

Japan has acted tough against Russia since the invasion, in line with other Group of Seven countries, although Tokyos moves have triggered retaliation from Moscow. Russia this week announced it would discontinue peace treaty talks with Japan over the disputed Kuril Islands and withdraw from joint economic projects there, citing Tokyos sanctions.

But a compromise by Japan could set a bad precedent in East Asia, where China increasingly makes assertive military actions.

Zelenskyys speech was broadcast live in a parliamentary hall packed with hundreds of lawmakers, including Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.

During his approximately 10-minute speech, Zelenskyy, appearing in his now trademark olive-colored top, also criticized Russian attacks on Chernobyl, currently entombed after the 1986 explosion, saying Russia turned a nearby nuclear waste storage site into a battlefield. Imagine, he said, how long it will take to clean up the situation there when the war is over.

Zelenskyy, speaking through an interpreter who translated his Ukrainian into Japanese, also raised an alarm about the possibility of Russias use of nuclear and chemical weapons.

Zelenskyy criticized the United Nations Security Council, in which Russia and China are among five permanent members, as dysfunctional and in need of reform.

Zelenskyy's address came hours before Kishida was to leave for Brussels to join other leaders of the Group of Seven countries on the sidelines of an emergency NATO leaders' meeting.

Story continues

Japan has expressed solidarity with Ukraine and provided it with humanitarian assistance and non-lethal military equipment such as bulletproof jackets, binoculars and medical equipment. Japan, though notorious for its strict refugee and immigration policy, has also pledged to accept Ukrainians fleeing from their country.

Foreign dignitaries, including former U.S. President George W. Bush and former Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, have delivered addresses in person during visits to Japan as state guests, but an online speech by a foreign leader is unprecedented.

Zelenskyy has made online speeches to lawmakers in several other countries, including the United States, Britain, Germany, Canada, Israel and the European Union, often striking a chord with audiences by putting Ukraine's ordeal into the historical contexts of other nations.
Following the most recent U.S. Census, Amherst County is pursuing a redistricting plan for its local election districts that will relocate 453 residents from District 4 to District 5.

The Amherst County Board of Supervisors recently directed the county attorney to present the county plan to the Virginia Attorney Generals Office to review and certify with no objection the proposed redistricting boundaries as permitted by state code.

The board established a redistricting committee, which was composed of two board members, county staff and a citizen from each of the five local election districts. The committee came up with the option that shifts some residents to another district.

Equal population among the five districts is the most fundamental requirement for redistricting, said Jeremy Bryant, Amherst Countys director of community development.

Generally, the committee worked to ensure that each district was below a 10% deviation from each other. The 2020 Census results had 6,318 residents in District 1; 6,076 in District 2; 6,485 in District 3; 6,626 in District 4 and 5,802 in District 5. The difference between District 4 and District 5 is greater than 10%, which calls for boundary changes, said Bryant.

The amended boundaries, if the redistricting plan is approved, changes the District 4 count to 6,173 and the District 5 population to 6,255.

The committee spent a fair amount of time considering the changes, Bryant said.

He said the committee didnt want to draw lines in the middle of property or geographic boundaries that didnt make sense and the option pursued is the least disruptive that causes less travel for voters to their precincts than another considered.

Those redistricted from District 4 to District 5 would go from voting at Amelon Elementary School to the Monelison Middle School precinct, Bryant said.

In terms of commute and disruptions to people, its fairly minimal, Bryant said.

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 presentation on Amherst Countys animal shelter, which operates in the same facility as the Humane Society of Amherst County, came before the countys board of supervisors on March 15.

During the discussion, Supervisor Tom Martin said it appears the county has a major need for more spaying and neutering services.

The public shelter at 318 Shelter Lane in Amherst is in the process of incorporating operational guidelines mandated by the Department of Agriculture as well as hiring a new shelter manager, according to the county. According to county documents, the shelter is overseen by the Amherst County Sheriffs Office and has parties involved in that process: animal control officers and a shelter manager, who report to the Amherst County Sheriffs Offices administrative captain, and the humane societys president.

Three board members said at a Feb. 1 meeting they had received calls from concerned residents raising complaints about the shelters management. Supervisor Claudia Tucker said at that time shes been asked why the county government would not take it over, stating the shelter was a county-run function in the past before the sheriffs office, a constitutional office, stepped in to oversee it.

Supervisor Jimmy Ayers, who served as Amherst Countys sheriff from 1995 to 2015, said that office, at some point during his tenure, assumed oversight of the shelter and local jail inmates were there daily helping in the upkeep.

Its a core function of the county, not the sheriffs office, Ayers said at the Feb. 1 meeting, adding hes gotten several complaints from residents. Obviously, there are some problems.

Martin said at the February meeting the issue seems to be a hot topic in the county. He said he wants to make sure the animals are getting the best treatment possible.

The board was set to openly discuss a possible change in the structure of shelter oversight on March 1, but pulled that item from that days agenda and went into a closed session instead. The motion for the closed session cited a state code exemption on investing public funds where the countys bargaining position is involved and listed the financing and facility use arrangement between the county and the humane society. Supervisors took no action following the closed session.

The shelter has had a long history of regulatory warnings and violations the county is working to remedy, according to a document included in the boards March 1 meeting packet.

Captain Juette Renalds of the sheriffs office and Tony Cerqua, the humane societys president, on March 15 addressed the board on how the shelter functions.

Renalds addressed concerns about euthanasia, which the shelter performs in some situations, he said.

We have to balance the health of the animals, Renalds said. Our objective is to provide the healthiest animals we can to provide to the humane society for adoption.

Cerqua said the shelter and humane society, which are two separate operations, have been in the same building for 46 years. From 1976 to 2008, the humane society was contracted to run the entire facility, he told supervisors.

Were in the same facility for a reason, Cerqua said. It benefits the animals greatly and benefits the county greatly.

Two-thirds of the facility belongs to the county and a third belongs to the humane society, which is a nonprofit and is fueled by donations and a thrift store in Monroe that Cerqua said serves as a great revenue source.

According to a county staff study in the boards packet for its March 1 meeting, the shelter has had a lack of internal guidance and an incorrect organizational structure, which the document states can easily be corrected having the shelter manager report directly to the senior animal control officer rather than a sheriffs office captain.

Those non-critical violations from a September inspection by the Virginia Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services, according to county documents, are as follows:

animal custody records do not all include all required elements;

the shelter had not adequately separated animals of different ages and sexes;

the shelter was not following veterinarians protocol for determining when an animal requires veterinary treatment; and

the shelter was not following veterinarians protocol for control of contagious and infectious diseases.

Measures have been taken to addresses those violations, according to the document. The county avoided penalties, according to correspondence letters with VDACS, and County Administrator Dean Rodgers wrote in an Oct. 26 letter to that department he requested the Amherst County Sheriffs Office, which oversees the animal shelter operations, conduct an internal investigation.

I, along with the Sheriff, am very mindful of the need to correct any violations at the animal shelter, Rodgers wrote in the Oct. 26 letter to Regina Campbell, an animal care inspector for the state.

Additional aids to alleviate the situation include increasing the shelter managers salary, adding $2,000 to the salary of the senior animal control officer to pay for additional supervisory responsibilities and resuming use of the jail inmate workforce, according to the county studys executive summary.

Animals taken into the facility are strays or surrendered by homeowners, Cerqua told supervisors in the March 15 presentation.

The humane society will pay $1,000 to $2,000 to adopt an animal out for $125, Cerqua said.

But thats what were here for, said Cerqua. We try to save as many as we can.

Lost animals are posted on a social media page in hopes of reuniting them with their families, Cerqua said. No adoptable dog gets euthanized in the county, he told supervisors.

Out of 500 dogs that came through the shelter through animal control last year, seven were euthanized, Cerqua told supervisors. Two were because of cancer, two were very aggressive and three were bitten by a rabid animal, had no shots and were ordered by the health department to be put down, according to Cerqua.

Weve have dogs on our side for up to two years to get them adopted, Cerqua said. Again, dogs are no-kill. No dog gets put down in Amherst County thats adoptable. Thats a pretty good record for a county that generates a lot of homeless animals, Cerqua said.

Last year, 700 cats came through the building, and they generally are more diseased and most are feral, said Cerqua. Cats are more challenging to manage, he said.

There are some adoptable cats in Amherst County that get euthanized but every year we get better and better in reducing that number, Cerqua told supervisors, adding many of the cats cant leave the building because of sickness.

According to information in the boards March 1 agenda packet, roughly 30 dogs have been euthanized in the past two years because of rabies, illness or being considered a danger to the public. The number of cats put down because of illness, feral status or under a veterinarians directive was 168 in 2020 and 153 last year, the report states.

Cerqua said some residents request feral cats to place into barns for the purpose of eliminating rodents. The county has a large feral cat population, according to Cerqua.

You can put out a can of tuna and youll get a cat, he told supervisors.

Martin asked if there are enough spaying and neutering services available and if the county can do more in that area.

Its a big challenge for us right now, Cerqua said, adding support from local veterinarians in that area is very thin. Spay/neuter is a big issue in Amherst County.

Cerqua said some residents every year bring litters of puppies to drop off and the humane society offers to go their home and offer spay services to the mother free of charge, but the offer routinely is refused. Thats the mindset the humane society encounters in many situations, he said.

The board took no formal action on the matter but Martin indicated he would like Rodgers to work with Renalds and the humane society in increasing spaying and neutering outreach.

Because obviously, thats an issue, Martin said.

Rodgers suggested possibly soliciting bids through a request for proposals in seeking a discounted price for those services.

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 12-story rental apartment building, Highpoint at 8000 North. is opening in downtown Skokie at the northwest corner of Lincoln Avenue and Oakton Street. (Pam DeFiglio / Pioneer Press)

A 12-story apartment building is opening in downtown Skokie with rents as high as $4,149 monthly, and a neighboring business owner expressing a variety of thoughts about it.

On March 15, Skokie Mayor George Van Dusen, developer John Murphy and Skokie Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Howard Meyer were among the community leaders and building teams at a ribbon-cutting for the building, Highpoint at 8000 North, on the northwest corner of Lincoln Avenue and Oakton Street in Skokie.

Advertisement

The luxury rental building, designed by Lucien Lagrange, towers over the historic downtown area.

A 12-story rental apartment building, Highpoint at 8000 North. is opening in downtown Skokie at the northwest corner of Lincoln Avenue and Oakton Street. (Pam DeFiglio / Pioneer Press)

One of the highlights of this property is the views, said Irini Boeder, Vice President Marketing for Lincoln Property Company, which manages the building. You get an entire city skyline of Chicago and its spectacular. Its breathtaking when you see it from the twelfth floor.

Advertisement

You have easy access to the city but youre not in that downtown hustle and bustle, added Jeff Stanfield of Lincoln Property Company, who is business manager of Highpoint at 8000 North.

The building was originally planned as a partnership between Greenspire Capital, Pontarelli & Company, and Hoffman Homes. Construction began in 2018 but stopped a year later when funds ran out. In 2020, Murphy Real Estate Services purchased the property, hiring Lincoln Property Company as the management company.

Boeder did not know the reason why the original builders decided to make this a rental building rather than create condos, but said she thinks it was a good decision.

We know that there is a demand for rental properties in all of the markets that were in, Boeder reported. We find a lot of people that are either selling their home or would like to have flexibility in their lease term. We definitely see a lot of demand for the renting option over purchasingwhether youre in-between purchasing a home or you just started a new job in the Chicagoland area and youre not sure where you want to end up long-term.

Stanfield said that approximately 20% of the buildings 153 units are rented. He noted that approximately half of those renters are young professionals.

The building offers studio, one-bedroom, two-bedroom, and three-bedroom rentals. The website lists starting prices ranging from $1,482 for the lowest-priced studio to $4,149 for a three-bedroom unit.

A 12-story rental apartment building, Highpoint at 8000 North. is opening in downtown Skokie at the northwest corner of Lincoln Avenue and Oakton Street. - Original Credit: Pioneer Press/Chicago Tribune (Pam DeFiglio / HANDOUT)

The studios are 550 square feet; one bedrooms average around 750 square feet; two bedrooms are 1,000 to 1,100 square feet; three bedrooms are around 1,200 square feet.

Stanfield described the buildings amenities.

Advertisement

Our first floor is our office and a beautiful lobby and mailroom, he said. On the top floor we have a great fitness center with outdoor terrace. We have a beautiful open clubroom; a gaming area which includes pool table, ping pong, shuffleboard. We have five work-from-home spaces, private offices. And a party room with a beautiful chef kitchen that people can reserve. There are also grills and fire pits.

There is no doorman or security person onsite.

Stanfield said visitors have to be buzzed in and residents have a view of the lobby so they can tell who they are buzzing in.

The building will hold events for residents, Stanfield indicated.

Every other week, well have some sort of activity, whether it be wine tasting or candle making, he said. To get to know your neighbors and socialize.

Dogs and cats are allowed, but there is a size limit.

Advertisement

There is retail space on the ground floor for a restaurant and three other businesses but none of the spaces had been rented at publication time.

Wendy Kaplan, owner of the Skokie Theatre, expressed reservations about how the building will fit into downtown Skokie.

I have had many conversations with a couple of the local merchants who are very concerned that the building is not going to do for downtown Skokie what the village would like it to do, Kaplan said.

The issue is that many of the merchants in Skokie are concerned about the vacancies in the stores downtown. If the building goes up without stores on the street level, people are concerned that theyre not going to sell out the building and its going to be an empty eyesore on the corner like the empty stores all around the town.

Kaplan admitted, If we move a lot of upper-middle-class people into the neighborhood, thats a wonderful thing.

She still has questions, though. What are we as merchants going to offer them as the reason to be in the town? Its a difficult dilemma, she said.

Advertisement

Myrna Petlicki is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.
The push for universal broadband coverage in all of Amherst County continues to pick up speed through Firefly Fiber Broadband, a subsidiary of Nelson County-based Central Virginia Electric Cooperative working to cover the gaps.

Gary Wood, president of CVEC, on March 15 addressed the Amherst County Board of Supervisors on the ongoing and upcoming work to install a fiber network that provides internet coverage in unserved and underserved rural areas of Amherst.

Areas in service include Boxwood Farm Road, Grandmas Hill Road, Roses Mill Road, Warrick Barn Road, Flatwoods Road and areas close to CVEC substation areas in Gladstone and Colleen, according to Fireflys report. Those areas combined pass 650 homes, covering 352 active accounts and 60 miles of fiber laid out for an investment of $4.2 million, the report states.

Overall, Amherst County broadband expansion through Fireflys Regional Internet Service Expansion (RISE) project costs $28.5 million, which largely is funded through grant money. The RISE initiative covers 526 miles in the county and Amherst County has provided a $3 million grant match.

The RISE project is bringing service to just more than 36,200 underserved homes, businesses and other locations to 13 counties, including Amherst.

Wood said crews are slated in upcoming weeks to begin work in the Temperance area.

Our intent is to get all of the Central Virginia [cooperative] area built out by mid-year, Wood said.

The expanded coverage will bring service to 5,500 to 6,000 homes in Amherst County, which is a significant piece of the RISE project, according to Wood.

Other work slated in the county includes the Little Piney River area and Indian Creek, north of the Buffalo River to the county line with Nelson, and areas of Winton, Hartless Road, Geddes Mountain and Toytown Road, according to the update. Fiber will be built from Temperance to Elon, an area that includes the Blue Ridge Parkway and Virginia 130 to Madison Heights and Stapleton.

The work will continue until all who would like service are connected in those areas, Wood said.

Melissa Gay, CVEC communications manager and an Amherst resident, expressed excitement in speaking to supervisors about much-needed internet service finally arriving to all areas of her native county.

Its amazing that we will be able to have this here in every area, top of the mountain or down in the valley, Gay said.

Jeremy Bryant, the countys director of community development, said the completion of a fiber network in Amherst County within the several years is just incredible.

County Administrator Dean Rodgers asked Wood about areas not colored in the coverage map in much of Madison Heights and the town of Amherst currently served by Comcast.

Im hoping you have intentions to work your ways into those areas too and provide Comcast some competition, Rodgers said.

Wood said Fireflys first goal is to make sure anyone without an option for broadband has service.

And that is what we will do, Wood said. After that is over and when we get to 2024, early 2025, and all this [Virginia Telecommunications Initiative-funded] work is complete, which is a huge project, then we make decisions on where to expand beyond that where the economics work.

Wood said the economics work in areas with more density.

Were not looking to move to other parts of the state, said Wood. But we want to build service where people want.

Rodgers said the goal is to make sure everyone, including those in Comcast-served areas, has options securing affordable broadband.

Weve got a lot to do the next few years, Wood said. And we realize that people need it today. Were going to move as fast as we can and get service as quickly as possible to the highest number we can.

For low- and moderate-income homes, Firefly will go as far as it needs to reach that residence without charging, Wood said.

Supervisor Tom Martin voiced appreciation for the partnership between the county and Firefly in carrying out a major goal that county officials have said is crucial for residents, businesses and students currently challenged with lack of proper broadband.

Youve done what you said you were going to do, Martin said.

Amherst County is one of our favorite partners, Wood said.

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.
With a federal panel down to 87 potential new names for nine military installations that currently honor Confederates, Rep. Don McEachin, D-4th, is renewing his call for rechristening Fort Lee for a trailblazing African American logistics officer.

Over the past year, McEachin and Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina have urged retired Navy Adm. Michelle Howard, chair of the Naming Commission at the U.S. Department of Defense, to rename Fort Lee in honor of Lt. Gen. Arthur J. Gregg, a 35-year Army veteran who broke barriers.

McEachin notes that when Gregg retired in 1981 as the Armys deputy chief of staff for logistics, he was the highest-ranking minority general, and the second-highest ranking Black servicemember to date.

McEachin said in a statement that Gregg rose from private to three-star general and that he represents the very best of the American Armed Forces.

Virginias Fort Lee, Fort A.P. Hill and Fort Pickett are three of the nine U.S. military installations named for Confederates that are to receive new names.

African Americans from Virginia honored for their service to the Union and other Virginia-born Medal of Honor recipients are among the 87 names that the federal commission has culled from 34,000 submissions. The federal panel is to make its final recommendations by Oct. 1, with the secretary of defense to implement new names in 2024.

Gregg was born in South Carolina, but lived in Newport News during his high school years before he enlisted in the Army at 17. Following his military career he served in a number of business posts, including as vice president and general manager of Cox Cable.

McEachin said renaming Fort Lee as Fort Gregg would be an incredible acknowledgment, not only of Lt. General Greggs contributions, but of the innumerable sacrifices men and women of color have made for generations in service to our nation.

Gen. Colin Powell, another of the 87 names on the list, subsequently became the first Black chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the first Black secretary of state. Retired Gen. Lloyd Austin, who serves in the Biden administration, is the nations first Black secretary of defense.
American history will come alive at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday at the Council Bluffs Public Library when RJ Lindsey will bring a virtual presentation of Daniel Burnham: Make No Little Plans.

Lindsey, as Daniel Burnham, an architect in Chicago, will share his innovative rebuilding design of Chicago after the Fire of 1871, as well as the remarkable White City of the 1893 Worlds Columbian Exposition. Through extensive research, a meticulous attention to detail and the use of only documented speeches, letters and anecdotes, a vivid living portrait emerges of Burnham. This White City is also the setting of Erik Larsens book The Devil in the White City. Erik Larson will be speaking at The Arts Center at IWCC on Thursday, April 14th at 7 p.m.

Lindsey earned a Masters Degree from Illinois State University and is a member of Actors Equity, the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. As a theatrical professional, Linsey has appeared on stage and television. Thirty-five years of experience as a researcher, writer and actor have contributed to the success of his living history program.

You can attend this live Zoom event either at the library in Meeting Room B or from your home. Check the library Event Page at www.councilbluffslibrary.org to find out more details about the program, or to register to attend via Zoom.

The program is free and open to the public and has been made possible with help from the Council Bluffs Public Library Foundation. For more information contact the library at 712-323-7553 ext. 4014.
OFFUTT AIR FORCE BASE, Neb.  Sean Poulicek, 55th Civil Engineer Squadron Operations flight chief, received the Department of Defense Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve Patriot Award during a presentation at Offutt Air Force Base in January.

The Patriot Award reflects the efforts made to support citizen soldiers in various ways, including flexible schedules, time off prior to and after deployment, caring for families, and granting leaves of absence if needed.

The 55 CES has employees serving in the National Guard and Reserve forces in at least four states  Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, and Missouri. Pouliceks received his award for contributing to national security and protecting liberty and freedom by supporting employee participation in Americas National Guard and Reserve Force.

National Guard or Reserve members or their spouses nominate individual supervisors and bosses for the award for support provided directly to the nominating service member and his or her family. Though the award is not for an entire organization or staff, those making nominations can submit as many supervisors as they would like. Each awardee receives a certificate and lapel pin.

Per its website, the ESGR is a DoD program that was established in 1972 to promote cooperation and understanding between Reserve Component service members and their civilian employers. They also help resolve conflicts that arise from an employees military commitment. ESGR is supported by a network of more than 3,000 volunteers in 54 committees located across all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Guam-Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

ESGR volunteers come from a variety of backgrounds, including small business and industry, government, education and prior military service. They work with ESGR Headquarters staff and state committee support staff to promote and enhance employer support for military service in the National Guard and Reserve.

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.
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.
You are here: Arts

The Ministry of Civil Affairs has urged local government departments and funeral service providers to adopt epidemic control protocols ahead of Tomb Sweeping Day to ensure people's needs to commemorate their ancestors and deceased loved ones can be satisfied.



Due to the resurgence of COVID-19 cases across the country, the ministry asked service providers at a meeting on Monday to step up efforts to avoid large-scale gatherings and curb infection clusters.

Green awareness, safety and morality in conducting tomb-sweeping activities will be encouraged, it said, adding that graveyards have also been cautioned about managing fire risks.

Tomb Sweeping Day will fall on April 5 this year.

It is a traditional day for Chinese people to visit the graves and tombs of their ancestors and loved ones, and carry out tomb-sweeping and commemorative activities, including burning paper money and other possessions made of paper as a way to pay tribute to them.

Many people travel home for the event, but since the COVID-19 epidemic, travel has been discouraged.

Recently, COVID-19 cases have seen a resurgence across the country, causing stricter epidemic protocols in some regions.

The National Health Commission said the Chinese mainland reported 2,281 new locally transmitted cases with confirmed symptoms on Monday, as well as 2,313 new local asymptomatic cases.

Many cities require people to present a negative nucleic acid test taken in the previous 48 hours before allowing entry.

Beijing requires travelers to present a negative nucleic acid test result taken within 48 hours and a green health code, and travelers are also required to have another nucleic acid test within 72 hours of their arrival. Residents from any county-level region with an infected case in the past 14 days are not allowed to enter the capital.

Beijing residents are also being discouraged from leaving the city without good reason.

Shanghai has asked travelers to present a negative nucleic acid test result taken within 48 hours when entering or leaving the city.

Northeast China's Jilin province has banned travel to other provinces since March 14.

Some regions have even shut down public funeral service venues in accordance with epidemic protocols to prevent mass gatherings.

In Shenzhen, Guangdong province, all funeral service sites have been closed temporarily since March 14.

In Tianjin's Jinnan, Xiqing and Wuqing districts, visits to tombs and graveyards have been discouraged since last week.
Moroccos Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita had separate phone conversations with his Russian and Ukrainian counterparts, Sergei Lavrov and Dmytro Kuleba, on Tuesday, March 22, 2022.

This was the first high-level contact between Nasser Bourita and his Russian and Ukrainian counterparts since the outbreak of the armed conflict between Moscow and kyiv on February 24, 2022.

The Moroccan Foreign Ministry made the announcement in two tweets. The first reports the interview with Sergei Lavrov, the second, posted an hour later, announced the telephone conversation with Dmytro Kuleba, with no details on the contents of the talks.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a press release that the exchanges between the two ministers focused in particular on the situation in Ukraine. Sergei Lavrov informed his Moroccan counterpart of the objectives of the special military operation to protect the republics of Donbass and gave an update on the progress of negotiations between Moscow and kyiv.

During this phone conversation, the two parties also discussed the development of relations between Morocco and Russia, and agreed to organize in Moscow the meeting of the Intergovernmental Committee of economic, scientific and technical cooperation, stated the press release.

Nasser Bourita and Sergei Lavrov took this opportunity to discuss the progress of the preparations for the 6th ministerial session of the Russian-Arab Cooperation Forum scheduled in Marrakech, the press release said, adding that the Forum dates have been mutually accepted by the participants.

The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry on its part said in a message posted on its twitter account that talks between Dmytro Kuleba and Nasser Bourita focused on ways to strengthen bilateral cooperation, including within the UN, to intensify the global humanitarian aid to Ukraine.

Minister Nasser Bourita expressed his gratitude to Ukraine for the efforts made to successfully evacuate Moroccan students.
Ex-Tunisian President Moncef Marzouki Tuesday indicated that there is currently a plan for a coup detat to ouster incumbent leader Kais Saied, without providing further details about the plotters.

A decision to remove Kais Saied by a coup detat is already taken, and his replacement is ready, he said during a video conference of parties forming the democratic front in the North African country.

Marzouki, in exile in France, has been condemned to 4 years in prison for treason after the regime of Saied accused him of sabotaging the country.

The former Tunisian President is one of the leading outspoken critics of Saied over his last years July 25 move during which he seized all major powers, froze the parliament activities and lift MPs immunity. He also targeted the judiciary and recently decided to dissolve the High Judicial Council.

Marzouki has also called on the army to ouster Saied who was elected in October 2019 following the death of Caid Essebsi.
By backing the Moroccan autonomy initiative as the most serious, realistic and credible basis for resolving the dispute over the Sahara, Spain wants to contribute to resolving this issue that has lasted too long, Spanish Foreign Minister, Jose Manuel Albares said on Tuesday.

This decision aims to contribute to ending a conflict that has lasted for over 46 years, Albares said before the Spanish Senate, assuring that Spain has followed the lead of other world powers that have supported the Moroccan approach.

On March 18, Spain officially endorsed in a letter by the head of the Spanish Government Pedro Sanchez to King Mohammed VI Moroccos Autonomy Plan as the most serious and credible solution to end the decades-long dispute.

Spains position is very similar to that adopted by France and Germany, meaning that the Moroccan autonomy plan is the most realistic basis, the Foreign Minister insisted.

I do not see that anyone thinks that the position of these two countries is not in compliance with international legality, Albares added, noting that the position expressed by the Spanish government is in line with the UN Charter and the Security Council resolutions, including the latest resolution 2602.

It is also in line with the support given to the mission of the UN Secretary Generals personal envoy for the Sahara, Staffan de Mistura, he said, while stressing the importance of the relationship with Morocco that he described as fundamental.

The relationship with our southern neighbor is fundamental, he said, reiterating his countrys determination to boost cooperation with Morocco at all levels, including in terms of management of migration flows, security, and the fight against terrorism.

The Spanish Foreign Minister, who was earlier this week on a visit to Brussels, also met with Staffan De Mistura to discuss Spains new stand and support to the Morocco-proposed autnomy plan.

The head of Spanish diplomacy highlighted during the talks that his country supports De Misturas work to achieve a mutually acceptable solution within the framework of the United Nations.

The Spanish official reiterated that Spain considers the autonomy initiative presented by Morocco in 2007 as realistic and credible to resolve this conflict.

The Spanish Foreign Minister is scheduled to visit Rabat this March, announced the Spanish government. A visit of Pedro Sanchez to Morocco is also planned. The date of the visit has not been announced yet.

The historical change in the Spanish position on the Sahara conflict continues to trigger reactions internationally, and particularly in Spain.

In this connection, Isabel Rodriguez, the Spanish government spokeswoman, echoed Albares statement, emphasizing that her country is entering a new phase in relations with Morocco.

The most important thing is to look to the future and not look back on the past. We are satisfied with this agreement, which means the re-establishment of diplomatic relations with a neighboring and strategic country for Spain, she said.

Rodrigues emphasized that preserving good ties with Morocco is of great importance to the Spanish government.

Morocco is a strategic ally with which we maintain human, historical, geographical, and economic ties, Rodriguez added.

Spanish governments former president Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has once again defended his countrys position on the Moroccan Sahara issue, stressing that Madrids support to Moroccos Autonomy Plan is in the interest of Spain, its security, its domestic policy and stability.

Zapatero said in an interview with El Pais daily, published on Wednesday, I appreciate this position because it is sincere and courageous [] and taken in a free manner.

The former head of the Spanish government (2004-2011) noted further that the position is part of a political consistency.

According to Zapatero, what the government has done is to clarify and ratify the stance of Spain which is a constructive position and support to Morocco. He recalled that since the presentation by Morocco of this initiative in 2007, the UN Security Council has welcomed it and supported a solution within its framework.

The decision taken by the government of Pedro Sanchez is the explicit confirmation of the policy of Spain since 2008, he said, adding that he has expressed his support for the Moroccan autonomy plan since that date.

The peaceful resolution of conflicts must be based on logic and the search for an agreement, said Zapatero, assuring, in this sense, that the Spanish government has taken a courageous and correct decision. Governments have the political responsibility to find solutions, not just to show compassion, he said.

Former President of the Spanish government, Felipe Gonzalez in turn gives his full support to the new position of his country recognizing the plan for autonomy as the only viable option to definitively settle the Sahara issue.

Another former head of the Iberian government and connoisseur of the Sahara dossier, Felipe Gonzalez, added his voice to that of Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero to express support to Madrids new position, recognizing the autonomy plan as the only possible way out of the conflict.

In statements reported this Wednesday March 23 by the official Spanish agency EFE, Felipe Gonzalez affirmed that the Moroccan autonomy plan was the only proposal which offers a negotiated exit from the conflict. An option described as viable and within the framework of the United Nations.

The plan for Moroccos autonomy is the only proposal already in the hands of the United Nations and offering a viable solution to the Sahara issue, he insisted.
Jay D. Amaya, who was convicted in the 1998 murder of a 20-year-old North Platte woman, will get a hearing on his motion to dismiss the charges against him.

District Judge Michael Piccolo scheduled a one-day evidentiary hearing for Sept. 7. Piccolos decision came after a March 15 hearing.

Amaya, 44, was sentenced to life imprisonment on Nov. 19, 1999.

He pleaded no contest to first-degree murder, use of a deadly weapon and first-degree forcible sexual assault in the death of Sheri Fhuere.

Amayas co-defendant, Michael E. Long, had agreed to testify against Amaya in exchange for reduced charges.

Fhuere was found dead in her North Platte residence on July 16. 1998. She had been raped, beaten and her throat was slashed. When law enforcement officers arrived to the scene, they found Long attempting to resuscitate her.

Amaya filed a writ of error coram nobis on Jan. 19, 2021. Such a motion asks the court to correct a judgment based on a fundamental error not reflected in the initial proceedings.

Amaya claims that a document containing his privileged communication with his then-attorney was, knowingly, purposely and intentionally opened and read by law enforcement investigators.

That information was then shared with other enforcement officers and the prosecutor, the motion said.

Because of that, Amaya contends, he was deprived of his rights to effective assistance of counsel and a fair trial.

Amaya also filed a motion for post-conviction relief on Feb. 18, 2021. It claims that North Platte Police Department investigators knowingly and purposely tampered with physical evidence, reports and witnesses outside of their official duties.

The motion also claims that the prosecutor knowingly and intentionally withheld exculpatory evidence from the defendants counsel and the court.

In an affidavit, Amaya says he was led by his lawyer to believe that if he did not plead no contest in the case, he would be sentenced to death by electrocution.

The appeal is Amayas fourth in the case since 2006.

The Nebraska Supreme Court has upheld a lower courts ruling in the previous three.

The most recent was in February 2020, when it upheld a lower courts dismissal of a DNA proceeding.

Amaya had sought relief in 2017 under the DNA Testing Act. He requested testing of four pieces of evidence in the case.

According to court documents, the DNA test results generated a profile consisted with a mixture of two individuals. Results from a bite mark showed the major DNA profile matched Amaya.

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.
North Platte Planning Commission members made a few last tweaks to their proposed residential zoning updates before sending them to the City Council Tuesday.

The final package, advanced 7-0, includes an extra avenue for upgrading mobile homes on a single-family lot where the homes owner also owns the lot.

Such mobile homes on single lots will continue to be allowed as nonconforming uses if the council April 5 approves reducing the number of types of residential zoning districts from four to three.

The draft proposal previewed at a Feb. 3 council work session said such homes owners would have to seek council permission to replace their mobile home with another.

That will remain the only option should the owner wish to replace one older mobile home with another, Planning Administrator Judy Clark told panel members.

The updates advanced to the council now say they also could do so with a permit  without going to the council  if the new mobile home meets four requirements:

 It would have to have a pitched roof with a minimum vertical rise of 2 inches for each 1 foot of horizontal run.

 Exterior materials would have to be of a color, material and scale comparable to those of site-built single-family homes.

 The mobile home would have to have its wheels, axles and removable towing apparatus removed.

 It would have to meet standards for mobile homes in existing city codes.

Planning Commission members also specified that recreational vehicle parks must be on land under single ownership and be at least 1 acre in size.

No one spoke at a public hearing before the panel voted to forward its plan to the council after several months work.

Council members will hold their own hearing and first-round debate April 5 on the package, which would be presented as an ordinance.

The updates would need three yes votes from the council unless it decides to waive one or two rounds of debate.

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.
State school aid for 2022-23 will grow by 6.1% for North Platte Public Schools and a combined 7.9% for the 40 K-12 districts in The Telegraphs traditional coverage area.

Total aid for those districts will rise for the fourth straight school year after dipping to a 20-year low in 2018-19, based on Nebraska Department of Education aid totals certified last month.

West central Nebraska districts will share $55.43 million in school aid, compared with $51.36 million for the 2021-22 school year that ends Aug. 31.

Nebraskas total 2022-23 state-aid pool will be $1.07 billion, rising by 2.3% after slipping by 0.6% in 2021-22 and 1.2% in 2020-21.

To view your districts latest and past aid totals, visit sfos.education.ne.gov/forms/formshome.

North Plattes next school budget will include just under $10.49 million in state aid, compared with $9.89 million for 2021-22.

Its the first time west central Nebraskas largest district will receive more than $10 million in aid since 2017-18.

Two of Lincoln Countys other five K-12 districts also will see increases, with aid growing by 16% to $1.88 million for Hershey and 45.4% to $240,081 for Sutherland.

Maxwells $1.58 million in total aid, however, will be 8.2% lower than in 2021-22. Aid will fall by 9.7% to $383,454 for Brady and 10.8% to $223,399 for Wallace.

Twenty-three of the 40 regional districts will receive more help from the state in 2022-23 than they did the previous year.

Aid totals vary depending on the degree to which Nebraskas 32-year-old school-aid formula concludes that a district has greater educational needs than fiscal resources.

Those judged to have greater resources typically must rely more on property taxes. School taxes routinely account for the majority of property owners tax bills.

Only nine west central Nebraska districts will receive 2022-23 equalization aid, which usually is tied to the extent to which their students come from low-income families or whose first language isnt English.

Lexington, which will gain 14.2% in overall aid to $24.27 million, again leads the regions list of equalized districts. Nearly $24 million of its total comes from equalization aid.

North Platte comes in a distant second, with $9.88 million in equalization aid. Other equalized 2022-23 districts are Cody-Kilgore, Cozad, Gothenburg, Hitchcock County, McCook, Medicine Valley and Overton.

Twenty-two regional districts will receive net option funding, awarded when more students transfer into their districts than leave for other districts.

Hershey ($1.84 million) and Maxwell ($1.56 million), North Plattes immediate neighbors along Interstate 80 and U.S. Highway 30, lead the list of net option districts.

All districts receive rebates of 2.23% of their patrons total state income tax payments. That percentage was 20% when the Legislature laid the foundations of Nebraskas current aid formula with Legislative Bill 1059 in 1990.

That rebate accounts for the only state aid that 13 of west central Nebraskas 40 districts will get next year.

Ogallala ($138,007) and Broken Bow ($104,198) lead that group. But Hayes Center will receive just $8,798 and McPherson County $5,917 in 2022-23 aid, all of it from the income-tax rebates.

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.
Writer Beer & Society

There is nothing that cannot be discussed and worked out over a beer. Join me as I explore local beer, breweries and how they can civilize us.
Zhengzhou, Henan province-based instant noodle maker Baixiang Food Group has gone viral online as the company gained popularity among consumers recently for its better product quality, which is partly due to Baixiang's insistence on not cooperating with any outside suppliers, a move to avoid risks of compromising food safety.

A growing trend among foodmakers of keeping suppliers in-house comes in the wake of compromised food safety practices related to substandard pickled cabbage in the industry.

The traditional instant noodle sector could experience changes in patterns and it is facing multiple challenges with the emergence of various instant, self-heating meal options and the rapid growth of the food delivery sector, analysts said.

Conventional instant noodles require boiled water, but self-heating foods such as rice and hotpot dishes are easier to cook. They can be heated up after opening via a chemical reaction, or after simply adding tap water.

During the annual gala of China Media Group on March 15, also the World Consumer Rights Day, it was revealed that compromised food safety practices related to pickled cabbage production exist among some noodle makers.

Master Kong, owned by Tingyi (Cayman Islands) Holding CorpChina's largest instant noodle makeradmitted that it had purchased the pickled cabbage in question to produce a kind of popular instant noodles.

Peer Uni-President China Holdings Ltd clarified that it does not deal with the pickled cabbage suppliers in question. It also contacted its cabbage suppliers to ensure supplies meet required standards.

Since then, a large number of consumers have turned to Baixiang instant noodles, online and offline, creating "big surge in demand" as was described in the company's out-of-stock announcement.

In 2020, Master Kong, Uni-President China and Jinmailang, a domestic instant noodle maker, accounted for 46 percent, 15 percent and 11 percent of domestic market share, respectively. Baixiang took a 7 percent share, the fourth-largest, according to the Chinese Institute of Food Science and Technology.

"The technological development of automated production has raised the overall strength of the instant noodle sector. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, consumers have shown significant demand for instant foods. Retailers should conduct more research about market demand in the pandemic-ravaged era and upgrade their products and management models," said Shao Wei, deputy chairman of the Chinese Institute of Food Science and Technology.

During the 2022 Beijing Winter Paralympic Games in early March, it was reported that about one-third of Baixiang employees were people with disabilities. Many consumers have since recognized the company's support to the group and purchased instant noodles to express their recognition of the company.

Baixiang said it is increasing its investment in research and development by building more advanced labs, upgrading facilities and attracting more talent. It also aims to develop more varieties of products. For instance, it has a buckwheat noodle product that targets people who aim to keep fit and lose weight, the company said.

"Some medium-sized instant noodle retailers such as Baixiang need to further upgrade their products and sales channels and achieve diversified development. A short period of enthusiasm from consumers won't support their long-term growth," said Zhu Danpeng, a food industry analyst.
Hes back! Photo: Michael Reynolds-Pool/Getty Images

Republicans participating in the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson can mostly be sorted into two groups. Some are being fairly civil and more or less relevant in their questioning, pausing frequently to congratulate themselves for behaving better than Democrats did during Brett Kavanaughs hearings (which involved serious sexual-assault allegations). But some Republican senators arent behaving well at all, and their outbursts often have little to do with Jackson.

The latter group includes several Judiciary Committee Republicans thought to have aspirations for higher office. Senator Josh Hawley has been attacking Jacksons record on child-porn penalties (possibly as a shout-out to QAnon and Pizzagate enthusiasts). Senator Tom Cotton keeps trying to identify Jackson with criminal-justice reform efforts he considers dangerously wrong-minded, which fits with his larger effort to wage a latter-day war on drugs (and crime). Senator Ted Cruz has gone to laughable lengths to tie Jackson to critical race theory, the furor du jour among conservatives. And batting cleanup each day, Senator Marsha Blackburn has reinforced every hard-core and irrelevant attack raised by her colleagues, possibly as part of an audition to be Donald Trumps next running mate.

But none of these senators can match South Carolinas Lindsey Graham in terms of heated, out-of-control expostulations. Maybe the fact that he brought up Kavanaugh at least three times is unsurprising since Graham was the face of Republican fury over the allegations against Kavanaugh when they arose in 2018:

But if possible, Graham is even angrier now. At one point on day three of Jacksons hearings, Graham badgered the judge, demanding that she say how shed feel if the Judiciary Committee confronted her with an ambush like the one that he claimed Kavanaugh had faced.

This wasnt a lone, retroactive burst of petulance. In his first round of questions a day earlier, Graham got increasingly heated about policies that allowed the release of prisoners from Guantanamo Bay (which was only tangentially related to a long-ago case in which Jackson represented prisoners) and stalked out of the room when his tirade ended. And when he wasnt relitigating grievances over Kavanaugh and former Court of Appeals judge Janice Brown Rogers (a Black jurist temporarily blocked by Democrats for her extremist views over the constitutionality of social programs), Graham got into Jacksons face on the child-porn sentencing issues that other senators had already beaten to death:

Lindsey Graham continues to interrupt and talk over Ketanji Brown Jackson pic.twitter.com/nMF6U1HBTb  Acyn (@Acyn) March 23, 2022

Unlike some of his posturing colleagues, Lindsey Graham is on no ones short- or longlist for president in 2024. His 2016 campaign crashed and burned before voters even voted (the day before he suspended his campaign in December 2015, RealClearPolitics showed him with a polling average of 0.5 percent of GOP voters supporting his candidacy). The main legacy of Graham 16 was the nasty words he said about Donald Trump that he later had to eat (as he did with no visible shame).

So if Graham doesnt harbor presidential ambitions anymore, and he isnt facing an election any time soon (he was reelected in 2020), why is he so out of control at the Jackson hearings? Maybe its just who he is.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse holds up a copy of The Kremlin Playbook while delivering remarks with Senator Lindsey Graham during a hearing on Russian interference in the 2016 election on May 8, 2017. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Ever since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, the aggressive sanctions response by the U.S. has been undermined by the fact that, for decades, Russian oligarchs have laundered their ill-gotten gains through the American financial system. Its been an open secret that some of Russian president Vladimir Putins closest allies own luxury apartments in New York, though its unclear exactly how much U.S. real estate is secretly financed by the oligarchs. There are other problems as well. For example, even if U.S. authorities believe a property was purchased using stolen or laundered money, they have to prove it in court  which can be difficult, expensive, and time-consuming if the owners fight the allegations. To facilitate the process, the federal government recently formed Task Force KleptoCapture; the joint operation among several agencies aims to get to the root of how sanctioned oligarchs are hiding their money. There are also groups of vigilantes trying to find oligarchs apartments themselves.

Last week, a bipartisan group of senators introduced the Asset Seizure for Ukraine Reconstruction Act, which would allow the federal government to more easily seize and liquidate the holdings of Russian oligarchs and use that money to fund the Ukrainian resistance. The bill is sponsored by Sheldon Whitehouse and has backing from his fellow Democratic senator Richard Blumenthal as well as Republican senators Lindsey Graham and Roger Wicker. If passed, it would give the president wartimelike powers to target Russian businesspeople and more easily sell off whatever assets they have  plus give people a bounty for dropping a dime on the Russians. I talked with Senator Whitehouse about how the bill came to be, what the senators hope to accomplish, and what this would mean for peoples fundamental rights in the U.S.

How did this bill come into existence?

The bipartisan agreement around measures like this was forged at Februarys Munich Security Conference among the American delegation. We worked with Senator Graham, in particular, to write it up correctly in a way that he and Senators Wicker and Blumenthal would all be aligned with. Our sense was that a critical way to put pressure on Putin was to squeeze his corrupt oligarchs  much in the way that the Ukrainian oligarchs turned on former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, causing him to flee to Russia when his position became untenable and started to affect their interests.

The Munich conference took place a few days prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. So this was what? A deterrent? A potential option if Putin did decide to pull the trigger and invade?

We were getting pretty solid briefings and warnings that the decision to invade had already been made, and that it was only a matter of time until the actual commencement of hostilities. So we were trying to address how we could improve on the general sanctions regime by allowing more aggressive deployment against oligarchs assets. What weve tried to do in this bill is to couch the presidents power to seize foreign oligarchs assets in the executive national security powers. If youre trying to seize an Americans assets, theres an enormous amount of procedure and due process required. Thats one extreme. The other extreme is when youre actually at war, everything is up for grabs and considered spoils of war; theres no procedure whatsoever. Were trying to forge a middle path in which assets can be rapidly seized, then we sort out who has what rights but from a position of having custody of the asset.

The Treasury Department has offered bounties, as it were, for whistleblowers.

Yes. Were happy about all of that.

Right now, Treasury is in the process of rewriting the rules around transparency for real-estate ownership.

Two things are going on. The rules regarding the Corporate Transparency Act, the beneficial ownership of shell corporations measure, are in their final phases over at Treasury, and were satisfied with all the initial signals. And then, I think, separately, theyre expanding what they called the Geographic Targeting Orders, which focus on real estate and have proved to be quite effective at dealing with some of the high-impact areas like Miami and New York.

So youre happy with what youre hearing about the expansion of the rules around beneficial ownership of shell corporations. Can you say more about that?

Well, we were turning into a great big Cayman Islands. And thats a very bad thing for the U.S. for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that land of the free and home of the brave is a much better brand than land where the crooked hide their money. It took a lot of resistance to pass that bill. And when you get a bill passed, youre always worried about how energetic the regulatory implementation will be. Ive been satisfied with how energetic Treasury has been in drafting the regulations and in its outreach to DOJ and others to make sure that they do this right. So I put that in the win column.

Do you have a sense that there is opposition from real-estate lobbies to increasing transparency at this moment?

Im confident there will be.

Is most of the money that oligarchs stash in the U.S. funneled through real estate?

Well learn a lot more as the shell corporations have to be opened up to FinCEN, the Treasurys Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, but I strongly suspect that the bulk of it is real estate. Although, the extent to which hedge funds and stock accounts can compete is unknown. It would be logical to think that real estate is No. 1.

Do you have any concerns that there could be repercussions down the line to peoples rights?

No, not really. First of all, were dealing with a foreign population of enemy collaborators. Were not dealing with American citizens, who have a different set of rights.

But Russia, right now, is not considered an enemy, is it? Were not at war.

We are not at war, but we are trying to couch this as much as possible in the national security powers of the president so that these tools can be brought to bear without being tangled up in unnecessary procedure that a foreign oligarch is not entitled to, since hes not an American citizen and not even in the United States.

A little bit of a sidebar, if you dont mind: I used to harangue the Department of Justice about shutting down botnets. After Microsoft had a successful case, it began shutting down botnets. What they would do is go into court and say, Anybody who claims this botnet, please show yourself and well hear you out. You get all the due process you want. If you dont show up, were going to take down the botnet. And, of course, nobody ever showed up. Who wants to step into court and say, Yes, thats my botnet? In a similar vein, if you grab a ginormous megayacht that is sheltered through five, six, or seven corporate shells, Cypriot bank accounts, and Cayman Islands screens, then what happens next? Does the oligarch show up to say, Thats not actually my boat? Whats he doing in the courtroom? And if somebody else shows up to say, Thats actually my boat, youve got some procedure to test that proposition, in the way it should be tested, under oath with discovery.

What were trying to do here is allow the government to act based on information that clearly places assets in the hands of oligarchs, whether thats insider information from the captain of the vessel or information that our national intelligence service has gathered, so that we know whose property this is. Then you dont have to jump through all the hoops of breaking through all the multiple shells. You just seize it based on good and solid evidence, and let them come and try to disprove it. I think a lot of times, they just wont, because they cant do it.

Your bill would expire after two years. Why?

This was cast as a temporary measure to see how it works and try to eliminate concerns. Any hesitation about this power is relieved a bit by there being a sunset.

What about billionaires from other countries that have human-rights problems  Chinese billionaires who profit from encampments of the Uighur population, people like that?

My personal goal in all of this  not just in this bill but in the entire effort across the board: the funding efforts, the empowerment and better cooperation among the different federal agencies, the other legislation and oversights we are working on in this area  is making sure that we have the capability to go after this international dark economy more or less wherever it rears its ugly head. Hiding behind anonymity in rule of law jurisdictions is essential life support for kleptocracy, corruption, and criminality, which imperils Americans everywhere. Weve been slow to see this as a national security problem, and I think we have not resourced going after that dark economy adequately yet. So Ill take whatever small measures I can get.

I dont want to speak to particular examples, but in general I think that there is a dark economy out there that supports a lot of evil in the world, and weve been negligent about directing spotlights onto it to put a stop to that evil.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
LONDON, March 23, 2022--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Morrow Sodali, the global investor engagement and governance consulting firm, today announced that Enzo Quattrociocche has joined the firm as a Senior Advisor. Based in London, Mr Quattrociocches primary focus will be on providing strategic counsel around key governance, stewardship and sustainability matters impacting corporate long term value creation for the firms clients.

Mr Quattrociocche has many years of experience leading significant organizations, including over 25 years at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), where he was the Secretary General from 2009 to 2021, and prior to this role he was a member of the Board of Directors for Italy. He has also held management positions at the Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF), where he reached the rank of Director General, as well as the International Monetary Fund.

During his tenure as Secretary General of the EBRD, Mr Quattrociocche led and successfully delivered twelve EBRD Annual Meetings, as well as leading successful high-level negotiations on new memberships, most notably with China, India, Libya, Lebanon and San Marino. He also engaged with the EBRDs resident Board of Directors daily, ensuring high standards of corporate governance in the institutional decision-making process of the bank.

Christian Sealey, Morrow Sodalis CEO - International, commented, "We are very excited to welcome Enzo Quattrociocche to our team. His prestigious background in international finance institutions and government ministries brings a wealth of experience to Morrow Sodali that will benefit both our clients and employees. Given his impressive reputation, I believe that his appointment has vast potential for growth and value creation within the firm and for our corporate clients."

"I am thrilled to be part of the Morrow Sodali family and help the company achieve its growth goals. I have spent the bulk of my career in international financial institutions and I look forward to providing my understanding of the investment management landscape, along with hands-on governance expertise and insights on issues of strategic importance to the firms current and future customers," Enzo said.

Story continues

For further information about Morrow Sodali, please visit www.morrowsodali.com.

ABOUT MORROW SODALI

Morrow Sodali is a global corporate advisory firm that provides clients with comprehensive advice and services relating to corporate governance, ESG, sustainability, proxy solicitation, capital markets intelligence, shareholder and bondholder engagement, M&A, and activism and contested situations.

From headquarters in New York and London and offices in global capital markets, Morrow Sodali serves more than 700 clients in 80+ countries, including many of the worlds largest multinational corporations. Clients include listed and private companies, mutual fund groups, stock exchanges and membership associations.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220322005827/en/

Contacts

Elena Cargnello, Corporate Director of Marketing

e.cargnello@morrowsodali.com

+44 204 5136913
the U.K. defense secretary was duped by a hoaxer posing as Ukraine's prime minister



omg how embarassing

Reply

Thread

Link

What in the literal fuck? Holy Moses. I would never show my face again.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

im screaming, how did the defense secretary not know what he looks like?? surely SOME kind of research is appropriate if you're meeting with them, no??

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

The government has launched a security probe into how a hoaxer posing as Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal was put through on a video call to Wallace on Thursday. Wallace said he became suspicious and hung up after the caller posed several misleading questions.



Another hoax call was made to Home Secretary Priti Patel, and Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries said an unsuccessful attempt also was made to speak to her.



And also



It is understood that Mr Wallace was put through to a Microsoft Teams video call which lasted about 10 minutes.

The video call was set up after an email, purportedly from an aide at the Ukrainian embassy in London, was sent to a UK government department and then forwarded to the Ministry of Defence.

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

can you imagine!!! good fucking lord

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link





Russians attack oil refinery that they own.



A Russian aircraft has fired upon an oil refinery in Lysychasnk, Luhansk Oblast, which is owned by Russian oil company Rosneft. According to Luhasnk Oblast Governor Serhiy Haidai, firefighters are fighting a blaze at the site.  The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) March 22, 2022



Also:



Zelensky to join NATO summit on March 24.



President Volodymyr Zelensky will give a virtual address to the NATO summit participants. He will speak about the need to stop Russias war crimes by closing the sky above Ukraine or supplying the country with air defenses.  The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) March 22, 2022



Edited at 2022-03-23 01:23 am (UTC) Enjoy this Russian own goal:Also:

Reply

Thread

Link

re: that first tweet, I wish there was a clown reaction button 



And fingers crossed that that summit will amount to something...

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

ME TOO. OMG I can't.



All the fingers and toes crossed.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

The Russian military is truly a joke.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Who would've thought that surrounding yourself with yes-men sycophants and grifters would lead to decades-long corruption on a scale grand enough to tank (pun intended) your own military? Besides the litany of other awful reasons why Trump and his ilk should be nowhere near power, this one should make anyone tremble. They are fully prepared to do the same to the US.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

About the first one; I bet they blame Ukraine for that.

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

Facing Putins wartime censorship, a Nobel laureate fights to keep truth in Russia alive.



When the government wants to shut us down, theyll shut us down. But I am not going to turn the lights off here on my own.



by @PaulSonne @maryilyushina https://t.co/28yEVDUapG  Jeanne Whalen (@JeanneWhalen) March 22, 2022

An article about how theyre managing to stay open. I think someone on here yesterday mentioned it. An article about how theyre managing to stay open. I think someone on here yesterday mentioned it.

Reply

Thread

Link

So incredibly brave

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

This is all so profoundly upsetting on top of so many other global calamities.



I don't know how this will end but I do hope diplomacy will prevail and this won't spiral even further.



Putin's ego won't allow for him to admit defeat and I really hope we don't end up in Nuclear war.



Edited at 2022-03-23 01:32 am (UTC)

Reply

Thread

Link

 Reuters: French automaker Renault resumes production in Moscow.



On March 22, the company decided to resume operations in the country. Renault is the majority owner of AvtoVaz, Russias largest car manufacturer famous for the Lada brand.  The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) March 22, 2022

France owns 15% of Renault. Despicable. France owns 15% of Renault. Despicable.

Reply

Thread

Link

ugh what WHY

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Now we know why Macron has been having so many phone calls with Poutine...

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Trash, as usual

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Truly disgusting. Blood money.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Of course 

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Good going Macaroon. Honestly, this is gross.



However, if people go back to calling French fries 'freedom fries' again in the US, I will scream.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

I read that as President Dude of Poland and needed that laugh.



Is Mariupol a port city or just because its in Donetsk that Russia is targeting it so hard.

Reply

Thread

Link

If they get Mariupol, it allows them a landbridge from Donetsk toward Crimea, and also another port. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60825226 has some more info

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Thank you! That does help.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

#Ukraine: We managed to identify this bizarre "container", captured today by the UA forces near #Kyiv.



It is likely to be the command post of one of the most potent Russian EW system - 1RL257 Krasukha-4, used to suppress AWACS radars & radar reconnaissance satellites. pic.twitter.com/1VvKjGoM2p   Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) March 22, 2022



More details in this article



Ukraine just captured part of one of Russia's most capable electronic warfare systems:https://t.co/g8vVOHgud6  The War Zone (@thewarzonewire) March 23, 2022 More details in this article

Reply

Thread

Link

People on twitter were saying that the US and NATO would be salivating over getting this from Ukraine.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

sounds like a good way to get air defense systems and migs out of the us

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

the back of it looks like a 70's kitchen, which is probably not unlike most russian military stuff

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Ol' Farmer Igor's been strolling in the woods again, I see. He can stick this one in the barn next to the SAM battery he found a couple of weeks ago. Farmer Igor's army: 5th strongest in the world!

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link





In a Kharkiv hospital basement, a new labor room has been set up to help Ukrainian women give birth, while the city above them remains under siege from Russian forces pic.twitter.com/l7KwxgNS5Q  Reuters (@Reuters) March 23, 2022 I can't even begin to imagine this

Reply

Thread

Link

I can't quit thinking about the pregnant lady from days ago that was carried away on a stretcher but then died. So many haunting pictures since the war started, but currently that one is stuck in my head.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link





Remarkable @BBCNews report: farmers in Vosnesensk ambushed  forces as they approached the small community, halting their advance by blowing up the bridge, destroying all  tanks vehicles w/ help from  NLAW anti-tank weapons, inflicting heavy  losses & full retreat#Ukraine pic.twitter.com/1Pu7HewKaG  KT CounterIntelligence (@KremlinTrolls) March 22, 2022 I'm about to head to bed but this report from BBC News was wild to watch:

Reply

Thread

Link

But, you know, Putin said Ukrainians would be happy for Russia to come in and take over!!

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

The juxtaposition of the little kid on their scooter going past a blown up tank at the end

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

yesss score another one for the farmers stealing military stuff!

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Farmers be planting their fields in style.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

This was amazing. The great Russian army, defeated by a farm village.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link





cautious about that "brave Russian journalist". The thing is she also recorded a message, which was just a compilation of imperialistic cliches about "brethren nations". For us this is a very strong "red flag", while western partners do not even look there 12/15  Tymofii Brik (@brik_t) March 22, 2022 This was an interesting perspective to read. The whole thread is great, but this caught my attention, especially:

Reply

Thread

Link

A Western intel source told me Lukashenko keeps deferring deployment by about 3 days every time hes asked by Moscow. He doesnt want to do it either. He knows.  Michael Weiss  (@michaeldweiss) March 22, 2022



Edited at 2022-03-23 03:47 am (UTC)

Reply

Thread

Link

ya i mean just look to belarus to see what happens when installing/reinstalling a deeply unpopular/hated pro russian head of state... (which putin himself was super reluctant to get involved until like, the eleventh hour, to help out lukashenko). what is putin/russian leadership gameplan here, really.



and it isn't at all like when russian forces went into kazakhstan by request of tokayev, the kazakh president to stamp out popular protests earlier this year, and then left bc it is part of the russia version of nato. but tokayev isn't democratic, which is what russia wants all their neighbours with large borders and russian or russian speaking populations to be.



but with ukraine, he is deffo gonna have to put the commitment in to occupying that country in the long term cos given the choice ukrainian citizens have already died for the sake of democracy multiple times even if we only count post-soviet history, right?

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Supposedly a Russian tank driver (or whatever they're called) surrendered with his tank to Ukarian forces. He'll get 10,000 of their currency after the war & a chance at Ukrainan citizenship.



But I can't find a good source, so take this with a grain of salt.

Reply

Thread

Link

There were stories of defections at the beginning, too. I wonder what will happen if conscription happens in Russia, whether that rate will increase. Or whether families will become pissed.



If I was insanely fascist and my country invaded another country (we did in the 70s), and the leadership's children who qualified for conscription didn't have to go but my conscription aged kids did, I would get real "unpatriotic" real quick. (but I don't understand nationalists at all so I am looking at this very wrongly).



And the currency in Ukraine is hryvna. 10000 hryvni is about 300 usd maybe? Pls correct.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

What is the point of having order and the UN if psycho strongmen can just decimate the county of their choosing provided said country isnt a NATO member? Or doesnt have its own numes? Though to be honest Im starting to believe that even if Ukraine were a member of NATO the response would be tepid in order to try and avoid further escalation.



The longer Putins assault drags on, the angrier I get about everything and by everything I mean not only whats happening in Ukraine but the fact that Putins terror in Syria and other places has been ignored or swept under the rug. Also, super angry about Navalny (he was just sentenced to nine additional years on what everyone knows are trumped up charges) and what is happening with Brittney Griner.

Reply

Thread

Link

tbh I don't think Putin would have attacked if Ukraine were a member of NATO. It's difficult to say but the mistake was really made in 2008 when the US pushed for Ukraine to join and France and Germany opposed it. Huge blunder.



And the UN is really kinda useless. I have a friend who wanted to go into international law for a while but it's not what people think it is. There's very little you can do to enforce anything. The UN specifically is more of a debate club. I guess in that sense it fulfills its function but if a country isn't interested in talking and wants to go to war instead, that's that. I think Zelenskyy was on to something with his call for new alliances and institutions that are capable of more rapid responses.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Yes! Like I feel like all of the worlds countries minus the nuclear powers need their own alliance to protect themselves against the nuclear powers; its a mess.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

One of the first things I learned is that the UN is useless. It keeps you from being disappointed in them tbh.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link





"Cargo 200" is Russian Military code for casualties.



They've been moving around with their dead comrade(s) for five days. "Cargo 200" is Russian Military code for casualties. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_200_(code_name) They've been moving around with their dead comrade(s) for five days.

Reply

Thread

Link

I never know how much I trust that the intercepted phone calls that get publicized are real but if they are, whoo boy. This one was especially telling.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link
The IAEA has already increased projections for nuclear growth this year, but will the need for greater energy diversity and security in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine push this figure even higher? Some countries are already opening up their existing nuclear power plans for discussion, with the potential for greater nuclear energy development over the next decade.

With the international push to transition away from fossil fuels to renewable alternatives coming out of the COP26 climate summit last November, many are reconsidering the development of their nuclear energy industries. The 2021 IAEA outlook for nuclear energy presents an increase in its high case scenario, with the potential for global nuclear generating capacity to double to 792 gigawatts (net electrical) by 2050 from 393 GW(e) last year. This is 10 percent higher than the previous years high case projection of 715 GW(e) by 2050. Although, the organization acknowledges that it would take significant action to achieve this scenario.

IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi stated that The new IAEA projections show that nuclear power will continue to play an indispensable role in low carbon energy production. And The reports findings represent an encouraging sign of increasing awareness that nuclear power, which emits no carbon dioxide during operation, is absolutely vital in our efforts to achieve net-zero emissions, he went on to say.

The prediction of a rise in the nuclear power output comes are governments are increasingly concerned about switching to greener energy options, with many making ambitious net-zero carbon emissions targets for 2050. The high case scenario would see nuclear energy contributing 12% of global electricity by 2050.

Just recently, the European Commission released a European Green Deal that establishes a classification system, establishing a list of environmentally sustainable economic activities. Under this system, the Commission includes both nuclear energy and natural gas, suggesting that both are vital to the transition away from the dirtier fossil fuels. Nuclear energy production does not emit greenhouse gasses, making it preferable to other options. This classification of nuclear power as green could see governments increasingly turning to this energy source to bridge the gap between fossil fuels and fully renewable options, particularly as global electricity generation is expected to double over the next 30 years.

So, what effect is the conflict likely have on this trend? Earlier this month, Russian forces attacked Ukraines Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, sending shockwaves around the world as people feared another nuclear disaster. However, global powers are also acknowledging the importance of nuclear power as a potential future energy source.

Wind and solar power alone cannot supply the energy needed to meet the global demand in their current state, with governments looking for suitable alternatives to bridge the gap. And in the COP26 summit, several representatives showed interest in nuclear power for the first time in decades.

At present, there are around 440 nuclear power reactors across 30 countries, providing approximately 10 percent of the worlds electricity. In addition, 55 new reactors are currently under construction in 19 countries, with 19 of those in China. Russia also has a significant nuclear program. But now other countries are looking to further develop their nuclear power capacities, in response to climate change pledges and, more recently, to the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

In the U.K., the government is now talking about boosting the countrys nuclear output, as Prime Minister Boris Johnson chairs a roundtable about the matter. This Monday, leaders from the nuclear industry met with the PM to discuss how to improve domestic energy security and rapidly accelerate nuclear projects in the UK. Johnson voiced his support for nuclear power as a major part of the U.K.s future energy system as a clean, reliable, and safe energy source.

And in the U.S., President Biden demonstrated his interest in increasing Americas nuclear power even before the conflict. At the beginning of the year, the U.S. government announced plans to invest in the upkeep of its nuclear power plants through the $6 billion Civil Nuclear Credit Program. The Department of Energy expects this funding to help keep existing nuclear facilities running, with several losing money due to the competitive price of fossil fuel alternatives. The U.S. sees nuclear power as vital to its climate change strategy and therefore sees the investment as a necessary means of achieving its longer-term green energy goals.

In addition, some countries are starting up their first nuclear power programs, demonstrating a growing interest in the energy source. In 2020, Belarus and the UAE began using nuclear power for the first time, under advisement from the IAEA. There are around 30 nuclear newcomers showing interest in developing nuclear programs with support from the IAEA, including Sri Lanka, Kenya, and Uganda.

With pressure mounting for countries to transition away from fossil fuels to greener alternatives, several governments have already demonstrated their interest in developing their nuclear energy capacities. And now, with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, state powers are trying even harder to establish their energy security by diversifying the energy mix and national production, with several turning to nuclear power.

By Felicity Bradstock for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Canadian oil firms are rising to the cause, aiming to increase production when the world needs it the most.

With fears of severe oil shortages if Russias exports are further restricted, world leaders are looking elsewhere for their crude supplies. But with many governments reining in oil and gas exploration in favor of renewable energy projects, these supplies are not so easy to find. Now, Canada is stepping up to the task as it says it can ramp up production to fill the gap as worldwide oil demand remains high.

State powers around the world are gradually imposing stricter sanctions on Russian products, with the EU tightening its sanctions on Russian oil companies. While the EU has not announced an outright ban on Russian energy imports, the U.S. has. Earlier this month, the U.S. banned imports of Russian oil, LNG, and coal, as did Canada.

Some Canadian oil firms have already stated their intention of increasing production as demand rises. The CEO of DeltaStream Energy Corp. in Alberta said he intends to drill more to increase production. Canadas potential for increasing production is significant with the CEO of Suncor Energy Inc. stating that the Canadian oil industry could raise production by more than 200,000 barrels in a short period of time.

The political sphere has also commented on the potential to increase production as Canadian Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson stated In the context of the discussions, not just with the Americans, but the Europeans as well, we have essentially asked each other, those of us that are oil and gas producers, to look at whatever we can do. He suggested that Canada should have a clear plan on how to increase its oil exports to countries facing shortages by 23rd March, in time for an IEA meeting in Paris.

Spending on oil and gas operations in Canada is also expected to grow this year to $26 billion, up 22% from 2021. Revenue is also expected to climb significantly as global shortages force oil prices even further up, showing Canadian companies a strong return on their investments.

And Alberta Premier Jason Kenney is once again putting pressure on the U.S. to revive major pipeline projects, such as Keystone XL to reduce the global reliance on Russian oil supplies longer term. Keystone was canceled when President Biden came into power as he ramped up policies on climate change, restricting new oil projects deemed harmful to the environment. But this is a common stance in the oil-rich Canadian state with David Yager from the Canadian Energy Centre stating the West has virtue-signaled away its energy security.

The Macdonald-Laurier Institute even when so far as to share a quote from Christian Leuprecht stating Make no mistake: Canadians who oppose construction of the Coastal Gaslink pipeline and pipeline capacity to enable liquified natural gas exports from Canadas East Coast to Europe, are aiding, abetting, and condoning #Putins behaviour. Demonstrating how seriously the oil sector has taken the curbs on its oil and gas operations over the last year, and how willing it is to make a comeback.

Canada is now exploring ways to increase pipeline utilization, with the government currently in talks with Canadian oil major Enbridge Inc. The majority of Canadas oil exports travel through Enbridges pipeline, which connects to the U.S. Current export levels from Canada to the U.S. stand at 4 million bpd of oil, and energy firms are trying to determine if this figure can be increased using the existing transport infrastructure.

Enbridge stated "Both our liquids and natural gas systems are at or near capacity but we're exploring options that may be taken to provide more energy to the U.S. and Europe. That includes using export facilities on the Gulf Coast for crude and natural gas."

But despite all the talk about ramping up production to increase energy security and move away from reliance on Russian oil, many experts question whether Canada can actually fill the production quota needed to reduce shortages. At least in the short term, the supply that Canada could provide would be far from enough to bridge the gap. President of industry group the Explorers and Producers Association of Canada, Tristan Goodman, stated Theres an immediate ability to add some degree of production, and I do mean immediate  weeks to months. It will be a small amount, but it will be noticeable. He suggested the amount would be 400,000 bpd at best.

After years of underinvestment of Canadas oil and gas infrastructure and curbs on production, Canada is not currently in a position to increase production to the levels required to meet global needs. This is something that could change over time if investment in new exploration and pipeline projects increases, but not as an immediate response to bans on Russian oil.

Ultimately, Canada is offering to step up its game by increasing investment in oil operations and ramping up production immediately. Revisiting canceled oil and gas infrastructure projects could see Canada helping North America to increase its energy security, albeit at the cost of Bidens green policies. However, in the short term, it seems this supply simply isnt enough to meet the global demand required in the face of severe shortages.

By Felicity Bradstock for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
The U.S. oil and gas industry needs a "Marshall plan" to boost gas production, according to the chief executive of JP Morgan, Jamie Dimon, who recommended this approach to the White House, Axios reported this week.

The recommendation comes as the federal government demonstrates confidence that U.S. oil companies will increase output by the end of the year.

"There will be a significant increase in supply by the end of this year, and we're hopeful that they live up to that," Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm told reporters as quoted by Reuters.

For this to happen, judging by Dimon's words, the administration will need to provide the energy industry with more support. This support is one of the things that appear to have been discussed at a closed-door meeting between President Biden and senior industry executives, including Dimon, earlier this week.

"We have a historic set of ideas on the table for investment in the U.S. energy sector, which would strengthen our security and make us more resilient to actions by leaders like Putin," Axios cited one White House official as saying.

"Those ideas are concrete, and we welcome engagement from all those who would join us in driving investments to strengthen our energy sector," the official added.

At the same time, President Biden recently spoke against the oil and gas industry, saying that "Oil and gas companies shouldn't pad their profits at the expense of hard-working Americans."

Meanwhile, a group of Democrats in the Senate have proposed a windfall tax bill that "would protect consumers from giant oil companies taking advantage of world events to jack up prices," per the website of the main sponsor of the bill, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse.

It may be mixed signals like these from the administration and legislators that have contributed to the oil and gas industry's reluctance to increase output. Yet Secretary Granholm remains confident the output increase is only a matter of time. It could be more than a little time as some from the industry have noted shortages of workers, supplies, and equipment as some of the reasons for the stalling production growth.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that Russia would start charging the countries it considers hostile in rubles for its natural gas.

I have taken a decision to switch to ruble payments for our natural gas supplies to the so-called hostile states, stop using the compromised currencies in such transactions, Putin said, per a transcript published on the Kremlin website as carried by Bloomberg.

The Russian Presidentwhose list of hostile states includes the United States, all EU member states, Switzerland, Canada, Norway, South Korea, Japan, and many others  has ordered the Bank of Russia, the central bank, to develop a system for payments in rubles within a week.

At the same time, I want to emphasize that Russia will definitely continue to supply natural gas in line with the volumes and prices, pricing mechanisms set forth in the existing contracts, Putin said at a government meeting today.

It makes no sense for Russia to export goods to the EU or the United States in U.S. dollars or euros, Putin added.

The U.S. has already banned imports of Russian energy products, including oil, coal, and LNG.

Earlier this week, the foreign ministers of the EU member states failed to come to an agreement about whether to punish Putin with an oil embargo. Some small EU members, including Lithuania, pushed for an embargo, but the biggest economy, Germany, was against it.

Gabrielius Landsbergis, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania, tweeted on Monday:

Why should Europe give Putin more time to earn more money from oil and gas? More time to use European ports? More time to use unsanctioned Russian banks in Europe? Time to pull the plug.

But Germany and the Netherlands said that the EU couldnt cut itself off Russian oil and gas right now. The European Union and its biggest economy Germany have been reluctant so far to ban imports of Russian energy or impose sanctions on Russian oil and gas exports, considering that Europe depends on Russia for more than one-fourth of its oil supply and one-third of its natural gas supply.

By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Despite pledges from numerous international oil majors to leave Russia, this is easier said than done, and companies from the U.S. and the UK are still stuck with their Russian assets, Patrick Pouyanne, CEO at TotalEnergies, said on Wednesday.

In the days after the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, UK's BP and Shell said they would divest their Russian assets and stop trading with Russian oil.

The war in Ukraine "has caused us to fundamentally rethink bp's position with Rosneft. I am convinced that the decisions we have taken as a board are not only the right thing to do, but are also in the long-term interests of bp," BP's chief executive Bernard Looney said just days after the invasion.

U.S. supermajor ExxonMobil said it would discontinue operations at Sakhalin-1 and will make no new investments in Russia, deploring "Russia's military action."

Only TotalEnergies has not announced an immediate withdrawal from Russia, drawing a lot of criticism from investors and campaigners.

"Everybody's telling me that my Anglo-Saxon competitors are leaving," TotalEnergies's CEO Pouyanne told France's RTL radio today. "None of my competitors has left Russia, and knows how to leave Russia," he added.

"Do you want me to abandon assets in Russia to enrich Russians whom we have placed under sanctions? I won't give in to it, because that's demagogy," said Pouyanne, as quoted by Bloomberg.

On Tuesday, TotalEnergies shared its view and steps it had taken regarding its business in Russia "after the serious and unfounded accusations of "complicity in war crimes" leveled against TotalEnergies."

Condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine once again, the company said it would not provide further capital for the development of projects in Russia, and it would no longer enter into or renew contracts to purchase Russian oil and petroleum products, "in order to halt all its purchases of Russian oil and petroleum products as soon as possible and by the end of 2022 at the latest."

TotalEnergies said it does not operate any oil and gas fields or any liquefied natural gas (LNG) plants in Russia.

Moreover, the company said that "The current environment of European sanctions and Russian laws controlling foreign investments in Russia would prevent TotalEnergies to find a non-Russian buyer for its minority interests in Russia. Abandoning these interests without consideration would enrich Russian investors, in contradiction with the sanctions' purpose."

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
China urges Israel to cease expanding settlements in occupied Palestinian territory

Xinhua) 08:42, March 23, 2022

UNITED NATIONS, March 22 (Xinhua) -- China on Tuesday called on Israel to cease expanding settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory.

"We call on Israel to halt the expansion of settlements, stop the eviction of Palestinians, stop the demolition of Palestinian homes, and create conditions for the development of Palestinian communities in the West Bank, as called for in council resolution 2334," China's permanent representative to the United Nations Zhang Jun told the Security Council briefing on the situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian question.

The ambassador said that "settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory violate international law, disrupt the contiguity of the occupied Palestinian territory, squeeze the living space of the Palestinian people, and affect the prospects for achieving the two-state solution."

On the security situation, Zhang said that China is concerned about the recent deterioration of the security situation in the occupied Palestinian territory, and deeply saddened by the casualties on both the Palestinian and Israeli sides caused by the violence, especially Palestinian children.

"The protection of children in conflict settings is not an empty slogan, but an unshakable moral responsibility and an international obligation that must be fulfilled. We call for a thorough investigation of the recent violence and for effective accountability," he said.

The ambassador noted that China calls on all parties concerned to refrain from provocative words and deeds, to refrain from incitement to violence, to jointly uphold and respect the historic status quo of the holy sites in Jerusalem, to make every effort to prevent the situation from escalating out of control, and not to allow the conflict in Gaza last year to repeat itself, with the upcoming month of April, which will celebrate important holidays for both Muslims and Jews.

The envoy also urged the international community to continue to help Palestine alleviate its fiscal crisis, improve its economy and people's livelihood, and fight the COVID-19 pandemic.

Zhang underscored that the current security situation in Europe has drawn attention from all parties, but the Palestinian-Israeli issue is equally important.

"The Palestinian question should not be marginalized, much less allowed pending for a long time. China will continue to work with the international community to make unremitting efforts and contribute China's share to a comprehensive, just and lasting solution to the question of Palestine," he said.

(Web editor: Peng yukai, Liang Jun)
Rescue work continued on Tuesday after a passenger plane with 132 people aboard crashed in south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region Monday afternoon.



Over 2,000 people have been sent to the site as part of the rescue efforts.

"The site of the crash in a mountain forest complicates the search for the black boxes and we have to rely mainly on drones and rescue staff," said Zhu Xiaodong, a rescuer with a drone rescue center in Guangzhou, capital of south China's Guangdong province and also the destination of the plane.

Experts from the public security department and the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) are entering the main crash site to search for physical evidence, confirm the identity of the missing persons and find out the possible cause of the accident. Some personal belongings of the passengers have been collected and numbered.

Drones have been deployed to search for more evidence in an area of nearly 680,000 square meters, according to Zhang Xueliang, a rescuer. "The drones' thermal imaging function will help locate the black boxes," Zhang added.

At around 7:30 a.m. on Tuesday, light rain began to fall over the rescue site. The local meteorological department forecast that more rain and high winds would hit the area in the next 24 hours, which might adversely affect the search efforts.

On Tuesday afternoon, Xinhua reporters spotted around six excavators and nearly 50 workers scrambling to clear a passage to the site for the rescue crew and the necessary machinery.

"We need to complete all preparations prior to the rain, and the initial objective is to gain entry to the site by approximately 8 p.m. Tuesday," said Guo Zhaoliang, in charge of the route construction.

Many residents nearby have volunteered to deliver tents, food and other relief supplies to the site by motorcycle.

So far, no survivors have been found. The rescuers, who are conducting a blanket search-and-rescue operation, said they would not give up seeking to save lives while there is still a chance.

The China Eastern Airlines Boeing 737 aircraft, which departed from Kunming and was bound for Guangzhou, crashed into a mountainous area in Tengxian County in Guangxi at 2:38 p.m. Monday, causing a mountain fire.

China's civil aviation regulator has called for screening hidden risks to boost civil aviation safety. Concrete measures should be taken to strengthen the investigation of hidden dangers concerning aircraft maintenance, flight weather conditions, personnel qualifications and operational skills, said the CAAC.

On Tuesday, Boeing China said that it is cooperating with China Eastern Airlines, and its technical experts are ready to aid the CAAC in conducting the investigation.
Together with its aims of becoming self-sufficient in gas and creating the pre-eminent oil storage and supply hub in the Middle East, boosting crude oil production to at least 5 million barrels per day (bpd) as soon as possible remains a core priority for the UAE. In precisely this context, its key state-owned oil conduit, the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), last week announced that it awarded AED2.4 billion (US$653 million) in new framework agreements that will allow it to drill thousands of new oil wells. The agreements were made with Halliburton Worldwide Limited Abu Dhabi, Baker Middle East, Emirates Western Oil Well Drilling & Maintenance Co., NESR Energy Services, and Emjel Oil Field Services, following a tender process.

In parallel to the new awards optimizing the chance of the UAE being able to boost its crude oil output from the current 4 million or so bpd to 5 million bpd sooner than the official 2030 target year, the investments are also designed to boost the local economy, according to ADNOCs upstream executive director, Yaser Saeed Al Mazrouei. All of these major energy-specific developments are seen by the UAE as foundation stones in its broader Operation 300 Billion plan. This plan intends to raise the contribution of the countrys industrial sector to AED300 billion from the current AED133 billion within the next 10 years. This objective  itself part of the UAEs Circular Economy Policy 2021-2031 - will be achieved in large part through the creation of 13,500 industrial companies over that period, covering the manufacturing, construction, electricity, gas, mining, and quarrying sectors in the first instance.

Last weeks AED2.4 billion of new framework agreements follow ADNOCs recent awarding of AED3.47 billion (US$946 million) in engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) contracts to the UAEs own National Petroleum Construction Company (NPCC) to do the necessary work to maintain Umm Shaifs 275,000 bpd crude oil production capacity and then to increase this output. As OilPrice.com exclusively reported back in August 2020, that month  shortly before the relationship normalization deal was signed between the UAE and Israel - saw ADNOC announce the transfer of ownership rights in its Lower Zakum and Umm Shaif and Nasr offshore concessions from the holdings of the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) to China National Offshore Oil Corporations (CNOOC) subsidiary, CNOOC Limited. This was done by CNOOC acquiring a 40 percent interest in CNPCs majority-owned subsidiary PetroChina Investment Overseas (Middle East) Ltd (PetroChina) through its holding company, CNOOC Hong Kong Holding Limited (CNOOC HK). This deal marked the first time a dedicated Chinese offshore oil and gas company joined in any ADNOC concession.

The ongoing activity in the Lower Zakum and Umm Shaif and Nasr offshore concessions has been mirrored in the quick pace of development on the Block 4 onshore concession, following the recent revelation that a new area of discovery in the Block is likely to have recoverable reserves of at least 480 million barrels, according to the operator of the site, Japans INPEX. This figure is based on a provisional recovery rate of 40 percent for crude oil and 70 percent for natural gas and condensate. This marked the first such find in the Block 4 onshore concession and the initial signs are that further finds may well be discovered on the site, according to ADNOC. The new crude oil find will also significantly augment ADNOCs ongoing efforts to establish Murban as the centerpiece of what it intends to be the pre-eminent oil futures trading platform in the Middle East  the ICE Futures Abu Dhabi platform (IFAD).

Launched on 29 March 2021 by ADNOC in partnership with the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), IFAD was built initially around a Murban futures contract, with this light, sweet crude oil grade accounting for around half of the UAEs total 4 million or so bpd crude oil production before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to ICE and ADNOC at the time of the launch of IFAD, Murban futures were the second physically delivered futures contracts traded on a regional exchange after Dubai Mercantile Exchanges Oman crude futures, and Murban remained a deliverable grade in the Platts benchmark Dubai and Oman crude assessments. ICE and ADNOC partnered with BP, GS Caltex, INPEX, PetroChina, PTT, Shell, ENEOS, Total, and Vitol to launch the trading platform, but ICE subsequently announced additional agreements with Chevron, Trafigura, and Occidental to explore using the contract to price crude exports from the U.S. to Asia. At the end of November, ICE announced that over one million futures contracts had traded on IFAD since the launch  equivalent to one billion barrels of Murban crude oil. Murban futures are adding to price discovery in Asia and [the] physical delivery mechanism has worked smoothly since launch and open interest continues to grow, Mike Muller, head of Vitol Asia told OilPrice.com.

In tandem with developing its oil output are efforts to build out the means to transport it, and to ship and store the oil and other commodities of other major players in the global oil market. The ongoing development of Fujairah continues apace in this context, offering precisely such an alternative global crude oil storage facility and transit hub to the perennially troublesome Strait of Hormuz route, as analyzed in-depth in my new book on the global oil markets. Earlier this year, according to comments by the Abu Dhabi (AD) Ports Groups commercial director-ports, Julian Skyrme, an AED1 billion investment in the expansion added container capacity of 720,000 twenty-foot equivalent units and general cargo capacity of 1.3 million metric tonnes. Although various stages of Fujairahs expansion plans have been subject to delay in the years prior to the onset of the major downturn in global oil prices in 2020 - due to lower forward oil prices making hydrocarbons storage a less attractive option  gradually each element of the Fujairah Port project (termed Black Pearl) has come into line. The pace of development, in particular, picked up after the 380 kilometer Abu Dhabi Crude Oil Pipeline from the Habshan onshore field in Abu Dhabi to Fujairah city became operational in June 2012, capable of transporting 1.8 million bpd and allowing for the smooth movement of UAE crude to the global market.

By Simon Watkins for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
The U.K. government has imposed a 35% import tariff on iron and steel from Russia and Belarus as part of denying the two countries Most Favored Nation tariff for hundreds of their exports.

UK steel tariffs hit imports from Russia

A March 15 statement from the Department for International Trade and HM Treasury named the two products in its list of goods, totaling 900 million ($1.18 billion), to face the tariff.

Copper, aluminum, silver, lead, and iron ore are also on the list of goods, the statement added.

These tariff increases will be legislated for by using our powers under the Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Act (2018), and operationalized in the UKs customs systems CHIEF and CDS, next week, the UK Governments statement added.

The move by the UK government came on the same day that the European Commission announced that it would stop the import of Russian steel products subject to safeguard measures. However, this did not include either slab or billets.

The Financial Conduct Authority also suspended on March 10 Evrazs shares on the London Stock Exchange. That followed the U.K. governments addition of Roman Abramovich to its list of sanctioned individuals.

The moves are in response to Russias invasion of Ukraine, which began on Feb. 24. Capital city Kyiv has come under siege. Port city of Mariupol, as well as Kharkiv, have seen heavy bombardment.

Tariffs also target Belarus

Byelorussian Steel Works is Belarus main steelmaking plant. The plant is about 220 kilometers south of the capital city of Minsk.

The site has three 100-ton electric arc furnaces. It has a combined crude steel capacity of 1.5 million metric tons per year.

Two six-strand continuous casting machines can cast produce 125125 mm and 140140 mm billets. Meanwhile, a four-strand caster can produce blooms in 250300 mm and 300400 mm diameters.

BMZ can also roll up to 1 million metric tons per year of long products. Those include rebar as well as merchant bar. The plant can also produce 490,000 metric tons per year of wire rod. It also can produce 450,000 metric tons per year of 100100 and 125125 square bar as well as 80-160 mm diameters in 80-160 mm diameters.

In addition, the plant can produce seamless pipe, for engineering, oil production, construction as well as municipal engineering. The pipes come in 21.3-168.3 mm outside diameters and wall thicknesses of 2.3-25 mm.

By AGMetalMiner

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Crude oil exports from the CPC terminal off the coast of Russias Black Sea have been halted completely after sustaining critical damage, the head of CPC has said, according to Reuters.

According to Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak, The Caspian Pipeline Consortiums oil supplies may be stopped for as long as two months while repairs are made.

The disruption in crude oil exports was the result of major storm damage and continuing bad weather.

The CPC pipeline transports between 1.2 million and 1.4 million barrels per day of crude oil from Kazakhstan, adding even more pressure to a global market already struggling with tight supplies further constrained by sanctions on Russian crude.

The CPC pipeline carries oil from Kazakstans Tengiz oilfield to export infrastructure along the Black Sea coast. Most of the crude oil carried by the CPC pipeline belongs to Russia, Kazakstan, and international oil majors such as Chevron. It remains a vital crude oil artery for Kazakstan, accounting for two-thirds of the countrys crude oil exports.

A port agent chalked the damage up to a spell of really strong norther wind that required a single point mooring (SPM) to be taken offline to be serviced, Reuters reported. On Thursday, another SPM was found to be in need of service, and the third SPM was halted due to bad weather.

A disruption of crude oil flows now, when global crude oil inventories are tight and fears of shortages are heightened, could send oil prices soaring even higher.

Brent crude was trading at $119.10 per barrel on Thursday morning, up $3.65 (+3.16%) per barrel.

The disruption to Kazakstans exports comes as President Biden travels to Europe to discuss the possibility of sanctioning Russias oil industry. Meanwhile, President Biden is reviewing all available options on how to bring down the cost of gasoline prices at home.

By Julianne Geiger for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
The European Union's heads of government are likely to back later this week a proposal to consider levying a temporary windfall tax on some energy companies as oil and gas prices soar, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday, citing a draft political statement it had seen.

The EU leaders are holding meetings all week to decide how to intensify sanctions against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, as well as how to mitigate the impact of skyrocketing energy prices on EU households.

"As proposed by the commission, temporary taxation of windfall profits can be a useful source of financing," the EU leaders are expected to say in a statement later this week. This statement, however, could change before being adopted, Bloomberg notes.

The windfall tax on EU level is yet another proposal from policymakers to have oil and gas companies pay more taxes as they earn large profits from the surge in energy prices. Several politicians in the UK and the U.S. have already called for windfall taxes on energy firms.

In the UK, the opposition Labour Party in the UK and Greenpeace proposed last month such a tax.

"These profits are a slap in the face to the millions of people dreading their next energy bill. BP and Shell are raking in billions from the gas price crisis while enjoying one of the most favorable tax regimes in the world for offshore drillers. And these are the same companies responsible for pushing our world closer to catastrophic climate change. This isn't right," Greenpeace UK's head of climate Kate Blagojevic said in early February, before the most recent rally of energy prices following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

In the United States, Senator Elizabeth Warren has also proposed a windfall profit tax on oil companies.

"Big Oil's first priority is to maximize profits," Warren said in a Tweet earlier this month. "We can't let them use Putin's invasion as an excuse to pad their bottom line with war-fueled profits."

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has issued a warning to the U.S. energy industry that it had detected scanning activity from multiple Russia-based IP addresses.

These Russia-based IP addresses are believed to be associated with cyber actors who previously conducted destructive cyber activity against foreign critical infrastructure, the warning read.

Present activity of these IP addresses likely indicates early stages of reconnaissance, scanning networks for vulnerabilities for use in potential future intrusions. US Energy Sector entities are advised to examine current network traffic for these IP addresses and conduct follow-on investigations if observed.

According to the FBI, a total of 140 addresses were involved in the detected scanning activity, which targeted at least five energy companies as well as businesses from other sectors such as defense, financial services, and information technology.

The warning comes on the heels of another one, made by President Biden, who said earlier this week that Russia was exploring a cyber attack against the United States but added that Washington would use every tool at its disposal to thwart it.

My Administration will continue to use every tool to deter, disrupt, and if necessary, respond to cyberattacks against critical infrastructure, the U.S. President said in a release published on the White House website.

But the Federal Government cant defend against this threat alone. Most of Americas critical infrastructure is owned and operated by the private sector and critical infrastructure owners and operators must accelerate efforts to lock their digital doors.

Cyberattacks are becoming a serious problem for businesses, and critical infrastructure is a top target. Last year, cybercriminals shut down the Colonial pipeline that carries 45 percent of the gasoline and diesel fuel the East Coast of the United States consumes. It is also the biggest piece of pipeline infrastructure in the United States. The attack highlighted the importance of protecting such critical infrastructure in an environment where cyber criminals become increasingly bolder.

By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
The de facto authorities in Nagorno-Karabakh have accused Azerbaijan of cutting natural gas supplies to the territory for the second time in as many weeks, depriving the people thereof heat for their homes amid a sharp cold spell.

Nagorno-Karabakh gets its gas supplied via Armenia, through a pipeline that transits territory over which Azerbaijan regained control in the 2020 war between the two sides.

Supplies from the pipeline were first disrupted on March 8, as tension spiked in the region following the launch of Russias invasion of Ukraine. Officials in Nagorno-Karabakh said that Azerbaijani troops prevented them from repairing the pipeline.

The shutdown forced residents of the territory to use other sources of heating, particularly electricity, which resulted in power outages. Armenian volunteers also shipped gas canisters to Karabakh to temporarily mitigate the issue.

The supply ultimately was restored on March 19, but was disrupted again on the evening of March 21. Officials in Nagorno-Karabakh blamed Azerbaijan.

We have sufficient grounds to assume that during the gas pipeline repairs, the Azerbaijani side installed a valve that stopped the gas supply a few hours ago," the de facto government said in a statement. "Unfavorable weather conditions serve the insidious Azerbaijani purpose of creating additional humanitarian problems for our population; it's a crime.

There has been no comment from the Azerbaijani authorities. The Russian peacekeeping contingent in Karabakh is discussing the issue with the Azerbaijani side, a spokesperson for Karabakhs de facto leader said on March 22.

March has been colder than usual this year, and heavy snow also has blocked roads in Karabakh and in the neighboring parts of Armenia, compounding the logistical complications.

The gas issue comes as the two sides have recently released more details on their slow negotiations over a peace deal.

Earlier this month Azerbaijan announced that it had sent a new proposal to Armenia to discuss a peace deal, which Armenia said it accepted on March 14. The deal would be based on five principles, according to Azerbaijans foreign ministry: Mutual recognition of each other's 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 other's security, demarcation of the border and unblocking of transport links.

Following the Azerbaijani proposal Armenia said it had applied to the Minsk Group of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe  the body that has been the main platform for negotiations since the first war between the two sides in the 1990s  to start negotiations.

But Armenia Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan said Yerevan would also be insisting on the rights of ethnic Armenians in Karabakh to be respected. It is paramount for the Armenian side that the rights and freedoms of the Armenians of Artsakh [an alternative Armenian name for the region] are guaranteed, and the status of Nagorno-Karabakh is finally clarified, he said on March 15. For us, the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is not a territorial issue, but a matter of rights.

With the new gas shutoff, however, many Armenians found the talk of peace ironic. Despite the war in Ukraine, gas continues to flow through the country to Europe. And in our country, as the era of peace is beginning, the gas in Karabakh is cut off," wrote journalist Nikolay Torosyan on Facebook. "Maybe we are doing something wrong, guys.

By Eurasianet.org

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
No task was too big or too small for fourth-generation newspaperman Ken Rhoades, publisher emeritus of the Washington County Enterprise in Blair.

He was the classic old newspaper publisher with ink in his veins, said son Mark Rhoades, the current publisher of the Enterprise. He did every job there was, from reporting to sweeping up, and even ran the presses.

Rhoades recalled his father rushing to take photos at fire calls or traffic accidents, even in the middle of the night. He once was injured while photographing a burning building when the doors blew open in an explosion, but he kept taking pictures.

The elder Rhoades died Monday at age 90 at Memorial Community Hospital in Blair. Services will be held at 10:30 a.m. Friday at First United Methodist Church in Blair.

Ken Rhoades continued his familys history of publishing newspapers. His great-grandfather, Hilton Rhoades, was a journalist with the Omaha Journal-Stockman before opening newspapers in the small Nebraska towns of Washington and Kennard. Rhoades grandfather, John Rhoades, later purchased a newspaper from Hilton Rhoades and moved it to Blair. His father, J. Hilton Rhoades, ran the newspaper until selling it to Ken in 1977.

Ken Rhoades, who was a member of the Nebraska Press Association Hall of Fame, served as president of the National Newspaper Association and of the Nebraska Press Association. In 2000, he was the recipient of the Master Editor-Publisher Award from the Nebraska Newspaper Association.

Ken Rhoades began working for his father at the Blair newspaper as a youngster. During a 1991 interview with The World-Herald, he talked about getting his start.

As a kid, I started pouring lead for the Linotype machines, he said. I was ecstatic to get paid 10 cents an hour to run the folder.

Mark Rhoades said readers loved his fathers column, This and That, in which he talked about everything from the latest happenings at City Hall to family events.

He was never afraid to stir the pot with his editorials, where he called it like it saw it, his son said. He spoke his mind in an effort to improve his community. There were many cases where his news coverage and comments spearheaded change or projects that improved the community.

Rhoades and his wife of nearly 72 years, Virginia, began dating in high school. They were both 19 when they wed in August 1950.

His love for my mother was very special, Mark Rhoades said. They were just together all the time. He would do anything for her.

Their travels included trips to Europe, China, Russia, Japan and Australia. They also were very involved in community organizations throughout Washington County.

If there was an organization, Dad was involved. If they were selling something, he was probably the top seller, his son said. He was one of the most community-minded people you could ever meet.

In addition to his wife and son, Rhoades is survived by a daughter, Penny Overmann of Omaha; seven grandchildren; and 12 great-grandchildren.

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.
LOS ANGELES  Three other politicians discovered their campaigns got dirty money from Nigerian billionaire Gilbert Chagoury and got rid of it, a process in which they formally disgorge the money by donating it to charity.

The reason Nebraska Rep. Jeff Fortenberry didnt do the same right away?

A prosecutor told him not to, according to his former attorney.

Trey Gowdy, who represented Fortenberry during the investigation into whether he received foreign funds, testified Wednesday that he suggested to prosecutors that Fortenberry would return the funds to the donors, after learning that the money probably came from Chagoury. It is illegal for elected U.S. officials to accept donations from foreigners.

Gowdy said Assistant U.S. Attorney Mack Jenkins, the lead prosecutor in the case, told him that Fortenberry shouldnt return it back to the donors, in part because it could tip off the donors that they were under federal investigation. When Gowdy asked what Fortenberry should do instead, he said, Jenkins didnt give any suggestions.

When you hear that something is going to hurt an investigation, and your purpose is to assist that investigation, youre not going to do it, Gowdy said.

Day 5 of Fortenberrys federal trial marked the end of the governments case, and the beginning of Fortenberrys defense. As told through the first week of the trial, the entire saga started with Fortenberrys support of In Defense of Christians, a group devoted to protecting Christians and other religious minorities in the Middle East.

The A, B and C of IDC were Eli Ayoub, Toufic Baaklini and Chagoury, all of whom are of Lebanese descent. Chagoury used both Ayoub and Baaklini, who are U.S. citizens, to illegally funnel money to the campaigns of U.S. politicians, including: former presidential candidate Mitt Romney, California Rep. Darrell Issa, former Nebraska Rep. Lee Terry and Fortenberry.

The others disgorged the money from their campaigns. Prosecutors have pointed out that Fortenberry took 2 years to do the same.

He didnt do it even after he noticed that most of the money raised at a February 2016 fundraiser in Los Angeles came from the same family. Seeing the same last name on the donor forms, Fortenberry asked Baaklini if he should be concerned  and Baaklini told him not to sweat it.

Fortenberry also didnt get rid of the money after a June 2018 phone call in which Ayoub told him that Baaklini had provided $30,000 in cash for the fundraiser and that the cash probably came from Chagoury.

He also didnt get rid of the money after the March 2019 FBI interview at his Lincoln home, prosecutors said.

Then came the second FBI interview in July 2019.

John Littrell, a Fortenberry attorney, asked Gowdy if he would agree with Fortenberrys comment in July 2019 that he was horrified at finding out that it was Chagourys money.

Asked to describe Fortenberrys reaction, Gowdy said: Shock and anger. It was shock, with a subtext of anger.

Part of the subtext of Gowdys testimony Wednesday was this: The attorney seemed to regret that he had allowed Fortenberry to be interviewed by the feds in July 2019.

A former federal and district attorney, as well as congressman, Gowdy said he believed that Fortenberry was trending toward a witness and that the government just wanted to size him up in terms of his reliability and credibility.

In reality, Fortenberry was the subject of the investigation. The FBI had taped the June 2018 phone call between Fortenberry and Ayoub. And FBI agents had taped the Lincoln interview and already had suspected him of lying.

An attorney asked Gowdy if he knew that the FBI had secretly recorded all of those events.

No, he testified, with a smirk.

Did he believe the feds were just sizing up Fortenberry as a witness?

One-hundred percent, Gowdy said emphatically.

Defense attorneys also introduced an FBI memo that they say shows the FBI had predetermined, even before the Lincoln interview, that they were going to charge Fortenberry. In the memo, agent Todd Carter wrote that he would approach Fortenberry and interview him about his conversations with Ayoub and his knowledge of the source of the $30,000 campaign contribution.

Case agents will also seek to indict Fortenberry with misprision (concealment) of felony and conduit contributions. In addition, if case agents determine from the interview that Fortenberry is making false statements, he will be charged with false statements.

A second FBI agent on the case, Edward Choe, testified that he hadnt seen that memo and that he didnt share the opinion that Fortenberry automatically would be charged.

And prosecutors argued that such memos are typical. Any criminal charges are subject to change, depending on what happens in the course of interviews and investigations, they say.

At that point, Choe said, agents had been continually checking to see if Fortenberry had gotten rid of the illegal campaign money. He hadnt.

Another memo caused a stir Wednesday. Prosecutor Jamari Buxton told the judge that he wanted to introduce a memo that Fortenberry had sent to the U.S. House of Representatives clerk just last week, seeking to vote by proxy in the House because of the ongoing public health emergency. Fortenberrys note made no mention of the real reason he cant attend: this trial.

It would counter any notion that Fortenberry is steadfastly honest, Buxton said.

Judge Stanley Blumenfeld Jr. considered it but ultimately decided against it. He said it would take too much evidence to establish why it was written and the process Congress uses during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In other testimony, Fortenberrys chief of staff, Andy Braner, testified that his boss is the countrys last great statesman and a visionary.

The nine-term congressman is so scrupulous that, Braner said, he once made Braner replace an office stamp on a piece of mail. Fortenberry handed him a stamp from his wallet.

Were not going to have the taxpayers pay for my personal mail, Fortenberry told Braner.

Another time in 2019, Braner said, a visitor from the Middle East tried to hand Braner an envelope of cash in recognition of all the work Fortenberry had done in the Middle East. Braner refused.

Two days later, Braner informed the congressman of the interaction.

Fortenberry was irate, Braner said. He said, Call the (House) Sergeant at Arms and get him up here. Were going to tell him everything and make sure that doesnt happen again. 

Prosecutors noted that the Middle East envoy had offered Braner cash just a month after the FBI had interviewed Fortenberry about his campaign receiving another foreigners cash. Hence the outrage, Buxton suggested.

Another House member told the jury that she has always known Fortenberry as an honorable person.

Rep. Anna Eshoo, a Democrat, said Fortenberry came across the aisle, literally, to meet her. He wanted to talk about a cause he thought she would share.

Eshoo, a half-Armenian, half-Assyrian representative from Northern California, said Fortenberry was sincere: He wanted her input on the issue of protecting religious minorities in the Middle East.

Thats how I got to meet and work with Jeff, Eshoo said. I think he brings honor to what he does. ... Hes faith filled. Hes honest. His word is always good  I cant say that about all members of Congress.

Whether his word is always good is a question for the federal jury. Jurors are expected to begin deliberating the case Thursday or Friday. Fortenberry is charged with two counts of lying to the FBI and one count of trying to conceal his knowledge about the true source of the $30,000 campaign donation.

Fortenberrys defense team is expected to continue Thursday to put the FBI on trial for its handling of the probe. Attorney Ryan Fraser blasted the FBI for showing up unannounced to the Fortenberry home and lying to Celeste Fortenberry, the congressmans wife, about why they were there. Jeff Fortenberry had called then-Lincoln Police Chief Jeff Bliemeister to send two officers to his house to screen and monitor the FBI agents. Bliemeister is expected to testify Thursday.

When FBI agents showed up, Fraser said, Fortenberry was exhausted, having just returned from a trip to Africa where he was briefed on elephant poaching.

You would expect the FBI to warn you if you were the victim of an illegal foreign campaign donation? asked Littrell.

Oh, I would hope so, Eshoo said.

She paused, correcting herself.

I would think so, she said. Not just hope.

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.
China has completed a test of its high-thrust oxyhydrogen engine designed for a Long March-5 rocket, which will launch the space station lab module Mengtian, the engine maker said Tuesday.



Fired up for 100 seconds during the test on Monday, the engine is now ready to enter the final assembly of the rocket, said the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation.

Designed for the core stage of the Long March-5 series carrier rockets, the engine is the most advanced cryogenic liquid rocket engine ever in China. There will be more than 20 experimental tasks that the rocket engine will undergo to test its performance further.

China will finish the building of its Tiangong space station this year. It will consist of a core module attached to two laboratories, Wentian and Mengtian, with a combined weight of more than 90 tonnes once completed.

Covering 150 square meters, the space station, at that time, could host six taikonauts, the company disclosed.
Easter Sunday ended tragically in the Omaha area 109 years ago today. Death and devastation roared through Omaha when a monster tornado ripped a bloody scar across the heart of the city.

The 1913 Easter tornado struck Ralston and Omaha with no warning, wiped out several thousand buildings and homes, and caused more than 100 deaths. Ralston, not quite a year from its incorporation as a city, was almost entirely leveled.

The massive storm cut a path two to six blocks wide and 4 miles long across Omaha, going north but eventually skirting downtown before moving into Iowa, and was undiscriminating in the damage it wrought. It tore through the homes of the rich and the hovels of the poor. An estimated 103 people were killed and 350 injured in the Omaha area. Six other tornadoes in eastern Nebraska and western Iowa killed about 65 other people and injured 240 more.

About 750 of Omahas more than 2,000 damaged houses were destroyed. Ten churches, five schools, three convents and a hospital were damaged or destroyed. Electrical, telephone and telegraph lines, streetcars and railcars were toppled. Fires from broken natural gas lines or upturned wood-burning stoves threatened widespread conflagration. Damage was estimated at $8.7 million.

The Omaha tornado  now categorized by the National Weather Service as an F-4 storm, which produces winds of 207-260 mph  was part of the most catastrophic outbreak of tornadoes in eastern Nebraska and western Iowa history.

The storm hit with all its fury a little before 6 p.m., wreaking what the Omaha Bee described as heart-rending havoc. Several days later, a photograph of a regulator clock hanging on the wall at the Electric Garage at 40th and Farnam Streets was found to have stopped at exactly 5:49 p.m., fixing the time the tornado hit.

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.
Planned Parenthood North Central States, which includes Nebraska and Iowa, has received $20 million from MacKenzie Scott, part of the $275 million the philanthropist and author is giving to Planned Parenthood and its 21 affiliates.

The gift to Planned Parenthood North Central States, which also includes Minnesota, South Dakota and North Dakota, is the largest one-time donation in the affiliates history.

The donation will pay for sexual and reproductive health care, comprehensive sex education and advocacy in the five-state region.

Scott, the former wife of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, also announced this week that she was donating $11 million to Habitat for Humanity of Omaha. The donation is part of the $436 million that she is giving to Habitat for Humanity International and 84 of its U.S. affiliates.

Andi Curry Grubb, Nebraska executive director of Planned Parenthood North Central States, said organization leaders are exploring ideas for innovating how health care is delivered and will identify more specific strategies this spring and summer before they are adopted.

The North Central States affiliate operates 28 health centers and a telehealth program in the five-state region, serving more than 100,000 patients a year.

Organization officials noted that the gift comes at a critical time for abortion access. The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to release a decision this summer on a case challenging Roe v. Wade, the decision that established the right to abortion.

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.
LOS ANGELES  Coronavirus cases are on the upswing worldwide, prompting some officials to warn that California could see increases this spring because of the omicron subvariant BA.2 even though cases so far have been modest.

The World Health Organization has recorded the first week-over-week increase in global coronavirus cases since late January, with cases rising 8% compared with the previous week. With infections rising in parts of Africa, Asia and Europe, officials say they wouldnt be surprised if new cases climbed again in the U.S.  and in California  this spring.

What remains unclear is whether a national increase would be a ripple or a deluge that could again strain hospitals.

So far, coronavirus cases are still declining across California, and in L.A. County, where case rates continue to fall.

But even with the decline, officials are closely watching how the omicron subvariant BA.2  which is 30% to 60% more contagious than the original omicron variant  is comprising a growing percentage of new cases.

Nationally, BA.2 represented an estimated 23% of variants analyzed between March 6 and March 12, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The previous week, the subvariant represented an estimated 14% of virus cases analyzed nationally. BA.2 was found most frequently in the Northeast, where it represented nearly 40% of coronavirus cases; on the West Coast, it represented about 25% of cases.

Scripps Research Translational Institute microbiologist Kristian Andersen projected on Twitter last week that in San Diego County, almost all new coronavirus infections will be of the BA.2 subvariant in the near future.

The growth of BA.2 has been more mixed elsewhere. In L.A. County, BA.2 comprised 6.4% of coronavirus specimens analyzed between Feb. 20 and Feb. 26, the most recent data available; a week earlier, it was 5%, according to Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer.

In Northern Californias most populous county, Santa Clara County, most of the omicron cases being detected in the Palo Alto area are of the BA.2 subvariant, but that gets less prevalent farther south, such as in Gilroy.

Interestingly  and this gives me hope  it is not driving up the levels overall. I dont know why, but it isnt, Dr. Sara Cody, the Santa Clara County public health director and health officer, said last week. But were watching that very, very carefully.

Theres no certainty that L.A. County will experience the kind of BA.2 surges that many European countries are observing now, Ferrer said, but it remains quite possible it could become a dominant strain.

BA.2 is probably not the only reason other countries are seeing sharp increases in coronavirus cases, she added; the jumps come as many public health measures that limited coronavirus transmission have been rescinded and as protection from vaccinations and booster shots have waned over time.

Its essential that more be done to get more people vaccinated and boosted, especially those who are vulnerable, Ferrer said. She expressed alarm about the lack of action to continue federal funding vaccination, testing and treatment efforts for uninsured residents.

Ferrer said that because of the stalemate in Washington, many of L.A. Countys community groups no longer will be reimbursed for vaccinated or testing uninsured people as of Tuesday, a situation that wrecks our network immediately.

My hope is that, swiftly, our federal elected officials are going to work together with the White House to get a package passed, Ferrer said. We need to be prepared for a potential challenge in the future  and in the near future. We dont want to be caught off guard; we need to have supply chains in place; we need people to have [personal protective equipment].

Cody echoed Ferrers statements, warning that COVID funding has essentially collapsed. That is breathtaking and shocking in the middle of a global pandemic.

Myoung Cha, chief strategy officer at San Francisco-based Carbon Health and former head of strategic initiatives at Apple Health, warned in a series of tweets Saturday that the BA.2 cycle has already started here and will be in full bloom in about two to three weeks, with a much bigger surge than anyone saw coming.

Potential signs of worry stem from the U.S. having lower vaccination and booster rates than Europe, less testing and a longer period of waning immunity. Cha suggested that BA.2 cases would hit the Northeast first, but predicting trends in the U.S. could be hampered by at-home rapid tests, whose results are not reported to the government, as opposed to lab-based PCR tests, which are reported to officials.

Cha noted that Google search trends for cold symptoms seem to be on the rise right now.

The irony is that eagerness to go back to normal and the lifting of social distancing measures will accelerate the surge beyond what otherwise would have been, Cha wrote. For many people, going back to pre-COVID behaviors may seem fine and the actual risk from BA.2 may be low. What is at stake is the impact on immunocompromised and older adults who will be disproportionately affected by another surge along with our health care system.

Dr. Eric Topol, director of Scripps Research Translational Institute in La Jolla, echoed Chas concerns. Right now were mainly relying on hope as our defense, when it ought to be boosting at scale. It remains possible it wont be substantial  as in the U.K. and other countries in Europe  but I wouldnt count on that, Topol tweeted.

In New York City, a decline in coronavirus cases may have already begun.

Its important to note, however, that BA.2 hasnt had the same effect on all countries. It has become dominant in Bangladesh, India and South Africa, yet none of those countries has seen the kind of jump in case rates that Britain, Germany, Austria and Switzerland have had, according to data shared by Topol.

Its also possible that the U.S. could see a milder effect from BA.2 than Europe or Asia, according to Andy Slavitt, a former senior advisor on COVID-19 with the Biden administration.

In a series of tweets Sunday, Slavitt said its worth noting that the U.S. version of omicron that dominated the nation this winter was actually more contagious than the version that hit Europe earlier. The version that hit Europe was BA.1, and the U.S. subvariant was its descendant, BA.1.1.

In other words, a nastier omicron winter for the U.S. compared with Europe could spell a less severe spring of BA.2, according to Slavitts reasoning.

If this sounds too optimistic for some, its still too pessimistic for others, Slavitt wrote. If you dont want to count on luck, get vaccinated and boosted, wear masks when cases rise near you and take care with people with higher risk factors.

California health officials continue to strongly recommend universal mask wearing in indoor public settings.

According to Ferrer, there have been only a handful of documented cases in which someone infected with an earlier omicron subvariant was reinfected with BA.2. But its early in the research cycle on this, Ferrer said. Should we start seeing a lot more BA.2 circulating, we all need to take additional precautions, particularly if we are at high-risk, and urge those unvaccinated or who havent received their boosters to take this opportunity [to get their shots] before BA.2 starts circulating more widely.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the U.S. governments top infectious diseases expert, said last week that he would not be surprised if the U.S. sees an increase in cases in the coming weeks.

And although some experts have noted that hospitalizations have started to rise in parts of Europe, Fauci said Britain has not yet detected heavier demand among intensive care units, nor are they seeing any increase in all-cause mortality.

Dr. Ashish Jha, the incoming White House COVID-19 response coordinator, said in interviews last week that hes not expecting a big surge in the U.S. from BA.2, but said there could be a small one.

Pfizer and BioNTech have requested authorization for a second booster shot for seniors, and Moderna went a step further and asked permission for a second booster shot for all adults.

The CDC already recommends that that those 12 and older with moderate or severely compromised immune systems who have had three doses of vaccinations of the Pfizer or Moderna shots get a fourth dose. For immune-compromised people who got the Johnson & Johnson vaccination as their primary inoculation and have already received a second dose of vaccine, officials now recommend an additional shot, for a total of three doses.

California is recording a coronavirus case rate of about 61 cases a week for every 100,000 residents  a rate not seen since July. L.A. County is reporting a rate of 79  a level not seen since the end of November, just before the omicron surge began, and a tiny fraction of the countys peak rate of more than 3,000 in early January.

The latest levels are tantalizingly close to a goal of fewer than 50 cases a week for every 100,000 residents, a level by which coronavirus transmission is seen as moderate and no longer substantial.
In the parking lot of a refugee reception center just inside Poland, Ukrainian women spoke last week with a bus driver as aid worker Chris Skopec stood nearby.

"It looks like I'm going to Germany," one of the war refugees told Skopec as she laughed hysterically. "How ridiculous is that?"

Then, the next moment, the woman was weeping, Skopec recalled. Her husband and two sons were still far inside Ukraine, where humanitarian needs were burgeoning amid Russia's bombardment. Here she was, at the first meager waypoint on her migrant journey. And if she took this ride, she'd be headed into the unknown, unsure where she'd even sleep.

"And she got on the bus," Skopec, executive vice president of global health for Project HOPE, told CNN. "That's everyone's story."

More than 3 million people have fled Ukraine since the invasion began more than three weeks ago, according to the International Organization for Migration, or IOM, and legions more flee to the border every day. Meantime, many more of Ukraine's 45 million residents remain in a country where active conflict has cut off access to basic supplies like medicine.

To serve their needs, the United Nations and its partners on March 1 launched an emergency appeal for $1.7 billion. Of that, $1.1 billion would go toward helping 6 million people inside Ukraine over the next three months and nearly $551 million help support Ukrainians who fled to other countries in the region.

Aid groups are working now to address the massive humanitarian crisis -- inside Ukraine, along the country's borders and in places of refuge far beyond. At each stage, Ukrainians face distinct needs, aid officials have found, and delivering proper resources at each one is no easy task.

Inside Ukraine, everything is needed

The need for medical supplies inside Ukraine is so great that Skopec stopped compiling lists. Every hospital is saying the same thing, he told CNN: "We're running out of everything."

He and a Project HOPE team traveled last weekend into Ukraine to deliver a shipment of medical supplies to a 4,000 bed, three-hospital network in Lviv. Among the supplies were specialized sutures used in a heart transplant the very next day, he said.

"Of course, we can talk a lot about the life we saved there, but this is a country of 45 million," he said. "So, we won't and can't stop with the idea of just helping one person."

Resupplying health care facilities -- and the doctors, nurses and support staff now doing their jobs in a war zone -- is the principal focus of Project HOPE's efforts inside Ukraine, said Skopec. The 64-year-old organization's mission is supporting health care workers around the world.

But as the demand for health care services inside Ukraine is greater than ever, the nation's supply chain has been severely disrupted, Skopec told CNN. He compared the needs to those of American doctors and nurses at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic: In Ukraine, health care workers in clinical settings are running out of masks and trauma supplies.

Another aid group, Americares, has sent 3 tons of critical medicine and medical supplies to Ukraine, its vice president of emergency programs, Kate Dischino, said in an email. And it's working on getting more.

"We are getting requests from health care facilities in Ukraine running low, or stocked out of, the most essential supplies," she said.

There's a heavy emphasis on trauma supplies like bandages and antibiotics due to the fighting, with at least 1,333 people injured as of Friday, per the UN Human Rights Office.

But there are also people with chronic conditions who need continued access to care and medicine -- and primary care inside Ukraine is functionally nonexistent, Skopec said. For instance, an estimated 2.3 million people in Ukraine, or 7.1% of the population, live with diabetes, according to the International Diabetes Federation. And some 10,000 people in Ukraine depend on dialysis to live, several global nephrology groups said in a joint statement.

"Beyond the direct causes of conflict ... you have all of the emergency needs that every population on the earth has," Alex Wade, a Doctors Without Borders emergency coordinator told CNN on Monday. "You have people who need access to insulin, people who need access to dialysis. You have pregnant women who need access to safe deliveries and, who could have complicated pregnancies, need access to surgical services. You have people with serious mental health conditions that need access to mental health services.

"These are all conditions where, if access is interrupted, the condition can deteriorate ... leading to serious complications or death," Wade said.

And needs extend beyond medicine: Food is the most urgent one now for the Odesa Humanitarian Volunteer Center, said Inga Kordynovska, head of the group that launched after the invasion. On top of supporting locals in the port city, refugees are pouring in from other Ukrainian cities like Kherson and Mariupol, she said.

Still, the nature of the conflict means there are large swathes of Ukraine where it's extremely difficult -- or impossible -- to deliver humanitarian aid.

At borders, safe passage is planned for the weary

Ukrainians escaping active conflict flee to the nation's borders, where their needs are distinct from those inside the war zone -- but just as pressing. Many tell similar stories: They left their homes on short notice, grabbing what they could and embarking on dayslong journeys. Some ran out of fuel or found it heavily rationed. At the border, they faced lengthy waits to cross.

"They're coming across exhausted, scared, angry," Skopec said.

Some have medical problems that must be addressed immediately: exhaustion, dehydration or gastrointestinal problems. Project HOPE buys and distributes medical supplies to clinics and temporary shelters that receive refugees, Skopec said. It also provides hygiene kits to support public health -- and refugees' dignity.

At border crossings to Poland and Romania, humanitarian workers support a refugee population still in transit, Skopec said. They move on quickly, getting tickets for buses or trains to take them further into Europe. More than 200,000 people entered Romania from Ukraine between February 24 and Wednesday, according to the IOM. The Romanian Ministry of Internal Affairs' state secretary on Tuesday put that number at 425,000, saying most had moved on to other countries.

Aid workers at border crossings register refugees so assistance can be better targeted to their needs -- a challenge in itself. CARE International is among aid partners working within existing civil infrastructure to register refugees, particularly those with extra vulnerabilities, and share it with other vetted organizations, like resettlement agencies.

"In the chaos of mass displacement," it's difficult to register everyone, CARE's humanitarian communications coordinator, Lucy Beck, told CNN from Isaccea, Romania, along the Danube River at the Ukraine border. "So the aim is really to put in place systems and registration to catch as many people as possible."

CARE's focus on women and girls is also key: 9 in 10 fleeing violence in Ukraine are women and children, according to the UN's Children's Fund, or UNICEF. Ukrainian men between the ages of 18 and 60 are banned from leaving the country and must stay to help fight the Russian invasion.

Part of CARE's mandate is protecting women and girls from gender-based violence, like rape or trafficking -- a risk as they move from one country to the next, Beck said. For example, many people have offered transportation to refugees, and while that's generous, it could also open refugees up to trafficking.

"There may be predatory people who will be taking some of these women and girls away," UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths told CNN. "That's an added, indecent part of this terrible conflict."

In Sighet, another Romanian border city, anyone offering refugees transport must register with aid workers so they -- like the refugees they're ferrying -- can be kept track of, Beck said. Meantime, vulnerable people, like unaccompanied children, are given specialized transportation services, she said.

Volunteers and translators doing this work interact with a huge volume of people, Beck said. Needed, too, are counselors and social experts who can support those in distress or confused to keep them away from potentially dangerous situations.

Border crossings are also filled with tearful goodbyes, and it's not just men. Beck met a 22-year-old woman who dropped off her 84-year-old grandparent at the border -- and then went back, she recalled.

"She was absolutely turning around straightaway to go back and volunteer," Beck said. "Should it come that she (is) needed to fight, she was willing to do whatever it took, I guess, to stay and help the people in Ukraine rather than choosing to leave and go somewhere safe."

Far from home, entire lives must be reset

Refugees are not just working to overcome short-term challenges -- they're faced with medium- and long-term needs, as well. And the shock of leaving their homes on such short notice could reverberate for years.

Warsaw alone had welcomed 300,000 people in the two weeks that ended Tuesday, Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski said. The city, he said, will help refugees, "but we are slowly becoming overwhelmed, and that's why we make a plea for help."

"If you think about all the things that you do as a normal person in your hometown, all of those things need to be ... recreated for people in another country," Beck said. Adults need to jobs and language skills to help to find employment; children need school.

Of the more than 3 million refugees who have fled Ukraine, Poland has by far received the most, at more than 1.8 million as of Wednesday, per the IOM. Hundreds of thousands more have entered Romania, Slovakia, Moldova, Lithuania and countries even further west, including Hungary, Austria, Germany, Belgium, Denmark, France, Portugal and the Netherlands, among many others, officials from those countries have said.

Refugees have also arrived in Italy, where two Ukrainian schoolchildren from Lviv got a warm welcome from their Italian classmates after arriving to live with their grandmother.

Refugees also need continued medical care, and the mass displacement has prompted a disruption in care for chronic diseases like HIV and tuberculosis, Doctors without Borders' emergency program manager, Kate White, told CNN. Medications for these conditions might be available for free or cheaply in Ukraine but are more expensive in other countries, she said.

"There is going to be a significant burden, either on the individual or on the government that welcome this population to ensure that they can have continuity of care," White said.

Already, for instance, 16 Ukrainian patients whose treatment was interrupted by the invasion are getting care in Italy, the country's Civil Protection Department said Monday. Among them are nine pediatric patients in the Lazio, Emilia-Romagna and Lombardy regions.

And Krakow Children's Hospital, which has had a decadeslong partnership with Project HOPE, is moving to open a separate ward for Ukrainian children, with Project HOPE contributing supplies and pharmaceuticals and installing equipment, Skopec said.

For those who want to help, aid organizations need monetary donations more than relief supplies. As well-meaning as the donation of medical supplies, hygiene kits and other items might be, money allows humanitarian groups to most efficiently direct their resources, Skopec said.

With cash, organizations like CARE "can look at that short-, medium- and long-term assistance," Beck said, "and working with all the other NGOs and UN, identify the gaps in those different areas and sectors, so that we can work together to make sure everything's covered across different needs."

The-CNN-Wire

 &  2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.

CNN's Theresa Waldrop contributed to this report.
LINCOLN  An Omaha senators second attempt at improving food assistance for convicted drug offenders in Nebraska cleared a hurdle Tuesday, but the bill could ultimately meet the same fate as the failed first attempt.

Legislative Bill 121, which State Sen. Megan Hunt introduced in 2021, would allow a person convicted of drug offenses  possession, use or distribution  access to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, commonly called food stamps, as long as they were complying with probation, parole or post-release supervision.

The bill passed its first round of debate on a 25-17 vote. It still needs to pass two more rounds of debate before it can become law.

Hunt has been trying to pass a bill to improve food assistance for drug felons since at least 2019, when she introduced Legislative Bill 169. That bill was effectively killed by a filibuster when Hunt fell short of the 33 votes she needed to pass a filibuster-ending cloture motion.

Hunt argued that LB 121 was fundamental to changing the culture of the state, and would improve the quality of life for all Nebraskans by helping those in poverty. She said it makes no sense for young people who are convicted of a drug offense to not have access to food when they are older.

I believe in second chances, Hunt said.

Under current Nebraska law, people with three or more felony convictions for drug use or possession, or just one felony conviction for drug sale or distribution, are banned from receiving SNAP. People with one or two convictions for use or possession are eligible for SNAP only if they participate in an approved treatment program, according to the bill.

Meanwhile, other felons, including rapists, robbers and murderers, face no such bar to getting food assistance, Hunt said.

Because SNAP is a federally funded program, Hunt said the bill would cost nothing for Nebraska taxpayers.

Supporters, including Sens. Steve Lathrop and Terrell McKinney of Omaha, said LB 121 would help reduce recidivism rates by eliminating the barrier of food access many drug convicts face upon their re-entry into society.

What is the harm of allowing an individual to get SNAP benefits? McKinney said.

Sen. Julie Slama of Sterling said she was wholeheartedly opposed to LB 121, arguing Nebraska should not expand government benefits to criminals. She said she would support amending state law to ban other convicts, including rapists and murders, from accessing SNAP as well.

Though she spoke for only a few minutes on Tuesday, Slama said she intends to filibuster LB 121 in the second round of debate. If the filibuster succeeds, LB 121 could meet the same fate as its predecessor.

Hunt said she is prepared to use her tools as a lawmaker, including legislative procedures and negotiations, to overcome a future filibuster.

A lot can change in a matter of hours, Hunt said.

Regardless of whether LB 121 passes, Hunt said she is confident that eventually the Legislature will pass a like-minded law.

And it will be worth it, she said.

World-Herald Staff Writer Martha Stoddard contributed to this report.

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.
China's civil aviation regulator on Tuesday urged the immediate launch of a two-week-long safety overhaul of the civil aviation sector after a passenger plane crashed in China the day before.

In addition to previous safety supervision and guidance, the safety overhaul aims to further strengthen the investigation of hidden dangers in the civil aviation sector to ensure the absolute safety of aviation operations and people's lives, the Civil Aviation Administration of China said in a circular.

The safety overhaul covers all regional air-traffic management bureaus, companies involved in civil aviation transport and general aviation, relevant service providers, airport operators, flight training organizations, among others.

During the overhaul, emphasis will be laid on areas such as professional team construction, the implementation of rules and standards, and the ability to ensure safety.

A passenger plane with 132 people aboard crashed in south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region Monday.

The China Eastern Airlines Boeing 737 aircraft, which departed from Kunming and was bound for Guangzhou, crashed into a mountainous area near Molang Village in Tengxian County in the city of Wuzhou at 2:38 p.m., causing a mountain fire.
LINCOLN  Opponents of cutting Nebraskas top corporate and individual income tax rates won a temporary victory in the Nebraska Legislature on Tuesday.

State Sen. Lou Ann Linehan of Elkhorn, the Revenue Committee chairwoman, pulled her tax cut plan off the legislative agenda after opponents blocked consideration of a key amendment. Her move means Legislative Bill 939 is dead for this year.

The amendment would have combined property tax relief measures with the income tax cuts. Linehan said the combination was critical to winning enough votes to overcome a filibuster and get the bill passed.

This bill has got to pass, so one way or another, well get it done, she said.

Despite the setback, the Revenue Committee regrouped and started over. In a hastily called executive session, the committee replaced the original language in a different bill, LB 919, with the income and property tax combination amendment, then advanced that measure to the full Legislature.

Speaker of the Legislature Mike Hilgers of Lincoln said he doesnt know how soon he will schedule the new bill for debate. But he said he is trying to keep the budget and tax bills moving along together.

The Legislature advanced the last piece of the main budget package on Tuesday morning. Lawmakers are slated to debate how to spend the states $1.04 billion worth of federal pandemic money on Wednesday. The Appropriations Committee advanced a proposal that would use $1.03 billion worth of the money provided under the American Rescue Plan Act.

Sen. Machaela Cavanaugh of Omaha led the filibuster that stopped LB 939. She said she supports tax cuts that would benefit lower- and middle-income taxpayers but objected to directing the tax cuts only to people in the top tax bracket.

She also raised concerns about the cost to the state once the cuts were fully implemented. By fiscal year 2024-25, the combination amendment and a separate bill exempting Social Security benefits from income taxes would reduce state revenues by $565 million.

This bill will ultimately bankrupt the state, Cavanaugh said.

But Sen. Tom Briese of Albion argued that Nebraska needs to bring down its top income tax rate to be competitive with surrounding states and attract new people and businesses. He said the combination amendment would help property owners as well, accusing opponents of being against tax relief.

Are you going to vote for Nebraska taxpayers or are you going to stand in the way? he asked.

The combination amendment would ratchet down the top corporate and individual income tax rates to 5.84% but at a slower pace than originally proposed in LB 939. Under current law, the top corporate rate is 7.5% for this year and is slated to drop to 7% next year. The top individual rate is 6.84% now.

The combination amendment would increase property tax relief by allowing property owners to claim new refundable income tax credits equal to a portion of what they paid in community college property taxes.

The new credit program would be similar to one created by LB 1107 two years ago, which offsets a portion of what property owners pay in school property taxes. The LB 1107 program currently provides $548 million worth of credits, equal to about one-quarter of school property taxes.

The proposed community college credit program would start at $50 million this year and ramp up to $195 million by 2026. At full implementation, the program could offset around three-quarters of community college property taxes.

The combination amendment would fix the size of the LB 1107 program at $560.7 million for 2023. Once reaching the maximum value set by the amendment, the school and community college credit programs would be allowed to grow by the same percentage that property valuations in the state grow, up to a 5% maximum.

Lawmakers never reached an amendment proposed by Sen. John Cavanaugh of Omaha, which would have given $200 cash to every Nebraskan this year while cutting the tax rate on a middle-income tax bracket starting next year. He said the proposal would return tax money to people while having less effect on future state revenues.

LB 939 had cleared the first of three rounds of debate on a 40-1 vote, but several senators said they backed it only to keep the bill in play.

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.
LINCOLN  A bill that would require Gov. Pete Ricketts to apply for $120 million of federal rent and utility assistance money could be dead in the water despite passing in the Legislature.

Legislative Bill 1073 passed on a 26-15 vote Wednesday, but crucially did not pass with an emergency clause, which means the law would take effect after the deadline to apply for the funding. The bill needed 33 votes to pass with an emergency clause, but it only received 26 votes in a separate attempt.

Additionally, Ricketts, who has repeatedly said he opposes the additional aid, could veto the bill.

In order for the bill to have the desired effect, the U.S. Department of the Treasury would first have to agree to extend the deadline for Nebraska beyond March 31, which State Sen. Matt Hansen of Lincoln said is a possibility. Additionally, LB 1073 would need 30 votes to pass a veto override if Ricketts vetoes the bill.

Sens. Eliot Bostar of Lincoln, Tom Brewer of Gordon and Rich Pahls of Omaha, who previously voted yes on the bill, were excused from Wednesday's vote, while Sen. Robert Hilkemann of Omaha, another previous yes vote, chose not to vote Wednesday. Sen. Steve Lathrop of Omaha was a new yes vote for LB 1073 Wednesday after not voting on the bill previously.

If all five senators voted yes on a veto override, in addition to every other senator who voted yes on LB 1073 Wednesday, that would reach the 30 votes needed to pass the bill into law.

Regardless of the bill's outcome, Hansen, who designated LB 1073 his priority bill, said there were other options available for the state to access rental assistance for residents, although he did not name specifics.

Lawmakers have been at odds with Ricketts over the funding, with many senators pushing him to accept the aid. Earlier this month, all nine members of the Appropriations Committee signed a letter asking the governor to reconsider his decision not to apply.

Despite this, Ricketts has held firm that Nebraska does not need the money. Ricketts has argued that the COVID-19 pandemic emergency is over, and pointed out that the state still has about $30 million of unused federal funding from the first round of the Emergency Rental Assistance Program.

Senators opposing the bill have echoed Ricketts' arguments, and argued that the federal assistance would hurt Nebraska taxpayers. Supporters have argued the opposite, and noted that the funding available for Nebraska will go elsewhere if the state does not request it.

Ricketts now has five days to either sign or veto LB 1073. Earlier this week, the governor declined to say whether he would veto the bill, but he repeated his opposition and touted the state's low unemployment rate.

"We are not in an emergency, so therefore its not appropriate for us to ask for emergency funds when were not in an emergency," he said.

Correction: This story has been corrected to note that the bill needed 33 votes to pass with an emergency clause, and that the federal deadline to request the funding is March 31.

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.
Going into Thursdays debate among Republican contenders for governor in Nebraska, we know top candidates answers to at least one burning question: Who do they believe is the president of the United States?

The top four Republican candidates agree that its President Joe Biden. That includes Conklin Co. CEO Charles W. Herbster, whos endorsed by former President Donald Trump, the main source of baseless assertions that the election was stolen.

In recent interviews with Herbster, hog producer Jim Pillen, State Sen. Brett Lindstrom and former State Sen. Theresa Thibodeau, The World-Herald asked who won the presidential election in 2020 and is now the duly elected president of the United States.

Joe Biden won 306-232 in the Electoral College and won the popular vote by over 7 million votes.

That should be a really easy question to answer, said Kevin Smith, chair of UNLs political science department. I am aware of no evidence of systematic voter fraud that could call into question in any way the legitimacy of the election outcomes, be that the presidential election or any other statewide race that Im aware of.

What makes answering the question tricky for statewide Republican primary candidates in a strongly red state is the narrative that Trumps camp has pushed and amplified, Smith said: That there was widespread fraud that calls into question the legitimacy of Bidens election.

The political context is what makes that a tough question, not the facts on the ground, Smith said.

The former president continues to cling to the narrative that widespread fraud played a role in his election loss despite the fact that numerous state and federal election officials, a succession of judges, Trumps own attorney general and an arm of his administrations Department of Homeland Security all said there was no evidence to support his claims, the Associated Press reported.

Nationally, Trumps claims have taken root in the minds of a sizable portion of Americans, according to polling. A national Monmouth University poll conducted with just under 800 adults Jan. 20-24 found that 32% thought Bidens win was only due to voter fraud, consistent with its polling since November 2020. It found that 30% of Republicans thought there was a path to overturn the election results.

In Ohio, The Hill reported that just one of five Republican senate candidates at a debate this week raised their hand when asked if the party should move on from the 2020 election. Candidates there are vying for the former presidents endorsement.

Herbster was at Trumps rally Jan. 6, 2021, before the violent attack on the nations Capitol. He was also at a meeting Jan. 5 in Trumps private residence in his Washington, D.C., hotel, where they discussed how to pressure more members of Congress to object to Electoral College results. He downplays his participation.

I was one of thousands of people who came from all over the United States that were at a very, very peaceful rally, he said. And Ive been to many rallies before. That was not my first one.

He said he never heard anybody was going to go to the Capitol to do anything.

Its unquestionably wrong, he said of the siege. Thats not American.

Herbster didnt object to any of the reporting recently published by the Nebraska Examiner, which obtained text messages between Herbster and staffers from those days. One text in particular demonstrated that Herbster firmly believed the 2020 election was stolen: ... this is a very very very important and informational meeting tonight with full written reports of how this election was truly stolen from us and any one who does not believe that is not true is totally inaccurate ... he wrote, according to the Examiners reporting.

In April 2021, when he announced his campaign, Herbster told KMTV that he didnt know who won and that there was no way to know, because states wouldnt look at irregularities.

But Herbster was less ambiguous in a recent interview.

Well, Joe Biden is the duly elected president of the United States, he said. And we have to honor him and wish him well as our president.

Thibodeau, who was once Herbsters running mate but now is pursuing the office in her own right, was the least clear in her answer to the same question. She said she doesnt know if voter fraud occurred in the 2020 presidential election.

Were the votes counted and were they accurate? Until we can implement some kind of verification, we cannot know, she said.

However, she said its an issue of the past: But Biden is our president right now, whether we like it or not, and we need to move forward.

Lindstrom and Pillen both also accepted that Biden is president, though Lindstrom said he has met people on the campaign trail who believe Trumps claims.

I dont discount how people feel, Lindstrom said. My message is that we cant talk about the past, we need to talk about the future.

World-Herald staff writers Lauren Wagner, Steve Liewer and Dan Crisler contributed to this story.

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.
BLOOMINGTON  The Pass Pub & Grill, 2303 E. Washington St. in Bloomington, is this week's pick for Eats of the Week.

The Pass, owned by Sarah Morgan, opened in August 2019. The name "Pass" comes from combining Morgan's stepchildren's initials, and she said the pub's ticket theme represents a "get out of the house pass" and "your ticket to great food and drink."

Morgan had been a bartender in downtown Bloomington since she was 21 years old, but had never worked in the restaurant business before opening The Pass. The Pass was initially just a bar, but eventually grew into a full-fledged restaurant.

"We really have an awesome staff and awesome, loyal customers," Morgan said. "I have a following from bartending for over 20 years, and personable bartenders are important. We have such a small place that customer service is all we have."

The Pass has poker machines; an outdoor patio, which soon will be enclosed to provide more space; and parking in the front and back of the building, which Morgan said most people don't know, as their location is very small.

The most popular menu items include the burger specials, garlic cheese balls, Cuban sandwich, fried avocado, and the "chicken PASSta," but the salads are their top sellers. The salads were even voted No. 1 by The Pantagraph Readers' Choice. Morgan said the restaurant goes through about four cases of lettuce a week.

"As a woman-owned restaurant, I was really focused on having a healthy choice," Morgan said. "It's not very often you can go to a bar and find a good salad. It could've not taken off for us, but it did."

The Pass also serves Vodka-soaked gummy bears as well as local beers on tap.

One Thursday a month, The Pass features a local "celebrity" to choose a charity and come in to bartend for two hours. Raffles, tips and money raised during the two-hour span are donated to that charity, with a goal to raise $1,000. Morgan said they like to give back to the community as much as possible.

"My favorite thing about this place is the customers and staff; it's a home-like atmosphere and like the 'Cheers' bar," employee Cari Gray said. "We want to know your name and what you like to drink. It's a very personable experience. Addressing customers by name makes them feel special and we have great, loyal and supportive customers."

The Pass Pub & Grill is open 10 a.m. to 12 a.m. Tuesday through Thursday and Sunday; 10 to 2 a.m. Friday and Saturday; and closed Monday. The kitchen is open each day from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. They offer indoor and outdoor dining. Orders can be made by calling 309-662-7277.

Contact Olivia Jacobs at (309)-820-3352. Reach out with questions.

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.
NORMAL  Doctors' offices across the country can soon buy a children's coloring book written by a local podiatrist who wanted to help kids feel less scared when they face common foot problems.

Carl Cortese, who has an office at College Avenue and Veterans Parkway in Normal as well as offices in Clinton and Pontiac, wrote "Sammy Sole Saver: The Foot Caring and Coloring Book," set for release next month.

The book includes some of the common foot ailments children may face, like warts, fungus and heel spurs. Each is represented by a cartoon antagonist, or Arch Enemies, waiting for children to color them in. Opposite the coloring page is a page with some of the details about the ailment, such as causes and preventative measures.

The original drawings were done by Eric Shellito, and the book was designed by Patty Young.

They can read about and they can learn about the diagnosis and how to prevent it in the future, Cortese said.

Sammy Sole Saver also appears around the book, often offering tips such as, Avoid going barefoot! or Your podiatrist will always make you feel better.

Children can experience many foot problems, Cortese said. Beyond minor issues, they can also face problems like in-toeing, flat feet and toe walking, which may merit talking with the child's doctor.

The National Institutes of Health's MedlinePlus provides guidance about when children may need medical help for foot conditions. Some issues may fix themselves as the child grows, the agency said, while others merit a doctor's visit if they worsen or cause pain. More information can be found on Foot Injuries and Disorders page of medlineplus.gov.

The character of Sammy has been used around Cortese Foot and Ankle Clinic for years, sometimes acting as a spokesperson for the office in advertisements and other promotional materials. Now, Cortese hopes that Sammy can help kids learn about and be less afraid of visiting a podiatrist and any problems they might be having with their feet.

Thats the whole purpose of this, is to get the child to relax and feel comfortable, he said.

Cortese also plans to sell collectable stickers depicting Sammy and the Arch Enemies, starting at next month's Midwest Podiatry Conference. The books should appeal to medical professionals beyond the field of podiatry, he said, and doctors could give the book to patients and their families to help them feel more comfortable.

Cortese also plans to offer the book for sale through the books website: www.sammysolesaver.com.

A percentage of the sales will go to the American Podiatric Medical Association Educational Foundation, which provides scholarships to podiatry students.

Part of the inspiration behind the book was the "shmoo" character from the Lil Abner comic strip. Cortese remembers going to his dentist's office and getting little dolls of the plump, bowling pin-shaped character, which experienced wild popularity and appeared on dozens of different products in the late 1940s.

He hopes his books and stickers can provide a similar feeling to kids today.

It was a good feeling to go to the dentist and get these Shmoos, he said.

Contact Connor Wood at (309)820-3240. Follow Connor on Twitter: @connorkwood

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0

Build your health & fitness knowledge Sign up here to get the latest health & fitness updates in your inbox every week! Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
BLOOMINGTON  The McLean County Museum of History won an award for Superior Achievement in Community Partnerships from the Illinois Association for Museums in recognition of its series, "Breaking Bread in McLean County."

The 10-part online program highlighted the shared and disparate experiences of local migrant communities from the Kickapoo to Congolese Americans, emphasizing shared elements, including food, family, tradition, trauma and exchange, to promote a deeper understanding of the ways McLean County has treated its past and present im/migrant communities, according to a news release.

During the series, participants engaged in monthly multimedia presentations over Zoom with community experts. Each of the 10 programs combined live and recorded lectures, discussions/interviews, musical performances, cooking demonstrations and more.

Online attendees were also given access to recipes personal to the presenters and featured in each of the programs. A possible extension of the program will be an annotated cookbook inspired by the recipes that were shared throughout the series.

The online series can be accessed for free on the museum's YouTube channel.

Contact Olivia Jacobs at (309)-820-3352. Reach out with questions.

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.
The NLA in recent time has had occasion to caution the general public to be mindful of lotto fraudsters who purport to be staff of the authority and claim to have winning numbers



NLA arrest

A collaboration between the National Lottery Authority (NLA) and the Ghana Police Service has led to the arrest of nine persons who are suspected to be behind recent social media publications aimed at defrauding the unsuspecting public by giving out supposed winning lotto numbers.



The NLA in recent time has had occasion to caution the general public to be mindful of lotto fraudsters who purport to be staff of the Authority and claim to have winning numbers.



Accused persons

The suspects as captured on the Police charge sheet are; Prince Agboglah Selorm, wise Akagbo, Hallow Winfred, Ali Gershon, Peter Sappey, Mantey Dzidzinyo, Oscar Amevor, Azilah Elijah and Samuel Kuditsa.



Charges

The accused persons have been charged with Charlatanic advertisement contrary to section 137 of the Criminal and Other Offences Act, 1960 (Act 29) and Section 110 of the Electronic Transactions Act, 2008, (Act 772).



The first accused person, Prince Agboglah Selorm, who according to the Police charge sheet is a trader and 22 years of age, has been charged alone with the offence of defrauding by false pretences, contrary to section 131 (1) of the Criminal and Other Offences Act 1960 (Act 29).



In Court

The accused persons were first arranged on the 11 February 2022 and admitted to bail in the sum of GHc 300,000.00 with two sureties each.



In court today 22 March 2022, Police Prosecutor, Fredrick Sarpong, told Judge Emmanuel Essandohs court that the Police are conducting further investigations into the case which may lead to the changing if the charge sheet and the brief facts.



The prosecution therefore asked for an adjournment to enable them to do same. Circuit judge, Emmanuel Essandoh, obliged the Police and adjourned sitting to the 4 April 2022.



Facts

According to the brief facts of the case, the complainants are the management of National Lottery Authority.



The first accused person (A1) is a trader. A2 and A3 are unemployed. A5, A6, A7 and A8 are students, while A4 and A9 are store attendants.



During the month of January 2022, the management of National Lottery Authority(NLA) received several complaints from the general public to the effect that some individual have used the NLAs symbols, photographs and names of NLA staff, to create various social media accounts.



By means of these accounts, they went ahead to claim that they have winning NLA lotto numbers and they are willing to give them out at a fee.



Through this strategy, they have succeeded in defrauding some members of the public of huge amounts of money.



The NLA management subsequently lodged a complaint to the Police. During investigation, Police traced and arrested the accused persons through the phone numbers they used to perpetrate the crime.



The Police searched and recovered from the accused persons mobile phones containing the various SIM cards used by the accused persons.



One of the victims, Comfort Yankey, mentioned A1s phone number as, 0549491036, indicating that she has been defrauded by A1 to the tune of GHC300,000 under the pretences of giving her NLA winning lottery numbers which will make her win an amount of GHc 2,860,000.00.00



Further investigations by the Police revealed that A1 used the following numbers; 0540480667, 0247124669 and 0207683962, to receive the defrauded monies from his victim, Comfort Yankey.















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 Minerals Commission has provided a pick-up vehicle and other logistics to the George Grant University of Mines and Technology (UMaT) to enable them to undertake an exploration of some mining blocks.



On Wednesday, March 23, 2022, the Deputy Minister for Lands and Natural Resources, Hon. George Mireku Duker made the presentation to the University with an appeal to them to use it for the intended purpose.



Hon. Duker described the partnership between the Minerals Commission and UMaT as a novelty that speaks directly to the aim behind the establishment of the university.



Hon. Mireku Duker whose constituency, the University is located shed light on the positive impact of the exercise on the school.



He noted that the investigation is the ideal medium to create linkages between academia and industry.



He, however, appealed to the Minerals Commission to provide more logistical and other forms of support to the University to help them undertake the assignment.



This is the first time the commission has asked the university to explore areas we can mine. This is a novelty, lets applaud the Commission. This is something that is going to help the University to enhance their geological investigation as far as mining is concerned, he said



There are some areas for the university to mine and that is also a novelty. The university is going to have its own concessions that student will be deployed to mine directly. They will be attending to some practical activities whiles on campus, he added



The Chief Executive Officer of the Minerals Commission, Mr Martin Ayisi said its the resolve of the Commission to provide adequate support to the Geological Service and other relevant institutions to undertake the prospecting of areas suspected to be rich in mineral resources.



He explained this is a new dimension the commission is embarking on as a way of resourcing and empowering institutions in the country.



He assured authorities of the George Grant University that the Commission will continue to provide the needed logistics for them to carry out the investigative exercise.



Professor Richard Amankwah, the Vice-Chancellor of UMaT welcomed with pleasure the task handed the University and assured that it will be executed to perfection.

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
The Rector of the Ghana College of Nurses and Midwives (GCNM), Miss Hannah Akua Oparebea Acquah, has advised the Graduating class of 2022 Nurse Assistant Clinical program of the Family Health Nursing and Midwifery School to aspire to the utmost level in nursing, as higher education was of the essence for practice in todays complex healthcare system.



Speaking on the theme, The Ideal Nurse for the 21st Century Ghanaian Healthcare System, at the 2022 Matriculation and Graduation ceremony for the Family Health Nursing and Midwifery School, the Rector enumerated a number of attributes that an ideal nurse should exhibit in her line of duty.



Care, empathy, commitment, critical thinking, effective communication skills, professionalism among other attributes were the traits she mentioned, summed up an ideal 21st Century nurse. She further admonished both Matriculants and Graduands to embrace mentorship and supervision from their predecessors and other senior colleagues in the nursing profession.



Welcoming the Freshmen and Women to the noble profession, Miss Oparebea Acquah reminded them to manage their time and resources well and to take their studies seriously by actively participating in both theoretical and clinical sessions.



In her welcome address, the Ag. Dean of the School of Nursing and Midwifery, Dr. Patience Aniteye, congratulated the graduands and encouraged them to give off their best in the service to humanity. To the Matriculants, Dr Aniteye admonished the students to brace themselves for the journey ahead and to take advantage of the human and material resources available to facilitate their learning.



She was grateful to Management for the additional infrastructure, incuding lecture halls, offices for staff, and a conference room to accommodate the increasing population of the School which now stands at over four hundred (400) with almost seventy percent (70%) offering Bachelor of Science in Nursing and Midwifery.



The President of the Family Health University College, Prof. E. Y. Kwawukume congratulated the graduands on their achievements; he entreated them to sharpen the skills acquired in the classroom and to build exceptional work ethics. He entreated them to show care and empathy in their professional duties, and to let the values inculcated in them by the School reflect in their actions and inactions.



He also encouraged the Matriculants to aim for excellence and be disciplined, analytical, and to learn to question knowledge received, in a refined manner.



The Family Health Nursing & Midwifery Schools 2022 Matriculation and Graduation ceremony had sixty-eight (68) Nursing Assistant Clinical (NAC) students graduating, and two hundred and fifty-seven (257) freshmen and women, comprising two-hundred (200) for BSc. Nursing and Midwifery programme, and fifty-seven (57) for NAC programme, also matriculating.



The Family Health School of Nursing and Midwifery is accredited by the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC) and the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) of Ghana, and affliated to the University of Development Studies (UDS), Tamale.



In 2009, the School started offering a two-year Certificate Programme in Nurse Assistant Clinical (NAC) and a three- year Diploma Programme in General Nursing and Midwifery in 2018. In 2019, the School started a Bachelor of Science programme in General Nursing and Midwifery.



The Nursing and Midwifery School is equipped with modern facilities and well-trained lecturers, and has churned out thousands of graduates who are working in both private and public health facilities across the country and beyond.

Source: Peacefmonline









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
In a statement read in Parliament, Hon. Yves Hanson-Nortey, MP for Tema Central reiterated the need for Ghanaians to take oral health care serious and not relegate it to the background as has been done with other health issues.



Making his statement on the floor of Parliament much to the delight of stakeholders who were commemorating World Oral Health Day, the vocal lawmaker urged the Government to take steps to address the low number of dentists currently practicing in Ghanas health care system.



Further he noted that Ghana still has few dental clinics, and the cost of dental services remains high.



It is important that we have a national conversation on what can be done to improve the oral health component of our health deliver ecosystem. More must be done to step up the dentist to patient ratio in Ghana, added Hon. Hanson-Nortey.



Noting the contribution of all stakeholders in the championing of proper oral health care, the honourable MP urged the Ghana Dental Association and its partners to enhance public awareness and education on oral health issues in the country.



Commenting on the MPs statement, Joel Boateng, Category Manager for Oral Care, Unilever Ghana saidcommended parliamentarians for prioritizing discussions on oral health care especially as the world marked World Oral Health Day.



I am encouraged to see our legislators shining the spotlight on issues of oral health. Pepsodents ongoing mission is to eradicate oral diseases for everyone and in 2022, the brand has launched an awareness campaign dubbed TalktoADentist to sensitize Ghanaians not to wait until it is too late before seeking dental care.



Oral health is closely tied to the overall health of the body and the consequences of waiting too long while nursing severe pain or any other oral care issue always leads to difficult and costly treatments and ultimately, tooth loss.



It is for this reason that Hon. Hanson-Nortey finished by making a clarion call to his fellow Members of Parliament to encourage regular oral health care check-ups by their constituents.



This year, Dont Wait Until Its Too Late #TalkToADentist. Follow Pepsodent Ghana on Facebook and participate and gain from the free dental advice.

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
You are here: China

A volunteer helps a resident register for nucleic acid test in Changchun, northeast China's Jilin province, March 21, 2022. [Photo/Xinhua]

More than 41,000 local COVID-19 infections had been reported in 28 provincial-level regions across China between March 1 and 21, a senior health official said Tuesday.

Over half of these infections, or 22,000 cases, occurred in northeast China's Jilin province, where the epidemic is still on the rise, said Lei Zhenglong with the National Health Commission (NHC) at a press conference.

With the repeated resurgence of COVID-19, China is facing a grim and complicated situation of epidemic prevention and control, said Lei.

The Chinese mainland on Monday reported 2,281 locally transmitted COVID-19 cases and 2,432 asymptomatic cases, NHC data showed.
The Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, will speak on the Ghanaian economy in April, his spokesperson, Dr. Gideon Boako has said.



Following worsening effects on the Ghanaian economy, including price hikes on fuel and basic commodities and depreciation of the Cedi, there have been calls on the Vice President to address the issues publicly.



The Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, will speak next month, in April 7, 2022, also at a platform somewhere in Cape Coast, for you to see that the Government has rolled out a plan to deal with the issues, he said.



A multiplicity of factors, including the Covid-19 pandemic and Russias invasion of Ukraine, have largely contributed to economic meltdown across the globe, and many have called on the Vice President, Dr. Bawumia, who is also the leader of the Economic Management Team to publicly address how these factors have impacted the Ghanaian economy, as well as measures the government has taken to address the situation.



Prior to the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, the Ghana economy was on the rise with positive indicators, earning positive ratings from global economic watchers.



But the situation became different when COVID-19 set in with Fitch rating Ghanas economy as B-.



However, critics of the Vice President, especially members of the opposition NDC, have incessantly demanded that the Vice President breaks his silence on the worsening economic conditions in the country.



Dr. Boako had earlier rejected claims that Dr. Bawumia was shying away from commenting on the current challenges plaguing the economy, particularly the depreciation of the cedi against the US dollar.





Source: ghanaweb.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 Ministry of Health has disclosed that it has no information on the governments giant health infrastructure programme, the Agenda 111 project.



The disclosure was made in response to a Right To Information (RTI) request submitted by an Accra-based news outlet, Joy News.



The news outlet's RTI request bordered on five areas including demand for information on copies of the policies underpinning the project, districts where the projects were to be situated and a detailed plan for commencement and completion.



It also sought information on staffing of the said facilities and detailed project proposals - feasibility studies and sources of funding secured.



The Ministry's March 21 response included an acknowledgement of the request and a one-line reply that read: "Per our records, we do not have the information in our custody."



The letter was signed by Kwabena Boadu Oku-Afari, Chief Director for the Minister and was copied to the Minister, his Deputy, the Information Officer at the Ministry and the RTI Commission.



Health Minister, Kwaku Agyeman-Manu, in January this year told the state broadcaster, Ghana Television, that the progress on the project touted as the biggest health sector infrastructure drive stood at 35 per cent.



On average, we have done close to about 35 per cent works on all the 101 facilities There were a lot of pre-contract arrangements, things that we needed to do; sitting, topography surveys to ensure that there are places where contractors can move into.



About Agenda 111



Government last year announced having secured US$100 million start-up fund through the Ghana Investment Infrastructure Fund (GIIF) for the commencement of works on Agenda 111 projects.



President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo performed the ground-breaking ceremony on Tuesday, August 17, 2021, at Trade in the Atwima Kwanwoma District of the Ashanti Region.



The Project Implementation Committee is chaired by Chief of Staff, Madam Akosua Frema Osei-Opare, and at the time of sod-cutting had secured sites and land titles for 88 out of the 101 district hospitals.



Government said each of the district hospitals would cost US$17 million, covering 15 acres. Each hospital is expected to be completed within 12 months, starting from the point of commencement.



The Agenda 111 project includes 101 district hospitals, six regional hospitals in the newly created regions, two specialised hospitals in the middle and northern belts, as well as a regional hospital in the Western Region and renovation of the Effia-Nkwanta Regional Hospital.





Source: ghanaweb.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 former National First Vice Chairman of the ruling party has called on Ghanaians to rally behind the government as it intends to implement new measures to navigate the economy through the current turbulence.



According to him, the current challenges are as a result of external factors which make it difficult to solve as a country. He said 'We find ourselves in difficult times because there is COVID-19 and now, the Russia and Ukraine war' These things have adverse impacts on nations whether you like it or not.



"Today, prices of fuel and other essential commodities are going up so I urge Ghanaians to understand the current situation and support this government as it intends to roll out new measures to address our challenges. We have done pretty well since we came to power so it is unfortunate these things are happening now



Speaking to some party members in the Greater Accra Region, he tasked them to also project the positives of the government for Ghanaians to also appreciate the current situation.



He also descended on the opposition party, NDC for creating the impression that they could have done something better in this current situation when their abysmal record on economic management is not something to be forgotten anytime soon.



Under the NDC, he stressed, Ghanas economy was run aground. Hopelessness was the order of the day. Even without Covid they couldnt employ teachers and nurses, let alone pay them.

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
The Association of Ghana Apparel Manufacturers (AGAM), the largest apparel-based business advocacy organization in the country, has outdoor its newly elected executives at a formal ceremony held in Accra at the associations general meeting last week.



The newly elected executives are Mrs Natasha Bannerman Kudjawu President, COO of Sleek Garments, Nura Salifu, Vice President and CEO of Sixteen 47, Dr. Florence Chambas, General Secretary CEO of Ford flora, Mr. Mahama Yussif, Treasury Secretary, CEO of Harmony Trends, Jane Damaris Agyarko Organising Secretary, CEO of Damaris and Garments Ltd.



The old executives who handed over to the newly elected executives are Mr. Gregory Kankoh CEO, Nallem Clothing President, Mrs. Linda Ampah, CEO, Cadling Fashons  Vice President, Mr. Dela Gomado, Del Gh Consult, Treasurer, Mrs. Natasha Kudjawu, Sleek Garments, Executive Member.



The handing over ceremony was witnessed by industry players such as Dignity DTRT, Manise Designs, Charisma Fashions, Precious Textiles, Tiffylis, Global Garments, Jem Afrik and Others.



Speaking at the handing over ceremony, Mr. Gregory Kankoh, Outgoing President said there is increased interest in Africa by key international players as a result of recent international events and AGAM is determined to work with members to take advantage of this opportunity and use that platform to continue to improve standards to suit market trends.







Mrs. Linda Ampah, Outgoing Vice President of the association, encouraged members to increase collaboration to maximize opportunities, both locally and internationally.



Nana Poquah A. Adiamah, the National Coordinator, briefed members about the recent successful visit to the country of international garment and apparel buyers facilitated by the GIZ, the German Agency for International Corporation, in partnership with the German Embassy and the Ministry of Trade and Industry.



The newly elected President, Mrs. Natasha B. Kudjawu outlined the strategy for the incoming team and said their areas of focus are Business Development, Members Capacity Enhancement and Effective Partnerships.



Other programmes include Advocacy for a national policy for the sector, Leverage on the partnership to further improve International standards of compliance, industry-oriented capacity building for the entire sector, increase awareness of the industry and develop further market access for the members of the Association/industry.



AGAM continues to partner  GIZ, USAID, DFID, UNESCO, DANIDA, EU, TFO CANADA, ITA, Ghana Export Promotion Authority, Ghana Exim Bank, Ministry of Trade and Industry, Ghana Enterprise Agency, Ghana Investment Promotion Center, Ministry of Health, Ministry of Education, AGI, GNCCI and COTVET etc.

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
A Private Legal Practitioner, Lawyer Godwin Edudzi Tamakloe, has proposed to Parliament to enact laws that will prevent drivers from driving late in the night.



According to him, the spate at which accidents are claiming lives is so alarming that something drastic should be done immediately before the worse happens.



Speaking on Okay fm's Ade Akye Abia, Edudzi Tamakloe, who is an aide to former president John Dramani Mahama, bemoaned how some drivers try to cheat nature by foregoing rest and end up falling asleep behind the wheel leading to fatal road accidents.



"We cannot continue to look on while innocent lives are lost through road accidents when something can be done about it. It is about time parliament enact laws that will protect passengers and drivers and also reduce road carnages.



"There should be some strict laws that will guide drivers, especially the big truck drivers who carelessly park on the shoulders of the road posing as danger to drivers and pedestrians. Some of these accidents can be avoided if only the laws enacted are enforced by the security agencies," he stated.



He maintained just like governments in advanced countries pass laws relative to road traffic regulations and ensure sure that these laws are strictly adhered to by drivers, same should be done in Ghana.



"We have not even ended the third quarter of the year yet we have recorded not less than 500 deaths through road accidents and it cannot continue like this," he added.



Watch Video Below





Meanwhile, fourteen (14) persons onboard an Accra-bound Ford vehicle from Tarkwa are believed to have perished in a car crash at Asem Asa in the Shama District, near the boundary between Western and Central Regions.A number of bodies at the scene of the accident were left charred after the crashed bus caught fire.According to an eyewitness, the accident occurred after a truck lost control and burst its tyre in an attempted overtaking, and crashed into the Ford.

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 Russian government has refused to rule out the use of nuclear weapons while admitting that president Vladimir Putin has yet to achieve any of his military goals in Ukraine since the invasion began in February 24.



Putin has previously hinted at using nuclear weapons against nations that he saw as a threat to Russia.



Back in February, the Russian President said in a televised statement, "No matter who tries to stand in our way or all the more so create threats for our country and our people, they must know that Russia will respond immediately, and the consequences will be such as you have never seen in your entire history."



Putin then said in a meeting with Russian defense officials that "officials in leading NATO countries have allowed themselves to make aggressive comments about our country, therefore I hereby order the Minister of Defense and the chief of the General Staff to place the Russian Army Deterrence Force on combat alert."



But in an interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour on Tuesday, March 22, When asked under what conditions Putin would use Russia's nuclear capability, Dmitry Peskov, Putin's chief spokesperson (pictured top left), replied, "if it is an existential threat for our country, then it can be."



When asked what Putin thought he had achieved in Ukraine since the invasion, Peskov answered:



"Well, first of all, not yet. He hasn't achieved yet."



The spokesman also claimed that the "special military operation" which is the Kremlin's official name for Russia's invasion in Ukraine -- was "going on strictly in accordance with the plans and the purposes that were established before hand."



Peskov then added that the "main goals of the operation" are to "get rid of the military potential of Ukraine," to ensure Ukraine is a "neutral country," to get rid of "nationalist battalions," for Ukraine to accept that Crimea -- annexed by Russia in 2014 -- is part of Russia and to accept that the breakaway statelets of Luhansk and Donetsk "are already independent states."



Russia's war with Ukraine is now in its fourth week.









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 government is to revitalise the Tema Oil Refinery to meet domestic demand for petroleum products, Dr Mathew Opoku Prempeh, the Minister of Energy, said on Tuesday.



This would greatly position the nation well, reduce her imported petroleum products and guarantee fuel security too.



Dr Prempeh said the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation was also developing the petrochemical industry to produce the required materials to manufacture solar panels, wind blades and battery cells that would contribute to Ghana's net-zero carbon emission agenda.



As a signatory to the Paris Agreement and other international protocols, all these are measures being introduced by the government to enable the nation to achieve net-zero carbon emission by 2050.



The Sector Minister said this in a speech read on his behalf at a public sensitization forum on the National Energy Transition Plan organised by the Ministry at Goaso in the Ahafo Region.



It was attended by traditional rulers, municipal and district assemblies, as well as heads of departments and agencies, civil society organisations and actors.



Dr Prempeh said the government needed to plan and strategise to push the country towards a low carbon economy while ensuring economic growth as well.



The Ministry, in collaboration with the Energy Transition Committee, is collecting and incorporating public views for the successful implementation of the Plan.



Mr Frederick Obeng Addo, a Deputy Minister of Transport, said data from the Driver Vehicle and Licensing Authority (DVLA) showed that 72 per cent of the 2.8 million vehicles registered in the country in 2021 used petrol, 27 per cent diesel and about one per cent gas and other sources of energy.





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 Dean of Communication Studies at the Wisconsin University, Professor Kwame Karikari, has suggested the introduction of local languages as a medium of instruction in basic schools in order for pupils to have easy grasp of topics and to keep the nation's culture.



He pointed out that even at the height of English's dominance all over the world, the country needed to maintain its cultural values which included language as one of the cultural elements in its education system.



Prof. Karikari was speaking at the Annual Founders' Day Inaugural lecture of the Komenda College of Education on the theme, "Teacher education in Ghana; The Komenda College of Education experience.



"It's important to remember that language influences ideas, and that speaking one's mother tongue promotes mental development. As a result, interactive learning sessions should be promoted, and Ghanaian language instruction should be improved, boosting national growth," he stressed.



Prof. Karikari said one of the key causes of the nation's underdevelopment was the neglect of its local languages, and that it was past time to place a greater emphasis on local languages in order to stimulate effective learning and to help accelerate national development.



"How can a student become relevant to the community if he or she cannot communicate in the local language?" he queried.



Inauguration



As part of activities to mark the day, the Deputy Minister of Education, Rev. John Ntim Fordjour, together with the Principal of the College, Very Rev. Dr Kwesi Nkum Wilson, and some members of the school's governing council inaugurated office blocks for heads of departments, an ICT lab and a refurbished Home Economics block provided by the government through the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GetFund).



Later in an address, Rev. Fordjour indicated that a proposal to secure the development of hostel facilities for all of the country's 46 Colleges of Education had been provided for and was nearing completion.



He explained that the move would aid in the creation of a calm and quiet studying environment for teacher trainees, which would aid in improving learning outcomes.



"Procurement has begun and almost been finalised for the construction of hostel facilities for each of the 46 Colleges of Education across the country to allow student-teachers to have conducive learning environment," he said.



Rev. Ntim Fordjour added that there were no ongoing discussions on phasing out the payment of the teacher trainee allowance.



Despite reports, he said the government would continue to demonstrate its commitment towards education in the country and would continue to pay the allowances to support teacher trainees.



College Principal



Dr Wilson thanked the government for providing the blocks, but stressed that there was still more that could be done to improve teaching and learning at the school.



He called for more infrastructural support for the college.



Roads



The Municipal Chief Executive Officer (MCE) of Komenda-Edina-Eguafo-Abrem, Mr Solomon Ebo Appiah, observed that conversations on the poor status of the road that leads to the college were gradually taking shape, and that plans to construct the roads were advance.













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 high transportation fares have resulted in high cost of foodstuffs in markets in the Tamale Metropolis.



A visit by the Ghana News Agency (GNA), to the Tamale Central Market, showed that three tubers of yam, which were sold between GHc10 to GHc15 last year, were now sold at GHc30, while a bowl of groundnut, which was sold at GHc10 last year, was now sold for GHc15.



Other foodstuffs, whose prices had gone up included maize where a bowl, which was sold for GHc5 last year, was now selling for GHc8 while a bowl of soybeans was now sold for Ghc15 as against GHc8 last year.



A bowl of big-size beans was now selling at Ghc30 as against GHc20 for last year, while a gallon of palm oil was now sold at GHc70 as against Ghc50 for last year.



A bowl of local rice was GHc12 last year but was now selling for GHc15 while Gari, which was sold for Ghc10 per bowl last year was now GHc17.



Some of the traders complained of low sales and appealed to the government to do something about the rising prices of foodstuffs to make them affordable to their customers.

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
Supreme Court ruled Deputy Speaker of Parliament can be counted during the formation of a quorum



Dr. Obed Yao Asamoah, a former Attorney General and Foreign Affairs Minister, has given his view on the recent Supreme Court ruling that affirmed the voting right of a Deputy Speaker while presiding in the Parliament.



Speaking in an interview on Joy News on Monday, March 21, 2022, he questioned why the Parliamentary Standing Orders were declared ultra vires.



The individual can take that position and it is intra vires but in the collective, in their power to regulate the proceedings of Parliament, they have that absolute power. They say look we are deciding collectively that if you are a Deputy Speaker, you dont have the what? How can that be ultra vires? I dont understand, Dr. Asamoah said.



The Supreme Court on Wednesday, March 9, ruled that a Deputy Speaker of Parliament can be counted during the formation of a quorum for parliamentary decision-making and participation in voting while presiding.



The landmark judgement 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 verdict by the Supreme Court has left the two leading political parties  NPP, NDC - deeply divided with the Minority Leader in Parliament, saying that the ruling is likely to exacerbate the existing tension in Parliament.





Source: ghanaweb.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
Rescue work continued on Tuesday after a passenger plane with 132 people aboard crashed in South China's Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region Monday afternoon. [Photo/Xinhua]

Boeing China said it is working with its airline customers and is ready to support them after a nearly 7-year-old Boeing 737-800 passenger jet of China Eastern Airlines, with 132 people on board, crashed in the mountains of southern China on Monday.

"Our thoughts are with the passengers and crew members of China Eastern Airlines flight MU5735. Boeing is in contact with the United States National Transportation Safety Board and our technical experts are prepared to assist with the investigation led by the Civil Aviation Administration of China," Boeing China said in a statement on Tuesday.

The flight from Kunming, Yunnan province, to Guangzhou, Guangdong province, reached a cruise altitude of nearly 9,000 meters shortly after departing from Kunming at 1:11 pm on Monday. At 2:19 pm, it plunged nearly 8,000 meters in three minutes and crashed on the mountain, according to data from flight-radar24, a global flight tracking service provider. The cause of the accident remains under investigation.

The Boeing 737-800 passenger jet is one of the company's most widely used aircraft. China Eastern Airlines suspended all the Boeing 737-800 jets after the crash.

According to a Boeing annual summary of commercial jet accidents, from 2011 to 2020, 13 percent of fatal accidents occurred while cruising and more than half the fatal accidents occurred during the final approach and landing.

"This report provides the opportunity for a moment of reflectionabout the improvements that have been made and the work we have yet to collectively do for the crews, passengers and those who create and maintain jet airplanes," Elisabeth Martin, Boeing vice-president, wrote in the summary.

"Aviation safety is a journey of continuous improvement," she wrote.

According to the report, in 2020, Boeing commercial jets were involved in 17 accidents worldwide. Five of the 17 involved 737-800 passenger jets from 7 to 21 years old, and people were killed in two of those.

On Feb. 5, 2020, a Boeing 737-800 operated by Pegasus Airlines overran the end of the runway and crashed when landing in Istanbul, Turkey. Three people died and 179 were injured.

On Aug. 7, 2020, a Boeing 737-800 overran the runway and crashed during landing in Calicut, India. Twenty-one people died and 75 were seriously injured.

According to the Boeing report, the percentage of fatal accidents has decreased over the years. Of the 2,082 accidents from 1959 to 2020, 638, or 31 percent, included fatalities.

From 2011 to 2020, there were 320 accidents, and 39 of them, 12 percent of the total, included fatalities.
Head of the School of Performing Arts at the University of Ghana, Professor Kofi Agyekum, popularly called Opanyin Agyekum, has called on government to review its free Senior High School (SHS) policy.



The free SHS was implemented by the government to capture all Ghanaian school children in the education bracket and enhance quality education in the country.



Children from both rich and poor homes all equally benefit from the free SHS policy.



But Professor Kofi Agyekum feels this provision of ''free SHS for all'' is exerting financial pressure on the government and further thinks it is somehow an inequality to have both rich and poor parents enjoy from the free SHS.



To him, there are some rich families that can afford their children's school fees, hence don't have to benefit from the free SHS.



Opanyin Agyekum asserted that the free SHS should be for only the underprivileged or deprived families.



''There are some families that, when you tell them to pay their children's school fees, they can do it without a sweat. So, why make their children have free SHS?...I think the government is overdoing this free SHS'', he stated on Peace FM's ''Kokrokoo''.





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
Frank Annoh-Dompreh, Majority Chief Whip, has once again lashed out at 'absentee' Dome-Kwabenya MP, Sarah Adwoa Safo, over her continuous absence from Parliament.



According to the Nsawam-Adoagyiri lawmaker, he cannot fathom why the 'on leave' Gender Minister will punish the government in such a manner.



He said, the party has done a lot for the 'absentee' MP, for which she should be grateful, rather than holding the party to ransom.



Annoh-Dompreh who was unhappy about the Minister's behaviour claimed that at a point in time, some notable individuals within the NPP had to kneel to beg Adwoa Safo to forgive the party if the party or anybody had done something to offend her but she did not heed to it.



He told Okay FM in an interview on Tuesday, March 22 that, the absentee MP "should think very well, that you dont bite the hand that feeds you. Our father Akufo-Addo was never wicked to you.



"I entered Parliament with Adwoa Safo, she was given a whole Ministry of Procurement and she was also made the Deputy Leader in Parliament, so, if she can remember she will know that our father Akufo-Addo has done a lot for her.



"Look at the population of NPP members at Dome-Kwabenya, so, our sister is telling us that NPP cannot find any member in Dome-Kwabenya to stand on the partys ticket? What wrong have we done for her to treat us this way?" he quizzed.



Annoh-Dompreh continued: "I have vowed that if she wants my position as the Chief Whip, she can say it and I will give it to her and stay away.



"If she can really think, she should think and know that whatever she is doing will affect her in the futureif I were to be her, I would be crying for the whole dayshe is ungrateful; Adwoa Safo is ungrateful..."



"At a point in time we the MPs had to go to her kneel to beg her...Chief of Staff knelt to beg her, elders of the party had to kneel to beg her...she is very wicked," he stressed.



Some leading government officials and some of her colleague MPs have accused Adwoa Safo of blackmailing the government with a list of demands, including the Deputy Majority Leader post.



However, when asked about it, Deputy Majority Leader, Alexander Afenyo-Markin said he is not aware of such demands.









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
Gabby Asare Otchere-Darko, a leading member of the New Patriotic Party, NPP, has referenced a 2014 news story to buttress the state of the economy at the time.



The August 2014 article was titled: Ghana seeks IMF help after currency falls 40%, addressed how the country is seen as the epitome of an Africa rising narrative of economic growth and improved governance was lacing its boots to seek help from the International Monetary Fund.



The photo Gabby shared had highlighted a portion that spoke about the plight of the local currency at the time.



It stated that Ghanas decision to go to the IMF was after the cedi had plunged by some 40% that year against the US dollar, the highlighted version read: making the cedi the worst-performing currency in the world in 2014.



Gabby has in recent social media posts been defending the governments economic management amid a crunch that the government has admitted is partly caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.



The falling currency and rising fuel prices and ripple effect on the cost of living has forced the government to take drastic decisions that are to be announced by the Finance Minister on March 24.



The decisions were reached after a cabinet retreat that took place last week.



Two of Gabbys economic posts are produced below:



On March 17 and 18, he tweeted respectively: 2022 began without the usual $3bn injection of Eurobond cash. Govts post-COVID recovery GhanaCARES programme hinged partly on an E-levy which Parliament may not even OK. There should be a national debate: do we want IMF or E-Levy or both or none? Tough decisions confront Ghana.



Not sure why NDC blowing a fuse over my harmless call for debate on the consequences of their members rejecting govts policy to fund the very budget the House has approved. Trust me, they dont mean well. They went to IMF when there was no Covid and want to force same on NPP.





Financial Times report, August 3, 2014 pic.twitter.com/J2CWOOGmrf  Gabby Otchere-Darko (@GabbyDarko) March 22, 2022







Source: twitter/ghanaweb.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
Gabby Asare Otchere-Darko, a leading member of the governing New Patriotic Party, has indicated that a by-election will look good in April.



In a post on his verified Twitter timeline, Gabby Otchere-Darko wrote, "April is looking good for a by-election."



It is unclear whether his comments are linked to a Cape Coast court's decision to strike out the appeal by embattled Assin North MP, James Gyakye Quayson, for non-compliance with court procedures.



Quayson filed an appeal challenging a High Court ruling that declared fresh elections to be held in his constituency and ordered him not to hold himself out as MP for the area.



Delivering her judgement on Tuesday, the presiding judge, Irene Charity Larbi, stated that the embattled MP failed to comply with the courts directives to submit his written submission within a stipulated time.



The judge further ordered that all applications before the panel in relation to the Assin North MP have to be struck out.



The written submission within the stipulated period is allowed under the Court of Appeal Rules, 1997 (C.I. 19).



The written submission was to state the reasons for the appeal against the High Court ruling.



Per Rule 20 (1) of C.I. 19, an appellant before the Court of Appeal shall within three weeks of filing a notice of appeal, file written submissions.



According to Rule 20 (2), "Where the appellant does not file the written submissions of his case in accordance with sub-rule (1), the appeal shall be considered to have been struck out and the Registrar shall inform the parties accordingly."



Background



James Gyakye Quayson polled 17,498 votes against 14,793 by the New Patriotic Party's (NPP) Abena Durowaa Mensah in the December 7, 2020, parliamentary election.



On December 30, 2020, a resident of Assin North, Mr Ankomah-Nimfah, filed a parliamentary election petition at the Cape Coast High Court challenging the eligibility of Mr Quayson to be an MP.



On July 28, 2021, following that petition by Mr Ankomah-Nimfah, the Cape Coast High Court declared Quayson's election as void, on the basis that he owed allegiance to another country other than Ghana, contrary to Article 94(2) of the 1992 Constitution.



It was the considered view of the court that as of the time Mr Quayson filed to contest the MP position, he had not renounced his Canadian citizenship and, therefore, he was not qualified to become a legislator.



The court, presided over by Justice Kwasi Boakye, ordered the EC to organise a new election in the constituency.



Quayson then filed an appeal at the Court of Appeal challenging the judgment of the Cape Coast High Court.

April is looking good for a by-election.  Gabby Otchere-Darko (@GabbyDarko) March 22, 2022

Source: twitter/ghanaweb.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 Bolgatanga Central, Isaac Adongo, has stated that the President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo deserves to be whipped in order for him to make difficult economic decisions.



According to him, the President needs such force to be applied on him in order to turn the countrys economic downturn around.



Speaking on Good Morning Ghana, the morning show of Accra-based Metro TV, the ranking member on Parliaments Finance Committee decried the economic standing of the country.



He indicated that the Akufo-Addo-led administration ought to be blamed fully and squarely for the current situation, adding that there was the need for difficult decisions to be taken to salvage the situation.



Whiles expressing reservation about the cabinets communique post the crunch meeting held at Peduase lodge over the weekend to proffer solutions to the economic challenges, he maintained that somebody with a whip [should have been] in that cabinet meeting who will tell them 'until you take the right decisions that will improve the economy, you are not leaving here.



The decisions that have to be taken are very difficult decisions. And the government that always wants to look good in the eyes of Ghanaians is not the type of government that can take the difficult decisions.



The government that wants to be praised in doing the wrong things to hurt the economy furtherwhat this government needs is somebody with a whip whipping Akufo-Addo to run around until he says yes sir, I wont do that again. That is what they need.



They should have had somebody with a whip in that cabinet meeting who will tell them until you take the right decisions that will improve the economy, you are not leaving here, Mr. Adongo stressed.



The economy in recent times has witnessed a downward spiral.



Many economists have cited the depreciating Cedi, increase in fuel prices and general cost of living as pointers to this claim.



Some analysts have asked the government to seek an IMF bailout programme, however, government has shot down the proposal whiles banking its hopes on the E-Levy.



The President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, over the weekend held a crunch meeting with key members of his government to decide on ways to mitigate the current economic challenges.



Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta is expected to brief the nation on Thursday on the outcome of the meeting.





Source: ghanaweb.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 Minister of Communications and Digitalisation Ursula Owusu-Ekuful has said the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) must be blamed for the long queues at the SIM card registration centres.



I need to make this point, even before the elections were done, this [Ghana] card registration exercise took off I believe in 2018 thereof, the National Democratic Congress told its members not to register and to boycott it, Owusu-Ekuful said on Asaase Radio Wednesday (23 March).



So, the queues we are seeing currently are directly attributable to that action that the NDC took, and if we had all availed ourselves of that opportunity at that time, everybody who wanted a card would have gotten it by now and we wouldnt have been seeing the queue, she told the ABS host Kwaku Nhyira-Addo.



It is through no fault of the National Identification Authority, it is those who did not register at the time the nationwide registration exercise was opened who are having to go through this thing. So lets lay the blame where it is and stop beating NIA over a situation which wasnt their own doing.



Owusu-Ekuful urged Ghanaians to stop politicising national exercises in the future.



And let me appeal to everyone that when there is a national exercise, lets not politicise it, because at the end of the day, it is the citizen who suffer. It is not the party which is queueing to acquire the card she added.



Meanwhile, the deadline for the SIM card re-registration has been extended to 31 July, the Ministry of Communications and Digitalisation announced on Tuesday (22 March).



The Ghana Card is the main requirement for the registration.





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
Credit: Australian Space Agency

In the past few years, Australia has formed its own space agency and launched a defense "space command". Billions of dollars for defense, and hundreds of millions for civilian space, have been allocated from the public purse to develop capability in this growing sector.

This funding covers the Moon-to-Mars Program, the SmartSat Cooperative Research Center, the Modern Manufacturing Initiative, opportunities in defense, various state-funded projects such as SA-SAT, and more.

This level of investment is unquestionably a good thing. But the great majority of it supports applied research and engineering, and commercialization of outcomes. None of the new funding goes to basic research.

In the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, India, South Korea, China, Russia, and United Arab Emiratesto name a fewbasic research in space and planetary science, and science missions, are key elements in strategies to grow their sectors. In Australia, this kind of fundamental work only gets around A$2 million a year. It hasn't budged in a decade.

Why basic research is important

Applied research and engineering aims to provide practical solutions to well-defined problems by applying existing knowledge.

Basic research aims to expand knowledge. It's the most successful mechanism humans have ever invented for generating new knowledge.

Every other major spacefaring nation funds basic research in space and planetary science from the public purse. They do it for a good reason, and it's not to make planetary scientists like me happy.

It's because in space science, an unusually short thread connects basic research, applied research and engineering, commercial outcomes, and a trained workforce.

Basic research isn't an optional extra: it's a crucial catalyst for everything else.

How it works

In other nations, scientists like me come up with an idea or hypothesis. Something big and exciting about how we think our Solar System works.

To test that hypothesis, we develop a space mission with engineers from both industry and academia. Because the universe defines the problem, not a human, that team is continually presented with unique challenges, requiring completely new technical solutions.

As a happy byproduct, this process creates an environment that is almost perfectly optimized for technology breakthroughs. I learned this lesson on the very first mission I was on: the UK's Beagle 2 Mars lander.

The mission didn't succeed. We didn't get to sniff for trace methane on Mars. But the technology turned out to be a great way to detect early-onset tuberculosis.

And exploring the Solar System to make fundamental new discoveries is a great way to inspire young engineers and scientists. So you inspire your public, you get students interested in STEM careers, and in the long term you get your highly trained workforce of the future.

I see this all the time. It's one of the joys of my job.

Our space program at Curtin University is called Binar, from the Nyungar word for "fireball."

We flew our first satellite, Binar-1, last year. We'll be flying another six over the coming 18 months. Our eventual goal is a lunar orbiter.

At any one time, around 60 undergraduate engineers are involved in Binar. Last week, dozens of high school students visited us. WA government is supporting a program that will see them flying experiments on Binar spacecraft from next year. That's what inspiration looks like.

And yes, a collateral benefit is that you make planetary scientists happy. But their discoveries win you credibility and visibility on the world stage, so that's not a bad thing either.

Our work on the geophysical evolution of the dwarf planet Ceres, based on Dawn Mission data, is one example.

Funding cuts have hit home

In Australia, basic research is formally excluded from the new funding schemes (for example, the Moon-to-Mars Demonstrator Mission scheme states "STEM, scientific or research projects without a clear commercialization pathway" are ineligible activities). So no science missions.

That exclusion, and the lack of funding, means that planetary science is no longer seen as a strategic area by universities. As a result it has been one of the first areas to be cut as belts have been tightened because of COVID.

Colleagues at the Australian National University and Macquarie University have lost their jobs. In fact, our team at Curtin University is the only substantial group left in Australia.

Not a zero-sum game

The Australian model is consistent with a belief that each dollar you spend on science is a dollar less for industry. Is this the case?

NASA doesn't think so. Its model is built around basic research and science missions.

A recent NASA-commissioned study found this model was extremely successful at generating benefits for the wider economy. Over a single year, every dollar spent on the agency generated around US$3 in total US economic output. Over longer timescales the return is even higher.

Other agencies, large and small, can demonstrate a similar return on investment with science-based models. Each 1 the UK Space Agency invests in space science and innovation yields 34 in direct value to the space industry and additional spillover impacts of 612.

A risky experiment

No other major spacefaring nation has implemented a strategy that formally excludes basic research. It follows that Australia is engaged in a unique experiment to see whether growth of our space sector is optimized by minimizing our ability to generate new knowledge.

With hundreds of millions in new funding for civilian space, and billions for defense, our space sector can't help but grow. The question is whether that investment is efficiently generating growth. Will our taxpayers see the same return on their investment as taxpayers in those other nations if we delete science?

Overseas space agencies can point to an economic return of three to 12 times the original investment. Can our space agency do better with a model that formally excludes basic research and science missions?

I don't know the answer. Unfortunately, no one does, because there are no examples or studies to draw on.

My hunch is that this novel strategy is not optimal. Hedging our betslearning from the strategies of other nationswouldn't cost much.

It would mean looking again at that A$2 million of annual funding for basic research. Engaging scientists in how research programs are defined. Possibly even the odd science mission. Doesn't seem like a lot if it buys you peace of mind.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
A cyclist on a flooded Bwaise road. Credit: Fiktube/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Flooding is common in informal settlements in Bwaise, a neighborhood in the Ugandan capital Kampala. Bwaise's residents are largely excluded from planning and local decision-making processes, and have poor housing and limited access to sanitation and other essential services.

Flooding makes matters much worse. During a visit in November 2019, residents showed us that they dig trenches around their houses and build small retaining walls to prevent water from flooding in. Public toilets are raised about a meter above the ground.

Bwaise lies in a swampy valley between several of Kampala's many hills and was already prone to flooding. But floods are now happening more and more often because of climate change.

This neighborhood is not exceptional, and such conditions are common in cities around the world. The UN estimates that around one in four city dwellersmore than 1 billion peoplelive in precarious conditions, without access to basic services or adequate housing and are excluded from health, education, and livelihood opportunities.

If this sounds bad, things are about to get worse: the IPCC's latest report on climate change impacts, adaptation and vulnerability (we helped write the chapter on cities) made it explicit that people living in informal settlements in areas such as Bwaise are the most vulnerable urban populations to climate change.

Where climate change hits hardest

These settlements tend to be found in marginal lands, often prone to flooding. Lack of drainage means the floods last longer and stagnant water becomes a breeding ground for mosquitoes that spread diseases such as malaria and dengue fever.

Informal settlement dwellers also lack access to many of the resources that provide protection against climate hazards. Precarious and poor-quality housing, for instance, offers no protection against flooding or extreme temperatures, and so the effect on people's health and wellbeing is greater than if they were living in households with air conditioning or at least adequate insulation and ventilation. Sanitation and waste management systems protect against disease transmission and other problems caused by flooding, yet are typically not adequate in informal settlements.

Residents of informal settlements often lack access to social security and healthcare systems that provide protection for other city dwellers during climate disasters. With livelihoods compromised and a lack of social protection or insurance, the impacts of a flood may keep families in poverty for generations.

Climate change does not happen in a vacuum, and the rapid growth of urban populations can further exacerbate environmental challenges. For example, cities already experience much warmer temperatures than surrounding areas, in what is called the urban heat island effect.

This combines with and magnifies climate change-induced heatwaves. These effects are already noticeable with warming of 1.1, but scientists argue that they will be unbearable if temperatures rise beyond 1.5.

Don't only focus on infrastructure

The recent IPCC report finds evidence that climate change adaptation is being integrated into urban policy, but progress is slow. Investments are concentrated in large infrastructure projects, such as widening drainage channels and roads. However, there is a need to tackle the root causes of vulnerability with a portfolio of responses such as new wetlands or parks that absorb storm water, and social protections such as welfare payments or insurance for those that are flooded or otherwise impacted by climate change.

The IPCC report explains that effective adaptation depends on local governments, businesses, NGOs, and communities working together. It cites examples from Uganda, Tanzania, Mozambique and Sierra Leone which show that informal settlements generate crucial data on climate and health risks that support adaptation and development plans. Local residents also develop innovations to create more sustainable futures, such as buildings that take into account flooding and heat risks.

Communities such as those in Bwaise have worked hard to provide options for their members even in the face of desperate conditions. For example, people there have worked with NGOs to build themselves a new sanitation unit designed to endure more frequent floods.

Improving sanitation conditions was a small step towards a more resilient neighborhood, but an important one for the people who benefited from it. However, the scale of the climate change challenge is such that communities can no longer deliver adaptation alone. Maintaining livability in future cities will depend on institutions that are able to recognize the needs and capacities of informal settlement dwellers.

Explore further Five key points in the IPCC report on climate change impacts and adaptation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Newly published Michigan State University research details how switchgrass, a biofuel crop, can mitigate effects of climate change when grown on marginal landagricultural land of little value. For farmers, it may also provide economic returns in these otherwise unproductive spaces.

The research was published in Environmental Research Letters.

The team was led by Bruno Basso, an MSU Foundation Professor in the departments of Earth and Environmental Sciences, and Plant, Soil and Microbial Sciences, as well as the W.K. Kellogg Biological Station. Seungdo Kim, an associate research professor in the MSU College of Engineering, and Rafael Martinez-Feria, a postdoctoral researcher in Basso's laboratory, were also involved.

Renewable energy is a topic of significant discussion worldwide. Climate scientists warn of catastrophic outcomes if fossil fuels remain the primary energy source into the future. Additionally, countries such as the U.S. are reckoning with the ethical and financial dilemmas of relying on foreign oil.

Lignocellulosic biofuels, which are made from plant biomass, are one of the only current renewable energy sources with potential as an fuel alternative for vehicles. But fossil fuel problems aren't easily solved by simply planting more biofuel crops such as switchgrass.

"Growing enough to use biofuel crops for the transportation sector at a large scale would require massive land use changes," Basso said. "This is a problem with many layers. There are food security concerns if land previously used for food crops was shifted to biofuel crops. There are also greenhouse gas emission concerns if land not currently used for agriculture, such as wildlife habitat, is overtaken by crop production systems."

The challenge is magnified when farmers consider what to do with marginal, less-productive land. With rising input costs, there is often little to no advantage to plant in these areas. If growers do decide to plant, environmental issues abound, as these fields are often nitrogen-deficient and may require heavy use of fertilizers.

"To get farmers to change their behavior, the change has to make sense for them economically first and foremost," Basso said. "Our goal was to examine whether marginal lands could be both profitable and environmentally conscious, something that would be a victory for everyone involved."

For this project, Basso and his team used a multi-model ensemble of crop simulation systems that factor in soil, weather and management data. These included three models from previous studies and Basso's System Approach to Land Use Sustainability (SALUS) program, which simulates daily crop production over many years using different management strategies.

The multi-model ensemble is designed to better understand and quantify the uncertainties coming from model input and parameters unique to each model. Basso said this is the first study to use a model ensemble linked to artificial intelligence for switchgrass used for bioenergy production.

Basso's team discovered that low amounts of nitrogen fertilizer provided long-term boosts in yield that outweighed greenhouse gas emissions, a finding that runs contrary to other studies. Researchers believe the benefit can be much greater on lands limited by nitrogen deficiency, which is the case in several areas of Michigan. Basso noted that the use of this strategy is not as effective in areas with rich soil organic carbon or those with low precipitation and short growing seasons.

"This shows that some marginal lands lacking nitrogen have potential value for biofuel crop production, which is of interest to farmers looking to increase profitability and of environmental importance by reducing the carbon footprint of the operation," Basso said. "It's important that when trying to solve a problem we don't create another, so the levels of added nitrogen fertilizer are crucial to maintaining the overall net-positive climate result."

Explore further Soil holds the secret to mitigating climate change

More information: R A Martinez-Feria et al, Boosting climate change mitigation potential of perennial lignocellulosic crops grown on marginal lands, Environmental Research Letters (2022). Journal information: Environmental Research Letters R A Martinez-Feria et al, Boosting climate change mitigation potential of perennial lignocellulosic crops grown on marginal lands,(2022). DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/ac541b
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

The breathing problems began when Ulises Flores was 13 years old.

Air struggled to pass through his nose, and he suffered frequent headaches. A doctor said his nostrils and sinuses were swollen, likely because of air pollution at his home in Wilmington, which hugs the fence line of the Phillips 66 oil refinery.

Growing up, Flores realized he wasn't alone: Neighbors in his community that is 87% Latino were being diagnosed with asthma, others with cancer. Many children would get nosebleeds, and strange odors would fill the air.

"The most basic thing in this human life is clean airwe can't even get that," said 23-year-old Flores as he watched columns of steam rise from the refinery's towers.

Since about the time Flores began experiencing breathing problems, the state of California has relied on a complicated market system of pollution credits to help reduce climate-warming greenhouse gas emissions. The program, called cap and trade, was the first of its kind in the U.S. when launched in 2013 and set the ambitious goal of slashing turn-of-the-century emission levels by 40% by the year 2030.

But despite its goal of reducing the gasses that contribute to rising sea levels, extreme heat and record-shattering wildfires, the program was quickly faulted by environmental justice advocates for failing to improve the lives of low-income people of color living alongside major polluting facilities.

Now, after years of such criticism, government officials are reevaluating the program. In addition to environmental justice concerns, analysts have warned that the cap on how much companies can pollute "is likely not having much, if any, effect on overall emissions in the first several years of the program."

Gov. Gavin Newsom's office and state officials say they are in the middle of preparing an assessment of California's various climate change programs. The results of this so-called scoping plan are expected to be released at the end of 2022. Officials have signaled that changes to the cap-and-trade program and how much the state relies on it are on the table.

"The scoping plan may show that as a proportion of total reductions, the cap and trade does not need to play such a major role in our toolbox going forward," said Jared Blumenthal, secretary of the state's Environmental Protection Agency, during a state Senate hearing last month.

As it operates now, the program sets a limit on how much companies can pollute and gives them the option to buy or trade credits. If a company wants to emit more greenhouse gasses than they are allotted, they must buy allowance credits from the state during an auction. The proceeds from these auctionswhich last year generated more than $2 billiongo toward other climate projects.

The state's review follows criticisms that cap and trade includes a faulty offset program and an excess of allowances that critics say are too cheap. That allows companies to essentially buy their way out of lowering emissions, they say.

"They've literally saved more allowances than the cuts they're expected to make," said Danny Cullenward, a lawyer and energy economist who helped draft a committee report on the program. "So the worst-case scenario is that they [polluting companies] don't have to change very much; in fact, they might not have to change anything at all."

Each allowance credit lets companies emit 1 metric ton of carbon dioxide, one of the main greenhouse gasses. That's about the same level of pollution emitted from one car driving 2,500 miles, about the distance from Los Angeles to Orlando, Florida.

However, the report found that these companies have bought and saved 321 million of these allowances that let them pollute, which could make it difficult for the state to force these companies to lower their emissions to meet the state's 2030 goals.

Although Cullenward has called the number of saved allowances a "big warning sign," California's Air Resources Board and the Newsom administration say they need time to collect more data before deciding whether the allowance issue is worth addressing. Adjustments to the program may not come until 2024, they say.

Environmental justice advocates say those who pay the most immediate price for program shortcomings are those who live near major emitters.

One recent study published by the University of Southern California found that while the level of greenhouse gas emissions in the state have gone down since the cap-and-trade program went into effect, Black and Latino communities and other communities of color are still more exposed to pollution from facilities such as oil refineries when compared to white communities. A separate study by the state's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment came to similar conclusions.

The USC study also found that communities whose residents are predominantly people of color and are below federal poverty levels and less educated are less likely to see improvements in the level of emissions from facilities like oil refineries. Such facilities release co-pollutants, such as nitrogen oxide, which can cause respiratory infections and asthma.

Some of those communities even saw the level of emissions grow worse since the start of the cap-and-trade program. Refinery communities that were whiter and wealthier, on the other hand, saw greater improvements.

"It doesn't make too much of a difference where greenhouse gasses are reducedthey tend to have a global impact that improves the situation for a lot of people," said Manuel Pastor, a sociology professor at USC and lead author of the recent study. "But it makes a lot of difference with the co-pollutants that come with itthe particulate matter. For those reasons, it matters that this study and the OEHHA study show the distribution of these facilities is more tightly associated with race."

For residents living alongside refineries, complex programs such as cap and trade boil down to a single concern: When and how will the quality of our lives improve?

Michelle Munoz, 27, and her mother, Maria Munoz, stood on the front porch of their family's Wilmington home, where Michelle Munoz lives with her children, siblings and parents. They watched over Michelle's two young children as they ran throughout their front yard, at one point hanging from the yard's metal gate like a jungle gym, letting out screams and laughter.

Through the home's canopy of fruit trees and queen palms, the pair caught a view of the Phillips 66 refinery, its towering steel columns releasing pillowy masses of vapor.

Both of her kids, a 7-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter, were diagnosed with asthma as babies, Michelle Munoz said. Her younger brother, who also lives with them, has suffered from frequent nosebleeds since they were kids.

The state and the harshest critics of cap and trade agree that more needs to be done to narrow the gap between communities like Wilmington and those with cleaner air.

"It's a lost opportunity that the co-benefits of greenhouse gas reductions don't happen in those communities that are hosting facilities regulated by cap and trade," said Rachel Morello-Frosch, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley and author of the USC study.

Morello-Frosch is among those who suggests a more targeted approach that regulates facilities more directly. That approach could include creating no-trade zones or price incentives targeted at facilities that aren't reducing emissions fast enough.

Residents like Flores and Munoz are on board with the idea of greater regulation of emissions at their neighboring Phillips refinery, but the most ideal option for them is shutting down the refinery altogether, which they acknowledge is unlikely, given the amount of profit generated from the refinery, which churns out 139,000 gallons of oil per day.

"That would be a dream for them to close," Maria Munoz said.

2022 Los Angeles Times.

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
You are here: World

 Flash

Law-enforcement authorities from China, Laos, Myanmar and Thailand joined forces on Tuesday for the start of the 115th Mekong River joint patrol.

A total of four vessels from the four countries participated in the operation. Two Chinese vessels departed at 9 a.m. on Tuesday from Jingha Port, Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture, southwest China's Yunnan province, said the provincial public security bureau.

During the patrol, the four countries will continue to focus on cracking down on cross-border crimes in a non-contact manner to safeguard safety and stability along the river basin.

The Mekong River, known as the Lancang River in China, is a vital waterway for cross-border shipping.

China, Laos, Myanmar and Thailand have been conducting joint patrols on the river since December 2011.
RioTintos Kennecott mine in Utah produces a variety of metals, including copper, gold and silver. Credit: (arbyreed/Flickr), CC BY-NC-SA

As governments try to navigate a path to a safe climate in the 21st century, the public debate has focused on net zero, carbon taxes, electrification and renewable energy. Mining is rarely an anchor point of the discussion, even though renewable energy infrastructure and low-carbon technology require vast amounts of metals and minerals.

Nickel, for example, is essential for electric vehicles and battery storage. The amount of nickel required by 2040 for the energy transition alone will be equal to the total demand for nickel across all industries in 2020, according to the International Energy Agency.

There is widespread consensus among economists that carbon taxation is one of the most effective policies to reduce carbon emissions. Presently, 27 countries have enacted carbon taxation policy at the national level, yet only seven are leading mining countries, and mining companies and industry organizations oppose carbon taxes in many of these countries.

Addressing climate change requires a coalition between industry and government. The idea that the industry supplying the technology for renewable energy is also opposing the economic policy needed to curb emissions is counter productive.

Simple economic modelling proves that resisting a carbon tax is the wrong strategy for the industry. Our recent paper shows that the mining industry has an economic incentive to support a tax on carbon dioxide emissions.

Opposed to taxes

The mining industry has historically opposed taxes, especially carbon taxes. When Australia introduced a price on carbon emissions in 2011, the Minerals Council of Australia led a multi-million-dollar campaign against the carbon tax policy even though there are tax-relief provisions for emissions-intensive industries such as steel and coal.

The Australian carbon tax policy was repealed in 2014, but some mining groups do support carbon taxes. BHP Billiton Ltd. supported carbon pricing in 2017 and distanced itself from the Minerals Council of Australia.

This fractured industry standpoint on carbon pricing is also present in Canada. Some mining companies have made public commitments to carbon neutrality by 2050, yet there has been opposition from some industry groups at the provincial level.

Projected demand change for copper and nickel requirements for energy transition technology. The solid bars show the amount of metal demand projected for the energy transition, while the transparent bar shows the actual total demand for copper and nickel across all industries in 2020. Credit: Cox et al. 2022

Metals out, a little CO 2 in

There are many factors throughout the mining process that contribute to carbon emissions. The commodity being mined heavily influences the amount of emissions and where the emissions are generated throughout the mining process.

For iron and steel most emissions are generated in the later stages during smelting. Mining copper ore, on the other hand, generates most of its emissions in the earlier stages during the crushing, grinding and hauling of ore.

One way to look at the impacts of carbon taxation in mining is to compare the the commodity's carbon footprint to its economic value. For example, the average carbon footprint of copper is 3.83 tonnes of carbon dioxide per tonne of copper.

So, for each tonne of carbon dioxide emitted, 261 kilograms of copper worth US$1,700, using 2019 copper prices, are produced. This is a relatively high value. The same cannot be said for other industries, like animal agriculture, where a tonne of carbon emissions corresponds to about US$125 of wholesale beef (using equivalent 2019 pricing).

How would a carbon tax affect mining?

The basics of a carbon tax are that more carbon-intensive industries will be taxed more. Our study tested three levels of carbon taxation: US$30, US$70 and US$150 per tonne of carbon dioxide, and compared them against commodity prices in 2019. These levels closely follow the Pan-Canadian approach to carbon pollution pricing, which are currently set to $50 per tonne and increase $15 per year to $170 in 2030.

We modelled the impact of a carbon tax on a range of commodities. Our model included all Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissionsdirect emissions from the source and indirect emissions associated with heating, cooling or electricity. The production of some commodities is more carbon-intense than others, which affects the impact of the carbon price.

The impact of three levels of carbon taxation (US$30, $70 and $150) modelled as a percentage of present product value for selected commodities. This shows that most mining industry and energy transition commodities will not be taxed to the same degree as other commodities. Credit: Sally Innis, Benjamin Cox, John Steen and Nadja Kunz

In some cases, the carbon tax can be greater than the product's value. When the price of carbon is US$150, coal is taxed at 144 percent of its value. Copper, on the other hand, is taxed at 10 percent of its value.

Two metals are outliers to the industry: aluminum and steel. The mining of the raw materials are not carbon intensive. Bauxite and iron ore generate 0.005 and 0.02 tonnes of carbon dioxide per tonne of product respectively, but smelting these ores into metals emits more carbon in production.

Mining for carbon taxes

Outside of aluminum refining and steel mills, the mining industry will perform better with a carbon tax than it would without one. This is because the carbon tax would increase the price of fossil fuels relative to renewable energy and the materials required for renewable energy technology.

For example, the costs of coal used for energy production will more than double, making electricity from coal increasingly uncompetitive. The rising demand for solar and wind power will drive further increases in the consumption of base metals for wind turbines and solar panels.

If implemented on a global scale, a carbon tax would not change the underlying cost of the base metal business, but it does have vast financial benefits for the mining sector. These benefits come from the increased demand for metals from the energy transition, paired with a relatively lighter percentage of global carbon taxes, in comparison to other industries.

Rather than opposing carbon taxes, the mining sector should become a global advocate for aggressive carbon targets, the harmonization of international carbon taxes and pursue further reductions to emissions such as the electrification of fleets or carbon offsets.

Explore further Australia has power to lower CO2 emissions in Asia Pacific

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

Interventions that seek to evoke empathy in teachers can sideline biases and narrow the racial gap in suspensions of middle school students, suggests new research from the University of California, Berkeley.

In one of the most rigorous efforts to date to combat race-based inequity in school suspensions, UC Berkeley social psychologist Jason Okonofua and fellow researchers recruited 66 middle school teachers who teach math to more than 5,500 7th- and 8th-grade students in one of the nation's largest school districts.

After the teachers completed two online empathy-evoking sessions over the course of a school year, their studentsespecially those belonging to racial minoritieswere less likely to get suspended, and the racial gap in suspensions was reduced by 45%, according to findings to be published in the journal Science Advances.

Moreover, the positive effects of the intervention persisted through the following school year when students had new teachers who were not involved in the empathy intervention. That second school year also saw fewer suspensions of students of color, as well as other vulnerable groups such as students who qualified for special education services.

"By virtue of having one class with a teacher who participated in the intervention, a student, especially a Black or Hispanic student, was less likely to get in trouble during any other teacher's class that entire school year and also the next school year," said Okonofua, an assistant professor of psychology at UC Berkeley and the study's lead author.

The large-scale empathy intervention sought to narrow the suspension gap between Black and Latinx/Hispanic middle school students and their white peers. Nationally, Black male middle and high school students are four times as likely to be suspended as white students.

The school district that partnered in the study is a diverse one and spans more than a dozen cities in the southeastern United States. It cannot be identified due to confidentiality protocols.

Nonjudgmental approach

Okonofua credits a non-judgmental approach for circumventing racial and other biases in school disciplinary outcomes.

"Our intervention materials don't focus on bias, or racial disparities in outcomes. That approach can put teachers on the defensive and backfire," he said. "Instead, we reminded teachers of why they entered the profession in the first place, which for almost everyone means helping children learn and grow, even when they struggle sometimes or act out."

The success of Okonofua's approach could play a key role in advancing former President Barack Obama's stalled federal Every Student Succeeds Act, which sought to curb disciplinary measures that pull students out of classrooms and to find innovative alternatives to suspensions and expulsions.

"At a time when anti-bias training is not producing the improvements in outcomes we need to see, our empathy intervention was able to sideline teachers' biases to reduce a racial disparity in suspensions in schools and do it in a sustainable way," said Okonofua, who studies the impact of stereotyping on school discipline and the relationship between education and justice systems.

Previously, Okonofua and fellow researchers conducted a smaller-scale empathy intervention that yielded similar results in three school districts in California.

Researchers focused on middle school because adolescence is a time in which young people are learning to navigate relationships with multiple teachers, and peer relationships are in flux.

"Around this age, children become increasingly aware of racial stereotypes and sensitive to disrespectful treatment," Okonofua said. "Meanwhile, teachers can feel overwhelmed by the daily need to keep classroom learning and behavior on track. Conflicts and disciplinary problems can spike and predict whether children will drop out of school."

How they conducted the study

Over the 2017-18 school year, during two online sessions that each lasted less than an hour, participating teachers read poignant testimonials from students from diverse backgrounds.

They also read testimonials from teachers who described how they made efforts to listen to and understand students when they misbehave, and sustain positive and trusting relationships with their students.

In addition to writing about their approaches to discipline, the teachers described their reasons for entering the profession, and what advice they would share with new teachers.

"At the beginning of the year, I let (students) know that every day is a new day.  I won't give up on them. In my eyes, it is imperative to say what you mean in the most 'real' way, and students will believe you. Be honest and consistent," one teacher wrote.

Another teacher's approach was to "incorporate a slight sense of humor in my lessons  and make a story out of solving math problems. The students typically laugh and understand the material better when I include real-world examples."

For Okonofua, this open-minded approach to sidelining biases is promising for multiple professions where power differentials lead to conflict.

"We're looking at applying this type of approach in prisons, for police officers on the beat, and also in health care and the relationships between health care providers and their patients," he said.

"Ultimately, we hope to help everyone double down on their professional goals, and not let stereotypes shape our decision-making or how we treat others," he added.

In addition to Okonofua, researchers of the study are J. Parker Goyer and Gregory Walton at Stanford University, Constance Lindsay at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

More information: Jason A. Okonofua et al, A scalable empathic-mindset intervention reduces group disparities in school suspensions, Science Advances (2022). Journal information: Science Advances Jason A. Okonofua et al, A scalable empathic-mindset intervention reduces group disparities in school suspensions,(2022). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abj0691
Feral swine have been called the "rototillers" of nature. Their long snouts and tusks allow them to rip and root their way across America in search of food. Unfortunately, the path they leave behind impacts ranchers, farmers, land managers, conservationists, and suburbanites. Credit: NASA, courtesy of USDA APHIS

A microscopic anthrax spore can lie dormant in the soil for decades until it ends up in a suitable host. Factor in feral swine and their natural tendency to root and wallow, and whose exploding population is estimated at over six million in the U.S. alone, and a concerning scenario emerges.

Rachel Maison, a Ph.D. student in Colorado State University's Department of Biomedical Sciences, recently published an innovative study that tested feral swine blood samples for the presence of anthrax antibodies in and around the "anthrax triangle," an area of southwest Texas where high numbers of anthrax cases have occurred in domestic livestock and farmed deer populations. This promising research, never before done in the U.S., was featured on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention podcast as well as its March 2022 Zoonoses & One Health Updates webinar and provides an important tool for better monitoring and responding to the dangerous pathogen.

"Rachel's work is a stellar example of how important it is to bring together humans, animals, and the environment when assessing the threat of zoonotic diseases," said Angela Bosco-Lauth, Maison's adviser and an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Sciences. "From management practices to invasive species to environmental conditions, we can't ignore the impact that each factor has on disease risk. And as an individual, Rachel's background in conservation, wildlife, and disease make her the ideal researcher to tackle these complex topics."

A conservation mindset

Maison grew up in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, where she developed a passion for wildlife conservation. After earning a bachelor's degree in fish, wildlife, and conservation biology from CSU, she was hired as a biological science technician with the USDA National Wildlife Research Center's National Wildlife Disease Program and later joined its National Feral Swine Damage Management Program, which works to protect agricultural and natural resources, property, and animal and human health and safety by managing damage caused by feral swine.

Through this work she was introduced to her now co-advisers, Bosco-Lauth and Richard Bowen, a professor in the Department of Biomedical Sciences, who both closely collaborate with the USDA in their wildlife, zoonotic, and infectious disease research efforts. Maison's research centers around investigating pathogens that might be carried or influenced by feral swine in the U.S. and focused on anthrax for this study.

"Because pigs in general are pretty resistant to developing anthrax, they seem to be a good species for mapping out risk regions," Maison said. "I knew through my undergraduate coursework that feral swine were a very problematic invasive species. Working with the USDA inspired me to further pursue wildlife disease surveillance work and to look at how invasive species might contribute to not only human health, but also the health of native wildlife populations and threatened or endangered species."

An ancientand stealthydisease + a destructive invasive species

Anthrax, caused by the bacteria Bacillus anthracis, is a rare but serious infectious disease that is thought to date back to at least 700 B.C. While uncommon, it can infect humans, and sporadic outbreaks occur in wild and domestic animal populations. It is also an extremely important pathogen to track and better understand due to its past and potential use in bioterrorism attacks.

Anthrax infections can occur when B. anthracis is inhaled, ingested, or comes into contact with broken skin. Ruminant species like cattle and deer are very susceptible to even small doses of anthrax spores and will often quickly fall fatally ill after exposure. Their bodies may then be scavenged by other animals, which can release spores back into the environment.

Once B. anthracis vegetative cells are exposed to oxygen, they expertly enter a dormant state and become spores that are highly resistant to environmental degradation, allowing them to be present on the landscape for indefinite lengths of time. Once they enter a new host, they can quickly come back to life and resume the infectious cycle.

About half of the nation's six million feral swine live in Texas, home to the anthrax triangle, and though they spend a great deal of time rooting around in the soil with their long snouts, they are mostly resistant to the disease.

Not your average farm pig, feral swine are typically more aggressive, can run up to 30 miles per hour, and often sport thick skin, coarse hair, and sharp tusks. They descended from escaped or released pigs that were first brought to the U.S. in the 1500s as a food source and Eurasian wild boars introduced in the 1900s for sport hunting.

Feral swine eat and destroy field crops such as corn, milo, rice, watermelon, spinach, peanuts, hay, turf, and wheat. Credit: USDA APHIS photo Craig Hicks

Highly adaptable opportunistic omnivores, feral swine lack natural predators and can produce litters of up to 10 pigs year-round. This, combined with their propensity to eat or displace wildlife species and destroy ecosystems and human property, makes them a very good invasive speciesand their population explosion a very big problem. Feral swine are estimated to live in at least 38 states in the U.S. where they cause an estimated $2.5 billion in agricultural damage each year.

And while the anthrax triangle region of Texas has experienced a high number of anthrax cases in livestock and deer, areas just outside of the region have rarely or never had outbreaks.

"Part of the difficulty in identifying anthrax risk zones is that unless you actively sample the soil or know of an outbreak that occurred in the past, you likely won't know that bacteria is present until it's too late and you start seeing dead or dying animals," Maison said.

Further complicating current models of anthrax risk zones is the fact that some outbreaks have been known to occur up to 40 years apart. And the response to anthrax outbreaks in livestock has largely been reactionary once animals are already getting sick.

Serosurveillance as an early warning sign

Maison's study aims to help improve the management of and response to anthrax through serosurveillance, a process of testing blood samples for the presence of antibodies against a specific disease that can help experts predict potential outbreaks and plan vaccination efforts.

"By examining feral swine blood for anti-anthrax antibodies, we may use this as an early warning sign for anthrax bacteria in an area," Maison said. And since feral swine are known to have relatively small home ranges between one and five square kilometers, the data could be used to map potential regions where the bacteria might be present.

Maison's study analyzed 478 samples from the USDA National Wildlife Research Center's archives, half from within the anthrax triangle region and half from outside of it. Results showed a higher prevalence of anthrax antibodies in the triangle region, yet relatively high positivity rates in all of the samples, which indicated exposure occurring in feral swine throughout Texas due to anthrax-causing bacteria, including outside of the high-outbreak anthrax triangle zone.

In places known to be endemic for anthrax, or in areas where outbreaks have occurred in the past, preventative management has mainly consisted of ranchers vaccinating their livestock, which is effective and can also be used during an outbreak to protect other animals. An anthrax vaccine for people exists as well, though it is only given to those who could potentially be exposed occupationally, such as laboratory personnel who work with the bacteria.

"I think ranchers and landowners would be interested in knowing ahead of time if there is a risk facing their livestock, or to know if the region they're in is in fact contaminated with anthrax-causing bacteria, as people often won't vaccinate their livestock unless their herds are actively being affected by anthraxwhich is usually too late," Maison said.

She hopes to continue building on this work by contributing to a series of important next steps, including working to determine the levels of bacteria feral swine were potentially exposed to as well as when the exposures actually took place. "Given that anthrax can go years without being observed in a particular area, it would be nice to know if when you see an antibody-positive animal, you could work backwards and see when that exposure happened in real time."

And because feral pigs are here to stay and naturally act like rototillers in the soil, Maison is interested in looking deeper into the various potential ways they may be playing an active role in spreading spores on the landscape, and if their actions result in more infections occurring in other species.

"I think identifying risk factors and educating stakeholders and the general public about anthrax is really useful," Maison said. "Even though humans are not really afflicted by this disease, it is unfortunately a concern for many livestock owners in endemic regions, so it's important to bring this information to those people and also to keep a better handle on where anthrax is hidingI'm excited to see what comes of this in the future."

Explore further France begins vaccinating cows, sheep against anthrax
Milky Way edge-on view. Credit: European Space Agency

Using data from ESA's Gaia mission, astronomers have shown that a part of the Milky Way known as the 'thick disc' began forming 13 billion years ago, around 2 billion years earlier than expected, and just 0.8 billion years after the Big Bang.

This surprising result comes from an analysis performed by Maosheng Xiang and Hans-Walter Rix, from the Max-Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg, Germany. They took brightness and positional data from Gaia's Early Data Release 3 (EDR3) dataset and combined it with measurements of the stars' chemical compositions, as given by data from China's Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST) for roughly 250 000 stars to derive their ages.

They chose to look at sub giant stars. In these stars, energy has stopped being generated in the star's core and has moved into a shell around the core. The star itself is transforming into a red giant star. Because the sub giant phase is a relatively brief evolutionary phase in a star's life, it permits its age to be determined with great accuracy, but it's still a tricky calculation.

How old are the stars?

The age of a star is one of the most difficult parameters to determine. It cannot be measured directly but must be inferred by comparing a star's characteristics with computer models of stellar evolution. The compositional data helps with this. The Universe was born with almost exclusively hydrogen and helium. The other chemical elements, known collectively as metals to astronomers, are made inside stars, and exploded back into space at the end of a star's life, where they can be incorporated into the next generation of stars. So, older stars have fewer metals and are said to have lower metallicity.

The LAMOST data gives the metallicity. Together, the brightness and metallicity allow astronomers to extract the star's age from the computer models. Before Gaia, astronomers were routinely working with uncertainties of 20-40 percent, which could result in the determined ages being imprecise by a billion years or more.

Gaia's EDR3 data release changes this. "With Gaia's brightness data, we are able to determine the age of a sub giant star to a few percent," says Maosheng. Armed with precise ages for a quarter of a million sub giant stars spread throughout the galaxy, Maosheng and Hans-Walter began the analysis.

An artist's impression of our Milky Way galaxy, a roughly 13 billon-year-old 'barred spiral galaxy' that is home to a few hundred billion stars. On the left, a face-on view shows the spiral structure of the Galactic Disc, where the majority of stars are located, interspersed with a diffuse mixture of gas and cosmic dust. The disc measures about 100 000 light-years across, and the Sun sits about half way between its centre and periphery. On the right, an edge-on view reveals the flattened shape of the disc. Observations point to a substructure: a thin disc some 700 light-years high embedded in a thick disc, about 3000 light-years high and populated with older stars. The edge on view also shows the Galactic Bulge, located in the central portion of the Milky Way and hosting about 10 billion stars, which are mainly old and red. The bulge, also visible in the face-on view on the left, has an overall elongated shape that resembles that of a peanut-shaped bar, with a half-length of about 10 000 light-years, making the Milky Way a barred spiral galaxy. Credit: European Space Agency

Milky Way anatomy

Our galaxy is made of different components. Broadly, these can be split into the halo and the disc. The halo is the spherical region surrounding the disc, and has traditionally been thought to be the oldest component of the galaxy. The disc is composed of two parts: the thin disc and the thick disc. The thin disc contains most of the stars that we see as the misty band of light in the night sky that we call the Milky Way. The thick disc is more than double the height of the thin disc but smaller in radius, containing only a few percent of the Milky Way's stars in the solar neighborhood.

By identifying sub giant stars in these different regions, the researchers were able to build a timeline of the Milky Way's formationand that's when they got a surprise.

Two phases in Milky Way history

The stellar ages clearly revealed that the formation of the Milky Way fell into two distinct phases. In the first phase, starting just 0.8 billion years after the Big Bang, the thick disc began forming stars. The inner parts of the halo may also have begun to come together at this stage, but the process rapidly accelerated to completion about two billion years later when a dwarf galaxy known as Gaia-Sausage-Enceladus merged with the Milky Way. It filled the halo with stars and, as clearly revealed by the new work, triggered the nascent thick disc to form the majority of its stars. The thin disc of stars which holds the Sun, was formed during the subsequent, second phase of the galaxy's formation.

The analysis also shows that after the star-forming burst triggered by the merger with Gaia-Sausage-Enceladus, the thick disc continued to form stars until the gas was used up at around 6 billion years after the Big Bang. During this time, the metallicity of the thick disk grew by more than a factor of 10. But remarkably, the researchers see a very tight stellar agemetallicity relation, which indicates that throughout that period, the gas forming the stars was well-mixed across the whole disk. This implies that the early Milky Way's disk regions must have been formed from highly turbulent gas that effectively spread the metals far and wide.

A timeline thanks to Gaia

The earlier formation age of the thick disc points to a different picture of our galaxy's early history. "Since the discovery of the ancient merger with Gaia-Sausage-Enceladus, in 2018, astronomers have suspected that the Milky Way was already there before the halo formed, but we didn't have a clear picture of what that Milky Way looked like. Our results provide exquisite details about that part of the Milky Way, such as its birthday, its star-formation rate and metal enrichment history. Putting together these discoveries using Gaia data is revolutionizing our picture of when and how our galaxy was formed." says Maosheng.

And we may not yet be looking far enough into the Universe to see similar galactic discs forming. An age of 13 billion years corresponds to a redshift of 7, where redshift is a measure of how far away a celestial object is, and so how long its light has taken to cross space and reach us.

New observations could come in the near future as the James Webb Space Telescope has been optimized to see the earliest Milky Way-like galaxies in the Universe. And on 13 June this year, Gaia will release its full third data release (Gaia DR3). This catalog will include spectra and derived information like ages and metallicity, making studies like Maosheng's even easier to conduct.

"With each new analysis and data release, Gaia allows us to piece together the history of our galaxy in even more unprecedented detail. With the release of Gaia DR3 in June, astronomers will be able to enrich the story with even more details," says Timo Prusti, Gaia Project Scientist for ESA.

The research was published in Nature.

Explore further Our galaxy's most recent major collision

More information: Maosheng Xiang et al, A time-resolved picture of our Milky Way's early formation history, Nature (2022). Journal information: Nature Maosheng Xiang et al, A time-resolved picture of our Milky Way's early formation history,(2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-04496-5
High schoolers developed a filter (the inside of which is shown here) that attaches to a faucet and removes lead from tap water. Credit: Rebecca Bushway

The next generation of scientists and inventors is already finding approaches to address society's problems. Today, a group of high school students and their instructor report a solution to the problem of lead contamination in drinking wateran inexpensive faucet attachment that removes this toxic metal. Unlike conventional filters currently on the market, theirs includes a cartridge made with biodegradable plastic and indicates when it's "used up" by turning the tap water yellow.

The researchers will present their results today at the spring meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS).

"A few years ago, I saw a video of a woman in Michigan turn on her tap water, and it came out brown," says Rebecca Bushway, who is the project's principal investigator. She's also presenting the work at the meeting. "That made me thinkbecause there's really no safe level of lead in drinking water, wouldn't it be nice to have a water filter that could tell you that your water is contaminated, well before it turns brown because of lead?"

Although some pipes have been remediated in the U.S., millions of homes, especially those in low-income communities, still receive drinking water through lead-containing pipes. If the water's chemistry isn't ideal, or it flows quickly because of high demand, then pipes can corrode. When the corroding material contains lead, the toxic metal dissolves or flakes off into the water, contaminating it with a dark discoloration and sometimes visible particles.

Until old pipes can be replaced with lead-free versions, filters can help remove or reduce this pollutant from tap water. Although various lead filtration systems exist, their high cost and large size can be barriers. In addition, few of them provide any indication that they should be changed, and none indicate that the water could pose an immediate health risk.

Bushway, a science teacher at Barrie Middle and Upper School, wondered aloud to her upper-level high school chemistry class if there was a little filtersimilar to the ones that are made for camping to purify waterthat they could make from inexpensive components to easily remove lead. The students were excited about the idea, and they started thinking about the project in 2020 when COVID-19 restrictions kept them out of the classroom. While at home, the team met virtually and discussed designs for an attachment to screw a filter onto a sink's faucet. Then in the spring semester of 2021, when they returned to the classroom, they 3D printed the attachment and a 3-inch-tall filter housing, using a biodegradable plastic. Their final step was to fill the cartridges with a mixture of calcium phosphate and potassium iodide powder.

"Calcium phosphate first binds with dissolved lead in water to form lead phosphate and free calcium. The calcium, which is harmless, ends up in the water, and the lead phosphate stays in the filter," explains Bushway. Lead phosphate, which is an inert solid, is trapped inside the filter by a nylon screen on the bottom of the unit. Once the reaction capacity of the calcium phosphate is reached, dissolved lead reacts with potassium iodide, which turns the water yellow, an indicator that lead is present.

And while the chemistry itself is pretty straightforward, crafting the water filtration system to do what the researchers intended has been more complicated. For instance, calcium phosphate tends to clump up, causing the reaction rate between it and lead to go down as the surface area decreases. So, the team's lead student engineer incorporated hexagonal bevels inside the filter. "That's an innovation, which came from one of the high school students, that will make the water spiral as it goes through and keep the powder from clumping," says Bushway.

Next, the students will add a tiny spectrophotometer with a single-wavelength LED to the bottom of the filter cartridge, where the water gets dispensed. Their plan is to have an indicator light that turns on as soon as the detector identifies the yellow color of the lead iodide. Bushway says this will indicate that lead is in the water, even before the color is detectable by a human eye.

The team's goal is to make and sell their filters for less than $1 each, which Bushway thinks they're on their way to doing. Because the housings use biodegradable plastic, the cost could trend a little higher, but the material would help reduce the overall environmental impact of the filter.

The process of developing the filter has been very fulfilling, according to Bushway. "Ultimately, this experience has shown students that they can make a difference to somebody, and there are problems that they can fix with science," she says.

Explore further EPA confirms filters reduce lead in Michigan city's water

More information: ACS Spring 2022, ACS Spring 2022, acs.digitellinc.com/acs/live/22/page/677
Comparison of dye penetration into the egg whites at different temperatures. Credit: Carson Emeigh, Hyeonggeun Luke Bak, Dilziba Kizghin, and Haipeng Zhang

Marinated, or pickled, eggs are enjoyed by cultures around the world. There are Pennsylvania Dutch red-beet pickled eggs, German-style ones with a heavy dose of mustard, and Asian recipes that use rice vinegar and soy sauce, to name a few.

The basis of any recipe is marinating hard boiled eggs in vinegar or brine, which cures the eggs by sufficiently saturating the egg whites via diffusion. In American Journal of Physics, researchers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln were inspired to demonstrate how diffusion works in an easy and quantifiable way.

"We wanted to develop an experiment for high school and college STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) students to show them how diffusion works in a simple visual manner and to ensure the experiment was easy to do at home so kids can learn diffusion on their own," co-author Carson Emeigh said.

Driven by thermal energy, diffusion occurs when atoms, molecules, or other particles spread throughout a fluid (air or liquid) over time from the highest concentration point to the lowest. Diffusion is widely studied for myriad applications, from aircraft engines to drug development.

In their experiment, the researchers compared penetration levels of red food dye in the whites of peeled hard-boiled eggs at three different temperatures: refrigerator temperature (40 F / 4.5 C), room temperature (70 F / 21 C), and in a cool convection oven (140 F / 60 C).

Each egg was taken out of the solution at a predetermined time (one hour, three hours, five hours, eight hours, or 24 hours), sliced in half with an egg slicer, and imaged. A digital camera on a tripod was placed above the light box.

The study demonstrated that at each increasing time interval, the dye diffused deeper into the egg white, with diffusion occurring more rapidly at higher temperatures.

The experiment can be simplified for home or classroom by using a pot or slow cooker instead of a convection oven, and eggs can be prepared in advance, so students can make all the measurements at the same time. Manual measurements of the penetration distance can replace the imaging method. Soy sauce or marinade of students' choice could be used instead of food dye solution, allowing students to "taste" the differences in diffusion.

Explore further Tracing the diffusion of carbon isotopes using atomic-scale vibrational spectroscopy

More information: Marinated eggs: An engaging quantitative demonstration of diffusion, American Journal of Physics (2022). Journal information: American Journal of Physics Marinated eggs: An engaging quantitative demonstration of diffusion,(2022). aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1119/5.0062178
Cartoon of the warped extra-dimensional model, where the position along the extra space direction is represented by the horizontal axis. The ordinary space-time is represented by the orthogonal screens. Ordinary matter we are made of is localised on the middle screen, while Dark Matter mainly lives on the right screen. Credit: Cai, Cacciapaglia & Lee.

Today, many research teams worldwide are trying to detect dark matter, an invisible substance that is believed to account for most of the matter in the universe. As does not reflect or emit light, its presence has been indirectly revealed via its gravitational interactions with visible matter.

So far, the most promising dark matter candidates are axions, neutrinos, and weakly interacting massive particles. Recently, however, some physicists also started investigating the possibility that another type of hypothetical particles, massive gravitons, could be viable dark matter candidates.

Theory suggests that massive gravitons were produced during collisions between ordinary particles in the hot and dense environment of the early Universe, in the few instants following the Big Bang. While theories predict their existence, these particles have so far never been directly detected.

Researchers at Korea University and University of Lyon have recently carried out a theoretical study exploring the possibility that massive gravitons could be good dark matter candidates. The results of their theoretical calculations were published in a paper in Physical Review Letters.

"Our study started by looking at extra dimensions, particularly warped extra dimensions, which have been studied a lot in the past 20 years," Giacomo Cacciapaglia, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told Phys.org. "When gravity propagates in this invisible space, it materializes massive gravitons. Their coupling to ordinary matter is very weak, being of gravitational origin."

Relic density of the massive graviton in the parameter space of the warped model. The points along the red line reproduce the observed Dark Matter in the Universe, while the shaded regions are excluded. Credit: Cai, Cacciapaglia & Lee.

The process through which massive gravitons would theoretically be produced is extremely rare. For this reason, the rate at which these particles are produced would be significantly lower than the rate of production of "ordinary" particles. Cacciapaglia and his colleagues Haiying Cai and Seung Lee wondered whether enough massive gravitons were produced in the early universe for them to be considered a good dark matter candidate.

"By computing the production rate of these particles, we discovered that some processes are enhanced below the scale where the Higgs boson generates masses for the ordinary particles, 1 picosecond after the Big Bang," Cacciapaglia said. "We showed that this enhancement is enough to create the right amount of dark matter in the form of massive gravitons with masses below the MeV."

The calculations performed by Cai, Lee and Cacciapaglia show that instead of being associated with unknown physics occurring shortly after the Big Bang, the production of massive gravitons is most effective below the energy scale in which Higgs bosons reside. Higgs bosons are elementary particles that carry the Higgs field, the field that gives mass to fundamental particles such as electrons and quarks.

"This draws a direct connection between the physics studied at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva and the early Universe physics of gravity and Dark Matter," Cacciapaglia said. "Our results imply that gravitational dark matter is produced 1 picosecond after the Big Bang, at a time when particle physics is well described by the current theories."

In the future, the results gathered by this team of researchers could inspire new studies and calculations exploring the production of massive gravitons in the universe. Meanwhile, Cacciapaglia and his colleagues plan to build on the theoretical model introduced in their paper, while also evaluating other dark matter candidates.

"We now plan to investigate other features of a concrete model in warped extra dimension that we sketch in the article," Cacciapaglia added. "We are particularly interested in the role played by a scalar particle called radion and on the potential testability at current and future particle colliders."

Explore further ATLAS and CMS collaborations chase the invisible with the Higgs boson

More information: Haiying Cai et al, Massive Gravitons as Feebly Interacting Dark Matter Candidates, Physical Review Letters (2022). Journal information: Physical Review Letters Haiying Cai et al, Massive Gravitons as Feebly Interacting Dark Matter Candidates,(2022). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.128.081806

 2022 Science X Network
MITs Infinite Corridor  which is one-sixth of a mile long  mixes thousands of people together daily. Credit: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The MIT campus is built to connect people. Some structures, like the Stata Center, the Sloan building, or the Media Lab building, offer large lobbies, flexible labs, and common spaces to enhance collaboration. MIT's Infinite Corridorwhich is one-sixth of a mile longmixes thousands of people together daily. Aerial walkways connect campus research buildings.

Do all these design elements truly help people to work together? A study led by MIT scholars reveals new details about collaboration on the Institute's campus. Overall the study, which looks at email traffic between faculty, researchers, and staff on campus, confirms that physical proximity does matter for workplace collaboration, but it adds new wrinkles about how this happens.

People are more likely to communicate via email after running into each other at a campus eatery, for instance, than in a crowded corridor. The study also found that email exchanges occur more often among researchers whose workspaces are connected through indoor halls rather than outdoor paths. And greater physical proximity may not replace email communication among people who don't know each other wellthey are more likely to email each other even when working in close proximity.

"Studying how spatial relationships may influence social ties has been of interest to scholars of the built environment and sociologists alike for a long time," says Andres Sevtsuk, an associate professor in MIT's Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP), and co-author of a new paper detailing the study's results. While past work often used survey data to account for interactions, here the campus email information added hard data to the research.

"We were interested in taking this idea of spatial relatedness further and examining its more nuanced aspects that have not been well-covered in prior research," Sevtsuk notes.

Those findings apply to not only MIT but other organizations as well.

"These ideas could be explored analogously in other work environments beyond MIT, such as companies, organizations, or even public sector institutions," says Bahij Chaucey, a researcher at the MIT City Form Lab and a co-author of the paper.

The paper, "Spatial structure of workplace and communication between colleagues: A study of E-mail exchange and spatial relatedness on the MIT campus," was published in advance online form in March, by the journal Social Networks.

The authors are Chancey; Rounaq Basu, a doctoral candidate in DUSP; Martina Mazzarello, a postdoc at the MIT Senseable City Lab; and Sevtsuk, the Charles and Ann Spaulding Career Development Associate Professor of Urban Science and Planning in DUSP and head of the MIT City Form Lab.

The Allen curve and onward

A large body of scholarship has examined workplace interactionsoften influenced by the late Thomas Allen, a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management whose interest in the subject was spurred in part by a stint working at Boeing. Allen's research in the 1970s and 1980s found that greater proximity has a strong relationship with greater collaboration among engineers, a phenomenon represented by the "Allen curve."

To conduct this study, the researchers used anonymized email data collected by MIT's Information Systems and Technology group in February 2020, a month before the COVID-19 pandemic altered campus routines. The data track how many bilateral email exchanges occurred between research units on campus, such as departments or labs; the scholars examined the number of individuals in a unit to estimate the typical amount of person-to-person exchange.

The team then examined the spatial relationships between research units, to see how the built environment might interact with email patterns. Overall, the study spanned 33 different departments, labs, and research groups, and 1,455 office occupants.

The scholars also modeled the likely walking routes to the office or lab of MIT workers, based on MIT's 2018 Commute to Work survey, while also estimating the total foot traffic or crowdedness of each corridor and eating venue on campus. Sevtsuk's research has included extensive modeling of pedestrian routes in city settings using such methods.

More food for thought

Many specific, granular findings emerged from the studyespecially the idea that proximity matters along with the specifics of the built environment. For starters, other things being equal, workers in research units located near the same dining facilities are more likely to email and interact.

"Cafeterias are spaces where verbal and visual communication is an important part of eating culture, especially in a research environment like MIT," says Basu.

Not having to venture outside also influences behaviorat least, it did during the wintery Massachusetts weather during the study period. For research units that are basically an equal distance apart, those linked by interior corridors tended to communicate more than those separated by outdoor space, even when that communication was in the form of email.

"We clearly saw that if people's offices are linked via the indoor Infinite Corridor system, they are more likely to engage in email exchange than if the logical connections between their offices require outdoor paths," Basu says.

As an added wrinkle, however, really busy corridors seem to generate brief greetings more than exchanges that lead to follow-up communication. "We found that if the corridor where person A may be walking past person B's office on the way to work tends to be more crowded, then it reduces the likelihood of A and B engaging in email exchange," Sevtsuk says.

However, this does not seem to be the case with very crowded cafeterias, which if anything seem to encourage more subsequent contact. "A more crowded cafeteria could provide more opportunities to engage in group conversations, where new social ties can emerge between people who are introduced by mutual connections," Sevtsuk observes.

Not least, the effects of physical proximity are themselves related to preexisting relationships. For people already familiar with each other, the research suggests, proximity leads to more face-to-face interactions; for those previously unfamiliar with each other, meeting people due to proximity tends to lead to a greater proportion of emails being exchanged, at first.

Many pathways ahead

The researchers believe their methodology could suggest ways to place new faculty or staff in useful spots where they would be able to interact easily with others.

"It is possible to use our findings to identify where such locations are within each department and school," Sevtsuk says.

Campus planners could also continue to build on ideas evident in the Stata Center and Sloan building, which have large ground-floor cafeterias and "strategically position social lounges or dining facilities at locations where access from surrounding offices, and the likelihood of passing [by] is highest," Sevtsuk adds.

In universities and tech-firm campuses, Sevtsuk suggests, when new building projects are being considered, it makes sense to "strategically evaluate their locations and circulation systems vis-a-vis spatial connectivity to surrounding departments with which they have the most potential for joint research."

Certainly, MIT, other universities, and large companies cannot always quickly reconfigure themselves. But over time, good planning and design can enhance interdisciplinary work, collaboration, and generate serendipitous meetings between people. Or, as the authors state in the paper, "Planning environments to encourage greater interaction across different groups may offer a pathway to bridge siloed social networks and encourage information exchange between otherwise unlikely parties."

Explore further Counting pedestrians to make pedestrians count

More information: Andres Sevtsuk et al, Spatial structure of workplace and communication between colleagues: A study of E-mail exchange and spatial relatedness on the MIT campus, Social Networks (2022). Andres Sevtsuk et al, Spatial structure of workplace and communication between colleagues: A study of E-mail exchange and spatial relatedness on the MIT campus,(2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.socnet.2022.03.001

This story is republished courtesy of MIT News (web.mit.edu/newsoffice/), a popular site that covers news about MIT research, innovation and teaching.
Arthropod (Naroia). Credit: Dr Xiaoya Ma

The ancestors of many animal species alive today may have lived in a delta in what is now China, new research suggests.

The Cambrian Explosion, more than 500 million years ago, saw the rapid spread of bilaterian speciessymmetrical along a central line, like most of today's animals (including humans).

The 518-million-year-old Chengjiang Biotain Yunnan, south-west Chinais one of the oldest groups of animal fossils currently known to science, and a key record of the Cambrian Explosion.

Fossils of more than 250 species have been found there, including various worms, arthropods (ancestors of living shrimps, insects, spiders, scorpions) and even the earliest vertebrates (ancestors of fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals).

The new study finds for the first time that this environment was a shallow-marine, nutrient-rich delta affected by storm-floods.

The area is now on land in the mountainous Yunnan Province, but the team studied rock core samples that show evidence of marine currents in the past environment.

"The Cambrian Explosion is now universally accepted as a genuine rapid evolutionary event, but the causal factors for this event have been long debated, with hypotheses on environmental, genetic, or ecological triggers," said senior author Dr. Xiaoya Ma, a palaeobiologist at the University of Exeter and Yunnan University.

Fish (Myllokunmingia). Credit: Dr Xiaoya Ma

"The discovery of a deltaic environment shed new light on understanding the possible causal factors for the flourishing of these Cambrian bilaterian animal-dominated marine communities and their exceptional soft-tissue preservation.

"The unstable environmental stressors might also contribute to the adaptive radiation of these early animals."

Co-lead author Farid Saleh, a sedimentologist and taphonomist at Yunnan University, said: "We can see from the association of numerous sedimentary flows that the environment hosting the Chengjiang Biota was complex and certainly shallower than what has been previously suggested in the literature for similar animal communities."

Changshi Qi, the other co-lead author and a geochemist at the Yunnan University, added: "Our research shows that the Chengjiang Biota mainly lived in a well-oxygenated shallow-water deltaic environment.

"Storm floods transported these organisms down to the adjacent deep oxygen-deficient settings, leading to the exceptional preservation we see today."

Co-author Luis Buatois, a paleontologist and sedimentologist at the University of Saskatchewan, said: "The Chengjiang Biota, as is the case of similar faunas described elsewhere, is preserved in fine-grained deposits.

"Our understanding of how these muddy sediments were deposited has changed dramatically during the last 15 years.

Lobopodian worm (Luolishania). Credit: Dr Xiaoya Ma

"Application of this recently acquired knowledge to the study of fossiliferous deposits of exceptional preservation will change dramatically our understanding of how and where these sediments accumulated."

The results of this study are important because they show that most early animals tolerated stressful conditions, such as salinity (salt) fluctuations, and high amounts of sediment deposition.

This contrasts with earlier research suggesting that similar animals colonized deeper-water, more stable marine environments.

"It is hard to believe that these animals were able to cope with such a stressful environmental setting," said M. Gabriela Mangano, a palaeontologist at the University of Saskatchewan, who has studied other well-known sites of exceptional preservation in Canada, Morocco, and Greenland.

Maximiliano Paz, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Saskatchewan who specializes in fine-grained systems, added: "Access to sediment cores allowed us to see details in the rock which are commonly difficult to appreciate in the weathered outcrops of the Chengjiang area."

This work is an international collaboration between Yunnan University, University of Exeter, the University of Saskatchewan, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the University of Lausanne, and the University of Leicester.

The research was funded by the Chinese Postdoctoral Science Foundation, the Natural Science Foundation of China, the State Key Laboratory of Palaeobiology and Stratigraphy, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and by the George J. McLeod Enhancement Chair in Geology.

The paper, published in the journal Nature Communications, is entitled: "The Chengjiang Biota inhabited a deltaic environment."

More information: The Chengjiang Biota inhabited a deltaic environment, Nature Communications (2022). Journal information: Nature Communications The Chengjiang Biota inhabited a deltaic environment,(2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-29246-z
A man rides a motorcycle past dead palm trees in Morocco's Skoura, an oasis area of around 40 square kilometres, in a file picture from January 2020.

As Morocco withers under its worst drought in 40 years, experts warn that a combination of climate change and bad resource management could trigger severe drinking water shortages.

"The country hasn't seen a situation like this since the start of the 1980s," said water policy expert Abderrahim Hendouf.

While it was usually farmers who bore the brunt of repeated droughts in the North African kingdom, today water supplies to cities are under threat, water minister Nizar Baraka told parliament in mid-March.

Morocco has had little rain since September, and authorities say its reservoirs have received just 11 percent of what they would in an average year.

"That's a worrying sign," Abdelaziz Zerouali, the water ministry's head of research and planning, told state television station M2, adding that some preemptive measures had been taken to mitigate the risks.

Two major cities, tourist hub Marrakesh and Oujda in the east, already started tapping into groundwater reserves in December to ensure adequate supplies.

The government in February also released a package of around one billion euros in aid to the beleaguered agricultural sector, which makes up some 14 percent of GDP and is the top employer in the Moroccan countryside.

A farmer in a melon field, which has dried out and been hit by the high salinity of water from the nearby Moulouya river, near Saidia city in northeast Morocco, on November 2, 2021.

"We need to change our vision of water," Zerouali told a conference on the right to water in Rabat.

"Climate change is real and we will have to face it."

'Absolute scarcity'

Moroccans have access to just 600 cubic metres of water per person per year, far below the 2,600 cubic metres they enjoyed in the 1960s.

According to the United Nations' definition, water scarcity occurs when supplies drop below 1,000 cubic metres per person annually, while supplies of 500 cubic metres are considered "absolute scarcity".

The decline in supplies in Morocco is a result of a mix of environmental factors, high demand and over-exploitation of groundwater for farming, according to Baraka.

In a recent report for the Moroccan Institute for Policy Analysis, Amal Ennabih wrote that "Morocco's water scarcity is deeply linked to the way water is used in irrigation, consuming around 80 percent of Morocco's water annually".

The Abdelmoumen dam, some 60 kilometres from Morocco's coastal city of Agadir, shown in a file photo from October 2020.

A farmer walks among orange trees hit by drought, in Morocco's southern plains of Agadir in the country's agricultural heartland.

A Moroccan shepard walks his herd on March 12, 2022 in the village of Ezzhiliga, some 100 kilometres east of Rabat.

The kingdom, with its Atlantic and Mediterranean coastlines, hopes desalination plants can help make up the deficit, although they are energy-intensive and pump brine back into the sea which causes its own environmental problems.

Moreover, efforts to build 15 more dams and more desalination facilities have been bogged down by delays.

One such plant has been under construction since 2020 near Casablanca, the country's commercial capital, which could face severe water shortages by 2025.

Baraka notes that a desalination plant meant to serve the northeastern resort town of Saidia has also yet to come online, causing water shortages.

Another desalination plant came online recently, supplying 70 percent of the needs of the Atlantic coastal city of Agadir, a tourist hub and centre of a major farming area.

That should provide some relief to a city that in autumn 2020 was so short of water that at night the taps ran dry.

Explore further Drought-hit Jordan to build Red Sea desalination plant

 2022 AFP
 Flash

China on Tuesday demanded that the United States immediately revoke sanctions imposed against Chinese officials for so-called human rights violations, warning that otherwise the U.S. will face reciprocal countermeasures from China.

"The U.S. statement is full of ideological bias and political lies, discrediting China and suppressing Chinese officials for no reason. What the United States has done violates international law and norms, and grossly interferes in China's internal affairs," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin told a regular news briefing.

China is firmly opposed to this, Wang said.

"The worst human rights violator in the world is the United States itself," Wang said, noting that it should repent for butchering the Native Americans and reducing their population to 250,000 at the beginning of the 20th century from 5 million in the late 15th century.

In the face of nearly 1 million COVID-19 deaths, over 40,000 gun violence victims each year, and tens of thousands of victims of racial discrimination, the United States should reflect on its own human rights deficit, Wang said.

The spokesperson added that the United States should beg for forgiveness from the international community for waging war in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan and causing 330,000 civilian deaths and over 26 million refugees, rather than lecturing others on human rights.

He urged the United States to face up to and resolve its own systemic and chronic human rights problems, instead of undermining the human rights of other countries in the name of protecting human rights.

"If the United States ceases being a lecturer of human rights, the situation of human rights in the world will be better," Wang said.
CSIRO researchers have found that the fungus, Venturia paralias, specifically attacks the invasive coastal weed called sea spurge (Euphorbia paralias), which threatens nesting sites of native species including little penguins (Edyptula minor), as well as impacting on the wider coastal ecosystem. Current control methods include removing the weed by hand or chemical sprays.

The fungus will be released by CSIRO and Parks Victoria at the world-renowned London Bridge, a natural offshore arch in Port Campbell National Park. The park is a popular tourist destination, with visitors coming to see the pristine coastline, Twelve Apostles and little penguins returning to their beach nests after fishing.

CSIRO scientist Dr. Gavin Hunter said sea spurge is problematic for nesting shorebirds, including penguins, as the weed can alter sand dune structure and displace vegetation which could negatively impact nesting sites of shorebirds.

"The weed also has a sap which can cause irritation to animals as well as humans," Dr. Hunter said.

"Sea spurge grows along Australia's southern coastline and is a concern for coastal ecosystems. We're hopeful the biocontrol agent will help reduce the dense weed from penguin nesting sites at Port Campbell, and many other beaches along the coastline where the weed occurs.

"There are many challenges with current methods for removing sea spurge so finding a biocontrol agent for the weed was important to complement existing management strategies of hand pulling and chemical sprays that are very labor intensive, costly, and cannot easily be deployed in difficult-to-access beaches."

CSIRO research technician Ms Caroline Delaisse will release the biocontrol agent at Port Campbell and said the fungus was originally found on the Atlantic and Mediterranean coast of France causing leaf and stem lesions on sea spurge plants.

"The fungus was isolated from these diseased plants and initial tests to explore its host range were performed in France. Following positive results from these tests, the fungus was imported to CSIRO's quarantine facility in Canberra and studied extensively," Ms Delaisse said.

"Our research found that the fungus is highly specific towards sea spurge. Based on our results, the fungus was approved by the regulator for release in Australia."

Parks Victoria manages around 70% of Victoria's coast and is helping CSIRO release the fungus at several sites, in addition to Port Campbell National Park.

Parks Victoria Program Leader for Marine and Coasts Mr Mark Rodrigue assisted in the first releases of the fungus in Victoria and said this was an exciting advancement in weed control that would help protect the health of Victoria's beautiful coast and native animals, such as little penguins and plants that depend on beach and dune habitats.

"If it successfully establishes, the biocontrol will be particularly important for managing this highly invasive weed in the more remote parts of the coast where access is very difficult for manual or chemical control," Mr Rodrigue said.

"CSIRO has paved the way for land managers like Parks Victoria and volunteers to safely target areas of sea spurge infestation, with solid science and comprehensive guidelines developed to support us."

A prolific seed producer, a mature sea spurge plant can produce up to 20,000 seeds per year and can grow anywhere on the beach above the high-water mark, taking over sand and dune vegetation.

This project has been financially supported by the NSW Government as part of nearly $500,000 in funding targeting four weed species including sea spurge.

Sea spurge is an introduced plant from Europe that has invaded coastal ecosystems from Geraldton north of Perth in Western Australia through to the mid north coast of New South Wales and around Tasmania's coastline.

Explore further Fungus fights oxygen-sucking water weed
Time could be determined even more precisely with sophisticated computational methods on entangled atoms. Physicists from Innsbruck, Austria, have developed such a technique. Credit: University of Innsbruck/Harald Ritsch

Atomic clocks are the best sensors mankind has ever built. Today, they can be found in national standards institutes or satellites of navigation systems. Scientists all over the world are working to further optimize the precision of these clocks. Now, a research group led by Peter Zoller, a theorist from Innsbruck, Austria, has developed a new concept that can be used to operate sensors with even greater precision irrespective of which technical platform is used to make the sensor. "We answer the question of how precise a sensor can be with existing control capabilities, and give a recipe for how this can be achieved," explain Denis Vasilyev and Raphael Kaubrugger from Peter Zoller's group at the Institute of Quantum Optics and Quantum Information at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Innsbruck.

For this purpose, the physicists use a method from quantum information processing: Variational quantum algorithms describe a circuit of quantum gates that depends on free parameters. Through optimization routines, the sensor autonomously finds the best settings for an optimal result. "We applied this technique to a problem from metrologythe science of measurement," Vasilyev and Kaubrugger explain. "This is exciting because historically advances in atomic physics were motivated by metrology, and in turn quantum information processing emerged from that. So, we've come full circle here," Peter Zoller says. With the new approach, scientists can optimize quantum sensors to the point where they achieve the best possible precision technically permissible.

Better measurements with little extra effort

For some time, it has been understood that atomic clocks could run even more accurately by exploiting quantum mechanical entanglement. However, there has been a lack of methods to realize robust entanglement for such applications. The Innsbruck physicists are now using tailor-made entanglement that is precisely tuned to real-world requirements. With their method, they generate exactly the combination consisting of quantum state and measurements that is optimal for each individual quantum sensor. This allows the precision of the sensor to be brought close to the optimum possible according to the laws of nature, with only a slight increase in overhead. "In the development of quantum computers, we have learned to create tailored entangled states," says Christian Marciniak from the Department of Experimental Physics at the University of Innsbruck. "We are now using this knowledge to build better sensors."

Demonstrating quantum advantage with sensors

This theoretical concept was now implemented in practice for the first time at the University of Innsbruck, as the research group led by Thomas Monz and Rainer Blatt now reported in Nature. The physicists performed frequency measurements based on variational quantum calculations on their ion trap quantum computer. Because the interactions used in linear ion traps are still relatively easy to simulate on classical computers, the theory colleagues were able to check the necessary parameters on a supercomputer at the University of Innsbruck. Although the experimental setup is by no means perfect, the results agree surprisingly well with the theoretically predicted values. Since such simulations are not feasible for all sensors, the scientists demonstrated a second approach: They used methods to automatically optimize the parameters without prior knowledge. "Similar to machine learning, the programmable quantum computer finds its optimal mode autonomously as a high-precision sensor," says experimental physicist Thomas Feldker, describing the underlying mechanism.

"Our concept makes it possible to demonstrate the advantage of quantum technologies over classical computers on a problem of practical relevance," emphasizes Peter Zoller. "We have demonstrated a crucial component of quantum-enhanced atomic clocks with our variational Ramsey interferometry. Running this in a dedicated atomic clock is the next step. What has so far only been shown for calculations of questionable practical relevance could now be demonstrated with a programmable quantum sensor in the near futurequantum advantage."

The results were published in the journals Nature and Physical Review X.

Explore further Manipulating the dark states of superconducting circuits in a microwave waveguide
A cone snail envenomates a fish. Credit: Helena Safavi

Scientists already know that the venom of cone snails, which prowl the ocean floor for a fish dinner, contains compounds that can be adapted as pharmaceuticals to treat chronic pain, diabetes and other human maladies. But the cone snails' venom has more secrets yet to be revealed. In a new study published in Science Advances, researchers report that a group of cone snails produces a venom compound similar to the hormone somatostatin.

While they continue to learn more about this venom compound and its possible pharmaceutical applications, the results show the wide variety of drug leads that venomous animals produce, designed and refined over millions of years.

"We have to broaden the scope of what we expect that these venomous animals make, assuming that they could really be making anything," says Helena Safavi-Hemami, an adjunct assistant professor at the University of Utah and associate professor at the University of Copenhagen. "We should look very broadly and keep an open eye for completely new compounds."

"Cone snail venom is like a natural library of compounds," adds Iris Bea Ramiro of the University of Copenhagen. "It is just a matter of finding what is in that library."

Beginning in Bohol

The story begins in the Philippines, on the island of Bohol where Ramiro grew up. Although she and most Boholanos didn't encounter cone snails often except for finding shells on the beach, fishermen knew how to find and catch the venomous snails, which are often sold to shell collectors and are sometimes eaten. One fisherman told Ramiro that his parents warned him to avoid eating a bean-like organ in the snail.

"The bean-like structure is actually a bulb that is connected to the gland where venom is produced," Ramiro says.

Watch how this strike-and-release strategy plays out as Conus neocostatus snails interact with a fang blenny that vigorously fights back. Credit: Helena Safavi

Some cone snails are fish hunters. Some of those use a "taser-and-tether" hunting strategy, shooting a barbed hook into a fish and delivering a jolt of venom that chemically electrocutes and paralyzes the fish. Others use a net hunting strategy, releasing a cloud of venom into the water with compounds that leave the fish sensory-deprived and disoriented.

Of the estimated eight groups of fish hunting cone snails, though, only half have been extensively studied. Among the least-studied lineages are the Asprella cone snails. They're not shallow-water snails, like some others. They like deeper waters, at depths of 200-800 feet (60-250 m), and have been less accessible to scientists.

As a graduate student at the University of the Philippines, Ramiro began studying Conus rolani, a species of Asprella snail. "No one in our lab was working on it at that time," she says. "I was just looking to identify any small peptide (chain of amino acids) from the venom of C. rolani that had unusual or interesting activity in mice."

She found one. A small peptide from the venom caused mice to act sluggishly or unresponsive. But it was slow-acting, hardly the expected effect since other cone snails produced venoms that acted almost immediately. It had a few similarities to the hormone somatostatin (more on that later) but not enough to say conclusively that the venom peptide and the human hormone were functionally related.

While exploring how and why the venom worked, Ramiro made a visit to the University of Utah, a hub of cone snail research.

Cone snails at the U

Far from the glittering waters of the Pacific, U researchers have been studying cone snails and their venom since 1970, when Baldomero "Toto" Olivera arrived in Salt Lake City, bringing the cone snail research he'd begun in his native Philippines.

Decades of study have provided an abundance of information about how venom compounds interact with the bodies of prey fish, including how the venoms interact with receptors in the body and overwhelm natural biochemical processes. Olivera and his colleagues investigated whether those effects could be employed as pharmaceuticals in humans. One effort yielded a pain medication, Prialt. Another, in which Safavi played a leading role at the U as an assistant professor, investigated how insulin analogs produced by cone snails might be adapted as a fast-acting insulin for people with diabetes.

"Somehow cone snails take some of their hormones and turn them into weapons," Safavi says. So she and other researchers helped Ramiro compare the peptide she'd found, now called Consomatin Ro1, to known human proteins.

Frank Whitby, a research associate professor in the Department of Biochemistry, used X-ray crystallography to determine the structure of Consomatin Ro1. "This was an important contribution because it showed that Consomatin Ro1 does not resemble somatostatin but rather resembles a drug analog of somatostatin called octreotide," says Christopher Hill, distinguished professor of biochemistry.

Meanwhile the research team also worked with local fishermen off Cebu, an island near Bohol, to bring Asprella specimens to the lab to observe their behavior and learn more about their biochemistry.

It took a year, Ramiro says, to confirm that the peptide that she'd originally isolated from the C. rolanisnail activates two of the five human receptors for somatostatin "with unique selectivity," she says.

"Then," Safavi says, "we really wanted to understand what it's doing and how it could be better than somatostatin."

Snails and snakes

Somatostatin is a hormone that, in humans and many other vertebrates, is generally an inhibitorkind of a wet blanket. It's the main inhibitor of growth hormone, and can be used to treat the excessive growth disorder acromegaly. It also inhibits hormones in the pancreas and signals of pain and inflammation.

"So it's this hormone that has many, many different functions in the human body," Safavi says, "But it's always blocking something. And because of that, it had been an interesting hormone for drug development for some time."

Bea Ramiro during fieldwork in the Philippines. Credit: Helena Safavi

How can a hormone like somatostatin work as a weaponized venom, especially when it acts slowly? The best way to understand that, the researchers say, is to look to another predator with a slow-acting venom: the rattlesnake.

Rattlesnakes, vipers and cobras have developed a hunting strategy to protect themselves against dangerous prey that could possibly fight back. The snakes strike, injecting their venom, and then retreat. They then wait and follow their prey until the venom takes its full effect and the prey is dead or nearly dead and safe to approach and eat.

Observations of cone snails in tanks showed similarities to the rattlesnakes' strike-and-release hunting strategy. After injecting venom, the snails would wait, sometimes up to three hours, before delivering a second injection and waiting again.

"And only when the prey is really incapacitated and unable to swim, they come and eat it," Safavi says. "If you don't catch the prey immediately, you have the advantage of just waiting until the prey can no longer move. That's particularly important if the prey can fight back."

How does a venom component that mimics somatostatin help with that strategy? It's still unclear. The study showed that Consomatin Ro1 can block pain in mice with efficiency similar to morphine, and it may be used to block pain so that prey doesn't know it's been struck, Safavi says. Different species of fish hunters may use these toxins for different purposes.

Tiny drug designers

As a somatostatin analog, Safavi says, Consomatin Ro1 is structured "as if it was designed by drug makers." The molecule is short, stable and efficient in the receptors it targets.

That's likely a reflection of the process of evolution. Cone snails likely began using their own somatostatin in venom and then, through generations of trial and error, refined the compound for maximum effectiveness. That's an advantage for us, since the biology of fish and humans is similar enough that a compound that's highly effective in fish will likely be effective in humans.

It's yet to be seen whether Consomatin Ro1 is more effective than somatostatin analog drugs already on the market that treat growth disorders or tumors.

"The advantage with the cone snails, though, is that there are so many species," Safavi says. "And we know that many of these species make somatostatin, so the chances of finding the best analog might be pretty high."

Future directions

Next, the research team wants to investigate the origin of Consomatin Ro1 in snails, as well as better understand the potential of the compound as an anti-inflammatory or pain reliever. They'll also look to see if modifications to the compound could make it even more useful.

The results show how venomous animals can turn a hormone into a weapon and suggest that the range of biochemical tools in venom might be broader than previously thought.

"There's evidence that viruses also turn hormones into weapons," Safavi says. "We can spend a lot of time trying to design good hormone drugs, or we could try to look at nature more often. And I think if we did the latter, we might be more successful or we might be faster in our drug development efforts." Safavi will continue this work when she returns to the U as an associate professor of biochemistry in summer 2022.

"This gives insight to the development of next-generation therapeutics," says Hill. "More generally, this is a great example of how evolution in the natural world has already developed drug-like natural products that have great potential to improve human health."

"Discovering new peptides from the cone snails is fun and exciting but it could be a long and difficult journey," Ramiro says, adding that the integration of various disciplines including biology, biochemistry and pharmacology have made this study successful. "There is still so much we can find, discover and learn from the cone snails and their venom."

Explore further Marine snail inspires fast-acting injectable insulin for better diabetes control

More information: Iris Bea L. Ramiro et al, Somatostatin venom analogs evolved by fish-hunting cone snails: From prey capture behavior to identifying drug leads, Science Advances (2022). www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abk1410 Journal information: Science Advances Iris Bea L. Ramiro et al, Somatostatin venom analogs evolved by fish-hunting cone snails: From prey capture behavior to identifying drug leads,(2022). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abk1410
Graphene with defects. Credit: Daria Sokol/MIPT Press Office

Russian scientists have found out why, instead of simply burning down at high temperatures, graphene oxide opens the door to a promising and inexpensive graphene production method. The research was published in the journal Carbon.

It has been over a decade since the Nobel Prize was awarded for graphene experimental research, but scientists still have not found a way to obtain high-quality large-area graphene, which would be cheap, efficient and scalable for industrial needs. Graphene reduction from graphene oxide by laser irradiation appears as a promising route: with graphene oxide produced from ordinary graphite using chemical methods, the laser-aided reduction technique holds much promise in terms of cost and controllability of the resulting material quality.

A few years ago, a group of Skoltech researchers discovered that heating graphene oxide to 3300-3800 K, even under atmospheric conditions, can produce graphene of fairly high quality.

"The result came as a big surprise for our colleagues: the temperature was very high, yet they obtained well-structured material. Carbon materials burn readily in atmospheric oxygen at 600-800 K or higher, whereas in the experiment at much higher temperatures graphene acquired good structural properties," said Nikita Orekhov, deputy head of the MIPT Laboratory of Supercomputer Methods in Condensed Matter Physics. "To figure out the reason for this unexpected effect, we decided to study the high-temperature graphene oxide reduction process using supercomputer atomistic modeling and perform additional research following on our colleagues' experiment design."

a - carbon atoms marked in red at the boundaries of graphene sheets "burn out" under laser pulses. b - in the central regions of graphene sheets, annealing occurs: graphene lines up in the correct stable structure. Credit: N.D. Orekhov et al

The researchers found that, on the one hand, at high temperatures (T > 3000 K) oxygen atoms from the gaseous environment interact intensively with graphene, oxidizing and destroying it. On the other hand, fast annealing of the crystal lattice begins at the same temperatures, which allows to eliminate defects. During the annealing, the lattice structure straightens out instead of falling apart.

"It turns out that two opposite processes occur concurrently in different places within a material exposed to laser pulses: burning, or destruction, is localized near the defects and boundaries of graphene sheets where carbon atoms are the most chemically active, while annealing occurs primarily in the center of the sheet where atoms prefer to settle back into a stable configuration," said Stanislav Evlashin, leading research scientist at the Skoltech Center for Materials Technologies (CMT).

The findings shed light on the behavior of graphene oxide at extreme temperatures, where straightforward experiments are hardly possible. Understanding the processes described in the paper can help further develop and optimize the methods for obtaining high-quality graphene with large-area monocrystals.

Explore further Graphene: It is all about the toppings

More information: N.D. Orekhov et al, Mechanism of graphene oxide laser reduction at ambient conditions: Experimental and ReaxFF study, Carbon (2022). N.D. Orekhov et al, Mechanism of graphene oxide laser reduction at ambient conditions: Experimental and ReaxFF study,(2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.carbon.2022.02.018 Stanislav Evlashin et al, Controllable Laser Reduction of Graphene Oxide Films for Photoelectronic Applications, ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces (2016). DOI: 10.1021/acsami.6b10145 Journal information: Carbon , ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces
Machu Picchu, Peru. Credit: Roberto H. on Unsplash

Machu Picchu is among the most recognized archaeological sites in the world. A lasting symbol of the Inca Empire, it's one of the most visited attractions in Latin America and at the heart of the Peruvian tourist industry.

However, when Hiram Bingham first visited the ruins in 1911 and then brought them to the world's attention, they were little knowneven among those who lived in Peru's Cusco region.

More than 110 years after Bingham's first visit to the site, historian Donato Amado Gonzales from the Ministry of Culture of Peru (Cusco) and archeologist Brian S. Bauer from the University of Illinois Chicago reviewed Bingham's original field notes, early 20th-century maps of the region, and centuries-old land documents from different archives. Their findings suggest that less was known about the site than what was previously thought.

In their paper, published by Nawpa Pacha: Journal of Andean Archaeology, the researchers conclude that the Incas originally called it Huayna Picchu, for the rocky summit that lies nearest to the site, and not Machu Picchu, which is the name of the highest mountain near the ancient city.

"We began with the uncertainty of the name of the ruins when Bingham first visited them and then reviewed several maps and atlases printed before Bingham's visit to the ruins," said Bauer, UIC professor of anthropology. "There is significant data which suggest that the Inca city actually was called Picchu or more likely, Huayna Picchu."

The researchers found that the ruins of an Inca town called Huayna Picchu is mentioned in a 1904 atlas that was published seven years before Bingham arrived in Peru. Additionally, they detail that Bingham was told in 1911 of ruins called Huayna Picchu along the Urubamba River before he left Cusco to search for the remains. A landowner's son later told Bingham in 1912 that the ruins were called Huayna Picchu.

According to Bauer, the most definitive connections to the original name of the Inca city are preserved within accounts written by Spaniards relatively soon after the region came under their control in the late 16th century.

"We end with a stunning, late 16th-century account when the indigenous people of the region were considering returning to reoccupy the site which they called Huayna Picchu," he said.

Explore further Study: Machu Picchu older than expected

More information: Donato Amado Gonzales et al, The Ancient Inca Town Named Huayna Picchu, Nawpa Pacha (2021). Donato Amado Gonzales et al, The Ancient Inca Town Named Huayna Picchu,(2021). DOI: 10.1080/00776297.2021.1949833
Scientists are working with farmers to cut the use of pesticides and water-polluting chemical fertilisers.

In a field in western France, the small purple and white flowers quivering among tender shoots of wheat are a clue that this is not conventional single-crop farmland.

In fact, this whole area is part of scientific work to help farmers cut down on their use of pesticides, herbicides and chemical fertilisers.

"I felt that these products were dangerous," said farmer David Bonneau as he hunched over the little wildflowersveronica and hickweed. And "the general public is asking for reductions".

One of his experimental plots is treated the standard way, with chemical weedkiller; another he weeds mechanically with a harrow whose teeth tear up the wild plants; while a third will not be treated at all.

He is part of a project involving 400 farms and around 40 villages in the Deux-Sevres region of western France, where scientists are experimenting with different techniques to cut pollution.

Researchers from the French research agency, CNRS, support volunteer farmers to reduce the use of pesticidesprobable sources of cancer and fatal to birdsas well as water-polluting chemical fertilisers, the prices of which are exploding.

While Russia's invasion of Ukraine has raised the spectre of food shortages, policymakers in Europe should not waver in their commitment to green agriculture, experts say.

And protecting Nature, a central task of biodiversity negotiations currently taking place in Geneva, is also a matter of safeguarding the water we drink, the food we eat and the air we breathe.

Pesticides may cause cancer and are fatal to birds.

"It's important from a political point of view to show long-term engagement," said Robert Finger, head of farming systems research at ETH University of Zurich.

And greener could even mean more profitable.

"In many parts of the world, we are at a point where fertiliser use is very inefficient in terms of additional yield," he said, referring to Europe and parts of Asia.

Excessive use of fertilisers or pesticides can affect small and large crops.

Dangerous habits

Meanwhile, Pepijn Schreinemachers, a researcher at the World Vegetable Center, said farmers in countries such as Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia were misusing pesticides with potentially harmful consequences.

"It is important to realise that it is farmers themselves who are most affected by the misuse of agrochemicals," he said. This could be using too much of a chemical, unsafe techniques or the use of the wrong products.

"Every farmer can share details about pesticide-poisoning incidents they have experienced, ranging from skin rashes to vomiting and unconsciousness. Still, most farmers strongly believe that pesticides are necessary for farm production."

Farmers can reduce nitrogen and pesticides by a third without loss of yield, scientists say.

So how can farmers be persuaded to change?

Robert Finger believes farming needs to have a middle way, between full organic farming and chemical-heavy conventional agriculture.

"The most important point is that the farmers have an option to do something different," he said.

Clear long-term public policies should help support the development of new technologies, as well as investment in pesticide-free production and techniques like growing legumes among crops to reduce the need for fertilisers.

The costs of pesticides and fertilisers should properly reflect the damage they can do, he said.

And in regions where "highly toxic" products are not being used safely, Schreinemachers said they should be banned outright, or heavily taxed to discourage use, while encouraging alternatives like biopesticides.

To help farmers overcome worries about making a switch, CNRS researchers are considering a mutual fund which would compensate them in the event of losses linked to the reduction of synthetic fertilisers and pesticides, a model that already exists in Italy.

Many farmers have suffered from pesticide poisoning.

Green growth

David Bonneau has seen savings so far on the costs of buying weedkiller and equipment.

When he made his first attempts at ditching the chemicals, he used his neighbour's machinery. Since then a more efficient device has been purchased by the agricultural cooperative.

But the proof will come at harvest time, when researchers will measure the wheat yields of each of the plots to find out the impact of the herbicide reduction.

In Deux-Sevres, "we have demonstrated that conventional farmers can reduce nitrogen and pesticides by a third without loss of yield, while increasing their income because they lower their costs", said Vincent Bretagnolle, research director at the CNRS.

But changing behaviour long-term is another challenge.

"Even the farmers who participated in the experiment and saw the results with their own eyes did not noticeably change their practices," Bretagnolle said.

Explore further Organic foods not always free from pesticides

 2022 AFP
The single-photon source and confocal microscope are housed inside a robust package that measures just 500 x 500 millimeters and weighs around 10 kilograms. Credit: Helen Zeng, University of Technology Sydney

Researchers have developed a new high-purity single-photon source that can operate at room temperature. The source is an important step toward practical applications of quantum technology, such as highly secure communication based on quantum key distribution (QKD).

"We developed an on-demand way to generate photons with high purity in a scalable and portable system that operates at room temperature," said Helen Zeng, a member of the research team from the University of Technology Sydney in Australia. "Our single-photon source could advance the development of practical QKD systems and can be integrated into a variety of real-world quantum photonic applications."

In the Optica Publishing Group journal Optics Letters, Zeng and colleagues from Australia's University of New South Wales and Macquarie University describe their new single-photon source and show that it can produce over ten million single photons per second at room temperature. They also incorporated the single-photon source into a fully portable device that can perform QKD.

The new single-photon source uniquely combines a 2-D material called hexagonal boron nitride with an optical component known as a hemispherical solid immersion lens, which increases the source's efficiency by a factor of six.

Single photons at room temperature

QKD offers impenetrable encryption for data communication by using the quantum properties of light to generate secure random keys for encrypting and decrypting data. QKD systems require robust and bright sources that emit light as a string of single photons. However, most of today's single-photon sources don't perform well unless operated at cryogenic temperatures hundreds of degrees below zero, which limits their practicality.

Although hexagonal boron nitride has previously been used to create a single-photon source that operates at room temperature, until now researchers had not been able to achieve the efficiency needed for real-world application. "Most approaches used to improve hexagonal boron nitride single-photon sources rely on precisely positioning the emitter or using nano-fabrication," said Zeng. "This makes the devices complex, difficult to scale and not easy to mass produce."

Zeng and colleagues set out to create a better solution by using a solid immersion lens to focus the photons coming from the single-photon emitter, allowing more photons to be detected. These lenses are commercially available and easy to fabricate.

The researchers combined their new single-photon source with a custom-built portable confocal microscope that can measure the single photons at room temperature, creating a system that can perform QKD. The single-photon source and confocal microscope are housed inside a robust package that measures just 500 x 500 millimeters and weighs around 10 kilograms. The package is also engineered to deal with vibration and stray light.

"Our streamlined device is easier to use and much smaller than traditional optical table setups, which often take up entire labs," said Zeng. "This allows the system to be used with a range of quantum computing schemes. It could also be adapted to work with existing telecommunications infrastructure."

Demonstrating quantum cryptography

Tests of the new single-photon source showed that it could achieve a single-photon collection rate of 107 Hz while maintaining excellent puritymeaning each pulse had a low probability of containing more than one photon. It also showed exceptional stability over many hours of continuous operation. The researchers also demonstrated the system's ability to perform QKD under realistic conditions, showing that secured QKD with 20 MHz repetition rates would be feasible over several kilometers.

Now that the researchers have established proof that their portable device can perform complex quantum cryptography, they plan to perform further testing of its robustness, stability, and efficiency during encryption. They also plan to use the new source to perform QKD in real-world conditions, rather than inside the lab. "We are now ready to transform these scientific advances in quantum 2-D materials into technology ready products," said Igor Aharonovich, who led the project.

Explore further Perfect photons feed new quantum processor

More information: Helen Zhi Jie Zeng et al, Integrated room temperature single-photon source for quantum key distribution, Optics Letters (2022). Journal information: Optics Letters Helen Zhi Jie Zeng et al, Integrated room temperature single-photon source for quantum key distribution,(2022). DOI: 10.1364/OL.454450
The CAMALIOT app will turn your smartphone into an instrument for crowdsourced science. Leave it by your window each night with your satnav positioning turned on and your phone will record small variations in satellite signals, gathering data for machine learning analysis of meteorology and space weather patterns. Credit: CAMALIOT

A newly released Android app will turn your smartphone into an instrument for crowdsourced science. Leave it by your window each night with your satnav positioning turned on and your phone will record small variations in satellite signals, gathering data for machine learning analysis of meteorology and space weather patterns.

The CAMALIOT app, developed through ESA's Navigation Innovation and Support Program (NAVISP) with the support of the Agency's GNSS Science Support Centre, is suitable for more than 50 models in the smartphone market which come equipped with dual frequency satnav receivers.

As well as helping to create new Earth and space weather forecasting models, participants are also in with the chance to win prizes including new phones and Amazon vouchers. This four-month "citizen science" campaign runs until the end of July.

"Global Navigation Satellite Systems such as Europe's Galileo have revolutionized everyday life," explains ESA navigation engineer Vicente Navarro.

"And the precisely modulated signals continuously generated by the dozens of GNSS satellites in orbit are also proving a valuable resource for science, increasingly employed to study Earth's atmosphere, oceans and surface environments. Our GNSS Science Support Centre was created to help support this trend."

For instance, tens of thousands of permanent GNSS stations are continuously recording satnav data. As the satellite signals travel down to Earth they are modified by the amount of water vapor in the lower atmosphere, helping to forecast rainfall in particular.

Model of the well-known 30 October 2003 Halloween solar storm produced by the MIDAS tomographic ionospheric model from the University of Bath. Credit: University of Bath

Satnav signals also undergo delay and fadingknown as ''scintillation"as they pass through irregular plasma patches in the ionosphere. This electrically charged upper atmospheric layer is continuously changing, influenced by solar activity, geomagnetic conditions and the local time of day. Dual frequency satnav receivers can compensate for this effect by comparing their two frequencies.

Vicente adds: "The combination of Galileo dual band smartphone receivers and Android's support for raw GNSS data recording is what opened up the prospect of supplementing data from these fixed GNSS stations with tens of millions of smartphones, vastly increasing our density of coverage. We took inspiration from the famous "SETI@home" initiative, where home laptops help seek out signs of extraterrestrial life."

The results can then undergo a "Big Data" machine learning approach, seeking out previously unseen patterns in both Earth and space weather.

Vicente explains: "This is our first step in enlarging GNSS data acquisition using an "Internet of Things" data fusion approach, employing novel sources such as fixed sensors and drones as well as smartphones. A wide range of other applications are also possible for the system, including improving the performance of GNSS systems."

Formally known as the "Application of Machine Learning Technology for GNSS IoT Data Fusion" project, CAMALIOT is run by a consortium led by ETH Zurich (ETHZ) in collaboration with the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA).

Many of the experts that designed and oversaw the Galileo satnav system are now supporting cutting-edge European companies in the development of new navigation technologies and services. The result is ESAs Navigation Innovation and Support Programme, NAVISP. NAVISP is looking into all kinds of clever ideas about the future of navigation: ways to improve satellite navigation, alternative positioning systems and, new navigation services and applications. Working in partnership with European industry and researchers, more than 200 NAVISP projects have been initiated so far. NAVISP is divided into three elements, the first looking into improving and expanding satellite navigation, as well as establishing novel positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) services. NAVISPs second element focuses on innovation for competitiveness, developing all kinds of new PNT products and services. Its third element covers support to Member State priorities, including support for national testbeds and programmes. Credit: ESA - European Space Agency

"The CAMALIOT effort was underpinned by Element 1 of our NAVISP research program, spurring innovation in satellite navigation," comments Pierluigi Mancini, ESA's NAVISP program manager.

About NAVISP

Many of the experts that designed and oversaw the Galileo satnav system are now supporting cutting-edge European companies in the development of new navigation technologies and services. The result is ESA's Navigation Innovation and Support Program, NAVISP.

NAVISP is looking into all kinds of clever ideas about the future of navigation: ways to improve satellite navigation, alternative positioning systems and, new navigation services and applications.

Working in partnership with European industry and researchers, more than 200 NAVISP projects have been initiated so far.

Explore further Using your cellphone to improve weather forecasts
Arctic Polarity, an art piece from the USask-led GWF Virtual Water Gallery. Credit: Megan Leung

The climate crisis is becoming a water crisis, and last year was one of the most disastrous years in Canadian history for water-related extreme events. Widespread drought, flooding, wildfires, permafrost thaw, and glacier retreat resulted in damage to communities, lakes, forests, animals, and crops.

As spring 2022 begins, scientists are seeing snowpacks at record-highs in the Yukon and parts of the Rocky Mountains and Manitoba that could lead to more flooding in the West. However, low to non-existent snowpacks have developed across parts of southern Alberta indicating that another drought leading to difficulty growing crops and feeding and watering livestock, could also be on the horizon.

"The cannon is loaded yet again," said Dr. John Pomeroy (Ph.D.), Canada Research Chair in Water Resources and Climate Change at the University of Saskatchewan (USask). "We are seeing all-time records for snowfall in parts of northwestern Canada that normally wouldn't occur until April, so concerns remain for floods. But snow drought continues in the western prairies too, with mid-winter dust storms in southern Alberta in the last month. Warmer than normal spring weather can also lead to intense spring rainstorms and so the situation is volatile for much of the country."

Pomeroy heads up the pan-Canadian Global Water Futures (GWF) program which employs more than 1,100 researchers across the country. Several GWF representatives along with many others from the Water Security for Canadians initiative traveled to Ottawa on March 22, World Water Day, to speak with members of parliament and other water policy makers from across the country to see how we could come together to find solutions to the emerging water crisis facing Canada.

"Since 2000 Canada has had the most expensive and severe floods and droughts in its history, and at the same time lake water quality has declined, leading to harmful algal blooms," said Pomeroy. "Groundwater has become increasingly contaminated and drinking water supplies remain unsuitable for human consumption in many Indigenous communities. We have to address this as climate change causes a massive increase in our water-based natural disasters and ability to sustain our communities, economy and natural environment. There is an incredibly important need for a nationally co-ordinated approach to water sustainability. Water is the messenger that tells us we are in a climate crisis. It is our wakeup call."

"Water is life to Indigenous Peoples across Canadaif the water is not healthy, then people are not healthy. It's entirely related," said Dr. Dawn Martin-Hill (Ph.D.), associate professor of Indigenous Studies at McMaster University and a GWF researcher.

Martin-Hill, from the Mohawk Wolf Clan of Six Nations of the Grand River, said the need to engage with First Nations People is paramount to the health of water and the future of Canada.

"Braiding Indigenous ecological knowledge with western science is key to innovatively assessing water security and mitigating climate change impacts on First Nations," she said.

The role of Indigenous People is vitally important, and so too is the role of women.

"Women and girls around the world are often the water keepers or the water fetchers, and the next generation of scientists, policy makers, and politicians need to include more women and greater diversity if we are going to equitably solve the water problems in Canada and around the world," said Dr. Corinne Schuster-Wallace (Ph.D.), USask associate professor. "It's exciting when conversations like this happen on a day such as the United Nation's recognized World Water Day."

Schuster-Wallace, GWF assistant director and co-lead of the Canada Water Decade initiative, knows how far Canada needs to go to meet our targets on the UN's Sustainable Development Goalsespecially SDG6 on Clean Water and Sanitation.

This year the theme for World Water Day is Groundwater: Making the Invisible Visible, "and this certainly speaks to roles of women and other equity-deserving groups who have been invisible in these conversations for too long," she said.

With key stakeholders in Ottawa on World Water Day, and with the continuing strong national dialog on Water Security for Canadians, policy and legal experts are ready to work with government to establish the likes of the Canada Water Agency.

"Water knows no boundariesit doesn't care if a provincial or national border interrupts the flow, water ties us together," said Merrell-Ann Phare, lawyer, legal counsel, and advisor to Indigenous and non-Indigenous governments on water rights. "These national conversations are so important to a better future on water for all people."

Phare, a Member of the Forum for Leadership on Water (FLOW), said breaking down the barriers for all people to establish healthy water systems can lead to greater understanding and conversations.

"Water is the key to climate change, and we need a national strategy now," said Phare. "We can design healthy, safe communities and keep our economy going, to work together as a country, to learn and respect each other, and to really prepare for the future in a meaningful way."

Explore further Canada falling short of UN's Sustainable Development Goals

More information: Global Water Futures:

Canada Water Decade:

Forum For Leadership on Water: Global Water Futures: www.globalwaterfutures.ca Canada Water Decade: www.canadawaterdecade.net Forum For Leadership on Water: www.flowcanada.org
Fungal fibers can be turned into yarn (left) or a leather substitute (right). Credit: Akram Zamani

Your next trendy handbag could be fashioned from "leather" made from a fungus. Today, researchers will describe how they have harnessed this organism to convert food waste into sustainable faux leather, as well as paper products and cotton substitutes, with properties comparable to the traditional materials. They explain that this fungal leather takes less time to produce than existing substitutes already on the market, and, unlike some, is 100% biobased.

The researchers will present their results today at the spring meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS).

Cotton is in short supply, and, like petroleum-based textiles and leather, its production is associated with environmental concerns. Meanwhile, plenty of food goes to waste. Akram Zamani, Ph.D., set out to resolve these seemingly unrelated problems with new biobased, sustainable materials derived from fungi. "We hope they can replace cotton or synthetic fibers and animal leather, which can have negative environmental and ethical aspects," says Zamani, the project's principal investigator. "In developing our process, we have been careful not to use toxic chemicals or anything that could harm the environment."

Just like humans, fungi need to eat. To feed the organisms, the team collected unsold supermarket bread, which they dried and ground into breadcrumbs. The researchers mixed the breadcrumbs with water in a pilot-scale reactor and added spores of Rhizopus delemar, which can typically be found on decaying food. As this fungus fed on the bread, it produced microscopic natural fibers made of chitin and chitosan that accumulated in its cell walls. After two days, the scientists collected the cells and removed lipids, proteins and other byproducts that could be used in food or feed. The remaining jelly-like residue consisting of the fibrous cell walls was then spun into yarn, which could be used in sutures or wound-healing textiles and perhaps in clothing.

Alternatively, the suspension of fungal cells was laid out flat and dried to make paper- or leather-like materials. The first prototypes of fungal leather the team produced were thin and not flexible enough, says Zamani, who is at the University of Boras in Sweden. Now the group is working on thicker versions consisting of multiple layers to more closely mimic real animal leather. These composites include layers treated with tree-derived tanninswhich give softness to the structurecombined with alkali-treated layers that give it strength. Flexibility, strength and glossiness were also improved by treatment with glycerol and a biobased binder. "Our recent tests show the fungal leather has mechanical properties quite comparable to real leather," Zamani says. For instance, the relation between density and Young's modulus, which measures stiffness, is similar for the two materials.

While some other fungal leathers have already reached the market, little information about their production has been published, and their properties don't yet match real leather, according to Zamani. From what she can ascertain, the commercial products are made from harvested mushrooms or from fungus grown in a thin layer on top of food waste or sawdust using solid state fermentation. Such methods require several days or weeks to produce enough fungal material, she notes, whereas her fungus is submerged in water and takes only a couple of days to make the same amount of material. A few other researchers are also experimenting with submerged cultivation but at a much smaller scale than her group's efforts.

In addition, some of the fungal leathers on the market contain environmentally harmful coatings or reinforcing layers made of synthetic polymers derived from petroleum, such as polyester. That contrasts with the University of Boras team's products, which consist solely of natural materials and will therefore be biodegradable, Zamani expects.

Her team is working to further refine their fungal products. They also recently began testing other types of food waste, including fruits and vegetables. One example is the mass left after juice is pressed from fruit. "Instead of being thrown away, it could be used for growing fungi," Zamani says. "So we are not limiting ourselves to bread, because hopefully there will be a day when there isn't any bread waste."

Explore further Producing leather-like materials from fungi

More information: Sustainable fungal textiles and paper-like materials from food waste, ACS Spring 2022. Sustainable fungal textiles and paper-like materials from food waste, ACS Spring 2022. acs.digitellinc.com/acs/live/22/page/677
 Flash

Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Tuesday that China stands ready to elevate the solidarity, friendship and cooperation with the Islamic world to a new level.



Wang made the remarks while meeting with Secretary-General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Hissein Brahim Taha in Pakistan's capital Islamabad, where Wang attended the 48th session of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the OIC.

China and the Islamic world shared a long tradition of relations, and the two sides supported each other on issues involving each other's core interests, Wang said.

He said China is willing to take attending the session as an opportunity to elevate the solidarity, friendship and cooperation with Islamic countries to a new level.

Wang said the OIC, which represents the Islamic countries' solidarity and independence, serves as a bridge for the development of the relations between China and Islamic countries.

China supports Islamic countries' safeguarding sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity as well as exploring a development path suited to the national conditions, and China will continue to firmly stand together with all Islamic countries, Wang said.

He said China will provide an additional 300 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine to Islamic countries and support the OIC's member countries in Africa fighting against the pandemic.

Wang also said that China will enhance bilateral cooperation in the education and training sector, and jointly hold the fifth seminar of the Chinese and Islamic civilization dialogue.

Taha welcomed Wang on behalf of the OIC's more than 50 member countries, saying Wang's attending the session will further boost bilateral relations.

Taha said the Islamic world appreciated China's efforts in helping Islamic countries fight the pandemic, providing assistance to least developed Islamic countries and the Islamic Development Bank, offering training to thousands of students from Islamic countries in Africa, and helping Africa enhance capacity for independent development.

Taha said Islamic countries hope to enhance dialogue and communication with China, promote mutual understanding and work together to meet challenges.

The two sides also exchanged views on Palestine and Afghanistan, among other issues.

In his meeting with Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, Wang said China and Egypt enjoy profound friendship and solid mutual trust.



Last year, two-way trade between China and Egypt increased by 37 percent despite the pandemic, which fully demonstrates the highly complementary nature of the two economies, Wang said.

The two countries have worked together to build Africa's first production line of COVID-19 vaccines, which demonstrated their traditional friendship and enriched the concept of their comprehensive strategic partnership, Wang said.

China has always viewed relations with Egypt as a diplomatic priority in the Middle East and Africa, he added.

For his part, Shoukry said Egypt will host the 27th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 27) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at the end of this year.

Egypt attaches great importance to China's crucial role and contribution and looks forward to strengthening coordination and cooperation with China in helping developing countries achieve their greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets, he said.

Wang said China has always taken part in the global action on climate change with a responsible attitude and has made important contributions to reaching the Paris Agreement.

China supports Egypt in making COP27 a success and ensuring that the global response to climate change moves in the right direction, Wang added.

The two sides also exchanged views on the Ukrainian issue and agreed to respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries and commit themselves to a comprehensive solution to the current crisis.

Shoukry said Egypt opposes some countries putting pressure on China and stands for strengthening cooperation rather than exacerbating conflicts.

In a meeting with Somali Foreign Minister Abdisaid Muse Ali, Wang said Somalia is an important country in the Horn of Africa. China supports various parties in Somalia to strengthen their coordination, and is willing to continue to contribute to peace, stability and development in Somalia, Wang said.



China stands ready to continue to contribute its wisdom and strength to peace and stability in the Horn of Africa, Wang added.
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

The Abel Prize honouring achievements in mathematics was awarded Wednesday to American Dennis Parnell Sullivan for his contributions to topology, including work on chaos theory, the Norwegian Academy of Science said.

Sullivan, a professor at the Stony Brook University in New York, was given the honour "for his groundbreaking contributions to topology in its broadest sense, and in particular its algebraic, geometric and dynamical aspects".

Topology "investigates the properties of objects that do not change when they are deformed," and has "significant applications in fields ranging from physics to economics to data science", the academy said.

Described as a "charismatic and lively member of the mathematics community," Sullivan, 81 was highlighted for finding "deep connections between a dazzling variety of areas of mathematics.

"Sullivan has moved from area to area, seemingly effortlessly, using algebraic, analytic and geometric ideas like a true virtuoso," Hans Munthe-Kaas, chair of the Abel Committee, said in a statement.

Born in Michigan, Sullivan at a young age moved to Houston in Texas, where he later attended Rice University before getting his doctorate at Princeton.

In the late 1970s he began working on chaos theory.

Among his achievements in the field was solving a conjecture that had eluded mathematicians for 60 years.

Sullivan will receive his award, which includes 7.5 million Norwegian kroner ($850,000, 780,000 euros) at a ceremony in Oslo on May 24.

Explore further Cybersecurity pioneers win mathematics Abel Prize

 2022 AFP
The EU's 'Farm to Fork' strategy includes a plan to devote a quarter of agricultural land to organic farming this decade.

Scientists are urging Europe not to delay the transition to greener agriculture in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which threatens global wheat supplies and raises fears over food shortages.

The European Commission is preparing to pass emergency measures on Wednesday to deal with the consequences of the war and sanctions on Russia, also a major exporter of cereals.

That will include granting temporary exemptions for fallow land, but some states, including agricultural powerhouse France, are calling for a much greater roll-back of the EU's green agricultural policies.

The bloc's "Farm to Fork" strategywhich aims to slash pesticide use by half, cut fertilisers by 20 percent and devote a quarter of agricultural land to organic farming this decadewas due to be officially outlined in legislative texts unveiled on Wednesday. They have been postponed indefinitely.

"This is very bad news," said An Lambrechts, of Greenpeace International, from Geneva, where international negotiations are taking place for better protection of biodiversity.

That view is shared by scientists.

An appeal signed by more than 500 experts has called on the European Union to "reinforceand not abandonthe transformation towards a healthy, just, and environmentally-friendly food system".

"We have to look at sensible short-term measures but we must not neglect those long-term targets," said Hermann Lotze-Campen, agricultural economist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), which led the appeal.

"Because reducing greenhouse gas emissions and protecting biodiversity are absolutely necessary to sustain and ensure long-term food production."

Intensive agriculture contributes to climate change, environmental pollution and poses risks to human health.

"We should not only look at the supply side, but also that we have to reduce our consumption of animal-based products and then reduce the number of livestock," Lotze-Campen told AFP.

A sign reading 'Danger mines' in a field northeast of Ukraine's capital Kyiv, where local people normally grow wheat and other crops.

Economic aid

About 60 percent of European cereal production is used for feeding pigs, chickens or cows, and just under 10 percent is used to produce fuel.

"Today, the main reason why we could run out of cereals in Europe is that we put too much of it in engines and that we give too much of it to animals," said Pierre-Marie Aubert of the IDDRI research centre.

He said cultivating fallow land is not a viable solution to increase agricultural production.

Often "it's not good land" for cultivation, he said, but it is needed to provide "key services that farmers depend on: pollination and pest control".

He said a better short-term answer would be economic aid for countries that are struggling to cope with soaring cereal prices.

The war in Ukraine has also underscored Europe's dependence on synthetic fertilisers from Russia and potash from Belarus.

But research in France has suggested that herbicides and nitrogen fertilisers can be cut by 30 to 50 percent from a high base, with no effect on yields.

Almost 200 countries are due to adopt a global framework this year to safeguard nature by mid-century from the destruction wrought by humanity, with a key milestone of 30 percent protected by 2030.

That must include better agricultural practices across the world, experts and activists say.

The European Union is positioning itself as a leader at the Geneva talks, which are laying the groundwork for the COP15 biodiversity summit later this year, hosted by China.

"The (European) Commission is about to delay vital actions which would protect our environment, and instead spend billions on activities which will lead to the destruction of important habitats and wildlife," said Anna Heslop from the NGO ClientEarth.

"These moves risk seriously undermining the EU's ability to claim leadership over protecting nature at a global level when it can't stick to its word at home."

 2022 AFP
This image of an anchor was taken from the 1836 shipwreck site of brig Industry in the Gulf of Mexico by the NOAA ROV deployed from NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer on February 25, 2022. Credit: NOAA Ocean Exploration

NOAA and partners today announced the discovery of the wreck of a 207-year-old whaling ship, called Industry, found on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. The remains of the 64-foot long, two-masted wooden brig opens a window into a little known chapter of American history when descendants of African enslaved people and Native Americans served as essential crew in one of the nation's oldest industries.

"Black and Native American history is American history, and this critical discovery serves as an important reminder of the vast contributions Black and Native Americans have made to our country," said U.S. Deputy Secretary of Commerce Don Graves. "This 19th century whaling ship will help us learn about the lives of the Black and Native American mariners and their communities, as well as the immense challenges they faced on land and at sea."

"Today we celebrate the discovery of a lost ship that will help us better understand the rich story of how people of color succeeded as captains and crew members in the nascent American whaling industry of the early 1800s," said NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad, Ph.D. "The discovery reflects how African Americans and Native Americans prospered in the ocean economy despite facing discrimination and other injustices. It is also an example of how important partnerships of federal agencies and local communities are to uncovering and documenting our nation's maritime history."

With guidance provided via satellite connection from partner scientists on shore, a team aboard NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer piloted a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) to explore the seafloor on February 25, 2022, at a suspected location first spotted by an energy company in 2011 and viewed briefly by an autonomous vehicle in 2017, but never fully examined.

NOAA Ocean Exploration documented the brig Industry shipwreck in the Gulf of Mexico at a depth of 6,000 feet below the Gulf surface. The brig sank in the summer of 1836 after a storm snapped its masts and opened the hull to the sea. Credit: NOAA Ocean Exploration

Armed with extensive research on Industry and the video from the ROV, the team of shoreside scientists led by James Delgado, Ph.D., senior vice president of SEARCH Inc.; Scott Sorset, marine archeologist for the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM); and Michael Brennan, Ph.D., also of SEARCH Inc., have now confirmed that the wreck is most likely the brig Industry.

The whaling brig was built in 1815 in Westport, Massachusetts, and hunted whales across the Atlantic Ocean, the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico for 20 years. It was lost when a strong storm snapped its masts and opened its hull to the sea on May 26, 1836. Industry was whaling primarily for sperm whales more than 70 miles off the mouth of the Mississippi River. It is the only whaling ship known to have been lost in the Gulf of Mexico out of 214 whaling voyages from the 1780s to the 1870s.

While Industry eventually sank, there was some mystery about what happened to the crew. Thanks to new research by Robin Winters, a librarian at the Westport Free Public Library, the crew's fate is finally clear. Winters tracked down a June 17, 1836, article in the Nantucket Inquirer and Mirror that reported the crew of Industry was picked up at sea by another Westport whaling ship, Elizabeth, and crewmen were returned safely to Westport.

"This was so fortunate for the men onboard," said Delgado, who worked closely with Winters and several other local historians to confirm the identity of Industry. "If the Black crewmen had tried to go ashore, they would have been jailed under local laws. And if they could not pay for their keep while in prison, they would have been sold into slavery."

SEARCH Inc., working with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, plans to nominate the wreck site for the National Register of Historic Places as part of a larger BOEM project, led by SEARCH, to document historic 19th-century shipwrecks in the Gulf of Mexico.

"BOEM is proud to be a part of this important discovery," said BOEM Director Amanda Lefton. "We work hard with our partners to safeguard historic and cultural treasures in the outer continental shelf."

Ship linked to the life of historic Black leader

While the crew list for the last voyage of Industry disappeared when the ship sank, lists of crews from previous voyages describe crewmembers and officers as including Black people, Native Americans, White people and multiracial people. The brig is connected to the life of Paul Cuffe, a mariner and entrepreneur whose father was a freed slave and mother was a Wampanoag Indian. Cuffe started whaling as a teenager and rose to become a successful ship builder, merchant, abolitionist, philanthropist, founder of an integrated public school and among the leaders of a project to settle freed Black people in a new colony in Africa. His son William was a navigator on Industry and his son-in-law, Pardon Cook, was an officer on the brig, and believed to have made the most whaling voyages of any Black person in American history.

This image of the tryworks was taken from the shipwreck site of brig Industry by a NOAA ROV. The tryworks was a cast iron stove with two deep kettles used to render whale blubber into oil. It was manufactured by G & W Ashbridge, a Philadelphia company. Credit: NOAA Ocean Exploration

"The news of this discovery is exciting, as it allows us to explore the early relationships of the men who worked on these ships, which is a lesson for us today as we deal with diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace." said Carl J. Cruz, a New Bedford-based independent historian and a descendent of the family of Paul Cuffe.

"Finding the Industry is an amazing opportunity to tell a much fuller story of Paul Cuffe's accomplishments as a whaling captain, businessman and social activist bent on finding a way to end the slave trade," added Lee Blake, president of the New Bedford Historical Society who played a role in the development of the Captain Paul Cuffe Park and an African American and Native American Heritage Trail.

Verifying the ship's identity

Delgado, Brennan and Sorset had a strong hunch about the identity of the whale ship prior to NOAA's February ROV dive, but they needed a more thorough look and the expert documentation that NOAA could provide.

The mosaic of images from the NOAA video of the brig Industry shipwreck in the Gulf of Mexico, February 25, 2022, shows the outline in sediment and debris of the wooden hull of the 64-foot by 20-foot whaling brig. The tryworks and two anchors are also visible. A third anchor is buried in the sediment near the tryworks. Mosaic was created by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management using NOAA ROV video footage. Credit: Bureau of Ocean Energy Management

They were fortunate that NOAA Ocean Exploration called them to ask for potential shipwreck coordinates and that the NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer was already in the Gulf of Mexico testing new equipment. ROV pilots from the Global Foundation for Ocean Exploration captured high-resolution video to fully document the wreck site found 6,000 feet below the Gulf's surface. The ROV hovered over the telltale tryworks, a cast iron stove with two large kettles used to render whale blubber into oil. The NOAA team confirmed the shipwreck's measurements matched those of Industry in historic documents. And they determined that the location of the shipwreck, 72 nautical miles from the last recorded location off the mouth of the Mississippi River, could be attributed to the still-floating ship within the Gulf of Mexico's Loop Current.

"That there were so few artifacts on board was another big piece of evidence it was Industry," said Sorset. "We knew it was salvaged before it sank." A whaling ship from the tight-knit Massachusetts community of whalers had visited the sinking Industry and removed 230 barrels of whale oil, parts of the rigging and one of the four anchors before it sank.
An example of a subsurface image of Yellowstone hydrothermal features produced from SkyTEM data. Blue colors are electrically conductive hydrothermal pathways; red features are electrically resistive lava flows. This line crosses two hydrothermal areas, one in the center of the figure that is near Old Faithful, and one labeled FM for Firehole Meadows. Image courtesy W. Steven Holbrook. Credit: Virginia Tech

The geysers and fumaroles of Yellowstone National Park are among the most iconic and popular geological features on our planet. Each year, millions of visitors travel to the park to marvel at the towering eruptions of Old Faithful, the bubbling mud cauldrons of Artists Paint Pots, the crystal-clear water and iridescent colors of Grand Prismatic Spring, and the stacked travertine terraces of Mammoth Hot Springs.

Those who have visited the park may have asked themselves, "Where does all the hot water come from?" A study published this week in Nature, co-authored by Virginia Tech's W. Steven Holbrook and colleagues from the U.S. Geological Survey and Aarhus University in Denmark, provides stunning subsurface images that begin to answer that question.

The research team used geophysical data collected from a helicopter to create images of Yellowstone's subsurface "plumbing" system. The method detects features with unusual electrical and magnetic properties indicative of hydrothermal alteration.

"The combination of high electrical conductivity and low magnetization is like a fingerprint of hydrothermal activity that shows up very clearly in the data," said Holbrook, a professor of geophysics and head of the Department of Geosciences in Virginia Tech's College of Science. "The method is essentially a hydrothermal pathway detector."

Images from the study show that the park's geology profoundly shapes its hot springs. Hot hydrothermal fluids ascend nearly vertically, from depths of more than 1 km (or .62 miles), to arrive at the park's major hydrothermal fields. Along the way, they mix with shallower groundwater flowing within and beneath the park's volcanic lava flows, which also are visible in the images. Faults and fractures guide the ascent of hydrothermal waters, while lava flow boundaries control the shallow groundwater aquifers.

The project fills in a longstanding knowledge gap about the underpinnings of Yellowstone's charismatic hydrothermal features. Much is known about the park's surface hydrothermal features, including the chemistry and temperature of mud pots and springs, the eruption interval of geysers, and the unique thermophilic bacteria that live in and around those features.

Likewise, scientists have a growing body of knowledge about the deeper heat sources and tectonic activity by tracking earthquakes that occur there. But little is known about how the surface hydrothermal features are connected to each other and to the deeper sources of heat and fluids.

"Our knowledge of Yellowstone has long had a subsurface gap," Holbook said. "It's like a 'mystery sandwich'we know a lot about the surface features from direct observation and a fair amount about the magmatic and tectonic system several kilometers down from geophysical work, but we don't really know what's in the middle. This project has enabled us to fill in those gaps for the first time."

To collect the data, the team used a unique instrument called "SkyTEM" that consists of a large loop of wire towed beneath a helicopter. As the helicopter flies, the loop sends downward repeated electromagnetic signals that provoke a response from electrically conductive bodies in the subsurface.

That response is recorded and later analyzed to produce detailed cross-sections along the flight lines. The technique is highly effective in environments like Yellowstone: hydrothermal fluids alter the rocks they pass through, turning rock into clay mineralsfor example, the surface mud potsthat have heightened electrical conductivity but suppressed magnetization.

Because the helicopter is able to travel at speeds of 40 to 50 mph while towing the SkyTEM instrument, scientists involved in the study were able to cover large swaths of the sprawling, 3,500-square-mile national park, Holbrook said.

"One of the unique aspects of this dataset is its extensive coverage of this huge system," Holbrook added. "We were able not just to look deep beneath the hydrothermal features, but also to see how adjacent features might be connected in the subsurface across great distances. That's never been possible before."

One of the mysteries addressed by the new work is whether different hydrothermal areas in the park show contrasting deep fluid sources and pathways. The team found a remarkable similarity in the deep structure beneath areas such as Norris Geyser Basin and Lower Geyser Basin, suggesting that contrasts in the chemistry and temperatures of those areas are not caused by deep processes. Instead, variable degrees of mixing with shallow groundwater likely create the wide variety of hot spring characteristics in the park.

Overall, the project generated more than 2,500 miles of helicopter lines, an enormous amount of data, according to Holbrook. Upon the study's publication last month, the research team released the data so that others can undertake additional research.

"The data set is so big that we've only scratched the surface with this first paper," Holbrook added. "I look forward to continuing to work on this data and to seeing what others come up with, too. It's going to be a data set that keeps on giving."

Before coming to Virginia Tech in 2017, Holbrook was part of the Department of Geology and Geophysics at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, Wyoming. He also co-directed the Wyoming Center for Environmental Hydrology and Geophysics. He said, "I've made several field trips to collect ground-based geophysical data in Yellowstone. The airborne data covers a lot more ground much more quickly than we could by hiking gear into the backcountry, though."

Carol Finn of the U.S. Geological Survey and lead author on the study said, "While the airborne data were still being collected, we saw the first images over Old Faithful and knew instantly that our experiment had workedthat we could, for the first time, image the fluid pathways that had long been speculated."

She added, "Our work has sparked considerable interest across a range of disciplines, including biologists looking to link areas of groundwater and gas mixing to regions of extreme microbiological diversity, geologists wanting to estimate volumes of lava flows, and hydrologists interested in modeling flow paths of groundwater and thermal fluid. With the paper as a guide and the release of the data and models, we will enable research in these diverse scientific communities."

One mystery that Holbrook is interested in pursuing further is evidence for distant connections between isolated surface hydrothermal areas. The SkyTEM data show evidence for subsurface linkages between hydrothermal systems that are up to 6 miles apart.

"That might have implications for the co-evolution of thermophilic bacteria and Archaea," Holbrook said. "The notion that airborne geophysical data could illuminate something about the life of microscopic organisms living around hot springs is a fascinating idea."

Explore further A fresh view of microbial life in Yellowstone's hot springs

More information: Carol Finn, Geophysical imaging of the Yellowstone hydrothermal plumbing system, Nature (2022). www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04379-1 Journal information: Nature Carol Finn, Geophysical imaging of the Yellowstone hydrothermal plumbing system,(2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-04379-1
LAKE GEORGE  The problem causing the flooding at a village hotel will soon be fixed forever, Mayor Bob Blais said on Wednesday.

A construction crew from Ellsworth and Son Excavating Inc. has been working at the vacant parking lot next to the Howard Johnson hotel since Monday.

On Monday morning, village officials were made aware of the flooding at 99 Canada St. in the village of Lake George. The first-floor rooms of the hotel that sits on the property were again underwater after heavy rains and melting snow last week.

This is the second time this year the bottom-level rooms of the hotel have flooded from excess stormwater.

Aside from the lack of rescue efforts, like with the flooding on Feb. 18 when a man was stuck on top of his pickup truck in the parking lot surrounded by water, Blais said this was the worst flood yet at this location.

The property reportedly had water levels rise so much in the parking lot that the handles of the room doors on the ground level were at least 18 inches underwater.

Blais said this caused the rooms to become filled with water.

Water inside the rooms was constantly running down the tub drains, sinks and toilets, he said.

Blais explained that all the water was pumped out of the parking lot by the fire department with some additional assistance from Albany, to the village pump station in Shepard Park.

All of our wastewater is sent to that pump station right near the beach, usually we have one pump going with another on standby, but with all the water flowing into the station both pumps kicked on and began sending the water to our new wastewater plant, he said.

The recently opened sewage treatment plant in the village has holding tanks to contain wastewater being treated, but with the volume of stormwater being funneled in on Monday, the tank overflowed into an additional holding basin with amounts similar what the village would see on July 4, Blais said.

The village then declared a state of emergency while cleanup and plans to rectify the recurring issue were made.

The hotel is owned by Mohammad Tariq, who also owns the adjacent lot that used to house a McDonalds that has since been demolished.

Blais said the issue stemmed from a 50-year-old stone culvert underground that was designed to carry stormwater to the pump station. It was discovered, after the flooding over the weekend, that a portion of the vacant lot had caved in and completely blocked water from passing through, creating the backup and overflow into the hotels lot.

After the problem was identified, Lake George village officials told the owner he must take action because it was his responsibility to get it fixed. According to Blais, the village hired an engineering firm to perform the preliminary work that needed to be done to allow the contractors to begin and remain on site to ensure the work is done properly. He said the board then helped Tariq get in contact with Ellsworth Excavation to complete the necessary construction.

The entire parking lot has been torn up after three blockages that were found under the surface. The culvert will be replaced with a new pipe designed for stormwater flow.

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 1 Wow 1 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.
FORT EDWARD  The Warren-Washington Industrial Development Agency has received $950,000 to upgrade the former General Electric dewatering facility in Fort Edward, now known as the Canalside Energy Park.

This money was part of over $22 million for Capital Region projects included in the recent federal omnibus spending bill. The bipartisan package was spearheaded by Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer.

The over $22 million that I have secured in the bipartisan spending package means jobs, new economic opportunity, and progress on these long-desired, critical community projects, said Schumer, D-N.Y., in a news release on Monday.

The Warren-Washington IDA will use the funding to build long-needed water and sewage infrastructure at the Canalside Energy Park, according to IDA Executive Director Michael Ostrander.

Ostrander said on Tuesday that the old GE dewatering facility currently does not have water and sewage infrastructure.

Well be installing piping and hook-ups, he said.

Hampton Supervisor Dave OBrien, chairman of the IDA board, said that this funding may also cover other infrastructure costs.

The IDA is still looking for potential businesses to purchase the Energy Park.

This new infrastructure will make the park more appealing to potential buyers, he said.

The IDA will also use $600,000 it received from the Northern Border Regional Commission in 2020, which was secured by U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-Schuylerville.

Michael Bittel, treasurer of the IDA, said the congresswoman also helped obtain this latest funding.

Between these two grants, the IDA will have around $1.5 million for infrastructure renovations, engineering and other development, OBrien said in a meeting on Monday.

The federal funding of $950,000 will most likely not be available to the agency until September, Bittel said.

The first phase of the renovations will require the IDA to work closely with the Department of Environmental Conservation to map out the engineering blueprints. Were going to design and build according to what they (DEC) tell us, OBrien said in the meeting.

In recent meetings, the IDA mentioned that there are a few companies interested in purchasing the entire Canalside Energy Park and that there is also a steel company interested in the rail that is located on the site.

In addition to this project, Schumer highlighted other community-led initiatives in Warren, Washington and Saratoga counties that will benefit from the omnibus package:

$500,000 to support the stabilization and restoration of Fort Ticonderogas iconic and historic walls;

$439,000 for the city of Glens Falls to undertake a number of structural renovations and energy upgrades for its historic City Hall building;

$205,000 for Warren County Employment and Training Administration to aid in the recruitment, training and opening of child care provider businesses in Warren and Saratoga counties.

Drew Wardle is a reporter for The Post-Star. You can contact him at 518-681-7343 or email him at dwardle@poststar.com.

Love 1 Funny 0 Wow 1 Sad 0 Angry 2

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.
HAGUE  A Korean War veteran from Hague will receive a long-overdue memorial.

In 1950, 19-year-old Army Sgt. Howard Belden and his entire convoy went missing after they were ambushed at the battle of Chosin Reservoir in North Korea.

After 71 years, the sergeants remains were finally recovered in July 2018 and identified in October 2021.

More than 1,000 U.S. troops were killed over a two-week period during the battle at the Chosin Reservoir.

The Americans were outnumbered four to one. It was heaviest casualties sustained in the entire war, said Tom Mullins, who sent out a news release on the memorial, said. Belden was declared presumptively dead in December 1953. There will be multiple memorial ceremonies held in honor of the late sergeant.

On April 22, a vehicle procession starting at the firehouse at 5 p.m. in Hague will proceed to Veterans Memorial Park, to be followed by a tribute ceremony at the park starting at 6 p.m.

On April 19, a tribute to Belden will take place at the Korean War Memorial in Albany, from 10:30 a.m. to 11:15 a.m.

The final burial service will be held at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia on May 12 at 11 a.m. He will be buried with full military honors.

Beldens remains were discovered in 2018 and turned over to the U.S. government after a summit meeting between former President Donald Trump and leader of North Korea Kim Jong Un led to a variety of agreements, including the transfer of the remains of American troops.

Since then, 55 boxes of American servicemens remains have resulted in 112 positive identifications, including those of Cpl. Clifford Johnson of Columbia County, and Cpl. Walter Smead of Hadley, who were both buried last year with full military honors in the Gerald B.H. Solomon Saratoga National Cemetery.

Belden is also honored in the National Purple Heart Hall of Honor.

Drew Wardle is a reporter for The Post-Star. You can contact him at 518-681-7343 or email him at dwardle@poststar.com.

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.
Warren County Health Services reported 12 new COVID cases on Tuesday, seven of which stemmed from at-home test results.

There have been 60 new COVID cases over the last five days, according to county data.

There is one county resident who is hospitalized, county officials said Tuesday.

The seven-day rolling positivity rate for Warren County is 2.4%.

COVID-19 vaccinations are available through Warren County Health Services as needed, and business clinics are being arranged as well, county officials said.

A Queensbury business administered four doses on Friday. Those seeking a vaccination or clinic can call 518-761-6580.

At-home COVID test kits remain available, free to the public, at the Warren County Municipal Center, town halls throughout the county and the city of Glens Falls.

The municipal center has a testing site, open on weekdays, 9 a.m. to 11 a.m.

Washington County

Washington County last updated its COVID data on Friday.

As of then, there were 41 active COVID cases, with three hospitalizations in the county.

There were no new cases of COVID out of 68 administered tests as of Tuesday morning, according to state data.

The seven-day rolling positivity rate for the county is 2.9%.

Capital Region/statewide

There are 62 COVID patients throughout Capital Region hospitals, one less than Mondays report.

The rate of patients admitted to Capital Region hospitals is currently on a slow decline, according to recent reports.

There were 52 new reported cases of COVID out of 1,340 administered tests in the Capital Region as of Tuesday morning, according to state data.

The seven-day rolling positivity rate is 2.8% for the region and 1.8% for the state as a whole.

Statewide, there were 1,497 new cases of COVID out of 63,513 administered tests as of Tuesday morning, according to state data.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
Dear Franny The Shopaholic: I am in search of ShopRite gluten-free white bread. It is in the freezer section with other gluten-free items. They have not had any in stock for the last few months at the Galloway or Somers Point stores. Also, the Kelloggs Special K banana-flavored cereal. I am not sure if this flavor has been discontinued or not. Cannot seem to find that either. Thank you.  Chris

Dear Chris: ShopRite does not have ShopRite gluten-free white bread on its website. However, they do have quite a few other brands. Three Bakers whole grain white bread, which is gluten-free, is on sale this week for $6.49.

The good news is Kelloggs still makes Special K banana cereal. According to the Kelloggs website, Walmart, Walgreens and Acme sell it. I emailed you both links.

Dear Franny The Shopaholic: Looking for best deal on wood-look laminate floor for a rental.  Dean DeMarco

Dear Dean: American Concepts water-resistant laminate flooring is on sale at Ollies Bargain Outlet for $1.39 per square foot. It comes with a 30-year limited residential warranty.

Dear Franny The Shopaholic: Where can I get a good deal on floor lamps? I am in need of two for both sides of my bed because I have no room for night stands.  Jessica Alder

Dear Jessica: Boscovs has a large selection with 30% off Wednesday. Also, you can get lucky at Christmas Tree Shops, Home Goods, Ross, TJ Maxx, Marshalls, Gabes and Big Lots.

Reader tips

Diomira Marra, of Brigantine, wrote in to let G.J. of Brigantine know that she recommends the Cobblers Bench Shoe Repair at 2603 New Rd. in Northfield. And Lewis Bratspis wrote in to let G.J. know that David of English Creek Shoe Repair moved next to the Walgreens at Tilton and New Roads at the strip mall, inside the cleaners.

Jim from Ventnor wrote in to let my readers know he is a big fan of Aldis salmon, but he has recently been going to Lidl for fresh salmon with the Bakkafrost brand name. Jim states it is a little more expensive than Aldi, but its farmed in the Faroe Islands, near Norway, not from Chile. Lidl also has several kinds of frozen Atlantic salmon portions, he wrote.

Steals of the Week

Acme

Extra jumbo 16- to 20-count shrimp: $15.98 for a 2-ound bag.

Colgate 4-ounce toothpaste: $1.

Boneless pork loin roast or center-cut pork chops: $2.99 per pound.

Soft soap 7.5-ounce hand soap: $1.

Kelloggs Pop Tarts: Buy one, get one free.

Colgate toothbrush: $1.

Cadbury creme eggs: 89 cents.

Ladies or mens Speed Stick: $1.

Breyers 48-ounce ice cream: $2.49. Limit one.*

Primo Taglio ham off the bone or Classics Swiss deli sliced: $5.99 per pound.*

Red seedless grapes: $1.49 per pound. Limit three pounds.*

Oscar Mayer or Hatfield 1-pound bacon: $4.99. Limit three offers.*

Campbells Chunky, Homestyle or Well Yes! soups: Two for $2. Limit one offer.*

Ritz crackers, Crispers or sandwich crackers: Two for $5. Limit two offers.*

*with your Acme digital coupon.

ShopRite

Fresh Perdue poultry: 40% off.

Family pack of center-cut pork chops: $1.99 per pound.

Plum tomatoes: 99 cents per pound.

Green asparagus: $1.49 per pound.

Gortons seafood: 25% off.

Skippy 15- to 16.3-ounce peanut butter: $1.77.

Pepperoni and cheese 15-ounce stromboli: $6.49.

Hebrew National beef franks: $2.99.

Bowl & Basket 25.4-ounce specialty avocado oil: half price.

Maxwell House 24.5- to 30.6-ounce coffee: $5.99.

Yehuda, Osem, Aviv or ShopRite 5-pound box of matzos: $1.99. Limit one.*

General Mills large-size cereals (limited assortment): Three for $5. Limit one offer.*

Pepperidge Farm farmhouse bread: $2.24. Limit four.*

Floridas Natural Premium orange juice: $1.99. Limit four.*

*with your ShopRite digital coupon.

Tips

Morning Blend 100-count Kcups are $19.99 at Ollies Bargain Outlet.

A gallon of Clark + Kensington or Royal interior or exterior paint is buy one, get one half price at Ace Hardware.

Angel Soft bath tissue in four mega rolls or nine regular rolls is $5.29 at Walgreens.

A multi pack of Cadbury creme eggs are $3.99 at Rite Aid. A 9-ounce bag of robin eggs are two for $5.

Essie nail polish is buy two, get one free at CVS. Black Forest gummies, nerds or sweet Ttrts are buy one, get one free.

Vigoro 0.5 cubic feet bagged marble chip landscape rock is on sale for $3.98 at Home Depot.

Get 50% off Easter decor and spring floral today at Boscovs. Mens college T-shirts regularly $20 to $25 are on sale for $11.99.

Easter party crafts and decorations and summer toys are 40% off at Hobby Lobby.

Holland Pavers are 68 cents each at Lowes. A Scotts turf builder 23-pound broadcast spreader is $39.98.

A 50-inch TCL Roku smart 4K UHD HDR TV regularly $469.99 is on sale for $299.99 at Target.

Franny The Shopaholic answers questions of general interest. Email FrannyShopaholic@aol.com.
 Flash

Washington must stop escalating tensions if it wishes to normalize ties with Moscow, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Tuesday.



"They need to stop their escalation, both verbally and in terms of pumping the Kiev regime with weapons," Ryabkov said, adding that the United States must also stop threatening Russia, according to Russian media reports.

"In the meantime, we are seeing a downward trend in relations," said Ryabkov, who faults the United States for the state of ties.

"We regret this. However, this doesn't have any effect on our determination to work towards achieving the goals of the special military operation and adapt to the circumstances resulting from U.S. sanctions," he said.
The grant is for $500. Barnegat was the only winner in New Jersey, according to a State Farm news release.

The release praised Barnegat for becoming a Firewise USA community, implementing programs to protect the townships Heritage Bay, an active community for adults 55 and older, from fire risks. The grant is meant to help fund programs that help communities in fire-prone areas better protect themselves.

The biggest thing right now is getting the residents on board with our plans since we are just starting to get the word out, said Debbie Wilson, the project coordinator. We are organizing cleanup efforts on April 23 and 24. We will hand out leaf bags to residents, along with our cleanup work form which, when returned, will be entered in a drawing.

New Jersey officials: Be prepared for wildfires TRENTON  The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection and state forestry service a

Prizes for participating in the cleanup include new fire extinguishers, smoke detectors and gift cards to local restaurants that were purchased with the $500 grant. The release urged people to reduce wildfire risk by removing dry leaves and pine needles from yards, roofs, gutters and boxed-in areas below decks to prevent the accumulation of combustible material.

The group being led by Wilson is collaborating with the local fire marshal, the Barnegat Police Department, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. They are collectively designing a community evacuation plan, with designated block captains to help emergency services in the event of a wildfire. Some of the services block captains can perform include alerting authorities to the presence of pets in a home or letting them know whether a resident is on vacation. Wilson said fire preparedness is especially important as the COVID-19 pandemic has begun to wane again and people enter into the spring wildfire season.

I believe education is the first and most important step, she 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.
Charges against an Atlantic County attorney previously convicted of endangering the welfare of a child have been reduced as part of a plea deal.

Jose Alcantara, a defense lawyer whose practice is based in Atlantic City, pleaded guilty to a petty disorderly persons offense Jan. 11 before Superior Court Judge Donna Taylor after he was granted a new trial by a state appellate court, according to court documents.

Alcantara, as part of his plea agreement, was required to pay a $160 fine. Typically, similar offenses carry fines of about $500, he said.

The Atlantic County Prosecutor's Office offered Alcantara the plea deal, in which he testified that he told his step daughter to "shut up" several times.

No more charges are pending, he said.

In the case, prosecutors alleged Alcantara exhibited sexual conduct toward a former stepdaughter when she was 10 years old in 2005, lasting until 2012.

In an appeal, the court found Alcantaras indictment was defective, the phrase sexual conduct void for impermissible vagueness, and that jury instructions were incorrect.

With these instructions, jurors were not required to share a common view of the facts, which could have resulted in a guilty verdict even if they didnt agree on what the actual misconduct was.

Nothing was sexual in nature, Alcantara said in a letter to The Press.

Alcantara was paroled in May 2020 for serving one-third of his total sentence, he said, having spent about 2 years in prison. He has since had the state Supreme Court reinstate his attorney license after it was previously revoked.

I have my license to practice law again after much suffering, and I am actually a better lawyer who deeply understands what people go through, Alcantara said. I may be the only lawyer to which no client can say, You dont understand, because no lawyer anywhere has had to go to jail for practically nothing.

Alcantara also was found not guilty of sexually assaulting another stepdaughter in 2016.

I am slowly regrowing my office, and my few clients are very happy and many old clients are returning for my services, he said.

Contact Eric Conklin: 609-272-7261 econklin@pressofac.com Twitter @ACPressConklin

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.
HAMILTON TOWNSHIP  An effort to refurbish the Lake Lenape Dam is getting a $4.6 million lift from federal funds, Atlantic County officials said Tuesday.

The funds are a part of $1.5 trillion government spending bill President Joe Biden signed into law last week. The law funds the federal government through September, the White House said.

Of the funds, $178 million is being allocated for New Jersey community projects, including those for transportation, housing and education, Atlantic County spokesperson Linda Gilmore said.

The dam project includes renovations to its powerhouse and reconstruction of the spillway, along with improvements to its embankments.

Local officials applied for the money earlier this year. The project is expected to cost $6 million, Atlantic County Supervising Engineer of Bridges Doug DiMeo previously said.

Construction is scheduled to begin next spring and be completed in two years, officials said.

The announcement that federal funding will be used to complete these projects is great news for Atlantic County and Hamilton Township, said U.S. Rep. Jeff Van Drew, R-2nd, who got a firsthand look at the dams decaying structure during a previous visit. I look forward to seeing the completion of the Lake Lenape Dam and the vast improvements this funding will provide to Atlantic County.

County Executive Dennis Levinson lauded Van Drew on Tuesday for helping secure the funds, saying they are key for the countys various improvement projects.

The improvements will stabilize the dam and reduce the risk of flooding for approximately 100 properties, Levinson said in a statement.

Township and county officials have noted the potential flood risk if the dams current structure isnt improved. But Mayor Charles Cain said Tuesday the project also will help the townships efforts to revive its historic area and business community.

This is the result of every level of government working together to ensure essential funding for our community, Cain said in a statement. We are overjoyed with the ability to reconstruct the dam, and truly appreciate Congressman Van Drews efforts in obtaining these funds.

Last month, the public was given the chance to comment on the project during two hearings.

Van Drew inspects Lake Lenape dam with local officials HAMILTON TOWNSHIP  U.S. Rep. Jeff Van Drew met with local and county officials Friday for a

The county and township are working with the state Division of Dam Safety, the state Department of Environmental Protection, the state Historic Preservation Office, the state Pinelands Commission and others to complete the project, Gilmore previously said.

Officials also have mulled ideas for the neighboring Wheaton complex, which once used the dam while serving as a cotton mill, which closed in 1940.

The dam was acquired by the township in 1978, and Atlantic County several years later became a co-owner to share the financial burden with the township.

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.
OCEAN CITY  Electric vehicle owners in the city will soon enjoy access to public charging stations at the citys Transportation Center parking lot at Ninth Street and Haven Avenue.

The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities on Monday notified the city that its grant application to finance new charging stations was approved. The funds will be available through $1 million New Jersey is giving to 24 state tourism areas to accommodate electric vehicle users and continue a drive to be more environmentally friendly.

Mayor Jay Gillian said Tuesday that Assemblyman Antwan McClellan, R-Cape May, Cumberland, Atlantic, is behind much of the funds being awarded to Ocean City, explaining the assemblyman, who also lives in the city, spoke with the BPU to obtain the money.

Its important to provide our residents and guests with access to the most up-to-date amenities, especially as electric vehicles become more common, Gillian said.

A conduit to accommodate the charging stations was placed before a recent repaving project began, the city said.

The grant will pay up to $150,000 for two DC fast chargers that can each charge two electric vehicles. Vehicles can reach 80% battery life in about 30-45 minutes, the city said.

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.
PLEASANTVILLE  Lessons about diversity, tolerance and different cultures took on a festive mood at the Leeds Avenue School on Tuesday, with students taking a hands-on approach to studying the Jewish holiday of Purim.

Welcoming a pair of rabbis from nearby synagogues, students and teachers listened to songs and readings while learning the history and practices of the holiday.

Rabbi Shalom Ever of Rodef Sholom Synagogue in Atlantic City was one of the hosts of the celebration. He said Purim was an especially festive holiday, with celebrators donning masks, drinking and eating special foods to mark the occasion. He wore exotic prop hats throughout the assembly.

Rabbi Avrohom Rapoport of the interdenominational Chabad at the Shore in Ventnor was the other host. Running TikTok and Instagram accounts that collectively have tens of thousands of followers, Rapoport said he was excited to connect with people to teach them about the faith.

Its all in the spirit of Purim, Ever said.

Purim commemorates the story told in the biblical Book of Esther in which she saves the Jewish people in the Persian Empire from the imperial official Haman. The holiday began this year at sundown March 16 and ended at sundown March 17 in most places, although the celebration takes place one day later in Jerusalem.

The assembly was held in two sessions, one for preschool to second-grade students and another for third- to fifth-grade students. Ever brought with him the traditional scroll of Megillah, which tells the story of Purim. Ever opened the scroll, which was made of olive wood, during the assembly to present to the students. Whenever the rabbis made mention of the villainous Haman, they encouraged the students to jeer and make noise with instruments called groggers, as is custom on Purim. Enthused students roared in the gymnasium at Hamans name, vocalizing the spirit of the holiday.

The rabbis also brought with them jovial hats and masks, as well as hamantashen  a triangular pastry with filling and a Yiddish name meaning Hamans pockets.

It was awesome, second-grader Hannah Williams said of the assembly. It taught me something new.

We could make a lot of noise and songs, added first-grader James Elwood Whitfield.

Students took away from the assembly the ceremonial disdain and ridicule of the holidays chief Haman. Whitfield criticized Haman as somebody who makes bad decisions, something he said he worked to avoid. Others recited the jeers the rabbis asked them to make when they heard the imperial officials name.

Boo, I dont like him, Williams said when asked what she thought of Haman.

Somers Point Plaza going through a renaissance SOMERS POINT  Somers Point Plaza on New Road has been going through some changes in recent 

The assembly was part of the Amistad, Holocaust and Latino  or AMHOTINO  curriculum at Pleasantville Public Schools. First-grade teacher Tamar LaSure-Owens, the director of AMHOTINO, helped emcee the event, introducing the students to the rabbis. Information about Purim was made available for teachers to incorporate into their lesson plans heading into the week, she said. The lessons about Purim could be incorporated into broader lessons about oppression and genocidal violence throughout history.

Ever connected Purim and the persecution of the Jewish people as told in the Book of Esther to the long history of antisemitism, ranging from the Babylonian exile to the Spanish Inquisition to the Holocaust.

Isnt this a story of persecution, really? Rapoport added.

Jeffery Lester, a fourth-grade teacher at Leeds Avenue, emphasized how he sought to teach students the legacy of historical events and how they impacted local communities, especially those that have battled prejudice and discrimination. He said events such as Tuesdays Purim celebration complemented his curriculum.

Thats the most important thing, looking at it from a holistic standpoint  making sure that everybody understands the contributions that everyone has made, good, bad or indifferent, Lester said.

Atlantic County Commissioner Caren Fitzpatrick was in attendance Tuesday. She praised the district for delivering to students a strong and diverse education. At the last meeting of the county Board of Commissioners, Fitzpatrick and her colleagues passed a resolution praising LaSure-Owens for her work implementing the AMHOTINO curriculum.

Music and art celebrate Black history at JCC of Atlantic County MARGATE  The works of local Black artists will be showcased at 6 p.m. Thursday at the Milto

Its so important when youre young to learn about other people, because that makes you understand and be accepting of other people who may be different than you, Fitzpatrick said. Its very, very important in our community to reach out to people who we dont know, who arent exactly like us, to know how different people make the community stronger.

The students reflected on the importance of learning about different religious traditions and cultures.

It was nice, I learned a lot that I didnt know  more about Jewish religion and things that happened, fifth-grader Valentina Conti said.

I thought it was pretty cool, added fifth-grader Victoria Feliciano. I learned a lot about a different culture.

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.
A coalition of about 100 business and trade groups sent a letter this week to the state Legislature, urging approval of a bill to save employers more than $300 million in unemployment insurance tax increases.

The bill (S733/A2152) would also pay off a federal unemployment insurance loan using federal COVID-19 relief funds and avoid unnecessary interest payments.

The Senate version passed the Labor Committee earlier this month and moved on to the Budget and Appropriations Committee.

An identical bill was introduced in the Assembly by Majority Leader Louis Greenwald, D-Burlington, Camden. It is now in the Assembly Commerce and Economic Development Committee.

New Jersey businesses are already paying $252 million in added taxes in Fiscal Year 2022 to replenish the states Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund, which was decimated by record unemployment during the COVID shutdowns and slowdowns of 2020 and beyond.

The bill would not stop another increase from happening in Fiscal Year 2023, when businesses will be assessed another $296.6 million for a total increase of $548.6 million.

Jobs to process unemployment not advertised to general public The state Department of Labor and Workforce Development is constantly recruiting for workers

It will, however, stop an additional $336.4 million UI tax hike in Fiscal Year 2024.

About half of states have used some of their American Rescue Plan funds, which were supposed to help states recover from the pandemic fiscally, to replenish their unemployment trust funds and repay federal loans.

The New Jersey Business Coalition said the bill would help businesses create and retain jobs.

UI payroll taxes are not a tax on income, property, corporate profit, or wealth, the coalition wrote. UI payroll taxes are a tax on the mere existence of a job.

At the Senate Labor Committee hearing on the bill, Sheila Reynertson of New Jersey Policy Perspective, a progressive think tank, said ARP funds should be used to help workers hit hardest by the pandemic, to help workers of color and Black and brown women.

Its important New Jersey use its recovery funds to reflect the principles President Biden set down, to directly address the public health crisis and reduce racial and ethnic differences, Reynertson said.

Senate committee advances bill to lessen unemployment tax increase on employers TRENTON  The Senate Labor Committee voted 5-0 Monday to advance a bill to require the state

But businesses countered that the state should not make job creation and retention less affordable.

In summary, S733/A2152 will reduce a three-year, $1 billion tax hike to a two-year $600 million increase, the coalition wrote.

The business community would have preferred federal dollars be used to fully replenish the unemployment fund, but we recognize the demands for federal funds are far and wide in our state.

We believe the targeted use of federal funds in this legislation finds a compromise that will provide much needed relief for the business community and support our states fiscal health, the group wrote.

REPORTER: Michelle Brunetti Post 609-841-2895 mpost@pressofac.com

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 Moline man who was being electronically monitored as a probationer in Rock Island County in February is charged in Scott County in connection with a Feb. 8 shooting at a Davenport residence and for sexually abusing a 14-year-old girl and recording the acts on his Apple iPhone, Davenport police said.
DES MOINES  In addition to voting for a president, Iowans in two years could be voting to clarify the line of succession for their states chief executive.

State lawmakers have given the first stage of approval to a proposed state constitutional amendment that would clarify what happens when Iowas governor must be replaced.

That proposal passed the Iowa Senate on Tuesday; it previously passed the Iowa House.

Because it would amend the Iowa Constitution, the line of succession proposal now must be passed again by the Iowa Legislature in either 2023 or 2024. It then must be approved by a public vote; it could go on the ballot as early as 2024.

The proposed constitutional amendment says if the governor of Iowa dies, resigns or is removed from office, the lieutenant governor becomes the governor.

Under the proposal, the lieutenant governor position would become vacant, clearing the way for the new governor to appoint a new lieutenant governor.

The push to clarify Iowas line of succession came in the wake of the 2017 transition from former Gov. Terry Branstad to his lieutenant governor at the time, current Gov. Kim Reynolds.

At that time, Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller provided a formal opinion that the Iowa Constitution does not clearly state that the lieutenant governor position becomes vacant in such a transition. So his opinion was that Reynolds occupied both the governors and lieutenant governors position simultaneously.

While Republicans disagreed with the attorney generals opinion, they did not challenge it. Instead, Reynolds appointed Adam Gregg as her acting lieutenant governor. He was paid a salary and performed most of the duties of a lieutenant governor, but was not officially in the line of succession. If Reynolds had been forced to leave the office for any reason, Gregg would not have become governor.

In 2018, Reynolds and Gregg were elected governor and lieutenant governor for a four-year term.

The proposal from the Republican-led Iowa Legislature, House Joint Resolution 2005, passed the Senate with strong bipartisan support, 46-3. It previously passed the House on a largely party-line vote, 63-34.

The main objection raised by some Democrats has been that they believe the proposal should include a requirement that any newly appointed lieutenant governor face confirmation in the Iowa Senate, since that individual would not have appeared on the ballot.

The proposed line of succession amendment also was approved by the Iowa Legislature in 2018, but a clerical error in the Iowa Secretary of States Office nullified the bill and forced legislators to restart the process. They waited until this year to do so.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
A roughly month-long labor strike of a Davenport military contractor ended Tuesday.

"A strike has ended for more than 400 Machinists Union Local 388 and Local 1191 members who work at Eaton Mission Systems Division of Davenport," the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) said in a statement announcing members had reached a contract agreement with Eaton-Cobham Mission Systems.

DeLane Adams, IAM assistant communications director, said in the statement the new contract included improved wages and other items "that will positively affect our members, their families and the community."

"We are proud of our members for standing strong and fighting for a contract to improve their lives," Adams said. "Our members build world-class products at Eaton Mission Systems. They look forward to getting back to work beginning tomorrow (Wednesday). We want to thank the Quad Cities community for their commitment and support during this process."

The terms and length of the new contract were not disclosed Tuesday.

Katie Kennedy, Eaton Aerospace senior manager of global communications, confirmed the two sides reached an agreement and offered a brief statement.

"We are pleased to have reached a mutually satisfactory agreement and look forward to having the employees who were on strike return to work to continue serving our customers and our community," Kennedy responded in an email.

The announcement ends a 33-day strike that began on Feb. 18. Tensions between the machinists and Eaton increased over the past two weeks, with the company advertising for replacement workers in the local press and a sign on the company's building in Davenport.

Members of the union also vocally objected when Kevin McKeown, senior vice president and general manager of the Eaton-Cobham site in Davenport, sent a two-page letter to union members on March 4 outlining how workers could get their jobs back after a strike and how they could cross the picket line.

McKeown's letter was sent March 4, the same day 97% of union members voted down Eaton's second contract offer. Eaton's first contract offer was voted down by 98% of the union on Feb. 17.

Eaton, a multinational power management company headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, completed its purchase of Cobham Mission Systems in June.

Cobham is a leading manufacturer of air-to-air refueling, life-support, fuel inerting, space propulsion and missile actuation systems, primarily for defense markets. The company has a workforce of approximately 2,000 people and manufacturing facilities in the United States and United Kingdom.

Love 0 Funny 2 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.
The Jewish Federation of the Quad Cities continues the Lloyd M. Burstein Memorial Holocaust Film Series this month, giving people the opportunity to experience stories of the Holocaust from all around the globe from a screen in the Figge Art Museum.

Tickets to attend the screenings cost $7 for adults, $6 for seniors and members of the military, and are free for students.

The second of the three-film series "Sobibor" will play 4 p.m. March 27, diving into the story of the Sobibor extermination camp uprising, orchestrated by Soviet officer and prisoner of war Alexander Pechersky. The uprising led to a mass escape of the prisoners, of which some were captured again and others made it to the partisans.

The series will round out 4 p.m. April 3 with "Three Minutes - A Lengthening." The documentary takes three minutes of film  a home movie shot by David Kurtz in 1938 that shows the only video left of the Jewish residents of Nasielsk before the Holocaust  and analyzes it frame-by-frame, telling the stories of those caught on camera. Kurtz's grandson and a man who was in the film as a young boy add their perspectives to this moment in time.

Jewish Federation of the Quad Cities Executive Director Allan Ross will set the stage for the movies before they begin, giving some history on the story and where it was made. He will also take questions after the screening.

Ross said a committee decides on which films to show in the series, looking at around the dozen or so Holocaust-centered movies released each year.

These are movies that are not shown in theaters around here," Ross said. "The committee tries to pick the best ones out, and usually they're excellent films, and they're from all over the world."

"Sobibor" includes Dutch, Russian, German and Polish, and will be played with English subtitles.

The federation has held Holocaust film series for the past 15 years. The federation also hosts two other film series, which center around Jewish and Israeli films, respectively.

Ross said they're hoping for good attendance for the films. This is the federation's first in-person film series since the COVID-19 pandemic began.

"I guess you could say after two years of being locked down in many respects, it's great to get out," Ross said.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0

Staying in? We've got you covered Get the recommendations on what's streaming now, games you'll love, TV news and more with our weekly Home Entertainment newsletter! Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
 Flash

Pakistan and China are ready to strengthen bilateral relations and boost cooperation in the emerging fields such as information technology, e-commerce and digital economy.

In a meeting with visiting Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Tuesday, Pakistani President Arif Alvi said that Pakistan and China have enjoyed friendly relations in the past decades featured with solid unity, mutual support and mutual assistance, with bilateral cooperation increasingly enhanced in all fields.

Pakistan will, as always, unswervingly pursue the one-China policy, support China's positions on its core interests in the issues of Taiwan, Hong Kong and Xinjiang, the president stressed.

Pakistan and China have identical views on international and regional issues, and Pakistan opposes any attempt of all external forces to contain China's development, he said.

The building of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor has yielded fruitful results which have significantly improved the livelihood of the Pakistani people, the president noted.

For his part, Wang said that the China-Pakistan friendship has withstood the test of evolving international landscape and is rock-solid, noting that mutual trust and mutual support are the most distinctive features of the all-weather strategic cooperative partnership between China and Pakistan.

Stressing that China has always been a long-term and most reliable strategic partner of Pakistan, Wang said the Chinese side firmly supports Pakistan in safeguarding its sovereignty, security and national dignity.

Wang added that China also staunchly supports Pakistan's development, revitalization and prosperity, and firmly supports Pakistan in playing a more important role in the international and regional arena.

China stands ready to work with Pakistan to advance cooperation in traditional fields, expand cooperation in emerging fields such as information technology, e-commerce and digital economy, increase investment in social and livelihood projects in Pakistan, and carry out more "small but beautiful" cooperation projects, he said.

China is willing to encourage more qualified Chinese enterprises to invest and start businesses in Pakistan as well as help Pakistan improve its capacity for independent development so that Pakistan can embark on a development path that suits its national conditions, Wang said.

Wang stressed that due to the centennial changes, the once-in-a-century pandemic and constant spillover of the Ukraine crisis, peace and development in today's world are faced with more insecure and instable factors.

China is ready to strengthen strategic communication, unity and coordination with developing countries including Pakistan and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation so as to inject more stability into the region and the world, and make more contributions to world peace, security and development, he added.

Appreciating China for upholding justice and fairness in the international arena for a long time, the Pakistani president expressed willingness to work with the Chinese side to safeguard the basic norms of international relations such as mutual respect, non-interference in internal affairs and good neighborliness.
A 60-year-old Muscatine woman was killed and a Muscatine man suffered serious injuries Sunday when the car in which they were riding was struck from the rear by a semitrailer, according to the crash report issued by Iowa State Patrol Trooper Zackory Lollar.

The crash occurred at 11:59 a.m. in the eastbound lanes of Interstate 80 at mile marker 248  in Johnson County.

According to the crash report, a 2022 International semitractor-trailer owned by Schuster Company of Le Mars, Iowa, and driven by Bryan L. Roth II of Muscoda, Wis., was eastbound in the right lane of eastbound I-80.

The semi struck the rear of a 2006 Toyota Prius that also was traveling in the eastbound right lane of I-80.

The driver of the Prius, Emmanuel B. Tennie, 23, was taken to University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, Iowa City, with serious injuries.

Tennies passenger, Annie Zleh, was killed in the crash.

Roth was taken to Mercy Iowa City with minor injuries.

The crash remains under investigation by the Iowa State Patrol.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 1 Sad 3 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.
Six Bettendorf High School students are facing charges after a disturbance Monday at the school.

All six were charged with criminal trespass, two were charged with interference with official acts, three were found to have vapes and charged with persons under the legal age, and one student was charged with possession of a controlled substance, Bettendorf Police Department Chief Keith T. Kimball said in an email.

The students were not identified.

Bettendorf police officers were called around 8:20 a.m. to assist the high schools resource officer because of the disturbance, Kimball said.

The disturbance, not described in detail, began inside the building among the students, all boys, Kimball said. The resource officer and district employees ordered the boys to leave the building and the grounds to prevent the incident from escalating.

Some left but later returned, while others tried to get back into the high school, Kimball said.

The arrested students were turned over to their families, Kimball said.

During the incident, the school activated its Hold Protocol, which requires people in the building to remain where they are, Bettendorf Community School District spokeswoman Celeste Miller said. The hold lasted about 40 minutes.

The school district is investigating, and disciplinary action will be enacted as warranted, she said.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 1 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.
Davenport police are investigating a crash in which a car struck a pedestrian Tuesday night in the 400 block of East Locust Street.

Police said the call was received at 10:01 p.m. regarding a vehicle striking a pedestrian.

Police closed off Locust Street between Iowa and LeClaire streets while they investigated the crash.

The victim was taken to Genesis Medical Center East, Davenport.

The vehicle stopped in the 1800 block of LeClaire Street, just south of East Locust Street.

This is a developing story. More will be reported when police release more information.

Love 0 Funny 1 Wow 0 Sad 2 Angry 1

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.
U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, told reporters on Wednesday he thought the chief Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee was running a fair hearing on the confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson to the nation's highest court.

Wednesday marked the third of four days of hearings where senators questioned Jackson's philosophy and record, after which the committee and the Senate will then decide whether Jackson will be confirmed to the Supreme Court. The Senate, split 50-50, requires a simple majority to confirm Jackson, who would be the first Black woman on the court.

Grassley, the ranking Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said on a call with reporters that it was "gratifying" to hear Brown Jackson say she "did not believe there is a living constitution."

"In the sense that its changing and its infused with my own policy perspective or the policy perspective of the day," Brown Jackson said on Tuesday. "Instead, the Supreme Court has made clear that when youre interpreting the Constitution youre looking at the text at the time of the founding.

In a previous call, Grassley said he looked for a stricter interpretation of statutes and the constitution in judges' and justices' philosophies.

"It was gratifying to hear her (Jackson) say that and we'll be able to measure now for the next 30 years whether she carries it out," Grassley said. "She's very graceful, very smart in her answers. If there's anything that I had concern about it seems to be weak on crime and things of that nature."

Grassley said he would wait until a few days before the committee hearing to publicly announce his vote.

Republican members on the committee on Tuesday and early Wednesday questioned Jackson's record, alleging that she was too lenient on sentencing as a federal judge.

U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, claimed Jackson gave lesser sentences for defendants convicted of possession of child pornography.

Fact checkers, including from the Associated Press, have found her sentencing is not abnormal compared to other judges across the country. Jackson passionately pushed back against Hawley's assertions, telling about how she would share with those convicted of possessing child pornography statements from victims who've experienced life-long trauma.

In opening remarks on Wednesday, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, criticized Republican senators for using the hearings at times as "a testing ground for conspiracy theories and culture war theories."

Republican senators, in turn, criticized Durbin for "editorializing" questions and comments made by Republicans.

On the call with reporters, Grassley said he believed Durbin was "running a fair hearing."

Grassley, who has been in the U.S. Senate since 1981 and chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee from 2015 to 2019, said the hearing was calmer than in previous years, calling back to the contentious fight over now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Jackson, nominated by President Biden, would replace liberal Justice Stephen Breyer. Her confirmation is not expected to change the ideological balance of the nation's highest court.

"It's a lot more decorum this time. That's the way it should be," Grassley said. "And maybe one last thing on Durbin, we've seen a deep dive into the record, but it's been very much less personal."

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 extraordinary events that are part of the U.S. Capitol legacy are not lost on state Rep. Kam Buckner, D-Chicago, a self-described "history buff" who served on Sen. Dick Durbin's staff for six years.

Buckner said he would sometimes sneak into some of the hearing rooms and sit there and kind of just take in the historical things that had happened there, such as famous speeches given by then-Sen. John F. Kennedy or the infamous Army-McCarthy hearings.

But Buckner had a front-row seat to history Monday, witnessing the first Supreme Court confirmation hearing of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman nominated to serve on the nation's high court. She would take the seat of Justice Stephen Breyer, who announced his upcoming retirement in January.

Buckner, speaking Tuesday, said the enormity of the moment still hadn't hit him.

"It really means that once again, we've not overcome completely some of our original sins, but it proves that with perseverance and a commitment to getting things right, that it's finally moving in the right direction," Buckner told Lee Enterprises. "So it was extremely emotional for me."

He, Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton and state Sen. Mattie Hunter, D-Chicago, were invited guests of Durbin, the Springfield Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee that is holding the hearings.

The Illinois delegation could be seen on Monday sitting behind Jackson as she testified before members of the committee.

Stratton, Illinois' first Black lieutenant governor, told Lee Enterprises that it was "really an honor for me to meet her and to be in that room during that time," noting that of the 115 justices who have served on the court, only five have been women and Jackson would be the first Black woman.

"Representation does matter," Stratton said. " ... As we think about the kinds of decisions that the Supreme Court makes, it's important that the court reflects the American people. ...

"There's a saying, 'You can't be what you can't see,'" she said. "There are going to be a lot of young people, if she is confirmed, who will be able to see themselves in a way that they've never been able to before."

Buckner, Stratton and Hunter had a brief opportunity to meet Jackson before the hearing. Stratton said she hoped " that (Jackson) would be blessed throughout the process."

Senators continued to question Jackson as the hearings continued Tuesday. The committee will hear from legal experts Thursday before an eventual vote to move her nomination to the Senate floor. Democrats hope to wrap up Jacksons confirmation before Easter, barring unexpected developments.

Beyond the barrier-breaking impact of Jackson's nomination, Stratton said she stood out for her qualifications, saying "she was poised and she was confident and she seems ready."

"She just has to be confident that she has had the experience and the knowledge base and an understanding of the law that has prepared her to serve on the highest court of the land, and to bring her full and authentic self into that space," Stratton said.

Hunter said it was "surreal to see it happen in the flesh."

I am so grateful for this moment in history, as its yet another significant first," Hunter said. "I hope that we continue to see Black women take more significant roles not only in federal government, but in other leadership roles across all sectors in this country."

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
The strength, courage and resilience she has demonstrated throughout her time in office is unmatched. She is committed to serving Iowans while leading this great state. When faced with unprecedented challenges, Reynolds rose to the occasion. She took these challenges head on, and Iowa is better off because of it. As a born and raised Iowan, I have never felt more gratitude and pride to be living in this state than I have over the last couple years.
The time it takes Chadron Police officers to respond to calls and fill out reports has been drastically improved with the addition of a computer-aided dispatch (CAD) system.

Dispatch Supervisor Gale Kittell explained the system had multiple screens, and demonstrated some of the functions they now have available to them, such as sending direct text messages from dispatch to the touchscreen mobile data terminals in officer vehicles. This cuts down on their having to report back and forth across the radio.

There is also a digital map integrated into the CAD, locating where the calls come in. Police Chief Rick Hickstein pointed out these maps are also on the terminals in the vehicles so officers can see where they are.

Even though were a small town, Hickstein said, its still helpful for new officers and new staff, but also if we have major events. The vehicles have also been equipped with GPS thats readable in real time by the new system, allowing dispatchers to see and send which vehicles are closest to an incident.

Kittell also demonstrated how the new system is integrated with the 9-1-1 system, and uses a color-coded map to show from which district a fire call is coming in. For instance, pink represents the Crawford fire district, while yellow represents Chadron. Using this, Hickstein said, dispatchers know who they need to contact on fire calls.

Officers respond to multiple calls throughout any given day, Hickstein said, and with the new terminals in the vehicles they all have access to maps that show just whats going on and what officers are available. He can also see everything coming through dispatch, including calls for the Dawes County Sheriffs Office.

When a call comes in, rather than alerting officers via radio dispatchers now send a direct alert to the terminals. With a few quick taps on the touchscreen  which Hickstein emphasized help against officers driving distractions  they can put in their times responding to and completing calls as well as any pertinent information.

If an officer wants an incident report, he or she can create it automatically. It seems trivial, but its not, Hickstein said. Any information already recorded, either by dispatch or the officer, is already populated in the report so it doesnt have to be entered a second time later. Since the vehicles are also outfitted with printers, the cars have essentially become their offices so they dont have to return to the station to fill out paperwork.

One thing the city cops do a lot of, Hickstein said, is code enforcement. For instance, if there are several sidewalks that havent had snow cleared, officers previously would have to call in their locations multiple times and clog up the radio lines. Now, dispatch can see where their officers are.

We want our dispatchers to be able to handle any call that comes in without being distracted, Hickstein said. We have officers on 24/7. If theyre out running traffic, that ties up a dispatcher that could be handling a 9-1-1 or a fire call. This saves a ton of time.

Kittell added the process used to involve switching back and forth between taking information and logging it, and often times when he finished a log to note officers were responding, they were already at the scene.

There is one more switch to put in, Hickstein said, which will allow officers to run drivers licenses and plates from inside their vehicles. It used to be Id have to call Gale every time I needed that information.

The department is also incorporating daily logs, Hickstein said, documenting their time, fuel consumption and mileage for every hour. Its not as cumbersome as it sounds, he said, and is a good way to keep track of what the officers are doing.

Also added to the department is the Traffic and Criminal Software (TraCS). Incorporated by the Nebraska State Patrol, which allows them to issue electronic citations or warnings from the vehicles. Hickstein further explained the system allows officers to scan in licenses in real time, and it connects to the State of Nebraska system.

Funding for the new system came from the City of Chadron. Hickstein noted the City received some COVID-19 relief dollars, and he requested if they could share some of the money to update the 20-year-old system.

.

You must be logged in to react.

Click any reaction to login. Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
As the Rapid City PTA Council President, Jamie Clapham said she believes that a good education is a lifelong gift for every child in our district. She also believes strong public school systems are the foundation of strong communities, which is why she is announcing her candidacy to represent Area 6 on the Rapid City Area School Board, a seat currently held by Amy Policky who is not seeking another term.

"I think it is important to be involved as a parent," Clapham said. In addition to leading the PTA, Clapham also volunteers every week at the Black Hawk Elementary School.

She was born and raised near Atlanta, Georgia. She earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Furman University and a Master of Physical Therapy from the Medical College of Georgia.

In 2011, she married Eric Clapham and moved to his childhood home in the Black Hills, where they enjoy raising their family. Jamie is a physical therapist at Monument Health, and she and her family are members of the Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Rapid City where Jamie was an active part of their strategic planning committee. She and her husband have two children that attend Black Hawk Elementary.

Clapham's interest in her children's education comes from being surrounded by educators her entire life, including her father, sister, husband, and mother-in-law and father-in-law. These relationships have not only shown her the benefits of a strong public education system, but theyve also allowed her to witness the many challenges facing school districts, educators, and students firsthand.

"People need to be heard and supported," Clapham said. "That doesn't happen often enough. You can't solve every problem immediately, but it helps when people know that you care about them and the problems they face."

Clapham said she believes a strong public school system provides stability and opportunity for not only students, but the entire Rapid City population. Quality public schools can lead to business growth, decreased incarceration rates, higher quality health care, and more resilient communities.

You must be logged in to react.

Click any reaction to login. Love 9 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
Mayor Steve Allender, Rapid City Police Chief Don Hedrick and Pennington County Sheriff Kevin Thom said Tuesday they strongly condemn comments made by an owner of a Rapid City hotel where a weekend shooting occurred.

The comments came at a meeting attended by representatives from the Pennington County Commission and States Attorneys office, Elevate Rapid City, the Rapid City Council as well as Allender via Zoom, City Attorney Joel Landeen, Oglala Sioux Tribe President Kevin Killer and tribal council leaders at Rapid City Hall. They met to discuss comments made on social media by Connie Uhre that said the Grand Gateway Hotel corporation was banning Native Americans from its property.

Her son Judson Uhre, one of the co-owners of the hotel, said Tuesday, however, that the hotel is not banning Native Americans and that his mother is no longer president of the company.

Following a shooting early Saturday at the hotel that left a man with serious injuries, Uhre posted comments on Facebook saying she would not allow a Native American to enter our business including Cheers (a bar on the property) because she cant tell who is a bad Native or a good Native. The comments have since been deleted.

Its not reflective of who we are as a community, Thom said. We had a good meeting today with some of our tribal partners and youll see a joint statement come out regarding condemnation of those statements from all the entities involved here today.

Hedrick said the city and county have done a lot of work to build bridges and work with everyone in the community. He said the statements made on Facebook counter those efforts.

Chief Deputy Prosecutor Lara Roetzel with the States Attorneys Office said the community suffered a tragedy this weekend with the shooting and was followed by another tragedy with the comments.

This meeting was an opportunity for people to come together, important people to come together and make an important stance against those statements, she said. I wish there was a crime against saying things that are racist. I wish there was a crime against being racist. There's not.

Killer said it was important to start the dialogue on how to repair relations.

At the end of the day, I think everybody was against what this person said, understanding that we need to make a strong statement, which we are in the process of, but also just making sure that were sharing information, he said.

Allender said in a statement that although criminal activity is unfortunate the racially-based statements return us to volatile comments of the 1950s and 1960s, prior to and during the civil rights era.

Such statements pitted people and communities against each other, tying race into virtually every community issue and every attempt to address and resolve such issues, he said. Connie Uhres statements are wrong and harmful not only to Native Americans but also to Rapid City businesses and the community at large. Such comments erase the progress that has been made over the last 60 years or so.

Allender called on the Uhre family to publicly denounce the statements and make amends to the community, especially Native Americans.

In a Facebook post, Nick Uhre, who has described himself as the hotel manager to the media and on social media, said the hotel has "repeatedly been the latest victim of lunatic cancel culture in Rapid City with allegations of racism, racial profiling and now, by you, Mayor Allender, a personalized target of politically motivated slander and defamation."

He said his political opposition to the present administration and public opposition to COVID-19 policies have made him a constant target for these attacks "and for internal attacks by people I hired and trusted as employees."

Nick said in the post that his hotel staff has been infiltrated by "political operatives seeking to damage" the business and create negative attacks in the media.

"We are and have been targeted simply for telling the truth," he said.

Elevate Rapid City released a statement after the meeting stating it joins the leadership of the community in denouncing the disgusting, reprehensible and racist comments put on social media yesterday by representatives of the Grand Gateway Hotel and that the comments do not reflect the values of the people of Rapid City.

Our Native American brothers and sisters are neighbors, friends, family, entrepreneurs, and business owners, the statement reads. This isnt just about treating people with respect and dignity, which should, by itself, be enough. Our economy will never be as vibrant as it could truly be without us welcoming our Native populations to our business community as true equals. We will continue to work to a future where all of us, people from all backgrounds, races, colors, and creeds, can realize a more just and equitable society.

Judson Uhre, who said hes an owner with a non-active role in the Grand Gateway Hotels operation, said Tuesday that his mother is not the owner of the hotel and was the president a long time ago.

He said his brother died about three years ago and since then theres been a lot of confusion as to whos in control of the company. He said the ownership structure is an ongoing debate, but he believes theyll be able to come to a resolution soon.

Judson Uhre told the Journal that the notion the hotel would ban Native Americans is one of the most stupidest things hes ever heard.

To clarify her statements, she did make some generalization statements about people, about morally diverse people who share the same ancestry, and those statements of generalization do not reflect the values of the Grand Gateway Hotel or our diverse workforce, Judson said.

He said he believes his mothers comments were more about her son dying than the Native American population. He said his mother was relating to the mother of the shooting victim who wasnt able to protect her child.

Judson said his brother Nick is a volunteer with the hotel but also part of ownership. Nick Uhre did not respond to a request for comment.

He said his family is quite concerned about the shooting victim. He also said there should be public discussion on the MacArthur Foundation Grant, which the county received in 2015 and aims to reduce jail population and racial disparities in the criminal justice system. He said the association with the grant has created a toxic environment in Rapid City and should be investigated.

Thom said a group of individuals over the past 18 months have put out half-truths and misinformation about the grant and their local initiatives. He said the city-county budget for the year is $318 million combined and the MacArthur Grant is $400,000 for the year.

Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Chairman Harold Frazier said in a statement Tuesday that he condemns the comments.

This type of behavior will no longer be tolerated in this day and age, he said. Not too long ago an Indian was murdered when someone shot him point blank in a bar in this very city. You did not hear us condemn a whole race of people so dont condemn our people.

Frazier also demanded an apology.

To those who will try to distance themselves from these words and thoughts to save face and business I say to you that it is unfair to be generalized and every Lakota knows how you feel, he said.

NDN Collective announced Tuesday afternoon that it will be filing a federal civil rights class action lawsuit Wednesday against the hotel for its "racist and discriminatory treatment of Native people."

The organization plans to host a rally at 2 p.m. Wednesday in Memorial Park and march with the American Indian Movement and Cheyenne River Grassroots Collective to the federal courthouse on Ninth Street.

"Our children should not have to grow up in a world that degrades and disrespects them because of the color of their skin or the culture they come from," said Korina Berry, Collective Managing Director of NDN Action. "There are long-term emotional and psychological impacts of such disgusting behavior, and our children and our communities deserve better."

She said the organization demands accountability at both the city and state level, and they will not back down until businesses "perpetuating racist actions and practices are held accountable for their actions."

Nick Tilsen, NDN Collective President and CEO, said racist policies and practices will not be tolerated.

"Our communities are struggling and our young people are up against so many challenges and obstacles," he said "As we continue tirelessly to find ways to heal and support them, we must put an immediate stop to business owners and politicians who attack our people through discriminatory and white supremacist tactics."

 Contact Siandhara Bonnet at siandhara.bonnet@rapidcityjournal.com 

You must be logged in to react.

Click any reaction to login. Love 1 Funny 3 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.
South Dakota's criminal corrections system needs more than a half-billion dollars worth of new buildings and upgrades in the coming years, according to warnings that have been coming from Gov. Kristi Noem in recent months.

And the statewide overhaul of the Department of Corrections facilities she's calling for includes abandoning the 141-year-old prison in Sioux Falls while building new places to incarcerate people from Sioux Falls to the Black Hills.

That's all based on findings in a 97-page report conducted last year by a Nebraska-based consultant hired by the state to find inefficiencies and shortcomings in existing prison facilities while identifying ways to optimize the way South Dakota houses inmates.

"Im not going to ask you to spend $600 million for prisons today, but I am asking you to save additional reserves for it in the future," Noem told lawmakers in her budget address in December, citing the consultant report which cost the state $323,000.

Neither the governor's office nor the Department of Corrections accommodated multiple requests by the Argus Leader for an interview to discuss the consultant's report.

But here's a look at what changes DLR Group is telling South Dakota to make, and the associated price tags that would come with them.

The South Dakota State Penitentiary is the state's oldest prison, towering over Sioux Falls from its bluff on what's now known as North Drive since 1881. And while it's had modifications over the years, its age and layout configuration create challenges that hurt operational efficiency and make it "expensive to maintain."

That's why DLR Group suggests South Dakota build a brand new, 1,372-bed housing penitentiary somewhere in or around Sioux Falls. It would house inmates of varying security categories and require at least 160 acres of ground to accommodate the complex.

With more of South Dakota's inmate population requiring mental and physical health support services, a new facility would be designed with the latest trends in therapeutic and treatment environments in mind, according to DLR.

"These design concepts frequently include features such as improved acoustics, plentiful natural light, enhanced indoor air quality, and exterior views," reads page 29 of the report, which also encourages the state to consider "biophilic designs," which means mimicking outdoor settings inside the prison.

Of the $338.5 million estimated cost of the project, about $205 million would be for the actual construction. Contingencies, architecture design, land acquisition and site development account for the rest of the projected expenses.

On the same campus as the state penitentiary, the Jameson Prison Annex that was built to absorb increasing male prison populations in the early 1990s had "no major shortcomings" and is in "good physical condition and operates in a secure and relatively efficient way," according to DLR Group.

But the consultant is still recommending millions in upgrades there.

The biggest ticket item DLR Group is calling for at the prison annex is an estimated $3.1 million remodel of existing courtyard space that would include a full-size gymnasium, bathrooms, storage, and inmate programming and support spaces.

The intake area of the annex could also be made to operate more securely, according to the report. The consultant recommends $2.5 million be spent revamping the existing intake/release processing area to include a vehicle sally port, a new processing and holding area, property storage, screening space and staff offices.

There's also a recommendation that $1.5 million be invested to repurpose an area of the annex that was originally designed to be used as medical space.

Readying inmates for re-entry into society is increasingly a priority for the Department of Corrections, and housing inmates who are eligible to work while incarcerated near employment centers makes that more feasible.

That's why DLR Group recommends constructing some sort of work-release center for inmates in Sioux Falls.

But the consultant has two different suggestions on how that might look.

A 100-bed female community work center in Sioux Falls, with the ability to expand to 200 beds later, is anticipated to cost about $23 million. The report also indicates that a 300-bed male community work center with dormitory-style housing could be built for just under $38 million.

"It is important that the location provides easy access to places of employment and public transportation," the report says.

Should DOC opt to build the work release center for male inmates in Sioux Falls, that would enable about 100 inmates who are right now in work-release programs housed at the Human Services Center in Yankton County to be relocated. And that would allow the state to build a smaller inmate housing complex at HSC than what's there now.

"The existing Yankton Community Work Center would be abandoned and returned to HSC," the report says of what would be a $28 million expense. "The new facility would include dormitory-style housing, all related support and programs spaces and be minimum security construction."

A second option that entails expanding the current facility at HSC to accommodate a new inmate processing center and more support and staffing space would cost about $13.2 million. That project would also have modifications made there to better comply with American Disabilities Act (ADA) requirements.

Modernizing the DOC's Springfield complex means, according to DLR Group, building a 300-bed complex to house low- to medium-security risk inmates and is anticipated to cost $43.3 million.

But if that's not something the state wants to pursue, the DOC should at least consider an $8 million investment into the existing prison's underground utilities and kitchen space.

The report states the existing kitchen within a building on the prison campus called Montgomery Hall is "old and dated" and the underground utilities that service it are inadequate.

Other recommendations in the report include scaling down or entirely demolishing the existing women's prison in Pierre and relocating many of those inmates to Rapid City or Sioux Falls. But a third option, estimated at about $41 million, would have a new 250-bed unit built there.

Constructing a work release center for either males or females in Rapid City could also range from $18.7 million to $41.5 million, depending on capacity and location.

The Legislature this year created a fund to begin setting aside cash reserves that will eventually be used to pay for some of the projects being proposed by DLR Group. And it authorized special budget line items to enable land acquisition for a work-release center in the Black Hills, though construction costs and a specific project haven't been approved.

A prison facilities summer study is anticipated to occur prior to any major projects being authorized.

You must be logged in to react.

Click any reaction to login. Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 2
China condemns US visa restrictions on officials

08:44, March 23, 2022 By WANG QINGYUN ( China Daily

The US should revoke its visa restrictions on Chinese officials immediately, or China will react with reciprocal countermeasures, Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said on Tuesday.

Wang made the remark at a daily news conference after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement on Monday that the US is imposing visa restrictions on Chinese officials who it believes to be involved in "repressing" religious people and ethnic group members.

Voicing China's absolute objection, Wang said the statement violates international law and basic rules for international relations, and is brutal interference in China's domestic affairs.

The US slandered China, and suppressed Chinese officials groundlessly with the statement "filled with ideological bias and political lies", Wang said, adding that the US is unqualified to point fingers at China's human rights situation.

"China's human rights situation is at its best in history, which is for all of the international community to see," the spokesman said.

The Chinese government has adhered to the people-centered idea of human rights and implemented conscientiously the principle of respecting and protecting human rights as stipulated in the Constitution, Wang said.

The government deems the rights to survival and development as the primary basic human rights, he also said.

The US, on the other hand, is "the largest human rights violator in the world", Wang said, adding that its "all-around and systemic violation of Native American people's human rights has constituted de facto genocide".

"In more than 100 years since the founding of the US, the country had been purging systemically the Native American people, a population that plunged to 250,000 in the early 20th century from 5 million in the late 15th century," Wang said, adding that the US government's assimilation policies led to the extinction of Native American culture.

Wang went on to cite the US failure to tackle COVID-19, which claimed more than 970,000 US people's lives, the "long-term and systemic racial discrimination" in the country and its invasions of other countries.

"Even so the US is clamoring all day and threatening sanctions on other countries under the pretext of protecting human rights," Wang said. "Such a trick is doomed to fail."

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
What was your favorite year?

I love that question. I listen to a lot of podcasts. Some are funny and some make me think. During one episode last week, one of the hosts asked the others to describe their favorite year.

I have seen a lot of pages on the calendar turn so there were a lot of years in contention for my favorite.

My senior year in high school was fun. My second year as an editor when we won best small daily newspaper in Oklahoma was pretty good too. When Blake was born in 2003, the year finished pretty strong. But when I added up all of the pros and cons, the answer for me was easy.

My favorite year was 2011.

This year was really top-heavy with a January so busy and stress-inducing that it's difficult to explain properly. I opened a weekly newspaper one week and flew to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia eight days later. Trying to stay in touch eight time zones away wasn't the easiest thing I have ever done. Not being in touch to make sure everything worked as we had planned was not great for my blood pressure.

In 2010 a newspaper in Andover, Kansas simply folded. Employees showed up to find doors locked. That is a problem for cities, schools and other entities that used that publication for legal notices. I published two newspapers in the same county so we immediately began working to legally publish their notices but we didn't have a great solution because we had a minuscule readership in the area.

I started running the numbers and figured out pretty quickly that, with a little buy-in from the community, we could make a newspaper work in the city. We hired a small staff, shared an office with the Chamber of Commerce, and I developed a plan to distribute 5,000 free newspapers. Advertisers and readers responded. Even though it wouldn't be a legal newspaper for two years, we published notices in the new publication and in the legal publication seven miles away.

It was an exciting time.

Eight days after that newspaper launched, my wife and I headed to Addis Ababa to do our court work and meet Dawit in person for the first time. Long days taking care of legal business, visiting his orphanage and touring the country were paired with long nights trying to keep everything working smoothly at three newspapers in the Wichita area. Trying to keep a solid wifi connection in Ethiopia while trying to move press times ahead to avoid a blizzard warning in Kansas was a fun way to spend an evening.

Later that year, we were able to return to Addis Ababa and take custody of Dawit and on July 6, 2011, he landed on American soil for the first time.

That year was filled with a lot of stress and worry, but there hasn't been a better year for me.

As I think about all of the things that made 2011 my favorite year ever, it occurs to me that all of the preparations for the amazing things that made the year stand out had been done in 2010.

My wife worked tirelessly on paperwork for the adoption throughout 2010. Obviously, the work to open a newspaper in January of 2011 required a lot of long hours in 2010 to make it possible.

That might just be a lesson for all of us. What are you doing today that might make 2022 or 2023 your best year yet? Great things don't just happen. As the old saying goes, failing to prepare is preparing to fail.

It puts the long hours and difficult situations in perspective. Today might have to be hard so tomorrow can be amazing.

Kent Bush is the editor of the Rapid City Journal. Reach him at kent.bush@lee.net
Students at Corvallis High School are raising funds for Ukraine with Change for Children, a three-week coin challenge, as a way to help students on the other side of the world.

Educator Laura Carrasco said student leaders from many groups and many grades spontaneously joined together for the effort.

I think when the war began a few weeks ago a couple of teachers and students showed alarm and were super concerned, Carrasco. Even in my class the day it started, every single class asked, What does this mean? Why is this happening? Its on social media and kids are on social media so they are very aware of what is going on over there.

She said since her students were scared and worried, she talked with them about the humanitarian crisis that is coming out of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, where lives are disrupted and over two million women and children have fled the country.

We felt as teachers, we needed to give kids an avenue to help, Carrasco said. This is one of those teachable moments. There is something you can do to help people, even if they are on the other side of the globe. I think that makes kids feel they are more in control over situations.

The kids also see that the Ukrainians were living just like us, living in a democracy, with jobs and school, houses in suburbs, it doesnt look different and now their lives are completely torn up, she said.

To help the people impacted by the war in Ukraine, and to help the students, Corvallis educators met with concerned students of all grades and talked about options for helping.

This group of kids had never heard of Pennies for Peace because it was so long ago, Carrasco said. Twenty years ago, that was something used to help build schools in Pakistan. It was effective so we suggested it.

Carrasco said the students agreed to donate the Change for Children collected to UNICEF as it is an established method of getting funds to Ukraine.

UNICEF is on the ground in Ukraine and according to their website (unicefusa.org) every 100% tax-deductible donation will help UNICEF ensure that Ukraine's children have access to safe water, nutrition, health care, education and protection.

They need blankets, they need everything, but trying to send supplies is complicated because it is a war zone, Carrasco said. Kids brought that up, so we sought a quicker, faster, easier way. UNICEF is for children, and you can donate specifically to Ukrainian children and UNICEF can buy supplies.

The coin collection challenge started March 14 and will end April 8.

We have spring break in there, so we went longer, Carrasco said. We wanted something for the kids to see the importance and to create enthusiasm. They set a competition aspect to it. The class that wins will have a week of early lunches.

Corvallis educators are also participating.

Students can collect donations from outside of school and put them in their jars.

The money can come from anywhere so if people are looking for a way to help the children of Ukraine, they can have a kid from Corvallis bring their money in, Carrasco said. They can stop by and have Holly put it in their kids class jar. Or they can put it in the teachers bin, and if the teachers win maybe no one will have early lunches. I dont know.

The first weeks results were just a start. The sophomore class had brought in the most money at $146.18, freshman  $114.03, educators  $36.87, juniors  $$32.39 and seniors  $6.16.

Freshman Farah Wyche and Caitlin Nelson said the Change for Children collection makes a positive difference.

What we are doing at school to raise money and help kids become aware of what is going on in Ukraine is important, Wyche said. I think it is a good fundraiser and great for the school.

Nelson agreed.

Im glad that were helping to raise money for the good cause of helping kids over there since we are not affected here right now, she said.

Im really proud of all the students, Carrasco said. The kids were really interested and willing. We want to raise citizens who are compassionate. It matters.

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.
Starting this week, you can walk up and rent a pontoon boat at The Lilly Pad in Henrico County, no boating license required.

Its the first of its kind in Richmond, said Max Walraven, owner of the restaurant at 9680 Osborne Turnpike and the attached Kingsland Marina.

Kingfish Boat Rental has four new pontoon boats that will be available for rent starting Friday in two-, four- or eight-hour increments.

Ive been trying to do this for six or seven years, Walraven said. Its always amazed me that in Richmond, even though a river runs through the city, its not a river-centric city. Theres never been a company dedicated to renting power boats on an hourly basis on the James River.

In places like Florida, you can walk up and rent a boat, no strings attached. We wanted to appeal to people or families who are looking to go out, run around on the river for a couple hours, without membership or initiation fees, he said.

Prices run around $225 for a two-hour rental on a weekday and around $300 for two hours on the weekend or $400 for four hours. Kingfish was still finalizing the pricing as of this writing.

The 18-foot pontoon with a 75-horsepower engine seats up to six people; the 20-foot pontoon with a 90-horsepower engine seats up to eight people.

Alcohol is allowed on the boats, but the driver cant be under the influence. Pets are also allowed, as well as children, of course. Drivers must be age 25 and over.

Inflatable tubes and stand-up paddleboards are also available to rent for $50 in tandem with the boats.

If youve never been on a pontoon boat, theyre often referred to as party barges. Theyre easier to pilot than a motorboat and only go about 25 to 30 mph. Kingfish will be offering a dockside safety course before each rental.

From the Kingsland Marina, boaters can run all the way up to Rocketts Landing, which takes about 30 minutes, Walraven said. Or they can head in the other direction toward the Benjamin Harrison Bridge in Prince George County. All boaters will be provided a map before heading out.

Kingfish Boat Rental is also offering a captained charter on a 55-foot fishing yacht on an hourly basis or for overnight stays. Day rentals cost $1,000. Kingfish Boat Rental will be run by a team of four: Walraven, a mechanic, a dockmaster and a deckhand.

Kingfish Boat Rental isnt the only way to rent a power boat in Richmond.

The Carefree Boat Club is also running rentals out of Kingsland Marina, but its a pricier option, with initiation fees running between $3,500 and $5,000, in addition to monthly fees of $300 to $500.

Walraven thinks that power boat rentals by the hour havent been done in Richmond before because the Virginia boating season is so marginal.

You have six to eight boat-able months per season. For someone to make a huge investment  we just purchased $150,000 of boats  and to only be open half the year is not a good business model, he said. But when Im in the marina and waterfront restaurant business, its another amenity to the marina. It makes perfect sense.

Walraven purchased a majority stake in the 13-acre Kingsland Marina in 2018 and took over The Lilly Pad lease in 2019. Since then, he has invested about $250,000 into renovating the outdoor dining-only restaurant and turning it into a local hotspot.

So much so that Henrico is requiring The Lilly Pad to secure a provisional use permit to bring the restaurant into compliance. The county reported there have been some noise complaints regarding the restaurants live music on Saturday nights.

A community meeting is planned at The Lilly Pad on Monday at 6 p.m. The issue is slated to go before the county Planning Commission on May 12.
WEAVER, Virginia W. "Ginny," 85, of Mechanicsville, Va., died peacefully in her sleep March 13, 2022. She was preceded in death by her parents, William Wirt Wade and Virginia Earle Scherer Wade. She is survived by her loving husband of 64 years, Victor A. Weaver Jr.; her daughter, Vicki (Don) Gartner; her son, William A. (Bill) Weaver; and grandog, Bernie. She is also survived by a host of grandchildren, cousins and dear friends. Ginny was employed by Sutton-Clark Supply and retired to become a homemaker. She liked to travel and she loved family trips to Nags Head and Lancaster, Pa. Ginny was a member of the VFW Battlefield Post 9808 Ladies Auxiliary and enjoyed the many projects they undertook. A visitation was held Thursday, March 17, 2022, from 4 to 7 p.m. at Bennett Funeral Home, Mechanicsville Chapel, 8014 Lee-Davis Road and where funeral services were held 12 noon Friday, March 18, 2022. The committal service followed at Forest Lawn Cemetery. In lieu of flowers, please donate to your favorite charity.
Richmond police responded to at least six shootings  two of them fatal  within a 48-hour period this week.

On Tuesday, authorities identified two men killed by gunfire.

Officers responded to the first shooting Sunday at 12:04 a.m. in the 1500 block of Gunn Street. An adult male was injured as part of an aggravated assault that was believed to be domestic in nature.

That evening, at 7:43 p.m. in the 1400 block of Jennie Scher Road in the East End, a man was found with a graze wound. He was treated at a local hospital for non-life-threatening injuries.

Shortly after 8 p.m. that night, police responded to a shooting call downtown in the 1000 block of East Main Street near the Virginia State Capitol. Officers found a man with life-threatening injuries.

On Monday, officers were summoned just before noon to the 1900 block of Richmond Highway in South Side. At the scene, they discovered a man in the parking lot of On Time Towing. Police said hed been struck by gunfire and was unresponsive. He was pronounced dead on the scene.

Police identified him as Jarrod Murray, 28, of Richmond and are still investigating the nature and circumstances of his death.

On Monday, shortly before 10 p.m., officers responded to a report of a shooting in the 4100 block of Hull Street in South Richmond.

At the scene, they found a man in a parked vehicle with an apparent gunshot wound. The man, identified as Jayce Folkner, 29, of Henrico County, was pronounced dead at the scene. Police later declared the incident a homicide.

Then at 10:55 p.m. on Monday, Richmond police were called to the parking lot of the 301 Express store in the 2000 block of Maury Street, also in South Side. They found a man in a vehicle with an apparent gunshot wound. It did not appear the shooting occurred at that location, police said.

No arrests have been announced.
The most celebrated student walkout came without an adult seal of approval.

On April 23, 1951, Barbara Rose Johns led what would become a two-week student strike at Farmvilles Moton High  a Black, grossly overcrowded school where some classes were held in tarpaper outbuildings. Moton had no cafeteria, no science lab, no gym and no industrial arts shops.

School officials were kept in the dark about the strike. The principal, in a ruse by the students, was summoned off-campus. Teachers were similarly deceived into bringing their classes to the auditorium, where the protest organizers announced what was afoot and asked the teachers to leave the assembly to avoid culpability. Johns then instructed the students to follow her out the back door of the school. What ensued is described by Richmond author Margaret Edds in her book We Face the Dawn, on legendary civil rights lawyers Oliver Hill and Spottswood Robinson:

For the rest of the day, some students tramped the Moton grounds, lofting premade signs with messages such as Down with the Tar Paper Shacks. Others returned to their classrooms but refused to do any schoolwork. The organizing committee unsuccessfully attempted to present their demands to the school superintendent Thomas J. McIlwaine at the school board offices downtown.

The students met success with a higher authority: The U.S. Supreme Court. Their lawsuit became part of the Brown v. Board of Education decision invalidating the separate but equal doctrine allowing government-sanctioned racism.

Nearly seven decades later, the Hanover County School Board seems intent on fashioning its own separate but equal policy for transgender students.

Two weeks ago, it voted to bring in a notoriously anti-LGBTQ organization, the Arizona-based Alliance Defending Freedom, to review the boards equal educational opportunities policy. In November, the board rejected a policy change that would that would have explicitly allowed transgender students to use bathrooms that aligned with their identity, essentially thumbing its nose at Virginia law and federal rulings.

Hanover County Public Schools resisted the byproduct of Johns protest as a participant in Virginias Massive Resistance to school desegregation. And nowadays, the Hanover School Board has obviously indicated they have no intention of supporting trans and non-binary children of Hanover, said Christopher Berg, whose daughter and non-binary child participated in a protest Friday at Atlee High School.

The day before, Atlees principal and the districts director of secondary education sent a message to Atlee families warning of an unapproved student walkout.

It urged students to abide by the Code of Student Conduct by reporting to and staying in their designated, supervised areas during instructional time. We also remind students that they are not permitted outside of the school unsupervised as a matter of safety. Students who do not follow these expectations will be held accountable for their actions in accordance with the Code of Student Conduct.

Chris Whitley, assistant superintendent for community engagement and legislative affairs, said Tuesday that the school administration is still evaluating the incident and working through the discipline process.

Berg, who said his non-binary child is subjected to abuse at school, said his kids were anxious at the possibility of being suspended but more worried about how their fellow students would respond to the protest on Monday. As it turns out, the school day was no worse than usual, he said.

For sure, the Hanover response could have been worse. In October, at a high school in Rome, Ga., students were suspended for planning a protest after white students paraded on campus waving a Confederate flag and using racial slurs, according to Newsweek.

We remain committed to helping our students learn about civic engagement and stand ready to help them navigate important, complex, and difficult issues by finding opportunities to give voice to their feelings and perspectives without compromising safety and interrupting our instructional focus, the Hanover school officials said in their message. Sadly, the Hanover School Board telegraphed how little interest it has in giving students voice when it floated a revised citizen participation policy that did not mention students at all.

On Friday, the students learned more about civic engagement than they would have inside a classroom.

Johns received death threats for her stance and was sent to live with relatives in Alabama. Her family home in Prince Edward County was burned down after the Brown decision. But today, her sculpted likeness can be found at the Virginia Civil Rights Memorial, with Hill, Robinson and others. Soon, a statue of her will grace the U.S. Capitol. The Hanover students are following her path toward the right side of history.

When a scofflaw school board colludes with an anti-LGBTQ outfit to advance an agenda against transgender kids, student conduct is not the problem.
As a kid in the 1930s, John Til Hazel would play in a creek that trickled through his home county, Arlington, to the Potomac River, on the opposite bank of which stood the seat of the federal government whose growth and largess would help transform then-sleepy, still-rural Northern Virginia into a suburban dynamo.

With undergraduate and law degrees from Harvard, Hazel returned to Northern Virginia in the 1950s, recognizing that its proximity to Washington, D.C., was a virtual guarantee for amassing a fortune in land and construction. And he would  after giving up his land-use law practice to do as clients were: buying and developing real estate.

By the 1970s, John Tilghman Hazel Jr.  prosperous and politically influential  teamed with others in the regions business class to win a state university for Northern Virginia. Fifty years ago next month, George Mason University  initially an arm of the University of Virginia  became a free-standing four-year institution.

It is now the states largest public university, with nearly 40,000 students. George Masons law school in Arlington is housed in a building named for Hazel, who died March 15 at age 91 at his farm in Fauquier County, a leafy, hilly quilt of farms and small towns increasingly beset by the development forces Hazel et. al unleashed decades earlier  occasionally to the ire of those weary of its consequences: traffic, density, high prices.

Near the law school is an enormous hole in which a 360,000 square-foot building is going up. It will be home to the GMU School of Computing. That project, financed with public and private dollars, complements a much sought-after get for the state: Info-tech giant Amazons East Coast headquarters in Northern Virginia, announced in 2018.

The School of Computing will straddle, in part, an enclosed, subterranean concrete culvert through which runs the creek that had been Hazels playground as a little boy. It is perhaps a reminder of how Northern Virginia shaped Hazel and how he shaped the region  by flowing continuously through, and seeping deeply into, the many facets of Northern Virginia life, most notably, its economy, schools and vexing transportation problems.

Hazel, with his signature crew cut, bulldog mien and plain-spokenness, was among the last of a generation of Northern Virginia power brokers whose vocabulary did not include the word no. Their ranks read like a big-league lineup: Hazels partner, Milt Peterson; Earle Williams, Dan Clemente, Gerald Halpin, Mike Erkiletian, Bill Thomas, Dan Bannister, Dwight Schar, Joe Cecchi, John Toups, George Johnson, Stan Harrison, and Sid Dewberry.

White, male and disproportionately Republican, they became very rich  as developers, federal contractors, architects, lawyers and home -, office- and road builders  and pressed, unapologetically, for education, transportation and cultural improvements, arguing they were essential to a strong economy, which, in turn, would draw the best and brightest to the Washington suburbs.

The Washington Post estimated that, at one point, one in 10 residents of Fairfax County lived in Hazel-built houses. Hazel did the lawyering for what became Tysons Corner, a now clogged edge city. He also built office parks. Even his occasional failures could be lucrative.

He and Peterson spent $11 million on land in Prince William County for a vast mixed-use project opposed by historic preservationist for encroaching on a Manassas Civil War battlefield. The federal government intervened, absorbing the tract as park land and paying Hazel and Peterson $81 million. Most of that cash was spent stabilizing their company ahead of the recession of the early 1990s.

Northern Virginias growth  spreading from the counties of Arlington and Fairfax to Loudoun and Prince William, and beyond  had remarkable consequences. Fairfax and Prince William would become, respectively, the largest and second-largest localities in Virginia and are home to about 15% of the states population. Both are majority non-white.

Loudoun  like Virginia as a whole, 42% non-white  is the wealthiest county in the nation, with a median household income approaching $143,000 and a cost of living that exceeds the U.S. average by more than 12%, according to federal data. Three other Virginia counties are in the top 10 for wealth: Fairfax, Prince William and the next frontier for Washington-induced suburbanization  Stafford.

A flood of non-natives and accelerating diversity would also reinvent Northern Virginia, which not long ago favored commonsense Republicanism, as a bulwark of progressive Democratic politics.

This change is reflected in the regions new leadership class. It includes a few proteges of the old guard but as well women, Black, Hispanic and Asian professionals and the leaders of businesses that, unlike many in Northern Virginia, may not be as closely associated with federal beneficence: hospital groups, cyber-security firms and investment companies.

There is no doubt that when Hazel and his confreres were feeling their oats in the 1970s, they were viewed as high-handed and uncompromising. Hazel battled with the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors over restrictions on growth in nearly a dozen lawsuits that went all the way to the Virginia Supreme Court  and all of which he won.

Occasional bursts of perceived contempt by NoVa for RoVa  the Rest of Virginia  could complicate relations with the conservative grandees of the General Assembly. The late George Johnson, a Hazel ally and long-serving president of George Mason, may have been joking when he said that Virginia, if measured by SAT scores, was the equivalent of Mississippi or Arkansas when peeling away high-performing Northern Virginia.

Hazel understood that for Northern Virginia to prevail in Richmond, Northern Virginia had to be simpatico with other areas of the state.

His Republican pedigree, notwithstanding, Hazel was front and center in pushing for Democratic Gov. Jerry Baliles road-financing initiative in 1986, which went unmatched for 30 years. Hazel would travel to remote, impoverished Southwest Virginia to counsel the region on ways to wean itself from coal. Hazel enlisted corporate leaders in Roanoke, Norfolk and Richmond to plump for the shared agenda of higher education and big business.

That rubbed a Republican governor, George Allen, the wrong way in the early 1990s.

Steamed that Hazel, through shoe-leather advocacy of legislators, had convinced Republicans and Democrats to defy Allens proposed cuts in college and university budgets, the administration suggested the developer had violating state ethics laws by not registering as a lobbyist. There apparently were faint threats of legal action, should Hazel refuse to register.

Hazel ignored the Allen administration, but not before lining up a lawyer or two  just in case. Allens staff seemingly struck again, using fresh appointments to the George Mason governing board to narrowly block the election of Hazels lobbyist-conservationist son, Jimmy, as rector, or chairman. Three decades later, Jimmy Hazel  as his father was  is GMUs rector.

Property isnt the only Hazel family business. Politics is, too.
Former Del. Lashrecse Aird, a Democrat from Petersburg, announced shes running for state Senate next year in a district that will likely set up a primary challenge against Sen. Joe Morrissey, D-Richmond.

As a young Black woman, mother and higher-ed professional, Ive experienced the same struggles as many across the district, Aird said in a campaign news release issued Wednesday.

I grew up experiencing and overcoming hardship firsthand, and Ive seen personally how gun violence affects our communities. I know how destructive failing schools can be on educators and especially our children. And to this day, I myself know so many dealing with the crushing weight of financial instability.

Aird was first elected to the House of Delegates in 2015 and lost a close election in November to Republican Kim Taylor despite massively outspending her.

Virginia has new state legislative and congressional district lines as a result of a required redistricting. The Supreme Court of Virginia completed it in December after a new commission of citizens and legislators couldnt agree on new district maps.

The 13th Senate District includes Petersburg, Hopewell, Prince George County, Charles City County, Sussex County and Surry County and parts of eastern Henrico and northern Dinwiddie counties.

Morrissey, who upset Sen. Rosalyn Dance, D-Petersburg, in a 2019 primary and is a former delegate, said Monday he plans to move into the 13th District to continue to represent Petersburg and other areas he represents now.

He said he could remain where he is and face no serious competition, but by moving hell allow Sen. Ghazala Hashmi, D-Chesterfield, to move into his district and likely win the seat.

Ill move my kids and my family, Morrissey said. No politician should ever feel that he has a free ride. I love competition and I look forward to a competitive and spirited race against Ms. Aird.

Del. Lamont Bagby, D-Henrico, said hes considering running in the 13th Senate District.

Among Airds legislation that became law was a 2020 measure to ban police from executing no-knock search warrants.

The legislation was called Breonnas Law, named for Breonna Taylor, the Louisville, Ky., emergency medical technician who was fatally shot by police after she and her partner were awakened by police in their home.

Aird is the chief of staff to the president at Richard Bland College of William & Mary.
Transportation Security Administration officers at Richmond International Airport and airlines across Virginia have reported an increase of prohibited items coming through pre-flight checkpoints, according to Federal Security Director Robin Chuck Burke.

Officials said they know anecdotally that there has been an increase in confiscated items as passenger traffic has grown, including many items such as oversized liquids and gels. But because they throw away many of those items, they said they could not provide specific overall numbers.

The most common mistake people make is carrying large bottles of liquid, aerosol cans and gels in their carry-on bags, Burke said at a news conference Wednesday at RIC, pointing to a table full of large canisters TSA officers had confiscated during the previous few hours.

When you see the size of this, and this is a very small percentage of what we see in a monthly basis, Burke said. Everyones bag that has these size liquids has to have a secondary search.

Burke oversees roughly 80% of airport security in Virginia and, as the number of travelers has started to increase to pre-pandemic levels, more and more violations have occurred. During Wednesdays news conference, Burke said he hopes to remind passengers of what they can and cannot bring while traveling.

On average, Virginias airports are seeing from 5,000 to 6,000 passengers per day. On some days, as many as 8,000 passengers go through RIC, according to Burke, and on other days as few as 4,500. Before the pandemic, RIC was seeing an average of about 11,000 passengers per day.

He said the volume of passengers is not quite up to pre-pandemic numbers, but is close in some areas. He did not give any specifics.

Although airline travel has become more routine for some and many are traveling for spring break, Burke said prohibited items at checkpoints means longer lines and wait times.

Burke said that when prohibited items come through a checkpoint screening, a second search occurs where a TSA agent will either confiscate the item, ask the passenger to give their things to a non-flying companion or  if its an item like a water bottle  empty it out and carry the container instead.

So far this year, TSA officers have detected four firearms inside carry-on bags at RIC, according to TSA spokesperson Lisa Farbstein.

Burke said from Oct. 1 to March 21, there have been nine weapons detected and three instances of improperly stored weapons in checked bags statewide.

Nationwide, 5,972 firearms were caught by TSA last year, according to the organizations statistics. In 2021, 20 firearms were stopped in RIC; 22 were found in 2020.

We really are asking the community, the media, the corporations, the air carriers, the airports and everything else, Burke said. Please, please re-stress the fact you cannot carry a weapon into an airport processor.

The fine for carrying a weapon through a TSA checkpoint can range from $360 to $1,390. Instances connected with loaded weapons and potential explosives have stricter punishments and could lead to criminal charges.

Farbstein attributes the surge of item confiscation to the fact that passengers misunderstand what they can bring and may be a little rusty when it comes to travel after the COVID-19 pandemic grounded a great deal of travelers.

Many, many people who are flying right now have not flown for several months or even several years as a result of the pandemic, Farbstein said. So people arent as practiced, theyre not as up on their protocols, theyre sort of like a little rusty.

Farbstein said TSA officials want to remind passengers that they may carry liquids, gels and aerosols in travel-size containers that are 3.4 ounces or 100 milliliters. Passengers also are limited to one quart-size bag of liquids, gels and aerosols. She said travelers can refer to TSAs 3-1-1 liquids rule if theyre unsure about a particular item.

Passengers are permitted to travel with firearms in checked baggage if they are properly packaged and declared at their airline ticket counter. Firearms must be unloaded, packed in a hard-sided locked case, and packed separately from ammunition.

Travelers can also go to TSAs website to view a full list of items that may be prohibited or tweet @AskTSA with questions.
(Image: The Sun Daily)

Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) has participated in an international project to successfully develop two prototypes for a common platform that allows international settlements using multiple central digital bank currencies (multi-CBDCs). Dubbed Project Dunbar, the effort saw a collaboration between BNM and three other central banks  the Reserve Bank of Australia, the Monetary Authority of Singapore, and the South African Reserve Bank  as well as the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Innovation Hub.

In a statement, BNM said that this project sought to prove that financial institutions can use different CBDCs issued by participating central banks to conduct direct cross-border transactions on a shared platform. In turn, the platform will reduce reliance on intermediaries, allowing for cheaper, faster, and safer cross-border payments.

BNM also explained that the project had managed to identify several critical issues related to the implementation of a multi-CBDC platform. These include matters such as who should be allowed to hold and transact with CBDCs issued on the platform, as well as how to simplify the cross-border payments without compromising the regulations of each participating central bank.

The project proposed practical solutions for addressing these issues, which were validated through the development of prototypes that demonstrated the technical viability of multi-CBDC shared platforms for international settlements, BNM shared in its statement.

The assistant governor of BNM, Fraziali Ismail further said that Project Dunbar has offered meaningful insights into the potential of multi-CBDC platforms in resolving future cross-border payment issues. The project [Project Dunbar] is a testament to the importance of central bank collaboration in supporting the development of next-generation payment infrastructures. We intend to carry these insights through other proofs of concept as we continue our CBDC exploration journey, he said.

(Image: Bernama)

BNM had previously stated that it may begin experimenting with CBDCs in the next few years, in line with the rapid growth of the digital asset space in recent times. However, the central bank also stressed that it needs to be careful in these efforts as it does not want to just be caught up in all the hype and buzz.

Meanwhile, the head of the BIS Innovation Hub, Andrew McCormack commented that although a common platform is an efficient model for payments connectivity, it is also very challenging to achieve. Project Dunbar demonstrated that key concerns of trust and shared control can be addressed through governance mechanisms enforced by robust technological means, laying the foundation for the development of future global and regional platforms, he said.

To note, Project Dunbar began its trial in September 2021, and its current findings are expected to spur and inform future phases of the project.

(Sources: BNM, BIS)

0 0 votes Article Rating

SHARE
Roanoke is among Virginia localities that desperately need help combating gun and gang violence, state Attorney General Jason Miyares said Tuesday.

Speaking at Hotel Roanoke to a conference of criminal justice professionals, Miyares announced an effort to establish the Operation Ceasefire Grant Fund, a state crime-fighting initiative.

The fund would provide funding to implement violent crime reduction strategies, provide training for law-enforcement officers and prosecutors, provide equipment for law-enforcement agencies and award grants to organizations that are involved in group violence intervention efforts, according to Virginias Legislative Information System.

The effort mimics one that was implemented in Boston in the 1990s to address youth gun violence. Legislation for the fund, House Bill 833, passed the Virginia House of Delegates in February.

Operation Ceasefire would be managed by the attorney generals office. Miyares expressed a specific interest in providing prosecutors to localities that need help removing crime from city streets.

Weve identified about eight or nine localities which desperately need those, that are going to be going after individuals, particularly gang-related and using guns, Miyares said. The task is going to be huge, but I am confident that, when you get the right resources and you have the right leadership focusing on the right priorities, that we can tackle this.

Roanoke police have reported four gun-related homicides and more than 20 incidents of woundings related to firearms so far in 2022, setting a pace to exceed previous annual records.

We need funds to help us deal with gun violence, Roanoke Mayor Sherman Lea said Tuesday.

He also noted that his office was not invited to or otherwise notified about the violent crime conference but said that he would be more than willing to speak with the attorney generals office about potential solutions to the problem.

City council member Joe Cobb, who also serves as the chair of Roanokes Gun Violence Prevention Commission, said he was similarly unaware of the conference and that communication between state and local offices is key to finding solutions.

Were the ones that have been doing the work, Cobb said.

He said the citys gun violence problem has always been at that level that requires state assistance. He said Operation Ceasefire could work.

We could really use that support from the state in Roanoke, Cobb said. But it has to work alongside the community-based programs already in place.

Miyares said community policing in city neighborhoods will be critical in fighting gun violence that often appears to be connected to turf battles and drugs. He said the fight against recidivism will begin as officials address the needs of city youth.

So many young people are just so desperate for money, power and respect, theyll do anything to get it, Miyares said. But you dont get money, power or respect by harming your fellow citizens. You dont get money, power or respect by selling narcotics on the street... What we want is for them to become independent, self-sufficient, productive members of society.

During his brief address to about 300 attendees at the states annual Conference on Violent Crime, Miyares, a Republican elected last fall, expressed support for a bill that was vetoed by former Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam in 2019 that would have allowed prosecutors to charge drug dealers with murder in cases where users die.

If youre selling this poison to our kids, then prosecutors should get every tool in the toolbox to go after you, Miyares said.

The attorney general also said that many public safety departments and officials are underpaid. He said pay increases for everyone in law enforcement at all levels can be anticipated in the next state budget cycle.

The annual Conference on Violent Crimes concludes Wednesday. It was sponsored by the Office of the Attorney General, the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services, the Department of Corrections, the Department of Juvenile Justice and the Virginia Department of State Police.
Pulaski County authorities are releasing few details of a second-degree murder charge filed earlier this week against Kevin Dwayne Scott, saying they are still trying to contact the victims relatives.

Scott, 47, was arrested Monday after a womans body was found in an apartment in Dublin, town police Chief Dennis Lambert confirmed Wednesday. The chief said that he was holding off identifying the woman publicly until her family has been notified of her death.

According to a news release that the police department issued Tuesday, the woman was found Monday afternoon after officers made a wellness check at Briarwood Apartments.

Scott, whose address is listed as unknown in court records, was at the apartment where the womans body was found, police said. He was arrested and taken to the New River Valley Regional Jail, where he remains.

No other details of the allegations against Scott were given.

Scott also has a pending charge in Pulaski County of attempted breaking and entering into an occupied house to commit a misdemeanor, an offense that court records say occurred on Feb. 10.

Scott is next scheduled to appear in court on May 10 for a preliminary hearing on both charges.

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.
Two incumbent, first-term Republicans in Southwest Virginia are intent on serving second terms in the House of Delegates, but both said they hope to win election to the same seat.

After legislating through their first General Assembly session, Del. Marie March, R-Floyd, and Del. Wren Williams, R-Patrick, have returned home from Richmond.

Theres already politics at play, March said. Im already basically in a primary with Wren Williams.

Both said they are eyeing election to the new House of Delegates District 47, drawn in 2021 to combine parts of Williams and Marchs current districts 9 and 7, respectively. The new, historically Republican House District 47 includes Carroll, Floyd and Patrick counties, plus western Henry County and Galax.

Common interest in representing the district sets the stage for a Republican primary election, scheduled tentatively for 2023.

Ill be continuing to reside within Patrick County, which will be in the 47th district, Williams said. Ill be running again for re-election in 2023.

March, an entrepreneur, said she dislikes big government.

Im not a politician. I come from being a small business owner, March said. Nobody owns me in Richmond  Im a pro-liberty candidate, and Im a grassroots candidate. Im not bought and paid for by the establishment in any capacity.

Williams, an attorney, said he stands for conservatism.

Our district is fully behind us. Both the 9th district and the new 47th, theyre very supportive of my approach of being a fighter and protecting our conservative values, Williams said. I know the people here, I know the folks, and its a real honor and pleasure to serve them.

One comparison from the 2022 General Assembly session: Williams voted with his party on 82% of strong Republican-majority floor votes, March sided with her colleagues just over 67% of the time, according to party unity data from the Virginia Public Access Project.

If its growing government you know, I want freedom. I want independence as much as we can have it, March said. Thats where youre going to see me differ from some party line.

Williams said he has a proven conservative track record, and his votes in Richmond uphold it.

Im originally from Patrick County. Im from this area, I was born in the Appalachian Blue Ridge Mountains, Williams said. Its really awesome to be able to basically be myself and represent my community. I dont have to change who I am, I dont have to act like Im somebody that Im not.

One vote on which Williams and March differed was to authorize certain uses of facial recognition software by state police. Senate Bill 741 passed the house by a 54-42 vote, with March and Williams on opposite sides of the debate about facial recognition.

I got a lot of grief, even from the caucus, for voting against the facial recognition software, March said. My constituents, were in a rural area. They dont want big brother spying on them with facial recognition software. So I voted against it.

Williams, who voted with the majority in favor of the bill, said it is beneficial to victims, and fits with his pro-law enforcement values.

When it comes to conservative policies and legislation, I support our police, Williams said. Im always going to stand with our police and law enforcement officers.

In the 2021 election for Virginia governor, residents of the new House District 47 voted almost 79% Republican, according to VPAP data.

An election for all of the new House of Delegates districts is currently scheduled for November 2023. But a pending lawsuit, filed by a former state Democratic Party leader, is requesting a judge to instead advance the next state House election to November 2022.

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.
Sideways sheets of rain, a roaring rumble, and at least five buildings left in shambles with many others damaged.

That was what some residents of Radford experienced late on a Monday night 35 years ago this month, minutes after Indianas Keith Smart hit a game-winning shot to conclude March Madness.

The National Weather Service confirmed the next day that an F-1 tornado with 100 mph winds had struck late on the evening of March 30, 1987, in southern Radford along Rock Road, 17th Street, Wadsworth Street and Allen Street.

This tornado in the New River Valley isnt one that seems to be often recalled. I was unaware of it until meteorologists at the National Weather Service office in Blacksburg asked me in the fall if I could find information about it in Roanoke Times archives. Im sure there are some of you reading this that remember it, possibly were affected by it.

The 1987 tornado, according to a Roanoke Times & World-News article, destroyed four buildings at RadVa Corp., leveled a two-story Masonic Lodge and damaged about 20 homes. It damaged the roof and gutters at the Radford City Schools administration building and broke out windows at Willow Woods apartments.

(One of the reporters who worked on that article was a much younger Laurence Hammack, my colleague at The Roanoke Times today.)

Severe storms are currently on the increase across the nation, as they often are this time of year. Texas experienced a tornado outbreak on Monday, with severe storms moving into Louisiana and Mississippi on Tuesday.

That same system will affect our region with showers and storms on Wednesday. The greatest threat of severe storms will be south and east of our region where there is more instability, but a cold front pushing through will provide enough lift with some shifting winds aloft that a few storms with strong winds are possible even near us.

The weather map from late March 35 years ago reveals a somewhat similar dynamic weather setup that was far more widely known for a late-season snowstorm from the lower Mississippi River Valley to the Great Lakes.

In fact, my location in northeast Arkansas at the time (I was a junior in high school) got 3 inches of wet snow out of the same storm system that spawned the tornado at Radford.

A cold front extended from the Florida panhandle to eastern Kentucky to the eastern Great Lakes that morning, slowly pushing eastward. Multiple waves of low pressure rode up that cold front.

Temperatures ahead of the cold front were not extremely warm, 50s to lower 60s, but they dropped off considerably behind it, hence the widespread snow to our west. So a sharp thermal boundary was in play, though probably not a great deal of instability, given those kind of mild but not extremely warm surface temperatures.

One telling sign of what may have helped spawn a tornado was the east-southeast winds depicted by the wind barbs at Roanoke and also at Raleigh, North Carolina. With south to southwest winds at the 500 millibar level (about 18,000 feet), this could indicate a strong veering profile, which could have supplied strong spin to any storm updrafts that formed.

This would fit in the category of high-shear, low-instability severe weather events that occur occasionally in our region during late winter and spring.

The cold front that triggered the Radford tornado did bring on a sharp weather pattern shift, so much so that the Roanoke and New River valleys were covered in about a half-foot of early-April snow a week later, a storm that dumped much greater amounts and caused widespread power outages just to our west.

Considering events like the Pulaski tornado 11 years ago that damaged more than 300 homes, an EF-3 tornado that leveled two homes in southern Franklin County three years ago and the tornado scare in Blacksburg last Aug. 31 when a low-hanging rotation associated with the remnants of Hurricane Ida briefly scraped the surface a couple of times, many regional residents have opined that once-rare tornadoes are becoming more frequent in our region.

There may be large-scale climate reasons that make this possible, but the core issue that must be answered first is whether tornadoes are in fact becoming more frequent locally or whether they have always been occurring on occasion and are now more detectable and better documented.

Blacksburgs situation late last summer might not have been readily noticed without modern Doppler radar and a curious Virginia Tech meteorology student tracking the opening stages of the mesocyclone that would eventually pass over his campus.

Many recent brief, weak tornadoes recorded in our region would probably not have been counted as tornadoes without modern radar and intensive post-storm surveys.

The 1987 tornado at Radford does, at the least, suggest that significant tornadoes have occurred in the New River Valley previously, just as having six deaths in two likely 1890s tornadoes in Roanoke and Salem seems to belie any notion that tornadoes are a recent development in the Roanoke Valley.

So whether tornadoes are increasing in frequency and intensity locally is an open question that can only be answered with current and future observation, as modern procedures to identify and document tornadoes are less than 30 years old in widespread use.

What Radford in 1987 and Pulaski in 2011 and almost Blacksburg last year clearly show is that our region isnt magically protected by the mountains, and we have to take tornadoes seriously even if our region isnt as often affected as many to our south and west.

Weather Journal appears on Wednesdays.

Contact Kevin Myatt at kevin.myatt@roanoke.com . Follow him on Twitter @kevinmyattwx .

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.
The former director of financial aid at Reynolds Community College has pleaded guilty in federal court in Richmond to wire fraud in connection with a scheme she orchestrated to defraud Virginia and the U.S. Department of Education of $379,602 in federal and state student loan and grant funds over eight years.

In accordance with a plea agreement, Kiesha Lashawn Pope, 47, entered a guilty plea to one count of wire fraud that was part of a five-count indictment issued in February that charged her with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, three counts of wire fraud and one count of aggravated identify theft.

U.S. District Court Judge David J. Novak accepted Popes plea and scheduled sentencing for July 19. The remaining four counts will be dismissed at the conclusion of Popes sentencing hearing.

Pope, who was hired by Reynolds in 2006, used her access to Reynolds financial aid systems to inflate the financial aid eligibility for several co-conspirators  her son, her former fiance, her goddaughter and a cousin  who were not eligible for aid at the college, according to the governments statement of facts.

Pope had kickback agreements in place with the co-conspirators to receive roughly half of the illegally obtained funds as compensation, which she used for personal expenses that included car repairs, retail shopping, a vacation on Disney Cruise Line and expenses for her minor-aged daughter, the government said.

The plea agreement Pope signed requires her to make restitution in the amount of $230,850, which includes $150,628 to the U.S. Department of Education, $62,240 to Virginia and $17,982 to Reynolds Community College.

Pope suddenly resigned from her position at Reynolds on Oct. 5, 2017, about two days after she was confronted by a supervisor about the student aid fraud involving her goddaughter.

Eight months later, on June 18, 2018, she was hired by Virginia Union University as the schools director of undergraduate and graduate school financial aid services and scholarship programs. A VUU spokesperson said after Popes February indictment that Pope is no longer employed by the university, but didnt say when Pope left.

With Popes manipulation of the Reynolds system, the four co-conspirators collectively received $246,450 in federal financial aid and $133,152 in state financial aid from about 2011 through 2018, to unlawfully enrich themselves, according to the indictment.

Pope agreed to procure student financial aid for the parties to ensure their continued eligibility for aid at Reynolds, even when Pope knew that such co-conspirators were not eligible for student aid. Further, Pope knew and concealed the fact that the parties had failed to earn satisfactory academic performance to receive such aid, even when such individuals were not attending classes at Reynolds, the government said in its statement of facts.

For example, Pope obtained financial aid for her ex-fiance from about 2010 through 2015 while he was incarcerated in the Sussex County Jail and not attending the college. Pope and her ex-fiance agreed that the illegally obtained funds would be given to Pope to help cover the costs of raising the fiances under-age children while he was in prison, the government said.

Pope also falsified supporting documentation for the financial aid that she procured for the co-conspirators. In one case, Pope forged medical documents from Virginia Commonwealth University Health Systems, along with financial aid documents, that indicated her goddaughter had failed to meet academic eligibility due to a breast cancer diagnosis, knowing that was false, the government said.
Sweet Briar College has announced $2.9 million has been raised through its March Days of Giving, the highest total since the initiative began in 2016 following a previous administrations failed attempt to close the Amherst school.

I am profoundly grateful to everyone who contributed to Sweet Briar during the March Days of Giving, President Meredith Woo said a news release issued Tuesday. This outpouring of generosity demonstrates the love that the Colleges family and friends feel for this institution, and the pride they take in supporting Sweet Briars mission to educate women leaders.

The 10-day fundraising campaign kicked off March 1 with the campus community gathering in the Quad to plant a new Sweet Briar rose bush. Students signed a banner thanking the Sweet Briar family and also picked up some freshly baked rose cookies as the bells rang for lunch.

That evening, alumnae and friends met and exceeded the first $500,000 goal, raising $517,447 in less than 24 hours, according to the college. As in previous years, this unlocked a challenge for March 2 to 10.

Six alumnae spanning five decades committed a total of $500,000 to match the half million dollars raised. Alumnae included Cornelia Long Matson, a 1958 graduate; Pamela Hellmuth Weigandt, of the class of 1964; Frances Kirven Morse, of the 1968 graduating class, two who prefer to remain anonymous from the 1970s and Meg Price Bruno, a 1983 graduate.

This year, alumnae and friends stepped up to March Days of Giving with 1,359 gifts from around the world, the release said. Our donors reached across the United States, and many international alumnae even mailed their checks well in advance. Supporters ranged from alumnae to faculty, staff, parents (both current and former), students, and friends.

Among alumnae, the college saw a 6.2% increase in its participation rate during March Days of Giving.

All gifts to the College during March Days of Giving truly make a difference to our current and future students, the release said. With recent events on our minds, we recognize the tremendous power that philanthropy can have in helping make the world a better place.
Administrators at Virginia Commonwealth University have proposed a 3% to 6% tuition hike next fall to pay for part of the $52 million in increased costs.

A price increase will end three years of flat tuition costs.

Karol Kain Gray, VCUs chief financial officer, recommended to the board of visitors Tuesday a range of increases, leaving wiggle room as the university awaits final funding figures from the state legislature. The board will determine a final cost in May.

This year, in-state undergraduate students pay roughly $15,000 annually in tuition and mandatory fees.

Facing rising costs for salaries, student aid, maintenance and more, Virginia colleges are considering upping the price of tuition. The University of Virginia announced a 4.7% hike this year and a 3.7% jump next year. Virginia Tech is considering a range of options from keeping the cost flat to a 5% increase.

VCU expects its costs to rise by $52 million next year. About half comes from a 5% salary increase the General Assembly is expected to give to all state workers, which includes most VCU employees. VCU also expects added costs to financial aid, faculty promotions, maintenance, new faculty hires and more.

To cover some of the increased costs, VCU will raise the cost of tuition and mandatory fees. A 3% increase to tuition would generate $40 million in revenue, but it would still leave the university in a $13 million budget shortfall.

VCU is required by law to balance its budget, so it would have to reconcile the shortfall before the start of fiscal 2023.

If tuition costs rise 3%, the average in-state undergrad would pay $15,600, roughly $500 more than last year. A 6% tuition increase would set the cost at $16,000, or $900 more than a year before.

University leadership also proposed raising mandatory fees by $145, or 5%.

Currently, VCUs tuition and fees are the third most expensive among public schools in the state. The College of William & Mary is Virginias priciest public college, charging in-state undergrads roughly $24,000 annually. Virginia State University is the commonwealths most affordable option, charging about $9,000.

VCU has proposed raising its room and board by 5%. When you add it all up, the total cost to attend VCU next year will range between $26,700 and $28,200 depending on the level of the tuition increase.

But none of these increases is enough to cover the $52 million in increased costs, meaning the university is likely to make cuts to the budget, Gray said.

It wont be easy no matter how you do it, VCU president Michael Rao added.

Its up to VCU to increase revenue, too, Gray added. The school has set goals for retaining a higher percentage of its current students and attracting more out-of-state students, who pay more than double what in-state students pay.

Gray recommended VCUs tuition increase stay under 6%.

Its not the right time, she said of a 6% bump. We have to be smart. We have to grow revenue.

But one piece of the puzzle is still missing  the states contribution. The General Assembly adjourned this month without agreeing to a budget, leaving colleges in the dark as to how much money they will receive.

Theres a wide gap between what the House and Senate have proposed. The House offered $30 million in new funding for VCU, while the Senate has offered just $18 million. As part of its proposal, the House has directed colleges to raise tuition no more than 3%.

In total, VCU received $270 million in state funding this year, which represents about 40% of the schools education and general budget.

State support is really critical for VCU, Gray said.

VCUs chief financial officer said she understands the impact tuition hikes have on students and that its also the universitys responsibility to raise revenue and decrease costs.

We have to own this problem and figure out a way to get out of it, Gray said.
Virginia journalists mourn one of their own this week.

Early Saturday morning, about 2 a.m., gunfire erupted outside a Norfolk pizzeria. Sierra Jenkins, a reporter for the Daily Press and Virginian-Pilot, was one of the two young people killed in the shooting.

News reports say she was struck as she was leaving the restaurant, an awful instance of wrong place, wrong time. Just six days before, she and her family had celebrated her 25th birthday.

A social media post from the Virginian-Pilot described the staffs devastation. For two years, shes covered the stories of Hampton Roads with compassion and care, the Twitter thread reads. Sierra was funny, energetic and full of enthusiasm. We are absolutely heartbroken.

The Pilot staff learned of Jenkins death in a particularly haunting way. Originally hired as a breaking news reporter, Jenkins had advanced to covering the education beat.

However, as is common at many newspapers, including The Roanoke Times, Jenkins was part of the rotation covering weekend shifts, and that Saturday she was scheduled to work.

That morning, the Pilots editors tried to contact Jenkins to request she investigate the fatal shooting, but could not reach her. They asked another colleague to fill in, and it was that reporter who discovered Jenkins was one of the people killed.

A Norfolk native who had previously worked as a CNN Health news assistant, Jenkins had a trailblazing career ahead of her. In one of her stories filed in February, she examined a sweeping, complex topic, examining at a state and local level the battle over how divisive concepts related to race and racism should be taught in classrooms and how that battle affects teachers.

The shooting that took her life was part of a rash that unfolded throughout Hampton Roads that weekend that left four dead and at least 11 more injured, starkly illustrating the national problem with escalating gun violence, a problem residents of Roanoke are all too familiar with  and that journalists such as Jenkins have examined, in search of solutions.

Every loss of precious life that weekend, every unnecessary death brought about through this proliferation of gun violence, represents a gut-wrenching tragedy, a persons potential cut cruelly short, their loved ones bereaved and bewildered.

Jenkins was not on the job when a bullet took her life, but had she not been where she was, it would have been her job to find out as much as she could about what happened for the sake of explaining it to the public as clearly as she could. Her death cuts close to home, and not just because The Roanoke Times and the Virginian-Pilot were once sister papers.

The news arrives amid mounting evidence of the fragility of journalism as a profession, even as the services journalism provides the world could not be more vital than they are right now.

Since the beginning of March, four journalists have been killed during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

On March 1, Ukrainian television camera operator Yevhenii Sakun was killed when the Russian military shelled a TV station in Kyiv.

The next day other television towers in the country were destroyed. The Russian Defense Ministry said the strikes were carried out to thwart informational attacks against Russia.

On March 13, American documentary filmmaker Brent Renaud was shot and killed in Irpin, a city just west of Kyiv. Ukrainian officials blamed the Arkansas natives death on an attack by the Russian military. He was in the country working for TIME Studios on a project about the global refugee crisis.

PBS Newshour reporter Jane Ferguson, who was nearby when gunfire slew Renaud, described an outraged Ukrainian police officer shouting, Tell America, tell the world, what they did to a journalist.

The next day, an artillery strike in the village of Horenka, directly northwest of Kyiv, killed London-based veteran cameraman Pierre Zakrzewski and 24-year-old Ukrainian television producer Oleksandra Kuvshyno, both of whom were working for Fox News.

Zakrzewski had dual Irish and French citizenship. Months earlier in Afghanistan, he not only covered the American withdrawal and the Taliban advance but, according to his Fox colleague Greg Palkot, helped out Afghans seeking refuge.

A statement from Ukraines Ministry of Defense commenting on the killings said that the truth is the target.

These travesties are not weighted more heavily than the uncountable number of others brought about by Russian President Vladimir Putins unjustified, unconscionable invasion of Ukraine. They are one element in a vast tapestry of tragedy. But they also fit into a larger picture of another kind.

Last week also brought word of an eighth journalist slain in Mexico, which a story in the Guardian described as  one of the most dangerous countries for journalists outside war zones.

Press activist groups have decried Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obradors indifference toward the targeted slayings of media workers. Lopez Obrador is known for smearing his critics in the media and laughing off calls to tone his rhetoric down  an eerily familiar playbook.

The website of the Committee to Project Journalists keeps a database that holds even more stories of harrowing slayings and murders. However, threats to the institution of journalism and Americas freedom of the press need not be so extreme or borne from such physically dangerous conditions to engender incontrovertible and long-lasting harm.

In 2022, print journalists have to perform their jobs while dealing with the daily pressures from a metaphorical vice. From one direction come volleys of misinformation and propaganda, often spread through social media, aimed at undermining the credibility of their work and even basic, normally indisputable facts.

From another direction, economic forces reduce their numbers, not only because of loss of direct advertising revenue to internet sources, but because industries like retail chains that were once stalwart purchasers of newspaper advertising have themselves faltered in the face of online competition.

Its a daunting environment, a challenging career track, that demonstrates why the loss of a colleague like Jenkins hurts so deeply.

Knowing those obstacles would be in her path, Jenkins chose journalism. Sharing truth was her choice.
Thank you for reading!

Please log in, or sign up for a new account and purchase a subscription to continue reading.
" " This large uncut specimen of rhodonite was mined from the Ural Mountains in Russia, where the first piece of the mineral was originally found in the 18th century. koroboky/Shutterstock

As sleeping babies lay in their cribs in the 18th-century Ural Mountain villages near Sidelnikovo, Russia, parents slipped pink stones next to them, called orlets. Rocking their child's crib slowly, parents told local folklore about how eagles (orels), the king of birds, brought the same beautiful and valuable stones to their nests. By placing the rose-colored stones next to their children, the villagers hoped it would bring their children courage and acuity, like the majestic eagle.

Eventually, rare rhodonite crystals and stones became highly prized in Russia, donned by czars and fashioned into enormous ornaments. Today, this pink stone  with its notable charcoal veining  is less known for its monetary value and rarity but more for its metaphysical value as a stone of power, protection and self-love.

Advertisement

A Rose Amongst Minerals

"Rhodonite is a manganese-rich member of the pyroxenoid group of minerals," explains Sheryl Elen, research librarian at the Gemological Institute of America (GIA). "The simplified chemical composition is MnSiO 3 but is usually combined with other elements or minerals like calcium and iron."

The manganese content gives rhodonite its pink hue and, thus, the mineral's name. It was first discovered in 1790 in the Ural Mountains near Sidelnikovo. In 1819, the German naturalist Christoph Friedrich Jasche named the stone rhodonite, derived from the Greek word "rhodo," which means "rose." Despite its name, deposits of rhodonite range in color from pink to brownish to purple-red. It is usually found with streaks of black and charcoal manganese oxides crisscrossing the stone.

"The fine-grained aggregate material often has black veins or splotches," Elen says. "Its color is stable to light, meaning it won't fade. But if set in jewelry, rhodonite can be fused into a brownish or black glass under a jeweler's torch."

Advertisement

A Cultural Symbol in Russia

For centuries in Russia, orlets were given to newlyweds for protection and improved their chances of conception. After Ural masters created an exquisite rhodonite vase, Emperor Alexander III (aka Alexander the Great) increased the production of rhodonite in Russia. It soon became a famous stone to create larger decorative pieces, including tables, vases and even coffins, only available to the wealthiest citizens.

"Because it can occur in large boulders, it has been used for carving statues and other objects, including tombstones," Elen says. The largest solid block of rhodonite in the world weighed 47 tons (42.6 metric tons) and was used to carve a sarcophagus for Maria Alexandrovna, Empress of Russia and wife of Alexander II. The two are entombed next to each other in the Romanov family tomb at Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg.

Many other decorative pieces are on display at the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, including a miniature copy of the Imperial Crown Jewels including exquisite rhodonite specimens.

" " Russian Empress Maria Alexandrovna's sarcophagus (right) was carved from the largest bolder of rhodonite in history. She is entombed next to her husband Tsar Alexander II at the Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg. Wikimedia/(CC BY-SA 2.0)

Advertisement

Rhodonite is Not Expensive, But Still Valued By Many

Rhodonite is not as valuable today as it once was in Russia, mainly because it's more easily available. "Today, rhodonite can be found in many countries around the world but the more well-known deposits are Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Peru, Romania, Sweden, Russia and the United States," Elen explains. In fact, Massachusetts has such productive rhodonite deposits that it was declared the state gem in 1979.

Rhodonite is easily mined today, as well, Elen says, which contributes to its accessibility. Some deposits can still be mined with simple tools and techniques like picks and hammers, but large boulders require advanced mining machinery to be extracted.

Valuable transparent, deep, red-colored crystals can still be found but those are scarce. "Rhodonite is fairly inexpensive, but high-quality crystals of this mineral can be more expensive due to their rarity," says Elen. "These crystals have perfect cleavage in two directions, low hardness [5.5-6.0 on the Mohs hardness scale] and poor toughness, making them difficult gemstones to cut. For this reason, faceted rhodonite is typically sold as a collector's stone rather than for jewelry use."

Today, Russian children still exchange rhodonite eggs at Easter to express friendship and affection. In the jewelry and gem market, the mineral is often found carved into cabochons (polished, rounded stones), carvings, tumbled stones and beads, Elen says. It holds metaphysical significance to crystal experts, healers and enthusiasts.

It's also been nicknamed the "stone of love" because many crystal enthusiasts believe it can stimulate and reactivate one's self-love and reduce anxiety, so it's also associated with the heart chakra.

People usually buy and sell rhodonite aggregate necklaces, bracelets, figurines, and stones for their aesthetic and healing value. It's widey available in shops online; prices range from a few dollars to a few hundred dollars depending on size, color and setting.

Though its value as a rare stone has changed since the 18th century, it's still an important mineral worldwide. Whether you're buying it because it matches your favorite pair of shoes or you want to invite more self-love and confidence into your life, know that this rose-colored stone is full of history, beauty and mystical properties. However, we don't recommend putting stones in your baby's crib  perhaps next to it.

" " This 19th century Russian cup was designed by The Yekaterinburg Imperial Lapidary Works and is currently part of the extensive rhodonite collection at the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. The State Hermitage Museum

Now That's Interesting In 2007, Nikolai Zavadsky, a 54-year-old history teacher, plead guilty of stealing more than 200 items from the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia. Among the items stolen were a silver gilded frame with rhodonite gem pieces. Zavadsky's late wife, Larisa, who was a long-serving curator at the museum, pawned many of the items off. Larisa died of a heart attack during an audit of the collection.
COLUMBIA, S.C.  At the first Certified SC Showcase, South Carolina farmers and food producers connected with local and regional buyers from grocery stores, wholesalers, and restaurants  an opportunity for South Carolina agriculture to show off its abundant produce, specialty food products and strong industry support.

The event grew out of the South Carolina Department of Agricultures successful Grower-Buyer Mash-Up, which for the past four years has brought together Certified South Carolina food producers and buyers to network and learn. This year, SCDA moved the event to the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center and expanded its scope.

Gov. Henry McMaster addressed the 230 attendees at the March 14-15 event, praising it as an opportunity to communicate, collaborate and cooperate.

Commissioner of Agriculture Hugh Weathers explained the importance of showcasing South Carolina farmer and products in such a setting. Were putting South Carolina farming on the map, Weathers said. During COVID, we learned that people want to know more about where their foods coming from, whos growing it, and if I can trust them  and sourcing more Certified South Carolina products is one way to answer those questions.

Eric McClam, who runs Columbia farm City Roots, called the Showcase incredibly beneficial. McClam said, It was an intimate event that allowed us to reconnect and foster existing relationships and to gain new sales with regional and national grocery retailers and food service distribution companies.

The educational section of the event included a panel discussion featuring buyers from various outlets, from wholesale to grocery to restaurants. They explained how they work with growers to ensure freshness and maximum profit.

Being able to market your own brand and share your story is key, because then we can share that with customers, Lauren Horning, Local Product Specialist with Freshpoint, told farmers.

The event also incorporated The Taste of South Carolina, a networking reception featuring Certified South Carolina hors doeuvres, sponsored by Arbor One and AgSouth Farm Credit. The Taste of South Carolina was formerly held each year during the SC AgriBiz and Farm Expo in Florence.

Event lead Katie Pfeiffer, SCDAs market development coordinator, said the inaugural Certified SC Showcase was a huge success  and South Carolina farmers can expect an expanded event next year.

We loved the opportunity to show off South Carolinas diverse, year-round bounty of food and farm products and the people who make it possible, Pfeiffer said. South Carolina has so much to offer.
The House set H. 5150, the General Appropriation Bill, and H. 5151, the joint resolution making appropriations from the Capital Reserve Fund, for special order on March 14 to begin its consideration of the Fiscal Year 2022-2023 State Government Budget on the House Floor.

Approved by the House, and sent to the Senate, was H. 4601, County Minimum Ambulance Service Standards. County councils would need to have at least one licensed ambulance service operating within its county under this proposal. They will not have to fund them if the private sector provides the service. Cities could set up, or contract for, these services as well. Mutual agreements are permitted to ensure these minimum service levels are met.

The House amended, approved, and sent to the Senate H. 4837, a bill establishing requirements and authorization that allows a not-for-profit program to operate optometry mobile units to visit Title I public schools and provide services onsite to their students.

The House recommitted H. 4946, legislation which states beginning July 1, 2022, the Department of Agriculture will establish the South Carolina Agricultural Tax Exemption Card Program as the sole method for obtaining farm and agricultural sales tax exemptions.

The House returned S. 1090 to the Senate with amendments. The bill explicitly reaffirms the Department of Employment and Workforces authority to set a weekly maximum amount of unemployment benefits that an individual may receive in a week for the legitimate legislative purpose of ensuring the solvency of the unemployment insurance trust fund and that there are adequate funds to pay unemployment insurance benefits to individuals unemployed through no fault of their own. The maximum weekly benefit amount set each year by DEW within the range established in statute must be published on the Departments website.

After adopting the proposed Committee amendment, the House amended and sent H. 3600 to the Senate. Those House amendments made minimal changes regarding highway crossing and helmet requirements. H. 3600 extensively addresses the subject of utility terrain vehicles.

This bill would define the term utility terrain vehicle and provide for the registration and operation on highways and streets (to include side-by-side, four-wheel drive, off-road vehicle, transporting individuals and cargo or both, tires, width, steering and seating).The bill also addresses speed and engine power parameters to ensure they are over the size of UTVs designed for young people. UTVs must be registered like a passenger vehicle. They would be exempt from county property tax and subject for registration renewal biennially. They are subject to user fees for electric, hydrogen, and fuels other than motor fuel. Other requirements are: unobscured license plate, registration, proof of ownership, liability insurance and a $10 biennial fee. UTVs may only travel on roads with a 55 mph speed limit or less, but UTVs may cross at an intersection where the road has a posted speed limit of more than 55 mph. It may be operated on an island road not accessible by a bridge designed for use by automobile. Operator must be at least 16 years old and hold a valid drivers license. The operator must have in his possession while operating on a street or highway: license plate and registration certificate, proof of liability insurance and drivers license. If the operator is sixteen and holds a conditional drivers license, the vehicle may only be driven during daylight hours. Registered UTVs may not be operated by anyone who holds a beginners permit holder, even if accompanied by a licensed driver, a moped operators permit, a temporary alcohol license, a route restricted license, a provisional drivers license; or solely a motorcycle license. No child under eight years old may be a passenger in a registered UTV while operated on a road. Drivers and passengers are required to have helmets and googles. Registered UTVs must be equipped with Type 2 seat belt assembly (pelvic and upper torso restraints), operable headlights, brake lights, taillights and turn signals. Drivers and passengers of a registered UTV, while being operated on a roadway, must wear a fastened safety belt.

SCDMV must not register or renew the registration of a UTV unless a certificate of title has been issued to owner or application delivered by owner to SCDMV. The SCDMV may require a bill of sale, invoice, or other sales document to properly title. Certificates of titles issued under this subsection must be branded off road use only. UTVs are exempt from the State Infrastructure Tax, but subject to sales tax

The House amended S. 947 and sent it to the Senate. The bill exempts the electric cooperatives of South Carolina from being regulated as a driving school by exempting an association formed by a group of electric cooperatives pursuant to the extent that it trains member cooperative employees. The House amendment allows that all driver training schools licensed as pertaining to this chapter may offer financial assistance to students who attend public South Carolina high schools to cover the fees associated with the business of training or educating persons to drive or operate motor vehicles.

The House non-concurred in Senate amendments to H. 3590. The bill would provide that public school districts may hire noncertified teachers if a certified teacher is not available (if certain circumstances and requirements are met).

The House amended, approved and sent to the Senate H. 4866, a joint resolution to provide for a three-year pilot program for public school-based canneries. The resolution outlines that the Department of Education, in conjunction with the Food Systems and Safety Program of the Clemson Extension Service, shall plan, develop, institute, and oversee a pilot program of three public school-based community canning sites where the general public may bring locally grown produce to be canned for their personal use. The purpose of this program is to enable families to safely preserve and store food grown by them for personal consumption through the use of research-based information, procedures and instruction concerning canning food and the use of industrial grade equipment and supplies that allow for faster processing of fruits and vegetables on a larger scale than can be done at home. These public school based community canneries shall provide community training programs for food preservation using canning. Use of the canning facilities and canning supplies must be provided to the community with limits on the amount available per family.

The resolution also outlines that community members using the facilities must sign an agreement not to sell any of the food that is canned at the cannery. The pilot program will run from Year 2023 to 2026. The bill provides for responsibilities of Clemson Extension and the Department of Education. A performance report must be provided before Jan. 1, 2026. The report will address each cannery and make recommendations regarding whether the program should be continued. The provisions of this joint resolution only may be enforced when the General Assembly appropriates the necessary funding.

The House amended and gave second reading to H. 3958, legislation that outlines that a coroner is considered a public safety officer if killed in the line of duty in counties which have both a coroner and a medical examiner. In addition, the bill adds that a coroner or designee may possess and administer an opioid antidote in accordance with the requirements of the South Carolina Overdose Prevention Act.

If you have a comment or opinion concerning the matters discussed in this report, or if I may be of assistance to you at any time, please feel free to call your legislative office in Columbia (803-734-3142), or my home (843-395-9408). Thank you for the opportunity to serve you in the House of Representatives.
Seguin, TX (78155)

Today

Cloudy early, then thunderstorms developing this afternoon. A few storms may be severe. High around 85F. Winds SSW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 70%..

Tonight

Some clouds. Low near 65F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph.
 The Sentencing Project and Fair and Just Prosecution produce "Felony Murder: An On-Ramp for Extreme Sentencing" | Main | Is Congress finally on the verge of equalizing crack and powder cocaine sentences? 

I just came across this interesting recent local article from Nebraska, headlined "Prison officials wrote a bill to release prisoners earlier. Theyre applying the law in a way that doesnt." The story it tells is yet another reminder of the myriad challenges that can attend effectively reforming and effectively administering our sentencing and corrections systems. Here is part of the story:

In 2011, the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services wrote a bill that would allow well-behaved prisoners the chance to shorten their time behind bars. Eleven years later, that same department is applying the resulting law in a way neither the state senator who sponsored the bill nor the then-director of Nebraskas prisons intended.

Prison officials now shorten a prisoners final release date, but never change the day that prisoner becomes eligible for parole. The result: Thousands of prisoners sentenced under the law have potentially stayed in prison days, weeks or months longer than the laws authors intended.

The debate over semantics  namely, the meaning of three dozen words buried in a state law  has made its way to the Nebraska Supreme Court, whose decision could shorten the stays of thousands of people in the states chronically overcrowded prisons....

On one side: The department argues that its properly following the 11-year-old law when it comes to calculating when a prisoner is eligible for parole. If theres a flaw, its in the language of the law itself, state lawyers have argued in court.

On the other: Robert Heist II, who has been imprisoned since 2016, argues that the department is misreading the law and delaying parole eligibility.

In some cases, prisoners end up being released with no supervision  jamming out in prison-speak  before they even become parole eligible....

The question now before the Nebraska Supreme Court: Should the three days a month earned for good behavior be applied to the date when a prisoner first becomes eligible for parole? The state senator who sponsored the bill and the former head of prisons say yes. Making prisoners parole eligible sooner was an intended result of the bill, both Council and Houston told the Flatwater Free Press. I introduced this bill as a means of providing additional ways to reduce the prison population and get people parole eligible, Council said in an interview....

But the state is simply following the letter of the law, state lawyers have argued to the Nebraska Supreme Court. That law as written, they say, doesnt allow for the extra good time days to go toward parole eligibility....

This interpretation of the law has potentially affected thousands of prisoners who could have had at least a little time shaved off their sentences. But the most egregious cases are those prisoners who jam out before even becoming parole eligible.

In 2019, the department told Heist that 62 prisoners at the time had tentative release dates that preceded their parole eligibility because of their earned good time. As of March 2022, the prisons roster listed as many as 306 individuals sentenced since 2011 who were released before they became eligible for parole.

When you become parole eligible after youve done your sentence, that doesnt make any sense, Heist said in an interview. Those prisoners  whose sentences should have included a shot at parole  become guaranteed jam outs, Heist said.

Under questioning at the Nebraska Supreme Court, the states lawyers didnt dispute that inverted sentences  when mandatory release actually comes before parole eligibility  can and do happen. Yes, it is possible that [inverted sentences] can occur, Scott Straus, assistant attorney general for the state, said during oral arguments. However, the plain language of the statute does not let us even get to whether that result is absurd or not.
STORY: Employees at Disney are putting pressure on the company to speak out against Floridas controversial Dont Say Gay bill.

The company has faced growing internal criticism over its public stance on the bill, which would limit the discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity in schools.

Thats culminated in a week of protests, dubbed the Disney Do Better Walkout.

Its organizers are calling on the company to stop campaign contributions for politicians supporting the bill and to develop a plan protecting employees from the legislation.

They also want Disney to halt construction in Florida, home of their flagship Walt Disney World theme park, until the measure is repealed.

Some 60 employees, like technical director Taylor White, gathered at a park outside Los Angeles on Tuesday to make those demands clear.

People like working for Disney. They grew up watching it. They grew up listening to it. It's something that they're proud of and they want to be proud of Disney again to feel comfortable working there."

Disney attempted to address employee concerns at a virtual town hall on Monday.

CEO Bob Chapek pledged to use the moment as a catalyst for change  and said the company had made a mistake in remaining publicly silent on the issue.

Ahead of Tuesday's demonstrations, Disneys streaming unit Disney+ offered public support for its LGBTQIA+ colleagues on Twitter, pledging to be a source for quote inclusive, empowering and authentic stories that unite us in our shared humanity.
     23.6 37   30 2.33 729104.35    3238 13.8%     Hinsland  0.36%     A  0.1%  23.62 8529 20 70.25  70  PLDT90.78 56.44%   16
OMAHA -- During the course of the pandemic, it has become clear that the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 can infect not only humans but also animals.

Many scientists, in fact, think the virus, SARS-CoV-2, initially emerged from bats. Studies have found antibodies to the virus in white-tailed deer, and another study last fall found signs of widespread infections in tissue samples collected from Iowa deer. The virus also has been found in a variety of other animals, from big cats in zoos to raccoons and skunks in the wild.

For now, capacity is limited across the U.S. to monitor animals for pathogens such as the coronavirus that can spread to humans, said Dr. Bryan Buss, who serves as Nebraska's state public health veterinarian.

But that is poised to change. Recently, the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services received a $100,000 grant that will allow the agency to work with a number of partners to develop a surveillance system for such diseases.

"There's really a limited amount of information about what's happening in our wildlife population," Buss said, "so it's pretty important and timely work."

In addition to looking for the virus in as many animals as possible, he said, another goal is to establish a sustainable system for reporting test results electronically. Plans call for building that system on an existing electronic reporting connection with the Nebraska Veterinary Diagnostic Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, which tests animals for rabies.

The lab will conduct all of the coronavirus testing under the new initiative. The animals submitted for rabies testing also will be tested for the coronavirus. Other partners, including the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission and Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo & Aquarium, will provide samples collected from animals for testing. Buss said the researchers also hope to work with humane societies to see if there are ways to test other domestic animals, such as feral cats.

Funding for the project was awarded by the Council for State and Territorial Epidemiologists.

Separately, the U.S. Department of Agriculture is launching a series of projects aimed at creating an early warning system for zoonotic diseases, those that can be spread between animals and people. That agency has received funding through the American Rescue Plan Act  $300 million, according to the New York Times.

Buss said the projects can complement each other.

"The more we can learn collectively, looking at this in a number of ways ... the better off we'll be," said Buss, a career epidemiology field officer with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention assigned to Nebraska.

Creating a surveillance system in Nebraska is important, he said, because all of the animals that live in the state create many opportunities for contact between people and animals. Farms and ranches account for 90% of the state's land area, and 1.2 million acres are open for hunting, trapping and fishing. The state's three zoos together draw 2.65 million visitors a year.

Right now, Buss said, the overall risk of transmission between humans and animals is low, as is the risk of humans getting the virus back from animals.

But researchers, he said, are concerned that new variants could emerge in animals and spread to humans and that animals could serve as reservoirs capable of spreading the virus to other species.

"It's worth looking at, and we're trying to build this for the future, not only for SARS-CoV-2," he said, "but for other diseases that spread from animals."

The largest potential source of animal samples for testing under the Nebraska project, he said, are deer killed by hunters.

The Nebraska Game and Parks Commission has banked about 1,500 lymph nodes from deer, which were collected last fall with hunters' permission at state check stations that were testing for chronic wasting disease.

Buss said the partners plan to reach out to hunters for permission to test the nodes for the coronavirus. The plan is not to test all of the banked nodes but a representative sample from across the state. This fall, the partners will ask hunters upfront for permission to test for both illnesses.

Todd Nordeen, the commission's big game disease and research program manager, said the agency also has sent some nasal swab samples from pronghorn antelope and elk that have been briefly captured for other agency studies. Those studies look primarily at the movement, distribution and resources used by wildlife in western Nebraska. Some blood serum samples also may be used.

Nordeen, who is based in Alliance, said the immediate aim is to see how widespread the virus has become across species. In the meantime, the project already has bolstered coordination among agencies that are tasked with dealing with such diseases.

"There's still a lot unknown about (SARS-CoV-2) in animals," he said. "This effort should help us gain more answers in that regard."

Dr. Bruce Broderson, director of the veterinary diagnostic lab, said antelope and elk samples will be tested soon.

"It'll be interesting to see what species are affected," he said.

Dr. Sarah Woodhouse, the Omaha zoo's director of animal health, said zoo staff have chosen to sample animals they think are at greater risk of getting COVID-19 based on animal infections in zoos around the world and on which animals can get closest to guests.

The zoo has been monitoring its snow leopards  it's home to a pair, a male and a female  with weekly fecal collections. Both have been negative. Now they will add tigers. Two of the zoo's tigers previously tested positive for COVID-19 but since have been clear. Also on the list are two ambassador cheetahs that go to events.

Also to be monitored are the African wild cat and coatimundi in the zoo's Desert Dome, two species of otters in the Lied Jungle as well as orangutans, siamangs and squirrel monkeys in the jungle's Adventure Trail area. A coatimundi tested positive at another zoo, and otters fall in the same family as mink, which have been subject to large outbreaks on farms.

Woodhouse said the state health department also is helping collect swabs of guano from the jungle's Egyptian fruit bats.

"It'll be comforting to know we're doing some surveillance and making sure our animals aren't being exposed to COVID, both for the sake of our animals and keepers and for the sake of our guests," she said.

The zoo, Woodhouse said, also plans to participate in an evolving USDA-Animal Plant Health Inspection Service study. That project will involve testing blood samples collected from zoo animals before and after the pandemic began for antibodies to COVID, which would provide evidence of exposure to the virus.

If the researchers find the virus in the samples they're testing, Buss said, they will attempt to sequence its genome at either the Nebraska Public Health Laboratory or the USDA National Veterinary Services Laboratory.

Scientists recently identified a new, highly mutated version of the virus in white-tailed deer in Ontario. A similar viral sequence was found in a person in the area who had close contact with deer. No evidence has been found, however, that the deer variant is spreading among or poses any added risk to people, the New York Times reported.

Buss said it's not well understood how the strain evolved. Among the things the Nebraska researchers want to know is whether a reservoir of the virus exists in some other species or there is more widespread circulation among deer than is currently known.

If the researchers find the virus in the animals they're testing, Buss said, they plan to go back and look for it in other species in the area, such as rodents and rabbits.

"We may wind up with very few positives," he said. "But if we do find it, we're going to be pretty aggressive in doing some investigation in the wild."

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
OMAHA -- Nomi Health, which offers COVID-19 testing in Nebraska, will offer $1 million in free behavioral health care to front-line health care workers in Nebraska and a handful of other states beginning this spring.

The free virtual care will be offered through a partnership with Tava Health, a 2-year-old company that typically provides such care through large employers such as hospitals, school districts and universities.

Nomi has offered COVID testing in Nebraska throughout much of the pandemic, first under contract as part of the state's TestNebraska program and later through its own community testing sites.

Dallen Allred, Tava's CEO and co-founder, said the free care will be primarily video-based talk therapy offered by providers in the communities that are being served. The company has contracts with therapists all over the country, including roughly 15 in Nebraska.

Services in Nebraska will start June 1, he said. A Tava team was slated to start reaching out to hospitals and clinics in Nebraska this week to help them begin getting the word out to employees.

Rebecca Langle, Nomi Health's director of corporate social responsibility, said the program is open to those who consider themselves front-line health care workers. Each person will have access to 12 sessions through the end of the year. The service also will be offered in Florida, Texas, Utah, Colorado and Hawaii.

Once a front-line health care worker signs up, Allred said, the company will determine what issues they're struggling with and whether they have any preferences in provider specialty or gender. If a patient meets with a therapist but later changes providers, their clinical notes will follow them.

While many employee assistance programs are designed for short-term use, he said, the Tava program is designed to work with short-, medium- and long-term cases.

With COVID-19, he said, demand for such services has skyrocketed. The good news is that awareness and acceptance of behavioral health issues is growing and the stigma is being pulled down bit by bit.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
SIOUX CITY -- The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will host a public meeting next month in Sioux City to provide a look at planned operations on the river this year.

The meeting, in which corps representatives will provide updates on runoff forecasts and how they will affect the river, is scheduled for 4 p.m. April 12 at the Betty Strong Encounter Center at the Lewis & Clark Interpretive Center, 900 Larsen Park Road.

The corps conducts spring and fall public meetings each year in locations throughout the Missouri River Basin to discuss operation plans for the river's six reservoirs.

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.
SIOUX CITY -- A Sioux City man has been sentenced to more than seven years in federal prison for selling methamphetamine.

Daniel Dickey, 34, pleaded guilty in October in U.S. District Court in Sioux City to one count of conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine. He was sentenced on March 15 to 93 months on prison.

According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, Dickey and other conspired from December 2020 through April to sell more than 30 pounds of meth in the Sioux City area. Dickey was recruited to help receive multiple shipments of liquid meth for a Texas-based distribution conspiracy, which included importation of liquid meth plus vehicle transport of the drug from Mexico to Texas, then Iowa and South Dakota.

Law enforcement officers conducted several controlled drug buys with Dickey in March and April 2021 in Sioux City, resulting in seizure of more than 1 pound of meth, liquid ready for chemical conversion into meth and about $40,000 in drug proceeds. Dickey also admitted to wiring money from drug sales to sources in Texas and Mexico.

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.
SOUTH SIOUX CITY -- The Norm Waitt Sr. YMCA on Tuesday announced plans to expand the South Sioux City complex.

At an estimated cost of around $4 million, the project includes an indoor play area and three to four new classrooms for childcare and school-age programming, the YMCA said in a press release.

Phase 1 -- renovating space in the current facility to accommodate the new programming -- is already underway. Subsequent phases will include an 11,000-square-foot expansion to the east of the current facility, which sits along the shore of the Missouri River.

The later phases are expected to begin after the majority of the fundraising has been completed, according to the press release. The capital campaign is underway, along with an operational campaign to raise an additional $2 million to $3 million.

An opening date is slated for January 2024.

The new classroom spaces will enable the YMCA to add an additional 82 spots in their early childcare programming, according to the press release. Evening care will be included in the expansion to accommodate parents who work second-shifts.

"The new addition will meet the needs of the (community's) growing population especially in children under age 18. This expansion will provide full-time and part-time care for children ages 6 weeks through 12 years old along with nontraditional times to include opportunities for care through the evening and early mornings," the YMCA press release said.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 1

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.
Warning: Video is disturbing.

PHILADELPHIA  The Pennsylvania SPCA is asking for help after an attack by two dogs on a family cat in Philadelphia was caught on camera.

The video of two males allegedly encouraging the dogs to attack the cat in a Philadelphia neighborhood has sparked an investigation, according to a report from Newsweek.

In the video above from CNN affiliate WPVI, one person can be heard encouraging the dogs, saying "good boy" as the attack continued. Video of the incident was released by the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

The incident happened Tuesday morning. The video shows two people walking by a home when they seemingly allow two dogs to attack a neighborhood cat named Buddy.

"There is a sound heard on the video that indicates they are encouraging the dogs," said Nicole Wilson, the PSPCA's director of humane law enforcement. "That continues until a resident of one property comes out and sees what's happening and everybody attempts to pull the dogs off the cat."

The Pennsylvania SPCA says the six- or seven-year-old cat suffered serious internal injuries. He currently has a 50% chance of survival.

Authorities say the suspects face serious felony charges since animal laws have been strengthened in Pennsylvania over the past seven years.

"Subsequent to Libre's Law passing, crimes like this are felonies. Whenever you are putting another animal on an animal  that's animal fighting," said Wilson.

Libre's Law was named after a Boston terrier puppy who was found emaciated on a Lancaster County farm, but was rescued and given a chance at life.

Anyone with information about this attack is asked to call the organization's cruelty hotline immediately at 866-601-7722 or email cruelty@pspca.org. Tips can be left anonymously.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
An Omaha senator's second attempt at improving food assistance for convicted drug offenders in Nebraska cleared a hurdle Tuesday, but the bill could ultimately meet the same fate as the failed first attempt.

The bill, LB121, which Sen. Megan Hunt introduced in 2021, would allow a person convicted of drug offenses  possession, use or distribution  access to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, commonly called food stamps, as long as they were complying with probation, parole or post-release supervision.

The bill passed its first round of debate on a 25-17 vote.

Hunt has been trying to pass a bill to improve food assistance for drug felons since at least 2019. That initial bill was effectively killed when Hunt fell short of the 33 votes she needed to pass a filibuster-ending cloture motion.

Hunt argued LB121 was fundamental to changing the culture of the state, and would improve the quality of life for all Nebraskans by helping those in poverty. She said it makes no sense for young people who are convicted of a drug offense to not have access to food when they are older.

"I believe in second chances," Hunt said.

Under Nebraska law, people with three or more felony convictions for drug use or possession, or just one felony conviction for drug sale or distribution, are banned from receiving SNAP. People with one or two convictions for use or possession are only eligible for SNAP if they participated in an approved treatment program.

Meanwhile, other felons, including rapists, robbers and murderers, face no such bar to getting food assistance, Hunt said.

Because SNAP is a federally funded program, Hunt said the bill would cost nothing for Nebraska taxpayers.

Supporters, including Sens. Steve Lathrop and Terrell McKinney of Omaha, said LB121 would help reduce recidivism rates by eliminating the barrier of food access many drug convicts face upon their re-entry into society.

"What is the harm of allowing an individual to get SNAP benefits?" McKinney said.

Sen. Julie Slama of Sterling said she was "whole-heartedly opposed" to LB121, arguing Nebraska should not expand government benefits to criminals. She said she would support amending state law to ban other convicts, including rapists and murders, from accessing SNAP as well.

Though she only spoke for a few minutes on Tuesday, Slama said she intends to filibuster LB121 in the second round of debate.

Hunt said she is prepared to use her "tools" as a lawmaker, including legislative procedures and negotiations, to overcome a future filibuster.

"A lot can change in a matter of hours," Hunt said.

World-Herald reporter Martha Stoddard contributed to this report.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
SPRINGFIELD  Members of the Illinois Firefighters Association joined state legislators at a news conference Wednesday to outline a measure that they claim would recruit more long-term volunteer firefighters and EMS personnel by offering them a tax credit.

Senate Bill 3027 would provide a $500 tax credit to those who serve as volunteer firefighters or EMS personnel. To qualify for the tax credit, volunteers must work for a fire department or fire protection district for at least nine months and not receive more than $10,000 in compensation for those services during the taxable year.

Sen. Christopher Belt, D-Swansea, chief sponsor of the bill, said offering the tax credit would help address the shortage of firefighter and EMS personnel at departments that rely on volunteers.

These individuals give up their personal time that could be spent with their families to ensure the well-being of our states residents with no monetary incentive, Belt said.

The bill states that if the tax credit exceeds the tax liability for the year, the excess can be applied to the earliest tax year in which there is a tax liability. The credit will not reduce a taxpayer's liability to less than zero.

During a news conference March 18, Belt noted that if the bill is approved, it would cost about $20 million to $22 million in lost revenue to implement it. Belt said the cost upfront pales in comparison to the lives lost without volunteer firefighters and EMS workers.

Margaret Vaughn, government affairs director at the Illinois Firefighters Association, said the number of emergency calls to fire departments has tripled over the past 20 years, with most calls being for EMS, while the number of volunteer emergency workers continues to decrease.

Vaughn told the story of a fire at a 100-unit apartment dwelling in Silvis, a blaze that, according to National Fire Protection Association standards, should have had 30 firefighters facing it. But only five firefighters showed up.

That is a public safety crisis, Vaughn said.

Vaughn said the aging population, additional training requirements and new policies have been contributing factors in the plummeting number of emergency workers. Training requirements vary by the fire department and district, she said.

National Fire Protection Association standard 1710 sets the minimum requirements for the number of firefighters needed when deploying fire suppression operations, EMS operations and other operations. NFPA standard 1720 establishes the minimum number of volunteers needed to assist professional firefighters.

Rep. Tom Bennett, R-Gibson City, said passing the measure would help address staffing issues in rural areas that cannot afford full-time firefighters. He noted that the incentive can attract new volunteers to keep communities safe while showing appreciation for their service.

They dont do it for the money (or) do it for the glory, Bennett said. They do it because they are committed to their communities, their neighbors and their families and they want to help.

The measure passed the Senate unanimously but awaits further consideration in the House. The House Revenue and Finance Committee is expected to discuss uncertainty as to how the tax credit would be implemented Thursday morning.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
Planned Parenthood North Central States, which includes Nebraska and Iowa, has received $20 million from MacKenzie Scott, part of the $275 million the philanthropist and author is giving to Planned Parenthood and its 21 affiliates.

The gift to Planned Parenthood North Central States, which also includes Minnesota, South Dakota and North Dakota, is the largest one-time donation in the affiliate's history.

The donation will pay for sexual and reproductive health care, comprehensive sex education and advocacy in the five-state region.

Scott, the former wife of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, also announced this week that she was donating $11 million to Habitat for Humanity of Omaha. The donation is part of the $436 million that she is giving to Habitat for Humanity International and 84 of its U.S. affiliates.

Andi Curry Grubb, Nebraska executive director of Planned Parenthood North Central States, said organization leaders are exploring ideas for innovating how health care is delivered and will identify more specific strategies this spring and summer before they are adopted.

The North Central States affiliate operates 28 health centers and a telehealth program in the five-state region, serving more than 100,000 patients a year.

Organization officials noted that the gift comes at a critical time for abortion access. The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to release a decision this summer on a case challenging Roe v. Wade, the decision that established the right to abortion.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
DES MOINES -- Schools would be required to post their classroom materials and library books online for parents to see  but not twice annually as previously proposed  under school transparency legislation moving in the Iowa House.

Majority Republicans in the Iowa Legislature have pledged to address school transparency after hearing from parents who have expressed concerns about library books and classroom materials they deem to be obscene.

Statehouse Republicans are taking different approaches to the legislation. On Wednesday, House Republicans continued their work advancing their bill, House File 2499.

Our intent here is not to give arbitrary work to teachers, said Rep. Garrett Gobble, R-Ankeny, who teaches in the Ankeny school district and who worked on the new amendment to the original House bill.

We want to make it meaningful and show parents how to engage. But we cant engage for the parents. These resources would be there for the parents to access, but theyd still have to make the decision to access.

Rep. Phil Thompson, R-Jefferson who ran the bill in Wednesdays budget subcommittee hearing, said he has not yet discussed the House proposal with Senate Republicans. He said he has focused on working with his House Republican colleagues and representatives from Gov. Kim Reynolds office.

Reynolds legislative liaison spoke during Wednesdays subcommittee hearing on the House bill.

Thompson said even with the recent changes, the bill will accomplish House Republicans original intent.

We can accomplish the intent of the bill, which is more transparency for parents, Thompson said. This bill is workable for teachers and still accomplishes that.

Advocates for public schools and school boards expressed reservations with the proposal, including the amount of training and time it will take to prepare teachers to upload their curriculum to a new website. But those advocates also said they appreciated the recent changes, which they feel move the bill in a positive direction from the perspective of educators.

The bill also adds some social studies and civics requirements, including a requirement that a student score at least 70 percent on a civics test in order to graduate.

Senate Republicans are weighing their own school transparency proposals, including one that would allow parents to sue educators who distribute materials that any parent deems to be obscene.

In order to send a proposal to Reynolds for her signature, the House and Senate will have to agree on one bill.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
DES MOINES -- Legislation that supporters say will update and repurpose state unemployment compensation to focus on finding jobs for out-of-work Iowans was approved in the House and sent to the Senate on Wednesday.

The bill, as amended, would cut the length of time Iowans can receive unemployment insurance benefits during a year from 26 weeks  the same as 38 states  to 16, less than all but four states. In cases of a business closure, benefits would be reduced from 39 weeks to 26.

House File 2355 would give a modern mission to Iowa Workforce Development and our unemployment system focusing on re-employment, new skills and new abilities so our workers can fill the modern jobs of today and tomorrow, Rep. Mike Bousselot, R-Ankeny, said before the law was approved 58-37 after more than four hours of debate.

The legislation updates a system from the 1930s when unemployment compensation was the sole safety net for out-of-work Iowans, he said.

That safety net has become too comfortable, according to Gov. Kim Reynolds. In her January Condition of the Sate speech, she told legislators, Government has taken away the need or desire to work. The safety net has become a hammock.

So the Republican majorities in the Iowa House and Senate approved changes Bousselot said would refocus unemployment on re-employment rather than just being a safety net.

Democrats could not disagree more, countered Rep. Bruce Hunter, D-Des Moines, who offered several amendments to raise the minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $15 by 2026, prohibit employers asking or requiring job applicants to disclose their criminal history, reinstate Chapter 20 collective bargaining for public employees the Legislature cut in 2017; and increase or create tax credits for child care and housing.

Make no mistake, we in the Democratic Party are going to end what, in my opinion, has been an attack on the workers of this state for the last 12 years, Hunter said, referring to the time the GOP has controlled the House.

We are going to treat workers not as an inconvenience if they're unemployed, but as a valuable cog of this state, deserving of respect and deserving of all the assistance we can give them to find a job that will not only increase their wages, but increase the economy and the well-being of this state.

Without amendments addressing access to affordable housing and child care, Democrats said, the bill does nothing to address Iowas worker shortage.

There are, on average, 28,000 unemployment compensation claimants each month, Rep. Dave Jacoby, D-Coralville, said, but there are more than 50,000 job openings. Reducing benefits wont change that, he said.

In the Senate, Democrats offered amendments to exempt short-term, seasonal workers from job search requirements if they are laid off but are returning to the same job or industry and exempts certain workers from requirement to take lower-paying jobs when their employment is interrupted by unforeseen circumstances or seasonal layoffs.

Democrats questioned the need for the changes, which they said disrespects Iowa workers. The unemployment trust fund has a balance of $1.4 billion, Rep. Kirsten Running-Marquardt, D-Cedar Rapids, said, and is one of the healthiest in the nation.

Iowas January unemployment rate was 3.7 percent, down from 4.4 percent a year earlier. Iowa Workforce Development reported about 62,700 Iowans were out of work, down 2,200 from December.

The bill would have required an unemployed worker to wait one week before becoming eligible for benefits, which is the case in 43 states. Bousselots amendment to strike that, making unemployed Iowans eligible for benefits upon losing their job, was approved. However, the Senate was expected to put it back in, despite Democratic opposition.

There is an immediate impact on working families here, said Sen. Nate Boulton, D-Des Moines. That missing week of benefits is immediately hurtful and impactful.

State benefits range from $823 a week in Massachusetts to $235 in Mississippi. Iowas rate of $481 a week is 58 percent of the Massachusetts rate and twice Mississippis.

HF 2355 also would change the requirements for taking a job that pays less than the unemployed Iowans previous job.

Under current law, a person on unemployment must take a job if offered based on their length of time on unemployment. The longer a person is on benefits, the lower wages they must accept. If they refuse a job offer that meets the income threshold, benefits stop. Now a person receiving unemployment benefits has six weeks before they must accept a lower paying job.

HF 2355 would shorten that time frame. After one week, a person on unemployment would have to accept a job offering 90 percent of previous wages. That would drop to 80 percent after three weeks, 75 percent after five until they would be required to take a job at 60 percent of their previous wage after eight weeks.

Under the current plan, after 18 weeks of unemployment, a person has to accept a job at 65 percent of their previous pay level. Most people have found a job by 17 weeks, Bousselot said.

The bill also changes the definition of misconduct. Employees discharged for misconduct, as defined in administrative rules, are not eligible for unemployment benefits. While most of the definition is retained, the bill lists 16 specific acts as misconduct but does not limit misconduct to those acts.

Love 1 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 2
The days of being forced at airport security checkpoints to remove laptops and liquids from carry-on bags may be coming to an end.

The Transportation Security Administration announced last week that it is spending $781.2 million for hundreds of scanners that use technology employed in hospitals to examine internal organs to more quickly and thoroughly scan carry-on bags for weapons and explosives. That means you can leave your laptops, liquids and other devices in your carry-on bag before it goes through the screener, making the screening process faster.

TSA hopes to install 938 scanners  using computed tomography technology  at most major U.S. airports over the next few years. The first 38 scanners will be installed by this summer, just in time for the busy travel season.

The scanners "provide our dedicated frontline officers with one of the best tools available to screen passenger carry-on items and also improves the passenger experience by allowing passengers to keep more items in their carry-on bags during the screening process," TSA Administrator David Pekoske said in a statement.

Analogic Corp., a Massachusetts-based technology company, was awarded the $781.2 million order.

The X-ray scanners currently used at most airport checkpoints can only generate a two-dimensional image of the contents of each carry-on bag, making it difficult to distinguish the items inside, especially when bags are crammed with electronics and other devices.

The new CT scanners enable TSA officers to see a 3-D image of the items in a carry-on bag. The images produced by the scanners can be rotated on three axes, making it easier for the officers to identify weapons and explosives.

"That's the beauty of the computed tomography process," said TSA spokesman R. Carter Langston.

Larger CT scanners have been used for several years to scan checked baggage, but until now have been too big to use in the TSA security lines.

The TSA began testing CT scanners in 2018 at airports across the country, including Los Angeles International Airport, Oakland International, San Diego International, Nevada's Harry Reid International (formerly McCarran) and Chicago O'Hare. LAX now has six CT scanners in use throughout the airport.

According to indexes compiled for Bloomberg News, these were the best- and worst-performing destinations in Europe and the U.S. in 2021:

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres announced a plan Wednesday to ensure every single person on the planet has access to early warning systems for extreme weather and climate disasters within the next five years.

Early warning systems inform people that dangerous weather is on the way. They have been crucial in saving lives in extreme weather events, such as tropical cyclones, flooding, storms, forest fires and tornadoes, and can help communities  particularly those that rely on farming  to adapt to upcoming changes in weather.

Yet a third of the world's population is not covered by these systems. And where they have been absent, hundreds, even thousands, of lives have been lost in single extreme weather events.

The climate crisis is expected to make many of these events more intense and frequent.

"Human-caused climate disruption is now damaging every region," said Guterres in a video message. "Half of humanity is already in the danger zone."

He added, "We must boost the power of prediction for everyone and build their capacity to act."

The U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) will spearhead the effort in an attempt to save not only lives but billions of dollars, by giving communities a heads up that a weather or climate-related threat is imminent.

While a lot of climate focus has been on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, there is a growing understanding that humans need to invest more into adapting to the crisis. A recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that some ecosystems  and humans  are reaching tipping points where adapting to the new climate and conditions may become impossible if global warming isn't reined in.

"We must invest equally in adaptation and resilience. That includes the information that allows us to anticipate storms, heatwaves, floods and droughts," Guterres said.

Inadequate warnings

While a third of the world lives without these crucial warning systems, in Africa the number jumps to 60%.

That's had devastating consequences. The WMO pointed to Tropical Cyclone Idai, which hit Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe in 2019, as an example of inadequate warnings, communication and education, which Guterres said was "unacceptable, particularly with climate impacts sure to get even worse."

"The meteorological services of Malawi and Zimbabwe were not able to forecast the event at all," said Petteri Taalas, the Secretary-General of the WMO, in an email to CNN.

"In Mozambique the storm surge, wind speeds and rainfall amounts were forecasted by the national meteorological service, but the responsible authorities were not acting to prevent human and economic losses since they didn't fully understand the risks caused by Idai."

There were more than 1,300 deaths from Idai, U.N. figures show.

Over 50 years from 1970 to 2019, a weather, climate or water-related disaster occurred on average almost every day, killing 115 people a day with a cost of $202 million every day, according to a 2021 WMO report on disaster statistics.

The WMO report also points out that "the number of recorded disasters increased by a factor of five over that 50-year period, driven by human-induced climate change, more extreme weather events and improved reporting."

However, because of better warning systems in place, the number of lives lost has decreased by nearly three-fold.

In the case of Typhoon Haiyan, which hit the Philippines in 2013 and killed 6,000 people, warnings didn't reach those who needed them most, and when they did, many people didn't understand them, the WMO told CNN.

A WMO analysis of the typhoon's impact found people failed to evacuate because they underestimated the danger.

The research team concluded that there needed to be a more "integrated multi-hazard approach to warnings" and evacuation centers need to not be in areas that are at risk of flooding.

Giving a community a warning of just 24 hours ahead of a coming storm or heat wave can cut damage by 30%, according to the Global Commission on Adaptation.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
Nearly 10 years after the release of her debut album, True Romance, Charli XCXs record deal with Atlantic Records has come to an end. The subversive pop artist has made it clear that, with her fifth and final record under the contract, she wants to go out with a bang. In the six months leading up to Crashs March 18 release, Charli has done the following: teased the release of lead single Good Ones with a series of cryptic Twitter posts endorsing selling ones soul to the devil in order to succeed in the music industry; posed for multiple magazine photo shoots in BDSM-inspired skintight leather get-ups; and, perhaps most tellingly, revealed her album cover to be an image of her throttled onto a car window, bloodied and wearing nothing but a black bikini.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Sign up for the Slate Culture Newsletter The best of movies, TV, books, music, and more, delivered to your inbox. 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.

This provocative, visceral imagery reflects Charlis musical evolution over the years. Since the release of her critically hailed EP Vroom Vroom in 2016, the now-29-year-old has been fascinated by technologys role in warping and distorting human desire and connection. Nowhere does Charli make this thematic interest more explicit than through her obsession with carssleek emblems of a future in which our bodies are both limited and liberated. Crashs title alone is a clear callout to another work that explores the human through the mechanical: the 1996 David Cronenberg film of the same name, which depicts car crash fetishists chasing an ever-fleeting high. Charli is able to not only lean into the long-suspected record label drama for increased buzz, but pose a challenge to herself. This far into her career, is it even possible to love, and to create, in new shapes (to quote the albums second single)?

Advertisement

Advertisement

Charli has developed a reputation as a boundary-breaking pop visionary over the past decade, in large part thanks to collaborations with hyperpop producers like SOPHIE and A.G. Cook. Despite her prominent connection to that niche, though, Charli has always aspired to conventional pop stardom. A firm hand in the mainstream pop machine, she has songwriting credits on hits like Senorita by Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello and Same Old Love by Selena Gomez, the latter of which includes backing vocals extracted from Charlis own demo; additionally, she has recorded demos for songs that would go on to successfully chart, such as Issues by Julia Michaels, The Middle by Zedd and Maren Morris, and Rare by Selena Gomez. Her idol since childhood is not any artist canonized as revolutionizing the industry, but Britney Spearsthe definition of a pop chameleon, whose often-processed voice and anonymous delivery have only prolonged her career, allowing Spears to embody numerous styles and trends. Yet Charlis fans arent always on her same page. The backlash to Crashs more traditionally pop singles crested to such a point that Charli took a step back from social media just weeks before the albums release, in order to distance herself from the criticism. Almost as if anticipating negative fan reception to the full record, the night before Crash dropped, Charli was photographed wearing a baby tee adorned with a mission statement: They dont build statues of critics.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

They dont build statues of critics pic.twitter.com/EbH3LNEO0l  CHARLI XCX UPDATES (@FckyeahCharli) March 17, 2022

While Charli isnt in the wrong here, her public disdain for dissenters translates to a damning insecurity about Crash. Unlike its namesake, Crashs extensive marketing reveals not a precursor to a transgressive triumph, but a deliberate overcompensation for an album lacking in similarly radical ideas. That this album was written during the pandemics rocky transitional period becomes obvious in the redundancy of the albums subject matternot just in its lack of party-ready songs when compared with past projects like Pop 2 and Charli, but also in how thinly spread so many of the album-dominating intimate songs become. After using the high-energy title track to drum up adrenaline for whats to comean introductory trick that shes been using since Pop 2Crash gradually settles into a baseline state of self-preserving deflection.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Within the glitched-out, heavily electronic production style of her previous projects, the emotional turmoil at the heart of many of Charlis songs found a complementary sonic fit, externalizing intense feelings without having to articulate them. On Crash, however, such detachment reads as dishonest, given that shes used this central tension between her emotional volatility and conflicting feelings toward commitment to fuel the pathos of several ballads dating back to her debut. The sense of callousness is only exacerbated by the albums counterintuitive sequencing. New Shapes, a confessional anthem (featuring Christine and the Queens and Caroline Polachek) about coming to terms with the reality that its narrators wont be able to meet someones needs, exudes climactic catharsis. Instead, it immediately follows the much more dispassionate Crash, throwing the listener and record off-balance. Even worse, one of the few moments of emotional reprieve, Every Rule, has its impact nullified by being immediately followed by Yuck. Easily the albums foremost dud, the song openly antagonizes a potential partner for showing Charli the slightest gesture of affection. She only wants to connect through empty sex, she says, a defensive return to her old, immature ways.

Advertisement

Advertisement

By far Crashs most disappointing element, however, is its lack of compositional imagination. This especially stings following the creative stride Charli had found with her last few projects, like 2019s masterfully varied Charli. This isnt to say that Crash lacks any distinctive musical highlights: The popping sequencer lines of Good Ones allow Charli to brood with enough of a groove behind her to aptly convey the songs melodrama in a brisk two-and-a-half minutes. Despite its played-out, retro synth lines, New Shapes uses a kinetic percussion fill to create a bigger scope than that of any following song. Presumably to prevent limiting herself to any single artistic expectation, Crash sees Charli pivoting to her blandest palette. The remainder of the albums track list defaults to blinkering keyboard melodies and underweight digitized rhythm sections. The songs lay this lack of innovation bare, often falling short of three minutes and hardly suggesting they could go on any longer.

Advertisement

Worse still, when Charli does attempt to deviate from the albums formula, she does so by dallying with styles that dont play to her strengths. In keeping with trends, Baby flirts with an admittedly robust disco sound, but it misses that the genres core was sultry, melodious longing; instead, the songs final hook is a stuttering power play that undercuts what comes before it. Even more baffling, Lightning, a riff on Janet Jackson, feels cluttered in comparison to its inspirations tightness. Charli crowds the tracks hook with wavering vocals, an underwhelming auto-tune breakdown, and, strangest of all, a Spanish guitar part to transition between the two.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Listening to Crash ultimately isnt a bad experience or even a mediocre one, howeverCharli has always had a gift for writing sticky hooks. But the record lacks depth or intrigue, a disappointing realignment from someone whose vision for pop music was so huge it nearly caused songs to burst at their seams. What were left with is an album deserving of a descriptor that no prior Charli XCX album has ever warranted: boring.

Though Charli described herself as an iconic figure in the arts in promotion of the album, what Crash most resembles in its comparative lack of ambition is a label concession. Charli sounds like shes desperately attempting to divvy up a small amount of inspiration into just enough tracks to shove herself out of her contract. It makes for a disappointing end to the ever-shifting guidance that characterized her artistic saga at Atlantic. Sadly, whats most reminiscent of David Cronenbergs Crash here is not any shrewd insight into the nature of modern intimacy, but the prevailing theme that its central character is slipping toward the point of no return, failing to find any meaning after pushing the boundaries of their life to the breaking point. One can only hope that this is a mere moment of transition for Charli XCX, but as far as her current standing goes, she neednt worry about her critics outshining herno one will be building statues for this album, either.
On Jan. 6, 2021, Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks gave a speech at the Republican rally that preceded the assault on the Capitol. That night, he voted in the House to reject the results of the 2020 presidential election. In April 2021, Donald Trump endorsed Brooks campaign to replace retiring Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby. The Republican primary in that race is being held on May 24 of this year, and its winner will be favored to win the general election in the fall.

Advertisement

But Brooks, who is not considered a charismatic figure or great campaigner, is polling in third place in the race, about 15 points behind the two leaders. On Wednesday morning, Trump announced that he is hereby withdrawing his endorsement of Brookssomething that hes reportedly considering doing in a number of other races across the country in which hes backed personally erratic or otherwise troubled candidates who are not doing well in polls. Trumps nominal reason is that Brooks, at the rally depicted in the photo above, told voters to put the issue of alleged 2020 election fraud behind them and look forward instead to 2022 and 2024. This is an unconvincing explanation given that the rally took place last August, but it appears to have provoked Mo Brooks into making a pretty remarkable claim in his own Wednesday statement:

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Mo Brooks statement: Says Trump was manipulated by McConnell.



ALSO says Trump "asked me to rescind the 2020 elections, immediately remove Joe Biden from the White House, immediately put President Trump back in the White House, and hold a new special election for the presidency." pic.twitter.com/Fh9Nbhspud  Allan Smith (@akarl_smith) March 23, 2022

At first glance this statement doesnt entirely make sense, given that Mo Brooks is currently one of 435 members of the House of Representatives and doesnt have any formal role that would even give him the opportunity to declare that Joe Biden is no longer the president. So what it could mean instead is that Trump, assuming like many people that Republicans will retake both the House and Senate this November, is asking the candidates he endorses to commit to some sort of effort to remove Biden from officebut not an impeachment, because that would make Kamala Harris presidentand somehow reinstall him as president on the pretext that he won in 2020. (Update, March 23, 2022, at 9:30 p.m.: Brooks told Vaughn Hillyard of NBC News that he and Trump never got as far as discussing whether Congress would be the institution that would rescind the election because Brooks told Trump that doing so was legally impossible. He did say that one of their conversations about holding a new election happened at some point after the most recent Labor Day, i.e., after Biden had already been in office for more than half a year.)

It never ends with this guy!
On the second day of her confirmation hearings for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson revealed her greatest strength and greatest weakness: She is simply not a purely political animal, and she never quite learned how to talk like one.

Unlike several prior Supreme Court nominees, who flew down to Florida to lend a hand in the litigation over the 2000 election, Jackson wasnt working for a political candidate prior to being tapped for the role. Unlike other recent nominees, who have served on the Starr investigation or worked in the Ronald Reagan administration to constrain minority voting rights, Jacksons professional career, both in private practice and as a public defender, mainly involved being a lawyer, often on different sides of political issues. And as a federal judge with nine years of experience on the bench, she can tell you, in great detail, how she has applied the law to the facts in any given case, how she reconciled statutes that appeared to conflict, and how the Administrative Procedure Act is applied.

Advertisement

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.

But what she cannot readily do, with the icy calm of a lifelong political operative, is offer up softball political answers to senators pointed political questions. Confronted time and again with tired and outdated questions about whether she is a judicial activist or living constitutionalist, she pivots to explain that she doesnt so much have a judicial philosophy as a judicial methodology. And when she attempts to lay out that three-part methodology, it doesnt precisely roll off her tongue, in the same manner as cute metaphors about balls and strikes or lashing oneself to a ships mast.

Asked by Sen. Dick Durbin to lay out her personal judicial philosophy in reference to past or sitting justices, Jackson on Tuesday again demurred: I havent studied the judicial philosophies of all of the prior justices, she said. I will say that I come to this position, to this moment, as a judge who comes from practice, that I was a trial judge and my methodology has developed in that context. This means that Jackson is at her most compelling when she is explaining how the Sentencing Commission guidelines are applied in a given case, or how she tries to explain the criminal justice system to a defendant for whom the entire machinery is impenetrable and opaque. Where she falters, often almost imperceptibly, is when she is asked about a purely partisan political issue that has absolutely nothing to do with how she has been doing her actual job for nearly a decade.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Take, for example, her exchanges with Sen. Ted Cruz. The enduring mental image I will hold until the day I die will be of two side-by-side photos: Jackson at a table alone, attempting to explain that critical race theory is a concept taught at law schools which she neither studies nor relies upon as a jurist, while Cruz tries manfully to get her to endorse a childrens book, Antiracist Baby, taught in a school where she serves as a board member. On the one hand, a serious judge who has done years of work on actual legal issues in the trenches as a lawyer and jurist. On the other, the guy with an overblown image of anti-racist diaper babies gamboling behind his head. This split screen highlights the experiences of every intelligent woman and person of color who has dedicated a lifetime to painstakingly explaining their right to even be at that table. Despite their efforts, they are all too often waylaid by man-babies peddling and demanding distracting sound bites about issues that have nothing to do with the job for which they are auditioning.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

In her opening statement, Jackson suggested to the committee that you may have read some of my more than 570 written decisions. But for those senators who cannot be bothered to engage with her body of published work, there will always be childrens books that need banning.

Advertisement

Advertisement

There is no better proof that Jackson is in fact a judges judge than the ways in which she describedin painstaking detailhow she approached sentencing in sex offender cases. Jackson laid out her methods, multiple times, in response to a widely debunked smear avoided by most of the GOP senators but seized upon by Sens. Cruz, Josh Hawley, and Marsha Blackburn. Jackson was careful to explain the kinds of evidence she must review in those cases, the crimes impact on victims, and the standards necessary for imposing a statutory sentence. When she described how she did her job, she was spectacular. When distracted by hand-waving about politics that bears no relation to her job, she was apt to get rattled.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Late in the day on Tuesday, Jackson avoided saying which justice she has molded herself after, when invited to do so by Sen. Ben Sasse, by explaining that any theory or philosophy distorts the input that she is trying to assess neutrally, changing the outcome. She added that ideas about constitutional interpretation simply dont come up much on the lower courts. Sasse continued to insist that she was either avoiding the question or hiding the ball. But what she was saying, what she continued to say, was that she has in fact been too damn busy being a judge for the last nine years to luxuriate in the academic debate-slash-roadshow proffered by Justices Antonin Scalia and Stephen Breyer about modes of interpretation. In other words, there is an immense amount of privilege required to even possess a snappy trading card of a lofty judicial philosophy that actually has little to do with what a trial court judge does all day. Many of those elevator pitch buzzwords and metaphors are often ideological methodologies that can get in the way of actual neutrality.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Its quite refreshing to hear a judicial nominee decline the invitation to expound about catchy constitutional philosophy, when that philosophy can get in the way of actually doing law. At the same time, its quite depressing to watch that nominee being persistently lectured about her failure to espouse a catchy constitutional philosophy. It suggests, in yet another way, that even a nominee who does precisely what she is tasked with, brilliantly and fairly, isnt deemed quite qualified unless she does it with all the abundant and ineffable self-confidence and tissue-thin claims to philosophy of a mediocre white man.
On Wednesday afternoon, a bill banning abortions performed after about six weeks of pregnancy became law in Idaho. The state is the first to approve a copycat law modeled after the Texas measure that has forced thousands of people to cross state lines for abortion proceduresor give birth to a child against their willif they do not wish to be pregnant.

Though he signed the bill into law, Idaho Gov. Brad Little, a Republican, expressed concerns that it may not survive judicial scrutiny. While I support the pro-life policy in this legislation, I fear the novel civil enforcement mechanism will in short order be proven both unconstitutional and unwise, he wrote in a letter to Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin.

Advertisement

Little is referring to the laws creation of bounties on abortion providers. Like the Texas ban, the Idaho law relies on private citizens, not the state, to enforce it through the threat of ruinous financial penalties. When the Idaho law takes effect in 30 days, anyone who performs an abortion after the detection of fetal cardiac activity can be sued for at least $20,000 by the father of the preborn child, a grandparent of the preborn child, a sibling of the preborn child, or an aunt or uncle of the preborn child.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Each one of those members of the patients family (and the patient herself) will be able to collect a minimum of $20,000, plus legal fees, from the medical professional who terminates a pregnancy. The threat of such lawsuits will be severe enough to end legal abortion in Idaho after six weeks of pregnancy, as the broader Texas lawwhich allows any civilian to sue any person who aids or abets an abortionhas done since it took effect in September.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Idaho lawmakers have praised Texas for pioneering that bounty system, which has been effectively endorsed by both the Supreme Court and the Texas Supreme Court. If the state is not involved in enforcing the law, the courts say, the courts cannot stop it. Texas clever, private course of action did good, Rep. Steven Harris, the Idaho bills co-sponsor, told the New York Times.

The Idaho law allows an exception for abortions performed in cases of rape or incest, but only if the pregnant survivor files a police report. And even if she does, her rapists family members would still be able to sue her abortion providermaking abortions in such cases too risky for most, if not all, providers to perform. The laws exception for medical emergencies only kicks in when a pregnant person is at immediate risk of death or substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function.

Advertisement

Advertisement

When Idaho clinic stop providing abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, its not just Idahoans who will suffer from the lack of options in the state. Right now, for people who live in southeastern Oregon, the closest abortion clinics are in Boise. Under the Idahos law, these patients will need to travel more than 200 miles away, to Bend, to access care.

Clinics in states that border Texas have seen a surge of Texan patients since September, when the states ban took effect. Planned Parenthood health centers in Oklahoma saw a nearly 2,500 percent increase in Texan abortion patients in the last four months of 2021 compared to the same time in 2020. Clinics in Colorado, New Mexico, and Louisiana have also been struggling to accommodate the spike in demand for abortion care.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

The Oregon state Legislature is already preparing for a similar wave of Idahoan abortion patients crossing the border in need of care. The states budget bill, House Bill 5202, allocates $15 million to establish a fund for helping patients from any state pay for abortions, lodging, and travel expenses in Oregon. Advocates say the money will also establish more abortion providers in the state.

Traveling hundreds of miles for a simple procedure or set of pills is not a viable option for many people. But in 30 days, for people experiencing unwanted pregnancies in Idaho, it will be the only legal one.
Ketanji Brown Jackson is expected to be a liberal justice. But time and again, during her testimony before the Senate on Tuesday, Jackson endorsed conservative theories like originalism and textualism, rejecting the living Constitution in favor of history and tradition. Her embrace of the conservative legal movements prized judicial philosophies delighted many commentators on the right, who cheered Tuesdays thoroughgoing rout for progressive theories of law.

These commentators are correct that Jacksons rhetoric signals the triumph of originalism and textualism, which are now firmly established as the default mode of judging. But her rhetoric does not mean that she is further to the right than Democrats assumed, let alone a secret reactionary. The truth is that left-leaning jurists have long deployed originalism and textualism as useful tools of interpretation, and Jackson is canny enough to emphasize them before an evenly divided Senate. Democratic senators may still rail against these methodologies, but progressive judges have figured out how to use them to their advantage.

Advertisement

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.

A primer: Originalism and textualism are two related theories meant to restrain judicial interpretation of the law. Originalism requires judges to enforce the original public meaning of a constitutional provisionthat is, how it was understood at the time of ratification. Textualism requires judges to apply the actual words of a statute rather than, say, legislative history. Conservative lawyers promoted these theories partly in response to the Supreme Courts liberal rulings under Chief Justice Earl Warren. By the 1980s, a new generation of Republican-appointed judges like Antonin Scalia insisted that originalism and textualism were the only acceptable modes of interpretation. The Federalist Society incorporated them as founding principles, and today, any conservative lawyer with judicial ambitions must espouse them.

Advertisement

Jacksons rhetorical turn to the right pleased many of her Republican critics.

It was a bit surprising, then, when Jackson placed originalism and textualism at the heart of her judicial philosophy on Tuesday. She told Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin that, when interpreting the Constitution, I am focusing on original public meaning because Im constrained to interpret the text. This adherence to the text, she explained, is a constraint on my authority.

A few minutes later, Jackson reiterated this view to Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, disavowing any belief in a living Constitution that evolves with the times. I do not believe that there is a living Constitution, she said, in the sense that its changing and its infused with my own policy perspective or the policy perspective of the day. Instead, the Supreme Court has made clear that when youre interpreting the Constitution youre looking at the text at the time of the founding.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

In a later colloquy with Republican Sen. Mike Lee, Jackson hit this point once more. The Supreme Court now very clearly has determined that, in order to interpret provisions of the Constitution, we look to the time of the founding and we ascertain based on what the original public meaning of the words of the Constitution were at the time. When recognizing a fundamental right not enumerated in the Constitution, she elaborated, a judge must look to history, as well as the practices of the American people. This answer echoes conservative originalists use of history and tradition to identify liberties implied by the Constitutions text.

Advertisement

Advertisement

In case her position wasnt plain enough, Jackson also distanced herself from another bugaboo of the conservative legal movement: a reliance on international law when interpreting the Constitution. Some liberal and moderate justicesincluding Jacksons former boss, Stephen Breyeroccasionally look to international law to glean the opinion of the world community. This information may support the courts conclusion that there is a broad societal consensus against, for instance, executing juvenile offenders or criminalizing sodomy. Conservatives like Scalia despise any gesture toward international law as a perversion of the U.S. Constitution.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Grassley therefore sought to put Jackson in a tough spot when he asked her: Do you think its appropriate to look to international law when interpreting enumerated and unenumerated constitutional rights? Yet the nominee did not hesitate: No, Senator, she said. So Grassley tried again: What specific constitutional clauses or rights, he asked, has the Supreme Court held can be interpreted by looking to international law? Jackson responded: Im not aware of any that are properly illuminated by reference to international law.

That isnt quite right, since the Supreme Court has explicitly affirmed the use of international law when analyzing the Eighth Amendment. But it was a shrewd answer. Jackson knows that this Supreme Court will never look to other nations laws when expounding the Constitution. And she has nothing to gain from defending this doomed approach to judging. So she threw Breyer under the bus, disclaiming his pet project without hesitation. (The man wrote a whole book on the subject!)

Advertisement

Jacksons rhetorical turn to the right pleased many of her Republican critics. The Washington Examiners Quin Hillyer wrote that she sounded almost like a conservatives dream nominee, adding: Even liberals are now arguing within parameters set by jurists like Scalia. National Reviews Dan McLaughlin published two pieces cheering Jacksons repudiation of progressive pieties. Talk radio figure Ross Kaminsky lauded her originalist principles, speculating that she might be as good a nominee as conservatives/libertarians could hope for from this president. Ed Whelan, implacable foe of KBJ, tweeted that she was validating conservative judicial principles. The upshot is that Jacksons testimony signals a victory for the conservative legal movementproof that even liberal judges must play by conservatives rules.

Advertisement

Advertisement

It would be foolish for Jackson not to endorse these theories.

This commentary reflects some antiquated assumptions about liberal judging today. Many Democratic politicians do still describe the Constitution as a living or evolving document (in President Joe Bidens words). But progressive jurists rarely do. Instead, they understand that originalism and textualism are genuinely useful tools that can frequently result in a liberal outcome.

It turns out that how you apply these theories is just as important as whether you apply them. A rigidly textualist reading of the Civil Rights Act, for example, protects LGBTQ employees, while a looser analysis that factors in congressional intent does not. When the text is not perfectly clear, judges will inevitably draw on other sources, such as the purpose of the statute, to fill in the gaps. Moreover, originalism is quite easy to manipulate: Judges can frame original meaning at a high level of generality or cherry-pick historical texts to reach a desired result. Oftentimes, the original meaning of a constitutional provision is simply unknowable, forcing judges to look elsewhere when elucidating its meaning. Because these methodologies have proved just as flexible as living constitutionalism, judges across the ideological spectrum freely deploy them.

Advertisement

As a result, Supreme Court briefs today are overflowing with textualist and originalist arguments. A liberal group called the Constitutional Accountability Center promotes these theories as fundamentally progressive. And why not? As the organization rightly points out, the underlying values that motivated constitutional guarantees like equal protection may help modern judges understand its meaning. Similarly, the three liberal justices routinely draw on text, history, and tradition to justify their positions. Justice Elena Kaganwho famously quipped that were all textualists nowis especially adept at following statutory text to a progressive outcome. It would be foolish for Jackson not to endorse these theories now that they are squarely in the mainstream and favored by countless liberals.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

You could look at Jacksons rhetoric as pretty great testimony to how much conservative originalists have moved the legal field, as Republican Sen. Ben Sasse said on Tuesday. Or you could see it as proof that their project has failed. The whole point (allegedly) was to limit judges authority by relying on objective evidence to reach a defensible, consistent, politically neutral conclusion. But it turns out that these theories give judges plenty of wiggle room to insert their own policy preferences. And Jackson is a deft enough politician to know that there is no downside to telling Republican senators exactly what they want to hear.
Republican Sen. Mike Braun is attempting a rather unconvincing cleanup job after telling reporters on Tuesday that the Supreme Court was wrong to strike down state laws banning interracial marriage in its landmark 1967 decision, Loving v. Virginia.

Braun, the junior senator from Indiana, made his comments during a media call in which he argued that policy issues should generally be left in the hands of state governments whenever possible, especially in the case of abortion.

So you would be OK with the Supreme Court leaving the question of interracial marriage to the states? a reporter asked.

Advertisement

Yes, Braun answered. I think that thats something that if youre not wanting the Supreme Court to weigh in on issues like that, youre not going to be able to have your cake and eat it too. I think thats hypocritical.

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.

REPORTER: "You would be okay with the Supreme Court leaving the issue of interracial marriage to the states?"



SEN. MIKE BRAUN (R-IN): "Yes. If you are not wanting the Supreme Court to weigh in on issues like that, you are not going to be able to have your cake and eat it too." pic.twitter.com/jiVTMOpC01  Heartland Signal (@HeartlandSignal) March 22, 2022

Advertisement

Advertisement

That sounded pretty unambiguous! But afterward, Brauns office issued a statement attempting to walk back the comment, suggesting he had misunderstood the question despite having seemingly answered with unblinking certitude.

Earlier during a virtual press conference I misunderstood a line of questioning that ended up being about interracial marriage, let me be clear on that issue - there is no question the Constitution prohibits discrimination of any kind based on race, that is not something that is even up for debate, and I condemn racism in any form, at all levels and by any states, entities, or individuals.

Advertisement

Could this really have been an honest misunderstanding? Lets look at the fuller transcript, starting with where the reporter first asks about abortion.

Advertisement

For context, keep in mind that this exchange occurred after a long question-and-answer session, in which Braun repeatedly suggested that states should handle major policy issues when it was practical, even including ones like marijuana legalization that conservatives often prefer to address federally.

Reporter: Hi, Senator. You spoke about judicial activism. If the Supreme Court later this year strikes down the right to abortion, would you consider that judicial activism, legislating from the bench? Braun: I consider it to have been judicial activism when it occurred back almost 50 years ago. So I think this would be bringing it back to a neutral point to where that issue should have never been federalized, way out of sync I think with the contour of America then. This puts it back to a point where, like most of these issues, where one side of the aisle wants to homogenize it federally, its not the right way to do it. This should be something where the expression of individual states are able to weigh in on these issues through their own legislation, through their own court systems, quit trying to put the federal government in charge of not only things like we did navigating through COVID recently, where I think that was misguided, but in general. So no, I think this takes it back to a point where it should have never gotten beyond in the first place. Reporter: Would that same basis [apply] to something like Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court case that legalized interracial marriage? Braun: When it comes to issues, you cant have it both ways. When you want that diversity to shine within our federal system, there are going to be rules, and proceedings, that are going to be out of sync with maybe what other states would do. Thats the beauty of the system. And thats where the differences among points of view in our 50 states ought to express themselves. And Im not saying that rule would apply in general, depending on the topic, but it should mostly be in general, because its hard to have it on issues that you are just are interested in when you deny it for others with a different point of view. Reporter: So you would be OK with the Supreme Court leaving the question of interracial marriage to the states? Braun: Yes. I think that thats something that if youre not wanting the Supreme Court to weigh in on issues like that, youre not going to be able to have your cake and eat it too. I think thats hypocritical. Reporter: What about Griswold v. Connecticut? Braun: You can list a whole bunch of issues, when it comes down to whatever they are. Im going to say that theyre not all going to make you happy within a given state, but were better off states manifest their points of view rather than homogenizing it across the country as Roe v. Wade did.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

There are some mush-mouthed bits here and there, but overall, Braun certainly seems to understand what hes talking about, and in fact sounds like a man who has given this whole topic very careful consideration. The first time the reporter asks him about interracial marriage, he says you cant have it both ways when it comes to states rights, and that diversity is the beauty of the system. The second time hes asked if the court should have let states determine whether or not to ban Black and white Americans from being wed, he says yes. Finally, asked about Griswold v. Connecticut, the case where the court struck down laws barring contraception, he says that regardless of the issue, he pretty much always believes states should have the right to manifest their points of view (because we all talk like Instagram influencers now). To his credit, Braun is being extremely clear and consistent. Say what you will about 1950s-style states rights fundamentalismat least its an ethos.

Anyway, it feels like its been a little while since a conservative politician hastily backtracked in embarrassment over a racist gaffe, rather than doubling down or railing against the fake news for distorting their words. In that way, Brauns cleanup job is kind of refreshing. At least the man, or his staff, is capable of feeling shame.
Its been quite a time the last few years for Howard Schultz, the longtime Starbucks CEO who stepped down from his position in 2017.

 He made a number of media appearances in early 2019 to say that he was thinking about running for president as an independent candidate, and was met in response with poor polling numbers, withering and incisive criticism by leading bloggers, and a perverse and terrifying series of videos made by a comedian named Connor OMalley pretending to be a deranged Schultz superfan [Ed. note: What in the name of God?] The only solid, issue-based opinion he seemed to have was that taxes should not be increased on people in his income bracket.

Advertisement

 He took several months off from his non-campaign, telling his staff when he returned that hed had to have multiple back surgeries, then announced he had decided not to run after all.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

 In November 2021, he told a group of Starbucks baristas in Buffalo that they didnt need to unionize because the company already shared its prosperity with them in a way that reminded him of an anecdote about Holocaust prisoners sharing a blanket. (Schultz is Jewish.) The questionable analogy, which one could argue is insulting to both Starbucks employees and victims of the Holocaust, made national headlines, and then five stores in Buffalo voted to unionize anyway. (The company has been criticized by workers in the past for paying too little, scheduling shifts in an erratic and disruptive way, and systemically understaffing its stores.)

Advertisement

Advertisement

Last week, Schultz announced that he would be returning to his former role as CEO of the Seattle-based on company on an interim basis. According to the Wall Street Journal, one of his goals in doing so is establishing a new tone with the roughly 230,000 workers staffing its U.S. cafes.

It appears the tone will need more time to be established, because the nine employees of the Seattle location that was holding its own union vote Monday just voted 9-0 to form one. From HuffPos Dave Jamieson, a leading labor reporter:

There are now 7 unionized Starbucks stores, including one in Seattle. The union just ran the table, winning 9 'yes' votes to zero 'no' votes. @SBWorkersUnited has won 7 of their first 8 union elections, with around 140 other election petitions in the hopper.  Dave Jamieson (@jamieson) March 22, 2022

Last Tuesday, meanwhile, the National Labor Relations Board filed a formal complaint accusing the company of retaliating illegally against two workers involved in unionization efforts in Arizona. (The company denies the allegations, which will be heard by an administrative law judge.)

In sum, theres some real pumpkin-spiced pressure on old Howard right now! Heres hoping he can start espresso-ing himself in a more convincing way and macchiato the best of a bad situation. Hahaha. Coffee words!
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
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court issued an astonishing decision throwing out Wisconsins new legislative districts as a violation of the equal protection clause. The majority accused a Republican justice on the Wisconsin Supreme Court of greenlighting a racial gerrymander by creating one more majority-Black district in the state Assembly. Wednesdays unsigned decision, issued through the shadow docket, hands Wisconsin Republicans an unexpected victory in their quest to reduce Black representation in the legislature. It also alters the law of redistricting in fundamental yet cryptic ways that might, to a cynic, seem designed to disadvantage Democrats in every single case.

Advertisement

Wisconsin Legislature v. Wisconsin Elections Commission is an unusual case. It arose because the states Democratic governor and GOP-controlled legislature could not agree on new maps following the 2020 census. The Wisconsin Supreme Court stepped in to referee the dispute, allowing parties to submit draft maps for its considerationincluding Gov. Tony Evers and legislative leaders. A majority declared that it would abide by a least change rule, selecting the map that made the fewest changes to the current plan. Applying this standard, the court adopted Evers map in March. Notably, Justice Brian Hagedorn, a conservative Republican, authored the majority opinion. His decision largely preserved the current Republican gerrymander, but also increased the number of majority-Black Assembly districts in Milwaukee from six to seven.

Advertisement

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.

This outcome was, objectively, quite sensible. The Supreme Court has held that the Voting Rights Act bars states from diluting racial minorities votesby, for instance, splitting them up into a bunch of different districts. But it has also held the equal protection clause forbids the use of race as a predominant factor in redistricting. Evers believed that, due to the growth of Milwaukees Black population over the decade, the current map diluted minority votes in violation of the VRA. Black residents were now packed into too few districts, and the creation of a seventh would restore their political power. The Wisconsin Supreme Court did not rely on this reasoning in choosing Evers map; again, it just picked the most minimalist plan. But in his majority opinion, Hagedorn did assess potential conflicts with the VRA and the equal protection clause. He concluded that there were no evident legal flaws, but noted that plaintiffs could still challenge the map in the future.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Republicans appealed Hagedorns decision, arguing that it constituted an illegal 21st-century racial gerrymander. On Wednesday, SCOTUS agreed. The majority admitted that it wasnt sure whether to fault Evers or Hagedorn for adopting the seventh district, so it blamed both of them. First, it claimed that Evers put forth insufficient evidence demonstrating that, without a seventh majority-Black district, the plan would violate the VRA. Second, it faulted Hagedorn for failing to consider whether a race-neutral alternative that did not add a seventh majority-black district would deny black voters equal political opportunity. So it overturned the legislative maps and ordered the Wisconsin Supreme Court to either adopt a different plan (with less Black representation) or justify Evers plan with new analysis that complies with our equal protection jurisprudence. (Because state law requires three Assembly seats nested within each Senate seat, a new map will require substantial adjustment of multiple districts.)

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

As Justice Sonia Sotomayor explained in a dissent joined by Justice Elena Kagan, this decision is unprecedented, extraordinary, and unnecessary. One fundamental problem is that, until now, no party raised an equal protection challenge to the legislative map. So Hagedorn had no opportunity to conduct a full constitutional analysis. Instead, in the Wisconsin Supreme Court, Republicans agreed that the VRA required multiple majority-Black districts in Milwaukee. They then ambushed the courts with last-minute complaints about an alleged racial gerrymander. SCOTUS rewarded their behavior, accusing Hagedorn of failing to undertake an analysis that no party asked him to undertake. There is no precedent, Sotomayor wrote, requiring a court to embark on an independent inquiry into matters that the parties have conceded or not contested.

Advertisement

A second problem with the majoritys analysis is that it essentially accuses Hagedorn of engaging in racial discrimination. This suggestion is absurd. Over and over again, Hagedorn reiterated his goal of adopting a map with the least change from the previous plan. He prioritized core retentionkeeping voters in their current districtsover all other factors. Even if Evers violated the equal protection clause by considering race, Hagedorns plainly did not. Why, then, does he not receive the presumption of good faith awarded to legislatures that draw actual racial gerrymanders? The majority doesnt say. As Sotomayor put it: Our precedents offer no clear answers to the question whose motives should be analyzed in these circumstances (the four justices who selected the map based on the least change criteria, the Governor, or some combination) or how. The court does not purport to answer this question.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Theres a third problem with the decision that Sotomayor does not mention: It flagrantly violates the Purcell principle. This rule holds that federal courts should not alter state election laws shortly before an election. The conservative justices have invoked it relentlessly to freeze lower court decisions expanding voting rights. In February, they deployed it to block a decision requiring Alabama to undo its (egregious) racial gerrymander because the primaries were three and a half months away. Now the conservatives have pushed aside Purcell to overturn Wisconsins legislative map when the primaries are four and a half months away. Without evidence, they asserted that their decision allowed for sufficient time to adopt a new map. This claim is false; the Wisconsin Election Commission begged SCOTUS to issue a decision by March 15 or risk sabotaging voter registration for the upcoming primaries. Because SCOTUS missed this deadline by eight days, it has increase[d] the risk of errors in administering the electionexactly the kind of thing Purcell counsels against.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Because Wednesdays ruling was issued on the shadow docket, we dont know how every justice voted. Only Sotomayor and Kagan noted their dissents; its possible that Justice Stephen Breyer dissented as well, but chose not to note it. (This opacity is a perennial problem with the shadow docket.) He may have simply decided not to publicize his disagreementchoosing, perhaps, not to rock the boat months before his retirement. It is difficult, if not impossible, to believe that Breyer agreed with the majority, since he has publicly opposed its approach to the VRA in innumerable cases.

If you set aside the many bizarre details of this decision, one overarching theme appears: a profound hostility to the VRA. As my colleague Rick Hasen put it, the ruling further narrows the scope of the law, making it harder for plaintiffs to win such cases. The conservative justices are so hostile to VRA districtsthat is, districts drawn to preserve Black voters political powerthat they will upend decades of precedent and impede an upcoming election just to wipe one off the map.

The real victims, of course, are Black Wisconsinites who will now have less influence in the state legislature. But once again, it is hard not to feel a bit of sympathy for the lower court judges, too. Hagedorn did his job commendably; he applied precedent fairly, to the dismay of his own party; and yet he still got brusquely reversed on the shadow docket in a nonsensical, unsigned opinion. It seems there is only one way a lower court can spare an election-related ruling from the SCOTUS shredder: bend any rules necessary to ensure a Republican victory.
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson faced hours of questioning from the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, the second day of her confirmation hearings to replace the retiring Justice Stephen Breyer on the Supreme Court. On Monday, Jackson was promised a respectful and dignified hearing from Senate Republicans. Some of the GOPs questioners lived up to that standard, but there were three notable exceptions: Sens. Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, and Josh Hawley.

Its relevant that these are the three most high-profile Republicans on the committee with future presidential aspirations. Cruz, Cotton, and Hawley spent their rounds of questioning theatrically fearmongering around pet issues that animate the conservative base. One line of attackthe QAnon-whistling suggestion that Jackson is soft on child predatorshas previously been refuted by the conservative National Review as a smear that is meritless to the point of demagoguery. Cruz also spent significant time on critical race theory, distorting aspects of the judges record in a way that turned the hearing into a culture-war spectacle.

Advertisement

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.

Cruz brought up Jacksons position on the board of the private Georgetown Day School, where books like Ibram X. Kendis Stamped (For Kids) and Antiracist Baby are taught, to ask Jackson whether she agreed that babies are racist. Behind Cruz were propped blown-up images of the picture book Antiracist Baby, replete with cartoon drawings of children in diapers.

Do you agree with this book that is being taught with kids that babies are racist?



Ted Cruz repeatedly pressed Ketanji Brown Jackson over her position on the board of trustees at Georgetown Day School, a private school in D.C., and what role CRT has in the school's curriculum. pic.twitter.com/VM8cfWmYoa  The Hill (@thehill) March 22, 2022

Advertisement

Advertisement

In response to being asked about racist babies, Jackson answered by explaining that her role as a board member at Georgetown Day School was not to assess curriculum. I do not believe that any child should be made to feel as though they are racist, or though they are not valued, or though that they are less than, that they are victims, that they are oppressors, Jackson said.

Advertisement

In line with her deft responses throughout the day, Jackson noted that when she listed social justice as part of the schools missionwhich Cruz attacked her forit was a nod to the schools profound civil rights legacy. From Jacksons testimony:

The school was founded in 1945 in Washington, D.C., at a time in which, by law, there was racial segregation in this community. Black students were not allowed in the public schools to go to school with white students. Georgetown Day School is a private school that was created when three white families, Jewish families, got together with three Black families, and said that despite the fact that the law requires us to separate, despite the fact that the law is set up to make sure that Black children are not treated the same as everyone else, we are going to form a private school so that our children can go to school together. The idea of equality, justice, is at the core of the Georgetown Day School mission.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Cruz, a former Harvard Law School classmate of Jacksons, wasnt done with the topic, however. In referring to another Kendi childrens book, Stamped (For Kids), he said:

Advertisement

Advertisement

I will say it is an astonishing book. On Page 33, it asks the question Can we send white people back to Europe? Thats on 33, thats whats being given to 8- and 9-year-olds.  Are you comfortable with these ideas being taught to children as young as  8 and 9?

Cruzs description of Kendis book was inaccurate. The passage in question was not to suggest that white people be sent back to Europe, but to illustrate a point about Black and brown people being told to go back to where you came from. From the book:

Advertisement

Advertisement

When Thomas Jefferson became president in 1801, there was lots of talk and debate over what to do about the issue of slavery. One idea tossed around by White assimilationists was for Black people to go back to Africa and the Caribbean. But Black people didnt want to go back to a place that many had never known.  Do you see how racist ideas of today are tied to racist ideas of the past? The phrase Go back to where you came from that is sometimes said to Black and Brown people today connects to the go back ideas of the past. Now you can trace the origins right back to Thomas Jefferson. (By the way, just imagine what Native Americans and Black people must have wished about their White oppressors: Can we send White people back to Europe?)

Advertisement

Advertisement

The CRT line of questioning was, though, a table-setter for Cruzs suggestion that Jackson is soft on those convicted of possessing child pornography. The basis of this attack was a series of cases Republicans have alleged were part of a pattern by Jackson of undersentencing sex offenders with child pornography collections. Do you believe the voice of the children is heard when 100 percent of the time youre sentencing those in possession of child pornography to far below what the prosecutors asking for? Cruz posed to Jackson. The judge explained that she was following the law and standard practice in these disturbing cases. The evidence in these cases are among the worst that I have seen, and yet, as Congress directs, judges dont just calculate the guidelines and stop, she noted. Judges have to take into account the personal circumstances of the defendant, because thats a requirement of Congress.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Again, this line of attacklater echoed by Hawley and Cottonwas misleading. A conservative former prosecutor, Andrew C. McCarthy, wrote in National Review that he would oppose Jackson on many grounds, but the implication that she has a soft spot for sex offenders who prey on children because she argued against a severe mandatory-minimum prison sentence for the receipt and distribution of pornographic images is a smear. As McCarthy noted, those mandatory minimums have not been updated in more than a decade, and even the most hardened prosecutors often argue for leniency for younger perpetrators, as did Jackson, because of the nature of the crime and the distorted nature of the current guidelines. As the Washington Posts Fact Checker noted, it is a widespread view in the judiciary that these sentencing guidelines are too harsh and judges often depart from them. As the Post reported, A 2010 survey showed 71 percent of judges said the mandatory minimums for receipt of images were too high. Further, a 2021 report by the U.S. Sentencing Commission found that judges gave these nonproduction child-porn offenders sentences below the guideline range 70 percent of the time.

Perhaps Tuesdays performances will win Hawley, Cotton, and Cruz voters in a future Republican presidential primary, but they are unlikely to dent Jacksons prospects of elevation to the high court. And their questioning has shown that matters of the court are hardly the first things on their minds.
This article is adapted from an episode of Tradeoffs, a health care policy podcast. Its the first of several episodes Tradeoffs is doing on the rollout of 988, the new mental health emergency hotline coming this summer. Over the course of a year, Tradeoffs will be chronicling the debut of 988, checking in with national experts, and closely following the journeys of two local crisis care organizations, and State of Mind will be publishing adapted versions of the episodes. Subscribe to Tradeoffs here.

Advertisement

This July, America is getting a new phone number. Its a hotline for mental health emergenciesthoughts of suicide, erratic behavior, addiction issuesthat anyone anywhere can dial with just three digits, 988. For people hallucinating, hurting themselves, or on the edge of overdosing, a 911 response can be dangerous, if not deadly. For instance, in January 2021, 52-year-old Patrick Warren was killed by police after his family called 911.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Other people in crises simply go without help, and the consequences are devastating. Roughly 46,000 Americans died by suicide and more than 90,000 died from drug overdoses in 2020. Mental health advocates hope 988 can offer people a fast, safe alternative to 911.

The law creating the new line passed on Oct. 17, 2020, and converts the existing National Suicide Prevention Lifeline from 10 digits down to three. But Congress wants this phone number to be more than an easier-to-remember hotline. Lawmakers see it as a front door for people in all kinds of mental health crisesnot just acute ones.

Advertisement

Advertisement

In 2020, the current suicide lifeline received roughly 3 million calls and texts. As many as 12 million may come through this wider 988 door starting in July, according to federal health officials. Mental health advocates see that as 12 million opportunities to greet people with better, safer crisis services than theyve had before. Thanks to 988, some communities across the country are now hustling to remake their local mental health care systems, adding new places to send people and new staff to help.

Forty-six-year-old Andrea Harrison used to being one of the roughly 30 million Americans whose mental illness goes untreated. Childhood trauma had led her to pills, then crack, and then heroin. Andreas story illustrates how a crisis can be a rare chance to get someone the help they need, or a missed opportunity that could cost someone their life.

Advertisement

Advertisement

One June morning in 2012, Andrea found herself in an alley in Huntington, West Virginia. Shed just been revived by paramedics after overdosing on heroin. All her usual thoughts tumbled through her mind: Am I going to be arrested? How am I going to get my next fix? But what stuck out was a new idea: I could choose to not be here.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Her sons were 10 and 12. Andrea had vowed to never take her life. Thats how her mom, Dina, had died. Andrea had never forgiven her mother for that, but today the idea of suicide seemed to fit. That scared me, she says. It scared me to death.

Andreas life had ended up a lot like Dinas in nearly every other way: poverty, addiction, homelessness, drifting in and out of her kids lives. Andrea wandered all day, haunted by thoughts of her mom and scared she might harm herself. She camped out that night in an abandoned house, where, exhausted, cold, and shaking from withdrawal, she made a decision. She would kill herself.

Advertisement

Advertisement

But as much as Andreas life mirrored Dinas, Andrea knew something her mom didnt: the long tail of suicide, the guilt, the hurt, the unanswerable questions: I didnt want that to be the story of their life.  I knew I had to do something to save them. And by saving them, I have to save myself first, she says.

Advertisement

Advertisement

And that was that. Andrea changed her mind, but she knew she needed help fast. She considered calling 911 but worried shed end up in jail. But she thought of another number, too, for a place in town where she could detox. She says everyone in the crowd she ran with had memorized that same number for the local detox center. It was the help she could find, not the help she needed. She did detox for 48 hours but remained addicted to heroin for five more years. Andrea got sober in 2017. She was 41, the same age as Dina was when she died by suicide.

Advertisement

Andrea is 46 now and deeply involved in the local recovery community.

Providing people the help that they need in the moments they need it mostthats the highest hope for this new 988 number. But as is so often the case with health care programs and policies, the difference between high hopes and disappointment will be in the details. Who will provide that help, how, where, and at what cost?

Advertisement

Theres a popular phrase out there: 988 could be the 911 for mental health crises. The hotlines have a lot in common: Theyre both national numbers, but the help you get depends on where you live. When you call 911, it matters how far you live from a fire station or how much you trust the local police. And every 911 call really has two key elements: Theres the people who respond and the places they take you. Those two elements will also determine the success of 988. But theres another problem: Even though Congress created 988, Congress didnt fund it.

Advertisement

Advertisement

There is some money coming from the Biden administration. But at least initially, what 988 becomes will depend largely on what states, cities, and counties do.

The first people 988 callers will encounter are the crisis counselors who staff the National Suicide Prevention Lifelinethe 10-digit hotline that Congress has repurposed as the foundation for 988.

That lifeline is staffed locally by counselors and more than 180 call centers around the country. They all look and operate pretty differently. But at their core, they provide the same basics: emotional support, possibly some referrals to local mental health services. And research out of Arizona suggests that for a big chunk of callers, about 80 percent, thatll be it. The phone will be enough.

Advertisement

For the other 20 percent, ideally, the call center would dispatch some type of first responder to the callers location, just like 911. And here is where communities are starting to make some pretty different choices, because a lot of those first responders are police. And police scare a lot of people.

If 988 is executed the way 911 is executed, people will die, says Madhuri Jha, who directs the Kennedy-Satcher Center for Mental Health Equity at the Morehouse School of Medicine. As the Washington Post reports, police have fatally shot more than 1,500 people with mental illness in just the past six years. And we know that Black people are already more than twice as likely to be fatally shot by police than whites. Add mental illness into that mix, and a Black persons risk of being killed by police quadruples.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Communities are experimenting with who should respond to these emergencies. Chicago is piloting police-free options, such as staffing mobile crisis vans with social workers and paramedics, even people who have lived through their own mental health struggles. Richland County, South Carolina, is still using police but pairing them up with mental health workers. Arizona has embraced a kind of short-term facility, literally called the Living Room, with recliners and couches where people in crisis can rest and make a recovery plan.

Right now, when people experiencing a mental health crisis call 911, most of the time they end up in a hospital or in jail. More than 2 million people each year with a mental illness are booked into our nations jails and prisons. Its a huge number, says Hannah Wesolowski, who directs policy for the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Advocates like her see 988 as a chance to significantly shrink that number.

Advertisement

Keeping people out of the hospital and jail could result in savings, which would have obvious appeal to policymakers. But delivering on that promise will be tough.

Its clear 988 is a rare national opportunity to welcome many more people in crisis into care. With no clear blueprint of what to actually build, though, and a lack of resources, theres a lot of concern that this opportunity may slip away. Mental health experts say they can easily imagine 988 services will look a lot like the status quo: long wait lists, inadequate services. And they know better than anyone else what more of the same means: more suicides, more overdoses, more lives lost.

Advertisement

This does represent a chance to get it right from the beginning. And I dont want us to be coming back 10, 15 years from now trying to fix what we are about to roll out, says Ben Miller. He runs Well Being Trust, a national mental health philanthropy. My biggest fear is that were going to have 51 versions of bad. People are not necessarily going to have the comprehensive vision that theyre going to need for this to be meaningful.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Theres a laundry list of reasons why we might end up with Millers 51 versions of bad, including problems with staffing, stigma, training, and technology. But lets just focus on federal funding. In December, the Department of Health and Human Services committed nearly $300 million to shore up, scale up, and staff up the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline and its local call centers.

What about funding for all the services that could come after the call, the mobile crisis teams, the care facilities? States and cities are scrambling, piecing together federal mental health grants, Medicaid dollars, dipping into pots of money wherever they can find them. It leaves advocates like Wesolowski frustrated: We have funded mental health this way for decades. It is pennies here, pennies there. It is out of the goodness of peoples hearts that organizations are there to support people experiencing mental health conditions. Im hoping policymakers make the investments that we know we need to make.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Wesolowski and others believe three different groups should split most of the tab for 988 and all the services that surround it. First, the federal government. There are several bills kicking around to step up funding. Second, the states. When Congress passed the 988 legislation, it gave states the authority to tack fees onto peoples cellphone bills to cover these crisis serviceswhich is how 911 is funded. Most of us pay about a buck a month to support 911, for example. But these new 988 charges have to pass through legislatures, and thats been tricky so far. Just four states succeeded last year.

The third group is health insurers. And theres an important bipartisan bill, supported by Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto, a Democrat from Nevada, and John Cornyn, a Republican from Texas, that would require most insurers, including Obamacare plans, employer plans, and Medicare and Medicaid to reimburse this full spectrum of crisis services from mobile teams to urgent care facilities. For the first time it would establish federal standards for what those services need to provideso insurers know what theyre paying for and what theyre getting in return. The legislation is still in the early stages, so its hard to say if it will pass.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Most researchers and advocates expect the 988 rollout to be bumpy. Federal health officials have said to give local providers more time to ramp up operations, they will begin serious promotion of the new line in 2023. But there are reasons to think well start to see some progress, too. Every state in the nation has people like Andrea Harrison, who now works for a crisis call center in West Virginia, excited for the calls to start coming in this July. Its a job, she says, that brings her almost as much joy as the bond shes rebuilt with her two sons.

If you need to talk, or if you or someone you know is experiencing suicidal thoughts, text the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 or call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.

State of Mind is a partnership of Slate and Arizona State University that offers a practical look at our mental health systemand how to make it better.
MOSCOWSince Russias special operation began in Ukraine, Western brands have been exiting the country rapidly, making it much harder to find cars, furniture, phones, and clothes. But the change has also affected more unexpected businesses. In early March, after PayPal announced shutting down its services in Russia, Etsy suspended Russian shops due to expanding business restrictions, including multiple payment processors and credit cards ceasing operations in Russia.

This is how many American fans of cross-stitcha needle craft in which you stitch tiny Xs over and over to create a design on fabricdiscovered that many of their favorite digital pattern designers are from Russia. Cross-stitchers will pay anywhere from about $3 for small, simple patterns to much more for large, complex designs, all of which can be downloaded instantly after purchase. They can also pay large sums for custom designs. After Etsy pulled the plug on Russia, shops with thousands of five-star reviews and large numbers of sales disappeared at once. Did cross-stitch pattern makers go through a purge or something? a Reddit user wondered. In a way, yesand its a fascinating example of how even the digital supply chain can be concentrated in one geographic area.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Once online cross-stitchers realized that the change had happened because of Etsy suspending shops in Russia (Etsy didnt respond to questions about how many exactly have been closed), many began to wonder why so many were based there in the first place. Because of a Russian tradition of textile crafts? Or, as another theory went, because of Russian Etsy users stealing virtual patterns? We spoke to some of the store owners to find out why Russia is so rich in cross-stitch pattern designersand what its been like to have their shops shuttered.

Maria Demina, the owner of the popular LittleRoomInTheAttic store on Etsy, says, The saddest part is that all the items got hidden, and nobody can see the patterns I have been working on for the last seven years. Demina connects the popularity of this hobby and variety of digital designs in Russia not with piracy, but national traditions, which were passed through generations. I still have two shirts that were cross-stitched by my great-great-grandfather, she said.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Though Russians have been embroidering for centuries, cross-stitch patterns were not originally created there. The tradition was brought to Russia from Europe in the end of 18th century, said Irina Churina, a historian and a lecturer at Saint Petersburg Technical College. According to her, first it was a hobby of aristocrats, who could buy expensive patterns and supplies for cross-stitch, but soon citizens learned how to copy patterns and dye thread, making the craft more affordable. Empresses and noblewomen in their entourage cross-stitched, as well as nuns and regular women living in cities, Churina said, adding that toward the end of 19th century, needlework became available to peasants. In Soviet times citizens continued to cross-stitch despite extreme shortage of supplies. Cross-stitchers dyed thread with tea, iodine, plants juices. Issues of Western Burda magazine, where antique patterns were published, were worth its weight in gold, says Julia Pushkina, a collector, and a researcher of ornamental stitching of 18th and 19th centuries. In the 90s, after the Soviet Union collapsed, cross-stitch boomed in Russia; according to Churina, one reason was interest in the lifestyles of Russian noble class in the past: A woman with an embroidery frame is a classic image from Russian literature.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Now there are about 3,000 cross-stitch groups on VK, the most popular social media platform in Russia. The largest of them has almost 200,000 members. Designers, embroidery influencers, and cross-stitchers, many of whom are young people, have recently started to combat the stereotype that needle craft is a hobby of elderly people. They have launched an Instagram campaign under the hashtag # (not only grannies embroider), and about 1 million posts have been published using it. According to experts, there are hundreds of Russian freelance designers, who sell their exclusive patterns online. One reason for the popularity of this profession is the availability of tutorials for pattern makers. Kseniya Adonieva said that she and her colleague Natalia Orekhova have trained more than 800 designers since 2010. Another instructor, Lyobov Vodenikova, who runs her own cross-stitch patterns school, stated that she has had foreigners among her students along with Russians: Some of them know basic Russian, some use the dictionary. I dont know any other countries that offer such workshops.

Advertisement

Advertisement

All of that supports the idea that there were so many cross-stitch shops on Etsy because of Russias history. But now, the rest of the world has been cut off from that rich ecosystem of cross-stitch patterns, kits, and training. Olga Lankevich, the founder of ParadiseStitch shop on Etsy, also said that she now feels that the time and money she invested to build her store have been wasted. Another designer, Alyona, who runs Stitchingland shop, told me that her account got blocked even though she has left Russia. Our store was registered in Russia in 2018, but now we live in Montenegro. Many Russian sellers who are currently located in France and other European countries complained that they were suspended, too, she said.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

But what about the accusations of piracy?

Because patterns are often sold as digital filespay a few dollars and then you can just download themthey can be easy to pirate. How widespread that is now depends on who you talk to.

According to authors of cross-stich courses, over the past 10 years Russian needleworkers have become more aware of the importance of respecting property rights, and piracy is not an issue anymore. We pay artists for their illustrations. Most of designers use licensed software. It is hard to find communities now where copies are sold without the consent of the maker. So, everything displayed on Etsy is an honest work, Adonieva said. Demina said she has never had problems with piracy.

Advertisement

Alyona, however, disagreed, saying that she sells her patterns only in English, and that her clients have been mostly Americans. I dont feel safe selling my projects in Russia, because many Russian needlecrafters share patterns online for free, and you cant ban them from doing this. Meanwhile, Americans care about intellectual property more, are ready to pay and tend to obey the law. She also added that she tries to create difficult patterns, which are hard to copy.

It is unknown whether and when Etsy and PayPal will work with Russians again. Vendors who have been suspended by the marketplace and live outside of Russia may consider alternative international platforms like Shopify. Those who are based in Russia, though, dont see any ways to sell their patterns abroad at this moment. (Mastercard, Visa and American Express blocked foreign transactions for Russian banks; Western Union and MoneyGram announced plans to halt their services in Russia.) The growing isolation of Russia will hardly cause crisis in the cross-stitch business in the country and throw it back to Soviet times, given the number of designers and their knowledge. But as many pattern makers have admitted, the lack of cultural exchange and inability to get the feedback from customers internationally has already affected their motivation. I feel bad for losing connection with people abroad, because it has encouraged me to keep working. It is about stars, comments, messages from users. It is all gone, said Alyona.

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society.
23. Mar 2022 at 17:59 I Modified at 24. Mar 2022 at 8:41 I Premium content

The comment came shortly after Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned of sending the system to Ukraine.

The launch of the S-300 system in Bulgaria. (Source: Defence Ministry)

Font size: A - | A + Comments disabled

Slovakia will not consider sending the S-300 air defence system currently used by its army to Ukraine if Russia stops breaching international law and withdraws its troops from Ukraine.

Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement

This was stated by Defence Minister Jaroslav Nad (OLaNO) before the March 23 cabinet session, shortly after Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov again warned countries that own the S-300 system against giving it to Ukraine.

Nad said earlier that Slovakia will try to replace the S-300 system with another system that would be fully compatible with Slovakias allies and provide Slovakia with high defensive capabilities.

First Patriot anti-missile defence system arrives in Slovakia Read more

Apart from Slovakia, the system is currently used by Greece and Bulgaria. It can be maintained only in Russia or Ukraine, Nad pointed out.

He added that the condition of the defence infrastructure, technology and equipment is not good, and after the armoured vehicles are purchased, the country will modernise weapons and drone technology, and buy subsonic training fighters.

Currently, 60 modernisation projects are being run by the Defence Ministry, Nad said, as quoted by the SITA newswire.

Lavrov gives another warning
https://sputniknews.com/20220323/anatoly-chubais-resigned-himself-was-not-fired-kremlin-says-1094126467.html

Anatoly Chubais Resigned Himself, Was Not Fired, Kremlin Says

Anatoly Chubais Resigned Himself, Was Not Fired, Kremlin Says

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Anatoly Chubais has resigned from the post of Russian President Vladimir Putins special presidential representative for relations with... 23.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-23T16:58+0000

2022-03-23T16:58+0000

2022-03-23T16:58+0000

russia

anatoly chubais

/html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content

https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/16063/43/160634369_0:156:3001:1844_1920x0_80_0_0_5b90f3a058188bb7072bd40252353121.jpg

"Chubais resigned himself. But weather he left [the country] or not - this is his own business," Peskov said.Earlier in the day, Ruslan Edelgeriyev, the president's special envoy for climate, said that Chubais stepped down. "Indeed, representatives of Anatoly Borisovich confirmed that he is leaving the post of special representative of the president. I do not think that his decision to leave the post will in any way affect the development of the climate agenda in our country," Edelgeriyev said.Anatoly Chubais is considered one of the architects of the post-Soviet economic reforms, who introduced Russia to a market economy and privatisation. In 1998, under President Boris Yeltsin's administration, he was elected chairman of the board of RAO UES, the state-run electricity company. From 2008 to 2020, Chubais served as General Manager of the Rosnanotech state corporation.

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, anatoly chubais
https://sputniknews.com/20220323/beersheba-stabbing-attack-whats-behind-the-deadly-incident-in-the-southern-israeli-city-1094108826.html

Beersheba Stabbing Attack: Whats Behind the Deadly Incident in the Southern Israeli City?

Beersheba Stabbing Attack: Whats Behind the Deadly Incident in the Southern Israeli City?

Mohammed Ghaleb Abou Al Qiyan was once a teacher before he established a cell that supported Daesh*. In 2016, when he was sentenced to four years in prison, he... 23.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-23T08:42+0000

2022-03-23T08:42+0000

2022-03-23T08:43+0000

israel

beersheba

radicalization

stabbing attack

/html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content

https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e6/03/17/1094108684_0:160:3073:1888_1920x0_80_0_0_761e9ab9cf1cc27bd8a894ee36047bf7.jpg

Israel is used to terror. Since the establishment of the state in 1948, it has seen hundreds of such acts, performed by Palestinian militants. The radicalisation of Israeli Arabs has been relatively uncommon, but Tuesday evening added yet another name to that list of terrorists.It was shortly after 4:00 p.m. local time when Mohammed Ghaleb Abou Al Qiyan, a 34-year-old resident of the Bedouin town of Al Hura, arrived at a Beersheba gas station in southern Israel to murder Israelis. His first victim was a middle-aged woman, who was stabbed to death. From there, he continued to the nearby shopping mall, rammed a man in his sixties with his car, and proceeded to murder two more civilians, injuring two others.Al Qiyan himself was subsequently shot by a bus driver who was present at the scene. It was reported that the assailant eventually died of his wounds.Radicalisation in PrisonsThe event stirred an uproar among Israelis; local media dedicated much of its coverage to the reasons that could have pushed a former teacher to commit such an atrocious act of terror.It turns out that Al Qiyan was well-known to Israel's security apparatus. In 2015, the state filed a lawsuit against him for participating in "a forbidden gathering", for having ties to criminal circles and for attempts to leave Israel for the sake of conducting an "unlawful act".Later it was also revealed that Al Qiyan had ties to Daesh*. He set up a secret cell comprised of Israeli Arabs that aimed at infiltrating Syria, where they would fight in the ranks of the deadly terrorist group. He was serving as the spiritual leader of the cell and preaching in mosques in support of the extremists.A year after his arrest, in 2016, Al Qiyan finally heard his verdict. He was sentenced to four years in prison. He expressed regret about his deeds and promised not to return to terror, but two years down the line, he broke these promises.Israeli decision makers and members of the security apparatus have long been aware that such prisoners tend to become even more radical in Israeli prisons. Normally, inmates are segregated according to their affiliations. They are allowed various types of literature and access to mass media. When they are released, many return to extremism.Al Qiyan probably went through a similar process. But according to Israeli media, his radical ideas werent the only thing that pushed the 34-year-old to extremism. Another factor, they say, could have been the neglect of the Bedouin community, which makes up some 3.5 percent of Israel's total population.Years of NeglectThroughout the years, Israeli media outlets have been ringing the alarm bell over the dire situation of the country's Bedouins.In 2018 it was reported that the unemployment rate in that sector was much higher when compared to the rest of the country: 8 percent among men and over 10 percent among women.The proportion of high school graduates was also relatively low, at only 48.1 percent, versus nearly 70 percent among the general public.Poverty, high crime rates and a lack of basic services have also been problematic, but Israel has been largely neglecting these issues. It is not that the Jewish state hasn't tried to address these challenges. In recent years, Israeli governments have invested more than $340 million into the Bedouin community. The current coalition has also committed to pour more than $400 million into that sector, but years of neglect have shown that the gaps were far too wide to bridge.Some Israeli politicians have already acknowledged that problem. Last night, Deputy Minister of Defence Alon Schuster said that Tuesday's attack was a direct outcome of the neglect of the country's Bedouins.Due to the outcry that followed shortly after, he was forced to apologise and say that his words were taken out of context, but the neglect of Israel's Bedouins is an issue that the country will need to address, sooner rather than later.*Daesh (aka ISIL/Islamic state etc.) is a terror group banned in Russia and many other states

beersheba

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

israel, beersheba, radicalization, stabbing attack
https://sputniknews.com/20220323/client-list-of-notorious-sarah-lawrence-college-sex-cult-case-briefly-leaked-by-mistake---report-1094098689.html

Client List of Notorious Sarah Lawrence College 'Sex Cult' Case Briefly Leaked by Mistake - Report

Client List of Notorious Sarah Lawrence College 'Sex Cult' Case Briefly Leaked by Mistake - Report

Larry Ray, a con artist and alleged cult leader accused of controlling the lives of a group of Sarah Lawrence College students, is on trial in federal court in... 23.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-23T01:04+0000

2022-03-23T01:04+0000

2022-03-23T01:02+0000

us

sex scandal

sex work

sex crime

college

scam

court

/html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content

https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e6/03/17/1094099944_0:0:3442:1936_1920x0_80_0_0_22409a75b41b6cfeadc8dd0ccff89e76.jpg

A list of purported clients of the student prostitute in the New York City's Sarah Lawrence "sex cult" case was published online on Tuesday, potentially leaving some known names for the public to see, the Daily Mail reported, citing the document.The list, which reportedly includes lawyers, businessmen, and socialites from around the Tri-state area, was brought into evidence under seal in the current trial of suspected cult leader Larry Ray. The 121-name list was pulled down almost as quickly as it was posted, per the outlet.According to the Daily Mail, one of two married couples included was a top executive at The Gap clothing company and her spouse, along with a former judge of the New York State Supreme Court. In the list, there is also reportedly a painter with studios in Manhattan's East Village, an architect who is well-known for his work on college and university campuses, an investment executive who was in pedophile Jeffrey Epstein's infamous little black book of contacts. A hedge fund manager who has donated millions to charity and whose name is on a museum building in New York, a Washington DC lobbyist who has worked for a foreign resistance movement, and an international diamond dealer are said to also be among the names.The document is one of the government exhibits in the federal case against the 62-year-old Ray, who is accused of running a sex cult out of his daughter's dorm room at Sarah Lawrence College in New York. According to the report, Claudia Drury, 31, a former Sarah Lawrence student, produced the list and sent it in an email. Drury has been on the stand testifying against Ray, who she said forced her into becoming a prostitute. A spokesman for the Department of Justice reportedly told journalists that the document, designated as "government exhibit #3217 (GX 3217)" was admitted under seal "per order of the Court," after it was taken off the page.And according to Drury, who allegedly sent the list to the department via an email, although it was not "exhaustive" it contained the names of "all my main clients/regulars and many others."The Case of Sarah Lawrence 'Sex Cult'Drury was one of at least five cult members who met Ray while attending a prestigious liberal arts institution in Bronxville, New York. Ray met the group in the fall of 2010 when he moved into his daughter Talia's on-campus dorm and convinced her pals to spend the summer with him in his downtown apartment.Ray allegedly forced the students to join his "family" as he gained power, sex, and money, forcing one girl into a sex work enterprise so lucrative that she paid him more than $1 million in a single year, according to prosecutors. Drury reportedly resumed her testimony in Manhattan Federal Court last week, telling jurors how Ray's charisma landed her in a psychiatric center and eventually led to a life of prostitution. She detailed how she progressed from being a naive student to soliciting sex and eventually handed over $2.5 million in earnings to Ray, his daughter Talia, and his "lieutenant" and co-accused conspirator Isabella Pollok.Drury allegedly admitted that she had always been uncomfortable and insecure about her body, and that she could not think anyone would find her beautiful. She attributed her decision to have sex with "Sam," a married man from whom Ray bought power tools, to her insecurities and Ray's coercion. Drury commended Ray's selflessness and the claimed psychological "help" he was offering to her and her friends like Santos Rosario, Dan Levin, and Felicia Rosario.On Tuesday, Ray was filmed taken out of court in a stretcher to an ambulance in the middle of witness testimony, for the second time during the trial.Earlier in the trial, prosecutors began their opening statements by asserting that Ray, an ex-convict, had obtained sex, power, and money through "violence, fear, sex, and manipulation." Ray allegedly abused the students after knowing their secrets and fears and winning their trust, "profiting off their labor, their money, and even their bodies," according to prosecution. Ray has been in jail since his arrest in 2020. He is said to be a well-known New York con artist, and he has worked on Wall Street, managed nightclubs, been an FBI informant, and inserted himself into prominent networks by brokering meetings, in addition to serving time in prison for his role in a securities fraud scheme. For his role in that scheme, he had already been sentenced to five years probation. The claims in the most recent instance were detailed in a lengthy article published in 2019 by magazine The Cut, which included statements from some of the cult members.Let's stay in touch no matter what! Follow our Telegram channel to get all the latest news: https://t.me/sputniknewsus

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

us, sex scandal, sex work, sex crime, college, scam, court
https://sputniknews.com/20220323/does-a-new-world-order-mean-regime-change-in-russia-1094099432.html

Does a New World Order Mean Regime Change in Russia?

Does a New World Order Mean Regime Change in Russia?

Selective energy sanctions, Covid surge anticipated in the US, Russian & Ukraine refugees in Tijuana and GOP Latinos. 23.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-23T10:12+0000

2022-03-23T10:12+0000

2022-03-23T10:12+0000

political misfits

ukraine

russia

cyberwar

new world order

covid-19

latinos

voting

immigration

/html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content

https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e6/03/16/1094099407_56:0:1300:700_1920x0_80_0_0_73ee2066b89e0b2d1c43a85edf13e5e4.png

Does A New World Order Mean Regime Change In Russia? Selective energy sanctions, Covid surge anticipated in the US, Russian & Ukraine refugees in Tijuana and GOP Latinos.

At the top of the show, Tony Alexiou, principal at The Minotaur Group, a Washington, DC consulting firm that specializes in geopolitical risk and homeland security consultancy joins the show to talk about the latest developments in Eastern Europe.We heard an announcement from the White House yesterday warning Americans that the Russians were preparing cyber attacks against US companies, government entities, and perhaps infrastructure. Then the Misfits talk about whether the rhetoric in the mainstream media about a New World Order is a call for regime change in Russia.Next, Garett Reppenhagen, Director of Veterans for Peace joins the show to talk about the volunteers and for hire mercenaries fighting against Russians in Ukraine. There is a stream of reports about volunteers in the region that coordination is pretty chaotic. The Misfits talk about the formal military contractors such as Blackwaters Erik Prince which for nearly a year now plans to build a private army in Ukraine. And, the BBC earlier this month reported on ads for military contractors to help extract families from Ukraine.Later on the show, Juan Jose Gutierrez, immigration lawyer, executive director of the Full Rights for Immigrants Coalition joins the conversation to talk about GOP Latinos. Republicans and Democrats both need the Hispanic vote to win in competitive elections. And, the Misfits discuss strategies that both parties will probably employ to court the Latino vote for the 2022 midterms.For the last segment, Dan Lazare, writer and journalist, calls into the program to talk about Stormy Daniels ordered to pay Trumps legal fees after her defamation case was overturned. Then the Misfits talk about trade relations with Iran and the nuclear agreement. Sanctions are abuse, not so effective and provide an incentive for Iran to form alliances with other countries that will not include the US according to Lazare.The Misfits sign-off till tomorrow.We'd love to get your feedback at radio@sputniknews.comThe views and opinions expressed in this programme are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the position of Sputnik.

ukraine

russia

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

2022

Michelle Witte https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e5/02/11/1082103644_0:1:240:241_100x100_80_0_0_aa1e89cc3422c54bfdeb46decb112e73.jpg

Michelle Witte https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e5/02/11/1082103644_0:1:240:241_100x100_80_0_0_aa1e89cc3422c54bfdeb46decb112e73.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

Michelle Witte https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e5/02/11/1082103644_0:1:240:241_100x100_80_0_0_aa1e89cc3422c54bfdeb46decb112e73.jpg

political misfits, ukraine, russia, cyberwar, new world order, covid-19, latinos, voting, immigration, , radio
https://sputniknews.com/20220323/finnish-support-of-nato-accession-more-than-doubles-amid-russias-special-op-in-ukraine-1094106035.html

Finnish Support of NATO Accession More Than Doubles Amid Russia's Special Op in Ukraine

Finnish Support of NATO Accession More Than Doubles Amid Russia's Special Op in Ukraine

In both Finland and Sweden, historically non-aligned, there has been a opinion shift toward NATO. However, the leadership remains pronouncedly more cautious. 23.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-23T07:26+0000

2022-03-23T07:26+0000

2022-03-23T07:26+0000

situation in ukraine

finland

nato

scandinavia

russia

ukraine

/html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content

https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/107039/45/1070394553_0:0:3450:1941_1920x0_80_0_0_1896a4644febf37b7b829c0f8f131a2c.jpg

Some 60 percent of Finns would support their country in joining NATO, according to the a recent poll by business and policy think-tank Eva, held amid Russia's special operation to "demilitarise and de-Nazify" Ukraine.The result represents a massive 34 percent jump compared to a similar poll carried out last autumn, and marks the highest level of support for the alliance ever since Eva began polling opinions on the subject in 1998.By contrast, the share of naysayers dropped by half, from 40 percent last time to merely 19 percent now.Remarkably, the majority of respondents said they wanted a decision to be made soon, preferably this year.The survey also found that the views of political leaders on NATO membership are no longer as influential as they used to be. Some 48 percent of respondents said they would support a membership application regardless of whether it was backed by the prime minister or president. Previously, the views of political leaders tended weigh more. Nevertheless, the support of the country's leaders would increase the share of those in favour of NATO accession to 67 percent.A similar move from neighbouring Sweden, a fellow non-aligned nation, would be yet another factor influencing Finns support, raising the level to 69 percent. Only 11 percent would prefer to stay out of NATO, if Sweden submitted an application.Public perceptions of Finland's national security also shifted from beginning of the 2000s. Now, only one in ten said that Finland didn't face any real military threats, as opposed to 50 percent in 2007. By comparison, three out of four respondents now believe that Finland faces a real threat.The results broadly coincide with a survey published last week by national broadcaster Yle, in which support for NATO soared to an unprecedented 62 percent, while opposition dropped to just 16 percent.Furthermore, since Russia's special operation, opinion polls have shifted toward a historic plurality in favour of joining NATO even in neighbouring Sweden. However, in both countries, historically non-aligned, the leadership is pronouncedly more wary, as Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson suggested that NATO membership would "destabilise the security situation in Europe", whereas Finnish President Sauli Niinisto suggested closer ties with Sweden and the US as alternative to NATO.

finland

scandinavia

ukraine

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

finland, nato, scandinavia, russia, ukraine
https://sputniknews.com/20220323/india-pays-tribute-to-freedom-fighters-bhagat-singh-rajguru-and-sukhdev-on-martyrs-day-1094103781.html

India Pays Tribute to Freedom Fighters Bhagat Singh, Rajguru, and Sukhdev on Martyrs' Day

India Pays Tribute to Freedom Fighters Bhagat Singh, Rajguru, and Sukhdev on Martyrs' Day

India has set aside seven days throughout the year for the commemoration of martyrs - so-called Martyrs' Day (Shaheed Diwas) - to honour those who have... 23.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-23T10:47+0000

2022-03-23T10:47+0000

2022-03-23T10:47+0000

india

india

narendra modi

narendra modi

amit shah

rajnath singh

arvind kejriwal

yogi adityanath

bharatiya janata party (bjp)

martyr

/html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content

https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e6/03/17/1094104415_0:161:297:328_1920x0_80_0_0_c186ae980eecaaa914488b86e6ba7fc3.png

Indians have paid tributes to freedom fighters Bhagat Singh, Shivaram Rajguru, and Sukhdev Thapar as the country observes the Martyrs' Day of March on Wednesday.Prime Minister Narendra Modi led the nation in paying tribute to the three freedom fighters and said in a tweet in Hindi: Tributes to sons of India, brave Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru on Martyrs' Day. Their passion to serve the motherland will always inspire the people of the country. Jai Hind!Federal Home Minister Amit Shah also paid fulsome tributes to the trio, writing in a tweet: Shaheed (Martyr) Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru are strong pillars of the Indian independence movement, whose patriotism and devotion to the motherland instilled into the people the spirit of independence against the atrocities of foreign rule. Their sacrifices still inspire every Indian to serve the country.And Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said in a tweet: On Martyrs Day, I revere the freedom fighters Sardar (Leader) Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev, who sacrificed their life to free Mother India from British rule. Their sacrifice in the struggle of freedom will always inspire the people of India.Congress parliamentarian Rahul Gandhi also paid his respects to the martyrs, saying: The names Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru will remain forever. Whenever a voice is raised against injustice, these martyrs will be honoured. All those who desire to serve the country, will welcome the names of these three heroes in their hearts.https://twitter.com/RahulGandhi/status/1506465853377703936Delhi state chief Arvind Kejriwal said in a tweet: On the occasion of Shaheed Diwas, my respect to Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru, icons of Indias freedom movement. People of the country will always be indebted to the supreme sacrifice made by these heroes."And Yogi Adityanath, state chief designate of Uttar Pradesh, said: Tributes to the great freedom fighters Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru, who awakened the spirit of freedom among the people through their sacrifice and bravery. Their supreme sacrifice will always inspire everyone to serve the nation.Newly elected state chief of Punjab, Bhagwant Mann, also paid homage to the freedom fighters via a tweet in the Punjabi language. He wrote, I pay homage to the unparalleled martyrdom of Shaheed-e-Azam Sardar Bhagat Singh, Rajguru, and Sukhdev. Let's make Punjab a corruption-free, prosperous, and golden Punjab by realising the dreams of the great martyrs who laid down their precious life for the freedom of the country."Other politicians from across the political parties acknowledged the three freedom fighters.This Shaheed Diwas (Martyrs' Day), Prime Minister Narendra Modi will open the Biplobi Bharat Gallery at Victoria Memorial Hall in Kolkata at 6pm (IST) (12.30 GMT) via video link.Meanwhile, the newly elected Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government in Punjab has declared the anniversary of Bhagat Singhs death on 23 March a state holiday.State chief Mann urged people to visit Bhagat Singhs ancestral village Khatkar Kalan in the district of Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar. Significantly, Manns swearing-in ceremony of took place at Khatkar Kalan on 16 March.Why Is the Trio So Greatly Revered By The Youth?Bhagat Singh and Sukhdev were born in Punjab in 1907 and Rajguru was born in Maharashtra in 1908.In December 1928, Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru plotted to assassinate the superintendent of police, James Scott, in Lahore (now part of Pakistan), which came to be known as the Lahore Conspiracy case. The wanted to avenge the death of author and politician Lala Lajpat Rai, aka the Lion of Punjab, a month earlier. However, they mistakenly shot dead JP Saunders, who was assistant superintendent.In April 1929, Singh, along with others, hurled bombs into Delhi's Central Assembly Hall, shouting the slogan of "Inquilab Zindabad!". They were later arrested.Singh and his comrades Rajguru and Sukhdev were hanged on 23 March 1931.The trio refused to apologise for their actions and submit to the British government. Instead they carried on protesting, even when in jail, encouraging other inmates to fight for the country's freedom by opting for the death penalty at an early age.Bhagat Singh and Sukhdev were 23-years old and Rajguru 22 when the British government executed them.Since then, they have been regarded as national heroes and youth icons.

india

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

2022

Rahul Trivedi https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e5/05/12/1082926121_0:-1:627:627_100x100_80_0_0_d882e1a63f627c25b7a534fb8b8234d7.jpg

Rahul Trivedi https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e5/05/12/1082926121_0:-1:627:627_100x100_80_0_0_d882e1a63f627c25b7a534fb8b8234d7.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

Rahul Trivedi https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e5/05/12/1082926121_0:-1:627:627_100x100_80_0_0_d882e1a63f627c25b7a534fb8b8234d7.jpg

india, india, narendra modi, narendra modi, amit shah, rajnath singh, arvind kejriwal, yogi adityanath, bharatiya janata party (bjp), martyr, politics, politics, politics, politics
https://sputniknews.com/20220323/iran-foreign-minister-nuclear-deal-closer-than-ever-before-at-vienna-talks-1094129516.html

Iranian Foreign Minister: Nuclear Deal 'Closer Than Ever Before' at Vienna Talks

Iranian Foreign Minister: Nuclear Deal 'Closer Than Ever Before' at Vienna Talks

Earlier this week, US State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters that while a nuclear deal with Iran was "not imminent", the Biden administration was... 23.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-23T21:37+0000

2022-03-23T21:37+0000

2022-03-23T21:36+0000

us

iran

iran nuclear deal

russia

vienna talks

/html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content

https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e6/03/17/1094130554_0:0:3212:1807_1920x0_80_0_0_6c4c7703eef31539b8bd220252ab07f8.jpg

Hossein Amirabdollahian, Iran's foreign minister, said on Wednesday that a new nuclear deal between his nation and the West was "closer to an agreement in Vienna than ever before," alluding to continuing talks in Vienna, Reuters reported on Wednesday.Amirabdollahian was talking to reporters in Damascus, Syria, saying that negotiators were close to revising the 2015 nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which was abandoned by the US under the administration of Donald Trump in 2018.Since US President Joe Biden took office, negotiations to restart the JCPOA have been ongoing for the greater part of a year, with the goal of resuming a nuclear deal that was ratified while he was vice president. And just for the past few weeks, negotiators in Vienna have been hinting that a new deal is on the way, with only a few wrinkles to iron out.On Monday, the US Department of State indicated that a new deal was not certain and that Washington was planning for scenarios with and without mutual agreement on a full reinstatement of the JCPOA. The discussions were on the verge of reaching an agreement until the Kremlin reportedly requested assurances from Washington that sanctions placed on Russia due to the special military operation in Ukraine would not harm its commerce with Iran, as well as the seizure by the US of a pair of Greek tankers carrying Iranian oil. However, failing to reach a new agreement might be costly, as Iran has reportedly enriched over 33 kilograms of uranium to 60% fissile purity, up 5 kilograms since November. Highly enriched uranium can be used to make a nuclear bomb, but the Islamic republic has repeatedly asserted that it will never develop nuclear weapons, as, among other issues, the deadly devices are contrary to Islam.Iran indicated earlier this month that it was willing to work with the International Atomic Energy Agency on its nuclear program. Late last month, Iran stated willingness to "immediately conclude a good deal" with the remaining Western JCPOA parties and the US, provided the latter was willing to "show real will."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/20220315/revival-of-iran-nuclear-deal-enters-homestretch-russias-lavrov-says-1093889497.html

iran

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

us, iran, iran nuclear deal, russia, vienna talks
https://sputniknews.com/20220323/irans-revolutionary-guard-threatens-new-missile-strikes-unless-israel-stops-targeting-its-troops-1094126222.html

Irans Revolutionary Guard Threatens New Missile Strikes Unless Israel Stops Targeting Troops

Irans Revolutionary Guard Threatens New Missile Strikes Unless Israel Stops Targeting Troops

The Revolutionary Guard launched a dozen Fateh missiles at a suspected Mossad base in Erbil, Iraq this month after warning that Israel would be made to pay... 23.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-23T16:10+0000

2022-03-23T16:10+0000

2022-03-23T17:03+0000

israel

iran

revolutionary guard

hossein salami

/html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content

https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/101959/35/1019593598_0:88:2499:1494_1920x0_80_0_0_4dab322382ee92785a1eef158673c595.jpg

Iran will conduct new strikes against Israeli targets in the region if Tel Aviv attacks any more Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) troops, commander-in-chief Hossein Salami has said.Be careful, for we will not only take part in the funeral of our martyrs, but also take immediate revenge for them. This is a serious and real message, Salami said, speaking at an event in Dezful, south-western Iran on Wednesday.We promise and assure you that we will never allow foreigners to threaten the security, dignity and interests of our beloved land, he added.The commander went on to warn the Zionists that if they did not not stop their evil acts, the small openings that have been created for them in the world would be closed forever.Salami also boasted about Washingtons recognition of Irans ability to resist pressure from the West, saying the world had entered a new century which will see the sunset of the evil powers and the century of the sunset of the West, with the Iranian Revolution accelerating this process.Iranian media reported that three Israeli operatives were killed and seven injured in the IRGCs 13 March missile strike in Erbil. US officials dismissed the suggestion that Erbil contained a Mossad base, saying two civilians were injured and that homes in the area were damaged, and that press speculation otherwise is simply wrong.The IRGC approved the Erbil strike after warning that Israel would be made to pay the price for the killing of two Iranian Revolutionary Guard officers in Syria in early March. Syria responded by accusing Israel of coordinating with Daesh (ISIS)*, as the Israeli strike was said to have come just hours after the terrorist group killed more than a dozen troops in central Syria.Israel has admitted it has carried out hundreds of air and missile strikes in Syria, claiming it is targeting Iranian and Iran-backed forces in the country. Damascus has slammed Tel Aviv for its repeated violations of its sovereignty.* A terrorist group outlawed in Russia and many other countries.

https://sputniknews.com/20220312/tehran-vows-to-retaliate-against-israeli-strike-on-syria-that-killed-two-irgc-officers-1093805324.html

iran

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

israel, iran, revolutionary guard, hossein salami
https://sputniknews.com/20220323/joe-rogan-blasts-us-media-u-turn-on-ukraine-coverage-for-dodging-corruption-far-right-group-issues-1094102384.html

Joe Rogan Blasts US Media U-Turn on Ukraine Coverage for Dodging Corruption, Far-Right Group Issues

Joe Rogan Blasts US Media U-Turn on Ukraine Coverage for Dodging Corruption, Far-Right Group Issues

Rogan's critique of much of US media is based on a decade of journalistic investigating into Ukraine's politics, which have been largely ignored in favor of a... 23.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-23T03:59+0000

2022-03-23T03:59+0000

2022-03-23T03:57+0000

situation in ukraine

us

russia

ukraine

ukraine crisis

neo-nazis

azov

ww2 nazi crimes

nationalism

mainstream media

/html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content

https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e6/03/17/1094102586_0:0:3011:1694_1920x0_80_0_0_69edab4ec05485428836fe3443f2868b.jpg

Joe Rogan, a popular podcaster, apparently spoke out against the American mainstream media narrative, pointing out that the outlets have completely reversed the reporting on Ukraine, which was previously thought to be corrupt at all levels of government.In a recent episode of his show "The Joe Rogan Experience", Rogan recalled the screenshot that "someone sent me" about the US media coverage of Ukraine before the current conflict.Rogan termed Ukraine "the most corrupt nation in Europe," with a "increasingly corrupt and authoritarian leader" attempting to deepen an "alliance with the far-right," as he read off headlines from a screenshot.The publications in question came from the World Socialist Web Site, the right-wing Cato Institute, and the Ukrainian news agency UNIAN.Rogan also verbally attacked Big Tech corporations like Meta's Facebook* and other social media platforms for permitting violent speech toward the Russian government and its military, in addition to condemning the media for changing its narrative on Ukraine. The Russian court has recently labeled Meta as an extremist organization for allowing the calls for violence against Russians during the Kremlin's ongoing special military operation across Ukraine.In 2017, the New York Times reported on a policy pursued by the previous Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko, to "whitewash" World War II Ukrainian nationalists who openly collaborated with Nazi occupation authorities in the mid-20th century and displayed anti-Semitism and direct participation in Nazi crimes against humanity.The article, written by the head of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee, went on to highlight how neo-Nazis frequently desecrated Holocaust memorials and places in Ukraine, as historical revisionism of that country's dark past has ramped up to whitewash not only Ukrainian nationalists, but the conduct of the remaining modern neo-Nazis.In 2018, the Atlantic Council published a report on known far-right groups in Ukraine that rose to prominence after the 2014 coup d'etat. In 2018, according to the report, C14* and other far-right groups such as the Azov-affiliated National Militia, Right Sector*, Karpatska Sich*, and others "have attacked Roma groups several times, as well as anti-fascist demonstrations, city council meetings, an event hosted by Amnesty International, art exhibitions, LGBT events, and environmental activists.""Whether this is due to a continuing sense of indebtedness to some of these groups for fighting the Russians or fear they might turn on the state itself, its a real problem and we do no service to Ukraine by sweeping it under the rug," the analyst center stated.Let's stay in touch no matter what! Follow our Telegram channel to get all the latest news: https://t.me/sputniknewsus*An extremist organization banned in Russia

ukraine

azov

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

us, russia, ukraine, ukraine crisis, neo-nazis, azov, ww2 nazi crimes, nationalism, mainstream media
https://sputniknews.com/20220323/just-one-third-of-taiwanese-think-us-would-assist-militarily-in-event-of-conflict-with-china-poll-1094128583.html

Just One Third of Taiwanese Think US Would Assist Militarily in Event of Conflict With China: Poll

Just One Third of Taiwanese Think US Would Assist Militarily in Event of Conflict With China: Poll

Beijing considers Taiwan an integral part of China destined for eventual peaceful reunification. The islands currently leaders are vehemently opposed to the... 23.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-23T18:58+0000

2022-03-23T18:58+0000

2022-03-23T19:18+0000

taiwan

china

poll

/html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content

https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e5/0a/06/1089720531_0:181:3128:1941_1920x0_80_0_0_43906ec6160bb7708238cf78d0155168.jpg

Only one third of the Taiwans residents believe the United States military would assist in the islands defence in the event of a Chinese invasion, a new poll by the Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation has found.The figures mark a dramatic decline in confidence in a US military intervention, with a similar survey taken in October 2021 finding that 65 percent of respondents believed the US would intervene.78 percent of respondents in the new poll think Taiwan had no chance of withstanding a Chinese incursion independently, but three quarters of those questioned nevertheless approve prolonging Taiwans conscription period beyond the present four months.The polling was conducted 14-15 March, with 1,077 people aged 20 and above surveyed, with an estimated margin of error of 2.99 percent.In mid-2021, a Chicago Council Survey found that 53 percent of Americans were in favour of a formal military alliance with Taiwan. 52 percent also supported using the US military to assist the islands defence forces at the time.Earlier this month, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi reiterated Chinas position that Taiwan was an inalienable part of Chinese territory, and expressed confidence that the island would eventually return to the embrace of the motherland.The current Taiwanese government and its US allies have repeatedly accused the Peoples Republic of having aggressive designs to invade and conquer the island. However, Chinese officials have insisted that the process will be peaceful. Last year, Chinese President Xi Jinping said that to achieve the reunification of the motherland by peaceful means was most in line with the overall interests of the Chinese nation, including our compatriots in Taiwan.Taiwan, which formally calls itself the Republic of China, broke off from the mainland in 1949 after the victory of communist forces in the Chinese Civil War. Beijing and Taipei spent the next several decades bickering over which of them has is the one true China. The United Nations formally recognized the PRC as such in 1971, with the United States moving to recognize the Peoples Republic in 1979, while maintaining a close partnership with Taiwan.In the 1980s and 1990s, Taiwans longtime ruling party  the nationalist Kuomintang  the same political force that fought the communists during the civil war, worked to improve economic and informal diplomatic links with the PRC. More recently, some of its factions have also expressed support for reunification under the One Country, Two Systems principle. However, the current ruling party  the Democratic Progressives, is openly hostile to any form of reunification, and has lobbied Washington extensively to shore up diplomatic ties and military assistance.

https://sputniknews.com/20220320/enemy-of-humanity-kim-dotcom-slams-us-plans-to-deploy-missiles-in-taiwan-okinawa-philippines-1094033515.html

https://sputniknews.com/20220307/taiwan-will-eventually-return-to-embrace-of-the-motherland-chinese-fm-says-1093657504.html

https://sputniknews.com/20220311/pentagon-official-calls-ukraine-case-study-for-taiwan-says-should-be-as-prickly-as-possible-1093789334.html

china

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

taiwan, china, poll
https://sputniknews.com/20220323/lavrov-the-current-russophobia-in-the-west-is-a-verdict-on-western-civilisation-1094108709.html

Lavrov: The Current Russophobia in the West is a Verdict on Western Civilisation

Lavrov: The Current Russophobia in the West is a Verdict on Western Civilisation

The Russian Foreign Minister arrived at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations on Wednesday to comment on the most pressing issues affecting... 23.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-23T08:33+0000

2022-03-23T08:33+0000

2022-03-23T09:47+0000

sergei lavrov

russophobia

russia

ukraine

us

situation in ukraine

/html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content

https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e6/02/19/1093362577_0:0:1836:1034_1920x0_80_0_0_bf77f48d7a930dc8036dad860d6516ea.jpg

The current Russophobia in the West is a verdict on Western civilisation, Russian Foreign Minister Segey Lavrov said in his address to students at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations. Speaking about the priorities of Russian foreign policy in view of the ongoing special military operation in Ukraine, Lavrov said that the prompt conclusion of Russia-Ukraine negotiations is not beneficial for the United States. According to him, Washington wants hostilities between Russia and Ukraine to continue as long as possible.He stressed that Russia is not against Western mediation in talks with Ukraine but there are certainly some red lines that should not be crossed. When asked about the possibility of peacekeepers being deployed to Ukraine, the minister said that this could lead to a clash between Russian and NATO forces.Commenting on the unprecedented sanctions imposed by the West on Russia after the beginning of the operation in Ukraine, Lavrov said these restrictions are aimed at removing Russia as an obstacle to a unipolar world.According to the minister, the freezing of the Russian central bank's reserves by the West is 'just theft'. Going back to the major goals of the Russian special operation in Ukraine, Lavrov said that concerns Moscow had about Kiev preparing an offensive in the Donbass region have proved reasonable.Moscow will demand that Ukraine cancel legislation directed against the Russian-speaking population of the country, the Russian Foreign Minister added. He noted that under the presidency of Volodymyr Zelensky, all attempts to re-introduce Russian as a second official language in regions where it is spoken were shot down by lawmakers.

https://sputniknews.com/20220322/us-navy-deploys-carrier-strike-group-in-med-to-implement-ukraine-no-fly-zone-if-biden-gives-order-1094082091.html

ukraine

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

sergei lavrov, russophobia, russia, ukraine, us
Australia Not Ruling Out Expulsion of Russian Diplomats - Foreign Minister

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - While Australia understands the importance of diplomatic contacts with Russia, it does not rule out the expulsion of Russian diplomats in the wake of Moscow's military operation in Ukraine, Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne said on Thursday.

"The option of expelling diplomats is something is available to government, but at the same time it is potentially useful to have direct lines of communication with, in this case, the Russian government, but that does not mean the government has excluded the option," Payne said in an interview with ABC Radio.

The minister observed that other countries have asked Russian diplomatic staff to leave, but "not in every case their ambassador," adding that Australia's government is working with partners to "determine the best approach in these circumstances."

Payne also said she is "not going to speculate on Australia's approach".


https://sputniknews.com/20220323/london-ambulance-service-responds-to-incident-at-queen-elizabeth-olympic-park-1094114868.html

London Ambulance Service Responds to Gas Leak Incident at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park

London Ambulance Service Responds to Gas Leak Incident at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park

According to the park's spokesman, an incident took place at the aquatics centre in the morning. 23.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-23T11:03+0000

2022-03-23T11:03+0000

2022-03-23T13:23+0000

uk

london

ambulance

park

/html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content

https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e6/03/17/1094120740_0:320:3072:2048_1920x0_80_0_0_c48709e2206303fb867f95a45f3f03b0.jpg

The London Ambulance service is responding to an incident at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.The incident reportedly took place at the aquatics centre in the morning and involved a gas leak.Several people with respiratory problems are being treated at the scene, Reuters quoted the park's spokesman as saying. The area has been cordoned off and evacuated, the spokesman added. "Due to a chemical reaction a high quantity of chlorine gas was released. London Ambulance Service are treating a number of patients', a London Fire Brigade spokesman said, quoted by the Daily Mail. He added that some 200 people were evacuated from the centre. Some of them were suffering from breathing problems and headaches. The London Ambulance Service were called the the Olympic Park in east London at just before 10am after a noxious substance leaked into the building containing the swimming pool and diving area.People described suffering headaches and struggling to breathe because of the fumes. Some were seen lying on their backs on the pavement.Mayor of London Sadiq Khan asked Londoners to avoid the area. "I remain in close contact with our emergency services who are dealing with a gas-related incident at the London Aquatics Centre this morning...Please avoid the area which has been cordoned off and evacuated," the mayor tweeted. Photos from the park were shared online, showing ambulances and medics working at the scene.The London Ambulance service said it will keep the public updated on the incident.

london

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

uk, london, ambulance, park
https://sputniknews.com/20220323/los-angeles-tops-us-average-gas-costs-after-city-prices-surpass-6-per-gallon-1094100598.html

Los Angeles Tops US Average Gas Costs After City Prices Surpass $6 Per Gallon

Los Angeles Tops US Average Gas Costs After City Prices Surpass $6 Per Gallon

While only 16 states in the nation have recorded gas prices under $4 per gallon, (those include Kansas $3.76, Missouri $3.77, Oklahoma $3.77, and Maryland... 23.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-23T00:41+0000

2022-03-23T00:41+0000

2022-03-23T00:39+0000

gas prices

us

california

/html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content

https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e5/09/1b/1089446981_0:0:1920:1080_1920x0_80_0_0_f764e38d3639c012365824ef38c28d8b.jpg

On Tuesday, the average cost of gas per gallon reached $6.01 in Los Angeles, the highest number in the nation. Surrounding counties in the Golden State include costs of $5.97 in Orange County, $5.95 in Ventura County, and $5.90 in Bernardino County. The average for the rest of the state comes to $5.86 per gallon.Industry watchers suggest that the drastic spike is due to flaring at PBF Energy refineries located in Torrance, Martinez, and Valero outside of San Francisco. Flaring is a safety device used by refineries to prevent overpressure of equipment. Planned flaring is scheduled, but unplanned flaring is used for emergencies caused by equipment failure or other unexpected events.According to Patrick De Haan, head analyst at GasBuddy, the California refineries could be experiencing computer or valve issues which have caused them to use flaring as a safety solution, but that is reportedly just a guess, as refineries do not willingly release that kind of information.Even if refineries in California get their safety issues under control, De Haan says its not certain that will bring the costs of gas down, considering other global issues such as the ongoing conflict in Ukraine and the COVID-19 pandemic.California is also known to have higher gas costs on average, considering their strict environmental laws and taxes on motor fuels as a means of curbing CO2 emissions and protecting the environment as humanity continues to avoid addressing its climate crisis.A decrease in Californias gas supply would likely affect other states on the West Coast, such as Oregon and Washington, as the two Pacific Northwest states may soon see the same price gouging by the fossil fuel industry in Los Angeles.An increasing number of Californians may be turning away from gasoline as an option. Demand destruction is when prices are so high that consumers choose to do away with their purchase of that product."Above $4 per gallon, you do see the American public change their driving habits. And we do actively see demand destruction," says Regina Mayor, global head of energy at KPMG.Californians have been turning toward electric vehicles to avoid price spikes at the pump. And while some EVs are more expensive, such as Teslas or BMWs, other brands, including Volkswagen, are more affordable due to monthly rebates that the state offers consumers, like the California Clean Fuel Reward, as well as federal rebates.Michael Macias, who became Californias millionth EV owner in December 2021, said the cost of gas played a major role in his decision to purchase an EV. Macias used $9,500 in state rebates, $750 from the California Clean Fuel Reward, $7,500 in federal rebates, and, because he is a resident of San Joaquin Valley in Central California, he gets $3,000 rebates from the Air Pollution Control District to purchase his electric Volkswagen.Macias says that after he factored in the cost of gas compared to the monthly car payments for his new EV, for him, the choice was clear. So those are the two things that I was thinking about, along with the fact that I am committed to being a good steward of the land, Macias said. This is part of me living into those principles and values.Let's stay in touch no matter what! Follow our Telegram channel to get all the latest news: https://t.me/sputniknewsus

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

gas prices, us, california
https://sputniknews.com/20220323/microsoft-confirms-lapsus-hacking-group-given-limited-access-during-strike-1094101299.html

Microsoft Confirms LAPSUS$ Hacking Group Given Limited Access During Strike

Microsoft Confirms LAPSUS$ Hacking Group Given Limited Access During Strike

In 2021, the Biden administration issued a new security guidance meant to combat the effects of cyberattacks after several industries came under ransomware... 23.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-23T02:21+0000

2022-03-23T02:21+0000

2022-03-23T02:19+0000

microsoft

hacking

/html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content

https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/106369/08/1063690823_0:100:1921:1180_1920x0_80_0_0_a3b8e8552a54fd03504a4cbc3d805aab.jpg

Microsoft has confirmed that it is investigating a breach of its internal servers by the hacking group known as LAPSUS$, which the tech giant described as one that doesnt seem to cover its tracks.The company detailed in a late Tuesday release that the hacking group had compromised a single account, while also indicating that Microsoft had been tracking the groups activity for several weeks.Our cybersecurity response teams quickly engaged to remediate the compromised account and prevent further activity. Microsoft does not rely on the secrecy of code as a security measure and viewing source code does not lead to elevation of risk, reads a blog post issued by Microsoft.The public disclosure referenced by Microsoft is the groups earlier move to share an image on its Telegram account that showed it had gained access to a Microsoft Azure DevOps account, a collaborative developer platform Microsoft employees use.The screenshot shows access to Bing_UX, Bing-Source, Bing-STC-SV and Cortana, among others. Potentially indicating that the user gained access to other Microsoft projects as well, the image also showed sections for mscomdev, microsoft and msblox.According to Vice, the image was quickly deleted by one of the groups Telegram administrators, with the promise to repost it soon.LAPSUS$ is a relative newcomer to the hacking group scene. It first made waves in December 2021 when it breached the servers of several Brazilian and Portuguese companies, as well as the Ministry of Health of Brazil.However, in 2022, the group made bigger headlines by leaking data from tech giants Nvidia, Samsung and possibly Ubisoft.According to reports, the group usually asks for payment in exchange for not leaking data, usually in the form of bitcoin. However, in the case of the Nvidia hack, the group demanded that Nvidia open-source its video drivers to make it easier to mine cryptocurrencies like Ethereum using the companys 30-series of video cards.Nvidia intentionally limited the cards cryptocurrency mining capabilities in hopes of driving down the costs for gamers and other users. At the time, cryptocurrency miners were blamed for increasing video card prices, as miners were buying the cards in bulk for mining farms.Unlike many hacking extortion groups, LAPSUS$ does not incorporate ransomware. Instead, they blackmail companies with the threat of public exposure.Ransomware is a technique used to extort businesses and individuals. Files on a server are cryptographically locked by the group which then demands payment, usually in the form of cryptocurrency, in order to unlock the files. Oftentimes the demand comes with a timer after which the price will either increase or the files will be deleted or leaked.Ransomware has some drawbacks as the cryptographic keys to unlock the files have to be stored somewhere, and giving them to the victim opens up the possibility of being tracked. Keys can also be stored on other hacked websites but if that websites owner finds the breach before the victim pays the ransom, the keys could be lost forever, effectively making paying the ransom less attractive since there is no guarantee of success.In a March 10 Telegram post, LAPSUS$ stated that it is recruiting rogue employees, specifically pointing to IBM, Apple and Microsoft. They say they arent interested in data troves but instead want employee usernames and passwords to access company networks.TO NOTE: WE ARE NOT LOOKING FOR DATA, WE ARE LOOKING FOR THE EMPLOYEE TO PROVIDE US A VPN OR CITRIX TO THE NETWORK, or some anydesk, according to the post.The latest comes years after Microsoft suffered a leak in 2020 that resulted in the source code for Windows XP and other early software being posted on 4chan.org.Let's stay in touch no matter what! Follow our Telegram channel to get all the latest news: https://t.me/sputniknewsus

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

microsoft, hacking
https://sputniknews.com/20220323/moscow-us-diplomat-handed-note-with-list-of-diplomats-being-ousted-from-russia-in-tit-for-tat-move-1094127196.html

Moscow: US Embassy Handed Note With List of Diplomats Being Ousted From Russia in Tit-for-Tat Move

Moscow: US Embassy Handed Note With List of Diplomats Being Ousted From Russia in Tit-for-Tat Move

The US and its allies began a new round of expulsions of Russian diplomats last month, with Washington declaring Russian Embassy #2 Sergei Trepelkov persona... 23.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-23T18:02+0000

2022-03-23T18:02+0000

2022-03-23T19:14+0000

russia

us

/html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content

https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/102777/51/1027775113_0:33:3525:2016_1920x0_80_0_0_c993e821f805be443a129de8934f36ac.jpg

The US Embassy in Moscow has been handed a note with a list of diplomats to be deported from Russia in response to the expulsion of Russians from the diplomatic mission to the United Nations, the Russian Foreign Ministry has announced."The American side was firmly told that any hostile actions of the United States against Russia would be met with a decisive and adequate response," the statement added.Russian UN Ambassador Vasily Nebenzya announced in late February that 12 employees of the Russian mission had been ordered to leave the United States by 7 March. Before that, the State Department moved to expel Sergei Trepelkov, Russia's second-ranking diplomat in Washington. Trepelkov was expelled after Russia kicked out US Embassy second-in-command Bart Gorman in response to the expulsion of yet another Russian diplomat from Washington. The US and Russian governments have engaged in tit-for-tat expulsions of diplomats going back to the crisis in Ukraine in 2014. The practice was also common during the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union in the 20th century.Commenting on the Russian expulsion notice later Wednesday, State Department spokesman Ned Price said that the US Embassy serves as a "locus of coordination and communication" between the two countries, and that Washington does not want to see it "closed down."Russian-US relations hit a lowpoint unseen since the deepest depths of the Cold War last month after Moscow began a military operation in Ukraine aimed at "demilitarizing" the country. Russian President Vladimir Putin gave the go-ahead on the operation after weeks of escalating shelling, sniper and sabotage attacks by Ukrainian forces against the self-proclaimed Donbass republics, whose sovereignty Russia recognized on 21 February.The fighting in Ukraine is the culmination of a security crisis which began eight years ago, when US and EU-backed political forces overthrew Ukraine's unpopular but democratically elected government and proceeded to try to drag the heavily divided nation into the West's orbit. The coup in Kiev prompted Crimean authorities to organize a referendum on the peninsula's status, and sparked a civil conflict in the regions of Donetsk and Lugansk which effectively continues to this day.

us

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

russia, us
https://sputniknews.com/20220323/political-pundits-doubt-islamic-nations-meeting-can-facilitate-india-pakistan-reconciliation-1094115196.html

Political Pundits Doubt Islamic Nations' Meeting Can Facilitate India-Pakistan Reconciliation

Political Pundits Doubt Islamic Nations' Meeting Can Facilitate India-Pakistan Reconciliation

The 48th conference of foreign ministers of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) is the first meeting held after the Talibans* takeover of... 23.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-23T12:29+0000

2022-03-23T12:29+0000

2022-03-23T12:29+0000

india

kashmir

pakistan

pakistan

organization of islamic cooperation (oic)

organisation of islamic cooperation (oic)

political party

delhi

new delhi

islamabad

/html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content

https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e6/03/17/1094117753_0:159:3359:2048_1920x0_80_0_0_1f073e96afb5b4ab6ed1b74525b20258.jpg

Raising Kashmir as an issue of concern at the 48th conference of foreign ministers of Islamic nations in Islamabad, the OIC has evoked a mixed response from politicians and local political observers in Indias union territory of Jammu and Kashmir.While the OIC has advocated the need to hold a dialogue between India and Pakistan, some politicians and experts in India-administered Kashmir expressed doubts about discussions at the latest meeting held in Pakistans capital city going anywhere.Senior member of the Jammu and Kashmir Peoples Democratic Party Naeem Akhtar said the statements made at the OIC conference in the past havent led to anything fruitful for Jammu and Kashmir as yet.PDP politician Akhtar also favoured holding bilateral talks, as he said: It is now time the Prime Minister's Office take a fresh look at our policies and let India take its natural role of leadership in South Asia and resolve the Kashmir issue with Pakistan."Akhtar added that "instead of India being bracketed with the United States or China", it is time for the country to "take centrestage, establish its independent stance and unveil its true potential.In a statement issued by the OIC Contact Group on Jammu and Kashmir, Secretary General Hissein Brahim Taha was quoted as saying that the conflict of Jammu and Kashmir continues without any signs of solution.Taha also said that the OIC reflected full solidarity of the Muslim world with the people of Kashmir in its struggle for self-determination. Taha also stressed the need for a dialogue to achieve a peaceful solution to the long-standing conflict.A Kashmir-based politician, however, said that the OIC wasn't "helpful" vis-a-vis Kashmir.OIC has never been helpful with regard to Kashmir. We are a votary for holding India-Pakistan talks but the onus lies on Pakistan to create a conducive environment for talks. Bilateral talks are the key, said Tanvir Sadiq, chief spokesperson of Kashmirs National Conference party.Scepticism OIC Has Any Major InfluenceSome of the political watchers based in the Kashmir region expressed doubts regarding OICs possibility to play a bigger role.According to Prof. Sheikh Showkat Hussain, OIC is the second largest forum after the United Nations. But despite having huge potential, it remains as inactive as the UN.On Tuesday, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, while delivering a keynote address, said, We have failed both the Palestinians and the people of Kashmir. I am sad to say that we have been able to make no impact at all."While referring to the Muslim nations group (OIC), he further stated that Western countries "did not take the OIC seriously" because "we are a divided house and those powers know it.Since February 2021, India and Pakistan have been observing a ceasefire at the Line of Control between the two neighbouring countries. Both Delhi and Islamabad claim Kashmir region in its entirety, but control it partially.*The Taliban is an organisation under UN sanctions for terrorist activities.

https://sputniknews.com/20220321/gulf-nations-delegation-visits-jammu-and-kashmir-ahead-of-oic-meeting-in-pakistan-1094041110.html

kashmir

pakistan

delhi

new delhi

islamabad

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

india, kashmir, pakistan, pakistan, organization of islamic cooperation (oic), organisation of islamic cooperation (oic), political party, delhi, new delhi, islamabad, sputnik
https://sputniknews.com/20220323/russian-ambassador-to-us-militarization-of-ukraine-threatens-european-global-security--1094101247.html

Russian Ambassador to US: Militarization of Ukraine Threatens European, Global Security

Russian Ambassador to US: Militarization of Ukraine Threatens European, Global Security

The ambassador called on those US politicians who make decisions to supply weapons to Kiev "to get rid of illusions and complacency," because the US also sees... 23.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-23T02:56+0000

2022-03-23T02:56+0000

2022-03-23T02:54+0000

situation in ukraine

russia

us

russian embassy in us

anatoly antonov

ukraine crisis

security

/html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content

https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e6/03/17/1094101655_0:230:3122:1986_1920x0_80_0_0_fa1a4acae8322c55968bdce6c7e4e046.jpg

Anatoly Antonov, Russia's ambassador to the United States, said on Tuesday that supplying Kiev with weapons and foreign mercenaries is reckless and dangerous, as it could endanger not only Europe, but the entire world.Antonov additionally pondered whether the West realizes that "thugs" coming from all over the world to fight in Ukraine could use their effective military experience "anywhere, including upon returning home."The Russian diplomat suggested that NATO member states "have forgotten how the United States spent decades searching for manpads [man-portable air-defense systems] handed over to the Afghan Mujahideen throughout the Middle East in the 1980s."The Russian Embassy in the US has additionally accused Washington of deliberately delaying the destruction of chemical weapons, urging it to complete the process.On February 24, Russia announced the start of its special military operation in Ukraine, in response to Donbass republics' requests for assistance in repelling the increasing aggression of the Ukrainian troops. According to a Russian Defense Ministry statement, the special military operation is only aimed at Ukrainian military facilities. The Ukrainian military have been accused by the Kremlin of using terrorist tactics, including lurking behind civilians and frequenting residential quarters.In the first early days of the special military operation, Ukrainian authorities gave automatic weapons to an estimated tens of thousands of the nation's populace. After Kiev allowed the nation's civilian population to take up weapons, looting was reported in local media. Western countries continue to supply weapons and ammunition to Ukraine. Russia has consistently condemned these deliveries of fresh weapons to Ukrainian fighters as fueling the conflict.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/20220316/lavrov-ukraine-cant-have-weapons-that-pose-threat-to-russia-1093920116.html

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, russian embassy in us, anatoly antonov, ukraine crisis, security
https://sputniknews.com/20220323/russian-special-operation-in-ukraine-indicated-end-of-pax-americana-indian-air-force-veteran-1094111355.html

Russian Special Operation in Ukraine Indicated End of Pax Americana: Indian Air Force Veteran

Russian Special Operation in Ukraine Indicated End of Pax Americana: Indian Air Force Veteran

Russia launched a special military operation on 24 February to demilitirize and de-Nazify Ukraine. At least four rounds of talks have been held so far between... 23.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-23T13:37+0000

2022-03-23T13:37+0000

2022-03-23T13:40+0000

situation in ukraine

russia

ukraine

germany

nato

japan

poland

us

joe biden

vladimir putin

/html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content

https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e6/03/0f/1093897137_0:57:2568:1503_1920x0_80_0_0_1be666ebe085525fd419318bbe71591e.jpg

Sputnik spoke with Vijainder Kumar Thakur, former squadron leader of the Indian Air Force and an independent defence analyst, on the Ukrainian crisis and the impact on geopolitics of this Russia-NATO row.Sputnik: It's been one month since Moscow began a special military operation in Ukraine. How do you assess Moscow's operation so far?Vijainder K Thakur: The Russian special military operation in Ukraine has gone well so far, albeit their progress appears to have slowed down. Russian forces have wrested a very significant amount of Ukrainian territory and practically removed any future threat to the Donbass area and Crimea from a surprise attack by the Ukrainian Army.Demilitarisation and de-Nazification are ongoing but slow because at the start of the war, instead of fighting Russian forces on the borders or the hinterland, Ukrainian nationalists quickly retreated to heavily populated areas.Russia has carefully calibrated its campaign to minimise civilian casualties. Russian forces are striking at nationalists entrenched in cities in close proximity to populated areas with precision-guided artillery shells and missiles.However, footage of urban structures destroyed by Russian precision strikes, occasional collateral damage and civilian casualties are being used by the nationalists and their supporters in the West to discredit Russia's forces. Ukrainian and western Information warfare directed at Russia is high-pitched.Russian forces are holding up well in the face of disinformation. There has been no breakdown in discipline. Popular support for President Vladimir Putin within Russia remains intact. China and India have not been swayed.Sputnik: Some commentators claim that Russia is losing the operation as they observed that Russia's offensive was "largely stalled on all fronts" in the past few days. As you monitor the operation closely, do you find a gap in the West's assessment and facts on the ground in Ukraine?Vijainder K Thakur: I don't believe the Russian operation has stalled. Far from it! Russian forces may not have made dramatic advances in the past two weeks or so, but they have tightened their grip on important cities such as Kiev, Kharkov and Mariupol.Elite Ukrainian forces in the Donbass region and further south near Crimea have been cut off from their command and resupply centres. Ukrainian forces are surrounded and their fuel and ammunition are being rapidly depleted because of Russian precision strikes on supply depots. Casualties are mounting.Sputnik: Russia and Ukraine have held several rounds of negotiations since 24 February. Now, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wants to sit with Russian President Vladimir Putin to negotiate. Do you think talks at the top at this point will bear fruit?Vijainder K Thakur: A peace agreement would have to be based on the groundwork laid by sustained and serious negotiations by officials at different levels over many days.Top leaders, overseeing the ongoing military operation, simply don't have the time to engage in sustained peace negotiations lasting days.President Zelensky can better serve his country by providing compassionate leadership through pragmatic directions to his negotiating team, rather than negotiating directly with President Putin.Sputnik: The US has delivered security assistance worth more than $1 billion in the past week alone. However, the US and NATO declined to get involved directly and remain opposed to instituting a no-fly zone over Ukraine. Many observers have predicted that the US actions in Ukraine will trigger insurgency in the country. Do you agree with this prediction?Vijainder K Thakur: First, I don't believe it's in the long-term interest of Europe or NATO to stoke an insurgency in Ukraine. They would be shooting themselves in the foot with a rather high-calibre weapon!Failure to strike a peace agreement would lead to a wider civil war than the one that has been ongoing in Donbass since 2014. The tragedy is that the EU and NATO have so far ignored the already ongoing civil war!Sputnik: Do you foresee the war-like situation spilling over into other regions such as the South China Sea or countries such as Poland?Vijainder K Thakur: In recent history, China has not engaged in a shooting war. It has focused almost exclusively on development, leveraging its military power, when necessary, without starting a shooting war! The US and NATO have engaged in wars where a low-cost victory was assured.Having said that, I don't think the West is done pushing buttons to provoke Russia, so an accidental escalation cannot be ruled out. However, self-preservation is a strong instinct, perhaps a stronger instinct in the more affluent West than the less affluent East.Sputnik: Several European countries have started increasing their military budget. Do you think this is the beginning of efforts to decrease dependency on the US for security?Vijainder K Thakur: Absolutely! Germany's and Japan's decision to increase their military spending is not directed at Russia. It is an acknowledgment of emerging multi-polarity in the world.Russian special operations in Ukraine indicated the end of Pax Americana. Germany and Japan will now strive for their own place in the emerging multi-polar world.

ukraine

germany

japan

poland

kiev

kharkiv

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

russia, ukraine, germany, nato, japan, poland, us, joe biden, vladimir putin, volodymyr zelensky, kiev, kharkiv, war, insurgency, military operation
https://sputniknews.com/20220323/saudi-led-coalition-reportedly-destroys-two-boats-carrying-explosives-in-red-sea-1094119600.html

Saudi-Led Coalition Reportedly Destroys Two Boats Carrying Explosives in Red Sea

Saudi-Led Coalition Reportedly Destroys Two Boats Carrying Explosives in Red Sea

According to Al Arabiya, the coalition has foiled an attack on tanker ships in the Red Sea. 23.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-23T12:49+0000

2022-03-23T12:49+0000

2022-03-23T14:11+0000

saudi arabia

red sea

boat

/html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content

https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e6/03/17/1094120448_121:38:668:345_1920x0_80_0_0_1a3f8b8dceeb27897deebf000364e187.jpg

The Saudi-led coalition has destroyed two boats carrying explosives in the Red Sea, Al Arabiya reported. According to the coalition, the explosives were going to be used by Yemen's Houthis in attacks on oil tankers in the south of the Red Sea. The Houthi movement has not commented on the coalition's statement.

saudi arabia

red sea

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

saudi arabia, red sea, boat
https://sputniknews.com/20220323/texas-driver-in-critical-condition-after-crash-triggered-natural-gas-pipeline-explosion-evacuations-1094131246.html

Texas Driver in Critical Condition After Crash Triggered Natural Gas Pipeline Explosion, Evacuations

Texas Driver in Critical Condition After Crash Triggered Natural Gas Pipeline Explosion, Evacuations

Residents within a one-mile radius of a natural gas pipeline in Mansfield, Texas, were evacuated from their homes early Wednesday morning after a vehicle... 23.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-23T22:27+0000

2022-03-23T22:27+0000

2022-03-23T22:25+0000

texas

natural gas

energy

us

fire

/html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content

https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e6/03/17/1094131019_0:297:1284:1019_1920x0_80_0_0_f86e5d9c400748eda1fba081f9763026.jpg

The Mansfield Fire Department confirmed on Wednesday that the motorist who crashed into a natural gas pipeline operated by Atmos Energy sustained severe burns and was critically injured upon airlift to Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, Texas.Officials noted the explosion occurred around 1:00 a.m. CDT, near an Exxon station at the intersection of Highways 287 and 360.All lanes of Highway 287 were shut down until approximately 5:00 a.m. CDT.Raw footage uploaded by WFAA showed the massive flames roaring as emergency responders arrived at the scene. Flames were visible from approximately 20 miles away. Those within the vicinity were ordered to evacuate their residences and take temporary refuge in Annette Perry Elementary school, or the parking lot of a nearby hospital. His wife, Whitney, caught video of the blaze from their backyard, prior to being evacuated. Firefighters reportedly went door-to-door to inform residents of the potential danger. Those evacuated were able to return by 4:00 a.m. CDT, per the Mansfield Fire Department. Repairs have been made to the above-ground station, which temporarily shut off natural gas lines to homes, according to Atmos Energy. The Dallas-based company manages proprietary pipeline and storage assets, including one of the largest intrastate natural gas networks in Texas.Let's stay in touch no matter what! Follow our Telegram channel to get all the latest news: https://t.me/sputniknewsus

texas

Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60

2022

Evan Craighead

Evan Craighead

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

Evan Craighead

texas, natural gas, energy, us, fire
https://sputniknews.com/20220323/us-treasury-secretary-to-discuss-freezing-russian-gold-reserves-with-senators-report-says-1094113900.html

US Treasury Secretary to Discuss Freezing Russian Gold Reserves With Senators, Report Says

US Treasury Secretary to Discuss Freezing Russian Gold Reserves With Senators, Report Says

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - The United States Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will meet with a group of US senators to discuss a bill seeking to lock down Russias $132... 23.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-23T10:22+0000

2022-03-23T10:22+0000

2022-03-23T10:23+0000

us

russia

gold reserves

sanctions

ukraine

/html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content

https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e6/03/17/1094113817_0:161:3071:1888_1920x0_80_0_0_ea2269a6b45df065641f8553ae3e1f7f.jpg

On 8 March, US Senators John Cornyn, Bill Flagerty, Maggie Hassan and Angus King have introduced a bill to impose sanctions on transactions with Russias gold assets, in a bid to eliminate possible loopholes in current sanctions regime that allows the Russian government to transfer money to gold.Secretary Yellen regularly meets with members of Congress to discuss legislation. Additionally, Treasury staff frequently provide technical assistance on sanctions bills," a US Treasury official told Axios.According to the media, the legislation would deter the purchase of Russian gold by applying secondary sanctions to any American entities that transport or make transactions with Russian gold.On 24 February, Russia launched a special military operation in Ukraine in response to calls from the Donetsk and Lugansk people's republics to protect them from intensifying attacks by Ukrainian troops. The Russian Defence Ministry said the special operation is targeting Ukrainian military infrastructure and the civilian population is not in danger. The United States and its allies have responded by imposing comprehensive sanctions against Russia.

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

us, russia, gold reserves, sanctions, ukraine
https://sputniknews.com/20220323/western-media-rooting-for-nazis-and-jihadists-1094122425.html

Western Media Rooting For Nazis and Jihadists

Western Media Rooting For Nazis and Jihadists

CNN host Anderson Cooper could hardly contain his boyish excitement when showing a video clip this week of a firefight between Ukrainian and Russian troops. 23.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-23T14:11+0000

2022-03-23T14:11+0000

2022-03-23T14:20+0000

ukraine

us

nazism

situation in ukraine

jihadists

columnists

/html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content

https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e6/03/17/1094123337_0:0:3073:1728_1920x0_80_0_0_86d38fa828801c15086b7693e1c5b0d5.jpg

The apparent dramatic gun battle at a railway line near Kiev purportedly shows Ukrainian fighters firing automatic weapons and several rounds from an RPG launcher at Russian soldiers. Before playing the clip, however, Cooper felt obliged to do a bit of explaining for viewers just in case they should get the wrong (sic) idea. He said the Ukrainian soldiers who are heard repeatedly shouting Allahu Akbar were actually Chechen volunteers who had signed up to fight against Russia.So our kindly CNN host is trying to contrive an apologetic distinction here. Shouting Allahu Akbar is OK if you are from Chechnya, he implies, as opposed to Saudi Arabia or some other place more associated with Islamic terrorists in Western public perception. Forbid the subversive thought that there may be no distinction.The Islamist slogan is a well-known rallying cry used by Jihadist terror groups affiliated with Al Qaeda* outfits like Nusra Front* and Daesh* who recruit fighters from all over the world. During the Syrian war, these militants would often release propaganda videos depicting fighters firing off weapons and shouting the slogan.Chechnya in Russias southern Caucasus region is a stronghold of Islamist terror groups that Moscow battled against during the late 1990s and 2000s. The same militants were responsible for terrorist atrocities against civilians in the Russian capital such as the theater hostage in 2002 when 171 people were killed. The similarity with the Mariupol theater incident in Ukraine last week is notable.Chechen fighters were an important fighting element in the Western-backed war for regime change in Syria. Western media like CNN covered up the links between the US and NATO governments and the terror groups who were doing their bidding to oust Syrian President Bashar Assad. That covert war failed because of Russias military intervention in support of the Syrian nation from the end of 2015 onwards.Getting back to CNNs video clip this week from Ukraine, what the American cable news channel is doing is inadvertently admitting that Chechen Jihadists are fighting in support of the Kiev regime. Secondly, it shows too that the Western media and governments are in effect back to their unspoken Syrian war policy of supporting the Jihadists  albeit lionizing them as fighters against Russia in Ukraine.Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a military intervention in Ukraine on 24 February because the Kiev regime was attacking Russian-speaking populations for eight years. The United States and its NATO partners weaponized Ukraine deliberately to threaten Russias security. NATO special forces from the US, Britain and Canada held training camps in Ukraine for Nazi fighters. This is consistent with how the US and its allies covertly backed the Third Reichs Nazi remnants in the Gehlen Organization after the Second World War in Soviet territories.Moscow says that its war in Ukraine will continue until the country is neutralized as a military threat. That means no NATO membership or presence and the elimination of Nazi paramilitaries that form the backbone of the Kiev regime since the CIA-orchestrated coup in 2014.In other words, the present war could have been averted if Washington and its NATO allies had refrained from their systematic hostile policy towards Russia. If Russias proposals for a security treaty had been respected and negotiated reasonably the present crisis would have been avoided.Ever since the 2014 CIA-backed coup detat in Kiev when an elected Ukrainian president was violently overthrown, the Western media like CNN have systematically ignored the reality of the Nazi paramilitaries underpinning the regime. The Azov Battalion and their ilk are now presented as some kind of noble resistance movement against Russian aggression. Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian comedian-turned-president, is flagged up by Western media for his Jewish ancestry as somehow a countervailing narrative, instead of the possibility that he is simply a puppet for the CIA and its Nazi militants who actually run the country.Ironically, US President Joe Biden has lately been lecturing China, India and others to be on the right side of history by joining the Western campaign to condemn Russia over the conflict in Ukraine. It is grotesque for an American president to label others as war criminals when we look at how the Americans wage criminal war after criminal war, flattening cities like Fallujah, Mosul and Raqqa to prosecute their illicit objectives.Its also grotesque for American and European governments and their media to pontificate about the right side of history when they are openly supporting Nazis and now we can see Jihadist terrorists in Ukraine  just like they did covertly during their regime-change war in Syria.The astounding Western duplicity and hypocrisy are only possible when the propaganda machine that is Western media is allowed to run its programs full throttle without any intelligent media challenge. Thats why the US and European Union are doing everything to censor and shut down Russian news media. It is incredible but nevertheless illuminating that today, the Western public is prevented from accessing RT and Sputnik news websites via open sources of the internet. The draconian censorship is necessitated because the shocking truth is the Western governments and their media are on the ugly side of history from weaponizing and glorifying Nazis and head-chopping terrorists in Ukraine.*Daesh (IS/ISIS/ISIL), Al-Qaeda, Nusra Front are terrorist organisations banned in Russia.

https://sputniknews.com/20220304/kadyrov-says-ukrainian-nationalists-planned-aggression-against--russia-1093590121.html

https://sputniknews.com/20220320/mariupol-resident-says-azov-regiment-neo-nazis-destroyed-city-pool-killed-a-lot-of-people-1094031465.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

ukraine, us, nazism, jihadists, columnists
https://sputniknews.com/20220323/wikileaks-founder-julian-assange-marrying-wednesday-while-in-belmarsh-prison-1094102976.html

WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange Marrying Wednesday While in Belmarsh Prison

WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange Marrying Wednesday While in Belmarsh Prison

Assange is the co-founder of WikiLeaks, the nonprofit group known for publishing classified information offered by anonymous sources. One of the websites most... 23.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-23T04:14+0000

2022-03-23T04:14+0000

2022-03-23T04:12+0000

julian assange

wikileaks

marriage

prison

hm prison belmarsh

/html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content

https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e5/06/06/1083083672_0:183:3072:1911_1920x0_80_0_0_a229484fff356e29e90e33790d48c6ec.jpg

The founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, has been given permission to marry his fiancee despite being in Her Majestys Prison Belmarsh, a Category-A mens prison in southeast London. His partner, Stella Moris, has two sons with the Australian publisher and fugitive activist.Julian Assange was arrested in April of 2019 at the Ecuadorian embassy in London after failing to surrender to court. His capture means the possibility of facing up to five years in a United States prison for federal conspiracy charges after teaming up with former US intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning who was arrested in 2010 for disclosing more than 700,000 confidential documents to WikiLeaks.Despite the arrest, Assange has been given permission to marry his partner, the mother of their two sons, Gabriel and Max. Moris spoke of her joy at being able to finally marry Assange, despite restrictions which have been placed around their wedding, including the guest list.Will Assange and his bride be expecting friends, family and loved ones? Not exactly. Only four guests are allowed to attend their wedding, in addition, two security guards will be present."Julian is looking forward to the wedding because it is finally happening, many months after we first made the request, adds Moris, who had to change her name in 2012 for safety reasons, a year after meeting Assange.Moris met Assange in 2011 when she was 28, and Assange was 40 at the time. Moris was working as a lawyer when she fell in love with the man she believed was responsible for exposing war crimes.Assanges supporters plan to hold a gathering outside the prison on Wednesday during the couples ceremony. Assange and Moris, who are being dressed by Dame Vivienne Westwood, have asked their supporters to dress as if they were attending any other normal wedding.The couple has asked supporters to donate funds to a Crowdfunder campaign to free the groom from captivity, as opposed to being given wedding gifts.Let's stay in touch no matter what! Follow our Telegram channel to get all the latest news: https://t.me/sputniknewsus

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

julian assange, wikileaks, marriage, prison, hm prison belmarsh
Nebraska State Patrol investigators arrested a Minatare police officer on accusations that he stole weapons from the department.

The patrol reported that Gering resident Bryan Martinez, 32, had been arrested at his residence Tuesday afternoon on suspicion of theft by unlawful taking and issuing or passing a bad check.

Cody Thomas, of the NSP, said the investigation began in January when a local retailer informed the NSP that Martinez had written a bad check. The NSP learned several firearms were missing from the Minatare Police Department and allege Martinez sold three such firearms to a local pawn shop.

Martinez, who has served with other agencies in the area, is also employed by the Sioux County Sheriffs Office, Thomas said. An investigation is still ongoing.

Submit Your News We're always interested in hearing about news in our community. Let us know what's going on! Go to form

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.
UNITED NATIONS, March 23 (Xinhua) -- Some 670,000 Israeli citizens currently reside in "over 130 illegal settlements and over 100 outposts in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem," Tor Wennesland, the United Nations special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, said Tuesday.

Wennesland told the UN Security Council that Israel's settlement expansion "continues to fuel violence" in the occupied Palestinian territory, "further entrenching the occupation and undermining the right of Palestinians to self-determination and independent statehood."

As for the call of the Security Council resolution 2334 (2016) on parties to prevent attacks against civilians, the special coordinator said that "unfortunately, daily violence continued."

Twenty-four Palestinians were killed by Israeli security forces during demonstrations, clashes, security operations, attacks and alleged attacks against Israelis, during the reporting period (Dec. 10 to March 18). In addition, Israeli settlers or other civilians perpetrated 144 attacks against Palestinians, according to the envoy.

In total, Palestinians carried out 277 attacks against Israeli civilians during the reporting period, the envoy added.

The envoy observed that the absence of a meaningful peace process to end Israel's occupation and resolve the conflict, is fueling a dangerous deterioration that is destabilizing the situation across the occupied Palestinian territory. 
Members of the Scotts Bluff County Board of Commissioners dealt with a variety of agenda items relating to truck bids and bridge deals during their regular meeting Monday, March 21.

To start the meeting, the board had to consider approval of a revised bid for a Western Star snowplow dump truck. In November, the board had approved a bid of $192,009 for the truck from Floyds Truck Center. The bid was around $7,000 over their budget. However, a notation of the bid said the manufacturer might need to raise the price of certain products, which would lead to an increased cost for the bid; the board accepted the bid with this in mind. Floyds informed the board the price had gone up $4,500 to $196,509.

Board chairman Ken Meyer asked Highway Superintendent Linda Grummert multiple times if the company would be able to increase the price even more.

He said no, this is it. Hes forewarning you that the price is up, and this is it. This is what the manufacturers saying, Grummert told the board. ...He left an open-ended bid saying he was expecting a price increase. That was in his bid.

How can we guarantee that, other than that he says it wont happen? Meyer asked. ...I dont want them to come back six months down the road and say, Sorry, sorry, theres going to be another increase.

The commissioners said theyd like for some way to ensure additional price increases wouldnt happen; Meyer suggested getting assurance from the company in writing.

Commissioner Mark Harris said hed be OK with the increase.

As we can see from this, the increase came from Daimler Truck and, according to this letter, passed on to Floyds and passed on to us, he said. The price increase was a factory decision, he added, not a company one. Because of that, I think weve already committed to it ... all we're doing is, I think, saying we acknowledge we got this letter and we acknowledge itll cost us that much more. But its at the end that we have to pay it.

After 10 minutes of discussion, the board voted unanimously to approve the revised bid with the companys acknowledgment that there would be no more price increases.

Once that vehicular decision was made, another one had to be decided. During their last meeting, the board approved a bid from Reganis Auto Center for three new pickup trucks. However, the vehicles proved unavailable; Grummert said the manufacturer was closing all production on them. The board had to decide whether to re-award the bid. The Reganis bid had been $111,000, already $21,000 over budget. The next lowest bid was just under $120,000 from Anderson Ford in Lincoln. The trucks could be delivered around the end of the month and the fee would include delivery.

Were going to buy four pickups and get three, Commissioner Russ Reisig said of the bids price. ... I think the bottom line is were $30,000 over budget and were not getting what we need to have.

The pickups would weigh half a ton instead of three-quarters of a ton like Reisig desired. Grummert said the county had only ever purchased half-ton pickups before.

While Meyer and Harris voted in favor of the new bid, Commissioners Reisig, Mark Reichert and Charlie Knapper voted against it. They said Grummert would have to source new options for them to choose from.

Grummert was not done yet presenting to the board, as they had to consider a county bridge match contract with the Nebraska Department of Transportation for one of the countys bridges near Lyman. The state would contribute $200,000 to the project, or 55%, while the county would need to supply the other 45%. Reisig was in favor of adding a box culvert to the site, but Grummert said that would be more expensive and difficult to maintain.

On a creek, a box culvert is going to be very hard to maintain in years to come because of debris that comes down a natural channel, she said. A box culvert is not open, it has barrels. The prospect of getting a tree stuck in a barrel is pretty high. The board unanimously approved the contract.

Submit Your News We're always interested in hearing about news in our community. Let us know what's going on! Go to form

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.
Sen. Steve Lathrop of Omaha on Tuesday urged the Legislature not to "kick the can down the road once again" while it avoids the growing need to address Nebraska's "prison overcrowding crisis," completing his filibuster of a state budget bill.

Lathrop's filibuster was designed to make his case before the budget proposal (LB1013) was moved on to second-stage consideration on a 39-4 vote.

That bill included $25 million in funding for development of an agricultural innovation facility at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's Innovation Campus.

Lathrop said the Legislature has dodged the challenge of addressing a rapidly growing inmate population that has led to overcrowding of the state's prisons well beyond designed capacity "for two administrations," a reference to the governorships of Dave Heineman and Pete Ricketts.

At one institution, Lathrop said, "people are literally sleeping on the floor."

Earlier this week, Ricketts described the proposed parole and sentencing reforms contained in the package emerging from a study by the Crime and Justice Institute and proposed by a majority of the members of a study committee as a "soft-on-crime package."

Lathrop, who is chairman of the Legislature's Judiciary Committee, has urged the Legislature to support investments in programming with "modest changes in sentencing (and) earlier parole eligibility."

Pending in the Legislature is a bill (LB920) to implement those reforms, but it faces opposition from two lawmakers who served on the study committee, Sens. Suzanne Geist of Lincoln and Julie Slama of Sterling.

Geist has filed five proposed amendments to the bill.

Sen. John Cavanaugh of Omaha said proposed reforms would "decrease the number of people going in" the state's prisons.

Proposed reforms can be accomplished "without sacrificing public safety," Lathrop argued.

"We have no plan," Sen. John McCollister of Omaha said.

McCollister said he was hopeful when leaders of all three branches of state government participated in the Crime and Justice Institute study, but now the process is being blocked "by a governor casting aspersions on the process."

Building new beds does not solve the problem, Lathrop said.

"We need to be responsible," he said.

Ricketts has proposed building a new state prison to replace the aging State Penitentiary in Lincoln and the Legislature's Appropriations Committee has set aside money to be able to fund it without yet appropriating the money.

Reach the writer at 402-473-7248 or dwalton@journalstar.com. On Twitter @LJSdon

Submit Your News We're always interested in hearing about news in our community. Let us know what's going on! Go to form
In his bizarre rant on why he had to invade and savage a peaceful neighbor, Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the West of trying to force false values on Russians. Such attitudes, he said, would erode ... our people from within and are directly leading to degradation and degeneration.

Putin was referring to the Wests acceptance of homosexuality, but his gripe against decadence clearly extended to the larger definition, an indulgence in luxury. He apparently thought that the comforts enjoyed by the Westernized Ukrainians had softened them to the point where theyd step aside when his tanks rolled in. Also that the flabby West would step aside rather than confront higher gasoline prices.

Boy, was he wrong.

Consumer societies are not weak because their people like road bikes, garage door openers and air fryers. The choice of goods that come in boxes rewires the society to be more flexible and eventually stronger in ways that cant be touched. For example, Ukrainian tech entrepreneurs, with choice of news sources, understood the need to set up offices where Russians couldnt get at them. They are now operating out of Poland, Silicon Valley and Israel.

Savvy young Russians could also get information that the peasantry could not. They are running for the exits even as they remain a protected class in a country fearing a brain drain. Russia has waived taxes on tech firms and promised IT professionals that they would not be sent to Ukraine. Nevertheless, Russias tech professionals are abandoning their posh apartments and high-style furniture -- fleeing with laptop and suitcase in hand.

One can argue that they are simply protecting themselves from a sinking economy. But its not just about having Mastercard and Visa reject their Russian bank cards. Wired youth have integrated into the wider world, and their countrys primitive assault on a peaceful neighbor has made Russian identity an emotional burden.

The professional burden will not be as heavy. Tech companies in other countries are happily snapping up educated refugees. These young people have long had choices beyond which French cheese to buy.

The United States has been accused, not unjustly, of being a materialistic culture. But some overstate the damage our love of gadgetry does to our souls. That self-flagellation has gone so far as to turn our love of stuff into a selling point.

You know those Expedia ads. We really love stuff, the Scottish actor Ewan McGregor says. Thinner TVs, sportier SUVs, smarter smartphones and so on. Do you think any of us will look back on our lives and regret the things we didnt buy, he says, opening a door onto a stunning uncrowded beach, or the places we didnt go?

Well, the character presumably bought a plane ticket, hotel room and car rental -- and his trips use of fossil fuels did not help the environment. Travel is also consumption, or as the ad really suggests, a form of inconspicuous consumption.

We who are busy clearing the excess from our messy closets should bear in mind that decluttering is also a choice. Russians taken in by Putins call for heroic sacrifice might turn their gaze to the yachts, private jets and French villas his oligarchs are now trying to shield from seizure.

Ukrainians do talk of the comfy life they left behind. But its also clear that the resisters throwing their bodies against the Russian tanks think of themselves as defending a way of life in which they had say on what they could do and think as well as buy.

Once again, an autocrat looking for plunder accuses another country of decadence, too drugged by affluence to fight back. He attacks; then he loses. Vladimir Putin, step right up.

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com.
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
Southport, NC (28461)

Today

Sunshine and clouds mixed. A stray afternoon thunderstorm is possible. High 81F. Winds SSW at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

Partly cloudy early followed by cloudy skies overnight. Low 69F. Winds light and variable.
The U.S. Marine Corps, after years of planning and preparation, activated its first (of three) Littoral Regiment in Hawaii. This one is called the 3rd Marine Littoral Regiment because it was built around the existing 3rd Marine Regiment in Hawaii. The Littoral Regiment is capable of operating throughout the Pacific and moving to a new area very quickly. The Littoral regiment has three components; battalion sized units called teams. The combat team consists of a Littoral Infantry battalion augmented by a missile battery firing guided rockets that can sink ships as well as destroy land targets. The infantry element is organized like the British Royal Marine Commandos, whose basic unit is a battalion size force called a commando and consisting of 690 marines including four commando companies each with about 100 commandos organized into five platoons. The rest of the 690 troops are for support functions.

The U.S. Marine littoral combat team infantry element consists of small platoons that can operate independently or together with two or three other platoons. These platoons can quickly be flown to a combat zone or hot spot and collect information on the area, including selecting targets that can be hit by littoral regiment missiles or missiles launched from warships or aircraft. A primary task of these platoon size teams is to remain hidden. The team uses encrypted satellite communications. These small teams are mobile enough to quickly change location to prevent an enemy action.

The second littoral team is a battalion-size anti-aircraft unit while the third team handles logistics and support of the entire regiment and especially the infantry battalion teams. These teams combine skills the marines have used with their Force Recon units and scout sniper teams consisting of two snipers to not only scout for a larger unit, but kill key enemy individuals they encountered.

The littoral infantry teams also use tactics similar to what the allied coast watcher teams did in the Pacific during World War II. The coast watchers formed spontaneously when Europeans or locals on Pacific Islands began observing Japanese ship traffic passing by and reporting it back to the nearest allied military base. Eventually these teams were equipped with more capable radios and operators who could quickly send short messages that Japanese radio direction units could not locate. The coast watchers also depended on friendly locals for information and assistance when the team had to move to another watching site to avoid Japanese troops. The marine littoral regiment is a clever combination of past skills and techniques used by the American and British marines as well as specialized information gathering units. The marines have often used their past experience or that of others to update their organization and tactics.

The littoral regiments are one visible result of nearly a decade of Marine Corps efforts at reorganizing itself. Over the last few decades its weapons and equipment got heavier, so that it could work with army units during combat operations on land. This made your average marine combat unit heavier and more difficult to move ashore for amphibious operations. In response, marine commanders say they would prefer to be a smaller force, one that concentrates on its main mission: amphibious and commando type operations.

The reorganization process has been underway during the past few years and has led to a lot of support units (tank, artillery, aviation, engineer and military police) being disbanded or moved to the reserves. Three of 24 current marine infantry battalions and one regimental headquarters are being deactivated as well. The marine focus is now on the Pacific and potential conflict with China. That means the marines want to get back to World War II-type operations, when the marines were all about taking fortified islands from their Japanese garrisons or harassing enemy forces throughout the region.

The last major reorganization took place in the 1980s. Back then, the marines turned their divisional and regimental headquarters into administrative operations, and created new organizations to do the actual fighting. The new units were MEUs (Marine Expeditionary Units, actually reinforced infantry battalions), MEBs (Marine Expeditionary Brigades, which were brigades reinforced with support units so they could operate independently) and MEFs (Marine Expeditionary Force), which was a headquarters for controlling MEUs and MEBs. When there was a large operation, the old regimental and divisional designations were used, but the units were basically MEBs controlled by an MEF. This task-oriented organization remains. Even the army adopted this type of thing fifteen years ago when reinforced brigades became the primary combat unit rather than the division. Divisions headquarters became a tactical headquarters for brigades and other units for an operation.

Meanwhile, many marines were unhappy with the way they have been used as an army auxiliary in the decade after 2001. The marines consider themselves specialists, while the army are generalists who, for example, carried out more amphibious operations than the marines did during World War II. By 2013 marines comprised a quarter of America's ground combat forces. That's active duty, when you count the much larger army reserve force, the marines are 18 percent of ground combat forces. The marines never wanted to be just another part of American ground combat forces. This has caused some tension within the marine leadership, as some commanders want to maintain as broad a range of skills as possible. This has led to disputes over how to handle development and procurement of specialist equipment, especially amphibious and armored vehicles. Eventually the originalists won the debate and now the marines are going back to their modern origins during and before World War II.

The marines were also concerned with their relationship with the U.S. Navy, which went ahead and formed another ground combat force. To understand how this came about you have to understand the relationship between the navy and the marines. The marines are not part of the navy, as they are often described. Both the navy and marines are part of the Department of the Navy. The Department of the Air Force now has the Space Force as well as the much larger Air Force. The Department of the Army has only one component. For a long time the Navy Department has had two components; the fleet and the marines, which is now a separate service that is still closely intertwined with the navy. For example, the navy provides many support functions for the marines which, in the army and air force, are provided by each service. Thus, navy personnel serve in marine units (wearing marine combat uniforms) as medics and other support specialists. The use of the navy for support functions means a much higher proportion of marines are combat troops than in the navy, army, or air force. This gives the marines a different attitude and outlook. The Air Force now has a similar relationship with the new Space Force.

Over the years, the marines have acquired more and more autonomy from the navy. When the U.S. Marine Corps was created, over two centuries ago, marines were sailors trained and equipped to fight as infantry, and they were very much part of the navy and part of ship crews. This changed radically in the late 19th century, when all-metal steam ships replaced wooden sailing ships. The new "iron ships" really didn't need marines and there were proposals to eliminate them. In response, the American marines got organized and made themselves useful in other ways. For example, the marines performed very well as "State Department Troops" in Latin America for half a century (late 19th century to just before World War II), where American troops were frequently used to deal with civil disorder abroad and nation building. During World War I (1914-18), they provided a brigade for ground combat in Europe where the marines demonstrated exceptional combat skills.

In the 1930s, as World War II approached, the U.S. Marine Corps really ran with the ball when the navy realized they would have to use amphibious assaults to take heavily fortified Japanese islands in any future war. Thus, once the U.S. entered World War II, the marines formed their first division size units and ended the war with six divisions, organized into two corps. Only four of those divisions survived the post-World War II demobilization and one of them is now a reserve division.

After World War II the Marine Corps was no longer just a minor part of the navy but on its way to being a fourth service. By the late 20th century, they basically achieved that goal. But in doing so, the navy lost control of its ground troops. Navy amphibious ships still went to sea with battalions of marines on board. But because the marines are mainly an infantry force, and the war on terror is basically an infantry scale battle, the marines spent a lot more time on land working alongside the U.S. Army.

In response to all this, the U.S. Navy began building a new ground combat force in 2006, staffed by 40,000 sailors as NECC (Navy Expeditionary Combat Command). This was for operating along the coast and up rivers, as well as further inland. NECC units served in Iraq and are ready to deploy anywhere else they are needed. The 1,200 sailors in the EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) teams are particularly sought after, because of increased use of roadside bombs and booby traps by the enemy. NECC organized three Riverine Squadrons which served in Iraq. NECC basically consists of most of the combat support units the navy has traditionally put ashore, plus some coastal and river patrol units that have usually only been organized in wartime.

As major U.S. troops commitments to Iraq and Afghanistan declined after 2011 so did the need for NECC. Currently NECC is a smaller force of 20,000 sailors trained and equipped for coastal and riverine operations. There is still a need for that and the marines are content to let the navy handle it with sailors trained as infantry who operate from small boats along coasts and waterways.

NECC and the strategy that came with it, was a surprise to many people, especially many of those in Congress who were asked to pay for it. It came as a surprise to many NECC sailors as well. The navy even called on the marines to provide infantry instructors for the few thousand sailors assigned to riverine (armed patrol boat) units. The navy already had infantry training courses for Seabees (naval construction personnel) and members of EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) teams. Now all that was combined in the Expeditionary Combat Skills (ECS) course, which is conducted at a base in Mississippi.

Initially the Marine Corps had mixed feelings about NECC, for the marines have long been the navy's ground combat troops. The navy says that the USMC mission will remain. Thus, some marine leaders want to shrink the Corps so they become small enough to handle anticipated navy amphibious operations and not large enough to have troops available for large-scale support of army operations.

In effect, many American marine commanders want to be more like the British marines. That's interesting, because British marines are called Royal Marine Commandos and are quite different from their American counterparts. Britain invented the modern concept of the commando but disbanded the ten army commando's (as the battalion size commando units were called) at the end of World War II. The Royal Marines, however, saw the commando concepts as a welcome addition to their own amphibious doctrine and retained three of their nine Royal Marine Commandos. Since World War II, the Royal Marines have maintained at least three commandos (battalions). Artillery and engineer units are supplied by the army.

Like the U.S. Marines, the Royal Marines realized that assault from the sea was always a commando-like operation which required special training, bold leadership, and an aggressive spirit. The Royal Marines, like their American counterparts, continued to innovate. In 1956, it was a Royal Marine Commando that launched the first helicopter assault from ships against a land target (during an invasion of Egypt). The Royal Marine Commandos were used extensively to keep the peace in Ireland during the 1970s and 80s. In 1982, it was two Royal Marine Commandos and one parachute battalion that did most of the fighting to retake the Falkland Islands from Argentina. The Royal Marines have performed peacekeeping duty in the Balkans and Africa, and served as an amphibious fast reaction force.

While the U.S. Marines made a name for themselves with multi-division amphibious operations in the Pacific during World War II, the Royal Marines stuck with the commando type operations that characterize what marines spent most of the time doing between major wars in the past. Remember, the last large scale amphibious operation took place over seventy years ago at Inchon, Korea in 1950. Since then, the typical marine mission has been a quick assault using a small (usually battalion size) force.

In anticipation of this, the U.S. Marine Corps Special Operations Command (MARSOC) was created in 2006. Since then, it has kept its 2,500 personnel busy with dozens of deployments in South America, the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia. MARSOC is organized into a headquarters, a two battalion Special Operations Regiment, a Foreign Military Training Unit, and a Marine Special Operations Support Group. There are 3-4 Special Operations companies in each battalion.

The marines basically lost two of their four Force Recon companies (one of them a reserve unit) in order to build MARSOC. Meanwhile, more troops have been added to division level reconnaissance units, to take up some of that slack. The Special Operations companies (with about 120 personnel each) can provide Force Recon capabilities to marine units they are attached to. The two Special Operations Battalions provide a combination of services roughly equal to what the U.S. Army Special Forces and Rangers do, as well as some of the functions of the Force Recon units.

With MARSOC the marines are playing catch up. In the late 1980s all the other services, except the marines, contributed to the formation of SOCOM (Special Operations Command). The marines finally got around to working with SOCOM in 2005, when it was agreed that they would create a marine special operations command (MARSOC). The Marine Corps had long resisted such a step, largely because of its belief that marines are inherently superior warriors capable of highly specialized missions. This attitude began to change during the fighting in Afghanistan, when marines were assigned to support SOCOM troops there and were duly impressed.

Most marine commanders see their future as a smaller (by up to a third, at least), even more elite and better equipped force. The marines want to get back to sea, and that is what the marines have done over the last decade. One major benefit was avoiding the loss of a lot of the valuable combat experience the marines have gained since September 11, 2001. Recruiting was reduced for a few years, and some marines transferred to the navy, usually in jobs that both sailors and marines handle, especially the NECC force. Marines have long moved over to the army, and the army would be glad to get an infusion of combat experienced marines, especially NCOs and officers. The marines also want to expand their reserve force so that marines who decide to get out can simply move over to the reserves.

The marines are now experimenting with some new concepts, like littoral regiments to do the jobs that are too tough or too distant for NECC to handle right away. The marines found a home in SOCOM, a multi-service organization where all forces involved (army Special Forces, Navy SEALs, and special operations aviation units from the army and air force) remain with the military service that created them. SOCOM sees to it that all these separate special operations are used for special operations and not diverted to more mundane tasks.
The case against two men accused in the 1996 murder of Kristin Smart should not be moved out of San Luis Obispo County Superior Court because the defendants havent proven bias against them from potential jurors, according to an opposition filed by District Attorneys officials on Friday.

In her Superior Court filing, Deputy District Attorney Crystal Seiler argued that 45-year-old Paul Flores and his father, 80-year-old Ruben Flores, have not met the burden for five factors listed to move the case out of county.

The opposition was filed in response to a March 9 request by attorney Bob Sanger, who represents Paul Flores, for a change of venue.

"Many serious offenses are likely to engender sympathy for the victims no matter where the trial was held, and this stems from the nature of the crime and not the location of the trial," Seiler wrote in the opposition. "This is a serious case that has devastated a family, but it is not a capital case nor is it a case that involves multiple murders."

Kristin Smart case: Defendants request change of venue, citing case publicity The defendants accused in the 1996 death and disappearance of Cal Poly student Kristin Smart have requested a change of venue for their upcoming trial, believing that they won't get a fair or impartial jury, according to a San Luis Obispo County Superior Court filing.

Paul Flores, of San Pedro, is charged with murdering 19-year-old Smart in his Cal Poly dorm room May 25, 1996 after they walked back from an off-campus party on Crandall Way.

His father, Ruben Flores, is charged with accessory after the fact and accused of hiding Smart's body under the deck of his Arroyo Grande residence in the 700 block of White Court. They both have pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Paul Flores was the last person seen with an intoxicated Smart near the intersection of Perimeter Road and Grand Avenue, just steps away from their dorms, at about 2 a.m., according to Cheryl Manzer, who walked back with them from the party before splitting off on her own.

Smart was not seen again. Her body was never recovered and in 2002, she was declared legally dead.

More than two decades passed after Smart's disappearance with no arrest before Orcutt native Chris Lambert produced the "Your Own Backyard" podcast series about the case from 2019 to 2021. Sanger cited the podcast in his motion as "advancing theories as to why Paul Flores is guilty."

Paul and Ruben Flores were arrested and charged in April 2021. Superior Court Judge Craig Van Rooyen upheld the charges against the defendants on Oct. 20 following a seven-week preliminary hearing from Aug. 2 to Sept. 22 in that same year, after finding probable cause. The trial is slated to begin on April 25.

The five factors listed by Seiler that the defendants must overcome include the nature and gravity of the offense, nature and extent of news coverage, size of the community, the defendants' statuses in the community and popularity and prominence of the victim.

Attached to Seiler's opposition was a screenshot of a website listing Lambert's podcast as the most popular in the U.S. in April 2021 and Google trends listing Kristin Smart as the seventh most searched term in the country at the time.

Additionally, Seiler attached Census statistics for San Luis Obispo, arguing in her opposition that judges have declined to change venues for similar cases in counties with smaller populations.

With regard to the fifth factor, Seiler said that courts have considered the posthumous celebrity status given to a victim after a serious crime due to media coverage, but argued that this wasn't enough for courts to support venue changes.

"There is no evidence that the potential jury pool will be comprised of persons who knew her or her family," Seiler said. "With her disappearance and murder, she joins a long, terrible list of young women whose lives were cut short."

Seiler added in her motion that the court is allowed to defer the venue change ruling until jury selection.

Sanger's motion is scheduled to be heard on 8:30 a.m. March 30 in Dept. 5 of Superior Court.
Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle on PBS. He wrote this for InsideSources.com.
New evidence shows US hijacks, monitors users social media accounts, emails

By Zhao Siwei (Global Times) 08:44, March 23, 2022

The digital times. (People's Daily Online/Zhao Tianqi)

Chinese cybersecurity experts for the first time disclosed a typical weapon used by US National Security Agency (NSA) to target China. The weapon can monitor and hijack users' social media accounts, emails and communication information, the Global Times learned from a leading cybersecurity company exclusively on Tuesday.

This is the second time in less than a month that internet security company 360 has revealed evidence of the NSA's ongoing large-scale cyber operations around the world, particularly targeting China.

In early March, 360 provided a series of evidence to prove that the NSA targeted the communications industry and other key areas, and hundreds of millions of citizens around the world had no safe place to hide their private and sensitive information, just like "running naked." China, as one of NSA's top targets, suffered millions of attacks.

According to a report published by 360 on Tuesday, Quantum attack is a cyber hijacking tool that the NSA especially designed for attacking users on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Amazon and other websites. Users of Chinese social media applications such as QQ, developed by Tencent, have also been a key target.

Cybersecurity experts from the company told the Global Times on Tuesday that the data stolen by the NSA around the world includes network profiles, account numbers and passwords, office and private documents, databases, online friends' information, communications information, emails, real-time data from cameras and microphones.

"The attacks are undifferentiated. In addition to China, many countries that cooperate with the US are also the targets of NSA's cyberattacks," the anonymous expert said.

Fully automatic, AI

According to the report, the Quantum attack system is the most powerful cyberattack tool of the NSA, and also one of its most important capability systems for cyber intelligence warfare. The Quantum attack system was founded in 2004 and contains several sub-projects, whose names all begin with "Quantum." 360 Cloud Security Brain lab has discovered that it contains nine advanced cyberattack capability modules, including Quantumbot, Quantumhand, Quantumcopper and Quantummackdown.

The quantum attack system could hijack national network communications to carry out a series of complex network attacks such as vulnerability exploitation, communication manipulation and intelligence theft.

"A Quantum attack can hijack the normal web traffic of any internet user anywhere in the world and remotely implant a backdoor program," the cybersecurity expert said.

According to the report, the Quantum attack was usually implemented in three stages. In the first stage, the Quantum attacker would first locate the target. According to NSA's confidential documents, such attacks could position global websites and accounts such as emails, social media platforms, search engines, video sites, quickly finding out the targets' addresses.

In the second stage, the attacker would fully monitor the targets' accounts and their activities. The NSA's confidential documents show the details of how Quantum attack system monitors users' information on Yahoo, Facebook and Hotmail. This proves that the NSA is monitoring internet users around the world.

In the third stage, the NSA began to implement vulnerability exploitation attacks, implanted its backdoor programs into victims' accounts and stole a large number of personal data. The vast amount of data collected throughout the attack was obtained without users' knowledge, the report shows.

Undifferentiated attack

The undifferentiated attacks conducted by the NSA across the globe could not have been achieved without the support of a huge and complex network of cyber weapons platform. As the technical personnel mentioned above said, cyberattacks launched by the US are undifferentiated, targeting the entire globe including its allies.

The undifferentiated cyberattack from the US also refers to the fact that all internet users of e-mails, social networks, search engines, and video websites are targeted. No country can stand alone under the sickle of US' cyberattacks, which is global and immoderate, the expert said.

Chinese cybersecurity analysts also noted US' cyber-warfare strategy may not be limited to cyber-theft and the next goal of the US will be even more ambitious.

They warned that the US may install hardware or backdoor programs in victims' computers, achieve remote control on targets including military systems, servers in the field of national public security, civil aviation transportation systems and bank financial systems, which will make its rivals have no room for negotiation.

To be the dominant power of cyber warfare, the US, with an already advanced internet technology, has incorporated a large number of top technological means such as Quantum attack systems, high-end talents, and intelligence forces into the warfare dispositions. It highlights how the US attaches great importance to developing its power in cyber warfare, regardless of cost and pouring in resources and leverage, they said.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
TAIPEI, March 23 (Xinhua) -- Taiwan reported 97 new COVID-19 cases Wednesday, including two locally transmitted infections and 95 imported infections, said the island's disease monitoring agency.

Of the new locally transmitted infections, one occurred in Taipei while the other was found in New Taipei, the agency said.

To date, Taiwan has reported 22,188 confirmed COVID-19 cases, of which 15,520 were local infections. 
A Seattle man was arrested Tuesday night after allegedly assaulting a Kelso Freeway Shell customer and biting officers.

Kelso Police Cpt. Rich Fletcher said police first contacted a man later identified as Geoffrey David Bork, 46, around 4 p.m. at the Riverway Plaza after he called 911 from several different phones, reportedly telling a citizen he wanted to see how many officers he could get to respond. Officers could not establish cause to arrest Bork and let him leave, Fletcher said.

Dispatch received a couple calls around 7:30 p.m. reporting Bork "bothering people," Fletcher said.

Around 10:45 p.m., a Shell employee called to report a disorderly subject in the store whom they had asked to leave after he allegedly assaulted another customer, Fletcher said. Officers contacted Bork in the Shell parking lot and he fled on foot to the Denny's parking lot across the street, Fletcher said.

Bork fought with officers, biting two and causing "pretty significant" injuries and attempting to bite a third, Fletcher said. The officers tased Bork and additional officers helped apprehend him.

Cowlitz County sheriff's deputies arrested Bork on suspicion of third-degree assault, disorderly conduct, criminal trespassing, obstructing a public servant and resisting arrest.

Love 0 Funny 3 Wow 5 Sad 0 Angry 4

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.
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

To help get supplies quickly to Ukrainian refugees, Amazon has reconfigured a warehouse in Slovakia from a center to fill customer orders to one collecting, preparing and distributing donated supplies.

Amazon announced Tuesday it had converted nearly 54,000 square feet of warehouse space in Slovakia to create a new "humanitarian aid hub," according to a blog post on the company's website.

The new warehouse space will connect a network of fulfillment centers across Europe to move donated blankets, clothing, hygiene items and other shelter materials. That network is preparing and delivering 4 million donations of critical supplies, Amazon said.

"Launching this hub in less than 10 days was a huge team effort and it's gratifying to see much-needed supplies already flowing through and making their way to people in need," Amazon wrote in its blog post. "We're thankful to our customers for their generosity and to our teams and our partners for their work and dedication to supporting refugees at this critical time, and we know this will be a long-term effort."

As donations come to Amazon's network of facilities in Europe, the company ships them to the hub in Slovakia. From there, donations are distributed to refugees through partnerships with Save the Children, and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

The hub is meant to "expedite the movement of relief supplies" through Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, Moldova and Czech Republic, Amazon said.

Amazon announced earlier this month that it would suspend shipment of retail products to customers in Russia and Belarus, as well as no longer accept new customers based in those countries through its program for third-party sellers or Amazon Web Services, the cloud computing and infrastructure arm of its business. It suspended access to Prime Video for customers based in Russia and stopped taking orders for New World, a video game, sold directly in Russia.

Amazon does not have offices, data centers or infrastructure in Russia.

Explore further Amazon to open Los Angeles clothing store, in first

2022 The Seattle Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Credit: Shutterstock

On March 21, President Biden issued an urgent warning to American business leaders to strengthen their companies' cyber defenses immediately. In recent weeks, experts have been surprised by the lack of full-scale cyberattacks by Russia. But the threat of devastating cyberattacks is still very real and American companies and individuals must remain vigilant, warned Liberty Vittert, professor of practice of data science at Washington University's Olin Business School.

"With the war in Ukraine seeming to only ramp up, instead of down, and Putin's aggression against those that would defend the Ukrainian people increases, it only seems appropriate to ask 'What is an act of war against the United States?'" Vittert said.

The United States was launched into World War II after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, killing 2,403 American soldiers and civilians. That was an act of war that the U.S. could not ignore. It's unlikely that Russia would attack the U.S. in the same way, though.

"Most assume that nowadays it would be an act of cyber warfare, not an actual physical attack. But what does that mean?" Vittert asked.

"The Russians and the Chinese have been responsible for cyberattacks for years on the United States. From the SolarWinds Russian-linked cyberattack in 2020, and the cyberattack on the Colonial Oil pipeline less than a year ago, we have numerous examples of Russia testing our systems.

"China has been much worse, with multiple Chinese-linked cyber hacks on Microsoft, on Google and even on our news sources like the New York Times," she said.

Previous cyberattacks have not been treated as acts of war, which begs the question: What sorts of actions would cross that line?

"If Russia targets the U.S. banking system, is that enough? Do they just need to access the systems, do they need to shut it down, do they need to steal? What is bad enough that we would call it an act of war?" Vittert said.

"If pipelines are targeted, how long do they need to be down before it is an act of war? Someone I spoke with recently said it would be an act of war if Americans died. If the U.S. has access to oil pipelines shut down for any period, I can guarantee you there will be deaths. How many is necessary to consider it an act of war?

"The answers to these questions are complicated and frankly unknown. This is a new tool in the new toolbox of war," she said.

Already, Russia has attacked Ukraine in multiple ways, including hacking business and financial systems in the country. As for an attack in the U.S., Vittert said it is just a matter of time.

"Most would say that the U.S. has the most sophisticated (cyber) defense systems andon the other side of itthe most sophisticated attack systems," Vittert said. "But the problem with cyberattacks is that they only need to get in once to cause devastating damage, whereas we have to defend against so many."

Most large corporations and financial systems likely have in-house cyber protection capabilities but, for smaller businesses, Vittert recommended hiring a cybersecurity company to ensure your company is protected. All businesseslarge and smallshould review their cyber protection systems to ensure they are up to date and as protected as they believe them to be.

"This isn't something to take lightly whether it be an attack from a foreign adversary or simply a criminal one," Vittert said.

As for individuals, Vittert said it's important to change your passwords regularly and never use the same password for your banking systems as you do for other websites.

"It's much easier to hack a magazine website, for example, but if you use the same passwords, you're potentially facing some real trouble," Vittert warned.
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Dallas-Fort Worth's economy weathered the pandemic better than most, recouping lost jobs sooner than nearly all other large metros.

It also made impressive gains as a technology capital, growing tech-sector jobs faster than the nation and gaining market share in the first year of the pandemic.

"Dallas is emerging as one of the top 10 tech centers in America," said Mark Muro, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and co-author of a recent report on how the pandemic affected the landscape for tech jobs.

The report identified D-FW as a "rising star" in the tech sector, among a group that includes Atlanta, Denver and San Diego. That's a notable achievement because tech fields generate faster growth and more spin-offs. And such status is hardly guaranteed; Houston, in contrast, lost tech workers.

Dallas ranks just behind eight "superstar" metros, led by San Jose, New York, San Francisco and Washington. Austin also made the superstar tier, a recognition of its fast growth and appeal to tech giants like Apple and Oracle.

In the Brookings report, the tech sector counts workers in six industries, including computer systems design and services; software publishers; semiconductor and component manufacturing; data processing and hosting; computer equipment manufacturing; and other information services.

Dallas-Fort Worth had just over 139,000 of those tech-sector workers in 2020, which ranked No. 8 in the U.S, according to the report.

The total does not count IT workers at many other large employers that aren't in the tech industry per se, such as American Airlines and Baylor Scott & White Health. So the size of the tech workforce in North Texas is actually larger, and size is part of the appeal.

"In Dallas, you just have an abundance of opportunity," said Bill Sproull, a longtime tech industry leader who formerly was CEO of Tech Titans, a local industry trade group. "A lot of these folks are being hired by companies that are tech-enabled. Think about State Farm, Capital One and BNSF; they hire all these IT folks, and they're competing with the big tech platforms for the same labor pool."

The pandemic accelerated the movement to remote work, and Sproull said that directly benefited two tech industries in North Texas: communications and IT services. He mentioned Cisco, which operates the popular Webex conference platform; it had 2,000 employees in Richardson last year, according to the Richardson Economic Development Partnership.

The Richardson list of employers also had 1,800 workers at Texas Instruments' chip plant, 1,500 at Fujitsu Network Communications and 1,100 at AT&T.

That diverse group of companies helps attract talent to the region, Sproull said: "If one job doesn't work out, you can walk across the street and try for another one."

From 2015 to 2019, D-FW tech-sector jobs grew at an annual rate of 4.2%, faster than the national growth rate, the report said. From 2019 to 2020, which includes the first year of the pandemic, D-FW's tech sector grew by 3.8%a percentage point higher than the average for its top rival metros.

While Seattle, New York and San Francisco grew faster, D-FW performed better than Austin, Atlanta, Boston and Los Angeles.

"D-FW actually increased its market share during the pandemic, and in my view, that's the most important metric," Muro said. "That's a fundamental indicator of D-FW's competitiveness."

Dallas is attractive to companies that want to tap a large labor pool while also cutting operating costs, he said. And it appeals to workers who want a hybrid workplace because many companies have regional offices here.

"It seems like Dallas may be one of the winners of the post-pandemic period," Muro said.

But leaders shouldn't focus on attracting new companies, Muro said: "Focus on attracting and growing talent. Everything else will come."

Downtown Dallas has been building tech clusters for many years, encouraging innovation and entrepreneurship. It has attracted some surprising employers in the past, including tech hubs for Blue Cross Blue Shield and Sam's Club.

"You may not think of them as tech companies, but they have rich tech jobs, and they're within the downtown area," said Dustin Bullard, executive vice president of economic development and place at the advocacy group Downtown Dallas Inc.

It's important for Dallas to rank high as a tech center, he said, because the tech industry leads on many fronts, from adopting technology for remote work to providing better employee benefits.

"That eventually bleeds into more traditional industries," Bullard said.

From 2015 to 2020, Dallas added over 25,000 tech-sector workers, according to the Brookings report. That ranked sixth in the U.S. and was the highest total for an inland city.

As the pandemic health threat eases, more employers want people to come back to the office, even for a few days a week. In that environment, Dallas offers a strong proposition, said Patrick Todd, managing partner at Todd Interests, a commercial real estate investment and development firm.

Average lease rates for commercial office space in Dallas are half the average rates in San Jose and New Yorkor less, according to CoStar. Many submarkets in Los Angeles also cost twice as much as here.

But it's also important to have unique spaces, such as the East Quarter that Todd is redeveloping on the edge of downtown. That project includes restoring 18 historic buildings, some 100 years old with views of the skyline.

Therabody, a health products company in Los Angeles, expanded to the East Quarter in what was described as a second U.S. headquarters.

"Companies have to give people a reason to come to the office," Todd said. "They're saying, 'I need killer spacegame-changing, place-making space.' And many are coming to Dallas."

Explore further Texas Instruments to build a $30 billion semiconductor chip manufacturing campus

2022 The Dallas Morning News.

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
The core of INL's Advanced Test Reactor, seen here in October, about midway through the overhaul process. Credit: Idaho National Laboratory

Workers at Idaho National Laboratory's Advanced Test Reactor have completed an 11-month outage for a core overhaul that occurs about every 10 years to maintain peak performance. During the overhaul, operators and maintenance teams replaced components that wear out over timeakin to rebuilding the engine of a high-performance car.

ATR is the world's largest, most powerful and flexible materials test reactor. Its distinctive cloverleaf core design provides a range of capabilities that no other can match. The new core components make it possible to continue ATR's strategic and scientific research missions for another decade or more.

As a centerpiece of the U.S. nuclear energy research infrastructure, the test reactor supports a range of vital missions for the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Nuclear Energy. ATR also supports university research and nuclear industries in the U.S. and around the world. Plus, it creates valuable isotopes for NASA space exploration and medical treatments.

Credit: DOE/Idaho National Laboratory

ATR operates at low temperatures and pressures compared to commercial power reactors, which are designed to produce heat. In contrast, ATR's main job is to produce neutrons. It does so at very high levels. By exposing fuel and material samples to this environment, researchers gain valuable data about the way new materials and designs respond to long-term operations in high-radiation environments.

Operations and maintenance team members stand back as the 32-ton top head of the Advanced Test Reactor is lowered back into place during an overhaul of INL's flagship test reactor. Credit: Idaho National Laboratory

INL operations and maintenance team members stand back as the 32-ton top head of the Advanced Test Reactor is removed from the vessel to allow access to begin the core overhaul that was completed on March 21, 2022. Credit: Idaho National Laboratory

Tony Wease performs precision welds on a core component of INL's Advanced Test Reactor during the reactor's core overhaul which was completed this week. Credit: Idaho National Laboratory

INL employees prepare new beryllium reflector blocks for installation into INL's Advanced Test Reactor during the reactor's 11-month core overhaul that was completed March 21, 2022. Credit: Idaho National Laboratory

A rare view into the Advanced Test Reactor's 35-foot high reactor vessel, after removal of the 31-ton stainless steel top head to begin a full core overhaul that was completed on March 21, 2022. Credit: Idaho National Laboratory

Although not a part of ATR itself, ATR's Gamma Facility, located in ATR's fuel storage canal, uses spent ATR fuel elements as a source for research on experiments needing significant doses of gamma radiation. Credit: Idaho National Laboratory

ATR's designers knew the neutron levels would take a toll on the reactor's main internal core components. Engineers tailored ATR's design to enable replacement of these components through an overhaul process known as the Core Internals Changeout. ATR has been through six core overhauls since it began operations in 1967.

In addition to the reactor itself, the core overhaul outage provided an important opportunity to replace and upgrade other systems and infrastructure within the reactor building and around the ATR Complex. Many of these systems are necessary for operation of ATR and can only be maintained and repaired during plant outages. These systems include equipment like bridge cranes, electrical switchgear and components of waste handling systems that also gradually wear out. Such infrastructure is routinely inspected and monitored as part of a long-term asset management program and repaired or replaced when needed to ensure ATR can accomplish its important missions.

With completion of the overhaul, INL and DOE experts are completing extensive readiness assessments, instrument calibrations and low-power system checks. When those are complete, ATR's normal research operations will resume this spring.

Explore further Powerful US nuclear test reactor getting rare major overhaul
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

"People who don't use the equipment just don't realize how important it is for individuals," a wheelchair user told USA TODAY.

 Smartphones and technology have alleviated some of the stress of transportation for disabled travelers.

 Airports and other transportation services have their own apps, as do the airlines, which means information is scattered across different sources.

The worst time at an airport for Paul Choquette is waiting at the gate before takeoff.

Choquette, 57, has used a wheelchair since he was 4 following a car accident. His process for boarding a plane involves riding his chair right up to the door, then transferring to an aisle chair to find his seat while his wheelchair is stowed under the plane.

But waiting for that assistance to arrive can create stress. Choquette recalls one flight from Newark, New Jersey, to Stockholm during which airport workers couldn't find an aisle chair to help him board his flight.

"I ended up actually getting on the plane in my wheelchairto the consternation of the staffand going as far down the business class aisle that I could, and then basically getting on the floor and crawling to my seat," said Choquette during an interview with USA TODAY.

On his return flight from Stockholm, Choquette's wheelchair had been sent to baggage claim instead of waiting for him by the plane door. So, Choquette was pushed on what he described as a "recliner on wheels" to get to his wheelchair.

Experiences like these are a big reason why he wants better technology to track information, such as the location of wheelchairs and when assistance for disabled travelers might arrive.

"When you order food, you can see the little dot coming closer to your house," he said. "Same kind of thing. If you could have something where they could see, is the person coming or are they in the airport?"

Smartphones and technology have alleviated some of the stress of transportation for disabled travelers, from apps for people with visual or cognitive impairments to websites rating locations based on their accessibility.

But there could be better tech to make the experience smoother.

'The automated check-in machines are terrible'

Lucy Greco, a web accessibility evangelist with the University of California, Berkeley, said that while airports have made strides on indoor navigation technology and digital boarding passes, there are struggles finding accessible solutions to processes from filling out forms for service animals to using check-in kiosks at airports.

"The automated check-in machines are terrible," said Greco. "They're supposed to be accessible by now. The FTA rule said they should be accessible by now, but I don't know of anybody who's used one independently to this day."

Airports and other transportation services have their own apps, as do the airlines, which means information is scattered across different sources. For example, travelers might have a boarding pass on their JetBlue app, while other important documents are held on a separate Mobile Passport Control or Smart Traveler government app.

"There's just not very much consistency around one single sign-in for these types of apps, especially around disability and travel," said Betsy Furler, founder of the website For All Abilities, which helps businesses support employees with disabilities.

Greco said she'd like to see airports maintain better digital signage, where airports can send a push notification to a disabled traveler through a universal app if they enter a new terminal, details on departures or arrivals, or where to find ground transportation.

When traveling by plane, Choquette relies on the apps from airlines as well as FlightAware for tracking his flight. If he flies American Airlines, he'll use their feature for tracking checked luggage to keep tabs on his wheelchair.

Choquette would like to see better tools in airports for tracking wheelchairs or other assistive devices travelers must check in, as well as digital confirmations for assistive services to "at least feel better about knowing that you're going to be able to get on the plane OK."

"I think sometimes ... people who don't use the equipment just don't realize how important it is for individuals," he said.

Top apps for disabled travelers

While some wheelchair users and those who need mobility equipment often opt for tile trackers, there is a small array of apps that can make traveling with disabilities a little more seamless. Among some of the apps Furler said can help travelers with disabilities:

Microsoft Seeing AI

The Microsoft app for people with visual or cognitive impairments uses the smartphone camera to read and recognize what it views. When held in front of short text, the app will read back what it sees. It can also describe scenes and people, and recognize types of currency.

"When you're in a foreign country, the money is confusing to all of us," said Furler. "And it's really confusing for someone with a disability or someone who can't see it very well."

Be My Eyes

This app for iOS and Android uses crowdsourcing to help users with blind and low-vision people. More than 5 million volunteers are available to assist users through a live video call to help with tasks like reading signs or seeking directions.

Access Now

The website and app map out information on locations, providing details on the level of accessibility. You can search for specific locations and rate them based on their accessibility.

Google Maps

Two years ago, the popular navigation app introduced an Accessible Places feature so users can more easily see which destinations are wheelchair accessible.

Google Keep and Apple Notes

Furler suggests travelers consider using note-keeping apps like Google Keep for Android or Apple's Notes app to keep all their necessary documents in one place on their smartphone. "It's all in there so every single thing is in one app that they can easily access and pull up."

Explore further Next stop: A transport system accessible for all

(c)2022 USA Today

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

Seattle Pride has cut Amazon as a sponsor for its annual parade, citing financial support for legislation, lawmakers and organizations that do not support the LGBTQ community.

Amazon has been a sponsor for the event in the past, Seattle Pride Executive Director Krystal Marx said, following the announcement Tuesday. But this time the company came in with a $100,000 offer, significantly higher than past donations, and strings attachedincluding a request to call the annual celebration Seattle Pride Parade Presented by Amazon.

It felt as if Amazon was trying to buy the event and the nonprofit itself, Marx said.

"It was important for us to really take a hard look at how do these values align with us," she said. "This Pride Parade is for our community to celebrate, to remember Stonewall in 1969, to continue the fight for our rights, and we don't feel it was possible to accept this money."

Ahead of this year's parade scheduled for June, Seattle Pride is requiring all corporate partners to participate in a diversity, equity and inclusion survey and evaluation process. That process is part of a larger movement around the country to prevent corporations from making what Seattle Pride described as "token gestures," rather than actively supporting members of the LGBTQIA+ community.

Amazon is the only corporate partner Seattle Pride has cut ties with following a deeper look into what lawmakers and organizations the company has supported, Marx said. The group has nine confirmed sponsors and is in conversation with 18 others.

Amazon says it "has long supported Seattle Pride because we believe that the rights of LGBTQ+ people must be protected," according to a spokesperson for the company.

When evaluating corporate sponsors, Marx says the group started from the top, with the companies that offered the largest donations and stood to benefit the most from exposure and involvement with the parade.

Amazon has been a sponsor for the parade on and off since 2009. It has donated roughly $42,000 since then, Marx said.

Its list of conditions for the 2022 contribution included featuring Amazon's logo prominently along the parade route, ensuring that logo would be first and larger than other corporate partners on promotional materials and allowing an Amazon leader to make remarks at the parade. Marx said the parade typically doesn't include speeches from corporate partners.

"There is a high likelihood it came from a place of wanting to support who we are," Marx said. "It was the additional requirements that came with that, that really threw us for a loop. They wanted so much visibility at such a high level."

Seattle Pride is also accusing Amazon of donating to politicians who support anti-transgender legislation, including two bills introduced in Washington, and supporting lawmakers who voted against the federal Equality Act, legislation that was meant to expand protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

Amazon is a member of The Business Coalition for the Equality Act, a group of more than 500 businesses who have voiced support for the bill.

"Amazon engages with policymakers and regulators on a wide range of issues that affect our business, customers, and employees," a spokesperson for the company said. "That does not mean we agree with any individual or political organization 100 percent of the time on every issue, and this includes legislation that discriminates or encourages discrimination against the LGBTQ+ community."

Outside of its own donations, Seattle Pride accused Amazon of facilitating donations from its customers to anti-LGBTQ groups on its AmazonSmile platform, a program that lets online shoppers donate 0.5% of their Amazon purchase to a charity of their choice.

Amazon says nonprofits participating in the program cannot support or promote discrimination based on sex or sexual orientation, but Seattle Pride pointed to groups on the platform like Arkansas-based Family Council, which worked to pass a state constitutional amendment to define marriage "as the union of one man and one woman."

"We simply cannot partner with any organization actively harming our community through the support of discriminatory laws and politics," Seattle Pride said in its Tuesday statement.

A spokesperson for Amazon said the fact that an organization has chosen to participate in the AmazonSmile program does not mean the company endorses its views.

Seattle Pride is asking Amazon to remove organizations from the AmazonSmile program that have an anti-LGBTQ agenda and deny future requests from similar groups. It's also asking the company to request the return of political donations to candidates introducing or supporting anti-LGBTQ legislation.

Making the decision to cut Amazon as a sponsor wasn't an easy one, Marx said, and it will affect the nonprofit's finances.

Amazon's donation would have helped Seattle Pride reach its proposed budget, meaning job security for the organization's four employees, investment in more accessibility resources and a guarantee that the parade and other events would be free.

Still, Marx said the day following the announcement was one of the "most encouraging days" from her time running the nonprofit. "People have been cheering left and right," she said.

On Tuesday, Marx added, Seattle Pride received an anonymous donation with a note that read, "Amazon employee who is very proud of Seattle Pride for their announcement today."

Explore further Amazon to build affordable housing near transit stops

2022 The Seattle Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

In recent weeks, some of Silicon Valley's most famous technologists have hailed a historically polarizing energy sourcenuclear poweras a solution to both cutting carbon emissions and weaning the world off now-controversial Russian gas.

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk wrote on Twitter that nuclear is "critical" to national security, while the risk of radiation is overplayed. And venture capitalist Marc Andreessen called for "1,000 new state-of-the-art nuclear power plants in the U.S. and Europe, right now."

The war galvanized a sentiment which has been building in recent years in the startup world, where billionaires including Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Peter Thiel have opened their wallets to back next-generation nuclear companies. None of the advanced reactor startups has yet produced an operating commercial product, but some believe that the combination of tech advances and a new urgency around ditching fossil fuels could be a catalyst for the sectorwhich has mostly languished in regulatory purgatory since the 1970s.

"We wouldn't be having a conversation about innovation in nuclear power today without the investment and thinking of the leaders of Silicon Valley," said Josh Freed, who specializes in climate and energy at public policy think tank Third Way in Washington.

Last year, venture investors plowed a record $3.4 billion into nuclear startupsmore than in every year over the past decade combined, according to research firm PitchBook. That number reflects very early-stage startups as well as more mature companies like Commonwealth Fusion Systems and Helion Energy Inc., both of which raised funding rounds of $500 million or more in 2021. In the previous decade there was an average of fewer than 10 deals a year. Last year the number jumped to 28.

The VC funding follows a decades-long dry spell for nuclear power. After it was developed in the 1950s, worries over safety and waste storage, along with accidents at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima hardened public opinion against the technology. Meanwhile, high costs made it less attractive than natural gas and other alternatives, as did regulatory hurdles. The Watts Bar Nuclear Plant, greenlit in 1973, was the last nuclear project to be approved in the U.S. It suffered from significant delays and cost increases and only began operating in 2016.

But as concerns over climate change grow, nuclear power's advantages have become clearer. Like solar, nuclear power has no carbon emissions; unlike solar, it can reliably produce energy 24 hours a day. It's also a path toward energy independence. The war in Ukraine drove gas prices in the U.S. to an all-time high earlier this month. While building more nuclear reactors won't alleviate the current paineven the new, smaller designs will take years to license and buildsupporters say it could help head off the next crisis.

Recent innovations in nuclear fission, the decades-old technology that captures energy released when atoms are split, include better methods for storing nuclear waste and cooling systems, which mean new reactors can be smaller and more efficient. Meanwhile, venture-backed startups that focus on nuclear fusion, the technology that captures energy created when atoms are merged, are progressing past the science project stage and toward commercialization faster than previously anticipated.

Fusion, a kind of holy grail for energy, has never successfully produced more power than was required to actually create the nuclear reaction. But some startups believe they are getting closer to flipping the equation. "Silicon Valley has been the foundation of the entire private fusion industry," said Christofer Mowry, chief executive officer of Vancouver-based General Fusion, which is backed by Bezos and others. Mowry, who also serves on the board of the nonprofit industry group Fusion Industry Association, said venture investment has helped dozens of fusion startups mature to the point that governments are starting to engage. In an example earlier this month, the U.S. Congress approved record funding for a public-private partnership program to build new fusion devices.

David Kirtley, a former implementer of fusion programs for the U.S. Department of Energy, started a fusion startup called Helion in 2013. The following year, he joined the Silicon Valley startup incubator Y Combinator, where he said he learned to "re-program" his thinking to be more ambitious. At YC, "they didn't talk about one-year timelines," Kirtley said. "Everything was next month and next week."

Helion has raised more than $570 million from investors including former YC President Sam Altman, Thiel's Mithril Capital and Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz. Altman, who serves as Helion's chairman and is a significant shareholder, said he believes fusion is the cleanest, cheapest form of energy that will someday transform the world. "All my conversations with them were about how they could go faster," Altman said.

Helion aims to demonstrate net electricity from fusion, meaning the system creates more power than it consumes, in 2024 and create a commercial system by the end of the decade. "I wish we would have joined Y Combinator five years earlier," Kirtley said. "We could be even farther along."

Nuclear fission startups could have a more immediate impact. TerraPower, founded and bankrolled by Bill Gates, uses advanced cooling materials including molten-chloride and liquid-sodium to build smaller, cheaper and more efficient reactors than conventional ones that use water for cooling. TerraPower plans to build two reactors in cooperation with the Energy Department, with its first commercial reactor to be located in Wyoming. TerraPower said late last year it will apply for a construction permit with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2023 and expects to begin operations in 2028.

TerraPower has seen new interest from countries including Romania and Poland following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, said Director of External Affairs Jeff Navin. "Not surprisingly we're seeing the most interest from those places that are bordering Russia and relying on them for energy," Navin said. John Kotek, vice president for policy development and public affairs for the Washington-based Nuclear Energy Institute, said its member companies have been busier than usual "since the Russian sabre rattling started."

Concerns over energy are particularly acute in Europe, which gets much of its fuel from Russia. Some countries that had been turning away from nuclear power are now reconsidering. "Germany would have needed less gas if they hadn't shut down nuclear," said Judi Greenwald, executive director for the Nuclear Innovation Alliance. "The invasion is a reminder that nuclear power is really reliable."

Despite the uptick in interest from governments, TerraPower's Navin said the company had yet to reach a deal. It's a reminder that even the most advanced startups are likely still many years away from a wide commercial rollout. Says Navin: "It takes time to sell a nuclear power plant."

2022 Bloomberg L.P.

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
MOGADISHU, March 23 (Xinhua) -- Somali security forces killed two al-Shabab terrorists in a foiled attack Wednesday noon on a military base near the heavily fortified Aden Ade International Airport in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, officials said.

Police force commissioner Abdi Hassan Mohamed Hijar told Xinhua that the terrorists had tried to force their way into the Somali National Army (SNA) base located near the airport but their efforts were thwarted by the vigilant security forces.

Hijar said the two militants disguised themselves as airport staff and reached the first checkpoint for screening people and vehicles heading into the airport before starting shooting security guards.

"The two terrorists who were armed with pistols made themselves look like the airport employees and launched the attack at the Marine gate which is an entry checkpoint to the airport of Mogadishu," Hijar said.

He said vigilant security forces manning the facility responded and killed the two of the terrorists before they could gain entry into the military base near Halane base camp, which houses AMISOM, United Nations and other international agencies.

Witnesses said heavy fighting broke out and sounds of gunfire could be heard from the area where presidential elections are soon scheduled to take place.

Mahad Salad, a member of the Somali Federal Parliament, said that the attack disrupted both domestic and international flights, saying that all flights were canceled.

A local staff inside the airport told Xinhua by phone that they are safe and sound, but there are restrictions since they are not allowed to move around.

The militant group al-Shabab claimed responsibility for the attack, noting it was targeting Western missions located around the area. 


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.
Chick-fil-A will supply Irving-headquartered Darling Ingredients with its delicious chicken grease  not for human consumption but for fuel.

Darling Ingredients core business is producing specialty ingredients like blood plasma, collagen, animal hides and bone-based protein that are needed to make products including pet food, soaps, leather and other consumer products.

The company is also part of a joint venture with Valero called Diamond Green Diesel that turns waste fat into renewable fuel that releases less emissions than fossil fuels. For the last several years, Darling Ingredients has been turning hundreds of millions of pounds of food manufacturing byproducts like chicken grease and other fats into alternative fuels.

Darling Ingredients DAR PRO Solutions will collect the grease from Chick-fil-As U.S. and Canada stores.

We admire Chick-fil-As commitment to reducing food waste and are proud to be part of a solution that keeps food waste out of our landfills while delivering a renewable fuel that reduces GHG emissions, Darling Ingredients vice president over renewables Sandra Dudley said in a statement.

The fuel Diamond Green Diesel produces is a low carbon transportation fuel that the company says is interchangeable with diesel.

Though its a relatively new space for the more than 70-year-old company, Darling Ingredients has been expanding its fuel sources in recent months, and growing revenue with it. In December, it agreed to acquire food processing company Valley Proteins for $1.1 billion.

Last year, Darlings renewable fuel ingredients business made up 9% of its overall sales, up from 8% in 2019, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company had $4.1 billion in sales revenue in 2021.

The business is poised to grow even faster now that a $1.1 billion expansion of its Louisiana plant has been completed and an additional $1.45 billion refinery plant in Port Arthur is expected to begin production in the first quarter of 2023.
The Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs at the Bush School hosted former ambassador Hank Crumpton, author of The Art of Intelligence, who discussed intelligence and global risk Tuesday night.

Crumpton served 24 years in the CIAs Clandestine Service, and from 2003-2005 was chief of the CIAs National Resource Division where he was responsible for all clandestine service operations in the United States. In 2005, President George W. Bush appointed Crumpton Ambassador-at-Large and U.S. Coordinator for Counterterrorism. Crumpton now serves as the co-chairman and co-chief executive officer of the Crumpton Group.

Crumpton said intelligence is a determined discipline; a specific education with a purpose. Intelligence is based off four elements relevance, accuracy, timeliness and analytical judgement.

Its not about being right. Its about living with the consequences of being wrong, Crumpton said. There is nothing more imperfect in all our endeavors than intelligence covert action at war. Theres nothing more complex. There nothing that will challenge us more.

Crumpton used Ukraine as an example. Crumpton said a sole farmer with a cell phone can geolocate enemy armor to provide intelligence to an outgunned, outmatched Ukrainian army. Crumpton said as the world continues to grow it is driven by technology and micro actors with macro impacts that have made the battlefield and marketplace more complex.

I look at whats going on in Ukraine right now with that trusted network of farmers and mechanics, militia, intelligent analysts and pilots all working together. Thats how we have success in todays world. Intelligence that feeds a dynamic trusted network, he said.

Crumpton said Ukraine has shown a remarkable demonstration of micro actors making a macro impact with Ukrainian volunteers manning a $40,000 NLAW anti-tank weapon to take out a $2 million Russian tank.

I am convinced that the Ukrainians are winning. Theyre counter attacking, Crumpton said. Theres been over 600 Russian armored vehicles destroyedTheres also been over 600 that have been abandoned or captured. Ukrainians are repurposing all of those. Stripping them of weapons and learning how to drive them to put them back into the fight.

As far as technology, Crumpton said he doesnt see it replacing people but rather adding to the intelligence process and the ultimate intelligence product.

Youre not there breaking bread with your Afghan allies. Youre not there sharing risk. Youre not there learning in an intimate way what their needs really are. I dont think that will ever change, Crumpton said.

Crumpton addressed students and told them the more endeavors they face the more mistakes they will make. But the key, he said, is to make the best possible judgment after sufficient reflection and studying and then live with the outcome and learn from it.

Thats also whats exciting and fun at least for me, thats how Ive learned, he said. In the private sector, Im always trying to do things, and I make a mistake sometimes and thats OK. I just tried to limit the damage and move forward and be able to be better at it next time.

Near the end of the discussion, Crumpton said the U.S. needs leaders in every sector of society. Crumpton said leaders need people who will speak up and help them lead the way.

When I think of leadership it just doesnt flow down. It flows up and down. It also flows sideways. Thats the only way we can tackle some of these complex issues that were facing in society, he said.

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 China-based advanced persistent threat (APT) known as Mustang Panda has been linked to an ongoing cyber espionage campaign using a previously undocumented variant of the PlugX remote access trojan on infected machines.

Slovak cybersecurity firm ESET dubbed the new version Hodur, owing to its resemblance to another PlugX (aka Korplug) variant called THOR that came to light in July 2021.

"Most victims are located in East and Southeast Asia, but a few are in Europe (Greece, Cyprus, Russia) and Africa (South Africa, South Sudan)," ESET malware researcher Alexandre Cote Cyr said in a report shared with The Hacker News.

"Known victims include research entities, internet service providers (ISPs), and European diplomatic missions mostly located in East and Southeast Asia."

Mustang Panda, also known as TA416, HoneyMyte, RedDelta, or PKPLUG, is a cyber espionage group that's primarily known for targeting non-governmental organizations with a specific focus on Mongolia.

The latest campaign, which dates back to at least August 2021, makes use of a compromise chain featuring an ever-evolving stack of decoy documents pertaining to the ongoing events in Europe and the war in Ukraine.

"Other phishing lures mention updated COVID-19 travel restrictions, an approved regional aid map for Greece, and a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council," ESET said. "The final lure is a real document available on the European Council's website. This shows that the APT group behind this campaign is following current affairs and is able to successfully and swiftly react to them."

Regardless of the phishing lure employed, the infections culminate in the deployment of the Hodur backdoor on the compromised Windows host.

"The variant used in this campaign bears many similarities to the THOR variant, which is why we have named it Hodur," Cote Cyr explained. "The similarities include the use of the Software\CLASSES\ms-pu registry key, the same format for [command-and-control] servers in the configuration, and use of the Static window class."

Hodur, for its part, is equipped to handle a variety of commands, enabling the implant to gather extensive system information, read and write arbitrary files, execute commands, and launch a remote cmd.exe session.

The findings from ESET line up with public disclosures from Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG) and Proofpoint, both of which detailed a Mustang Panda campaign to distribute an updated PlugX variant earlier this month.

"The decoys used in this campaign show once more how quickly Mustang Panda is able to react to world events," Cote Cyr said. "This group also demonstrates an ability to iteratively improve its tools, including its signature use of trident downloaders to deploy Korplug."
Microsoft on Tuesday confirmed that the LAPSUS$ extortion-focused hacking crew had gained "limited access" to its systems, as authentication services provider Okta revealed that nearly 2.5% of its customers have been potentially impacted in the wake of the breach.

"No customer code or data was involved in the observed activities," Microsoft's Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) said, adding that the breach was facilitated by means of a single compromised account that has since been remediated to prevent further malicious activity.

The Windows maker, which was already tracking the group under the moniker DEV-0537 prior to the public disclosure, said it "does not rely on the secrecy of code as a security measure and viewing source code does not lead to elevation of risk."

"This public disclosure escalated our action allowing our team to intervene and interrupt the actor mid-operation, limiting broader impact," the company's security teams noted.

Identity and access management company Okta, which also acknowledged the breach through the account of a customer support engineer working for a third-party provider, said that the attackers had access to the engineer's laptop during a five-day window between January 16 and 21, but that the service itself was not compromised.

The San Francisco-based cloud software firm also said it's identified the affected customers and that it's contacting them directly, stressing that the "Okta service is fully operational, and there are no corrective actions our customers need to take."

"In the case of the Okta compromise, it would not suffice to just change a user's password," web infrastructure company Cloudflare said in a post mortem analysis of the incident. "The attacker would also need to change the hardware (FIDO) token configured for the same user. As a result, it would be easy to spot compromised accounts based on the associated hardware keys."

That said, of particular concern is the fact that Okta failed to publicly disclose the breach for two months, prompting the cyber criminal group to ask "Why wait this long?" in its counter statement.

LAPSUS$ has also claimed in its rebuttal that Okta was storing Amazon Web Services (AWS) keys within Slack and that support engineers seem to have "excessive access" to the communications platform. "The potential impact to Okta customers is NOT limited, I'm pretty certain resetting passwords and MFA would result in complete compromise of many clients' systems," the gang elaborated.

Microsoft Exposes the Tactics of LAPSUS$

LAPSUS$, which first emerged in July 2021, has been on a hacking spree in recent months, targeting a wealth of companies over the intervening period, including Impresa, Brazil's Ministry of Health, Claro, Embratel, NVIDIA, Samsung, Mercado Libre, Vodafone, and most recently Ubisoft.

The financially motivated group's modus operandi has been relatively straightforward: break into a target's network, steal sensitive data, and blackmail the victim company into paying up by publicizing snippets of the stolen data on their Telegram channel.

Microsoft described LAPSUS$ as a group following a "pure extortion and destruction model without deploying ransomware payloads" and one that "doesn't seem to cover its tracks."

Other tactics adopted by the crew include phone-based social engineering schemes such as SIM-swapping to facilitate account takeover, accessing personal email accounts of employees at target organizations, bribing employees, suppliers, or business partners of companies for access, and intruding in the ongoing crisis-response calls of their targets to initiate extortion demands.

LAPSUS$ has also been observed deploying the RedLine Stealer that's available for sale on underground forums to obtain passwords and session tokens, in addition to buying credentials and access tokens from dark web marketplaces as well as searching public code repositories for exposed credentials, to gain an initial foothold.

"The objective of DEV-0537 actors is to gain elevated access through stolen credentials that enable data theft and destructive attacks against a targeted organization, often resulting in extortion," the company said. "Tactics and objectives indicate this is a cybercriminal actor motivated by theft and destruction."

Following initial access, the group is known to exploit unpatched vulnerabilities on internally accessible Confluence, JIRA, and GitLab servers for privilege escalation, before proceeding to exfiltrate relevant information and delete the target's systems and resources.

To mitigate such incidents, Microsoft is recommending organizations to mandate multi-factor authentication (but not SMS-based), make use of modern authentication options such as OAuth or SAML, review individual sign-ins for signs of anomalous activity, and monitor incident response communications for unauthorized attendees.

"Based on observed activity, this group understands the interconnected nature of identities and trust relationships in modern technology ecosystems and targets telecommunications, technology, IT services and support companies  to leverage their access from one organization to access the partner or supplier organizations," Microsoft detailed.

Amidst the fallout from the leaks, LAPSUS$ appear to be taking a break. "A few of our members has [sic] a vacation until 30/3/2022. We might be quiet for some times [sic]," the group said on its Telegram channel.
Doniphan is expanding west.

A major new subdivision, approved by Hall County/Grand Island Regional Planning Commission, will allow a developer to create new lots west of U.S. Highway 281.

Elsbury Construction of Grand Island is readying High Point Development, located west of U.S. Highway 281 and north of Platte River Drive, an area that is largely untouched.

High Point is roughly 58.8 acres. Its adjacent Kracklin Kirks subdivision, one lot located south of Doniphans new Dollar General at Clarice Street, will be 1.5 acres.

The final plat for High Point is only 14.6 acres, explained Regional Planner Chad Nabity.

The preliminary plat is, heres how we expect to lay out the whole thing at this point in time, based on what we see as market conditions, he said. Thats followed up with a final plat thats just a portion of it that they will develop first.

A total of 121 lots are planned for the entire subdivision with 36 lots in the first phase.

These projects are typically done in phases.

Once you do the final plat there are tax consequences for that, once those are filed, because each of those lots is a buildable lot at that point and can be sold separately, so its worth more than the farm ground as one big piece, Nabity said. Most developers in our area tend to do somewhere between 5 and 15 acres at a time.

RPC approved rezoning for the subdivision on March 2 from transitional agriculture and general commercial to R-3 multiple family residential zone.

The project is one that has been long in the making, said Doniphan Mayor Ryan Nickerson.

This is not something we just decided were going to do. Its something that has been in the process for a while, he said. It goes through several steps. Were still in the planning phases and going over plans and drawings and layouts. We really feel that as long as we continue to follow this process, it can be something that will be very beneficial for Doniphan.

More infrastructure work is needed, Nickerson explained.

Some of that work was done with the completion of Doniphans Dollar General store.

We did have water and sewer on that side of the road because of the Nebraska Public Power building thats been there for a while, he said. Im sure as plots and things progress thats something that will be discussed through this planning phase, how are we going to do it and whats the process and how its going to get accomplished.

To meet this growth, a new sewage lagoon system will be constructed.

Were being required to do this by the state because we are growing, Nickerson said. When we decided to make the investment on that piece of our infrastructure, we wanted to have a water and sewer system that would meet our needs for growth for the next 50 years.

He added, That way when projects like this subdivision come up were able to absorb that and reap those benefits.

Amber Schuppan, chair for Doniphans Economic Development Board, said she is extremely excited about the new subdivision.

We have been short of housing for a long time. The residential plans that I have seen, I think its on point with what our community needs, said Schuppan. They talked about putting in some condos and townhomes that are going to be part of an HOA, and easy-living smaller units, so possibly some of those people who have become empty-nesters, but want to stay in the community, it might give them an option to live a simpler life.

It would also help Doniphan attract another needed resource: teachers.

Weve struggled with getting them to move into our community, just because we havent had any housing available for them, said Schuppan. I think that will increase those numbers, as well, so we can get them in our community instead of alternate communities.

Nabity applauded the prospect of a new subdivision in Doniphan.

This is one that I have worked with multiple property owners on over the past 18 years that they have brought in different plans and, for whatever reason, decided not to move forward. This is the farthest its gotten in that timeframe, he said.

Such projects are critical to Doniphans future, said Nickerson.

Its good to see growth, he said. It makes me know were going to build a community thats going to be around for the next couple hundred years also. Thats exciting. I think about what itll be like when my kids are my age, and I hope theyre in a community as good and beneficial for them as Doniphan has been for us.

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.
Holiday Express, a Grand Island-based transportation company, will use a $125,000 rebate opportunity from the federal government to assist in the purchase of six propane buses.

Holiday Express and five school districts were the Nebraska recipients of the program. Together, they received $250,000 in school bus rebate opportunities.

Mick Brown, co-owner of Holiday Express, said the new buses will replace old diesel models that are 19 years old.

At an event March 8 in Lenexa, Kansas, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced the winners of two school bus opportunities  the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) Electric School Bus Rebates and 2021 Diesel Emissions Reduction Act (DERA) School Bus Rebates. Vice President Kamala Harris attended the announcement.

The $7 million in ARPA funding is directed toward school districts in underserved communities to replace old diesel buses with new, zero-emission electric models; and the $10 million in DERA rebates will assist with 444 school bus replacements across the country.

The DERA School Bus Rebates awarded to Nebraska entities will be used to replace 11 older buses. The school district recipients were Harvard, Centennial, Dundy County Stratton, Elmwood-Murdock and Sutherland.

The program gives recipients $25,000 toward the new purchase of a diesel or a propane bus, Brown said.

The rebate awards represent EPAs latest round of funding for longstanding DERA School Bus Rebates. This years program awards approximately $10 million to fund the replacement of old diesel school buses with new electric, diesel, gasoline, propane or compressed natural gas school buses meeting current emission standards.

Brown isnt interested in an electric bus right now because, he said, the price tag is $250,000 to $300,000 each.

Holiday Express has applied for the rebates before, but this is the first time the Grand Island company has been chosen, Brown said.

He hopes the new buses will arrive in August or September. Theyre priced at about $125,000 each, said Brown, who owns Holiday Express with his wife, Lori. The company already has some propane buses in its fleet.

After the new buses arrive, Holiday still will have about 17 old diesel buses left, but theyre newer than the ones that are being replaced.

Holiday Express has contracts to transport students for Grand Island Public Schools, Northwest, Crete and Blue Hill. The company also takes Central Catholic and Hastings St. Cecilia students to various activities.

The new propane buses probably will be used for the Grand Island Public Schools and Northwest school routes, Brown 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.
KEARNEY  A Buffalo County warrant has been issued for an Omaha man charging him with seven felonies, including murder, in the Jan. 16 shooting of Jared Shinpaugh in Kearney.

In addition to murder, Romeo Chambers, 24, of Omaha is charged with three counts of using a firearm to commit a felony, possession of a firearm by a prohibited person, first-degree assault of Joseph Garcia and second-degree assault of Joshua Morris. The warrant was issued Friday.

The murder charge alleges Chambers killed Shinpaugh with malice, but without premeditation.

Shinpaugh, 31, and Joseph Garcia, 29, both of Lexington, were both shot in the Jan. 16 incident. Shinpaugh died, while Garcia was treated at CHI Health Good Samaritan for his injuries and released.

At the request of Buffalo County Attorney Shawn Eatherton court records detailing the murder are sealed because of the sensitive nature of the investigation and because it could jeopardize the safety of material witnesses. Judge Gerry Jorgensen granted Eathertons request.

Violent crime is not acceptable in this community, said Bryan Waugh, Kearney police chief. Im proud of the effort by all involved in this case leading to multiple felony arrests. Members of KPD and our allied law enforcement partners have worked tirelessly on this case, leading to the issuance of an arrest warrant for Chambers. The information shared from our community, leads cultivated throughout this investigation, the use of technology, and quite frankly, good old fashion police work led to this felony arrest warrant.

Around 8:38 p.m. Jan. 16, KPD responded to the 800 block of West 23rd Street to investigate a report of gunshots in the area. The investigation revealed one person was killed and two other subjects had been shot in an attempted robbery.

It later was discovered that a resident, Joshua Morris, 18, of Kearney, also was shot during the attempted robbery. Morris and Mariah Chamberlin, 19, also of Kearney, were wanted for questioning in the incident, and later were arrested.

Also arrested in connection to the murder/armed robbery are:

- Joseph Garcia, 29, of Lexington, charged with felony attempted robbery of Joshua Morris and Mariah Chamberlin on Jan.16.

- Morris and Chamberlin were arrested nine days after the robbery/shooting in Grand Island and both face charges of possession of a defaced firearm, possession of a stolen firearm, possession of marijuana with the intent to distribute while in possession of a firearm and possession of more than one pound of marijuana  all felonies. The incidents are alleged to have occurred Jan. 17, records indicate.

- Chenoa Snow Lemburg, 22, of Grand Island, charged with felony attempted robbery of Joshua Morris and Mariah Chamberlin on Jan.16.

Court records detailing the allegations against all those charged in connection to the murder/armed robbery also are sealed. The investigation continues as law enforcement has followed up on leads, interviewed witnesses, and compiled forensic and digital evidence leading to the warrant for Chambers.

The Kearney Police Department was assisted in this investigation by Buffalo County Sheriffs Office, University of Nebraska Kearney Police Department, Omaha Police Department, Lexington Police Department, Grand Island Police Department and Nebraska State Patrol Crime Lab.

Anyone with information about the robbery/shooting are asked to contact KPD at 308-237-2104, Crimestoppers at 308-237-3424 or the See It, Say It app.

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.
China solemnly urges Japan to stop all official ties with the Taiwan region and cease making provocations concerning the Taiwan question, a foreign ministry spokesperson said on Wednesday.





Produced by Xinhua Global Service




One man has been arrested and charged after allegedly breaking into a gun safe to steal firearms and ammunition from a Zeigler home.
CARBONDALE  The Carbondale City Council has voted to send $64,391 to SIU to complete a needs assessment on city gun violence.

During the council's regular meeting Tuesday, Councilman Jeff Doherty said the city had earmarked $1 million per year for three years to SIU to address gun violence.

We wont know what is needed until the needs assessment is completed, Doherty said.

The City Council and those attending the virtual meeting Tuesday had lengthy discussions on approving SIU's proposal. The council also discussed community agency funding requests for the Fiscal Year 2023 budget.

SIU's proposal included: an online survey of Carbondale residents; one-on-one interviews with eight key people from organizations working directly to address gun violence in Carbondale; a facilitated discussion with six to eight stakeholders, such as emergency department personnel, school social workers and the states attorney; analysis of police data on crimes committed with guns; SIH discharge data on victims of gun violence; and analysis of Jackson County Department of Public Health Emergency Medical Services data on calls involving gun violence.

Doherty made a motion to approve the proposal. His motion was seconded by Councilman Lee Fronabarger.

Fronabarger asked why the survey was taking place over the summer when a majority of students would not be in Carbondale.

Tammy Rinehart Kochel, a professor and associate dean at SIU, answered the question saying the online survey would be publicized on city water bills.

Councilwoman Ginger Rye Sanders asked how much of the funding would go to administrative costs. Kockel said they used the lowest percentage available, 26%.

Doherty said he did not envision the cost of programs to run $3 million. City Manager Gary Williams reminded everyone that $3 million really isnt that much in city funding. The police department, for example, operates on a $10 million budget per year.

Councilwoman Carolin Harvey asked if the survey would be available on paper for residents who did not have internet access or did not use the internet.

Kochel replied that paper copies would not be available due to the cost, but the survey could be taken on smartphones or could be completed on computers in the library.

Matt Baughman, chief of staff for SIU Chancellor Austin Lane, told the council students would be emailed directly and the survey would be promoted through social media.

Councilman Tom Grant also suggested having volunteers take the survey into neighborhoods for responses.

Then community members made comments and asked questions.

I think this proposal is completely disconnected from the community. It makes no sense whatsoever, this proposal. Talk to the black organizations, but giving money to SIU to create and use their data and ideas, Chastity Mays said.

Nick Smaligo suggested SIU should be more collaborative with local groups throughout its process.

We went to two or three funerals for gun violence and my son died. We dont need a survey. We can tell you whats going on. We live it, community organizer Nancy Maxwell said.

After the lengthy discussion, Doherty amended his motion to extend the terms of the proposal one month. The council unanimously voted in favor of the proposal, giving SIU until September to complete the process.

The council also discussed funding for community organizations. Each year, the city of Carbondale provides some funding to local organizations, such as Attucks Community Services Board for after school programs and summer food programs, Boys and Girls Club of Southern Illinois, the Eurma Hayes Center, I Can Read, Southern Illinois Music Festival and others.

Because they city gets numerous requests from new organizations, the council suggested giving additional money and funding new organizations with their American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding.

After another lengthy discussion, the council had no action to take other than to give Gary Williams an idea of how to put proceed for the 2023 budget.

The council also approved a request from Dr. Paul Shawler to rezone a duplex at 3436 S. Illinois Ave. Shawler wants to operate a child psychologists office in the building's unit A and continue to use unit B as a single family rental.

The council approved purchasing three F-150 Lightning Electric Vehicles from Vogler Ford of Carbondale for $158,769.

They also approved an ordinance amending Title 15 of the Carbondale Revised Code regarding ground mount solar energy systems. Solar arrays can be no taller than 12 feet. The area of the system cannot exceed the area of the primary structure for lots less than 10,000 square feet or 8 percent of the lot for lots larger than 10,000 square feet.

A council discussion of Carbondale Police Department surveillance systems was tabled until the next meeting. The only public comments were from Nick Smaligo.

The council also heard updates on the multimodal transportation center and a proposed Founders Park.

The next city council meeting will be at 6 p.m. April 12.

Love 0 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.
HARRISBURG  Eldorado native, Dr. Madeline Rogers, will return to the Southeastern Illinois College Allan G. Kimball Stage April 3 at 2 p.m. as part of the SIC Cultural Arts Series.

Rogers, who started formal piano lessons at age three, began performing with SICs music program and summer theatre at the age of six. By age 13, she was attending SIC full-time progressing quickly as a pianist, vocalist, and actress. She quickly became an accompanist for the SIC Community Chorus and a music instructor for area children.

An SIC music alumna, Rogers will be performing piano selections from Amy Beach (1867-1944), Victoria Bond (b. 1945), Johannes Brahms (1833-1897), and Maurice Ravel (1875-1937).

In 2011, I began my collegiate career at Southeastern Illinois College with an insatiable desire to learn and no clue where my educational journey would lead. Eleven years later, I have a DMA in Piano Performance, a fantastic job at the Omaha Conservatory of Music, and countless collaborative experiences with wonderful musicians from all over the world, said Rogers in a recent social media post.

SIC gave me an indescribably important foundation on which to build my educational journey and I couldn't be more grateful for all the opportunities SIC provided! said Rogers in a thank you email to SIC President Dr. Jonah Rice just a week after achieving her Doctorate in Musical Arts from University of Nebraska.

Dr. Jonah Rice said of Rogers, Sometimes these amazingly talented students from our rural district find us, and we are able to nurture them with individual attention and encouragement, and they become these tremendously capable adults who come back to share their talents with us. Were thrilled to have Madeline back in Southern Illinois, and I look so forward to this concert.

After SIC, Rogers attended Southern Illinois University Carbondale at age 15 to earn a bachelor's degree in Piano Performance. She went on from there to earn a masters degree in Music from Indiana University Jacobs School of Music as a student of Andre Watts. She then earned her Doctorate in Musical Arts from the University of Nebraska with Dr. Paul Barnes. While attending IU, Rogers also studied vocal performance with Patricia Havranek and performed collaboratively under the instruction of Dr. Charles Prestinari.

Rogers is an accomplished solo and collaborative performer in the U.S. and abroad. She is frequently requested to collaborate with other faculty and guest artists, most recently performing a program featuring all vocal faculty from the University of Nebraska Lincoln. In 2019, Rogers collaborated with faculty from various campuses across Nebraska to present a program of chamber music inspired by Shakespeare at Churchill College in Cambridge, UK. Other international performances include collaboration with Maestro Andrea Grassi in 2017, in lectures pertaining to his Henle Urtext edition of the clarinet music of Brahms. In July of 2022, Rogers will be presenting a solo piano program at Brahms's house in Baden-Baden, Germany, combined with a research project on his late works.

A proponent of living composers, Rogers has worked closely with Victoria Bond to revive a piano concerto that was last performed in 1997 and was the first to premiere the two-piano version of the concerto in April 2021. Her doctoral research included tracing cyclicism and romantic elements within the chant-inspired piano pieces of Victoria Bond. This research culminated in commissioning fellow doctoral student Christian Johnson to transcribe the orchestral reduction of Bonds first piano concerto, funded by grants from the Hixson-Lied College of Fine and Performing Arts and the Glenn Korff School of Music, which was subsequently presented at the Nebraska Music Teachers Association Conference in October of 2021.

Rogers is an experienced instructor, having taught in both private studio and class piano settings since 2010. While pursuing her doctorate at UNL she served as studio assistant to Dr. Paul Barnes, teaching collegiate pianists and instructing applied lessons and piano literature classes. She currently serves as an Artist-Faculty member teaching solo and collaborative piano at the Omaha Conservatory of Music in Nebraska.

Rogers will be joined in concert for one song selection by her friend and fellow musician, coloratura soprano Annika Shaw of Bloomington, Indiana. While studying at Brigham Young University-Idaho, Shaw performed several leading operatic roles, and went on to be featured as a soloist with the Saddleback Symphony Orchestra, the Rexburg Symphony Orchestra, and the Bloomington Symphony Orchestra. While earning her Master of Music degree in vocal performance at the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University, she appeared in the IU Opera Theaters mainstage production of Ariadne auf Naxos as Zerbinetta, and the Bloomington Chamber Operas production of Die Zauberflote as the Queen of the Night.

Tickets for the April 3 concert are $10 for adults and $5 for students at the door. For more information, contact boxoffice@sic.edu or (618) 252-5400, ext. 2486.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
SPRINGFIELD  The Senate Executive Appointments Committee moved six appointees to the Illinois Prisoner Review Board through committee on Tuesday, but the only appointee of Gov. J.B. Pritzker that came for a vote before the full Senate was rejected.

The 15-member Prisoner Review Board decides on the release and conditions of release for offenders from the Illinois Department of Corrections. The governor appoints the board, the Executive Appointments Committee votes on whether to recommend those appointments, and the full Senate determines whether the members will be approved.

On Tuesday morning, PRB member Jeff Mears was recommended by the Senate Executive Appointments Committee, but by late Tuesday afternoon he failed to reach the 30-vote threshold for approval by the full Senate.

In addition to 18 Republicans who voted no, 18 Democrats did not vote. Sen. Patrick Joyce, D-Essex, joined the GOP and voted no.

Mears is a former Illinois Department of Corrections employee from southern Illinois. He has voted on more than 40 cases for the PRB while awaiting Senate action.

Pritzker spokesperson Jordan Abudayyeh in an email blamed Republicans for the denial Tuesday and touted Mears resume.

Republicans have set out on a mission to dismantle a constitutional function of government, just like the previous governor, she said in a statement. We remain committed to ensuring that highly qualified nominees fill these roles, especially because we must fulfill our constitutional obligations for justice and cannot jeopardize key public safety functions of the board like revoking parole for those who violate the terms of their release.

The statement was referring to the approximately 4,500 parole revocation hearings held by the PRB each year at locations around the state about 15 to 20 times per month. Three board members must be present at each hearing to render a decision on whether to terminate an offenders parole, otherwise the offender would be released and deemed not in violation of parole.

Pritzker had sent a letter to Executive Appointments Chair Sen. Laura Murphy, D-Des Plaines, and Sen. Jason Plummer, R-Edwardsville, on March 15 urging them to act on appointments to address the potential of not having enough board members for the revocation hearings.

PRB members Ken Tupy, Jared Bohland and LeAnn Miller were also recommended by the committee, with Tupy and Bohland receiving unanimous support.

The Senate did not take up those appointees but has until the end of session on Monday to vote on them before they are automatically approved due to a provision in the Illinois Constitution that sets a 60-session-day timer for action.

Two other PRB appointees, Oreal James and Eleanor Kaye Wilson, were passed along for Senate consideration without recommendation from the committee. These appointments, too, must go before the Senate by end of session Monday for a vote or they will be automatically approved.

PRB scrutiny

The PRB appointment process has come under scrutiny by Republican members of the Senate in the past year. James and Wilson were appointed on April 2, 2019, but Pritzker pulled their appointments on March 19, 2021. They were reappointed two days later.

The governor can withdraw nominations and reappoint the same appointee to restart the 60-session-day clock in which their appointments could be heard by the Senate. This practice is allowed under Senate rules and has been used by previous governors.

Plummer, the Edwardsville Republican, has long raised concerns about the number of PRB members who were voting on offender releases without being confirmed by the Senate.

There are a checks and balances, he said. The governor appoints and we advise and consent. The way the governor wants it to be handled is he appoints and that's the end of it.

Plummer said Pritzkers appointees, generally speaking, have been very extreme.

And so instead of doing the right thing by appointing more mainstream people that we would agree with, he just hides them from the Senate, he said.

Pritzker, meanwhile, has blamed the Senate for failing to act.

Appointee scrutiny

The strategy of pulling and reappointing was used on Mears, who Abudayyeh, Pritzkers spokesperson, said has 20 years of experience at the Shawnee Correctional Center.

While his official role is a union painter, facility wardens and administrative staff have asked Mears to be a hostage negotiations coordinator and member of the elite negotiations team and statewide audit review team, she said. His experience in de-escalation and crisis intervention speaks to his skills in collaboration, communication and thoughtful approach to complex issues.

Mears told the committee Tuesday morning that he was on his way to appear before the committee on May 31, 2021, when he got a call telling him his appointment was pulled. Bohland told the committee that he was dressed and ready to go on the same day when he was told that his appointment had been pulled as well.

During the hearing, Plummer stated that the PRB jobs have an annual salary of roughly $90,000 and that by failing to go before the committee and the Senate, the members had less job security and less autonomy.

I vote with integrity regardless of my personal circumstances, Bohland replied.

Some PRB members faced scrutiny for votes they had taken while on the board.

James, who holds a law degree from DePaul University, came under questioning for his vote last year to parole Paula Sims, who was convicted in 1990 of murdering her newborn daughter, Heather. She also admitted to causing the death of her infant daughter, Loralei, in 1986. Sims was sentenced to life in prison. Her attorneys had argued that Sims suffered from post-partum psychosis.

James said that he considered the needs assessment conducted by the Illinois Department of Corrections, the parole plan, the original crime and sentence, previous criminal history of the offender and the institutional adjustment of the offender when considering an offender for parole.

Sen. Terri Bryant, R-Murphysboro, pointed to the Sims case one of the more hot-button decisions.

Their votes speak more about their values than their qualifications on paper, Bryant said of the PRB appointees.

Wilson is a longtime educator who was director of DePaul Universitys School for New Learning, as well as director of urban programs at Chicago City Wide College. She is also godmother to the children of former President Barack Obama.

Last week, Pritzker withdrew his appointment of PRB member Max Cerda. Cerda was convicted of a double murder when he was 16 years old. He was released from prison when he was 35 and began working with offenders transitioning into life outside of prison.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
DECATUR  A mother who described herself as abused and frightened, and who police say did nothing while her 4-year-old Decatur daughter was whipped and beaten to death by the childs father, was sentenced to 24 months probation Tuesday.

Dalvon D. Taylor, 31, took a plea deal in Macon County Circuit Court negotiated by her defense attorney, Susan Moorehead. The defendant pleaded guilty to endangering the life or health of a child, a Class A misdemeanor.

Taylor had not been accused of inflicting any harm on the child herself.

A sworn Decatur Police affidavit about the case said Amarrah C. Reynolds died in Decatur Memorial Hospital on Aug 31, 2016. Police had been summoned after the girl was found to be covered in scabs and wounds, both fresh and in various stages of healing.

The childs father, Darrell A. Reynolds, now 34, had told police Amarrah was acting up lately and he had started whipping her with a belt because time outs werent working.

Darrell stated he struck her so many times he lost count, the affidavit said. Darrell stated that Amarrah suddenly appeared dazed and fell over, striking her head on the TV, wall and floor as she fell. Darrell made several statements at the hospital about he knew it was abuse and he was sorry.

Police said Reynolds had tried to kill himself in an interview room by shoving his head inside a plastic bag and is quoted as saying: I deserve to die, I just killed my daughter.

He pleaded guilty to the aggravated battery of a child at a hearing in July and was sentenced to 14 years in prison.

Taylor had been interviewed during the police investigation and said she had watched Reynolds violently abusing her daughter for the two years leading up to her death.

Dalvon stated the abuse typically consisted of Darrell hitting Amarrah in the face and torso, hitting her forcefully with a belt numerous times, which caused welts to her arms, back, legs and torso, (and) severe pinching, and grabbing the back of her neck and lifting her off the ground, the affidavit said.

Taylor also said she saw him kicking the child as she lay on the floor and shoving her into a wall. Dalvon indicated she knew the abuse was occurring and never reported it to police or the Department of Children and Family Services, the affidavit said.

Dalvon stated Darrell was also abusive towards her, which prevented her from reporting the abuse.

Commenting on the case, Macon County States Attorney Scott Rueter said Taylor had gone on to build a new life for herself in Wisconsin and, if she stays out of trouble, will emerge with a clean record.

She has other children and part of her sentencing requirement is that she continues to cooperate with DCFS or the Wisconsin equivalent.

Contact Tony Reid at (217) 421-7977. Follow him on Twitter: @TonyJReid

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
Orangeburg County

Sheriffs Office

A bullet went through the window of a Sheppard Lane home in Orangeburg on Tuesday just before 8 p.m., according to a sheriffs office incident report.

A resident was in the home at the time. He wasnt physically injured.

The homeowner said her home has been shot before.

Deputies collected two shell casings from the road in front of the home.

In other reports:

 An Orangeburg County mother called deputies on Tuesday after her daughter, who is under the age of 10, alleged that a teen male touched her inappropriately while she was sleeping.

The child told her mother the incident happened about a week before but she waited to tell her because she was scared, the report states.

 Someone stole a Vermeer VX30-500 vacuum excavator from a worksite on Santee Drive in Santee. The theft was reported Tuesday.

The machine is valued at $60,000.

 A 1987 gray Nissan 300 stolen in Beaufort County more than a year ago was recovered in Santee, according to an incident report.

An Orangeburg wrecker service towed the vehicle from the Holiday Inn parking lot on Dec. 3, 2021 at the request of the Santee police chief.

The vehicle identification number wasnt in the national database of reported stolen autos.

The wrecker business discovered on Tuesday that the Nissan was stolen.

Beaufort County authorities said there had been a mix-up and the vehicle identification number wasnt placed in the national database until Jan. 7, despite the vehicle owner reporting it as stolen about a year prior, the report said.

The Nissan is valued at $2,500.

Orangeburg

Department

of Public Safety

A Henley Street woman was cited for ill-treatment of animals after she allegedly had her puppys ears clipped by her son, according to an incident report.

An officer received a report about a dog allegedly jumping onto a girl and injuring her face on Tuesday night, the report said.

Officers spoke with the puppys owner.

The officers claimed both of the puppys ears were injured and had no protection from the elements or insects.

The puppys owner claimed her son clipped the puppys ears on March 17 in an Aiken backyard.

An officer cited the woman for alleged ill-treatment to animals.

The citys animal control officer removed the puppy from the property for veterinary care, the report said.

Contact the writer: mbrown@timesanddemocrat.com or 803-533-5545. Follow on Twitter: @MRBrownTandD

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 S.C. Drought Response Committee upgraded the drought status to incipient drought for 11 South Carolina coastal counties.

Bamberg, Calhoun and Orangeburg counties are all considered normal. Colleton, Dorchester and Berkeley counties are all in an incipient drought.

As designated by the S.C. Drought Response Act, incipient is the first level of drought followed by moderate, severe and extreme.

Low streamflow conditions and below-normal topsoil and subsoil moisture were the primary driving factors leading to the drought declaration.

According to S.C. State Climatologist Hope Mizzell, the rainfall over the last 90 days has been below normal for the coastal counties.

Some observers along the coast reported less than 5 inches of rain since Dec. 22, which is 50 percent of normal.

Elsewhere in the state, rainfall has been close to normal or above normal. Seneca has received 17.96 inches, Tega Cay 14.04 inches, Aiken 11.58 inches and Camden 10.69 inches.

According to Darryl Jones, forest protection chief for the S.C. Forestry Commission, Although some parts of the state have received enough rainfall to moderate conditions, wildfire occurrence has been higher than normal over the last two months, particularly along the coast.

Where drought conditions are still in place, fires are easier to ignite and usually take more resources to suppress. In most years, peak wildfire activity occurs during March and April, and we expect those conditions this year due to dry, cured fuels combined with higher winds and low relative humidity associated with frontal passages.

It is early in the growing season for many crops, but Blake Badger, Farm Service Agency district director, said dry conditions this early in the year are creating anxiety for some producers.

Increasing temperatures will cause already dry conditions to further deteriorate, with the potential that some crops will not be planted.

The South Carolina Drought Response Committee will continue to monitor conditions moving through the spring and will reconvene in late April.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
Orangeburg County has agreed to give the Orangeburg County School District about 95 acres of property as part of a land swap.

The county is giving the school district the land on Red Bank Road near U.S. Highway 601.

In exchange, the school district is giving the county property near Interstate 95 on U.S. Highway 15  the site of the former Dantzler Middle School.

Council gave unanimous and final third reading to the property exchange Monday.

The matter has yet to come before the OCSD Board of Trustees for a vote.

The 95 acres of county property are located near the intersection of Red Bank Road and Industrial Boulevard.

School district officials could not be reached for comment on the possibilities for the land.

The county has said the district's property near I-95 could be used for future economic development. It has been looked at by industrial prospects in the past. The county will also harvest timber from the interstate property.

In other matters:

 Council unanimously approved the purchase of an emergency transfer generator switch for $284,166 following a recent power outage at the jail.

The device will be paid for with federal American Recovery Plan Act funds, County Administrator Harold Young said.

Commercial power was lost for a good period of time, County Director of Risk Services Todd Williams said.

The generator did kick on, however the transfer switch did not maintain the critical load for the facility, he said.

Williams said, Life safety systems were available at the detention center, but the data processing, computers and some controls we lost because the transfer switch was not adequate to handle all the processes to keep the facility running as it should.

 Council unanimously agreed to provide the Branchville Railroad Depot with $25,000 for renovations, tables, chairs and equipment, as well as for improvements to the grounds.

Council also agreed to provide South Carolina State Universitys I.P. Stanback Museum and Planetarium with $10,500 for the launch of a new event celebrating higher education and highlighting historically Black colleges and universities.

The county's tax and tourism committee previously approved both requests.

 Council gave unanimous final third reading approval to Red Pill Partners request to rezone property located near Monarch Road and Boyer Road from forest/agriculture to residential development.

Red Pill Partners wants to develop 162 acres on Old State Road with about 130 homes.

 Council gave unanimous second reading to an ordinance placing Tri-County Electric Cooperative's $10 million to $12 million broadband expansion project within a joint county industrial park with Calhoun County.

 Council gave unanimous first reading to an ordinance amending the county's code of ordinances related to animal control, including violations and penalties.

The amendment would help the county establish a trap, neuter and release program for feral cats. Greenville and Charleston counties have similar programs.

 Council gave unanimous first reading to an ordinance amending the county's code related to solid waste, including violations and penalties.

The amendment would require commercial driveways to be reinforced with appropriate fill to ensure they can handle the trucks that will use them. The change is being considered to help reduce the need and cost of maintenance on roads.

 Council unanimously passed a resolution entering into a lease-purchase agreement with Caterpillar Financial Services Corporation for the purchase of heavy equipment from Blanchard Machinery Company.

Young said the county has used Caterpillar equipment for road and bridge maintenance over the years. Young also said the county likes to use Caterpillar products due to the quality of the equipment as well as the buy-back potential for equipment that needs to be resold.

 Council gave unanimous first reading approval to rezoning the .63-acre piece of property at 203 Third Street in Eutawville from residential-general to a rural community district to allow a second manufactured, doublewide home on the property. The Orangeburg County Planning Commission approved the request unanimously earlier this month.

 Council read a proclamation naming March 26, 2022 as Bishop Johnie James Johnson Day upon his retirement and service as the judicial prelate of the Church of God in Christ South Carolina. He was installed as the judicial prelate of the Church of God in South Carolina in 1985.

Johnson is 98 years old.

 Councilwoman Deloris Frazier informed council members they are invited to attend the Orangeburg County Library's programs.

They are doing a fantastic job out there, Frazier said.

Young commended the staff at the library and conference center for continually hosting a number of events, noting the library and conference center are constantly being used.

 Prayers were offered for families impacted by the war between Ukraine and Russia.

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.
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) - Lan song dich Covid-19 a khien cho nen kinh te nuoc ta 2 nam vua qua chao ao. Chinh phu ang co cac goi ho tro kinh te, trong o quyet liet thuc ay au tu cong va giai ngan nhanh nguon von nay uoc coi la cu hich cho nen kinh te nhanh hoi phuc.
BEIJING, March 23 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese government spokesperson on Wednesday slammed the remarks by former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Taiwan-related issues.

Zhu Fenglian, a spokesperson for the State Council Taiwan Affairs Office, said certain people in Japan making wrong remarks related to Taiwan was malicious in nature.

Zhu made the comment in response to a media's inquiry about Abe's Taiwan-related remarks during a video call with Taiwan leader Tsai Ing-wen on Tuesday.

Zhu urged certain people in Japan to deeply reflect upon the history, rectify their mistakes and return to the right path of adhering to the one-China principle.

She added that Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party authority's attempt to rely on external forces to seek "Taiwan independence" is doomed to fail. 
BEIRUT  Kuwait welcomed on Tuesday evening Prime Minister Najib Mikati's statements in which he renewed his government's commitment to taking the necessary steps to restore Lebanon's ties with the Gulf Cooperation Council.

In a statement, Kuwait assured that it seeks to "pursue constructive and practical measures to this end, which will contribute to greater security, stability and prosperity for Lebanon and its brotherly people."

Earlier in the day, Saudi Arabia also welcomed "the positive points" contained in Mikati's statement and hoped that "it will help Lebanon regain its role and status at the Arab and international levels.

On Monday, the prime minister reaffirmed Lebanon's determination to prohibit its financial and banking system from being used in operations that "could undermine the security of Saudi Arabia and the GCC countries. He also called for "a halt to political, military, security and media activities that undermine the sovereignty" of these countries.

Last October, the broadcast of controversial remarks by then-Information Minister George Kurdahi on the role of Saudi Arabia in the war in Yemen soured relations between Beirut and Riyadh.

According to information obtained by L'Orient Today, a GCC meeting is scheduled for Sunday and could lead to the return of the Arab ambassadors who were recalled from Beirut in October.




Unlike Europe, the U.S. doesnt rely very heavily on Russian energy imports. But the federal ban on Russian petroleum will hit some industries harder than others.

The U.S. imported roughly 43% of the petroleum it used last year  8.47 million barrels of the 19.78 million barrels consumed per day  and exported about 8.63 million million barrels of petroleum per day, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA).

Russia contributed about 8% of total U.S. petroleum imports in 2021. While Russian shipments made up just 3% of the countrys crude oil imports, they accounted for 20% of imported petroleum products derived from crude oil.

On its own, petroleum products could refer to a lot of different things, including  but not limited to  gasoline, diesel and jet fuels, heating oil and asphalt.

Its more of a catch-all term, said Ryan McConnaughey, communications director for the Petroleum Association of Wyoming, whereas crude oil is just oil.

Unfinished oils, which are produced by partially refining crude oil, also fall under the petroleum-product umbrella. Refineries often rely on unfinished oils  which made up over half of U.S. petroleum imports from Russia last year  to make other products.

Crude oil itself is not a uniform material. Its composition varies depending on where it comes from, and lighter  or less dense  crude is refined differently than heavier crude.

For the U.S. refiners, at least, were more geared towards a heavier slate  a lower gravity of crude, said Trey Cowan, an oil and gas industry analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, in a previous interview with the Star-Tribune.

Most of the oil produced in the U.S. is lighter crude. Before the ban, the heavier crude that many U.S. refineries rely on came, in part, from Russia. And its not easy for refineries to switch from one density to another.

Thats part of the reason some analysts, including Cowan, arent convinced the rapid increase in U.S. oil production that many Wyoming leaders are pushing for will have a substantial effect on gasoline prices.

At the margin, its not going to make that much difference, Cowan said, because those arent the barrels of crude that the U.S. needs.

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.
An ongoing legal dispute between the Casper Star-Tribune and a pair of local municipalities has brought up a constitutional issue and questioned the definition of a newspaper in the modern day.

Mills and Bar Nunn both passed ordinances last year meant to exempt them from publishing public notices in a newspaper. In response, the paper filed a petition asking the ordinances to be nullified, but that case was dismissed in November after a Natrona County judge found the paper lacked standing in the matter.

Earlier this year, an attorney for the Star-Tribune filed another similar petition, clarifying the papers monetary interest in the issue  basically, that it counts on revenue from those publications as part of its business model.

According to the petition, the paper has lost an undetermined amount of revenue since the municipalities have stopped publishing meeting minutes in its pages. Legal and other public notices have still been appearing in the paper, court filings say.

Patrick Holscher, an attorney representing Mills and Bar Nunn, filed a counterclaim asking the court to rule that the statutes requiring public notices to be distributed in a print newspaper are unconstitutional, both at the state and federal level.

He also said Tuesday he hopes the court, or a higher one if the case is eventually appealed, can give some clarity to what exactly constitutes a newspaper in the digital age.

At the time these statutes were drafted  theyre over 100 years old  everyone knew what a newspaper was, and there was no substitute, Holscher said. Now its become really unclear.

If the objective of the law is to get information out to the public most effectively, Holscher said, print newspapers may no longer be the best option.

But Bruce Moats, attorney for the Star-Tribune, said that printed papers establish a record that cant be altered after the fact, like a website may be. And extending the definition of a newspaper to include online media and electronic media that distributes news, to borrow language from the municipalities counterclaim, could muddy the waters when it comes to objective third-party publishing, according to Moats.

We never really wanted the government in the business of defining what is news, or what is a newspaper, Moats said.

While the defendants say the paper is not one of general circulation in their municipalities since its printed in Nebraska and has had delayed delivery at times, the paper maintains in their petition that it meets the statutory requirements to print those notices.

But Holscher said those requirements dont apply in this case, since theyre included in state statute under the section concerning counties, not cities and towns. Moats said that the language of the statute still applies in this case.

Editors note: The Star-Tribune newsroom is not involved in legal decisions in this matter.

Follow city and crime reporter Ellen Gerst on Twitter at @ellengerst.

Love 0 Funny 3 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 federal judge ruled Monday that a section of Wyoming election code is unconstitutional because it chills speech.

In response to a lawsuit by Second Amendment group Wyoming Gun Owners against several state officials, U.S. District Judge Scott Skavdahl ruled that Wyomings electioneering communications law is unconstitutional under the First Amendment.

The case originated in 2020 when the Greater Cheyenne Chamber of Commerce filed a complaint alleging that Wyoming Gun Owners ran a series of attack ads against Republican candidates over multiple months despite not being registered with the Wyoming Secretary of States office, as is required by election statute. As examples, the chamber noted multiple fundraising emails bashing candidates around Wyoming, photocopies of a political mailer boosting Sen. Anthony Bouchard, R-Cheyenne, in his heated primary race and an audio recording of a radio advertisement touting Bouchard and his voting record. Bouchard founded Wyoming Gun Owners over a decade ago.

But in all those communications, Wyoming Gun Owners never expressly stated, Vote for Bouchard or any one candidate.

Buchanan requested Wyoming Gun Owners pay a fine or disclose its donor list. The pro-gun group chose the former and then took the case to federal court, where the organization mostly prevailed.

The pro-gun group argued that Wyoming law relating to organizations electioneering communications and the filing of reports disclosing contributors and expenditures is unconstitutional under the First Amendment. On this front, the judge agreed with the group.

Wyoming Gun Owners also argued that two parts of the states election law were so vague that they were unconstitutional. Skavdahl ruled that one of the provisions is void for vagueness, while he upheld the other provision.

This case demonstrates the delicate balance of the First Amendment right to engage in political speech verses the need to provide for an informed electorate during elections by requiring disclosure of those who are funding media and promoting certain candidates or issues throughout the election season, Skavdahl wrote in his decision.

Wyoming Gun Owners and its lawyers emphasized the weight of their court victory.

Yesterdays ruling is a victory for free speech and citizen privacy, said Del Kolde, an attorney at the Institute for Free Speech, which represented the group. We are pleased the court recognized that Wyomings disclosure provision is both vague and not narrowly tailored.

Aaron Dorr, the groups policy adviser, also disparaged multiple Wyoming officials following the decision, chief among them Secretary of State Ed Buchanan and Attorney General Bridget Hill. The lawsuit named as defendants both Buchanan and Hill, along with Deputy Secretary of State Karen Wheeler and Election Division Director Kai Schon.

The reason why this was filed was ... not just because they hate me, its because they hate you. They hate you. These anti-gun RINO republicans, they hate you, he said.

Dorr also said in a Facebook Live video that part of the reason the group does not want to disclose its donor list is out of fear that its supporters will be doxxed and dissenters will try to get them fired from their jobs.

We all know what cancel culture is, he said.

Wielding money in elections without disclosing where it comes from is often referred to as dark money. There have been a number of laws passed to close dark money loopholes in recent years, including during the budget session that ended this month. One of which  House Bill 49  may interfere with this ruling.

The secretary of states office requested that the attorney general advise of any potential impacts of the bill.

The courts decision recognizes an important point, which is that the citizens of Wyoming have a legitimate interest in knowing what money and which groups are standing behind certain candidates and issues, Buchanan said in a statement to the Star-Tribune. The courts decision is further helpful, in that it gives the Legislature guidance on how to narrowly tailor the law so that political speech under the First Amendment is preserved, while at the same time informing the public on how certain groups and their financial resources come to bear during election season. Ultimately, I expect we will work with the Legislature, along with other interested groups, to craft a law that constitutionally strikes a balance between these two important concepts.

In theory, the decision could be perceived as an invitation to those organizations that walk the line between advocacy and electioneering to jump into the fray leading up to the 2022 midterms. Wyoming is home to arguably the most symbolically important race in the nation as Rep. Liz Cheney faces off against the Donald Trump-endorsed lawyer Harriet Hageman. Already, this race, which is being painted as a referendum on the former president, has involved national figures who have never taken part in Wyomings politics.

Does it open the door to more dark money? asked Sen. Cale Case, R-Lander, a member of the legislative committee that handles election law.

Where the state goes from here is unclear.

My office and I will review todays decision with our legal counsel to determine how best to proceed in light of the ruling, Buchanan said in a statement. I would similarly encourage the members of the Legislature to consider whether the ruling comports with the standard they intended to set for transparency regarding donations to organizations and subsequent expenditures by those organizations who support or oppose political candidates.

In the upcoming interim legislative session, its likely that the elections law committee will once again discuss the issue of dark money in Wyoming elections.

Follow state politics reporter Victoria Eavis on Twitter @Victoria_Eavis

Love 1 Funny 0 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.
Fourteen more Wyomingites have died from COVID-19, the Wyoming Department of Health reported Tuesday.

There have now been 1,783 coronavirus-caused deaths in Wyoming since the pandemic arrived here in March 2020.

The new deaths touch seven of Wyomings 23 counties. Campbell, Converse and Lincoln counties had one death each. Park and Sheridan counties each reported two deaths. There were three deaths each in Laramie and Natrona counties.

Seven of the people whose deaths were announced this past week had preexisting health conditions that put them at risk of more severe illness from contracting COVID-19. Eleven of the 14 were hospitalized, four out-of-state, while two were residents of long-term care facilities.

Last week, 20 COVID deaths were reported in the state.

Eight of the newly announced deaths occurred in March. Six occurred in February.

The state does not include a death in its COVID-19 count unless the virus is listed on the patients death certificate as either the cause of death or a contributing factor. There is often a lag between when deaths occur and when deaths are reported because of the time it takes for death certificates to be processed.

Broadly speaking, the number of deaths in Wyoming correlates with the rise and fall of cases in the state, often trailing by a few weeks changes in infection and hospitalization rates.

Deaths declined dramatically last spring. But when cases surged late last summer and early fall, the weekly updates on COVID-19 deaths rose as well.

On Tuesday, 14 people were hospitalized for COVID-19 in Wyoming. That number rose towards the end of January but has fallen considerably since the start of February.

Last years COVID-19 surge was driven by the delta variant, which is more contagious and causes more serious illness than the first strain of COVID-19 that emerged here. But delta is no longer the dominant strain in Wyoming. The omicron variant has overtaken it. The omicron strain, which is now responsible for most of Wyomings new cases, appears more contagious than delta, but studies suggest it causes less severe symptoms.

Wyomings vaccination rate trails most of the country. Nationally, the state has the second-lowest proportion of fully vaccinated residents.

Roughly 51% of the state is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, and about 58% people have received at least one dose of a vaccine.
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.
BEIJING, March 23 (Xinhua) -- Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and Chinese president, sent a congratulatory letter to the fourth theory seminar between the CPC and the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC), which opened on Wednesday. 
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.
Minister in the Office of the Prime Minister with responsibility for Gender and Child Affai
LONDON, March 23 (Xinhua) -- "The West, and especially America, is principally responsible" for the Ukraine crisis, John J. Mearsheimer, a U.S. political scientist, wrote in a recent opinion piece published in The Economist.

American and European policymakers provoked the Ukraine crisis by trying to integrate Ukraine into the West and asserting that Russian President Vladimir Putin bears full responsibility for the crisis, said Mearsheimer, a political science professor at the University of Chicago, "But that story is wrong."

In his view, the Ukraine crisis "is the most dangerous international conflict since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis." The West is now increasing aid to Ukraine while imposing economic sanctions on Russia, a step that Putin sees as "akin to a declaration of war."

Understanding the root causes is essential to finding a way to bring the crisis to an end. The trouble over Ukraine started at NATO's Bucharest summit in 2008 when George W. Bush's administration pushed the alliance to announce that Ukraine and Georgia "will become members," said the article.

In late 2021, the West ignored Russia's security concerns, with intentions of including Ukraine into NATO, which led directly to the current war, Mearsheimer wrote.

Furthermore, Russian policymakers have said "hardly anything about conquering new territory to recreate the Soviet Union or build a greater Russia," said the expert, adding that Russian leaders have repeatedly said that they view Ukraine joining NATO as "an existential threat that must be prevented."

"As Mr. Lavrov noted in January, 'the key to everything is the guarantee that NATO will not expand eastward,'" Mearsheimer said. 
The issue of school violence has resurfaced with such an intensity that it has the nations 
Arizona is the first state in the nation to take advantage of a new Apple feature allowing iPhone users to add their drivers licenses and state IDs to their digital wallets.

The digital identification cards are valid at select TSA airport security checkpoints at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport by tapping the iPhone or Apple Watch at the identity reader.

From there, the traveler will see a prompt on their device displaying which specific information is being requested by the TSA. Only after authorizing with Face ID or Touch ID is the requested identity information released from the device.

The option is not yet available at Tucson International Airport, though the technologys use will grow over time, a news release said.

Arizona is proud to be the first state to give our residents the choice to add their ID to Apple Wallet, Arizona Motor Vehicle Division Director Eric Jorgensen said. We will continue to seek out opportunities for products and services that provide Arizonans security, privacy and ease of use.

Arizonans should continue to carry their physical, plastic driver license or state ID card to use in other situations, including with law enforcement, the MVD news release said.

Other states that will gain access to the feature include Colorado, Hawaii, Mississippi, Ohio, and the territory of Puerto Rico, along with the seven states Apple previously announced.

Is it safe?

Fraud prevention steps include requiring the user to take a selfie and complete head movements during the setup process, as well as scanning the physical card.

If an iPhone or Apple Watch is lost, the user can use the Find My app to lock their device and help locate it, or remotely erase their device.

Because identity data is encrypted and protected against tampering and theft, the MVD and Apple do not know when or where residents present their IDs.

How to add an ID

The feature is only available on iPhone 8 or later running iOS 15.4, and Apple Watch Series 4 or later running watchOS 8.4 or later.

Tap the + button at the top of the screen in Apple Wallet on the iPhone, select Drivers License or State ID and follow the on-screen instructions to start the set-up and verification process. You will need your physical MVD-issued driver license or ID card.

The state is responsible for verifying and approving requests to add a drivers license or state ID to Wallet.

Subscribe to stay connected to Tucson. A subscription helps you access more of the local stories that keep you connected to the community.


Long Realty: Associate Broker Jennifer Anderson, with Longs Houghton/Southeast/Vail office, took home the companys Samuel H. Woods Community Service Award, which recognizes a sales associate or employee who best exemplifies a commitment to community involvement and service above self while inspiring others to do the same. Winning the companys Barrington L. Long Lifetime Achievement Award for 2022 was Sue Brooks, a sales agent with the Foothills office. The honor is presented to a Long Realty associate whose life and character have made a significant and lasting impact on the field of real estate, earned the respect and admiration of professional peers and repeatedly inspired others to excel.

Arizona Attorney General: Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovichs Office received the Consumers Champion Award for the first-in-the-nation settlement with Ticketmaster that returned more than $71 million in refunds for consumers who purchased tickets to Arizona live events that were canceled, postponed or rescheduled because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Affirm Wealth Advisors: Affirm Wealth Advisors, a private wealth advisory practice of Ameriprise Financial Services LLC, has earned the 2021 Ameriprise Client Experience Award for its ability to consistently deliver personalized, goal-based advice and exceptional client service. Award recipients earned an overall client satisfaction rating equal to or greater than 4.9 out of 5.0 and maintained stellar business results.

Oro Valley Home Watchers: Oro Valley Home Watchers earned accreditation from the National Home Watch Association for the sixth year. Home Watch is a visual inspection of a home or property, looking for obvious issues, which means that it is a service that keeps an eye on things at your vacation or primary home while you are not in residence. Dave and Michelle Arellano established Oro Valley Home Watchers in 2016.

Submit items to business@tucson.com; please use Biz Awards in the email subject line.

Subscribe to stay connected to Tucson. A subscription helps you access more of the local stories that keep you connected to the community.


PHOENIX  A Senate committee voted Tuesday to dictate that Arizona schools must teach students how communism and totalitarianism are in conflict with freedom and democracy.

House Bill 2008 spells out in some detail what this new civics education would include.

The measure was written by Rep. Quang Nguyen, R-Prescott Valley, who told the Senate Education Committee of his own familys experience escaping Vietnam as communists took over after the war there.

His bill, already approved by the House, now goes to the full Senate, after being approved by the Republican-led committee on a 5-3 party-line vote.

It does more than mandate a comparison. It would also require the state Board of Education to develop standards that instruct students about the civic-minded expectations of an upright and desirable citizenry that recognizes and accepts responsibility for preserving and defending the blessings of liberty inherited from prior generations and secured by the United States Constitution.

The state board also would have to establish and maintain a list of oral history resources to provide portraits in patriotism based on first-person accounts of victims of other nations governing philosophies who can compare those with the United States.

Nguyen said more than 100 million people have been killed in a century of communism.

And the voice of these victims and survivors, such as myself, need to be heard, he said. We have so much to share with those who live in the greatest nation God has given to humanity.

Barbara Jennings, a Scottsdale parent, said the proposal makes sense.

Its very disturbing, what we are seeing with our young people today, their lack of appreciation for where we live, she said.

Jennings had some other reasons she thinks curriculum changes are needed. We know the Chinese government has infiltrated our higher education, she told the committee.

Sen. Sally Ann Gonzales, D-Tucson, said she agrees that communism should be taught.

Its part of our history and its part of what my brother went to go fight in the Vietnam War, she said.

But Gonzales said lawmakers are being disingenuous by saying they want students exposed to more history, even as they have taken actions in the past to curb whats taught. She said those include a 2010 vote by lawmakers to outlaw ethnic studies programs, including one on Native Americans, a very powerful and effective program that was open to everybody at the high schools in Tucson.

Gonzales, who is Native American, said it didnt stop there.

This Legislature is currently prohibiting the history of the U.S. being taught to our children and what happened to the Indigenous people of this country, she said. She was referring to current proposals to limit how certain subjects can be taught, in ways she believes are designed to limit how racism and its history can be taught.

And it hurts me because, as an Indigenous woman, I live through that discrimination on a daily basis, Gonzales told her colleagues on the committee, saying people of color face discrimination not only at grocery stores and banks but even in the halls of the Legislature. And yet, we do not want to hear the truth and allow schools to teach the history of the U.S.

Sen. Teresa Hatathlie, D-Coal Mine Canyon, went a step farther, saying there has been bias and discrimination even on the dais of committee hearings.

And Sen. Christine Marsh, D-Phoenix, who is a teacher, questioned why legislators believe it is their role to dictate exactly what has to be taught and how.

She said lawmakers are free to make policy decisions. But the details, she said, are best left to the state Board of Education, which regularly brings together educators to review and alter curricula.

But Sen. Tyler Pace, R-Mesa, said the legislation simply spells out what he believes to be true.

Communism and democracy are at odds with each other, he said. Totalitarianism is at odds with freedom.

Subscribe to stay connected to Tucson. A subscription helps you access more of the local stories that keep you connected to the community.


A small native fish is swimming in the Santa Cruz River in Tucson for the first time in more than a century.

Roughly 600 longfin dace, each no more than about 3 inches long, were set free Wednesday at two locations along the rejuvenated river, where Pima County and Tucson are using treated wastewater to restore natural habitat killed off by human development in the early 20th century.

Its bringing some of the life back to the river that was here that disappeared because of the citys growth in the first place, said University of Arizona aquatic ecologist Michael Bogan, who has been monitoring the river restoration. Personally I feel like we owe it to the species to give them a chance and bring them back down here.

Bogan said the dace disappeared  along with all the other native fish  in about 1913, when irrigation diversions and groundwater pumping caused the once-perennial Santa Cruz to run dry through Tucson.

The fish managed to hang on in some irrigation ditches and upstream tributaries, he said, but they were gone from the river here.

The energetic, olive-green minnows made their triumphant return to the Santa Cruz in large Coleman coolers stamped with the words Fish Transport, after being scooped from Cienega Creek near Vail, about 25 miles away.

It took the team about 90 minutes to net all 600 dace from the creeks much larger population of the fish, said Arizona Game and Fish Department biologist Besty Grube.

We got some chunky ones, Bogan said, as the transplants were transferred into a pair of 4-gallon buckets strapped to backpacks to be carried down to the river.

Wednesdays release was part of a cooperative effort by the county, the city, the UA, Arizona Game and Fish and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.

Only one dace died during the operation. The rest quickly settled into their new home.

Experts hope to see them start spawning later this spring.

The fish seemed pretty vigorous and they swam off, said Ian Murray, a conservation biologist with the Pima County Office of Sustainability and Conservation. Theyre pretty tough fish.

About 500 of the dace went back into the river just downstream from the countys Agua Nueva Water Reclamation Facility, near El Camino Del Cerro and Interstate 10. The rest were set free just south of the Starr Pass Boulevard bridge, where the city began releasing recycled sewer water in 2019 as part of its Santa Cruz River Heritage Project.

That northerly flow has created a narrow, mile-long ribbon of green that reaches to Congress Street and beyond, depending on the day.

The dace joins an even smaller native fish known as the Gila topminnow, which was reintroduced to the downtown stretch of the Santa Cruz in October of 2020.

The topminnow has been on the endangered species list since 1967, but its doing quite well along the rewatered river. Grube said the transplanted population of around 500 tiny topminnows has grown to roughly 2,000 over the past 18 months or so.

Topminnows and longfin dace could be seen swimming side by side within moments of Wednesdays release.

Grube said the two species will compete with each other to an extent  and the much-larger dace might occasionally harass their smaller neighbors  but ultimately she expects them to coexist downtown just as they do in Cienega Creek.

The longfin dace isnt threatened or endangered, and Bogan said releases like this one could help keep it that way, as populations elsewhere in Arizona come under threat from climate change, drought and water pumping.

The idea is to prevent the species from becoming endangered by putting it into as many habitats as possible, he said.

The little fish also have a part to play in the larger river ecosystem.

They do things like eat mosquito larvae, Bogan said. And theyre food for birds, so were hoping soon to see things like kingfishers and herons down here eating some of the dace that weve reintroduced.

Contact reporter Henry Brean at hbrean@tucson.com or 573-4283. On Twitter: @RefriedBrean

Subscribe to stay connected to Tucson. A subscription helps you access more of the local stories that keep you connected to the community.



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.
PHOENIX  State lawmakers are moving to permanently bar health officials from requiring students be vaccinated against COVID to attend public schools.

A 5-3 party-line vote Wednesday by the Republican-led Senate Committee on Health and Human Services sends the measure, House Bill 2086, to the full Senate, as the House already approved it.

The vote came despite the fact parents already have the ability to opt out of any vaccines listed as required for students. There are not only medical or religious exemptions, but also the option for parents to simply say the vaccination is against their personal beliefs, a right that does not exist in most other states.

But Rep. Joanne Osborne, R-Goodyear, said there is no reason parents should have to take action to opt out of the COVID vaccine. The exemption process is meant to deal with regular childhood diseases such as measles and mumps, she said.

This is a virus, she said. This is not a childhood disease.

The laws allowing parents to refuse to get their children vaccinated against the now-listed diseases also prohibit students who lack proof of immunization from attending school during outbreaks of communicable diseases. But HB 2086 contains no such prohibition.

Required vaccines Diseases for which vaccines are currently required for school entry in Arizona: Hepatitis B Polio Varicella (chicken pox) Measles Mumps Rubella Diptheria Tetanus Pertussis Meningococcal disease  Source: Arizona Department of Health Services

Osborne told lawmakers shes not an anti-vaxxer. She said she has lost friends to COVID and urged her 92-year-old mother-in-law to get inoculated against the virus.

We know that, for our older generation, that this (vaccine) is going to help them, this is going to keep them out of the hospital, Osborne said. They may still get COVID, but this is more than likely going to keep them out of the hospital.

But she said the situation is different for children, who are less likely to die from the virus, but have suffered adverse reactions.

Wednesdays vote came over the objections of Will Humble, executive director of the Arizona Public Health Association.

Humble, a former state health director, pointed out there is no requirement now for students to be vaccinated against COVID. He detailed the process health officials would have to undertake, including public hearings, to add COVID to the list of mandated vaccines for school attendance.

This is a tried-and-true process that has worked for a long time and we should trust the process, he said.

Humble acknowledged that, in general, children were not affected by the coronavirus in its early stages. But he said that changed as new variants developed, saying they are more challenging for kids.

The latest figures from the Arizona Department of Health Services show that 63 of the states 28,883 deaths from COVID were of people age 20 and younger. Out of nearly 2 million COVID-19 cases since the pandemic began, more than 425,000 were in children.

Sen. Kelly Townsend, R-Apache Junction, said the language in the measure is consistent with provisions in the Parents Bill of Rights thats in Arizona statutes. Among those rights is the right to make health-care decisions for a minor child.

Sen. Wendy Rogers, R-Flagstaff, said shes not convinced the ability of parents to opt out is sufficient.

It shouldnt be an exception for parents to have rights as to what their child should receive, she said. This is an experimental inoculation which has had severe effects in and of itself.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has so far approved the Pfizer vaccine for children younger than 15 only under its experimental use authorization, though the agency required extensive clinical trials and has said the vaccine has proven safe and effective.

Sen. Nancy Barto, R-Phoenix, said that in just the first few months of the Pfizer vaccine being available there were more than 1,100 deaths.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Prevention and Control reported in June 2021 that there had been about 4,500 deaths after people were vaccinated, about 80% among people 60 and older, though the agency said there were no unusual patterns that suggested a link to the vaccine itself.

This is a balance, Barto said. And we have to make sure that parents have the ultimate right to guide their childrens health and safety.

There is a precedent of sorts for the measure. Lawmakers previously voted to bar the health department from requiring immunization for the human papilloma virus as a condition for attending school.

But Humble pointed out that HPV group of related viruses, which can cause warts, is generally spread through direct sexual contact with someone who has the virus. By contrast, he said, COVID is airborne.

Howard Fischer is a veteran journalist who has been reporting since 1970 and covering state politics and the Legislature since 1982. Follow him on Twitter at "@azcapmedia" or email azcapmedia@gmail.com.

Subscribe to stay connected to Tucson. A subscription helps you access more of the local stories that keep you connected to the community.


TEHRAN, March 23 (Xinhua) -- Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian said on Wednesday that the relationship between Iran and Syria is at its best, official news agency IRNA reported.

"Trade, economic and political consultations between the two countries are at the best level," he told reporters upon arrival at the Damascus airport in the Syrian capital.

Iran is determined to further boost comprehensive relations with Syria, and the economic and trade cooperation is a priority, he was quoted as saying.

"We (Iran and Syria) are on the same front, and Iran supports the leadership, the government and the people of Syria," the Iranian minister added.

Abdollahian is scheduled to meet his Syrian counterpart and other senior Syrian officials to discuss bilateral ties before leaving for Lebanon. 
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis waded into fresh controversy on Tuesday with a proclamation honoring the collegiate swimmer who recently placed second to University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas, the first transgender athlete to win an NCAA Division I title.

The Republican governor, already embroiled in a fight with Disney over the state's so-called "Don't Say Gay" bill, claimed that the NCAA is "perpetuating a fraud" and declared University of Virginia freshman and Florida native Emma Weyant the "rightful winner" of the race.

Weyant had finished about 1.75 seconds behind Thomas, who has come to personify the ongoing discourse on trans women's participation in sports and the balance between inclusion and fair play.

"The NCAA is basically taking efforts to destroy women's athletics," the Republican governor said in a news conference. "They're trying to undermine the integrity of the competition and crown someone else."

The NCAA currently requires trans women athletes to have one year of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) to be cleared to participate in women's sports. Thomas said she started HRT in May 2019 and came out as trans that fall, and the NCAA has approved her participation in the women's field.

Tuesday's proclamation comes against the backdrop of DeSantis' showdown with Disney over the controversial Florida bill that would ban classroom instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity before fourth grade. A day after Disney CEO Bob Chapek publicly condemned the legislation -- which DeSantis has said he will sign into law -- the Florida governor ripped Disney as a "woke corporation" to a room of supporters.

Unlike past GOP leaders, DeSantis has been unmoved by corporate pressure or threats of economic boycott over divisive policies. Rather, he has gained a national following by leaning into fights, no matter who is on the receiving end -- a strategy that was on full display Tuesday as he entered the debate sparked by Thomas' win in the women's 500-yard freestyle event.

"In Florida, we reject these lies and recognize Sarasota's Emma Weyant as the best women's swimmer in the 500y freestyle," he said in a tweet.

By allowing men to compete in women's sports, the NCAA is destroying opportunities for women, making a mockery of its championships, and perpetuating a fraud.



In Florida, we reject these lies and recognize Sarasota's Emma Weyant as the best women's swimmer in the 500y freestyle. pic.twitter.com/tBmFxFE3q6  Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) March 22, 2022

While sex is a category that refers broadly to physiology, a person's gender is an innate sense of identity. The factors that go into determining the sex listed on a birth certificate may include anatomy, genetics and hormones, and there is broad natural variation in each of these categories. For this reason, critics have said the language of "biological sex," as used in DeSantis' proclamation, is overly simplistic and misleading.

A 2017 report in the journal Sports Medicine that reviewed several related studies found "no direct or consistent research" on trans people having an athletic advantage over their cisgender peers, at any state of their transition, and critics say postures like DeSantis' will only add to the discrimination that trans people face, particularly trans youth.

Still, the debate over the inclusion of transgender athletes, particularly women and girls, has become a political flashpoint in recent years, especially among conservatives.

So far this year, Iowa and South Dakota have approved legislation banning transgender women and girls from participating on sports teams consistent with their gender at accredited schools and colleges. And last year, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Mississippi, Montana, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia enacted similar sports bans, infuriating LGBTQ advocates, who argue conservatives are creating an issue where there isn't one.

***

Photos: Lia Thomas competes at NCAA Championships

The-CNN-Wire  &  2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.

Subscribe to stay connected to Tucson. A subscription helps you access more of the local stories that keep you connected to the community.


KABUL, March 23 (Xinhua) -- A total of 570 newly graduated Afghan youth, after receiving necessary military training, joined the army in Afghanistan, said a statement of defense ministry released here Wednesday.

In a graduation ceremony held in central Corps 313 in the country's Kabul on Tuesday, 570 persons including 120 personnel of Special Force obtained certificate and were commissioned to the army, the statement added.

The graduated soldiers also exhibited their professionalism in a parade showed to the ceremony participants, the statement further said.

Afghanistan would have a 150,000-strong army in the future, said Defense Ministry Spokesman Enayatullah Khawarazmi. 
WASHINGTON (AP)  Madeleine Albright, the first female U.S. secretary of state, has died of cancer, her family said Wednesday. She was 84.

President Bill Clinton chose Albright as America's top diplomat in 1996, and she served in that capacity for the last four years of the Clinton administration. She had previously been Clinton's ambassador to the United Nations.

At the time, she was the highest-ranking woman in the history of U.S. government. She was not in the line of succession for the presidency, however, because she was a native of Prague.

"She was surrounded by family and friends," her family announced on Twitter. "We have lost a loving mother, grandmother, sister, aunt and friend." It said the cause was cancer.

In 2012, President Barack Obama awarded Albright the Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, saying her life was an inspiration to all Americans.

Albright remained outspoken through the years. After leaving office, she criticized President George W. Bush for using "the shock of force" rather than alliances to foster diplomacy and said Bush had driven away moderate Arab leaders and created potential for a dangerous rift with European allies.

However, as a refugee from Czechoslovakia, she was not a dove and played a leading role in pressing for the Clinton administration to get militarily involved in the conflict in Kosovo. She also toed a hard line on Cuba, famously saying at the United Nations that the Cuban shootdown of a civilian plane was not "cojones" but rather "cowardice."

She advised women "to act in a more confident manner" and "to ask questions when they occur and don't wait to ask."

"It took me quite a long time to develop a voice, and now that I have it, I am not going to be silent," she told HuffPost Living in 2010.

When the Senate Foreign Relations Committee asked her in January 2007 whether she approved of Bush's proposed "surge" in U.S. troops in bloodied Iraq, she responded: "I think we need a surge in diplomacy. We are viewed in the Middle East as a colonial power and our motives are suspect."

Albright was an internationalist whose point of view was shaped in part by her background. Her family fled Czechoslovakia in 1939 as the Nazis took over their country, and she spent the war years in London.

As secretary of state, she played a key role in persuading Clinton to go to war against the Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic over his treatment of Kosovar Albanians in 1999. "My mindset is Munich," she said frequently, referring to the German city where the Western allies abandoned her homeland to the Nazis.

She helped win Senate ratification of NATO's expansion and a treaty imposing international restrictions on chemical weapons. She led a successful fight to keep Egyptian diplomat Boutros Boutros-Ghali from a second term as secretary-general of the United Nations. He accused her of deception and posing as a friend.

As America's top diplomat, Albright made limited progress at first in trying to expand the 1993 Oslo Accords that established the principle of self-rule for the Palestinians on the West Bank and in Gaza. But in 1998, she played a leading role in formulating the Wye Accords that turned over control of about 40% of the West Bank to the Palestinians.

She also spearheaded an ill-fated effort to negotiate a 2000 peace deal between Israel and Syria under Syria's late President Hafez al-Assad. And, she helped guide U.S. foreign policy during conflicts in the Balkans and the Hutu-Tutsi genocide in Rwanda. Full story here:

Photos: Remembering Madeleine Albright

Photos: Notable Deaths in 2022 Meat Loaf Sidney Poitier Ronnie Spector Bob Saget Louie Anderson Howard Hesseman Sally Kellerman Peter Bogdanovich Andre Leon Talley Marilyn Bergman Gaspard Ulliel Ivan Reitman Dan Reeves Don Maynard Michael Lang Lawrence N. Brooks Charles McGee Manfred Thierry Mugler Bill Fitch Gary Brooker Charley Taylor Dwayne Hickman Emilio Delgado William Hurt Madeleine Albright Brent Renaud Scott Hall Don Young Taylor Hawkins John Clayton

Subscribe to stay connected to Tucson. A subscription helps you access more of the local stories that keep you connected to the community.


TEHRAN, March 23 (Xinhua) -- Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) on Wednesday warned that Israel will receive another missile attack if it repeats "evil acts" against Iran, Tasnim news agency reported.

"If the Zionists do not stop their evil acts, the small openings that have been created for them in the world will be closed forever," IRGC's Commander-in-Chief Hossein Salami said.

The commander noted that his forces "will immediately take revenge" for any killing of its soldiers by Israel.

On March 13, IRGC said it hit with missiles an Israeli intelligence base in Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdish regional capital Erbil.

The operation, according to the IRGC, was in response to an Israeli airstrike on Syria's capital Damascus on March 7, in which two IRGC officers were killed. 
PHOENIX  The chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors is lashing out at a senators subpoena ordering the board to produce certain documents by Monday.

In a statement Tuesday, Bill Gates said the information state Sen. Kelly Townsend wants is based on the discredited work of Shiva Ayyadurai, an MIT lecturer who has espoused various election conspiracy theories.

Gates said Ayyadurais claim to have compared signatures on 2020 early ballot envelopes suggests someone  he isnt saying whom  violated state law that prohibits posting of this kind of information online.

That information was provided by the county only to the Senate after other subpoenas were issued last year, Gates said. Public release by anyone, he said, is a Class 6 felony, punishable by up to a year in state prison.

Ayyadurai did not respond to messages seeking comment.

As to the latest subpoena, Gates said the supervisors have made no decision on whether they will show up Monday at the Senate Government Committee that Townsend chairs.

My colleagues and I will meet soon to discuss an appropriate response, he said.

What Gates said Tuesday, however, angered Townsend.

She said her subpoena is identical to an unfulfilled request for information made of the county by the Arizona Attorney Generals Office, which is still looking into various claims about the 2020 general election.

Townsend said the question of whether Ayyadurais study of early ballots was based on improperly obtained information is irrelevant to compliance.

Is it the job of the Board of Supervisors to make a determination if something was done illegally and then obstruct the efforts of the attorney general to conduct an investigation into the matter? said Townsend, an Apache Junction Republican. She called it shoddy obstructionism.

She said that if Ayyadurai or anyone broke laws with the use of the ballot signatures, that is a matter for the attorney general and not an excuse for the county to withhold information.

Townsend also criticized Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovich, saying he has had information about the 2020 election now for more than a year but has failed to produce any results.

Why do we need a state Senate subpoena nearly two years on to get information from the county Board of Supervisors when the attorney general himself could issue the same subpoena and get the information straightaway? she asked. Instead, Brnovichs office has relied on public records requests.

There was no immediate response from the Attorney Generals Office.

Ayyadurai, who has ties to the nationally debunked Stop the Steal movement, claims he compared signatures on 499 Maricopa County ballot envelopes  he does not say how he obtained them  with other signatures on file at the county Recorders Office.

The latter group of signatures he used, however, are not the ones kept by election officials. Those are not public. Instead, he went to other documents, such as deeds and mortgages, which may be years older.

How is comparing signatures from one unrelated public recorded document to an early ballot envelope signature considered a viable way of providing identity for voting purposes? Gates asked.

He said Ayyadurai used faulty data extrapolation for his claim that more than 200,000 signatures on early ballots did not match.

Gates also disputed claims the county is withholding information.

He said thousands of documents, data and equipment were provided to the Senate for its review of the 2020 election results. As of the first week in February, the county had produced more than 4,400 documents and five PowerPoint slide decks to the Attorney Generals Office, Gates said.

As to the latest demand, Gates said the request arrived as the county was handling the Tempe City Council election. He said the information sought is being processed, and records will be provided in a reasonable period of time as prescribed by Arizona law.

Gates also took a more generic slap at what has been a series of allegations, all unproven, that the election results were inaccurate and that Donald Trump really won in Maricopa County despite the certified vote tally showing Joe Bidens victory.

The Board of Supervisors continues to stand by the integrity of our workers and the effective checks and balances in place that allow us to provide free, fair and accurate elections, he said.

Subscribe to stay connected to Tucson. A subscription helps you access more of the local stories that keep you connected to the community.


Get to know the homeless

I recently adopted a cat I saw in the Arizona Daily Star and I thought  it seems we do more to help homeless pets in Tucson than we do to help ones experiencing homelessness. Maybe if one of your reporters went out once a week and talked to some of the homeless and every week wrote a story about one of them. If they could tell a little bit of their story in their own words maybe we would all be moved to do something for them. I know that many of them have made bad choices but often they are homeless just because of rotten luck. Maybe if we knew their stories it would help to get something done  surely homeless people are at least as deserving as homeless pets to get a second chance.

Nancy Silberschlag

Foothills

White House is incompetent

To all you Tucson Trump bashers: How do you like your $5 gas price? How do you like your Southwest Gas and Tucson Electric bills? Are you enjoying what youre paying for groceries and anything else youre spending your shrinking paycheck on? Youve elected the most incompetent president and vice president in the history of this once great country. Open borders, critical race theory, white supremacy, Trump as a puppet to Putin. The entire Biden family is in Putins pocket.

When he shuts down our petroleum resources but gives Russia carte blanche for theirs while Biden sends Putin billions of our dollars and begs them for more without any reasonable way to convert us off fossil fuels except for us to pay through the nose to get us there. Thats just incompetence at the highest level.

Tom Roberts

Northwest side

Initiatives fly under the radar

Re: the March 18 letter Government by, for the people.

I am a volunteer with the current Arizonans for Fair Elections petition drive, which seeks to reinstate Permanent Early Voting, allow voting anywhere in the county where a person is registered, increase funding for Clean Elections candidates, and prevent the Legislature from overriding the voters in a presidential election. As Merrill Eisenberg wrote, Arizonas Constitution was designed to promote democracy through popular referendum and initiative, as well as through our elected Legislature. But referenda and initiatives, which now require hundreds of thousands of signatures to get on the ballot, dont get the kind of press coverage that activities in the Legislature get. Citizens may not hear about the referendum or initiative until its too late for them to sign it or organize an opposing effort. Newspapers like the Star could help to solve this problem by running a regular listing of signature-gathering efforts, with information about where and how to contact them.

Robert Wallace

Oro Valley

Teachers unions brought this on

The education bills passing through the Legislature will not break the publics trust in government schools, but are a result of the complete forfeiture of trust that has already occurred. The argument against HB 2808 blames the students for their schools failure. There are proven public/private options that successfully educate the same children. I think the bills calling for more transparency in curriculum are a result of the teachers unions. I think it is the teachers unions along with their progressive allies who want to convince children that their parents are their enemies and threaten arrest if you object. I am also tired of the complaint that prohibitions on CRT-inspired teaching that tells white children they are evil based on their color alone are unnecessary.

Helen Moulton

Foothills

Escalationists living a fantasy

Re: the March 20 letter Nuclear war or nuclear ban?

Its good to hear a sane voice to counter the voices of the escalationists who suggest that there exists some form of limited nuclear war that can be survived or even won. They believe we can have a few tactical nuclear strikes here and there and somehow be OK. Thats magical thinking at its most delusional. True, destruction of the entire planet might not be immediate, and we older folks might not live to experience the worst effects of nuclear war. Our children, however, would be doomed to a brutal struggle for survival in a barren world as imagined, I think accurately, by Cormac McCarthy in his novel The Road. Is this what we wish for those we love, or for anyone? A change of course is still possible, and absolutely necessary.

Kim Mathews

East side

On immigration, lets be honest

Re: the March 20 article These refugees have an easier go.

Thank you, Tim Steller, for this article. Were horrified watching the attacks on Ukrainians. Some might realize their reaction to bombing Syrians was different. Steller was tactful calling out our prejudices and immigration policies. I think responding differently is whats important today. In the past weve hated Irish, refused Jewish refugees during WWII, deported 400,000 to 1 million Mexicans and Mexican American citizens in the Depression. Lets be honest: Why does cartel crime exist? Is the U.S. ever involved in Latin American politics? Are refugees a burden? Who does yardwork in Tucson, cleans houses and takes care of our parents in long-term-care facilities? Who washes restaurant dishes, builds, paints, lays roofs in desert heat? Plus, the U.S. has been the major contributor of climate-change emissions already causing conflagrations and diaspora. Are we not responsible for receiving some percentage of the climate refugees our lifestyle choices cause? Isnt it time to acknowledge our past and plan honestly for major immigration revisions?

Nancy Jacques

Northeast side

Steller visits my street family

Re: the March 9 article Tucson should open sanctioned homeless camps.

Tim Steller came to our camp between Congress Avenue and St. Marys. He interviewed Outbak (William Greenaway III) and me. I would like to thank him.

Four days ago, I was handed the key to my apartment from my caseworker, Selene. She is a housing coordinator who works for Community Partners Inc. I believe it was his article that led to me being housed, permanently. I also have to thank Alex Mendoza of the Pima County Housing and Outbak, as well as the rest of my street family, for helping me survive up till now.

I hope Steller continues to speak to those living on the streets here in Tucson, he was very kind, and we enjoyed talking to him. After reading his article, we realized there are a lot of people who are trying to help. We didnt realize the amount of money that could be received from the federal government. May Tucson, Pima County, and Arizona be able receive this money and use it wisely.

Michelle LaLone

South Tucson

Disabled need absentee voting

Re: the March 21 article Bill would end early voting, require hand count.

I support a hand count of ballots within a 24-hour period. However, the proposed limitation on absentee voting is unfair to the many seniors with permanent disabilities making it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to participate in future voting. Restricting absentee voting to people who are physically unable to go to the polls because of being hospitalized or in a nursing home is too limiting. My 93-year-old husband served in the Caribbean Defense Command during WWII. Three years ago, he fell and broke his leg at the hip and has problems walking, standing and maintaining his balance despite physical therapy and constant use of a walker. I provide care for him on a 24/7 basis at our home. He is not in a nursing home, nor is he hospitalized. Absentee voting makes it possible for him to continue voting. HB 2289 needs to be amended to include all Arizona citizens with physical disabilities who cannot easily vote in person; regardless of where they reside.

Gail Gesell

Tubac

Why are private schools exempt?

Re: the March 15 article Bill expands parent-teacher involvement.

Our legislators are concerned about the transparency of what is being taught in public and charter schools. With the introduction of SB 1211 they hope to address this concern. The bill intends to make what is being taught readily available to parents and the public. A laudable goal since this information is often available already. But as with other education issues, private and parochial school are exempt. Why? Since some hold them up as shining examples, then I think what they teach should be available to us all also. I say the Arizona Legislature should include private and parochial schools in SB 1211.

Gary Benna

Midtown

Subscribe to stay connected to Tucson. A subscription helps you access more of the local stories that keep you connected to the community.


One of the countrys most storied orchestras, the New York Philharmonic, will become a regular presence in Oklahoma, thanks to a new residency partnership between the orchestra and the McKnight Center for the Performing Arts on the Oklahoma State University campus in Stillwater.

Officials with the center and the orchestra on Wednesday announced the three-year partnership, which will begin with the 2022-2023 academic year.

Each year. the orchestra will conduct a residency at OSU, which will include a gala event, public performances, a youth education concert and a series of master classes where students can interact with some of the worlds greatest musicians.

In addition, students from the OSU music program will travel to New York City each year for immersive learning opportunities with the philharmonic.

The New York Philharmonic has been a regular visitor to the McKnight Center since the facility opened to the public in October 2019. The orchestra was featured during the centers gala opening weekend, performing three concerts that featured Oklahoma native Kelli OHara.

The orchestra recently performed at the McKnight Center as part of its Midwestern tour.

The musicians of the Philharmonic and I are very much looking forward to returning to Oklahoma, said Jaap van Zweden, music director of the New York Philharmonic. When we inaugurated the beautiful new concert hall in 2019, we were touched by the warm welcome we received and by the enthusiasm of the audience. It will be a joy to return.

The orchestra will return to the OSU campus Sept. 23-25 for a weekend of performances that will feature acclaimed violinist Gil Shaham and pianist Conrad Tao, and a performance of Beethovens Symphony No. 9 that will feature a chorus of OSU students. The orchestra will return during the centers 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 seasons.

We are pleased to expand our partnership with a distinguished institution like the New York Philharmonic through this three-year residency, said Ross McKnight, the McKnight Centers namesake and board chair. McKnight also serves as a board member at the New York Philharmonic.

We envisioned the center as a transformational space for our university, community and region to experience world-class art, McKnight said. Over the next three years, the residency will help establish a cultural legacy in Stillwater that will draw audiences and develop the next generation of musicians.

For more on the center, go to mcknightcenter.org.

Watch Now: 5 to find: Things to do this weekend

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.
With the archives locked away in the basement of a former savings and loan building, the Tulsa Foundation for Architecture preserves thousands of irreplaceable records that document some of the citys most historic and recognizable landmarks. But not very many people get to see them.

TFA makes the collection available for research, but the public has seen very little of it. That could change soon, however, with a $20,000 grant from the Oklahoma Historical Society.

The money will help TFA digitize at least 5,000 records and make them available online, officials said recently. That is still only a fraction of the archives, which include more than 35,000 architectural drawings, renderings, tracings, photographs and other documents. But it will make TFAs collection more accessible than it has ever been before.

These funds will allow us to begin to digitize our collection so that our wide range of architectural drawings and artifacts will be accessible online to a much broader audience, said Amber Litwack, TFAs executive director. We truly could not embark on this project without the financial support that this grant provides.

The funding will come from the state Historical Societys Oklahoma Heritage Preservation Grant Program, which will distribute more than $558,000 this year for projects ranging from collections care and strategic planning to exhibit development and educational programming, officials said.

Entering our third year, said Nicole Harvey, director of strategic initiatives and grants administrator for the Historical Society, to date the program has funded over 120 projects that are aiding with collecting, preserving and sharing Oklahoma history for local communities across the state.

Featured video:

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.
The two former public school employees vying to represent Zone 3 on Tulsa Techs board of education are in agreement on one thing.

Despite having six campuses around the metro area, working with 15 public school districts and being the largest member of Oklahomas Career Tech system, both said not enough people know Tulsa Tech exists.

We tend to fly under the radar at Tulsa Tech to a great extent, incumbent Mark Griffin said. Those who know us know us well, and I like that. But were just not as well known. I have had several people tell me that they didnt know Tulsa Tech has a school board.

The average person who is working every day and doesnt spend a lot of time reading the newspaper or watching TV just does not have the opportunities to know about Tulsa Tech, candidate Jim Provenzano said.

The Zone 3 seat on Tulsa Techs board of education is one of 10 seats going before Tulsa-area voters on April 5. Early walk-in voting is scheduled for March 31 and April 1 from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. at county election board offices.

The northern boundary for Zone 3 is 31st Street. Its southern boundary is 81st Street between Yale and Memorial and 101st Street from Memorial to 129th East Avenue. Its western border runs along Yale Avenue to 81st Street, then cuts over to Memorial. Save for three precincts that stretch out to 145th East Avenue, the districts eastern border is 129th East Avenue.

Prior to getting on the board in 2015, Griffin worked for Tulsa Tech and Tulsa Public Schools for more than 30 years. He joined the Tulsa Tech faculty in 1984 on a part-time basis, teaching in a converted trailer in a parking lot outside the auto body shop at what is now known as the systems Lemley Campus near 31st Street and Memorial.

Griffin has served as chairman of the boards facilities committee, which has helped oversee the renovation efforts at Tulsa Techs Broken Arrow campus and the ongoing expansion work at the Lemley campus.

Even with those projects creating more classrooms, he said one of his goals if re-elected was to try to find ways to add even more instructional space in order expand enrollment capacity while staying within budget parameters.

We get very little in terms of state or federal money, he said. In my mind, that gives me a really strong commitment to the people who pay our property taxes that enables us to do what we can do and be really frugal with that and try to apply every dollar to where it is going to do the most good.

Provenzano retired from Tulsa Public Schools in summer 2021 after 15 years with the district and currently works as a data consultant. He said he sees the opportunity to serve on Tulsa Techs board as a natural extension from his years working in public education and finding ways to set students up for success after graduation.

When you start talking to families of young adults and older teens, you find out that a lot of people arent aware of post-secondary, nontraditional paths, he said. We talk about being college and career ready, but we dont do much talking about what those career opportunities are outside of college.

Provenzano said his professional experience working both with students and data would be an asset to the board of education to help better inform the public about the opportunities available through Tulsa Tech.

My ability to think about relationships between people and information differently would be a nice fit as we try to become more innovative in engaging with whats coming through in the future not only with our students, but with our communitys older adults as well, he said.

Featured video:

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.
Talking to students about the real history behind Killers of the Flower Moon, a former Osage Nation principal chief said Tuesday he has good reason to believe the movie based on the book will get the story right.

The filmmakers are making sure the Osage play a significant role in the story, and it gives me hope that we have a new kind of movie that nobodys ever seen before, Jim Gray said about the upcoming Martin Scorsese film.

The virtual event, with Gray speaking via Zoom, was sponsored by Tulsa Community College in partnership with the University of North Carolina-Greensboro, with students from both schools participating.

Gray, a former chief and onetime publisher of the Native American Times, is the great-grandson of one of the most well-known victims of the 1920s Osage Reign of Terror, the series of murders that form the basis for David Granns bestselling book.

Gray, whose middle name is Roan, was named in honor of his ancestor, Henry Roan, he said.

The sad part is theres very little I can tell you about the life of Henry Roan because he was robbed of a childhood, and he was killed as a young man, Gray said. He never got to see his granddaughter (Grays mother) being born.

Gray said up to the time of his murder, his ancestors story sadly paralleled that of many young tribe members. It began as a child sent away to an Indian boarding school.

They didnt go for a semester, they didnt go for a year, Gray said. They went for years, never to return home. And while they were there, they were beaten for speaking their language or practicing their traditional ways.

A whole generation of Indian children went through this, he said. My great-grandfather came back years later as a grown man, robbed of having any kind of relationship with his family. He fell into this purgatory of being considered neither white nor Osage and like a lot of people it caused him to find ways to self-medicate.

Gray said for years he didnt talk about the story of the Osage murders and his own familys part in it.

I always kind of kept it to myself, he said. I never really thought to tell strangers or anybody about that story because it is painful.

Many Osages maintained an uneasy silence, he said, because we know what happens to those who speak up. They meet a similar fate to my great-grandfather.

Gray described a public meeting held in Pawhuska with Scorsese and members of the cast and crew that changed the direction of the film.

Gray was one of the people who spoke, and he appealed to Scorsese to not make another Hollywood white-savior movie.

Instead of glamorizing the role of the FBI, I said tell the story from our perspective. Make sure that our voices are heard. Make the movie that no one in your business has ever made before, be the director of that movie.

As a result of the meeting with tribe members, Scorsese decided to delay production and rework the script.

He said Im not going to make this movie until I get it right.

Gray said the resulting changes were refreshing.

It really elevates the Osage perspective in the story in a way that the book never intended and the original screenwriter never intended, he said.

As for Gray, he wont be silent anymore about his family history, he said.

Of the Osage murders, a lot of people have said, That was in the past. Why would you want to keep reliving this kind of thing? And my answer to that is, If my mom wanted me to forget that past, why would she have named me James Roan Gray?

Video: Joe Conner talks about Fairfax and Killers of the Flower Moon.

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.
CARACAS, March 23 (Xinhua) -- A total of 97 migrants from Ecuador were repatriated to Venezuela on Wednesday as part of the Return to the Homeland Plan (Plan Vuelta a la Patria) promoted by the Venezuelan government to support its nationals abroad, Foreign Minister Felix Plasencia said.

The migrants arrived from the Ecuadorian city of Guayaquil and landed at the Simon Bolivar International Airport near Caracas.

The Venezuelan official explained on his Twitter account that this is a "new phase" of the program, "to continue serving our compatriots and bringing them back."

The Ministry of Popular Power for Foreign Affairs detailed on Tuesday that the new phase involves "tripling the number of flights" for the return of Venezuelan citizens to the South American country.

The program, initiated in August 2018, has facilitated the return to Venezuela of over 28,000 people from 19 countries. 
A woman charged in connection with the shooting of a hospital security guard has been found not guilty by reason of insanity.

Following a non-jury trial in Tulsa federal court, U.S. District Judge Gregory Frizzell on Tuesday made the finding and ordered Karee Dawn Alvarez, 21, be committed to a federal prison medical facility until she is eligible for release.

Alvarez was arrested after a Hillcrest Medical Center security guard was shot May 27 in the chest in a hospital parking lot near 11th Street and Utica Avenue.

The security guard, who was wearing a bulletproof vest, suffered minor injuries before returning fire and wounding Alvarez in the hands, arms and torso.

Prior to being shot, the guard was investigating a report of gunshots in the area when he approached Alvarez, who was sitting in a silver car in the hospital parking lot.

Alvarez said that she too had heard noises, but she said the sound was firecrackers that she had been lighting, according to court records.

When asked where she was getting the firecrackers, Alvarez allegedly stated, Right here, just before grabbing the handgun and shooting the guard, according to court records.

Officials later determined that Alvarez had just been released from the hospital and had been wandering in the parking lot, checking for unlocked vehicles, when she found a silver unlocked car with a gun inside.

A grand jury indicted Alvarez on Sept. 7, charging her with assault with intent to commit murder in Indian Country, assault with a dangerous weapon with intent to do bodily harm in Indian Country and carrying, using, brandishing and discharging a firearm during and in relation to a crime of violence.

The charges were filed in federal court because Alvarez is a member of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma and the crime occurred in Indian Country, according to court records.

Both prosecutors and Alvarezs defense attorney later agreed to medical reports describing her mental condition at the time of the assault.

Based upon the stipulations and evidence presented, the Court finds that the government has met its burden to prove that Ms. Alvarez committed the offenses charged in the indictment, Frizzell wrote in his special verdict.

The Court also finds, based on the stipulations and psychological reports, that Ms. Alvarez has proven by clear and convincing evidence that she suffered from a severe mental disease or defect, she was not able to understand what she was doing at the time, or to understand that it was wrong, Frizzell wrote.

He set an April 28 hearing date to receive an update on Alvarezs condition.

In the meantime, Frizzell ordered Alvarez to undergo further psychiatric or psychological examination to determine whether her release would create a substantial risk of bodily injury to another person or serious damage to property of another.

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.
OKLAHOMA CITY  The Senate on Tuesday advanced a measure to let voters decide whether to dramatically alter how the state selects judges and the court system.

Senate Joint Resolution 43, by Senate Pro Tem Greg Treat, R-Oklahoma City, passed 38-10 and heads to the House for consideration.

The measure would let voters decide whether to alter the Oklahoma Constitution, asking them to abolish the Judicial Nominating Commission.

Created by a vote of the people after a court scandal decades ago, the Judicial Nominating Commission screens candidates for judicial offices and refers three names to the governor for selection.

The Judicial Nominating Commission has 15 members, nine of whom are not lawyers.

Treat said attorneys are overrepresented on the panel.

Under the proposal, the governor would be able to appoint judges with advice and consent of the Senate, the same as the federal system.

It would also end direct appeals to the Oklahoma Supreme Court, making cases first go through the Court of Civil Appeals. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals would remain the final arbitrator in criminal cases.

A growing number of bills, some authored by Treat, have been tossed by the Oklahoma Supreme Court. Several dealt with abortion.

The courts need to be more reflective of Oklahomans, Treat said. We have seen, time and time again, appellate courts legislating from the bench.

Asking voters to abolish the Judicial Nominating Commission has been the goal of a number of measures introduced by lawmakers over the years.

The measure would also make trial court judges run on a ballot that identifies party affiliation, something thatbis not currently done.

The measure would let the Supreme Court retain credentialing and disciplinary action involving attorneys who practice in Oklahoma courts. Currently, the Oklahoma Supreme Court vests credentialing of attorneys and discipline with the Oklahoma Bar Association.

It would not allow the OBA to discipline attorneys for actions that occurred outside the scope of court proceedings.

The measure would give the legislature jurisdiction over attorneys who do not appear before Oklahoma courts. It was not clear if those regulated by the legislature would be required to be members of the Oklahoma Bar Association.

Some attorneys have been critical of the requirement to join the Oklahoma Bar Association to practice. They object to paying dues to an organization that holds beliefs with which they disagree.

Treat said plenty of attorneys work for school districts and corporations and never appear before an Oklahoma court.

Senate Minority Leader Kay Floyd, D-Oklahoma City, asked if the individuals not regulated by the Oklahoma Supreme Court would have to graduate from law school.

Treat said he thought that would be a requirement, but it would be up to the legislature.

Featured video:

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.
Book bans are seeping into school board meeting agendas, proposed legislation, and candidate platforms, and the noise from these debates is obscuring the real outrage  that far too many of our students arent reading at grade level.

Books give kids the superpower of independence. Reading allows students to access stories from places far away or around the corner, learning about perspectives different from their own. Books unlock both imagination and information, helping children build knowledge and understanding. As Laura Bush once said, Reading is the path to success in school and life.

All students deserve to read on grade level. But too often thats not the case, particularly for Black, Hispanic, and low-income students.

In the United States, only 35% of fourth graders are proficient readers, according to the 2021 National Assessment of Educational Progress. Far too many of the countrys Black and Hispanic students are behind their peers in reading. Why arent we marching in the streets about the students we are leaving behind and leaving out?

We know how to teach reading well, thanks to decades of research around the science of reading, but that knowledge too often doesnt translate into classrooms. Teachers often need additional training and support to fill gaps in their knowledge and updated instructional materials that align with current research instead of outdated, and debunked, balanced literacy practices.

Many state legislatures are responding with policy and incentives to drive districts to align instruction and curriculum with the science of reading.

In Massachusetts, districts are eligible for grants to purchase high-quality curriculum and replace low-quality materials. Tennessee just released free science of reading resources for teachers and parents. Colorado districts must choose an approved, research-aligned reading curriculum or face sanctions. In Texas, all K-3 teachers and principals must be trained in the science of reading to help improve instruction.

Instead of banning books, we should focus on creating strong readers, encouraging transparency between educators and parents, and offering students well-stocked school libraries. Lets not get distracted into solving for the wrong X in this equation.

Thats why the Laura Bush Foundation for Americas Libraries provides grants to our countrys neediest schools to update and expand often outdated collections. Its important for students, especially those who may not have many books at home, to have access to a rich variety of books.

Make no mistake, we need to help children learn to navigate books with complex themes in age-appropriate ways. Children arent small adults and must be taught the significant skills of discernment and judgment to navigate our real, messy, and complicated world.

Its entirely reasonable to expect that educators tell parents what books are being used in class or featured in a school library. Transparency builds trust. Teachers should be able to articulate the themes of a book, the purpose of teaching it in a particular class, and what supports will be used to teach difficult elements of a particular text. Parents should be able to ask questions along the way.

But we shouldnt try to wall off students from information about our history or todays social issues  as authoritarians do  but to help them navigate difficult material.

As former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said recently on this topic, This could be a slippery slope that goes to really bad places. And there is no better way to get a book widely read than to ban it.

Imagine a country where all our children are proficient readers, able to access information, ask questions, build their perspective, and create new ideas. That is a nation where children are set up for a life with agency because they better understand themselves, their world, and their history.

Book bans wont get us there, but great reading instruction and well-stocked libraries are big steps in the right direction.

Anne Wicks is the Ann Kimball Johnson Director of the Education Reform Initiative at the George W. Bush Institute.

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.
On March 15, at the Honoring Ceremony of the Leading Real Estate Brands in 2021-22, the Diamond Lotus Riverside luxury apartment building of Phuc Khang Corporation was named among the five best green-smart building projects of last year.

The Honoring Ceremony of the Leading Real Estate Brands in 2021-22 was held in conjunction with the second Spring Real Estate Forum to fully and comprehensively recognize professional real estate developers and quality products in the market.

The event, which took place in Hanoi, was organized by Vietnam Real Estate Electronic Magazine (Reatimes) and Vietnam Real Estate Research Institute (VIRES) under the direction and patronage of the Vietnam Real Estate Association.

Among the attendees were executives of the Vietnam Real Estate Association, Advisory Council of VIRES, and Realtimes; 30 leading experts in Vietnam; representatives of news agencies, press and leaders; and representatives of the businesses being honored at the ceremony.

The trophy and certificate recognizing the Diamond Lotus Riverside project of Phuc Khang Corporation as one of the five best green-smart constructions in 2021

To be named among the five best green-smart building projects in 2021, the Diamond Lotus Riverside luxury apartments developed by Phuc Khang Corporation underwent a round of voting by 500,000 readers on Realtimes.vn and the direct, independent, and objective votes from the Council, including journalists covering real estate and leading experts in economics, law, planning, architecture, construction, and real estate in Vietnam.

Located on Le Quang Kim Street in District 8, Ho Chi Minh City, the Diamond Lotus Riverside project is the first high-rise apartment complex developed by Phuc Khang Mitsubishi Corporation Holding, a joint venture between Phuc Khang and leading Japanese enterprise Mitsubishi Corporation, in Vietnam.

The project development met both the LEED standard of the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) and the LOTUS benchmark of the Vietnam Green Building Council (VGBC), with its gold-level registration for the two criteria approved.

By the end of 2021, Diamond Lotus Riverside had been awarded the LOTUS provisional certificate by the VGBC, which certified that the project is on track to reach the gold level at the full certification stage.

At the ceremony to award the LOTUS provisional certificate to Diamond Lotus Riverside, VGBC President Phan Thu Hang confirmed that this green building had brought three benefits in terms of the environment, economy, and society.

Firstly, the project developer has expressed the commitment on corporate social responsibility to the community and to the environment by reducing the company's carbon or environmental footprint, Hang elaborated.

Secondly, the project is developed for users, as LOTUS green buildings are focused on providing suitable microclimate conditions and amenities regarding heat, light, sound, and comfort for them, which make the users feel better about their living environment.

Thirdly, the project is for green buildings themselves: LOTUS green buildings always encourage the efficient use of energy.

Using energy effectively and efficiently during the operation of a building not only lowers the propertys carbon emissions but also reduces the monthly electricity bill.

This brings economic benefits to users.

A real-life image of Diamond Lotus Riverside  the construction built according to international green standards with Japanese quality and technology

With the aim of turning the Diamond Lotus Riverside project into a green symbol in the heart of the city, which brings the perfect living environment and potentially makes space for the prosperous life of residents' families, Phuc Khang Corporation has devoted itself to the design, construction, operation, and technology transfer of the property.

The most outstanding element of the development is a joint venture with Mitsubishi Corporation, a leading corporation in Japan, to build Diamond Lotus Riverside according to strict green building standards with Japanese technology.

Given these hallmarks, the Diamond Lotus Riverside project has become one of the typical highlights for the journey of pioneering and promoting the creation of a better lifestyle for public health and a humane ecological environment in accordance with global green standards of Phuc Khang Corporation.
A Vietnamese company has recently been required to re-export 25 containers of Monazite concentrates to Russia after the products were found containing radioactive materials.

The information was highlighted in the press release summarizing smuggling, trade fraud, and counterfeit goods in Vietnam since the beginning of this year, which the General Department of Vietnam Customs sent to local media on Tuesday.

Trung Viet Export-Import and Investment Company, based in Quy Nhon City in south-central Binh Dinh Province, previously filed an import declaration for 25 shipping containers of Monazite concentrates from Russia to Quy Nhon Port.

However, an inspection by customs officers in Binh Dinh and relevant agencies later showed that the Monazite concentrates contained such radioactive materials as uranium and thorium.

After consulting the Ministry of Finance, the General Department of Vietnam Customs directed the customs unit at Quy Nhon Port to book Trung Viet Company for importing radioactive materials that do not match the specifications stated in the import license.

The firm was required to re-export the entire shipments within 10 days.

The 25 shipping containers have already been re-exported from Vietnam, the customs department said in the press release.

The agency added that customs authorities had busted multiple cases of smuggling and illegal cross-border transportation of COVID-19 test kits and medicines of unknown origin.

In one instance, a passenger was caught illicitly transporting 14,650 COVID-19 pills from Russia after landing in south-central Khanh Hoa Province in January.

In late February, customs officers at Chi Ma Border Gate in northern Lang Son Province discovered an abandoned cargo containing 1,600 COVID-19 test kits originating in China.

In the first two months of 2022, local customs forces dealt with more than 2,700 violations of customs law, with the value of the goods totaling VND1.2 trillion (US$52.4 million).

The customs department also asked relevant bodies to conduct criminal prosecution in 27 cases.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!
Authorities in the Chinese city of Shanghai have denied rumours of a city-wide lockdown after a sixth straight increase in daily asymptomatic coronavirus cases pushed its count to record levels despite a campaign of mass testing aimed at stifling the spread.

The latest outbreak in China's wealthy commercial hub remains tiny by global standards but authorities are proceeding with the testing campaign that has seen many people locked in residential compounds for days as the city implements a national "dynamic clearance" policy aimed at stamping out flare-ups as they arise.

Total local COVID-19 infections in Shanghai approached 1,000 on Tuesday, but the city said late in the day it would stick to its "slicing and gridding" approach and screen its citizens neighbourhood by neighbourhood rather than shut down entirely.

The lockdown rumours triggered panic buying late on Tuesday night, with slots on Alibaba's "Freshhippo" delivery app running out a minute after midnight.

"Please do not believe and spread rumours," the city government said on its Weibo microblog site.

A health official told a briefing on Wednesday that the city had turned two stadiums into quarantine facilities for mild cases and asymptomatic carriers.

A handful of subway stations also suspended operations on Wednesday, the firm managing the transit system said, citing COVID-19 controls.

The municipality reported 977 domestically transmitted asymptomatic infections for Tuesday, data from the National Health Commission (NHC) showed, up from 865 a day earlier.

It also reported four local cases with confirmed symptoms, which China counts separately, down from 31 a day earlier.

'Infinite loop'

Throughout the city, while some compounds were unsealed, others were shut for several more days to try to eliminate transmission chains. Some residents said they would be sealed off for two weeks after a neighbour tested positive.

One resident posting on Weibo under the username "Zhang Fan's Viewpoint" said authorities might as well lock the city down and put an end to the uncertainty caused by 48-hour lockdowns for testing that are often extended.

"This infinite loop of 48 hours plus 48 hours plus 48 hours is more likely to cause ordinary people to lose control of their emotions, and it would be better to directly notify six days, eight days or even 14 days," the resident said.

"In these circumstances, a one-off payment is better than payment by instalment."

Mainland China reported 2,591 locally transmitted cases with confirmed symptoms on Tuesday, versus 2,281 a day earlier, the NHC data showed. The number of new local asymptomatic cases stood at 2,346 compared with 2,313 a day earlier.

The top steelmaking city of Tangshan said late on Tuesday residents who are not essential workers must stay home unless in an emergency or they need to be tested. The city government did not specify when the citywide lockdown would be lifted.

The northeastern city of Shenyang also announced that its 9 million residents would have to go through another three rounds of testing from Thursday through to March 30, after the three rounds already completed.

As of March 22, mainland China had reported 137,231 cases with confirmed symptoms, including both local ones and those arriving from outside the mainland. There were no new deaths, leaving the death toll at 4,638.

The coronavirus was first detected in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019.
Rain in southern China on Wednesday halted the search for victims and flight information black boxes that could tell why a China Eastern Airlines passenger plane plunged into a mountainside two days earlier with 132 people on board.

Rain water was filling the depression in the soft soil caused by the impact of the crash, and there were risks of landslides that could endanger rescue workers scouring the difficult, heavily forested terrain, state television reported.

The wet weather was forecast to last for the rest of the week.

Flight MU5735 was en route from the southwestern city of Kunming, capital of Yunnan province, to Guangzhou in Guangdong province bordering Hong Kong, when the Boeing 737-800 jet suddenly plunged from cruising altitude at about the time when it would normally start to descend ahead of its landing.

The cause of the crash in the mountains of Guangxi region is yet to be determined, with aviation authorities warning that their investigation would be very difficult because of the severe damage to the aircraft.

China had made great strides in improving air safety standards over the past two decades, and Monday's disaster was the first major crash in a dozen years.

The disaster prompted the aviation regulator to launch a two-week inspection of the sector that will involve checks at all regional air traffic control bureaus, airline companies and flight training institutes to ensure the "absolute" safety.

Rescue members work at the site where a China Eastern Airlines Boeing 737-800 plane flying from Kunming to Guangzhou crashed, in Wuzhou, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, China March 21, 2022. Picture taken March 21, 2022. Photo: cnsphoto via Reuters

Safety concerns

Since the crash, China Eastern and two subsidiaries have grounded their fleet of more than 200 Boeing 737-800 jets. The last commercial jetliner to crash in mainland China was in 2010, when an Embraer E-190 regional jet flown by Henan Airlines went down.

Having rushed to Guangxi on Monday to oversee the emergency operations, Vice Premier Liu He held a meeting on Tuesday during which officials were urged to go "all out in their search as long as there is a glimmer of hope" for survivors.

Officials were also instructed to release information "in accordance with the principles of timeliness, accuracy, openness and transparency", according to state media reports.

The broader aviation sector was ordered to carry out special checks to prevent any other major accidents.

At the first news conference held by the government late on Tuesday night in Guangxi, an aviation official said the 737-800 jet that crashed had met airworthiness standards before take-off and crew members had been in good health.

The disaster comes as Boeing seeks to rebound from several crises, notably the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on air travel and safety concerns over its 737 MAX model following two deadly crashes.

China Eastern also faces deepening losses and closer regulatory scrutiny following the crash.
Read what is in the news today:

Society

-- Vietnam Airlines announced on Tuesday evening that it will temporarily suspend regular flights on the Vietnam - Russia air route, starting from March 25, until further notice.

-- The number of passengers of the Cat Linh - Ha Dong urban railway route has increased over 30 percent in the past two weeks, Vu Hong Truong, director of Hanoi Railway Co. Ltd., the unit that directly operates the service, said on Tuesday.

-- Forty-eight residents and tourists showed symptoms of food poisoning after eating sandwiches made by Lien Hoa, a famous brand in Da Lat City, Lam Dong Province from March 18 to Monday.

-- Work on the expansion of Nguyen Van Linh Avenue in District 7, Ho Chi Minh City has begun to increase its number of lanes from six to ten as the project is expected to ease traffic congestion and rainwater inundation that often happen on this road.

-- Nearly 48,000 people have declared their COVID-19 infections online after the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Health introduced the service a week ago, an official said on Tuesday.

-- Vietnam has spent more than US$865 million importing COVID-19 test kits since the respiratory disease was first reported in the country in early 2020, according to statistics of the General Department of Customs.

-- The headquarters of the Can Tho City Confederation of Labor has been seriously degraded, with large cracks appearing inside the building and plastic bags hung on its gate, making it look like an abandoned place.

-- The Vietnam National Childrens Hospital officially inaugurated the first breast milk bank in Hanoi on Tuesday after four months of trial.

Business

-- The General Department of Customs announced on Tuesday the forced re-exportation of 25 containers of Monazite concentrate with radioactive uranium and thorium from Russia.

Sports

-- Vietnam playmaker Nguyen Quang Hai will leave Hanoi FC on a free transfer as his current deal will expire on April 12, after negotiations over an extension have broken down, the football club announced on Tuesday evening.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!
Authorities in Vietnam have confirmed a mass food poisoning incident that has led to the hospitalization of 48 people who ate banh mi, or Vietnamese sandwiches, bought from a popular brand name.

Officials in Da Lat City under Lam Dong Province, located in the Central Highlands region, said on Tuesday that 48 people had been hospitalized after consuming banh mi prepared by Lien Hoa Bakery, which is a famous name and popular with visitors to the city.

The diners fell sick from March 18 to 21 after they ate sandwiches bought from either of the two Lien Hoa Bakery stores on Tran Phu and Phan Chu Trinh Street in Da Lat, local authorities said.

The patients were admitted to Lam Dong General Hospital and Hoan My Hospital, with signs of digestive disorders, vomiting, and fever.

A boy is hospitalized after eating 'banh mi' bought from Lien Hoa Bakery in Da Lat City, Lam Dong Province, Vietnam. Photo: M.V. / Tuoi Tre

Nguyen Hoang Nhat Nam, 15, was brought to hospital with symptoms of abdominal pain and diarrhea on Friday after eating sandwiches bought by his teacher at Lien Hoa Bakery at 165 Phan Chu Trinh Street.

Tuyet, a native of Da Lat, encountered the same situation as she suffered stomach ache, diarrhea, and fatigue after eating vegan sandwiches at the other store at 9 Tran Phu Street.

Upon receiving reports about the cases, local authorities quickly inspected the bakeries.

The bakery owner failed to present documents proving the ingredient origin at the time, said Bui Van Do, director of the Lam Dong Food Safety and Hygiene Agency under the provincial health department.

We are conducting further investigation while ordering the temporary closure of the stores, Do added.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!
After four months of preparation, the first human milk bank in Hanoi was officially launched on Tuesday at Vietnam National Children's Hospital.

The human milk bank receives financial support from the government of Ireland and organizations that protect the healthy growth of mothers and children such as Alive & Thrive and Newborns Vietnam.

Speaking at the opening ceremony, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Tran Minh Dien, director of the Vietnam National Children's Hospital, believed that pasteurized breast milk plays a vital role in enhancing survival for critically-ill infants who cannot be breastfed.

Research shows that pasteurized human milk can temporarily replace natural milk and help reduce neonatal sepsis by 19 percent among vulnerable infants within their first 28 days of life.

It can also help save around 15 days of hospitalization and 10 days of feeding parenteral nutrition compared to formula products on average.

Doctor Le Thi Ha, head of the neonatology department at the Vietnam National Children's Hospital, said that each year the hospital provides treatment for nearly 5,000 babies with serious illnesses such as premature birth, low birthweight, or birth defects.

Following the a four-month trial operation, the breast milk bank has received 600 liters of milk from 38 mothers whose children are being treated at the hospital.

After being pasteurized, the milk was given to 280 children, of which 62 were infected with COVID-19.

During the process of milk pasteurization, the hospital follows technical guidance and strict procedures in accordance with the Ministry of Health, said Dinh Anh Tuan, deputy director of the maternal health and children ward.

Donated breast milk will be tested and sterilized to ensure safety for babies while milk-donating moms have to undergo a health check and periodic blood tests, Tuan added.

The bank is the seventh to officially operate in Vietnam.

Sean Farrell, development specialist at the Ireland Embassy in Vietnam, expressed his pride in helping Vietnam expand the breast milk network, which gives access to lifesaving human milk and an equal chance of a healthy and successful life to children.

He also spoke highly of the milk donors and staff working at the bank over their silent yet enormous dedication.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!
PM vows tough anti-terror stance after deadly attack in southern Israel

Xinhua) 08:44, March 23, 2022

JERUSALEM, March 22 (Xinhua) -- Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett vowed on Tuesday to take a tough stance against "terrorists" after an Israeli Arab citizen killed four people in the country's southern city of Beersheba.

"We will take strong actions against terrorists," Bennett said in a statement following an evaluation of the attack and consultations with Public Security Minister Omer Bar-Lev and Israel's police chief Kobi Shabtai.

"We will also pursue and apprehend those who aided and abetted them," he said, adding the security forces are "on maximum alert."

Bennett also offered his condolences to the victims' families and expressed his concern for those who were injured in the attack.

Four people were killed and two others injured on Tuesday in Beersheba by a knife-wielding Arab assailant who was later shot dead by two armed civilians passing by, according to the Israeli police.

The assailant fatally stabbed a woman in a gas station after getting out of his car near a shopping mall. He then went back to his car and ran over a bike rider before stepping out of the car again to fatally stab another man and woman, the police said in a statement.

The state-owned Kan TV news reported that the attacker is an Israeli Arab citizen, a Bedouin resident of the village of Hura in the Negev Desert. According to Shabtai, the suspect had previously served prison terms for attempting to join the Islamic State militant group in Syria.

No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack, which lasted about eight minutes and is the deadliest in Israel in the past few years.

Police forces were deployed throughout Israel to "avoid copycat attacks," Shabtai told reporters during a press briefing.

Investigation on the attack was still underway, according to Shabtai.

(Web editor: Peng yukai, Liang Jun)
by Marwa Yahya

CAIRO, March 23 (Xinhua) -- Egypt and Israel have agreed to launch a new flight route and a new gas pipeline between the two countries, which are expected to deepen their economic cooperation and ties.

The new flight route, from Ben Gurion Airport in Israel's Tel Aviv to the Egyptian city of Sharm el-Sheikh, is expected to start operation ahead of the Jewish Passover holiday when thousands of Israelis would flock to Egypt, the Red Sea resorts in particular.

The two countries also agreed last month to construct a second pipeline that will export the liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Egypt via Jordan.

"Cooperation between Israel and Egypt is expanding. Israel is opening up to the countries in the region, and this is another important step in warming up the peace agreement between Israel and Egypt," tweeted Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.

"Developing Egypt-Israel relations is normal in light of the ongoing peace between the two countries for more than 40 years," said Tariq Fahmy, chairman of the Israeli Studies Unit in the Cairo-based National Center for the Middle East Studies.

Egypt is the first Arab country that signed a Camp David peace deal with Israel, but the "cold relations" were only concentrated on security and limited economic cooperation, he said.

Gamal Bayoumi, head of the Cairo-based Arab Investors Union said that the new flight route will attract more Israeli tourists to the Red Sea resorts in a country that relies on tourism as one of the main sources of foreign currency.

With Russia and Ukraine being the main exporter of tourists to Egypt, the Russia-Ukraine crisis can present a serious blow to the Egyptian tourism sector.

The new cooperation activities are steps for warming the peace agreement between Israel and Egypt at the economic level, Fahmy said, noting that exporting gas to Egypt via Jordan could double Israel's gas export capacity and help Egypt's ambition to be a regional energy hub.

The gas running offshore before crossing the north of Arish city on the Sinai Peninsula can be liquefied at Egyptian plants of Idku and Damietta and re-exported to Europe or Asia, he said.

Israeli gas export through the new route is expected to reach 2.5 to 3 billion cubic meters (bcm) in 2022, and may increase to 4 bcm in subsequent years, according to the Israeli Ministry of Energy.

In 2020, nearly 2.17 bcm Israeli LNG were exported to Egypt, according to Egypt's official sources.

On Monday and Tuesday, Egypt hosted the first summit meeting with leaders of Israel and the United Arab Emirates in Sharm el-Sheikh.

During the meeting, the three leaders discussed "recent developments in energy, markets stability, and food security," and talked about the ways to enhance trilateral ties "on all levels" under current circumstances. 
The Ho Chi Minh City Department of Construction has submitted to the municipal administration a VND50 billion (US$2.1 million) plan to renovate Ho Con Rua (Turtle Lake), a popular destination in the citys downtown area.

Ho Con Rua is an informal name given to an artificial lake that lies at the heart of a traffic circle bounded by three streets in District 3, namely Vo Van Tan, Pham Ngoc Thach, and Tran Cao Van.

It is among the popular hangout spots of local residents, especially young people.

The Ho Con Rua Park covers an area of more than 3,840 square meters, including a 2,300-square-meter lake, 937-square-meter walkway, and 617-square-meter green space, according to the construction department.

The landscape of the lake has deteriorated considerably, with visitors often comparing it to an empty pond, while the walkway has also been damaged, the department stated, adding that the green space there remains underdeveloped.

The renovation plan includes improving the lakes waterproofing capacity, adding a water fountain system in the lake, fixing the walkway, replacing the current lighting system with lamp posts, installing decorative lights, and planting more trees.

The revamp will cost approximately VND50 billion, which will be funded by the private sector.

The makeover of Ho Con Rua is part of a project to give a facelift to the surrounding streets.

In late January, the municipal Peoples Committee approved the District 3 administrations proposal to upgrade the sidewalks in the area around Ho Con Rua.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!
Two members of a family were killed after falling from their burning flat on the 10th floor of an apartment building in Ho Chi Minh City early on Wednesday morning.

A fire broke out at an apartment on the 10th floor of Carillon 5 Apartment Complex on Luy Ban Bich Street in Hoa Thanh Ward, Tan Phu District at around 4:15 am, according to preliminary information.

Eyewitnesses said they heard an explosion prior to the blaze.

Officers under the firefighting and prevention police unit in Tan Phu District arrived at the location after being notified and managed to put out the flames after a few minutes.

However, two people in the apartment had already died after falling from their flat to the ground, with eyewitnesses saying that the heat from the fire forced them to climb out of the window.

The victims were identified as N.T.N.N., 42, and her daughter, 18-year-old N.T.N.M..

A fire breaks out at an apartment on the 10th floor of Carillon 5 Apartment Complex in Tan Phu District, Ho Chi Minh City, March 23, 2022. Photo: A.X. / Tuoi Tre

The blaze burned down about 20 square meters of the apartment as well as multiple assets, while some nearby apartments were also affected.

Police officers were still examining the scene as of 8:00 am the same day.

A kindergarten on the ground floor of the building was also temporarily closed.

Officers are seen on duty at Carillon 5 Apartment Complex in Tan Phu District, Ho Chi Minh City, March 23, 2022. Photo: Ngoc Khai / Tuoi Tre

Nearby apartments are affected by the fire at Carillon 5 Apartment Complex in Tan Phu District, Ho Chi Minh City, March 23, 2022. Photo: Ngoc Khai / Tuoi Tre

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!
Vietnam Airlines announced on Tuesday evening that it will temporarily suspend regular flights on the Hanoi - Moscow air route, starting from March 25, until further notice.

Explaining reasons for the suspension in a statement, the national flag carrier said it needs to review and clarify procedures, requirements, and regulations related to insurance and flight operations to Russia.

It is not clear how long the suspension will last as the airlines announced in its statement that it will temporarily suspend the service until further notice, and expressed deep regret about this 'force majeure.'

For passengers who have bought tickets, the airline said that it will offer free ticket refunds or change to other flights when the operation of the route is resumed.

It recommended that passengers regularly monitor for updated information in the next announcements.

Vietnam Airlines, the only carrier operating a regular route to Russia at present, also confirmed that it is working hard with relevant agencies in order to bring the route back on stream as soon as possible.

The airline just resumed the regular route between Hanoi and Moscow early this year after nearly two years of closure due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!
Network 10 is reviewing its continuation of Hillsong TV following the resignation of global pastor Brian Houston.

Hillsong last week revealed that an investigation into two incidents involving Mr Houston found he had breached the churchs moral code of conduct for pastors and engaged in conduct of serious concern.

We have sadly been dealing with two complaints made against Pastor Brian over the last 10 years, the church said in a statement.

In 2013 Houston sent inappropriate text messages to a member of staff, which subsequently resulted in the staff member resigning. The church said the Pastor was under the influence of sleeping tablets at the time.

The second incident occurred in 2019, during an annual conference at Sydney Olympic Park involved the Pastor being disoriented following medication and knocking on the door of a hotel room that was not his, entering this room and spending time with the female occupant. The Church maintained that while parts of the complaint were unable to be sustained Houston had breached the Hillsong Pastors Code of Conduct.

10 screens Hillsong TV early on Sunday mornings as part of its religious programming. Discover your God-given potential with Pastor Brian Houston as he shares empowering and inspiring messages from the Word of God, a description notes.

Pastor Brian Houston is the programmes sole presenter and spiritual guardian, preaching to large congregations in Baulkham Hills.

Industry sources confirm 10 is now reviewing whether it will continue to screen Hillsong TV.

Since 2016 both Foxtel and Fetch TV also broadcast a Hillsong TV channel on their subscription channels, including Brian Houston TV, and via the Australian Christian Channel. From Hillsong Church in Sydney, Australia, Pastor Brians messages are empowering, passionate and practical for everyday life and will inspire you with the hope and purpose that can be found in a loving God, says a description.

It isnt clear if Hillsong pays broadcasters for airtime.

Network 10, Foxtel and Fetch TV have all been contacted for comment.
A Very British Scandal, from the producers of A Very English Scandal, will screen on Prime Video in late April.

Written by Sarah Phelps (The Pale Horse, Dublin Murders), it focuses on the divorce of the Duke (Paul Bettany) and Duchess of Argyll (Claire Foy), one of the most notorious, extraordinary, and brutal legal cases of the 20th century.

Famed for her charisma, beauty, and style, Margaret, Duchess of Argyll, dominated the front pages as a divorce featuring accusations of forgery, theft, violence, drug-taking, secret recording, bribery, and an explicit Polaroid picture all played out in the white-hot glare of the 1960s media.

A Very British Scandal turns this scandal inside out in order to explore the social and political climate of post-war Britain, looking at attitudes towards women, and asking whether institutional misogyny was widespread at the time. As her contemporaries, the press, and the judiciary sought to vilify her, Margaret kept her head held high with bravery and resilience, refusing to go quietly as she was betrayed by her friends and publicly shamed by a society that revelled in her fall from grace.

Produced by Blueprint Pictures, A Very British Scandal will be available on Amazon Prime Video in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Sony Pictures Television are the international distributors and brokered the deal with Amazon Studios.

Friday April 22 on Prime Video.
Peter Eden searches for the truth about his Hungarian father was he a war criminal responsible for a murderous rampage in WWII? 7:30pm Thursday on SBS.

Halo

Foreign Correspondent

The Great Australian Bake Off

Australia Behind Bars

Survivor
Tyler, TX (75702)

Today

Scattered thunderstorms during the morning becoming more widespread and possibly severe this afternoon. Damaging winds and large hail with some storms. High 78F. Winds SSW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 90%..

Tonight

Showers early, then clearing overnight. Low 57F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 40%.
A security officer stands next to the wreckage of a car on a street of Aden, the southern port city of Yemen, on March 24, 2022. (Photo by Murad Abdo/Xinhua)

ADEN, Yemen, March 23 (Xinhua) -- A deadly booby trap bomb attack in southern Yemen's Aden killed a high-ranking military commander of the Yemeni army and three bodyguards on Wednesday, a government official told Xinhua.

The booby-trapped vehicle "targeted a motorcade of General Thabit Jawas while he was passing near a security checkpoint in the northern parts of Aden," the local government source said on condition of anonymity.

The four people were killed on the scene amid the powerful explosion, he noted.

Jawas leads the pro-government military forces in the country's southern provinces, particularly in Aden, Lahj, and other neighboring cities, he said.

"The general had launched several military campaigns against the Houthis in the first round of fighting in 2004 in the northern province of Saada," one of which killed Hussein Al-Houthi, former head of the Iran-backed Houthi group, according to the official.

Earlier on Wednesday, witnesses told Xinhua that an exchange of gunfire occurred following the explosion that was heard in various neighborhoods of Aden.

They said that security vehicles and ambulances rushed to the bombing site that was surrounded by soldiers who prevented access to the area.

Local authorities are trying to maintain security and stability in Aden. However, sporadic bombing incidents and drive-by shooting attacks still occur in the strategic Yemeni port city.

Yemen has been mired in a civil war since late 2014, when the Houthi rebels seized control of several northern provinces and forced the internationally-recognized government of Hadi out of the capital Sanaa. 

Security officers stand next to the wreckage of a car on a street of Aden, the southern port city of Yemen, on March 24, 2022. (Photo by Murad Abdo/Xinhua)

The wreckage of a car is seen on a street of Aden, the southern port city of Yemen, on March 24, 2022. (Photo by Murad Abdo/Xinhua)
The University Libraries present annual awards for international students, teacher education majors or minors, and published student writers. Students apply or are nominated early in the winter term, and a committee for each award selects the winners. This year, each honor includes a $500 award.

All are welcome to attend the awards ceremony at 3:15 p.m. on Tuesday, April 12 in the Gathering Place, Roesch Library second floor. Join us in congratulating these outstanding students.

Lauren Durham: Brother Frank Ruhlman, S.M., Award of Excellence for Literary Achievement

Lauren Durham is a senior from Versailles, Ohio, double majoring in English and communication. She was an active student in the Core program. Throughout her four years at UD, she has devoted much of her time to writing for UD publications, including University of Dayton Magazine and Flyer News, where she is the print editor-in-chief. She has loved getting to know the UD community through in-depth interviews and writing stories about professors, staff, alumni and students she may not have met otherwise. Beyond writing, Lauren has enjoyed getting to know the Dayton community as a member of the Dayton Civic Scholars. She is also an intern in the marketing and communications department at Dayton Childrens Hospital. After graduation, Lauren plans to work at a public relations firm.

The Ruhlman committee noted Laurens strong reporting in several categories of journalism including news and human interest. Her whole portfolio was strong but particular standouts were A day in the life with President Eric F. Spina and UD administration disinvites UN Special Rapporteur, womens reproductive rights advocate from Flyer News.

Laxmi Vaka: Rev. Theodore Koehler, S.M., International Student Award

Laxmi Vaka, a first-year graduate student from India, is excelling in her studies in computer science. She earned a 4.0 GPA her first semester. She also works two jobs, both as a graduate assistant in the School of Business Administration and a grader in the computer science department. Prior to attending UD, she helped support her family financially and volunteered as a primary school teacher in India for Teach for Change. Laxmi said she strongly believes that education  is Gods best gift in the current world of disorder.

Stephen Hall, director of the Center for Project Excellence in the School of Business Administration, says Laxmi is a conscientious and dedicated student. She has a natural curiosity and desire to learn and help others.

Ally Kaiser: Dr. Nicoletta Hary Award

Ally Kaiser is a sophomore from Fort Recovery, Ohio, with majors in adolescent to young adult English education and English and a minor in music. Ally has an excellent GPA and multiple campus jobs, and she is involved in student organizations that involve community service. One of Allys roles on campus is as a student leader and research assistant in the Paul Laurence Dunbar initiative, in which she merges her passions for music and language as she builds an online Dunbar Library and Archive. Minnita Daniel-Cox, associate professor of music, Allys private voice instructor and leader of the Dunbar project, says, Ally is a wonderful example of the benefits of an interdisciplinary education, and her scholastic journey thus far has been a wonderful reflection of the characteristics of a Marianist tradition. She performs with scholastic rigor and a heart for God and is a light to all around her.

Ally hopes to teach at the high school or collegiate level and carry elements of the Marianist educational values into her own classroom. In that spirit, Ally says, Each student I will have will be fundamentally different with different learning styles and personal needs, and I strive to be the teacher that celebrates their uniqueness and challenges them to succeed through that.

Congratulations

The Library Awards committees and the faculty and staff in the University Libraries congratulate the honorees and thank all the applicants for their inspiring submissions. For more information about the Library Awards, visit go.udayton.edu/libraryawards.
President of the European Central Bank Christine Lagarde has called crypto an 'accomplice' in helping Russia circumvent sanctions. Photo: Daniel Roland/Pool/Reuters

President of the European Central Bank Christine Lagarde has called crypto an "accomplice" in helping Russia circumvent sanctions.

However, there was no mention of the $100m in bitcoin (BTC-USD) and stablecoin donated to the embattled Ukrainian government since Vladimir Putin's invasion began.

Bitcoin was down 0.9% to trade at $42,074 on Wednesday.

Read more: Live crypto prices

At the Bank of International Settlements' Innovation Summit on Tuesday Lagarde warned that cryptocurrencies are a cause for concern and said that they remain a threat.

At the summit, the ECB chief said: "They are certainly being used as a way to try to circumvent the sanctions that have been decided by many countries around the world against Russia."

Watch: Hammond: Big Finance's crypto adoption is now 'unstoppable'

It has been reported that millions of Russian rubles are being invested in bitcoin and stablecoins since Putin began his invasion of Ukraine.

Lagarde said: A specific number of players, either individuals or corporates, are obviously trying to convert their rubles into crypto assets."

She noted the increasing volumes of transactions going from the ruble to stablecoins and from stablecoins to other digital assets.

She added: "We have taken steps to clearly signal to all those who are exchanging, transacting, offering services in relation to crypto-assets that they are being accomplices to circumvent sanctions."

Lagarde said: "So is it a threat? Yes.

"Has it been a threat in the past? Yes, because when you look at a lot of the dubious transactions that are taking place, a lot of the criminal activities payments that are taking place, very often you find some crypto assets."

Read more: 'Crypto lobby groups are dictating terms in Washington'

The news comes after the Ukrainian government's recent move to legalise bitcoin and its setting up of an official cryptocurrency donations wallet.

Story continues

Ukraine's official recognition of cryptocurrencies was not mentioned at the meeting.

The nation has raised more than $100m from crypto donations to help in their war effort.

So far the donations have been made mostly in cryptocurrency tether (USDT-USD) and bitcoin.

Ukraine's digital ministry said the crypto donations have been spent on bulletproof vests, food, medicine, helmets and optics.

Watch: Steve Hanke: 'Cryptocurrencies are fiat money on steroids'
FILE PHOTO: Lebanon's Prime Minister-Designate Najib Mikati speaks after meeting with Lebanon's President Michel Aoun, at the presidential palace in Baabda

RIYADH (Reuters) -Saudi Arabia's foreign ministry said on Tuesday it welcomed the "positive points" in a statement by Lebanon's prime minister, in a sign that Beirut's tensions with Gulf Arab countries are easing.

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati stressed in a statement on Monday the need to stop all Lebanon-originated activities that affect the security and stability of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab countries.

He added the Lebanese government is committed to strengthen cooperation with Saudi Arabia, following a phone call with Kuwait's foreign minister, Sheikh Ahmad Nasser al-Mohammad al-Sabah.

The Saudi ministry said it welcomed Mikati's statement, adding it hoped that it will "contribute to the restoration of Lebanon's role and status on the Arab and international levels".

Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries expelled Lebanese envoys last year in a diplomatic spat that has deepened Lebanon's economic crisis, following critical comments about the Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen by Lebanon's former Information Minister George Kordahi.

Riyadh says the crisis with Lebanon had its origins in a Lebanese political setup that reinforces the dominance of the Iran-backed Hezbollah armed group and continues to allow endemic instability.

Saudi Arabia and its fellow wealthy neighbours once spent billions of dollars in aid in Lebanon, and still host a huge Lebanese diaspora. But the friendship has been strained for years by the growing influence of the powerful Hezbollah movement.

A financial meltdown has crashed the Lebanese currency over the past months and left most of the population facing poverty amid sky-rocketing commodity prices in the international markets.

(Reporting by Ahmad Elhamy; writing by Aziz El Yaakoubi; Editing by Alex Richardson and Jonathan Oatis)
ReportLinker

Major players in the shipboard cables market are Eaton Corporation, Fujitsu Limited, Belden, SAB Cable, FSC Global, Belcom Cables Ltd, Leoni AG, Eland Cables, Nuhas Oman, and Cable Source Pte Ltd.

New York, March 23, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Reportlinker.com announces the release of the report "Shipboard Cables Global Market Report 2022" - https://www.reportlinker.com/p06247519/?utm_source=GNW



The global shipboard cables market is expected to grow from $5.63 billion in 2021 to $6.26 billion in 2022 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.2%. The growth is mainly due to the companies rearranging their operations and recovering from the COVID-19 impact, which had earlier led to restrictive containment measures involving social distancing, remote working, and the closure of commercial activities that resulted in operational challenges. The market is expected to reach $8.36 billion in 2026 at a CAGR of 7.5%.



The shipboard cables market consists of sales of shipboard cables and related services.Shipboard cables are used for electrical installations in ships and offshore platforms for the transfer of electric power to electric panels for lighting, control circuits, the transmission of vital instrumentation signals.



They are fire-resistant, flame retardant, low smoke & halogen?free cables.



The main types of shipboard cables are fiber-optic cables, electric cables.A fiber-optic cable, also known as an optical fiber cable, is a cable that looks like an electrical wire but contains one or more optical fibers for light transmission.



The various voltages involved are medium voltage cable, low voltage cable. The different applications include marine and offshore, oil & gas and petrochemical, others.



The Asia Pacific is the largest region in the shipboard cables market in 2021.North America is the second-largest region in the insulated cables market.



The regions covered in this report include Asia-Pacific, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, North America, South America, the Middle East, and Africa.



The increase and the expansion of offshore oil & gas plants are driving the shipboard cables market.The expansion of offshore oil & gas plants includes electrification of offshore oil and gas platforms which involves the use of efficient shipboard cables to connect oil platforms to mainland power grids.



For instance, in 2019, LS Cable & System, a Korea-based cable manufacturer has signed an agreement worth $100 million with Orsted, a Denmark-based energy firm, to construct a submarine power grid in Taiwan. Therefore, the development of offshore oil & gas projects is projected to support the growth of the shipboard cables market.



The increasing cost of raw materials hampers the shipboard cables market.The increase in raw material costs increases the operational expenses and hence increases the price of the end product.



For instance, in 2019 the price of copper metal increased rapidly owing to the trade tensions between the USA and China.Copper is a key raw material used in the production of shipboard cables.



The rise in copper prices thereby increases the manufacturing cost and hence restrains the growth of the market.



The countries covered in the shipboard cables market report are Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, Russia, South Korea, the UK, and the USA.





Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p06247519/?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




(PA)

Wealthy countries must end oil and gas production by 2034 to ensure the world doesnt surpass 1.5C of warming and to give poorer nations longer to transition, according to a new report published Tuesday.

The Phaseout Pathways for Fossil Fuel Production report, commissioned by the International Institute for Sustainable Development, found there was no room for any country to increase production, and that all would have to make significant cuts this decade if the world wants to meet the target.

A separate United Nations science report published last month found that if the world overshoots the 1.5C mark compared to pre-industrial times then many human and natural systems will face additional severe riskssome will be irreversible.

The new report, written by climate scientist Kevin Anderson of the University of Manchester and researcher Dan Calverley, proposes that the poorest nations should be given until 2050 to end production and says they will need significant financial support to transition their economies.

Anderson, who is professor of energy and climate change at The University of Manchester, said the world needed to shift rapidly away from fossil fuel economies, but that it must be done fairly. Russias invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent spike in oil and gas prices only strengthen the case made in the report, he said.

Now is exactly the time we should be planning for a renewable twenty-first century rather than reliving the oil-based twentieth, he added.

Rich countries can typically remain wealthy without oil and gas revenues, but some poorer nations are so reliant on fossil fuel revenues that rapidly removing them could threaten their political stability, according to the report. Countries like South Sudan, Congo-Brazzaville, and Gabon, for example, have little economic revenue apart from oil and gas production, it said.

Last months report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said countries need to do more to adapt to warming and that rich countries need to do a better job of financing poorer countries to adjust to climate change.

Story continues

Anderson and Calverleys report looks at how much future production of oil and gas is compatible with targets under the 2015 Paris Agreement which aims to limit global warming well below 2C, and preferably to 1.5C, compared to pre-industrial levels. It suggests different phase-out pathways for different countries depending on their capacity to transition away from fossil fuels.

For a 50 per cent chance of limiting global warming to 1.5C the report found that the 19 highest capacity countries, with average non-oil GDP per capita of over $50,000  including the UK, US, Norway and Canada  must end production by 2034, for example.

The 25 lowest capacity countries, with an average non-oil GDP per capita of $3,600  including Iraq, Libya and South Sudan  must end production by 2050.

Christiana Figueres, a former executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, welcomed the report as a timely reminder that all countries must phase out oil and gas production rapidly with wealthy countries going first, while at the same time ensuring a just transition for those who rely on it.

Wealthy countries can and must provide the support and resources less wealthy countries need to make the same transition, she said.
Jeremy Ausmus Wins Again, Takes US Poker Open Points Lead

March 23 2022 Jon Sofen

Jeremy Ausmus is virtually unstoppable at this point in his career. The three-time WSOP bracelet winner not only took down US Poker Open Event #5: $10,000 No-Limit Hold'em on Monday for $178,200, but he also moved into first place in the overall series standings.

Additionally, Tamon Nakamura also ran pure on Sunday and put in a stellar performance by topping a 53-entry field to win Event #4: $10,000 Big Bet Mix for $169,600.

Nakamura Can't Be Stopped

Nakamura had never won a high roller before, but his presence on the felt was appreciated by Daniel Negreanu, who finished in third place ($74,200).

The Japanese poker players who have joined us for the US Poker Open in @PokerGO studio have been a breath of fresh https://t.co/rWPmhRTlvg  Daniel Negreanu (@RealKidPoker)

Nakamura entered the tournament with under $400,000 in live tournament cashes, but the Japanese poker player showed up against some of the top players in the world, including Negreanu, and dominated play. He entered the final table third in chips behind "DNegs" and Rok Gostisa, an up-and-coming high roller star.

On Day 2, he made a number of brilliant plays and also ran hot, the recipe for success in tournament poker. Gostisa would end up as the runner-up after losing a heads-up match to Nakamura.

US Poker Open Event #4 Final Table Results

Place Player Prize 1 Tamon Nakamura $169,600 2 Rok Gostisa $111,300 3 Daniel Negreanu $74,200 4 Stephen Chidwick $53,000 5 Dylan Weisman $42,400 6 John Riordan $31,800

Don't miss these free to play poker games

Can Anyone Stop Ausmus These Days?

Ali Imsirovic entered the final table in Event #5, which attracted 66 entrants, with the smallest stack, far behind chip leader Nick Petrangelo, but the 2021 GPI Player of the Year would flip the script on Day 2.

After two-time defending US Poker Open champion David Peters busted in sixth place ($39,600), Petrangelo went out in fifth place.

Imsirovic had rallied to build a sizable chip advantage at that point, but he ran into a brutal run of cards. It all started with the blinds at 25,000/50,000 and about 8.2 million chips in play. The Bosnian poker pro lost a race to Ausmus, the short stack, to go from having nearly half the chips in play to barely having a lead over both Ausmus and Ren Lin.

Ali Imsirovic

Chris Brewer remained a distant fourth place, but he'd soon take a shot at doubling up against Imsirovic when he limp-jammed preflop with . Imsirovic called with , and things looked bad for Brewer when the first four community cards out of the deck were . But the lucky river gave him the 3.3 million chip pot, enough to make the former University of Oregon track star the new chip leader.

Moments later, Imsirovic got it all in preflop with against the of Brewer. Off to the races they went as the board ran out , ending the tournament for Imsirovic, who busted in fourth place for $66,000. Lin then went out in third place for $85,800.

Ausmus would quickly take a 2:1 chip lead over Brewer during heads-up play. On the final hand, with the blinds at 40,000/80,000, Brewer limped on the button with , while his opponent raised it up to 330,000 with . That convinced Brewer to jam for 2.7 million and he was snap-called.

Once again, Brewer was looking to win a race and it appeared he would win the board began , but he couldn't dodge the six-outer on the river, which was the , giving Ausmus a straight to win the tournament.

US Poker Open Event #5 Final Table Results

Place Player Prize 1 Jeremy Ausmus $178,200 2 Chris Brewer $132,000 3 Ren Lin $85,800 4 Ali Imsirovic $66,000 5 Nick Petrangelo $52,800 6 David Peters $39,600

Ausmus now has $11.8 million in live tournament cashes according to Hendon Mob. He won his third bracelet back in November in the $50,000 pot-limit Omaha high roller for $1.2 million.

It would be really cool to win back-to-back majors, Ausmus said. I know D. Peters won this twice (U.S. Poker Open), but I dont think anyone has won back-to-back. The older I get, the more important it is to me. My kids think its cool. If I win trophies, they can see me way up in the standings.

The champ, with three cashes through the first five events of the series, takes over first place on the 2022 US Poker Open leaderboard. There are still seven tournaments remaining, including Event #6: $15,000 8-Game, which kicked off Monday afternoon at the PokerGO Studio in Las Vegas.

Remaining 022 U.S. Poker Open Live Stream Schedule

Date & Time Event Tuesday, March 22, at 4 p.m. ET (1 p.m. PT) Event #6: $15,000 8-Game Wednesday, March 23, at 4 p.m. ET (1 p.m. PT) Event #7: $15,000 NL Hold'em Thursday, March 24, at 4 p.m. ET (1 p.m. PT) Event #8: $15,000 Pot-Limit Omaha Friday, March 25, at 4 p.m. ET (1 p.m. PT) Event #9: $25,000 NL Hold'em Saturday, March 26, at 4 p.m. ET (1 p.m. PT) Event #10: $25,000 Pot-Limit Omaha Sunday, March 27, at 4 p.m. ET (1 p.m. PT) Event #11: $25,000 NL Hold'em Monday, March 28, at 4 p.m. ET (1 p.m. PT) Event #12: $50,000 NL Hold'em

Check out the PokerNews US Poker Open Hub here!

*Images courtesy of PokerGO.
Photo credit: Pool/Samir Hussein - Getty Images

Jamaican leaders are speaking out during the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge's ongoing royal tour of the Caribbean. In a letter published this weekend, 100 prominent Jamaican politicians, professors, and more urged Prince William and Kate to apologise for "British crimes against humanity" and for the British crown to pay reparations.

The Cambridges have wrapped up the first leg of their tour in Belize and landed yesterday in Jamaica, a former British colony. Jamaica's past with Britain is rife with violence, dating back to the 1600s. The plantation labour system set up by the British in Jamaica relied on the labour of Africans through the transatlantic slave trade. An estimated 600,000 enslaved Africans were forcibly transported to Jamaica.

Jamaica gained independence 60 years ago but remains a British Commonwealth realm  meaning the Queen remains Jamaica's head of state  but calls for Jamaica to become a republic especially intensified after Barbados forged a new republic last year.

Photo credit: William Lovelace - Getty Images

"We see no reason to celebrate 70 years of the ascension of your grandmother to the British throne because her leadership, and that of her predecessors, have perpetuated the greatest human rights tragedy in the history of humankind," the Advocates Network group wrote in their letter, published online Sunday.

"During her 70 years on the throne," they continued, "your grandmother has done nothing to redress and atone for the suffering of our ancestors that took place during her reign and/or during the entire period of British trafficking of Africans, enslavement, indentureship and colonialisation."

Photo credit: Bettmann - Getty Images

Last summer, the Jamaican government submitted a petition demanding reparations from the Queen and the UK government. State officials said they're asking for $10.6 billion (around 8 billion) in reparations.

"We are hoping for reparatory justice in all forms that one would expect if they are to really ensure that we get justice from injustices to repair the damages that our ancestors experienced," Jamaican politician Olivia Grange told Reuters. "Our African ancestors were forcibly removed from their home and suffered unparalleled atrocities in Africa to carry out forced labour to the benefit of the British Empire. Redress is well overdue."



Story continues

Demands for reparations are not unique to Jamaica; in the US, for example, Black Americans have argued for reparations since the end of the Civil War.

"The essence of the reparations movement is that if you cause harm to a group of people, you have a duty to repair that harm," historian Verene Shepherd, the director of the Centre for Reparation Research at the University of the West Indies, told NBC News. "Those who benefited from the labour of the ancestors of African people are still benefiting from the wealth. There is an intergenerational generation of wealth on one side, and an intergenerational transmission of poverty on the other."

Photo credit: Chris Jackson - Getty Images

The royal family has undeniably benefited from the wealth of the British Empire, which was made possible by the labour of enslaved Africans. Indeed, the letter specifically referenced how Prince William and Kate are "direct beneficiaries of the wealth accumulated by the royal family over centuries," and will perhaps one day be on the British throne. Therefore, the Cambridges have "the unique opportunity to redefine the relationship between the British Monarchy and the people of Jamaica," a process which, per the letter writers, starts with "an apology and recognition of the need for atonement and reparations".



During their visit to Jamaica, Prince William and Kate are set to celebrate the legacy of Jamaican musician Bob Marley. The letter specifically called this out, stating, "As a Rastafarian, Bob Marley embodied advocacy and is recognised globally for the principles of human rights, equality, reparations and repatriation."

Photo credit: Mike Prior - Getty Images

"We are hopeful that in spite of what has happened, the royals can break with the past and create new opportunities for reconciliation and begin our process of reparatory justice," Professor Rosalea Hamilton, who signed the letter, told the Guardian.

A spokesperson on behalf of the palace said that William and Kate are aware of the situations and the protests and the prince will acknowledge the issue of slavery in his speech. The duke is set to give a speech later today (Wednesday 23 March).

You Might Also Like
Staff members perform to welcome the arrival of tourists as cruise ship Spirit of Discovery docks at the port of La Goulette in Tunis, Tunisia, March 23, 2022.

Spirit of Discovery is the first cruise ship to have docked in a Tunisian port since the outbreak of COVID-19 in early 2020. (Photo by Adel Ezzine/Xinhua)

TUNIS, March 23 (Xinhua) -- A cruise ship docked in a Tunisian port on Wednesday for the first time since 2019, signaling tourism recovery in the north African country.

The cruise ship Spirit of Discovery docked on Wednesday morning at the port of La Goulette with 724 tourists on board, most of whom are British, Minister of Tourism and Handicrafts Mohamed Moez Belhassen told the media upon the ship's arrival.

About 400 tourists left the ship for excursions to Sousse, Kairouan, the Medina and Sidi Bousaid before leaving the country for Spain at 5 p.m. local time (1600 GMT).

Belhassen stressed the importance of the return of cruises for Tunisia's tourism, as well as other sectors such as transport, crafts and culture.

The minister said that a second cruise is expected in April and 40 others throughout this year. 

Staff members perform to welcome the arrival of tourists as cruise ship Spirit of Discovery docks at the port of La Goulette in Tunis, Tunisia, March 23, 2022.

Spirit of Discovery is the first cruise ship to have docked in a Tunisian port since the outbreak of COVID-19 in early 2020. (Photo by Adel Ezzine/Xinhua)
By Andrea Shalal

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The United States will "absolutely" enforce export controls if Chinese companies send semiconductors to Russia that were made with U.S technology, a move that could "essentially shut them down," Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said on Wednesday.

Raimondo doubled down on U.S. threats to punish any company in any country that violated tough export controls that the United States has imposed on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.

Raimondo said all Chinese semiconductor companies relied on U.S. software to make their chips, which made them subject to controls. "If we find that they are selling chips to Russia, then we can essentially shut them down by denying them use of that software, and we're absolutely prepared to do that," she told Reuters in an interview.

President Joe Biden plans to announce a fresh package of sanctions on Russian political figures and oligarchs during emergency talks this week in Brussels with European and NATO leaders, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Wednesday.

The United States and its allies are seeking to ratchet up pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin to halt the war, which Russia calls a "special military operation."

They are particularly concerned about China's relationship with Russia, its failure to condemn the invasion, and U.S. reports that Beijing is willing to provide military assistance to Moscow - all issues on the agenda during Biden's meetings.

Beijing has described the sanctions imposed on Russia as increasingly outrageous, although it has expressed concern about the war.

Raimondo said the United States was monitoring for possible violations of its sweeping export controls on Russia "hour by hour, minute by minute," and would crack down on any violations by any country as they occurred.

Asked whether Chinese firms were violating the controls so far, Raimondo said no, but noted that Commerce does not disclose investigations or enforcement actions before they are finalized.

Story continues

The former venture capitalist and Rhode Island governor said Washington expected China to comply because the consequences would be severe and could hit any company, including Chinese semiconductor maker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC).

Raimondo said she mentioned SMIC in an interview with the New York Times earlier this month as an example of the companies that could be affected, and should have said "XYZ company" instead. But she denied that she was softening the threat.

"I'm not walking that back. I'm very consistent and clear," Raimondo said.

She said the unprecedented breadth of the concerted Western action against Russia could not be lost on Beijing, and noted recent U.S. agreements on steel and aluminum with the European Union, Britain and Japan that are squarely aimed at cracking down on Chinese overcapacity.

"What you're seeing now is really unprecedented levels of cooperation between the U.S. and our like-minded allies," Raimondo said. "I'm sure that China takes notice that America is strong and that our relationship with our partners is stronger than it's been in a long time."

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Rosalba O'Brien)
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridges visit to Jamaica has given the nation the opportunity address unresolved issues, Prime Minister Andrew Holness has told the couple.

William and Kate received an official welcome from the Caribbean nations premier and he described how Jamaica intended to fufil its destiny as an independent, developed, prosperous country.

The Cambridges arrived in Jamaica on Tuesday to a much-publicised demonstration urging the monarchy to pay reparations for slavery, and there have been calls from politicians for the country to drop the Queen as head of state and become a republic.

William receives a gift of a rare Appleton Estate ruby rum from Jamaicas prime minister (Jane Barlow/PA)

As he welcomed the couple before sitting down for talks, Mr Holness said: There are issues here which are, as you would know, unresolved but your presence gives an opportunity for those issues to be placed in context, put front and centre and to be addressed in as best (a way) as we can.

But Jamaica is, as you would see, a country that is very proud of our history, very proud of what we have achieved.

And were moving on and we intend to attain in short order our development goals and fulfil our true ambitions and destiny as an independent, developed, prosperous country.

The Independent has reported the Jamaica government has already begun the process to transition to a republic, with an official appointed to oversee the work.

The couple are touring Jamaica over three days (Jane Barlow/PA)

The Prince of Wales witnessed Barbados break away from the British monarchy and become a republic last November, attending the swearing in of its first president Dame Sandra Mason.

During the formal welcome, William was presented with an official gift  a bottle of Appleton Estate Ruby rum, a blend of hand-selected rums aged between 35 and 45 years.

Kate wore a chic white Alexander McQueen suit for the meeting and a Ridley blouse and was joined by the prime ministers wife Juliet Holness.

During a hospital visit William revealed he and Kate have been triple-jabbed against Covid as he praised Jamaican medics as total heroes for their efforts during the pandemic.

Story continues

As the couple toured Spanish Town Hospital, celebrating its 70th anniversary this year, they met patients receiving their vaccinations, and William told them: Ive had my three. Catherine has had her three.

William and Kate at Spanish Town Hospital (Chris Jackson/PA)

The couple spent time in the outpatient clinic and A&E department before moving on to the maternity and neonatal units and were shown on to a ward where the most critical premature babies are treated, and peered through a glass window at two tiny infants in incubators.

In pride of place in the ward was a wall of triumph featuring pictures of all the premature babies the staff have saved, including one who weighed just one pound at birth and is now a healthy three-year-old.

Pointing at the pictures, which appeared alongside the words Tiny Heroes, Kate said: See how tiny the nappies are.

Taking off his mask to address the medics, William said: We know from previous experience of seeing hospitals how difficult it has been in the past two years particularly, and you guys have been a wall of strength and support for everyone.

So please look after yourselves, talk about mental health, talk about the stresses and the pressures because life doesnt get any easier. Every day youre doing the same thing, saving lives and being total heroes. So please look after yourselves.
The University of North Georgia (UNG) partnered with the Greater Hall Chamber of Commerce to host its third annual Career Path Fair on the Gainesville Campus on March 17. The event provided seventh-graders with an overview of career opportunities in the Gainesville-Hall County area as representatives from local companies covered more than a dozen career paths.

"Middle grades are such formative years, where students tend to start to make lifelong decisions, form lifelong opinions, friends, likes, and dislikes," Dr. Richard Oates, interim vice president of UNG's Gainesville Campus, said. "It's an emotional phenomenon and if we can provide them opportunities by planting the seed, we can cultivate it in high school. Eventually, they can say, 'Yes, I can do this and this is what I want to become.'"

UNG welcomed South Hall Middle School, Cherokee Bluff Middle School, Davis Middle School, West Hall Middle School, and World Language Academy for the Career Path Fair. Lanier Technical College hosted a companion event a week earlier with students from the other Hall middle schools and Gainesville Middle School.

"Our goal was to inform students of careers that they can build right here at home," Nikki Chandler, vice president of existing industry at the Greater Hall Chamber, said. "The Career Path Fair gave seventh-graders an opportunity for a 'light bulb' moment to connect to the career that will inspire them. In addition, each student had the opportunity to be on a real college campus at UNG. The whole day was one of learning and experiences."
The University of North Georgia (UNG) Institute for Leadership and Strategic Studies (ILSS), College of Education, and strategic and security studies degree program will host the annual ILSS Symposium April 6-7 at the Convocation Center on UNG's Dahlonega Campus with a focus on the role which higher education serves to strengthen U.S. national security.

"In this sense, the civilian population plays a major role in supporting and promoting higher education institutions by encouraging the enrollment of students to pursue studies in a variety of disciplines," Dr. Edward Mienie, executive director of the strategic and security studies program and partnerships and associate professor, said. "Higher education plays a crucial role in assuring that national security is protected and strengthened against a multiplicity of adversarial nation-state and non-state actors."
JAKARTA, March 23 (Xinhua) -- Indonesian President Joko Widodo announced on Wednesday that fully vaccinated international visitors are no longer required to undergo quarantine amid a decrease in COVID-19 cases in the Southeast Asian country.

International travelers are now only required to show negative PCR test results upon arrival, he added.

"If the PCR test result is negative, they can come out of the airport immediately and carry out activities," the president said in a statement.

The country's Minister of Health Budi Gunadi Sadikin told the parliament earlier that the number of imported COVID-19 cases is currently relatively much lower than that of domestically transmitted cases, making the mandatory quarantine for arriving visitors no longer necessary.

The number of COVID-19 infections is declining in Indonesia. Health authorities on Wednesday confirmed 6,376 new COVID-19 cases, bringing the total tally to 5.98 million, with the death toll from the coronavirus rising by 159 to 154,221.

As the Indonesian government is accelerating its national vaccination programs to curb the spread of the virus, over 195.22 million people in the country have received their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, while over 156.13 million have taken their second dose. 
Amazon, the Seattle-based giant of online shopping and delivery, confirmed the rumors in October 2020 that a robotic fulfillment center would materialize on Wacos Exchange Parkway. It has arrived, several stories stacked atop a 700,000-square-foot footprint. Hard to miss, indeed, but also mysteriously quiet.

There should be at least 1,000 people toiling there by now, according to the timetable Amazon laid out when it announced the plans during press conference attended by company, local and state officials, including Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.

Explanations vary on why the $200 million facility awaits a crew.

We are working hard to complete our fulfillment center which has been impacted due to COVID-19 related supply chain constraints, Amazon spokesperson Daniel Martin said. Its common for us to adjust launch timetables based on capacity needs across the network.

Amazon also is working to meet its staffing needs at a time when the jobless rate in Greater Waco continues to drop. The local economy has moved beyond pandemic recovery to growth, according to reports from economist Karr Ingham, who prepares the monthly Greater Waco Economic Index.

Amazon is not alone in pursuing local talent. New industry announcements were plentiful the past 18 months, with SpaceX in McGregor announcing a $150 million rocket-making addition that would create 400 new jobs by 2026. Envases Group will need about 120 staffers to make aluminum cans in a 450,000-square-foot facility. Knauf Insulation will employ 150 at a 600,000-square-foot plant in McGregor yet to be built.

S2A Modular plans to employ about 200 at a modular home-making facility. Hello Bello, a producer of baby and family-care products, announced its local operation, now up and running, would create 145 positions. The expanded Cargill poultry plant will hire 125.

Berenice Segovia, who manages Workforce Solutions for the Heart of Texas, which is under the direction of the Texas Workforce Commission, said Amazon representatives have attended several job fairs her office hosted.

The last we spoke, in January, they had more than 200 openings, Segovia said. We have not received an update.

She said she has noticed no resistance to working for Amazon. The company name carries weight, and theyve had really good response.

Local Amazon employees will make at least $15 an hour and will be full-timers, receiving comprehensive benefits from day one, Martin said.

Tanya Walls, who manages Jack of All Trades Personnel Service, said her office provided 25 to 30 construction workers to the contractor erecting the massive Amazon complex, but the relationship has ended, at least for now.

We thought everything would be happening right after the first of the year, but were hearing they still are not ready to open, Walls said.

In the Waco area generally, there are more jobs available than people willing to fill them, she said.

Were really trying to beat the streets to find people we can plug into vacancies, Walls said. There are really good-paying jobs out there, a lot of welding jobs, assembly, machine operators. Theres a lot of construction going on in this market, and were trying to help in those areas.

Jake Johnson, vice president of Total Placement Staffing, said it would not surprise him if Amazon is facing challenges filling positions.

There are now hiring signs everywhere you go, Johnson said. Wacos growing. Theres new opportunity. The workforce is trying to catch up to it.

He said demand is strong for forklift operators, production people, engineers and clerical workers. Pay is increasing accordingly.

Pay is really going up for those who have a trade, said Nelissa Davalos, a manager at Snelling personnel services locally.

Davalos said she knows of no local personnel company assisting Amazon with its search, suggesting the company may contract with a national entity to provide such services.

Others said they believe Amazon is tackling the process alone.

McLennan County Judge Scott Felton said he has heard delays in opening the Amazon plant are primarily due to supply chain problems.

Texas State Technical College recently announced plans for a $23 million training center to serve students and non-students pursuing skills in demand by local employers. The city of Waco, McLennan County and TSTC would share construction costs. Businesses, meanwhile, would be recruited to help underwrite costs associated with tools and equipment.

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.
Baylor Theatres production of The Laramie Project presents a communitys varied reactions to the shocking 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard as a mosaic, but audience members struggling with their own opinions may find it acts like a mirror.

Thats intended, said Baylor University theater professor and director David Jortner, who saw a final dress rehearsal of Moises Kaufmans 2000 play in New York and found the play stayed with him for the next two decades.

With hate-driven violence on the increase in communities across the country, coupled with a yet unresolved pandemic killing nearly a million Americans, Jortner felt the timing was right to bring the play to a Baylor stage. This is how a community reacts to and deals with traumatic evil, he said. It asks some very powerful questions, but lets us find the answers as an audience ... Its been on my mind to direct for quite some time.

Kaufman and the Tectonic Theater Project created the play from wide-ranging interviews conducted in the aftermath of Shepards murder and the trial of his killers. Shepard, a gay, 21-year-old University of Wyoming student, was beaten and tortured by two men he met in a bar, then left for dead outside Laramie, Wyoming. He died days later from his injuries and his death became a touchpoint for hate crime legislation on both state and federal levels.

The Baylor professor said theater faculty and university administrators held multiple discussions about the play and its appropriateness before adding it to this years season, given a campuswide dialogue on LGBTQ issues over the last few years. The Laramie Project isnt an advocacy piece as much as a reflection of the complicated, conflicted reactions to hate and violence found within a community, the director said.

A 15-actor cast presents some 80 characters ages 16 to 80 years old in the production, with dialogue drawn from interview transcriptions. They perform on multiple platforms across the stage with a large screen behind for image projections that create the locale of Laramie and surrounding Wyoming plains, as well as advance the narrative.

To help audiences process issues raised in the course of the drama, the Baylor production will feature talk-back sessions after each performance led by university and community leaders. For some audience members, the discussion may help shape what they take away from the drama, the director said.

Scheduled to lead the discussion are attorney Henry Wright, Wednesday, March 30; Baylor chaplain Burt Burleson, Thursday, March 31; the Rev. Leslie King, pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Waco, Friday, April 1; the Rev. Kelsey Fitting-Snyder, pastor of St. Matthew Lutheran Church, Saturday, April 2; and Baylor sociology professor Kevin Dougherty, Sunday, April 3.

For a play that asks deep questions, the theater wanted to give audience members the chance to talk about what theyve seen, the director said.

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.
The Veterans of Foreign Wars recognized Sgt. Investigator Juan Cardenas of the Beverly Hills Police Department with a state level Police Officer of the Year award Wednesday at VFW Post 2148 in Beverly Hills.

I was completely taken by surprise to receive this award today, Cardenas said at the ceremony after being held over from a 12-hour shift that was scheduled to end at 6 a.m. It is a great honor.

Cardenas chief suggested him for the award based on efforts to equip himself and others with knowledge to assist people experiencing a crisis or other issues related to mental health or substance use.

At the state level, up to 286 VFW Posts across Texas can submit nominees for police officer of the year, Post 2148 commander Alton Leuschner said. Texas VFW officials chose Cardenas among all the nominations received this year, he said.

They also forwarded Cardenas nomination to VFW national headquarters to be considered for a national police officer of the year award to be given at the VFW national convention later this year in Kansas City, Missouri, Leuschner said.

Family pride

Juan Cardenas older brother Paul Cardenas, who is also a peace officer, said he wanted to see his brother cry tears of joy upon receiving the award to bookend the tears of sibling rivalry from growing up.

Dalia Cardenas, who is Juan Cardenas wife, also attended the ceremony with their youngest child; Juans mother, Marie Cardenas; and Dalias own parents.

The kids and I are so very proud of Juan, Dalia Cardenas said. She spoke highly of his dedication to police work, He always works very hard.

Juan and Pauls mother, Marie Cardenas, said that Juan has gone a long way. She also said she is proud of Juans career and his award.

Why he received it

Beverly Hills Police Chief Kory Martin said he submitted Juan Cardenas nomination because of his involvement in Heart of Texas Behavioral Health Network training and his dedication to duty.

Martin said Juan Cardenas took the Mental Health First Aid training with the Behavioral Health Network and became certified as an instructor for the training.

He jumped right in and even helped give the classes to the rest of the department, Martin said, while also keeping up with his duties as a patrol sergeant, a lead investigator and working his own cases.

Juan Cardenas said he took the training because of his passion for properly relating to community members with mental health issues.

Its my passion, Juan Cardenas said. Its needed in law enforcement and its needed in the community.

He said the techniques are additional tools along with de-escalation techniques police can use to properly handle situations that develop in the course of their duties.

Cardenas background

Juan Cardenas has worked as a sergeant investigator with the Beverly Hills Police Department since July, Martin said. Juan and Dalia Cardenas said they have three children: twins in kindergarten and a toddler who went to the ceremony.

Martin also said Juan Cardenas experience includes seven years as a peace officer and certification as a basic peace officer instructor through the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement.

He also served six years as an infantry solider with the Texas Army National Guard, Martin 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 McLennan County grand jury indicted a Waco woman last week on two domestic assault charges involving an incident with her boyfriend on Valentines Day.

Devonna Savord was indicted Thursday on a second-degree felony charge of aggravated domestic assault with a weapon and a third-degree felony charge of assaulting a member of her household by choking. The indictment stems from an incident Feb. 14 at the apartment of Savords boyfriend in the 200 block of Washington Avenue, according to an arrest affidavit.

After Waco police officers arrived at the apartment, Savords boyfriend showed officers two cellphone videos indicating Savord attempted to attack him with a knife, the affidavit states.

The man also reported Savord choked him with her hands, according to the affidavit.

Savord remained in McLennan County Jail on Tuesday on $25,000 bond, jail records show.

Assault of corrections staff

In another indictment from Thursday, the grand jury indicted a McLennan County Jail inmate in an attack on corrections officers.

Camryon Sanders was indicted on two third-degree felony charges of assault against a public servant, stemming from an Aug. 15 incident, according to his arrest affidavit.

While corrections officers placed Sanders in an emergency restraint chair, two officers charged that Sanders bit them during the restraint process, according to the affidavit. One officer received a bite on a finger, the second on a knee, the affidavit states.

Sanders was not included Tuesday in the list of inmates in the county jail, nor among those incarcerated by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, according incarceration records.

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.
CEDAR BLUFFS  The bricks need a little attention on the exterior of the senior center in downtown Cedar Bluffs to keep the building from deteriorating.

But it wont be necessary if the organizers of the facility cant attract more people to eat and volunteer there.

Mary Shonka, who is the manager of the Cedar Bluffs Senior Center and Community Coffee Bar as well as president of Friendly Neighbors, the organization that operates the facility, is reopening the center on April 1 after it was closed for a month.

The center was closed in March because Shonka was recovering from surgery. She is the one who opens the center, gets it ready for the coffee bar and lunch, cleans up afterwards and makes sure things keep running.

Shonkas husband, Donald Shonka, is also a big contributor. He drives to Fremont to pick up the meals.

I cant do it without him, she said.

Mindy Siebels comes to the center at lunch time to help serve and clean up. Shonka said Siebels works from home and comes over on her lunch hour to help out.

Shes a blessing, Shonka said.

They are all unpaid volunteers. And when Shonka or her husband are not available, the center does not open.

Thats why they need more people to help keep the facility open. Its a place where anyone of any age can gather for good food, conversation and companionship. The center also has a lending library.

But Shonka needs help to keep the center open.

I need people who are willing to step forward, Shonka said.

That starts with Friendly Neighbors board members. It takes just $1 to join the organization and have a say in how the senior center runs during meetings on the second Wednesday of every month. They do not need to be senior citizens to join.

The senior center is open just two days a week, Wednesday and Friday. In the morning, there is what Shonka calls the Community Coffee Bar, from 8 to 10 a.m. They serve all the coffee you can drink for $1.25, plus rolls, donuts or sometimes cake.

At 10 a.m., the center shifts to lunch service. Congregate meals are purchased through Treat America, a food service company out of Omaha, and picked up at the Friendship Center in Fremont through an agreement Shonka negotiated with the company.

The price of the meal is $5.50, which covers the cost charged by Treat America, plus tax, Shonka said. She encourages everyone to come and eat at the center because the must purchase a minimum number of meals.

We serve anyone of any age because we have a quota of 10 and we cant get 10 without them, she said.

Often Shonka has to call to invite people to come dine to reach the quota. They are not allowed to keep any leftovers at the center, so all diners are served large portions and usually have a container to take home as well, she said.

Shonka kept the senior center doors open for the most part through the COVID-19 pandemic. They closed on March 17, 2020 but opened a short time later, Shonka said.

That is until Shonka and her husband came down with COVID-19 in November 2020. The center closed for about a month as they recovered.

The center used to be open three days a week, but the regulars started to dwindle and they dropped Mondays. Shonka said in the past they would play cards after the meal, but these days there are few card players to stick around for a game.

The center receives a stipend from the county for every meal served to a resident over the age of 60. But donations from local organizations and citizens are also necessary to keep the doors open. Shonka said the Cedar Bluffs businesses, organizations and churches have been very generous.

So they keep us going, she said.

Some of the operating budget will be used to fix the loose bricks on the outside of the building, a situation Shonka was recently made aware of. She is getting an estimate for repair, but notes that she will consult the Friendly Neighbors board when hiring a contractor.

This is a decision I cannot and will not make on my own, she said on a post to the Cedar Bluffs Community Facebook page on Sunday.

Shonka took over the senior center in 2009 after she lost her job a few months earlier. She started going to the center and quickly became a volunteer.

She has enjoyed her time working at the center, and is adamant that it will stay open.

When you see them throwing dirt in my face you will know Im done because I will keep this center open if it kills me, she said.

Suzi Nelson is the managing editor of the Wahoo Newspaper. Reach her via email at suzi.nelson@wahoonewspaper.com.
COLOMBO, March 23 (Xinhua) -- The Sri Lankan central bank has lifted a ban on foreign exchange transactions and allowed banks to provide forward sale and purchase of foreign exchange facilities to importers.

Forward sale and purchase of foreign exchange are contractual agreements between two parties to exchange a pair of currencies at a specific time in the future.

This new direction is expected to play a role in ending shortages of goods in the country.

On April 25, 2021, the central bank prevented commercial banks from selling dollars to customers for future transactions, causing significant issues for importers who found it difficult to order goods from abroad.

This move comes in the wake of a decision by the central bank to allow the Sri Lankan rupee to depreciate earlier this month. 
WAHOO  Three local veterans shared stories about their time in the military as they were honored by their peers.

Al Bartek, Joe Ostoff and Tommy Hicks were honored during the Veteran of the Month ceremony held March 18 at the Veterans Club in Wahoo.

The ceremony honored the men for their service and allowed them to tell a story or two about their time in the military.

Bartek is a member of American Legion Post 371 in Valparaiso, where the octogenarian can often be found scooping snow off the sidewalks before a meeting.

He told a story of a recent trip to a grocery store in Lincoln where a man gave him a special medallion thanking him for his service after noticing Barteks military license plate.

I was really impressed by this, he said.

Bartek served in the Navy from 1956 to 1959. He made numerous trips across the Mediterranean Sea and sailed above the Arctic Circle. He saw places like Italy, England, Scotland and Antigua while working in the sonar room.

Id do it again, he said of his time in the Navy.

Ostoff, a resident of Wahoo, was nominated by a friend, Jack Fisher Sr., for Veteran of the Month.

He joined the Army in 1965 after a recruiter assured him hed be stationed in Germany, which is where his father had lived before emigrating to the U.S.

While assigned in what was then West Germany, Ostoff intercepted Morse code from Russians in East Germany. He was still in Europe during the Prague Spring movement when Czechs protested Russian rule.

The Russians did the same thing there that theyre doing now in Ukraine, Ostoff noted.

After he left the Army, Ostoff earned a college degree and worked for a bank in Omaha. In 1981 he came to Wahoo to work as a civil servant with the National Guard.

Hicks traveled from his home in Woodbine, Iowa to attend the ceremony. He grew up in the Malmo area and joined the Navy four years after graduating from high school.

He spent most of his time in Vietnam, and at first was reluctant to talk about his service. But a prompt from an audience member got Hicks to talk about the time he was on the flight crew with a very special passenger.

U.S. Army Gen. William Westmoreland, who was Chief of Staff of the United States Army from 1968 to 1972, and his staff loaded up on the aircraft where Hicks was second engineer. Hicks said Westmoreland came into the cockpit and began moving the power levers.

I reached up and pulled them back, Hicks said.

Westmoreland continued to mess with the controls, until Hicks smacked the back of his hand with a slip stick slide rule. He looked at the general and told him, The airplane belongs to me.

Westmoreland said, I guess I dont need to go any faster, and left the controls alone after that as they flew to the Philippines.

The landing was also eventful, as the pilot miscalculated the tricky runway and was ready to hit pylons at the end when Hicks reached up to shut down the engine and keep the aircraft from bouncing off the sea wall and ending up in the ocean.

Saunders County Veterans Service Officer Dan Kauble said Hicks story, and those told by the other veterans, are the reason they hold the Veteran of the Month ceremony. He invited anyone to attend the ceremony and see what its all about.

If you know a veteran, if you want to recognize a veteran, bring them in, he said.

This was the first time members of the county board attended a Veteran of the Month ceremony held outside of their meeting room.

The Veteran of the Month program was initiated in 2018 by the late Larry Mach, who was a member of the county board. On the second Tuesday of the month, the honored veteran attended the supervisors meeting, where they received a plaque and recognition. The ceremony usually lasted about five minutes.

Last fall, the Saunders County Veterans Service Committee (VSC) chose to change the ceremonys location and format, opting to honor more than one veteran at a time and to do it at a time and place other than during the supervisors meeting. Kauble said the program has outgrown the original format.

Wendy Mach, Larry Machs daughter, publicly expressed her concerns about the change at the March 8 county board meeting. There, supervisors said they wanted to continue to honor veterans, but they couldnt accommodate a longer ceremony as the VSC wanted.

While acknowledging Wendy Machs concerns, VSC members said they feel the changes are in honor of their friend and fellow veteran, Larry Mach.

Were not dishonoring Larry, said VSC chairman Larry Johnson during a VSC meeting on March 9.

Last fall the VSC started holding the Veteran of the Month ceremony at other locations, including the American Legion in Ceresco. The March event was held at the Wahoo Veterans Club.

Supervisor Frank Albrecht, who represents District 7, said he was happy to attend the ceremony.

Its humbling to be here and I really enjoyed listening to their stories, he said.

Albrecht admitted that the new format allowed veterans the time and space to tell their stories.

Ive got to say I like this format a lot better, he said.

Also in attendance were supervisors Tom Hrdlicka (District 6) and John Smaus (District 5).

Kauble thanked the supervisors for attending and said the ceremony was veterans appreciating veterans.

Weve had some great conversations, weve had some great stories, he said.

Suzi Nelson is the managing editor of the Wahoo Newspaper. Reach her via email at suzi.nelson@wahoonewspaper.com.
FICTION: In her 24th novel, Anne Tyler captures the avoidances and silences of family life.

"French Braid" by Anne Tyler; Alfred A. Knopf (244 pages, $27)



"French Braid," Anne Tyler's 24th novel, spans three generations of the Garrett family of Baltimore. At its heart are Robin and Mercy Garrett, married in the 1950s, tacitly separated 20 years later.

Robin is a plumber and Mercy is first a housewife and mother, and then an artist. She paints portraits of people's homes, focusing on one modest detail  a doorstop, a newel post, or the fringed trim of a curtain. "Am I missing something? she thought every now and then. Am I overlooking something?" It's a perfect Anne Tyler metaphor.

Once David, their youngest, heads off to college, Mercy quietly moves into her studio a few miles from home.

She plans the move carefully, avoiding confrontation. She packs lightly. "Not all her clothes. Oh, no. To look in her bureau drawers ... you would never suppose anything was missing."

Gradually, Mercy begins spending occasional nights at her studio until eventually she is there full time. She never discusses any of this with her husband. He never asks.

Life is easier with no confrontation, no arguing. The surface remains smooth, the marriage endures.

Families, as Tyler has shown so brilliantly over her long career  she is 80 now  are private, convoluted things, twisted and knotted together over generations like a braid. And not even a simple three-strand braid; more like a complicated French braid, one that takes in more and more strands as it progresses.

Behaviors and attitudes from one generation are braided into the next, and so the Garrett children and grandchildren absorb their parents' need for avoidance. "Oh, the lengths this family would go to so as not to spoil the picture of how things were supposed to be!" Tyler writes.

It is lines like that one  seemingly tossed off by the omniscient narrator, a great skill of Tyler's  that bring heft to this largely plotless book. "French Braid" is filled with piercing observation.

Robin and Mercy's children grow up wary. It's easier, David figures, to avoid the family than to confront them, and so, like his mother, he leaves without ever saying he is going. He spends college summers away from home; he gets married without telling a soul. He just  drifts away. Like so many Tyler characters, he is active through passivity.

The whole complicated arrangement of keeping secrets and not asking questions filters down to Mercy and Robin's grandchildren. Their grandson Eddie doesn't tell anyone he's in a romantic relationship with his longtime partner Claude, so Eddie's aunt does her frantic best to pretend to be in the dark.

"Oh, babe," Claude finally tells Eddie. "She knows. She knew all along."

Late in the novel, Robin tells himself that the greatest accomplishment of his life was that "not a single one of his children guessed that Mercy wasn't living at home anymore."

Or course, earlier, their son-in-law had noted, "It was bizarre ... how something so obvious was never, ever talked about."

Without trust, without confidences, family members unbraid themselves from each other and drift apart. But the ties are not so easily undone, and the effects of family are lasting. "You think you're free of them," David notes, "but you're never really free; the ripples are crimped in forever."
WATERLOO  One person has been arrested on weapons charges after a Waterloo man was shot in the leg over the weekend.

Police arrested Corshundous Adaryll Love, 27, of 1687 Woodmayr Drive, for interference while armed, carrying weapons, public intoxication and carrying weapons while intoxicated. He was later released pending trial.

According to police, officers heard a gunshot around 2:15 a.m. Sunday and found Montora Johnson with gunshot wound to the leg in front of 439 Adams St.

Officers also noticed Love walking away from the scene and told him to stop, but he continued walking, according to court records.

Police noticed a handgun sticking out of his coat pocket, and Love was detained following a brief struggle, records state. Authorities seized a 9 mm Glock Model 19 handgun.

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.
WATERLOO  A Waterloo man has been arrested for allegedly killing his second cousin in an early morning shooting Tuesday.

Waterloo police arrested Dorray Darnell Cooper, 58, on charges of first-degree murder and felon in possession of a firearm.

Authorities said Dorray Cooper shot and killed 41-year-old LaVance Lamarr Cooper.

Police and paramedics were called to the the older cousin's apartment at 627 W. Second St. around 4:10 a.m. Tuesday and found the LaVance Cooper with a gunshot wound to the abdomen.

Paramedics with Waterloo Fire Rescue took Lavance Cooper to UnityPoint-Health Allen Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, according to police.

Court records show Dorray Cooper has a prior conviction for killing a person in a 2006 crash. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison on a vehicular homicide charge for a drunken driving collision that killed a woman.

He was released from prison in 2018.

Tuesdays shooting is the second homicide in Waterloo this year.

On Jan. 8, 18-year-old Courtney Lamont Harris was shot and killed while sitting in a vehicle parked on Edwards Street. Eugene Octavius Love Jr., 19, was arrested for intimidation with a weapon for shooting into the vehicle.

Cedar Falls has also had one homicide this year.

On Feb. 7, 19-year-old Arthur Craig Lang of Clear Lake was shot and killed while in a vehicle on College Street. Brandon Javon Mitchell, 25, of Mason City, was arrested for attempted murder and other charges for allegedly shooting at another person during the encounter, and Daniel Martez Judon, 24, also of Mason City, was arrested for intimidation with a weapon.

Love 0 Funny 13 Wow 1 Sad 26 Angry 6

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.
Lawmakers in an Iowa House Education Subcommittee on Tuesday advanced a proposed new method for funding Iowas public universities that would have them competing for state dollars by enrolling students into high-demand majors to fill needed jobs.

Instead of granting the Board of Regents request for $15 million more in general education appropriations for the 2023 budget year  bringing the regents total higher-ed allocation to $501 million  the lawmakers suggested keeping that flat while putting $12 million instead into a new Iowa Workforce Grant and Incentive Program.

Iowa College Aid would distribute the money through two-year scholarships. Qualifying students would have to already be on a path toward a high-demand career, as defined by Iowa Workforce Development, like teaching, engineering, nursing, information technology, accounting and auditing.

We wanted to wait until they got involved in the programs and really were on that career path before the students would qualify during their final two years in school, said House Speaker Pat Grassley, R-New Hartford. The program also aims to keep students in Iowa after graduation. It provides up to $5,000 their first year in the program, up to $2,500 their second year and then the balance if they stay in Iowa and work for a year for a total of $10,000.

Rep. David Kerr, R-Morning Sun, chair of the House Education Appropriations Subcommittee, said the proposed new scholarship dollars will serve as a great recruiting tool.

And they need students because the enrollments are decreasing, he said. I think this is a great plan that theyll jump on board with.

When pressed Tuesday why he didnt propose both new money for regent programming and for scholarship funds for high-need careers, Kerr said he made a decision last year that he wanted to focus state support on students.

If we took this $12 million  and we divide it up, I think that would dilute both programs, he said. So we put the money toward this.

Democrats on the subcommittee pressed their Republican counterparts to reconsider some funding for the universities themselves. But the bill moved forward without amendment.

Having these regent institutions not only partner with us but compete for students, I think, is really a different approach than the state has always taken, Grassley said.

... What are we getting for those dollars? he asked. We look at this as a way that, hey, the Legislature is going to step up, invest in our regent institutions and more importantly invest in our students across the state.

This, Grassley said, creates more collaboration between the Legislature and Iowas public universities. The program would be housed and funded through Iowa College Aid, created by lawmakers in 1963 as the states student financial aid agency.

Conceding that new ideas are always met with a little bit of caution, especially as Iowans, Grassley said, I think if we really sit down and think about this, this has some great potential to really pay dividends on that workforce situation.

Funding asks

The regents in September submitted a state appropriations request of $15 million more in general education funds  to be split $4 million each for University of Iowa and the University of Northern Iowa and $7 million for Iowa State University.

The House bill proposes status quo funding, and also denies UI-sought increases for its Oakdale campus and State Hygienic Lab of $1 million each. The only request the proposal incorporates is a $500,000 bump for UIs family practice program, a legislative initiative based at the UI to support community-based family medicine residency programs across Iowa.

The Iowa Senate has yet to release an education appropriations proposal. Once it does, the Senate and the House must compromise on a bill to send to the governor.

By rejecting much of the boards funding requests, the House budget proposal keeps the UIs total general education appropriations at $215.6 million; ISUs at $172.1 million; and UNIs at $98.3 million for the upcoming budget year.

To UNIs $1.6 million ask for a new community college degree attainment program, the House proposed appropriating $300,000.

Including all general education, special purpose, special schools, economic development, agriculture and other regent allocations for the current year, state appropriations total $616.6 million. Total revenues for the regent enterprise in the 2021 budget year were $6.26 billion.

In its latest appropriations request, regents noted the pandemics impact on its universities, which lost enrollment and, as a result, tuition revenue.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 1
WATERLOO  Black Hawk County Supervisors on Tuesday were urged to fund a study of the countys compensation system in an effort to stem a steady tide of employee resignations.

The Board of Supervisors discussed using money from the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, which allotted $25.5 million in federal funding to the county, for such a study. The ARPA funds can be used for such purposes as funding public health, replacement of lost revenue and infrastructure, and to increase the pay of essential workers.

Human Resources Director Amanda Fesenmeyer proposed spending $60,000 to conduct a compensation study of the various jobs in Black Hawk County government.

Fesenmeyer said an average of 54 county employees have resigned per year since 2019, with only about one-third due to retirement. Since Jan. 1, there have been 15 resignations, only two due to retirement. Work/life balance and wages are two of the main reasons cited for departure.

Were doing a lot, our departments, when it comes to backfilling positions, whether its retirements or resignations for whatever reason people are leaving, Fesenmeyer said. But about 35 people a year, employees, leave our organization not due to a retirement.

Fesenmeyer said a study would evaluate the countys wage structure and the labor market. The last time Black Hawk County did a compensation study, she said, was in the 1980s. Supervisor Craig White said that one such study had been done in his time on the board, but didnt elaborate. He has spent 20 years on the board.

What weve been hearing in the past is we say that we want to offer competitive wages. I think that we have an opportunity here to evaluate how competitive we are, Fesenmeyer said. We have done it with law enforcement this last go-around with the union.

The HR director said she is starting to see difficulties in recruiting other county workers. Often when a position needs to be filled, they have to hire the second or third candidate on the list instead of the first pick due to compensation.

Supervisor Linda Laylin expressed support for evaluating the pay.

I think you bring up a good point as far as where we are in the market, because we dont really know, Laylin said. So a market assessment to me makes a lot of sense.

Fesenmeyer said the issue isnt urgent, but is still something supervisors should to keep in mind.

Im not saying its critical today, Fesenmeyer said. But its something I want on everybodys radar because we already lag, and is that how the board wants to continue?

The ARPA funds can be requested by end of 2024.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
CEDAR FALLS  Business cultivation on College Hill will be a joint focus of the University of Northern Iowa and the city of Cedar Falls, with an eye to improve the schools employee and student recruitment.

During a work session Monday officials made clear that the town and gown relationship is positive, and they share common economic interests.

Our ongoing relationship with the staff of the city of Cedar Falls is excellent and has been for many, many years  just a phone call away at a variety of different levels within the institution and within the city, said Michael Hager, UNI finance and operations senior vice president. We really enjoy that relationship and its important to make that on the record because there are some communities where the university and the city do not get along well, and this is not one of those communities. We have a very good relationship with the staff of the city and we appreciate that and do not take that for granted.

After Hager and Andrew Morse, assistant to the president for board and governmental relations, took time to talk about the universitys contributions to the growth and economic success of the city. They discussed topics like shared services with local officials as the conversation shifted to what the city could do to support the college.

Revitalizing the College Hill area made up the bulk of the 45 minute discussion.

A visioning plan, Imagine College Hill, was adopted last year to prepare the area for future growth and development on College Hill while maintaining, preserving, and stabilizing the surrounding neighborhoods to provide a wide variety of housing choices to meet the future needs of our community.

The visioning plan will be the backbone of future zoning updates. The council had removed funding for those changes in next years budget, but eventually restored it after stakeholders sparked an uproar.

At the time, Kathryn Sogard, executive director of the College Hill Partnership, said the updates would would foster improvements to the gateway of UNI and to Cedar Falls; offer a variety of housing options, including missing middle and affordable housing that Cedar Falls needs; and encourage stabilization of the neighborhood and allow unique opportunities for business and rentals close to the campus of UNI.

Encouraging economic development should be a primary focus, Hager noted, and added he was a little bit surprised that housing development was pinpointed in the report.

Councilor Simon Harding posed a question about how the College Hill area could evolve and what the city could do to support it besides the zoning changes.

Spring E scooter launch and safety event April 1 Students will lead tours during the two-hour event and children in kindergarten through second grade will sing as part of a 6:30 p.m. program.

I wouldnt dismiss zoning, Hager replied. For any community, zoning is a very important characteristic, and when its not there, you start to see some infill.

Morse also noted the university benefits from the citys intentional efforts with natural aesthetics and in making walkability a priority: Lets keep that going in the right direction.

Developing 22nd Street and folding that into the College Hill district was another idea floated by Hager. He noted that might be the natural progression with the Multimodal Transportation Center as the centerpiece.

In an effort to support the Hill, Hager also noted UNI purchased its bookstore there.

Love 1 Funny 2 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.
WATERLOO  Glen Keith, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and East High teacher, is running for a seat on the Black Hawk County Board of Supervisors. Keith spent 25 years in the military and is currently in his fifth year of teaching at East High School, where he leads the JROTC program.

Keith served on the Black Hawk County Veterans Affairs Commission for three years, with almost two years as the chair.

He said working with the Board of Supervisors during his time on the veterans commission gave him insight into what county government can accomplish.

My entire adult life has been in service, and its just something I wanted to do to give back to the community. ... Ive always had an itch to get into government. Thats where you can really make an impact, Keith said.

He wants to work more in concert with the communities and cities to address issues like affordable housing, economic growth and health outcomes.

One thing I learned in the military is if you work together as a team, you can accomplish any mission, Keith said.

Keith served two deployments as a lieutenant in the Balkans in the 1990s and two combat tours in Afghanistan in 2003-2004 as a captain and 2009-2010 as a major.

Keith, 47, was assigned to the University of Northern Iowa Army ROTC program in 2013 where the program was recognized as the best in the Midwest for recruiting and retention and was recognized as the most improved ROTC program in the Midwest. After his retirement from the Army in 2017 he transitioned to leading the JROTC program at East High. During his leadership at East High the JROTC program received two statewide awards; the Student Organization of Character Award from the Robert D. and Billie Ray Center, and the Governors Volunteer Award. Keith also serves as the East High adviser to the Waterloo Youth City Council and the Mentors in Violence Prevention program.

A graduate of Tennessee Technological University, Keith holds masters degrees from Central Michigan University and the U.S. Marine Corps Command and Staff College. He is married to Michelle Jungers with a combined family of five children.

More details about Glen Keith can be found on his candidate Facebook page, @GlenKeith4Supervisor or he can be emailed directly at Glen4Leadership@gmail.com.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
WATERLOO -- The Northeast Iowa Food Bank will bring its mobile food pantry to Living Faith United Methodist Church in Tama from 4:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. today. The mobile food pantry will visit Tama on the fourth Wednesday of each month.

The NEIFBs mobile food pantry program provides food to our under-served rural communities in Northeast Iowa. The mobile food pantry are held once a month and are hosted in churches, libraries, community centers, schools or other public central locations. The Northeast Iowa Food Bank provides a loaded truck of food that is then unloaded and distributed by local volunteer community members to those in need.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg speaks during a press conference previewing the Extraordinary Summit of NATO Heads of State and Government at the NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, March 23, 2022.

NATO is set to considerably increase forces deployed on its eastern flank, Stoltenberg said on Wednesday. (Xinhua/Zheng Huansong)

BRUSSELS, March 23 (Xinhua) -- NATO is set to considerably increase forces deployed on its eastern flank, secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg said on Wednesday.

Addressing a news conference on the eve of an extraordinary NATO summit to discuss the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict, Stoltenberg said he expected allies to agree to strengthen NATO's position "on land, in the air, and at sea."

"The first step is the deployment of four new NATO battlegroups. In Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia. Along with our existing forces in the Baltic countries and Poland, this means that we will have eight multinational NATO battlegroups all along the eastern flank. From the Baltic to the Black Sea," he said.

Stoltenberg explained how there were hundreds of thousands of Allied troops at heightened readiness across the alliance, including 100,000 U.S. troops in Europe and 40,000 troops under direct NATO command, mostly in the eastern part of the alliance. These are backed by major air and naval power including five carrier strike groups in the High North and in the Mediterranean.

"We face a new reality for our security. So we must reset our deterrence and defense for the longer-term," he stressed, adding that "there is a new sense of urgency. Because we cannot take peace for granted."

Stoltenberg said he expected Allies to agree to provide additional support, including cybersecurity assistance as well as with equipment to help Ukraine protect against chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threats. Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky is expected to address the meeting.

He added that any use of biological or chemical weapons would have "far-reaching consequences," while stressing that NATO is ready to "protect and defend allies against any threat, any time".

The NATO summit will be convened in Brussels on Thursday. In a show of Western unity against the war in Ukraine, Brussels will also host a G7 and an EU summit on Thursday. 

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg speaks during a press conference previewing the Extraordinary Summit of NATO Heads of State and Government at the NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, March 23, 2022.

NATO is set to considerably increase forces deployed on its eastern flank, Stoltenberg said on Wednesday. (Xinhua/Zheng Huansong)
DES MOINES (AP)  A hearing scheduled for Thursday in the case of one of the teenagers charged with killing a southeast Iowa teacher has been placed on hold after his attorney sought a review by the Iowa Supreme Court.

Willard Miller and Jeremy Goodale, both 16, are charged with murder in the death of Fairfield High School Spanish teacher Nohema Graber. The body of Graber, 66, was found Nov. 3 hidden at a Fairfield park.

Miller's attorney, Christine Branstad, has sought to suppress evidence obtained by investigators through a police interview and physical evidence obtained using search warrants.

Branstad has asked Judge Shawn Showers to hold a hearing on suppressing evidence she claims was obtained in violation of Miller's constitutional rights before the court holds a separate hearing about whether the teenagers should be tried in juvenile court.

Under Iowa law anyone age 16 or over charged with a forcible felony is automatically tried as an adult. Judges may consider sending cases to juvenile court.

Showers denied Branstad's motion to hold a suppression hearing first, and Branstad on Tuesday asked the Iowa Supreme Court to review Showers' decision. She asked the judge to stay proceedings in the case until the high court rules.

Showers on Wednesday morning issued an order halting proceedings in Miller's case. No such order was immediately entered in Goodale's case.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 1
The state is making more than a half-million dollars available to prepare K-12 teachers to teach computer science.

Computer science is a basic skill set necessary for student success and an added advantage for recruitment in high-demand careers in the rapidly changing, technology-driven workplace, Gov. Kim Reynolds said. These awards equip more educators with the tools and resources needed to prepare K-12 students in computer science.

Through computer science, students build critical thinking, problem-solving and reasoning skills that are transferable across academic disciplines and fields, added Ann Lebo, director of the Iowa Department of Education.

Reynolds and the department have announced $506,084 in annual awards to prepare K-12 teachers in 136 school districts and non-public schools to teach computer science.

The Computer Science Professional Development Incentive Fund awards are part of a commitment to expand computer science instruction in K-12 schools. In 2017, SF 274 established the fund to pay for teacher professional development, including training to teach specific computer science courses and earning in-depth university endorsements to teach computer science. In 2020, Reynolds proposed and the Legislature passed HF 2629 requiring K-12 schools to offer computer science education to all students, starting with high schools in 2022-23.

COLLEGE SAVINGS PLAN: For the ninth time in 16 years, the College Savings Iowa 529 plan has reduced its fees for participants.

By reducing fees, were making it possible for families to keep more money in their accounts, Treasurer Michael Fitzgerald said. Every little bit saved can go a long way to help Iowans afford the educational adventure of a lifetime.

Effective April 1, the annual asset-based fee on the plans investment options will decrease 5.5 percent, which brings the price down from 0.19 percent to 0.18 percent or $1.80 per $1,000 invested annually.

Since Fitzgerald started the plan, College Savings Iowa has grown to over $6.3 billion in assets, with over $3.8 billion having been used for education expenses.

Iowa taxpayers who are College Savings Iowa participants can deduct the first $3,522 they contribute per beneficiary account from their state taxable income in 2022, subject to federal tax regulations.

For more information, visit https://www.collegesavingsiowa.com/.

TITLING FEES: A bill to increase the cost of registering vehicle titles and obtaining a certificate of title was approved by the House Ways and Means Committee over Democratic objections. HF 870 would allow Iowans to register their vehicles titles at any county treasurers office.

Fees, which in some cases havent increased since 1989, would provide $22 million to county budgets, relieving pressure for property tax increases, said Rep. Jane Bloomingdale, R-Northwood.

However, Rep. Chuck Isenhart, D-Dubuque, pointed out the fees are based on vehicle prices, which have increased significantly in the past year or two.

The timing is not right for nickeling and diming Iowans with $5 and $10 increases for the privileges of paying so much more to register their vehicles, he said.

The bill, approved 14-8, would raise the fees for a new registration, new title, replacement title and salvage title, manufacturer buyback and security interest. The fees now range from $1 to $11, with most being $7.50.

LEGALIZED MARIJUANA: Senate Democrats took their crack at proposing legalized recreational marijuana in Iowa during debate over a bill on criminal penalties for possession of heroin.

Since the minority Democrats are unable to set the legislative agenda, they chose the heroin bill for their amendment that would regulate marijuana similar to the way alcohol is regulated in the state. Majority Republicans shot down the proposed amendment with a procedural move, ruling it was not relevant to the original bill.

Sen. Joe Bolkcom, D-Iowa City, was among the Democrats who spoke in favor of the proposal. He called the prohibition of marijuana a costly failure.

It has broken up too many families, upended too many livelihoods, thrown too many children into poverty, Bolkcom said of the enforcement of marijuana laws. He also noted data that shows marijuana laws disproportionately impact Black Iowans, who are seven times more likely to be arrested for possession marijuana, the worst disparity in the nation, even though Black and white people use marijuana at similar rates, according to a study by the American Civil Liberties Union.

The bill, HF 2462, passed the Senate by a 44-5 vote.

TAX CODE CHANGES: The Senate passed legislation that would address myriad items in the state tax code, including exempting some products from the state sales tax, expanding the items and services used in food manufacturing that are exempt from the sales tax, exempting up to $20,000 in National Guard pay from the state income tax, expanding a capital gains individual income tax exemption for certain stock sales, and reducing the bank franchise tax rate.

SF 2372 passed on a 43-6 vote.

Sen. Dan Dawson, R-Council Bluffs, called the legislation a continuation of rebuilding Iowas tax code for a better tax code for the 21st century.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
BRUSSELS  NATO members are debating how best to express concern over possible Chinese cooperation with Russia in a joint statement after an extraordinary summit Thursday, amid fears that military and financial support from Beijing could reinvigorate Moscows offensive in Ukraine. Source: NATO eyes warning to China against aiding Moscow  Nikkei Asia

I guess China never knew it was under the guns of NATO

More.Hmm!

Think it all is stupidity, yet theres no way  this is NATO/Western Empire manufactured and intentional Chaos, based upon stupidity (There, that fixed it)

WtR
Weather Alert

...WINDY TODAY THROUGH SUNDAY, MUCH COLDER TEMPERATURES SUNDAY INTO EARLY NEXT WEEK WITH PERIODS OF RAIN AND SNOW SHOWERS... --Today and Friday-- * As has been a repeating story lately, gusty winds will return again today and Friday. Strongest winds will be near and north of US-50 today, spreading across the entire region Friday. Winds will decrease overnight into early Friday morning for valley locations, but are unlikely to completely let up, while ridge winds will remain strong tonight. * Winds will bring travel difficulties both in the air and on the ground. Travel restrictions for high profile vehicles are possible. Check with CalTrans and/or NDOT for the current road information. Areas of blowing dust are possible both afternoons downwind of the Carson Sink and other desert locations, possibly affecting portions of I-80, US-50, and US-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 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 Mother's Day into the first half of next week. Temperatures will be 15-25 degrees below normal. While there is still some uncertainty due to winds and cloud cover, it's possible we could have frost and freeze concerns Sunday-Tuesday nights. Might want to watch those sprinklers and protect any sensitive vegetation. * We will see periods of rain and snow/pellet showers along with slight chances for thunderstorms Sunday through Tuesday. There are solid chances for snow levels to fall to all valley floors by Sunday evening, which may catch many off guard. Mountain passes could see light snow accumulation on roadways during the overnight periods. It will be harder to see any roadway snow accumulation for lower valleys given the time of the year.

...WIND ADVISORY NOW IN EFFECT FROM 11 AM THIS MORNING TO 5 AM PDT SATURDAY... * WHAT...Southwest winds 25 to 35 mph with gusts up to 55 mph expected. Wind gusts up to 65 mph for wind prone locations. Wave heights on Pyramid Lake of 2 to 4 feet. * WHERE...Greater Reno-Carson City-Minden Area and Western Nevada Basin and Range including Pyramid Lake. * WHEN...From 11 AM this morning to 5 AM PDT Saturday. * IMPACTS...Gusty winds could blow around unsecured objects. Tree limbs could be blown down and a few power outages may result. Dangerous boating conditions on Pyramid Lake. * ADDITIONAL DETAILS...Winds will be lighter tonight into early Friday morning for lower valleys before once again increasing during the day Friday and lasting into the night Friday night. Areas of blowing dust are possible downwind of the Carson Sink, which could bring reduced visibility to I-80, US-95, and US-50. Travel restrictions are possible for high profile vehicles. Check with NDOT for the latest on road conditions. PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS... Now is the time to secure loose outdoor items such as patio furniture, holiday decorations, and trash cans before winds increase which could blow these items away. The best thing to do is prepare ahead of time by making sure you have extra food and water on hand, flashlights with spare batteries and/or candles in the event of a power outage. &&
Choteau, MT (59422)

Today

A mix of clouds and sun this morning followed by cloudy and windy conditions this afternoon. High 76F. Winds SSW at 20 to 30 mph..

Tonight

Cloudy and windy this evening, becoming partly cloudy after midnight. Low 46F. Winds SW at 20 to 30 mph.
Getty Images News

En espanol

The U.S. Postal Service is getting back into financial services, something it hasnt offered for 55 years. The new services will start off small. For a flat fee of $5.95, customers in Washington, D.C., Falls Church, Virginia, and the Bronx, New York, can cash payroll or business checks (up to $500) on to a debit card. If all goes well, the Postal Service says customers could eventually pay bills, deposit and withdraw cash, and send money to other post offices. The idea is to cater to the millions of Americans who dont have access to a bank.

Its a huge problem for the unbanked and the underbanked who often get caught in the payday lending and cash-checking predatory process, says American Postal Workers Union President Mark Dimondstein. Low-income people, whether they are actively working or retired, spend up to 10 percent of their income on these fees and services. Here you have a trusted public institution that already provides basic financial services such as money orders."

For years, the Postal Service has been bleeding money forcing it to close offices and cut services. The COVID-19 pandemic proved how useful the Postal Service can be, with the nations mail carriers getting supplies and COVID-19 test kits to residents. Proponents argue the Postal Service can do more helping rural communities and unbanked adults with their basic banking needs. In early March, Congress passed the Postal Service Reform Act, which removes budget rules that played a role in 14 years of losses. It also makes it law that mail is delivered six days a week, excluding federal holidays.
The average price of regular unleaded gasoline in Flint reached $4.25 per gallon on March 9, 2022.
You have permission to edit this article.

Edit Close
President Joe Biden, seen here on March 16, departs March 23 on one of the highest-stakes presidential trips in recent memory, a moment for the U.S. President to assume leadership of a newly united West.
Minister Files Federal Lawsuit After US Capitol Denies His Permit Request to Hold a Good Friday Service on the Grounds of the Capitol Building NEWS PROVIDED BY

Christian Defense Coalition

March 23, 2022



WASHINGTON, March 23, 2022 /Christian Newswire/ -- Rev. Patrick Mahoney, Director of the Christian Defense Coalition, is seeking a preliminary injunction in United States District Court for the District of Columbia to conduct his Good Friday Service.



Currently no permits are being granted for peaceful free speech activities on the public grounds immediately surrounding the US Capitol Building.



It is deeply troubling while the Biden Administration and Speaker Pelosi are calling for freedom and democracy in Ukraine, they are denying Americans the right to peacefully exercise their First Amendment freedoms on the grounds of the US Capitol.



By denying American citizens to peacefully conduct free speech events on the grounds of the US Capitol, the First Amendment is being crushed and trampled by our own government.



Rev. Patrick Mahoney, Director of the Washington, D.C. based Christian Defense Coalition, states; "It is deeply troubling while the Biden Administration and Speaker Pelosi are calling for freedom and democracy in Ukraine, they are denying Americans the right to peacefully exercise their First Amendment freedoms on the grounds of the US Capitol.



"The 'People's House,' as the US Capitol Building is so rightly called, must be a place where all Americans are afforded the right to come and peacefully celebrate and express their First Amendment rights. Tragically, those rights and freedoms are being denied and prohibited.



"Business is going on as usual at the Capitol. Members of Congress and their staff are entering and using the Capitol. Vendors, the media and their crews, invited guests, lobbyists, tourists and so many more are also allowed to enter and use the Capitol grounds.



"Yet, I am being prohibiting from holding a Good Friday Service to pray for God to bring healing to our nation and bring hope and comfort to all those struggling around the world, especially for the people of Ukraine. I am filing this federal lawsuit to ensure the 'People's House' is returned back to the people and the First Amendment is once again celebrated and honored at the United States Capitol." Rev. Mahoney is being represented by Harmeet Dhillon/ Dhillon Law Group Inc. and Joshua Wallace Dixon/ Center for American Liberty.



For more information or interviews call

Rev. Patrick Mahoney at: 540.538.4741



SOURCE Christian Defense Coalition



CONTACT: Rev. Patrick Mahoney, 540-538-4741



Share Tweet


Etherstack Launches Carrier MCX IWF Product

Sydney, Mar 23, 2022 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Etherstack plc ( ASX:ESK ) is pleased to announce the product launch of its carrier grade MCX IWF (Mission Critical Push-To-Talk InterWorking Function). The MCX IWF is a telco network element that seamlessly bridges traditional public safety land mobile radio (LMR) networks with next generation MCPTX (mission critical push to talk) services that carriers are beginning to deploy for public safety agencies globally.As previously announced, Etherstack has received an initial order for its MCX IWF product via its partner Samsung Electronics for supply into lead telco carrier networks in North America.Deployment activities for the initial deliveries are well under way.Standards-based migration from existing LMR networks to carrier 4G/LTE & 5G MCX networks requires the use of an MCX IWF to enable secure and robust interoperability between the LMR & MCX domains. These hybrid LMR & MCX networks will be commonplace for at least another decade as traditional LMR users migrate to MCX.Mr Doug Chapman, Etherstack Senior VP North America said, "Etherstack is widely recognized as the leading licensor of LMR protocols and gateway technologies within the public safety industry globally.We have over two decades of high-performance communications network softswitching experience which when combined with our LMR expertise means that we can deliver the highest achievable levels of LMR functionality and standards-compliance to the market."About Etherstack Plc

Etherstack (ASX:ESK) is a wireless technology company specialising in developing, manufacturing and licensing mission critical radio technologies for wireless equipment manufacturers and network operators around the globe. With a particular focus in the public safety, defence, utilities, transportation and resource sectors, Etherstack's technology and solutions can be found in radio communications equipment used in the most demanding situations. The company has Research and Development facilities in London, Sydney, New York and Yokohama.
Copyright  2022 Albuquerque Journal

SANTA FE  New Mexico will pull back nearly $8 million in investments in Russian stocks and bonds, after the State Investment Council voted 10-0 on Tuesday to divest due to the ongoing Ukraine conflict.

The states Russian investments make up just a small fraction of its total $36 billion portfolio  about 0.022% of its total value  and the move to divest could be largely symbolic in nature.

But Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, who is the investment councils chairwoman, and other backers say no state dollars should be invested in the Russian government, at least until the conflict is resolved.

While the Democratic governor missed the Tuesday meeting due to a scheduling conflict, a Lujan Grisham spokeswoman lauded the SICs vote.

The governor has been clear that not one penny of New Mexico funds should go toward furthering Putins brutality  New Mexico stands with the Ukrainian people, said Lujan Grisham spokeswoman Nora Meyers Sackett, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

During Tuesdays meeting, the SICs Chief Investment Officer Vince Smith said most of the states investment exposure to Russian companies are in actively managed stocks, with a smaller amount in bonds and passively managed index funds.

With the Russian stock market currently closed due to the fallout of the countrys invasion of Ukraine, he said pinpointing an exact value of the investments is difficult.

The market is just not there for these securities, Smith said.

A SIC spokesman said after Tuesdays meeting, which was conducted remotely by telephone, that the bulk of New Mexicos investment exposure to Russia comes from one actively managed investment account with stock in Yandex, which is Russias largest technology company.

That investment represented nearly $7.3 million of the states roughly $7.9 million in investment exposure to Russia as of the start of the Ukraine invasion, said SIC spokesman Charles Wollmann.

While divestment has been rarely used by New Mexico as a tactic to apply pressure on foreign governments and make moral statements, its not unprecedented.

In 2007, the SIC voted to divest about $45 million from publicly traded companies doing business with the government of Sudan, which at the time was committing acts of genocide in the Darfur region.

In addition, board members of the states teacher retirement system voted in 2020 to divest from two private prison companies amid growing pressure from teachers and immigrant rights groups.

The teacher retirement fund, the Educational Retirement Board, recently reported having $3 million or less in investment holdings in Russian securities. The funds board could also discuss divestment next month, though no such proposed action has been added to the ERBs agenda as of yet, a pension fund official said Tuesday.

The states other pension fund, the Public Employees Retirement Association, also has about $3 million in Russian investment holdings as part of its global market index, PERA Executive Director Greg Trujillo said.

He also said the pension fund has been in touch with its investment managers of those holdings regarding potential sanctions.

Divestment decisions can have legal repercussions, as State Investment Council members and pension fund board members are required to prioritize the fund and its beneficiaries  current and future retirees  over outside interests and concerns.

But Wollmann said that fiduciary obligation doesnt necessarily preclude divestment, especially in cases like Russian securities that could see their valuations drop significantly due to the Ukraine conflict.

It is something you only undertake in serious situations, Wollmann said of divestment decisions.

Other states and countries have also pursued divestment from Russian securities due to the conflict in Ukraine, which intensified last month when Russian troops invaded.

The invasion has led to a mass exodus of Ukrainians, widespread destruction and hundreds  if not thousands  of casualties.

In all, the State Investment Council oversees about $36 billion in investments, including four permanent funds.

The largest of the funds  the Land Grant Permanent Fund  gets money from investment gains and taxes and royalties on the oil and natural gas industries, among other sources.

The fund makes annual distributions that help fund public schools around New Mexico.

New Mexicos sovereign wealth fund, the combination of all permanent funds overseen by the SIC, is the third-largest in the nation and one of the 30 largest in the world.
Copyright  2022 Albuquerque Journal

A decision by a judge to release a suspect in two homicides on a GPS ankle monitor pending trial drew fierce criticism Tuesday from Albuquerque Police Department Chief Harold Medina.

Medina took aim at 2nd Judicial District Judge Stanley Whitaker, who rejected two motions from prosecutors to hold Adrian Avila in jail while he awaits trial on charges including murder, kidnapping and armed robbery.

Avila is accused in two shootings six months apart, an August 2020 case where a teen was killed during a gun robbery and a February 2021 case where a man was killed in front of his home by his brothers kidnappers.

Ahmad Assed, Avilas attorney, said Whitaker found that prosecutors failed to demonstrate that no conditions of release for Avila  who has no criminal history  could ensure the safety of the public.

These people are accused of killing somebody and were counting on an ankle bracelet to protect the community, Medina said. He said Avila is at the root of gun violence, and called his release ridiculous.

Assed argued in a motion that the prosecutions evidence against Avila in the August 2020 homicide is circumstantial and based largely on cellphone and Snapchat account records that dont reliably establish his involvement.

In addition to wearing a GPS ankle monitor, Whitaker ordered that Avila remain under house arrest and be allowed to leave his mothers home only to attend a charter high school and for educational purposes.

Assed responded that Medinas irresponsible and reckless statements have the potential to poison a jury pool and raise questions about APDs ability to investigate crimes objectively.

Its outrageous for Albuquerques chief law enforcement officer, who wasnt even at the hearing, to make a knee-jerk comment that is purely reactionary and pandering, Assed said.

Medina and Assed personally negotiated Avilas surrender to APD, Assed said.

Medina said he understands monitoring those accused of property crimes, such as car theft, but theres a line in the sand that comes with violence. He said he understands judges are following guidelines, but argued that those guidelines, like the Arnold tool, which scores a defendants risk of flight or new crime, need to be fixed.

Several studies have shown the Arnold tool has a good success rate and the states pretrial detention system is, in general, effective in most cases.

Medina said multiple people have continued to conduct illegal activity while on house arrest and GPS monitoring, adding that, on Tuesday, a domestic violence offender was unaccounted for after the batteries died on his GPS device.

APD spokesman Gilbert Gallegos said the courts need to build trust in the community and not admitting theyre doing something wrong in these cases hurts the whole system.

We posted this stuff on social media and its blowing up; people want to blame, they feel somethings not right here. I think the courts need to admit that something is wrong and start rebuilding that community trust, he said.

Second Judicial District Attorney Raul Torrezs office said prosecutors plan to appeal Avilas pretrial release.

We strongly disagree with the Courts assessment that GPS monitoring is sufficient to protect the community from someone like Adrian Avila, who stands accused of not one, but two violent homicides, Torrezs office said in a written statement.
Copyright  2022 Albuquerque Journal

The city of Rio Rancho reversed itself once again Tuesday by denying public records requests related to the unexplained fatal shooting of a 2-year-old son of a law enforcement officer last December.

The action came just days before the citys records custodian was expected to release the records and just two weeks after Rio Rancho officials announced they would change course and process records requests related to the death of Lincoln Harmon.

A spokeswoman for the city asked that new records requests be filed.

The citys rationale for again withholding the Rio Rancho police records?

A lawsuit filed March 14 by the Santa Fe New Mexican and the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government that contended the city has been violating the state Inspection of Public Records Act for months in withholding the records.

The lawsuit contended a ruling from a state district court judge declaring the records as public was necessary because despite its indication earlier this month that records requests would be processed, the city still hadnt yet provided the documents, which would include an initial police incident report, the 911 call, and other records.

As a result of a lawsuit filed on March 14, 2022.stemming from past Inspection of Public Records Act (IPRA) denials relating to the Lincoln Harmon investigation, the City has denied recent IPRA requests (dated March 7, 2022 and later) for all records related to the investigation. The City will respect the legal process and await a court ruling in the matter and associated lawsuit, stated a release sent to the Journal by the city.

The city contended last December in denying initial records requests that the state Childrens Code prevented disclosure of the police records.

State Attorney General Hector Balderas told the Journal earlier this month that his office concluded the Childrens Code didnt cover law enforcement records, and an assistant attorney general issued a letter notifying Rio Rancho officials they were in violation of IPRA.

In response to the AGs letter, Rio Rancho City Attorney Greg Lauer fired off an email accusing the AGs office of violating a different state law and claiming that Balderas was unable or unwilling to defend the rights of children or families. Lauer wrote that the AGs legal opinion provides little more than a series of contrived, illogical machinations.

Balderas, in turn, called Lauers response insulting and urged city officials to obey the law and produce the records.

In its latest announcement on Tuesday, the city said it respectfully disagrees with the New Mexico Attorney Generals non-binding opinion.

The City believes that not releasing the records follows all applicable laws  IPRA, the New Mexico Childrens Code, and the New Mexico Constitution, the statement said.

After the AGs opinion was released and Lauer wrote his email, the city of Rio Rancho announced that even though disagreeing with the opinion, it would process records requests on the case and redact certain information.

The records custodian for the city told the Journal that the city would respond to the request on Thursday, March 24.

On Tuesday, the Journal received a denial of its request.

Earlier this month, the city attacked the news media for seeking the records related to the shooting of the Harmon boy, whose father is a police officer with the Santa Fe Police Department. The city suggested the records were being sought by the guerrilla media for use on the dark web.

The FOG lawsuit, which asks for release of the records and that the city of Rio Rancho pay penalties and other costs for wrongfully denying the records, is pending in the court of Sandoval County state District Judge James Noel.

The lawsuit contended the public had a right to know what happened to the child and Balderas told the Journal that transparency laws protect children especially in light of these tragic circumstances.

Along with issuing a public records opinion, Balderas said earlier this month his office was working to ensure an independent investigative team review the case that had been handled by the 13th Judicial District Attorneys office.

The city of Rio Rancho on Tuesday noted that no one has yet been charged in the case.

Furthermore, the City believes crime scene evidence and imagery of children should not be available for public consumption, as protecting sensitive information involving our youngest and most vulnerable population is one of the purposes of the New Mexico Childrens Code.

The statement added that there are varying interpretations of IPRA, the New Mexico Childrens Code, and other sections of law including the victims rights provisions in the New Mexico Constitution. As such, and at this juncture, a court must weigh-in and provide a definitive ruling regarding what information can and should be released, to which the City of Rio Rancho will adhere. 

In the event that a court rules that the requested records and information are releasable to the general public, which includes media entities, the City will not only comply with the court order and rule of law, but also continue to work with legislators in order to update and modernize IPRA and other sections of New Mexico law.
Copyright  2022 Albuquerque Journal

SANTA FE  Three Republican candidates for governor say that one of their own, Mark Ronchetti, failed to attend recent candidate forums, depriving voters of a chance to compare candidates in person.

He missed seven recent forums, including four held in the Republican stronghold of southeastern New Mexico, his rivals say.

The Ronchetti campaign, by contrast, contends the candidate  a former meteorologist at KRQE  is traveling the state meeting with voters and that hes already agreed to a televised debate and other candidate events, including one scheduled this week in Roosevelt County.

The criticism, his campaign said, is a gimmick by lesser candidates to attract attention.

The back-and-forth comes as the campaign to secure the Republican nomination for governor enters a critical stretch: Absentee voting begins within 50 days.

The winner will take on Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and a Libertarian candidate this fall.

Brian Sanderoff, a political analyst and president of Research & Polling Inc., said Ronchetti may see less value in going to smaller candidate events because he is already well known in New Mexico, having served as a TV weatherman and run a 2020 campaign for the U.S. Senate.

Avoiding them, however, opens Ronchetti up to criticism by rival candidates, he said.

Sanderoff noted that Ronchetti finished behind three of his rivals in delegate voting at the Republican Party convention last month  a sign, he said, that grassroots activists arent his strength.

I think the Ronchetti campaign strategy may be to target the mainstream Republican voters rather than grassroots party activists, Sanderoff said in an interview. The activists may split their vote among many of these other candidates.

Strategic or not, other candidates have slammed Ronchettis attendance record.

In an interview, Republican candidate Jay Block, a Sandoval County commissioner and retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, said Ronchetti didnt attend seven recent forums that attracted other candidates, including events in Farmington, Belen and southeastern New Mexico.

I think its important, Block said, for people to hear the candidates together so they can compare and contrast.

State Rep. Rebecca Dow and Greg Zanetti, a financial adviser and military veteran, said they, too, appeared at a series of recent forums without Ronchetti.

I have a conservative record Im proud to talk about, Dow said.

Zanetti said Ronchetti has decided the grassroots Republican base is inconsequential to his campaign.

Ronchetti spokesman Enrique Knell said Ronchetti has accepted multiple invitations to forums and debates. They include events in Roosevelt County this week and Santa Fe County next month.

Mark Ronchetti is criss-crossing the state meeting with voters, Knell said. Their concerns are his top priority, not the complaints of primary opponents seeking legitimacy.

Ronchetti also will participate in a debate hosted by KOAT in partnership with the Albuquerque Journal and KKOB radio, the campaign said. Its set to air May 19.

The other candidates recognize Ronchettis strength as a candidate, Knell said, so its no surprise theyre resorting to silly gimmicks trying to garner any attention they can.

The Journal wasnt able to reach the fifth GOP candidate, Ethel Maharg, an anti-abortion activist and former mayor of Cuba.

The primary election is June 7.

County clerks are set to begin mailing out absentee ballots on May 10. In-person voting at clerks offices opens that day, too.

Expanded early voting at other sites will begin May 21.
SANTA FE  New Mexicos K-12 students will see a greater focus on race and ethnicity, including Native American history, in curriculum over the next two years under new standards aimed at making social studies teaching more culturally responsive.

The state Public Education Department recently finalized the changes following months of debate that included pushback from parents worried their kids would be labeled racist. The standards dont mandate specific lessons or textbooks, but will require school districts to increase their focus on social identities and understanding the world through the lens of race, class and privilege.

New Mexico is the latest Democratic-led state to approve new public school standards amid a move toward more open discussion of race. As in Washington and New York, the standards require students to identify and articulate their cultural identity starting in elementary school. Ethnic studies will now be part of the high school curriculum, though not required for graduation, as in California.

A dozen other states have passed laws to restrict topics related to race and gender over concerns, particularly among the GOP, about critical race theory, which has become a catch-all term for identity politics in education.

In New Mexico, hundreds of parents, teachers and grandparents weighed in for and against the proposed changes last fall. Officials heard public comments in thousands of letters and hundreds of appearances in an all-day Zoom forum.

Supporters backed a closer look at the history of Indigenous communities in the state, and more discussion of race and identity at an earlier age.

The final rule, published last month, rebutted some criticisms about identity and integrated a plea for including personal finance in the curriculum.

School districts will begin training teachers on the new standards next year and implement them in the classroom in the fall of 2023.

Its the states first overhaul of social studies standards since 2001.

The new standards change the way Native American histories are taught. Students will be more likely to study the states 23 tribes on their own terms and more in depth. In the past, that history was cursory, focusing on comparing and contrasting with European conquerors.

State education officials are also under pressure to make the K-12 school system more relevant to the 11% of students who are Native American, due in part to an ongoing lawsuit. A court ruled in 2018 that the state isnt meeting the educational needs of Indigenous kids.

Alisa Diehl, an education attorney at the New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty representing the plaintiffs, calls changes to the social studies standards a first step toward providing a public education system that takes students cultures, languages and life experiences into account, as required by our statutes and constitution.

Opponents of the new approach expressed fears that children would be labeled victims or oppressors based on their race.

Some commenters color-coded the entire proposed rule, identifying language that they saw as echoes of critical race theory, including such phrases as unequal power relations, privilege or systemic inequity, and requirements that students identify their group identity starting in kindergarten.

The agency also removed mentions of sexuality, communism, police brutality and gun violence following concerns raised by the public, said Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham spokeswoman Maddy Hayden.

The agency decided to keep the privilege, power and inequity language.

The response to those criticisms stated that: Critical race theory is suited for graduate school-level discussions, and is not contained in the standards.

At the heart of the debate is whether discussing differences in the classroom hardens social divisions or softens them.

Republicans in the state Legislature had proposed banning critical race theory. They also proposed replacing leadership at the education department, currently appointed by the governor, with an elected board. Both measures failed.

In a letter to state education officials, Republican leaders said they would advocate for districts to use wiggle room in the curriculum requirements to keep conservative textbooks and lesson plans. They said education officials ignored public opposition.

The department had no real intention of making significant changes to the proposed standards, which were clearly outside of the mainstream of New Mexicos values and traditions, the letter said.

The letter was signed by House Republican leaders, including Rebecca Dow, of Truth or Consequences. Dow is one of three members of her party fighting in a primary to take on the sitting governor, a Democrat.

Whether they fit all the definitions of critical race theory or not, the new standards appear designed to divide New Mexicans by race, ethnicity and economic status, said Paul Gessing, president of the libertarian think tank Rio Grande Foundation.

Authors of the changes say identity has become a more important and more visible aspect of society, and needs to be studied.

Its more like a deep exploration that there are identity differences that exist, and that everybody is not always going to think the same. But the level of respect for everybodys varying opinions is what we want to bring out in the classroom, said Irene Barry, an English teacher in Aztec.

Barry says the biggest changes in the standards are an incremental introduction to social identity from K-12, and the expansion of civics and geography into high school. The previous standards did not focus on identity, and wrapped up geography and civics in middle school.

PED leaders said removing the language advocated by Barry and other teachers would devalue their work, despite the many objections from the public voiced in comments.

In economics, the agency responded to public comments with sweeping changes, adding an entirely new section on personal finance, following a letter campaign backed by a local education policy think tank.

By fifth grade, students can be learning how to track spending and savings. In high school, standards include sections on understanding credit scores, the consequences of credit cards, and ways to build wealth with such tools as stocks, savings and real estate.

New Mexico now joins the 45 other states that include personal finance in their K-12 education standards, which is an important first step to tackling intergenerational poverty, said Abenicio Baldonado, education reform director for Think New Mexico, which promoted the letter campaign.

Baldonado is advocating for personal finance to be required for high school graduation.
WASHINGTON  The U.S. State Department says Russia has begun the process of expelling several more diplomats from the U.S. embassy in Moscow.

The department said it received a list of diplomats on Wednesday who have been declared persona non grata by the Russian foreign ministry. It didnt say how many diplomats were affected by the order, which generally results in the expulsion of those targeted within 72 hours.

The Russian foreign ministry summoned U.S. Ambassador to Russia John Sullivan on Monday to protest President Joe Bidens description of Russian leader Vladimir Putin as a war criminal over the invasion of Ukraine. After that meeting, Russia warned that it was close to severing diplomatic relations with the United States, which would be an unprecedented move.

The State Department called Wednesdays move Russias latest unhelpful and unproductive step in relations between the countries. It urged Russia to end its unjustified expulsions of U.S. diplomats and staff.

___

KEY DEVELOPMENTS IN THE RUSSIA-UKRAINE WAR:

 NATO estimates that 7,000 to 15,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in four weeks of fighting

 Ukraines president calls for a worldwide show of support on Thursday to mark one month since Russia invaded.

 The Biden administration has made a formal determination that Russian troops have committed war crimes in Ukraine

 Biden has embarked on a trip to Europe as Russias war in Ukraine bogs down

 Russian Olympic athletes who participated in a pro-Putin rally are facing a backlash

 Go to https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine for more coverage

___

OTHER DEVELOPMENTS:

LVIV, Ukraine  Russian troops who occupy the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson seized one of the countrys most prominent theater directors in a fascist manner and took him to an unknown location, Ukraines Culture Minister Oleksandr Tkachenko said.

Witnesses said nine Russian military vehicles pulled up to the home of Oleksandr Kniga early Wednesday and led him out. The Russians warned neighbors that if they came out of their homes, they would be killed, the witnesses said.

The whole world should know about this! Tkachenko said on Facebook.

Kniga, 62, is one of the most important and respected theater directors in Ukraine. He founded the international theater festival Melpomene of Tavria.

He was among many in Kherson who oppose the Russian occupation. On Monday, Russian troops used stun grenades and fired in the air to disperse a protest.

___

LVIV, Ukraine  Speaking on the eve of the NATO summit, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on the alliance to provide effective and unrestricted support to Ukraine, including any weapons the country needs to fend off the Russian invasion.

We ask that the alliance declare that it will fully assist Ukraine to win this war, clear our territory of the invaders and restore peace in Ukraine, he said late Wednesday during his nightly video address to the nation.

Zelenskyy will speak to the NATO summit by video, the presidents office said.

He appealed to Western countries to stay united in the face what he says are Russias efforts to lobby its interests with some partners to bring them over to its side.

We will see who is a friend, who is a partner and who has sold out and betrayed us, he said in an emotional speech. Together we should not allow Russia to break anyone in NATO, the EU or G-7, to break them and drag them to the side of war.

Zelenskyy noted that Ukrainian skies are still not closed to Russian aircraft and missiles and that Ukraine hasnt received the fighter jets or modern air-defense systems it requested. He said Ukraine also needs tanks and anti-ship systems.

It has been a month of defending ourselves from attempts to destroy us, wipe us off the face of the earth, he said. We have lasted six times longer than the enemy had planned  but the Russian troops are destroying our cities, killing civilians indiscriminately, raping women, kidnapping children, shooting refugees, capturing aid columns and looting.

___

LONDON  Britain will send thousands more missiles to Ukraines government as Prime Minister Boris Johnson urged Western allies to boost the supply of military aid to Ukraine.

Johnson is travelling to Brussels on Thursday for talks with NATO and leaders of the Group of Seven. He is expected to provide further details of the new British aid during the visit, including the donation of 6,000 more missiles comprising anti-tank and high-explosive weaponry.

The United Kingdom will work with our allies to step up military and economic support to Ukraine, strengthening their defenses as they turn the tide in this fight, Johnson said.

Britain has already sent more than 4,000 anti-tank weapons to Ukraine.

The U.K. government also says it is providing some 4 million pounds ($5.3 million) in emergency funding to the BBC World Service to counter disinformation in Russia and Ukraine.

___

LVIV, Ukraine  Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called on people around the world to come to your squares, your streets to stand with Ukraine and against the war.

He said late Wednesday in his nightly video address to his people that the war breaks my heart, the hearts of all Ukrainians and every free person on the planet. He called for people to visibly show their support for Ukraine starting from Thursday, exactly one month after Russia launched its invasion.

He said, Come from your offices, your homes, your schools and universities. Come in the name of peace. Come with Ukrainian symbols to support Ukraine, to support freedom, to support life.

Come to your squares, your streets. Make yourselves visible and heard. Say that people matter. Freedom matters. Peace matters. Ukraine matters.

Switching to Russian, Zelenskyy appealed to Russians to leave Russia so as not to give your tax money to the war. Tens of thousands of Russians already have fled Russia since the war began, fearing the intensifying crackdown at home.

___

A senior U.S. defense official said Wednesday that Russian ground forces appear to be digging in and setting up defensive positions between 15-20 kilometers (9-12 miles) outside Kyiv, as they continue to make little to no progress moving toward the city center.

The official said it appears the forces are no longer trying to advance into the city and, in some cases east of Kyiv, Ukrainian troops have been able to push Russian soldiers further away. The official said Russian forces had been 20-30 kilometers (12-19 miles) away to the east and northeast, and are now about 55 kilometers (34 miles) away.

The official said that, instead, Russian troops are exerting more energy and effort in the eastern Donbas region, specifically in Luhansk and Donetsk. The official said the U.S. is seeing Russia prioritize the fight there, in what could be an effort to cut off any Ukrainian troops in those areas and prevent them from moving west to defend other cities.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss military assessments.

The official said the U.S. has seen some activity from Russian ships in the Sea of Azov, including what appears to be efforts to send landing ships ashore with supplies, including vehicles.

Weapons and other security assistance from the U.S. continues to move into Ukraine. The official said that the final shipments from the $350 million package approved by the U.S. will be arriving in Ukraine in the next day or so, and the first shipments from the latest $800 million package will start arriving soon.

___

AP writer Lolita C. Bandor in Washington contributed to this report.

___

A senior Russian official says the countrys nuclear arsenal should help deter the West from intervening in the war in Ukraine.

Dmitry Rogozin, the head of the state corporation Roscosmos, noted in televised remarks Wednesday that the Russian nuclear stockpiles include tactical nuclear weapons along with the nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Rogozin pointed at Russian President Vladimir Putins warning to other countries not to meddle with the Russian action in Ukraine. The Russian Federation is capable of physically destroying any aggressor or any aggressor group within minutes at any distance, Rogozin said.

Putin has warned the West that an attempt to introduce a no-fly zone over Ukraine will draw it into a conflict with Russia. Rogozin in his Wednesdays comments didnt elaborate on what specific action by the West would be seen as meddling in the conflict.

Rogozins statement comes amid Western fears that Russia could use battlefield nuclear weapons against Ukraine amid the stalled Russian offensive. U.S. officials have long warned that Russias military doctrine envisages an escalate to deescalate option of using battlefield nuclear weapons to force the enemy to back down in a situation when Russian forces face an imminent defeat in a conventional conflict. Moscow has denied having such designs.

___

LVIV, Ukraine  A rush to purchase guns and train with them continued in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv on Wednesday.

Among the people lined up at a gun range was Ihor Oprysk, who said he hadnt fired a gun since serving in the Soviet army.

I bought a gun to see how it feels, Oprysk said. To (know how to) shoot nowadays is very important. You need to know about everything.

Gun shop owner Zakhar Sluzhalyy said he had 700 kinds of weapons for sale before the Russian invasion and was now down to 40. Supply chain problems have made it difficult to restock the shop with guns.

The gun (sales) boom started three or four weeks before the war began, Sluzhalyy said.

All guns are best-sellers now, he said as an $800 Kalashnikov rifle adapted for civilian use sat on a counter in front of him.

The war has prompted officials to streamline the monthlong permitting process for gun purchases to two days, he said.

___

ISACCEA, Romania  Refugees crossed the Danube River separating Ukraine and Romania by ferry on Wednesday.

A woman named Anastasia arrived in the small town of Isaccea, Romania, and said she was from Odesa. She said Russian ships had shelled the city from the Black Sea and that she and her family were headed to Constanta, a city on the Black Sea in southeastern Romania.

Its said to be a good city, the sea is not far away, Anastasia said. It feels almost like at home near the Black Sea. Well come back home after the war, of course. We really want to come back. We didnt want to leave, but we have little kids and we have to think about their safety.

___

KYIV, Ukraine  A Russian journalist has been killed by shelling in Kyiv on a reporting assignment.

The independent Russian news outlet The Insider said that Oksana Baulina was killed Wednesday when she was documenting the damage of a Russian shelling of the Podil district of the capital and came under a new strike. It said a civilian was also killed and two people who were accompanying Baulina were wounded and hospitalized.

The Insider said that Baulina had previously worked for the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalnys Anti-Corruption Foundation until she was forced to leave Russia after the organization was designated extremist by the authorities. It said it will continue to cover the war in Ukraine, including such Russian war crimes as indiscriminate shelling of residential areas killing civilians and journalists.

___

BRUSSELS  On the eve of a summit meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden, European Union nations signed off on another 500 million euros ($550 million) in military aid for Ukraine to help stave off the Russian onslaught on its territory.

EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell called the doubling of the EUs military aid since the Feb. 24 beginning of the war another sign of the EUs support to the Ukrainian armed forces to defend their territory and their population.

Borrell had already announced the additional injection of military aid at a March 11 summit in Versailles, but the proposal still had to go through the EUs approval process.

Days after the start of the war, the EU agreed to spend 500 million euros on military supplies for Ukrainian forces in an unprecedented step of collectively supplying weapons to a country under attack.

___

BERLIN  German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has spoken by telephone with Russian President Vladimir Putin and inquired about the current status of efforts by Russia and Ukraine to find a diplomatic solution.

Government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit said in a statement Wednesday night that the chancellor urged Putin to achieve a cease-fire and an improvement of the humanitarian situation in Ukraine as quickly as possible.

After his conversation with Putin, Scholz spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and asked about his assessment of the current situation and the negotiation process. Scholz and Zelenskyy agreed to remain in close contact.

___

WARSAW, Poland  Dozens of orphans and their caregivers from Ukraine who were delayed in Poland have finally boarded a plane for the U.K., where they are being given refuge due to the Russian invasion.

Some 50 youngsters from orphanages in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro were due to fly to London on Monday before traveling on to Scotland. But they were forced to wait in a hotel due to missing paperwork from Ukraine.

Their journey was organized by Scottish charity Dnipro Kids, set up in 2005 by supporters of Hibernian Football Club in the Scottish capital, Edinburgh.

They were flown late Wednesday to London by Virgin Atlantic, which said on Twitter that it operated a special relief flight to take over 50 Ukrainian orphans and eight caretakers away from the conflict in Ukraine.

The effort to offer them temporary refugee status until the war is over has the support of the British government.

___

WASHINGTON  President Joe Bidens top national security adviser says Biden and other world leaders will agree on steps to coordinate enforcement of crippling economic sanctions they have imposed on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.

Biden and other world leaders are set to hold a series of urgent meetings Thursday in Brussels on the month-old war.

The adviser, Jake Sullivan, says additional sanctions against Russian oligarchs and political figures will be announced. He says helping European countries reduce dependence on Russian energy will be a substantial topic of conversation. Announcements on that are expected Friday.

Sullivan says the United States is looking for ways to surge supplies of liquified natural gas to Europe to help make up for supply disruptions. The European Union imports nearly all of the natural gas needed to generate electricity, heat homes and supply industry, with Russia supplying nearly half of EU gas and a quarter of its oil

Sullivan, who is accompanying Biden, spoke to reporters Wednesday aboard Air Force One en route to Brussels.

___

KYIV, Ukraine  Air raid sirens wailed over the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv at dusk on Wednesday as the city remained under attack from Russian forces.

Barrages of shelling and loud gunfire rocked the city Wednesday, striking a shopping mall and high-rise buildings in the districts of Sviatoshynskyi and Shevchenkivskyi.

Fires from shelling injured four residents, city officials said.

Mayor Vitali Klitschko said at least 264 civilians have been killed in the capital since war broke out.

___

ROME  Italian Premier Mario Draghi says Italy is setting up procedures to accept Russian scientists who want to leave their homeland.

Some 60,000 people fleeing war in Ukraine have arrived in Italy over the last weeks.

The Italian government has allocated funds to help with housing and integration programs for those who have fled due to the war, but Draghi stressed in remarks in the Italian Senate on Wednesday evening that the special assistance doesnt only apply to Ukrainian citizens.

There are refugees who are scientists or university professors, who could come to Italy and could benefit by scholarships, by funds and financing for research, Draghi said.

Among these are Russian scientists who are asking to get out. We must accept them, and I asked the (interior) minister to let them know that they are welcome and to even set up a telephone number they can call so the procedures to welcome these scientists can be set in motion, the premier said.

Draghi didnt provide any number of how many such Russians might pursue the possibility.

___

ODESA, Ukraine  Dozens of volunteers filled sandbags and piled them on the back of trucks at a beach in the Black Sea port city of Odesa on Wednesday. Volunteers have been at the beach filling sandbags since the war began to build barricades around the city.

Merchant sea captain Sivak Vitaliy, 47, carried sandbags over each shoulder and said with a smile, We win.

The father of three daughters, Vitaliy said he had gathered clothes and other items from his apartment to donate to the war effort. With no money or anything else of value to give, he came to the beach Wednesday after learning of the volunteer effort there.

Because they (Ukrainian army) are in their own land, they will not permit anybody to come and take their land and take their lives, Vitaliy said. No matter how bad the situation is in Mariupol, Kharkiv, it doesnt matter. We will win.

___

WASHINGTON  U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken says the Biden administration has made a formal determination that Russian troops have committed war crimes in Ukraine.

Blinken said the assessment was based on a careful review of public and intelligence sources since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine last month.

Americas top diplomat said the United States would share that information with allies, partners and international institutions tasked with investigating allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Blinken made the announcement Wednesday in a statement released as he was traveling to Brussels with President Joe Biden for an emergency summit of NATO leaders.

___

LONDON  Russian Olympic athletes who participated in a rally supporting President Vladimir Putin and the invasion of Ukraine are facing a backlash, with one losing a sponsorship deal and facing a disciplinary investigation.

Medalists from cross-country skiing, gymnastics, figure skating and swimming gathered on stage at the Luzhniki Stadium on Friday as part of the concert and entertainment program around Putins speech.

Olympic champion swimmer Evgeny Rylov is under investigation from the sports governing body, known as FINA, for attending the event.

Rylov also lost his endorsement deal with swimwear manufacturer Speedo because of his involvement in the pro-Putin rally.

Most of the athletes, including Rylov, were pictured wearing jackets with a Z on the chest at the rally. The letter isnt part of the Russian alphabet but has become a symbol of support for Russian troops after it was used as a marker on Russian armored vehicles operating in Ukraine.

Other Olympic medalists athletes in attendance included figure skaters Victoria Sinitsina, Nikita Katsalapov, Evgenia Tarasova and Vladimir Morozov; cross-country skier Alexander Bolshunov; and rhythmic gymnastic twin sisters Dina and Arina Averina.

___

PARIS  Ukrainian refugees lined up outside a welcome center in Paris on Wednesday thats providing food and temporary shelter to people as some await transfer to permanent shelters in Brittany in northwestern France.

The center is run jointly by Paris authorities and several French NGOs. French Prime Minister Jean Castex said on Wednesday that 26,000 Ukrainian refugees had arrived in the country since Feb. 24. While some have remained in France, others have traveled to Spain, Portugal and the United Kingdom, Castex said.

European Union member countries have granted Ukrainians a six-month temporary protection visa, renewable up to a maximum of three years. This Temporary Protection Directive, implemented for the first time in the EU, includes a residence permit, access to the labor market and housing, medical assistance, and access to education for children.

Hayko, a 30-year-old woman from Lviv, arrived in Paris with her friend, Tanja, 31, and their three children after a lengthy trip from Ukraine through Moldova and Romania. They said they left Lviv a few days after the Russian invasion began. They plan to live for now with Tanjas sister-in-law, who lives in Paris.

I have a 7-year-old son, Hayko said. My husband is in Ukraine. He is protecting our country. We dont want to stay here for the rest of our lives. I hope it will only be for a short period of time.

___

UNITED NATIONS  Ukraines U.N ambassador is urging all nations that stand against Russias invasion to vote for a U.N. resolution on the humanitarian consequences of its aggression, saying this will send a powerful message aimed at helping people caught in the conflict and ending Moscows military action.

Russias U.N. envoy countered that the U.N. General Assembly, which is considering the resolution, is just another political anti-Russian show, set this time in an allegedly humanitarian context and urged its 193 member nations to vote against it and support a rival South African draft resolution that focuses solely on humanitarian issues with no political assessment.

Ukraines Sergiy Kyslytsya and Russias Vassily Nebenzia spoke at the start of Wednesdays emergency special session of the General Assembly to consider the rival resolutions on the humanitarian impact of the war, which will mark its one-month anniversary on Thursday. Russia has also called for a vote later Wednesday in the U.N. Security Council on its own humanitarian resolution, which has been widely criticized for not referring to its invasion of Ukraine.

Kyslytsya said the Ukraine-backed assembly resolution, drafted by two dozen diplomats from all parts of the world and co-sponsored by nearly 100 countries, focuses on the urgent need to elevate the humanitarian suffering on the ground and immediate cessation of hostilities by the Russian Federation.

Nebenzia warned that adoption of that resolution will make a resolution to the situation in Ukraine more difficult. Thats because it will likely embolden Ukrainian negotiators and nudge them to maintaining the current unrealistic position, which is not related to the situation on the ground, nor to the need to tackle the root causes of Russias military action, he said.

___

WASHINGTON  A senior NATO military officer says the alliance estimates that Russia has suffered between 30,000 and 40,000 battlefield casualties in Ukraine through the first month of the war, including between 7,000 and 15,000 killed. It is NATOs first public estimate of Russian casualties since the war started Feb. 24.

The military officer, speaking on condition of anonymity under ground rules set by NATO, said the estimate of the number killed is based on a combination of information from the Ukrainian government, indications from Russia, and open-source information.

The U.S. government has largely declined to provide public estimates of Russian or Ukrainian casualties, saying available information is of questionable reliability.

The NATO military officer, in a briefing from the alliances military headquarters in Belgium on Wednesday, said the estimate of 30,000 to 40,000 Russian casualties is derived from what he called a standard calculation that in war an army suffers three wounded soldiers for every soldier killed. The casualties include killed in action and wounded in action, as well as those taken prisoner or missing in action, the officer said.

___

Associated Press Writer Robert Burns in Washington contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON  A senior NATO military officer says the alliance estimates that Russia has suffered between 30,000 and 40,000 battlefield casualties in Ukraine through the first month of the war, including between 7,000 and 15,000 killed. It is NATOs first public estimate of Russian casualties since the war started Feb. 24.

The military officer, speaking on condition of anonymity under ground rules set by NATO, said the estimate of the number killed is based on a combination of information from the Ukrainian government, indications from Russia, and open-source information.

The U.S. government has largely declined to provide public estimates of Russian or Ukrainian casualties, saying available information is of questionable reliability.

The NATO military officer, in a briefing from the alliances military headquarters in Belgium on Wednesday, said the estimate of 30,000 to 40,000 Russian casualties is derived from what he called a standard calculation that in war an army suffers three wounded soldiers for every soldier killed. The casualties include killed in action and wounded in action, as well as those taken prisoner or missing in action, the officer said.

___

Associated Press Writer Robert Burns in Washington contributed to this report.

___

KEY DEVELOPMENTS IN THE RUSSIA-UKRAINE WAR:

 Ukraine is mourning its dead but is far from beaten

 Biden starts a trip to Europe as Russias war in Ukraine bogs down, challenges grow

 Amid Russias new crackdowns, small signs of defiance emerge

 A new fund directs its support to Ukraines long-term needs

 Security Council taking up Russian resolution on Ukraine crisis as Assembly hears rival resolutions

 Spanish ties provide safe havens for Ukrainian refugees

 Go to https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine for more coverage

___

OTHER DEVELOPMENTS:

BRUSSELS  The head of the European Unions executive arm says she will discuss with President Joe Biden the possibility to secure extra deliveries of liquefied natural gas from the U.S. for the 27-nation bloc.

Speaking at the European Parliament ahead of Bidens visit to Europe, Ursula von der Leyen said she will discuss with him how to prioritize LNG deliveries from the United States to the European Union in the coming months.

The EU imports 90% of the natural gas used to generate electricity, heat homes and supply industry, with Russia supplying almost 40% of EU gas and a quarter of its oil.

The bloc is looking at ways to end its dependence on Russian gas by diversifying suppliers. Von der Leyen said the EU is aiming at having a commitment for additional supplies from the U.S. for the next two winters.

___

PARIS  Ukraines President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called on French multinationals based in Russia to leave Russia and stop indirectly supporting the war against Ukraine.

In a 20-minute virtual speech to the French parliament, the wartime leader mentioned several French companies such as carmaker Renault, supermarket chain Auchan and home improvement giant Leroy Merlin. He said they must stop being sponsors of Russias war machine.

The companies did not have any immediate comment. Zelenskyy used the address to French MPs to rally further European support for his war-torn countrys efforts to stave off Russian aggression. He called on France for assistance with arms, equipment and more planes so that liberty does not slip away, according to a French translation of the 20-minute speech.

___

BERLIN  Environmental campaigners staged a protest early Wednesday off Germanys Baltic coast against oil imports from Russia.

Activists from the group Greenpeace painted the words oil fuels war in large letters onto the side of the oil tanker Stamos as it passed the island of Fehmarn.

German news agency dpa reported that the tanker was carrying 100,000 tons of crude oil from the Russian port of Ust-Luga to Rotterdam.

Greenpeace has called on Germany and other European countries to cease buying fossil fuels from Russia, payments for which the group says help finance the war in Ukraine.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has repeatedly dismissed calls to boycott Russian energy supplies, saying it would cause significant damage to Germanys economy.

___

PARIS  Ukraines President Volodymyr Zelenskyy thanked French President Emmanuel Macron for his true leadership over the war during a virtual address from Kyiv to the French parliament Wednesday.

Zelenskyy used the address to French MPs via video link to rally further European support for his war-torn countrys efforts to stave off Russian aggression. He called on France for assistance with arms, equipment and more planes so that liberty does not slip away, according to a French translation of the 20-minute speech.

Using often-emotive language, the Ukrainian leader told French lawmakers you know who the guilty one is that buries his head in the sand.

The speech comes one day after French President Emmanuel Macron talked with both Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin about the terms of a potential cease-fire.

Though they reached no agreement, according to the French presidency, Macron remains convinced of the need to continue his efforts and he stands alongside Ukraine.

Zelenskyy has been a regular fixture in recent weeks in international lawmaking chambers, having spoken Japans parliament earlier Wednesday, and previously to the US Congress and the German Parliament, to harness international help.

___

The Kremlin says President Vladimir Putins envoy for liaison with international organizations has resigned.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying that Anatoly Chubais had submitted his resignation.

Peskov wouldnt say if Chubais has left the country, saying its his private business.

Chubais, the architect of Russias post-Soviet privatization campaign, has served at a variety of top official jobs during the past three decades.

His latest job envisaged contacts with international organizations to pursue the goals of sustainable development  a broad portfolio that allowed him to maintain contacts with top foreign officials and organizations.

After Russia began its last month, Chubais posted a photo of Boris Nemtsov, a leading Russian opposition figure who was shot dead near the Kremlin in 2015. Even without a caption, it was seen as a powerful statement from a Moscow insider.

Chubais resignation appears to reflect growing divisions among top Russian officials over the military operation in Ukraine.

___

LIMA, Peru  A top Ukrainian cyber defense official says a steady stream of Russian cyberattacks continues, much of it intending to disrupt communications, with refugee assistance and other humanitarian organizations being targeted.

Victor Zhora, deputy chair of Ukraines special communications service, told reporters in an online news conference Wednesday that state-backed Russian hackers were in some cases using phishing campaigns to try to get access to accounting and other systems of European charities helping Ukrainian refugees.

Zhora said hackers financed and basically owned by the Russian federation were also attacking state and private organizations distributing humanitarian supplies, moving with an alacrity characteristic of a military.

He did not specify the humanitarian targets by name. The United Nations says more than 3.5 million people have fled Ukraine since Russia attacked on Feb. 24.

Zhora said that despite repeated efforts by the Russian military to disrupt Ukrainian communications  with bombs, missiles and cyberattacks  very few regions of the country lack connectivity.

In hard-hit regions in particular where fixed telecoms links have been severed, Zhora said uplinks donated by Elon Musks Starlink satellite internet service have been providing priceless assistance.

___

MEDYKA, Poland  A Ukrainian refugee described the horrid conditions in the eastern city of Kharkiv after crossing the border at Medyka, Poland, on Wednesday.

The situation in Kharkiv is terrible, said Natalia Savchenko, 37. People are being killed day and night. They are shooting with everything they have. There is almost no one left in Kharkiv. There is no electricity, water. The city is almost empty. They do not supply children with medicine and food. They are just killing people.

Savchenko said the military helped her escape by train.

It is horrible, so horrible, she said. We left, but in the district where we lived, my grandmother stayed, my mum and my husband. Today our district was bombed, Shevchenkivsky district. We are running away.

___

BRUSSELS  NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg says the military organization is setting up new multinational battlegroups in eastern Europe to deter Russia from launching an attack on any of its members.

The battlegroups, which usually number between 1,000-1,500 troops, will be set up in Hungary, Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria. Stoltenberg says they will remain in place as long as necessary.

Speaking Wednesday on the eve of a summit of NATO leaders, Stoltenberg said that Russias war on Ukraine means a new normal for our security and NATO has to respond to that new reality.

Stoltenberg says the leaders are likely to agree to send more assistance to Ukraine, including equipment to help Ukraine protect against chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threats.

NATOs 30 allies are worried about Russian rhetoric and fears that Moscow might want to create a pretext to use chemical weapons in Ukraine.

Stoltenberg says that any use of chemical weapons would totally change the nature of the conflict, and would have far-reaching consequences for Russia. He declined to elaborate.

___

PRZEMYSL, Poland  Ukrainian refugees continued to arrive at the train station in the border city of Przemysl, Poland, on Wednesday.

Kateryna Mytkevich, 39, arrived from Chernihiv in northern Ukraine.

We endured (the fighting), trapped at home for three weeks, Mytkevich said. We hoped the war would pass us by. But then the heavy artillery shifted to our city and bombs began to fall. Two schools in the city center were blown up, there were small children there. Its so difficult. I dont understand why we have such a curse.

Wiping tears from her face, Mytkevich added, I had to flee because everything was destroyed. There was no gas, no electricity, no water in the city. Our children are dying. My son had to stay in Chernihiv, I could only take my daughter with me. It hurts a lot. Now we have nowhere to go, our whole neighborhood is destroyed. Everything is completely destroyed.

Volodymr Fedorovych, 77, also fled Chernihiv.

There was nothing, there wasnt even bread, Fedorovych said. Bread was brought in every three days. One day I was standing in line for bread, but then decided to go get some tea. I had just walked away when they dropped the bomb (on people in line). Apparently it was a helicopter, we didnt even hear the whistle (of the bomb falling). Sixteen people died and 47 were taken by ambulance, some of them without arms and legs. Horrible. There were 100 people in that queue.

___

BERLIN  A senior German official says the countrys intelligence agencies have joined the hunt for assets belonging to Russian oligarchs who have been slapped with international sanctions.

The official, who briefed journalists on condition of anonymity, said Wednesday authorities at several levels are tasked with determining which assets can be frozen in Germany.

He said this includes the federal customs agency and intelligence agencies, without elaborating.

___

Associated Press Writer Frank Jordans in Berlin contributed to this report.

___

BRATISLAVA, Slovakia  Slovakias Foreign Minister Ivan Korcok says his countrys diplomats are returning to Ukraine to open an embassy in the western town of Uzhorod.

Korcok has called the move an important step for the diplomatic service.

Uzhorod is located near the border with Slovakia.

He said that in addition to diplomatic activities, the diplomats will be helping at the border where thousands of Ukrainian refugees arrive every day and report about the situation in Ukraine.

Slovakias closed the embassy in Kyiv on March 4 due to Russias invasion of Ukraine.

The Czech Republic has also said it is preparing to open an embassy in Uzhorod, which has not been targeted by the Russian troops.

___

KYIV, Ukraine  The mayor of Kyiv says Russian forces have killed 264 civilians, including four children, in the Ukraine capital since the war started last month.

Mayor Vitali Klitschko said Wednesday that battles were being waged in the area of Liutizh, a village 30 kilometers (about 20 miles) north of Kyiv and that Ukrainian forces have wrested back control of areas to the north-west and the north-east of the city, including most of Irpin.

He said the western town of Makariv has also been taken back by Ukranian troops.

Klitschko spoke to reporters in the capital Kyiv in a central park overlooking the city. Explosions and gunfire could be heard in the background as he spoke.

___

WASHINGTON  The U.S. State Department says a U.S. Embassy official has visited with WNBA star Brittney Griner, who remains detained near Moscow, to check on her condition.

State Department spokesperson Ned Price told CNN on Wednesday that the official found Griner to be in good condition. Price did not identify the official who had been granted consular access to Griner, something the United States had been demanding.

Griner was detained after arriving at a Moscow airport, reportedly in mid-February, after Russian authorities said a search of her luggage revealed vape cartridges that allegedly contained oil derived from cannabis, which could carry a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.

Russian state news agency Tass reported last week that a court had extended Griners pretrial detention to May 19.

Price says the U.S. will do everything we can to see that she is treated fairly throughout this ordeal.

A member of a Russian state-backed prison monitoring group visited with Griner last week at the pretrial detention facility outside Moscow where shes being held and said the Phoenix Mercury star was faring well behind bars.

___

PARIS  In his latest address to a foreign parliament, Ukraines President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is to speak to French lawmakers on Wednesday.

The address, via video link from his office in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, comes one day after French President Emmanuel Macron talked with both Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin about the terms of a potential cease-fire.

Though they reached no agreement, according to the French presidency, Macron remains convinced of the need to continue his efforts and he stands alongside Ukraine.

Zelenskyy hrecently addressed the U.S. Congress and the German and Japanese parliaments, among others, to harness international help.

___

BELGRADE, Serbia  Serbias pro-Russian president is accusing the West of double standards, comparing Moscows attacks against Ukraine with the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999.

The Western military alliance launched a 78-day air war against Serbia in March 1999 to stop a bloody crackdown by Serbias armed forces on majority ethnic Albanians in Kosovo who were seeking independence.

The Serbian troops were forced to leave the former province which declared independence in 2008, something both Belgrade and Moscow do not recognize.

The NATO bombing is a key argument used by Serbian nationalists to justify and support the current Russian attacks against Ukraine.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said that if the West is so brave and moral, why dont you carry out an aggression against Russia  why dont you (militarily) protect Ukraine? he said on state-controlled Pink TV.

Morality is an important category in politics, but you cant stick to it one day and forget about it the next.

Although formally seeking European Union membership, Serbia under Vucic has established close political and military ties with the Kremlin.

Serbia voted in favor of a U.N. General Assembly resolution condemning the invasion of Ukraine but is the only European nation that has refused to join international sanctions against the Kremlin.

___

WASHINGTON  U.S. President Joe Biden has left the White House for a four-day trip to Europe, where he will meet with key allies to discuss Russias invasion of Ukraine.

As he departed Wednesday, Biden told reporters the possibility that Russia could use chemical weapons in the Ukraine war is a real threat.

He said he would say more on the subject directly to the leaders he was meeting with Thursday.

There are fears that Russia could use chemical or nuclear weapons as its invasion stalls amid logistical problems and fierce Ukrainian resistance.

Bidens first stop is Brussels, where hell attend a hastily arranged emergency NATO summit. He will also participate in meetings of the European Union and the Group of Seven, which includes the worlds richest democracies.

Hell travel to Warsaw on Friday to meet Polish officials.

___

LVIV, Ukraine  Russian ally Belarus says it is expelling Ukrainian diplomats and closing a consulate.

Belarusian Foreign Ministry spokesman Anatoly Glaz didnt specify Wednesday how many diplomats would have to leave but said a maximum of five could remain.

Glaz said, This step is aimed at ending the undiplomatic activities of several staff of the Ukrainian foreign missions.

Belarus has allowed Russia to use its territory as a staging area for its forces invading Ukraine.

The announcement comes on the same day as Poland expelled Russian diplomats.

___

VATICAN CITY  Pope Francis has again prayed for peace in Ukraine and added a personal note to explain his aversion to war: He said his Italian grandfather, a World War I veteran, taught him to hate war in all its forms.

Francis prayed for the victims of Russias invasion in Ukraine, including the many soldiers who fell on both sides, during his weekly general audience Wednesday. He urged government leaders to understand that buying and producing weapons is not the solution.

He offered a personal testimony, saying he learned hatred and anger toward war from his grandfather who fought in northern Italy during World War I and conveyed his experiences to his grandson.

Francis on Friday is expected to preside over a special prayer for peace by consecrating both Ukraine and Russia to the Virgin Mary. The Vatican on Wednesday released translations of the consecration prayer in 30 languages in hopes that the faithful around the world will join him.

___

BRUSSELS  The European Commission has announced measures to help European Union countries provide the millions of refugees fleeing Russias invasion of Ukraine with access education, health care, accommodation and work.

The United Nations says more than 3.5 million people  mainly women and children  have fled Ukraine in the four weeks since Russian tanks rolled across the border and Moscow began bombarding towns and cities.

European Commission Vice President Margaritis Schinas said Wednesday the new raft of measures aims to build on a Temporary Protection Directive issued earlier this month and on initiatives happening across Europe to welcome refugees.

The protection system, established in 2001 in response to the fallout from the 1990s Balkan wars but never previously used, streamlines entry procedures for Ukrainians arriving in the EU and outlines entitlements such as employment and housing.

Wednesdays announcement provides support for EU countries in meeting those commitments.

___

ROME  Italian Premier Mario Draghi says the European Union must engage with China to make sure it is working actively to mediate peace in Ukraine and does not show any support for Moscows invasion of its neighbor.

Draghi told Parliament on Wednesday that the EU summit with China on April 1 must underline the blocs expectations that Beijing will be a constructive and authoritative player for peace.

Draghi said: Its fundamental that the EU is compact in keeping open spaces for dialogue with Beijing so that it contributes in a constructive way to the international mediation effort.

He added: We must repeat our expectations that Beijing abstains from actions supporting Moscow and participates actively and authoritatively in the peace effort.

___

MOSCOW  The Russian Central Bank says it is reopening trading on the Moscow stock exchange for the first time since it was closed nearly a month ago.

Trading will resume Thursday but only for 33 stocks of large companies listed on the IMOEX index. There will be a ban on short-selling.

The exchange resumed trading in government debt earlier this week.

__

LVIV, Ukraine  Ukraines president is urging Japan and other Asian countries to step up sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.

In an address by video link to Japans parliament on Wednesday, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on Japan to place a national embargo on trade with Russia. He also asked Japanese companies to pull out of the Russian market.

I call on Asian states and your partners to unite their efforts so that Russia seeks peace and stops the tsunami of its brutal invasion of our state, Zelenskyy said in the address.

He told the Japanese lawmakers that over the past 28 days, thousands of people, including 121 children were killed in Ukraine and about nine million were forced to leave their homes.

Our people cannot even adequately bury their murdered relatives, friends and neighbors. They have to be buried right in the yards of destroyed buildings, next to the roads, Zelenskyy said.

___

WARSAW, Poland  Polands Internal Security Agency says it is expelling 45 Russian intelligence officers using diplomatic status as cover to stay in country.

The agency said Wednesday it is asking the Foreign Ministry to urgently expel the Russians, describing them as a danger to Polands security.

The agency also said it detained a Polish citizen on suspicion of espionage on behalf of the Russian secret services. The suspect worked in Warsaws registry office and had access to city archives.

Given the nature of documents kept by those units, the activity of the suspect posed a threat to both the internal and external security of Poland, the agency said in a statement.

___

BERLIN  Four environmental think tanks say the European Union can stop its imports of Russian gas by 2025, allowing the bloc to end its dependence in the medium term on a key energy source thats been called into question amid the war in Ukraine.

A report published Wednesday by Ember, E3G, the Regulatory Assistance Project and Bellona concludes that ramping up solar and wind power, reducing demand and electrification can replace two-thirds of Russian gas imports within three years.

It suggests that the remaining shortfall can be met through existing gas infrastructure, without the need to build new terminals for LNG imports that some countries are now eyeing.
WASHINGTON  Its not just Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson who is being scrutinized. Senators are also being watched at this milestone moment in history considering the first Black woman for the high court.

Some senators have been overcome with joy, as Cory Booker of New Jersey described the swell of emotion he felt over the potential to confirm a judge who would help the court look more like America.

Others, led by Sens. Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, quizzed the federal judge about her views on issues of race and crime, amplifying election year grievances and a backlash over changing culture.

Jackson endured a third day at the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, a tense, 10-plus hour session providing a vivid portrait of the nations promise, but also its enduring racial challenges.

At one point, Jackson listened, tears rolling down her cheek, as Booker spoke of all that brought her to this: Youre here.

Here are some takeaways from Day Three of the weeklong confirmation hearings.

IN DEFENSE OF PUBLIC DEFENDERS

Jackson is the first federal public defender to be nominated to the Supreme Court and her efforts representing those accused of crimes, alongside her work as a federal judge, have provided a lengthy record of difficult cases for senators to review.

Republicans have particularly focused on the emotional and disputed debate over the judges sentences for child pornography offenders to portray her as soft on crime. Critics say she brings too much empathy to the law.

Under questions from Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia, Jackson explained that prior to the courts 1963 ruling in Gideon v. Wainwright, people who were accused of crimes but couldnt afford lawyers were not guaranteed the right to legal representation.

Everybody who is accused of criminal behavior now has the right to an attorney, she said.

And thats very important.

Jacksons record is being scrutinized much the way the work of the first Black nominee to the court, Thurgood Marshall, the storied civil rights attorney, was probed for representing criminal defendants a half a century ago.

Democrats argue that Jackson, who described her own familys work in public service as police officers, is backed by the Fraternal Order of Police, the large law enforcement organization.

JUDGES CANT MAKE LAW

Jackson has presented herself a judge who relies on method, not judicial philosophy, to remain neutral as she works to stay in my lane as a judge rather than a public policy-maker.

She expanded on that view Wednesday reminding senators that the Constitution gives Congress the power to make laws and the courts the power to interpret them.

Judges cant make law; judges shouldnt be policy makers, she told the senators.

Republicans have tried to portray Jackson as a potentially activist justice, a judge who has shown empathy for defendants and cases that they argue goes too far for a position on the high court, which is now tilted 6-3 toward conservatives.

Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said, It seems as though youre a very kind person, and that theres at least a level of empathy that enters into your treatment of a defendant that some could view as maybe beyond what some of us would be comfortable with.

In a nod to her views, Jackson disclosed that, if confirmed, she would recuse herself from hearing an affirmative action case at Harvard University, her alma mater, where she now serves on Harvards Board of Overseers.

Thats my plan, she told senators.

REVIEWING THE RECORD

Senators on the Republican side are repeatedly returning to issues of race and crime, focusing on the child pornography cases that the judge herself has said are among the most difficult of her career  some that still give her nightmares.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., picked up the arguments anew, arguing that Jackson as a judge should have imposed tougher sentences on child porn defendants rather than applying other deterrents, despite fact checkers and other experts who have said the terms Jackson handed down are within norms of federal guidelines.

Put their a in jail, Graham said.

Cruz in one tense moment demanded to know why Jackson handed down lighter sentences in a series of cases he had displayed on a chart than the government prosecutors or guidelines recommended.

The chairman Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., gaveled, saying the senators time had expired.

You can bang it as long as you want, Cruz said to the chairman.

Jackson had said that no single one sentence could stand in for all the sentences she has handed down in nearly a decade on the bench, and that she weighs all aspects of the case before her.

Ive said what Im going to say about these cases, she said.

Senators on the Republican side have signed onto a letter demanding files of her cases, some confidential, insisting the panel probes deeper into Jacksons decision making. Durbin dismissed the request as unprecedented, a fishing expedition he will not allow.

JOY AND BITTERSWEET TEARS

Jackson is making history as the first Black woman nominated for the court, which once upheld racial segregation in America and for 233 years has been filled mainly with white men.

Democrats have the potential with their slim majority in the 50-50 Senate to confirm Jackson as President Joe Bidens choice to replace retiring Justice Stephen Breyer even if all Republicans line up opposed. Her nomination is on track for a vote by Easter.

Late in the day, Booker marked a moment saying he refused to let detractors take away his joy.

You have sat with grit and grace, he told her, as opponents hit a new low twisting her record.

Jacksons face scrunched up as the senator talked about her family, her work, her accomplishments. As he spoke, she pulled out a tissue, and wiped her eye.

You, Booker said, are a great American.

If confirmed, Jackson would also become the sixth female justice in the courts history and the fourth among the nine members of the current court.
DENVER  The Outdoor Retailer trade show is moving back to Salt Lake City from Denver next year despite threats from an environmental group and big-name recreation companies of a boycott, the events organizer announced Wednesday.

Critics of holding the event in Utah say the states politicians oppose efforts to protect national monuments and public lands.

But Emerald X, the publicly traded company that owns the biannual show, told stakeholders in a letter announcing the move that it can better promote the outdoor recreation industry and fight for environmental protections from its longstanding base in Utah  where the show was held for decades before moving to Denver in 2018.

Salt Lake City is our hometown, and were going back with a commitment to effecting meaningful change, the company said. In reality, leaving after 2017 has not brought the change we had hoped for, so we will push back, not pull back. We firmly believe that staying engaged and collectively contributing to the ongoing discussion, no matter how difficult, is far more constructive.

This years June event will still be held in Denver ahead of the shows winter 2023 event in Salt Lake City.

Show organizers came under pressure in February when The Conservation Alliance and two dozen outdoor recreation companies  including Patagonia, REI and The North Face  threatened to boycott the event if it was moved back to Salt Lake City despite what they described as widespread industry objections.

Jeff Davis, group vice president for Emerald X, said in an interview with The Associated Press that the company hopes to convince skeptical participants to stick with the show.

Emerald X consulted with hundreds of firms and exhibitors and considered multiple locations, including staying in Denver. An overriding majority of outdoor retailers wanted the event moved back to Utah, he said.

Weve talked to all the brands, and while we cannot speak for all the brands, our tent is open, Davis said. We want as many participants as possible to contribute to what we believe is a positive change.

The dispute over the events location has simmered since 2017, when Utah lawmakers asked then-President Donald Trump to repeal the newly designated Bears Ears National Monument in southeastern Utah. Thirty outdoor retail companies objected, and the Outdoor Retailer show announced it would move from its longtime home in Salt Lake City to Denver.

Later that year, Trump reduced the size of Bears Ears and southern Utahs Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, prompting a lawsuit from Patagonia over the reduction and a declaration on its website that The President Stole Your Land.

President Joe Biden has restored the two monuments to their former sizes.

But The Conservation Alliance made up of more than 270 companies has argued that Utahs political leaders are still trying to undermine the monuments through legal action to roll back protections. Most of the groups members are outdoor retailers, but the alliance also includes several breweries, photography companies and a bank.

The alliance, Patagonia and REI each issued statements Wednesday criticizing the decision to move the Outdoor Retailer show and vowing to follow through with a boycott.

We are disappointed the owners of Outdoor Retailer are blatantly ignoring the Indigenous Peoples, local activists and outdoor athletes who spent years working to conserve and protect wild lands in Utah by moving the show back to Salt Lake City, Patagonia CEO Ryan Gellert said.

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox welcomed Emerald Xs decision, saying, This is great news for Utahs expanding outdoor industry and all those who love getting outside and experiencing the states natural beauty.

He struck a more confrontational tone during an interview with KSL NewsRadio while talking about the companies that threatened the boycott.

You dont get to come in and threaten us and tell us how to do things. Thats not how this is going to work, Cox said.

The Republican governor asked the shows organizers last year to return the event to Salt Lake City, saying the location offered economic benefits for the state and for outdoor retailers.

Emerald X also sent a survey last year to the shows attendees asking their opinions about a possible move to various cities  including Salt Lake City; Anaheim, California; Houston; Las Vegas and Orlando, Florida.

Marisa Nicholson, the show director for Outdoor Retailer, told the AP its easier for exhibitors to demonstrate their skiing, snowboarding, kayaking and other products in Utah. Thats because outdoor venues where the products can be used or tested are closer and easier to get to than in Denver, where travel to the Rockies from the downtown convention center where the show has been based can take hours.

Nicholson said organizers also plan to make the winter and summer shows more accessible to consumers instead of just commercial buyers and retailers.

She said without providing specifics that Outdoor Retailer plans to commit revenue from its Utah events to fund efforts to protect public lands with involvement from local, state and federal officials plus state tourism and business officials.

The Outdoor Retailer show generates tens of millions of dollars in local economic impact, but the benefits have been reduced because of the pandemic.
WASHINGTON  Madeleine Albright, a child refugee from Nazi- and then Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe who rose to become the first female secretary of state and a mentor to many current and former American statesmen and women, died Wednesday of cancer, her family said. She was 84.

A lifelong Democrat who nonetheless worked to bring Republicans into her orbit, Albright was chosen in 1996 by President Bill Clinton to be Americas top diplomat, elevating her from U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, where she had been only the second woman to hold that job.

As secretary of state, Albright was the highest-ranking woman in the history of the U.S. government. She was not in the line of succession to the presidency, however, because she was born in what was then Czechoslovakia. Still, she was universally admired for breaking a glass ceiling, even by her political detractors.

We have lost a loving mother, grandmother, sister, aunt and friend, her family said in a statement.

President Joe Biden ordered flags at the White House and other federal buildings and grounds to be flown at half-staff until March 27.

Outpourings of condolences came quickly.

Biden said, America had no more committed champion of democracy and human rights than Secretary Albright, who knew personally and wrote powerfully of the perils of autocracy.

When I think of Madeleine, Biden added, I will always remember her fervent faith that America is the indispensable nation.'

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Albright was a brilliant diplomat, a visionary leader, a courageous trailblazer, a dedicated mentor, and a great and good person who loved the U.S. deeply and devoted her life to serving it.

Clinton called her one of the finest Secretaries of State, an outstanding U.N. Ambassador, a brilliant professor, and an extraordinary human being.

And through it all, Clinton added, even until our last conversation just two weeks ago, she never lost her great sense of humor or her determination to go out with her boots on, supporting Ukraine in its fight to preserve freedom and democracy.

Former President George W. Bush said Albright lived out the American dream and helped others realize it.  She served with distinction as a foreign-born foreign minister who understood firsthand the importance of free societies for peace in our world.

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, U.S. envoy to the United Nations, honored Albright as a trailblazer and a luminary in remarks on the General Assembly floor.

In 2012, President Barack Obama awarded Albright the Medal of Freedom, the nations highest civilian honor, saying her life was an inspiration to all Americans.

Albright remained outspoken through the years. After leaving office, she criticized Bush for using the shock of force rather than alliances to foster diplomacy and said Bush had driven away moderate Arab leaders and created potential for a dangerous rift with European allies.

As a refugee from Czechoslovakia who saw the horrors of both Nazi Germany and the Iron Curtain, she was not a dove and she played a leading role in pressing for the Clinton administration to get militarily involved in the conflict in Kosovo.

She also took a hard line on Cuba, famously saying at the United Nations that the Cuban shootdown of a civilian plane was not cojones but rather cowardice.

Albright advised women to act in a more confident manner and to ask questions when they occur and dont wait to ask.

It took me quite a long time to develop a voice, and now that I have it, I am not going to be silent, she told HuffPost Living in 2010.

When the Senate Foreign Relations Committee asked her in January 2007 whether she approved of Bushs proposed surge in U.S. troops in bloodied Iraq, she responded: I think we need a surge in diplomacy. We are viewed in the Middle East as a colonial power and our motives are suspect.

Albright was an internationalist whose point of view was shaped in part by her background. Her family fled Czechoslovakia in 1939 as the Nazis took over their country, and she spent the war years in London. After the war, as the Soviet Union took over vast chunks of Eastern Europe, her father, a Czech diplomat, brought his family to the United States.

As secretary of state, Albright played a key role in persuading Clinton to go to war against the Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic over his treatment of Kosovar Albanians in 1999. As U.N. ambassador, she advocated a tough U.S. foreign policy, particularly in the case of Milosevics treatment of Bosnia and NATOs intervention in Kosovo, was eventually dubbed Madeleines War.

My mindset is Munich, she said frequently, referring to the German city where the Western allies abandoned her homeland to the Nazis.

Albright helped win Senate ratification of NATOs expansion and a treaty imposing international restrictions on chemical weapons. She led a successful fight to keep Egyptian diplomat Boutros Boutros-Ghali from a second term as secretary-general of the United Nations. He accused her of deception and posing as a friend.

And she once exclaimed to Colin Powell, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who would later succeed her as secretary of state: Whats the point of having this superb military youre always talking about if we cant use it?

Powell, who died last year, recalled in a memoir that Albrights comment almost made him have an aneurysm.

Despite her championing of diplomacy in the Middle East and a late Clinton-era foray to North Korea, which made her the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit the Stalinist state, Albright drew criticism for her support of sanctions against Iraq that many blame for humanitarian suffering in the country under Saddam Hussein.

I am an eternal optimist, Albright said in 1998, amid an effort as secretary of state to promote peace in the Middle East. But she said getting Israel to pull back on the West Bank and the Palestinians to rout terrorists posed serious problems.

Albright made limited progress at first in trying to expand the 1993 Oslo Accords that established the principle of self-rule for the Palestinians on the West Bank and in Gaza. But in 1998, she played a leading role in formulating the Wye Accords that turned over control of about 40% of the West Bank to the Palestinians.

She also spearheaded an ill-fated effort to negotiate a 2000 peace deal between Israel and Syria under then-President Hafez al-Assad. She helped guide U.S. foreign policy during conflicts in the Balkans and the Hutu-Tutsi genocide in Rwanda.

As an outspoken Democrat in private life, Albright often joked that she had her political instincts surgically removed when she became secretary of state. True to that, she formed an unlikely friendship with arch-conservative North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms to increase funding for the State Department and U.S. diplomacy and oversaw a radical change in Washingtons handling of Cold War-era messaging.

Born Marie Jana Korbel in Prague on May 15, 1937, she was the daughter of a diplomat, Joseph Korbel. The family was Jewish and converted to Roman Catholicism when she was 5. Three of her Jewish grandparents died in concentration camps.

Albright later said that she became aware of her Jewish background after she became secretary of state. The family returned to Czechoslovakia after World War II but fled again, this time to the United States, in 1948, after the Communists rose to power.

They settled in Denver, where her father obtained a job at the University of Denver. One of Josef Korbels best students, a young woman named Condoleezza Rice, would later succeed his daughter as secretary of state and was the first Black woman to hold that office.

Among current officials who worked closely with Albright are Bidens domestic policy adviser and former U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, as well as Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman and a host of others.

Albright graduated from Wellesley College in 1959. She worked as a journalist and later studied international relations at Columbia University, where she earned a masters degree in 1968 and a Ph.D. in 1976.

She worked for the National Security Council during the Carter administration and advised Democrats on foreign policy before Clintons election. He nominated her as U.S. ambassador to the U.N. in 1993.

Following her service in the Clinton administration, she headed a global strategy firm, Albright Stonebridge, and was chair of an investment advisory company that focused on emerging markets.

She also wrote several books. Albright married journalist Joseph Albright, a descendant of Chicagos Medill-Patterson newspaper dynasty, in 1959. They had three daughters and divorced in 1983.

___

The late Associated Press diplomatic correspondent Barry Schweid contributed to this report.
HARTFORD, Conn.  Infowars host Alex Jones failed to show up and testify under oath at a deposition Wednesday in a lawsuit filed by relatives of victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, leading the families lawyer to call for Jones arrest if he doesnt appear again Thursday.

Jones, whose attorney said he missed the deposition because of an appointment for undisclosed medical conditions, was scheduled to testify Wednesday and Thursday in Austin, Texas, where Infowars is based, in connection with the relatives defamation lawsuit against him for saying the 2012 school massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, was a hoax.

Connecticut Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis found Jones liable for damages in November. A trial on how much he should pay the families is set to begin in August.

Bellis on Wednesday ordered Jones to appear at the deposition Thursday and warned he would be in contempt of her order if he doesnt show. She denied a request by the families lawyer, Christopher Mattei, to issue an arrest order to have Jones brought to the proceeding if he fails to attend again, but said Mattei could seek to subpoena Jones and request sanctions against him.

Mattei said he would seek a subpoena in Texas if the judge didnt approve his request for an arrest order.

This, in our view, was a cowardly display intended to cheat the plaintiffs of their right to put him under oath, Mattei said at a news conference, and ask him questions about why over the course of many years he lied about them, he lied about the loved ones that they lost at Sandy Hook and why he unleashed a barrage of harassment over many years that continues to this day.

Jones lawyer, Norman Pattis, filed new court documents late Wednesday afternoon that included letters from two doctors who said they advised Jones not to attend the deposition because of his medical conditions. Pattis also asked Bellis to postpone the deposition, but she denied the request.

In the court filing, Pattis wrote Jones doctor was so alarmed by his observations of Jones on Monday that he advised him to go to an emergency room or call 911. Jones refused and his doctor advised him to stay home, Pattis said.

On Tuesday, however, Jones broadcasted his daily website show at the Infowars studio in Austin, his lawyers said. He did not appear in person on the show Wednesday, but he provided commentary by phone including pre-recorded segments for portions of the program. He did not discuss the deposition or his medical conditions at the beginning of the show.

Jones underwent an exam by another doctor and medical testing Wednesday, Pattis said. The doctor, Amy Offutt, wrote in a letter that she examined Jones for acute medical issues that were time-sensitive and potentially serious and lab tests were pending.

Twenty first graders and six educators were killed in the 2012 shooting. The families of eight of the victims and an FBI agent who responded to school sued Jones, Infowars and others, saying they have been subjected to harassment and death threats from Jones followers because of the hoax conspiracy. Jones has since said he believes the shooting did occur.
Instagram Movie

Dozens of employees march outside of Disney's headquarters in Burbank, California, chanting, 'Say Gay!' as part of a full day of walkouts across the company's theme parks and offices following the 'slow response' to 'Don't Say Gay' bill.

Mar 23, 2022

AceShowbiz - Disney employees continue their protest against the company over its "slow response" to the "Don't Say Gay" bill. Dozens of the staff walked out of the company's headquarters after its CEO, Bob Chapek, declared that the studio will produce more gay content for kids.

On Tuesday, March 22, the employees marched outside of Disney's headquarters in Burbank, California. At one point, the staff could be heard chanting, "Say Gay!" as part of a full day of walkouts across the company's theme parks and offices.

In a statement about the walkouts, the company said, "We respect our colleagues' right to express their views." The statement continued, "And we pledge our ongoing support of the L.G.B.T.Q.+ community in the fight for equal rights."

The walkouts came just hours after Bob declared that the company vows to produce more gay content for kids. "To ALL who come to this happy place, welcome. Disney Parks, Experiences and Products is committed to creating experiences that support family values for every family, and will not stand for discrimination in any form," the CEO of the company wrote via Walt Disney World's official Instagram account.

"We oppose any legislation that infringes on basic human rights," added the statement. "[We] stand in solidarity and support of LGBTQIA+ cast, crew, guests and fans who make their voices heard today and every day."

In the comment section of the post, many social media critics mocked the statement as they believed the company launched the message "only because the walk out was planned today." One person wrote, "So STOP donating for those causes, and fire bob chapeck [sic]," while another stated, "This won't change anything. They're still walking out today buds."

In attempts to take a stronger stance against the "Don't Say Gay" bill, Disney was reportedly reinstating a kissing scene between two female characters in the upcoming "Toy Story" spin-off, "Lightyear", after Pixar employees accused the parent company of cutting gay characters from films. Earlier this month, the company also announced its decision to pause political donations to Florida.

"Today, we are pausing all political donations in the state of Florida pending this review," said Bob in a statement on March 11. The 61-year-old businessman added, "Speaking to you, reading your messages, and meeting with you have helped me better understand how painful our silence was. It is clear that this is not just an issue about a bill in Florida, but instead yet another challenge to basic human rights."
WENN Celebrity

Prominent figures of the island nation pen an open letter to Prince William and Kate Middleton prior to their arrival in the country to mark the monarch's 70th year on the throne.

Mar 23, 2022

AceShowbiz - Queen Elizabeth is facing criticism from Jamaican leaders amid celebrations for her Platinum Jubilee. Prominent figures of the island nation penned an open letter to Prince William and Kate Middleton prior to their arrival in the country to mark the monarch's 70th year on the throne.

In the open letter on Tuesday, March 22, they demanded "an apology and recognition of the need for atonement and reparations" from the royal family. "We see no reason to celebrate 70 years of the ascension of your grandmother to the British throne because her leadership, and that of her predecessors, have perpetuated the greatest human rights tragedy in the history of humankind," read the letter, which was shared online by human rights advocacy group the Advocates Network.

"During her 70 years on the throne, your grandmother has done nothing to redress and atone for the suffering of our ancestors that took place during her reign and/or during the entire period of British trafficking of Africans, enslavement, indentureship and colonization," it continued. Additionally, the letter also stated that instead of celebrating the Queen's milestone, the 100 people who signed the note will instead "celebrate 60 years of freedom from British colonial domination."

Through the letter, they also urged William and Kate to use their platforms to "redefine the relationship" between the British Monarchy and the people of Jamaica. "We are of the view that an apology for British crimes against humanity...is necessary to begin a process of healing, forgiveness, reconciliation and compensation," it concluded.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are currently embarking on an eight-day royal Caribbean tour at the behest of the Queen as a way to strengthen ties with countries in the Commonwealth. The couple started their trip in Belize over the weekend.

They, however, canceled a scheduled visit to a local village amid protests from residents. "We can confirm that due to sensitive issues involving the community in Indian Creek, the visit has been moved to a different location," Kensington Palace announced on March 19. "Further details will be provided in due course."
Instagram Celebrity

Justin Johnson, who is in custody on multiple charges including first-degree murder, was suddenly punched by a fellow inmate when he was in the middle of a phone call, according to his attorney.

Mar 23, 2022

AceShowbiz - One of Young Dolph's suspected killers has been attacked in jail. Justin Johnson, who is in custody on multiple charges including first-degree murder, was assaulted in unprovoked attack at Tennessee's Shelby County Jail on Friday, March 18, according to his lawyer.

Justin's attorney tells TMZ that the 23-year-old, also known as Straight Drop, was punched in the middle of a phone call. He says his client was on the phone in the visitation area when a fellow inmate at 201 Poplar walked up and socked him.

Justin reportedly was not severely injured in the incident. A rep for the Shelby County Sheriff's Office, meanwhile, confirms that there was an incident on Friday involving Justin and another inmate, but there were no reported injuries.

The spokesman called the incident an attempted fight. Currently, there is no word on a motive as the attack is still under investigation.

Justin was arrested on January 11 in Indiana for the murder of Young Dolph. On the same day, another suspect, 32-year-old Cornelius Smith, was indicted on first-degree murder, weapons possession and theft charges. On February 11, both Justin and Cornelius pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder.

27-year-old Shundale Barnett, a passenger of the vehicle Justin was driving, was also arrested and charged with being an "after-the-fact accessory" for reportedly helping Justin get away from the scene of the crime.

Young Dolph was fatally shot on November 17, 2021 when he visited Makeda's Homemade Butter Cookies to pick up cookies for his mother. He was laid to rest on November 30 at a cemetery across from Hamilton High School, after a service at First Baptist Church Broad Street.

Recently unveiled autopsy results show that the hip-hop artist suffered 22 gunshot wounds. He was shot in his forehead, temple, face, right back, center back, left back, right arm, left arm, left chest, left abdomen, right chin, right neck, right wrist and right shoulder.
WENN/Instagram/FayesVision Music

The music executive is asking the hip-hop artists to 'come together in Las Vegas' to hold an anti-Grammys concert after the 'Donda' artist is being barred from performing following his social media antics.

Mar 23, 2022

AceShowbiz - J. Prince has shared his thoughts about how Grammy Awards has been treating the hip-hop community over the years. In a new social media post, the music executive urged Kanye West, Drake, The Weeknd as well as Nicki Minaj to boycott the annual ceremony by doing a rival concert.

"HIP HOP VS. THE GRAMMYS: @champagnepapi, @kanyewest, @theweeknd, @nickiminaj. The powers that be will be mad at me about this one but F**K EM! I love the culture!" the 57-year-old wrote via Instagram alongside news of Kanye's removal from this year's Grammy Awards following his social media attacks against Kim Kardashian, Pete Davidson, D.L. Hughley and Trevor Noah. The CEO of Houston-based record label Rap-A-Lot added, "The seed is planted  let's water it!"

Taking to his Twitter account, J. Prince further detailed his plan to boycott the award-giving event by inviting the hip-hop stars to hold an anti-Grammys concert. "I've been watching the Grammys control and dictate our culture to their benefit up close and personal for the past 30 years that I've been in the music business," he began explaining.

"And all the artists, managers and executives would do is complain but never have the nuts to come together to do anything about it," J. Prince added. He later said that he believed Kanye's cancellation was a "racist act," tweeting, "Even though the latest episode deals with Trevor Noah and the cancelling of @kanyewest, this racist act is so much bigger than them."

J. Prince noted, "Let's just start with the mindset of the words 'counsel' and 'cancel' where the Grammys is concerned and compare them to rehabilitation and legal slavery where the penitentiary is concerned." He penned in a following tweet, "If we begin with counsel and rehabilitation in the Grammys or the penitentiary, the truth is, is that they really don't exist. They're just fancy lies. But on the other hand, if we look at the words cancel and legal slavery punishment those words are true, real and exist today."

J. Prince provided some historical context to his concert plans, reflecting on how the Recording Academy has treated the community while comparing them to the U.S. prison system. He also likened the Grammys' decision to cancel Kanye's performance and their historical snubs of Drake, Nicki and The Weeknd to the acts of a "slave master."

"This will only be broken by us uniting our powers to bring about change moving forward," J. Prince pointed out. "How do we bring about change? I'm glad you all asked! I recommend that the artists that I've mentioned above and more come together in Las Vegas and perform at the same time as the Grammys."

J. Prince further detailed that the performance will be aired "on a special network and streaming platform." He stressed that he wants to "prove that ratings will change where the Grammys are concerned when the #1 selling genre in the music - HIP HOP - comes together because there's power in numbers."
Netflix TV

In a new interview, newcomer Chelsea Lazkani, a graduate of the University of Birmingham and the University of Dundee in Scotland, thanks her family for their support for her new venture.

Mar 23, 2022

AceShowbiz - The wait for season 5 of "Selling Sunset" is going to be over soon. On Tuesday, March 22, Netflix announced the premiere date of the upcoming season will be coming on the streaming giant on April 22.

Additionally, the new season will introduce a new cast member. Newcomer Chelsea Lazkani will join returning stars Jason Oppenheim, Brett Oppenheim, Chrishell Stause, Christine Quinn, Mary Fitzgerald, Romain Bonnet and Heather Rae El Moussa.

Other cast members who are set to return for the fifth installment are Amanza Smith, Maya Vander and Davina Potratz. Last season's new additions Emma Hernan and Vanessa Villela will also be among the cast in season 5.

In a new interview with PEOPLE, Chelsea, a graduate of the University of Birmingham and the University of Dundee in Scotland, thanked her family for their support for her new venture. "I think having the support of my husband and my family really essentially prepared me to take on this big role and this big opportunity," Chelsea said.

"But for me personally, I saw this as an opportunity to really open doors in an industry that has lacked diversity and where minorities are underrated," she added. "I feel like with great opportunities comes great responsibility."

"This was kind of my time to give back and to educate and really mentor and push forward Black women in this luxury sector in real estate. So just knowing that I've got a greater purpose kind of prepared me for this," Chelsea went on to say.

Chelsea added that she "was always very familiar with Oppenheim Group" prior to joining the show as she was acquainted with Jason through her husband. While she hadn't met any of her other co-stars on "Selling Sunset", the realtor claimed they all have "really inspired" her.

"It kind of helps me see my future trajectory by being around so many successful women," she explained. "It helps materialize the fact that I can be selling $20 million, $30 million, $40 million homes, seeing other women in close proximity to me doing it."

"It kind of helps me see my future trajectory by being around so many successful women," she added. "It helps materialize the fact that I can be selling $20 million, $30 million, $40 million homes, seeing other women in close proximity to me doing it."

Teasing what fans can expect from the upcoming season, Chelsea said it is "so juicy." She added, "I will say it's really electric. It's nothing you've ever seen before on TV."
Instagram Celebrity

The former U.S. Secretary of State reveals on social media that she has 'mild cold symptoms' while her husband and former President Bill Clinton 'is tested negative and is feeling fine.'

Mar 23, 2022

AceShowbiz - Hillary Clinton receives funny yet sarcastic responses after she revealed that she tested positive for COVID-19. The former U.S. Secretary of State has been ridiculed online soon after asking for movie recommendations to social media users.

On Tuesday, March 22, the "State of Terror" author took to her Twitter page to share her COVID diagnosis. "Well, I've tested positive for COVID. I've got some mild cold symptoms but am feeling fine," she shared. "I'm more grateful than ever for the protection vaccines can provide against serious illness. Please get vaccinated and boosted if you haven't already!"

In a following Twitter post, Hillary went on to detail that her husband Bill Clinton "tested negative and is feeling fine." The 74-year-old politician added that the former President "is quarantining until our household is fully in the clear." She concluded her message as saying, "Movie recommendations appreciated!"

Hillary Clinton revealed that she tested positive for COVID-19 and asked for movie recommendations.

Responding to Hillary's request, former nurse Juanita Broaddrick, who has publicly accused Bill of raping her in 1978 while he was attorney general of Arkansas, urged the former First Lady to give her husband her book about the alleged incident instead of watching a movie. "Maybe give him a book to read," Juanita captioned a picture of the cover of "Some Ice on That: How I Survived Being Raped by Bill Clinton".

In the meantime, comedian Tim Dillon recommended her to watch "Primary Colors", a 1998 film starring John Travolta. The movie, directed by Mike Nichols, was inspired by the events of Bill's first presidential campaign in 1992.

Other Twitter users, meanwhile, recommended "The Plot Against the President". The documentary film, directed by Amanda Milius, examines evidence of a conspiracy uncovered by Congressman Devin Nunes to sabotage former President Donald Trump.

The highly-contagious virus has been hitting the upper echelons of Washington's political circles in the past few weeks. Second gentleman Doug Emhoff tested positive for the virus last week, though Vice President Kamala Harris has since tested negative.

Former President Barack Obama also announced on March 13 that he'd tested positive for the virus, noting he had a scratchy throat. "I just tested positive for COVID," he wrote to his 131M followers on Twitter. Thankfully, he only had mild symptoms as he had been vaccinated and boosted.
Follow Action News Now on Facebook and Twitter for the latest news, weather and sports in Northern California.
ASCI recently launched the Endorser Due Diligence service, paid advisory that is aimed at helping endorsers follow the ASCI Code and abide by the rules laid down in the Consumer Protection Act (2019), which places an obligation on them to undertake due diligence for advertisements they appear in.

ASCI has established a panel of experts from over 20 disciplines, ranging from advertising regulation and legal, Ayurveda, microbiology, electronics, market research, nutrition, dentistry, product formulations, financial services, and so on. The panel will assess the representations, statements, and claims in the advertisement from a consumer and technical perspective, examine the evidence in support of the claim where necessary, and thereby help the endorser conduct their due diligence.

In conversation with Adgully, Manisha Kapoor, Secretary General, ASCI, sheds more light on the Endorser Due Diligence service, how it will help brand endorsers, whether it would impact creativity in ads, focus areas for ASCI and more.

What will ASCIs Endorser Due Diligence service offer?

The Consumer Protection Act, 2019, provides for the imposition of fines and suspension of endorsers for appearing in a false or misleading advertisement. However, if the endorser has exercised due diligence to verify the claims made in the advertisement, the Act provides for a waiver of such penalties or suspension. The ASCI Code has always required celebrities to be honest and truthful of the claims that they make while promoting any product or brand. In order to help endorsers fulfil their legal obligation for due diligence, ASCI has introduced the Endorser Due Diligence Service. This service will not only help the endorsers fulfil their legal obligations under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019, but will also ensure that consumers who trust such endorsers will not be misled.

How much will it impact the creativity in ads and the impact that it will create on advertisements overall?

Honest advertising and creative advertising are not opposing forces. In fact, both are needed to ensure good advertising. Advertising always has an element of exaggeration and creativity, and that is what makes the messaging stand out. While ASCI always roots for creativity in ads, it should not be at the cost of consumer interest. Claims made in ads need to be true and capable of being substantiated, and endorsers need to be mindful about the same.

What led ASCI to come up with the Endorser Due Diligence service?

In India, we have a very strong celebrity culture, where more than 50% of the advertisements feature celebrities. According to the TAM AdEx report, more than 25% of the advertisements aired on television in 2021 featured celebrities. This shows that the average Indian consumer is heavily exposed to advertisements featuring celebrities. Such endorsers/ celebrities may not be technically qualified to ascertain if the claims or representations they make in ads are capable of substantiation. As the ASCI Code as well as the Consumer Protection Act, 2019 require endorsers to ensure that representations made by them in advertisements are honest and dont exploit the consumers by making false claims, ASCI decided to offer the service by tapping into its vast expertise and experience in advertising self-regulation.

What are the other areas that ASCI will be focusing on?

ASCI will continue to expand its presence in the digital sector, both in terms of coverage of newer areas such as ed-tech and fin-tech, as well as in deploying technology solutions such as Artificial Intelligence tools for better monitoring. Helping shape the narrative in better ways remains a key priority. We wish to work closely with all our stakeholders  the government, consumers and consumer bodies, the industry and industry bodies to make sure we strengthen self-regulation as it offers the most sustainable mechanism for consumer protection when it comes to advertising.

Who were the brand endorsers/ legal/ PR approached for bringing this to action?

The Endorser Diligence Service was developed through extensive consultation over a period of time with stakeholders, including advertisers and talent management agencies.
Rashmika Mandanna has been much in talks for her brilliant performance in 'Pushpa'. The audience has been waiting for her next release for a long time and the good news dropped in when the actress was caught up at the Mumbai airport while heading for the shoot of 'Goodbye' in Rishikesh.

Recently, the Shutterbugs at the airport captured Rashmika Mandanna jetting off from Mumbai as she was heading to take a flight for Rishikesh for the next shoot schedule of 'Goodbye'. The actress eventually stopped and posed for the camera and has also been seen mimicking the 'Pushpa Raj style' while having a cute conversation with the media people.

Rashmika kept her look very casual at the airport by wearing a denim jumpsuit with the sunglasses having her black mask on.

Rashmika has some big releases coming up like 'Mission Manju' where she will be seen with Sidharth Malhotra, In 'Goodbye' she will see sharing screen space with Amitabh Bachchan.
Even as India rushes to reach its goal of vaccinating 100 per cent of the eligible population, there are many who are still hesitant to take the jab. Several reasons ranging from fear, misinformation, and ignorance are to blame.

Concern India Foundation, a leading non-profit organization, recently launched a unique campaign in areas of Bangalore with high vaccine hesitancy. With help from community leaders, they created a unique audio appeal called the Divine Voice.

The temples and mosques in India have speakers. These speakers usually broadcast prayers and holy messages. Concern India weaved vaccination messages into these prayers. These messages were then broadcast live through these speakers by the community leaders themselves.

These passages from the Holy scriptures like The Bhagwad Gita and the Quran teach about overcoming fear, being a good human being and saving lives.

Weaving the vaccination message into something so culturally relevant had a huge impact on people. It went beyond reason and appealed straight to their hearts.

Pampa Chowdhury, Deputy Director at Concern India: Though vaccines were available, there was a poor turnout in the vaccination camps. Our discussion with Ogilvy led to launching the campaign. Initially we were apprehensive whether it would work. But with immense cooperation from all the stake holders, the campaign worked. People showed up in numbers, creating a model that can be used as an awareness tool.

What the campaign is achieving is quite remarkable. Data from the recent drives held at Hajee Sir Ismail Sait Masjid in Frazer Town and Sri Gayathri Devi Temple in Yashwantpur is proof. According to Pampa Chowdhury, Earlier only about 30 or so people would turn up for vaccination. But after the campaign, more than 200 people were vaccinated per day, and more were in waiting.

Encouraged by the success of the campaign, Concern India Foundation is looking to expand their Bangalore Model to more areas. Pampa Chowdhury adds, We will continue with the vaccination drives using this model religious influences can be a catalyst of social change.

Here is what some of the people associated with the vaccination campaign had to say -
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.

Twishy Vats is the Chief Content Officer at Inshorts. Having worked with Inshorts for the past six years, she oversees the content creation team for both the platforms  Inshorts, Indias #1 English news app and Public app, Indias largest location-based social network and #1 app for vernacular video updates. She is also responsible for creating a brand message and structure that stays consistent in all the messaging.

In conversation with Adgully, Twishy Vats, Chief Content Officer, Inshorts Group, speaks about the many challenges and opportunities brought forth by the global pandemic, how empathetic women leaders are multi-managing the crises , lessons that she learnt as a woman leader and more.

How do you think the role and scope of women leaders have widened in the post-pandemic world?

Over the past two years, the pandemic has brought with it a unique set of challenges along with several learning opportunities. Women leaders have surfed through these unchartered waters and emerged successfully. From the shift to remote working to living in an ever-evolving digital world  our work, as well as personal lives, have constantly changed.

I believe the merging of geographical restrictions in a pandemic-induced remote working model has led to a sharp increase in opportunities for women. Coupled with flexible work schedules, it has helped women leaders to overcome challenges and grasp newer opportunities like never before. A lot of women who had to leave their jobs to be the caregivers of their families are now returning to the workforce as they can now customise their schedules and easily manage all aspects of their lives.

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?

The pandemic was an unprecedented and unforeseeable global event, something that we were untrained for, still we strived through it. In the initial days, balancing personal life and a remote work set-up, all combined with the worries of a global public-health crisis, was daunting, to say the least. Gradually, I started settling in the new normal, as we now call it. Over time, I developed a new work routine and strategy to keep the momentum going. One extremely crucial practice to maintain a healthy work-life balance is establishing boundaries. The personal and professional aspects of our lives shouldnt get heavier on each other, and these boundaries ensure that we achieve the desired balance.

We are a content app, so managing and pushing out the correct information at a time when so much was happening was a challenge. The entire team had to work together and double verify each information so as to avoid spreading fake news. But as time passed, we adapted to the new normal by implementing new processes and strategies of working efficiently in a remote environment.

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?

The pandemic has been yet another testament to womens leadership. Countries led by women leaders have been particularly successful in fighting COVID-19. As women, we face different kinds of adversities throughout our lives. It is these challenges that women wear as a suit of armour to face the world. Hence, I feel, we learn how to handle a crisis quite early in our lives. Perseverance and calmness built over the years have helped women leaders stay composed in these adverse conditions. Moreover, the pandemic called for a workplace that prioritised employees well-being by understanding their problems. This called for empathetic leaders who could multi-manage various challenges, and its safe to say that women leaders across the world rose to the occasion.

What are the five most effective lessons that you have learned as a woman leader?

Some key life lessons I have imbibed from my professional journey are:

Communicate: Speak up for things you are passionate about, and ideas you dont like. You wont risk your seat at the table by standing up and communicating what you think. Holding back will be a hurdle to your growth. Ask for what you want.

Speak up for things you are passionate about, and ideas you dont like. You wont risk your seat at the table by standing up and communicating what you think. Holding back will be a hurdle to your growth. Ask for what you want. Be yourself: Everyone has their unique leadership style, and you should not be scared of embracing yours. No rule book defines a good leader, so create your own rules as you go.

Everyone has their unique leadership style, and you should not be scared of embracing yours. No rule book defines a good leader, so create your own rules as you go. Keep learning: We live in tumultuous times, and each day is a new challenge. Keep upskilling and reskilling to keep your skillset relevant. Learning never stops and when you think there is nothing to learn, think more.

We live in tumultuous times, and each day is a new challenge. Keep upskilling and reskilling to keep your skillset relevant. Learning never stops and when you think there is nothing to learn, think more. Show empathy: Women are often labeled as the more emotional gender. Remember that showcasing emotions and being passionate does not make you a less efficient leader. Rather, it makes you more humane. Emotions can be an asset, and empathy is what we need in these times. Dont run away from it.

Women are often labeled as the more emotional gender. Remember that showcasing emotions and being passionate does not make you a less efficient leader. Rather, it makes you more humane. Emotions can be an asset, and empathy is what we need in these times. Dont run away from it. Motivate your team: Over the years, I have learnt that as important as it is to guide and lead the people you work with, it is equally important to establish a connection with them and uplift them through affirmative words. A good job goes a long way! As the popular saying goes, people may not remember what you say, but they will remember how you made them feel.

Gender sensitivity and inclusion in the new normal  how can organisations effectively encourage and groom women leaders in challenging times?

Though gender sensitivity and inclusion in the workplace have become omnipresent conversations, we still have a long way to go. Organisations should look beyond the gender of a candidate and focus on the skills, capability, intelligence, experience, and performance. I am a strong believer of equal pay for equal work as it encourages more women to join the workforce.

If you want to build a stronger and wholly inclusive workplace, give women room for growth, listen to their ideas, and you will be surprised to see what they are capable of.
Alton, IL (62002)

Today

A steady rain this morning. Showers continuing this afternoon. High 61F. Winds E at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall near a half an inch..

Tonight

Rain showers early will evolve into a more steady rain overnight. Thunder possible. Low 56F. Winds E at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%.
South Africa: Bank for International Settlements publishes central bank digital currencies report

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Innovation Hub has announced the completion of prototypes for a common platform enabling international settlements using multiple central bank digital currencies (mCBDCs).

The BIS is comprised of the South African Reserve Bank (SARB), Reserve Bank of Australia, Bank Negara Malaysia, and the Monetary Authority of Singapore.

In a statement, the Hub said: Led by the Innovation Hubs Singapore Centre, Project Dunbar proved that financial institutions could use CBDCs issued by participating central banks to transact directly with each other on a shared platform. This has the potential to reduce reliance on intermediaries and, correspondingly, the costs and time taken to process cross-border transactions.

The project was organised along three work streams: one focusing on high-level functional requirements and design, and two concurrent technical streams that developed prototypes on different technological platforms (Corda and Partior).

The BIS said the project identified three critical questions. These included the question of whether entities should be allowed to hold and transact with CBDCs issued on the platform. Among the other questions was how could the flow of cross-border payments be simplified while respecting regulatory differences across jurisdictions and what governance arrangements could give countries sufficient comfort to share critical national infrastructure such as a payments system.

The project proposed practical solutions for addressing these issues, which were validated through the development of prototypes that demonstrated the technical viability of shared multi-CBDC platforms for international settlements.

A common platform is the most efficient model for payments connectivity but is also the most challenging to achieve. Project Dunbar demonstrated that key concerns of trust and shared control can be addressed through governance mechanisms enforced by robust technological means, laying the foundation for the development of future global and regional platforms, said Andrew McCormack, Head of the BIS Innovation Hub Centre in Singapore.

The projects findings also affirmed that any such arrangement should be subject to the governance deemed appropriate by central bank participants, including allowing them to retain control of the application of rules on a jurisdictional and currency level.

The details and conclusions of the project were published on Tuesday in a report that supports the efforts of the G20 roadmap for enhancing cross-border payments, particularly in exploring an international dimension of CBDC design.

Even though multi-CBDC exploration is at its infancy, Project Dunbar highlights the possibilities of using multiple CBDCs issued on a shared platform for international settlement.

While many unknowns remain, and a number of areas still require further investigation, it is only through our collective understanding and journeying together that we can meaningfully contribute to the G20 roadmap for enhancing cross-border payments. We are privileged to be part of this pioneering piece of work, said Rashad Cassim, Deputy Governor of the South African Reserve Bank. SAnews.gov.za

This story has been published on: 2022-03-23. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
BRICS nations launch vaccine R&D center

Xinhua) 08:50, March 23, 2022

BEIJING, March 22 (Xinhua) -- A launch ceremony for the BRICS Vaccine Research and Development (R&D) Center was held online on Tuesday.

During the ceremony, Chinese Minister of Science and Technology Wang Zhigang said that China will work with other BRICS countries to use the center's launch as an opportunity to promote exchanges and cooperation on vaccine R&D and testing.

China will work with these countries to jointly establish plants and the mutual recognition of standards, so as to strengthen the defense against COVID-19 and deliver hope and confidence for global economic recovery, Wang said.

At the ceremony, the five BRICS countries jointly proposed an initiative to strengthen vaccine cooperation to ensure the accessibility and affordability of vaccines in developing countries through their equitable distribution as global public goods.

The initiative is also aimed at enhancing BRICS countries' capability to control infectious diseases and respond to public health events.

It places special emphasis on openness and welcomes more partners to join. The launches of the BRICS Vaccine R&D Center and the initiative mark a solid step forward in strengthening cooperation on public health and vaccine R&D among BRICS countries.

Related officials and representatives from the five BRICS countries attended the ceremony online.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
Lockheed Martins facility at Fort Worth, Texas is to trial the use of drones and robots on an

F-35 assembly line to autonomously conduct metrology and NDT.

The system being developed for the program could replace manual inspections currently performed by workers on gantries. The technology aims to improve accuracy, safety and efficiency with a combination of aerial drones and ground robots conducting surface metrology and NDT.

') } else { console.log ('nompuad'); document.write(' ') } // --> ') } else if (width >= 425) { console.log ('largescreen'); document.write('') } else { console.log ('nompuad'); document.write('') } // -->

Chris Colaw, Lockheed fellow, quality and mission success said, There needs to be a bold first adopter of aerial digital inspection in the industry, and Lockheed Martin hopes to fulfill that role with this use case.

This is important in the quality space as it helps us peel away the reliance on so much human involvement.

Measuring Lightning

Many devices allow for digital measurement of parts and assemblies on a small level. However, scaling up inspections to inspect completed airframes, while retaining quality goals and reducing costs is

a significant challenge.

Roughly 75% of my costs come from inspection, and 66% of that requires humans to perform, which involves some degree of subjectivity, said Colaw. But in our digital future we need to embrace things in a different way.

Lockheed Martin sought to find an automated metrology solution to confirm and document measurements to the tightest tolerances in a faster, more accurate, and repeatable process as part of the project. The company started working with Texas-based company CAD / CAM Services last Spring, with funding from a Small Business Technology Transfer Research (STTR) award.

The company assembled suppliers to deliver a drone-mounted scanner that can accurately measure large assemblies and send data to a system that creates CAD files for inspection or maintenance purposes.

We are taking COTS components, slightly modifying them and tying it all together to create a new system, said Scott Shuppert, CEO of CAD / CAM Services. Our team decided we needed to have both a drone and a robot to inspect on the assembly line. The drones will fly above and around the craft, while the wheel-mounted robot will work underneath the plane.

Environmental Integration

CAD / CAMs drone and camera inspection software actively searches for issues such as dents, cracks, deformations, corrosion and alignment issues. It then reconciles the measured results to the design model.

CAD / CAM is working with Maryland-based company Airgility to develop the drones and the guidance and control (G&C) system.

Since GPS signals cant penetrate a heavily built aircraft hangar, the drone has to rely on the internal G&C system, said Pramod Raheja, CEO and co-founder of Airgility. This system regulates the angular orientation of the drone via an independent thrust vectoring system so it can follow a 3D reference trajectory based on the physical dimensions of the aircraft.

According to Raheja, situational awareness is achieved by an algorithm that incorporates data from numerous redundant sensors. This allows the craft to fly in narrow spaces, like over and under a gantry or aircraft wing. Also included in the intelligence is a self-contained on-onboard AI failsafe mechanism, so if the software crashes for any reason the drone will simply back away, avoid any obstacles, and land itself.

Collision avoidance is important, because in addition to the aircraft itself the Lockheed Martin factory floor presents numerous physical obstacles including scaffolding, pilot ladders, auxiliary power units, tails, canopies, and people.

Before we allow a drone to fly next to an US$80 million jet, we wanted to test it within a lab environment, said Colaw.

Testing of the system is being conducted at the University of Texas at Arlington. Animesh Chakravarthy, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and flight control there said, The goal is to have the drone performing multiple precise orbits around the aircraft, at just the right speed, while at the same time ensuring that the scanner is properly oriented towards the aircraft, said Chakravarthy.

The trick is not getting so close as to cause a collision, but not so far away as to distort the readings.

Chakravarthys advanced students are developing a robot that carries the scanner under the aircraft along the plant floor. This ground robot will be equipped with its own G&C system  conceptually like that the drones  that will autonomously track the reference trajectory while ensuring collision avoidance.

Sometimes drone technology gets a lot of attention because it is neat and intriguing, but there has to be a business value behind it, said Colaw. Using drones and this type of scanning technology really opens the door to better understand our product and to cost-effectively substantiate the quality of our products in a way that we cannot currently do because we are limited by human bandwidth.

Expanding capabilities

The project also includes options to develop ways of identifying any delamination within the composite skin of the F-35. Since separation of the layers and voids cannot always be seen or measured from the surface, a non-destructive testing method has to be developed to perform this function.

Highly sensitive IR cameras will be used to inspect beneath the composite surface of the craft to effectively visualize and identify any anomalies.

Desmond Lamont, global business development manager for Teledyne FLIR said, The IR flash lamps act as an excitation source to transfer heat through the material. Since voids and gaps dont transfer heat as efficiently as a solid does, the heat will build and the camera identifies these hot spots and points out the adjacent fault areas.

Cutting the cord

While there were a number of challenges the team encountered, the issue of removing the wiring tether from the scanner was considered one of the most significant. A wireless approach is much safer and more capable of dodging personnel and physical infrastructure on the factory floor.

The Airgility team plans to solve this problem by utilizing AI drones that only transmit crucial data, thus greatly reducing bandwidth. Since the intelligent drone knows what anomalies to look for, it only sends that info and ignores the expected results, said Raheja. Therefore, you dont need to transmit a lot of data continuously.

The ultimate result will be a reliable, highly accurate ( 0.025mm) inspection platform for large body aircraft that removes human error and safety risk from the manufacturing environment.

With the F-35 there certainly is a use case to employ this technology where it has a successful chance of entry, said Colaw. The idea is to scale it across the other Lockheed Martin business units, and then become a major proponent for using this technology in other applicable industries.
Note: The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health is currently ranked #11 on Amazon. 11 is amazing. 1 is better. We encourage readers to buy a copy - the Kindle version is just $2.99 right now!



###



By Lou Conte



Tony Lyons, the President, and Publisher at Skyhorse Publishing recently crafted an article for the Childrens Health Defense Defender Newsletter in which he detailed the New York Times refusal to run advertising for The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.



We Tried to Run an Ad for The Real Anthony Fauci in The New York Times. Heres What Happened.

In refusing to run the advertisement, the New York Times responded, The Times retains the right to decline an advertisement offered to us. This ad goes against our guidelines and as we cannot accept an ad that is misleading, false, or deceptive.

The Times took issue with a blurb from Noble laureate, Dr. Luc Montagnier - Tragically for humanity, there were many, many untruths emanating from Fauci and his minions. RFK junior exposes the decades of lies.

Tony Lyons detailed the Times role in the campaign of suppression and censorship of The Real Anthony Fauci. Despite the campaign, the book which exposed the corrupt world around Fauci, became a nation-wide best seller.

Even in the face of establishment media censorship, the truth got out.

Many who visit the Age of Autism are keenly aware of the on-going censorship and suppression of those who criticize public health officials like Anthony Fauci or who criticize vaccines. The New York Times has been front and center in silencing those who question. For years, the Times has quashed the words of anyone who challenges the public health mantra that Vaccines are safe and effective. The Times has labeled those who question vaccines as anti-science and conspiracy theorists.

Silencing the words of and suppressing writing of a community of people who have the courage to challenge the Vaccinology hegemony pours salt on the wounds of those who have vaccine injured loved ones. It is shocking that a newspaper that was once a bastion of the Free Press now sees fit to engage in the raw censorship of the powerful writing and journalism that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. delivered to the world in the Real Anthony Fauci.

The good news is that many other Americans are now also questioning Big Pharmas Vaccinology belief system for the simple reason that millions took the COVID vaccines and got sick with COVID. Americans have realized that these vaccines, described as being 96% effective, simply did not work.

Mandating an ineffective vaccine on millions of people will lead to one nasty public relations problem for the public health establishment and the propaganda apparatchiks who work for them in organizations like the New York Times.

Regarding censorship, Judy Blume once said, Its not just the books under fire now that worry me. It is the books that will never be written. The books that will never be read. And all due to the fear of censorship.
SHEYENNE, N.D.  Mid-March brought the start of calving season at Midway Polled Herefords. Bill Smith mentioned in his previous report that he expected calves on the ground the first week of March, but the cows decided to hold off a little longer this year.

Weve had just a few (calves), so were barely getting started, Bill said. Some of the cows I bought recently, theyre calving now. We had three calves today (March 14).

Bill estimates that they might have had their dates a little mixed up  leading to the delayed start to calving season.

With the drought, they might have started a little later because of that, too, he said.

Private treaty sales are continuing on the ranch. The buyers that came up from New Mexico to visit the ranch ended up taking home a pair of bulls.

Thats a good thing for us, Bill said. They have a big ranch, so they might need 2-3 bulls every year.

While the Smiths hope to sell out of bulls as soon as they can, they dont mind having to hang on to a couple until June.

Thats not always a bad thing, Bill said. Sometimes bulls get hurt, get hit by lightning or something, and then someone needs a bull. You always sell a few during the summer during breeding season. Its good to sell out of bulls, but its almost as good to have a few around, too.

With calving season about to hit full swing, the Smiths will be busy moving snow around the ranch in the coming days.

Ive been using the dozer to push snow out of where the Herefords are going to start calving in a couple weeks, he said. Theres a lot of snow to move. It blew so much that there are banks that are way above my head  up to eight feet tall around the calving barn. So weve got to start digging that out.

I scraped the hillside and got that down to the dirt, so that wasnt too bad. My son-in-law has a huge dozer tractor, so hell come help us clean out the one big area, Bill added.

The Smiths will have some of the bulls they bought earlier in the year delivered in late March. In preparation for their arrival, Bill says they need to clean out a pen to put them in.

We dont want to mix them with the other bulls. We want to keep them isolated so they dont fight. So hopefully the feed holds out, but this warmer weather will help, he concluded.

Farm & Ranch Guide Weekly Update Get the latest agriculture news delivered to your inbox from Farm & Ranch Guide. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
Horse trail at Summit among several state park projects under way in northeast Nebraska
Glenn Brunkow Glenn Brunkow is a fifth-generation farmer in the Northern Flint Hills of Pottawatomie County in Kansas. He was a county Extension agent for 19 years before returning to farm and ranch full time. Reach him at editorial@midwestmessenger.com. Follow Glenn Brunkow 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

This week was spring break for the kids, and I was excited. I had a lengthy list of things I needed to get done and needed the extra help.

I know you are thinking college kids always go somewhere warmer for spring break. The great thing about having both kids go north for college is that they could both legitimately say they went south for spring break.

OK, saying that going from Lincoln to Kansas is warmer may be a stretch, but we are a darn sight warmer and less snowy than Fargo. In fact, Ike called home before he came back to see if there was snow in the forecast because if there was, he was not coming home.

You may be thinking that coming back to the ranch is not the ideal spring break for college kids, and you would be right. Tatum dubbed this week as Spring Break on the Beaches of Brush Creek. I detected a hint of sarcasm in her tone.

I did offer to get T-shirts made up and told them they could post on social media about their awesome time partying on the beaches of Brush Creek. Neither kid took me up on my offer.

Ideal or not, Dad was glad to have the help for a few days. They called themselves cheap labor. I vehemently disagreed with that. There is nothing cheap about college aged kids. I didnt have to pay them an hourly wage, but the salary is pretty steep.

Jennifer thought the idea of Spring Break on the Beaches of Brush Creek was so appealing that she took vacation, too. Honestly, that would be the longest family vacation we have ever taken. We even managed to talk our hired high school help into spending the first half of his spring break on the beaches of Brush Creek.

I had not thought about it until now, but I had two days of cattle and sheep working planned and we did not get a single drop of rain. The conditions and temperatures were ideal. We must really be in a terrible drought for that to happen. For it not to rain the entirety of spring break is a sobering thought. It just goes to prove that when you think you have the weather in Kansas figured out, it throws you another curve.

We needed to sort some spring calving cows and haul the ones that had not calved to a special cow sale, vaccinate the oldest half of the lambs and move and give pre-weaning shots to the fall cows. We produced a plan to do all of this in two days, but it was going to take everything going right to make it happen. Honestly, I had the odds of it going off without a hitch at about 25%.

Monday morning, we started catching the spring cows and sorting off the late calvers to sell. To my amazement they all came in and we had extraordinarily little trouble sorting them. Even more amazing was that I hauled four loads to the sale barn without a single flat tire or mechanical breakdown.

We finished so early in the afternoon with the cattle sorting and hauling that we had time to gather the ewes and lambs, sort them and work lambs that afternoon. I had planned to do that on Wednesday.

Tuesday, we gathered the fall cows and calves. They did not want to cooperate as well as the spring cows, but they also should have known that my gathering crew (Jennifer and Tatum) were even more stubborn than they were. At first, we were a little off schedule, but we ended up getting them hauled into the working pens by 11:45 and sorted before lunch. We were right on schedule. I did not know how to react to that.

Finally, we ran the fall calves through the chute and gave them pre-weaning shots. We had a couple of minor glitches like the head gate not working right but we overcame those problems and finished in record time.

Again, I was stunned and confused by everything going smoothly and did not know what to do. Lucky for me, my crew jumped into action. We moved bale rings and the creep feeder to the fall cows new location. Again, this was something I had planned for Wednesday.

I am sure the real beaches were packed with college kids on spring break, and some tell me that is a lot more fun than working cattle and sheep. I really cant imagine that it is but, I have been told by two reliable sources that I am wrong.

I did try to tell the kids that they were following in my footsteps and that I had spent all four of my college spring breaks on the beaches of Brush Creek. I dont think they were impressed. All I know is a fun time was had by all, or at least one of us on the Beaches of Brush Creek.

Glenn Brunkow is a fifth-generation farmer in the Northern Flint Hills of Pottawatomie County in Kansas. He was a county Extension educator for 19 years before returning to farm and ranch full time. He can be reached at editorial@midwestmessenger.com.

Midwest Messenger Weekly Update Get the latest agriculture news delivered to your inbox from the Midwest Messenger. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
The events taking place in Ukraine have been disruptive for many commodity markets, including corn, soybeans, and also wheat. As a result, its led to some unique trading action.

Its not about the fear of an inverse market because its already there, said Ed Usset, professor emeritus and grain marketing economist with the University of Minnesotas Center for Farm Financial Management. But how are we going to deal with it? Theyre already hedging in the July contract. Theyre bidding off of the May (contract) and theyre hedging into the July contract. Usually theyd be in the May contract.

It's a unique kind of thing, he continued. Normally (hedgers) would be trading off the May contract until April. It's March 14. This is odd where we skipped the nearby contract a month and half earlier than normal.

War is very disruptive and this has caused a lot of uncertainty for hedgers regarding the May/July spread. Usset said memories of a disastrous inverted wheat market back in 2008 has hedgers, who buy grain and sell to nearby futures, nervous about history repeating itself. Back then the March contract went to a $4 to $10 premium to the May contract and hedgers found themselves buying back the March and moving to May.

That cost players big money, he said, noting the North Dakota Mill and Elevator indicated that that hedge in 2009 when it showed up, cost the mill almost $12 million. He also noted that General Mills, which has six or seven flour mills throughout the country and is a big wheat buyer, reported hedging losses of over $100 million. And ConAgra, a big miller at the time, and now a part of Ardent Mills, reported $33 million in losses.

This all came down to rolling the hedge in an inverted market. And youre seeing people go to the July today, because right after this stuff broke out with Ukraine and Russia, the wheat market took off and the inverses increased, he explained. In Chicago, the May/July spread went from a 10-cent inversethat is the May trading 10 cents over the Julyto 90 cents over in just a handful of trading days.

Basically your hedgers are saying, Were not going to place our short hedges in the May contract. We dont know where that inverse will go. We dont want to be a part of the suffering that goes with placing that short hedge in the May contract and then a month from now rolling it forward when we dont know where that inverse will go, he continued. Will it go to $1, $2? Theres just that much uncertainty.

The trade is saying, and this is both merchandisers and processors  flour mills, ethanol plants, etc.  Were going to buy off the July. Were going to hedge into the July contract. This does not necessarily mean theyre out of the woods and have dodged the problem. It does give them, though, an extra two months to think about what the hell theyre going to do if it goes through a big inverse. Thats the biggest story out there right now from a hedger/merchandiser standpointan unprecedented move to the July contract. Its very interesting, he continued.

Otherwise, its all about the war. There are so many uncertainties. What these traders did going to the July just says theyre trying to avoid the uncertainty as much as they can because they dont know whats going to happen. I sure dont know whats going to happen, Usset added.

He noted the market has been very volatile, one day trading limit up and the next day its limit down. And its all related to the war.

I dont know whats going to happen. I do know its very disruptive, he said.

One of the reasons for that is because of Ukraine and Russias emergence as major agricultural producers and exporters.

Thats one of the three biggest changes to come to agriculture in the last 20 years. The others, according to Usset, are the growth of ethanol and corn and the growth of Chinese imports of soybeans, as well as corn to a degree.

Corn is the biggest crop, and you have a whole new course of demand (with ethanol) coming into that market. You upset the corn market, you upset everything, he said. Chinese imports of soybeans and that continued growth over the last two years (has been) incredible. In fact, we could argue about which of those two  soybeans or corn  was the bigger event.

But the emergence of Russia and Ukraine as major agricultural players is also very significant because it wasnt a change in demand, but rather a new source of demand. Its a changing of the players, largely in the wheat market.

Before, under a communist-ruled central economy in the former Soviet Union, the countries were limited as to what or how much they could export.

You look at how much wheat they exported in 2000. It appears to me they both sent a couple of trucks across the border. Thats about it, they didnt export. They had all this capability and they couldnt get anything out of it, he said. But in the last 20 years, they have slowly gotten their act together and they are major players.

And now, over the last five years, Russia is the second-largest wheat exporting country in the world, and Ukraine is also large. Its half the size of Russia, in terms of exports, but of course Ukraine is a relatively small country compared to Russia, he added.

Besides the war, another factor the market is watching is the fact Argentina appears to be shutting off soybean meal exports, according to Usset. Argentina will at times place a heavy tax on exports in order to keep more product for their domestic market and, at this time, he said it looks like theyre getting ready to impose the taxes.

Argentina has weird tax policies around soybeans. They tax the hell out of them and cut off their exports. The best I can tell, because theyre getting ready to tax them and they dont want people sending stuff out of the country before the taxes begin, he said. Its a big deal.

Other than that, next up for producers and the market is spring planting and USDAs Planting Intentions Report, which will be released March 31. Producers were surveyed in early March to ascertain what they intended to plant this spring. With strong prices for many commodities, there is strong competition for acres in 2022. That said, Ussets initial thought is there wont be a dramatic shift in acres.

My initial thought is I dont think acreage will change much, he said, speaking of corn, soybeans and wheat. All three crops are high priced, but input costs are higher, too.

But then I got thinking about northwestern Minnesota where they plant a lot of corn and soybeans and wheat, and Im thinking about inputs, and Im thinking about acres where someone has not secured their inputs yet, or maybe they have them bought but they havent been delivered yet. And the thought crosses my mind that if Ive got some acreage and I didnt get the right inputs in there for corn or soybeans, maybe Ill go to wheat, because with wheat you can get away with fewer inputs.

Its just a thought. I cant prove that its going to happen that way. But it seems to me it could.

You could see a few more wheat acres there, he concluded.

Looking at area prices, at one local elevator in west central Minnesota regularly followed in this column, as of March 15, the January cash price for corn was $6.95 and basis was -28 cents under. Thats over a dollar improvement since early January. The July 2022 futures price was $7.23 with the basis at +5 cents over.

At that same elevator, as of March 15, the March cash price for soybeans was $15.85 and basis was -50 cents under. The June 2022 futures price for new crop soybeans was listed at $16.36 and basis was -11 cents under.

Farm & Ranch Guide Weekly Update Get the latest agriculture news delivered to your inbox from Farm & Ranch Guide. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
If farmers are adding strip tillage, cover crops, or perennial crops to their operation, there could be the potential to receive a carbon credit payment per acre, too.

The carbon market is still new, though, so early adapter farmers will need to study and prepare.

The subject of carbon markets was recently discussed at the Strategic Farming: Lets Talk Crops! webinar on March 16.

Im always the person who says, Just put your toe in  dont jump in. Start with your worst field, the sandiest with the lowest organic matter content, said Jodi DeJong-Hughes, University of Minnesota Regional Extension educator.

Even if the carbon markets dont pay out, youll see other benefits in crop yield and water management.

DeJong-Hughes reminds farmers to check with their lawyer before signing any contracts for providing carbon credits.

Many contracts are 5-10 years, so farmers need to know what will happen if they cant store as much carbon as they said they could. Contracts should also have a clause that allows for higher carbon payments as the market matures.

Practices that qualify for carbon credits should be practices that help your farmland.

Its supposed to be practices you want to do, and then you get an extra $5 per acre, said Anna Cates, Ph.D., Minnesota soil health specialist.

Carbon info

DeJong-Hughes and Cates are working with the Minnesota Corn Growers to help farmers understand the carbon credit market better.

Farmers always strive to improve farmland through good production practices. Now, some of these practices may provide an extra payment through carbon credits  but mostly likely only if they are newly-added practices.

The three most important elements are hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon. Most soil organic matter is carbon, and it serves to build resiliency in farm fields.

Carbon is the glue that holds life together.

When you incorporate practices that leave more carbon in your field, and good organic matter, your field can better capture the rainfall, be able to move the water into the soil, that helps the farmer to be able to get into the field quickly after a rainfall event. Also, you can bang up the soil a little bit and it bounces back, DeJong-Hughes said.

Carbon  as carbon dioxide  is a greenhouse gas. It keeps heat in the atmosphere. We need carbon dioxide, but the numbers are too high, so we want to reduce carbon dioxide levels through storing carbon.

As a visual, DeJong-Hughes suggests farmers think of an inflated hot air balloon. The amount of space inside that hot air balloon is comparable to the size of a ton of carbon dioxide.

You might hear the term carbon dioxide equivalent. This is because there are multiple greenhouse gases  methane, nitrous oxide, carbon dioxide and more.

They put it all on the scale of How does it compare to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for holding down heat? Carbon dioxide is 1, and if you look at methane it is about 25 carbon dioxide equivalents. It is more potent than carbon dioxide by 25-30 times. Nitrous oxide is about 265 times more potent, she said.

Using nitrogen fertilizer efficiently, helps nitrogen to stay in the field to be used by the crop and keeps nitrous oxide out of the atmosphere, she added.

According to the EPAs Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks, 29 percent of U.S. emitted greenhouse gas comes from transportation. Electricity is 25 percent, industry is 23 percent, commercial and residential is 13 percent, and agriculture is about 10.5 percent.

Breaking down agricultures greenhouse gas emissions, 55 percent is created from ag soil management, with another 28 percent from cow burps. Manure management and other practices make up the remaining portion of ag greenhouse gas emissions.

Cates and DeJong-Hughes are focused on ag soil management. Its common to think of soil organic carbon as interchangeable with soil organic matter, as organic matter is about 58 percent carbon. One percent of organic matter has about 11,600 pounds of carbon in the top 6 inches of soil per acre.

The neat thing about carbon is it is dark in color  black  so you can actually see it in your soil if you have more carbon or less carbon, DeJong-Hughes said. In Minnesota, soils that are tan in color are generally less than 1 percent organic matter.

When it comes to carbon credits  the more carbon in your soil, the more difficult it is to see a significant change.

If getting a carbon credit contract is something a farmer wants to try, signing up a poor quality, light-colored field with soil health problems is likely the field to start with.

Increasing carbon in the soil include practices like leaving more crop residue, growing long roots, adding manure to the soil, or growing cover crops.

Practices that take carbon away include tillage, baling/burning, or harvesting crops. Removing carbon is sometimes a good thing, as in harvesting crops. On the negatives side, erosion removes carbon from the field.

When companies pledge to reduce their carbon footprint, they have two ways to do so.

They can remove carbon through various practices, and these are called insets. A company reduces its emissions within its own value chain.

A company can also purchase offsets  carbon and/or greenhouse gases are removed from the atmosphere or kept from being released  from other places. Purchasing offsets could include paying someone to restore a forest or paying a farmer to adopt certain production practices that increase carbon in the soil.

You really have to check into the company that is buying the credit, she said. Companies that refine fossil fuels, for example, will most likely need to purchase carbon credits to meet their pledges for reduced carbon.

If you want to sell your credits, make sure its to a company that you think shares your ideals, she said. This is one of the reasons that its not going to be one size fits all.

For most farmers and landowners, the primary goal of adopting new farming techniques is to improve the farmland and soil health. Obtaining a carbon credit payment of a few dollars per acre may be a nice perk for some farmers, but the greater benefit comes from a more productive soil and a healthier environment  such as reduced erosion and better water quality.

There are many benefits, Cates said. Cover crops and good soil structure can help mitigate the effects of very wet years. Cover crops and good soil structure can help mitigate the effects of very dry years. Thats where you get the intersection of the environmental issues that society is interested in and on-farm logistical help.

For more information, please contact Anna Cates at catesa@umn.edu or Jodi DeJong-Hughes at dejon003@umn.edu.

Minnesota Farm Guide Weekly Update Get the latest agriculture news delivered to your inbox from the Minnesota Farm Guide. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
Because of the huge demand, steamship lines have put all their emphasis and all of their available space on the inbound side, and theyre not always paying attention to the export side.
News

featured popular urgent

Dougherty County schools one of four state systems awarded Georgia Power Co. grants

File Photo The Dougherty County School System announced on Tuesday that it received a $750,000 grant to fund career training for students and families.

ALBANY  A $3 million grant from Georgia Power Co. will help Dougherty County and three other school systems fund programs to help students and their parents succeed beyond high school.

The $750,000 grant funding allotted to the Dougherty County School System will be used to develop a career-focused high school graduation option that includes expanding career, technical and agricultural education (CTAE) pathways through paid internships, career guidance, technical training and opportunities to earn industry certificates.

Two pillars of the Dougherty County School Systems strategic plan are providing rigorous and relevant educational experiences for our students and prioritizing meaningful engagement with the families of DCSS students, Dougherty Schools Superintendent Ken Dyer said Tuesday. Our partnership with Georgia Power will allow us to not only help equip our students with the technical skills to position them to be successful beyond high school but, through partnerships with Albany Tech and other community partners, support the upskilling and reskilling of their adult family members to provide a jump start for their careers where the need exists.

In addition to the career initiatives, the school district will boost spending on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) enrichment and education programs in schools.

The partnership offers the opportunity for a new take on long-established priorities for the school system, the superintendent said.

This is a tremendous opportunity to enhance the talent pipeline that will ultimately lead to opportunities for our students and their families and increase economic development for our community, Dyer said.

The other school systems selected were Clayton County Schools, Richmond County Schools and Savannah-Chatham County Schools, the company announced on Tuesday. The grants are meant to address needs and opportunities identified by local school districts focused on improving career readiness and multigenerational economic stability in communities of color.

Whether its providing grants for first-year teachers or working with local educators on innovative initiatives such as the 4C (Commodore Conyers College and Career) Academy, were proud of the long-standing partnership we have with Albany area schools, Audrey King, vice president for the South Region of Georgia Power, said. Dougherty County Schools is a leader in the area of CTAE and, as this part of Georgia continues to grow, we believe that investments in impactful local education programs will continue to generate opportunity for real, inclusive economic growth for Albany students and families.
Grove City, PA (16127)

Today

Partly cloudy skies this morning will become overcast during the afternoon. High 67F. Winds ESE at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Cloudy with periods of rain. Low 53F. Winds E at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall around a quarter of an inch.
In July of 2021, this writer took a little trip through rural Missouri. Besides visiting kinfolk whom I hadnt seen for far too long, one purpose of my trip was simply to do something else, something different. You see, Id become something of a recluse and I really needed to just go outside, blow the stink off, maybe even commune with Nature, whatever that is.

My destination was a spot near the center of the northeast quadrant of the state, about a three-hour trip by car. The most expeditious route from Kansas City would be to take I-70 to Columbia and then motor north on US 63 for about an hour. Not really interested in expedience, I chose the scenic route, a road less traveled, US 24 to be exact.

Driving eastward on 24, what impressed me was the modern worlds utter dependence on petroleum. Not only was I leisurely tooling along in my 1990 Taurus, which happens to burn gasoline, but everything I surveyed depended on oil. The lawns and pastures of the rural folk were nicely manicured. All that mowing takes a lot of oil, but thats nothing when compared to the crops, especially the corn.

The corn crop did not look like any corn that this kid could remember. It was lush and tightly packed, dense even. Every field looked like it had been planted and cultivated by the same farmer, maybe some corporation. Id bet a buck that this corn I drove past was genetically-modified Frankencorn, and totally dependent on high-powered fertilizers. Ive probably eaten tons of it in the cheap salty corn chips Im addicted to.

Corn (a.k.a. maize) is used not just as food for people and cattle, its also used to produce ethanol, and not just for boozers, but to mix in with our gasoline.

Since 2005, Congress has required oil refineries to add ethanol, mostly from corn, to their gasoline. Its called the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS). The EPA runs the program. In January, Reuters reported: EPA will have to decide on the next phase of the program in coordination with the Department of Energy and the Department of Agriculture. The EPA plans to propose requirements in May this year.

Members of Congress should not leave the changing of RFS to some pointy-headed bureaucrat in the administrative state (i.e. the EPA) but should adjust the program themselves. And they should seriously consider ending the program. Or, they might consider an idea floated in How To Fix The Ethanol Industry by Robert Rapier at Forbes in 2019.

To understand just how wacky the RFS is, read Stop the Ethanol Madness by Mario Loyola, which ran at the Atlantic in November of 2019. Loyola explains how RFS is not only uneconomic but is also destroying the environment. Loyola asserts that todays corn-ethanol program is a glaring failure, and it is unconscionable that politicians of both parties are conspiring to keep it alive despite knowing full well what its problems are.

Ethanol has about one-third less energy than does gasoline. So cars using ethanol get fewer miles per gallon. Flex-fuel vehicles that use E85 get up to 27 percent fewer miles per gallon.

A huge problem with corn ethanol as a fuel for ICE (internal combustion engines) is its EROI, i.e. its energy return on investment. EROI is the amount of energy produced against the amount of energy used to produce it. The formula for EROI is the energy output divided by the energy input. An EROI of 1.0 would mean that youre expending as much energy to produce energy as the energy being produced, so its would be a wash, a draw, and utter folly to produce energy with such a low EROI. Corn ethanol has an EROI of 1.5 as compared to gasolines 11. Because of corn ethanols low EROI, youre basically swapping one type of energy for another. How smart is that?

So, the amount of energy that one gets from corn ethanol for mixing into gasoline is just slightly more than the energy it takes to cultivate corn, harvest it, haul it to the distillers, keep the distillers from sampling too much of their product, haul the finished product to refiners, etc.

That gets us to the fraud of renewables -- they depend on fossil fuels. The heavy machinery used to produce corn ethanol, the tractors, corn-pickers, and such, all use fossil fuels; there are no electric versions as yet. (Rapier touches on this in the above link.) So, a farmer must use fossil fuels to produce a non-fossil fuel. Biofuels cant exist without fossil fuels, at least not yet. (Actually, petroleum is a biofuel; the bio is ancient plankton. Geologists dont think that abiogenic oil can account for whats in the worlds vast oil fields.)

Although there are questions about how economic corn ethanol is, its lobby keeps it going. But now that the price at the pump is at all-time highs, its time to ask how much of that price is due to compliance with the RFS mandate on refiners to mix ethanol into gasoline. If it adds to the price at the pump, then the RFS program should end immediately.

In June of 2021, American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM) reported:

The total cost of RFS compliance is surging and could be as high as $30.5 billion for 2021 -- more than twice the record-high annual program costs set in 2016, and 8.5 times higher than in 2019, the year the United States reached record ethanol blending. By comparison, the refining sector spends $16.4 billion on workforce pay and benefits. The situation is so dire that labor groups and Democratic Governors have requested relief from the Environmental Protection Agency.

In August of 2021, The Hill ran Why the Renewable Fuel Standard is a threat to our nation's supply chain security by former Secretary of the Navy Sean OKeefe and General Anthony Zinni:

For Americas independent refiners, the cost to comply with the RFS is on track this year to exceed all other costs of running their refineries [] a well-meaning policy to increase biofuels has become a self-inflicted wound that poses an ever-growing threat to our national security and global standing as more domestic refineries succumb to the unsustainable costs of the RFS.

In November of 2021, Bloomberg ran Biden Could Revisit Renewable Fuel Mandate to Give Drivers Relief at Pumps:

A reduction in ethanol use could be more effective now, with gasoline from refineries even cheaper than ethanol prices. Wholesale prices for 87-octane conventional gasoline are about 15 cents a gallon cheaper in New York than a blend of 90% gasoline and 10% ethanol.

Note that these three block quotes are from 2021, before the added price spikes due to war in Ukraine. The historic high prices for fuel are filtering throughout the economy. Congress needs to act, not leave tweaking RFS to the EPA. There may be some movement on that front, as last July a bill was introduced to that end: S.2385 -- Corn Ethanol Mandate Elimination Act of 2021. However, all thats happened with the bill is its introduction. It needs further action.

The corn ethanol lobby immediately rose up, and six days after the bills introduction, FarmProgress ran Senate bill repeals corn ethanol mandate. The article is worth reading as it reveals the entrenched interests at play in RFS. But the article is dated, as the worlds food supply has been damaged by the war in Ukraine, which is a breadbasket to much of the world.

This spring, Ukrainian farmers might have a little trouble between missile strikes getting their crops planted. However, if Ukrainian agriculture is taken offline by war, American farmers can make up some of the difference by raising food rather than fuel additives. That is, if Congress lets them.

Jon N. Hall of ULTRACON OPINION is a programmer from Kansas City.

Image: Tony Webster
Several decades ago, my then-elderly mother was mugged in a New York City subway station. She was knocked to the hard ground by a male stranger, who ran off with her purse. According to reports, there were several other passengers on the platform, but none of them came to her aid.

Fortunately, my mother was not seriously hurt. Her material loss included several valuable pieces of jewelry, which she had kept in a bank vault, aware of the possibility of their being stolen from her apartment. Having retrieved and worn them over the weekend, she had put them in her purse and was on her way to returning them when she was mugged.

Such a brutal incident was not that unusual, even then. And perhaps my mother might have felt relieved to emerge from it relatively unscathed. There have always been bad actors taking advantage of the vulnerable. And in a burgeoning society increasingly reluctant to "get involved" with strangers, the job of the evildoer is facilitated.

This senseless subway incident roars back at me whenever  like an idle bystander  I observe on TV the horror in Ukraine. As the outrageous war images multiply, I feel as conflicted as the shocked passengers on the subway platform  mindful of the right thing to do yet minding my own business, because, quite frankly, that is of greater immediate concern.

Russia's month-long assault on Ukraine has only grown more brutal. What is happening there represents within a single year a second military incursion in which the reaction of the United States has lacked clarity and focus. In both aggressions, Biden presumed that the battles were not ours to fight. He even refers to the current action against Ukraine as "Putin's War." Not long ago, Joe reminded us that what was happening in Kabul was not "our war," either. In fact, he was relieved to be withdrawing from the mess, abandoning billions of dollars of equipment and presuming that the Afghan forces would determine the country's fate.

Biden may jaw about how the buck stops at his desk, but he rarely assumes responsibility for what's going on here or abroad  unless, of course, the news is favorable. During his ignominious retreat from Afghanistan, he shrugged off queries about the recent deaths of Afghans desperately clinging to the wings of departing aircraft, regarding it as old news.

Another discouraging parallel between the Biden administration's handling of the Afghan and Ukraine crises is the fact that in both events, "conventional wisdom"  based on our "intelligence"  proved dead wrong. Before America's leave-taking from Afghanistan, Biden assured us that the Afghan air force was more than up to the task. He even described it as an impressive, well-trained fighting group that would have no problem with any opposition. And despite hundreds of intelligence personnel on the ground in Afghanistan at the time, there was little reported awareness that the Taliban were gobbling up other Afghan cities on their inexorable march toward Kabul.

Frighteningly, the same pattern of miscalculation and negligence appears to be happening in this administration's assessment of the Ukraine situation. One wonders what Biden and Putin chatted about during their face-to-face meeting in June of last year.

Whatever it was, Biden, who minced out of the meeting looking vaguely hopeful, proved totally ineffective in stopping Putin from eventually invading Ukraine. And he was slow on the uptake to help the Ukrainians repel the invasion.

Once the fighting began, many liberal pundits gave viewers the impression that determined Ukrainian forces, though hugely outnumbered by Russia's military, would nevertheless prevail. We saw images of stalled Russian columns, badly in need of food and fuel supplies. There were rumors of defections among the Russian ranks.

That was the tale they wanted us to believe. Such coverage led us to assume that a discouraged Putin might be in retreat and the war would soon be over. Surely the Biden administration had a more realistic grasp on the situation. But once again, we were flummoxed by those who run our non-transparent government. How much sheer incompetence does it take before we lose all faith in them?

Now Biden is heading off to a NATO conference in Brussels, as if anything he has to say will make much of a difference. And, scarier still, as if he is even aware that such is the case.

Perhaps the most chilling prospect during Biden's brief reign of error is that America, once the leader of the free world, is clearly losing its clout. Our back is to the wall, shoved there by Russia's threat of worldwide nuclear war, China's acquiescence to Putin's treachery, and Biden's policy  from "day one"  that has made America energy-dependent on Russia and other rogue states.

Despite this administration's threats against Russia, Putin is still in the catbird seat and in control of his people. Biden may saber-rattle with the best of them, even calling out Vlad as a villainous war criminal. But the nations of the world have caught on to Old Joe. In light of his failures at home and abroad, they dare not depend on someone who is tongue-tied without a teleprompter and, more importantly, exhibits the pointless bravado of a man who puts politics above principle.

Like Americans, the rest of the world is watching developments in Ukraine with a heightened sense of today's horror and tomorrow's dread. An attack against Russia could mean Armageddon. Suddenly, global warming seems less catastrophic than global war.

So like the passengers on the subway platform who did nothing during a brutal attack on another human being, we tend to measure this latest atrocity with the yardstick of our own self-interests.

As long as Putin is in charge, we can no longer dismiss the rhetoric coming out of the Kremlin as mere "Russian disinformation." Yet at the same time  and with good reason  Americans are growing more skeptical of what our own government tells us.

As the world hangs in the balance, this is hardly the time for a compromised president and his ineffective staff to be calling the shots.

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.
The paradigm of seeking a balance between the federal government and states began to cave during the Obama years. Now, under Biden, the abandonment of the federalism paradigm is picking up steam, and we see an attempt to sabotage federalism in favor of a vast federal bureaucracy and regulations and laws produced and upheld by a cadre of antisocial, power-mad elitists.

The replacement is seen in a growing identity with authoritarian regimes and practices such as being soft on Iran and Russia. Liberty always means support for the individual and locality against the encroachments or belligerence of tyranny. There is contempt for the states, especially those at our southern border, as we see the federal government breaking its own laws and distributing illegal migrants throughout the country. We see it In its attacks on the nuclear family and our military by its extreme support of non-heterosexual agendas. The obsessive climate change agenda enhances globalist encroachments over U.S. sovereignty, and thus reduces the foundational federalism with concomitant liberties of our own sovereign system.

The key principle of our Constitution is the federalist system itself, with shared power between the states and the federal government. Here, the United States is unique among nations in that the state governments created the federal government.

The government of these United States prior to our Constitution was under the Articles of Confederation. Under that system, the federal government was purposely weak. Power resided overwhelmingly in each of the separate states. But without a uniform trade policy, a uniform national tax policy, and a standing army, the sense of unity among the states was diluted. Even though we had won the War for Independence under a less than unified system, it was clear that in order to survive in the world, we needed to have more unity.

Thus, the U.S. Constitution with its separation of powers into three branches of government; its Bill of Rights; its affirmation against the presence of titles of nobility; its assertion of the importance of habeas corpus (recently diluted or ignored in our treatment of Jan. 6 defendants who as of this writing are still being oppressed); Article 1, Sec. 8, which states 18 categories of laws Congress may pass; Article 1, Sec. 9, which states eight topics of laws Congress may not pass; and Article 1, Sec. 10, which states that three areas of legislation states may not engage in at all establishes a beautiful balance between decentralized and centralized governance. Because of the comprehensiveness of these articles particularly, some did not consider the Bill of Rights necessary, since the duties and no-nos of legislation were already contained in the document. But because their ancestors in England already had enunciated many rights of Englishmen in 1689, it was considered wise to emphasize that hundred-year-old heritage.

Although the scope of federal legislation was enlarged by the so-called progressive presidents early in the 20th century, and later by the New Deal, there was still a great deal of ambivalence in our society  even among many New Deal Democrats  that perhaps the federal government was getting too much power. That sense of balance between the separate states and the federal government still resonated with both parties, albeit less so with the Democrats, who had too many aggressive leftists even in the 1940s  men like the Democrat secretary of commerce Henry Wallace, who eventually ran against Harry Truman for president in 1948 as the Progressive candidate.

However, in the Obama years, we saw a shift in the pro-Constitution paradigm that was shared by both the Republicans and Democrats, despite the Democrat excesses over a few decades in expanding the scope of federal authority. That shift can be clearly seen by the sign-off of the Obama administration in 2015 in support of U.N. Agenda 2030. This commitment by our government (which, by the way, was not rescinded by President Trump) places our government's activities on the world stage within a globalist paradigm built around the idea of "sustainability."

This agenda is not mainly an agenda of countries, nor of states or provinces or other localities within countries. Rather, it is an approach to solving global issues by "stakeholders." Stakeholders include governments, but they also include "civil society, the private sector, and others [non-specified]." This worldwide behemoth will thus transcend classic distinctions and nation-state ideals where governments (in our case federalism and concomitant liberties) define society. Rather, governments, including the USA, are part of a more complex venture. This more complex venture, we are told in the United Nations' sustainability document, "will require resource mobilization and financing strategies." These strategies "will require quality, accessible, and timely data collection and regional follow-up and review."

What lies behind these vapid, vague words is never specified. Will all citizens of all countries be required to fill out forms regularly as part of this "data collection" as we now do with our income tax? Will the U.S. budget process already mired in thousands of pages and a regular cause of consternation among the legislators and the citizens now have to include increasingly large allocations for "resource mobilization and financing strategies"? The opaque wording should be a cause of concern to every adult citizen of the USA.

We should also note that Agenda 2030 shifts from an emphasis upon rights, which appears in almost every sentence in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was passed by all countries with only eight abstentions and no negative votes, in 1948. Thus, the U.N. at that time used rhetoric that was in no way a threat to our system of government or our sovereignty. Like us, the whole world said rights were of uppermost importance. Rights, liberty, separation of powers, and federalism were mutually enforcing ideas and institutional realities. Now, 74 years later, the goals of Agenda 2030 do not seem to reflect the historical and institutional values of our country. The word "rights" appears only once in Agenda 2030 in Section 19.

How will this new vision be implemented? The U.N. tells us that "resources need to be mobilized from domestic and international sources, as well as from the public and private sectors." If ever there was a sentence that called for specifics, this is it. You see, dear reader, you and I compose the private sector, even if we are employed by a governmental entity. We tend to think our money belongs to us, but this mealy-mouthed language leaves that as an open question in the new sustainable world order.

The electric company in NYC sends out notices with bills advising people to wash their clothes in cold water. This is an energy-saving measure and is consistent with sustainability. Although this advice is local, it is also at the same time global. It bypasses local and state legislation and clearly points to a time when it will not be a suggestion but will be required. This writer heard Obama state in an interview that he believed in remote controls over home thermostats but that there were some practical issues of conversion to that that still had to be overcome. This means the complete destruction of consumer choice, and by invading the home, he clearly was going beyond the constitutional restraints on the power and authority of the federal government in our Constitution. Today's suggestion undoubtedly is tomorrow's controlling command.

Sustainability was a key Obama commitment during his term of office, and it is a key commitment today. The paradigm of federalism on which our system was founded continues to be undermined by our present administration, which has intensified the radical path of sustainability Obama propelled us on.

Image via Pixnio.
I am discovering that my education has been woefully inadequate.

Somehow, I missed the part about how the Ukrainians do not have the same rights that all other human beings have  that is to say, the right to freedom and democracy. Apparently, "human rights" and "Ukrainian rights" do not intersect. The only possible explanation is that the Ukrainians are not human. Not sure how I missed that part in biology.

I also missed the part about how Russia owns Ukraine. I realize that Russian tsars subjugated the Ukrainians for centuries. I certainly have read about the famines deliberately imposed by Soviet Russia. The victims are numbered in the millions. But I did not realize that the Russians are to be held blameless for their atrocities. I somehow did not know that it is permissible for one country to own another. I suppose I need to study the works of Lenin more closely. Didn't I read somewhere about human beings having the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Must be my imagination. Can we not understand that the reason that the Ukrainians are fighting and dying for their country is that they have had a bellyful of Russia and would rather die than submit to tyranny any longer?

I must have been absent on the day that they told us that Russia and only Russia has the right to dictate the military force composition of its neighbors. Somehow, I didn't see the part where they dictated to China. China salivates at the energy resources of Siberia, so close and yet so far. NATO can't even pull the plug on Russian energy, never mind invade Russia, even if they wanted to, which they have never and will never even have the intestinal fortitude to consider. Quite the contrary. NATO would not even exist except for Russian enslavement of the captive nations it acquired at the end of a previous war it started, when it allied with the Nazis to dismember Poland.

We are told the Russians destroyed Grozny and Aleppo, and nobody seemed to care, so why should we mourn the Ukrainian victims of Russian war crimes? Is it because Ukrainians are Christians? Isn't that racist? Does their Christianity entitle them to special status?

Yes, it does. I am, or attempt to be, a Christian, so I am a brother in Christ to every Christian Ukrainian. Together, we are members of the Body of Christ. Christians have a duty of charity, that is, love, to our brothers in Christ. Should we have sanctioned Putin for his undeniable war crimes in Grozny and Aleppo? Absolutely. Having failed to do so, do we now intend to give him a free pass for his murders of civilians in Ukraine? Are we eventually going to restore relations with Putin and carry on as if he is were legitimate leader? How low can we sink? What are the limits of our cowardly depravity? Is there no act that is beyond the pale? Is there no number of murders at which we will not say "enough"?

The current war is between civilization and barbarism. Either the rule of law will prevail, or we can forget the progress that we foolishly thought we had made since WWII, and regress to a world where the violent conquer while decent people cower in fear. We can be certain that China will be confirmed in its military and economic ambitions if we once again treat Russian aggression as acceptable.

The men of the West will rise or fall on the battlefields of Ukraine. The Orcs are upon us.

Image: Arnold Boecklin.
Today was the second day of hearings on the nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson, a person Joe Biden nominated to the Supreme Court because she's a leftist Black woman. It revealed that she is anti-constitutional and anti-White and has a weird fondness for child sex predators.

Democrats' statements today boiled down to three things: (1) We are so excited that you're a Black female. (2) Republicans are racist for daring to inquire into your credentials and views. (3) Regarding those racist questions, we would never treat a Supreme Court nominee as disrespectfully as the Republicans are treating you. (Their disgraceful treatment of Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Comey Barrett, Clarence Thomas, and Robert Bork has been memory-holed.)

The real focus was on Jackson's disturbing views about child sexual predators, the Constitution, and race. Her answers revealed that she's either very dumb or very dishonest.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) already tweeted out last week Jackson's history of demanding and imposing lesser sentences and other punishments for people convicted of pedophilia or child pornography. His questions focused on an 18-year-old man facing ten years in prison to whom she gave a three-month sentence. The man possessed hardcore stuff:

Videos included those showing a 12-year-old male committing a sexual act, about which Hawley said. "I'm not gonna I'm not gonna read exactly what it was," because of the graphic nature of the content. There was another video showing an 8 year old "committing a sexual act," and still others, showing 11-year-olds, the rape of children by adult males, and "very lengthy and include numerous images, numerous views, sometimes collages, sometimes multiple victims, you see the act and progress, the government goes on to describe some of the masochistic images," Hawley said.

Jackson agreed that the crime was heinous but said she wanted to "redirect[] the defendants' attention" through punishments other than prison (limits on computer use, being kept from children, etc.). Hawley pointed out that her opinions did not give her the right to ignore Congress's laws.

Hawley also pressed Jackson about the fact that she thought the small size of the collection, rather than its appalling contents, mattered. He also noted that Jackson seemed to feel that the defendant (18) was just curious about his "peers" (8- to 13-year-olds) and that she'd apologized for sentencing him. The Post Millennial has an excellent rundown of the back-and-forth.

What's striking is how Jackson's answers so often sound almost logical, but they're not. This surreal quality was especially apparent when she explained why she thought existing child pornography laws are too harsh.

Ketanji Brown Jackson defends her record of letting child porn offenders off the hook, saying that federal guidelines for such offenders are outdated pic.twitter.com/kyXkxEKtnO  RNC Research (@RNCResearch) March 22, 2022

Huh? The sentences before the internet made porn readily accessible were very harsh, but now that porn is so easily available, it's wrong to punish people as hard as in the old days?

Jackson believes that, because she disagrees with Congress, she can ignore the law.

Jackson's views about the Constitution and race are also disturbing. First, she claimed that, even though she sits on the board of a pricey D.C. elementary school, she knew nothing about the way the school taught racial theories derived from Critical Race Theory, and it didn't matter to her work anyway:

Judge Jackson is on the Board of Trustees at Georgetown Day School, a private school that was founded in 1945 as the first integrated school in Washington, D.C. (Tuition is $40-$46k/year.) Here's the Cruz line of questions on CRT. pic.twitter.com/gnOsKBvydQ  Jamie Dupree (@jamiedupree) March 22, 2022

Oh, man. Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is backtracking on her earlier statement that Critical Race Theory is not taught in schools, after evidence that it is taught in her Georgetown private school, saying that she thought he meant "public schools." @tedcruz really nailing it here.  Joel Pollak (@joelpollak) March 22, 2022

In fact, Jackson has long been an admirer of Critical Race theorists and claims to support the doctrines they espouse:

This isn't a speech from thirty years ago. It's from January 20, 2020. She endorses a book that was foundational to critical race theory and made the case that, given the choice, whites would trade African-Americans away to space aliens and banish them from the universe.  Christopher F. Rufo  (@realchrisrufo) March 17, 2022

This isn't just metaphorical. Bell told NPR's Fresh Air he believed whites would make the trade in real life. He argued in the book that the history of slavery was not only "an example of what white America has done," but "a constant reminder of what white American might do."  Christopher F. Rufo  (@realchrisrufo) March 17, 2022

Ketanji Brown Jackson says "Faces at the Bottom of the Well"a founding text of critical race theoryis a personal touchstone. The book claims America is irredeemably racist, speculates that whites might re-enslave blacks, and endorses Louis Farrakhan.



We must ask if she agrees. pic.twitter.com/H7TXuS8K4b  Christopher F. Rufo  (@realchrisrufo) March 21, 2022

WATCH: @pnjaban says senators need to "take a look at" Ketanji Brown Jackson's embrace of Critical Race Theory and the debunked 1619 Project. pic.twitter.com/s1yexrB9ad  RNC Research (@RNCResearch) March 18, 2022

Ketanji Brown Jackson told @tedcruz she has "never studied critical race theory," but she has cited the founder of critical race theory, Derrick Bell, and endorsed its core concepts, including white privilege and intersectionality, in her speeches.



She is lying. pic.twitter.com/GPcrDdJlCQ  Christopher F. Rufo  (@realchrisrufo) March 22, 2022

What does this boil down to? It means that a person seeking to be installed as a Supreme Court justice  sworn to uphold the Constitution she's charged with interpreting  buys into an ideological theory that says the Constitution is "roach powder" and inherently racist, making the American nation rotten from root to branch. Her beliefs cannot coexist with being on the Supreme Court. It's like trapping matter and anti-matter in the same space.

I sincerely hope that the usual suspects (Senators Romney, Collins, Murkowski, and Sasse) understand that Jackson's open embrace of the ideas underlying CRT (even if she refuses the label) and her sympathy for child sexual predators prove conclusively that she is unfit for the Supreme Court.

Image: Ketanji Brown Jackson. Twitter screen grab.
The entire world seems to have pivoted to utter insanity. Historical standards of decorum have been turned upside-down. Now societies worldwide have devolved such that ideologues are describing truly peaceful protests as hateful, insurrectionist riots while they embrace actual hateful, insurrectionist violent riots as noble and virtuous "peaceful protests." How do we reorient our minds to comprehend this arcane and incomprehensible path to tyranny?

During the protests and riots of 2020 (in response to George Floyd's death), violent rage took to the streets of almost every major city. George Floyd, to coin a phrase, was all the rage! Thousands raged by looting businesses, fires raged as businesses were burned to the ground, and hostilities raged as rioters unleashed violent acts of hateful fury on city government buildings and anyone in law enforcement. Yet countless blatant acts of unfettered rage, violence, and criminality were deemed "peaceful protests."

Even though many were captured on camera committing crimes, comparatively few people were arrested. "Legacy media," pundits, and race-baiting apologists wanted and expected Americans nationwide to participate in mass self-deception. They hoped we would deceive ourselves by believing that we were not actually observing what we observed. They wished we would cast off logic, reason, prudence, and history of observable truths and definitions to embrace a mass illusion that the looting and violence we witnessed were in fact noble, virtuous "peaceful protests."

Despite billions of dollars lost in aggregated revenue, property damage, and thousands of human causalities (including many deaths), the "neo-peaceful protest" movement still receives credit as altogether peaceful!

Is this just an expansion of the definition of "peaceful protest"? Well, not quite. It's a complete redefinition  a redefinition both disorienting and nonsensical.

The definition of peaceful protests used to refer to mass marches and chants of dissatisfaction (while unarmed). Many Americans don't realize that that definition exactly describes the protesters in D.C. on January 6, 2021. They were unarmed as they marched toward the Capitol buildings, chanting displeasure with the presidential election outcome. Media and commentators called this group "hateful," "White Supremacists," and insurrectionists.

That's funny. The D.C. protesters didn't topple statues, they didn't set buildings on fire, they didn't set upon onlookers and demand a salute, and they didn't loot or interfere with private businesses at all. Yet those actually peaceful protestors are universally targeted, condemned, and prosecuted by the FBI, CIA, Capitol Police, and judges. True, some in this group did enter Capitol grounds and have been charged with "trespassing." Still, compared to the fully armed, violent rioting and looting "neo-peaceful protesters" in 2020, this cadre of protesters was entirely benign. Like something out of Orwell's 1984, the disproportional treatment between these two groups is grotesque!

The takeaway point: Of all deceptions, the worst is self-deception, because it robs the soul of dignity and integrity. Every Black Life Matters (EBLM) rejects the current disorienting paradigm that inclines toward self-deception and progressivism. Building a civil society that wholly respects liberty and freedoms for everyone requires "blind justice" and holding everyone accountable to the same (equal) standards. A just and free society cannot survive the rejection of concepts and terminology that underpin historical norms, replacing them with progressivist schemes and ideals. All lives are impacted when we see gross inconsistencies in upholding laws and justice, and all lives matter!

EBLM stands with all actual peaceful protests (as historically defined). We stand with J6 protesters and those currently and unjustly imprisoned (many just due to their proximity to capital buildings). We also share solidarity with Canadian and American truckers who simply seek to maintain personal dignity and bodily autonomy without government mandates. Bodily autonomy is the epitome of true liberty and freedom and must not be relinquished, regardless of government hostility.

Please stand with us as we stand with these. Remember, historically, North America represented a rejection of tyranny, embracing instead "liberty and justice for all." Let's commit to rejecting progressive nonsense and get back to this vital ethic.

Kevin McGary, president and founder of Every Black Life Matters (EveryBLM.com), is an entrepreneur, author, and public speaker. Kevin serves as chairman of the Frederick Douglass Foundation of California and is an executive with the Douglass Leadership Institute and the Northstar Leadership PAC. As a professional, Kevin has worked the past 35 years in information technology, specializing in the arenas of cyber-security, enterprise applications, application development automation, and enterprise job scheduling/utilities. Kevin leads a collection of proactive individuals committed to developing innovative and new approaches to today's socio-political issues, and with the assistance of elected officials and myriad of community activists, he lectures and provides workshops about today's most perplexing social issues.

Image: kolyaeg via Pixabay, Pixabay License.
A few days ago, Twitter locked the account of humor website The Babylon Bee for a post declaring transgender U.S. assistant secretary of health Dr. "Rachel" Levine its "Man of the Year."

This was a parody in response to USA Today naming Levine among its 2022 "Women of the Year."

Twitter cited "hateful conduct" on the part of the Bee, shutting the account down:

I just received this notice that weve been locked out of our account for hateful conduct. pic.twitter.com/udMriKcDr6  Seth Dillon (@SethDillon) March 20, 2022

Twitter informed the Bee that its account would be restored on the condition that the "offensive" tweet is deleted.

The Bee has over 1.3 million followers on Twitter, which shows its considerable reach and revenue generation. The easier route would have been to delete the tweet and then complain.

But, admirably, the Bee's CEO, Seth Dillon, has strode the difficult path of refusing to capitulate.

We're not deleting anything. Truth is not hate speech. If the cost of telling the truth is the loss of our Twitter account, then so be it.  Seth Dillon (@SethDillon) March 20, 2022

I've received some messages from people asking how they can help. I can think of a few ways:



1. Never censor yourself. Insist that 2 and 2 make 4 even if Twitter tries to compel you to say otherwise. Make them ban tens of millions of us.  Seth Dillon (@SethDillon) March 21, 2022

This isn't the Bee's first clash with Big Tech.

In 2020, Facebook demonetized the Bee's account and removed an article lampooning Democrat senator Mazie Hirono's comments during the confirmation hearings of SCOTUS nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett.

Facebook claimed that the article was "inciting violence" and demanded that the "problematic" portions be removed for the post to be restored.

CEO Dillon, even back then, chose to stand for freedom rather than Facebook-generated revenue.

So after a manual review, Facebook says they stand by their decision to pull down this article and demonetize our page. I'm not kidding. They say this article "incites violence." It's literally a regurgitated joke from a Monty Python movie!https://t.co/U9B6tTOj6N  Seth Dillon (@SethDillon) October 20, 2020

This occurred at a time when Facebook allowed content such as that generated by BLM's Hawk Newsome, who tweeted: "If this country doesn't give us what we want then we will burn down the system and replace it," and Democrat congresswoman Maxine Waters, who incited "protesters" to harass members of the Trump administration.

This goal behind the selective application of restrictions was obviously to ensure total adherence to progressive groupthink, irrespective of how ridiculous such ideas may be. Restraining hate or incitement to violence was the least of their concern.

Facebook eventually apologized, they restored the article and Bee's ability to monetize, claiming "satire can be difficult for our systems to identify."

The Bee, which by no means is a powerful media house, should be commended for consistently standing up for freedom of expression.

Most articles about the Bee call it a "right-wing" or "conservative" or "Christian" satire website. Even right-leaning Fox News refers to the Bee as "a conservative satirical site." This is probably what causes extra scrutiny from everyone, including the tech giants.

How does Babylon Bee see itself?

These are extracts from the "About Us" section on Bee's site:

The Babylon Bee is the world's best satire site, totally inerrant in all its truth claims. We write satire about Christian stuff, political stuff, and everyday life. We focus on just the facts, leaving spin and bias to other news sites like CNN and Fox News. If you would like to complain about something on our site, take it up with God.

The specific mention of "Christian stuff" and Fox News makes it obvious that their primary goal is laughter, and they are not ideological.

A browse through Bee's website proves that nobody is spared. Their objects of satire range from President Trump to Joe Biden to even President Putin.

This is a drastic departure from most of the mainstream "comedy" featured on TV and on streaming platforms whose aim is to advance a political agenda and deride nonconformists.

But this isn't about taste or quality of content. Media by their definition are a carrier and not a source or recipient.

Freedom of expression emanates from freedom of thought. Every amazing invention or idea or literary work was the product of a brave new idea. A society that demands consensus ceases to grow.

This is why people living under totalitarian regimes rarely innovate. It is not for the lack of talent; it is just that the people do not want to risk their lives by expressing a different idea.

By censoring and suppressing the "wrong" ideas, Big Tech is effectively impeding growth. There is no place for such tyranny in one of the world's largest democracies.

It has to be remembered that when Big Tech launched its social media platform, it was a place for interaction, sharing of information, and frivolity.

In time, they managed to infiltrate governments, corporations, educational institutes, NGOs, the news media, and everybody that mattered to become their official communication channels. They even became a channel of income for businesses and users.

Once Big Tech established its monopoly, it assumed the roles of judge, jury, and executioner of content and users permitted on its sites.

During the 2020 presidential elections, the people running Big Tech suppressed news about Hunter Biden's corruption that implicated Joe Biden. Also, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg donated nearly $419 million to nonprofit organizations that infiltrated the administration and infrastructure of the 2020 elections, which were supposed to be apolitical and sacrosanct.

The tyrants hence bought the White House for Joe Biden, and now everybody is suffering.

They then removed President Trump across platforms for "inciting violence" after the Jan. 6 protests. Ideally, the powers that be in the U.S. should have compelled the tech tyrants to reinstate Trump's accounts. But instead, they were glad that an independent voice and a tough critic was suppressed.

Big Tech's outlets then became enforcers of government-driven COVID-19 vaccine mandates by censoring any content that challenged the effectiveness of vaccines.

Currently, Big Tech can even shut down communication lines of governments and corporations by locking all of their platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Gmail, etc. Hence, they can blacklist countries, corporations, and individuals. The tyrants can demonetize accounts, add disclaimers to posts, and suppress content by applying their rules selectively and operating above the local or national law.

This goes against the spirit of freedom that is one of the founding tenets of the internet.

They can even deny infrastructure such as server platforms to rivals. Amazon removed social media platform Parler, which challenged the Big Tech cartel, from its web hosting service for "violating rules."

Big Tech demonstrated that it would abuse its monopoly to shut down opponents and competitors.

The idea was implemented on a much larger scale when Big Tech led Big Corporations to de-platform a country  i.e., Russia. This is like a nuclear weapon, and if history has taught us anything, once the advanced weaponry is developed, it will be used.

In free capitalistic nations, the buyers have the power to choose and earn a living. The tech tyrants are attempting to subvert these freedoms and democracy itself by installing a quasi-Soviet-style super-regime, where blacklisting, canceling, and denying income are easy.

So how does one take on this tyranny?

All great journeys begin with small steps.

Here is an idea:

While you can retain your Big Tech accounts, you should sign up for alternative platforms such as Truth Social, Rumble, and Parler and make DuckDuckGo your search engine. Urge your relatives, friends, and colleagues to join in. You should also visit and support financially these platforms and sites such as the Babylon Bee. If you run a business, add these platforms to your channels of communication. Once people get accustomed to new outlets, abandoning Big Tech will not be so difficult. Humans are creatures of habit, and habits are often as easy to break as they are to inculcate. Just give it time.

Let's take on the tyrants while we still have the facility to do so.

Wait any longer, and it may be too late!

Image: Twitter screen shot.
One of the things that makes life easy for true conservatives is that their principles are fixed, so they don't often get tripped up on their past stands. That's not true for leftists, for whom the ends always justify the means, so the means can do a 180 in an instant. When one enterprising New York Times reporter tried to attack Candace Owens as a Russian stooge for repeating Russian propaganda about Ukraine, Owens politely, and helpfully (very helpfully), explained that all her information about Ukraine came from...the New York Times.

Owens tweeted out the exchange, writing:

Received an email from The NYTimes asking for comment regarding me "advancing ideas that Ukraine is a corrupt country"similar to Russian state TV. I replied informing them that I actually got my ideas from the New York Times, and provided them links to their past articles. 

She included the receipts in the form of the email a New York Times writer sent to Owens stating, "We note that you advanced the idea that Ukraine was a corrupt country, which matched comments we've seen from Russian state media." Subtext: Gotcha! You're a secret Russian asset.

Owens was equal to the task of responding to this missive:

I am very confused by this e-mail. I learned about 'the idea that Ukraine was a corrupt country' from the New York Times. You guys have covered the corruption of Ukraine extensively, for years. As just one example, here is a piece from the NYT Editorial Board entitled, "Ukraine's Unyielding Corruption": https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/01/opinion/ukraines-unyielding-corruption.html I educated myself about both the neo-nazi problem in Ukraine and the unyielding corruption by reading your newspaper, not Russian state media. Is there something specific I said that was different from what you guys have written in the past?

Boom! And just to rub things in a little, Candace was kind enough to include a list of articles from other left-leaning publications discussing Ukraine's problems with corruption and neo-Nazis:

For more good measure  here are some more past articles written from reputable sources over the past few years about the corruption and neo-nazi problem in Ukraine. For clarity, are you now suggesting that what the western media covered extensively over the last few years is now just Russian propaganda? Are you suggesting all of these articles were sponsored by Russia state media? Again, I would love to provide you with a quote for your article, just want to be clear regarding what you mean when you say that I am advancing ideas that Ukraine was a corrupt country when in fact I got my ideas from your publication.

The listed articles came from such mainstream stalwarts as the Times, The Hill, The Daily Beast, and The Guardian, all of which are now banging the war drum.

Received an email from The NYTimes asking for comment regarding me advancing ideas that Ukraine is a corrupt countrysimilar to Russian state TV.



I replied informing them that I actually got my ideas from the New York Times, and provided them links to their past articles.  pic.twitter.com/Zy6a7Btih4  Candace Owens (@RealCandaceO) March 21, 2022

The snarksters on the left immediately pointed out that the first Times article Candace cited was from 2016, before Zelensky came into office. And once again, leftists learned it's a mistake to bring a little leftist toothpick to a fight with the well armed intellectual samurais on the right. This time, it was Mike Cernovich who shot back with links to Guardian, WaPo, and Times articles from last October about Zelensky's corruption issues.

Revealed: anti-oligarch Ukrainian presidents offshore connections



The Guardian



October 3, 2021.https://t.co/r2NKgV3oEk  Cernovich (@Cernovich) March 21, 2022

Zelensky name checked as corrupt official in New York Times as recently as October, 2021.https://t.co/kes4uvyawG  Cernovich (@Cernovich) March 21, 2022

Jack Posobiec chimed in with a year-old Time Magazine video about the country's neo-Nazi problem:

Last year Time Mag ran a mini-doc on the Azov Battalion https://t.co/FtlJOceiVG  Jack Posobiec  (@JackPosobiec) March 21, 2022

By the way, this neo-Nazi issue was no surprise to Jews, who will never forget that, during WWII, the real Nazis were shocked at the ferocity with which Ukrainians slaughtered their Jewish neighbors. And yes, the Ukrainians did elect as president a Jewish man, but Zelensky seems to be Jewish in a George Soros way  genetically but not religiously, ethically, culturally, or emotionally:

He has described his childhood as an "ordinary Soviet Jewish upbringing," which has been taken to mean that the family was not religiously observant, as was common under the repressive Communist regime. "I never speak about religion and I never speak about God because I have my own personal opinion about it," he has said. "Of course, I believe in God. But I speak with him only in those moments which are personal for me." He has described himself as a Ukrainian "with Jewish blood." According to press reports, the two children he has with his non-Jewish wife  Olena Zelenska, a former schoolmate  have been baptized.

What's clear to anyone who pays attention is that Ukraine is a corrupt country at the highest levels. (And for some reason, American politicians just love it there  e.g., these senators.)

What's also quite clear is that Putin has become a paranoid megalomaniac who seems happy to bomb a civilian population into oblivion, along with threatening the world with a nuclear war. Neither country is worth our blood and money...except that Putin is truly the baddie in all this, and, in addition to slaughtering civilians, he's risking destabilizing NATO, in which we in America have a longstanding and direct interest.

Here's Candace on Tucker discussing the exchange:

Image: Candace Owens on Tucker. Fox News screen grab.
In 2016, a cluster of over 300 megaliths were discovered under a maze of shrubs and garbage near Ranchi. The tombstones of Yamuna Nagar had existed there since the Neolithic Age around 1AD, but the modern-day colony that sat above it had remained oblivious to the ancient treasure for years. The stones became the second largest megalithic site of Jharkhand.

Amidst quarried lands and dusty air riddled with the smell of charcoal, lay thousands of prehistoric megalithic structures that spread across the jagged terrain of Jharkhand. Not many have noticed their presence, even fewer acknowledge their relevance, but these are stone structures that have marked the land with tribal traditions of birth and death, celebration and remorse since ages. Jharkhand is one of the few places in the world where tribes continue to build megaliths today, but are we learning what theyre trying to tell us?

Chokahatu, the largest megalith site in Jharkhand. Photo: Karan Kaushik/Outlook India

The extant megalithic structures of the state were built by tribes of various districts. Today, four out of the 32 megalithic tribesMundas, Asurs, Hos and Oraonscontinue to build stone burials for the dead. Elaborate rituals are performed and varied architectural styles are involved by each tribe for different occasions, which is why each site in each village across each district boasts different structures from dolmens to menhirs.

The Punkri Burwadih megalithic complex. Photo: Prantik16!/Wikimedia

Different villages or tribes call these burial structures by different names like hargarhi, harsalli, hargarha, jangarha and more. Some like birdiri menhirs are erected to celebrate various occasions from the birth of a girl child to the activists of the state. While birdiris of the Mundas were placed in a row, the dolmens of the Oraons were made by placing a flat stone on four vertical ones. Each structure has a story to tell. Here are a few examples.

What Do They Tell Us?

If you visit the southern tip of Jharkhand, youll find the land of its Singhbhum district riddled with horizontal stone slabs and long standing vertical monuments. These are the dolmens of Ho, a Kolarian tribe that erects megaliths as a secondary funerary rite. Stone slabs called Saasandiri are placed in the courtyards of houses, while menhirs or commemorative megaliths populate the exteriors of houses and cremation grounds. But these structures are more than pieces of stone. Among the people of the Ho tribe, a cremation is not allowed to be completed; the burning of the departed is doused with water about halfway through, and bones are picked from the heap of ashes to be stored in an urn for a few days as per custom. On the third day, the Umbul Ader ritual is performed to call back the spirit of the dead by placing the ashes on the kitchen floor. The people believe that death of a mortal is always caused by the influence of a spirit, and to determine this causal spirit, a male member of the family looks into the spread of ashes to check for marks: A long line points to death by ancestral spirits; footprints of a lizard suggest that the mountain god killed the deceased; and crab feet say that they were killed by the spirit of the tiger. Upon determining this, the ashes are stored in an urn in a Saasandir in the courtyard and a menhir is built outside as a memorial of the death of the departed. These are some of the most unique dolmens among the tribes.

Bhumij, a Munda enthnic group. Photo: Sumita Roy Dutta/Wikimedia

The undulating hills of the state reveal their own stories of megalithic traditions. The stone-spotted lands seem ordinary at first glance, their monotony broken only by the occasional contrast of a stunted green shrub. But a deeper study by archaeologists has suggested that these dolmens have had an order to their chaos. Not all sites were commemorative of death here: some were sepulchral stone structures erected in worship of the Mother Goddess. Numerous megalithic temples were built around these sites, with the dolmens being aligned with the hills, cardinal points of the earth or even the sky. Many sites were burial grounds as well, where the alignment of the tomb represented the desire of the deceased to return to the womb of the goddess for a better next life.

At the site of Chano, for instance, a cluster of five randomly placed stones remain almost missable to the unaware eye. But those who study it will learn that one of the more petite ones was designated as a female stone, while the highlight of the site is a 0.74m tall phallic shaped rock. Male and female stone traditions are not uncommon, and have been identified in various other locations from Meghalaya to Madagascar over the years. The Chano cluster reveals a stunning representation of horizon astronomy, in which tribals observe the path of the sun and moon instead of following calculations. Following it, the center of the shrine has been located exactly on the linear line that passes between the Bawanwey and Kesura Hills. Others are aligned perfectly with other important hills, or the rising sun or the North-South axis. The entire site is aligned towards the Summer Solstice sunrise.

The megaliths of Hazaribagh. Photo: Prantik16!/Wikimedia

While there are dolmens to be found every few metres in the state, a few clusters have garnered attention of historians over the years. Some such as Hazaribagh, with its heterogeneous designs and representations of animals; the Punkri Burwadih complex, which is an observatory for the path of the sun; and Honhey with its remnants of Red and applique pottery have revealed tremendous knowledge, culture and skill to be running through the veins of rural India. And those who search will find stunning beauty in these slab structures too, for when the moon shines bright over sites like Honhey, flecks of mica that go unnoticed in the day light up every night in a dance of incandescence to decorate its stone surfaces.

References

# The Hargarhis of Jharkhand: A Brief Study of the Megaliths of Jharkhand

# Telegraph India

# The Astronomy of the Megaliths of Chano

# Megalithic Monuments of Ho Tribe of West Singhbhum District
(Image source from: Twitter.com/ANI)

11 Migrant Workers Dead in a Fire Mishap in Hyderabad:- 11 migrant workers were burnt to death in a fire accident during the early hours of today. The fire mishap took place in Bansilalpet of Bhoiguda in Hyderabad. The fire officials rushed to the spot and two godowns caught fire on the spot. The initial investigation claimed that the fire accident took place due to a short circuit. The locals told that they heard a huge bang at 3:30 AM and it took hours to control the fire and the flames. The godowns had sawdust and caught fire immediately. The migrant workers are sleeping inside the godown.

Telangana | 11 people died after a fire broke out in a scrap shop in Bhoiguda, Hyderabad



Out of 12 people, one person survived. DRF reached the spot to douse the fire. A shock circuit could be the reason for the fire. We are investigating the matter: Mohan Rao, Gandhi Nagar SHO pic.twitter.com/PMTIDa5ilg  ANI (@ANI) March 23, 2022

Hyderabad Police Commissioner CV Anand rushed to the spot this morning. All the deceased are aged between 23 and 30 years. All of them are the natives of Chapra district in Bihar. Some of the locals told that they heard a cylinder blast and five fire-tenders have been rushed to the spot. The investigation also told that the fire safety norms were flouted and both the godowns were adjacent to each other. All the migrant workers die from asphyxiation. One of them managed to jump out and he is rushed to a nearby hospital. Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR) announced an ex gratia of Rs 5 lakhs for the families of the deceased. He asked the Chief Secretary Somesh Kumar to make the arrangements for the mortal remains to reach their native places.

(Video Source: NTV Telugu)
(Image source from: Timesofindia.indiatimes.com)

KCR planning for a National Tour:- Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR) is eager and keen to make his impact in national politics in the upcoming elections. He announced a Third Front and he has been meeting various counterparts of other Indian states and crucial regional leaders. A high profile meeting is planned soon in which most of the leaders of non-BJP and non-Congress would attend. KCR is all set to takeup a national tour soon after the inauguration of the Yadadri temple on March 28th. KCR visited Maharashtra, New Delhi and Jharkhand in Febraruy this year. KCR took a small break due to the ongoing budget sessions of the Telangana Assembly.

KCR will also participate in the Ugadi celebrations on April 2nd after which the tour map will be finalized. There were no Ugadi celebrations held in Pragathi Bhavan from the past three years because of the coronavirus pandemic. A grand celebration is planned for Ugadi this year and KCR would be present. KCR will fly to New Delhi and will meet various leaders for a week. He will then meet other leaders of the regional parties after his Delhi tour. A conclave is planned in Hyderabad or New Delhi soon so that the plan for the third front will be finalized. KCR's office will announce the details very soon.
Apples iPhones could finally bid goodbye to those wide notches. Well, the upcoming iPhone 14 Pro is already said to get rid of the bulky cutout in favor of two smaller ones  a hole and a pill. The former is for the selfie camera and the latter for other front-facing sensors including the Face ID hardware. But starting with the iPhone 15 series in 2023, the pill could be gone as well thanks to Samsungs technology. According to a new report coming from Korea, Samsung Display is developing a new display technology that will allow Apple to hide the Face ID sensor under the screen.

The whole thing will work similarly to how the under-display camera (UDC) technology currently works. But instead of a camera, the display panel will hide the Face ID hardware. When needed, it will be there for you. But when not in use, you will have a larger screen real-estate free of any notches and pills. The hole-punch will still be there for selfie cameras though. Samsung isnt quite ready with its UDC technology for mainstream phones.

Well, Samsung did use an under-display camera on the Galaxy Z Fold 3 last year but the performance was below par. The company better be working on improving the technology rather than rushing to throw it out of the door just for the sake of it. Time will tell what the Galaxy Z Fold 4 will bring this year.

Advertisement

Samsung is developing a new display technology

Samsung Display is the worlds largest smartphone display manufacturer and perhaps the best as well. Apple is one of the companys biggest customers, with most iPhones flaunting a Samsung-made display. Its no wonder the iPhone maker is turning to the Korean behemoth in helping it get rid of notches.

But Samsung isnt just developing this tech for Apple. The company could use the same technology to equip an under-display camera on the Galaxy Z Fold 5 ahead of the iPhone 15 next year, The Elec reports. The current iteration of its UDC tech, which we discussed above, uses laser drilling and lower pixel density on the part of the screen directly above the camera to allow light to pass through. But this implementation affects the photo quality quite severely.

The new display technology that Samsung is developing, on the other hand, will use transparent cathodes. Canadian firm OTI Lumionics will help the company in this. We hope it brings improvements all-around and wont affect the performance of selfie cameras or Apples Face ID system.
Most people, when buying a new phone or setting out to send somebody a text dont spend a lot of time thinking about how their messages will be sent. Typically, at least in the US, they simply open the default messaging app and send a message. Never giving a thought to whether thats RCS (rich communication suite), SMS, or some other message type. Let alone how those things are different and why those differences are important.

Of course, some just utilize an after-market apps messenger system. Such as those from Facebook, WhatsApp, Telegram, Instagram, or Snapchat. But many may also have noticed that a significant amount of news has centered recently around RCS, SMS, and iMessage. And those things are, in fact, very different  with important distinctions between them.

If youve been wondering about that, fortunately, thats exactly what this article sets out to explain.

Advertisement

What is RCS?

Now, chances are, youre already utilizing RCS in some form or another if youre using Googles default Android Messages app. Or, in fact, if youre using an aftermarket messaging app installed by your carrier. But, equally likely, you may also still be using SMS  unless youre on an iPhone.

SMS was first developed in 1992 and introduced as the standard messaging for phones in 1993. Its still in use on smartphones to a large extent and thats not least of all because of how iMessage works. Well discuss why that is in a moment. But, summarily, SMS is the standard for text-based messages with basic features such as sending in real-time. And its often paired with MMS for images and other media. Specifically, allowing text thats longer than 160 characters, up to forty seconds of video, one image, image slideshows, and audio clips.

Advertisement

Conversely, RCS is the next evolution of that universal messaging platform. It was first introduced to the world in 2007 before being taken over by the GSMA in 2008. But it has only recently been at the forefront of a concerted effort to make it the defacto replacement for SMS.

Google and carriers alike have pushed to bring RCS and its features as the default platform for smartphone messaging. The search giant acquired a company called Jibe Mobile in 2015, spurring one of several starts to implement the technology in place of SMS. And in place of the picture and media-specific MMS standard.

Jibe Mobile was an RCS back-end company. Put simply, Jibe Mobile was effectively building an effort to sell RCS server solutions as a middle man and working directly with carriers. With SMS and MMS holding position as fallback technologies. But widespread, widely reported efforts didnt begin to appear until

Advertisement

Finally, the iMessage platform was introduced on the iOS platform in 2011 with iOS 8. And while its the newest of the platforms, it only applies to iPhone, Apple Watch, iPad, iPod Touch, Mac, and other Apple products. If youve ever had a friend complain that your messages show up as green on their Apple devices, thats because theyre using iMessage and youre using a different platform. Summarily, because iMessage forces any non-iMessage content to appear in SMS or MMS form.

Whats the difference between RCS and SMS?

As noted above, SMS and MMS, together or apart, are both fairly standard and basic. RCS builds on that in a significant way. Not least of all, bringing text and image features into a single platform.

RCS supports text with an unlimited character limit, just for starters. It supports file sharing up to 100MB as well. Including images, GIFs, video, and similar content. IP voice calls are also enabled by RCS, including both individual and group calls. And, going further, it supports group chats with full chat features as well as group file transfers, geolocation exchanging, client-to-server and end-to-end encryption, read receipts, delivery receipts, and typing indicators.

Advertisement

Summarily, it brings all of the best of modern chat services to text messaging. All while using data connections in a way thats not wholly dissimilar to SMS. At least in terms of the connection requirement. It does also extend on those, not least of all by allowing text messages over Wi-Fi. But also by working via desktop platforms.

Given that the features of RCS go so far beyond SMS or MMS and their similarity to Apples iMessage, the differences between RCS and iMessage arent necessarily the most important.

What is important to understand is that RCS is a much more advanced solution than SMS. The latter of which is incredibly outdated. In terms of both features and related security. Particularly when considering that SMS has no encryption and RCS has client-to-server encryption by default. End-to-end encryption, conversely, is being added by more providers. Among those, the default Android messaging app has had end-to-end encryption  when RCS is active  since 2021.

Advertisement

Why hasnt RCS taken off, despite its differences compared to SMS?

Now, RCS has faced its fair share of challenges too. And arguably more than its fair share. For instance, while the global association of networking companies, the GSMA, unveiled its Universal Profile to help push carriers and app makers over to RCS in 2016, it hasnt required support for Universal Profile in order to support RCS. The most recent version, one of five, is version 2.4 and was released in late 2019. And it doesnt have that requirement either.

The Universal Profile goes a long way toward ensuring interoperability. It helps by settings standards and features that should be supported via RCS messaging across all carriers and messaging apps. That it isnt required has been among the biggest issues with regard to RCS replacing SMS entirely.

Advertisement

While everybody involved does appear to want the features and functionality to roll out, they havent always been on the same page. And they havent always adhered to the same set of features or methods for providing those. AT&T and Verizon are examples of those carriers. Although Verizon does plan support for RCS Universal Profile in 2022.

Secondarily, but no less impactful in the US where iPhone sales are typically dominant, Apple devices dont support RCS at all. As noted above, Apple has forgone support for RCS. Opting to keep SMS as the fallback text method for its iMessage service.

That has resulted in some big discrepancies, at least as large as those caused by carrier hesitancy. Chiefly in terms of what features can be used when iOS users interact with non-iOS users. With non-iOS users messages and content appearing only as either SMS or MMS on iPhones, for example.

Advertisement

For instance, reactions dont appear on Android phones even though RCS supports that. Instead, users only see messages about those interactions. Or an emoji sticker or message, depending on the app in question. Similarly, if Android users react to messages, iPhone users wont see the expected result either.

How do you know if RCS is enabled on your phone?

Although RCS hasnt been a smooth rollout across the board, chances are youve already got access to it. In particular, if youre using an Android phone. Thats not only because of the plethora of apps that have been created by carriers and third parties to roll it out either. As noted already, there are issues with those as they currently stand. But because of Google and a few other companies.

For instance, Googles decision to go around carriers, given their hesitancy, has resulted in the availability of RCS on many phones by default. And out-of-the-box.

Thats because its already available in the defacto Android SMS app, Google Messages. So, if you have Google Messages, you already have access. Youll only need to activate the features in the app in order to use them.

The search giant is, in fact, using Universal Profile standards as well. So all of the expected features  or most of them, with updates consistently adding more  are readily available.

Samsung Messages, for those using an older phone that doesnt yet include Google Messages as the default app, also supports RCS Universal Profile. Helping to solve discrepancies in messaging capabilities and bringing encryption to day-to-day messaging. And enabling a better, more uniform experience for everybody. Albeit without much help from Apple.

The primary caveat, of course, is that these types of messages do require a data connection to work. So if you arent on Wi-Fi or an unlimited plan, you will use your mobile data. Additionally, its worth noting that some apps  such as Google Messages  allow end-to-end encryption. But in many cases, including Google Messages, its only supported between users of the same app. So both uses would need to be messaging via that app.

All of that means that while RCS simply cant reach its potential, as of this writing. This article will be updated if that changes. And it very well could, if carriers each agree to implement RCS properly, as Verizon plans to, in the near future. But for now, RCS simply isnt a globally-available solution even if it is getting better. Or at least not the solution that it has the potential to be.
PLEASE NOTE: ALL ONLINE PURCHASES ARE AUTOMATIC RENEWALS UNLESS YOU EMAIL JPAYNE@ANNISTONSTAR.COM OR CONTACT CUSTOMER SERVICE @ 256-235-9253....

Purchase an online subscription to our website for $7.99 a month with automatic renewal. Each online subscription gives you full access to all of our newspaper websites and mobile applications. To cancel you may contact Customer Service @ 256-235-9253 or email JPAYNE@ANNISTONSTAR.COM



*NEW SUBSCRIBERS ONLY join with a NEW ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION is just $59.99 for the first year. Existing customers do not qualify for the specials! AMEX is not accepted through this site.



After the first year, well automatically renew your subscription to continue your access at the regular price of $69.99 per year. Please note *Your Subscription will Automatically Renew unless you contact Customer Service To Cancel*


(ANSA) - ROME, MAR 23 - Almost 100 kg of cocaine was seized in Friuli Tuesday night, police told the Messaggero Veneto newspaper.

The drugs were found in a wooded area at Bagnaria Arsa near Udine.

Two Croatian couriers were arrested. (ANSA).


(ANSA) - ROME, MAR 23 - An arsenal of weapons was seized from the Sicilian Mafia in Catania on Wednesday, police said.

The cache belonged to the Nizza group in the Santapaola-Ercolano family of Cosa nostra, led by jailed superboss Bendetto 'Nitto' Santapaola, police said.

Police found nine guns including pistols and rifles including two Soviet-made kalashnikov AK 47s in a pristine state of preservation, plus around 900 munitions of various calibers.

A grenade launcher with six modified grenades and 12 pipe bombs and flash bangs were also seized.

The stash was found in an abandoned warehouse near a school in the northeastern Sicilian port city. (ANSA).


(ANSA) - ROME, MAR 23 - Some 65,350 Ukrainian refugees have come to Italy since the start of the war in their country, the interior ministry said Wednesday.

Some 1,611 people fleeing the Russian invasion have arrived in Italy in the last 24 hours, it said.

The total that have arrived by road is 63,104: 32,361 women, 25,151 children and 5,592 men.

A further 2,246 refugees came by train between March 10 and 22.

The main destinations declared upon entry are still Milan, Rome, Naples and Bologna. (ANSA).


CAIRO - Benghazi Mayor Sagir Bujuary called on Italy to save the architectural identity of the city's historic center which was damaged by civil war. The mayor was speaking at a congress on Monday in the second-largest city of Libya, organized by the municipality in collaboration with the Italian consulate general, Abdelgadier Ramdan, one of the founders of the Italo-Libyan association of friendship, told ANSAmed on Wednesday.



Bujuary, in stressing the importance of preserving the city's identity, in particular through its historic buildings, recalled the efforts made by the municipality, in coordination with the UN capital development fund to recuperate, among others, the building of the lighthouse of Sidi Akhribesh, of the former legislative council of Barqawi and the house of culture, also said Ramdan, previously a coordinator of relations between Italy and Libya at the then-foreign ministry of Benghazi.



The city center, as known, has been seriously damaged by armed clashes that accompanied the takeover of eastern Libya by the forces of general Khalifa Haftar between 2014 and 2017.



Intense fighting was registered in Benghazi in particular to chase jihadists resisting in strongholds.



The congress focused on "favoring a closer partnership between the Italian system and Libyan authorities to facilitate the reconstruction of the old city of Benghazi", the Italian consulate summed up on the eve of the event. At least 170 buildings need to be restored or rebuilt, it was specified.



Italy's consul general in Benghazi, Carlo Batori, in a speech expressed the hope that the congress can "facilitate the reflection of Libyan authorities on how to best deal with the complex task of rebuilding the old city", in the "most efficient and transparent way" and with "an approach that is based on modern methodologies, innovative materials and avant-garde technologies".



Batori stressed that the historic center of Benghazi is "one of the most interesting and intriguing of the Mediterranean".




LISBON - Portugal on Wednesday kicked off commemorations for the 50 years of the so-called "Carnation Revolution" on April 25, 1974, that marked the end of the regime of Antonio de Oliveira Salazar and the beginning of an actual democracy. The opening ceremony will be held in Lisbon, on the eve of a day with a symbolic value, in which the Portuguese will be able to say they have lived more days as a democratic State than as a dictatorship.



Celebrations for the 50th anniversary will last four years, until 2026, when the 50 years since the implementation of the Constitution and the first democratic legislative elections will be commemorated. The program will start with a ceremony on Wednesday, attended by the president and the prime minister, with the objective of reflecting on the future of the country.



Along with the awarding of military honors, a time capsule with objects and three letters written by young students will be buried. The capsule will then be opened in 2074, for the centennial of the Revolution.



The inspiration behind the name "Carnation Revolution" was the gesture of a florist in Lisbon who was asked a cigarette by a soldier. She instead gave him a red carnation to insert in the barrel of his gun. The gesture was replicated and became symbolic of a historic time and a revolution in which red was recalled more for the flowers than the blood.
BELGRADE - While armed conflict has been raging in Ukraine for a month, with dramatic consequences in terms of human losses, destruction and the flow of refugees fleeing the country, Serbia has been remembering NATO's bombing campaign in the spring of 1999 that ended the war of Kosovo. The intervention 23 years ago was carried out without a UN mandate, contributing to still fuel in the Balkan country a sentiment of hostility towards the Atlantic Alliance, considered as an authentic "aggressor" against a sovereign and independent State.



"Aggression" rather than "bombings" is the term used by Serbs to indicate the campaign of raids carried out by NATO, which lasted two months and a half and ended with the withdrawal of the forces of Slobodan Milosevic from Kosovo. And as a reminder of the aggression, in downtown Belgrade - which was pummeled by raids - huge buildings that housed the then-ministry of defense and of the army general staff were left in ruins after being hit and severely damaged by allied bombs.



NATO's raids, carried out at the order of then-secretary general of the alliance Javier Solana, began on the evening of March 24 1999, with the first fighter-bombers taking off from the base of Aviano, in northeastern Italy, and ended on June 9, after 78 days of intense bombings that hit military - as well as civilian - targets, causing the death of at least 2,500 people and wounding 12,000 others. The damages were evaluated in tens of billions of dollars caused to infrastructures, roads, bridges, industrial plants, schools, hospitals, newspapers, museums, theaters and cultural sites. NATO's intervention was decided without a UN mandate and after the failure of several negotiation attempts at a diplomatic level, with the objective, defined as "humanitarian", of inducing the regime of then-strongman Slobodan Milosevic, of ending repressions, violence and ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, and the withdrawal of Serbian troops from that territory, where some 40,000 NATO soldiers entered with the KFOR mission. That mission is still present in the country, although with a force reduced by 10 times.



The episode that is considered a turning point, leading to the raids, is the slaughter of some 40 ethnic Albanians by Serbs in Racak, south of Pristina. While the Kosovan side said it was a massacre of innocent people, according to Belgrade the victims were fighters in the Kosovo Liberation Army (UCK, the Albanian separatist guerrilla), considered by Serbs as a terrorist organization. They claimed it was an operation to guarantee national security. But the international community did not accept Belgrade's justification, denouncing a heinous crime against civilians. Four years ago, a special commission was set up in Serbia to investigate the consequences of NATO's bombings with the use of depleted uranium, believed to have caused several cases of cancer. So far, a number of complaints against NATO have been presented by the commission.




TUNIS - After a forced pause that lasted over two years due to the pandemic, a cruise ship docked on Wednesday morning for the first time since 2019 at the port of La Goulette in Tunis, from Spain, with 724 tourists of various nationalities on board. The announcement was made by the Tunisian merchant navy and ports office, adding that the ship is the "Spirit of Discovery" of British company Saga Cruises.



Tourists on the cruise ship - mostly Britons as well as Germans, French and Spaniards - were welcomed by various representatives of Tunisian authorities, including the Tourism Minister Mohamed Moez Belhassine.



"These cruises are very important to re-launch tourism and other sectors", commented Belhassine, announcing that in 2022 some 44 cruise ships are expected to arrive in Tunisia, a number that is expected to increase in the coming years.



Tunisia vies to earn between 50% and 60% of revenues registered in the tourism sector in 2019, the year of reference for the country since the revolution of 2011 with over 9 million tourists and earnings worth 14% of GDP.




The son of John Lennon and Yoko Ono is to officially unveil a new cultural landmark in Liverpool named in honour of his mother.

On Friday, Sean Lennon will open the Yoko Ono Lennon Centre which will be home to the University of Liverpools new 400-seat concert hall, The Tung Auditorium.

The event will be celebrated in the evening with a gala concert featuring composer Professor Shirley Thompsons premiere of One World, a re-imagining and homage to the ex-Beatles iconic song Imagine.

A thrilled Yoko Ono, an honorary graduate of the university, said: Thank you to the university and to the people of Liverpool for this wonderful honour.

Yoko Ono says she is thrilled to be honoured by the university and the people of Liverpool (Jason Roberts/PA)

Liverpool has become part of me from years of going there, and with this new centre part of me will always be there  for that Im very thankful.

I think John is smiling about it too. Im also very thankful that our son, Sean, is there in Liverpool for the celebrations around the opening.

Musician Sean added: They used to say behind every great man was a great woman. But my parents famously stood beside each other as equals.

It is a beautiful statement that the University of Liverpool would recognise my mother in this way.

In a city synonymous with my fathers achievements it is especially meaningful to acknowledge Yoko Ono for the remarkable human being that she is.

Im just really chuffed to be here.

Sean Lennon will open the the performance centre named in honour of his mother, Yoko Ono (John Stillwell/PA)

The state-of-the-art centre will also provide the latest teaching facilities including a 600-seat lecture theatre.

Richard Hartwell, The Tung Auditorium artistic director, said: Due to its cutting-edge design, The Tung Auditorium is possibly the finest concert hall in the world.

The excellent acoustics will bring out the very best creativity in anyone who uses it, from students, tutors, youth groups, and amateur ensembles, to internationally acclaimed visiting artists.

Professor Catherine Tackley, head of the universitys department of music, said: We are very proud of what the Yoko Ono Lennon Centre offers not only the university, but also the city and region.

As well as offering a busy programme of public performance, our students will benefit from involvement in all aspects of The Tung Auditoriums operation, from front-of-house to sound technician roles, delivering so much valuable experience as they look towards their careers.
Taylor Swift has shared a clip of a new song she has written for the upcoming film adaptation of Where The Crawdads Sing.

The pop megastar said she had got absolutely lost in the book when she read it and had wanted to be part of the musical side of the production.

Swift said she wanted the track, titled Carolina, to be haunting and ethereal to match the tone of the story.

The film, starring Daisy Edgar Jones and produced by Reese Witherspoon, is based on the best-selling novel by Delia Owens.

It follows the story of Kya, a young girl who lives alone in the marshes of North Carolina, who becomes enveloped in a local murder mystery.

Where The Crawdads Sing is a book I got absolutely lost in when I read it years ago, Swift wrote on Instagram, sharing the films new trailer.

As soon as I heard there was a film in the works starring the incredible @daisyedgarjones and produced by the brilliant @reesewitherspoon, I knew I wanted to be a part of it from the musical side.

I wrote the song Carolina alone and asked my friend @aarondessner to produce it.

I wanted to create something haunting and ethereal to match this mesmerising story. Youll hear it fully soon, but for now check out the @crawdadsmovie trailer for a clip.
A baroness once described as a Tory feminist who was married to one of the architects of Thatcherism whose speech sealed her downfall, has died aged 90.

Baroness Elspeth Howe of Idlicote died late on Tuesday at her home in Warwickshire, her family said in a statement.

Lady Howe was the widow of the late Lord Geoffrey Howe of Aberavon, a former deputy prime minister and chancellor.

Elspeth Howe and her dog sleeping rough at Westminster Cathedral Plaza in London at the launch of National Sleepout Week, a national appeal to raise funds for the homeless (PA)

Lord Howe was both fundamental in the making of Margaret Thatcher but also credited as being key in her downfall.

The Guardian once described Lady Howe as becoming once, twice, three times a lady as she had become a Lady through her marriage to Lord Howe, then simply Sir Geoffrey.

She retained her title when he was elevated to the Lords, and was then made a crossbench peer in her own right.

Lady Howe was also the half-aunt of the Duchess of Cornwall.

Her family said in a statement that she died following a brave battle with cancer.

They said: She will be missed intensely by her whole family and many friends We are immensely proud of her many achievements, especially her championing of the causes close to her heart which she supported so effectively during her remarkable lifetime.

Camilla, whose father Major Bruce Shand was Lady Howes half-brother, said it was a sad time for all the family.

The duchess is understood to have thought Lady Howe a remarkable woman who did so much for her country.

Lady Howe, who retired from politics in June 2020, entered the Lords as a life peer in 2001.

She was deputy chairman of the Equal Opportunities Commission from 1975 to 1979 and then chair of the Broadcasting Standards Commission.

Then-chancellor of the exchequer Geoffrey Howe with his wife Elspeth in Downing Street as he made his way to the Commons to deliver his budget speech (PA)

When her position at the latter was announced, she took over from William Rees-Mogg, a former editor of The Times and the father of current Cabinet minister Jacob Rees-Mogg.

In a profile of Lady Howe in The Independent in 1993, she was dubbed a Tory feminist.

Antiques dealer and friend Alistair Sampson told the newspaper: She isnt easily shockable but she does insist on standards. Shes not a Mary Whitehouse figure. And shes a feminist  but not a tiresome feminist.

She is well-documented to have clashed with Baroness Thatcher, with Conservative grandee John Biffen once describing the two women as being like wasps in a jam jar.

One of the baronesss causes was to tackle homelessness, and in 1990 she took part in a sleepout where she spent the night on the street in a cardboard box to highlight the issue.

The gesture was reported to have widened the rift between the Howes and Mrs Thatcher.

Lord and Lady Howe leaving their London home (PA)

Lady Howe, who was reported to be known as Heppy to her friends, was rumoured to have helped her husband write the resignation speech credited with destroying the former prime ministers career in 1990.

It was later suggested that while she did not write it, she did inspire it.

In the book Margaret Thatcher: Power And Personality, Lady Howe was described as forthright in her opinions, feminist in her sympathies, sharp-tongued in her humour, and fiercely supportive of her husband in his battles.

Lady Howe married her husband in 1953 and the pair had three children: Caroline, known as Cary, and twins Amanda and Alec.

In her latter career, Lady Howe questioned the Government on the protection of children from issues such as internet pornography, gambling, and inappropriate content on the television and radio.

Her family said funeral details would follow in due course.
Beyond Meat Jerky (BYND) is here  yes, you read that right.

The plant-based leader partnered with PepsiCo (PEP) to create the new shelf-stable snack, which is set to roll out at stores nationwide beginning this month.

Beyond Meat Jerky, marinated and slow roasted to offer a similar taste experience to traditional beef jerky, contains 10 grams of protein and is made with simple, plant-based ingredients such as peas and mung beans.

The product will be available in three different flavors: original, hot & spicy, and teriyaki.

"We are thrilled to introduce the first product from Planet Partnership, our joint venture with Beyond Meat and PepsiCo," Dan Moisan, Planet Partnership CEO, said in a press release.

"The nationwide launch of Beyond Meat Jerky will make plant-based meat accessible to millions of households. It tastes great, its a good source of protein, and its convenient to eat whether youre on the go, at the office or out on adventures," the executive added.

Beyond Meat Jerky (Credit: Beyond Meat)

The news comes as Beyond Meat continues to expand its footprint within both retail and fast food.

Earlier this year, KFC (YUM) announced the nationwide debut of Beyond Fried Chicken after a two-year testing period.

McDonald's (MCD) McPlant burger, which analysts say could hit the Golden Arches this year, has been viewed as one of the most-anticipated plant-based rollouts. An expanded release could help lift not only Beyond Meat's bottom line, but plant-based meat makers overall.

The company has also struck up alliances with Taco Bell, Costco (COST), Subway, TGI Fridays, Dunkin, Pizza Hut, and more.

Other competitors like Impossible Foods have searched to secure viable partnerships of their own.

In 2020, Impossible landed a mega deal with Disney (DIS) that would sell meatless items at high-traffic locations including Disneyland in Anaheim, Disney World in Orlando, and the Disney Cruise Line.

That same year, Starbucks (SBUX) announced that it would offer an Impossible Sausage breakfast sandwich at stores nationwide, and Burger King unveiled an Impossible Whopper (QSR), which hit the fast food chain to much fanfare in 2019.

Overall, alternative meat and dairy options have skyrocketed in popularity over the past several years.

According to the latest Good Food Institute industry report, U.S. plant-based food sales grew two times as fast as animal-based food sales in 2020, totaling $7 billion. Within that category, plant-based meat crossed the billion-dollar mark, expanding by 45% in dollar sales from 2019.

Alexandra is a Senior Entertainment and Food Reporter at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter @alliecanal8193

Follow Yahoo Finance on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Flipboard, LinkedIn, YouTube, and reddit
In September 2020, Thomas Ferry scored a studio apartment in Manhattan for $1,950 a month, just as pandemic-weary New York City dwellers were fleeing to their vacation homes or reclaiming their childhood bedrooms in the suburbs.

Last May, right before references to the "hot vax summer" began taking root, he was able to renegotiate the rent down to $1,750 for a one-year lease, starting in June.

As fully vaccinated people began flocking back to the city, Ferry, 27, who works in advertising at the live-streaming service Twitch, knew his COVID-19 rental deal would not last. Before the pandemic, his apartment would have been rented in the $2,400-a-month range.

Sure enough, in February, he received a letter from his landlord saying that his rent would be going up when his lease expired in May. In New York City, landlords are required to provide notice to tenants if they intend to raise their rents by more than 5%.

What he was not prepared for was the rate of increase: a whopping 43%.

His new monthly rent spiked to $2,500 for a 12-month lease, or $2,424 if he signed a 14-month lease.

Thomas Ferry

LIVING THE NYC DREAM: How remote work is helping young workers live their best lives

RENTALS: Apartment hunting? Here are the 10 cheapest cities for renters

MOBILE HOMES: Manufactured houses deliver the American dream amid tough housing market

I had heard of other people getting increases like, you know, 15%, or 20%, something like that, even up to 30%, Ferry says. A 40% increase is just ridiculous. Honestly, its like the largest increase I've heard of anyone, whether it's on social media or friends.

The pandemic rental market in New York City, which was characterized by a precipitous drop in prices and unheard-of deals, is ending with a thud  as rents are surging again. And it's delivering a rude shock to New Yorkers who had recently enjoyed steep discounts and landlord concessions in a city long known for its jaw-dropping rents.

Are rents going up?

Nationwide, rent prices have also skyrocketed, jumping 20% annually in January in the nations 50 largest metropolitan areas, according to a recent Realtor.com report. In Manhattan, rents were up almost 30% year-over-year in February.

It's quite a reversal from the pandemic's depths, when the inventory of apartments rose 200% and rents fell by more than 20% in Manhattan, forcing landlords to offer incentives such as paying the broker fee, offering one to three months of free rent and perks such as free gym membership and storage in buildings.

Now, those concessions have largely disappeared, and the average rents in Manhattan are 11% higher than pre-pandemic levels, according to a February report by Douglas Elliman Real Estate, prepared by real estate appraiser Jonathan Miller.

TOOLS FOR RENTERS: 5 easy fixes so renters can get back their security deposits

Vacancy rates for February fell to 1.3% in Manhattan, the lowest recorded for the month of February since 2008. And the bidding wars are back: 17% of all rentals were fought over in February compared with 1% of the apartments before the pandemic.

You get a sense that the city is really ramping up, Miller says. I think it says a lot about urban centers that were written off early in the pandemic.

As things normalize, urban rental markets will continue to strengthen, and the rapid rebound is an indication that the U.S. housing market will not be moving into an all-suburban market, Miller says.

Where do people live when they do remote work?

The perception with remote work is people living in the suburbs, but the reality is that there are just as many people working remotely in the city as there are in the suburbs, he says.

In San Francisco, rents plunged 35% during the pandemic.

Inna Rubinchik

Inna Rubinchik, an agent for Compass Realty who specializes in the neighborhoods of Cow Hollow, Presidio Heights, and Pacific Heights in northern San Francisco, says an apartment shed listed in November 2020 for $5,300 sat on the market for three months. After 29 tours, it finally rented for $3,500, a 34% decrease.

People who were paying thousands of dollars for small apartments in up-and-coming districts could now afford nicer neighborhoods and larger apartments. Tenants were also seeking accessible outdoor recreation.

Places with easy access to parks and beaches were also suddenly more affordable.

"For example, Sunset, which is one of the largest San Francisco neighborhoods, is by the ocean," she says. "And it's never been as popular as it has been in the last couple of years because that's where the beach is.

How is the rental market now in San Francisco?

But rent growth is slowly gaining momentum in San Francisco.

The median price for a one-bedroom was $3,516 in January 2020, and had plunged 26% to $2,600 in April 2021. This March, the median one-bedroom in the city priced for $2,903, up 12% from almost a year ago but still 17% below pre-pandemic levels, according to data from Zumper.

Christopher Morales

Back on the East Coast, Christopher Morales, an agent with Douglas Elliman, says remote work has enabled young people from other cities to explore New York.

I see a lot of the transplants coming to Manhattan," Morales says. "It is a testament to the fact that New York did well overall with COVID, and it bounced back as far as theater, restaurants, and nightlife  all the things young people care about. So they wanted to be here. But now, they have almost nothing to chose from in terms of rentals.

Matthew DeCristofaro

Matthew DeCristofaro had been living in the Hamilton Heights neighborhood in Manhattan for almost four years in 2020.

I always wanted to live downtown, he says. Thats where all the restaurants and bars I frequented with my friends are located. I knew that it was a possibility, financially, to live downtown because of the COVID deals.

So when he saw a one-bedroom apartment last March listed for $2,300 in the East Village with one month, he jumped at the chance  and was able to negotiate the rent down to $2016 per month.

Last month, when he got his renewal letter in the mail, he says he was bracing himself for a big hike, given that the apartment was being rented for about $3,000 before the pandemic. At $2,800, it was less than what hed expected.

DeCristofaro, a real estate agent, was also able to negotiate it down to a little over $2,600 for the fifth-floor walk-up apartment.

I think they saw value in keeping a good tenant. Its $600 more a month, but it is worth it, he says. Last year, the criteria I was searching for resulted in well over a hundred options. This year, there were zero.

The lack of inventory has Ferry, the renter form Midtown East, thinking of other alternatives, including putting his stuff in storage and temporarily moving in with his parents in New Jersey.

I am definitely moving out. I am looking at other apartments, he says. But by June 1, theres going to be an influx of people looking for apartments, so its gonna be difficult to find one.

Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy is a housing and economy correspondent for USA TODAY. Follow her on Twitter @SwapnaVenugopal

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: NYC apartments are scarce as rent skyrockets, bidding wars erupt
A Bahamas committee has called on the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge to acknowledge the British economy was built on the backs of past Bahamians and pay reparations.

The Caribbean countrys national reparations committee has issued a strongly worded document a few days ahead of William and Kates three-day tour of the country which begins on Thursday.

The body claims the monarchy has looted and pillaged our land and our people for centuries, leaving us struggling with under development, left to pick up the pieces.

The Duke of Cambridge (right) speaks with Bahamas Prime Minister Philip Edward Davis during a meeting with his Earthshot prize winners at Cop26 (Alistair Grant/PA)

The Cambridges are on an eight-day tour of the Caribbean and have seen anti-royal protests in their first stop Belize and Jamaica, with protestors in the latters capital Kingston accusing the couple of benefitting from the blood, tears and sweat of slaves.

In 2013 the Bahamas committee was founded to establish the moral, ethical, and legal case for the payment of repatriations by European countries.

It said in the statement: We, the members of the Bahamas National Reparations Committee (BNRC), recognise that the people of the Bahamas have been left holding the bag for much of the cost of this extravagant trip.

Why are we footing the bill for the benefit of a regime whose rise to greatness was fuelled by the extinction, enslavement, colonisation, and degradation of the people of this land? Why are we being made to pay again?

William and Kate were mobbed by crowds in Jamaica on the same day a protest against the visit was held (Chris Jackson/PA)

The visit to commemorates 70 years since Queen Elizabeths accession to the throne of imperialism  more years than the Bahamas has been a sovereign nation.

The BNRC asserts that we as Bahamians must have a clear understanding of what this trip truly means. We are not beholden to the British monarchy in any way and we do not owe them a debt of gratitude for anything  not for our culture, religion, or system of governance.

Instead the monarchy has looted and pillaged our land and our people for centuries, leaving us struggling with under development, left to pick up the pieces.

A royal source has said the duke was aware of the Jamaican protest staged outside the British High Commission on Tuesday and was expected to acknowledge the issue of slavery in a speech on Wednesday night during a dinner hosted by the Governor General of Jamaica.
Stephen Wilhite, the creator of the looping animated GIF image format, died this month.

The death was confirmed in an obituary, which said Wilhite, one the chief architect of America Online, died March 14  just days after his 74th birthday on March 3. He died of Covid, his wife, Kathaleen, confirmed.

Wilhite began his career at Compuserve, the first major commercial online service provider.

In 1987, while at Compuserve, he created the Graphics Interchange Format, or GIF, to compress images to make them accessible for early modem speeds.

Years later, it became social media's primary method of conveying emotion and memetic communication. The GIF format has been used as a convenient way to show graphs, drawings and simple animations.

In the early 2010s, the format exploded. Whether it was Jasmine Masters from RuPauls Drag Race saying And I oop- or Kermit the Frog drinking Lipton tea, there was no shortage of expression that could be conveyed by Wilhites GIF.

In 2012, GIF was pronounced word of the year by the Oxford American Dictionary, thanks to its resurgence in popularity among bloggers, especially on Tumblr and other sites.

Many over the years debated how GIF is supposed to be pronounced. In 2013, Wilhite settled the debate, declaring that it is pronounced with a soft "g," like the peanut butter brand Jif. Some still use a hard "g" when they use the word.

In 2013, Wilhite received Lifetime Achievement Award at the Webby Awards for his invention and his contribution to internet culture.

Kathaleen Wilhite said it was a "wonderful moment in his life going to New York and winning that award. However, she said, "they should have honored him a lot sooner."

He retired in the early 2000s and spent time camping and traveling.

Wilhite is survived by his wife, four stepchildren, a son, 11 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren, according to his obituary.

A funeral service was held Tuesday in Milford, Ohio.
Kim Kardashian may be considered a fashion icon and the ultimate influencer, but as far as daughter North West is concerned, shes just as likely to take a style misstep as any other mom.

The Kardashians star and Skims founder has revealed that her 8-year-old has plenty to say about her sartorial sense  and it isnt always positive.

For instance, the 41-year-old is well known for her love of wearing all black, from boots to shades to every catsuit in between. But as it turns out, those sleek, monochromatic looks get a thumbs-down from her daughter.

The 2021 Met Gala Celebrating In America: A Lexicon Of Fashion - Street Sightings (Gotham / GC Images)

North is very opinionated when it comes to what Im wearing, Kardashian confessed in a chat with Vogue. Shell always complain when Im wearing too much black."

And Kardashian has learned it's hard to satisfy such a harsh critic.

"I showed up at her school on Valentines Day wearing head-to-toe pink, and she got so excited she ran over and hugged me," the mother of four explained. "(Of course) she opened my coat, saw the black lining, and says Mom, youre still wearing black.

Fans of the family who've paid attention over the years won't be surprised by North's fashionista tendencies. After all, she was just 13 months old when she made her modeling debut, and by the age of 5, North landed a solo cover feature in WWD Beauty Inc.

Interesting enough: North's ideas on fashion are in line with Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour who also detests all black.

"Just don't wear all black," she has said in the past. "It seems too gloomy."
Beauty is pain! Lily Collins may have had quite the insane wardrobe to choose from while filming Emily in Paris, but theres one thing she could have done without: high heels.

Read article

The 33-year-old actress revealed on a Tuesday, March 22, episode of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon that walking around the cobblestone streets of Paris in stilettos required her to go to the doctor pretty frequently.

I actually literally went to a podiatrist every week to fix my feet because I was wearing heels all the time, she told Jimmy Fallon. I had to have, like, insoles made for every pair of shoes.

Carole Bethuel/Netflix

So, while shes game to do spinoff shows where Emily Cooper immerses herself in different cities, she has one request. The producers either have to pick locations with flat streets or swap out her shoes.Emily in Flats, she joked on the show. Why not?

While the Love, Rosie star was likely ready to say goodbye and good riddance to the heels in the wardrobe closet, she did try to keep some of the fabulous dresses that made their grand debut in season two of the series.

Read article

I didnt keep anything this season, she told Vogue Australia in a November 2021 interview. Believe me, Ive asked. As for what items made her list?

While there were some tiny Prada purses and sparkly items that were funny and sweet, it was the epic gowns (read: the Giambattista Valli tulle number) from the few final episodes that she was really vying for.

The brightness and boldness and fun and ease of humor Emily has in her wardrobe enhances her personality, especially coming out of Covid where comfort was everything, she said in the interview. Not everything felt super comfortable after Covid, but it was really nice to have fun with fashion again in the most heightened way possible.

Even though fans of the show and social media fanatics love to hate on Emilys fashion sense, costume designer Patricia Fields said that the kitschy vibe is a very conscious choice. In a letter penned for InStyle, Fields explained that she intentionally emphasized the fact that Collins play a Midwesterner.

Read article

Emily is an optimist and she would be very excited to be an American in Paris, she wrote. So to me, it just made sense that she would put on a blouse that had the Eiffel Tower on it or carry a Mona Lisa bag or throw on a beret.
As Prince William and Duchess Kate are met with protests during their arrival to Jamaica for Queen Elizabeth's Platinum Jubilee, which marks the 70th anniversary of her coronation, pressure for the country to cut ties with the British monarchy continues to grow.

Roughly 350 protestors demonstrated in Kingston, where activists from the Advocates Network delivered an open letter to the British High Commission on Tuesday, calling for reparations and a formal apology from the royal family for its colonial past and ties to slavery.

The protest in the Jamaican capital comes just days after the royal couple were forced to change plans in Belize, after locals protested their initial arrival. The island of Barbados in November became a republic after officially cutting ties with Queen Elizabeth as head of state.

PHOTO: PPeople calling for slavery reparations protest outside the entrance of the British High Commission during the visit of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge in Kingston, Jamaica, March 22, 2022. (Ricardo Makyn/AFP via Getty Images)

While the royal family attempts to strengthen its relationship with commonwealth nations throughout the Caribbean, the controversies have reignited a fierce debate in Jamaica over how and when the island would remove Queen Elizabeth as head of state.

MORE: Prince William and Duchess Kate face Protest on Caribbean Tour

Robert Nesta Morgan, the minister without portfolio in the Office of the Prime Minister, told ABC News that there is consensus within the country, and agreement between the Jamaican government and opposition leadership that the country is "moving towards becoming a republic."

Prime Minister Andrew Holness appointed Marlene Malahoo Forte, the country's former attorney general, to be the minister of constitutional affairs, which took effect in January. Her new role, in part, oversees and advises the government as it seeks to transition to republic status.

PHOTO: Britain's Prince William and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, walk during their visit to Trench Town on the fourth day of their tour of the Caribbean, in Kingston, Jamaica, March 22, 2022. (Toby Melville/Reuters)

Malahoo Forte told the Jamaica Observer in December that Holness gave her instructions for the constitution to be amended for the purposes of becoming a republic.

The Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) and the People's National Party (PNP) met on Feb. 27 at the University of West Indies to discuss what a republic would look like, according to Morgan. However, disagreements on whether the country would have an executive president or a ceremonial president have stalled the referendum needed to move forward.

MORE: Barbados bids farewell to British monarchy, becomes republic

Unlike the Island of Barbados, which removed Elizabeth as head of state with a simple majority vote, Jamaica has entrenched provisions in its constitution that require a referendum, allowing the electorate to vote on the proposal before it heads to the legislature. The amendment to become a republic would then have to be approved by a two-thirds majority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate.

PHOTO: Prince William, Duke of Cambridge and his wife Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, are greeted by officials upon arrival in Jamaica on March 22, 2022. (Ricardo Makyn/AFP via Getty Images)

"It's not a straightforward simple process. It requires a lot of planning. It requires a lot of public education and it also requires a lot of consensus between both the opposition and the government," Morgan told ABC News.

He continued, "I think there is agreement between the two sides [Jamaica Labour Party and the People's National Party] and there has been discussions for many decades ... we want to move to a republic, but there were sticking points."

PHOTO: Prince William, Duke of Cambridge is greeted by a guard of honour of the Jamaica Defence Force in Kingston during his visit to Jamaica to mark the occasion of Her Majesty The Queens Platinum Jubilee on March 22, 2022. (Ricardo Makyn/AFP via Getty Images)

Despite the arduous process to sever ties with the British monarchy, Morgan said he believes the appointment of a minister of constitutional affairs is "a big step."

The minister also reacted to Tuesday's protests led by the Advocates Network, saying the government respects the rights of its citizens to protest.

"We are a democracy and we are a country that very much values free speech. So the government does not reject or view with disdain those who are seeking to fulfill their constitutional right to protest." Morgan said, later adding that the Jamaican government believes in the concept of reparations from Britain.

Amid royal visit, Jamaican official says country 'moving towards becoming a republic' originally appeared on abcnews.go.com
President Joe Biden planned to depart for Europe Wednesday as he tries to keep NATO allies and other European partners united against Russian President Vladimir Putin and his invasion of Ukraine.

With fighting lasting nearly a month -- and Ukrainian forces unexpectedly holding Russia to a standoff -- Biden and other world leaders will seek to speed an end to the conflict.

They'll face pressure to make announcements about new sanctions on Russia, humanitarian assistance for refugees and additional support for Ukraine's military.

Putin and China will be watching, with the fate of Ukraine -- and Russia's place in the world -- hanging in the balance.

And while Biden will command much of the attention this week, his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, also plans to speak to -- and potentially pressure -- Biden and other NATO leaders.

PHOTO: National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan speaks to the media about the war in Ukraine and other topics at the White House, in Washington, D.C., March 22, 2022. (Leah Millis/Reuters)

Whirlwind diplomacy on display

Biden will spend much of Wednesday traveling from Washington to Brussels, ahead of a whirlwind day of diplomacy in the Belgian capital the next day.

On Thursday, he plans to attend an extraordinary summit of all 30 NATO leaders, where he will discuss deterrence against Russia and "reaffirm our ironclad commitment to our NATO allies," according to the White House.

MORE: Biden's risk-averse approach to Russia could create greater threat, experts say

Biden will also participate in a pre-scheduled meeting of the European Council -- the political body of the European Union -- and meet with leaders of the Group of Seven, or G-7, major industrial nations.

Throughout the meetings, Biden hopes to achieve "continued coordination and a unified response" to Russia, the White House said.

Biden has made working in lockstep with Europe a top priority, at times holding back sanctions -- such as on Russian energy -- to maintain that show of unity.

PHOTO: People, mainly women and children, arrive at Przemysl train station after travelling on a train from war-torn Ukraine, on March 22, 2022, in Przemysl Poland. (Jeff J. Mitchell/Getty Images)

He has also fastidiously tried to avoid a wider conflict, declining to send American troops to Ukraine or support a NATO-enforced no-fly zone over the country.

Whether he'll push allies to more directly confront Russia -- by committing more troops to the region, providing even more provocative military assistance to Ukraine or otherwise directly assisting Kyiv -- remains to be seen.

One challenge he may face Thursday, though, is responding to Zelenskyy's remarks to NATO leaders.

The Ukrainian leader has repeatedly commanded the world's attention with moving, sometimes blunt addresses to national and international bodies. His direct demands sometimes go beyond Biden and other leaders' comfort levels, and he has not held back from naming and shaming those who he does not believe are doing enough to support Ukraine.

New sanctions and aid expected

The president "will have the opportunity to coordinate on the next phase of military assistance to Ukraine," U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Tuesday.

Biden and other leaders will announce a new "package of sanctions" on Russia, too, including "tightening the existing sanctions to crack down on evasion and to ensure robust enforcement," Sullivan said.

"One of the key elements of that announcement will focus not just on adding new sanctions," Sullivan said, "but on ensuring that there is a joint effort to crack down on evasion, on sanctions-busting, on any attempt by any country to help Russia, basically, undermine, weaken or get around the sanctions."

Biden will also speak with leaders about "longer-term adjustments to NATO force posture on the eastern flank," Sullivan said, referring to the United States and other NATO countries deploying additional troops to countries that border Russia, like Poland, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia.

And he will announce a "joint action on enhancing European energy security and reducing Europe's dependence on Russian gas," Sullivan added, without elaborating.

PHOTO: Firefighters are seen as smoke billows from a building of a research institute, part of Ukraine's National Academy of Science, after a strike in northwestern Kyiv, on March 22, 2022. (Aris Messinis/AFP via Getty Images)

Focus on millions of displaced Ukrainians, US troops

In Brussels, Biden "will announce further American contributions" to help the 3.5 million Ukrainians who have fled the country and for the millions more who have become internally displaced, according to Sullivan.

On Friday, the president will travel to Poland, where he'll "engage with U.S. troops"  he has deployed thousands there in response to the invasion  and on Saturday, meet with Polish President Andrzej Duda. Poland has taken in more than 2 million Ukrainian refugees.

MORE: Prominent Putin critic Alexey Navalny sentenced to additional 9 years

"It is the right place for him to go to be able to see troops, to be able to see humanitarian experts, and to be able to meet with the frontline and very vulnerable allies," Sullivan said.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said this week that there were "no plans" for Biden to travel into Ukraine and that the White House had "not explored that option."

Putin, China watching

Biden said Monday that "the one thing I'm confident, knowing Putin fairly well -- as well as, I guess, another leader could know one another -- is that he was counting on being able to split NATO. He never thought NATO would stay resolved -- stay totally, thoroughly united."

"And I can assure you," he told a group of chief executives, "NATO has never been stronger or more united in its entire history than it is today, in large part because of Vladimir Putin."

PHOTO: Russian President Vladimir Putin is shown during a meeting with Novgorod Region Governor Andrey Nikitin in the Kremlin in Moscow, on March 22, 2022. (Russian Look via ZUMA Press Wire)

In fact, Russia's invasion has united NATO against it. And a month of crushing sanctions have crippled Russia's economy and largely isolated Putin.

Whether world leaders in Brussels decide to ramp up the pressure on Putin in a way that could further change Putin's calculus -- and bring an end to war, perhaps by offering him a clear off-ramp -- could determine the length and course of the conflict.

But it's not clear the decreasing number of options they have left could fundamentally sway Putin. Russian troops continue to pummel Ukrainian cities and kill civilians even as the Ukrainians have prevented them from claiming major wins and toppling the government in Kyiv.

And it's not clear what that off-ramp could be. "Putin's back is against the wall," Biden said Monday.

MORE: 'Nation under stress': Doctors say mental health a top priority in Ukraine

And China's President Xi Jinping will be watching, too. In a call last week, according to the White House, Biden warned him of the consequences of providing aid to Russia.

Sullivan told ABC News' Elizabeth Schulze on Tuesday that, since last week, the U.S. had "not seen" China provide military equipment to Russia, as it had feared China may do.

The degree to which Biden is able to get European leaders on board with potential punishments for China could also determine whether Xi decides to support Putin or stay out of the fight.

Biden heads to high-stakes NATO summit amid showdown with Putin over Ukraine originally appeared on abcnews.go.com
WASHINGTON (AP)  The future of Europe hanging in the balance, President Biden will huddle with key allies in Brussels and Warsaw this week as the leaders try to prevent Russias war on Ukraine from spiraling into an even greater catastrophe.

Biden embarks Wednesday on a four-day trip that will test his ability to navigate the continents worst crisis since World War II. There are fears that Russia could use chemical or nuclear weapons as its invasion becomes bogged down in the face of logistical problems and fierce Ukrainian resistance.

Humanitarian challenges are growing as well. Millions of refugees have fled the fighting, mostly by crossing the border into Poland, and the war has jeopardized Ukraine's wheat and barley harvests, raising the possibility of rising hunger in impoverished areas around the globe.

Jake Sullivan, Bidens national security adviser, said the president would coordinate with allies on military assistance for Ukraine and new sanctions on Russia. He added that Biden is working on long-term efforts to boost defenses in Eastern Europe, where more countries fear Russian aggression. The president is also aiming to reduce the continent's reliance on Russian energy.

This war will not end easily or rapidly, Sullivan told reporters at a White House briefing on Tuesday. For the past few months, the West has been united. The president is traveling to Europe to make sure we stay united.

Sullivan said Vladimir Putin's references to nuclear weapons at the beginning of the conflict are something that we do have to be concerned about, adding that Biden would be talking with allies about potential responses if the Russian leader takes that step.

Sullivan's description of Biden's trip was another sign that the crisis is entering a new and uncertain phase.

After the initial invasion failed to topple Ukraine's government, the war has become a grinding endeavor for Putin, who is relying on airstrikes and artillery that are devastating civilian communities. Negotiations between Ukraine and Russia have not produced a cease-fire or a path to ending the conflict, and the U.S. continues to rush weapons like anti-tank missiles to Ukrainian forces.

President Biden will be in Europe this week to discuss Russia's invasion of Ukraine. (AP)

The war's ripple effects are also spreading. Biden warned that Russia could be planning cyberattacks that would affect U.S. companies, and he spoke to Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday to warn him against backing Russia with military or financial assistance. Meanwhile, a top State Department official visited India this week shortly after that country decided to purchase more Russian oil.

This is one of those decisive moments for an American leader that defines their legacy internationally, said Timothy Naftali, a presidential historian at New York University.

Bidens first stop is Brussels, where hell attend back-to-back-to-back meetings.

NATO is holding a hastily arranged emergency summit, where Biden is expected to reiterate his support for Article 5 of the alliance's charter, which commits all members to collective defense if any are attacked.

I think the meeting of all heads of state and government in NATO will provide us with yet another platform to demonstrate our unity, our support to Ukraine, but also our readiness to protect and defend all NATO allies, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told NBCs Meet the Press on Sunday. And by sending that message, we are preventing an escalation of the conflict to a full-fledged war between NATO and Russia.

Biden will also participate in meetings of the European Union and the Group of Seven, which includes the worlds richest democracies.

Hell then travel to Warsaw on Friday to meet Polish officials to discuss the enormous humanitarian strain caused by the Ukrainian refugee crisis. Biden is scheduled to meet with Polish President Andrzej Duda on Saturday.

Duda, whose country suffered a brutal Nazi occupation during World War II, compared Russian actions in Ukraine to Adolf Hitler's infamous SS forces. Visiting Bulgaria on Tuesday, Duda said Putin's army is behaving in exactly the same way." He said he hoped that those responsible for attacks on civilians would be brought before international courts.

Biden may visit U.S. troops in Poland

Polish leaders have pressed for a Western peacekeeping mission to intervene in Ukraine, a step that the U.S. and other Western allies worry could lead to a broadening of the war. The Polish leadership also wants an increased military presence along NATO's eastern flank.

Sullivan said Biden's trip to Poland is an important opportunity to meet with a frontline and very vulnerable ally. Poland is also host to a growing number of U.S. troops, and Sullivan suggested Biden may visit them as well.

Last week, at NATOs Brussels headquarters, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and his counterparts weighed what defenses to set up on the organizations eastern flank, from Estonia in the north through Latvia, Lithuania and Poland down to Bulgaria and Romania on the Black Sea.

The aim is to deter Putin from ordering an invasion of any of the 30 allies, not just for the duration of the war in Ukraine but into the future.

Putin has demanded that NATO withdraw its forces on its eastern flank and stop expanding.

Sullivan said that Biden, during his talks in Europe, will work with allies on longer-term adjustments to NATO force posture.

Biden's visit to Poland follows on Vice President Kamala Harris' visit to Warsaw and Bucharest earlier this month. While Harris was in Poland, Duda called on the Biden administration to expedite visa procedures for Ukrainians who have family living in the United States so that they could resettle in the U.S. at least temporarily.
Civil rights attorney Ben Crump filed a racial discrimination lawsuit against Google this week claiming there has been a pattern of racial discrimination toward minority employees.

"Former Google employees came for their dream job that turned into a nightmare because of bigoted, discriminatory, racist culture that exists within Google," Crump said at a press conference Monday.

The lawsuit, which alleges a pattern and practice of racial discrimination, was filed on behalf of April Curley and other former and current Black employees at Google. Curley said she was unlawfully terminated from her position after she told managers she was creating a report on Googles "discriminatory" practices, a press release stated.

MORE: Disney employees plan walkout to demand action against 'Don't Say Gay' bill

"These women tried to sound the alarm," Crump said, later adding that the company "retaliated against these victims of the racist culture that exists in Google."

ABC News has reached out to Google for comment on the lawsuit.

PHOTO: Signage is displayed in front of a building on the Google campus in Mountain View, Calif., Oct. 21, 2020. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images, FILE)

Curley worked at Google as a diversity recruiter for six years to recruit prospects from historically Black colleges and universities. She said she was hired at an entry level position even though she held a master's degree and had five years of experience.

"April Curley was an exceptional employee at Google. She was hired to a position well below her qualifications and was consistently wrongfully passed over for promotions," Crump alleged. While Google claims that they were looking to increase diversity, they were actually undervaluing, underpaying and mistreating their Black employees, leading to high turnover."

Curley said she was able to recruit more than 500 Black students to become a part of the company. But ultimately, she alleges, she began noticing "white dominant policies in practice within Google."

Crump and law firm Stowell & Friedman, Ltd. alleged in a press release that Black employees at Google are "steered toward lower-level roles with less pay and fewer opportunities for advancement" and face a hostile working environment and retaliation if they "oppose the companys discriminatory practices."

"After dedicating so much of my life to ensure Black and brown students had access to opportunities in tech, and at Google, after being restrained to an entry level classification for six years, after being blocked for promotion because, I quote, 'Google had no budget to pay me,' Google decided that right next step in my career was to unjustly terminate me," Curley said at the press conference.

Google has not commented publicly on Curley's termination.

MORE: Students demand action after Penn professor's 'racist' comments about Asians

According to Google's annual diversity report published in 2021, the company said they "recognize" a need to do better.

"We recognize our responsibility to meet this moment and believe the greatest contribution we can make to changing these structural inequities is sustained action within our company, our communities and the world," the report stated.

Crump and his team are pursuing a class action suit. The lawsuit filed by the firm requests that employees get their positions back and be awarded the full compensation and benefits that they not only lost but may also lose in the future.

"Google, we are here to encourage you to do the right thing," Crump said.

Crump said investigations have been opened by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing and the California Assembly. ABC News has reached out to both for comment.

Black former employees sue Google for racial discrimination originally appeared on abcnews.go.com
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks during a January news conference. While some tech workers and companies left California, a new study raises doubt on the scale of the supposed Silicon Valley exodus. (Greg Lovett / Associated Press)

Wannabe innovation hubs from coast to coast have been slavering over the prospect that the work-from-home revolution triggered by the COVID pandemic would finally break the stranglehold that California and Silicon Valley have had on high-tech jobs.

Here's the latest picture on this expectation: Not happening.

That's the conclusion of some new studies, most recently by Mark Muro and Yang You of the Brookings Institution.

There's a suggestion that we're on the brink of an entirely different geography. I don't think recent history or the nature of the technologies point in that direction.

Mark Muro, Brookings Institution

They found that although the pandemic brought about some changes in the trend toward the concentration of tech jobs in a handful of metropolitan areas, the largest established hubs as a group "slightly increased their share" of national high-tech employment from 2019 through 2020. (Emphasis theirs.)

Stories of discontented California entrepreneurs decamping for up and coming new hubs or even remote (but broadband-enabled) climes are common fodder in the news.

The Times last year published a sort of diary in which Geoffrey Woo, one such expatriate, wrote about his relocation to Miami to flee the crime and pandemic lockdown of San Francisco. He's still in Miami.

Yet "the big tech superstar cities aren't going anywhere," Muro told me. "There's a suggestion that we're on the brink of an entirely different geography. I don't think recent history or the nature of the technologies point in that direction."

Muro, in harmony with other experts in the geography of work, divides tech employment hubs into three groups.

There are the superstar metro areas: Silicon Valley and San Francisco; New York; Boston; Washington, D.C.; Seattle-Tacoma; Los Angeles; and Austin. Next come "rising stars": Dallas, Atlanta, Denver, San Diego, Miami, Kansas City, Salt Lake City, St. Louis and Orlando. Finally, everywhere else.

The superstars increased their share of total tech employment by 0.3% during the pandemic  less than the increase of 1.4% they experienced in 2015-2019, but still positive. The rising stars as a group increased their share by 0.1%, down from 0.5% in the earlier period. Both gains came at the expense of other would-be hubs.

"The California metropolises really do retain their irreplaceable depth and strength," Muro says. "That's not to say there won't be some movement. Early in the period we saw some exiting, especially from the Bay Area, but it turned out that much of it was within California, rather than to Kansas."

This shouldn't be too surprising. The value of concentrated ecosystems in nurturing innovation has been document for decades. As Nicholas Bloom of Stanford and colleagues pointed out in 2020, elite academic institutions attract highly skilled innovators and spin off their learning into new technologies and new industries; their presence tends to attract others like them.

That's how Boston and San Diego became biotech hubs and Silicon Valley and San Francisco centers of inventive approaches to computer hardware and software. There's a notable cross-pollination effect: Inventors who move to a city with a large cluster of inventors in the same field experience "a sizable increase in the number and quality of patents produced," according to UC Berkeley economist Enrico Moretti.

The allure of living and working in such a cluster outweighs the downsides of high living costs, taxes and congestion.

Of the 100 largest U.S. metro areas (gray), eight are established tech hubs, including the San Francisco/Silicon Valley metro and Los Angeles. (Brookings Institution)

"High-tech clusters tend to be located in cities with high labor and real estate costs  cities like San Francisco, Boston, or Seattle  rather than in cities where costs are low," Moretti observes, possibly because for creative intellectuals, intellectual productivity outweighs those costs.

Tech companies have been moving some operations away from their traditional headquarter locations or expanding elsewhere, Moretti says, but that was happening long before COVID. "I'm skeptical that COVID-induced changes are driving an acceleration in an exodus of tech firms," he says.

Muro's research points to an evolutionary change in high-tech geography triggered by the pandemic, rather than "a wholesale decentralization of tech." There may be several reasons why a large-scale flight from the big hubs hasn't happened.

One is that most tech companies don't plan to abandon office work entirely but expect their workers to commute to work two or three days a week.

This hybrid system "allows employees to move further from their place of work, such as from a city center to a surrounding suburb," Bloom reckons. "But it does not allow an employee to move to another metro area entirely because they must still commute to work on some days."

Instead, Bloom found increased movement within metro areas, rather than between metros  a trend he terms the "donut effect," signifying movement out of the central city and into suburbs or exurbs.

Bloom's data are drawn from U.S. Postal Service change-of-address records and Zillow's tracking of rent increases.

His findings cast doubt on the theory, put forth by urbanist Richard Florida and economist Adam Ozimek, that habits of remote work would give rise to "Zoom towns," communities such as Tulsa, Boulder, Colo., and Bozeman, Mont., remote from traditional business centers but inviting for workers who need only keep in touch with their bosses and colleagues digitally via the Zoom and Slack platforms.

While Postal Service statistics do show some movement from densely populated cities to distant locations, the trend is "small relative to the within-metro movement from city centers to their suburbs," Bloom wrote.

The pandemic-driven shift to remote work does seem to have opened entrepreneurs' eyes at least to the potential for doing away with centralized workforces.

In a recent survey of tech startup founders, the share of respondents saying they would prefer to start a firm with an entirely remote workforce from Day One rose to 42.1% in 2021 from only 6% in 2020. Among physical locations where the founders said prefer to launch their businesses, however, San Francisco still dominated, at 28.4%, with New York a distant second.

There have been some clues in recent years that the exodus of big business from California hasn't been all it's cracked up to be.

Most tech sectors either returned to pre-pandemic job levels by the summer of 2021 or exceeded them. (Brookings Institution)

In 2020, the headline departures featured in reports of corporate relocations were three: Oracle, Tesla and Hewlett Packard Enterprise. The Brookings study, published this month, mentions three major tech firms: Oracle, Tesla and Hewlett Packard Enterprise. (Brookings cites a fourth  Palantir, a money-losing software company headquartered in Denver, but as of year-end 2021 it employed fewer than 1,900 people in the U.S., some of whom work in California.)

Some of the assertions about a California exodus aim to make political, rather than economic or demographic, points. Consider an August 2021 paper by Lee Ohanian of the Hoover Institution and Joseph Vranich, who happens to be the CEO of a Texas business relocation firm.

Far from being a sober statistical survey of business moves, the paper is more of a screed comprising the usual conservative beefs about California, such as too much regulation. It also makes some surprising assertions: "California is notorious for imposing excessive real estate taxes," for example.

Actually, California's property taxes are the 36th-highest in the nation; Texas, Vranich's home state, ranks seventh, with an effective rate more than twice California's. Thanks to Proposition 13, California is notorious for, if anything, having low real estate taxes.

Ohanian and Vranich, asserting that corporate headquarters are leaving California in "unprecedented numbers," offer a database of 265 companies that did so from January 2018 through June 2021. The list includes such non-business businesses as the NFL Raiders, which moved from Oakland to Las Vegas in 2020. The NFL, however, actually approved the relocation in 2017.

Disney, the door is open to bring those jobs back to California - the state that actually represents the values of your workers. https://t.co/kbCi7Zgs90  Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) March 13, 2022

The authors don't give this supposed exodus its proper context, which is how many businesses have been created or moved into California in the same period. The answer, according to the Census Bureau, is 133,503. In the same time span, Texas added 90,916. (By the way, California still hosts three NFL teams, tied with Florida for the most of any state.)

Communities are eager to position themselves as remote tech hubs because of the sector's economic resilience. Unlike service industries such as leisure and tourism, most tech industries experienced barely a hiccup in their long-term growth trends during the pandemic.

Although employment in semiconductor and computer hardware manufacturing fell from January 2020 through June 2021, Brookings found that software publishing, data processing and information services such as Google and Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook) suffered only brief employment losses early in 2020, but by mid-2021 had larger workforces than before the pandemic.

Would-be tech hubs can't depend on attracting digital workers naturally, Muro says; they have to work at making themselves seem attractive to a digital workforce. That means building up a technical infrastructure, including broadband access, developing a networking culture resembling Silicon Valley in its early days, and offering good schools and other crucial amenities.

The political environment is also an imponderable factor. Whether aggressively conservative politics in Texas and Florida, including hostility to the LGBTQ community and the contraction of women's reproductive health rights, will slow the influx of young and well-educated workers is hard to tell at the moment.

But the early signs should worry those states' leaders. Tech journalist Kara Swisher, who is gay, recently canceled a tech conference scheduled for next year in Miami to protest the state's so-called "Don't Say Gay" law.

The law prompted a workforce uproar at Walt Disney Co., one of Florida's biggest employers, over the company's silence about its enactment; California Gov. Gavin Newsom publicly invited Disney to reverse its decision to move 2,000 jobs to Florida from California. (The company hasn't responded to the overture.)

It's doubtful when, if ever, 100% work-from-home jobs will amount to a large share of employment. Full-scale work-from-home only applies to about 6% of workers, Moretti says. That's triple the 2% level of the pre-pandemic era, but still an exception to the rule.

For all that, it's also true that some "rising star" metros may offer entrepreneurs and tech workers some qualities that established hubs have lost. That's what has kept Woo, who wrote about his decision to relocate, in Miami.

Woo, who runs two businesses in startup mode and a venture investing fund, says he hasn't found business reasons to regret moving from San Francisco. (The dearth of decent Asian food is the one drawback he mentioned.)

The tech community in San Francisco has become dominated by large established companies led by billionaires, those who have already made their fortunes, Woo told me. The tech community in Miami is more inviting to "people who haven't made it, who aren't billionaires.... San Francisco is in harvest mode rather than create mode  it's harvesting the value of all the dynamism that has been created over the last 20 or 30 years."

As for Florida politics, "the most impactful policy for normal citizens is COVID policy," he says. "I've been used to not having to wear a mask or show vax cards for every little thing, and it's been great."

Conservative social policies, he says, might undergo change as the result of the inflow of a diverse workforce, rather than keeping people away. "As people come in, the policies of the jurisdiction will evolve to match what the constituents want."

There may be a cultural shift going on in what Moretti calls the "geography of jobs." But "it's still unclear how far it will go," he says. "It will take at least a few years to know."

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Idaho Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin, left, who has the endorsement of former President Trump, is struggling to overtake Gov. Brad Little, right, in the state's May 17 Republican primary. (Associated Press)

Running for governor as a disciple of Donald Trump, Janice McGeachin has done almost everything short of surgically attach herself to the former president.

It's not just that Trump is omnipresent in her advertising, or that McGeachin mimics his flame-throwing rhetoric. She's also modeled Trump's flamboyantly defiant behavior, challenging Gov. Brad Little, a fellow Republican, in the upcoming primary and, as lieutenant governor, acting to overturn his policies when he left Idaho.

The reward for McGeachin's performance is Trump's Complete and Total Endorsement," which followed her pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago and makes Little one of only two Republican governors in the country seeking reelection to be openly opposed by the ex-president.

Not that the endorsement  make that Total Endorsement seems to be doing much good. Less than two months before the May 17 primary, McGeachin (pronounced Mick-GHEE-hin) is fighting for credibility and traction in a race that polls show her losing badly.

She is not alone in facing those difficult straits.

Trump coaxed former Georgia Sen. David Perdue into the Republican primary against Brian Kemp after the governor committed the heresy of refusing to overturn Joe Biden's victory in the state. But Perdue is also struggling ahead of the May 24 GOP primary, as are candidates Trump endorsed in Senate primaries in North Carolina and Alabama.

(On Thursday, Trump rescinded his endorsement of Rep. Mo Brooks in Alabama, seeking to cut his potential losses.)

All of which suggests Trump's sway over Republican voters  and, by extension, the Republican Party  is diminishing the further he gets from the White House.

"A president's endorsement is going to carry more weight than an ex-president's endorsement," said Q. Whitfield Ayres, a GOP strategist with extensive experience in congressional and gubernatorial races nationwide. "Especially an ex-president without access to Twitter and social media."

Polls reflect the waning of Trump's influence.

A January survey by NBC News found that more than half  56%  of Republicans interviewed described themselves as more supportive of the GOP than Trump personally, while 36% saw themselves as more supportive of Trump than the Republican Party.

That's a near-total reversal from 2020, when 54% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents said they considered themselves more supportive of Trump than the party and 38% were more supportive of the GOP than Trump.

In a separate measure, a Quinnipiac Poll last month showed, by a 52%-36% margin, Republicans sided with Mike Pence over Trump on the question of whether the former vice president could have overturned the 2020 presidential election, as Trump urged.

Of course, much could change before Republicans vote in May. But if Idaho  a state Trump won by nearly 2-to-1 over Joe Biden  is any indication, it will take more than a blessing from the former president to boost his preferred candidates into office.

Issues matter and so, most especially, does the quality of each candidate.

Little, 68, an affable third-generation rancher and former head of the Idaho Assn. of Commerce and Industry, is a living embodiment of the business-oriented pragmatic conservatism that has long held sway here.

As governor, he's cut taxes and regulations and kept a light hand during the COVID-19 pandemic, which allowed businesses to stay open during the worst outbreaks but pitched the healthcare system into crisis for several months.

His reelection strategy essentially amounts to doing his job and ignoring McGeachin.

On Tuesday, Little appeared in the governor's ceremonial office  marble columns, gold drapery, big Western oil paintings  to announce "a new online, one-stop shop" to find public meeting information for the state's executive branch agencies.

Standing before a bank of cameras, Little also worked in a lighthearted reference to his aggressive deregulation efforts, saying anyone who didn't know his record was "living on a foreign planet."

For her part, McGeachin, 59, was a mainstream conservative during a decade in the Legislature before transforming herself  like many seeking opportunity and advancement in the Trump era  into an acolyte of the man she calls "the greatest president of our lifetime."

Her campaign has consisted largely of attention-seeking stunts, with COVID-19 the wedge she's used to break from Little. (The two were elected separately, not as running mates.)

On two occasions when the governor left the state, McGeachin used her temporary authority to issue executive orders prohibiting localities from enforcing mask mandates and testing and vaccine requirements. Little immediately reversed her actions and secured an opinion from the state attorney general limiting McGeachin's powers in his absence.

The governor, for good measure, also stopped telling the lieutenant governor his travel plans.

Lately, McGeachin's candidacy has further degenerated.

She has been defending her decision to address a white supremacist gathering in Florida  which put her in the company of extremist GOP Reps.Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar  and gone on the attack against authorities over a mistreated 10-month-old being taken from his family and put in protective custody.

(The child is the grandson of a campaign consultant for Ammon Bundy, the militant right-wing activist, who is running for Idaho governor as an independent. McGeachin called the action "medical tyranny.")

For years now, Idaho has been one of the fastest-growing states in the country, experiencing a boom that's not only carpeted the landscape with new subdivisions but also changed the tenor of its politics.

Some of the new arrivals are conservative refugees from blue states like California, who thrill to the pugnacious style of politics that Trump personifies and others emulate. Their influence can be seen at the local level and, increasingly, when legislators gather beneath the Capitol dome.

But there remains a significant portion of the Republican Party that prefers a more practical and achievement-oriented approach.

"There's still an old-fashioned sense of propriety," said Shea Andersen, a Boise communications strategist who's backing Little's reelection. "Competence matters and dignity and behavior matter."

During Trump's presidency it was common to hear supporters say they liked his policies even if they didn't much care for his personality or provocations.

A primary victory by Little would suggest that given the chance to have one without the other  the accomplishments without the antics  a majority of Republican voters will take it.

That could have implications not just in 2022, but if Trump seeks the GOP nomination again in 2024.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
If Saint Peter's miracle run in the men's NCAA tournament comes to an end Friday, Doug Edert will still go down as one of the tournament's biggest winners. Edert capitalized on St. Peter's success Wednesday, signing an NIL deal with Buffalo Wild Wings.

The company confirmed the news, sharing a picture of Edert sitting in front of an absurd amount of wings.

Doug Edert is cashing in on St. Peter's success. (Photo by Zach Bolinger/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Edert has captured the attention of fans during the men's tournament. He has been a standout player on the most surprising team. Edert dropped 20 points during No. 15 seed St. Peter's shocking win over No. 2 seed Kentucky in the first round of the tournament. He then scored 13 points when the team took down No. 7 seed Murray State on Saturday.

Edert ranked third on St. Peter's in points per game during the regular season, but has turned things up in the tournament. In addition to his strong play, Edert has received added attention for his mustache.

Edert and St. Peter's will look to continue their miracle run when they take on No. 3 seed Purdue on Friday. A win would push St. Peter's into the Elite Eight, where it would take on the winner of No. 8 seed North Carolina or No. 4 seed UCLA.
WASHINGTON  Russia will face increased economic isolation, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Tuesday from the White House as President Biden prepared for his trip to Brussels, where he is to meet with European allies in an effort to end the invasion of Ukraine that was launched late last month by the Kremlin.

Biden will join our partners in imposing further sanctions on Russia and tightening the existing sanctions to crack down on evasion and to ensure robust enforcement, Sullivan said at a White House briefing, adding that Biden will also announce further American contributions to a coordinated humanitarian response. Russias invasion has caused a massive refugee crisis while also leaving Ukrainians who have stayed behind without necessities like drinking water.

National security adviser Jake Sullivan takes questions during a briefing at the White House on Tuesday. (Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images)

Since deciding to attack its much smaller neighbor, Russia has seen an exodus of Western companies. Oligarchs close to the Kremlin have seen their assets seized, while ordinary Russians can no longer use American credit cards like Visa and Mastercard. Earlier this month, Russia joined Cuba and North Korea as the only nations in the world to be deprived of top-tier trading privileges by the United States.

Yet for all that, Russian President Vladimir Putin has shown no signs of backing down in his campaign to turn Ukraine into the kind of vassal state it was during the nearly eight-decade existence of the Soviet Union. Ukrainian forces have thus far defended the capital, Kyiv, and the key Black Sea port of Odesa, even as Mariupol, on the Sea of Azov, has been devastated.

With Biden making clear that the United States would not send troops to Ukraine out of fears of provoking Russia into a broader conflict, it is not apparent just how the current stalemate will be resolved. There will be hard days ahead in Ukraine, Sullivan acknowledged. This war will not end easily, or rapidly.

Sullivan predicted, however, that Putin would fail to ultimately subjugate Ukraine and its people, even if Russia sees military gains in the days and weeks to come.

According to the United Nations, 953 Ukrainian civilians have been killed since the start of the war, including 78 children.

_____

What happened this week in Ukraine? Check out this explainer from Yahoo Immersive to find out.
Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson appears at her Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing on Wednesday. (Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)

Georgetown University government professor Nadia Brown tossed out the syllabus Tuesday for her course on race, gender and American politics and spent the class watching clips from Judge Ketanji Brown Jacksons Senate confirmation hearing.

The session was a rare opportunity to showcase real-world events in the classroom. But it was also personal for Brown, one of many Black women around the country who have seen their experiences starkly reflected in Jacksons historic Supreme Court nomination.

This is just a master class in how Black women have to be patient  have to be fully composed in responding to things that are meant for destruction, said Brown, chair of the womens and gender studies program at Georgetown. These are the kinds of attacks that Black women get in their professional roles.

For weeks, Black women supporting Jacksons nomination awaited her confirmation hearing with a mix of excitement and dread, eager to see history being made, but concerned her critics would play into racist and sexist tropes.

Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee seemed aware of that Monday, taking pains to insist in their opening statements that scrutinizing Jacksons record was not the same as attacking the first Black woman ever picked for the high court.

But on the third day of Jacksons hearing, many Black female lawyers and scholars said some of their fears had been realized.

Republicans, they said, were engaging in a series of political stunts and character attacks.

Jackson and the Democratic senators on the panel said theyd had to spend much of their time defending her against unfounded or misleading claims that she supports the teaching of critical race theory in schools, that shes soft on crime and that she is sympathetic to sex offenders.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) next to a poster detailing some information from Judge Jackson's sentencing history. (Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)

Youve seen this effort by some of the senators to smear her, and it is hard to watch, said Fatima Goss Graves, president of the National Womens Law Center. I imagine that women in particular around the country who are watching this are frustrated.

Graves, who watched Tuesdays proceedings from inside the hearing room, pointed to a moment during Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruzs often provocative questioning about race.

I imagined how I would fare  probably not as well as she  in this situation, Graves said.

Referring to a childrens book that aims to teach young people about racism, Cruz asked Jackson whether she believes babies are racist.

A somber-faced Jackson paused for several seconds, exhaled deeply and appeared to reflect carefully before responding. It was a sigh that resonated with many viewers.

The sigh. The pause. The double blink. The angle of the head. Volumes spoken before giving the answer, tweeted Sherrilyn Ifill, a civil rights lawyer and former head of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. We understand.

Several Republicans on the committee, including Cruz and Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, dedicated large portions of their questioning to Jacksons record in cases involving sex offenses.

A question she had asked during a 2012 U.S. Sentencing Commission hearing about the motivations of people who view child pornography was falsely portrayed by both senators as representing Jacksons personal views.

I find that a pretty remarkable argument, that people in possession of child pornography are not actually interested in the child porn, Cruz said Tuesday, after reading a longer version of her comments off a red poster board. Do you agree with that sentiment?

Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson answers questions from GOP Sen. Josh Hawley. (Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)

It looks as though I was asking that of someone, not taking that position, Jackson replied.

Hawley focused on the 2013 case of Wesley Hawkins, an 18-year-old convicted of sharing images of child abuse online and with an undercover agent. Federal sentencing guidelines recommended a sentence of 97 to 121 months, and prosecutors requested 24 months. Jackson, who said she was bound to abide by other factors too, sentenced him to three months in prison and 73 months of supervised release.

Alexis Hoag, an assistant professor at Brooklyn Law School, said the line of attack felt like it came right out of QAnons playbook, referencing the conspiracy theory that many celebrities and Democratic politicians are part of an international cabal of pedophiles.

As a Black woman who also served as a federal public defender, its hard to watch, because I cant divorce all these aspects of her identity from the way shes being treated by the Republican senators, Hoag said.

Jacksons confirmation process is playing out in the midst of rising political tribalism and lingering bitterness over Justice Brett M. Kavanaughs 2018 confirmation hearing, which was roiled well into the process by the release of sexual assault allegations against him.

The panel has also become a venue for those seeking higher office to attempt to steal the spotlight, a criticism Republicans leveled at Democrats during the Kavanaugh hearings, and raised by Democrats this week against Republicans.

Sheryll Cashin, professor of law, civil rights and social justice at Georgetown Law School, said 2024 GOP presidential hopefuls were using the hearing to score rhetorical points with the party base.

I think thats unfortunate, she said. But thats more a reflection on them and their aspirations and the kind of politics they engaged in, than on ... Jackson and her race or gender.

Sen. Ted Cruz checks his phone after questioning Judge Jackson. (Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Exactly one month after Russia invaded Ukraine, on Feb. 24, an estimated 100,000 Ukrainians remain trapped inside the port city of Mariupol in inhumane conditions, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. There is no more food, no drinking water and no electricity as the constant drum of Russian shelling  upwards of 50 to 100 airstrikes per day by land, air and sea  has reduced much of the city to rubble.

There is nothing left there, Zelensky said of Mariupol on Tuesday, while addressing the Italian Parliament by video. Only ruins.

If captured, Mariupol, which was home to more than 430,000 people prewar, would give Russia strategic control of Ukraines southern coast.

Destroyed buildings and a military vehicle in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol on Monday. (Stringer/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Inside the city, located on the coast of the Sea of Azov, Ukrainians optimism continues to dwindle.

In this city, everyone is constantly waiting for death, Nadezhda Sukhorukova, a lifelong Mariupol resident, wrote on Facebook, where she chronicled her firsthand account of civilian life during wartime in the city in a series of posts. Last Saturday she was able to escape what she described as hell.

I am alive and now I will live long, she wrote in another post. [But] my city is dying a painful death. Twenty days I was dying with him. I have been through hell.

Inhabitants who are left are mostly confined to bomb shelters and the basements of buildings throughout the city, clinging to the hope that they will eventually be evacuated. Zelensky said Tuesday that 7,000 people had been evacuated during the previous 24 hours, but efforts to free more were thwarted by Russian troops.

Refugees fleeing Mariupol arrive at a hub in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, on Tuesday to be registered. (Andrea Carrubba/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Depleting resources have led some Ukrainians to attempt to flee the city independently on foot, a risky journey of 6 to 12 miles to relative safety that could end in death without a ceasefire, Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said on Ukrainian television.

More than 3,000 people have been killed in Mariupol since the war began, according to Ukrainian officials. Corpses of unburied Ukrainians line the citys streets, and with each passing day an even more dire humanitarian disaster unfolds. Without safe corridors to get aid into the city, there have reportedly been no medication or hygiene products available there for more than two weeks.

We are working to mobilize supplies and are already providing aid to internally displaced persons across the country, but we need agreement between the parties before we can get aid in and people out, Arran Skinner, a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, told Yahoo News.

A protester at a rally in support of Mariupol, calling on NATO to close the skies over Ukraine. (Mykola Tys/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Russia blames Ukraine for the failure to establish a safe corridor, or passageway, out of Mariupol, while Ukrainian officials accuse Russian troops of compromising aid missions near the city by blocking humanitarian convoys, often by using deadly force. Vereshchuk said that Russians recently captured 11 bus drivers and four aid workers, holding them hostage along with their vehicles.

As more humanitarian workers find themselves in grim circumstances because of the conflict, administering aid to those in need has become a traumatizing feat in itself, as they realize their own lives are in peril.

In a dramatically changed landscape, the work I was doing with [Doctors Without Borders] earlier is no longer possible, Aleksandr Burmin, a staff member of the organization in Ukraine, wrote in a post last week. Many of my colleagues find themselves in the same situation.

Another aid worker described the tense situation in the city as increasingly desperate.

A Ukrainian serviceman walks toward the front line in the city of Irpin on March 12. (Aris Messinis/AFP)

Despite the despair, Ukrainian forces continue to mount a valiant defense against Russian forces looking to advance upon Mariupol, leading to some fears that Russian President Vladimir Putin may escalate the war using chemical or biological weapons.

Putins back is against the wall, President Biden said Tuesday, ahead of a four-day trip to Europe for an emergency NATO meeting on Thursday. And the more his back is against the wall, the greater the severity of the tactics he may employ.

Already, the Russian shelling has decimated most of Mariupol, leaving 80% to 90% of the city destroyed, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The bombing in Mariupol has gotten so bad that the president of Poland has compared it to Nazi war crimes.

My countrymen, Poles, are looking today at Mariupol and are saying, God  they say it with tears in their eyes  Mariupol looks like Warsaw did in 1944 when Nazis, Hitlers Germans, were brutally bombing houses, killing people, killing civilians with no mercy at all, Andrzej Duda said Tuesday while on a visit to Bulgaria.

A woman walks past a damaged building in Mariupol on Monday. (Stringer/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Today the Russian army is behaving in exactly the same way. Russian leaders are behaving in exactly the same way, like Hitler, like the German SS, like the German pilots of the fascist army during World War II.

The last remaining journalists, who were once stationed in Mariupol to capture the grief, have also since left for fear of their lives.

The officer, who had once begged us to show the world his dying city, now pleaded with us to go, Mstyslav Chernov, a video journalist for the Associated Press, recalled on Tuesday in an emotional dispatch from outside the city. We were the last journalists in Mariupol. Now there are none.

Civilians are evacuated along humanitarian corridors from Mariupol on Monday. (Stringer/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Without journalists, power or internet connectivity, Ukrainians left in Mariupol have limited knowledge of the outside world or, except in rare instances, access to a radio. People have lost full communication with family and loved ones.

Meanwhile, the U.S. and its European allies continue to offer Ukraine support through billions in military aid and numerous Russian sanctions, stopping short of engaging in direct conflict.

As of Wednesday, more than 3.6 million Ukrainians had fled the country, with the majority  upwards of 2.1 million  finding refuge in Poland, according to the U.N. refugee agency.

_____

Cover thumbnail photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Sergey Bobok/AFP via Getty Images, Aris Messinis/AFP via Getty Images (2)
People walk past damaged buildings as civilians are evacuated along humanitarian corridors from the Ukrainian city of Mariupol under the control of Russian military and pro-Russian separatists on Monday. (Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

As President Biden headed Wednesday to a Europe with large-scale battles raging at its edge, his government formally declared that Russian forces have committed war crimes in their brutal attacks on civilians and others in Ukraine.

The besieged port of Mariupol was cited as one of the main pieces of evidence. On Wednesday, Ukraine said Russian forces hijacked aid missions headed to the devastated city, where one of the worst humanitarian crises of the escalating conflict has unfolded with hundreds of civilians killed and scarce supplies of food, water and medicine.

"Russian President Vladimir Putin has unleashed unrelenting violence that has caused death and destruction across Ukraine," Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said in announcing the government's determination in a statement released as he flew to NATO headquarters in Brussels with Biden.

Blinken noted deadly Russian attacks on apartment buildings, hospitals, schools and shopping malls, and in Mariupol, on a maternity ward and theater said to be sheltering children. He cited U.N. statistics of nearly 5,000 civilians killed in the monthlong war, almost half of those in Mariupol alone. The real figures are believed to be much higher.

"Putins forces used these same tactics in Grozny, Chechnya, and Aleppo, Syria, where they intensified their bombardment of cities to break the will of the people," Blinken said. "Their attempt to do so in Ukraine has again shocked the world."

Both Biden and Blinken said recently they personally considered Putin to be a war criminal, but a formal declaration was pending while U.S. investigators documented the cases of potential crimes against humanity.

The U.S. assessment helps build a legal case against Putin that would be prosecuted at a world judicial institution, such as the International Criminal Court at The Hague. Perpetrators of atrocities in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s have been prosecuted in similar systems.

It will do little to stop the violence, however. In Mariupol on Wednesday, where entire streets of buildings have been reduced to rubble from ceaseless shelling, Ukrainian officials said

15 aid workers and drivers were seized as they made their way to the strategic southeastern port next to the Crimean peninsula, a city that remains under Ukraine's control but that was said to be breached by an unknown number of Russian troops Tuesday.

The Red Cross said that one of its convoys was unable to enter the city, but confirmation of the Ukrainian allegation of abductions was unavailable.

The accusation came as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization said it would beef up forces along its eastern flank to deter Russia from launching an attack on any of the alliance's member nations. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Wednesday that new multinational battle groups, which normally consist of about 1,000 to 1,500 troops, would be established in Hungary, Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria and would remain stationed there as long as necessary.

The war in Ukraine has resulted in a new normal for our security, and NATO has to respond to that new reality, Stoltenberg said on the eve of an emergency meeting of NATO leaders in Brussels, which Biden is scheduled to attend.

He also called on the allies to step up defense of other potentially threatened countries such as Georgia, which Russia invaded in 2008, and Bosnia-Herzogovina, where numerous disgruntled Serbs favor Moscow.

A Ukrainian firefighter sprays water inside a house hit by Russian shelling in Kyiv. (Vadim Ghirda / Associated Press)

Biden will use the emergency NATO meetings in Brussels, as well as those of the EU, and the Group of Seven top democracies, to push for more sanctions against Russia and ways to bolster military defense of Ukraine without escalating the conflict.

The devastation in Mariupol has made it one of the worst human catastrophes of the nearly monthlong war.

"We are trying to organize stable humanitarian corridors for Mariupol residents, but almost all of our attempts, unfortunately, are foiled by the Russian occupiers, by shelling or deliberate terror," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an overnight video address.

"Employees of the state emergency service and bus drivers have been taken captive, Zelensky said. He described the city, where an estimated 100,000 people  about a quarter of its prewar population  remain trapped, as one of "inhumane conditions. In a total blockade. Without food, water, medication. Under constant shelling, under constant bombing."

As the death toll in Mariupol climbed, rescue operations were forced to move slowly to find any survivors beneath leveled buildings and much of the city without electricity. Zelensky said more than 7,000 people had been evacuated over the last day. Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said Wednesday that no agreement was reached with Russia to evacuate civilians from the center of Mariupol despite humanitarian corridors being open elsewhere in the nation.

Still, residents have slowly made their way out, traveling between small towns over many days as they seek safety. Hundreds of former Mariupol residents arrived early Wednesday in Lviv, the city in western Ukraine that has become a hub for refugees escaping the country to neighboring nations such as Poland, Romania and Moldova.

Attacks and street fighting continued elsewhere Wednesday, with a report from the Kyiv city administration that overnight shelling had hit a high-rise apartment building and homes in the Sviatoshynskyi and Shevchenkivskyi districts, west of the city center. Information on deaths or injuries was unknown.

Deadly missile attacks on neighborhoods and suburbs in the capital have become a near-daily part of life as Russian forces remain arrayed on the outskirts, apparently unable to penetrate the city.

Mayor Vitali Klitschko said the Ukrainian military had taken back areas northeast and northwest of the city, including heavily bombarded Irpin. He said civilian deaths in the city had reached 264 since the invasion began.

Zelensky, who has asked unsuccessfully for negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin and spent the last week making daily appeals to foreign lawmakers, addressed the Japanese parliament Wednesday.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed Japan's parliament Wednesday in his latest speech to foreign lawmakers. (Shuji Kajiyama / Associated Press)

"I hope you will continue imposing sanctions. Let's try to find a way which enables Russia to find a peaceful solution," he said.

The president has demanded that NATO create a no-fly zone over Ukraine. But he has repeatedly been told by leaders of NATO member states, including the U.S., that that will not happen, for fear of turning the conflict into a world war.

On Wednesday, Ukrainian presidential advisor Mykhailo Podolyak suggested alternative forms of assistance: modern air-defense systems, cruise missiles or shells, an embargo on Russian oil and the closure of ports around the world to Russian ships.

The U.S. and European nations have offered billions in military aid and imposed several rounds of economic sanctions on Russia. Germany, which is heavily dependent on Russian gas, said Wednesday that it would consider cutting off Russian imports but not immediately.

Yes, we will end this dependency  as soon as possible," German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said during a budget speech to parliament. "But to do this from one day to the next would mean plunging our country and the whole of Europe into a recession."

Poland said it was expelling 45 Russian diplomats who the government said were in reality Russian spies. The Russian ambassador to Warsaw, who is not among those being ejected, denied the allegation.

Biden will also travel to Poland on Friday to show his support for a nation that has received more than half of the 3.5 million refugees who have fled Ukraine. The United Nations says the war has displaced 10 million Ukrainians, many of whom have left eastern Ukraine for safer areas in western parts of the country, since the Russian invasion began Feb. 24.

Ukrainian and Russian officials have regularly met for negotiations over the course of the war but have been unable to agree on terms for a cease-fire.

U.S. and British intelligence reports have said Russia's invasion has not gone according to plan and described Russian troops as struggling to hold on to gains in key regions. A senior U.S. Defense official said this week that there were "indications that [Ukraine is] now able and willing to take back territory that the Russians have taken."

According to an analysis from the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War, Russian attacks are stalled around several major cities. Russia "did not make any major advances" overnight, the institute said, emphasizing that there were no major strikes on the northeastern cities of Chernihiv, Sumy or Kharkiv.

"Russian forces around Kyiv and other major cities are increasingly prioritizing long-range bombardment after the failure of Russian ground offensives," the analysis said. That includes hypersonic missiles, which fly up to 15 times the speed of sound and can easily evade air-defense systems.

however

In an interview with CNN on Tuesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov insisted that the invasion was "going on strictly in accordance with the plans and the purposes that were established beforehand."

Peskov also refused to rule out the use of nuclear weapons. When asked about the possibility, he said that the Kremlin would consider a nuclear attack if there was an existential threat for our country."

In response, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said the remarks did not reflect the "way a responsible nuclear power should act." He added that the U.S. has not "seen anything that would lead us to conclude that we need to change our strategic deterrent posture.

At the United Nations on Wednesday, delegates debated competing resolutions on the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine. A version favored by the U.S. and several allies pinpointed blame for the disaster on Russia, while a separate resolution sponsored by South Africa did not.

McDonnell reported from Lviv, Kaleem from London and Wilkinson from Washington.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Gov. Brad Little of Idaho, a Republican, signed into law a bill banning abortion after six weeks of pregnancy on Wednesday, making Idaho the first state to follow the lead of the Texas law that allows private citizens to sue abortion providers and doctors for terminating an unwanted pregnancy.

The measure in Idaho is the latest in a wave of anti-abortion bills at the state level, based on the expectation that the U.S. Supreme Court is set to overturn or at least weaken Roe v. Wade when it rules on a Mississippi abortion ban later this year. The six-week ban  which goes into effect in 30 days  means that many women will not even realize they are pregnant within the time frame in which abortion is permitted.

We heard in testimony in the committee; we heard in testimony here today that this will end many abortions in Idaho, said the bills sponsor, Republican state Rep. Steven Harris, last week after it passed the House. Lets save some babies.

Idaho Gov. Brad Little delivers his State of the State address at the state Capitol in Boise on Jan. 10. (Otto Kitsinger/AP Photo)

Little, a Republican, is facing a primary challenge from his right from his own Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin, who has earned the endorsement of former President Donald Trump and has repeatedly battled with Little during their time in office.

I stand in solidarity with all Idahoans who seek to protect the lives of pre-born babies, Little wrote in a letter to McGeachin, who serves as president of the state Senate, announcing that he had signed the bill.

In Idaho, the mother, grandparents, siblings, aunts and uncles of either parent would be allowed to sue medical personnel who provide an abortion up to four years after it takes place. While rapists and perpetrators of incest would not be able to sue, their family members would be, which Little said worried him, even though he signed the bill.

I am particularly concerned for those vulnerable women and children who lack the capacity or familial support to report incest and sexual assault, Little wrote. Ultimately, this legislation risks re-traumatizing victims by affording monetary [incentives] to wrongdoers and family members of rapists.

Mistie DelliCarpini-Tolman, state director of Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates in Idaho, told Yahoo News that the concerns expressed in Littles letter didnt matter.

He still signed the bill, he is still responsible for putting abortion out of reach for most Idahoans, and its a shame that he listened to the extremists instead of standing up for survivors of rape and incest, DelliCarpini-Tolman said Wednesday afternoon. This is a prime example of actions speaking louder than words.

The Idaho House of Representatives votes on March 14 to approve a Texas-style bill banning abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. (Keith Ridler/AP Photo)

Lawsuits to stop the Texas bill, which took effect in September and allows any private citizen to sue any other private citizen who aids in providing an abortion, have failed at both the state and federal levels. Legal challenges to stop the Idaho law from going into effect are expected, and the neighboring states of Washington and Oregon have already said they will help Idahoans who cross the border seeking an abortion. When Texass law went into effect, neighboring states saw a spike in pregnant women traveling from Texas for abortions. A number of Democratic-controlled states have enacted or are in the process of enacting protections for abortion providers in response to restrictions in other states, including a proposal in Missouri that would allow residents to sue out-of-state providers.

In a statement for Legal Voice, an advocacy group for womens and LGBT rights, Idaho programs manager Chelsea Gaona-Lincoln told Yahoo News, Knowing that the clock is winding down on access to safe abortion care in Idaho is absolutely sickening. Extremists know they cannot eradicate abortion  they only seek to ban access to safe abortion care, putting the lives of pregnant people at risk. As someone that is 26 weeks pregnant and an Idahoan  these legislators love to brag about local control  nothing is more local than having control over my own body.

No Democrats voted for the measure, which passed the Idaho Senate 28-6 and the House 51-14, with three House Republicans voting against it. The signing came a day after Oklahomas state House passed a near-total ban on abortion, allowing exceptions only to save the mothers life and allowing private citizens to sue any doctors who perform abortions. Republicans in Tennessee are pushing similar legislation.

DelliCarpini-Tolman told Yahoo News last week that the laws being passed across the nation are the culmination of a decade-long campaign by anti-abortion extremists to secure this conservative majority of the Supreme Court.

Demonstrators in front of the Supreme Court during the annual March for Life on Jan. 21. (Stephanie Keith/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Weve been seeing these 15-week bans pop up across the country, in Mississippi and Kentucky and Florida and other areas, DelliCarpini-Tolman said. These extreme legislatures that are emboldened by the Supreme Courts conservative bent.

Activists and the medical community in Idaho had also spent part of March rallying against a piece of anti-trans legislation that would have made it a felony punishable by life in prison for parents to seek gender-affirming care for their children and for medical professionals to provide it. While the bill passed in the Statehouse virtually along party lines, it ended up being shelved in the Senate.
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador gives his daily, morning press conference during the inauguration of the Felipe Angeles International Airport (AIFA), north of Mexico City, Monday, March 21, 2022. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

MEXICO CITY (AP)  A half-dozen legislators from Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obradors Morena party joined Wednesday in creating a congressional Mexico-Russia Friendship Committee, almost a month after Russian troops invaded Ukraine.

It was the latest in a string of events that suggest there is sympathy for Russia in Mexicos ruling party, despite the invasion.

About two dozen congress members from Morena and the allied Labor Party applauded Russian Ambassador Viktor Koronelli Wednesday after he addressed the committee, which met at Congress.

For us this is a sign of support, of friendship, of solidarity in these complicated times in which my country is not just facing a special military operation in Ukraine, but a tremendous media war, Koronelli said. Russia didn't start this war, it is finishing it.

Russia has outlawed calling the invasion by that name, and instead calls it a special military operation.

Morena Congressman Armando Contreras Castillo said: We are always ready to do everything we can to increase the friendship, relations and cooperation between Mexico and Russia in every aspect of the world and life.

Mexico has refused to send any aid to Ukraine or impose sanctions on Russia, but did vote in favor of a U.N. resolution condemning the invasion.

But on Wednesday, Lopez Obrador declared that Mexico was neutral in the conflict.

As regards the war, we are not going to participate in favor or against, the president said. Our posture is neutrality.

In early March, a youth group apparently affiliated with the president's Morena party made headlines in Mexico after it sent an open letter to the Russian ambassador supporting the invasion.

We reaffirm our moral and political support for the difficult decision that forced the Russian government and President Vladimir Putin to engage in the legitimate defense of his people and, seeking to avoid a larger military conflict and preserve world peace, militarily intervene in Ukrainian territory to weaken the neo-Nazi, coup-lead forces," the Morena Youth of Mexico State group wrote in the letter.

Lopez Obrador's spokesman, Jesus Ramirez, said the youth group had no official standing in the party.

But the Morena party itself latter said in a statement that we respect the freedom of thought of our members, but we make clear that this letter does not represent an official position of Morena, implying the views expressed there did exist among at least some members of the party.

Federico Estevez, a political science professor at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico, said the position of Lopez Obrador and Morena hearkens back to 1960s-era leftism, when the Soviet Union was seen as a counterbalance to U.S. dominance in Latin America. They also reflect Mexico's long-standing resentment of U.S. invasions which eventually cost the country half its territory.

He doesnt want to be accused of being knuckled under by the U.S. for the U.S. foreign policy goals, Estevez said of the president. It makes sense he would like an anti-imperialist front like the non-aligned movement of the 1960s and 70s  however unlikely that is to emerge  Estevez said, noting Theres just like nowhere to go, except for rhetorical resistance to U.S. sheep herding in the world."
FILE - A health worker administers a dose of a Moderna COVID-19 vaccine during a vaccination clinic at the Norristown Public Health Center in Norristown, Pa., Tuesday, Dec. 7, 2021. Moderna says its COVID-19 vaccine works in babies, toddlers and preschoolers. The company announced early findings from a study of children younger than 6 on Wednesday, March 23, 2022. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

Modernas COVID-19 vaccine works in babies, toddlers and preschoolers the company announced Wednesday  and if regulators agree it could mean a chance to finally start vaccinating the littlest kids by summer.

Moderna said in the coming weeks it would ask regulators in the U.S. and Europe to authorize two small-dose shots for youngsters under 6. The company also is seeking to have larger-dose shots cleared for older children and teens in the U.S.

The nations 18 million children under 5 are the only age group not yet eligible for vaccination. Competitor Pfizer currently offers kid-sized doses for school-age children and full-strength shots for those 12 and older.

But parents have anxiously awaited protection for younger tots, disappointed by setbacks and confusion over which shots might work and when. Pfizer is testing even smaller doses for children under 5 but had to add a third shot to its study when two didn't prove strong enough. Those results are expected by early April.

Vaccinating the littlest has been somewhat of a moving target over the last couple of months, Dr. Bill Muller of Northwestern University, an investigator in Modernas pediatric studies, said in an interview before the company released its findings. Theres still, I think, a lingering urgency to try to get that done as soon as possible.

The younger the child, the smaller the dose being tested. Moderna said a quarter of the dose it uses for adults worked well for youngsters under age 6.

Moderna enrolled about 6,900 tots in a study of the 25-microgram doses. Early data showed after two shots, youngsters developed virus-fighting antibody levels just as strong as young adults getting regular-strength shots, the company said in a press release.

Moderna said the small doses were safe, and the main side effects were mild fevers like those associated with other commonly used pediatric vaccines.

Once Moderna submits the data to the FDA, regulators will debate whether to authorize emergency use of the small doses for tots. If so, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention then will decide whether to recommend them.

While COVID-19 generally isnt as dangerous to youngsters as to adults, some do become severely ill. The CDC says about 400 children younger than 5 have died from COVID-19 since the pandemics start. The omicron variant hit children especially hard, with those under 5 hospitalized at higher rates than at the peak of the previous delta surge, the CDC found.

COVID-19 vaccines in general dont prevent infection with the omicron mutant as well as they fended off earlier variants  but they do still offer strong protection against severe illness.

Moderna reported that same trend in the trial of children under 6, conducted during the omicron surge. While there were no severe illnesses, the vaccine proved just under 44% effective at preventing any infection in babies up to age 2, and nearly 38% effective in the preschoolers.

Moderna said also said Wednesday it will ask the Food and Drug Administration to clear larger doses for older children.

While other countries already have allowed Modernas shots to be used in children as young as 6, the U.S. has limited its vaccine to adults. A Moderna request to expand its shots to 12- to 17-year-olds has been stalled for months.

The company said Wednesday that, armed with additional evidence, it is updating its FDA application for teen shots and requesting a green light for 6- to 11-year-olds, too.

Moderna says its original adult dose  two 100-microgram shots  is safe and effective in 12- to 17-year-olds. For elementary-age kids, its using half the adult dose.

But the FDA never ruled on Modernas application for teen shots because of concern about a very rare side effect. Heart inflammation sometimes occurs in teens and young adults, mostly males, after receiving either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines. Moderna is getting extra scrutiny because its shots are a far higher dose than Pfizer's.

The risk also seems linked to puberty, and regulators in Canada, Europe and elsewhere recently expanded Moderna vaccinations to kids as young as 6.

That concern has not been seen in the younger children, said Northwesterns Muller.

___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institutes Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Halle Berry and Denzel Washington with their Oscars in 2002. (Don Kelsen / Los Angeles Times)

Twenty years ago, Ron Howards A Beautiful Mind won four Academy Awards including best picture, beating out Gosford Park, In the Bedroom, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring and Moulin Rouge!

But the biggest moments of the night belonged to Halle Berry (Monsters Ball) and Denzel Washington (Training Day), marking the first and only time that both lead acting Oscars have gone to Black performers  a triumph that coincided with Washington presenting an honorary Oscar to Sidney Poitier, the first Black performer to win the lead actor trophy.

Times columnist Glenn Whipp and film critic Justin Chang sat down to reminisce about the impact of that memorable night and how the motion picture academy has  and mostly hasnt  followed through on its promise.

JUSTIN CHANG: In a few key respects, Glenn, the 74th Oscars ceremony  held nearly 20 years ago on March 24, 2002  holds up something of a cracked mirror to the 94th Oscars ceremony thats nearly upon us. Back in 2002, Will Smith and Denzel Washington went head-to-head in the lead actor race; Washington won that round (for Training Day), and this time, Smith looks poised to win their rematch (for King Richard). Nicole Kidman and Judi Dench were both nominated in 2002, for Moulin Rouge! and Iris, respectively; theyre up again this year, this time for Being the Ricardos and Belfast. In 2002, the best picture Oscar went to A Beautiful Mind, a movie thats generally less fondly remembered than some of its fellow nominees like Moulin Rouge!, a musical, and The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, the first chapter of an ambitious long-form fantasy epic  maybe not quite that years equivalents of West Side Story and Dune, but close enough.

Beyond the winners and nominees, 2002 also marked the first Oscars ceremony to be held at Hollywoods newly built Kodak Theatre (now redubbed the Dolby Theatre) after several years at the Shrine Auditorium and other venues. Now, after last years pandemic-downscaled ceremony at Union Station, the Oscars are heading back to the Dolby, with an expected return to the glitz and fanfare (there will be hosts!) of shows past.

There will be some differences, of course, chiefly related to length. Much angry ink has been spilled over the controversial decision to pre-tape the awards presentations in eight categories, removing them from the live broadcast, so as to bring the show in at a tight three hours. The 2002 ceremony, by contrast, stretched on to a downright tumescent four hours 23 minutes; I still remember the morning-after proclamations that it was the longest Oscars show in history, a record that holds to this day.

Needless to say, no categories were truncated or excised that year. And that was back before the Governors Awards had been shunted aside into their own ceremony, which meant that audiences at home and inside the Kodak got to see Arthur Hiller receive the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award and Robert Redford and Poitier receive their honorary Oscars. Twenty years later, in the year of Poitiers death, I cant help but feel nostalgic for a time when the academy knew how to show its artists, its artisans and its legends a modicum of respect.

Denzel Washington wins the Best Actor award for "Training Day" at the 74th Academy Awards at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood in 2002. (Ken Hively / Los Angeles Times)

WHIPP: I interviewed Washington not long ago. Prepping for it, I came across the speech he gave when he won the Oscar in 2002 for "Training Day." Poitier had received his honorary award earlier in the evening, and he was on Washington's mind. "Forty years I've been chasing Sidney; they finally give it to me and what do they do? They give it to him the same night." The telecast cuts to Poitier and his family in the balcony, doubling over in laughter. "I'll always be chasing you, Sidney. I'll always be following in your footsteps. There is nothing I'd rather do, sir. Nothing I would rather do."

This profoundly moving exchange defines what the Oscars should be about  honoring, remembering, linking. I asked Washington if he had planned to say that and he said, no, he was just feeling the moment. Today that moment wouldn't happen because, as you noted, Justin, the honorary awards are no longer presented during the Oscars, but at an earlier, untelevised event. Yes, we see clips. But it is not live television. Great things happen in the moment. Dull things too. But when you remove the live aspect, you lose the electricity. And when you remove the awards, you lose the show's purpose.

Washington holding his Oscar aloft toward Poitier, reciprocating the gesture Poitier had just made to him, is one of my all-time favorite Oscar moments. And it came just a few minutes after Berry won the lead actress Oscar for "Monster's Ball." There was no prior winner for Berry to chase; she was the first Black woman to win that Oscar. And you can see from her stunned, sobbing response  for a moment, you're not sure if she's going to be able to catch her breath to speak  that the moment isn't lost on her. "This door tonight has been opened," she said. Twenty years later, Berry remains the only Black woman to win the lead actress Oscar.

CHANG: Watching that extraordinarily moving speech again, its hard not to feel depressed  no, enraged  that, having opened just long enough for Berry to walk through it, that door seems to have slammed promptly shut again. In the 20 years since Berrys historic win, only six Black performers have been nominated for lead actress: Gabourey Sidibe, Viola Davis, Quvenzhane Wallis, Ruth Negga, Cynthia Erivo and Andra Day. Davis, its worth noting, actually received two lead actress nominations, for The Help and Ma Raineys Black Bottom. She won a supporting actress Oscar for her staggering performance as Rose Maxson in the 2016 movie Fences, which is 100% a lead role (and in fact won her the 2010 Tony for lead actress in a play). I like to think that had Davis campaigned for lead actress that year, she would have won; her work is that good, that undeniable.

Then again, maybe not. Im hardly the first to point out that the academy seems perfectly happy to award supporting actor prizes to Black actors (and, on occasion, other actors of color), but still has a curiously tough time recognizing them as leads. If Davis and the late Chadwick Boseman had won last year for their lead performances in Ma Raineys Black Bottom, they would have been the first Black actors to win both top acting trophies on the same night since the Berry-Washington triumph of 2002. But they both lost  to two very worthy performances, admittedly, from Anthony Hopkins and Frances McDormand, but the symbolism of the academys double slight did not go unnoticed.

This year, Smith seems likely to become just the fifth Black man to win a lead actor Oscar, after Poitier, Washington, Jamie Foxx and Forest Whitaker. Thats still a lousy track record, even if Black men have obviously fared better than Black women in the lead category. There is no Black nominee in the lead actress category this year, which is a shame, considering the academy members could have nominated Tessa Thompsons sublime performance in Passing, a grievously underloved movie about, incidentally, the indignities that Black women endure to be taken seriously  or simply treated as human  in a white mans world.

And lets not get started on all the Black women who failed to get the lead actress nominations they deserved in recent years, among them Lupita Nyongo (Us), Alfre Woodard (Clemency), Vero Tshanda Beya (Felicite), Helena Howard (Madelines Madeline) and none other than one of this years three Oscar hosts: Regina Hall, so marvelous in 2018s Support the Girls.

But I digress. Needless to say, the Oscars have not lived up to the promise of the Berry-Washington 2002 ticket. And as we shouldnt forget, that ticket very nearly didnt happen. Russell Crowe had all the lead-actor momentum for A Beautiful Mind that year, having won the Golden Globe, Critics Choice, SAG and BAFTA prizes, and looked set to become the first guy since Tom Hanks to win back-to-back lead acting Oscars. But then came his angry, widely publicized BAFTA-night tirade against BBC producer Malcolm Gerrie, and while well never know for certain, its now widely believed that Crowe destroyed his own winning campaign, allowing the tide to turn against him and in Washingtons favor at the worst possible moment.

A still from the movie "A Beautiful Mind," with curtains adorned and projectors on either side. (Micah Fluellen / Los Angles Times; Getty Images; Universal Pictures)

WHIPP: That self-inflicted wound  "it wasn't a moment of violence; it was a moment of clarification," Crowe said afterward  stood in contrast with the kind of damage that "A Beautiful Mind's" competitors were trying to inflict on the film. This Oscar campaign season was just the absolute worst  its vicious backbiting has not been equaled. I remember talking to Ron Howard shortly before the ceremony, and he was just drained and exhausted from defending his movie. Then he won Oscars both as a director and a producer. Yay! But the party afterward felt more like ... well ... it wasn't quite a wake. It was just relief, both that they won and that the whole damn thing was over.

I don't know how much any of that ugliness is remembered. I don't even know how much the film itself is remembered. "A Beautiful Mind" belongs to the class of best picture winners that few revisit  a list that would include a good half of the movies that have prevailed over the years.

Ron Howard won the director and best film awards for "A Beautiful Mind" at the 74th Academy Awards. (Don Kelsen / Los Angeles Times)

The accusations leveled against "A Beautiful Mind" pertained to what Howard and screenwriter Akiva Goldsman chose to include in their depiction of Nobel Prize-winning mathematician John Nash's battle with schizophrenia  and what they chose to leave out. Was Nash an anti-Semite? That was the charge leveled in the Drudge Report, just as final voting began, the latest and nastiest accusation in a smear campaign that started around the holidays. Was Harvey Weinstein behind it? I hear it originated elsewhere, from a Miramax alum now working for a competitor, the studio with the hobbit movie. But opinions vary. People saw enemies behind every corner.

While the controversy and the movie itself have faded, time has been kinder to other nominees. Baz Luhrmann's "Moulin Rouge!" remains an exhilarating spectacle of sound and vision. Robert Altman's "Gosford Park" stands as another expert ensemble piece from the master. And if someone needs an introduction to Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" movies, I'll make some popcorn and watch "The Fellowship of the Ring" again ... though, for me, it now takes a back seat to Jackson's latest trilogy. Get back, Frodo.

CHANG: Well, now Im envisioning crossover possibilities (The Fellowship of the Ringo, anyone?). As you note, Glenn, this was an awards season of near-unprecedented ugliness. (I still remember host Whoopi Goldberg quipping in her opening monologue: I got an email today saying Frodo Baggins was an anti-Semite.) A Beautiful Mind certainly didnt deserve the ugliness thrown its way, though given its timid kid-gloves treatment of its real-life subject, neither did it deserve to avoid scrutiny. A better, bolder picture would have dared to explore Nashs complicated sexuality, among other things, without fear of audience discomfort. Its not a movie that I think ultimately has much respect or concern for its subject  or, in the end, for the audiences intelligence. But if voters were ever going to reject it, they should have done so on the basis of its reductive storytelling and unremarkable filmmaking, not because of specious bad-faith accusations from the competition.

Still, what competition! Its a shame that A Beautiful Mind beat out so many superior rivals, and under slightly different circumstances it might not have. While Howards Directors Guild Award gave both him and the film a major boost going into Oscar night, the other major precursor prizes were quite evenly split. The Producers Guild of America chose Moulin Rouge!, Luhrmanns punch-drunk glitter explosion of a jukebox musical, a then-polarizing tour de force that now feels like more of a classic than ever. The Screen Actors Guild rightly awarded its ensemble prize to Gosford Park, which is probably the 2002 best picture nominee I return to most often, so elegant and nimble and endlessly pleasurable is Altmans star-studded mashup of Agatha Christie and Jean Renoir.

The British Academy of Film and Television, meanwhile, gave best picture to The Fellowship of the Ring  the right choice, I think, and one I wish the academy had echoed. They would, of course, give the trilogy its due two years later with The Return of the Kings 11-award sweep, but the first installment of Jacksons trilogy nonetheless had a fresh, vital, utterly transporting power that deserved to be acknowledged at the time; it was the most exhilarating piece of fantasy storytelling to hit the movies in years. And 2001 didnt lack for fantasy efforts, including Chris Columbus comparatively lackluster Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone (which scored just three Oscar nominations to Fellowships 13) and the charmless but popular Shrek, an inauspicious choice for the academys first-ever animated feature prize.

The one best picture nominee that didnt stand a chance is the one we havent mentioned yet: In the Bedroom, Todd Fields tense, harrowing New England drama of love and marriage, crime and punishment. Tom Wilkinson, Sissy Spacek and Marisa Tomei were duly recognized with acting nominations, though the movie itself, for all its emotional ferocity, hasnt had much cultural staying power. Unlike, say, Wong Kar-wais In the Mood for Love (completely ignored by the academy) and David Lynchs Mulholland Dr. (recognized with a lone directing nomination), whose reputations have only grown and grown with time; the prestigious 2012 Sight & Sound critics poll ranked them both among the top 30 greatest films of all time. 2001 was a damn good year, in other words  not that the Oscars would have necessarily told you why.

WHIPP: Which is a reason we love the Oscars, right? Every year, the academy gives us so much to talk  and complain  about. In that respect, it unites film lovers, the kind of people who don't mind spending nearly 4 1/2 hours meandering through an awards show as long as it provides a handful of moments that remind us why we cherish cinema.

It's worth noting that this ceremony took place several months after 9/11 and opened with Tom Cruise taking the stage, asking if we should be celebrating the joy and magic that movies bring. He answered his own question: "Dare I say it, more than ever." And while there's a whiff of self-congratulation there, this show did consistently remind viewers why movies matter and how film can pierce our hearts and make us smile.

The high point came with a four-minute montage tribute to New York in the movies, assembled by beloved filmmaker (and quintessential New Yorker) Nora Ephron. It had everything  "On the Waterfront," "Do the Right Thing," "Ghostbusters," "Saturday Night Fever," "Fame," "Shaft," "King Kong" and a couple dozen more movies that, taken together, captured the city and made you tear up, even if you had never been to New York. It could have run twice as long and no one would have complained  a lesson that the academy's leadership should take to heart as it considers the future of the Oscars.

Read Justin Chang and Glenn Whipp's picks for what films and which actors deserved to win Oscars back in 2002.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
A broadcast of Russian President Vladimir Putin's speech is shown on TV in the White House briefing room on Feb. 21, 2022, days before the invasion of Ukraine. (Al Drogo / Bloomberg )

Anyone wanting to know the Kremlins worldview need only tune in to News of the Week, a Sunday night talk show hosted by Dmitry Kiselyov, who warns his millions of viewers of the sobering specter that the U.S. is an imperial power, Ukraine is ruled by fascists, Europe is a decadent mess in swift decline and Russia has too many enemies to count.

The operation to clear Ukraine of Nazis continues, Kiselyov, dressed in a dark suit, white shirt and light blue tie, informs his audience on state-run Russia-1. His nations military strategy is microsurgical ... and methodical, the TV host says in a staccato-style burst of sentences he has honed for years as Russian President Vladimir Putins chief opinion shaper.

Fever is no helper, he adds, underscoring the need for a dispassionate and calculated army mission. The statements are followed by video showing the precise attacks on Ukrainian military facilities. No word about the Russian shelling of homes, hospitals, schools, the near-destruction of the cities of Mariupol or Kharkiv and the more than 3 million refugees created by Moscows invasion of its neighbor. And not even a hint of Russias battlefield failures.

The 67-year-old Kiselyov is a household name and an aging prince of propaganda. Prone to tirades and myth peddling, he once suggested that Russia could turn the U.S. into radioactive ash. He was appointed in 2013 by Putin to head Rossiya Segodnya, the powerful media group that controls much of the Kremlins ultranationalist spin. Ki- selyov has no qualms about quoting out of context, masking the political affiliations of his guests and picking aspects of a story that fit his narrative while blowing up facts that dont conform.

On Sunday, News of the Week, known in Russian as Vesti Nedeli, intensified its populist rhetoric when it featured a segment on alleged Russophobia that included quotes from Ramon Serrano Suner, a follower of Spains fascist Gen. Francisco Franco, and Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitlers infamous minister of propaganda. To add a more recent anti-Russian statement, Kiselyov took to Rod Liddle, a controversial British journalist. The intent was to create a siege mentality that feeds into the Kremlins central theme: The West wants to bring Russia to its knees.

Dmitry Kiselyov, who hosts a Sunday night TV talk show, is Russian President Vladimir Putin's chief opinion shaper. (Mikhail Svetlov / Getty Images)

With the help of the West, Ukraine staged a coup detat, said Kiselyov on a recent show, giving his version of events in 2014, when the Ukrainian parliament voted to remove then-President Viktor Yanukovich, a Russian ally, from his post. Showing marches of right-wing groups in Kyiv, Ukraines capital, Kiselyov insinuated that the countrys new leadership idolized Hitlers SS, the paramilitary organization of the Third Reich. He does not mention that President Volodymyr Zelensky is Jewish and lost relatives in the Holocaust.

People like Kiselyov are not journalists, says Russian journalist Dmitry Kartsev. They are propagandists.

Kartsev heads the department of analysis at Meduza, a Russian-language online news portal operating from the Latvian capital, Riga, and working mostly for the audience in Russia. Until last year, Meduza ran an office in Moscow but had to abandon it after pressure on the independent press increased. After it was labeled a foreign agent by Russian authorities, advertisers abandoned Meduza, forcing it into exile.

Russians understand that this is propaganda, but they also believe that there is no free media anywhere at all, neither in Russia nor in the West, and [that] is one of the main achievements of the Kremlins propaganda, Kartsev says. This is true in particular of those Russians who lean toward Putin but are not yet entirely convinced. If everybody lies, they think, then we should support our son of a bitch, he explains.

Kiselyov is not the only star propagandist. Vladimir Solovyov hosts a debate show on Russia-1, where he lashes out against Ukraine. Shortly before the invasion he said: We have enough firepower for the full annihilation of the Ukrainian military infrastructure without an incursion of forces into Ukrainian territory. But we arent preparing to do this. A few days later he added: Today is the day that a righteous operation was launched for the denazification of Ukraine.

The role of TV has long been crucial in shaping Russian public opinion. Its influence has grown since the invasion of Ukraine and the silencing of alternative media sources. Most Western-run social media such as Facebook or Instagram are banned. YouTube appears to be on the verge of being banned. Twitter has been slowed down significantly. According to a recent report, Chinese TikTok does not allow any foreign content anymore for users in Russia. Foreign broadcasters such as Germanys Deutsche Welle were forced to shut down their Moscow offices.

A number of foreign correspondents based in Moscow have temporarily left the capital over fears they might face 15 years in prison for violating a new law that forbids contradicting the Kremlins language rules, which, for example, prohibit the use of war and invasion to describe the aggression against Ukraine. Instead the conflict must be referred to as a special operation.

Independent media are near extinct. Radio station Ekho Moskvy (Echo of Moscow) and the online TV program Dozhd (Rain) closed this month. Only the intellectual Novaya Gazeta is still standing, which may have to do with the fact that its editor in chief, Dmitry Muratov, was awarded the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize. Muratov has said he is auctioning off his medal to help Ukrainian refugees. The last president of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, owns about 10% of the publishing house, but it is unclear how long this will shield the newspaper from closure.

Any people, and particularly the Russian people, will always be able to tell apart the patriots from the scum and traitors and spit them out like a fly that accidentally flew into their mouths, Putin said in a speech last week. He continued: I am convinced that this natural and necessary self-cleansing of society will only strengthen our country, our solidarity, cohesion and readiness to meet any challenge.

That was apparently an attack on dissidents, antiwar protesters and non-state media voices.

Western social media were the big challenge for Russian TV, says Tamina Kutscher, editor in chief of dekoder.org, a platform based in Berlin that, among other things, monitors media in Russia and Belarus. But those are now gone. What is left are platforms such as Odnoklassniki or Vkontakte, Russian social media sites whose owners have close ties to the Kremlin.

What happens to data and statements published on those sites one never knows, says Kutscher.

There is also a psychological factor at play, Kutscher says: When the war began this was a moment of shock and people were ready to believe what the propaganda told them.

One of the recurring lines manipulates World War II history by suggesting that Ukrainians are fascists. Putin is clearly tying in here with the legacy of the Nazis, Kutscher says.

The same theme seems to be at work when Russians are asked whether they support the war. According to the Levada Center, an independent pollster in Moscow, 67% of Russians are in favor of the war in Ukraine.

Levadas director, Lev Gudkov, sees a clear connection between propaganda and public opinion. Most of the people do not have another choice than to watch and read state media, he said. And they all tell the same story.

When Dmitry Kiselyov ends his nearly four-hour-long program, there is no word about antiwar protests on the streets of Moscow or about Marina Ovsyannikova, the journalist with Russias state-run Channel One who last week interrupted a live news broadcast by holding up a sign condemning state propaganda. There is also no mention of the scores of Russians fleeing their country.

Instead he says: No other Western leader has as much support as Putin.

For Dmitry Kartsev in Riga, all this comes as no surprise: If you live in an authoritarian state you better say what is expected of you, he says.

Ziener is a special correspondent.





This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
About 200 gallons of sulfuric acid leaked outside Pepperidge Farm in Bloomfield Wednesday during a pre-dawn fire, officials said.

No one was injured, although some workers complained of an odor from the fumes. The bread-making plant at 1414 Blue Hills Ave. was evacuated as a precaution, said Willie Jones, chief of the Blue Hills Fire Department.

Advertisement

Jones said the fire burned in outdoor containers for about 90 minutes. Firefighters did not try to douse them with water because they were told they contained chemicals, and water can cause a reaction when its mixed with certain substances.

The contents of the containers leaked during the fire, he said. Workers from the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection were called to determine the extent of the spill and how to mitigate it.

Advertisement

Four, 220-gallon containers, each with 50% sulfuric acid, leaked, as did two, 330-gallon containers holding 25% caustic soda, said Will Healey, the agencys spokesman. The substances were diluted, and they were discharged into the parking lot.

There does not appear to be any discharge off the site as the storm water system runs off into a dirt drainage swale along the edge of the parking lot, Healey said.

Workers were in the plant at the time of the fire, and they left the building, but returned when they smelled the odor of burning chemicals, the fire chief said. They then were told to leave from a different exit, away from the fire.

We did, as a precaution, evacuate the building, because we didnt want the burning fumes to enter the HVAC system, Jones said.

Sulfuric acid is used for wastewater treatment, Healey said.

This treatment involves sulfuric acid as well as a caustic soda to adjust the wastewater PH, he said.

A local health official was at the scene late Wednesday morning working to get the plant reopened, Healey said, and the fire marshal was investigating the cause of the fire.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Breaking News As it happens Get the latest updates on Coronavirus and other breaking news events happening across Connecticut >

Advertisement

Christine Dempsey may be reached at cdempsey@courant.com.
A large tornado struck New Orleans on Tuesday night, causing extensive damage to a densely populated area.

The tornado was captured on local NBC affiliate WDSUs weather camera and could be seen on the stations live broadcast for several minutes.

Injuries from the storm werent immediately reported. Rubble littered the streets and power lines could be seen lying on the ground and wrapped around all manner of objects.

Because New Orleans sits below sea level, very few people have basements where they could have sheltered from the violent winds.

Authorities survey damage in the Lower 9th Ward, Tuesday in New Orleans, after strong storms moved through the area.





Authorities survey damage in the Lower 9th Ward, Tuesday in New Orleans, after strong storms moved through the area. (Gerald Herbert/)

If you have damage please report but DO NOT go sightseeing!!! People have lost homes and businesses and need help right now!! said Benjamin Schott, chief meteorologist with the National Weather Service in New Orleans.

The tornado struck New Orleans Lower Ninth Ward and the suburbs of Arabi and Chalmette, according to reports from the city.

@MargaretOrr here is a video of the tornado my husband matthew burke took in chalmette on chinchilla st. you all have permission to use it! pic.twitter.com/QgTyALUFXp  drew  (@cemeteryfairyyy) March 23, 2022

It just kept getting louder and louder, Arabi resident Michelle Malasovich told the Associated Press. After it passed they came out to survey the damage. Our neighbors house is in the middle of the street right now.

More than 14,000 people in the New Orleans metro area had lost power as of Tuesday night, according to the local electric company, Entergy.

Tornado warnings for the area were called off by 8:30 p.m., implying that the storm had moved on.

State agencies are assisting local officials as needed as they assess the damage and impacts of these tornadoes, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards tweeted. My prayers are with you in Southeast Louisiana tonight. Please be safe.

A debris lined street is seen in the Lower 9th Ward, Tuesday, March 22, 2022, in New Orleans, after strong storms moved through the area.





A debris lined street is seen in the Lower 9th Ward, Tuesday, March 22, 2022, in New Orleans, after strong storms moved through the area. (Gerald Herbert/)

The same storm system hit north and central Texas on Monday, spawning multiple tornadoes. At least one person was killed, a 73-year-old woman living in Grayson County, north of Dallas.

While people often dont expect tornadoes in high-population areas, an EF3 twister struck New Orleans in February 2017 and caused serious damage.
KYIV, Ukraine (AP)  Ukrainian leaders accused Russia of seizing 15 rescue workers and drivers from a humanitarian convoy trying to get desperately needed food and other supplies into the bloodied port city of Mariupol, which also came under naval attack after weeks of air and land strikes.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy estimated that 100,000 civilians remained in Mariupol, scene of some of the war's worst devastation, as Russia presses a nearly month-old offensive by bombarding cities and towns. Those made it out described a shattered city.

They bombed us for the past 20 days, said 39-year-old Viktoria Totsen, who fled into Poland. During the last five days, the planes were flying over us every five seconds and dropped bombs everywhere  on residential buildings, kindergartens, art schools, everywhere.

Zelenskyy, speaking Tuesday in his nightly video address to his nation, accused Russian forces of blocking the aid convoy despite agreeing to the route ahead of time.

We are trying to organize stable humanitarian corridors for Mariupol residents, but almost all of our attempts, unfortunately, are foiled by the Russian occupiers, by shelling or deliberate terror, Zelenskyy said.

The Red Cross confirmed a humanitarian aid convoy trying to reach the city had not been able to enter.

The convoy's attempt to deliver assistance came as Russian navy vessels joined in what have been weeks of Russian air and land strikes into Mariupol, U.S. officials said.

A senior U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity to give the Pentagons assessment, said Russian ships in the Sea of Azov added to the shelling of Mariupol. The official said there were about seven Russian ships in that area, including a minesweeper and a couple of landing vessels.

The hands of one exhausted Mariupol survivor shook as she arrived by train in the western city of Lviv.

Theres no connection with the world. We couldnt ask for help," said Julia Krytska, who was helped by volunteers to make it out with her husband and son. "People dont even have water there.

An aerial view shows residential buildings which were damaged during Russia'sbombing of the besieged southern port city of Mariupol, Ukraine. (Reuters)

U.S. President Joe Biden is due to head to Europe for an emergency NATO summit Thursday on Russia's invasion and increasingly hostile stance toward the West, where NATO members and other European allies are strengthening their defenses.

Biden is traveling to Brussels and Poland, which has received more than 2 million Ukrainian refugees since the Feb. 24 invasion. He is expected to seek continued unity among Western allies and to announce more sanctions on Russia.

Asked on CNN what Russian President Vladimir Putin had achieved in Ukraine, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: Well, first of all, not yet. He hasnt achieved yet. But he insisted that the military operation was going strictly in accordance with the plans and purposes that were established beforehand.

Putins aims remain to get rid of the military potential of Ukraine and to ensure that Ukraine changes from an anti-Russian center to a neutral country, Peskov said.

In Ukraines capital, Kyiv, continued shelling and gunfire shook the city early Wednesday, with plumes of black smoke rising from the western outskirts.

Heavy artillery fire was heard on Tuesday too from the northwest, where Russia has sought to encircle and capture several suburbs. Ukraine's defense ministry said its forces partially lost three suburbs in that area, but recaptured another, Makariv, west of Kyiv.

A video posted by Ukrainian police showed them surveying damage in Makariv, including to the towns police station, which an officer said took a direct hit to its roof. The police drove by destroyed residential buildings and along a road pocked by shelling. The town appeared all but deserted.

The Russian forces bombed and destroyed a bridge in the encircled northern city of Chernihiv that crossed the Desna River and connected the city to Kyiv, regional governor Viacheslav Chaus said Wednesday. Deliveries of humanitarian aid and evacuations of civilians went through that bridge. Local authorities have warned of a humanitarian disaster in the city, with no water or electricity.

A Western official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss military assessments, said Ukrainian resistance has brought much of Russia's advance to a halt but has not sent Moscow's forces into retreat.

We have seen indications that the Ukrainians are going a bit more on the offensive now, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters separately in Washington. He said that was particularly true in southern Ukraine, including near Kherson, where they have tried to regain territory.

People stand around a giant peace sign with the message "Stop Putin's Oil," put up by demonstrators ahead of an EU and NATO summit in Brussels, Tuesday, March 22, 2022. (AP)

Russia's far stronger, bigger military has many Western military experts warning against overconfidence in Ukraine's long-term odds. Russia's practice in past wars in Chechnya and Syria has been to grind down resistance with strikes that flattened cities, killed countless civilians and sent millions fleeing.

But Russian forces appeared unprepared and have often performed badly against Ukrainian resistance.

The U.S. estimates Russia has lost a bit more than 10% of the overall combat capability it had at the start of the fight, including troops, tanks and other materiel.

Western officials say Russian forces are facing serious shortages of food, fuel and cold weather gear, leaving some soldiers suffering from frostbite.

The invasion has driven more than 10 million people from their homes, almost a quarter of Ukraine's population, according to the United Nations.

Thousands of civilians are believed to have died. Estimates of Russian military casualties vary widely, but even conservative figures by Western officials are in the low thousands.

Putins troops are facing unexpectedly tough resistance that has left the bulk of Moscows ground forces miles from the center of Kyiv, and they are making slow progress on apparent efforts to cut off fighters in eastern Ukraine. The Russians increasingly are concentrating their air power and artillery on Ukraines cities and civilians.

Talks to end the fighting have continued by video. Zelenskyy said negotiations with Russia are going step by step, but they are going forward.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he saw progress "coming into view on several key issues, and that the gains are enough to end hostilities now. He gave no details.

The Western official, though, said that there were no signs Moscow was ready to compromise.

In their last update on March 15, Mariupol officials said at least 2,300 people had died in the siege. Accounts from the city suggest the true toll is much higher, with bodies lying uncollected. Airstrikes over the past week destroyed a theater and an art school where many civilians were taking shelter.

Ukrainian servicemen have a rest in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, March 22, 2022. (AP)

Zelenskyy, in his address, said more than 7,000 people were evacuated from Mariupol on Tuesday. Those who remain suffer in inhuman conditions, under a full blockade, without food, without water, without medicine and under constant shelling, under constant bombardment, he said.

Before the war, 430,000 people lived in Mariupol.

Perched on the Sea of Azov, Mariupol is a crucial port for Ukraine and lies along a stretch of territory between Russia and Crimea. The siege has cut the city off from the sea and allowed Russia to establish a land corridor to Crimea.

Its not clear how much of the city Russia holds, with fleeing residents saying fighting continues street by street.

Further west in the seaside city of Odesa on Tuesday, street musicians played under cloudless skies as barricades lined the streets and couples parted ways at the station in tears, as residents prepared for what they fear will be an escalated Russian assault.

Fondly known as the Pearl of the Black Sea, Odesa was awash with a bittersweet air  sandbags and security forces clashing with romantic jazz rippling from the train station speakers.

I cant understand what has happened, said Igor Topsi, a 56-year-old musician whos been playing the drums on the streets of Odesa for over three decades.

At the central station, a young man on the platform said goodbye by phone to his girlfriend sitting inside the train. Only a pane of glass separated them.
WASHINGTON (AP)  The Biden administration on Wednesday made a formal determination that Russian troops have committed war crimes in Ukraine and said it would work with others to prosecute offenders, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said.

Today, I can announce that, based on information currently available, the U.S. government assesses that members of Russias forces have committed war crimes in Ukraine, Blinken said in a statement released as he was traveling to Brussels with President Joe Biden for an emergency summit of NATO leaders.

The assessment was based on a careful review of public and intelligence sources since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine last month, he said.

America's top diplomat said the United States would share that information with allies, partners and international institutions tasked with investigating allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Weve seen numerous credible reports of indiscriminate attacks and attacks deliberately targeting civilians, as well as other atrocities. Russias forces have destroyed apartment buildings, schools, hospitals, critical infrastructure, civilian vehicles, shopping centers, and ambulances, leaving thousands of innocent civilians killed or wounded, Blinken said.

He cited attacks on the civilian population in the besieged city of Mariupol and elsewhere.
FILE PHOTO: U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee holds hearing on Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson's nomination to the Supreme Court on Capitol Hill in Washington

By Leah Douglas

(Reuters) - The United States must increase food aid to prevent millions of people starving as Russia's invasion of Ukraine threatens global grain supplies, members of the U.S. Senate's bipartisan hunger caucus said.

Congress passed $13 billion in aid for Ukraine on March 9, but the $2.65 billion earmarked in the package for food and other humanitarian aid does not go far enough to address food shortages globally, the Senators say.

They will seek billions more dollars as part of any future COVID-19 or Ukraine relief bill, a Congressional staffer with knowledge of the plans said.

Democrats and Republicans in Congress need to quickly come together and approve emergency global food aid in order to prevent tens of millions of people, including millions of children, from dying of starvation, Sen. Cory Booker, a Democrat from New Jersey, told Reuters.

The United Nations' World Food Programme (WFP) says it is facing a $9 billion funding shortfall. Before the invasion, 44 million people in 38 countries were on the brink of famine, according to the agency.

Now, the flood of refugees from Ukraine and disruptions to the countrys spring planting season threaten to drive worldwide hunger to catastrophic levels, WFP executive director David Beasley said.

Russia and Ukraine together account for about 25% of the worlds wheat exports, and WFP gets about 50% of its commodities from Ukraine.

This is unprecedented, Beasley said.

In addition to legislation, lawmakers are looking to the Bill Emerson Humanitarian Trust, a $260 million fund for international food aid managed by USDA and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

Sen. Jerry Moran, a Republican from Kansas, wrote to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack on March 3 urging him to draw on the funds.

It is critical to utilize every tool at your disposal to meet these challenges, Moran wrote of hunger crises in Afghanistan and Ukraine.

Moran has not heard from USDA or USAID on this proposal, a staffer told Reuters.

USDA referred questions about the trust to USAID, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

(Reporting by Leah Douglas; Editing by Alison Williams)
ANNVILLE, Pa. (AP)  A Pennsylvania woman has been convicted of first- and third-degree murder in the death of a 12-year-old boy authorities said was starved and beaten before his death almost two years ago.

Jurors deliberated for less than an hour Tuesday before convicting 37-year-old Kimberly Maurer of all charges including child endangerment, involuntary manslaughter and criminal conspiracy in the May 2020 death of 12-year-old Maxwell Schollenberger, the Lebanon Daily News reported.

Defense attorney Andrew Race said Wednesday that his client faces a mandatory life term without possibility of parole when she is sentenced June 1.

Lebanon County authorities said the boys naked, feces-covered body was found in a soiled bed in a room that was caked with feces and urine. He had a broken eye socket and multiple signs of blunt force trauma, and the cause of death was attributed to prolonged starvation, malnutrition and blunt force trauma, officials said.

In September 2020, authorities accused Scott Schollenberger Jr., 43, and Maurer, his fiancee, of keeping the boy in a dark room for years, starving him and beating him while treating their other children well. The boy's room had no lights and duct tape closed the shades while metal hooks kept the room locked from outside, officials said.

Scott Schollenberger pleaded guilty last month shortly before his scheduled trial date to charges including criminal homicide, child endangerment and conspiracy. He was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole.

In Maurer's trial, witnesses testified that she failed to enroll the 12-year-old in school for years, give him proper medical care, or give him proper treatment for possible physical and psychological problems, the newspaper reported.

Maurers attorneys argued that the boys father orchestrated the abuse and death. Race suggested that she could be convicted of endangerment but not more serious charges because the boy's father wouldnt allow anyone else to make decisions for his son, the newspaper reported.

Race said Wednesday he was disappointed with the verdict but called it a tough, tough case for any jury to view."

I thought a lot of evidence pointed to the degree of control and coercion that the biological father exercised over that family," he said, while adding that we have to trust the jury."

Prosecutors said social media posts and text messages showed Maurer describing an inability to control Maxs behavior, along with instances of Max urinating and defecating in the familys home. District Attorney Pier Hess Graf said the trial showed jurors what pure evil personified looks like.

It shows how a child could be tortured, starved and punished in every way for existing, she said.
(Reuters) -A large tornado ripped through New Orleans on Tuesday, killing at least one person, destroying homes and knocking down power lines, media reported, in another setback for area that has yet to fully recover from last year's Hurricane Ida.

A dark funnel cloud touched down in the city and plowed through neighborhoods, pictures on social media showed, with damage reported in the communities off Arabi, Gretna and St. Bernard Parish.

St. Bernard Parish President Guy McInnis told local media at least one person was killed but offered no further details.

There were no official reports of the number of people injured.

"We had five or six houses totally demolished. There were people in the homes, so far everyone is accounted for," McInnis said on WDSU television.

St. Bernard Parish Sheriff Jimmy Pohlmann told news site NOLA.com he had reports of some people trapped.

In Arabi, the tornado blew off roofs and knocked over trees and utility poles, NOLA.com reported.

A video posted on Twitter by Fox8 television showed firefighters near a house in Arabi with no roof and its walls toppled over.

Much of southern Louisiana is still recovering from Hurricane Ida, a fierce Category 4 storm that came ashore last August, devastating rural communities to the south of New Orleans and killing more than 100 people in the South and Caribbean.

The majority Black city of New Orleans, known for its jazz, Cajun-influenced cuisine and history as a major slave port, is still traumatized by 2005's Hurricane Katrina, one of the largest and most powerful storms in U.S. history, which killed at least 1,800 people.

Tuesday's tornado struck a day after twisters destroyed homes and injured people elsewhere in the region.

Power was reported out for more than 17,346 customers in Louisiana, 25,923 in Texas and more than 11,646 in Mississippi, according the website poweroutage.us. Some 8,000 customers in New Orleans lacked electricity, utility provider Atmos Energy told NOLA.com.

The storm front brought heavy rain and powerful winds to Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama as National Weather Service forecasters warned some 5 million people in the region could see dangerous weather.

"This is the typical time of the year for these events to unfold. Spring-time is prime for severe weather," said Roger Erickson, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Lake Charles, Louisiana.

School districts across the region canceled classes and Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge closed its campus for the day.

(Reporting by Brendan O'Brien, Daniel Trotta, Dan Whitcomb and Eric Beech;Editing by Michael Perry and Karishma Singh)
A Ukrainian has spoken about the horror of seeing photographs online of her family home destroyed by Russian bombing days after her parents fled the city of Mariupol.

Mariia Moskalenko, 28, had been regularly checking a local news channel for updates of her neighbourhood and was shocked to discover her parents building had been destroyed.

Its so hard to believe this is happening the Russians are destroying everything, she told the PA news agency.

Before the invasion Mariupol was a very beautiful place.

Mariia Moskalenko, 28, was shocked to discover her parents home had been destroyed (Mariia Moskalenko/PA)

There had been a change in local government and a lot of money had been put into the city to build new parks, new schools and stuff like that.

Its our taxes you know, my money which I worked hard for and which was used to build those houses, those roads, those parks  and now they are all destroyed.

Ms Moskalenko escaped the city with her 16-year-old brother on March 3 and had been anxiously waiting for news of her parents after failing to convince them to leave their home.

Her 50-year-old mother and 55-year-old father eventually left Mariupol on March 17 after being ordered to evacuate by Ukrainian soldiers.

Mariia Moskalenko with her father in Mariupol the day before Russian began airstrikes over the city (Mariia Moskalenko/PA)

They were just so shocked and my father hadnt wanted to leave, Ms Moskalenko said.

When I first talked to him, he told me he would return to Mariupol and it was really scary because I thought he might.

But after a few days, when he had slept without the constant sound of bombs exploding over him, he realised it is not a good idea.

I think it is psychological, like a coping mechanism a lot of men have been saying this when they escape.

Ms Moskalenko is still in Ukraine and has been living in a safe house with her younger brother, but she could not say where for safety reasons.

She said the priority for her family now is to find somewhere to relocate to but she has ongoing concerns about safety.

Its a challenge  where to try and think of where to settle down, or at least where to go for now, she said.

Because actually, Im thinking that moving to Europe may not even be safe enough.

If Europe will not do anything to conquer Russia then why would the Russians stop if they take over Ukraine?

Now Im thinking about (moving to) Australia.

Conditions are brutal for those still in Mariupol with electricity, water and food supplies cut off along with communication with the outside world.

Russian President Vladimir Putins forces are increasingly concentrating their air power and artillery on the city and the civilians living there.

However, Ms Moskalenko said that despite this many of her friends have remained in her hometown to fight.

They just dont want to lose their home and I understand that, I feel it, she said.

I know a lot of people who are still fighting on different fronts, as soldiers, territory defenders, as volunteers, journalists and so on.

I still dont want to leave Ukraine because I dont want to even believe that we will lose.

And I think we will keep going because we dont want to lose our home, our community, our connection to what we have.
Marysville, CA (95901)

Today

Partly cloudy this morning, then becoming cloudy during the afternoon. High 81F. Winds S at 10 to 20 mph..

Tonight

Some clouds. Low near 55F. Winds S at 10 to 15 mph.
Two people have been arrested in connection to an armed carjacking Tuesday afternoon in West Hartford, police said.

Gregory O. Ortiz, 29, of Newington Avenue in New Britain and Ashley M. Antonetti, 28, of Tolland Street in East Hartford both were charged with conspiracy to commit first-degree robbery, third-degree larceny and conspiracy to commit third-degree larceny, police said Wednesday. Both were scheduled to be arraigned in Superior Court in Hartford Wednesday.

Advertisement

Ortiz also was charged with first-degree robbery and carrying a pistol without a permit. He was in custody on $250,000 bail early Wednesday, and Antonettis was set at $150,000.

About 12:34 p.m. Tuesday, a 42-year-old man drove to a parking lot attached to an apartment complex at 108 Oakwood Ave. to meet with someone who was interested in buying his vehicle, according to the West Hartford Police Department.

Advertisement

A silver BMW pulled up while the man was distracted helping someone in the parking lot who police described as a distressed motorist.

Breaking News As it happens Get the latest updates on Coronavirus and other breaking news events happening across Connecticut >

While the man was distracted, a person approached him, showed a handgun and stole his car keys, police said. The people in the BMW, and the person in the parking lot who the man had been helping, fled in the BMW and the victims vehicle, police said.

Police did not provide any details about what type of vehicle was stolen. The man it belonged to was not injured, police said.

Police later found the stolen vehicle in Manchester and arrested two people. No further information was immediately provided about the people who were arrested or whether they have been charged.

The West Hartford Police Department and Greater Hartford Auto Theft Task Force were investigating the incident as of Tuesday afternoon, according to a press release.

Anyone with information on this incident is asked to call police at 860-523-5203 or use the West Hartford police tip line at 860-570-8969 or whpdtips@westhartford.gov.

Courant staff writer Christine Dempsey contributed to this report.

Taylor Hartz may be reached at thartz@courant.com.
JOHNS CREEK, Ga.  Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger carried his campaign message of sound electoral practices to the Johns Creek Chamber of Commerce at a March 22 breakfast meeting.

Raffensperger, who is facing challenges in the May 24 primary, used the occasion to dispel rumors of electoral fraud in Georgia.

The Country Club of the South in Johns Creek was the latest stop Raffensperger, a Johns Creek resident, has made on the campaign trail. Following a visit to Forsyth County at the beginning of March, the secretary of state has held talks in Dublin, Rockmart, Cordele, Newnan, Warner Robins and other cities.

Raffenspergers faces challenges from other Republicans, some accusing him of complicity in voter fraud during the 2020 general election, though claims of widespread voter fraud have been debunked. His recent campaign stops have strongly focused on combating these rumors and answering voters questions about the states election integrity.

Raffensperger told the Johns Creek Chamber that he had asked the Legislature to introduce an amendment to the Georgia Constitution specifying that only American citizens can vote. He has called for the same amendment to be added to the U.S. Constitution. The constitutions state American citizens can vote but do not specifically restrict noncitizens from voting.

The vast majority of states, including Georgia, do not allow noncitizens to vote. Around 15 municipalities across the U.S., including New York, allow noncitizens to vote in local elections only. Noncitizens cannot vote for state or federal offices anywhere in the U.S.

Raffensperger said his office conducted a citizenship check on all 7.5 million registered voters in Georgia and identified about 1,600 he said could potentially be noncitizens. He said none of them have actually voted, but his office will investigate whether they are eligible to be on voter rolls.

Raffensperger said there had been claims that more than 10,000 dead people, 66,000 underage people, 3,000 unregistered voters and 2,000 felons had voted. In truth, he said, there had been four ballots cast under a dead persons name and 74 people had voted under a felony sentence. He said no minors or unregistered people had voted in 2020.

Despite numerous investigations and lawsuits by allies of former President Donald Trump, Raffensperger said nobody ever found evidence of widespread fraud. He said Trump came up short because 28,000 Georgians who voted in the general election skipped voting for president.

When an audience member asked Raffensperger for advice on how to bridge the gap between people with conflicting political beliefs, he said it came down to being kind to everyone.

People are basically good people, Raffensperger said. I think we can just get back about that and look for our common interest. Its about freedom, its our family and its our faith. Just continue to be kind to people, and thats what youve got to do.
Online Access for Print Subscribers. Do you have a print subscription with the Argus-Press? If yes, then click here to enjoy complimentary access to our Online Content!
YEREVAN, MARCH 23, ARMENPRESS. The United Kingdom intends to call for increased arms supplies to Ukraine during the upcoming emergency NATO summit in Brussels, the Times reported citing a source familiar with the matter.

According to the source, the UK will voice the need for urgent increase of arms supplies to improve the ability of resistance of the Ukrainian troops.

The NATO summit is scheduled to take place on March 24.
YEREVAN, MARCH 23, ARMENPRESS. Minister of Defense of Armenia Suren Papikyan held a meeting on March 23 with United States Ambassador to Armenia Lynne Tracy.

The US Embassys Defense Attache Colonel Gregory Pipes also attended the meeting, the Ministry of Defense said in a statement.

During the meeting the Minister of Defense presented to the US Ambassador the current situation at the Armenian-Azerbaijani borderline and in Nagorno Karabakh, and addressed humanitarian issues emphasizing the need to solve them urgently.

The sides also discussed current issues and prospects of the Armenia-United States cooperation in the defense sector.

Views were exchanged around the international security situation and military-political developments.
YEREVAN, MARCH 23, ARMENPRESS. Associate director at Europe and Central Asia Division of the Human Rights Watch, Giorgi Gogia, has expressed concerns about the current humanitarian situation in Artsakh.

For 2nd time in 2 weeks, Nagorno-Karabakh residents are left without heating in freezing temperatures because of a gas pipeline running through Azerbaijan-controlled territory. Many bakeries are also unable to operate causing an acute shortage of bread, he said on Twitter. The gas cut also affects educational institutions, including kindergartens and schools. They remain closed as they cannot be heated. Urgent steps are needed to avoid further humanitarian crisis, he added.
UN chief calls for sustainable use of groundwater for future generations

Xinhua) 08:51, March 23, 2022

UNITED NATIONS, March 22 (Xinhua) -- UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday called for the sustainable use of groundwater for future generations.

"On this World Water Day, let us commit to intensifying collaboration among sectors and across borders so we can sustainably balance the needs of people and nature and harness groundwater for current and future generations," the UN chief said in his message for the international day, which is observed annually on March 22 and highlights the importance of fresh water.

The secretary-general underscored that humanity's demand for water is growing and pressure on water resources is increasing due to overuse, pollution and climate change.

"Droughts and heatwaves are becoming more intense and more frequent. Sea-level rise is driving salt-water intrusion into coastal aquifers. Groundwater aquifers are being depleted," he said.

The top UN official said that water can be a source of conflict but also of cooperation. "It is essential that we work together to provide better stewardship of all water sources, including the world's supply of groundwater."

On the situation of groundwater, the secretary-general said that it is "out of sight, but we cannot afford for it to be out of mind."

"Stored in rocks and soil, groundwater is our biggest source of liquid freshwater," the secretary-general said, adding that "it sustains drinking water supplies, sanitation systems, farming, industry and ecosystems. Yet, some 20 percent of the world's aquifers are being overexploited."

"In many places, we simply do not know how much of this precious resource might exist. We need to improve our exploration, monitoring and analysis of groundwater resources to protect and better manage them and help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals," the UN chief noted.

(Web editor: Peng yukai, Liang Jun)
YEREVAN, MARCH 23, ARMENPRESS. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Armenia has utilized all diplomatic efforts over the Azerbaijani blocking of gas supply to Artsakh, Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan said.

During parliamentary questions time the FM was asked by MP Tatevik Gasparyan to mention what work the foreign ministry has done on the international arena to present to the world the Azerbaijani actions that created a humanitarian crisis in Nagorno Karabakh.

Mirzoyan said theyve utilized all diplomatic efforts in both cases of the disruptions of gas supplies.

First of all we maintain close, regular contact with our Russian partners. The damaged site..or rather in this case it is already clear how to call it.anyhow, the location of the damaged or closed part is in the area of responsibility of the peacekeepers. And we have primary contact with our Russian partners, but we also maintain contact with the rest of the civilized world, Mirzoyan said.

The FM said they are already receiving responses from the international community.

FM Mirzoyan said that during the first incident of the gas supply interruption the Armenian Prime Minister spoke about this issue with the US Secretary of State, the Russian President and the French President, and the foreign ministry has done everything through its channels to raise this issue. The same this time. We already see reactions.

On March 8, the authorities of Artsakh said that the main pipeline supplying gas from Armenia to Artsakh was damaged and the supply was stopped.

The Artsakh authorities had said the area where the damage occurred was in Azerbaijani-controlled territory. It was reported that the Azerbaijani military deliberately damaged the pipeline.

The Azerbaijani authorities obstructed repair works for days. Only on March 16 the authorities in Artsakh announced that the Azerbaijani side itself began the repair work. However, days later, the gas supply was cut again. Authorities said they have reasons to believe that during the repairs the Azeri authorities installed a valve on the pipeline in order to shut it down whenever they want.

Meanwhile, the population of Artsakh is without gas and heating amid freezing temperatures and snowfalls.

On March 22 the Human Rights Defender of Armenia Kristinne Grigoryan and the Human Rights Defender of Artsakh Gegham Stepanyan issued a joint statement, calling on international human rights organizations to pressure Azerbaijan and eliminate its gross and continuous human rights violations against the Armenians of Artsakh.
Russian forces and Russian-backed separatist units had taken about half of the port city, normally home to around 400,000 people

An elderly woman walks pass concrete blocks topped with sandbags at a street in Odesa, southern Ukraine, on Tuesday, March 22, 2022.(AP/Petros Giannakouris)

LVIV/KYIV, Ukraine: Talks between Ukraine and Russia are confrontational but moving forward, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Wednesday, as the West plans to announce more sanctions against the Kremlin amid a worsening humanitarian crisis.

Intense Russian air strikes are turning besieged Mariupol into the "ashes of a dead land", the city council said on Tuesday, as street fighting and bombardments raged in the port city.

Hundreds of thousands are believed to be trapped inside buildings, with no access to food, water, power or heat. Both civilians and Ukrainian troops were coming under Russian fire, said regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko.

Russian forces and Russian-backed separatist units had taken about half of the port city, normally home to around 400,000 people, Russia's RIA news agency said, citing a separatist leader.

But in an early morning address, Zelenskiy held out hope for negotiations, which have yielded little since the Feb. 24 invasion began.

"It's very difficult, sometimes confrontational," he said. "But step by step we are moving forward."

Russian President Vladimir Putin's incursion into Ukraine has forced more than 3.5 million to flee, brought the unprecedented isolation of Russia's economy, and raised fears of wider conflict in the West unthought-of for decades.

Mariupol has become the focus of the war that erupted when Putin sent his troops over the border on what he calls a "special military operation" to demilitarise Ukraine and replace its pro-Western leadership.

The port city lies on the Sea of Azov and its capture would allow Russia to link areas in the east held by pro-Russian separatists with the Crimean peninsula, annexed by Moscow in 2014.

Western nations plan to heap more pressure on the Kremlin.

Alongside European leaders, U.S. President Joe Biden is expected to announce new sanctions against Russia and new measures to tighten existing ones when he visits Brussels this week.

The United States is preparing sanctions on more than 300 members of Russia's lower house of parliament as soon as Thursday, according to The Wall Street Journal, which cited unnamed officials and internal documents.

"No final decisions have been made about who we will sanction and how many we will sanction," said a White House spokesperson.

"We will have additional sanctions measures to announce that will be rolled out in conjunction with our allies on Thursday when the President has the opportunity to speak with them."

Biden's Europe trip is also set to include an announcement on joint action to enhance energy security on the continent, which is highly reliant on Russian gas, and a visit to Poland to show solidarity with Ukraine's neighbour.

The United States and its Western allies are also assessing whether Russia should remain within the Group of Twenty (G20) major economies, sources told Reuters.

NUCLEAR OPTION

Having failed to seize the capital Kyiv or any other major city with a swift offensive, Russia is waging a war of attrition that has reduced some urban areas to rubble and prompted Western concern that the conflict could escalate, even to a nuclear war.

Russia's security policy dictates that the country would only use such weapons if its very existence were threatened, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told CNN.

"If it is an existential threat for our country, then it (the nuclear arsenal) can be used in accordance with our concept," he said.

Earlier he said "no one" had ever thought the operation in Ukraine would take just a couple of days and the campaign was going to plan, TASS news agency reported.

Western officials said Russian forces were stalled around Kyiv but making some progress in the south and east. Ukrainian fighters are repelling Russian troops in some places but cannot roll them back, they said.

Russia's combat power in Ukraine has declined below 90% of its pre-invasion levels, a senior U.S. defence official said on Tuesday, without providing evidence. If confirmed, it would suggest heavy losses of weaponry and growing casualties.

'HUMANITARIAN CATASTROPHE'

The United Nations human rights office in Geneva said on Tuesday it had recorded 953 civilian deaths and 1,557 injured since the invasion. The Kremlin denies targeting civilians.

Millions have fled abroad, according to the United Nations, leaving Eastern Europe scrambling to provide them with care, schools and jobs.

The United States plans to launch an effort this week to make it easier for some to enter after only a handful of refugees were admitted in the first two weeks of March, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk, speaking on Ukrainian television on Tuesday, said at least 100,000 people wanted to leave Mariupol but could not.

A Reuters team that reached a Russian-seized part of the city on Sunday described a wasteland of charred apartment blocks and bodies wrapped in blankets lying by a road.

Ukraine says Russian shells, bombs and missiles have struck a theatre, an art school and other public buildings, burying hundreds of women and children sheltering in cellars.

Kyiv accused Moscow of deporting residents of Mariupol and separatist-held areas of Ukraine to Russia. This includes the "forcible transfer" of 2,389 children to Russia from the Luhansk and Donetsk regions, Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova said.

Moscow denies forcing people to leave, saying it is taking in refugees.

In Kherson, a city under Russian control, Ukrainian officials said Moscow's forces were preventing supplies from reaching civilians.

"Kherson's 300k citizens face a humanitarian catastrophe owing to the Russian army's blockade," foreign ministry spokesperson Oleg Nikolenko said on Twitter.

Russia did not immediately comment on the situation in Kherson.

Zelenskiy warned the crisis in Ukraine, one of the world's biggest grain exporters, would bring famine elsewhere.

"How can we sow (crops) under the strikes of Russian artillery?" he told Italian lawmakers.

In his latest address to Western lawmakers, Zelenskiy said via a video link that his people were clinging to survival, with the Russian military devastating Ukrainian cities and slaughtering civilians.
by Steve Suwannarat

A mothers quest for justice for her son, Veeraphan Tamklang, who died last year after a beating on a campus, shows police failure to investigate this type of violence, which is often perpetrated by members of high-ranking families.

Bangkok (AsiaNews)  A mothers battle over a murdered son is turning the spotlight on hazing rituals in Thailands universities and military schools.

Veeraphan Tamklang died in May 2021 a week after he was taken to hospital for pulmonary embolism following an assault by dozens of fellow students at Rajamangala University of Technology in Tawan-ok, not far from the capital Bangkok.

His mother, 59-year-old Manasnan Tamklang, who lives in north-eastern Thailand, decided not to let the investigation drift into oblivion.

Her struggle for the truth has not only highlighted the polices failure to look for the culprits but has also brought to public attention the issue hazing of new recruits, a major topic on social media that affects students in both higher education institutions as well as military schools.

She fears that the delays and flaws in the investigation will lead to her sons death to be swept under the carpet, leaving another unjustified crime unpunished for the umpteenth time.

This is not remote possibility since police have failed in many cases to complete their inquiry when the perpetrators are members of high-ranking families.

Now however, public pressure on civil and military authorities for their incompetence in hazing cases highlights their selectivity and double standards since law enforcement agencies have been quite efficient at cracking down on dissent, violating human rights, imposing censorship, and prosecuting individuals for peaceful protest.

This is also true in the case of Padyos Chonpakdi, who was the victim of a hazing ritual at the start of the academic year at the Nakhon Ratchasima campus of Rajamangala University of Technology. The 19-year-old man was badly beaten in a dry paddy field not far from the campus, and died on 13 March.

In this case, seven of the students involved confessed and were charged with assault, but their families tried to get the victim's father to drop the charges in exchange for compensation equivalent to US$ 15,000. The offer was rejected.
Today's headlines: 6.7 magnitude earthquake in Taiwan; crematoria are full in South Korea; economic growth in India, China and South-East Asia to hit 5.8% this year; Russia's army is using the tactic of razing cities; meanwhile, thousands of Russian tourists are stranded on the island of Phuket.

AFGHANISTAN

The school year begins again in Afghanistan today, but not for girls: the Taliban ordered the closure of girls' secondary schools, contradicting previous decisions. The announcement was made this morning a few hours before the start of classes.

ISRAEL

Four Israelis were killed and two wounded in a terrorist attack by a lone bomber in a shopping centre in the city of Beersheba. The attacker - an Israeli Arab from a Bedouin community in the south of the country - was also killed.

INDIA - AFGHANISTAN

The parents of Indian photojournalist Danish Siddiqi, killed last year in Afghanistan while working for Reuters, took legal action against the Taliban. Initial reports claimed the journalist was killed in a clash and then taken to a mosque for treatment, but his body, his parents claim, was mutilated by the Taliban.

TAIWAN

There was a magnitude 6.7 earthquake in Taiwan overnight. One person was injured and a building partially collapsed. The island is prone to earthquakes. Taipei's tsunami warnings are automatically triggered by an earthquake of magnitude 7 or higher.

SOUTH KOREA

Crematoria in South Korea have been forced to upgrade their services due to the raging pandemic. Active cases of Covid-19 have exceeded 10 million. The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency yesterday reported over 490,000 new infections and 384 deaths. Although mortality rates remain relatively low, the number of deaths has doubled in just six weeks.

THAILAND

Thousands of Russian tourists are stranded on the island of Phuket in Thailand following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The biggest problem they face is the availability of money: at the moment they cannot withdraw money from ATMs. In December, 17,000 Russian visitors landed on Phuket, who, with the pandemic, have replaced Chinese tourists.

ASIA

According to a report just published by the OECD, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the gross domestic product of China, India and the 10 Asean nations will grow by 5.8% this year, after expanding by 7.4% in 2021 and contracting by 0.8% in 2020. Although the war in Ukraine is likely to undermine growth in the region.

RUSSIA

After several attempts to seize Ukrainian cities, the Russian army has changed tactics, switching to destroying them with artillery, missiles and air strikes, as seen in Cernigov, Kharkiv and especially Mariupol. This is the strategy of the Chechen teams, already experimented 30 years ago in Groznyj and ten years ago in Aleppo in Syria, aimed at "razing to the ground" the cities to be conquered.

AZERBAIJAN

A Tehran government delegation visiting Baku signed a memorandum for the construction of a transport corridor linking Azerbaijan with its autonomous enclave of Nakhicevan in Armenian territory. This will act as an alternative to the Moscow-Azerbaijan-Armenia line, leaving the Armenians in the corner, but Baku did not want to wait for their decisions.
The leaders of Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Israel met to discuss the implications of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict for the region, but also what to do about Iran. According to Israeli intelligence, a nuclear deal with Tehran can be expected soon.

Cairo (AsiaNews/Agencies)  Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Zayed and Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett met yesterday in Sharm el-Sheikh, ostensibly to counter Iranian influence in the region.

According to a statement from the Office of the Egyptian President, the three leaders discussed the implications of the war in Ukraine, including issues of energy security and food supply.

The three leaders also spoke about boosting diplomatic relations and the importance of cooperation and dialogue to achieve growth and stability in the Middle East, the Emirates News Agency said.

The Israeli Prime Ministers Office reported the same, highlighting the mediation efforts by the Jewish state in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.

All three countries have recently come under US pressure to enforce Western sanctions and isolate Russia, and in the case of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), to boost oil production to reduce oil prices.

Planning for the summit began in December after Bennett's visit to Abu Dhabi. The Iranian nuclear agreement is the elephant in the room. Israel is opposed to it and despite delays caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it might be revived.

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), signed by the Obama administration in 2015 and cancelled three years later by the Trump administration, would lift sanctions from Iran in exchange for a halt to the development of the nuclear programme.

Recent reports that the United States would remove the Revolutionary Guards from its list of terrorist organisations as part of the deal sparked great anger in Israel, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

According to some analysts, including Emirati political scientist Abdulkahleq Abdullah, Egypt, the UAE and Israel, three of the most important US allies in the region, wanted to send a message to Washington: Are you with us or with Iran? Will America stay with its partners, or will it side with Tehran and favour an agreement at any cost?

The evening before the trilateral summit, US State Department spokesman Ned Price tried to reassure allies by stating that despite recent progress, An agreement is neither imminent nor is it certain.

Instead, "We are preparing equally for scenarios with and without a mutual return to full implementation of the 2015 agreement, contradicting Israeli intelligence assessments that a new agreement with Iran is a done deal.

While the Americans might want to close a deal as soon as possible to continue their withdrawal from the region, Bennett is trying to set an alliance of states that oppose not only Iran but also Iran-funded and supported movements, like Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and a number of Shia militias in Iraq.

The summit is also part of a broader process of diplomatic visits between the Gulf monarchies, increasingly linked to Israel after the signing of the Abrahamic agreements in August 2020, and other Arab countries in the region.

Some experts claim that the Saudis and the Emiratis are trying to involve Syria and Lebanon in the anti-Iran club.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad recently visited the Emirates, and Lebanon could soon re-establish diplomatic ties with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries after its envoys were expelled last year over a dispute concerning Lebanons financial crisis.
Another Indian state ruled by Hindu nationalists has approved legislation that fuels intercommunal tensions. The new law imposes the burden of proof on the accused to demonstrate that he or she was not converted by extorsion, force or deception. If Karnataka passes a bill currently before the state legislature, 11 Indian states will have this kind of law.

New Delhi (AsiaNews/Agencies)  The Legislative Assembly of Haryana, a northern Indian state, has approved a controversial anti-conversion law, the standard measure of Hindu nationalists that is often used against religious minorities.

The Prevention of Unlawful Conversion of Religious Bill 2022 became law with the votes of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi as well as state chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar who sees it as a key tool to fight the so-called love jihad, i.e., mixed marriages between Hindu women and Muslim men. Opposition lawmakers from the Congress party left the chamber in protest at the time of the vote.

With Haryanas law, anti-conversion legislation, first introduced in Odisha in 1967, is now in force in 10 Indian states; the other nine are Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh.

A similar bill is before the state legislature in Karnataka, where intercommunal tensions are running high over a dress code that bans the hijab in schools despite strong local opposition, including that of the local Catholic Church.

The text of the Haryana law approved bans conversions by deception, force or fraudulent means, imposing prison sentences of one to five years and a fine of at least 100,000 rupees (about US$ 1,300). If conversion involves a minor, a woman or a person from a disadvantaged caste or tribe, the prison sentence rises to four and 10 years, with a fine of at least 300,000 rupees (US$ 3,925).

In a matter that is by its very nature hard to ascertain, the law requires the accused to prove his or her innocence. This will inevitably create a generalised climate of suspicion despite the Indian constitution asserting the principle of religious freedom.
Long-term care members of the New England Health Care Employees Union, SEIU 1199 rallied at the state Capitol in 2020 for new laws to protect long-term caregivers and consumers.. (AP Photo/Jessica Hill) (Jessica Hill/AP)

A committee of the General Assembly has advanced legislation strongly opposed by businesses fighting Democrats who are seeking to expand worker rights.

Two measures that would allow strikers to collect unemployment benefits and forbid bosses from requiring workers to attend or participate in meetings about the employers views on political or religious matters were approved Tuesday by majority Democrats on the Labor and Public Employees Committee.

Advertisement

The arguments are familiar between Democrats and their allies in organized labor and Republicans and their supporters in the business community. Democrats have the upper hand, pushing out each of the two bills on party-line 9-4 votes. The legislation now heads to the House and Senate.

State Sen. Rob Sampson, the committees ranking Republican, characterized much of the agenda as heavy-handed government regulation that interferes with workers decisions.

Advertisement

Connecticut State Sen. Rob Sampson watches the vote tally board inside the Senate Chamber in 2022. Photograph by Mark Mirko | mmirko@courant.com (Mark Mirko/The Hartford Courant)

We cannot stand in the way of them making their own choices about who they work for and what the requirements of their employer are or what the employers requirements of them are, he said That should be left to those individuals to figure out for themselves.

State Sen. Julie Kushner, a Danbury Democrat and co-chairman of the labor committee, defended legislation forbidding employers from compelling workers to attend meetings related to the bosses political or religious views.

I just cant abide by the notion that people have the freedom to choose not to work because I think most people have to work, she said. On a very practical level people do have to go to work, they have to keep their jobs to keep food on the table, pay their rent, provide for their children, pay for that college.

The Connecticut Business & Industry Association has sharply criticized the Labor and Public Employees Committee for approving a torrent of workplace mandates it says will stunt the states already weak economic growth. The two bills were among more than a dozen on the committees agenda.

CBIA opposes legislation it calls a gag order that would bar meetings about politics or religion. The legislation has come up repeatedly over the years, drawing the same complaint that employers worry about how the legislation would restrict employers ability to communicate critical workplace matters.

The definition of political matters is overly broad and could be interpreted as preventing bosses from talking to workers about executive orders, laws and regulations associated with the states handling of COVID-19, CBIA said.

Five Things You Need To Know Daily We're providing the latest coronavirus coverage in Connecticut each weekday morning. >

The Connecticut AFL-CIO, which refers to the legislation as a captive audience bill, said it protects workers from being forced to endure anti-union propaganda during union organizing campaigns and allows employees to leave an employer-sponsored meeting and return to work if the meeting is about religious and political matters unrelated to work.

Organized labor and businesses also squared off on legislation that would allow striking workers to be paid unemployment insurance benefits after two weeks. It would significantly change current law that permits unemployment compensation only when workers lose their jobs through no fault of their own.

Advertisement

Strikes are typically authorized by union members, calling into question whether workers are blameless for the loss of their jobs. Businesses see the legislation as a way to reduce the financial penalty of strikes that would extend work stoppages, putting more pressure on employers to make concessions at the negotiating table.

Make no mistake, the goal of this bill is to provide additional leverage to striking workers at the expense of employers, CBIA said.

The state AFL-CIO urged lawmakers to extend unemployment insurance to striking workers who feel they have no choice but to walk off the job.

Connecticut Labor Commissioner Dante Bartolomeo told lawmakers the expanded use of unemployment insurance may affect the insurance funds solvency, though she was not specific.

Stephen Singer can be reached at ssinger@courant.com.
by Shafique Khokhar

Wahid Bux Lashari, along with two accomplices, tried to kidnap the young woman on Monday morning while she was alone in her home. She resisted and he shot her. Hundreds of attacks against young minority women are reported each year. Human rights groups and PPP leader Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari condemn the attack.

Sukkur (AsiaNews)  Pooja Kumari, an 18-year-old Hindu woman from the Odh community, was killed on Monday after she refused a marriage proposal from a prominent Muslim man.

When she resisted his attempt to seize her, he brutally killed her inside the young woman's home, in the Chhuahra Mandi area, Sukkur, a Pakistani city in the southern province of Sindh.

Kumari belonged to a nomadic group. Her mother works all day at the local market in Kajhor, earning a meagre income to support her family.

On the day of the murder, as usual, she went to work early in the morning, leaving her daughter alone in the house. This allowed her would-be kidnapper and two associates, known locally, to climb the homes walls and get inside with the intention of abusing and abducting her. However, the victim put up a fight that led to her death from gun shots.

Sindh police have reportedly arrested the killer, identified as Wahid Bux Lashari, and two other individuals.

Human rights associations have slammed the latest act of violence against a young minority woman, calling for the Sindh provincial government to take steps to stop such incidents.

In the recent past, such acts of violence have become commonplace and are one of the countrys unsolved issues, so much so that the leaders of the Pakistani Church have urged the authorities to take action.

Usually, the cases follow a certain pattern: locally prominent more or less wealthy Muslim men are the main culprits, often enjoying the complicity of local police and authorities.

Zahid Farooq, a Christian human rights activist and deputy director of Urban Resource Centre, points out that, had the kidnapping been successful, yesterday we would have seen a video of the young woman claiming that she chose to convert to Islam and marry her kidnapper.

Every human being, he adds, must have the right to live "freely" and marry "whoever they want", while kidnapping someone and forcing them to marry "is a crime against humanity".

Kidnapping and forced conversions affect hundreds of non-Muslim girls and women in Pakistan every year.

For Mariyam Kashif Anthony, womens rights activist in Karachi, "what happened to Kumari happens to hundreds of young women and shows a worrying pattern of kidnappings, forced conversions and unwanted marriages, touching mostly young women from religious minorities.

Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, president of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), the countrys third largest party, currently in opposition, strongly condemned the murder, expressing full solidarity with the victim's family.

Son of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and former President Asif Ali Zardari, Bhutto-Zardari called for exemplary sentences for the guilty.
Success! An email has been sent to with a link to confirm list signup.
You are the owner of this article.
Infowars host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones speaks outside of the Dirksen building on Capitol Hill in Washington in 2018. A Connecticut judge has found Jones liable for damages in lawsuits brought by parents of children killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. The parents of several children sued Jones over his claims that the massacre was a hoax. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File) (Jose Luis Magana/AP)

Conspiracy theorist and Infowars founder Alex Jones failed to appear for a deposition Wednesday by families of Sandy Hook massacre victims and he could face arrest if he ignores an order from a Connecticut judge that he make himself available to answer questions on Thursday.

After a series of delays, Jones was supposed to appear for a deposition Wednesday and Thursday in Austin, Texas, where his company is based. Relatives of children murdered in the 2012 school shooting want to question him in connection with his broadcast assertions that the massacre was a hoax.

Advertisement

Jones absence from the deposition, which he already had postponed, is the latest in a series of delays that have held up movement on the suit. Frustrated by such delays, Connecticut Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis took the extraordinary step late last year of issuing a default order against Jones  effectively settling the suit in favor of the families and leaving only the question of damages against Jones and his businesses unresolved. The deposition was to be part of the process leading to the calculation of a damage award.

A Texas judge issued a similar order last year in a related case for what she called Jones flagrant bad faith and callous disregard for the parents and the court by repeatedly disregarding orders to disclose documents and records pertaining to the shootings and his assertions.

Advertisement

On Monday, Jones lawyers filed a motion in Connecticut claiming he was suffering from an undisclosed illness and asking for a delay. Attorney Norm Pattis wrote that Jones was under a doctors care for a condition requiring immediate, and possibly, emergency testing. Pattis said the doctor advised Jones against submitting to a deposition.

Christopher Mattei, who represents the Sandy Hook families, called the request a stalling tactic. Mattei said Jones was broadcasting Monday and again on Tuesday when his request for a postponement was argued in Connecticut.

The court appropriately denied his motion and directed him to appear today, Mattei said. He refused to do that. This was in our view a cowardly display intended to cheat the plaintiffs of their right to put him under oath and ask him questions about why over the course of many years he lied about them, he lied about the loved ones that they lost at Sandy Hook and why he unleashed a barrage of harassment over many years that continues to today.

Should Jones continue to resist being deposed, Mattei said the families will ask courts in Connecticut and Texas to order his arrest and forced appearance. Parties to the case were preparing arguments on such an arrest late Wednesday afternoon.

The shooting at Sandy Hook School in Newtown on Dec. 14, 2012, killed 20 first-graders and six educators. The gunman, 20-year-old Adam Lanza, fatally shot his mother at their home nearby before going to the school and killed himself as police arrived.

The shooting was portrayed on Jones Infowars show as a hoax involving actors aimed at increasing gun control. Jones has since acknowledged the school shooting did occur.
Athens, TX (75751)

Today

Scattered thunderstorms this morning, then strong thunderstorms likely during the afternoon hours. Damaging winds and large hail with some storms. High 76F. Winds SW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 80%..

Tonight

A few clouds. Low near 55F. Winds light and variable.
Share This:

When customers and vendors arrive at CARSTAR Mount Orab in Williamsburg, OH, they are greeted by the director of operations, Jackson Barnes, who offers a handshake and a welcome from his desk, where his Snap-on toolbox is by his side.

He is 6 years old, son of owners Kenny and Sarah Barnes, and he has literally grown up in the collision repair center.



Kenny and Sarah Barnes were high school sweethearts and married young. Kenny Barnes went on to work in the collision repair industry for 25 years, including managing locations in Cincinnati for a previous CARSTAR franchise partner. Sarah Barnes was in real estate.

When the opportunity came available, the Barneses joined forces with their friends Chris and Jennie Clark to open their own CARSTAR location.



Kenny had always dreamed of owning his own repair center, so we took the leap, said Sarah Barnes. We opened when my son was 2.5 years old, and weve been a family business ever since. We worked 24/7 in the beginning, and our son Jackson was right by our side. He literally potty trained in the front office bathroom. But its been an amazing experience to all be together and spend so much time raising our son in this type of family business environment. Were very fortunate to have this opportunity, but we worked hard to get here.



Sarah Barnes never intended to have a career in collision repair. She had one in real estate and was used to working on her own. When Jackson was born, she intended to be a stay-at-home mom. Then they opened a collision repair center, and she agreed to help out in the beginning. That soon turned into 50-hour weeks.



When we started, we worked around the clock through weekdays and weekends, Sarah Barnes said. Then we got our business established, earned our customer base, achieved our certifications and built our insurance relationships. CARSTAR was incredible in helping launch our business and guide us through the process. Today, they are right by our side as we continue to grow amid todays changing industry.



Sarah Barnes said she and Kenny have learned from each other through the process.



Id never been a manager, so I learned a lot about managing the business and managing people on the job from my husband and developed my multi-tasking skills, she said. I think hes learned...
Last year, Jack Hemmings turned 100. But that didn't stop him from celebrating his birthday how he loves the most: in the air, performing aerobatics in a Slingsby Firefly. He's been flying most of his life. During WWII, he operated the Lockheed Hudson and C-47 Dakota aircraft.After the war, Jack and his friend Stuart co-founded the Mission Aviation Fellowship charity, and in 1948, they flew together in a Gemini to conduct Mission Aviation Fellowship's first survey throughout Central Africa. The six-month trip was the first British mission that focused on evaluating the humanitarian needs of isolated communities in Kenya, Uganda, Sudan, Ethiopia, Rwanda, and the Belgian Congo.Now, 74 years later, Jack is back in at the controls of the Miles Gemini. He took off from Old Warden airfield on the Shuttleworth estate on February 19th  the same day his friend would've turned 100. Jack lost Stuart in the summer of 2020.The recent flight was conducted to raise funds for Mission Aviation Fellowship and to honor Stuart. His friend was an Engineering Officer for the 247 Squadron before joining Mission Aviation Fellowship. He also played a crucial role in making the charity grow from one site in Sudan to 12 African programs today.Jack described Stuart as "a great friend, a man of vision, devoted to Mission Aviation Fellowship since the early days in 1947.""Pioneering in Africa wasn't a question of hope  we just went out and did it! If Stuart were here today, I would simply say to him: Stuart  you done good," he added.
KW

Only six units will be produced, each priced at 175,000 ($193,250 at current exchange rates), excluding the applicable taxes. By comparison, the road-going model with the 2.0-liter turbo four-cylinder engine and eight-speed automatic transmission retails at 48,900 ($53,980) in Deutschland.What sets the special edition apart from the regular specification?The list starts with the Gazoo Racing-specific red exterior, adorned with 50 Edition gold decals on the roof and front fenders. Each car is fitted with a driver seat embroidered with GT4 branding, while the passenger seat and carbon-fiber footrest come standard. The Japanese manufacturer also notes a 50 Edition logo on the iDrive controller and a special plaque that reads  50 Edition | 1 out of 6  on the leading edge of the carbon-fiber dashboard.As for the finishing touch, customers are provided with an indoor car cover at no additional cost. Of the six examples that will be made, two units will be delivered in Asia, two in Europe, and the remainder in North America.In the 250-plus racing events it has tackled thus far, the GR Supra GT4 delivered 36 class wins and 78 podiums. Throughout 2022, circa ten units will compete in Europe, Japan, and North America, according to Toyota.Gifted with the same 3.0-liter sixer as the street-legal model, GR Supra GT4 differs in many other ways. For example, the motorsport-grade engine control unit and wiring looms. Tuned to make in the ballpark of 430 ponies, the straight-six turbo mill is connected to a seven-speed transmission, namely the ZF 8HP torque-converter auto without the overdrive eighth gear.Tipping the scales at 1,350 kilograms (2,976 pounds), the GR Supra GT4 stops on a dime thanks to six- and four-piston brake calipers from Brembo. Fitted with 305/660-18 tires from Pirelli, the racing car also flauntsadjustable racing dampers, air jacks, as well as an FIA-approved roll cage.
"The Focus Group" is a four-minute spot that shows how an ad about the 2022 GR86 should actually be: fun. The video was put together by Sweatpants Media, which teamed with Toyota Gazoo Racing's pro drifters. It took three days to shoot the action-packed scenes, which take place in the Chicago suburbs in an abandoned shopping center.The ad shows what the focus group wants to see on the GR86. To demonstrate the car's precision handling, Toyota Gazoo Racing team driver Frederic Aasb slid onto the snow in a parking spot just outside the mall, stirring everyone's interest.But that didn't quite hit the spot. The team had to show what the naturally aspirated 2.4-liter boxer engine could do. The mill is capable of producing 228 hp and 184 lb-ft (250 Nm) of torque. That's more power produced than its predecessor, which delivers 205 hp and 156 lb-ft (212 Nm).To test the car's abilities, Frederic Aasb tackles the narrow corridors of the empty mall. Later in the clip, Ken Gushi and Jhonnattan Castro join him in two GR Supra drift cars to race through the dusty hallways "Tokyo Drift" style.You can really hear the GR86 growl while accelerating. Speaking of the acceleration, with the six-speed manual transmission, it has been improved from 7.0 to 6.1 seconds. For the six-speed automatic, make that 8.0 and 6.6 seconds, respectively.Pricing for the 2022 Toyota GR86 starts at $27,700 in the United States. As for the digital campaign, expect to see more thrilling actions scenes since the company plans to run it through through May."With the perfect location, amazing cars and amazing drivers, we were able to push them to the limit and make an incredibly epic film; we can't wait for the next one!" said producer Elliot Blanco.
kW

WLTP

PHEV

SUV

The Civic e:HEV is the effective replacement of the entire Civic range in Europe, although the Civic Type R will remain in the brand's portfolio as a separate product. The new Civic will come with a 2.0-liter, inline-four-cylinder engine that has direct injection and runs in the Atkinson cycle. That unit is assisted by two electric motors.The e:HEV powertrain from Honda includes a new Power Control Unit and an Intelligent Power Unit, as the automaker describes it. What you need to know about it is the fact that the 2023 Civic offers a maximum output of 135(181 horsepower), as well as a peak torque of 315 Nm (232 lb.ft.). If you want more than that from your future Honda Civic, the Type R will have to be your thing The goal of the new model will be to achieve average CO2 emissions of less than 110 grams per kilometer intesting, which is essential to help the brand reduce its fleet average. The described emissions target means an average fuel consumption of less than 5 liters/100 km (over 47 mpg). With the new Civic, the Japanese marque has completed the electrification of its European line-up.The Civic Type R FK8s successor is still being tested in Europe, so it is set for launch later, but it is not mentioned by the brand at all, so we can only assume it is being treated separately.While it may seem it was canceled, doing so would just waste everything the company spent on developing the new version, not to mention the fact that the ongoing model, the FK8 did not get a special edition to say goodbye. We hope to learn more about the matter later The model comes with a 72-cell lithium-ion battery of an unspecified capacity, and its internal combustion engine provides a thermal efficiency of 41 percent, which is claimed to be one of the highest figures in the industry for a production road-going vehicle.The Civic has dramatically changed from several points of view. For example, its wheelbase has increased by 35 millimeters (1.37 inches), the rear track is wider, and the suspension has been revised all-round. The body has received a revised structure for the new body-stabilizing front seats.Other changes to the body involve lowering the hood line by 25 mm, as well as increasing the glass area for more light inside. Onboard, the new Civic will have a more practical and human-centric approach, along with better materials and improved soundproofing. Honda also notes that the new model will be the most dynamic, efficient, and safest Civic yet.Honda will reveal further details about the 2023 Civic later this year, as its launch day approaches. We also know that the brand will introduce a new generation of the CR-V next year, which is set to also be available inform, along with anthat will slide between the new CR-V and the HR-V (recently revealed as well).Also in 2023, Honda will launch an electric HR-V, which is based on the model that is already sold in China.Available starting this upcoming fall for European customers, we reached out to the Japanese automakers representatives and learned that the ongoing Civic is sold-out in most European markets, and new orders cannot be placed.So, if it is not present in a dealers lot or your country's national Honda dealer network, you cannot get a new Civic in Europe until Autumn 2022.
Can a taillight be a work of art ???? ???? ???? ? 4.4.22 #HondaHRV pic.twitter.com/w1IJHxslz6  Honda (@Honda) March 23, 2022

Scheduled to premiere on April 4th, the U.S. variant will offer all-new styling inside and out, more standard features than ever, and the versatility to take you from the vet to the valet. Rather pretentious for a mass-market brand, likely because this redesign replaces the Fit subcompact hatchback.Pictured with smoother lines for the taillamps, the 2023 model year HR-V also incorporates a revised bumper that moves the reflectors a bit higher. The Japanese automaker has also raked the rear pillars more for more visual drama, which is always welcome in this growingly competitive segment.Probably based on the Fits platform or a Fit-Civic melange, the HR-V for the U.S. market hasnt been detailed from a technical standpoint. In any case, prospective customers expect Honda to ditch the underpowered 1.8L of the current generation for a slightly pokier engine. The 2.0L from the Civic wouldnt be a bad choice although the 1.5L turbo would be better.There is hearsay of a hybrid powertrain as well, yet were not certain how thats going to pan out. A standard-issue hybrid would be interesting, no doubt. On the other hand, the CR-V is offered with an optional hybrid powertrain whereas the CR-V for Europe comes standard with e:HEV.Speaking of which, the HR-V e:HEV is a two-motor hybrid affair that includes a 1.5L four-cylinder gasoline mill. The total system output is rated at 131 ps (129 horsepower) and 253 Nm (186 pound-feet) of torque.The Atkinson-cycle lump and two electric motors are joined by a lithium-ion battery and a fixed-gear transmission coupled to a power control unit. The HR-V e:HEV drinks 5.4 liters per 100 kilometers (43.5 mpg) on the combined cycle and emits 122 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometer.
AMG

Case in point, the all-new 2023 Mercedes-Benz GLC has already had its first hands-on review, in Sweden, close to the Arctic Circle, where it was driven on the ice by MercBenzKing, who also had the chance to jump behind the wheel of the EQS SUV earlier this month.A camouflaged prototype served as the car for the test drive, in the 300 d configuration, equipped with air suspension and rear-axle steering. The diesel powertrain reportedly produces over 265 horsepower and 600 Nm (443 lb-ft) of torque, which is similar to the C 300 d. However, thats no coincidence, because, in case you forgot, the GLC is a high-riding alternative to the new C-Class Compared to its predecessor, the 2023 GLC is said to be 60 mm (2.4 in) longer. The wheelbase was apparently extended by 15 mm (0.6 in), so it has a bit more legroom for passengers sitting on the second row. The trunk capacity was increased by around 50 liters (1.8 cu-ft), the reviewer claims, stating at the same time that the premium compact crossover has additional sound deadening, and thicker windows.In addition to these, the one put to the test on video down below came with a fewgoodies, as well as a panoramic sunroof, leather upholstery, heated rear seats, electric tailgate, multi-zone climate control, and so on. For the most part, the Stuttgart brands rival to the likes of the Audi Q5 and BMW X3 appears to be a more interesting proposal in the segment , but is it actually worth the wait? Only one way to find out.
Hartford, Ct. - 03/23/2022 - Hundreds of anti-abortion activists demonstrated today outside the Capitol as part of the movementOs state-by-state battle plan to limit abortion access if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade. Photograph by Mark Mirko | mmirko@courant.com (Mark Mirko/The Hartford Courant)

HARTFORD  Forty years ago, a young woman in Hartford had an appointment to have an abortion. In the eleventh hour, she changed her mind and later gave birth to a baby girl named Christina Bennett.

On Wednesday, Bennett stood before a crowd of hundreds and advocated for anti-abortion legislation on the steps of the Capitol in Hartford, sharing her story and calling on legislators to make the state a safer place for fetuses during the first Connecticut March for Life.

Advertisement

Bennett, a full-time pro-life advocate for more than two decades, was one of hundreds of people who came from across Connecticut and out of state to converge on the Capitol. The rally was part of a state-by-state march mapped out across the nation by March for Life, an annual rally that has been held in Washington, D.C. since the 1970s in protest of Roe v. Wade.

Hartford, Ct. - 03/23/2022 - Hundreds of anti-abortion activists demonstrated today outside the Capitol as part of the movementOs state-by-state battle plan to limit abortion access if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade. Photograph by Mark Mirko | mmirko@courant.com (Mark Mirko/The Hartford Courant)

The Connecticut march was part of a plan to gather in states to advocate for limited abortion access. The Supreme Court is expected to rule this summer on a Mississippi law that bans abortion after 15 weeks, a ruling that could overturn or weaken the Roe v. Wade decision that has guaranteed legal abortion since 1973.

Advertisement

Connecticut has historically been a leader in reproductive rights. The state codified the provisions of Roe v. Wade into state law in 1990, so even if the court repeals the landmark ruling, abortion will remain legal in Connecticut.

Bennett, of Middletown, said she was proud to be a part of the first March for Life on Connecticut soil and plans to continue advocating for anti-abortion legislation in Hartford.

Hartford, Connecticut is where I had an appointment to die, she said into a microphone, facing a sea of protestors. The place that could have been my graveyard is now my battleground.

Christina Bennett, of Middletown, spoke about her mother's canceled abortion during the Connecticut March for Life at the Capitol in Hartford on Wednesday. (Taylor Hartz)

And she wasnt the only one.

Jean Pollock and her son drove from Great Barrington, Massachusetts, to take part in the rally. Pollock, who helped organize the first March for Life near the U.S. Capitol in 1974, is the mother of 10 children and has been rallying against abortion for more than a decade.

She made the drive to Hartford on Wednesday to support March for Lifes plans to gather in every state, not just in the nations capital.

We support life everywhere, she said. Life doesnt stop at state lines.

Advertisement

Her 22-year-old son, Quinn Pollock, who has Down syndrome, accompanied her on Wednesday, holding a sign that read I am the pro-life generation.

Jean Pollock and her 22-year-old son Quinn drove from Great Barrington, Massachusetts, to Hartford on Wednesday to take part in the first Connecticut March for Life. (Taylor Hartz)

Quinn said that he comes to the rallies with his mom because he thinks legislation that protects fetuses protects people like him.

So many people with Down syndrome are killed before they have a chance, and their parents have no idea the gift theyve been given, she said, looking admirably at her son who she said is both the glue that keeps their family together and the honorary mayor of their town in the Berkshires, where everyone knows his name.

With hundreds singing Amazing Grace and reciting the Lords Prayer, 79-year-old deacon Phil Hayes and 77-year-old Linda Hayes  married 56 years  clasped their hands together and stepped off in the march. Together the couple has attended dozens of anti-abortion rallies, including more than 10 in Washington, D.C.

Phil Hayes, wearing a button of a fetus on his bright red coat, said that the couple came out to show support to end abortions and help women and their babies.

That support, he said, takes the form of helping pregnant women.

Advertisement

The support looks like, every time we have a chance to help a pregnancy center, we do. It looks like, every time we know a young lady who is experiencing an unplanned pregnancy, we help her in any way we can; the emotional support and the physical support, he said.

Linda Hayes, who lives in Bozrah with her husband, said they wanted their voices to be heard.

I think we cant be the silent majority anymore, she said.

Sister Agnus Dei of the Sisters of Life speaks to hundreds of anti-abortion activists demonstrated today outside the Capitol as part of the movement's state-by-state battle plan to limit abortion access if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade. Photograph by Mark Mirko | mmirko@courant.com (Mark Mirko/The Hartford Courant)

Katherine Sarris, a 38-year-old performing artist and educator from Trumbull, marched in the crowd behind the couple.

Im here because I believe that life begins at conception. If we save a whale that has a heartbeat or a baby cat that has a heartbeat, why dont we save a baby human that has a heartbeat? she asked. We have better solutions than murder.

Five Things You Need To Know Daily We're providing the latest coronavirus coverage in Connecticut each weekday morning. >

Like the Hayeses, Sarris, too, called for more support for pregnancy centers that provide things like clothes, food, diapers and formula to people who are experiencing unplanned pregnancies.

Advertisement

A new state law last year targeted such limited services pregnancy centers. The law, which went into effect in July, says these centers may face fines or lawsuits if any information they publish is misleading or deceptive for patients.

Sarris hopes to advocate for legislation that will support, and provide more funding for, pregnancy centers that provide people with options other than abortion.

Thats what we should be focusing on, not only giving people the option to terminate, she said. Shouldnt we be trying to help women to have a whole range of choices?

Information from Courant reporter Daniela Altimari was used in this report.
This particular example of perhaps the most famous early Cold War fighter jet left its Inglewood, California factory on April 22nd, 1953. From the factory, the aircraft sported a single General Electric J-47 turbojet engine. Where the engine wound up is anyone's guess, however.From 1955 onward, this Sabre was transferred to a multitude of different South American Air Forces. Including service in the Bolivian and Venezuelan Air Force during its operational career.The Sabre was the United State's front-line jet fighter during the Korean War, fighting alongside P-51D Mustangs, Vought Corsairs , Gloster Meteors, and Republic Thunderjets in the skies over the 38th parallel.This late model F-86F variant was a few months too late to see service in Korea. But you can't say it didn't squeeze every ounce of usefulness out of it like an empty toothpaste tube.Apart from a nearly complete airframe, the little details of this jet are all in a pretty sorry state of affairs. A new engine, cockpit, tires, brakes, and just about everything else you can think of are needed even to get this jet in static display condition.But, if you have more money than the average human brain cell count, this might end up being one heck of a restoration project. If you think some car restorations can take a long time, a decent airplane restoration can take decades.As we said, there's no margin for error at 30,000 feet and 600 plus miles per hour. You'd hope the people in charge would take their time crunching the numbers. For $179,000 via Courtesy Aircraft Sales of Rockford, Illinois will award you this incoming headache.
Conor McGregor loves sharing his lavish lifestyle with his followers. His Instagram account often includes images of his expensive cars, among which theres a Bentley Continental GT Speed convertible The former UFC champion loves driving it and has flaunted it online several times. But now it looks like he got himself in trouble for taking it over the legal limits.McGregor was arrested, the Irish Independent reported. The UFC champion was driving in the Irish capital, Dublin, and was detained for dangerous driving.He was reportedly driving along the N4 when he attracted the polices attention. Plus, he has a number of road traffic convictions that made the officers take him to the station and temporarily seize his luxury convertible. According to the same outlet, meanwhile, they had already returned the vehicle to him.After he was taken to the Lucan police station, he was charged with dangerous driving and released on bail. In a statement to the outlet, his rep confirmed the arrest and added that he was on his way to the gym. McGregor also had to take a drug and alcohol test at the station, which he passed.The UFC champion is to appear before the district court next month. This wouldnt be his first time there because he had to appear in court after receiving 400 ($440) for speeding in 2017.One could understand Conor McGregors need for speed because the Bentley convertible is surely powerful. The luxury brand put a 6.0-liter W12 engine at its core, which delivers 650 horsepower (659 ps), and a maximum torque of 664 lb-ft (900 Nm) of torque. Given these figures, the convertible can sprint from zero to 62 mph (0-100 kph) in just 3.7 seconds and has a top speed of 208 mph (335 mph).But he should do it within the speed limits, just like everyone else.
SUV

Cupra only stated that this newadopts a new-generation PHEV technology that allows it to have such a long range. Only a few Chinese vehicles broke the 100 km barrier when it comes to plug-in hybrids apart from the Chevrolet Volt and the BMW i3 REx, two cars that can only be bought today as used ones. The Chinese options are mostly restricted to that market.Unfortunately, Cupra did not explain what this new technology offers. We suspect it has to do with being able to put more batteries in a car without robbing trunk space and unbalancing the vehicle, as most PHEVs currently do. It is unlikely that the company managed to give this car more range based solely on efficiency gains.If Cupra will have this system, you can bet all PHEVs in the Volkswagen group will also get it. To reinforce that, Cupra informed that this new SUV would be manufactured in Hungary  at the Gyor plant  alongside the Audi Q3 Sportback . The Spanish brand is probably talking about the third generation of the Q3, expected to have its official introduction by 2024. In other words, the new Audi Q3 will also have it.That means we can include the Volkswagen Tiguan , the Seat Tarraco, and the Skoda Kodiaq in the same list. Curiously, Cupra said that this new SUV will be around 4.50 meters (177.2 inches) long and that it belongs in the challenging A-segment. We have no idea what Cupra means by that. A-segment cars are shorter than 4 m (157.5 in).That puts it in the same league as the Formentor , which was introduced in 2020 and is apparently selling very well. Could the new SUV replace it? It would not make much sense to have two SUVs precisely the same size for sale.If we are to take the video below into consideration, expect this new SUV to be introduced by an unusual concept car. The vehicle below these sheets features a light strip going from the bottom of the front bumper until the end of the rear bumper, passing all over the body of the vehicle. That includes the windscreen and the rear glass. A production car would probably not be allowed to present such a feature. In Europe, it is illegal to even have lighted badges, which explains why the ID family vehicles do not present that feature where they are currently produced.






AeroScope works with two features, the first of which is the drone. Each machine emits an encrypted code that relays details such as speed, altitude, serial number, and even the pilot's location. That signal is then picked up by a "unit" that identifies the above-mentioned information and alerts the governing agency of the AeroScope system to the whereabouts and possible intentions of the



Furthermore, what makes AeroScope so unique is that the signal reception stations or units, as I mentioned earlier, come in two varieties, stationary and portable. Now, the portable unit is just that and allows AeroSope to be deployed easily, quickly, and used for emergency drone detection. This unit features a 5 km (3.11 mi) detection range and can be easily carried in hand.







However, since humans will be humans and any technology has the potential to be used for a multitude of purposes, DJI drones have even seen recent action and attention in the conflict happening over in Eastern Europe. Because of this, DJI has even come under heavy scrutiny in recent reports because of errors in AeroScope's functionality. Yet, diving deeper into allegations, it seems to be one of those "I don't like your friends" situations.



Because humans can be and are quite the creative bunch, just about anything on this planet can be repurposed for ill-will use, and drones are not an exception to that rule. Heck, even the pencil is

This sort of system can be lifesaving in scenarios where drones could be used with mischievous intentions. To simplify things , as a whole, AeroScope is meant to be used during events such as government rallies, major sporting events, airports, private properties, and "secure locations."AeroScope works with two features, the first of which is the drone. Each machine emits an encrypted code that relays details such as speed, altitude, serial number, and even the pilot's location. That signal is then picked up by a "unit" that identifies the above-mentioned information and alerts the governing agency of the AeroScope system to the whereabouts and possible intentions of the drone and pilot Furthermore, what makes AeroScope so unique is that the signal reception stations or units, as I mentioned earlier, come in two varieties, stationary and portable. Now, the portable unit is just that and allows AeroSope to be deployed easily, quickly, and used for emergency drone detection. This unit features a 5 km (3.11 mi) detection range and can be easily carried in hand.As for the stationary unit, this trinket is different in that it offers a sort of "set it and forget" application where a constant stream of data is intercepted. With this component, DJI provides a massive 50 km (31 mi) range. Yes, anything in that area will be known to you, if it's a DJI product, that is. Did I mention public and private cloud integration and the IP65 rating?However, since humans will be humans and any technology has the potential to be used for a multitude of purposes, DJI drones have even seen recent action and attention in the conflict happening over in Eastern Europe. Because of this, DJI has even come under heavy scrutiny in recent reports because of errors in AeroScope's functionality. Yet, diving deeper into allegations, it seems to be one of those "I don't like your friends" situations.Because humans can be and are quite the creative bunch, just about anything on this planet can be repurposed for ill-will use, and drones are not an exception to that rule. Heck, even the pencil is said to be mightier than the sword.

Folks, DJI is a crew that initially saw its beginnings in Shenzhen, China. If there's one thing you should note about Shenzhen, popular opinion considers it the Silicon Valley of China, and for a team to stay alive in this business since 2006 says something. While they are mainly known for creating excellent drones, they also focus on high-quality cinematic cameras; their drones often include cameras for incredible shots and footage.The company currently offers two types of drones and camera gear, each defined for a particular use, but all of it is designed to bring smiles to people's faces. Even I currently have a DJI product on my Christmas list, the DJI FPV Combo , a drone that offers you a first-person perspective into a flight that occurs at 87 mph (140 kph). You say you like to fly?Now, with all these drones flying around, DJI decided it would be a good idea to create a system that tracks their drones, and since 2017, every drone to leave DJI factory lines has been equipped with an identification system that is active during flight. This system is known as AeroScope, and the reason it exists is to be a safety feature that allows tracking of current DJI drones in an area.
Star Wars actor Ewan McGregor owns several VW Bullis (known as VW Bus in the U.S.) and he is using the Force to restore them by himself.The Hollywood actor got a chance to visit the Volkswagen Commercial Vehicle plant in Hanover, Germany, and he couldnt have been more excited. He asked all the right questions, which propelled him to the top of the list for all the workers who had a chance to interact with him.The two-minute video that follows his tour around the plant shows us how the actor impressed everyone around. He seemed to know all the models and trims, and he was generally very down to Earth.He was very excited to see all the "beautiful buses in one place, and noted that its amazing to see all of them being restored so beautifully.The actor is a car enthusiast and owns several Volkswagens. He shared he likes the commercial vehicles, the panel vans, and the double cabs, and basically all of them. He added that hes building a panel van at the moment, a 1958 model.After being part of the world premiere of the 2023 Volkswagen ID. Buzz, the actor couldnt be more buzzed about the VW brand, and he even commented he's thinking about giving up acting and coming to work here if they can fit me in.The Volkswagen Transporter (Type 2) is the model that kicked off the company's commercial vehicles production and has been around since 1950 . It has sold in more than 13 million units over seven generations. And the German brand will continue its run with the all-electric newcomer ID. Buzz. Which Ewan McGregor is sure is a very good vehicle for a Jedi.
Dutch banking group ING confirmed it will stop any kind of funding for new fossil fuel projects, even if they were already approved in the first quarter of 2022. The financial company will keep the money going for any contracts that were signed before the 1st of January 2022, but it wont work again with key players from the oil and natural gas industry that are looking to keep the production going.ING says it heard what the International Energy Agency stated and is looking to do its part in tackling rising global temperatures. The banks energy chief Michiel de Haan told Reuters that power generation will still be of interest to ING, but from now on, the focus is being put on renewable alternatives like solar, wind, and hydro. There was no mention of nuclear energy, which was in some way expected as the material used in nuclear power plants is non-renewable.The Dutch financial group will keep its promises made towards its current fossil fuel partners but intends on increasing financing for alternative sources of energy by 50% until 2025. This comes as no surprise, as the energy sector has seen a boom in 2021 when it comes to lending for solar and wind developments.While ING is not one of the biggest banks in the world, its decision to cut fossil fuel funding from its portfolio is still a strong signal, one thatll have an impact, especially in Europe. A report published by Bloomberg in 2021 showed JPMorgan, Wells Fargo, and Citigroup are the top three financial entities that keep working with existing or just established gas and oil projects. But none of these banks made the same strong and growing investments in fossil fuels as Chinas Postal Savings.Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP, and Saudi Aramco are the latest beneficiaries of loans meant to help kickstart new operations or grow existing ones. ING s move becomes more important as a starting pressure point since The Paris Agreement hasnt had the expected impact on the oil and gas industry. Companies on both sides of the aisle have kept working together despite what world leaders agreed upon.For now, quitting funding new fossil fuel projects wont have a big impact on the prices we pay at the pump. However, it is a clear signal that cheaper gas (petrol) and diesel wont be soon available. This is true, especially for Europe, where, before ING, the European Investment Bank (EUs lending institution) cut financing for fossil fuels and renewables entirely. Furthermore, with the sanctions put on Russia, the U.S. stopping investments abroad in this sector since last year, and Saudi Arabia now refusing to increase production after weve all fought a health situation globally, theres little hope for any reasonable prices in the near future.The switch to electric vehicles ( EV s) becomes more and more attractive. But, unfortunately, it feels forced and will have a resounding impact on almost everything  from the price of bread to the plane tickets you buy for your vacation.
PHEV

FoMoCo identified another Kugathat reported a loss of function due to an overheated busbar, which is why the safety boffins contacted Samsung SDI for additional information. Come November 2021, an Escape PHEV was called back in the United States over the same condition. Fast forward to February 2022, and thats when South Koreas Samsung SDI recalled 1,163 lithium-ion packs that equip 1,139 Ford vehicles and 24 Stellantis vehicles.According to the supplier, the problem boils down to welding issues in the manufacturing process of the cell module. The busbar pad wasnt seated properly, or the power of the welding between the cell terminal and busbar was insufficient, thus increasing the risk of a sudden loss of drive power.Mere days ago, the Ford Motor Company has revised the number of potentially affected vehicles according to the latest data from Samsung SDI and subcontractor Nex+. Dearborn says that one unit of the Lincoln Corsair Grand Touring and two units of the Escape PHEV have to be fixed. These utility vehicles were produced on August 5th, 2021 and January 10th, 2022.The high-voltage battery is referred to as part number LX68-10B759-R by Samsung SDI. Owners will be notified of this callback on March 28th, and obviously enough, the lithium-ion pack will be replaced at no charge. The replacement pack, which bears the very same part number as the faulty one, will have a properly seated and welded busbar as per the Blue Oval.Over at Samsung SDI, the battery specialist has modified welding width and the area limits in order to detect non-conforming batteries in their assembly plant. As for the Dearborn-based manufacturer, the Escape PHEV is currently listed from a rather expensive $33,940, while the Lincoln Corsair Grand Touring levels up to an even more expensive $51,595 sans freight.
Although there is no doubt the F-16 (part of a large fleet, as the U.S. flies over 1,200 of them) is presently the fighter aircraft that gets the most exposure, in both the world of pilots and in the media, the F-15 does have its share of merits. So much so, in fact, that the F-15EX version of it will likely continue to serve Americas needs as part of its Air Forces streamlined fleet of war birds.The current lineup of F-15s is only close to 250 strong, and it comprises mostly single-seater F-15C and two-seater F-15D. Kept in tip-top shape with regular upgrades, both are as potent as they were on day one of their existence.And, despite their age, they look as amazing as any fifth-generation fighter jet of today, as clearly demonstrated by the F-15C we have here, snapped on film as it was moving toward the end of the runway of the Kingsley Field Air National Guard Base in Oregon, for a routine training mission.The airplane belongs to the 173rd Fighter Wing, and the base is described by the military as the premier F-15C training base for the United States Air Force. It is here where pilots learn to harness the immense power of the two Pratt & Whitney turbofan engines, good for 23,450 pounds of thrust each.As a side note, fans of the F-15 should enjoy any hints of it while they can. America plans to start retiring both the C and D variants probably by the end of this decade.
The semiconductor crisis, however, will soon be just a bad memory, one of the largest companies in the tech sector claims, as the existing inventory will fundamentally improve in the second half of the year.Xiaomi, one of the most important names in the smartphone race, says we should expect much better times towards the end of the year, with the chip shortage to ease off starting with the second quarter.Xiaomi President Wang Xiang is obviously very optimistic, though, on the other hand, the recovery depends on a lot of factors that carmakers are still closely monitoring.First and foremost, the end of the chip shortage seems impossible to predict due to many reasons, including the war in Ukraine. After the invasion started by the Russian military more than three weeks ago, Ukrainian neon providers had no other option than to suspend the production of the gas.The neon is being used for the lasers that build the chips, yet manufacturers claim their current operations are yet to be affected.At the same time, the war itself is also a big concern, as it could create other disruptions in the supply chain. So while the chip inventory could improve, carmakers might end up facing other shortages due to the geopolitical turmoil.In the meantime, carmakers are still looking into ways to lower the impact of the chip shortage on their daily operations. Ford, for example, has suspended production at some of its European plants due to the same chip problem, while other companies have started shipping vehicles without some non-safety systems in an attempt to reduce the number of required semiconductors.At the end of the day, its understandable carmakers cant be too optimistic over the end of the chip shortage, but if the Xiaomi president is right, the moment weve been expecting for so long may not be too far.
The leading designers and creators of high-end automotive culture & lifestyle are more affluent than a Rolls-Royce dealership sometimes. Just recently, for their latest social media log, they had a trio of Cullinan ultra-luxury SUVs dwelling in the backyard. That would be around $1.5 million in cash, without any custom intervention, if one dared to sell all three of them on the spot.However, all three of them - one being a Black Badge that is soon going to be stripped of the Black Badge content! - will undergo various changes and personalization makeovers to better suit the whims and desires of their affluent, sometimes secretive owners. Oh, and just to be sure that we do not mistake them for Cullinan loyalists, the Platinum host also made sure to have a blue Lamo Urus casually lying around and expecting its own, full Mansory body kit transformation.Amazed, outraged, or bedazed? No worries, there is more even in this sneak peek pre-making-of video (embedded below). And we are not just talking about the Mercedes-Maybach GLS stationed in the background (and clearly seen around the 2:20 mark) and acting as a sort of Easter Egg for the next project belonging to Kim Ks mansion-matching collection Instead, there is also a little road trip to Studio City, California, where the PML chauffeur services company subsidiary is headquartered. There, we are given just a glimpse of what Platinum does best with Mercedes-Benz Sprinter-based executive vans , complete with a quick behind-the-scenes glance at the hard work that needs to be done to achieve the private jet on wheels threshold.And this was all just a preview, as the monster build that is said to even dwarf what Platinum has in store for the Urus and three Cullinan SUVs is still very much a competent work in progress, as noticeable from the 5:30 mark.
What is the holiest day of the Jewish year? Its not Chanukah. Non-Jews sometimes dont understand that, considering Chanukah comes in the middle of the holiday season, which falls in December.

And does the holiday season really fall just in December? Or is it all year round? The Hindu holiday Diwali is usually in the fall. The Muslim holiday Ramadan moves around the calendar.

Advertisement

These questions, and others, will be answered in a virtual seminar series by Hartford International University for Religion and Peace, formerly known as Hartford Seminary. Holidays in the Workplace is geared toward human resources professionals, but all members of the general public are welcome.

A lot of times HR people or people in leadership positions desire to be inclusive and recognize holidays. But what happens unfortunately is that there is not a lot of knowledge so their best intentions often dont hit the mark, said Katy OLeary, HIUs director of executive and professional education.

Advertisement

Now is the time for religion to be added to the conversation on diversity, equity and inclusion. This is about creating supportive work environments, so people dont have to check that aspect of themselves at the door. It helps with recruitment, retention of talent. What kind of environment are you offering? she said.

Andrea Obston knows the issue from both the perspective of an employee and employer. Years ago, she worked at Travelers. Now, she owns Andrea Obston Marketing Communications in Avon.

Its not like being Jewish is odd, but at [Travelers] people would dance around Chanukah or the High Holy Days. Its almost like its a third rail. They dont even feel they can ask about it. I found myself being the translator. I thought it was kind of humorous, Obston said.

Then as an employer, I had someone who was Arab Israeli working for me. I found myself reluctant to ask him about it, like I was intruding. Here I was, this arrogant person in the corporate world laughing at people who didnt understand me, and now I was afraid to ask about his holidays. Ah, now I get it.

Even outside work, Obston faced well-meaning but odd misconceptions about Jewish holidays. There was one year Chanukah started around Thanksgiving. My hairdresser said to me, This year its early. Some years its late. When is it ever on time? she said.

The goal of the series is for employers to learn enough about different religious traditions that they feel comfortable speaking with employees about their faiths, their needs, their requests for time off, etc.

Diversity the goal

All Holidays in the Workplace sessions run from 10 to 10:30 a.m. and cost $45 per session. The first one is on March 30, Islam: The Two Eids in Context. It will Imam Khalil Abdullah, assistant dean for Muslim Life at Princeton University, and Aida Mansoor, director of field education at HIU.

Vanessa Avery of HIU and Yale, who is helping to choose the speakers, said each has a different perspective on Islam. Khalil is Black and a convert. Aida is neither of those. Both have different experiences navigating social identities, she said.

Advertisement

Five Things You Need To Know Daily We're providing the latest coronavirus coverage in Connecticut each weekday morning. >

OLeary said that diversity is the goal of each seminar session. Just because two people are both Muslims, are both Christians, are both Jewish, youre not going to hear the same thing. Theres such a continuum. Showing two will give us that sense, If youve met one, youve met one, she said. This aims to run counter to the stereotypical If youve met one, youve met them all.

On June 15, the discussion is African American and Black Heritage: The What, Who, and Why of Juneteenth and Kwanzaa.

On Sept. 14, the discussion is Judaisms High Holy Days, plus a Passover Primer.

On Dec. 7, the topic is When is Christmas? The Holidays for Christians.

The series continues into 2023. On March 15, the subject is on Bahai. On June 14, the subject is Hinduism. On Sept. 13, the focus is Wicca and Paganism. On Dec. 6, the topic is Buddhism.

Register for the seminars at hartfordinternational.edu/holiday-series-2022.

Advertisement

Susan Dunne can be reached at sdunne@courant.com.
Nvidias GPU Technology Conference (GTC) is similar to an Apple Event. The company gathers its partners around, invites a lot of other people, and it showcases what progress has been made or introduces a new product or service.Unlike the iPhone maker, Nvidia likes to keep people connected for longer periods of time. This year Nvidia took it a step further and, over the span of four days, organized a lot of panels that facilitate access to better understanding and developing artificial intelligence. The event will end on Thursday, the 24th of March.While were confident Nvidia is doing important work for both gamers and other stakeholders of the next era of technology, this year, one thing got our attention: Lucids confirmation that it implemented the Drive Hyperion solution. This is a computing platform that can be easily upgraded because its core philosophy is based on modularity. In laymans terms, you can change a lot of stuff in a certain sector without needing to update the whole system. This is great for carmakers since over-the-air updates are slowly yet surely becoming the norm.DreamDrive Pro comprises 14 cameras, a LiDAR scanner, five radars, and 12 ultrasonic sensors. These parts work together in a seamless manner to provide the driver with enough information for daily driving but are also capable of engaging in autonomous operations. Even though Lucid Air doesnt have this ability now (and there are a lot of legal challenges to face), its systems can be simply upgraded in the future. The car is able to provide a number of safety assistance systems that can be of use in multiple cases. Essentially, the Air is a smart vehicle and will be able to learn more tricks as time passes and the American carmaker advances its research  all thanks to Hyperions modularity and Lucids programming.The same Nvidia technology will also offer the possibility for artificial intelligence (AI) integration, a thing Lucid wants to do because its looking to offer its clients the best when it comes to electric mobility.DreamDrive Pro is standard only on the Dream Edition and the Grand Touring trims.The partnership with Nvidia might also secure much-needed chips for the carmaker, but this hasn't been officially disclosed during the GTC. More details can be found in the press release attached down below.
ACC

The first one is about a joint venture the automaker has with LGES (LG Energy Solution) to build a 45-GWh/year battery plant in Canada. The new factory will be located in Windsor, Ontario, and production is scheduled to start by 2024.Although Stellantis does not speak about why the plant is in Canada nor its plans for it, it seems the idea is to supply battery packs to the products made north of the U.S. Currently, the company manufactures the Chrysler Pacifica, Chrysler 300, Dodge Challenger, and Dodge Charger there. Wed bet the production version of the Chrysler Airflow will also come from one of these Canadian factories.With this plant in Windsor, Stellantis could also quickly ship them to Michigan. The automaker will need a lot of them for its future electric pickup trucks, such as the RAM 1500 . More than anything, these new cells will power products we are yet to discover. Many of them may be made in Canada. The cell factory in Windsor will create 2,500 new jobs.The other announcement was about a new(Automotive Cells Company) plant in Italy. To be precise, ACC will turn one of Stellantis factories into a battery plant. Were talking about Termoli, a factory that is known for producing combustion engines, such as the Global Medium Engine, a 2-liter four-cylinder used by Alfa Romeo vehicles and also by the Jeep Wrangler  call that poetic justice.This new battery and cell module plant will probably employ the same people Stellantis already has working there, even if their activities will be very different from those they have performed until now. The carmakers goal for it is to produce 40 GWh per year in batteries. ACC has two other factories in Europe: one in Douvrin, France, and another one in Kaiserslautern, Germany.Each of the ACC plants has the same projected capacity. When all three are in full operation, the battery manufacturer wants to have 120 GWh of cell production capacity per year. The goal is to get there by 2030.ACC was a joint venture between Stellantis and TotalEnergies/Saft. With the announcement about the Termoli plant, the company made it official that Mercedes-Benz is a new partner, with equal shares and decision power as the other two. That means that the German company will also get these cells  possibly Mercedes-Benz's most affordable vehicles.
Full Self-Driving

FSD

ADS

There were laughter and dancing at the Giga Berlin opening ceremony and everyone was happy, even though the Tesla facility Gruenheide was a hard nut to crack for Elon Musk. Cascading problems blocked the gigafactory construction for months and compounded to more than a year of delays in starting the production. But all is well now, and Elon Musk checked all the boxes in achieving what many considered harder than Tesla: building the biggest car factory in Germany.Speaking of the Full Self-Driving suite, Elon Musk made another of his forward-looking statements regarding the controversial automated driving system that seems to be stuck in a beta stage for eternity. During a Q&A session with Tesla fans, Musk announced that Tesla Full Self-Driving will get to Europe soon, but not before the beta-testing will start in Canada first.The CanadaBeta rollout will happen later this week as planned, Musk confirmed with his fans at the Giga Berlin opening. In a couple of months, Tesla will also submit FSD to European regulators and will roll out the beta stage in Europe pending approval.Were getting to a point where the FSD Beta is very good in the U.S. and later this week expanding to Canada. And then I think well be ready to show it to regulators in the EU, Musk told the small crowd gathered at Giga Berlin.Tesla FSD in Europe is especially challenging since there are a lot of special-case situations and many details differ from country to country. The sheer complexity of European roads and regulations makes for a very difficult job for FSD.You know, theres a lot of little tricky things. The rules are not the same. But I think probably we can start doing Beta later this year, depending on regulatory approval, Musk said. Things are a little different in the U.S. Like in the US, things are legal by default and in Europe, theyre illegal by default, so we have to get approval beforehand; whereas in the US you can kind of do it on your own cognizance more or less.The European Commission published the regulatory framework for autonomous vehicles in September 2021, as the Draft EURegulation. This will be the basis for all future legislation regarding autonomous cars and will be observed by all countries in the EU.
kW

After the prefectural and local authorities learned that Mitsubishi has no plans for the Sakahogi plant that produced the Pajero, they asked the automaker to sell the facility to protect jobs. Nikkei Asia reports that Mitsubishi closed a deal with Daio Paper in this regard, selling the complex for circa four billion yen (that's just over $33 million at current exchange rates).To whom it may concern, Daio Paper will reappropriate this facility to make sanitary paper products, namely tissues and toilet paper. A paper mill is very close to Sakahogi, which explains the companys interest in this factory.As per the cited publication, the facility's location in central Japan offers Daio flexibility to shift supply to the Tokyo region or greater Osaka as needed. Daio Paper controls 30% of the facial and toilet tissue market.Whats next for the Pajero?Well, it was initially believed that Mitsubishi and Nissan would collaborate on the next-generation model with underpinnings from the Patrol. Speaking of which, the 2024 redesign is rumored with a twin-turbo V6 powerplant rather than a free-breathing V8 to improve output and efficiency alike.However, the senior manager of product strategy for Mitsubishis Australian division has bad news. More specifically, Owen Thomson made it extremely clear that we shouldnt hold our breaths for a return anytime soon. When asked about the Patrol tie-up, the high-ranking executive couldnt offer any additional information to Australian motoring publication Drive The last hurrah for the Pajero came in May 2021 when Mitsubishi presented the Aussie market with the Final Edition. No fewer than 800 units were delivered in this part of the world, starting at 54,990 kangaroo bucks for the base trim. All three grades feature a 3.2-liter turbo diesel four-cylinder engine that cranks out 141(189 hp) and 441 Nm (325 lb-ft) of torque.
The two companies have been partners for more than a decade, first for the MQ-9A and now for the MQ-9B. They recently hit a milestone with the first UK-manufactured V-tail to be installed onto a SkyGuardian RPA ( remotely piloted aircraft ) that will be delivered to the Royal Air Force (RAF). This is the first of the 16 new aircraft that will enter service with RAF as the Protector fleet.The new Protector aircraft will boost RAFs capabilities when it comes to Intelligence, Surveillance, Targeting, and Reconnaissance (ISTAR) operations. But its also meant to comply with stringent NATO and UK safety requirements, which means that it can also operate in civilian airspace. According to RAF, Protector could also conduct, when needed, disaster response operations or search-and-rescue missions.The MQ-9B will also operate in Australia and in Belgium, and all the aircraft variants sold in different parts of the world will be fitted with the V-tails manufactured by GKN Aerospace.At the beginning of their collaboration, the UK-based aviation company designed and built a fit and forget fuel bladder system for the remotely-piloted aircraft. Today, GKN Aerospace produces a wide range of components for GA-ASIs Predator, including the V-tail, fuel bladders, and a lightweight landing gear system.The MQ-9B combines a highly-modular platform with the ability to carry multiple mission payloads and with a state-of-the-art Detect and Avoid (DAA) system. With a wingspan of 79 feet (24 meters) and a fuel capacity of 6,000 lb (2,721 kg), this remotely-piloted aircraft can stay in the sky for up to 40 hours, boasting a maximum speed of 210 knots (242 mph/388 kph).Protector is set to kick off operations in the UK by mid-2024.
Armenian authorities say there is little they can do to help the truck drivers who have spent weeks in what is reported to be a 150-kilometer queue of vehicles waiting to cross the border.

Such situations at the Upper Lars checkpoint are typical of winter months, but also happen during the rest of the year when landslide block traffic along a mountain serpentine in Georgia.

Local authorities are trying to clear the road from snow, but heavy snowfalls still make the Gudauri section of the road impassable for trucks.

It is very narrow, ours are long trucks, they dont fit into those turns Snowplows have been trying to clean the road, but the wind blows more snow there, said Tigran Gabrielian, one of the Armenian drivers stuck at Upper Lars.

Many truck drivers are concerned that perishables that they are transporting will soon go bad.

The thing is that a lot of diesel fuel is spent every day to maintain the necessary temperature inside the refrigerator. We hope that at least some of the cargo will be preserved, Gabrielian said.

I am transporting tomatoes and have to keep the temperature inside the refrigerator at +6 degrees Celsius, but still it is very likely that some of them will go bad, he added.

Another Armenian truck driver Azat Davtian said that after spending about 20 days in the queue he and his fellows were also worried about the prospect of losing their cargoes and freezing if they ran out of fuel.

We have three trucks loaded with apples. We have been stranded here for 19 days. Our diesel fuel will end soon. I dont know what we are going to do then. But something will have to be done, Davtian said.

Armenias Ministry of Emergency Situations said that as many as 375 vehicles had lined up on the Russian side of the Russian-Georgian border due to bad weather conditions. The Armenian ministry said it had no data on the number of vehicles stuck in traffic at the Georgian side of the border.

Arion Logistics cargo company owner Gurgen Vanetsian said that 25 of their trucks have for more than three weeks been stuck in traffic on both sides of the border. He said that drivers constantly ask for money so that they can buy something to eat in nearby villages where food now costs twice as much as its normal price. He said that already now they are counting their costs.

Meanwhile, truck drivers in the long queue have set up an online group that now has about 4,000 users to share information on the situation. All appear to have the same problems: requests from banks to repay overdue loans, problems with food and fuel and concerns about perishables in their trucks.

Armenian authorities say that representatives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the State Revenue Committee are dealing with the situation, but they acknowledge that little can be done to change the weather conditions.

Aram Tananian, a customs attache at the Armenian embassy in Russia, said that he was trying to help the drivers as much as it was possible to do in a long queue at a border checkpoint outside Armenian jurisdiction.

Of course, we drive along that 150-kilometer queue and stop and approach people there. But we cant really do much to solve everyday problems that these people have, the official said.

Tananian also denied claims by some companies about discrimination against Armenian drivers at the border.
A federal grand jury in New Haven indicted a Maine man on Tuesday for allegedly embezzling more than $1 million from a Berlin business.

Federal prosecutors charged Edward F. Ziegler II, 63, of Bridgton with tax and fraud charges in connection with the alleged theft from Show Lighting, which supplies lighting for the concert, stage, film, and television industries.

Advertisement

Richard C. Lee United States Courthouse. 141 Church Street New Haven

The U.S. Attorneys office said Ziegler, who was the companys office manager for 25 years, allegedly diverted payments from customers to a bank account he controlled and used the money for his own benefit, while covering the theft with false entries in the company books.

The prosecutors said Ziegler diverted more than 400 checks worth a total of more than $1 million. In addition, he failed to pay $173,643 in federal income taxes on his embezzled income for the 2015 through 2019 tax years.

Advertisement

The indictment charges Ziegler with 22 counts of wire fraud affecting a financial institution, which carries a maximum term of imprisonment of 30 years on each count, and five counts of tax evasion, which carries a maximum term of imprisonment of five years on each count, if convicted

Ziegler appeared in court in Hartford Tuesday, where he pleaded not guilty to the charges, and was freed on a $100,000 bond, according to federal authorities.
In her written replies the EU ambassador referred to the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights of the Council of Europe, stressing that Armenia is a member of the Council of Europe.

She stressed that a law which interferes with freedom of expression must be narrowly and precisely circumscribed so that it is legally predictable and certain.

But most importantly, the question is whether the law is implemented in a democratic and non-arbitrary manner, on the basis of objective criteria, subject to independent judicial control, where the judges consider the proportionality of the sanction. Should the insult amount to hate speech, which is speech likely to produce the effect of legitimizing, spreading or promoting violence, racial hatred, xenophobia, antisemitism or other forms of discrimination or hatred based on intolerance, arguably sanctions or restrictions can be more severe, the EU diplomat said.

Asked whether the EU Delegation to Armenia shares the concerns of local and international human rights groups regarding this legislation, Wiktorin said that the EU Delegation is closely monitoring the situation and, together with colleagues in Brussels, does its own legal analyses.

The ambassador also said that they had a general consultation with Armenias Prosecutor-General Artak Davtian earlier this month rather than discussed only the law on grave insults. We talked about a number of issues and had a very profound and detailed discussion. I am convinced he takes the issue very seriously, Wiktorin said.

Under amendments to the Armenian Criminal Code voted for by only pro-government lawmakers and enacted last summer anyone insulting government officials and public figures risks paying hefty fines or going to jail for up to three months.

Opposition members and human rights activists in Armenia have criticized the authorities for adopting the measure, describing it as an infringement of free speech.

A number of international organizations, including the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, have called on Armenia to decriminalize grave insults. The U.S. democracy watchdog Freedom House has repeatedly said that the passage and enforcement of the controversial law highlighted a clear degradation of democratic norms in Armenia.

Armenian authorities have defended the controversial law. Meeting with the EU ambassador on March 3, Armenias Prosecutor-General Davtian said that the law is necessary for reducing or neutralizing the scale and impact of hate speech.

Armenias Constitutional Court on March 22 began considering the constitutionality of the legislation following a claim lodged by the countrys ombudsperson. The court said that the examination of the claim proceeds in writing.
In a statement on March 22 Armenias Foreign Ministry, in particular, accused Azerbaijan of deliberately disrupting the normal operation of a gas pipeline passing through the territory controlled by its military forces. We consider this outrageous policy of systematic violence against Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh to be unacceptable, it said.

The statement followed reports by de-facto Armenian authorities in Nagorno-Karabakh that natural gas supplies to the region had been cut by Baku, which created humanitarian problems for the population of the region still experiencing subzero temperatures despite early spring.

Still earlier, the Armenian ministry slammed Baku over inviting United Nations officials to an event in Shushi (Susa), a key town and site in Nagorno-Karabakh contested by Armenians and Azerbaijanis.

The Armenian Foreign Ministry first tries to interfere in the internal affairs of Azerbaijan by issuing a statement on the participation of international organizations in an event held in Azerbaijan. And now it [issues a statement] on a different matter, Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Leyla Abdullayeva said on Wednesday as quoted by Azerbaijani media.

We recommend that instead of making unfounded and illegal accusations, Armenia should ensure the fulfillment of its obligations, including the withdrawal of the remnants of its armed forces from the region, and thus contribute to regional peace and security, she added.

Azerbaijans Defense Ministry said on Tuesday that Chief of the General Staff of the Azerbaijani Army, Colonel-General Kerim Veliyev had met with a delegation led by Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Ground Forces of the Russian Federation for Peacekeeping Activities, Colonel-General Alexey Kim. It said that during that meeting the sides held a thorough exchange of views on the withdrawal of illegal Armenian armed groups from the territory of Azerbaijan and a number of other issues.
During a question-and-answer session of government members in parliament Mirzoyan, however, stressed that the international community continues to see a settlement of the issue within the format of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs involving Russia, the United States, and France.

The ongoing hostilities in Ukraine have sharply complicated the work of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs up until the level of joint discussions, but based on very specific, certain signals and messages that I have been receiving from the co-chair countries and many other countries, I want to reaffirm that the international community continues to see the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in the context of the Minsk Group co-chairmanship. And this is quite encouraging, the top Armenian diplomat said.

We work on a daily basis to be able to organize a discussion under the [Minsk Group] co-chairmanship, including with the latest proposals, Mirzoyan added.

The Armenian foreign minister reiterated that Yerevan saw nothing unacceptable in the five-point proposal of Azerbaijan for starting negotiations around a peace treaty with Armenia. He repeated that at the same time Armenia deems that it does not fully address the possible agenda of comprehensive peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Baku insists that a future peace treaty with Yerevan should be based on five fundamental principles, 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, delimitation and demarcation of the border with the establishment of diplomatic relations and unblocking of transport links.

In a recent interview with the state-run Armenpress news agency Mirzoyan said it is vital for the Armenian side that the rights and freedoms of Nagorno-Karabakhs Armenians be clearly guaranteed, and the status of Nagorno-Karabakh be finally clarified. For us, the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is not a territorial issue, but a matter of rights, he said.

One of the key points of our proposals is that the issue of the rights and status of Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh remains a matter of principle for us. It is impossible to call it a complete agenda until this issue is discussed there, Mirozyan explained in parliament today.

On March 14, Armenias Foreign Ministry said that it had applied to the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs requesting that they organize Armenian-Azerbaijani negotiations on a peace treaty on the basis of the UN Charter, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the Helsinki Final Act.

The foreign minister said that Armenia was informed by the Co-Chairs that its proposals had been passed on to Azerbaijan. He said, however, that Baku has not responded to Yerevans proposals yet.
Farm Day in the City was back again Tuesday at the Kern County Fairgrounds. Over the years, the event, created by the Kern County Farm Bureau,
Dazania Williams (right) and Demi Canales, two 10th graders at Hartford Public High School, demonstrate the CPR training they've learned through Hartford High's Allied Health pathway, a hands-on career development program. (Seamus McAvoy)

Dazania Williams, kneeling over an inanimate, vinyl torso, couldnt help but laugh.

It was a bit silly, in fairness: at Hartford Public High School, a room full of adults had huddled into a semi circle around Williams and her classmate, Demi Canales, to watch the 10th graders demonstrate CPR on a pair of manikins.

Advertisement

Then, after a slight giggle, the training kicked in. If theyre an adult or older child, you tap them on the shoulder, Canales explained to their audience. If theyre a little baby, you tap their foot because they arent as sensitive.

And let them know that you are trained in whatever education you have, whether that be CPR or AED training, Williams continued, and the pair proceeded to rattle off the remaining steps from memory.

Advertisement

Canales and Williams are two of the 44 Hartford Public students who are part of the Allied Health career pathway, a hands-on professional development program launched last year in partnership with Hartford HealthCare and ReadyCT to offer industry-specific education and training to students concurrent with their regular schooling.

Now, with presentations from current program students and a career fair-style event held earlier Tuesday morning, the district is trying to double the number of students who register for a career pathway program before the official sign-up day on Thursday.

We are thrilled that Hartford HealthCare recognizes the value of Hartford Public Schools and our students, and that theyre engaging with us in such a meaningful way, said Dr. Leslie Torres-Rodriguez, superintendent of Hartford Public Schools.

This is such a magic moment, and were thrilled to be a partner, added Tracy Church, executive vice president and chief administrative officer of Hartford HealthCare.

In the Allied Health pathway, students like Canales and Williams are learning about global health, completing group projects and hearing guest lectures from real-world health professionals.

The pathway asks that the 10th-graders take either biology or honors biology, with additional course requirements in chemistry, anatomy and psychology tacked on in the higher grades. Students must maintain a strong GPA to remain eligible for paid internships.

Meanwhile, students are working toward (or have already earned) certifications in first aid, CPR or AED, as well as training as a certified nursing assistant or patient care technician.

Ive always wanted to help people, and keep them safe, said Rodrigo Fabian, a 10th-grade Allied Health student.

Advertisement

So far, Williams has volunteered with a Red Cross blood drive and had a medical internship over the summer. In a matter of months, Williams said shes gone from not expecting to work in the medical field to considering a career as a midwife to work with mothers and children.

It just gives you more eye-opening opportunities, that you wouldnt realize yourself, Williams said.

Canales said she plans to use her EMT certification to help her earn some money on the side while in college, and eventually wants to become an anesthesiologist.

Benefits for students, and workforce

While hands-on programs that offer industry experience have the benefit of allowing students to explore different careers early on in their lives, Torres-Rodriguez said their value reaches even further.

We know that when students are in a pathway, their attendance is higher, they are more engaged and they perform better in school, Torres-Rodriguez said.

Flora Padro, principal of Hartford High, said her school has seen pass rates in the pathway classes exceed 85%, sometimes reaching into the 90s.

Advertisement

Hartford Public High School principal Flora Padro, center, is joined by Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin (left) and district superintendent Dr. Leslie Torres-Rodriguez (right) at a press conference at Hartford High to promote the school's Allied Health career pathway, a career development program now in its second year. (Seamus McAvoy)

In addition to educational benefits, pathway programs may also play a role in addressing the worker shortage that has slammed the economy across sectors.

Chris DiPentima, president and chief executive of the Connecticut Business & Industry Association, on Tuesday described Connecticuts workforce crisis as quite honestly, second to none. The state has an estimated 117,000 open jobs, while the labor force has shrunk by 83,000, he said.

Even if every unemployed Connecticut resident got a job in-state, DiPentima said, there would still be 18,000 openings.

The health care industry has been no exception, with frontline workers exhausted after two years dominated by the coronavirus pandemic, characterized by disruptions, long hours and raging case numbers.

These pathway programs need to be in every school system in the state of Connecticut, DiPentima said.

#Healthcare's next generation is pursuing careers through a model public-private partnership between @Hartford_Public, @HartfordHealthC, and @CBIANews affiliate @readyCTEDpart of the solution for fixing our labor shortage crisis and filling a record 117K job openings. #RebuildCT pic.twitter.com/v5ZtGXvoOz  Chris DiPentima (@ChrisDipentima) March 22, 2022

Other Pathways

The Allied Health pathway is the newest of several offered across Hartfords neighborhood high schools, which are promoting their respective programs this week.

Advertisement

More than 140 Hartford High students participate in the Engineering and Green Technology pathway, now in its 18th year.

Leadership and Public Service and Computer Science pathways are offered at Bulkeley High School. At Weaver High School, students can participate in Journalist and Media or Insurance and Finance.

What makes a pathway effective, is when the employers are helping to design it, said Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin, who called the pathways a perfect example of the public-private partnership.

To give our young people at Hartford Public High School the opportunity to go into [the health care field], if they want to, will make our community stronger, will make our state stronger, it may well save lives, and hopefully do something to change our students lives as well, Bronin said.

To recruit new students, current pathway students are tasked with designing their own recruitment plan, and will soon visit Hartford middle schools to share their experiences with the next generation of learners.

Five Things You Need To Know Daily We're providing the latest coronavirus coverage in Connecticut each weekday morning. >

[Students] listen to each other, said Fallon Daniels, executive director of post-secondary success and alternative programming. They want to know what [the older students] story is, and they relate to [them].

Advertisement

For Daniels, the pathway program is also about giving students the opportunity to build the confidence they need to succeed.

Our kids need people who believe in them, and want to create the spaces for them to thrive Daniels said, speaking to the Courant after the press conference and student CPR demonstration.

What you saw here today is an example of a leader who believes in the children, created this opportunity with a team ... and because of that, you see that being presented, she said.

For Williams, the 10th grader, that confidence is clear.

I want to make something great of myself, Williams said. And this is the first step in doing so.

Seamus McAvoy may be reached at smcavoy@courant.com
You can reach Ishani Desai at 661-395-7417. You can also follow her at @idesai98 on Twitter.
One of the saddest and most distressing stories of the past year reportedly comes out of California City, where two very young brothers were r
As Gov. Ned Lamont toured New Londons State Pier Tuesday he praised the transformative potential of the future hub for offshore wind development  shortly before the announcement of an additional price hike for the project, which has long struggled with delays and rising costs.

This is going to be one of the most major ports in the country, just like New London was 100 years ago, Lamont told reporters at State Pier, which is on the Thames River.

Advertisement

Behind him, trucks rumbled through the busy construction site. In one area, workers prepared about 150 30-inch-diameter steel piles, which run 75 to 105 feet underground and will eventually be filled with concrete and rebar and topped with a concrete slab, according to Jordan Henshaw, project manager for the construction company Kiewit. Upon completion, the area will become a heavy lift terminal able to support 5,000 pounds per square foot  five times the pressure of the original pier.

When you come in about a year and its finished, youre just going to see a big flat surface, said David Kooris, chairman of the board of directors of the Connecticut Port Authority, who emphasized that the project would anchor southeastern Connecticut at the foundation of the green sector economy and offshore wind.

Advertisement

[ Connecticuts State Pier was supposed to be a world-class hub for offshore wind. Now its overdue, overbudget and under investigation ]

Officials upbeat messaging during the press tour of the site was dampened somewhat by a subsequent meeting of the Connecticut Port Authority board of directors, at which Kooris announced that the project could cost about $13 million more than expected  nearly $250 million. An additional $6.8 million is anticipated due to various delays, including the process of obtaining federal permits. Another cost, which Kooris said would be in the same ballpark as the cost of delays, may also be added in order to expedite the completion of the project, so that the State Pier would be ready to accommodate wind projects by March 2023, he said.

It is not the grand escalation that some people have speculated, he told reporters prior to the board meeting. It is a reasonable number given about a half a year of delay.

The State Pier project was initially expected to cost $93 million and to be finished by March 2022.

David Kooris, the chairman of the Connecticut Port Authority board of directors speaks with reporters at New London's State Pier as Gov. Ned Lamont looks on, Tuesday, March 22, 2022. (Eliza Fawcett)

The redevelopment of the site requires dredging the riverbed and filling in the gap between two aging piers to create a massive staging area for nearby wind farms. Wind turbines constructed on State Pier will serve Revolution Wind, Connecticuts first offshore wind farm, as well as South Fork Wind and Sunrise Wind. Together, the three projects are expected to provide enough clean energy to power more than one million homes in Connecticut, Rhode Island and New York.

Five Things You Need To Know Daily We're providing the latest coronavirus coverage in Connecticut each weekday morning. >

The State Pier project surfaced earlier this year in a federal investigation into spending projects overseen by Konstantinos Diamantis, the former deputy secretary of the Office of Policy and Management, whom Lamont fired last year. Diamantis served as the Lamont administrations point person for the project, overseeing procurement and construction.

Kooris emphasized Tuesday that, to his knowledge, the Port Authority has nothing to do with the investigation.

Still, the project has been criticized by some local residents and lawmakers for swelling costs and other issues, including alleged inadequate oversight of the Port Authority.

Anybody that trusts your word or judgement is a fool, Kevin Blacker, of Noank, a longtime critic of the project, told the board during the public comment portion of the meeting. Youve told us before, three times, Oh, this is the maximum [cost].

Advertisement

During Tuesdays press briefing, Kooris said that the projects initial price tag of $93 million represented committed funds but didnt really represent the entire project estimate. Subsequent increases to $157 million and then to $235 million were due to things that were not anticipated to their full extent, he said. (About two years earlier, Diamantis had told reporters, Its a $157 million dollar project. There are no overruns in this project.)

This is an enormous project and sometimes there are some unforeseen things, Lamont said at the State Pier. ...But youve got to keep the perspective. I think this is transformative for our state and this region.

New London, Ct. - 05/03/2021 - The New London State Pier is being improved to accommodate wind turbine generator staging and assembly. Photograph by Mark Mirko | mmirko@courant.com (Mark Mirko/Mark Mirko)

Eliza Fawcett can be reached at elfawcett@courant.com.
Alec Garza, a photographer from Houston, will be featured on the upcoming season of ABCs The Bachelorette. The show released photos of the castmembers on their Facebook page Wednesday morning, and after a little digging, we found plenty about the Houston part of the show.

With filming of the show beginning Wednesday night, according to Reality Steve, Garza deleted his Twitter account and made his Instagram private, but his YouTube channel and LinkedIn and Twitch accounts still are active.

Garza, who turned 27 in December, runs AJG Works, a photography business that appears to specialize in weddings, but the companys Instagram page shows off Garzas work for all kinds of occasions, including a Travis Scott concert.

In addition to photography, Garza, who was on the wrestling as well as speech and debate teams at Cypress Ridge High School before graduating in 2013, also was in the middle of becoming a personal trainer when he was cast on the show.

In a video on YouTube channel, which has slightly less than 1,000 subscribers, Garza also said he does some modeling, in addition to the photography and potential work as a personal trainer.

Ive gotta do a lot, Im Alec-tric; gotta keep it going, Garza says in the video.

Garza graduated with a degree in digital media and film/video production from Baylor University in 2017, according to his LinkedIn account. He also was a member of the schools Filipino Student Association.

This will be a unique season of "The Bachelorette" as there will be two leads - Gabby and Rachel, who both made it to the final three of the last season of "The Bachelor." It's unclear how it will work exactly, but Mike Fleiss, the show's creator, promises the two women won't be pitted against each other.

On last season's "The Bachelor," Houston's Lyndsey Windham was on the cast, and a couple episodes were shot in Houston.
The Jasper County Commissioners Court met for the regular session last Monday and the agenda was full of items for action. The meeting opened recognizing the founding and current members of the Beech Grove Volunteer Fire Department for their creation of Jasper Countys newest fire department. The Court acknowledged that the department was protecting the citizens of Beech Grove and passed a resolution recognizing the efforts and the Courts appreciation for assisting Jasper County during Hurricanes Laura and Delta in 2020 and recently with the severe winter weather and flooding. The Court also congratulated the Beach Grove VFD for their construction of a sub-station to serve the Dixie community.

Ronnie Beard of Evadale and his attorney, Blair Bisbey, provided proper application and order for closure of a portion of County Road 829 in Evadale. Property owners on both sides of the road agreed on the closure, which they believe will be in the areas best interest in helping to reduce vandalism, trespassing and other criminal activities. The Court approved the shortening of the county road also known as Jones Road.

Next was the County Clerks Technology Fund Plan renewal hearing presented by Debbie Newman. Newmans submitted plan included the scanning of historical records to preserve them for the future. The Court voted to approve the plan. Newman then presented to the Court the proposed early voting dates for the Nov. 2 proposition election. The dates recommended are Oct. 18 through Oct. 29. These dates, along with times and locations, will be published by the County Clerks office as the election draws near.

Jasper County Chief Deputy Scott Duncan followed with a report that the Sheriffs Office is still in discussions with Southern Health Partners, who currently provides the inmate medical services for the Jasper County Jail. He reported that an agreement should be completed in the next couple of weeks. In a related matter the Court voted to temporarily extend the existing services contract allowing time for the new agreement negotiations and it being approved. Duncan then addressed the compensatory overtime for Sheriffs Office employees which are paid out of the Prisoner Reimbursement Fund. The Court voted to payoff the overtime from the fund in the amount of $44,865.67. Duncan gave the monthly jail report that $32,860.00 was invoiced to Newton, Sabine and Tyler Counties and that currently additional inmates from Nacogdoches County are being housed in Jasper to assist with overflow from other facilities.

Emergency Management Coordinator Billy Ted Smith requested a renewal of Jasper Countys contract with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) to allow the state agency access to work out of the Jasper County Emergency Operations Center (JCEOC) during disaster events like hurricanes and floods. The Court recognized that having a TCEQ representative present in the JCEOC assisting during events was advantageous to the protection of first responders and in the overall recovery from a disaster event. The Court voted to approve the renewal.

In other emergency management business, the Court approved the acceptance of a $10,000 donation from the WestRock Paper Mill in Evadale and a $1,000 donation from the Jasper-Newton Electric Cooperative. Both donations are to improve agency operations when they are needed. The Court thanked both for being active in the community and their regular contributions to programs that improve the safety and quality of life for families in Jasper County. Commissioners approved the extension of Jasper Countys COVID-19 Declaration of Disaster allowing continued monitoring, contract tracing and vaccinations in the event of increases in the number of active positive cases.

Gulf Coast Construction of Jasper was awarded the contract for road and drainage improvements on County Roads 741, 742, 743, 788, 814 and 815 in Precinct 4 in south Jasper County. The contract amount is $238,958.87 and Precinct 4 commissioner Vance Moss advised that the projects would begin in the next few weeks. The Court authorized the engineering firm of Goodwin-Lasiter-Strong out of Lufkin to publish bids for a major water supply improvement project at the Harrisburg Water Supply Corporation. The project will involve a mew ground water storage tank and the rehabilitation of existing infrastructure. This project will improve water quality for citizens from this system that was established in 1964. Funding for this project will come through the Texas Department of Agriculture Community Development Block Grants. The Court obtained this grant to assist water and sewer projects within Jasper County.

Approval was granted on an updated contract for Grantworks Inc., for the administration of the Hurricane Harvey Community Development Block Grant program of the Texas General Land Office. This grant is for the floodplain buyout and acquisition grant. These funds can be used to purchase homes from individuals that live in homes that are in flood-prone areas. The Court authorized county auditor Mellisa Smith to initiate procurement by publishing requests for proposals and qualifications for professional services for the American Rescue Plan Act of 2020. This is a federal grant program that Jasper County expects to receive $6.89 million.

Commissioners reappointed Brent Meaux, Molly Thacker and Randal Daily to another term on the Jasper County Economic Development District No. 1 Board of Directors. Precinct 1 commissioner Seth Martindale advised that all three were willing to serve an additional term. The Court thanked the district for their efforts to promote tourism and improve the quality of life for citizens in their district.

Discussion then moved to a new Sub-Courthouse Annex in Precinct 3. Jasper County owns property that is suitable for construction of the proposed facility. The Court appointed county Judge Mark Allen Precinct 3 Commissioner, Willy Stark and Precinct 3 Justice of the Peace and Mike Smith to a project development committee. They are charged with determining the need for a new facility, possible additional offices and services and the possible sale or transfer of the current Sub-Courthouse Annex in Kirbyville after the completion of a new facility. This project will utilize grants and existing funds so that no debt is incurred by the county.

The Court voted to establish criteria for any proposed redistricting of political boundaries when the 2020 US census numbers are finalized and adopted. Voter approval rate must be calculated in a manner provided for a special taxing unit for any upcoming budget process. The Court then entered a budget workshop for the Fiscal Year 2022. No additional requests were made from any of the County departments. Allen closed the meeting presenting the monthly civil and criminal fee reports on behalf of District Clerk Rosa Norsworthy, who was assisting the District Court and the District Attorney with grand jury selection.
Jefferson County leadership is hoping to use new state funding to complete up to $2 million in local drainage projects.

Last week, the Texas General Land Office opened applications for a disaster recovery grant competition, which will award $81 million in federal dollars to eligible government agencies. Jefferson County is eligible as a result of Tropical Depression Imelda.

(Drainage is) Jefferson Countys biggest concern now, given our history, said County Judge Jeff Branick. Our main aim, where we could spend virtually every dime, is going to be in flood control and drainage.

Related: Something worth staying for Beaumont sees first GLO Imelda rebuild

According to GLOs Director of Communications Brittany Eck, $61.43 million is available statewide for the 2019 disasters. Successful applications will be those that use at least 70% of funds to improve infrastructure in a low-to-moderate-income area, she said.

Each applicant may submit a total of two applications, whether applying lone or jointly, Eck said. Each application must have a total proposed cost between $250,000 to $1 million.

The county is expecting to meet with area drainage districts to get more information on priorities before submitting its applications in May.

Any kind of mitigation money - we're going to try to focus it on drainage, Swain said.  If you could solve some of the drainage issues, then that helps a larger group than elevating (or) buying out an individual home.

Related: State-funded affordable apartments open in west Beaumont

According to Branick, Drainage District 6, which covers the northern part of Jefferson County, is especially interested in applying for money to divert water from Beaumont and Taylors Bayou into the Neches River, which has more capacity for excess precipitation. There also are ditches and detention areas that DD6 wants to focus on.

They have a priority list, Branick said. What's most important? What project is going to do the most to benefit the biggest number of households and businesses?

Related: Jefferson Co. moves forward on Taylors Bayou bridge construction

All involved are hoping to get as much funding as possible to improve the local area. Applications are due by August 1. Jefferson County is one of 10 counties eligible for the funds.

Every time there's a funding opportunity, we dip our toes in that water, said attorney and Branicks executive assistant, Fred Jackson. Nothing slips by us.

rachel.kersey@beaumontenterprise.com

twitter.com/ontheREKord
Fran Ruchalski, The Enterprise / The Enterprise

A Port Arthur teenager accused of killing a police officer in a 2020 vehicle crash will go to trial soon.

The Jefferson County District Attorneys Office told The Enterprise that Luis Fernando Torres will be set for a docket call on April 18 and jury selection on April 19.
As talk of a third world war and nuclear escalation percolate to the surface, its imperative that Americans take this discussion seriously. We have been sleepwalking a path toward escalation over the war in Ukraine, and we need to immediately find an exit ramp that all parties find mutually beneficial.

To promote de-escalation, the U.S. must encourage and accelerate negotiation between Russia and Ukraine though neither the U.S. nor our allies seem to be doing that. Nonetheless, the United States can help to pave a path toward peace and de-escalation without intervening directly by helping to build a framework for postwar peace and security in and around Ukraine.

Advertisement

Now that Russian President Vladimir Putin has demanded a neutral Ukraine and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has demanded real security guarantees, the door is open for the U.S. to help provide those real guarantees of lasting security and neutrality via the worlds peacekeeping institution  the United Nations.

How? A postwar Ukraine that is neutral, secure and independent would be free from any foreign military intervention  from Russia, the U.S., or any other power. The U.N. can effectively guarantee that no superpower would ever intervene in Ukraine in the future by tying permanent membership on the U.N. Security Council to Ukraines ongoing autonomy.

Advertisement

Under such a postwar arrangement, any permanent member of the U.N. Security Council that deploys force in Ukraine without U.N. approval would automatically forfeit its permanent seat on the Council. It would be unwise and politically impossible to apply this policy retroactively, in a punitive attempt to force Russia off the Council today, but such an arrangement could help hold together a postwar peace.

The U.S. can and therefore should encourage all parties to pursue these changes to the U.N. Security Council as part of a peace deal. Only five nations  China, France, Russia, the U.K. and the U.S.  have a permanent seat on the Security Council and the resulting authority to veto any U.N. resolution, making these positions among the most powerful in the world. Requiring each permanent member to wager its position on its ability not to use force in Ukraine should therefore inspire mutual confidence that none will ever do so.

Opinion Weekly Perspective on the week's biggest stories from the Courant's Opinion page >

Further, the U.N. has clear authority to adopt such a resolution given the precedent set when the U.N. revoked Taiwans permanent seat on the Security Council, as well as its representation in the U.N. as a whole, in 1971. So with Russian, Ukrainian and American support, the U.N. would almost surely be able to adopt a resolution linking permanent membership on the Security Council to Ukraines neutrality.

Ironically, though, Russia is the only nation that stands to oppose this measure despite proposing the initial idea itself, as Russia is the only permanent member of the Security Council to have deployed force in Ukraine during the U.N.s nearly 80 years of existence. Still, this arrangement could become a critical element of a path toward peace as both sides have signaled willingness to support a neutral Ukraine. This outcome therefore seems highly desirable to Americans, Russians and Ukrainians.

This proposal alone is independent of the other aspects of a peace deal such as the fate of Crimea and the Donbas as well as Ukrainian membership to the European Union (E.U.) as this proposal addresses postwar security concerns alone. This proposal alone cannot bring peace to Ukraine, but it can help the U.S. to accelerate progress toward peaceful reconciliation by helping to build a mutually beneficial framework for neutrality in postwar Ukraine that is backed by fundamental changes to the U.N. Security Council.

Meanwhile, on the questions of E.U. membership and territory, the same strategy applies: The U.S. should help Ukraine respond to Russian demands by outmaneuvering them ideologically and politically. We must rely on our wit and free thinking as force alone was not sufficient to avert this crisis.

Its in the best interest not just of Ukraine and the U.S., but also of Russia and the E.U., to find a foundation for peace and to build upon that foundation with vigor. From the hope that we may yet avert further catastrophe, I have proposed one idea that might be able to form a foundation for mutual understanding and eventually peace.

If we are unable to secure such a peace, the fight for the future Ukraine may begin anew.

Advertisement

Samuel Teixeira was born in New London and graduated from the University of Virginia in 2015 with a BA in government. He is the founder of the Liberal Peace Initiative and is currently based in Spain.
Unidentified men carry knives and slingshots as they walk past a burning house in Gawdu Tharya village near Maungdaw in Rakhine state in northern Myanmar, Sept. 7, 2017.

On 21 March 2022, U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken made a formal determination that Myanmars military committed genocide against the Rohingya population in 2017. He described the attacks as widespread and systematic, with a clear and premeditated intention to destroy the Rohingya population. This went beyond the U.S. governments previous findings that the military had committed ethnic cleansing in the process of driving over 740,000 Rohingya across the border into neighboring Bangladesh.

The determination comes five years after the fact, in a case that was broadcast in real time, and documented by human rights observers who were able to use commercial satellite imagery to prove that entire villages had been razed. Interviews of refugee women found so much rape and gang rape that it could only have been official government policy.

The determination has no immediate legal impact on Myanmars military, which in February 2021 staged a coup detat and ousted the democratically elected government that a few months before had shielded the military, defending its actions before the International Court of Justice.

But the designation does have other important policy ramifications.

Does it obligate the United States to do anything?

In a legal sense, the designation is nothing more than symbolic, which begs the question why it could not have been made sooner. It does not commit the United States to do anything, including increasing aid and support for third country resettlement of the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh.

The United States will provide the original ICJ plaintiff, The Gambia, an additional $1 million to continue their lawsuit. More importantly, it will provide The Gambia with the documents and evidence that it used to make the determination, which could be important if they then move to refer the case to the International Criminal Court.

The designation comes just over a year into the Biden administration, which wants to draw a clear distinction from its predecessor and reinforce the governments commitment to human rights and democratic values.

Myanmars military junta has been in power now for almost 14 months. In that period, they have killed over 1,700 people and arrested 13,000. The army has waged an all-out war against its population, razing thousands of homes.

As Blinken noted: Since the coup, we have seen the Burmese military use many of the same tactics. Only now the military is targeting anyone in Burma it sees as opposing or undermining its repressive rule.

Coming on the heels of Russias illegal invasion of Ukraine, the genocide declaration signals a change in the U.S. resolve to stand up to aggressive authoritarian regimes. Not imposing costs early on only emboldens further aggression.

The Tatmadaw got away with genocide in 2017 with nothing more than diplomatic opprobrium, which emboldened it to stage the coup detat in February 2021. Likewise, the Russian invasion of Crimea in the Donbas in 2014 went unanswered, and emboldened President Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine in 2022.

Myanmar soldiers walk down a street during a protest against the military coup in Yangon, Feb. 28, 2021. (Reuters)

What does it mean for the Rohingya?

For the Rohingya, it is a validation, and an important acknowledgement of the wrongs committed against them. It will increase expectations that perpetrators will eventually be held accountable. This has to be a real morale boost for the beleaguered population.

The designation doesnt have any immediate impact on the more than 900,000 refugees living in Bangladesh. But it does pave a way for them to assert their rights to return home when conditions allow them to return with safety and legal protections.

Obviously the ruling matters for Bangladesh, which seeks the soonest possible repatriation of the refugees.

Will it influence the international community?

The designation could help usher in a necessary new wave of sanctions on Myanmars junta. While U.S. sanctions against Naypyidaw thus far have been more encompassing than anyone elses, they have not put sufficient pressure on the military. A new round of sanctions could target the banking system, more cronies of the military leadership, and the Ministry of Oil and Gas Enterprise.

Notably, Blinken referenced an arms ban twice in his speech, though it is unlikely that China or Russia would allow the U.N. Security Council to impose one. Perhaps, it will help galvanize support for a ban on jet fuel.

The designation is perhaps an opportunity to pull Japan, Australia, Singapore, and South Korea all of whom who were quick to sanction Russia, but have resisted sanctioning Myanmar  on board. It also creates a moral imperative for corporations to cut their business ties to Myanmar, in general, and with military-backed corporations, in particular. Shareholders may turn a blind eye to a forcible change in government; genocide is a whole other matter.

The designation is also an important gesture to Indonesia and Malaysia, who both led ASEANs condemnation of the junta and took in substantial numbers of refugees. The plight of the Rohingya is an issue the public in both countries cares about.

Both Jakarta and Putrajaya continue to condemn the juntas failure to implement the Five Point Consensus, ASEANs road map for restoring democracy in Myanmar. The genocide designation gives them and other like-minded states another tool to prevent Cambodia from using its position as the groups chair to fully embrace the junta.

Fleeing persecution in Myanmar, Rohingya Muslims carry their young children and belongings after crossing the border from Myanmar into Bangladesh, Nov. 1, 2017. [AP]

What does it mean for Myanmar?

The designation does have some impact on the worsening quagmire in Myanmar.

First, its important to note the difference in positions on the U.S. designation: one by a responsible stakeholder, the other by a pariah.

The opposition National Unity Government welcomed the designation and reiterated its policy on the Rohingya, committing itself to the safe, voluntary, dignified, and sustainable return of the Rohingya refugees and internally displaced persons, and to comprehensive legislative and policy reform in support of citizenship, equality in rights and opportunity, and justice and reparations.

This reinforces the NUGs commitment to establishing a federal democracy and further legitimizes them. The NUG had previously dropped its objection to the ICJ case moving forward and pledged cooperation with the court.

Unsurprisingly, the juntas statement was dismissive, a blanket denial of any genocidal actions that accused the United States of interfering in the internal affairs of a sovereign state. They remain impervious to international criticism.

But does it have any bearing in terms of an off-ramp for the conflict?

On the one hand, it will convince Min Aung Hlaing and the other junta leaders that they need to prevail to escape accountability. Things just got more existential for them and they are likely to escalate the violence.

More importantly, they will message this through the ranks, in order to stave off more defections from their depleting forces: we hang together, or we hang separately.

On the other hand, it could convince more officers to cut their losses and defect. The costs of being tied to a regime that is committing atrocities against an unarmed civilian population, while decimating the economy, is already causing plummeting morale and defections. The U.S. determination could help in that calculus. If the officers are looking for yet one more reason to sever ties to the senior military leadership, this could be it, even if they themselves willingly participated in and supported the operation against the Rohingya.

Zachary Abuza is a professor at the National War College in Washington and an adjunct at Georgetown University. The views expressed here are his own and do not reflect the position of the U.S. Department of Defense, the National War College, Georgetown University or BenarNews.
Rohingya siblings fleeing violence hold one another as they cross the Naf River along the Bangladesh-Myanmar border near Coxs Bazar, Bangladesh, Nov. 1, 2017.

Citizens of Myanmar are applauding the Biden administrations recognition of their militarys 2017 crackdown on the Rohingya minority as a genocide but questioned the timing and whether it will lead to concrete action against the junta amid human rights abuses.

Antony Blinken, the U.S. secretary of state, announced Monday that American investigators had determined the Burmese military was responsible for atrocities including mass killings, gang rapes, mutilations, crucifixions, and the burning and drowning of children during its offensive in Rakhine state. Such acts constituted genocide under U.N. definitions, he said.

Thousands of people died during the offensive, which forced an exodus of about than 740,000 people to neighboring Bangladesh and followed a 2016 crackdown that drove out more than 90,000 Rohingya from Rakhine.

In a statement, the juntas Ministry of Foreign affairs rejected the designation as far from reality and dismissed Blinkens comments as politically motivated and tantamount to interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign state.

The announcement also drew scorn from pro-military voices in Myanmar, including outspoken nationalist blogger Kyaw Swar, who slammed the U.S. in a post on the social media platform Telegram.

We killed them. What can you do about it, he wrote, suggesting that Washington be quiet and concentrate on dealing with Russia following its invasion of Ukraine.

Others welcomed the decision and called on Washington to take further action against the military, which has killed at least 1,687 civilians and jailed 9,773 others since seizing power in a Feb. 1, 2021, coup.

Win Aung, a resident of the commercial capital Yangon, told the Myanmar Service of Radio Free Asia (RFA) that he was pleased by the U.S. announcement, but said it was long overdue. BenarNews is a unit of RFA.

These Rakhine state massacres were not the only ones committed by this army. Many have occurred in other ethnic areas as well, he said.

Rohingya refugees walk along a path at the Kutupalong refugee camp in Ukhia, Bangladesh, Aug. 25, 2021. [AFP]

The junta is embroiled in multiple conflicts with armed ethnic groups and prodemocracy paramilitaries in Myanmars border regions, and reports have emerged of troops torturing, raping and killing civilians.

But while Western governments have ostracized and sanctioned the military regime, Win Aung said the junta was unlikely to step down without a fight.

The whole world is now waiting to see what the U.S. will do, he said. Regardless of timing, I think this announcement will have an impact somehow. Especially at a time when the ICJ [International Court of Justice] is looking into the issue. I think it will hurt the juntas defense at the ICJ genocide hearing.

In a case brought before The Hague-based ICJ, Gambia has accused Myanmars military leadership of violating the 1948 Genocide Convention in Rohingya areas. The court is holding hearings to determine whether it has jurisdiction to judge if atrocities committed there constituted a genocide.

Su Myat, a young woman from Yangon, called the U.S. declaration the right thing to do.

But she said that the announcement should have been made long ago because this kind of brutality has not only been directed against the Rohingya.

They have committed many crimes everywhere, but these crimes only surfaced after the Rohingyas had their turn and thats because [they were documented using] modern technology, she said, noting that members of the Kachin and Kayin ethnic groups have leveled similar accusations of atrocities by the military.

Call for further action

Prior to Monday, the U.S. government had described the crackdown in Rakhine state as ethnic cleansing  not using the genocide designation, which carries more legal weight and which the Genocide Convention defines as acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.

The new designation marks the eighth by the State Department since the Cold War, following its recognition of genocides in Bosnia (1993), Rwanda (1994), Iraq (1995), Darfur (2004) and areas under the control of the Islamic State extremist group (2016 and 2017), according to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, where Blinken delivered his announcement.

Htet Myat Aung, a young man from Mandalay, said that the U.S. governments declaration should mark the first step in a series of more significant and effective actions.

All our people welcome the declaration of a genocide. But we hope to see more tangible and meaningful initiatives, he said.

People are now realizing that if the military can commit atrocities in cities like Yangon and Mandalay, where we have access to the internet and media, it must have been very bad in the remote areas where the Rohingya lived. Now we can sympathize with them and  wed like to see more action on this issue.

Htet Myat Aung said that while junta leaders may think that they can elude accountability by ignoring the international community, they will have to pay for their crimes.

Hope for the future

Myanmar, a country of 54 million people about the size of France, recognizes 135 official ethnic groups, with Burmans accounting for about 68 percent of the population.

The Rohingya, whose ethnicity is not recognized by the government, have faced decades of discrimination in Myanmar and are effectively stateless. They have been denied citizenship. Burmese administrations have refused to call them Rohingya and instead use the term Bengali.

The atrocities against the Rohingya were committed during the tenure of the civilian government of Aung San Suu Kyi, who in December 2019 defended the military against allegations of genocide at the ICJ. The Nobel Peace Prize laureate and one-time democracy icon now languishes in prison  toppled by the same military in last years coup.

A Rohingya named Hla Kyaw, who has lived in Thei-Chaung Muslim refugee camp in Sittwe since the 2016 and 2017 crackdowns, told RFA that he was saddened by the losses endured by his ethnic group as well as by people throughout the country.

There are laws in Myanmar, but the laws have been ignored, he said. This should not have happened. We hope that we will enjoy freedom in the future and that life will improve for our children.

This reported was produced by Radio Free Asia.
Russian President Vladimir Putin sits in front of a screen displaying Chinese President Xi Jinping as he attends a G-20 summit via a video link at his residence outside Moscow, Oct. 31, 2021.

President Vladimir Putin plans to attend the G-20 summit in Bali in October, Russias ambassador to Indonesia said Wednesday, amid reports of attempts by Western governments to oust Moscow from the group over its invasion of Ukraine.

Beijing meanwhile backed Moscow on the matter, with a foreign ministry spokesman saying that no member of the Group of Twenty leading economies had the right to strip another of its membership.

Putins attendance at the G-20 summit in Bali would depend on many things, including the COVID situation that is getting better, Russian Ambassador Lyudmila Vorobieva said.

So far, his intention is, he wants to come [to the G-20 summit], she told a news conference in Jakarta, when asked about the prospect of Russia being booted from the group.

The envoy acknowledged that many international organizations are trying to expel Russia, including the World Trade Organization (WTO), and said the Wests reaction to its invasion of Ukraine was disproportionate.

Vorobieva said the G-20 was not the right platform to discuss the conflict in Ukraine.

The expulsion of Russia from this kind of economic forum will not help economic problems to be resolved. On the contrary, without Russia, it would be difficult to do so, she said.

We really hope that the Indonesian government will not give in to  pressure that is being applied not only to Indonesia but also so many countries in the world by the West, she added.

Ukraine earlier this month urged Indonesia, this years president of the G-20, to include discussions on the invasion during the upcoming summit in Bali.

But Teuku Faizasyah, spokesman for Indonesias Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said that Indonesias stance was that the G-20 forum should focus on global economic issues.

The G-20 was formed as a premier forum for economic issues, he told BenarNews last week.

Vorobievas made her remarks a day after the top U.S. national security official indicated that Washington would lead an effort to put pressure on Russia to be excluded from international forums over its invasion of Ukraine.

On the question of the G-20, I will just say this: We believe that it cannot be business as usual for Russia in international institutions and in the international community, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said Tuesday.

As for particular institutions and particular decisions, wed like to consult with our allies, consult with our partners in those institutions before making any further pronouncements, he said.

In March 2014, the United States and other powers indefinitely suspended Russias membership in the G-8 after Moscow annexed Crimea; In 2017, Russia permanently withdrew from the grouping.

On Wednesday, U.S. President Joe Biden was heading to Brussels to participate in the summits of NATO, the G-7 and the European Union where he plans to send a powerful message that we are prepared and committed to Ukraine for as long as it takes, Sullivan said.

He also said Biden would consult with NATO on Chinas ties to Russia and the question of Beijings potential participation in the conflict in Ukraine.

The administration is worried Beijing will provide economic or military help to Moscow, Sullivan said.

True multilateralism

China, meanwhile on Wednesday, claimed that Russia could not be kicked out of the G-20.

The G-20 is the premier forum for international economic cooperation. It brings together major economies in the world, including Russia, which is an important member of the group, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told reporters.

No member has the right to strip another member of its membership.  [The G-20] should practice true multilateralism 

For its part, Indonesia had voted for a U.N. General Assembly resolution that condemned Moscows military strike on Ukraine. But, at the same time, Jakarta has not directly criticized Russia or used the word invasion.

After Moscow launched the invasion on Feb. 24, President Joko Jokowi Widodo posted on Twitter  without referring to Russia or Ukraine: Stop the war. War brings misery to mankind and puts the whole world at risk.

Hikmahanto Juwana, a professor in international law at the University of Indonesia, said Western members of the G-20 may boycott the Bali summit if Putin attends.

[T]hey definitely dont want to be there if Russia attends. Australia just said they wont attend if Russia does, Hikmahanto told BenarNews.

The absence of other member countries will undermine Indonesias credibility, he said.

According to Hikmahanto, Russias expressed intention to attend the summit was intended to forestall American participation.

Now Russia is playing chess, making such a statement so that America wont attend. This spells failure for the G-20, he said.

Teuku Rezasyah, a lecturer in international relations at Padjadjaran University in Bandung, said Putin should be allowed to attend the summit, even it means risking a boycott.

Everyone wants to hear what Putin has to say because right now he is the center of global attention, he said.
Masked protesters march during a rally to commemorate the 49th anniversary of the New Peoples Army, the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines, near the Malacanang presidential palace in Manila, March 21, 2018.

Communist insurgents in the Philippines alleged Wednesday that search engine firm Google had wiped out their email accounts at Washingtons behest as part of the U.S. governments efforts to deny space for insurgent groups.

This came on the same day Manila admitted that it might fail to meet a self-imposed deadline to end the communist rebellion before President Rodrigo Dutertes one and only term ends in June.

Google has purged all our email accounts from its servers in line with the U.S. governments drive to deny space for anti-imperialist dissent on the internet, said Marco Valbuena, chief spokesman for the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), in a Twitter post.

Spokespeople for Google Philippines and the U.S. embassy in Manila did not immediately respond to BenarNews requests for comment.

The Philippine government has intensified its crackdown on the communist party, its military wing, and left-leaning groups of late.

On Wednesday, Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said the military and defense establishments could miss a self-imposed deadline.

Speaking at the Armys 125th founding anniversary, Lorenzana said Duterte had promised to crush the insurgents before leaving office after the May 9 general election.

So we worked hard, crafted the EO [Executive Order 70] that gave birth to the NTF-ELCAC [National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict], which is actually the best campaign plan or method that we have devised for a long time, Lorenzana said.

Because of the anti-communist task force, Lorenzana said we are closer to ending the New Peoples Army (NPA), the military wing of the CPP. The task force headed by Duterte includes members of the defense establishment and leaders of government agencies and was supposed to deal with the insurgency by addressing poverty, a factor fueling the rebellion.

Up until three months ago, at the start of this year, we were hoping that we could finish the job. Its a tall order because the enemy is deeply embedded in all sectors of society, Lorenzana said.

And it takes a little more, more time to neutralize them, Lorenzana said.

The New Peoples Army has been waging one of Asias longest-running insurgencies that dates back to 1969. The NPAs strength is estimated at about 5,000 fighters nationwide, down from at least 20,000 at its peak in the 1980s.

Manila has also labeled exiled CPP founder Jose Maria Sison, a former university professor of Duterte, as a designated terrorist.

In January, the government branded 16 left-leaning groups as terrorist organizations, claiming they funnel money to communist insurgents. These groups were alleged allies of the National Democratic Front, the CPPs political wing.

Duterte, a self-proclaimed leftist who once called these groups his allies, tried to engage the insurgents in talks after winning the presidency in 2016. Those negotiations fell through with both sides accusing each other of continuing attacks despite talks.

During a command conference in January 2021, then-military chief Gen. Gilbert Gapay directed military commanders to dismantle all 54 NPA guerilla fronts by the end of 2021.

Now, the military said the NPA has about 41 guerilla fronts throughout the country with 2,500 fighters. The NPA, meanwhile, claims to have doubled that number of armed fighters and many others helping its cause.

From Jan. 1 to March 17, the military has either killed or captured 61 rebels while 1,417 rebels and supporters have surrendered, Col. Jorry Baclor, the militarys chief spokesman told reporters on Wednesday. He said 365 firearms were seized or surrendered during the same period.

Sustain your fervor in serving the Filipino people with passion and dedication. Your commitment will be critical in the next few months as the term of the president, President Duterte, is coming to an end. That is June 30 of this year, Lorenzana told the troops.

Froilan Gallardo and Richel V. Umel in Cotabato, Philippines, contributed to this report.
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen (center), reviews an honor guard with his Japanese counterpart, Fumio Kishida at Peace Palace in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, March 20, 2022.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida visited Cambodia over the weekend to lobby for regional solutions to the South China Sea disputes, potentially diluting Beijings influence in Phnom Penh.

This was his first bilateral foreign trip since taking office in October 2021.

Cambodia is the current chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nation (ASEAN) and has close relationship with both Japan and China.

China claims historical rights to most of the sea but those claims are rejected by neighboring countries including some ASEAN members. An international tribunal in 2016 also rejected the legal basis of Chinas sweeping claims.

Although Cambodia and Japan are not claimant states in the South China Sea, these two countries pay important roles in mediating the South China Sea disputes, said Kimkong Heng, visiting senior research fellow at the Cambodia Development Center (CDC).

This year Cambodia chairs ASEAN so the country is in a good position to be a mediator for regional issues and challenges such as the Myanmar crisis and the South China Sea issues, Heng said.

Last week, before Kishida arrived in Phnom Penh, two Japanese naval ships spent three days at Cambodias southern port city of Sihanoukville and conducted a joint exercise with the Royal Cambodian Navy.

The Japanese crew also visited the Ream Naval Base where the United States alleges that Cambodia has granted exclusive utilization access to the Chinese military to part of the base. Cambodia has repeatedly denied the allegation.

A spokeswoman at the U.S. Embassy in Phnom Penh last week told Radio Free Asia (RFA), a sister entity of BenarNews last week that Washington is still concerned about the intended use of the naval facility.

The U.S. government has long expressed concerns that the Government of Cambodia has not been fully transparent about the intent, nature, and scope of the Ream project or the role the PRC (Peoples Republic of China) military is playing in its construction, spokeswoman Stephanie Arzate said.

The Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force makes a port call at Sihanoukville, Cambodia March 15, 2022. [Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force]

Influencing China

A joint statement issued after Prime Minister Kishidas visit said the leaders of Japan and Cambodia reaffirmed the importance of sustaining peace, security, safety, freedom of navigation in and overflight above the South China Sea, as well as non-militarization and peaceful resolution of disputes in accordance with international law, including the 1982 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea.

Kishida on Tuesday tweeted that he confirmed with his counterpart that any attempt to unilaterally change the status quo by force cannot be tolerated in any region of the world.

We were also in agreement that precisely because of this situation it is imperative that we further promote efforts to realize a free and open Indo-Pacific, the prime minister said, referring to the concept initiated by the U.S. and its allies.

Stephen Nagy, senior associate professor at the Department of Politics and International Studies, International Christian University in Tokyo, said Japan prioritizes maintaining stability and a rules-based approach to governing the South China Sea as its sea lanes are critical arteries for the Japanese economy.

Sovinda Po, a research fellow at the Cambodian Institute for Cooperation and Peace, said Japan has a broader strategic interest in areas surrounding the South China Sea, including the East China Sea, where it has a territorial dispute of its own with China.

The way in which ASEAN under Cambodias chairmanship deals with China on the South China Sea issue will determine the way in which China will respond. There are some concerns that if ASEAN goes soft with China, then China will further expand beyond the South China Sea, Po said.

But Nagy said that Kishida will be challenged to get Cambodia to support Japans position. He said Cambodias close partnership with China continues to be strong and Phnom Penhs relationship with Beijing is not easily influenced.

During Cambodias last chairmanship of ASEAN in 2012, the 10-member bloc, which makes decisions by consensus, failed to issue a joint statement for the first time in its history, reportedly over Cambodian resistance to language about the South China Sea.

Tricky task

Tokyo nevertheless also has some leverage in dealing with Phnom Penh, being the latters long-time ally and donor. The two countries established diplomatic relations in 1953.

From 1991 to 2017, Japan provided Cambodia with grants totaling 201.5 billion yen (U.S. $1.66 billion), according to the Japanese Foreign Ministry. It also provided technical cooperation funds valued at 86.3 billion yen ($712.5 million) and a loan of 140.3 billion yen ($1.16 billion) during the same period.

A Cambodian Buddhist nun is framed by Japans flag and her national flag as she listens to Prime Minister Hun Sen during a ceremony outside of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, March 13, 2018. [AP]

Most recently, Japan donated 1.3 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines to Cambodia and provided a loan of 45 billion yen ($371.5 million) to help with the Kingdoms fight against the pandemic.

Cambodia would always be willing to open up relations with Japan to get developmental aid, infrastructure and connectivity and diversify its relations in the region, Nagy at ICU said.

Analysts said Prime Minister Hun Sen, who has been ruling Cambodia since 1985, will be trying to maintain a tricky balance between a good relationship with Japan and not offending China.

Heng said for Japan its important to engage with Cambodia to ensure that Japans strategic interests are considered in ASEAN meetings regarding Southeast Asia and the wider Indo-Pacific.

Thats likely to be viewed with suspicion in Beijing.

Japan is also one of the four members of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, alongside the U.S., India and Japan. The Quad, as it is better known, is widely seen as countering Chinas weight in the region.
HARTFORD  With the state budget surplus hitting record-breaking levels, Connecticut legislators voted unanimously Wednesday to cut gasoline taxes  and talked about reducing more taxes in the future.

The immediate plan calls for temporarily suspending the gasoline excise tax of 25 cents per gallon as of April 1 as already rising prices have skyrocketed even further after Russia invaded Ukraine.

Advertisement

After a one-hour debate, the state House of Representatives voted 143-0 in favor of the bipartisan bill with 8 members absent. Hours later, the state Senate approved the measure by 33-0 after 8 p.m. Wednesday.

The bipartisan package also includes installing a one-week sales tax holiday on clothing and footwear items under $100 that starts on April 10, which is a vacation week for many public schools in advance of the Easter holiday. The same tax-free week will be held again in August for popular back-to-school sales.

Advertisement

Lawmakers will also provide free bus service for the mostly lower-income riders on the public buses, starting April 1 and lasting until the fiscal year ends on June 30. The bus rides cost about $1 to $2 each, depending where the rider is going, and the overall reduction of $8.1 million will be paid with federal stimulus funds. Last month, 2.1 million rides were taken across the state.

The package, proposed by Gov. Ned Lamont at a time when gasoline prices have been rising in an election year, generated support from both Republicans and Democrats.

Rep. Sean Scanlon, a Guilford Democrat who co-chairs the tax-writing committee, said many constituents have been hurting from the rising prices at the pump, which was an average of $4.32 per gallon Wednesday.

Our constituents did not start a war in Ukraine,' Scanlon told his colleagues on the House floor. Our constituents did not contribute to the global supply chain. ... This is a great first step that we can make to give them some affordability, some relief. ... At least were doing something.'

Regarding future gasoline prices and global events, Scanlon said, None of us know what is going to happen in the coming weeks and months.'

While some lawmakers were concerned that the tax cut might not be passed along to drivers at the pump, Scanlon said that certain lines in the eight-page bill mandate that every retailer must adhere to this and pass along the tax' cut.

The tax cut does not apply to diesel fuel, propane or home heating oil.

Since the cut is temporary, some lawmakers were concerned that the tax could go back up again by 25 cents per gallon on July 1, soon before the July 4 holiday that is known for heavy driving to beaches and vacation spots.

Advertisement

Rep. Holly Cheeseman of East Lyme, the ranking House Republican on the tax-writing committee, said she wished that the tax cuts could go deeper.

We already provide huge subsidies for buses, but if people need to get around, they need to get around,' Cheeseman said. Im frustrated that we havent included diesel.'

The tax cuts are possible partly because the state has large budget surpluses in two separate funds due to increased federal stimulus money and capital gains taxes from Wall Street increases, paid largely by millionaires and billionaires in Fairfield County.

The gasoline tax cut of $90 million will come from the once-troubled Special Transportation Fund, which now has a projected operating surplus of $381 million in the current fiscal year and a projected fund balance of more than $600 million by the end of the fiscal year. The fund has been growing because it includes money from the second part of the states two-pronged gasoline tax, known as the gross receipts tax. That tax increases as the wholesale price increases, and the tax is currently at the state-capped maximum of 26.4 cents per gallon, which has added more than $100 million to the fund.

House majority leader Jason Rojas of East Hartford said the global events are largely beyond our control, but we are not completely powerless to act.'

Besides gasoline, legislators are intending to cut car taxes and property taxes before the legislative session ends May 4.

Advertisement

More than five hours later in the Senate, transportation committee co-chairman Will Haskell of Westport rejected any thoughts of making the tax cut permanent because it would deliver a debilitating blow' to the states plans to spend millions of dollars to fix roads and bridges.

Gas prices are high, but not because of taxes,' Haskell said. Its because of [Russian leader Vladimir] Putin.'

Senate majority leader Bob Duff of Norwalk said, It has been a double hit to us, where we are coming out of this pandemic and we have seen supply changes. ... Now, were seeing a lot of demand and prices going up - and a war in Ukraine that nobody has asked for except Vladimir Putin.'

Senate Republican leader Kevin Kelly of Stratford said that inflation started increasing last year before eventually reaching a 40-year high. Numerous families who are living paycheck to paycheck will find some relief in the package, he said.

This is a start  and a thankful start,' Kelly said. There is something here for everyone.'

Senate President Pro Tem Martin Looney of New Haven, the highest-ranking senator, said it was important to take action quickly in order to provide targeted relief, including for bus riders. In some U.S. Census tracts in New Haven and other cities, more than 40% of residents do not own cars, he said.

Advertisement

While Wednesday focused on the gasoline tax, some lawmakers were also pushing to cut the highway usage tax on trucks that is scheduled to start on Jan. 1, 2023. Sen. Cathy Osten of Sprague, an influential Democratic legislator as co-chairwoman of the budget-writing committee, wants to eliminate the truck tax for those transporting agricultural commodities. Lawmakers already provided an exemption last year for trucks carrying milk because they were concerned about helping the states dairy farmers.

Republicans countered that it was ironic that House Democrats had voted strongly against two Republican amendments on June 8, 2021 that would have exempted trucks carrying agricultural commodities, supplies, livestock and machinery. Those amendments failed on party-line votes on the day that the General Assembly approved the highway use tax, which is expected to generate $90 million per year.

Joseph Sculley, the executive director of the association that represents truckers, predicted that some out-of-state trucks would dodge the tax by simply driving straight through Connecticut, leaving local drivers to pick up the tab.

We dont need a partial repeal,' Sculley told reporters. We think it should apply to nobody. Were not going to get $90 million a year.'

Christopher Keating can be reached at ckeating@courant.com
Two U.S. lawmakers are urging Thailand to drop provisions of a draft bill restricting NGOs, saying it would harm civil society and negatively impact the delivery of humanitarian assistance to neighboring Myanmar.

Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-o-chas government is seeking to pass a controversial bill regulating not-for-profit organizations in Thailand, including prohibiting groups from engaging in all activities that he says could be detrimental to national security or social harmony.

Local and international NGOs have opposed it, saying it threatens civil society work and hampers free speech.

In their letters to the Thai and U.S. governments, Sen. Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts and Sen. Jeffrey A. Merkley of Oregon said the draft, if enacted, will represent one of the most restrictive NGO laws in Asia and will have an irreversible effect on civil society in Thailand.

They urged the Thai government to revoke harmful provisions of the draft, according to a statement released on Tuesday.

The legislation also threatens to eliminate what could soon be the last available place for Burmese civil society organizations to operate, Markey and Merkley said.

We, therefore, call for an urgent, coordinated, whole-of-government approach to pressure the Thai government to drop all consideration of this dangerous law, the senators said in their letter to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, and USAID Administrator Samantha Power.

In January, Prayuths cabinet approved the draft bill in principle.

A government ministry then launched a public survey of the bill as required by the constitution. That survey ends this week and the bill will be returned to the cabinet before being forwarded to the parliament for deliberation.

The survey shows 70 percent of the respondents favor the bill. However, most of them are government agencies-related people. NGOs are not supporting this draft law, Nattacha Boonchaiinsawat, a Thai parliamentarian with the progressive Move Forward Party, told BenarNews on Wednesday.

Nattacha said the parliaments house committee on political development, mass media and civil participation, which he chairs, had invited relevant ministries and officials in November to answer concerns about how the bill would affect freedom and rights.

The Office of Council of State said it aims to counter money-laundering  but we recommended that they use the existing anti-money laundering act and not issue a blanket law like that, Nattacha said.

The foreign ministry admitted that many countries had expressed concerns regarding this bill, he said. But the government still failed to convince us why this law is needed.

Thai authorities did not respond immediately to BenarNews request for comment. Previously, government officials had said the new bill would make NGOs more transparent.

Tight leash on NGOs

According to the draft bill viewed by BenarNews, NGOs are prohibited from operating in ways that affect the governments security, affect economic security, or relations between countries, affect public order, or peoples good morals, or cause divisions within society, affect the public interest, including public safety, or affect the happy, normal existence of other persons.

Critics said those terms could be interpreted to mean any activity by any organization. Close to 1,870 NGOs issued a statement earlier this year opposing the draft, saying the administration is trying to regulate their charity work.

The International Center for Not-for-Profit Law said the draft contains heavy-handed provisions to control the NGOs activities and threatens to violate numerous aspects of international law.

The bill would regulate not only NGOs based in the country but others including from Myanmar. A military coup last year forced many organizations and activists to flee the country and take refuge in Thailand.

Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch, said the draft would have a severe negative impact on efforts to support vulnerable communities in Thailand, including thousands fleeing Myanmar.

In the hands of Prime Minister Prayuth and his quasi-military government, this law would amount to Armageddon for civil society groups and NGOs who stand up for human rights, political reform, anti-human trafficking and protection of the rights and interests of the most vulnerable groups in society, he told BenarNews on Wednesday.

The two U.S. senators also called on the governments in Washington and Bangkok to do more to address the humanitarian crisis in Myanmar and offer support to those fleeing violence.

Cross-border assistance provides a critical lifeline for these vulnerable populations, and we urge your government to work with the international community to allow for its increased flow from Thailand into Burma, including in areas not controlled by the regimes military, they wrote to Don Pramudwinai, Thailands deputy prime minister and foreign minister.

The Thai government should also allow unimpeded humanitarian access for civil society groups and the United Nations to visit the refugees in Thailand, Markey and Merkley said, adding Bangkok should use its voice as a member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations [ASEAN] to press for a resolution in Myanmar.

No more critical NGOs

Bangkok political activist Sombat Boonngamanong said the draft bill results from Prayuths discontent with NGOs frequent criticism of him.

The goal of the new draft law is to take control of the NGOs. If it is enacted, there will only be government-friendly NGOs left, Sombat, president of the Mirror Foundation, an NGO based in northern Thailand, told BenarNews.

There will be no more critical NGOs to help improve the country or offer critical views of the government.

Robertson said the passage of the law would usher in a massive, systematic crackdown on freedom of association, expression and other core civil and political rights in a way that weve not seen in Thailand in decades.

He said even those who are not forced to cease operations would have to operate in fear, as one complaint, one issue, or one tweet could start an investigation to shut them down.

The U.S. senators are right to assess this draft law as a potential game-changer that could alter the political, economic and social development landscape of Thailand for the worse, he said.
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.
Cameroon health minister awards Chinese medical workers with special medals

Xinhua) 08:51, March 23, 2022

YAOUNDE, March 22 (Xinhua) -- Cameroon's Minister of Public Health Manaouda Malachie on Tuesday awarded three workers of the Chinese medical team with medals in recognition of their outstanding work in delivering medical services to the Central African nation.

Malachie honored the workers including head of the Chinese medical team in Cameroon Tian Yuan, acupuncturist Li Yudong and interpreter Jia Fengying with the medals at the end of their medical services in the country at a ceremony held at the Gynaeco-Obstetric and Paediatric Hospital in the capital city of Yaounde.

The three workers are part of the 21st batch of the Chinese medical team to the country.

Robinson Mbu Enow, director-general of the Gynaeco-Obstetric and Paediatric Hospital, said he was "very impressed" with the work done by the Chinese medical team, stressing that they helped in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, provided free medical consultation and medicines to rural communities, and trained Cameroonian medical personnel in traditional Chinese medicine.

"The Chinese doctors worked in close collaboration with local doctors sharing their knowledge and skills," Enow said during the ceremony that was also attended by the Chinese ambassador to Cameroon.

Tian said they were honored to be decorated with the medals.

"This encourages us to work harder," he told Xinhua after the ceremony.

The mission of the 21st batch of Chinese medical team will officially come to an end in Cameroon in April.

(Web editor: Peng yukai, Liang Jun)
Kathleen Carter is at the helm of three of Amazon's delivery stations in Hampton Roads. Carter excels in logistics, which had been an industry dominated by men. (Courtesy / HANDOUT)

In just five years, Kathleen Carter worked her way up to overseeing Amazons three Hampton Roads delivery stations in Chesapeake, Norfolk and Hampton.

Advertisement

Carter has more than 1,000 Amazon employees in her chain of command and assures that more than 100,000 packages are successfully delivered throughout Hampton Roads each day.

The 30-year-old moved up the rungs quickly, including from shift manager to overnight shift manager, area manager, on-the-road team manager, operations manager and senior regional operations manager. She broke the mold to become a leader in logistics  long seen as an industry dominated by men.

Advertisement

Her daily responsibilities now include the management of site leaders and operations managers at the three local stations.

We deep dive a lot into the quality of our service to make sure were delivering at the top quality; its always continuous improvement, Carter said.

Her daily shift starts around 6:30 a.m.  with occasional evenings  and she does in-person rotations each week. Carter said she is constantly challenging and engaging her teams to meet expectations and exceed them.

Advertisement

We ensure that we processed all of the packages overnight and have them prepared and ready for a timely dispatch to our delivery service providers to get them delivered, she said.

A native of Northern Virginia, Carter graduated from Christopher Newport University in 2013 with a degree in communications before she decided to make Norfolk home. She entered the workforce as a management trainee with Enterprise Rent-A-Car.

It was quick, fast-paced and every day is different, she said. I loved that environment and I learned a ton while I was working there.

Recruited to go into supply chain and logistics for Targets distribution center, Carter said she took the opportunity because she was ready to take the risk.

I really love supply chain and logistics, she said. Its even more fast-paced.

A year later, Amazon recruited Carter to launch their logistics.

Advertisement

I didnt know Amazon was delivering their own packages. They were still pretty underground at the time, she said. I launched the first delivery station in Chesapeake. I pioneered and piloted a lot of new processes and networked really heavily.

Now, Carter is looking to continue a career in leadership with Amazon. And she has the support of women who work with her.

Jennifer Vincent, senior project manager for Amazons fleet management, met Carter when they both worked for Enterprise.

She taught me a ton and I really looked up to her as a leader, Carter said.

Now, Vincent looks up to Carter.

Advertisement

Inside Business Weekdays Business news for the Hampton Roads region >

When I met Kat, I realized there was something special in her, Vincent said.

Referring to her co-worker and friend as energetic, driven, and fearless, Vincent said she possesses a magic about her.

Shes a fabulous and infectious leader, Vincent said.

In addition to enjoying the culture at Amazon, Carter said her favorite part of the job aligns with the e-commerce giants slogan of work hard, have fun and make history.

Ive never worked as hard as I have being with this company, but its enjoyable hard work because in the middle of that youre having fun  and we really are making history, she said. Its cool to be a part of that.

Advertisement

Sandra J. Pennecke, 757-652-5836, sandra.pennecke@insidebiz.com
Greg Sukiennik has worked at all three Vermont News & Media newspapers and was their managing editor from 2017-19. He previously worked for ESPN.com, for the AP in Boston, and at The Berkshire Eagle in Pittsfield, Mass.
COVID and other issues kept Catholics from church. A look at efforts in the Berkshires to bring them back
Community News Editor / Librarian

Jeannie Maschino is community news editor and librarian for The Berkshire Eagle. She has worked for the newspaper in various capacities since 1982 and joined the newsroom in 1989.
Long lines form at booths at a job fair in 2019 at the Sandler Center for the Performing Arts. The Hampton Roads Workforce Council launched a campaign to help businesses find more workers. (Stephen M. Katz/Staff file)

Norfolk  The Hampton Roads Workforce Council has launched a campaign aimed to re-energize the regions workforce.

Lets Go to Work! launched on March 14 and is geared to help traditional job seekers, career switchers, students entering the workforce, veterans and spouses connect with businesses and employers seeking employees.

Advertisement

The effort comes at a time when job vacancies continue to increase throughout the country. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 47.4 million people voluntarily left their jobs in 2021.

In Hampton Roads, jobs in hospitality, information technology, construction, manufacturing and ship repair have experienced the highest percentage of vacancies, according to the council.

Advertisement

The campaign will use the council and Virginia Career Works programs, services, and initiatives so job seekers can easily connect with employers. The workforce council oversees the regions federally funded workforce development programs.

The HR Strong program, in partnership with the Virginia Ship Repair Association and Thomas Nelson, Tidewater and Camp community colleges, is one of those initiatives. It provides free training and hiring events for individuals interested in welding careers.

Shawn Avery, president and CEO of the Hampton Roads Workforce Council, said in a news release that the organization is well-positioned to align skilled, qualified employees with careers while helping regional businesses and organizations solve pre-pandemic challenges.

Job seekers can also attend a job fair 9 a.m. to noon April 7 at the Hampton Roads Convention Center in Hampton. For more information, visit theworkforcecouncil.org/letsgotowork.

Sandra J. Pennecke, 757-652-5836, sandra.pennecke@insidebiz.com
A strong democracy is built upon its elections, in terms of both integrity and competitiveness. That integrity is under assault nationally by 
The former Christian Science Church shown in 2014, when it was renovated for a jewelry company. On Friday, Great Barrington Dispensary, a cannabis shop, opens its doors here.
Communities in central and southeastern Massachusetts saw the highest rates of eviction cases filed in the first year after elected officials allowed a statewide moratorium to expire, according to a new Homes For All Massachusetts report.
This combination of photos shows promotional art for the films nominated for an Oscar for best picture, top row from left, "Belfast," "CODA," "Don't Look Up," "Drive My Car," and "Dune." Bottom row from left, "King Richard," "Licorice Pizza," "Nightmare Alley," "The Power of the Dog" and "West Side Story." (AP)

Myles McNutt isnt your average Oscars viewer.

Advertisement

Hes an associate professor in communication and theater arts at Old Dominion University and has a doctorate in communication arts. Known as the universitys pop culture expert, McNutt has written television criticism on his blog, Cultural Learnings, since 2007.

Myles McNutt, an associate professor in communication and theater arts at Old Dominion University, has degrees in communication arts and English. (Courtesy of Myles McNutt)

In 2009, he started writing about the fantasy HBO series Game of Thrones and gained enough attention that HBO and publisher Chronicle Books contacted him to write a book. In 2019, he published Game of Thrones: A Guide to Westeros and Beyond, The Complete Series, which focuses on the shows plot and breaks down certain characters and how they came to be.

Advertisement

At ODU, he teaches classes on the media industry, technology, reality television and even theme parks. He also talks to students about award shows, a timely topic since the 94th Academy Awards show is airing March 27. We asked him to predict who he thinks will take home Oscars.

___

Will Smith in "King Richard." (AP)

Actor in a leading role

Javier Bardem: Being the Ricardos

Benedict Cumberbatch: The Power of the Dog

Andrew Garfield: tick, tick...BOOM!

Will Smith: King Richard

Denzel Washington: The Tragedy of Macbeth

That, to me, is very clearly Will Smith. King Richard is a very showcase performance. Its well regarded. Theres a supporting nomination for Aunjanue Ellis, which gives a good indication of its support within the broader Academy. I think Will Smith is generally very well-liked and his last nominations have come for films that were almost at the wrong time with other roles that were in position.

___

This combination of photos shows Oscar nominees for best actress, from left, Jessica Chastain in "The Eyes of Tammy Faye," Olivia Colman in "The Lost Daughter," Penelope Cruz in "Parallel Mothers," Nicole Kidman in "Being the Ricardos," and Kristen Stewart in "Spencer." (AP)

Actress in a leading role

Jessica Chastain: The Eyes of Tammy Faye

Olivia Colman: The Lost Daughter

Penelope Cruz: Parallel Mothers

Nicole Kidman: Being the Ricardos

Kristen Stewart: Spencer

Nicole Kidman won a Golden Globe. She has won before. Shes well-liked in the industry. But theres two wildcards in the context of this race. One is Kristen Stewart in Spencer, a performance that got overlooked by some award shows but its been very well rewarded by the ones that havent. The fact that she got nominated at all indicates theres support. Then at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, Jessica Chastain won for The Eyes of Tammy Faye. Of the women in this category, she and Stewart are the only ones who have never won an Oscar before. I feel like that does carry weight, much like Will Smith hasnt won before. Chastain hasnt, shes well-liked, she has been nominated multiple times for various awards. Thats pretty much a toss-up. I feel like that is still a chaotic circumstance on which I would not bet anyone.

___

In "West Side Story," from left, Ilda Mason as Luz; Ariana DeBose as Anita; and Ana Isabelle as Rosalia. (Photo by Niko Tavernise/AP)

Actress in a supporting role

Jessie Buckley: The Lost Daughter

Ariana DeBose: West Side Story

Judi Dench: Belfast

Kirsten Dunst: The Power of the Dog

Aunjanue Ellis: King Richard

Theres Ariana DeBose, who is in West Side Story. She came from So You Think You Can Dance, a reality-TV-show-to-Oscar trajectory. The other is Kirsten Dunst in The Power of the Dog, which is a film that has many nominations  a front-runner for Best Picture. Kirsten Dunst has been largely overlooked over the course of her career. Theres a great narrative there, but I feel DeBoses performance is undeniable and there really might not be another place  again, Im getting into the psychology of this  for the Oscars to award West Side Story. Its a film that has many nominations, but ultimately, its not really in the front-runner position to win that many of them. I feel like the supporting actress award is an acknowledgment of film in addition to the performer, and so I would say that Ariana DeBose is the likely winner.



Troy Kotsur and Marlee Matlin in a scene from "CODA." (AP)

Actor in a supporting role

Ciaran Hinds: Belfast

Troy Kotsur: CODA

Jesse Plemons: The Power of the Dog

J.K. Simmons: Being the Ricardos

Kodi Smit-McPhee: The Power of the Dog

CODA is unlikely to compete necessarily for that many other Oscars. Troy Kotsur plays the father. He is a deaf actor. The film tells the story of a teenager whos kind of grappling with her identity and with the realities of her family and her own goals or dreams. He is fantastic in that movie alongside Oscar winner Marlee Matlin, the previous deaf individual to win an Oscar. It really feels like the race is solidified around the strength of his performance and what that means and the message that it sends. He has given some really powerful speeches along the way. I feel like hes a clear lock at this point.

Advertisement

Promotional art for the films nominated for the Oscar for best animated feature, from left, "Encanto," "Flee," "Luca," "The Mitchells vs. the Machines" and "Raya and the Last Dragon." (AP)

___

Animated feature film

Encanto: Jared Bush, Byron Howard, Yvett Merino and Clark Spencer

Flee: Jonas Poher Rasmussen, Monica Hellstrom, Signe Byrge Srensen and Charlotte de la Gournerie

Luca: Enrico Casarosa and Andrea Warren

The Mitchells vs. the Machines: Mike Rianda, Phil Lord, Christopher Miller and Kurt Albrecht

Raya and the Last Dragon: Don Hall, Carlos Lopez Estrada, Osnat Shurer and Peter Del Vecho

The easy choice here is Encanto, the Disney release that blew up on Disney+ over the holiday; the soundtrack was No. 1 on the Billboard 200 for weeks. Somehow, We Dont Talk About Bruno became a No. 1 hit single in this country, which is insane. I feel like its very much possible that Lin-Manuel Miranda, who did the music for the film, will win an Oscar for Dos Oruguitas, which would give him the coveted Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony Awards title. I think the film itself is so much in the public eye and garnered a lot of attention, so it seems like the front-runner. But many of the Critics Awards have gone to The Mitchells vs. the Machines, a Netflix release produced by Phil Lord and Chris Miller, who also produced Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which won an Oscar. Each category has its own ebbs and flows and trajectory, but I would say those are the dominant narratives in that respect, with no discredit to the others.



This combination of images released by Disney shows a seamstress working on a costume for the film "Cruella," left, and Emma Stone wearing the costume in a scene from the film. Costumes were designed by Oscar-winning designer Jenny Beavan. (Laurie Sparham/AP)

Costume design

Cruella: Jenny Beavan

Cyrano: Massimo Cantini Parrini and Jacqueline Durran

Dune: Jacqueline West and Robert Morgan

Nightmare Alley: Luis Sequeira

West Side Story: Paul Tazewell

Every guild has its own award show before the ceremony and they always split it up into periods, so different types of costumes for different contexts. In this case, you have something like Dune, which is full science fiction, alternate worlds brought to life, versus something like Nightmare Alley, which is a period piece. Thats about how we re-create these fashions and find our take on them. Cruella, with Jenny Beavan, who previously won an Oscar for Mad Max: Fury Road, is very distinct. Its partly a film about fashion, which means theres a lot of specific looks that are chosen, but its also a period piece, kind of reimagining these Disney costumes that have their iconic position. Films about fashion often dominate in these categories, so that feels like the safer bet.

___

Lady Gaga stars as Patrizia Reggiani and Jared Leto as Paolo Gucci in Ridley Scotts "House of Gucci." (Fabio Lovino/Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures/TNS)

Makeup and hairstyling

Coming 2 America: Mike Marino, Stacey Morris and Carla Farmer

Cruella: Nadia Stacey, Naomi Donne and Julia Vernon

Dune: Donald Mowat, Love Larson and Eva von Bahr

The Eyes of Tammy Faye: Linda Dowds, Stephanie Ingram and Justin Raleigh

House of Gucci: Goran Lundstrom, Anna Carin Lock and Frederic Aspiras

Makeup and Hairstyling is often the weirdest category. Suicide Squad won this category. In the case of The Eyes of Tammy Faye, you have Jessica Chastain, Oscar-nominated for her lead performance and might be a front-runner, being transformed into a real person known for their heavy makeup. But then you have Dune, which is this sci-fi extravaganza, and then you have House of Gucci, which is just a bunch of prosthetics on Jared Leto. I think about the prosthetics versus non-circumstance. Prosthetics often are seen as the most involved. Ill say House of Gucci for the sake of argument, but it feels like a hard category to have a clear vision of given that this is a kind of labor and work we dont know that much about.

___

Advertisement

Music (original score)

Dont Look Up: Nicholas Britell

Dune: Hans Zimmer

Encanto: Germaine Franco

Germaine Franco Parallel Mothers: Alberto Iglesias

Alberto Iglesias The Power of the Dog: Jonny Greenwood

Daywatch Weekdays Start your morning with today's local news >

Jonny Greenwood, who is in the band Radiohead, has done a number of scores for Paul Thomas Anderson, including one this year for Licorice Pizza. He has, generally speaking, been really well regarded for the work he does. The score for The Power of the Dog is deeply unsettling and atmospheric and I think captures the mood of that film so effectively. He previously probably wouldve won for There Will Be Blood, but he was disqualified because theres too much existing music used. The moral of the story is I think hes due and Im hoping that they will acknowledge him.

___

Music (original song)

Be Alive from King Richard; music and lyrics by DIXSON and Beyonce Knowles-Carter

Dos Oruguitas from Encanto; music and lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda

Down to Joy from Belfast; music and lyrics by Van Morrison

No Time to Die from No Time to Die; music and lyrics by Billie Eilish and Finneas OConnell

Somehow You Do from Four Good Days; music and lyrics by Diane Warren

It really is, to me, a two-horse race. Lin-Manuel Mirandas We Dont Talk About Bruno is a huge No. 1 hit. You can hear it on the radio. If you listen to the song, it doesnt make any sense if you havent seen the movie, but hes not nominated for the song. They didnt submit it. They submitted the more sad, meaningful, emotional Dos Oruguitas, which plays a very key theme in the film and flashback. I think he has a shot, but the challenge here is that in recent years, James Bond theme songs have not lost this category. Given that fact, at this point, I would argue that No Time to Die, Billie Eilish and Finneas song that was written for that film, probably remains the default front-runner in this context. She managed to win many Grammys in unexpected circumstances and has a lot of regard in this case. But I would say Mirandas is the better narrative and the better story.

___

Promotional images for "Belfast," "CODA," Don't Look Up," Drive My Car," Dune," "King Richard," Licorice Pizza," "Nightmare Alley," "The Power of the Dog" and "West Side Story." (AP)

Best picture

Belfast: Laura Berwick, Kenneth Branagh, Becca Kovacik and Tamar Thomas, producers

CODA: Philippe Rousselet, Fabrice Gianfermi and Patrick Wachsberger, producers

Dont Look Up: Adam McKay and Kevin Messick, producers

Drive My Car: Teruhisa Yamamoto, producer

Dune: Mary Parent, Denis Villeneuve and Cale Boyter, producers

King Richard: Tim White, Trevor White and Will Smith, producers

Licorice Pizza: Sara Murphy, Adam Somner and Paul Thomas Anderson, producers

Nightmare Alley: Guillermo del Toro, J. Miles Dale and Bradley Cooper, producers

The Power of the Dog: Jane Campion, Tanya Seghatchian, Emile Sherman, Iain Canning and Roger Frappier, producers

West Side Story: Steven Spielberg and Kristie Macosko Krieger, producers

The proverbial front-runner for a long time has been The Power of the Dog. It would be Netflixs first win in Best Picture, which theyve been fighting for a long time. Jane Campion, who directed it, is likely going to win Best Director, and I think its a very traditional Oscar movie. Its always possible that narratives emerge around Best Picture. CODA, which won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Ensemble, is on the upswing. I think people liked the movie. Its very crowd-pleasing. Its definitely more accessible. Whether, based on how Oscar voting works, that film could potentially ride into that position, I think is an open question. At this moment, The Power of the Dog feels like the safer choice in terms of what we would normally expect from the Oscars.

For a full list of nominees, visit tinyurl.com/OscarNoms2022.

Advertisement

Saleen Martin, 757-446-2027, saleen.martin@pilotonline.com
GRANEGVILLE - According to the Idaho County Sheriff's Office, on May 21, 2018, a vehicle drove off the road into the Selway River in a remote area near the Paradise Guard Station. Six persons were in the vehicle and two were able to immediately make it out of the river safely. The bodies of two others were recovered in the weeks following the crash, leaving brothers Jessie and Raymond Ferrieri unaccounted for.

On August 16, 2020, a fragment of human bone was found near the Shearer airstrip. The fragment consisted of a right side upper jaw that included the lower orbit of the eye and three intact teeth. In response, three members of the Idaho County Sheriffs Office traveled to Shearer airstrip on August 18, 2020, and searched the river both upstream and downstream for several miles from where the fragment was found. The searchers were unable to find any more human remains.

On September 26, 2020, caretakers at the Selway Lodge reported that a possible portion of upper cranium had been found below the searched area. This bone fragment was determined to be human.

Both bone fragments were sent to the Idaho State Police Laboratory for DNA extraction and comparison. On March 17, 2022, ICSO investigators were advised that both bone fragments were those of Jessie Ferrieri.

The Idaho County Sheriff's Office also asks for the publics assistance as they begin recreating on the upper Selway River this year. If any unusual bones are found, citizens are asked to please secure those items and immediately notify the Sheriff's Office or Idaho County Coroner Cody Funke.
BOISE  Idahos wildland firefighters are another step closer to receiving competitive compensation on par with their federal peers and other western states.

The Idaho Senate, in a 35-0 vote, passed the bill to give state wildland firefighters hazard pay, in addition to their hourly wages. The bill passed in the House 49-19 last month.

A release from the Idaho Department of Lands says the agency has become a defacto training ground for wildland firefighters and faces extreme challenges recruiting and retaining qualified personnel. The agencys wildland firefighters engage in highly dangerous work for low pay protecting 6.2 million acres of private, state and federal land. Most are hired as temporary, seasonal employees and do not receive benefits.

Over the last two seasons, 40% of IDL wildland firefighters did not return to work for the agency. This high turnover rate, given training requirements, is costly. Those seeking careers in fire often use IDL to obtain certifications and experience, then go on to obtain permanent or higher paying jobs elsewhere.

Surrounding states and the federal government offer higher wages and benefits, including firefighter hazard differential pay equal to 25% of hourly rates while engaged in dangerous fire suppression activities.

If there is a wildfire on private land protected by IDL, federal firefighters work shoulder to shoulder with IDL firefighters. The state is required to pay hazard pay to the federal firefighter but is not allowed to pay it to its own. When IDL firefighters are dispatched to states that do provide hazard pay, they cannot receive this additional compensation due to Idahos laws.

HB588, a bill sponsored by Rep. Sage Dixon, is seeking to help level the playing field, allowing Idaho wildland firefighters to receive the same hazard pay benefit of those they work next to on a wildfire. In a recent survey 60% of IDLs wildland firefighters who indicated they would not return to work for the agency in the next season reported that if hazard pay was provided, they would stay on with IDL.

Having enough experienced wildland firefighters in place and at the ready is vital to protecting our communities, said Representative Dixon. It also protects the $2.4 billion dollar forest products industry that is important to our local and state economies.
Bill spoke with Mayor Paul Kanitra of Point Pleasant Beach, NJ, who just returned from a humanitarian mission to Poland, where he witnessed the plight of Ukrainian refugees.

Enhance your life  become a Premium Member for complete access to the No Spin News and get a FREE COPY of Killing the Killers.
A case of Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) was confirmed on a commercial stud farm in North West province.

Previous FMD-free zones affected

FMD virus in KwaZulu Natal

Farmers urged to use caution

The Provincial Veterinary Services conducted epidemiological investigations following reports and a positive laboratory result, and have confirmed the diagnosis.The farm and other linked farms have been placed under quarantine while further surveillance in the area is being conducted to determine the extent of the outbreak. A Joint Operations Commission, supported by the local Members of the Mayoral Committee for Safety and Security, and the Provincial Disaster Risk Management Committees of both Dr Kenneth Kaunda and JB Marks was established, and its first sitting was on Sunday 20 March 2022. All present at the joint operations centre (JOC) pledged their unwavering support for the control of this outbreak.It's important to note that foot and mouth disease which animals such as cattle, pigs, sheep, and goats can get - and which is also known as hoof-and-mouth disease - is different than hand, foot, and mouth disease . Because the virus that causes FMD is sensitive to stomach acid, it cannot spread to humans by means of consumption of infected meat, except in the mouth before the meat is swallowed.However, the World Organisation for Animal Health reports FMD is not readily transmissible to humans and is not a public health risk.In addition to the North West Province, an outbreak of Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) was detected in the previous FMD-free zone in Collins Chabane municipality (Vhembe) in Limpopo Province in March 2022. Infection was detected in two locations in the former FMD-free zone and involves cattle in communal grazing areas. One of the two new infected locations is in the Disease Management Area, which was declared in January 2019, and remains in place, while the other is north of it. Other locations in the area with clinical signs suggestive of FMD are under investigation.This outbreak is most likely due to spill-over from an outbreak in the adjacent FMD protection zone, which was detected in March 2021. There are permanent movement restrictions in place in the protection zone, preventing the free movement of cloven-hoofed livestock into the FMD-free zone.The affected diptanks were placed under quarantine and no cloven-hoofed animals were allowed to move from these locations.In an effort to curtail the spread of the disease, cattle were vaccinated to establish a band of resistant animals around the known positive diptanks.Based on surveillance activities conducted in the second half of 2021, it appeared at the time that the infection had come to an end. However, it resurfaced in 2022 in the former FMD-free zone.Surveillance activities in the newly affected area are underway to determine the extent of the spread of the disease both within the Direct Memory Access (DMA) and to the north of the DMA. Vaccination in the area has started in an effort to curtail further spread of the disease.In addition to the outbreak in Limpopo province, the FMD outbreak in KwaZulu Natal is still continuing and the vaccination campaign has begun.Two new affected locations have been identified. One falls just outside of the DMA in the Mthonjaneni municipality, while the other one falls some distance to the south-west of the DMA, in the uMlalazi municipality (near the Nkandla and Maphumulo muncipalities). The newly infected diptanks have been placed under quarantine, and no cloven hoofed animals are allowed to move from these locations. Clinical and serological surveillance has been intensified in the diptanks surrounding the newly infected area to determine the extent of the spread.All farmers, livestock owners, members of industry and other stakeholders are urged to abide by the movement restrictions in place in both the Limpopo and KZN DMAs, as well as to abide by the restrictions within the affected areas. These restrictions are deemed necessary to prevent the further spread of the virus out of the affected areas.All farmers, livestock owners, members of industry and other stakeholders in the rest of the country are urged to use caution when sourcing cattle, the notion of know what you are buying holds true in this instance; ensure that you know the health of the animals you are investing in and where possible, seek a health attestation from the sellers veterinarian.Livestock owners are reminded that foot and mouth disease is transmitted by moving cattle from infected premises and urge all owners not to move animals if there is a suspicion of illness. All buyers must ensure they get an attestation from the seller, confirming the health status of the animals they are buying. Should any suspicious clinical symptoms (salivation, blisters in the mouth, limping or hoof lesions) be seen, it should be reported to the local State Veterinarian immediately and such animals must not be moved under any circumstances.
Tourism Minister Lindiwe Sisulu has welcomed the decision by President Cyril Ramaphosa to scrap PCR tests for people visiting the country. President Ramaphosa made the announcement on Tuesday, 22 March 2022, that all travellers entering South Africa will need to show proof of vaccination or a negative PCR test not older than 72 hours.

Source: Andrew Donovan Valdivia via Unsplash

All unvaccinated travellers entering the country who want to be vaccinated will be offered a vaccination.According to a news report published by; earlier this month, the department of health mooted dropping pre-departure testing for the vaccinated, in a package of draft regulations intended to replace those imposed under the authority of the state of disaster. But those rules are still open for public comment, and could only become effective towards the end of April at the very earliest.Anyone who can not show they are fully vaccinated will still need to present a PCR test no older than 72 hours, President Ramaphosa said. They will also be offered vaccination, the news report adds.Commenting on the decision, Minister Sisulu says: "As we are all looking forward to a brighter year for the South African tourism sector recovery, these revised regulations are most welcome. These revisions will immediately address some challenges that travellers and the tourism industry have expressed and will make South Africa more accessible and attractive. Doing away with the requirement of a PCR test for all arrivals reduces the added cost and administrative burden to travelling.""Increasing the numbers of people attending outdoor indoor events is a major boost for leisure travel and the Business Events industry. We look forward to South Africa hosting many more physical meetings and conferences that can be held at a larger scale," continues Sisulu."This comes at an opportune time, as our plans are well underway to host Africas Travel Indaba in May, one of our signature trade shows, after a two-year absence due to the Covid-19 pandemic."South African borders are open and we are ready to welcome regional and international visitors. Our globally-benchmarked norms and standards are in place to ensure the safety of all citizens and visitors alike," Sisulu says."Now is a great time to travel for business and leisure, come and explore our beautiful country, we stand ready to welcome travellers near and far," concluded Sisulu.
Matheau Hall of Virginia Beach during his remarks to members of Norfolk City Council Tuesday evening, March 22, 2022. Hall, a cousin of Sierra Jenkins, spoke about her to the council. Jenkins was one of two people killed early Saturday in downtown Norfolk. (Bill Tiernan/The Virginian-Pilot)

norfolk  Norfolk city leaders weighed the need for short-term and long-term strategies to address gun violence at Tuesdays work session and council meeting.

Council member Courtney Doyle said she wants emergency action to ban guns from downtown bars and restaurants, as well as require businesses to close at midnight.

Advertisement

As a long-term solution, City Manager Chip Filer introduced the Newark Community Street Team, an organization that specializes in resolving community-based violence through conflict resolution and relationship-focused intervention. Filer said the team has been retained by the city to address community violence.

A memorial, as seen on Tuesday, March 22, 2022, honors Sierra Jenkins, an education reporter for The Virginian-Pilot and Daily Press, and others shot outside Chicho's Pizza Backstage in Norfolk, Va. Jenkins was one of two people killed after getting caught in the line of gunfire outside of the downtown Norfolk business on Saturday. (Kaitlin McKeown/Virginia Media)

The discussion comes after a spate of gun violence over the weekend  including a shooting outside a popular Granby Street bar in downtown Norfolk that killed two people and injured three.

Advertisement

Violence in the city is becoming a little too common, Filer said.

Aqeela Sherrills, the chairman of the Newark organization, told the council Tuesday that his group was already engaged in a landscape analysis to look at crime hotspots in the city and what is driving the violence. The initial results, he said, are already evident.

Much like the weekends fatal shooting outside Chichos Pizza Backstage, which police said stemmed from an argument over a spilled drink, much of the crime is retaliatory in nature, Sherrills said.

Something as little as tripping over a shoe or spilling a drink can lead to someone being harmed, Sherrills said. Most of the violence we see happening in communities is not between strangers.

As part of the analysis, the Newark Community Street Team meets with local government officials and area schools, as well as community members who have been impacted by violence. Their input will inform a Norfolk-specific public safety strategy.

When the team concludes its analysis, it will work with local government to invest in and support local organizations who specialize in victim services and community outreach.

Sahrah Yashaahla of Norfolk and Chloe Tamula of Norfolk as they listen to Matheau Hall of Virginia Beach speak during a meeting of the Norfolk City Council Tuesday evening, March 22, 2022. Hall, a cousin of Sierra Jenkins spoke about her to the council. Seen on the monitor In the background is Norfolk Council member Mamie Johnson who attended the meeting remotely. (Bill Tiernan/The Virginian-Pilot)

There is a conditioned response to homicide in urban communities, which is eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, Sherrills said. Violence knows no boundaries. This violence cuts across racial and economic lines. We have to have all hands on deck if we are going to be effective at reducing violence in Norfolk.

While the Newark team represents a long-term goal, Doyle said what Norfolk needs now is an immediate solution to the violence plaguing downtown.

Advertisement

We need to take downtown back. We do not have control of our downtown, Doyle said.

Doyle said she is looking into the process for submitting and voting on an emergency injunction to force downtown bars and restaurants to close at midnight.

Doyle suggested holding area businesses accountable for public safety issues that happen on their property by requiring all businesses install cameras and banning weapons in bars and restaurants.

We also need to look at all bars and restaurants downtown to make sure they are compliant with their permits and if not, we need to shut them down, Doyle said.

Chichos management said security patted down patrons entering the bar the night of the shooting and there were no altercations or other incidents inside the business that they had to handle.

Daywatch Weekdays Start your morning with today's local news >

The City Council meeting drew dozens of community members, most of whom signed up to speak about the recent gun violence.

Advertisement

Council member Thomas Smigiel said while community members may believe the City Council does not care about the violence in Norfolk, it is not that we dont care  it just that we dont know what to do.

I think the issue is, sometimes we just dont know what to do and that is why you guys are here, Smigiel said to members of the Newark Community Street Team.

Caitlyn Burchett, caitlyn.burchett@virginiamedia.com
Savanna, South Africa's favourite cider, shares a chuckle with another super brand, Nando's, to launch an innovative cider flavour, Chilled Chilli. If social media reactions are anything to go by, the Savanna and Nando's combination is a winner.

The Savanna brand is not shy to do things a little differently, so, for the launch of the brands spicy variant, Chakalaka Norris the TVC and campaigns protagonist, is the spiciest celebrity in town. How spicy? So spicy he has no qualms about tucking into a delicious and spicy Nando's chicken in a Savanna ad.Devised by WPP Liquid for client Distell, and directed by Peter Pohorsky of Plank Film Productions. South Africa has been holding out for a hero and Chakalaka Norris might just be that guy. Unless hes busy that day, explains Fran Luckin, chief creative officer, Grey Advertising Africa.Now at all major liquor outlets, the new Savanna Chilled Chilli is available in a 330ml bottle. Best served chilled, it delivers the crisp, dry premium cider experience that you know and love, with hints of chilli and gingerEasily identifiable with a hint of red on the bottle and an alcohol percentage of 5.5%, Savanna Chilled Chilli is the hottest new accessory in stores, bars and taverns across SA.#SpicyButChilled #SiyavannaSouthAfrica #StaySafeSavanna promotes responsible drinking. Not for persons under 18.For more information, follow Savannas social media channels or go to www.savanna.co.za Instagram: @savannaciderFacebook: @SavannaCiderTwitter: @SavannaCiderYouTube: SavannaCider
A New York University graduate, Mimi Kalinda has accumulated a wealth of strategic media experience across different industries, specialties, and continents. This includes her work in film (working alongside greats such as acclaimed director Spike Lee), television (notably being the first African woman to host a show on MTV Europe), traditional and digital media.

Mimi Kalinda, CEO and cofounder of Africa Communications Media Group (ACG)

When and how did Africa Communication Media Group come about?

Having travelled the continent, we understood that doing communications in Nigeria, for example, was hugely different from how we would approach South Africa, Mali, or Benin.

When you started out, what was your vision?

You've worked in film and television. How did you enter the industry?

Thats when I realised that you could use stories and media to create perceptions that lead to concrete behaviour change and action

Can you share any career highlights?

You're notably one of the first African women to host a show on MTV Europe. What was this experience like?

As an African woman who showcases leadership roles. What advice do you have for other women, based on your experiences?

Can you elaborate on the importance of storytelling in an increasingly competitive marketplace?

In business, storytelling is pivotal because it differentiates you from everyone else.

What approach should companies take when sharing their narrative?

We find out from Mimi Kalinda about her journey into storytellingAfrica Communication Media Group (ACG) started in 2015 in Johannesburg, South Africa. It was born out of the need to create a culturally attuned Pan-Africa communications company owned by Africans. After having worked in leadership roles for public relations, and strategic reputation management companies, we realised (Addis Alemayehou and I) that there was a huge gap left by a lot of companies working in our space. Many were applying a cut and paste approach and taking a blanket look at the continent.We wanted that to be reflected in the type of work and communications strategies that we developed for our clients.Our vision was to create a leading hub for Africa-centered communications both for African clients and global clients. We have become the go-to PR and strategic communications agency for anyone looking to do business in Africa and share their narrative stories, and for that, we are grateful to our amazing clients.My early career was in front of the camera, so my very first job in the media was with Channel O. I then moved on to MTV, where I was a VJ in London. The first half of my career was as a TV host. Then I transitioned into content production and I became fascinated with everything that happened behind the scenes. After graduating with a degree in Media Studies at New York University, I went on to work for HBO, Showtime, Life Time Television, Oxygen  I did everything from ad sales, to business development, and all work behind the camera and what an incredible experience this was.I then chose to become a documentary film producer because I was fascinated by how we can use films to tell impactful stories that change narratives. I worked at 40 Acres and a Mule (Spike Lees production company) and eventually moved to the DRC, where I worked on a project called Rien Que La Verite which addressed behavioural change challenges by highlighting stigma on issues such as HIV and Aids and violence against women in times of war.So, eventually I came back to South Africa and started on my journey to blend everything I learned from content production to behavioural change communications into strategic communications and PR  I eventually started my own company ACG in 2015.My career highlights include having worked as the Africa Lead for FleishmanHillard (FH), where I was in charge of the global public relations firm's engagement with its affiliates in Africa. I was part of the team that won a Prism Award for the Barclays Africa "Prosper" campaign and the African Union's Ebola campaign, which raised $51m.I also worked for Weber Shandwick, where I oversaw social impact accounts such as the Innovation Prize for Africa, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation.During the 2013 African Cup of Nations, I also worked to increase the visibility of Samsung's CSR initiatives and led content creation for the African Union's CAADP framework and Nigeria's Ministry of Agriculture.I have also worked with director Spike Lee as a production assistant on the filmfrom 2003 to 2006. During this time, I also produced and directed my first documentary,about the impact of the negative portrayal of Africa in the US news media on Africans living in the diaspora.It was an incredible experience, especially because the feed of MTV that I was presenting broadcast right back into Africa, which meant that young people back home could watch me and hopefully be inspired. Travelling all over Europe as a VJ and getting to know and understand the history of music, how music is made, and how a bands music personality is created through marketing etc, that was fascinating and very educational for me.Do not be afraid to go after what you want! I think a lot of the opportunities that I have had were based on my confidence in my ability to deliver. You have to be bold and believe in yourself. Know that what you have to give has value.Do not be afraid of change. Nobodys career is linear, there will be so many twists and turns. Be flexible enough to go with the flow and then be excellent at what you do because being excellent will get you into rooms you never even dreamed of. Make sure you work at your craft and when people look at your body of work, make sure it fully represents your brand.Imagine you are an entrepreneur and you are walking into a room full of potential funders for your idea, products or services. You pitch your idea beautifully and its a compelling proposition. You walk out of the room and somebody else walks in with the exact same idea and business plan. What is going to make a difference between the two of you?I believe the difference will be your story - what about you makes you the perfect person to execute the idea?Be deliberate. Storytelling is an investment - you spend time and resources. Telling a good story is not an easy exercise because you have to be clear about your intention, what you want your return on investment to be, who your target audience is and how you are going to reach them with your carefully crafted messages.Be consistent. Storytelling is not a once-off thing. Set clear and winnable metrics- How will you know when you have reached your objectives? Anything worth doing should be measured.
The One Club for Creativity has announced the launch of Colorful: A Prelude to Young Guns 20, and tripled the size of the grant programme to $9,000 in an aim to help young Bipoc creatives around the world advance their careers.

There is no fee to apply, and the grant is open globally to Bipoc creatives who qualify for the clubs Young Guns competition: age 30 years and under with at least two years of professional creative experience and never having won Young Guns in the past.Candidates must submit links to six projects in their portfolio, as well as a short essay and a 60-second video (phone or webcam acceptable) to introduce themselves and describe their dream project.The deadline for the free application for a Colorful grant is 15 April.A Bipoc jury of past Young Guns winners will review submissions and select one gifted entrant to receive the first-place grant of $3,000 towards a professional dream project of their choosing. Runner up will receive a $2,000 grant, and two third-place winners will each receive $1,000.In addition, all Colorful finalists receive free entry into Young Guns 20, as will the first 10 qualifying candidates to enter when the competition opens on 18 May.2021 Colorful winner Sean Wang, a New York-based filmmaker, went on to become a YG19 winner, as did finalist Dani Choi, an illustrator also in New York.Funding for this year's Colorful is provided by Russells Reserve Bourbon and Rich Tu, group creative director at Jones Knowles Ritchie New York who conceived of the grant programme last year.I always feel we can do more to change this industry for the better, challenge pre-existing norms, and provide inclusive spaces for Bipoc representation, said Tu. I wanted to put my money where my mouth is and build upon the great work we did last year. Thats why we do this, to send a signal to the industry that were here too and that we wont go away.Branding for this years Colorful programme was created by Lebassis, art director and lettering artist based in Rio de Janeiro and YG18 winner.
A history of breaches

Common practice

Digital Protective Registration (powered by Secure Citizen)

The hacker group, going by the name N4aughtysecTU, which claims to hail from Brazil, is alleging it breached TransUnion South Africa and accessed 54 million personal records of South Africans.Speaking to ITWeb via Telegam, the hacker group claims the information it is in possession of credit scores, banking details and ID numbers.TransUnion South Africa has issued a statement confirming that a criminal third-party obtained access to an isolated South African server, through misuse of an authorised clients credentials.This alarming news is further indication that every company that holds personal information is a potential target. The consumer desperately needs an extra layer of protection on their identity against criminals who will turn their lives upside down without a second thought, reports Manie van Schalkwyk, CEO of the Southern African Fraud Prevention Service (SAFPS), who estimated that there are 17 billion cyberattacks that take place around the world every day, not all being successful.Over the past two years, South African companies have been reporting that they have been victims of cyberattacks and data breaches. Some of these breaches include the compromise of personal information of consumers.No organisation is immune against cyber attacks and the Department of Justice recently announced that it was a victim of a cybercrime. In a separate incident, Debt-IN Consultants, a professional debt-recovery solutions partner to many South African financial services institutions, announced on 22 September that a ransomware attack by cyber criminals resulted in a significant data breach of consumer and employee personal information.It is suspected that consumer and personal information of more than 1.4 million South Africans was compromised through the Debt-IN attack in April last year. The breach only came to light last week.Data breaches have been on the rise globally and South Africa has seen unprecedented increases in the number of cyber victims, says Dalene Deale, executive head of Secure Citizen.Secure Citizen was created through a collaboration with SAFPS and OneVault in response to a rapid growth in identity theft following online fraud. Fraudsters do not discriminate. As we continuously move towards the adoption of a digital and more importantly touchless era, the platform for fraud increases."Fraud is a fraudsters business and they often use the same business tactics we use in legitimate business, the difference being that they dont have customers, they have victims. Thanks to an increase in data breaches, fraudsters are motivated and armed with the correct information, meaning that they are capable of impersonating an individual. The impacts of this are catastrophic, says Deale.Van Schalkwyk points out that the TransUnion breach is concerning as the records of 54 million South Africans may have been compromised. In a country where identity fraud is common practice, this is extremely concerning. It is critical that consumers act now before significant fraud is unknowingly committed on their behalf. In the last significant data compromise in 2020 - where more than 20 million records were compromised with another credit bureau - the SAFPS saw a rise of impersonation of more than 300%, says Van Schalkwyk.One of the most important services, and the core of SAFPS service offering, is Protective Registration. Protective Registration is a free service protecting individuals against identity theft. Consumers apply for this service and the SAFPS alerts its members to take additional care when dealing with that individuals details.Protective Registration provides an added layer of protection and peace of mind regardless of whether the identity of the applicant has been compromised.As a society, it is important that we move towards creating a world where the fight against fraud becomes protective and proactive, says Van Schalkwyk.
A subsea cable owned by Google that promises to double internet speeds for millions in Africa arrived in Togo on Friday, the company said, the latest step in a multi-year project to provide cheaper access to users across the continent.

A view of a sign above the entrance of the Google office, ahead of presentation of the detailed investment plan for Germany, in Berlin, Germany, 31 August 2021. Reuters/Annegret Hilse

The Equiano cable, the first of its kind to reach Africa, has wound its way from Portugal and will double internet speed for Togo's 8-million residents, Google said in a statement.That may be a taste of things to come for other countries set to benefit in a region where internet use is rising fast but where networks are often cripplingly slow and are a drag on economic development.The new line will also make land in Nigeria, Namibia and South Africa, with possible branches offering connections to nearby countries. It is expected to start operating by the end of the year.Sub-Saharan Africa is the world's least-connected region, with around a quarter of the population still lacking mobile broadband coverage compared to 7% globally, according to a 2020 report by GSMA Intelligence.Most countries in West Africa are at the bottom of a World Bank global ranking on internet penetration.Togo will be the first to benefit. The cable is expected to reduce internet prices by 14% by 2025, according to an Africa Practice and Genesis Analytics assessment commissioned by Google.Google said the cable will indirectly create 37,000 jobs in Togo by 2025 and boost GDP by $193m.
We specialise in outsourced sales and marketing on behalf of our clients' brands. We know that a friendly hello and a firm handshake are the best ways to form a lasting relationship with consumers so this is exactly what we do!
William Peace University's campus in Raleigh has an enrollment of more than 800 and is affiliated with the Presbyterian Church. (Jonathan Drew)

RALEIGH, N.C.  A small private college in North Carolina is considering a name change amid scrutiny of its namesakes history as a slaveholder.

William Peace University President Brian Ralph told WRAL-TV Tuesday that the school will hold a series of listening sessions with faculty, staff, students, alumni and others on whether to rename the school, among other questions.

Advertisement

Ralphs remarks came as the university released findings from a task force that reviewed the schools historical ties to slavery and white supremacy.

The task force found that Peace owned more than 50 slaves, according to data from an 1860 census.

Advertisement

The school said Tuesday that its Board of Trustees voted to remove a statue of Peace on campus.

The campus in Raleigh has an enrollment of more than 800 and is affiliated with the Presbyterian Church.
A former additional public prosecutor and practicing advocate was arrested by the Vanasthalipuram police on Tuesday for threatening to kill his family. (DC)

HYDERABAD: A former additional public prosecutor and practicing advocate was arrested by the Vanasthalipuram police on Tuesday for threatening to kill his family members at gunpoint.

A .32 calibre licensed pistol, three live rounds and a kitchen knife were seized from him by the police.

The accused, Banala Ajay Kumar, 47, a former additional public prosecutor of Nampally court, and a resident of CBI Colony at Vanasthalipuram, on March 19, in an inebriated condition pointed the pistol at his daughter and threatened to kill his wife and son when they tried to resist.

The complaint was lodged by his wife B. Ramadevi who stated that Ajay Kumar had been torturing her and her two children for the past several months without any reason.

Ramadevi stated that her husband, a habitual drunkard, used to beat her frequently and threaten the children at gunpoint using vulgar language.

On March 19, the accused picked up a quarrel with his family for no reason and threatened his daughter Shraddha at gunpoint, police said. As his son Avinash tried to save Shraddha, the accused aimed the pistol at him. However, when Ramadevi managed to snatch the pistol from him, he ran into the kitchen and came up with a knife and tried to attack them, the police said.

However, they managed to escape from his clutches and approached Vanasthalipuram police. The accused was arrested on March 20. His arms licence was cancelled, the police said.
Hyderabad: The High Court rejected a proposal of the Telangana Housing Board to auction open land measuring 2 acres 39 guntas situated between Roads No. 2 and 3, Phase I and II, in KPHB Colony, Kukatpally, for commercial purposes.

The court asked how the original layout would be changed without permission from the authorities. In the name of revised layouts, the authorities have no right to de-notify the areas which were earlier earmarked for particular purposes in the layout, the High Court said.

A division bench headed by Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma was dealing with an appeal filed by Telangana Housing Board, which challenged the single judge order, declining the proposal to auction open land for commercial purposes.

The proposal was made in 2009 by the then AP State Housing Board. But, the residents approached the High Court challenging the proposal. Then, the single bench set aside the proposal, and now the Telangana Housing Board preferred an appeal before the division bench.

The land covered under the KPHB Colony Phase I and II is 222 acres. In the layout, 904 plots for MIG, 1,056 plots for LIG and 1,320 plots for EWS were allotted. As per the plan sanctioned by the erstwhile HUDA, the land demarcated was 26 acres and 62 guntas. for open spaces, and about 11 acres for commercial spaces.
At least 500 workers at a gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, and lubricating oils refinery owned by Chevron in the San Francisco Bay Area city of Richmond began striking at local time 12.01 am, the union said in a statement. According to AP News, this followed USW workers voting down a contract offer from Chevron and the company refusing to return to the bargaining table.

The strike's timing is "very unfortunate" as refinery capacity in California is tight, Severin Borenstein, a UC Berkeley professor, told local news KTVU.

Refinery worker on the picket line sends this video of Chevron flaring hours after the strike began. pic.twitter.com/9bJw4exHZh  Ted Goldberg (@TedrickG) March 21, 2022

Chevron announced in a statement the strike has yet to affect operational capacity at the refinery.

"Chevron Richmond is fully prepared to continue normal operations to safely and reliably provide the products that consumers need. We anticipate no issues in maintaining a reliable supply of products to the market. Chevron remains committed to safe operations for our workers and communities."

The heart of the problem is USW's push to increase pay for workers by another 5%, on top of the national agreement to raise pay by 12%, purely based on the cost of living in the Bay Area is unbearable for blue-collar workers.

"The cost of living in the Bay Area, as any blue-collar worker knows, has gotten to the point that makes it hard to live," USW Local 5 First Vice President B.K. White, told local news ABC7. "Our workers have to live 45 minutes to an hour out. We are just asking for a little bit of relief."

He also said, "A cost of living increase for the Bay Area it's not for us to get rich. Our medical, Kaiser, went up 23 percent this year and the company did not contribute another penny to it."

A prolonged strike could impact refining capacity as Californians pay some of the highest gasoline prices in the country. Here's what Americans are paying on average at the pump for regular gas.

Ken Medlock, director of the Center for Energy Studies at Rice University's Baker Institute, told AP the refinery is likely running a skeleton crew during the strike. He doesn't believe the strike would lead Chevron to shutter capacity or the facility as a whole.

Let's hope USW and the company can resolve their differences quickly, or the largest refinery in California could experience output disruptions.
In September 2021, a group called Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency (PHMPT) filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to obtain the documentation used to approve Comirnaty, including safety and effectiveness data, adverse reaction reports and lists of active and inactive ingredients.

When, after a month, the FDA still had not responded to the FOIA request, the PHMPT sued.1 Pfizer and the FDA asked the judge to give them 75 years to release all the documents (doling out just 500 pages per month)2 but, fortunately, the judge ruled that they have to release them at a rate of 55,000 pages per month.

COVID Jab Supporter Gets Red-Pilled

In mid-November 2021, the FDA released the first 91 pages,3,4 which alone revealed the FDA has been aware of shocking safety issues since April 30, 2021. For nurse educator John Campbell, featured in the video above, these documents appear to have served as a "red pill,"5 waking him up to the possibility that the jabs may be far more dangerous than anyone expected, but he didnt get around to reviewing them until now.

Cumulatively, through February 28, 2021, Pfizer received 42,086 adverse event reports, including 1,223 deaths. The latest tranche of Pfizer documents also includes a whopping nine pages of recorded side effects  158,000 in all!

In his video, Campbell reviews the documents listed as "5.3.6. Postmarketing Experience," which were originally marked "confidential." They reveal that, cumulatively, through February 28, 2021, Pfizer received 42,086 adverse event reports, including 1,223 deaths.

As noted by Campbell, "It would have been good to know about this at the time, wouldnt it?" referring to the rollout of the jabs. Campbell has been fairly consistent in his support of the "safe and effective" vaccine narrative, but "This has just destroyed trust in authority," he says.

To have 1,223 fatalities and 42,086 reports of injury in the first three months is a significant safety signal, especially when you consider that the 1976 swine flu vaccine was pulled after only 25 deaths.

Now, the number of doses shipped has been redacted under a FOIA redaction code that stands for "Trade secrets and commercial or financial information obtained from a person and privileged or confidential." Why would the number of doses shipped be confidential?

Campbell is clearly bothered by this redaction, as you cannot calculate the incidence rate or side effects if you dont know what the denominator is. As noted by Campbell, that number cannot be proprietary. Its being withheld for some other reason (and I just stated what that might be).

Even without knowing the underreporting factor, Campbell is appalled by the number of reported side effects. It is very clear that this information red-pilled Campbell. For an overview of the types of side effects recorded, check out Campbells video. Ive already reviewed that in previous articles.

Here, well move on to the first really large tranche of Pfizer documents, which was released March 1, 2022. In all, the FDA has some 450,000 pages of data from Pfizers COVID jab trials, and we now have just over 10,000 of those pages. You can find them all on PHMPT.org.6

Findings From Early Review of Case Reports

March 7, 2022, investigative journalist Sonia Elijah published a review of her initial findings on Trial Site News,7 having glossed through some of the thousands of newly-released documents.

Her review centers primarily on the case report forms (CRFs). These are documents used in clinical research to record standardized data from each patient, including adverse events. As such, theyre a crucial part of the clinical trial process.

A majority of the CRFs in this release were from Ventavia-run trial sites. Ventavia is currently facing a lawsuit brought by Brook Jackson, a former Ventavia regional director. Jackson was fired shortly after she brought concerns about potential data falsification and poor laboratory management to the attention of the FDA and higher-ups in the company.

Her testimony was published November 2, 2021, in The British Medical Journal  the oldest and most prestigious medical journal in the world  by investigative journalist Paul Thacker.8 Facebook fact checkers actually tried to "debunk" this BMJ article and censored it.

In her review of the CRFs, Elijah found a number of errors and anomalies that seem to corroborate Jacksons claims, including the following:9
Belarus has officially granted refugee status to Evan Newman, an American citizen who was facing potentially decades in prison for taking part in a rowdy protest at the Capitol on Jan 6.



"US citizen Evan Newman received refugee status in Belarus," Belarusian Telegraph Agency reported Tuesday on Twitter (as translated by Google). "The document was handed to him in the Department of Citizenship and Migration of the Internal Affairs Directorate of the Brest Regional Executive Committee on March 22, 2022."









#US citizen Evan Newman, who stormed the #American Capitol a year ago, received refugee status in #Belarus. He wants to take his family from the United States. There are several criminal charges against him in the US.



He stated that he feels safe here and plans to do business. pic.twitter.com/DKriX1qfNR  NEXTA (@nexta_tv) March 22, 2022



Newman's request for asylum was covered in Nov 2021 on Belarusian TV.







"The Belarus 1 anchors described Neumann as a 'simple American, whose stores were burned down by members of the Black Lives Matter movement, who was seeking justice, asking inconvenient questions, but lost almost everything and is being persecuted by the U.S. government,'" the AP reported.



Newman could be heard highlighting how Capitol protesters are being tortured in jail.



Capitol protesters are not only being tortured but also racially abused by sadistic jail guards, locked in solitary confinement and held in indefinite detention. These are grave human rights abuses by any measure.



If Newman was rioting against the government in Belarus or Russia he would be hailed by our government as a "pro-democracy protester." If he was rioting for Black Lives Matter he would have escaped all charges and potentially been handed millions of dollars. Because he was opposing the DC regime, he was aggressively overcharged and threatened with decades in prison.



A Sept 2021 poll found that half of Americans believe Jan 6 suspects are "political prisoners."



Follow InformationLiberation on Twitter, Facebook, Gab, Minds, Parler and Telegram.
by Dustin Broadbery

Part 1: Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth

As the digital revolution was underway in the mid-nineties, research departments at the CIA and NSA were developing programs to predict the usefulness of the world wide web as a tool for capturing what they dubbed birds of a feather formations. Thats when flocks of sparrows make sudden movements together in rhythmical patterns.

They were particularly interested in how these principles would influence the way that people would eventually move together on the burgeoning internet: Would groups and communities move together in the same way as birds of a feather, so that they could be tracked in an organised way? And if their movements could be indexed and recorded, could they be identified later by their digital fingerprints?

To answer these questions, the CIA and NSA established a series of initiatives called Massive Digital Data Systems (MDDS) to directly fund tech entrepreneurs through an inter-university disbursement program, naming their first unclassified briefing for computer scientists birds of a feather, which took place in San Jose in the spring of 1995.

Amongst the first grants provided by the MDDS program to capture the birds of a feather theory towards building a massive digital library and indexing system  using the internet as its backbone  were dispersed to two Stanford University PHDs, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who were making significant headways in the development of web-page ranking technology that would track user movements online.

Those disbursements, together with $4.5 million in grants from a multi-agency consortium including NASA and DARPA, became the seed funding that was used to establish Google

Eventually MDDS was integrated into DARPAs global eavesdropping and data-mining activities that would attempt total information awareness over US citizens. Few understand the extent to which Silicon Valley is the alter-ego of Pentagon-land, even fewer realise the impact this has had on the social sphere. But the story does not begin with Google, nor the military origins of the internet, it goes back much further in time, to the dawn of counterinsurgency and PSYOPs during the second world war.

The Dawn of PSYOPs

According to historian Joy Rhodes, a renowned physicist told U.S. defence secretary Robert McNamara in 1961: While World War I might have been considered the chemists war, and World War II was considered the physicists war, World War III . . . might well have to be considered the social scientists war.

The intersection of social science and military intelligence is recognised by the US Army to have begun during WWI when pre-war journalist Captain Blankenhorn established the Psychological Subsection in the War Department to coordinate combat propaganda.

These grey-area operations, as they become known, plateaued during World War II, when military strategists, building on wartime research in crowd psychology, drafted social scientists into the war effort through the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD). The office would aggregate information about the German people and develop propaganda and psychological operations (PSYOPS) to lower their morale. This culminated in 1942, with the US federal government becoming the leading employer of psychologists in the US.

OSRD was an early administration of the Manhattan Project and responsible for important wartime developments in technology, including radar. The agency was directed by engineer and inventor Vannevar Bush  a key player in the history of computing, known for his work on The Memex, an early hypothetical computer device, that would store and index a users books, records and other information, and which would go on to inspire most major advancements in the development of personal computers over the next 70 years.

As the second world war ended and a new threat emerged from post-war ravaged Europe, scholars and soldiers once again reunited to defeat an invisible and aggressively expansionist adversary.

Across the Soviet satellites in Europe and in the nations threatened by communism in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, cold war special operations, as they become known, were a nebulous category of military activity that included psychological and political warfare, guerrilla operations and counterinsurgency. To mobilise these special warfare tactics the army established the Office of the Chief of Psychological Warfare (OCPW) in 1951, whose mission was to recruit, organise, equip, train, and provide doctrinal support to Psywarriors.

The office was directed by General Robert McClure, a founding father of psychological warfare and friend of the Shah of Iran, who was instrumental in the overthrow of Mohammad Mosaddegh in the 1953 Iranian coup detat.

Integral to the projects of McClures OCPW, was a quasi-academic institution with a long history of military service called the Human Relations Area Files (HRAF). Founded by anthropologist turned FBI whistle-blower George Murdock, HRAF was set up to collect and standardise data on primitive cultures around the world.

During WWII its researchers worked hand in glove with naval intelligence to develop propaganda materials that would help the US liberate pacific nations from Japanese control. By 1954, the department had grown into an inter-university consortium of 16 academic institutions, funded by the army, CIA, and private philanthropies.

In 1954 the OCPW negotiated a contract with the HRAF to author a series of special warfare handbooks, disguised as scholarship, that sought to understand the intellectual and emotional character of strategically important people, particularly their thoughts, motivations and actions, with entire chapters compiled on the attitudes and subversive potentials of foreign nationals, while other chapters focused on the means of transmitting propaganda in each target nation, whether news, radio or word of mouth. This was, of course, decades before the internet.

SORO

In 1956, the Special Operations Research Office (SORO) emerged from these programs. Charged with managing the US Armys psychological and unconventional warfare tactics during the cold war and taking the work of HRAF to the next level, SORO set about the monumental task of defining the political and social causes of Communist revolution, the laws governing social change and the theories of communication and persuasion that could be used to transform public perception.

SORO formed a central component of the Pentagons militarisation of social research, and particularly the ideas and doctrine that would usher in a gradual shift towards an American-led world order. Its research team was located on the campus of American University in Washington, D.C, and comprised the eras pre-eminent intellectuals and academics.

SOROs ensemble team, from the fields of psychology, sociology and anthropology, would immerse themselves in social system theory, analysing the society and culture of numerous target countries, particularly in Latin America, while confronting the universal laws governing social behaviour and the mechanisms of communication and persuasion in each jurisdiction. If the US Army could understand the psychological factors that sparked revolution, they could, in theory, predict and intercept revolutions before they got off the ground.

SORO was part of a rapidly expanding nexus of Federally Funded Research Centers (FCRCs), that reoriented academia towards national security interests. Working at the intersection of science and the state, SORONs, as they were known, advocated for an expert-directed democracy, regardless of the totalitarian consequences of social engineers and technocrats acquiring control over the thoughts, actions, and values of ordinary people.

In those early days of the cold war, academics and scientists working at the intersection of military and academia firmly believed that intellectuals should guide geopolitics. This was accepted as the most stable form of governance to take the free world into the next century. It explains how we have arrived under the rubric of the settled science today. Or at least, policies masquerading as science. From the biosecurity state to the fundamentalism of climate science, much of what was achieved in those golden years of militarised social research shapes the twenty-first century.

By 1962, sixty-six federally funded military research institutions were in operation. Between 1951 and 1967, the number tripled, while funding skyrocketed from $122 million to $1.6 billion.

But as opposition to the Vietnam War intensified in the 1960s, a growing number of intellectuals, policymakers and academics became concerned that the national security state was morphing into the statist, globalist force it had been fighting during the cold war and began publicly criticising Pentagon-funded social scientists as technocratic social engineers.

This inspired a wave of discontent against the militarisation of social research to grip America, culminating in 1969 with the American Universitys administrators banishing SORO from their campus and severing ties with their military partners. The move was endemic of the changing attitude towards these grey area special operations and resulted in the 1960s and 1970s with the excommunication of military research centres from university campuses across the US: a move that forced the military to look elsewhere  towards the private sector for their alternative warfare capabilities.

Following a long tradition of public-private military cooperation, from the Rand Corporation to the Smithsonian Group, these quasi-private institutions were being spun-out of the military at a rate of knots since the 1940s.

Project Camelot

One of the programs conceived by SORO was Methods for Predicting and Influencing Social Change and Internal War Potential. Codenamed Project Camelot, the landmark program sought to understand the causes of social revolution and identify actions, within the realm of behavioural science, that could be taken to suppress insurrection.

The goal, according to defence analyst, Joy Rhodes, was to build a radar system for left wing revolutionaries. A sort of computerised early warning system that could predict and prevent political movements before they ever got off the ground.

This computer system writes Joy Rhodes, could check up to date intelligence against a list of preconditions, and revolutions could be stopped before the instigators even knew they were headed down the path of revolution.

The research collected by Project Camelot would produce predictive models of the revolutionary process and profile what social scientists deemed revolutionary tendencies and traits. It was anticipated that such knowledge would not only help military leaders anticipate the trajectory of social change, but would also enable them to design effective interventions that could, in theory, channel or suppress change in ways that were favourable to U.S. foreign policy interests.

It was intended that the information gathered by Project Camelot would funnel into a large computerised database for forecasting, social engineering, and counterinsurgency, that could be tapped at any time by the military and intelligence community.

But the project was beleaguered by controversy when academics in South America discovered its military funding and imperialist motives.

The ensuing backlash resulted in Project Camelot being, ostensibly, shut down, though the core of its project survived. Multiple military research projects picked up on Project Camelots early warning radar system for left wing revolutionaries, while its computerised database for forecasting, social engineering, and counterinsurgency went on to inspire a nascent technology developed in the years to come, that would eventually become known to the world as the internet.

The Military Origins of the Internet

As Sasha Levine reveals in his ground-breaking book, Surveillance Valley, at the height of the Cold War, US military commanders were pursuing a decentralised computer communications system without a base of operations or headquarters, that could withstand a Soviet strike, without blacking-out or destroying the entire network.

The project was coordinated by the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), created by President Eisenhower in 1958, for the development of technologies that would expand the frontiers of science and technology and help the US close the missile gap with the Soviets.

DARPA has been at the vanguard of every major advancement in the development of personal computers since the cold war, culminating in 1969 with the first computers arriving in universities across the US.

A few years later DARPA would develop the protocols to enable connected computers to communicate transparently across multiple networks. Known as The Internetting Project, DARPAs prototypical communications network, the ARPANET, was born in 1973.

The project was eventually transferred to the Defence Communications Agency and integrated into the numerous new networks that had emerged. By 1983 the ARPANET was divided into two constituents: MILNET to be used by military and defence agencies, while the civilian version would retain the ARPANET handle.

Fast forward to 1990 and the ARPANET was officially decommissioned, and the Internet privatised to a consortium of corporations including IBM and MCI. Eventually the federal government created a dozen or so network providers and span them off to the private sector, building companies that would become the backbone of todays internet, including Verizon Time-Warner, AT&T and Comcast.

Thats the same handful of corporations who not only own 90% of US media outlets, but also control the flow of global communications, through a process of absolute vertical-horizontal alignment of legacy media with digital media, and the infrastructures and technologies that enable their mass communication, including cable, satellite and wireless, the devices and hardware, software and operating systems.

J.C.R. Licklider

A central player in the development of the ARPANET, who many consider the founding father of computing, was American psychologist, J. C. R. Licklider.

Lick, as he was known, was the first director of the agency tasked with executing DARPAs information technology programs, The Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO), that has been responsible for just about major advancement in computer communications since the sixties.

As Stephen J. Lukasik, a contributor to the ARPANET project reflected in his paper  Why the Arpanet Was Built, Lick saw information technology and behavioural and cognitive science issues as connected.

Lick was essentially predicting how the internet would go on to evoke real world social processes that would radically transform how we communicate, organise and process information. It is no coincidence that a psychologist of Licks calibre was at the vanguard of a new technology designed to exploit basic vulnerabilities in the human psyche.

In the 1960s Lick oversaw DARPAs strategic interest in a new frontier of information technology, called Brain Computer Interfaces (BCIs). In his famous paper, considered one of the most important in the history of computing, Lick put forward the then radical idea that the human mind would one day merge seamlessly with computers.

He was anticipating the evolution of AI and the role that DARPA would go on to play in funding just about every major advancement in BCI technology over eight decades, including Elon Musks fully-implanted, wireless, brain-machine interface company, Neuralink.

The Vietnam War

The ARPANET brought together the Pentagons war machine with university research departments and the Bay areas counterculture scene, inspiring much of the anecdotal idealism that would define the early years of cyberspace as a liberating new frontier for humanity.

Cyberspace, it was claimed by its early adopters, would free information and provide universal connectivity. The realms of possibility were, indeed, endless.

But war hawks and intelligence analysts had other ideas. If the lessons of the Vietnam war were anything to go by, the future of US warfare would not be with nation states, it would be with ideologies, or more specifically, grassroots movements, such as the Viet Cong, who had the power to stoke the flames of civil unrest, that could lead to uprisings, or worse, revolution. Alternative approaches were, therefore, needed to infiltrate and disrupt this new threat to the free world.

As the war raged in Southeast Asia, another psychology PhD, Robert Taylor, joined DARPA as the agencys third director. Taylor transferred to Vietnam in 1967, to establish the first computer centre at the Military Assistance Command base in Saigon, a central pillar in the DoDs psychological warfare operations. The move was symptomatic of the changing rules of military engagement that saw DARPA, and indeed, this new technology, playing a major role in the war effort, both in Southeast Asia, and at home on US soil, against the growing anti-war movement.

In 1968, Taylor and Lick published their seminal paper The Computer as a Communication Device, laying out the future of what the Internet would eventually become. The paper began with the visionary statement: In a few years, men will be able to communicate more effectively through a machine than face to face, anticipating the meteoric rise of social media, particularly Facebook, in the decades to come.

Bringing the PSYOP Back Home

The origins of Facebook coincide with a controversial military program that was mysteriously shut down the same year Facebook launched.

The military program in question, LifeLog, was developed by DARPAs Information Processing Techniques Office, with the stated aim of creating a permanent and searchable electronic diary of a persons entire life  a dataset of their most personal information, including their movements, conversations, connections, and everything they listened to, watched, read and bought.

But would people willingly give up a record of their private lives to a military intelligence social media platform?

Probably not. Enter Facebook.

LifeLog, meanwhile, was ostensibly shut down. But this was not the first nor the last time that a project of this magnitude would be proposed.

In a 1945 article for The Atlantic, Vannevar Bush who, the reader will recall, directed the US Armys psychological operations during World War II, discussed his hypothetical project, The Memex, as a device in which an individual stores all his books, records and communications, and which is mechanised so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility.

In immortalising peoples lives, it was hoped that LifeLog would eventually contribute to the emerging field of artificial intelligence (AI), that would one day think just like a human, intersecting with another DARPA backed project  the Personal Assistant That Learns (PAL)  a cognitive computing system designed to make military decision-making more efficient, which was eventually spun-off as Siri, the virtual assistant on Apples operating system, present in the homes of 1 billion unsuspecting people.

But LifeLog is just one part of the story. There was another DARPA program that also disappeared one year before Facebook made its debut. Often cited as the precursor to Facebook, the Information Awareness Office (IAO) brought together several DARPA surveillance and information technology projects including MDDS which provided Googles seed funding.

The stated aim of the IAO was to gather and store the personal information of every US citizen, including their personal emails, social networks, lifestyles, credit card records, phone calls, medical records, without, of course, the need for a search warrant.

This information would funnel back to intelligence agencies, under the guise of predicting and preventing terrorist incidents before they happened. Reminiscent of Project Camelots early warning radar system for left wing revolutionaries.

Despite the government, apparently, abandoning their gambit for total information awareness over ordinary Americans, the core of the project survived.

I draw your attention to Palantir, the spooky data analytics firm founded by Facebooks board member, Peter Thiel.

Portrayed as science fiction in the firm Minority Report, Palantirs predictive policing analytics have been deployed extensively against insurgents in Iraq and by police departments in the US.

This is, of course, nothing new for the Chinese. The convergence of big tech data analytics with social credits has been put to good use by the CCP to weed out and punish dissidents who can find themselves held indefinitely without charge or trial in political re-education camps for holding the wrong set of political beliefs.

But, it must also be accepted, these Orwellian methods of repression did not originate in China. The encroachment of the CIA into the public sphere has been happening since the 1960s, when the US imported decades of counterinsurgency from the soviet satellites to tackle the anti-war and civil rights movements.

This was ramped up in the wake of 9/11 and now, through the backdoor of COVID-19 total information awareness, is coming home to roost, as Chinas social credits system has been implemented on the back of the Green Pass.

Before anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists, you had civil rights and anti-war activists. The ideology guiding dissent may have changed, but the military tactics used to counter it remain the same.

Part 2: The War is Over, The Good Guys Lost

If insurgency is defined as an organised political struggle by a hostile minority attempting to seize power through revolutionary means, then counterinsurgency is the military doctrine historically used against non-state actors, that sets out to infiltrate and eradicate those movements.

Unlike conventional soldiers, insurgents are considered dangerous not because of their physical presence on the battlefield, but because of their ideology.

As David Galula, a French commander who was an expert in counterinsurgency warfare during the Algerian War, emphasised: In any situation, whatever the cause, there will be an active minority for the cause, a neutral majority, and an active minority against the cause. The technique of power consists in relying on the favourable minority in order to rally the neutral majority and to neutralise or eliminate the hostile minority.

Over time, however, the intelligence state lost touch with reality, as the focus of its counterinsurgency programs shifted from foreign to domestic populations, from national security risks to ordinary citizens -particularly in the wake of 9/11, when the NSA and its British counterpart, GCHQ, began mapping out the Internet.

Thanks to Edward Snowdens revelations in 2013, we now know that the NSA were collecting 200 billion pieces of data every month, including the cell phone records, emails, web searches and live chats of more than 200 million ordinary Americans. This was extracted from the worlds largest internet companies via a lesser-known data-mining program called Prism.

Theres another name for this, and its total information awareness, the highest attainment of a paranoid state seeking absolute control over its population. What ceases to be worth the candle is that peoples right to privacy is enshrined under the US Constitutions fourth amendment.

Few understand how lockdowns are ripples on these troubled waters. Decades of counterinsurgency waged against one subset of society, branded insurgents for their Marxist ideals, has, over time, shifted to anyone holding anti-establishment views. The predictive policing of track and trace and the theory of asymptomatic transmission are the unwelcome repercussions of the intelligence state seeking total information awareness over its citizens.

Throughout COVID-19, anyone audacious enough to want to think for themselves or do their own research has had a target painted on their back. But according to the EU, one third of Europe is unvaccinated. This correlates precisely with David Galulas theory of counterinsurgency, that suggests one third of society is the active minority against the cause, who must be neutralised or eliminated.

And for good reason. People are within sniffing distance of mobilising popular support from the neutral majority and toppling the house of cards. What follows is a protracted campaign by the establishment to neutralise the opposition.

It was not so long ago that journalists were called muckrakers, for digging up dirt on Robber Barons who, overtime, learned how to throw muck back, using smear and innuendo, such as conspiracy theorist, anti-vaxxer and right-wing extremist.

When Domestic Populations Become the Battlefield

The use of counterinsurgency in the UK goes back to colonial India in the 1800s. According to historians, this was the first time the British government used methods of repression and social control against indigenous communities who were audacious enough to want to liberate their homeland from imperialist rule.

Counterinsurgency was used extensively during The Troubles in Northern Ireland against another anti-imperialist faction, also looking to liberate their homeland from The Crown. Much of the lessons learned in Northern Ireland were later transferred into the everyday policing and criminal justice policies of mainland Britain. And it wasnt just dissenters who were targeted by these operations, it was anyone with left wing ideals, particularly trade unionists who, it could be argued, were conspiring with the Kremlin to overthrow parliamentary democracy.

Decades of infiltration has recalibrated the left into genuflections of establishment interests

I draw your attention to the spying and dirty tricks operations against the 1980s miners strike. This continued right up until 2012, when the police and intelligence communities were implicated in a plot to blacklist construction industry workers deemed troublesome for their union views.

The existence of a secret blacklist was first exposed in 2009, when investigators from the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) raided an unassuming office in Droitwich, Worcestershire, and discovered an extensive database used by construction firms to vet and ultimately blacklist workers belonging to trade unions. More than 40 construction firms, including Balfour Beatty and Sir Robert McAlpine, had been funding the confidential database and keeping people out of work for many years.

If you want to know what happened to the left, look no further than Project Camelots early warning radar system for left wing revolutionaries. Decades of infiltration has recalibrated the left into genuflections of establishment interests.

It was the unions who scuppered the easing of lockdowns in the UK and consistently called on the Department of Education to postpone the reopening of schools. This is despite the impact which school closures had on marginalised families, who were statistically more at risk from the fallout of lockdowns, and supposedly represented by union interests.

From the infiltration of unions to the co-option of activism, a judge-led public enquiry in 2016 revealed 144 undercover police operations had infiltrated and spied on more than 1,000 political groups in long term deployments since 1968. With covert spymasters rising in the ranks to hold influential leadership positions, guiding policy and strategy, and in some cases, radicalising those movements from within to damage their reputation and weaken public support.

We also need to talk about big philanthropy. George Soros Open Foundation is the largest global donor to the twenty-first centurys equivalent of activist groups. The agitprop used in the former Soviet Union evolved, over time, into the masthead of Extinction Rebellion, a motley crew of eco-warriors courted by high profile financial donors and aligned ideologically with the very multinational energy corporations they are supposedly at odds with. This climate agenda came out of the UN, organiser of COP20, for what reason ER had to protest the event is anyones guess.

ER doner, George Soros, is also a seed investor in Avaaz, often cited as the worlds largest and most powerful online activist network. When the US was on the brink of insurrection, following the first lockdown, Black Lives Matter entered the fray, not so much a grassroots movement, but a proxy for the Democrats to essentially redirect the publics outrage against lockdowns into the wrong, establishment-endorsed cause.

Counterinsurgency in the US

In the US, COINTELPRO was a series of illegal operations conducted by the FBI between 1956 and 1971, to disrupt, discredit and neutralise anyone considered a threat to national security. In the loosest possible definition, this included members of the Womens Liberation Movement and even the Boy Scouts of America.

And it wasnt just the customary wiretapping, infiltration and media manipulation: the FBI committed blackmail and murder.

Take, for example, the infamous forced suicide letter addressed to Martin Luther King that threatened to release a sex tape of the civil rights leaders extramarital activities, unless he took his own life. Consider also the FBIs assassination of Black Panther Party chairman Fred Hampton.

In the 1960s a Washington Post expose by army intelligence whistle-blower Christopher Pyle revealed a massive surveillance operation run by the Army, called CONUS Intel, involving thousands of undercover military agents infiltrating and spying on virtually everybody active in what they deemed civil disturbances. It turns out that many of those targeted had done nothing even remotely subversive, unless you consider attending a left-wing college presentation, or church meeting, revolutionary.

These programs came to a head in the 1970s, when an investigation by the US Senate, conducted by the Church Committee, uncovered decades of serious, systemic abuse by the CIA. This included intercepting the mail and eavesdropping on the telephone calls of civil rights and anti-war leaders over two decades. As if predicting the internet as an instrument for mass surveillance, Senator Frank Church warned that the NSAs capabilities could at any time could be turned around on the American people.

And turned around they were.

USAGM

Before the internet, the deployment of PSYOPS was limited to legacy media and permitted only on foreign soil. But that all changed in 2013, when the government granted themselves permission to target ordinary Americans.



Conceived at the end of the cold war as the Broadcasting Board of Governors, USAGM is a lesser-known government agency charged with broadcasting thousands of weekly hours of US propaganda to foreign audiences, that has played a major role in pushing pro-American stories to former Soviet Bloc countries ever since Perestroika.

Ostensibly concerned with maintaining US interests abroad, USAGM has also been the primary funder of the Tor Project since inception. Tor, also known as The Onion Browser, is the mainstay of encrypted, anonymous search used by activists, hackers, and the anonymous community, if you can get your head around the fact that the confidential internet activity of anarchists has been framed by a PSYOP since the get-go.

For decades an anti-propaganda law, known as the Smith-Mundt Act, made it illegal for the government to conduct PSYOPS against US citizens. But that all changed in 2013 when the National Defence Authorization Act repealed that law and granted USAGM a licence to broadcast pro-government propaganda inside the United States.

To what extent US citizens are being targeted by propaganda is anyones guess, since PSYOPS largely take place online, where its difficult to distinguish between foreign and domestic audiences.



What we do know is that in 2009 the military budget for winning hearts and minds at home and abroad had grown by 63% to $4.7 billion annually. At that time the Pentagon accounted for more than half the Federal Governments $1 billion PR Budget.

An Associated Press (AP) investigation in 2016 revealed that the Pentagon employed a staggering 40% of the 5,000 working in the Federal Governments PR machines, with the Department of Defence, far and wide, the largest and most expensive PR operation of the United States government, spending more money on public relations than all other departments combined.

Things are not so different in the UK.

During COVID-19 the British government became the biggest national advertiser. Even tick tock and snapchat were deployed by the Scottish government to push COVID PSYOPS to children.

Last year Boris Johnson announced record defence spending for an artificial intelligence agency and the creation of a national cyber force. Thats a group of militarised computer hackers to conduct offensive operations.

Offensive operations against whom, you might ask.

Britain was not at war, but in an article for the Daily Mail last year, Britains top counter terrorism officer, Neil Basu confirmed that the UK was waging an ideological war against anti vaccination conspiracy theorists. Ideological wars of this nature typically take place online, where much of the governments military budget was being spent.

Since the vaccine roll-out there has been a protracted effort to paint the 33% of British citizens who have a problem with lockdowns and vaccine mandates, as violent extremists, with one member of the commentariat drawing parallels with US-style militias.

It doesnt take a genius to see where this is heading.

The Facebooks-Intelligence-Harvard Connection

Consistent with the opaque nature of Facebooks origins, shortly after its launch in 2014 co-founders Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz brought Napster founder Sean Parker on board. At the age of 16, Parker hacked into the network of a Fortune 500 company and was later arrested and charged by the FBI. Around this time Parker was recruited by the CIA.

To what end, we dont know.

What we do know is that Parker brought Peter Thiel to Facebook as its first outside investor. Thiel, who remains on Facebooks board, also sits on the Steering Committee of globalist think tank, the Bilderberg Group. As previously stated, Thiel is the founder of Palantir, the spooky intelligence firm pretending to be a private company.

The CIA would join the FBI, DoD and NSA in becoming a Palantir customer in 2005, later acquiring an equity stake in the firm through their venture capital arm, In-Q-Tel. At the time of his first meetings with Facebook, Theil had been working on resurrecting several controversial DARPA programs.

Which begs the question: with intelligence assets embedded in Facebooks management structure from the get-go, is everything as it seems at 1 Hacker Way?

According to Lauren Smith, writing for Wrong Kind of Green: Some of Facebooks allure to users is that Mark Zuckerberg and his friends started the company from a Harvard dorm room and that he remains the chairman and chief operating officer. If he didnt exist, he would need to be invented by Facebooks marketing department.

By the same token, if Facebook didnt exist it would need to be invented by the Pentagon.

To achieve this, you would need to embed government officials in Facebooks leadership and governance. Cherry picking your candidates from, say, the US Department of Treasury, and launching the platform from an academic institution, Harvard University, for example.

According to the official record, Zuckerberg built the first version of Facebook at Harvard in 2004. Like J.C.R Licklider before him, he was a psychology major.

Harvards president at that time was economist Lawrence Summers, a career public servan
Having escaped the Russian war machine, female Ukrainian refugees face a new threat to their safety.



PLEASE DISABLE AD BLOCKER TO VIEW DISQUS COMMENTS Ad Blocking software disables some of the functionality of our website, including our comments section for some browsers.







Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.
US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will meet this week with a bipartisan group of senators to discuss the opportunity of freezing Russias $132 billion in gold reserves, an American news website Axios reports.

Secretary Yellen regularly meets with members of Congress to discuss legislation. Additionally, Treasury staff frequently provide technical assistance on sanctions bills, the department spokesperson said.

Maine Senator Angus King claimed the legislation could pass the Senate as early as this week. The initiative is meant to deprive Moscow of the opportunity to mitigate the effects of Western sanctions on its economy by monetizing its large gold reserves, punishising the Kremlin for its military action in Ukraine.

Russias massive gold supply is one of the few remaining assets that Putin can use to keep his countrys economy from falling even further. By sanctioning these reserves, we will further isolate Russia from the worlds economy and increase the difficulty of Putins increasingly-costly military campaign, King explained.

The American politicians behind the initiative believe that Moscow is using gold to hinder the devaluation of its national currency, the ruble. Washington, DC is concerned that vast gold reserves allow the Kremlin to purchase high-value currencies on the international market.

On March 8, the same group of US senators introduced a bill designed to close this loophole in the sanctions that allows Russians to trade gold. The bill is titled Stop Russian GOLD, which stands for Stop Russian Government and Oligarchs from Limiting Democracy. If adopted, the legislation will allow the US government to apply secondary sanctions to anyone selling or buying the gold that belongs to Russias central bank.

Russias Minister of Finance Anton Siluanov has previously declared that Moscow has lost nearly $300 billion worth of its reserves to US and EU sanctions. The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia Sergey Lavrov said that freezing the assets of the Central Bank amounts to theft. Russias President Vladimir Putin has described anti-Russian sanctions as a total undisguised aggression and a war waged by economic, political, and informational means.
Vijayawada: The Andhra Pradesh High Court has issued an interim order for status quo for a period of two weeks on the Chittoor district administration's move to set up the Collectorate for the new district Sri Balaji at TTDs Sri Padmavathi Nilayam.

A single judge bench of Justice Nimmagadda Venkateswarlu heard the petition on Tuesday. It was filed by BJP leader Bhanu Prakash, challenging the TTD executive officers order issued on March 7 allotting Sri Padmavathi Nilayam for the Collectorate and also Chittoor Collectors order on March 14 allotting rooms for government departments.

Petitioners counsel Ashwani Kumar submitted to the court that the setting up government departments in Padmavathi Nilayam was in violation of Section 111 (4)(6) of AP Endowments Act and said the guest houses built with TTD funds should be used for the comfort of devotees. They should not be used for other purposes.

He urged the court to stop any effort at altering the Padmavathi Nilayam in ways as to turn it into the Collectorate.

AP government and TTDs counsels Sudhakar Reddy and SS Prasad argued that Section 111 (4)(6) of AP Endowments Act was not applicable to the case and said the TTD Trust Board had the right to lease out its assets. TTD was getting one crore rupees as income by leasing out its asset.

The court opined that the building built for the comfort of devotees should not be used for other purposes. The court directed the state government and TTD executive officer to file counter affidavits and posted the next hearing to March 29.
Technocrats love to work within a large police force because it is authoritarian and prone to concealment of miscreant policies such as maintaining a DNA database on innocent citizens. This blatantly violates state and national law plus the U.S. Constitution itself. Technocrats crave and hoard data like an addict craves and hoards heroin.  TN Editor

The NYPDs DNA database is comprised of an ever-growing number of genetic profiles of thousands of innocent New Yorkers, including children, a lawsuit alleges.

The Legal Aid Society, in a suit filed Monday in Manhattan Federal Court, is asking a judge to declare unconstitutional the practice of secretly taking, analyzing and maintaining peoples DNA in its suspect index. The public defenders group seeks an order the NYPD expunge those DNA files and records.

There are 31,826 DNA profiles in the database at last count, according to the suit.

The database, which is maintained by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, has been the subject of much debate the past few years.

The NYPD said it operates within the bounds of the law and that the database is an important tool used to obtain justice for each crime victim.

But critics have said any policy that allows police to collect DNA without consent  such as by offering a suspect a soda, then keeping the can for forensic analysis, even if the person is not charged with a crime  is a violation of privacy rights.

And theyve noted that while a conviction is required before someones DNA can be entered in a state-run database, those built by local authorities operate outside those requirements.

The citys decision to ignore state and federal law while secretly collecting and permanently storing the DNA profiles of thousands of people should send a chill down the spine of every New Yorker, said Dave Pollock, a Legal Aid lawyer in its DNA unit. The NYPDs troubling ruse offering  our clients a drink or a cigarette after hours in a precinct without food or water, and using it to surreptitiously collect their DNA  is wrong and illegal.

Read full story here
Hyderabad: BJP state president Bandi Sanjay Kumar on Tuesday accused Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao of enacting a fresh drama by demanding that the Centre purchase paddy, instead of rice. This is only to divert the attention of the people from his governments failures, Sanjay alleged.

The MP told the media in Delhi that the Chief Minister should first explain why he had announced the closure of paddy procurement centres during the Rabi season. The Centre never said it wouldnt purchase rice from the state. Even on Monday, Union minister Piyush Goyal said the Centre would purchase any quantity of raw rice. It is the state government that said it wont procure paddy from farmers this season.

All these days, KCR has been demanding that the Centre purchase parboiled rice from TS, though the state had given a written undertaking to the Centre against supply of parboiled rice. Now, he has come up with a fresh demand that the Centre should purchase only paddy, not rice, he said.

He said it is the Centre that pays every single rupee to the farmers towards paddy purchase while the state government would only do brokering.

Sanjay noted that the CM had warned the farmers against raising paddy, while he had allegedly raised paddy in the fields of his farmhouse. It was the BJP who encouraged the farmers to go ahead with paddy cultivation.Why is there an issue only in Telangana and not in any other state, he asked.

Quoting Piyush Goyals comments, the BJP state president said the Centre would definitely purchase raw rice from the state. The Union minister told Parliament that the TS had no proper assessment and guidelines on paddy procurement.

He alleged that large-scale irregularities were committed in paddy procurement by state ministers, TRS MLAs and party leaders. We have all the evidence. Order an inquiry.

Reacting to Chandrashekar Raos claim that the TRS would win 95 seats in the Assembly elections, Sanjay said it showed that the Chief Minister had lost his mental balance after watching the BJP victory in four states. "In fact, survey reports say the BJP would get 95 seats and the TRS either nine or five seats, he claimed.

On the CMs outbursts against the film The Kashmir Files, Sanjay asked, Why is KCR bothered when the film sought to educate the people about the massacre of Kashmiri Pandits?
Chinese FM proposes partnerships of solidarity, development, security, civilization with Islamic countries

Xinhua) 09:02, March 23, 2022

Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi (1st L) attends the 48th session of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Islamabad, capital of Pakistan, on March 22, 2022. (Xinhua/Jiang Chao)

ISLAMABAD, March 22 (Xinhua) -- Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said here on Tuesday that China is upholding real multilateralism and willing to build four partnerships with Islamic countries.

Addressing the 48th session of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), Wang said China is ready to build four partnerships of solidarity, development, security and civilization with Islamic countries in a world full of turbulences and transformations.

First, building a partnership of solidarity and coordination. China and Islamic countries should support each other in safeguarding sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity, and back each other in exploring a development path suited to their own national conditions, Wang said.

They should also support each other in safeguarding their rightful development interests and common interests of the developing countries.

Second, building a partnership of development and rejuvenation. China will provide 300 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine to Islamic countries in helping them fight the pandemic, Wang said. Both sides should join hands to build the Belt and Road and implement the Global Development Initiative in high quality so as to contribute to realizing the UN Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.

Third, building a partnership of security and stability. China will continue supporting Islamic countries in solving the hotspot issues in the world with Islamic wisdoms, and holding the key of stability and peace in their own hands, Wang said. China is ready to promote the comprehensive and just settlement of the Palestinian issue on the basis of the two-state solution.

China backs Afghanistan in forming an inclusive government and achieving stability in governance so as to usher in a new era for peace and reconstruction.

China will encourage Russia and Ukraine to continue peace talks for a ceasefire and put an end to conflict until peace is achieved. Efforts should be made to avoid a humanitarian disaster and prevent spillover of the Ukraine crisis, which may otherwise affect or damage the legitimate rights and interests of other regions and countries, he said.

Fourth, building a partnership of mutual learning among civilizations. China opposes creating division and confrontation by drawing lines with ideology, Wang said, adding that China is also against the ideas of "superiority of a civilization" and "clash of civilizations."

Both sides should also deepen their cooperation in preventive anti-terrorism and de-radicalization, and oppose double standard in anti-terrorism and linking terrorism to a specific nation or religion, he said.

Noting that friendship is the mainstream of the relations between China and the Islamic countries, equality is the basis of mutual communication of the two sides and win-win is the target of mutual cooperation, Wang made three proposals to further boost communication between the two sides.

First, China and the Islamic countries should always stick to mutual respect and mutual trust, and accommodate each other's core concerns. China will never forget the firm support from the Islamic countries in restoring its lawful seat at the United Nations, and China, in return, has always supported the Islamic world over its core concern of the Palestinian issue, Wang said.

Second, the two sides should always stick to unity and mutual assistance, and work together for the realization of common development. Jointly building the Belt and Road has served as a bridge and a bond between the two sides for development and prosperity. China has signed cooperation documents with 54 Islamic countries on nearly 600 large projects, bringing tangible results to the peoples of the two sides, Wang said.

Third, China and the Islamic countries should always stick to learning from each other and safeguard the diversity of civilizations in the world. The two sides should draw on the wisdom from each other's long civilization, Wang added.

(Web editor: Peng yukai, Liang Jun)
Goyal had also stated that the Telangana government had agreed in writing not to supply boiled rice from this year but was now blaming the Centre for non-procurement.  DC file photo

Hyderabad: A delegation of state ministers left for Delhi on Tuesday to meet Union ministers and officials at the Centre to demand 100 per cent procurement of boiled rice made out of paddy grown in Telangana in the rabi season, as was being done in Punjab.

On the other hand, the TRS is gearing up party leaders and cadre to launch agitations across the state by involving farmers.

Ministers T. Harish Rao and Gangula Kamalakar held meetings with leaders of District Rythu Bandhu Samitis on Tuesday to discuss mobilising farmers if the Centre turns down the states demand.

Before leaving for Delhi, agriculture minister S. Niranjan Reddy told media personnel that the delegation had sought an appointment with Union food and public distribution minister Piyush Goyal on Wednesday.

Niranjan Reddy said if the Centre fails to give an assurance on purchase the crop, the TRS will draft an action plan to start agitations on a massive scale as stated by Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao on Monday.

Niranjan Reddy condemned Goyal's statement on Tuesday alleging that the Telangana government had not supplied the rice it was supposed to send to the Food Corporation of India (FCI) in the past.

Goyal had also stated that the Telangana government had agreed in writing not to supply boiled rice from this year but was now blaming the Centre for non-procurement.

"Goyal is distorting facts and trying to mislead the people. Why would we stock custom-milled rice (CMR), when the Centre is not willing to lift it? We are only facilitators and it is the Centre's responsibility to lift the stocks, he said.

Niranjan Reddy said the delay in transportation of rice to the FCI was on account of the Centre's negligence in arranging goods trains and rakes to shift rice.
 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.
After two days of uncertainty and tension, Canadian Pacific Railway has reached an agreement with the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference train and engine negotiating committee to enter the binding arbitration process.

Advertisement Advertise With Us

After two days of uncertainty and tension, Canadian Pacific Railway has reached an agreement with the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference train and engine negotiating committee to enter the binding arbitration process.

In the arbitration process, both parties agree to accept the arbitrators impartial decision as final. As a result, CP Rail workers in Westman and across the country returned to work at noon on Tuesday.

"This agreement enables us  to resume our essential services for our customers and the North American supply chain," said CP Rail president and CEO Keith Creel.

The company will immediately begin working with customers to resume normal train operations across Canada as soon as possible, following that two-day work stoppage.

The Teamsters Canada Rail Conference (TCRC) union represents approximately 3,000 locomotive engineers, conductors, train and yard workers across Canada.

Earlier this week, many CP Rail workers in Brandon took to the picketing lines in front of their downtown rail office on Pacific Avenue.

"The decision to agree to final and binding arbitration is not taken lightly," said Dave Fulton, union spokesperson at the bargaining table.

"While arbitration is not the preferred method, we were able to negotiate terms and conditions that were in the best interest of our members."

Several workers on Sunday voiced their concerns over an update to their pension plan, an issue they believe had not been addressed since 2012. Wages, benefits and the ability to spend more time at home with family were also concerns expressed by members of the Teamsters union.

Federal Labour Minister Seamus ORegan acknowledged both parties on Twitter, congratulating CP Rail and the union for staying at the table and coming to a resolution with the help of federal mediators.

"The outcome is further evidence that when employers and unions work together, we get the best results for Canadians and our economy," ORegan said in a later statement.

ORegan vowed to remain in Calgary until an agreement was reached.

The minister indicated over the weekend that the government believed the best deal could be reached at the bargaining table, after industry groups had been pressuring Ottawa to introduce back-to-work legislation to end the work stoppage.

A report published by The Canadian Press on Tuesday found the arbitration process could take some time based on advice from a labour relations expert.

"Given the high profile of this company, the arbitration process will probably be fast-tracked, but were not talking days, were talking weeks," said Robert Hickey, a labour and employment professor at Queens University.

CP Rail is well aware of the importance and need to manage labour relations and bring the dispute to a quick settlement, Hickey said.

"Labour relations is a key component of being a competitive player in this marketplace," Hickey said.

The professor said he doesnt think Teamsters will get everything the union wants, nor will CP Rail, noting the arbitration process can often leave both parties unsatisfied.

However, Hickey doesnt believe this necessarily guarantees more strike action down the line.

"I dont think this will create a secure path of continued conflict," he said. "These two have an ongoing relationship that certainly has its share of disputes during contract renewal bargaining, but they also know how to reach settlements and get back to work."

 jbernacki@brandonsun.com, with files from The Canadian Press

 Twitter: @JosephBernacki
The federal political landscape in Canada shifted Tuesday morning after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh announced they had signed a confidence and supply agreement until 2025.

Advertisement Advertise With Us

The federal political landscape in Canada shifted Tuesday morning after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh announced they had signed a confidence and supply agreement until 2025.

Essentially, the deal means NDP MPs will vote with the Liberals on confidence votes and budgets in exchange for policy concessions in the current minority Parliament.

They will prioritize work on a dental-care program for low-income Canadians, national pharmacare, affordable housing, phasing out subsidies for fossil fuels, forbidding the use of replacement workers in federal industries during strikes or lockouts and supporting Indigenous communities that wish to undertake burial searches at the former sites of residential schools.

"The message from Canadians was as clear as the mandate they gave Parliament: work together to put people and families first, deliver results and build a better future," Trudeau said. "What this means is that during this uncertain time, the government can function with predictability and stability, present and implement budgets and get things done for Canadians."

Trudeau said the deal would focus on issues on which the parties agree rather than disagree. On areas where the Liberals and NDP do not agree, such as a potential increase in defence spending in response to Russias attack on Ukraine, the prime minister said such situations will be managed on a case-by-case basis.

"In the areas where there is no agreement, we will continue to do the things that the Liberal party was elected to do," he said. "And well look for support from other parties as necessary as we move forward."

At a news conference of his own, Singh also underscored the importance of co-operation to help Canadians, saying on-again, off-again negotiations had been underway since the 2019 election, which handed the Trudeau Liberals their first minority.

"Everyone I talked to, people are telling me that they need help now," he said. "And they expect politicians to deliver that help. And thats exactly what were doing. Were using our power to get help to people."

In Westman, both Conservative members of Parliament came out against the agreement.

"The NDP proactively agreeing to support the next four Liberal budgets, without knowing what is contained within them, is an extraordinary move," Brandon-Souris MP Larry Maguire told the Sun in an email.

"Particularly for an opposition party. While it may not be an official coalition, the end result is the same. The Liberals now have a working majority without needing to win a majority of the seats in the House of Commons."

He said this agreement means the NDP is putting a lot of trust in the Liberals and the prime minister to keep their word. However, he has learned over the past six years that Trudeaus actions and words dont always align.

"Theyve basically done a backroom deal at the expense of democracy," Dauphin-Swan River-Neepawa MP Dan Mazier said. "Its terrible. Its so in your face. Its brazen."

He said after question period on Tuesday, Conservative House leader John Brassard lobbied the Speaker to rule on how this will affect business in the House and in committees if the NDP is essentially no longer part of the opposition.

The agreement is unprecedented at the federal level, Mazier said. Even though similar deals have happened at the provincial level, this was a case of two party leaders in trouble trying to salvage their positions.

"There was a reason why the NDP were the third party in opposition," Mazier said. "There was a reason why the Liberals didnt get the popular vote."

Though the Opposition Conservatives and interim party leader Candice Bergen have been saying the agreement means Canada now has a Liberal-NDP coalition government, Brandon University political science Prof. Kelly Saunders said that isnt the case.

An actual coalition government would have seen NDP members of Parliament more closely integrate with the Liberals, taking up cabinet positions.

"The Conservatives know that," Saunders said. "But theyre using that language to score some political points."

A notable recent example in a similar parliamentary democracy was in the United Kingdom between 2010 and 2015, where the U.K. Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats forged a coalition after an election where no single party had a majority.

In that case, Conservative Leader David Cameron became prime minister while Liberal Democrat Leader Nick Clegg became deputy prime minister.

The current situation is more similar to what happened in British Columbia in 2017, when that provinces NDP and Green Party signed a confidence and supply agreement after the minority Liberal government was defeated in a confidence vote.

While the Conservatives have referred to the agreement as a power grab, Saunders doesnt agree. She sees it as normal business for a minority government, especially since every political partys goal is to earn and maintain power.

It is still the Liberal government and the executive branch, the prime minister and the ministers that introduce legislation that determines the budget.

"That being said, being in a minority situation  as we know  with confidence votes the party in power has to get over 50 per cent plus one [votes in the House of Commons] in order to stay in government.

"They dont have enough votes from their own caucus, so that means that theyre always shopping for votes."

Despite the agreement seemingly ensuring the Liberals will be able to govern a full term, Saunders said she believes the agreement is something the Conservatives can make hay out of.

In 2008, a failed attempt between the Liberals, NDP and Bloc Quebecois allowed Stephen Harper to earn his party a majority in the subsequent election.

"That played really well for them," Saunders said. "They won a massive majority in 2011, so they were able to really act on that."

This agreement buys the Conservatives, whoever their next leader is, time to prepare and rebrand heading into the next election, she said.

 cslark@brandonsun.com, with files from The Canadian Press

 Twitter: @ColinSlark
Traditional Owners of Murujuga, home of one million Indigenous rock engravings carved over about 50,000 years, have demanded the WA government and gas giant Woodside stop development in the World Heritage-nominated area until they can properly consider the impact on their culture.

In an open letter to the state government and Woodside investors, 27 traditional custodians have called for funds to take care of their ancient heritage without relying on industry support, removal of a gag order from the agreement governing the area, and a pause on Woodsides Scarborough LNG development until they can properly consider its impact and give their free and informed consent.

Traditional custodians Adrianna Irvine-Stanes, Patrick Churnside, Josie Alec, Denae Clifton and Raelene Cooper at Murujuga. Credit:Woop Woop Pictures

Former chair of the Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation Raelene Cooper said the Traditional Owners were stuck in a catch-22 where they had the responsibility to care for their heritage, but to do so needed funds from the companies whose facilities and emissions threatened that same heritage.

Its a conflict of interest, Ms Cooper said. Its slowly killing our culture, our history and our people.
Geopolitical, market and financial volatility can generate unintended and unpredictable consequences, with Russias invasion of Ukraine and the Wests response providing a dramatic illustration of how combustible that combination can be.

While the crisis in the nickel market that led to the London Metal Exchanges shutdown and the cancellation of $US3.9 billion ($5.2 billion) of trades is perhaps the most dramatic of the examples, the volatility of oil prices is probably the more central and threatening.

The volatility in oil prices is set to continue. Credit:AP

The oil price was trading just above $US90 a barrel just ahead of the invasion, driven by conventional market forces. Supply that had been curtailed during the pandemic was proving slow to respond to the rate of the rebound in demand as the developed economies bounced back.

The invasion, and the brutal sanctions the West imposed on Russia (with the notable exception of its oil and gas exports because of Europes dependence on them) saw the price soar to almost $US140 a barrel, before falling back to its current level of about $US115 a barrel.
Save Log in , register or subscribe to save articles for later. Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size Sebastian Goldspink is pioneering a new model of curatorship  the sensitive, caring custodian. At the opening of this years Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art at the Art Gallery of South Australia, Goldspink seemed to waver on the brink of tears every time he made a speech, which, as guest curator, was pretty frequently. At no stage did he show a trace of cynicism. For Goldspink, the Adelaide Biennial represents a big step up from his usual activities as an independent curator best known for his work with the Sydney artist-run space, Alaska Projects. The AGSA has brought him on board to identify a new crop of emerging artists and the shape of Australian art in a post-pandemic world. To this end hes been conscientious, putting the needs of artists ahead of any personal agenda. Hes been willing to include older artists, making it a trans-generational show. Hes paid his respects to the South Australian context, the theme of the exhibition serving as a reminder of the states origins as a settler colony, not a prison camp. Hes been exceptionally attentive to Indigenous issues. These are the positives of this 17th Adelaide Biennial but dont expect any sweeping revelations. Goldspink writes: This Biennial takes the position that, in times of crisis, the most radical and impactful position an artist can assume is to act idiosyncratically, to hold their course. To be a guiding star in the darkest of nights. Sebastian Goldspink said the Biennial should be a guiding star in the darkest of nights. Credit:Rhett Wyman This is a terribly romantic way of saying: Anything goes. The idiosyncratic approach may be a fair reflection of the confused, pluralistic state of contemporary art, but it doesnt guarantee memorable works. Free/State is the usual blend of the good, the bad and the cryptic. It just feels a bit more sincere this time. It has been difficult to pull a Biennial together during a pandemic, but the launch was overshadowed by two last-minute tragedies. First was the sudden death of Hossein Valamanesh, who along with his wife, Angela, is one of the senior participants in the exhibition. Next came the accidental death of Neil Balnaves, whose Foundation is the Biennials Principal Donor. Neil Balnaves at his home in Mosman in 2008. Credit:James Brickwood

Advertisement

Neil Balnaves was, quite simply, one of Australias great art patrons  a forthright personality who took a hands-on interest in the events he sponsored. Many galleries and exhibitions  along with other good causes  have benefited from his generosity. In this country genuine philanthropists are rare, and with Balnaves demise, rarer still. In Hossein Valamanesh, we have lost one of Australias most versatile and respected artists, a figure who successfully integrated his Iranian heritage with the culture of an adopted homeland where he would spend almost five decades. He and Angelas contribution to this Biennial was conceived as a compact survey of their careers as solo artists and collaborators. Guardian, part of Angela and Hossein Valameneshs joint exhibition at the Art Gallery of South Australia. Credit:Saul Steed The Valamaneshes display is a show-within-a-show, including early work and some of their most recent. It starts with small, relatively modest pieces and expands in a dozen different directions. Hossein would make sculptures, wall pieces, kinetic works, films, and large-scale installations, each with its particular poetry. Angela begins as a potter and goes on to create large, biomorphic ceramic sculptures. Together the couple have created a significant body of public art. The Valamanesh rooms would have been a highlight of the exhibition under any circumstances but have now taken on an elegiac dimension. They serve as the unofficial heart of this Biennial. Another work that has assumed an exaggerated significance is Stanislava Pinchuks The Wine Dark Sea (2021): an installation of smooth, coloured marble blocks, inscribed with quotations from The Odyssey and lines from reports about Australias offshore detention centres. Ukrainian-Australian artist Stanislava Pinchuk with The Wine Dark Sea, featured in the 2022 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art. Credit:

Advertisement

Pinchuk was born in Kharkhiv, one of the Ukrainian cities currently being besieged by Russian forces. By bringing Odysseuss wanderings in line with those of the refugees who have travelled to Australia by boat, she aimed to make a comment about exile, melancholy, and dislocation. The piece was inspired by Homers supposed tomb on the Greek island of Ios, which features a group of stones perpetually being rearranged by visitors. Pinchuk never anticipated that by the time she showed Wine Dark Sea her birthplace would be rearranged into a mass of rubble, and her fellow Ukrainians transformed into the newest wave of refugees. Pinchuk is a conceptual artist who has hired a professional stonemason to produce components to her specifications. Positioned by the main entrance its one of the first pieces viewers will see and it sets a sombre tone. The actual front of the gallery has been draped in massive, coloured sails by Kate Scardifield. Those who can read such things will tell you it announces an emergency. Kate Scardifields Alarum at the Art Gallery of South Australia. Credit:Saul Steed Inside, above the front desk, theres a piece by Laith McGregor, that contains the word hope. In another part of the building the same artist has spelled out SOS in bottles attached to the gallery wall. McGregor hails from Lismore, a town that has just been decimated by floods, so he has every right to sound alarmist. His large, fastidious drawings are among the more impressive works in this selection. With only 25 artists the Biennial is not huge, but it spreads throughout the AGSA like gas, occupying the temporary exhibition spaces and insinuating itself into the Elder Wing. Tom Polos big, crude, expressionist paintings are erected like billboards in the midst of Australian historical works, angry brutes breathing down viewers necks as they examine some minor colonial masterpiece. Polos works arent pretty, but their sheer bravura is appealing. Perhaps not so appealing to those whose criteria of quality is: Would I hang that in my lounge room? Laith McGregors Strange Days. Credit:Saul Stead

Advertisement

At the other end of the stylistic spectrum, Mitch Cairns has an eye-catching series of paintings filled with flat, decorative motifs. He also has a wall-sized conceptual poem, based on the labels found on a group of old photos. While the paintings lend gravity to unassuming details, the wall piece feels like a laborious way of not saying much. Pitjantjatjara artist, Rhoda Tjitayi, has produced the most whole-hearted paintings in the show, while Indigenous moderne is represented by Reko Rennie, with two long, videos. We watch him driving around in a pink Monaro, late at night, as dreamy music plays in the background. Its not unpleasant, but neither is it especially profound. This is more than I can say about Shaun Gladwells new video, in which the artist, looking more than ever like Moses, with long grey hair and beard, goes tooling around Melbourne on his BMX. From Goldspinks words in the catalogue, one gathers that he sees Gladwell as a special artist, but Im probably not the only person who felt their brain turning to jelly in front of this video. Artist Reko Rennies new work. Credit:Reko Rennie and Justin McManus Overall, the artists in this Biennial deal with a bewildering range of themes and ideas  from politics to sport, from mysticism to heritage  but in many cases the ideas behind a piece are not effectively conveyed to the viewer. The onus is on us to learn what its all about, and then say Ah-ha! That, Id argue, is a poor way of imagining a work of art, which should be able to arrest and hold viewers without them having to consult a wall label or an essay. Julie Rrap, now one of the elders in this group, takes a more direct approach, with a multi-channel video installation called Write Me (2021-22), which features 26 images of her own face, laid out like the letters on a keyboard. Viewers are allowed to write a message to the artist, which sets up a reaction on the screens, as corresponding letters are touched. One can only admire Rraps bravery in creating so many self-portraits in which she has added years and wrinkles to her own face. Its simultaneously an embrace and a defiance of the ageing process. In the context of this Biennial, in which the older artists seem to have produced the best, most coherent work, its also a testament to the value of experience. The Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Free/State runs until June 5.

Advertisement
VIJAYAWADA: Chief Minister Jagan Mohan Reddy stated on Wednesday that the YSR Congress government did not grant any permission to distilleries for the manufacturing of liquor. All such permissions were given during the term of the Chandrababu government, he said.

The chief minister was rounding off a short discussion on liquor policy in the assembly.

He said the YSRC government, on the other hand, had given permission to establish 16 medical colleges in the state. As many as 254 liquor brands came to the distribution outlets during the TD governments time. The YSRC government did not accord a single permission after it took power in 2019, the CM stressed.

Asserting that the brands of YSRC government are its welfare schemes, the chief minister said brands like the President Medal, Boom-Boom beer, Governor Reserve, Powerstar 999 were all the brands of Chandrababu. It was C for Chandrababu and L for Lokesh, when came to such liquor brands, the CM said.

Jagan dismissed the oppositions allegations, stating that his government did not give permission to any new distillery or brewery since 2019. The alleged J-brands were given permission during the term of Chandrababu Naidu. At that time, the CM said, some 254 brands were introduced in the state.

As for distilleries, out of the 20 existing distilleries in the state, 14 were given permission during the TD rule. Seven of them were given permission even while Naidu was acting as an interim chief minister, he said.

The CM said. Liquor brands like the President Medal, Governor Reserve, 999 Powerstar, 999 Legend, Boom Boom beer, ACB, Seventh Heaven are all part of Chandrannas Kanuka.

Also, Jagan highlighted the role of TD leaders in the liquor business. He said Visakha Distillery belongs to TD leader Ayyanna Patrudu, PMK Distilleries is owned by a relative of former TD minister Yanamala Ramakrishnudu, and Sri Krishna Distilleries is owned by Adi Keshavulu Naidu and SPY Distilleries by SPY Reddy, who all belonged to the TD.

Jagan said backstabbing politics is the trademark of Chandrababu and he was acting the same way even on the liquor issue.

Jagan affirmed that there is no cheap liquor in the state and all the liquor being supplied is getting processed and distilled from licensed distilleries after tests by both the company and the government.

Chandrababu, TD and their own media houses are the only cheap brands in the state, he said in a lighter vein.

Liquor rates have been increased to keep the poor people away from consumption and the government has taken over retail trade through the AP State Beverages Corporation and reduced the number of shops from 4,380 to 2,934, the CM said.

He said no changes were made by his government to the states liquor manufacturing policy. While the present government is bringing in 16 new medical colleges and 16 new districts, the previous government gave permission to 14 new distilleries and 254 brands, he said.
All the evidence tells us these treatments work really well and if you can help a young person you can literally change the trajectory of their lives. A kid who is going through anxiety, which is going to cause all sorts of bumpiness for them, they learn some CBT [Cognitive Behavioural Therapy] and slow breathing and understand whats going on and thats a game-changer. The first place to start is with your GP (if you dont have a GP HealthDirects search engine can help you find one locally). When youre trying to find a GP who is helpful, its worth speaking with the medical receptionists  theyre gold, Blashki says. Even if you dont know the clinic well, ring them and ask which doctors are into mental health because some wont be. Request a mental health plan Burgess suggests being clear when youre making the GP appointment that you want a mental health plan, as that allows you to get up to 20 Medicare subsidised sessions with a psychologist.

Loading The APS National Schedule of Recommended Fees 2021-2022 has the standard 46 to 60-minute consultation fee at $267, but costs vary, so it is important to check the price and ask how much you will pay after the rebate when making an appointment. The rebate is between $88-$129 per individual session, so its not unusual to be more than $100 out of pocket for an appointment. Some people qualify for extra help with payment through the Better Access initiative which you can talk about with your GP. APS has an online tool to help people find a suitable psychologist. Within that, a section called PsychEngage allows people to directly contact psychologists and ask them about low/no gap fees. Finding someone you click with

A preliminary conversation with a potential psychologist over the phone can also help to establish whether they are a good fit and, most importantly, if you feel comfortable talking with them. Ask them a bit about their background, the kinds of patients they see, what their waitlists are like  if you talk to them a little bit it gives you a sense of what the person is like, Burgess explains. Psychologists understand it is about a match between the patients and themselves. Dr Grant Blashki, lead clinical advisor at Beyond Blue. Credit:Simon Schluter GPs can also help navigate the local services. They know how to get you into this psychologist or that psychologist, Blashki says, who adds that it is not unusual for people to try two or three mental health professionals before they find a person they click with. The GP can be a bit of an anchor and go OK lets find another person.

Opting for a telehealth appointment slashes the wait times, but if youd prefer to see someone face-to-face, then there is a menu of support available in the interim. At-home therapy There are quite a lot of effective e-therapies. My favourite is Moodgym, but theres also MyCompass, Blashki says. You can learn to challenge some of your [negative] thoughts before youve even spoken to a counsellor. Also while you wait for a psychology appointment, Kids Helpline, ReachOut, and Beyond Blue all provide high-quality resources and information. And school counsellors and Headspace centres, which are Australia-wide and specifically designed for young people, can provide in-person support.

Also, dont forget about all the boring, common sense stuff that has a lot of evidence, stuff like regular exercise, routine, getting enough sleep, turning down the volume on all the socials and phone obsession, staying off drugs and alcohol if theyre an issue, Blashki says. Another thing, in light of the pandemic, is a lot of kids have lost their confidence. My motto for the year is avoid avoidance. Go and sit with it  if you wanted to go to the footy or see friends or to a party, go and sit with it, even if its a bit annoying. Try, even with small steps, to get back into engaging rather than avoiding life. Loading Burgess also suggests spending time with the people you feel safe with: Those basic interactions with people that make a difference. I really encourage people to write about their feelings and thoughts because sometimes just putting it down on paper helps you see it and think about it differently, she says.
For Bethany Shegog, the impact of sexual assault at university has been paralysing.

She was assaulted at a party during a transition to starting uni by someone she considered a friend. She believes he was also failed, as he was unaware of what consent even looks like.

Bethany Shegog was sexually assaulted at a university party, and is among the one in six Australian university students who have experienced harassment or assault since starting their university courses. Credit:Scott McNaughton

It was a drunken incident where he took advantage of my vulnerability, says Ms Shegog, who was motivated by her experience to become womens officer at RMIT, and has chosen to speak publicly about her ordeal.

The mental health toll of it was kind of huge.
As financial journalist Andrew Clark said, Walsh had a golden 15-year period when he was chief Canberra political correspondent of The Australian Financial Review and then the papers editor in Sydney.

Along with a few others, such as his one-time colleague, Vic Carroll, he could easily have stepped into the shoes of government. Smiling and urbane, Walsh in his position as commentator could stand aside from political pressures and really dictate where the economy was going and what should be done.

Maximilian Walsh, along with a handful of other journalists throughout the nations history, reached such a stature in the political/economic firmament that governments were sometimes reading his material before deciding what to do.

Among those he influenced was Labor frontbencher Paul Keating who, when he became federal Treasurer, began dismantling the protectionist wall around the Australian economy. Walsh arrived on the national stage at a time when the Australian economy, emerging from the fairly easy financial environment in the 60s under a long-serving and increasingly complacent conservative government, hit the 70s with a change to Labor, the onset of a recession and political upheavals that are felt to this day. As a journalist, Walsh was the man for the moment.

Maximilian Sean Walsh was born on May 8, 1937, in a Catholic, Labor-voting family in Sydney. Leaving school at 16, he went to work in a chemical factory. In 1955, he then joined John Fairfax and sons as an assistant proofreader. A year later became a cadet journalist with the Sydney Morning Herald.

Nine months later, he joined the Sydney Daily Mirror, where he entered the rough and tumble world of crime reporting. A colleague who met him in 1957 said he was a brash, aggressive police-rounds reporter. Walshs ability quickly showed itself out, and he was transferred to Canberra to cover parliamentary sessions, and it was soon impressed on him that politics was about what people could get out of the system, and that system was based on economics. He enrolled as an economics student at Sydney University, where his brilliance showed itself out again.

Jim Waley and Max Walsh, the co-hosts of Sunday, in 1981. Credit:Source unknown

In 1962, Maxwell Newton, whom Walsh had met during his stint in Canberra, recruited him to write on oil and gas at a time when the industry was becoming increasingly important. Carroll took over editorship of the Financial Review in 1964 and two years later sent Walsh back to Canberra, this time as chief political correspondent for the paper.
Millionaire businessman and former national COVID-19 response leader Neville Power and his son Nicholas have copped eight-month suspended sentences for sneaking into Western Australia in their helicopter, avoiding quarantine.

The former head of the National COVID-19 Coordination Commission flew with his son from their family cattle station near Mount Isa through the Northern Territory, stopping at regional WA towns including the coastal tourist hotspot of Exmouth, on their way back to Perth.

Neville Power and his lawyer Sam Vandongen SC arrive at Perth Magistrates Court on Wednesday. Credit:Peter de Kruijff

They entered guilty pleas to two charges of failing to comply with the border restrictions for not going into 14 days of isolation or filling out a G2G Pass to enter WA.

Deputy Chief Magistrate Elizabeth Woods said on Wednesday the two men had good character references and no record of similar offences, but the breaches were serious.
A Queensland judge has found holes in expert witness evidence and testimonies in several criminal and civil cases, urging defence lawyers to identify the qualifications of witnesses.

In a paper delivered to the Australian Defence Lawyers Alliance Symposium on Friday, Justice Peter Davis raised concerns with several cases across the state and questioned the viability of expert witnesses.

Queensland Supreme Court Justice Peter Davis.

Evidence provided by a pathologist in one of Queenslands biggest crimes, the murder of 15-year-old Janet Phillips in Brisbanes bayside suburb of Wynnum in 1987, was probed by Justice Davis.

He questioned that while the pathologist was an expert in forensic pathology and was clearly qualified to give opinion evidence about stab wounds, he lacked expertise in other fields, notably whether Phillips killer Lloyd Clark Fletcher raped her before or after her death.
Australian universities have a problem with sexual assault.

The Universities Australias National Student Safety Survey released on Wednesday makes that clear. Sixteen per cent of students reported sexual harassment and 4.5 per cent reported sexual assault since starting university.

More effective policy leadership and education is required to ensure all women know how to report a sexual crime. Credit:Tamara Voninski

While it is difficult to know the prevalence of campus-based sexual harm when the survey was conducted during a COVID-19 lockdown, what is clear is that until the sector starts conducting evidence-based research into what does and doesnt work to address sexual assault and harassment at universities, we will never trulydeal with the problem.

Professor Charlene Senn, chair in Sexual Violence at the University of Windsor in Canada, told a presentation at the United Nations in April last year that the bulk of sexual harm at universities is against women perpetrated by heterosexual men, and that the highest incidence of sexual assault is experienced by young women in their first two years of study.
The mental health of young people has been steadily declining around the world over the past 15 to 20 years. This public health threat finally prompted the US Surgeon General Dr Vivek Murthy to issue a statement late last year on what he acknowledged as the youth mental health crisis.

Every childs path to adulthoodreaching developmental and emotional milestones, learning healthy social skills, and dealing with problemsis different and difficult. Many face added challenges along the way, often beyond their control. Theres no map, and the road is never straight. But the challenges todays generation of young people face are unprecedented and uniquely hard to navigate. And the effect these challenges have had on their mental health is devastating.

A pandemic is a perfect recipe for a crisis in youth mental health. Credit:Rodger Cummins

It prompted President Joe Biden in his State of the Union address this month to announce a national program of investment in youth mental health care.

The pandemic has added further momentum to this public health crisis. All disasters create a surge of mental ill-health and a global pandemic much more so. In May 2020, researchers with the Australian youth mental health organisation Orygen predicted a 32 per cent rise in cases of mental ill-health in young people over the next three to four years. Last November, The Lancet reported that the global increase in anxiety and depression alone had already reached 25 per cent.
Labor deputy leader Richard Marles has rejected calls for an inquiry into the pressure placed on Kimberley Kitching in the months before she died by saying she never made a formal complaint to him about bullying and did not ask him to take action on her behalf.

Mr Marles conceded the Labor senator was obviously unhappy at her treatment by Senate colleagues when they dumped her from the partys tactics committee in the upper house, a source of frustration known to her friends last year.

Richard Marles denied receiving a formal bullying complaint from the late senator Kimberley Kitching. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

But he refused to discuss the details of a conversation he had with Senator Kitching in June last year when she reportedly drafted a letter, which she never sent, outlining her concerns about a campaign of bullying that went beyond the normal contest of politics.

At no point did Kimberley make a bullying complaint to me. At no point did she ask me to take action, Mr Marles said on Wednesday in his first answers to questions about their one-on-one conversation.
Around three-quarters of Australians would move from a capital city to a mid-sized regional town under the right circumstances, new research shows, but the threat of bushfires and floods play into where they would choose to live.

Only 16 per cent are happy to stay put in the city, a new Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute report, titled Understanding what attracts new residents to smaller cities, revealed.

Noel Clifford is in the process of moving to his new home in Sedgwick, near Bendigo. Credit:Eddie Jim

As part of the research, undertaken by the University of South Australia, RMIT and UNSW Sydney, more than 3000 Australians aged 18 and older were surveyed about their preferences for city or regional living.

The survey was conducted in January and February last year, still within the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the report author - University of South Australia senior research fellow Associate Professor Akshay Vij - said there were unexpected results.
Ukrainian pilots do have one advantage. In most of the country, Russian planes fly over territory controlled by the Ukrainian military, which can move anti-aircraft missiles to harass  and shoot down  planes. Ukraine has been effective in the sky because we operate on our own land, said Yuriy Ihnat, a spokesperson for the air force. The enemy flying into our airspace is flying into the zone of our air defence systems. He described the strategy as luring Russian planes into air defence traps. Dave Deptula, dean of the American Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies and principal attack planner for the Desert Storm air campaign in Iraq, said the impressive performance of the Ukrainian pilots had helped counter their disadvantages in numbers. He said Ukraine now has roughly 55 operational fighter jets, a number that is dwindling from shoot-downs and mechanical failures. He said Ukrainian pilots were stressing them to max performance. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has appealed repeatedly to Western governments to replenish his air force and has asked NATO to enforce a no-fly zone over the country, a step Western leaders have refused to take. Slovakia and Poland have considered sending MiG-29 fighter jets, which Ukrainian pilots could fly with minimal additional training, but as yet no transfers have been made.

Russian troops have already fired nearly 1000 missiles at Ukraine, countless bombs, Zelensky said in a video address to US Congress on March 16, appealing for more planes. And you know that they exist, and you have them, but they are on earth, not in Ukraine  in the Ukrainian sky. Deptula said transferring these jets into Ukraine was critical. Without resupply, he said, they will run out of aeroplanes before they run out of pilots. Loading Pilotless drones are also a tool in the Ukrainian militarys arsenal but not in the battle for control of the airspace. Ukraine flies a Turkish-made armed drone, the Bayraktar TB-2, a plodding, propeller aircraft that is lethally effective in destroying tanks or artillery pieces on the ground but cannot hit targets in the air. If Ukraines air defences fail, Russian jets could easily pick them off. As in other aspects of Ukraines war effort, volunteers play a role in the air battles. A volunteer network watches and listens for Russian jets, calling in coordinates and estimated speed and altitude. Other private Ukrainian pilots have removed up-to-date civilian navigation equipment from their planes and handed it over to the air force, in case it can be helpful.

Air-to-air combat has been rare in modern war, with only isolated examples in recent decades. US pilots, for example, have not flown extensive aerial dogfights since the first Iraq War in 1991. Since then, US fighter jets have engaged in air-to-air combat on just a few occasions, shooting down 10 planes in the Balkan War and one plane in Syria, according to Deptula. In the night sky, Andriy said he relies on instruments to discern the positions of enemy planes, which he says are always present. He has shot down Russian jets but was not permitted to say how many or which type. He said his targeting system can fire at planes a few dozen kilometres away. I mostly have tasks of hitting airborne targets, of intercepting enemy jets, he said. I wait for the missile to lock on my target. After that, I press fire. When he shoots down a Russian jet, he said, I am happy that this plane will no longer bomb my peaceful towns. And as we see in practice, that is exactly what Russian jets do. Most of the aerial combat in Ukraine has been nocturnal, as Russian aircraft attack in the dark when they are less vulnerable to air defences. In the dogfights over Ukraine, Andriy said, the Russians have been flying an array of modern Sukhoi jets, such as the Su-30, Su-34 and Su-35.

I had situations when I was approaching a Russian plane to a close enough distance to target and fire, he said. I could already detect it but was waiting for my missile to lock on while at the same time from the ground they tell me that a missile was fired at me already. He said he manoeuvred his jet through a series of extreme banks, dives and climbs in order to exhaust the fuel supplies of the missiles coming after him. The time I have to save myself depends on how far away the missile was fired at me and what kind of missile, he said. Still, he said in an interview on a clear, sunny day, I can still feel a huge rush of adrenaline in my body because every flight is a fight. Andriy graduated from the Kharkiv Air Force School after deciding to become a pilot as a teenager. Neither me nor my friends ever thought we would have to face a real war, he said. But thats not how it turned out. Andriy has moved his wife to a safer part of Ukraine, but she has not left the country, he said. She spends her days weaving homemade camouflage nets for the Ukrainian army. He never tells family members when he is going on duty, he said, calling only after returning from a night flight.
US President Joe Bidens admonishment of India for its shaky stand on Russia with regard to its invasion of Ukraine was bound to come. As the leader of the free world who is proactive in keeping Nato and EU nations united in its stand against Russia and towards which he is travelling to Brussels and Warsaw, Mr Biden had to bring out the contradiction in Indias neutrality -- which may have been acceptable all the way to abstaining thrice from voting at the United Nations -- and its inability to call out the unconscionable atrocities of the war that Vladimir Putin is waging.

Not voting at the UN may have been understandable considering India-Russias old and unbreakable ties and Indias dependence on Russian armoury, flying fighting machines and aircraft carrier, which constitute more than 60 per cent of Indias military capabilities, besides civil nuclear cooperation in power generation. The moral dilemma has grown intolerably suffocating now that the Russian forces, finding increasing Ukrainian resistance, are following their Syrian playbook of attacking hospitals, schools and civilians, including women and children, in a war of attrition.

What makes Indias quirky stand shakier is the fact that during a call with the British Prime Minister, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is reported to have agreed with Boris Johnson that Ukraines integrity and territorial sovereignty must be respected, according to the British version of the conversation. Furthermore, the leaders agreed that Russia needed to adhere to the UN charter. India has not, however, publicly aired these thoughts in a month after Mr Putins invasion of Ukraine that began on February 24 with utter disregard for international rules-based order.

Calling for cessation of hostilities is about the most that India has done and the futility of talks is clear as Russia is trying to regroup on the ground now. Not even China, despite closeness to the Kremlin, is doing much towards stopping the war that Mr Putin began. And Indias neutrality that all but supports Russias indefensible invasion may even be caused by its fears over a China-Russia-Pakistan axis developing that would be too close to home for comfort.

Regardless of such geostrategic scenarios, what hits home is that as a member of the US-led Quad alliance, India remains the only nation not to condemn the abomination of the Russian war machine let loose.

What Indias reaction may be can only be guessed at if Mr Putin were to follow his Syrian playbook even more by resorting to chemical weapons, which is what the West is anticipating at the moment. The conflict could escalate due to Russias failure to win the war outright to which the civilian areas of Ukraine that are reduced to rubble stand tragic testimony. It is moot whether the war is unwinnable but Mr Putin has gone too far anyway to be able to call it off. In that sense at least, Indias ambivalent stand on Ukraine is not of immediate relevance though it could cost it the ties assiduously built with US in recent years that is reflected in India becoming a valued member of Quad with fellow democracies.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson will use the summit to pledge 6000 new defensive missiles for Ukraine and about $50 million for Ukraines armed forces. Loading Leaders meeting in Brussels are also expected to discuss longer-term military, diplomatic and humanitarian support for Ukraine and strengthening measures against Russia. The UK will also provide an additional 4.1 million ($7.2 million) for the BBC World Service as part of an effort to tackle disinformation in Russia and Ukraine, as well as new financial and policing support for the International Criminal Courts investigation into war crimes. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Thursday morning (AEDT) that the group was expected to agree to provide Ukraine with additional support, including equipment to protect against chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threats as well as cyber security assistance.

It would be the first time NATO member states have sent supplies to Ukraine specifically to counter weapons of mass destruction amid rising fears in western capitals that Moscow could use them. We are concerned about the use of chemical or biological weapons, Stoltenberg said. Any use of chemical weapons would totally change the nature of the conflict ... and have far-reaching consequences. Russian President Vladimir Putin during a meeting in Moscow on Monday. Credit:Kremlin/AP Since Putin launched an invasion on February 25, NATO has readied 140,000 troops in the region and mobilised a massive war chest of advanced military equipment. The alliance, which has more than 140 warships and 130 aircraft on heightened alert, has warned Moscow that an attack on a NATO member state would be viewed as an attack on all member nations. Ukraine, which has sought NATO membership since 2002, is bordered by four NATO allies.

US President Joe Biden will attend the summit as well as meetings with European Union and G7 allies aiming to increase support for Kyiv and tighten the financial squeeze on Russias economy with more sanctions. More than 100,000 of NATOs troops are American. Loading Biden is also expected to travel to Poland which is dealing with almost 2 million refugees who have fled the conflict. He warned on Monday that the world was at inflection point, with his administration sharing deep concerns about Russias alignment with China, as intelligence officials said that the Kremlin had turned to Beijing for economic and military aid. Theres going to be a new world order out there, and weve got to lead it, Biden said. And weve got to unite the rest of the free world in doing it.

He said ahead of his visit there was a real threat Russia could use chemical weapons in Ukraine. Biden is also expected to announce further sanctions against Moscow while pressing Western leaders to join in on even more aggressive economic actions. The Biden administrations formal declaration of war crimes was a significant shift in rhetoric, as both Blinken and the President had previously said, only as a matter of personal opinion, that they believed war crimes had taken place. Loading Todays statement from Blinken, however, comes after the Department of State and other US government experts documented and assessed potential war crimes in Ukraine. Among the atrocities committed, Blinken said, was the strike that hit a Mariupol theatre clearly marked with the word children in Russian; the attack on the Mariupol maternity hospital; and the indiscriminate shelling of schools, ambulances and shopping centres.

Russia has denounced reports that the US and its Western allies were pushing to expel it from the G20 meeting in Indonesia later this year, saying Putin still intended to attend. Russias embassy in Jakarta said the reaction of the West was absolutely disproportional. Ukraines President Volodymyr Zelensky will address the summit video as he hailed his troops for taking back territory from Russian forces. The Ukrainian military has mounted a series of limited counter-attacks in recent days, claiming to retake Makariv on the outskirts of the capital Kyiv, as well as pushing back occupying forces around the southern city of Kherson. In a regular overnight address, Zelensky praised his forces who had defeated and dislodged Russian soldiers around Kherson while warning that Russias brutal shelling meant there was nothing left of Mariupol, a port city that has borne the brunt of the war. Russian troops are attempting to grind down resistance in Mariupol to consolidate territory along Ukraines coast, but Ukrainian and western officials said the defence of the city continued.
Broker franchise network MoneyQuest is banking on great customer experiences and attracting high-quality brokers to grow the business in 2022.

MoneyQuest Australia managing director Michael Russell (pictured) highlighted the companys growth strategy at a recent in-person national conference in Melbourne.

This year we will continue to recruit people who are going to enhance the reputation of MoneyQuest and the broader mortgage broking industry. For us its about quality over quantity, Russell said.

The broker network aimed to create good customer experiences by taking cues from Disneyland, the happiest place on earth to ensure MoneyQuest clients received a magical Disney-like experience.

We emphasise to our members that its all in the thoughtful, personalised details and making each client feel special and important. This is what clients remember and what motivates them to come back, Russell said.

Read more: MoneyQuest brokerage hits monthly record for loan settlements

Lead generation and referral partner opportunities were at the top of the networks 2022 priority list. MoneyQuest also aimed to convert new members into successful franchise business owners.

We conduct regular business development sessions with our brokers to assist them with adopting a growth mindset, so that they can in turn grow their businesses, he said.

MoneyQuest runs one-hour sessions fortnightly to provide franchise owners the opportunity to share their experiences and best practices. They also get feedback from their peers, learn new skills and set goals led by general manager of franchise development Simon Dehne.

The network also wanted to strengthen its value proposition by focusing on technology.

We have an industry-leading CRM, as well as an innovative client communications platform to assist our brokers with day-to-day activities and generating repeat business, said Russell.

MoneyQuest plans to further develop these systems as technological advances occur to give brokers the best chance of managing and growing successful businesses.

It is our goal to become the leading technology-enabled mortgage broking business in the industry, said Russell.

The broker networks final goal for 2022 is to have fun, which was reflected in the theme of its recent national conference.

Having fun and fostering a positive culture is incredibly important to us. Happy people do better business, which is why we endeavour to create happiness for our brokers, and by extension their clients, at every opportunity, Russell said.

MoneyQuests Creating happiness national conference in Melbourne was held over three days in February and attended by members, business supporters and industry partners.

Speakers included Australias laughter specialist Scott Williams, 3AW drive host Tom Elliott and retired US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Bill Sullivan.
In the early stages of my research on partnerships between large corporations and startups, some of my most intriguing case studies were found in Bangalore. A notable example was that of Mango, a startup incubated in IIM Bangalores NS Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning (NSRCEL) which had forged a partnership with Qualcomm, the American wireless technology giant. Fast forward to present times. A few days ago Maruti Suzuki marked the conclusion of a corporate accelerator programme, conducted in partnership with IIMBs NSRCEL, through which it engaged with a set of focused on technologies relevant to mobility.

The journey from Mango to Maruti at IIMB parallels other trajectories I have observed as part of my research over the past 15 years that forms the basis of my new book, Gorillas Can Dance, on corporate-startup partnering. In the case of Microsoft, the lead case study in my book, one of the first examples of corporate-startup engagement I studied involved a Bangalore-based company called Skelta whose CEO Sanjay Shah and his team forged a parnership with with support from a young manager, Rajiv Sodhi, who today is Indias COO. The partnership transformed into a global relationship that facilitated the ventures international expansion. The subsequent opening of Microsofts accelerator in Bangalore in 2012, with enthusiastic involvement from individuals like the then CFO Amaresh Ramaswamy, saw the corporations engagement with Indian grow in leaps and bounds.

Other MNCs followed suit. IBM engaged with such as Bangalore-based Stelae Technologies which became the runner-up of its global startup competition in 2015. LaunchPad, established in Bangalore in 2016, has engaged with over 50 startups over the years, several of which have gone onto to achieve considerable success. Even corporations in more traditional sectors, such as the retail company Target and SwissRe, a European reinsurance corporation, opened accelerators in Bangalore. And when the founders of the BMW Startup Garage established a global initiative called Startups Against Corona to connect innovative startups with corporations, one of the early success stories was that of Pune-based Leena AI which provided a remote work management solution to the Swiss cement giant Lafarge Holcim.

Reflecting on these developments, three points are worth marking. First, while there are many instances of impressive corporate-startup partnering efforts in India, these have been effortful, not effortless. As I note in my book, a challenge stems from the paradox of asymmetry  the very differences that make corporations and startups attractive to each other also make it difficult to work together. Executives at Cisco, Microsoft, SwissRe and many other corporations have recognized this and worked hard to establish partner interfaces to address this challenge. Corporations that have begun to engage with startups more recently would do well to learn from the experiences of these veterans.

Second, there is scope for corporate-startup partnering to go beyond the established startup ecosystems like Bangalore to include locations off the beaten track. In my research at China Europe International Business School (CEIBS), I have observed that entrepreneurial efforts by local government policy makers through initiatives like smart city programmes can facilitate corporate-startup partnering even in smaller cities. More initiatives targeting smaller cities, such as for Startups Highway to a Hundred Unicorns and efforts at Hyderabads T Hub to engage with entrepreneurs from other parts of the state, are in order.

Third, India offers a tremendous opportunity to enable corporate-startup partnering that helps to address the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). There is scope for more partnering between corporations and social enterprises, as noted in a recently report from Catalyst 2030, which tallies with my own work at the CEIBS Africa Campus in Ghana. Moreover, Indian outfit Startup Reseaus activities in East Africa suggest that emergent ecosystems in Africa can learn from experiences in India. Going forward, green technology represents an important area for corporate-startup partnering in India to help address the global climate change challenge.

In sum, the growth in corporate-startup partnering in India reflects the rise of sophistication on the part of both corporations and startups, as evident from last years unprecedented success for Indian companies like Fresh Works that went public in the US. In India, the potential for a symbiotic relationship between corporations and startups has played out not only at the level of individual partnerships, but also in terms of the co-evolution of the entrepreneurial ecosystem and the partner ecosystems of large corporations. And there is scope for corporate-startup partnering to go further, not only for economic payoff but also social impact.

Shameen Prashantham is Professor of International Business & Strategy, and Associate Dean (MBA), at China Europe International Business School. He is the author of Gorillas can Dance: Lessons from Microsoft and Other Corporations on Partnering with Startups.
Ltd Executive Chairperson has been elected as a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE), Scotland's National Academy, the company said on Wednesday.

Mazumdar-Shaw, who is also the Executive Chairperson of Biologics, will be joining RSE's current fellowship of around 1,700 fellows, the company said in a statement.

"It is inspiring to join this fellowship of luminaries from different walks of life, who are striving for the economic and social well-being of the world. The fellowship will provide me an opportunity to work collectively and collaboratively with some of the greatest minds to solve the pressing issues of our times through innovative solutions for the greater good of mankind," she said.

RSE is one of the world's oldest and most respected academic societies. Fellows are elected to join the RSE from across the fields of science, arts, education, business and public life in recognition of their impact in improving the world around them.

The RSE fellowship is split into four broad sectors, covering the full range of physical and life sciences, arts, humanities, social sciences, education, professions, industry, business and public life.

"This year's cohort represents the diversity of expertise within Scotland and the UK with leaders from business, tech, legal and other sectors," the statement 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.)
financial arm, Oxyzo Financial Services, a tech-enabled smart financing solution provider, turned unicorn after raising $200 million in a Series A round led by Alpha Wave and co-led by Tiger Global, Norwest Venture Partners, Matrix Partners and Creation Investments.

Oxyzo started as Groups financing platform that provided cash flow matched working capital financing for buying raw materials for SMEs in the traditional sectors of the economy such as manufacturing and sub-contracting. However, the company has always been a 100 per cent subsidiary of . Close to 75 per cent of the shareholding in Oxyzo is held by OfBusiness.

Ruchi Kalra, chief executive officer and co-founder at Oxyzo, said that the firm's operations and lending were never purely dedicated to OfBusiness clients. We have always focused on creating our own balance sheet and hence our book balance has always been growing well. Over 70 per cent of lending from Oxyzo is for outside of OfBusiness, she added. Oxyzo has grown to an AuM of $350 million with a 100% Y-o-Y growth while maintaining its GNPA at 1.2% even through the Covid period.

The funds will be used to expand Oxyzos broader digital financial services play organically and inorganically across a strong own balance sheet play, scaling the supply chain marketplace, launching innovative fixed income products for the SME space, and scaling other fee incomes business lines including debt capital markets and securities.

Oxyzo expanded to value chains beyond OfBusiness B2B raw material platform with diversified product suite and a broader customer base to include SMEs, mid-corporates, as well as the new age economy. With this, the company has now leveraged its strong supply chain data warehouse, basis its cumulative disbursements of $2 billion across 30,000+ nodes to build a digital supply chain and embedded finance marketplace that aims to solve for the under-penetrated formal credit in the B2B economy.

The company has leveraged proprietary tech systems to ensure proactive monitoring and operating efficiencies at scale resulting in the business having an opex of 2.5%.

Further, Oxyzos recently launched fixed income and securities business line has achieved cumulative market volume of over $1.6 billion in the last 6 months. Kalra also shared that Oxyzo has been profitable since its inception and currently at a 5.5%+ pre-tax RoA.

Ask Kalra about being a women heading a unicorn, she is quick to clarify: It is about teamwork. Besides, all five of us have worked hard on these two entities. Going ahead Vasant (Vasant Sridhar, co-founder) and I will be focusing more on Oxyzo, she added.

Oxyzo aims to continuously innovate in B2B financial services space through end-to-end capabilities across origination, deployment, curated structuring and distribution enabled through technology.

Niren Shah, MD and head, Norwest Venture Partners India, stated, We have been delighted with our early investment in Ofbusiness and feel privileged to get an opportunity to partner with them once again, this time co-leading a $200m round to fund Oxyzo, the SME Fintech business. We are impressed with how the Oxyzo team has built a high growth business with robust corporate governance and are even more excited with their vision to build this into Indias most profitable, tech-driven, B2B SME fintech player. We are proud to congratulate Ruchi on becoming the first female founder in India of a profitable, fintech unicorn!
For more than a year, online D2C start-ups have been seeking, and sometimes commanding, valuations like software start-ups. According to industry insiders, valuation demands of around 10x of revenue had become far too common despite the fact that consumer brands are fundamentally different from technology businesses.

But a course correction is happening now. In the last two months, sanity has returned and the investor community is driving home the point that the best consumer brands cant grow as fast as the best tech firms. It is that simple a reasoning, says an ...
Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd on Wednesday said it along with its US-based arm Ranbaxy, Inc, has



signed a USD 485 million settlement with two plaintiff groups regarding generic drug application antitrust litigation.

The company and its arm have signed a binding term sheet with two plaintiff groups, the Direct Purchaser and End-Payor Plaintiffs, collectively resolving all of the claims against the company, in the matter of "In re Generic Drug Application Antitrust Litigation", said in a regulatory filing.

The case has been ongoing in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts (USA) for several years, it added.

There were multiple antitrust, consumer protection, and civil RICO class actions consolidated in the District of Massachusetts, (USA) against the Company in connection with generic Diovan, a drug for the treatment of hypertension; generic Nexium, a drug for the treatment of gastroesophageal reflux disease and peptic ulcers; and generic Valcyte, a drug for the treatment of cytomegalovirus disease, it added.

The actions and claims relate to alleged conduct by Laboratories Ltd. and its U.S. subsidiary prior to its acquisition by Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd, the company said.

said has disputed the claims of the plaintiffs and defended these matters vigorously.

"With a view to resolve this dispute and avoid uncertainty, the company has agreed to enter a comprehensive settlement with these plaintiff groups for a total settlement amount of USD 485 million," it said.

As a consequence of the binding term sheet, the company shall execute the necessary settlement agreements, which, upon approval by the US Court, will ensure that all allegations against it has denied, is "not conceded and not admitted, do not survive and stand extinguished".

(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
It was a tragedy waiting to happen at the ill-fated scrap godown in Hyderabad's Bhoiguda as 12 migrant workers from Bihar were staying in a single room above the godown that had a sole access point.

A spiral staircase in the godown was the only way to enter and exit from the room and a kitchen attached to it.

Making matters worse for the hapless workers, the shutters of the godown (on the ground floor) remained closed when the deadly fire mishap happened in the early hours of Wednesday.

Unsurprisingly, they could not come out and save their lives though one of the 12 people managed to escape by jumping out of the window. It was a heart-wrenching scene as bodies, charred beyond recognition, were found in a heap as they apparently collapsed upon inhaling the smoke, a fire official said.

Eleven among the 12 workers perished in the fire the exact cause of it would be known after an investigation, the officials said. Burnt scrap material, including old papers, empty liquor bottles and fiber cable wires, were found scattered at the scene. The godown owner has provided accommodation to them in the room upstairs, but no one was, actually, supposed to stay there, a police official said. The 12 workers, aged between 22 and 35 years, were sleeping in the room when the tragedy struck.

The fire appeared to have broken out in the godown and soon spread to the room above, the police official said.

The site of the fire tragedy was sealed and cordoned off as authorities removed the burnt scrap material from the godown. The migrant workers, who came to the city to eke out a living, hailed from different villages of Bihar's Chhapra and Katihar districts. Some of them were working at the scrap godown for the past two years, while others had joined recently.

(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 elderly woman walks pass concrete blocks topped with sandbags at a street in Odesa, southern Ukraine, on Tuesday, March 22, 2022.(AP/Petros Giannakouris)

LVIV/KYIV, Ukraine: Talks between Ukraine and Russia are confrontational but moving forward, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Wednesday, as the West plans to announce more sanctions against the Kremlin amid a worsening humanitarian crisis.

Intense Russian air strikes are turning besieged Mariupol into the "ashes of a dead land", the city council said on Tuesday, as street fighting and bombardments raged in the port city.

Hundreds of thousands are believed to be trapped inside buildings, with no access to food, water, power or heat. Both civilians and Ukrainian troops were coming under Russian fire, said regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko.

Russian forces and Russian-backed separatist units had taken about half of the port city, normally home to around 400,000 people, Russia's RIA news agency said, citing a separatist leader.

But in an early morning address, Zelenskiy held out hope for negotiations, which have yielded little since the Feb. 24 invasion began.

"It's very difficult, sometimes confrontational," he said. "But step by step we are moving forward."

Russian President Vladimir Putin's incursion into Ukraine has forced more than 3.5 million to flee, brought the unprecedented isolation of Russia's economy, and raised fears of wider conflict in the West unthought-of for decades.

Mariupol has become the focus of the war that erupted when Putin sent his troops over the border on what he calls a "special military operation" to demilitarise Ukraine and replace its pro-Western leadership.

The port city lies on the Sea of Azov and its capture would allow Russia to link areas in the east held by pro-Russian separatists with the Crimean peninsula, annexed by Moscow in 2014.

Western nations plan to heap more pressure on the Kremlin.

Alongside European leaders, U.S. President Joe Biden is expected to announce new sanctions against Russia and new measures to tighten existing ones when he visits Brussels this week.

The United States is preparing sanctions on more than 300 members of Russia's lower house of parliament as soon as Thursday, according to The Wall Street Journal, which cited unnamed officials and internal documents.

"No final decisions have been made about who we will sanction and how many we will sanction," said a White House spokesperson.

"We will have additional sanctions measures to announce that will be rolled out in conjunction with our allies on Thursday when the President has the opportunity to speak with them."

Biden's Europe trip is also set to include an announcement on joint action to enhance energy security on the continent, which is highly reliant on Russian gas, and a visit to Poland to show solidarity with Ukraine's neighbour.

The United States and its Western allies are also assessing whether Russia should remain within the Group of Twenty (G20) major economies, sources told Reuters.

NUCLEAR OPTION

Having failed to seize the capital Kyiv or any other major city with a swift offensive, Russia is waging a war of attrition that has reduced some urban areas to rubble and prompted Western concern that the conflict could escalate, even to a nuclear war.

Russia's security policy dictates that the country would only use such weapons if its very existence were threatened, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told CNN.

"If it is an existential threat for our country, then it (the nuclear arsenal) can be used in accordance with our concept," he said.

Earlier he said "no one" had ever thought the operation in Ukraine would take just a couple of days and the campaign was going to plan, TASS news agency reported.

Western officials said Russian forces were stalled around Kyiv but making some progress in the south and east. Ukrainian fighters are repelling Russian troops in some places but cannot roll them back, they said.

Russia's combat power in Ukraine has declined below 90% of its pre-invasion levels, a senior U.S. defence official said on Tuesday, without providing evidence. If confirmed, it would suggest heavy losses of weaponry and growing casualties.

'HUMANITARIAN CATASTROPHE'

The United Nations human rights office in Geneva said on Tuesday it had recorded 953 civilian deaths and 1,557 injured since the invasion. The Kremlin denies targeting civilians.

Millions have fled abroad, according to the United Nations, leaving Eastern Europe scrambling to provide them with care, schools and jobs.

The United States plans to launch an effort this week to make it easier for some to enter after only a handful of refugees were admitted in the first two weeks of March, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk, speaking on Ukrainian television on Tuesday, said at least 100,000 people wanted to leave Mariupol but could not.

A Reuters team that reached a Russian-seized part of the city on Sunday described a wasteland of charred apartment blocks and bodies wrapped in blankets lying by a road.

Ukraine says Russian shells, bombs and missiles have struck a theatre, an art school and other public buildings, burying hundreds of women and children sheltering in cellars.

Kyiv accused Moscow of deporting residents of Mariupol and separatist-held areas of Ukraine to Russia. This includes the "forcible transfer" of 2,389 children to Russia from the Luhansk and Donetsk regions, Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova said.

Moscow denies forcing people to leave, saying it is taking in refugees.

In Kherson, a city under Russian control, Ukrainian officials said Moscow's forces were preventing supplies from reaching civilians.

"Kherson's 300k citizens face a humanitarian catastrophe owing to the Russian army's blockade," foreign ministry spokesperson Oleg Nikolenko said on Twitter.

Russia did not immediately comment on the situation in Kherson.

Zelenskiy warned the crisis in Ukraine, one of the world's biggest grain exporters, would bring famine elsewhere.

"How can we sow (crops) under the strikes of Russian artillery?" he told Italian lawmakers.

In his latest address to Western lawmakers, Zelenskiy said via a video link that his people were clinging to survival, with the Russian military devastating Ukrainian cities and slaughtering civilians.
With staring at an unprecedented economic crisis, the refugee flow to Tamil Nadu has commenced after 16 Sri Lankan nationals reached the shores of the state.

On Tuesday, the arrived in Tamil Nadu in two batches.

While six people, including a family of a man, wife and their 4 month-old son and a woman and her six and twelve year old children arrived on Tuesday afternoon, the rest arrived late at night.

In there is a high financial crisis with prices of essential commodities, including milk and rice skyrocketing, petrol and diesel not available and power stations shut. Schools are not holding examinations due to lack of paper for printing question papers.

It may be noted that the Civil war in the early 1980's triggered an inflow of people from and now around 60,000 are living in 107 camps spread across Tamil Nadu and about 30,000 more live outside these camps or in general society.

The first batch of six who arrived in the state have been identified as R. Gajendran (24), his wife Mary (23) and their four-month-old son Nijath. Dony Ariston (31) and her two sons, Esther (12) and Moses (6) also accompanied Gajendran's family. Dony has left behind her husband in Sri Lanka while traversing to India as a refugee.

Interacting with reporters at Madurai, Gajendran and the two women said that they don't have any jobs in Sri Lanka and essential commodities were not available while blackmarket prices were unaffordable. They also said that long ques can be seen in fuel stations.

They also said that they had paid an amount of Rs 50,000 to a boatman who had dropped them early morning of Tuesday at a sand dune near Rameswaram and were later rescued by the Indian coast guard. Ten other people also reached Tamil Nadu late evening of Tuesday but their details were not available.

Police sources told IANS that the refugees would be produced before a court in Ramanathapuram on Wednesday.

--IANS

aal/dpb

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Chief Minister on Wednesday asserted that proper action would be taken against the perpetrators of violence in Birbhum district, where eight people were charred to death in a village the day before.

Banerjee said she would be visiting the district on Thursday to take stock of the situation there.

"Strict action will be taken against all those responsible for the Birbhum incident, irrespective of their (political) colours," she stated.

The CM, during a programme here, also maintained that she had to postpone her visit to the district by a day as "other political parties were already huddling there".

Taking a dig at opposition BJP, she said its leaders have "limped their way to the site of the incident, stopping to savour 'langcha' (sweetmeat originating in neighbouring Burdwan district's Shaktigarh area) in between".

Banerjee also alleged that such incidents of violence are results of conspiracy hatched to divert attention from issues of concern, such as price hike of petrol and other commodities.

BJP president J P Nadda had on Tuesday constituted a five-member committee, which includes four MPs, to visit the site of the tragedy.

(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 consequence of any possible disaster due to the Russia- conflict is not envisaged to have any radiation impact in India, the Parliament was told on Wednesday.

Responding to Trinamool Congress Lok Sabha member Sougata Ray's query as to whether the government has taken precautionary measures to counter the radiation caused by the disaster, if any, due to the Russia- conflict, Science and Technology Minister Jitendra Singh said: "The consequence of any possible nuclear disaster due to the Russia- conflict is not envisaged to have a radiation impact in India. The Indian Environmental Radiation Monitoring Network (IERMON) established across the country continuously monitors the background radiation level to give early indications of any increase in the radiation level."

"In an unlikely scenario of radiation level exceeding acceptable limits within the country, a radiation emergency response plan is available to handle the situation," he said.

The Minister replied in negative to Ray's other questions, whether the Russia-Ukraine conflict will impact the safety and security of Kudankulam reactor in Tamil Nadu, and whether any demand has come up to scrap the Kudankulam reactor due to the threat of nuclear radiation.

--IANS

niv/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.)
The day after 8 people were burnt to death in a village in Bengal's Birbhum district, Prime Minister on Wednesday, described the killings as heinous and said the culprits should not be forgiven.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday too vowed that strict action would be taken against the perpetrators regardless of their party colour and announced plans to visit the village of Bogtui, where some ten houses were set ablaze by throwing petrol bombs in the early hours of Tuesday in a suspected revenge attack after the slaying of a local TMC leader.

The blaze killed eight people including three women and two children. Investigations by the special investigation team set up by the state government are on and some 20 people who have been arrested.

The village of Bogtui, on the outskirts of Rampurhat town, itself had a deserted look Wednesday as many anxious residents afraid of both the violence which ripped apart their lives on Tuesday night and the fear of arrests by police seeking answers to a series of attacks and counter-attacks fled to other villages.

Those that remained had fear writ large on their faces as the smouldering remains of the houses charred by Tuesday's bombings and the blaze it lit remained poignant reminders of the wages of internecine violence that rural Bengal has been witnessing over the last few decades.

Noor Ali, 40, the brother of Bhadu Sheikh, the Trinamool Panchayat deputy chief who was killed Monday around 8.30 pm, said among the suspects picked up by the police were Sheikh's sons.

The arrival of delegations led by top politicians from the CPI(M) and BJP including Mohammed Salim, the communist party's new state unit chief and BJP's leader of the opposition Suvendu Adhikari to the village long with large hordes of television crews did not seem to instill much faith among the denizens of the village.

The delegations were however not allowed to enter the houses where the killings occurred as forensic teams were working there to collect evidence.

Speaking at a virtual event to inaugurate a gallery dedicated to freedom fighters at the Victoria Memorial here, Prime Minister Modi said the Central Government is willing to help the state in any way required in bringing perpetrators to justice and hoped the state would take steps to bring the culprits to justice quickly.

I hope that the state government will definitely ensure that those who have committed such heinous crimes are punished, Modi said.

I would also urge the people of Bengal to never forgive the perpetrators of such incidents, those who encourage such criminals. The centre would extend all sorts of help to the state government to ensure the culprits are booked, he said



The Calcutta High Court taking suo moto cognisance of the case directed the Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL), Delhi, to immediately collect necessary materials for forensic examination from the site and asked the state government to file a report on Tuesday's incident to it by 2 pm on Thursday.

Banerjee who vowed strict action however described the unfolding events as a conspiracy to defame her government.

"It was an attempt by the BJP, Left and the Congress to malign our government Strict action will be taken against all those responsible for the Birbhum incident, irrespective of their (political) colour, she said.

Without naming anyone, Banerjee said that the incident was orchestrated because "they failed to flare up a riot".

Opposition political parties had on Tuesday alleged that the TMC is now killing its "own people" indicating that it was the result of an intra-party feud.

"We are in power. Why would we instigate killings in the state? It is being done by those who want to create disturbance to malign the state," she queried.

Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar who had crossed swords with Banerjee on Tuesday in the aftermath of the incident again spoke out against the Birbhum killings and said that what happened in Bogtui is a shame on democracy and humanity.

What happened in Rampurhat is a shame on democracy and humanity," the governor told reporters after participating in the Prime Minister's programme at the Victoria Memorial Hall here.

Dhankhar on Wednesday also shot off another letter to Banerjee, claiming that the state government's actions smack of "political overtones" and an attempt to shield the guilty.

"Adopting diversionary tactics, you have labelled my reaction as a sweeping and uncalled for statement. In the face of such enormity, I cannot fiddle in Raj Bhavan and be a mute spectator," he wrote.

Banerjee was quick to the reply. Without naming Dhankar, she counter-attacked, stating: "There is one 'Lat Saheb' (lordly person) sitting who is describing Bengal as the worst state and hurling abuses at the state government."



Police officials said investigators are looking at various possible causes to the chain of events.

"We are grilling them (suspects) to find out if there were more people involved in the incident. Some accused seem to have fled the village. We are trying to trace them," an officer said.

The government has constituted a Special Investigation Team (SIT), headed by Additional Director General (CID) Gyanwant Singh, to probe the incident.

However, locals told PTI that they suspected that rivalry over sand mining was the most probable cause for the attack and counter-attack which led to the gruesome murders.

CPI(M) state secretary Mohammed Salim who met the villagers, also claimed illegal sand mining mafia played a role in the attack and sought strictest punishment for the culprits. Till about a decade back, the CPI(M) had held sway in the region and still has a handful of followers here.

A BJP delegation led by the Leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari which visited the village demanded the chief minister's resignation.

"Only CBI and NIA probes can bring out the truth. She must step down as home minister of the state," Adhikari said.

A five-member BJP committee constituted by BJP president J P Nadda, which includes four MPs, will also visit the village on Thursday.

Meanwhile, the state government has removed the officer-in-charge of the local police station, a Sub-Divisional Police chief, a senior officer of the detective department as well as a district information officer of Birbhum besides 12 civic volunteers.

A report from the district administration on the carnage reached the state secretariat on Wednesday.

(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.)
Delhi's went up by 50 per cent since 2016-17, indicating that the city's is in a strong position, Lieutenant Governor said on Wednesday.

In his address to the Assembly, which was initially interrupted by BJP legislators who demanded that 'The Kashmir Files' movie be made tax-free, the LG said Delhi's in 2020-21 was adversely affected due to COVID-19.

"In 2021-22, Delhi's Gross State Domestic Product (calculated) on current prices was Rs 9,23,967 crore and in the last five years, it grew by 50 per cent as compared to Rs 6,16,085 crore in 2016-17.

"This shows the strong position of Delhi's economy," he said.

Baijal also said Delhi's per capita income in 2021-22 was Rs 4,01,982 which is three times that of the country.

In his address to the House, the L-G mentioned the government's achievements in various fields, including electricity, education, pollution remediation, in-situ slum development and green energy.

He also said has the cheapest electricity rates in the country and that 91.4 per cent of households availed the benefit of power subsidy in 2020-21.

On the Delhi government's achievement in the education sector, Baijal said the pass percentages in classes 10 and 12 have registered successive growth.

"The pass percentage in classes 10 and 12 were 97.52 per cent and 99.84 per cent respectively."



He also said the Delhi Teachers University Bill, 2022, was also passed to provide professional training to teachers by establishing a dedicated university.

In his address, Baijal said that the Delhi government's Public Works Department was constructing 784 multi-storey flats in the Devanagar area for slum-dwellers under its in-situ rehabilitation policy.

The Delhi government was supplying 945 million gallons of water daily across the city with a pipeline network of 15,000 km.

"Water is also being supplied in 1,577 unauthorised colonies. Where there is no water pipeline, the government is supplying water through tankers," Baijal said.

The LG, in his speech, said the Delhi government has decided to set up a school with boarding and other modern facilities to provide structured education to underprivileged and homeless children.

He said that 90 per cent population above the age of 18 have been vaccinated and inoculation for the age group of 15-18 years is also going on at a very fast pace.

The LG added that to further streamline the facility of health services, the government has decided to implement Health Information Management System.

"Under this system, all citizens will be provided with a QR code-based e-Health Card. This will help the patients to be identified and track demographic and basic details with geo-tagging," Baijal said.

In his speech, the LG said the innovative Interceptor Sewer Project for cleaning the Yamuna river is almost complete.

Further, construction of STPs at Coronation Pillar in Kondli and Rithala under Yamuna Action Plan-III is in progress, he said.

The L-G said the government is striving to increase the renewable energy component in the total energy mix of Delhi.

"Delhi Solar Policy, 2016, has been notified. The total Solar Power available through Rooftop SPV plants installed in Delhi is 221.46 MW. To date, around 136 MW capacity Solar Plants have already been installed on 1,160 government buildings."



He added that works for the installation of CCTV cameras throughout Delhi, and providing free WiFi at bus stops and parks have been completed.

"Construction of the elevated road of Barapullah Phase-III from Sarai Kale Khan to Mayur Vihar is under progress. Underpasses between Wazirabad and Jagatpur and a pedestrian subway near Gandhi Vihar on Outer Ring Road is near completion," Baijal added.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The is mulling over taking a loan of over Rs 1,000 crore from the Higher Funding Agency (HEFA) for infrastructure development and creation of capital assets, according to official documents.

A proposal on the loan from will come up for discussion in the university Executive Council meeting on March 25.

According to the agenda of the meeting, the university is planning to submit a proposal of Rs 1,075.40 crore to for infrastructure development and creation of capital assets.

According to the funding pattern, the university will have to repay the loan in 20 half-yearly installments in 10 years.

The university said it has been receiving a very limited allocation for creation of capital assets for the last three to five years and has been unable to purchase lab equipment.

It also cited the condition of buildings that are in a dilapidated state.

The Eduction Ministry has already said that major infrastructure projects will be funded through HEFA only and no funds will be released as budgetary support.

A teachers' body, the Academics For Action and Development (AAD), said that seeking loan from HEFA will lead to a steep fee hike in future.

"AAD strongly opposes the proposal of taking the loan of around Rs 1,000 crore from HEFA for infrastructure development. This is shifting from grant based to loan based which will lead to steep hike in fees. The Executive Council members of AAD will resist this proposal in the forthcoming EC meeting as the students from SC, ST, OBC, PwD will be adversely affected," it said.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Delhi government on Wednesday said real-time data on pollution sources in the capital will be available from August 1.

A supersite will be established on Pandara Road in Central Delhi by the end of July to identify sources of pollution in real time, it said after Chief Minister chaired a review meeting with teams from IIT Kanpur, IIT Delhi and The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) on the ambitious Real Time Source Apportionment System and Pollution Forecasting Project.

Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, Environment Minister Gopal Rai, Delhi Development Commission Vice Chairperson Jasmine Shah and other high-ranking officials were present at the meeting.

Kejriwal said real-time identification of pollutants will significantly help in taking controlling measures and reducing pollution.

During the review meeting, Professor Mukesh Khare from IIT Kanpur informed the chief minister that a mobile application will also be developed as part of the system.

"In Delhi, pollution remains in the 'moderate category' around October 9 every year.

"After that, the pollution level starts increasing suddenly. Looking at NASA's photos, it has been noticed that a large amount of stubble is burnt during that period. Whereas, the figures every time say that only five per cent of Delhi's pollution can be blamed upon stubble. In such a situation, it is important to ascertain the actual contribution of stubble in Delhi's pollution and how much other factors contribute. This would enable real-time detection of factors causing pollution in the state and help in controlling that source of pollution," a statement quoted Kejriwal as saying.

Delhi will become the first city in the country to identify the real-time source of air pollution through its apportionment system.

The project will help identify the factors responsible for the rise in air pollution at any given location in Delhi. It will help understand the impact of pollution sources like vehicles, dust, biomass burning, stubble burning and industrial emissions.

Based on the results, the government will be able to take the necessary steps to curb the specific sources of pollution. Additionally, pollution forecasting will help the government take significant policy decisions regarding school closures, construction restrictions and vehicular restrictions beforehand.

(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.)
Foreign Secretary arrived in New York on Tuesday, a day before the UN General Assembly and the Security Council are expected to vote on draft resolutions on the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine.

Shringla will participate in the Security Council meeting on cooperation between the UN and the League of Arab States on Wednesday.

Delighted to receive Foreign Secretary @harshvshringla in New York. Foreign Secretary will participate in the UN Security Council meeting on cooperation between the UN and the League of Arab States, India's Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador T S Tirumurti tweeted.

Shringla's arrival in New York comes as the is set to witness a busy and crucial day Wednesday over Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Following the UNSC meeting on cooperation between the and the League of Arab States, the Council is expected to vote on a draft resolution on the humanitarian situation in Ukraine put forward by Russia.

The UN General Assembly will also resume the 11th Emergency Special Session on Ukraine and vote on a resolution put forward by Ukraine and its allies.

On previous occasions, India abstained on resolutions in the Security Council and the General Assembly on Russian aggression against Ukraine.

Moscow had last week put off a vote on its resolution and US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said that Russia did so because they knew that they didn't have support for that resolution.

On what kind of vote the Russian resolution will get in the Security Council on Wednesday, she said "there is no support for the resolution in the Council.

The American envoy said Russia putting forth a humanitarian resolution on Ukraine is akin to an arsonist calling for the neighbours to help him put out the fire that he started in one neighbour's house".

Russia is the aggressor here, and it is absolutely unconscionable for Russia to think that they can put forward a humanitarian resolution. What Russia needs to do is stop fighting. It needs to stop killing Ukrainians. It needs to stop attacking civilians and forcing people from their homes and creating a humanitarian crisis that is only the result of their actions in Ukraine, Thomas-Greenfield told reporters here.

The 11th Emergency Special Session of the UNGA on Ukraine will resume Wednesday morning after 22 member states, including France, the UK and the US, wrote to the President of the 193-member UN body, Abdulla Shahid, to convene the meeting.

The General Assembly, the most representative body of the United Nations, had on February 28 convened the rare emergency session on Russia's aggression against Ukraine.

Before the end of the session on March 2, the General Assembly had voted to reaffirm its commitment to the sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity of Ukraine within its internationally recognised borders and deplored in the strongest terms Russia's aggression against Ukraine.

India, along with 34 other nations, had abstained on the resolution, which was adopted with 141 votes in favour and five member states voting against.

The UNGA will again vote on a draft resolution titled Humanitarian consequences of the aggression against Ukraine' by Ukraine and co-sponsored by more than 70 states. South Africa too has put forward a rival resolution for the UNGA that makes no mention of Russia.

When asked about the three draft resolutions on Ukraine - one by Russia in the UNSC and the other two by Ukraine and South Africa in the UNGA, Thomas-Greenfield said she will support the draft that the Ukrainians and the work with the French and the Mexican delegations and the rest of us to put on the table".

"It is a strong humanitarian resolution. It does identify the cause of the humanitarian crisis. Russia is the cause of the humanitarian crisis. The other two resolutions, one put forth by Russia and the other put forth by South Africa, do not identify the cause of the crisis, she said.

Thomas-Greenfield said the US is working with members of the General Assembly and with the South Africans to try to address any concerns that they may have and address those concerns in the resolution that Ukraine supports that was already on the table. So, we're still hoping to get the same numbers that isolated Russia the last time around.

Russia's First Deputy Permanent Representative Dmitry Polyanskiy told reporters that Russia will go ahead for a vote in the Security Council on its draft resolution on the humanitarian situation in Ukraine Wednesday.

We proposed a UNSC draft resolution that will be voted on tomorrow. It will be a good chance to see if our Western colleagues really care about the things that they promote in their statements, because they are all in our resolution. We'll see whether they are serious about it or whether it is just a false flag for them, he told reporters on Tuesday.

When asked about western nations making it clear they will not support Moscow's draft resolution in the Council and that it would fail as well as about the resolutions in the UNGA, Polyanskiy said if Western nations do not support Moscow's draft, this will be a reflection of their hypocrisy, because speaking is one thing, and taking a decision is another thing".

Everyone understands that in order to help humanitarian agencies, the Security Council has to say its position and give them some instructions. That's what we propose, without any politicizing, as in any other humanitarian resolution that the Security Council has ever adopted. We do not understand why people would say one thing, but act differently.

As for the two humanitarian resolutions, frankly speaking, we do not know what is the added value of humanitarian resolutions by the General Assembly. We do not want them, especially the Western draft, to turn into another anti-Russian biased document. We do not think we need such documents. So we will define our position on these premises, 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.)
Former Chief Justice of India Ramesh Chandra Lahoti died at a hospital here on Wednesday evening, family sources said.

He was 81 years old.

Justice Lahoti was appointed as the 35th chief justice of India on June 1, 2004. He retired on November 1, 2005.

Born on November 1, 1940, he joined the Bar in Guna district in 1960 and enrolled as an advocate in 1962.

He was recruited directly to the bench in April 1977, from the Bar to the State Higher Judicial Service and was appointed as a district and sessions judge.

After serving in the post for a year, Justice Lohati resigned in May 1978 and returned to the Bar to practice mainly in the High Court.

He was appointed an additional judge of the Madhya Pradesh High Court on May 3, 1988, and made a permanent judge on August 4 the next year.

He was transferred to Delhi High Court on February 7, 1994, and later appointed as a judge of the Supreme Court on December 9, 1998.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
State Department Spokesperson Ned Price has acknowledged that India developed defence ties with because the US was not ready for such a relationship when the Soviet Union and India drew close.

But he said on Tuesday that despite India's historical relationship with Russia, the US is a "partner of choice" for New Delhi and the ties with Washington, including in the defence and security evolve.

Price made the observations when asked by a reporter at his briefing about President Joe Biden's statement on Monday that among the Quad partners India was "shaky" in isolating over its invasion of Ukraine.

"You raised an interesting issue of history versus where we are now," Price said.

The ties began with the Soviet Union and continued with after the communist mega-state disintegrated.

He referred to Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland's statement in New Delhi on Monday that India had a historic defence relationship with Russia.

Price said, "It was a very different time, different considerations, but those times have changed."

"They've changed in terms of our willingness and ability to be a strong defence and security partner of India," and has deepened over the past 25 years or so with bipartisan support, he said.

He credited Republican former President George W. Bush for boosting the closer relationship with India.

"It is a legacy in large part of the George W. Bush administration, where we have seen this bilateral relationship between the United States and India evolve and change for the better and deepen in a number of ways, including in our defence and security relationship," he said.

"Historical relationships notwithstanding, we are a partner of choice for India now, as are many of our partners and allies around the world," he said.

He explained that the closer relationship with India is centred around the shared interests in the Indo-Pacific.

"In terms of our relationship with India in the Quad context and the bilateral context, we know that India is an essential partner for us in realising our shared vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific,' Price said.

"That is really at the heart of the Quad's goals," he said.

The Quad made up of India, the US, Japan and Australia is united in the opposition to Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific region.

During their interactions with India and the Quad, Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken have reaffirmed their "commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific in which the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all states are respected, and countries are free from military, economic, and political coercion," he said.

Those principles were again affirmed by Biden and Prime Ministers Narendra Modi of India, Scott Morrison of Australia and Fumio Kishida of Japan at their summit on March 3, he said.

"They also reaffirmed their dedication to the Quad as a mechanism to promote regional stability and security," he added.

While answering another question about the US relations with countries in the Middle East, Price spoke of the cooperation with India there.

He referred to the "trilateral relations" between the US, India and UAE and said, "It's a relationship, a trilateral relationship that we will continue to invest in and continue to develop."

In fact, in what could be the seed of another Quad, India's External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Foreign Ministers Yair Lapid of Israel and Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed of the UAE held a virtual meeting while the Indian minister was visiting Israel in October and agreed to cooperate in maritime security and discussed future cooperation regionally and globally.

The India-US Civil Nuclear Agreement reached in 2005 between Bush and then-Prime Minister Manmohan Singh sealed the new chapter in relations between the two countries.

Improvements in ties that began before the agreement that set the stage for the virtual recognition of India as a nuclear power entitled to international nuclear cooperation in civilian fields, took off under subsequent Republican and Democratic administrations.

Although the US had come to the aid of India following its defeat in the 1962 China War, as a member of a military alliance with Pakistan, the Central Treaty Organisation (CENTO) Washington was lukewarm towards India and turned definitely hostile to India during the Bangladesh War of Independence in 1971.

While US arms poured into Pakistan, India turned to the Soviet Union and in 1971 signed a treaty of friendship with it incorporating mutual strategic cooperation.

While India's relations with the US and its allies have grown since then, New Delhi is still dependent on Russia for a major portion of its defence needs making a break with Moscow -- or riling it up -- almost an impossibility now.

Without the continued Russian defence supplies, India would find it difficult to stand up to China's aggression -- the driving force behind the Quad and the US Indo-Pacific strategy.

(Arul Louis can be reached at arul.l@ians.in and followed @arulouis)

--IANS

arul/dpb

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
India on Wednesday rejected as uncalled for Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi's comments referring to at a meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Islamabad, amid contacts between the two sides over a possible visit by him to New Delhi this week.



The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said other countries including China have no locus standi to comment on Jammu and

Kashmir and should note that India refrains from public judgement of their internal issues. The MEA's reaction came in the midst of contacts between New Delhi and Beijing over a possible visit to visit by Wang to India going down to the wire with neither side giving any clarity on the proposed trip.

"We reject the uncalled reference to India by the Chinese Foreign Minister during his speech at the opening ceremony," External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said, in response to Wang's reference to in his speech at the OIC meeting. Bagchi said matters related to the Union Territory of are "entirely" internal affairs of India.



"Other countries including China have no locus standi to comment. They should note that India refrains from public judgement of their internal issues," he said. Bagchi was responding to media queries on the comments by Wang. "On Kashmir, we have heard again today the calls of many of our Islamic friends. And China shares the same hope," Wang said at the OIC meeting in Islamabad.

The Chinese foreign minister began a two-day visit of Pakistan on Tuesday. He addressed the opening ceremony of the session of the Council of Foreign Ministers (CFM) of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).

"This is the first time for China's foreign minister to participate in the OIC-CFM meeting. It fully demonstrates the sincere desire of China and the Islamic world to strengthen exchange and cooperation, and will surely lift our relations to a new level," Wang said in his address at the meeting on Tuesday.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Nearly a third of every Covid case detected since the pandemic reared its head has come from only three countries. India accounted for about 9 per cent. Brazil for another 6 per cent. And the US for more than the two combined, at nearly 17 per cent.

Indias latest value for the stringency index is higher than either of these two peers. Values are lower in both the US and Brazil, show numbers from Our World in Data.



The index considers indicators, including school and workplace closures, besides travel bans. This Oxford Covid-19 Government Response Tracker (OxCGRT) was developed at the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford. If policies vary at the sub-national level, they reflect the strictest sub-region.



Its important to note that this index simply records the strictness of government policies. It does not measure or imply the appropriateness or effectiveness of a countrys response. A higher score does not necessarily mean that a countrys response is better than others lower on the index, said a note on the Our World in Data website.



The data is not uniformly updated. The numbers considered are in accordance with the latest available for each country.

The index had been at 100 in March 2020 for India. The corresponding levels for the US and Brazil were closer to 70 at the time. The lowest level in India after the pandemic began was 37.5 in November 2021. This was before the Omicron variant of the novel became widespread. It is currently at 71.76 as of March 14. The reading for Brazil as of March 7 (the latest available) was 69.9. It is 58.8 for the US as of March 16. All three countries saw restrictions rise after the Omicron variant became widespread. Workplace visits have moved at a different pace in all the three countries. India and Brazil have had more people now reporting to work than was the case before the pandemic began, shows the mobility numbers from search engine Google. It uses anonymised location data to see how people are moving during the pandemic. This has not been true for the US.



Brazil has seen its retail and recreation visits lag the recovery in its workplace visits. Workplace visits for the South American country are 28.6 per cent higher than a baseline value in 2020 before the pandemic took hold. Brazils retail and recreation visits are still below this level.



Indias retail and recreation visits are 6.9 per cent higher than the baseline value, which reflects the time before cases became widespread and governments imposed restrictions. Indias workplace visits have recovered more than retail and recreation. It is at 12.9 per cent above the baseline value. It had crossed 25 per cent earlier in the month.



The US has seen retail and recreation visits bounce back, but remain 9.7 per cent short of the baseline value. The workplace visit number is worse. It is down 19 per cent.



The Google data is released with a lag. The latest is as of March 19.



Note: The stringency index (as seen in the first chart) is a composite measure based on nine response indicators rescaled to a value from 0 to 100 (100 = strictest). If policies vary at the sub-national level, the index shows the response of the strictest sub-region.

Source: Our World in Data (Oxford Covid-19 Government Response Tracker)

Latest updates (for charts 2-4) are as of March 19, based on location data as processed by the company. The percentage change is compared to a baseline value for the same day of the week, calculated on a median basis during the 5-week period Jan 3Feb 6, 2020. The chart shows a seven-day rolling average of visits to each category.

Sources: Google LLC Google Covid-19 Community Mobility Reports, Our World in Data
British Prime Minister spoke to Prime Minister on Tuesday and agreed to build a strong relationship between the two countries on trade, security and business in the coming days.

"Today @narendramodi and I spoke about the grave situation in Ukraine and agreed its sovereignty must be respected. The UK- relationship continues to go from strength to strength, and we'll build on our trade, security & business ties in the coming weeks and months," tweeted Johnson post the conversation.

Notably, during the conversation, PM Modi and Johnson discussed issues of bilateral interests and agreed on the potential of further deepening cooperation in various areas including trade, technology, investments, defence and security besides people-to-people relations.

According to a PMO statement, PM Modi expressed satisfaction at the positive momentum in the ongoing negotiations on the bilateral Free Trade Agreement.

He also appreciated the progress in implementing the 'India- Roadmap 2030' adopted during the virtual summit between both leaders last year.

The Prime Minister conveyed his desire to welcome PM Johnson in at an early date, as per mutual convenience.

The two leaders also held a detailed discussion on the Ukraine situation where PM Modi reiterated India's consistent appeal for cessation of hostilities and a return to the path of dialogue and diplomacy.

He emphasized India's belief in respect for international law and the territorial integrity and sovereignty of all states, as the basis of the contemporary world order.

Russia began its military operations in Ukraine on February 24.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A TCS-led consortium with C-DoT has developed indigenous and network technologies which will be deployed in network by August 15, a top official of the government-run telecom research firm, said on Wednesday.

Speaking at the Convergence India event, Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DoT) Executive Director Rajkumar Upadhyay said that the consortium has developed the technology at a cost of around USD 30 million indigenously while global telecom giants invest billions of dollars in the technology development.

"I am happy to report that soon you will hear good news that we are going to complete this job, and soon this network will be deployed in network. It will not be alone. NSA (non-standalone access) will be deployed by the Independence Day this year," Upadhyay said.

Chairman and Managing Director P K Purwar at an employee event had also said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants BSNL to deploy services by August 15.

The Standing Committee on Communications and Information Technology has recommended that the BSNL should be allocated spectrum for rolling out services at par with private telecom operators in the country.

BSNL has been conducting trials for 4G networks with a TCS-led consortium which includes C-DoT as a technology partner.

"This consortium is led by TCS which is a software power in itself. What was preventing us earlier was the hardware. Today my 4G core is totally virtualised," Upadhyay said, adding that the technology developed by the consortium runs on a standard personal computer (PC).

"If you want to run a small network you can run it on a PC. If you want to run it for a carrier like BSNL, it will require 30-40 servers. Because of softwarisation, now companies like TCS have a much bigger role," Upadhyay said.

The government has made a provision of Rs. 45,000 crore for BSNL to roll out the 4G network.

Upadhyay said that C-DoT is now opening up its technology development details for Indian companies, and it will also fund start-ups for the development of technologies.

(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 is planning to tap the Central government's production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme to aggressively push for investments in the biopharmaceuticals and medical devices sector, C.N. Ashwath Narayan, Minister of Information Technology-Biotechnology, Higher Education and Science and Technology, said on Tuesday.

Participating in the 'Bioeconomy 2025 and Beyond' programme organised by the Association of Bioeconomy Led Enterprises (ABLE), Narayan said, "Bioeconomy of the state, which is currently valued at $24.4 billion contributing 33 per cent to the national share, is on course to achieve $50 billion value by 2025."

The bio-industrial segment comprising bio-renewables, bioenergy, biofuels, and green chemicals is expected to be the next big segment that can drive future growth. This segment has the potential to increase by four-fold in its contribution to the bioeconomy of the state from $1-2 billion to $6-7 billion, he said.

"The state government plans to attract investments in bio-agriculture (agriculture and animal husbandry) and bio-industrial (enzymes, biofuels, biomass, and green chemicals) industries as well to increase the share of bioeconomy. Research and development services, marine biotech and BioIT and informatics services will be the focus areas for the state of over the next few years," Narayan said.

Stating that is the third-largest producer of biofuels and among the states which reached 9 per cent blending of petrol in 2021, he added that the state's biotech industry has crossed $180 million in R&D spend.

As many as 95 biotech startups were set up in Karnataka in 2021, averaging almost eight startups every month, the minister stated.

Karnataka has emerged as the preferred destination for biotech investments in India, he said.

At present, the state hosts about 60 per cent of the biotech companies in the country and employs about 54 per cent of India's total biotech workforce, Narayan said.

--IANS

pvn/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 Left Front (LF) on Wednesday took out a rally in Rampurhat town of West Bengal's Birbhum district, demanding justice for those killed in violence in the area the day before.



LF chairman Biman Bose, who led the rally along with state secretary Mohd Salim, said any attempt to hush up the "mass murder" would be resisted.

Bose slammed the police for "not doing anything" to rescue the villagers.

Speaking to reporters after visiting the site of the incident, Salim alleged that illegal sand mining mafia played a role in the attacks.

He demanded stern punishment for the perpetrators.

"We want strictest punishment for those involved in the barbaric attack," he said.

Eight people, including two children, were charred to death as their houses were set on fire in Bogtui village near Rampurhat town of Birbhum district early on Tuesday.

The incident is suspected to be the fallout of ruling panchayat official's murder.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Chemicals and Fertilisers Minister Mansukh Mandaviya has urged Jordan, Morocco and other countries to fix prices of their fertilisers responsively as the crop nutrients are inputs for food security.

The minister's appeal comes amid concerns over the supply and prices of fertilisers in the wake of war between Russia and Ukraine.

A delegation from Jordan met Mandaviya on March 22 to discuss supply of phosphatic and potassic fertilisers as well as raw materials from Jordan to India.

According to an official statement, a Jordanian delegation led by their Minister of Investment, Kheiry Yaser Abdel-Monim Amr called on Mandaviya in his office and "discussed subjects of mutual interest specially relating to supply of phosphatic and potassic fertilisers and raw materials from Jordan to India," an official statement said on Wednesday.

The strategic partnership forged by Indian companies like IFFCO and IPL with the largest fertilizer company of Jordan, which is Jordan Phosphate Mines Company (JPMC), was also appreciated by the Jordanian Minister.

"Mandaviya referred to the present geopolitical global situation and appealed not only to Jordan but other countries like Morocco to responsively price their fertilisers as these are inputs for food security," the statement said.

The Jordanian Minister expressed satisfaction with the outcome of his India visit and the business MOUs to be signed with some of the Indian companies in coming days.

He also extended an invitation to Mandaviya to visit Jordan in May 2022 to expand and consolidate the existing ties of Indian companies and explore further business opportunities.

Besides phosphatic fertilisers and raw materials, Jordan is also a regular supply source of MOP (Muriate of Potash) to India.

"The Jordanian Minister agreed to lend his good offices to get long term MOUs executed by Jordanian companies for Rock Phosphate, DAP and MOP with IFFCO and IPL (Indian Potash Ltd)," the statement said.

JPMC Chairman Mohammad Thenibat suggested that India and Jordan should mutually devise a treaty for economic cooperation.

Senior officials of the Department of Fertilisers, Ministry of External Affairs and representatives of IFFCO and IPL etc were also present.

Separately, Mandaviya interacted with the delegation of Single Super Phosphate (SSP) industry on Wednesday to discuss ways to boost domestic production.

"The industry has been forthcoming in the current year wherein the sale of SSP increased by 18 per cent in order to meet the domestic requirements of phosphatic fertilisers especially in Rabi Season 2021-22," an official statement said.

A detailed discussion to address the issues related to raw material, support of transportation, cost to industry, quality enhancement etc was done.

The minister assured to take necessary steps to support the SSP industry in their endeavours.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
After the agitation to repeal farm laws, a group of farmers on Tuesday floated a new front to press for their demand for a law for guaranteeing minimum support prices for farm produce.

Raju Shetti, a two-term Lok Sabha member from Maharashtra and leader of the Swabhimani Paksha, said a decision to launch the Guarantee Kisan Morcha was taken at a meeting of various farmers' organizations here.

"We will launch an agitation under the banner of Guarantee Kisan Morcha. In the next six months, we will visit every district in every state to create awareness about MSP," Shetti said after the meeting of farmers' leaders attended by V M Singh from Uttar Pradesh, Rampal Jat from Haryana, Balraj Singh from Punjab, Rajaram Singh from Jharkhand among others.

The leaders decided to push for adopting a resolution by every gram sabha (village council) demanding statutory guarantee for minimum support price for farm produce.

Shetti said the village councils will be urged to send such resolutions to the President of India.

He said a three-day farmers' convention will be held in the capital to announce a nation wide agitation on the issue.

Shetti said the farmers should get for their farm produce on the lines of the Fair Remunerative Price that is fixed by the Centre for payments to cane growers.

(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.)
Deliberations between India and China over a possible visit here by Chinese Foreign Minister have gone down to the wire with neither side providing any clarity over it.

Wang began a two-day trip to Pakistan on Tuesday primarily to attend a meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Organisation Islamic Cooperation (OIC) as a special guest.

Nepal has already announced that he will visit Kathmandu from March 25 to 27.

It was China that sent a proposal to India for a visit to New Delhi by Wang as part of his tour of the region, people familiar with the development had said last week.

It is learnt that the two sides were looking at Wang's visit to India during the window between his trip to Pakistan and Nepal and that it could take place on Thursday or Friday.

There is no official comment or clarity on Wang's proposed visit to India either by New Delhi or by Beijing yet.

However, it was very clear that Wang's comments on Kashmir at the OIC opening ceremony in Islamabad on Tuesday have not gone down well in New Delhi with it strongly rejecting the remarks.

In its reaction, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said on Wednesday that other countries, including China, have no locus standi to comment on India's internal matters and that they should note that India refrains from public judgement of their internal issues.

If the visit takes place notwithstanding India's strong reaction to Wang's remarks, then it will be the first trip by a senior Chinese leader to India after the eastern Ladakh military standoff began in May 2020.

In reflection of India's consistent position on ties with China, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday apprised his Australian counterpart Scott Morrison about the situation in eastern Ladakh and emphasised that peace and tranquillity in the region is an essential prerequisite for normalisation of India's ties with China.

Modi made the comments at a virtual summit with the Australian prime minister.

At the 14th India-Japan summit on Saturday, New Delhi conveyed to Tokyo the same line that its ties with Beijing cannot be business as usual until peace is restored in the eastern Ladakh region.

India and China have held a series of diplomatic and military talks in the last one-and-half years to resolve the eastern Ladakh row.

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and Wang held several rounds of talks in Moscow and Dushanbe to defuse tensions in eastern Ladakh during the period.

In September 2020, Jaishankar and Wang held extensive talks in Moscow on the sidelines of a conclave of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) during which they reached a five-point agreement to resolve the eastern Ladakh border row.

The pact included measures like quick disengagement of troops, avoiding action that could escalate tensions, adherence to all agreements and protocols on border management and steps to restore peace along the LAC.

The two foreign ministers had held a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of another SCO meeting in Tajik capital city Dushanbe in July last year with a focus on the border row. They again met in Dushanbe in September.

India has been consistently maintaining that peace and tranquillity along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) was key for the overall development of the bilateral ties.

Earlier this month, Wang said some forces have always sought to stoke tensions between China and India, in an apparent reference to the US.

Wang's proposed visit, if it takes place, is expected to provide an opportunity for the two sides to exchange views on the crisis in Ukraine as well.

On March 11, India and China held the 15th round of high-level military dialogue to resolve the pending issues in the eastern Ladakh region.

The eastern Ladakh border standoff between the Indian and Chinese militaries erupted on May 5, 2020, following a violent clash in the Pangong lake areas.

Both sides gradually enhanced their deployment by rushing in tens of thousands of soldiers as well as heavy weaponry.

As a result of a series of military and diplomatic talks, the two sides completed the disengagement process last year in the north and south banks of the Pangong lake and in the Gogra area.

Each side currently has around 50,000 to 60,000 troops along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in the sensitive sector.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Prime Minister on Wednesday said he is pained by the loss of lives due to a tragic in and announced an ex-gratia of Rs 2 lakh each for the next of kin of the deceased.

Eleven migrant workers were charred to death in a major accident at a scrap godown in in the early hours of Wednesday.

The deceased workers, all hailing from Bihar, were sleeping in a room constructed above the godown at Bhoiguda when the incident happened, and police officials said.

"Pained by the loss of lives due to a tragic fire in Bhoiguda, . My thoughts are with the bereaved families in this hour of grief," Prime Minister Modi was quoted as saying by his office.

"An ex-gratia of Rs 2 lakh each from PMNRF would be given to the next of kin of the deceased," 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.)
Prime Minister paid tributes to freedom fighters Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru on Martyrs' Day (Shaheed Diwas) today and said their passion to die for the motherland will always inspire the countrymen.

The three freedom fighters were hanged to death by Britishers on March 23, 1931, in the Lahore conspiracy case.

PM Modi tweeted in Hindi, "Tributes to the immortal sons of Mother India, Veer Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru on Martyrs' Day. Their passion to die for the motherland will always inspire the countrymen. Long live India!"

March 23 is observed as Shaheed Diwas to pay tribute to Indian revolutionaries Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev, who were hanged by the British Government in 1931. The trio was found guilty of the murder of deputy police superintendent JP Saunders in 1928, to avenge the death of Lala Lajpat Rai. was 23, Rajguru was 22 and Sukhdev was 23 when they were hanged to death at Lahore Central Jail.

On the occasion of Shaheed Diwas, Prime Minister will inaugurate Biplobi Bharat Gallery at Victoria Memorial Hall, Kolkata at 6 PM via video conferencing,

Meanwhile, the newly-elected Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government in Punjab has declared Bhagat Singh's death anniversary on March 23 as a state holiday. Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann had declared about the state holiday in the Assembly and requested people to visit his ancestral village Khatkar Kalan in Shaheed Nagar district. It may be noted that the swearing-in ceremony of CM Mann took place at Khatkar Kalan on March 16.

After an unprecedented win in the recently concluded Punjab elections, Bhagwant Mann had said that in all the government offices in the state, there will be only portraits of and Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar.

(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 Wednesday directed the to file an action taken report in connection with Muzaffarpur shelter home sexual assault case.

A bench comprising Chief Justice N V Ramana and Justice Krishna Murari noted that investigation is complete in the matter and 19 persons have been convicted.

The bench said: "The petitioner has sought a direction regarding probe into the shelter homes. CBI has also filed an application regarding repatriation of officers to the parent cadre. Investigation was done by CBI regarding one shelter home and then against others too. There have been 19 convictions in the main case. Now appeal is pending in the Delhi High Court.

"The state submits action has been taken against erring officers. "State is directed to file an action taken report. It is open to CBI to take assistance from counsels who appeared before trial court. List after two weeks. Without fail state to file action taken report".

The order came after advocate Shoeb Alam, appearing for the petitioner, submitted that recently there was a newspaper report that the Patna High Court has taken cognisance in a matter where a juvenile girl ran from a shelter home where she was sexually exploited in the same modus operandi as happened in earlier cases.

He said the CBI had recommended action to be taken against various officers and there is no clarity what action was taken as the problem has been going on.

"I am only asking for an action taken report. The government has not taken action," Alam said.

The counsel for the said conviction has happened in one matter and now appeal is pending before the Delhi High Court.

Additional Solicitor General Madhavi Divan, appearing for the CBI, informed the court that investigation is complete in the matter and some officers were repatriated to parent cadre with permission of court.

"We are seeking the disbanding of the original investigation team... There is no investigation which is now pending. Trial has taken place in the main case and 19 persons have been convicted," Divan said.

The apex court had earlier granted three months to the CBI to complete the probe in the case, including suspected murders, and had directed it to widen the scope to investigate the "outsiders" involved in the crime.

It had also directed the CBI to probe the allegations of unnatural sexual assault under section 377 of the Indian Penal Code in the Muzaffarpur case. Several girls were allegedly raped and sexually abused at an NGO-run shelter home in Muzaffarpur and the issue had come to light following a report by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS).

(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.)
Pune-based Serum Institute of India (SII) has sought emergency-use authorisation (EUA) for its Covovax vaccine from the drug regulator for children aged between seven and 11 years, said sources in the know. If the approval comes through, this will be a global first for the vaccine for such an age group.

SII has submitted the interim data from the clinical trials and sought EUA for the Novavax vaccine it manufactures in India under the name Covovax, said a source close to the development.

SII withheld comment till the time of going to press. Earlier this month, SII had received the Drugs Controller General of Indias (DCGIs) approval for Covovax for children aged 12-17 years.

Novavax, had said on Wednesday that its Covid vaccine got the DCGI green light. In December 2021, the DCGI had approved the vaccine for use in adults.

Covovax is the fourth Covid vaccine to be authorised for adolescents aged 12 years and beyond in India after Zydus Lifesciences ZyCoV-D, Bharat Biotechs Covaxin, and Biological Es Corbevax.

Last month, US major Novavax had said its vaccine was 80 per cent effective against Covid in a late-stage trial testing the shot in 2,247 children aged 12-17 years. In India, SII is conducting trials of Covovax on children as young as two years and above, and thus, it aims to position the vaccine as a childrens vaccine, informed sources.

Covovax, however, has not been procured by the Centre so far for the 12-14 age group. The Union health ministry is using the Biological E vaccine Corbevax for 12-14 years and Bharat Biotechs Covaxin for 15-17 years. Although approved, both Covovax and ZyCoV-D are not used by the Centre on adolescents yet.

SII, meanwhile, has urged the government to include Covovax in the national Covid immunisation drive for 12 years and beyond.

SII has written to the Union health ministry, urging it to use the vaccine on adolescents in the government programme. The company has also indicated that it has received queries from several institutions, schools, hospitals, and public sector undertakings to administer the vaccine, and is looking to price it at Rs 900 per dose (excluding goods and services tax) in the private market, indicated a source.

The company is also keen to supply to the public immunisation drive, but has not indicated any price for supplying to the Centre. SII has written a letter to Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan, saying it is awaiting the health ministrys directives for supply of Covovax to the Government of India.
Central government programmes on water emphasise ground by the community in a decentralised manner but, by and large, these schemes are silent on the availability, training and deployment of a skilled workforce for this task, especially in rural areas.

at the most decentralised, local levels is often a part-time, volunteer or unpaid activity. This neither helps cultivate water security, nor does it help cultivate meaningful livelihoods to manage precious water resources, found an analysis by the global research organisation, the JustJobs Network, with Bengaluru-based Arghyam, working for safe and sustainable water.

Over 80% of India's urban and rural domestic water supplies are served by groundwater. India has 18% of the world's population but only 4% of global renewable water resources within its territory. Over 250 of 700 districts have 'critical' or 'over-exploited' groundwater levels, according to the most recent Central Ground Water Board data from 2017.

There are several programmes for water supply and management in India, with the goal of water-secure villages, including one for delivering good quality piped water supply to villages through the Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM), for groundwater management through the Atal Bhujal Yojana (ABhY) and for water and sanitation under the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM).

Workers in these programmes should be from the community, have knowledge of the science behind groundwater and surface water, have the skills to support their community to plan water usage based on its availability, and build, operate and maintain structures and systems to ensure water security.

Rural unemployment was at 8.35% as of February 2022, as per data from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy. On World Water Day, our story highlights the urgent need for skilling and upskilling local workers in so as to address the challenges of managing limited resources. This can help India solve two crises; one of greater water insecurity as resources deplete, especially with a warming climate; and the second of a lack of gainful employment for the country's large labour force.

JustJobs's Jal Kaushal project, supported by Arghyam, tries to map the landscape of the management of rural water commons, jobs and skills at village, district and state levels. With no government body with the mandate to map this skills gap or to create job roles for water management, train or employ frontline workers, Jal Kaushal also hopes to create a blueprint for action on water security through sustainable livelihood and skills.

India is the world's largest user of groundwater, drawing 25% of global groundwater. Water security is key for India's continued socio-economic development. Nearly 62% of India's irrigated agriculture is dependent on groundwater, while some 85% of rural India's drinking water supply depends on groundwater. Groundwater, important for both lifeline and livelihood activities, is a common resource and requires adequate conservation and management.

Skilled front-line cadre for water secure villages

Indian villages are served by surface water sources such as rivers, ponds, lakes and ground water sources such as wells, tube wells, bore wells, piped water through bore wells and handpumps.

There are multiple agencies and government programmes on water, which often do not have convergence on the ground. Further, many of these schemes recognise the need for a skilled water cadre for efficient and effective implementation of the schemes, but most schemes are silent on how to ensure availability of this skilled cadre.

We reached out to the Ministry of Rural Development and to the Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation on Thursday, March 17, but did not hear back from them. The story will be updated when we receive a response.

Even though there could be an estimated cadre of 500,000 to 1 million skilled personnel in the country (assuming that at least 2-3 people per village have been trained) to undertake various water-linked activities, these workers are largely invisible, and they have no job security beyond the period of the programme.

Further, there are no data at the village, gram panchayat or district level of this skilled cadre, nor does a mapping of what skills are required for adequate water management exist. Every time a new programme is launched, new personnel are trained, resulting in multiplicity of efforts. There are also insufficient data to understand the effectiveness, sustainability and demand and supply gap of all such people working on rural water issues.

Ensuring productive jobs for skilled cadre for rural water security

Through these government schemes and civil society initiatives, community members do get sporadically trained and engage on a voluntary basis on aspects of water management in the village. The tasks and responsibilities of these trained workers range from a worker digging wells, mason or a plumber for laying and maintaining of pipelines, a pump operator, bhujal jankaars as para-hydrologists, jal sahelis responsible for desilting ponds, dhara sevaks for spring shed management and other community resource persons.

But even in flagship programmes, tasks of these skilled personnel are not defined as 'job roles and responsibilities' and there is no clear mobilisation, upskilling and associated remuneration, an analysis of the guidelines of the Jal Jeevan Mission and the Atal Bhujal Yojana show. As a result, even if civil society groups do mobilise and train these workers, they have to sustain their interest in undertaking water management without a path to income and job progress.

There have been some attempts to mainstream skilled cadre through 'full time jobs' such as Jal Surakshaks in Maharashtra, who have been trained and certified to monitor the groundwater situation, and to handle water-level measuring instruments, identification of wells, and digitally share information with the Ground Water Survey and Development Agency (GSDA) at different block and district headquarters.

Through livelihood missions such as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), the National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM) and State Rural Livelihoods Missions (SRLM), workers have been engaged at the village level for the construction, operation and maintenance of water works on contract basis. Swacchagrahis and Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHA), are engaged in testing water quality, in addition to the other tasks that they perform, on a parttime or on an incentive basis.

In a few states, traditional jobs of water managers such as kollalus in Garhwal, and chowkidars in the Kumaon hills in Uttaranchal, or havaldar, jagliyas or patkaris in Maharashtra, have been 'formalised' with roles, responsibilities and remuneration defined. However, despite efforts being taken in the direction of 'creating jobs', most community resource persons continue to engage on a voluntary or shramdaan [donation of labour] basis.

Government-formed sub-committees, such as Village Water and Sanitation Committees (VWSC) and Water User Associations (WUA) at the gram panchayat level, need to play a significant role to ensure adequate planning and implementation of water management. However, the capacity of these bodies is inadequate and they often require hand holding, such as for tasks like mapping water resources and even in holding regular meetings, from other non-profits or civil society groups, found researchers from JustJobs Network in conversations with nonprofits working on water management.
Automakers are facing a dilemma as supply chains disruption and commodity prices worsen due to the Russia-Ukraine war. US President is expected to announce new sanctions against Russia during his trip to headquarter, Brussels. More on those stories in our top headlines.

Supply chain uncertainty saddles auto component firms with inventory

Amid supply chain disruption and skyrocketing commodity prices that have been worsened by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, automotive (auto) component makers are staring at a dilemma they havent faced in some years. Most have seen the inventory of raw materials and finished goods increase. Read more

Russia-Ukraine war: firms prepare to take steep price hikes

With supply chain disruptions since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic pushing up the cost of raw materials, fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) companies have been forced to increase the prices of products ranging from biscuits to shampoos to detergents. The ongoing Russia-Ukraine war has only made things worse, resulting in the costs of various commodities shooting up to record high levels. Read more

NCLT extends revival plan deadline till March 29

The Company Law Tribunal has extended the revival plan deadline till March 29 based on submissions made by the Kalrock Jalan consortium and lenders. The deadline was expiring on March 22. Read more

Biden to announce new sanctions against Russia during Brussels trip

US President plans to announce new sanctions against Russia on Thursday while in Brussels for meetings with and European allies, according to a top security aide. Read more

Suzlon Energy awaits shareholder approval for a third bailout package

Shareholders of Suzlon Energy will be voting on Friday to offer a stake to a new consortium of lenders including power infrastructure finance company REC and Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency. This would see the promoters stake falling to a record low of 13 per cent. Read more
On Tuesday, the US State Department said that, although the US has sanctioned Russia over the last four weeks, including the imposition of defence sanctions, the Biden administration is not about to sanction India anytime soon for buying S-400 air defence missile systems from Russia.

At a media briefing in Washington DC, US State Department spokesperson Ned Price also said that Indias strong dependency on Russian arms was the outcome of an era in which Washington, and some of its partner countries, were unwilling to have defence and security ties with New Delhi.

New Delhi is concerned that its impending purchase of five units of S-400 Russian long range missile systems could bring down American sanctions on India under the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA)--a US federal law that mandates sanctions against countries that engage in significant transactions with Russian, Iranian and North Korean defence and intelligence entities.

On Tuesday, Price downplayed the probability of whether CAATSA sanctions would be triggered by Indias purchase of the S-400 missile system. I dont have anything new to update you on when it comes to the applicability of CAATSA. We continue to work with Congress and our Indian partners on these issues.

The US Congress has empowered American presidents to waive sanctions where required, but the US administration says waivers would be given only in exceptional cases. New Delhi has argued that, given Chinas occupation of Indian territory on the Ladakh-Tibet border and the Peoples Liberation Armys (PLAs) aggressive confrontation with Indian troops, Washington should grant India an early waiver from CAATSA.

Russia has already begun delivery of the first S-400 systems, and the question of sanctions, or of a waiver to sanctions, preoccupies New Delhi.

New Delhi has argued that India has little choice but to source weapons and defence equipment from Russia, given the historical arms supply partnership between the two countries.

The State Department spokesperson pointed out on Tuesday that the historical dimension of Indias arms relationship with Russia had been acknowledged recently by top level US officials, including Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Toria [Victoria] Nuland.

Nuland said, on her recent visit to India, that New Delhis close defense and security relationship with Moscow had come together decades back, at a time when neither the US, nor some of its security partners, were prepared to have that kind of relationship with India. It was a very different time, different considerations, but those times have changed, said Price, quoting Nuland.

Theyve changed in terms of our willingness and ability to be a strong defence and security partner of India. This is a bilateral relationship that has deepened in a number of ways over the past 25 years or so, said Price.

We are a partner of India when it comes to shared interests, when it comes to the values we share in a free and open Indo-Pacific. And weve invested in that relationship in terms of our defence and security. So historical relationships notwithstanding, we are a partner of choice for India now, as are many of our partners and allies around the world, said Price.

Addressing Indias growing importance in the Indo-Pacific security architecture and the Quadrilateral Grouping (Quad), Price stated: We know that India is an essential partner for us in realizing our shared vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific. That is really at the heart of the Quads goals.

President Joe Biden, in a call with President Xi Jinping on Friday, said there was no change in Americas Taiwan policy. He reiterated that the One-China policy was still based on the Taiwan Relations Act, the Three Communiques and the Six Assurances.

Responding to a question about why the largest democracy in the world is, in fact, buying Russian oil right now at a discount  expanding its purchases and taking advantage of the situation, the US administration responded: What we would project or convey to any leader around the world is that the world--the rest of the world is watching where youre going to stand as it relates to this conflict, whether its support for Russia in any form as they are illegally invading Ukraine.
As many as 28,091 were granted as of March 15 in this fiscal compared to 28,391 in 2020-21, Parliament was informed on Wednesday.

In a written reply to the Lok Sabha, Minister of State for Commerce and Industry Som Parkash also informed that 15,283 were granted in 2018-19.

Replying to another question on edible oil, Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal said that India is the largest importer of palm oil in the world.

India's import of edible oils stood at 1,35,40,020.94 tonnes in 2020-21.

At present, adherence to the NDPE (No Deforestation, No Peat, No Exploitation) policy is not mandatory for the import of palm oil into India, he said. However, both Malaysia and Indonesia, which are the major suppliers of palm oil to India, have certification schemes to promote sustainability in palm oil production.

"It is mandatory for palm oil produced in Malaysia to be certified under the Malaysian Sustainable Palm Oil (MSPO)," Goyal said.

In order to reduce dependence on imports, the government has launched the National Mission on Edible Oils - Oil Palm (NMEO-OP) with the aim to augment the availability of edible oil in the country by harnessing area expansion and increasing crude palm oil production.

(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.)
Approximately 89 per cent of land required for Mumbai-Ahmedabad project has been acquired by the Centre, Railways Minister said on Wednesday.

"The execution of Mumbai-Ahmedabad high speed rail (MAHSR) has been delayed especially due to delay in land acquisition in the state of Maharashtra and consequent delays in finalisation of contracts as well as adverse impact of COVID-19," the minister said in his written reply to a question in Lok Sabha.

Out of total the 1,396 hectares of land required for MAHSR project, about 89 per cent, approximately 1,248 hectares, has been acquired, he noted.

In Mahrashtra, 68.65 per cent out of total 297.81 hectares needed for the project has been acquired, he stated.

"Five villages in Palghar district in Maharashtra have passed the proposals in Gramsabhas...to oppose the land acquisition for the MAHSR project," he said.

These five villages are Warkhunti, Kallale, Man, Khaniwadi and Sakhare, he noted.

In Gujarat, 98.76 per cent out of 954.28 hectares needed for the project has been acquired, Vaishnaw said.

The Centre has acquired 100 per cent of the 7.9 hectares land needed for the project in Dadra and Nagar Haveli, he noted.

"The National High Speed Rail Corporation Limited (NSHRCL)...is constantly pursuing the villagers by highlighting the benefits of the project, handsome compensation amount and rehabilitation and resettlement provided to the land losers of the affected villages," 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.)
The (RBI) has approved SBI Mutual Fund, along with other SBI group companies, to hold a 9.99% stake in  the countrys second largest lender.

(ICICI) Bank has today received a copy of letter dated March 23, 2022 addressed to SBIFML [SBI Mutual Fund] that it has accorded its approval to SBIFML together with all other group entities of SBI group for acquiring upto 9.99% of the paid-up equity capital of the Bank, said in a communication to the exchanges.

At the end of the December quarter, had 5.72% stake in .

In its letter, has advised SBIFML to ensure that the total shareholding of the SBI group entities in the Bank remains below 10% of the paid up equity capital of the Bank at all times, ICICI Bank further said adding that the approval to is valid for a period of one year that is up to March 22, 2023.

Last year the banking regulator accepted a set recommendation of an Internal Working Group (IWG) which was formed to review ownership guidelines and corporate structure for Indian private sector . Among others, allowed financial institutions, supranational institutions, public sector undertakings to have 15% stake in private sector .

However, the central bank clarified that prior approval from the regulator is required by such an entity to pick up more than 5% stake in a private sector bank.
When was arrested in January 2021, tens of thousands of Russians filled the streets in protest, demanding that the top Kremlin critic be released and chanting slogans against President Vladimir Putin. Thousands were arrested.

In the months since then, Navalny was given 2 years in prison. His organization, close associates and other opposition activists were either prosecuted, fled the country or had their hands tied by draconian new laws or decrees. Independent news outlets were blocked and social media platforms banned.

Even a silent antiwar protester who held up a blank sign earlier this month in the city of Nizhny Novgorod was arrested.

Putin's crackdown unprecedented in post-Soviet has blanketed the country. By the time Navalny's sentence was extended for another nine years by a court on Tuesday, not much dissent could be mustered. The Kremlin had worked hard to see to that.

And yet, there are still flickers of protest and defiance.

Of course, nine years is a stiff sentence," said Navalny ally Ilya Yashin, who has vowed to remain in . "Rapists, thieves and murderers in often get less. ... But in reality (the sentence) doesn't mean anything, because everyone understands: Alexei will spend as much time behind bars as Putin will sit in the Kremlin.

Addressing Putin, Yashin added sarcastically in his Facebook post, You're quite the optimist.

After a trial in a makeshift courtroom at the penal colony where he is being held, Navalny was convicted on fraud and contempt of court charges in a move that was seen as an attempt to keep Putin's biggest foe behind bars for as long as possible.

The 45-year-old corruption fighter, who in 2020 survived a poisoning with a nerve agent that he blames on the Kremlin, said on Facebook in a sardonic comment that was posted by his team: My space flight is taking a bit longer than expected.

His trial, which began a week before Russian troops rolled into Ukraine on Feb. 24, even prompted a small act of defiance by one of the witnesses for the prosecution. Fyodor Gorozhanko, a former activist in Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation, who has since left Russia, testified that he had been coerced to give evidence against the opposition leader.

Navalny's foundation and a nationwide network of regional offices were outlawed last year as extremist and ceased operating. The Kremlin also turned up the heat on other opposition activists and groups, as well as on independent media and human rights organizations.

Dozens have been slapped with a crippling foreign agent label, which implies additional government scrutiny and scorn. Many have been forced to shut down under pressure.

With the invasion of Ukraine, the crackdown has been expanded all but silencing most independent news sites. Facebook and Instagram were banned as extremist and were blocked in Russia. Twitter also was blocked, although Russians who use virtual private networks, or VPNs, are able to avoid access restrictions to the social media networks and news outlets banned in Russia.

A sweeping clampdown on antiwar protests was instituted, but that didn't stop them. More than 15,000 people were detained for demonstrating against the war, according to the OVD-Info rights group that tracks political arrests.

On March 14, a live evening news program on Russia's state TV was interrupted by a woman who walked behind the anchor holding a handmade poster protesting the war in English and Russian. OVD-Info identified her as Marina Ovsyannikova, an employee of the station, who was taken into custody and fined.

A new law was rubber-stamped by the parliament, criminalizing content that deviates from the official line as fake news or which discredits the Russian military and its actions in Ukraine. Media outlets have faced pressure over calling the action a war or an invasion, rather than using the government's description of it as a special military operation. The first criminal cases under the new law appeared shortly after it was adopted and, among others, implicated two prominent public figures who condemned the offensive on social media.

Navalny's team has been undeterred by both the war and the trial of its leader, announcing it was rebooting the foundation as an organization.

Corruption kills, read its new website. As Ukrainian cities are bombed by Putin, this has never been more obvious. Putin and his circle have done everything to stay in power and steal, and steal, and steal some more. High on their own impunity, they unleashed a war.

We will find all of their mansions in Monaco and their villas in Miami, and when we do, we will make sure Putin's elite loses everything it owns," the statement said. We have been fighting Putin since 2011. We will fight him until we win.

The Navalny team also promoted a new YouTube channel it has launched, Popular Politics, that since March 5 has attracted more than 920,000 subscribers.

On Monday, it released a video on YouTube alleging that Putin owns a $700 million super yacht, which is in an Italian port. The new expose has gotten over 2.8 million views by Tuesday evening. The New York Times reported earlier this month that the vessel's captain denied Putin owned or had ever been on the yacht.

The allegations came in stark contrast to Putin's recent ominous remarks condemning those who oppose the war in Ukraine and juxtaposing elites who have villas in Miami or the French Riviera, those who can't live without foie gras, oysters to our people and Russia.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky, an exiled Russian oil tycoon who spent a decade in prison in Russia on charges widely seen as revenge for challenging Putin's rule, spoke Tuesday of his optimism for Navalny.

Nine years were handed to Navalny. However, what does it matter? What matters is how much time Putin has left. And here I think there is some good news for Alexei, Khodorkovsky 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.)
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.
U.S. President flies to Europe on Wednesday for an emergency NATO summit on Ukraine, where invading Russian troops are stalled, cities are under bombardment and the besieged port of Mariupol is in flames.

Four weeks into a war that has driven a quarter of Ukraines 44 million people from their homes, has failed to capture a single major Ukrainian city, while Western sanctions have ostracized it from the world economy.

After failing in what Western countries say was an attempt to seize Kyiv swiftly and depose the government, Russian forces have taken heavy losses, are frozen in place for at least a week on most fronts and face supply problems and fierce resistance.

They have turned to siege tactics and bombardment of cities, causing massive destruction and many civilian deaths.

Moscow says its aim is to disarm its neighbor, and its special military operation is going to plan. It denies targeting civilians.

Worst hit has been Mariupol, a southern port completely surrounded by Russian forces, where hundreds of thousands of people have been sheltering since the wars early days, under constant bombardment and with food, water and heat supplies cut.

New satellite photographs from commercial firm Maxar released overnight showed massive destruction of what was once a city of 400,000 people, with columns of smoke rising from residential apartment buildings in flames.

No journalists have been able to report from inside the Ukrainian-held parts of the city for more than a week, during which time Ukrainian officials say has bombed a theater and an art school used as bomb shelters, burying hundreds of people alive. denies targeting those buildings.

Biden, due to arrive in Brussels on Wednesday evening, will meet NATO and European leaders in an emergency summit at the Western military alliances headquarters. The leaders are expected to roll out additional sanctions against Russia on Thursday. Sources said the U.S. package would include measures targeting Russian members of parliament.

Biden will also visit Poland, which has taken in most of the more than 3.6 million refugees who have fled Ukraine and served as the main route for Western supplies of weapons to Ukraine.

TALKS CONFRONTATIONAL

Kyiv hopes that Russias President Vladimir Putin, having failed to swiftly subdue what he describes as an illegitimate nation, can now be compelled to negotiate a ceasefire and withdrawal. Peace talks have been ongoing since last week.

Its very difficult, sometimes confrontational, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in an overnight address. But step by step we are moving forward.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also described the talks as difficult, saying the Ukrainian side constantly changes its mind and backs away from its own proposals.

Poland has proposed sending NATO peacekeepers to Ukraine, although Biden has long since ruled out any such ground presence. Lavrov said that could lead to war with the West.

Despite its losses so far, Russia may still be hoping to make more gains on the battlefield, especially in the east, in territory including Mariupol which Moscow demands Ukraine cede to Russian-backed separatists.

In a daily intelligence update, Britains defense ministry said the entire battlefield across northern Ukraine  which includes huge armored columns that once bore down on Kyiv  was now static, with invaders apparently trying to reorganize.

But in the east, the Russians were trying to link troops at Mariupol with those near Kharkiv in the hope of encircling Ukrainian forces, while in the southwest they were bypassing the city of Mykolayiv to try to advance on Odesa, Ukraines biggest port.

Ukrainian officials described sporadic shelling in other cities overnight, with two civilians killed in the Mykolayiv region, a bridge destroyed in the Chernihiv region, and residential buildings and a shopping mall struck in two districts of Kyiv, wounding at least four people.

Meanwhile, life continues under the relentless bombardment. In Kharkiv in the east, a maternity clinic had moved patients into the basement for safety. Tearful mother Yana cradled her baby in a room with beds lining the walls. Her house has been bombed. I have nowhere to go, she said.

Far away in Mykolaiv, a southern port which Russian forces tried and failed to storm over the past 10 days, Tamara Kravchuk, 37, lay blissfully with her baby just minutes old on her chest. She had been scared, especially when explosions burst just 500 meters from the hospital, she said. But baby Katya melted her fears away.

I think the war will end and we will live as it was before, our life will be calm again, she said. I hope our children wont see all these crazy things and everything will be good.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
President plans to announce new sanctions against Russia on Thursday while in for meetings with and European allies, according to a top national security aide.

Biden, who will take part in a special meeting of and address the European Council summit, is also expected to underscore efforts to enforce the avalanche of existing sanctions already announced by the US and allies.

He will join our partners in imposing further sanctions on Russia and tightening the existing sanctions to crack down on evasion and to ensure robust enforcement, said White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan, who declined to further preview new sanctions the president will announce.

Biden is traveling to and Poland which has received more than 2 million Ukrainian refugees who have fled since the Feb. 24 invasion looking to press for continued unity among Western allies as Russia presses on with its brutal invasion of Ukraine.

In Poland, Biden will meet with Polish President Andrzej Duda, who has requested further U.S. aid and a stepped up military presence on NATO's eastern flank as the war grinds on. The U.S. has already added several thousand U.S. troops to it regular presence. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Romania have also called for a greater or U.S. military presence in recent weeks.

Sullivan suggested more help will be coming with announcements by Biden on longer term adjustments to NATO force posture on the eastern flank.

We feel that it is the right place for him to go to be able to see troops, to be able to see humanitarian experts and to be able to meet with a frontline and very vulnerable ally, Sullivan said of Biden's visit to Poland.

Biden and NATO have said repeatedly that while the U.S. and NATO will provide weapons and other defensive support to non-NATO member Ukraine, they are determined to avoid any escalation on behalf of Kyiv that risks a broader war with Russia.

Polish leaders have called for a Western peacekeeping mission to intervene in Ukraine, a step that the U.S. and other allies worry could lead to a broadening of the war.

Sullivan added that Biden will also announce joint action on enhancing European energy security and reducing Europe's dependence on Russian gas.

(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 its allies would consult whether should remain within the G-20 grouping of major economies after its invasion of Ukraine, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan has said, underlining that it "cannot be business as usual" for Moscow.

We believe that it cannot be business as usual for in international institutions and in the international community, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters at a White House news conference when asked about Russia's membership of G-20.

But as for particular institutions and particular decisions, we'd like to consult with our Allies, consult with our partners in those institutions before making any further pronouncements, Sullivan said.

is the premier forum for international economic cooperation that plays an important role in global economic governance.

Sullivan said that when the President announced that the United States was going to ban the import of Russian oil and gas, he was very clear.

He said that the United States is uniquely positioned: We are an energy producer. We can do this. We can take this step of banning the import of Russian oil and gas and coal and be able to withstand it, have resilience against it, he said.

But he also recognised quite explicitly in that statement that some of our European Allies and partners would not be able to follow suit, and he was not going to pressure them to do so, he added.

From his perspective, what we have achieved with our European partners -- in terms of financial sanctions, export controls, and other measures to hit the Russian economy have had an unprecedented impact on a large economy at a scale we have never seen before, he said.

So, he believes that that is in fact increasing the costs on Russia; it is sharpening the choice for . And he feels very good about where things stand today in terms of the unity and resolve of the Western alliance on sanctions, Sullivan 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.)
Witnessing a COVID surge, on Tuesday reported 2,591 locally transmitted COVID-19 cases, the National Commission said Wednesday.

Of the new local infections, 2,320 were reported in the province of Jilin, 110 in Fujian, 36 in Liaoning, 24 each in Tianjin and Shandong, 15 in Guangdong and 13 in Heilongjiang, Xinhua reported.

The rest of the cases were reported in 12 other provincial-level regions, including Hebei and Jiangxi.

According to the commission, a total of 76 imported COVID-19 cases were reported on Tuesday. It further said that three suspected cases, all imported, were reported in Shanghai, as per Xinhua.

Meanwhile, the COVID-19 pandemic situation in continues to heat up as more than 20 provinces and cities have imposed travel bans and lockdowns.

The situation in more than 20 provinces and cities including Jilin, Hebei, Guangdong, and Shanghai has deteriorated.

is facing mounting pressure to guard against infections amid a recent surge in cases throughout the country.

Earlier, Chinese President Xi Jinping has said that Beijing will stick to its "zero Covid-19" policy, days after National Commission (NHC) released new guidelines easing its control measures.NHC had uploaded a new document on its website. Titled the Novel Diagnosis And Treatment Plan, it was the ninth revision to a document setting out COVID-19 policy for the country of 1.4 billion.

China's zero-COVID policy is pushing cash-strapped local governments to the brink amid rising care costs and efforts to control debt.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
By Tom Hals

(Reuters) - Hundreds of companies have said they are withdrawing or suspending operations in after its invasion of Ukraine, from energy producer Shell Plc to carmaker Hyundai Motor Co to PwC, a global professional services firm.

The following is a look at how insurance and international arbitration might soften the blow to those companies, which stand to lose billions of dollars:

DOES STANDARD INSURANCE PROVIDE COVERAGE?

No, but companies can purchase political risk as an add-on to trade credit, property and aviation insurance. It covers government seizures of property and forced abandonment, cancellations of government licenses for operations such as mines and the inability to convert foreign currency. The insurance typically covers long-term energy or infrastructure projects, but can be purchased by other types of businesses. Policies are confidential, insurance experts said, and disputes are resolved in private arbitration.

Berne Union, a trade association representing political risk insurers, estimated that $1 billion in new political risk insurance was written in in 2020, its most recent data.

Much of the insurance is written by non-commercial agencies such as the Overseas Private Investment Corp of the United States and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, part of the World Bank.

WILL COMPANIES LEAVING HAVE CLAIMS?

Companies that leave and abandon their business without any action taken by the Russia government to seize control of their assets will have a tough time collecting insurance, according to legal experts.

"You see companies saying 'we're leaving because we support .' The question is then whether the policy covers a voluntary departure," said Micah Skidmore of the law firm Haynes and Boone.

Insurers are most likely to pay claims for revenues earned in Russian roubles that are no longer convertible to foreign currency, said legal experts.

WHAT MIGHT HELP COMPANIES RECOUP THEIR LOSSES?

Russia could take actions that would support claims that assets are being seized. Last week, Russia's President Vladimir Putin signed into law a measure that allows the country to place planes leased from foreign companies on Russia's aircraft register.

Air Lease Corp said earlier this month the Russian law demonstrates Moscow's intent to confiscate planes and the company expected the move to help the company collect on its insurance.

Sanctions give the aircraft leasing industry until March 28 to sever ties with Russian airlines. If more than 400 jets in Russia are not repossessed, the industry stands to lose almost $10 billion.

Russia's ruling United Russia party said in early March it is considering a proposal to nationalize foreign-owned firms that leave the country. If enacted, this measure could also support claims for insurance.

ARE THERE OTHER AVENUES FOR COMPENSATION?

A company can look to trade agreements signed by Russia which provide for arbitration when government actions damage foreign investment.

The Steptoe & Johnson law firm said last week in a note to clients that classic international arbitration claims include failure to protect intellectual property rights, refusal to release aircraft and expropriation of assets.

At least nine companies from used trade agreements to seek billions through arbitration from Russia after Moscow annexed the Crimea region of in 2014.

However, the international arbitration process can take years and Russia does not voluntarily pay awards, according to legal experts.

Franz Sedelmayer, whose German security equipment business was expropriated by Russia in 1996, won a $2.3 million arbitration award in 1998 but spent more than a decade fighting in numerous courts trying to collect the money.

A company would not be able to collect on both insurance and arbitration.

(Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware; additional reporting by Carolyn Cohn in London; Editing by Noeleen Walder and Grant McCool)

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Former US Secretary of State on Tuesday said that she had contracted COVID-19.

"Well, I've tested positive for COVID. I've got some mild cold symptoms but am feeling fine. I'm more grateful than ever for the protection vaccines can provide against serious illness," the 74-year-old tweeted, who was also the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee.

In a follow-up tweet, Hillary informed that former US President and her husband Bill Clinton tested negative for the and is "feeling fine." Bill is "quarantining until our household is fully in the clear," she said in a subsequent tweet.

This comes less than a day after White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki announced a positive test result.

"Thanks to the vaccine, I have only experienced mild symptoms," Psaki said in a statement, adding U.S. President Joe Biden tested negative on Tuesday via a PCR test.

The US has reported nearly 80 million COVID-19 cases and 972,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

Health experts have warned that the US may see another rise in COVID-19 cases, as the new Omicron subvariant continues to spread across the nation.

(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.)
French President on Tuesday talked with both Russian President and Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy about the terms of a potential cease-fire, according to the French presidency.

They reached no agreement, the statement said, but Macron remains convinced of the need to continue his efforts and he stands alongside Ukraine.

The Kremlin confirmed that Putin and Macron had a call in which they exchanged views about the situation in Ukraine, including the talks between Russian and Ukrainian negotiators. It didn't give further details.

(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.)
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will consider compiling a fresh stimulus package to cushion the economic blow from surging fuel and grain prices, Kyodo news agency quoted a senior ruling coalition lawmaker as saying on Wednesday.

Kishida, who heads the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), made the remarks in a meeting with Natsuo Yamaguchi, leader of the LDP's ruling coalition Komeito. Any extra spending, which would follow Tuesday's parliamentary approval of a record $900 billion budget for the 2022 fiscal year, will add to Japan's huge public debt and run counter to other major economies withdrawing crisis-mode policies.

Under pressure by politicians to ramp up spending ahead of an upper house election scheduled this summer, Kishida has been signalling the chance of compiling further stimulus steps to ease the pain of surging fuel and food costs on households and companies.

The Nikkei newspaper reported that the government will likely tap 5.5 trillion yen ($45.41 billion) in reserves set aside under the fiscal 2022 budget to fund the package, instead of compiling an extra budget.

(Reporting by Kantaro Komiya and Leika Kihara Editing by Shri Navaratnam and Sam Holmes)

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
WikiLeaks founder married his lawyer fiance on Wednesday in Belmarsh Prison in south-east London, where he is being held as he fights against being extradited to the US on charges of the alleged leak of classified documents.

Assange, 50, and his South Africa-born partner Stella Moris, 38, have two sons together four-year-old Gabriel and two-year-old Max.

Moris, dressed in a wedding gown designed by British designer and Assange supporter Dame Vivienne Westwood, arrived at the prison with her sons and Assange's father Richard and brother Gabriel.

Westwood also designed a kilt for the groom, as a nod to his Scottish heritage.

Today is my wedding day. I will marry the love of my life, Moris wrote in The Guardian ahead of the small ceremony held under strict prison rules.

My husband to be is the father of our two sons, he is a wonderful man, intelligent and funny, he has a deep-seated sense of right and wrong and he is known the world over for his work as a courageous publisher, she said.

This is not a prison wedding, it is a declaration of love and resilience in spite of the prison walls, in spite of the political persecution, in spite of the arbitrary detention, in spite of the harm and harassment inflicted on Julian and our family. Their torment only makes our love grow stronger, she said.

Moris claimed that behind the scenes, the couple have been locked in a dispute with the UK Ministry of Justice and prison authorities, who have denied their proposed witnesses and a photographer for the event because they are journalists.

The prison states that our wedding picture is a security risk because it could end up in social media or the press. How absurd, she writes, adding that Assange's family will continue to fight for his freedom.

The UK Prison Service said photography for weddings in prisons is done by prison staff to meet with an established policy against photographing prisoners.

"All weddings in prisons must meet the requirements outlined in the Prison Service policy," a Prison Service spokesperson said.

Besides two security guards, four guests and two witnesses were allowed to attend Wednesday's ceremony.

The couple are said to be bearing the costs of the ceremony and instead of any wedding gifts, they asked their supporters to donate to the new official Crowdfunder campaign for Assange or sponsor a charity effort and put up posters calling for Assange to be freed.

A group of supporters gathered outside the prison with a tent and wedding cake, with a free Assange sign.

Assange has been in prison since 2019, after he was carried out of the Ecuadorian embassy by the police before being arrested for breaching his bail conditions.

He had been living in the embassy since 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden to face sex offence allegations, which he has always denied and were eventually dropped.

Earlier this month, the WikiLeaks Founder lost an appeal against his extradition in the UK Supreme Court.

Lawyers had argued that he should not be taken to the US because of a real and "oppressive" risk of suicide and won the right to appeal in Britain's highest court.

However, the Supreme Court concluded that his application did not raise an arguable point of law.

The case will now go back to Westminster Magistrates' Court, which is likely to send it to the UK Home Secretary for certification.

Assange's legal team has indicated that a separate process of appeal is likely with reference to other points not considered at the High Court level as yet.

The US indictment against him claims Assange conspired to crack a scrambled password, known as "hash", to a classified US defence department computer.

Assange denies the charge and maintains there is no evidence anyone's safety was put at risk.

(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.)
French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday held talks with Russian President and Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy and discussed about the terms of a potential ceasefire in Ukraine, said a media report citing the French presidency.

As per the official statement, Putin and Zelenskyy reached "no agreement," however, Macron "remains convinced of the need to continue his efforts" as he "stands alongside Ukraine", France 24 reported.

Further, the Kremlin confirmed that Putin and Macron had a call in which they exchanged views about the current situation, including the talks between Russian and Ukrainian negotiators.

In the early hours of February 24, launched a special military operation in after the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics (DPR and LPR) appealed for help in defending themselves against the Kyiv forces.

said that the aim of its special operation is to demilitarize and "denazify" 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 Donbas, "who have been subjected to abuse, genocide by the Kyiv regime for eight years."

However, the Western countries have strongly condemned Russia's invasion of Ukraine and imposed heavy sanctions on Moscow.

(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.)
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.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been invited to virtually address the summit set to take place on Thursday discussing the Russian invasion of his country.

"President Zelensky is invited to address the summit via video link," a official said Tuesday. "This will be an opportunity for allied leaders to hear directly from President Zelensky about the dire situation facing the people of because of Russia's aggression," the official added, reported France 24.

A meeting of the North Atlantic Council (NAC) at the level of Heads of State and Government will take place on Thursday. The meeting will be in person and will be chaired by the NATO Secretary-General, Jens Stoltenberg.

On February 24, Russia began a special military operation in after the Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics requested help in defending themselves. What followed the military operation was a slew of sanctions imposed by the western countries targeting the Russian economy.

(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 humanitarian needs of more than 10 million displaced Ukrainians have quickly become staggering, and longer-term problems resulting from Russia's invasion will grow ever larger if they are not sufficiently addressed now, warned Mark Malloch-Brown, president of the Open Society Foundations.

Experts report an unprecedented outpouring of aid for food, medicine and other essential needs of Ukrainians, but comparatively only few donations have been earmarked for maintaining the country's culture or democratic foundations.

Open Society Foundations has launched the Democracy Fund with a USD25 million pledge, in hopes of raising USD100 million to address that cause.

The foundations, launched by billionaire investor George Soros, are now one of the world's largest funders of democracy, human rights and justice groups.

Keeping their civil society alive absolutely is the key bit, said Malloch-Brown, who has also served as the United Nations deputy secretary general.

Otherwise, it's a hollow victory. If you neglect or lose that civil society piece, you've lost what this was ultimately all about.

Since invaded on February 24, the philanthropy research organisation Candid has catalogued USD440 million in grants and USD333 million more in pledges for the victims.

Those totals do not, however, include individual donations or from non-profits and corporations that have not yet publicly reported their gifts, meaning that the actual amount of aid is much higher.

By many measures, this has been an unprecedented philanthropic response by organisations, by individuals, said Laia Grino, Candid's director of data discovery.

Some groups have said that this has exceeded what they were able to raise for COVID-19, what they raised for racial equity, the response to the crisis in Afghanistan," Grino noted, adding that the bulk of those donations are for immediate needs food, shelter, safety.

We haven't seen a lot for longer-term efforts really, she said. And that will continue to be important.

Malloch-Brown said Open Society had supported with about USD230 million in donations since the nation declared its independence from the former Soviet Union in 1991.

The USD230 million has been primarily invested in developing the sort of civil society and democratic space that has made Ukraine so different from ... Russia, Malloch-Brown said.

Our feeling is that (Russian President Vladimir Putin's) real target is exactly these values our investment represented and sought to build because that's what threatens him this sort of gloriously humorous, ironic, open, vigorous, debating world of Ukraine versus his locked-down, common, homogeneous values of .

Open Society believes its history within Ukraine and its contacts in the country are tools that must be used to keep the nation's culture intact by continuing to invest in human rights defenders and journalism and the civil society, which sustain the country's democracy, Malloch-Brown said.

It plans to continue to fund independent media throughout the war and to support journalists and scholars who are documenting war crimes or providing public health information.

We recognise that it's going to be harder and harder as the Russian military crackdown intensifies, Malloch-Brown said.

A lot of people will be displaced some into exile, some in the west of the country but we've got to follow them and enable them to keep working and fighting for those values that they've been fighting to build for so many years.

In two weeks, Open Society's Ukraine Democracy Fund raised an additional USD13 million from the Ford Foundation, the Oak Foundation, the Schmidt Family Foundation and other, anonymous donors.

Philanthropy can and should anticipate what and where ongoing needs will be and step in preemptively to address them, Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation, wrote in a statement.

This crisis calls out for America to rise to the challenge and realise our promise not just despite our missteps in recent years, but because of them.

After all, Malloch-Brown said, there are plenty of compelling reasons to rally around Ukraine.

Ukraine is a story about democratic success, not failure, he said. One can't find many silver linings to this horrific situation, but under Zelenskyy, it was becoming this glorious, New York-like hodgepodge of opinions and views a real rainbow of pluralism.

(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.)
By Shadia Nasralla

LONDON (Reuters) - rose in volatile trading on Wednesday, supported by disruption of Russian and Kazakh crude exports via the CPC pipeline.

Brent crude futures were up $3.13, or 2.7%, at $118.61 a barrel at 1100 GMT. Prices had earlier fallen to a low of $114.45.

U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures rose $2.69, or 2.5%, to $111.96 a barrel. The contract had earlier slipped to a low of $108.38.

The market remains on edge over the prospect of further sanctions on Russia, the world's second-largest crude exporter, after its invasion of Ukraine, actions that Moscow calls a "special operation".

U.S. President Joe Biden is set to announce more Russian sanctions when he meets with European leaders on Thursday in Brussels, including an emergency meeting of NATO.

European Union member countries remain split on whether to ban imports of Russian crude and oil products which still continue to flow, but this might change once short-term contracts run out.

"Next up are Russian exports in April and there we see cancelled cargoes and problems for Russia to find buyers. India and China will buy but that won't be enough to avoid declining Russian exports," said SEB analyst Bjarne Schieldrop.

Russia on Tuesday warned of a drop in oil exports via the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) of up to 1 million barrels per day (bpd), or 1% of global oil production, because of storm-damaged berths.

CPC exports stopped fully on Wednesday and repairs will take at least one and a half months, according to a port ship agent.

Plunging crude stockpiles in the United States, the world's biggest oil consumer, also added to the apprehension around supply.

The latest data from the American Petroleum Institute industry group showed U.S. crude stocks fell by 4.3 million barrels for the week ended March 18, according to market sources. [API/S]

Nine analysts polled by Reuters on average had estimated crude inventories rose by 100,000 barrels in the week to March 18.

Official U.S. inventory data is due from the Energy Information Administration on Wednesday.

(Additional reporting by Sonali Paul and Mohi Narayan; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)

(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.)
One of the two black boxes of the China Eastern Airlines plane that crashed on Monday has been found, rescuers said on Wednesday.

The China Eastern Airlines aircraft, which departed from Kunming and was bound for Guangzhou on Monday, crashed into a mountainous area near Molang Village in Tengxian County in the city of Wuzhou, in the worst air disaster in over a decade in the country.

A black box of the China Eastern Airlines passenger plane has been recovered, rescuers at the site told state-run Xinhua news agency.

The crashed airliner had two black boxes, one in the cockpit and one in the tail to record various data, according to the official media here.

The search for the black boxes is one of the key tasks required by the investigation team.

Aircraft black boxes are generally in bright orange-red so they can be found quickly after a flight accident. They are built to withstand explosions, disintegration, high temperature combustion, immersion in water and other damage, and the battery lasts for about 30 days.

Because the crash site is in a forested mountainous area, searchers are relying on drones and manpower, which will bring certain difficulties.

No survivors have been found so far among the 123 passengers and nine crew members in the plane crash, Sun Shiying, chairman of China Eastern Airlines Yunnan branch, said on Tuesday night.

The cause of the crash cannot be confirmed immediately and the investigation into the cause is difficult, said Zhu Tao, an official with the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) said on Tuesday.

At present, the investigation team is carrying out a full probe in accordance with the procedures, with rescuers exploring the crash site and going all out to search the black boxes, Zhu had said.

The team is also thoroughly investigating other aspects, including flight, maintenance, air traffic control, meteorology, aircraft design and manufacturing, Zhu said.

Based on known information, the authorities do not yet have a clear clue to the cause of the passenger plane crash, the official said.

The last domestic fatal incident was in 2010, when a plane crashed in Yichun, Heilongjiang province, killing 42 people.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Chinese emergency workers found on Wednesday one of two black boxes from a Eastern Airlines plane that crashed this week in forest-clad mountains with 132 people onboard, the aviation regulator said.

The device is the planes cockpit voice recorder, based on an early assessment, a Administration of official told a media briefing. The cause of the crash has yet to be determined.

Most of the jet appears to have disintegrated upon impact, although some debris and human remains have been found.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Pakistan's top body has imposed a fine of Rs 50,000 on Prime Minister for violating code of conduct by addressing a rally in Swat ahead of the local government in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.

The Election Commission of (ECP) had on March 15 barred him from visiting Swat to address a public rally, but the premier ignored the directives and addressed a rally a day later, the Express Tribune reported.

According to the new ECP code of conduct, no public office holder can visit the districts where elections are being held. The second phase of KhyberPakhtunkhwa local government elections is scheduled for March 31.

The ECP had twice issued notices to Khan for violating the code of conduct.

The last notice was sent on March 21 for addressing a political rally in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa's Malakand area.

The Prime Minister and Minister for Planning and Development Asad Umar had filed a petition in the Islamabad High Court against the notices. According to the petition, The notices have been issued despite new legislation regarding the election campaign.

However, the IHC had refused to restrain the ECP from proceeding against the Prime Minister, saying the commission had a mandate to devise a code of conduct for transparent elections.

The ECP has banned PM Khan from attending meetings during the second phase of Khyber- Pakhtunkhwa local government elections.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
has "manifestly failed" to accomplish its three major goals through the country's "brutal" invasion of Ukraine, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan has said.

On February 24, Russian forces launched military operations in Ukraine, three days after Moscow recognised Ukraine's breakaway regions Donetsk and Luhansk as independent entities.

Sullivan told reporters that intended to accomplish three basic objectives in launching its unprovoked attack against Ukraine: first, to subjugate Ukraine; second, to enhance Russian power and prestige; and third, to divide and weaken the West.

has thus far manifestly failed to accomplish all three objectives. In fact, it has thus far achieved the opposite, Sullivan said on Tuesday.

On the first, the brave citizens of are refusing to submit. They're fighting back. They're defending their homes. They're defending their cities. And although Russia may take more territory in these brutal military operations, it will never take the country away from the Ukrainian people, he said.

On the second, Russian power and prestige have been badly depleted. The Russian military has dramatically underperformed. The Russian economy has been rocked by powerful sanctions. The Russian high-tech and defence sectors are being choked off from key inputs. And Russia is a pariah in the international community, he added.

On the third, the nations of the free world are more united, more determined, and more purposeful than at any point in recent memory, he said.

Since President Joe Biden and the US began warning the world of impending Russian aggression back in November, the US has clearly and consistently pursued three lines of effort, Sullivan said.

First, help defend itself by supplying weapons and military equipment; second, impose severe and escalating economic costs on Russia through the application of unprecedented sanctions in close coordination with Allies and partners in Europe, the Indo-Pacific, and other parts of the world; and third, fortify NATO and the Western Alliance by enhancing our force posture on the eastern flank and making our allies more resilient against other forms of Russian aggression, he said.

After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the US and its allies were quick to impose sweeping sanctions on the Russian economy, as well as financial penalties on the Russian president and elites in his inner circle.

The war between Russia and has pushed more than 3.5 million people to flee the country, according to the United Nations, as Russian forces continue to besiege and bombard Ukrainian towns and cities.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
will likely decide on Thursday to ramp up military forces on its eastern flank, the head of the alliance said, while also warning Russia against using nuclear weapons after its Feb. 24 invasion of .

has sharply increased its presence at the eastern border of the alliance, with some 40,000 troops spread from the Baltic to the Black Sea, and is seeking to deploy four new combat units in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia.

"I expect leaders will agree to strengthen NATO's posture in all domains, with major increases in the eastern part of the alliance. On land, in the air and at sea," chief Jens Stoltenberg told a news conference ahead of a NATO summit in Brussels on Thursday.

Putin sent troops into in what he calls a "special military operation" to demilitarise and "denazify" .

Ukraine and the West say Putin launched an unprovoked war of aggression.

The additional multinational battlegroups come on top of four existing combat units, with a total of some 5,000 troops, deployed by NATO to the three Baltic states and Poland after Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014.

Stoltenberg said the Ukraine crisis had shown that NATO must reset its deterrence and defence posture for the longer term, an issue NATO leaders are expected to discuss at their next regular summit at the end of June in Madrid.

"There is a new sense of urgency because we cannot take peace for granted," he told reporters.

NATO leaders are also set to agree additional aid for Kyiv, according to Stoltenberg, including equipment to help Ukraine protect against chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threats.

He warned Russia against using nuclear, biological or chemical weapons in Ukraine, while stressing NATO's readiness to "protect and defend allies against any threat any time".

"Russia should stop this dangerous irresponsible nuclear rhetoric... Russia must understand that it can never win a nuclear war," he said, adding that any use of biological or chemical weapons would have "far-reaching consequences".

Stoltenberg also called on China to condemn Russia's war in Ukraine and to not provide "material support" for Moscow.

China has not condemned Russia's invasion, though it has expressed concern about the war. Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Le Yucheng said on Saturday that Western sanctions against Russia were getting "more and more outrageous".

"For NATO, it is of particular concern that China now, for the first time, has questioned some of the key principles for security, including the right for every nation in Europe to choose his own path," Stoltenburg said.

In a show of Western unity against the war in Ukraine, Brussels will also host a G7 and an EU summit on Thursday.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
US President flew to Europe on Wednesday for an emergency summit on Ukraine, where invading Russian troops are stalled, cities are under bombardment and the besieged port of Mariupol is in flames.



The US and its allies would consult whether should remain within the G-20 grouping of major economies after its invasion of Ukraine, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said, underlining that it cannot be business as usual for Moscow.



We believe that it cannot be business as usual for in institutions and in the community, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters at a White House news conference when asked about Russias membership of G-20.



Russian President plans to attend the next summit in Indonesia later this year and received valuable backing from Beijing on Wednesday in a pushback to suggestions by some members that could be barred from the group.



China, which has not condemned Russias invasion and criticised Western sanctions, defended Moscow on Wednesday, calling Russia an important member of the . No member has the right to remove another country as a member.





The should implement real multilateralism, strengthen unity and cooperation, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told a news briefing. While refusing to rule out the use of nuclear weapons, Russian President Vladimir Putins spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that if there is an existential threat for Russia, the country can use the nukes.



In an interview with CNNs Christiane Amanpour, when asked under what conditions Putin would use Russias nuclear capability, Peskov replied, if it is an existential threat for our country, then it can be, reported CNN News.



The Biden administration is preparing sanctions on most members of Russias State Duma, the lower house of parliament, and the president intends to announce the sanctions during his trip to Europe.



Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been invited to address a special summit on Thursday discussing the Russian invasion of his country, an official said. This will be an opportunity for allied leaders to hear directly from President Zelenskyy about the dire situation facing the people of because of Russias aggression, a official said.


Russia's National Settlement Depository (NSD) said on Wednesday that Russian holders of domestic corporate Eurobonds may see delays in receiving payments settled through agents, as transactions get snarled up by sanctions.

"Delays are possible for payments cleared via depositories. This could be linked to 'manual' processing of the orders linked to Russian companies as well as with a need to get clarifications from European regulators," NSD said in a statement to Reuters.

Russian sovereign and corporate Eurobond payments were previously processed by clearing and settlement firms such as Clearstream and Euroclear, which process payments and confirm ownership of assets before sending cash to Western bondholders and then to NSD for domestic holders.

However, Western sanctions and countersanctions by Moscow mean that the payment process on hard currency bonds issued by or Russian companies has become much more complicated, with some payments delayed or getting stuck in transit.

Euroclear, owned by exchanges and banks, and Clearstream, part of Deutsche Boerse, both said they would stop settling trades in Russian securities in response to European Union financial sanctions after Russia's invasion of Ukraine last month.

Clearstream and Euroclear did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Russian companies are due to pay $18.5 billion in external debt, including coupon payments, by year-end, ITI Capital analysts estimate, and the Russian ministry is due to pay another $3.4 billion in sovereign Eurobonds.

In a separate statement, NSD said that it is receiving Eurobond payments from Euroclear but will not process these until Euroclear gets clarifications from European regulators.

NSD said it is not getting payments from Clearstream.

"After curbs are lifted, payments will be processed... as usual," NSD said.

Dmitry Lesnov, head of the customer service department at Finam, said that his company is not receiving payments made via Euroclear or Clearstream.

"We do not receive payments on foreign securities made via Euroclear, NSD receives them but does not yet process (them), (we are) awaiting further clarifications," he said.

(Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Alexander Smith)

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
As the Russian invasion of the country is in its fourth week of conflict, Russian troops destroyed railway station in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast in central Ukraine leaving one dead and several freight cars derailed.

Dnipropetrovsk Oblast Governor Valentyn Reznichenko shared that a total of 15 freight cars were derailed in the attack, reported Ukraine's local media outlet, The Kyiv Independent.

Moreover, Russia's proxies have captured an evacuation convoy from Mariupol near the town Mangush on the agreed-upon route. According to Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk, "it is reported that the vehicles will be seized, and people may or may not be allowed to leave."

With the Russian invasion waging on, one person died in shelling of Kyiv's Obolon district. Russian shelling occurred at about 1 pm on March 22 in northern Kyiv. The attack damaged two buildings and a vehicle, killed one and injured three others, according to the local authorities.

According to the Ukraine local media, Greek foreign minister Nikos Dendias wants to travel with a humanitarian aid mission to Mariupol. The media outlet reported that Dendias said at a news conference that he wanted to lead the mission to the besieged seaport city in south-eastern Ukraine, which is home to a sizeable ethnic Greek community.

On February 24, began a special military operation in Ukraine after the Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics requested help in defending themselves. What followed the military operation was a slew of sanctions imposed by the western countries targeting the Russian economy.

(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 the Chinese city of have denied rumours of a city-wide lockdown after a sixth straight increase in daily asymptomatic cases pushed its count to record levels despite a campaign of mass testing aimed at stifling the spread.

The latest outbreak in China's wealthy commercial hub remains tiny by global standards. But its testing campaign, with many people locked in residential compounds for days, follows Beijing's national "dynamic clearance" policy to stamp out flare-ups as quickly as possible.

Daily new local COVID-19 infections in neared 1,000 on Tuesday, but authorities vowed to stick with a "slicing and gridding" approach to screen neighbourhoods one by one, rather than shut down entirely.

The lockdown rumours triggered panic buying late on Tuesday night, with slots on Alibaba's "Freshhippo" delivery app running out a minute after midnight.

"Please do not believe and spread rumours," the city government said on its Weibo microblog site. City health official Wu Jinglei said several streets and residential compounds had been unsealed after testing, but some areas face another round on Wednesday and Thursday, as the focus of its efforts is narrowed.

The city is using two stadiums as quarantine facilities for mild cases and asymptomatic carriers, Wu added at Wednesday's news briefing. A handful of subway stations also suspended operations on Wednesday, the firm managing the transit system said, citing COVID-19 controls.

The municipality reported 977 domestically transmitted asymptomatic infections for Tuesday, data from the National Health Commission (NHC) showed, up from 865 a day earlier.

It also reported four local cases with confirmed symptoms, which China counts separately, down from 31 a day earlier.

'Infinite loop'

Throughout the city, while some compounds were unsealed, others were shut for several more days to try to eliminate transmission chains. Some residents said they would be sealed off for two weeks after a neighbour tested positive.

One resident posting on Weibo under the username "Zhang Fan's Viewpoint" said authorities might as well lock the city down and put an end to the uncertainty caused by 48-hour lockdowns for testing that are often extended.

"This infinite loop of 48 hours plus 48 hours plus 48 hours is more likely to cause ordinary people to lose control of their emotions, and it would be better to directly notify six days, eight days or even 14 days," the resident said.

"In these circumstances, a one-off payment is better than payment by instalment."

Mainland China reported 2,591 locally transmitted cases with confirmed symptoms on Tuesday, versus 2,281 a day earlier, the NHC data showed. The number of new local asymptomatic cases stood at 2,346 compared with 2,313 a day earlier.

The top steelmaking city of Tangshan said late on Tuesday residents who are not essential workers must stay home unless in an emergency or they need to be tested. The city government did not specify when the citywide lockdown would be lifted.

The northeastern city of Shenyang also announced that its 9 million residents would have to go through another three rounds of testing from Thursday through to March 30, after the three rounds already completed.

By March 22, mainland China had reported 137,231 cases with confirmed symptoms, including both local ones and those arriving from outside the mainland. There were no new deaths, leaving the death toll at 4,638.

The was first detected in China's central city of Wuhan in late 2019.

(Reporting by David Stanway, Roxanne Liu, Stella Qiu, Yifan Wang, Brenda Goh and the newsroom; Editing by Michael Perry, Robert Birsel)

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The has allowed girls to return to high schools from Wednesday, ending the uncertainty over whether the Islamic group would allow full access to for girls.

Teenage girls across will return to their classrooms after being banned after the Islamic outfit sized power last August. Since taking power, the have rolled back women's rights in virtually every area, including crushing women's freedom of movement.

The vast majority of girls' secondary schools were closed. Universities recently reopened, with new gender segregation rules. But many women are unable to return, in part because the career they studied for is off limits now as the banned women from most jobs.

"Critical period ahead for as school and colleges soon re-open after winter break. UNAMA conducted a discussion on Higher yesterday with Mawlawi Abdul Baqi Haqqani. Importance of equal access to quality for all & guarantees for academic freedom was stressed," the UN Mission in said in a tweet.

Heather Barr, former senior researcher, at Human Rights Watch (HRW), said opening girls' secondary schools is hugely important.

According to HRW, women and girls are blocked from accessing health care as some healthcare facilities require them to bring a mahram. Reports suggest that women and girls facing violence have no escape route if they can flee only with an abuser escorting them.

Allowing girls into schools and other educational institutes has been one of the main demands of the community.

The majority of countries have refused to formally recognise the Taliban amid worries over their treatment of girls and women. and other human rights issues.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Friday had welcomed the plan announced by the Taliban to reopen schools for girls and boys.

(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.)
Tencent Holdingss revenue grew at the slowest pace since its 2004 listing, showing the financial toll of Chinas crackdown on its most lucrative businesses from to advertising.

Revenue rose 8 per cent for the three months ended December  the first time that quarterly sales have grown by single-digits.

Online advertising sales missed analysts projections after they declined for the first time on record. And domestic revenue grew a mere 1 per cent  reflecting curbs on playtime for minors that have sapped Tencents biggest division.
The British government said Wednesday that a Dubai government-owned ferry operator at the centre of a bitter UK labour dispute likely broke the law when it fired 786 crew members without notice to replace them with cheaper contract staff.

Prime Minister condemned the callous behaviour of P&O Ferries and said the company appeared to have broken British labor laws.

We will be taking action, Johnson said, adding that the company could "face fines running into millions of pounds if it is found guilty.

P&O Ferries claimed the move was legal because the staff worked on ships registered outside the U.K. The ferry operator acknowledged that the way the dismissals were carried out caused distress for workers and said it had offered generous compensation to those involved.

But the company also said it couldn't have survived without fundamentally changed crewing arrangements and that it took the action to save 2,200 other jobs. The dismissed seafarers are being replaced by cheaper workers employed by a third-party crew provider.

The staff cuts which came after P&O received millions in British government aid during the COVID-19 pandemic have caused outrage and sparked protests by trade unions at UK ports. P&O canceled all its ferry crossings between Britain, Ireland and continental Europe after the announcement last week, disrupting the movement of both travellers and goods.

Trade unions have long objected to fire and rehire policies that let companies fire staff members and reemploy them on worse terms. Under British labor laws, such extreme action is only meant to be done after extensive employee consultations.

P&O chief executive Peter Hebblethwaite said that restructuring our workforce in this way was not a course of action that we ever wanted to take.

We did this as a last resort and only after full consideration of all other options," he said in a letter to the government.

The letter came in response to Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng's request for information amid outrage from workers and allegations that P&O violated UK labor laws. Kwarteng last week said it appeared the company hadn't followed the required process for dismissing large numbers of workers and notified it that failure to do so was a criminal offense that could lead to an unlimited fine.

The National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers reacted angrily to the P&O letter, saying the disgusting statement sought to justify the company's shameful acts.

The ferry operator, a unit of Dubai-government owned logistics giant DP World, said the dismissed crew members worked on eight ships registered in the Bahamas, Bermuda and Cyprus. They were employed by three P&O units incorporated in Jersey, a self-governing crown dependency that isn't part of the U.K.

Crew members employed by two other subsidiaries based in France and the Netherlands weren't fired, P&O said.

P&O gave advance notice of the firings to authorities in the countries where the ships are registered, Hebblethwaite said. As a result, P&O doesn't believe it violated U.K. laws.

P&O has announced that it will pay workers 13 weeks salary to compensate for the lack of advance notice, and another 13 weeks salary in lieu of consultation. In addition, P&O says dismissed crew members will receive 2 weeks salary for every year of service, instead of the legally required 1 weeks.

About 575 of the dismissed workers have accepted the severance package, P&O said.

But the RMT union said the package amounted to blackmail and threats because workers will only receive a fraction of the payout unless they give up their legal right to file an action with the employment tribunal.

They have ripped away the jobs, careers and pensions of our members and thrown them on the dole with the threat that if they do not sign up and give away their rights they will lose many thousands of pounds in payments, General Secretary Mick Lynch said in a statement.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Russian President plans to attend the next in Indonesia later this year and received valuable backing from Beijing on Wednesday in a pushback to suggestions by some members that Russia could be barred from the group.

The United States and its Western allies are assessing whether Russia should remain within the Group of Twenty major economies following its invasion of Ukraine, sources involved in the discussions told Reuters.

But any move to exclude Russia would probably be vetoed by in the group, raising the prospect of some countries instead skipping G20 meetings, the sources said.

Russia's ambassador to Indonesia, which currently holds the rotating G20 chair, said Putin intended to travel to the Indonesian resort island of Bali for the in November.

"It will depend on many, many things, including the COVID situation, which is getting better. So far, his intention is...

he wants to," Ambassador Lyudmila Vorobieva told a news conference.

Asked about suggestions Russia could be kicked out of the G20, she said it was a forum to discuss economic issues and not a crisis like Ukraine.

"Of course expulsion of Russia from this kind of forum will not help these economic problems to be resolved. On the contrary, without Russia it would be difficult to do so." China, which has not condemned Russia's invasion and criticised Western sanctions, defended Moscow on Wednesday, calling Russia an "important member" of the G20.

The G20 is a group that needs to find answers to critical issues, such as economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said.

"No member has the right to remove another country as a member. The G20 should implement real multilateralism, strengthen unity and cooperation," he told a news briefing.

Indonesia's foreign ministry declined to comment on calls for Russia to be excluded from the G20.

Russian President sent his troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24 on what he calls a "special military operation" to demilitarise and "denazify" the country. Ukraine and the West say Putin launched an unprovoked war of aggression.

'BUSY WITH SOMETHING ELSE'

Russia is facing an onslaught of sanctions led by Western countries aiming at isolating it from the global economy, including shutting it out of the SWIFT global bank messaging system and restricting dealings by its central bank.

On Tuesday, Poland said it had suggested to U.S. commerce officials that it replace Russia within the G20 group and that the suggestion had received a "positive response".

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said G20 members would have to decide but the issue was not a priority now.

"When it comes to the question of how to proceed with the WTO (World Trade Organization) and the G20, it is imperative to discuss this question with the countries that are involved and not to decide individually," Scholz said.

"It is quite clear that we are busy with something else than coming together in such meetings. We urgently need a ceasefire." Russia's participation in the G20 is almost certain to be discussed on Thursday, when U.S. President Joe Biden meets allies in Brussels.

"We believe that it cannot be business as usual for Russia in institutions and in the community," U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters.

A European Union source separately confirmed the discussions about Russia's status at G20 meetings.

"It has been made very clear to Indonesia that Russiaas presence at forthcoming ministerial meetings would be highly problematic for European countries," said the source, adding there was, however, no clear process for excluding a country.

Indonesia's deputy central bank governor, Dody Budi Waluyo, said on Monday Jakarta's position was one of neutrality and it would use its G20 leadership to try to resolve problems, but Russia had a "strong commitment" to attend and other members could not forbid it from doing so.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
With United Nations confirming that more than 3.3 million refugees have now fled Ukraine since the Russian invasion, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's office has launched a humanitarian aid website helping to find out how to and whom to address the aid.

Ukraine's local media outlet, The Kyiv Independent, wrote, "President's Office launches humanitarian aid website. The official website http://help.gov.ua helps to find out how to send and whom to address humanitarian aid. The portal also provides contacts of foreign and Ukrainian humanitarian hubs."

An estimated over 3.2 million people have left Ukraine for neighbouring countries from February 24, the UN refugee agency said on Friday. UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, acknowledged the enormous support of the Polish authorities and civil society for those who have been forced to flee Ukraine after the number of arrivals passed the two million mark within three weeks.

More than 3.3 million refugees have now fled Ukraine since the Russian invasion, the United Nations said Saturday, while nearly 6.5 million are thought to be internally displaced within the country.

UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, said 3,328,692 Ukrainians had left since the war began on February 24, with another 58,030 joining the exodus since Friday's update.

"People continue to flee because they are afraid of bombs, airstrikes and indiscriminate destruction," said UNHCR chief Filippo Grandi.

On February 24, began a special military operation in Ukraine after the Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics requested help in defending themselves. What followed the military operation was a slew of sanctions imposed by the western countries targeting the Russian economy.

(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 leaders accused of seizing 15 rescue workers and drivers from a humanitarian convoy trying to get desperately needed food and other supplies into the bloodied port city of Mariupol, which also came under naval attack after weeks of air and land strikes.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy estimated that 100,000 civilians remained in Mariupol, scene of some of the war's worst devastation, as presses a nearly month-old offensive by bombarding cities and towns. Those made it out described a shattered city.

They bombed us for the past 20 days, said 39-year-old Viktoria Totsen, who fled into Poland. During the last five days, the planes were flying over us every five seconds and dropped bombs everywhere on residential buildings, kindergartens, art schools, everywhere.

Zelenskyy, speaking late Tuesday in his nightly video address to his nation, accused Russian forces of blocking the aid convoy despite agreeing to the route ahead of time.

We are trying to organize stable humanitarian corridors for Mariupol residents, but almost all of our attempts, unfortunately, are foiled by the Russian occupiers, by shelling or deliberate terror, Zelenskyy said.

The Red Cross confirmed a humanitarian aid convoy trying to reach the city had not been able to enter.

The convoy's attempt to deliver assistance came as Russian navy vessels joined in what have been weeks of Russian air and land strikes into Mariupol, US officials said.

A senior US defence official, speaking on condition of anonymity to give the Pentagon's assessment, said Russian ships in the Sea of Azov added to the shelling of Mariupol. The official said there were about seven Russian ships in that area, including a minesweeper and a couple of landing vessels.

The hands of one exhausted Mariupol survivor shook as she arrived by train in the western city of Lviv.

There's no connection with the world. We couldn't ask for help," said Julia Krytska, who was helped by volunteers to make it out with her husband and son. "People don't even have water there.

US President Joe Biden is due to head to Europe for an emergency NATO summit Thursday on Russia's invasion and increasingly hostile stance toward the West, where NATO members and other European allies are strengthening their defences.

Biden is traveling to Brussels and Poland, which has received more than 2 million Ukrainian refugees since the Feb 24 invasion. He is expected to seek continued unity among Western allies and to announce more sanctions in a punishing series of economic and financial penalties on .

Asked on CNN what Russian President Vladimir Putin had achieved in Ukraine, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: Well, first of all, not yet. He hasn't achieved yet.

But he insisted that the military operation was going strictly in accordance with the plans and purposes that were established beforehand. Putin's aims remain to get rid of the military potential of and to ensure that changes from an anti-Russian center to a neutral country, Peskov said.

In Ukraine's capital, Kyiv, explosions and bursts of gunfire shook the city, and heavy artillery fire could be heard from the northwest, where Russia has sought to encircle and capture several of the capital's suburbs.

Ukrainian forces this week recaptured one suburban city, Makariv, but partially lost three other northwest suburbs, Ukraine's defense ministry said.

A video posted by Ukrainian police showed them surveying damage in Makariv, including to the town's police station, which an officer said took a direct hit to its roof. The police drove by destroyed residential buildings and along a road pocked by shelling. The town appeared all but deserted.

A Western official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss military assessments, said Ukrainian resistance has brought much of Russia's advance to a halt but has not sent Moscow's forces into retreat.

We have seen indications that the Ukrainians are going a bit more on the offensive now, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters separately in Washington. He said that was particularly true in southern Ukraine, including near Kherson, where they have tried to regain territory.

Russia's far stronger, bigger military has many Western military experts warning against overconfidence in Ukraine's long-term odds. Russia's practice in past wars in Chechnya and Syria has been to grind down resistance with strikes that flattened cities, killed countless civilians and sent millions fleeing.

But Russian forces appeared unprepared and have often performed badly against Ukrainian resistance.

The US estimates Russia has lost a bit more than 10 percent of the overall combat capability it had at the start of the fight, including troops, tanks and other materiel.

Western officials say Russian forces are facing serious shortages of food, fuel and cold weather gear, leaving some soldiers suffering from frostbite.

The invasion has driven more than 10 million people from their homes, almost a quarter of Ukraine's population, according to the United Nations.

Thousands of civilians are believed to have died. Estimates of Russian military casualties vary widely, but even conservative figures by Western officials are in the low thousands.

Putin's troops are facing unexpectedly tough resistance that has left the bulk of Moscow's ground forces miles from the center of Kyiv, and they are making slow progress on apparent efforts to cut off fighters in eastern . The Russians increasingly are concentrating their air power and artillery on Ukraine's cities and civilians.

Talks to end the fighting have continued by video. Zelenskyy said negotiations with Russia are going step by step, but they are going forward.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he saw progress in negotiations.

From my outreach with various actors, elements of diplomatic progress are coming into view on several key issues, and the gains are enough to end hostilities now, he said. He gave no details.

The Western official, though, said that there were no signs Moscow was ready to compromise.

In the last update from Mariupol officials, they said March 15 that at least 2,300 people had died in the siege. Accounts from the city suggest the true toll is much higher, with bodies lying uncollected. Airstrikes over the past week destroyed a theater and an art school where many civilians were taking shelter.

Zelenskyy, in his address, said more than 7,000 people were evacuated from Mariupol on Tuesday. Those who remain suffer in inhuman conditions, under a full blockade, without food, without water, without medicine and under constant shelling, under constant bombardment, he said.

Before the war, 430,000 people lived in Mariupol.

Perched on the Sea of Azov, Mariupol is a crucial port for Ukraine and lies along a stretch of territory between Russia and Crimea. The siege has cut the city off from the sea and allowed Russia to establish a land corridor to Crimea.

It's not clear how much of the city Russia holds, with fleeing residents saying fighting continues street by street.

Beyond the terrible human toll, the war has shaken the post-Cold War global security consensus, imperiled the world supply of key crops and raised worries it could set off a nuclear accident.

(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.)
French energy giant TotalEnergies said it has decided to halt all its purchases of Russian oil and petroleum products by the end of 2022 at the latest.

The French company said in a statement it will gradually suspend its activities in Russia amid the worsening situation in Ukraine.

Russia represented 17% of the company's oil and gas production in 2020.

TotalEnergies holds a 19.4% stake in Russia's natural gas producer Novatek.

It also has a 20% stake in the Yamal LNG project in northern Russia. The group said it continues to supply Europe with liquefied natural gas from the Yamal LNG plant as long as Europe's governments consider that Russian gas is necessary.

Contrary to oil, it is apparent that Europe's gas logistics capacities make it difficult to refrain from importing Russian gas in the next two to three years without impacting the continent's energy supply, the statement said.

TotalEnergies has also decided to put on hold its business developments for batteries and lubricants in Russia. It will provide no further capital for the development of projects in Russia, the statement 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.)
invoked history to justify his countrys invasion of . To cement that message at home, his regime is feeding domestic audiences propaganda insisting that the Russian army fights against Nazism across the globe.

In a bid to ensure this message takes root among the countrys youth, Russias Ministry of Education recently announced its intent to create a unified single history course to correct the presentation of history in universities. The course, which will be compulsory for all students, aims to instil in a young person pride in our history, involvement in more than a thousand-year-old culture, awareness of the inheritance of the deeds and accomplishments of their ancestors.

But the Russian presidents tendentious use of history relies on a highly selective reading. In speeches delivered before the invasion, Putin claimed that Ukraine is an inalienable part of our own history, culture, and spiritual space. This theme, developed politically in Russia over the past two decades, emphasises the common heritage of the so-called Russian world. This imagined cultural-historical space is centred on the holy trinity of Belarus, Ukraine and Russia, all of which trace their roots back to the ancient principality of Kyivan Rus.

Putin also contends that Lenin and the Bolsheviks promised Ukrainians their own state simply to consolidate power. Indeed, he criticises Soviet policies towards and the USSRs other titular republics by asking why it was necessary to make such generous gifts, the kind that even the most zealous nationalists never dreamed of before. Such allegations, however, ignore the reality that the development of a Ukrainian national identity and political consciousness significantly predates the formation of the Soviet Union.

To bolster Russias claims as champions of the fight against fascism, Putin has likewise emphasised the sacred sacrifices made by Soviet people to vanquish Nazism and the need for similar sacrifices today: Your fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers did not fight the Nazi occupiers and did not defend our common motherland so that todays neo-Nazis could seize power in .

By invading Ukraine, he is also rejecting the legacy of the 1991 Belovezha Accords between Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, which brought about the demise of the Soviet Union and demarcated the borders of the post-Soviet states. This is something Putin has referred to as the the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the last century. The aim of Putins historical revisionism is to challenge the humiliating loss of great power status that resulted from the Soviet Unions dissolution.

Finally, Putin insists that after acquiring independence Ukrainian authorities took advantage of economically while building their statehood by negating everything that unites us, by trying to destroy the mentality and historical memory of millions of people, of entire generations living in Ukraine. Anyone familiar with the fractious of post-Soviet Ukraine, where power has routinely shifted between regionally based interests both more and less amenable to rapport with Moscow, will understand the perfidy of the latter claim.

Putins use of history

Putins historical distortions are chaotic and jumbled. The crisis in Ukraine is concurrently presented as the fault of the west  or Lenin, or Ukrainian nationalists. But never . If anything, these claims underline just how deep Putins ambition is to restore to its rightful place in the pantheon of nations.

Nonetheless, the Russian president appears ready to use any historical reference necessary to justify his cynical policies.

Now Putin wants these messages embedded in Russias educational curriculum. But, as our research has shown, the extent to which such narratives actually take hold in society remains uncertain. Our survey from 2021 revealed that a diversity of historical viewpoints continue to persist in Russia.

But questioning the official historical narrative in Russia today may lead to severe consequences. Already in 2014, a law made it illegal to criticise the Red Armys actions in the second world war. Echoing this injunction, a law passed in early March 2022 threatens to punish criticism of the Russian militarys actions in Ukraine with up to 15 years of imprisonment.

History wars

The obsession of Russian elites with history is part of the war in Ukraine. Over the course of the past few weeks it has become clear just how diametrically opposed the two countries prevailing historical narratives are and how much they are being manipulated. Indeed, Russias defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, recently announced an international antifascist conference would be held in Russia this August to unite the efforts of the community in the fight against Nazi ideology and neo-Nazism in all its manifestations in the modern world.

Dialogue over how to interpret the legacies of the Soviet era was still possible before the invasion of Ukraine. But Kremlin war rhetoric, which pushes the line about genocide being enacted against Russian speakers in the east of Ukraine and the need for denazification of Ukrainian has severely damaged the prospects of historical reconciliation between the two societies.

Referencing past legacies as a justification for present-day political decisions is often effective  such appeals trigger emotional reflexes and contribute to thinking about in terms of rivalry and defence. The irony within the tragedy of the current situation is that Putin will assuredly go down in history as the figure that did more to unite the Ukrainian people (albeit against Russia) than any other in recent memory.

Felix Krawatzek, Senior Researcher at the Centre for East European and International Studies and Associate Member of Nuffield College, University of Oxford and George Soroka, Lecturer on Government and Assistant Director of Undergraduate Studies, Harvard University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
The Biden administration is allocating nearly $3 billion in disaster relief funding to cover recovery efforts by multiple state and local governments.

The Community Development Block Grants, announced Tuesday, include $2.2 billion to 10 local governments and 13 state governments for 16 major disasters that took place in 2021. These include wildfires in California and Colorado, ice storms in Texas, and damage wrought by Hurricane Ida in multiple states from Louisiana to New Jersey.

An additional $723 million is being sent to five previously announced recipients of disaster relief grants for incidents dating back to 2020 including Hurricane Sally in Alabama and Florida, and Hurricane Zeta in Mississippi. The extra money, according to a statement from HUD, will cover a higher level of need than previously calculated for disasters in those states.

Tuesday's announcements finish the original $5 billion in disaster relief funding provided by Congress last year. Marcia Fudge, secretary of the Department of Housing and Development, said in a statement that the new allocations "will strengthen recovery efforts and improve long-term, inclusive resilience to future disasters and climate impacts.

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear expressed gratitude for the nearly $75 million his state will receive to cover damage from flooding and a string of tornadoes.

After two years of devastating tornadoes, flooding and ice storms, we are looking forward to seeing how this funding can help make an impact in our long-term recovery efforts, Beshear said in a statement.

Under guidance issued by HUD in January, the state and local agencies receiving the block grants are instructed to prioritize climate-change mitigation and equity for underserved communities in deciding how to disperse those funds.

These block grants traditionally come with a great deal of flexibility for local authorities and recipient agencies to decide where best to target the funds depending on the nature of the disaster. For example, wildfires tend to largely destroy buildings and residences, while storms and hurricanes often do the most damage to infrastructure like bridges, sewers and electrical grids.

Most of that flexibility remains, but HUD is now directing recipient agencies to prioritize long-term environmental resilience and serving traditionally marginalized populations.

All new construction funded by the grants will need to be built to green standards that emphasis energy efficiency and resilience against similar disasters down the line.

Communities will have greater resources and focus to ensure equitable outcomes for underserved households that too often bear the brunt of climate-related disasters," Fudge said. "With these funds, we are sending a strong message that equity and forward-looking mitigation are priorities of HUD and this administration's disaster recovery work.

(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 has agreed to lift tariffs on British and aluminum, mending a rift between allies that dates back to the Trump administration.

At a meeting Tuesday in Baltimore, the U.S. and the U.K. announced a deal that would remove taxes on British and aluminum that comes in below new quotas on the imports. The British agreed to lift retaliatory tariffs on U.S. exports, including whiskey.

In 2018, President imposed tariffs of 25% on imported and 10% on aluminum, calling the foreign metals a threat to U.S. national security a move that outraged the British, Europeans and other longstanding American allies. Although President Joe Biden had criticized Trump for alienating America's friends, he was slow once taking office to undo the metals tariffs, popular in the politically important steel-producing states.

Last year, the Biden administration reached a deal with the European Union, agreeing to drop the tariffs on EU metals that come in below new import quotas and continuing to tax imports that exceed them.

Critics said all along that Trump's steel and aluminum tariffs did little to address the real problem confronting American producers of steel and aluminum: overproduction by China. But the already shuts out most Chinese steel.

Under the agreement announced Tuesday, Chinese-owned steel companies in Britain must undergo annual audits to ensure that cheap Chinese steel can't slip into the tariff free.

American whiskey producers welcomed the resolution to the trade standoff.

Distillers throughout the United States are cheering the end of this long tariff nightmare,'' Chris Swonger, CEO of the Distilled Spirits Council, said in a statement.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
US national security adviser Jake Sullivan on Tuesday said that the US is closely monitoring over possible weapon supply to Russia.

He also added that the US administration has not seen provide military equipment to Russia since President Joe Biden spoke with China's President last Friday.

"I can't make predictions going forward. What I can tell you is we have not seen since those meetings or since the President's conversation with Xi, the provision of military equipment by to Russia, but of course, this is something we are monitoring closely," Sullivan told reporters, reported CNN News.

This comes in the backdrop of talks held between Biden and Chinese President on Friday. During the talks Biden sought to dissuade Xi from assisting Russia, warning his Chinese counterpart during a 110-minute long video call of the "implications and consequences" for Beijing if it were to provide material support to Moscow.

Sullivan asserted, "We will continue to monitor it. And the President made clear to President Xi the implications and consequences of any such provision of equipment and they very well understand."

With the Russia-Ukraine war in its fourth week, a new debate whether China is providing military support to Russia or not, has begun with Moscow and Beijing both denying the allegations.

Two US officials told CNN last week that Russia has requested military support and economic assistance support from China. Furthermore, According to a US diplomatic cable to allies, China has conveyed some openness to offering help to Russia, reported CNN News.

On February 24, Russia began a special military operation in Ukraine after the Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics requested help in defending themselves. What followed the military operation was a slew of sanctions imposed by the western countries targeting the Russian economy.

(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 Ganesh Housing Corporation (GHCL) hit an over 13-year high of Rs 298.10, surging 16 per cent on the BSE in Wednesdays intra-day trade, in an otherwise range-bound market. At 11:46 am, the stock was11 per cent higher, as compared to 0.03 per cent gain in the S&P BSE Sensex. The stock hit its highest level since June 2008.

The realty stock has zoomed 53 per cent in the past five trading days. In comparison, the benchmark index was up 2.2 per cent during the same period. Earlier, it had hit a record high of Rs 553 on January 4, 2008.

is engaged in construction of residential and commercial projects in and around Ahmedabad. Till date, the company, along with its various special purpose vehicles (SPVs), has developed 22 million square feet of projects with 85 per cent of all the development in the residential sector.

Currently, the company has 2 projects under construction: Malabar County III and Malabar Exotica. Apart from these, the company has more 3 projects namely Malabar Luxuria, IT SEZ, and Smile city which are expected to commence in FY2023.

On March 3, 2022, Brickwork Ratings India Pvt. Ltd had upgraded the ratings of bank loan facilities of the company by 3 notches from BWR B- to BWR BB- and outlook was upgraded from 'Negative' to 'Stable'.

Brickwork's rating upgrade reflects improved financials, significant reduction in debt, improved leverage metrics, cash inflow receipts from sales of land parcels, improved cash flows (as the company has already received customer advances of Rs. 72 crore from the running projects), and monetization of the land bank, that reduced debt and improved gearing ratio.

"The company has an ongoing project which enables company to be at a stage wherein a couple of their projects are always under the advanced stage of construction and a couple of them are under the nascent stage. This combination helps the company to balance its cash flows more efficiently," said Brickwork Ratings.
The key benchmark indices seem poised for a positive start to trade on Wednesday tracking cues from the global . As of 07:05 AM, the SGX Nifty March futures quoted at 17,425, indicating a gap-up of nearly 100 points on the NSE Nifty 50 benchmark. Meanwhile, here are the stocks to focus in trade today.

Zomato: The Food aggregators proposed 10-minute delivery service has drawn ire from several quarters  gig workers, market experts, social media users and restaurants. The main reason for the restaurants to be unhappy is that they are against giving up quality control, and are focusing on serving fresh food to customers. READ MORE

Suzlon Energy: The debt-ridden company awaits shareholder approval for a third bailout package. The new lenders are bailing out the company by infusing additional funds and converting their loans worth Rs 4,100 crore into equity. READ MORE

Jet Airways: NCLT has been extended the deadline by a week to allow lenders to formulate their view on the consortium's application to revive the ailing airline. The matter will now be heard on March 29. READ MORE

GMR Power and Urban Infra: Equity shares of GMR Power and Urban Infra Ltd, the non-airport business company of the GMR Group, will start trading on BSE and NSE from Wednesday onwards. Post the demerger, GMR Infrastructure has emerged as the India's first pure-play airports' company and has been trading ex-demerger since January 12, 2022. READ MORE

Infosys: The IT major announced the acquisition of oddity, a Germany-based digital marketing, experience, and commerce agency for a consideration of Euro 50 million, including earn-outs, management incentives and bonuses. The acquisition is expected to close during the first quarter of FY23. READ MORE

TCS: The IT behemoths Rs 18,000 crore share buyback plan was subscribed 5.5 times a day before its close. On Tuesday, 220 million shares were tendered, 5.5 times the company intends to repurchase. The Tata group flagship firm will buy back 40 million shares, or 1.08 per cent of its equity. The buyback is being done at Rs 4,500 per share. READ MORE

Zee: In a setback to the Subhash Chandra family, the Bombay High Court on Tuesday allowed an appeal filed by Invesco Developing Fund, a shareholder of Zee, against a single judge order of October last year that had stayed a shareholders meeting to remove Zees Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, and family scion, Punit Goenka. READ MORE

HCL Technologies: The IT firm has signed an agreement with NEORIS for integrated IT services. The two companies jointly will offer unique capabilities to clients in global and countries, like Mexico.

Jindal Hotels: The company has scheduled its board meeting on March 25 to consider a proposal for allotting 3.50 lakh equity shares on a preferential basis to the promoters.

PCBL: The companys board as fixed April 12 as the record date for the proposed stock split from Rs 2 per share to Re 1.

Karnataka Bank: The bank approved a proposal for issuance of Basel III compliant unsecured Tier-2 subordinated bonds in the nature of debentures with a base issue size of Rs 150 crore and a green shoe option to retain oversubscription up to Rs 150 crore.

SBI: The state-run bank has acquired 7.84 per cent stake in ONDC (Open Network for Digital Commerce) for a consideration of Rs 10 crore.

and Payment Services: The companys board has approved an interim dividend of Rs 2.50 per share.

SBI Life Insurance: The companys board has approved an interim dividend of Rs 2 per share.

HUDCO: The companys board has approved a proposal for raising up to Rs 7,000 crore by way of issue of bonds/ debentures. The board also approved an interim dividend of Rs 0.75 per share.

BEML: The company has declared an interim dividend of Rs 5 per share.

Stocks in F&O ban: Balrampur Chini, Delta Corp, GNFC, Indiabulls Housing Finance and Sun TV are the stocks in the F&O ban period on Wednesday.


Adani Ports & Special Economic Zone (APSEZ), an integrated transport utility and a part of the Adani Group, crossed the mark of handling 300 million metric tones (MMT) cargo volumes before March 2022.

APSEZ has registered robust growth since it started operations just over two decades ago and continues to outperform all India cargo volume growth, with its market share rising rapidly.

The company took 14 years to achieve 100 MMT annually (with five ports in its portfolio) while the cargo volumes doubled to 200 MMT annually (with nine ports in its portfolio) in the next five years.

With 12 ports in its portfolio currently, APSEZ's achieved handling 300 MMT annually in about three years. The company expects to achieve 500 MMT by 2025, the company's press release highlighted.

Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone reported 6% decline in consolidated net profit to Rs 1,479 crore on a 1% rise in revenue to Rs 3,797 crore in Q3 FY22 over Q3 FY21.

APSEZ, a part of the globally diversified Adani Group has evolved from a port company to an integrated transport utility. It is the largest port developer and operator in India with 6 strategically located ports and terminals on the west coast and 6 ports and terminals on the East coast of India.

Shares of Adani Ports & Special Economic Zone (APSEZ) gained 0.07% to Rs 740.15 on 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.)
Bajaj Electricals has extended its trademark agreement with United Kingdom-based Morphy Richards (part of the Irish headquartered electrical appliances group Glen Dimplex), for usage of the Morphy Richards trademark for a further fifteen years with effect from 1 July, 2022.

The extension of the exclusive license will enable BEL to continue using the trademark Morphy Richards for producing, marketing and selling the home appliances in India and neighbouring territories (Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Maldives and Sri Lanka).

BEL has been exclusively offering this international brand to Indian consumers since April 2002 and has established it well in the premium home appliances segment. With the license renewal, the company will be able to further strengthen its multi-brand offerings and position in the Indian and neighbouring territories.

Powered by Capital Market - Live News

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The IT company on Tuesday announced that it signed a collaborative agreement with NEROIS for co-creating solutions for digital companies.

HCL said the agreement will bring unique capabilities to clients in global markets, including the ability to increase application usage time, business management operations and integrated IT services companies.

As part of the agreement, both companies will be able to expand their operations and access new markets, making them better positioned to explore global markets. NEORIS, with more than 20 years of experience and global presence including operations in Latin America, will strengthen HCL's presence in territories like Mexico and South America which offer great opportunities for commercial development. With operations in 52 countries, HCL Technologies will aid NEORIS in expanding its business internationally, primarily in the United States, Europe and Asia.

Ajay Bahl, corporate vice president of HCL Technologies said, "We are delighted to offer this unique program to our clients in Latin America who are seeking ways to optimize their teams through best-in-class technology solutions. Our collaboration will also contribute to our continuous effort to build a great talent pool in Mexico to deliver industry-best service and capabilities to our customers."

HCL offers its services and products through three business units: IT and Business Services (ITBS), Engineering and R&D Services (ERS) and Products & Platforms (P&P). The IT major reported 5.4% rise in consolidated net profit to Rs 3,442 crore and revenue increased by 8.1% to Rs 22,331 crore in Q3 FY22 over Q2 FY22.

Shares of HCL Tech were trading 0.47% higher at Rs 1,182.65 on BSE in morning trade.

Powered by Capital Market - Live News

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Hindalco Industries Ltd is quoting at Rs 603.6, up 1.71% on the day as on 12:49 IST on the NSE. The stock is up 89.96% in last one year as compared to a 18.51% jump in NIFTY and a 70.23% jump in the Nifty Metal.

Hindalco Industries Ltd is up for a fifth straight session today. The stock is quoting at Rs 603.6, up 1.71% on the day as on 12:49 IST on the NSE. The benchmark NIFTY is down around 0.42% on the day, quoting at 17243.15. The Sensex is at 57731.01, down 0.45%. Hindalco Industries Ltd has gained around 16.6% in last one month.

Meanwhile, Nifty Metal index of which Hindalco Industries Ltd is a constituent, has gained around 19.1% in last one month and is currently quoting at 6323.7, up 0.07% on the day. The volume in the stock stood at 83.42 lakh shares today, compared to the daily average of 174.99 lakh shares in last one month.

The benchmark March futures contract for the stock is quoting at Rs 604.4, up 1.63% on the day. Hindalco Industries Ltd is up 89.96% in last one year as compared to a 18.51% jump in NIFTY and a 70.23% jump in the Nifty Metal index.

The PE of the stock is 30.39 based on TTM earnings ending December 21.

Powered by Capital Market - Live News

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Hong Kong share market finished higher for second straight session on Wednesday, 23 March 2022, on tracking overnight advances on Wall Street along with expectation of stimulus measures from Beijing, including possible cuts to banks' reserve requirements, after assurances of more support by the China's economic czar Vice Premier Liu He and other policymaking bodies last week.

At closing bell, the benchmark Hang Seng Index advanced 1.21%, or 264.80 points, to 22,154.08. The Hang Seng China Enterprises Index was up by 1.28%, or 96.58 points, to 7,635.13.

Shares of technology companies surged as investors applauded Beijing's possible concession for audit issues and the end of a criminal case against ZTE in the United States.

Chinese regulators have asked some of the country's U. S.-listed firms, including Alibaba, Baidu and JD.com, to prepare for more audit disclosures, as Beijing steps up efforts to ensure domestic companies remain listed in New York.

Powered by Capital Market - Live News

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Russia-Ukraine conflict warrants a new European security mechanism

09:20, March 23, 2022 By Tom Fowdy ( People's Daily Online

A woman sits on a bus in Irpin, Ukraine, March 5, 2022. Photo: Xinhua

-A new European security mechanism must be one which takes the legitimate security concerns, perspectives and strategic realities of all countries into consideration.

The continent of Europe is facing arguably what could be its biggest crisis since World War II. The events in Ukraine have produced a significant human cost, upheaval and widespread uncertainty. The Russian Federation has argued consistently that the West, in pursing the expansion of the NATO alliance eastwards, did not adhere to Russias legitimate security concerns and has feared potential strategic and military encirclement, a move which concerning Ukraine provoked tensions and finally as of 2022, conflict. It is a sad moment for Europe, which has prided itself on unity, stability and progress.

This poses the question: how can European security be better guaranteed? As of present, the current European security order established through NATO may be historically successful for some countries, yet the alliances fundamental problem is that it is based on a zero-sum premise of ideological struggle and hegemony, or for that matter an us vs. them dichotomy, which believes in the absolutism of not just securing itself, but evangelizing its own values to the rest of the world. It is a security order, which as a result of its own outlook, promulgates insecurity precisely because it needs an enemy to vindicate itself.

NATO originated as an anti-Communist military alliance in the 1950s in order to check the power of the former Soviet Union, of which was subsequently balanced by the Warsaw Pact. When the original Cold War ended in 1991 and the USSR dissolved however, NATO continued to exist. Rather than being what was a defensive orientated alliance, it in effect became a hegemonic one as it moulded itself to the narrative that Francis Fukuyama termed the end of history thesis, which argued the premise that Liberal Democracy was the historically endpoint, and the ultimate and permanent outcome of mankinds trajectory, and that great power politics and ideological struggle would be a thing of the past.

The bombed Radio Television Serbia (RTS) building is seen in Belgrade, Serbia, March 21, 2022. In Belgrade, there are many scars left by the NATO bombings. The NATO bombings of Yugoslavia started on March 24, 1999. During the 78-day military attack, 2,500 civilians were killed, and around 25,000 objects were damaged, including airports, hospitals, schools, cultural monuments and road infrastructure, according to the Serbian government. (Xinhua/Zheng Huansong)

Therefore, NATOs institutional logic evolved to reflect the sentiment of universal ideological hegemony, that it was a permanent order and a global policeman of sorts. Therefore, it subsequently began to expand itself eastwards into the former Soviet sphere. This betrayed former promises with Russia by Western leaders that they would not make such a move. NATOs trajectory of expansion and its bombing campaign in the Balkan Wars subsequently provoked distrust from Moscow, which was a key factor in the soaring of the post-Soviet relations of the 1990s between Russia and the West. Russia began to perceive its expansion as a threat to its own security, setting out on a long journey to the events of the present day.

Despite this being quite obvious, the West continues to deny that they could have possibly done anything wrong by expanding NATO, affectively reaffirming that such was their ideological right to do so and that Russia is merely a bad actor for opposing it. This again reflects the zero-sum ideological view of the West, reflecting global security concerns not pragmatically or materially, but through the normative lens of a binary struggle between good and evil which misrepresents the actions and decisions of states as if it were the script of a movie. This is neither realistic nor practical, and it is no surprise that such an arrangement does not in fact provide security for all, but only for some. It does not prevent conflict, it creates it.

As a result, a new European security mechanism must be one which takes the legitimate security concerns, perspectives and strategic realities of all countries into consideration. It cannot and should not be based on an ideological framework or a mentality of hegemony, but instead place a greater emphasis on what achieves the most workable results for all states. Whilst Ukraine, of course, has legitimate security rights and choices of its own, so does Russia.

The post-war system of Europe has had undoubtedly some successes over the years. But if it claims to have moved itself away from the politics of power and hegemony of which dominated the continent pre-1991, and even more drastically pre-1945, then it is mistaken. The logic on all sides that countries must be made to choose one bloc or the other is a pathological and zero-sum rendering of how international politics work, and it is precisely such a logic that starts wars. Now however, emphasis must be placed on ending one, and that cannot happen without a fairer and more equal security mechanism.

The author is a British Analyst of politics and international relations with a primary focus on East Asia. He graduated from Oxford University with a MSc. in Chinese studies.

The opinions expressed in this article reflect those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of People's Daily Online.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
Wednesday Comment: The Apple Silicon Mac Pro

By Graham K. Rogers





If the new Mac Studio has performance that is as good as or better than the current Mac Pro, what does that infer for when the next Mac Pro is announced in a month or two (or three if this is to be at WWDC) when the important bits inside will be moved to Apple silicon.



Commentators have been speculating wildly about what the next Mac Pro is to be. I have been trying to base my comments on what we do know along with some input from engineers who know a bit about chips. As the late Donald Rumsfeld said (correctly - also see David A. Graham, Atlantic), there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; . . . some things we do not know. For once Wall Street seems to have gained some confidence: there is some realization that Apple already has this all planned out. The way the M1 series has been developed - each iteration scaling up from the previous version, with the Ultra providing a creative solution by doubling up on the M1 Max - is a strong indication that Apple has a long term strategy for chip development. Like many I wonder how far the scaling could go. As a reminder, the current Mac Pro has options for 8-core to 28-core Intel Xeon processors and there are 8 PCI expansion slots. The next Mac Pro must somehow exceed this and the recently released Mac Studio.



Current Apple Mac Pro - Image courtesy of Apple

Many people were surprised by the joining of two Max chips - not the least the normal sources of rumors - but I wondered if it is possible to go further and join two Ultra chips. That M1 Ultra looks a bit odd with its rectangular shape: why not double it to make it square (almost). And if Apple could do that once, why not double up again? I was clearly not the only one thinking along these lines. Christian Zibreg (iDownloadBlog) enlarges some ideas from Mark Gurman adding some useful, technical ideas that explain how this might be done. The current design does not have the ability to make such a connection, but in a redesign for the 4 nm processes Apple could amend that. That sounds easy, but it would mean much rethinking both for hardware and the software that would make it all work. Such changes would be made more effective if incorporated into the version of macOS that follows Monterey.

The System on a Chip (SoC) design means that Apple can include features that other manufacturers would need several months to add to their products. This was apparent to me from the A7 with its 64-bit technology when it seemed likely that the A-series potential could extend to the Mac and I wrote about this then (13 Sep 2013). The release of the M-series chips brought this to fruition, but also has shown certain limitations that need to be addressed before the Mac Pro will be ready: memory and graphics. The Mac Studio was for professionals who need more power, but may have limitations, particularly in terms of budget. I have seen a couple of user comments about the price of the Studio with the M1 Ultra chip, but falling between the iMac Pro (now gone) and the Mac Pro, with its wide range of options (although it is way above my budget and power needs), it seems well-priced for what it can do. Its output exceeds a number of high end machines. The Mac Pro is a beast for a different class of user, such as makers of big budget movies, where the cost of several such devices - perhaps used only for the production itself - is factored into that budget; or for businesses in media or creative fields where the outlay is tax allowable?

Although John Ternus mentioned the Mac Pro during the recent Keynote Event, Ming Chi Kuo seems to disagree suggesting that this will not be available until 2023, which could be damaging to Apple. Customers may be delaying purchases. Such a wait would mean those with large projects that may need several high-performance machines could look to other sources. The next version of the Mac Pro needs to exceed the current specifications, including computers from competitors using Xeon and AMD multi-core processors and Apple's own Mac Studio with the M1 Ultra chip. That hints at the sort of power outputs that may be coming. The M1 Ultra which has output that exceeds some current high end chips is the starting point and it may be that one version of the MacPro could include that, or a version of this M1 chip. It is also possible, as Johnny Srouji mentioned, to link two of these via the motherboard. He sounded less than enthusiastic about this, but it is a solution. Others have suggested a further iteration of the M1 Ultra - created by linking two M1 Max chips - that would link 2 Ultra chips (see above). While this sounds good, John Ternus called the M1 Ultra the end of the development of the M1. That hints at the long-rumored M2, which would indeed be a multi-core chip, probably fabricated using a 4nm process, which would provide other benefits in use. The whole development of A-series and M-series chips has featured scalability, but also the speed with which new chips can be developed. An example of this was the A7 which moved smartphones to 64-bit processing (from 32 bit) causing a disturbance in the force. It took the industry by surprise and it was some 6 months before other chip makers could copy this advance. It was the A7 that put the idea of what became Apple silicon in my mind: Apple could design features into the chip that no one could copy for at least months, if ever in some cases. What would this do for the Mac? Well now we know.



Current Apple Mac Pro - Image courtesy of Apple

The Mac Pro needs three other things in the mix: storage, memory and graphics. Most Mac Pro (and earlier Power Mac) computers scored highly in the way it was possible to upgrade both. Handling massive amounts of data, when crunching numbers or working on large image or movie files is of prime importance. Last week, another Radeon card was added to the graphics options of the current Mac Pro. As with the M1, each development has allowed use of additional ports up from the basic two USB-C Thunderbolt 3 ports of the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro, with the adapted M1 chip of the Mac mini having additional ports. The M1 Pro and M1 Max allowed more ports and other features, including up to 64GB memory, while the M1 Ultra was able to double up on this: configurable up to 128GB. With the M1 Ultra there are additional ports, and more types (Ethernet, SD card, et al). Although it is speculation, what the Mac Pro could have designed into the SoC is likely to exceed this although the current Mac Pro can go up to 1.5TB of memory. The graphics capabilities are another matter. Users of the Mac Pro have always enjoyed the benefits of being able to choose a graphics card that would suit their workflow, in much the same way as they were able to select the right processor for the task (and the price). There are five Radeon graphics cards available for the current Mac Pro. Offering more than two using the SoC approach could stretch resources; but the SoC would preclude additional cards unless Apple has a solution to allow an upgraded card that would turn off the SoC graphics. I do not see this myself.

Storage was never a major problem with the Mac Pro as, apart from the Trash Can design (which I rather liked despite its limitations), there were usually enough spare spaces in the body to add other drives. The Trash Can Mac Pro relied on external drives to supplement the internal storage. Many use external storage for archiving and scheduled backups. I use 3 drives regularly for Time Machine, with one stored at my office and occasionally brought into use. This redundant backup is just in case of fire or theft - having experienced the latter, it is no good backing up every day if the disk is stolen. Redundancy saves tears. Apple therefore can offer the options of internal or external storage (or both) and while the disk solution decided on purchase is usually final, more internal storage spaces covers that, while a number of reports have revealed that the SSD in the Mac Studio is relatively easy to remove, and hence replace. David Crewe in PetaPixel later revealed that this is apparently blocked by software and is probably only possible if done by Apple. With WiFi and faster USB-C Thunderbolt 4 cables, external solutions are increasingly more widely used and I would expect limited internal space in a new Mac Pro.

The body design of the next Mac Pro will depend on decisions made by Apple concerning expandability and which slots (if any) would be included. The current cheese-grater style was first seen with the G5 Power Mac and is not unaesthetic by any means. The size however will probably be decided by the features of the chip (or chips) that power the device. Unlike the current Mac Pro a large array of fans will probably not be needed Some rumors pitch the size as somewhere between the Mac Studio and the current Mac Pro. There has always been a strong argument for expandability in the Pro devices although that has been less evident (for good reasons) in the notebook computers. The desktop Mac Pro is aimed at a different customer, but it may be that Apple sacrifices the idea of internal expansion for reliability of the chip: decisions on specifications would be made at purchase. That would not sit well with some potential users and was a problem with the earlier Trash Can Mac Pro where utility was sacrificed for design. External expandability is a safer route and was tried with that earlier device. That lost ability to upgrade is a lesson Apple should have taken on board, although it is difficult to see at this stage - and with only the M1 to base ideas on - how this may be overcome with the design contradictions of the SoC and a computer that has always been based on the ability to update key components. With the lessons of the previous Mac Pro and the Mac Studio it is probable that the types and number of ports will satisfy most users. While we know from Apple that a Mac Pro (or a suitable replacement) is on the way, what is finally offered will depend on the specific chip (or chips) offered, the options available at the time of purchase, and the potential for upgrades post-purchase. Based on what we have seen with the current Mac Studio, I expect the next Mac Pro will have much that is attractive.

Graham K. Rogers teaches at the Faculty of Engineering, Mahidol University in Thailand. He wrote in the Bangkok Post, Database supplement on IT subjects. For the last seven years of Database he wrote a column on Apple and Macs. After 3 years writing a column in the Life supplement, he is now no longer associated with the Bangkok Post. He can be followed on Twitter (@extensions_th)
The BJP on Wednesday pointed out that there was only Bhagat Singh's picture displayed in the Delhi government's advertisements in newspapers on Shaheedi Diwas and urged Delhi Chief Minister that martyrs should "not be divided".

The chief minister said that it was indeed a mistake and assured that it will not be repeated after Leader of Opposition Ramvir Singh Bidhuri raised the matter during his address to pay homage to martyrs on the first day of the Budget session of the Delhi Assembly.

Only Shaheed Bhagat Singh's photo is there in advertisements issued by the Delhi government in newspapers. It doesn't have pictures and names of martyrs Sukhdev and Rajguru. Martyrs of the country should not be divided, Bidhuri said in House.

The BJP leader urged the chief minister to rectify the mistake and requested him to install a statue of martyr Ashfaqulla Khan near the statues of Shaheed Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru on the Delhi Assembly premises.

While paying tributes to martyrs Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru on their martyrdom day, Kejriwal said, I agree with the Leader of Opposition that we don't have to divide martyrs. It was indeed a mistake in today's advertisement. I accept that mistake and ensure that this will not be repeated.

Kejriwal also said that despite 75 years of Independence, the dreams of Bhagat Singh remain unfulfilled.

No government of any party did anything for the common man. They only indulged in dirty . I am happy that the AAP government is honestly working for the common people.

"AAP governments in Punjab and Delhi have decided to install photos of only Dr Ambedkar and Bhagat Singh instead of political leaders, Kejriwal said in the House.

He also appealed the BJP to install photos of Babasaheb Ambedkar and Shaheed-e-Azam Bhagat Singh in its offices.

(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.)
RJD president Lalu Prasad's elder son on Thursday demanded that his father, who is undergoing treatment in hospital, be immediately released from jail.

Yadav, an RJD MLA, was talking to reporters on the assembly premises, a day after Prasad was shifted to All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi in an air ambulance from Ranchi where he was serving sentence in a fodder scam case.

He was undergoing treatment at Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS) in the Jharkhand capital and his health condition had deteriorated.

"I have seen my father being repeatedly put in jail, having been implicated in a case he had sought to crack," 35-year-old Yadav said.

He alleged that government officials, who were "primarily responsible" for fraudulent withdrawal of money to the tune of about Rs 1,000 crore from various districts of undivided Bihar, were "roaming freely" while his father was being made to suffer despite old age and multiple ailments.

Training his guns at Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, Prasad's arch rival, the RJD leader alleged, "He (Kumar) is an accused in a murder case and would have faced life imprisonment but for an alliance with the BJP."



Notably, the murder case, relating to an incident of poll violence, was lodged in the 1990s, when Kumar was an MP from the now abolished constituency of Barh.

Criminal proceedings against Kumar were, however, set aside by the Patna High Court three years ago.

(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.)
Videos

Sorry, there are no recent results for popular videos.
Commentary: Democrats must be open to everyone for success
Thank you for reading!

Please log in, or sign up for a new account and consider subscribing for only $7 per month to get access to more articles and news as it happens.
Op-ed by Paige Alexander, CEO of The Carter Center.

A version of this essay first appeared in Chinese on FT.com/Chinese Edition.

The route to peace in Ukraine may travel through China. Because of its unique relationship with Russia, China now has more influence than any other country to convince Moscow to seek peace. Beijing should not be reluctant to use this clout.

As a first step, President Xi Jinping should refuse Russian requests for military assistance. He could initiate shuttle diplomacy in European capitals to broker a cease-fire and chart a clear path for actions required for sanctions to be lifted  and ultimately to find a way for Russia to peacefully coexist with its European neighbors.

China can also play a critical role in opening humanitarian access in Ukraine by calling forcefully on Russia to abide by Article 55 of the Geneva Conventions and respect the safe corridors for refugees and aid shipments to which they agreed. The humanitarian toll in Ukraine is acute and growing worse each day, and Chinas voice may be one that breaks through to Vladimir Putin.

China is big, it is growing, and it will influence the world in the years ahead, Robert Zoellick, then U.S. deputy secretary of state, famously told the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations in 2005. He went on to say that China should become a responsible stakeholder in the international system. It would work with us to sustain the international system that has enabled its success.

Despite growing tensions with the West, China still has the potential to prove Zoellick right. Almost 17 years later, Chinas influence on global peace and prosperity has only grown more impactful. As the Ukraine crisis deepens, the international community is wondering  and hoping  if this is Chinas moment to step into a global crisis as a force for peace and stability.

There have been signs of Chinas willingness to be a responsible stakeholder. President Xi placed a phone call to President Putin on Feb. 25, urging Moscow to exercise restraint and open negotiations with President Zelenskyy. On March 7, Xi held a virtual summit with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has talked to his counterparts in the U.S., Ukraine, the EU, and Hungary. Wang has indicated that China wants to facilitate dialogue for peace. On March 14, Chinas top diplomat, Yang Jiechi, met with U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan in Rome to discuss U.S.-China relations and the Russian war against Ukraine.

The challenge is how to translate these words into meaningful actions.

Chinas ever-growing economic power places it in position to put pressure on Moscow. Russia is losing export customers and import suppliers quickly, and its sources of loans are drying up; it simply cant afford to lose Chinas business, even in the short term. Russians who can no longer access their Visa, Mastercard, and AMEX cards will turn to China for credit cards. Thats some strong leverage.

After years of tense relations between the U.S. and China, Xi and President Joe Biden have taken cautious steps recently to repair the relationship. They held a virtual summit in November and agreed to put the bilateral relationship back on the right track, but the Ukraine crisis presents a historic and tangible opportunity for Washington and Beijing to work together as joint anchors for peace and development now and in the coming years. If the U.S. and China could coordinate their actions to broker peace in South Sudan, get Iran to agree to limit its nuclear capacity, and put Ebola under check, they undoubtedly can find ways to work together to end the war in Ukraine as quickly as possible.

Working together on the Ukraine crisis will not make tensions in the U.S.-China relationship disappear. Several difficult issues, including sovereignty over the South China Sea and the status of Hong Kong and Taiwan, will remain points of contention. Nevertheless, cooperation between the worlds two most powerful nations is essential to ending the war in Ukraine and addressing its peoples humanitarian needs. Agreeing to disagree in order to find common ground was President Nixons and Mao Zedongs recipe to open a window for relations between the U.S. and China. It laid the groundwork for President Carter and Deng Xiaoping to eventually normalize diplomatic relations between the two nations.

Playing the role of peacemaker in Ukraine will bear dividends for China and its place in the world, opening new opportunities to broker peace, bolsters its trade opportunities in the region, and elevate Chinas status in the West. These benefits will accrue to China in the future  but only if it acts now to forge a peace agreement, end the most consequential outbreak of war in Europe since WWII, stem the burgeoning refugee crisis in Europe, and relieve the suffering of the Ukrainian people. It cannot wait.
High-ranking country representatives pledge to eliminate Guinea worm disease in the presence of (standing, from left) Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, His Excellency Sheikh Shakhbout Nahyan Al Nahyan, UAE Minister of State, and Jason Carter, chair of the Carter Center Board of Trustees. The declaration signing took place Tuesday at the Qasr Al Watan in Abu Dhabi. (All photos: The Carter Center)

His Excellency Sheikh Shakhboot bin Nahyan Al Nahyan, Minister of State at the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation; Jason Carter, Carter Center Board of Trustees Chair; and Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, World Health Organization Director-General, stood in solidarity with the signatories. Additional support was provided by the Global Institute for Disease Elimination (GLIDE) and Pure Health.

A sense of urgency surrounded this weeks summit with dignitaries from formerly endemic countries and partner countries on hand to offer support to the nations where the disease remains. Donor countries and organizations also renewed their pledges to support the campaign.

The Abu Dhabi Declaration was agreed upon at the conclusion of the 2022 Guinea Worm Summit, a high-level, three-day event co-hosted by The Carter Center and Reaching the Last Mile, a portfolio of global health programs working toward disease elimination that is driven by the personal commitment of His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi.

Assembling at the UAEs presidential palace, Qasr Al Watan, leaders from Chad, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Angola, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Cameroon confirmed their commitment by signing the declaration. Representatives of Mali, an endemic nation, were unable to attend the event.

Ministers and dignitaries endorsed the Abu Dhabi Declaration on the Eradication of Guinea Worm Disease to ensure the neglected tropical disease becomes the first human disease to be eradicated since smallpox in 1980.

ABU DHABI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES (March 23, 2022)  High-ranking representatives of several countries pledged this week to devote all resources needed to interrupt transmission of Guinea worm disease and certify its eradication by 2030.

In 2021, just 15 human cases of Guinea worm disease were reported in four countries. When The Carter Center assumed leadership of the eradication campaign in 1986, an estimated 3.5 million cases occurred annually in 21 countries.

Thanks to the commitment of The Carter Center and partners around the world, we have made incredible progress towards ending Guinea worm disease  but the work is not over. This week we were honored to convene global champions of the eradication effort in Abu Dhabi to renew our shared commitment towards reaching that last mile of disease eradication, said His Excellency Sheikh Shakhboot bin Nahyan Al Nahyan. It is a privilege to continue the legacy of the founder of our nation, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, who believed no one should suffer from a preventable disease. Reaching the last mile of Guinea worm disease cannot come soon enough.

In July 1990, the late Sheikh Zayed invited former U.S. President Jimmy Carter to the UAE for the first time. During the meeting, President Carter described his initiative to wipe out a parasitic disease affecting millions of people across Africa and Asia. Sheikh Zayed responded with a substantial personal donation to The Carter Center, which established the Abu Dhabi ruling familys more than 30-year commitment to disease eradication.

The Carter Center, founded by former President Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, 40 years ago, seeks to capitalize on recent momentum achieved in battling the disease.

We observed a dramatic reduction in both human cases and animal infections last year, and I want to help our country partners continue this progress, said Adam J. Weiss, director of the Guinea Worm Eradication Program at The Carter Center. The final part of any eradication campaign is the most difficult and expensive, and significant resources are being devoted to eradicating Guinea worm disease. We need to be aggressive to achieve eradication, and this recommitment comes at just the right time.

We are more than 99% of the way towards consigning Guinea worm to history, but the last mile is the hardest, and the gains we have made can be easily lost, said Dr. Tedros. Our goal is tantalizingly close, but we need relentless political commitment, fidelity to science, more village volunteers, and sustained financial resources to finish the job and ensure future generations live free of this terrible disease.

The summit spotlighted country leadership and secured recommitments from the final Guinea worm-endemic countries (Angola, Chad, Ethiopia, Mali, South Sudan) and pre-certification countries (DRC, Sudan), as well as Cameroon, a country affected by cross-border infection.

Jason Carter, chair of the Carter Center Board of Trustees and grandson of the Centers founders, said: My grandfather and His Highness the Crown Princes late father were good friends who formed an important alliance against Guinea worm disease. That rich partnership has endured through three generations, and I believe it will go on even after Guinea worm disease is eradicated.

Guinea worm disease is a particularly devastating disease that incapacitates people for extended periods of time, making them unable to care for themselves, work, grow food for their families, or attend school. The disease is contracted by drinking water contaminated with Guinea worm larvae. About a year later, the adult Guinea worm creates a painful lesion in the skin and slowly emerges.

Sufferers may seek relief by immersing their limbs in water, stimulating the worm to release its larvae and renewing the cycle of infection.

More information on the Abu Dhabi Declaration on the Eradication of Guinea Worm Disease can be found here: www.cartercenter.org/health/guinea_worm/guinea-worm-summit.html.

###

Editors Note: Select photos available upon request.

Contact: Emily Staub, Emily.Staub@cartercenter.org, Rusol Tamimi cartercenter@sevenmedia.ae

About The Carter Center

Waging Peace. Fighting Disease. Building Hope.

A not-for-profit, nongovernmental organization, The Carter Center has helped to improve life for people in over 80 countries by resolving conflicts; advancing democracy, human rights, and economic opportunity; preventing diseases; and improving mental health care. The Carter Center was founded in 1982 by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, in partnership with Emory University, to advance peace and health worldwide.

About Reaching the Last Mile

Reaching the Last Mile (RLM) is a portfolio of global health programs working towards disease elimination that is driven by the personal commitment of His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi. The Initiative provides treatment and preventative care in communities that lack access to quality health services, with a specific focus on reaching the last mile of disease elimination. RLMs mission represents His Highnesss dedication to ending preventable diseases that affect the worlds poorest and most vulnerable communities and helping millions of children and adults live healthy, dignified lives. https://www.reachingthelastmile.com/, @RLMGlobalHealth
Photo: The Canadian Press In this photo posted on Facebook provided by the Johnston County Sheriff's Office is the scene of a deadly two-vehicle collision on Tuesday, March 22, 2022, in Tishomingo, Okla. The Oklahoma Highway Patrol says six teenage students have been killed in a collision in southern Oklahoma. OHP spokesperson Sarah Stewart says the students were in a passenger vehicle that collided with a semi about 12:30 p.m. Tuesday in Tishomingo, which is about 100 miles southwest of Oklahoma City. (Johnston County Sheriff's Office via AP)

Six teenage students have been killed in a two-vehicle collision in southern Oklahoma, the Oklahoma Highway Patrol said Tuesday.

The students were in a passenger vehicle that collided with a semi about 12:30 p.m. in Tishomingo, a rural city of about 3,000 located about 100 miles (161 kilometers) southeast of Oklahoma City, according to OHP spokesperson Sarah Stewart.

Stewart said she did not have details of the collision or the exact ages of the students but that all six victims were female. The condition of the semi driver was not immediately known.

Images from the crash scene showed a virtually destroyed black vehicle with what appeared to be a pink steering wheel among the rubble.

Tishomingo Public School Superintendent Bobby Waitman said in a Facebook post that the district had a great loss involving students from the district's high school.

Our hearts are broken, and we are grieving with our students and staff, said Waitman, who did not immediately return a phone call on Tuesday.

Waitman said counselors would be available at the high school throughout the night Tuesday and that school would be open on Wednesday with a focus on the emotional well-being of our students.
Photo: The Canadian Press Pedestrians make their way along Sparks Street Mall near the Peace Tower on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Tuesday, Nov. 9, 2021. The mayor of Canada's capital city has urged the federal government to send its workers back to their downtown offices to bolster flagging local businesses. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

The mayor of Canada's capital city is urging the federal government to send its workers back to their downtown offices to bolster flagging local businesses.

Jim Watson appealed directly to Treasury Board President Mona Fortier to remind her that Ottawa has one of the highest COVID-19 vaccination rates of any big city in the country, saying it's safe for workers to return.

"A healthy city must have a healthy core," the mayor said in a statement.

Approximately 94 per cent of adults in Ottawa are fully vaccinated, and 98 per cent of the core public service has attested that they've received two shots of a COVID-19 vaccine.

Even so, many public servants are still logging in from home.

Business and government employees working from home have taken a huge bite out of small commercial enterprises, said Dan Kelly, president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.

The federation is one of several business groups that have also asked the government to send its workers back to the office.

"So many (businesses) are related to serving office workers. Not just restaurants, but the dry cleaner, the convenience store, retailers, hotels in downtown cores, these are some of the businesses that have been hit hardest by COVID restrictions," he said.

While nearly all urban centres have been starved of customers since the pandemic began, those in downtown Ottawa have been put through the wringer more than anywhere else, Kelly said.

Just as many capital businesses began to reopen their doors after the latest wave of COVID-19, a massive protest against public health measures flooded downtown streets with huge trucks and forced outlets to close for weeks.

Meanwhile, the federal government appears to be among the slowest to bring workers back to the office, Kelly said. Ontario public servants have already been ordered back, at least part time, by April 4, for example.

The federal government has begun to slowly increase building occupancy, Fortier said in a statement Tuesday.

The decision about how quickly, and to what extent, departments will move away from remote work arrangements has been mainly left to individual directors, with the support of Treasury Board.

"The Treasury Board Secretariat is providing guidance to promote a coherent approach across departments and agencies, while respecting the different operational realities of each organization. There is no one-size-fits-all approach," she said.

Fortier said she regularly stays in touch with Watson about how they can foster the vitality of local restaurants and businesses.

Watson said even a hybrid model that sees employers work in the core only part of the time could help struggling small businesses.

Kelly said if the government doesn't send employees back soon many of those businesses will be gone. "The longer that we have workers working from home, the harder it's going to be to unscramble the egg."

The negative effect will be massive, even if the government starts shifting people back to the office part-time, he said.

"They just won't have enough business."

The issue seems to be on the government's radar, Kelly said, but the wheels turn slowly in Ottawa.

"Downtown businesses are hanging by a thread, and in Ottawa that thread has been unraveling even further," he said. "So we need to move on this fast."
Photo: Fernando Lessa Salmon in the Fraser River.

A coalition of environmental groups is calling on Alaska to halt the interception of hundreds of thousands of B.C.-bound salmon before they return home to spawn.

In a letter addressed to Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy, four salmon conservation groups presented data indicating that in 2021 more than 650,000 Canadian-origin sockeye salmon were caught in the waters of southeast Alaska. That is six times the 110,000 sockeye B.C. commercial fishers caught last year.

Were just talking about the fish we know that are getting killed up there, said Greg Taylor, a longtime consultant with commercial and First Nations fisheries.

B.C. salmon populations have plummeted to record lows in recent years. In response, the federal government closed 60 per cent of B.C.s commercial salmon harvest in June 2021 and announced a fishing licence buy-back program under its $647-million Pacific Salmon Strategy Initiative.

The result for B.C., says Taylor: It makes us a spawning ground for Alaska.

The fish expert was one of three authors on a recent report detailing the impact Alaskan fishers are having on returning B.C. fish. Released in January under commission from the Watershed Watch Salmon Society and SkeenaWild Conservation Trust, the research found Alaskan fishers intercepted over half a million salmon on their way home to B.C.'s Skeena and Nass rivers, two of the province's most important spawning grounds after the Fraser River.

But since then Taylor says his team has dug deeper into the numbers. The problem, he says, is much more widespread than initially thought.

Canadian salmon caught in Alaska are now thought to have origins in river systems across the coasts of Vancouver Island and the inlets of B.C.s mainland.

The biggest impacts, says Taylor, are felt anywhere north of the City of Nanaimo. An unknown portion of returning Fraser River sockeye are also thought to be taken in Alaska waters.

Its not just in the North and the Central coasts. If you live anywhere in this province, there are fish that are getting caught in Alaska, he said.

It's also not just sockeye at risk. Alaska provides little or no information on how many B.C.-origin chum, pink, steelhead and coho salmon are caught in southeast Alaska every year, but in their letter to the governor, the conservation groups state it is likely in the millions.

They call it a pink fishery. That's why they want to be in that area. But we know that the real prize is the sockeye, said Stu Barnes, operations manager of the Skeena Fisheries Commission (SFC). We could have survived for four years off of what they got this [last] year.

The SFC coordinates scientific research and fish stock conservation for the Gitxsan, Wetsuweten and the Gitanyow First Nations  together representing over 20,000 people who are among the most heavily dependent on salmon in the world.

We have communities that aren't meeting their food fish needs for going on 10, 15, 20 years, said Barnes. So any kind of extra impact on our stocks right now is just making the access that much harder.

Data shared with Glacier Media show southeast Alaskan fisheries took 70 per cent of sockeye stocks for the Nisgaa Nation last year; 64 per cent of chinook in watersheds around Bella Bella and Bella Coola; and 44 per cent of chinook stocks along a stretch of coast that includes the Quinsam area of Campbell River.

Those numbers represent a small slice of the fishers hit by the combined effects of B.C. fishery closures and Alaskan interceptions.

Following the release of the report on southeast Alaska salmon catches in January, First Nations across the province finally had data to back up what many had suspected all along.

It created a rallying point for more than just the Skeena First Nations, said Barnes.

In January, Ts?ilhqotin Nation tribal chair Joe Alphonse said the First Nation was outraged over the interceptions, especially at a time when the nation has made huge sacrifices to conserve salmon.

Like many First Nations working to recover salmon stocks, the Ts?ilhqotin Nation has implemented closures and denied its citizens their Aboriginal right to fish, said Alphonse.

It's time, said Alphonse, to review how the Pacific Salmon Treaty is structured, and where First Nations sit at the international table.

Since 1985, the Canada-U.S. Pacific Salmon Treaty has been in place to settle international imbalances in fisheries, prevent overfishing, and ensure both countries receive equal benefits from healthy salmon populations. Over the last three decades, new agreements have been reached every 10 years. But the last agreement was signed in 2019 and the Pacific Salmon Treaty isnt up for renewal until 2028.

Despite frustration on the B.C. side, both Barnes and Taylor say there has been little response from the Canadian government or those working on the Pacific Salmon Treaty.

Its just not working for us under Canada's banner, Barnes told Glacier Media. At the domestic table we can say, We have rights. At the international table, we say we have rights' and they shrug their shoulders and say, Good for you. How much fish are we getting?

On Tuesday, Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard spokesperson Kevin Lemkay said the department is was aware of the January report and is working with Global Affairs Canada to address these concerns.

Glacier Media also reached out to the office of Alaska Gov. Dunleavy, but he was not immediately available to comment.

Taylor said the coalition received a neutral response from Dunleavys office, saying it had received the letter. In it, the four conservation groups  Watershed Watch Salmon Society, SkeenaWild Conservation Trust, Raincoast Conservation Foundation and Coastal Rivers Conservancy  asked to sit down with the governor to work out a common sense solution for all sides.

That means closing District 104 to net fishing  fishing grounds that make up an overwhelming percentage of intercepted B.C-bound salmon. Other suggested measures include reducing harvest rates in the area to avoid overfishing of Canadian-origin stocks and implementing independent catch reporting for target and non-target species.

The group is also calling for fishers to release non-target fish, or bycatch, back into the water before they die, something already required in B.C.

But while Taylor says scientists and fisheries experts have the genetic tools to identify where and how big the problem is, anything less than the closure of District 104 would be kicking the can down the road.

Really we need to close that offending fishery and move them elsewhere, he said.

Taylor added hes optimistic the groups will get an honest conversation with the governor, especially in a state that sells its salmon catch based on an image of sustainability.

It does not look good what theyre doing now, he said. It just needs some common sense. We cannot protect and rebuild our salmon population if theyre getting killed.

The first thing you need to do is stop the bleeding.
Photo: Glacier Media A BC Supreme Court judge has sentenced a man convicted of manslaughter in a Vancouver stabbing death to 18 months in prison.

A man will spend 18 months in prison after being convicted of manslaughter in the July 2020 death of a man in Vancouvers Downtown Eastside.

B.C. Supreme Court Justice David Crossin said Daniel Haydons death was the result of a fistfight that broke out between Haydon and Luis Alberto Maulen, 53, on the morning of July 1, 2020.

Maulen claimed self defence for the Canada Day incident in which Haydon, 49, was stabbed twice.

I conclude the accused used excessive force in the course of defending himself against this much larger man, the judge said in a March 11 decision released March 22. The use of the knife, in stabbing the victim twice however, was not reasonable in the circumstances.

After Haydon died from his wounds, Maulen was charged with second-degree murder.

However, a jury found Maulen not guilty of murder, but guilty of manslaughter.

Crossin said critical evidence at trial consisted of a video that captured aspects of the confrontation, although not the stabbing. The main Crown witness was a Ms. Van Kalsbeek, a bus driver who witnessed the conclusion of the struggle.

The court heard Haydon had a reputation for violence.

He was a drunk and a bully, the judge said.

On that July morning, Maulen heard Haydon calling his name from an East Hastings bus stop. He crossed the street to Haydon.

Maulen had a knife used for carving but Crossin said there was no evidence he intended to use it as he approached Haydon.

When Maulen arrived at the bus stop, Crossin said, Haydon punched him. The punch to the head caused him to fall, court heard.

The accused testified the knife came loose during the scuffle while on the ground, the judge said. The accused grabbed it as he thought the deceased was reaching for it.

The judge said Maulen was terrified for his life and stabbed Haydon twice. Haydon got on his feet and stumbled back to the bus stop bench. Maulen walked away, knife in hand.

Van Kalsbeek testified she saw the stabbing as she pulled her vehicle to the stop. She testified to seeing Maulen walk away with the bloody knife.

Pathology evidence confirmed Haydon suffered two wounds: one on the lower left part of his abdomen and one on his upper left thigh.

Both wounds were severe; both potentially fatal, Crossin said. He soon died from blood loss.

The total sentence was 20 months plus six days imprisonment but Crossin credited Maulen with 66 days in pre-trial custody.
Photo: The Canadian Press Members of the Nuchatlaht First Nation and supporters rally outside B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver.

The British Columbia government admits that members of the Nuchatlaht First Nation are descended from a historical Indigenous collective, but the lineage through a family of chiefs doesn't establish Aboriginal title, a provincial lawyer says.

Jeff Echols told a B.C. Supreme Court trial Tuesday that the province disputes the nation's claim to 230 square kilometres of land off Vancouver Island's west coast.

The "modern-day" Nuchatlaht draws its membership from a broader base of Indigenous Peoples than the "historical" Nuchatlaht did when the Crown claimed sovereignty over what's now B.C., he said, and the province plans to present evidence showing their ancestors weren't alone in using the land on Nootka Island.

Case law has established that Aboriginal title is not transferable, Echols said. The legal test would not allow the modern Nuchatlaht to assume the title of other historical Indigenous groups whose members joined or merged with them, he said.

The Nuchatlaht First Nation, which has about 160 registered members, claims the B.C. and federal governments have denied its rights by "effectively dispossessing" the nation of the Nootka Island land. The lawsuit asks the court for a declaration that would recognize their rights title and put a stop to logging in claim area.

Jack Woodward, a lawyer for the nation, told the court on Monday that expert evidence shows the Nuchatlaht were organized into a confederacy of sorts, with a number of groups who shared a summertime gathering place in the area.

The claim meets the test for Aboriginal title set out in the Supreme Court of Canada's landmark Tsilhqot'in decision in 2014, he said. That case recognized Tsilhqot'in title over a large part of their traditional territory in B.C.'s Interior.

The area the Nuchatlaht are claiming avoids any potential conflict with neighbouring nations, said Woodward, who also represented the Tsilhqot'in.

Echols also asserted Tuesday that the Nuchatlaht claim is too narrow in scope considering the complexity of modern Aboriginal rights litigation. He said he expects there will be disagreements between the nation and the province over what evidence and issues are deemed relevant to the trial, which is expected to last weeks.

The resolution of Indigenous rights claims through adversarial litigation is not the only option and it is not the province's preferred option, he said.

"But the litigation must proceed in a way that respects the rules of practice and fairness to all parties. It is particularly important that the court have the necessary evidentiary foundation for a fair determination of the case on its merits."

The nation's chief at the time the lawsuit was filed in 2017 said that the Nuchatlaht spent many frustrating years at the treaty table and working through other government processes trying to protect its lands and the health of its people.

Shortly before the end of Tuesday's hearing, Woodward said his client has asked him to apply to discontinue the proceeding against two of the three defendants, the federal government along with logging company Western Forest Products.

A lawyer for Western Forest Products had told the court that his client takes no position on whether the Nuchatlaht have Aboriginal title. But Geoff Plant urged the court to consider how a declaration recognizing its rights would affect third parties.

Western Forest Products has provincially approved logging tenures in the claim area on Nootka Island. Plant said the lawsuit, as it's currently structured, is "incapable of fully addressing the rights of third parties and the public interest."

If Nuchatlaht rights and title over the area are proven, Plant said the best way to achieve reconciliation would be for the court to suspend making any declaration to allow time for his client's interests to be taken into account.

A lawyer for the federal government said Tuesday it intends to "maintain a minimal role, given that there is no relief sought against the federal Crown."
Photo: The Canadian Press

Canada and the United States have started talking about ways to make it easier for law enforcement officials in either country to navigate stringent privacy laws when investigating criminal activity.

The two countries have started working towards an agreement that would compel internet service providers to hand over private data when it's deemed to be part of an investigation.

The framework for the talks is the Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act, or CLOUD, passed in the U.S. in 2018 in an effort to ease access to evidence while protecting civil liberties.

Today's announcement is part of a cross-border crime forum taking place this week in the U.S. capital with Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino and Justice Minister David Lametti.

It's the first meeting of the forum in a decade, resurrected by the Canada-U.S. "road map" for bilateral co-operation agreed to last February by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and President Joe Biden.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland says a new data-sharing deal would enhance public safety and security while protecting privacy and civil liberties in both countries.

"Such an agreement, if finalized and approved, would pave the way for more efficient cross-border disclosures of data between the United States and Canada so that our governments can more effectively fight serious crime, including terrorism," Garland said in a statement.

"By increasing the effectiveness of investigations and prosecutions of serious crime ... we seek to enhance the safety and security of citizens on both sides of the U.S.-Canada border."

Mendicino and Lametti took part in the talks along with Garland and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

A summary of the meeting says they discussed working together to defend against ransomware attacks and to "freeze and seize" Russian assets as part of North America's economic countermeasures against Vladimir Putin's ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

Foreign policy experts have been warning for weeks that U.S. efforts to sanction Russia would likely lead to a ramp-up in foreign cyberattacks on American infrastructure, a possibility Biden himself flagged publicly on Monday.

"My administration has issued renewed warnings that, based on evolving intelligence, Russia may be planning a cyberattack against us," Biden told business leaders.

"The magnitude of Russia's cyber capacity is fairly consequential, and it's coming."

The four leaders also talked about efforts to push back against human trafficking and smuggling across the Canada-U.S. border, as well as plans to target the flow of illegal guns between the two countries.
Photo: The Canadian Press Senior military officers and dignitairies depart after attending the homecoming motorcade procession for the return of Capt. Brenden MacDonald, Capt. Maxime Miron-Morin and Master Cpl. Matthew Cousins, drives through 12 Wing Shearwater near Dartmouth, N.S. on Thursday, June 25, 2020. The Canadian Armed Forces will soon adopt a gender-neutral dress code for service member as military commanders push for more diversity in the ranks. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Andrew Vaughan

The Canadian Armed Forces will soon adopt a gender-neutral dress code for service members as military commanders push for more diversity in the ranks.

Men and women in uniform are currently subject to separate dress codes that include the types of clothing they can wear as well as hair styles and other aspects of their appearance.

Maj.-Gen. Lise Bourgon, the acting chief of military personnel, says the new gender-neutral standard will give members more choices while ensuring they are still dressed safely and appropriately for their duties.

The change is part of the militarys effort to be more inclusive by recruiting and accommodating women, visible minorities and other groups that are under-represented in the military.

Bourgon says 71 per cent of Canadian Armed Forces members are white males, while they account for 39 per cent of the rest of Canadas workforce.

She spoke about the new dress code during a briefing today, in which senior officers updated Canadians on their ongoing efforts to change the Armed Forces culture.
Photo: Vancouver Police Department Brad King has been charged in the incident.

Police have identified and charged the man accused of shoving another man down a flight of stairs at the Granville SkyTrain station earlier this month.

Brad King, 53, faces a charge of assault in the incident.

He allegedly shoved the victim, a 61-year-old man, down the stairs on March 1. Police believe the alleged assault took place after the victim and suspect had a confrontation outside the station.

King allegedly followed the victim into the station, pushed him down the stairs and then kicked him at the bottom in front of onlookers.

Last week police released video of the incident from security cameras and asked for the public's help identifying the suspect. King was arrested this past weekend after tips from the public but wasn't initially charged.
Re. Liberal-NDP deal slammed (March 23)

In response to (Conservative North Okanagan-Shuswap MP Mel Arnolds) views, I am not opposed to this agreement because of the lack of movement on national pharmacare and dental plans with the intention to help citizens without plans to have that support.

As a retired federal employee in 2015, from the 11-year (Conservative) Stephen Harper government, I was more than pleased to see the change.

Anyone with common sense knows a minority government cannot accomplish what it hopes to achieve as other parties will block what they can.

Would (Arnolds) party support these two agreements or delay them inevitably?

I watched the interaction in the House of Commons on Tuesday. I rarely do as I compare it to kids fighting in a playground.

The Conservative MPs were being unprofessional as the Deputy Speaker of the House tried to encourage respect of other speakers.

I hope for more goals to be met by the Liberal Party, with support from others. Majority votes accomplish a lot more and quicker than a minority government. I also hope the NDP will gain more seats in future elections.

We need ongoing support for many social and provincial issues, including the pandemic, which is not over.

The current government is getting us through this once-in-a-lifetime event and other issues can be resolved quicker.

I do wish the Conservative Party luck in finding a viable leader from the eight

possible choices now. And 2025 will gives it enough time to rewrite its playbook.

Mary Lou Siemens, Kelowna
Photo: The Canadian Press British trade secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan poses for a photo after an interview in Ottawa on Wednesday, March 23, 2022. THE CANADIAN PRESS/ Patrick Doyle

Britain's trade minister says she hopes her country can finalize a formal free trade agreement with Canada within a year now that negotiations are set to start in earnest.

U.K. Trade Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan offered that timeline in an interview with The Canadian Press after her arrival in Ottawa.

Trevelyan is set to announce the formal start of the talks with Canada on Thursday with Canadian counterpart Mary Ng.

Britain and Canada have already negotiated an interim trade agreement to replace the broader Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, or CETA, that Canada negotiated with the European Union.

Britain's decision to leave the EU after its Brexit referendum meant that it was forced out of CETA at the end of 2020.

Trevelyan says it is critical for Britain to strike deals with Canada as well as gain entry to the 11-country Pacific Rim trade pact known as the CPTPP.
Page not found

Please try the following step instead:

- Check your network connection

and refresh the page

- Check if the URL is correct

- Try other interesting CGTN content
Chatham, VA (24531)

Today

Sunny to partly cloudy. High 77F. Winds E at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Partly cloudy this evening, then becoming cloudy after midnight. Slight chance of a rain shower. Low around 60F. Winds light and variable.
First Lady Suzanne Youngkin (center) presents the first ever Spirit of Virginia award to Maj. General Bob Dees (right), CEO of the National Center for Healthy Veterans, as Governor Glen Youngkin (left) joins them for this special award.
The Dalton Police Department presented one of its highest awards to an officer Tuesday morning at the monthly meeting of the Dalton Public Safety Commission while the Dalton Fire Department recognized its Firefighter of the Year. Those awards and an officer promotion headlined the meeting.Award of ValorOfficer Joshua Bethune was presented the DPDs Award of Valor Tuesday in honor of his life-saving and heroic actions during an incident in January. The award is presented to a department member who conscious of danger and great risk of personal hazard to life, distinguishes themselves by intelligently performing an act of heroism or valor above and beyond the call of duty.The incident happened Jan.26 while Officer Bethune was off duty. While driving, he came upon the scene of a traffic crash between a passenger vehicle and a tractor trailer. The passengers in the car were entrapped and the vehicle was on fire. Officer Bethune rushed into action, working to free the driver from the burning vehicle. Once the driver was free, Officer Bethune again attempted to enter the burning vehicle to help the passengers as emergency crews arrived. Thanks in part to his actions, there was no loss of life.Firefighter of the YearChief Todd Pangle recognized Matt Asbell as the Firefighter of the Year on Tuesday. The honor is both nominated and decided by vote of the departments firefighters.Firefighter Asbell joined the fire department since January 2003, rising to the rank of Firefighter III in his 19 years of service. Chief Pangle noted Tuesday morning that twice in the past six months, Firefighter Asbell put himself into harms way while rescuing victims who were trapped inside burning structures, giving those victims a chance for survival. As a Firefighter III, he routinely is in charge of a company on scenes and he has been successful in that role. Hes currently in training for certification as a fire investigator to assist the department in that capacity.Chief Pangle said Tuesday that Firefighter Asbell was chosen for the honor for his commitment to the community, enthusiasm for the profession and his selfless acts of heroism.New LieutenantWoody Cantrell is the Dalton Police Departments newest lieutenant after having his promotion confirmed by unanimous vote of the commission. He was presented for promotion by Chief Cliff Cason.Lt. Cantrell joined the police department in July 2002, serving his entire career thus far in the patrol division. He was promoted to the rank of sergeant in 2015 and since 2018 he has served as the supervisor of the agencys special operations units including the Traffic Enforcement Unit. He has earned 10 awards for outstanding performance, including four letters of commendation, and has been honored as the departments Officer of the Month on one occasion.The Dalton Public Safety Commission is comprised of Chairman Terry Mathis, Alex Brown, Anthony Walker, Bill Weaver, and Truman Whitfield.
Tennessee American Water is the recipient of the 2022 Chattanooga Chamber of Commerce Business Education Investor Award. The award recognizes a business for its partnerships with local schools to help build a talent pipeline in the Chattanooga community and is part of the Chambers Community Engagement recognition program for different businesses and non-profits.Tennessee American Water student outreach spans kindergarten through college, with hands-on activities to inspire students in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). Creative programming focuses on water, from its natural source to the drinking water treatment process.In addition to providing safe, clean, reliable water, being involved in the community is an important aspect of what Tennessee American Water does, said Grant Evitts, president of Tennessee American Water.This award is due to our employees who have shared their time with students and opened up a world of career possibilities. Our employees are passionate about working with young people in our community, to help each reach their potential.Tennessee American Water has partnered with Chattanooga State and the Hamilton County Department of Education for over 10 years with the Elementary Science Olympiad. In 2019, the company launched an inaugural Olympiad in Marion County. Employee volunteers have participated in various outreach at schools or at the Chattanooga water treatment plant, including career panels, experiments such as build-your-own water filter and mentoring programs. Tennessee American Water also partners with the Tennessee Aquarium on educational outreach programs directly to schools, libraries and other venues. Most recently, Tennessee American Water supported the Tennessee Aquariums Science Streams video series which can be accessed from the companys website www.tennesseeamwater.com.The videos were developed specifically for teachers and students and are aligned with Tennessee Science and Next Generation Science standards.
Grady Pascal Williams, a Chattanooga civic and philanthropic leader, has died at 87.He was the chief fundraiser for many worthy causes, most recently working with Tom Edd Wilson to raise funds for the new Children's Hospital Outpatient Center.The Signal Mountain resident was born in Sequatchie Valley where he grew up on a farm. He graduated from Bledsoe County High School in 1953 and went on to Tennessee Tech University where he graduated with a degree in accounting with honors.He started his career in Chattanooga at the accounting firm of Hazlett, Lewis, and Bieter. He loved being a CPA and spent over 47 years with HLB. While working with HLB, he took a two-year leave for military service as a U.S.Army Paratrooper Infantry Officer and was honorably discharged as a captain. Grady officially retired from being a CPA when he was 80, but spent many hours at home helping friends and family with their taxes up to the day of his passing.He was actively involved at the Signal Mountain Presbyterian Church as a deacon, Sunday School superintendent, and elder.Mr. Williams served on the committee that planned festivities for Hamilton County's 175th birthday.He had a passion for serving and became involved in many civic and philanthropic organizations over the last 50 years including chairman of the United Way Campaign, the United Way Board, president of the Rotary Club of Chattanooga, and the Advisory Board for Tennessee Tech University where a scholarship fund is established in his name. It was said that "Grady never turned down an opportunity to get involved and to help others with his time and resources."Later in his career he became one of the organizers of Capital Mark Bank in Chattanooga and served on its board of directors.He was preceded in death by his parents, Eugene and Mayme Williams; sisters Marie Williams Bickford and Velma Williams Holland; brothers Cecil Williams and Thomas Williams.He is survived by his wife of 62 years, Phyllis Williams, brother Franklin Williams; sons Grady (Kim) Williams, David (Michele) Williams; grandchildren Luke Hill, Justin Hill, Will Williams, Katie (Mitchell) Gentry, Megan Williams, and great-granddaughter Emmie Hill.The funeral service will be held on Friday at 11 a.m. in the sanctuary of the Signal Mountain Presbyterian Church, 612 James Boulevard, Signal Mountain. The family will receive friends on Thursday from 5-7 p.m. in Dudley Hall of the church.In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to Signal Mountain Presbyterian Church Margaret Ferguson Scholarship fund, Childrens Hospital at Erlanger in care of EHS Foundation, 975 E. 3rd St., Suite 508, Chattanooga, TN 37403, or the Grady P. Williams Endowed Scholarship by contacting Tennessee Tech University Foundation, PO Box 1915, Cookeville, TN 38505.Arrangements are by Heritage Funeral Home and Crematory, Battlefield Parkway.
Hula, the traditional dance of the pacific islands, is synonymous with Hawaiian culture. Long before its pop culture notoriety, it was utilized across the islands in sacred feasts, rituals, and celebrations. Any visit to the islands of Hawaii is incomplete without experiencing the full display of the Hawaiian dance and feast that we know now as the luau.

If you visit the island of Maui youll have the opportunity to experience one of the best Luaus - Old Lahaina Luau located in the historic town of Lahaina. Labeled as Maui's most authentic Hawaiian lu`au, Old Lahaina provides guests with the full Hawaiian experience.

The luau takes place in a large private area situated right on the shore, and surrounded by thatched huts and swaying palm trees. The backdrop is truly picturesque. Tables are reserved upon booking and guests have the option to choose from the traditional low table where guests sit cross-legged in the first row surrounding the stage, or chaired tables that are placed on tiered levels that provide everyone with a great vantage point. Each option can accommodate up to 8 individuals.

Upon entering the Old Lahaina Luau property you pass through a rustic gate and stone wall to be greeted by the friendly staff. They provide everyone with a fresh flower lei and then escort you to your reserved table. From there you are encouraged to walk around the property and get acquainted with your assigned server and busser who will be with you throughout the evening.

During your pre-meal stroll you are treated to live music and several culture exhibits - wood carving, jewelry making, etc., all of which can be purchased as souvenirs. As the sun begins to set into the Pacific, the first several plates of the 5-course meal begin to arrive at the tables.

Throughout your three-hour trip back in time, you are given a glimpse into the history of the islands. An emcee, dressed in traditional Hawaiian garb provides narrative as highly-trained dancers exhibit the many different types of hula - Tahitian, Polynesion, and Traditional.

As the show goes on, the feast at your table continues. From traditional Hawaiian barbecue pork to sirloin steak and many traditional taro-inspired plates, no one will leave hungry. In fact, the meal is considered all you can eat and servers are happy to bring additional plates of your favorite dishes.

The show itself is spectacular and a unique experience for any visitor. Couple this with the Hawaiian feast and you will have a night to remember.
A woman told police she was eating at the Waffle House at 2024 East 23rd St. with a black male, possibly named Anthony, and she believes he stole her Tracfone cell phone when she fell asleep at the restaurant table. An employee at the restaurant attempted to call her cell phone to see if anyone would answer, but no one answered when it was called.

* * *

Police received a call from a woman on McCallie Avenue who said she wanted her car keys from her ex-husband. Police attempted to knock on the ex-husbands door to ask if about the womans car keys but no one came to the door.

* * *

Police spoke with a woman on Shepherd View Circle who said there were people inside the house in a verbal argument but everything was fine now. She did not want to give any of her information to police.

* * *

Police were called to the apartments at 22 Starview Lane on a suspicious vehicle that was reported to be parked in the parking lot. An officer spoke with a white male who was later identified and was not local to Chattanooga. He said he was parked there because he was trying to find a hotel for the night. The officer verified through NCIC that the man did not have any warrants and asked him to leave the property to avoid any further calls.

* * *

An anonymous person reported they could hear someone yelling outside on North Kelley Street. An officer spoke with a woman who said her friend dropped her off but she had forgotten her phone in the car and she was trying to flag her down to stop. While speaking to the woman, the car with her phone returned and she was given her phone back.

* * *

A woman on Cleveland Avenue called police regarding harassment between her and her ex. She said the man had been harassing her and threatening her through phone calls, text messages and social media messages. She told the officer she is concerned because the mans son knows how to make explosives and thinks that he could utilize explosives to harm her. The woman said she has saved harassing and threatening calls and messages on her phone from him. When the officer asked if they could meet to view these messages, she became hesitant and did not wish to meet with police that night because of past experiences with law enforcement. The officer explained to her police would have to view these messages and that they are evidence to support her claims of harassment and threats. She said she would meet with police during daytime hours because she would feel safer. At this time charges are pending the review of the messages she has saved on her phone. Her address has been added to the watch list.

* * *

Police were called to 7310 Standifer Gap Road on a call of a man wearing all white and orange slippers walking down the road. Police spoke with him and he said he was just let out of Silverdale for theft. Police got his information and verified that he was arrested for theft. Silverdale also said that everyone was accounted for in their facility. Police gave the man a ride to Brainerd Road.

* * *

An officer saw a gold Honda Tag on Highway 27 south at the 4th Street exit that was left unoccupied and partially in the road. It was a road hazard and was towed to avoid a car crash.

* * *

Police responded to East Martin Luther King Boulevard where a witness saw someone enter his neighbors vehicle. The neighbors are currently out of town in Colorado and police were unable to make contact with them by phone. A voicemail was left for them. The suspect is believed to be homeless and had left the items he was attempting to steal when he got caught by the witness. He was described as wearing a gray/black jacket, black backpack, and had a black mountain bike. It is a man with olive-colored skin and possible facial hair around the mouth.

* * *

An officer responded to the Circle K gas station at 3743 Cummings Hwy. on a delayed shoplifting call. The cashier said she had observed a white male suspect come into the store and start to look at the sunglass display which was fully restocked by the vendor just minutes prior to the suspect walking in. The person then tried on several pairs of the sunglasses, but he always had a hold of one in his hand. The suspect then slowly turned away from the cashier and walked in the opposite direction, while at the same time he was placing the sunglasses into his front pocket. The suspect then turned back around and started to head towards the exit door, going past all points of final sale. The cashier yelled at the suspect and asked him if he was going to pay for the sunglasses he had hid in his pocket. The suspect responded back and said he had already laid them down and didn't have them. He then dashed out the front door without paying for the Pugs Classic sunglasses worth approximately $15. The cashier said they want to prosecute the unknown person for the theft, but there was not enough information at this time to issue a warrant.

* * *

A school security officer said a woman drove onto the property at Howard School, 100 East 25th St. and tried to drive around the cones that he had set out for traffic control. He said he stopped her and she started cussing and going off then backed up the wrong way cussing and making a scene the whole time. He requested a report be made of this incident as he is banning her from the property and the day care has also requested that she be banned. He said she has been banned from other places for the same type of behavior. She drives a maroon Ford Explorer with aftermarket wheels.

* * *

Police spoke with a woman on Shallowford Road who said she and her boyfriend had gotten into an argument while on Shallowford Road and he jumped out of the car while it was moving. She said he had been drinking and wanted him to get checked out. Police made contact with the man who was bleeding from the forehead and said that he did not want to be checked out by fire or EMS. Fire arrived on scene and did bandage his head. He said that while the woman was driving, they got into an argument and he wanted to get out of the vehicle and go home, so he got out. He said he was not suicidal, he just wanted to go home and stay there.
If all goes as planned, County Commissioner Greg Martin will be sent by his peers to Nashville next week to join the state legislature and he will fit in just perfectly. The 58-year-old realtor is excited and eager for the job and the only thing he doesnt like is how the job fell into his lap.

Greg will likely be chosen by the other commissioners next Wednesday to replace Robin Smith who has abruptly resigned her seat in Nashville. He would maintain his interim appointment until November, when he hopes to be elected for a full term. Im definitely on the ballot for the August primary and Im at the point in my life where I want to help Tennessee as well as my own neighborhood.

If I go to Nashville I will resign my County Commission seat the day I am sworn into the legislature.

Some people have asked I do both  I believe it is legal -- but the legislature is a full-time job that I am eager to do to the very best of my ability. After 10 years of public service I know everyone in the Hamilton County delegation  they are great friends of mine, he said yesterday.

Over the past 10 years of public service, Ive learned many things which will help me represent the voters of House District 26, such as balancing a budget, making hard decisions about competing priorities and working towards one goal  what is best for the people I represent. There is no higher calling than to represent and serve the public. The voters who have elected me three times know they can trust me to vote our conservative values.

I think there are two things that give me the greatest satisfaction; I have always voted on what I believed was best. I have never not voted my conscious, even when the decision was hard. And, secondly  you know this is true  Ill return a phone call or an email. Serving the people is a tremendous honor and I deeply respect it, Martin explained.

One huge plus for Martin is that State District 26 includes a lot of neighborhoods he represented as a county commissioner. The people know what they are getting. I am proud of that. I will provide another positive conservative voice, he said, knowing the Nashville legislature is so conservative it has a super majority.

In his campaign announcement, Greg laid the groundwork for his election in August. As my campaign begins to take root over the next few weeks, I will be working to build my campaign team for this seat. Two very well-known community leaders have agreed to anchor my campaign, Tony Sanders will serve as campaign manager and Fred Decosimo will be my campaign treasurer.

"I look forward to meeting with my constituents in the coming weeks and months to hear what you believe we need to be doing in Nashville to make our lives better. There are many challenges facing our state and I promise I will do my very best to represent the values of the folks of House District 26 and the Great State of Tennessee.

Greg Martin is the guy we want.

royexum@aol.com
A federal grand jury has subpoenaed House Speaker Cameron Sexton and possibly several other lawmakers in an investigation of corruption in the Legislature, NewsChannel5 reported Tuesday.

According to the report, 10 to 12 legislators also are believed to have been subpoenaed Tuesday as federal agents probe the activity of shadowy campaign vendors in connection with the 2020 election.

In a statement to NewsChannel5, Sexton said, It is not unexpected that I and other members would be called to appear before a grand jury to provide factual statements as part of this ongoing investigation.

Sexton has said he has been cooperating with federal agents since he won election to the Speakers post in the fall of 2019 following the resignation of Rep. Glen Casada amid a sexist and racist texting scandal and complaints about his management style.

The subpoena of Sexton comes on the heels of the resignation of Rep. Robin Smith when she pleaded guilty to a wire fraud charge two weeks ago.

Smith and Casada, who was identified in federal documents as a former House Speaker from January 2019 to August 2019, used their positions in the Legislature to persuade House Republicans to do business with a new campaign vendor called Phoenix Solutions, according to federal documents. As part of her guilty plea, Smith is cooperating with federal agents.

Smith, Casada and first-term Republican Rep. Todd Warner were targets in a January 2021 raid by FBI agents.

Smiths guilty plea identifies the operator of the business as the former House Speakers ex-chief of staff, Cade Cothren, who resigned amid scandal. Cothren gave Smith and Casada kickbacks for more than $200,000 worth of business steered to him, according to the federal documents.

The House Republican Caucus spent tens of thousands of dollars with a man named Matthew Phoenix, believed to be Cothren, yet nobody within the caucus had a face-to-face meeting with the owner of Phoenix Solutions.

NewsChannel5 reported the lawmakers subpoenaed are believed to have dealt with Smith or Casada in doing business with Phoenix Solutions. Several lawmakers used the new vendor for campaign work and to handle their taxpayer-funded mailers.

Phoenix Solutions used the same mode of operation as two other new entities in the 2020 election, Alabama-based Dixieland Strategies and the Faith Family Freedom Fund, as well as the same Hamilton County postal code, 383.

A former girlfriend of Cothrens testified he persuaded her to organize the Faith Family Freedom Fund political action committee so he could run it. A North Carolina restaurant owner, who has not been found, donated the money that was used to attack former Republican Rep. Rick Tillis of Lewisburg in his race against Warner of Chapel Hill.

Warner defeated Tillis in the race, and a Tillis campaign worker filed a complaint that the Faith Family Freedom Fund PAC illegally coordinated with the Warner campaign.

The Tennessee Registry of Election Finance has turned that matter over to the Williamson County District Attorneys Office and asked the Attorney Generals Office to bring in Cothren to testify. He refused to testify after being subpoenaed by the Registry board, invoking his Fifth Amendment right to avoid incriminating himself.
Legislators won money for the Chattanooga area charity of their choice at the Tennessee Health Care Associations annual Partnering for Charity event held on March 4 at the Doubletree Hotel Downtown in Nashville.

Representative Patsy Hazlewood won $150 for Southern Lit Alliance, Representative Greg Vital won $200 for Tennessee Aquarium, Representative Esther Helton won $150 for Chattanooga Kidney Foundation and Senator Bo Watson won $200 for Wolftever Creek Elementary.

Each year, the charity giveaway is a highlight of THCAs Legislative Conference, an event that

brings long-term care professionals together with state lawmakers to discuss what it takes to

provide quality services. In total, legislators won $9,000 in donations for charities in their

communities.



THCA is a nonprofit association representing long-term care facilities throughout the state.


Ten Lee University students visited various music studios in the Tennessee area as part of their Intro to Music Business course. The trip, which consisted of tours, observations, and Q&As, was led by Lees Assistant Professor of Music, Dr. Luke Gambill.

Though we have a robust music business program here on campus, nothing beats the experience of seeing your potential future careers unfolding right in front of you, said Dr. Gambill. Visiting a couple of Nashvilles finest recording studios, experiencing a string recording session, hearing from alumni who are working in Nashville, and having the opportunity to hear from a successful record label and publisher are all priceless, and this is a trip we plan to do each year.

Over the course of a day, the students visited In:ciite Studios, Treasure Isle Studios, Centricity Music and Publishing, and Lee alumni in Nashville who have gone on to pursue a career in the music industry.

This trip was amazing! said Maxwell Murray, music business student. Touring some of the top studios in Nashville and making connections within the music industry was the biggest highlight for me. Its great to read, learn, and have discussions in the classroom, but its also so important to experience things firsthand; thats what we were able to do, thanks to Dr. Gambill.

At In:ciite Studios, a wide-range recording and audio post-production facility in Franklin, Tn., students were led on a personal tour by CEO Chris Thomason.

Treasure Isle Studios is the second oldest independently owned studio in Nashville still under its original management. While there, students observed a one-hour strings recording session, as well as union players, producers, recording engineers, and a studio assistant.

They also visited alumni at Christ Church in Nashville: Christopher Phillips, worship pastor at Christ Church; Phil Nitz, staff arranger at Christ Church; and Kris Crunk, freelance producer and arranger. After lunch, the students were able to ask the alumni various questions during a Q&A session.

Finally, students toured Centricity Music and Publishing and met with CEO John Mays and his team.

Our students had the opportunity to see how valuable relationships are in the music industry and the chance to begin some great relationships with those they were able to meet and hear speak, said Dr. Gambill. I teach our music business students to work hard, to never burn a bridge - you may need that person in the future, or they may need you. Proving yourself a hard worker and a good hang are extremely vital to be successful in this industry, and the many conversations throughout the day were a confirmation. It was a remarkable day for our students, and I look forward to more of these experiences for them.

The trip was scheduled by Russell Mauldin, multi-Dove Award winner and producer, and Lee alumni from the graduate program, who were with Dr. Gambill and the students throughout the day.

For more information about Lees music business program, visit https://www.leeuniversity.edu/academics/music/music-business/ or contact Dr. Gambill at lgambill@leeuniversity.edu.




A Catoosa County man has been given a life prison sentence with the first 25 years to be served in prison after pleading guilty to molesting a young girl "with a horrifying array of sex acts."

George Anderson, 39, pleaded guilty to all counts of a 28-count indictment before Judge Ralph Van Pelt, Jr.

District Attorney Chris Arnt said, "The victims mother and stepmother agreed to the plea agreement to keep the victim from having to testify and relive her nightmare. Anderson had been sexually abusing the victim, a female relative, for several years. Anderson was caught when officers from Homeland Security and the Catoosa County Sheriffs Department searched Andersons computers as part of a Trump Administration operation to crack down on child pornography.

"Anderson was found to be in possession of over 50,000 images and videos of child pornography. The victim was then interviewed by the Childrens Advocacy Center (CAC) and disclosed the years of abuse by Anderson.

"The victims statement was corroborated by videos seized from Anderson, which depict him engaging in a horrifying array of sex acts with the victim including rape and sodomy."

DA Arnt described the case as "one of the most horrific he has worked in over 30 years as a prosecutor."

He said, This child abuser deserves to spend the rest of his life in prison. We agreed to this sentence to spare this little girl from having to come to court and relive this abuse when she is already struggling mightily to try and rebuild her life.

He said under Georgia law a jury must make a finding that an image or video meets the legal definition of child pornography and thus the state is required to display these images and video to the jury.

DA Arnt said, The resolution of this case with a guilty plea also spares the jurors from being subjected to this horrific filth.

He thanked the Catoosa County Sheriffs Department, the Department of Homeland Security, Agent Shawn Owens of Homeland Security, Detective Clay Thompson of the Sheriffs Department, and the CAC for their work on this case.

He noted, These cases take a tremendous toll on those of us who work on them. The detectives, the CAC interviewer, the victim advocates and the prosecutor are all deeply disturbed by them. The hard work and dedication we have in the team in the Lookout Mountain Judicial Circuit to fight for children is truly impressive. We take great pride in being the toughest Judicial Circuit in the state when it comes to sentencing sex offenders.

The victims family stated, We are finally relieved that the predator is off the streets. We believe that justice was somewhat served but it's never enough for the trauma that has hit our family. We would like to thank the detectives, officers, investigators, counselors, district attorneys staff, and everyone who has walked us through the process and the continuous healing of our family.
The Galt Police Department received funding from the state Department of Justice to purchase Halo Smart Sensor vaping detectors, to be installed in the bathrooms at each of Galts high schools.
What happened to 90 Day Fiance: The Other Way Season 3 couple, Ellie Rose and Victor Mclean? Here are all of the updates Ellie and Victor gave fans on 90 Day Diaries Season 3.

Ellie and Victor, 90 Day Fiance: The Other Way Season 3 | TLC

Victor comes to the US

The last time fans saw Ellie and Victor was for the The Other Way Season 3 tell-all. Victor surprised fans by being in persona at the New York City studio. Ellie explained that before she moved to Providencia, Colombia, to be with Victor, they had already started the (K-1) fiance visa.

However, Victor explained that he didnt want to settle down in the US. When his visa allows him to travel, he will be going back to rebuild his home in Providencia.

On the March 21 episode of 90 Day Diaries, Victor and Ellie gave fans an update on their relationship and life together in Washington. However, Victors opinion about staying in the US is the same. He wants to go back to the island with Ellie as soon as possible.

Ellie says getting a green card could take anywhere from three to eight months. During that time, Victor wont be able to leave the US, or immigration will cancel his visa.

Ellie and Victor are married

After Victor arrived, Ellie explained that now that hes in the US on the K-1 visa, they have 90 days to get married. If they fail to marry within 90 days, he will have to return to Providenica.

90 days after Victor arrives in the US, Ellie and Victor get married. Ellie tells the 90 Day Diaries cameras, We got married! Were doing great. We are looking forward to going back to Providencia at some point and seeing what the future brings.

What happened to Ellies pizza shop?

As fans recall, on The Other Way, Ellie sold her Seatle-based pizza shop, Central Pizza, to her friend so that she could move to Providencia. However, Ellie revealed that she kept ownership of her restaurant after she came back from her trip to the island.

On 90 Day Diaries, Ellie said, Luckily, I still had my restaurant. When I left, I still had ownership of it; I hadnt signed anything. So nothing was finalized. Im super lucky. I can just slide back into my old life.

Despite Ellies business slowing down due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic causing lockdown and closures, her pizza shop is still up and running.

Ellie and Victor proved the 90 Day Fiance fans wrong who were skeptical that they would make it down the aisle. 90 Day Diaries Season 3 airs Mondays on TLC and discovery+.

RELATED: 90 Day Diaries: Asuelu and Kalani Update  Are They Still Married in 2022?
Nina Dobrev and Shaun White have been dating since at least early 2020. After months of speculation that they were an item, the duo went Instagram official in March 2020. It was later reported that the snowboarding legend moved in with his Degrassi star girlfriend moved in together during the coronavirus (COVID-19) lockdowns. While living under the same roof in a pandemic, the couple decided to start a few DIY projects.

Heres more on those home improvements and a tour inside Dobrevs beautiful West Hollywood home.

Nina Dobrev posing for a portrait at the Mammoth Film Festival | Michael Bezjian/Getty Images for Mammoth Film Festival

Dobrev said White helped her paint and fix up her home

Dobrev opened up the doors of her home to Architectural Digest in late 2021 and told the outlet that the exterior of her Spanish-style home was a mustard yellow color but she had wanted to change it for a while. So during quarantine, she and White decided to repaint it.

I always wanted to paint it white and for the first time I found myself having no excuse, and my boyfriend and I painted the whole exterior of the house ourselves and it took forever, she said.

Maybe its the frugal side of me, the Eastern European Bulgarian girl that was like, I dont want to pay a lot of money to have a bunch of people come and paint this, and Im bored, the Love Hard star told AD about taking on the DIY project.

Shaun White and Nina Dobrev in attendance at a Vegas Golden Knights game | Jeff Bottari/NHLI via Getty Images

The couple also transformed something in the backyard

The Vampire Diaries alum did want to preserve the architecture and European elegance of her home while she and White did a few upgrades and repairs.

It was really important to me because the house was built in the 1920s, I wanted to pay respect to the original architecture and the Spanish-style influence, Dobrev stated. Even though we were redoing things, I wanted to use materials that were organic and felt like they couldve belonged to the home before, while still refreshing and giving the house a facelift.

One major change was in the backyard where they transformed a pool house into a gym so they could work out while they were cooped up inside during the pandemic.

Dobrev and White have been enjoying themselves post the athletes retirement

Dobrevs beau said goodbye to competitive snowboarding following the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. And now that Whites retired, the Love Hard star told him to make a list of all the different things he wants to do.

My girlfriend said, If youre retiring, you gotta make this list of things you wanna do, he revealed on Jimmy Kimmel Live.

Since they dont seem to have any more home repair projects to do, the pair has been seen enjoying their time together while on a few vacations. Recently, they shared shots on social media from Costa Rica where they were photographed surfing, riding horses, ziplining, and swimming.

Dobrev posted a pic on Instagram of them smiling on a beach together with the caption: S***, if this is what #RetiredLife looks like  should I retire too?

RELATED: Who Has a Higher Net Worth Olympic Gold Medalist Shaun White or His Girlfriend Vampire Diaries Star Nina Dobrev?
Kate Middletons a senior British royal with more than 10 years of experience. But she wasnt always the Duchess of Cambridge. Before officially joining the royal family, particularly following her engagement to Prince William, she exhibited less assured behavior, according to a body language expert.

The royal family announced William and Kates engagement in November 2010

Kate Middleton and Prince William | Samir Hussein/WireImage

After meeting in college while attending Scotlands University of St. Andrews, William and Kate started dating. Following a brief split, the pair were back together. Their relationship status changed once again in November 2010 when the royal family announced Kate and Williams engagement.

The Duke of Cambridge proposed in Kenya where he and Kate were vacationing in October 2010. He later revealed he had a simple plan behind the proposal. William knew he wanted it to be natural. So he popped the question at a cabin in Africa, a place that has a special meaning to him.

An expert says Kates lip bite suggested a lack of confidence

Prince William and Kate Middleton | Stephen Davison/AFP via Getty Images

Expert Darren Stanton told Express Kates habit of biting her lip following her engagement to William suggested she was adjusting to her new life. He added shed been nervous around other members of the royal family in the early stages of her relationship with William.

Adjusting to her new role was a gradual process. These days, while Stanton says Kate appears super confident, that wasnt always the case.

Although she now appears super confident both with and without William by her side while attending events, there were times previously where she exhibited signs of introversion and lacked the confidence she now has, he said of Kate.

For instance, in the early days of her engagement to William, Kate would bite her lower lip  a gesture children usually make and often carry into adulthood, he explained. Its known in psychology as a self-reassurance gesture and its something a person does when they are feeling less assured in a given situation.

Following Kate and Williams engagement announcement, the heightened attention surrounding their relationship, in addition to her new role in the royal family, could very well have made the Duchess of Cambridge uneasy. After all, there are strange etiquette rules, style guidelines, and royal protocol to remember.

Kates confidence has grown over the years

Kate Middleton and Prince William | Karwai Tang/WireImage

At one time Kate may have been biting her lip because she felt less assured. Today shes a confident senior royal and future queen consort.

Kate has displayed a quiet yet growing confidence, Stanton said. She shows a will to remain true to tradition while still being very much herself.

From her hand gestures to the powerful messages in her official birthday portraits, Kates come a long way. She exudes confidence during official engagements and on royal tours. And on some occasions, she even breaks royal protocol. During a November 2021 museum visit, Kate removed her coat indoors. Some royal commentators described it a subtle power move.

RELATED: Kate Middletons Handshake Can Be More Powerful and Intimidating Compared to Prince Williams, Body Language Expert Says
Stranger Things Season 4 is only three months away, but fans are chomping at the bit to learn as much as they can about the upcoming season. We last left our friends in Hawkins, Indiana, in 2019, so the hype for the newest installment in the series is at an all-time high. While the showrunners remain tightlipped regarding the most significant plot points in Stranger Things Season 4, new photos dropped on Mar. 23 show several of the characters making a pitstop at Dustins (Gaten Matarazzo) girlfriends Suzies house.

Susie singing The Neverending Story theme song | Netflix

Who is Suzie in the series?

Suzie, played by Gabriella Pizzolo, didnt snag much screen time in Stranger Things Season 3, but the scene she appeared in quickly became iconic. Dustin and Suzie met at Camp Knowhere during the summer of 1985. When camp ended, Suzie went to her home in Utah while Dustin headed back to his friends and family in Hawkins. The kids spent much of season 3 nagging Dustin about whether or not his girlfriend really existed.

It wasnt until the Stranger Things Season 3 finale that Dustins friends and the audience learned that Suzie was, in fact, a real person. Dustin needs Suzies help figuring out Plancks Constant, but before giving up the information, she insists the duo sing their song together. Dustin reluctantly agrees, and they both sing along to The Neverending Story theme song using their respective ham radios.

Eduardo Franco as Argyle, Noah Schnapp as Will Byers, Finn Wolfhard as Mike Wheeler, and Charlie Heaton as Jonathan stand in Suzies room in Stranger Things Season 4 | Netflix

RELATED: Stranger Things 4: Hardcore Fans Believe the Nina Project Spells Bad News for Eleven

Stranger Things Season 4 photos show some of the characters in Suzies room

Despite fans begging the streaming platform to do so, Netflix has played coy about releasing a full-length trailer for Stranger Things Season 4. Instead, the official Stranger Things social media accounts showed fans recap clips of where we last left off with some of the characters.

On Mar. 23, the accounts dropped some new photos of production stills from Stranger Things Season 4. Before long, an eagle-eyed fan spotted something curious in the background of a couple of the pictures.

In Stranger Things Season 3, audiences caught a glimpse of Suzies room at her house in Utah as she sang along with Dustin. The newest Stranger Things Season 4 images show a poster of the planets, along with some very 80s-style wallpaper, on Suzies walls. In one of the images, Mike (Finn Wolfhard,) new character Argyle (Eduardo Franco,) Jonathan (Charlie Heaton,) and Will (Noah Schnapp) stand in someones bedroom. At a closer look, the same wallpaper in Suzies room matches the wallpaper in the room the boys are standing in.

its a full ST4 extravaganza, hot off the griddle. pic.twitter.com/5SuC8S9HR1  Stranger Things (@Stranger_Things) March 23, 2022

How could Stranger Things Season 4 use Suzie?

It might seem odd to bring Suzie back in Stranger Things Season 4, but the character might prove helpful. Dustin prides himself on being the nerd of the group, and his knowledge of scientific topics has helped the gang out more than once. The series portrayed Suzie as an equal to Dustins intelligence. With Dustin in Hawkins, the group in California might be able to use Suzie as a stand-in for Dustin.

Suzies return in Stranger Things Season 4 might rub some fans wrong. Several viewers felt Suzies hesitation in giving Dustin the numbers for Plancks Constant caused Hoppers presumed death. Well find out the extent of Suzies role in Stranger Things Season 4 when it debuts on May 27, 2022.

RELATED: Stranger Things Season 4: Which Couples We Think Are Endgame in the Series
Stranger Things Season 4 premieres in May, but showrunners have yet to release a full-length trailer, despite the impatience running through the fandom. Their promotional marketing has everyone scratching their heads as they release recaps of characters situations. However, the show recently debuted new production stills from the upcoming season, hinting at a much scarier vibe.

Finn Wolfhard as Mike Wheeler, Millie Bobby Brown as Eleven and Noah Schnapp as Will Byers | Cr. Courtesy of Netflix

Stranger Things Season 4 takes place in several different locations

Up until now, Stranger Things has been set in one place and one place only  Hawkins, Indiana. The town has the misfortune of somehow acquiring a portal to an alternate universe known as the Upside Down. Monsters wreaked havoc on the residents of Hawkins, and when we last left the characters in Stranger Things Season 3, the new mall was decimated by a creature known as the Mind Flayer.

After those events, the Byers family, plus Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown,) moved across the country to Lenora Hills, California. We also know that part of Stranger Things Season 4 takes place in Russia and somewhere in the desert. Executive producer Shawn Levy hinted that the scope of season 4 would be massive, and the show plans to deliver.

from indiana to california, the gangs back together again in these new STRANGER THINGS 4 photos pic.twitter.com/hSLgSkaeGW  Netflix Geeked (@NetflixGeeked) March 23, 2022

RELATED: Stranger Things 4: Characters Most Likely to Die in the Upcoming Season

Creepy haunted houses, Satanic Panic, and evil Russians play a part in season 4

When the Stranger Things Season 4 posters dropped on Feb. 17, the images showed fans a glimpse of some of the different locations. We know Victor Creel, a new character played by Robert Englund, is pivotal to the Creel House plot. Accused of murdering his wife and two children, Creel now lives in an insane asylum called Pennhurst. However, some clues revealed in August of 2021 hinted that Creel might be wrongly accused.

The 1984 classic horror movie A Nightmare on Elm Street has been rumored as the inspiration behind some of Stranger Things Season 4, and cast members admitted that the newest season will elicit more scares than previous ones.

Speaking on the podcast Present Company with Krista Smith, Ross Duffer, one of the seriess creators, said, When we pitched it to Netflix all those years ago, we pitched it as the kids areThe Goonies in E.T. Thats their storyline. And the adults are in Jaws and Close Encounters and then the teens are in Nightmare on Elm Street or Halloween. But, this year, we dont have the kids. We cant do The Goonies anymore. And so, suddenly, were leaning much harder into that horror movie territory that we love. It was fun to make that change.

The newest photos give off the horror movie vibes Duffer mentioned.

The Duffer Brothers say the fan theories for Stranger Things Season 4 are startlingly accurate

The Stranger Things fandom loves to speculate about the potential plots and storylines in the show before it premieres. With an almost three-year wait between seasons 3 and 4, the fans went into overdrive for Stranger Things Season 4 with their theories. However, they managed to hit the nail on the head with some of them.

Ross Duffer expects fans to be happy with the new season and went on to say that some of their theories were startlingly accurate. Of course, he wouldnt say which ones.

Duffer continued, Im constantly impressed with how sharp the fans are, and how quickly theyre able to put something together with very, very little information.

Stranger Things Season 4 Part 1 premieres on May 27, 2022.

RELATED: Stranger Things Season 4: Demospiders Might Be Coming to Hawkins
The 90s ushered a new musical era, from the growth of hip-hop to alternative rock to swoon-worthy boy bands. It was a time before on-demand music platforms, such as Spotify or iTunes, so the radio and a Walkman are where millennials used to catch their favorite tunes.

While many hit songs filled the airwaves during the mid to late 90s, one that guaranteed a jam session in the back of your moms minivan was MMMBop. The popular Hanson song got everyones attention, whether a full-fledged fan or hearing the catchy tune so often. MMMBop may have been released 25 years ago, but it still inspires the Hanson Brothers recent endeavors.

(L-R) Zac Hanson, Taylor Hanson, and Isaac Hanson of Hanson | Rick Kern/Getty Images

The Hanson Brothers rise to fame

Growing up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Isaac Hanson, Taylor Hanson, and Zac Hanson always had a passion for music, from playing piano and singing a capella of classic hits, including Rockin Robin and Johnny B. Goode. In 1992, when the brothers were eleven, nine, and six years old, they formed the Hanson Brothers for their debut professional performance at the Mayfest Arts Festival in their hometown.

The young group recorded two independent records in Tulsa before signing with Mercury after their impressive performance at the 1996 Wisconsin State Fair. The following year, Hanson became a worldwide sensation after the release of Middle of Nowhere, their first major-label album featuring the top hit MMMBop.

The Hanson Brothers quickly took the world by storm in summer 1997, resulting in three Grammy nominations in 1998. The brothers filled arenas throughout the United States during their Albertane Tour and responded to fans with the rerelease of the original version of MMMBop on 3 Car Garage, followed by the bands second studio album, This Time Around.

Unfortunately, Mercury Records merged with Island Def Jam shortly after the release, resulting in little album promotion and low sales of Hansons album. The Hanson Brothers used their own funds to complete their summer and fall tours in 2000. Then, by the mid-2000s, left Island Def Jam Records. While many consider this time the end of Hansons mainstream success, the brothers continued making music and releasing albums under their own label, 3CG Records.

Making music and beer

The Hanson Brothers continue to follow their passion for music but had a special 21st-anniversary tribute to their careers by launching their own craft beer called no other than Mmmhops. The Hanson Brothers Beer Co. is based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and currently offers six craft brews following the motto, Music+Beer=Awesome. The pale ale is a big hit and can make an ideal drink for fans to celebrate Hanson Day.

Oklahomas 1997 governor, Frank Keating, declared May 6 Hanson Day in Tulsa in honor of the successful release of Hansons debut record. While it was supposed to be a one-time, special occasion, many fans still recognize and celebrate Hanson Day each year. Just as Isaac, Taylor, and Zac put in the hard work to be successful in the music industry, they are doing it again with their Mmmhops. The brothers are very active in Hanson Brothers Beer Co. with a similar shared passion for craft brews.

What the Hanson Brothers are doing now

Mmmhops now available at Valkyrie Tulsa. Stop by for a drink! pic.twitter.com/tPHfrpzasS  HANSONBrothersBeer (@HANSONBrosBeer) November 19, 2016

While MMMBop was one of the most well-known Hanson Brothers songs, the group never slowed down after their rise to fame and after 25 years are still following their musical passion and touring. Isaac, Taylor, and Zac are now in their thirties and forties with families of their own, with the happily married brothers sharing 13 kids among the three of them. If their families arent keeping the Hanson Brothers busy enough, they recently released a new album Red, Green, Blue and will kick off their world tour in June 2022.

RELATED: 1990s Celebrities Who Are Unrecognizable Today
Waste materials from oil sands extraction, stored in tailings ponds, can pose a risk to the natural habitat and neighbouring communities when they leach into groundwater and surface ecosystems.

Until now, the challenge for the oil sands industry is that the proper analysis of toxic waste materials has been difficult to achieve without complex and lengthy testing. And theres a backlog. For example, in Alberta alone, there are an estimated 1.4 billion cubic metres of fluid tailings, explains Nicolas Peleato, an Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of British Columbia's Okanagan campus (UBCO).

His team of researchers at UBCOs School of Engineering has uncovered a new, faster and more reliable, method of analyzing these samples. Its the first step, says Dr. Peleato, but the results look promising.

Current methods require the use of expensive equipment and it can take days or weeks to get results, he adds. There is a need for a low-cost method to monitor these waters more frequently as a way to protect public and aquatic ecosystems.

Along with masters student Maria Claudia Rincon Remolina, the researchers used fluorescence spectroscopy to quickly detect key toxins in the water. They also ran the results through a modelling program that accurately predicts the composition of the water.

The composition can be used as a benchmark for further testing of other samples, Rincon explains. The researchers are using a convolutional neural network that processes data in a grid-like topology, such as an image. Its similar, she says, to the type of modelling used for classifying hard to identify fingerprints, facial recognition and even self-driving cars.

The modelling takes into account variability in the background of the water quality and can separate hard to detect signals, and as a result it can achieve highly accurate results, says Rincon.

The research looked at a mixture of organic compounds that are toxic, including naphthenic acidswhich can be found in many petroleum sources. By using high-dimensional fluorescence, the researchers can identify most types of organic matter.

The modelling method searches for key materials, and maps out the samples composition, explains Peleato. The results of the initial sample analysis are then processed through powerful image processing models to accurately determine comprehensive results.

While results to date are encouraging, both Rincon and Dr. Peleato caution the technique needs to be further evaluated at a larger scaleat which point there may be potential to incorporate screening of additional toxins.

Peleato explains this potential screening tool is the first step, but it does have some limitations since not all toxins or naphthenic acids can be detectedonly those that are fluorescent. And the technology will have to be scaled up for future, more in-depth testing.

While it will not replace current analytical methods that are more accurate, Dr. Peleato says this approach will allow the oil sands industry to accurately screen and treat its waste materials. This is a necessary step to continue to meet the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment standards and guidelines.
Cherokee Nation leaders on March 10 visit the Vinita Health Center, where a computed tomography, or CT, scanner is being added at a cost of $1.7 million.
The mother church of the Vineyard movement announced Sunday that it is disassociating from the charismatic denomination.

The division isnt theological, pastor Alan Scott told Vineyard Anaheim, the California congregation he and his wife, Kathryn, have led for four years. There arent any big disputes over the direction of Vineyard USA. No personal grievances causing a rift.

Its just that the leaders of Vineyard Anaheim believe that God is guiding them to leave the denomination their church helped start. So they are leaving.

We dont really understand why, Alan Scott said in a recording of a Sunday service obtained by CT. I wish I really could sit before you today and say, Here are the six reasons, Heres our issues, Here are our grievances, or whatever.  We dont always know whats on the other side of obedience.

A spokesperson for the church declined to speak to CT and pointed to an official statement posted on its website. The statement says the decision is our best effort to respond to the distinct calling on our church at this time, and a desire to say yes to the Spirit.

National Vineyard leadership is not so sure thats the Holy Spirit speaking.

John Kim, a New York City pastor and member of the Vineyard USA board of trustees, writing to the church leadership on behalf of the board in a series of emails obtained by CT, described the statements as spiritually implausible.

Do you understand this lightning-fast, seemingly unaccountable process as having been subject to biblical standards of discernment? Kim wrote.

According to Kims emails, the churchs explanations of its decision-making process, its process of spiritual discernment, its reasons for leaving, and the timeline for departure have left the national leadership in bewildered astonishment, profound pain, and lack of comprehension.

The spiritual significance of Anaheim

The association of Vineyard churches, formed in Southern California in 1975, has historically been fairly loose. Individual congregations are autonomous and own their own buildings. The national organization didnt have a statement of faith for the first 20 years; didnt set standards or record Vineyard ordinations; and didnt, until recently, even track the reasons departing congregations gave when they chose to disassociate from the movement.

Vineyard Anaheim isnt just any congregation, though. It holds serious spiritual and symbolic significance for the charismatic denomination.

Vineyard Anaheim was planted in 1977 by John Wimber, a born-again rock musician who believed Christians should do the stuff of the Bibleheal the sick, cast out demons, listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit, and reach lost people with the good news of a God who saves. He combined the practices of signs and wonders Pentecostalism with an evangelical commitment to Scripture, developing a movement that could be dynamic and surprising, yet also grounded.

Wimber took over leadership of the Vineyard movement in 1982 and continued until his death in 1997. The church in Anaheim became an unofficial headquarters and, for many, a sacred space.

While it was not the first Vineyard church, it was undoubtedly the church through which the Vineyard movement was built, Caleb Maskell, associate national director of theology and education, said in a written statement to CT. Thousands of pastors and leaders who call the Vineyard movement their family have had profound, life-shaping encounters with God at Vineyard Anaheim.

J. T. Meyer is one of them. He grew up in the Vineyardboth his parents were pastorsand though he was never part of the historic Southern California congregation, that physical space is special to him.

I can think of at least a dozen different times where I had really powerful experiences with God at the Anaheim Vineyard at a national conference, said Meyer, who now leads a Vineyard church in Cleveland. I cant speak to whether the decision theyre making was moral or immoral or wise or unwise, but it feels really hurtful. It feels like your parents are selling your childhood home.

The Scotts are very intentional

Some with close connections to the church feel deeply betrayed by the disassociation. Christy Wimber, John Wimbers ex-daughter-in-law, who was mentored by him in ministry, said on social media that this is a spiritual hijacking. While Alan and Kathryn Scott may talk about obedience to God, she sees it as a crass power grab.

The Scotts are very intentional, she said in an Instagram video. Listen, I love them. Theyre my brother and sister in Christ but  theyve been very intentional to have that church. Very intentional in what theyre doing now.

The Scotts were called by the leadership of the congregation four years ago. Alan Scott is originally from Glasgow. He became a Christian at age nine after watching the Jesus film and joined a small group of Christians that became part of the Vineyard. He felt a call to ministry, and he and Kathryn, a songwriter and worship leader from Northern Ireland, planted their first church when he was 27 and she was 24.

The early years were a struggle, but then in 2003, Alan Scott started praying for 100 conversions in a year. The church moved its healing service out into a city street, setting up six chairs and a banner that said healing, to evangelize with Pentecostal signs and wonders.

It located the supernatural beyond the building, he said on a Vineyard USA podcast in 2020. Yes, we need everything Jesus has for us in our gathered moments, but theres something beautiful about engaging beyond the building.

Scott wrote a book about unleashing the church to bring life to the city, and he and his wife applied for the leadership position at the mother church of the Vineyard movement. At the time, Vineyard Anaheim only had about 300 people in regular attendance, but a remarkable heritage, 5.7 acres of prime Orange County real estate, and a debt-free building.

A 12-member search committee voted unanimously to hire the Scotts, according to an email sent this month by longtime Anaheim church member Greg Scherer to the national leadership as a representative of the church board.

After the couples interview, one woman who had been an influential leader in the church since the 1970s exclaimed, Do we even need to vote on the Scotts its so clear God has chosen them?

During the interview process, someone asked if Alan Scott was really Vineyard. He said, I am Vineyard to my core, Scherer recalled. But no one asked whether they might lead the church away form the Vineyard movement. That idea hadnt occurred yet.

An awkward dinner

The national Vineyard leadership first learned of the Scotts plans to disassociate on February 24, 2022. Jay Pathak, the new national director who took over in January, and Maskell went to Anaheim and met the Scotts for dinner at a local restaurant.

Pathak asked the Scotts how they could help lead the Vineyard movement, using their strengths and the strengths of Vineyard Anaheim, according to an account of the meeting he and Maskell wrote for the Vineyard USA board. The Scotts replied that, actually, a decision had been made to leave the Vineyard and they would be informing their staff the next day. They gave Pathak an envelope with a letter.

As per our conversation tonight, it said, we are writing to formally notify you of our decision to withdraw Vineyard Anaheim as a member of the Association of Vineyard Churches USA with immediate effect.

The Scotts went on to state their affection for the movement was undimmed and they would continue to honor the Vineyard, but they were nonetheless parting ways.

After the meeting, Pathak and Maskell contacted Anaheim church board members, calling two and texting a third to ask them to slow the process down.

Give us time to process their grievances, Pathak said in the text, as well as the implications for the church and our whole movement.

That Sunday, Alan Scott told his congregation he had a little bit of family news on things that are important to us. As part of a process of renewal, the church was entering a process of disassociation from the Vineyard movement.

Scott said the conversation with the national leaders was just starting and he and Kathryn had misstepped by trying to be kind and move quickly. He said he wouldnt be talking about the details until the process was further along, but he wanted the congregation to know what was happening.

No agreement on the terms of a meeting

A few days later, the Vineyard USA board of trustees reached out to the churchs board to see if it would be possible to discuss the disassociation and other possible alternatives. The national leaders acknowledged that a congregation is legally entitled to separate from the denomination at any time, but they questioned how the process had happened and raised issues of transparency and accountability.

The two boards were in daily conversation for the next 12 days but couldnt agree to the terms of a meeting or what the proposed conversation should even be about.

Is Vineyard Anaheim still a local community of believers free to step into the story of God as the Spirit leads? Scherer wrote on behalf of the California church board. Or is Vineyard Anaheim primarily a custodian that exists to steward the legacy, memory and history of the global vineyard? And crucially, is she free to pursue whatever God calls her to do whether that lies within or beyond the Vineyard Movement?

It is not clear from the emails between board members or any of Alan Scotts teaching and writing what the church might want to do that would be limited by association with the Vineyard.

Kim responded the following day: Frankly, we confess we do not understand this account of the reasons for disassociation.

By March 17, Scherer wrote that he was afraid we may never see eye-to-eye on what it means to be obedient to the calling of the Holy Spirit.

What does it mean to follow the Holy Spirit?

The disagreement appears to tap into deeper Vineyard tensions over what it means to follow the Holy Spirit.

Some believe the organizational structures of the denomination prevent people from trusting God, taking risks, and following the Spirit wherever it leads. Vineyard pastors associated with the Toronto Blessing, the Kansas City prophets, and Bethel Church and Jesus Culture have critiqued what they see as a growing bureaucracy in the Vineyard and an increasing insistence on the importance of accountability.

Vineyard USA has reorganized in the past few years. It now has a leadership team and is developing standards and a process for ordination, as well as church affiliation.

Other Vineyard pastors insist that listening to the Holy Spirit involves discernment. And Gods leading should be discerned in community. They are concerned with the many charismatic leaders over the years who have claimed that their spiritual gifting frees them from any accountability.

God does speak today! Rich Nathan, pastor emeritus of Vineyard Columbus, the largest Vineyard church in the country, wrote on social media this week. But whenever a so-called leading is obviously self-seeking, fundamentally dishonest, lacking in accountable discernment, demonstrably hurts others and especially when money or power is involved, you can rest assured that it is NOT God who is leading!

According to Nathan, the Lord told me is too often used to justify breaking commitments, severing relationships and rationalizing away the hurt we cause to others!

Christy Wimber told her social media followers that the real problem at Vineyard Anaheim is not the Scotts. The disassociation of the church points to deeper problems that have troubled the movement since John Wimber died in 1997.

Something is broken in the system, she said. There are things here that are obviously pointing to some things that are broken, and thats okay, because then its an opportunity for God to come in and bring healing to the whole of the movement.

Reasons still unclear

Alan Scott announced the disassociation to the Anaheim congregation on Sunday, March 20, a little more than three weeks after he and Kathryn wrote their disassociation letter. The livestream of the service was turned off for the family announcement, and a statement was posted online later that day.

According to a recording of the service obtained by CT, Scott told the church they would change the name from Vineyard Anaheim to something else, but the new name has not yet been decided.

He assured them, though, that many things wouldnt change.

We will continue to teach Gods word, he said. We will continue to feed the poor. We will continue to heal the sick. We will continue to lead people to Jesus. And by Gods grace and with his power, we will continue to drive out demons, fingers crossed, we believe it.

The national organization posted a response and answers to frequently asked questions the same day.

We still do not fully understand the reasons that the leadership of Vineyard Anaheim has chosen to leave the Vineyard movement, it said. The stated reasons feel highly insufficient to the magnitude and impact of the decision.
So. Baptist group nominates Voddie Baucham for president of SBC Pastors Conference

Voddie Baucham, the dean of theology at African Christian University in Zambia, will be formally nominated as the president of the Southern Baptist Convention Pastors Conference at the denominations annual meeting in Anaheim, California, in June.

The announcement came in a statement published Tuesday on the website of Founders Ministries endorsed by a prominent group of Southern Baptists who say they are concerned about the woke direction of Americas largest Protestant denomination. The group also expressed their intention to nominate Tom Ascol, longtime senior pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Cape Coral, Florida.

Founders Ministries is a conservative group within the SBC where Baucham serves as a board member. The group's statement is endorsed by 11 high-profile Southern Baptists, including Pastor Mike Stone, a member of the SBC Executive Committee, and the steering committee of the Conservative Baptist Network. Stone lost his bid for the SBC presidency in a runoff with Ed Litton in 2021.

We, concerned Southern Baptists of differing geographical, theological and vocational perspectives, in one voice nominate Pastor Tom Ascol for President of the Southern Baptist Convention, and SBC Missionary Voddie Baucham for President of the SBC Pastors Conference, the group began in their statement.

The Southern Baptist Convention badly needs a change of direction. While baptisms and evangelism continue their freefall, a small group of leaders steers our institutions ever closer to the culture, from radical feminism masked as soft complementarianism to the false gospel of Critical Theory and Intersectionality, they continued.

In Christ there is no Jew or Greek, there is no slave or free, we are all made one in Him. But this Race Marxism divides everyone by their most superficial features, in a never-ending cycle of recrimination and hate. We reject these worldly dogmas. We stand together on the Baptist Faith and Message. We proclaim the sufficiency of Scripture. And we know the vast majority of Southern Baptists do too, they added.

At this critical juncture, we need men to serve who can unite our convention around the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We believe there are no two better men to lead us in this vital task than Tom Ascol and Voddie Baucham.

Baucham did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Christian Post on Wednesday. However, earlier this month, the renowned Southern Baptist preacher, who denounced critical race theory and the social justice movement in his latest book, Fault Lines: The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalisms Looming Catastrophe, confirmed with CP that he had been asked to accept a nomination for SBC president but wasnt sure he was eligible to accept it.

The 52-year-old leader said Article VIII of SBCs constitution requires that all officers of the SBC must be members of Baptist churches cooperating with this Convention."

Due to his work as a missionary, Baucham has been a member of Kabwata Baptist Church in Zambia since 2015. The church is affiliated with Reformed Baptists of Zambia, not the SBC.

I am a missionary sent by an SBC church, supported by an SBC church, reporting to an SBC church, but am technically not a member of that SBC church because my family and I entrusted our souls to a healthy, indigenous, local Baptist church at the behest of our SBC church," he said. "Hence, it appears my commitment to missions and biblical church membership has rendered me ineligible for any office in the SBC. At least thats the way I read it.

Baucham doesnt appear to face any such issue to become president of the SBC's Pastors Conference as the conference has no organizing documents or stated qualifications for its officers.

In a statement on YouTube Tuesday, Ascol said he decided to accept the nomination because he, too, is concerned about the direction of the denomination and that the concerns of Southern Baptists, like himself, were not being treated respectfully and honestly.

I agreed to be nominated for the presidency because I believe we could do better in this regard, he said.

Ive watched with dismay as faithful pastors and members of regular churches have had their concerns dismissed without any serious consideration," he continued. "One of the most recent and egregious examples of this is the way that the 2021 resolutions committee refused to bring out a resolution on the incompatibility of critical race theory and intersectionality with the Baptist Faith and Message. That resolution has had the signatures of over 1,300 faithful Southern Baptist pastors and church members, yet the resolutions committee would not even allow the convention to consider it for a vote. I believe Southern Baptists can do better.

The other signers of the statement endorsing Baucham and Ascol include:

Carol Swain, former professor of political science and law at Vanderbilt University in Nashville; Lee Brand, SBC first vice president; Tom Buck, senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Lindale, Texas; Javier Chavez, senior pastor of Amistad Cristiana International and a member of the CBN steering council; former Atlanta fire chief Kelvin Cochran, a member of the CBN steering council; Mark Coppenger, CBN steering council member and former president of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary; Greg Davidson, senior pastor of Trinity Baptist Church in Vacaville, California, and state coordinator of the CBN California chapter; Mark DeVine, associate professor of Beeson Divinity School; Brad Jurkovich, senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Bossier City, Louisiana, and a CBN steering committee member; and Ronnie Rogers, senior pastor of Trinity Baptist Church in Norman, Oklahoma.
Disney, reverse discrimination, and "Respect of Persons"

In the recent Disney annual meeting, shareholders were given the opportunity to vote on a resolution regarding the issue of possible reverse discrimination in employee diversity training. The resolution was placed on the ballot by the conservative Free Enterprise Project (Free Enterprise Project - The National Center) and Justin Danhof, the leader of the group, gave a public statement in support of it. The resolution said:

"RESOLVED: Shareholders of The Walt Disney Company (Disney or Company) request that the Board of Directors commission a workplace non-discrimination audit analyzing Disneys impacts, including the impacts arising from Disney-sponsored or -promoted employee training, on civil rights and non-discrimination in the workplace, and the impacts of those issues on Disneys business. A report on the audit, prepared at reasonable cost and omitting confidential or proprietary information, should be publicly disclosed on Disneys website." The Walt Disney Company

This resolution was based partly on leaked documents from a Disney diversity training program. The source material is found near the bottom of this page: The Wokest Place on Earth (christopherrufo.com). The material tells people who are not members of the disadvantaged group, which in this case is people of color, that you are only an ally when the other group says you are an ally. It tells employees not to say things like "I feel you" or "I can't believe this is happening" (in reference to items in the news). "All lives matter" or "I don't see color" are deemed "harmful and hurtful." And the rules are not just something which employees are told to impose on themselves, "problematic posts on Slack," or other workplace channels are to be reported to the HR or diversity departments. Employees are given a list of books and articles to read about "white fragility", "microagression," and even something for the "well-meaning white parent" about how not to teach racism to babies.

Training material rejects the idea of "equality," which emphasizes "equal treatment [] and opportunities," in favor of "equity," which strives for equal outcomes. Equality is not the goal. The idea of equality is one of the problems which such training programs are intended to replace.

Understandably, employees felt under attack by such training programs. Equally understandably, they only felt safe expressing those feelings off-the-record. Whether such training programs amount to reverse discrimination is debatable, but it seems clear that there is adequate basis for concern. The resolution simply asked Disney to commission an audit regarding the issue and to disclose the results. In other words, it's only a request for a study, and yet Disney objected. It offered no real counter argument, just shared already available boilerplate claims that it treats people fairly and is committed to diversity. That was hardly an adequate basis to urge shareholders to vote against a non-binding request for a deeper look at the question, "at reasonable cost."

What view should Christians take about such corporate employee diversity training programs? Like all forms of discrimination based on surface-level group identity, reverse discrimination is an example of what James (James 2:1-4) calls "respect of persons." The word he uses in the original Greek (prosopolepteo) is literally " face" and "accept" spliced together. So, to be a respecter of persons is literally to "accept a face." The example he uses is one in which people are treated differently as they come into a synagogue. You see what they look like (in this case, their clothing) and then accept (or reject) them in advance.

Is this not what all skin-color based evaluation does? It looks at faces and then judges. James' example involves favoring the rich over the poor, because that is the problem he saw at the time of his writing. Christians, perhaps as part of a political tactic to get protection from persecution by Pharisees, were pandering to the ruling class. But whether the bias is socially upward or socially downward, it is still "becoming judges of evil reasoning" (2:4). It's evil whether its the standard form of discrimination or an alleged reversal, pandering to the poor through populist revolts and such. In fact, in the next generation after James was written, that is exactly what happened: Zealots committed acts of terrorism against the ruling class. For example, they murdered the High Priest and his family and burned down the house of records where debts were recorded in order to curry the favor of debtors. This helped lead to the destruction of the city.

Any favor based in outward appearance or class (or race) and not based in actual knowledge is what some translations call "respect of persons" and constitutes evil judgment. In many ways, this English translation is misleading, because it's not actually "persons" who are being respected -- it's faces. In other words, the person is not being respected at all, only outward appearances. Neither the one who is told to sit under the footstool nor even the one favored is being respected as a person. You can't respect a person when the only thing you see is their face.

The HR and diversity approaches currently in fashion in corporate America claim to show respect for victims ("historically disadvantaged groups"), but they do so at the expense of the dignity of employees who are members of groups considered to be historic oppressors. This current approach reverses the earlier patterns of discrimination associated with the era of racial segregation, and on the surface it appears to reverse the pattern which James warns about which favored the ruling class. But when you look deeper, you see that it is not really a reversal at all: it still favors the rich and powerful over the less rich and powerful, because these training programs are being forced by wealthy and powerful people at the top echelons of American corporate life down upon those who have no choice but to endure it for fear of losing their livelihoods. Disney's upper management is tapping into ideologies hatched in Ivy League universities and forcing them on those lower than they are in the social hierarchy. When top managers force their employees into mandatory diversity training, they get credit for being progressive (or at least they seek such credit), but it's those under them who have to sit "under my footstool," being berated for surface-level similarities to past oppressors, in a show designed to make the bosses look good. Workers sit through accusatory struggle sessions, while bosses get to pretend that they are Atticus Finch. So in the end, it's not really reverse discrimination: It's just plain old discrimination. It's the powerful socially castigating the less powerful.

The proposal on Disney's ballot lost, but a message was sent. Similar messages are going to be sent at the upcoming Levi's, Bank of America, Johnson & Johnson, Citi, CVS, and AT&T annual meetings as well. Concerns are increasing, not decreasing. Face-based acceptance is evil judging, no matter which direction it leans. Christians should denounce it in all its forms.
PolitiFact debunks false claims American megachurches arent helping Ukrainians

Megachurches in the United States are doing their part to help raise funds and supplies to help those impacted by the Russian invasion of Ukraine despite false posts on social media, including one from a widely-followed liberal Facebook page, claiming otherwise.

In a fact check published Thursday, PolitiFact took aim at widely-shared posts on Facebook and Twitter that combine a photograph of televangelist Joel Osteens Lakewood Church in Houston and the words: Funny how we havent seen a single American megachurch offer ANYTHING to the Ukrainians

The meme described above was published by The Other 98%, a Facebook page with over 6.6 million followers known for posting memes that advance a liberal narrative, on March 5. The post was shared 22,000 times and received 40,000 likes.

Another tweet from March 14 retweeted over 2,000 times claims: Youll notice that you havent seen one multimillion dollar tax exempt MegaChurch or their grifting sinister millionaire owners sending relief or supplies to Ukrainian refugees, which isnt surprising because they dont even help U.S. citizens during times of disaster.

However, such claims are false as several megachurches  typically defined as churches with 2,000 or more members  have announced efforts to help Ukrainians. Additionally, megachurches have assisted in efforts to help those impacted by past natural disasters.

Churches with ongoing efforts to help Ukrainians include John Hagees Gateway Church in Texas, The Rock Church in San Diego, Rick Warrens Saddleback Church in Lake Forrest, California and Lakewood Church.

We rate posts that say no megachurches are raising money for Ukraine relief False, PolitiFact declared.

PolitiFact was not alone. FactCheck.org also felt the need to publish a report tackling the false posts, stating: American megachurches are actively raising funds to support Ukrainians.

On March 7, Lakewood Church shared a Facebook video featuring Osteens brother, Dr. Paul Osteen, talking about the churchs efforts to help Ukrainians.

We are doing what we can do to help partner churches in Slovakia who are helping refugees fleeing the war, Osteen says in the clip. Were looking for opportunities to work with refugees in Poland, and with our long standing partnership with Dr. Todd and Sue Price, were working inside of Ukraine to help those who are in the midst of the conflict right now.

John Osteen, Joel and Pauls father, raised donations to help build a church in Ukraine in 1996, and that church is now feeding refugees, the video says.

Similarly, Warrens Saddleback Church has deployed an advanced relief team to connect with local pastors in Ukraine and Poland caring for hundreds of Ukrainian refugees. A March 12 update from Saddlebacks Advance Relief Team details some of the work being done at a border crossing in Medyka, Poland, to help refugees who fled the invasion.

Were traveling in three large vans so we can take refugees back to Warsaw or any other stop along the way, the update reads.

The thread in all of this chaos seems to be the concept of relocation. There are - very intentionally - no refugee camps. Everybody gets transported to a local mall that functions as a distribution center. In the first room of the mall, drivers register with their ID. They give their destination and number of passengers. There seems to be an official registration system that provides some level of tracking and safety for both drivers and refugees. The danger of human trafficking at any of these arrival spots is glaringly obvious.

Saddlebacks website also invites people to help and has provided multiple updates on its efforts in the region.

The multi-site Gateway Church in Texas has established a crisis relief fund devoted to Ukraine to which it's encouraging members to donate.

The Rock Church in San Diego is working with its partner organization, Crisis Response International. The church informed PolitiFact that its in the process of establishing a Ukraine relief fund.

Crossroads Church in Cincinnati, Ohio, partners with humanitarian and disaster relief organizations Convoy of Hope and World Vision, which have operations on the ground in Ukraine.

According to the United Nations migration organization, nearly 6.5 million people have been displaced inside Ukraine, and over 3.2 million have fled the country since Russia began its invasion on Feb. 24.

The pace and magnitude of the internal displacement and refugee exodus from Ukraine, as well as resulting humanitarian needs, will only increase if the situation deteriorates, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees spokesperson Matthew Saltmarsh said, according to AFP.

The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said Friday it had recorded 2,149 civilian casualties, including 816 killed and 1,333 injured.

Those dead include 152 men, 116 women, seven girls, 16 boys, 36 children and 489 adults whose sex is not yet known. But the OHCHR reported that the actual figure could be much higher."

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 multiple-launch rocket systems, and missile and air strikes, the OHCHR statement said.

Many international Christian relief agencies, including Samaritans Purse, Slavic Gospel Association and World Help, are sending aid and helping local churches in Ukraine meet the needs of internally displaced people.
Evangelical pastor Jimmy Evans calls Putin the 'new Hitler on a rampage'

An evangelical pastor in Texas recently preached a sermon on Bible prophecy in which he declared that Russian President Vladimir Putin is the new Hitler on a rampage."

Pastor Jimmy Evans, the founder and apostolic elder of the multi-site Trinity Fellowship Church in Texas, appeared as a guest preacher at Ed Youngs Fellowship Church last Sunday, where he preached the culmination of a four-part sermon series on End Times prophecy.

During the March 13 sermon, titled What in The World is Going on? the 66-year-old pastor and founder of XO Marriage discussed the eschatological belief that Russias invasion of Ukraine could be part of the End Times prophecy being fulfilled.

Today, I would say that Vladimir Putin is Gog, Evans said, referencing the figure mentioned in Ezekiel 38. Now, if this is going to happen years in the future, Gog could be somewhere else. But now we have a leader in Russia who is a very evil man.

He said Russia is bombing women and children, bombing nursing homes, bombed a mosque this week and killed the people in it that were hiding there.

Evans believes that Putin wants to reassemble the Soviet Union, a collection of communist governments dominated by Russia that officially collapsed in 1991.

Ukraine is not his end game, the pastor asserted.

This is a new Hitler on a rampage. This is the most aggressive military action that has been taken since World War II, he added, believing that Putin more than likely will continue to conquer parts of Europe.

While some evangelical pastors and biblical scholars believe that Ezekiel 38s mention of Gog and Magog joining other nations in attacking Israel is modern-day Russia, other scholars disagree.

Using a map to show that Ukraine is positioned to the far north of Israel, Evans cites Ezekiel 38:1-6 to surmise that all of the nations mentioned in the Scripture as going to attack Israel are politically and militarily aligned.

Rosh is Russia at the top of the map. Youll notice Ukraine is there to the left. The Ukraine, biblically, could be part of Rosh, especially East Ukraine, which is historically Russian. So, the Ukraine could be part of that Magog. Ezekiel 38 mentions Magog, he said.

Today, that is Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Afghanistan. Gomer and Togarmah, Meshech and Tubal, that is modern-day Turkey. Put, that is Lybia, could be Algeria, parts of Tunisia. That is northern Africa. And Ethiopia and modern-day Sudan. These are all the nations that are mentioned there. By the way, Persia is Iran.

What do these nations have in common? he asked. They are all allies of Russia, and they all hate Israel. These are all Muslim nations except for Russia. And Russia is very, very angry at Israel right now. [Over] 2,600 years ago, the prophet Ezekiel sits down and writes this prophecy. It is exactly what is happening the world might now. All these nations are in their place, they are all politically and militarily aligned, and they all hate Israel. They would attack Israel in a heartbeat if they could.

According to Evans, the End Times was the most prophesied about period of time in human history.

The Bible tells us exactly whats going to happen in the End Times, and it is happening right before our very eyes, he added. Just about every generation of Christians since Jesus has believed they were living in the End Times.

Earlier in the sermon, Evans read Joel 3:1-2 and explained that God is saying, when I bring back the captives of Judah and Jerusalem, theres also going to be Armageddon.

Evans claimed Israel is the only nation in the history of the world that has been dispossessed twice and has come back to be reestablished as a country.

The first time they were dispossessed was around 500 B.C. Because of their sins, God allowed the Babylonians, Nebuchadnezzar, to defeat the Jews. They took them captive from Israel, took them to Babylon. While they were in Babylon, Persia defeated Babylon, Evans described. At the end of the 70 years, they were able to go back and literally revive their nation.

They only went back from one nation. They only went back from Persia. They only went back from Babylon where they were taken.

The second time that Israel was scattered, Evans said, was in A.D. 70, when the Romans crushed a Jewish uprising and destroyed Jerusalem, scattering the population.

Evans believes that the founding of the modern state of Israel in May 1948 was the fulfillment of prophecy in the Old Testament book of Isaiah and is a sign that the End Times are near. He said that in Isaiah 11, God declares that He will, for the second time, regather my people from all the nations.

Evans said that in Matthew 24:32-34, Jesus was basically telling people that the generation that sees the beginning of the end will see the end of the end.

Every generation has had signs of the End Times. Every generation has had earthquakes. Every generation has had famines. Every generation has had pestilences. Every generation has some evil person that they thought was the anti-Christ, Evans said.

But, were the only generation that has the existence of Israel. Thats what makes us different. Thats why we know we are living in the End Times. Israel has to exist for dozens of End Times prophecies to come true.

An important question, Evans said, is how long is a generation. He pointed to Psalm 90, which says, the days of a mans life are 70 years or if by reason of strength, 80 years.

Evans speculated that, since modern Israel will turn 74 later this May, it is possible that we have six years left.

So if a generation is 80 years. We have six years, Evans said. Im not setting dates. Im just telling you what the Bible says.

The belief that the founding of the modern state of Israel was predicted in the Bible and signals the start of the End Times is not without its critics, including within Christian theological circles.

Some, such as adherents to Replacement Theology, believe the modern state of Israel is not foretold in the Bible, but rather the biblical prophecies thought of as applying to it actually are about Christianity.

Last year, Grey Matter Research and Infinity Concepts released a survey that reportedly found that 51% of Evangelical Protestants in the United States believe that the Jews are still Gods chosen people. In comparison, 17% believe that Christians have replaced them, 19% said they were unsure and 10% said they believe Jews were never Gods chosen people.

From the Jewish and Israeli perspective, the Evangelical community is often viewed as a monolithic group that is both pro-Israel and pro-Jewish, Mark Dreistadt of Infinity Concepts told The Christian Post last year.

We knew this was not true but felt it was important to quantify the diversity as best we could. By looking at theological viewpoints, charitable giving, and support priorities we were able to see the mosaic of diversity emerge.
This week in Christian history: Prince leaves his throne to become a monk; archbishop executed

Throughout the extensive history of the Church, there have been numerous events of lasting significance.

Each week brings anniversaries of impressive milestones, unforgettable tragedies, amazing triumphs, memorable births, notable deaths and everything in between.

Some of the events drawn from over 2,000 years of history might be familiar, while other happenings might be previously unknown by most people.

The following pages highlight anniversaries of memorable events that occurred this week  March 20 through Mach 26  in Christian history.

1

2

3

4

Next
Is it OK for Christians to attend same-sex weddings? Al Mohler answers

Christians shouldn't attend same-sex wedding ceremonies, as attending would be to an inherent show of support, according to Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Albert Mohler Jr.

In an episode of Mohlers The Briefing podcast that aired Friday, the Evangelical theologian was asked by a listener about what to do if one is invited to a same-sex wedding ceremony.

Mohler responded by noting that the whole context of the wedding as a public event is the public exchange of vows and the public declaration of the rightness of this relationship.

Remember that the traditional word used of those who are attending a wedding is that they are celebrants," he added. "They are there to celebrate the wedding. It is virtually impossible to go to  a wedding of a same-sex couple and go and smile and not give affirmation to what you believe to be fundamentally contrary to nature and injurious to human flourishing.

Mohler went on to say that if you are consistently biblical in your thinking, you simply can't go to a wedding that actually isn't a wedding, for a marriage that you don't believe is actually a marriage.

One of the principles that has guided the Christian church through the centuries is that the Church cannot sanction and Christians should not celebrate weddings that are illicit or unlawful according to Scripture.

Now that can include some situations in which it would be a man and a woman standing at the altar, but we would believe there are biblical reasons why they should not be joined together, why it would not be a biblical marriage, it is not a rightful wedding. You extend that to the LGBTQ revolution and we have a whole new set of complexities, but in reality, this isn't a new question.

Mohler tackled other listener-submitted questions in the podcast episode, including, when is a child too young to have a conversation about transgender ideology.

The one thing we must always do is say what is true, Mohler replied. But understanding how much to say and how much to explain at any one moment to any given child, well, that is something that only faithful parents can actually well understand.

There's a difference between age 4 and 14. But it is parents more than any experts nor anyone outside the home who will have the best understanding of how and when to have certain discussions with children.

Tim Wilkins of the conference More Than Words penned a column in 2018 that was reposted by The Christian Post in which he tackled the issue of Christians attending same-sex weddings.

I do not believe a Christian should attend such a wedding for this basic reason ... this is not a get-together or a social event, wrote Wilkins, in an opinion piece that was originally published on Cross Ministry. God Himself is being called on to oversee this solemn event and those in attendance are witnesses of it.

Having said that, I am not opposed to inviting the couple to a dinner at a local restaurant sometime later where I treat them to a meal. Why? There is no theological conflict here and such a meal would provide an opportunity to enjoy the meal and conversation.
Hillsong Atlanta pastor announces resignation in wake of scandals surrounding global church

Sam Collier, the first-ever African American lead pastor of a Hillsong church, has announced he is stepping down from his position as a slew of scandals continue to surround the church and its founder, Brian Houston.

Collier, who with his wife, Toni, led the Atlanta, Georgia-based branch of Hillsong, announced his departure from the church on Wednesday afternoon.

My greatest reason for stepping down as Pastor of Hillsong Atlanta is probably not a secret to any of you. With all of the documentaries, scandals, articles, accusations and the churchs subsequent management of these attacks its become too difficult to lead and grow a young Church in this environment, Collier, who is also an author, adviser to the King family, and founder of A Greater Story Ministries, wrote on social media.

I have no shame in admitting I cried like a baby moments after I informed the Hillsong global pastor of my departure."

Hillsong Atlanta was launched in October 2020 with the goal of reaching and influencing the world by building a large Christ-centered, Bible-based church, changing mindsets and empowering people to lead and impact in every sphere of life, Collier told The Christian Post at the time.

He told CP the church aimed to be a multicultural, spirit-filled and theologically astute church  one that models unity in a desperately divided time in history.

Weve kind of dropped the ball, historically, when it comes to unity, he said, quoting Martin Luther King Jr., who once described 11 a.m. on Sunday mornings as "one of the most segregated hours in Christian America."

The world models how to come together better than the church does, he lamented. We want to change that. Hillsong Atlanta wants to provide a model for how to be unified. We want to have a ministry that is multicultural and unified so we can help people learn to live together for the sake of the Kingdom of God.

Colliers announcement came just hours after Hillsong revealed that Houston, who founded the church in 1983 with his wife, Bobbie, had resigned from his role as global senior pastor.

It was revealed that Houston, who had initially stepped down from the church's boards last September after he was charged with concealing child sex offenses, had violated the churchs pastoral code of conduct by entering the hotel room of an unidentified woman for 40 minutes while under the influence of alcohol and prescription drugs during the churchs annual conference in 2019.

We understand there will be much emotion at this news, and we all share these feelings," Hillsong said in a statement Wednesday. "Irrespective of the circumstances around this, we can all agree that Brian and Bobbie have served God faithfully over many decades and that their ministry has resulted in millions of people across the world being impacted by the power, grace, and love of Jesus Christ."

But other high-profile sexual misconduct scandals have plagued the megachurch and its campuses amid the COVID-19 pandemic, including the 2020 firing of Carl Lentz, who led Hillsong Church in New York City, over leadership issues and moral failures, including being unfaithful to his wife.

In April 2021, former Hillsong Dallas Lead Pastor Reed Bogard and his wife, Jess, abruptly resigned from their positions. It was revealed that the two were under investigation for leadership failures, resulting in the closure of that campus.

Meanwhile, on Thursday, Discovery Plus will premiere a three-episode docuseries titled Hillsong: A Megachurch Exposed that purports to highlight how the Australia-based global Evangelical church network has toed the fine line between cult and culture.

Prior to pastoring Hillsong Atlanta, Collier, who wrote the 2020 book, A Greater Story, served at Atlanta-based North Point Community Church, led by Pastor Andy Stanley.

In his statement Wednesday, Collier said he truly loves the Hillsong family and believes they will get through this storm and come out better than they were before.

He revealed that this coming Sunday will mark his final service at Hillsong Atlanta, where he plans to share more information about a new church hes launching on Easter Sunday.

I have appreciated the Hillsong family and want to thank the Houstons for the love they have shown Toni and me, he wrote.
Most Christians see their spiritual lives as private, but outlook clashes with their role as disciples: study

While Christians by definition are disciples of Jesus who accept and help with the spreading of the Gospel, a majority see their spiritual lives as private which is counterproductive to their mission in society, a new report from Barna Research shows.

Insights recently published by the research firm in a report titled Growing Together show that 56% of Christians in the U.S. see their spiritual lives as entirely private.

While holding this view of privacy, however, the majority of Christians in this group were found to be less likely to say it's very important to see progress in their spiritual life; say their faith is very important in their life today; and less likely to have weekly time with God.

In other words, the idea that faith should be kept private is one part of a bigger swirl of negative conditions that need to be addressed for people to see spiritual growth, Barna researchers noted.

The data informing the report was collected from two online surveys. One survey was conducted from Dec. 22, 2020, through Jan.18, 2021, and involved 2,511 randomly selected adults who self-identify as Christian and live within the United States. The second survey was conducted from June 1 through July 4, 2020, with 2,930 U.S. adults.

The report showed that Christian adults desire friendships that will challenge them and help them grow in their faith yet the older an individual is, the less likely they are to be part of a discipleship community. Boomers, for example, were found to be the generation least likely to be a part of a discipleship community and 63% of them believe their spiritual life is entirely private.

Gen Z, on the other hand, were found to be more than twice as likely as boomers to be part of a discipleship community. A majority do not see their spiritual life as private, but a significant minority, 46% of them, do. And researchers say the impact of technology on culture is partly to blame.

Even before COVID-19, individuals expressed feeling distant from others, and Christians are not exempt. Part of this can reasonably be attributed to the rhythms of our digital society. We have become accustomed to experiencing hyper-connection and disconnection all at once, Barna said.

It was further pointed out that Jesus, through His example with His disciples, never kept His faith private.

Discipleship is a powerful way to meet a communal need for vulnerability and companionship, researchers said.

When Jesus discipled the 12, the spiritual and day-today matters of their lives intermingled. Life was not private or compartmentalized. Meals and miracles, frustration and affection, sermons and naps, trials and celebrations  they shared it all, they added. Christians should consider what it would mean to do the same today.

A survey released last October by Probe Ministries, a nonprofit that seeks to help the Church in renewing the minds of believers with a Christian worldview, found that nearly 70% of born-again Christians disagree with the biblical position that Jesus is the only way to God.

The survey also found that among the top reasons given by born-again Christians for not telling others about their faith is the acceptance of pluralism. When asked why they dont share their beliefs with others, born-again respondents chose They can get to Heaven through their different religious belief, We shouldnt impose our ideas on others, and The Bible tells us not to judge others as their top three responses, respectively.

At first glance, this may seem surprising. But in a culture where pluralism is a dominant part of all religious groups, it begins to make sense, Steve Cable, senior vice president of Probe Ministries said. And the pluralistic reasons were dominant, attracting around two-thirds of the population across all religious groupings.
Orthodox advocacy group, archbishop call for sanctions against Russian Orthodox clerics

The Orthodox Public Affairs Committee and a Ukrainian archbishop are calling for sanctions to be placed on the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church, alleging that they are complicit in the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

OPAC, which exists to provide public advocacy for the global Orthodox Christian Church, and to promote, support, defend and champion Christian communities worldwide in the face of persecution, exclusion, and prejudice, released a statement Monday condemning the response of the Russian Orthodox leadership to the invasion.

The statement comes nearly a month into the invasion, which has caused a massive humanitarian crisis in Eastern Europe as hundreds of civilians have been killed and more than 10 million have been displaced from their homes.

Patriarch Kirill, his possible successor, Metropolitan Tikhon of Pskov, Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokomansk, who heads the Public Relations wing of the Moscow Patriarchate; the Department of External Church Relations (DECR), and the Rev. Nikolai Balashov, a priest of the DECR and long-time accomplice to Kirill, are all complicit in not only supporting the invasion of Ukraine, but also in perpetuating the lies of the government against their own people, the OPAC statement reads.

The group, founded in 2020 and led by a former Trump White House official, contends that the Russian Orthodox leaders have abandoned the Orthodox People of Ukraine, who make up 1/3 of their flock, and are as blameworthy for the deaths of innocent children and civilians as the soldiers acting on orders from the Kremlin.

The committee said, the idea that this invasion was for the benefit of the Ukrainian people would be laughable, if it were not matched by such horrific war crimes.

As OPAC, we cannot stand by and listen to the lies coming out of these so-called shepherds of the Church of Russia, who are acting more like wolves in sheeps clothing, OPAC asserted.

Like all the other oligarchs and government officials in Russia, these Clerics must be sanctioned now and be held accountable for their betrayal of the Orthodox Faith, and their complicity in this unjust and bloodcurdling war.

OPACs call for sanctions against the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church comes more than three weeks after Patriarch Kirill referred to Ukrainians fighting back against Russian soldiers as evil forces who were fighting against the unity of Russia and the Russian Church.

OPAC was launched in November 2020 and led by George Gigicos, who served as the director of the White House Office of Presidential Advance under President Donald Trump. The organization was founded to expose and combat the persecution of Christians around the globe" and says it advocates for all persecuted Christians.

Archbishop Yevstratiy of Chernihiv and Nizhyn of the Autocephalous Church of Ukraine also called on sanctions against Russian Orthodox Church leaders for their comments about the Russian invasion of Ukraine last week, The Orthodox Times reported.

Yevstratiy, who serves as a spokesperson for the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, specifically called for sanctions against Patriarch Kirill, Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, Father Nikolaos Balasov and Metropolitan Tikhon Pskov and Porkhov.

Four members of the Russian Orthodox Church are as guilty as Russian ministers, propogandists [sic], and [Russian President Vladimir] Putins oligarchs who have already been included in the list of sanctions, he said.

Yevstratiy maintained that the Russian Orthodox Church officials must be included in the international and Ukrainian sanctions list, as active members of the Kremlin regime, responsible for planning, executing and facilitating the war in Ukraine.

Additionally, Yevstratiy characterized the aforementioned leaders as the main supporters of the idea of the Russian World, a neo-imperialist plan that created the ideological background of Russian aggression against Ukraine.

All the above-mentioned individuals, due to their positions and the system that has been created in Russia between the state and the Church, undoubtedly maintain constant contact with the Russian special services, with government officials and with the presidential administration of the Russian Federation.

Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, which dissolved in 1991. The Eastern European country achieved independence following the dissolution of the Soviet Union and gave up its nuclear weapons after signing the Budapest Memorandum.

The 1994 agreement stipulated that Great Britain, Russia, and the United States would protect Ukraine if it was attacked by a hostile foreign power and vowed to respect its territorial integrity or political independence.

While the memorandum includes assurances of protection, it doesn't carry the same weight as a legally binding treaty agreement and has no enforcement measures.

Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, U.S. President Joe Biden announced a series of sanctions that the U.S., along with a coalition of allied nations, would impose. The sanctions apply to Russian elites who have personally gained from the Kremlins policies and Russian banks. Every asset they have in America will be frozen, he vowed.

The calls for sanctions against the Russian Orthodox Church leaders come as Biden heads to Europe this week and will meet with NATO allies to discuss the international response to Russias actions.

The White House listed discussions about efforts to support Ukraine and impose severe and unprecedented costs on Russia for its invasion as part of the agenda for the presidents trip, which will include stops in Brussels, Belgium as well as Warsaw, Poland.

Biden's administration is gearing up to sanction hundreds of Russian lawmakers. The Wall Street Journal reports that an announcement could come Thursday.

There has been a rift between the Russian Orthodox Church and the global Orthodox community in recent years.

The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, which holds authority over the worlds 300 million Orthodox believers, recognized the Ukrainian Orthodox Church as independent in 2019, meaning the Ukrainian Orthodox churches no longer fall under the jurisdiction of Moscow Patriarch Kirill.

The Russian Orthodox Church voted months prior to cut ties with the Patriarchate of Constantinople after a Ukrainian church was granted independence.

Following the Ukrainian Orthodox Church being granted autocephaly, several churches under Moscows jurisdiction severed their ties with the Russian church, moves that infuriated Russian nationalist sentiments, according to James W. Carr, a commissioner on the U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom.

The Russian government uses distortions of religious history to support its claim that Ukrainians have no independent ethno-religious identity or state tradition," Carr warned earlier this month in a statement voicing concern that the religious freedom of Ukrainian Orthodox believers is in "jeopardy."
US President Joe Biden is under fire from his party mates as he pursues an Iran nuclear deal that could be dangerous since Tehran never complied from the start.

Leading Democratic senators are not confident that the Biden administration could force the Islamic regime to stick to the deal.

Iran has seen how weak the current US president is, and like China, Russia, he's a pushover compared to President Trump, who was not afraid to sanction; the Obama-sponsored deal.

Biden Attempts To Revive Iran Nuclear Deal

According to The Hill, the president is not right to even consider asking the Iranians to agree to a nuclear pact last Monday in a report.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) stresses why Tehran would allow anyone to stop them from developing nuclear weapons. The president is not even really about whether it would work.

The Democrat from New Jersey is among many who the White House ignores despite their stake in it. He added that the administration is not transparent about it; they keep the details or hide something, reported Newsmax.

Menendez added that everyone is kept in the dark about the negotiations, no one knows what to say about it.

Furthermore, should Iran stop its nuclear program and finally admit that it is developing nukes and allow the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) access to sites from which it has been restricted.

Another is if Tehran will stop developing its missile program via the Iran Nuclear deal, but the knowledge is there, so they might choose to go ahead because they don't care about Biden's tough talk.

Read Also: Vladimir Putin Net Worth 2022: Does Anyone Know Russian President's Hidden Wealth?

Menendez also brought into question if it is appropriate to work out a new accord at a time when US dealings with Russia and China, two signatories to the original 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

Former President Donald Trump withdrew three years later. They are at a low, particularly given that a new agreement could provide billions of dollars to Russia by allowing it to do nuclear energy business with Iran, mentioned an outlet, cited the Times of Israel.

He added that "if somehow it gives reprieve to Iran and if Russia benefits from it, evidence that would be a problem."

Lawmakers Express Concern

Menendez, along with Maryland Senator Ben Cardin, New York Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, and West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, were among four Democrats who voted against the first agreement made by former President Barack Obama in 2015.

Cardin is on the Foreign Relations Committee and second senior member, pointing out how the president has managed to alienate both Russia and China since taking office.

It prevents a strong deal from getting forged later, but Joe Biden is rushing headlong without consultation. Just the same as how America lost Afghanistan but its nuclear arms now.

But other Democrats are defending the decision of the White House on a new nuclear pact with Iran, which they think can be done.

Most Democrats and GOP members think Joe Biden is not on point for another JCPOA or Iran Nuclear deal now that China and Russia are not afraid of the US, which will be a big problem.

Related Article: Joe Biden Cannot Handle Iran Nuclear Deal Says Retired US General Warning It Might Go South

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Oxford college accused of canceling Christian conference, denies Evangelical group's claim Free Speech Union criticizes college's 'uncritical acceptance' of student complaints

An Evangelical organization has accused a college in Oxford, England, of canceling an upcoming Christian conference after student activists complained that the beliefs of speakers and attendees were hurtful to the LGBT community, a claim the college has denied.

The Wilberforce Academy, an affiliate of the Evangelical advocacy group Christian Concern, has run a one-week conference for university students and young professionals at Worcester College for over a decade to guide them on applying the Christian faith to their vocations.

After the conference last September, some university students pressured the school to take action against the group, claiming speakers beliefs were hateful and invalidating toward the LGBT community. The school issued an apology for those offended by the conference.

The preliminary booking for this years Wilberforce Academy conference  scheduled for September  was allegedly canceled by Worcester College, according to a statement from Christian Concern.

Student activists allege that leaflets promoting the conferences Christian worldview were aggressively distributed without consent."

Upon hearing news of Worcesters public apology after last years conference, Christian Concern launched an independent inquiry.

The group said in a statement Monday that there was no evidence found to justify the college apologizing last year and canceling the event booking this year.

After thoroughly reviewing all the available evidence given by 114 attendees  the conclusion is made that complaints against The Wilberforce Academy delegates are without substance, Christian Concern stressed in its statement.

In a statement provided to The Christian Post, Worcester College contends that contrary to Christian Concern's claims, "no conference booking has been cancelled."

"The College does not accept many of the findings in Christian Concerns own report, and we are disappointed that this report has been published without us having the opportunity to discuss it in advance," the Worcester College statement reads.

"The College looks forward to a constructive meeting with Christian Concern and the chance to discuss properly the issues raised. It does not wish to comment further at this stage except to make it very clear that the College supports free speech and to confirm that it remains one of the core values of Worcester."

Christian Concern reported that the topics found to be covered by expert international speakers at the conference were teachings of biblical beliefs the Church has upheld for roughly 2,000 years.

The legal group confirmed that the topics discussed by the Wilberforce Academy at the conferences included the role of Christianity in shaping law and culture; understanding todays context; biblical ethics on human identity and sexuality and comparative religion including examining the nature of Islam.

Worcester College is headed by the former chair of the U.K. Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) and former head of the LGBT organization Stonewall, Provost David Isaac.

Christian Concern claimed in its Monday statement that it was informed by the college last November that the Wilberforce Academys preliminary booking for September 2021 was canceled because the college planned to conduct an internal review of the matter.

As you will be aware, Oxford University and Worcester College seek to establish an inclusive culture which promotes equality, values diversity and maintains a working, learning and social environment in which the rights and dignity of all members of the College and University community (including people of faith) are respected, the college said in a statement.

Worcester College says it received several complaints from students about the leaflets being passed out on campus last September.

Unsolicited approaches by your conference delegates to staff and students within the confines of the College in respect of various issues, especially LGBT conversion therapy, which they found upsetting, the college was quoted as telling Chrisitan Concern. This was especially the case for new students attending a parallel event, Opportunity Oxford, which prepares young people for their impending admission to Oxford University.

When asked to show details of the complaints and alleged leaflets passed out on campus, Christian Concern was told that the school could not provide such information.

The information provided does not enable me to identify any of your delegates, a Worcester College official told Christian Concern. I have not been able to obtain a copy of the leaflets that were alleged to have been distributed.

Christian Concerns independent inquiry was conducted by Michael Stewart, a charity lawyer with prior experience in similar investigations.

Of the 124 attendees at the 2021 conference, 114 provided witness statements responding to the allegations. Worcester College didnt engage with the inquiry, according to Christian Concern.

The allegations that have been made regarding inappropriate behavior are not in keeping with my own experiences with the delegates with whom I had the pleasure of teaching and interacting. I found them unfailingly courteous and, in their debates with each other, mature and respectful, one of the attendees was quoted as saying in a witness statement.

I find it very sad that people are spreading lies when the week was a very positive week where many of todays issues could be discussed in love and respect, said another attendee.

Andrea Williams, the chief executive of Christian Concern, said she anticipated that the inquiry would find no evidence that any delegates have done anything to warrant apologizing for, being canceled or discriminated against for their Christian beliefs.

Worcester College capitulated to complaints from a handful of students who appear to have felt offended following debate on some of the most important social issues of our time. It is disappointing that such a prestigious university and college should be canceling Christian beliefs, debate and free speech, Williams wrote.

Williams believes Oxford University should stand for free speech and expression and allow its students to have the intellectual ability to decide whether they wish to attend external events and make up their minds on what they hear.

We will continue to speak of Jesus Christ who was Himself an outsider and by His words and actions demonstrated His commitment to reaching the marginalized, excluded and vulnerable so that they could discover true hope and everlasting love through Him, even sacrificing His own life to do so, she added.

The Free Speech Union, a U.K.-based advocacy group, sent a letter to Provost Issac last week voicing concern with the schools handling of allegations against the Wilberforce Academy.

The Colleges uncritical acceptance of claims that the conference harmed students was a serious error, FSU General Secretary Toby Young wrote. In keeping with, as you put it yourself, your own and the Colleges commitment to freedom of speech, the College should have investigated and faced down students ill-founded complaints. No higher education institution should apologise for free speech.
Church removes pastor facing charges for possessing child porn abuse of kids as young as 13

A New Hampshire Baptist pastor, who was arrested and now faces five felony charges for possession of child sexual abuse images, has been removed from his job, his church has said.

The congregation strongly denounces the actions of Stephen Bates as ungodly, unholy, unnatural, perverted and reprehensible, deacons of the Bible Baptist Church of Nashua, an independent Baptist congregation, said in a statement.

Court documents show the 46-year-old ex-pastor is facing five charges of possessing child sexual abuse images, not just one, as was known earlier, NBC Boston said, adding that police found two flash drives in his pants pocket, which had child sexual abuse images in various folders involving children as young as 13.

During a review of the content on the drives numerous images of child pornography were located, stated the Nashua Police Department on Tuesday. As a result of him possessing child pornography Pastor Bates was arrested.

The church said in the statement: We have worked with and will continue to support our local law enforcement in this matter and our wish is that justice be served. Our hearts break for all his victims and we sorrow with them for the hurt, pain, and irreparable damage he has caused. We encourage anyone victimized by Stephen Bates actions to contact local law enforcement.

The investigation began in August 2016, when the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children contacted Nashua Police with a tip indicating that child pornography had been accessed by a device with an IP address associated with Bible Baptist Church.

After the arrest, police said in a statement, From the onset of the investigation, Pastor Bates was contacted several times by investigators with the Nashua Police Department and Homeland Security Investigations. Pastor Bates was considered a person of interest during the earlier investigations but until today there wasnt sufficient evidence to charge him with any crimes.

Offices of the Homeland Security Investigations in Denver, Colorado, and Blaine, Washington, conducted investigations into the distribution of child pornography and child sexual exploitation in 2019 and 2021. They also discovered the source of the crimes being an IP address associated with the church.

Additionally, in 2020, when police in Tallahassee, Florida, investigated the publishing of child pornography online, they learned that the account responsible for publishing the images utilized an IP address associated with the Bible Baptist Church.

Police have said no local victims have been identified, but also encouraged any parishioners with concerns to come forward.

Bible Baptist Church was founded in 1980 by a group of ex-Catholics. Bates became the churchs pastor in August 2005 following a unanimous vote.
Can former transgenders tweet truth on Twitter?

Now that Twitter has taken action against The Christian Post and The Babylon Bee over their tweets calling Rachel Levine a man, will Twitter do the same thing with every former transgender who wishes to share his or her honest story with the world?

Why are executives at Twitter so afraid of allowing people to hear the truth about transgenderism on their platform? Could it be that deep down, these executives realize that the truth is what sets people free from gender confusion?

I suspect that many gender-confused women would be able to relate to some of the things Laura Perry experienced early in life. Lauras video testimony is humble, sincere and liberating.

Would Laura be allowed to tweet the truth on Twitter that she has always been a female, even during the confusing period in her life when she thought she had mysteriously turned into a man?

And what about men like Walt Heyer, who came to realize that transitioning doesnt fix the underlying ailments. After pretending to be a woman for eight years, Walt says, Had I not been misled by media stories of sex change success and by medical practitioners who said transitioning was the answer to my problems, I wouldnt have suffered as I have. Genetics cant be changed. Feelings, however, can and do change  You will hear the media say, Regret is rare. But they are not reading my inbox, which is full of messages from transgender individuals who want the life and body back that was taken from them by cross-sex hormones, surgery, and living under a new identity. After de-transitioning, I know the truth: Hormones and surgery may alter appearances, but nothing changes the immutable fact of your sex.

Would Twitter executives allow Walt to tweet the truth about how much pain transgender propaganda has caused him? Rather than addressing his deep psychological struggles, hormone therapy and surgery simply compounded his problems exponentially. Walt said, The reprieve I experienced through surgery was only temporary. Hidden underneath the makeup and female clothing was the little boy hurt by childhood trauma. I was once again experiencing gender dysphoria, but this time I felt like a male inside a body refashioned to look like a woman. I was living my dream, but still I was deeply suicidal.

As I pointed out in my CP op-ed four years ago, (Will Americas Public Grade Schools Become Transgender Mills?), the Wall Street Journal cited the largest study of its kind concerning those who have had sex-reassignment surgery and found they are almost 20 times more likely to commit suicide than the rest of the population. (This 30-year study in Sweden involved 324 people.)

Twitter executives have a moral responsibility to look at these suicide statistics with their eyes wide open. Why would Twitter want to keep this critical information from the public? Are they more committed to their misguided transgender ideology than to the health and well-being of gender-confused individuals? They really need to take a hard look at what is driving them to be so reckless with the truth about transgenderism and gender confusion.

Male and female God created them (Genesis 5:2). Biology isnt bigotry.

Former transgenders deserve to be heard. Justice demands that the truth be told. And if Twitter executives are too afraid of the truth about transgenderism, why dont they just come out and tell the world about the fears they are harboring? These executives will not experience the healing they need until they address their faulty presuppositions. They must come to recognize that their fears are irrational, not to mention dangerous for anyone who experiences gender confusion. Why should the illogical and absurd fears of Twitter executives drive their platform into such a dark place?

Unless these executives choose to have an open mind on the matter, they will likely continue charging down the perilous path of transgender misinformation. And this will certainly increase the suffering of those like Walt Heyer who made monumental decisions about his body based on the lies he was hearing from the media.

In contrast to media propaganda today, Jesus never told a single lie. To the Jews who had believed Him, Jesus said, If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free (John 8:31,32). Jesus asked some religious leaders this important question: Havent you read that at the beginning the Creator made them male and female? (Matthew 19:4).

Unless Twitter executives look beyond their limited and flawed perspective on transgenderism, they will never come to understand the simple truth about gender. And in that case, they may never escape their self-imposed prison of acceptable transgender tweets that are allowed on their platform.

The question remains: Can former transgenders tweet truth on Twitter? Time will tell.

Lets see if Twitter executives decide to deal with their biases, and address those malignant strongholds that develop within the human mind when lies are accepted as truth. Infectious strongholds, after all, are what lead a gender-confused individual to make extremely unwise decisions about his or her own body. And immoral strongholds compel social media executives to block transgender truth on their platform from reaching a world of people who hunger for truth, authenticity, and holistic health.
COVID was isolating. Summer camp is just what we need.

College students have undergone unprecedented lockdowns, mandates, and frequently-changing policies for the past two years. They have worked in isolation from their dorm rooms, used video calls to attend classes, and endured significant social disruption. As a result, 95% of students have reported their mental health has suffered. They are stressed, lonely, and struggling to stay emotionally connected and socially grounded.

As students begin to dig out from under the pandemic-induced rubble, they will need more opportunities to make up for stolen time  to develop meaningful friendships, rediscover a sense of purpose and belonging, and make a difference in their lives of others.

With nearly 25 years of camp ministry experience, I have witnessed firsthand the many ways in which working Christian summer camps can provide those opportunities.

College students are only allotted a few summers in their post-high school season of life, and the pandemic has already robbed 2 of those summers from them. My hope is that they would be intentional with the ones they have left.

John, a college senior and former camp counselor, shared this:

"I had 1 year of my college experience, then the next 2 years we felt like nomads. We couldn't gather normally, study abroad, go to church, class, or anywhere. All of the developmental opportunities we were expecting were missing. It felt pretty lonely and isolating at a critical moment in my life when I needed to start adulting. But where were the other adults? It really created some dark moments. Now, it's my senior year, and I'm almost done. But it feels like I am having to start over again. I am trying to establish relationships like it was my first. It just feels like COVID stole something from us."

Now more than ever, students just like John are in search of community. They need personal interaction and opportunities to connect with peers. They need the freedom to laugh and let loose again, to use and rebuild their social skills in a fun, encouraging environment. Even under normal circumstances, its been discovered that the number one driver for college students seeking summer camp employment is a desire to develop lifelong friendships. Summer camps have rightly earned the reputation of bringing students together in extraordinary ways and encouraging friendships that last a lifetime.

Working as a camp counselor is important and challenging work, but its also a lot of fun. Its a unique summer experience that gives students an excuse to disconnect from social media, to set down their phones, and participate in outdoor games and activities. Camps allow students to play in ways that help them grow.

A recent survey of camp staffers who worked the entire summer revealed that 91% felt their lives had been significantly impacted, with over 78% reporting their faith was stronger. An overwhelming majority indicated that they felt a deeper sense of self-confidence, and 94% said their leadership skills had significantly improved.

But I dont need numbers to convince me of what I already know to be true. Ive seen the significant personal and spiritual growth that happens in the lives of camp staffers. And its happened to me.

When I consider the impact camp counselors can make on the lives of young people, one camper from my own past stands out vividly in my mind: Ryan. He never felt like he mattered to most people outside of camp while he was growing up. He never felt great, or even good, at anything.

But when he was at camp, the camp counselors saw him differently. He felt special. Capable. He felt seen and valued by people who seemed more like family. When he became an adult, he shared with me that camp became his city on a hill, an experience that hed live off for a year. Ryans story is particularly meaningful to me, but it is not necessarily unique. Summer camp staffers often make a profound impact on the lives of campers they lead.

Working at a Christian summer camp is a chance for college students to socialize, have fun, and develop important skills, sure. But its also an opportunity for students to change lives, including their own. After two years of confusion, transition and fear, its time to start investing in community again.
India: Christian pastor dragged out of his home, stabbed to death by 5 masked men

Five masked men stabbed a 50-year-old pastor to death in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh. While police are blaming it on extreme communists, Christians suspect he was murdered by Hindu nationalists, according to reports.

The unidentified men broke into the house of Pastor Yallam Shankar, dragged him out and stabbed him to death in Bijapur districts Angampalli village, the U.S.-based persecution watchdog International Christian Concern reported Saturday, adding that the pastor is survived by his wife, two sons and grandchildren.

Indias PTI news agency suggested that Maoists, or extreme communists, killed him on suspicion that he was a police informer.

As per preliminary information, a group of suspected armed Naxals entered the house of local pastor Yallam Shankar, and dragged him out. They attacked him with sharp-edged weapons, killing him on the spot, an official was quoted as saying.

The official added that a Maoist group left a handwritten note to claim responsibility for the murder.

However, a local group called Progressive Christian Alliance of Chhattisgarh, said in a statement that Christians in Angampalli village had received death threats by Hindu nationalist groups.

The group added that anyone can use the name of a Maoist group to mislead the investigation.

Pastor Shankar, a former village head, was the Senior Pastor of Bastar for Christ Movement Church, ICC said, adding that he was influential and known for defending Christians from the radical Hindu nationalists.

The Christians in this area have been facing intense opposition from the radical Hindu nationalists, a local Christian was quoted as saying. Several times Pastor Shankar defended Christians from radical Hindu nationalists, and that could be the reason for this extreme form of persecution of killing.

Local Christians also said that two days before the murder, radical Hindu nationalists had threatened the pastor, saying they would kill him if he continued to preach.

Open Doors USA, which monitors Christian persecution in over 60 countries, has reported that persecution against Christians and other religious minorities has increased in India since the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party took power at the federal level in 2014.

For Indias Christians, 2021 was the most violent year in the countrys history, according to a report by the United Christian Forum, which recorded at least 486 violent incidents of Christian persecution in the year.

The UCF attributed the high incidence of Christian persecution to impunity, due to which such mobs criminally threaten, physically assault people in prayer, before handing them over to the police on allegations of forcible conversions.

Police registered formal complaints in only 34 of the 486 cases, according to the UCF.

Often communal sloganeering is witnessed outside police stations, where the police stand as mute spectators, the UCF report states.

Hindu extremists believe that all Indians should be Hindus and that the country should be rid of Christianity and Islam, an Open Doors fact sheet explains. They use extensive violence to achieve this goal, particularly targeting Christians from a Hindu background. Christians are accused of following a foreign faith and blamed for bad luck in their communities.

Christians make up only 2.3% of Indias population and Hindus comprise about 80%.
Drew Angerer /Getty Images

(Bloomberg) -- Apple Inc. worked to get popular services such as Apple Music, the App Store and podcasts back online Tuesday after suffering outages for the second day in a row, marking a rare streak of disruptions for the tech giant.

Reports on Twitter and Downdetector -- along with checks by Bloomberg -- indicated that the problems began around 5 p.m. New York time. The companys website said that the App Store, music, books, weather, fitness, podcasts and other services were all facing disruptions. Within about two hours, Apple reported that the problems had been resolved.
Hillsong Church became an internationally known megachurch after capturing the support and attendance of big time celebrities like Justin and Hailey Bieber, Selena Gomez and Chris Pratt.

The church has, however, found itself in the wake of many scandals and accusations, and the latest news is no exception.

Hillsong announced this week that its founder, Brian Houston, has resigned from the church amid allegations of inappropriate behavior towards two women.

Phil Dooley, the acting senior pastor of Hillsong, announced the news Wednesday morning in a staff meeting, per The Daily Mail.

"We would like to advise you that Pastor Brian Houston has resigned as global senior pastor of Hillsong Church and the board has accepted his resignation," Hillsong said in a statement. We understand there will be much emotion at this news and we all share these feelings. We ask that you continue to pray for them and the entire Houston family during this challenging time.

The church first acknowledged the accusations and impending resignation on March 18, stating that since the allegations had been made public, the church felt it was its duty to speak out and ahead on what was to come.

We have sadly been dealing with two complaints made against Pastor Brian over the last 10 years. These matters  like all such matters under our code of conduct  were dealt with confidentially. In both of these cases we respected the confidentiality of both Pastor Brian and those involved, and we also must abide by local employment law, Hillsong said last week. We are a church that believes in grace, love, restoration and integrity; these are our guiding values.

The church went on to explain that the first accusation came from a decade ago and involved Houston sending inappropriate text messages to a staff member which led to their resignation. The church claims that at the time, Houston was addicted to sleeping tablets and worked with him to receive professional help.

Related: Joel Osteen's Church Received More Than $4 Million In PPP Loans

The second incident occurred in 2019 while Houston was under the influence of alcohol and anti-anxiety medication, the church said, wherein Houston ended up entering a hotel room that was not his and spending the night with an undisclosed female, wherein the conduct was of serious concern.

Houston agreed to step down from his position temporarily but after failing to take all of agreed steps, he was removed from the Hillsong board in 2021.

Like many other churches of its size, Hillsongs governance model has historically placed significant control in the hands of the senior pastor, but we recognize that the way we do things needs to be reviewed, the church shared. We know there are areas on which we can improve, and we will work honestly and transparently to that end.

Hillsong maintains that there is still much to be done in the wake of Houstons removal and that the church does acknowledge that change is needed moving forward.

The church faced another major scandal in late 2021 when famed pastor Carl Lentz (who had been brought into mainstream media via his close friendship with Justin Bieber) was released from the church due to moral failures.

The day after he was fired, Lentz took to social media to announce that he had been unfaithful in his marriage, leading to his mistress coming forward before checking into an outpatient treatment program for mental-health-related issues.

A former Hillsong staff member (who also served as a nanny to Lentzs children) accused Lentz of sexual abuse last summer.

A legal representative for Lentz and wife Laura told NBC at the time that the couple vehemently deny the allegations and, in addition to that, have irrefutable proof the events did not happen as they are being described."

Hillsong was founded by Houston and his wife, Bobbie, in 1983 in Australia and now oversees churches in 30 different countries.

Copyright 2022 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
Cybersecurity experts have been puzzled by the absence of a major cyberattack from Russia in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine and in retaliation for crippling sanctions. Kremlin-backed hackers have previously shut down Ukrainian electric grids and propagated malware that caused an estimated $10 billion worth of global damage. This time, barring a few issues on Ukrainian websites and the disruption of a satellite internet provider, it's been quiet on the hacking front. Prevailing theories have been that Russia's cyber capabilities are not that great, while Ukraine has become better at defending its networks.

A new warning from the White House suggests something more calculated: Russia has simply chosen not to do anything yet. President Vladimir Putin may well have been keeping his cyber assault on hold for the right moment.

Here's the key line in President Joe Biden's statement, published Monday afternoon in Washington: "Today, my Administration is reiterating those warnings based on evolving intelligence that the Russian Government is exploring options for potential cyberattacks."

"Exploring options" could mean a number of things:

- The hackers are already in U.S. or European networks and waiting for the green light to attack. This has precedent. The Solar Winds cyber attack in 2020 - which was carried out by more than 1,000 operatives of the Russian government and breached at least 100 companies around the world - went undetected for months. The damage cost tens of billions of dollars and led to the theft of valuable data. The hackers were able to lease servers from Amazon Web Services and others to bypass surveillance from the National Security Agency, exploiting a legal loophole that prevents the NSA from monitoring domestic networks. NSA director Paul Nakasone has since argued to lawmakers that this creates a dangerous "blind spot" for the NSA.

- Russian cyber criminals, who have long enjoyed immunity from prosecution in Russia, are planning a wider array of ransomware and malware attacks on Western targets, including government agencies and companies.

- A more serious attack on critical infrastructure, such as knocking out an electric grid in the U.S. or taking a power plant offline, is in the works. Russia's fingerprints are all over some of the worst attacks on critical infrastructure to date. The Triton malware attack in 2017 on a Saudi petrochemical plant saw hackers take over the plant's safety instrument system, which could have led to a loss of life. Russian hackers have for years been breaking into U.S. power utilities to probe for weaknesses and planting malware that could give them control of part of an electrical grid or a water-treatment facility.

U.S. intelligence has been largely right in predicting Russia's next moves since invading, so there's good reason to take Biden's warning seriously. Anne Neuberger, the deputy national security advisor for cyber and emerging technology, said on Monday that U.S. intelligence had observed "preparatory activity," and that federal agencies last week had convened more than 100 companies to "share new cybersecurity threat intelligence."

She added that there was "no certainty there will be a cyber incident on critical infrastructure," and that Biden's warning was a call to action.

Cyber attacks have a psychological impact, hurting morale as much as actual infrastructure. They create the illusion that a shadowy group is in control and, worse, could be hiding in wait to cause even more damage. Putin, a former KGB officer who is well-versed in psychological warfare, may have been letting his missiles create the first wave of collective unease for both Ukrainians and the West.

Fortunately, there are basic things that organizations and individuals can do to mitigate potential threats. Companies can invest in running incident response simulations, disabling remote access for employees where it's not critical and patching vulnerabilities they already know about. European banks operating in Russia have taken a more blunt approach by simply separating their Russian units from their main computer systems. Commerzbank, for instance, has designed a "kill switch" to make that separation possible, Bloomberg News reported earlier this month. Individuals should start using two-factor authentication, if they don't already, to log into email and social media when possible.

The prospect of an attack on the horizon can create a sense of powerlessness at organizations, but there is much they can do to limit how bad the damage gets.

- - -

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners. Parmy Olson is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering technology. She previously reported for the Wall Street Journal and Forbes and is the author of "We Are Anonymous."
A new theory speculates that the earth was oxygenated at an unexpected turning point from a few billion years as a toxic dust ball. Ocean microbes and minerals played a part in the production of oxygen that filled out the atmosphere. The delicate balance of producing a breathable atmosphere would allow ancient flora and fauna to evolve and survive until the present day.

Sudden Increase of Oxygen on Earth

Keeping humans and all living things alive keeps a concentrated amount of life-giving oxygen at 21 percent, as the balance but not consistently, reported Sciencealert.

Earth is inherently toxic to many but a few life forms until a faint chance arose in a billion, then sudden, oxygen became plentiful, and life exploded at that time on. The process of emitting more O2 than is taken is an enigma.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers came up with an answer to explain everything. Their new hypothesis suggests that a few microbes were at the borderline of producers and consumers billions of years ago.

Oceans Play a Role in Oxygenating the Earth

Organic matter can be degenerated by deep ocean microbes that use oxygen. Suppose another microbe will be absorbing the gas faster than other organisms can use it.

In that case, then the semi-oxidized organic matter would have the leftover O2 bond at a chemical level to an ancient mineral in sediment underwater. This became a breakthrough in the new theory that more oxygen is stored in the world's ancient oceans, which led to oxygenated earth, and microbes would have sustenance to live.

Read Also: Vladimir Putin Net Worth 2022: Does Anyone Know Russian President's Hidden Wealth?

Storage of oxygen in the oldest seas would delay it escaping to the atmosphere like a sponge, absorbing it and being used to create a breathing loop for all organisms to exploit.

Geobiologist Gregory Fourier from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ponders if there is a microbe-based metabolism capable of making POOM (partially oxidized organic matter).

There was such a thing, and looking over sources on record, he and his colleagues, Haitao Shang and Daniel Rothman, got their answer. It is the bacterial group known as SAR202.

This type of bacteria partly oxidizes organic material in the deepest oceans, using the enzyme known as Baeyer-Villiger monooxygenase or BVMO. Tracing the enzyme and where it came from was present before the great oxidation event.

Furthermore, the data points to the increase of more oxygen in ancient earth were tied to the gene. The development of the enzyme and its spread to other microbial organisms is the tipping point.

Earth's Oxygenation

A random event like the great oxygenation was a cosmic chance of having BVMO at the right moment. Inevitable more O2 became plentiful and simpler organisms acquired it.

Scientist says that living processed eat up O2 supplies, and it should not have happened, but it did. But having absorption by oxidized metabolic products in the minerals of sediments in the ocean.

Minerals also trapped the partly oxidized organic matter on its surface throughout ocean floors. The sea because storage of O2 as a result.

Accumulation over eons of time led the O2 to leach in the world's oceans and atmosphere, establishing the 21 percent now as the balance. One study at the American Geophysical Union supports this claim.

The study by Fournier says the new theory about why and how the earth evolved from an environment with scarce oxygen to the modern oxygenated world via an enzyme is further explained in Nature Communications.

Related Article: Ancient Oceans Not Susceptible to Climate Change; Human Activities Have Done Many Damages

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
On February 21, Russia sent troops into the two self-proclaimed independent republics on the eastern border of Ukraine. Three days later, it launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The news is full of reports on the fighting while business news reveals another concern of many: How will the conflict in Eastern Europe affect my bottom line? There's good reason to ask this question. Shipping companies across the world are halting cargo deliveries to Russia, hurting both imports and exports substantially. The Ruble has fallen nearly 70% in the last five days. Seven Russian banks were cut from SWIFT  a severe move that will undercut faith in Russian financial markets.

Browse the business news related to the Russian invasion, and youll see concerns about the price of grain, volatility in oil prices and other economic symptoms of global unrest. Yet, we're missing an opportunity to have an important discussion: What is the role of business in times such as these?

Businesses and their representatives stand with Ukraine

Look closely, and you'll see the two main camps emerge. Some businesses remain quiet  passively hoping the conflict is resolved before supply-chain issues reach them. Others are unable to sit on the sidelines and watch. Starlink has sent terminals to Ukraine to help prop up communications that have been disrupted by Russian attacks. Airbnb is offering free short term housing to Ukrainian refugees fleeing the Russian occupation. Even FIFA has banned Russian teams from competing while Adidas dropped their agreements with the teams as well.

Businesses are taking proactive steps to not only signal their general support, but also show it with concrete actions. And it's not just businesses that are stepping in; it's their representatives as well. The Business Roundtable issued a statement, saying "... our members join the Ukrainian people, the U.S. government and global community in condemning Russias attack on Ukraine and its citizens." B Lab, the parent organization that represents and certifies a global network of over 4,000 Benefit Corporations, recently updated its website to include a condemnation of Russia's aggression and resources for supporting those affected by conflict.

For some businesses, this will prove to be a savvy marketing move. But for others, they stand to lose substantial value for shareholders. This underscores the fundamental question we still need to answer. Since the beginning of time, business has had a responsibility to prioritize the needs of shareholders. But that maxim is changing, and shareholder primacy is coming to an end.

Related: These Franchises Have Stopped Doing Business in Russia

What gets priority during a global crisis?

Given this, we now have a more nuanced understanding of business's role in society. As a result, we face a not-so-simple question: If the financial motives of shareholders are in conflict with basic human rights, whose needs should be the priority?

My lifelong argument has been that the long-term needs of shareholders are never in misalignment with our societal needs. Henry Ford famously argued that excess profits should subsidize the price of his cars so that his employees could afford to buy them. He knew that making cars more affordable would create a much bigger market for them in the long term. His investors took him to court because he was trading the short-term profit for shareholders for the long-term financial viability of the company as well as the benefit to society.

With regards to the conflict in Ukraine, many businesses have arrived at a fork in the road. The path they choose may provide immediate relief for shareholders but not accurately reflect their values as an organization. But the notion that one's personal ethics can be separate from those of one's business is a fallacy.

Related: How to Be an Ethical Leader

A good business move and a moral imperative

The need for businesses to pull out of Russia is both a good business move and a moral imperative. Positive public perception, a reliable supply chain and strong diplomatic values are all in the long-term interest of shareholders. Doing business with and in a country with erratic and aggressive foreign policy will most likely erode shareholder value over time. Society and investors are more adept at seeing the long-term benefits of being a "good" business. This case is no exception.

As for the moral imperative, I'm certain that many businesses will opt out of taking a stand against Russia's invasion of Ukraine. They'll likely do just fine on behalf of their shareholders in the coming years. But as the paradigm of shareholder primacy erodes, the businesses that thrive will be those that reflect the values of their founders and our society.

Our ability to separate our personal ethics from those of our business has been at the heart of the debate around corporate social responsibility for decades. It's up to us to break down the firewall between individual and corporate ethics and shepherd in a future in which business does good and does well at the same time.

Related: Why Should Your Business Care About Social Responsibility?

Copyright 2022 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
One of the most evocative spots in Hawaii, Puu Kekaa, also called Black Rock, is located along the north end of Kaanapali Beach on the island of Maui. It offers stunning views, snorkeling and a nightly cliff diving ceremony.



But Puu Kekaa may also have the highest rate of snorkeling-related drownings per year. Yet there are no lifeguards, no warnings.



Locals are familiar with its strong currents, but visitors, who are not aware, can get caught in its waters, panic and drown. Earlier this year, a 52-year-old California man drowned at Puu Kekaa.



By far, its the No. 1 drowning capital in Hawaii, former Maui Fire Department battalion chief of ocean safety Colin Yamamoto told SFGATE. He managed all Maui County lifeguards from 2014 to 2017. Now retired, he is a strong advocate for a lifeguard station at Puu Kekaa.



According to a drowning and aquatic injury trends report covering 2009 to 2018 by the Hawaii State Department of Health, the leading cause of fatal injuries for visitors in Hawaii is ocean drowning  ahead of car accidents and falls  and snorkeling is the leading cause of those ocean drownings.

The island of Maui had the highest number of snorkeler drownings with 94 deaths, followed by the island of Oahu, which had 70 snorkeler drownings during the same time period. And of all the beaches on Maui, Puu Kekaa is the single location with the highest number of snorkeling-related fatal drownings, with 18 visitor deaths.



Hanauma Bay on Oahu had 28 visitor deaths due to snorkeling during the same time period, but Puu Kekaa is still suspected to have the highest rate of death.



Hanauma Bay has got to have 10 times the number of people than Black Rock, Daniel Galanis, injury epidemiologist for the Hawaii State Department of Health, told SFGATE. When you translate it to incidents per given number of people there, its a pretty good assumption that the rates are higher for Black Rock.



Hanauma Bay received an average of 3,000 visitors per day up until 2019. There are no official counts of how many people visit Puu Kekaa, but Yamamoto estimated it at about 500 to 700 per day.



Another disturbing trend is how quickly the number of snorkeling deaths in Hawaii have increased over time. In the 5-year period of 1994 through 1998, there were 19 snorkeling deaths in Hawaii. That number grew to 103 from 2014 to 2018.



Galanis thinks the increase of deaths due to snorkeling could be because the amount of visitors has also increased through the years  and snorkeling is an easily accessible activity.



You dont need a lot of equipment, Galanis pointed out, and the equipment you do need can be purchased for $20 to $30 bucks, and then you just get yourself to a beach and walk into the water.
Its arguably one of the best days for a couple  getting married. Whether they choose to celebrate with a close circle of friends and family, or tip the scale, creating an extravagant and elaborate party, or opt for a more intimate and romantic ceremony, one things for certain  its two people, exchanging vows, pledging their love to one another and cementing their commitment with rings.

However, for one San Antonio bride, one of those precious emblems is missing  her engagement ring.

Dr. Jasmine Harris is an Associate Professor of African-American Studies for the University of Texas at San Antonio. Shes also the coordinator of the African-American Studies Program in the Department of Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.

She and her fiance Michael Bent had so much to celebrate this past weekend, with the wedding within arms reach, Bents 40th birthday and Harris' recent book deal. On Sunday, March 20, the happy couple decided to do brunch at Rebelle inside the stunning St. Anthony Hotel downtown.

This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 3 1 of 3 Courtesy, Jasmine Harris Show More Show Less 2 of 3 Courtesy, Jasmine Harris Show More Show Less 3 of 3





I remember being at brunch and thinking I feel okay. I think everything is going to go well. Everything is done. We dont have to worry about anything for the next month.

And then, the unimaginable became a horrific nightmare, bringing the blissful future matrimony to an abrupt pause.

Three hours later, I realized my ring was gone.

Hearts began racing, panic set in, tears started to fall  Harris immediately retraced her steps trying to calm the fuzziness swirling around in her head and pull from deep within the memory banks of her mind to find her one-of-a-kind keepsake.

Courtesy, Jasmine Harris

My reservation (for brunch at Rebelle) was at 11 a.m. We got there late. I remember in the car that my hands were dry, and I needed to put lotion on. Normally, I would take my engagement ring off to put lotion on. And that may have been what happened. I never put it back on and when we pulled up to the hotel, when we got out, it fell out.

Harris tells MySA she talked with the valet staff working that day and to her dismay, they didnt notice any diamond ring left behind.

The more devastating part is I dont know where it is. Im guessing it was last seen at St. Anthony in the front. My biggest fear is that its like been kicked into some corner somewhere where it will never be found.

Desperation setting in to find her engagement ring, which her fiance Bent had custom made just for her, Harris put out calls to social media, asking the entire city of San Antonio to help find the gem.

The soon-to-be husband and wife first met when they were teenagers in high school. Both from the Midwest, Harris lived in Minnesota and Bent hailed from Wisconsin. For about five years, they did the long-distance relationship. They then went their separate ways in college before reconnecting in 2014.

They got engaged in July 2021 right before moving to Texas from Philadelphia.

I never dreamed I would be getting married without my engagement ring. You know, I guess thats life. I still get to marry my best friend. My first love. I still have a very beautiful wedding band. And thats enough.

Courtesy, Jasmine Harris

Harris says she did file a claim with police and does have renters insurance although its unclear right now if the insurance will cover the total cost of the ring. The ring also has a serial number.

The wedding date is April 22.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

The anchor Bible verse for those who worked on the locally produced streaming series Breaking Strongholds was John 1:5 Light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot over come it.

Thats exactly what were planning to do, shine a light on very dark issues, said Terry Weaver, who plays one of the characters in the series.

The eight-episode series from locally based Reflective Media Productions was filmed in Montgomery and it shines a light on teen suicide, depression, abandonment, spiritual darkness and more.

The series will be released everywhere on April 30.

But before the worldwide release, on April 16, episodes one and two will premiere in Montgomery, the shows official film location.

On YourConroeNews.com: Series produced in Montgomery works to combat teen suicide

Before the show, attendees can enjoy shopping at local vendor booths, behind-scenes-footage on a 200-square-foot LED screen, guided tours of film locations, photos with the actors and a VIP lounge. Attendees, vendors, and interested sponsors may visit www.breakingstrongholds.com for tickets and details. Admission is free but each attendee must register.

Gates open at 3:30 p.m. April 16 at the Montgomery Community Center, 1422 Liberty Street. Visit https://www.breakingstrongholds.com/ to register.

The show centers around a missing high-school teacher and the family of Detective Ethan James, whose son, unbeknownst to him, is considering suicide to escape the pain from the loss of his mother. This happens while a small Texas town is distracted and deceived by the arrival of world-renowned, best-selling author and thought leader, Redmond Quinn.

Breaking Strongholds is going to turn traditional faith-based media on its head, entertain millions of people and provide a message of hope to the brokenhearted, said Weaver who is also the Marketing Director of Reflective Media Productions.

Reflective Media Productions is a faith-based organization focused on creating impactful media resources that promote mental and spiritual wellness. The production group already has the films We Are Stronger and First Love to its credit.

Author, speaker, and film producer, Carla McDougal, is the founder of Reflective Life Ministries, Reflective Media Productions and the Stronger Alliance. Weaver said it was put on McDougals heart to address the topic of teen suicide.

Its a very dark issue thats not talked about a whole lot, but there are a lot of people who have been effected by it, Weaver said.

Weaver plays detective and father Ethan James. John Chance plays his teen son, Ryan James. Amy Kramr plays James daughter, Riley.

Teenagers, Ryan and Riley James, are left with unanswered questions after their mothers death five years before. Their father, Ethan, numbs the pain by pouring himself in to his work as a police detective, but misses the mark within the walls of his own home.

On YourConroeNews.com: Task force looks to battle rising suicide rates

Ryan struggles with depression and thoughts of suicide. With his moms death, an absent father, and rejection from his childhood sweetheart  in his mind, there is no other way out. Is this the end for Ryan? No. In his attempt to end it all, the most unlikely person halts his exit strategy.

Each episode weaves Gods truths into the storyline, directing those who are hurting to Jesus, deemed the only one capable of truly Breaking Strongholds.

Precinct 1 Justice of the Peace Wayne Mack is a co-founders of the Montgomery County Behavioral Health and Suicide Prevention Task Force launched in 2019.

He said this is a series everyone needs to see.

Breaking Strongholds brings light to very dark and devastating issues in our culture, he said. Families and society at large are affected by behavioral health issues, especially suicide.

In April 2021, the series pilot was accepted into a major international film festival in Canada.

Visit https://www.breakingstrongholds.com/ and https://www.reflectivemedia.org/ for more about this project. Also see the Reflective Media YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/c/ReflectiveMediaProductions/featured.

shernandez@hcnonline.com
Leaders of Britain and Canada were excluded in the European Council meeting scheduled in Brussels in an unprecedented impasse. It would have been fine, but President Joe Biden of the United States got an invitation to the Brussels event. Some are not keen on the snub when all world leaders should be on deck, not sidelined.

UK Forgotten by the EU council

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson was not invited to the Brussels meeting this week, and some say the presence of Joe Biden was not a good move, reported the Express UK.

In the last meeting of the EU, he went off-page several times, even seen napping and getting nudged by an aide in the COP 26 summit, states Metro UK.

Last Monday, the Prime Minister talked with EU Council President Charles Michel to assess the escalating conflict between Russia and Ukraine. However, the bloc's chief declined Johnson to cordially invite a major EU summit this week.

The UK leader also discussed with the US, France, Germany, and Italy, looking for a consensus on dealing with the ongoing conflict.

Downing Street released a statement about how the EU will deal with the Ukraine incursions. According to TASS, all the signatories agreed to commit to what needed to be done to support Ukraine in this time of crisis.

But other bloc members have reserved their support in the matter. What was agreed was to heap more sanctions on Moscow. Britain and Canada have to be roped in, not sidelined from the European Council meeting.

Read Also: Vladimir Putin Net Worth 2022: Does Anyone Know Russian President's Hidden Wealth?

President Biden will meet with EU council leaders in Brussels about more penalties on Russia but not direct military support. Not all-EU members are all in like Germany, and others are still dependent on Gazprom supplies.

The US president will be part of the discussions of the council. Another western leader, the Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, is visiting Brussels this week and, like Boris, got sidelines allegedly unceremoniously. He will not be part of the summit. Instead, an address by him to European Parliament on Wednesday with his plan in the bloc.

UK, Ukraine Compared

One report says that Johnsons spoke last weekend that the Ukrainians choose freedom and compare Brexit as one example. But Downing Street did not acknowledge that the British PM wanted to have a comparison of how Kyiv and London chose to leave the European Union.

According to a representative who made it clear, the speech had no relation to Ukraine. Chancellor Rishi Sunak stated they had not related; it is only a perception, and it references fighting for freedom. He added the ambassador from Kyiv was there at that time and liked the speech, even giving a standing ovation.

Health Secretary Sajid Javid went on to say how everyone, regardless of background or whatever circumstances, has a strong capacity for self-determination.

Javid made it clear that no attempt to connect to Ukraine, stating that all that is needed to see is the support given to Ukraine is enough to see the point and implied it was just a misunderstanding of what the UK prime minister said.

Leaders from Britain and Canada not getting invited to the European Council meeting should have been done by the EU Chief when everyone is needed.

Related Article: Russians Favor Military Action Against NATO Countries Deemed as Threat by Putin, New Poll Says

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Interview: Xi-Biden video call matters to China-U.S. relations -- pundit

09:27, March 23, 2022 By Sun Ding, Hu Yousong ( Xinhua

WASHINGTON, March 22 (Xinhua) -- The latest video call between Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Joe Biden is "important," as the dialogue matters to the management of the China-U.S. relationship, an American pundit has said.

"Dialogue at the leader-to-leader level is very important. Dialogue at other levels of the government is very important," Neysun A. Mahboubi, a research scholar of the Center for the Study of Contemporary China at the University of Pennsylvania, told Xinhua in a recent virtual interview. "We're seeing that happening."

On Friday, Xi and Biden had a candid and in-depth exchange of views on China-U.S. relations, the situation in Ukraine, and other issues of mutual interest. The two presidents, agreeing that the video call is constructive, directed their teams to promptly follow up and take concrete actions to put China-U.S. relations back on the track of steady development.

"There is already a narrative about how U.S. and Chinese administrations have been engaged in dialogue since the change of administration here in the United States," Mahboubi said.

"I think for those of us who are looking closely, we do see there's been this runway of more and more productive dialogue," he said, describing the online interaction between the two heads of state on Friday as "part of that trend of dialogue."

Besides, Mahboubi said that dialogue and exchanges among scholars, students, and businesses have been "an enormously important ballast" in China-U.S. relations.

The expert mentioned that he and his colleagues used to travel to China multiple times a year for academic exchanges before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, adding that "I would like to go to China," which is "beneficial to my work and my research."

"And I miss my friends in China," the scholar added, noting that bilateral exchanges have brought "a lot of value" to the people of the two sides.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the "Shanghai Communique," a historic document that became a key political foundation for the two countries to establish diplomatic ties.

Fifty years on, the U.S.-China relationship has once again come to a critical time. How this relationship develops will shape the world in the 21st century, Biden said in the video call with Xi.

The Chinese president underscored that there have been and will continue to be differences between China and the United States. "What matters is to keep such differences under control. A steadily growing relationship is in the interest of both sides," Xi added.

Mahboubi said "We know that the interests on both sides and the values and the priorities will always be different but enough of common ground can be reached that the relationship can remain stable," adding that "That's the best I think we can hope for."

(Web editor: Peng yukai, Liang Jun)
Australia's first space commander has admitted that the country lags in the rising military arena, saying that China and Russia's ability to shoot down satellites "scares" her.

Air Vice-Marshal Catherine Roberts leads the Defence Space Command, which brings together resources from the RAAF, Navy, and Army. "I am so happy to be launched, it's been a long time coming," she told reporters at the Air and Space Conference in Canberra.

Air Vice-Marshal Roberts now leads a team of over 100 people from a new headquarters in Canberra, where her unit is already building "kinetic and non-kinetic" technologies to strike out possible opponents' assets in space, which she sees as an important step.

"We need to operationalize it because we are so far behind," Roberts said, as per ABC News.

Australia is keeping a close watch on the Chinese satellite SJ21, which successfully eliminated another satellite from orbit earlier this year, alarming the US and its allies.

In November, Russia blasted one of its aging satellites in a test of anti-satellite missiles, scattering approximately 1,500 pieces of debris across the globe, which raised concerns.

"Well, it's not Darth Vader," Roberts quipped, admitting that she's a science fiction fan, The Guardian reports. Though the threat is real, it is more terrifying than the movies.

"I think the activities by China and Russia, which have been fairly well documented in the public domain, scare me," Air Vice-Marshal Roberts noted, saying Australia's lack of defensive mechanisms against such threats is alarming. Yet, the country has a "great ally" to help address the concern: the United States.

Read Also: [REPORT] Russia Admits Losing 10,000 Soldiers Within 4 Weeks of Ukraine Invasion, Following Airstrike in Mariupol

New Realm For Conflict

In a speech to the Royal Australian Air Force air and space power conference on Tuesday, Defence Minister Peter Dutton revealed details of the new military unit Defence Space Command.

He announced that Australia is planning to follow America's lead in establishing a 'Space Force' to protect crucial satellites from authoritarian states, such as Russia and China, that are developing "capabilities to threaten or damage space networks, target satellites, and destroy space systems."

The failed missile launch on the Kosmos 1408 was dubbed "unconscionable" by NASA and the administration of United States President Joe Biden, who warned the weapon constituted a threat to space exploration and scientific discovery, as per Daily Mail report.

Dutton believes that it is a "necessary endeavor" to create a military presence in space, which he called the "new realm for conflict," which has become increasingly crowded with around 7,500 satellites orbiting the globe at present.

The official noted that "Space is becoming more congested and is already contested" mainly due to the gradual blurring of " grey-zone activities" in the "boundaries between competition and conflict."

Donald Trump announced in 2018 he was directing the Pentagon to launch a 'Space Force'Last year, the British Government also confirmed the launch of the UK Space Command to protect key satellite assets.

Expert: Australia Should Be Careful In Its Space Endeavors

Dr. Cassandra Steer, a space law expert at the Australian National University, praised the creation of Space Command but urged that Australia must proceed with caution in increasing its footprint in space. She also thinks that there is a need for the country to assert its position as a "responsible space middle power."

"It's an exciting time for Australia as a middle power to be extending our footprint in space but we must be cautious of adopting any rhetoric, policy, or strategic language that may be interpreted as escalatory," said Dr. Steer.

Related Article: First NASA James Webb Telescope Image Shows 1 Star 18 Times: Why Is the Photo Blurry?

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
From photo cops and teaching entrepreneurship to ending mask mandates on public transportation, see how Manistee area lawmakers voted on recent measures.

 2022 Senate Bill 875, Ban "photo-cop red-light tickets

To prohibit the use of automated, unmanned, photographic traffic signal enforcement system ("photo-cops") to issue traffic citations for violating red lights or stop signs.

Sen. Curt. VanderWall, R-Ludington, supported the measure.

Passed 28 to 10 in the Senate

 2022 Senate Resolution 119, Senate call to end public transportation mask mandates

To resolve that the Michigan Senate calls for an immediate end to public transportation mask mandates. This applies to trains, planes and buses, but has no legal force.

Passed 22 to 16 in the Senate

Sen. Curt. VanderWall, R-Ludington, supported the measure.

 2021 House Bill 5566, Cap delinquent rent penalties

To permit late fees of up to $50 per month or 10% of the rental amount that property owner may collect in court from a delinquent tenant in an eviction case if these are specified in the lease, unless the owner demonstrates that a higher late fee is reasonable.

Passed 67 to 38 in the House

State Rep. Jack OMalley, R-Lake Ann, supported the measure

 2021 House Bill 4074, Encourage schools to teach free enterprise and entrepreneurship

To encourage public schools to offer a program of instruction on free enterprise and entrepreneurship for high school students.

Passed 21 to 17 in the Senate

Sen. Curt. VanderWall, R-Ludington, supported the measure.

 2021 House Bill 4074, Encourage schools to teach free enterprise and entrepreneurship

Passed 96 to 9 in the House

State Rep. Jack OMalley, R-Lake Ann, supported the measure

 2021 House Bill 5287, Revise township partisan special election detail

To replace references to township party committees in Michigan election law with county party committees. The bill specifically addresses designating partisan candidates for township board special elections.

Passed 102 to 3 in the House

State Rep. Jack OMalley, R-Lake Ann, supported the measure

 2022 House Bill 5804, Mandate veterinarian-client-patient relationships

To prohibit veterinarians from practicing unless it is within the context of a veterinarian-client-patient relationship as defined in the bill. See also House Bill 4912.

Passed 71 to 31 in the House

State Rep. Jack OMalley, R-Lake Ann, supported the measure

 2021 House Bill 4912, Authorize "alternative" veterinary practices and more

To revise various regulations in the law governing veterinary practices. Among other things the bill would prohibit veterinarians from practicing unless it is within the context of a veterinarian-client-patient relationship as defined in the bill; waive certain licensure mandates during a declared emergency or in response to a to a large-scale animal cruelty case; authorize the use of specified therapeutic philosophy and practice that is not considered part of conventional, Western veterinary medicine; and more.

Passed 85 to 17 in the House

State Rep. Jack OMalley, R-Lake Ann, supported the measure

 2021 House Bill 5659, Require certain nursing home death reports

To require state regulators to make biannual reports on certain nursing home facilities that reflect inspector feedback and input.

Passed 100 to 3 in the House

State Rep. Jack OMalley, R-Lake Ann, supported the measure

 2021 House Bill 5660, Require certain nursing home death reports

To require state regulators to make biannual reports on feedback and input from nursing home inspectors.

Passed 100 to 3 in the House

State Rep. Jack OMalley, R-Lake Ann, supported the measure
Pandemic emergency and medical leaders gave an update during Monday's city council meeting on the current state of the city, including a new variant overseas and the second booster shots.

According to Laredo Health Authority Dr. Victor Trevino, there has been a drop of cases and mortality, but a new variant in Europe, BA2, is 80% more transmissible than the omicron variant and is expected to reach throughout the U.S. in the coming weeks.

This does not mean that there are more mortalities as we have seen in previous waves, but we do anticipate like omicron that we see more cases in our community, he said. But thats not necessarily more hospitalization and death -- thats the good part -- as we saw in the earlier waves.

But the predictable and unfortunate news is about that 90% of the death will continue to be from people that are not vaccinated, so we need to see that as important.

As such, he predicts that with the new variant, the unvaccinated community will once again be the majority of the overflowing of the hospitals which would lead to diversions as the wave reaches Laredo. He reiterated that it will once again make treating patients not sick with COVID more difficult as the hospitals run out of space.

Despite this, the upcoming wave is anticipated to be lighter than previous surges, and health staff anticipate less cases cropping up.

But at the end, the best defense is going to be the vaccinations, specifically boosters, to reinforce our immunity, Trevino said. And because of the lack of our health care professionals that can treat COVID, this is the challenge our community has to see, and we need to address these issues and the waves that will continue be part of our endemic and other illnesses.

Councilmember Mercurio Martinez suggested an additional information campaign to reach the unvaccinated community and encourage them to get vaccinated once again.

In response, Laredo Health Director Dr. Richard Chamberlain said that the city health department is already sharing information through their social media channel about the risks of being unvaccinated, COVID-19s severity to the immunocompromised and the availability of a mobile unit to attend to the needs of the community.

On the topic of a booster shots and vaccines, Trevino indicated that a second booster shot has yet to be approved, but it is expected to be approved soon. The fourth booster shot is anticipated to boost antibody response, and as the new BA2 variant approaches Laredo, Trevino said the second booster will help protect residents.

Acknowledging that deaths have occurred to residents that were vaccinated and boosted, Trevino indicated that it is rare but still recommends receiving the second booster. Responding to Martinezs concern over how the Johnson & Johnson vaccine lasts longer than the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines due to the different technology used, Trevino said that it has less efficacy but lasts longer, as opposed to the MRNA vaccines that have higher efficacy but require boosters.

Regardless, boosters will be encouraged in preparation to the new variant.

Furthermore, Chamberlain said that the health department does have the J&J vaccine readily available, and Fire Department Chief Guillermo Heard has been in contact with the National Guard to facilitate vaccine drives through to the summer.

In regards to the vaccination efforts in Nuevo Laredo, Trevino said that vaccination drives are still being held at the outlets every weekend, and the binational program sees Mexican citizens bussed to the bridges to get vaccinated. He highlighted that 2,000 vaccines were administered on Monday.

Recognitions

Prior to the update, Saenz and the council recognized and presented keys to the city to Trevino, Chamberlain, Heard and Dr. Ricardo Cigarroa each.

While Cigarroa was unable to attend, Saenz said that the city was lucky to have the health experts guide the city staff and Laredo residents through the pandemic over the past two years. Lamenting the loss of the over 1,000 lives, a moment of silence was held to honor their memories.

With a humble speech, each attending honoree emphasized that the pandemic was still ongoing, with Heard saying that while it is not over yet, the recent low active cases allow for a sigh of relief. Regardless, each said that they want to share the recognition with every other team member and will continue to work to protect the city.

Saenz provided a brief rundown of the past two years and how the city, the pandemic response staff and its residents were impacted by COVID-19 and fought tooth and nail against it.

With news of the spread of a virus throughout China, Europe and Italy starting in late 2019, the first Laredo case was reported in March 2020. After a school staff member was infected and schools began to close, Saenz said that Laredo was the first city in the country to impose a mask mandate, beating out the state and other municipalities.

Through the combined expertise of Cigarroa, Chamberlain and Trevino, Saenz highlighted how their input emphasized the severity of the pandemic and set a foundation for how the city would respond. In spite of the tremendous pressure, heroic efforts were shown throughout the medical communities from doctors and nurses.

Ultimately, Heard, Chamberlain and Trevino understand that the fight isnt over, but all remained committed to work until the end.
NORWALK  A new endowment by the 460 Foundation in honor of Connecticut State Colleges and Universities President Terrence Cheng will benefit students at the local community college for years to come, officials said.

The 460 Foundation, based in Westport, donated $100,000 with the intent to endow a scholarship at the Norwalk Community College Foundation in honor of Cheng. The Cheng Family-460 Foundation Scholarship will be awarded annually to qualified Norwalk Community College students.

In so many ways, because he is a first-generation college student who emigrated to the U.S. as a young child, President Cheng embodies the spirit of NCC students, and all our community college students, said Norwalk Community College CEO Cheryl DeVonish at the recent announcement of the scholarship.

The first recipient of the scholarship will be Brandon Dass. Carrie Bernier, president and CEO of the NCC Foundation, called Dass an academically gifted young man.

We are thrilled to steward this scholarship fund as a part of our financial commitment to students at NCC, Bernier said. Given President Chengs long career in higher education, his commitment to Connecticuts college students, and his dedication to the community college system, this honor is well-deserved.

On having a scholarship named in his honor, Cheng said, The joy for me, and why I love coming to work every day, is that we are in a human business, the business of trying to make people better, and when we make people better, we make communities better. There is no value you can put on this work. The value is infinite. It means everything.

Contributions to the NCC Foundation can be made at ncc-foundation.org/donate.

emily.morgan@hearstmediact.com
It is perfectly natural for parents to be worried when their child's development seems to be lagging that of their peers. Of course, all children develop at their own pace. A child who takes a little longer to talk or walk is not necessarily disabled, and parental concerns are often overblown.

Nevertheless, as children age, some development disabilities become apparent. There is no avoiding the conclusion that your eight-year-old's inability to count to 10 is anything but a disability. And a birth injury might have been the cause.

The attorneys at Cohen, Placitella & Roth PC help parents understand their legal rights to compensation when medical malpractice injures their children. Below, we discuss some of the major brain injuries children can suffer and what red flags parents should watch out for.

What Causes Brain Injuries at Birth?

Labor can be difficult for mothers and children, and children might be injured due to a doctor's negligence. Some injuries stem from trauma, such as a doctor grasping the baby's head too forcefully with forceps. This type of trauma can cause bruising or even bleeding in the brain, which can then permanently damage brain tissue.

Other injuries stem from deprivation of blood or oxygen, both of which are essential for brain health. Umbilical cord prolapse or prolonged labor could deprive your child of oxygen for an extended period, causing injury. A careful doctor should have diagnosed fetal distress and responded promptly, but a negligent doctor's failure can lead to permanent brain damage.

Red Flags of a Birth Injury

Certain developmental disabilities are not apparent at the time of birth. Only as your child ages do you see that he or she is not developing like other children of a similar age. Some signs of injury include:

Difficulty talking or listening

Learning disabilities

Delayed walking

Motor control impairment

If your child was taken to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) after birth or if a doctor performed imaging tests soon after delivery, then there could have been an injury.

How to Uncover a Birth Injury

An experienced birth injury attorney will review all medical records to uncover evidence that a medical error occurred during delivery that injured your child's brain. Other evidence can include interviewing those who participated in the delivery (such as nurses) and obtaining a medical opinion from a doctor to determine the source of your child's disabilities.

Many years might have passed since your child was born. Indeed, many parents might not know their child has a disability until the child enters elementary school and struggles to count or even print their own name. This passage of time can make obtaining a complete picture of the delivery difficult. Nevertheless, parents should quickly meet with a seasoned lawyer to begin the evidence gathering process.

Compensation for Birth Injuries

Children whose disabilities stem from a birth injury face a lifetime of medical care and lost job opportunities. Some children will need prosthetics (like leg braces) or rehabilitation for decades. They might also be unable to work a full-time job due to cognitive impairments. We encourage all parents to meet with an attorney to review what compensation is available.

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
SPRINGFIELD  The Illinois Supreme Court is being asked to decide the extent to which property owners can block anyone else, including neighboring property owners, from accessing a river that runs through their property.

Its a question of law that Illinois courts have not fully addressed before and one over which different states have vastly different policies.

The case involves two property owners who own land along the Mazon River in Grundy County, a portion of which has been declared a National Historic Landmark because it has significant and unique fossil deposits dating back some 300 million years.

The Mazon River is designated as non-navigable under Illinois law, meaning it is not wide or deep enough to carry commercial traffic such as barges.

Adam Holm and his family own two noncontiguous parcels of land along the river, one of which is accessible by road and one of which is not.

Holm, who operates a fossil-hunting business, used a kayak to traverse down the river from one parcel of land to the other to gather fossils, passing through land owned by Peter Kodat, who also operates a fossil hunting business.

In September 2016, Kodat called the Grundy County Sheriffs Office to report two people kayaking in front of his property. Sheriffs officers responded and informed Holm that he was trespassing by kayaking on the river, even if he remained in the kayak and never went on land.

Holm then sued, asking the court to declare that as a riparian landowner, he had a right to access the full length of the river, even if that meant traversing across Kodats property.

Although there were allegations that Holm had, in fact, been taking fossils from Kodats property, that was never adjudicated in court.

At first, the trial court sided with Holm, saying he had a right to access the entire surface of the river. But Kodat asked the court to reconsider that decision. In March 2020, the court reversed itself and held that Kodat had an absolute right to exclude anyone from accessing the portion of the river that flowed across his property.

The 3rd District Court of Appeals upheld that decision.

At issue, according to Holms attorney Zachary Pollack, is whether a civil law principle should apply, allowing a riparian landowner to use the entire surface of a non-navigable river or whether courts should apply a common law principle that says riparian landowners have a right to exclude others from accessing the portion of a river that crosses their property.

Pollack noted that some states, like New Mexico, have laws that effectively make rivers and streams public property, thus prohibiting landowners from barring public access to those waters.

We don't have that here, he said during oral arguments Tuesday. So again, you're dealing with a different framework.

In Illinois, he said, courts have never directly addressed the question of the civil law principle that applies to accessing rivers, lakes and streams. Most decisions have dealt with access to lakes.

The most notable, he said, was a 1988 decision dealing with access to Lake Zurich, a private body of water in Lake County. In that case, the plaintiff, who owned property on the lake, operated a business that rented boats to the public for use on the lake and the court held that those customers were entitled to reasonable use of the entire lake, including the waters above other property owners portion of the lake bed.

But Kodats attorney Chad Layton argued that there are significant differences between a lake and a stream, and he said property owners along a stream like the Mazon River have a legitimate interest in keeping people off of their property.

They're asking to open up a huge can of worms in terms of reasonable use, he said. And there's no limitation proposed by the by the plaintiffs with respect to what type of use would be allowed, and the plaintiffs are asking for would allow kayakers, boaters. It would allow party barges. It would allow people with stereos to coast through somebody's backyard. It would allow water skiers. And there's no limit to how many times somebody could go back and forth across somebody's property.

The court is expected to issue its ruling on the case later this year.
Fire crews have solidified the time and date for a prescribed burn in Houston and are urging the public to not be alarmed if they see smoke rising near Memorial Park on Thursday.

Crews from the Houston Fire Department, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and the Houston Arboretum and Nature Center initially set a window for the burn any time between now and April 21. On Wednesday, they finally announced that the burn will take place this Thursday morning after conferring with meteorologists with the National Weather Service.

Jay R. Jordan / Chron staff

Thursday's weather will be perfect for starting fires. There's a slight breeze forecast for the Bayou City but the skies will otherwise be clear and temperatures will rise to the 70s by the afternoon. The prescribed burn is part of a two-fold effort to reduce the risk of urban wildfires and preserve the native grasslands inside the facility.

"This proactive approach is the most practical way to reduce dangerous accumulation of combustible fuels and protect our community by reducing the risk of unwanted wildfires in the future," said Houston Fire Chief Samuel Pena. "Our wildland firefighting group and emergency operations personnel, in collaboration with our safety partners, will ensure a professional controlled burn operation."

Here's what the burn looked like in 2021:

The fire will take place in the arboretum's grasslands area, a three-part section on the east side of the center.

The nature center provides sanctuary for both plant and animal species in each ecosystem and education about the region's natural lands before they were paved and developed into what we know today. In centuries past, nature would take care of the lands. But with modern development, there's a need to mimic some of the natural cycles that keep the ecosystems healthyespecially with fire.

"These prairie and grassland ecosystems evolved with fire," said Christine Mansfield, marketing and development manager at the arboretum. "As humans removed that largely, along with (the lack of) large grazers, this is an attempt to bring back a little bit of the natural tools that would keep these ecosystems healthy. Without them, succession happens and things naturally move from grassland states to savannah states to woodland states."

Firefighters are canvassing nearby neighborhoods to let residents and businesses know of the planned fire. They're urging anyone who sees smoke to not call 9-1-1 and clog up emergency lines.

Check the Houston Arboretum's website for more information.
San Antonio and the rest of Central Texas is a stretch of land mostly situated south of Tornado Alley, the region stretching from Waco to Dallas and northward to Oklahoma and Kansas. However, on the night of Monday, March 21, thunder shook window panes and reported tornadoes tore through the area as a result of a perfect storm weather event.

While San Antonio was one of the city's advised to be under a tornado watch, none landed within city limits. The events that took place just north of the city are considered a 1 in 15 or 20-year severe event for the Central Texas area, according to the National Weather Service. Damages from storms have been reported in Round Rock, Elgin, Jarrell, and Seguin. At this time, one casualty has been reported.

It's eerie timing as almost 25 years ago, a similar event blew through Central Texas. That storm produced a one of the deadliest tornadoes in Texas history since 1900. The storm devastated the town of Jarrell, north of Austin.

It was an unusual and deadly day. On May 27, 1997, residents of the town in northern Williamson County braced for projected gusts of wind up to 80 mph, lightning storms, and large hail.

During the late afternoon, a 3/4 mile-wide F5 tornado, one of the most powerful on record, ripped apart the Double Creek Estates subdivision, according to the National Weather Service. In this forecast area, two F3 tornadoes also touched down, one in Bell County and one in McLennan County, as well as seven smaller twisters across the region spanning Uvalde to Georgetown.

Gerald Gower, a Jarrell local, was interviewed by the Washington Post in the aftermath. He was in the midst of searching for his missing 11-year old son.

ERIC GAY/AP

"I've got some hope, but the way it looks . . .'' said Gower, a 47-year-old security guard, "Twisters just do crazy things to people.''

Jarrell, located about 100 miles south of Tornado Alley was a town of about 800 people at the time according to Express-News archives. The Jarrell tornado was reported to command wind speeds over 300 mph. It destroyed 40 homes, killed 27 people, including 12 children, then went on to take out 300 head of cattle and rip apart two 500-foot-wide sections of pavement on nearby county roads. Born out of an unprecedented 1997 tornado outbreak, the Jarrell tornado is the last confirmed F5 twister to have torn through Texas.

The earth was scoured bare, pavement was ripped from roadways, [and] homes and other buildings were completely pulverized, one initial ground report by Lon Curtis for the Weather Bulletin reads.

Homes were eventually rebuilt, but lasting havoc was wreaked onto the small community. According to Express-News archives, in May of 1998, a granite monument was dedicated in the memory of those who died in the center of town.

The National Weather Service explains that this day as particularly unusual and unexpected because it was "distinctly lacking two of the four crucial ingredients we typically look for on big severe weather events." It also followed a strange path, moving south to the southwest.

Steve Campbell/Houston Chronicle

Despite the peculiar nature of the weather system, over the course of six hours on that day in 1997, 20 documented tornadoes touched down between the Dallas/Fort Worth and Austin/San Antonio forecast "areas of responsibility."

Ten years following the Jarrell tornado, the Express-News checked in with residents of the town as they reflected on the events that changed the community forever.

RON HEFLIN/AP

David Harp was Principal at Jarrell Elementary School during the infamous storm and ten years following.

"I'm sure we'll all spend a few moments thinking about it. Everyone will stop to remember those folks, because about half of them were children we were all familiar with," said Harp in 2007. " And then we'll go on about our lives, and keep on building."
Amanda Edwards, the 2020 Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate and former member of the Houston City Council, is running for mayor of the city, a contest that is already garnering statewide attention despite being over a year away.

The field already includes two names well-known in Texas politics: veteran state Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, and Chris Hollins, the former Harris County clerk who oversaw election changes in 2020 that became a lightning rod for Republicans. They are competing to replace term-limited Mayor Sylvester Turner in the November 2023 election, which is nonpartisan.

As a native Houstonian and as someone who has a very deep passion and high level of experience in the city, my reason for running for mayor is to make sure that we are tackling some of the citys challenges but also seizing some of the opportunities, Edwards said in an interview. She added that Houston, the largest city in Texas and the fourth-biggest in the country, is at a crossroads.

Edwards said her top issues will be preventing flooding, increasing economic opportunity and combating crime. Like other major cities, she said, Houston has seen a rise in crime, and we need to make sure that we have enough law-enforcement officers in the communities, not just to improve response times but also create better relations with those communities.

Edwards served on the Houston City Council in an at-large position from 2016-20. She ran in the 12-way Democratic primary to challenge U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and came in fifth.

Edwards is entering what is likely to be a high-octane competition. Whitmire has represented Houston in the Senate since 1983, making him the most senior member, and he has $11 million saved up in his state campaign account. He just fended off a Senate primary challenge in March from Molly Cook, an emergency-room nurse who attacked him for running for reelection to the Legislature while also having his sights on City Hall.

Hollins, meanwhile, made a name for himself during a monthslong stint as interim Harris County clerk in the lead-up to the November 2020 election. He responded to the coronavirus pandemic by doing things like introducing drive-thru voting and trying to send mail-in ballot applications to every registered voter in the county. The Republican-led Legislature eventually outlawed those tactics as part of a hard-fought bill that Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law last year.

Edwards said she plans to stand out with her background in municipal finance, an issue she specialized in as a lawyer before entering public service. She also pointed to her time on the council and regular presence in the citys communities, instead of just going door-to-door when its time for campaign season. And noting the nonpartisan nature of the election, she said she intends to build a very broad coalition because of the issues.

After the 2020 U.S. Senate primary, Edwards endorsed one of the runoff candidates, state Sen. Royce West of Dallas. He lost to eventual nominee MJ Hegar by a small margin, and Cornyn defeated her by 10 percentage points that November.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2022/03/23/amanda-edwards-houston-mayor/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.
Alex Vitale, author of "The End of Policing," claims that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) helped make his book a national bestseller this week. The Texas senator only displayed the book for a few seconds while questioning Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson about critical race theory Tuesday, saying the book called for "the end of policing and advocacy for abolishing police."

However, Vitale says that was enough to shoot his book to the top of Amazon's Government Social Policy section. "Thanks to Ted Cruz, The End of Policing is now the #1 Best Seller in Gov. Social Policy," Vitale tweeted. "Every purchase now comes with a vial of Ted Cruz tears."

Vitale also shared an image of Cruz holding up the book and likened it to being on "the best enemies list since Nixon," later adding that the Republican's CRT tirade was "the best endorsement yet for 'The End of Policing.'"

Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez also took note of the new condition of the book, tweeting "When you're showing off the next book you want banned with the perfect edges and everything to underscore to everyone that you haven't actually read it."

Originally published in 2017, "The End of Policing" argues that the central problem of policing and racial justice is the dramatic expansion in the role of police over the last 40 years, according to a description of the book. Vitale's book draws on firsthand research from around the world about how the implementation of alternatives to policing  such as drug legalization, regulation and harm reduction  has led to reductions in crime, spending and injustice.

Vitale stated on social media that while he's honored to be included in Cruz's list of Critical Race Theory texts, it seems to be another example of the senator's "intentional confusing of a specific school of legal scholarship and the broader effort to shed light on the nature and history of racism in America."

"I can only hope that the Senator's misguided efforts to suppress this history will backfire and inspire a generation of young people to seek out these ideas that are all too often absent in American schools," Vitale wrote.

During the hearing, in which Cruz also asked Jackson if she thought babies were racist, the Republican brandished other books, including "Critical Race Theory: An Introduction" by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic and "Antiracist Baby" by Ibram X. Kendi, as he questioned Jackson about recommended reading lists at Georgetown Day School where she serves as a member of the board of trustees.

In response, Kendi tweeted "You know Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson has impeccable credentialsand you know you're doing the workwhen Ted Cruz questions her about your books since he cant touch her record."

As of Wednesday, "Antiracist Baby" is currently one of the bestselling children's books on Amazon in multiple categories, including the bestselling children's book on prejudice and racism as well as the bestselling children's book on difficult discussions.
Marion, IN (46952)

Today

Cloudy with occasional rain during the afternoon. High 58F. Winds E at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 90%..

Tonight

Periods of rain. Low 52F. Winds E at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 80%. Rainfall around a quarter of an inch.
Belarus might "soon" join Russia in its war against Ukraine, according to US and NATO officials, and the nation is already making moves in that direction.

Belarus is becoming more "likely" to join the battle, according to a NATO military officer. "Russian President Vladimir Putin requires assistance, and any assistance would be welcome," the person added.

Belarusian Forces Form Near Ukraine

According to a Belarusian opposition source, Belarusian military formations are ready to deploy into Ukraine as soon as the next few days, with tens of thousands of troops on standby. Given the consequences of another nation joining the conflict, this source believes it will have a less military impact than a geopolitical impact.

Separately, a senior NATO intelligence officer stated that the Belarusian government is "creating the conditions to justify a Belarusian invasion against Ukraine," CNN reported.

Thousands of Russian troops gathered in Belarus before Russia invaded Ukraine last month, which both nations said was for training exercises. In reaction to the conflict, the United States and Europe imposed sanctions on both Russian and Belarusian leaders, including Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.

Russian forces were able to launch a direct assault on Kyiv in concert with two additional lines of attack from eastern Ukraine, which borders Russia, thanks to the mobilization of roughly 30,000 troops into Belarus under the cover of joint military drills.

According to a senior European source, this staging ground allows them to "maintain this pressure on western Ukraine and the risk of cutting off humanitarian supply to Ukraine," especially if Putin can persuade Belarusian tyrant Alexander Lukashenko to send his army into the war.

Ukrainian officials believe such a scheme is in the works "in the Volyn direction," the northwestern Ukrainian province where Ukraine's, Poland's, and Belarus' borders intersect.

A frontal attack by Belarus on Ukraine would exacerbate the rift between the two nations. Putin has referred to Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus as "a triune people," a term that indicates he wants to control both nations and reflects true sociological and cultural ties between the countries.

Per The Washington Examiner, the departure of the Belarusian ambassador was marked by a heated altercation with a Ukrainian border police officer. The crossing guard urged the leaving envoy to bring a bag of money - "these 30 pieces of silver" - back to the Belarusian border officials, according to a video of the altercation.

Read Also: China Eastern Plane Crash: Horrifying Video Shows Boeing 737 Jet Nosediving, Erupting Into Flames

Russia Loses 10% of Military Force

According to The Independent, the US intelligence claims Ukraine is "able and willing" to regain a part of its land after Russia apparently lost more than 10% of its military force.

It comes after the Ukrainian military said on Tuesday that it had retaken Makariv, a strategically important suburb north of Kyiv, and thwarted an offensive on Mykolaiv, a Black Sea coastal city immediately east of Odesa.

On Tuesday, Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelensky, told the Italian parliament that his nation was "on the verge of surviving" the conflict before saying that Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to "break through" to the rest of Europe.

Over the last 24 hours, Russian ships have been bombarding Mariupol from the Sea of Azov, according to a senior US defense official. There were roughly seven Russian ships in the region, including several warships, a minesweeper, and a couple of landing ships.

The US did not observe any evidence that ships in the Black Sea were shooting on Odesa, as they had done a few days previously, according to the official. According to the authorities, the US estimates that Russia has roughly 21 ships in the Black Sea, including a dozen surface combatant warships and some troop-carrying landing ships.

Mariupol is an important port for Ukraine, and it is located on a border between Russia and Crimea. Residents attempt to evacuate the city after a weeks-long siege that has left them without food, water, or power.

Related Article: Russia-Ukraine War: Vladimir Putin Agrees To Meet Volodymyr Zelensky; Ukraine President Warns of World War 3 if Peace Talks Fail

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
We're always interested in hearing about news in our community. Let us know what's going on!

Go to form
Pharmaceutical company Pfizer has been forced to recall blood pressure medications due to alleged carcinogen content, an agent that could cause cancer in individuals and be made naturally.

The company has ordered 11 batches of blood pressure medication quinapril and quinapril HCI/hydrochlorothiazide made by Pfizer, sold under a brand name, and distributed as authorized generics to be recalled. The brand name for quinapril is Accuretic, and six lots were recalled while four lots of generic HCI/hydrochlorothiazide were ordered to be returned.

Pfizer's Blood Pressure Medications

The primary reason for the decision is that the nitrosamine, N-nitroso-quinapril, is above the Federal Drug Association's (FDA) accepted daily intake level. While Pfizer's recall notice said that nitrosamine is commonly found in water and food, it also noted that "these impurities may increase the risk of cancer" if individuals are exposed to them in great quantities over a period of time.

The medications are usually prescribed to individuals for treatment of hypertension in an attempt to reduce the risk of cardiovascular events, such as strokes and myocardial infarctions. Pfizer said that the recall was voluntary, noting that it has not received any reports of adverse events related to the drugs, as per NPR.

But for people who have and are using the recalled tablets, it does not mean you will immediately or in the near future get cancer. The best thing to do would be to stop taking them and make an appointment with your healthcare provider to discuss a different treatment to mitigate the chances of adverse effects on your health.

Read Also: COVID-19 Infection Raises Likelihood of Developing Type 2 Diabetes, New Research Found in Review of Patient Records

For consumers and patients who are taking the recalled drugs, Sedgwick can be called as it can inform you how to return your tablets and get a refund. For distributors or wholesalers, you should contact your customers and ask them to return the drugs to you and then coordinate with Sedgwick for the recall.

Cancer-Causing Impurities

According to the Miami Herald, if taking the drug causes any sort of problem with your health, you should notify a medical professional and let the FDA know through its MedWatch Adverse Event page. You can also fill out a form to describe the situation before notifying the drug company.

Nitrosamines are frequently found in cured and grilled meats, dairy products, and vegetables, making them extremely common. Despite the heightened risk for cancer, Pfizer said that there are no known immediate risks to patients who are taking the drug.

The pharmaceutical company also recalled its anti-smoking treatment, Chantix, last year due to high levels of nitrosamine found in the pills. In Canada, the company also recalled Accuretic earlier this month for the presence of the same impurities, Reuters reported.

Pfizer is known to be one of the manufacturers of the live-saving coronavirus vaccines and is at the forefront of the fight against the health crisis. Both it and another manufacturer, Moderna, said it was already time for another coronavirus booster shot to fend off the rising number of infections, but vaccine experts are skeptical of the idea.

Related Article: COVID-19 in the US: Dr. Anthony Fauci Warns Potential Surge in Cases Amid 'Blip' in the UK

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Sorry, no valid subscriptions were found for this Publication. Please select from an option below to start a subscription.

SUBSCRIBE TODAY!

24 Hour Access
Oklahoma City, OK (73106)

Today

A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible early. Cloudy skies early, then partly cloudy this afternoon. High 64F. Winds NW at 10 to 20 mph..

Tonight

Clear skies. Low 48F. Winds WNW at 10 to 20 mph.
Raspunsul la criza refugiatilor: Apel de propuneri, lansat de MAD-Aid in parteneriat cu Camera de Comert Britanica din Moldova
Primeste notificari pe email

Contractare si Achizitie Bunuri Anunturi de Angajare Granturi - Finantari Burse de studiu Stagii Profesionale Oportunitati de voluntariat Toate Articolele
Jo Elvin will join Children with Cancer as chief executive next month after working in the media for 20 years.

Elvin is currently the editor of the Mail on Sundays YOU magazine and previously edited Glamour magazine.

David Gibbs, chair of Children with Cancer, said: We are absolutely delighted to welcome Jo onboard.

She has in-depth business knowledge, credibility and experience, leadership skills as well as an exemplary work ethic.

One of the many reasons we appointed Jo was her outstanding aptitude for understanding what people are passionate about, which will be invaluable in future collaborations, helping us to continue to raise both awareness and donations for the charity.

Children with Cancer UK had income of 13.5m for the year ending December 2020. This was nearly 4m less than the previous year, with the charity attributing the drop to the impact of the pandemic.

The charity was founded in 1988 by Marion and Eddie OGorman in memory of their children.

Elvin said: It is a privilege to be stepping into my new role as the CEO of Children with Cancer UK. The OGorman family have built an organisation that has been saving young lives for decades.

I am very much looking forward to the next chapter in my working life which will include guarding and building on that legacy. Together with our excellent trustees, we aim to take the charity to even greater successes in raising vital funds for groundbreaking research into childrens cancer, as well as doing everything in our power to be there for patients and their families when they need us most.

sign up to receive the Civil Society News daily bulletin here . For more news, interviews, opinion and analysis about charities and the voluntary sector,




US attorneys investigating the theft of Ashley Bidens diary during the 2020 election campaign compelled Microsoft to turn over emails from nine accounts associated with Project Veritas, a conservative group known for hidden-camera sting operations designed to embarrass liberals and mainstream news outlets, according to a court filing from Veritas that Microsoft confirmed.

According to the filing, beginning in November 2020, under Attorney General Bill Barr, attorneys for the Department of Justice obtained secret warrants, nondisclosure orders, and a subpoena demanding Microsoft share emails and contact information from the Veritas members, who use Microsoft cloud software.

In a motion filed yesterday, Veritas condemned the surveillance as overly broadin one case stretching back eight months before the group began pursuing the diaryand asked a judge to halt use of the information obtained via Microsoft.

A Microsoft employee shared the information with Veritas earlier this month after the nondisclosure orders were lifted. It is our policy to always push back on legal demands for enterprise customer data and to notify the customer as soon as were legally able if were forced to comply with such orders, said a Microsoft spokesperson. We did both in this instance.

The American Civil Liberties Union lent Veritas its support, with a caveat. We deplore Project Veritass deceptions, and we dont have a full picture of the governments investigation, said Brian Hauss, a senior ACLU staff attorney. But were concerned that the precedent set by this case could have serious consequences for press freedom.

A Department of Justice spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment.

Sign up for CJR 's daily email

James OKeefe, Veritass founder, says his organization did purchase the Biden diary, which it ultimately did not publish. But he said in an interview that Veritas was not directly involved in its theft, and is therefore protected under the law.

If it was illegal for someone to receive a document that a source stole, then you should incarcerate all people at the Washington Post and New York Times, OKeefe said by phone yesterday.

Government lawyers seem to be suggesting that Veritass involvement was more direct, and they have resisted categorizing the group as journalists. There is no First Amendment protection for the theft and interstate transport of stolen property, they wrote in a filing. In November 2021, roughly a year after the first subpoena of Microsoft, a federal judge in the Southern District of New York found probable cause to authorize a search warrant of OKeefes apartment related to federal crimes including conspiracy to transport stolen property across state lines and interstate transportation of stolen property. Searches were also executed at the homes of two other Veritas members.

A month after the raids, a judge agreed to appoint an independent third party, known as a special master, to review the materials seized by FBI agents. But even after the raids were highly publicized, US attorneys sought to extend the nondisclosure orders against Microsoft.

Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today

Caleb Pershan is a CJR fellow.
A group of Democratic lawmakers in Congress is proposing a new type of stimulus payment to aid Americans coping with rising gas prices.

The Gas Rebate Act of 2022 was proposed by Reps. Mike Thompson (D-California), John Larson (D-Connecticut), and Lauren Underwood (D-Illinois).

In every month that the national average gas price surpasses $4 a gallon, the plan suggested giving Americans an "energy rebate" of $100 per month, with an extra $100 per dependent for the remainder of 2022.

How To Be Eligible for a Gas Rebate?

According to Al.com, the rebate would be calculated in the same way as the most recent Economic Impact Payment:

Single filers earning less than $75,000 will pay $100, with the tax phased out at $80,000.

Joint filers earning less than $150,000 pay $100, with the tax phased out at $160,000.

Because the plan does not specify how the payments would be paid and Congress has been unwilling to begin any other sort of stimulus payments, approval seems uncertain. The law comes after a month of record-high gas prices, with no relief in sight at the pump. The national average price of a gallon of gas in the United States is $4.24 as of today.

With Americans still reeling from record-high gas prices, a few suggestions have circulated in Congress and elsewhere to provide some comfort to motorists.

Los Angeles became the first major city in the United States to reach a gas price of $6 or more on Tuesday. According to GasBuddy, the national average gas price in the United States has begun to fall after reaching a high of $4.35 per gallon on March 10.

The Stop Gas Price Gouging Tax and Rebate Act was sponsored by Rep. Peter DeFazio of Oregon. "The measure would impose a windfall profit tax on excessive corporate earnings and return the cash to American consumers in the form of a tax refund," according to the bill's summary.

Companies will pay a one-time 50 percent windfall profit tax in 2022 if their adjusted taxable income (ATI) surpasses 110 percent of their average ATI between 2015 and 2019, according to his plan.

DeFazio said the windfall profit tax revenue will be returned to consumers in the form of a monthly, advanced, and refundable tax credit that will be tapered down as income rises.

According to Fox32, DeFazio said that the criteria for qualifying are the same as those used for stimulus payments under the American Recovery Plan (ARP). Democratic state legislators in California proposed a $400 gas rebate for every taxpayer. The gas rebate would be funded with $9 billion from the state's budget surplus, and it would pay the 51.1-cent-per-gallon gas tax for a year of weekly fill-ups for a car with a 15-gallon gas tank.

Read Also: Increase in Food Prices Make Low-Income Americans Turn for SNAP Benefits; Here Are the States Offering Aid in 2022

Would Gas Rebate Become Monthly Stimulus Check?

To be clear, a gas rebate would not be available to everyone. Instead, eligibility would be the same as it was at the most recent stimulus check cycle. In view of the better economy, lawmakers have been reluctant to provide stimulus aid. Even with today's high gas prices, they may not be quick to send out a gas rebate, as per The Motley Fool.

If you're having trouble covering your gas expenses, it might be worth changing your driving habits. That might imply a more planned approach to your errands. Perhaps you could organize a carpool with your coworkers to share the cost of commuting to and from work.

It's also a good idea to use a credit card that gives you a lot of cash back when you buy gas. Some cards, for example, give you 3% back at the pump; so if yours only gives you 1%, you might want to apply for a new one.

Unfortunately, we may be facing many more months of exorbitant gas prices. We can't expect a stimulus payment to help offset those expenditures despite Congress' best efforts. The best thing that consumers can do is to plan ahead when it comes to driving and try to save as much money as possible by utilizing the right credit cards.

Related Article: Stimulus Check New York: $1000 Available for New Yorkers [Eligibility, Requirements, How to Apply]

@YouTube

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
The Russians were hunting us down. They had a list of names, including ours, and they were closing in. Thus begins a gut-wrenching, and widely shared, reflection by Mstyslav Chernovan Associated Press reporter who, along with his colleague Evgeniy Maloletka, was the last international journalist inside the heavily besieged city of Mariupolon his coverage of the carnage that Russian forces have wreaked there. Chernov and Maloletka set off for Mariupol a month ago today, arriving early the next day, one hour before Russia invaded Ukraine. Few people believed a war was coming, and by the time most realized their mistake, it was too late, Chernov recalls. One bomb at a time, the Russians cut electricity, water, food supplies, and finally, crucially, the cellphone, radio, and television towers. The few other journalists in the city got out before the last connections were gone and a full blockade settled in. The deaths, he says, came fast.

In the month since Russia attacked, brave journalists like Chernov and Maloletka, serving both Ukrainian and international outlets, have kept the world apprised of the horrors of the war, a commitment to documentation for which several colleagues have already lost their lives. Their efforts have been aided by Ukrainians daily acts of citizen journalism on social media. They have been supplemented, too, by distant reporters and researchers who have harnessed open-source intelligence to track the broader shape of the war. Even before it began, analysts were able to observe Russias troop buildup around Ukraines borders; as BuzzFeed has reported, the Middlebury Institute, in California, spotted that Russia had invaded before Putin announced it, after noticing an apparent traffic jam on Google Maps. Analysts like those at Middlebury have since been tweeting their findings on the timescale of rolling news, BuzzFeed noted, while satellite companies have provided actual rolling-news outlets with near real-time images of troop movements, strikes and their damage, and more.

New from CJR: For journalists, Ukraine is a WhatsApp war

The widespread availability of such sources, especially compared with prior wars, has reduced our collective reliance on official gatekeepers. As BuzzFeed reported, though, the world of private satellite imagery is not immune from concerns about the strategically selective publication of evidence. (Some of the same companies providing imagery to news outlets have separate contracts with the US military.) And, of course, osint cannot tell us everything. Bloombergs Marc Champion noted recently that while analysts were quick to spot the dispersal of a Russian military column north of Kyiv two weeks ago, for example, it was harder to say what it meant. Franz-Stefan Gady, a research fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in the UK, told Champion that despite unprecedented levels of monitoring, the fog of war still applies.

This observation strikes me as being more generally applicable. News consumers have access to a lot of information coming out of Ukraine. But key details remain elusive or unconfirmed. And, in this age of information overload, the sheer breadth of sources available to uswith their competing observations and analyses, not to mention motivescan itself feel disorienting. I wrote often before the war about the need for caution and healthy skepticism in assessing claims about the Russian threat amid a complex and multi-sided information war. A month after the threat actualized, that need clearly persists, as does the information war, with Russia pumping out industrial quantities of brutally dishonest propaganda about its actions and Ukrainian leaders countering it with a dexterity that seems to have surprised many observers.

In the run-up to Russias invasion, US intelligence agencies took the unusual step of briefing the public on their (often dire) assessments of Putins plans, typically without evidence, despite reporters (sometimes exasperated) requests for it. The US intelligence community, it goes without saying, has a checkered recent pastsee: the Iraq war and, much more recently, the fall of Afghanistan to the Talibanand so the exasperation was warranted. This time, however, the warnings proved correctand if the Biden administrations decision to shout about them didnt ultimately deter Putin, it did at least pre-bunk parts of his casus belli by shining a light on them. US intelligence, as one recent headline put it, has consequently enjoyed something of a reputational renaissance, not least in the eyes of many journalists and experts. News reports about various aspects of the war are still leaning into official warnings on a daily basis. (One example from yesterday: that Belarus might soon send troops to join Russias war.)

Sign up for CJR 's daily email

The insight of Western officials, while apparently impressive so far, is not perfect, however. (US and nato leaders are reportedly struggling, for example, to gauge the status of peace talks between Russia and Ukraine.) Its also worth remembering that while the Biden administrations pre-invasion assessments were broadly, and in some cases specifically, right, they were sometimes off. From the outside, its tricky to assess, in such cases, whether the intelligence erred or whether its accurate disclosure prompted Putin to reconsider his options. Even the latter scenario, however, is a reminder that the US was, and remains, an actor in an information war here, not a neutral observer. Its warnings coming to fruition doesnt change that fact.

Nor is the information war easy to conceptually separate from the physical conflict. On Saturday, for example, Russia claimed that it had used a hypersonic missilea weapon that flies very fast and is adept at evading missile defenses, but is not known to have ever been used in combatto destroy a Ukrainian munitions store. Headlines in various Western outlets relayed the claim or treated it as fact; CNN was quick to report that US officials had confirmed the use of the weapon, and one of its military analysts cited it as a potential game-changer. In the days that followed, however, Lloyd Austin, the defense secretary, rejected the game-changer characterization, while an anonymous defense official told reporters that the US had not independently confirmed usage. Numerous experts suggested, given the apparent details of the strike, that if Russia did fire such weapons, it may have done so more to sow fear than for any concrete military advantage. We media types risk doing Russias propaganda work for it by inflating the significance of this supposed launch, Politicos Alexander Ward and Quint Forgey warned on Monday. (Even without adding hype, the word hypersonic, repeated without context, sounds scary enough.)

Pretty much since the war began, we have also seen conflicting assessmentsfrom Western officials, outside analysts, and media commentatorsas to who is winning the war, and what metrics we might use to judge that. This question, too, is wired into the information war. Take troop losses. Last week, US intelligence reported that seven thousand Russian soldiers may have been killed to that pointa staggering figure that officials nonetheless couched as a conservative estimate. This week, an article pegging the figure nearer to ten thousand appeared on the website of a pro-Kremlin tabloid and stayed there for six hours before it was taken down. The paper blamed hackers. The Kremlin declined to comment and claimed not to have any information on casualty numbers. The last time it offered a count, on March 2, it was 498.

Civilian casualty numbers are hard to pin down as well, with the true number likely much higher than the confirmed count, not least in Mariupol, where the barbaric Russian blitz continues. Accounts of the horror are still making their way out, not least via those who have escaped it, but communications in the city remain crippled, and the situation is murky. Nor are Chernov and Maloletka still there to document it; they were evacuated by Ukrainian soldiers who feared that Russia might capture the journalists and force them to publicly disavow their reporting, which might have fatally undermined the strongest evidence the world has of Russian atrocities there.

Chernov notes that Russias information blockade in Mariupol served two purposes: impunity for Russian crimes, and seeding chaos. Even residents of the city have lacked a clear picture of whats going on; by the time Chernov left, some had taken to believing lies that Russia was feeding in via the only radio broadcast left in operation. Others relied on Chernov and Maloletka to tell them what was going on with the war beyond their city limits in the absence of other news sources, all as the journalists worked to send their stories in the opposite direction. We were the last journalists in Mariupol, Chernov says. Now there are none.

Below, more on the war:



Other notable stories:

ICYMI: The asymmetric interest in Ketanji Brown Jacksons nomination

Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today

Jon Allsop is a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Review of Books, Foreign Policy, and The Nation, among other outlets. He writes CJRs newsletter The Media Today. Find him on Twitter @Jon_Allsop.
The Delaware Supreme Court has ruled that solar panel manufacturer First Solar, which faced two securities class actions, is not entitled to have its insurance policies cover both because the later-issued of its policies excluded coverage for related actions.

The state Supreme Court reached the same conclusion that the state Superior Court did in its ruling that was appealed by First Solar. But the two courts used different standards for assessing the relatedness of the two actions for the purposes of satisfying the exclusion provision

The Superior Court used a fundamentally identical standard in concluding that the two securities claims were sufficiently related to be excluded under the second policy. The Supreme Court said that a generic fundamentally identical measure is not the correct standard for judging relatedness; rather, the right way is to follow the actual language in the policies. In so ruling, the high court sided with the insurers.

The case (First Solar v. National Union Fire Insurance Co. and XL Specialty Insurance) involves March 2012 and June 2015 class action lawsuits filed against First Solar alleging that it violated federal securities laws by making false or misleading public disclosures.

The plaintiffs in the original March 2012 suit, known as the Smilovits action, alleged that from April 30, 2008, to February 28, 2012, First Solar: misrepresented that it had a winning formula for reducing manufacturing costs so rapidly and dramatically as to make solar power competitive with fossil fuels; perpetuated [its] fraudulent self-portrayal by concealing and misrepresenting the nature and extent of major manufacturing and design defects in [its] solar modules; misrepresented its financials; artificially inflated its stock prices; allowed individuals to engage in insider trading; manipulated the cost-per-watt metrics; and understated its expenses.

National Union Fire Insurance Co. provided insurance coverage for the Smilovits action under a 201112 claims-made directors and officers insurance policy with a $10 million limit.

On June 23, 2015, while the Smilovits action was pending, First Solar stockholders who opted out of the Smilovits action filed what has been referred to as the Maverick action, alleging violations of the same federal securities laws as the Smilovits action, as well as violations of Arizona statutes and claims for fraud and negligent misrepresentation.

When the plaintiffs filed the Maverick action in 2015, First Solar had a $10 million claims made primary policy with National Union for 201415 and a $10 million layer of excess coverage with XL Specialty Insurance Co. The 201415 primary policy excluded coverage for related claims, which the policy defined as claims alleging, arising out of, based upon or attributable to any facts or wrongful acts that are the same as or related to those alleged in a claim made against an Insured.

Both courts determined that the related claim exclusion barred coverage under the 201415 policies if the Maverick action is a related claim to the Smilovits action.

At first, First Solar obtained defense coverage for the Maverick action under its 201112 policies. In 2015, First Solar exhausted all coverage under the 201112 National Union policy. Chubb, the excess insurer next in line after the 201112 National Union policy, accepted coverage of the Maverick action because the new Maverick litigation is based on the same facts and circumstances of the previously noticed Smilovits class action complaint, and as such, Chubb treated this Maverick matter as a related claim. Chubb provided coverage for the Maverick action as the litigation progressed.

After years of litigation and after incurring more than $80 million in defense costs, First Solar settled the Smilovits action on January 5, 2020, for $350 million. All primary and excess insurers under the 201112 policies paid their policy limits.

Having settled the Smilovits action and exhausted all coverage under the 201112 policies, First Solar began to arbitrate a settlement of the Maverick action seeking coverage under the 201415 primary policy and the XL Specialty policy. After the insurers denied coverage under the policies, First Solar filed suit in the Superior Court asking for declaratory relief that the insurers were obligated to provide coverage under the policies.

The courts focused on the relatedness of the Smilovits and Maverick actions and whether the Maverick action fell within the primary policy exclusion for related claims.

First Solar argued that the Smilovits action and the Maverick action were not sufficiently related because they involved different operative factsdifferent plaintiffs, conduct, causes of action, and time periods.

The insurers responded that the Maverick action arose out of the Smilovits action and raised the same claims against the same parties in all material respects.

Relying on previous cases, the Superior Court reasoned that a complaint is related to or aris[es] out of a previous complaint if the claims are fundamentally identical. Fundamentally identical lawsuits, according to this court, require the same subject and common facts, circumstances, transactions, events, and decisions. The Superior Court noted that there must be more than thematic similarities for complaints to be sufficiently related under similar policy language because the words arising out of imply a causal connection.

The Superior Court concluded that the Maverick action was fundamentally identical to the Smilovits action in that the lawsuits stemmed from the same original suit, were against identical defendants, overlapped in time, contained allegations of the same securities law violations, and relied on the same specific disclosures. Also, the court found that the underlying wrongful conduct allegedly inflating First Solars stock price by misrepresenting cost-per-watt metrics and falsifying financial reportswas the same. While there were some differences, including the theory of damages claimed by the Maverick plaintiffs, the Superior Court held that the differences did not outweigh the similarities and thus Maverick was excluded as a related claim under the policies.

On appeal, First Solar argued that the Superior Court ruled incorrectly, claiming that the actions merely shared thematic similarities not fundamental identity.

The insurers, however, countered that the Maverick action meets the fundamentally identical standard because it is directed to the same wrongful act and fraudulent scheme as the Smilovits action. They further argued that the fundamentally identical standard had been taken out of context by the Superior Court. According to the insurers, the meaning of related to should come from the language of the insurance policy.

In response, First Solar contended that the plain language of the primary policys relatedness standard would render coverage illusory.

On appeal, the Supreme Court said it agreed with the insurers that the Superior Courts use of the fundamentally identical standard disregards the plain language of the insurance policy. The court said that the error can be traced to a misunderstanding over the meaning of arising out of or related to for coverage of related complaints and claims. Whether a claim relates back to an earlier claim is decided by the language of the policy, not a generic fundamentally identical standard, the high court stated.

The primary policys broad related claim provision states that a related claim is a claim alleging, arising out of, based upon or attributable to any facts or wrongful acts that are the same as or related to those that were alleged in a claim made against an insured.

Thus, the question before the Supreme Court on appeal became whether the Maverick action raised claims that aris[e] out of, [are] based upon or attributable to any facts or wrongful acts that are the same as or related to the Smilovits action.

The high court found that both actions are based on the same alleged misconductFirst Solars misrepresentations about the cost-per-watt of its solar power. The court assembled a side-by-side comparison of the two complaints to make its point that while there might be minor differences between the claims, these were not meaningful to the relatedness inquiry:

In other words, both actions allege that First Solar misrepresented its ability to achieve grid parity. Both actions allege that First Solar concealed defects in the design and manufacturing of modules and panels. Both actions allege that First Solar manipulated its costs, including cost-per-watt metrics. Both actions allege that First Solar issued false financial reports in violation of GAAP. Both actions allege that First Solars deceptions came to light on February 28, 2012.

Although the actions are not identical in their claims or evidence, absolute identity is not required, the court found.

Using the primary policys related claim definition, the Maverick action raised claims alleging, arising out of, based upon or attributable to any facts or wrongful acts that are the same as or related to those raised in the Smilovits action, the court said in concluding that the Maverick claim is excluded from coverage and affirming the lower courts ruling.
A Montana attorney who helped win a $36.5 million jury verdict for a worker exposed to asbestos at the Libby Mine is asking a federal court to void a loss-portfolio deal that transferred liability for hundreds of similar claims from Zurich American Insurance Co. to a Bermuda-based reinsurer.

Allan M. McGarvey of Kalispell has filed a federal lawsuit that seeks a ruling that Zurichs retrocession reinsurance agreement with Enstar Group Ltd. violates Montana public policy. He said Zurich and Enstar have unreasonably failed to engage in settlement negotiations.

The lawsuit seeks an injunction that to block any third-party influence over the mine workers claims and force Zurich to pay medical, hospice and other expenses from the workers illnesses.

If I succeed, the acquirers of this liability lose control, McGarvey said during a telephone interview.

Zurich became liable for hundreds of asbestosis claims when it acquired Maryland Casualty Co., which provided workers compensation insurance to W.R. Grace and its vermiculite mine in Libby, Montana. In 2019, Zurich transferred liability for those claims, along with $623 million in loss reserves, to Enstar in exchange for a $507 million fee, according to reports to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Enstar describes itself as the industrys largest stand-alone run-off consolidator, holding $2.4.4 billion in assets but only $17.9 billion in liabilities. The company said asbestos and environmental liability claims make up 27% of its portfolio.

If we are successful at settling claims or otherwise manage the expected value of the losses for less than our carried reserves, we recognize favorable prior period development within our net incurred loss and loss adjustment expenses, the company explains in its 2020 annual report.

McGarvey said investment companies have no business managing personal injury claims. His lawsuit alleges Zurichs arrangement with Enstar violates public policy because it creates an incentive for a third party to withhold or delay payments and resolve claims, despite the insurers legal responsibilities to make timely payments.

This scheme is not insurance at all, it is a vehicle for turning human suffering into an investment commodity, the lawsuit says.

McGarvey acknowledged theres no Montana law that specifically prevents an entity from acquiring someone elses legal liability and then profiting off delayed payments. But he said it undermines rules intended to make insurance companies act in good faith.

The lawsuit lists 17 living and 29 deceased plaintiffs who contracted lung disease after exposure to asbestos dust from the W.R. Grace mine during the 1960s and 1970s. McGarvey said his clients badly need advance payments for ongoing medical expenses, but Enstar refuses to even discuss settlement terms.

McGarvey represented former W.R. Grace employee Ralph Hutt in a case that resulted in a 2020 Montana Supreme Court decision that found workers who were exposed to asbestos dust from the Libby Mine could pursue lawsuits against Maryland Casualty.

Normally claims for illnesses caused by exposure at work would be confined to the workers compensation system, but the Montana high court found that the workers could pursue tort claims because Maryland Casualty had failed to warn them that exposure to the asbestos could endanger their health. The company also provided workplace safety services to W.R. Grace.

The Montana court system created a special asbestos court to handle Libby Mine claims. Judge Amy Eddy chose Hutts lawsuit for the first trial. A jury in Great Falls awarded Hutt $6.5 million in damages and $30 million in punitive damages.

Even though that award clearly shows the extent of potential damage awards, McGarvey said Zurich and Enstar continue to make no effort to resolve the some 900 claims that remain pending against Maryland Casualty. He said three more trials to hear claims against Zurich are scheduled for this year.

McGarvey said he is hoping his lawsuit will disrupt Enstars industry. Investors shouldnt have anything to do with these claims, he said.

McGarvey filed the lawsuit at the U.S. District Court for Montana on Monday. Zurich had not yet filed a reply as of Tuesday. A spokesman for the company told the Associated Press that it does not comment on pending litigation.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

About the photo: In this Feb. 18, 2010 file photo, Dr. Brad Black, director of the Libby, Mont., asbestos clinic, looks at X-rays. A doctor in Libby since 1977, Black has been at the front lines of Libbys asbestos fight.
DALLAS (AP)  One person was killed and more than a dozen were injured when tornadoes tore through parts of Texas and Oklahoma, damaging a school, homes and businesses, officials said. The same storm system was poised to move into Louisiana and Mississippi on Tuesday, carrying the risk of dangerous tornadoes and powerful winds.

In Texas, several tornadoes were reported Monday along the Interstate 35 corridor, particularly in the Austin suburbs of Round Rock and Elgin, and close to Dallas-Fort Worth. Two unconfirmed tornadoes caused damage in the Lake Texoma area of northern Texas and southern Oklahoma.

More than a dozen injuries have been reported in Texas, including 10 in Grayson County, about 60 miles (95 kilometers) north of Dallas, the countys emergency management office said. A 73-year-old woman who lived in the community of Sherwood Shores died in the storm, but officials have not provided any details.

By Tuesday morning, the system was bringing heavy rainfall and thunderstorms to parts of Texas and Arkansas, said Jeremy Grams, lead forecaster with the Storm Prediction Center, in Norman, Oklahoma. A tornado watch was in effect for parts of Texas and Louisiana.

In Louisiana, high water early Tuesday posed a threat to motorists on several roads, including a stretch of Interstate 20 and several state highways after rains overnight, authorities said. Deputies in Caddo Parish, which includes Shreveport, rescued three drivers from high waters during the night, the sheriffs office tweeted before dawn.

The storms were expected to intensify throughout the day as temperatures rise, increasing the threat of tornadoes, hail and strong winds. Much of Louisiana and Mississippi were at a moderate risk of severe weather Tuesday, the second-highest risk category issued by the Storm Prediction Center. Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Jackson, Mississippi, were among the cities at risk for bad weather Tuesday.

Were still a bit uncertain on just how intense and how longer-lived some of these tornadoes may be, so were going to be just below that threshold of the greatest risk, Grams said Tuesday morning.

Forecasters were predicting intense tornadoes and widespread damaging winds, some hurricane-force with speeds of 75 mph (120 kph) or greater, in much of Mississippi, southern and eastern Louisiana, and western Alabama.

Louisianas federal and state authorities reminded thousands of hurricane survivors living in government-provided mobile homes and recreational vehicle trailers to have an evacuation plan because the structures might not withstand the expected weather. More than 8,000 households live in such temporary quarters, officials said.

The storm already left misery in its wake in Texas. Damage to homes and businesses occurred in at least a dozen Texas counties, according to reports submitted to the Storm Prediction Center.

Officials reported damage throughout Jacksboro, about 60 miles (100 kilometers) northwest of Fort Worth. There, photographs posted on social media showed a storm ripped the wall and roof from parts of Jacksboro High School, especially its gym.

It brought tears to my eyes, school principal Starla Sanders told WFAA-TV in Dallas.

Thirty miles (50 kilometers) northeast of Jacksboro, near Bowie, the damage was widespread. Four people suffered minor injuries, said Emergency Manager Kelly McNabb.

Associated Press journalists Julie Walker in New York and Ken Miller in Oklahoma City contributed to this report.

About the photo: Jarrod Schneider, who lives on Oxford Drive in Round Rock, Texas, helps his neighbors clean up after a tornado heavily damaged several homes on the street on Monday ,March 21, 2022. (Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman via AP)

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
HARLAN, Ky. (AP)  Crews have recovered the body of a Kentucky coal miner missing after a roof collapsed deep underground, officials said.

INMET Mining CEO Hunter Hobson told WYMT-TV on Monday night that it was with deepest sorrow that he was confirming the death of James D. Brown, 33, of Lynch.

Our thoughts and prayers continue to be with James family and also his coworkers at INMET. We were praying for a different outcome. At this time, we have no further comment as we transition from the recovery efforts and continue working with both State and Federal agencies to determine what happened, Hobson said.

Brown began his shift as a roof bolter operator late Sunday at the D-29 Darby Fork coal mine in Harlan County, the Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet said. The roof fell about an hour later, some 14,000 feet from the entrance.

A spokesman for the cabinet, John Mura, told The Associated Press on Monday that Brown had been working alone, but later clarified that an equipment operator was nearby when the roof collapsed.

We are heartbroken at the news, said Gov. Andy Beshear said in a statement. Please join me in expressing my deep condolences to his family, friends and community.

Mine operations remained suspended Tuesday while an investigation continues, state officials said.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to Mr. Browns family, Kentucky Energy and Environment Secretary Rebecca Goodman said. Our trained mine safety specialists are in the process of examining how this happened and how it could have been prevented.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Claremore, OK (74018)

Today

Scattered thunderstorms during the morning becoming more widespread this afternoon. High 67F. Winds SW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Localized flooding is possible..

Tonight

Partly cloudy this evening with more clouds for overnight. Low 51F. Winds W at 10 to 15 mph.
If a visitor to Israel had the time to take a month to really get to know the country, I would recommend the period that has just concluded  from Passover through Israeli Independence Day. Its Israel in a nutshell. And it also happens to be a time of year when most of the days are picture-perfect  warm and sunny with cool nights.
Beachwood, OH (44122)

Today

Partly cloudy this morning, then becoming cloudy during the afternoon. High 61F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Rain likely. Low 52F. Winds ENE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall around a quarter of an inch.
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson enters her second day of questioning for her Supreme Court Confirmation Hearing where she defended her sentencing in child porn cases amid fierce Republican questioning.

GOP members have been quick to portray United States President Joe Biden's Supreme Court nominee as being weak on crime by focusing on her previous defense work. Republican lawmakers have raised concerns over Jackson's judicial philosophy while they warned against activism and prescription of policy outcomes from the bench.

Supreme Court Confirmation Hearing

The nominee addressed and disputed the criticisms on Tuesday by stressing her concern for public safety and the rule of law, both as a judge and a United States citizen. Jackson argued that her approach to work was impartial and that she did not allow personal opinions to influence her decisions.

Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, who serves as the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, pressed Jackson, who then sidestepped a question related to whether or not she supported the expansion of the Supreme Court to include more than nine justices at any given time.

Jackson said that it was not a decision for her to make but was a responsibility of Congress, saying that she was particularly mindful of not speaking to policy issues. She said that she was committed to staying in her "lane," as per CNN.

The Supreme Court nominee also forcefully defended her record of sentencing child pornography offenders and pushed back against a recurring Republican attack line. Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley claimed that Jackson's treatment of sentencing child sex offenders showed an "alarming pattern" of leniency.

Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin questioned the nominee about her stance on the issue where she answered that in dealing with such cases, she was far from lenient. Jackson said that working as a judge, she placed great weight on victims' perspectives when addressing offenders.

Read Also: Ketanji Brown Jackson Touts Love for the U.S. on First Day of Confirmation Hearings, Vows To Be Independent

According to The Hill, on Tuesday, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz was among the first few GOP senators on the panel, including Hawley and Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn, who intend to make the issue one of the pivotal discussions in the questioning.

Child Porn Offenders Sentencing

Republicans have long used allegations of being soft on crime against Democrats' judicial nominees and candidates and have been going on since at least the Nixon era, said political scientists.

A Howard University law professor, Justin Hansford, who is also the executive director of the Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center, said that the strategy was part of a strain of criticism that Black public servants especially have come to expect from GOP members. He compared it to a dog whistle that is played to a specific audience.

Marshall, who is the country's first Black Supreme Court justice, faced off against similar language during his confirmation hearing nearly six decades ago. At the time, a group of fervently segregationist senators attempted to stir fear over clashes between civil rights protesters and the police.

On the other hand, a Harvard law professor who clerked for Marshall, Mark Victory Tushnet, believes that the attacks against Jackson now have been far less veiled than those of the old justice, the New York Times reported.

Related Article: Hunter Biden Scandal: US President Joe Biden Slammed for "Lying to the American People," Son Is Predicted To Be Indicted

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Mayor Brian C. Wahler revealed a big fire was blazing at a Pepsi factory in Piscataway on Tuesday night.

On New Brunswick Avenue, near Lakeview Avenue, a fire broke out at a soft drink company. Around 7:30 pm, a production part of the plant continued to fire, drawing a large reaction from township and adjacent emergency services, according to the mayor. According to early accounts, many propane tanks may have exploded, causing the flames to spread.

Piscataway Pepsi Complex Four-Alarm Fire

"For Middlesex County, this is an all-hands-on-deck mutual aid call," Wahler said. He stated that the fire was likely to reach at least four alarm levels, NJ.com reported. According to the mayor, there were no early reports of injuries to staff at the factory, but neighbors were advised to avoid the area. He said crews were attempting to keep the fire from spreading to surrounding woodlands and homes.

Apparently this is the Pepsi plant on New Brunswick Ave in Piscataway pic.twitter.com/k1wqVNbEoH  Matt P. (@mattyp2488) March 22, 2022

As of 7:30 p.m., no homes were on fire, according to Wahler. Thick smoke billowed from the factory, according to photos posted on social media. Multiple explosions were also reported by residents in the neighborhood. Pepsi claimed the fire originated outside its facility and warehouse in a statement.

The Sun received an update from a Pepsi-Co spokesperson, who stated that the cause of the incident will be probed. First responders are on the scene, working to keep the fire under control and extinguish it quickly. There were no injuries among the staff and people who were in the facility when it was evacuated. According to initial reports, propane tanks may have exploded, causing the fire to spread quickly.

Pepsi plant on fire earlier today. pic.twitter.com/qdikIKHXur  peteycip (@peteycip) March 23, 2022

Eyewitnesses said the fire appeared to be isolated to one area of the plant. Residents are advised to stay away from New Brunswick Avenue, Carlton Avenue, and Lakeview Avenue. The incident was described as a "major structural fire" by Piscataway Township, which advised residents to avoid New Brunswick Avenue, Carlton Avenue, and Lakeview Avenue to allow first responders access to the scene.

Debris and embers from the fire may also be blowing into brush to the side of the facility, according to reports. Pepsi trucks parked at the facility are seen smoking on video and appear to be on the verge of fully igniting. According to some accounts, flames are leaping up to 40 feet into the air.

The Pepsi-Cola Metropolitan Bottling Company, Inc., is located at 2200 New Brunswick Ave., and one resident who lives less than a mile away reported hearing multiple explosions and shared video footage of the smoke on Twitter, calling the situation "scary."

According to a company directory, the factory employs approximately 170 people. Pepsi-Co is also the parent company of Frito-Lay and Quaker Foods, among other well-known brands.

Read Also: US Daylight Savings Bill Hit With Potential Issues: Why Are Lawmakers Hesitant About Passing It?

Fire at Jojo Discount Store in Chicago

Meanwhile, an extra-alarm fire gutted an Albany Park store Tuesday afternoon, with the roof collapsing as firefighters battled the flames. The fire broke out at Jojo Discount Store, which offered mattresses and discount furniture, just after noon.

The store was open when the fire broke out, and customers were inside. Witnesses said those people ran screaming out of the building, but Fire Department officials said everyone made it out safely. The fire was able to be contained to the building where it began. The flames caused the store's truss roof to fall at 1:15 pm. on Lawrence Ave. The building emitted thick smoke that could be seen for miles.

Because of the extremely combustible materials inside and the truss ceiling that fell all at once, CBS 2's Kris Habermehl said it was a tenacious fire. When the roof caved in, a large wall of flame erupted in front of the building, narrowly missing firefighters across the street.

The incident destroyed a street sign adjacent to the building and damaged automobiles at a nearby body business with its intense flames. The fire also destroyed the Jojo shop sign, revealing the remains of a used car dealership that formerly occupied the space. The building would be a "total loss" and would have to be demolished, according to the Chicago Fire Department.

Related Article: China Eastern Plane Crash: Horrifying Video Shows Boeing 737 Jet Nosediving, Erupting Into Flames

@YouTube

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Clinton, IA (52732)

Today

Showers this morning becoming less numerous during the afternoon hours. High 59F. Winds E at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 50%..

Tonight

Cloudy with showers. Low 47F. Winds ENE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 60%.
Corey Hyde, age 51 of Clinton, passed away Sunday, May 1, 2022 at his home. Visitation and funeral services are being scheduled for Friday and Saturday at the Pape Funeral Home.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Russian President Vladimir Putin was not ruling out the possibility of his government authorizing the use of nuclear weapons if the country was faced with an "existential threat" amid its continued invasion of Ukraine.

The official made the remarks during an interview on Tuesday and comes nearly a month after Moscow's troops invaded its neighboring country. The West has repeatedly warned that the situation could escalate into a nuclear war if left unchecked.

Russia's Nuclear Weapons

Pekov's statements were made in English and were his answers when asked whether or not Putin was planning to use such destructive weapons. The spokesman said that Russia had a concept of "domestic security and its public."

In a further reference to Russia's security concept, Peskov said that there were no other reasons mentioned in that text. The statements come after last month when President Putin ordered the country's nuclear forces to be put on high alert amid the war. Russia's defense ministry said on Feb. 28 that it had placed its nuclear missile forces and Northern and Pacific fleets on enhanced combat duty, as per Reuters.

Furthermore, Peskov said that Putin has still not achieved his goal in its invasion of Ukraine and said that the advancements were going on "strictly in accordance with the plans and the purposes that were established beforehand."

Read Also: US, NATO Warning: Belarus 'Likely' to Help Russia in Ukraine Invasion

According to The Denver Channel, the spokesman said that the Russian president demands that the invasion get rid of the "military potential of Ukraine." Moscow also said that it wanted to remove what is considered "nationalist battalions," with Putin demanding that Ukraine accept that Crimea is part of the mainland after it was annexed in 2014 and that Luhansk and Donetsk are independent states.

Defense Against Existential Threat

The remarks echo similar statements that President Putin made in February where he said that no matter who stood in the way of Russia, he will respond immediately to threats to the country. He added that there will be consequences that other nations have never seen in their history.

Peskov also repeated claims that Russia has only targeted military troops and equipment amid its invasion of Ukraine despite multiple reports of civilians being bombarded by Moscow's troops. Airstrikes have also been reported to target buildings that were sheltering ordinary Ukrainians.

One such incident comes after Kyiv authorities said on Monday that Russian forces occupying the Ukrainian city of Kherson opened fire on peaceful protesters. In a statement, the Ukrainian armed forces' press service said that Russian security forces ran up, started throwing stun grenades into the crowd, and shot their guns.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba posted a tweet with a video of the scene and said that the whole world should band together and stop Russia. He urged other nations to sanction them, isolate them, and hold war criminals to account.

At least one video recording showed a wounded and bleeding protester and the Ukrainian armed forces said that there was at least one injury in the incident but had no information on how many were actually hurt, the New York Post reported.



Related Article: Ukrainian Ground Forces Strikes Down Russian Ka-52 Alligator Attack Helicopters; How Were These Powerful Gunships Neutralized?

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 23)  Presidential candidate Leody de Guzman has chastised rival Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. over his remak that seasonal workers will be excluded in his push to end contractualization.

De Guzman, a labor rights activist, cited a portion of the Labor Code stating seasonal workers who are rehired are considered to be regular employees.

"Pinatunayan ng statement na ito na walang alam si Marcos Junior sa mga usapin ng labor relations," he said in a statement on Wednesday. "Mayroong kategoryang 'regular seasonal' sa Labor Code. Ang manggagawang pinatatrabaho sa isang panahon o season at muling pinatrabaho o na-rehire ay hindi pwede pagkaitan ng mga benepisyo bilang regular na empleyado,"

[Translation: The statement proves Marcos Junior has no knowledge about labor issues. There is category called "regular season" in the Labor Code. Workers hired for seasonal work then rehired cannot be denied their benefits as regular employees.]

Marcos, in an interview that aired on One PH on Monday, said he will end contractualization or endo (end of contract)  excluding seasonal workers.

RELATED: Marcos to revisit anti-endo bill, says it applies only to businesses that are not seasonal

He said he will revisit the Security of Tenure Bill, which was vetoed by President Rodrigo Duterte in 2019, if he wins the presidency.

Marcos said the president was correct that the law should only apply to businesses that are not seasonal.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 23)  The Department of Budget and Management said Wednesday that the increased cash aid allocation for poor families as instructed by President Rodrigo Duterte is good for just three months.

Duterte on Tuesday raised the aid for poor families from 200 to 500 to cushion the effect of fuel price hikes.

DBM OIC Usec. Tina Canda said that it may cost the government 20 billion to cover 13 million beneficiaries for three months.

Yang 500 a month na yan, ang kaya pa lang at this point is probably mga tatlong buwan, siguro sa mga excess revenues na mako-kolekta ng DOF (Department of Finance), said Canda during a public briefing.

[Translation: The 500 monthly cash aid is good for only three months at this point, by way of excess revenues that the DOF will collect.]

Ang excess revenues naman na ito ay manggagaling either sa dividends ng mga government corporations or doon sa excess VAT collections as a result nung pagtaas ng value ng petrolyo, she elaborated.

[Translation: These excess revenues will either come from dividends of government corporations or excess VAT collections as a result of the oil price hike.]

Duterte instructed the Department of Finance to increase the monthly cash aid for poor families. He noted that 200 is not enough to sustain even a family of three.

Moreover, the DBM noted that the monthly cash aid will be coursed through the Department of Social Welfare and Development once it receives a certification from the Bureau of Treasury on the availability of the excess revenue.

Yung pag-download nito, as soon as mabigyan tayo ng certification ng Treasury na meron na tayong available excess collection, mairi-release na natin ito sa DSWD. At ire-release naman ito ng DSWD sa recipients ng unconditional cash transfer, said Canda.

[Translation: As soon as the Treasury issues a certification on the availability of the excess collection, we can already release it to the DSWD. Then the DSWD will release it to the unconditional cash transfer recipients.]

Consumers are experiencing some relief as oil companies implemented an oil price rollback this week.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 23)  The Development Academy of the Philippines (DAP) has been removed from the list of government owned or controlled corporations (GOCCs).

As a result, the academy would lose government support such as subsidy, equity, and net lending.

The Governance Commission for GOCCs (GCG) announced DAP's removal in a memorandum released March 22.

It said DAP  a public higher educational institution (HEI)  must be considered part of state universities and colleges (SUCs), which are excluded from coverage of Republic Act 10149, or the GOCC Governance Act of 2011.

RA 10149 defines the jurisdiction of the GCG, which does not include SUCs, cooperatives, local water districts, economic zone, authorities, research institutions, and the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.

SUCs are defined by Republic Act 10931 as HEIs established by the national government, and governed by their respective independent boards of trustees or regents. RA 10931, or the Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education Act, institutionalizes free tuition in SUCs.

Subsidies cover operational expenses of GOCCs that their internally generated revenues cannot. Equity pertains to the national government's investment in GOCC's authorized capital stock. Net lending, meanwhile, refers to the state's advances for servicing guaranteed and re-lent domestic and foreign loans of GOCCs.

"Resolved further, the exclusion of DAP shall be subject to the reevaluation and reclassification, pending any change in the situation and/or circumstances of the institution," read the GCG's Memorandum 2022-04.

DAP was established as a corporate body on June 6, 1973 - pursuant to Presidential Decree 205.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 23)  The PDP-Laban faction of Energy Secretary Alfonso Cusi is still hoping that party chair President Rodrigo Duterte will soon adopt its endorsement of presidential bet Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. as a "validation" of the decision.

"It will be a big addition to the candidacy of Sen. [Marcos] and sa party namin (to our party), it will be validation of the action ng buong partido (of the whole party)," PDP-Laban secretary general Melvin Matibag told CNN Philippines' The Source on Wednesday.

Matibag said Duterte had been informed ahead by Cusi about their planned endorsement of the son of the late dictator, but the energy secretary did not disclose how the President reacted.

"We are looking forward to that day na dumating na si Pangulo (when the President) will say as chairman of the party that he is also adopting the position of the party," he said.

Marcos, the standard bearer of Partido Federal ng Pilipinas, is running in tandem with Duterte's daughter, Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte. They are the tandem to beat based on past surveys on preferred presidential and vice presidential bets.

Mayor Duterte's vice presidential bid was earlier endorsed by the ruling party. Her father has so far kept mum on who he wants to be his successor.

President Duterte previously called Marcos a "weak leader," and said the former senator is the reason there will be no coalition between his and his daughter's political parties.

READ: Duterte: Bongbong Marcos a 'weak leader'

Matibag claimed that all the presidential candidates reached out to the party to talk about a possible endorsement, but Marcos was the one who was most aligned with their agenda.

Meanwhile, Sen. Koko Pimentel from the other PDP-Laban faction said he pities the rival group for endorsing Marcos without sticking to their principles. He noted that the group should not have endorsed someone who is the "antithesis" of what the party is fighting for.

PDP-Laban was born out of a 1983 merger of Partido Demokratiko Pilipino (PDP) headed by Pimentel's father Nene Pimentel, and Lakas ng Bayan (Laban) party founded by former senator Benigno Aquino Jr. to stand against the regime of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos.
Nueva Ecija (CNN Philippines, March 23)  Presidential hopeful Vice President Leni Robredo has appealed to voters to scrutinize candidates, especially those who are claiming to be against corruption.

'Pag nagsabi pong galit ako sa korapsyon, tanungin natin, nagbabayad ba 'yan ng tamang buwis? Robredo said during her grand rally in Cabanatuan City on Tuesday.

[Translation: If (the candidate) says they're mad at corruption, lets ask, are they paying the right taxes?]

Robredo's remark is an apparent swipe against former senator Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos, whose family has yet to pay estate taxes despite a 1997 final ruling from the Supreme Court demanding them to settle the P23 billion estate tax liabilities.

The amount has reportedly ballooned to P203 billion.

During the Comelecs first presidential debate, Manila Mayor Isko Moreno, Senator Panfilo Lacson, labor leader Leody De Guzman, and Robredo were united in urging the government to go after the unpaid taxes of the Marcoses.

The money, they pointed out, could be used to help poor Filipinos amid the spike in pump prices.

In 2016, Robredo lost to Marcos in Nueva Ecija with a margin of more than 320,000 votes. But Novo Ecijanos who attended Robredo's Tuesday rally vowed to change that narrative.

The lone female presidential candidate admitted feeling anxious holding a campaign rally in Marcos bailiwick but more than 50,000 kakampinks showed up, according to local police and rescue team.

Dahil kahit talo ako dito, over the past six years, pabalik-balik ako dito sa inyo dahil marami po kaming programa na ginawa dito sa lalawigan ninyo, Robredo said.

[Translation: Because even if I lost here, over the past six years, I keep coming back here because we did many programs in the province.]

The real measure of a candidates sincerity to serve, Robredo pointed out, is what he or she has done even before running for a post.

[M]ay eleksyon o wala, kasama niyo kami," she noted. "May sakuna man o walang sakuna, kahit po talo ako dito sa Nueva Ecija, ako pa din 'yung unang pumupunta pag kinakailangan kami.

[Translation: Whether theres election or not, were with you. Disaster or not, even if I lost here in Nueva Ecija, Im still the first one to come here when were needed.]
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 23)  Vaccine expert panel chairperson Dr. Nina Gloriani said booster shots for the pediatric population are not yet necessary.

At a Laging Handa briefing on Wednesday, Gloriani said it may take a long time before children aged 12 to 17 and younger will need to receive an additional jab, citing data that their immune response is still strong because of their age.

Data also show na mas bata, mas maganda ang immune response," she said. "So siguro, medyo matatagalan pa bago sila mangangailangan ng booster.

[Translation: Data also shows that the younger the age, the better the immune response. So maybe, it will take a long time before they would need a booster.]

The expert, however, mentioned that the vaccine expert panel will still be studying the need for booster shot on kids, especially the immunocompromised or those who have existing illnesses.

In the same light, Gloriani cited data saying two shots against COVID-19 are not sufficient to provide protection against the emerging variants of concern such as the Omicron variant. This is why a second booster shot may be needed, especially for those with weak immune system, she said.

The administration of a second booster shot for senior citizens and immunocompromised individuals was previously recommended by the Department of Health (DOH), suggesting that it will further increase their protection against COVID-19.

According to presidential adviser for COVID-19 pandemic Vince Dizon, the government is likely to approve this recommendation once details of the implementation have been finalized by the National Vaccination Operations Center.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippine, March 23)  The PDP-Laban faction of Sen. Koko Pimentel on Wednesday expressed pity for their rival wing which endorsed Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr., saying their members do not know that the party was built to fight the regime of their presidential bet's father.

"I pity their group because they've been trying to sell their group to a presidential candidate. I think Bongbong Marcos is their fourth choice for president already," Pimentel told CNN Philippines' The Source on Wednesday. "If you look at their past actions, they have been trying to sell their group as a formidable group kuno. I pity them."

Pimentel slammed the "transactional politics" upheld by the rival faction, adding that only legitimate members of the group know the history and the principles of the party.

PDP-Laban was born out of a 1983 merger of Partido Demokratiko Pilipino (PDP) headed by Pimentel's father Nene Pimentel, and Lakas ng Bayan (Laban) party founded by former senator Benigno Aquino Jr. to stand against the regime of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

For months, the faction of Energy Secretary Alfonso Cusi kept mum on who they will endorse as candidate, after initial PDP-Laban bets Senators Bato dela Rosa and Bong Go backed out from the presidency.

Pimentel claimed the other faction will likely jump ship to the party of the winning candidate to cater to their own interests, while he will be left to rebuild the party after the elections.

"This is their fourth choice of presidential candidate. I hope this is their last and final answer pero wrong answer pa rin (but this is the wrong answer)," Pimentel said without elaborating or mentioning names.

Double standard?

But Cabinet Secretary Melvin Matibag, secretary-general of the Cusi faction, cried "double standard" on Pimentel's remarks, noting the latter approved the party's endorsement of Marcos' sister Imee to the Senate back in 2019.

"Alam naman po ni Sen. Pimentel yan, na ang politika there are a lot of dynamics," Matibag said. "If he is really true to what he is saying na itong partido itinayo laban sa diktador, if you will look at the footages niya noong 2019 campaign, he is seated beside Imee Marcos. Inadopt ng PDP yan as a candidate with his consent."

[Translation: Sen. Pimentel knows that a lot of dynamics are involved when it comes to politics. If he is really true to what he is saying that the party was built to fight a dictator, if you will look at the footages during the 2019 campaign, he is seated beside Imee Marocs. The PDP-Laban adopted her as a candidate with his consent.]

Back in 2019, Imee was among President Rodrigo Duterte's "personal" bets for the Senate who were invited as guest candidate in one of PDP-Laban's sorties.

Pimentel can be seen sharing the stage with the former Ilocos Norte governor in a Bulacan rally, but he clarified later that the ruling party will not merge the guest candidates with its original five-man senate slate comprising of him, Go, Dela Rosa, Francis Tolentino, and Maguindanao Rep. Dong Mangudadatu.

Pimentel said in an ambush interview with CNN Philippines at the time: "Ang PDP-Laban, we are a friendly party, they (guest candidates) can speak. Pero lima pa rin kami [but we will stick with our five candidates]."

The Commission on Elections has yet to decide on which of the two factions of the ruling PDP-Laban is the legitimate group.

Pimentel's faction is currently endorsing Sen. Manny Pacquiao and BUHAY Party-list Rep. Lito Atienza to the country's highest posts.

Meanwhile, Duterte has yet to personally announce whether he is formally adopting his faction's endorsement of Marcos.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 23)  Sen. Koko Pimentel has slammed the delayed collection by the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) of the unsettled estate taxes of the Marcoses, noting that the matter calls for an executive action.

"Executive action na po ito (This calls for executive action already)," he told CNN Philippines' The Source on Wednesday. "I think, number one, the liability for unpaid estate tax has been fixed by the courts, therefore it's a matter now of enforcing the court decision."

Pimentel was referring to estate taxes that a 1997 Supreme Court ruling said should be paid by the family of late dictator Ferdinand Marcos. The amount has since ballooned to 203 billion.

Three months ago, the BIR wrote a letter to the Marcos family demanding payment for the unsettled taxes.

READ: DOF pushing BIR to collect Marcos heirs' estate taxes to generate more government revenue

"Masyadong mabagal (They're too slow). And it's just, I think, last December was just a demand letter. It's about time the actions are taken, maybe a motion for execution or motion for garnishment, yung mga ganyang executory process na po (these types of executory processes)."

Pimentel said that with such amount, the case should have been designated to a special team which would quickly resolve the matter.

He said BIR alone has a specific department dedicated to large taxpayers with remaining liabilities.

Presidential candidate Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr., the late dictator's son and namesake, has claimed that "there's a lot of fake news involved" on the issue.

"It should have been to the credit of the current BIR leadership, had they been able to execute on this judgment," Pimentel said.

Pimentel's rival PDP-Laban faction has recently endorsed Marcos Jr.'s presidential bid, despite facing petitions challenging his candidacy due to his failure to file income tax returns from 1982 to 1985.

LIST: Petitions against Bongbong Marcos' 2022 presidential bid

Four of five petitions against Marcos have been dismissed, with at least three on appeal with the Commission on Elections (Comelec) en banc. Only one plea seeking to disqualify the survey frontrunner is pending before the Comelec's second division.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 23)  The Civil Service Commission (CSC) on Wednesday said it is now in the "final stage" of institutionalizing flexible work arrangements in the government.

The policy will be issued "in the next few weeks," according to CSC commissioner Aileen Lizada.

"The commission wants to institutionalize the flexible working arrangements para may default na ang gobyerno natin (so the government will have a default) in case of pandemic, endemic, calamities," she told CNN Philippines' Newsroom Ngayon.

Lizada added that the CSC has consulted the Development Academy of the Philippines, the Department of Information and Communications Technology, and the National Privacy Commission in crafting the whole concept of the flexi-work rules.

"They were able to give inputs. This is like one year and six months in the making," she said.

Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Karl Chua and Energy Secretary Alfonso Cusi earlier proposed to shorten the workweek to four days, but with longer hours - from the usual eight hours to 10 hours - amid surging fuel prices.

READ: NEDA, DOE chiefs bat for 4-day work week, extension of work-from-home setup amid fuel price hikes

Lizada said if the compressed four-day workweek will be pursued, there will be no disruptions in government operations.

Government workers' salaries will also not be affected by the proposed rule, she stressed, as they will complete 40 hours of work per week.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 23)  A person who converts to Islam and then contracts a second marriage while the previous one remains legally in effect will be accused of bigamy, according to the Supreme Court.

In a decision penned by Associate Justice Marvic Leonen and released on Monday, the court said conversion to Islam in this scenario does not exempt one from criminal liability.

A party to a civil marriage who converts to Islam and contracts another marriage, despite the first marriage's subsistence, is guilty of bigamy. Likewise guilty is the spouse in the subsequent marriage, the verdict read.

The high court was affirming a Court of Appeals (CA) ruling in 2015 where a couple married under Muslim law had been found guilty of bigamy. This crime carries a penalty of imprisonment of up to 12 years.

The couple in question  who turned to the Supreme Court to assail the CA decision  admitted they got married in 2005 even when the mans marriage to his first wife had yet to be legally dissolved.

The petitioners claimed they could not be penalized for bigamy as they converted to Islam prior to their marriage. They argued that the Muslim Code  and not the general law, or the Civil Code  applies in their case.

But the Supreme Court pointed out that while Islamic law allows polygyny, it only does so in "exceptional cases," in particular, if the Muslim men can deal with [their wives] with equal companionship and just treatment.

It added that the Muslim Code is not applicable in the said case since the first wife is a non-Muslim.

Article 13(2) of the Muslim Code explicitly spells out that the Civil Code governs marriages where either party is non-Muslim and which were not solemnized in Muslim rites. There is no conflict with general law here, it wrote.

In its 17-page decision, the high court also noted the contemporary but illegal practice in the country where males convert to Islam as alternative to divorce.

Conversion to Islam to remarry and circumvent the laws on bigamy generates legal tensions as it exploits the protective mantle of religious freedom under the Constitution, the court said.

This Court should not condone practices which circumvent laws in the guise of preserving culture, it added.
A New York Federal Reserve analysis released on Tuesday revealed that an increase in delinquencies last year among a smaller pool of student loans not covered by a forbearance program signals likely problems ahead for almost 37 million loans when the program expires.

Borrowers under the forbearance program have been exempt from making loan payments since March 2020, but the suspension of payments is due to terminate at the end of April. According to the New York Fed, $195 billion in payments have been waived over the period.

Student Loan Delinquencies Expected To Spike

Borrowers in a smaller pool of around 10 million loans given privately or via the Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) system who were not protected by the forbearance program struggled with debt payments over the last two years. Delinquency rates for FFEL borrowers have been rising since March of last year, and by the end of December, they had returned to pre-pandemic levels, according to Reuters via MSN.

Delinquency rates among student loan borrowers in the two-year forbearance program, on the other hand, plummeted to a low of 3.6 percent at the end of last year. This is bad news for people who were enrolled in the program and had greater loan levels, poorer credit ratings, and were making slower repayment progress than FFEL borrowers before the pandemic.

Another set of Democratic lawmakers also expressed their views on student loan repayments, stating that borrowers should not be required to repay their debt in less than two months, Business Insider reported.

On Monday, 43 Democratic legislators, led by Pennsylvania Rep. Conor Lamb, wrote to President Biden, demanding that the moratorium on student loan payments be extended "at least until the end of this year."

They cited a 2020 Education Department report that noted the "heavy burden" of transitioning millions of federal borrowers back into repayment. They wrote that, while the economy has made progress in pandemic recovery, households across the country continue to face financial hardship.

Read Also: Stimulus Check New York: $1000 Available for New Yorkers [Eligibility, Requirements, How to Apply]

Democrats Think Student Loan Repayment Is Too Soon

Payments on student loans with waived interest have been on hold for more than two years, and Biden just extended it for the third time. However, as the deadline approaches, Democrats in both the House and Senate have raised concerns about returning federal borrowers to repayment too soon despite Republicans denouncing additional borrowers' relief as being too costly to taxpayers and the economy.

Patty Murray, the former chair of the Senate education committee, issued a statement last week urging Biden to extend the payment moratorium until 2023 so that he can "permanently fix" the loan system by restoring defaulted borrowers to good standing and fixing flawed loan forgiveness programs, among other things.

The difficulties FFEL borrowers had making payments during the pandemic "suggest that Direct borrowers will face rising delinquencies once forbearance ends and payments resume," according to the researchers.

As of February 2020, students with direct federal student loans had larger debt levels and poorer credit ratings than students with private loans or FFEL loans, as per The Hill.

The research comes just over a month before the moratorium on federal student loan payments and interest accrual is slated to end. President Biden prolonged the ban, which began during the Trump administration and has been extended many times until May 1.

Related Article: Increase in Food Prices Make Low-Income Americans Turn for SNAP Benefits; Here Are the States Offering Aid in 2022

@YouTube

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 23)  President Rodrigo Duterte has adopted the Economic Development Clusters (EDC) policy agenda aiming to speed up and sustain the countrys recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

There is an urgent need to adopt policies on economic recovery to sustain current economic gains, minimize the pandemics long-term adverse effects, and restore the countrys development trajectory, read Dutertes Executive Order 166.

The order was signed on March 21 and was released to the public on Wednesday.

The EDCs ten-point policy agenda includes strengthening the countrys healthcare capacity, accelerating and expanding the national vaccination drive, and reopening the economy further while expanding public transport capacity.

The National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) earlier said that placing the entire country under Alert Level 1 would add 16.5 billion to the economy per week.

The agenda also covers the resumption of face-to-face learning, which if done for all classes could prevent trillions of pesos in lost productivity, according to NEDA. The country lost around 22 trillion for the past two years without physical classes, the agency earlier explained.

The cluster likewise bats for fewer restrictions on domestic travel and the standardization of local governments requirements. It also wants requirements for international travel eased.

The EO adopts as well the prioritization of key legislations on digital transformation to improve the countrys connectivity.

It also seeks to formulate a bill allowing an efficient rollout of emergency programs during pandemics. The legislation could cover the establishment of a standby fund for pandemics and lifting of ceilings for Quick Response Funds.

EO 166 likewise adopted the shift on the focus of decision-making and state reporting to primarily take into consideration total severe or critical cases, case fatality ratio and total vaccinations to avoid unnecessary changes in alert levels and encourage Filipinos to get their shots.

The government must also come up with a Comprehensive Pandemic Response Framework beefing up the countrys resilience against future pandemics, stated the issuance.

The COVID-19 task force must ensure the agendas proper implementation and ensure all measures under the governments pandemic response are aligned with them, added the EO.

NEDA, the Department of Finance, and the Department of Trade and Industry must be consulted before implementing such measures.

The order likewise authorizes NEDA to monitor the compliance of concerned agencies and to periodically report to the president through the Office of the Executive Secretary.

After plunging by a record 9.6% in 2020, the Philippine economy grew by 5.6% last year  slightly up the economic teams adjusted 5-5.6% target band. Economic managers expect output to expand by 7-9% this year.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 23)  Asticom Group, a subsidiary of Globe Telecom, is looking forward to welcoming strategic investors as it targets to go public amid its "aggressive" push to expand its operations.

The company, a shared services provider, is part of Globe's goal of moving beyond the telco market, riding on the success of mobile wallet GCash.

READ: Globe rebounds to pre-pandemic levels, explores new revenue sources beyond telco

Mharicar Castillo-Reyes, president and CEO of Asticom, said conducting an initial public offering (IPO) is included in the group's "five-year plan".

"That is part of our strategy in order for us to continue growing our portfolio," she said in a virtual briefing on Wednesday.

Reyes said the group has been approached by a number of private equities, and Asticom is already "in the process of talking to them".

"[They] have raised interest in potentially having that strategic partnership," she said.

Asked about the group's revenue target this year, Reyes said she is confident the company could "double" the 2 billion it booked in 2021.

"We are aiming for an aggressive target for 2022," she declared. "It is going to be an exciting ride for the entire Asticom Group of Companies."

"The growth drivers really be on the new subsidiaries and businesses that we have," Reye said. "One of the biggest areas is ... Finsi (Fiber Infrastructure and Network Services Inc.) given the aggressive requirement for us to support the telco industry and the technology industry in rolling out new technologies that would help us in terms of connectivity."

Aside from Finsi, Asticom's units include Asti Business Services Inc., which focuses on IT and business solutions; BRAD Warehouse and Logistics Services Inc., a logistics solutions provider; and HCX Technology Partners Inc. for HR and digital solutions.
(CNN)  Following criticism from Ukraine's president over Nestle's ties to Russia, the company is halting the sale of more of its brands in the country.

"Going forward, we are suspending renowned Nestle brands such as KitKat and Nesquik, among others," the Swiss multinational brand said in a statement. "We have already halted non-essential imports and exports into and out of Russia, stopped all advertising, and suspended all capital investment in the country."

The move comes a few days after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky criticized Nestle for the company's continued relationship with Russia during an address to the people of Switzerland.

"'Good food. Good life.' This is the slogan of Nestle. Your company that refuses to leave Russia," Zelensky said in the speech. "Even now  when there are threats from Russia to other European countries. Not only to us. When there is even nuclear blackmail from Russia."

Nestle, the world's largest food and beverage company and the maker of such iconic brands as Gerber baby food, Cheerios, and Dreyer's ice cream, defended itself and pointed to what it says are sweeping changes since Russia invaded Ukraine.

"We are focused on providing essential foods such as baby food and medical/hospital nutrition products," a Nestle spokesperson told CNN Business on Wednesday. "This means we will suspend the vast majority of our pre-war volume in Russia."

Nestle announced on March 11 that it suspended exports of its products from Russia except for essential items like baby food. The company also said it stopped importing Nespresso and other products into Russia, except for essential goods including baby food, cereal and therapeutic pet foods.

Nestle employs more than 7,000 workers in Russia, most of whom are locals. The company has previously said that is identifying solutions for its employees and its factories in Russia, and it will continue to pay its employees there.

Last week, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal criticized Nestle CEO Mark Schneider for the company's continued presence in Russia.

"Unfortunately, he shows no understanding," Shmyhal wrote on Twitter after saying he spoke to the Nestle CEO. "Paying taxes to the budget of a terrorist country means killing defenseless children & mothers. Hope that Nestle will change its mind soon."

-- CNN Business' Chris Liakos and Matt Egan contributed to this report.

This story was first published on CNNcom, "Nestle pulls KitKat, Nesquik and other brands from Russia."
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 23) The countrys newest queen Kathleen Paton believes her early pageant experience and genuineness were keys in her bid to become the second Filipina winner of Miss Eco International.

Paton recounted her journey to winning the crown as she faced media in a victory celebration held in Pasay City on Wednesday. The Boracay-born beauty queen returned to Manila late Tuesday evening, five days after clinching the title in Egypt.

She believes representing the Philippines in the Miss Teen International in 2017 and other pageants helped her achieve the victory this time around.

When I did Miss Teen I was brand new to the pageant scene. I guess at that point and time it was an experience for me to be able to get out and find that confidence within me. The main difference now when I go into Miss Eco, I really know who I am. I know my strengths and my capabilities. My whole pageant experience brought that out, she said.

The Aklan native also cited her authenticity, honesty, kindness, and being approachable as her keys to winning. She said the organizers and her fellow contestants praised her for these traits even before she was announced as the winner.

To be a queen I believe you have to be genuine to everybody and especially yourself to continue if ever you become the number one queen in the end. Then you have to become that person all throughout your life and throughout your reign, she said.

When asked about the winning moment, Paton revealed she was emotional as she recalled all the effort and hard work she put in to get to that point. She said its both an honor and responsibility to be the second Filipina winner after Cynthia Tomalla in 2018.

Being a queen is a responsibility for me. I will use everything in my power to be able to use this platform for the best of my ability and to be able to advocate for all the things I advocate for and make sure to voice out all the problems we have in the Philippines. And make change, positive changes, she said.

For now, Paton is focused on fulfilling her duties as Miss Eco International 2022, as well as advocating for water conservation and mental health. However, she said shes not closing the door to other opportunities, like working in showbiz and for the United Nations in the future.

Paton also addressed the question that was on everyones mind during her homecoming: Where was the Miss Eco International crown?

Paton said the crown was brought to the Netherlands by organizers to have it resized, since it did not fit her well. The beauty queen said she will be able to get the crown when she returns to Egypt in May.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 22)  Pasig City Mayor Vico Sotto denied saying anything libelous against Vice Mayor Iyo Bernardo  also his rival in the mayoral race  which could trigger the latter to file a cyberlibel complaint against him.

"Obviously I don't think I said anything libelous," he told CNN Philippines' Politics as Usual on Tuesday.

"I've never said anything about his family. I really didn't. Tsaka hindi (And it's not) cyber. I didn't post anything online or say anything online," Sotto added.

Bernardo lodged the cyberlibel complaint last Friday, citing Sotto's speech during a flag-raising ceremony in January.

The Pasig City mayor previously slammed Bernardo for criticizing the city government despite him being uncooperative in local programs.

"During a flag ceremony, one Monday morning, I was responding to some of the complaints or allegations that he was making, and I told him kung mayroon siyang complaints (if he has complaints), use the formal mechanism of the city first, use the local special bodies, which he is actually a member of," he said.

Last December, Bernardo posted a video on Facebook showing alleged complaints from residents regarding their difficulties in securing financial aid from the city government. Bernado said residents "don't deserve this kind of service."

In response, Sotto said Bernardo would better understand the situation if only he attended their meetings.

Sotto said he welcomes criticisms, stressing they are part of his work.

"Sometimes we get good things from criticisms," the mayor added.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 23)  The Commission on Elections on Wednesday allowed the Office of the Vice President (OVP) to resume some projects under its COVID-19 pandemic response program even as VP Leni Robredo continues her presidential campaign.

Comelec Commissioner George Garcia said specific projects under the "Angat Buhay" program are exempted from the public works and fund disbursements ban.

"In an executive session today, the en banc granted the petition for exception of the Office of the Vice President of certain projects and programs during the 45-day period of the campaign," he said.

The OVP sought exemption for its COVID-19 response programs, such as Bayanihan E-Konsulta, Swab Cab, and Vaccine Express, that began at the height of the Omicron surge in January. Logos of the said programs were also redesigned to remove links to Robredo.

People seeking medical support flocked to Robredo's social media pages after the program was suspended in February, but they were denied help pending the Comelec decision.

The Robredo camp welcomed the Comelec decision.

"This will ensure that Angat Buhay projects which have helped hundreds of thousands of Filipinos in the past six years can continue to bring hope," OVP spokesperson Barry Gutierrez said.

CNN Philippines correspondent Melissa Lopez contributed to this report.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 23)  Mandatory military service is a good idea and will prove to be valuable during a crisis, according to a former defense official.

It was former Defense secretary Norberto Gonzales' reply when asked what he thought about Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte's proposal requiring mandatory military service for all Filipinos when they reach the age of 18.

"Very good yan. Huwag na natin hintayin na gagawin pa yan, na pagtatalunan pa. When a crisis arises, whether we like it or not, that will happen," Gonzales said at the Go Negosyo KandidaTalks on Wednesday.

[Translation: That would be very good. Let's not wait for that or quibble over it. When a crisis arises, whether we like it or not, that will happen.]

Gonzales, who is running for president in the May polls says mobilization of the entire nation would be inevitable should war break out, citing the Russia-Ukraine crisis.

"Tignan mo how did the Russians prepare to invade Ukraine? Military exercises simula... The Chinese are conducting the same exercises in the West Philippine Sea today. Anong gagawin natin ngayon? Hihintayin muna natin na may giyera bago maghanda? This is the time to act," he said.

[Translation: Look at how the Russians prepared to invade Ukraine. It started with military exercises... The Chinese are conducting the same exercises in the West Philippine Sea today. What do we do now? Do we sit and wait for war before we prepare? This is the time to act.]

Mayor Duterte, who is running for vice president, said she would use the Office of the Vice President to convince Congress to make military service mandatory for all Filipinos, male or female.

Her suggestion was backed by the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the Department of National Defense.
(CNN)  When Russian armed forces launched an unprovoked assault on Ukraine last month, Beijing appeared to side with Moscow, accusing the United States and its NATO allies of inviting conflict by allowing their security bloc to expand eastward.

Now, as China faces pressure from the West to condemn the Russian invasion, it's ramping up similar rhetoric to talk about America's footprint in Asia.

In recent days, senior Chinese Foreign Ministry officials and influential Communist Party publications have accused the US of seeking to build a NATO-like bloc in the Indo-Pacific, with one official warning of "unimaginable" consequences if it does.

At a conference in Beijing on Saturday, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Le Yucheng said the Ukraine crisis could be used as a "mirror" to view the security situation in the Asia-Pacific region.

Le didn't name the US, but he explicitly referred to the Indo-Pacific strategy -- a plan the Biden administration detailed last month to strengthen America's role in the region, such as through supporting democracy and bolstering its alliances and partnerships, including with Taiwan.

Building "closed and exclusive small circles or groups" in the region "is as dangerous as the NATO strategy of eastward expansion in Europe," Le said at the event at Tsinghua University, according to a version of the speech published by China's Foreign Ministry.

"If allowed to go on unchecked, it would bring unimaginable consequences, and ultimately push the Asia-Pacific over the edge of an abyss," he said.

China's criticism of NATO follows attempts to portray itself as a neutral actor in the Ukraine crisis, refusing to denounce Russia's attacks on civilians, while stressing its humanitarian aid to Ukraine and denying it considered providing military support to Moscow.

However, China's bid to draw parallels between the US strategy in the Indo-Pacific and NATO's "eastward expansion" in Europe closely echoes talking points from Moscow, raising serious doubts as to Beijing's supposed neutrality.

Russian leader Vladimir Putin has repeatedly attempted to use concerns over NATO to justify his brutal invasion of Ukraine. Now, experts say China is seeking to use the current crisis in Ukraine to not only amplify its portrayal of the US as an alleged instigator of conflict, whether in Europe or in Asia, but to warn of the consequences if the US and countries in the region align against China.

China 'takes advantage' of crisis

Washington's emphasis on the Indo-Pacific has come as China pushes a more aggressive foreign policy, doubling down on its territorial claims, while taking a harder line in response to perceived challenges.

In recent years, China has disavowed a UN tribunal ruling dismissing its vast territorial claims in the South China Sea, while continuing to militarize its positions there and harass other claimants. It's also ramped up its threats on self-governing Taiwan, with record incursions of fighter jets into the island's air defense identification zone in recent months.

"It's no surprise that China would take advantage of the Ukraine crisis to lash out at the Indo-Pacific strategy," said Li Mingjiang, an associate professor and Provost's Chair in international relations at S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University.

Li pointed to China's "growing anxieties" over the rejuvenation of the "Quad" security forum between India, Japan, Australia and the US, and of the AUKUS security pact between Australia, the United Kingdom and the US, as well as the strong commitment from the US to maintain its longstanding role in the region, outlined in Biden's Indo-Pacific strategy last month.

"The intention is clear -- China wants to send this message to the US and countries in the region that the Indo-Pacific strategy and American security alliances could also generate some similar security dynamics (to those) seen in Europe, involving Russia," Li said.

That message is also being sent ahead of an "extraordinary" NATO summit on Thursday, where US President Joe Biden will meet allied leaders in Brussels to discuss the situation in Ukraine -- in another showing of the striking solidarity of the bloc since the start of the crisis.

A message to America

Vice Foreign Minister Le's warnings about the US presence in the Indo-Pacific were echoed Monday by the Chinese Ambassador to ASEAN at a news conference in Jakarta.

There, Ambassador Deng Xijun accused the US of "creating a set of 'gang rules' while claiming to uphold the international order" and taking the region "down an evil path," according to Chinese state-run media The Paper.

A similar tone was adopted in an opinion piece in China's People's Liberation Army Daily, republished last weekend on the website of the influential Communist Party journal Qiushi, which took aim at the Indo-Pacific strategy and said the US creation of blocs was an "important reason for the continuing souring and escalation of the Ukraine issue."

This is not the first time that China has sought to draw parallels between the US strategy in the Indo-Pacific and NATO in recent years, and the concerns get at the heart of a key stance that has drawn Russia and China closer together: their mutual distrust of the US.

That was underlined in a 5,000-word joint statement released weeks before the invasion of Ukraine, in which both voiced their opposition to the "further enlargement of NATO" and pledged to "remain highly vigilant about the negative impact of the United States' Indo-Pacific strategy."

But experts point out there are vast differences between NATO, a security alliance, and the US strategy in Indo-Pacific, which is not just about security, but includes a range of policies. The US, with its own long Pacific Ocean border and island state of Hawaii, also has territories in the Indo-Pacific, including Guam.

Other nations have also increased activities in the region in an effort to counter China's influence. In the past year, Britain sent its largest concentration of maritime and air power for joint exercises in the Philippine Sea, while Germany sent a warship through the South China Sea for the first time in almost two decades. France also last year announced a plan to boost its maritime cooperation with the South Pacific. China has often pushed back against such actions, decrying what it sees as efforts to contain it.

The Chinese stance, meanwhile, ignores the fact US security partnerships have come in response to China's own rapid military modernization, according to Drew Thompson, a senior research fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore.

The US is "increasingly drawn into deeper and stronger security alliances because of (China's military) modernization" and Beijing's "lack of openness and transparency" toward its neighbors about its intentions, Thompson said.

But China's leaders "don't see a connection between other countries in the region hedging against China's military modernization" through relationships with the US, he added.

The question of Taiwan

Another issue much closer to home may also explain why China is keen to call up its concerns over the US in the Asia-Pacific region amid the Ukraine crisis -- Taiwan.

This was suggested in a 110-minute video meeting between US President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Friday, where Xi's concerns regarding Taiwan were clearly a focal point for the Chinese side.

"Some people in the US have sent a wrong signal to 'Taiwan independence' forces. This is very dangerous. Mishandling of the Taiwan question will have a disruptive impact on the bilateral ties," Xi told Biden, according to a Foreign Ministry readout.

Analysts have drawn comparisons between the authoritarian threats to Ukraine and Taiwan, a self-governing island democracy which Beijing claims as its own and has not ruled out taking by force. Earlier this month, a group of former US defense and security officials traveled to Taipei in a signal of American support amid the European crisis.

This connects too with China's larger concerns in the Indo-Pacific, said RSIS's Li.

"If there's a conflict over the Taiwan issue, a worst case scenario (for China) would be that China would not only have to fight a war against Taiwan, against the US, (but that) perhaps some US allies would be involved against China," he said.

This story was first published on CNN.com, "What China really means when it talks about NATO's eastward expansion"
(CNN)  President Joe Biden issued an urgent and ominous warning to American individuals and businesses Monday, when he said "evolving intelligence" suggests Russia might be planning cyberattacks against the US.

On Tuesday, an FBI advisory was sent to US companies in the energy, defense and financial sectors, warning of potential prep work for hacking from IP addresses in Russia.

This activity is likely "not about espionage, it's probably very likely about disruptive or destructive (cyber) activity," US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Jen Easterly said during a phone briefing with industry executives and state and local government personnel, according to three sources on the call, writes CNN's Sean Lyngaas.

Many warnings of a looming Russian cyberattack

The advisory is part of a growing chorus of warnings that US infrastructure is at risk, writes Lyngass.

"For months, the US departments of Energy, Treasury and Homeland Security, among others, have briefed big electric utilities and banks on Russian hacking capabilities, and urged businesses to lower their thresholds for reporting suspicious activity."

Some companies aren't prepared

The bottom line of Biden's warning Monday and the FBI advisory was that the infrastructure behind US society and American life is mostly in private hands and that it needs to be made more secure from hacks.

Anybody who remembers the ransomware attacks on the major US food manufacturer JBS, US cities, an oil pipeline and hospital systems in recent years knows this to be true.

Biden has told Putin to cut it out

Biden has warned Russian President Vladimir Putin not to use cyberattacks against the US. The President on Monday referred to the conversations as an "altar call."

"We've had a long conversation about, if he uses it, what would be the consequence," Biden told business leaders on Monday.

Biden has more control over that consequence than he does over the preparedness of US companies that are involved in American infrastructure. He appealed to their sense of "patriotic obligation" to get their cyber-defense capabilities up to scratch.

He specifically mentioned the energy, power and financial sectors.

What might a large-scale cyberattack look like?

It's happened before. Estonia was the victim of a large-scale cyberattack in 2007, although there was not enough evidence to definitively pin it on Russia at the time.

CNN's Ivana Kottasova wrote about the attack, which Estonia considered an act of cyber-warfare, last June. It all started with Estonia's decision to remove a Soviet-era war memorial from central Tallinn.

Here are some key lines from her report:

The attack made Estonia realize that it needed to start treating cyber threats in the same way as physical attacks.

At that time, the country was already a leader in e-government, having introduced services like online voting and digital signatures. While no data was stolen during the incident, the websites of banks, the media and some government services were targeted with distributed denial of service attacks that lasted for 22 days. Some services were disrupted, while others were taken down completely.

NATO and the international community took notice of the attack on Estonia and experts developed a standard to assess cyber-war as a result.

When is a cyberattack an act of war?

I called Tess Bridgeman, co-editor in chief of the website Just Security and a former attorney in the Obama White House who is an expert on war powers and international law.

"If a cyberattack causes significant death, destruction or injury, of the same sort that you would see from a more traditional attack using kinetic means, like bullets or missiles, you know, then you would call it a 'use of force' in international law," she said.

A cyberattack that targeted a dam or air traffic control towers might rise to this level, but the government would try very hard to avoid responding to a cyberattack with a military attack, she said.

The attacks on the US to date have fallen short of the threshold to justify a military response.

As the government seeks countermeasures to respond, Bridgeman said, there's a good chance they won't be publicly known.

"It may appear that the US is sitting by idly, but I would be highly doubtful that that's the case," she said, arguing that defensive actions might be more effective at de-escalating the standoff. "It's setting the example for what responsible state behavior looks like."

Could weapons be used to respond to a cyberattack?

The threat of a military response is always there for the worst cyberattacks, should they cost American lives.

"Our policy, our declared policy is, if it's a big enough attack on us and it hurts us, we will use the conventional weapons response," Richard Clarke, who was a top adviser to President George W. Bush on cybersecurity, told CNN's Michael Smerconish shortly after the war in Ukraine began.

"So we could very easily find ourselves in a shooting war with Russia if they try devastating -- and that would have to be devastating -- cyberattacks like turning out the power grid," Clarke said.

Most of these attacks are meant to be part of espionage campaigns or to be meddlesome rather than deadly. Clarke argued that Russian attacks on US industries could be more devastating than attacks on the government itself. He said the government doesn't really know what would happen if the Amazon, Google and Microsoft cloud systems went offline, for instance.

"I can tell you if those clouds go down, the United States stops working, our economy stops working, the phones stop working -- we will find ourselves pretty soon in the dark ages if the internet goes down," said Clarke.

What if Russia attacked a US ally?

It's not clear that Russia would want to provoke the US specifically in a such a devastating way, or how the US would respond.

While its cyberattacks in Ukraine since the war began have been less severe than some expected, according to a report by Lyngass, Russia has targeted internet infrastructure in parts of the country.

There has been concern that cyberattacks in Ukraine could spill over to nearby countries that are in NATO and could lead the organization to invoke Article 5 of its charter -- the principle that an attack on one member of NATO is an attack on all members.

Could a cyberattack trigger Article 5?

A cyberattack could absolutely trigger Article 5. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg made this clear in February just after Russia's invasion.

"An attack on one will be regarded as an attack on all," Stoltenberg said at a news conference when asked about a potential Russian cyberattack.

But he added that NATO would be very careful in assessing an attack and would make sure a cyberattack on Ukraine -- shutting off electricity, say -- that accidentally spilled over into Poland or Romania is not construed as an attack on those countries.

He also said it's intentionally unclear what kind of cyberattack would rise to the level of invoking Article 5.

NATO, he said, would not want to "give a potential adversary the privilege of defining exactly when we trigger Article 5."

This story was first published on CNN.com 'A cyberattack could lead to war. But it is very unlikely'
(CNN)  The Russian journalist who won last year's Nobel Peace Prize says he will auction off his medal to support Ukrainian refugees.

Dmitry Muratov Novaya Gazeta editor Dmitry Muratov was compelled to sell his medal by the sight of "wounded and sick children" requiring "urgent treatment" following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, according to a statement published Tuesday on the newspaper's website.

Muratov shared the 2021 Nobel with Filipino American journalist Maria Ressa for what judges described as their "efforts to safeguard freedom of expression."

Proceeds from the sale of the Nobel medal will go to The Foundation of Assistance to the Ukrainian Refugees, an NGO that provides support to refugees from Ukraine. In the statement, Muratov stressed the need for a ceasefire, exchange of prisoners and provision of humanitarian corridors.

Over 3.5 million refugees have fled Ukraine, according to the latest update from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Muratov helped found Novaya Gazeta in 1993 and has served as its top editor since 1995. The Nobel Committee said that the newspaper had been highly critical of the Russian government since its inception, including reporting on corruption and the activities of the country's military.

Russian authorities have tightened their grip on the country's independent media following the invasion of Ukraine. Earlier this month, lawmakers criminalized the spread of "fake" information that discredits the Russian armed forces or calls for sanctions against the country.

The crackdown has forced some outlets to shut up shop and their journalists to leave the country.

In early March, Novaya Gazeta said it had removed articles on the war in Ukraine from its website due to the government censorship.

Anna Cooban contributed reporting.
Police say a Bronx mother and her boyfriend were charged on Monday with the murder of her 8-year-old son, who died in a hospital nine months ago.

The allegations come less than a week after the death of toddler Joseph Barney, who was diagnosed with battered child syndrome and was deemed a murder. Sharay Barney, 29, and her boyfriend Michael Ransom, 33, were charged with manslaughter and aggravated manslaughter, according to authorities.

Read Also: Massive Fire Erupts at Pepsi Factory in New Jersey; Pictures Show Company Engulfed in Thick Black Smoke

Mom, boyfriend Arrested in Connection to the Death of Autistic Child

According to cops and sources, the mother took her son in an Uber from their Williamsbridge home to Montefiore Medical Center in June 2021. The youngster was found unconscious and unresponsive after cops responded to a call from the hospital's emergency department.

The kid was pronounced dead at the hospital, although he showed no indications of trauma, as per NY Post. Last Tuesday, Joseph's death was judged a murder. According to police sources, he had been transported to Montefiore several times before with signs of child abuse.

Initially, investigators were looking into whether Joseph's death was caused by starvation. At the time of his death, the boy weighed only 30 pounds. According to the CDC, a typical 8-year-old should weigh roughly 50 pounds.

The autistic boy's death was triggered by a combination of past and new traumas, they claimed. Ransom, 33, and Barney, 29, were arrested and were awaiting arraignment on murder and manslaughter charges, The New York Times reported.

On Tuesday evening, the authorities provided no reason for why they suspected Barney and Ransom were responsible for Joseph's death, nor any specifics about their separate roles in the alleged crime.

The boy had hemorrhage on his brain and optic nerve, a bruising on his head, and minor wounds on his face and mouth, according to the report. A routine state investigation undertaken after his death stated that the circumstances were "extremely suspicious." He was also severely underweight and had a chipped tooth. According to the report, no arrests were made at the time since the autopsy had not been finished.

Barney gave inconsistent statements during interviews with investigators and had planned what she would say to the authorities over text messages with Ransom, which state law requires the Office of Children and Family Services to complete when children who have been abused die.

Bronx Boy's Biological Father Expresses Fury

After the agency was made aware of the family, Stephanie Gendell, a spokesperson for the Administration for Children's Services, said the agency "immediately" initiated a joint investigation with the police. She didn't specify how or when this happened.

The agency said state law prevents authorities from providing information about specific cases. However, there are several exceptions to the rule that enable authorities to divulge additional information, such as in circumstances when a kid has died. In an email, Joseph's biological father, Desmond Long, expressed his relief at the arrests. "After what they did to Joseph, they were still together," he said.

The child's family had no active cases with child protection authorities at the time of his death, according to the state investigation. Barney initially told authorities that she left home at 7 a.m. to get ready for work. She stated she had given her child a nutritional supplement before she left, but he was sick and vomited.

Joseph seemed chilly to the touch when she returned at 12:20 p.m., she added, so she clothed him and phoned a cab. Joseph was declared dead at 2:04 p.m., after a journey to the hospital that took more than an hour. Barney and Ransom were spotted leaving the house together at 7:38 a.m., according to investigators. He returned a few minutes later and would not leave until the boy was brought to the cab. According to the report, they informed investigators that they assumed it would be faster than an ambulance, but the trip took 80 minutes.

Neighbors interviewed by child welfare caseworkers expressed no major concerns about the boy's care, but they reported about hearing "light banging" from the apartment on a routine basis, according to the report. Joseph was diagnosed with autism, and his previous school informed authorities that he had not returned when the family relocated.

School officials claimed they had left many messages for his mother, presuming he had moved schools, requesting that she transfer services. According to the state report, Barney then became uncooperative with the investigators, and Ransom never agreed to an interview.

Related Article: Michigan Teen Arrested For Dousing, Killing Dad With Drain Cleaner

@YouTube

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
(CNN)  Russian President Vladimir Putin's chief spokesman has conceded that Russia has yet to achieve any of its military goals in Ukraine and refused to deny that Moscow could resort to the use of nuclear weapons.

In an interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour on Tuesday, Dmitry Peskov repeatedly refused to rule out that Russia would consider using nuclear weapons against what Moscow saw as an "existential threat." When asked under what conditions Putin would use Russia's nuclear capability, Peskov replied, "if it is an existential threat for our country, then it can be."

Putin has previously hinted at using nuclear weapons against nations that he saw as a threat to Russia. Back in February, the Russian President said in a televised statement, "No matter who tries to stand in our way or all the more so create threats for our country and our people, they must know that Russia will respond immediately, and the consequences will be such as you have never seen in your entire history."

He then said in a televised meeting with Russian defense officials that "officials in leading NATO countries have allowed themselves to make aggressive comments about our country, therefore I hereby order the Minister of Defense and the chief of the General Staff to place the Russian Army Deterrence Force on combat alert."

When asked what Putin thought he had achieved in Ukraine so far, Peskov answered: "Well, first of all, not yet. He hasn't achieved yet."

The spokesman also claimed that the "special military operation" -- the Kremlin's official euphemism for Russia's invasion in Ukraine -- was "going on strictly in accordance with the plans and the purposes that were established before hand."

Peskov also repeated Putin's demands, saying that the "main goals of the operation" are to "get rid of the military potential of Ukraine," to ensure Ukraine is a "neutral country," to get rid of "nationalist battalions," for Ukraine to accept that Crimea -- annexed by Russia in 2014 -- is part of Russia and to accept that the breakaway statelets of Luhansk and Donetsk "are already independent states."

He also claimed that Russia has only attacked military targets, despite numerous reports of Russian airstrikes against civilian targets sheltering ordinary Ukrainians.

The interview comes as Western intelligence has reported that Russia's operations have stalled in parts of Ukraine.

This story was first published on CNN.com, "Putin spokesman refuses to rule out use of nuclear weapons if Russia faced an 'existential threat'."
(CNN) -- In 2010, doctors told Ben Sobieck, now 37, that his kidneys were inexplicably failing. Shortly after, he had a kidney transplant and started on the lifelong medications that weaken his immune system to keep his body from rejecting the donor organ. They never figured out what caused Sobieck's kidney failure. But a decade later, he confronted another threat to his health: the Covid-19 pandemic.

"I am on immunosuppressants that make me more vulnerable for serious Covid complications," said Sobieck, 37, who lives in Minnesota. "If you're immunocompromised, you may not have a very good response to the [Covid-19] vaccine."

Seeking evidence that his immune system was working the way it should, Sobieck made an unusual request: He asked his nephrologist to do a blood test that gives a rough measure of antibodies, a type of protein the body creates in response to an infection or vaccine. Antibody titers reveal the concentration of a specific antibody found in someone's blood.

Millions of Americans -- not just those with weakened immune systems -- are wondering about their protection after a winter of booster shots and Omicron infections. As mask mandates are lifted and restrictions removed in a step toward normalcy, a test to measure immunity would be a powerful tool to measure individual risk.

"The biggest reason I wanted to get my antibody titer checked is because I don't know how to assess risk," Sobieck said. "Anyone who is immunocompromised, from the beginning of this pandemic right through today, has very few tools to assess risk: if they're going to leave the house, when they're going to leave the house, how to interact with other people, which situations are OK."

Sobieck had his antibody levels checked after his second, third and fourth doses of the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine. Each result showed that he had more than the maximum number of antibodies the test could detect, indicating a robust immune response.

Although there is no specific guidance on how to interpret these results to figure out the level of protection against infection or disease, Sobieck felt reassured that his immune system was doing its job.

"More than 50% of transplant patients don't have enough immune response to be protected, even if they get not two but three doses of the vaccine that we use in the general population," said Dr. Dorry Segev, professor of surgery at New York University Langone Health. "For them, [an antibody titer] is a particularly poignant indicator of whether they have any protection at all."

Segev, a transplant surgeon, advocates using tests that measure antibodies as a way to check immune protection in people who are immunocompromised.

Sobieck says the test results allowed him to make decisions for himself and his family.

"Knowing that I had the antibody response that I had meant that my son could go to in-person school. That's huge," he said.

Correlates of protection

About 95% of Americans 16 and older have antibodies against Covid-19 as of December, the most recent date that data is available, according to US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that use information from blood donors.

But it's one thing to measure antibody levels. It's another to measure how much they protect you against Covid-19.

The US Federal Drug Administration recommends against checking antibody levels at all because there's no agreed-upon way to calculate how any given antibody level protects you from infection or severe disease. It may also give a false sense of security, the agency says.

"There aren't good correlates of protection -- something that says that this is the measurement that one needs to know how well they are protected," Emory University virologist Mehul Suthar said.

Scientists are trying to fill the knowledge gap. Studies measure average antibody levels across a population to check vaccine efficacy, often using antibody levels months after vaccination to determine the need for a booster. One study in people who got the Moderna vaccine found that higher antibody levels after vaccination were associated with lower risk of Covid-19 infection.

But not all antibodies are created the same. Of all the antibodies that the body may make after infection or vaccination, only a fraction are considered "neutralizing antibodies," meaning they can actively prevent infection.

Tests to measure antibodies can be either quantitative or qualitative. Quantitative tests provide a specific number, up to a certain point, of antibodies in the blood. Qualitative tests will indicate only whether certain antibodies were detected. Results of qualitative tests are either positive, negative or indeterminate for neutralizing antibodies.

When it comes to measuring neutralizing antibodies specifically, there is only one type of test that has been given emergency FDA authorization to detect them, and it is qualitative.

Several studies have demonstrated that neutralizing antibodies are a strong correlate for protection against symptomatic infection with Covid-19 and its variants, with boosters enhancing neutralization.

Peter Gilbert, professor of vaccine and infectious diseases at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and lead author of the Moderna study, says these correlates are useful to apply to large groups. For example, scientists can use data from larger studies about the correlation between antibody levels and vaccine efficacy in adults to make a prediction about vaccine efficacy in children.

However, reaching conclusions based on one person's antibody levels is far more limited. Gilbert compares individual antibody titers with a dipstick for oil in a car.

"Is the oil in a particular car low? Therefore, you need to go out and get some new oil," or in this case, "get another shot of the vaccine," he said. "For that purpose, the markers aren't as good."

This is largely due to how antibody levels vary from person to person. That correlate of protection also changes over time and with different coronavirus variants, which makes it hard to define a cutoff for antibody levels above which scientists can confidently say that someone is protected against Covid-19.

Natural vs. vaccine-acquired immunity

There's a key difference in how antibody levels compare in people who have been vaccinated against Covid-19 versus those who have been infected with the coronavirus.

"Whereas a vaccine response, you may have all individuals that got the vaccine have high antibodies and sort of wane over time. ... With infection, it's remarkably heterogeneous. You'll have lots of individuals that have very low and individuals that have very high antibody responses," Suthar said.

According to Marion Pepper, an associate professor of immunology at the University of Washington, location matters, especially for the immune system.

"There are different immunological environments that make up your body. ... When you see an immune response in your arm, it's going to be a different cast of characters than if you see an immune response in your lungs," Pepper said.

The immune system "is like lots of different neighborhoods, and each one has a different flavor," depending on how an individual gets exposed to the coronavirus, whether it's through a vaccine injected into the upper arm or through an infection to the respiratory system.

The CDC cites one study, which is in preprint and has not been peer-reviewed, that found antibody titers waned more quickly in vaccinated people than in people who had been infected. This may help explain the growing evidence of stronger and more durable vaccine efficacy in people who have immunity through both illness and vaccination, called hybrid immunity.

Although they may not provide the best way to tell how protected someone is, antibodies are useful to understanding how we compare people with natural immunity with those with vaccine-acquired immunity.

"We know that people who have this hybrid immunity are better protected. ... So it also really begs the question, 'which of these parameters is associated with that protection?' " said Pepper, who leads a lab that is studying hybrid immunity.

Observing levels of immune cells and antibodies as they change over time in different groups of people can help scientists learn how to create vaccines and time vaccinations to replicate the strength of hybrid immunity without the actual infections.

Just one piece of the immunity puzzle

Antibody levels are only one part of the immunity story. There are also T cells, a type of white blood cell that helps fight infection by killing cells that have been infected with a virus or by helping another type of white blood cell, the B cell, create antibodies.

So why do we focus so much on antibodies? "One aspect is that antibodies are probably one of the easiest to measure in the laboratory," Suthar said.

"I think when you go to the T-cell-based assays, they're much more challenging," he explained. "Each individual has different what are called H.L.A. types that make it a bit more challenging to understand how well one's T-cell responses are against this virus."

Unlike antibodies, which are responsible for preventing an infection, T cells are responsible for destroying cells that are already infected. T cells may play a big role in vaccine efficacy against serious disease from more transmissible coronavirus variants, such as Omicron.

One study showed that while the highly mutated Omicron could evade previously neutralizing antibodies, T cells preserved a strong response.

"A memory B cell is a B cell that can get reactivated to make antibodies. It generally doesn't do that unless a T cell tells it to go, so studying the T cells is going to be really important for understanding this immune protection," Pepper said.

However, she said that the complexity of measuring T cells means there isn't going to be a rapid test to measure them any time soon.

The Omicron surge has demonstrated that infection rates can still be high even after a vaccine or a prior infection. With the possibility of more variants forming, Covid-19 has become a moving target requiring a constantly evolving understanding of these correlates of protection.

"The biggest question I have and I think everyone else has is: What level of antibody equals protection from serious complications from Covid?" Sobieck said.

This story was first published on CNN.com "How protected are we against Covid-19? Scientists search for a test to measure immunity".
(CNN)  Former US President Bill Clinton paid tribute to former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on Wednesday, saying the late former top diplomat was "a passionate force for freedom, democracy, and human rights" whose death "is an immense loss to the world in a time when we need the lessons of her life the most."

Albright, 84, died of cancer on Wednesday, her family said.

"Few leaders have been so perfectly suited for the times in which they served," Clinton said in a statement. "When the end of the Cold War ushered in a new era of global interdependence, she became America's voice at the UN, then took the helm at the State Department, where she was a passionate force for freedom, democracy, and human rights."

"Madeleine's passing is an immense loss to the world in a time when we need the lessons of her life the most," he continued, adding that both he and former first lady and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton "will always be deeply grateful for the wonderful friendship we shared and the unfailingly wise counsel she gave us over so many years."

Albright was a central figure in Clinton's administration, first serving as his US ambassador to the United Nations before he picked her to be the first woman secretary of state in his second term. In office, she championed the expansion of NATO, pushed for the alliance to intervene in the Balkans to stop genocide and ethnic cleansing, sought to reduce the spread of nuclear weapons, and championed human rights and democracy across the globe.

The former President noted Albright's lifelong commitment to public service, saying that "even until our last conversation just two weeks ago, she never lost her great sense of humor or her determination to go out with her boots on, supporting Ukraine in its fight to preserve freedom and democracy."

When Clinton nominated Albright to be his second secretary of state in 1996, he said the then-UN ambassador "embodies the best of America" and displays "determination to advance our interests around the world."

"It says something about our country, and about our new secretary of state designate, that a young girl raised in the shadow of Nazi aggression in Czechoslovakia can rise to the highest diplomatic office in America," he said at the time.

Former President George W. Bush also honored Albright on Wednesday, saying in a statement that he and former first lady Laura Bush are "heartbroken" by the death of the former secretary, whom they remembered as a diplomat "who understood firsthand the importance of free societies for peace in our world."

"She lived out the American dream and helped others realize it ... I respect her love of country and public service, and Laura and I are grateful to have called Madeline Albright our friend," Bush said.

And former President Barack Obama said Albright brought a "unique and important perspective" to a career in which she served as a "champion for democratic values." The former President also shared one of his favorite memories of Albright.

"At a naturalization ceremony, an Ethiopian man came up to Madeleine and said, 'Only in America could a refugee from Africa meet the secretary of state.' She replied, 'Only in America could a refugee from Central Europe become secretary of state,'" Obama said in a statement.

This story was first published on CNN.com, "Bill Clinton remembers Albright as a 'passionate force for freedom, democracy, and human rights'."
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.
With orange lockers, southern accents and ringing school bells, Penn State Centre Stages production of Blood at the Root opens a conversation about social issues within the scene of a high school in Louisiana.

The Pavilion Theatres stage was set as a school with an oak tree all the way in the back corner. Although it may look out of place, the tree is what starts the conversation of changing stereotypes and the problems of social constructs.

Today cant be like no other day, its gotta count for something, Raylynn, the shows main character played by Trinity Jackson, said. Today the trees are full of color. Today is a day for change.

The play was originally written by Dominique Morisseau and premiered at Penn State in 2014. Once again, the show will run on campus at 7:30 p.m. from March 26 to April 2 at the Pavilion Theatre.

Raylynn is a Black student at Cedar High School who's ready to make some changes. She's tired of the student bodys segregation, and to fix this, she decides to go sit at the oak tree  the tree where the white cliques sit, according to the character Toria, a student who wants to be recognized as a real journalist.

Black students sitting at the tree caused the white students to present a joke as payback, which then led to the school becoming a zone of protesting throughout the play.

Throughout the performance, characters called out the racism of Cedar High School, while others had to learn to call out the mistreatment that was occurring among their peers.

Blood at the Root also brings up the bullying of homosexual students, and the cast of the play works together to stand for whats right and to fight for justice.

Today is about breaking rules 'til there is nothing left to break, nothing left to fight for, Raylynn said.

Faith Gallagher, who came out to support one of the performers, said the play was really impactful. Gallagher also said she thought the actors spoke very well throughout the performance.

While the topics depicted in the play affected the characters, they also had some impact on the audience members.

Ann Mitra, a Penn State graduate and State College reisdent, said she came out because of the students but also due to the very interesting topic.

The performance was very engaging and absorbing in terms of content, Mitra said. She also complimented the timing, acting, staging and visual arrangements for being well done.

Hadef Mohamed said he came out to watch Centre Stages production as a class assignment.

This one was my favorite so far. I think Im going to come to more now just for fun, Mohamed (freshman-chemical engineering) said.

I thought it was too good. I forgot to write my notes, Mohamed said. I really loved the last part  the musical material on the chairs. When [actor Derrick Sanders] was singing, it was amazing.

MORE LIFESTYLE CONTENT
Penn State Housing announced on Friday it will team up with Goodwill to "collect, sort and distribute" gently used items from students during student move-out at the end of the spring semester to be sold for resale at various locations.

In April, students will be informed of donation locations in their residence halls and common living areas. Items like unwanted clothing and small room decorations will be accepted, but large furniture items will not be accepted and should instead be given to organizations outside the university, the release said.

Students are also encouraged to donate unexpired food items to local food pantries.

Goodwill will be responsible for collecting and transporting the donations, which after students have moved out, and some of the proceeds made will be given to Centre County United Way.

The new collaboration also marks the end of the annual Trash to Treasure Sale at Beaver Stadium, which been put on hold in 2019 due to pandemic restrictions at the time.

This announcement comes with the approach of the "first large-scale student move-out in two years" since the beginning of coronavirus.

MORE CAMPUS COVERAGE
China completes engine tests for Long March-5B Y4, marching toward space station lab module launch

By Deng Xiaoci (Global Times) 10:22, March 23, 2022

Photo: CAST

China has successfully completed final tests on the last set of high-thrust hydrogen-oxygen engines that will power the Long March-5B Y4 carrier rocket to ferry the country's space station Mengtian laboratory module into orbit, the Global Times learned from project insiders on Tuesday.

Researchers and engineers with the 101 Research Institute, the 6th Academy of the state-owned major aerospace contractor China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp (CASC), ran a 100-second test of the state-of-the-art liquid-propellant engine on Monday. The results showed that the craft's performance met the mission requirements, the institute told the Global Times on Tuesday.

Next, the engine will be delivered to the rocket general assembly, and then the Long March-5B Y4 rocket will launch the Mengtian laboratory module into orbit later this year, according to the institute.

It was the second running test of the powerful engine, after a smooth 520-second test on March 10.

Ma Liya, director of the science and technology office with the institute, told the Global Times on Tuesday that the 50-ton-thrust engine will work in pairs as the first stage of the Long March-5 rocket series.

According to Ma, the success of the final calibration test showed that the Long March-5B Y4 rocket has entered the final preparation stage before being transferred to the launch site. The series will carry out the launches for the country's space station Mengtian and Mengtian laboratory modules in 2022.

The institute further disclosed in a statement it provided to the Global Times that it will conduct tests for the engine more than 20 times in order to verify its reliability and lay the foundation for the launch of the Xuntian space station telescope module.

China is expected to complete the construction of its orbiting space station by the end of this year. The space station will form a T-shaped structure with a cabin of over 110 cubic meters, allowing a long-term stay for a crew of three and short-term stays for six people. After completing functional and performance tests in orbit, the space station will move to the operational phase.

Zhang Wei, director of the Space Utilization Development Center, Technology and Engineering Center for Space Utilization, under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, revealed that the Wentian module will host a dozen life science experiments, including one of an artificial closed ecosystem comprised of tiny fish, microbes and algae, media reported on March 17.

Mengtian will carry the world's first space-based cold atomic clock system consisting of a hydrogen clock, a rubidium clock and an optical clock. "If successful, the cold atomic clocks will form the most precise time and frequency system in space, which should not lose one second in hundreds of millions of years," said Zhang.

China is conducting long-term and systematic planning for space experiments in four important areas: space life-sciences and human research; microgravity physical science; space astronomy and earth science, and new space technologies and applications, said Gao Ming, director of the Technology and Engineering Center for Space Utilization under the Chinese Academy of Sciences and general director of the space application system of China's manned space program.

These scientific research facilities have been developed to support more than 1,000 in-orbit research projects, Gao said.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
A top aide to Alexei Navalny warned about possible assassination of the Russian opposition leader after he was given a guilty sentence that added nine more years to his sentence in a maximum-security prison.

On Tuesday, the executive director of Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation, Vladimir Ashurkov, said in an interview that there was nothing that could stop Russian security services from killing a person anywhere in the world. He warned that this was much more of a threat to individuals inside a Russian prison, which he argued was a brutal place.

Potential Russian Assassination

The official denounced what he called the "bizarre" sentencing of Navalny which he said was imposed by a judge who was a "puppet of somebody sitting in the Kremlin." He added that the harsh sentence was part of a series of brutal crackdowns of dissent in the country amid the invasion of Ukraine.

Ashurkov noted that the unprovoked war on the neighboring country fueled opposition to Russian President Vladimir Putin's government. He argued that the situation could eventually lead to the leader's downfall, as per Yahoo News.

Authorities convicted Navalny on fraud charges over allegations that he stole from his Anti-Corruption Foundation. The 45-year-old Russian opposition leader was already serving a two-and-a-half-year sentence when he was handed out his new sentence.

Read Also: US, NATO Warning: Belarus 'Likely' to Help Russia in Ukraine Invasion

Navalny was kept in a detention center found east of the Russian capital after his February 2021 arrest for violation of probation terms, a decision that he said was politically motivated. After the sentence's announcement on Tuesday, Navalny posted on Twitter pondered about his new nine-year sentence and said he was only doing two days, the day he went in, and the day he gets out.

According to CNN, Russian state-owned news agency RIA noted that Navalny was fined roughly $11,500 and said that the opposition leader was planning to appeal the guilty verdict, citing his lawyer's statements. During the time that Judge Margarita Kotova read the accusations against Navalny, he stood by his lawyers unfazed, looking through some of the court documents.

Alexei Navalny's Sentence

For a long time, Navalny has been the subject of a campaign of harassment and intimidation by Russian authorities for his opposing views. Many see the new sentence as a move by the Kremlin to keep the opposition leader behind bars beyond the expiration in 2023 of his current prison sentence.

Navalny also said that the best support people could give him and other political prisoners were not sympathy and kind words but actions. He urged the public to conduct any activity against the deceitful and thievish Putin regime. He said that he wanted the people to take a stand against who he called "war criminals."

Despite being jailed previously, Navalny maintained his voice of opposition, only gaining momentum since Moscow decided to invade Ukraine nearly a month ago. He also sent letters to his lawyers who posted on his social media accounts to urge other people to protest against the war on Ukraine. He argued that the invasion was started by a group of "old crazy men who don't understand anything and don't want to understand anything," the New York Times reported.

Related Article: Russia Could Use Nuclear Weapons if It Faces 'Existential Threat' Amid Invasion of Ukraine

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
For Maha Marouan, Penn State associate professor of women's, gender and sexuality studies, and African studies, her collective work with the African Feminist Initiative at Penn State since 2015 has created spaces for discussions and spread awareness concerning feminism in Africa and the African diaspora.

Marouan said she works alongside co-directors Gabeba Baderoon and Alicia Decker, associate professors of womens, gender and sexuality studies, and African studies, to showcase the AFI as a transnational and global research network connecting scholars in African feminism and sharing their work.

Our research students are very involved. We have dialogues every month. Every time a book comes out, we have a book discussion, Marouan said. We are very active. Graduate students are very involved with the African Feminist Intiative.

Marouan also said theres a mentorship program within the AFI.

Additionally, the AFI has undergraduate and graduate courses focused on African feminist topics and has held five international conferences on African feminist issues.

Decker said theres an external advisory board of scholars who are based around the world, as well as an internal steering committee of Penn State-based faculty members.

It seems the more the AFI grows, the more people hear about Penn State, and they want to come to Penn State to do work  either as graduate students or as faculty or as visiting scholars, Decker said.

The AFI grew out of a need for more purposeful and deliberate conversations about African feminism within academia at Penn State, according to Decker, and it has created a space to connect the African studies and womens, gender and sexuality departments.

We were looking for a way to engage in more feminist conversations about Africa and so this was a way for us to create this metaphorical third space, Decker said. I would say that it grew out of an absence  not because either space was hostile necessarily but just because it was missing.

While most of the participating scholars reside in North America, probably one-third [reside] in various parts of the African continent and other parts of the world, Decker said.

What the AFI initially thought would be a mostly Penn State-centered organization grew into a globally reaching organization, bringing African feminist scholars togther to disscus gender inequality, patriarchy and oppression, Marouan said.

For Decker, the group didnt anticipate there being an interest in this kind of work more broadly.

MORE NEWS COVERAGE

Penn State Housing to partner with Goodwill for donations during student move-out Penn State Housing announced on Friday it will team up with Goodwill to "collect, sort and d

And so what we found is that theres a lot of scholars  both scholars like myself who are not African but do African-focused research, as well as African scholars that are living and working in primarily U.S. institutions that are feeling kinda also isolated in a way, Decker said. And so we were able to tap into this kinda hunger and really link people together.

Decker said shes been really inspired over the last seven years by the traction AFI has gained on pretty much a daily basis.

Im getting new requests from people from all over the world saying that they want to join the Listserv and be a part of the network, Decker said.

Marouan said one of AFIs goals is to have these meetings and these conferences when we bring scholars of Africa and African feminisms from all over the world to engage with these issues and make these issues visible.

She also emphazised the importance of recognizing feminism as a global issue that affects the lives of women everywhere  regardless of where theyre from.

Marouan said she hopes women across the globe can start to engage with each other and learn how to fight against inequities.

For Marouan, as women, we dont operate in a vacuum, and women are connected globally and challenged by patriarchy  all over the world.

Gender inequalities dont just exist in the third world or in the developing world, they exist everywhere, Marouan said. We can all learn strategies from each other. We can all learn from each other how to resist inequality.

Marouan also explained the differences between what it means to be a feminist from Morocco to rural parts of Southern Africa.

By studying the variety of feminisms within Africa and the different kind of manifestations, I think it certainly raises awareness among American students of just how amazing and rich the histories of activism against various forms of oppression that African women have been doing for a long, long, long, long time, Marouan said.

Decker said she believes learning about African feminism is important for students because having exposure to different ways that people are thinking allows students to see the similarities across persons, across the world  but also interesting and important differences.

Part of teaching students about African feminism includes dismantling the notion among many U.S. students that Africa is a place that needs saving and feminist movements there are not progressive, Marouan said.

The images we often get about the African continent is people in dire poverty, civil wars, a lot of violence, Marouan said. Africa is a continent, I mean so many people think about it as one country or one place, where they dont understand it actually is a continent with so many different languages and ethnicities and civilizations.

MORE NEWS COVERAGE

For Decker, the value of learning about African feminism is that American students are able to learn about Africa as a progessive place and not as a necessarily backwards place that needs to be saved.

The idea that there are women who are engaging with feminist issues and challenging patriarchy and fighting for equal rights just doesnt, you know, doesnt cross peoples minds, Marouan said.

Marouan said the only way it can work is through connecting to other people, and so its important not to have assumptions about other parts of the world and this idea that other parts of the world have nothing to offer us.

Zinhle kaNobuhlaluse, co-moderator for AFIs monthly Feminist Dialogues, said its important for people to understand that we are not a monolith, and that theres different forms of African ways of being and African feminists.

Intergenerationality isnt a conversation, but were actually doing it, Zinhle kaNobuhlaluse said. It also ensured that other emerging scholars find refuge in this space and see that they also can contribute within the spaces if you have somebody whos doing that.

Zinhle kaNobuhlaluse also said dialogue spaces allow room for activists on the ground, which reminds those in the AFI "come into feminism because I come into feminism through activism as well.

[African feminism] is important every month. Why its important is because theres been so much erasion, Zinhle kaNobuhlaluse said. Theres one erasion of the work that has been done by feminists. Thats why its important for us to constantly recognize that.

Zinhle kaNobuhlaluse said African feminist spaces always cultivate room for joy  even in times of struggle.

Theres a balance of both forms of resisting oppression but also cultivating joy whilst doing that and cultivating ones own identity outside of what one is responding to, Zinhle kaNobuhlaluse said.

Decker said AFI will continue to be present and answer questions, and we welcome the involvement of undergraduates, certainly, in whatever way they want to be involved.

Be curious about the world, be curious about how other women operate in the world  how do they fight patriarchy, how do they fight inequality, how do they fight injustice, what are the strategies they have, Marouan said.

MORE NEWS COVERAGE
Nov. 8, 2022, will see plenty of consequential elections in Pennsylvania.

The general elections for statewide offices such as governorship, half of the state Senate and all seats in the state House, as well as federal offices with an open Senate seat up for grabs and all House of Representative members are on the ballot.

Given Pennsylvanias importance as the bellwether in the 2020 general election, all eyes will be on the elections this fall during midterms. Before it comes, however, the primaries must take place  this year on May 17.

The Republican primaries for governor and Senate are by far the most important, however.

The Democratic primaries for those two races have been pretty clear thus far. For the Senate, incumbent Lt. Governor John Fetterman has a healthy lead and has led in polls the entire race. As far as the governor race goes, current Attorney General Josh Shaprio faces no serious opposition in the primary and is expected to win his election.

Fetterman and Shaprio have a large disadvantage when they inevitably head into the general election. Typically, an incumbent presidents party often performs poorly during midterms. It's a phenomenon thats historically documented and generally reliable. The more unpopular the president, the more of an effect this will have.

President Joe Bidens approval rating, once steady and respectable for a deeply divided nation, has been underwater since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, and continued to drop, steadying at about 42.2% as of March 22.

Bidens approval rating is slightly higher than former President Donald Trumps at the same day in office and a lot lower than former President Barack Obamas at the same day, with both former commander-in-chiefs parties losing big in their midterms  an ominous sign for the Biden administration.

This means that whoever the GOP nominates as their candidates will have a decent shot at winning the races this fall. And the Republican races are awfully close. The Republican governor primary race is full of candidates, with two big Trump supporters narrowing down the field as the top two candidates.

Former Rep. Lou Barletta is barely leading the polls, who Pennsylvanians may be familiar with as the GOP nominee for Senate in 2018. Barletta failed to defeat Sen. Bob Casey Jr. in the race.

Although described as more moderate than some Republicans during his House tenure, Barlettas been a fervent supporter of Trump and was one of the so called alternate electors for the GOP during the contesting of the 2020 election.

Barletta is facing the most stiff competition from Doug Mastriano, a state senator. Mastriano himself has views that go from being fairly extreme to hateful.

Mastriano believes that adoption agencies should discriminate against same-sex couples, posed with white supremicist groups, posts Islamaphobic memes online such as claims that Muslims set Notre Dame on fire and that Muslim Congresswoman Illhan Omar throws babies out of windows  both of which are not true.

While Barletta attempted to overturn the 2020 election, Mastriano went further. He funded six charter buses to the Jan. 6 Stop the Steal rally, which ended up with one officer being killed by rioters and four other officers dying of suicide in the following days and months, along with the deaths of four rioters.

Neither of the candidates have Trumps endorsement. Whether Barletta prevails or Mastriano pulls ahead will demonstrate how far the GOP is willing to nominate someone for a governorship.

The Senate race for the GOP is hectic, as well. GOP Sen. Pat Toomey, who voted to convict Trump in his second impeachment, opted to retire, leaving the competitive seat open. Toomeys voting history was reliably conservative, with some wiggle room for bipartisanship at times.

Sean Parnell, an army veteran, was the frontrunner for months and was endorsed by Trump. However, in a custody battle with his wife, Laurie Snell, she testified that she was strangled by Parnell and that he abused their kids. He thankfully dropped out of the race, opening it up.

TV doctor Mehmet Oz announced his candidacy after. Oz faced criticism for not living in Pennsylvania and only being registered to vote within the commonwealth until 2020. It may be hard to fathom how much Oz really knows about the needs of Pennsylvanians with his short history living full time in the Keystone State.

David McCormick, who is currently ahead in the polls, has attempted to enlist the help of Trump supporters to beef his campaign.

McCormick is a former administrator from the George W. Bush administration, and his political views throughout his career are more moderate than the current state of the GOP. Hes on record of detracting Trump, calling out certain aspects of Trumps policy as wrong and crediting Biden for political appointments and speeches that aimed at a theme of unity.

McCormicks campaign has endorsed Trumps politics, however. Both him and Oz are competing for the kings slice of Trump voters, who obviously dominate the Republican voting base.

Both races are extremely tight. It seems that all candidates are vying to have the support of Trump and his voters. Without that support, their chances of winning the primaries would be in the gutter.

Just how far can these candidates go in the primary toward Trump before they scare off independent and moderate voters  who will ultimately decide the election? History shows that flying too close to the former president hasnt ended well.
Its a long way from a small Colorado mountain town to Ankara, Turkey, but Samuel Frykholm 24 is confident about that journey. The political science major will spend summer 2022 studying the Turkish language through the Critical Languages Scholarship, which will fully fund his time there.

Growing up in Leadville, Colorado, Frykholm dreamed of attending Colorado College; he was drawn to the opportunities, education, and community here. And then he received a Boettcher Scholarship, which awards $20,000 per year for four years, with CC using various sources to pay recipients total tuition and fees.

It was just such a dream combination, Frykholm says.

The CLS application was unique, he says, because of its emphasis on students justifying their language choice. The program is part of the U.S. governments effort to assist students to master foreign languages and act as citizen ambassadors to other countries.

Students spend eight to 10 weeks in the host country. The CLS program doesnt require previous study in Turkish, among a few other languages.

Frykholm spent summer 2021 working in the Republic of Georgia for a small non-governmental organization that was integrating Azeri, Armenian, and Meskhetian Turk migrants into Georgian society. He formed friendships with many of the people there and wants to work with them again, and learning a Turkic language would smooth his way.

In a geographic sense, Turkish compliments my Russian language skills particularly well. With the two, so much of the world opens up, he says.

This will be Frykholms first time in Turkey, where hell study at Tomer University in Ankara and, most likely, live in one of the universitys dormitories. The program is intense and he expects to spend about eight hours on classes and work every day.

CLS students participate in extracurricular activities that are created to augment the formal curriculum and expand their understanding of the host countrys daily life, history, politics, and culture. Theyll also meet regularly with native speakers to practice their conversational skills one-on-one.

Frykholm knows this experience will complement his political science studies, which he hopes to continue in graduate school. The details about his post-CC life are up in the air, but he knows the CLS experience will greatly benefit his life and career.

Turkey is placed in such a diverse and important political space, so understanding it at a deeper level should open up so many more doors to me, he says.
Colorado Politics is published both in print and online. Our website features subscriber-only news stories daily, designed for public policy arena professionals. Member subscribers also receive the weekly print edition of our award-winning newspaper, containing outstanding features and news stories, in their mailboxes every Saturday.
On Tuesday, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson called with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the two nations pledged to strengthen their trade, security, and economic ties in the coming days.

Specifically, PM Modi and Johnson addressed bilateral problems and agreed on the potential for further increasing cooperation in a variety of areas, including commerce, technology, investments, military and security, as well as people-to-people connections, during their talk.

PM Modi Speaks to Boris Johnson on Ukraine Situation

PM Modi expressed satisfaction with the positive momentum in the ongoing bilateral Free Trade Agreement negotiations, according to a PMO statement. He also praised the progress made in executing the 'India-UK Roadmap 2030,' which was established during last year's virtual summit between the two leaders.

According to Business Standard, the Prime Minister expressed his wish to have PM Johnson visit India as soon as possible, if it is mutually convenient. PM Modi reiterated India's consistent call for a cessation of hostilities and a return to the path of dialogue and diplomacy during their discussion on the Ukraine situation.

He emphasized India's belief in international law and all states' territorial integrity and sovereignty as the foundation of the modern world order.

Boris Johnson encouraged India to join the West in criticizing Russia's invasion of Ukraine, despite mounting criticism of the country's neutral posture. Modi has even put up a system to help Putin evade the consequences of sanctions by facilitating commerce with Russia using rupees, as per Daily Mail.

In order to achieve this, India has begun purchasing oil from Russia at low prices. Johnson advised Modi to utilize his tight connection with the Kremlin for good, according to the Prime Minister's official spokesperson.

"We urge all nations to move away from dependency on Russian oil and gas," the official said when asked about India's choice to buy Russian oil. Meanwhile, the Foreign Office is anticipating the announcement of further Western sanctions in the coming days.

Read Also: Xi Jinping Eases Joe Biden, United States' Concerns on China Aiding Russia, Opposes Ukraine Invasion

India, UK Agree To Strengthen Economic Ties

Modi reaffirmed India's long-standing call for an end to hostilities and a return to discussion and diplomacy. Modi also stressed India's confidence in international law, as well as the territorial integrity and sovereignty of all states, as the foundation of today's world order.

In addition, the two leaders addressed bilateral matters and agreed on the possibility of increasing cooperation in sectors like commerce, technology, investments, military and security, and people-to-people connections.

According to News18, the leaders praised India and the United Kingdom's strong and flourishing relationship and pledged to continue to strengthen trade, security, and commercial ties in the next weeks and months. The leaders' request comes after the UK expressed dissatisfaction with India's stance in the continuing Russia-Ukraine issue, which included abstaining from UN votes denouncing Russia's conduct.

Last week, on the sidelines of a UK Turkey Green Finance Conference in London, UK Trade Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan expressed disappointment with India's stance on the Russia-Ukraine crisis and stated that collaboration with Indian partners will continue in the "hope that their views will change."

Related Article: US, NATO Warning: Belarus 'Likely' to Help Russia in Ukraine Invasion

@YouTube

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Wasco County commissioners hear testimony during their first in-person meeting since the arrival of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 in 2021. Pictured are, from left, commissioners Steve Kramer, Kathy Schwartz and Scott Hege. They are looking up at a Zoom screen on the wall.
Are you a current print subscriber to Columbia Gorge News? If so, you qualify for free access to all content on columbiagorgenews.com. Simply verify with your subscriber id to receive free access. Your subscriber id may be found on your bill or mailing label.
Would you like to receive our news updates? Signup today!

Sign up to receive notifications when a new Columbia Gorge News e-Edition is published.

Error! There was an error processing your request.

Success! An email has been sent to with a link to confirm list signup.

News and Info from our Community Partners

Information from the News and our advertisers (Want to add your business to this to this feed?)
Installation of better ventilation systems can bring down the risk of COVID-19 transmission in schools by more than 80%, according to recent research conducted by an Italian think-tank.

Coronavirus infection was analyzed in 10,441 classrooms in Italy's central Marche region, according to a study conducted by the Hume foundation research tank, per Reuters report.

COVID-19 cases were significantly reduced in the 316 classrooms with mechanical ventilation systems, reducing cases varying depending on the system's strength.

Infections were reduced by 40% using applications that guaranteed a complete replacement of the air in a classroom 2.4 times per hour. According to the study, they were reduced by 66.8% with four air replacements per hour and by 82.5 percent with six air replacements per hour.

Mechanical ventilation is not installed in the majority of Italian schools. Instead, teachers are encouraged to keep windows open when the weather permits.

The Hume foundation and the Marche regional administration noted in a press release that if the most efficient systems were installed, "we could go from 250 instances per 100,000 kids (the education ministry's alert threshold) to a rate of 50 cases per 100,000."

The research was conducted between September 2021 and January of the current year.

Italy COVID-19 Cases Up Again

COVID-19 cases in Italy increased rapidly in December and early January. Then it declined from mid-January until early March. However, the number of infections increases again due to the Omicron variant, which is more contagious. Data also indicate that new hospitalizations and deaths are dropping.

Since the pandemic began in February 2020, the country has recorded 157,904 deaths due to COVID-19, the second-highest number of fatalities in Europe after the United Kingdom and the eighth-highest worldwide. To date, it has reported 13.89 million instances.

According to an ABC News report, 89.7% of the country's over-12 population is fully vaccinated.

The health ministry reported 32,573 new cases on Monday, up from 60,415 a day before and 119 deaths, a rise from 93 recorded the previous day.

Read Also: India, UK To Strengthen Ties on Trade, Security; PM Boris Johnson Urges PM Narendra Modi to Condemn Russia's Invasion of Ukraine

Increasing COVID-19 Cases In Other European Countries

Meanwhile, the World Health Organization (WHO) said that COVID-19 cases are increasing in 18 out of 53 countries in its European region.

According to WHO Europe director Hans Kluge, the rise in cases is possibly due to the BA2 variant, which is more transmissible but less dangerous than other strains of the virus.

However, as per France 24, the health official said in a media conference in Moldova that he was "optimistic but vigilant" on the situation.

Kluge said that the countries that saw an increase are "the United Kingdom, Ireland, Greece, Cyprus, France, Italy, and Germany." He added that the mentioned nations are relaxing their restrictions "from too much to too few."

WHO database indicates that the new COVID-19 cases in Europe abruptly declined following a peak at the end of January. Though, since early March, the numbers have been climbing.

In the last seven days, over 5.1 million new cases and 12,496 deaths have been reported in the WHO's European region. This puts the total number of infections to about 194.4 million and the number of fatalities to 1.92 million since the pandemic started in early 2020.

Related Article: COVID-19 Infection Raises Likelihood of Developing Type 2 Diabetes, New Research Found in Review of Patient Records

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
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.
Despite daily headlines of cyberattacks, nine out of 10 IT and security leaders believe their organizations are still falling short in addressing cyber risks, according to Foundrys 2021 Security Priorities Study.

But there is hopeful news. The study found that among the small and midsize businesses (SMBs) increasing their security budgets, they are aiming to double their spending on average, from approximately $5.5 million in 2020 to $11 million in 2022.

Furthermore, because many SMBs tend to have limited expertise in security, they are turning to outsourcers for help. This year, 21% plan to have fully outsourced their security functions.

However, before doing so consider this: Many managed services providers (MSPs) also lack security expertise. In the face of cutting-edge cyberthreats, their approach may be limited to configuring basic firewall rules and deploying antivirus solutions, says Gaidar Magdanurov, chief success officer at Acronis.

Unfortunately, ensuring a better security posture comes at a higher cost to organizations. That sometimes leaves gaps and risks  for both SMBs and the customers they serve.

We typically see that few SMBs have a strong security posture, Magdanurov says. So, when they are serving as vendors of large enterprises, they inadvertently become the weak link in the security chain. As an example, he points to multiple recent security breaches of large retailers, including Target and Home Depot, through third parties.

Security initiatives for SMBs

The first step is to engage with partners that can deploy and manage security information and event management (SIEM) systems, as well as monitor events to detect security threats, Magdanurov says. Reactive security is not enough, and SMBs need to have security solutions that assess vulnerabilities, deploy patches, and improve configurations.

SMBs should invest in systems that are able to quickly restore systems to an operating state after attacks, while maintaining a copy of the information for analysis and investigation to prevent future breaches. If you arent sure how to go about prioritizing and tackling these, an MSP with security expertise or a managed security services provider (MSSP) can help.

The partner should guide you through the options available, based on the budget youre able to allocate to security, Magdanurov says.

It is also critical to invest in employee education around security best practices, because people are still responsible for about 90% of all breaches, he added. Such incidents might occur when users open a phishing email, adopt weak passwords, or leave unlocked devices in public.

SMBs should also request that their MSP or MSSP partners regularly review their environments to constantly improve the security posture, Magdanurov says.

When finances are limited

For those with a limited budget, at the very minimum, Magdanurov advised the deployment of an integrated system that combines cybersecurity with data protection and management.

SMBs need proactive protection with patch management capabilities, vulnerability assessments, and antivirus and anti-malware protection, he says. They also need the ability to quickly recover in the event of failure by restoring from backup  automatically, if possible  to local hardware or even the cloud.

An integrated offering is the most economical decision, Magdanurov says, because it allows an SMB  or the MSP managing their infrastructure  to save on resources spent deploying multiple agents and managing multiple consoles, maintaining a patchwork of solutions, and training staff to work with disparate vendors. Using multiple solutions decreases actively increases complexity and the chance for human error, he notes, decreasing reliability and putting organizations in harms way.

Click here to see how Acronis can help Improve your security posture.
Apple is acquiring the UK-based fintech startup Credit Kudos for an undisclosed amount, as Apple typically doesnt disclose the price of its acquisitions. Credit Kudos last raised 5 million ($6.5 million) in funding back in April 2020.

Neither Credit Kudos or Apple could be reached to confirm the deal, which was first reported by the crypto-focused publication The Block, citing three sources close to the deal. The privacy policy link on the Credit Kudos website currently redirects to Apples privacy policy.

Credit Kudos is a challenger credit bureau founded in 2015 by Freddy Kelly and Matt Schofield after Kelly struggled to get credit upon returning to the UK after working overseas in the US. It uses machine learning and real-time data to build up a fuller picture of a persons credit score, rather than traditional agencies, like Experian, Equifax and TransUnion, which typically rely on older information to build up a profile, such as bank statements and utility statements.

The open banking opportunity

The firm has also benefitted from the recent wave of open banking regulations across the globe, which aim to open up consumer financial data via a set of secure application programming interfaces (APIs). Credit Kudos provides this data to clients for services such as affordability and risk assessments.

In the USA, where open banking regulations have not yet been formally implemented, banks do not have a consistent set of APIs to work from, making companies that can provide access to this data highly valuable.

As a result, open banking startups have been attracting plenty of M&A attention over the past few years. In January 2021 Visa called off its acquisition of the San Francisco-based financial data specialist Plaid, before turning its attention to the Swedish open banking firm Tink later that year. Elsewhere, Mastercard announced it was expanding its fintech capabilities by acquiring the Danish open banking startup Aiia in September of 2021.

It is unclear at this stage what Apple plans to do with Credit Kudos, but it has invested significantly in its fintech capabilities over recent years, in particular its mobile Apple Pay wallet, and its Apple Card credit card, which is currently only available in the US and was built in partnership with Goldman Sachs.
US declares Rohingyas year-long repression in Myanmar a genocide

The Joe Biden administration has declared the year-long repression of the Rohingya Muslim population in Myanmar a 'genocide', US officials said.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced the long-anticipated designation on Monday at an event at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Blinken announced the US would provide $1m (758,000) in new funding for the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar, which continues to examine atrocities. Photo courtesy: Twitter/@rachelhalinsor

The US has seen evidence pointing to a clear intent to destroy the Rohingya, with reports of killings, mass rape and arson, Blinken said.

The designation does not in and of itself portend drastic new measures against Myanmars military-led government, which has already been hit with multiple layers of US sanctions since the campaign against the Rohingya ethnic minority began in the country's western Rakhine state in 2017.

But it could lead to additional international pressure on the government, which is already facing accusations of genocide at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Human rights groups and lawmakers have been pressing both the Trump and Biden administrations to make the designation.

At least one member of Congress, Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon, welcomed the step, as did Refugees International.

I applaud the Biden administration for finally recognising the atrocities committed against the Rohingya as genocide," he said in a statement.

While this determination is long overdue, it is nevertheless a powerful and critically important step in holding this brutal regime to account," Merkley said. Such processes must always be carried out objectively, consistently, and in a way that transcends geopolitical considerations.

The humanitarian group Refugees International also praised the move. The US genocide declaration is a welcome and profoundly meaningful step, the group said in a statement. It is also a solid sign of commitment to justice for all the people who continue to face abuses by the military junta to this very today.

Merkley called on the administration to continue the pressure campaign on Myanmar by imposing additional sanctions on the government to include its oil and gas sectors. America must lead the world to make it clear that atrocities like these will never be allowed to be buried unnoticed, no matter where they occur, he said.

More than 700,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled from Buddhist-majority Myanmar to refugee camps in Bangladesh since August 2017, when the Myanmar military launched a clearance operation in response to attacks by a rebel group. Myanmar security forces have been accused of mass rapes, killings and the burning of thousands of homes.
Anonymous is now continuously making headlines as they actively participate in defending Ukraine with Russia's territorial dispute.

Anonymous Resurfaces

Anonymous is a well-known legion of hackers, founded as early as 2003. This time, their notoriety will be made by continuously defending Ukraine.

The Anonymous movement is a collaborative project from a group of hacktivists from different countries around the world seeking a better future for humanity.

These hacktivists all come from different cultural backgrounds, political ideologies, and preferred methods of activism. However, this legion operates on its few shared basic principles.

Anonymous's basic principles revolve around freedom of speech, privacy, and accountability from private sectors and public agencies.

When Russia's President Vladimir Putin declared a specialized military operation in Ukraine on Feb. 23, the Anonymous hacktivist group tweeted that multiple Anonymous accounts are gearing up towards launching a cyberattack on Vladimir Putin.

There are many #Anonymous accounts gearing up for action against the imperialist state of Russia, and we will be retweeting their endeavors.  Anonymous (@YourAnonNews) February 24, 2022

The Anonymous collective is officially in cyber war against the Russian government. #Anonymous #Ukraine  Anonymous (@YourAnonOne) February 24, 2022

The legion of Anonymous became vocal in threatening Vladimir Putin during the exact day that Russia declared specialized military operations to their neighboring country, Ukraine.

Anonymous was clear that they stand against oppression, help seek justice, and defend those that are left who cannot fight for themselves.

Anonymous: Attacking Russia

Anonymous made several cyberattacks on Russia during the earliest days after Vladimir Putin declared a specialized military operation in Ukraine.

However, all eyes began looking at Anonymous as they attacked Russia on March 2 by hacking the website of Russian oil company Gazprom.

In addition to that cyberattack, the RT News agency, the state-controlled agency in Russia, was successfully pulled down by Anonymous at the same time.

On top of that, as previously reported, Anonymous attacked websites of Russian governments and the Russian defense ministry's website.

The hacktivist took to Twitter and credited themselves for launching the cyberattack to internet service providers in Russia. The hacktivist also took credit for "leaking documents and emails from the Belarusian weapons manufacturer Tetraedr, and shutting down a gas supply provided by the Russian telecommunications service Tvingo Telecom."

Read Also: SysJoker Malware Can Damage Your Windows, Mac PC: Warning Signs, How to Remove If You're Attacked

Anonymous Hacking Russian TV on March 7

Anonymous made a massive breach in Russian telecommunications that disrupted every channel available in the country. The hacktivist breached all the Russian channels: Russia 24, Moscow 24, Channel One, Wink, and Ivi.

The group disrupted air time and inserted on the ground footage of the devastation in Ukraine showing in the video the damaged buildings, rubbles of road damages, and live footages of bombings by the Russian military.

The hacktivism was featured in their Twitter account, sharing clips of the Russian propaganda they have caused.

After Anonymous hacks Russia, the group posted on their Twitter account stating:

"The hacking collective #Anonymous today hacked into the Russian streaming services Wink and Ivi (like Netflix) and live TV channels Russia 24, Channel One, Moscow 24 to broadcast war footage from #Ukraine. #TangoDown #OpRussia"

MORE: All Russian-state TV channels have been hacked. pic.twitter.com/fCZaYpQjYP  Anonymous TV  (@YourAnonTV) March 6, 2022

Anonymous Hacks Russia with Database Breach

Anonymous, according to the report of Fortune, recently attacked 92 out of 100 Russian databases. The collected database was analyzed, compromised, and the file names were changed to "Glory to Ukraine", "Putin stop this war," "stop war," "no war," "HackedByUkraine," and short pro-Ukrainian messages. The files that were compromised by Anonymous were also wiped out. As stated by Fortune, "Hacktivists used a script resembling the "MeowBot," which deletes the content of files and changes their names." One of the compromised entities was The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). The CIS is an international organization composed of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. Anonymous was able to hack into the lawmaking body, trade, security, and finance systems of these member states. After compromising these files, internal emails and administrative credentials were leaked and some data were renamed to "putin_stop_this_war". The private retail home decor company of Leroy Merlin was also compromised by the hacktivists: files were hacked, corrupted, and then, renamed. Since declaring cyber aggression to Russia, "#Anonymous has hacked over 2500 websites of Russian & Belarusian gov't, state media outlets, banks, hospitals, airports, companies & pro-Russia 'hacking group' in support of #Ukraine."

MORE: Since declaring 'cyber war' on Kremlin's criminal regime, #Anonymous has hacked over 2500 websites of Russian & Belarusian gov't, state media outlets, banks, hospitals, airports, companies & pro-russian 'hacking group' in support of #Ukraine. #OpRussia  Anonymous TV  (@YourAnonTV) March 17, 2022

Related Article: Afraid Data Brokers Are Selling Your Personal Information? This 1 Tool Prevents It From Happening
Nakasu-climax.com scored 40 Social Media Impact. Social Media Impact score is a measure of how much a site is popular on social networks. 2/5.0 Stars by Social Team

This CoolSocial report was updated on 30 Jan 2013, you can refresh this analysis whenever you want.

This is the sum of two values: the total number of people who shared the nakasu-climax homepage on Twitter + the total number of nakasu-climax followers (if nakasu-climax has a Twitter account). The total number of people who shared the nakasu-climax homepage on Google Plus by a google +1 button. This is the sum of two values: the total number of people who shared, liked or recommended the nakasu-climax homepage on Facebook + the total number of page likes (if nakasu-climax has a Facebook fan page). The total number of people who shared the nakasu-climax homepage on StumbleUpon. The total number of people who shared the nakasu-climax homepage on Delicious.

Basic Information

PAGE TITLE  Climax() DESCRIPTION () Climax() KEYWORDS , , ,  OTHER KEYWORDS climax, climax,



The keywords 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 URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is the address of the site. The title found in the head section of the homepage. The description meta-tag found in the head section of the homepage.

Domain and Server

DOCTYPE HTML 4.01 Transitional CHARSET AND LANGUAGE Japanese EUC-JPJapanese DETECTED LANGUAGE Japanese Japanese SERVER Apache/2.0.63 (FreeBSD) PHP/4.4.9 (PHP/4.4.9) OPERATIVE SYSTEM Linux Linux

Operative System running on the server. The language of nakasu-climax.com as detected by CoolSocial algorithms. Represents HTML declared type (e.g.: XHTML 1.1, HTML 4.0, the new HTML 5.0) Character set and language of the site. Type of server and offered services.

Site Traffic trend during the last year. Only available for sites ranked <= 100000 in the world.

Referring domains for nakasu-climax.com by MajesticSeo. High values are a sign of site importance over the web and on web engines.

Facebook link

FACEBOOK PAGE LINK NOT FOUND

The total number of people who tagged or talked about website Facebook page in the last 7-10 days. The type of Facebook page. A Facebook page link can be found in the homepage or in the robots.txt file. The URL of the found Facebook page. 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.

Twitter account link

TWITTER PAGE LINK NOT FOUND
- [Advanced Optimus]: Brightness levels do not change properly when display set to NVIDIA GPU only mode with HDR set to off. [3497181]

- Increased registry reads by DWM.exe when GPU is connected to G-SYNC/G-SYNC Compatible display [3535493]

- [NVIDIA Advanced Optimus][Ampere] Putting notebook to sleep by closing the lid and then waking up the notebook may cause Windows to reboot when in dGPU mode. [3444252]

- The native resolution for a DVI or HDMI display may not be available from the display settings if the display contains an invalid EDID. [3502752]

- [Adobe Substance Sampler/Stager]: Fixed Optimus profile to run on dGPU by default. [3557257]

- [Enscape]: Shadow rendering is incorrect. [3530584]

- [Solidworks Visualize Boost]: When the application process is running in the background, the GPU memory clock may operate at lower clock speeds. [3417407]

- [Adobe Premiere Pro]: Adobe Media Encoder could crash due to out of memory error when encoding multiple R3D 8k files. [3532477]

- [Foundry Nuke]: CUDA and OpenCL kernel return incorrect result. [3497442]

- Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed may crash on courses where players drive through water. [3338967]

- [NVIDIA Ampere GPU]: With the GPU connected to an HDMI 2.1 audio/video receiver, audio may drop out when playing back Dolby Atmos. [3345965]

- Club 3D CAC-1085 dongle limited to maximum resolution of 4K at 60 Hz. [3542678]

diffuse de nouveaux drivers, les. Les nouveaux venus sont Game Ready pour les jeuxetNvidia a ajoute des profils Geforce Experience pour les jeux Elden Ring, Expeditions: Rome, Mortal Online 2, Shadow Warrior 3, Sifu et Total War: Warhammer III.Les driversse trouvent ici
Kid Rock was interviewed on Tucker Carlson this week. I hate that we live in a timeline where I have to type those words, but its where weve arrived. I guess when the guest list begins to run dry on people that have actual political knowledge and also choose to believe in the same variety of absolute fiction Tucker Carlson viewers do, youre eventually going to be forced to call Kid Rock.

Though it may not be at the front of peoples minds anymore because of the sheer amount of abject terror weve been shoving in there over the last year, Kid Rock was a vocal Trump supporter. Over the campaign and resulting presidency, he went from an artifact of nostalgia filed away next to the song Youth Of The Nation by P.O.D. to a fairly regular, confounding sight in politics. When the modern Republican party is truly scraping the bottom of the barrel, desperate for any sort of relevant celebrity that will (publicly) support them, I guess Kid Rock seems like a pretty good find.

Pixabay Quick, call Kid Rock!

Anyway, the two were reminiscing about the Trump presidency, as two ghouls are wont to do, when Kid Rock revealed some details that probably would have been shocking to me about 7 years ago, but now just make dark sense. Those details being that at some point, while hanging out with Donald Trump, Trump asked him for advice on North Korea and ISIS. I dont know whats crazier to me, imagining Kid Rock giving his take on North Korea, or imagining Donald Trump actually asking for advice.
Microsoft confirms that the Lapsus$ hack of the Microsoft Azure DevOps is true, naming the actors DEV-0537. Microsoft released a statement in their blog post today confirming the claims of Lapsus$ that they were behind the data breach.

Lapsus$ posted a screenshot in their Telegram account with a photo of the now confirmed hacked files in their group chat. Within the screenshot can be seen the hacked files that belong to source code repositories for Bing, Bing Maps, and Cortana.

Microsoft Confirms Lapsus$ Hack

Microsoft was asked about the hacking of Lapsus$ in their systems after the leaks and rumors have resurfaced online. However, Microsoft stated yesterday that they are investigating the claims of Lapsus$.

As reported by The Verge, on March 23 today, after the investigation done by its cybersecurity team, Microsoft confirmed the data breach of Lapsus$.

In addition, Microsoft admitted that they have been looking closely at the activities of the threat actors even before they decided to breach the company. Microsoft names Lapsus$ as DEV-0537.

Microsoft clarified that there was no involvement of a customer's data being compromised during the data breach of source code from DEV-0537.

After conducting an investigation, Microsoft discovered that only a single account has been compromised, resulting in limited access.

Microsoft has an extensive cybersecurity team, with that, the cybersecurity response teams were dispatched as soon as the compromised account was discovered in order to prevent further infiltration.

As reported by iTech Post, Microsoft states: "This means we do not rely on the secrecy of source code for the security of products, and our threat models assume that attackers have knowledge of source code. So viewing source code isn't tied to elevation of risk."

Since Microsoft has already been investigating DEV-0537, the Microsoft cybersecurity respondents were already familiar with the strategies, tactics, and techniques DEV-0537 employed in this incursion.

When Lapsus$ made the claims publicly, the Microsoft team had already begun analyzing the compromised account based on threat data gathered at the time.

Microsoft also revealed that the threat actors were stopped in the middle of their operations which reduced the broader impact of the incident.

Read Also: Cybersecurity Hackers Defending Ukraine After Conti Ransomware Gang Sides With Russia

Lapsus$ Hacks

Lapsus$ was also the threat actor responsible for breaching Samsung, Vodafone, Ubisoft, Mercado Libre and NVIDIA.

This Lapsus$ breached a surmountable amount of data in NVIDIA. Just recently, Lapsus$ breaching data in NVIDIA is claimed to be for the gaming and mining community.

Lapsus$ stole 1TB of data from the GPU company in response to an Ethereum hash rate limiter that was installed on the company's most recent graphics card release; which resulted in the company being held to ransom.

It has also done the same to Samsung and Ubisoft. DEV-0537 initially targeted organizations in the United Kingdom and South America, but it has since expanded to include organizations throughout the world, including those in the government, technology, telecommunications, media, retail, and healthcare sectors.

However, one of Lapsus$' alleged victims, Okta, denied that they were hacked by the ransomware gang.

In the blog post published by Microsoft, the company also revealed how the Lapsus$ group was able to make the attack possible. Included in the article are ways companies can mitigate the infiltration of Microsoft in their systems. Microsoft stated:

"DEV-0537 also uses several tactics that are less frequently used by other threat actors tracked by Microsoft.

Their tactics include phone-based social engineering: SIM-swapping to facilitate account takeover, accessing personal email accounts of employees at target organizations, paying employees, suppliers, or business partners of target organizations for access to credentials and multifactor authentication (MFA) approval; and intruding in the ongoing crisis-communication calls of their targets."

Related Article: Lapsus$ Group Leaks Alleged Samsung Confidential Data
Crossville, TN (38555)

Today

Sunshine and clouds mixed. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High near 80F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Variably cloudy with scattered thunderstorms. Low 63F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60%.
Business

Hutchinson woman brings Dunn Brothers back to life

Staff photo by Stephen Wiblemo McKenna Nelson of Hutchinson enjoyed her part-time job at Dunn Brothers Coffee so much that when the previous owners closed the downtown business in February, she decided to buy it with plans to reopen in April.

While Christians around the world are preparing to celebrate Easter, Hutchinson coffee lovers can celebrate a different kind of resurrection.

One month after Dunn Brothers Coffee announced it was closing Feb. 8, a new owner has purchased the business with plans to reopen the downtown java spot next month with a new look and new lease on life.

It was like, no, no, wait a minute, I need to ask why. I need to know more about whats going on, because I do know that it was a successful business, said McKenna Nelson, a 27-year-old Hutchinson native, mother, newlywed, and the new owner of Dunn Brothers Coffee.

Nelson, a 2012 Hutchinson High School graduate who studied accounting at Purdue University, was one of the first people to hear the store was closing. Although she works full time as an accounting manager, she was also working part time at Dunn Brothers for the past two years. When the news went public that one of the last coffee spots on the north side of town was closing, she knew from customers reactions that it was going to be missed.

This is the only place on this side of town, she said. It was nice and convenient, so I know there was a lot of uproar like, Oh no, you guys are closing, this was our one-stop shop. We have posted since that we are reopening and weve had awesome feedback. The community has been really welcoming.

Shortly after the closing announcement, Nelson reached out to the previous owners to ask questions about why they were closing and inquire about purchasing the business. According to her, the business was still viable, but the previous owners were simply no longer interested in running a coffee shop. With their lease coming to an end, they decided it was the right time to get out.

It also ended up being the right time for Nelson to take the plunge from being a part-time server to becoming the owner.

I really love this place, the people who come in, the staff who worked here, the community and Dunn Brothers itself, she said. They have a good stance on being for your community and taking that up, and it really hit home for me.

Nelson officially became the owner of Dunn Brothers Coffee March 1, and she hasnt been a passive owner, either. Shes got big plans, starting with renovations to open up the space and create a conference room available for rent.

Changes to the menu are also on the docket. Fans of Dunn Brothers will still be able to get all their favorite foods and beverages from before, but theyll also have new options with a full lunch menu, nitro coffee and extended hours from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Im really excited about this, Nelson said. Were actually going to have a full lunch menu, which they didnt have here before, they just had the build-your-own sandwiches and pastries and things of that nature. But Dunn Brothers actually offers a full lunch with soups, salads, sandwiches and all these different things that our staff will make.

The plan is to reopen the store in early or mid-April, depending on the availability of supplies needed to finish renovations. Hiring has started, and already Nelson said shes seen some previous employees submit applications.

It wasnt known that I was going to (buy the business), so they had to find another job, Nelson said about her former coworkers. So theyre starting to come out of the woodwork a little bit and gain that confidence because its coming to fruition now. Im hoping more folks will come on board.

Its been a whirlwind month for McKenna and her husband, Brody Nelson, who also got married in late February. Becoming a wife and a business owner all within a few days has kept her busy, but she wouldnt have it any other way.

We talk about it all the time because its happened so fast, she said. This is the first time Ive done this, so I kind of leaped in, but Im really excited.
Hutchinson, MN (55350)

Today

Showers this morning becoming less numerous during the afternoon hours. High 61F. Winds E at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50%..

Tonight

Cloudy skies this evening will become partly cloudy after midnight. Low near 45F. Winds light and variable.
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
Elon Musk still cannot get away with regulating tweets about Tesla!

Elon Musk Tweets: SEC Continues to Regulate

Elon Musk has stated that he wants to tweet freely in his account. However, the nation's top securities regulator urged the federal judge not to allow Elon Musk to avoid a court order requiring that his Twitter activity be monitored.

Elon Musk's tweets have been monitored for a few years now. This is part of the agreement between Musk, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the federal court. However, the Tesla chief executive considers the arrangement to be a part of a harassment campaign.

As reported by Reuters, the United States securities regulators have legal rights to release a subpoena to Tesla CEO Elon Musk about his tweets if the tweet is categorized as harassment, false, and misleading.

In addition, the recent U.S. SEC filing in the federal court in Manhattan states that Elon Musk is not in a high-burden situation for Musk to breach the agreement.

Tesla CEO had a consent decree in 2018 requiring Musk to preapprove his tweets and public statements about his electric vehicle company to his lawyers before publishing them.

Elon Musk Tweets: Mishaps with SEC

Elon Musk has a longstanding struggle with the SEC which resulted in his tweets about Tesla being regulated by his lawyers first before publishing.

This all started in 2018 when Musk published tweets stating that he was considering making Tesla private at $420 a share and shareholders could either sell or hold.

Shareholders could either to sell at 420 or hold shares & go private  Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 7, 2018

When Musk published those tweets, it made a huge impact, moving the market plummeting the shares of the company as high as 13%, which lead to market disruption instantaneously even in the after hours of trading.

With that, the SEC filed a complaint to the court in the Southern District of New York against Tesla CEO Elon Musk, stating that his tweets on August 7 are false and misleading.

According to TechCrunch, Musk stated, "This unjustified action by the SEC leaves me deeply saddened and disappointed. I have always taken action in the best interests of truth, transparency and investors. Integrity is the most important value in my life and the facts will show I never compromised this in any way."

Read Also: Elon Musk's Starlink Satellites Are Cat Magnets; Can It Cause Internet Problems?

In November 2021, the Securities and Exchange Commission of the United States issued a new subpoena to Tesla.

Despite having previously agreed to a settlement with the SEC, Musk came under fire again last year when he asked his Twitter followers if he should sell 10% of his stake in Tesla, causing the company's stock to plummet. As a result, Tesla's stock price plummeted.

The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York SEC regulator Melissa Armstrong wrote in a filing that Musk agreed in 2018 to comply with Tesla's mandatory procedures requiring pre-approval of certain of his Tesla-related public communications as part of a settlement of the SEC's action against him.

However, according to the SEC, "Musk cannot now cast off the Amended Final Judgment simply because he has found complying with Tesla's procedures to be less convenient than he had hoped, or because he wishes the SEC would not investigate whether Tesla's disclosure controls and procedures are actually being maintained and followed."

Related Article: Neuralink vs. Metaverse: Elon Musk Not Convinced About the Future of Metaverse, Thinks Neuralink Is Better
From stompy fun tunes to horror punk and everything in between
Most observers expect the Trumpian Supreme Court to either gut or overturn Roe v. Wade in a ruling by this summer.
There is no question about it. Cybercrime can be a very lucrative career choiceif you dont mind participating in illegal activity or the possibility of getting arrested. Unfortunately with the growth in Ransomware as a Service (RaaS) and the breadth of the cybercrime ecosystem, the challenge is not going away anytime soon.

As ransomware attacks and cybercrime have skyrocketed over the past few years, some organizations are feeling compelled to purchase cyber insurance, which is designed to cover the costs resulting from a successful cyberattack. A cyber insurance policy coverage usually includes costs related to the remediation process, such as paying for the investigation, crisis communication, legal services, and refunds to customers.

Cyber insurance can save victims of cybercrime and help prevent bankruptcy. Thats the good news. The bad news is that those with cyber insurance could be painting a big target on their backs. Why? Because anecdotal evidence suggests that cybercriminals are quite adept at finding out which organizations have cyber insurance. This is helpful to them because they know that insured organizations are more likely to pay a ransom.

For example, by using the public record and seeing the premium paid for cyber insurance, threat actors can figure out how much coverage a government or agency has. This helps attackers know which organizations to target because they can foresee professional negotiators will be brought in by the insurer and likely and quickly lead to a financial settlement.

According to a recent ransomware survey, some cybercriminal organizations keep data on their attacksjust like any legal business would. If they successfully get paid for a ransomware attack and a cyber insurance company was involved, you can be assured that that fact will be documented and the victim organization will likely be targeted again in the near future.

Not a Panacea

You can be assured if your organization is a regular victim of cybercrime, your insurance rates are going to go up and your coverage may become more limited. However, companies shouldnt be fooled, cyber insurance is not a bandage for all the wounds that may come from a cyberattacks. There is no way to get fully reimbursed for lost operating costs, stolen intellectual property, bad press, or a destroyed reputation.

Improving on Cyber Hygiene

A not-so-obvious benefit that comes with cyber insurance is how it can propel an organization to improve its basic cybersecurity and adopt cyber hygiene practices. As part of their agreement to provide cyber insurance, the insuring companies are going to demand that their clients upgrade their security profiles as they will exclude coverage on issues that were preventable or caused by human error or negligence.

Insurers expect organizations to have basic security applications and solutions like endpoint detection and response (EDR) and security platforms like Fortinet Security Fabric that span the extended digital attack surface, enabling self-healing security and networking to protect devices, data, and applications.

In effect, getting cyber insurance can force an organization into creating a higher standard of behavior and cyber hygiene as well as improve on its cyber defenses. Employing solutions like a cybersecurity mesh or industry-leading security platform can reduce the chances of a company being breached.

By fortifying its potential vulnerabilities, organizations can save money in the both the short run (lower premiums) and the long run (avoiding the expenses of successful cyberattacks).

The Evolution of Ransomware

Ransomware is a constantly evolving threat and the affect it can have on an organization can be deep and long-lasting. It used to be that cybercriminals would hold a victims data hostage by encrypting it and then provide the key once they were paid off. Nowadays, threat actors with ransomware publicize stolen records or completely erase dataeven after the ransom or ransomware settlement has been paid.

In addition to that unfortunate development, threat actors are also responding faster than ever and taking advantage of newly publicized vulnerabilities. Because ransomware knows no limits, spanning political, geographic, and technology arenas, an integrated response involving the public sector as well as the private sector is required to totally defend against it.

As an individual, you can help protect yourself and your organization by making sure you are trained on the latest cybercriminal techniques. Free cybersecurity and awareness training is readily available.

Learn more about how Fortinet Security Fabric solutions protect the entire organization against ransomware attacks as well as from infection and spread.
As regulators and legislators consider new approaches to addressing consumer privacy, CISOs and colleagues in technology and consumer products companies that use personal data should reconsider how theyre balancing their management of data privacy risks and the need for speed. Developing a privacy risk analysis capability is a useful way to address consumer privacy issues without impeding the rapid pace at which the company puts forth new products and updates of existing offerings.

Many technology companies update their products on a weekly, if not daily, basis. And many, though certainly not all, of those updates pose potential data privacy risks. The trick is to quickly and reliably identify which new products and/or updates can give rise to privacy risks and then mitigate those risks, while letting updates that have little or no impact on consumer data privacy zip through the filter.

When a company releases 10 bits of code to production, the code should be subject to a privacy assessment process that evaluates the data privacy risks as quickly and as unobtrusively as possible. However, when that update moves a button from one side of a users screen to the other side, that change likely does not need to be subject to a comprehensive risk impact assessment.

A privacy risk analysis consists of three enabling activities:

Inventory privacy risks: Start by developing a long list of privacy risks related to specific offerings that a company confronts. When developing this list, keep in mind that data privacy issues often arise when a company begins using data in ways that it has not done previously. A platform, app, or product update might contain a new feature that relies on geolocation data to track customers, for example. If the privacy policy indicates that the company does not use geolocation data to track consumers, that update warrants additional scrutiny. In addition to strengthening the identification and mitigation of privacy risks, this inventory helps support efficiency. After all, its much quicker to assess whether a software update might trigger one or more of 50 or 100 defined privacy risks than to start the assessment from scratch each time.

Start by developing a long list of privacy risks related to specific offerings that a company confronts. When developing this list, keep in mind that data privacy issues often arise when a company begins using data in ways that it has not done previously. A platform, app, or product update might contain a new feature that relies on geolocation data to track customers, for example. If the privacy policy indicates that the company does not use geolocation data to track consumers, that update warrants additional scrutiny. In addition to strengthening the identification and mitigation of privacy risks, this inventory helps support efficiency. After all, its much quicker to assess whether a software update might trigger one or more of 50 or 100 defined privacy risks than to start the assessment from scratch each time. Involve your engineers: Most data privacy missteps are unintentional, and many of these unintentional mistakes occur as second-degree impact of a change that otherwise poses a minimal direct risk. A slight change to an in-car apps algorithm may have the unintended effect of letting a third party track the vehicle. These types of unexpected data privacy impacts are precisely why software engineers should be involved in identifying the privacy risk inventory and analyzing whether a product update might trigger a privacy risk. Engineers can walk their data privacy and security colleagues through discussions along the lines of if we make this update, the consumer will do X, which will cause Y and Z to happen.

Most data privacy missteps are unintentional, and many of these unintentional mistakes occur as second-degree impact of a change that otherwise poses a minimal direct risk. A slight change to an in-car apps algorithm may have the unintended effect of letting a third party track the vehicle. These types of unexpected data privacy impacts are precisely why software engineers should be involved in identifying the privacy risk inventory and analyzing whether a product update might trigger a privacy risk. Engineers can walk their data privacy and security colleagues through discussions along the lines of if we make this update, the consumer will do X, which will cause Y and Z to happen. Mitigate and document: When a privacy risk associated with an update occurs, the privacy team must determine what actions to take to reduce that risk to an acceptable level. And that mitigation should be documented. If the car app update might let an unauthorized third-party track someones vehicle, the team should document the technical and procedural controls that were put in place to prevent that outcome from occurring.



While developing and refining a privacy risk analysis requires a fair amount of upfront work and ongoing collaboration, its design is relatively straightforward. Yet many organizations lack this capability, not because of its intricacy, but due to other common hindrances, such as:

Compliance myopia: Some organizations overfocus on compliance-related privacy risks while neglecting risks that arise from using consumer data in ways that depart from the stated policy and/or other promises that the company has previously made to consumers. Compliance risks are important, of course, but many types of privacy risks lurk beyond the reach of regulations.

Some organizations overfocus on compliance-related privacy risks while neglecting risks that arise from using consumer data in ways that depart from the stated policy and/or other promises that the company has previously made to consumers. Compliance risks are important, of course, but many types of privacy risks lurk beyond the reach of regulations. Reacting instead of reaching out: In some cases, privacy teams only get involved in the software development lifecycle by invitation  when a member of the development teams thinks a change might create a data privacy problem. The reality is that far more changes in the development lifecycle have potential privacy impacts than many development teams realize.

In some cases, privacy teams only get involved in the software development lifecycle by invitation  when a member of the development teams thinks a change might create a data privacy problem. The reality is that far more changes in the development lifecycle have potential privacy impacts than many development teams realize. Ineffective filtering: Without a comprehensive list of privacy risks, too many software and product changes with privacy risk implications slip through the filter without being mitigated.

A sound privacy risk analysis program helps companies overcome those obstacles without interfering with the roll-out of new functionality and new products.

This article was written by Jeffrey Sanchez.
By Cynthia Hubert

Sacramento State is helping build the human capital necessary to bring electric vehicles and other green technology to the marketplace more quickly as part of its key role within the ecosystem known as the California Mobility Center.

The CMC, which employs technology, academics, and political connections in an effort to achieve its goals, celebrated its first year of full operations on March 17 with a showcase at its facility inside Army Depot Park.

Sac State, one of the organizations founding members, was front and center.

Students from the College of Engineering and Computer Science and College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics already receive direct experience developing technologies at the CMC and will help the centers clients take their products to the public in a timely manner.

The students and their faculty mentors are helping to fuel a workforce ready to power employers in the rapidly growing advanced mobility and manufacturing sector.

Within a few years, the CMC plans to move to University property on 25 acres of land along Ramona Avenue, about a half mile south of campus.

The Sacramento State Innovation Hub will serve as a giant incubator for startups producing everything from zero-emission vehicles to batteries to recharge them, said Neal Best, a senior partner at CMC. The hub also will feature classroom space and a showroom that will support students, our workforce and the overall community, Best said.

Sac State's Tony Lucas, right, said the University and its students benefit from their association with the California Mobility Center, which eventually will relocate to Sacramento State property. (Sacramento State/Andrea Price)

The proximity to campus and to the state Capitol made it an ideal location for the company, he said.

Tony Lucas, Sac State associate vice president for Business and Administrative Services, said the University is proud to be a key player in the project.

Because of Sac States relationship with the CMC, faculty and students at the University will gain access to leading-edge facilities and equipment in support of instruction, senior projects, and research, he said. Students also will gain access to internship opportunities with innovators in the electric mobility and clean-energy industries.

Sac State President Robert S. Nelsen serves on the CMCs board of directors, and Jonathan Bowman, the Universitys chief financial officer, serves as its secretary and treasurer.

Hundreds of industry leaders from around the globe, elected officials, and members of the news media attended the showcase.

The company aims to be a catalyst to drive the whole industry of mobility innovation, said Marc Dorfer, chief operating officer at PEM Motion, an engineering and consulting firm and a CMC founding partner.

We have the ability to serve a magnitude of different clients at different levels of their journeys, helping them complete product development, plan business models, and test technology, he said.

At the showcase, CMC unveiled an all-electric work truck, the first of its kind in the United States, designed for the Sacramento Municipal Utilities District, another founding partner. Also on display were a fleet of passenger cars and other vehicles powered by clean technology.

In the year since starting operations, CMC has signed on 65 member companies, with clients from around the world, said Mark Rawson, CMCs chief operating officer. More than a dozen Sac State students, in addition to students from community colleges, have worked and interned at the Army Depot facility, he said. CMC also has factories in Canada, Mexico, and Europe.

In a very short time, weve been quite busy, Rawson told event attendees.

He said he expects the CMCs influence to grow substantially in the coming years as it prepares to move into its permanent home near Sac State.

Thanks to support from the University, CMC not only is shaping the future of mobility, but also the future of those who will bring it to life, Rawson said.

Share This Story email copy url url copied!
Joey (left) and Justin Young, 24 of Brookfield will compete on season 19 of "The Bachelorette." (Photos courtesy of ABC's "The Bachelorette" via Facebook)

Joey (left) and Justin Young, 24 of Brookfield will compete on season 19 of "The Bachelorette." (Photos courtesy of ABC's "The Bachelorette" via Facebook)

Season 19 of ABCs The Bachelorette will not only feature two bachelorettes, but also a set of twins  from Brookfield. A UConn alum is also on the cast list.

For the first time, Rachel Recchia and Gabby Windey are both set to star as the Bachelorettes, and ABC released the first look of the contestants on Facebook Wednesday.

Among them are Justin and Joey Young, 24, from Brookfield. According to the brothers social media, both attended Quinnipiac University in 2016.

Matt Labagh, 25, might live in San Diego but he is a Connecticut Husky. According to UConn Phi Delt's twitter, Labagh is a UConn alum and was the 51st founding father of Phi Delt.

ABC/The Bachelorette on Facebook

This is not the first time contestants have Connecticut ties on the show. Season 26 of The Bachelor, in which both Recchia and Windey were on, featured Tess Tookes from Stamford and Yale Law School student Daria Rose.

It was it was like the least familiar experience Ive ever had, Tookes said in a previous interview. I cant compare it to anything else. I guess maybe its like going to the prom with no date ... hoping to meet someone that night.

Craig Sjodin/ABC

According to Windey's bio, the bachelorette doesn't have a physical type but if the contestant doesn't have a personality? "It's a hard pass." Her ideal man will challenge her, communicate their feelings and work hard to "equally carry the weight of the relationship."

Racchia is looking for someone who is as playful, passionate and spontaneous as she is, according to her bio. She wants them to be nurturing, empathetic and respectful. She wants to find "crazy, insane love that makes sense to no one else but her and her soulmate.

According to US Weekly, the show is set to start filming this month. Season 19 will premiere on July 11 on ABC.
Tesla will now produce electric vehicles in Europe as Elon Musk opens their first factory just outside Berlin. After almost 20 years in the auto industry, Tesla is now expanding throughout the globe.

Tesla's Elon Musk in Europe

Tesla CEO Elon Musk opened their first manufacturing facility inviting the public to their new Tesla plant.

In the opening of the Tesla Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg, Musk was accompanied by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and other government officials on a tour of the massive factory.

Olaf Scholz stated after the tour that "Electromobility will shape the mobility of the future."

As reported by The New York Times, Robert Habeck, the German vice chancellor said, "A special day for the region, a special day also for Germany and a special day for the mobility transformation in Germany." In addition, Tesla boasts that it was built in just a little more than two years, which left German officials and commentators amazed at the speed of construction.

Grunheide, a coal town in Brandenburg, Germany, about an hour's drive from Berlin, is where the new Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg manufacturing plant is located. According to Bloomberg, the recent Tesla Gigafactory outside Berlin costs about $5.5 billion to $7 billion.

Tesla opened the factory yesterday, March, 22, and has officially begun producing its electric vehicles. Elon Musk stated that he hopes to contribute to Tesla's goal to produce 500,000 electric vehicles per year

 Danke Deutschland!!   Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 22, 2022

Tesla Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg

Tesla CEO Elon Musk visited the Gigafactory plant construction site last October and stated that "the start of production is nice, but volume production is the hard part". Following the start of commercial production in June, according to Troy Teslike, an independent Tesla researcher, the company hopes to reach 1,000 vehicles per week at the six-week mark, and then 5,000 vehicles per week by the end of 2022.

Teslike stated at the time that Tesla hoped to produce 5,000 to 10,000 vehicles per week by the end of this year, and he was correct. Tesla is experiencing increasing demand for its electric vehicles as the EV industry continues to grow.

Tesla Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg is significant to Elon Musk for meeting the electric vehicle demands in Europe's expanding EV industry.

Musk previously tweeted his master plans for Tesla, and a major part of that master plan is expansion focused on "scaling to extreme size". Tesla has already employed 3,000 employees in the factory, the EV company plans to hire up to 12,000 employees. Tesla stated in an emailed statement that this number is expected to increase by a few thousand over the next few months.

Read Also: SpaceX CEO Elon Musk Believes Moon Landing in 2029: Does This Mean NASA Artemis?

Working on Master Plan Part 3  Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 17, 2022

Main Tesla subjects will be scaling to extreme size, which is needed to shift humanity away from fossil fuels, and AI.



But I will also Include sections about SpaceX, Tesla and The Boring Company.  Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 21, 2022

Tesla Meeting European Demand

The electric vehicle manufacturer in the United States has been struggling to keep up with demand. Unfortunately, Tesla has received multiple complaints and reports of lengthy delays for Model Ys and certain Model 3s in various parts of the world.

One of Tesla's factories, Giga Shanghai, is experiencing production delays due to the worsening COVID-19 situation in China. Numerous businesses were forced to suspend work because of the widespread Omicron variant.

According to CNBC, when Tesla Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg was not yet constructed, Tesla has been exporting cars from China to customers in Europe in recent quarters.

This is due to the skyrocketing demand for electric vehicles (EVs) in Europe, and now Tesla can rely on some of its production taking place on the continent rather than solely being shipped from China.

Related Article: Tesla CEO Elon Musk: SEC Won't Remove Tweets Regulation
A group has threatened to sue the state for discrimination if it doesnt change the laws governing how the state supervises people acquitted of crimes because of serious mental health conditions.

Those committed to the supervision of the Psychiatric Security Review Board, known as the PSRB, were originally charged with a crime. They were not convicted but found not guilty by reason of insanity.

The attorneys who wrote the letter threatening the lawsuit represent those sent to the states maximum security psychiatric hospital, Whiting Forensic Hospital, instead of prison.

Acquittees have not been convicted of a crime; state and federal law command that the State may not punish them, lawyers with the Connecticut Legal Rights Project and Disability Rights Connecticut wrote in the 12-page letter. And yet, the attorneys said, acquittees are treated as convicted criminals. Unlike convicted individuals, however, they are discriminated against based on their disabilities because, among other things, they do not have the benefit of a fixed-term sentence with a chance for good time credits, probation or parole.

Instead, the lawyers said, it is not uncommon for those under the supervision of the board to spend more time held in a psychiatric hospital than they would have spent in prison.

The attorneys argue that their clients rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act have been violated, claiming that the slow, arduous process by which they are given the opportunity to regain their freedom discriminates against them. They said that the states failure to fund adequate community-based supports means acquittees are stuck in Whiting for months, if not years, waiting for a bed to become available.

The letter is a demand to recognize the patients rights. Attorneys asked for a meeting with state officials by April 4 to discuss their concerns and come up with a way to comply with federal law. If authorities do not think that is possible under the current statute to change their practices, the lawyers asked the state to work with them in the ongoing legislative session to pass a bill that amends the state law.

The advocates proposed three actions the state can take to avoid a lawsuit: come up with a plan to increase the number of community providers so PSRB patients can transition out of Whiting when they are ready, not when a bed becomes available; develop a process that would allow for modifications of PSRB policy so patients can get access to community-based forensic mental health services; and adopt regulations that reinterpret the public safety mandate that guides the boards decisions.

The lawyers recounted the experiences of three PSRB patients affected by the shortage of community beds or who were impacted by what the attorneys described as harmful policies. One patient, placed under the boards supervision in 1998, worked for years to be granted temporary leave, which usually allows a patient to leave campus and spend time with a community provider for a few hours. He chose to be sent to a local mental health authority in Middletown but was told they didnt have any openings and have a long wait list, forcing the patient to wait out the delay or select another location for temporary leave.

Another patient had been participating in a temporary leave program since 2019 when officials learned an employee of Whiting Forensic Hospital borrowed $200 from him. The employee was fired, but somehow borrowed more money from the patient. That staffer then mailed the patient a gift card in an attempt to pay him back, which other staff intercepted. They then notified the PSRB, after which the patients temporary leave was put on hold.

He was blamed by WFH for the illegal actions of WFHs own staff and then punished by the PSRB for being a victim of the staffs theft, the lawyers said.

The advocates also claim that the PSRBs public safety mandate violates federal law. That allegation builds on a recommendation recently made by the CVH Whiting Task Force, which suggested lawmakers consider abolishing the PSRB because of its emphasis on public safety rather than patient treatment.

The Public Health Committee is hosting an informational forum Monday regarding the task forces findings and recommendations. After the forum, it will hold a public hearing on a bill based on the task forces work. The measure would create a task force to study the PSRB and whether it is necessary for it to continue to exist.

Task force co-chair Michael Lawlor, an associate professor of criminal justice at the University of New Haven, said the state law outlining the boards decision-making on whether to discharge a patient is mostly based on the protection of society.

If you read the statute, you would almost think the best interests of the patient are irrelevant, said Lawlor.

The task forces recommendation, Lawlor said, is to examine revising the laws governing the PSRB so patients best interests are considered when the board is weighing a patients discharge. After all, Lawlor said, if public safety is the only factor the board is assessing, why would you let anyone out?

The PSRB process differs even from incarcerated peoples movement in the prison system, Lawlor said. The Department of Correction doesnt need to hold a hearing whenever they move a prisoner to a lower-security correctional facility; those are decisions made by DOC officials.

But those are not decisions made by the forensic hospital. Theyre made by the PSRB, Lawlor said, meaning the board makes the call on whether to move patients to a lower-security setting.

Task force members did not unanimously agree that the PSRB should be abolished, but they encouraged legislators to consider proposals that would better respect the rights of patients while balancing public safety concerns. They expressed concern over the lengthy periods for which people are committed to the boards supervision. Last summer, for instance, a 20-year-old man was committed to the PSRB for 120 years for stabbing his grandparents to death.

The stated purpose of the PSRB is to protect public safety; these lengthy commitments do little to further that end, the task forces recommendations read. Rather, they seem to be more a mechanism to reassure the public that an individual will never get out of an institution.

The sentiment is shared by at least one patient under the supervision of the PSRB. In a letter to the boards executive director dated Jan. 16, 2022, Anthony Dyous spoke out against his commitment being extended by another five years. Dyous had originally received a 25-year commitment in 1985 for hijacking a bus with 47 passengers and holding some of them hostage. His commitment has since been extended several more times. A 2012 article in The Hartford Courant noted that he had behaved violently, refused to cooperate with psychiatrists or acknowledge his illness.

The idea that the PSRB is protecting society coupled with the media classification of us as (The most dangerous criminals in the state are housed in Whiting Maximum), allows justification for holding us until death, Dyous wrote.
Efforts to cut down on well-water contamination in Connecticut through mandatory testing and increased accountability for polluters advanced swiftly through the legislatures Public Health Committee on Tuesday.

The committee passed two pieces of legislation related to wells, the most controversial of which would require testing for more than a dozen contaminants and other factors on private wells whenever the property is sold or transferred to another owner.

That proposal has drawn scrutiny from the real estate industry as well as Republicans on the committee, who argued that the expense of testing would increase the cost of homes and should be left up to the decisions of the buyers and sellers.

By no means do we intend to inhibit or interfere with the sale of homes, we just think that at least periodically people ought to know what are in these wells, said state Rep. Jonathan Steinberg, D- Westport, who co-chairs the Public Health Committee.

The Democratic-controlled committee passed the legislation along a party-line vote, sending it to the House floor with promises to attempt to ease the concerns of Realtors.

The second piece of legislation, a bill that would require polluters to pay for the costs associated with replacing or repairing private wells contaminated by their actions, proved less controversial and was passed by the committee without opposition.

Well water contamination has become an increasing concern for Connecticut residents in rural areas without access to public water supplies, state public health officials told lawmakers during a hearing earlier this week.

Common sources of contamination include road salts that leach into the ground, toxic PFAS chemicals that are used in firefighting foams and even arsenic that can be linked to apple orchards.

There are nearly 322,000 private wells in Connecticut that provide drinking water to nearly a quarter of the states population, according to the Department of Public Health. A 2016 study by the U.S. Geological Survey found that the state has a very high prevalence of corrosivity in untreated groundwater.

This legislation will enable DPH to merge private and semipublic well water data with existing public drinking water system data to determine trends and locations with drinking water quality and quantity needs, Department of Public Health Commissioner Manisha Juthani said in testimony submitted to lawmakers.

Opponents of mandatory well testing, however, noted that testing is already a common practice during home sales, and that forcing the cost of the tests onto buyers at a time when inventory is already limited could put some houses out of reach for middle and lower-income residents.

When you sell a house, that is part of the negotiations, you have it checked and if its bad they decide if its coming off the price or whos paying for it, said state Rep. Lezlye Zupkas, R- Prospect. I dont believe it's the government's place to be in between the buyers and the sellers.

The legislation approved by the committee Wednesday did not place any restrictions on the sale of homes with contaminated well water, and Steinberg said it would still be up to the buyers and sellers to determine what to do if contamination is discovered through testing.

Steinberg and other Democrats argued that many first-time homebuyers  especially those moving from larger cities  may not be aware of the risks of contaminated well water, and that discovering the issue early can make it more affordable to fix the problem.

When theyre saying you dont have to fix anything in your home to be able to sell it, there are a lot of unintended consequences of these sales that happen so fast, said state Rep. Eleni Kavros DeGraw, D- Avon.

The committee did not take action on a third bill addressing water contamination that was discussed earlier in the week. That legislation would require state regulators to weigh in on the location of solar facilities that could impact public water supplies.
The omicron subvariant known as BA.2 comprises more than half of all tested COVID samples in New England, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But a Yale expert says BA.2  the subvariant of omicron  could account for even more COVID cases than that in Connecticut.

The CDC tracks variants by region. In Region 1, which includes Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, BA.2 makes up 55.4 percent of all tested samples.

The remaining 44.6 percent are BA.1, otherwise known as the omicron variant.

According to Yale researcher Nathan Grubaugh, BA.2 is about 30 percent more infectious than omicron, which is about 100 percent more infectious than the delta variant.

Grubaughs lab conducts the majority of COVID sampling in Connecticut. He said its possible BA.2 comprises more than 80 percent of all COVID cases in Connecticut.

A little more than 15 percent of all samples tested by Grubaughs lab over the past three weeks have been confirmed to be BA.2. But Grubaugh can also conduct a preliminary test for an s-gene dropout, a characteristic of omicron, but not BA.2.

Based on the preliminary data, BA.2 comprised more than 50 percent of all samples as of last Thursday. But Grubaugh said sequencing data lags.

The percentage of samples without the s-gene dropout, probably BA.2, is doubling every 7.8 days, suggesting that its well higher Tuesday than it was on Thursday, perhaps as high as 80 percent, he said.

At this rate, BA.2 will be 95 percent by early April, he said on Twitter.

While it is unclear what impact BA.2 may have on infections in Connecticut, the state reported a slight uptick in the positivity rate Tuesday with 461 COVID-19 cases found through 14,090 tests for rate of 3.27 percent. Hospitalizations increased by a net for three patients for a total of 100 statewide.

The United Kingdom, among other nations, is seeing a surge in COVID cases blamed, in part, on BA.2, but Ulysses Wu, chief epidemiologist at Hartford HealthCare, said he does not expect a similar spike here. Wu believes the numbers will go up, but said, I don't think it will be that bad.

But, if BA.2 is driving the rise in Europe, then we should expect something similar in the U.S, Grubaugh said.

The timing of BA.2's emergence, waning immunity from the BA.1 wave, and removing mask requirements isn't great, he said.

Wu believes the weather will make the difference. The numbers will go up, but remember, the weather is going to make a huge difference, he said. COVID may be seasonal, but with spring comes a natural social distancing.

As the weather gets nicer, all these parties are going to be outdoors all of sudden, he said. The only reason we had it last summer is because of the variant.

Wu said BA.2 concerns me a little bit. While its more infectious than its ancestor, omicron, which caused a huge spike in Connecticut and across the country, the reality is that it's still just a variant of omicron, Wu said.

That means anyone who has already contracted the omicron variant will have some measure of immunity from BA.2 in addition to Connecticuts high rate of vaccination.

If a spike happens, then stuff will have to happen possibly, from a public health standpoint, Wu said. It depends on the degree of the spike.
Posters for the films, "Loners," left, and "Tomb of the River" / Courtesy of The Coup, JNC Media Group





By Kwak Yeon-soo







Despite the sluggish film market amid the COVID-19 pandemic, several Korean films are hitting it big at international film festivals.







Director Hong Sung-eun's "Aloners," about a solitary young woman working in a call center, won the grand prize at the Osaka Asian Film Festival, which closed on March 20. This feat comes three years after Yi Ok-seop's "Maggie" picked up the grand prize there in 2019.







The drama film debuted at last year's Jeonju International Film Festival  where it won the Best Actress Award for lead actor Gong Seung-yeon  and the CGV Korean Independent Feature Distribution Award. It also played in the Discovery section at the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival.







"Tomb of the River," together with crime action flick "Special Delivery" and political thriller "Kingmaker," have been invited to Italy's popular Udine Far East Film Festival, the largest film festival in Europe dedicated to introducing Asian cinema. The 24th edition of the event will take place from April 22 to 30.







The festival's director, Sabrina Baracetti, praised "Tomb of the River" as "an action noir full of a dizzying thrill ride set in Gangneung, a calm and beautiful city. It's very provocative in its ability to captivate the audience, but at the same time, it's a human story. Yu Oh-seong's acting was particularly impressive."







Earlier this month, "Hommage" was invited to the Glasgow Film Festival in Scotland and had its European premiere on March 12 and 13. The film debuted at last year's Tokyo International Film Festival and is set for theatrical release in the first half of 2022.







The drama film directed by Shin Su-won follows a director struggling to survive in the film industry, who is inspired to continue her work when she meets female filmmakers from an earlier generation. Lee Jung-eun ("Parasite"), Kwon Hae-hyo ("Peninsula") and Tang Jun-sang ("Crash Landing on You") star in the picture.







Last year's opening film at the Glasgow festival was family drama, "Minari," while "The Man Standing Next" and "Voice of Silence" were screened at the festival's Country Focus segment.







Also, "Siren," an episode of the KBS Drama Special, recently notched an award at this year's Stockholm Film & Television Festival.







The sci-fi thriller, which premiered at last year's Gangneung International Film Festival, follows a man named Choi Tae-seung (Choi Jin-hyuk), who works at a noise pollution treatment center. The company eliminates noise for its clients at its facility using a device it developed.







Meanwhile, Park Chan-wook's "Decision to Leave," about a detective drawn to a mysterious widow during his investigation of a murder case in the mountainous countryside, and Ryoo Seung-wan's "Smuggle," an action film set in the 1970s about haenyeo (female divers from Jeju Island who harvest their livelihood from the sea) caught up in smuggling ring, are highly anticipated to premiere at this year's Cannes Film Festival.


If theres one thing that characterizes Republican state Rep. Kimberley Fiorellos policy positions, its cruelty. But well return to that.

During a recent hearing on HB 5429, proposed legislation that would help alleviate Connecticuts serious shortage of affordable housing, Fiorello (149th district, Greenwich, Stamford) stated that, Housing is not a right, because housing is built by other people. Its a want and theres a variety of different housing that people may want. But housing is not a right. You dont have a right to other peoples labor.

In his 1944 State of the Union speech, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt proposed a Second Bill of Rights for the American people. We have come to a clear realization of the fact, he said, that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. Necessitous men are not free men. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made. Roosevelt included as key elements in his Second Bill of Rights, adequate income for food, shelter, and recreation. as well as the right to decent housing.

In Article 25 of its landmark 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which the United States is a signatory, the United Nations enshrined housing as a human right. The right to housing was also codified in the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, to which the United States is also a signatory. Further, the United States ratified the 1994 Convention Against Torture, which protects individuals from torture and other cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment, including the criminalization of homelessness. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing states that, housing is a right, not a commodity ... Housing is the basis of stability and security for an individual or family. The center of our social, emotional and sometimes economic lives, a home should be a sanctuary  a place to live in peace, security and dignity.

Last year, Connecticut State Sen. Saud Anwar introduced SB 194, An Act Establishing A Right To Housing. That bill was approved by the Connecticut Senate by a vote of 25-10, including Republican votes. In support of Connecticuts Housing As A Right bill, Kellyann Day of New Reach, an organization working to eliminate homelessness in Connecticut, wrote, When our states residents have stable housing, their economic and health outcomes improve. Childrens health, both physical and mental, improve, as do their educational outcomes. The Connecticut Fair Housing Center wrote that it, supports a right to housing, because housing affects every part of a familys life. It determines access to schooling for children, safe outdoor space, health care, healthy and affordable food options, and jobs for adults. The COVID- 19 pandemic has also made clear that without access to safe, affordable housing, people can become sick and die ...

President Joe Biden has made the right to housing a foundation stone of his agenda. Housing should be a right, not a privilege, he stated. In support of that goal, President Biden pledged to invest $640 billion over 10 years so every American has access to housing that is affordable, stable, safe and healthy, accessible, energy efficient and resilient, and located near good schools and with a reasonable commute to their jobs.

Around the world, people of conscience understand that housing is a human right . Denying that right leads to the cruelty of homelessness, poverty, ill health and desperation.

Next time a Noreaster blows freezing winds and stinging snow through Connecticuts towns, recall Fiorellos words that housing is nothing but a want. Remember her cruelty.

Sean Goldrick is a Riverside resident.
BRIDGEPORT  An Easton man, accused of repeatedly sexually assaulting two young girls, was sentenced Wednesday to 30 years in prison.

The facts of this case read about someone who appears to be subhuman, they are acts of sexual savagery against helpless young children, Superior Court Judge Kevin Russo said in sentencing 42-year-old Robert McGuire.

McGuire, who showed no emotion during the hearing, declined comment to the judge. He had previously pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree sexual assault and two counts of risk of injury to children.

The sentence is running concurrent to a 30-year sentence McGuire is serving in federal prison after he pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to making a pornographic video of the same two victims.

The mother of the children told the judge that while she didnt think the 30-year term was enough for McGuire, she was satisfied with the outcome.

I want to thank the victims for having the courage to come forward, said Senior Assistant States Attorney Tatiana Messina. While no time will ever be enough to erase the harm done to these young girls hopefully through therapy the harm will fade in time.

According to Messina, in May 2020, the mother of the two victims complained to police that her daughters had been sexually assaulted during visits to McGuires Adams Road home.

During subsequent forensic interviews, Messina said the girls revealed they had been repeatedly sexually assaulted, beginning when they were 6, by McGuire during a two-year period.

McGuire also took video and numerous pornographic photographs of the victim, the prosecutor said.

The judge imposed a very fair sentence, McGuires lawyer, Edward Gavin, said later. I want to thank the court and the staff for helping resolve a factually and administratively difficult case.
NEW HAVEN  A close look at a 328 million-year-old ancestor of todays octopuses revealed 10 arms, confirming theories of how the creatures evolved.

And in a nod to President Joe Bidens commitment to science and the beginning of his administration, researchers at Yale University and the American Museum of Natural History have named it after him. Their paper was published in the journal Nature Communications.

Christopher Whalen, a postdoctoral fellow in Yales Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and at the natural history museum in New York, went to the Royal Ontario Museum in search of a different kind of cephalopod, the class that includes octopuses and squids. Not finding what he was looking for, Whalen took out some other fossils on loan, including one found in Montanas Bear Gulch.

When he looked at the fossil, Whalen was surprised by what had been preserved. I noticed on this fossil in particular that the arms were preserved, which is very rare, he said. Squids and octopuses are coleoids, which have soft bodies that dont preserve well.

This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 3 1 of 3 S. Thurston / American Museum of Natural History Show More Show Less 2 of 3 Katie Whalen / American Museum of Natural History Show More Show Less 3 of 3





Normally, its very rare already to get a coleoid, a soft-bodied cephalopod, but if youre getting it, youre getting the harder parts of the shell.  Its not unheard of, but its pretty rare to get the arms, he said.

And then, when I looked at the arms under a microscope, I noticed that there were actually suction cups or suckers on the arms, two rows on each arm. And thats incredibly rare, he said. Theres only a handful of fossils that have ever been discovered that preserve the actual suckers on cephalopod arms.

The fossil, which he and his co-author, Neil Landman of the Museum of Natural History, named Syllipsimopodi bideni, also was an example of a 10-armed cephalopod. Its related to modern octopuses and vampire squids, which Whalen said actually are a form of octopus, not a squid.

While octopuses have eight arms, vampire squids have eight, too, connected by a web of skin, which give them a cape-like appearance. They also have two filaments, which are thought to be vestiges of the 10 arms that the newly named fossil has.

The 10-armed fossil is 82 million years older than any known vampyropod, the group that includes octopuses and vampire squids. Its really that combination of being the oldest and sort of the earliest in an evolutionary tree that made it so significant, Whalen said. Being both oldest and earliest are significant, he said. A later generation can leave remains that are older than those left by an earlier generation because they lived at the same time.

The limestone fossil came from the Bear Gulch part of Montana. And this is from a time when this part of Montana would have been submerged under a tropical marine bay, tropical because that part of North America would have been situated near the equator at the time, Whalen said. It would have been most like the Bay of Bengal off India today, he said.

Whalen said the paper was submitted shortly after Bidens inauguration. And we liked the plans he put forward to address climate change and fund science, so it seemed like a nice way to sort of bring attention to those policies, he said.

Since the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol had occurred two weeks before Biden was inaugurated, It felt like it would be a good time to say something, even in a small way, that was positive about the start of Bidens presidency rather than negative, Whalen said. So it seemed like a nice forward-looking thing to do.  It was intended as a compliment.

Whalen said he hasnt heard from the White House about the honor. A request from Hearst Connecticut Media for comment did not yield an immediate response.

edward.stannard@hearstmediact.com; 203-680-9382
A person passes by an electronic board of Bithumb in Seoul, Mar. 17. The chart shows a real-time price of bitcoin. Yonhap



By Lee Min-hyung



The Fair Trade Commission (FTC) reportedly plans to designate two major cryptocurrency exchange operators as large business groups.



The commission imposes such regulations on companies whose asset volume tops 5 trillion won ($4.1 billion) by May 1 of each year. Those designated as such are subject to tighter regulations from watchdogs especially when they make investments.



Local media reported that the FTC considers designating Dunamu  the operator of Korea's largest crypto exchange Upbit  and Bithumb as large business groups. But the method of calculating their total assets has triggered controversy due to ambiguous laws on the industry here.



According to data from Rep. Kang Min-kook of the main opposition People Power Party, the total assets of Upbit and Bithumb came in at 42.97 and 11.62 trillion won, respectively, when customer deposits are included. But after deducting customer deposits, their asset size does not exceed 5 trillion won.



Industry sources said that the dispute arose due to the unclear legal standard on the calculation.



"Conventional financial firms in the industries of banking or insurance do not include customer deposits when calculating their total asset volume," an industry source said. The source added that while it appears strange that the rule is not applied to crypto exchange operators, industry players are taking a wait-and-see approach before receiving clear responses from the watchdog as nothing specific has been confirmed on the issue so far.



The watchdog will be able to designate the exchange operators as large business groups only when they are not legally recognized as financial companies.



Officials from the two exchanges declined to comment on the details of the issue, saying that nothing specific has been confirmed as of now.



"We are going to fulfill our responsibility in accordance with the law," an official at Dunamu said, declining to comment further.


My wife, Kim Hoffman, spent nine years battling cancer. She spent her last months of life lobbying Connecticut lawmakers to let doctors aid her in dying.

Kim died Jan. 18 without the medication she needed to ease her suffering. I am committed to continuing her advocacy to make sure no one else endures the mental and physical anguish she did without compassionate alternatives.

Connecticuts legislature has considered medical-aid-in-dying legislation more than a dozen times since 1994. Kim was always a supporter, but over the past two years, as her condition worsened and standard medical treatment options were exhausted, she became far more focused.

In March 2021, just two weeks into a medical trial, Kim testified in support of aid-in-dying legislation. She waited more than 12 hours, well into the late evening, to be the 89th of 246 speakers at a Public Health Committee hearing. Legislators were captivated by her story and, despite the hour, engaged her with many questions, comments and well wishes for the trial.

The bill was referred to the Judiciary Committee, but it failed to come to a vote there. Kim wanted to keep up the fight but was told there just wasnt time in the legislative calendar. Yet a few weeks later, in the final days of the session, members of the House had enough time to approve a bill making pizza the official state food. The bill didnt make it through the Senate, but Kim was infuriated.

The Legislature had time to consider commemorating pizza, she fumed, but no time to address the needs of dying constituents.

Just four months into the trial, Kims cancer was back, and she was running out of options. All last summer and into the fall, Kim was on a mission: to change enough minds on key legislative committees to get medical aid in dying approved before she died.

She reached out to a dozen lawmakers and advocates who opposed the legislation, appealing to them directly in emails and phone calls. In meetings and other exchanges, she convinced at least two members to change their position. With others, she wasnt so successful, but she was persistent and fearless.

In the last months of her life, Kims energy dwindled. She could no longer hike or even take a short walk. But she still spent precious time telling lawmakers her story in the desperate hope of getting their support; time we could have spent moving to another state where medical aid in dying is authorized; time she could have spent with family, with friends, with me.

Consider her fathers story. Kims father, Herb, was diagnosed with terminal cancer only a few months before Kim died. After her death, he moved to California to live with his son and just this month utilized medical aid in dying there.

Statistics in the states where medical aid in dying is the law show that most terminally ill people dont pursue the option. Of the people who do seek a prescription, a third never use it. What terminally ill people say again and again is that just having the option gives them peace of mind so that they dont have to fear dying in pain.

My wife asked again and again for lawmakers to give her that peace of mind, and she was devastated in her final days when it became clear that she would not get it. To Connecticut lawmakers, I say please dont put another terminally ill person through this agony. Kim deserved better.

Joy Cipollo lives in Glastonbury.
Funeral Service for Brenda Joyce Wright, 71, of Cullman, will be 3 p.m. Friday, May 6, 2022 at Northbrook Baptist Church. A viewing will be on Friday from 2-3 p.m. prior to the service. The visitation will be 5:30 - 8 p.m. Thursday night, May 5, 2022 at Cullman Funeral Home. Rev. Keith Warde
Instant unlimited access to all of our content on currypilot.com.

The Curry Coastal Pilot'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)


Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy and Finance Hong Nam-ki speaks during a meeting with relevant ministers on real estate policy at the Government Complex Seoul in central Seoul, Wednesday. It was the last in a series of policies announced by the Moon Jae-in administration. Yonhap









By Yi Whan-woo







The Moon Jae-in administration introduced a set of measures that will lower property taxes for more than nine out of 10 single home owners nationwide, Wednesday. These measures are Moon's latest real estate policies, most of which are considered to have failed at stabilizing real estate prices and demand.







Jointly announced by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport and other relevant ministries, the measures will also exempt 69,000 people from paying a tax levied exclusively on those who own homes that exceed 1.1 billion won ($907,600) in value and owners of multiple homes.







The government seeks to ease the burden on the aforementioned taxpayers, by using the state-assessed value for homes from 2021, instead of the one from this year, as the criteria for taxation.







The state-assessed value refers to the price of a property recognized publicly by the government as being appropriate for transaction. It is different from the market value, which is determined by supply and demand.







Considering that housing prices rise over time, applying last year's state-assessed value is anticipated to reduce the property tax for 93.1 percent of the single home owners whose homes are priced at 600 million won or less.







"The government has sought to ensure that the state-assessed value does not increase the burden on single home owners," Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy and Finance Hong Nam-ki said during a meeting on real estate with related ministers, Wednesday.







During a separate press briefing, a senior land ministry official estimate that the targeted 93.1 percent will be taxed an amount less than what they paid in 2020.







The official explained, by "virtually freezing the state-assessed value," the amount of comprehensive real estate tax will be reduced as well.







The comprehensive real estate tax was originally adopted as a punitive measure against those who buy multiple homes for speculation purposes.







It, however, met protest from those who own a single but expensive home, and who consider it an additional burden on top of other property taxes.







The government expects about 69,000 people will be exempt from paying tax under the comprehensive real estate tax under the new policy.







And by applying last year's state-assessed value over this year's, another group of 145,000 who are still subject to the comprehensive real estate tax will pay 174.5 billion won less in taxes compared with the 416.2 billion won that would have been levied on them if applying this year's state-assessed value.







Among other measures introduced to ease the tax burden were enabling senior citizens to postpone paying the comprehensive real estate taxes as well as freezing the premium for national health insurance, which is levied based on their property's value.







But President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol, when he takes office on May 10, is likely to overturn most of the Moon government's real estate policies that have resulted in soaring home prices.







Many homeowners and would-be homeowners infuriated by the policies are believed to be behind the ruling Democratic Party of Korea's bitter defeat in the March 9 presidential election.







Asked how he would evaluate how the Moon administration has wrapped up its real estate policy, an expert said it will have little influence.







"I give credit to the government showing willingness to deal with the housing issue right up until the last minute," said Kwon Dae-jung, a real estate professor at Myongji University. "But it won't do any good to ease the market situation that the policies for the past years were focused on collecting more tax and left a devastating impact."







The professor said Wednesday's measure will "not be in sync with" Yoon's policies, noting the President-elect plans to refer to the state-assessed value of homes dating back to the Park Geun-hye administration in the mid-2010s to cope with the housing market.







He pointed out Yoon plans to ease housing taxes to a great extent, and is even considering scrapping the comprehensive real estate tax.







"In that regard, I think the government's measure was aimed at not losing votes in the local elections in June," Kwon added.


U.S. political scientist blames West for Ukraine crisis

Xinhua) 10:28, March 23, 2022

LONDON, March 23 (Xinhua) -- "The West, and especially America, is principally responsible" for the Ukraine crisis, John J. Mearsheimer, a U.S. political scientist, wrote in a recent opinion piece published in The Economist.

American and European policymakers provoked the Ukraine crisis by trying to integrate Ukraine into the West and asserting that Russian President Vladimir Putin bears full responsibility for the crisis, said Mearsheimer, a political science professor at the University of Chicago, "But that story is wrong."

In his view, the Ukraine crisis "is the most dangerous international conflict since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis." The West is now increasing aid to Ukraine while imposing economic sanctions on Russia, a step that Putin sees as "akin to a declaration of war."

Understanding the root causes is essential to finding a way to bring the crisis to an end. The trouble over Ukraine started at NATO's Bucharest summit in 2008 when George W. Bush's administration pushed the alliance to announce that Ukraine and Georgia "will become members," said the article.

In late 2021, the West ignored Russia's security concerns, with intentions of including Ukraine into NATO, which led directly to the current war, Mearsheimer wrote.

Furthermore, Russian policymakers have said "hardly anything about conquering new territory to recreate the Soviet Union or build a greater Russia," said the expert, adding that Russian leaders have repeatedly said that they view Ukraine joining NATO as "an existential threat that must be prevented."

"As Mr. Lavrov noted in January, 'the key to everything is the guarantee that NATO will not expand eastward,'" Mearsheimer said.

(Web editor: Peng yukai, Liang Jun)
Ludmila, left, says goodbye to her granddaughter Kristina, who, with her son Yaric, leaves the train station in Odessa, southern Ukraine, Tuesday. AP-Yonhap



Foreign ministry has yet to decide whether to accept Ukrainian refugees



By Jung Da-min



A lawyers' group has called for the government to take prompt action in accepting Ukrainian refugees.



On Tuesday, the Korean Bar Association (KBA) issued a statement to express concerns over human rights violations occurring in the Eastern European region due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, while also calling for the Korean government actively to accept refugees from the area.



"Regarding the refugee situation (in Ukraine), the Korean government announced on Feb. 28 that Ukrainians in Korea would be granted stay extensions on humanitarian grounds so that they could leave after the local situation (in Ukraine) stabilizes. But considering the seriousness of the prolonged situation in Ukraine, such a measure is not enough. The Korean government should take further measures to accept refugees fleeing from Ukraine," read the statement.



The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has not given any clear answers about its stance on the Ukrainian refugees.



A foreign ministry official told The Korea Times Wednesday that the Korean government has been committed to helping Ukrainians, referring to its earlier decision to take an additional measure of streamlined visa-issuance process for Ukrainians whose family members are staying in Korea.



"That was an exceptional measure taken for the war situation in Ukraine, as visa issuance in many countries has been temporarily suspended under the government's quarantine guidelines for the COVID-19 pandemic situation," the official said.



On March 8, the Ministry of Justice unveiled a streamlined visa-issuance process for ethnic Koreans in Ukraine, as well as Ukrainians with family members who reside in Korea.



According to the justice ministry, as of 2021 there were about 13,524 ethnic Koreans in Ukraine, and about 12,711 of them are of foreign nationality. About 2,390 Ukrainian nationals with Korean heritage were staying in Korea, while another 3,828 Ukrainians were staying in Korea under short- or long-term visas.



According to March 21 statistics by UNHCR or the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 3,557,245 Ukrainians had fled the country since Russia invaded on Feb. 24. When considering the millions of internally displaced people, expectations are that more than 10 million people  over a quarter of the population in regions under government control  are thought to have fled their homes in the Eastern European nation.



Most of those who have fled are women and children, as Ukrainian men aged 18 to 60 are subject to military conscription and are not permitted to leave.


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.
The nine seniors from Dalton Dance Company will dance together one last time Friday-Sunday in Dalton Arts Projects performances of Timeless. Front row, from left, are Sophia Creswell, Drew Patton, Emma Ridley, Maddie Whittle and Aidan Stacy. Back row, Rayna Wilson, Mia Gale, Addie Simmons and Emma Grace Tillman.
Barbara Faye Boyles, 75, of Raceland, Kentucky passed away Tuesday, May 3, 2022, at her residence. Barbara was born August 1, 1946, in Load, Kentucky a daughter of the late Homer and Gladys Johnson Boyles. In addition to her parents, she was preceded in death by one nephew Robert Boyles. Bar




President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol held telephone talks with Vietnamese President Nguyen Xuan Phuc on Wednesday during which they agreed to develop bilateral ties, Yoon's spokesperson said Wednesday.







During the 30-minute talks, the Vietnamese president congratulated Yoon for winning the election and asked him to visit Vietnam as soon as possible, the spokesperson Kim Eun-hye said.







The Vietnamese president also hoped that Yoon would make achievements in overcoming the COVID-19 pandemic and spurring an economic recovery from the pandemic, Kim said.







Yoon and the Vietnamese president also agreed to bolster cooperation for North Korea's denuclearization and stabilization in the Indo-Pacific region, according to Kim.







Phuc was the sixth foreign leader to speak with Yoon since his election, after U.S. President Joe Biden, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. (Yonhap)






Imagine Prince Williams fury.

As his royal tour to Jamaica with Kate is increasingly overshadowed by a toxic row over local calls for reparations to compensate for British colonialism (yawn), its the words of his own sister-in-law being weaponised against the Royal Family.

In fact, Meghan Markles pack of lies to her nodding BFF Oprah Winfrey suggesting the monarchy is a racist institution and casting doubt on its senior members is now providing a significant boost to the fast-moving republican cause in Jamaica at the worst possible moment.

For all their talk of believing in and loving the Commonwealth pre-Megxit, Harry and Meghan have become the pin-ups for its destruction.

This was always the concern of senior courtiers when Meghans claim to Oprah about a so-called unnamed royal racist who asked about her unborn babys skin colour went unchallenged: Republicans across the Commonwealth would try to use the claims to bring the Queens reign to an end in the monarchs twilight years.

Thats exactly whats happening  and campaigners are using the media attention around William and Kates trip to inflict maximum damage.

This was the nightmare scenario after Meghans Oprah lies  now its coming true, says a concerned royal insider.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge during a meeting with the Prime Minister at his office in Kingston, Jamaica, on day five of their tour of the Caribbean on behalf of the Queen to mark her Platinum Jubilee

Leading the charge is Jamaican attorney and reparations advocate Bert Samuels, who swallowed Meghans crocodile tears hook, line and sinker to help advance his political cause for the UK to be forced to pay reparations to compensate for African slaves brought to the island before the practice was made illegal in 1833.

He told Newsweek: Jamaicans were very torn up to hear about Harry and Meghan's issue, and Harry and Meghan's interview with Oprah Winfrey, and that has torn us. That's William's brother, that's his nephew, and for Harry to have been treated the way he was, and worse yet Meghan.

The Jamaicans are very hurt by the treatment of an African American woman in that family. William needs to speak to that when he comes and as it were, he should come here with an apology, not only for slavery but for the treatment of a black woman who had to run out of the palace with her husband. That's a strong issue and that's a fresh wound.

As the journalist who broke the most stories about former Suits star Meghans tumultuous time in the Royal Family, including the Sussexes decision to Megxit, its utter hogwash to suggest her race played any role in the ensuing rows.

Meghan wasnt pushed out of the Royal Family because of ethnicity and to even countenance such a fantasy is irresponsible.

Dan Woottoon (pictured): 'For all their talk of believing in and loving the Commonwealth pre-Megxit, Harry and Meghan have become the pin-ups for its destruction'

In fact, she was given a huge amount of support from the Queen down but scarpered because, as a pampered actress used to assistants giving into her every whim, she wanted to return to the comfort of Hollywood and make the serious big bucks she thought she deserved.

Meghan soon realised a life of service wasnt for her.

She had zero interest in supporting the Royal Family and zero interest in the Commonwealth, but cared a whole lot about her bank balance and celebrity status.

So it was convenient for the Sussexes to fashion a narrative behind their exit to make it more politically palatable to their leftie supporters, to hell with the damage it would cause to the Queens legacy - and thats what makes me so angry.

Of course, Jamaicans have a right to self-determination and if they want to follow Barbados and become a republic, having first gained independence from Britain in 1962, then so be it.

Reparations to Jamaica were last ruled out by then-Prime Minister David Cameron during a visit to the island in 2015 where he said: I do hope that, as friends who have gone through so much together since those darkest of times, we can move on from this painful legacy and continue to build for the future.

But theres not much hope of that after the disgraceful position the Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness put William and Kate in today as he launched a political speech as they stood by his side, despite how diligently the couple try to stay out of politics.

Holness said: There are issues here which as you know are unresolved but your presence gives us an opportunity for those issues to be placed in context, to be out front and centre and to be addressed as best we can.

But Jamaica is, as you would see, a country that is proud of its history and very proud of what we have achieved. And were moving on and we intend tofulfil our true ambitions and destiny to become an independent and prosperous country.

Dan Wootton: 'Meghan Markles (pictured) pack of lies to her nodding BFF Oprah Winfrey suggesting the monarchy is a racist institution and casting doubt on its senior members is now providing a significant boost to the fast-moving republican cause in Jamaica at the worst possible moment'

That came hot on the heels of Lisa Hanna, a former Miss World turned politician with the People's National Party, a republican who has campaigned for reparations, rudely snubbing Kate during yesterdays ceremonial arrival.

Despite only 60 protesters bothering to show up outside the British High Commission, Queen's Counsel Hugh Small says senior figures on both sides of Jamaican politics now want to address the question of reparations with far more urgency.

I think theres zero chance of that happening, which is why its unconscionable for public sentiment to be whipped up using total falsehoods propagated by Meghan to Oprah.

After all, in the year since the CBS interview, claim after claim has been resolutely debunked, resulting in the Queens extraordinary statement that recollections may vary and William publicly stating furiously that we are very much not a racist family.

That said, the Duke of Cambridge is a modern man acutely aware of Britains history and he will do his best to show Jamaicans he has listened to their concerns. Tonight, he intends to reference historic slavery in a speech in Kingston.

Prince Charles too recently referenced the appalling atrocity of slavery in the Caribbean during the ceremony he attended as Barbados became a republic. I would say the future king even took it one step too far by admitting it forever stains our history.

The point is this is no longer a Royal Family burying its head in the sand about historic controversies.

However, Harry and Meghans personal propagandists in the craven left-wing US media shamefully continue to try and paint William as some sort of racist at every opportunity, delighting the vile Sussex Squad trolls online.

Omid Scobie  author of the hagiography Finding Freedom, with which Meghan had to admit she had forgotten collaborating with in court  now regularly tries to bring down the future king with snide snipes suggesting he is some sort of gammon.

Dan Wootton: 'Omid Scobie (pictured)  author of the hagiography Finding Freedom, with which Meghan had to admit she had forgotten collaborating with in court  now regularly tries to bring down the future king with snide snipes suggesting he is some sort of gammon'

Today, silly Scobie has suggested that a lack of diversity on Williams team (translation: the fact he has white staff members) resulted in negative coverage about the Jamaican protests.

Scobie tweeted: I do wonder what the hell palace organisers were thinking with some of yesterday's photo moments. The planning and recon that goes into every step of these engagements is next level, so how did no one think to avoid certain imagery? This is why diversity on a team matters.

Its all quite embarrassing, given we now know from whom silly Scobie takes his marching orders.

But those trying to paint a picture of our 95-year-old monarch  who has spent her entire life working to strengthen the Commonwealth  as some sort of racist is a disgrace.

Anyone who knows anything about the Queen is aware that couldnt be further from the truth.

Shame on Meghan Markle for the damage shes caused to the Commonwealth and shame on the propagandists in Jamaica and the media using her fantasies to advance their republican cause.
A woman who was 10,000 in debt after divorce has revealed how she was able to pay it off in three years by making major cutbacks to her lifestyle.

Fernanda Fletcher, 31, from Worcester, told how she sold her car, handbags and even her books to pay back her half of the 20,000 in debt she and her husband had racked up over the course of their five year marriage.

When they separated in 2017, the couple had no money to split - just the debt they'd accrued by overspending on credit cards and financed payment plans, which they had used to pay for everything from a new car to weekly takeaways.

After the split, Fernanda wanted to clear the debt and move on and set about cancelling her gym membership and streaming services, and only shopping 'yellow sticker' items in the supermarket.

Fernanda Fletcher, 31, from Worcester, managed to pay off 10,000 worth of debt after her divorce in just three years

Fernanda Fletcher, 31, from Worcester, told how she sold her car, handbags and even her books to pay back her half of the 20,000 in debt she and her husband had racked up

Her first step was to build an emergency fund, which would act as a buffer to stop her from having to borrow any more money if something went wrong.

Money-saving tips that actually work: Fernanda shares tricks to keep costs down 1. Budget, Budget, Budget She said: 'So many people still live pay cheque to pay cheque because they don't know how much money they've got coming in and how much money they've got coming out. 'We are sometimes so scared to look at our bank accounts that it can make us blind to that odd charge or subscription that goes unused! Make looking at your finances a routine of at least once a month. 'If you find it boring and think it takes too much time to organise a budget, it's actually the exact opposite: dedicating that one hour to setting it up properly once a month will mean that that's the only time you really need to do it. 'You won't need to keep checking it all the time or have the anxiety on the back of your mind of not knowing.' 2. Cooking from scratch is a must Fernanda explained: 'When I was in debt, our weekly food shop was 80 because of all the convenience foods we were buying. 'It didn't only make us broke, but it also made us fat. 'I now cook a lot more from scratch. I grate my own cheese and a food shop for two people hovers around 40-50.' 3. Buy second hand Fernanda said: 'I furnished my whole house from Facebook marketplace and it looks pretty good if I do say so myself. 'The sofa, TV, dining table and mantel mirror are all bargains from Facebook marketplace so if you have something on your wish list, make sure to look online or at second-hand shops first because you might just find the bargain of the century.' Advertisement

Fernanda said: 'In order to do that, I cut everything. At this point, most of my salary was tied up with bills and monthly debt payments so I had to make money from nothing.

'I started by cutting my budget to the bare minimum: streaming services all gone, gym membership gone, only shopping in the yellow sticker section for food.'

After reducing her outgoings as much as possible, Fernanda decided to start selling anything she didn't really need.

She said: 'Then I took one look around me and realised that all the stuff I had bought on the credit cards used to be cash, cash that I could use to pay off my debt so I basically sold everything. Bags, clothes, books  if someone wanted to buy it, I was selling it.

'I even went so far as to sell my car. I was roughing it on the bus to work every day, I was so desperate to be rid of debt.

'There was no big secret, really. I just cut down on my expenses and tried to hustle extra money any way I could and sent every spare penny to debt.'

Fernanda explained that she hadn't thought of her debt until her marriage broke down. Until that point, it had simply grown slowly without them realising.

She said: 'We were both not great with money and, since we were now married, we figured the "adult" and responsible thing to do was to get a credit card "for emergencies".

'After a while, we ended up using the credit card for everyday expenses  even the two to three times a week takeaway was going on the cards.

'The first month where we only paid the minimum on it was the month things really started going downhill.

'We bought items like a hoover and a bed on finance and paying monthly kind of disguised the fact that we were living beyond our means because, we figured, if we can "afford" the monthly payments, then it's fine, right? Turns out, no.

'Pile on top of that buying a massive car on finance and after two to three years, we were in 20,000 worth of consumer debt.'

When her marriage ended in 2017 and as they split everything they owned, Fernanda realised she needed to pay back 10,000 and felt she needed to clear it to move on.

She said: 'I wanted to feel safe and secure and independent like I could stand on my own two feet.

'I had a clear vision of what I wanted my life to be like and knew that I was the only one who could take the action necessary to make that vision a reality.'

By making incremental lifestyle changes and cutting back everywhere she could, Fernanda cleared 8,000 of the 10,000 she owed.

Fernanda, pictured, decided to start by building an emergency fund, which would be a buffer to stop her from having to borrow any more money if something went wrong

Fernanda wanted to clear the debt and move on and set about cancelling her gym membership and streaming services, and only shopping 'yellow sticker' items in the supermarket

But she suffered setbacks as she came closer to her goal.

She said: 'Let's just say getting out of debt was not a smooth, linear path. It took about two years in total, including paying off debt, then getting into more debt, then finally paying all of it off.'

In October 2019, Fernanda needed to buy a car earlier than she had planned.

She had already saved 3,000 and had intended to save more to buy the car in cash but found herself faced with an urgent need due to a circulation problem that meant she couldn't go through winter waiting outside in the cold for a bus.

'I bought a car for 4,600 and financed half of it,' she continued.

'At the same time, I had two unexpected back-to-back trips to Brazil to see my father who unfortunately passed away from cancer in February 2020. Each return ticket to Brazil was nearly 1,000 a pop so I had to use the credit card for it.

'I ended up taking another debt consolidation loan to cover those costs.'

Now, Fernanda is using her Instagram accounts to help others who want to get on top of their finances

Finally, in September 2020, she paid off the final amount.

She said: 'It didn't quite sink in at the time. The thing that no one tells you about paying off debt is that nothing else in the world around you changes.

'Everybody still carries on their normal lives. The day you make that last payment, there are no fireworks or a big party.

'But you are different. You know the lesson you learned and you're really changed forever, for the better.'

Now, Fernanda is using her Instagram accounts to help others who want to get on top of their finances.

She said: 'I am debt-free as of September 2020 and have a five-figure investment portfolio of index funds and singles stocks.

'I started my Instagram page when I found the #debtfreecommunity through Australian personal planner Canna Campbell.

'I realised a lot of people were sharing their own journeys on there and I found it so inspiring that I decided to start my own page to share my progress with others

'I now share everything I learned about budgeting and finance along the way, as well as trying to educate people on how the financial system works and how you can take advantage of the opportunities it presents.'
Advertisement

The meteoric rise and spectacular fall of WeWork - and its founder Adam Neumann - has long-been a source of much fascination, speculation, and investigation, however in recent weeks that has reached new heights as a result of the release of Apple TV+'s new show, WeCrashed, which chronicles the disgraced CEO's fall from grace, and that of his wife Rebekah.

But while much has been made of Adam's party-hard lifestyle and his swift ascent to start-up success, attention is now turning to his spouse, and the part that she played in WeWork's near-collapse.

Rebekah's role has covered everything from spiritual motivator to 'muse' to financial backer, thanks to a $1 million wedding gift from her parents that helped her and Adam launch WeWork in 2010.

Raised in wealthy Bedford, New York, Rebekah brought an Ivy League education, years of yoga training under the Dalai Lama in India, and a short-lived acting career to WeWork, where she would be named 'chief brand and impact officer.'

Part of growing that brand included creating the since-shuttered $42,000-a-year WeGrow school  where mini entrepreneurs were encouraged to start their own businesses at age five  and promoting it on her cousin Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop website.

'Women need to get to the right level for men to even have the opportunity to get there,' Rebekah, 44, told Porter magazine in 2016. 'Like we create a place for them to rise to. We have a really important role to play.'

WeWork founder Adam Neumann's wife Rebekah is the woman behind the man - spiritually, emotionally, and financially

Rebekah was born Rebekah Victoria Paltrow, the daughter of Evelyn and Bob Paltrow - and the cousin of Oscar winner Gwyneth Paltrow

Rebekah was born Rebekah Victoria Paltrow, the daughter of Evelyn and Bob Paltrow  and the cousin of Oscar winner Gwyneth.

She grew up privilege in Bedford, New York, a wealthy town about an hour north of New York City that is now home to Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds, Glenn Glose, Chevy Chase, Martha Stewart, and Ralph Lauren. Her childhood house is now valued at $3.56 million.

Kate and Rooney Mara, Nicola Peltz, and Felicity Huffman all grew up in Bedford as well.

'Her mom came from a lot of money and they had a huge piece of property, a big beautiful house,' Gwyneth told Porter magazine. 'Her mother Evelyn has amazing taste: every linen perfect. They had a lot of help and every comfort.'

In fact, both of Rebekah's parents had money. Hers was from her family's lingerie company, Gelmart, while his was made from manufacturing steel pipes and co-founding a junk mail distribution business.

Rebekah grew up flying on a company plane to her family's various homes, including her grandmother's Martha's Vineyard summer house, a winter house in Vail, and an oceanfront mansion in Palm Beach.

But amidst incredible privilege, her upbringing was marred by scandal and then tragedy.

In the mid-80s, her father's company set up a fraudulent charity called American Cancer Research Inc., for which they raised about $2 million through mailings  though there was never any intention for that money to go to actual charitable causes.

The Neumanns are portrayed by Jared Leto and Anne Hathaway in AppleTV+'s WeCrashed, airing now

Rebekah, who brought an Ivy League education, years of yoga training under the Dalai Lama in India, and a short-lived acting career to WeWork, where she would be named 'chief brand and impact officer', is now having her story brought to light in the Apple TV+ series, in which Hathaway portrays her

In 1986, the United States Attorney's Office in New Hampshire filed criminal charges against the company, alleging ten counts of mail fraud, to which the company pleaded guilty, agreeing to pay a $100,000 fine.

Later, in 1996, Bob was used by the federal government for 'unjust enrichment, seeking to recover the value of postage discounts improperly used by two bogus charities.'

But that wasn't even the worst childhood experience for Rebekah, the youngest of four children. When she was just 11, her older brother Keith died at age 23 from cancer.

'At a very young age, I started to understand that life is much bigger than anything material or superficial,' she said on Lewis Howes' School of Greatness podcast in 2018. 'I grew up in a comfortable home and all of that, but when someone you love dies, it puts everything in perspective and you realize that there's a bigger purpose to life.'

Rebekah was in public school at the time, which she attended until seventh grade before matriculating at the Horace Mann School where, Bustle reports, she was part of the 'wealthy popular crowd'  with friends including Amanda Tisch, future fashion editor of Harpers Bazaar.

Upon graduation, she studied business and Buddhism at Cornell University, where she also joined the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority.

In college, she dated crew team member Brian Hallisay, who would go on to become an actor and marry Jennifer Love Hewitt.

She went six years without dating before being introduced to Adam. Rebekah recalled that she had just come off a yoga retreat, and 'my intention when I met him was, "How do we expand this good vibration to the planet?"

Rebekah admitted that she accused him of being a 'big talker' but said he 'couldn't even afford lunch.' She eventually helped him quit smoking and soda and introduced him to the Jewish mystical practice of kabbalah

College held some hard times for Rebekah, too, including her estranged parents finally splitting up. She also said she went through a 'terrible breakup' after graduation, in which her boyfriend ran off with her best friend.

But the 'betrayal and pain,' she said, led her on a 'journey of self-discovery.'

After a stint working as a stockbroker at Smith Barney  which was 'not her calling'  Rebekah traveled to Dharamsala, a city in the Indian state of Himachal Prades, to study yoga with the Dalai Lama.

During that time, Fast Company reports, she even attended a birthday party for the Dalai Lama himself.

Back in the US, she moved to Los Angeles and took method acting boot camps before winding up at the Omega Institute in upstate New York, where she got certification as a Jivamukti yoga teacher.

Though she clearly kept busy, Rebekah says her love life was particularly uneventful over the next six years, when she decided not to date at all.

'I was studying life and wanted to have a deeper understanding of who I was, and what my purpose was, and kind of why I was on this planet, before I opened up to welcoming in a partner,' she said on the School of Greatness podcast. 'It's a little out there, but that's what happened.'

When she finally opened herself up to dating again, she was introduced by future husband Adam through their friend Andrew Finkelstein, who is now a Hollywood agent.

Rebekah recalled that she had just come off a yoga retreat, and 'my intention when I met him was, "How do we expand this good vibration to the planet?"

For some time, Rebekah tired to make it as an actress, appearing in Fair Game with Naomi Watts and Nomads with Lucy Liu in 2010 (pictured next to Demi Moore at a Sundance Film Festival premiere in 2009)

Rebekah is pictured at a party hosted by Halle Berry in 2009 (left) and a show at Mercedes Benz Fashion Week in 2009 (right)

After launching her own production company, Boheme Films, Rebekah hired screenwriter Hunter Richards to direct a short film called Awake, based on an idea Rebekah had come up with - and cast herself as the star

She hired Rosario Dawson, who thought she was the lead - but, according to a book about WeWork, 'when they arrived on set, Rebekah made clear the role was hers'

'He was really, really thin, and he was shaking 'cause I think he was smoking too many cigarettes. And he walked in, and I saw that he was my soul mate. It's the truth,' she told Fast Company.

'Rebekah went on that first date with me,' Adam said during a commencement speech for Baruch College in 2017. 'And within five minutes  now I say five minutes to be nice but it surely took 10 seconds  she looked me straight in the eye and she said, "You, my friend, are full of s***. Every single word that comes out of your mouth is fake."'

Rebekah admitted that she accused him of being a 'big talker' but said he 'couldn't even afford lunch.'

When Adam explained that he was an entrepreneur, Rebekah told him, 'Maybe you're in the wrong business, because if you were doing the right thing, you would be able to afford dinner.'

Adam, though, appeared to be charmed by Rebekah's plain talk, and she eventually helped him quit smoking and soda and introduced him to the Jewish mystical practice of kabbalah.

On October 9, 2008, just months after meeting, they tied the knot and were living together in a small East Village apartment.

For some time, Rebekah tired to make it as an actress, appearing in the film Fair Game with Naomi Watts and Nomads with Lucy Liu in 2010.

After launching her own production company, Boheme Films, Rebekah hired screenwriter Hunter Richards to direct a short film called Awake, based on an idea Rebekah had come up with  and cast herself as the star.

WeWork's first location, in SoHo, was famously funded by a $1 million wedding gift from Rebekah's parents

Rebekah is said to have been an influential part of WeWork since the beginning, serving as an adviser. She called herself a 'strategic thought partner,' and spoke about being hands-on with business strategy and even cleaning

'They hired a star-studded cast  Rosario Dawson, Sean Lennon, and Lynn Cohen, fresh off her role as Mirandas housekeeper in Sex and the City  along with a twenty-person crew that included a cinematographer flown in from Canada and an assistant director who worked on The Hurt Locker,' author Reeves Wiedeman wrote in Billion Dollar Loser.

'Richards presumed that Dawson would play the lead  he said Dawson thought she would, too  but when they arrived on set, Rebekah made clear the role was hers,' he wrote.

The film was completed in 2010, which is when the Neumanns turned their attention to WeWork.

The company's first location, in SoHo, was famously funded by a $1 million wedding gift from Rebekah's parents. While Rebekah clearly had enough faith in her husband's vision to put a fortune behind it, Adam said that it was also his wife who was responsible for keeping his ego in check.

'The answer is quite consistent. It's really Rebekah,' he told Business Insider in 2019. 'I think her contribution to my life can not be overstated. I would not be able to keep it in check without her.

'When I don't have my ego in check and I come home at night, she looks at my face. She doesn't even need to talk to me. She's like, "Ugh, again? I thought we had that one covered! Sit down."

'She'll do whatever it takes just to make sure I snap right back. Go hang out with the kids, go do this, go do that, and come back in an hour. You come back indoors and you remember where you came from and where you're going,' he said.

Some said she was prone to mood shifts, and allegedly fired a mechanic for WeWorks Gulfstream jet within minutes of meeting him because she didnt like his energy

Inside the Neumanns' friendship with Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner Adam and Rebekah are longtime friends of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, and remained so when the latter couple worked in the White House. 'I find Jared to be one of the most sophisticated real-estate developers on earth,' Adam told Bloomberg in 2016. 'A lot of times when I'm with Jared, I take cues from his behavior just to learn how to act. You know, just to act a little bit better myself because it's always good to learn.' A former employee said that the two couples occasionally had dinner together, and that Ivanka and Jared had sent the Neumanns gifts at WeWork headquarters. One was a basket for the Jewish holiday Purim, with a note signed, 'Love, the Kushners.' Four years ago, Rebekah celebrated her 40th birthday party on the Amalfi Coast of Italy, with a multi-day bash for 40 people that included a yacht and luxury suites. The Kushners ultimately did not attend  though not because the Neumanns didn't want them there. According to insider, one source claimed it was because WeWork's head of communications was worried about the optics, and that the Neumanns were convinced not to invite them. Another source said they were invited, but declined due to security reasons. As recently as 2018, Rebekah and Ivanka were photographed together at an event at Hugh Jackman's New York home. Advertisement

Rebekah also tried to shift Adam's focus away from strictly trying to make money.

'When I initially met him, he was trying and failing,' she said on the School of Greatness podcast. 'Because if you only focus on trying to make money, first of all it might not happen, and second of all, even if it does, you might not be happy.'

She helped in 'redefine success as fulfillment, happiness, and generosity,' and steered his vision into one that had a positive influence on people's lives.

'I knew whatever I did needed to impact people in a really positive way,' she told Porter.

Rebekah is said to have been an influential part of WeWork since the beginning, serving as an adviser. She called herself a 'strategic thought partner,' and spoke about being hands-on with business strategy and even cleaning.

'There is something really exhilarating about starting something from the bottom,' she told Coveteur in 2016.

'You wear every possible hat  theres no job too big or too small for each person, so everyone is doing everything. We were the ones scrubbing all the glass dividers and cleaning the floors at night. Wed stay up until four or five in the morning, sometimes when we were going to open the next day.'

But according to the company's 2019 IPO filing, Rebekah  whose title was 'chief brand and impact officer'  never earned a salary.

'Working with my husband is the biggest perk of the job,' she told the Coveteur. 'There is no separation between work and life. So the fact that everything is seamless and integrated has been awesome.'

Yet not everyone who worked for the company had such a positive assessment of her influence. Some said she was prone to mood shifts, and allegedly fired a mechanic for WeWorks Gulfstream jet within minutes of meeting him because she didnt like his energy.

'I got the sense that she was guiding the company through her astrological intuition,' one person interviewed with Rebekah for a job told Vanity Fair. He said that during the interview, they mostly talked about his birth sign, an whether if  'energetically speaking'  he would be a good fit.

She also reportedly wondered about the impact of continuing to use her maiden name, Paltrow, because of associations with her famous cousin. According to Vanity Fair, she even up a Google alert for Gwyneth, and met with consultants about the continued use of the name.

In 2011, Rebekah and Adam welcome their first daughter, Elle. They would go on to have four more children, two sets of twins.

'[The biggest challenge was] balancing between my family, my kids, and work,' she told Coveteur.

'Its really important, especially for women, to combine the two worlds so that they dont feel like being a mother somehow takes away from being able to succeed in the work force. Kids shouldnt feel like work is something theyre not allowed to peek into. So, for me, the biggest challenge was being able to bring those two worlds together.'

In 2018, her cousin Gwyneth interviewed her about WeGrow, and Goop promoted it on its website

Gwyneth spoke about Rebekah in a profile for Porter magazine, discussing the 'huge piece of property, a big beautiful house' Rebekah grew up in

WeGrow: Rethinking the Goal of Childhood Education WeGrow's founder and CEO, Rebekah Neumann, sat down with Gwyneth Paltrow of goop to talk about how education can play a role in cultivating fulfillment and consciousness in our children. http://we.co/wegrowgoop Posted by WeWork on Thursday, February 15, 2018

The year 2014 brought more family drama, as her father pleaded guilty to felony tax evasion. According to court documents, his company had purchased four antique race cars, five luxury vehicles, and a membership to Mar-a-Lago for Bob's personal use. Hundreds of thousands of dollars had also been spent on rent for Bob's Palm Beach mansion and Park Avenue penthouse.

Rebekah was one of several people to write letters on behalf of her father ahead of his sentencing, and she used to opportunity to speculate that his grief over losing his son contributed to his bad behavior.

'I do not know why my father would disrespect the government or act in such an irresponsible and stupid way as to not pay taxes, but I have to imagine, in some way, it was related to the tremendous loss he felt [when his son died] and his wanting to rebel against a larger system of life,' she wrote in letter to the court.

Bob was sentenced to six months in prison.

Rebekah, though, was still in entrepreneurial mode, and in 2017 founded WeGrow, a private $42,000-a-year school in Chelsea, after being unhappy with the first grade options available for her oldest daughter.

'We couldnt find the school that we felt would nurture growth, her spirit as well as her mind,' she told Fast Company.

'These children come into the world, they are very evolved, they are very special. Theyre spiritual. Theyre all natural entrepreneurs, natural humanitarians, and then it seems like we squash it all out of them in the education system. Then we ask them to be disruptive and find it again after college.

'Now that Im a mom, Im noticing theres been a huge missed opportunity in the educational system, because children are ready to start creating their lifes work when theyre five. And thats just the truth of it. So why are we waiting until they graduate from college? I dont even know if my kids are going to go to college.'

The couple has gone on to sell at least three of their homes, including a $22.4 million estate in California (pictured), a $3.4 million mansion in Westchester, and a Hamptons farmhouse

The alternative curriculum at WeGrow was not unlike that which you'd expect to see if Rebekah's cousin Gwyneth set up her own Goop school; it included mindfulness, yoga, meditation, farming, and farm-to-table cooking, and even had its own farm north of New York City.

Rebekah told Bloomberg that she wanted kids at the school to 'understand what their superpowers are  and use these talents and gifts to help each other and help the world.'

'In my book, theres no reason why children in elementary schools cant be launching their own businesses,' she said.

Tuition was between $22,000 and $42,000, depending on the age of the student.

Rebekah even sat down for an interview with Gwyneth, telling her smiling cousin that she named the school WeGrow 'because we think we're all students of life, for life. And one of the most important things in life is to be in a constant state of personal growth.'

She added that she wanted to build a place that would 'nurture' her daughter's 'spirit and her soul.'

But then, in September 2019, everything came crashing down. In a failed attempt to take WeWork public, the company lost $40 billion in value, resulting in 2,400 layoffs and the ousting of the founder himself.

In the aftermath, Rebekah announced that she would step down as CEO of WeGrow and relinquish her role in The We Company.

In October 2019, it was announced that the WeGrow school would close at the end of the academic year.

The couple has gone on to sell at least three of their homes, including a $22.4 million estate in California, a $3.4 million mansion in Westchester, and a Hamptons farmhouse. They also listed a six-bedroom Gramercy Park apartment in Manhattan. However, in 2021 they purchased two South Florida properties for $44 million.

They now live in a $1.7 million Hamptons home, adjacent to an estate owned by Gwyneth Paltrow and her mother, Blythe Danner.
A young woman has poked fun at her husband during a trip to Bunnings, making him pose in front of a 'gaslighter' sign.

The New Zealand couple, Sav and Mark, posted the video onto their shared TikTok where the 22-year-old woman explained 'men are cheap'.

Her husband, 44, simply rolled his eyes as he posed next to the sign which is also a term for someone who is controlling in a toxic relationship.

A young woman has poked fun at her husband during a trip to Bunnings, making him pose in front of a 'gaslighter' sign

The couple met on Tinder before moving their friendship to Facebook despite never intending to meet in real life

'Lowest prices are just the beginning,' one woman laughed.

'I would give at least $10 for Mark,' one of the couple's fans commented on the video.

'Sold to the highest bidder,' his wife said.

'$5.30? Why pay when you can get it for free?' said another fan.

What is gas lighting? Therapist Lesley McPherson said gaslighting is associated with 'power and manipulation', as the perpetrator makes the victim 'question their own reality'. She said those with a self-centred attitude often engage in this type of emotional manipulative behaviour in order to 'safeguard their egos' and keep their own perspective of reality in line with 'little regard to how much it hurts another person'. In other cases, gaslighting can occur among friendships and family relationships where an individual says certain statements to make someone else feel anxious or confused. Deflecting is also recognised as a form of gaslighting where, for instance, the individual deflects to a situation that makes you feel bad or refers to something that occurred years prior. 'An example of this might be an instance where you take the time to say, 'We need to talk about this issue', then they deflect to 'Well you did this' rather than addressing the issue at hand,' she said. If this occurs, Ms McPherson said you can either not respond and remove yourself from the conversation or refer back to the original issue initially being discussed and note how they respond. Advertisement

Despite the joke the couple, who have a 20-year age-gap, say their relationship is amazing and they have 'found their person'.

Others joked they weren't so sure they had picked 'the right tool for the job'.

'Where can I get a refund?' one woman laughed.

While many poked fun at the pair after they shared the video some were more serious.

'I got a gaslighter for free for eight years,' one woman said.

And some even turned the joke around.

'Gaslighting doesn't exist, you made it up to make me feel bad,' one man said.

The video has been viewed over 300,000 times after it quickly went viral.

The couple have previously explained how they met on Tinder before 'becoming Facebook friends'.

They 'never planned on meeting' but one night they happened to be in the same club and 'clicked', so Sav pursued the relationship.

What are the common toxic signs of gaslighting to be aware of ? Gaslighters use a range of 'techniques' to execute their control, including: Pretending not to understand when they do - they may pretend to completely misunderstand what you are saying or doing, despite the fact that you are being very transparent and clear in your actions or motives. Labelling your thoughts as crazy or imagined - a person gaslighting you may tell you things like, 'that never happened'. For instance, they may say one thing to you on a particular day and the following day, vehemently deny ever saying it. Questioning the other person's memory of events when they remember correctly - in a similar vein as above, they may continually question your version of events until you doubt them yourself. Pretending to forget what actually occurred when you actually remember - this also falls in line with the other two points. You may recall clearly an event, while they may flat out deny the event ever occurred. Denying promises that you know they have made - gaslighters love to make promises to people only to deny they ever made them in the first place. It's a classic mind game that leaves the recipient bewildered and confused. Trivialising the other person's feelings as being too sensitive when their reaction is somewhat normal. Source: Lesley McPherson Advertisement

She said it tool a year to convince Mark she was the right girl and after two they had moved in together.

Mark, 44, revealed the young woman is the first person he has lived with but it was going so well they decided to get hitched.

They now use TikTok and Youtube to show off their relationship and de-stigmatise the 'age gap' idea.

Daily Mail Australia understands the video is made in jest and the young woman isn't actually accusing her husband of being abusive in any way.
Hendrick's is delivering gin and cucumber crates for free in Sydney and Melbourne to celebrate the end of summer.

The Scottish gin brand is hand-delivering the DIY drink crates to parched Aussies who are in need of a good old fashioned gin and tonic.

To get your hands on a cucumber and gin crate simply ring the hotline, 1800 HG CUKE, between 4:00pm and 5:00pm on March 23 or March 30.

The first five callers from each city will be greeted by the official Hendrick's Gin Chief Cucumber Officer to deliver the necessary cocktail ingredients.

Legendary liqueur brand, Hendrick's is delivering gin and cucumber crates for free in the cities of Sydney and Melbourne to celebrate the end of summer

The first five callers from each city will be greeted by the official Hendrick's Gin Chief Cucumber Officer to deliver the necessary cocktail ingredients

How to make a Hendrick's gin and tonic: Ingredients: 50ml Hendrick's Gin 3 Cucumber slices 150ml Tonic water Method: Pour 50 millilitres of Hendrick's Gin into a high ball glass. Pour 150 millilitres of tonic water into the glass and combine well with the gin. Give the cocktail a light stir. Garnish with three thinly sliced rounds of cucumber on top of the glass. Advertisement

Tonight crates will be delivered to the Sydney suburbs of Ryde, Davidson and Hunter's Hill and in Melbourne city, Brighton East and Balwyn North.

Next Wednesday final deliveries will be made to Pyrmont, Earlwood, North Strathfield and Balmain in Sydney and to North Melbourne's Heidelber and Fawkner.

'Our mission is to excite the unusual in life and keep those refreshing experiences alive,' Mr Sanderson said.

Hendrick's encourages all Sydney and Melbourne residents aged 18 and over to call the hotline in the final weeks for a free delivery to create the classic cocktail.

To get your hands on a cucumber and gin crate simply ring the hotline, 1800 HG CUKE, between 4:00pm and 5:00pm this March 23 and March 30
Australians are feeling the pinch as the average cost of living increases - with the price of petrol, small goods and rentals skyrocketing.

And now thousands have compared what they're paying in rent with their income, with some spending as much as 50 per cent of their salary on renting homes they love.

'If people don't mind sharing, what do you pay for rent in Sydney and what percentage of your monthly income?' a woman wrote on Reddit.

Thousands have compared what they're paying in rent with their income - and the average percentage is startling

One person admitted they spend $215 on rent and earn between $500 and $1,000 per week

The open Reddit forum was quickly flooded with responses from tenants in and around the Sydney CBD

One person admitted they spend 50 per cent of their income on rent

'I'll start. Currently paying $360 per week in Ryde area. Lease ends soon and seems like places are getting quite expensive and nice places always have a lot of people interested in them or applying.

'There are quite a few more expensive places for  lesser quality as well.'

The open forum was quickly flooded with responses from tenants in and around the Sydney CBD, with prices often costing between $250 and up to $430 per week and some spending a whopping 50 per cent of their salary on rent.

Another Reddit user said they pay $3300 a month ($825 per week) but split the cost with their partner

Another person said they spend 30 per cent of their income on rent

The most and least affordable cities in the world: Most affordable cities 2022: 1. Pittsburgh 2. Oklahoma City 3. Rochester 4. Edmonton 5. St Louis Least affordable cities 2022: 1. Hong Kong 2. Sydney 3. Vancouver 4. San Jose 5. Melbourne Source: 2022 Demographia International Housing Affordability Report Advertisement

'Last year I was paying $215 per week for a room in a share house in Jannali, my wage was between $500 and $1,000 per week,' one person wrote.

'I pay about $3,300 a month split rent with my girlfriend and we live in Chippendale. Ends up [being] about 25 per cent of my income which isn't bad considering we can walk to everything, including jobs in the city,' another added.

A third wrote: 'I pay $430 per week for a two-bedroom in Meadowbank. It's just under 50 per cent of my income. It's expensive, but I love it here.'

Another admitted: 'I pay $330 a week for a studio in Surry Hills near Taylor Square. Way too much if you ask me. Plus, I am currently taking my landlord to the tribunal for taking over a month to install a working smoke alarm.'

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has caused petrol prices to spike in Australia and around the world in recent weeks, but it's not just at the bowser that people feel the pressure - the cost of oil flows through to everything (stock image)

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has caused petrol prices to spike in Australia and around the world in recent weeks, but it's not just at the bowser that people feel the pressure - the cost of oil flows through to everything.

Automotive fuel has risen by 32.3 per cent in the past year in Australia.

Gerry Incollingo, Managing Director of financial planning business LCI Partners, previously told FEMAIL the average Australian should spend a maximum of 30 per cent of their monthly gross income on rent.

Pushing further than this recommended amount can place strain on the person and their financial situation.

'Of course, circumstances differ across the board and sometimes it may seem necessary to compromise on other expenses to increase your ability to afford rent, however, it is commonly considered that pushing for higher than 30 per cent often generates housing stress,' Mr Incollingo said.

'Prospective renters should make it their primary focus to accurately determine how much they make and calculate how much they are able to afford within a safe sweet spot.'

Failing to understand and manage your financial position can result in 'rental stress' and the possibility of being unable to pay for additional bills.
Aldi Australia is bringing back its famous hot cross bun gin after a sell-out success in 2021.

The $19.99 Easter favourite by Manchester Drinks Co will return to shelves on March 30 and be infused with a delicious combination of nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves and ginger.

The flavours are blended to give the rich, fruity taste of hot cross buns in a glass.

Speaking about the return of the widely loved festive gin liqueur, Paul Handley, Spirits and Beer Buying Director for ALDI, said they are anticipating much hype around the re-launch.

Aldi Australia is bringing back its famous hot cross bun gin after a sell-out success in 2021

The $19.99 Easter favourite by Manchester Drinks Co will return to shelves on March 30 and be infused with a delicious combination of nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves and ginger

'After becoming an instant favourite with our customers when it was introduced last year, we're very excited to be bringing back our limited-edition Manchester Drinks Co's Hot Cross Bun Gin Liqueur for Easter again in 2022,' he said.

'Infused with all the delicious flavours of a hot cross bun, this rich and fruity gin liqueur is a great twist on a classic festive favourite and the perfect way to spice up your Easter festivities!

'Enjoy it on the rocks, over ice or with a dash of soda. Like hot cross buns though, it's not sticking around forever so eager customers should pick up their bottle soon.'
The Gwangju High Court / Korea Times file





A three-year prison sentence was increased to five years in an appellate ruling Wednesday for a young Vietnamese mother accused of beating her 7-month-old daughter to death.







The Gwangju High Court's regional branch in Jeonju, 240 kilometers south of Seoul, found the 23-year-old Vietnamese woman guilty of murdering her daughter by willful negligence.







A lower court had not recognized the murder charge and ruled her guilty of child abuse resulting in death, but the appeals court overturned the decision on the grounds that she was aware of the possibility of the child's death while using violence.







The mother allegedly hit the then 7-month-old baby with her hands and a towel and flung her to the ground on several occasions between March 7 and 12 last year, eventually resulting in her death.







"The accused raised the victim up to shoulder high and flung her down several times, resulting in the infliction of severe brain damage ... and fatal injuries to the head, leading to her death," the court said.







The court dismissed the mother's claims of depressive disorder and intellectual disability, saying they cannot be justified as reasons for her being unable to perceive the risk of death.







"It appears that the accused was aware of and able to predict the possibility of the victim's death," the court said, adding she deserves a stern punishment for neglecting her duty to protect the child.







In a previous probe, she said she committed the crime because the baby whined, interrupted her napping and threw up milk.







In the appellate ruling, the mother was also ordered to receive 40 hours of child abuse treatment programs and barred from working at children-related facilities for seven years. (Yonhap)






Royal fans were left cringing over an 'embarrassing' video that shows the Duchess of Cambridge being given the cold shoulder by a Jamaican politician.

During a ceremonial welcome at Kingston's Norman Manley International Airport yesterday, Kate, 40, appeared to be shunned by Lisa Hanna, a former Miss World turned politician with the People's National Party, who wants the country to 'become free from the monarchy'.

The People's National Party, led by Mark Golding, is in favour of removing the Queen as head of state and lobbying Britain for reparations.

Although the Duchess and Ms Hanna, 46, chatted happily for much of the ceremony, there was one moment in which the royal appeared to lean over to speak to the politician, only for her to turn away.

Awkward arrival: The Duchess of Cambridge appeared to be given the cold shoulder in an awkward exchange with a Jamaican politician whose party is calling for a referendum to abolish the monarchy. Pictured, Kate with former Miss World Lisa Hanna (right) ow a politician with the People's National Party

Cold shoulder: In one moment caught on camera, Ms Hanna (right) appeared to turn away from the Duchess when she tried to speak to her

Beauty queen: Lisa Hanna was Miss Jamaica and Miss World in 1993 (pictured). She entered politics in the early 2000s and is now one of the country's most famous political figures

Ms Hanna, who met Prince Harry on his visit to Jamaica in 2012, was unsmiling and Kate quickly dropped her own smile and faced forward.

The clip went viral on Twitter, where royal followers said they had 'second hand embarrassment' just from watching the clip.

Another tweeted: 'Yikes!!! The embarrassment!' A third added: 'Oh damn I just felt a huge second hand embarrassment.'

However elsewhere in the ceremony the pair were filmed happily chatting and smiling to each other, suggesting that perhaps Ms Hanna simply didn't hear the Duchess above the sound of the wind on a blustery day.

Ms Hanna also took to Instagram to share they had enjoyed a 'pleasant' conversation, writing: 'Today I welcomed Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge Kate to Jamaica on behalf of the Leader of the Opposition in celebration of the Queens platinum Jubilee.

Clashing views: Kate, 40, left, was seated next to Lisa Hanna, right, during a ceremonial welcome at Kingston's Norman Manley International Airport yesterday

Diplomatic response: Ms Hanna She used the platform to set the record state on her conversation with Kate, explaining they had an 'enjoyable' conversation' but still intends to discuss issues including divorcing the monarchy in 'private'

'We had a very interactive and pleasant conversation throughout the proceedings as we talked about family, our cultures and our people.

'Theres no doubt at this time that we all seek our true independence and want to develop systems & strategies where we become free from the monarchy. But until then we will always remain a courteous and respectful country.

'I am a firm believer in reparations and as such when I was Minister of Youth and Culture I led the reparations committee which made strides in developing submissions to Britain which examined the economic cost of slavery to our country.

'I welcome them wholeheartedly with our warm hospitality, and look forward to us having productive discussions about our future.'

Blustery day: Elsewhere in the ceremony the pair exchanged a few words, so it is unclear if perhaps Ms Hanna (just seen right) simply didn't hear the Duchess above the sound of the wind on a blustery day

Mr Golding said he plans to tell the royals that many Jamaicans want an apology from the monarchy for past atrocities and involvement in the slave trade.

The opposition leader welcomed the royals to Trench Town and will attend the Governor General's dinner tonight where the Duke of Cambridge is expected to acknowledge the issue of slavery.

Mr Golding told the Gleaner, a national Jamaican newspaper: 'I would hope that I get the opportunity during the events that I will be attending to have that dialogue with them and to bring it to their attention in a courteous and respectful way that this is the view held by many Jamaicans.

'And that I think it would be helpful both to the royal family and Jamaica for them to consider this as a means of starting to move forward to a new future.'

Their arrival came as up to 100 people demonstrated outside of the British High Commission in Kingston at having a UK head of state and the issue of Britain's historic role in slavery.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge arriving in Jamaica today. Kate's version of the bespoke gown has been designed with short sleeves, however the dress is available without sleeves

Kate looked stunning in a custom Roksanda dress in the yellow of the Jamaican flag as she arrived at Kingston's Norman Manley International Airport

The Duchess of Cambridge (pictured) proved her fashion prowess once again when arriving in Jamaica with her husband Prince William

A royal aide said that the duke and duchess were 'aware of the protest'.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were accused of benefitting from the 'blood, tears and sweat' of slaves as they arrived in Jamaica on Tuesday to be met by a protest calling for reparations from the British monarchy.

And the Advocates Network coalition of Jamaican politicians, business leaders, doctors and musicians wrote an open letter detailing 60 reasons why the monarchy should compensate the country.

It is now understood that Jamaica's decoupling has been discussed at the 'highest levels' in government, with one political source even saying a senior figure had been appointed to oversee the changeover.

Another political insider told The Independent: 'The government has had to start the process; the road to becoming a republic is not an easy one but they have long been coming under significant pressure to do it.'

The couple, though, were kept well away from protestors outside the British High Commission building (above) as they arrived for an official meeting with the Governor General of Jamaica Patrick Allen

BAZAAR.com also reported that the government has started the 'long and arduous process' and aims for it to be completed by August 6 - exactly 60 years after Jamaica gained its independence from the UK.

Marlene Malahoo Forte, who was Jamaica's attorney general until January, in December told the local newspaper Jamaica Observer that she had received instructions from Prime Minister Andrew Holness to reform the constitution to become a republic.

A senior government official speaking to Bazaar.com said it will be 'full steam ahead in the coming weeks and months', and another source added that while there had been 'some pushback' from members of parliament it was not the majority.

Miss World turned political power player who 'snubbed' Kate: Twice married farmer's daughter Lisa Hanna says she had a 'pleasant' chat with the Duchess despite wanting to remove the Queen as Jamaica's head of state

Beauty queen turned politician Lisa Hanna has been catapulted back onto the global stage almost 20 years after winning Miss World after she was filmed having an 'awkward' conversation with the Duchess of Cambridge yesterday.

Farmer's daughter Ms Hanna, 46, a powerful figure in Jamaican politics, went viral on Twitter in a clip that appeared to show her giving Kate, 40, the cold shoulder during an official event welcoming the royal couple to the country.

Ms Hanna is a member of the opposition People's National Party, which is committed to removing the Queen as head of state and wants to lobby Britain for reparations.

The glamorous mother-of-one - whose ex-husband is a close friend of former US Presidential candidate Ted Cruz - is one of the country's most recognisable political figures and ran in the party's most recent leadership contest.

Still she remains an influential and popular figure, boasting 469,000 followers on Instagram, where she updates constituents with her latest political initiatives, fitness regimes and personal accomplishments.

She used the platform to set the record state on her conversation with Kate, explaining they had a 'pleasant' conversation but still intends to discuss issues including divorcing the monarchy in 'private'.

Beauty queen turned political power player: Lisa Hanna winning Miss World in 1993 and meeting Kate Middleton yesterday

Instagram star: The glamorous mother-of-one - whose ex-husband is a close friend of former US Presidential candidate Ted Cruz - is one of the country's most recognisable political figures and ran in the party's most recent leadership contest

Political career: Ms Hanna (right, in blue) met Prince Harry on his visit to Jamaica for the Diamond Jubilee in 2012. Hanna is a member of the People's National Party, which is committed to removing the Queen as head of state

Sharing a slideshow of images with the Duchess, she wrote: 'Today I welcomed Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge Kate to Jamaica on behalf of the Leader of the Opposition in celebration of the Queen's platinum Jubilee.

'We had a very interactive and pleasant conversation throughout the proceedings as we talked about family, our cultures and our people.

'There's no doubt at this time that we all seek our true independence and want to develop systems & strategies where we become free from the monarchy. But until then we will always remain a courteous and respectful country.

'I am a firm believer in reparations and as such when I was Minister of Youth and Culture I led the reparations committee which made strides in developing submissions to Britain which examined the economic cost of slavery to our country.

'I welcome them wholeheartedly with our warm hospitality, and look forward to us having productive discussions about our future.'

First husband: In 1999, Lisa married David Panton, who is now a partner at Navigation Capital Partners, a private equity firm. Born in Jamaica, Panton was educated at Princeton where he was the roommate of US Senator and former Republican Presidential candidate Ted Cruz. Pictured, Panton (left) with Ted Cruz on their graduation

Second husband: In 2017, Hanna married restaurateur Richard Lake, who is 20 years her senior, in a private ceremony in St. Andrew. She regularly shares loved up tributes to her husband on Instagram (pictured)

Born in August 1975 in Retreat, St Mary, Lisa is the second daughter of Rene Hanna, a farmer of Lebanese descent, and Dorothy, a hairdresser.

She remains close to her older sister, Ella, who she described in a recent Instagram post as a beautiful, party animal, selfless, globe trotter... sensitive nurturer 'get the job done' trouble shooter'.

Hanna attended the Immaculate Conception Preparatory School in Kingston before the family moved to Kansas City, Missouri.

After a stint in the US, Hanna returned to Jamaica to complete her schooling at The Queen's School, a well respected all-girl institution in the Jamaican capital.

Hanna, who was Head Girl, discovered a love of martial arts and attained a black belt. She remains a fitness enthusiast and frequently posts about her challenging workouts and the importance of exercise on Instagram.

Dazzling: In 1993, Hanna, then aged 18, won the Miss World Caribbean beauty pageant and went on to win Miss World

Crowning glory: Hanna at the competition in Sun City, South Africa, becoming the third Jamaican woman to take the crown

Demonstrating a love of the spotlight at an early age, Hanna appeared on reality TV show Enter the Dojo as a teenager and was a presenter on the programme Rapping.

She also volunteered with the World Hunger Project, helping to make Jamaicans more aware of global hunger, starvation, and adult illiteracy.

After high school, she continued her advocacy work and became the youngest Goodwill Ambassador to lead the UN Development Program in Jamaica.

In 1993, Hanna, then aged 18, won the Miss World Caribbean beauty pageant and went on to win the title of Miss World at the competition in Sun City, South Africa, becoming the third Jamaican woman to take the crown.

The ambitious beauty queen capitalised on the global fame and pursued a career in broadcasting and communications, at one point holding a role with the Hilton Hotel in New Kingston.

Her personal life was also thriving. In 1999, Lisa married David Panton, who is now a partner at Navigation Capital Partners, a private equity firm.

Political career: In September 2007, then aged 32, Hanna was elected as the Member of Parliament for St Ann South East. She was one of the youngest women to be elected to Jamaicas government. Pictured, Hanna at an event in 2012

Taking action: Hanna remains an influential and popular figure, boasting 469,000 followers on Instagram, where she updates constituents with her latest political initiatives, fitness regimes and personal accomplishments

Born in Jamaica, Panton was educated at Princeton where he was the roommate of US Senator and former Republican Presidential candidate Ted Cruz.

The pair bonded over their shared conservative politics - Panton at one point reportedly had aspirations to become President of Jamaica - and went on to room at Harvard Law School.

Panton became president of the Harvard Law Review, the second black person to lead after Barack Obama.

Cruz and Panton remain close friends. Panton joined Cruz and his family on a scandal-stricken vacation last year as the senator's home state of Texas was hit by a devastating storm.

Panton and Hanna welcomed a son, Alexander, who has landed a job at Deutsche Bank in New York, before divorcing in 2004.

Relatable: Ms Hanna shares photographs that give an insight into her private life, including her love of fitness and animals

In 2017, Hanna married restaurateur Richard Lake, who is 20 years her senior, in a private ceremony in St. Andrew.

Lake is the group chief executive officer of Restaurant Associates Limited, operators of Burger King, Little Caesars and Popeye's in Jamaica.

Proud wife Hanna shares loved-up tributes to her husband on Instagram, although it seems he rarely appears alongside her at political events.

In September 2007, then aged 32, Hanna was elected as the Member of Parliament for St Ann South East. She was one of the youngest women to be elected to Jamaicas government.

In addition to her duties as constituency representative she served as opposition spokesperson on Information, Youth and Culture.

When the People's National Party was elected into power in December 2011, Hanna was appointed Minister of Youth and Culture.

The party lost power in 2016. In 2020, following the resignation of PNP President and opposition leader Peter Phillips, Hanna stood for election but was ultimately beaten by Mark Golding.

Mr Golding is expected to attend a formal event tonight in honour of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.

Mr Golding said he plans to tell the royals that many Jamaicans want an apology from the monarchy for past atrocities and involvement in the slave trade.

The opposition leader welcomed the royals to Trench Town and will attend the Governor General's dinner tonight where the Duke of Cambridge is expected to acknowledge the issue of slavery.

Mr Golding told the Gleaner, a national Jamaican newspaper: 'I would hope that I get the opportunity during the events that I will be attending to have that dialogue with them and to bring it to their attention in a courteous and respectful way that this is the view held by many Jamaicans.

'And that I think it would be helpful both to the royal family and Jamaica for them to consider this as a means of starting to move forward to a new future.'
A sleazy singleton accidentally sent his Bumble date a text intended for his friend in which he branded her a 'solid 4/10' who looked like 'an easy lay.'

Samantha Burroughs, 25, from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, was devastated to find out that the man she was set to meet, known only as Jake, had been ridiculing a photo of her in a bikini to a friend.

Sharing the messages he sent in error on TikTok, she told her followers that he'd rated her a 'solid 4/10' and that he was only taking her out as an 'easy lay', saying: 'desperate times call for desperate measures'.

Scroll down for video

Health care worker Samantha Burroughs, from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, thought her Bumble match was 'respectful' in early exchanges but discovered another side to his personality after he sent her a text in error - ridiculing her bikini photo to a friend

The messages that came to Samantha - but were meant for Jake's friend...which exposed how he really felt about their date

The 25-year-old took revenge by posting about the messages, which called her an 'easy lay', on her TikTok account, garnering supportive messages from those who saw them

Initially, the singleton said she was dazzled by his sweet messages, after he expressed how 'lucky' he felt to be meeting her that night.

However, the 25-year-old's 'jaw hit the floor' when he followed the apparent smitten adulation by accidentally sending her a bikini picture of herself alongside a 'belittling' text mocking her.

Jake's message exclaimed to his friend: 'Bro, she's a solid four', before admitting 'desperate times call for desperate measures' and saying 'beggars can't be choosers'.

He added that he was going to keep his date with Samantha 'on the low' and ended the message by boasting 'all I saw was t*** and an easy lay'.

A second message followed shortly after to Samantha, in which he attempted to cover up the blunder, claiming: 'I didn't mean to send that to you' and 'I was talking about someone else'.

Samantha refused to reply - and stood up her date - and is baffled at how Jake switched from messaging so courteously to so 'childishly' in the messages.

After receiving the messages ahead of her date, Burroughs stood up 'Jake' and took her revenge on social media - her post has now been liked more than 1.5million times

Unlucky-in-love Samantha, who has been single since January 2021, claims she's been in 'terrible' and 'toxic' relationships since her teens

She then exposed his cold-hearted blunder on TikTok where her video has now been viewed more than 1.5 million times, with users seething at Jake's message.

He's since text her claiming the message was 'a joke', demanding she take the TikToks down to avoid men thinking she's 'crazy' - and adding 'he just doesn't find fat girls attractive'.

Samantha said: 'The comments about 'desperate times', 'beggars can't be choosers' and 'easy lay' - they sucked. It belittled me and it was childish.

'He went from being really respectful and having really good grammar to talking like he was a high school boy. It's amazing how men can totally deceive you. It seemed like two totally different people.

THE VERY AWKWARD EXCHANGE BETWEEN SAMANTHA BURROUGHS AND HER BUMBLE MATCH Revenge is a dish best served...on TikTok. Samantha quickly uploaded the exchange on social media 1.14pm: Jake: 'Yeah, I can't wait to meet you! You're beautiful [heart eyes emoji]. Would 7-ish work?' Samantha: 'Thank you. That's sweet. Yeah, that should be fine.' Jake: 'I'll be coming straight from work so you'll have to look over my work uniform.' Samantha: 'Haha, no worries. I'm in scrubs so I understand.' Jake: 'I'm sure you look beautiful either way. I'm a lucky guy to get to take you out.' At 3.59pm Jake sent a photo of Samantha in a bikini that she'd shared on dating app Bumble: Jake: 'No bro, she's a solid four and I would for sure keep it on the low, but desperate times call for desperate measures and beggars can't be choosers. 'All I saw was t*** and an easy lay.' Jake: 'Damn. I'm sorry I didn't mean to send that to you I was talking about someone else and clicked her picture by accident. My bad.' Advertisement

'When I saw him send the photo, I thought he was going to say something perverted and sexualize my body and ruin the whole thing, but then I read the text and I just didn't know what to say.

'Initially I was very shocked. My jaw hit the floor then I was laughing a bit because It's so typical of my luck with men. I didn't reply with anything because I didn't know what to say.

'The number [rating] didn't get to me as much because I don't really get how that works, and it doesn't make any sense.'

It hurt, but I dodged a bullet. I'd rather that happen than we hang out and think it's going somewhere... Samantha Burroughs

She said Jake was 'tall, dark and handsome' and 'interested in the same things' so she had high hopes for their relationship.

Samantha explained: 'My friends told me I should hang out with someone as quickly as I can so I can see what they're like in person, so I thought he was great because he was trying to do that.

'He was very quick to jump to texting and wanting to hang out because he wasn't on Bumble too much, and I wasn't either.

'He sounded very respectful and seemed like he was appreciative of my time.'

Jake appeared to want to get to know her personality too, something that impressed her but she now realizes he wasn't genuine and says she's relieved she found out the truth.

She said: 'It hurt, but I dodged a bullet. I'd rather that happen than we hang out and think it's going somewhere, then realize he's using me for sex or something like that.'

Samantha, who has been single since January 2021, claims she's been unlucky in love and has had 'terrible' and 'toxic' relationships since her teens.

Her TikTok has been liked more than 1.5million times with more than 25,000 comments offering her support and slamming Jake for his hurtful misstep.

Samantha said some people had even claimed that the man could have done this to her 'on purpose' from someone wanting simply to be mean.

User actwin66 commented: 'Did he think his attempt of saving the situation was somehow better?'

Samantha replied: 'Right? I wouldn't be okay with someone talking about anyone that way.'

Ginna Cranston said: 'Honestly to me instant love bombing and compliments like that are a huge red flag.'

Morgan Jean added: 'You're so beautiful! We love it when the trash takes itself out.'
The Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall kicked off the second day of their four-day long tour in Northern Ireland this morning.

The heir-to-the-throne, 73 and his wife, 74, walked round CS Lewis square in Belfast to visit the stalls along the Narnia-themed sculpture walk, which showcase the East Side Partnership's community activities.

Charles and Camilla then attended the reopening of of the Grand Opera house, where The Prince of Wales met drag queen, May McFettridge, who has starred in pantomimes in the city for more than 30 years.

Their tour largely focuses on themes of Community and Diversity, Education, Tourism and Arts in The Queen's Platinum Jubilee Year, as part of their tour to all countries in the United Kingdom for the Queen's Platinum Jubilee year.

Prince Charles and Camilla the second day of their four-day visit to Northern Ireland with a visit to Belfast

The royal couple started in CS Lewis square where they were met with multiple stalls showcasing community art

Breaking away for a visiting the Arches Library on her own, keen reader The Duchess of Cornwall had afternoon tea as she talked with organisers

Charles appeared in good spirits as he greeted members fo the public who were eagerly waiting to see the royal couple in CS Lewis square.

The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall then spoke with Kate Nicholl, Lord Mayor of Belfast, about their tour.

Following a stroll around the stalls, Camilla visited the Holywood Arches Library where she met with the library's book club.

Charles also separately attended the reopening of of the Grand Opera house, where he met drag queen, May McFettridge.

The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall met Kate Nicholl, Lord Mayor of Belfast who is currently pregnant

The Duchess of Cornwall talked with book groups who regularly host activities in the Belfast arches library

During the Grand Opera house reopening, Prince Charles spoke with drag queen May McFettridge

The Prince of Wales met Ukrainian women (left-right) Iuliia Wilson, Kateryna Zaichyk, Maryna Opanasenko and Alina Bilous

The Duchess of Cornwall enjoys a performance from local children at Holywood Arches Library, Belfast, part of her longstanding commitment to encouraging literacy and reading

Prince Charles spoke with an elderly patient as he visited the Marie Curie hospital on his tour in in Belfast

Young performers at the Opera House also had the chance to speak to the future King.

Later in the day, The Prince of Wales travelled to Marie Curie hospital where he spoke to patients outside to mark the second National Day of Reflection, to remember those who died during the covid pandemic.

During the end of the tour, The Prince of Wales met with Ukrainian women during a reception at Titanic Belfast, to hear how organisations across Northern Ireland are supporting refugees.

Camilla chose a an elegant dark green and navy tartan jacket for the occasion, which she paired with a matching pleated skirt and suede black boots.

Looking equally as coordinated, Prince Charles opted for a dark blue pinstripe suit with a crisp, white shirt and a simply patterned light blue tie.

Yesterday, the Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall were greeted by well-wishers in County Tyrone as they arrived for the start of their four-day visit to Northern Ireland.

The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall with a statue of CS Lewis and the wardrobe from the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe during a tour of CS Lewis Square

Charles had a cup of tea as he spoke with patients and loved ones in the sun outside Marie Curie hospital

Charles met with Ukrainian women during a reception at Titanic Belfast, to hear how organisations across Northern Ireland are supporting refugees

The Duchess of Cornwall met with library regulars at Holywood to converse over some afternoon tea

Prince Charles appeared in high spirits as he stopped to talk with well-wishers outside CS Lewis square

Charles and Camilla became the first members of the royal family to visit Cookstown, which boasts one of the longest high streets in all of Ireland, this afternoon.

A section of the main street was cordoned off to traffic and lined with schoolchildren waving Union flags.

The couple later visited a charity cafe offering employment opportunities for people with learning disabilities where they were treated to a dance performance and ride on a tandem bike.

The royal couple appeared in high spirits as they went on a walkabout to meet well-wishers, as well as being introduced to local businesses people and community members.

Charles' hospital visit was to mark the second National Day of Reflection, to remember those who died during the covid pandemic

Prince Charles spoke with Ukrainian women living in Belfast about the current political climate in their country and what Ireland is doing to help

Taking a peek! The royal couple stopped to inspect the Narnia Wardrobe sculpture from the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe

Camilla perused some books for her own reading list while enjoying a visit to the Holywood Library

Time for some cake! A young schoolgirl smiled at Prince Charles cut her a slice of frosted vanilla cake

The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall chatted with Irish officials as they began they tour

The royal couple were met with warmth as hundreds of adoring fans came to celebrate their visit

Charles, 73, appeared in high spirits as he chatted and shook hands with schoolchildren, while Camilla, 74, was seen waving at well-wishers as she made her way down the street.

The Prince of Wales was also seen chatting with a pipe band, joking there are a 'few good pubs around here' they could pay a visit to after their performance.

The Duke and Duchess of cornwall visited Superstars Cafe, a centre that helps train and provide employment for 20 young people with learning difficulties.

The Duke and Duchess met staff, volunteers and trainees before unveiling a plaque marking the date.

Stepping into the story! The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall with characters from the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe

Charles met with NHS staff and shared a cup of tea with them as he arrived at Marie Curie hospital

Holding court! During the library afternoon tea, Camilla talks to library familiars about the importance of literacy

Young performers at the Grand Opera House reopening had the chance to meet and talk with The Prince of Wales

The couple are at the start of a four-day visit to the island of Ireland, with the final two days to be spent in the Republic - which was last visited by the Duke and Duchess in in 2019.

Their visit will see the Duke and Duchess carry out a series of engagements throughout the trip, both separately and together.

They are also due to travel to all the nations in the United Kingdom during the Queens Platinum Jubilee year.

The Duke and Duchess last visited Northern Ireland in May last year, where they spent two days making appearances in and around Belfast.

Outside Marie Curie hospital, Prince Charles was gifted some honey in a glass jar while speaking with medical staff

The Queen was due to visit in October however was forced to cancel last minute on medical grounds.

A Buckingham Palace spokesman said in a statement: 'The Queen has reluctantly accepted medical advice to rest for the next few days.

'Her Majesty is in good spirits and is disappointed that she will no longer be able to visit Northern Ireland, where she had been due to undertake a series of engagements today and tomorrow.

'The Queen sends her warmest good wishes to the people of Northern Ireland, and looks forward to visiting in the future.'

A royal source said at the time there was 'no cause for caution' about the Queen's health - and her decision was understood not to be related to coronavirus. Her condition was not revealed.

The Queen is double-vaccinated, having been given her first jab by a household doctor at Windsor Castle on January 9 last year and her second at the end of March ahead of what was her first public appearance in five months.

Buckingham Palace would not comment on whether the head of state had received her booster Covid-19 jab, but given her age it is likely she has already had it.
2006

Assange creates Wikileaks with a group of like-minded activists and IT experts to provide a secure way for whistleblowers to leak information. He quickly becomes its figurehead and a lightning rod for criticism.

2010

March: U.S. authorities allege Assange engaged in a conspiracy to hack a classified U.S. government computer with former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning.

July: Wikileaks starts releasing tens of thousands of top secrets documents, including a video of U.S. helicopter pilots gunning down 12 civilians in Baghdad in 2007. What followed was the release of more than 90,000 classified US military files from the Afghan war and 400,000 from Iraq that included the names of informants.

August: Two Swedish women claim that they each had consensual sex with Assange in separate instances when he was on a 10-day trip to Stockholm. They allege the sex became non-consensual when Assange refused to wear a condom.

First woman claims Assange was staying at her apartment in Stockholm when he ripped off her clothes. She told police that when she realized Assange was trying to have unprotected sex with her, she demanded he use a condom. She claims he ripped the condom before having sex.

Second Swedish woman claims she had sex with Assange at her apartment in Stockholm and she made him wear a condom. She alleges that she later woke up to find Assange having unprotected sex with her.

He was questioned by police in Stockholm and denied the allegations. Assange was granted permission by Swedish authorities to fly back to the U.K.

November: A Swedish court ruled that the investigation should be reopened and Assange should be detained for questioning on suspicion of rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion. An international arrest warrant is issued by Swedish police through Interpol.

Wikileaks releases its cache of more than 250,000 U.S. diplomatic cables.

December: Assange presents himself to London police and appears at an extradition hearing where he is remanded in custody. Assange is granted conditional bail at the High Court in London after his supporters pay 240,000 in cash and sureties.

2011

February: A British judge rules Assange should be extradited to Sweden but Wikileaks found vows to fight the decision.

April: A cache of classified U.S. military documents is released by Wikileaks, including intelligence assessments on nearly all of the 779 people who are detained at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba.

November: Assange loses High Court appeal against the decision to extradite him.

2012

June: Assange enters the Ecuadorian embassy in London requesting political asylum.

August: Assange is granted political asylum by Ecuador.

2013

June: Assange tells a group of journalists he will not leave the embassy even if sex charges against him are dropped out of fear he will be extradited to the U.S.

2015

August: Swedish prosecutors drop investigation into some of the sex allegations against Assange due to time restrictions. The investigation into suspected rape remains active.

2016

July: Wikileaks begins leaking emails U.S. Democratic Party officials favoring Hillary Clinton.

November: Assange is questioned over the sex allegation at the Ecuadorian Embassy in the presence of Sweden's assistant prosecutor Ingrid Isgren and police inspector Cecilia Redell. The interview spans two days.

2017

January: Barack Obama agrees to free whistleblower Chelsea Manning from prison. Her pending release prompts speculation Assange will end his self-imposed exile after Wikileaks tweeted he would agree to U.S. extradition.

April: Lenin Moreno becomes the new president of Ecuador who was known to want to improve diplomatic relations between his country and the U.S.

May: An investigation into a sex allegation against Assange is suddenly dropped by Swedish prosecutors.

2018

January: Ecuador confirms it has granted citizenship to Assange following his request.

February: Assange is visited by Pamela Anderson and Nobel Peace Prize winner Adolfo Perez Esquivel.

March: The Ecuadorian Embassy suspends Assange's internet access because he wasn't complying with a promise he made the previous year to 'not send messages which entailed interference in relation to other states'.



August: U.S. Senate committee asks to interview Assange as part of their investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election.

September: Assange steps down as editor of WikiLeaks.

October: Assange reveals he will launch legal action against the government of Ecuador, accusing it of violating his 'fundamental rights and freedoms'.

November: U.S. Justice Department inadvertently names Assange in a court document that says he has been charged in secret.

2019

January: Assange's lawyers say they are taking action to make President Trump's administration reveal charges 'secretly filed' against him.

April 6: WikiLeaks tweets that a high level Ecuadorian source has told them Assange will be expelled from the embassy within 'hours or days'. But a senior Ecuadorian official says no decision has been made to remove him from the London building.

April 11: Assange has his diplomatic asylum revoked by Ecuador and he is arrested by the Metropolitan Police; he is remanded in custody by a judge at Westminster Magistrates Court.

April 12: He is found guilty of breaching his bail terms.

May 1: Sentenced to 11 months in jail.

May 2: Court hearing takes place over Assange's proposed extradition to the U.S. He tells a court he does not consent to the extradition and the case is adjourned until May 30.

May 13: Swedish prosecutors reopen rape case saying they still want to question Assange.

June 3: Swedish court rules against detaining him in absentia, setting back the extradition case.

June 12 Home Secretary Sajid Javid signs an extradition request from the US.

June 13 A hearing sets out the date for Assange's full extradition hearing - February next year.

November Swedish prosecutors stop investigation into an allegation of rape against Mr Assange

November 25 - Medics say without correct medical care Assange 'could die' in Belmarsh

December 13 - Hearing in London hears he is being blocked from seeing key evidence in case

December 19 - Appears at Westminster Magistrates Court via video-link where his lawyer claims US bid to extradite him is 'political'.

2020

February 24 -Assange faces an extradition hearing at Woolwich Crown Court.

Assange's representatives argue he cannot legally be handed to the US for 'political offences' because of a 2003 extradition treaty.

March 2 - Assange appears by video link at Westminster Magistrates Court, where he is refused bail amid the coronavirus crisis.

April 11 - Stella Moris, Assange's partner, who gave birth to his two children while he was living inside the Ecuadorian embassy, issues a plea for his release amid fears for his health.

June 24 - The US Department of Justice issues an updated 18-count indictment, over Assange's alleged role in 'one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of the United States'.

August 25 - Ms Moris visits her partner in Belmarsh prison for the first time in almost six months.

September 7 - Assange's extradition hearings resume at the Old Bailey. They are expected to go on for up to four weeks.

October 1 - Judge Vanessa Baraitser adjourned the case at the Old Bailey until January 4.

2021

January 4 - Judge Baraitser strikes down US extradition bid.

August 11 - The US government is authorised to expand its appeal against a judge's decision not to extradite the Wikileads founder to America.

2022

March 14 - The Supreme Court rejects his appeal request. The ruling means the WikiLeaks founder is running out of legal avenues to challenge his extradition.

March 23 - Assange marries Stella Moris at Belmarsh
Joe Biden's granddaughters Naomi and Finnegan showed off their fashion prowess on Tuesday while attending the star-studded Ralph Lauren runway show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

The sisters, who are the daughters of the president's son Hunter Biden and his ex-wife, Kathleen Buhle, were dressed to impress in structured Ralph Lauren pantsuits for the event, which marked the American label's first physical fashion show since the pandemic.

Naomi, 28, was right on trend in an all-white suit and white blouse, as Ralph Lauren's fall 2022 ready-to-wear collection featured largely monochromatic black and white looks.

President Joe Biden's granddaughters Naomi (center) and Finnegan (right) attended the Ralph Lauren fashion show in New York City on Tuesday with Naomi's fiance, Peter Neal (left)

Naomi, 28, and Finnegan, 23, both wore structured Ralph Lauren suits to the star-studded event held at the Museum of Modern Art

Naomi was right on trend in her all-white suit and blouse, as Ralph Lauren's fall 2022 collection featured largely monochromatic black and white looks

The Columbia Law graduate topped off her outfit with a metallic clutch and matching high-heeled sandals.

Naomi's light brown hair was worn loose around her shoulders, and she added a pop of color to her white outfit with a berry-colored lip.

She was joined by fiance, Peter Neal, who looked dapper in a double-breasted black suit with tortoiseshell buttons, an embroidered pocket square, and a matching polka-dot tie.

The couple has been together since 2018, and they announced their engagement in September over Labor Day weekend.

Naomi added a pop of color to her all-white outfit with her berry-colored lipstick

The Columbia Law graduate topped off the look with a metallic clutch and matching high-heeled sandals

Finnegan trailed behind her older sister and future brother-in-law as they were photographed walking into the MoMa ahead of the show

Finnegan wore a black strapless top with tortoiseshell buttons down the front, matching slim-fit dress pants, and a blazer over her shoulders

Finnegan's outfit actually complemented Peter's double-breasted suit

Peter's look actually complemented the outfit worn by his future sister-in-law.

Finnegan, 23, had on a structured black strapless top with tortoiseshell buttons down the front, matching slim-fit dress pants, and a blazer that she wore stylishly slung over her shoulders.

The University of Pennsylvania graduate's blonde hair was pulled up into a modern updo with loose tendrils framing her face.

She carried a small black handbag that matched her high-heeled sandals, and like her older sister, she added some touches of color to her look. Her fingernails were painted fuchsia while her toenails were a deep red.

When the trio posed for photos together, Naomi stood in the middle while Peter and Finnegan bookended her in their nearly matching suits

Naomi took to Instagram on Wednesday to share photos of them getting ready in what appeared to be a hotel room before the show

Sweet black and white snapshots show Naomi and Peter sitting on a bed together and sharing a kiss

A close-up of the shot showcased her timeless emerald-cut engagement ring

When the trio posed for photos together, Naomi stood in the middle while Peter and Finnegan bookended her in their nearly matching suits.

They were just a few of the A-list attendees who were photographed outside the MoMA ahead of the show. Lily Collins modeled a tuxedo while Jessica Chastain dazzled in a sparkly jumpsuit with a plunging neckline.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams struck a pose with Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, who wore her signature dark sunglasses despite it being dark out.

Adams shared photos of himself at the event on Twitter later that night, writing: 'Strike a pose! Incredible night at the @MuseumModernArt to celebrate the groundbreaking work of @RalphLauren and to send a clear message: #NYCisBack!'

The couple has been together since 2018, and they announced their engagement in September over Labor Day weekend

Naomi and Peter appeared to be having a great time during their pre-show photo shoot

Peter looked dapper in a double-breasted black suit with tortoiseshell buttons, an embroidered pocket square, and a matching polka-dot tie

She struck a pose with her sister in the bathroom, where they looked into the mirror while their photo was being taken

Naomi also posted a snapshot of herself walking into the event with Peter trailing behind on her Instagram Stories, jokingly writing: 'Keep up, @peterneal'

There were also plenty of stars on the actual catwalk, including models Gigi and Bella Hadid, Shalom Harlow, and Tyson Beckford.

After the show, the Biden sisters headed to Ralph Lauren's Polo Bar, where they took a selfie in the bathroom.

Finnegan, who had removed her blazer at this point, took the snapshot while Naomi stood behind her and leaned her head towards hers.

Naomi posted the image on her Instagram Stories that night. The next day, she returned to social media to share photos of herself with Peter and Finnegan before they headed to the show together.

The carousel of images, which appear to have been taken in a hotel, started with Naomi and Peter posing in an elevator together, with her looking over at him.

Anna Wintour wore her signature dark shades to the event despite it being dark out

Lily Collins (eft) and Jessica Chastain (right) were among the A-list guests in attendance

New York City Mayor Eric Adams took to Twitter after the show to say 'NYC is back'

There were also plenty of stars on the actual catwalk, including models Gigi and Bella Hadid

The next photos showed them sitting on the bed together, with Naomi's hand lovingly resting on her fiance's. A close-up of the shot showcased her timeless emerald-cut engagement ring.

In another black and white picture, Naomi was captured giving her husband-to-be a sweet kiss on the cheek. She also posed with her sister in the bathroom, where they looked into the mirror while their photo was being taken.

Peter shared similar images on his Instagram page on Wednesday.

Naomi tagged hairstylist Antonio Velotta, makeup artist Mia Jones, and stylist Bailey Moon in the post, writing in the caption: 'Magical night at MoMA Thank you @ralphlauren.'

After the show, the Biden sisters headed to Ralph Lauren's Polo Bar, where they took a selfie in the bathroom

Naomi and Finnegan's younger sister Maisy (far right) wasn't with them. They are the daughters of the president's son Hunter Biden and his ex-wife, Kathleen Buhle (center)

The Biden sisters are pictured with President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden, their father Hunter Biden, and his wife Melissa Cohen

Naomi, Finnegan, and Peter enjoyed lunch with President Biden at The Hamilton restaurant in Washington, D.C. last month

She also posted a snapshot of herself walking into the event with Peter trailing behind on her Instagram Stories, jokingly writing: 'Keep up, @peterneal.'

The Bidens seemed to have a great time at the show, though they were missing their younger sister Maisy, who was likely in Philadelphia for school.

The 21-year-old aspiring artist is a student at the University of Pennsylvania, where Naomi and Finnegan both graduated from.

The Biden family has deep ties with the Ivy League school, as the president's late son Beau and daughter Ashley also obtained degrees from the private university.

While Maisy's relatives have all taken an interest in politics, policy, and law, she is the artist in the family. She is studying fine arts and appears to be focusing on contemporary art.
The royal family are certainly used to life in front of the camera, being snapped thousands of times a year, and now they're embracing yet more photo opportunities as they get on board with selfies.

Yesterday, as the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge enjoyed their first day in Jamaica on their royal tour, they happily posed with the Jamaican bobsleigh team.

There's no official protocol on selfies, but the royals have a rule against signing autographs, so that they can't be sold for large amounts of money.

And in the early days of camera phones, they seemed to shy away from being snapped with members of the public with Prince William, Prince Harry and Prince Charles all voicing their dislike of the method.

However, in recent years, they've become commonplace, with Prince Charles posing for his first selfie all the way back in 2014, and other royals from Sophie Wessex to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle following suit.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge enjoyed their first day in Jamaica on their royal tour of the Caribbean and broke Buckingham Palace's protocol to pose for a selfie with the Jamaican bobsleigh team

The Duchess of Cornwall had selfie taken with employee Biffy Mackay (right), during a visit to Social Bite, a cafe in Edinburgh 2016

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex posed for a selfie during a walkabout at the National War Memorial in Wellington in 2018

Prince Charles was among the first royals to be seen stopping for a snap with fans after cheeky scaffolder Sam Wayne took a picture with him in 2014 on a visit to Stroud

The Queen known not to like them because she prefers eye contact - and will politely decline when asked.

William, 39, has previously joked that he is 'allergic to selfies' while Prince Harry, 37, once told a teenager that 'selfies are bad' and told her to 'just take a normal photograph' when she requested one in Australia in 2015.

However recent times it appears some royals have grown fonder of the selfie, perhaps viewing the form of photography as way of embracing modern times and connecting with fans.

Despite previously admitting he 'hates' selfies, Prince Charles was among the first royals to be seen stopping for a snap with fans after cheeky scaffolder Sam Wayne took a picture with him in 2014.

Sophie Wessex has also been spotted indulging fans who asked for a selfie when she smiled with a group of youngsters while attending the New Forest and Hampshire County Show in 2016

Meghan Markle met Max Henry, 10, during a walkabout at Viaduct Harbour in Auckland, on day three of the royal couple's tour of New Zealand in 2018

Prince William took the picture himself while posing for a snap with schoolgirl Madison Lambe, 12, after she visited the Sandringham Estate on Christmas Day in 2014

Two years later the same construction worker, from Redruth, reduced the Duchess of Cambridge to fits of giggles as he snapped a selfie with them on a tour of a housing development in Cornwall.

Prince William pushed the trend further in 2014 when he actually took the picture himself while posing for a snap with a schoolgirl after she visited the Sandringham Estate on Christmas Day.

The Duke ended up photographing himself with the schoolgirl, Madison Lambe, 12, because she was too nervous to press the button on her phone.

William seems to have grown more accustomed to the selfie over the years, with the royal melting hearts when he put his tour of Ireland on hold while to stop for a selfie with little girl Jennifer Malone in March 2020.

William seems to have grown more accustomed to the selfie over the years, with the royal melting hearts when he put his tour of Ireland on hold while to stop for a selfie with little girl Jennifer Malone in March 2020

Kate has always seemed to be comfortable with the selfie, going viral in 2014 when she took a snap high-fiving a youngster in Christchurch

It seems that the Duchess of Cornwall has always been on board with the selfie, having posed with various fans over the years. She is pictured having her picture taken with family of members of the armed forces in 2016

Kate has always seemed to be comfortable with the selfie, going viral in 2014 when she took a snap high-fiving a youngster in Christchurch before posing with various well-wishers on a walkabout in Sydney.

Meanwhile, Prince Harry welcomed the selfie after marrying Meghan Markle in 2018 when the pair happily posed for several photos with royal supporters during their recent 16-day tour of Australia, Fiji, Tonga and New Zealand.

Harry made headlines around the world when he stepped up to take a photo of his pregnant wife with one schoolgirl who looked strikingly like she did as a child.

It seems that the Duchess of Cornwall has always been on board with the selfie, having posed with various fans over the years.

In June 2016, she proved she's a good sport by snapping a selfie with staff member Biffy Mackay, 27, at the Social Bite cafe in Edinburgh, which feeds, trains and employs members of the homeless community.

Camilla has a selfie taken with family of members of the armed forces as she visits the Poppy Pod Village at the Tile Barn Outdoor Centre in 2016

Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie take a selfie at a Commonwealth reception during the United Nations General Assembly in New York in 2019

An officer of the Saudi Arabia Navy takes a selfie with the Prince of Wales, Admiral of the Fleet last year

Zara and Mike Tindall take a selfie together on day one of Cheltenham Festival earlier this month

A month later the royal was first seen beaming with a young woman as she joined families at the Poppy Pod Village which provides camping facilities to provide some respite for members of the Armed Forces.

In 2017, Camilla was spotted again happily posing with fans as she visited the Sandringham Flower Show in the grounds of Sandringham House.

Sophie Wessex has also been spotted indulging fans who asked for a selfie when she smiled with a group of youngsters while attending the New Forest and Hampshire County Show.

Less senior members of the royal family including Zara Tindall and Princess Beatrice have all been seen snapping selfies in the past.
The Duchess of Cambridge proved she is the queen of co-ordination today as she joined Prince William to meet the Prime Minister of Jamaica.

Kate Middleton, 40, was dazzling in the 1,370 fresh white jacket with matching 575 trousers as she joined the Duke, 39, at the Andrew Holness' office this morning, perfectly pairing the crisp white outfit with her heels.

Meanwhile she matched her 249 vibrant orange blouse from Ridley London, which was described online as 'elegant but relaxed', with a matching orange 229 handbag from Willow Hilson Vintage - a Cheltenham-based boutique.

Kate has a close affiliation with Alexander McQueen having worn the British fashion house's designs on notable occasions, most famously to her wedding in 2011.

Kate Middleton, 40, was dazzling in the 1,370 fresh white jacket with matching 575 trousers as she joined the Duke, 39, at the Andrew Holness' office this morning

The mother-of-three was in high spirits during the visit to the Prime Minister's office this afternoon

Meanwhile the Duchess accessorised with a playful orange handbag for the occasion, which perfectly matched her Ridley London blouse

The mother-of-three swept her long brunette locks over her shoulder for the occasion, opting for natural makeup look.

Online, the blazer is described as 'a testament to Alexander McQueen's expert tailoring skills' with 'strong shoulders'.

The designer describes it as 'perfect for a city hall wedding.'

Meanwhile the Duchess could be seen carrying a playful orange handbag for the occasion, which perfectly matched her Ridley London blouse.

The mother-of-three paired the stunning white outfit with a 249 vibrant orange blouse from Ridley London, which was described online as 'elegant but relaxed'

The mother-of-three beamed for snaps alongside Prince William as the royal couple met with the Prime Minister

Kate added a touch of glamour with a 48 bangle by Jamaican designer Lashawndla Bailey-Miller and her 125 Maria Black 'Cha Cha' Earrings.

The mother-of-three beamed for snaps alongside Prince William as the royal couple met with the Prime Minister and his wife Juliet.

The Duchess went on to visit Shortwood Teachers College, as part of her ongoing work to elevate the importance of early childhood development.

The royal couple's visit  part of a tour celebrating the Queen's Platinum Jubilee this year  has been mired by controversy, as they arrived in the country amid calls for the monarchy to pay reparations for its role in slavery.

Earlier, protesters gathered at the British High Commission in Kingston with placards and accused the monarchy of benefitting from the 'blood, tears and sweat' of slaves.

The Duchess of Cambridge was elegant in a white Alexander McQueen suit as she joined Prince William to meet the Prime Minister of Jamaica earlier today

Anti-colonial sentiment has been growing across the Caribbean against the background of the Black Lives Matter movement in recent years, with Jamaican politicians calling for the Queen to be dropped as head of state and for a formal acknowledgement of slavery.

A royal source said the duke was aware of the protests and was expected to acknowledge the issue of slavery in a speech on Wednesday night during a dinner hosted by the Governor General of Jamaica.

Prince William and Kate Middleton paid tribute to Bob Marley on social media earlier today after visiting his home in the reggae capital of Trench Town in Jamaica during their tour of the Caribbean.

The video compilation, which used Jamaican national hero Marley's hit song One Love as a soundtrack, featured clips of the royal couple being greeted by crowds during the visit yesterday.

Kate has a close afflation with Alexander McQueen having worn the British fashion house's designs on notable occasions, most famously to her wedding in 2011

The clip was posted on the couple's joint Instagram account alongside a message that read: 'Thank you Trench Town'.

It was released online after the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge played the bongos in Trench Town travelled to the reggae legend's former home, now a museum, in the Kingston neighbourhood yesterday.

The royal couple were mobbed by crowds who chanted 'We love you, we love you' as they walked to Trench Town Culture Yard and Museum in Jamaica's capital.

Kate and William also tried out a bobsleigh made for two under the watchful eye of Jamaica's latest Cool Runnings team before meeting Jamaica's sporting greats.
The Queen, 95, is on top form mentally although she has some 'mobility issues', her biographer has revealed.

Speaking to GB news on Wednesday, Robert Hardman, 57, revealed on Wednesday she was in 'very good spirits' amid recent reports that she is relying on a wheelchair.

Robert, who is the author of a new book on the Queen's life, said: 'Mobility is something of an issue now.'

However, it's not lowered her mood, with Robert adding: 'I'm told by those very close to her that she's in very good spirits, you know - absolutely pin sharp as ever.

The Queen is said to be on top form mentally although she has some 'mobility issues'

He continued: 'But, but there is a mobility [issue] inevitably when you're coming up to your 96th birthday and also dignity, I think it's terribly important.

'She is the Queen, she wants to be seen as the Queen, she wants to look the part.'

Robert is the author of the new book 'Queen of Our Times: The Life of Elizabeth II' published by Macmillan.

The Monarch personally granted him rare access to the usually private Royal archives at Windsor Castle to help with the research.

Royal biographer Robert Hardman, 57, revealed on Wednesday she was in 'very good spirits' amid recent reports she was now largely confined to a wheelchair

In an appearance on Breakfast with Eamonn and Isabel on GB News this morning, he said: 'I was very lucky in researching this and I was given access to the royal archives which are atop Windsor Castle in the big tower.

'Under lock and key there are the King's wartime diaries, all 11 volumes of them, and the Queen gave me access to have a look at those.

'They are fascinating because they're not just sort of 'what I did today' type diaries. I mean, they're very honest.'

He said Her Majesty will have a keen interest in the current tour of the Caribbean by the Duchess of Cambridge and Prince William.

The Monarch personally granted him rare access to the usually private Royal archives at Windsor Castle to help with the research

'He and the Duchess would have had a chat with the Queen before going on this trip [to] the Caribbean where she is Queen of all these countries and they'll have a chat when they come back.'

The tour is intended to strengthen the UK's ties with Commonwealth countries as the Queen marks 70 years on the throne.

During the eight-day tour  their first foreign trip together since the start of the pandemic  the couple will also visit Jamaica and the Bahamas.

A royal spokesman described the three countries they are visiting as those 'with which Her Majesty has an extremely warm relationship'.

However, it's not been plain sailing for the couple who were today warned by Jamaica's Prime Minister that his country could soon become a republic when they arrived at his official residence.

In a tense exchange that was caught on camera, Mr Holness told the royal couple that whilst Jamaicans were 'very very happy' to welcome them, 'there are issues here which are as you would know unresolved.'

He said Her Majesty will have a keen interest in the current tour of the Caribbean by the Duchess of Cambridge and Prince William

He then added that his nation is 'moving on' and has 'true ambitions' to become an 'independent, developed, prosperous country'.

His comments followed his statement last year that there was 'no question' his country would become a republic. Politicians are pushing for the move to take place within two years and they hope a referendum will take place before the end of 2022.

It comes after Kate and William posed for smiling selfies and were met with chants of 'we love you, we love you' as they enjoyed their first day in Jamaica despite anti-monarchy protests on the Caribbean island as its politicians push for a 2022 independence vote and slave trade reparations.

Mr Hardman's comments come two days after Christopher Biggins told GB News he'd been told the Queen was now largely confined to a wheelchair.

The entertainer said it was 'very sad' but that he hoped she'd be well enough to enjoy the upcoming anniversary celebrations.

He said: 'I have heard that the reason she's not doing a lot of the events that she should be doing and cancelling them is because she is in a wheelchair. She doesn't want to be seen because she's very proud.'
Prince Harry has praised the efforts of the Halo Trust in Ukraine after more than 17 million Ukrainians saw videos made by the charity which educates them on how to stay safe from unexploded ordnance.

The Duke of Sussex, 37, held a video call with two women who have made the decision to stay in Ukraine with the Halo Trust which has been clearing military ordinance in the eastern European country since 2016.

Princess Diana worked with the Halo Trust in Huambo, Angola, during the 1990s in a fight against landmines. At the time, her support for an international treaty banning use of the explosive devices was seen as a political stance, but it was widely regarded as one of her greatest humanitarian efforts.

Prince Harry has praised the efforts of the Halo Trust in Ukraine after more than 17 million Ukrainians saw videos made by the charity which educate them on landmines

In a clip posted to Halo Trust's Twitter today, Harry, who has served as the charity's patron and visited Angola to see the work they are doing, met virtually with Olesia, Halo's communications manager in Ukraine, and Maryna, 25, the charity's monitoring and evaluation officer.

In a clip posted to Halo Trust's Twitter today, Harry, who has served as the charity's patron and visited Angola to see the work they are doing, met virtually with Olesia, Halo's communications manager in Ukraine, and Maryna, 25, the charity's monitoring and evaluation officer.

'Perhaps you can tell people the work you guys have been doing on social media,' the Duke of Sussex says.

'My understanding is that the social posts you've been doing about unexploded ordnance and the videos have been seen by over 17 million Ukrainian is that right?'

'Yes we aim to spread it right across the country so that every Ukrainian can see that this item is hazardous,' Olesia replied. 'Seeing the number of people that saw this and our campaign, it inspires us to keep working and inform people'.

The Duke of Sussex , 37, held a video call with two women who have made the decision to stay in Ukraine with the Halo Trust which has been clearing military ordinance in the eastern European country since 2016. He is pictured in Angola in 2017

Princess Diana wearing a bombproof visor during her visit to a minefield in Huambo, in Angola in 1997

The Duke of Sussex held a video call with two women who have made the decision to stay in Ukraine with the Halo Trust which has been clearing military ordinance in the eastern European country since 2016

Maryna added: 'Yeah, that's really really important because right now we see the use of cluster munitions and open mines so we needed to inform people how to recognise explosive devices, and even just some parts of those so that adults and children, they can say stay safe.'

Last week, Harry and his wife Meghan Markle announced they made donations to several charities including The Halo Trust.

The non-political charity helps communities across the world remove deadly landmines from their land.

Prince Harry met virtually with Olesia (left), Halo's communications manager in Ukraine, and Maryna (right), 25, the charity's monitoring and evaluation officer

Halo has 8,500 staff in 25 countries and territories and has been providing ambulances and logistics to medical authorities in Zimbabwe, Somalia, Libya, Afghanistan and Guinea-Bissau.

The duke made an emotional pilgrimage to Africa in 2019 to retrace the steps of his mother Diana, who famously walked through a partially cleared Angolan minefield in 1997 to highlight the trusts efforts and the threat of the military munitions.

In 1997, Diana said: 'I am not a political figure. As I said at the time, and I'd like to re-iterate now, my interests are humanitarian.

'That is why I felt drawn to this human tragedy. How can countries which manufacture and trade in these weapons square their conscience with such human devastation?'
Queen Maxima of the Netherlands met with the US Secretary of the Treasury to discuss economic recovery in wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Dutch royal was welcomed by Janet Yellen at the Department of Treasury in Washington, D.C. on the second day of her two-day trip to the US this afternoon.

Maxima, 50, visited in her capacity as the UN Secretary-Generals Special Advocate for Inclusive Finance for Development (UNSGSA).

Having met briefly at the G20 summit in Rome, the pair appeared in good spirits as they discussed the importance of measuring financial health through government and supervisory policies.

Queen Maxima of the Netherlands met with the US Secretary of the Treasury to discuss economic recovery in wake of the COVID-19 pandemic

The Dutch royal was welcomed by Janet Yellen at the Department of Treasury in Washington on the second day of her two-day trip to the US this afternoon

Looking typically polished, the royal opted for a simple dark blue ensemble which she dressed up with a statement bejewelled floral brooch

Maxima will be visiting Washington, D.C. and New York during the two-day visit to discuss the contribution of digital financial inclusion to economic recovery

Looking typically polished, the royal opted for a simple dark blue ensemble which she dressed up with a statement bejewelled floral brooch.

Mother-of-three Maxima matched the oversized accessory with chunky earrings while donning a large pearl ring and a collection of bracelets.

She opted for a simple make-up look, donning a light bronzer and peach-toned blush with a light smokey eye and subtle eyeliner.

Maxima will be visiting Washington DC and New York during the two-day visit to discuss the contribution of digital financial inclusion to economic recovery.

Having met briefly at the G20 summit in Rome, the pair appeared in good spirits as they discussed financial policy today

Mother-of-three Maxima matched the oversized accessory with chunky earrings while donning a large pearl ring and a collection of bracelets

She opted for a simple make-up look, donning a light bronzer and peach-toned blush with a light smokey eye and subtle eyeliner

In 2020, Maxima launched the Financial Health Working Group, which aims to help policymakers understand and measure financial health.

While in Washington Maxima will meet with representatives of international development organisations with whom she works in her capacity as UNSGSA.

Tomorrow the Dutch royal will travel to New York to meet with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and the UN Assistant Secretary-General and Director of the Bureau of External Relations and Advocacy of the United Nations Development Programme.

It's been a busy few weeks for Maxima, who has been showing her support for Ukrainian refugees after Nearly three million people fled following the Russian invasion last month.

Maxima, 50, visited in her capacity as the UN Secretary-Generals Special Advocate for Inclusive Finance for Development (UNSGSA)

Queen Maxima of the Netherlands appeared in high spirits as she met with with US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen

Queen Maxima appeared to get on well with Janet Yellen having met briefly at the G20 summit in Rome

Queen Maxima of the Netherlands (2nd R) meets with US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen (2nd L) at the Treasury Department in Washington

On Friday she attended the launch of a new online platform helping Ukrainian refugees obtain visas in the Netherlands at an application centre in the Broodfabriek in in Rijswijk.

She later met pupils at a school in the The Hague which is teaching Ukrainian children who fled from the war.

The website, founded by Dutch Council for Refugees and SparkOptimus, provides relevant information in various languages and provides an overview of organisations and initiatives available to them.




The number of babies born in Korea inched down in January from a year earlier, data showed Wednesday, highlighting the country's gloomy demographic situation with its chronically low birthrate.







A total of 24,598 babies were born in January, down 1.2 percent from a year earlier and the lowest tally for the month, according to the data compiled by Statistics Korea.







January also marked the 74th consecutive month of year-on-year decline; but figure was higher than the 17,084 newborns reported the previous month.







The slight drop came as many young Koreans are opting to distance themselves from life's three major milestones here  dating, marriage and having children  amid a prolonged economic slowdown and hikes in housing prices in recent years.







Korea's total fertility hit a record low of 0.81 in 2021  the fourth straight year that the rate was below 1 percent.







The number of deaths, meanwhile, rose for the 11th straight month in January amid rapid aging and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the agency said.







The number of deaths came to 29,686 in the month, up 9 percent from a year earlier. The year-on-year growth rate was down from a 17.7 percent surge in December.







Accordingly, the country's population decreased by 5,088 in January, marking the 27th consecutive month of decline.







Korea reported the first natural decline in population in 2020 as the number of deaths outstripped that of newborns.







The number of people getting married shrank 9.4 percent to 14,753 in January, compared with a 10.7 percent drop in December.







Amid the downtrend of marriages, more people postponed or delayed their weddings due to the coronavirus pandemic, according to the statistics office.







Divorces in Asia's fourth-largest economy sank 12.1 percent to 7,359 in January, according to the data. (Yonhap)






Kate Middleton donned two delicate gold bracelets crafted by a local female designer during her tour of Jamaica today.

The Duchess of Cambridge, 40, was dazzling in the 1,370 fresh white jacket with matching 575 trousers as she joined the Duke, 39, at the Andrew Holness' office this morning, perfectly pairing the crisp white outfit with her heels.

She added a touch of glamour to the outfit with two sparkling gold bracelets from a Jamaican brand Steelz and Mantraz, designed by Lashawndla Bailey-Miller.

The pearl bracelet is from the same designer as a stunning gold bangle worn by the mother-of-three yesterday.

Kate Middleton, 40, donned two delicate gold bracelets crafted by a local female designer during her tour of Jamaica today

She added a touch of glamour to the outfit with two sparkling gold bracelets from a Jamaican brand Steelz and Mantraz, designed by Lashawndla Bailey-Miller (left and right)

While the pearl bracelet is currently unavailable on Steelz and Mantraz' site, the gold bangle is currently for sale online for 9,765 Jamaican Dollars, or 48.37.

While the Duchess' bangle is plain gold, the bracelet advertised on the site features the engravement 'She's Royal.'

The brand are offering to engrave the cuff bracelet with the phrase.

Meanwhile the online description reads: 'Worn by the Duchess of Cambridge on her visit to Jamaica in March 2022, this cuff bracelet is sure to please you!'

The Duchess is known for her love of affordable jewellery, and often selects earrings by high street brands including Accessorize

The Duchess is known for her love of affordable jewellery, and often selects earrings by high street brands including Accessorize.

The Duchess proved she is the queen of co-ordination today as she joined Prince William to meet the Prime Minister of Jamaica.

She matched her 249 vibrant orange blouse from Ridley London, which was described online as 'elegant but relaxed', with a matching orange 229 handbag from Willow Hilson Vintage - a Cheltenham-based boutique.

Kate has a close affiliation with Alexander McQueen having worn the British fashion house's designs on notable occasions, most famously to her wedding in 2011.

The mother-of-three swept her long brunette locks over her shoulder for the occasion, opting for natural makeup look.

The Duchess proved she is the queen of co-ordination today as she joined Prince William to meet the Prime Minister of Jamaica

Online, the blazer is described as 'a testament to Alexander McQueen's expert tailoring skills' with 'strong shoulders'.

The designer describes it as 'perfect for a city hall wedding.'

Meanwhile the Duchess could be seen carrying a playful orange handbag for the occasion, which perfectly matched her Ridley London blouse.

Kate added a touch of glamour with her 125 Maria Black 'Cha Cha' Earrings.

The mother-of-three beamed for snaps alongside Prince William as the royal couple met with the Prime Minister and his wife Juliet.

The Duchess went on to visit Shortwood Teachers College, as part of her ongoing work to elevate the importance of early childhood development.

The royal couple's visit  part of a tour celebrating the Queen's Platinum Jubilee this year  has been mired by controversy, as they arrived in the country amid calls for the monarchy to pay reparations for its role in slavery.
Sophie Wessex put on a glamorous display this evening as she stepped out for an award ceremony in London.

The Countess, 47, was the picture of elegance in a burgundy midi dress featuring mesh sleeves and floral embroidery as she stepped out for the Arab Women of Year Awards.

Sophie appeared in high spirits as she posed for photographs ahead of the event, which is being hosted by The Bicester Collection in partnership with London Arabia.

Showcasing her fashion credentials, the mother-of-two teamed her dress with a pair of statement teardrop earrings decorated with multicoloured gemstones with a matching ring.

Sophie Wessex put on a glamorous display this evening as she stepped out for an award ceremony in London

Sophie was seen chatting with Omar Bdour, CEO of the London Arabia Organisation, and member of award ceremony's advisory board

The Queen's daughter-in-law was typically polished at the award ceremony, opting to have her blonde tresses slicked back in a chic up-do.

Sophie sported a glamorous make-up look with a dark smokey eye, peach blush and light bronzer paired with a glitzy silver highlight.

The award ceremony, held as part of The Bicester Collection's Unlock Her Future campaign at Jumeirah Carlton Tower Hotel, celebrates achievements made by Arab women across the globe.

The award ceremony was founded in 2014 by the London Arabia Organisation and in conjunction with the Mayor of London and Regents University London.

The award ceremony, held as part of The Bicester Collection's Unlock Her Future campaign at Jumeirah Carlton Tower Hotel, celebrates achievements made by Arab women across the globe

The award ceremony was founded in 2014 by the London Arabia Organisation and in conjunction with the Mayor of London and Regents University London

Sophie was seen chatting with Omar Bdour, CEO of the London Arabia Organisation, and member of award ceremony's advisory board.

The Countess, who is often been noted as the monarch's 'favourite' family member, last week embarked on a rare high profile solo trip to the US, cementing her position as the Queen's secret weapon within the new look monarchy.

In a clip shared on Twitter from her trip to New York, the mother-of-two told GMB's Noel Phillips the Queen was feeling 'good'.

Meanwhile, she explained the whole family were looking forward to the monarch's Jubilee celebrations, saying: 'I think it's going to be very busy.

The Countess of Wessex beamed as she chatted with Maggie Gobran while the two women held hands

The mother-of-two grinned as she chatted with Maggie during the Arab Women of Year Awards hosted by The Bicester Collection tonight

The Countess, who is often been noted as the monarch's 'favourite' family member, was in high spirits at the event

Countess of Wessex and Omar Bdour, Founder of London Arabia, attend the Arab Women of Year Awards hosted by The Bicester Collection today

'It represents the Queen's life work and she should be really proud of what she has achieved. It's wonderful.'

Days ago, a royal expert claimed the Countess 'undoubtedly benefits' from Prince Harry and Meghan Markle stepping back from royal life because it has 'raised her profile'.

Royal expert Russel Myers has now explained how the mother-of-two has seen her star rise after the Duke, 38, and Duchess of Sussex, 40, stepped down as senior royals and moved to California last year.

The Countess was the picture of elegance in a burgundy midi dress featuring mesh sleeves and floral embroidery as she stepped out for the Arab Women of Year Awards

Sophie was seen chatting with Omar Bdour, CEO of the London Arabia Organisation, and member of award ceremony's advisory board

Speaking on True Royalty TVs The Royal Beat, he explained: 'Are the Instagram generation going to be as obsessed with Sophie and Edward Wessex as they are with the Sussexes? Obviously not.

'However, when youre dealing with them Sophies really across her subject matter.

'Its not just for show and she has really grown into that. With the Sussexes not here, the Wessexes will undoubtedly benefit.'

Showcasing her fashion credentials, the mother-of-two teamed her dress with a pair of statement teardrop earrings decorated with multicoloured gemstones with a matching ring
Princess Eugenie has shared an adorable snap of her husband Jack Brooksbank and their son August as she celebrated her 32nd birthday today.

The Queen's granddaughter posted the snap on Instagram with the caption: 'What a birthday to celebrate in the park with my boys. Thank you Xx.'

The photo shows Eugenie and husband Jack, 35, with their one-year-old son as they walked through a busy park, which appeared to be in London.

The snap captured the first steps August has taken in public, but his face was turned away from the camera, in keeping with Eugenie and Jack's wishes to give their son some privacy as he grows up.

Princess Eugenie, 32, has shared an adorable snap of her husband Jack Brooksbank and their son August as she celebrated her 32nd birthday today

The Queen's granddaughter posted the snap on Instagram and thanked 'her boys' for the day 'celebrating in the park'

In the snap, Eugenie can be seen leaning down as she held hands with her young son, while Jack held his hand on the other side.

The one-year-old, who was wearing black and white striped trousers and an orange shirt for the outing, could be seen tentatively taking steps alongside his parents.

Sarah Ferguson also paid tribute to her daughter's birthday in an Instagram post, sharing a snap of Eugenie riding a horse as a child.

Over the image, she wrote the text: 'Happy Birthday my little Eugie.

Eugenie, the youngest daughter of Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson, gave birth to August, who is 13th in line to the throne, at London's Portland Hospital (pictured with her husband Jack)

'You make everyday the best with your golden heart.'

Eugenie, the youngest daughter of Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson, gave birth to August, who is 13th in line to the throne, at London's Portland Hospital.

She has shared a handful of snaps of her son in the last 12 months, much to the delight of royal fans.

She last posted sweet snaps of her son August to mark his first birthday last month.

Sarah Ferguson also paid tribute to her daughter's birthday in an Instagram post, sharing a snap of Eugenie riding a horse as a child.

The Queen's granddaughter posted two photos on Instagram with the caption: 'Happy 1st Birthday to our little hero Augie. You are such a special soul that brightens every room with your smile and wave. You have made us so very proud. We love you!'

The first photo was of Eugenie and husband Jack Brooksbank, 35, with their son on a family ski holiday. The second snap showed August crawling on the floor at a play group.

In another recent family photo Eugenie is seen carrying August, who was dressed in a camouflage snow suit and navy cap.

Jack, who is wearing a navy jumper, dark trousers and dark hat, was reaching his arm out to Eugenie while gazing lovingly at his son.

Eugenie has shared a handful of snaps of her son in the last 12 months, much to the delight of royal fans, including this one for the one-year-old's first birthday

Ready for the slopes, Eugenie was wearing fluorescent yellow trousers, grey hat and dark ski coat.

Eugenie also shared photos of August in January as part of a roundup of the highlights of 2021.

She shared adorable pictures walking with her son - the Queen's ninth great grandchild - thought to have been taken in the grounds of Frogmore Cottage, where the couple are currently living.

The royal also posted sweet selfies taken with husband Jack, who she wed in a ceremony at St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle in October 2018.

Eugenie recently shared a snap of August crawling on the floor at a play group with a name tag on his back

Eugenie also gave a glimpse into the rare double royal christening in Windsor which saw August baptised alongside his second cousin, Lucas Tindall - Zara and Mike's son - in the presence of the Queen.

he royal also celebrated the birth of her niece after sister Princess Beatrice gave birth to baby girl Sienna at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in September, sharing a snap of the baby's footprints.

While Eugenie had much to celebrate this year, she also shared some of the more difficult moments of the year - posting an image of her grandparents the Queen and Prince Philip.

This has been a particularly difficult year for the Princess, whose father Prince Andrew faced growing scandal surrounding his association with alleged sex trafficking victim Virginia Giuffre.

In January Princess Eugenie shared an unseen photograph from her son's christening
Royal fans have been going wild online after the Duke of Cambridge joked he was 'out of his depth' while the Duchess led a discussion about the Early Years.

Prince William, 39, and Kate Middleton, 40, visited Shortwood Teacher Training College in Kingston, Jamaica, on Wednesday, where they met with students training to become early childhood education practitioners.

As they sat down to chat with the trainee teachers, the Duchess nervously starting the conversation with a laugh, before the Duke jokingly added: 'I'm out of my depth here! I'm listening.'

The group erupted with laughter while Prince William raised his hands in the air and pretended to shrug, with Kate adding: 'No you're not! You hear me chatting about it.'

The candid moment between the couple left royal fans swooning over the 'cute' Duke, with one writing: 'He is such a supportive husband!'

Royal fans have been going wild online after the Duke of Cambridge joked he was 'out of his depth' during a discussion with the Duchess about the Early Years

Meanwhile another added: 'I love when he gives Catherine the space to shine in her field.'

A third wrote: 'This is cute! Prince William said: "This is your day, darling. Your thing.' Catherine immediately: "Okay then..." That was definitely her thing!'

A fourth commented: 'His expressions and hands. I'm laughing. He's such a cutie.

'They so cute! They compliment each other in every way. And are very happy to share the limelight,' another wrote.

Many royal followers were left swooning over the playful moment between the couple, which saw both of them giggling

'One is not better than the other but are equals and partners.'

The clip was taken today as the couple met with teachers at Shortwood Teachers College, which is a recognised exemplar in its field, conducting research in early childhood education and care while also offering professional development programmes to the early childhood sector.

During their time at the College, Kate and William also visited the Shortwood Practising Primary and Infant School where they met children and parents.

The royal couple then went on to meet students and staff to hear about their work and studies at the College and learn of the significance that Jamaica places on early childhood development.

In the clip, Kate can be seen starting the conversation before William playfully interjects to joke he 'is out of his depth'

The Duchess reached over to the Duke to rub his arm after he joked he would be 'listening' during the roundtable discussion

The Duchess also gave her first speech of the Caribbean tour praising the 'crucial role of teachers at the front line in shaping society' during the visit.

Kate told college students: 'You as teachers are at the frontline of this vital work and play a crucial role in shaping our societies by positively impacting the futures of literally thousands of young people over the course of your careers.'

She added: 'Decades of science and research have shown us that our earliest experiences establish the fundamental foundations that shape and connect our future lives.

The Duke and Duchess earlier today visited a school in Jamaica where they met with young children

'It is when we learn how to form relationships, connect with one another, how to manage our feelings and emotions and it's when we learn how to develop a sense of identity.'

Her comments came shortly after the royal couple received an official welcome from the Caribbean nation's premier, and he described how Jamaica intended to fulfil its destiny 'as an independent, developed, prosperous country'.

The mother-of-three has championed the cause of early years development since she joined the royal family.
Panera has officially entered the chicken sandwich chat - a whopping three years after Popeyes first turned the fast food item into a viral sensation when it launched its now-infamous version in the summer of 2019.

Clearly eager to hit the ground running, or clucking, Panera is bringing not one, but two varieties of chicken sandwich to the table: a 'signature take' and a 'spicy take', both of which will retail for $11 each when they hit cafes across the country on March 30.

According to Panera, while its sandwiches are certainly pricier than the versions offered by many of the country's major fast food chains, the company insists that their offerings are 'worth' the additional money.

Still, the eatery's chicken sandwiches will face some stiff competition from the much-loved fast food alternatives found at the likes of Popeyes, KFC, Burger King, McDonald's, and even Taco Bell - all of which have been engaging in the 'chicken sandwich war' for months.

Panera has made a very late entry into the chicken sandwich wars with the release of two of its own versions of the much-loved menu item - three years after Popeyes released its viral take

On March 30, Panera cafes across the country will begin selling a 'signature' and a 'spicy' chicken sandwich, both of which will retail for $11 each

The first of the sandwiches - christened the 'Signature Take' - is aimed at those who are on a 'hunt for a new and improved version of the chicken sandwich they know and love', according to the eatery.

It is made with a chicken filet, garlic aioli sauce, parmesan crisps 'for added flavor and crunch', and leafy greens, all of which are sandwiched in a brioche bun.

Meanwhile, for those keen to get an extra kick from their sandwich, there is the 'Spicy Take', which features spicy cucumber crisps instead of the parmesan found in the milder signature version, as well as spicy buffalo sauce for some added heat.

'The chefs at Panera aimed to redefine the chicken sandwich we have all grown accustomed to beginning with its core,' a statement from the brand reads.

'Panera marinates the quarter pound of 100 per cent all-white meat chicken breast filet in a rich, savory chicken broth and finishes by seasoning the filet with Paneras Signature spice blend.

'Each filet is topped with spicy crunchy topping, either pickle crisps or parmesan crisps all thoughtfully stacked between a buttery brioche bun that is sealed with a proprietary umami-rich garlic aioli sauce - designed to deliver a chefs kiss with each bite.'

Panera's announcement comes more than 24 months after Popeyes launched an all-out fast food war with the launch of its first-ever chicken sandwich in summer 2019.

In the months since then, a slew of fast food chains have tried to jump on the chicken sandwich bandwagon, with even Taco Bell joining the fray in February of last year when it released a taco version of the menu item.

Popeyes' sandwich first hit stores in early August 2019, marking the first time in the company's then-45-year history that it had added a chicken sandwich to the menu on a nationwide level.

Flashback: Popeyes sparked chaos in the US with its first ever fried chicken sandwich in the summer of 2019

Must-have: The sandwich sold out in weeks and didn't return until November of that year (pictured: a NY location in August 2019)

Since Popeyes launched its chicken sandwich, a slew of other fast food chains have joined the fray by launching their own versions, including KFC (pictured)

The sandwich earned so much attention that other fast food chains, including Wendy's, Chick-fil-A, and Shake Shack, immediately began feuding on Twitter over which restaurant's version is the best.

Popeyes' sandwich earned even more buzz when restaurants couldn't meet the demand and sold out in less than a month, leaving some customers throwing fits, attacking employees, and even suing the chain.

Furious food fans took to social media to complain that they couldn't get their hands on the menu item, begging Popeyes to restock.

In late August 2019, an irate Popeyes customer climbed through a drive-thru window before brawling with three employees when he learned the sandwich was sold out.

And Craig Barr, of East Ridge, Tennessee filed a $5,000 lawsuit against the fast food chain alleging false advertising' and 'deceptive business practices' by the company because he couldn't get his hands on their famous chicken sandwich.

By early November on 2019, Popeyes' sandwich was back in stores, and has remained a staple on the chain's menu.

Meanwhile, other fast food chains have scrambled to update their own fried chicken sandwiches to get in on the action.

In January 2021, KFC debuted its 'best chicken sandwich ever,' a quarter-pound double-breaded Extra Crispy chicken breast filet on a brioche bun with pickles and mayo or spicy sauce.

'We tested the new KFC Chicken Sandwich in Orlando last spring, and we nearly doubled our sales expectations, so we knew that we had a winner,' Andrea Zahumensky, chief marketing officer for KFC U.S., said in a press release at the time.

Eat up! McDonald's joined the chicken sandwich war in January 2021 when it launched three versions of the popular fast food dish  classic (right), deluxe (left), and spicy

Yum! Burger King announced in February 2021 that it would be introducing a hand-breaded chicken sandwich, revealing it had been working on perfecting the recipe since 2019

Yum! Taco Bell announced in February 2021 that it was testing its own version of a crispy chicken sandwich  the Crispy Chicken Sandwich Taco

'Many customers hadn't considered KFC as a part of the chicken sandwich conversation, but anyone who tastes this sandwich will know, without a doubt, that we're playing to win.'

That same week, McDonald's confirmed its plans to launch three varieties of a new crispy chicken sandwich  'classic,' 'deluxe,' and 'spicy'  on February 24, 2021.

All three contain a new crispy white meat chicken fillet served with crinkle-cut pickles on a toasted, buttered potato roll.

However, McDonald's had already dipped a toe into the fried chicken fray at that point, when it added a different type of fried chicken sandwich to the menu in January 2020: breakfast sandwiches.

They included Chicken McGriddles  crispy chicken served between two sweet griddle cakes  and McChicken Biscuit sandwiches  the same chicken between two biscuit halves.

Burger King finally threw its hat into the ring in February 2021 when it unveiled its own brand new fried chicken sandwich, which it promised is 'just as good as one you could get from the big chicken guys.'

'What if hand-breading were to chicken what flame-grilling is to burgers? Thats been our guiding filter to bring a delicious chicken sandwich to guests in a way only BK can,' said Ellie Doty, chief marketing officer, Burger King North America.

'Well take the time to get it right and our guests will definitely taste the difference.'

The sandwich had been in the works since 2019, the chain claimed.

It's made with hand-breaded white meat chicken a potato bun, pickles, and signature sauce, and can be ordered regular or spicy.
Many 'lube' products which claim to be safe for male fertility could actually harm sperm, doctors have warned.

A study found three lubricants marketed as 'sperm-friendly' and sold in high street chemists for 20 a bottle can reduce motility  or their ability to swim in the right direction.

Despite the promotional health claims, the researchers concluded these products could 'actually hinder normal conception'.

The review also looked at two bizarre 'natural' lubricants  olive oil and egg whites  which have become popular in some corners of internet forums.

Pre-Seed, which sells for 18.49 per 40g tube at Boots, caused a reduction in sperm motility.

Optilube, priced at 19.99 for 400g on Amazon, and Yes Baby, which costs 17.99 per 150ml bottle at Holland and Barrett, stopped sperm from being able to move altogether.

Olive oil also stifled sperm's ability to spread, whereas egg whites appeared to have no impact on their performance.

However, raw eggs can contain harmful bacteria  including salmonella  and experts do not recommend using them during sex.

A study today claimed most lubricants marketed as being 'sperm-friendly' actually reduce how quickly a man's swimmers move. Even Pre-Seed (pictured)  which is approved as 'fertility-friendly' by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)  saw a fall in sperm motility

South African researchers measured how using Pre-Seed, Yes Baby (left) and Optilube (right) lubricants affect a couple's ability to have children

Traditional lubes have been shown to damage sperm motility because they are too acidic and can contain harmful chemicals including parabens.

It has led to an increase in demand for so-called fertility-friendly lubricants, despite these costing up to four times more than the traditional product.

Users on forums like Mumsnet have also advocated the use of egg whites and other home products, despite the risks.

For the latest study, published in the International Journal of Gynecology & Obstetrics, researchers from the University of Pretoria in South Africa tested the three branded and two natural lubes on 60 semen samples.

Men were aged 18 and above and the samples were collected from a fertility clinic in Midstream, Gauteng Province.

Researchers used pipettes to divide the samples in six before adding 0.5ml of each of the five lubricants, while leaving one as a negative control sample.

Microscopic cameras were used to measure the speed and movement of the sperm on glass slides, using a score recognised by the World Health Organization (WHO).

After two hours, sperm mixed with olive oil and Pre-Seed samples had scores of one  movement with no direction  and Optilube and Yes Baby had scores of zero  no movement at all.

Sperm mixed with egg white had a score of two, meaning it had slow or sluggish progressive motility.

Meanwhile, sperm not treated with any lubricant had scores of more than two over the period  not statistically higher than egg white.

After 24 hours the three branded lubricants and olive oil all had scores of zero  meaning the sperm was not moving at all.

The egg white and control groups had a score of one at 24 hours. All six sample reduced to zero after 72 hours.

Lead author Johan Markram said: 'This study is important because it highlights that these so-called sperm-friendly lubricants may actually hinder normal conception.'

Women trying to conceive have started to use egg whites as a natural lubricant more in recent years, with message boards branding them as useful in getting pregnant.

Experts say it has become popular because the type of vaginal mucous produced during ovulation by the body has the same name  egg white mucous  which may confuse people doing their own research.
Mice were able to father pups four to six weeks after they stopped taking drug

Scientists develop male contraceptive that prevents 99% of pregnancies in mice

The decades-long ambition of creating a male contraceptive pill has today moved another step closer to reality.

For experts claim to have developed a tablet that's 99 per cent effective at blocking pregnancies, putting it on par with the actual female version.

Tests on mice showed the non-hormonal drug, labelled YCT529, did not trigger any visible side effects.

And the rodents were able to father pups again four to six weeks after they stopped taking the contraceptive, according to the team.

University of Minnesota researchers plan human trials of the drug  which inhibits a protein to stop the formation of sperm  later this year.

Other candidates exist, including ones that have been trialled on men in Britain over the past few years.

But Professor Gunda Georg, who led the study, said YCT529 is 'the furthest ahead of all contraceptive agents for men'.

The non-hormonal drug, which was given to mice orally for four weeks, works by inhibiting a protein important for the normal development of sperm. University of Minnesota experts, who designed the drug called YCT529, said it was 99 per cent effective at preventing pregnancy  on par with the female contraceptive pill. Pictured: stock of oral contraceptive pills

Scientists have been trying since the 1950s to develop an effective male oral contraceptive, including pills, gels and injections.

None have been approved, and even the most promising options are still thought to be years away from being widely available.

A major hurdle is that the female contraceptive works by preventing ovulation, which happens once a month.

Any male contraceptives would need to interrupt the production of millions of sperm made by men every day.

WHAT ARE THE CURRENT METHODS OF CONTRACEPTION AVAILABLE TO MEN? There have been few changes in male contraception compared with the range of options available to women. Although there's ongoing research into a male contraceptive pill, there is not one available yet. At the moment, the 2 contraceptive methods available to men are: condoms  a barrier form of contraception that stops sperm from reaching and fertilising an egg

vasectomy  a minor, usually permanent, surgical procedure that stops sperm from reaching the semen ejaculated from the penis The withdrawal method of taking your penis out of your partner's vagina before ejaculating is not a method of contraception. This is because sperm can be released before ejaculation and cause pregnancy. Source: NHS Advertisement

Most of the drugs undergoing clinical trials target testosterone, blocking the male sex hormone from producing healthy sperm cells.

Doctors say, however, that the testosterone-blocking action can trigger weight gain, depression and increase cholesterol.

For comparison, the female combined contraceptive pill  which contains synthetic versions of female hormones oestrogen and progesterone  has been linked with similar mental health side effects.

The NHS says it can raise blood pressure and slightly increase the risk of blood clots and breast cancer.

Abdullah Al Noman, who helped create YCT529, said: 'We wanted to develop a non-hormonal male contraceptive to avoid these side effects.'

YCT529 targets retinoic acid receptor alpha (RAR-a), a protein heavily involved in the development of cells, including sperm formation.

When they gave the drug orally to mice for four weeks, it 'dramatically reduced' their sperm counts, the researchers said.

It was also 99 per cent effective in preventing pregnancy and worked 'without any observable side effects'.

'The mice could father pups again four to six weeks after they stopped receiving the compound,' the scientists said.

Condoms, which are 'prone to failure', and a vasectomy  a surgical procedure that permanently prevents pregnancy  are the only effective birth control options for men.

Men need 'an effective, long-lasting but reversible contraceptive, similar to the birth control pill for women', they said.

YCT529 will be tested in human clinical trials in the second half of 2022.

Professor Georg, head of medicinal chemistry at the university, said: 'Because it can be difficult to predict if a compound that looks good in animal studies will also pan out in human trials, we're currently exploring other compounds, as well.'

She told US news website The Daily Beast: 'YCT529 is the furthest ahead of all contraceptive agents for men.'

Mr Al Noman told the website: 'Birth control is a critical health-care issue. About more than half of all pregnancies in the US are unintended pregnancies.

'And that can lead to very poor outcomes, whether in terms of the child's health or maternal health and also financial and career advancement of women.

'We need to have more investment in the research and development of the male birth control pill.'
Moderna announced Wednesday morning that it has successfully completed clinical trials for its COVID-19 vaccine in children as young as six months old - and it will soon submit data to federal regulators to get the shot approved.

The Phase 2 and 3 trials were recently completed and included the six months to two years old age group, and the two to six years old groups. Both received two 25 microgram vaccine doses.

The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company hopes to have its shot available for young children as early as this summer.

Moderna's vaccine is currently only approved for adults 18 and older, and has run into trouble - especially overseas - due to concerns of myocarditis forming in recipients under the age of 30.

'Given the need for a vaccine against COVID-19 in infants and young children we are working with the U.S. FDA and regulators globally to submit these data as soon as possible,' Stephane Bancel, CEO of the company, said in a statement.

If approved, Moderna could pull out an unlikely victory in the race against Pfizer to get its vaccine approved for children under the age of five years old.

Moderna announced Wednesday that it has completed Phase 2 and 3 clinical trials for its COVID-19 vaccine in children aged six months to six years old. The children will receive a dosage a quarter the size of what adults currently receive

Pfizer's shot is currently the only one in America authorized for children, with those as young as five years old eligible, while only adults can get the Moderna shot.

Only 27 percent of five to 11 year olds in the country are fully vaccinated, and COVID-19 is generally more mild in children than adults.

The recently completed Moderna trials enrolled 6,700 children six months to six years old. Another group of around 5,000 children aged six to 17 were involved in Moderna clinical trials as well.

For comparison, the clinical trial for the jab in adults performed in 2020 included 30,000 adults.

There were no severe cases in Moderna's pediatric trial for either vaccine or placebo participants.

The dose size tested was 25 micrograms - a quarter of the dose that adults receive for each of their first two shots.

Moderna reports that the shot was just as effective in the younger age group as the full dose is for adults on average.

It was 44 percent effective against Omicron infection for the children aged six months to two years old, and 38 percent effective for those aged three to six.

There have been some concerns about the size of the dose. By comparison, the dosage of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine - which uses similar messenger RNA technology - was 10 micrograms for five to 11 year olds.

Pfizer is testing three microgram doses for children younger than 5.

'FDA did ask us to evaluate lower doses and we intend to do so,' said Moderna's top scientist, Dr Jacqueline Miller.

'However, we believe that the current data really support the dose selections that we have made in this age group... We are confident in the dose that we've chosen.'

The company has already submitted data from trials in children aged five to 11 to regulators, and announced that it plans to do the same for even younger children.

'We remain committed to helping to end the COVID-19 pandemic with a vaccine for children of all ages,'' Bancel said.

Not all experts agree that vaccines for children this young are necessary to end the pandemic, though.

Children face little risk from COVID-19, with a ever-growing trove of data showing that they are not nearly as affected by it as adults are.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that children only account less than 0.1 percent of Covid deaths in the U.S. since the pandemic first began.

Not all experts are convinced that children require the COVID-19 vaccine, since deaths are rare, they are less likely to have a symptomatic case and they may even be less likely to spread the virus

Pfizer has also attempted to get its Covid vaccine approved for children in the six months to six year old age group, but has run into issues as the small dosage had minimal effectiveness is older aged children

A study from the University of Utah last year found that 50 percent of pediatric Covid cases are asymptomatic. The study was performed before the more-mild Omicron variant emerged, meaning the risk for children to even feel symptoms is likely lower now.

UNDER FIVES SUFFER LITTLE RISK FROM COVID-19 Children face little risk from COVID-19 when infected, data from multiple studies and sources shows The CDC reports that children only account less than 0.1 percent of Covid deaths in the U.S. since the pandemic first began Pfizer's vaccine trials for children under the age of five was hampered by the extremely low number of children from the control group who were hospitalized with the virus A study from the University of Utah last year found that 50 percent of pediatric Covid cases are asymptomatic. The study was performed before the more-mild Omicron variant emerged, meaning the risk for children to even feel symptoms is likely lower now Children may also be less likely to spread the virus when infected, with a German study finding that they release as little as only 25 percent of virus particles as adults do Advertisement

Children may also be less likely to spread the virus when infected, with a German study finding that they release as little as only 25 percent of virus particles as adults do.

Data revealed by New York state officials at the end of last month also found that the shot was only 12 percent effective at preventing Covid infection for children aged five to 11.

Florida Surgeon General Joseph Lapado even issued guidance earlier this month recommending 'healthy' children aged 17 of younger not to get the shot.

There is also the concern of myocarditis which, while limited, has been higher for younger Moderna recipients than those of every other vaccine.

Last year, European countries like Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Denmark and France all either restricted or stopped the use of the Moderna shot in people 30 and younger out of fear of recipients developing rare heart inflammation.

Officials in those nations instead recommended younger people to receive the Pfizer vaccine.

Pfizer has run into some issues in getting its vaccine out to the youngest age groups too, though.

The company had to shift its Covid vaccine regimen for the youngest children up to three doses from two, as the smaller, three microgram doses, were almost entirely ineffective in children three and four years old.

The New York City-based firm has also submitted data to regulators for its Covid jab in children under the age of five, though the approval process was paused earlier this year.
Advertisement

The Omicron 'stealth' variant has captured headlines around the world in recent weeks as the highly transmissible strain - the most infectious of the pandemic yet - has many fearing yet another Covid surge could be around the corner. Experts are assuring Americans that things may not be as dire as some may believe.

Dr Jacob Lemieux, a instructor of medicine at Harvard Medical School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said Tuesday that he does not believe the U.S. will suffer a large surge in Covid cases similar to what Hong Kong and some European nations suffered in recent weeks.

Instead, he predicts cases will slightly grow, but still remain at the extremely low overall levels the nation is currently experiencing.

Meanwhile overseas, the World Health Organization (WHO) is still issuing dire warnings of the impact the stealth variant can have, especially as pandemic-related masking and distancing mandates are being dropped. The organization reported Tuesday that global infections increased seven percent last week.

BA.2, the official title of the stealth variant, is a lineage of Omicron that has seen rise across much of the world, but has failed to make a large impact in the U.S.

It has not been able to take hold in the U.S. the same way it did in much of Europe, though.

Dr Jacob Lemieux (pictured), a instructor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, does not believe the U.S. will suffer a similar BA.2-fueled Covid surge as many other nations around the world did earlier this month

According to most recent data revealed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) last week, BA.2 makes up 35 percent of active Covid cases in the U.S., with BA.1 still being dominant.

BA.2's share of Covid infections in America is growing, though, with the variant only accounting for 23 percent of cases in the week previous.

'We see almost nothing at all associated with the transition to BA.2 prevalence,' Lemieux told The Harvard Gazette.

Covid cases have remained steady despite what is happening elsewhere in the world.

America is averaging 31,309 cases per day, matching figures from last week. This is the lowest weekly case average since July 2021, just before the Delta variant surge.

America is also suffering 1,032 deaths per day from the virus, a 13 percent drop over the past seven days. Mortality of the virus has significantly dropped over the past few months due to the more mild nature of the Omicron variant, and the nation's successful vaccine rollout - nearly 90 percent of adults have received at least one jab.

Internationally, the WHO reports that there were over 12 million Covid cases globally last week, a seven percent jump from the previous week.

Deaths dropped, though, down 23 percent to under 33,000 - another sign of the virus's falling mortality.

The increase in cases was entirely clustered in the Western Pacific region, where daily infections jumped 23 percent last week. In Europe, infections stabilized after slightly rising two percent last week.

Some countries that had experienced declining cases from months, like the UK, France and Denmark, suddenly saw infection rates start to surge last week. Cases seem to have stabilized in these nations as well and the growth has stopped.

Experts at Harvard are hopeful that the U.S. not having suffered a surge so far from BA.2 means that it will likely never come.

With the variant already accounting for more than a third of cases nationwide, they feel it would have impacted national and local case figures by now.

'There's really no indication of an increase in cases or deaths in the region that corresponds to this increase in BA.2 infections that we're seeing,' Bronwyn MacInnis, director of pathogen genomic surveillance at Harvard's Broad Institute, said.

On the west coast, Dr Pavitra Roychoudhury, a bioinformatics expert at the University of Washington, told DailyMail.com that a rise in prevalence of BA.2 in her department's sequencing has not translated into higher case numbers just yet either.

Cases are rising in some places, though, a signal that BA.2 could start impacting daily case figures around the country.

BA.2 is most prevalent in the New York and New Jersey region, according to CDC data, making up 52 percent of cases.

New York, which has served as canary in the coal mine of sorts during the pandemic so far, has recorded a 14 percent increase in Covid infections over the past two weeks, the first state to record a substantial jump in nearly two months.

Manhattan, New York City's largest population hub, has recorded a 17 percent increase over the past week as well, fueling the greater surge across the state.

The state is still at 1,000 cases per day, though, a very small total that pales in comparison to the nearly 40,000 case per day mark reached at the Omicron variant's peak.

Other states recording increases over the past two weeks include Arkansas (34 percent jump over two weeks), Nevada (23 percent), Colorado (22 percent), Vermont (seven percent) and Rhode Island (one percent).

The WHO warns that these case rises are only the start of what could be a brutal spring season for parts of the world.

'These increase are occurring despite reductions in testing in some countries, which means the cases we're seeing are just the tip of the iceberg,' Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the WHO, said last week.
Students who spend more time on the internet are more likely to suffer mental health problems and suicidal ideation, a new study finds.

Researchers from the Red Cross College of Nursing in Seoul, Korea, made the shocking discovery that has massive implications on parenting going forward as devices like laptops, tablets and smartphones become a staple of daily life in the modern world.

The research team is not sure if frequent internet use damages children's mental health, or if it is the other way around and children dealing with mental health issues are more likely to gravitate towards the internet.

A mental health crisis among America's children has erupted over the course of the pandemic, coinciding with a sharp increase in screen time among children as well as they spent significantly more time at home and indoors.

Researchers found that students who used the internet for three or more hours per day were 25% more likely to suffer suicidal ideation, 17% more likely to report they were stressed and 10% more likely to feel sadness

Researchers, who published their findings Wednesday in PLOS, gathered data from nearly 30,000 high school students between the ages 16 and 18 in Korea.

Each participant was surveyed on their daily non-academic related internet usage and their mental health.

Like teens everywhere, the study participants were most likely to be spending their internet time on social media and instant messenger apps.

'One common aspect between adolescents from other countries and Korean adolescents is that they use instant messenger and social media the most,' researchers wrote.

'Adolescents usually access the Internet using their cellphones, and the increased smartphone penetration rate in recent years has markedly contributed to an increase in Internet usage time.'

On average, the students recorded around three hours of internet usage every day, with female, poorer and students with worse grades likely to report even more time.

Teens who spent less than three hours on the internet every day were 33 percent more likely to report that they were in good health.

Those with more internet usage were 17 percent more likely to report that they were stressed, and ten percent more likely to report recent feelings of sadness.

By far the most worrying figure is that they were 25 percent more likely to have contemplated suicide at one point in there life.

The exact causation for this trend can not be determined, but the research team has a few hunches.

'Excessive Internet usage among adolescents was reportedly related with diminished overall physical and psychological functioning, which may lead to a deterioration of social skills in real life, and as a result, these adolescents experience social isolation,' they wrote.

'Furthermore, it may worsen learning habits, thereby decreasing academic performance while increasing impulsiveness and aggression.'

Internet usage among adolescents sky-rocketed during Covid as many other activities to take part in were canceled

Experts describe this excessive, addictive, internet usage as 'problematic internet usage', an unofficial but slowly researched condition that can strike people.

Child internet usage, and screen time in general, spiked during the pandemic, adding extra alarm to this study's findings.

As children were sent home from schools, removed from extra-curricular activities and had other major changes made to their lives, many took refuge online to maintain communication with friends and to distract from the happenings around them.

Parents were also more willing to allow children to spend more time online during the stressful early months of Covid.

These factors led to the level of problematic internet usage increasing over the past two years.

The research team believes that parents can play a role in managing their child's internet usage and preventing them from falling into problematic behaviors.

'A lack of parental, managerial support and control was associated with increased Internet usage time,' they wrote.
gettyimagesbank



Gov't penalizes universities that admitted foreign students who overstayed their visas



By Lee Hyo-jin



The increasing number of international students in Korea who have been overstaying their student visas has been emerging as a major headache for provincial universities, many of which have been slapped with one-year bans on recruiting new students from overseas.



Government data shows thousands of undocumented immigrants around the nation who came here initially as students, and then stayed in the country even after their academic or language programs ended and their student visas expired.



The universities that originally invited these students who overstayed their visas are now facing the consequences, as the sanction measure bans them from admitting any students of foreign nationality for a year. This hits them hard financially as they had been relying heavily on tuition payments from international students, especially due to the growing shortage of domestic students caused by the nation's falling birthrate.



Within the broader context of shrinking government support, many universities' financial difficulties have been further compounded by the lack of domestic students and their tuition payments, which have been frozen for the last decade.



Facing this situation, many schools started turning to a new strategy: attracting international students.



The number of foreign students nationwide, which stood at around 33,000 in 2006, surged to nearly 160,000 by 2021, backed by support from the Ministry of Education which set the ambitious goal of raising the figure to 200,000 by 2023.



'Missing' students on the rise



But since the onset of the pandemic, an increasing number of international students have not been leaving the country after their visas expire, according to data from the Ministry of Justice.



From 2019 to 2021, the number of international students studying for degree programs rose by 20 percent, while the number of students overstaying their visas jumped by more than 120 percent during the same period.



In 2019, 2,833 foreign nationals who arrived in Korea on D-2 student visas were found to have overstayed them, and the figure rose to 4,692 in 2020 and 6,294 in 2021.



Since 2012, based on an annual assessment conducted by the education and justice ministries, the schools with the highest numbers of students staying illegally in the country are banned from recruiting new international students for one year.



This year, 18 schools  including Suwon, Yongin and Jeonju universities  have been banned from admitting students of foreign nationality for degree programs, and 19 universities  including Hanshin, Chosun and Daejin Universities  will not be able to accept first-year students for Korean language programs.



These universities view the measure as an "excessively harsh penalty," considering that it has been much harder for them to keep track of their students for the last two years, as most classes were conducted online due to the pandemic.



"We had never experienced such issues before the COVID-19 pandemic. But as classes were conducted online, and not all of them are conducted real time, it has been very difficult for us to take care of the students," an official, in charge of the Korean language center at a university in Gyeonggi Province, said on condition of anonymity.



He presumed that most of the students who haven't yet left the country are working at farms and factories in the region.



"We do feel a sense of responsibility that some of our students have become undocumented, but realistically speaking, there aren't any measures to prevent the students who are aged 20 and above from disappearing," he said.



He expressed worries that the one-year ban will have a significant impact on the university, saying that the language center has already had to lay off some of its instructors.



An official at a university in North Jeolla Province, who also requested anonymity, pointed out the lack of government support for monitoring the students.



"Previously, we made several reports to the police when we found out that some of our students were overstaying their visas. But it didn't help much," he said.



"We also consulted with the immigration authorities, but due to their lack of personnel and complicated administrative procedures, they failed to come up with feasible support measures."



The official argued that schools should not be held solely responsible for their students who have overstayed their visas, as the government has eased its stance towards undocumented immigrants during the pandemic by scaling down its inspections and crackdowns.



The justice ministry, for its part, said it took into consideration the difficulties of the universities amid the pandemic.



"We drastically eased the assessment criteria this year, as we were aware that it has been difficult for universities to monitor their students. We also took into consideration that we have loosened monitoring on undocumented foreigners during the pandemic," an official at the Korea Immigration Service told The Korea Times.



"We will discuss it with the education authorities and see if we can make more improvements in the assessment system."



Song Gi-chang, a professor of education at Sookmyung Women's University, said the government should engage in solving the issue more actively.



"Attracting students from overseas was not just an option but a must, especially for provincial universities that are on the brink of collapse due to the declining population and tuition freeze," he said.



"But due to the lack of resources, schools lack the ability and authority to monitor these foreign students outside the classroom. The education ministry, the universities and immigration authorities should thoroughly review the issue and come up with comprehensive measures in the long term, rather than one-off measures restricting schools from accepting new students."






The energy suppliers who picked up the pieces when dozens of their rivals collapsed over the last year could be paid 2.4 billion from energy bills.

The charge will be spread across all households in Great Britain, and will likely reach between 2.2 billion and 2.4 billion, regulator Ofgem has revealed.

More than 30 energy suppliers have gone out of business since the beginning of last year.

Industry experts say that some of these companies were poorly run, but others were responsible businesses that were simply not able to withstand the giant rise in wholesale gas prices over the last year.

The energy suppliers who picked up the pieces when dozens of their rivals collapsed over the last year could be paid 2.4 billion from energy bills, a watchdog said

When a supplier goes out of business, its customers are picked up by one of its rivals, ensuring users are kept on supply.

But this comes with costs to the new supplier, which is able to claim back the money from the rest of the market.

The system under which Ofgem transfers customers of collapsed providers over to other firms is called the supplier of last resort (SoLR) regime.

During the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee's evidence session held yesterday as part of its inquiry into energy pricing and the future of the energy market Gillian Cooper, the head of energy policy at Citizens Advice, told members: 'We need to move to a world where the costs of failures are not fully borne by energy bill payers.

'We have estimated that the costs of all these energy supplier failures is going to cost in excess 2.4 billion. That is about 94 per household.'

Cooper added that the cost does not include the failure of Bulb Energy which collapsed in November.

According to Citizens Advice, the charge could add as much as 94 to an average household bill at a time when energy costs are set to go through the roof anyway

Rather than its customers being transferred to another firm under the SoLR regime, the company was instead placed in Special Administration and consultancy firm Teneo was appointed to take over its affairs.

Last week, the BEIS Committee published a letter from its Chair, Darren Jones MP, to the Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng, asking why Teneo had been banned from buying wholesale gas at hedged prices.

The Chair outlined his concern that this hedging ban will cost the taxpayer at least 1.3bn more than the original 1.7bn estimated cost caused by Bulb's collapse.

In evidence provided to the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, Ofgem said that a vast majority of the billions that companies will claim  85 per cent  will be to buy enough energy in advance to supply their new customers.

According to Citizens Advice, the charge could add as much as 94 to an average household bill at a time when energy costs are set to go through the roof anyway.

From 1 April the average household whose bills are limited by the price cap will go from paying 1,277 per year to 1,971 per year.

The actual final bill of depends on how much energy is used. The cap limits the cost of electricity to 28p per kilowatt hour (kWh) and the price of gas is capped at 7p.

At current predictions average bills could rise by another 1,000 per year from the beginning of October. Ofgem said that the figure is still 'subject to significant uncertainty'.

The proportion of the costs that suppliers are claiming to refund customers' balances from collapsed peers is 3.6 per cent, but this could rise as high as 10 per cent  or around 240million.

It said that payments need to be made 'promptly' to make sure that the new suppliers are not put in financial difficulty from taking on the customers of their collapsed rivals.
Saga rounded off the past year with another underlying loss and has warned that short-term bookings look set to take a hit following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The Kent-based group reported a pre-tax loss of 23.5million for the year ending 31 January, marking an improvement on the 61.2million loss seen the year before.

Saga shares fell sharply today and were down 6.06 per cent to 238.60p in early morning trading, having also slumped over 25 per cent in the past year.

Highs and lows: Saga has seen cruise bookings surge but warned of short-term headwinds

The over 50s holiday and insurance company said demand for its tour packages remained below pre-pandemic levels as customers continue to be cautious of travelling abroad, while the war in Ukraine may also reduce travel bookings in the short term.

Saga said its tour bookings for 2022/23 totalled 132 million pounds, which is 30 per cent lower than see before the pandemic struck.

However, the group has seen bookings for its cruises over the coming year reach a higher level than before the pandemic, as the unleashing of pent-up demand ramped up sales. The company resumed cruises in June after a more than year-long hiatus.

The travel industry, which had been battered by the pandemic, is starting to recover, but risks of new variants of the coronavirus and the war in Ukraine still pose a threat to the pace of recovery.

Boss Euan Sutherland, said: 'Looking to the future, I am both confident and excited about the opportunities ahead of us as we emerge stronger from the pandemic than we went in, whilst remaining mindful of the current challenging external environment.'

The company, which also sells insurance to over 50-year olds, said it expects the new pricing rules levied by British regulators to reduce its motor and home insurance profits. Last year, it benefited from lower motor insurance payouts.

Saga said it had 1.6million motor and home policies in force at 31 January 2022, marking a 1.4 per cent increase from the same point a year ago. The company said its motor and home gross margin per policy remained stable at 74.

In charge: Euan Sutherland is the boss of over 50s-focused firm Saga

Sophie Lund-Yates, an equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said: 'Saga has rounded off the year with an underlying loss, which has disappointed the market alongside a lack of forward guidance.

'As drivers have returned to the roads following lockdowns, so too have insurance claims. Together with the hammering faced by Sagas travel business  including cruise ships which are eye wateringly expensive to run, whether they leave their ports or not  and the result is a disappointing one for the group.

'Marketing expenses are also rising, compounding the issues. However, this is a necessary evil. Saga has been doing some impressive work on improving its proposition, which has been throwing up results. Sagas biggest challenge is how to differentiate itself in a world where most people only really care about price when it comes to insurance.

'The money the groups throwing at a brand refresh seems to be bearing some fruit, with customer retention levels moving in the right direction. But before Saga can focus on the future too much, it needs to concentrate efforts on navigating through the current waters of uncertainty.'
Local high streets are set to capture around 360million over the next 12 months as the trend for remote working continues, according to a new study.

Research by credit card firm Capital One UK suggests that this compares to 358million spent in office areas, where businesses are losing out on footfall.

Workers are set to spend an estimated two-thirds of their spend on items such as coffee and lunch on their local high streets, according to experts, at an average of 42 per person a week or 2,200 a year.

Local high streets set to capture around 360 million over the next 12 months as the trend for remote working continues, according to a new study

But office areas are not losing out completely, and employees are also spending 24 on average a week near their work or around 1,250 a year.

National spending overall is also set to increase - the study found nearly a third (29 per cent) of workers expect the amount of money they spend locally to increase now Covid restrictions have lifted.

A third of Brits (32 per cent) want to support small local businesses more now than before the pandemic, while 28 per cent feel it's important to be more sustainable and shop local.

The easing of restrictions is also benefiting workplace areas, with 21 per cent of workers planning to spend more money in nearby shops now restrictions have eased.

Capital One predicts spending at work will increase by 26 per cent from 24 to 31 a week, which equates to 322 per person over a year.

In terms of regional spend, the West Midlands sees the highest proportion of income being reinvested in the local area as those working from home plan to spend 5 per cent of their salary compared to 3.8 per cent nationwide.

This equates to an annual spend of 2,200 per worker and 959million boost for local high streets in the West Midlands.

When it comes to total spend in home areas, London is seeing the most with 1.49billion spent by those working from home, while the South East is in second place (1.05billion), followed by the West Midlands (959million) and the North West (762 million).

A regional breakdown of people spending in home and office areas

Top 10 local authorities by total spend in home areas per year

Commenting on the results, Katy Lomax a chief experience officer at Capital One UK said: 'For the many workers who transformed spare bedrooms and kitchen tables into makeshift offices during the past two years, it looks increasingly clear that hybrid working looks here to stay.

'Now, as we emerge from the pandemic, it's great to see spending being spread more broadly as a result.

'The past two years have allowed people the opportunity to reassess their finances and think about where and how they would like to spend their hard-earned cash. With many traditionally office-based businesses now operating a hybrid working model, it's really encouraging to see workers are enjoying all of the fantastic amenities around them - both on their office and home doorsteps.'

On a local authority level, home workers in Birmingham spend the greatest amount in their local area per year by a significant amount.

They spend 236 million in their home area each year, which means they are reinvesting just over 5% in their local economy. Home workers in Cornwall spend the second highest amount in their local area at 2.6 million per week, or 137 million per year.

Meanwhile, homeworkers in Sandwell reinvest the greatest proportion of their income in the local economy, at nearly 6%, while in Wandsworth in London that drops to under 3%, largely due to higher average annual incomes.

According to the Office of National Statistics, between January 19 and 30 this year, 36% of working adults reported having worked from home at least once in the last seven days because of the pandemic.

Almost half (46%) of these homeworkers said they spent less as a result of homeworking. A similar proportion of homeworkers reported spending less when interviewed in November (49%).

The area where homeworkers most commonly saw spending increase was utility bills, where 86% reported their spending had risen.
Millions of workers are mistakenly relying on auto-enrolment pensions to provide the retirement they want, industry research reveals.

Its ten years since the introduction of auto-enrolment rules that require both employees and employers to pay into a pension.

The minimum contribution is 8 per cent of earnings, with employees paying in 5 per cent (including 1 per cent tax relief) and employers paying 3 per cent.

The minimum contribution to a workplace pension is currently 8% of earnings, with employees paying in 5% (including 1% tax relief) and employers paying 3%

But new research from B&CE, provider of workplace scheme The Peoples Pension, found that around 7.4 million pension savers make the minimum employee contribution required by law, and just 7 per cent understood that this would fund only a basic retirement.

B&CE says a worker born in 2000 on an average salary of 30,576 would retire at 68 with a pension paying 6,537 a year if they stuck to minimum contributions.

The industry says even with a state pension of 9,339, that would leave them unable to afford to run a car and limited cash to spend on leisure, food and drink.

Most workers think that because the rates are set by Government they will be left with enough savings, the research found.

The pension industry has produced a guide to the cost of certain retirement lifestyles. Designed by The Pension and Lifetime Savings Association (PLSA), these are pitched to three levels.

How to top up your work pension Savings threatened by inflation? Tempted to start investing? A simple (and potentially cheap) option is to top up your pension fund - find out how here.

A comfortable retirement requires an annual income of 33,600, and allows more financial freedom and some luxuries such as three weeks holiday in Europe.

A moderate lifestyle requires 20,800 and means 100 a month for eating out and 60 a month for a TV broadband package.

A minimum retirement lifestyle requires 10,900 a year. This would mean travelling by public transport, and only a week and a long weekend of holiday in the UK.

Phil Brown, director of policy at B&CE, called on the Government to set out plans for a review of the minimum level of auto-enrolment contributions.

He says: Millions of hard-working people are not saving enough.

'Affordability plays a role, but in most cases, people believe that because theyre saving what theyve been told to by those who run the country, theyre saving enough.

Former pensions minister Baroness Ros Altmann says auto-enrolment has been a fantastic success. She adds: Its paved the way for lots of people to start saving in a pension who otherwise would probably not have done so.

t.armstrong@dailymail.co.uk
Nearly a quarter of a million women who may be entitled to pension compensation will have died waiting by the end of this year, analysis shows.

Women born in the 1950s missed out on up to 50,000 after the state pension age was raised from 60 to 66.

Last year, the Parliamentary Ombudsman found that the Government had been too slow to notify some of the 3.8 million women involved.

Snubbed: Women born in the 1950s missed out on up to 50,000 after the state pension age was raised from 60 to 66

Campaign group Women Against State Pension Inequality (Waspi) has been fighting for seven years to secure compensation.

But analysis by data platform Statista estimates that 220,000 of those eligible will have died in the period between when the campaign began and the end of this year.

The research, commissioned by Waspi, is based on figures recorded by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) that show how many women in that age bracket die each year.

The dispute arose after the 1995 Pensions Act, brought in by the Conservative government, raised the womens state pension age from 60 to 65, to be in line with mens.

The 2011 Pension Act further raised the age to 66.

The changes were set to be phased in over ten years from 2010 for women born between 1950 and 1955.

But the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) didnt send letters to some of those affected until 2009, and some claimed they never received the warnings.

The Government has so far refused to commit to financial compensation. The DWP points out that both the High Court and Court of Appeal supported its decision to raise the womens state pension age.

h.kelly@dailymail.co.uk
Seven teenagers have been arrested in Melbourne following the fatal stabbing of 16-year-old Declan Cutler.

Homicide detectives and other police officers executed warrants on Wednesday and arrested six males and a female aged, who are aged between 13 and 17.

Declan died after being attacked on Elizabeth Street in Coburg North, at around 2.40am on March 13.

His mother, Sam Cutler, said she was 'broken' and called for those responsible to be held accountable.

'I miss him so much, his life was taken in such a cruel way, and way before his time. The people who did this are cowards,' she said.

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

'Knowing he was intoxicated, they preyed on him; knowing he couldn't get away. These people need to be found and justice served. I want my son back, I am broken.'

Assistant Commissioner Bob Hill said many experienced police saw the 'profoundly violent attack' as one of the most brutal they had ever come across.

'It's every parent's worst nightmare, having their teenage child leave the house for a night out with friends and never returning, however this is exactly what happened on this occasion,' Mr Hill said.

'The senseless nature of this incident should not be lost on anyone  I know it has impacted our police.'

Those arrested are a 17-year-old Taylors Hill boy, a 17-year-old Tarneit boy, a 15-year-old Hoppers Crossing boy, a 16-year-old Yarraville boy, a 13-year-old Meadow Heights boy, a 14-year-old Meadow Heights boy and a 17-year-old girl from Clifton Hill.

Mr Hill said the arrests follow an 'extraordinary investigative effort' by detectives and local police in the area.

'I know many will be horrified by the young age of those arrested today but let me be very clear  we will be relentless in pursuing anyone responsible for this level of violence, regardless of their age,' Mr Hill said.

'There are so many impacted people whose lives have been changed forever by what happened the night Declan died, most of all his family.

'Our thoughts are very much with his loved ones and we will continue to ensure all the relevant support services are made available.'

Declan had been at a house party in Coburg North when a group of teenagers were chased by a group in a dark-coloured car.

Declan became separated from his friends and those in car caught up with him.

He was attacked on Coburg North nature strip near the corner of Horton and Elizabeth streets.

Police (pictured) are investigating the killing of Declan Cutler, who was stabbed to death in the Melbourne suburb of Reservoir

A family friend of Declan's has launched a fundraiser 'to give him the send off he deserves'.

He was one of two people killed in five separate knife attacks in Melbourne over Victoria's Labour Day long weekend.

'On 13/3 Declan grew his wings,' fundraising organiser Lacey Trafford wrote on the GoFundMe page for him.

She said he was a 'very caring, loving and easy going person'.

'A beloved son, big brother and very respected friend was taken unexpectedly in a horrific way.

'Over the long weekend two people tragically lost their life to stabbings and Declan was one,' Ms Trafford said.

Neighbours said they heard yelling coming from the street, before rushing to try to help Declan.

There were multiple stabbings over the Labour Day long weekend in Melbourne

Police said he was stabbed with an 'edged weapon'. He was treated by emergency services, but died at the scene.

Police investigating the attack said they were shocked by the brutality of the assault after reviewing CCTV of the incident.

Detective Superintendent Paul O'Halloran said Declan was at a house party in Coburg at about 2.40am when a group arrived looking for him and his friends.

He and several friends ran from the house and were chased by a small dark car.

Declan became separated from his friends and was unable to get away from the vehicle.

'The young male was separated from his friends and he was attacked by that group of offenders,' Superintendent O'Halloran told The Age.

They allegedly kicked, punched and stabbed Declan several times in a shockingly violent attack.

'I'm also told by the investigators reviewing some footage they were able to obtain that it was a very, very vicious assault.

Police described the attack on 16-year-old Declan Cutler as a 'very vicious assault'

'In fact, [they] are quite shocked about the brutality of the assault which involved a number of stabbings to the victim and also kicks and punches,' Superintendent O'Halloran said.

A large kitchen knife and another blade were among the items found by officers near the crime scene.

Superintendent O'Halloran said the police had some 'very strong lines of inquiry' and believed the attackers had targeted the teenager.

'No teenager deserves this, let alone my godson,' a relative told 9News.

'It's just shocking, it's horrible for us as a family.'

Ms Trafford, the fundraising organiser, said 'I am here to help raise money for his family in support of sending Declan off the way he deserves.

'He was a very caring, loving and easy going person. Loved you for who you are.'

Declan was the eldest of five children, with three brothers and one sister.

'He absolutely adored, he loved and cared for them and they loved him more then ever,' said Ms Trafford.

She added that Declan's family and friends 'are lost for words (and) absolutely devastated'.

The GoFundMe page had already raised around $6,000 of its $10,000 goal by Wednesday afternoon, from almost 100 donations.

One commenter said 'RIP beautiful boy. You were taken far too soon. A piece of you will live on in all of us.'

Another said 'This child's life was taken way too soon. He was so young and had his whole life ahead of him.

'He'll never find love, have a family or the opportunity to live the full life he so deserved. I'm just devastated for his family.'

'Declan was such a valued member of the Pavilion School community. Sending all of our love to his family and friends. We will miss him terribly,' said another.
Bruce McArthur was a familiar face in the gay Toronto enclave, always waved or nodded to Mark Henderson who, although wary, did the same back.

But on October 31, 2001, Halloween, McArthur jogged to catch up with Henderson as he unlocked the building's security door and before he knew it he felt a whack on the back of his head.

Confused, Henderson turned. His assailant's face was a mask of fury. He was holding a metal bar above his head, ready to bring it down once more.

Mark Henderson knew that he was looking into the eyes of a killer.

Henderson is the first known survivor of Toronto's most prolific serial killer, Bruce McArthur, 70.

Now, in an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com he has shared the details of his attack and the years of pain that followed as he  like many of McArthur's later victims - was mischaracterized, marginalized and dismissed by Toronto Police Service (TPS) with devastating consequences.

Mark Henderson, 56, was attacked by Toronto serial killer Bruce McArthur just after noon on October 31, 2001, and is McArthur's first known survivor

Henderson shared photos of ijs injuries, which included a fractured skull and broken fingers

Today, in an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com he has shared the details of his attack and the years of pain that followed

'I turned, and he was there like a wild man, Hendereson recalled. 'I can't emphasize enough how horrified I was. And then I realized, he's trying to kill me.'

Henderson is alive today because he fought and because, he says, of a 'sliver of luck.' Many others were not so lucky.

McArthur's reign of terror lasted between 2010 and 2017 when he slaughtered eight men, all of whom disappeared from the Canadian city's so-called 'gay village.'

Toronto serial killer Bruce McArthur, 70, was sentenced to life in prison in 2019

The dismembered remains of several of his victims were found buried in planters at a suburban property at which he worked as a landscaper.

He was arrested in January 2018. On January 29, 2019, he pleaded guilty to eight counts of first-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison with no eligibility for parole for 25 years.

Now, his crimes and the investigation that led to his arrest are the focus of two episodes in the latest season of Netflix's hit show, 'Catching Killers.'

But Henderson's story is not featured. Instead, he says, he has been conveniently carved out of the official narrative which starts with McArthur's first known killing in 2010.

Because, the truth is, Toronto's cops had a chance to catch their killer much sooner.

But, as Henderson puts it, 'they blew it' after his attack in 2001 and when men started disappearing from the gay village nine years later, they blew it all over again.

He said, 'I would defend the police if they did it right, but they just keep doing everything wrongand the fact that they're even ignoring me now drives me up the wall.'

Henderson isn't alone in this opinion. Retired Ontario Court of Appeal Justice Gloria Epstein presided over an independent review into TPS handling of the McArthur and missing persons cases.

Her report, published in April 2021, was blunt. 'The police could have done better.'

She made 151 recommendations of how and cited the mishandling of Henderson's case both at the time of his attack and after, when it 'played no part,' in later investigations as, 'particularly troubling.'

McArthur pleaded guilty to eight counts of murder in early 2019. He is pictured center in a court sketch from a hearing where he was sentenced to life in prison

McArthur pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting, killing and dismembering eight men he met in Toronto's Gay Village between 2010 and 2017

Today Henderson, 56, presents an extravagantly stylized face to the world. But his Neptune-like beard, designer clothes and penchant for costumes belie a darker truth.

Because nothing has ever been the same for Henderson since the day of his attack.

Back then he was studying to become a registered nurse as well as acting and modeling in the bars and clubs of the gay village.

He was known in the close LGBTQ community in which he lives as the guy who would take to the stage without a second thought, dance, do some comedy then end by pulling down his pants and showing the crowd his thong.

Henderson was known in the close LGBTQ community in which he lives as the guy who would take to the stage without a second thought

These days, he says, he is afraid of the dark, does his laundry at 4am to avoid other people and has more in common with Howard Hughes than the man he used to be.

He said, 'If you asked me when was the last time I personally saw the killer, I would tell you it was one year ago in March.

'He was standing on Yonge Street and I had a complete panic attack and came home.

'You and I know he could not possibly have been standing on Yonge Street a year ago but that's a snapshot of the pain that's left over.'

The balcony of the apartment in which Henderson lives today overlooks the back of the building in which he was attacked. He can still map it out, step by step.

He was locking up his bicycle when he saw McArthur paying for street parking.

McArthur was a familiar face from around the area. He always waved or nodded to Henderson who did the same back but felt an uncomfortable urge to cross the street whenever he did so.

On that day McArthur jogged to catch up with him as he unlocked the building's security door and Henderson held it open, unwittingly letting in his attacker.

He said, 'It was Halloween  I founded the Halloween party on Church Street which is the largest party in North America so Halloween is a busy day for me and I had my costume inside.'

Henderson vaguely recalls McArthur asking him what he was doing for Halloween and answering him as he unlocked his front door. He lived on the ground floor just 15 feet from the security door and along from the building's office where Henderson assumed McArthur was going.

He said, 'I was unlocking the door when I felt a whack. It happened so fast. I kind of fell in and I thought maybe part of the ceiling had fallen. I turned and I remember he was like this wild man.

'I can't emphasize how horrified I was. I felt betrayal. I realized he's trying to kill me.'

The sequence of events is blurred by shock and time, but Henderson remembers shielding his head as the bar came down again breaking two of his fingers.

He was on the floor now and pushed McArthur away with both feet with all his might buying himself some time to scrabble further into his apartment.

He said, 'He sort of flew back. The phone was there, and I had two tall candlesticks made of silver. I picked up one of those. He stood up and I couldn't hear anything. I could hardly see anything, there was blood and cerebral fluid coming down. So, I picked up the candle stick and I looked at him and he looked at me and I made a decision.

'I thought I cannot hit him. I can't do it. If I'm going to die that's not going to be the last thing I do. I'll go for the phone instead. I had 911 in before I could even imagine it.

'As I was calling 911, he came right up to me and said, ''Please don't tell them this happened. Please don't tell them it was me.'' And he started pulling on the chord and looking for the end of it butit was like 30 or 40ft long so I could be on the phone talking all night going round my apartment.

'He couldn't find the end of it and then the 911 operator said, 'Can you describe what he's wearing' and I was just reading his outfit from him being there.'

Henderson shared the x-rays of his skull with DailyMail.com, which show the fracture near the top of his head

Henderson shared a photo of his injuries. He said he remembers the EMT 'cracking jokes' over him as he lay there. Later, in the hospital he remembers a police officer asking him repeatedly, 'Were you having sex with him [McArthur]?' And him answering, 'No'

This is the location where serial killer McArthur followed and attacked Henderson years before his killing spree

The whole thing took less than 5 minutes  McArthur's parking ticket was timestamped at 12.34pm. Henderson dialed 911 at 12.39pm.

Henderson remembers feeling the compression in his skull and worrying that it was only a matter of time before he lost consciousness.

The next thing he remembers is a police officer looking round the door and asking if his attacker was still there, before he was strapped to a stretcher and into a waiting ambulance.

He remembers the EMT 'cracking jokes' over him as he lay there. Later, in the hospital he remembers a police officer asking him repeatedly, 'Were you having sex with him [McArthur]?' And him answering, 'No.'

It would be a few days before Henderson learned that McArthur had immediately handed himself in  a move that Epstein's review described as 'strategic.'

Henderson said, 'I realized that the whole sex thing had to have been part of his narrative. He was way ahead of this, but that's one of his moves as we see later.'

The police didn't even take a victim statement.

In 2003 McArthur was sentenced to one year house arrest and banned from the gay village for two years  a ban that was unenforceable.

Henderson recalls being branded a 'hooker.' In news reports he was described as a 'hustler.'

In truth, Henderson, now 31 years sober, was a trainee nurse who championed a safe sex message in the community and had his contribution towards establishing Casey House - Canada's first hospital specializing in the treatment of HIV - recognized by Princess Diana.

But, he said, 'I was immediately sexualized [by McArthur] and discredited [by the police] and once he pleads guilty, we don't need Mark Henderson and his fractured skull or broken fingers and arm. They charge him and it's over.'

For Henderson and for members of the LGBTQ community it was only just beginning.

The Gay Village area of Toronto where McArthur sought his victims. In 2003 McArthur was sentenced to one year house arrest and banned from the area for two years  a ban that was unenforceable

Henderson had a short stint as an officer. He left the police in 2009 and returned to his former careers of modeling and acting. He's pictured as a Toronto officer

Years later, in her report into TPS's handling of the McArthur case, Epstein professed her dismay at the offhanded manner with which Henderson's case was handled.

She wrote, 'McArthur was obviously very persuasive. Hedisarmed others as to his true evil.'

By pleading guilty to possession of a deadly weapon, assault with a weapon and assault causing bodily harm, McArthur ensured that the trace he left in the system was faint.

Had he faced a more appropriate charge of aggravated assault then major case management would have been mandatory and the details of his crime would have been entered in a police-wide data base.

Retired Ontario Court of Appeal Justice Gloria Epstein presided over an independent review into TPS handling of the McArthur and missing persons cases. Her report, published in April 2021, was blunt. 'The police could have done better'

When it came to Henderson's case Epstein found that police prejudice played a part, as it would with the disappearances of McArthur's later victims who she said, 'were given less attention or priority then the cases deserved.'

That failure had real world consequences both for Henderson and others.

He explained, 'I remember for a long time after, I'd be on the subway and my fists and my teeth would be clenched, and I was just ready to fight. I was angry at everything.

'I had some huge personality and psychological changesmany were almost animal at the beginning.'

He returned to the police many times over, 'I wanted to tell somebody what had happened, but they had absolutely no interest. My father said, 'Let it go,' and I was furious. I regret that.'

Frustrated by his 'rough treatment,' Henderson made a surprising decision. He was, 'terrified of the police.' And so, he decided to join them in a bid to institute change from within.

It gave him focus at a time in his life when he needed it more than ever.

Henderson graduated valedictorian from police college in 2007 and endeavored to build bridges between the force and the LGBTQ community through a host of outreach programs.

As much as anything he was trying, he admitted, to 'feel safe' and he was trying to tell his story.

He explained, 'I was trying to tell people [in the force] that no-one knew my story.

'Because the fact is the man that attacked me didn't know how to kill somebody. By the time he gets to the other victims he's grown. He had to rethink as a killer, 'How am I going to get my prey?'

But Henderson's fears that McArthur was 'out there,' honing his skills fell on deaf ears.

He said, 'I was running from him constantly. I was afraid of what was lurking in the darkness.

'In my imagination he was behind every tree and in every bush.'

Henderson stint as an officer was short-lived. He left the police in 2009 and returned to his former careers of modeling and acting.

He tried to leave his memories of McArthur behind. But then men started going missing and he felt heart sick.

He said, 'I knew he was out there.'

Technology brought new opportunities for McArthur to stalk and reel in his prey. He trolled dating and hook up apps and sites such as SilverDaddies where his username was SilverFoxx51.

In 2012 TPS launched Project Houston to investigate the 2010 disappearance of Skandaraj 'Skanda' Navaratnam. That investigation would lead them to identify two other missing men: Abdulbasir 'Basir' Faizi and Majeed 'Hamid' Kayhan.

All three had disappeared from the same small area of Toronto. In 2013 police receive an anonymous tip linking McArthur to Navaratnam and Kayhan.

He was brought in for questioning. Had police dealt with Henderson's case differently a check in the system would have raised a red flag.

But Henderson's case had been all but dismissed and, in the intervening years, McArthur had successfully secured a pardon.

He told police he knew both men but that the relationships were consensual and over. They let him go.

Henderson says police 'blew it' after his attack in 2001 because they discredited him as a gay 'hooker' and hustler

Henderson remains scarred by the attack. He says that because of the attack he's now afraid of the dark, does his laundry at 4am to avoid other people

In 2016 Project Houston was wound down. It concluded there was no explanation for these men's disappearance and no link.

Then, in June 2017, one day after Pride, Andrew Kinsman was reported missing. Friends had checked on his apartment to find nothing disturbed but his cat left unfed.

Henderson said, 'We're a community. We know when people come and go. When we find an apartment that's empty and a cat that hasn't been fedgay guys don't do that.'

He continued, 'I get so upset because I know I sound crazybut I knew what the killer was, and I couldn't get anybody to hear it and [I knew] what his victims faced. I knew it when Andrew Kinsman went missing.'

Henderson spoke with Kinsman at the Pride parade the last day he was seen alive. Kinsman admired his costume and they posed for a picture together.

When officers were dispatched to Kinsman's apartment, they found one word written in his calendar on the day of his disappearance, 'Bruce.'

In the days after they reported him missing Kinsman's friends galvanized. They formed Facebook groups and pushed his name and his face into the public eye.

Henderson said, 'We had learned lessons as a community, and they were not going to stop.'

With the groundswell of public attention TPS launch Project Prism. The speed with which Kinsman's disappearance was reported meant that officers could cull surveillance footage from outside his apartment.

They saw him walk towards a vehicle identified as a 2004 Dodge Caravan. There were 6000 similar vehicles in Toronto but only 5 were registered to a Bruce and only one was a 2004 model.

For McArthur it was the beginning of the end. The killer had disposed of the van, but police recovered it and found DNA evidence of Kinsman and a second missing man Selim Essen.

A covert mission saw police clone the contents of McArthur's computer and discover a trove of images and video including post-mortem pictures of Kinsman and others.

Some had a ligature around their neck, others were placed in suggestive poses with props such as fur coats and hats.

There were files devoted to multiple men. Some were saved under names, others just numbers.

McArthur was placed under 24-hour surveillance and arrested on January 18 when officers saw a young man enter his apartment and considered his life in danger.

They found him handcuffed to the bed with a bag over his face. He had not consented to being handcuffed.

One day later cadaver dogs alerted at one of the large planters on the grounds of a suburban home at which McArthur was a landscaper.

Police found the remains of at least three men in two of the 12 planters they removed from the scene.

Police charged McArthur with the first-degree murders of Andrew Kinsman, Selim Essen, Majeed Kajhan, Sorowsh Mahmudi and Dean Lisowick, a homeless man who was never reported missing.

The following month, in February, the search of planters revealed the dismembered remains of three more people: Skandaraj Navaratnam, Abdulbasir Faizi and Kirushna Kumar Kangaratnam.

It is still profoundly painful for Henderson to speak of these men, men to whom he is forever linked.

He explained, 'Look around. Just take in this space, think about what sort of man I am, what things I might value, how vast my imagination might be.

'And then realize there are eight other people like me and it's just empty apartments. Had he killed me 21 years ago this would be an empty apartment.

'You can get a sense of that loss, where the pain is. I don't speak for the dead and I don't speak for the grieving families and friends that are out there worldwide, but I sit here, and I get to speak with those people in my heart.'

He said, 'We're all connected now. It isn't about sex. It's about power. They weren't sex murders they were murder murders.

'These people weren't killed because they did anything wrong. They were killed because he was a good killer.

'I knew he was a killer. He was going to kill me. At this point I am a footnote in his story but I'm making it my mission in life that by the time I die he's a footnote in mine.'
Advertisement

A tornado tore through parts of New Orleans and its suburbs Tuesday night, ripping down power lines and scattering debris in a part of the city that had been heavily damaged by Hurricane Katrina 17 years ago.

Other tornadoes spawned by the same storm system hit parts of Texas and Oklahoma, killing one person and causing multiple injuries and widespread damage.

In Texas, at least 47,000 were left without power on Monday. More than 13,000 homes remained without power in three parishes around New Orleans late Tuesday night, NBC reported.

A video taken by a local television station showed a large black funnel visible in the darkened sky looming among the buildings in the eastern part of New Orleans.

The tornado appeared to start in a New Orleans suburb and then move east across the Mississippi River into the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans and parts of St. Bernard Parish - both of which were badly damaged by Katrina - before moving northeast.

Reggie Ford was nearby when the tornado struck. He drove from the area, only to return once it passed, to offer help to anyone who needed it. So far, he says, the streets are eerily quiet, only filled with fresh devastation from the twister.

People walk in front of a damaged building after a tornado struck in the Arabi neighborhood, St. Bernard Parish, New Orleans

The tornado flipped cars and ripped roofs off homes and killing at least one person in a region that was pummeled by Hurricane Katrina 17 years ago

At least one person died and multiple others were injured after the tornado moved through New Orleans

In Texas, at least 47,000 were left without power on Monday. More than 13,000 homes remained without power in three parishes around New Orleans late Tuesday night, NBC reported

The tornado appeared to start in a New Orleans suburb and then move east across the Mississippi River into the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans and parts of St. Bernard Parish - both of which were badly damaged by Katrina - before moving northeast

A tornado tore through parts of New Orleans and its suburbs Tuesday night, ripping down power lines and scattering debris

A video taken by a local television station showed a large black funnel visible in the darkened sky looming among the buildings in the eastern part of New Orleans

The tornado appeared to start in a New Orleans suburb and then move east across the Mississippi River into the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans and parts of St. Bernard Parish - both of which were badly damaged by Katrina - before moving northeast

Authorities survey damage in the Lower 9th Ward, Tuesday, March 22, 2022, in New Orleans, after strong storms moved through the area

A general view of a destroyed building in the aftermath of a tornado in Arabi, Louisiana on March 22

The tornado moved through the New Orleans suburb of Arabi, where there was a strong smell of natural gas

A car lies overturned among debris in the Arabi neighborhood after a large tornado struck New Orleans, Louisiana on March 22

'I see downed powerlines. A church is completely destroyed. Three businesses are completely destroyed. There are eight blocks of houses missing their roofs,' the New Orleans resident said.

Video he posted on Instagram shows debris cluttered streets and shredded buildings. A battered car lies on its roof. Debris was spread across an area covering multiple blocks east of New Orleans.

In the New Orleans suburb of Arabi, there was a strong smell of natural gas in the air as residents and rescue personnel stood in the street and surveyed the damage.

Some houses were destroyed while pieces of debris hung from electrical wires and trees. An aluminum fishing boat in front of one house was bent into the shape of a C with the motor across the street.

Power poles were down and leaning over, forcing emergency workers to walk slowly through darkened neighborhoods checking for damage.

Michelle Malasovich lives in Arabi. Initially she had been worried about family that lives in areas north of Louisiana that were also getting hit by bad weather. She was texting with her family there when, she said, 'All of a sudden the lights started flickering.'

She didn't hear the distinctive freight train sound that many people say comes with a tornado but it was extremely windy, and her husband yelled at her to get out of the bedroom. He was out on the porch and saw the tornado coming.

'It just kept getting louder and louder,' Malasovich said. After it passed they came out to survey the damage. 'Our neighbor's house is in the middle of the street right now.'

Debris is strewn across the ground in the Arabi neighborhood after a large tornado struck New Orleans on March 22

A man views damage to buildings in Arabi, New Orleans

A car lies overturned among debris in the Arabi neighborhood after a large tornado struck New Orleans

People view damage to buildings in the Arabi neighborhood after a large tornado struck New Orleans, Louisiana on March 22

The twister is shown moving through Arabi. Thousands were left without power through Louisiana, Texas and Oklahoma

A person takes a photo of damage, Tuesday, March 22, 2022, in Arabi, La. A tornado tore through parts of New Orleans and its suburbs Tuesday night, ripping down power lines and scattering debris

People survey damage, Tuesday, March 22, in Arabi, Louisiana, after a tornado took down a tree

Malasovich's house fared relatively well, she said. Some columns were blown off the porch and the windows of her Jeep were blown out. Down the street a house was severely damaged, and parked vehicles had been moved around by the winds: 'This is serious for down here.'

About 13,000 homes and businesses were without power in the three parishes around New Orleans after the storm.

Guy McGinnis, president of St. Bernard Parish, told WWL-TV that the parish had 'widespread damage' in parts of the parish that borders New Orleans to the east. Search and rescue teams were going through homes looking for people and responding to at least two calls from people who said they were trapped in their homes in their bathrooms.

'As of right now no major injuries are reported,' McGinnis said. 'It's going to be a long night.'

It wasn't immediately known whether anyone was injured. While the metropolitan region is often struck by severe weather and heavy rains, it's rare that a tornado moves through the city.

High winds uprooted trees in Ridgeland, Mississippi, as a possible tornado passed the Jackson-area city Tuesday afternoon, but there were no immediate reports of any injuries or serious damage to buildings. Campus police at Mississippi State University, in Starkville, shared a photo of a large hardwood tree lying across a street.

Many schools were closing early or canceling after-school activities Tuesday in parts of Louisiana and Mississippi to allow students to get home before the weather deteriorated. Shelters opened for residents who needed a place to stay while the storms traveled through.

Debris is seen inside a damaged room after a tornado from the devastating storm system touched down in Round Rock. High speed winds ripped a hole out of one of the walls of the domicile

Disturbing drone footage shows the small Central Texas town in ruins after tornadoes tore through the American Southwest late Monday, as officials warned that the storm system causing the twisters is far from over

The town in the footage, the small, usually sleepy suburb of Round Rock, saw several tornados rip through its framework Monday night, seeing dozens of homes, businesses, and properties destroyed

No casualties have yet been reported from the small Texas town - located less than 20 minutes from Austin - as police and citizens continue to search through debris left by the rampaging cyclones and high-speed winds

Rows of destroyed homes are seen in the aftermath of a tornado in Round Rock

Homes in the small Texas town saw their walls and roofs stripped clean off the houses' foundation by high-speed winds seen Monday night

Debris lines the roads as crews and homeowners work to repair properties damaged by severe weather in Elgin, Texas

Officials say multiple tornadoes ripped through parts of Texas and Oklahoma on Monday

High water posed a threat to motorists early Tuesday in Louisiana on several roads, including a stretch of Interstate 20 and several state highways after rains overnight, authorities said. Deputies in Caddo Parish, which includes Shreveport, rescued three drivers from high waters during the night, the sheriffs office tweeted before dawn.

The storms were expected to intensify throughout the day as temperatures rise, increasing the threat of tornadoes, hail and strong winds. Forecasters predicted intense tornadoes and damaging winds, some hurricane-force with speeds of 75 mph (120 kph) or greater, in much of Mississippi, southern and eastern Louisiana, and western Alabama. Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Jackson, Mississippi, were among the cities at risk for bad weather.

A blind cat - whom rescuers drolly named 'Nado' - is pictured after being pulled from an animal shelter in Jascksboro that was destroyed by a twister Monday night

Jacksboro Animal Shelter was completely leveled by the twister. Volunteers worked relentlessly Tuesday to rescue and evacuate the animals from the wreckage, including Nado. All of the animals were rescued

The system dumped heavy rain, downed trees and prompted multiple tornado warnings as it moved into Alabama Tuesday evening. The roofs of several homes were damaged in Toxey, Alabama, after a storm preceded by tornado warnings passed through the area, the National Weather Service tweeted.

Louisianas federal and state authorities reminded thousands of hurricane survivors living in government-provided mobile homes and recreational vehicle trailers to have an evacuation plan because the structures might not withstand the expected weather. More than 8,000 households live in such temporary quarters, officials said.

In Texas, several tornadoes were reported Monday along the Interstate 35 corridor, particularly in the Austin suburbs of Round Rock and Elgin, as well as in northern and eastern Texas and southern Oklahoma.

The tornadoes came on a wild weather day in Texas - wildfires burned in the west and a blizzard warning was issued for the Texas Panhandle, where up to 9 inches (23 centimeters) of snow fell

At news conferences in Jacksboro and Crockett, two communities severely damaged by tornadoes, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced a disaster declaration for 16 hard-hit counties

In Elgin, broken trees lined the rural roads and pieces of metal - uprooted by strong winds hung from the branches. Residents stepped carefully to avoid downed power lines as they worked to clean the remnants of broken ceilings, torn down walls and damaged cars.

J.D. Harkins, 59, said he saw two tornadoes pass by his Elgin home.

'There used to be a barn there,' Harkins said, pointing to an empty plot on his uncles property covered with scattered debris. He said the building was empty when the first tornado hit Monday, and that his family is thankful nobody was hurt.

'It was crystal clear, well defined,' Harkins said. 'And then one went up and another one came down.'

The tornadoes came on a wild weather day in Texas - wildfires burned in the west and a blizzard warning was issued for the Texas Panhandle, where up to 9 inches (23 centimeters) of snow fell.

'Theres absolutely nothing out of the ordinary in terms of what we saw yesterday and we see today,' said Victor Gensini, a meteorology professor at Northern Illinois University, who studies severe storms. Its the time of year when tornadoes and storms are to be expected and there are usually more during years with a La Nina, a natural cooling of parts of the Pacific that alters weather across the globe, he said.

The biggest concern remains tornadoes that strike at night, Gensini said.

The system, which has already snuffed out the life of one Texas woman and has injured dozens of others, is now moving east across the Lone Star State toward Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center say, where it may possibly trigger 'a regional severe weather outbreak'

An aerial photo made with a drone shows a damaged Round Rock homes after a series of tornadoes passed through the town

A tornado-damaged home is seen Tuesday in Round Rock. Dozens of homes in the town were leveled by several tornadoes

A construction crew works to clean up debris in a tornado damaged neighborhood of the small town Tuesday

At news conferences in Jacksboro and Crockett, two communities severely damaged by tornadoes, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced a disaster declaration for 16 hard-hit counties.

Abbott said 10 people were injured by storms in the Crockett area, while more than a dozen were reportedly hurt elsewhere.

The Grayson County Emergency Management Office said a 73-year-old woman was killed in the community of Sherwood Shores, about 60 miles (95 kilometers) north of Dallas, but provided no details.

Homes and businesses in at least a dozen Texas counties were damaged, according to Storm Prediction Center reports.

Officials reported damage throughout Jacksboro, about 60 miles (100 kilometers) northwest of Fort Worth. Photographs posted on social media showed a storm ripped the wall and roof from parts of Jacksboro High School, including its gym.

'It brought tears to my eyes,' school principal Starla Sanders told WFAA-TV in Dallas.
The Chinese owners of the renowned Australian Daydream Island resort have been ordered to make a huge pay-out to a former employee who woke up 'choking' on his drunk colleague's urine.

The Supreme Court of Queensland ordered China Capital Investment Group pay Aaron Schokman $431,738 over the horrific incident that occurred about 3.30am on November 7, 2016.

The 30-year-old's colleague and room-mate, Sean Hewett, got so drunk he vomited then half an hour later got up to urinate but did not know where he was, the court documents said.

'About 30 minutes [after hearing him vomit] I woke up in complete distress and I was unable to breathe,' Ms Schokman told the court.

'I immediately realised that I was choking and inhaling Hewett's urine.

The Supreme Court of Queensland ordered China Capital Investment Group to pay Aaron Schokmann $431,738 over a horrific incident in which his drunken Daydream Island colleague choked him by urinating in his face while he slept at about 3.30am on November 7, 2016

Paradise scenes at Queensland's Daydream Island resort are seen above. A worker told a court how he woke up to find his colleague 'standing over my bed with his shorts pulled down ... in the act of urinating'

'I looked up and observed Hewett standing over my bed with his shorts pulled down a short distance and his penis was exposed whilst in the act of urinating.'

A Court of Appeal judgment, made by Judges Fraser and McMurdo and Mullins on March 18, overturned a single trial judge's decision in Queensland's Supreme Court last year that found the resort's owners could not be held vicariously liable.

The latest judgment said there was 'insufficient' evidence to find Mr Hewett committed the act intentionally.

However, the judges foundthe actions of Hewett were undoubtedly committed in the course of his employment'.

The judgment found Mr Schokman and Mr Hewett were required to sign a tenancy agreement which stated that they must take reasonable care that any acts 'did not adversely affect the health and safety of other persons'.

'It was a term of Hewetts employment that he reside in the staff accommodation on the island, and more particularly in the room assigned to him.

'There was in this case the requisite connection between his employment and the employees actions. The respondent should have been held to be vicariously liable for his negligence and the loss which it caused.'

A Court of Appeal judgement , made by judges Fraser and McMurdo and Mullins on March 18, overturned a single trial judge's decision in the Supreme Court last year that found the resort's owners could not be held vicariously liable

'The defendant, by placing Hewett in such close proximity to the plaintiff in such a vulnerable, intimate setting provided the occasion for the incident to occur,' the judgement said.

Court documents also said that Mr Hewett 'urinating in those circumstances was not a voluntary act'.

Mr Schokman's existing conditions of cataplexy (loss of muscle tone from strong emotions) and narcolepsy (a chronic sleep disorder) were made worse by the incident, the court heard.

He suffered a cataplexic attack after the incident. Cataplexy 'is a sudden and usually brief loss of voluntary muscle tone triggered by strong emotions', the court heard.

He also suffered post-traumatic stress disorder contributing to anxiety and depression.

Court documents showed Mr Hewett had consumed up to eight drinks before the incident but also that he was not a witness and was not trial for any wrongdoing.

The evidence was 'uncontested', court documents said.

Mr Schokman's colleague and room-mate, Sean Hewett, got so drunk he vomited then 30 minutes later got up to urinate but did not know where he was, court documents said

Court documents showed Mr Hewett claimed had a history of sleepwalking and claimed to have asked his employer to moved him to a single room because of it, but had been denied.

He was also found to have suffered a level of impairment to his whole person of between 10 and 20 per cent.

'Aaron is happy to put this ordeal behind him and will move forward with the confidence that his employer has been held responsible for what occurred while he was working on Daydream Island,' said Kylie Carson of Shine Lawyers.
Australian travellers keen to get back to Bali after two years locked out have detailed what to expect when arriving on the holiday island.

Nicole Shiraz and her boyfriend, recently retired NRL star Corey Norman, are among hundreds of Australians who have travelled to the holiday hotspot in the past week.

The island finally reopened to the world without quarantine for the first time since the onset of Covid-19 in early 2020.

But travelling to Bali isn't as simple as dusting off your passport, booking a plane ticket, and getting a visa on arrival like it used to be.

Bikini model Nicole Shiraz (pictured relaxing at a resort in Seminyak, Bali) was among the first Australians in years to touch down in Bali

Australians must comply with strict rules before getting on the plane, and again after touching down in Bali.

Ms Shiraz warned to expect a two hour wait at the airport and shared footage of queues of tourists sitting in rows of chairs waiting to show their vaccination documents to immigration officials.

Travellers then have to line up to take a PCR test, which costs $79.

Ms Shiraz then shared footage of the deserted airport as they walked through the luggage collection area.

'The airport was so dead, our luggage looked lonely. Customs took zero minutes,' she captioned the clip.

Ms Shiraz uploaded a second video explaining the documentation needed to enter Bali, which includes travel insurance that provide cover for Covid-19 and proof of booked accommodation in Bali for a minimum three nights.

Nicole Shiraz says travellers should expect to spend two hours at the airport upon arrival, which including a long wait in immigration for vaccination checks (pictured)

Travellers must also go online to fill in a Health Alert Card prior to arrival, which can only be done after the pre-flight Covid test.

The customs declaration form must also be completed before arrival.

Vaccination status checks, Covid tests and travel insurance are some of the many rules international travellers now face in Bali.

Travellers over 12 must be vaccinated and are required to take a PCR test within 48 hours of their flight.

Tourists are then required to take another PCR test upon arrival and isolate until they get a negative result.

Travellers must get PCR tests prior to their flight and again upon arrival in Bali (pictured)

Vaccinated travellers don't have to quarantine but visas are required, which can cost just $47 and be bought at the airport, as they were before Covid.

Travellers are urged to double check their passports for possible damage.

Sydneysider Bronte Gossling was hoping to be among one of the first Australians to arrive in the Bali last Monday.

But she was denied by airline staff at Melbourne Airport who advised she would be unable to board the Jetstar flight due to 'a little bit of water damage' on the photo page of her passport.

Nicole Shiraz is currently holidaying in Bali with her partner. former NRL star Corey Norman




Fifty-two schools in Seoul that had regulations on the color and shape of students' underwear removed such rules amid criticism they violate the human rights of students, the city's education office said Wednesday.







The schools, including 31 girls' middle and high schools, as well as 21 coeducation schools, had a dress code on students' undergarments and socks, requiring their students to don all-white underwear and socks or only wear black or skin-colored stockings, according to the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education.







The rules were removed after the schools held special consultations with the education office last year.







The office said it plans to provide consulting to 60 schools with excessive restrictions on students' appearances, such as hairstyles and clothing, this year.







Currently, schools in Seoul are advised to not restrict students' dress through school rules under an ordinance introduced by the city government in 2012 to improve students' human rights. (Yonhap)


A cat has had its leg amputated after being stuck in a illegal steel-jaw trap up a tree for several days.

Ed - a young ginger tabby cat - was discovered by a neighbour in Taperoo, Adelaide, on Saturday after she heard his cries from her home.

She found little Ed two metres up a tree with a steel-jaw trap cutting his right-rear leg.

Ed - named by his rescuers - was found by a neighbour balancing on a corrugated iron fence on Saturday with his rear-right leg trapped in a steel-jaw trap

The neighbour rushed to get a box for young Ed to relax in while waiting for help to arrive

He was panting and exhausted, balancing by just one leg on a corrugated iron fence.

The trap had been wedged in a fork in the tree with its chain wrapped around the branches so that Ed was unable to move.

The owner of the property the cat was found on was not home at the time of his rescue.

Steel -jaw traps are illegal and owners face penalties including a maximum fine of $20,000 or two years imprisonment

The neighbour held the box under Ed until the Largs North Metropolitan Fire Service arrived to quickly cut the branches of the tree holding Ed, removing his paw from the trap

The worried neighbour ran inside to get a box but by the time she came back, Ed had lost his balance and was dangling by his trapped foot.

She held the box under the cat until the Largs North Metropolitan Fire Service arrived, who quickly cut the branches of the tree holding Ed and removed his paw form the trap.

By that time an RSPCA rescue officer had also arrived on the scene and rushed Ed to an emergency vet.

An RSPCA rescue officer rushed Ed to an emergency vet where he was treated for a broken pelvis, dehydration and fever. His trapped leg unfortunately had to be amputated

Ed was discovered hanging from a tree by a paw stuck in a steel-jaw trap in Taperoo, Adelaide (pictured)

RSPCA South Australia spokeswoman Carolyn Jones told Daily Mail Australia Ed suffered significant injuries from the ordeal.

'His temperature was over 40C and he was suffering from dehydration,' she said.

'In addition to his crushed leg, he has a broken pelvis, likely caused when he was trying to free himself.

'Given the advanced infection in the trapped leg, RSPCA SAs vet team believe the cat was caught in the trap three to four days prior to his rescue.'

Ed's rear-right leg was in a necrotic state by the time he reached the vet and had to be amputated

Ed is now recovering well as the RSPCA continues to search for his owner - he had no collar and isn't microchipped

Unfortunately Ed's leg was in a necrotic state by the time he reached the vet and had to be amputated.

Ed is now recovering well as the RSPCA continues to search for his owner.

'He is doing well today after yesterdays surgery and will have six weeks of cage rest to give his broken pelvis time to mend,' she said.

'He is approximately two years old and has a friendly temperament, indicating he may be someones pet.

'However, he is not microchipped or wearing a collar with any other form of identification.'

Anyone caught setting a steel-jaw trap faces a maximum fine of $2,500 while those caught with an animal in their trap can face a $20,000 or two years imprisonment.

Anyone with information is urged to contact RSPCA on 1300 477 722.
A group of so called 'freedom' protesters have been captured in shocking footage harassing a bus driver after he tried to move through their rally in Canberra.

The driver slowly moved towards the group who were blocking Northbourne Avenue in the city's centre at about 11.45am on Tuesday, prompting those in the rally to accuse him of trying to mow them down.

Many then lashed out at the bus, banging on its side and front windows while one man wrestled with the driver to try and take his keys out of the ignition.

A bus driver was harassed after trying to move through a demonstration by vaccine mandate protestors in Canberra on Tuesday morning

Protesters are seen shouting abuse at the driver, after accusing him of trying to mow them down

Another protester jumped onto a rail at the front of the bus and started swearing at the driver.

'Look at this, he just drives all over, he just crashed into us,' one demonstrator filming the collision said.

'Get his number plate!' said another.

Protesters are seen standing in the way of the bus as the driver tried to move through the street safely

One man wrestled with the driver to try and take his keys out of the ignition

Eventually one of the group members leading the pack shouted at the protesters to move on as they continued their march to Parliament House.

The demonstration was made up of about 100 people from religious groups, sovereign citizens and Covid deniers all banding together to protest against vaccine mandates.

Chants of 'stop the jab, there is no emergency' rang out through the streets of Canberra in yet another anti-vaccination protest seen in the city.

ACT Police confirmed they are investigating the matter while Transport Canberra City Services said the bus driver would be provided with support.

ACT Police confirmed they are investigating the matter while Transport Canberra City Services said the bus driver would be provided with support

Just last month up to 20,000 demonstrators, united in their opposition to any compulsory vaccination, streamed through Canberra to assemble across several huge lawns at Parliament house.

At least three were arrested including one who allegedly drove a truck through a barrier.

Even One Nation leader Pauline Hanson joined the thousands for the Canada-inspired 'Convoy to Canberra' rally, who appeared to represent many different causes and carried a wide array of anti-authority signs, messages and flags.

The huge rally forced the cancellation of a major Canberra fundraiser for suicide prevention hotline Lifeline, whose organisers were concerned about safety.
A man facing a murder charge has told police that an alleged shot fired into the chest of another man he believed was an intruder was a 'warning shot'.

Kim Jamie Keith Kellett, 38, who lives outside of Katherine in the Northern Territory, has been charged with murder and the alternate charge of manslaughter.

It follows the death of a 26 year-old man last Thursday morning at Kellett's home - a ranger station near the Cutta Cutta caves tourist attraction.

Kellett told police he had fired a shot to scare off a partially naked indigenous man who had startled his wife at around four in the morning on March 17, NT News reported.

Kellett has been charged with the murder of a 26 year-old indigenous man allegedly fatally shot on Kellett's driveway

The entrance gate to the Cutta Cutta Caves Nature Park was locked on Thursday morning to block access to both the public and media

Ms Kellett, an NT park ranger, reportedly saw the man when she went to the kitchen to get a bottle for her youngest child.

Police will allege that her husband burst into the kitchen upon hearing her screams to scare the intruder from their home and that in a following call to emergency services, the couple warned police to quickly come to their home because they would shoot the man.

Eight minutes after Ms Kellett's call to triple-0, police arrived at the couple's home to allegedly find a deceased man on his back in the driveway of the home.

Ms Kellett works as a NT parks ranger and was living in the ranger station by the Cutta Cutta caves tourist attraction (pictured) when she allegedly saw the 26-year-old in her house

The man was found with a bullet wound in his chest, wearing nothing but a pair of boxers stuffed with grass, according to reports.

Before the incident the deceased 26-year-old had reportedly left a drug rehabilitation centre - 4km away from the Kelletts' home - before midday last Wednesday.

Police will further allege that Kellett fired the fatal shot at the man, despite having other options to scare him off including shooting in the air or the ground nearby.

NT Police warned the public there would be an increased police presence in the area but said there was no further risk to the community.

Earlier in the week Detective Senior Sergeant Jakson Evans said: 'We appreciate there is a lot of public interest in this case and we assure the community we are doing everything we can to establish exactly how this incident transpired.'

The entrance gate to the Cutta Cutta Caves Nature Park was locked on Thursday morning to block access to both the public and media.

A Parks and Wildlife spokeswoman said the national park was already closed when the incident occurred, with tours of the cave to resume in April.
An Australian council warns pasting anti-Coalition stickers on wheelie bins could result in them being left empty emptied or confiscated.

Stickers featuring Prime Minister Scott Morrison holding a lump of coal and Deputy PM Barnaby Joyce have begun appearing on some Sydney bins.

They urge voters to 'chuck them out' at the federal election in May, and another featuring Mr Morrison reading 'bin him'.

Residents in Hornsby, in the city's north, received letters saying the stickers were 'not appropriate' and obscured the council logo.

A Sydney council has threatened to not collect rubbish from wheelie bins which have political stickers on them (pictured)

Scott Morrison was asked his opinion on the bin row on Wednesday morning (pictured) and said he was focused on 'strengthening the economy'

The Mayor of Hornsby Council is Philip Ruddock, who is the NSW Liberal Party president and a former Howard Government attorney-general.

His council sent out a letter telling residents the stickers meant a garbage collector ignoring the rubbish 'if they cannot identify council's logo on the bin'.

The council said the stickers could also be removed by workers or the bins confiscated and replaced.

The stickers were originally produced by the Smart Energy Council, a non-profit agency for the renewable energy industry, but are now produced by a separate company.

Mr Morrison was asked his opinion on the issue on Wednesday morning.

'I'll leave that to the Mayor of Hornsby... what I'm focused on is ensuring our economic plan continues to work,' he told Sunrise.

'We've got unemployment at four per cent, record numbers of trade apprentices in training... this is the stuff that matters and what our budget will continue to address next week.

'I'll let him (Philip Ruddock) take the bins out, I'll get on with strengthening the economy. '

Peter Rickwood, an Asquith resident who received the letter after a neighbourhood complaint, said other houses have stickers on their bins such as for sporting teams or businesses.

'It seems a bit odd that they're suddenly choosing to police this no-sticker policy when it happens to be political,' he told the Sydney Morning Herald.

Mr Ruddock said the content of the letter was not his decision, but he agreed political messages should not be posted on council property.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison (pictured) is gearing up for a federal election in May

The stickers (pictured) were produced by the Smart Energy Council but are now produced by a private company

'Political advertising should be done on private property... your wheelie bin is owned by council,' Mr Ruddock told 2GB on Wednesday morning.

'Put it on your front fence or on your letterbox.

'Political advertising should not be undertaken except when there's an election on, and there's no election on yet.'

Hornsby council said the rule would apply to all stickers on wheelie bins.

'The matter was brought to our attention through a complaint from a resident who was offended by the content of the signage... this rule would apply to signage of any type applied to council assets where a complaint is made,' it said.

The stickers were originally made and distributed by the Smart Energy Council until it was threatened with de-registration by the charities commission.

SEC employee Wayne Smith then took over producing them through his own company.
A photo has emerged of Greens Senator Lidia Thorpe living it up at one of the world's most exclusive airport lounges, as she comes under fire over claims she was racially targeted trying to board a flight.

The Indigenous MP has claimed she was racially profiled at a Virgin Airlines check-in desk at Canberra Airport last December and has lodged the incident in the new Call It Out anti-racism register by the University of Technology Sydney.

Senator Thorpe's complaint centres around having to wait 'seven minutes' at the express check-in before being told by staff her carry-on luggage was too heavy to take on board.

The controversy comes about a year after she flaunted her status on social media with a smiling selfie from the plush Qantas Chairman's Lounge - which Australian MPs are regularly treated to.

Radio host Ben Fordham and the Minister for Women, Amanda Stoker, dismissed Ms Thorpe's story on Wednesday - dubbing her the 'senator who cried wolf'.

Lidia Thorpe in May, 2021, posted a selfie from the exclusive Qantas Chairman's Lounge

'Lidia Thorpe has posted selfies from the Chairman's Lounge at Qantas, so she knows how to enjoy the benefits of her role,' Fordham said on 2GB.

'But it has really upset people because she's played the race card when it's nothing to do with race.'

Liberal Party Senator Amanda Stoker also took aim at Ms Thorpe for recording the 'petty' incident in the anti-racism register.

'The senator who cried wolf, the Senator who cried racism, Senator Thorpe, she describes everything she doesn't like as racism,' she said.

'When projects like the one out of UTS solicit complaints of racism from arguably the most privileged Indigenous people you could find - because of all the advantages that are provided to us in our role as senators - we devalue the difficult experience of Indigenous people who are experiencing serious disadvantage.'

WHAT IS THE QANTAS CHAIRMAN'S LOUNGE? The Qantas Chairmans Lounge is one of the most exclusive airport club's in the world and has been described by Travel.com as the 'ultimate status symbol and an acknowledgement of power and prestige'. HOW DO YOU GET IN? You can't. There is no membership application and no amount of money or fame that qualifies you to join - even if you are a Qantas Platinum frequent flyer. The club is invite only and you must be among the nation's most elite. WHO HANGS OUT THERE? The exclusive lounge is filled with executives of major corporations, politicians, A-list celebrities, high-profile media figures, sporting stars, eminent names from science and the arts. WHERE ARE THEY LOCATED? Qantas Chairman's Lounges are found in Sydney, Brisbane, Perth, Canberra, Adelaide and Melbourne domestic terminals. The clubs do not have signage and are often hidden behind a secret door. Advertisement

Radio host Ben Fordham accused the senator of leaving out key details from her account of the incident and said she had 'thrown a hissy fit' - and it had nothing to do with race

Liberal Party Senator Amanda Stoker took aim at Ms Thorpe for recording the 'petty' incident in the anti-racism register

Senator Thorpe first aired the allegations on Monday but gave few details and did not return calls to Daily Mail Australia.

But on Tuesday, the senator went on ABC Radio National to reveal further details about how the situation escalated as she tried to check in last December.

'I lined up into the express lane to board the plane and I was standing there for seven minutes and was completely ignored,' she said.

'I jumped over to the general line and then watched others being served in the express lane while I stood in the the regular line.'

She claimed she was then told her handbag was too heavy to take on board as carry on luggage and she would need to leave something behind.

Senator Lidia Thorpe claimed she'd been racially targeted when she tried to check in, and used the incident as the first case in the new Call It Out anti-racism register

Senator Lidia Thorpe went on ABC Radio National to reveal more about how the situation escalated as she tried to check in for a Virgin flight last December

'I said, 'Well, I don't know what to do because I can't leave anything behind'. And they proceeded to call security on me,' she said.

'I've never had security called on me in my whole life.

'When I saw security coming at me, I just grabbed my bags and walked away. I couldn't get on any plane and had to wait to contact my staff and get on a Qantas flight.'

She added: 'I just don't think this would have happened to a white woman.

'It happened to me because I believe I was racially profiled given that the express lane was still taking non-black people very quickly and very easily.'

But Fordham accused the senator of missing out key details from her account of the incident and slammed: ''You are kidding yourself, Senator Thorpe, seriously.

Senator Lidia Thorpe claimed she was then told her handbag was too heavy to take on board as carry on luggage and she would need to leave something behind

Senator Lidia Thorpe claimed Canberra Airport staff called security on her and said she had been racially profiled during the incident

'This happens all the time at airports,' Fordham said. 'It's got nothing to do with being an Indigenous person, or being racially profiled.

'I'm guessing you blew up. You thought the rules were different for you. And that's why they called security. Am I wrong? Or am I right?

'I'm guessing you had a hissy fit. You refuse to accept the umpire's decision. They make those decisions based on safety and what's safe to be happening on an aeroplane.'

Canberra Airport told Daily Mail Australia they received a letter on Monday from senator Thorpe about the alleged December incident.

'We have reached out to her to arrange a time to meet,' an airport spokesman added. Daily Mail Australia has also contacted Virgin Australia for comment.

The incident was revealed as Senator Thorpe used it as the first case to be recorded in the new Call It Out directory which aims to chronicle racial discrimination against Indigenous Australians.

It's the brainchild of lawyer George Newhouse of the National Justice Project and Professor Larissa Behrendt at Sydney's University of Technology.

The senator's check in clash has been recorded as the first case in a new directory of racial discrimination against First Nations people in Australia

It's based on similar directories by activists which catalogue homophobic attacks and incidents against Muslims and Jews.

Mr Newhouse stressed the incidents would all be vetted 'by academics' before being included in the new registry.

'They'll be monitored and they're not public,' he told Daily Mail Australia.

'It's not just going to be an online public display of incidents.

'It will be a flag on the map and it will insert data in the report, but there will be no names or identifiers.

'The data will be used to drive change and to highlight the problems First Nations people are facing across the nation.

'Hopefully it will identify hotspots and issues that they are addressing and will be an extremely useful tool for driving societal change and stamping out racism against First Nations people.'
The foster father of William Tyrrell (above) faces a possible two years in prison if found guilty of allegedly lying to the NSW Crime Commission last year

William Tyrrell's foster father faces a potential two years in prison if he is found guilty on two charges of allegedly lying to the state's secretive top crime fighting body.

The 55-year-old has engaged lawyer Carly Hydes, ranked among the top rising stars in NSW criminal law two years ago, who has insisted on a full two-day hearing to defend him.

Two days is considered very lengthy for a local court matter, but Ms Hydes convinced a cautious Magistrate Miranda Moody on Tuesday to set down the foster father's trial over two consecutive days later this year.

Giving false or misleading information to a public authority is an offence which carries a maximum penalty of two years in prison.

Unsolved homicide team detectives charged William's foster father in January with two counts of the offence after he allegedly gave false and misleading information while testifying last November in a closed hearing at the NSW Crime Commission's Surry Hills headquarters in inner city Sydney.

The details of what exactly is the evidence provided to the NSWCC by the foster father or the nature of the hearing at which he was required to testify have not been publicly disclosed.

The man and his wife, 57, fostered William Tyrrell from March 2012 until the three-year-old's disappearance from the house of his foster grandmother on the NSW Mid North Coast town of Kendall in September 2014.

The couple has been described by friend, 2GB radio broadcaster Chris Smith, as 'professional people from a comfortable part of Sydney'.

Both husband and wife, who gave evidence at the William Tyrrell coronial inquest, have since been charged with common assault against a child who is not William, and have pleaded not guilty.

William Tyrrell's foster father has hired top criminal lawyer Carly Hydes (above) to defend him on alleged lying charges which carry a potential penalty of two years in prison

William's 55-year-old foster father (above) faces a possible two years in prison if found guilty of allegedly making two false and misleading statements to a secret Crime Commission hearing

The foster father has entered pleas of not guilty to both charges of giving false or misleading information that will be heard at the Downing Centre on October 12 and 13.

In relation to the charges, a police officer in the William Tyrrell investigative team Strike Force Rosann has alleged the missing toddler's foster father has been caught out 'lying about something we can prove.'

Carly Hydes told Downing Centre Local Court on Tuesday that more time than usual was needed to hear the charges because of the 'enormous amount of material' including the accused's police electronically recorded interview and 'further electronic material' to be played in court.

A surprised Magistrate Moody questioned Ms Hydes, saying 'Two days? Two days is a lot of time to ask for and we are very, very tight in the (court) diary.

Carly Hydes (right, with legal firm partner Lauren MacDougall) was ranked a NSW criminal law 'rising star' in 2020 and will defend William Tyrrell's foster father on two serious charges

'That does not look a two day matter to me.

'Sergeant, do you agree with that?,' the Magistrate asked the police prosecutor, 'How many witnesses are there for the defence?'

Ms Hydes said her client had a 'long audio' interview with police and further material was still being collected.

After conferring with the prosecutor, she returned to the court room and told Magistrate Moody the request for a two day hearing was 'maintained'.

Carly Hydes' previous clients include former Australian Idol host James Mathison, who escaped conviction after pleading guilty this month to not providing financial records over an outstanding $120,000 tax bill.

Court documents seen by Daily Mail Australia reveal William Tyrrell's foster father was charged by Detective Sergeant Andrew Lonergan and Detective Sergeant Trent Power from the Unsolved Homicide team, part of NSW Police State Crime Command.

Det Sgt Lonergan is a senior detective in the strike force investigating the disappearance of William Tyrrell in 2014.

The foster father testified for up to two hours after being secretly summonsed to appear at the NSWCC on November 11.

This was four days before NSW Police launched a surprise 'high intensity' search of bushland around 800m from the house where William had been staying with his foster parents when he vanished seven years ago.

Homicide Det Sgt Andrew Lonergan (above, right, with Detective Mark Dukes, left, and paedophile Tony Jones, centre, at the Tyrrell inquest) charged the foster father

Detective Andrew Lonergan (above, centre, at the William Tyrrell dig in Kendall with body finder expert Prof. Jon Olley, right) charged the foster father with allegedly 'lying about something we can prove'

On the second day of the search for William's remains at a dig site in the NSW Mid North Coast town of Kendall, the boy's foster mother was declared a person of interest in his disappearance.

Then NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller said investigators were focusing 'one person in particular that we are looking closely at', adding he was confident Strike Force Rosann 'can solve' the mystery.

Detective Lonergan was one of several senior detectives who worked on the four week long dig at Kendall, which wound up on December 16.

The NSW Crime Commission hearing was held at its Surry Hills headquarters (above) where the foster father testified and, police allege, gave two false and misleading statements

Detective Sergeant Lonergan, second right, with Detective Sean Ogilvy, second left, and Professor Jon Olley, right, at the Kendall dig on the last day of the search for William's remains

Along with fellow senior strike force investigator Detective Senior Sergeant Mark Dukes, Lonergan escorted convicted paedophile Tony Jones when he gave evidence at the William Tyrrell inquest in 2020.

However, speaking on the condition of anonymity, a strike force officer told Nine newspapers 'that we can prove' he had made a false statement.

The NSW Crime Commission is the top intelligence agency which investigates organised and serious crime in the state, but is rarely written about.

Working closely with the NSW Police Force, the NSWCC works to combat drug trafficking, organised crime, tax evasion, and terrorism related offences.

Detectives Marks Dukes (left) and Andrew Lonergan (right) escort convicted paedophile Tony Jones (centre) to Taree Local Court to give evidence at the William Tyrrell coronial inquest

The officer from Strike Force Rosann, which was set up to investigate the 2014 disappearance of three-year-old William Tyrrell (above) said detectives could prove the foster father had lied

WHAT IS THE NSW CRIME COMMISSION? The NSW Crime Commission is the top intelligence agency which investigates and organised and serious crime in the state. Established in 1986, originally to combat drug trafficking, organised crime and tax evasion, it has more recently investigated terrorism related offences. The crime-fighting body which works closely with the NSW Police force itself has been the subject of a public inquiry and of allegations of covert operations, secrecy and an absence of defined accountability. The NSWCC came under the spotlight when its former assistant director Mark Standen was charged and found guilty of conspiring to import and supply 300kg of of the ice precursor drug, pseudoephedrine. Standen's conviction and maximum sentence of 22 years in prison sparked sweeping changes to the Commission's structure and handling of complaints, although a Special Commission of Inquiry found no evidence of misconduct or impropriety other than that of Standen. Advertisement

The case has been subject to strict suppression orders but these were varied earlier this month in the local court.

William's foster father and foster mother, - whose identities are suppressed for legal reasons - have indicated they may apply to have the matter heard under the Mental Health Act.

In February, William's foster mother was charged with another count of common assault of a child, which also does not relate to William, and her lawyer has indicated she will plead not guilty.

The Sydney couple fostered William after he was placed in the care of the then state minister for family and community services until he was 18 years old.

They drove William to Kendall on Friday, September 11, 2014 and he stayed overnight in his foster grandmother's house.

He was last seen wearing a SpiderMan suit and playing on the verandah of the house on the Saturday morning.

A widespread search for him in the surrounding area failed to find any trace of him.

Last November, NSW police revealed the foster mother was being treated as a person of interest in William's case.

A new search for William's remains at Kendall began at the same time and continued for four weeks.

Police, SES and rural fire workers along with detectives from Strike Force Rosann spent four weeks late last year digging up a section of forest less than a kilometre from the house where William vanished.

The foster mother denied any involvement in William's disappearance and no charges have ever been laid against any person.

William Tyrrell was fostered by the 55-year-old man (left) and his wife, 57 (right) at the time the toddler vanished, aged 3, from Kendall and has never been seen again

Combing bushland and digging with excavators, police searched along Batar Creek Road, Kendall for William's remains and scraps from the SpiderMan suit he was last wearing.

Police said William's foster mother was seen driving along the road on the morning the boy vanished.
The number of people in intensive care with Covid would need to quadruple before Australia resorted to re-imposing indoor mask mandates and other restrictions to combat the surging Omicron sub-variant, according to a top health expert.

Transmission of the virus has risen by 57 per cent nationally in the past week - up to 53,376 cases on Tuesday - driven by Omicron's more transmissible BA.2 sub-variant.

The spike is yet to be reflected in intensive care figures as there are only 97 Covid patients in intensive care, compared to 424 at the height of the first Omicron wave in January.

Infectious disease expert Peter Collignon told Daily Mail Australia that number of 97 would need to soar past 400 before the re-imposition of public health orders was warranted.

Prof. Collignon said 20 per cent of ICU beds being occupied by coronavirus patients could trigger new restrictions.

Recent figures show there are 2,183 intensive care beds available nationally, meaning 436 beds represented 20 per cent of ICU capacity.

A top health expert has urged officials not to reintroduce mask mandates unless the number of Covid patients in intensive care quadruples. Pictured are masked shoppers in the Brisbane CBD

'Lockdowns are a thing of the past but once that (20 per cent) figure is reached we can think about mask mandates and tightening density limits in pubs and restaurants,' Professor Collignon said.

'We're looking at potentially requiring people to sit down in venues - not widespread restrictions.

'If your ICUs are 20 per cent full with Covid patients, those rules will help flatten the curve of infections. The trigger has to be a hospital system that is overwhelmed by infections.'

Mask rules have largely been relaxed in Australia in recent months. They are no longer mandatory in most public indoor spaces in NSW, Victoria and Queensland.

Infectious disease expert Professor Peter Collignon told Daily Mail Australia Covid lockdowns should be a 'thing of the past'

His stance echoes that of Queensland Chief Health Officer Dr John Gerrard, who this week called for more restrictions only when Omicron posed 'an immediate threat' to the safety of the state's residents.

The Australian National University expert said heavy-handed restrictions such as stay-at-home orders would be futile given the virulence of Omicron strain.

'Places that have tried hard to stop it completely - Hong Kong, Singapore and Western Australia - have failed,' Professor Collignon said.

'Lockdowns are off the table in Australia now 95 per cent of the country is fully vaccinated.

The expert said it would likely take a week before the recent rise in cases was reflected in hospital and ICU admissions.

'If you know how many cases there are and what ages are involved, you can have a very good indication of how many people are going to be in hospital,' he said.

Mask rules have largely been relaxed in Australia in recent months and are no longer mandatory in most public indoor spaces in NSW, Victoria and Queensland. Pictured are masked passengers at Sydney Airport, where face coverings are still mandatory

Dr Gerrard on Tuesday said 58 per cent of the cases sequenced by Queensland's health officials in the past two weeks were identified as the BA.2 strain.

'It will be by far and away the dominant strain virus in Australia within weeks,' Dr Gerrard said.

The top doctor he said is not considering reintroducing any mandates, at least not yet.

'A legal restriction from the chief health officer is a very serious thing to undertake,' Dr Gerrard said.

Queensland's chief health officer John Gerrard (pictured) said state infections jumped by 15 per cent in the past week, with more than half the cases in the past fortnight identified as sub-variant BA.2

'I will only undertake that if it is clear there is an immediate threat to the safety of Queenslanders. But we do not plan to introduce any new public health measures to deal with this current BA.2 wave until we get a better sense of what it is like.'

Dr Gerrard said the spike had not been reflected in hospital wards and was not as bad as January's Omicron wave when infections doubled every two to three days.

There are 252 patients - including 19 school-aged children - in hospital and another nine people in intensive care.

The CHO said the BA.2 variant was 'dominant' in age groups from pre-school to 30s in Queensland.

'For most cases we all know it is a mild disease ...(but) we can see serious complications with COVID in children - it is not a myth - including some who have gone to ICU,' Dr Gerrard said.

Health Minister Yvette D'Ath, who is back to work after recovering from COVID-19, said the latest case numbers were a timely reminder for people to get vaccinated.

Mr Gerrard said more mandates are not being considered in Queensland despite the new Omicron sub-variant causing a spike in COVID-19 cases (pictured, people wear masks in Brisbane in January 2022)

The latest figures show 93.28 per cent of eligible Queenslanders have had one dose, while 91.49 per cent have had two.

But almost 40 per cent of Queenslanders due for boosters have not received them.

Another concern was the 5-11 age group's 43.15 per cent vaccination rate.

'I know we have been dealing with so many things in our community in recent times including the floods but please remember the virus is ... as dangerous as it has always been,' Ms D'Ath said.

Meanwhile, Mr Hinchliffe on Tuesday revealed he was the third state minister to contract the virus but only had mild symptoms.

'I am following the isolation rules, will be recovering and working from home,' he tweeted.
Project Veritas claimed Tuesday that the Department of Justice 'spied' on their employees' emails and used gag orders to cover it up during the investigation into the conservative group's purchase of Ashley Biden's diary before the 2020 election.

In court filings and a video narrated by Project Veritas' founder James O'Keefe, the group alleged that federal prosecutors from the Southern District of New York used 'secret warrants' to obtain Project Veritas employees' emails via Microsoft, the email service provider used by the organization.

A number of those subpoenas included gag orders, which prevented Microsoft from publicly saying they existed.

In a letter written Tuesday to Judge Analisa Torres, the group's lawyers suggest this was done behind her back - after Torres previously ruled that materials in the case needed to be handed over to a 'special master,' to determine if any of them could be withheld from investigators due to Project Veritas' claims of journalistic privilege.

Project Veritas, which has used sting operations to go after Democrats and left-leaning media organizations, says its employees are journalists and thus have First Amendment protections.

The homes of O'Keefe and two other former staffers were raided by the FBI in November - a move that raised eyebrows since Project Veritas identifies as a news outlet and there are DOJ policies and laws that prevent search warrants against reporters.

'Project Veritas has just obtained documents showing the SDNY was spying on Project Veritas journalists well before the FBI raided the homes of our journalists last November - secretly reading our emails, concealing that from the court in our case against the SDNY,' O'Keefe said in the video. 'This is a fundamental, intolerable abridgement of the First Amendment by the Department of Justice.'

In court filings and a video narrated by Project Veritas' founder James O'Keefe (pictured), the group alleged that federal prosecutors from the Southern District of New York used 'secret warrants' to obtain Project Veritas employees' emails via Microsoft

O'Keefe said the evidence was found in legal documents from Microsoft obtained by Project Veritas - and show that the government wanted emails starting in January 2020, which was eight months before the group even knew about the diary.

He said the group is also filing a motion demanding that the federal government disclose if it asked any other entity for Project Veritas' documents.

O'Keefe also called the DOJ probe into Ashley Biden's diary an 'unprecedented investigation.'

'As far as we know, federal law enforcement has never before investigated an abandoned diary,' O'Keefe said in the video.

The latest legal maneuvering comes after The New York Times reported Sunday more details about Project Veritas' alleged efforts to obtain and authenticate Biden's diary - including that it was shown and shopped around a Trump fundraiser before being purchased by Project Veritas for $40,000.

The Times reported that Biden received a call from a man working for Project Veritas saying he found a diary and thought it belonged to her. He allegedly didn't tell Biden he was affiliated with the conservative group.

But according to the Times the call was meant to trick Biden into confirming that her diary was real.

It could complicate Project Veritas' legal case, as the group has wanted to be classified as a publisher, and thus have journalistic First Amendment protections.

But using deception - as the caller did when he used a fake name - is not typical journalist behavior.

In a statement to DailyMail.com, Project Veritas' press secretary R.C. Maxwell said, 'As is typical, the New York Times misses the real story by years much as they did with a certain laptop.'

'Similarly, the Times has long accused Project Veritas of engaging in a "coordinated disinformation campaign" while now admitting Veritas' reporting confirmed Ashley Biden's diary was real and Veritas' activities surrounding the diary were all employed "to authenticate the diary,"' Maxwell said.

Ashley Biden's (right) diary was shown and shopped around a Trump fundraiser before it was purchased by Project Veritas for $40,000 in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election

The head of Project Veritas, James O'Keefe, was pulled out of his apartment wearing just underwear and handcuffs during an early morning raid in November

In court filings, prosecutors suggested Project Veritas was complicit in the theft of some of Biden's other belongings, which interviews with the Times show the group obtained to confirm the diary was Biden's.

After going to rehab in Florida in 2019, Biden moved into a two-bedroom house rented by a friend in Delray Beach, Florida, staying there while her father competed in the Democratic primaries in the spring of 2020.

But in June, for the final months of the campaign, Ashley Biden relocated back to the Philadelphia area, leaving some of her belongings at the house, with plans to move back in the fall before the lease expired in November.

Her roommate allowed an ex-girlfriend named Aimee Harris and her two children to move in according to previous reporting by the Times.

Harris was reportedly going through a bitter custody battle and struggling financially.

Her 'social media postings and conversations with friends suggested that she was a fan of Mr. Trump,' a Times report from December said.

Ashley Biden (right) at age six is seen with her father, now President Joe Biden, when the then-senator was running for president the first time in August 1987

Ashley Biden (right) sits with her parents Jill Biden (left) and Joe Biden (center) at the Democratic National Convention in 2008, when Biden was then Sen. Barack Obama's running mate

Ashley Biden (left) walks alongside her father President Joe Biden (right) as they leave church in November in Wilmington, Delaware

Ashley Biden is photographed arriving at a White House state dinner in October 2016

Harris soon found out that Ashley Biden had lived at the address previously and left some of her things at the home, according to the earlier Times report.

What happened next is the subject of the investigation.

Project Veritas told a federal judge that in September 2020 someone described as 'a tipster' called and left a voicemail, telling the conservative group that 'a new occupant moved into a place where Ashley Biden had previously been staying and found Ms. Biden's diary and other personal items.'

The 'diary is pretty crazy,' the message said. 'I think it's worth taking a look at,' the caller added.

Project Veritas confirmed that the group paid money for the diary.

They did it through an unnamed proxy from two people identified by their initials - A.H. and R.K.

The group said they purchased the diary lawfully.

The Times identified those individuals as Harris and Robert Kurlander.

Kurlander was a longtime friend and former housemate of Harris, who previously pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge in a drug-related money laundering scheme and was sentenced to 40 months in prison.

Robert Kurlander tweeted at Trump and Donald Trump Jr. in October 2020, just weeks before election day, telling them that 'Ashley and Hunter are disasters'

Kurlander tweeted at Trump and Donald Trump Jr. in October 2020, just weeks before election day, asking 'where are Biden's two kids? Why aren't they campaigning like your 4 kids? Your great awesome kids. You can tell a lot about the family by the children !!!!!'

'Ashley and Hunter are disasters,' he continued. 'Reflection of the parents. Joe !!!'

He's continued to share pro-Trump tweets since.

The new Times report said that Kurlander contacted Elizabeth Fago, a Florida-based businesswoman, who was nominated by Trump in December 2020 to serve on the National Cancer Advisory Board.

It was Fago's daughter who called Project Veritas' tip line on September 3, 2020, The Times said.

According to the Times, three days later, Harris and Kurlander - who brought along the diary - attended a fundraiser at Fago's house in Jupiter, Florida.

The fundraiser was also attended by Donald Trump Jr.

The Times said it was unclear if Trump Jr. saw the diary at the party.

Mark Paoletta, a lawyer who worked for Vice President Mike Pence, who was doing some lobbying work for Project Veritas and its head James O'Keefe, told Republican lawmakers this fall that Trump Jr. found out about the diary at the fundraiser - but showed no interest in it and said whoever was in possession of it should report it to the FBI.

Paoletta later called back the group of Congressional Republicans to say that he wasn't sure his characterization of Trump Jr.'s reaction was accurate, The Times reported.

After the fundraiser, Project Veritas sought to acquire the diary, flying Harris and Kurlander to New York to meet with several of the group's operatives at a hotel on Manhattan's West Side.

No deal was struck during that trip, so Harris and Kurlander returned to Florida.

One of O'Keefe's top lieutenants, Spencer Meads, was sent to Florida to further investigate the diary.

In court filings, Project Veritas said its operatives obtained additional items that belonged to Ashley Biden that 'sources' said were 'abandoned.'

'The sources arranged to meet the Project Veritas journalist in Florida soon thereafter to give the journalist additional abandoned items,' Project Veritas' lawyers wrote.

In filings, prosecutors cast doubt on Project Veritas' actions being above-board.

'Put simply, even members of the news media "may not with impunity break and enter an office or dwelling to gather news,"' prosecutors wrote.

Prosecutors challenged the group's 'repeated claim that they had "no involvement" in how the victim's property was "acquired."'

O'Keefe was pulled out of his apartment wearing just underwear and handcuffs during an early morning raid in November, two days after other Project Veritas employees had their homes raided by the FBI.

O'Keefe, according to court filings, told his team in an October 12, 2020 email that he decided not to publish a story about the diary.

'We have no doubt the document is real,' he said, but he added that it would be 'characterized as a cheap shot.'

Four days later, Project Veritas wrote to the then-Democratic nominee Joe Biden and his campaign to say they had obtained Ashley Biden's 'abandoned' diary and wanted to question the now-president on-camera.

Around the same time, Project Veritas finalized the deal to buy the diary from Harris and Kurlander for $40,000 - wiring them the money.

'Should we not hear from you by Tuesday, October 20, 2020, we will have no choice but to act unilaterally and reserve the right to disclose that you refused our offer to provide answers to the questions raised by your daughter,' Project Veritas' chief legal officer Jered T. Ede wrote.

Biden's lawyers responded by calling the ask an 'extortionate effort to secure an interview.'

They refused to acknowledge whether the diary belonged to Ashley Biden, but told Ede it should be regarded as stolen property and called it 'ludicrous' that it was abandoned.

The lawyers said 'serious crimes' might have been committed.

Biden's lawyer Roberta Kaplan told Ede, according to The Times, 'This is insane; we should send to SDNY.'

Biden's lawyers did alert prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, which is now in charge of the probe.

During the back-and-forth, on October 24, the conservative site National File published excerpts of the diary, and later the full thing.

The postings didn't get a lot of attention.

The site said it obtained the diary from someone at another organization that refused to publish it.

O'Keefe was reportedly furious, The Times said, and some people at Project Veritas believed someone leaked it from within their organization.

In a court filing last year, O'Keefe's lawyer said Project Veritas arranged for Ashley Biden's possessions to be delivered to a police station in Florida in early November 2020, near the Delray Beach property.

Lawyer Adam Leo Bantner (pictured) was captured in bodycam footage dropping off bags of possessions that belonged to Ashley Biden in November 2020 to the Delray Beach Police Department

'Project Veritas gave the diary to law enforcement to ensure it could be returned to its rightful owner,' O'Keefe said in a statement in November.

A Florida lawyer named Adam Leo Bantner dropped off the bags the day after Biden was declared the winner of the presidential election.

Citing the police report and bodycam footage, The Times said Bantner told officers that his client told him that the property was 'possibly stolen' and he 'got it from an unknown person at a hotel.'

Bantner describes the bags as 'crap' to an officer, who then responds he's going to throw the bags in the garbage because there was no 'information' or 'proof of evidence.'

'Like I said, Im fine with it,' Bantner replied.

The police report said that officers determined the items in the bags belonged to Ashley Biden, alerting both the Secret Service and the FBI, which collected them.
Kamala Harris's office kicked up a fuss over a Vogue cover that pictured the vice president in sneakers before being told to back down by President Biden's office who said concerns over the cover were 'first world problems,' according to a new book.

In the weeks before Inauguration Day, Harris was to be featured on an issue of Vogue, but the vice president was reportedly caught off-guard when a leaked image of the cover depicted her most casual look from the photo shoot, donning black converse and black skinny pants.

The photo, as the Vogue reporters, wrote, portrayed 'an approachable but less than grand depiction of the incoming vice president.'

Harris had been expecting a more stately-looking photo to make the cover, where she wore a powder blue suit with her arms crossed in front of her. 'Harris was wounded. She felt belittled by the magazine, asking aides: Would Vogue depict another world leader this way?' New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns write in their forthcoming book, 'This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America's Future.'

Still, it had been Harris' staff that picked out her outfits, not the in-house team at Vogue.

Harris' debut on Vogue sparked outrage across the internet, with some accusing the magazine of 'lightening' the vice president's skin and other accusing Vogue of 'lazy' editing.

Harris' incoming press secretary Symone Sanders took the matter straight to Anna Wintour, Vogue's illustrious editor-in-chief. Wintour pushed back, admitting that she'd chosen the cover herself because she thought it made Harris look 'relatable,' according to excerpts from the book provided to Politico.

In the weeks before Inauguration Day, Harris was to be featured on an issue of Vogue, but the vice president was reportedly caught off-guard when a leaked image of the cover depicted her most casual look from the photo shoot

'Disrespectful': Vogue released two covers, one for the print issue, and one digital alternative (pictured), which is the image that Harris, 56, and her team had approved

A source in the vice president's office told DailyMail.com that Harris had specifically requested the blue suit photo and only learned that the Converse photo was being used on the cover after it leaked online. However, a Vogue insider denied that Harris' team ever requested photo or cover approval, and insisted that a specific cover shot had not been agreed upon.

Incoming chief of staff Tina Fluornoy got in touch with a senior Biden campaign official. But Biden was in the midst of a major policy upheaval at the onset of his administration, not to mention the nation was focused on the recent Jan. 6 attack and the Covid-19 pandemic.

'[T]he Biden adviser told Flournoy that this was not the time to be going to war with over a comparatively trivial aesthetic issue. Tina, the adviser said, these are first-world problems,' according to the excerpt.

The Vogue cover was just the first of many disagreements to come between the offices of the president and vice president.

'Some of Harris's advisers believed the president's almost entirely white inner circle did not show the vice president the respect she deserved,' Martin and Burns write. 'Harris worried that Biden's staff looked down on her; she fixated on real and perceived snubs in ways the West Wing found tedious.'

Harris even sent out Fluornoy to scold Biden's staffers for not standing up when she entered the room, the way they do for the president. 'The vice president took it as a sign of disrespect,' according to the book. Fluornoy reached out to Biden adviser Anita Dunn.

Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour admitted that she'd chosen the cover herself because she thought it made Harris look 'relatable'

In comments to Politico, Dunn did not confirm or deny the conversation. She said she wasn't 'going to comment except to say that everyone in the West Wing has a high degree of respect for the Vice President and the hard work she is doing for this President and our country. Particularly me.'

Harris also reportedly asked for a softball foreign policy assignment, one that would prove an easy win and establish her credentials on the world stage. Instead, she was nicknamed 'border czar' and assigned the politically fraught Northern Triangle countries.

Staff floated the possibility of the vice president overseeing relations with the Nordic countries  a low-risk diplomatic assignment that might have helped Harris get adjusted to the international stage in welcoming venues like Oslo and Copenhagen,' the authors write.

'White House aides rejected the idea and privately mocked it. More irritating to Biden aides was when they learned the vice president wanted to plan a major speech to outline her view of foreign policy. Biden aides vetoed the idea.'

Biden then tasked Harris with handling immigration and its 'root causes' in the Northern Triangle countries of Latin America. Harris was displeased, noting that Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala had been in Biden's portfolio as vice president. Given outcries over a surge in migration, Harris aides saw the assignment as politically undesirable.

Harris led a campaign of publicly emphasized she was assigned to the 'root causes,' and not in charge of the cramped, overcrowded facilities at the border. She hissed at the 'border czar' label and 'did not hesitate to chide Biden for characterizing her assignment in those terms.'

Then amid leaked reports of chaos, toxicity and dysfunction in the VP's office, Biden himself called in his staff and threatened to fire anyone who went to the press with damaging information.

Gripes among Harris staffers were that they had been handed an 'impossible' portfolio.

The president has on multiple occasions been accused of punting critical but over-broad tasks to his deputy, notably including solving the southwestern border crisis, voting rights, leading a pro-union task force and chairing the National Space Council.

But Biden communications director Kate Bedingfield privately blamed Harris herself for failing to meet the bar set for her, according to the book.

'In private, Bedingfeld had taken to noting that the vice presidency was not the first time in Harriss political career that she had fallen short of sky-high expectations: Her Senate office had been messy and her presidential campaign had been a fiasco,' the journalists write.

'Perhaps, she suggested, the problem was not the vice presidents staff.'

The Biden aide criticized the reporting in a statement to Politico: 'The fact that no one working on this book bothered to call to fact check this unattributed claim tells you what you need to know. Vice President Harris is a force in this administration and I have the utmost respect for the work she does every day to move the country forward.'

The president reportedly hauled staffers into the Oval Office in after a story emerged in the outlet in June painting Harris' office as an 'abusive environment.'

Biden warned senior staff that if 'he found that any of them was stirring up negative stories about the vice president' then 'they would quickly be former staff.'

The book describes the pair's relationship as 'friendly but not close.'

New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns even quote Biden's communications director as blaming Harris herself for the dysfunction

'Their weekly lunches lacked a real depth of personal and political intimacy,' the authors wrote -- a notable departure from the president's characteristic warmth.

Harris lost her tenth staffer since June on Monday with the departure of national security adviser Nancy McEldowney.

It comes after news broke last week of Harris' deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh's departure from the administration.

During her years as a freshman senator from California, Harris had been lauded for her prosecutorial skills that were on display during Congressional hearings.

In that first term Harris cast herself into the 2020 presidential race. Initial enthusiasm surrounding her candidacy quickly fizzled out amid a crowded Democratic primary field, and she dropped out in December 2019 citing a lack of funds.

And once Biden took office, Harris' trailblazing status as the first black, Asian and female vice president was quickly overshadowed by both her and the president's low poll numbers and a number of public gaffes.

During her trip to Guatemala in June, Harris invoked outrage among immigration activists when she told people there during a speech, 'Do not come' to the US.
Workers are blaming skyrocketing fuel prices for not wanting to return to the office even after work-from-home Covid restrictions have ended.

A recent survey by the Finance Sector Union (FSU) found 75 per cent of members didn't want to return to work at an office because of added financial pressure.

CommSec chief economist Craig Jones found motorists are paying an extra $35 per tank for fuel compared with 12 months ago when fuel prices averaged $1.40 per litre, News.com.au reported.

A recent survey by the Finance Sector Union found 75 per cent of members didn't want to return to work because of added financial pressure, including commuting and childcare costs

In March the fuel price reached an average of $2.20 per litre and some experts predict it to rise to $2.50 per litre, with workers expected to shoulder the burden of increased commuting costs.

Other workers noted they had also saved money on childcare by working from home.

'Our employers have achieved extraordinary financial results off the back of allowing flexibility. Why fix something that is not broken?' a worker said in the FSU survey.

Another worker said working from home saved them at least $5,000 per year and also 'freed up about 15 days per year'.

The FSU also noted average wages had only increased 2.3 per cent while consumer prices had gone up 3.5 per cent.

Office workers began returning to Sydney's CBD on March 6 following lockdowns caused by the Omicron outbreak

The survey found 69 per cent of workers were concerned about Covid, 60 per cent about their physical and mental health, and 57 per cent about the disruption to caring and family responsibilities as their main reasons for not wanting to return to office work

However workers weren't just worried about the financial implications of returning to the office.

The survey found 69 per cent of workers were concerned about catching Covid and 60 per cent were worried about the physical and mental health implications of returning to the office.

Another 57 per cent also listed a disruption to caring and family responsibilities as their main reason for not wanting to return to work.

'I will lose out in spending bedtime with my son as he is normally asleep when I reach home,' one worker said.

'Being able to take my children to school and pick them up without having to put them in before and after-school care  better for them, nicer for me and reduces our cost of care,' another said.

FSU has written to over 50 banks, insurance companies, and super funds to ask for employees to have more options around their return to the office

Julia Angrisano, the national secretary at the FSU, said employers should be considering the needs of their workers before imposing harsh office rules.

'Finance sector workers are telling us that the option to work from home is very important to them,' she said.

'It enables them to spend more time with their family, save money by not commuting and most importantly, protect themselves from contracting Covid-19 at work.

'Having endured the enormous pressures of working through the pandemic, staff deserve better.'

Covid cases have spiked once again with NSW recording an average of 20,000 new cases daily last week and Victoria 9,000.

'The pandemic is not over, and I can't believe we're being told to go back to the office when there are still tens of thousands of new cases or more per day,' a worker wrote.

FSU has written to over 50 banks, insurance companies, and super funds to ask for employees to have more options around their return to the office.

National Australia Bank has asked its staff to work in the office three days a week and ANZ told employees they are expected to be in the office two to three days a week, with expectations differing dependent on a worker's role.

The Commonwealth Bank and Westpac have also invited their staff to return to the office this month.




Security around the new residence of former President Park Geun-hye was strengthened Wednesday as supporters prepared to welcome her on the eve of her arrival.







Park has been staying in a hospital in Seoul for treatment even after she was set free following a presidential pardon in December. She plans to leave the hospital Thursday and move into the residence in the city, 302 kilometers southeast of Seoul.







Local police and the Presidential Security Service were busy preparing for Park's arrival, setting up a security perimeter around the residence in Dalseong County in southwestern Daegu. A traffic control gate was newly placed 10 meters away from the entrance of the home.







The number of security personnel around her home was also increased to around 10 compared to the previous one or two until Tuesday. Three police buses and two patrol cars were also mobilized near the home.







Dozens of well-wishing flower wreaths lined the street leading to Park's home.







Around 10 apparently conservative-leaning YouTube channel operators were also seen filming around the residence.







"I came here today expecting tomorrow to be too chaotic to come," a 60-something local Park supporter said. "I tear up whenever I think about the troubles former President Park went through. I hope she can now rest comfortably in her hometown," the person added. (Yonhap)


One day in 1964, a performance artist by the name of Dorothy Podber strode into Andy Warhols New York studio and demonstrated why she deserved her wild child reputation.

Dressed in black motorcycle leathers and accompanied by her Great Dane, Carmen Miranda, Podber spotted a stack of four large, striking artworks of Marilyn Monroe propped against a wall and asked if she could shoot them.

Warhol, assuming she intended to photograph the pictures, gave his assent.

Podber removed her gloves, drew a small pistol from her handbag and aimed briefly at the artist before turning the pistol towards the screen prints and opening fire, shooting a hole through Marilyns forehead, right between the eyes.

She put her pistol back, pulled on her gloves and left, recalled a Warhol acolyte professionally known as Ultra Violet (Isabelle Dufresne) who was present that day.

This stylish event was regarded as an art happening.

Now, nearly 60 years on, the portraits that came to be known as the Shot Marilyns may yet again provide an explosive happening as one of them, Shot Sage Blue Marilyn, goes under the hammer at Christies.

'Shot Sage Blue Marilyn' is a 1964 Andy Warhol silkscreen of Marilyn Monroe, due be auctioned in May

The auction house has announced that the 40-inch square silkscreen image of the actress, created by printing ink onto a screen over stencils  will have an estimate of $200million (151million) when it goes on sale in New York in May.

If it reaches that, it will be a record price tag for any 20thcentury artwork sold at auction.

The image is instantly recognisable  a pop art rendition of a photo of Monroe from the 1953 film Niagara. Warhol made the work in five colour variations.

The lot in question renders the star in striking bright blue eyeshadow, with acid yellow hair, red lips and vibrant pink skin against a vivid blue-green background.

And far from ruining its value, that bullet hole  which went through all but one of the silkscreens (which was not in the stack) and is still faintly visible, despite Warhols best efforts to cover it up with light, make-up-style paint  has added many millions to the price.

High-end auction houses are dab hands at hyperbole, and Christies has described the Shot Sage Blue Marilyn as one of the rarest and most transcendent images in existence, on a par with Botticellis Birth of Venus and Leonardos Mona Lisa.

The auctioneers are clearly confident, too, that it will smash Warhols current auction record of 65.5million set nine years ago for his Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster) as well as the current record for a 20th-century artwork, held by Picassos Les Femmes dAlger Version O, which sold in 2015 for 102million.

Andy Warhol stands in front of his double portrait of the Hollywood film star Marilyn Monroe at the Tate Gallery

Astonishingly, even though Warhol was famous for mass-producing his art with commercial printing techniques, experts say Christies will have no trouble reaching or exceeding the estimate.

The Shot Marilyns are the gold standard of Warhols work  the blue eyeshadow, the gold hair, the parted lips. Theyre so iconic, says Warhol scholar Professor Jean Wainwright.

Its a really special piece because it was damaged in a very Warholian incident. Warhol  who was himself shot and badly injured by radical feminist writer Valerie Solana just four years after Podber holed his Marilyns  created about 8,000 paintings and sculptures between 1952 and his death in 1987.

He was obsessed with cultural icons and also painted Liz Taylor, Jackie Kennedy, Elvis Presley and the Queen, though he was often heard saying that all his subjects were the same in his eyes.

But buyers clearly dont agree, as his Marilyns have consistently been his most cherished works  and while it was never officially corroborated, hedge fund billionaire Kenneth Griffin is rumoured to have privately paid the estate of Conde Nast publishing magnate S.I. Newhouse more than 150million for the orange version in the Shot Marilyn series in 2017.

And for these mind-boggling prices the art market not only has pistol-packing Dorothy Podber to thank, but also Warhols practice of churning out his pictures in a production line so cynically detached from him that they were sometimes printed and even signed by his staff.

The Shot Marilyns, then, have a guaranteed authenticity rare in Warhols output. Only two years after his death, Shot Red Marilyn sold at Christies for a then record 3million.

American artist Andy Warhol (1928-1987) pictured in 1981 sitting in a red velvet chair

Peter Brant, a businessman friend of Warhol, was only 20 when he snapped up the blue version for less than 4,000 in 1967.

If that sounds cheap, Brant, who still owns the work, has pointed out that back then, it was more than the cost of a luxury Cadillac car.

Obsessed as he was with fame and celebrity, Warhol found a natural subject in Monroe, although he started painting her only after her suicide in 1962.

He started with a series of small Marilyn pictures in different colour palettes, which he dubbed flavours such as mint and lemon. The Shot Marilyns were to be much larger.

Warhol was reportedly horrified by Dorothy Podbers gun stunt, told his underlings she was too scary and demanded they never let her in again.

If he had known what shed do for their value, he might have been more grateful, given his healthy respect for money.

He once said that being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art.

However, he came to resent that he had to share the fame for the Shot Marilyns with Podber, who was even more of an exhibitionist than him.

Born in the Bronx, New York, after surviving her mothers attempt to abort her by throwing herself down some subway stairs, Podber was a troublemaker from her schooldays, when she would organise mass walkouts of pupils.

A self-styled witch, she was once jailed for running an illegal abortion business out of her flat, before  with the emergence of an avant-garde scene in the late 1950s  she realised she could continue to cause mayhem but now call it art.

She organised existential happenings with fellow performance artist Ray Johnson, such as inviting themselves into peoples homes and then re-enacting the shower scene from the Hitchcock horror film Psycho.

Another prank was to show prospective tenants around a supposedly empty Manhattan apartment, then burst out at them from cupboards.

She had three husbands and many lovers, including a banker with whom she would have sex only while lying on a banknote-strewn floor of his vault.

However, she was often low on funds and would resort to such unorthodox methods of raising them as running a cleaning service for doctors offices, which was primarily a way of stealing the keys to their medical cabinets, the contents of which she would then sell.

Ive been bad all my life. Playing dirty tricks on people is my speciality, she said shortly before her death aged 75 in 2008.

Certainly, the art world will be watching what happens to Shot Sage Blue Marilyn with intense interest.

After all, Warhols art is auctioned so regularly  on average about 200 works a year  that he is considered something of a bellwether for the entire art market. But not every piece sold is quite so special.

As the sums changing hands become ever more mind-boggling, usually making very rich people even richer, the sale of Shot Sage Blue Marilyn at least offers some consolation, as it wont be lining another billionaires pockets.

The painting is owned by a foundation created by the Zurich art dealer Doris Ammann and her brother Thomas, a dealer who helped to catalogue Warhols work after his death.

Both are now dead, and all proceeds from the sale are going to international health and educational programmes for children.

As to where the work will hang, who knows where it could end up  but perhaps the bank vault where Dorothy Podber liked to spend her evenings would be the safest place.

Why, for once, it's actually worth the crazy price tag

By Richard Polsky for the Daily Mail

When a painting sells for a vast sum, it is hard to separate the headlines from its value as a work of art.

Certainly, 151million  the sum Shot Sage Blue Marilyn is predicted to fetch  is eye-watering, but a surprising number of people can afford it.

Are they just buying into hype and marketing, though? In this case, no. It is a truly great painting.

All the Shot Marilyns are beautiful but Shot Sage Blue Marilyn is the most beautiful of all. Although quite modest in size, it has wall power  it exudes energy and pulls you in like a magnet.

Part of that power lies in the colours Warhol used. His genius for juxtaposing bright colours is what makes the painting so arresting.

With Roy Lichtenstein, he founded the Pop-Art movement, which used vibrant colours rather than realistic ones; hence Marilyns bubblegum-pink skin.

There is also poignancy to it. Blue can be viewed as sad, or wonderful  like a summer sky. Marilyns death in 1962, aged 36, was a tragedy but here he dwells on the wonderful.

Her yellow hair looks almost stuck on, and the blue eyeshadow, red lips and that pink skin give the painting an artificial quality, perhaps reflecting the fact that Marilyn epitomised the illusion of the movies.

Hollywood had taken the young brunette Norma Jeane Mortenson and confected her into Marilyn Monroe, an exaggerated, artificial version of herself with platinum hair.

The painting emphasises both her beauty and the artifice. So it is powerful in its own right and iconic because of the mystique of Marilyn.

Warhols process was also unique. He printed the image on a silk screen, before pressing paint over stencils through the silk and onto the painting.

All great art persuades you to see the world differently, and thats what this work does.

The Shot Marilyns have survived the test of time. Whoever buys this one will get a piece of history and timeless beauty.

Like Marilyn, it has become an icon in its own right.
Countries around the world are queuing up to sign trade deals with Britain, Anne-Marie Trevelyan declares today as she kickstarts negotiations with Canada.

The Trade Secretary will fly to Ottawa to launch formal talks on a chunky new agreement to replace arrangements carried over from our membership of the EU.

In an interview with the Daily Mail, she reveals plans to sign a deal with Israel by the end of this year.

International Trade Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan, pictured, is planning to fly to Ottawa to open negotiations on a new trade deal with the Canadian government

As well as security a trade with with Candian PM Justin Trudeau's government, Number 10 wants to target deals with the US, Mexico and India - as well as deals with the Trans-Pacific Partnership

It will be the fourth from scratch post-Brexit trade agreement, following successful negotiations with Australia, New Zealand and Singapore.

Key targets now are the U.S., Mexico and India, as well as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), which is a bloc of 11 Pacific nations, and the Gulf Cooperation Council comprising Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

People are queuing up wanting to do trade deals with us, which I find very encouraging, Mrs Trevelyan said last night.

We do ourselves down, the rest of the world thinks the UK is amazing and they want to work with a trusted partner.

The minister, whose ancestors moved from the Isle of Mull in Scotland to Canada where her father was born, will wear a suit she has made herself from her familys ancient hunting tartan.

It'll just be lovely to be the person who moves us into that next stage, she said.

Mrs Trevelyan, who has nicknamed the new deal Canada 2.0, said the continuity trade agreement rolled over from Britains member of the EU was quite old fashioned and not really very digital trade focused.

This is an opportunity to take it to a much, much higher level, she added. Looking at things like digital trade, which is such an important area.

By removing red tape, Mrs Trevelyan said the agreement would help strip away costs for the consumer and strip away cost and effort for business.

British officials believe thousands of smaller firms will be encouraged to start trading with Canada if barriers can be removed, such as by simplifying paperwork

Mrs Trevelyan said the new agreement would open access for British firms to Canadian government procurement contracts, which will be really big business for some of our really important construction and industrial service partners.

There'll be some really chunky stuff in there to discuss, which will be good and they're really up for it, she continued.

That's why they're top of my pile because they've really leaned in and said we want to move to the next phase. So Ive said: OK youre on.

Mrs Trevelyan will meet Canadian trade minister Mary Ng. Trade between the two countries is already worth 19billion.

She heads to Canada following two days of talks with her U.S. counterparts. Yesterday she met U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo to finalise a deal on removing punitive tariffs on British steel and aluminium that have been in place since 2018.

In return, the UK will drop retaliatory tariffs on American brands such as Harley-Davidson.

The trade dispute has been a longstanding thorn in relations between the two allies.

Mrs Trevelyan believes formal negotiations on a U.S. trade deal may begin by the end of this year, with expectations they could be completed within 18 months.

The Daily Mail revealed yesterday she believes there has definitely been a change in approach from Joe Biden, who put talks on the backburner when he entered the White House.

After initially having no appetite for a deal, she said his administration has now leaned in.
Julian Assange will today marry his fiancee - the mother of two children he secretly fathered in the Ecuadorian embassy - in a ceremony inside Belmarsh Jail where his prison guard will take the pictures.

Mr Assange, 50, who is facing extradition to the United States on espionage charges, will wed Stella Moris, 38, in front of four guests and two witnesses this afternoon.

Dame Vivienne Westwood is designing Ms Moris's wedding dress and a kilt for Australian-born Assange, whose parents are of Scottish extraction. The limit on guests means that one of the WikiLeaks founder's guard will also have to act as the wedding snapper.

His fiancee Stella has spoken of her joy at being allowed to marry Assange despite restrictions being placed on their wedding, which must end by the time visiting hours are over.

She said: 'Obviously we are very excited, even though the circumstances are very restrictive. All the guests and witnesses must leave as soon as the ceremony is over, even though that will be before normal visiting time ends. Julian is looking forward to the wedding because it is finally happening, many months after we first made the request.'

Outside the prison his supporters will gather for an impromptu wedding reception not attended by the groom. But after the marriage Stella will come outside the south-east London prison and cut the cake. The throng have been asked to dress as if they were attending a wedding.

Julian Assange is going to tie the knot with Stella Moris - but there can only be four guests and a prison guard must take the snaps

Julian Assange, left, will marry his lawyer Stella Moris, right, later today in Belmarsh Prison

Assange and Ms Moris, have two children together, Max (left) and Gabriel (right) The couple will get married later today with four guests and two witnesses as well as two security guards

The ceremony will take place just weeks before the third anniversary of his dramatic arrest when he was dragged out of the Ecuadorian embassy in the capital.

Assange has been held in the high-security jail ever since as he fights extradition to the United States, where he is wanted 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.

A Prison Service spokesperson said: 'All weddings in prisons must meet the requirements outlined in the Prison Service policy.'

The service said photography for weddings in prisons is facilitated by prison staff, in line with 'established national policy on photographing prisoners', adding: 'The relevant policy makes clear the governor can block images being taken if it is believed they will be shared publicly, which can compromise prison security. Accordingly, photos will be taken by prison staff.'

The cost of the ceremony will be picked up by the couple, who have two young children.

Instead of sending gifts, it was suggested they donate to the new official Crowdfunder campaign, sponsor a park bench or similar in their area, and put up posters calling for Assange to be freed.

Assange is facing extradition to the United States after the Supreme Court rejected his appeal request a week ago.

The ruling means the WikiLeaks founder is running out of legal avenues to challenge his extradition.

The notorious case will now be formally sent to Home Secretary Priti Patel for approval.

A quarter of the wedding party will be maximum-security prison guards and one of the cameras recording the occasion will be part of the CCTV inside HMP Belmarsh in South London. This is the extraordinary secret wedding planned by the WikiLeaks publisher and his fiancee, lawyer Stella Moris, for March 23

A tearful Stella Moris, the mother of Assange's two secret children, speaks to the media and supporters at the High Court in London after the US' appeal against his extradition moved forward last August

Belmarshs Governor Jenny Louis is ordering the couples four guests and two witnesses out of the prison the minute the service is over

Julian Assange will NOT be held in a supermax jail if he's extradited, US assures UK Wikileaks founder Julian Assange will not be held in supermax prison conditions if he is allowed to be extradited to the United States, American officials have assured British authorities. American officials have made the compromise in the hopes of finally ending the lengthy battle to put Assange, 50, on trial for espionage charges in the United States, the Wall Street Journal reported last month. If Assange is convicted in an American court, U.S. officials have also said the Australian would be allowed to serve jail time in his home country, the outlet reported. The revelations were made in a court ruling provided by the U.K. Crown Prosecution Service obtained by the outlet. Assange has been in London's high-security Belmarsh Prison since he was arrested in April 2019 for skipping bail seven years earlier during a separate legal battle. He had spent seven years holed up inside Ecuador's London embassy, where he fled in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden to face allegations of rape and sexual assault. Sweden dropped the sex crimes investigations in November 2019 because so much time had elapsed. U.S. prosecutors have indicted Assange on 17 espionage charges and one charge of computer misuse over WikiLeaks publication of thousands of leaked military and diplomatic documents. The charges carry a maximum sentence of 175 years in prison. The prosecutors say Assange unlawfully helped U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning steal classified diplomatic cables and military files that WikiLeaks later published. Advertisement

But Mr Assanges lawyers suggested that they could still launch a last-ditch appeal on a new point of law.

The 50-year-old had asked the Supreme Court for permission to appeal a December High Court ruling that he could be extradited to America over an alleged conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information, following WikiLeaks publication of leaked documents relating to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

But the UKs highest court denied the request yesterday saying the application did not raise an arguable point of law.

Mr Assange secretly fathered two children with Miss Moris while he was in hiding at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.

He spent five years at the embassy in Knightsbridge where he claimed political asylum as he fought to avoid extradition to Sweden to face separate sexual assault allegations, which have since been discontinued.

Miss Moris, an expert in international law hired as part of Mr Assanges legal team to help fight his case against extradition, said she fell in love with him in 2014, and the couple are set to finally wed next week.

Ecuador revoked Mr Assanges asylum in April 2019 and he was arrested by police for violating a bail charge and dragged out of the embassy.

US authorities now want him extradited to face 18 charges in America, including 17 under the 1917 Espionage Act.

If convicted in the US, Mr Assange faces a possible penalty of up to 175 years in jail, his lawyers have said.

However the US government has said the sentence was more likely to be between four and six years.

In a long-running legal battle, a district judge at Westminster Magistrates Court initially blocked his extradition in January 2021 due to a real and oppressive risk of suicide.

But this decision was overturned at the High Court after US authorities provided assurances that Mr Assange would be spared highly restricted prison conditions.

Yesterday Mr Assanges solicitors Birnberg Peirce released a statement saying it was regrettable the Supreme Court would not consider the troubling circumstances by which governments requesting extradition can add terms to the extradition post-hearing.

However, his lawyers believe it may still be possible to appeal on another point of law: It will be recollected that Mr Assange succeeded in Westminster Magistrates Court on the issue subsequently appealed by the US to the High Court.

No appeal to the High Court has yet been filed by him in respect of the other important issues he raised previously in Westminster Magistrates Court. That separate process of appeal has, of course, has yet to be initiated.
Australians on the east coast have been warned to brace for a new rain bomb and the threat of more flooding.

The Bureau of Meteorology has warned a cold front will bring more rain and floods to Sydney, Wollongong, and the Northern Rivers region over the next seven days.

The BoM says the La Nina pattern that brought record rain and flooding to NSW over summer is far from over, with the wild weather expected to continue until at least May.

The Bureau of Meteorology has warned a cold front on Australia's east coast will bring more rain to Sydney, Wollongong, and the Northern Rivers region

A graph from Weatherzone shows the rain forecast for the next nine days in eastern Australia

'Everyone is acutely aware of the floods over the past couple of weeks, but we are really encouraging people not to be fatigued with it,' Bureau Meteorologist Jackson Brown said.

'Stay across the messaging, as we know La Nina will be around for at least another month.'

Senior Meteorologist Jonathan How told Nine the wet weather will spread from Wollongong to the Northern Rivers region - including flood-stricken Lismore.

'It is the news that no-one in NSW wants to hear right now... across eastern NSW, there's plenty of wet weather to come,' he said on Wednesday.

Rainy weather is set to continue for seven days from Wednesday along the central parts of Australia's east coast

Residents from Wollongong to Sydney and the Northern Rivers region have been told to brace for more wet weather and possible flooding

'We're set for another seven days of showers, rain and storms kicking off from today really anywhere north of Wollongong up towards Sydney and the Northern Rivers as well.

'We're expecting over the next seven days 50 to 100mm but isolated places could see 200mm fall from tomorrow and into the weekend.'

The BoM is predicting thunderstorms along the affected parts of the east coast.

A strong wind warning has been issued for the coast from Sydney to Eden on the South Coast.

A graph from Weatherzone shows the rain forecast for the next seven days in eastern Australia

Sydney's heaviest rain is set to fall on Friday with 25mm forecast.

The state's soggy summer has given away to a wet beginning to autumn, with Sydney recording 409mm of rain this month already, making it the fourth-wettest March on record.

A southerly change will hit on Wednesday afternoon with possibly severe thunderstorms north of Newcastle bringing heavy rain and damaging winds, possibly extending to the Mid-North Coast and southern parts of the Northern Rivers, where the worst of the recent flooding occurred.

Some areas around the Hunter region, mid-North Coast and up towards the Northern Rivers could see more than 200mm of rainfall.

Flood-devastated Lismore residents are forecast to receive over 20mm of rain Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

On February 28 Lismore locals underwent on emergency evacuation after a record-breaking 14.37m flood collapsed the town's weir

On February 28, Lismore locals underwent on emergency evacuation after a record-breaking 14.37m flood collapsed the town's weir.

This week, several Lismore residents carried a tip truck full of flood-damaged possessions to the Prime Minister's Sydney residence of Kirribilli House to mount a protest against the handling of the flood crisis.

The tip truck was blocked from driving to the official residence so protesters instead took their destroyed possessions to the front of the 1855 sandstone mansion.

The protest group said in a statement they were demonstrating against the federal government's response to the 'climate-fuelled mega-floods'.

A street in South Lismore in the Northern Rivers region shows the devastating damage caused by the town's recent flood

On Monday several Lismore residents carried a tip truck full of flood-damaged possessions to Kirribilli House after mounting a protest against the handling of the flood crisis

'Scott Morrison came to Lismore and refused to speak to us. He snuck in through the backdoor and had a curated experience,' demonstrator Kudra Ricketts, 24, said.

One protester said she had been trapped by floodwater in her roof cavity for six hours before she was finally rescued by a local on a jetski.

She lost her home and belongings to flood damage.

'We've interrupted our clean up and travelled more than 700km to the Prime Minister's residence to hold him to account,' she said.

Canberra and Melbourne are both forecast for cloudy weather and showers heading into the weekend

On Monday Mr Morrison announced a $1.8billion funding package to help the recovery of south-east Queensland.

He said he understood the frustrations of Lismore residents but added: 'I think the politicisation of natural disasters is very unfortunate.'

Last week an extra $742 million was announced for the joint Federal-NSW flood recovery fund, bringing the total federal and state packages for NSW to $1.7 billion.

Meanwhile, the NSW parliament has voted to establish an independent inquiry into the state and federal governments' response to the flood crisis.

The announcement follows the NSW government announcement just days ago that former police commissioner Mick Fuller will head an investigation into the causes of the floods and the emergency response.

The parliamentary inquiry will examine the preparedness of NSW to deal with major flooding events, while considering gaps in the emergency response that left inundated residents in the state's north to be rescued by private boats.

Darwin residents are also forecast for wet weather with storms set to continue into next week

Labor's North Coast spokesman Walt Secord said both the federal and NSW government responses failed, leaving nearly 1,500 people in emergency accommodation and 4,000 homes uninhabitable.

'Parliament needs to get to the bottom of what happened and the widely acknowledged lack of co-ordination in the immediate aftermath,' he said.

The rest of the country is also expected to see some miserable weather in coming days.

Canberra and Melbourne are both forecast for cloudy weather and showers heading into the weekend.

Darwin residents can expect storms that will continue into next week.

Brisbanites will soak up all the sun they can on Wednesday with Thursday, Friday, and Saturday expected to be cloudy with showers.
Labor senator Penny Wong is the most trusted politician in Australia according to a new poll, which was taken before she was accused of bullying her late colleague Kimberley Kitching.

The Roy Morgan survey of 1,409 Australians found Scott Morrison is the least trusted politician in the nation.

He was closely followed by Peter Dutton, Barnaby Joyce and Pauline Hanson in the 'distrust' rankings.

The poll is good news for Labor, with leader Anthony Albanese coming second behind Senator Wong in the trust ranking.

Frontbencher Tanya Plibersek, WA leader Mark McGowan and independent Tasmanian senator Jacqui Lambie followed with high trust ratings.

Senator Kristina Keneally - who along with Senator Wong has denied bullying Senator Kitching before her fatal heart attack on March 10 - did not feature in the rankings.

Roy Morgan said the top five reasons why Senator Wong was rated number one were because she is considered 'ethical, focussed on the needs of the electorate, fair, honest and transparent with no hidden agendas'.

Labor senator Penny Wong (pictured on Monday) is the most trusted politician in Australia, according to a new poll taken before she was accused of bullying Kimberley Kitching

The Roy Morgan survey of 1,409 Australians found Scott Morrison (pictured on Tuesday) is the least trusted politician in the nation

One respondent said of Senator Wong: 'Generally she stands for what she believes in, presents with honesty, even though I might not agree totally with her. She shows a degree of integrity.'

Another wrote: 'She has integrity, she is clear about what she stands for and she does what she thinks is right, without much regard for politics and impact to her career. She is open to new ideas and genuinely interested in debate.

'She is not two faced. She has genuinely improved Australia through her focus and dedication to doing good work. A rarity in this country.'

The poll was taken between February 28 and March 1. Thousands of Australians over 14 received text messages asking them to list which government leaders they trusted and distrusted and why.

Roy Morgan says its sample is representative across geography, gender and age and has been weighted to neutralise any potential bias.

The research group believes the results are bad for the Coalition because the party in power usually cops negative feedback.

But CEO Michele Levine said repeated blunders by Mr Morrison such as his holiday to Hawaii during fatal bushfires have damaged his standing.

Most and least trusted politicians Least trusted 1. Scott Morrison 2. Peter Dutton 3. Barnaby Joyce 4. Pauline Hanson 5. Craig Kelly 6. Dominic Perrottet 7. Angus Taylor 8. Michaelia Cash 9. Josh Frydenberg 10. Matthew Guy Most trusted 1. Penny Wong 2. Anthony Albanese 3. Tanya Plibersek 4. Mark McGowan 5. Jacqui Lambie 6. Adam Bandt Source: Roy Morgan poll of 1,409 Aussies over 14 Advertisement

The poll is good news for Labor, with leader Anthony Albanese (pictured with his son and partner Jodie) coming second behind Senator Wong in the trust ranking

Peter Dutton (pictured on Tuesday) came second in the distrust rankings which hammered the Government

'In 2019 when Scott Morrison won the ''unwinnable'' election more people believed the government was doing a good job and fewer people distrusted the government,' she said.

'But by June 2021 it all went into reverse - Black Summer bushfires, the end of JobKeeper, parliamentary sex scandals, Covid vaccination delays  all sent trust plummeting and distrust climbing.'

Meanwhile, a separate Roy Morgan poll over the week to Tuesday found Labor has increased its poll lead over the Coalition.

It puts the ALP on 58 per cent - up two points from a week ago - and the Coalition on 42 per cent on a two-party preferred basis.

That result on election day would mean a landslide victory for Labor.

The research group said consumer confidence has been smashed by soaring petrol prices in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Four reasons why the polls may be wrong Dr Sarah Cameron, a political scientist at University of Sydney, told Daily Mail Australia there were four reasons why polls may be wrong 1) The accuracy of polls depends on the methodology used, including whether the sampling frame is an accurate reflection of the population. With a shift over time from landlines to mobiles, sampling frames have become less accurate. Declining response rates can also affect the accuracy of polls. 2) The results of national polling may be different to key marginal seats that could prove influential in an election. 3) All polls have a margin of error and elections can be won or lost within that margin of error, particularly when elections are close. 4) Data from the Australian Election Study shows that the Australian electorate has become increasingly volatile over time. Voters have become more likely to switch votes from election to election, change their minds during the campaign or preference minor parties. This voter volatility makes it more difficult to predict election results. Advertisement

Polls are yet to take into account Labor's bullying scandal with Mr Albanese under fire after refusing to investigate claims Senator Kitching was bullied before she died.

The refusal to take any action has made Mr Albanese vulnerable to accusations of hypocrisy after Labor campaigned vigorously for inquiries and resignations over reports of mistreatment within the Liberal ranks last year.

Scott Morrison faced several issues in his own party including the alleged rape of former staffer Brittany Higgins, allegations of rape levelled at Christian Porter which the MP denied, and contested accusations that Alan Tudge mistreated former staffer Rachelle Miller.

Senator Kitching told her friends including One Nation Senator Pauline Hanson that she was being ostracised by Labor senators Kristina Keneally, Penny Wong and Katy Gallagher.

WA leader Mark McGowan (left) and independent Tasmanian senator Jacqui Lambie (right) had high trust ratings

The trio were dubbed 'mean girls' in reports on the bullying claims, which they deny.

Asked if he will call an inquiry into the claims, Mr Albanese on Wednesday told today show host Karl Stefanovic: 'No, I won't.

'What I'll do is take the words from Bill Shorten at the funeral, which is that Kimberley Kitching would want us to move on and dedicate ourselves to a Labor victory at the election.'

Stefanovic pressed him, saying: 'You fought for several other inquiries but you're not fighting for an inquiry inside your own Party. It doesn't make any sense to me. What are you afraid of?'

The Labor leader insisted he had several meetings with Senator Kitching but she did not once claim she was being bullied.

He said: 'Karl, there was no complaint made... in terms of moving forward, there was no complaint put in by Kimberley.

Liberals are hopeful the bullying scandal may derail Mr Albanese's election bid, but Labor sources say it won't make a big impact.

Mr Morrison on Tuesday accused Mr Albanese of hiding from scrutiny - but the PM has not called for an inquiry into the bullying claims.

'At the first sign of hard questions he has gone into complete hiding,' Mr Morrison said in Cairns.

'Frankly, I think that it is pretty gutless'.

On Wednesday he turned the knife, telling Sunrise: 'If Anthony Albanese won't stand up to the bullies in his own party how can Australians trust him to stand up to the bullies in our region and those who seek to coerce Australia?'

Mr Morrison has repeatedly sought to portray Mr Albanese as weak on national security and China, a charge the Labor leader rejects.

Senator Kitching's husband blasted her detractors in a moving speech at her funeral on Monday

In the year before her death Senator Kitching was ordered to do late night shifts in the senate and dumped from Labor's tactics committee.

Last week Senator Penny Wong revealed she apologised to Senator Kitching in 2019 after insulting her childless fellow Labor senator by saying: 'If you had children you would understand' during a discussion about climate change.

Senator Kitching - who was from the Labor Right faction - made a complaint to Deputy Leader Richard Marles in June.

Mr Albanese insisted this complaint was about being shunted off the tactics committee not being bullied.

Senator Kitching in November complained to PWC workplace safety consultants that she was being bullied - but Mr Albanese said he did not know about this.

'They were confidential discussions that people had. I do not know what happened in that room. And I have not seen anything from the PwC consultant,' he said.
An Italian fashion house has been urged to publicly denounce Vladimir Putin after he wore one of their jackets to a pro-war rally.

The Russian president appeared in the 10,500 coat  worth more than double the average annual salary in Russia  as he gave a jingoistic speech to thousands of spectators last week.

Almost 1,300 people have signed a petition calling on luxury brand Loro Piana to denounce the despot.

Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during a concert marking the anniversary of the annexation of Crimea. He appeared in a 10,500 coat from luxury brand Loro Piana, who people are calling upon to denounce the despot

Underneath the blue coat, Putin also wore a 2,400 roll-neck jumper by Italian brand Kiton.

He is also reported to favour Brioni  the Italian tailor famous for dressing James Bond  and London based bootmaker John Lobb, which describes its clientele as the discerning famous and infamous.

Putins decision to wear the designer brand at the rally provoked immediate outrage on Twitter.

Russian and Ukrainian interpreter Yana Morozova wrote: While Russian people are fighting for food in stores, Putin addressed 90,000 Russians wearing a Loro Piana puffer jacket for 1.5million rubles.

Olga Lautman, a Russian analyst and podcast host added: While Putin commits genocide, in Ukraine he lies about stopping genocide. While in an Italian Loro Piana coat worth more than most Russians yearly salary.

The average annual salary in Russia is estimated to be around 4,780.

Karine Orlova, a Moscow radio correspondent who launched the petition, warned that Loro Pianas history could be forever overshadowed.

Pier Luigi Loro Piana, deputy chairman of the brand, told an Italian newspaper that Putin wearing the jacket creates some embarrassment from a human point of view.

He added: It is clear which side we are on... The Ukrainians will have all our moral and practical support.

Loro Piana, which is part of luxury giant LVMH, closed its stores in Moscow and St Petersburg in response to the invasion earlier this month.
President Biden is reportedly preparing to sanction hundreds of Russian lawmakers, including most of Russia's State Duma, its lower house of parliament, on Thursday, just as he jets off to Europe to meet with NATO leaders.

Biden will announce the new sanctions on 300 members of Russian parliament on Thursday from Brussels, where he will meet with allies from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to plot their next steps to address the war in Ukraine, officials told the Wall Street Journal.

The sanctions will be in coordination with the European Union and members of the G-7 alliance, they said. In total, 400 people will be targeted, including 328 Russian lawmakers and other elites, as the invasion trudges into its fourth week.

The Russian Federal Assembly is made up of a 450-member Duma and a 170-seat upper chamber, the Federation Council. The Duma approved a law this month that would authorize up to 15 years in prison for peddling 'false news' about Ukraine.

Also last month the Duma passed a direct appeal to Vladimir Putin to recognize the Russian-controlled separatist states of Donetsk and Luhansk, where Putin first sent in 'peace-keeping' troops at the start of the war.

Biden will reportedly announce sanctions on the Russian Duma during his trip to Brussels on Thursday

In total, 400 people will be targeted, including 328 Russian lawmakers and other elites, as the invasion trudges into its fourth week

Russian lawmakers attend a session of the State Duma on Feb. 22

The White House sanctioned Putin directly last month and has so far targeted a slew of political figures and elites that have propped up his regime and cut off Putin's access to banks and business to starve his war chest.

And though the Russian currency, the ruble, dropped down to being worth next to nothing and the nation was last week at risk of defaulting on its debt, sanctions have done little to change the Russian leader's posture.

This week, the ruble stabilized and Russia was able to make interest payments on $117 million due on two bonds denominated in U.S. dollars. And while about half of Russia's $640 billion in foreign reserves is frozen, it has been able to offset that by continued fuel sales to Europe amid a price spike in the cost of oil and gas.

Earlier National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said that Biden would unveil the next round of sanctions on Russia and security aid for Ukraine during his trip.

Russia's presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky, head of the Russian delegation, speaks to the media after the talks with Ukrainian officials, as Russia's State Duma member Leonid Slutsky, Russian ambassador to Belarus Boris Gryzlov and Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Rudenko stand beside him, in the Brest region, Belarus March 7

The Russian national tricolor flag flutters on top of the building of the State Duma, the lower chamber of Russia's parliament, in central Moscow in the evening of March 3

Russian Police officer detain men in front of State Duma during an unsanctioned protest rally against the military invasion on Ukraine, March 6

Sullivan said the president would make new announcements about how to help European countries wean themselves off of Russian energy, which has already been banned in the U.S. Russia's oil and gas accounts for about a third of European energy supplies.

'From Brussels, President Biden will travel to Poland where he will engage with US troops, who are now helping to defend NATO territory, and he will meet with experts involved in the humanitarian response,' said Sullivan.

'He will also hold a bilateral meeting with President Duda of Poland.'

Poland has received an influx of more than 2 million Ukrainian refugees.

Duda has already asked for more help in coping with the humanitarian emergency and for military reinforcement.

'We feel that it is the right place for him to go to be able to see troops, to be able to see humanitarian experts and to be able to meet with a frontline and very vulnerable ally,' said Sullivan.

Polish leaders have also floated the prospect of a Western peacekeeping mission intervening in Ukraine, an idea that Washington rejects for fear it would escalate the conflict.

Biden's visit comes as the Russian invasion remains stalled - nearly a month into the war, Russian troops have failed to seize a single major city and their advance has been halted on nearly all fronts by staunch Ukrainian defense.

National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan briefed reporters on President Biden's trip to Europe and said he will be unveiling fresh sanctions on Russia later in the week

President Vladimir Putin of Russia has seen his government hit by multiple rounds of sanctions in an effort to undermine his position and starve his war machine of cash

A residential building damaged by shelling in Kyiv's Sviatoshynskyi district

At least six people were killed when the Retroville shopping mall was shelled by Russian forces in a residential district in the northwest of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv

Now, Ukrainian forces are preparing to retake captured territory as Russian forces battle declining morale - according to the latest Pentagon assessments.

A senior U.S. defense official also said Russian morale was falling.

'We picked up some indications that some of their soldiers are suffering from frostbite because they they lacked the appropriate cold weather gear for the environment that they're in ... that they haven't - in addition to food and fuel - even in terms of personal equipment for some of their troops they are having trouble,' said the official.

'They're having trouble and we picked up indications that some troops have actually suffered and been taken out of the fight because of frostbite.

'So yes, they are having continued logistics and sustainment issues.'
Boris Johnson urged India to join the West in condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine, amid growing anger over its neutral stance.

He spoke to the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, to discuss the 'grave situation' in the country.

When the United Nations voted to unanimously condemn Russia earlier this month, India abstained.

Boris Johnson (pictured) urged India to join the West in condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine, amid growing anger over its neutral stance

Mr Modi has even set up a mechanism to facilitate trade with Russia, using rupees to help Putin avoid the effects of sanctions.

To this end, India has also started buying oil from Russia at cheap rates.

Yesterday the Prime Minister's official spokesman said Mr Johnson urged Mr Modi to use this close relationship with the Kremlin for good.

He said: 'The Prime Minister recognises that India has an important role to play in its relationship with Putin and his regime.

Mr Modi (pictured) has even set up a mechanism to facilitate trade with Russia, using rupees to help Putin avoid the effects of sanctions

'We urged him to join the condemnation of Putin.'

Asked about India's decision to buy Russian oil, the spokesman said 'we want all countries to move away from reliance on Russian oil and gas'.

Meanwhile the Foreign Office is hopeful that new Western sanctions will be announced in the coming days.
A young West Australian woman has died in hospital after being repeatedly stabbed in the chest and neck in a violent incident.

Police and paramedics from St John Ambulance were called to a residence in Nollamara in Perth's north at 10:30pm on Tuesday and found a fatally injured 26-year-old woman suffering severe stab wounds to her chest and neck.

The woman was transported by paramedics to Royal Perth Hospital where she later died over night.

A young West Australian woman has died in hospital after being repeatedly stabbed in the chest and neck in a violent incident, launching a homicide investigation. Stock image

A canine section unit was deployed after police arrived at the grisly scene.

A short time later a man was found cowering in front of a neighbour's property and arrested by police.

The 40-year-old man, who is known to the victim, was taken into custody and is assisting with the investigation. He has not been charged.

WA Police commissioner Chris Dawson relayed the events to radio host Gareth Parker on Perth radio station 6PR Breakfast on Wednesday morning.

'It's a very tragic incident,' Dawson reported. 'A woman aged in her 20s was located very seriously injured.

'Despite the efforts of family, attending police and hospital staff, tragically this woman has now died in hospital.'

Police and paramedics from St John Ambulance were called to a residence in Nollamara in Perth's north on Tuesday and found a fatally injured 26-year-old woman suffering severe stab wounds. Pictured: Monterey Street in Nollamara where the attack took place

Police commissioner Chris Dawson (pictured) relayed the events to radio host Gareth Parker on Perth radio station 6PR Breakfast on Wednesday morning

'Police now have a 40-year-old man who we located nearby last night. The police canine squad assisted in the arrest of a man. We are now speaking with him, he is in custody.'

Dawson clarified that the matter was now a homicide investigation following the woman's death.

Detectives are appealing for members of the public who saw or heard anything suspicious in the vicinity of Monterey Street between 9:30pm and 11:00pm last night to call Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000 or make a report online.
Richard Pusey has told a magistrate he is transitioning into a woman from behind bars.

The disgraced Porsche driver fronted a Melbourne court on Wednesday after being charged with allegedly posting a picture of the body of a police officer killed in 2020's Eastern Freeway truck crash.

Pusey, who appeared before magistrate Charlie Rozencwajg, claimed he was in the process of sourcing a hospital that could help with his transition.

Pusey told court he was starting the process of transitioning to a woman in jail

Pusey walked free from jail in August donning a bizarre outfit (pictured) after serving 10 months for filming the dying police officers.

Constable Glen Humphris, Senior Constable Kevin King, Leading Senior Constable Lynette Taylor and and Constable Josh Prestney all died in the horror crash (pictured left to right)

Four officers were killed after they pulled over Mr Pusey Porsche (pictured) for allegedly speeding on Melbourne's Eastern Freeway

POLICE ASSOCIATION CHIEF'S ATTACK ON PUSEY AFTER CRASH Police Association of Victoria secretary Sergeant Wayne Gatt slammed Richard Pusey after his sentence for outraging public decency last year. 'Four upstanding heroes died on that day. One coward, one soulless coward lived. He is a worthless individual that lacks any human trait that would be, and should be, and is a feature of the Victorian community, he said. 'Each and every one of us will face our mortality one day. 'When his day comes, I hope that he faces the same coldness and the same callousness with which he provided my members when they faced theirs.' Pusey had been pulled over for speeding when a truck driven by an ice-crazed driver crashed into the emergency lane. Pusey escaped as he was urinating on the side of the road and avoided being hit. He disgusted Australia by filming and swearing at the four dying police officers. Advertisement

Pusey informed the magistrate he had almost missed his court hearing due to ongoing plans to transition.

'I've got discussions with some clinics in Melbourne in relation to my gender re-assignment surgery,' he said

Pusey, who is representing himself, said it was pure luck he made it to the video link room within the Metropolitan Remand Centre where he is being held on remand.

'I was two seconds into being put onto a bus to spend the day running around to hospitals within Melbourne, but fortunately it was brought to their attention that I've actually had court today,' he said.

The claim appeared to go over the head of Magistrate Rozencwajg, who was heard after the hearing asking a court clerk what he had been talking about.

Pusey had given some indication of his plans during his last court appearance in February when he asked a magistrate to refer to him as 'them/they'.

'My pronouns are they/them,' he insisted from a prison phone after his matter was called.

The 44-year-old had his bail revoked after he was charged earlier that month with two counts of using a telecommunications device to menace and two counts of committing an indictable offence while on bail.

Pusey was previously dubbed 'the most hated man in Australia' by a magistrate after he was convicted of filming four police officers after they were fatally struck by a truck.

The officers had just pulled Pusey over and were questioning him at roadside when the truck ploughed into them.

A picture of Pusey's wrecked black 2016 Porsche 911 was posted online with the caption: 'You don't need one of these to bend a cop'. Pusey was reportedly trying to claim insurance over the crash

Bizarre social media posts began appearing on an account called 'the Richard Pusey show' shortly after he was released from jail (pictured)

The despised Melbourne businessman, who was previously represented by high profile criminal barrister Dermot Dann QC, continued to delay the proceedings amid claims the prison had failed to hand him over the full brief of evidence.

Magistrate Rozencwajg ordered the prosecution write a letter to the jail and ask them to ensure Pusey be handed all of the legal documentation and sign a receipt for it.

Pusey asked that media watching the live videolink be handed the exhibits police will rely on in their prosecution - a request denied by the magistrate.

Police allege Pusey posted a Google review of the Porsche Centre Melbourne, which included one of the pictures he took at the scene of the April 2020 crash over which he was previously sentenced on outraging public decency charges.

Pusey told the magistrate last month he intended to plead not guilty to his latest charges, which are set to return to court now in June.

A memorial for the four police officers - Leading Senior Constable Lynette Taylor, Senior Constable Kevin King and Constables Josh Prestney and Glen Humphris - was held at Melbourne's Marvel Stadium earlier this year.

Richard Pusey was defended by high-profile Melbourne barrister Dermot Dann, QC (far right) during his proceedings related to the Eastern crash. He represented himself in court on Wednesday

Richard Pusey pictured atop of his Fitzroy mansion after a protest against the way he has been treated

About 2,000 people attended the memorial including the victims friends, colleagues and families.

'Police are human, they cry, they suffer, they worry, but they do what they do because the community expects it of us and because they want to be of service,' Victoria Police Commissioner Shane Patton said.

'I can't begin to tell you how sorry I am that they did not come home from their shift that night,' he said.

Colleagues in the stadium's stands were pictured wiping away tears as members of the officers families shared stories.

'Our police officers wear a uniform, but underneath that uniform is a person who has people that love them and look forward to them coming home,' Constable Glen Humphris' partner Todd Robinson said.

Premier Dan Andrews said the incident had resonated with Victorians and he felt for the officer's families.

'Their loved ones has chosen to live a life in the service and protection of others. It's essential, it's honourable and it can be tragic,' he said.

'To run toward the danger in order to protect others is a special thing,' he said.

Pusey in April 2020 after his arrest over his role in the Eastern Freeway crash, which claimed the lives of four officers

Word breaks that Richard Pusey was involved in yet another police incident, this time at his own home

In October 2021, Pusey was reportedly fighting for a $250,000 payout for the wrecked Porsche but had been denied by two insurance firms

He was rejected payment from his own insurer after it found out Mr Pusey had not disclosed his prior indiscretions to the company.

It is understood Pusey then turned to Connect Logistics, which owned the Semi-trailer driven by Mohinder Singh - the driver convicted over the deadly collision with the roadside police officers.

Pusey had walked free from jail just a couple of months earlier in August donning sunglasses and a mask that read 'fake news'.

He had served 10 months for filming the crash scene and at one point commenting 'this is f****ng justice'.

Just three weeks after his release he was sent back to jail, charged with assaulting police and stalking after a disturbance at his Fitzroy home.

In December, social media accounts popped up online which appeared to be operated by Pusey and contained pictures and comments that repeatedly referenced the crash and bizarre thinly veiled insults towards police.
President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol speaks during a meeting with reporters at a press tent set up in front of his office in Tongui-dong, Jongno District, Seoul, Wednesday. Yonhap



Moon names IMF director as new BOK governor amid escalating tensions



By Nam Hyun-woo



President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol and President Moon Jae-in clashed again on Wednesday with the two locking horns this time over the nomination of the central bank governor.



Yoon denied Cheong Wa Dae's explanation that it consulted with the president-elect before nominating the new Bank of Korea (BOK) governor. The nominations of several key posts, including the BOK governor, were some of the obstacles that stood in the way of Moon's one-on-one meeting with Yoon earlier this month.



The prospects of a Moon-Yoon meeting seem to have grown slim as the two sides show few signs of narrowing their differences on key agenda items.



According to Cheong Wa Dae, Moon named Rhee Chang-yong, director of the Asia and Pacific Department at the International Monetary Fund, as new governor of the BOK. Current BOK Governor Lee Ju-yeol's term ends on March 31.



"We designated Rhee Chang-yong as the new BOK governor after hearing the President-elect's opinion, in order to prevent a potential vacuum in the central bank's leadership," a senior Cheong Wa Dae official said.



"A BOK governor is an ex-officio member of the Monetary Policy Board, whose political neutrality is guaranteed. Regardless of the partisanship of the government, Lee's term will end on March 31 and we had to prepare for the next governor considering the appointment process," the official added.





Bank of Korea Governor nominee Rhee Chang-yong / Yonhap



Rhee was known as an economist favored by Yoon to become the BOK governor. Although Yoon and Moon failed to narrow their differences over other nominees, it had been reported that the two sides were almost on the same page regarding Rhee's nomination.



After Cheong Wa Dae's announcement, however, Yoon's spokesperson, Rep. Kim Eun-hye of the People Power Party (PPP), denied the explanation provided by the top office. In a text message sent to reporters, she wrote that it is not true that the President-elect had a prior consultation with Cheong Wa Dae about the nomination. She also denied that Yoon recommended a particular figure for a certain post.



The two sides gave differing accounts of what their counterparts had said during the closed-door working-level talks.



"There have been no recommendation and consultation with Cheong Wa Dae over the nomination," Yoon's chief of staff, PPP Rep. Chang Je-won, told reporters Wednesday.









"While speaking to senior presidential secretary for political affairs Lee Cheol-hee, he asked, 'how about Rhee' and I said 'he is a good man.' That was the end of the conversation. It was not a consultation or recommendation," Chang said. "Lee notified me about the nomination just 10 minutes before Cheong Wa Dae announced it, so I just said, 'Do whatever you want' and 'we don't agree with this nomination.'"



Cheong Wa Dae also refuted the claims made by Yoon's side.



"We thought Yoon's side would be satisfied with the nomination because we granted their wishes," another senior Cheong Wa Dae official said. "Multiple names have been mentioned as candidates for BOK governor and Cheong Wa Dae asked two people.  They chose Rhee over the other and asked whether Cheong Wa Dae screened their past records and conducted background checks. We said yes, and announced it."



"We're embarrassed to hear that they denied there was prior consultation. We thought this would be a gift for Yoon's side and discussions (over a meeting between Moon and Yoon) could go well," the official added. "If they continue lying, we can also reveal everything."



The blame game between the two sides signals that the chances of a Moon-Yoon meeting appear thin as the two sides continue to clash over practically every issue.



Previously, Korea's outgoing and incoming presidents met within 10 days after a new leader was elected. But Yoon and Moon still show no signs of narrowing their differences although two weeks have passed since Yoon won the March 9 presidential election.



After Moon congratulated Yoon's victory during a phone call a day later, there has been no direct conversation between them. Initially, they were scheduled to meet on March 16, but the meeting was postponed as the two clashed over Moon's intention of naming the new heads of government agencies within his presidency.



Representing the two sides, senior presidential secretary for political affairs Lee and Yoon's chief of staff Chang had attempted to negotiate the date of their meeting, but failed to make progress.



According to sources, the two sides are also clashing over Cheong Wa Dae's intention to fill two empty seats at the Board of Audit and Inspection (BAI) Commissioners' Council.



To start an audit on a government arm, the council requires the approvals of four out of its seven members. Among five current commissioners, three are considered to be favorable to the Moon administration. If Moon names a figure favorable to his administration, it will be difficult for the BAI to launch audits critical of the Moon administration.



Reportedly, Cheong Wa Dae wanted each side to recommend one commissioner, but Yoon's side demanded "a right to veto Cheong Wa Dae's recommendation" as the precondition for the Yoon-Moon meeting. As the two sides failed to narrow the differences, talks between political affairs secretary and Yoon's chief of staff ended without discussions, sources said.



"Media reports are describing the nomination as a gesture for reconciliation, but I don't agree," Chang said. "The nomination seems nothing more than efforts to justify its intention to name BAI commissioners of its favor. I don't understand why they (Cheong Wa Dae) are doing this."







Park Soo-hyun, senior presidential secretary for public communication, announces Rhee Chang-yong, the Director of the Asia and Pacific Department at the International Monetary Fund, as the new Bank of Korea Governor, during a press conference at Cheong Wa Dae, Wednesday. Yonhap
Cameras caught the moment a jewelry store in Beverly Hills lost millions in merchandise in a smash-and-grab robbery in broad daylight on Tuesday afternoon.

The incident took place at the Luxury Jewels of Beverly Hills at the corner of South Beverly Drive and Charleville Boulevard at about 2 p.m.

Authorities said that the five arrived in what they discovered was a stolen car but left it, fleeing in a different, unknown vehicle.

A group of five is seen on video with what police say appeared to be sledgehammers, obliterating the front window of the store. They then took off with several items.

Some of the crooks were spotted wearing hooded sweatshirts and sweatpants, while several wore surgical masks.

The store was left with glass covering the sidewalk below and a gaping hole in their front window.

A jewelry store in Beverly Hills was hit by smash-and-grab robbers Tuesday who remain at large

A group of five is seen on video with what police say appeared to be sledgehammers, obliterating the front window of the store

The store was left with glass covering the sidewalk below and a gaping hole in their front window

Luxury Jewels of Beverly Hills on the corner of South Beverly Drive and Charleville Boulevard

Peter Sedghi, the store's owner, told ABC7LA that the merchandise taken was valued between $3-5million, with one necklace alone worth nearly $500,000.

Sedghi added that he thought he'd heard gunshots and came outside with his gun.

'It literally sounded like gunshots, so I told my staff, I yelled out, 'everyone down on the floor,'' Sedghi said.

Employees pushed the store's panic button and Sedghi waited until the noise stopped to head outside.

Wesley Aframian, who owns a business next door, told reporters he tried to stop the suspect before they got away.

'I look outside, I see, there are five guys with sledgehammers, axes, hammers, they're banging on the window,' Aframian said. 'And you know, we're a jewelry store, they're a jewelry store. We're good friends with them. They're very good people. I just reacted and tried to stop them.'

He did say that he managed to get a kick in on one of the robbers and was able to grab some of the watches they were trying to take back.

Larceny has become a statewide problem in California of late, with the trend having spread from San Francisco down to the LA area.

One of the robbers very clearly handling a sledgehammer as they attempt to rob the jewelry store

The robbers got away with somewhere between $3-5million in merchandise, according to the store owners

Owners clean up after the Beverly Hills robbery at Jewelry store while five men are at large that broke the window with sledgehammers on a double tempered glass

Peter Sedghi (left) the owner of Luxury Jewels of Beverly Hills, details the damage done to his store

The robbers came in a stolen SUV from Long Beach and then ran off in another vehicle before one was tripped to the ground and some of the stolen goods were recovered

Wesley Aframian, who owns a neighboring shop, said he was able to recover a couple of watches from the robbers in trying to stop them

Roving gangs of criminals have been carrying out brazen smash-and-grab robberies, targeting high-end stores like Louis Vuitton and Burberry, but also national chains like Walgreens and CVS.

Walgreens said last year that retail theft in San Francisco was five times the chain average and security costs were 46 times the chain average, reported San Francisco Chronicle.

According to the latest available crime data, grand larceny rates in California's liberal bastion were up 19 per cent in late February, compared with the same period last year.

California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, has vowed to crack down on gangs of retail thieves, despite a controversial 2014 law - Proposition 47 - that barred prosecutors from charging suspected shoplifters accused of stealing less than $950 worth of merchandise with felonies.

Crime is up about eight percent from last year's already high numbers in the city of Los Angeles through March 19, according to the city's own statistics. Robberies are up four percent.

Luxury Jewels Of Beverly Hills lost expensive jewelry pieces which can run for thousands of dollars
Save the Children has refused an energy firms 750,000 donation to ease the Ukraine crisis because it doesnt want to endorse fossil fuels.

It rebuffed cash from North Sea gas producer Neptune Energy two weeks ago, stating it was committed to working on climate change issues.

Despite refusing help for Ukraine, it said it would take cash for its Childrens Emergency Fund, which supports youngsters in crises around the world, because this could be used in a crisis for which relatively little money is available.

Save the Children snubbed the large donation cash for Ukrainian children because of Neptune's affiliation with fossil fuels (file image)

Neptune, which says it has given 1.5million for Ukrainian humanitarian efforts, challenged the decision with Save the Childrens trustees, saying its staff chose the charity and the snub had shocked them.

Save the Children will now refuse donations from firms whose core business is fossil fuels... following a lead by children who have protested about the threat the climate crisis poses to their future, The Daily Telegraph reported.

Neptune says it has lower carbon emissions than the industry average and it will store more carbon than it emits by 2030.

The company, which is chaired by former Centrica boss Sam Laidlaw, produces around 130,000 barrels of oil equivalent every day.

Vice-chairman Richard Winter is a partner at PwC, which advises several energy companies while board member Anne Fahy worked at oil company BP for 27 years.

A spokesman for Save the Children said: We decided earlier this month that we would stop taking donations as soon as possible from companies whose core business is in fossil fuels.

The only exception during a transitional period before this policy comes into force would be a large donation to our flexible Childrens Emergency Fund.

The reason is that this could be used in a crisis for which relatively little money is available, such as in the Horn of Africa.

Weve changed our policy following a lead given by children all over the world who have protested about the threat the climate crisis poses to their future.
Ukraine is said to be quickly running out of the weapons it needs to hold off Russian forces  and has called on France and Germany to send more arms.

The military only has two weeks before it uses up its supply of anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles, foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba reportedly told friends last week.

And he said the situation had only partially improved after Western countries sent additional weapons in recent days.

Volunteer civilians practice combat tactics during a military training in Kyiv, Ukraine on March

Paul Grod, president of the non-profit organisation Ukrainian World Congress, told The Times that some countries were failing to fulfil their military pledges.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky is understood to have told Boris Johnson that Ukraine is getting through a weeks worth of supplies in just 20 hours.

Troops are also using captured Russian trophies  such as vehicles and other equipment  to bolster their supplies.

Western officials said they were surprised by the strength of the Ukrainian defence and had expected a more limited insurgency at this stage.

They added that Ukrainian forces were obviously expending a lot of ordnance.

The Pentagon said troops have started regaining ground and were in places and at times going on an offensive.
A man and woman found dead in a Sunshine Coast backyard are believed to have been virtual strangers who met online before 'carefully' planning a murder-suicide pact.

Sonja Kovacevic, 48, and Barry Houston, 52, were found dead with gunshot wounds at a Teal Street home, in Caloundra West, about 6.30pm on Monday after police were called to the property to conduct a welfare check.

It is understood Ms Kovacevic, a local, and Mr Houston, from Brown Plains south of Brisbane, connected on social media before meeting up with the intention of taking their own lives, the Courier Mail reports.

Ms Kovacevic phoned police prior to the incident, telling officers she planned to take her own life. It is understood the pair were killed with a high-powered rifle.

A man and woman who died in a suspected murder-suicide pact at a Caloundra West home (pictured) met on social media

The unusual case has baffled seasoned detectives who described it as the most bizarre crime scene they had witnessed in 30 years.

Detective Acting Inspector John Mahony said police were working to establish how long the pair had been communicating through analysis of their digital devices.

'Investigations thus far suggest the 52-year-old male person has ended the life of the 48-year-old woman and then a very short time later has ended his own life,' Inspector Mahony said.

Police said the deaths were so meticulously planned the incident seemed 'clinical', with evidence showing items had been packed into boxes before the shootings.

It is understood Ms Kovacevic, who was involved in a family court matter at the time of her death, was known to police for non-criminal matters.

Neighbours said Ms Kovacevic had appeared melancholy in recent weeks, with one residents saying she hoped the woman was now in a 'better place' and sending condolences to her family.

Other residents said they were shocked by the tragedy in their typically-quiet suburb after hearing loud bangs ring out on Monday night.

The tragedy comes just weeks after the suspected murder-suicide deaths of a mother and two children in Perth.

Detective Acting Inspector John Mahony (pictured) said it appeared Mr Houston shot Ms Kovacevic before turning the gun on himself

Abiyah, 10, and Aiden Selvan, eight, died in a car fire alongside their mother Selvamma Doreswamy, 40, at John Graham Reserve, Coogee, on March 14.

The deaths of the 'normal', 'happy' family rocked the tight-knit community of Canning Vale, in the city's south, where a memorial has emerged outside the children's school, Providence Christian College.

The children's father Selvan Govindhan Vairavan received the heartbreaking news on the first day of a US trip to visit a sick relative.

He has since returned home as he prepares to farewell his wife and two young children.

For confidential support in Australia, contact Lifeline: 13 11 14, Beyond Blue: 1300 22 4636, or Suicide Call Back Service: 1300 659 467.
Advertisement

Around 100,000 people are still in the besieged city of Mariupol, trapped 'in inhumane conditions' and under constant attack, Volodymyr Zelensky said last night.

In his regular evening address the Ukrainian president said that one group fleeing along an agreed humanitarian route was 'simply captured by the occupiers.'

He added: 'There are about 100,000 people in the city - in inhumane conditions, in a complete blockade, no food, no water, no medicine, under constant shelling.'

Mr Zelensky also accused Russian forces of not only blocking a humanitarian convoy trying to take desperately needed aid to Mariupol but seizing what another Ukrainian official said were 15 of the bus drivers and rescue workers on the aid mission, along with their vehicles.

The Ukrainian president said the Russians had agreed to the route ahead of time.

Military personnel pictured last week as civilians are being evacuated along humanitarian corridors from the besieged port city of Mariupol

Volodymyr Zelensky said some 100,000 are still in the city besieged city of Mariupol (pictured last week), trapped 'in inhumane conditions' while low on supplies and under constant attack

'We are trying to organise stable humanitarian corridors for Mariupol residents, but almost all of our attempts, unfortunately, are foiled by the Russian occupiers, by shelling or deliberate terror,' he added in a nightly video address to the nation.

Two 'super powerful bombs' hit Mariupol yesterday as officials tried to evacuate thousands of civilians from the besieged city, which has been described as a 'hell-scape riddled with dead bodies' by humanitarian workers.

Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said there 'will not be enough space for everyone' to leave the city on Tuesday - amid estimates that up to 300,000 people remain there - but 'we will try to carry out the evacuation until we have gotten all the inhabitants.'

As the evacuation got under way two 'super powerful bombs' struck the port city, local officials said, without saying whether they killed anyone. 'It is clear that the occupiers are not interested in the city of Mariupol, they want to raze it to the ground, to reduce it to ashes,' they said.

Members of the Italian Parliament make a standing ovation at Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky (on screen), at the end of his speech to members of the Italian Parliament via video conference

Two 'super powerful bombs' hit Mariupol today as officials tried to evacuate thousands of civilians from the besieged city, which has been described as a 'hell-scape riddled with dead bodies' by humanitarian workers

It came as UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for an end to the 'absurd war' started when Vladimir Putin gave the order to invade almost exactly a month ago, warning that the conflict is 'going nowhere fast' and that the Ukrainian people are 'enduring a living hell.'

'Continuing the war in Ukraine is morally unacceptable, politically indefensible and militarily nonsensical,' Guterres said. 'Even if Mariupol falls, Ukraine cannot be conquered city by city, street by street, house by house.

'This war is unwinnable. Sooner or later, it will have to move from the battlefield to the peace table. It is time to end this absurd war,' he added.

President Zelensky said Ukraine is 'on the brink of surviving' its war as he told lawmakers in a video address yesterday that Italy must stop being 'a resort for murderers' and urged the country to ban Russian ships from its ports.

In a speech to the Italian parliament, Zelensky urged the country's MPs to freeze all assets belonging to the Russian elite and to declare a full trade embargo, starting with oil.

He said: 'You know very well who orders troops to go to war and who propagates this. Almost all of them use Italy as a place to rest. Do not be a resort for murderers.

'Freeze all their property, accounts and yachts. Freeze all the assets of those who have influence, let them use it for peace. Support sanctions against Russia, a full trade embargo, starting with oil.'

He also asked Italy to remove enemy troops from Ukraine and to help carry out the de-mining and reconstruction of the country 'after this war'.

'Together with you, together with Italy. Together with Europe. Together - in the European Union,' he added.

He also begged the country's MPs to step up sanctions on the Russian economy, saying 'more pressure' can help Ukraine withstand the Kremlin assault.

Mr Zelensky also accused Russian forces of not only blocking a humanitarian convoy trying to take desperately needed aid to Mariupol but seizing what another Ukrainian official said were 15 of the bus drivers and rescue workers on the aid mission, along with their vehicles

In his regular evening address the Ukrainian president said that one group fleeing along an agreed humanitarian route were 'simply captured by the occupiers'

Mariupol has now been surrounded and under siege for more than three weeks - cut off from food, water, electricity and reinforcement, and constantly shelled in an effort to force the defenders to surrender. Multiple attempts at evacuating civilians along 'humanitarian corridors' have failed, amid claims Russia attacked them.

Several thousand have managed to make it out - many by making life-or-death breaks for the outskirts in their own vehicles - and have begun to tell of the horrors they faced inside.

Victoria, who only gave her first name, told the BBC today that three infants she knows have died because they could not access drinking water, after the snow they had been melting for supplies ran out.

Drone footage taken by the Azov Battalion which is helping to defend the city of Mariupol shows Russian bombardment of an industrial area, in video released on Tuesday

Smoke rises from the ruins of an industrial area somewhere in Mariupol after it was shelled by Russian forces

Men from the Ukrainian city of Mariupol lay bodies into a mass grave dug on the outskirts, as officials estimate thousands of people have been killed by Russian bombardments

A woman holds a child over her shoulder in a makeshift bomb shelter constructed in an apartment basement in Mariupol, which has been largely cut off from food, water and electricity for three weeks

Women and children shelter in the basement of an apartment building in Mariupol, southern Ukraine, which has been under near-constant Russian bombardment for three weeks

A man wounded during the Russian shelling of Mariupol lies in a temporary medical shelter as doctors operate on him

It's likely Mariupol will remain an epicentre in the war against Russia - with Kyiv set to see more intense fighting, too

Others are now starving in basements that have been turned into makeshift bomb shelters but are being slowly destroyed by Russian artillery that pounds the city non-stop 'except a few hours at night', Victoria added.

Meanwhile Mykola Trofymenko, a professor and city councillor from Mariupol who has also fled last week, described how one doctor was forced to perform surgery with a kitchen knife and no anesthetic after the hospital where he was working was destroyed by artillery.

Trofymenko, who escaped with his wife and three-year-old son, said the city 'doesn't exist now because almost everything is destroyed' and that he had to train his son to run and hide from the sound of incoming bombs while he struggled to find enough food and water for him.

Speaking to BBC 5 Live in a voice trembling with emotion, Victoria said: 'My city is absolutely destroyed. Me, my family, all our friends, we don't have our homes now. All the buildings are destroyed and the shelling is continuing... It is on fire all the time, except a few hours at night.

'People stay in the basements but it doesn't save them. They're bombing so hard so they're destroying even the basements. They don't have water, we gathered snow several days ago of water.

'Three children I know... died from dehydration. It is the 21st century, and children are dying from dehydration in my city, they are starving now.

'Part of my family is still there, and families of my friends are still there. We tried to take them out of the city but the city is closed. They don't let people in so we couldn't take them out... it is impossible.'

Mr Trofymenko added: 'Mariupol was always showing to the occupiers that it is better to be in Ukraine because we are developing and we are making our lives better. We tried to build Europe in Mariupol.

'The city, it doesn't exist now because almost everything is destroyed, but previously, before February 24 [when Russia invaded] it was beautiful.'

Describing how he fled the city, he spoke of witnessing cars hit by landmines and others shot at by Russian troops despite having white inscriptions on the side saying 'children'.

'They hit one car, seven or eight cars from me. They hit this car with two children inside. I don't know what people could do this, actually. We are blaming Putin, that he is doing this to Ukraine, but regular soldiers are shooting civilians,' he said.

Perched on the Sea of Azov, Mariupol has been a key target that has been besieged for more than three weeks and has seen some of the worst suffering of the war.

A building burns somewhere in Mariupol after being struck by a Russian shell during artillery attacks on the city

Photographer Evgeniy Maloletka stands amid rubble of an airstrike on Pryazovskyi State Technical University

Photographer Evgeniy Maloletka (left) helps a paramedic to transport a woman injured during shelling in Mariupol

A Ukrainian soldier motions to his comrades as he takes up a position near a destroyed building in the city of Mariupol

But no clear, independent picture emerged of how close its capture might be. Ukraine's defence ministry said on Tuesday that their forces were still defending the city and had destroyed a Russian patrol boat and electronic warfare complex.

Russia, for now, controls the land corridor from Crimea, the peninsula it annexed in 2014, and is blocking Ukraine's access to the Sea of Azov, the ministry said.

'Nobody can tell from the outside if it really is on the verge of being taken,' said Keir Giles, a Russia expert at the British think tank, Chatham House.

Over the weekend, Moscow had offered safe passage out of Mariupol: one corridor leading east to Russia, another going west to other parts of Ukraine, in return for the city's surrender before daybreak Monday. Ukraine flatly rejected the offer well before the deadline.

Mariupol officials said on March 15 that at least 2,300 people had died in the siege, with some buried in mass graves. There has been no official estimate since then, but the number is feared to be far higher after six more days of bombardment.

For those who remain, conditions have become brutal. The assault has cut off Mariupol's electricity, water and food supplies and severed communication with the outside world, plunging residents into a fight for survival. Fresh commercial satellite images showed smoke rising from buildings newly hit by Russian artillery.

Mariupol had a pre-war population of about 430,000. Around a quarter were believed to have left in the opening days of the war, and tens of thousands escaped over the past week by way of the humanitarian corridors. Other attempts have been thwarted by the fighting.

Those who have managed to flee described life-or-death struggles through Russian bombardments, gun battles and corpses lying on the streets in order to reach safety.

'There are no buildings there anymore,' said 77-year-old Maria Fiodorova, who crossed the border to Poland on Monday after five days of travel.

Olga Nikitina, who fled Mariupol for the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, where she arrived on Sunday, said gunfire blew out her windows, and her apartment dropped below freezing.

'Battles took place over every street. Every house became a target,' she said.

A long line of vehicles stood on a road in Bezimenne as Mariupol residents sought shelter at a temporary camp set up by Russian-backed separatists in the Donetsk region.

An estimated 5,000 people from Mariupol have taken refuge in the camp. Many arrived in cars with signs that said 'children' in Russian.

Satellite image of apartment blocks in Mariupol show smoke rising after they were shelled by Russian forces on Saturday

An overview of the city of Mariupol, taken from a satellite, shows multiple plumes of smoke rising from the city as it comes under heavy bombardment by Russian forces

Russian artillery positions are seen in the fields surrounding Mariupol, as Putin's men try to bomb the city into submission

A woman who gave her name as Yulia said she and her family sought shelter in Bezimenne after a bombing destroyed six houses behind her home.

'That's why we got in the car, at our own risk, and left in 15 minutes because everything is destroyed there, dead bodies are lying around,' she said. 'They don't let us pass through everywhere - there are shootings.'

In all, more than 8,000 people escaped to safer areas on Monday through humanitarian corridors, including about 3,000 from Mariupol, deputy prime minister, Iryna Vereshchuk, said.

Russian shelling of a corridor wounded four children on a route leading out of Mariupol, Zelensky said.

While Russian forces carried on with the siege after the city's defenders refused demands to surrender, the Kremlin's ground offensive in other parts of the country advanced slowly or not at all, knocked back by lethal hit-and-run attacks by the Ukrainians.

The Ukrainian army said early on Tuesday that it had forced Russian troops out of a strategically important Kyiv suburb following a fierce battle.

The regained territory allowed Ukrainian forces to retake control of a key highway to the west and block Russian troops from surrounding Kyiv from the northwest.

But Ukraine's defence ministry said Russian forces battling toward Kyiv were able to partially take other northwest suburbs, Bucha, Hostomel and Irpin, some of which had been under attack almost since Russia's military invaded late last month.

Russian president Vladimir Putin's forces are increasingly concentrating their air power and artillery on Ukraine's cities and the civilians living there, killing unknown and sending millions fleeing.

A senior US defence official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the military's assessment, said Russia had increased air sorties over the past two days, carrying out as many as 300 in the past 24 hours, and has fired more than 1,100 missiles into Ukraine since the invasion began.

In a video address on Monday night, Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, hailed those who have fought back against Russia.

'There is no need to organise resistance,' Zelensky said. 'Resistance for Ukrainians is part of their soul.'
A south London district could be renamed in the future due to its namesakes historic connections to slavery.

Tulse Hill was named in honour of 17th century merchant Sir Henry Tulse, who served as Lord Mayor of London in 1684 and whose familys wealth was largely drawn from the slave trade.

Now, Lambeth Council has asked residents for their views of the names of certain areas, The Telegraph reports.

The survey reportedly asked residents if the area should be renamed, whether it should have an information stand about its history or if an education programme should be launched in local schools.

Another option was to take no action whatsoever.

Tulse Hill could soon be renamed if residents object to its namesake's links to slavery

It is the latest conflict in Britains culture wars, which has seen statues toppled and reputations cancelled as a new generation of activists reassesses the past.

Lambeth is not the only borough look at its history, after Mayor of London Sadiq Khan offered 25,000 to local authorities to decolonise their street names.

Other problematic street names mentioned in the survey are those named after slave-owning couple Henry Richard Vassal-Fox, third Baron Holland of Foxley, and his wife Elizabeth Webster, including Vassal Street, Holland Grove and Foxley Road.

Conservative Party Chairman Oliver Dowden criticised Lambeth Council for spending public money on what he called a vanity project.

He said: While people worry about the cost of living, Labour councils are wasting their cash on vanity projects like this.

No wonder Conservative councils deliver more and cost less.

Tulse Hill (pictured) was named in honour of 17th century merchant Sir Henry Tulse, who served as Lord Mayor of London in 1684 and whose familys wealth was largely drawn from the slave trade

Other street names which may bite the dust include Rhodesia Road  named after the former British colony of what is now Zimbabwe  and Juxson Street, which got its name from Archbishop William Juxson, who family was involved in the slave trade.

A spokesman from Lambeth Council said the authority had worked closely with local communities following the 2020 Black Lives matter protests, in order to stamp out racism.

He added: Lambeth is a richly diverse borough and the council has been a pioneer since the 1980s for naming new places to reflect local people.

This latest piece of work required no extra spending and has taken government legislation on the issue fully into account.
Hillsong founder Brian Houston has resigned from the Pentecostal megachurch over allegations of 'indiscretions' toward two women, an emergency staff meeting has been told.

The church's acting senior pastor Phil Dooley announced the resignation to the second staff meeting in a week on Wednesday.

He said it was a time of 'humble reflection' for the church, which was founded in Sydney's west and has since spread around the world.

Houston submitted his resignation at 4am on Wednesday morning before a scheduled board meeting, Crikey reported.

The church had been investigating 'two complaints made against Pastor Brian' over the past 10 years.

Hillsong founder Brian Houston stepped down in January from his role as the organisation's international leader (pictured with wife Bobbi)

'We would like to advise you that Pastor Brian Houston has resigned as global senior pastor of Hillsong Church and the board has accepted his resignation,' Mr Dooley said in a statement.

'We understand there will be much emotion at this news and we all share these feelings.

'We ask that you continue to pray for them and the entire Houston family during this challenging time.'

One complaint was made after a church employee claimed to have been sent 'inappropriate' texts, and the second was Mr Houston going into a woman's hotel room in 2019 at a conference.

Mr Dooley had addressed the situation in a service streamed online on Sunday.

'I want to say we are sorry for anyone who has been a victim of any form of harassment,' he said.

'Some of us here... understand the pain because you have experienced it yourselves, and others of us are doing our best to empathise with you.

'Where you've been hurt, we pray for healing, strength and courage to move forward in your life.'

The Hillsong Global Board said the two complaints were treated 'extremely seriously'.

It added that previous statements, including when Mr Houston temporarily stepped down in January, had not been made out of confidentiality for both him and the two women while the matters were investigated.

Mr Houston (pictured with wife Bobbi) sent inappropriate texts to a former employee and entered the hotel room of a guest after the 2019 Hillsong Conference, the board said

'The first issue was approximately a decade ago and involved inappropriate text messages from Pastor Brian to a member of staff, which subsequently resulted in the staff member resigning,' the board said.

The board explained Mr Houston was 'under the influence of sleeping tablets, upon which he had developed a dependence' when he sent the texts.

Mr Houston immediately apologised and sought professional help to end his dependency on the medication, the church claimed.

'To this former staff member, we again apologise and would welcome the opportunity to provide further assistance if this is needed,' the board said.

The second incident was when Mr Houston knocked on the hotel door of a female guest following the 2019 Hillsong Conference and came inside.

'An in-depth investigation found that Pastor Brian became disoriented... following the consumption of anti-anxiety medication beyond the prescribed dose, mixed with alcohol,' it said.

Mr Dooley previously said Mr Houston was in the room for 40 minutes and no allegations of assault were made by the woman.

'The board found that Brian had breached the Hillsong Pastor's Code of Conduct,' he said.

Hillsong's interim global leader Phil Dooley (pictured) apologised in an online service as the church's board issued an apology statement

'The board also met a request for a refund of money donated to the church by this person... Pastor Brian was extremely remorseful and insisted on repaying the church for this.'

The board said after the most recent investigation, Mr Houston took 'specific action, including stepping down from leadership for a period'.

'However unfortunately he failed to take all of the agreed steps which resulted in further action being taken by the board in late 2021.

'We apologise unreservedly to the people affected by Pastor Brian's actions and commit to being available for any further assistance we can provide.'

The board said Hillsong was reviewing its governance to ensure higher levels of transparency and accountability.

Hillsong was founded in 1983 in the Hills district of Sydney and has expanded to an international organisation with more then 100 churches and a global weekly attendance of 150,000.
Vladimir Putin's Russian Army has lost another commander - the 15th of Putin's top military leaders to be killed as the country's invasion of Ukraine heads into its second month.

Colonel Alexei Sharov became the latest high-ranking Russian official to die in what has become the country's biggest loss of military higher-ups since World War II. His death was announced by Ukrainian armed forces on social media Tuesday.

The commander of the 810th Guards Separate Order of Zhukov Brigade in the Russian Marines, Sharov was reportedly killed in Mariupol, a city in which over 100,000 people have been trapped amid a siege by the invading Russians.

At least 902 civilians have been killed and 1,459 wounded in Ukraine as of midnight on March 19, the UN human rights office said.

Ten million people have been displaced, including nearly 3.4 million who have fled the country, the U.N. refugee agency said.

Russian media had reported that they've lost almost 10,000 troops of their own since the invasion began but the tabloid paper Komsomolskaya Pravda has since said they were hacked and this was not the case.

Russia has not officially updated its casualty figures since stating on March 2 that 498 servicemen had been killed and 1,597 wounded. Since then its offensive has run into further heavy resistance from Ukraine's army and volunteer defence forces.

Russian top military officials killed during invasion Lieutenant General Andrei Mordvichev

Major General Vitaly Gerasimov

Major General Andrei Kolesnikov

Major General Andrei Sukhovetsky

Major-General Oleg Mityaev

Colonel Nikolay Ovcharenko

Colonel Sergei Porokhyna

Colonel Sergei Sukharev

Colonel Andrei Zakharov

Colonel Konstantin Zizevsky

Lieutenant Colonel Yuri Agarkov

Lieutenant Colonel Denis Glebov

Lieutenant Colonel Dmitry Safronov

Major Viktor Maksimchuk

General Magomed Tushaev

Captain Andrey Paliy

Captain Alexey Glushchak

Colonel Alexei Sharov Advertisement

Sharov's death comes after the death of Colonel Nikolay Ovcharenko, Commander of the 45th Engineering Regiment.

Sharov is the fifth colonel to die and marks 15 of Russia's military commanders to have died in the invasion, according to The Sun. Foreign Policy reported that Moscow has suffered its highest casualty rate among top brass since the WWII.

The news comes as Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky said some 100,000 are still in the besieged city of Mariupol, trapped 'in inhumane conditions' while low on supplies and under constant attack.

In his regular evening address the Ukrainian president said that one group fleeing along an agreed humanitarian route were 'simply captured by the occupiers.'

He added: 'There are about 100,000 people in the city - in inhumane conditions, in a complete blockade, no food, no water, no medicine, under constant shelling.'

Zelensky also accused Russian forces of not only blocking a humanitarian convoy trying to take desperately needed aid to Mariupol but seizing what another Ukrainian official said were 15 of the bus drivers and rescue workers on the aid mission, along with their vehicles.

The Ukrainian president said the Russians had agreed to the route ahead of time.

'We are trying to organise stable humanitarian corridors for Mariupol residents, but almost all of our attempts, unfortunately, are foiled by the Russian occupiers, by shelling or deliberate terror,' he added in a nightly video address to the nation.

Two 'super powerful bombs' hit Mariupol yesterday as officials tried to evacuate thousands of civilians from the besieged city, which has been described as a 'hell-scape riddled with dead bodies' by humanitarian workers.

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 Oleg Mityaev: Commander of the army's 150th motorised rifle division, died fighting around the besieged city of Mariupol 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 Major-General Oleg Mityaev, 47 (left and right), was killed by Ukrainian troops near Mariupol - Kyiv has said 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 (left), who led air assault troops died in the south of Ukraine and Captain Alexey Glushchak (right), of the GRU intelligence service, who died fighting near Mariupol Colonel Andrei Zakharov (right, with Vladimir Putin) was killed in an ambush near Kyiv in the opening days of the war, while General Magomed Tushaev: Chechen special forces leader killed in an ambush near Hostomel Vladimir Zhonga: Leader of neo-Nazi Sparta Battalion 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 Vladimir Zhoga (left), the leader of a military group from the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, was killed in Volnovakha while Chechen general Magomed Tushaev (right) was reported killed in an ambush on an armoured column Georgy Dudorov (left), deputy commander of an airborne reconnaissance division, and Aleksey Aleshko (right), a paratroop intelligence officer, have also been killed Advertisement

Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said there 'will not be enough space for everyone' to leave the city on Tuesday - amid estimates that up to 300,000 people remain there - but 'we will try to carry out the evacuation until we have gotten all the inhabitants.'

As the evacuation got under way two 'super powerful bombs' struck the port city, local officials said, without saying whether they killed anyone. 'It is clear that the occupiers are not interested in the city of Mariupol, they want to raze it to the ground, to reduce it to ashes,' they said.

It came as UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for an end to the 'absurd war' started when Vladimir Putin gave the order to invade almost exactly a month ago, warning that the conflict is 'going nowhere fast' and that the Ukrainian people are 'enduring a living hell.'

'Continuing the war in Ukraine is morally unacceptable, politically indefensible and militarily nonsensical,' Guterres said. 'Even if Mariupol falls, Ukraine cannot be conquered city by city, street by street, house by house.

'This war is unwinnable. Sooner or later, it will have to move from the battlefield to the peace table. It is time to end this absurd war,' he added.

President Zelensky said Ukraine is 'on the brink of surviving' its war as he told lawmakers in a video address yesterday that Italy must stop being 'a resort for murderers' and urged the country to ban Russian ships from its ports.

In a speech to the Italian parliament, Zelensky urged the country's MPs to freeze all assets belonging to the Russian elite and to declare a full trade embargo, starting with oil.

Two 'super powerful bombs' hit Mariupol today as officials tried to evacuate thousands of civilians from the besieged city, which has been described as a 'hell-scape riddled with dead bodies' by humanitarian workers

A handout satellite image made available by Maxar Technologies shows a burning high-rise apartment buildings in Mariupol, Ukraine

Russian troops entered Ukraine on 24 February prompting the country's president to declare martial law and triggering a series of announcements by Western countries to impose severe economic sanctions on Russia

He said: 'You know very well who orders troops to go to war and who propagates this. Almost all of them use Italy as a place to rest. Do not be a resort for murderers.

'Freeze all their property, accounts and yachts. Freeze all the assets of those who have influence, let them use it for peace. Support sanctions against Russia, a full trade embargo, starting with oil.'

He also asked Italy to remove enemy troops from Ukraine and to help carry out the de-mining and reconstruction of the country 'after this war'.

'Together with you, together with Italy. Together with Europe. Together - in the European Union,' he added.

He also begged the country's MPs to step up sanctions on the Russian economy, saying 'more pressure' can help Ukraine withstand the Kremlin assault.

US President Joe Biden will meet with European leaders at an extraordinary NATO summit in Brussels on March 24. He will attend a scheduled European Council summit, where efforts to impose sanctions are underway.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said: 'While he's there, his goal is to meet in person face-to-face with his European counterparts and talk about, assess where we are at this point in the conflict in the invasion of Ukraine by Russia.

'We've been incredibly aligned to date. That doesn't happen by accident. The president is a big believer in face-to-face diplomacy. So it's an opportunity to do exactly that.'

The trip follows Kamala Harris's visit to eastern flank NATO countries of Poland and Romania last week to discuss with leaders the growing refugee crisis in eastern Europe and to underscore the US's support for NATO.

Poland's foreign minister Zbigniew Rau said Tuesday a visit by Biden to Poland was 'very probable' when he comes to Europe.

More than 1.8million Ukrainians have fled to Poland since the start of the war, according to the UN. More than three million people have fled Ukraine since Russian launched its invasion.

Rau told Polish state TVP INFO: 'It would be hard to imagine a better place for the United States and for the entire alliance to stress their position than the brightest link on the eastern flank, that Poland is.'

Psaki said she did not have additional details about whether Biden would visit Poland during the trip.
Belarus has granted political asylum to an American citizen who is wanted by the FBI on criminal charges stemming from the assault on the US Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump.

Evan Neumann, 49, received documents confirming his refugee status in a ceremony broadcast by Belarusian state media on Tuesday, after first entering the country last summer.

'Now you are completely under the protection of the Republic of Belarus,' a uniformed official, identified by state media as Yuri Braziyskiy, told Neumann as he handed over the document.

Neumann, a former California resident who has been on the lam since last year, faces 14 criminal charges in the January 6, 2021 riot, including assaulting police officers, which he has denied.

Evan Neumann, 49, received documents confirming his refugee status in Belarus during a ceremony broadcast by state media on Tuesday

Now on the FBI most wanted list, and thought to be the only international fugitive charged in the Capitol riot, Neumann is preparing to make a new life in the former Soviet satellite state, which is closely allied with Russia and has supported Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

Neumann has been on the run for roughly a year now, and first traveled to Ukraine, he has said in prior interview.

But last August, he crossed the border into Belarus on foot, saying he feared that he was being followed and investigated by authorities in Ukraine.

In a carefully scripted broadcast, Belarusian state media trumpeted the ceremony granting Neumann asylum, and played up his claims that he faced unjust persecution in the US.

'Belarus is very nice. And I feel safe in Belarus, especially compared to my compatriots in America,' said Neumann, appearing to weigh his words carefully, in an interview as part of the broadcast.

Neumann claimed that six Capitol riot suspects have killed themselves while facing charges.

Multiple suicides of riot defendants have been reported, but the exact number was difficult to immediately confirm.

Video footage had captured Neumann at the riots wearing a Make America Great Again hat, black jacket, dark-colored backpack as well as a yellow and orange scarf

Neumann was also seen donning a gas mask and ramming a metal barricade into police

At least 800 people have been charged in the Capitol riot, in which Trump loyalists stormed Congress to disrupt the certification of President Joe Biden's election victory.

The FBI says that roughly 250 of the defendants are considered wanted fugitives.

Belarus has no extradition treaty with the United States.

In Neumann's absence, an indictment containing 14 criminal counts against him was unsealed in December, adding to the charges originally listed in a criminal complaint last March.

Neumann, of Mill Valley, California, near San Francisco, was seen in video footage donning a gas mask while standing near police in front of barricades set up at the base of the West Front of the Capitol Building, prosecutors said in a statement.

According to documents filed in the case, Neumann later removes his gas mask and shouts at the police, 'I'm willing to die, are you?' before he physically assaults several officers and rushes into them using a barricade as a battering ram.

In November, Neumann was featured in a Belarusian state media TV special titled Goodbye, America, recounting his journey to the former Soviet republic

He said on the program that he was seeking political asylum in Belarus because the United States, in his opinion, is no longer a country of law and order

Neumann, who has yet to make a court appearance in the case, fled from the United States last February 16, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia said in a statement.

In November, Neumann was featured in a Belarusian state media television special titled Goodbye, America, recounting his journey to the former Soviet republic.

He said on the program that he was seeking political asylum in Belarus because the United States, in his opinion, is no longer a country of law and order.

In the interview published on Tuesday, Neumann was asked how he felt about being granted asylum.

'I am very grateful, and it is bittersweet like eating klyukva,' he said, using the Russian word for cranberries. 'So, very happy and very sad at the same time.'
School staff and students could soon be wearing masks again as new regulations are introduced to combat a surging Covid sub-variant.

Under the new NSW regulations, which were announced on Wednesday, more rapid antigen tests will be supplied to teachers and students, and staff, adult visitors or high school students could be required to wear masks indoors.

Assemblies and large gatherings could also be moved outdoors to help schools continue to operate through the spike in cases.

The Minister for Education, Sarah Mitchell, said the enforcement of mask wearing will be in place until at least the end of Term 1 in the lead up to Easter, when many people take a holiday before winter comes.

More rapid antigen tests will be supplied to teachers and students in NSW, and new measures are being rolled out to help schools continue to operate through the surging number of Covid-19 cases. Pictured is a student talking to a teacher

The changes to mask wearing rules, which are making many fearful that new rules could ruin Easter, come as authorities are expected to sign off within days on a fourth Covid vaccine dose for almost five million Australians.

Ms Mitchell said a multipack of at least five RATs will be available for students and teachers at every school as needed to use when symptomatic.

'Additional tests will also be provided for early childhood educators and staff,' she said.

What the NSW education department has called 'additional proportionate measures for a short period of time', includes requiring staff, adult visitors or high school students to wear masks indoors, or moving assemblies or large gatherings outdoors.

The measures will be used if a particular community is experiencing an increase in Covid cases.

The announcement came as NSW recorded 24,115 new Covid cases and five deaths as daily infection numbers surge amid the spread of the more transmissible sub-variant BA.2.

'These tailored measures will support the continuity of face-to-face learning and help to protect students and staff by reducing in-school transmission of Covid-19,' Ms Mitchell said.

'With a significant proportion of new cases being school-aged children, it is important that we all do our part to help schools remain operational by staying home if you're sick and test if you're experiencing any symptoms or are a close contact.'

The minister said the state government will continue to review the situation throughout the school year 'to ensure students continue to receive face-to-face learning'.

Pictured is a Year 12 student getting a Covid-19 vaccination shot at Qudos Arena in Sydney

Victoria recorded a similar pattern to NSW on Wednesday, with 10,471 new cases - the biggest daily increase since February 4 - and 11 deaths from the virus.

The rise in cases has made NSW and Victorian state government health advisers become hesitant about planned easing or removal of the seven-day isolation requirement for household contacts of confirmed cases.

In Queensland, chief health officer ruled out introducing more coronavirus restrictions despite the emergence of the new Omicron sub-variant.

Dr John Gerrard said state infections jumped by 15 per cent in the past week, with more than half the cases in the past fortnight identified as sub-variant BA.2.

Queensland's chief health officer John Gerrard said more mandates are not being considered in Queensland despite the new Omicron sub-variant causing a spike in Covid-19 cases (pictured, people wear masks in Brisbane in January 2022)

Dr Gerrard said since BA.2 was first discovered by Queensland Health in December it has spread to more than 90 countries.

'In the last two weeks we have seen 58 per cent of the virus sequenced in Queensland identified as BA.2,' he said.

'It will be by far and away the dominant strain virus in Australia within weeks.'

However Dr Gerrard is not considering reintroducing any mandates, at least not yet.

'A legal restriction from the chief health officer is a very serious thing to undertake,' he said.

High school students in NSW could soon have to wear masks in classrooms again. Pictured are school students wearing masks on the street

'I will only undertake that if it is clear there is an immediate threat to the safety of Queenslanders. But we do not plan to introduce any new public health measures to deal with this current BA.2 wave until we get a better sense of what it is like.'

Transmission of the virus has risen by 57 per cent nationally in the past week - up to 53,376 cases on Tuesday - driven by the BA.2 sub-variant.

The spike is yet to be reflected in intensive care figures as there are only 97 Covid patients in intensive care, compared to 424 at the height of the first Omicron wave in January.

New South Wales has recorded 24,115 new Covid cases and five deaths as daily infection numbers surge amid the spread of the more transmissible sub-variant, BA.2 (pictured Sydney woman walks with a face mask in her hand)

Infectious disease expert Peter Collignon told Daily Mail Australia that the number of people in ICU would need to be more than 400 before the reimposition of public health orders was warranted.

He said 20 per cent of ICU beds being occupied by coronavirus patients could trigger new restrictions.

Recent figures show there are 2,183 intensive care beds available nationally, meaning 436 beds represented 20 per cent of ICU capacity.

'Lockdowns are a thing of the past but once that (20 per cent) figure is reached we can think about mask mandates and tightening density limits in pubs and restaurants,' Professor Collignon said.

'We're looking at potentially requiring people to sit down in venues - not widespread restrictions.

A woman is pictured wearing a face mask while leaving a shop in Brisbane on January 7, 2022

'If your ICUs are 20 per cent full with Covid patients, those rules will help flatten the curve of infections. The trigger has to be a hospital system that is overwhelmed by infections.'

Authorities are expected to sign off within days on a fourth Covid vaccine dose for almost five million Australians, and scrap plans to ease isolation rules amid a surge in Omicron cases.

The Australian Health Protection Principal Committee is expected to discuss rolling out a fourth jab to combat waning immunity levels and a case spike driven by BA.2.

The first groups expected to become eligible will include 4.2million Australians over the age of 65 and 500,000 people who are severely immunocompromised.

Details of the Covid-Smart school settings are available on the NSW Department of Education website.
By Kim Sun-ae





President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol pledged to raise the proportion of nuclear power in Korea's electricity generation from the current level of 25-29 percent to 30-35 percent by 2030. He also said that he would restart building Sin Hanul reactors 3 and 4 whose construction has been suspended. But is it safe to use nuclear power?



On March 4, when a wildfire occurred in Uljin, North Gyeongsang Province, the fire spread close to the fences of Hanul Nuclear Power Plant. If the fire had damaged the power plant, it could have become an even more tragic situation than now.



Scientists predict that climate change will increase the frequency of wildfires and typhoons, both of which can damage nuclear power plants. According to climate scientists, global warming raises the number of lightning strikes. Warming causes more water vapor in the atmosphere, and water vapor is the fuel for thunderstorms. So the warmer it gets, the more lightning strikes are expected. Increased lightning strikes would lead to more wildfires.



Also, nuclear power plants are not safe in the case of other natural disasters including earthquakes. Think of the Fukushima nuclear accident caused by the great earthquake and tsunami in 2011. Although 11 years have passed, the problem is still ongoing. Water has been irradiated constantly from the nuclear power plant, and about 70 percent of people who evacuated their homes after the accident could not return yet.



Moreover, a strong earthquake occurred again in Fukushima this March. The disaster temporarily stopped the operation of part of the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant facilities for cooling spent nuclear fuel. These accidents show that nuclear power plants are vulnerable to natural disasters such as earthquakes.



In addition to natural disasters, war is another factor which threatens the safety of nuclear power plants. Recently Russia seized control of Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. This situation and the continuing tragic war, which Russia must stop, show the high risk associated with nuclear power plants all over the world in the event of a military aggression.



In particular, Korea is not free from this risk. The country is surrounded by strong nations: China, Russia and Japan. Furthermore, South and North Korea did not end the Korean War formally. Given the circumstances, South Korea cannot ensure the safety of its nuclear power plants.



If one of the power plants happens to be attacked, it will be a complete catastrophe. In this small country, we have too many nuclear power plants. In the case of a nuclear accident, no one will be safe. Thus, it is wise not to build new nuclear power plants.



Even if no accident occurs during the operation of nuclear power plants, radioactive substances in spent nuclear fuel can have a half-life of as high as 24,000 years. When we think of the future of our children, our nieces and nephews and our grandchildren, what will be the right decision?





Kim Sun-ae (blog.naver.com/dancinglf) is a writer and translator.




Australians on the east coast have been told to brace for a new rain bomb as experts predict the unwelcome arrival of thunderstorms, wild winds and a relentless deluge.

The Bureau of Meteorology said a cold front crossing the southeast of the country is due to hit Sydney, Wollongong, and the Northern Rivers region from Wednesday.

The wet weather system is expected to dump widespread rainfall on areas previously damaged by the floods, bringing the potential of flash flooding.

Large parts of the state, including Sydney, are forecast to be pounded with up to 100mm of rain over the next four days.

Rainy weather is set to continue for seven days from Wednesday along the central parts of Australia's east coast

The wet weather system is expected to dump widespread rainfall on areas previously damaged by the floods, bringing the potential of flash flooding (pictured, scenes in Lismore)

The downpour is expected to deliver at least 150mm of rain over the next week as flood-weary residents brace for another round of wet and wild conditions.

'Severe thunderstorms are possible for north-eastern New South Wales over the coming days,' a statement from the bureau warned on Wednesday.

'Localised heavy rain, gusty winds and hail are all possible.'

BoM says the La Nina pattern that brought record rain and flooding to NSW over summer is far from over, with the wild weather expected to hang around until May.

Senior Meteorologist Jonathan How said the forecast of wet conditions so soon after the floods was the news 'no one in NSW wants to hear right now'.

The Bureau of Meteorology has warned a cold front on Australia's east coast will bring more rain to Sydney, Wollongong, and the Northern Rivers region

A graph from Weatherzone shows the rain forecast for the next nine days in eastern Australia

The forecaster told Nine the wet weather will spread from Wollongong to the Northern Rivers region - including flood-stricken Lismore.

'It is the news that no-one in NSW wants to hear right now... across eastern NSW, there's plenty of wet weather to come,' he said on Wednesday.

The bureau warned catchments and rivers already saturated by previous rainfall would mean an increased risk of flash flooding, particularly for regions such as the Hunter, the Mid North Coast and Northern Rivers.

Water is steadily moving southwards from inland Queensland into northern NSW along the Birrie, Bokhara and Narran rivers.

Moderate flooding is already occurring at the Narran river near Angledool which could intensify to major levels over the weekend.

A flood watch has been issued along the Bellinger, Kalang, Nambucca and Upper Macintyre Rivers along with warnings of potential landslides and fallen trees.

Meteorologist Jackson Brown encouraged NSW residents to remain vigilant amid warnings La Nina conditions would linger for at least another month.

'Everyone is acutely aware of the floods over the past couple of weeks, but we are really encouraging people not to be fatigued with it,' he said.

Water is steadily moving southwards from inland Queensland into northern NSW along the Birrie, Bokhara and Narran rivers (pictured, scenes of flood damage in South Lismore)

Residents from Wollongong to Sydney and the Northern Rivers region have been told to brace for more wet weather and possible flooding

'We're set for another seven days of showers, rain and storms kicking off from today anywhere north of Wollongong up towards Sydney and the Northern Rivers as well.

'We're expecting over the next seven days 50 to 100mm but isolated places could see 200mm fall from tomorrow and into the weekend.'

BoM is predicting thunderstorms along the affected parts of the east coast with the bulk expected to hit from Friday and into the weekend.

Bondi in Sydney's east is expected to receive about 40mm of rain on Friday, 20mm on Saturday and 25mm on Sunday.

A strong wind warning has been issued for the South Coast from Sydney to Eden while parts of inland Queensland are also expected to be hit with wet conditions.

Temperatures are due to plunge in Sydney over the weekend with a low of 18C expected over the next four days with Sunday and Monday bringing milder temperatures with a high of 25C.

A graph from Weatherzone shows the rain forecast for the next seven days in eastern Australia

A southerly change and trough are bringing unsettled weather conditions to northern and eastern parts of #NSW today and into the weekend. This is likely to bring severe #thunderstorms to northeast #NSW from today. Check forecasts and monitor warnings at: https://t.co/VSywVjzXy7 pic.twitter.com/Sqv5bITmD4  Bureau of Meteorology, New South Wales (@BOM_NSW) March 23, 2022

Sydney's heaviest rain is set to fall on Friday with 25mm forecast.

The state's soggy summer has given away to a wet beginning to autumn, with Sydney recording 409mm of rain this month already, making it the fourth-wettest March on record.

A southerly change will hit on Wednesday afternoon with possibly severe thunderstorms north of Newcastle bringing heavy rain and damaging winds, possibly extending to the Mid-North Coast and southern parts of the Northern Rivers, where the worst of the recent flooding occurred.

Some areas around the Hunter region, mid-North Coast and up towards the Northern Rivers could see more than 200mm of rainfall.

Flood-devastated Lismore residents are forecast to receive over 20mm of rain Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

While the river flooding is not predicted to rise above minor floods levels people in previously affected areas are being warned to take care around river areas.

On February 28 Lismore locals underwent on emergency evacuation after a record-breaking 14.37m flood collapsed the town's weir

On February 28, Lismore locals underwent an emergency evacuation after a record-breaking 14.37m flood collapsed the town's weir.

This week, several Lismore residents carried a tip truck full of flood-damaged possessions to the Prime Minister's Sydney residence of Kirribilli House to mount a protest against the handling of the flood crisis.

The tip truck was blocked from driving to the official residence so protesters instead took their destroyed possessions to the front of the 1855 sandstone mansion.

The protest group said in a statement they were demonstrating against the federal government's response to the 'climate-fuelled mega-floods'.

A street in South Lismore in the Northern Rivers region shows the devastating damage caused by the town's recent flood

On Monday several Lismore residents carried a tip truck full of flood-damaged possessions to Kirribilli House after mounting a protest against the handling of the flood crisis

'Scott Morrison came to Lismore and refused to speak to us. He snuck in through the backdoor and had a curated experience,' demonstrator Kudra Ricketts, 24, said.

One protester said she had been trapped by floodwater in her roof cavity for six hours before she was finally rescued by a local on a jetski.

She lost her home and belongings to flood damage.

'We've interrupted our clean up and travelled more than 700km to the Prime Minister's residence to hold him to account,' she said.

Canberra and Melbourne are both forecast for cloudy weather and showers heading into the weekend

On Monday Mr Morrison announced a $1.8billion funding package to help the recovery of south-east Queensland.

He said he understood the frustrations of Lismore residents but added: 'I think the politicisation of natural disasters is very unfortunate.'

Last week an extra $742 million was announced for the joint Federal-NSW flood recovery fund, bringing the total federal and state packages for NSW to $1.7 billion.

Meanwhile, the NSW parliament has voted to establish an independent inquiry into the state and federal governments' response to the flood crisis.

The announcement follows the NSW government announcement just days ago that former police commissioner Mick Fuller will head an investigation into the causes of the floods and the emergency response.

The parliamentary inquiry will examine the preparedness of NSW to deal with major flooding events, while considering gaps in the emergency response that left inundated residents in the state's north to be rescued by private boats.

Darwin residents are also forecast for wet weather with storms set to continue into next week

Labor's North Coast spokesman Walt Secord said both the federal and NSW government responses failed, leaving nearly 1,500 people in emergency accommodation and 4,000 homes uninhabitable.

'Parliament needs to get to the bottom of what happened and the widely acknowledged lack of co-ordination in the immediate aftermath,' he said.

The rest of the country is also expected to see some miserable weather in coming days.

Canberra and Melbourne are both forecast for cloudy weather and showers heading into the weekend.

Darwin residents can expect storms that will continue into next week.

Brisbanites will soak up all the sun they can on Wednesday with Thursday, Friday, and Saturday expected to be cloudy with showers.
Ben Roberts-Smith's ex-mistress knew where compromising pictures of her and the war hero had been taken because there was only one place where they'd had ever sex against a window.

The woman, known as Person 17, has claimed she was approached by a mystery man who showed her graphic photographs of her having sex with Mr Roberts-Smith in a Brisbane hotel.

Person 17 told the Federal Court on Wednesday she had been walking along a beach in her home town early one morning when the man confronted her with evidence of their affair.

She said the man had produced two images from a envelope which appeared to show her and Mr Roberts-Smith having sex against a window at the high-rise Milton hotel.

Mr Roberts-Smith's barrister, Bruce McClintock SC, repeatedly put it to Person 17 that her testimony about the man and the photographs was a 'straight-out bare-faced lie', which she denied.

Ben Roberts-Smith's ex-mistress believed she knew where compromising pictures of her and the war hero had been taken because there was only place where they'd had sex up against a window. Mr Roberts-Smith is pictured outside the Federal Court on Wednesday

Person 17 says she was confronted by a man who threatened to make public pictures of her having sex with Mr Roberts-Smith if she did not reveal their affair to his wife Emma (above)

Asked why she thought pictures of her having sex with Mr Roberts-Smith against a window had been taken at the Milton hotel, Person 17 said: 'I thought it was the location because that was a location, or the only location, where I had had sex with Ben in that position'

Person 17 said the man was Caucasian, had brown hair and was wearing jeans with a black T-shirt. He had come up behind her from nearby sand dunes and she did not know if he had arrived in a car.

'He just looked to me like a sort of bikie-type person, or an army person,' she told the court.

Person 17 is giving evidence for Nine newspapers in the defamation case Mr Roberts-Smith has brought against the publisher.

Nine has accused Mr Roberts-Smith of committing or being complicit in the murders of six unarmed prisoners during his service with the SAS in Afghanistan and also of punching Person 17.

Mr Roberts-Smith has denied every war crimes claim made by the newspapers and is just as insistent he did not assault Person 17, or would ever hit a woman.

Person 17 has described her tumultuous six-month relationship with the Victoria Cross recipient, which began in October 2017 at a time he says he was separated from his then wife.

His former mistress said the unknown man on the beach had confronted her with the pictures on April 3, 2018, two days before the last night she spent with her lover.

Mr Roberts-Smith has said he had a six-month affair with Person 17 while he was temporarily separated from his then wife. Ms Roberts has said there was no short-lived separation and she did not know of the affair until it was over. The former couple is pictured in London in 2012

'The photos were of what looked to be Ben and I up against the - sorry, this is really embarrassing - up against the, like, glass window where we had had sex, several times,' Person 17 said, as she burst into tears.

Justice Anthony Besanko then granted Person 17 a ten-minute break so she could compose herself.

Upon Person 17's return to the witness box Mr McClintock put it to her she had made up the window sex story while she was sitting in court, which she denied.

Person 17 said the pictures had been taken in 'day time' and the camera was 'just looking straight on'.

Mr McClintock asked Person 17 why she believed it was the Milton hotel when she had said there was little detail in the photographs of the room.

'I thought that it was the Milton because that was a location - the only location - where I had had sex with Ben in that position.'

Mr McClintock: 'You never ever had sex up against a window with my client, did you?'

Person 17: 'Yes I did.'

Ben Roberts-Smith's defamation trial has taken another turn as his onetime mistress gives evidence about their tumultuous affair. Mr Roberts-Smith is pictured with his wife Emma Roberts, who has dropped the Smith from her surname

The court has heard Person 17 and Mr Roberts-Smith had only ever stayed in rooms at the Milton between the 20th and 30th floors.

When Mr McClintock asked Person 17 if a drone might have been used to take the pictures she said, 'I have no idea'.

Mr McClintock: 'It really is just a ridiculous story, isn't it?'

Person 17: 'No'.

She said the man had instructed her to tell Mr Roberts-Smith's wife Emma she was having an affair with him or he would expose their relationship.

'He said to me, "You've been seeing Ben Roberts-Smith",' she said. 'He showed me the photos. He said that I was to tell Emma about the affair or the photos would be made public.'

The stranger had not addressed Person 17 by name and she did not know how he had found her.

'I said, "Who are you?" but he didn't answer,' she told the court.

Ms Roberts has said she suspected her husband of having an affair during a difficult period in their marriage in late 2017 but he repeatedly denied it. 'He would constantly be taking selfies of himself and I knew they weren't for me,' Ms Roberts told the court

Person 17 had not asked how to contact the man in future and did not know how she would communicate with him if she complied with his demands.

'That's not something that I thought of at the time,' she said.

'The whole thing was bizarre.'

Mr McClintock: 'The whole thing is completely ridiculous, isn't it? It never happened.'

Person 17: 'It did happen.'

Despite the man's threats, Person 17 said she had not told her lover about the pictures. 'I didn't trust him,' she said of Mr Roberts-Smith. 'I thought he might have been involved with it.'

Mr McClintock put it to Person 17 that was the first time she had made such a claim and asked what interest Mr Roberts-Smith would have in wanting her to confront his wife.

'I think the interest in my going to his wife would be so that he could do what he ended up doing and making me out to be the bad person in the situation,' she replied.

Mr Roberts-Smith finally broke up with Person 17 over dinner on April 5, 2018. The spent a final evening together in Brisbane's Airport Novotel Hotel. Mr Roberts-Smith has denied telling Person 17 that night: 'You're like crack and I'm going to find it very hard to give you up'

Asked how Mr Roberts-Smith would have obtained pictures taken from outside the hotel, Person 17 said, 'I don't know but he was always on about private investigators or people following us'.

Mr McClintock noted Person 17 had not included the mystery man in an affidavit sworn in October 2018 listing the people who knew about the affair.

'I don't know who that person is,' she told the court.

Person 17 said she had no qualms about suggesting to Mr Roberts-Smith the day after the beach encounter with the mystery man that they stay at the Milton again on April 5.

'I don't think it was really relevant where we stayed,' she said.
Advertisement

Nearly 400 Channel migrants were brought into Dover yesterday, the Home Office confirmed  bringing this years total so far to more than 3,800.

Some 394 people, including tiny babies wrapped in blankets, arrived in Kent on 11 small boats, while the French intercepted a further 467 people after attempting to make the journey.

Crossings have taken place this week as people-smugglers take advantage of calm seas and clear skies during Britains mini-heatwave.

Yesterdays surge means that 2,354 migrants have arrived via small boats across the Channel this month  almost three times as many as March last year. In 2021, more than 28,500 migrants made the crossing from France.

A Home Office spokeswoman said joint operations with the French had prevented more than 23,000 migrant attempts in 2021 and 19 small boat organised criminal groups had been dismantled with 400 arrests since July 2020.

Campaigners say the Channel migrants are refugees who are fleeing persecution or war in countries in Africa and the Middle East.

The National Crime Agency has warned the UK maritime industry to beware of organised crime groups targeting them to obtain small boats for people smugglers.

It comes as the Government is currently paving the way for Ukrainians escaping Putins bombs to enter Britain, with more than 150,000 people in the UK expressing their interest in sponsoring visa applications for thousands of refugees.

Young children amongst a group of people thought to be migrants as they are brought in to Dover, Kent, following a small boat incident in the Channel, Tuesday March 22, 2022

A child amongst a group of people thought to be migrants are brought in to Dover, Kent, onboard a Border Force vessel following a small boat incident in the Channel, March 22, 2022

A group of people thought to be migrants are brought in to Dover, Kent, onboard an RNLI vessel following a small boat incident in the Channel, March 22, 2022

A Coastguard officer engages with a child as a group of people thought to be migrants are brought in to Dover, Kent, from a Border Force vessel following a small boat incident in the Channel, March 22, 2022

A group of people thought to be migrants are brought in to Dover, Kent, onboard a Border Force vessel following a small boat incident in the Channel, March 22, 2022

Yesterdays surge means that 2,354 migrants have arrived via small boats across the Channel this month  almost three times as many as March last year. In 2021, more than 28,500 migrants made the crossing from France

Tom Pursglove, Minister for Justice and Tackling Illegal Migration, said: The rise in dangerous Channel crossings is unacceptable.

Not only are they an overt abuse of our immigration laws but they also impact on the UK taxpayer, risk lives and our ability to help refugees come to the UK via safe and legal routes. Rightly, the British public has had enough.

Through our Nationality and Borders Bill, were cracking down on people smugglers and fixing the broken system by making it a criminal offence to knowingly arrive in the UK illegally and introducing a maximum sentence of life imprisonment for those who facilitate illegal entry into our country.

Border Force cutter Hunter brought the first group of around 20 people into Dover Marina around midday on Monday, with the mostly male group wearing red blankets over their lifejackets waved as they walked up the gangway for processing.

Hunter returned to harbour shortly afterwards carrying around 30 more migrants, including some women. Large Border Force vessel Seeker docked just before 1pm with 50 more people intercepted attempting the dangerous journey.

A short while later three migrants were rescued by the RNLI in Littlestone-on-Sea after getting stuck in the Channel on a tiny dinghy. They are believed to have ditched the engine of their vessel to be helped from the 21-mile Dover Strait.

The three young men were brought to safety by a lifeboat around 1pm with their deflated boat in tow and handed over to Kent Police once they had reached the shore.

A spokesperson for the Maritime and Coastguard Agency said: HM Coastguard has been coordinating a search and rescue response to a number of incidents involving small boats off Kent, working with Border Force and other partners.

We sent Dungeness, Walmer and Ramsgate RNLI lifeboats as well as the fixed wing and remotely piloted aircraft and Border Force vessels. Langdon Battery Coastguard Rescue Team was also sent.

The NCA has warned that boat owners should take extra security measures to protect vessels and equipment while reporting suspicious behaviour following thefts.

A Coastguard officer carries a young baby as a group of people thought to be migrants are brought in to Dover, Kent, from a Border Force vessel following a small boat incident in the Channel, March 22, 2022

A group of people thought to be migrants queueing for buses after being brought in to Dover, Kent, onboard a RNLI vessel following a small boat incident in the Channel

A group of people thought to be migrants are brought in to Dover, Kent, onboard a Border Force vessel, March 22, 2022

Retailers are also asked to report unusual purchases of untreated plywood boards, PVC tarpaulin sheets and duct tape as these materials are often used to reinforce and modify inflatables.

Intel has led the NCA to believe OCGs are using ever more dangerous and un-seaworthy boats to smuggle people across the Channel with no regard for increasing the risk to life. Its new appeal, backed by Border Force and charity Crimestoppers, will see striking leaflets and social media posts issued.

NCA Deputy Director Andrea Wilson said: As the weather starts to improve, making small boat crossings more likely, we are taking this opportunity to reinforce our appeals to those within the marine and maritime industries to help us stop those involved in organised people smuggling.

Crossing the channel in these types of vessels is extremely dangerous, but the criminals involved dont care about safety, they just see people as a commodity to be exploited. Tragically, in the last year we have seen the fatal consequences of that.

Appeals like this are an important part of our activity to disrupt these gangs and go hand in hand with law enforcement activity to stop them.

We continue to work with partners to target the supply of these vessels but we need the help of those in the UK maritime industry and coastal communities to do that, and Id ask them to report any suspicions they may have.

Lesley Robinson, CEO of British Marine, the trade association for the UK leisure, superyacht and small commercial marine industry, said: We are pleased to be continuing our partnership with the NCA to help raise awareness of organised crime linked to the supply of small boats; and highlight the steps businesses and boat owners should take to protect themselves and others.

As a trade association, safety is at the heart of what we do and I am confident that our members will continue to take the lead in this area by reporting suspicious activity and familiarising themselves with the red flags to be mindful of when selling boats and marine equipment.

This is a vitally important campaign from the NCA and I would encourage all leisure marine businesses and boat owners to report any signs of suspicious activity and take additional security measures to prevent them becoming the victims of theft.

Meanwhile, a Sudanese man aged in his 20s who is believed to have only reached the Calais region a few days earlier in hope of reaching the UK, was hit by a vehicle while walking in the road in northern France.

He died at the scene near the village of Nouvelle-Eglise at 6am on Thursday.

It is the fifth migrant death in the Calais region so far this year  with the man only arriving a few days previous according to Voix Du Nord.
The Kremlin has refused to rule out using nuclear weapons after Vladimir Putin made thinly-veiled threats over the war in Ukraine.

Dmitry Peskov, Putin's spokesman, was asked three times on CNN whether he could definitively rule out the possibility of the Russian leader pushing the button - and three times refused to give a straight answer.

Instead, Peskov said only that Russian doctrine allows Putin to use nukes see off 'existential threats' - raising fears he could justify using the weapons over Ukraine, having previously said the country poses a direct threat to the security of Russia.

John Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, slammed Peskov's rhetoric as 'dangerous' saying it is 'not the way a responsible nuclear power should act'.

President Putin has raised the threat of using nuclear weapons  and his spokesperson Dmitry Peskov refused to rule out their use, in an interview with me tonight. pic.twitter.com/uxQqncLGYN  Christiane Amanpour (@amanpour) March 22, 2022

Dmitry Peskov, Putin's spokesman, has refused to rule out the possibility that Russia will use nuclear weapons over the war in Ukraine (pictured, a Russian nuclear missile test in February)

Kirby added that the US is keeping Russia's nuclear arsenal - believed to be the world's largest at 6,500 warheads - under constant surveillance and has not yet seen any indication that it is preparing to use the weapons.

But that will do little to reassure jittery world leaders, particularly in the West, after Putin used a fire-and-brimstone speech as he declared war on Ukraine to make a thinly-veiled nuclear threat.

Ordering the start of his 'special military operation' on February 24, Putin issued a warning to anyone 'who might be tempted to meddle in the ongoing events: whoever tries to stand in our way or create threats for our country.'

He said: 'People should know Russias response will be immediate and lead you to consequences you have never encountered in your history.'

Just three days later, on February 27, Putin then ordered his nuclear forces to be put on a 'special alert' in what he said was a response to 'aggressive statements' made by the NATO alliance - specifically threatening the West.

America later said that it had not observed any significant changes in Russian nuclear posturing in response to the order, but still cancelled a test-launch of one of its own weapons the following week as a precaution.

There are also fears that Russia could be considering using a low-yield 'tactical' nuclear weapon against Ukraine itself in order to turn the tide of the war, which has so-far gone against Moscow's troops.

Leon Panetta, former US defence secretary, said Peskov's remarks show Russia is 'looking for a possible excuse for the use of low-yield nuclear weapons.'

Putin made a thinly-veiled nuclear threat to 'whoever tries to stand in our way' as he declared war in Ukraine, warning of 'consequences you have never encountered in your history'

Russia has unleashed conventional ballistic missiles against Ukraine (pictured, damage caused by a missile in Kyiv) amid warnings they could now be looking to use low-yield nukes

I think that presents a real concern that Russia at least is considering that possibility,' he added. 'I dont see how you can see it any other way but as dangerous.'

Using the weapons would be based on 'a very false premise that somehow Russia is being threatened,' he said.

'I dont know that its going to happen. I still think that Putin has to worry about how the US would respond and he has to worry about his own survival.'

Western leaders and intelligence agencies have been warning for days that Putin may resort to desperate measures as the war in Ukraine goes against him.

On Sunday, Joe Biden repeated warnings that the Kremlin looks to be developing a pre-text to use biological or chemical weapons by falsely accusing Ukraine of possessing them - saying Putin's 'back is against the wall'.

It also comes after Ukraine warned that Russia appears to be manufacturing man-made catastrophes at either Chernobyl or Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plants - both of which are in the hands of the Kremlin's men.

Russian soldiers have disconnected Zaporizhzhia's six reactors and the defunct reactor at Chernobyl from international monitoring systems, and have disconnected Chernobyl from the power grid.

That means water pumps at Chernobyl which keep spent nuclear fuel submerged in water to cool them will not automatically run, meaning the water will eventually evaporate if not topped up manually.

Should that happen the fuel could catch on fire - pumping a cloud of radioactive ash into the air which would cause fallout over wide areas of Europe.

Russian forces have been fought to a standstill across Ukraine as the initial phase of Putin's invasion spectacularly failed.

Russia's offensive has now stalled on all fronts amid reports that Ukraine has started launching counter-attacks to push Putin's forces back

Ukrainian forces remain in control of all major cities across the country except for the regional capital of Kherson, where counter-attacks are now underway in an effort to recapture it.

Counter-attacks are also underway to the west of the capital Kyiv, in Voznesensk in the south, and around Izyum in the north-east.

Ukraine's generals believe Russian forces only have enough supplies to last three more days in the field, while Western experts have said Putin's men will soon need to switch on to the defensive as their stockpiles run low.

It means Putin's troops will be vulnerable to counter-attacks, pushing up Russia's already-high casualty toll even further.

Reliable casualty figures for either side are hard to come by, but it is thought Russia has seen around 10,000 troops killed after a typically pro-Kremlin tabloid published the figure on Monday night and credited it to the Defence Ministry.

The same article said another 16,000 men had been wounded, accounting for around a fifth of the total force Putin arrayed before the start of the war.

The figure was quickly deleted and blamed on a hack, but is compelling because it sits between low-ball US estimates of Russian deaths - around 7,000 - and optimistic Ukrainian tolls - around 15,000.

Ukraine's death-toll is even more opaque. Preisdent Zelensky has said around 1,300 troops have died in fighting, but that is viewed as an under-estimate and has not been regularly updated.

Kyiv's forces are thought to have suffered their heaviest losses fighting in the south and east, where Russian offensives have managed to push the furthest and threaten to surround soldiers dug in along the old frontline with pro-Moscow rebels.

Few expected Ukraine's defences to hold for more than a few weeks in the face of attack by what was supposed to be the world's 'second military' after the US, but the war is now entering its second month with no sign of a break-through for Russia.

Observers will now watch for signs that Ukraine's military - which has proved dogged in defence - can now successfully counter-attack, which would raise the possibility of the unlikeliest of victories of Kyiv.

However, it could also mean Russia doubling down on its battlefield brutality, raising the civilian death toll and threat of extreme acts.
Australian academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert has revealed shocking new details about the torturous 804-day stint she spent locked in a hellhole Iranian prison.

The Islamic studies scholar has claimed that during her captivity a prison boss took an 'perverse' interest in her and used his powers to extend her sentence.

'He wanted some sort of romantic relationship with me,' she told 60 Minutes in a preview for a new interview due to air on Sunday.

'It was a perverse romantic interest. He arranged a birthday party for me with a birthday cake. He had complete and utter control over every facet of my life.'

In September 2018, the academic (pictured) was arrested on trumped-up spying charges at Tehran Airport as she attempted to leave the country

Dr Moore-Gilbert also claimed the Iranian prison boss extended her release date by six to seven months after becoming infatuated with her.

While imprisoned the academic was kept in a tiny cell in freezing temperatures and was subjected to psychological torture.

She staged several hunger strikes, and in May 2020 her family denied reports she had attempted suicide.

'It's psychological torture. It's a two-by-two-metre box. You go completely insane. It is so damaging. By the end of it (I was) a crazy lady. My emotional state was just so volatile. I was basically having a prolonged anxiety attack,' she previously told Sky News.

In September 2018, the academic was arrested on trumped-up spying charges at Tehran Airport as she attempted to leave the country.

She was finally freed from prison in November 2020 but arrived home to the shocking news her Russian-Israeli husband had moved on with another woman.

Ruslan Hodorov's new love interest was no other than Dr Moore-Gilbert's university colleague and PhD supervisor Dr Kylie Baxter.

The pair had struck up an affair while she was kept against her will thousands of miles away, but continued to push for her release from Australia.

Australian academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert (pictured) has revealed shocking new details about the 804-day stint she spent locked in a hellhole Iranian prison

While imprisoned Dr Moore-Gilbert (pictured) was kept in a tiny cell in freezing temperatures and was subjected to psychological torture

An 'upset and disappointed' Dr Moore-Gilbert filed for divorce shortly after arriving home and last year said she was keen to move on from her ex-husband.

'I don't care what he is doing. He is none of my business that is my ex and I don't care about him,' she told the Herald Sun.

The University of Melbourne lecturer also fired up her twitter account to share the news that her relationship status had officially changed.

'Forgive the irrelevant personal announcement dear Twitter, but ladies and gentlemen, I am officially divorced! Time for a sneaky kardonnay?', she wrote.

Before her arrest Dr Moore-Gilbert and Mr Hodorov had just bought a house in Melbourne after marrying the previous year in a Jewish ceremony.

They met a decade earlier when she visited Israel, where Mr Hodorov lived after emigrating from Russia with his family.

Dr Moore-Gilbert revealed in a bombshell interview that while locked up in the Middle East Mr Hodorov eventually stopped saying 'I love you' during phone calls.

Dr Moore-Gilbert revealed in a bombshell interview that while locked up in the Middle East Mr Hodorov (pictured right) eventually stopped saying 'I love you' during phone calls

An 'upset and disappointed' Dr Moore-Gilbert (pictured) filed for divorce shortly after arriving home and discovering he had had an affair with her university colleague

'I knew that it (the marriage) wasn't in the same state that it was when I left. I knew that there was a problem at least 12 months before I came home,' she told Melissa Doyle in a Sky News tell-all last year.

'My mother told me when I arrived in hotel quarantine. She found out the day before from a third person, a third party... My family found out and called (him), and he confirmed it.'

Dr Moore-Gilbert said she became suspicious when her husband had not contacted her after touching down in Australia.

'He hasn't even called to say "I'm happy you're free", so I said you have to tell me mum it's obvious somethings up - I'm strong I can handle it,' she said.

Dr Moore-Gilbert was given a 10-year sentence but always denied the charges, that reportedly stemmed from the Iranian authorities' belief that she was a spy for Israel because of her relationship with her husband - an Israeli citizen.

While in prison, she refused to help lure him to Iran in a plot concocted by her captors, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC).

A letter from Dr Moore-Gilbert to Prime Minister Scott Morrison, which was smuggled out of Evin prison, revealed how the IRGC tried to set a trap for Mr Hodorov, who they accused of being an Israeli spy.

Dr Moore-Gilbert was given a 10-year sentence but always denied the charges, that reportedly stemmed from the Iranian authorities' belief that she was a spy for Israel because of her relationship with her husband - an Israeli citizen

When she was arrested, Dr Moore-Gilbert - who is also the cousin of Julian Assange - had been attending a conference in Iran when she was flagged as 'suspicious' by a fellow academic and by a subject she had interviewed for research.

She was subsequently tried and sentenced, and held in Evin prison in solitary confinement. Iranian authorities reportedly tried to recruit her as a spy in exchange for her release, which she declined.

Nick Warner, the head of Australia's intelligence service, successfully negotiated a prison swap for Dr Moore-Gilbert's freedom.

She was exchanged for three Iranian prisoners in Thailand, two of whom had been convicted in connection with the 2012 Bangkok bomb plot.

He is understood to have spent months convincing officials in meetings and even at social functions to get the Thai prisoners released - who the Iranian government called 'businessmen'.

When she was arrested, Dr Moore-Gilbert - who is also the cousin of Julian Assange - had been attending a conference in Iran when she was flagged as 'suspicious' by a fellow academic and by a subject she had interviewed for research

Australia's ambassador to Thailand, Allan McKinnon, also lobbied with Thai officials to release the three Iranian terrorists as an exchange for the university lecturer.

Dr Moore-Gilbert has carried out research into revolutions in the Middle East, particularly in Bahrain.

To this day, no evidence of her alleged crimes have been brought forward by Iran, and the Australian government has rejected them as 'baseless and politically motivated'.

In December 2020, Western and Israeli media claimed Iran had launched a media misinformation campaign against Moore-Gilbert 'accusing her of coordinating with a former Bahraini MP, Jasim Husain, to steal secrets for Israel'.

Husain was accused by Iran of teaching Moore-Gilbert Arabic and Persia, and offering to help her spy on Shia exiles in Iran.
The Taliban ordered girls' secondary schools in Afghanistan to shut today just hours after they reopened, sparking confusion and heartbreak over the policy reversal by the hardline Islamist group.

Crestfallen students, back at school for the first time since the Taliban seized power in August last year, tearfully packed up their belongings and filed out of schools across the country.

'I see my students crying and reluctant to leave classes, said Palwasha, a teacher at Omra Khan girls' school in Kabul. 'It's very painful to see your students crying.'

The decision to postpone opening schools to girls in secondary school appeared to be a concession to the rural and deeply tribal backbone of the hardline Taliban movement, that in many parts of the countryside are reluctant to send their daughters to school.

Girls attend a class after their school reopening in Kabul on Wednesday. The Taliban later ordered girls' secondary schools in Afghanistan to shut today just hours after they reopened, sparking confusion and heartbreak over the policy reversal by the hardline Islamist group.

Girls leave their school following order of closure just hours after reopening in Kabul on Wednesday

The decision to postpone opening schools to girls in secondary school appeared to be a concession to the rural and deeply tribal backbone of the hardline Taliban movement, that in many parts of the countryside are reluctant to send their daughters to school. Pictured: Girls leave their school after attending only hours following reopening in Kabul on Wednesday

The latest setback for girls' education is certain to receive widespread condemnation from the international community that has been urging the Taliban leaders to open schools and give women their right to public space.

Children were filmed inside their classroom at Zarghona High School in Kabul when a teacher entered and said class was over, leaving children confused and heartbroken.

'Yes, it's true,' Taliban spokesman Inamullah Samangani said when asked to confirm reports that girls had been ordered home.

United Nations envoy to Afghanistan Deborah Lyons described reports of the closure 'disturbing'.

Girls have been banned from school beyond Grade 6 in most of the country since the Taliban returned to power in mid-August.

Universities opened up earlier this year in much of the country, but since taking power the Taliban edicts have been erratic and while a handful of provinces continued to provide education to all, most provinces closed educational institutions for girls and women.

In the capital Kabul private schools and universities have operated uninterrupted.

The international community has made the right to education for all a sticking point in negotiations over aid and recognition of the new Taliban regime, with several nations and organisations offering to pay teachers.

Girls have been banned from school beyond Grade 6 in most of the country since the Taliban returned to power in mid-August. Pictured: Girls attend a class on Wednesday after their school reopened, before the Taliban announced they would close schools for girls

Girls arrive at their school in Kabul on Wednesday, just hours before the Taliban ordered girls' secondary schools in Afghanistan to shut

On Wednesday, the order for girls' secondary schools to resume appeared to only be patchily observed, with reports emerging from some parts of the country - including the Taliban's spiritual heartland of Kandahar - that classes would restart next month instead.

For the several that did reopen in the capital and elsewhere, including Herat and Panjshir - they were forced to close within hours of reopening.

The religiously-driven Taliban administration fears going forward with enrolling girls beyond Grade 6 could erode their base, said Waheedullah Hashmi, external relations and donor representative with the Taliban-led administration.

'The leadership hasn't decided when or how they will allow girls to return to school,' Hashmi said. While he accepted that urban centers are mostly supportive of girls education, much of rural Afghanistan is opposed, particularly in tribal Pashtun regions.

'In some rural areas a brother will disown a brother in the city if he finds out that he is letting his daughters go to school,' said Hashimi, who said the Taliban leadership is trying to decide how to open education for girls beyond Grade 6 countrywide.

Most Taliban are ethnic Pashtuns. In their sweep through the country last year, other ethnics groups such as Uzbeks and Tajiks in the north of the country either joined the fight to give the Taliban their victory or simply chose not to fight.

'We did everything the Taliban asked in terms of Islamic dress and they promised that girls could go to school and now they have broken their promise,' said Mariam Naheebi, a local journalist from Kabul. Naheebi has protested for women's rights and says 'they have not been honest with us.'

The Taliban have imposed a slew of restrictions on women, effectively banning them from many government jobs, policing what they wear and preventing them from travelling outside of their cities alone.

They have also detained several women's rights activists.

Girls leave their school following order of closure just hours after reopening in Kabul on Wednesday

Girls attend a class after their school reopened in Kabul on Wednesday, before schools were closed to girls

Even if schools do reopen fully, barriers to girls returning to education remain, with many families suspicious of the Taliban and reluctant to allow their daughters outside.

Others see little point in girls learning at all.

'Those girls who have finished their education have ended up sitting at home and their future is uncertain,' said Heela Haya, 20, from Kandahar, who has decided to quit school.

'What will be our future?'

It is common for Afghan pupils to miss chunks of the school year as a result of poverty or conflict, and some continue lessons well into their late teens or early twenties.

Human Rights Watch also raised the issue of the few avenues girls are given to apply their education.

'Why would you and your family make huge sacrifices for you to study if you can never have the career you dreamed of?' said Sahar Fetrat, an assistant researcher with the group.

The education ministry acknowledged authorities faced a shortage of teachers - with many among the tens of thousands of people who fled the country as the Taliban swept to power.

'We need thousands of teachers and to solve this problem we are trying to hire new teachers on a temporary basis,' the spokesman said.
NHS medics have complained they can't get hold of lateral flow tests as a result of the last minute scramble to access free kits before the 2billion-a-month scheme is axed next week.

Health chiefs have now began trying to discourage people in England from ordering the swabs online, in order to safeguard supplies for essential workers and vulnerable residents.

Lateral flows will be free for the public in England until April 1, when the provision is set to be dropped under Boris Johnson's plans to 'live with Covid'.

But people have struggled to get their hands on the kits over the past week, claiming they've spent days trying and failing to secure free tests.

Dr David Nicholl, a neurologist in Birmingham's NHS, said he was trying 'to do as my employer recommends' by ordering tests for twice weekly swabs but was repeatedly told there were 'none available'.

Meanwhile, a GP and a woman who claimed to care for extremely vulnerable people also said they couldn't get hold of any swabs.

It comes as it emerged today that anyone trying to get a pack of Covid swabs from the Government's website is now met with a message saying tests should be left for 'people that need them most'.

The notice adds that most people not suffering symptoms of the virus now no longer need to test themselves.

Shortages have been a regular occurrence since ministers announced they would be cutting off free access to lateral flows, in a sign Brits have started to plunder the final stocks. An uptick in cases may have also been behind the rise.

High street retailers, such as Boots and Superdrug, will sell lateral flow swabs for as little as 2 each.

The above graph shows the number of lateral flow tests carried out in England by day

'Most tests are now needed for people at higher risk,' according to the online ordering system

Free universal testing for the virus will come to an end on April 1, with free tests only being made available to the most vulnerable

Scotland will stop handing out free lateral flow tests in May, while Wales will keep the swabs available until the end of June. Northern Ireland is yet to iron out its plans

Covid testing has formed the backbone of the UK's virus-fighting strategy, allowing people to check whether they have the virus and if they need to self-isolate.

But lateral flows will be shelved in England from next week amid pressure from the Treasury to scale back pandemic costs. PCR testing is also set to be watered down under No10's plan.

The country will then effectively switch to relying on weekly surveillance data from the Office for National Statistics to monitor flare-ups.

Scotland is set to stop handing out free coronavirus tests in May, while Wales will keep them available until July. Northern Ireland is yet to outline its plans.

Is UK's Covid resurgence fizzling out? Britain's daily Covid cases dropped yesterday for the first time in three weeks  but both hospitalisations and deaths continued to creep upwards. Government dashboard data showed 94,524 infections were recorded over the last 24 hours, down 14 per cent on a week ago. But 'technical issues' meant Scotland reported four days' worth of cases last Tuesday, which artificially inflated the UK-wide daily tally. Covid deaths rose a quarter today compared to a week ago, however, with 250 recorded. And hospital admissions also ticked upwards 17 per cent in a week, after 1,879 admissions were logged on March 18  the latest date UK-wide data is available for. The current resurgence, which has seen cases soar since the start of March, is being driven by a more infectious version of Omicron, scientifically named BA.2. Although, ministers say easing the final Covid rules in England  including the legal requirement for infected people to self-isolate  may also be to blame. Advertisement

Venting his frustration on social media, Dr Nicholl said: 'Been trying to do as my employer recommends, book lateral flows for two-times weekly testing.

'None available. The new policy from April 1 (is) "be sensible".'

Dr Peter Edwards, a GP in Bristol, also complained he could not get the tests saying: 'Can no longer get lateral flow tests online.'

He said he was seeing 'lots of sick patients, some very vulnerable, every day'.

Twitter user Jos Sy said: 'Clinically extremely vulnerable family. Previously shielded. Can't get access to lateral flows.

'Schools, workplaces, leisure facilities, shops, all abandoned Covid precautions due to "personal responsibility".'

Ministers have repeatedly tried to limit ordering of tests ahead of the deadline to ensure the kits are still available for those that need them most.

Last month they quietly tweaked testing rules so that people could now only order a pack every 72 hours, instead of the initial 24-hour gap.

And they have now put a notice on the website discouraging people from ordering the packs.

It reads: 'Most tests are now needed for people at higher risk.

'In England, most people without COVID-19 symptoms no longer need to take rapid lateral flow tests.

'We want to make sure tests are available for people who need them most.'

A Twitter account set up to ping out alerts when lateral flows run out of stock said England's supplies were gone by 9.42am today, an hour after being replenished.

Kits also regularly ran out at the height of the Omicron wave, when millions were ordering the swabs in order to ensure they were free of Covid.

Some Britons have been bragging of stockpiling 'towers' of the boxes containing seven kits at a time, even as the official website showed none were available.

Although free testing is ending in England, the swabs are set to remain available to over-80s, the vulnerable and health and social care staff.

But confusion over this was sparked this week when NHS bosses warned their staff may be forced to fork out 50 a month for tests.

The NHS Confederation  which represents hospital trusts  called on ministers to guarantee swabs would still be available for healthcare workers, pointing out that their staff are still required to test for the virus twice a week.

The Department of Health said more details would be set out 'shortly'.

Stockpilers shared pictures of their towers of free NHS lateral flow tests that are being phased out from April 1 last month

A spokesperson from the UK Health Security Agency  which manages swab distribution  said: 'As set out in the Living With Covid plan, from April 1 free tests will only be available for certain groups who are at most risk from the virus.

'In preparation for this change, the gov.uk home ordering channel is asking users to only order test kits if you're eligible for new Covid treatments, work or volunteer in a high-risk setting or support people who are at higher risk from Covid.

'Tests should only be ordered after you have used up any kits you already have at home.'

Around 500,000 lateral flows are currently being carried out every day in England, alongside 250,000 PCR swabs.

Scientists have questioned the decision to scrap free mass testing, 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.

But business leaders, Tory MPs and some experts all backed Boris Johnson's decision to scale back the expensive programme, which the Prime Minister claimed cost up to 2billion a month.

Yesterday Covid cases dropped for the first time this month after 94,524 were recorded.

But the tally from last Tuesday included four days worth of data for Scotland, because of 'technical issues'.

Some experts say Covid cases currently driven by the more infectious version of Omicron, scientifically named BA.2, will start to fall before the end of the month.

It comes after MailOnline last week revealed how health officials admitted that the Covid testing regime did not cost 2billion-a-month.

Mr Johnson told MPs in February the Test and Trace programme cost that amount 'in January alone' at the height of the Omicron wave.

UKHSA bosses later sneaked out a document to say the figure quoted by the PM 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.

MPs said the UKHSA document, published on March 3 during Russia's invasion of Ukraine, raised questions about the Government's decision to axe free swabs.
President Joe Biden on Wednesday acknowledged it was a 'real threat' that Vladimir Putin might use chemical weapons in the Ukraine, a topic of concern for world leaders ahead of their NATO summit.

'I think it's a real threat,' Biden told reporters ahead of his departure for Brussels.

Officials have been concerned that Putin will use more aggressive tactics and disruptive weapons as his invasion of the Ukraine reaches a stalemate.

The situation in the Ukraine is the main topic at Thursday's NATO meeting, where Biden will rally western allies and announce a new round of financial sanctions against Putin's government.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will take part of the special summit, which was pulled together in a week, via video link as the Russian invasion of his country enters its fourth week.

On the trip, Biden intends to shore up the NATO alliance as the war in the Ukraine threatens to settle in for the long haul. He'll put pressure on the allies to continue financial sanctions, announce additional humanitarian assistance and could reveal a plan to increase U.S. boots on the ground in Eastern Europe.

'Our goal is to weaken Russia's hand, tactically, and strategically, and to strengthen Ukraine's hand on the battlefield and at the negotiating table. We know this conflict has to be resolved diplomatically if we're going to save lives,' State Department spokesman Ned Price told CNN Wednesday morning of the trip.

He will also travel to Poland to meet with U.S. troops stationed there, review the situation with Ukraine refugees and meet with Polish President Andrzej Duda.

The trip will be heavy on symbolism, with the pictures showing a united front among the allies and a compassionate Biden meeting the displaced as Vladimir Putin continues to pound away at the Ukraine.

'There will be hard days ahead in Ukraine  hardest for the Ukrainian troops on the frontlines and the civilians under Russian bombardment. This war will not end easily or rapidly,' National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said on Monday in previewing the trip.

'For the past few months, the West has been united. The President is traveling to Europe to ensure we stay united, to cement our collective resolve, to send a powerful message that we are prepared and committed to this for as long as it takes,' he added.

Biden's trip comes as the allies are pushing the boundries of what they can do to stop Putin.

Europe, which still needs Russian oil, is reaching the limits of the financial sanctions it can implement. And the West has also committed as much military assistance as it can - short of putting boots on the ground in the Ukraine.

President Joe Biden acknowledged it was a 'real threat' that Vladimir Putin might use chemical weapons in the Ukraine

President Biden is headed to Brussels for meetings with NATO, the European Union and G7

Biden's trip comes as the allies are pushing the boundries of what they can do to stop Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will speak to NATO meeting via video link

President Biden's schedule for his European trip THURSDAY: President Biden is in Brussels for the NATO summit, a Group of 7 meeting and a session with heads of state from the European Union. FRIDAY: Biden heads to Poland SATURDAY: Biden is in Poland where he will discuss the Ukrainian refugee situation and meet with President Andrzej Duda. He leaves for Washington D.C. in the evening. Advertisement

Biden will start his trip Thursday in Brussels, where he attend emergency summit meetings of NATO, the European Union and the G7.

And Russia is warning the 30-nation alliance to take care what it decides at its meeting, saying a peace keeping mission to Ukraine could trigger 'direct clashes' between Russia and NATO.

Poland said last week that it would formally submit a proposal for the peacekeeping mission in Ukraine at the Thursday summit.

'I hope they understand what they are talking about,' Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told staff and students at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations on Wednesday.

'This will be the direct clash between the Russian and NATO armed forces that everyone has not only tried to avoid but said should not take place in principle.'

The Biden administration has appeared to rule that Poland's proposal, saying they are committed to not putting U.S. troops on the ground in the Ukraine.

Meanwhile, a slew of new economic sanctions will be aimed at trying to deter Putin.

'It cannot be business as usual for Russia,' Sullivan said on Monday.

The president will announce the U.S. will target 400 people, officials told the Wall Street Journal, including 328 Russian lawmakers in the Duma and other elites.

The United States has already announced a slew of sanctions against Putin himself, his inner circle, the Russian oligarchs and Russian businesses.

And though the Russian currency, the ruble, dropped down to being worth next to nothing and the nation was last week at risk of defaulting on its debt, sanctions have done little to change the Russian leader's posture.

This week, the ruble stabilized and Russia was able to make interest payments on $117 million due on two bonds denominated in U.S. dollars. And while about half of Russia's $640 billion in foreign reserves is frozen, it has been able to offset that by continued fuel sales to Europe amid a price spike in the cost of oil and gas.

Biden also announced earlier this month the U.S. would ban imports of Russian oil, natural gas and coal, though America doesn't use much of those products.

The E.U. unveiled a plan to cut Russian gas imports by approximately two-thirds this year, but it's unclear how quickly member nations will be able to accomplish that given their heavy dependence on Russian oil.

Sullivan said the U.S. would make new announcements about efforts to help European countries wean themselves off Russian energy.

Biden also may announce more U.S. troops wil be deployed to NATO countries in Eastern Europe to help ease worries among those nations that Putin's invasion could spread, NBC News reported.

Sullivan previewed the announcement on Monday when he said Biden would announce the 'next phase' of military assistance to Ukraine during his trip.

'He will work with Allies on longer-term adjustments to NATO force posture on the eastern flank,' Sullivan said.

President Biden will work to keep allies in lock step during his trip to Europe

The fighting in the Ukraine is entering its fourth week - above a marke in Kharkiv that was destroyed by Russian missiles

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has warned sending a peace keeping mission to Ukraine could trigger 'direct clashes' between Russia and NATO

Russia's offensive has now stalled on all fronts amid reports that Ukraine has started launching counter-attacks to push Putin's forces back

Biden recently reviewed options for permanent increases in the number of U.S. troops in Eastern Europe, and Poland is among the possible locations, NBC News noted.

'At the summit,' the an administration official said, 'we expect NATO leaders to review the alliance's current deterrent and defensive force posture, especially in light of the deteriorated security environment caused by Russia's unprovoked and unjustified further invasion of Ukraine.'

One fear among leaders to be addressed is Putin's next move in the Ukraine.

With the invasion at a stalement, there is concern the Russian president will step up his game, possibly using chemical or even a small nuclear weapon. The Biden administration is also warning that cyber attacks could come.

'Now Putin's back is against the wall. He wasn't anticipating the extent or the strength of our unity. And the more his back is against the wall, the greater the severity of the tactics he may employ,' Biden told business leaders in Washington on Monday.

NATO leaders could announce the addition of a new chemical and biological weapons unit to the NATO Response Force to counter Russia.

American officials have expressed concern that Putin could use chemical weapons after the Russian Defense Ministry said Ukraine could make such a move, in what U.S. officials say could be a false flag operation to justify any moves by Moscow.

Russia has wielded chemical weapons in the past.

Moscow used the deadly Novichok poison in 2018 an attempt to assassinate a defector living in Salisbury, England. And it is suspected of using a similar poison against opposition leader Alexei Navalny in 2020.

Russia also offered diplomatic cover to Syrian use of chemical agents. It accused the West of being behind the 2017 attack on Khan Shaykhun with Sarin or similar nerve agent.

The invasion has not gone well for Russia.

Ukrainian forces remain in control of all major cities across the country except for the regional capital of Kherson, where counter-attacks are now underway in an effort to recapture it.

Counter-attacks are also underway to the west of the capital Kyiv, in Voznesensk in the south, and around Izyum in the north-east.

Ukraine's generals believe Russian forces only have enough supplies to last three more days in the field, while Western experts have said Putin's men will soon need to switch on to the defensive as their stockpiles run low.

The Kremlin has refused to rule out using nuclear weapons.

Dmitry Peskov, Putin's spokesman, was asked three times on CNN whether he could definitively rule out the possibility of the Russian leader pushing the button - and three times refused to give a straight answer.

Instead, Peskov said only that Russian doctrine allows Putin to use nukes see off 'existential threats' - raising fears he could justify using the weapons over Ukraine, having previously said the country poses a direct threat to the security of Russia.

John Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, slammed Peskov's rhetoric as 'dangerous' saying it is 'not the way a responsible nuclear power should act'.

Kirby added that the US is keeping Russia's nuclear arsenal - believed to be the world's largest at 6,500 warheads - under constant surveillance and has not yet seen any indication that it is preparing to use the weapons.

Biden will also talk to E.U. leaders about China's relationship with Russia. Biden spoke to Chinese leader Xi Jinping last week amid concerns Beijing could back the invasion.

E.U. leaders have a summit with Xi on April 1.

'This will be an opportunity  Thursday  for the United States and our European partners to coordinate closely on what our message is,' Sullivan said.

Thursday's meetings will also reveal what Biden and the allies won't do.

The U.S. has already ruled out Zelensky's request for a no-fly zone over the Ukraine, arguing it could escalate the conflict into World War III.

Leaders may also discuss whether or not to push Russia out of the G20. Putin is expected to attend November's gathering of the world leaders and there are some countries in the 20-nation alliance that would likely opposing removing Russia.

On Friday, Biden heads to Poland, where he will discuss the situation with Ukrainian refugees. Poland has taken in nearly 2 million of them.

'He will announce further American contributions to a coordinated humanitarian response to ease the suffering of civilians inside Ukraine and to respond to the growing flow of refugees,' Sullivan said.

While in Poland, he will hold an event related to refugees, which could include meeting with some of the Ukrainians who had fled their country but the details are still being worked out, The Washington Post reported.

People wait at Przemysl train station before continuing their journey back into war-torn Ukraine in Przemysl, Poland. Nearly two-thirds of the more than 3 million people to have fled Ukraine since Russia's invasion last month have come to Poland, which shares a 310-mile border with its eastern neighbor

Firefighters put out fire after Russians shelled a warehouse in Mykolaiv, Ukraine

A view of a shopping mall that was destroyed by a missile in Kyiv

Biden will also visit with American troops stationed in Poland as part of NATO forces and meet with President Duda.

What's not on the table during this trip is a Biden stop in the Ukraine.

'Any president of the United States traveling into a war zone requires not only security considerations but also an enormous amount of resources on the ground, which is always a factor for us as we make considerations,' press secretary Jen Psaki said this week. 'It was a decision made about what would be most effective on the trip.'
Vladimir Putins war was plunged into deeper crisis today amid reports that Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu has vanished from view with 'heart problems'.

He has not been seen for 12 days and old footage and pictures have been shown of him on TV, say reports in opposition media.

It comes after it was revealed Putin had started a witch-hunt among his inner circle and was growing wary of close allies after the US and Britain received leaks of his military plans.

Among those rousing suspicion was Shoigu, who is in charge of the bloody military operation in Ukraine which is believed to have led to more than 10,000 troops being killed, and mass civilian deaths.

His public appearances have been significantly curtailed in the past week, while his younger daughter Ksenia, 31, was seen posing in Ukrainian colours of blue and yellow.

On March 18, Shoigu, 66, was mentioned in a Kremlin website report saying he and Putin had discussed the 'the progress of the special operation in Ukraine' with permanent members of the security council. But videos and pictures were not shown.

On the same day, Channel One aired a story about Shoigu presenting awards, yet an image used with the report was the same as shown on March 11.

Earlier in the war he had been more visible, and frequently quoted. His circle said he was unwell - with heart problems, investigative news outlet Agentstvo was told by a source close to the minister.

Shoigu is seen as one of Putins closest and most loyal allies.

However, strains have appeared over the conduct of the war with him and other leading army and security chiefs.

In June last year his sister Larisa Shoigu, 68, died of Covid.

Vladimir Putin has started a witch-hunt among his inner circle and has grown wary of close allies, including Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu (pictured together), after the US and Britain received leaks of his military plans

Among those rousing suspicion is Putin's close ally Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, (pictured on holiday together) who is in charge of the bloody military operation in Ukraine which is believed to have led to more than 10,000 troops being killed, and mass civilian deaths

Shoigu's public appearances have been significantly curtailed in the past week, while his younger daughter Ksenia, 31, was seen posing in Ukrainian colours of blue and yellow (pictured)

The Russian president is seeking out 'guilty men' behind his stalled invasion of Ukraine and is said to be 'incandescent' that the US and Britain have been privy to Moscow's military tactics.

Sources said leaks, which have been passed by London and Washington to Kyiv, had been blamed as the reason Russia's top generals and elite forces have been targeted so effectively in Ukraine.

Sources say Putin has been dismissive in private of long-time ally Alexander Bortnikov, FSB security service head, and started snapping in meetings at Valery Gerasimov, chief of the Russian general staff.

Bortnikov has been spoken of as a stand-in leader should Putin fall in a coup.

Another target of Putin's fury is Igor Kostyukov, Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Armed forces, who may face imminent removal as part of a wider purge.

Earlier ahead of the invasion he publicly humiliated SVR foreign intelligence chief Sergey Naryshkin.

But Putin is reportedly more concerned with losses of military hardware - for which he has blamed Gerasimov - than more battlefield casualties.

A toll of 50,000 would be 'nothing compared to the goals that will be achieved after the victory', he is said to have told his commanders.

Some believe he is planning for a deal he will sell as a Ukrainian 'surrender' and a 'victory parade' in Moscow in early May.

'He is incandescent that US and UK intelligence appear to know the Russian army's next moves all the time, starting with predicting the invasion before he was ready to acknowledge it,' said one source.

Sources say Putin has been dismissive in private of long-time ally Alexander Bortnikov, FSB security service head, and started snapping in meetings at Valery Gerasimov, chief of the Russian general staff (pictured)

Another target of Putin's fury is Igor Kostyukov, Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Armed forces, (pictured with Putin, first left) who may face imminent removal as part of a wider purge

Earlier ahead of the invasion he publicly humiliated SVR foreign intelligence chief Sergey Naryshkin

The loss of more than a a dozen generals is seen as linked to these real time leaks of his military operation movements.

Russian security expert Andrei Soldatov said military counterintelligence is probing an FSB security service department.

Russian top military officials killed during invasion Lieutenant General Andrei Mordvichev

Major General Vitaly Gerasimov

Major General Andrei Kolesnikov

Major General Andrei Sukhovetsky

Colonel Nikolay Ovcharenko

Colonel Sergei Porokhyna

Colonel Sergei Sukharev

Colonel Andrei Zakharov

Colonel Konstantin Zizevsky

Lieutenant Colonel Yuri Agarkov

Lieutenant Colonel Denis Glebov

Lieutenant Colonel Dmitry Safronov

Major Viktor Maksimchuk

General Magomed Tushaev

Captain Andrey Paliy

Captain Alexey Glushchak

Colonel Alexei Sharov Advertisement

'That could mean that, finally, people in Moscow started asking themselves why the US intelligence was so accurate,' he told The New Yorker.

'Military counterintelligence is mostly about mole-hunting, identifying the sources of leaks.

'So it looks like now Putin is getting angry, not only with bad intelligence and the bad performance in Ukraine but also about the sourcing of the US intelligence about the invasion, and why US intelligence was so good before the invasion, and why the Americans knew so many things about what was coming.'

He also believes Putin in blaming his underlings for 'the lack of popular support in Ukraine for the Russian troops', as if locals were expected to cheer the arrival of the invaders.

He said Putin's top brass are still too scared to tell him the truth.

'You have so many people now in jail, even people from the FSB. So if you think, from the point of view of a military general, is it really safe to say something to Putin that he would not like? I think it's a big challenge for them.'

The climate of fear means that intelligence on the scale of Ukraine's likely resistance to Russian invaders was hidden from Putin.

But Soldatov does not expect a move by his inner circle to assassinate Putin, despite the increasing hostile treatment they face.

'I think now Putin is almost in no danger,' he told ZDF Heute in Germany. 'He has two security services, who are primarily responsible for ensuring that nothing happens to Putin personally.

'We know that he himself is a former intelligence officer, who understands the different risks. He often claims that he successfully survived from 12 to 13 assassination attempts on his life. In this sense, everything is safe for him.'

Russian security expert Andrei Soldatov (pictured) said military counterintelligence is probing an FSB security service department

Russia has unleashed conventional ballistic missiles against Ukraine (pictured, damage caused by a missile in Kyiv) amid warnings they could now be looking to use low-yield nukes

Photographer Evgeniy Maloletka stands amid rubble of an airstrike on Pryazovskyi State Technical University
Large swathes of London and its streets are set to be renamed over links to slavery - with the possibility of an entire district being rebranded.

Lambeth and Hackney councils are among those consulting on roads bearing the identities of historic figures, now considered controversial.

Tulse Hill in Lambeth was named in honour of 17th century merchant Sir Henry Tulse, who served as Lord Mayor of London in 1684 and whose familys wealth was largely drawn from the slave trade.

Now the Council has asked residents for their views of the names of certain areas

The survey asks residents if the area should be renamed, whether it should have an information stand about its history or if an education programme should be launched in local schools.

Another option was to take no action whatsoever.

It adds: 'The review of statues, memorials and place names was announced in October 2020, following the appalling killing of George Floyd in the USA and the mobilisation of the 2020 Black Lives Matter campaign.

'As a proudly diverse borough which has previously taken a lead on commemorating Black leaders in the late 20th century, we have committed to reviewing existing troubling or historic links and assess whether we can legally suggest new names or commemorations to mark the lives and contributions to key people who have made Lambeth the place we know today.'

Street names in Lambeth under review by the council because of links to slavery figures

Tulse Hill could soon be renamed if residents object to its namesake's links to slavery

It is the latest conflict in Britains culture wars, which has seen statues toppled and reputations cancelled as a new generation of activists reassesses the past.

Lambeth is not the only borough look at its history, after Mayor of London Sadiq Khan offered 25,000 to local authorities to decolonise their street names.

Other problematic street names mentioned in the survey are those named after slave-owning couple Henry Richard Vassal-Fox, third Baron Holland of Foxley, and his wife Elizabeth Webster, including Vassal Street, Holland Grove and Foxley Road.

Lambeth Archives carried out an audit to identify the locations linked with the slave trade.

It said: 'This is a community conversation, together we will develop proposals on how to deal with this difficult aspect of our history, and find ways to celebrate the people who made Lambeth the diverse and inclusive borough that it is today. '

Tulse Hill (pictured) was named in honour of 17th century merchant Sir Henry Tulse, who served as Lord Mayor of London in 1684 and whose familys wealth was largely drawn from the slave trade

Where the streets have no shame? The road names targeted by Lambeth Council Tulse Hill Vassall Road Holland Grove Foxley Road Foxley Square Lord Holland Lane Lilford Road Juxon Street Tradescant Road Rhodesia Thurlow Road. Cromwell Road Nelson's Row Advertisement

The council has also released a list of names it could look at again.

Burgoyne Road, Cromwell Road, Dundas Road and Nelsons Row are not currently under threat but could if 'the local community express a strong desire to educate and inform people about their possible origins'.

Conservative Party Chairman Oliver Dowden criticised Lambeth Council for spending public money on what he called a vanity project.

He said: While people worry about the cost of living, Labour councils are wasting their cash on vanity projects like this.

No wonder Conservative councils deliver more and cost less.

Other street names which may bite the dust include Rhodesia Road  named after the former British colony of what is now Zimbabwe  and Juxson Street, which got its name from Archbishop William Juxson, who family was involved in the slave trade.

A spokesman from Lambeth Council said the authority had worked closely with local communities following the 2020 Black Lives matter protests, in order to stamp out racism.

He added: Lambeth is a richly diverse borough and the council has been a pioneer since the 1980s for naming new places to reflect local people.

This latest piece of work required no extra spending and has taken government legislation on the issue fully into account.
Moon, Yoon should meet to narrow differences



A clash is intensifying between the incoming and outgoing administrations over President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol's plan to relocate the presidential office to the of Ministry of National Defense compound in Yongsan, central Seoul. In an apparent rejection of the plan, President Moon Jae-in said, "I will carry out my final mission as head of state, chief executive and commander of the armed forces." Moon made the remark during a Cabinet meeting Tuesday, in a bid to put the brakes on the relocation plan citing security concerns.



In response, Yoon's spokeswoman, Rep. Kim Eun-hye of the main opposition People Power Party (PPP), called on Moon to support the relocation. "We want your help so that we can work," she said. As the nation is facing diverse challenges such as the resurgent COVID-19 pandemic and North Korea's continued military provocations, we urge Moon and Yoon to meet immediately to discuss how to cope with the pending issues.



Yoon and his transition committee could suffer a setback in the power transition unless they get support from the incumbent government and the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) which occupies 172 seats in the 300-member National Assembly. Yoon has been seeking to open Cheong Wa Dae to the public from May 10, when he will take office, in a symbolic move to end what he calls the "imperial presidency." We don't doubt the President-elect's will and conviction toward that end.



Yet skepticism has been growing over Yoon's plan to move the presidential office in just 50 days. Yoon and his transition team should have engaged in behind-the-scenes contacts with Moon and his staffers to discuss detailed measures. The current conflict was a result of a lack of such efforts, let alone a power struggle between them.



Moon and the DPK have also been taking flak for locking horns with Yoon and his PPP only to hamper a smooth and orderly power transition. Moon has already triggered a backlash from the incoming administration by appointing his loyalists to major posts at state enterprises and public institutions.



The problem is not confined to the ruling camp. Yoon is seeking to begin his presidency at the transition committee office in Tongeui-dong as the Moon administration is being so uncooperative with the relocation plan. But doing so cannot address concerns about presidential escorts and security. Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum proposed Monday during a meeting with transition committee chairman Ahn Cheol-soo that a task force be set up to discuss pending issues. Both sides need to accept the proposal to break the deadlock.



Most importantly, Moon and Yoon should meet immediately to straighten out all the problems. It is urgent for them to have candid discussions and try to narrow their differences. They should work together to complete the transfer of power and install a new government. This is a first step toward promoting national unity and forging cooperative ties between the ruling and opposition camps.




Advertisement

A Ukrainian refugee family of 10 who 'lost everything' before fleeing war-torn Kharkiv say they feel like they 'have a home again' after moving into a house in Cambridgeshire, donated by a local businessman.

The four-generation family, ranging in age from 10 to 90, arrived at the property in Caldecote last night having travelled to the UK under the Ukraine Family Scheme.

The house is owned by Mick Swinhoe, an executive at an industrial automation firm, who initially wanted to use it as a 'project', but changed his plans after being connected with the family through Facebook.

One of the family members, Valeriia Starkova, 37, expressed her relief and gratitude that Mr Swinhoe opened the doors for them.

'I can feel maybe I have a home again because I feel that I lost everything that I had,' she said. 'My kids (Alikhan, 10, and Kamila, 11) lost everything.

'I did so much, my family, for us to live there, to earn money, nice place to live, work for kids. We lost in one day everything.

'I had really nice job that I love, nail technician, but I really love my job. I feel that I need to start again from zero.'

Ludmila Starkova, 90, (right) who fled Kharkiv in the Ukraine with her family following the Russian invasion, talks to Rends Platings in her new home in Caldecote near Cambridge

The family fled Kharkiv, which has suffered bomb craters (pictured) as a result of Russian shelling throughout the conflict

A car destroyed by shelling is seen in a street in Kharkiv, Ukraine - where the family have escaped from - earlier this week

Valeriia Starkova and her daughter Kamila with their dog Florie, at their new home

(left to right) Valeriia Starkova with her daughter Kamila, mother Iryna, father Mykola and great grandmother Halyna, who all fled their home in Kharkiv in the Ukraine following the Russian invasion, at their new home in Caldecote near Cambridge

Mick Swinhoe shows Iryna Starkova and her grandchildren around the kitchen of their new home in Caldecote near Cambridge

Iryna Starkova and her family look around one of the bedrooms in their new home in Caldecote near Cambridge

Ludmila Starkova, who fled her home in Kharkiv in the Ukraine with her family following the Russian invasion, wipes a tear from her eye at their new home in Caldecote near Cambridge

Iryna Starkova and her family look around their new home in Caldecote near Cambridge

Iryna Starkova and her husband Anatolii Subota help great grandmother Ludmila Starkova into their new home in Caldecote near Cambridge

Mick Swinhoe's property in Caldecote near Cambridge which is the new home of the Starkova family

Mick Swinhoe: The kind-hearted businessman who is chair of an engineering firm Mick Swinhoe is chairman and co-founder of Cambridge-based engineering consultancy firm, Z-Tech Control Systems. He started the company more than two decades ago and boasts over 30 years' experience in industrial automation, electrical and mechanical systems. Before founding Z-Tech in 2000, Mr Swinhoe spent over of a decade with Northumbrian Water maintaining water and wastewater sites followed by four years as Operations Manager for a system integration company delivering automation projects to the UK water industry. He has also earned management qualifications from Durham University and holds a HNC in Electrical and Electronic Engineering. Mick Swinhoe shows Iryna Starkova and her grandchildren around the kitchen of their new home Mr Swinhoe, 52, said he bought the house next to his own in Caldecote just before the war broke out, and he initially planned to use it as a 'project house'. The executive at an industrial automation company changed his plans, and after posting on Facebook groups he was connected with a family. Mr Swinhoe said he wants the house to be used for 'something more useful until I do something else with it'. 'It's a better use for it really,' he said. 'I can do what I want to do later when things get better.' Mr Swinhoe said his two daughters, aged 11 and 15, are 'really delighted' there are three children among the Ukrainian family of 10, and he said they will be able to help integrate them into school. Advertisement

The family were helped in their journey to the UK by relative Roman Starkov, who is a British citizen.

The 38-year-old, of Cambridge, has lived in the UK for 20 years since travelling to the country to study.

The software developer helped his family through the visa process which he described as 'pretty involved'.

'You have to fill out arcane forms, and for such a big group there's a lot of repetition, but once that was sorted we went to a visa application centre, they processed us very quickly, that was in Albania,' he said.

He said his 90-year-old grandmother Ludmila Starkova does not have a valid international passport and had wanted to stay in Ukraine.

'On every border that was a challenge,' he said.

'Fortunately every single border they figured something out and allowed her to pass.'

Eight of the family members took a flight from Albania to London Luton Airport, with Ms Starkova, who is Mr Starkov's sister, and father their Mykola Starkov, 59, travelling by car and ferry, arriving four days later.

This was so they could bring more of their belongings and their two dogs, Yorkshire terrier Mikki and mini Maltese Florie, both aged two.

Mr Starkov said he has 'mixed emotions' now his family have safely fled Ukraine.

'Yes they are safe, that's amazing,' he said. 'They've still lost everything.

'There's still hope that maybe they can go back and maybe what they left behind will still be there. Maybe not.

'And there's a lot of uncertainty about their future here. Will they fit in, will they find a place, will they feel comfortable? I don't know.'

Ms Starkova said that when the war broke out in Kharkiv 'it was 5am, we packed a few suitcases and I went to my mum's home and we stayed there for five days as it was so scary to go outside'.

'We were in the basement,' she said. 'We couldn't go outside. We stayed five days in the basement without going anywhere.

'Then we decided that we had to leave as we couldn't sleep, it was so scary. We just put our bags in the cars and went.

'We were so afraid someone would shoot our car or something like that. Recently friends of my friends were shot like that.

'It was so scary but we managed to go through the borders and when we passed several cities we felt relieved as we couldn't hear those bombs and those scary noises.

'The first night we slept it was so quiet.'

She said her journey to the UK took 20 days and they were 'exhausted'.

Alikhan Starkova, 10, at his new home in Caldecote near Cambridge

Iryna Starkova and her husband Anatolii Subota help great grandmother Ludmila Starkova into their new home in Caldecote near Cambridge

Kamila Starkova, 11, is reunited with her dog Florie after fleeing their home in Kharkiv in the Ukraine following the Russian invasion, at their new home in Caldecote near Cambridge

Iryna Starkova and her family look around one of the bedrooms in their new home in Caldecote near Cambridge

Iryna Starkova comforts her daughter Valeriia (left) and granddaughter Kamila at their new home in Caldecote near Cambridge

Iryna Starkova (left) with her family at their new home in Caldecote near Cambridge.

Kamila Starkova, 11, looks around the bedroom of her new home in Caldecote near Cambridge

Mykola Starkov is reunited with his mother Halyna Starkova, 89, at their new home in Caldecote near Cambridge

Valeriia Starkova wipes a tear from her eye as she is reunited with her family at their new home

Asked about those who are helping the family, she said: 'I feel that they're saving our lives, otherwise I don't know where we would stay because it's quite expensive, and OK, we could for couple of weeks, but we need to live every day and we need to find a job first.

'I'm so grateful for everyone who supports us and can give us some place to live. I really appreciate it.'

Mr Swinhoe, 52, said he wants the house to be used for 'something more useful until I do something else with it'.

'It's a better use for it really,' he said. 'I can do what I want to do later when things get better.'

The family were reunited at the home in Cambridgeshire on Tuesday, after they separated to travel from Albania to the UK.

They were shown around the home then spent Tuesday night in a hotel while the property is furnished.

Mr Swinhoe said his two daughters, aged 11 and 15, are 'really delighted' there are three children among the Ukrainian family of 10, and he said they will be able to help integrate them into school.
A TikTok rapper who has been dubbed the 'Camden Doorstep Rapist' after attacking six lone women at knifepoint during a two-year reign of terror in north London is facing jail after being convicted for multiple rapes.

Using knives and a hammer to terrify the women aged 20 to 32 into submission Francis Mukendi, 27, forced his victims on doorsteps and in communal stairwells to perform sex acts on him.

The rapper who goes by the name 'Raver Artist ambushed the women as they were walking home alone at night in the Camden area between September 2017 and December 2019.

Wood Green Crown Court was told how Mukendi assaulted his first victim in September 2017 by waiting for her by a doorway, telling her to get down on her knees and putting a knife on her neck.

The woman described feeling terrified as she was forced to perform oral sex on Mukendi as he pressed a knife to her throat before her flatmate opening her front door and scared the 'doorstep rapist' away.

When an image of a suspect was released to media, he handed himself in on 21 December 2020, hoping to be eliminated from investigation by the police.

But Mukendi was found guilty of four counts of rape, three of attempted rape, two of sexual assault and four of possession of a bladed article by a jury at Wood Green Crown Court after denying being the 'doorstep rapist'.

He did admit possession of an extreme pornographic image in relation to a video found on his MacBook.

Francis Mukendi, 27, pictured, lay in wait as young women walked towards doorsteps or communal stairwells to force his terrified victims to perform sex acts on him

Mukendi handed himself in to police on 21 December 2020 after a CCTV image of the suspect was released to the media

Judge Andrew Holmes told the court how Mukendi assaulted his first victim in September 2017.

The female victim entered the hallway of her block of flats and when she turned to close the door she saw a man standing in the doorway

'He told her to get down on her knees,' Judge Holmes said.

'She said no but she did get down. She asked, why are you doing this?

'He put a knife to her neck. She thought it had come from his back pocket. It had a long, curved blade.'

The woman described feeling terrified as she was forced to perform oral sex on the friend as he pressed a knife to her throat.

When her flatmate came home the attacker ran away.

Police later searched Mukendi's flat and found a MacBook under his bed.

They delved into the laptop's trash can and recovered a video clip of a woman weeping as she was being raped in a hallway.

An information systems expert for the police said the video's metadata showed it had been recorded on September 21, 2017 at 12.33am.

Internet history showed it had been downloaded to the laptop on November 5, 2018.

Police searched the flat of Mukendi from Finsbury Park Road, pictured,in north London and found a MacBook under his bed. They delved into the laptop's trash can and recovered a video clip of a woman weeping as she was being raped in a hallway

Other data showed the video had been deleted and sent to the trash can 85 seconds after it was downloaded.

When asked about the video, Mukendi said he had first seen it in 2017 on a phone he had bought from a friend for 40 worth of drugs.

'He did not think much of it, it was two people getting intimate,' said Judge Holmes. 'It was not unusual in his world to download pornography.

'When he saw the video he had the sound turned off and didn't realise it was a rape video. He said he didn't know how it came to be on the laptop.

'He said he put the video in the trashcan because it wasn't interesting to him as he wasn't in it.'

Judge Holmes also described how another woman was targeted after coming home from a night out.

She first noticed her attacker on the stairs after she had entered her block of flats.

He asked her how she was and pleaded with her to kiss him.

'She thought it was just harassing so she said yeah, I have to go home, I live on the fourth floor,' said Judge Holmes.

'He pushed her against the wall. She wanted to say hey what are you doing but he showed her a kitchen knife.

'She wanted to cry and said please don't hurt me. He said shut up, go on your knees. Then he said 'now suck my d**k' and took down his pants.

'She didn't want to fight back because of the knife.'

Jurors were shown a music video Mukendi had made under the name Raver Artist in which he is waving weapons around. Pictured: One of Mukendi's music videos as Raver Artist

He then made her perform a sex act.

Mukendi claimed he was in the Camden area dealing drugs, selling up to 60 wraps of cocaine a night.

A zombie knife and a lock knife believed to be used in the attacks were also recovered from his home address.

Jurors were shown a music video Mukendi had made under the name Raver Artist in which he is waving weapons around.

He said he only used the knives because they look cool and said he has never taken them out of the house as he is well known and respected in Islington.

In a statement he prepared before handing himself in Mukendi, of Finsbury Park Road, said: 'I did not commit this rape. I did not see any rape and I was not aware of any rape.

'I was not aware that any offence had been committed until I was referred to in a news article.

'I sometimes frequent the area to see friends and I also used to see my ex-girlfriend there.'

Jurors at Wood Green Crown Court were shown a music video Mukendi had made under the name Raver Artist in which he is waving weapons around

He denied all charges including four counts of rape, three of attempted rape, two of sexual assault and four of possession of a bladed article

He admitted possession of an extreme pornographic image in relation to the video found on his MacBook.

Detective Constable Stacey Smith, of Central North BCU said: 'Mukendi is an extremely dangerous offender who targeted these women as they walked home alone in the dark.

'He waited for the most opportune of moments before making his attacks.

'His actions have left these women traumatised by what has happened to them.

'I would like to thank them for coming forward and supporting the police investigation; also for providing crucial evidence which led to this conviction and has ensured Mukendi cannot subject anyone else to such horrific attacks.'

Mukendi will be sentenced on a date to be confirmed.
A couple in their 90s have finally got married  after he proposed while she was having a heart attack.

Maurice Benton, 90, and Joanne Orris, 92, have lived together for 37 years  and have now tied the knot.

Known as 'Mo and Jo', they were visited at their Curry Rivel home in Somerset by a vicar and registrar on Saturday to carry out the ceremony.

They agreed to finally wed after Mr Benton proposed to his beloved when she was having a heart attack on March 3, last year.

Maurice Benton, 90, and Joanne Orris, 92, married at their Somerset home on Saturday after living together for 37 years

The mum-of-two, who has six grandchildren, six great-grandchildren and two-great-great grandchildren, said yes while in the grips of a cardiac arrest.

It followed many years of turning down Mr Benton's regular proposals.

Ms Orris said: 'Mo came forward and knelt down. He said, "I'm sorry I can't take this pain away from you. Will you marry me?"

'I've always said no in the past, but my heart attack made us realise perhaps we haven't got so many years left, so we'll get married after all.

'When I said yes, I think Maurice was so shocked, he nearly had a heart attack as well.

'We've been laughing ever since. And it means there won't be any problems with the taxman.'

The couple got engaged in March last year when Ms Orris was having a heart attack

Saturday's wedding was Ms Orris' nuptials. Her first marriage ended in divorce, and her second husband died in his 50s.

'Everyone's really thrilled for us, although most of our friends and my cousin said they thought we were already married,' she said.

Mr Benton, who has two daughters and five grandchildren, said: 'I'll still be her slave, doing all the washing and ironing.

'Jo's not so mobile, but fortunately, she's got a sharp brain like nobody else.

'It was about time she made an honest man of me.'

The happy occasion saw guests enjoy several bottles of champagne and food prepared by the groom.

Speaking afterwards, Ms Orris said: 'The only downside is he can't call me his mistress any more.'

The couple became known as the Perfect Strangers when they sent anonymous letters and parcels to British troops serving in the Iraq War.

They were also made honorary Gurkhas for their fundraising efforts for members of our armed forces.

Marie Hill, 93, met Ron Hedley, 100, during a group exercise class at Cameron Park Care Community in Newcastle, NSW

Last April another love story captured the hearts of thousands when two elderly grandparents married after meeting at their aged care home and falling in love.

Marie Hill, 93, met Ron Hedley, 100, during a group exercise class at Cameron Park Care Community in Newcastle, NSW.

'He just seemed so nice, right from the time I met him. And I thought "oh he's a lovely fellow",' Ms Hill told Nine News.

Ms Hill, donned a blush coloured gown and gloves, was walked down the aisle by her two sons Denis and Glen while Perfect by Ed Sheeran played in the background.

The newlyweds, who were both sat in wheelchairs, exchanged rings and vows in front of their families on the lawn of the care home.

Staffer Miki Stojcic said she played cupid to the couple  who had both lost their partners  after encouraging Ms Hill to join the home's exercise class.

Ms Hill described her new husband as a 'lovely fellow' after meeting him at their nursing home

'Marie spotted Ron and from that day everything changed,' she said.

Janet Collins, the aged care centre's general manager, said at the time it's 'really lovely' to have watched the couple fall in love.

'It's really obvious when you spend even a few minutes in their company, just how happy they are together,' she said.

Ms Hill's son Denis said his mother has 'gone from being a cranky old girl to very happy'.

Mr Hedley's son Peter said the couple, who have both lost their spouses, are now 'enjoying life' with each other.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has warned sending a peace keeping mission to Ukraine could trigger 'direct clashes' between Russia and NATO.

Poland said last week that it would formally submit a proposal for a peacekeeping mission in Ukraine at the next NATO summit.

'I hope they understand what they are talking about,' Lavrov told staff and students at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations on Wednesday.

'This will be the direct clash between the Russian and NATO armed forces that everyone has not only tried to avoid but said should not take place in principle.'

Lavrov's comments come after Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Poland's idea was reckless and extremely dangerous'.

'Any possible confrontation between our troops and NATO forces could have clear consequences that would be hard to repair,' Peskov told reporters.

Moscow has accused Kyiv of stalling peace talks by making proposals unacceptable for Russia. While Ukraine has said it is willing to negotiate but will not surrender or accept Russian ultimatums.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has warned sending a peace keeping mission to Ukraine could trigger 'direct clashes' between Russia and NATO

Lavrov said Ukrainian authorities were backing away from their own proposals at the talks, making it difficult to achieve a breakthrough.

'The talks have started, they are difficult because the Ukrainian side... constantly changes its mind and backs away from its own proposals,' Lavrov said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said earlier on Wednesday that the talks with Russia were tough and at times confrontational.

Lavrov also accused the US of 'holding Ukraine's hand and deliberately hindering peace talks in a bid to drag out the war and keep Russia 'in a state of military action'.

'It's hard to avoid the impression that our American colleagues are holding their hand,' Lavrov added.

He said that 'the Americans simply see it as disadvantageous for them for this process to finish swiftly', claiming 'they are counting on continuing to pump up Ukraine with weapons'.

Lavrov spoke of 'provocative statements' about Soviet-era MiG fighter planes - apparently referring to Poland's offer to send its MiG-29 fighter jets via a US air base, which the US rejected - and Ukraine's pleas for sending extra Stinger missiles.

The United States 'apparently wants to keep us in a state of military action as long as possible', the Russian minister said.

Lavrov said the US (pictured, left, Joe Biden) is 'holding Ukraine's hand and deliberately hindering peace talks in a bid to drag out the war and keep Russia 'in a state of military action', while Moscow has accused Kyiv of stalling peace talks by making proposals unacceptable for Russia. Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky (right) said earlier on Wednesday that the talks with Russia were tough and at times confrontational

Lavrov said that Russia needed to 'stand firm'.

'Western countries want to play some kind of intermediary role but we have red lines', he added.

Russia sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in what it called a special operation to degrade its neighbour's military capabilities and to root out people it called dangerous nationalists.

Ukrainian forces have mounted stiff resistance while the West has imposed sweeping sanctions on Russia in an effort to force it to withdraw its forces.
Advertisement

Russia has lost more than 15,000 troops in Ukraine, the country's generals claimed today, as they launched a series of counter-attacks across the country to push back Putin's forces after a month of dogged defending.

Ukraine's General Staff said Wednesday that Russia has now lost 15,600 men in fighting, along with 517 tanks and 1,600 armoured vehicles amid reports that their troops have recaptured the city of Makariv, to the west of the Kyiv, as photos showed troops raising a Ukrainian flag from one of the buildings.

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 IN THE US You can donate via CAF America at: https://donations.cafamerica.org/mail-force/ Or US readers can send checks to dailymail.com HQ at 51 Astor Place (9th floor), New York, NY 10003 Advertisement

The move puts Russian forces bogged down fighting in Irpin, Bucha and Borodyanka at risk of being cut off.

Meanwhile counter-attacks were also underway in the south, with the BBC reporting a Russian tank column was destroyed by Ukrainian troops and volunteers at Voznesensk - pushing Moscow's forces back 60 miles from the strategically-important town that spans the Bug River. Attacks were also launched on the captured city of Kherson.

Russian troops have also been forced to reposition around Mykolaiv after coming under attack by Ukrainian forces, the Pentagon said last night, while also reporting heavy fighting in Izyum - hundreds of miles away to the northeast - as Ukraine tries to thwart attempts to surround its armies near the Donbass.

A senior Pentagon source, briefing journalists on the situation on the ground in Ukraine, said the US is 'starting to see indications' that Kyiv's generals are now 'able and willing to take back territory' - potentially marking a turning-point in the conflict as Russia's advance grinds to a halt with supplies running low.

Videos posted online late Tuesday appeared to show one of the counter-attacks, wit Ukrainian troops engaged in heavy fighting to the west of Kyiv, unleashing a hail of rocket-propelled grenades and machine-gun fire.

Rob Lee, an expert on conflict from King's University, said the troops appeared to be Chechens fighting in Ukraine's Sheikh Mansur battalion - a Muslim-majority unit made up mostly of volunteers.

Amid the fighting, Russia continued to bombard civilian areas of the city with missiles - injuring four people in two districts that are about three miles from the frontlines.

'The enemy fired on Kyiv again - buildings in Sviatoshynskyi and Shevchenkivskyi districts were damaged,' city officials said in a statement on Telegram.

'Rescuers and medics are working on the spot. There are fires in several residences and in high-rise buildings. Four people were injured,' the statement added.

Volodymyr Okhrimenko, a resident of one of the damaged buildings, told AFP he had narrowly escaped the attack.

'It was a strike on the roof. I walked out of the house to smoke a cigarette, and when I went back inside it happened. The ceiling collapsed,' he said, firefighters working around him to put out the blaze.

'I lost consciousness for a few moments,' the pensioner said, with a shocked look on his face and a scratch on his forehead.

Western experts and observers have been predicting for days that Putin's army is now near 'culmination' - the point at which stockpiles of ammunition, food and fuel amassed ahead of the invasion will start to run out, forcing them to switch from attacking to defending and making their vulnerable to counter-attacks.

Ukraine's generals estimated on Tuesday that Moscow's troops had supplies left for 'no more than three days', though it appears resources in some areas have run out faster than that.

The task for Ukraine will now be to stop the war turning into a bloody stalemate fought on its territory, which will inevitably lead to widespread destruction and mounting casualties in a repeat of the situation playing out in the southern city of Mariupol.

Ukrainian troops are shown fighting Russian forces to the west of Kyiv, where counter-attacks are currently underway around the suburban city of Makariv

Fighters believed to be from the Sheikh Mansur battalion, a Muslim-majority unit of Chechens fighting for Ukraine, are shown in battle - believed to be to the west of Kyiv

A soldier raises a Ukrainian flag in the city of Makariv, to the west of Kyiv, which has been recaptured - putting Russian forces in Bucha, Irpin and Borodyanka at risk of getting cut off

A Ukrainian soldier stands next to a Russian armoured vehicle that was captured during fighting near Makariv, which is now back under Kyiv's control

Ukrainian troops inspect a Russian rocket artillery truck that was destroyed in fighting in Makariv, to the west of Kyiv

A view of a destroyed Russian military vehicle located in fields to the north of Makariv, after it was recaptured by Ukraine

Counter-attacks are now taking place to the west of Kyiv, around Mykolaiv and Kherson in the south, and towards Izyum in the east as the Pentagon says Ukrainian generals are 'able and willing to re-take territory'

Putin's men have Mariupol surrounded and have been trying to bomb it into submission for three weeks, but have failed to break the Ukrainian defenders and attempts to capture the city have so-far been repulsed. Humanitarian groups describe the situation on the ground as a hell-scape.

As Kyiv tries to gain the upper hand in fighting, it has been reaching out to the US and its NATO allies to supply more weapons. Advisers to President Zelensky are now calling for offensive as well as defensive weapons in a clear sign of the shift on the battlefield.

'Our armed forces and citizens are holding out with superhuman courage, but we cannot win a war without offensive weapons, without medium-range missiles that can be a means of deterrence,' adviser Andriy Yermak said during a panel discussion late Tuesday. 'In our case, deterrence, not aggression,' he added.

Yermak said it was 'impossible' for Ukraine to effectively defend itself without a reliable 'air defence system that shoots down enemy and ballistic missiles from a great distance.'

Biden and other NATO leaders have been stepping up military support for Ukraine including anti-tank weapons that have helped to stall Russian forces.

Ukraine's appeal for greater military support from Western allies has been a key refrain in a spate for recent addresses by President Zelensky to European and Western lawmakers.

Zelensky was due to address Japanese and French lawmakers Wednesday, and a special NATO summit Thursday. The Ukraine leader recently conceded Kyiv was not likely to become a member of the bloc.

'They don't want to see us in NATO. This fear of escalation is understandable. But it will not save us,' Yermak added in his address Tuesday.

With the future of Europe hanging in the balance, President Biden will huddle with key allies in Brussels and Warsaw to try and prevent the conflict from dragging the alliance into the fighting.

Biden embarks Wednesday on a four-day trip that will test his ability to navigate the continent's worst crisis since World War II. There are fears that Russia could use chemical or nuclear weapons as its invasion becomes bogged down in the face of logistical problems and fierce Ukrainian resistance.

Humanitarian challenges are growing as well. Millions of refugees have fled the fighting, mostly by crossing the border into Poland, and the war has jeopardized Ukraine's wheat and barley harvests, raising the possibility of rising hunger in impoverished areas around the globe.

Russian troops have been trying to surround Kyiv for weeks, but are now facing Ukrainian counter-attacks after their offensive ran out of steam - with the city of Makariv falling back into Ukrainian hands

Firefighters attempt to put out a blaze at a warehouse in the city of Mykolaiv, southern Ukraine, amid fighting with Russia

Vehicles go up in flames after being set alight during fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces near Mykolaiv

A firefighter extinguishes a burning house hit by Russian Grad rockets in Kyiv's Shevchenkivsky district on Wednesday

Firefighters battle a blaze caused by Russian rocket artillery which landed on the outskirts of Kyiv on Wednesday morning

Four people were injured in Russian shelling that hit western neighbourhoods of Kyiv on Wednesday, as fighting continues

Ukrainian firefighters assess the damage after Russian shelling on residential areas to the west of Kyiv on Wednesday

A thick pall of smoke hangs over Kyiv amid heavy fighting between Ukrainian and Russian forces on the outskirts of the city

Kyiv is blanketed in smoke early Wednesday amid heavy fighting to the north-west of the city with Russian forces

Jake Sullivan, Biden's national security adviser, said the president would coordinate with allies on military assistance for Ukraine and new sanctions on Russia. He added that Biden is working on long-term efforts to boost defenses in Eastern Europe, where more countries fear Russian aggression. The president is also aiming to reduce the continent's reliance on Russian energy.

'This war will not end easily or rapidly,' Sullivan told reporters at a White House briefing on Tuesday. 'For the past few months, the West has been united. The president is traveling to Europe to make sure we stay united.'

Sullivan said Vladimir Putin's references to nuclear weapons at the beginning of the conflict are 'something that we do have to be concerned about,' adding that Biden would be talking with allies about 'potential responses' if the Russian leader takes that step.

Sullivan's description of Biden's trip was another sign that the crisis is entering a new and uncertain phase.

After the initial invasion failed to topple Ukraine's government, the war has become a grinding endeavor for Putin, who is relying on airstrikes and artillery that are devastating civilian communities. Negotiations between Ukraine and Russia have not produced a cease-fire or a path to ending the conflict, and the U.S. continues to rush weapons like anti-tank missiles to Ukrainian forces.

The war's ripple effects are also spreading. Biden warned that Russia could be planning cyberattacks that would affect U.S. companies, and he spoke to Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday to warn him against backing Russia with military or financial assistance. Meanwhile, a top State Department official visited India this week shortly after that country decided to purchase more Russian oil.

'This is one of those decisive moments for an American leader that defines their legacy internationally,' said Timothy Naftali, a presidential historian at New York University.

Biden's first stop is Brussels, where he'll attend back-to-back-to-back meetings.

NATO is holding a hastily arranged emergency summit, where Biden is expected to reiterate his support for Article 5 of the alliance's charter, which commits all members to collective defense if any are attacked.

'I think the meeting of all heads of state and government in NATO will provide us with yet another platform to demonstrate our unity, our support to Ukraine, but also our readiness to protect and defend all NATO allies,' NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told NBC's 'Meet the Press' on Sunday. 'And by sending that message, we are preventing an escalation of the conflict to a full-fledged war between NATO and Russia.'

A damaged building is seen in village of Kamiyanske, 18 miles from the city of Zaporizhzhia, after bombing by Russian forces

Heavily damaged buildings are seen in Kamiyanske, near Zaporizhzhia, amid fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces

A Ukrainian soldier inspects damage to buildings in Kamiyanske, near Zaporizhzhia, after fighting with Russian troops

A woman clasps her hands in pain after seeing the damage fighting has caused to her home in Kamiyanske, near Zaporizhzhia

Biden will also participate in meetings of the European Union and the Group of Seven, which includes the world's richest democracies.

He'll then travel to Warsaw on Friday to meet Polish officials to discuss the enormous humanitarian strain caused by the Ukrainian refugee crisis. Biden is scheduled to meet with Polish President Andrzej Duda on Saturday.

Duda, whose country suffered a brutal Nazi occupation during World War II, compared Russian actions in Ukraine to Adolf Hitler's infamous SS forces. Visiting Bulgaria on Tuesday, Duda said Putin's army 'is behaving in exactly the same way.' He said he hoped that those responsible for attacks on civilians would be brought before international courts.

Polish leaders have pressed for a Western peacekeeping mission to intervene in Ukraine, a step that the U.S. and other Western allies worry could lead to a broadening of the war. The Polish leadership also wants an increased military presence along NATO's eastern flank.

Sullivan said Biden's trip to Poland is an important opportunity to 'meet with a frontline and very vulnerable ally.' Poland is also host to a growing number of U.S. troops, and Sullivan suggested Biden may visit them as well.

Last week, at NATO's Brussels headquarters, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and his counterparts weighed what defenses to set up on the organization's eastern flank, from Estonia in the north through Latvia, Lithuania and Poland down to Bulgaria and Romania on the Black Sea.

The aim is to deter Putin from ordering an invasion of any of the 30 allies, not just for the duration of the war in Ukraine but into the future.

Putin has demanded that NATO withdraw its forces on its eastern flank and stop expanding.

Sullivan said that Biden, during his talks in Europe, 'will work with allies on longer-term adjustments to NATO force posture.'

Biden's visit to Poland follows on Vice President Kamala Harris' visit to Warsaw and Bucharest earlier this month. While Harris was in Poland, Duda called on the Biden administration to expedite visa procedures for Ukrainians who have family living in the United States so that they could resettle in the U.S. at least temporarily.
Advertisement

The entire Russian crew onboard a 500 million superyacht suspected of belonging to despot Vladimir Putin have disappeared and been replaced by a British one.

Officials said more than two dozen officers and deckhands were all spirited away from The Scheherazade within the last week after it was placed in the spotlight due to the ongoing war in Ukraine.

The 460ft vessel is currently undergoing repairs at the Italian part of Marina di Carrara, north of Pisa, having arrived there at the end of last summer under the steerage of British captain Guy Bennett-Pearce.

Earlier this week it emerged that all 40 of the crew were members of the Russian intelligence branches of the FSB and FSO and had sworn their loyalty to Putin.

But since the six-deck yacht came under the eye of investigators probing possible sanctions a veil of secrecy has come down  despite Captain Bennett-Pearce denying Putin owns it or has even been on board.

Paolo Gozzani, of the local CGIL Union, told MailOnline: 'From what I have heard the Russian crew were all replaced during the last few days and now they are all British onboard.

'It was all a few days, the word from inside is that they were called back to report for military service and now there are armed guards surrounding it as well.

'You can't get anywhere near her and the level of security is unbelievable.'

A source at the marina said:' You could spot the Russians a mile off they were in the local bars most night, drinking vodka and beer.

'They were big looking guys and then one day they all just disappeared. To be honest for me they didn't look like a yacht crew they looked like a small army or security detail.'

The Italian Sea Group which owns the yard where The Scheherazade is docked has denied Putin is the owner but is expected to come under scrutiny on Thursday when it presents its consolidated financial results.

The entire Russian crew onboard a 500 million superyacht suspected of belonging to despot Vladimir Putin have disappeared and been replaced by a British one

Officials said more than two dozen officers and deckhands were all spirited away from The Scheherazade within the last week after it was placed in the spotlight due to the ongoing war in Ukraine. The entire Russian crew has been replaced by a British one

It is currently undergoing repairs at the Italian part of Marina di Carrara, north of Pisa, having arrived there at the end of last summer under the steerage of British captain Guy Bennett-Pearce

The Scheherazade, currently docked for repairs at the Italian Sea Group shipyard in Marina di Carrara, Italy, is one of the largest and most expensive superyachts in the world, and since its launch in 2020, its true ownership has been cloaked in absolute secrecy

For more than a year, workers at the shipyard have speculated that the ship belongs to Putin himself, a source there told MailOnline on March 8. 'All the whispers were it belonged to Putin,' the person said. However, the ship's British captain, Guy Bennett-Pearce, has denied that Putin owns the Scheherazade or has ever been on board

Putin's 'other yacht' - a smaller, older vessel named GRACEFUL Vladimir Putin claims that he is only moderately-wealthy, but is suspected of secretly harboring a $100 billion fortune. A smaller, older vessel, the Graceful, has long been suspected of belonging to Putin. Alone among the world's superyachts, the Graceful's hull was laid at a Russian naval shipyard, before being finished in Germany, an industry source told DailyMail.com. The Graceful left port in Germany about two weeks before Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and is currently docked at Russia's Baltic Sea enclave of Kaliningrad, safely out of the reach of Western sanctions. The Scheherazade, however, is stuck in drydock in Italy undergoing repairs, and a person familiar with the matter said that it would be impossible for it to sail before the end of March. A smaller, older vessel, the Graceful (seen leaving Hamburg last month), has long been suspected of belonging to Putin The Graceful left port in Germany on February 7 (above), about two weeks before Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and is currently docked at Russia's Baltic Sea enclave of Kaliningrad, safely out of the reach of Western sanctions Advertisement

The six-deck Scheherazade is one of the largest - with space equivalent to two apartment blocks - and most expensive superyachts in the world. The yacht has room for 18 guests in nine luxury cabins in addition to a crew of 40, residing in 20 cabins and boasts two helipads, a royal suite, a swimming pool, a spa and a beauty salon.

But since its launch in 2020, the yacht's true ownership has been cloaked in absolute secrecy.

Currently docked for repairs at the Italian Sea Group shipyard in Marina di Carrara, Italy, the Scheherazade is protected by measures that are extreme even by the ultra-private standards of the superyacht world, with covers hiding its nameplate and a metal barrier erected to partially block the vessel from public view.

For more than a year, workers at the shipyard have speculated that the ship belongs to Putin himself, a source there told MailOnline on March 8. 'All the whispers were it belonged to Putin,' the person said.

The source said that the Scheherazade's crew appear to be Russian, and that a team of Germans working on repairs to the vessel were recalled by their home office after the EU announced its sanctions in early March.

Allies of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny yesterday told Italian authorities that they should seize the Scheherazade because they can prove it belongs to Putin. A sensational video shared on Navalny's YouTube channel claims that though the captain is British, the rest of the crew are allegedly from the FSO and FSB - two Russian secret services.

However, Captain Guy Bennett-Pearce denied has that Putin owns the Scheherazade or has ever been on board, telling the New York Times: 'I have never seen him. I have never met him.'

The ship's name, Scheherazade, is the female protagonist from the Middle Eastern collection of tales known as the One Thousand and One Nights. It is also the title of a symphonic suite by Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov that is based on the tales.

The ship reportedly features personal touches for the Russian strongman including a judo gym with framed pictures of Putin's black belts.

And the Scheherazade carries books The Atlas of Beauty by Mihaela Noroc, Fashion History from the Kyoto Costume Institute and Photo Icons by Hans-Michael Koetzle.

A worker involved in the yacht's construction told the Sun: 'Every surface is marble or gold. There are countless swimming pools, a spa, a sauna, a theatre, ballrooms, a gym, two helipads. It's like a mini city.

'There is even a hospital which makes sense when you hear rumours of Putin being terminally ill. It is hard to swallow the fact that the most incredible ship in the world is owned by a man intent on bombing civilians in Ukraine.

'And it is an unimaginable amount of wealth when the average Russian's salary is 5,000 a year, and people there are struggling to eat.'

Italian authorities are currently probing whether the opulent vessel should be seized under sanctions against Russia, following the speculation that it could belong to Putin.

Bennett-Pearce declined to identify the Scheherazade's owner, citing a strict non-disclosure agreement, and would not rule out that the owner is Russian. He did however insist that the owner is not on any sanctions list.

The captain said that Italian investigators had come aboard on March 4 and examined some of the ship's certification documents, and that he planned to hand over documents identifying the true owner on Tuesday, telling the Times that he had 'no choice.'

The six-deck Scheherazade is one of the largest - with space equivalent to two apartment blocks - and most expensive superyachts in the world

The yacht has room for 18 guests in nine luxury cabins in addition to a crew of 40, residing in 20 cabins and boasts two helipads, a royal suite, a swimming pool, a spa and a beauty salon

Currently docked for repairs at the Italian Sea Group shipyard in Marina di Carrara, Italy, the Scheherazade is protected by measures that are extreme even by the ultra-private standards of the superyacht world, with covers hiding its nameplate and a metal barrier erected to partially block the vessel from public view

The yacht has room for 18 guests in nine luxury cabins in addition to a crew of 40, residing in 20 cabins and boasts two helipads, a royal suite, a swimming pool, a spa and a beauty salon

'I have no doubt in my mind whatsoever that this will clear the vessel of all negative rumors and speculations,' Bennett-Pearce told the outlet.

Last night his mother Debbie told The Daily Telegraph: 'I don't think for one second that Guy would work for that  whatever you want to call himmurderer.'

But locals in Marina de Carrara have said that most are convinced the superyacht belongs to Putin. Giorgio Petri, 72, told the paper: 'There's nothing official, of course, but all the locals say that it is Putin's. Just look at it.'

The Italian investigation into the ownership of the Scheherazade comes as authorities across Europe have raced to identify and seize yachts tied to Russian oligarchs named in new sanctions over the invasion of Ukraine.

In early March, French authorities seized the superyacht Amore Vero in the Mediterranean resort town of La Ciotat.

The 289-foot boat is believed to belong to Igor Sechin, a Putin ally who runs Russian oil giant Rosneft, which has been on the US sanctions list since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014.

The French Finance Ministry said in a statement that customs authorities boarded the Amore Vero and discovered its crew was preparing for an urgent departure, even though planned repair work was not finished.

The $700 million yacht, Scheherazade (seen in drydock), is one of the largest and most expensive superyachts in the world, and since its launch in 2020, its true ownership has been cloaked in absolute secrecy

Currently docked for repairs (above) at the Italian Sea Group shipyard in Marina di Carrara, Italy, the Scheherazade is protected by measures that are extreme even by the ultra-private standards of the superyacht world

The Italian investigation into the ownership of the Scheherazade comes as authorities across Europe have raced to identify and seize yachts tied to Russian oligarchs named in new sanctions over the invasion of Ukraine

Sanctioned steel baron Alexei Mordashov's 213-foot Lady M was seized by Italian authorities on March 4 while it was moored in the Riviera port town of Imperia.

And in Sanremo, Italy, authorities seized the Lena, a yacht belonging to Putin ally and oil billionaire Gennady Timchenko.

The 511-foot Dilbar, which is likely the largest superyacht in the world, is currently under orders to remain in port at Hamburg as officials there try to determine its ownership.

Russian oligarchs account for a significant portion of the global superyacht market. Of all the superyacht projects over 164 feet that are in build or on order, Russians make up 17 per cent of all owners, according to Boat International.

It has fueled speculation about the Scheherazade, whose ownership remains one of the biggest mysteries in the yachting world.

The industry website SuperYachtFan, which estimates the boat's cost at $700 million, believes that the Scheherazade has room for a crew of about 40 and around 18 passengers.

The Scheherazade was constructed by the German firm Lurssen under the management of Imperial Yachts, a company based in Monaco.

Imperial Yachts also manages the Amore Vero, the seized yacht belonging to Sechin, according to Reuters. An industry source told MailOnline that 'ninety percent of the Russians have Imperial manage their boats.'

In early March, French authorities seized the superyacht Amore Vero (pictured in La Ciotat Port, France) in the Mediterranean resort town of La Ciotat. The 289-foot boat is believed to belong to Igor Sechin, a Putin ally who runs Russian oil giant Rosneft, which has been on the US sanctions list since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014

Sanctioned steel baron Alexei Mordashov's 213-foot Lady M was seized by Italian authorities on March 4 while it was moored in the Riviera port town of Imperia

The 511-foot Dilbar, which is likely the largest superyacht in the world, is currently under orders to remain in port at Hamburg as officials there try to determine its ownership

A spokesman for Imperial said that the company is not operationally responsible for the Scheherazade, but only supervised construction.

'As a company we comply with all applicable relevant law and regulation in all jurisdictions in which the company operates,' the spokesman said in a statement.

Imperial, led by CEO Evgeniy Kochman, is believed to have four other projects underway at the Italian Sea Group shipyard. The owners of those projects were not immediately clear.

Officially, the Scheherazade's registered owner is Bielor Assets Ltd, a company registered in the Marshall Islands, and the boat is flagged in the Cayman Islands.

Speculation about a connection between the vessel and Putin has run rampant in Marina di Carrara since the boat first docked there last winter, a source said.

The person said that workers at the shipyard believed the initial owner was Middle Eastern, but that at some point the boat was sold to Putin or another wealthy Russian.

The SuperYachtFan site has also speculated that the owner of the boat could be a Middle Eastern billionaire.

Officially, Putin has a declared net worth of about $150,000 and very few assets. But the Russian leader's true wealth, thought by some to be as much as $100 billion, though it has never been confirmed.

Forbes recently called it 'the most elusive riddle in wealth hunting.'

Nevertheless, Putin's fondness for luxury yachts is well established. He has previously been photographed on yachts from the Black Sea in the south the Russia's northern regions. Last May, he took a yacht cruise with Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko near the Black Sea resort of Sochi.
Notorious serial killer John Wayne Glover committed at least six more murders, experts believe.

Glover was sentenced to six life sentences over the murders of six elderly women on Sydney's Lower North Shore between 1989 and 1990.

Dubbed the 'Granny Killer', Glover hung himself in his cell at Lithgow jail in September, 2005 at the age of 72.

His victims ranged from 60 to 92, and were attacked with a hammer, by Glover's fists or strangled with their pantyhose.

Retired homicide detective Brian Collis appeared on Nine's Under Investigation program on Wednesday night where he claimed it is highly likely Glover had many more victims.

Mr Collis said he has 'no doubt' Glover was responsible for the deaths of two elderly women on the NSW Central Coast in 1984 and 1986, years before his other murders.

John Glover (pictured) was sentenced to six life sentences over the murders of six elderly women between 1989 and 1990

In 1984 Josephine McDonald, 73, was sexually assaulted and strangled in her Ettalong apartment.

Wanda Amundsen, 80, was beaten with a hammer just a few kilometres away in Umina two years later.

Glover would often travel to the Central Coast to visit his half-sister and his mother Frida - who was said to have had a complicated relationship with her son.

'The killer of those people in my view was John Wayne Glover,' Detective Collis said. 'I have no doubt that was the case'.

'The M.O, the placing of the bodies, the method of death, all fitted in perfectly'.

But by the time police suspected Glover of the additional deaths he was already serving a life sentence for the slaying of six elderly women in Sydney.

The travelling pie salesman was 58 when he began that rampage, but experts believe he was a killer long before this.

From 1957 to 1968, four elderly women were bashed and strangled to death in Victoria.

Glover was high on the list of suspects as he had been living in Melbourne at the time, but he was never formally charged.

His first confirmed victim was Gwendoline Mitchelhill, 82, in 1989.

He had followed her back to her apartment in Neutral Bay and hit her multiple times in the head with a hammer in broad daylight.

The snowy-haired killer would commit his second murder months later, by bashing Lady Ashton, 84, with a hammer before dragging her to a rubbish bin alcove where he repeatedly hit her head on the concrete floor.

The travelling pie salesman (pictured) was 58-years-old when he began his serial rampage in Sydney's Lower North Shore however experts believe he was a killer long before this

He then removed her pantyhose and strangled her with them, positioned her shoes and walking stick near her lifeless body, and stole $100 from her purse.

Lindsay Simpson, who interviewed Glover in Lithgow, speculated he may have been motivated to kill elderly women by the rage and hatred he felt for his own mother, Frida.

The journalist told host Liz Hayes he had hated how 'promiscuous' his mother had been when he was a young boy, and disapproved of her dating several men.

Ms Simpson said Glover had also stumbled across pornographic images of his mother, with the bodies of his victims later arranged just like the photographs.

Following the death of his second victim was a string of attacks on elderly women in nursing homes and hospitals across the state.

Traumatised women, who believed they had been molested, struggled to identify Glover, who was subsequently allowed to continue his cruel killing spree.

His third victim was Margaret Pahud, 85, who was murdered on November 3, 1989.

The widow was struck on the back of the head with a blunt object, with Glover rearranging her clothing, walking stick and shoes.

Lindsay Simpson, who interviewed Glover (left) while he was detained in Lithgow jail, speculated he may have been motivated to kill by the rage and hatred he felt for his own mother, Frida, (right) who he had a complicated relationship with

Less than 24 hours later the established 'Granny killer' struck again and murdered Olive Cleveland, 81, who he bashed and strangled with her pantyhose.

With the $60 he took from Ms Cleveland's purse he paid a visit to the Mosman RSL, to play the pokies.

Three weeks later on November 23, 1989, his fourth victim, Muriel Falconer, who was partially deaf and blind from a recent stroke, was killed inside her home.

He struck the elderly woman with a hammer and strangled her with her undergarments, the now recognisable M.O of the killer who was at that stage still unidentified.

It was his final kill, that of his close friend Joan Sinclair, that finally led police to their man.

Glover had been under 24-hour surveillance for some time after witnesses described a portly, grey-haired man turning up at crime scenes and in nursing homes where female residents had been molested.

Tragically, officers watched as the practiced killer entered Ms Sinclair's home where he would just moments later end her life.

The 60-year-old had recently installed security gates over widespread fears of the 'Granny killer' but had inadvertently locked herself in with the murderer.

After he killed his friend, Glover ran himself a bath, washed down a handful of valium with alcohol and slit his wrists.

Police became suspicious when the pair failed to leave the home and were confronted with the grisly scene. Glover survived the suicide attempt.

He had attempted to take his own life twice before, with his wife Gay Glover describing a chilling moment when barely conscious he told her half of him was 'good' while the other half was 'bad'.

He was sentenced to life in prison for the slaying of his six Sydney victims and hanged himself in Lithgow on September 10, 2005 at the age of 72.

Journalist Lindsay Simpson told the program in his final days she never saw the murderer show any remorse for his victims, instead only feeling sorry for himself.
This is the moment gunmen shot at each other from speeding cars before colliding head-on in a violent crash that a shocked witness said sounded like 'a bomb going off'.

Jeaninne Bauer's doorbell camera captured the shootout outside her home on a quiet street in Milwaukee on Sunday afternoon.

Seven people between the ages of 15 and 20 have been arrested over the horrifying incident.

The footage initially shows one car zooming down the street while at least five gunfire shots can be heard as a passenger hangs out of a window.

Jeaninne Bauer's doorbell camera captured the horrifying shootout near 77th and Lisbon in Milwaukee on Sunday at 6.23pm. Pictured, a man hangs out of a car as gunshots ring out

The terrifying footage initially shows one car zooming down the residential street while at least five gunfire shots can be heard, Another car then speeds down the street and smashes head-on into the first vehicle

Another car then speeds down the street from the opposite direction and smashes head-on into the first vehicle.

Plumes of smoke erupt from the engines of the cars as they collide and spin round to a standstill.

Ms Bauer, 62, can then be heard shouting: 'Jesus Christ.'

A door of the second car is then flung open and two men are seen sprinting away from the scene.

Ms Bauer then shouts: 'Call the cops! Right now.'

A dog is heard barking in the background as two more men scurry out of the second car and sprint away, apparently leaving a fifth man lying on the road.

Jeaninne Bauer said :'The impact was tremendous. I do not know how anybody survived... I'm still shaking from it'

The door of the second car is flung open and two men are seen sprinting away from the scene

Police say the crash, at 6.23pm, was so violent it tore both cars apart and huge chunks of metal remained in the street near 77th and Lisbon a day later.

Ms Bauer told MailOnline: 'When this happened I was in my office in the back of the house, the window was open and suddenly I heard several pops and then it sounded like a bomb went off.

'I flew to the front to see two cars mangled with smoke billowing from them and people running, one person on the ground, etc.

'I yelled to my husband to call the cops, but I had my phone closer so I did.

'They were at the scene in less than three minutes. We've lived on my block for 27 years this coming October, it's a quiet residential area, where this is not normal.

'There are families with little kids and elderly. We are physically ok, but very shaken up and mentally exhausted from this experience.'

Ms Bauer told CBS: 'All of a sudden you hear this massive boom. It literally sounded like a bomb exploded.

'The impact was tremendous. I do not know how anybody survived.

'What happened yesterday was beyond understanding. I'm still shaking from it.'

She added that she had to stop her husband from going to help anyone who had been injured because she didn't want him to end up being shot.

Milwaukee police found two guns at the scene and emergency responders had to cut one person out of one of the cars.

Police say the crash was so violent it tore both cars apart and huge chunks of metal remained in the street a day later

An 18-year-old man was taken to hospital but everyone survived both the shooting and the crash.

Acting Mayor Cavalier Johnson's office gave a statement that read: 'He received a detailed briefing from the police department on this shooting.

'He is alarmed by the brazenness and disregard of life.

'The Mayor also appreciates the police work and the multiple arrests that have been made.

'He continues to work with police and with teams involved in prevention to reduce violence in the city.

'He also wants state legislators to seriously address the ongoing problem of guns in the hands of people who should not have them.

'It is also time to revisit the absence of restrictions on private gun sales.'

The Milwaukee County District Attorney's Office will consider any criminal charges.
The United States appeared to hit Boris Johnson's hopes of striking a post-Brexit free trade deal today, as a top official said an agreement is not worth spending 'years and a lot of blood, sweat and tears' over.

In an uncomfortable moment for Trade Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan, her US counterpart Katherine Tai last night used a joint press conference to suggested a commerce covenant was a 'very 20th century tool'.

Britain has spent years trying to get first the Trump and then the Biden Administration to agree to a free trade deal that would represent a blue ribband moment for post-Brexit commerce.

But at the media event in Baltimore, Maryland, Ms Tai said: 'A free trade agreement is a tool. A very 20th Century tool. It has its place in the toolbox.

'I want to ensure the conversations and the approaches that we bring today, especially with the pressures that were facing, are maximally responsive so that we don't spend years and spend a lot of blood, sweat and tears working on something that isn't going to be relevant to the needs of our people and our economies.'

She and Ms Trevelyan met as the US announced it was removing punitive tariffs on British steel and aluminium that have been in place since 2018.

In an embarrassing moment for Trade Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan, her US counterpart Katherine Tai last night used a joint press conference to dismiss a covenant as a 'very 20th century tool'.

At the media event in Baltimore, Maryland, Ms Tai said that while an agreement 'has its place in the toolbox' it might not be 'relevant to the needs of our people'.

In return, the UK will drop retaliatory tariffs on American brands such as Harley-Davidson.

The trade dispute has been a longstanding thorn in relations between the two allies.

Under Donald Trump, the US imposed a 25 per cent duty on foreign steel and 10 per cent tax on foreign aluminium.

Before the press conference Ms Trevelyan had hoped formal negotiations on a US trade deal may begin by the end of this year, with expectations they could be completed within 18 months.

Ms Trevelyan last night said countries around the world are 'queuing up' to sign trade deals with Britain, as she kickstarted negotiations with Canada.

The Trade Secretary is flying to Ottawa to launch formal talks on a 'chunky' new agreement to replace arrangements carried over from our membership of the EU.

In an interview with the Daily Mail, she revealed plans to sign a deal with Israel by the end of this year.

It will be the fourth 'from scratch' post-Brexit trade agreement, following successful negotiations with Australia, New Zealand and Singapore.

Key targets now are the US, Mexico and India, as well as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), which is a bloc of 11 Pacific nations, and the Gulf Cooperation Council comprising Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

'People are queuing up wanting to do trade deals with us, which I find very encouraging,' Mrs Trevelyan said last night.

'We do ourselves down, the rest of the world thinks the UK is amazing and they want to work with a trusted partner.'

The minister, whose ancestors moved from the Isle of Mull in Scotland to Canada where her father was born, will wear a suit she has made herself from her family's ancient hunting tartan.

'It'll just be lovely to be the person who moves us into that next stage,' she said.

Mrs Trevelyan, who has nicknamed the new deal 'Canada 2.0', said the continuity trade agreement rolled over from Britain's member of the EU was 'quite old fashioned' and 'not really very digital trade focused'.

'This is an opportunity to take it to a much, much higher level,' she added. 'Looking at things like digital trade, which is such an important area.

By removing red tape, Mrs Trevelyan said the agreement would help 'strip away costs for the consumer' and 'strip away cost and effort for business'.

British officials believe thousands of smaller firms will be encouraged to start trading with Canada if barriers can be removed, such as by simplifying paperwork

As well as security a trade with with Candian PM Justin Trudeau's government, Number 10 wants to target deals with the US, Mexico and India - as well as deals with the Trans-Pacific Partnership

Mrs Trevelyan said the new agreement would open access for British firms to Canadian government procurement contracts, which will be 'really big business for some of our really important construction and industrial service partners'.

'There'll be some really chunky stuff in there to discuss, which will be good and they're really up for it, she continued.

'That's why they're top of my pile because they've really leaned in and said we want to move to the next phase. So I've said: 'OK you're on'.'

Mrs Trevelyan will meet Canadian trade minister Mary Ng. Trade between the two countries is already worth 19billion.

She heads to Canada following two days of talks with her U.S. counterparts. Yesterday she met U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo to finalise a deal on removing punitive tariffs on British steel and aluminium that have been in place since 2018.

In return, the UK will drop retaliatory tariffs on American brands such as Harley-Davidson.

The trade dispute has been a longstanding thorn in relations between the two allies.

Mrs Trevelyan believes formal negotiations on a U.S. trade deal may begin by the end of this year, with expectations they could be completed within 18 months.

The Daily Mail revealed yesterday she believes there has 'definitely' been a change in approach from Joe Biden, who put talks on the backburner when he entered the White House.

After initially having 'no appetite' for a deal, she said his administration has now 'leaned in'.
China today said Russia cannot be expelled from the G20 after Washington raised the prospect of excluding Moscow from the group.

Beijing described Russia as an 'important member' of the G20 in the latest sign of China providing a level of diplomatic protection to the country, which is increasingly isolated over its invasion of Ukraine.

'The G20 is the main forum for international economic cooperation,' Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told reporters. 'Russia is an important member, and no member has the right to expel another country.'

Chinese President Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin declared a relationship of 'no limits' following a visit by the Russian President to Beijing for the Winter Olympics.

Wang's comments follow a briefing by a top Washington security advisor on Tuesday indicating the US will lead pressure on Russia to be cut from international forums over its invasion of its neighbour.

China today said Russia cannot be expelled from the G20 after Washington raised the prospect of excluding Moscow from the group. Pictured: Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, shakes hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping, right, during the Tsinghua Universitys ceremony, at Friendship palace in 2019 in Beijing, China

'On the question of the G20, I will just say this: We believe that it cannot be business as usual for Russia in international institutions and in the international community,' Jake Sullivan White House National Security Advisor said.

The likelihood that any bid to exclude Russia outright would be vetoed by others in the club - which includes China, India, Saudi Arabia and others - raised the prospect of some countries instead skipping G20 meetings this year, sources involved in the discussions of whether to bar Russia from the group said.

The G20 along with the smaller Group of Seven - comprising just the United States, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Japan and Britain - is a key international platform for coordinating everything from climate change action to cross-border debt.

Putin still intends to attend the next G20 summit on the Indonesian resort island of Bali in November, Russia's ambassador to Indonesia said.

'It will depend on many, many things, including the COVID situation, which is getting better. So far, his intention is... he wants to,' Ambassador Lyudmila Vorobieva told a news conference.

The likelihood that any bid to exclude Russia outright would be vetoed by others in the G20- which includes China, India, Saudi Arabia and others - raised the prospect of some countries instead skipping G20 meetings this year. Pictured: Putin (centre left) with other leaders at the G20 summit in Argentina in 2018

Asked about suggestions Russia could be kicked out of the G20, she said it was a forum to discuss economic issues and not a crisis like Ukraine.

'Of course expulsion of Russia from this kind of forum will not help these economic problems to be resolved. On the contrary, without Russia it would be difficult to do so.'

China, which has not condemned Russia's invasion and criticised Western sanctions, defended Moscow on Wednesday, calling Russia an 'important member' of the G20.

The G20 is a group that needs to find answers to critical issues, such as economic recovery from the Covid pandemic, the Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said.

China has faced criticism from the West and US for its refusal to condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

US President Joe Biden last week warned his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping there would be 'consequences' if Beijing provides support to Russia during its invasion of Ukraine.

The move comes after it emerged that Russia has asked China for military equipment to bolster their offensive against Ukraine.

In the nearly two-hour video call between Biden and Jinping, the US President described the implications and consequences if China provides material support to Russia as it conducts brutal attacks against Ukrainian cities and civilians, the White House said in a readout of the conversation.

Putin and Jinping declared a relationship of 'no limits' following a visit by the Russian President to Beijing for the Winter Olympics on February 4 (pictured)

US President Joe Biden last week warned his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping there would be 'consequences' if Beijing provides support to Russia during its invasion of Ukraine

The call was part of the administrations effort to keep China from providing a lifeline to Putin, who is becoming increasingly isolated since he invaded Ukraine nearly a month ago and whose economy has crashed as a result of Western sanctions.

Washington has not observed any Chinese arms shipments to Russia since Biden held the call with Jinping last week, Sullivan said.

'We have not seen... the provision of military equipment by China to Russia. But of course, this is something we are monitoring closely,' he said.

Relations between China and Russia have warmed in recent years. Putin and Jinping met in Beijing in February when the Russian president was in town for the opening of the Winter Olympic Games.

China initially seemed to support Russia's invasion of Ukraine, with Jinping denouncing 'NATO's eastward expansion' - which has been Moscow's position.

Beijing also initially refused to refer to a 'war' or 'invasion' in Ukraine, instead preferring Moscow's description of a 'special military operation'.

But as the tide of the conflict has turned against Putin's men and the civilian death toll has mounted, Chinese diplomats have slowly dropped their support.

Wang Yi, the foreign minister, said last week that China 'laments' the conflict and the civilian death toll, before referring to it as a 'war' for the first time.

Beijing also has offered to act as mediator between Russia and the Ukraine but it also denounced trade and financial sanctions against Russia.

The U.S. is urging China to use its close ties with Moscow to help convince Putin to back down.

'We believe China in particular has a responsibility to use its influence with President Putin and to defend the international rules and principles that it professes to support,' said US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken.

'Instead, it appears that China is moving in the opposite direction by refusing to condemn this aggression, while seeking to portray itself as a neutral arbiter.'

Since Putin barbarically invaded Ukraine last month, Russia is facing a slew of international sanctions led by Western countries aiming at isolating it from the global economy, including shutting it out of the SWIFT global bank messaging system and restricting dealings by its central bank.

Cars and buildings are seen on fire after shelling, as Russia's invasion of Ukraine continues, in Mykolaiv, Ukraine, on Wednesday

On Tuesday, Poland said it had suggested to U.S. commerce officials that it replace Russia within the G20 group and that the suggestion had received a 'positive response'.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said G20 members would have to decide but the issue was not a priority now.

'When it comes to the question of how to proceed with the WTO (World Trade Organization) and the G20, it is imperative to discuss this question with the countries that are involved and not to decide individually,' Scholz said.

'It is quite clear that we are busy with something else than coming together in such meetings. We urgently need a ceasefire.'

Russia's participation in the G20 is almost certain to be discussed on Thursday, when U.S. President Joe Biden meets allies in Brussels.

'We believe that it cannot be business as usual for Russia in international institutions and in the international community,' U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters.

A European Union source separately confirmed the discussions about Russia's status at G20 meetings.

'It has been made very clear to Indonesia that Russiaas presence at forthcoming ministerial meetings would be highly problematic for European countries,' said the source, adding there was, however, no clear process for excluding a country.

Indonesia's deputy central bank governor, Dody Budi Waluyo, said on Monday Jakarta's position was one of neutrality and it would use its G20 leadership to try to resolve problems, but Russia had a 'strong commitment' to attend and other members could not forbid it from doing so.


We Are China

Chinese spokesperson rejects ignorant question from Reuters

(People's Daily App) 10:53, March 23, 2022

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin declined to answer an ignorant question from a Reuters reporter as the entire nation grieved over a plane crash.

(Web editor: Peng Yukai, Liang Jun)
Samsung Electronics' Samsung Bot Handy is introduced at this year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, January. Courtesy of Samsung Electronics



By Baek Byung-yeul



Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics are hiring more workers and expanding investments to foster robots as one of their new growth engines as automated devices are being used increasingly in everyday life, according to company officials Tuesday.



Data shows the robot business is expected to grow rapidly in the future.



The International Federation of Robotics (IFR) predicts the robot market to grow 32 percent annually to about 211 trillion won ($173 billion) in 2025.



Samsung Vice Chairman Han Jong-hee announced earlier this month that robots will become the company's new area of business.



"We have accumulated technology in various robot areas and reviewed commercialization so that future generations can experience 'life companion' robots," Han told investors during the company's shareholders' meeting.



Samsung has been unveiling different types of service robots every year. At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in 2019, Samsung launched the Samsung Bot robotics platform and unveiled a fleet of robots including Samsung Bot Care, Air and Retail and an exoskeleton-assisted wearable robot called GEMS.



At the 2020 event, the company came up with Ballie, a small ball-shaped companion robot designed to help consumers around the house. The company also introduced Samsung Bot Handy, a robot that can help out with various household chores.



Samsung has yet to release any robots for sale, but the company is widely expected to commercialize its GEMS exoskeleton robot within this year. GEMS is a wearable robot that can fit to the hips, knees and ankles and serve as a walking aid.





LG Electronics' CLOi ServeBot robot delivers wine bottles to a staff member at a hotel in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province, March 22. Courtesy of LG Electronics
The State Department is denouncing the nine-year sentence that a Russian court handed down for opposition leader Alexei Navalny amid a fierce Kremlin crackdown on dissent inside the country.

A Russian court convicted Navalny of fraud and contempt of court on Tuesday, as Russian authorities continued to jail and try to silence street protesters who have defied new decrees against criticizing what the Kremlin calls its 'special military operation' in Ukraine.

'We condemn Russian authorities politically-motivated conviction and sentencing of opposition leader Aleksey Navalny on additional spurious charges to nine more years in a high security prison,' State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a statement released Tuesday night.

'This outlandish prison term is a continuation of the Kremlins years-long assault on Navalny and on his movement for government transparency and accountability. Of course, Navalnys true crime in the eyes of the Kremlin is his work as an anti-corruption activist and opposition politician, for which he and his associates have been branded extremists by Russian authorities,' he said.

The U.S. denunciation of the sentence came as tweets posted from Navalny's Twitter account called for action against Vladimir Putin's 'war criminals.'

The State Department blasted the 'outlandish prison term' a Russian court handed down for Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalany

Navalny was given a nine-year sentence Tuesday. 'Now more than ever, the people of Russia must be able to hear voices of courage and integrity that tell the truth about the Kremlins wrongdoing at home and abroad,' said State spokesman Ned Price

Navalny was already serving a two and a half year sentence for parole violations. He was jailed last year after he left the country for medical treatment following his poisoning with the nerve agent Novichok.

The State Department put Navalny's sentencing in the context of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which President Vladimir Putin launched Feb. 24th.

It also Navalny's 'near-fatal poisoning with a nerve agent in 2020 by Russias security services and his unjust imprisonment since January 2020,' and Russia's suppression of free expression.

'This campaign has intensified as the Kremlin seeks to hide the truth of its brutal war against Ukraine from its own people. More than 15,000 citizens of Russia have been detained for taking part in anti-war protests since February 24,' said Price, calling for Russia to 'unconditionally release' Navalny.

'Now more than ever, the people of Russia must be able to hear voices of courage and integrity that tell the truth about the Kremlins wrongdoing at home and abroad.'

Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov defended the sentencing of Putin's political opponent in an interview with CNN's Christiane Amonpour. She asked him what he and the regime were 'afraid of.'

Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov defended the sentencing of Putin's political opponent in an interview, claiming it was purely for an 'economical crime'

President Joe Biden heads to Europe on Wednesday to meet with allied leaders to counter Russia's invasion of Ukraine

'No. Navalny is a prisoner is a prisoner. He had his his first sentence. Now he's got he's got his second one. And he's blamed and then it is proven by the prosecutor's office, that he's blamed for fraud. So it's purely economical crime. He was collecting money by his foundation, from citizens, regular citizens of Russia and also from abroad,' he said.

'And he was spending part of that money for his personal purposes. This is fraud in our country. And he was supposed to be punished and no one is afraid of him. It sits. If people is a criminal, he should be in prison. This is the same thing that is happening in the United States and in European countries,' he said.

That prompted Amonpour to interject: 'I know you say that. I know the prosecution says that. But the people who allegedly claimed that he was taking their money and using it for himself then said on the stand that they had been forced to, to make to make those testimonies.'

Navalny's Twitter account said Putin is 'afraid of the truthko

Navalny said on his Twitter account that Mr Putin is afraid of the truth, adding: Fighting against censorship and bringing the truth to the people of Russia has remained our priority.

The Kremlin smashes the media, and in response we create new ones.
Families will be able to start buying free-range eggs again from the start of April after they disappeared from supermarkets when millions of chickens were put under a bird flu lockdown, industry sources have said.

Around 35million of Britains hens have spent the last four months cooped up after an unprecedented spike in case numbers led to the largest ever outbreak of H5N1, also known as avian flu, on UK soil.

Officials at the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) ordered millions of egg-laying hens in Britain indoors on November 3, then brought additional housing measures into force on November 29.

Because the birds have been housed for more than 16 weeks, poultry keepers were not able to retain their free-range status for eggs and meat, and the eggs had to be marketed as barn eggs from Monday, March 21.

Farmers had hoped that the Government would lift the indoor housing order next week, but officials decided to keep it in place after the total number of bird flu outbreaks hit 80.

But the British Egg Industry Council has now said that they expect the housing order will be lifted in a couple of weeks. A spokesman added: We remain in ongoing dialogue with Defra who will make the final decision on when the housing order is going to be lifted.

Eggs from British hens can no longer be labelled as free-range

Millions of Britains hens have spent the last four months cooped up after an unprecedented spike in case numbers led to the largest ever outbreak of H5N1, also known as avian flu, on UK soil

So how are eggs supposed to be marketed during Britains bird flu lockdown? Defra said that eggs must now be marketed as barn eggs, not free-range, until the mandatory housing restrictions are lifted. This is because the measures are still in force and have exceeded the 16-week grace period, as of Monday, March 21. IN GREAT BRITAIN (GB) Eggs must be stamped with the appropriate code to show that the farming method has changed from free-range or 1UK to barn production or 2UK. Eggs should not be stamped with two codes. Free-range egg packs can continue to be used, but the words Barn Eggs must be shown on pack, either via an over-sticker or a direct print/affixed label. The latter option is a concession for this year only in recognition of the challenges facing industry due to Covid-19. Clear and transparent consumer information is required at the point of sale, via in store signage, social media and web-based communication to ensure consumers are aware of the changes to farming methods and reasons for the housing measures. IN NORTHERN IRELAND Northern Ireland (NI) has issued separate advice to industry. Labelling for eggs moved from GB to NI should follow the guidance for NI. AND THE EU? Exports to the EU should continue to adhere to EU standards. Advertisement

Robert Gooch, CEO of the British Free Range Egg Producers Association, told MailOnline: Free range producers have worked really hard throughout the winter to keep hens healthy and protected from avian influenza.

Unfortunately, the risk of disease continuing to spread is too great for the housing order to be lifted. While farmers would like to let their hens access their ranges now, their welfare is the primary consideration.

The last time the housing order had to be extended beyond the permitted free range marketing period, egg boxes were clearly marked and consumers were told they were buying eggs from hens kept to barn standards.

They were fantastically supportive of a situation that was out of farmers control, and as soon as it was safe for hens to be allowed out again, they returned to buying free range.

We have no reason to believe the situation will be any different this time, and thank the public in advance for continuing to support British free range egg farmers.

Scientists have for years warned that H5N1 could spark a future pandemic threat due to how contagious it is in animals. It is feared that as the virus spreads, it may acquire mutations which make it easier to infect humans.

The current H5N1 outbreak is said to be the largest bird flu crisis ever recorded in Britain, with more than 2million poultry culled as part of efforts to control the virus.

Britains patient zero, Alan Gosling  a 79-year-old grandfather and former railway worker in Devon  was forced to destroy all 160 of his Muscovy ducks at his home in Buckfastleigh, and banned from keeping ducks for more than a year.

Bird flu has been rampant across Europe, with the continent suffering one of its worst winters for the disease. The outbreaks are so widespread that France has been trialling bird flu vaccines.

A Defra spokesperson said: We are experiencing our largest ever outbreak of avian flu and housing measures remain in force to protect poultry and other birds from this highly infectious and unpleasant disease.

We continue to provide support for the poultry sector throughout this challenging time. The 16-week grace period we allowed for free range eggs has now been exceeded, and eggs must now be marketed as Barn Eggs.

We have worked closely with the sector and retailers to implement these changes as smoothly as possible.

Meanwhile, a widely used food colouring that has been banned as a potential cancer risk in the EU will continue to be permitted in Britain.

Families will be able to start buying free-range eggs again from the start of April after they disappeared from supermarkets on Monday due to chickens being under a bird flu lockdown, industry sources have said

Titanium dioxide, which is commonly used in paint and sunscreen lotion, can be added as a whitening agent in sweets, cakes, mayonnaise, hot cross buns and even Easter eggs.

It appears in many supermarket own-brand products along with some sold by famous names such as Mr Kipling, Dr Oetker and Cadbury.

The European Food Safety Authority has ordered a ban on the basis it is potentially genotoxic  a cancer risk.

However, experts at Britains Food Standards Agency (FSA) are confident there is no safety risk based on the advice of two UK expert committees on food and additives and will continue to allow it to be used.

Despite this, the additive will be banned in Northern Ireland, which must fall in line with EU food safety rules as a result of Brexit. Many brands and UK supermarkets have decided to remove the ingredient.
A British Army soldier accused of raping his female colleague so violently she feared for her life told a court martial: 'I tend to get rough when drinking'.

Sapper Thomas Herrington, who allegedly pulled the soldier around his bedroom by her hair, said he had asked about her 'pain threshold'.

A military court has heard the Army engineer targeted his co-worker when she was 'out cold' after drinking vodka at a party and that they had been having consensual sex in the weeks before.

Giving evidence, Spr Herrington claimed the soldier 'liked kinky sex' and being 'roughly handled', that she previously sent him naked selfies on Snapchat, and that she sent him sexualised messages before the party.

The 19-year-old said the woman rejected his offer of a relationship and she 'wanted to keep our intimacy a secret' from other soldiers so she didn't gain a 'reputation'.

He denies raping the woman and claims he is 'stunned and confused' by the allegations.

Sapper Thomas Herrington, 19, denies two charges of rape and one of assault at the court case

Bulford Military Court, Wiltshire, had heard the female soldier 'drank so much she passed out on one of the beds' at the party, before Spr Herrington was seen 'cradling' her and carrying her to his bedroom.

She claimed he gained pleasure out of her 'struggling', dragged her by the hair when she tried to escape, and pinned her down by his dressing gown belt in an attack so violent she thought he'd kill her.

Eventually she managed to 'wriggle away', escape the room without any clothes on, and return to the party crying 'I couldn't stop him, I couldn't move, I told him to stop'.

However, Spr Herrington told the court sex that night had been consensual after the pair struck up a sexual relationship and spoke about their interests.

He said: 'We had spoken about interests and liked rough, kinky sex.'

He said he had 'strong feelings' for her, adding: 'I had spoken to her about developing more of a relationship type of thing, but she said she didn't feel the same way and it was just a bit of fun, and I completely accepted that.'

He also said: 'There was another female in the troop that was sleeping with other male sappers and she made a name for herself.

'When [his alleged victim] spoke to me about it, she wanted to keep it secret so she didn't have that reputation.'

Spr Herrington said he and the female soldier met most days. They regularly ate together, watched Netflix, and often drank alcohol together.

Before the party, Spr Herrington and the woman drank vodka together in his room and watched Netflix. As he lay with his head on her lap, she made a suggestive comment about him being 'between her legs'.

Spr Herrington said a colleague came into his room and the woman, in a bid to get Spr Herrington to boot him out, sent him sexualised messages outlining what she wanted him to do to her.

Bulford Military Court, Wilts, heard the female soldier 'drank so much that she passed out'

After briefly attending the party, Spr Herrington said they returned to his room and had 'passionate' consensual sex - giving each other 'love bites' and 'tickles' - and then returned to the party again.

The woman was not drunk but 'happy and giddy' during their first sexual encounter that night, according to Spr Herrington.

Later, while at the party, the female soldier appeared to fall asleep at the party and Spr Herrington carried her back to his room.

Spr Herrington said he returned to the party on her advice so they 'did not raise suspicion' about their sexual relationship before returning to his room, locking the door and then having sex with the woman.

He said: 'She said go back to the party for a little bit then come back.

'I locked the door because we were going to have coitus, I didn't lock the door because I was going to have sex with an unconscious woman.

'I said 'are you OK?' and she said 'I'm fine'. I wanted to make sure she was responsive and that she was OK.

'I told her if you don't want to do this just tell me to stop.

'We had spoken about how I tend to get a bit more rough when drinking and I didn't know her pain threshold so I wanted to make sure she was OK.

'I was not dragging her around by her hair, I was caressing her body. She was enjoying it, she was moaning.'

Spr Herrington also told the board: 'The Army has been my life and my dream, following in my dad's footsteps'

Spr Herrington said suddenly the woman 'jolted forward', got up, and ran out of the room naked.

He said he thought she was getting up to 'get restraints from his wardrobe'.

Spr Herrington told the hearing he was 'completely stunned' and 'didn't know what I had done wrong'.

He added: 'As far as I was concerned I didn't rape her... There were so signs of struggling, that's why I was confused.'

Spr Herrington also told the board: 'The Army has been my life and my dream, following in my dad's footsteps.'

The female soldier, who can't be named for legal reasons, described the alleged attack as 'the most unconsensual experience of my life'.

Spr Herrington, of 1 Royal School of Military Engineering regiment, denies two charges of rape and one charge of assault by penetration and claims she played an 'active and voluntary role'.

The trial continues.
A book that claimed to have solved the mystery of who betrayed Anne Frank to the Nazis has been pulled by a Dutch publishing house after its findings were discredited.

The book - The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation - suggested a Jewish man called Arnold van den Bergh may have revealed the Franks' hiding place in Amsterdam in a bid to save his own family.

The reported findings were based on an investigation led by retired FBI detective Vince Pankoke who spent six years trying to crack the cold case.

However, the book, written by Canadian author Rosemary Sullivan, was widely criticised by the Jewish community and historians before publisher Ambo Anthos confirmed it was pulling the Dutch edition with immediate effect.

US publisher HarperCollins is now facing calls by van den Bergh's granddaughter Mirjam de Gorter to suspend the book's international sales, local media reported.

A book that claimed to have solved the mystery of who betrayed Anne Frank to the Nazis has been pulled by a Dutch publishing house after its findings were discredited

Researchers gathered in Amsterdam to discuss the research report which discredited the book The betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation

At a panel discussion in Amsterdam late Tuesday, experts complained that the investigation included in the book was based solely on hypotheses and an erroneous interpretation of the sources.

'A number of prominent experts presented a very critical report on the investigation that is described in the book,' Ambo Anthos said in a statement late Tuesday.

'Based on the conclusions of this report, we have decided that effective immediately, the book will no longer be available,' the statement added.

'We will call upon bookstores to return their stock. We would once again like to offer our sincere apologies to everyone who has been offended by the contents of this book.'

Theories have long swirled about the Nazi raid on August 4, 1944, that uncovered the secret annexe to an Amsterdam canal-side house where Anne and her family hid for two years.

Anne and her sister Margot died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945.

Her diary went onto become one of the most haunting accounts of the Holocaust, selling some 30 million copies worldwide and translated into around 70 languages.

Former FBI detective Pankoke was enlisted by a Dutch documentary maker in 2016 to head a team to solve the mystery as to who might have betrayed the Franks.

The name of Van den Bergh, who died in 1950 of throat cancer, had previously received little attention.

But it rose to the top of a list of four suspects during Pankoke's investigation, which used modern techniques including algorithms to find new links in troves of information and employed experts in various fields.

US publisher HarperCollins is now facing calls by van den Bergh's granddaughter Mirjam de Gorter (pictured) to suspend the book's international sales

Sullivan's book has faced serious criticism since it was published in January.

The head of the Central Jewish Board of the Netherlands described the investigation's findings as 'extremely speculative and sensationalist'.

Contacting HarperCollins, Van den Bergh's granddaughter said: 'With this story, you are exploiting the story of Anne Frank, you are falsifying history and you are contributing to great injustice.'

The European Jewish Congress said the book tarnished the dignity of Holocaust survivors.

The book's investigating team has previously stood by its research, with chief investigator Pieter van Twisk telling Dutch news agency ANP: 'Our theory is a theory and nothing more.'
The Duchess of Cornwall has paid tribute to her half-aunt after she died aged 90 following a battle with cancer.

Camilla said it was 'a sad time for all the family' following the death of Baroness Elspeth Howe of Idlicote at her home in Warwickshire late on Tuesday.

The family also released a statement remembering a 'remarkable lifetime', adding 'she will be missed intensely'.

Lady Howe was the widow of Lord Geoffrey Howe of Aberavon, a former deputy prime minister and chancellor, who helped bring down Margaret Thatcher.

She is well-documented to have clashed with Baroness Thatcher, with Tory grandee John Biffen once describing the two women as being like 'wasps in a jam jar'.

A baroness once described as a ' Tory feminist' who was married to one of the architects of Thatcherism whose speech sealed her downfall, has died aged 90. She is pictured with her husband in 2005

Lord Howe (pictured with his wife in 1983 as Chancellor) was both fundamental in the making of Margaret Thatcher but also credited as being key in her downfall

Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall (left) talks with Elspeth Howe (right) as she attends a Service of Thanksgiving for the life of Geoffrey Howe at St Margaret's Church, Westminster Abbey on May 3, 2016

The Duchess of Cornwall said today it was 'a sad time for all the family'. Lady Howe was Camilla's half-aunt as the half sister of the duchess' father Major Bruce Shand.

The Duchess is understood to have thought Lady Howe a remarkable woman who did so much for her country.

Lady Howe's family said in a statement: 'She will be missed intensely by her whole family and many friends.

'We are immensely proud of her many achievements, especially her championing of the causes close to her heart which she supported so effectively during her remarkable lifetime.'

Former colleagues also paid tribute to her, with Elaine Mitchell, a PhD student at Birmingham University, saying: 'Sad to hear news of Lady Howe.

'Worked for her for short while at newly-established Equal Opportunities Commission. Strong, capable and good company.'

Broadcaster Alastair Stewart said: 'So sad. Elspeth was a loyal wife to one of the quiet giants of the Thatcher era whose resignation speech was a key factor in her downfall.'

He added: 'But Baroness Howe was also a clever, committed public servant in her own right.'

Lady Howe was once described as becoming 'once, twice, three times a lady' as she had become a Lady through her marriage to Lord Howe, then simply Sir Geoffrey (pictured in 2006)

Left: Lady Howe is pictured walking her dog in 1990. Right: Lady Howe is pictured in a portrait in 2009

Sir Geoffrey Howe and Lady Howe are pictured enjoying a drink while their dog Budget looks on outside The Dog & Duck near Outwood, Surrey, in 1983

'Tory feminist' who clashed with Baroness Thatcher... who was Lady Howe? Lady Howe, who retired from politics in June 2020, entered the Lords as a life peer in 2001. She was deputy chair of the Equal Opportunities Commission from 1975 to 1979 and then chair of the Broadcasting Standards Commission. When her position at the latter was announced, she took over from William Rees-Mogg, a former editor of The Times and the father of current Cabinet minister Jacob Rees-Mogg. She is well-documented to have clashed with Baroness Thatcher, with Tory grandee John Biffen once describing the two women as being like 'wasps in a jam jar'. One of the baroness's causes was to tackle homelessness, and in 1990 she took part in a sleepout where she spent the night on the street in a cardboard box. The gesture was reported to have widened the rift between the Howes and Mrs Thatcher. Lady Howe, known as 'Heppy' to her friends, was rumoured to have helped her husband write the resignation speech credited with destroying the former prime minister's career in 1990. It was later suggested that while she did not write it, she did inspire it. Advertisement

Lady Howe was once described as becoming 'once, twice, three times a lady' as she had become a Lady through her marriage to Lord Howe, then simply Sir Geoffrey.

She retained her title when he was elevated to the Lords, and was then made a crossbench peer in her own right.

Lady Howe, who retired from politics in June 2020, entered the Lords as a life peer in 2001.

She was deputy chairman of the Equal Opportunities Commission from 1975 to 1979 and then chair of the Broadcasting Standards Commission.

When her position at the latter was announced, she took over from William Rees-Mogg, a former editor of The Times and the father of current Cabinet minister Jacob Rees-Mogg.

In a profile of Lady Howe in The Independent in 1993, she was dubbed a 'Tory feminist'.

Antiques dealer and friend Alistair Sampson said: 'She isn't easily shockable but she does insist on standards.

'She's not a Mary Whitehouse figure. And she's a feminist - but not a tiresome feminist.'

One of the baroness's causes was to tackle homelessness, and in 1990 she took part in a sleepout where she spent the night on the street in a cardboard box.

The gesture was reported to have widened the rift between the Howes and Baroness Thatcher.

Lady Howe, known as 'Heppy' to her friends, was rumoured to have helped her husband write the resignation speech credited with destroying the former prime minister's career in 1990.

It was later suggested that while she did not write it, she did inspire it.

Lady Howe was the widow of the late Lord Geoffrey Howe of Aberavon (pictured together at Buckingham Palace when she was made a CBE in 1999), a former deputy prime minister and chancellor

Lady Howe is pictured with former PM David Cameron at her husband's thanksgiving service at Westminster Abbey in London in 2015

Lord Howe (pictured with Baroness Thatcher in 1989) was credited in part with the Iron Lady's downfall

In the book Margaret Thatcher: Power And Personality, Lady Howe was described as 'forthright in her opinions, feminist in her sympathies, sharp-tongued in her humour, and fiercely supportive of her husband in his battles'.

Lady Howe married her husband in 1953 and the pair had three children: Caroline, known as Cary, and twins Amanda and Alec.

In her latter career, Lady Howe questioned the Government on the protection of children from issues such as internet pornography, gambling, and inappropriate content on the television and radio.

Her family said funeral details would follow in due course.

Baroness Howe and how she irritated Baroness Thatcher during her government

Margaret was renowned for being bad with cabinet wives.

She forgot their names, talked past them with bored dismissiveness and walked past them in reception lines with a yanking handshake that pulled women she did not want to converse with past her at high speed.

She gave the impression that none of her colleagues had such a thing as a 'better half '.

She was more respectful towards the spouses of grandees, such as Celia Whitelaw or Iona Carrington.

But if there was one wife who irritated her more than any other it was Elspeth Howe.

For a start, Thatcher simply couldn't stand her husband, Geoffrey.

She handbagged him constantly in front of others. 'Just twaddle' was her put-down to his face about his views on Europe.

If there was one wife who irritated her more than any other it was Elspeth Howe (pictured sleeping rough with her dog in Westminster in 1990). For a start, Thatcher simply couldn't stand her husband, Geoffrey

There was something about him that never failed to drive her up the wall  it was as though proximity to his presence had the effect of itching powder on her skin.

She suspected he was disloyal and hated his ambition to succeed her, something she vowed would never happen.

'He's past it,' she told a confidant. 'He will never, never, never succeed me! It's out of the question.'

But Lady Howe disagreed. She took very seriously the prospect of one day being in Downing Street, and was fiercely supportive of her husband in his battles.

She was a formidable character in her own right. Forthright in her opinions, feminist in her sympathies and sharp-tongued in her humour, she had an inner strength that grated against Margaret Thatcher's 'Iron Lady' persona.

Lady Howe is pictured at the Colour for Kosovo auction, part of the Art 2000 exhibition, held at the Business Design Centre, London, in 2000

There were no overt clashes between the two of them, though their antagonism was clear. The Senior Tory John Biffen memorably likened them to 'two wasps in a jam jar'.

Personally and politically, they were poles apart. But where Elspeth kept her opinion to herself, Margaret did not, scornfully deprecating the 'feminist views', 'the progressive attitude' and the 'equal opportunities mindset' of the Foreign Secretary's wife.

Lady Howe had been a leading light in the Equal Opportunities Commission, a Labour-created quango which elicited much scorn from Mrs Thatcher.

She liked to say that her own career demonstrated that women did not need a government commission to help them achieve equal opportunity.

A third area of issue was the Howes had a reputation for being wonderful hosts at Chevening, the Foreign Secretary's official grand country residence in Kent.

It was said to be much more fun than going to Chequers.
Former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has issued a stark warning over the prospect of China invading Taiwan and said the West could be 'sleepwalking into war' with the communist state.

Mr Rudd said few in the West realise how much Chinese leader Xi Jinping covets the return of the island nation of Taiwan to mainland control.

'It's right up there next to Xi Jinping's desire for the party to remain in power and for him to be the predominant leader within the Communist Party of China,' Mr Rudd told ABC's 7.30 program on Wednesday.

He also said that in the event of a war with the West, a Chinese pre-emptive strike would try to take out American forces in the US-controlled island of Guam and in Japan.

Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd (pictured) has given a stark warning about the power of Chine and its plans for Taiwan

Mr Rudd said the only things stopping China from invading Taiwan are questions of militaristic dominance and avoiding the crippling sanctions that have been imposed on Russia following the invasion of Ukraine.

'There has been a little too much excited commentary in the West about how China will seize on this strategic opportunity to move on Taiwan. I don't think that's the case,' he said.

But Mr Rudd warned that 'the balance of power continues to change in China's favour, both militarily and economically, so that shifts this dynamic.'

The former Prime Minister said the US military has done extensive war game modelling on how a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would turn, and it shows China would come out on top, but barely.

'In most of the war gaming which has been done so far  and these are desktop exercises by and large  if you look at what various US officials have said off the record and partly reported in the American media, the Chinese at this stage win most of the time,' he said.

Mr Rudd added that all parties are closely watching what is happening in Ukraine.

'Taiwanese, for the first time in a very long time, I think, are now readdressing their national defence idea needs and I think they will be looking very carefully at the fight which the Ukrainians have put up against Russia,' he said.

He added that Russia's 'blitzkrieg' invasion of Ukraine by land had stalled. In comparison, he said an invasion of Taiwan would be largely conducted by sea.

China's President Xi Jinping (pictured) inspects People's Liberation Army soldiers at a barracks in Hong Kong

Mr Rudd said Australia's role should be to encourage the US and other allies towards deterrence of any military conflict.

'Australia is a treaty ally of the United States. So our job as a treaty ally, in my judgement, is to argue strongly and effectively with the United States, two things.

'One is how to maximise the deterrent effect of US military posture, but also the pan-allied military posture as well. The Japanese, the Republic of Korea, Australia, together with our new quad partner in India.

A Lafayette-class frigate of the Taiwanese navy takes part in an exercise in waters off the southern naval base of Tsoying

'And I think the second is this, to urge upon the Americans a stabilising mechanism for the bilateral US-China relationship ... to prevent what I would describe as "sleepwalking into war".'

Mr Rudd also warned that any war between the US and China would also result in a direct Chinese attack on Japan.

'A Chinese pre-emptive strike would try to take out American forces, probably in Guam (a US overseas territory in the Western Pacific), but also in Okinawa (Japan, where the US has a huge military base), and that brings Japan in.'
A police union boss has accused Alvin Bragg's office of failing to issue a warrant to confiscate a career criminal's gun, two weeks before it was used in a fatal shooting.

Tyrell Rodgers, 29, allegedly used a silver revolver to threaten and rob his estranged partner on February 8, a crime which was reported on February 17.

Two-and-a-half weeks later on March 8, the same gun was allegedly used by Rodgers - a man with 23 prior arrests on his rap sheet - in a double shooting on West 19th Street and Ninth Avenue in Chelsea, in which one man died.

But President of the Detectives' Endowment Association Paul DiGiacomo yesterday said the shooting could have been prevented, accusing the Manhattan District Attorney's office of airing a request from detectives investigating the Feb. 8 robbery for warrant to search and seize Rodgers' gun.

'Why didn't DA Bragg's office act?' DiGiacomo asked. 'Why did another New Yorker have to die?'

The warrant to search for Rodgers' gun was finally granted by Bragg's office on March 10, but by then the career criminal had already been arrested and charged with murder in the second degree, attempted murder in the second degree and criminal possession of a weapon in connection with the killing, according to court records.

It comes amid surging violent crime in New York, with crime stats for February up by almost 60 percent versus the same month last year.

The Manhattan DA's office has been contacted by DailyMail.com for comment.

An NYPD detectives union boss has accused the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (pictured) of failing to issue a warrant to confiscate a career criminal's gun, two weeks before it was used in a fatal shooting (Bragg pictured in November)

Tyrell Rodgers, 29, allegedly used a silver revolver to threaten and rob his estranged partner on February 8, a crime which was reported on February 17. Two-and-a-half weeks later on March 8, the same gun was allegedly used by Rodgers - a man with 23 prior arrests on his rap sheet - in a double shooting on West 19th Street and Ninth Avenue in Chelsea (scene of shooting pictured), in which one man died

President of the Detectives' Endowment Association Paul DiGiacomo alleged that the shooting could easily have been prevented, but that the DA's office did not respond to detective's request for warrant to search and seize Rodgers' gun more than two weeks prior to the shooting (officers pictured at the scene of the shooting)

President of the Detectives' Endowment Association Paul DiGiacomo

Rodgers allegedly used the revolver on February 8 to threaten his ex-girlfriend, according to court records, before stealing her cellphone and making his escape.

The serial offender allegedly shouted: 'Give me the phone or I'll kill you and everyone you love,' as he pointed the weapon at his former partner and her baby, court records show.

Detectives applied for a search warrant on February 17 when the robbery was finally reported, in light of Rodgers' eye-watering rap sheet.

But DiGiacomo said yesterday that the warrant was never granted - this is despite Rodgers' extensive criminal history.

The gun, which DiGiacomo protested should have been confiscated, was then allegedly used by Rodgers on two individuals he confronted in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan on March 8.

The two men were struck by gunfire shortly after 10pm near the intersection of West 19th Street and Ninth Avenue, according to police.

One of the victims, a 27-year-old male, sustained a bullet wound to his right arm, but did not receive any life-threatening injuries.

His companion however, a 31-year-old male, was hit in the abdomen and suffered massive blood loss.

He was taken to Bellevue hospital but pronounced dead on arrival.

The gun, which DiGiacomo protested should have been confiscated, was then allegedly used by Rodgers on two individuals he confronted in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan on March 8

The two men were struck by gunfire shortly after 10pm near the intersection of West 19th Street and Ninth Avenue, according to police. One of the victims, a 27-year-old male, sustained a bullet wound to his right arm, but did not receive any life-threatening injuries (scene pictured)

His companion however, a 31-year-old male, was hit in the abdomen and suffered massive blood loss (blood pictured at the scene). He was taken to Bellevue hospital but pronounced dead on arrival

Detectives on March 10 searched Rodgers' apartment and confiscated the gun thought to be used in the shooting, which matched the description given by the shooter's ex-girlfriend of the gun he used to threaten her in the Feb. 8 robbery.

At the perpetrator's arraignment, officials were told by prosecutors that Rodgers' former partner 'indicated to police that defendant frequently carries this weapon around' - raising further questions as to why the warrant to search for the weapon prior to the shooting was not granted.

Rodgers was sent to Rikers Island on $100,000 cash bail or $100,000 bond.

The troubling case comes as violent crime in the Big Apple continues to surge, with statistics released earlier this month showing an increase of nearly 60 percent in incidents in February this year versus 2021.

The city's latest crime figures released by the NYPD showed 9,138 incidents last month, as opposed to 5,759 during the same period in 2021  with double-digit surges in nearly every major category.

There were 32 murders in February  three more than the same month last year.

Multiple other categories saw shocking jumps, including car theft, which soared by nearly 105 percent; grand larceny, which jumped nearly 80 percent over the previous year; robberies, which surged 56 percent; a 44 percent bump in burglaries and a 22 percent spike in assaults. Rapes also saw a terrifying 35 percent rise in February.

It comes amid reports that several violent criminals with extensive rap sheets were being released without bail after being arrested.

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

Christopher Herrmann, a former Crime Analyst Supervisor with the NYPD and a Professor in the Department of Law & Police Science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, told DailyMail.com he finds the statistics extremely worrying.

'All of these numbers are bad, to be honest,' Herrmann said. 'Generally, increases and decreases in crime would be in the single digits. These new numbers are not good.'

Herrmann argued the increase can be traced back to lax bail laws, which mean perpetrators can often walk out of jail quickly after being arrested - a situation that leads to more repeat offenses.

'There are certainly enough cases of people being released from incarceration who should have stayed in jail,' he said.

Herrmann added that the new numbers for February - typically a low-crime month due to weather and other factors - portend poorly for the rest of the year to come.

'There is no easy solution - these are longer term problems,' the crime analyst said. 'This is a new crime rate... People should be worried.'

In addition, experts say the state government needs to address glaring issues, like homelessness and offenders' mental health, if New York City has any hope of quelling the crime wave.

Nearly 50,000 people were counted last December according to Coalition for the Homeless

Christina Yuna Lee, 35, left was found dead last month after being stabbed in her own apartment. Michelle Go, 40, right, was at the Times Square subway platform when she was shoved onto the tracks

Gui Ying Ma, a 62-year-old grandmother from Queens, died last month after being smashed in the head with a rock

The number of people experiencing homelessness in New York City is the highest since the Great Depression, with nearly 50,000 people counted last December according to the Coalition for the Homeless.

Meanwhile, The New York subway has been ground zero for the latent crime wave after an alarming 73.3 percent increase in underground incidents - including 182 in February alone.

Hate crimes have also doubled since last year  with anti-Asian attacks more than tripling and anti-Jewish complaints up by a whopping 54 percent over the same time last year, from 134 to 207 incidents.

One recent poll revealed that nearly 75 percent of all New York City voters consider crime to be a 'very serious' problem  the highest number since polling began in 1999.
A bookkeeper who stole 69,000 from a printing firm is jailed for 26 months as her boss who 'trusted' her tells how the theft left him considering taking his own life.

Duarte Goncalves, 60, said he felt like a 'failure' when he found out Gillian Wilde secretly spent four years diverting company cash to spend on luxury holidays, designer clothing and expensive watches.

Wilde, 58, a mother-of-one, assured Mr Goncalves all would be well and told him to take time off work as he underwent life-saving heart by-pass surgery following his second cardiac arrest.

She looted company funds as he lay in a hospital bed whilst falsely telling co-workers the company would fail and even discussed the level of redundancy packages they might get.

She also wrongly alleged the victim himself was systematically draining money from the firm.

Mr Goncalves, a managing director, who employs 31 people at DXG Media in Dukinfield, discovered the betrayal when the firm had to shut down due to the first UK lockdown and he carried out an audit.

Wilde from Stockport pleaded guilty to fraud by abuse of position at Minshull Street Crown Court and was jailed for 26 months.

Duarte Goncalves, a successful managing director, considered taking his own life after discovering his trusted bookkeeper stole 69,000. Picture: Mr Goncalves with wife Angela

Gillian Wilde, mother-of-one, pictured, had launched an evil smear campaign against Mr Goncalves as lay seriously ill in hospital

Wilde, who was sacked since the thefts were discovered, appeared to have a designer pea-green suitcase with her as she was led away from the dock.

Former local radio presenter Mr Goncalves, who won several business awards since founding his firm in 2001, told the court that Wilde's 'deplorable' level of greed was on show as he lay in his hospital bed after his second heart attack in 2018 waiting for bypass surgery.

She told him 'everything would be okay' and gave him 'support' as she stole the majority of the money from his business account and told staff the business would fail.

He added: 'Gillian had been very vocal in telling members of staff confidential information about me and the business and she told some suppliers and other members of staff that I was draining the company of cash which was a complete lie.

'Sadly some individuals believed her so she ruined my good name as a result.

'I have had dark thoughts about ending my own life during this period as I feel like a failure.

'This was a person I trusted 100%. I believe she ruined my good name in the way she spoke about me to staff and some suppliers.'

Mr Goncalves, pictured, was told all would be well at work by Wilde and advised to take as much time off as he could to recover after he underwent life-saving heart by-pass surgery following his second cardiac arrest

Former local radio presenter Mr Goncalves, who won several business awards since founding his firm in 2001, spoke out against Wilde at court

The thefts took place between June 2016 and June 2020 just a few months after Wilde who had joined the firm at its inception was promoted to sole bookkeeper at the company.

Brian Berylne prosecuting said: 'In 2017 he began to have concerns when he heard she had been making untruthful comments to other staff members that he had been draining money from the company and he noticed she was enjoying expensive holidays and appeared to be wearing expensive jewellery and watches.

'On the face of it she seemed to be living beyond her means.

'Eventually Mr Goncalves told Wilde he would be employing an accountant so they could have monthly meetings to go through the figures - but in response, Wilde became defensive and appeared to become somewhat angry.

'As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, the business closed for a while and Mr Goncalves took that opportunity to check the accounts and it was then he noticed irregularities.'

An audit showed money paid by customers had been diverted into Wilde's account after she duplicated account records and forged invoices.

The total loss was 69,133. Wilde was arrested in August 2020 and admitted thefts claiming they were 'easy to do'.

Wilde said she was sorry but then made disparaging comments about Mr Goncalves. Pictured the director with his wife Angela

She said she was sorry but then made disparaging comments about Mr Goncalves.

In mitigation, defence counsel Nicholas Clarke said his client had offered to sell her house to repay back the money she stole.

He added: 'At the time she started this offending she was living beyond her means.

'She had various loans and various people to support and various things she wanted to do.

'She dipped into company funds and it became simple straightforward theft. It was very likely she was going to be discovered.'

Sentencing Judge Mark Savill told Wilde: 'This was a serious betrayal of trust and serious dishonesty from an employer who trusted you.

'It was significant amount of money taken over four years. You betrayed the trust of your employer but you also betrayed the trust of your friends and and family.'
The widow of Julian Assange's lawyer has launched a 5million compensation claim against her late husband's exclusive private psychiatric hospital, claiming the facility provided 'wholly inadequate' treatment for his depression.

John Jones QC, 48, who represented the WikiLeaks founder, died after stepping in front of a train at West Hampstead station in April 2016.

He had been admitted to the exclusive Nightingale Hospital, in London's upmarket Marylebone, after struggling to cope with his heavy caseload and plunging into a 'deep depressive phase', a court heard.

But Mr Jones, who was head of international law at the acclaimed Doughty Street barristers' chambers, walked out of the hospital for what the court heard was a 'morning stroll'.

Two hours later he suffered fatal injuries after stepping off a platform into the path of a train.

His widow Misa Zgonec-Rozej, also a leading human rights lawyer, is now fighting in the High Court for 5million in compensation on her family's behalf.

She is suing the two medics who treated her husband as well as Florence Nightingale Hospitals Ltd, blaming his death on what she says was 'wholly inadequate' treatment.

All deny liability for Mr Jones' death in what the judge - Master Roger Eastman - labelled a 'complex and absolutely tragic case' during a pre-trial hearing at the High Court.

John Jones QC, 48, who represented the WikiLeaks founder, died after stepping in front of a train at West Hampstead station in April 2016

His widow Misa Zgonec-Rozej, also a leading human rights lawyer, is now fighting in the High Court for 5million in compensation on her family's behalf

Mr Jones had been admitted to the exclusive Nightingale Hospital, in London's upmarket Marylebone, after struggling to cope with the Julian Assange (pictured in 2017) caseload, and other heavy caseloads, and plunging into a 'deep depressive phase', a court heard

Mr Jones, an Oxford graduate, carved out a name as a pioneering human rights barrister in the field of war crimes and represented the former president of Sierra Leone, Charles Taylor, who was later jailed for 50 years.

He later switched to extradition law and acted for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.

He saw the darkest side of humanity in his work, representing men charged with the most horrific atrocities, and also appearing in last-chance death penalty appeals.

And during an August 2016 inquest into his death Mr Jones' mother, Peggy, explained that her son's mental health had begun to unravel after he moved his family into a new home in Golders Green in September 2015.

Mr Jones (pictured), an Oxford graduate, carved out a name as a pioneering human rights barrister in the field of war crimes and represented the former president of Sierra Leone, Charles Taylor, who was later jailed for 50 years

He grew 'increasingly agitated and distressed', she told St Pancras coroner's court, and complained to his mother that he was in 'horrible pain'.

His widow told the same inquest her husband was exhausted and sleep-starved, and troubled about his ability to handle his demanding workload.

'He started doubting himself and all the decisions he had made in his life,' said Ms Zgonec-Rozej, adding: 'He felt he was useless and had failed.

'Objectively it was so irrational, he had a loving family who he adored, he was incredibly successful and we had a positive future ahead of us.'

The father-of-two died in April 2016 two hours after he was allowed out of the hospital to go for an early morning stroll.

A nurse told the inquest he didn't seem agitated or distressed and that walking habitually helped to soothe him.

The coroner recorded a 'narrative' verdict, deciding it was unclear whether Mr Jones set out to commit suicide given the troubled state of his mind.

His widow had told the inquest she 'genuinely believed that John did not want to die and that he didn't know what he was doing when he jumped'.

Ms Zgonec-Rozej is suing Mr Jones' two treating psychiatrists, Dr Stephen Pereira and Dr Neelam Bakshi, as well as the Nightingale Hospital.

And her case reached London's High Court as lawyers on all sides debated complex issues concerning legal costs and the shape of the evidence at trial.

Ms Zgonec-Rozej is suing Mr Jones' two treating psychiatrists, Dr Stephen Pereira and Dr Neelam Bakshi, as well as the Nightingale Hospital (pictured)

Her case reached London's High Court as lawyers on all sides debated complex issues concerning legal costs and the shape of the evidence at trial

The court heard the costs of the case have already reached 450,000.

Ms Zgonec-Rozej's barrister, Michael Sheldon, told Master Eastman that Mr Jones was admitted to the Nightingale on Mr Pereira's recommendation and under his care but added: 'For a significant period of the time he was in hospital, his care was managed by (Dr Bakshi) with Dr Pereira being on holiday'.

'The claim in essence is that after he was admitted to the hospital suffering from a serious and life-threatening illness, the treatment and care he received was wholly inadequate so that his illness became worse,' explained Mr Sheldon.

But Adrian Hopkins - for the hospital - said there was a 'very real issue' over the cause for Mr Jones' final tragic breakdown and added: 'There's no common ground for what the true diagnosis was for his condition'.
Kamala Harris wasn't happy with Joe Biden appointing her to address the southern border crisis, wanting a more softball foreign policy assignment, and thinks the president's 'white inner circle' looks down on her, according to claims made in a new book.

During an April meeting with Congressional Black Caucus leaders, Biden praised Harris and said she would do 'a hell of a job' handling immigration.

'The vice president corrected him at once,' New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns wrote in their new upcoming book This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America's Future.

''Excuse me,' she said, 'it's the Northern Triangle  not immigration.''

The book also explains that the first minority and female vice president felt belittled by Biden's white staff.

'Some of Harris's advisers believed the president's almost entirely white inner circle did not show the vice president the respect she deserved,' they wrote.

'Harris worried that Biden's staff looked down on her; she fixated on real and perceived snubs in ways the West Wing found tedious,' they added, according to excerpts published by Politico on Tuesday.

Biden tasked Harris with addressing immigration  and the vice president took her opportunities to share her dissatisfaction with the role.

According to the book, Harris' aides felt that the task of addressing the southern border crisis, in any way, was politically undesirable and wanted the vice president to have a more softball foreign policy assignment  like overseeing relations with Nordic countries.

'Staff floated the possibility of the vice president overseeing relations with the Nordic countries  a low-risk diplomatic assignment that might have helped Harris get adjusted to the international stage in welcoming venues like Oslo and Copenhagen,' the authors wrote.

They added that the prospect of overseeing Nordic countries was 'rejected' by White House aides and even 'privately mocked.'

'More irritating to Biden aides was when they learned the vice president wanted to plan a major speech to outline her view of foreign policy,' they added in the book. 'Biden aides vetoed the idea.'

A new book details Vice President Kamala Harris takes opportunities to share dissatisfaction with Biden giving her role of 'border czar'  and makes sure it's clear she's addressing 'root causes' in the northern triangle

The border crisis was transferred from Biden's portfolio to Harris' shortly after inauguration.

Harris' team quickly rejected the classification of 'border czar', making sure that it was known she was only looking at root causes of migration in Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

Martin and Burns write that Harris does 'not hesitate to chide Biden for characterizing her assignment' in terms of addressing immigration.

The book comes amid several reports of tensions between Harris and Biden's staff  and even the president and vice president themselves. The new details in the upcoming publication describe an increasingly fraught relationship filled with anger, eye-rolling, portfolio feuds and slights.

Harris' office claims Vogue 'belittled' the Vice President by including a photo of her wearing Converse sneakers on the cover

Harris' office, the book claims, also kicked up a fuss over a Vogue cover that pictured the vice president in sneakers before being told to back down by Biden's office who said concerns over the cover were 'first world problems'.

In the weeks before Inauguration Day, Harris was featured on an issue of Vogue, but the vice president was reportedly caught off-guard when a leaked image of the cover depicted her most casual look from the photo shoot, donning black converse and black skinny pants.

The photo, as the Vogue reporters wrote, portrayed 'an approachable but less than grand depiction of the incoming vice president.'

Harris had been expecting a more stately-looking photo to make the cover, where she wore a powder blue suit with her arms crossed in front of her. 'Harris was wounded. She felt belittled by the magazine, asking aides: Would Vogue depict another world leader this way?' New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns write in their forthcoming book, 'This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America's Future.'

Still, it had been Harris' staff that picked out her outfits, not the in-house team at Vogue.

Harris' debut on Vogue sparked outrage across the internet, with some accusing the magazine of 'lightening' the vice president's skin and other accusing Vogue of 'lazy' editing.

Harris' incoming press secretary Symone Sanders took the matter straight to Anna Wintour, Vogue's illustrious editor-in-chief. Wintour pushed back, admitting that she'd chosen the cover herself because she thought it made Harris look 'relatable,' according to excerpts from the book provided to Politico.

In the weeks before Inauguration Day, Harris was to be featured on an issue of Vogue, but the vice president was reportedly caught off-guard when a leaked image of the cover depicted her most casual look from the photo shoot

'Disrespectful': Vogue released two covers, one for the print issue, and one digital alternative (pictured), which is the image that Harris, 56, and her team had approved

A source in the vice president's office told DailyMail.com that Harris had specifically requested the blue suit photo and only learned that the Converse photo was being used on the cover after it leaked online. However, a Vogue insider denied that Harris' team ever requested photo or cover approval, and insisted that a specific cover shot had not been agreed upon.

Incoming chief of staff Tina Fluornoy got in touch with a senior Biden campaign official. But Biden was in the midst of a major policy upheaval at the onset of his administration, not to mention the nation was focused on the recent Jan. 6 attack and the Covid-19 pandemic.

'[T]he Biden adviser told Flournoy that this was not the time to be going to war with over a comparatively trivial aesthetic issue. Tina, the adviser said, these are first-world problems,' according to the excerpt.

The Vogue cover was just the first of many disagreements to come between the offices of the president and vice president.

Harris even sent out Fluornoy to scold Biden's staffers for not standing up when she entered the room, the way they do for the president. 'The vice president took it as a sign of disrespect,' according to the book. Fluornoy reached out to Biden adviser Anita Dunn.

Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour admitted that she'd chosen the cover herself because she thought it made Harris look 'relatable'

In comments to Politico, Dunn did not confirm or deny the conversation. She said she wasn't 'going to comment except to say that everyone in the West Wing has a high degree of respect for the Vice President and the hard work she is doing for this President and our country. Particularly me.'

Biden 'threatened to fire anyone' who leaked 'negative' stories about Harris, book claims

Then amid leaked reports of chaos, toxicity and dysfunction in the VP's office, Biden himself called in his staff and threatened to fire anyone who went to the press with damaging information.

Gripes among Harris staffers were that they had been handed an 'impossible' portfolio.

The president has on multiple occasions been accused of punting critical but over-broad tasks to his deputy, notably including solving the southwestern border crisis, voting rights, leading a pro-union task force and chairing the National Space Council.

But Biden communications director Kate Bedingfield privately blamed Harris herself for failing to meet the bar set for her, according to the book.

'In private, Bedingfeld had taken to noting that the vice presidency was not the first time in Harris's political career that she had fallen short of sky-high expectations: Her Senate office had been messy and her presidential campaign had been a fiasco,' the journalists write.

'Perhaps, she suggested, the problem was not the vice president's staff.'

The Biden aide criticized the reporting in a statement to Politico: 'The fact that no one working on this book bothered to call to fact check this unattributed claim tells you what you need to know. Vice President Harris is a force in this administration and I have the utmost respect for the work she does every day to move the country forward.'

The president reportedly hauled staffers into the Oval Office in after a story emerged in the outlet in June painting Harris' office as an 'abusive environment.'

Biden warned senior staff that if 'he found that any of them was stirring up negative stories about the vice president' then 'they would quickly be former staff.'

The book describes the pair's relationship as 'friendly but not close.'

New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns even quote Biden's communications director as blaming Harris herself for the dysfunction

'Their weekly lunches lacked a real depth of personal and political intimacy,' the authors wrote -- a notable departure from the president's characteristic warmth.

Harris lost her tenth staffer since June on Monday with the departure of national security adviser Nancy McEldowney.

It comes after news broke last week of Harris' deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh's departure from the administration.

During her years as a freshman senator from California, Harris had been lauded for her prosecutorial skills that were on display during Congressional hearings.

In that first term Harris cast herself into the 2020 presidential race. Initial enthusiasm surrounding her candidacy quickly fizzled out amid a crowded Democratic primary field, and she dropped out in December 2019 citing a lack of funds.

And once Biden took office, Harris' trailblazing status as the first black, Asian and female vice president was quickly overshadowed by both her and the president's low poll numbers and a number of public gaffes.

During her trip to Guatemala in June, Harris invoked outrage among immigration activists when she told people there during a speech, 'Do not come' to the US.


LG Electronics allegedly attacked by hackers



By Baek Byung-yeul



LG Electronics, Samsung Electronics and other Korean companies need to beef up their cybersecurity readiness levels as more hacking attempts have been reported in recent weeks amid increasing geopolitical risks around the world, sparked by Russia's invasion of Ukraine and North Korea's missile launches, cybersecurity experts here said Wednesday. Not only private enterprises, but government agencies and other state-run institutions should also be aware of the risks of cyberattacks, they added.



Korea is particularly vulnerable to attacks by hackers seeking access to information on government policies as the country is undergoing a leadership transition after the March 9 presidential election. As a result, the experts stressed that state-run institutions should be aware of possible cyberattacks and be ready to respond.



On Wednesday, a hacking group called Lapsus$ claimed that it attacked LG Electronics and Microsoft. The group claimed it stole of information on employees and customers from LG's website and added it also plans to release more in-house information belonging to LG.



Responding to the claim, an LG Electronics spokesman said, "It is estimated that some e-mail addresses of the company's employees have been leaked. The possibility of information leakage related to our technology is slim."



Not only Microsoft and LG, but other tech firms including Samsung and Nvidia have been the targets of the hacking group's attacks. The group claimed that it hacked Samsung Electronics' server on March 5. But Samsung said in an internal notice that "the leaked data so far included some source codes necessary to operate the Galaxy phones, but it was found that there was no impact on the company's business and customers."



Cyberattacks from Russia are not a huge concern for Korea. But they have become a serious concern for other countries. U.S. President Joe Biden issued a warning to American business leaders on Monday, asking them to intensify their companies' cyber defenses against possible attacks from Russia.



"The magnitude of Russia's cyber capacity is fairly consequential and it's coming," the U.S. President said. "The federal government is doing its part to get ready. But under U.S. law, as you all remember, the private sector, all of you, largely decides the protections that we will or will not take in order to protect your sources."



Shin Dae-kyu, chief of the Korea Internet and Security Agency's (KISA) Korea Internet Security Center, said the state agency recently raised its cybersecurity alert status from the second-lowest "attention" level out of a five-stage warning to "caution" as the possibility of cyber threats at home and abroad increased.



"Until now, we have adjusted the alert level by looking at the situation here and in North Korea. As the cybersecurity threats have been occurred overseas after the Ukraine crisis, we presumed that the threat is likely to spread to our country. In addition, large companies have recently been targets of attacks by hackers, so we raised the alert level," Shin said.



The cybersecurity response center chief said the agency is monitoring cyber threats more thoroughly.



"We are closely monitoring websites of domestic companies operating businesses in Ukraine and Russia. The Ukraine crisis is feared to escalate the cyber war. Domestic companies are also being monitored to see if they will become targets of retaliation," he said.



Shin added the agency is monitoring possible cyberattacks against state-run institutions as the country is in the process of transitioning to a new government.



"During the period of regime change, a lot of data related to the new government's policy are uploaded to each public institution. There may be hacking attempts targeting such information," he said.



An official at a local IT company said all cyberattacks cannot be prevented and it is important to establish a system to effectively recover from the damage.



"Not all attacks by increasingly intelligent hackers can be prevented. Therefore, it is most important to prevent the leakage of important information through cloud computing and the construction of a hybrid cloud system," the official said asking for anonymity.



Yi Ok-yeon, a professor at the Department of Information Security, Cryptology, and Mathematics at Kookmin University, and chairman of the Korea Institute of Information Security and Cryptology, said he needed more time to analyze how cyberattacks by hackers against Korean companies would be a real threat.



"I saw that domestic companies were attacked by hackers in newspaper articles. For a more accurate analysis, it would be better to look at more reliable information," he said.


This is the shocking moment a furious man appears to throw a burning Molotov cocktail at the walls of the Kremlin in Moscow.

Video shows the man, who has not been identified, gesticulating angrily at the red walls of the Kremlin as he looks up at a burning section of the brickwork.

The footage, which was filmed by a passing motorist, purportedly shows the moment just after the man threw the petrol bomb at the building.

He appears enraged as he shouts and swears at the walls of the Kremlin, a section of which is burning where the Molotov cocktail appears to have hit it.

It comes after more than 15,000 people have been detained for demonstrating against Russia's barbaric invasion of Ukraine, according to independent human rights body OVD-Info.

This is the shocking moment a furious man appears to throw a burning Molotov cocktail at the walls of the Kremlin in Moscow

Video shows the man, who has not been identified, gesticulating angrily at the red walls of the Kremlin as he looks up at a burning section of the brickwork

Despite the constant threat of arrest in Russia, thousands of Russians across the country have protested against Putin's war in Ukraine.

Last week, 467 people were detained in Moscow for protesting against the invasion as Moscow clamps down on antiwar demonstrations.

An journalist with AFP, who was present at a protest in the capital Moscow on Sunday, witnessed at least a dozen arrests.

They added that police were taking away anybody without press papers.

Videos show officers using truncheons and stun guns in a brutal bid to stamp out any opposition to the invasion of Ukraine.

Police officers in central Moscow were seen manhandling many people who took part in the protests against Russian military action, in Manezhnaya Square.

Police officers detain a man during a protest against Russian military action in Ukraine, in Manezhnaya Square in central Moscow on March 13

Demonstrations have been taking place in many locations across Russia to protest against Putin's invasion of Ukraine

Meanwhile, on March 14, Russian journalist Marina Ovsyannikova defied Putin's crackdown on free speech to denounce his war on Ukraine on live TV.

Putin has strong-armed state channels into referring to a 'special military operation' instead of a 'war' or 'invasion', has denied suffering mass casualties, and sought to paint Ukraine as the aggressor with 15 years in jail for anyone who defies him.

But Ovsyannikova decided to flout the law, storming on to the set of state-controlled Channel One waving an anti-war sign.

A highly regarded employee of the channel, the mother-of-two held a placard reading 'Stop the war. Don't believe propaganda. They're lying to you'.

She then released a pre-recorded video statement calling on ordinary Russians to protest and 'stop the madness'.

Miss Ovsyannikova's exceptional act of defiance against Putin quickly went viral, winning praise from world leaders and sparking calls for her to be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.

But once she was arrested, there were fears she would disappear, as many critics of the Kremlin do.

Marina Ovsyannikova, the editor at the state broadcaster Channel One who protested against Russian military action in Ukraine during the evening news broadcast at the station late Monday, leaves the Ostankinsky District Court after being fined for 30,000 rubles

Her lawyer said he could not make contact with the journalist or find her at the notorious police station she was said to be held in, raising concerns for her safety.

Then last week Miss Ovsyannikova suddenly appeared at Moscow's Ostankino district court, where a judge ordered her to pay a 210 fine (30,000 rubles) and released her.

She could have faced a maximum punishment of 10 days in detention for calling for illegal protests.

However, the charge was based only on the video  not her interruption of the news broadcast.

So it is feared that her ordeal is far from over as Kremlin cronies last week called for her to be locked up for several years.

With the invasion of Ukraine, the crackdown on dissent has been expanded to media outlets and social media networks - all but silencing most independent news sites.

On Monday, a Moscow court banned Facebook and Instagram for what it deemed extremist activity in a case against their parent company, Meta.

The Tverskoy District Court fulfilled a request from prosecutors to outlaw Meta Platforms Inc. and banned Facebook and Instagram for what they called 'extremist activities.'

Russian prosecutors have accused the social media platforms of ignoring government requests to remove what they described as fake news about Russian military actions in Ukraine and calls for anti-war protests in Russia.

Police officers detain a man during a protest against Russian military action in Ukraine, in Manezhnaya Square in central Moscow on March 13

The court's ruling bans Meta from opening offices and doing business in Russia. Meta declined to comment when contacted by The Associated Press.

Prosecutors haven't requested to ban the Meta-owned messaging service WhatsApp, which is widely popular in Russia. The authorities also emphasized that they do not intend to punish individual Russians who use Facebook or Instagram.

Instagram and Facebook were already blocked in Russia after the country's communications and media regulator Roskomnadzor said they were being used to call for violence against Russian soldiers.

In addition to blocking Facebook and Instagram, Russian authorities also have shut access to foreign media websites, including BBC, the U.S. government-funded Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, German broadcaster Deutsche Welle and Latvia-based website Meduza.

Continuing the effort, Roskomnadzor on Monday blocked the website of Euronews, a European news network. The regulator has also cut Euronews broadcasts.

The court's verdict comes amid multipronged efforts by Russian authorities to control the message about Russia's military action in Ukraine, which the Kremlin describes as a 'special military operation' intended to uproot alleged 'neo-Nazi nationalists.'

A new law fast-tracked on March 4 by the Kremlin-controlled parliament, a week after Russia launched the attack on Ukraine, envisions prison terms of up to 15 years for posting 'fake' information about the military that differs from the official narrative.
Shocking new statistics show a huge rise in the number of guns owned in Western Australia.

As of January 2022 there were 349,492 guns registered in WA - a huge 60 per cent increase from the 218,765 guns in the state in 2009 - the WA government revealed.

Over the same period the total number of WA gun owners fell, but the active owners have dramatically increased how many weapons they each have - four each on average.

Maps released by the WA police showed a heavy concentration of gun ownership in metropolitan areas - including some of Perth's richest areas, including the so-called Golden Triangle western suburbs.

Shocking new statistics show a huge rise in the number of guns owned in Western Australia, with in some cases several rifles and handguns in a single suburban street. WA Police maps marked out where handguns (green dots) and rifles (blue dots) were - everywhere

WA Police commissioner Chris Dawson was especially concerned that military-style AR ArmaLite rifles were legal in WA and wants to see that change in the overhaul of WA gun laws

The maps show a huge number of assault rifles were owned in suburban streets, as well as handguns.

Close ups of busy street grids clearly showed suburbs with firearms registered to owners right across some whole suburbs - with rifles outnumbering handguns in some streets.

The maps produced were 'de-identified' to prevent criminals from locating particular suburbs and houses with guns inside so they could not steal them.

Police commissioner Chris Dawson said 3.4 per cent of West Australians - 89,000 people - have gun licences.

Some of the police maps - which were 'de-identified' to prevent criminals from finding gun owners and stealing their weapons - showed hundreds of handguns and rifles licensed in a small area

The leap in gun numbers was announced as the WA police minister unveiled a plan to overhaul gun ownership laws in the west by making guns tougher to own, especially military grade weapons.

'We want to avoid what has occurred in America in the last 50 years or so and make sure there is a culture of safety when it comes to gun ownership,' said WA premier Mark McGowan.

Dawson cited the example of a '50 calibre ArmaLite sniper [rifle], designed for military [which can still] be licensed in WA.

'I don't consider that should be available for civilian and community use ... We want to make sure weapons such as that don't fall into the wrong hands.'

Dawson stressed sporting shooters and owners who need guns for legitimate purposes, such as some farmers, would not be prevented from keeping their weapons.

The West Australian Firearms Act is '50 years old' Police Minister Paul Papalia said, announcing that guns would be harder to get and owners would face tougher rules around storage.

Police commissioner Dawson stressed sporting shooters and owners who need guns for legitimate purposes, such as some farmers, would not be prevented from keeping their weapons

'Proposed reforms include strengthened training requirements, provisions to allow police to revoke gun licences from those convicted of serious family violence offences, and enhanced requirements for security and storage of legitimately owned firearms,' a WA government statement said.

The proposed legislation will be subject to community consultation and a year-long process before it becomes law.

Across the nation 868,000 Australians hold a gun licence.

The federal government estimates there are more than 260,000 unregistered guns in circulation in Australia.

In 2019 guns were used in 22.2 per cent of homicides in the country.

Gun ownership has become an election issue ahead of the upcoming federal poll.

Last month Scott Morrison introduced a bill to Parliament on Wednesday which will increase prison sentences to 20 years for criminals who import guns.

It also includes a mandatory minimum sentence of five years for adult gun traffickers.
A British man who travelled to Ukraine to fight the Russians has returned home after ten days on the 'front line' after it became 'too high risk and too little reward'.

Ethan Dennis, 21, said he formally served in the Royal Navy, and decided to travel east six days after Vladimir Putin's forces began their assault.

But after sixteen days in Ukraine, Dennis is now back home in Portsmouth, Hampshire.

'It was when the objectives we were being given became too high risk and too little reward that I decided Id had enough', he said.

'Luckily I had signed an open contract with the major so he had no problem with me returning home.'

Dennis said he flew to Rzeszow in southern Poland and then crossed the border into Ukraine with a group of Brits he met at the airport, which included Ben Spann, 36, who went to Ukraine because he 'thought it was the right thing to do' despite having no military experience or connections to the country.

Spann has since returned to the UK to be with his wife and 16-year-old son after becoming worried he had joined a 'suicide mission'.

Ethan Dennis, 21, has returned to the UK after spending ten days in Ukraine where he had joined the fight against Russian troops

Dennis (third from right, wearing a black cap) said he flew to Rzeszow in southern Poland and then crossed the border into Ukraine with a group of Brits he met at the airport, which included Ben Spann (back) , 36, who went to Ukraine because he 'thought it was the right thing to do' despite having no military experience or connections to the country

In his sixteen days in Ukraine, Dennis said he witnessed missile strikes, mortar bombs and intense combat with Russian forces and, although none of his British comrades were injured or killed, he claimed some of the Ukrainian soldiers were not so lucky.

A former seaman, he said witnessing the 'brutal conflict firsthand' has made him hope a deal between Russia and Ukraine is reached 'sooner rather than later - for everyone's benefit'.

He said, upon arrival in Ukraine, the soldiers were bundled into the back of a van and driven to Lviv where they collected their gear and were assigned to a safe house.

After three days in the house, the group were surrounded by a Ukrainian special forces team, who had been informed by a local of their position.

Dennis said: 'At the safe house we were treated really well with comfy beds and good food.

'But we believe a civilian informed the Ukrainians about our foreign uniforms which raised suspicion amongst the higher ranks.

'The team burst through the door and told us to put our hands on our head whilst they checked our documents and verified our stories.

'One of our squad even had a gun put to his head when he refused to follow one of their instructions.

'They had their safety [mechanism] off and their fingers on the triggers - it was an intense moment for us.

'Once they realised we were there to help they left us alone.'

Unsatisfied with the lack of action they were seeing in Lviv, Dennis said he and his comrades decided to change squadrons and take the train to Kyiv.

They travelled to the capital, and, on their journey, helped police detain a suspicious man, who Dennis said was found to be making frequent calls to Russia.

The suspected spy was arrested and taken to a detention centre for further questioning, Dennis said.

Dennis, a former seaman, said witnessing the 'brutal conflict firsthand' has made him hope a deal between Russia and Ukraine is reached 'sooner rather than later - for everyone's benefit'

When they arrived in Kyiv, he said dozens of families sleeping in the tube station stood up to applaud them.

The squad were then driven to an undisclosed location where they were briefed by an ex-major on how to conduct covert operations on the front line just outside the city.

'It was a surreal feeling getting off the train and having all these strangers start clapping you,' Dennis said.

'It felt nice to be appreciated by these people who right now have so little to be enthusiastic about.

'When we arrived at the briefing room with a different unit in Kyiv we were handed better kit and proper military IDs.

'It was a much more organised outfit than the unit we were with before, and within a day we could see why.

'We were thrown right into the action and sent to guard a position just outside Kyiv which was a key asset in the Ukrainian war effort.'

Counter-attacks are now taking place to the west of Kyiv, around Mykolaiv and Kherson in the south, and towards Izyum in the east as the Pentagon says Ukrainian generals are 'able and willing to re-take territory'

Russian troops have been trying to surround Kyiv for weeks, but are now facing Ukrainian counter-attacks after their offensive ran out of steam - with the city of Makariv falling back into Ukrainian hands

Dennis, who said he served in the military for four years as an engineer, added: 'Sometimes the Russians were so scared in contact they werent even able to get rounds away.

'There was an obvious lack of training amongst them and a lack of motivation to be there - which we used to our advantage.

'The fighting was intense and very scary at points, but I just remembered all my training and tried to take calculated risks.'

After deciding he had 'had enough', Dennis boarded a refugee train out of the capital and back to Lviv.

There he stayed the night in a Red Cross tent, and was awoken by the sound of shelling in the city.

After a long walk to the border, he eventually made it back over to Polish soil, but his journey was interrupted when Ukrainian secret police stopped him from crossing.

He said he was detained by immigration officials who were not convinced by his passport or why he was in Ukraine.

In his ten days in Ukraine, Dennis said he witnessed missile strikes, mortar bombs and intense combat with Russian forces and, although none of his British comrades were injured or killed, he claimed some of the Ukrainian soldiers were not so lucky

He was eventually freed but claims he was closely followed throughout the rest of his time in Poland before flying back to London on March 19, some sixteen days after he left for Ukraine.

Dennis, who was working as a carpenter before he flew out, said: 'Getting home was really stressful.

'Theres always that doubt in your mind something may go wrong and you could be stuck.

'The train ride to Lviv was the worst journey of my life.

'The relief I felt when the plane left that runway is indescribable.

'My girlfriend was overjoyed to see me, and Ive been told if I want to go and fight again she wont be there when I get back - so thats my decision made.'
Woods was allowed to postpone court appearance two weeks to avoid clashing with a holiday to Thailand

Katie Price's fiance Carl Woods appeared in court today to deny using 'threatening words and behaviour' following a row at his Essex home.

Woods, 33, had been charged under Section 4 of the Public Order Act following an incident at his home in Little Canfield, Essex last year.

Colchester Magistrates' Court was told the charge followed a row that spilled over into the street, disturbing neighbours.

At one stage Woods was seen trying to force open a door, the court heard.

The male model was seen arriving at court hand-in-hand with Price this morning after the pair recently returned from a holiday to Thailand.

Former glamour model Price, wearing a sun visor, and Woods, dressed in a black t-shirt and sunglasses, were seen chatting to two police officers before heading inside.

Katie Price has accompanied fiance Carl Woods to court for his hearing to answer a public order offence charge

The couple were seen arriving at Colchester Magistrates' Court hand-in-hand this morning before heading inside

Woods, who is engaged to the reality star, was arrested after Price, 42, was allegedly punched in face on August 22, 2021

She sat in the public gallery and watched her fiancee during the short session, with Woods smiling towards from behind the re-enforced glass of courtroom four.

He spoke just to confirm his date of birth and address before answering 'not guilty' when asked to enter a plea to the public order charge.

Leigh Hart, prosecuting, told the court the incident happened at Woods' house in Little Canfield, near Dunmow.

She said: 'The incident occurred on the evening of 22nd August 2021 when this defendant ended up getting into an argument with his partner at his home address.

'The partner left his property and went to another property.

The court case is expected to bring to an end long-running and denied claims of Woods' 'threatening and abusive behaviour' towards Price. Pictured: Price wearing a sun visor shield outside court

Price, wearing a sun visor, and Woods were seen chatting to two police officers before heading inside

'The allegation itself is the defendant attempted to force the door of that property whilst shouting outside in the street.

'This was overheard by neighbours and it is that part of the incident that forms the Section Four public order offence.'

Woods has denied a single count of using threatening, abusive or insulting behaviour with intent to cause 'that person' to believe that unlawful violence would be used against them.

Mark Davies, defending, said Woods' argument would be that the incident was 'nothing more than a squabble'.

The maximum sentence Woods' faces is up to six months.

It comes just two days after Woods was snapped embracing Price as they kissed and cuddled beside the sea while on holiday in Thailand

Woods had been supposed to be at Colchester Magistrates Court on March 9 for his appearance but his defence team had the hearing successfully postponed

Woods was granted unconditional bail and the case was adjourned for trial on June 16 at Chelmsford Magistrates' Court.

The hearing comes just days after Woods was snapped with Price as they kissed and cuddled in the sea in Thailand.

Woods was supposed to be brought before court on March 9 to answer a public order offence charge.

But his defence team successfully requested it be moved to March 23 as Woods and Price jetted off on holiday.

News of the scheduling change looks sure to raise questions over why the hearing was moved for a holiday.

A source told MailOnline: 'The change of date was instigated by the defence side.

Former glamour model Price was handed a 16-week suspended sentence and two-year driving ban for flipping her uninsured BMW X5 into a hedge while disqualified and under the influence. Pictured, Price arriving at Crawley Magistrates' Court in West Sussex in December 2021

'They asked for the case to be moved for a couple of weeks on the basis of him being currently in Thailand looking after Katie's mental health.

'The holiday was organised as a much needed break from it all for her.'

A spokesman for Woods told MailOnline: 'I can confirm this holiday was pre-booked and my client Carl and his partner Katie both having such busy schedules and pre existing work commitments that when given the opportunity to travel together and their schedules allow it they need to take advantage of it.'

The court case is expected to bring to an end long-running and denied claims of Woods' 'threatening and abusive behaviour' towards Price.

He had earlier accused others of creating a 'storyline' - insisting they only had an argument in public.

Woods claim he 'didn't lay a finger' on Price and said he had 'black and white proof' to clear his name after he was charged with using threatening and abusive behaviour towards her in an incident at their house in Essex.
Advertisement

Sir Chris Whitty, England's chief medical officer, said there is a 'high chance' a new variant will emerge 'at some point in the next two years' that 'significantly changes our balance of risk'

There is a 'high chance' that a new Covid variant which is worse than Omicron will emerge in the next two years, Sir Chris Whitty warned today.

In a downbeat assessment of how the next phase of the pandemic could pan out, England's chief medical officer hinted that lockdowns may still be on the cards.

Sir Chris told the Local Government's Association public health conference that there was still a 'long way to go' because the virus will continue to 'throw surprises'. He also insisted the virus  which now poses a similar death threat as flu  will be with us 'for the rest of our lives'.

The emergence of a more dangerous strain could 'significantly change our balance of risk', Sir Chris added in his speech, which came on the second anniversary of the historic coronavirus lockdown.

Sir Chris said the strain could cause 'worse problems' than Omicron and the challenges from the current strain are 'not by any means trivial'.

But other experts have repeatedly insisted the darkest days of the pandemic have been consigned to history, insisting that the virus is mutating into a cold-causing pathogen over time.

Omicron burst onto the scene in November, with infection rates hitting pandemic highs and experts estimating one in 15 people in England were infected at the winter peak.

Grim modelling by SAGE had warned of up to 6,000 deaths a day, prompting the Government's own advisers to call for stringent measures. Some doom-mongering scientists even wanted a circuit-breaker.

But Boris Johnson held his nerve and stuck to the 'Plan B' measures already in place, which saw the return of work from home, face masks in public places and a ramping up of the booster programme.

Sky-high immunity rates and the variant's milder nature blunted the impact of the virus, with Covid deaths peaking at 300 a day  similar to levels seen in a bad flu winter and a fraction of rates seen during the first and second waves. NHS hospitals were never overwhelmed and intensive care admissions barely budged.

Asked when the Covid pandemic will truly shift to an endemic stage, Sir Chris said it 'will become less dominant steadily'.

He said the UK would likely be hit by seasonal waves for the next 'two or three years' that will be 'interspersed' by new variants that could occur between peaks.

Dismissing the idea that Covid has become endemic, he said it is incorrect to assume the virus has reached a 'stable state' around the globe, despite restrictions easing for Britons.

Sir Chris added: 'The UK has chosen a particular path and we have high immunity due to vaccination rates in children, the elderly and some immunity due to infection as well.

Free Covid lateral flows are ALREADY being scaled back as No10's deadline for end of '2billion/month' swabbing scheme nears People in England are being discouraged from ordering free lateral flow tests ahead of the swabbing programme being axed next week. Anyone trying to get a pack of Covid swabs from the Government's website is now met with a message telling them supplies are needed for the vulnerable. The notice says most people not suffering symptoms of the virus no longer need to test themselves. It adds that tests should be left for 'people that need them most', including NHS staff, those at high risk and those visiting high-risk settings such as hospitals. Lateral flow tests will no longer be free in England from April 1 under Boris Johnson's plans for 'living with' the virus. Free Covid swabs have run out by 10am every day this week as the deadline for ending the mass swabbing scheme  which cost 2billion at the height of the Omicron wave in January  approaches. High street retailers such as Boots and Superdrug say they will keep selling the swabs for as little as 2 each. Advertisement

'But others have chosen perfectly sensible paths but they're going to play out differently. So I think we need to be aware there's a long way to go with this and it'll also throw surprises as it has.

'And there's a high chance that we will all be discussing, and I will be discussing with my colleagues, a new variant at some point in the next two years that actually significantly changes our balance of risk.'

Sir Chris told the virtual conference: 'We could well end up with a new variant that produces worse problems than we've got with Omicron and the Omicron problems are by no means trivial.'

Gloomy SAGE advisers warned of a 'realistic possibility' that a more lethal variant could emerge that kills one in three people, in line with earlier coronaviruses such as MERS.

This is because Omicron evolved from a different part of the virus's lineage, and there is no guarantee the next strain will evolve directly from Omicron.

And Professor Devi Sridhar, a global public health expert at the University of Edinburgh, told the conference that she does not believe the virus will 'fade into the background' anytime soon.

It comes as the UK's daily Covid cases yesterday dropped for the first time in three weeks. Government dashboard data showed 94,524 infections were recorded, down 14 per cent on a week ago.

But 'technical issues' meant Scotland reported four days' worth of cases last Tuesday, which artificially inflated the UK-wide daily tally.

Covid deaths rose by a quarter compared to a week ago, however, with 250 recorded.

And hospital admissions also ticked upwards 17 per cent in a week, after 1,879 admissions were logged on March 18  the latest date UK-wide data is available for.

Experts have blamed the uptick on BA.2, which is now dominant in the country. But the strain is not thought to be any more severe than the original Omicron variant.

Cases have also been spiralling for a fortnight on the back of England's 'Freedom Day', which the Health Secretary Sajid Javid insisted was 'expected'.

Speaking about the current Covid situation, Sir Chris said the BA.2 Omicron variant is a 'large part' of the current high rates that are rising 'in virtually all parts of England'.

He said the strain, thought to be as contagious as chickenpox, is not translating into surges in deaths or intensive care admissions  but 'that doesn't mean that it is having no impact at all'.

There are 'significant numbers' in hospital and admissions will 'rise for at least the next two weeks', which Sir Chris warned would pile pressure on the NHS.

He added that the health system was already under 'significant' strain as it juggles an uptick in Covid patients alongside the national effort to tackle the record backlog of patients waiting for routine operations.

Sir Chris noted that the ratio of infections turning into hospitalisations and deaths has consistently decreased due to increasing immunity from vaccines and infection, as well as improvements in medical care.

He said: 'There has been a de-risking to some degree of Covid over time. But de-risking is not the same as no risk and there is still significant risk.'
Sen. Angus King on Wednesday called this the 'most dangerous moment' for the U.S. since the 1960s  after a top Russian official refused to rule out using nuclear weapons.

King, a Maine Independent who caucuses with Democrats and who sits on the Senate Armed Services and Intelligence committees, said Russian President Vladimir Putin Vladimir Putin 'at this moment is the most dangerous man in history.'

He called it 'an exceedingly dangerous moment.' He then referenced the Cuban Missile crisis of October, 1962, when the U.S. and Russia were on the brink of a potential nuclear war.

'This is clearly the most dangerous moment our country has faced since the Cuban Missile Crisis,' he told CNN in an interview.

President Joe Biden on Wednesday addressed another danger, when asked as he left the White House for Europe about the potential for chemical warfare.

'I think its a real threat,' Biden said.

And NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Wednesday criticized Russia for 'continuing nuclear saber rattling' that contradicts its own statements at the United Nations.

'This is clearly the most dangerous moment our country has faced since the Cuban Missile Crisis,' said Sen. Angus King (I-Maine)

'Russia should stop this dangerous irresponsible nuclear rhetoric,' he told reporters a day before Biden is set to meet with NATO allies. 'But let there be no doubt about our readiness to protect and defend allies against any threat anytime.'

He said any use of chemical weapons would 'totally change the nature of the conflict.'

'I think I think that's the most important message to convey that any use of chemical weapons is is absolutely unacceptable and will have far reaching consequences.'

And Stoltenberg added: 'Russia must understand that it can never win a nuclear war.'

King described Moscow of having 'a different view of nuclear weapons than anybody else in the world that has them, including us. They view nuclear weapons as part of their arsenal.'

He cited an element of Russian military doctrine called 'escalate to deescalate.

'And what that means is if we're losing on the battlefield, we'll use nuclear weapons to kind of level the playing field and force our adversaries to negotiate. That's a terrifying prospect,' he told CNN in an interview.

'Vladimir Putin at this moment is the most dangerous man in history. He's an autocrat. He's a tyrant. He's aggressive. He wants to expand his country through a force and he has nuclear weapons, the second largest stockpile in the world. so this is an exceedingly dangerous moment,' King said.

An analysis of Russian nuclear policy in Global Security Review published in 2018 concluded that the latest doctrine 'significantly lowers the threshold under which the use of nuclear weapons is permitted.'

The more recent iteration allows for use of nukes 'in response to large-scale aggression utilizing conventional weapons in situations critical to the national security of the Russian Federation.'

King, in his comments, noted that the U.S. view is that 'if it's tactical, a smaller outcome, that's still a nuclear weapon,' and quoted Ronald Reagan saying 'nobody wins a nuclear war.'

The U.S. developed its own nuclear doctrine after world War II, when the U.S. dropped nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki shortly before the Japanese surrender in 1945.

President Joe Biden on Wednesday addressed the risk of potential for chemical warfare. 'I think its a real threat,' Biden said as he prepared to leave for Europe

King spoke a day after Dmitry Peskov refused to rule out the possibility that Moscow would use nukes

Just three days later, on February 27, Putin then ordered his nuclear forces to be put on a 'special alert'

King compared the risk to the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the U.S. and Russia were on the brink of nuclear war

King's comments came after Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, a Putin ally who has fallen under U.S. and international sanctions since the invasion, refused to rule out Russian use of nuclear weapons after Vladimir Putin made thinly-veiled threats over the war in Ukraine.

Peskov was asked three times on CNN whether he could definitively rule out the possibility of the Russian leader pushing the button - and three times refused to give a straight answer.

Instead, Peskov said only that Russian doctrine allows Putin to use nukes see off 'existential threats' - raising fears he could justify using the weapons over Ukraine, having previously said the country poses a direct threat to the security of Russia.

Putin, in his comments justifying the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, has sometimes referred to Ukraine as an artificial invention  raising the possibility he could consider an attack on Ukraine by allies assisting the besieged government as such an 'existential threat' to Russia.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov sent his own message Wednesday, knocking down a Polish proposal to have international peacekeepers go into Ukraine. Lavrov said it could trigger 'direct clashes' between Russia and NATO.

Poland said last week that it would formally submit a proposal for a peacekeeping mission in Ukraine at the next NATO summit.

'I hope they understand what they are talking about,' Lavrov told staff and students at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations on Wednesday.

'This will be the direct clash between the Russian and NATO armed forces that everyone has not only tried to avoid but said should not take place in principle.'

Lavrov's comments come after Peskov said Poland's idea was reckless and extremely dangerous'.

'Any possible confrontation between our troops and NATO forces could have clear consequences that would be hard to repair,' Peskov told reporters.

President Putin has raised the threat of using nuclear weapons  and his spokesperson Dmitry Peskov refused to rule out their use, in an interview with me tonight. pic.twitter.com/uxQqncLGYN  Christiane Amanpour (@amanpour) March 22, 2022

Dmitry Peskov, Putin's spokesman, has refused to rule out the possibility that Russia will use nuclear weapons over the war in Ukraine (pictured, a Russian nuclear missile test in February)

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby slammed Peskov's nuclear rhetoric as 'dangerous' saying it is 'not the way a responsible nuclear power should act'.

Kirby added that the US is keeping Russia's nuclear arsenal - believed to be the world's largest at 6,500 warheads - under constant surveillance and has not yet seen any indication that it is preparing to use the weapons.

But that will do little to reassure jittery world leaders, particularly in the West, after Putin used a fire-and-brimstone speech as he declared war on Ukraine to make a thinly-veiled nuclear threat.

Ordering the start of his 'special military operation' on February 24, Putin issued a warning to anyone 'who might be tempted to meddle in the ongoing events: whoever tries to stand in our way or create threats for our country.'

He said: 'People should know Russias response will be immediate and lead you to consequences you have never encountered in your history.'

Just three days later, on February 27, Putin then ordered his nuclear forces to be put on a 'special alert' in what he said was a response to 'aggressive statements' made by the NATO alliance - specifically threatening the West.

America later said that it had not observed any significant changes in Russian nuclear posturing in response to the order, but still cancelled a test-launch of one of its own weapons the following week as a precaution.

There are also fears that Russia could be considering using a low-yield 'tactical' nuclear weapon against Ukraine itself in order to turn the tide of the war, which has so-far gone against Moscow's troops.

Leon Panetta, former US defence secretary, said Peskov's remarks show Russia is 'looking for a possible excuse for the use of low-yield nuclear weapons.'

Putin made a thinly-veiled nuclear threat to 'whoever tries to stand in our way' as he declared war in Ukraine, warning of 'consequences you have never encountered in your history'

Russia has unleashed conventional ballistic missiles against Ukraine (pictured, damage caused by a missile in Kyiv) amid warnings they could now be looking to use low-yield nukes

I think that presents a real concern that Russia at least is considering that possibility,' he added. 'I dont see how you can see it any other way but as dangerous.'

Using the weapons would be based on 'a very false premise that somehow Russia is being threatened,' he said.

'I dont know that its going to happen. I still think that Putin has to worry about how the US would respond and he has to worry about his own survival.'

Western leaders and intelligence agencies have been warning for days that Putin may resort to desperate measures as the war in Ukraine goes against him.

On Sunday, Joe Biden repeated warnings that the Kremlin looks to be developing a pre-text to use biological or chemical weapons by falsely accusing Ukraine of possessing them - saying Putin's 'back is against the wall'.

It also comes after Ukraine warned that Russia appears to be manufacturing man-made catastrophes at either Chernobyl or Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plants - both of which are in the hands of the Kremlin's men.

Russian soldiers have disconnected Zaporizhzhia's six reactors and the defunct reactor at Chernobyl from international monitoring systems, and have disconnected Chernobyl from the power grid.

That means water pumps at Chernobyl which keep spent nuclear fuel submerged in water to cool them will not automatically run, meaning the water will eventually evaporate if not topped up manually.

Should that happen the fuel could catch on fire - pumping a cloud of radioactive ash into the air which would cause fallout over wide areas of Europe.

Russian forces have been fought to a standstill across Ukraine as the initial phase of Putin's invasion spectacularly failed.

Russia's offensive has now stalled on all fronts amid reports that Ukraine has started launching counter-attacks to push Putin's forces back

Ukrainian forces remain in control of all major cities across the country except for the regional capital of Kherson, where counter-attacks are now underway in an effort to recapture it.

Counter-attacks are also underway to the west of the capital Kyiv, in Voznesensk in the south, and around Izyum in the north-east.

Ukraine's generals believe Russian forces only have enough supplies to last three more days in the field, while Western experts have said Putin's men will soon need to switch on to the defensive as their stockpiles run low.

It means Putin's troops will be vulnerable to counter-attacks, pushing up Russia's already-high casualty toll even further.

Reliable casualty figures for either side are hard to come by, but it is thought Russia has seen around 10,000 troops killed after a typically pro-Kremlin tabloid published the figure on Monday night and credited it to the Defence Ministry.

The same article said another 16,000 men had been wounded, accounting for around a fifth of the total force Putin arrayed before the start of the war.

The figure was quickly deleted and blamed on a hack, but is compelling because it sits between low-ball US estimates of Russian deaths - around 7,000 - and optimistic Ukrainian tolls - around 15,000.

Ukraine's death-toll is even more opaque. Preisdent Zelensky has said around 1,300 troops have died in fighting, but that is viewed as an under-estimate and has not been regularly updated.

Kyiv's forces are thought to have suffered their heaviest losses fighting in the south and east, where Russian offensives have managed to push the furthest and threaten to surround soldiers dug in along the old frontline with pro-Moscow rebels.

Few expected Ukraine's defences to hold for more than a few weeks in the face of attack by what was supposed to be the world's 'second military' after the US, but the war is now entering its second month with no sign of a break-through for Russia.

Observers will now watch for signs that Ukraine's military - which has proved dogged in defence - can now successfully counter-attack, which would raise the possibility of the unlikeliest of victories of Kyiv.

However, it could also mean Russia doubling down on its battlefield brutality, raising the civilian death toll and threat of extreme acts.
The only known whaling ship known to have gone down in the Gulf of Mexico has been discovered after nearly 190 years south of the Mississippi River.

Researchers checking out odd shapes during undersea scanning work on the sandy ocean floor believe they've finally found the shipwreck of the Industry whaler about 70 miles offshore from Pascagoula, Mississippi. The discovery was documented in February by remotely operated robots in about 6,000 feet of water.

It was crewed by black and mixed-race men, which was highly unusual for the time. The crew were all rescued by a passing ship, and taken to shore by its crew.

Had they tried to sail ashore by themselves on their lifeboats, they risked imprisonment and enslavement because of racist laws of the time.

Not much is left of the two-masted wooden brig thought to be Industry, a 65-foot-long whaler that foundered after a storm in 1836.

An old news clipping found in a library shows its 15 or so crew members were rescued by another whaling ship and returned home to Westport, Massachusetts, said researcher Jim Delgado of SEARCH Inc.

The ship was also home to Black and mixed-race men who were part of the crew and risked enslavement at Southern ports.

'The Gulf is an undersea museum of some incredibly well-preserved wrecks,' said Delgado of SEARCH Inc., who a few years ago helped identify the remains of the last known U.S. slave ship, the Clotilda, in muddy river waters just north of Mobile, Alabama.

This image taken by NOAA Ocean Exploration in February 2022 shows what researchers believe to be the wreck of the only whaling ship known to have sunk in the Gulf of Mexico

The Industry's remains were found 70 miles offshore from Pascagoula, Mississippi

This mosaic image made and provided by NOAA Ocean Exploration shows the full outline of the wreck. The ship is tied to the history of a black captain, Paul Cuffe, who led two whaling expeditions with a diverse crew of black, white and Native American men

The crash occurred roughly 15 years before Herman Melville introduced the world to Moby Dick, a whaling ship from Massachusetts that sank near the mouth of the Mississippi River.

Melville's 'Moby-Dick; or, The White Whale,' published in 1851, told the story of American whaling from a Northeastern view.

The discovery of Industry shows how whaling extended into a region where relatively little is known about whaling despite the Gulfs extensive maritime history.

The find also sheds light on the way race and slavery became entangled in the nation's maritime economy, said historian Lee Blake, a descendant of Paul Cuffe, a prominent black whaling captain who made at least two trips aboard the Industry.

Southern slave owners felt threatened by mixed-race ship crews coming into port, she said, so they tried to prevent enslaved people from seeing whites, blacks, Native Americans and others, all free and working together for equal pay.

'There were a whole series of regulations and laws so that if a crew came into a Southern port and there were a large number of mixed-raced or African American crew members on board, the ship was impounded and the crew members were taken into custody until it left,' said Blake, president of the New Bedford Historical Society in Massachusetts.

A NOAA submarine is pictured moving across the wreckage of the Industry whaling ship, with the vessel's anchor visible just underneath it

The Industry's brig log book is pictured, and shows its crew members during 1828

A payment schedule for the whaling vessel's crew members is also pictured

A drawing shared by the NOAA shows whalers killing the mammals in the Gulf of Mexico during the 19th Century

Black crew members also could be abducted and enslaved, she added.

'Finding Industry is an amazing opportunity to tell a much fuller story of Paul Cuffe's accomplishments as a whaling captain, businessman, and social activist bent on finding a way to end the slave trade,' Lee said.

Fellow Paul Cuffe descendent Carl Cruz, a New Bedford-based independent historian, added: 'The news of this discovery is exciting, as it allows us to explore the early relationships of the men who worked on these ships, which is a lesson for us today as we deal with diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace.'

Images of Industry captured by NOAA Ocean Exploration aboard the research ship Okeanos Explorer show the outline of a ship along with anchors and metal and brick remnants of a stove-like contraption used to render oil from whale blubber at sea, elements Delgado described as key evidence that the wreck was a whaling vessel.

The Industry photos pale in comparison to those recently released of Endurance, which sank in 10,000 feet of frigid Antarctic water a century ago and is incredibly well preserved.

Bottles believed to date to the early 1800s are visible around Industry, but no ship's nameplate; what appears to be modern fishing line lies near the metal tryworks used to produce oil from whale fat.

The Gulf was a rich hunting ground for sperm whales, which were especially valuable for the amount and quality of their oil, before the nations whaling industry collapsed in the late 19th century, said Judith Lund, a whaling historian and former curator at the New Bedford Whaling Museum in Massachusetts.

'In the 1790s there were more whales than they could pluck out of the Gulf of Mexico,' she said in an interview.

While at least 214 whaling voyages ventured into the Gulf, Lund said, ships from the Northeast rarely made extended port calls in Southern cities like New Orleans or Mobile, Alabama, because of the threat to crew members who weren't white.

That may may have been a reason the whaling ship that rescued Industry's crew took the men back to Massachusetts, where slavery was outlawed in the 1780s, rather than landing in the South.

'The people who whaled in the Gulf of Mexico knew it was risky to go into those ports down there because they had mixed crews,' said Lund.
The owner of a New York construction company was indicted Tuesday on manslaughter charges after a 'dangerously flawed' decorative stone barrier killed a five-year-old girl in 2019.

Nadeem Anwar, 46, of Valley Stream - a licensed contractor in Nassau County - and his company City Wide Construction and Renovations were hired to build a stone wall and do facade work in September 2018 in Brooklyn, despite not being properly permitted by the NYC Department of Buildings. He allegedly had another contractor file for an application for the facade work.

Alysson Pinto-Chaumana, five, and her mother, Maria, were visiting a friend on Harman Street in Bushwick around 8.30pm on August 29, 2019, when Alysson started climbing on the stone wall. It fell on top of her, crushing her skull and killing her.

Her mother flagged down a passing ambulance and paramedics, running down the street with her bleeding daughter in her arms. They were rushed to Wyckoff Hospital, but Alysson was pronounced dead upon arrival.

'I saw it all come down, crushing her head,' Pinto-Chaumana told NBC New York. 'I desperately picked her up - I picked up my daughter, crying out to her: 'Why did you have to leave me?' My life. My love. She was so smart.'

'I look to the side and then I see her fall back and was crushed  her whole head was crushed,' Chaumana told Telemundo in 2019.

Alysson Pinto-Chaumana, five, and her mother, Maria, were visiting a friend on Harman Street in Bushwick around 8.30pm on August 29, 2019, when Alysson climbed onto the stone wall and it fell on top of her, crushing her skull and killing her

City Wide Construction and Renovations and its owner Nadeem Anwar, 46, of Valley Stream, have been indicted with manslaughter charges for Chaumana (pictured), as well as for criminally negligent homicide, reckless endangerment, offering a false instrument for filing, and falsifying business records on Tuesday

The 68-inch high wall was a barrier to the patio on the property and was made up of stone pillars topped with horizontal stone plates. A NYC buildings engineer, who inspected the fence after its collapse, said it was 'dangerously flawed,' as it did not have any steel reinforcement in the pillars, which were required.

Anwar also neglected to have a licensed engineer or architect perform a post-construction review of the wall's stability, as is required by city ordinance.

The engineer, who inspected the fence after its collapse, determined the wall was mainly held together by weight and gravity, NBC New York reported, determining it to be 'highly unstable' and in 'egregious violation of multiple provisions of building code.'

'He allegedly failed to obtain the proper permits, and failed to reinforce and secure the structure as required by law,' Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez said Tuesday. 'As a direct consequence of his alleged recklessness, the wall collapsed and caused the senseless death of a precious five-year-old child.

Chaumana's was climbing the stone fence (pictured) when it topple and killed her. An engineer who inspected the structure after its collapse found that Anwar failed to install steel support beams, as is required, meaning the stone fence was being held together by weight and gravity alone

'My heart is with the victim's family, and we will now seek to hold this defendant accountable.'

Anwar has been charged with manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide, reckless endangerment, offering a false instrument for filing, and falsifying business records on Tuesday for Alysson's death.

He was released without bail and is due back in court in May.

Alysson's mother tried to rush the little girl to a passing ambulance, but she was pronounced dead before reaching the hospital

Anwar, who is a licensed contractor in Nassar County, failed to receive the right work permits for NYC when he came to work on the Harman Street property (pictured)

The property owner, who reportedly paid $40,000 for the fence, was issued a violation from the Department of Buildings at the time for failure to maintain the property.

Just days after her death, people gathered at the home where Alysson died for a vigil for the little girl. Flowers, pictures, and stuffed animals dotted the fence, which was wrapped in police tape.

DailyMail.com has attempted to contact Anwar, and City Wide Construction and Renovations for comment.
Detectives probing the unsolved murder of mother-of-two Vera Anderson who was found with her throat cut on the wheel of her car in 1991 have arrested a 70-year-old man and a 61-year-old woman.

Vera's death sparked a massive nationwide police hunt after she was found slumped over the steering wheel of her blue Ford Cortina more than 30 years ago.

Today, Cheshire Constabulary said a man from Warrington and a woman from Widnes have been detained by officers on suspicion of her murder.

The pair both remain in custody and are being quizzed by detectives, the force said.

There was renewed focus into Vera's death on its 30th anniversary after it featured on the BBC's Crimewatch series during summer 2021.

Vera was killed on 24 August 1991, with her body discovered on a street in Penketh, a suburb of Warrington, Cheshire.

She was found strangled with her throat slit and there was no evidence of a robbery or a sexual assault.

Mum-of-two Vera Anderson, pictured, 42, was found with her throat cut and slumped over the steering wheel of car in late August 1991

Vera's death sparked a massive nationwide police hunt after she was found slumped over the steering wheel of her blue Ford Cortina more than 30 years ago

Vera was killed on 24 August 1991, with her body discovered on a street in Penketh, a suburb of Warrington, Cheshire. Pictured: The scene off Tannery Lane more than 30 years ago

The grim find sparked one of Britain's longest unsolved murder investigations, and featured on Crimewatch Live, on BBC One, last September.

Vera's daughter, Lorraine, told Crimewatch: 'It's a long time to hold onto something for so long.

'I just don't understand how anyone could do such a thing.

'It's never going to be forgotten, I'm still going to have it on my mind.

'I feel like it's me living the life sentence.'

At around 10pm on Saturday, 24 August, 1991, Vera received a phone call before dashing out of her home, in Widnes, Cheshire.

She left without taking her purse and had left her television on.

She dropped her then seven-year-old son with a neighbour, saying she would only be gone for 10 minutes.

Her body was found slumped over the steering wheel of her blue Ford Cortina car off Tannery Lane, pictured this year

But five hours later - shortly after 3 am on Sunday, August 25 1991 - her body was found slumped over the steering wheel of her blue Ford Cortina car off Tannery Lane.

It is believed that Vera, who ran a business making and selling sandwiches, was killed at some point between 11.30pm and 2.30am.

The identity of the caller remains a mystery, but at around 10.30pm a woman matching Vera's description was sighted in the Crown and Cushion pub in Penketh.

On the 30th anniversary of her death, DI Adam Waller said: 'Vera's family have been left devastated by her death and have had to live with what happened since 1991.

'The family have never received closure from Vera's death, and I would appeal to anyone with information to come forward.

'Someone must know what had happened that day, and I would appeal to them to come forward.'
Lloyds Banking Group today announced said it plans to shut 60 branches across the country, adding to recent closures as customers choose to sort their finances online.

The lending giant said it would close 24 Lloyds branches, as well as 19 Bank of Scotland and 17 Halifax sites.

The branches are thought to employ 124 people, but Lloyds said it would try to find affected staff new roles within the company.

The bank said it had seen a 27% rise in use of its mobile banking app over the last two years, and a 12% rise in regular users of its online banking system.

Now 18.6 million people regularly bank online and 15 million use the mobile app.

It comes after recent figures showed Britain has lost nearly 5,000 High Street banks in a decade, sparking fears that the elderly, vulnerable and those living in rural areas are effectively being 'cut adrift' from face-to-face banking.

Campaigners and charities for the elderly say decisions to close village and town centre banks is proving 'extremely damaging' for local communities and a 'serious blow' for millions of older Britons.

Lloyds Banking Group has said it will close 60 bank branches, comprising of 24 Lloyds Bank, 19 Bank of Scotland and 17 Halifax sites across the UK

The biggest decline in terms of branches in the Big Six banks meanwhile has been at Barclays. Once the largest bank in Britain in terms of the number of branches, it shut nearly 800 branches between 2014 and 2022. It now has less than Lloyds and a similar level to Natwest

England has seen the biggest decline - of around 4,000 banks -while Scotland and Wales have all seen small decreases. Northern Ireland has lost 10 bank branches in the last 10 years, a three per cent decline

The biggest decline, according to that same report, has been in the south west of England, where the number of banks fell by 40 per cent from 2012 to 2021. Behind the south west was the north west (-38 per cent), Wales (-36 per cent) and Yorkshire and Humberside (36 per cent). London was in line with the UK average of -36 per cent, while Northern Ireland (-3 per cent), the north east (-23 per cent) and the west Midlands (-33 per cent) saw the smallest declines

London meanwhile has 1.6 banks for every 10,000 people, while Scotland and Wales both had 1.4 banks per 10,000 people - above the UK average of 1.3. The east Midlands had the lowest bank-to-person density, with just 1.1 banks per 10,000 people, followed by the east of England, Yorkshire, the west Midlands and the north west, which had 1.2 banks per 10,000 people

'Just like many other high street businesses, fewer customers are choosing to visit our branches,' the business's group retail director Vim Maru said.

'Our branch network is an important way for us to support our customers, but we need to adapt to the significant growth in customers choosing to do most of their everyday banking online.'

The bank said that customers were continuing to choose online and mobile banking more frequently than using a branch.

The group currently has 739 Lloyds branches, 553 Halifax branches and 184 Bank of Scotland sites.

Caren Evans, national officer for the union Unite, said: 'Lloyds Banking Group must not be allowed to abandon 60 more local communities where bank branches play an essential role.

'The 124 employees who work tirelessly in their communities are dedicated to serving the banking needs of the most vulnerable who depend on their skilled services.

'When a bank branch closes, the heart of the local community is ripped out and the results are devastating. Unite is clear that simply leaving an ATM in place of a vibrant bank branch is wholly insufficient.

'The banking sector needs to answer some serious questions about its corporate social responsibilities and the Government cannot stand back and allow the relentless closure of banks to continue until no more local banking services remain.'

The news follows several other closures from the bank, which said in October it could close 48 sites, and announced 44 closures in June last year.

Which branches are set to close? Bank of Scotland Aberdeen 201 Union Street - September 14 Alness - July 27 Brechin - August 2 Broxburn - August 9 Carluke - June 27 Clarkston - July 4 Dunblane - July 7 Dyce - July 5 Edinburgh Barnton - July 13 Edinburgh Shandwick - July 13 Forres - July 11 Glasgow Riddrie - August 9 Innerleithen - August 4 Kirkcudbright - August 3 Lockerbie - August 8 Selkirk - August 8 Shotts - August 15 Stromness - August 17 Troon - September 21 Halifax Abingdon - June 29 Beaconsfield - July 28 Beccles - July 5 Belfast Shaftesbury - June 28 Bideford - July 6 Devizes - July 27 Doncaster Market Place - September 19 Dunstable - July 11 Finchley Central - July 12 Halifax Commercial Street - September 19 Margate - July 18 Morriston - July 18 Penge - August 10 Totton - July 19 Wokingham - July 20 Worcester Park - July 20 Yeadon - July 25 Lloyds Bank Aylesbury Gatehouse - July 26 Beaconsfield - June 29 Birmingham Temple Row - September 15 Bolton Westhoughton - August 1 Bradford Thornbury - August 11 Buckingham - September 20 Chandlers Ford - June 30 Chipping Campden - August 10 Colchester St Johns - June 30 Cottingham - September 20 Edgbaston - September 21 Knutsford - July 6 Liverpool Woolton - July 7 Lyndhurst - July 14 Marlow - July 13 Morriston Swansea - August 4 Oxford Summertown - July 21 Poulton-le-Fylde - August 3 Rushden - June 28 Shanklin - July 26 Shrewsbury Mount Pleasant - July 28 Smethwick - August 11 Swanwick - July 21 Tiptree - July 25 Advertisement

Britain's vanishing High Street banks: After HSBC announced plans to axe 69 more branches how total in UK has plunged from 20,528 in 1988 to 8,810 today - as interactive map shows devastating decline in YOUR area

By James Robinson for MailOnline

Which areas have seen the biggest decline in banking numbers in the last decade? North East: Branches in 2012: 450. Branches in 2021: 320. Change: -130. Percentage Change: -29% North West: Branches in 2012: 1,460. Branches in 2021: 905. Change: -555. Percentage Change: -38% Yorkshire & the Humber: Branches in 2012: Branches in 2021: 655. Change: -365. Percentage Change: -36% East Midlands: Branches in 2012: Branches in 2021: 555 Change: -275. Percentage Change: -33% West Midlands: Branches in 2012: 1,085. Branches in 2021: 730. Change: -355 Percentage Change: -33% East: Branches in 2012: 1,120. Branches in 2021: 735. Change:-385. Percentage change: -34% London: Branches in 2012: 2,190. Branches in 2021: 1,440. Change: -750. Percentage change: -34% South East: Branches: 1,740. Branches in 2021: 1,155. Change: -585. Percentage change:-34% South West: Branches in 2012: Branches in 2021: 710. Change:-480. Percentage change: -40% Wales: Branches in 2012: 695 Branches in 2021: 445. Change: -250. Percentage Change: -36% Scotland: Branches in 2012: 1,190. Branches in 2021: 790. Change: -400. Percentage Change: -34% Northern Ireland: Branches in 2012: 375. Branches in 2021: 365. Change: -10. Percentage Change: -3% UK: Branches in 2012: 13,345. Branches in 2021: 8,810. Change: -4,535. Percentage Change: -34% *Figures from House of Commons Library - rounded to the nearest 5 Advertisement

Britain has lost nearly 5,000 High Street banks in a decade, sparking fears that the elderly, vulnerable and those living in rural areas are effectively being 'cut adrift' from face-to-face banking.

Figures show there were more than 13,300 banks in cities, towns and villages across the UK in 2012 - down from 20,583 in 1988.

But by the end of last year that figure had dropped even further to just 8,810 - a staggering 34 per cent decrease in less than a decade.

Yesterday, in the latest cull of High Street banks, HSBC announced plans to axe 69 more branches across the UK.

The banking giant, which closed 82 sites last year as part of its 'transformation programme', said the move was in response to a shift towards online banking.

With thousands of banks now gone from High Streets up and down the UK, groups such as the Post Office have stepped in to provide every-day over-the-counter banking services for people in rural communities.

But campaigners and charities for the elderly say the decision to close village and town centre banks is proving 'extremely damaging' for local communities and a 'serious blow' for millions of older Britons.

Banking experts meanwhile have warned that while previous cuts have been to small rural branches, banks are now increasingly shutting sites in medium-sized towns.

And there are fears even some large towns of 100,000 people or more may be left without any dedicated branches within a decade.

Business chiefs have warned also about the perils of the UK moving completely cashless, saying the Russia-Ukraine conflict has exposed the potential pitfalls of relying on online banking.

The extent of the bank branch issue has been revealed in a new map by Which?, whose own research focuses on the most commonly used retail banks and puts the total number of High Street banks left in the UK at just 5,154, down from 9,807 in 2015.

The map, compiled by the consumer group through its own research, highlights how some areas of the UK lost all their remaining banks between 2016 and 2022.

According to Which?, the small Parliamentary constituency of Wentworth and Dearne, South Yorkshire, lost 100 per cent of its banks over the last six years.

Nearby Sheffield Hallam has also lost all of its banks since 2016, according to Which?.

Areas such as the rural constituency of Arundel and the South Downs, in West Sussex, has also lost most of its banks since 2016.

The upmarket market town, home to Arundel castle, the seat of the Duke of Norfolk, lost its last bank, a Lloyds branch, six years ago.

However the nearby town of Storrington, which is in the same constituency, maintains a HSBC branch.

Below is the interactive map by Which? showing the percentage decrease of bank branches in each Parliamentary constituency between 2016 and 2022. Scroll over your constituency or use the search function to find your area.

Britain has lost nearly 5,000 High Street banks in seven years, sparking fears that the elderly, vulnerable and those living in rural areas are effectively being 'cut adrift' from face-to-face banking. Pictured: Library image of a NatWest bank

Figures show more than 12,000 bank branches existed in towns and villages across the UK in 2015 - down from 20,583 in 1988. Pictured: Library image of a Lloyds Bank

Yesterday, in the latest cull of High Street banks, HSBC announced plans to axe 69 more branches across the UK. The banking giant, which closed 82 sites last year as part of its 'transformation programme', said the move was in response to a shift towards online banking. Library image of an HSBC branch

Figures show more than 12,000 bank branches existed in towns and villages across the UK in 2015 - down from 20,583 in 1988. But by the end of last year that figure had dropped to just 8,810. Other figures from consumer group Which? - whose research focuses on the most commonly used retail banks - puts the the total at just 5,154, down from 9,807 in 2014

HSBC announces huge bank branch cull with 69 out of 510 set to shut across UK this year in major shift to online banking Banking giant HSBC will shut 69 of its bank branches across the UK in a shift towards online banking, it has today been announced. The British multinational says it will begin closing the branches from July. The move is expected to affect the jobs of around 400 staff - though HSBC say it 'aims' to redeploy impacted staff. Company chiefs say they will 'try to replace' the affected branches with other banking services, such as new ATMs and pop-up banks. It will also retain a network of more than 440 branches and will not close any branches where they are the last bank in town. However the move is expected to increase the average distance customers must travel for in-person services to around four miles. HSBC, which axed 82 sites last year as part of its 'transformation programme', says the move is in response to a shift towards online banking - which it says has been 'accelerated' during the Covid pandemic. HSBC's head of UK branch network Jackie Uhi said: 'The way people bank is changing - something the pandemic has accelerated. 'Our branches continue to support people with their more complex banking needs, but the way we can do this has also evolved, with the addition of banking hubs, community pop ups and continued use of the Post Office network. 'Rather than a one-size fits all branch approach, it's an approach built around the way different customers are choosing to bank in different areas.' The bank, which has 7,500 offices in more than 80 countries around the world, and its headquarters in Birmingham, says the move comes due to an 'acceleration' towards customers using online banking. It says less than 50 per cent of its bank's customers now 'actively use' a branch network and that average footfall has declined by over 50 per cent since 2017. HSBC also say it has seen an 'increase preference' for online and mobile banking during the pandemic. However the move will spark fears for elderly and less tech-savvy customers. HSBC admits the move will increase the average travel distance to its branches by 0.3 miles for customers. It means customers now have to travel, on average, four miles to get to a HSBC bank. But HSBC says customers will also be able to use the Post Office, within 1.5 miles of each closing branch, to carry out day-to-day transactions. Advertisement

But this issue is not just a rural one. The constituency of Erith and Thamesmead in East London has also lost all of its remaining banks in the past six years. Barclays pulled the last bank in the constituency in February last year.

According to Which?, other areas to suffer big losses in bank branches in the last six years include South Devon, a large, mostly rural, constituency, which has lost 87.5 per cent of its banks in the last six years.

Other areas to feature high on the list by Which? include the Wirral West (87.5 per cent decline since 2016) and nearby Liverpool West Derby (100 per cent decline since 2016).

But while rural areas and those in the north-west were among the biggest losers in terms of bank branch losses, city areas and upmarket towns saw the smallest decline.

Walthamstow in London lost just 11 per cent of its banks according to Which?, while Carshalton and Wallington saw a 14.3 per cent decline.

Outside of cities, Banbury in Oxfordshire saw a 10.5 per cent decline, while Sittingbourne and Sheppey, in Kent, saw a decline of just 7.7 per cent.

But West Bromwich East, in the Midlands, was the only constituency not to see any decline. The area still has branches of all of the major banks, including Halifax, Santander, Lloyds, Natwest, TSB, Barclays and HSBC.

In Emsworth, in Hampshire, it is a different story. The small coastal town, which sits on the border of West Sussex, had four banks in 2013. But three banks quit the town in a space of 12 months in 2014. And in 2017, Natwest, the last bank in town, also left.

Now residents in the town only have the Post Office where they can complete face-to-face banking, otherwise they face a three mile drive to nearby Havant, which has a Natwest, Barclays, Halifax and a Lloyds.

According to figures on the House of Commons Library, there were 20,583 bank branches and building societies in the UK in 1988. But by 2017 that figure had fallen to 9,690.

Similar figures from the House of Commons Library show the total number of bank and building society branches fell by 11,078 or 51 per cent, from 1986 to 2014.

Since then, the biggest decline, according to that same report, has been in the south west of England, where the number of banks fell by 40 per cent from 2012 to 2021.

Behind the south west was the north west (-38 per cent), Wales (-36 per cent) and Yorkshire and Humberside (36 per cent). London was in line with the UK average of -36 per cent, while Northern Ireland (-3 per cent), the north east (-23 per cent) and the west Midlands (-33 per cent) saw the smallest declines.

This means that Northern Ireland now had the highest number of bank and building society branches per 10,000 population in 2021, with 1.9 banks per 10,000.

London meanwhile had 1.6 banks for every 10,000 people, while Scotland and Wales both had 1.4 banks per 10,000 people - above the UK average of 1.3.

The east Midlands had the lowest bank-to-person density, with just 1.1 banks per 10,000 people, followed by the east of England, Yorkshire, the west Midlands and the north west, which had 1.2 banks per 10,000 people.

According to the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), a financial regulatory body in the United Kingdom, the UK had an average of 2.3 branches per 10,000 inhabitants in 2012. Five years later, this had decreased to 1.47, a drop of 27 per cent.

And this, the FCA says, had an impact on customers, who now have to travel longer distance in order to get to their nearest branch.

According to the FCA, in 2015 the average consumer had to travel 2.5 miles to their nearest branch (4.8 for those living in rural areas, 1.8 in urban areas). By 2017, this had increased to 2.6 miles (5.1 in rural areas, 1.9 in urban areas).

The biggest decline in terms of branches in the Big Six banks meanwhile has been at Barclays. Once the largest bank in Britain in terms of the number of branches, it shut nearly 800 branches between 2014 and 2022. It now has less than Lloyds and a similar level to Natwest.

According to the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), a financial regulatory body in the United Kingdom, the UK had an average of 2.3 branches per 10,000 inhabitants in 2012. Five years later, this had decreased to 1.47, a drop of 27 per cent

Meanwhile, Natwest shut nearly 400 banks between 2016 and 2017. It had more than 1,200 banks in 2014, but now has just 600. It means Lloyds are now the biggest bank in terms of branches. But they too have shut more than 400 branches in the last eight years.

TSB and RBS, the smaller banks of the Big Six, have similarly reduced the number of branches, from around 600 in 2014 to around 200 in 2022.

HSBC have steadily pulled back on the number of branches. The British multinational had more than 1,000 branches across the UK in 2014 and now has almost 400.

Earlier this week the bank announced plans to cut 69 of its branches across the UK in a shift towards online banking.

So what exactly is driving the dash to ditch cash? For millions of Britons access to cash is still a vital part of day-to-day life. But the decline in its use has been staggering in recent years - and has only fallen further since the start of the pandemic. Even before Covid struck, forcing many businesses and banks to close, cash use was on the decline. According to the House of Commons Library, there were 17billion cash payments made in the UK in 2015. But that was dwarfed by other types of payments, such as card and online, which were used 21billion times in the UK. Even before Covid struck, forcing many businesses and banks to close, cash use was on the decline. According to the House of Commons Library, there were 17billion cash payments made in the UK in 2015. But that was dwarfed by other types of payments, such as card and online, which were used 21billion times in the UK And, according to the figures, the use of cash payments has declined by two billion each year since 2015, falling to 9billion payments by 2019. At the same time online payments have been on the rise, with 31billion payments from methods other than cash in 2019. Meanwhile, the use of online banking is growing, according to industry bosses. UK Finance, which represents banks in Britain, says nearly 90 per cent of UK adults used online banking, mobile banking or telephone banking in 2020, up from 81 per cent in 2019. And bank branches can be costly for firms, with experts estimating each branch costing around 350,000-a-year. However even UK Finance say the represent the need for face-to-face banking services: 'Technology is not for everyone and bank branches continue to play an important role in the life of local communities, meaning decisions to close them are never taken lightly,' a UK Finance spokesperson told MailOnline. 'Ensuring there is continued access for those who need it, both now and in the future, is something the banking and finance industry has publicly committed to delivering.' Meanwhile, John Howells, who is the CEO of a pilot scheme by cash machine firm LINK to provide banking 'hubs' for communities set to lose bank branches, also said the banking landscape had changed in recent years. He said six in 10 payments were made in cash a decade ago, but this had declined to just three in 10 prior to the pandemic. 'Since Covid that has dropped to around one in 10 payments. But we are not ready as a country to be a cashless society. 'But it's not just about access for the elderly and vulnerable people. 'The situation between Russia and Ukraine has highlighted the issues of what can happen with online banking systems. 'And in Sweden they have an emergency campaign which lists items people should keep in the house in case of an invasion - one of those is cash.' LINK's pilot scheme, which is being done in conjunction with the Cash Action Group (CAG), involves the setting up of banking 'Hubs'. The CAG comprises of all major banks, Nationwide, the Post Office, along with the Federation of Small Business, Age UK and Toynbee Hall. Under the scheme, which is currently voluntary, banks tell LINK about their plans to close branches. LINK then make an assessment of the area's needs and will then decide if it needs a banking hub. These hubs are then created, allowing people to have access to day-to-day banking services throughout the week, which can be used by customers from any bank. On top of this, each bank will then have its own counter day, depending on size and customer base in the area, where customers can engage in more advanced face-to-face services. Currently two hubs exist, in Rochford, Essex, and Cambuslang, on the outskirts of Glasgow, both of which CAG's Natalie Ceeley described as a 'success'. Five more 'bank hubs' will be set up across the UK next year, in Acton (West London), Brixham (Devon), Carnoustie (Angus), Knaresborough (North Yorks) and Syston (Leicestershire). Meanwhile, the Post Office has also announced that it will install 'dedicated cash services' in 30 branches over the next 12 months which could include banking counters and self-service machines. While the scheme is currently based on towns set to lose banks in the future, bosses behind the pilot hope to expand it to backdate the scheme to areas that have already lost many or all of their branches. Ms Ceeney, who has campaigned on the issue for several years, told MailOnline: 'This is not just an issue for people, but one for smaller businesses as well, that rely on local banking services.' Ms Ceeney has called for the scheme, which is currently a voluntary one, to be properly legislated by the Government. 'We are laying the foundations, but we will struggle without legislation. It is a volunteer scheme at the moment, but banks have to be made to do this in order to make sure it is a success.' Advertisement

Company chiefs vowed to 'try to replace' the affected branches with other banking services, such as new ATMs and pop-up banks.

HSBC also insisted it would retain a network of more than 440 branches and will not close any branches where they are the last bank in town.

Bosses said the the move is in response to a shift towards online banking - which it says has been 'accelerated' during the Covid pandemic.

HSBC's head of UK branch network Jackie Uhi said: 'The way people bank is changing - something the pandemic has accelerated.

'Our branches continue to support people with their more complex banking needs, but the way we can do this has also evolved, with the addition of banking hubs, community pop ups and continued use of the Post Office network.

'Rather than a one-size fits all branch approach, it's an approach built around the way different customers are choosing to bank in different areas.'

The bank, which has 7,500 offices in more than 80 countries around the world, and its headquarters in Birmingham, says the move comes due to an 'acceleration' towards customers using online banking.

It says less than 50 per cent of its bank's customers now 'actively use' a branch network and that average footfall has declined by over 50 per cent since 2017.

HSBC also says it has seen an 'increase preference' for online and mobile banking during the pandemic.

However the move will spark fears for elderly and less tech-savvy customers. HSBC admits the move will increase the average travel distance to its branches by 0.3 miles for customers.

It means customers now have to travel, on average, four miles to get to a HSBC bank. But HSBC says customers will also be able to use the Post Office, within 1.5 miles of each closing branch, to carry out day-to-day transactions.

Charities warn that this could have a negative impact on customers, particularly those who are elderly.

Caroline Abrahams, Age UK Charity Director, said: 'Many older people value the services provided by bank branches, in particular the human touch that a counter service can provide, so it's a concern that more and more local bank branches are not only closing, but also restricting opening hours for customers.

'The scale of the bank branch cull over recent years has been extremely damaging for so many local communities nationwide and a serious blow for the millions of older people who rely on them, particularly those who are not online or confident with mobile banking.

'It's well known that a rapid move towards online banking over the past few years has caused significant problems for many older customers, particularly those with visual impairments and dexterity problems.

'These problems are exacerbated when branch closures coincide with poor public transport locally, a lack of ATMs, substandard internet service and mobile black spots, making it increasingly difficult for customers to access their money.

'The recent announcement by the banks about how they will protect cash through shared banking hubs, Post Offices and community cashback is welcome. However, some customers are still at risk of being cut adrift and the banks should do everything they can to ensure the continued provision of essential banking services for years to come.'

Meanwhile Jenny Ross, Which? Money Editor, said: 'The rapid decline of the bank branch network is hugely concerning for the millions of people that still rely on banks for vital face-to-face services and to withdraw cash to pay for everyday essentials.

'Initiatives put forward by the banking industry such as shared banking hubs are welcome and have the potential to play a key role in preserving local access to cash and in-person banking services.

'However, it is important that proposals are of sufficient scale to plug gaps which emerge when banks close their branches and are tailored to address the different challenges faced by local areas.

'Underpinning those proposals must be long-promised and much-needed government legislation to protect access to cash for as long as it is needed.'

While thousands of bank branches have closed across the UK in the last twenty years, the Post Office has picked up much of the slack in rural communities who now no longer have dedicated branches.

The Post Office already has an agreement with many banks that allows customers to do their everyday banking over its counters.

But while customers can complete day-to-day transactions at the Post Office, more complex actions still require customers to go into branch. And with branch closures, the average distance customers need to travel to get to their bank has increased, making it increasingly difficult for consumers to access their banks.

But groups representing the industry say the move is due to the change in banking habits among Britons, with more and more people now choosing online or mobile banking.

A spokesperson for UK Finance, a trade association for the UK banking and financial services sector, told MailOnline: 'Growing numbers of customers are opting to use new technologies to manage their money with nearly 90 per cent of UK adults using online banking, mobile banking or telephone banking services in 2020, up from 81 per cent in 2019.

'But technology is not for everyone and bank branches continue to play an important role in the life of local communities, meaning decisions to close them are never taken lightly.

'Ensuring there is continued access for those who need it, both now and in the future, is something the banking and finance industry has publicly committed to delivering.

'As part of this, the Access to Cash Action Group, chaired by Natalie Ceeney, recently set out plans on how the industry will deliver on commitments to preserve access to cash and banking services. This includes shared bank hubs alongside free ATMs and cashback without purchase.'

Experts meanwhile have told MailOnline how banks are now increasingly looking to close branches in medium-sized towns, having previously targeted smaller more rural locations such as larger villages.

Derek French, a former high-ranking boss at Natwest, who launched the Campaign for Community Banking Services group, said towns of between 40,000-50,000 in population were now increasingly at risk of losing their branches.

He told MailOnline: 'If you look at the HSBC closures they are in medium sized towns. They are much larger than the previous areas, but they are often not the first banks to go in these towns.'

Mr French, who has 30 years experience in the industry, and who is calling for more legislation to ensure customers still had access to over-the-counter services, said that although the move to digital banking had been a key driver, cost was also an element.

'It costs around 350,000 to run a branch in an average town for a year,' Mr French said. 'Most of the banks are aiming to get down to the magic number of around 400 branches each, and you see HSBC in their recent announcement is now nearing that number. They (the banks) are saving a huge amount of money (by cutting back on branches).'

Meanwhile campaigners warn how High Street banks could disappear from all but the biggest towns and cities in a decade. An evaluation by Ask Traders, based on Which? research, earlier this year found communities of 100,000 or more are already facing a future without physical banks.

Nigel Frith, a senior financial analyst at AskTraders, called on the government to act to protect access to cash: 'With 50 million people in the UK still reliant on using cash, the need for security around high street banks is clear to see.

'While high streets and banking groups must continue to evolve, millions of people still rely on the services physical bank branches provide. Online banking should certainly be embraced but not at the expense of branches on the high street which meet the nuanced needs of individuals.

'It's really important the government delivers on its promise to protect access to cash.'

So what is being done to combat the issue? John Howells is the CEO of a pilot scheme by cash machine firm LINK to provide banking 'hubs' for communities set to lose bank branches. He also said the banking landscape had changed in recent years.

Five more 'bank hubs' will be set up across the UK next year, in Acton (West London), Brixham (Devon), Carnoustie (Angus), Knaresborough (North Yorks) and Syston (Leicestershire). Pictured: The Post Office Bank Hub in Rochford

Meanwhile, John Howells, who is the CEO of a pilot scheme by cash machine firm LINK to provide banking 'hubs' for communities set to lose bank branches, also said the banking landscape had changed in recent years

He said six in 10 payments were made in cash a decade ago, but this had declined to just three in 10 prior to the pandemic.

'Since Covid that has dropped to around one in 10 payments. But we are not ready as a country to be a cashless society. But it's not just about access for the elderly and vulnerable people.

'The situation between Russia and Ukraine has highlighted the issues of what can happen with online banking systems.

'And in Sweden they have an emergency campaign which lists items people should keep in the house in case of an invasion - one of those is cash.'

But he said he was hopeful the pilot scheme could help plug some of the gaps left behind. The pilot scheme, which is being done in conjunction with the Cash Action Group (CAG), involves the setting up of banking 'Hubs'. The CAG comprises of all major banks, Nationwide, the Post Office, along with the Federation of Small Business, Age UK and Toynbee Hall.

Ms Ceeney has called for the Banking Hub scheme, which is currently a voluntary one, to be properly legislated by the Government

Under the scheme, which is currently voluntary, banks tell LINK about their plans to close branches. LINK then make an assessment of the area's needs and will then decide if it needs a banking hub.

These hubs are then created, allowing people to have access to day-to-day banking services throughout the week, which can be used by customers from any bank.

On top of this, each bank will then have its own counter day, depending on size and customer base in the area, where customers can engage in more advanced face-to-face services.

Currently two hubs exist, in Rochford, Essex, and Cambuslang, on the outskirts of Glasgow, both of which CAG's Natalie Ceeley described as a 'success'.

Five more 'bank hubs' will be set up across the UK next year, in Acton (West London), Brixham (Devon), Carnoustie (Angus), Knaresborough (North Yorks) and Syston (Leicestershire).

Meanwhile, the Post Office has also announced that it will install 'dedicated cash services' in 30 branches over the next 12 months which could include banking counters and self-service machines.

While the scheme is currently based on towns set to lose banks in the future, bosses behind the pilot hope to expand it to backdate the scheme to areas that have already lost many or all of their branches.

Ms Ceeney, who has campaigned on the issue for several years, told MailOnline: 'This is not just an issue for people, but one for smaller businesses as well, that rely on local banking services.'

Ms Ceeney has called for the scheme, which is currently a voluntary one, to be properly legislated by the Government.

'We are laying the foundations, but we will struggle without legislation. It is a volunteer scheme at the moment, but banks have to be made to do this in order to make sure it is a success.'

An HM Treasury spokesperson said: 'We know that cash remains vital for millions of people and we are committed to protecting access to cash across the UK.

'That's why we published a consultation on proposals for new laws to make sure people only need to travel a reasonable distance to pay in or take out cash, and have already legislated to enable shops to offer cashback to customers without them having to make a purchase.'
Participants of the Roundtable on New Government Policies pose at the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) headquarters in Seoul, March 10. From left are KCCI Vice President Lee Seong-woo, Korea Times President-Publisher Oh Young-jin, French-Korean Chamber of Commerce and Industry Chairman David-Pierre Jalicon, American Chamber of Commerce in Korea Chairman James Kim, Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy's Director General for Cross-Border Investment Policy Jung Jong-yung, KCCI Executive Vice Chairman Woo Tae-hee, Korean-German Chamber of Commerce and Industry President Martin Henkelmann and British Chamber of Commerce in Korea Executive Director Lucinda Walker. Korea Times photo by Choi Won-suk



President-elect urged to lower taxes, abolish discriminatory rules



By Park Jae-hyuk



Leaders of foreign chambers of commerce in Korea hoped President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol will create a business environment that meets global standards, while lowering regulatory hurdles that have restricted the country from attracting larger investments.



During a roundtable meeting hosted jointly by the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) and The Korea Times on March 10, the foreign businesspeople anticipated that Korea will be able to become a hub of Asia if the new president reforms the country's tax system and rules that have been considered unfair to foreign companies.



American Chamber of Commerce in Korea (AMCHAM) Chairman James Kim mentioned corporate and individual taxes as "pretty serious" issues for the foreign community, asking the new administration to reduce taxes to create more opportunities.



He particularly pointed out the inheritance tax on foreign residents here, which has interrupted AMCHAM's goal of helping Korea become the regional headquarters of U.S. firms in Asia, beating Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan in a competition to be the number one destination for multinational companies.



"If you die today, your entire global asset will be taxed under the Korean system," Kim said. "Foreign heads of Asia are not going to want to come here for a long term nor want to die in Korea (because of the problem)."



He added that Yoon made a pledge regarding the tax issue when he attended a special meeting with AMCHAM members last December when he was a presidential candidate.



"It was a tough race, but now it's time to move forward," Kim said. "AMCHAM is ready to work with him and his administration."





American Chamber of Commerce in Korea Chairman James Kim, right, speaks during the Roundtable on New Government Policies at the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry headquarters in Seoul, March 10. Korea Times photo by Choi Won-suk



French-Korean Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FKCCI) Chairman David-Pierre Jalicon agreed that Korea deserves better recognition from foreign companies, considering its successful management of the COVID-19 crisis.



However, he urged Korea to ease regulations if the country does not want to miss a "historical chance" to become a hub of Asia.



"There are too many regulations in Korea, which need interpretation," Jalicon said.



Specifically, the FKCCI chairman demanded a regulatory sandbox's openness to foreigners, citing the case of an entrepreneur, who suffered difficulties in applying for the program that allows innovative companies to test their products and services on the market without regulations for a certain period of time.



He also stressed the need to distinguish a CEO's personal responsibility from a company's responsibility, criticizing the Serious Accidents Punishment Act. The law imposes criminal liability on the head of a company if a fatal industrial accident occurs at a workplace run by that business.





[Roundtable] New FTA to boost digital trade between Korea, UK [Roundtable] Deregulation key to German firms in Korea [Roundtable] New government urged to unite politically divided Korea [Roundtable] Upholding global standards needed to attract foreign investment Korean-German Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KGCCI) President Martin Henkelmann shared the view of other participants that deregulation is a "very important" topic for Yoon.



In response to a question about one thing he would suggest in a meeting with the president-elect, Henkelmann mentioned more adoptions of the "Ausbildung," dual vocational training that combines apprenticeships in a company and theoretical education at a vocational school.



"I would count on my colleagues to mention the topics of deregulation and trade, so I would focus on advocating and lobbying for vocational education and training and for life-long learning," he said.



Henkelmann added that the KGCCI will suggest this topic be one of the speaking points of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, when he meets the new president of Korea.



British Chamber of Commerce in Korea (BCCK) Executive Director Lucinda Walker said that its members look forward to working closely with Yoon and his new administration, strengthening the bilateral relationship between the U.K. and Korea, under the new free trade agreement (FTA) signed between the two countries after Brexit.



"BCCK sees the Korean market as key market for many of our members," she said. "Discussing the areas BCCK would like the new government to focus on, I'd like to mention digital trade and clean energy."



Introducing herself as a working woman in Korea and a mother of a Korean citizen, Walker also asked the new government to continue to prioritize the success of all genders in the workplace and all forms of diversity in business.



"BCCK believes diversity is what makes business strong and resilient," she said.



Participants of the Roundtable on New Government Policies applaud Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) Executive Vice Chairman Woo Tae-hee, third from left, for his speech during the event at the KCCI headquarters in Seoul, March 10. Korea Times photo by Choi Won-suk

KCCI backs foreign chambers



KCCI Executive Vice Chairman Woo Tae-hee promised the leaders of foreign chambers that he will fight for them, if they find any laws discriminating against foreign companies.



But at the same time, he told them that Yoon has a lot of hurdles to overcome at this moment, because the opposition party is the majority in the National Assembly and the former prosecutor has absolutely no experience in foreign policies.



"The landscape of the Korean economy is also not as safe or good as last year," Woo said. "This is a good chance for foreign direct investments (FDI) to play a role."



Jung Jong-yung, the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy's director general for cross-border investment policy, vowed to deliver what was discussed at the roundtable meeting to Yoon's transition team, if there is a chance.



He also emphasized that the government's basic policy is to make a business-friendly economy.



"I don't represent the new president, but the direction of the government's policy for FDI will remain favorable to foreign-invested companies," Jung said. "President-elect Yoon made a promise to pursue deregulation and streamline regulatory procedures."



Oh Young-jin, president-publisher of The Korea Times, who moderated the meeting, told the participants that foreigners and foreign businesspeople should continue to be part of Korea, expressing his gratitude for their advice for the president-elect.




Advertisement

A Good Samaritan has described in vivid detail his tense stand-off with a knife-wielding terrorist accused of murdering MP Sir David Amess.

Unarmed Darren King said he immediately became aware of the danger posed by the suspect, 26-year-old Ali Harbi Ali, as the pair came face to face inside Belfairs Methodist Church in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, last October.

He said he rushed into the building when he heard what had happened and tried to 'calm' Ali, who stood clutching a blood stained carving knife in one hand, while shouting on the phone he had in the other.

He told how he confronted the accused terrorist, who claimed he was going to die a martyr, saying: 'No, you're just gonna be dead, mate.'

Mr King also revealed the alleged killer told him he wanted to be shot by police, but the witness told him: 'They do that in America, not so much over here.'

Sir David, an MP since 1983, suffered more than 20 stab wounds during the frenzied attack at Belfairs Methodist Church shortly after midday on October 15 2021, and was pronounced dead at the scene.

Jurors also heard today:

Sir David 's alleged murderer had a look of 'self-satisfaction' after stabbing the MP to death, his aide said;

Meetings were usually held in his constituency office where there was a certain amount of security in place;

But he wanted to hold them in other locations locally after Covid-19 restrictions were lifted to be 'accessible';

Sir David had taken cakes and coffee to the meeting he had on the day he died, his former aide told the court;

Ali had a 'warped' ideology and wanted 'revenge' over Britain's recent foreign policy, especially over Syria.

Ali Harbi Ali, 26, appeared in the dock at courtroom two at the Old Bailey this week wearing a collar-free black robe and black-rimmed glasses

Sir David Amess was stabbed to death at a constituency surgery at Belfairs Methodist Church in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex on 15 October last year

Ali is spotted walking down a pathway by a house doorbell camera just before 9am near home in north London

By 8.44am he was walking beside a road on his way to the train station where he would catch a carriage to Essex

Ali Harbi Ali appeared perfectly calmas CCTV captured him on his way to Southend

At 8.49am he taps his card on to the reader at the London Underground Tube stop as his journey continued across London

In one exchange, recalled to police hours after the stabbing and captured on police video, Mr King said: 'He (Ali) said: I want to be shot. I said: They (police) do that in America, not so much over here.'

Mr King said he saw Sir David's bloodied body 'crumpled up on the floor' in a vestry room at the back of the church as he tried to reason with the suspect and let him tend to the casualty, who he had known for years and had been due to meet at the church that afternoon.

He said: 'My one eye was looking at David to see if I could see movement, the other eye was on the knife - it was a big knife. Me, not having anything except two hands, I thought: I'm gonna keep an eye on him.'

The witness said Ali also tried to justify his actions, which jurors previously heard was to do with the Government's Syrian bombing campaign.

Mr King said: 'It was all on Syria, the Iraq war, the innocent people who died over there, he wants to kill David, all the MPs that voted for the bombing.

'And he wanted to die. (He said): I want to be shot. The rest of it was probably crap. I said: Why do you want to die? You're talking to your sister - how's she gonna feel if you die?

'He said: I'm gonna be a martyr, I'm gonna die a hero. And I said: No, you're just gonna be dead, mate.'

Mr King told police he eventually persuaded Ali to step to one side so he could treat Sir David, but retreated the moment he heard police sirens.

He said: 'I heard the sirens, I moved back to the doorway, saw the two plain clothes fellas. They told me to f****** get out, excuse my French.

'They rushed in, started effing and blinding 'put that effing knife down', and eventually they came out with him.' Mr King added: 'With nothing on me (weapons), I was just trying to calm him down. Then your boys turned up, problem solved.'

Ali walked through the station and on to a Tube carriage, where he walked down a few rows before taking a seat

Cameras at 9.34am picked up the alleged killer walking through Barking train station as he continued on his way to Essex

Ali appeared courteous as he made his journey earlier in the day, at one point, he was even pictured helping another passenger with directions

The jury watched CCTV footage of Ali travelling by train to Leigh-on-Sea, wearing a long khaki jacket, a black backpack slung over his right shoulder, blue trainers and black trousers

He stood on the platform at the bottom of the stairs before getting on a train service to Essex where he allegedly killed the MP

He sat down on the train at about 10.19am before he later got up as he prepared to disembark

Cameras jotted around Leigh-on-Sea captured him casually walking through the quiet town with his backpack slung over his right shoulder

Earlier, Julie Cushion, a long-term member of the Southend West staff, told the court how the alleged murderer had a look of 'self-satisfaction' after stabbing the MP to death.

She recalled hearing a 'piercing scream', five minutes after accused Islamic terrorist Ali Harbi Ali was called to his appointment at a constituency surgery.

Giving evidence from behind a screen at the Old Bailey, Ms Cushion, who made the first 999 call at 12.07pm, said the pair had engaged in 'chit-chat' when Ali arrived, before being led into a back room to meet Sir David.

Her voice cracking with emotion, she said: 'A piercing scream was the first thing I heard.

'And then a very loud crash which I assumed was furniture going over. I got up and walked through, I assumed something structurally had happened.

'Rebecca (Hayton, a fellow aide) came running towards me screaming that Sir David had been stabbed, he was on the floor. At that moment I picked up my phone to call for help.'

Asked how Ali looked, Ms Cushion said: 'Self-satisfaction, I would describe it.'

The trial previously heard how Ali had allegedly spent years hatching his plot, researching a number of potential high-profile political targets including Michael Gove, Dominic Raab and Sir Keir Starmer.

Ms Cushion, who described Sir David as a 'close friend', said meetings had traditionally been held in his constituency office where there was a certain amount of security in place.

But she said he decided to hold surgeries in other locations locally after coronavirus restrictions were lifted because he 'wanted to be accessible to his constituents'.

Ms Hayton described to police hours after the incident how she saw Ali stand up and stab Sir David. In her police interview, played to jurors, the junior staff member said: 'He (Ali) leans over and stabs him straight in the stomach.

'David screamed, and sort of panicked. I think he stabbed him again. I could see David screaming.' She added: 'I saw it (the knife) go in once and as I got up he (Ali) kept going.'

Ali looked perfectly ordinary as he walked around Leigh-on-Sea, but prosecutors claim his motives were ill-intentioned from the start

This cafe saw him pass at 11.14am on his way to the constituency meeting with Sir David

Another CCTV camera picked him up at 11.19am walking down a main road with his backpack still slung over his shoulder

Ali again was caught on CCTV, close to the spot where Sir David Amess lost his life

Ms Hayton said Ali had been 'smiling' during the five-minute meeting with Sir David, adding: 'He seemed relaxed and nice.'

She ran outside to raise the alarm and returned to the church with two members of the public, Yvonne Eaves and Darren King.

There, they saw Ali standing in the doorway between them and the prone victim, clutching the knife with a clenched fist.

She said: '(Mr King) was trying to speak to the guy and he (Ali) was saying: 'Don't come any closer, don't come any closer'.

'I heard him say 'Don't come anywhere near, I'm not going to hurt anybody else, call the police, call the police.' 'I basically told him (Mr King) to come out. Then he (Ali) was going: 'Call the police, call the police'.'

Ali had managed to arrange an appointment with Sir David by duping his office into believing he was a healthcare worker moving to the area, who wished to discuss local matters.

Jurors were yesterday shown CCTV of Ali's near-two-and-a-half-hour journey from his home in north London to the appointment in Leigh-on-Sea, on trains and by foot along busy high streets and residential areas.

He arrived at the church as planned but then sent a WhatsApp message to family and friends seeking to justify his actions.

He told father-of-five Sir David he was 'sorry' before plunging the carving knife into his victim, sending Ms Cushion and fellow aide Ms Hayton fleeing to safety.

The court heard Ali had a 'warped' ideology and sought to exact 'revenge' over Britain's recent foreign policy, notably the bombing campaign on Syria in the mid 2010s.

He allegedly told bystanders at the scene: 'I want him dead. I want every Parliament minister (sic) who signed up for the bombing of Syria who agreed to the Iraqi war to die.'

Ali, from Kentish Town, has denied preparing terrorist acts and murder. The trial continues.

SEPTEMBER 27: Ali emailed Sir David's aide to request to meet the Conservative MP from September 27

SEPTEMBER 27: An aide emailed him back asking to confirm his address and details so they could arrange a booking

SEPTEMBER 28: He told them a day later that he would be soon so would arrange to meet him later in the week

SEPTEMBER 29: The aide continued the email exchange later in the day to tell him Sir David had all his appointments for October 1 booked up

SEPTEMBER 30: Ali replied a day later that he had been able to clear his schedule so he could meet Sir David on October 15, the next available surgery meeting date
An Arizona doctor and her nurse sister died at a Swiss suicide clinic on February 11 - with the physician transferring her $1 million home into a trust weeks before they took their lives.

Lila Ammouri and Susan Frazier's date of death was shared with DailyMail.com Wednesday by a Swiss government source. The insider explained: 'The two American ladies died on February 11.

'It has been reported that they died later than this but this is not correct. It was the Friday in the Canton Basel-Landschaft by a legal assisted suicide.

'They died the same day and the timings were close, if not at the same time.' The sisters deaths were confirmed by the US consulate on February 18. Their brother Cal, 60, who lives in New York said he only learned of his siblings' passing when contacted by The Independent earlier this week.

Ammouri, a 54 year-old palliative care doctor and Grazier, a 49 year-old registered nurse, are believed to have died at Pegasos. It is a Basel-based assisted suicide clinic. Unlike its better-known Swiss rival Dignitas, Pegasos does not require patients to be terminally-ill, or suffer from a life-limiting illness.

Meanwhile, DailyMail.com has also discovered an unusual property maneuver made by Ammouri in the weeks leading up to her death.

She placed million dollar Cave Creek home in an intrafamily trust on January 25.

Suzan Frazier, left, and her sister Lili Ammouri, right, died by assisted suicide in Basel, Switzerland, with their deaths confirmed on February 18

Ammouri had put her $1 million Cave Creek home in an intrafamily trust on January 25, less than two weeks before the sisters trip to Switzerland

The arrangement, also known as a living trust, allows family members, friends or even business partners to receive the property after her death without having to go through the legal process of probate to prove they're the rightful heirs to an estate.

The trust would have allowed Ammouri to specify who would receive the home, free of estate taxes, or split up the value of the property to multiple people. It remains unclear who was named as a recipient in the trust.

According to public records, Ammouri purchased the home in 2014 for $549,000. The single-family home features three bathrooms, 2.5 bathrooms and a pool in a spacious backyard. It has doubled in value since she purchased it.

Ammouri's only known living relative, her brother, Cal Ammouri, 60, of New York, said he was torn apart after learning of his sisters death when contacted Tuesday.

'This is the most terrible thing that's ever happened to me,' Cal told DailyMail.com ' I'm an only child now. I don't understand any of it.'

The trust allows the home to be transferred to family without the conventional legal process of proving they're the heirs to the property

According to public records, Ammouri purchased the home in 2014 for $549,000. The single-family home features three bathrooms, 2.5 bathrooms

The home also has a large pool in a spacious backyard

Ammouri and Frazier traveled Phoenix to Basel, Switzerland via Chicago on February 3, with the U.S. Consulate confirming their deaths on February 18.

The city is home to Pegasos, an assisted suicide facility which helps patients who aren't terminally-ill to take their own lives for an $11,000 fee.

Dr. David Bilgari, a longtime friend of the sisters, said no one had heard from the duo since February 9, four days after they arrived in Switzerland, and that some of their final texts seemed to have been sent by someone else.

Prior to that, Bilgari told Fox 10 that co-workers had been texting them and felt that the person responding was not actually one of the sisters.

'Some of the text communications they had, we are certain they were not from them,' Biglari said. 'They were most likely fabricated with someone else.'

A spokesman for the Basel-Landschaft Public Prosecutor's Office confirmed to The Independent that the sisters had died by suicide 'within the legal framework'.

It is unclear how or where the sisters' died. Assisted suicide is legal in Switzerland, with Basel being home to a assisted suicide organization called Pegasos, which offers help with associated suicides to people who are not terminally-ill, as long as they are over the age of 18.

According to Pegasos, anyone who uses their services must have a third party who is known to the individual be able available to identify them to the authorities after they die.

If the sisters did use Pegasos service, it is unknow who would have been with them to identify them as Pegasos suggests patients who can't provide a third party join Exit International, another assisted suicide company that deals only with terminally ill patients, to figured out how they can be identified after death.

Basel is home to an assisted suicide service called Pegasos, whose website is pictured. Unlike the more famous Dignitas clinic, patients do not have to be terminally-ill or severely disabled to end their lives there

Their brother Cal, who spoke shortly with his sisters before their trip, did not mention that they were traveling with anyone else.

Frazier's employer, Aetna Health in Phoenix, raised the alarm after she failed to return to work on February 15.

Cal says his siblings appeared healthy and happy, and has not given any indication as to whether they were suffering any illness that could have driven them to suicide.

The company says it accepts application for people all over the world and has no required waiting period for assisted suicide

Pegasos says it accepts applications from patients the world over, but insists it refers anyone who is suffering from depression to counselling services.

Its website states: 'Pegasos believes that for a person to be in the headspace of considering ending their lives, their quality of life must be qualitatively poor.

'Pegasos accepts that some people who are not technically 'sick' may want to apply for a VAD. But this does not mean the person is 'well'. (Assisted suicide patient) Professor David Goodall was one of these people.

'He was not sick but his eye sight was failing him, as was his mobility. Old age is rarely kind. The decision to end one's life is an intensely personal one. Pegasos makes every effort to understand fully the unique circumstances of everyone who makes contact with us.'

Dignitas is the most famous suicide clinic, but is based in a different Canton (county) to where the sisters took their lives. It only offers an $8,000 assisted suicide to people who are terminally-ill, or who live with a disability that severely limits their quality of life.

The U.S. Consulate in Switzerland did not immediately respond to DailyMail.com's request for comment.

The sisters were found dead in Basel, Switzerland, (pictured) on February 18, three days after they were due back to return to work in Arizona

It is currently unknown which assisted suicide service the sisters used, but Pegasos, a nonprofit in the field, has a facility in Basel (pictured)

Other clinics across Switzerland also offer similar services, with patients given a solution of barbiturates dissolved in water, which guarantees a painless death after being consumed.

Visitors to the clinics must undergo stringent checks before being allowed to avail of their services.

Pegasos, in particular, which has English speakers on staff, requires looking for assisted suicides to be members of the organizations and pay fees that exceed $11,000.

Pegasos has no required waiting period for assisted suicide but does require consultations and paperwork be completed first.

Patients are given the option of intravenous infusion or a small drink that provide a lethal overdose that will lull them to sleep and result in death.

Cal, of New York, said is unclear why his sisters chose to end their lives, and that U.S. consular services have kept him in the dark.

'This is the most terrible thing that's ever happened to me,' Cal told DailyMail.com ' I'm an only child now. I don't understand any of it.'

Suicide is legal at Switzerland's famous Dignitas clinic, with visitors required to undergo a series of checks before being allowed to end their lives.

According to Cal and long-time friends of the women, the sisters were do back at work at Aetna Health Insurance on February 15 but never showed up.

The grieving brother said that both sisters appeared happy, with Lila owning a home in Phoenix and enjoying her job helping patients with serious illnesses and pain and Susan recently getting a promotion.

'Why would you leave your jobs, your home, your loved ones, just abandon everything,' Cal asked. 'I just want some answers.'

Michael Lutz, a spokesperson for the Basel-Landschaft Public Prosecutor's Office, told The Independent that the sisters death did not immediately result in a criminal investigation since it was strictly performed through legal means.

The Phoenix Police Department, who were contacted by friends and family to investigate the incident, said they could not open a case since it was outside their jurisdiction.

The sister's death was confirmed by the U.S. Consulate in Switzerland on February 18, weeks after friends and loved ones took to the Internet to spread awareness over their disappearance.

Like Cal, Bilgari mentioned that both sisters were happy and it was not like them to suddenly go missing.

Bilgari did not immediately respond to DailyMail.com's request for comment.

Inside the Swiss assisted suicide clinic where US sisters paid $11,000 each to die: Facility has cool white walls, designer furniture - and a death room where you're hooked up to drip or given drink that will kill you

A Swiss assisted suicide clinic where two US sisters are believed to have paid $11,000 each to die has cool white walls, elegant designer furniture - and a death room where patients can choose to die via intravenous drip or a lethal drink.

Lila Ammouri, a 54 year-old palliative care doctor, and Susan Frazier, a 49-year-old nurse, traveled from Phoenix to Basel, Switzerland on February 3, and died on February 11.

Basel is home to the Pegasos Swiss Association - which unlike Dignitas and Exit International, the the two largest assisted suicide organizations in the country - accepts applications for Voluntary Assisted Dying (VAD) from people who are not terminally ill.

The clinic, which was established in August 2019, has a neat and unassuming white exterior, with wooden shutters.

It is three stories high, with a hairdresser also occupying its first floor. There is no obvious indication outside that it the building is also home to an assisted suicide facility.

Pegasos's waiting room is equally low-key, and resembles the lobby of a doctor's surgery, or hairdressers. It has soothing white walls, mid-century designer furniture and plants as well as lights to further enhance its calming vibe.

Unlike Dignitas and Exit International, the the two largest assisted suicide organizations in the country, Pegosas (pictured above) accepts applications for Voluntary Assisted Dying (VAD) from people who are not terminally ill

Pegasos' waiting rooms feature a modern style with sleek furniture and cool white walls. The facility was established in August, 2019, in Basel, Switzerland

One of Pegasos's death rooms is pictured in a 2020 documentary about Laura Henkel (center) who chose to die there. She traveled to Switzerland from her home in Australia withThe company was featured in a 2020 documentary on the death of Laura Hankel (center) with daughter and filmmaker Cathy (left) and granddaughter Sam (right). The intravenous drip that she chose as her method of death is pictured, right. Patients can also opt for a deadly drink

Pegasos's death rooms are intimate, and at least one appears to be windowless, or have its curtains drawn for privacy. Images of one of the rooms shown on Australian and American documentaries about patients who previously traveled there to die shows cinderblock walls painted white, as well what appears to be a rug pinned to the walls.

Laura Henkel, an Australian woman who allowed her filmmaker daughter to record her final moments at Pegasos, was seen laying on the death room's bed during her final moments in December 2019.

She opted for death via intravenous injection, which can be seen beside her bed in an image from the documentary.

Henkel had just turned 90, was not suffering from any terminal illness, and said she was mentally and physically healthy for her age.

But she said she wanted to decide to die on her own terms, before suffering the type of illness commonly associated with very old age that could have prevented her from being able to make that decision.

Henkel traveled to Switzerland because assisted dying is illegal in her home country of Australia.

The clinic also allows pets inside the rooms to comfort the dying and lets the patients pick whatever music they like to accompany their final moments.

When the time comes, patients are instructed on how to kill themselves. They can either select a lethal drink or death through an intravenous drip. A doctor will hook the patient up to the drip, to insure the needle is inserted correctly, but the patient must push a notch to let its deadly contents flow into their body.

Lila Ammouri, 54, (left) and sister Susan Frazier, 49, (right) died by assisted suicide in Basel, Switzerland, with their deaths confirmed on February 11

Pegasos approves all adults of 'sound mind' regardless of their country of origin or residence, the company boasts on their website.

A third party must be there to confirm and identify the person who took their own life. Pegasos advices patients who do not have a witness to contact another assisted dying organization called Exit for help. It is unclear whos served as witness for Ammouri and Frazier.

In order to use Pegasos services, individuals must be members of the organization and pay an annual fee of about $110. Once a member, a person can apply for VAD.

In order to apply for the process, Pegasos needs to know the reason a person is requesting a VAD as well as their current living situation and family background.

Patients must also submit a brief biography, a birth certificate, marriage or divorce certificates, funeral instructions, health reports and proof of residence.

Aside from the membership fee, which could be waived if a patient is already a member of Exit International, the average cost of a VAD with Pegasos is more than $11,000.

Pegasos has English, Swiss, German, French and Italian speakers on staff.

Pegasos has no required waiting period for assisted suicide but does require consultations to be completed.

'Pegasos believes that for a person to be in the headspace of considering ending their lives, their quality of life must be qualitatively poor,' the company explains on their website.

'Pegasos accepts that some people who are not technically 'sick' may want to apply for a VAD. But this does not mean the person is 'well'. (Assisted suicide patient) Professor David Goodall was one of these people.

'He was not sick but his eye sight was failing him, as was his mobility. Old age is rarely kind. The decision to end one's life is an intensely personal one.

'Pegasos makes every effort to understand fully the unique circumstances of everyone who makes contact with us.'

A Swiss government source told DailyMail.com that: 'The two American ladies died on February 11.

'It has been reported that they died later than this but this is not correct. It was the Friday in the Canton Basel-Landschaft by a legal assisted suicide.

'They died the same day and the timings were close, if not at the same time.'

The sisters deaths were confirmed by the US consulate on February 18. Their brother Cal, 60, who lives in New York said he only learned of his siblings' passing when contacted by The Independent earlier this week.

In the end, patients are instructed on how to provide themselves with a lethal drug cocktail that can be delivered through an intravenous drip or through a drink. Cindy Siegel Shelpler (right, pictured at the facility with husband David before the process) chose the IV option, commenting that it felt cold before falling asleep and dying

Cindy Siegel Shepler, 62, of Knoxville Tennessee, was one such person to make the trip, according to a CNN editorial written by her friend, Ryan Prior.

Shepler was diagnosed with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome, a debilitating illness that causes chronic pain and insomnia for which there is no cure, along with many other 'painful illnesses.'

Shepler traveled to Basel in 2020 with her husband, David, to die at Pegasos facility.

She opted for the intravenous drip, which she commented was 'cold,' before falling asleep and dying.

That same year, the clinic was subject to a documentary about Laura Henkel, 90, of West Australia, who traveled to the facility to die.

Her daughter Cathy Henkel, who made the documentary, told The West Australian she had previously witnessed her mother trying to commit suicide when she was just 14 and that her death at the Pegasos facility allowed her mother to end her life without trauma.

Most recently, the facility was used by Shanley Rose Cruthchfield, 35, of Ellicott City, Maryland, according to a Baltimore Sun op-ed by her husband, Kevin Froehlich.

Crutchfield suffered from the same disease as Shepler and had attempted suicide in 2021. Froehlich said she had resigned herself to shooting herself in the head before learning that her application for Pegasos VAD was accepted.

Froehlich said he was in contact with her throughout the journey and confirmed she died on February 23.
Advertisement

Drone footage and satellite images have today given a glimpse at the extent of the devastation in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, which has now been under siege by Russian forces for almost a month as officials say it has been reduced to the 'ashes of a dead land'.

Video taken in the skies above the hard-hit district of Livoberezhnyi, to the east of the city, shows thin lines of smoke drifting through the air between blocks of destroyed apartments, shredded trees and dead grass - with barely a building left undamaged by Russian shelling.

Satellite images taken above other areas of the city show the grim picture repeating many times over in what Human Rights Watch has described as a 'hell-scape.' 'It is clear that the occupiers are not interested in the city of Mariupol,' a local official said. 'They want to raze it to the ground, to reduce it to ashes of a dead land.'

Though humanitarian convoys trying to reach the city have largely been thwarted - with President Zelensky saying on Tuesday that Russian forces had captured some aid workers heading there - a steady stream of refugees has managed to flow out, bringing their horror stories with them.

Julia Krytska, who managed to flee the city with her husband and son earlier this week, described passing piles of rotting bodies lying in the streets because there are no workers left to bury them.

Smoke is seen rising over civilian areas of Mariupol, which has been almost totally levelled by Russian forces in an attempt to take the city - which has been without water, food or electricity for almost a month

Heavily damaged apartment buildings are seen in southern Mariupol, as a local official said the city has been reduced to 'the ashes of a dead land' by Russian bombardment

Heavily damaged buildings and apartment blocks are seen in a satellite image of Mariupol, where more than 100,000 people are still said to be stranded in conditions likened to a 'hell-scape'

Badly damaged and partially collapses apartment buildings are seen in the city of Mariupol, which has been under near-constant Russia bombardment since early March and been almost-totally destroyed

An industrial area in the centre of the city of Mariupol, which has been heavily bombed by Russian forces, is seen in this satellite image taken on Tuesday

'I want the world to know about Mariupol,' she told the Guardian while sheltering at a train station in the western city of Lviv. 'People dont have any food there. They have nothing. What we had we shared. They are dead people in the streets everywhere. They cant take them away because of the shelling.'

Russian forces are now thought to be fighting in the centre of the city, though are still not in control of it almost exactly a month after Vladimir Putin announced the start of what was supposed to be a days-long 'special military operation' aimed at toppling the government.

Once home to more than 400,000 people, there are now thought to be less than 100,000 left - suffering through what Zelensky last night called 'inhumane conditions' - describing 'a complete blockade, no food, no water, no medicine, under constant shelling.'

Mr Zelensky also accused Russian forces of not only blocking a humanitarian convoy trying to take desperately needed aid to Mariupol but seizing what another Ukrainian official said were 15 of the bus drivers and rescue workers on the aid mission, along with their vehicles.

The Ukrainian president said the Russians had agreed to the route ahead of time.

'We are trying to organise stable humanitarian corridors for Mariupol residents, but almost all of our attempts, unfortunately, are foiled by the Russian occupiers, by shelling or deliberate terror,' he added in a nightly video address to the nation.

Two 'super powerful bombs' hit Mariupol yesterday as officials tried to evacuate thousands of civilians from the besieged city, which has been described as a 'hell-scape riddled with dead bodies' by humanitarian workers.

Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said there 'will not be enough space for everyone' to leave the city on Tuesday - amid estimates that up to 300,000 people remain there - but 'we will try to carry out the evacuation until we have gotten all the inhabitants.'

As the evacuation got under way two 'super powerful bombs' struck the port city, local officials said, without saying whether they killed anyone.

Military personnel pictured last week as civilians are being evacuated along humanitarian corridors from the besieged port city of Mariupol

Volodymyr Zelensky said some 100,000 are still in the city besieged city of Mariupol (pictured last week), trapped 'in inhumane conditions' while low on supplies and under constant attack

Members of the Italian Parliament make a standing ovation at Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky (on screen), at the end of his speech to members of the Italian Parliament via video conference

Two 'super powerful bombs' hit Mariupol today as officials tried to evacuate thousands of civilians from the besieged city, which has been described as a 'hell-scape riddled with dead bodies' by humanitarian workers

Mr Zelensky also accused Russian forces of not only blocking a humanitarian convoy trying to take desperately needed aid to Mariupol but seizing what another Ukrainian official said were 15 of the bus drivers and rescue workers on the aid mission, along with their vehicles

It came as UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for an end to the 'absurd war' started when Vladimir Putin gave the order to invade almost exactly a month ago, warning that the conflict is 'going nowhere fast' and that the Ukrainian people are 'enduring a living hell.'

'Continuing the war in Ukraine is morally unacceptable, politically indefensible and militarily nonsensical,' Guterres said. 'Even if Mariupol falls, Ukraine cannot be conquered city by city, street by street, house by house.

'This war is unwinnable. Sooner or later, it will have to move from the battlefield to the peace table. It is time to end this absurd war,' he added.

President Zelensky said Ukraine is 'on the brink of surviving' its war as he told lawmakers in a video address yesterday that Italy must stop being 'a resort for murderers' and urged the country to ban Russian ships from its ports.

In a speech to the Italian parliament, Zelensky urged the country's MPs to freeze all assets belonging to the Russian elite and to declare a full trade embargo, starting with oil.

He said: 'You know very well who orders troops to go to war and who propagates this. Almost all of them use Italy as a place to rest. Do not be a resort for murderers.

'Freeze all their property, accounts and yachts. Freeze all the assets of those who have influence, let them use it for peace. Support sanctions against Russia, a full trade embargo, starting with oil.'

He also asked Italy to remove enemy troops from Ukraine and to help carry out the de-mining and reconstruction of the country 'after this war'.

'Together with you, together with Italy. Together with Europe. Together - in the European Union,' he added.

He also begged the country's MPs to step up sanctions on the Russian economy, saying 'more pressure' can help Ukraine withstand the Kremlin assault.

Drone footage taken by the Azov Battalion which is helping to defend the city of Mariupol shows Russian bombardment of an industrial area, in video released on Tuesday

Smoke rises from the ruins of an industrial area somewhere in Mariupol after it was shelled by Russian forces

Men from the Ukrainian city of Mariupol lay bodies into a mass grave dug on the outskirts, as officials estimate thousands of people have been killed by Russian bombardments

A woman holds a child over her shoulder in a makeshift bomb shelter constructed in an apartment basement in Mariupol, which has been largely cut off from food, water and electricity for three weeks

Women and children shelter in the basement of an apartment building in Mariupol, southern Ukraine, which has been under near-constant Russian bombardment for three weeks

A man wounded during the Russian shelling of Mariupol lies in a temporary medical shelter as doctors operate on him

Mariupol has now been surrounded and under siege for more than three weeks - cut off from food, water, electricity and reinforcement, and constantly shelled in an effort to force the defenders to surrender. Multiple attempts at evacuating civilians along 'humanitarian corridors' have failed, amid claims Russia attacked them.

Several thousand have managed to make it out - many by making life-or-death breaks for the outskirts in their own vehicles - and have begun to tell of the horrors they faced inside.

Victoria, who only gave her first name, told the BBC that three infants she knows have died because they could not access drinking water, after the snow they had been melting for supplies ran out.

Others are now starving in basements that have been turned into makeshift bomb shelters but are being slowly destroyed by Russian artillery that pounds the city non-stop 'except a few hours at night', Victoria added.

Meanwhile Mykola Trofymenko, a professor and city councillor from Mariupol who has also fled last week, described how one doctor was forced to perform surgery with a kitchen knife and no anesthetic after the hospital where he was working was destroyed by artillery.

Trofymenko, who escaped with his wife and three-year-old son, said the city 'doesn't exist now because almost everything is destroyed' and that he had to train his son to run and hide from the sound of incoming bombs while he struggled to find enough food and water for him.

Speaking to BBC 5 Live in a voice trembling with emotion, Victoria said: 'My city is absolutely destroyed. Me, my family, all our friends, we don't have our homes now. All the buildings are destroyed and the shelling is continuing... It is on fire all the time, except a few hours at night.

'People stay in the basements but it doesn't save them. They're bombing so hard so they're destroying even the basements. They don't have water, we gathered snow several days ago of water.

'Three children I know... died from dehydration. It is the 21st century, and children are dying from dehydration in my city, they are starving now.

'Part of my family is still there, and families of my friends are still there. We tried to take them out of the city but the city is closed. They don't let people in so we couldn't take them out... it is impossible.'

Mr Trofymenko added: 'Mariupol was always showing to the occupiers that it is better to be in Ukraine because we are developing and we are making our lives better. We tried to build Europe in Mariupol.

Soldiers inspect a destroyed tank sitting along an evacuation route leading out of the city of Mariupol, taken on Monday

Damaged buildings and a military vehicle are seen as civilians being evacuated along humanitarian corridors from the Ukrainian city of Mariupol

Civilians are evacuated along humanitarian corridors from the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, under the control of Russian troops

Civilians are seen walking through the destroyed streets of Mariupol after attacks by the Russian military

People evacuate from the destroyed city of Mariupol which has been under siege by Russian forces for almost a month

'The city, it doesn't exist now because almost everything is destroyed, but previously, before February 24 [when Russia invaded] it was beautiful.'

Describing how he fled the city, he spoke of witnessing cars hit by landmines and others shot at by Russian troops despite having white inscriptions on the side saying 'children'.

'They hit one car, seven or eight cars from me. They hit this car with two children inside. I don't know what people could do this, actually. We are blaming Putin, that he is doing this to Ukraine, but regular soldiers are shooting civilians,' he said.

Perched on the Sea of Azov, Mariupol has been a key target that has been besieged for more than three weeks and has seen some of the worst suffering of the war.

But no clear, independent picture emerged of how close its capture might be. Ukraine's defence ministry said on Tuesday that their forces were still defending the city and had destroyed a Russian patrol boat and electronic warfare complex.

Russia, for now, controls the land corridor from Crimea, the peninsula it annexed in 2014, and is blocking Ukraine's access to the Sea of Azov, the ministry said.

'Nobody can tell from the outside if it really is on the verge of being taken,' said Keir Giles, a Russia expert at the British think tank, Chatham House.
Dancing with the Stars alum Maksim Chmerkovskiy admits he felt guilt and shame at fleeing his native Ukraine on a train packed with women and children instead of staying to help fight Putin's invasion.

Speaking on Good Morning America Wednesday, Chmerkovskiy said: 'Yeah , I feel guilty, I feel bad, I feel shame, I feel upset.' The 42 year-old dancer, who left Ukraine for the US aged 14, raised eyebrows over images of him fleeing the war-torn country last month, and traveling business class back to the United States to his wife and son, who live in Malibu.

He has since returned to Poland to set up a charity named Baranova 27 which is helping refugees who've fled their homes in Ukraine after arriving safely over the Polish border. It is named after the dancer's former address in Ukraine.

Chmerkovskiy, 42, said he has returned to Poland in an effort to make things right after he was trashed by critics over his flit.

'I feel like this is my duty,' he told Good Morning America on Wednesday. 'I'm here to remind people that this is just getting worse.'

'I feel like this is my duty,' he told Good Morning America on Wednesday. 'I'm here to remind people that this is just getting worse.

When asked why he would ever go back near the conflict zone again after going through the trouble to flee, Chmerkovskiy said he had to do the right thing

'It's just survival on that train, to Warsaw when I finally got back home and I finally saw (his wife) Peta and we had that emotional moments that's when I realized I gotta go back,' he said.

'have an opportunity to prove to my son, me as a man, I want him to be proud of me and maybe this is the opportunity to show him exactly how to do right.'

Chmerkovskiy described his harrowing journey to Poland via train to GMA host TJ Holmes.

'I'm super grateful, its things like this that change me as a person,' Chmerkovskiy said of being able to give back. He is pictured helping Ukrainian refugees in Poland

Chmerkovskiy is shown on a train from Kyiv to Poland. He said he sat in between carriages so that he didn't take up anyone else's 'space' , but that he couldn't stay there for the entire time because it was too cold

'I'm dying inside because this is still very emotional stuff for me, there's kids everywhere, babies everywhere- its negative temperature,' he said.

The UN confirmed nearly 2.7 million people have left Ukraine as refugees, with the vast majority heading west into EU countries, and it is expected this number could rise to more than 4 million in the coming weeks.

The charity has set up housing for refugees and in a selfie video Chmerkovskiy gave a tour of an apartment in Poland that will be housing refugees and taking in children.

'So basically this is your version of a dorm, the owners of this house particularly are going to help out with anything to do with kindergarten, school,' he said.

Chmerkovskiy announced a new charitable organization called Baranova 27 , named for the address of the place where he was born in Odesa, Ukraine

Maksim Chmerkovskiy with his wife Peta Murgatroyd in Malibu after he arrived back in America from Ukraine

The charity is also helping with shipments to Ukraine and Poland, including food, clothing, diapers and other necessities.

So far they have shipped nearly 280,000 pounds of emergency goods to those in need.

The endeavor is a family business with Chmerkovskiy's brother and father helping run operations.

Chmerkovskiy told GMA that the charity is his way of helping everyday Ukrainians.

'I get a call from my friend who said they run out of all supplies and I was able to direct him to our location in Lviv where he can go pick up supplies and as we spoke I got a text message about an orphanage of 200 kids, that are very much on negative supplies at the moment, and after our call I hang up and I'm going to set up a logistical chain that will deliver exactly what they're asking for.'

'I'm super grateful, its things like this that change me as a person,' Chmerkovskiy said.

Chmerkovskiy, 42, is best known for his work as a dancer on the ABC reality staple

Maksim Chmerkovskiy is shown as a teenager with his little brother Valentin. They moved to the US when he was 14 in 1994 as refugees and automatically lost their Ukrainian citizenship

The Dancing With the Stars pro was crucified by critics for not only fleeing the region when other less-equipped volunteers have stayed behind to fight, but also for sharing his ordeal in great detail on social media and TV interviews afterwards.

The dancer - who admitted he felt 'badly' about the choice in early March - declined an interview with DailyMail.com but an acquaintance said he had done nothing wrong.

'Maks is not a Ukrainian citizen, he's an American citizen. It was not an option for him to just 'stay and fight.''

'The narrative of evading any duty to Ukraine is simply not accurate,' they said.

The source added that he moved to the US as a 14-year-old refugee in 1994 and in doing so automatically renounced his citizenship. Ukraine does not recognize dual citizenship.

He told Anderson Cooper that he had been 'bombarded by sources' including 'military personnel' telling him he would be the first to be evacuated when Putin struck and that he had 'no choice' but to leave.

He has not given any other details about who told him to leave specifically.

Ukrainian men between 18 and 60 years old have been banned from leaving the country and President Volodymyr Zelensky has made a desperate appeal around the world for able-bodied men to join the International Legion of his Territorial Defense Army.

Chmerkovskiy had said a couple of weeks ago that he would go back to Poland to help with relief efforts. In the meantime, he was raising money online and his family in New Jersey has been raising money and packaging relief for refugees.

His brother, Valentin, another DWTS pro, and his father, Aleksandr 'Sasha' Chmerkovskiy, are helping with the effort.

Sasha, who runs Dance With Me USA, lives in Edgewater, New Jersey, with his wife, Larisa.

Valentin lives in California with his wife, fellow dancer Jenna Johnson.

Their grandmother lives in Brooklyn, New York, which is the first American city they settled in when they emigrated in the 1990s.

Chmerkovskiy joined DWTS in 2006, when he was 26.

Maks Chmerkovskiy with his mother Larissa, father Sasha and brother Valentin. The family moved to the US in 1994 as refugees

Maks with his son, grandmother and brother Valentin in Brooklyn. The family moved to New York in 1994

His escape from the conflict was of great relief to his fans but enraged critics and people who had not watched the show, especially given how many elderly people, women and foreigners are in Ukraine, choosing to fight.

In his interview with CNN, he claimed that Ukrainians were 'ready' for the conflict and had been preparing for it for months. When Putin invaded, Maksim claims he was 'told' that he 'had to go'.

'I just got told that I had to go. I have to say about Ukrainian people in general, they were ready for this conflict. That was the whole general feeling.

'All the time I was being told if something happens, 'we'll take you out, you'll be the first.'

'When everything happened, it happened suddenly. The day it happened, somebody was bombarding my phone saying 'you have to go now.'

'I started to get various calls multiple sources, military personnel saying 'you have to go, things are about to get crazy.''

He did specify who helped him leave, or advised him to get out. Other Americans have reported not receiving any form of help from the State Department and having to find their own paths out of the conflict.

Maksim said he felt 'really bad going' and it became 'even worse' when he got to the train station in Kyiv and realized he was one of, if not the only, man on the train.

'I realized it's all women and children and I'm too big and I'm taking up space. I put myself in between trains. Internally, I justified my space because I was outside,' he said, referring to his decision to sit in between the train cars for some of the trip.

He ended up going back inside because it was 'too freezing'.

'I helped a lot with bags and stuff, just to understand that I am not taking up space.'
A desperate search is underway for a little girl missing in Tasmania.

The four-year-old girl was last seen playing with two dogs in a backyard in the Stormlea area of the Tasman Peninsula about 2.30pm on Wednesday.

The little girl has long brown curly hair and was last seen wearing pink leggings, a light yellow top, and gumboots.

Tasmania Police, Tasmania SES, and the Westpac Rescue Helicopter were continuing their search at 9.50pm.

Stormlea, near Port Arthur, is largely rural, made up of hilly bush and farmland.
Advertisement

Julian Assange's wife Stella Moris has made an emotional speech to a crowd outside Belmarsh prison following her wedding to the imprisoned WikiLeaks founder.

She left the high security jail linked arm in arm with her father-in-law wearing the dress designed by Vivienne Westwood.

Fighting back tears and wearing her wedding dress, she said: 'I'm very happy but I'm very sad... I wish he were here...

'What we're going through is inhuman.'

She added: 'He's the most amazing person in the world and he should be free.

'But our love will carry us through.'.

Mr Assange, 50, who is facing extradition to the United States on espionage charges, married Ms Moris, 38, in front of four guests and two witnesses this afternoon. Two prison officers attended the ceremony, one of whom acted as official photographer.

Stella Moris, centre, left HMP Belmarsh with her arms linked with her father-in-law John Shipton, left, and the Wikileaks founder's half-brother Gabriel

Ms Moris addressed supporters of the Wikileaks founder outside the court while cutting the couple's wedding cake

Ms Moris told the assembled crowd that what she and Mr Assange were going through was 'inhuman'

The couple were allowed to have four guests and two witnesses at the ceremony. Two prison officers attended the wedding, one of whom acted as photographer

The former editor and publisher has always denied wrongdoing and has won support from human rights organisations across the globe.

Assange and his new wife, Stella Moris, 38, announced their engagement in November last year.

The couple, who have two children together - Max, two, and Gabriel, four - were wed by a registrar inside the prison shortly after midday.

South African lawyer, Moris, who works for Assange's legal team, arrived in a fossil grey dress designed by Dame Vivienne Westwood - a vocal supporter of Assange.

She complimented it with a matching longline jacket, a single pink rose attached at the neckline, and a floor-length veil embroidered with words including 'faith' and 'wilfulness'.

Assange, whose parents are of Scottish heritage, reportedly donned a kilt - also designed by Westwood.

The smiling bride clutched a bouquet of pink and purple roses as she was joined at the high-security prison by the couple's two young sons.

Moris' mother and Assange's father, John Shipton, and brother, Gabriel Shipton were also in attendance.

The boys wore matching purple and mustard yellow kilts with white roses attached to their suit jackets. They grinned gleefully as they joined their mother in posing for photographs.

While the ceremony was destined to be far from ordinary, Assange's supporters were determined to make the day memorable for the newlyweds.

Miss Moris poses for photographers before heading into the prison

Stella Moris poses with her sons Gabriel, and Max, left, for the media and supporters, ahead of her marriage to the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in a small wedding service inside the high-security Belmarsh Prison

Stella Moris arrived at the prison with a friend and her mother, right, ahead of her wedding which took place at lunchtime

The blushing bride is helped from her taxi by family before entering the prison for the ceremony

Miss Moris' extraordinary veil was covered in signatures and brightly coloured handwritten words

A supporter is asked to move back by a police officer as Stella Moris (L), partner of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, arrived in her wedding dress,

Well wishers gathered outside HMP Belmarsh to celebrate the wedding of Stella Moris and Julian Assange

A supporter of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange holds a placard outside Belmarsh Prison

A wedding cake brought by supporters of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to celebrate his wedding to fiancee Stella Moris

A view shows figurines on a wedding cake on the day of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and Stella Moris' wedding at HMP Belmarsh prison. They look remarkably like the couple

Stella Moris, the partner of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, is photographed with their sons Max, 3, and Gabriel, 4, in her Vivienne Westwood designed wedding dress before driving to Belmarsh Prison

Stella had her two sons with Assange when he was hiding in the Ecuadorian embassy for seven years

Julian Assange is going to tie the knot with Stella Moris - but there can only be four guests and a prison guard must take the snaps

Julian Assange, left, will marry his lawyer Stella Moris, right, later today in Belmarsh Prison

The atmosphere outside HMP Belmarsh was one of excitement - with Assange's loyal supporters embracing each other gleefully as they gathered together in celebration.

A gazebo was set up outside the entrance to the prison - displaying a three-tier wedding cake adorned with edible rose petals and bride and groom figures, a white 'Mrs and Mrs' sign, and bunches of flowers.

Champagne and canapes were served among the crowd and musical entertainment took place to celebrate the couple's nuptials.

Assange's supporters spoke of their joy at the wedding but branded the celebration 'bittersweet'.

Val, 75, who has been campaigning for Julian's freedom for the last 12 years said it's 'horrendous' that the couple were forced to marry inside a jail.

She added: 'They are such a lovely couple and it's awful that they're having to get married in Belmarsh - they should be walking down the aisle at the likes of Westminster Abbey not here.

'It's horrendous that Stella is going to walk out of that prison on her own.

'We are here to show her how much she is loved.'

Gloria Wildman, 78, who carried three signs demanding Assange's release, affectionately referred to the Australian activist as her 'son.'

She said: 'I am a mother myself and I see Julian as a son.

'It's bittersweet to see them marry in a prison but you can't lock up love.

'I wish my son and his beautiful wife great health and happiness, despite the awful circumstances.'

However, the general consensus among the crowds is that Assange's successful application to marry his fiancee Stella Moris is just a small win in a long list of hurdles awaiting the former editor.

Supporters used the wedding as an opportunity to protest his proposed extradition to the USA.

Assange and Ms Moris, have two children together, Max (left) and Gabriel (right)

Belmarsh's Governor Jenny Louis told the couple's four guests and two witnesses out of the prison the minute the service was over

Julian Assange will NOT be held in a supermax jail if he's extradited, US assures UK Wikileaks founder Julian Assange will not be held in supermax prison conditions if he is allowed to be extradited to the United States, American officials have assured British authorities. American officials have made the compromise in the hopes of finally ending the lengthy battle to put Assange, 50, on trial for espionage charges in the United States, the Wall Street Journal reported last month. If Assange is convicted in an American court, U.S. officials have also said the Australian would be allowed to serve jail time in his home country, the outlet reported. The revelations were made in a court ruling provided by the U.K. Crown Prosecution Service obtained by the outlet. Assange has been in London's high-security Belmarsh Prison since he was arrested in April 2019 for skipping bail seven years earlier during a separate legal battle. He had spent seven years holed up inside Ecuador's London embassy, where he fled in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden to face allegations of rape and sexual assault. Sweden dropped the sex crimes investigations in November 2019 because so much time had elapsed. U.S. prosecutors have indicted Assange on 17 espionage charges and one charge of computer misuse over WikiLeaks publication of thousands of leaked military and diplomatic documents. The charges carry a maximum sentence of 175 years in prison. The prosecutors say Assange unlawfully helped U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning steal classified diplomatic cables and military files that WikiLeaks later published. Advertisement

Dozens of yellow ribbons were tied to the gates of Belmarsh with 'journalism is not a crime', 'free hostage Assange now' and 'the world is with Stella Julian' among the slogans written in marker pen.

Large banners were also tied to the gates and to the traffic lights opposite the jail - with one sign reading 'beep to free Assange' gaining the attention of passing motorists who hooted their horns in support.

Gloria added: 'This is a wasted life. This is a human being. Julian is an innocent man.

'The first example of this happening is when Jesus was crucified.'

Jim Curran, 75, offered his support to the newly married couple but said he attended the gathering today in protest of extradition - something he has been campaigning against for 44 years - rather than to celebrate their marriage.

He added: 'I've campaigned against Palestinians being extradited to Israel and Kurds being extradited to Turkey.

'I even campaigned against the extradition of Abu Hamza.

'Extradition is wrong because every country has different laws and punishments.

'Some of the fraud offences Julian is being accused of are not even fraud offences in the UK.'

Another supporter, Pete Hall, said he hates the 'cliches' of wedding celebrations but felt compelled to share his support for Assange - having spent many years in and out of prison himself.

Describing himself as 'retired from a life of crime', he added: 'The worst thing about prison is that nobody tells you anything.

'Nobody tells you what will happen to you or what's going on outside.

'The only thing I can think of to say to Julian is: hang on, for God's sake don't give up.

'We will get you out eventually.

'I don't know how long it will take but please hang on in there.'

Among Assange's supporters was former British Ambassador Craig Murray.

Murray, 63, donned a green and blue kilt with knee-high cream socks and traditional leather Sporran as he joined supporters gathered to celebrate the couple's imminent nuptials.

When asked if he would be attending the ceremony, Murray replied: 'No. I'm too high of a security risk apparently.'

He expressed his dismay at not being able to attend the wedding in person, writing on Twitter: 'I have the huge honour of being invited by Julian and Stella as one of the six people allowed to attend their wonderful wedding in Belmarsh prison today.

'But Julian has now been told I will not be allowed in as my presence would 'endanger the security of the prison'.'

He added: 'I plainly have superpowers, but this spite and viciousness even on their wedding day is absolutely typical of the cruel yet pathetic British authorities.

'But most certainly will not spoil the day: we already knew what they are and nothing has changed.

'The defiant wedding of Julian and Stella today, in the face of a possible 175 years in a US jail for publishing the facts of US war crimes, is a triumph for love, a triumph for hope and a triumph for truth.

'Let's celebrate!'

Rather than offering wedding gifts, Assange and Moris asked supporters to put up posters calling for his release or donate to a Crowdfunder campaign - launched by Moris - to help the 50-year-old in his fight against extradition.

They also suggested sponsoring a park bench in honour of the WikiLeaks founder.

However guests were encouraged to dress in formal attire, as they would to attend a normal wedding.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak and Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng today begged petrol stations to pass on a 5p cut to fuel duty immediately

Asda and Sainsbury's have said they will cut petrol prices by 6p a litre after Rishi Sunak and Kwasi Kwarteng begged petrol stations to pass on a 5p fuel duty cut at the pumps from tonight.

It comes after Chancellor Mr Sunak and Business Secretary Mr Kwarteng today wrote to retailers saying 'the public will rightly expect to see the cut reflected quickly in the prices shown on the forecourt this evening'.

The change in pricing is expected to come into force from 6pm this evening, though timing could differ across the country.

Asda was the first major supermarket to confirm a cut in prices, with a 6p decrease in petrol and diesel, before Sainsbury's and Tesco followed suit earlier today.

Morrisons has also said it will cut pump prices by 5p from 6pm.

Sainsbury's boss Simon Roberts said: 'We understand that the cost of living is a real challenge for many households and we are committed to helping our customers as much as we can.

'We welcome the Chancellors announcement today which will save motorists money and we are passing the cut to fuel duty to our customers at the pumps across every single one of our 315 forecourts from tonight.'

Following his statement today, Mr Sunak said: 'We are facing the same challenges that many countries around the world are facing and that's rising prices and high inflation. Inflation here is running a bit lower than it is in America - similar to what is happening in the Eurozone.

There is uncertainty ahead. I wish I could but I can't protect everyone against the full impact of those global challenges, but where we can make a difference, of course we will.

'That is why the policies I announced today are a significant intervention that will put billions of pounds back into the pockets of hard working British families. We are on people's sides through this difficult time.'

The Chancellor visits a supermarket after delivering his Spring Statement earlier today

Mr Sunak pictured speaking to the media in the forecourt of a Sainsbury's petrol station earlier today

he Chancellor Rishi Sunak visits a Sainsbury's supermarket in south east London after delivering his Spring Statement

Rishi Sunak hailed his fuel duty cut as unprecedented - but drivers don't think they'll see the benefit

A man fills up his car at a petrol station in Cheshire on March 17 as prices continue to rise

I'll still buy my blooms abroad Not enough: Fuel cut wont help Gemma Hales, 32 Florist Gemma Hales said that  even with the 5p cut to fuel duty  it was still cheaper to import her flowers than drive to buy them locally. The 32-year-old has her blooms delivered from Holland, which she thinks costs hundreds of pounds less a month than making the regular journey a few miles across London. Miss Hales, who runs Femme Petale in Wimbledon, south London, said: Fuel is something thats increased a lot, so this cut is a drop in the ocean. Its something... but when you look at how much fuel has gone up in the last year it doesnt make enough of a difference. Including Londons Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) charge, she calculated it would cost her around 300 more a month to make the ten-mile round trip to New Covent Garden Market, in Nine Elms, a few times a week than order from Europe. Miss Hales, who decorates customers weddings, is trying to save up for her own. Its not just the petrol, its everything else on top of it. The ULEZ, as well as petrol prices being at a record high, make things so much harder for a small business like mine. Ordering things online to be delivered to me is just so much cheaper, quicker and easier. Advertisement

It follows critics pointing out that the eye-watering rise in fuel prices means that while the 5p cut is welcome - UK drivers are seeing forecourt increases at that rate every 24 to 48 hours.

Motorists continue to battle sky-high prices, with the average cost of a litre of petrol at British forecourts yesterday at 167.3p, while diesel was 179.7p.

This is a rise of 18.0p per litre for petrol and 27.0p for diesel over the past month, in one of many factors squeezing household incomes as the pandemic subsides and Russia's attack on Ukraine intensifies.

In a joint letter to supermarkets and petrol giants such as Texaco, Shell and BP, Mr Sunak and Mr Kwarteng said: 'I know you will agree that it is vital that these savings are delivered to consumers as soon as possible to deal with the increased pressures that the unprecedented global circumstances are bringing to the cost of living in the UK'.

The 5p cut in fuel duty was today blasted by UK motoring groups as a 'drop in the ocean' for hard-pressed drivers as pump prices continue to hit record levels.

Chancellor Rishi Sunak said the new reduction in fuel duty would last until March 2023 - with the move expected to reduce the cost of filling a 55-litre tank by 3.30.

Oil prices surged straight after Russia's invasion of Ukraine which led to an initial increase in wholesale costs for fuel retailers, although prices dropped last week.

Mr Sunak said the reduction will come into force at 6pm tonight - but motoring groups will be watching whether retailers pass on the savings to drivers, after they were accused of failing to pass on a reduction in wholesale costs earlier this month.

Ahead of today's announcement, fuel duty had been levied at 57.95p per litre for petrol and diesel, with VAT at 20 per cent charged on top of the total price.

Reacting to Mr Sunak's announcement today, RAC head of policy Nicholas Lyes told MailOnline: 'With petrol and diesel prices breaking records almost daily, and the cost to fill up a petrol car at over 92 and a diesel at nearly 100, we're pleased to see the Chancellor has given drivers some much-needed relief at the pumps, but the reality is that a 5p cut in duty is something of a drop in the ocean.

'In reality, reducing it by 5p will only take prices back to where they were just over a week ago.

'With the cut taking effect at 6pm tonight drivers will only notice the difference at the pumps once retailers have bought new fuel in at the lower rate.

How much money will I save from fuel duty cut? Chancellor Rishi Sunak has announced a cut in fuel duty of 5p per litre in his spring statement. Here are a series of key questions about taxes on fuel: What is fuel duty? Fuel duty is levied at a rate of 57.95p per litre for petrol and diesel. How long has it been at that level? It has been frozen since March 2011. What about VAT? VAT is added on top, at a rate of 20 per cent of the combined product price and duty. What are the latest average pump prices? The average cost of a litre of petrol at UK forecourts on Tuesday was 167.3p, while diesel was 179.7p, figures from data firm Experian Catalist show. This is an increase of 18p per litre for petrol and 27p for diesel over the past month. Why have prices reached record highs? Oil prices surged immediately after Russia's invasion of Ukraine due to supply fears, leading to a rise in wholesale costs. Prices were already increasing as global economies recover from the coronavirus pandemic. How much will I save from a 5p per litre cut in duty? The RAC has calculated this would reduce the cost of filling a typical 55-litre family petrol car by around 3. What impact could the move to electric cars have? The switch from traditionally fuelled cars to battery-powered models could cause the Treasury's annual fuel duty income from cars to drop from 16.4 billion in 2019 to 11.4 billion in 2028, according to analysis by the RAC Foundation. Advertisement

'There's also a very real risk retailers could just absorb some or all of the duty cut themselves by not lowering their prices.

'If this proves to be the case it will be dire for drivers. It also wouldn't be totally unexpected based on the biggest retailers not reducing their prices late last year when the oil price fell sharply.

'Temporarily reducing VAT would have been a more progressive way of helping drivers as the tax is applied at the point the fuel is sold, removing any possibility of retailers taking some of the tax cut themselves to increase their profits.

'It's also the case that the Treasury is benefitting hugely from the high fuel prices because of greater VAT revenue.

'The Chancellor is currently getting 28p a litre VAT on petrol and 30p on diesel  this of course comes on top of fuel duty as VAT is a tax on a tax.'

And AA president Edmund King told MailOnline today: 'The AA welcomes the cut in fuel duty. However, we are concerned that the benefit will be lost unless retailers pass it on and reflect a fair price at the pumps. Average pump prices yesterday hit new records - despite the fall in wholesale costs.

'The Chancellor has ridden to the rescue of UK families and businesses who use their vehicles, not for pleasure, but to function in their daily lives.

'Since the start of the year, the 20p-a-litre surge in pump prices has been the shock that rocked the finances of families, and particularly young drivers, pensioners and lower-income workers who need to commute each day.

'AA research showed that even in November, when petrol pump prices set new records at around 148p a litre, 43 per cent of drivers were cutting back on car use, other spending to compensate or both.

'That rose to 59 per cent among young drivers and 53 per cent among the lower-paid. Petrol started this week averaging 167p a litre.

'On top of the duty cut, there has been a substantial reduction in wholesale road fuel costs feeding through to the forecourts since March 9.

'That needs to drive lower pump prices also. The road fuel trade shouldn't leave the Treasury to do the heavy lifting when cutting motoring costs.'

Meanwhile motorists on social media described the move as a 'joke' which 'won't make any difference', while another said: 'This will do nothing.'

And Howard Cox, founder of the FairFuelUK campaign, told MailOnline today: 'It would be churlish not to be thankful to the Chancellor in cutting Fuel Duty by 5p for 12 months. Well done, Rishi.Our relentless campaigning has been fruitful.

'It will give some respite to millions of motorists, that have had and continue to have no choice but to drive. Just as important this fiscal relief to hauliers and small businesses teetering on survival, desperately need this reduction more than most road users, it's way overdue.

'It will only benefit drivers and the economy if the new fuel taxation level becomes permanent and is accompanied by the introduction of an independent pump pricing watchdog, we've notionally called PumpWatch.

'Today's fuel duty reduction must be passed onto drivers immediately.'

Sarah Coles, senior personal finance analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said: 'The fuel duty cut is better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, but it's hardly going to be lifechanging for hard-pressed motorists.

'Currently fuel duty costs around 58p a litre, and VAT almost 28p per litre. On a 55-litre tank, 47.30 is tax. The cut would mean this drops by just 2.75.

'With the cost of unleaded petrol now almost 1.67 a litre on average it's still going to mean we need to make some horribly difficult decisions about how and where we travel in future.

'It's also going to continue inflating the cost of transporting anything to stores, which will gradually feed into the price of everything on the shelves. Life is going to keep getting more expensive, and this cut isn't going to change that.'

And Alex Kindred, car insurance expert at Confused.com, said: 'Fuel prices continue to rise at record-breaking figures, so the cut to fuel duty is a small step in the right direction.

'With the average cost of a tank of petrol nearly at 91, the cut will mean 5p off per litre and around 2 off your bill, on average.

'Although it might not seem a lot in the grand scheme of things, if you tally this up every time you fill up your tank, the savings do add up. Although, this is still extremely high and unaffordable for some, so it's clear there's still a need to cut fuel costs.'

He said the company's research found that two in five UK drivers are 'making a conscious effort to drive less in order to save on fuel at the moment'.

Announcing the duty cut in his spring statement, Mr Sunak said the UK Government wanted people to know they will 'stand by them' in dealing with rising living costs.

He told MPs: 'Today I can announce that for only the second time in 20 years, fuel duty will be cut. Not by one, not even by two, but by 5p per litre.

'The biggest cut to all fuel duty rates - ever. While some have called for the cut to last until August, I have decided it will be in place until March next year - a full 12 months.

'Together with the freeze, it's a tax cut this year for hard-working families and businesses worth over 5 billion, and it will take effect from 6pm tonight.'

Ahead of the announcement, Dr Doug Parr, policy director at Greenpeace UK, had said: 'The Chancellor should only cut fuel duty if he can make an equivalent cut to the costs of public transport, which offers more environmentally friendly support for those facing this cost-of-living crisis.'
A Cambridge college's bid to rip out a 300-year-old memorial to a benefactor with links to the slave trade has been thrown out, in what backers have described as a 'victory for common sense'.

Jesus College claimed the memorial to Tobias Rustat - a courtier of King Charles II - was an odious memento of the Transatlantic Slave Trade and was 'incompatible with the chapel as an inclusive community and a place of collective wellbeing'.

They wanted the memorial, which is set high on the wall above the altar in the college's Grade-I listed chapel, removed and replaced in a permanent exhibition space elsewhere.

But the plans sparked accusations that the college was trying to 'cancel' Rustat, who was one of Jesus College's largest benefactors before the 20th century.

Opponents of its removal also argued that Rustat's links to the Transatlantic Slave Trade had been exaggerated, because he had a relatively small investment in a company that traded slaves and the majority of his wealth came from his work for the king.

The row, which even drew comment from the Archbishop of Canterbury, ended up before a special ecclesiastical court sitting at Jesus College Chapel.

And a judge has ruled against the college, saying the memorial should remain in place as a reminder of 'the imperfection of human beings'.

He also said that through the plaque, Rustat's undoubted involvement in 'the abomination' that was the slave trade could serve as a reminder 'that none of us is free from all sin' and would allow those who observed it to 'question our own lives, as well as Rustat's'.

Today's decision has been backed by the Rustat Memorial Group, which opposed its removal, and by Save Our Statues, a group which campaigns against 'attacks' on British history.

Meanwhile, Lawrence Goldman, a former Oxford University history professor who was a party to the case, told The Times the ruling was a 'victory for common sense'.

But the College today said it was 'deeply disappointed' and 'shocked' by the decision. A spokesperson said the College was now 'carefully considering' its next steps, which include a possible appeal.

Jesus College claimed the memorial to Tobias Rustat (pictured) - a courtier of King Charles II - was an odious memento of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, which saw millions of people shipped from Africa to the Americas over 400 years

Bosses of the college also claimed the stone plaque to Rustat (pictured) was 'incompatible with the chapel as an inclusive community and a place of collective wellbeing'.

But the move sparked accusations that the college was trying to 'cancel' Rustat, who was one of Jesus College's (pictured) largest benefactors before the 20th century

Rustat supported the slave trade by investing in two important slave trading companies over a period of 30 years. In addition, he also lent funds and took on managerial roles.

University benefactor and slave trade investor: Life of Tobias Rustat - and his links to Edward Colston A statue of Tobias Rustat Tobias Rustat was a 17th century benefactor of the University of Cambridge, as well as a servant to King Charles II. He created the first fund for the purchase of books at the Cambridge University Library. Born circa 1606, he trained as an apprentice to a barber-surgeon in his youth before becoming a servant - first to the 2nd Duke of Buckingham and later to the monarch. He accumulated his wealth during his career as a courtier - but also invested in several trading companies, including the Company of Royal Adventurers of England Trading into Africa - commonly known as the Royal African Company (RAC). The Company had complete control of Britain's slave trade, as well as its gold and Ivory business, with Africa and the forts on the coast of west Africa. Later in life, Rustat became a benefactor to the university, focusing mainly on Jesus College, where his father had been a student. He died in 1694. A contemporary of Rustat was Edward Colston, who became Deputy Governor of the Royal African Company. During Colston's tenure, his ships transported around 80,000 slaves from Africa to the Caribbean and America. Around 20,000 of them, including around 3,000 or more children, died during the journeys. Colston's brother Thomas supplied the glass beads that were used to buy the slaves. Colston used a lot of his wealth, accrued from his extensive slave trading, to build schools and almshouses in his home city. A statue was erected in his honour as well as other buildings named after him, including Colston Hall. But after years of protests by campaigners and boycotts by artists the venue recently agreed to remove all reference of the trader. In the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 sparked by the death of George Floyd in the US, the statue of Colston overlooking the harbour in Bristol was torn down. Advertisement

Rustat was a courtier under Charles II and a major benefactor to Cambridge University, but became a target for campaigners due to his involvement with the Royal African Company which operated on the west coast of Africa in the later 17th century under royal charter.

They accused Rustat of 'financial and administrative involvement in the trading of enslaved human beings over a substantial period of time'.

But objectors highlighted the move as an example of cancel culture, which could open dangerous floodgates leading to the removal of monuments to many more historical figures.

The case was heard by a judge specially appointed by the Bishop of Huntingdon because the ornate memorial is housed in a world-renowned Grade-I historic building and an ecclesiastical environment.

Jesus College had urged that 'any harm caused to the significance of the chapel as a building of special architectural and historic interest by the removal of the Rustat memorial is substantially outweighed by the resulting public benefits, in terms of pastoral wellbeing and opportunities for mission'.

Lawyers for the college highlighted the memorial's position in the chapel 'high up on the west wall', which gave a man linked to the historic slave trade a position of undeserved prominence.

This created a 'serious obstacle' to the college's wish to preach the Christian mission, they added, although stressing: 'it does not seek to erase Rustat's name, or his memory, from the college but merely to relocate his memorial to a more appropriate, secular space, where it can be properly conserved and protected, and become the subject of appropriate educational study and research'.

But others opposed the plans, with historian Professor Lawrence Goldman suggesting that in trying to 'cancel' Rustat, the college was attempting to 'assault carefully selected aspects of its past' and could lead to further calls for removal of memorials to other historical figures elsewhere.

'Other figures from the past, equally bad or even worse, will also have to be removed and cancelled, and the disputes will multiply and intensify,' he told the judge.

'If the church supports the removal of monuments, it will rightly stand accused of adding to cultural division and social discord.'

But the college denied that Rustat was being 'cancelled' since his life would be remembered elsewhere and not 'erased.'

For 65 past college students fighting the removal, barrister Justin Gau argued that the best solution was to 'contextualise' Rustat's life with a plaque close by the memorial explaining his conflicted background.

He said removing the memorial was like 'getting rid of an elderly and unpopular relative - though one who has been hugely generous in the past'.

After exhaustive argument and trawling through historical evidence, Deputy Chancellor of the Diocese of Ely, David Hodge QC, ruling on the case, came down in favour of retaining the memorial.

They accused Rustat (pictured: The Rustat plaque) of 'financial and administrative involvement in the trading of enslaved human beings over a substantial period of time'

For 65 past college students fighting the removal, barrister Justin Gau argued that the best solution was to 'contextualise' Rustat's life with a plaque close by the memorial (pictured) explaining his conflicted background

The Master of Jesus College, Sonita Alleyne, said that the proposal to relocate the monument to an educational exhibition space was 'part of a process of critical self-reflection on the long-term legacies of enslavement and colonial violence'

Given the architectural beauty of the chapel, the college would have to present compelling arguments for ripping out the memorial, he explained, which they had failed to do.

What the inscription on Rustat's memorial says TOBIAS RUSTAT, YEOMAN OF THE ROBES TO KING CHARLES THE SECOND, WHOM HE SERVED WITH ALL DUTY AND FAITHFULLNESS, IN HIS ADVERSITY AS WELL AS PROSPERITY. THE GREATEST PART OF THE ESTATE HE GATHERED BY GOD'S BLESSING, THE KING'S FAVOUR, AND HIS INDUSTRY, HE DISPOSED IN HIS LIFETIME IN WORKES OF CHARITY; AND FOUND THE MORE HE BESTOWED UPON CHURCHES, HOSPITALLS, UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES AND UPON POOR WIDOWS AND ORPHANS OF ORTHODOX MINISTERS, THE MORE HE HAD AT THE YEAR'S END. NEITHER WAS HE UNMINDFUL OF HIS KINDRED & RELATIONS, IN MAKING THEM PROVISIONS OUT OF WHAT REMAINED. HE DIED A BACHELOUR THE 15TH DAY OF MARCH, IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1693. AGED 87 YEARS. Advertisement

While acknowledging the obvious fact of slavery's 'evil and abhorrence' he said the main opposition to the Rustat memorial was based on a 'false narrative' that he had amassed most of his fortune from the slave trade.

'The true position, as set out in the historians' expert reports and their joint statement, is that Rustat's investments in the Company of Royal Adventurers Trading into Africa (the Royal Adventurers) brought him no financial returns at all; that Rustat only realised his investments in the Royal African Company in May 1691, some 20 years after he had made his gifts to the college, and some five years after the completion of the Rustat memorial and its inscription.

'Any moneys Rustat did realise as a result of his involvement in the slave trade comprised only a small part of his great wealth, and they made no contribution to his gifts to the college.'

He 'recognised' that willing involvement in the slave trade was itself deeply problematic - even if Rustat had made scant profits.

But the judge concluded: 'However, I would hope that, when Rustat's life and career is fully, and properly, understood, and viewed as a whole, his memorial will cease to be seen as a monument to a slave trader.

'Certainly, I do not consider that the removal of such a significant piece of contested heritage, representing a significant period in the historical development of the chapel from its medieval beginnings to its Victorian re-ordering, has been sufficiently clearly justified on the basis of considerations of pastoral wellbeing and opportunities for mission in circumstances where these have been founded upon a mistaken understanding of the true facts.'

He was persuaded that the appropriate response to Rustat's undoubted involvement in 'the abomination' that was the slave trade was not to remove his memorial from the college chapel but to retain it in the religious space for which it was always intended.

'In this way, the Rustat memorial may be employed as an appropriate vehicle to consider the imperfection of human beings and to recognise that none of us is free from all sin; and to question our own lives, as well as Rustat's, asking whether, by (for example) buying certain clothes or other consumer goods, or eating certain foods, or investing in the companies that produce them, we are ourselves contributing to, or supporting, conditions akin to modern slavery, or to the degradation and impoverishment of our planet.'

A spokesman for Jesus College said: 'We are deeply disappointed and shocked by the decision.

'Rustat's involvement in the slave trade has never been in question, and the widespread opposition to the presence of his memorial in the College Chapel is the result of this involvement and not any false narrative apparently created by the College about the sources of Rustat's wealth.

Rustat (pictured: The Rustat memorial) was a courtier under Charles II and a major benefactor to Cambridge University, but became a target for campaigners due to his involvement with the Royal African Company which operated on the west coast of Africa in the later 17th century under royal charter

The row even drew comment from the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, who asked: 'Why is it so much agony to remove a memorial to slavery?' The archbishop added that 'we need to change our practices'  making reference to Sonita Alleyne, a black woman and master of Jesus College who has to look at the memorial 'every time she sits in her stall'.

Save Our Statues, a campaign group fighting against the removal of historic plaques and statues, today backed the decision. 'As we've long argued, a disproportionate emphasis on links to slavery is not 'more history', it's a false distortion of history,' the group today said on Twitter.

'This celebratory memorial to an active participant in the slave trade remains a barrier to worship in our Chapel for some members of our community.

'It was right for us to have submitted this application. We will now carefully consider our next steps.'

Meanwhile Lawrence Goldman, a former Oxford University history professor who was a party to the case, told The Times: 'The fact weve pushed back sends a message to institutions that there will be opposition and this is not a free ride.

'Jesus College said it was not trying to cancel Rustat . . . I think the evidence suggests that it was.

'Its also a victory for conservation and historical scholarship. The judgment swept away the colleges arguments. I think institutions will now think twice about doing things of this nature.'

Save Our Statues, a campaign group fighting against the removal of historic plaques and statues, also backed the decision.

'As we've long argued, a disproportionate emphasis on links to slavery is not 'more history', it's a false distortion of history,' the group today said on Twitter.

A spokesman for the Rustat Memorial Group, which opposed the memorial's removal, said: 'We are pleased to read the judgment and hope that all parties can agree that the issues raised by the petition are now resolved.

'We wish Jesus College well as it focuses again on today's challenges in the university.'
A teenage double murder suspect has been freed on an ankle monitor after a judge used a woke bail reform group's 'safety tool' to decide he posed little risk to society.

Adrian Avila, 18, walked out of prison Tuesday after Albuquerque district judge Stanley Whitaker ruled that prosecutors could not prove that Avila posed a threat to the community despite having evidence that linked the teen to two separate killings.

He will be required to wear a GPS ankle monitor at all times and must adhere to a curfew.

Avila was granted his freedom thanks to the Arnold Tool, a risk assessment system that was developed by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation.

Adrian Avila (pictured) is awaiting the start of two trials for two separate murders he is being charged with in Albuquerque, New Mexico. But district judge Stanley Whitaker on Tuesday allowed him to await the start of the proceedings away from prison and ordered him to wear a GPS ankle monitor and adhere to a curfew.

It was deployed by courts in New Mexico and 2017, with the Arnold Foundation's website saying that it seeks to 'eliminate unjust pretrial detention and create a justice system where jail is only used when absolutely necessary.'

At the time of its introduction, research surrounding the assessment showed that suspects who were considered low and medium risk were apt to commit more crimes if they were imprisoned for a long stretch.

The controversial tool helps judges to determine if defendants can be released on their own recognizance, released under strict measures or kept in custody as they await trial.

The judicial system examines how the dangerous the accused suspect could be if they were to be released from custody and the possibility of them not skipping their trial hearings.

But bail reform measures have come under extreme scrutiny in recent months, after suspects deemed safe to released committed severe crimes across the US, leading to allegations that supporters are more concerned about defendants' rights than the safety of the general public.

Avila scored a 2 out of 7 on a scale for being a threat to society and was given 1 on a scale of failing to show up for trial.

New Mexico district judge Stanley Whitaker (pictured) based his decision to allow Adrian Avila, who is awaiting trial for two separate murders, to await the start of his trials away from prison because prosecutors were not able to provide sufficient proof that the 18-year-old posed a security and flight risk

The Albuquerque Police Department chief Harold Medina slammed judge Whitaker for basing his decision on the risk assessment tool to release Avila from prison.

'The ankle monitor is not the answer for somebody who has a violent history or violent charge on their hands,' Medina said, as quoted by ABC television affiliate KOAT. 'And if the Arnold (Tool) needs to be changed, let's stop talking about it and actually get it done.

It's the first time that a defendant who is accused of murdering two people in separate incidents is permitted to await trial away from the confines of a jail cell, according Bernalillo County district attorney Raul Torrez.

'We've made the decision already to file an appeal of that order and seek review from an appellate court and ask that Mr. Avila be remanded into custody pending outcome of not just one, but two separate murder cases,' Torrez told KOAT.

Since June 12, 2017, New Mexico courts have used a risk assessment tool that was developed by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, which sought to 'eliminate unjust pretrial detention and create a justice system where jail is only used when absolutely necessary.' Research showed that suspects who were considered low and medium risk were apt to commit more crimes if they were imprisoned for a long stretch of time

Defense attorney, Ahmad Assed, said prosecutors were lacking evidence took keep Avila in detention ahead of the start of the trial, indicating his client does not have a criminal record and that he turned himself in.

'We don't decide cases based on innuendo and DA's closing arguments geared toward the eye of the media. That was the whole deal today, was just those notion of a closing argument or opening statement for the media's purposes,' Assed said, according to KOAT. 'It's not for the court or the judge to discuss the details of the case. The judge must follow the law, and the law clearly requires the state to act. If the state does not act, and in this case, the state did not act, the court must follow the law.'

Avila is accused of being one of the four people who had a role in the murder of 17-year-old Donnie Brandon in August 2020.

Authorities charged him for the crime last week.

Former corrections officer Elias Otero is one of the two victims allegedly killed by Adrian Avila in New Mexico

Anna Bella Dukes, who is custody without bond, helped lure Elias Otero through a social media app as part of a plot to rob him

Avila turned himself in to authorities in December 2021 and was charged for the February 11, 2021 killing of former corrections officer, Elias Otero, 24. A second suspect, Anna Bella Dukes, 18, was also charged for the murder and remains in prison without bond.

Both Avila and Dukes face Dukes murder, kidnapping, armed robbery, tampering with evidence and conspiracy charges.

Investigator found that Dukes used a social media application to lure Otero's brother, Nicholas Otero, and allow Avila and another suspect to rob him. Otero was forced out of his vehicle and demanded him to turn over cash, jewelry and a gun.

They held him at gunpoint and drove to his home in his car and a second vehicle. Upon arriving they instructed him to call Elias Otero, so that he could meet them with additional money and a gun. Otero stepped out of the residence and threatened to shoot the suspects during the encounter before Avila shot and killed him.

Alicia Otero, who opposes the Arnold Tool, fears that another family could deal with the pain of losing their loved one with Avila awaiting trial.

'I feel another family is going to have to go through the pain that we're going through by losing their loved one also,' she said, according to KOAT. 'Every day we wake up. I don't eat, I don't sleep. All I think about is what it took from us. He took my baby.'
Dr. Sonya Douglass is fed up with her husband Rep. Steven Horsford's 'unbridled ambition' and publicly expressed her displeasure at his decision to run for reelection two years after being exposed for a decade-long affair.

The Nevada Democrat was 36 at the time that he began an affair with 21-year-old Senate intern Gabriela Linder. Horsford admitted the relationship to his wife after Linder, using the name 'Love Jones' - came forward with details of the affair in her podcast 'Mistress for Congress' and Twitter account.

Douglass wrote on Twitter that she is 'not enjoying the pain' of her husband's affair, having learned about it in May 2020.

'I have remained silent for nearly two years and want it to be clear that I am not enjoying the pain that my children and I continue to suffer since @stevenhorsford told me the day after Mothers Day about his 10-year affair AFTER already speaking to his staff and attorneys,' Douglass, who previously went by her husband's last name but has since returned to her maiden name on Twitter, wrote on the social media platform this week.

Douglass and Horsford are pictured above together after he won his race in 2018, two years before his decade-long affair was revealed

Linder claimed that the affair began in 2009 while she was interning for former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's Nevada office. At the time, Horsford was the majority leader of the Nevada state Senate

'That he would choose to file for re-election and force us to endure yet another season of living through the sordid details of the #horsfordaffair with #mistressforcongress rather than granting us the time and space to heal as a family.'

'We did not ask to be put in public life and were simply supporting @stevenhorsford because thats what we understood family to be and do. We just want to heal and live the amazing lives weve been destined to live, free of lies, manipulation, and unbridled ambition,' Douglass continued.

Horsford has been married to his wife - an associate professor at Columbia University - since 2000. The couple share three children, aged 13 to 21.

Horsford first represented Nevada's 4th district from 2013 to 2015 but lost his bid for reelection. He ran again in 2018 and won the Democratic primary one month after the affair came out, then defeated Republican Cresent Hardy and took his seat back in 2019. He won again in 2021 and is now seeking third term.

Horsford grew up in Nevada and owns a home there, but has been criticized as he and his wife and kids spend most of their time living in Arlington, Virginia.

It's not clear if Douglass and Horsford are separated, but appeared together publicly as recently as January. 'I was just trying to keep my family together,' Douglass wrote in a tweet.

Nevada Rep. Steven Horsford acknowledged the affair after Gabriela Linder - using the name 'Love Jones' - came forward with details

Horsford and his wife are pictured above in December 2021

Linder claimed that the affair began in 2009 while she was interning for former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's Nevada office. At the time, Horsford was the majority leader of the Nevada state Senate.

The the then-21 year old claimed that she met Horsford at an event and later arranged to meet him through a friend.

She said that the two had a sexual relationship off and on again until September 2019. But the two have been in communication up until April, when Linder reached out to Horsford personal number so that he could appear on an episode of a show her young son presents on Facebook. The representative appeared on the show on April 1.

Linder has stated on her podcast that her son was a result of another relationship she had while attending law school at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Their sexual relationship took place between 2009-2010 and 2017-2019, she claimed. The two maintained regular contact throughout the decade, however.

Linder asserted that she saw her podcast as 'an empowering journey' as she moves on from the relationship, which she claims she ended after Horsford refused to leave his wife in the 2020 election year.

'I decided I can't wait, deserved more and didn't want to be that person anymore,' she said. 'And I realized someone who could lie that way is not someone who would be honorable to me.'

But the mother has gone on the defensive in tweets, even sharing screenshots of conversations she claims were held between her and the representative. The exchange involves a Black Panther costume Linder said she purchased for Horsford.

Horsford served in Congress from 2013-2015 and again starting in 2019. He is running for reelection again this year

The mother has gone on the defensive in tweets, even sharing screenshots of conversations she claims were held between her and the representative. The exchange involves a Black Panther costume Linder said she purchased for Horsford

Besides the podcast, Linder plans on writing a book on her experience.

On the third episode of 'Mistress of Congress,' Linder stated that Horsford 'looked out for her over the years, from anything from a job recommendation to financial support.'

Linder never worked directly under the politician but would not elaborate on exactly Horsford would help her.

An aide for Horsford said Linder 'never received any compensation from the congressman of from the campaign over the course of their private relationship.'

'This was a private relationship of the congressman's and this was in no way related to his public office,' the aide added.

Linder did assert that to her knowledge, the representative did not use campaign funds or money from the state to purchase her anything.

The mother, who was a senior at University of Nevada, Las Vegas, when she met Horsford, said that now realizes the politician used his status and power to manipulate the situation. She claims he never told her not to tell anyone of the affair.

She said that the two had a sexual relationship off and on again until September 2019. But the two have been up in communication up until April, when Linder reached out to Horsford personal number so that he could appear on an episode of her son's show

'He knew how in love with him I was, and he knew what he could do and get away with,' she said. 'He knows I would support him. He never told me to keep quiet. He didn't have to. He knew I was loyal to a fault.'

Linder said she reached to Horsford through her publicist to have him on the show, receiving an email that directed her to an attorney in Washington D.C., Howard Schiffman.

According to the former intern, Horsford suggested that the issue would be damaging to everyone since they couldn't solve the situation amicably.

Linder plans to release a new podcast on Sunday but stated that she was not seeking to damage Horsford during an election year.

She did, however, want the politician to end his bid for re-election.

'If this was a story in 2018 (when Horsford successfully recaptured the seat after having lost it in 2014), he wouldn't have run,' Linder said. 'He obtained this position under false pretenses that he was a family man and man of God. He should take a step back, atone, and if people are satisfied, then he can come back into politics.'
Korean-German Chamber of Commerce and Industry President Martin Henkelmann

By Martin Henkelmann



I would like to extend my sincerest congratulations to President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol. The Korean-German Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KGCCI) looks forward to trustful relations and fruitful cooperation with the new government.



Transitioning into a new role is always challenging in politics as in business. However, assuming responsibility for the 10th-largest global economy in these disruptive times is a Herculean task for which we wish the new administration good luck and farsightedness. Germany is the eighth-largest trading partner of Korea and German companies have been third in investing in the country last year. We see even more potential for the bilateral economic relations, particularly if the new government embraces the opportunities in three fields.



First of all, there is the topic of deregulation and the legislative framework. Our regular surveys and the yearly hundreds of exchanges with companies already active or interested in the Korean market clearly show concerns in these areas. Deregulation is important to enable businesses to actively participate in the market, to invest in innovation and overall to stimulate efficiency. All these lead to increased economic growth.



The second focal point is international trade. Korea has become a major player in international trade. It has established one of the largest networks of free trade agreements (FTAs) globally. While the rules-based international trade system has been key to the economic success of Germany and Korea, this system is increasingly under stress. International collaboration built on just rules and fair standards deserves attention and efforts from the incoming government, especially as the global challenges like combatting climate change can only be solved through multinational endeavors. Furthermore, modernizing some of the FTAs, like the highly successful Korea-EU FTA, would stand out as a forceful signal and impulse for wider and enhanced economic exchange between companies in market economies.






Former British paratrooper Soldier F could still face prosecution for murder over two deaths at Bloody Sunday after a judge quashed a decision by prosecutors to drop his case.

Soldier F was being prosecuted for the murder of two men, James Wray and William McKinney, who were shot during a civil rights demonstration in Londonderry in 1972 along with 11 others.

Delivering today's ruling, Lady Chief Justice Mrs Siobhan McKeegan said the decision by the PPS not to continue the prosecution 'crossed the threshold of irrationality'.

Soldier F was accused of murdering James Wray (left) and William McKinney (right) on January 30, 1972

The PPS announced last year it was discontinuing the prosecution of Soldier F for the murders of Mr Wray and Mr McKinney amid concerns the case could collapse in light of a separate court ruling on the admissibility of evidence which caused the collapse of another Troubles murder trial involving two military veterans.

The McKinney family then launched a judicial review to challenge the PPS decision.

Delivering the verdict today, the Lady Chief Justice said: 'We consider that the decision crosses the threshold of irrationality where it simply does not add up, or in other words there is an error of reasoning which robs the decision of logic.

'It follows that the matter should remain with the PPS to reconsider the decision.

'There has already been considerable delay in the criminal process and so it may be that the swiftest and most effective course is actually for the district judge to be asked to rule on the admissibility issue in the first instance.

'It may be that public confidence in the interests of justice are best served by a definitive judicial determination on this issue by a court properly seized of the merits. The PPS will now have to decide on the next steps.'

The family of William McKinney: John (second left) and Mickey (second right), walk in with solicitors, brothers, Fearghal and Ciaran Shiels, as they arrive at the City Hotel in Londonderry, for a meeting with the Public Prosecution Service last year

Today Mickey McKinney, the brother of William McKinney, welcomed the judge's decision.

He said: 'We are delighted for our own family but also for the family of Jim Wray and those who were wounded in Glenfada Park.

'It was with regret that we were forced to bring these proceedings in the first place but the PPS did not engage with us properly in respect of its decision-making, but in fact came to Derry last July and presented us with a determination it had already decided upon.

'As the court has remarked today, this was in breach of the Charter for Victims and forced our hand.'

But it was slammed by unionist activist Jamie Bryson, who said: 'Todays decision by the High Court to interfere in the correct PPS decision not to prosecute Soldier F will simply reinforce the unionist view that the highest tier of the judiciary are inherently biased. Every politically contentious case is resolved in favour of nationalism.'

Bloody Sunday saw British troops open fire on civil rights demonstrators in the Bogside area of Derry, killing 13 people. Pictured: A confrontation between soldiers and protesters earlier in the day

Today, judicial reviews taken by a number of other Bloody Sunday families to challenge the PPS not to take prosecutions against five other veterans were dismissed by the court.

The Lady Chief Justice said she considered there was 'no error in law' in these decisions.

Bloody Sunday was one of the darkest days in Northern Ireland's history, when British soldiers shot dead 13 civil rights protestors in the Bogside area of Londonderry.

Another man shot by paratroopers on January 30 1972 died four months later. While many consider him the 14th victim of Bloody Sunday, his death was formally attributed to an inoperable brain tumour.
A veteran Kremlin envoy has quit and left the country with no intention to return allegedly in a protest over Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Anatoly Chubais, an economist and special envoy to international organisations for Putin since 2020, is the first senior official to quit since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine a month ago.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Wednesday confirmed Chubais, 66, had resigned, adding that he did so of his own accord.

But Chubais has not yet said why he resigned nor where he intends to go after leaving Russia, and hung up the phone when contacted by Reuters - though sources have said he is opposed to the war in Ukraine.

The economist was one of the principal architects of Boris Yeltsin's economic reforms of the 1990s and many Russians blame him for allowing a small group of tycoons to develop vast fortunes amid the mass privatisation of state-owned assets, while millions of regular citizens were left in poverty.

But Chubais was also a key figure behind Russia's cultivation of a market economy and also helped to modernise the nation's energy sector.

In recent years he continued to call for economic reform and was one of the most high-profile liberals associated with the Russian government, holding senior business and political roles under Putin.

He was appointed as a special envoy in 2020, charged with 'achieving goals of sustainable development', days after resigning as the head of state technology firm RUSNANO which he had run since 2008.

His resignation comes as the Kremlin stepped up pressure on oligarchs critical of the war in Ukraine, with Putin last week warning 'scum' traitors that the Russian people will 'spit them out like a midge that flew into their mouths'.

Veteran Kremlin envoy Anatoly Chubais (pictured right, with Russian President Vladimir Putin in December 2016) has quit and left the country with no intention to return allegedly in a protest over Russia's invasion of Ukraine

Chubais' resignation comes as the Kremlin stepped up pressure on oligarchs critical of the war in Ukraine, with Putin last week warning 'scum' traitors that the Russian people will 'spit them out like a midge that flew into their mouths'

Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, left, President Boris Yeltsin, centre, and chief of Yeltsin's staff Anatoly Chubais stand during a wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of Unknown Soldier to mark the Day of the Defender of the Fatherland in Moscow, Sunday, Feb. 23, 1997

Pro-Russian separatist troops patrol in Donetsk in eastern Ukraine on March 11 as civilians scrambled to leave the city following a sustained shelling campaign

A residential block, including a school, destroyed after the building in Kyiv was hit in shelling on March 18

Chubais was one of the most prominent Russians of the chaotic immediate post-Soviet era.

Enemies cast him as the Kremlin puppet master who sold off the assets of a former superpower to a small group of oligarchs in the privatisations of the 1990s, while his supporters saw Chubais as a hero who fought to establish a market in Russia - and prevented it from tipping into civil war.

After graduating from the Leningrad Institute of Engineering and Economics in 1977, he went on to earn a PhD in Economics and by the late 1980s had become a prominent figure pushing for privatisation as the Soviet Union began to break.

In 1990, Chubais became a deputy on the Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) City Council and by 1991 - the year the Soviet Union collapsed - was made a minister in Boris Yeltsin's cabinet and charged with implementing a mass privatisation programme of state-owned companies.

The programme helped Russia to emerge from communism and begin cultivating a market economy, but also enabled a small group of oligarchs to secure vast fortunes in the early post-Soviet period by taking advantage of the huge differences between the value of Russian commodities versus Western markets.

A tiny group of kleptocrats rapidly cemented elite status, while millions of regular citizens saw what little money they had evaporate.

Chubais was in the late 1990s appointed as head of the state-owned electricity monopoly 'Unified Energy System' (UES) which at the time was struggling to get paid for the electricity it sold, and was elected president of the CIS Electric Power Council in 2000.

Chubais managed to raise billions of dollars worth of investment into the Russian energy sector, and ushered in an era of modernisation which dramatically increased energy capacity and reduced payment issues, while breaking up the UES monopoly.

In recent years, the economist continued to call for economic reform and was one of the most high-profile liberals associated with the Russian government.

His resignation amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine could represent a major milestone in the conflict, as Chubais represents the first top tier official close to Putin to leave since the war began - though he has not yet disclosed the reason behind his decision.

However, a Western official said that although the resignation was a 'significant statement' it does not come as a major surprise because Chubais was 'relatively high up on the list' of people who might make such a step.

'I think it's encouraging that there are senior members of the Russian political class that are doing such things, but it doesn't lead me to a conclusion that this is in any way undermining the security of Putin and his regime, given the iron grip that he holds together with those at the centre of his power,' the official said, on condition of anonymity.

'But nonetheless, I think it is an encouraging statement that such a figure would make this move.'

Chubais pictured in 2000. The economist was elected president of the CIS Electric Power Council in 2000, and went to great lengths to modernise Russia's energy sector

In recent years, the economist continued to call for economic reform and was one of the most high-profile liberals associated with the Russian government

Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden flies to Europe on Wednesday for an emergency NATO summit on Ukraine, where invading Russian troops are stalled, cities are under bombardment and the besieged port of Mariupol is in flames.

Four weeks into a war that has driven a quarter of Ukraine's 44 million people from their homes, Russia has failed to capture a single major Ukrainian city, while Western sanctions have ostracised it from the world economy.

After failing in what Western countries say was an attempt to seize Kyiv and depose the government, Russian forces have taken heavy losses, been frozen in place for at least a week on most fronts and face supply problems and fierce resistance.

They have turned to siege tactics and bombardment of cities, causing massive destruction and many civilian deaths.

Moscow says its aim is to disarm its neighbour, and its 'special military operation' is going to plan. It denies targeting civilians.

Worst hit has been Mariupol, a southern port completely surrounded by Russian forces, where hundreds of thousands of people have been sheltering since the war's early days, under constant bombardment and with food, water and heat supplies cut.

New satellite photographs from commercial firm Maxar released overnight showed massive destruction of what was once a city of 400,000 people, with columns of smoke rising from residential apartment buildings in flames.

No journalists have been able to report from inside the Ukrainian-held parts of the city for more than a week, during which time Ukrainian officials say Russia has bombed a theatre and an art school used as bomb shelters, burying hundreds of people alive. Russia denies targeting those buildings.

Badly damaged and partially collapses apartment buildings are seen in the city of Mariupol, which has been under near-constant Russia bombardment since early March and been almost-totally destroyed

Heavily damaged apartment buildings are seen in southern Mariupol, as a local official said the city has been reduced to 'the ashes of a dead land' by Russian bombardment

Smoke is seen rising over civilian areas of Mariupol, which has been almost totally levelled by Russian forces in an attempt to take the city - which has been without water, food or electricity for almost a month

An industrial area in the centre of the city of Mariupol, which has been heavily bombed by Russian forces, is seen in this satellite image taken on Tuesday

Heavily damaged buildings and apartment blocks are seen in a satellite image of Mariupol, where more than 100,000 people are still said to be stranded in conditions likened to a 'hell-scape'

Biden, due to arrive in Brussels on Wednesday evening, will meet NATO and European leaders in an emergency summit at the Western military alliance's headquarters.

The leaders are expected to roll out additional sanctions against Russia on Thursday. Sources said the US package would include measures targeting Russian members of parliament.

Biden will also visit Poland, which has taken in most of the more than 3.6 million refugees who have fled Ukraine and has been the main route for Western supplies of weapons to Ukraine.

In a sign of Moscow's further isolation, Poland announced it was expelling 45 Russian diplomats accused of either being undercover spies or 'associated' with them.

Several other eastern European countries have announced similar moves in recent days, although not on such a large scale. Russia has rejected all the accusations.

Despite its losses so far, Russia may still be hoping to make more gains on the battlefield, especially in the east, in territory including Mariupol which Moscow demands Ukraine cede to Russian-backed separatists.

In a daily intelligence update, Britain's defence ministry said the entire battlefield across northern Ukraine - which includes huge armoured columns that once bore down on Kyiv - was now 'static', with invaders apparently trying to reorganise.

But in the east, the Russians were trying to link troops at Mariupol with those near Kharkiv in the hope of encircling Ukrainian forces, while in the southwest they were bypassing the city of Mykolayiv to try to advance on Odesa, Ukraine's biggest port.

Ukrainian officials described sporadic shelling in other cities overnight, with two civilians killed in the Mykolayiv region, a bridge destroyed in the Chernihiv region, and residential buildings and a shopping mall struck in two districts of Kyiv, wounding at least four people.

A soldier raises a Ukrainian flag in the city of Makariv, to the west of Kyiv, which has been recaptured - putting Russian forces in Bucha, Irpin and Borodyanka at risk of getting cut off

Ukrainian troops inspect a Russian rocket artillery truck that was destroyed in fighting in Makariv, to the west of Kyiv

A Ukrainian soldier stands next to a Russian armoured vehicle that was captured during fighting near Makariv, which is now back under Kyiv's control
A detective who gave child abuse images back to a suspected rapist has been banned from the police after being found guilty of gross misconduct.

DC Philip Payton, from Humberside Police, was found to have repeatedly failed to properly probe crimes after an investigation into six of cases from 2015 to 2017.

On one occasion, he recovered several 'electrical devices' from the home of a man accused of rape, the Independent Office of Police Conduct (IOPC) found.

Despite knowing at least one of them contained indecent images of children he secretly handed it back to the suspect.

He also lied to victims' families and colleagues, wrote incorrect information in crime logs and missed crucial evidence while investigating rapes and sexual assaults.

His mistakes meant investigations stalled and in several cases it was only after a different detective was appointed to take charge that perpetrators were prosecuted.

Payton was found guilty of gross misconduct at a hearing yesterday and he would have been dismissed without notice if he had not already resigned this month.

DC Philip Payton, from Humberside Police (file photo of its HQ), was found to have repeatedly failed to properly probe crimes after an investigation into six of cases from 2015 to 2017

On another occasion he was found to have not processed or managed case material properly during a probe into a woman stealing money from her vulnerable parents.

The disgraced policeman was also found to have failed to hand the files over to the Crown Prosecution Service to review.

Meanwhile he failed to process and manage case material or submit files to the CPS in another sex abuse probe - where he did not update the victim on the case.

In both cases, it was only after other detectives were appointed that the criminals were charged and prosecuted.

During interviews with investigators, Payton provided no comment for his actions. In a prepared statement he claimed he was unsupported and overworked.

But the IOPC found he was applying for additional responsibilities at the time and supervisors had met with him to try and help manage any workload problems.

Humberside Police referred five of the investigations in May 2017 after a sergeant identified concerns, citing a lack of action and ineffective investigation.

A sixth was then sent to the IOPC by the force in September 2017 after a complaint from a member of the public, with the investigation finishing in May 2020.

The case was also sent to the CPS to consider charges over the distribution of child abuse images - but it did not authorise any.

IOPC Regional Director Miranda Biddle said: 'DC Payton's handling of these investigations fell so far below the standards of what members of the public are entitled to expect and his failures have had a devastating impact on the families involved.

'Had it not been for the actions of his colleagues in identifying and rectifying this litany of mistakes, his incompetence might have resulted in serious crimes going unpunished.

'He has at no point taken responsibility for his extremely poor performance and this kind of response severely erodes trust and confidence in the police and anyone who behaves in such a way can have no place in policing.

Following a misconduct hearing at the Old Magistrates' Court building in Goole (pictured), former officer Payton was found guilty of gross misconduct

'We have been assured that Humberside Police have subsequently undertaken an internal review and implemented additional supervision approaches to ensure that concerns are flagged and addressed to prevent such failures reoccurring.

'My thoughts go out to all those who have been affected during the course of these investigations and I thank the newly assigned detectives on some of the investigations who have demonstrated a commitment to securing justice for families.'

Humberside Police Superintendent Matt Baldwin said: 'This was a concerning case where an officer repeatedly breached the standards of behaviour that we expect here at Humberside Police, putting investigations at risk.

'He is no longer serving the public as a police officer and I hope this offers reassurance to our communities that investigating crime and putting offenders before the courts is something that we take very seriously.

'I am pleased to share that all of the investigations that Payton failed to appropriately investigate were reallocated to other officers and subsequently convictions were secured in the majority of them.

'The case was also reviewed internally and learning was implemented to prevent any further instances of this nature.

'As part of our commitment to victims, supervisors across the force work very closely with their teams to ensure that investigations are of the highest standard and any concerns are flagged and addressed.'

Payton was added to the National College of Policing's barred list - meaning he can never again work in any UK force.
The BBC has filed its fourth complaint in five years to the UN against Iran after the broadcaster accused the hardline Islamic republic of sending its female journalists rape and death threats.

The Corporation has called for Tehran to investigate and prosecute as women journalists including BBC News Persian presenter Rana Rahimpour face relentless online attacks and harassment.

These include the photoshopping of a presenter onto a pornographic image using hacked photos from her Facebook page, and reportedly sending to her 14-year-old son in London. The story was picked up by a national newspaper in Iran, the broadcaster said.

Others include the release of fake stories claiming a BBC journalist had been raped by a colleague known to Iranian audiences and a fake photo depicting her with the illegitimate child.

Writing in the i newspaper, Miss Rahimpour said she had received the threat: One day, we will arrest you, we will rape your daughter in front of you, and then we will cut both your heads off.

The BBC has called for Tehran to investigate and prosecute as women journalists including BBC News Persian presenter Rana Rahimpour face relentless online attacks and harassment

A handout picture provided by the office of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

Officers explained to her father that she had kept it a secret from her family because she was embarrassed about being raped by a colleague.

Female journalists working for the BBCs Persian service say that they have opted out of using social media as a journalistic tool and self-censor online for fear of harassment.

The new complaint to the UN against Iran follows several attempts by the BBC since 2017 to address the risks facing female journalists.

Since BBC News Persian TV began in 2009, journalists have been the subject of a campaign of harassment and intimidation, including prosecution and conviction in Iran for national security crimes  with some of the offences attracting the death penalty.

Similarly, their families have faced arbitrary arrest and detention, been blacklisted from jobs and had their passports confiscated, with effective travel bans imposed.

They have also faced pressure to coerce their family members to leave the BBC and return to Iran.

As a result of the threats and abuse, BBC News Persian has no staff working in Iran.

Writing in the i, BBC presenter Miss Rahimpour said: We receive countless online threats of sexual violence and graphic images. They are trying to scare us, to silence us, to counter our ability to use social media for our journalism and drive us out of these online spaces.

Female journalists working for the BBCs Persian service say that they have opted out of using social media as a journalistic tool and self-censor online for fear of harassment

The United Nations headquarters in New York on March 17, 2022

It can have a negative effect on mental health, with disgusting words and images still running through your head hours after deleting them. All because we are journalists for the BBC. It might not be personal, but it feels it.

We call on the international community around the world to stand in solidarity with our women journalists, to hear our voices and take a stand against online violence.

This is why today the BBC has filed an urgent complaint to the United Nations about the gendered harassment of our women journalists.

The UN has raised concern about Irans online violence towards women, how it is closing the public space for womens voices and resulting in gendered censorship.

Liliane Landor, senior controller of BBC International News and director of the BBC World Service, said: We absolutely deplore the violent, misogynistic and gendered harassment our women journalists have to face every day.

Trusted and impartial journalism is fundamental to any democracy and it is only by working together that we can ensure the safety of journalists everywhere and ensure womens voices are included.

We have to be able to work unhindered, free from threats and free from abuse.

Caoilfhionn Gallagher QC and Jennifer Robinson, counsel for the World service, added: Iran has international obligations of due diligence to take action against those responsible.

We call on the UN to condemn the attacks and to ensure Iran meets its international obligations.

There is a long enmity between the UK and Iran that traces back to 1953, when the CIA joined British spies in fomenting a coup against the elected government of Iranian then-prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh.

In 2017, an Iranian court froze the assets of more than 150 people associated with the Persian service, which remains in place amid ongoing domestic legal challenges.

BBC News Persian staff in London have also faced credible death threats requiring police intervention and protection in the UK, they have said.

MailOnline has contacted the Iranian delegation to the UN and the Metropolitan Police for comment.
Disturbing new footage shows two violent and unprovoked attacks on police officers working at Salt Lake City's airport.

In a clip captured on film March 12, a man can be seen throwing down his bag and throwing a sucker punch at a SLCPD officer who was walking past him inside the airport's terminal in a seemingly unprovoked assault.

The 33-year-old man initially turns his attention toward a second officer and appears ready to throw another punch. Instead, he quickly puts his hands up then gets onto his knees after the attack, and is easily subdued.

'The man, without warning, dropped his bag and punched an officer in the head, nearly knocking him to the ground,' police said.

Scroll down for video

In a clip captured on film March 12, a 33-year-old man can be seen throwing down his bag and throwing a punch at a SLCPD officer, seemingly unprovoked

After the punch, the man quickly puts his hands up then gets onto his knees after the attack, and is easily subdued

'After the punch, the man turned his attention toward the second officer and appeared to throw a second punch but immediately transitioned into a position of surrender and put his hands up.'

The man, whose identify has not been released, was taken into custody and booked into the Salt Lake County Jail on a charge of assaulting an officer.

Captain Stefhan Bennett with the SLCPD Airport Division told KSLTV that 'the targeting of my officers, especially in the second incident, is extremely concerning to [him].'

Another disturbing clip from February 17 begins with a 28-year-old man, dressed in all black with a green beanie covering his long red hair, standing before a TSA agent with his hands held awkwardly at his chest as he looks around anxiously.

Another clip from February 17 begins with a 28-year-old man, dressed in all black with a green beanie covering his long red hair, standing before a TSA agent with his hands held awkwardly at his chest as he looks around anxiously

He attempts to walk past the female agent, and is quickly intercepted by a Salt Lake City Police Department officer, who wrestles him to the ground with the help of a male TSA agent

But after about a minute, when the officer has clasped one cuff onto the man's hand, the man unexpectedly turns over and strikes twice

The unruly man kicks at the officer in the tussle with one handcuff dangling from his wrist

He attempts to walk past the female agent, and is quickly intercepted by a Salt Lake City Police Department officer, who wrestles him to the ground with the help of a male TSA agent.

For a moment, it appears the unruly man has been subdued. The officer can be seen speaking into his radio, then flipping the man onto his back to place him in handcuffs.

'I need you to calm down, sir,' the SLCPD officer can be heard saying in body camera footage from the incident. 'Calm the f*** down! Calm down! On your stomach!'

The officer yells over and over for the man to put his hands behind his back.

But after about a minute, when the officer has clasped one cuff onto the man's hand, the man unexpectedly turns over and strikes twice. He quickly crawls away, throwing kicks at the policeman as he tries again to get a hold of the him.

At that point, retired law enforcement officer Enrique Rodriguez, who witnessed the struggle as he went through screening, runs to the officer's aid and knocks the belligerent man back to the ground after he jumps up.

'The gentleman kicked the police officer off of him. And since the officer was alone in the fight and he was staggering, I decided to jump in to help them out,' Rodriguez told KSLTV after the incident. Instincts took over from a law enforcement and from human aspect.

'Im very thankful that he was able to step in,' Bennett said.

The officer is then able to get ahold of the man, with Rodriguez helping to maintain control. Two more officers run up to keep the man down, then a third walks over to assist.

The officer is then able to get ahold of the man, with Rodriguez helping to maintain control. Two more officers run up to keep the man down, then a third walks over to assist

'Stop resisting! Give us your other hand!' the officers can be heard saying on body camera footage

'Stop resisting! Give us your other hand!' the officers can be heard saying on body camera footage.

'Other hand now! Give me your hand! Okay man, settle down. Can you settle down?'

'Yes, sir,' the ornery man can be heard saying, panting heavily.

SLCPD officials told KSL TV that the man was not a ticketed passenger, and had no business at the airport. The case has since been forwarded to the FBI and the United States Attorney's office.

The man never made it outside the screening area and did not impact airport operations, they said.

The dramatic struggles came as U.S. inflight disturbances jumped by 500 percent, from 2 incidents per 1 million passengers screened in 2019 to 12 per each 1 million in 2021, according to the TSA.

Since January 1, the Federal Aviation Administration said there have been 85 assaults on TSA officers. The agency told a U.S. House panel on Tuesday that they had received 3,509 reports of unruly airline passengers, including 2,605 who have refused to wear a mask to protect against the spread of COVID-19.

Meanwhile, resisting arrest and assaults on police officer cases in Salt Lake City increased by 16.33 percent last year.

Salt Lake City Police Department Chief Mike Brown said that 'these incidents show a total disregard for basic dignity and respect.'

'This conduct can put our officers, airline passengers and airport employees at risk, and I hope these types of assaults end now.'

Matt Davis, the TSA federal security director for the state of Utah, said that the agency takes a 'zero-tolerance approach to threats, verbal abuse and physical violence of any kind against our employees.'
Chicago Public Schools (CPS) agreed to pay $1.5million to two families whose disabled sons were raped by the same student eight months apart.

Two male students at William J. Bogan High School in Chicago were raped on two separate occasions by the same student, who was also disabled.

The families' joint lawyer Carolyn Daley said the school failed to notify the accused rapist's teachers after the first attack in 2016, and he was never monitored in the restroom or removed from the school.

'Well, what happens when you do that?' Daley told CBS 2 in February. 'He ended up sexually assaulting another cognitively disabled child in the bathroom at Bogan High School eight months later.'

CPS denied the allegations and tried to get the case dismissed twice, but has since settled for $1.5million - $725,000 will go to the first student's family and $850,000 will go to the second student's. The case was slated for trial soon.

'While nothing can change what their children have experienced due to the failures of Chicago Public Schools, this settlement will provide some justice and healing for these victims,' Daley told CBS News.

Two disabled boys were assaulted by the same student, also disabled, in two separate occasion inside the William J. Bogan High School (pictured) bathroom

One of the boys was found in the bathroom (pictured, a bathroom in the school) bent over with his pants down with the accused boy and another student, who was also a part of the special needs program.

CPS released a statement on the settlement saying it 'firmly believes that students who are impacted as a result of a legally recognized failure on the District's part should be compensated in a reasonable manner that will remedy injuries to the student.'

'There is a tentative settlement agreement in place that resolves the matter in a way that is fair to the student and to the taxpayers who fund the District.'

The school board is supposed to confirm the settlement numbers at its meeting today.

'This shouldn't have happened in a high school with special needs kids - or any kid,' the father of one of the victims told CBS 2 earlier this month. 'We thought they'd be safe in school.'

Daley said the 15-year-old victim was found inside the bathroom bent over with his pants down with two other students, including the accused rapist - who has 27 conduct violations and a history of aggressive behavior and sexual misconduct.

All the students were a part of the cluster program for special needs children and had an 'action plan' in place, including being escorted around the building.

The parents also told CBS 2 that the principal asked their son to 'stand up and show me how it happened' before asking the boy if 'it hurt.'

'What kind of question is that,' his mother asked. 'How the heck did that happen, in school? I mean, no one was watching.'

'We'd thought he'd be safe in school, you know,' the father said.

The parents said they chose not to press charges against the rapist, because they thought he needed help, but instead sued CPS for failing to protect their son. They said they only found out about the attack after their son told another classmate what happened. That student reported it to the teacher.

CPS argued it had no duty to protect the boy in the bathroom, but called the child's testimony 'self-serving.'

The parents, who spoke anonymously, said students in their children's program were supposed to be escorted around the hallways in the school and should have been monitored in the restroom

They also expressed shock that the school did nothing to protect other students, despite knowing the rapist's reported history with aggressive behavior and sexual misconduct

'The most vulnerable spot for a child at a school is in the bathroom,' Daley said earlier this month.

CPS' lawyer also allegedly asked the boy if he 'knew what gay means?'

The other student's mother said her son told her he was 'hurt and mentioned blood.'

'I went crazy,' the unidentified mother told CBS 2 in 2018. 'He needed to be protected. He's vulnerable.'

She also said at the time that her son's individual education plan (IEP) required her son to be escorted almost everywhere in the school, since he has trouble recognizing when he is in danger.

DailyMail.com attempted to contact Chicago Public Schools and Daley for comment.

In 2018, CPS settled with the family of a student for $1million after being accused of 'sweeping under the carpet' two staff members - a teacher and an assistant principal - being removed from school amid misconduct allegations.

The teacher was reportedly having a relationship with a special needs student.
This is the moment a brave woman tried to stop three masked robbers from raiding a spa in Manhattan this past weekend.

The three perpetrators entered the Rescue Spa on East 19th Street in Manhattan's Flatiron district shortly after 2:30pm on Saturday afternoon, according to police, where they stole over $3,000 worth of products.

At first, the trio looked to be browsing the shelves nonchalantly, but it quickly became apparent they were filling their pockets with merchandise.

Upon realizing the crooks' true intentions, a woman stepped forward to confront one of them, who knocked a stack of merchandise to the floor as he shoved her away.

A few moments later, the thieves made their way to the exit, pockets full of loot, but the woman pursued them to the door where security footage appeared to show her attempting to pull one of the fleeing criminals back into the store.

The masked man kicked and shoved her once again, before haring off with his accomplices to complete the 14-second shock heist.

It is the latest in a long line of smash-and-grab robberies blighting the Big Apple, a trend which has spread seemingly from California where larceny has become almost commonplace.

New York City is experiencing a major crime surge as of late, with the NYPD's February crime statistics revealed an almost 60 per cent increase in felonies vs the same month last year.

Upon realizing the crooks' true intentions, a woman stepped forward to confront one of them, who knocked a stack of merchandise to the floor as he shoved her away

A few moments later, the thieves made their way to the exit, pockets full of loot, but the woman pursued them to the door where security footage appeared to show her attempting to pull one of the fleeing criminals back into the store

One of the robbers pushed and kicked the woman again as he departed, while another woman ran from the spa ran across to collect the merchandise that had been knocked to the floor

It is unclear exactly what merchandise was stolen by the masked trio, but the police report said a total of $3,129 had been made off with.

Rescue Spa is advertised as a luxury day spa which offers a range of beauty treatments, but also sells high-end health and wellness products and tools, some of which are sold for hundreds of dollars according to its website.

Jennifer Labs, CEO of Rescue Spas, said: 'While this was certainly an unfortunate incident, we are so grateful no one was injured and for the way our local police have handled our case.'

Labs said officers from the NYPD's 13th precinct have upped patrols in the area in response, and said the spa is looking forward to welcoming clients back amid increased police protection.

The brazen heist is comparable to countless incidents plaguing cities across the state of California, which has been hit hard by petty criminals trying to make easy money by turning over luxury retail stores.

California Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom has vowed to crack down on gangs of retail thieves, despite a controversial 2014 law - Proposition 47 - that barred prosecutors from charging suspected shoplifters accused of stealing less than $950 worth of merchandise with felonies.

But the trend has only worsened in light of the Covid-19 pandemic, and smash-and-grab heists of retail stores have become a regular occurrence across the state.

A jewelry store in Beverly Hills lost millions in merchandise in a smash-and-grab robbery in broad daylight just yesterday afternoon.

Authorities said that five thieves arrived at Luxury Jewels of Beverly Hills at the corner of South Beverly Drive and Charleville Boulevard at about 2pm, obliterating the front window of the store and making off with bags of expensive jewelry before fleeing in a separate car.

Roving gangs of criminals have been known to target high-end stores like Louis Vuitton and Burberry, but also national chains like Walgreens and CVS.

Walgreens said last year that retail theft in San Francisco was five times the chain average and security costs were 46 times the chain average, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

According to the latest available crime data, grand larceny rates in California's liberal bastion were up 19 per cent in late February, compared with the same period last year.

A group of five is seen on video with what police say appeared to be sledgehammers, obliterating the front window of the store

Luxury Jewels of Beverly Hills on the corner of South Beverly Drive and Charleville Boulevard

Meanwhile, New York is experiencing a startling rise in crime across the board.

Statistics released earlier this month show an increase of nearly 60 percent in incidents in February this year versus 2021 - with grand larceny up by an eye-watering 79 per cent.

The city's latest crime figures released by the NYPD showed 9,138 incidents last month, as opposed to 5,759 during the same period in 2021  with double-digit surges in nearly every major category.

There were 32 murders in February  three more than the same month last year.

Multiple other categories saw shocking jumps, including car theft, which soared by nearly 105 percent; 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.

It comes amid reports that several violent criminals with extensive rap sheets were being released without bail after being arrested.

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

Christopher Herrmann, a former Crime Analyst Supervisor with the NYPD and a Professor in the Department of Law & Police Science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, told DailyMail.com he finds the statistics extremely worrying.

'All of these numbers are bad, to be honest,' Herrmann said. 'Generally, increases and decreases in crime would be in the single digits. These new numbers are not good.'

Herrmann argued the increase can be traced back to lax bail laws, which mean perpetrators can often walk out of jail quickly after being arrested - a situation that leads to more repeat offenses.

'There are certainly enough cases of people being released from incarceration who should have stayed in jail,' he said.

Herrmann added that the new numbers for February - typically a low-crime month due to weather and other factors - portend poorly for the rest of the year to come.

'There is no easy solution - these are longer term problems,' the crime analyst said. 'This is a new crime rate... People should be worried.'
Anti-lockdown protesters accused of harassing BBC Newsnight journalist Nicholas Watt will stand trial in June, after today's hearing was adjourned because one of their lawyers has Covid.

Martin Hockridge, 57, Christopher Aitken, 62, Djazia Chaib-Eddour, 43, Alexander Peat, 34, and 44-year-old Gary Purnell are all charged with harassing the political editor in Whitehall, central London.

Hockridge is accused of yelling 'traitor' at the journalist, but he claimed it was not a 'threatening or abusive word' to use, an earlier hearing was told.

Purnell today pleaded not guilty to the charge of using threatening or abusive language or behaviour causing alarm or distress.

The other four protesters denied the same charge at an earlier hearing at Westminster Magistrates' Court.

Peat was asked to remove a T-shirt bearing the message 'proudly unvaccinated' before entering the courtroom.

The trial, originally set for today, was adjourned due to a representative of one of the defendants testing positive for Covid-19 and Purnell, who is homeless, was not informed of proceedings until Monday.

Newsnight political editor Nicholas Watt (right) ran behind a line of police near Downing Street after trying to evade demonstrators including Martin Hockridge (left)

Martin Hockridge arrives at an earlier hearing. He denies using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour with intent to cause harassment, alarm or distress on June 14

Alexander Peat was asked to remove a T-shirt bearing the message 'proudly unvaccinated' before entering the courtroom

Gary Purnell today pleaded not guilty to the charge of using threatening or abusive language or behaviour causing alarm or distress

Judge Briony Clarke said: 'It seems to me everyone is agreed for various reasons the best way is to have all the defendants dealt with together.

'That includes the concern of the complainant to give evidence on separate occasions during the trial.

'Despite the disappointment that the trial was ready to go forward today, I have decided it is in the interests of justice to list the trial for the end of June.

'The best thing to do is adjourn all defendants until 29 June, 30 June and 1 July.'

The men were released on unconditional bail.

The defendants were supported by a large group of anti-lockdown activists, including anti-vaxxer and Covid-19 conspiracy theorist Piers Corbyn.

The group mostly stayed quiet throughout proceedings, other than when it was noted a solicitor was unable to attend court today due to contracting Covid.

Following this, Mr Corbyn shouted: 'It's all lies anyway!'

Ahead of his first court appearance, Hockridge wrote on Facebook: 'I stand by my actions. It is unacceptable that the BBC lies and spread fear among the nation.

'The propaganda pushed out by this man and the insidious organisation he works for. Nicholas Watt is a traitor, cast from the same mould as Lord Haw-Haw.'

Hockridge added: 'Never expect the truth from the BBC, and did the weasel engineer that incident by milling around in a BBC lanyard in a crowd baring 'The Media Is the Virus' placards, a movement that has and is currently protesting at the BBC? I think he was hoping for that reaction.'

Boris Johnson led condemnation of 'disgraceful' footage of the incident, emphasising the importance of a free press to the country's democracy.

He tweeted: 'Disgraceful to see the hounding of Nick Watt doing his job.

'The media must be able to report the facts without fear or favour  they are the lifeblood of our democracy.'

Other MPs also condemned the behaviour of those protesting against the Government's extension of coronavirus restrictions.

Home Secretary Priti Patel tweeted: 'The video of BBC Newsnight's Nick Watt being abused by a mob is appalling and distressing. This behaviour is never acceptable.'

She later added: 'The safety of journalists is fundamental to our democracy. This month the Government launched a consultation to better understand the nature & volume of threats and abuse against journalists who are operating in the UK.'

Aitken, of Lambeth, south London, Chaib-Eddour, of Islington, north London, Hockridge, of Harpenden, Hertfordshire, Peat, of Wandsworth, south west London, and Purnell, of no fixed abode, each deny one change of harassment.

Joseph Olswang, 39, denies the same charge but will stand trial separately.
Vladimir Putin has been accused of using banned white phosphorus weapons in Ukraine amid fears he may be on the verge of resorting to chemical warfare

NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg also vowed to provide extra support for Ukraine to deal with chemical and nuclear threats as it battles Russia's invading forces

eaders will agree at Thursday's summit in Brussels on deploying troops to Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia

NATO leaders are set to agree on deploying four new battle groups to the alliance's eastern flank to bolster their defence in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Leaders will agree at Thursday's summit in Brussels on deploying troops to Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia, NATO's secretary general Jens Stoltenberg said.

'I expect leaders will agree to strengthen NATO's posture in all domains, with major increases in the eastern part of the alliance on land, in the air and at sea,' Stoltenberg said ahead of the urgent NATO summit on the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The NATO chief also vowed to provide extra support for Ukraine to deal with chemical and nuclear threats as it battles Russia's invading forces.

'Tomorrow, I expect allies will agree to provide additional support, including cybersecurity assistance as well as equipment to help Ukraine protect against chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threats,' Stoltenberg said.

Vladimir Putin has been accused of using banned white phosphorus weapons in Ukraine amid fears he may be on the verge of resorting to chemical warfare.

Stoltenberg also accused China of giving political backing to Russia with 'blatant lies' as it attacks Ukraine, and warned Beijing against providing material support to Moscow's war effort.

Leaders will agree at Thursday's summit in Brussels on deploying troops to Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia, NATO's secretary general Jens Stoltenberg said. Pictured: A French army tank is seen at the Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base near Constanta, Romania, on March 3

An apartment building after a rocket strike, amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine, in Kramatorsk, Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine on March 18

The NATO chief also vowed to provide extra support for Ukraine to deal with chemical and nuclear threats as it battles Russia's invading forces

'China has provided Russia with political support, including by spreading blatant lies and misinformation, and allies are concerned that China could provide material support for the Russian invasion,' the NATO chief said.

'I expect leaders will call on China to live up to its responsibilities as a member of the UN Security Council, refrain from supporting Russia's war effort, and join the rest of the world in calling for an immediate, peaceful end to this war.'

China, which has not condemned Russia's invasion and criticised Western sanctions, defended Moscow on Wednesday, calling Russia an 'important member' of the G20 after Washington raised the prospect of excluding Moscow from the group.

US President Joe Biden last week warned his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping there would be 'consequences' if Beijing provides support to Russia during its invasion of Ukraine.

Jinping and Putin earlier this year declared a relationship of 'no limits' following a visit by the Russian President to Beijing for the Winter Olympics.

Stoltenberg also accused China of giving political backing to Russia as it attacks Ukraine, and warned Beijing against providing material support to Moscow's war effort. Pictured: Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, shakes hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping, right, during the Tsinghua Universitys ceremony, at Friendship palace in 2019 in Beijing, China

Stoltenberg meanwhile said that the new NATO battle groups being deployed to Bulgaria, Slovakia, Romania and Hungary, as well as the existing forces in the Baltic countries and Poland, means NATO will have eight multinational groups along the alliance's eastern flank.

Stoltenberg said that the Ukraine crisis has shown that NATO must reset its deterrence and defence posture for the longer term.

Russia meanwhile refuses to rule out using nuclear weapons if it faces an 'existential threat', Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told CNN.

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby slammed Moscow's 'dangerous' rhetoric, and Biden warned en route to Europe that Russia may also use chemical weapons in Ukraine as its ground offensive stalls.

'Our armed forces and citizens are holding out with superhuman courage,' Andriy Yermak, a top advisor to Zelensky, said as Biden travelled to the summits of NATO, the G7 and European Union in Brussels.

'But we cannot win a war without offensive weapons, without medium-range missiles that can be a means of deterrence,' Yermak said.

NATO warned on Wednesday against Russia's war in Ukraine sliding into a nuclear confrontation between Moscow and the West.

Spanish soldiers stand in front of an Spanish Air Force Eurofighter EF-2000 Typhoon II during the joint tasks on enhanced airspace protection Air Policing by the Bulgarian and Spanish Air Forces on February 17 in Bulgaria

'Russia should stop this dangerous irresponsible nuclear rhetoric,' Stoltenberg said. 'But let there be no doubt about our readiness to protect and defend allies against any threat anytime.'

'Russia must understand that it can never win a nuclear war,' he said on the eve of a summit of the Western military alliance's national leaders in Brussels. 'NATO is not part of the conflict... it provides support to Ukraine but isn't part of the conflict.'

'NATO will not send the troops into Ukraine... It is extremely important to provide support to Ukraine and we are stepping up. But at the same time it is also extremely important to prevent this conflict becoming a full-fledged war between NATO and Russia.

The Ukrainian authorities have accused Putin of using white phosphorus munitions on the city of Kramatorsk.

While strictly not considered a chemical weapon, the substance burns fiercely and can cause horrendous injuries, and its use on civilians constitutes a war crime.

Human Rights Watch says the incendiary weapons are 'among the cruellest' in modern warfare as they cause 'lifelong human suffering'.

The deputy head of Kyiv police, Oleksiy Biloshytskiy, said on Facebook: 'Another use of phosphorus ammunitions in Kramatorsk.'

He shared a video of a substance burning like the chemical which Russian troops have already been accused of using in the cities of Lutsk and Popasna.

'What we're seeing is a near desperate attempt by the Russians to gain some momentum and try to turn the course of this in their favour,' a defence official said.

Stoltenberg also today said Belarus has been 'complicit' in Russia's invasion of Ukraine even before it was launched, allowing its territory to be used for massing troops, and it continues to enable the invasion.

He told a news conference on the eve of a NATO summit in Brussels that Belarus has also allowed its military airfields to be used by Russian forces to launch attacks on Ukrainian cities and civilians.

Meanwhile, Ukraine appealed for more Western military help ahead of a NATO summit, as it warned that almost 100,000 people are trapped by Russian bombardment and facing starvation in the ruins of the besieged port of Mariupol.

Tens of thousands of residents have already fled the southern city, bringing harrowing testimony of a 'freezing hellscape riddled with dead bodies and destroyed buildings', according to Human Rights Watch.

As the UN demanded Russia end its 'unwinnable' war, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told the Japanese parliament that the UN Security Council was dysfunctional and in need of reform, after Russia wielded its veto to nix condemnation of its invasion.

Nearly a month on, peace talks have agreed on daily humanitarian corridors for refugees, and Ukraine says it is willing to countenance some Russian demands subject to a national referendum.

But it has refused to bow to Russian pressure to disarm and renounce all Western alliances, and Zelensky was also due Thursday to address a NATO meeting in Brussels joined by US President Joe Biden.

Ukraine's lead negotiator Mykhaylo Podolyak said the peace talks were encountering 'significant difficulties', after Moscow accused the United States of undermining the process.

Western leaders have grown increasingly concerned that Russian President Vladimir Putin will use chemical weapons or otherwise escalate tactics four weeks into an invasion where his troops have failed to capture a single major Ukrainian city.

Leaving the White House on Wednesday, Biden said Russia's use of chemical weapons in Ukraine is a risk.

'I think it's a real threat,' he said.

Biden and his team have been developing plans to impose sanctions on members of the Duma, Russia's parliament, in retaliation for Russia's invasion of Ukraine, according to two sources familiar with the situation. The sanctions are expected to be announced on Thursday.

A White House spokesperson said 'no final decisions have been made about who we will sanction and how many we will sanction.'

'We will have additional sanctions measures to announce that will rolled out in conjunction with our allies on Thursday when the president has the opportunity to speak with them,' the official said.

On Thursday, Biden will attend an emergency NATO summit, meet with G7 leaders and address the 27 leaders of the European Union at a session of the European Council, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters on Tuesday.

He said Biden will coordinate on the next phase of military assistance to Ukraine.

In addition to imposing fresh sanctions on Russia, Biden will work with U.S. allies to tighten existing sanctions to 'crack down on evasion and to ensure robust enforcement,' Sullivan said.

In recent days, Russia and Western governments have traded accusations over the possibility of a chemical weapons attack in Ukraine without producing evidence to back their concerns.

Biden has vowed not to engage in direct conflict with Russia but has pledged the United States will defend all NATO territory. He has ordered more U.S. troops to NATO's eastern flank to reassure edgy allies.

During his visit to Poland, a NATO member, Biden will visit U.S. troops and meet with experts involved in the humanitarian response to helping hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians who have fled their country and those who remain
A burglar has been jailed for 16 months after he admitted a string of thefts in a crime spree nearly 30 years ago.

Stuart McDonald, 51, confessed to 18 offences including stealing car keys, breaking into fruit machines and a burglary of an Argos store after handing himself into police.

At Cambridge Crown Court on Friday, 18 March, McDonald pled guilty to two counts of burglary.

The judge took into account a further 16 offences that McDonald admitted to.

He was jailed for 16 months in prison after visiting his local police station and admitting the crime spree which ran from 1993 to 2006.

Stuart McDonald, 51, confessed to 18 offences including stealing car keys, breaking into fruit machines and burglary of an Argos store

At Cambridge Crown Court on Friday, 18 March, McDonald pleaded guilty to two counts of burglary

He committed a burglary at a pub in St Neots in 1994 when he broke in through a window and targeted fruit machines to steal 1,000 in cash. He also took some car keys.

McDonald, of no fixed address, also admitted burglary of a former Argos store in Huntingdon in 2006 when he took a bracelet from the counter.

His fingerprints were linked to both crimes.

DC Lisa Bacon, of Cambridgeshire Police, said: 'McDonald has made the decision to clear his offending past and get the support he needs to prevent him returning to a life of crime.'
British Chamber of Commerce in Korea Executive Director Lucinda Walker

By Lucinda Walker



The British Chamber of Commerce in Korea (BCCK) would like to congratulate President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol on his victory. We are looking forward to working closely with him and his administration and strengthening the bilateral trading relationship between the U.K. and South Korea.



The BCCK sees that the Korean market is a key market for many British companies. British companies operating in Korea appreciate this country's commitment to the rule of law and to economic cooperation.



The bilateral trading relationship between the U.K. and South Korea is now worth more than 20 trillion won a year, with an 11 percent increase in 2021. When it comes to foreign direct investment in Korea, the U.K. also ranks highly out of Korea's partner countries.



The year 2022 will be the year that negotiations start between the U.K. and Korea for a new ambitious free trade agreement (FTA). Today, when discussing areas that the BCCK would like the new administration to focus on, I would like to mention digital trade and clean energy, but we look forward to working with the new administration on all areas under the FTA.






Advertisement

Children at every grade level are still performing worse in math and reading than they were before start of COVID, data from 7.3 million standardized tests across the US reveals.

The study, released this week by standardized test provider Renaissance Learning Inc., revealed that a return to in-person learning in the latter half of the last school year has seen standardized test scores improve across the county.

However, students are still lagging well behind pre-pandemic levels.

The firm analyzed reading scores for 4.4 million students from kindergarten to 12th grade in all 50 states, as well as 2.9 million students' math marks during the 2020 and 2021 school years.

It found student performance during the second year of the pandemic was markedly worse than the first year, with each state seeing marked declines in 2021, suggesting remote learning has had a lasting - and negative - impact on student achievement.

It also found that children are still performing worse at every level in math and reading than before remote learning was introduced.

However, when it came to the change in scores for the tests - which are given to students twice a year, first in the fall and then in the winter - the study found that the winter marks had improved slightly, indicating some improvement in the latter part of 2021, when students started to head back to school in person.

A return to in-person learning has seen standardized test scores improve across US, the test's provider has found - but kids are still behind pre-pandemic levels. According to the firm, on average, reading scores recorded during the 20212022 school year were nine points lower in the fall, compared to 3 points in the winter, relative to the same span the prior school year

Meanwhile, in math, scores were eight points lower in the fall, which rose slightly to just 3 points lower in winter. The results, released by Renaissance Learning Inc., analyzed reading scores for 4.4 million students from kindergarten to 12th grade in all 50 states, and 2.9 million math marks during the 2020 and 2021 school years

According to the firm, on average, reading scores recorded during the 20212022 school year were nine points lower in the fall, compared to 3 points lower in the winter, relative to the same scores during the prior school year.

Meanwhile, in math, scores were eight points lower in autumn, which rose slightly to just 3 points lower in winter.

With that said, the marks are still below the level of the 2019-2020 school year, before remote learning was implemented in response to the pandemic.

'Were there signs of stabilization? Yeah, there really were,' Gene Kerns, chief academic officer of the standardized testing kingpin - who presided over computer versions of the longstanding exams during the pandemic - told The Wall Street Journal Wednesday of the results and their implications.

Kerns said the scores were somewhat bittersweet, citing that students' performance has yet to rebound to pre-pandemic levels.

'There are not signs of a recovery if you define that as getting back to where we were performing before all this,' he told the paper.

In both reading and math, Kerns' company found that students' average growth percentage - a statistic that measures a student's growth compared to others with similar prior test scores by granting them a percentile mark out of 100 - improved 3 points, to 48 and 50, respectively.

When looking at reading scores by state, all but six states saw a decrease in students hitting a state-set landmark. The poor reading marks indicate that students, especially younger ones, are still struggling, with a median student-growth percentile of 35, showing very low growth

The math exam saw students perform similarly, with 10 states slightly rising above the 50 mark - Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, Vermont, and North and South Dakota

Much like percentile measurements that would track a child's height and weight, a mark of 50 would indicate a typical person.

But Renaissance's report notes that that recovery is somewhat misleading, as most grades still remain below pre-pandemic rates.

To get fully back to pre-pandemic levels, Renaissance said, the metric would need to surpass 50 consistently.

However, few grades, the study found, have surpassed the 50 target, with only grades 3 through 5 slightly rising above the state-set benchmark. Grade 6 was the only to reach exactly 50.

All other years, while improving slightly from 2020, saw averages of less than 50, the study found.

When looking at reading scores by state, all but six states saw a decrease in students hitting the 50 mark - with only Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania seeing slight increases of 2 percent or less.

The math exam saw students perform similarly, with 10 states slightly rising above the 50 mark - Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, Vermont, and North and South Dakota.

The poor reading marks, seen especially in students in lower grades, indicate that students who have yet to learn how to read independently are still struggling, with a median student-growth percentile of 35, showing very low growth.

The findings validate educator's and parents' previously aired concerns that younger students being brought up during the pandemic in their most formative years are not receiving the reading instruction they need before they reach the fourth grade, when reading become tantamount to success in other subjects,

It comes in contrast to the early days of the pandemic, when math advancement took the biggest hit in regards to scores, which many attributed to parents being less willing - or able - to help with the subject while their kids learned from home.

The findings suggest that public schools' decision to revert back to a traditional teaching approach has benefited students who have struggled with remote learning, especially those in younger grades, who have seen less progress over the past two years than their older counterparts.

It also also confirms concerns that academic progress has been weaker among kindergarten and first-grade aged students who have not yet learned to read and have only known a pandemic education.

Concerning the underwhelming reading scores, Josh Kizner, Renaissance's vice president for partnerships, told the Post that they have reached a level not seen in several generations.

Rena Gibbs, the coordinator of curriculum and instruction at the 3,500-student Cypress School District in Southern California - a state that saw a 2 percent decline in average scores and a marked 5 percent drop in math - told the paper that younger students returning to in-person learning are not coming as prepared as history should dictate.

Standardized test provider Renaissance - who presided over computer versions of the longstanding exams during the pandemic - analyzed reading scores for 4.4 million students from kindergarten to 12th grade in all 50 states, as well as 2.9 million students' math marks during the 2020 and 2021 school years

'They're just not coming with those sounds and letters and scholarly habits we're used to,' she said of his first-grade and kindergarten aged students.

The school head said that teachers instructing younger student have had to go back to the basics since returning on-site learning, sounding out and teaching letters and the alphabet instead of teaching them vocabulary - as they have in the past.

'We feel a huge pressure,' Gibbs said. 'We know if they don't have those early literacy skills by the end of third grade, it does not bode well for their future.'

Kerns, meanwhile, said that recovery from the disrupted learning process for students in the wake of the emergence of coronavirus will prove unique to each student.

The testing official, however, said that educators should therefore strive for growth of any kind, and effectively make the best out of a less than ideal situation.

To the Post, he conceded that there may be no easy solution to the issue, which may take years to address.

'We can't undo a pandemic,' he said.
Kirsten Allen will be Vice President Kamala Harris' new press secretary, moving over from the Department of Health and Human services (HHS) after three high-profile departures in the VP's press shop.

'Exciting day! Honored and elated to work for @VP and continue serving this historic Administration,' Allen wrote on Twitter.

Allen currently serves as national press secretary for the Covid-19 response at HHS. Allen previously worked for Harris as deputy national press secretary and African American media director during Harris' presidential campaign in 2019. She's also served in communications roles for the House subcommittee on coronavirus and for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Allen's hire comes as the press secretary role has remained vacant for months. Her deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh announced she was leaving for the Defense Department last week. Chief spokesperson and senior adviser Symone Sanders departed in December, shortly after communications director Ashley Etienne left.

Kirsten Allen will be Vice President Kamala Harris' new press secretary, moving over from the Department of Health and Human services (HHS) after three high-profile departures in the VP's press shop

Kirsten Allen, above, currently serves as national press secretary for the Covid-19 response at HHS

Allen previously worked for Harris as deputy national press secretary and African American media director during Harris' presidential campaign in 2019. She's also served in communications roles for the House subcommittee on coronavirus and for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee

Singh was Harris' longest serving press staffer she worked with the vice president for over two years, joining the then-senator's team in March 2020 during the presidential campaign to run communications after working on the campaigns of Michael Bloomberg and Corey Booker.

Staffers in the vice president's office have been jumping ship after a year full of messaging blunders and a barrage of personal attacks on the VP, combined with viral rumors of toxicity within the office and tensions between Harris's and President Biden's offices.

The announcement of Allen's hiring came just after juicy details of tension and chaos in the VP's office have trickled out in leaked excerpts of 'This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America's Future,' by New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns.

Harris' office kicked up a fuss over a Vogue cover that pictured the vice president in sneakers before being told to back down by President Biden's office who said concerns over the cover were 'first world problems,' according to the book.

Harris reportedly sent out her chief of staff to scold Biden's staffers for not standing up when she entered the room, the way they do for the president, and her some in her office complained about Biden's 'all-white inner circle.'

They complained about Harris being assigned to work on immigration with Northern Triangle countries, and the VP herself hissed at Biden for calling her 'border czar,' insisting she was focused on the 'root causes,' according to the book.

Harris has lost 10 staffers since June. The vice president's office could employ up to around 50 staffers at any given time.

Of the four-person senior press shop that began with Harris, only one remains - Herbie Ziskend. Ziskend will be promoted to senior advisor for communications, according to an email sent to an internal email shared with DailyMail.com.

The shakeup of the vice president's press team comes under the direction of new communications director Jamal Simmons. The reset came as both the president and vice president sought to step up public engagement to battle low poll numbers.

After Singh, Harris lost her national security advisor, Nancy McEldowney.

McEldowney will be succeeded by her deputy Philip Gordon, according to an announcement by the Vice President's office. He currently serves as special assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser to the vice president.

Both McEldowney and Gordon have been with the White House since the start of the Biden administration and advised both Harris and President Biden on affairs such as Afghanistan, Iran, Ukraine and cybersecurity issues.

McEldowney said that she is stepping down to 'focus on some pressing personal matters' but will remain an impassioned supporter of the Biden Harris administration.

Deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh, above, announced she was leaving for the Defense Department last week

Spokesperson Symone Sanders and Communications Director Ashley Etienne both left last year. In all, ten officials have left since Harris visited Central America last June

'This was a difficult decision because I am so deeply committed to the work we do and the crucial national interest we serve. But after more than a year, this is the right decision for my family,' she said.

McEldowney did not say what her last day would be but said she is 'not rushing out the door.'

McEldowney is a 31-year veteran of Foreign Service, having served as ambassador to Bulgaria, and deputy chief of mission in both Azerbaijan and Turkey.

The adviser's departure comes on the heels of Harris's high-stakes NATO trip to Poland and Romania, and after a turbulent first year marked by a number of public messaging failures.

In Warsaw, Harris attracted controversy after laughing off questions about the refugee crisis resulting from the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The vice president's nervous laugh came up yet again as she took questions from reporters alongside Polish President Andrzej Duda about accepting Ukrainian refugees to take the burden off Poland.

Harris and Duda both looked at each other to see which one wanted to answer. 'OK,' Harris said with a laugh.

'A friend in need is a friend indeed,' she said before chuckling at her own line. Duda then took the question.
A Swiss assisted suicide clinic where two US sisters are believed to have paid $11,000 each to die has cool white walls, elegant designer furniture - and a death room where patients can choose to die via intravenous drip or a lethal drink.

Lila Ammouri, a 54 year-old palliative care doctor, and Susan Frazier, a 49-year-old nurse, traveled from Phoenix to Basel, Switzerland on February 3, and died on February 11.

Basel is home to the Pegasos Swiss Association - which unlike Dignitas and Exit International, the the two largest assisted suicide organizations in the country - accepts applications for Voluntary Assisted Dying (VAD) from people who are not terminally ill.

The clinic, which was established in August 2019, has a neat and unassuming white exterior, with wooden shutters.

It is three stories high, with a hairdresser also occupying its first floor. There is no obvious indication outside that it the building is also home to an assisted suicide facility.

Pegasos's waiting room is equally low-key, and resembles the lobby of a doctor's surgery, or hairdressers. It has soothing white walls, mid-century designer furniture and plants as well as lights to further enhance its calming vibe.

Unlike Dignitas and Exit International, the the two largest assisted suicide organizations in the country, Pegosas (pictured above) accepts applications for Voluntary Assisted Dying (VAD) from people who are not terminally ill

Pegasos' waiting rooms feature a modern style with sleek furniture and cool white walls. The facility was established in August, 2019, in Basel, Switzerland

One of Pegasos's death rooms is pictured in a 2020 documentary about Laura Henkel (center) who chose to die there. She traveled to Switzerland from her home in Australia withThe company was featured in a 2020 documentary on the death of Laura Hankel (center) with daughter and filmmaker Cathy (left) and granddaughter Sam (right). The intravenous drip that she chose as her method of death is pictured, right. Patients can also opt for a deadly drink

Pegasos's death rooms are intimate, and at least one appears to be windowless, or have its curtains drawn for privacy. Images of one of the rooms shown on Australian and American documentaries about patients who previously traveled there to die shows cinderblock walls painted white, as well what appears to be a rug pinned to the walls.

Laura Henkel, an Australian woman who allowed her filmmaker daughter to record her final moments at Pegasos, was seen laying on the death room's bed during her final moments in December 2019.

She opted for death via intravenous injection, which can be seen beside her bed in an image from the documentary.

Henkel had just turned 90, was not suffering from any terminal illness, and said she was mentally and physically healthy for her age.

But she said she wanted to decide to die on her own terms, before suffering the type of illness commonly associated with very old age that could have prevented her from being able to make that decision.

Henkel traveled to Switzerland because assisted dying is illegal in her home country of Australia.

The clinic also allows pets inside the rooms to comfort the dying and lets the patients pick whatever music they like to accompany their final moments.

When the time comes, patients are instructed on how to kill themselves. They can either select a lethal drink or death through an intravenous drip. A doctor will hook the patient up to the drip, to insure the needle is inserted correctly, but the patient must push a notch to let its deadly contents flow into their body.

Lila Ammouri, 54, (left) and sister Susan Frazier, 49, (right) died by assisted suicide in Basel, Switzerland, with their deaths confirmed on February 11

Pegasos approves all adults of 'sound mind' regardless of their country of origin or residence, the company boasts on their website.

A third party must be there to confirm and identify the person who took their own life. Pegasos advices patients who do not have a witness to contact another assisted dying organization called Exit for help. It is unclear whos served as witness for Ammouri and Frazier.

In order to use Pegasos services, individuals must be members of the organization and pay an annual fee of about $110. Once a member, a person can apply for VAD.

In order to apply for the process, Pegasos needs to know the reason a person is requesting a VAD as well as their current living situation and family background.

Patients must also submit a brief biography, a birth certificate, marriage or divorce certificates, funeral instructions, health reports and proof of residence.

Aside from the membership fee, which could be waived if a patient is already a member of Exit International, the average cost of a VAD with Pegasos is more than $11,000.

Pegasos has English, Swiss, German, French and Italian speakers on staff.

Pegasos has no required waiting period for assisted suicide but does require consultations to be completed.

'Pegasos believes that for a person to be in the headspace of considering ending their lives, their quality of life must be qualitatively poor,' the company explains on their website.

'Pegasos accepts that some people who are not technically 'sick' may want to apply for a VAD. But this does not mean the person is 'well'. (Assisted suicide patient) Professor David Goodall was one of these people.

'He was not sick but his eye sight was failing him, as was his mobility. Old age is rarely kind. The decision to end one's life is an intensely personal one.

'Pegasos makes every effort to understand fully the unique circumstances of everyone who makes contact with us.'

A Swiss government source told DailyMail.com that: 'The two American ladies died on February 11.

'It has been reported that they died later than this but this is not correct. It was the Friday in the Canton Basel-Landschaft by a legal assisted suicide.

'They died the same day and the timings were close, if not at the same time.'

The sisters deaths were confirmed by the US consulate on February 18. Their brother Cal, 60, who lives in New York said he only learned of his siblings' passing when contacted by The Independent earlier this week.

In the end, patients are instructed on how to provide themselves with a lethal drug cocktail that can be delivered through an intravenous drip or through a drink. Cindy Siegel Shelpler (right, pictured at the facility with husband David before the process) chose the IV option, commenting that it felt cold before falling asleep and dying

Cindy Siegel Shepler, 62, of Knoxville Tennessee, was one such person to make the trip, according to a CNN editorial written by her friend, Ryan Prior.

Shepler was diagnosed with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome, a debilitating illness that causes chronic pain and insomnia for which there is no cure, along with many other 'painful illnesses.'

Shepler traveled to Basel in 2020 with her husband, David, to die at Pegasos facility.

She opted for the intravenous drip, which she commented was 'cold,' before falling asleep and dying.

That same year, the clinic was subject to a documentary about Laura Henkel, 90, of West Australia, who traveled to the facility to die.

Her daughter Cathy Henkel, who made the documentary, told The West Australian she had previously witnessed her mother trying to commit suicide when she was just 14 and that her death at the Pegasos facility allowed her mother to end her life without trauma.

Most recently, the facility was used by Shanley Rose Cruthchfield, 35, of Ellicott City, Maryland, according to a Baltimore Sun op-ed by her husband, Kevin Froehlich.

Crutchfield suffered from the same disease as Shepler and had attempted suicide in 2021. Froehlich said she had resigned herself to shooting herself in the head before learning that her application for Pegasos VAD was accepted.

Froehlich said he was in contact with her throughout the journey and confirmed she died on February 23.
A woman serving 25 years for killing her boyfriend died after catching Covid when refusing to shield from the disease despite already having asthma and the lung disease COPD.

Sharon Swinhoe died in hospital as a result of Covid while serving her sentence at HMP New Hall at Flockton, between Wakefield and Huddersfield in West Yorkshire.

The 52-year-old killer was serving 25 years for murdering her retired civil servant boyfriend Peter McMahon before plundering his bank account for thousands of pounds.

Sharon Swinhoe, 52, was eight years into a 25-year sentence for murder when she died after catching Covid

Alongside accomplice Joseph Collins, 54, Swinhoe was found guilty in 2013 of murdering the 68-year-old grandfather-of-one at her home by gouging his eyes out.

Mr McMahon's corpse was discovered in a chest freezer by police in 2012. He had died from heart failure triggered by the injuries to his eyes.

Swinhoe had been in a relationship with the former local government worker, described by the prosecution as her 'sugar daddy'.

Between the time he went missing and was discovered by officers, she had plundered 2,660 from his bank accounts.

A newly released report by the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman noted that Ms Swinhoe died in hospital on February 23, 2021.

She suffered from asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD, a lung disease) which contributed to but did not cause her death, the report said.

'Ms Swinhoe's health conditions meant she was in the category for those at high risk of developing complications from Covid-19 and she was, therefore, advised to shield.

Swinhoe battered Peter McMahon, 68, (pictured) to death and gouged his eyes out in the 2012 attack

'Although she initially agreed, she refused to shield from August 2020 onwards.

'Healthcare and prison staff tried to persuade her to shield and when she declined, they gave her advice to minimise the risk of contracting Covid-19.'

The Ombudsman report added: 'On 7 February, Ms Swinhoe felt unwell and tested positive for Covid-19.

'She was monitored regularly by healthcare staff.

'On 15 February, an emergency ambulance was called after her condition deteriorated, but Ms Swinhoe refused to go to hospital.

'She was assessed as having the capacity to make that decision.

'On the morning of 23 February, Ms Swinhoe appeared to be recovering and spoke to staff.

'However, shortly afterwards she was found confused and showing signs of having had a stroke. She was taken to hospital but died later that day.

'It appears that Ms Swinhoe contracted Covid-19 in prison as she had not left New Hall in the 14 days before she tested positive for the virus.

Swinhoe died on February 23, last year, after refusing to shield from Covid at New Hall jail in Flockton, West Yorkshire (pictured)

The clinical reviewer concluded that the clinical care that Ms Swinhoe received at New Hall was good and equivalent to that which she could have expected to receive in the community.

'We found that prison staff followed the national guidance on managing the risk associated with Covid-19.

'We found no non-clinical concerns and we have made no recommendations.'

Swinhoe had been eight years into a sentence of a minimum of 25 years given to her following Mr McMahon's murder.

The woman, along with her then 54-year-old former lover Joseph Collins, killed Mr McMahon in her Newcastle flat.

The body was then moved in a suitcase to Collins' flat in Elswick, Newcastle, where they hid it in his freezer.

The pair then plundered Mr McMahon's bank account of thousands of pounds.

Police discovered the victim's mutilated body in the second-hand chest freezer in December 2012.

Swinhoe had called 999 and tried to blame the killing on Collins.

The pair were found guilty of murder at Newcastle Crown Court in July 2013 after a six week trial.

Collins was sentenced to a minimum of 20-years in jail.

A second man, Ronald Douglas, 77, also a former lover of Swinhoe, admitted helping move the body.

He was sentenced to four years for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.

Newcastle Crown Court was told that Mr McMahon was last seen alive on 18 October 2012 when he took a taxi to the home of Swinhoe, with whom he had been having a relationship.

His body was found six weeks later on the 1st December in the chest freezer in Collins's flat.

A post-mortem examination revealed he had suffered a number of injuries, including gouging to the eyes.

Swinhoe killed Peter McMahon with the help of Joseph Collins (left), then 54. Ronald Douglas, then 77, (right) admitted conspiracy to pervert the course of justice

During the trial, twice-married Mr McMahon was described as being besotted with Swinhoe, who was 24 years his junior.

He would buy her presents and she was described by the prosecution as seeing Mr McMahon as a sugar daddy.

Prior to his body being discovered Mr McMahons son phoned from New Zealand to tell his father he had become a grandfather.

Swinhoe answered the call and said he could not come to the phone because he was sleeping - despite it being early evening.

Jailing Swinhoe, Mr Justice Globe said at the time that she appeared to show no remorse for the killing, adding: 'You appear to care more about the rats you kept as pets than the man who loved you and asked to marry you and bought you an 1,100 engagement ring.

'Peter McMahon was a well-liked respected, generous, mature man living comfortably on his two pensions in the Newcastle area.

'In common with the two men sitting alongside you Sharon Swinhoe, his downfall was that he fell victim to your charm that has attracted men to you like magnets.

'Ultimately he fell victim to your much more sinister, controlling and violent personality.'

He ordered that more than 2,600 found in her flat after the murder had to be repaid to the family.

After the case Detective Chief Inspector Paul Young said: 'Peter McMahon was a decent, hard-working man who was looking forward to becoming a grandfather.

'Swinhoe and Collins targeted him for financial gain, preying on his generosity and then plundering his bank accounts after his death.

Swinhoe and Collins were assisted by another of her boyfriends, Ronald Douglas (pictured front left with them)

'Mr McMahon believed they were his friends, but they brutally murdered him and then conspired with Ronald Douglas to cover up their crime by hiding the body and denying responsibility.'

In a statement, Mr McMahons family described Swanhoe as 'cruel, calculated and cold hearted.

The statement said: 'He (Mr McMahon) will be greatly missed by his family and friends.

'It is particularly tragic that he not only had his life taken from him, but that these people showed utter disrespect for it afterwards.

'He was also denied the chance to learn he had become a grandfather which he had always dearly wanted.

'We still cant believe that anybody could be so cruel, calculated and cold hearted against our dad.

'Rest in peace dad.'

The family thanked Northumbria Police and the CPS for bringing Mr McMahon's killers to justice.

The trio in the lift at Collins' flat on the night the body is believed to have been moved there (pictured)

Following the verdict, Gerry Sydenham, head of the Crown Court Unit at CPS North East, said: 'It is clear from the evidence in this case that Swinhoe manipulated Peter McMahon in the same way that she manipulated the two men who would later assist her in his murder and the disposal of his body.

'It is evident that Peter had genuine affection for Swinhoe but she chose to exploit those feelings and, on October 18 last year, she led Peter to believe that he was leaving his home to rekindle their relationship. The truth is that she was leading him to his eventual death.

'After the murder, Swinhoe and Collins showed not a scrap of remorse.

'Their every action from that point was a calculated attempt to evade justice, including their inhuman treatment of Mr McMahons remains and the web of lies they told, both to Peters family and to police.

'Ultimately, the only thing that they have achieved through their despicable actions is to prolong the suffering of Peters family and friends.

'I am pleased with the sentences passed today and I would hope that they give some measure of comfort to those who knew Peter McMahon at what must be a very difficult time for them.'
A feared Canadian sniper has shut down claims he was killed in Ukraine but has revealed he was nearly blown up by a Russian tank that shelled the room next to his.

Last week rumours began circulating online that the former Canadian Forces sniper, known only as Wali, was killed while fighting Russian troops near Kyiv.

In a Facebook post and a subsequent interview, Wali, who travelled to Ukraine to answer President Volodymyr Zelensky's calls for foreign fighters, confirmed he was alive and continuing with the fight.

In a Facebook post which included a picture of himself lying in a ball pit while holding a rifle, he wrote: 'I am alive.

'The rumors that I died in the fight were completely ridiculous. The truth is we have taken the enemy's ground in addition to causing him losses. Unfortunately, we also lost comrades, dead and injured.

'The Russians are afraid of a close fight. They prefer to bomb, over and over again, destroying houses, such as frustrated thugs.'

The sniper-turned-filmmaker from Montreal uses the name given to him by the Afghan people while he was on one of two tours of duty with the Canadian Royal 22nd Regiment, so as not to be identified by Vladimir Putin who he fears may target his family in Canada.

In a Facebook post confirming he was alive, Wali shared a picture of himself lying in a ball pit while holding a rifle

Former Canadian Forces sniper Wali, who uses the name given to him during a tour to Afghanistan, travelled to Ukraine to answer President Volodymyr Zelensky's calls for foreign fighters

Speaking to Canada's Global News this week, Wali said he is 'well-fed, rested and all good'.

'I was the last person to learn the news that I was dead,' he added.

'I think its just trolling. But I think its strange because after a while the enemy will lose credibility with this propaganda. I dont understand why they push such lies. Its pretty obvious because after a few days Im popping out and telling everyone Im alive.

'Maybe the next time [the Russians] say that Im dead it might be true but no one will believe them.'

Wali, who served in Afghanistan and Iraq during the 2010s, said he has been fighting alongside the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the Kyiv region and revealed he was nearly blown up when he engaged in a battle with Russian troops who shot at the room next to him - about three metres away - with shells from a tank.

'We were lucky,' he added. 'Now I know how it feels to be engaged by a tank.'

He also revealed one of his colleagues was shot during one of the first patrols he was part of in Ukraine, but survived.

Wali, who left behind a fiancee, one-year-old son and a comfortable life as an IT programmer to answer Ukraine's plea for foreign recruits, said the war in Ukraine is unlike any other warzones he has been to.

'Most combat zones have no electricity and no water and its chaos. If you go in the centre [in Kyiv], its alright', he told Global News.

'In one of the patrols I was in an amazing condo  you could have the same one in Toronto.'

He described the war effort as being 'amateur' and said the Russians 'dont have the capabilities of NATO forces'.

Wali previously described the moment he answered the call to join the Ukrainian volunteer forces as being 'like a firefighter who hears the alarm ringing.'

He crossed into Ukraine on March 1, and said he and the three other former Canadian soldiers who made the journey with him were greeted with hugs, handshakes, flags and photos by Ukrainians after they crossed the frontier.

Wali revealed he was nearly blown up when he engaged in a battle with Russian troops who shot at the room next to him - about three metres away - with shells from a tank

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, Wali embarked on his first stint as a freedom fighter in 2015, joining up with Kurdish forces for four months as they battled ISIS terrorists in northern Iraq.

In June 2017, one of his comrades reportedly shot dead an Islamic State terrorist from an incredible distance of 3,450m - more than two miles away for the longest ever kill shot.
An airplane mechanic who pleaded guilty to planning a kidnapping of Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer told jurors Wednesday that he and his allies wanted to carry the attack before the 2020 election to prevent Joe Biden from winning the presidency.

Ty Garbin is a critical witness in the trial of Barry Croff, 44, Adam Fox, 40, Daniel Harris, 23, and Brandon Caserta - who were arrested in 2020 for allegedly planning to kidnap Whitmer because they were upset with her COVID-19 restrictions.

'We wanted to cause as much a disruption as possible to prevent Joe Biden from getting into office. It didn't have to be,' Garbin said of striking before the election. 'It was just preferred.'

Garbin, 26, said a kidnapping would be the 'ignition' for civil war 'and hopefully other states or other groups would follow suit.'

The group was arrested a month before the election, a stunning bust near the end of a national campaign that polarized the country.

Garbin took a plea deal in exchange of his testimony against the other four men and was sentenced to a relatively light six-year sentence.

Another man who pleaded guilty, Kaleb Franks, will also testify.

Investigators said the men were antigovernment extremists who were trying to come up with $4,000 for an explosive to blow up a bridge in northern Michigan during the abduction, to stop law enforcement from responding to Whitmer's house.

They were angry about Whitmer's statewide COVID-19 restrictions and generally disgusted with politicians, according to trial evidence.

A man who participated in planning a kidnapping of Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer testified that he and his allies wanted to carry the attack before the 2020 election to prevent Biden from winning. Above, Whitmer pictured on March 11

Ty Garbin, 26, took a plea deal with the prosecution and is now a critical witness in the trials of Barry Croff, 44, Adam Fox, 40, Daniel Harris, 23, and Brandon Caserta - who were arrested in 2020 for allegedly planning to kidnap Whitmer because they were upset with her COVID-19 restrictions (File)

Garbin said a kidnapping would be the 'ignition' for civil war, and that 'hopefully other states or other groups would follow suit' to prevent Biden from winning the presidency. Above, Biden during his inauguration ceremony on January 20, 2021

The testimony has linked - at times indirectly - the kidnapping plot to a series of events, especially right-wing protests at the Michigan Capitol and elsewhere in response to pandemic orders.

Challenges to the results of the 2020 presidential election followed, culminating in the US Capitol riot on January 6, 2021.

Garbin explained the Whitmer scheme to jurors, taking them through days of training, secret messages and a late night trip to her weekend home.

He talked about how he built a 'shoot house' with wood, tarps and scrap materials so the men could practice an eventual assault.

The goal was 'to kidnap the governor,' Garbin told a prosecutor.

'There was no question in your mind that everybody knew?' Assistant US Attorney Nils Kessler asked.

'No question,' Garbin said.

The jury has heard from FBI agents and an informant who secretly recorded hours of incriminating conversations.

Garbin's testimony was specifically significant because it came from someone who pleaded guilty and said he was a willing participant in the plan to snatch Whitmer.

In October, the US Attorney's Office released video and text messages which prosecutors say is evidence in their case against the men who face federal conspiracy to kidnap charges against Governor Gretchen Whitmer

This combination of photos provided by the Kent County Sheriff and the Delaware Department of Justice shows, top row from left, Brandon Caserta and Barry Croft; and bottom row from left, Adam Dean Fox and Daniel Harris. Other two men have taken plea deals with the prosecution

Defense lawyers claim the men were entrapped by the government. Garbin, however, told jurors that he never heard anyone talk about being swayed by informants.

He said he invited the group to his property in Luther, Michigan, to train for a violent assault on Whitmer's second home. He put together a crude structure so the men could practice going in and out of tight spaces.

'I was kind of ballparking it,' Garbin said of the layout. 'Every house had a front door. Every house had a living room. Every house had a hallway. Every house had a back door.'

In September 2020, Garbin, Fox, Croft and others traveled to Elk Rapids in three vehicles for night surveillance of Whitmer's property. Garbin said his job was to find it and flash a light to others at a boat launch.

He said his ultimate assignment would be to 'perform the actual kidnapping.'

Under questioning by the defense, Garbin repeated that Fox was a leader of the cabal.

Fox's attorney Christopher Gibbons wondered how Garbin could be inspired by a guy who lived in the 'sad' basement of a Grand Rapids-area vacuum shop, with the living space divided by hanging blankets.

Garbin acknowledged he had called Fox 'Captain Autism' and that his shooting skills 'weren't top-notch.'

The airplane mechanic began cooperating with prosecutors after the group was arrested.

Prosecutors say Fox, the suspected mastermind of the plot, and his co-defendants, came up with the plan to snatch the Democratic governor because they were angry about pandemic restrictions she imposed.

But the defendants' attorneys argued that the four men had been entrapped by the FBI and its informants, and that without their involvement there would be no case.

'The FBI knew this was stoned crazy talk,' defense attorney Joshua Blanchard told the jury on earlier this month, arguing that the accused were influenced by an unscrupulous undercover FBI informant.

Garbin explained the Whitmer scheme to jurors, taking them through days of training, secret messages and a late night trip to her weekend home. Authorities have said the text messages included images of the conspirators as they carried out surveillance on properties that Whitmer owned

The alleged conspirators shared stories about having been stopped by police and how easy it would be to 'tap' them and get away with it at night

Blanchard, who is representing Croft, said that one informant recorded the suspects brainstorming madcap ideas on how to draw Whitmer out of her house, reported Detroit Free Press.

'Maybe we should go hide in the woods and go bark and the governor  shell know the animals were against her,' Blanchard quoted one of the accused plotters as saying, noting that federal investigators surely knew that these comments were ridiculous.

Prosecutors said that Croft, a truck driver from Delaware, helped Fox orchestrate the kidnapping, allegedly telling him: 'all its going to take is one state to burn out and hang its governor and then those dominos will start to fall.'

Garbin testified to the grand jury that indicted the men, and he was rewarded with a relatively light six-year prison sentence, a term that could be reduced after the trial.

'I am truly sorry,' Garbin said last August.

In court Wednesday, he said he was mostly a libertarian who joined a militia, the Wolverine Watchmen, to find people who believed in limited government - 'I'm not a fan of taxes' - and supported gun rights.

In June 2020, Garbin said he met Fox at a pro-gun rally at the state Capitol, a connection that would put him on a path to target Whitmer.

Whitmer, a Democrat, rarely talks publicly about the case, though she referred to 'surprises' during her term that seem like 'something out of fiction' when she filed for reelection on March 17.

She has blamed Trump for fomenting anger over coronavirus restrictions and refusing to condemn right-wing extremists like those charged in the case. Whitmer has said Trump was complicit in the January 6 Capitol riot.
A migrant girl was pictured being rescued by U.S. Border Patrol agents after a smuggler abandoned her on the banks of the Rio Grande River.

The four-year-old child was crossed from Mexico by a smuggler and dumped on the riverbank Tuesday in Eagle Pass, Texas, as the number of unaccompanied minors making the crossing rocketed by a third last month, to 12,011.

A marine unit assigned to the U.S. Border Patrols Del Rio Sector located the unaccompanied girl and transported her to a local station for processing.

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesperson told DailyMail.com on Wednesday that the child's nationality has not been determined yet.

It's unknown if the girl's parents are in the United States or if they stood back in Mexico.

A four year-old girl is pictured being rescued by Texas CBP after she was brought into the US by a people smuggler then dumped on a riverbank

The Del Rio sector made a heart-rending Facebook post about the incident

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has registered 59,368 encounters with unaccompanied migrant children stopped at the southwestern border region since October 2021, the start of fiscal year 2022

Per U.S. immigration policy, CBP has 72 hours to place the girl in custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, an agency within the Department of Health and Human Services.

The Office of Refugee Resettlement provides foster care placement and services to unaccompanied minors (under the age of 18) stopped at the border. It also works to reunify the children with their parents or adult relatives.

The migrant girls rescue comes nearly three weeks after another child was died in a failed attempt to reach the U.S. border via the perilous Rio Grande River.

Angelica Silva, a native of Nicaragua, was crossing with her mother and a group of migrants on March 4 when one of the men accidentally dropped her in the water.

Silva was swept by a rip current. Her body was recovered by the U.S. Border Patrol on March 10.

Encounters with migrants stopped for unlawful crossing of the southwestern border went up in February to 164,973, according to data released by U.S. Customs and Border Protection on Tuesday

Angelica Silva, a four-year-old girl from Nicaragua, was crossing the Rio Grande on March 4 when she was swept by a rip current. U.S. border agents located her body March 10

CBPs recent monthly border report noted an increase in encounters with unaccompanied minors along the southwester border region for the month of February.

Border agents reported 12,011 interdictions in February after 8,760 were documented in January. Officers registered 12,278 encounters in October 2021, the start of fiscal year 2022.

There were 13,932 unaccompanied migrant children encounters in November and the decreased to 11,887 in December.

Unlike single adult and family units who can be rapidly expelled by U.S. Border Patrol for illegally crossing the United States-Mexico border under Title 42 - a measure introduced by the administration of former President Donald Trump - minors are exempted by President Joe Bidens administration and cant be returned to Mexico or even their countries of origin if they are found to have been smuggled into the U.S. without their parents.

Overall, CBP has reported 838,685 encounters along the 1,954-mile border since October. The totals are on pace to surpass the 1,734,686 interdictions for all of fiscal year 2021.
Do you know who the passenger is? Get in touch: tips@dailymail.com Advertisement

A violent passenger who kicked off on a flight back to Turkey after becoming annoyed by crying babies also tried to open the door while the plane was in the air, a fellow traveller has claimed.

The female flyer became unruly around halfway through the scheduled four-and-a-half hour journey from Manchester to Antalya on Monday and was so disruptive she caused a diversion to Vienna.

Shocking video footage emerged earlier this week of her squaring up to Jet2 cabin crew staff, while witnesses reported her slapping other passengers on board.

Now, another woman who was on the same flight has revealed more about the confrontation.

Samantha Fearon, from Littleborough, Greater Manchester, told Yorkshire Live she believed the sound of young children crying and fellow holidaymakers 'looking at her funny' had sparked the violence.

'She was ragging at the door, saying 'get me off this f***ing plane - let me off now'. It was just so shocking,' she said.

Samantha admitted that she was worried and feared for her own life when the passenger took such drastic action.

'My first thought was 'why did I pick the seat at the front - I am going to go out of the door first'. That did worry me.'

A female passenger was led off the Jet2 flight which had been diverted to Vienna from Antalya

The flight had to be diverted to the Austrian capital so the woman could be removed, arriving at 11.40am before carrying on to reach Antalya two hours later than scheduled.

Another passenger onboard the plane previously told the Manchester Evening News that a female passenger became disruptive 'about an hour and 20 minutes' into the flight.

'There was lots of noise,' the passenger, who asked not to be identified, said.

'Then she came to the front of the plane. She was really angry towards Jet2 staff and wouldn't calm down. Her voice was getting louder and more aggressive - she was shouting in people's faces.

'People were saying she was kicking off at the airport before she even got on the plane. Then some people said it was over babies crying on the flight.

'A customer said something and she slapped him in the face. Then a man got up to try and calm the situation before taking her to the back of the plane.'

The rowdy passenger was seen on camera and had reportedly been slapping others on the flight

The passenger said that staff then made the decision to divert the flight to Vienna.

As the plane landed, the woman was said to have slapped another passenger as she was getting off.

'This is the first time we have had to land because of someone on a flight,' the passenger added. 'Jet2 staff handled the whole situation very well. Nobody could help the out-of-control woman once she slapped the passenger.'

Jet2 sent a text message to passengers onboard the flight just before 12pm, apologising for the incident.

The message said: 'Hello, we are sorry that due to the disruptive behaviour of a fellow passenger, your flight has been diverted to Vienna.

'We are working on a situation to get you on your way as soon as possible.'

The flight left Vienna at 1pm before arriving at Antalya just after 3pm - one hour and 15 minutes later than scheduled.

The flight had to be diverted to the Austrian capital so the woman could be removed, arriving at 11.40am before carrying on to reach Antalya two hours later than scheduled

Manchester Airport declined to comment on the situation, saying it was a matter for the airline to comment on.

In a statement, Jet2 confirmed the incident. The flight operator also confirmed that the flight successfully continued onto Antalya once the passenger had been offloaded.

A Jet2 spokesperson told the M.E.N: 'We can confirm that flight LS895 from Manchester to Antalya diverted to Vienna earlier today so that a disruptive passenger could be offloaded.

'As a family friendly airline, we take a zero tolerance approach to disruptive behaviour.'
Why should Nazanin be grateful?

If she had a nice British name like Mary Brown and blonde hair, would a bunch of petty racists have taken to social media moaning that she 'didn't seem grateful' to be back in the UK after six years in captivity in Iran, a country renowned for its abuse of human rights and contempt for women?

Within moments of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe declaring at her first press conference since her release 'how many Foreign Secretaries does it take for someone to come out? Five. It should have been one' the hashtag #ungrateful was trending on Twitter along with #sendherback.

Worse, some idiots accused her of 'disrespecting her husband' for daring to say she disagreed with him after he thanked the government for bring her home.

Why should Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe feel grateful for her release? asks Janet Street-Porter

Zaghari-Ratcliffe with her husband Richard and daughter, Gabriella (left) meeting Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle

One chap said she was 'biting the hand that saved her'.

There's nothing like the sight of a strong-willed, opinionated woman to flush out the bigots that exist just below the surface in British society.

The thought police who secretly think women should be seen and not heard unless a man has given permission.

Isn't it odd that Nazanin isn't simpering with gratitude to have lost six years of her life for going on holiday to a place the Foreign Office had said was safe to visit?

Six years ago, the charity worker flew to Tehran to show 22-month-old Gabriella to her parents.

Then, on April 3rd, the trip ended in tragedy when she was seized by the Revolutionary Guards at the airport, slung into jail and accused of spying.

Boris Johnson didn't help her cause when (as Foreign Secretary in 2017) he told the House of Commons she was in the country 'training journalists'- his sloppy grasp of the facts a trait we have seen time and time again  and allowed the Iranian government to invent a story that Nazanin was training young people to write propaganda attacking their regime.

A handy falsehood which obscuring the real reason for her captivity, which is that they were determined the 400 million debt would be paid.

This innocent mother - guilty of no crime - had little chance of release unless the money was paid.

Put yourself in her shoes. Not knowing from one week to the next when the ordeal would end.

Her husband led an emotional campaign for her release back in the UK, pleading on television, in newspapers, to anyone who will listen. And still the UK government did nothing. Finally, he went on hunger strikes outside parliament.

Boris Johnson didn't help her cause when (as Foreign Secretary in 2017) he told the House of Commons she was in the country 'training journalists'

Meanwhile, their daughter returned home to the UK. Nazanin went on hunger strike twice because she was denied medical help. She suffers panic attacks.

Summoned into a courtroom and given a five-year sentence for spying. Then another year was added, on charges of spreading propaganda.

As for negotiating any improvement in her conditions, any promises from her captors were designed to unnerve and destabilise her. To keep her cowed and compliant. Without her only child, being a mum must have been so hard.

For six years Nazanin has not been a person in her captors' eyes, not a mother, not a wife.

She was simply a chattel which must be kept alive as a bargaining chip - like a precious vase or piece of jewellery - something to haggle with to get a debt paid, the paltry sum of 400 million which the UK has owed Iran since the 1970s, for tanks which were ordered but never delivered.

Yes - a sum which is relatively inconsequential to our Treasury, considering the amounts spent on royal tours, redecorating Whitehall, bringing back stray dogs from Afghanistan or giving MPs a recent pay rise.

Politicians and medics have spent the last two years of Covid banging on about our mental health and the stresses caused by the pandemic. BUT WHAT ABOUT THE HEALTH OF THIS TOTALLY INNOCENT WOMAN WHO IS A BRITISH CITIZEN?

Dominic Raab was Foreign Secretary while Nazanin was in jail. Pictured right: Liz Truss

Nazanin's unrelenting mental and physical deterioration was of no consequence to her captors.

When the debt was eventually paid, probably because the UK finally had the guts to stand up to the US who wanted their hostages included in any deal, she had served her purpose and was handed back.

With unfortunate timing, just as she was preparing to return home, the Prime Minister flew to Saudi Arabia on another mission.

Sadly, he was too late to plead for the human rights of the 81 prisoners summarily executed as 'traitors' the weekend before. His mission was more prosaic: to plead with the autocratic leader Mohammed bin Salman to flog us more oil and gas.

Faced with soaring prices and no end to Russia's brutal war in Ukraine, Boris went shopping.

Jeremy Hunt and Philip Hammond were also unable to secure the mother of one's release

MBS has been regarded by most world leaders as a pariah since the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in in 2018 but, as one government minister put it, 'we have to deal with people who have regimes we find difficult in emergencies.

The current huge crisis is not about the enforced millions of migrants forced to leave their homes in Ukraine, or the human rights of anyone who upsets the Saudis: it is a lack of gas.

Yes, British politicians claim they care about human rights, but the reality is very different. Boris would not have mentioned the embarrassing issue of executions in any depth, whilst holding out his begging cap.

He left empty-handed after a visit of less than 24 hours. So what was the point, other than to burnish his reputation as a 'big player'.

For the past six years, one Foreign Secretary after another has failed to extract 400 million from the Treasury to pay off a debt and secure the release of an innocent mother even when Richard Ratcliffe was starving himself and sleeping on the street outside their offices.

The Ratcliffes with Gabriella as they arrive at a press conference hosted by their local MP, Tulip Siddiq

Given the above, you'd think Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe would have suffered enough when she was finally allowed to board a plane to return to her family in the UK.

That's not how these things work. She must be paraded at a press conference, along with her husband and child.

And then we expect her to thank us?

No doubt there will be an inquiry into why the debt was not paid.

It will be a waste of time and money.

The truth is that five Foreign Secretaries in six years shows our leaders don't think the job is worth a top talent.

They'd rather suck up to the Saudis for another gallon.

Intervene to help a plane load of stray dogs return to the UK from Kabul.

While Nazanin sat and waited. And waited.
A 16-year-old teen in Wisconsin was ambushed and shot at point blank range by two gunmen while walking with a child on the street on Sunday evening - a horrific attack caught on video by a local surveillance camera.

Footage of the shooting shared by cops shows the unidentified male teen walking on the sidewalk, alongside a small child, when a black SUV suddenly pulls up next to them at the intersection of Albert and Marquette streets in Racine.

Two individuals can be seen getting out, with one of them staying near the vehicle while the other runs towards the teen and the young child, who immediately start retreating.

The teen, however, slips and falls onto the ground. One of the gunmen moves closer and fires multiple shots at close range as the small child successfully flees the scene without any injuries.

All of the suspects left the scene immediately, leaving their victim laying in the street.

An anonymous witness in the area ran up to the severely-wounded teen to render aid before calling 911.

The victim was brought to Ascension All Saints Hospital before being transferred to to a hospital in Milwaukee - 30 miles away - via emergency medical helicopter.

As of Tuesday afternoon, the teenager remains in critical but stable condition, cops said.

It's just the latest incident to rock the southern Wisconsin city, which has been plagued by gun violence in recent months - including a number of shootings carried out by teen gunmen.

Video of the shooting captured by a nearby surveillance camera at the intersection of Albert and Marquette streets in Racine, Wisconsin, shows two unidentified gunmen approaching a male teen walking on the sidewalk with a child after suddenly pulling up in a black SUV

The teen (muzzled) was shot out on the street at point blank range before the two gunmen get back into their dark-colored van and flee the scene. Racine Police Department have not made any arrests in relation to Sunday's shooting

No suspects have been arrested in relation to the shooting, police added, and the case still remains under investigation.

RPD declined to provide details to DailyMail.com on identities of the child and of the victim, as well as the number of times the teen was shot.

Sunday's shooting came just a week after another teenager, 14-year-old Eugene Henderson Jr., was killed on March 13 by a gunshot to the head.

He was riding as a passenger in a stolen car when he was killed in a drive-by shooting, following an alleged argument with the driver of the car next to him.

A $1,000 reward is being offered in exchange for additional information on the suspects, who have not been held captive yet. A GoFundMe page for Henderson's funeral expenses has so far raised $11,165.

Eugene Henderson, 14, was killed on March 13 after a vehicle pulled up by a stolen car he was riding in as a passenger and a gunman shot him in the head

It's not the first violent incident the city has dealt with in the past year, either.

In 2021, a total of 76 juvenile delinquents were jailed in Racine County for gun-related charges, according to county data.

'We're hearing it more and more with younger and younger teenagers,' said Mayor Cory Mason. 'To put it in context, these are 9th- and 10th-graders often engaged in some of these activities.'

'Young folks and guns just don't mix,' Charlie French, executive director at Racine Neighborhood Watch, told Fox 6. 'I think that's the thing that sticks out the most is that they were very young.'

'This is a reflection on our community, and our community needs to get involved and do something about it,' said French.

Any witnesses, or anyone with additional information is urged to contact the Racine Police Department Investigations Unit at 262-635-7756.

Anonymous tip caller can contact Crime Stoppers' hotline at 262-636-9330, or through the Crime Stoppers app by using the p3 app.
Chung Ki-sun

Founder's grandson seeks to attract investments for future growth



By Park Jae-hyuk



Daunting tasks have been assigned to Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI) Holdings and Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering (KSOE) President Chung Ki-sun, as the late founder's grandson stepped closer to tightening his control over the shipbuilding group, Tuesday, a day before the 50th anniversary of its founding.



According to KSOE, Chung was appointed as its new co-CEO to lead the company along with Vice Chairman Ka Sam-hyun, during Tuesday's board of directors meeting, which was held immediately after the general meeting of shareholders, where his proposed appointment as a new inside director was passed.



He is also expected to be appointed as a new inside director of HHI Holdings without a major hitch, during next Monday's general meeting of shareholders of the group's holding company, which will be rebranded as HD Hyundai.



His entry to the boards of HHI Holdings and KSOE has been widely viewed as a preparatory measure to hand over control of the group to him from professional managers, who have run the group, since Chung's father, Asan Foundation Chairman Chung Mong-joon, the largest shareholder of HHI Holdings, with a 26.6-percent stake, stepped down from management in 2002.



Considering the fact that the younger Chung said at the CES 2022 in January that HHI Group will grow into a "future builder" creating new values for humankind, he seems to be focusing for a while on attracting investments for autonomous ships, eco-friendly vessels and a hydrogen value chain, as well as increasing his stake in the group's holding company and its affiliates.



"Chung will be able to push ahead with various new businesses, capitalizing on the recent growth in the shipbuilding industry," an industry official said.



The 39-year-old, however, is still facing conflicts with minority shareholders and unionized workers.



KSOE's minority shareholders have complained about the company's ongoing attempt to list one of its subsidiaries, Hyundai Samho Heavy Industries, on the local stock market.



They have expressed concerns about an additional decline in the parent firm's stock price, citing its previous stock price plunge, when another subsidiary, HHI, was listed on the benchmark KOSPI market last September.



Some of them even voted against Chung's appointment as an inside director to protest the company.



In response, KSOE's management announced several shareholder return policies at Tuesday's general meeting, saying it is considering raising dividends, repurchasing treasury stocks and retiring the stocks.



"We are also considering delaying the subsidiary's initial public offering (IPO) until the introduction of specific regulations on listing a listed holding company's subsidiary," a KSOE official said. "If we pursue its IPO before the introduction of the regulations, we will consider measures to protect shareholder value."



On the same day, unionized workers of HHI, Hyundai Construction Equipment and Hyundai Electric rejected the tentatively proposed agreement on 2021 wages.



During a vote taken on Tuesday morning, 68.5 percent of voters refused to accept the proposal.



"The lower-than-expected base salary and the hefty dividends paid to the HHI's largest shareholder have angered the workers," an HHI union representative said.



The management claims that it has tried its best to satisfy the unionized workers for a prosperous relationship with them during the year of the 50th anniversary of its founding.


A woman has appeared in court charged under an obscure Victorian law  of procuring her own miscarriage.

The 24-year-old from London is accused of unlawfully administering prescription drug Misoprostol with intent to abort her unborn child.

Misoprostol is used to prevent stomach ulcers while someone takes painkillers such as aspirin or ibuprofen. It is also used in combination with another drug, mifepristone, to end a pregnancy.

The 24-year-old from London was granted bail to appear before Oxford Crown Court on April 21. She appeared at Oxford Magistrates Court (above) yesterday morning via video link from home. File image

What does the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 say about abortion? Attempts to procure abortion are covered in the 1861 Act under two categories: 1. Administering drugs or using instruments to procure abortion 2. Procuring drugs to cause abortion However, the 1967 Abortion Act made abortions legal if performed by a doctor, authorised by two doctors acting in good faith, and met at least one qualifying factor. But it does not apply to Northern Ireland. Until 2019, anyone carrying out an abortion in Northern Ireland, except under highly limited circumstances, could be jailed for life under the 1861 Act. It was legalised under Section 9 of the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc) Act 2019. Advertisement

The charge relates to an incident in Oxford on January 27 last year.

The charge dates back to the Victorian era. It was brought into law by the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act, which also covers crimes including causing grievous bodily harm.

Appearing before Oxford Magistrates Court yesterday morning via video link from home, the woman entered no plea to procuring her own miscarriage by use of poison.

The charge is indictable only, meaning it can only be dealt with at the crown court, the magistrates heard.

Her solicitor, Howard Wilson, said that the allegation would be denied.

She was granted bail to appear before Oxford Crown Court for a plea and trial preparation hearing on April 21.

In 2012, Sarah Catt took misoprostol days before her baby was due to be born.

She pleaded guilty to administering a poison with intent to procure a miscarriage was given an eight year prison sentence at the Crown Court in Leeds.

In 2016, a Northern Irish woman was given a suspended prison sentence for purchasing the same medication online, reported The Guardian.

At the time, abortion was illegal in Northern Ireland.

Belfast crown court heard that she tried to travel to England for a termination but could not cover her costs.

Abortion sections of the Offences against the Person Act 1861 were repealed in Northern Ireland, in October 2019.
A World War II soldier who was buried in the wrong grave and considered missing for decades, finally has been identified and will be laid to rest after his son tracked him down following years of frustration.

U.S. Army Private First Class Edward 'Pete' Hewitt Benson Jr., of Roanoke, Virginia, was identified 77 years after his death, the Pentagon announced on March 10, after his son James 'Jim' Benson, 79, of Little River, South Carolina, began a series of inquiries in 2003 with the Department of Defense about the possibility of identifying his father.

'I started tracing him,' James Benson, a retired Marine, told the Washington Post. 'It was off and on for years.'

Benson was only two when his father died in March 1945 during World War II and said he has no recollection of him, but he has pictures with his dad, who came home at least once to visit the family during the war.

'I never knew him,' he told the Post. 'I wanted to know more about him: how he got killed, why cant we get him home. He was an unknown.'

Pete Benson's body originally was buried at St. Mary's Cemetery in Glens Falls, New York, in July 1948, by the family of Sergeant Leonard J. Moynihan, who thought the remains belonged to him. Moynihan and Benson were killed in the same attack during a Japanese air raid on the island of Biak in the South Pacific, now a part of Indonesia, in 1945.

It took the Defense Department three years to discover the mistake, removing Benson's body - then unidentified - from the grave and burying Moynihan there in 1951. Benson's body was taken to Fort William McKinley Cemetery - now known as Manila American Cemetery and Memorial - in the Philippines, where he was laid to rest for 71 years unidentified.

He was dubbed as X-188 Finschhafen #3, or X-188 for short, and was declared 'non-recoverable' - or missing - by the American Graves Registration Service.

Edward 'Pete' Hewitt Benson Jr., 22, of Roanoke, Virginia, (pictured) was officially identified on March 10 after 77 years of being considered missing. His remains were mistakenly identified as those of Sergeant Leonard J. Moynihan, who was stationed at the same airstrip

He was dubbed as X-188 Finschhafen #3, or X-188 for short, and was declared 'non-recoverable' by the American Graves Registration Service after he was exhumed from Moynihan's grave in upstate New York (pictured: Pete Benson with his wife, Joan)

Both Benson and Moynihan were stationed at the airstrip in Biak (pictured) during WWII and both of them died when the Japanese bombed the island in March 1945. Thirty-eight other soldiers died in the attack and Benson's was last body to be identified

Benson and Moynihan were both stationed near Sorido Airstrip on Biak, which was seized from the Japanese in 1944, and became part of the 1562nd Army Air Force Base Unit. It is unclear if they knew each other.

The pair, as well as 38 other soldiers, were killed in 1945 when the Japanese raided the airstrip at night. Three out of the 40 soldiers who died, including Benson, ended up unidentified. The other two were later identified, but the third - Benson - remained unknown.

The bombing destroyed men's tents, the mess hall, warehouses, planes and the air traffic control center. Originally, all 40 men who died were buried on the island until after the war, then they were exhumed and reburied in a large cemetery in New Guinea.

Questions arose about Moynihan's identity in 1951 and in September, the mistake - that Benson, and not Moynihan, was in Moynihan's grave in Glens Falls - was discovered. Moynihan's his body was found still in the New Guinea cemetery and he was identified through dental records, the Washington Post reported. He was reburied in November. Benson's remains were removed but remained unidentified.

James Benson, who had been researching his father's death since 2003, continuously asked the Department of Defense to look into the possibility that the remains mistakenly buried in Moynihan's grave could be those of his father.

He argued that his father was the only soldier not identified after the raid and whose body had never officially been located. The set of remains that had been in Moynihan's grave were the only ones from the raid still unidentified.

Pete Benson's son James (pictured) fought for years to have the potential connection between X-188 and his father being looked into. He started in 2003 and couldn't get anywhere until 2015, when Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) was formed and took family DNA and exhumed the body

The Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) was reluctant to do another exhumation, but Benson was persistent. He later submitted detailed research performed by retired Air Force Colonel Jack O. Forgy about the 'complexities' of the case, but it still stalled.

When the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) was formed in 2015, Benson reached out in hopes of moving the case further.

In January 2020, Pete Benson - then known as X-188 - was moved to the DPAA Laboratory at the Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii and the family sent DNA samples for analysis. Through dental, anthropological and DNA analysis, Benson was properly identified and officially accounted for.

James Benson told the Washington Post that it was 'such [a] shock after all these years.' when he received the call from an Army official, who told him: 'Jim, I got great news. Theyve identified your father.'

'That caused a big gulp,' he said. 'Its hard to explain.'

Pete Benson attended Jefferson High School and worked for the Norfolk & Western Railway before entering the Army with friends in October 1942, the Roanoke Times reported. He was married to Joan Benson. He spent five months overseas and then was killed in the attack at age 22.

Pete was originally buried in the St. Mary's Cemetery in Glens Falls, New York (pictured), before being moved to the Philippines military cemetery. In 1951, his body was exhumed and the proper Moynihan was buried in his rightful spot in the Glens Falls cemetery

'Its closure. Its a remarkable piece of history,' James Benson told the Roanoke Times.

Benson, a retired Marine colonel, served in Vietnam and spent 26 years in the military. He visited the cemetery in the Philippines where his father was potentially buried in the mid-1970s to see the Tablets of the Missing, where his dad's name was recorded. Benson's name will now have a rosette next to it to show that he has been recovered and identified.

Pete Benson will be reburied at Roanoke's Evergreen cemetery on May 14 near his parents and siblings, the Washington Post reported.
The soldier near Mykolaiv in southern Ukraine told his colleague that the attack led to chaos within the ranks of the Russian military

Audio reveals one soldier describing how a column of Russian forces that had been sent beside his unit was 'torn apart' by Ukrainian forces

wo Russian soldiers have been heard describing Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine as a 's***show', according to an intercepted call

Two Russian soldiers have been heard describing Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine as a 's***show' after their own troops dropped a bomb on them, according to an intercepted phone call.

Audio reveals one soldier, who has not been named, describing how a column of Russian forces that had been sent beside his unit was 'torn apart' by Ukrainian forces

The soldier near Mykolaiv in southern Ukraine told his colleague that the attack led to chaos within the ranks of the Russian military, with 50 per cent of the unit suffering from frostbite.

'But they don't plan to treat them in the hospital,' the Russian soldier said in the audio, which was published by the Ukrainian Security Service, as he slammed Putin's 'madhouse invasion'.

Despite mobilising a force of between 150,000 and 200,000 Russian troops, Moscow failed to anticipate anything other than weak resistance by the Ukrainian forces - likely owing to Russian intelligence failures.

A senior NATO military officer today said the alliance estimates that Russia has suffered between 30,000 and 40,000 battlefield casualties in Ukraine through the first month of the war, including between 7,000 and 15,000 killed.

Two Russian soldiers have been heard describing Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine as a 's***show' after their own troops dropped a bomb on them, according to an intercepted phone call. Pictured: A charred Russian tank is seen, amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine, on the front line in the Kyiv region, Ukraine, on March 20

A Ukrainian serviceman mans a military check point in Kyiv on March 21

'Basically, it's a s***show here, I'll put it that way,' the unnamed soldier said, according to the Daily Beast.

He said that General Lietenant Yakov Rezantsev, who was commanding his unit, told them that their invasion of Ukraine would be over quickly.

'Do you know what he told us? "It's no secret to anyone that there are only a few hours until this special operation is over." And now those hours are still going,' the soldier said.

The unnamed soldier added that Russian troops have complained that their military armour are not fit for purpose, and their concerns have been ignored.

'Comrade General, damn it, I have this situation,' the soldier claimed troops had told their leader. 'And he just says, "Son, be strong," and then he fucks off. It's such trash here our own plane dropped a bomb on us,' he said.

'They couldn't even send off the 200s here,' he said, using a military term for dead bodies. 'They rode with us for five days.'

'Even in Chechnya, there was nothing like this,' he said. 'This 'special operation,' damnit with respect to homes not meant to be destroyed it's bulls***.'

A car destroyed after Russian shelling is seen in Kharkiv, Ukraine, on Tuesday

Russia's forces in Ukraine appear to be turning to a war of attrition with devastating effect on civilians, after failing to secure hoped-for swift gains when President Vladimir Putin launched the invasion one month ago.

The US government says recent days have brought more intense aerial and naval bombardment as Ukrainian resistance holds up the invaders' advance on land.

Attacking forces remain 10 miles from the Ukrainian capital Kyiv to the north-west and 18 miles away to the east, able only to bombard it from a distance.

While US President Joe Biden has said Putin's 'back is against the wall in Ukraine', US Defense Department spokesman John Kirby told CNN Tuesday that Ukrainian forces were now even 'going after Russians' who were losing morale as food and fuel run out.

Capturing Kyiv had appeared the Russians' top target as they entered the country on February 24, hoping to topple President Volodymyr Zelensky's administration.

But despite mobilising a force of between 150,000 and 200,000 troops, Moscow failed to anticipate anything other than weak resistance - likely owing to Russian intelligence failures - and made sloppy logistical preparations.

Even now, Russia does not have complete control of the skies over Ukraine, complicating their entire offensive.
We recently went to Yale Law School and what we experienced should frighten  not just legal professionals  but everyone interested in America's future.

We are constitutional litigators who have more than three decades of combined experience.

We've argued before the U.S. Supreme Court and in lower federal courts and state courts.

We are also lawyers on opposite sides of the ideological spectrum, and yet one of us joined the other's successful effort to secure a major civil rights victory for all Americans.

Monica litigates for the American Humanist Association, which has fought for LGBTQ equality and separation of church and state, and Kristen is with Alliance Defending Freedom, which has fought for free speech and freedom of conscience.

In our presentation to Yale Law School students, we planned to focus on Uzuegbunam v. Preczewskia U.S. Supreme Court case Kristen argued that resulted in an 8-1 ruling hailed by both the left and the right.

If the Supreme Court had not issued an opinion overturning the lower court decision, the government would have had the opportunity to violate civil rights without penalty, including the rights of LGBTQ, minority, and religious students across this nation.

We recently went to Yale Law School and what we experienced should frighten  not just legal professionals  but everyone interested in America's future. (Left) Kristen Waggoner of the Alliance Defending Freedom in a Christian conservative (Right) Monica Miller of the American Humanist Association is a liberal atheist

We came to the Yale event with the goal of demonstrating that religious and political opponents can do great things when they respectfully work to find common ground.

But instead of encountering students who wanted to question us about the case, we encountered a crowd of activists who, perplexingly, tried to silence us.

Out of the 150 students there, about 120 chanted, pounded the walls, and yelled obscenities, which disturbed nearby classes, exams, and meetings.

Harassment and physical threats were reported. The police had to escort us out of the building into a patrol car for our safety.

Some students freely hurled insults including the word 'b---h,' which was particularly jarring to us as female litigators.

We recognize that we have benefited from the long, hard battles fought by the women who have come before us. But we have also worked hard ourselves to become excellent advocates.

All three of the women on the podiumthe two of us plus the moderatordeserved to be treated with civility.

Out of the 150 students there, about 120 chanted, pounded the walls, and yelled obscenities, which disturbed nearby classes, exams, and meetings. (Above) Footage of Yale Law School protest

Some students freely hurled insults including the word 'b---h,' which was particularly jarring to us as female litigators.

While the event concluded on time, it was significantly disrupted.

We strongly defend the First Amendment rights of students to speak, assemble, and even peacefully protest when appropriate.

But we also understand as litigators  and law students should recognize that  that one cannot effectively argue their position if they refuse to hear the other side of the argument.

It is a rarity in today's culture that a liberal atheist and a Christian conservative can find common ground on anything. Perhaps because neither side is willing to listen.

The refusal to engage with someone that holds a different point of view is an intellectual sickness that has obviously infected public debate, but to see that this illness has also taken hold of aspiring lawyers is shocking.

Disruptive behavior of the kind we encountered has the paradoxical effect of pushing two sides further apart.

Ironically, we had come to Yale to show that two advocates, who don't agree on many things, can agree on certain fundamental beliefs.

The primary one being that freedom of expression is critical to the future of the judicial system and our nation.

In the courtroom strict processes and decorum are upheld so that each party can present the facts and the law to reveal truth so that justice may be served.

As the American Bar Association itself has recognized, civility serves as 'a foundation for democracy and the rule of law,' and lawyers must 'set a high standard for civil discourse as an example for others in resolving differences constructively and without disparagement of others.'

Critical thinking, intellectual curiosity, persuasive advocacy, and civility are hallmarks of exceptional lawyers and leaders. Respectful argumentation is the essence of what lawyers and judges are called to do.

Those ideas underpin the U.S. adversarial legal system, which demands vigorous argument. The entire system collapses when one sides chooses to rhetorically burn it all down, as these students chose to do.

Perhaps most disturbingly of all, a room full of America's future lawyers showed a complete misunderstanding of free speech.

The First Amendment is not realized unless everyone, regardless our their viewpoint, is able to participate in free expression.

By trying to silence us, the Yale law students put aside reasoned, civilized discourse. And to what end?

If tomorrow's leaders do not learn to respectfully debate the most polarizing issues of our day while on campus, they will be ill-equipped to do so after graduation.

As for us, we are more deeply resolved than ever to seek the truth, to respect the freedom of others to do the same, and to listen to our opponents.

The way forward for America amidst our deep differences is more speech and more listening.

Through this balance, we'll find plots of common ground to plant seeds of change.
The prime suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann has complained that inmates in the jail where he is currently serving time are threatening to kill him.

Christian Brueckner, who is behind bars in Germany for the rape of a 72-year-old American tourist, also moaned about having to buy his own pens from the prison shop and a lack of coffee creamer.

The 44-year-old - who has not been charged over Madeleine's 2007 disappearance but has been identified by police as their suspect - made the complaints in a 14-page missive penned from a 8ft by 10ft cell at Oldenburg prison, near the city of Bremen.

Christian Brueckner (left), the main suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann (right), has complained that inmates of German jail where he is serving time want to kill him

German newspaper Bild obtained a copy of the letter and says Brueckner wrote that other inmates have learned who he is because of a documentary detailing his links to Madeleine's disappearance.

Since then he has been subjected to verbal abuse and death threats, the letter says, including one man who walked up to him in a yard and threatened to murder him.

'I am forcing myself to isolate myself because there is a high probability of a physical attack by fellow prisoners,' he said. 'It's torture.'

Brueckner claims to only leave his cell for one hour every day for fear of being killed, and to avoid certain areas of the prison where prisoners could easily fashion weapons to attack him.

He also complained that prison guards confiscated a set of pens he was sent because they were a 'safety hazard', forcing him to buy his own from the shop.

And he is also said to have complained about a lack of coffee creamer.

The letter emerged just days after police sources said Operation Grange - the British inquiry into Madeleine's disappearance - will be wrapped up later this year if no new lines of inquiry emerge before then.

Detectives are said to be frustrated by the failure to compile sufficient evidence to prosecute Brueckner despite publishing his name in the hopes of drawing out witnesses or others with information on him.

He denied any involvement in the disappearance of the youngster from an apartment in Praia da Luz on the Algarve.

Operation Grange, overseen by the Metropolitan Police, is estimated to have cost 13 million.

The Sun said it was understood that Madeleine's parents, Gerry and Kate, both 54, are aware of the impending closure but have vowed to continue their search.

Madeleine vanished from a holiday resort in the Portuguese town of Praia da Luz in 2007, with Brueckner named as the prime suspect

Brueckner is serving a seven-year jail sentence in Germany for raping a 72-year-old American tourist at the same resort where Madeleine disappeared - two years before she vanished.

The Operation Grange team has in recent years been pared down from 40 officers to just four detectives working under Detective Chief Inspector Mark Cranwell.

His team also liaises with Madeleine's parents, of Rothley, Leicsestershire.

In June 2020, police in Britain and Germany launched a renewed appeal for witnesses after disclosing they had a new suspect, who was later revealed to be Brueckner.

German prosecutors remain convinced he was responsible for the youngster's disappearance but despite an intensive investigation have not brought any charges.

Brueckner also is alleged to have admitted abducting Madeleine to a friend - and the German team of investigators, led by public prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters, said they were certain he had killed the three-year-old.

It is now highly unlikely that he will be charged over her disappearance.

Wolters went as far as holding a press conference where he addressed Madeleine's parents Kate and Gerry over the air.

He insisted: 'We are confident we have the man who took and killed your daughter. All I can do is ask for your patience.'

But claims German detectives had sent multiple notes to Madeleine's family were rubbished within days.

And the Met itself released a pointed statement correcting the allegations about the correspondence.

It said last year: 'The Met received one letter from the BKA [Federal Criminal Police Office of Germany] on June 12, which was passed to the family.

'The letter did not state that there was evidence or proof that Madeleine is dead, the MPS continues to investigate Madeleine's disappearance as a missing person investigation. No letter has been received by the Met from the German prosecutor.'

In fact in May last year, Kate and Gerry restated they still believed she could be alive.

A statement that month said: 'The Covid pandemic has made this year even more difficult for many reasons but thankfully the investigation to find Madeleine and her abductor has continued.

Parents Kate (left) and Gerry McCann say that - despite 15 years elapsing since they last saw their daughter - they still hold out hope that she is alive

Brueckner was in Praia da Luz when Madeleine went missing on the night of May 3, 2007, pinpointed there by a mobile phone call (file image, the family's apartment)

'We hang on to the hope, however small, that we will see Madeleine again. As we have said repeatedly, we need to know what has happened to our lovely daughter, no matter what. We are very grateful to the police for their continued efforts.'

Brueckner is currently serving a prison sentence for drug trafficking and is expected to remain behind bars until 2026 after losing a bid to overturn a rape conviction.

He was last year found guilty of the 2005 rape of a 72-year-old American woman in the same Portuguese resort from which Madeleine vanished and sentenced to seven years in jail, at a court in Brunswick, Lower Saxony.

Brueckner was in Praia da Luz when Madeleine went missing on the night of May 3, 2007, pinpointed there by a mobile phone call.

Madeleine - then aged three - disappeared from an apartment where she was staying with her family.

Kate and Gerry, had been dining with friends in a nearby restaurant and periodically checking on Madeleine and her two siblings - Sean and Amelie - as they slept.

Around 9pm, Gerry went to check on the children and found them sleeping. At 9.30pm, a family friend went to the apartment and heard no noise, but did not check far enough into the room to see if Madeleine was there.

At 10pm, Kate went to check on the children and found Maddie was gone.

The disappearance was reported immediately and a search party launched the same evening including officers from the Guarda Nacional Republicana and the Policia Judiciaria, which launched an investigation.

Amaral was brought in to head that investigation and ran it for several months, infamously naming both Kate and Gerry as suspects.

He was sacked shortly after launching a public attack on British detectives - accusing them of only pursuing investigative lines given to them by the McCanns.

He has since published a book and appeared in a documentary called 'The Truth of the Lie' in which he repeated his claims against the McCanns.

The family won a libel suit against him in 2015, and were awarded 500,000 in damages.
An LA woman miraculously survived a shooting that saw dozens of bullets pumped through the windshield of her white BMW sedan.

The shooting happened around 9:30pm PST Tuesday night, when at least one person began firing rounds into the 3-Series sedan in Exposition Park, close to USC.

The victim, who hasn't been named, but is in her 30s, was seen chatting to EMTs on the sidewalk after, with blood seen dripping from her wounds.

She was later taken to a hospital for treatment, with no updates on her condition since shared.

The woman was in the passenger seat when she was ambushed - it is unclear if anyone was in the driver's seat.

The white four-door sedan they were sitting inside had at least 20 bullet holes in its windshield, and at least one of them had traveled through the driver's side window. Dozens of shell casings littered the ground around the car.

An LA woman miraculously survived a shooting that saw dozens of bullets pumped through the windshield of her white BMW sedan

The white four-door sedan they were sitting inside had at least 20 bullet holes in its windshield, and at least one of them had traveled through the driver's side window. Dozens of shell casings littered the ground around the car

Bloodied and rocking back and forth, wearing shorts and a long-sleeved tie-dye shirt, the woman could be seen conscious and speaking with police

'The person is blessed to survive something of this magnitude,' LAPD Sargeant Craig Orange told ABC7.

Bloodied and rocking back and forth, wearing shorts and a long-sleeved tie-dye shirt, the woman could be seen conscious and speaking with police. She was carried on a gurney into an ambulance, and then to a nearby hospital.

The LAPD's Media Relations Department told DailyMail.com that the assailant's vehicle was a late-model white sedan with tinted windows, although it was unclear whether that description was provided by the victim or witnesses.

It was last seen driving west on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard towards Normandie Avenue.

The department would not confirm whether a suspect in the shooting had been identified or divulge additional information. It is unclear whether the victim and the shooter knew each other.

She was carried on a gurney into an ambulance, and then to a nearby hospital

The attack came as Los Angeles has seen a 16 percent increase in robberies since last year, a rise in the number of street shootings since 2020 and an increase in the number of armed holdups.

Woke DA George Gascon has come under fire over soft-on-crime policies that have been blamed for emboldening criminals by releasing them straight back onto the streets after they're charged.

He is now likely to face a recall like woke San Francisco prosecutor Chesa Boudin, with a recent poll showing that Boudin is almost certain to be ousted when he goes on the ballot in June.
Convicted con artist Anna Sorokin continues to revel in her notoriety from behind bars as the buzz surrounding the new miniseries about her life spreads to the White House.

The fake German heiress, who remains in ICE custody in Upstate New York, was thrilled to learn that Netflix's 'Inventing Anna' has captured the attention of White House press secretary Jen Psaki, who has now recommended the show to Hillary Clinton.

Psaki, 43, has been keeping herself entertained in isolation after revealing she had contracted Covid-19 for the second time on Monday.

Just one day later, the former first lady, 74, announced on Twitter that she too had tested positive for the virus and asked followers for 'movie recommendations' for her time in quarantine.

Psaki was among the thousands to reply with suggestions, tweeting: 'Finally watching Inventing Anna (and recommend!) And highly recommend lots of water, tea and juice.'

Anna Sorokin said she was happy to learn the new Netflix series about her life has captured the attention of White House press secretary Jen Psaki

Psaki, 43, revealed she is watching Inventing Anna while isolating at home with Covid-19 as she recommended the show to Hillary Clinton who is also sick with the virus

Psaki, 43, revealed she had contracted Covid-19 for the second time, just a day before Hillary announced she also tested positive

'Thank you for the tips, Jenand hope you feel better soon!' Clinton replied.

News of the exchange managed to get back to Russian-born Anna, who is being held at the Orange County Correctional Facility in Goshen for overstaying her visa.

The scammer was quick to gloat in an interview with DailyMail.com Wednesday, while also revealing she has been granted an emergency stay to block a deportation order filed last month.

'BTW Jen Psaki just said on Twitter that she's watching Inventing Anna and recommended it to Hillary Clinton,' Anna said.

'[I'm] happy to hear that Jen Psaki is enjoying me during her "Netflix and quarantine" time out.

'Also just got a stay from ICE and wondering if the two are somehow connected.'

Meanwhile, the former secretary of state did not confirm whether she plans to watch the new series, starring Julia Garner as the lead role.

Inventing Anna was released on Netflix last month

She first took to Twitter earlier Tuesday to announce she had tested positive for the coronavirus, adding that she has 'mild cold symptoms but am feeling fine.'

'I'm more grateful than ever for the protection vaccines can provide against serious illness. Please get vaccinated and boosted if you haven't already!' Clinton tweeted.

'Bill tested negative and is feeling fine. He's quarantining until our household is fully in the clear. Movie recommendations appreciated!'

Psaki's promotion of the new series comes just days after Anna finally expressed remorse for her scams in an exclusive interview with DailyMailTV.

The Netflix show, which premiered last month, depicts how the 31-year-old passed herself of as 'Anna Delvey,' the daughter of an oil tycoon, who conned the super-rich of New York and persuaded banks to lend her mountains of cash.

But her spiraling debts caught up with her in April 2019 when she was convicted of four counts of theft of services, three counts of grand larceny and one count of attempted grand larceny.

The miniseries, starring Julia Garner as the lead role, depicts how the fake German heiress managed to swindle New York's elite

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 jailed for between four and 15 years and ordered to pay $199,000 in restitution to her many victims.

However, prior to her chat with DailyMailTV last Friday, Anna had never before apologized for her scams and for pretending to be a millionaire socialite.

'I admit I made some mistakes,' she said in the jailhouse interview. 'I never tried to harm anybody and I'm trying to fix it now. I don't know what that makes me.'

When asked at that time whether she had any regrets, the champagne-swilling fraudster told a journalist: 'I'd be lying to you and to everyone else and to myself if I said I was sorry for anything.'

Despite her attitude, Sorokin, who grew up in Germany and worked as an intern for a fashion mag before coming to the US in 2013, was released from prison in February of last year for good behavior.

However her legal problems were far from over and a month later she was taken back into custody by ICE for overstaying her visa.

'No money in the world is worth going to jail  even for a day,' she warned.

'I'm just trying to make the best out of the situation I'm dealing with right now. I could have done so many things different and I would have never seen the inside of the jail. But it just is what it is.

'You don't get to press a reset button and go back and fix what you've done in the past. So don't commit any crimes and don't go to jail. It's definitely not worth it.'

The former first lady said her husband, Bill Clinton, tested negative for the virus and 'is feeling fine'

Hillary broke the news on Twitter on Tuesday evening

Anna claimed she has settled her restitution and covers her own legal bills thanks to the $320,000 windfall she received from Netflix for the rights to her wild life story.

The resulting Netflix miniseries, Inventing Anna, featuring Julia Garner in the lead role, has been a smash hit since its February release.

Anna said she's only been able to watch about 20 to 30 minutes of it so far in video calls to friends.

'Julia did a great job, a great job. Everybody loves it,' Sorokin said.

But she added: 'I wouldn't want people to glamorize crimes and use me as an example, like the poster child.

'This is totally not the message I'm trying to send. I'm trying to turn my story around. I know I'm getting a lot of criticism for, like, why are you giving a platform to a criminal?

'I feel like I deserve a second chance and I deserve to move on. And I'm not doing anything illegal as of right now.'

Anna Sorokin is seen in court during trial closing summations in 2019

Anna was found guilty of theft charges but was acquitted 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 has been held at the Orange County Correctional Facility in Goshen, New York since March 2021 for overstaying her visa

Anna is appealing her deportation so she can stay in the States, write a memoir and work on her podcast.

Anna said she expects her deportation appeal to be decided any day now but if she does have to leave, the UK could be next on her radar.

'I have a German passport, so technically I could go to a lot of places,' she explains.

'I guess I'll think about that when that happens. London would be an option  I have a lot of friends there.'

If Anna does end up back in Germany she's confident that her working class parents will forgive her.

Anna's dad Vadim, a former truck driver, has a heating and cooling business in Duren, 45 minutes west of Cologne. Her mom owns a convenience store.

Vadim told DailyMail.com in 2019 that he had disowned his daughter because of her 'selfish personality'.

But Anna insisted: 'I'm still in touch with my parents and I call them every other day.

'They're not going to drop life in Germany and buy a house by the jail in New York and come see me every day. But whatever I need, I can always give them a call and ask if that's reasonable. So I have support from them.'
McDonald's is rationing tomatoes in its UK restaurants after supply chain issues led to a shortage of the fruit.

The fast food giant has said while the menu as a whole hasn't been affected, it has been forced to cut the amount of tomato in some of its products.

Chief among these are the Big Tasty and Big Tasty with Bacon, both of which will no longer have two slices of tomato and will have to make do with one lonely slice for the time being.

Supply chains are currently being affected by multiple factors, including the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Brexit and the backlog due to Covid.

All of this means some items are proving harder to source than others, and now even the mighty McDonald's has been affected too.

McDonald's says supply chain issues mean it is having trouble sourcing tomatoes for its UK restaurants, such as this one in London

A sign at a McDonald's in Teesside reveals the supply chain woes currently facing the fast food giant

A spokesperson from McDonald's confirmed the shortage was a nationwide issue.

'We are currently experiencing a shortage in our supply of tomatoes,' she said.

'As a result, the Big Tasty and the Big Tasty with Bacon will have one slice of tomato rather than the usual two.

'We apologise for any inconvenience, and thank our customers for their patience.

'We are working hard to resolve this issue as quickly as possible.'

As a result of the tomato shortage the chain's Big Tasty (pictured) will no longer have two slices of tomato - it will only have one

It comes after numerous reports from customers in the north east that branches in Teesside had been informing them of the shortage, GazetteLive reports.

It's not the first time McDonald's has seen issues with its supply chain bring problems to its restaurants.

Last month fans were left 'devastated' when the Big Mac Chicken was pulled from menus just nine days after it was launched due to high demand.

The new fan favourite Big Mac Chicken burger (pictured) from McDonald's sold out in the UK in less than two weeks in February - leading the fast food chain to pull it from the menu

The variation of the Big Mac was pulled temporarily as soaring demand from customers led to the chain running out across its 1,300 restaurants in the UK.

Despite being 50p more expensive than a regular beef Big Mac, it ended its scheduled limited six-week run more than four weeks early due to demand.

The company said it had 'escalated quickly' and while it said it would be back, it did not put a date on when this would be.

Angry fast food fans have hit out at McDonald's after it removed Chicken Legends (pictured) from its menu due to 'supply chain' issues in October

Meanwhile, in October last year the chain ran out of Chicken Legends due to 'supply chain' issues.

McDonald's initially said supply chain woes were 'impacting the availability' of the Chicken Legend and that it was working hard to return the item as soon as possible.

In a later statement to Mail Online it said the item should still be available inside restaurant chains, just not for delivery orders.
An infamous killer who got her 15 year-old lover to murder her husband in 1990 has failed in her last-ditch attempt to have her life sentence reduced after apologizing for her crimes for the first time.

Pamela Smart's bid for freedom was unanimously rejected 5-0 by an appellate panel in New Hampshire this week, 31 years after the former high school worker got underage boyfriend William Flynn to shoot and kill her spouse Gregory Smart.

'I offer no excuses for my actions and behavior,' she said in a recorded statement that was sent as a DVD to the attorney generals office in December. 'I'm to blame.'

She continued: 'I regret that it took me so long to apologize to the Smart family, my own family, and everyone else. But I think that I wasn't at a place where I was willing to own that or face that.'

'I was young and selfish and I wasn't thinking about the consequences of what I was doing.'

In the state's response, Jeffery Strelzin, associate attorney general, wrote that Smart has told a false narrative for over 30 years and just because she's decided to change that now 'does not mean that she has truly changed and fully acknowledged all the crimes she committed as an accomplice and conspirator in her husbands murder, and the perpetrator of witness tampering.'

Pamela Smart (pictured in 2020), 54, was denied a reduction for her life sentence over the 1990 murder of her husband, who was shot by her 15-year-old lover

'Decades of lies cannot be undone in an instant by newfound claims of remorse and a vague acceptance of responsibility,' Strelzin, who opposed a sentence reduction, added.

The request was filed by Smart's attorney, Robert Juceam, who did not immediately return DailyMail.com's request for comment.

Smarts appeal after he took 30 years to admit her guilt or issue an apology, leading the appellate panel to rule that she'd only been telling them what they wanted to hear, and that she wasn't to be trusted.

Smart issued an apology for the first time via a DVD recording, which also saw her finally own up to her crimes, but the panel deciding her fate was unimpressed.

It was the third appeal made by Smart, who was jailed for life without parole in 1991, meaning she must now spend the rest of her life behind bars.

Smart, whose crime inspired the 1995 Nicole Kidman movie To Die For, apologized to Smart's family since her last appeal, but that attempt at contrition proved unsuccessful.

Smart was convicted of orchestrating the murder of Gregory Smart (right) only a year after the couple married . The two are pictured on their wedding day

'I am absolutely convinced that theres no evidence or argument' to grant a commutation request, councilor Janet Stevens said during a short discussion.

Smart was 22 and working as a high school media coordinator when she began an affair with 15-year-old student William Flynn, who shot and killed her husband, Gregory Smart.

Although she denied knowledge of the plot, she was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder and other crimes and sentenced to life without parole. The student, William Flynn, and three other teens who cooperated with prosecutors, served shorter sentences and have been released.

Smart had repeatedly denied involvement in the plot for nearly three decades before admitting fault.

The court found that Smart had seduced 15-year-old William Flynn to kill her husband. Flynn is pictured crying as he testified in court on his 17th birthday

The murder and subsequent trial shocked the nation. Smart is pictured testifying in 1991

Although she denied any connection to the murder of Gregory for more than 30 years, Smart finally admitted fault to it in her last appeal, which was denied

Flynn returned to court in 2008 to testify during one of Smart's appeal cases. He called how Smart manipulated him to shoot her husband

Smart's trial was a media circus and one of the first high-profile cases about a sexual affair between a school staff member and a student. It was the first murder trial in history to be broadcast on television gavel-to-gavel.

Smart was convicted in 1991 by a jury in Rockingham County, New Hampshire, and is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole at a maximum-security prison in Bedford Hills, New York.

Smart appealed the decision all the way to the Supreme Court, which declined to hear her case.

She had been applying for clemency since 2004. She was denied commutation in 2019 after the attorney general's office said she 'never accepted full responsibility' for her actions and there was overwhelming evidence.

Joyce Maynard wrote 'To Die For' in 1992, drawing from the Smart case, which went on to inspire a 1995 film of the same name, starring Nicole Kidman and Joaquin Phoenix.

The case became the basis for a novel that was adapted into the 1995 film 'To Die For,' starring Niccole Kidman as Smart and Joaquin Phoenix as Flynn

Flynn testified that Smart told him she needed her husband killed because she feared she would lose everything if they divorced.

He said she threatened to break up with him if he didn't kill Gregory Smart. He later shot Gregory Smart in the head with a .38-caliber revolver with the help of three friends.

In addition to earning two masters degrees in a Bedford Hills, New York, prison, Smart has tutored fellow inmates, has been ordained as a minister, and is part of an inmate liaison committee.

Many letters of support from inmates, supervisors and others were included in her application.

Besides saying that she is remorseful and has been rehabilitated, Smarts appeal noted pardons granted to three other women in New Hampshire in murder cases.

But the state countered that the cases involved less serious second-degree murder charges and the other women did not entice a juvenile to commit murder.
The upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy and Tron rollercoasters are just two projects in the pipeline at Disney World that could be delayed if employees who are protesting the company's response to Florida's so-called 'Don't Say Gay' bill get their way.

Protesters have asked the company to halt donations to politicians involved in the passage of the bill, such as Gov. Ron DeSantis - but they also want Disney to stop all 'construction and investment in the state of Florida' until the bill is repealed.

The legislation, officially called the 'Parental Rights in Education' bill and expected to go into effect in July, would ban classroom lessons on sexuality, gender identity and sexual orientation 'in a manner that is not age appropriate.'

Critics say the open-ended language, which also prevents 'classroom discussion' of the topics, would prevent children from confiding in teachers if they feel unsafe because of their identity.

Gov. Ron DeSantis, however, says the bill's aim is to 'empower parents' in their children's education, and make teachers recognize the distinction between 'instruction' and 'discussion.'

Disney employees have called out the company for not taking a stronger stance against the legislation. On Monday, CEO Bob Chapek said it was a 'mistake' to not take a stand against the bill earlier.

He also promised to put together a task force to create more LGBTQ content for children.

Despite these concessions, employees still took part in a company-wide walkout on Tuesday. About 60 employees gathered in a park outside Los Angeles, Reuters reports, and dozens of other employees walked out of their jobs at the company's studio in Burbank.

The Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind is set to open this summer at Disney World's EPCOT park, Disney says. The Tron Lightcycle/Run ride does not yet have an opening date, though the park says it has now started testing the ride vehicles on the tracks.

Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind is set to open this summer at Disney World's EPCOT park near Orlando, Florida. Above, a promotional poster for the project

A planned Tron Lightcycle/Run ride does not yet have an opening date, but the company says ride vehicles are currently being tested. It is set to open in Magic Kingdom's Tomorrowland

Dozens of employees marched outside of Disney's headquarters in Burbank, California on Tuesday as part of a full day of walkouts across the company's theme parks and offices in protest of the company's slow response to Florida's 'Don't Say Gay' bill

Protest organizers are calling for an end to all 'construction and investment in the state of Florida until hateful legislation is repealed'

What is the Parental Rights in Education bill? HB 1557 was introduced by two Republican members of the Florida Legislature - Representative Joe Harding and Senator Dennis Baxley. They say the bill's aim is to 'empower parents' in their children's education, and make teachers recognize the distinction between 'instruction' and 'discussion.' 'What we're prohibiting is instructing them in a specific direction,' Baxley said about how teachers lead students in a classroom. 'Students can talk about whatever they want to bring up, but sometimes the right answer is, ''You really ought to talk to your parents about that.''' The bill applies to children in kindergarten through third grade. It states that 'classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur.' It also requires districts to 'adopt procedures for notifying a student's parent if there is a change in the student's services or monitoring related to the student's mental, emotional, or physical health or well-being,' something LGBTQ advocates argue could lead to students being outed to their parents without the student's knowledge or consent. It was passed on March 8 in a 22-17 vote. The state House had approved the bill late last month. DeSantis has said he will sign it into law. It will come into effect on July 1. Advertisement

Cosmic Rewind will be Disney's first-ever 'reverse launch' coaster. It will also rotate riders in their cars as they race down the track.

According to the company: 'Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind is a family-friendly adventure, featuring a totally new type of roller coaster experience we're developing just for this attraction  it's a storycoaster that rotates 360 degrees so you're always focused on all the action as you help the Guardians save the galaxy.'

The semi-enclosed Tron ride is a version of the Lightcycle Power Run ride that opened in 2016 in Shanghai Disneyland, according to the Disney theme park blog Inside the Magic.

It will operate in Magic Kingdom's Tomorrowland section.

'This coaster-style attraction will allow riders to board a train of two-wheeled Lightcycles for a thrilling race through the digital frontier,' the company says.

The ride was first announced in 2017 and construction began in 2018, though it was delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Inside the Magic.

Both rollercoasters are based on the films of the same names.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, starring Chris Pratt and Zoe Saldana, will hit theaters in 2023.

Along with the two rollercoasters, recent construction permits applied for by Disney show more projects at Magic Kingdom Drive to be built by New Horizon Construction Services.

It is unclear what the projects will be - though the addresses listed are used by the Gaston's Tavern and Be Our Guest eateries at the parks.

Disney who are protesting the company's response to Florida's Don't Say Gay bill are calling for an end to 'construction and investment' until the bill is repealed.

In a statement on March 11, CEO Bob Chapek said Disney needed to use its influence to 'promote' inclusive stories and added that the company would 'combat similar legislation in other states.

Disney CEO Bob Chapek told employees during a virtual town hall that he regretted not taking a public stance against Florida's controversial 'Don't Say Gay' bill and that the company will create a task force to focus on more LGBTQ content

Disney has reportedly reinstated a gay kiss in its upcoming Toy Story spinoff amid the criticism. Hawthorne (voiced by Uzo Aduba), a character in the film Lightyear, has a relationship with another female character in the film

What do Disney protesters want? Disney employees protesting the Mouse's response to the 'Parental Rights in Education' bill want the company to: 1. Stop campaign donations to politicians involved in the creation of the so-called 'Don't Say Gay' bill, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. 2. Halt all 'construction and investment' in Florida until the bill is repealed 3. Stop relocating employees to Florida, along with a guarantee that they won't be fired if they refuse to go 4. Reaffirm its commitment to protecting LGBTQ staff 5. Contribute 'substantially' to the Trevor Project and other human rights advocacy groups 6. Create more LGBTQ content 7. Create a brand focused solely on LGBTQ creators Source: whereischapek.com Advertisement

Going further on Monday, Chapek said Disney would put together a task force overseen by film executive Paul Roeder and Disney Parks marketing executive Lisa Becket. The task force would be in charge of making sure that more LGBTQ-awareness content is available for children.

Last week, reports emerged that Disney was reinstating a kissing scene between two women in the upcoming 'Toy Story' spinoff, 'Lightyear' - after Pixar employees accused the parent company of cutting gay characters from films.

Pixar employees published an open letter this month alleging that 'nearly every moment of overtly gay affection is cut at Disney's behest, regardless of when there is protest from both the creative teams and executive leadership at Pixar.'

Since then, protests and walkouts have built up within the company.

On Tuesday, dozens of employees marched outside of Disney's headquarters in Burbank, California chanting, 'Say Gay!' as part of a full day of walkouts across the company's theme parks and offices.

Others gathered at a park in Glendale with signs reading, '#DisneySayTrans' and 'Disney oppose Florida's "Don't Say Gay" bill.'

Outside Walt Disney World's property near Orlando, Disney employee Nicholas Maldonado was a lone protester Tuesday, wearing a rainbow flag and holding a sign reading, 'Trans rights are human rights' and '#DisneyDoBetter.'

'Where was Chapek when the bill was introduced?' said Maldonado, who had a day off from his merchandising job at an Orlando Disney store and, while disappointed with Chapeks initial response, said he felt Disneys leaders were beginning to hear the concerns of the companys workers.

In a Tuesday Facebook post, Disney wrote that the company opposes 'any legislation that infringes on basic human rights' and stands 'in solidarity' with LGBTQ employees 'who make their voices heard today and every day.'

Disney employee Tiffany Cooper holds a sign to protest the company's stance on LGBTQ issues in Glendale, California on Tuesday

Employees, gathered at Griffith Park, held signs reading, '#DisneySayTrans' and 'Disney oppose Florida's "Don't Say Gay" bill'

Disney employee Nicholas Maldonado holds a sign while protesting outside of Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida on Tuesday

A half-dozen Disney workers gathered Tuesday morning at an Orlando LGBTQ center to write letters in support of queer students. 'You're Amazing. You Matter and We Care' and 'It Gets Better,' they read, next to a drawing of a rainbow.

'We are creators, and we felt that we could be creative and productive and write letters of encouragement to LGBTQ youth,' said Gabe, a Walt Disney World product development manager who didnt want his last name used for fear of having his privacy invaded.

In Burbank, employees marched outside the company's studios.

'We had a great group out here just to show our support for our queer employees and their families,' said Nora Rogers, a production supervisor at Walt Disney Animation Studios.
Models hold pizzas from No Brand Pizza at a restaurant in Seoul, March 10. Courtesy of Shinsegae Food



By Kim Jae-heun



No Brand Pizza, a pizza chain newly launched by Shinsegae Food, has been accused of copying the product concept and store interior of GOPIZZA, another local pizza franchise, according to industry officials Wednesday.





GOPIZZA's restaurant in Daechi, southern Seoul / Courtesy of GOPIZZA
Formula giant Abbott ran a filthy Michigan production line around the same time a bacterial outbreak linked to its products killed two babies and sickened others, the FDA has said.

Food and Drug Administration bosses shared a preliminary report Tuesday that its inspectors found Abbott had not maintained clean surfaces and machinery at their baby formula making facility in Sturgis. It manufactures many of America's best-selling baby formula brands.

A formal report will follow, alongside a likely FDA warning. That is not the most serious type of enforcement that the agency can pursue, and is intended to give manufacturers the chance to fix an issue. But it will strengthen the cases of affected families planning to sue Abbott for injuring their infants.

The hygiene failings were noted weeks before the products were recalled due to suspected cronobacter contamination, and FDA inspectors have remained at the plant ever since.

And the FDA say they've found good reason to link that outbreak to the plant, after discovering eight instances of cronobacter contamination at the plant between fall 2019 and February 2022.

The FDA reported that Abbott's formula making facility, in Sturgis, Michigan, had not maintained clean surfaces and had a history of bacterial contaminations

The disease can cause deadly infections such as meningitis.

The latest contamination has been linked to five hospitalizations and two deaths of infants in Ohio from September 2021 to March 2022, the FDA reported.

The agency said consumers should avoid the Similac, Alimentum and EleCare powdered infant formulas that were produced at the unclean facility.

Abbott, which also recalled its Similac PM 60/40 product, said in a statement that it is 'taking this very seriously and working closely with the FDA to implement corrective actions.'

The company added: 'No Cronobacter sakazakii or Salmonella was found in any of our testing of products distributed to consumers.

'In addition, the unique genetic makeup of the Cronobacter sakazakii microbes found in non-product areas at the Sturgis facility did not match the Cronobacter sakazakii microbes from the reported cases.'

The company has not said how many units of their products have been recalled, but brands like Similac are among the best-selling formulas in the US and overseas.

Cronobacter bacteria was found at the facility during the period where five infants were hospitalized and two died after they drank the baby formula. Two-month-old Dah'Veon Jones (pictured), of Las Vegas, was the latest to get sick from the product last month

Dah'Veon fell ill after being given an Abbott-manufactured formula, and is now recovering from his injuries

The FDA said consumers should avoid the Similac, Alimentum and EleCare powdered infant formulas that were produced at the dirty facility

How to check if your child's formula has been affected FDA said buyers should avoid Similac, Alimentum and EleCare formulas if they meet all of the following criteria: First two digits of the code are 22 through 37; and The code on the container contains K8, SH or Z2; and The expiration date is 4-1-2022 (APR 2022) or later The recalled products can be identified by examining the number on the bottom of each container. Parents can also type in the code on the bottom of the package at similacrecall.com to see whether their product is affected or call 800-986-8540. Parents can identify the recalled products by number on the bottom of each container. Advertisement

The FDA did not say why investigators were not at the plant sooner despite cases beginning last September and the recall of the products not sent out until last month.

The FDA did not immediately respond to DailyMail.com's request for comment.

Sarah Sorscher, of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, told Fox that parents needed more answers on how the outbreak occurred.

'This sheds a little more light on what went wrong, but we still don't have all the answers,' Sorscher said.

'Abbott and the FDA really need to do more work to get to the bottom of what happened so we can prevent the next outbreak.'

Tuesday news is the latest to come out over the recall after U.S. Senators Patty Murray, of Washington, and Bob Casey, of Pennsylvania, demanded the company turn over documents regarding its plant and the contamination last month.

At least half a dozen parents have filed lawsuits in U.S. District Court's in Illinois and Florida in February in March alleging the company used 'unfair and deceptive acts and practices designed to mislead the public in connection with their promotion, marketing, advertising, packaging, labeling, distribution and/or sale of' it products.

David Silverman, an attorney for two Miami parents who's child got sick after drinking Abbott's product, said families were demanding accountability for the company's alleged unsafe practices.

'Clearly, better safety standards at Abbott's manufacturing facility is needed,' Silverman said in a statement.

'Families expect their baby formula to be safe for consumption and free of bacteria and toxic contaminants. They should be able to use these products knowing that they are safe.'

According to the FDA, Cronobacter sakazakii bacteria can cause life-threatening infections or meningitis, symptoms of which could include poor feeding, irritability, temperature changes, yellowed skin or eyes, grunting breaths and abnormal movements.

The first symptoms in infants younger than 1 year old is usually a fever, accompanied by poor feeding, excessive crying or very low energy.

It can also cause bowel damage and spread to other parts of the body, possibly resulting in the swelling of the linings surrounding the brain and spinal cord.

Some infants may also experience seizures.

Cronobacter sakazakii bacteria (pictured) can cause life-threatening infections or meningitis

The dangers of Cronobacter sakazakii Cronobacter sakazakii is a bacteria that can cause life-threatening infections or meningitis. The first symptoms in infants is usually a fever, accompanied by poor feeding, excessive crying or very low energy. It can also cause bowel damage and spread to other parts of the body, possibly resulting in the swelling of the linings surrounding the brain and spinal cord - or meningitis. If it spreads to the blood, it could also cause jaundice - or a yellowing of the skin or eyes. Advertisement

Two-month-old Dah'Veon Jones, of Las Vegas, was the latest to get sick from the product after he checked into the hospital on February 21 where he was being treated for severe dehydration, a rash and bowel issues.

'I just checked his temperature and it's 104, and then he is moaning and groaning, and he is red, like pepper red,' Dah'Veon's grandmother, Mellon Ko, told 8NewsNow.

Babies two-months and younger are more likely to develop far more serious complications.

Abbott announced a recall of the products on February 17, with Joe Manning, the executive vice president of nutritional products, saying in a statement: 'We know parents depend on us to provide them with the highest quality nutrition formulas.

'We're taking this action so parents know they can tryst us to meet our high standards as well as theirs.

'We deeply regret the concern and inconvenience this situation will cause parents, caregivers and health care professionals.'

Consumers are encouraged to type in the code on the bottom of their package to confirm whether it is part of the recall, and those who are using the formula are encouraged to switch to a different brand.

Liquid baby formulas are not included in the recall.

Anyone whose child is experiencing any symptoms of an infection is also encouraged to call their health care provider immediately.
But on reaching Calais, the family were refused passage due to delays in vetting

While there, they planned to take a Ukrainian family back to a sponsor in London

They drove to Poland to deliver humanitarian aid to desperate refugee families

A British couple forced to leave three Ukrainian refugees in Calis have blasted the Government's Homes for Ukraine scheme as 'painfully slow'.

Graham and Angela Coton, from St Albans, Hertfordshire, delivered humanitarian aid to Lublin, Poland, on Saturday.

On their way back, they had hoped to take a Ukrainian mother and her two children to a family in Norbury, south London, who are sponsoring them.

The refugees have been waiting on the approval of their visa applications for five days after the family in Norbury registered them for the scheme when it launched on Friday March 18.

They said the two-and-a-half-day trip through France, Belgium and Germany was 'completely smooth but as the group reached the UK border in Calais on Monday morning, the family were refused passage due to a delay in the vetting process of their sponsor - a process Mr Coton, 59, described as 'painfully slow'.

He said: 'We've got a mother who's 35, her 14-year-old daughter and seven-year-old son, who are all completely traumatised.

Angela and Graham Coton travelled from their home in St Albans to Poland to deliver supplies to refugees

'They should have been waived through and allowed to travel - we had to leave them in Calais and put them up in a hotel... We felt we'd let them down.

'The process is so disjointed and so slow... All of this spin about welcoming these people in, that's not the reality on the ground.

'The UK sponsor is just sitting there, desperately trying to get the authorities to say 'yes, you're good to go'.'

Mr Coton, who did not want to name the Ukrainian family, said there is a 'logjam' in the vetting process delaying visa applications and that he could not find help in Calais.

'There was nothing around to say where to go or what to do, I can't find anything on the internet,' he said.

'Where is the official UK presence or systems or procedures?

'The office we were pointed towards by the local French authorities is shut in the afternoons, we got there at 1pm.

'The whole thing is a complete debacle.'

Mrs and Mrs Coton delivered humanitarian aid to Ukrainian refugees in Poland

Mr Coton said the Ukrainian mother works for a telecoms company but she may lose her job as a result of the wait.

'She has a job, she works from home,' he explained.

'If she'd come straight here, she could have started working on a laptop in the UK and kept the money coming in.

'But she's probably going to lose her job because she's basically gone off grid.'

Mr Coton said he and his wife will return to Calais to pick up the family as soon as their visas are approved.

'We're going to get tickets to Calais and go get them and deliver them to the sponsor,' he said.

'So one happy ending for one little family, but how many others are sitting in this position?'

He added there should be a better system in place for housing refugees who are told to wait in Calais.

'The military should have a camp in Folkestone or wherever, to make some sort of holding pen where at least they're over here rather than randomly wandering around Calais.'

'There's 150,000 people waiting to receive them.

'They're just turning around and going back to Germany, Holland and Belgium where procedure seems to be very straightforward.

'Britain is not doing its bit because it's failed on the bureaucracy side.'

Mr and Mrs Coton have raised 6,000 through local donations and will be using it to assist other refugees waiting to travel.

Graham and Angela Coton say they are disappointed with the delays to the Government's Homes for Ukraine scheme

'It's all happening by the goodwill of local UK communities deciding to just go of their own volition,' he said.

'I've been contacted by others asking for help.

'I'm just an estate agent.'

A Government spokesperson said: 'We are moving as quickly as possible to ensure that those fleeing horrific persecution in Ukraine can find safety in the UK, setting up the both Ukraine Family scheme and now the Homes for Ukraine scheme which allows those without family connections to come here.

'We have streamlined the visa application process so valid passport holders no longer have to attend in-person appointments before arriving and made changes to the forms people have to fill out in order to help people through the process as quickly as possible.'

'Applicants should not try to reach the UK until they have received notification of permission to travel.'
A Russian soldier drove a tank over his commanding officer to protest the huge number of losses suffered by his unit in Ukraine, a Ukrainian journalist has claimed.

The claim followed footage allegedly showing Russian Colonel Yuri Medvedev being stretchered into a hospital after suffering severe injuries to his legs.

According to Roman Tsymbaliuk, who was said to have been the last Ukrainian journalist in Russia before fleeing the country in January, Medvedev was run over by one of his own soldiers who was angered by heavy losses suffered by the unit.

Pictured: A still grab from a video allegedly showing Russian Colonel Yuri Medvedev being stretchered into a hospital after suffering severe injuries to his legs. A Ukrainian journalist has claimed that Medvedev was run over by a tank driven by his own soldier

Tsymbaliuk said in a Facebook post on Tuesday that the tank battalion of 1,500 troops had lost around half its strength to either death or injury.

'A soldier, choosing a convenient moment during the battle, ran over his brigade commander, Colonel Yuri Medvedev, with a tank, injuring both his legs,' Tsimbalyuk wrote in his report to his followers.

'Medvedev is in a hospital in Belarus and has already been awarded the Order of Courage.' He said the Colonel is now awaiting compensation.

There was no independent corroboration of the claim, but a video released by Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov - a close ally of Vladimir Putin - allegedly showed Medvedev being transported by medical troops to Belarus for hospital treatment.

One Chechen fighter - who are fighting under the Russian National Guard and directly under Putin's control - told him: 'Hold onhow are you? OK? Talk to us

Medvedev replied: 'I'm OK. Where are you from?'

There was no independent corroboration of the claim, but a video (pictured) released by Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov - a close ally of Vladimir Putin - allegedly showed Medvedev being transported by medical troops to Belarus for hospital treatment

According to Roman Tsymbaliuk (pictured), who was said to have been the last Ukrainian journalist in Russia before fleeing the country in January, Medvedev was run over by one of his own soldiers who was angered by heavy losses suffered by the unit

The video allegedly showing Medvedev being transported by medical troops to Belarus for hospital treatment was posted by the head of the Chechen Republic Ramzan Kadyrov

The colonel was then told to keep wearing his bulletproof jacket, before being unloaded on a stretcher, with blankets covering his legs.

Tsimbalyuk did not say what happened to the soldier driving the tank, but the report follows several others suggesting low morale among Putin's forces who have been making little progress in Ukraine.

NATO estimated on Wednesday that 7,000 to 15,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in four weeks of war in Ukraine, where ferocious fighting by the country's fast-moving defenders has denied Moscow the lightning victory it sought.

By way of comparison, Moscow lost about 15,000 soldiers in Afghanistan over 10 years.

A senior NATO military official said the alliance's estimate was based on information from Ukrainian officials, what Russia has released - intentionally or not - and intelligence gathered from open sources. The official spoke on condition of anonymity under ground rules set by NATO.

When Russia unleashed its invasion February 24 in Europe's biggest offensive since World War II, a swift toppling of Ukraine's democratically elected government seemed likely.

But with Wednesday marking four full weeks of fighting, Russia is bogged down in a grinding military campaign.

Pictured: A charred Russian tank and captured tanks are seen, amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine, in the Sumy region, Ukraine, March 7, 2022

Locals walk on a street between anti-tank Czech hedgehogs in the South Ukrainian city of Odesa, 16 March 2022

With its ground forces repeatedly slowed or stopped by hit-and-run Ukrainian units armed with Western-supplied weapons, Putin's troops are bombarding targets from afar, falling back on the tactics they used in reducing cities to ruins in Syria and Chechnya.

Russia has released very little information on its casualties, saying March 2 that nearly 500 soldiers had been killed and almost 1,600 wounded.

However, a NATO official said today that 30,000 to 40,000 Russian soldiers are estimated to have been killed or wounded.

Ukraine also claims to have killed six Russian generals. Russia acknowledges just one dead general.

The figures from NATO represent the alliance's first public estimate of Russian casualties since the war began.

The U.S. government has largely declined to provide public estimates of Russian or Ukrainian casualties, saying available information is of questionable reliability.

With casualties mounting and quick victory no longer in sight, Russia is having to work to suppress dissent and shore up morale.

It has arrested thousands of antiwar protesters and cracked down on the media.

Service members of pro-Russian troops in uniforms without insignia are seen atop of a tank during Ukraine-Russia conflict outside the separatist-controlled town of Volnovakha in the Donetsk region, Ukraine March 15, 2022

Also, under a law passed Wednesday, troops in Ukraine will get the same benefits as veterans of previous wars, including tax breaks, discounts on utilities and preferential access to medical treatment.

In an apparent reflection of growing divisions in Russia's top echelons, top official Anatoly Chubais has resigned, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told the Interfax news agency.

Chubais, the architect of Russia's post-Soviet privatisation campaign, had served at a variety of top official jobs over three decades. His latest role was as Putin's envoy to international organisations.

Peskov would not say if Chubais had left the country.

Western officials say Putin's forces are facing serious shortages of food, fuel and cold weather gear, with soldiers suffering frostbite, while Ukraine's defenders have been going more on the offensive - preparing to reclaim lost territory.

Still, Russia's far stronger, bigger military has many Western military experts warning against overconfidence in Ukraine's long-term odds.

The Kremlin's practice in past wars has been to grind down resistance with strikes that flattened cities, killing countless civilians and sending millions fleeing.

Talks to end the fighting have continued by video. Zelensky said negotiations with Russia are going 'step by step, but they are going forward.'

With no peace, those not yet fighting prepared to do so.

'Everything's a best-seller these days,' said Zakhar Sluzhalyy, who owns a gun shop in the western city of Lviv. 'We're defending our land,' he said. 'We're fighting for our freedom and that of the rest of Europe.'
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson said Wednesday that if confirmed she would recuse herself from a case coming before the Supreme Court centering on Harvard's admission policies and their use of affirmative action.

Jackson, who earned her undergraduate and law degrees from Harvard, will serve on the university's Board of Overseers until her term expires this spring. She was asked by her law school classmate, Sen. Ted Cruz, who completed his degree one year ahead of her at Harvard, whether she would step back from the case set to come before the high court in the fall.

'That is my plan, senator,' Jackson replied.

The Supreme Court could put an end to factoring race into college admissions, after agreeing in January to take up a pair of court challenges claiming affirmative action is unfair to white and Asian American students.

The high court said it will take up lawsuits claiming that Harvard University, a private institution, and the University of North Carolina, a state school, discriminate against Asian American applicants.

The suits claim that affirmative action gives an edge to African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans over Asian students.

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who earned her undergraduate and law degrees from Harvard, will serve on the university's Board of Overseers until her term expires this spring

Jackson was asked by her law school classmate, Sen. Ted Cruz, who completed his degree one year ahead of her at Harvard, whether she would step back from the case set to come before the high court in the fall

Its decision to take up the case was praised by Republicans in Congress but criticized by others who say abolishing affirmative action is removing a guardrail against inequality.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki declined to comment on the specific cases when asked to at her daily press briefing on Monday, but said: 'We strongly believe, this administration, in the benefits of diversity in higher education and we take very seriously our commitment to advancing equity and equal opportunity for historically underserved populations.'

Lower courts had previously rejected the challenges to admissions practices, citing more than 40 years of Supreme Court rulings that allow colleges and universities to consider race in admissions decisions. But the colleges and universities must do so in a narrowly tailored way to promote diversity.

The last time the issue came before the court was in 2016, when justices ruled in favor of the University of Texas and its admissions program in a 4-3 decision. That case had been brought by a white woman.

But the court has undergone a massive shake-up since then that's seen three conservative justices appointed to the bench by Donald Trump.

Two members of 2016's four-justice majority are gone from the court: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in 2020, and Justice Anthony Kennedy retired in 2018.

The three dissenters in the case, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, remain on the court.

Roberts, who's been known to side with the liberal justices on occasion as a moderating influence on the court, has also criticized using race as a major factor in public programs.

Harvard, whose freshman class is roughly one-quarter Asian American, 16 percent black and 13 percent Hispanic, denies having discriminatory admissions practices

The University of North Carolina did not discriminate against white and Asian-American applicants by using its 'holistic approach' to race-based admissions, a federal judge ruled in October

'It is a sordid business, this divvying us up by race,' he once wrote.

Both suits were filed by Students for Fair Admissions, a Virginia-based group run by Edward Blum. He has worked for years to rid college admissions of racial considerations, and the court's new lineup breathed new life into his project.

The group is calling on the court to overturn its 2003 ruling in Grutter v. Bollinger, which upheld the University of Michigan's law school admissions program.

The Biden administration had urged the justices to stay away from the issue, writing in the Harvard case that the challenges 'cannot justify that extraordinary step' of overruling the 2003 decision.

Harvard President Lawrence Bacow said that the Ivy League institution does not discriminate and vowed to continue defending its admissions plan.

'Considering race as one factor among many in admissions decisions produces a more diverse student body which strengthens the learning environment for all,' Bacow said in a statement.

Blum voiced hope that the high court will order an end to taking account of race in college admissions.

'Harvard and the University of North Carolina have racially gerrymandered their freshman classes in order to achieve prescribed racial quotas,' Blum said in a statement.

The Supreme Court has weighed in on college admissions several times over more than 40 years. The current dispute harks back to its first big affirmative action case in 1978, when Justice Lewis Powell set out the rationale for taking account of race even as the court barred the use of racial quotas in admissions.

Demonstrators against Harvard University's admission process hold signs and American flags while gathering during a protest at Copley Square in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S., on Sunday, Oct. 14, 2018

In the Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, Powell approvingly cited Harvard as 'an illuminating example' of a college that takes 'race into account in achieving the educational diversity valued by the First Amendment.'

Twenty-five years later, Justice Sandra Day OConnor likewise invoked the Harvard plan in her opinion in the Michigan law school case.

In 2020, the federal appeals court in Boston ruled that Harvard looked at race in a limited way in line with Supreme Court precedents.

Harvard's freshman class is roughly one-quarter Asian American, 16 percent black and 13 percent Hispanic, Harvard says on its website.

'If Harvard were to abandon race-conscious admissions, African-American and Hispanic representation would decline by nearly half,' the school told the court in urging it to stay out of the case.

The Trump administration had backed Blum's case against Harvard and filed its own lawsuit alleging discrimination against Asian American and white people at Yale University. The Biden administration dropped the Yale suit.

North Carolina's flagship public university prevailed in a federal district court in October. U.S. District Judge Loretta Biggs ruled that the school's program was intended to produce a diverse student body and had shown the benefits of doing so.

Biggs said in her decision that UNC did not discriminate against white and Asian American students with its 'holistic' admissions process.

Ignoring race as a factor, Biggs said, 'misses important context to include obscuring racial barriers and obstacles that have been faced, overcome and are yet to be overcome.'

The court accepted the North Carolina case for review even though it has not been heard by a federal appeals court. Blum filed a Supreme Court appeal with the hope that it would be bundled with the Harvard case so that the justices could rule on public and private colleges at the same time.
Advertisement

The United States government officially announced on Wednesday that it believed members of Russia's armed forces have committed war crimes in its invasion of Ukraine.

'Our assessment is based on a careful review of available information from public and intelligence sources,' said Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

'As with any alleged crime, a court of law with jurisdiction over the crime is ultimately responsible for determining criminal guilt in specific cases.'

The announcement was issued as he traveled with President Joe Biden to Europe for a N.A.T.O summit.

He said the number of civilian casualties was climbing every day that Russia's brutal attacks were allowed to continue

'We've seen numerous credible reports of indiscriminate attacks and attacks deliberately targeting civilians, as well as other atrocities,' said Blinken, citing Ukrainian officials who had counted 2,400 dead in the besieged city of Mariupol.

'Russia's forces have destroyed apartment buildings, schools, hospitals, critical infrastructure, civilian vehicles, shopping centers, and ambulances, leaving thousands of innocent civilians killed or wounded.'

U.S. officials at first avoided being drawn into assessments of whether Russia was committing war crimes, even as horrifying reports emerged of a maternity hospital and a theater - where families were sheltering and marked with a sign for 'children' - being bombed Mariupol.

'Today, I can announce that, based on information currently available, the U.S. government assesses that members of Russia's forces have committed war crimes in Ukraine,' said Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday

A school destroyed by Russia's aerial bombardment in Kharkiv, Ukraine. On Wednesday the US said it had assessed that war crimes were being committed in Ukraine

The scene inside the school hit by aerial bombardment in Kharkiv, Ukraine

Russian forces bombed a theatre where hundreds of civilians, including children, were sheltering in the encircled port city of Mariupol last week, the city council said. Satellite images revealed a sign clearly indicating the presence of 'children'

But that changed last week when President Joe Biden was asked by reporters what he thought of President Vladimir Putin's actions.

'I think he is a war criminal,' he said.

Officials were quick to say he was speaking from his heart - rather than as the result of the sort of complex legal analysis needed to declare war crimes.

He was quickly backed by Blinken, who last week said Russian reliance on long-range bombardments appeared to be part of an attempt to break the will of the Ukrainian people.

'Yesterday, President Biden said that in his opinion, war crimes have been committed in Ukraine,' he said.

'Personally, I agree. Intentionally targeting civilians is a war crime.

'After all the destruction of the past three weeks, I find it difficult to conclude that the Russians are doing otherwise.'

The new designation adds official weight to expressions of horror at the way the conflict is unfolding.

But proving Putin's responsibility for war crimes could be more difficult, and would require producing evidence in a forum such as the International Criminal Court that showed his intent to target civilians.

'I think that's a question thats left to a court of law that has appropriate jurisdiction over individuals involved in the conflict,' the U.S. Ambassador at Large for Global Criminal Justice Beth Van Schaack as she explained the decision.

The Russians have been accused of deliberately targeting civilian areas with missile and artillery attacks

A woman injured earlier this month in Russian shelling of Mariupol's maternity hospital stands outside amid the carnage

President Joe Biden's schedule for his three-day trip to Europe President Biden left for Brussels on Wednesday morning THURSDAY: President Biden is in Brussels for the N.A.T.O summit, a Group of Seven meeting and a session with heads of state from the European Union. FRIDAY: Biden heads to Poland to meet with U.S. troops stationed there as part of N.A.T.O. SATURDAY: Biden is in Poland where he will discuss the Ukrainian refugee situation and meet with President Andrzej Duda. He leaves for Washington D.C. in the evening. Advertisement

The Russian ground invasion remains largely stalled after four weeks. Fierce Ukrainian resistance and a steady flow of weapons from outside the country combined with poor planning by Moscow and failing morale mean its main advance is still about 10 miles from the capital Kyiv.

U.S. defense officials say Russia is instead relying on long range artillery, missile and rocket attacks.

The result is a terrible toll on Ukraine's civilian population. And the United Nations estimates more than 3.5 million people have fled the country since the beginning of the invasion.

The World Health Organization said it had verified 64 attacks on healthcare facilities, including ambulances.

Addressing Japan's parliament, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said thousands of his people have been killed, including at least 121 children.

'Our people cannot even adequately bury their murdered relatives, friends and neighbors. They have to be buried right in the yards of destroyed buildings, next to the roads,' he said.

And there are warnings that things could get even worse. With the Russian advance halted, there are growing fears that an increasingly desperate Putin could resort of weapons of mass destruction, such as chemical munitions.

'I think it's a real threat,' said Biden as he left the White House on Wednesday morning.

Jake Sullivan, Biden's national security adviser, told reporters travelling aboard Air Force One that the president plans to consult with allies on military assistance for Ukraine and on new sanctions against Russia.

Any announcements will be rolled out in close coordination with Europe and N.A.T.O. allies and could include sanctions on hundreds of members of the Russian State Duma, the lower house of parliament.

'What we would like to hear is that the resolve in unity that we've seen for the past month will endure for as long as it takes,' said Sullivan.

He added that Biden will also consult with allies about 'potential responses' if Putin uses nuclear weapons.

Biden's first stop is Brussels, Belgium, where he will join other leaders at a N.A.T.O summit, followed by meetings of the European Union and the Group of Seven, which includes the world's richest democracies.

From there he travels to Poland where he will meet U.S. troops and discuss the plight of refugees with Pesident Andrzej Duda.
This is the shocking moment a 13-year-old boy is repeatedly beaten by a police officer in India for stealing biscuits.

Footage, which has gone viral on social media, appears to show an assistant sub inspector at Laharighat police station thrashing a teenager.

The officer seemingly ignored the boys pleas for forgiveness and continued to smack him with a white stick.

A man confronts the boy for apparently stealing biscuits and then proceeds to beat him with a rod, captured on mobile phone footage

At one point the boy cried hysterically and jumped up and down with his fingers in his ears.

The final moments of the film show three men standing over the distressed teenager without trying to stop the officer, who has been suspended over the incident.

The boy was caught stealing biscuits from a van, it has been claimed.

Laharighat police station is located in Morigaon, Assam, which is in north east India.
Advertisement

Louisiana's governor declared a state of emergency Wednesday after tornadoes lashed the New Orleans area, flipping vehicles, tossing a house with a family inside to the middle of their street, leaving thousands without power and killing at least one person.

A mother in Arabi, in the St. Bernard Parish, described the terrifying moment she felt her house spin a full rotation - and when she emerged, the house was in the street. Standing on top of the wreckage, she frantically screamed for help while her daughter, who was on a breathing machine, was trapped inside.

The powerful storm is the latest to devastate a region still reeling from Hurricane Ida last August and Hurricane Katrina nearly 17 years ago.

Gov. John Bel Edwards declared an emergency in St. Bernard, Orleans, Jefferson and St. Tammany parishes, and thanked responders for toiling through the night.

At least two people are confirmed dead, including a 25-year-old man in St. Bernard Parish, according to a statement from Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards. Just north of Dallas, a woman was confirmed to be among the dead. Authorities didn't say how they were killed.

Several other people were transported to the hospital and local emergency officials say dozens of homes were damaged in St. Bernard Parish alone. Exact numbers will become available once the initial emergency response is completed.

Other tornadoes spawned by the same system caused so much damage in Texas that the governor declared a disaster in 16 counties. Buildings were shredded in Alabama, where torrential rainfall was recorded.

The multi-day severe weather event is expected to produce more powerful storms as it moves east and is expected to smash into Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas.

Drone footage shows the community of Arabi, in the St. Bernard Parish, that was devastated by Tuesday's storms

Residents walk past a home destroyed in the aftermath of a tornado in the Arabi neighborhood of New Orleans, Louisiana

Gov. John Bel Edwards declared an emergency in St. Bernard, Orleans, Jefferson and St. Tammany parishes

People walk amidst destruction from a tornado that struck Tuesday night in Arabi, La., Wednesday

A man clears debris of a destroyed home, after it was struck by a tornado in the Arabi neighborhood of New Orleans

New Orleans escaped significant damage, Mayor LaToya Cantrell tweeted late Tuesday, but tornadoes touched down in Arabi, just east of the city, and further east in Lacombe, across Lake Pontchartrain.

The storm system is the latest blow to a region still reeling from Hurricane Ida last August and Hurricane Katrina nearly 17 years ago. Officials say Arabi, in St. Bernard Parish, was hit hard.

'Unfortunately, our people have become all too familiar with rebuilding after tragedy and loss, but it is never easy,' Gov. John Bel Edward said. 'My prayers are with everyone who is hurting because of these tornadoes today and I have pledged to local leaders that we will be here to support their long-term recovery efforts.'

In Arabi, debris hung from electrical wires and trees amid destroyed houses. Power poles were down, forcing emergency workers to walk slowly through darkened neighborhoods checking for damage early Wednesday.

The tornado that ripped through a New Orleans suburb lifted one house into the air and dropped it onto the middle of a street with a family inside.

Neighbors said the parents of a girl climbed out of the wreckage screaming frantically for help. Their daughter, who was on a breathing machine, was trapped in the house.

On Wednesday, as she tried to salvage items from the one-story house that had been moved 30 feet by the storm, mother Dea Castellanos described to The Associated Press through a translator how she heard rain and wind outside while she was sitting on her living room couch Tuesday.

The next thing she knew, Castellanos said, she could feel the house spin through a full rotation and she ended up in a bedroom.

When the family was finally able to emerge, Castellanos noticed that her house was in the street. Her daughter, who suffers from muscular dystrophy, was stuck in her bedroom, calling for her mother.

'They were screaming. His wife was hysterical,' neighbor Chuck Heirsch, who called 911, told The Times-Picayune / New Orleans Advocate when he saw his neighbors trying to get to their daughter. 'They were already traumatized from taking that `Wizard of Oz ride.'

Dea Castellanos walks through her destroyed house in Arabi, La., Wednesday, March 23, 2022. The house was moved off its foundation during the tornado Tuesday night and landed in the street about 30 feet away

Sobreviven al tornado Arabi, La- Familia hondurena sobrevive el azote del tornado que arraso con casas, arboles, techos y dejo como saldo un muerto y varios heridos en el hospital, entre los que se encuentran la hija de la senora Dea Castellanos. #tornadoarabi Posted by Jambalaya News Louisiana on Wednesday, March 23, 2022

A house that was moved off its foundation during the tornado Tuesday night sits in the street about 30 feet away in Arabi

The rest passed like a blur, Castellanos said. An ambulance came to take her daughter to the hospital, where she was operated on overnight and is now all right, she said. Describing the rescue, St. Bernard Parish President Guy McInnis said the hospitalized girl was 'doing fine.'

Friends and relatives helped Castellanos clean out what belongings could be saved from inside the shattered home, like clothes and mementos, on Wednesday. One of the birds Castellanos kept as pets was standing on the floor, scattered debris all around.

Castellanos said she was thankful for everyone who had come to help with the cleanup, bringing food, garbage bags and work gloves.

Volunteers help clear out belongings from a tornado-damaged home in the Arabi neighborhood

Family member Holly Perque, right, hugs Alyssa Wineski next to Alyssa's tornado damaged home on Wednesday

Residents of severely damaged or destroyed homes in Arabi swept up broken glass and tried to salvage their belongings.

The community next to the citys Lower 9th Ward was wrecked by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and hit hard again when Hurricane Ida swept through last year.

Stacey Mancusos family had just finished repairing the damage from Ida, which ripped off the roof and caused extensive water damage. Huddling in the laundry room with her husband, two children and dogs, they all survived as the tornado blew away part of their new roof.

'Were alive. Thats what I can say at this point,' said Mancuso. Still, the twister was the third time theyve had major weather damage since Katrina.

The National Weather Service said the Arabi damage had been caused by a tornado of at least EF-3 strength, meaning it had winds of 158-206 mph (254-332 km/h), while the Lacombe-area twister was an EF-1, with winds as strong as 90 mph (145 km/h).

The system, which has already snuffed out the life of one Texas woman and has injured dozens of others, is now moving east across the Lone Star State toward Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center say, where it may possibly trigger 'a regional severe weather outbreak'

The town in the footage, the small, usually sleepy suburb of Round Rock, saw several tornados rip through its framework Monday night, seeing dozens of homes, businesses, and properties destroyed

The mall Texas town - located less than 20 minutes from Austin - is devastated as police and citizens continue to search through debris left by the rampaging cyclones and high-speed winds

'I wasnt mentally prepared to see what I was seeing,' said Amy Sims, who jumped into her car when the tornado warning sounded and drove to the Arabi Heights area to check on relatives. She said emergency medics, some crying, were dodging live wires as they went door-to-door through shattered homes.

'A bomb looked like it had gone off,' she said, adding that her cousins home and family were OK, but houses all around them were flattened.

Television stations broadcast live images as the storm damaged an area about 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) long and a quarter-mile (0.4 milometer) wide in St. Bernard Parish, where Ochsner Health said eight patients were treated in an emergency department.

Louisiana activated 300 National Guard personnel to clear roads and provide support. They joined firefighters and others searching door-to-door to make sure no one had been left behind, said John Rahaim Jr., the parish's homeland security director.

An analysis of the tornado posted by Stephen M. Strader on Twitter

n intact dresser is seen amongst debris in the Arabi neighborhood on March 23, 2022 in New Orleans, Louisiana

A school bus is overturned after a tornado Tuesday night in Arabie, La., Wednesday, March 23, 2022. Louisiana is sending 300 National Guard troops to the New Orleans area where tornadoes flipped cars, ripped off rooftops

A vehicle is damaged after a tornado Tuesday night in Arabie, La., Wednesday, March 23, 2022. Louisiana is sending 300 National Guard troops to the New Orleans area where tornadoes flipped cars, ripped off rooftops

Entergy reported that about 3,700 of its customers remained without electricity Wednesday. A strong smell of natural gas was in the air, and downed power lines forced emergency workers to walk slowly through the wreckage.

Michelle Malasovich was texting relatives from her home in Arabi when 'all of a sudden the lights started flickering.' Her husband saw the twister approaching.

'It just kept getting louder and louder,' Malasovich said. After it passed, they saw some columns were blown off their porch, and her Jeep's windows were blown out. Others fared worse: 'Our neighbors house is in the middle of the street right now.'

Gene Katz said he, his wife and their two children hid in a closet as the tornado pushed their home off its slab and caved in the part where they took shelter.

'By the time we closed the door, the roof came off, and that was it,' he said.

As the storm front moved eastward, an apparent twister shredded a metal building and shattered windows east of Mobile Bay.

The weather service reported more than 8 inches (20 centimeters) of rainfall in the central Alabama city of Sylacauga overnight. The roofs of several homes were damaged in Toxey, Alabama, where tornado warnings were issued.

The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency said a dozen counties had damage to homes and two injuries were reported.

The vicious weather hit Texas on Monday, with several tornadoes reported along the Interstate 35 corridor. In Elgin, broken trees lined the rural roads and pieces of metal hung from the branches as residents stepped gingerly through the mess.

J.D. Harkins, 59, said he saw two tornadoes pass by his Elgin home.

'There used to be a barn there,' Harkins said, pointing to an empty plot on his uncles property, covered with debris.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said 10 people were injured by storms in the Crockett area, while more than a dozen were reportedly hurt elsewhere.

The Grayson County Emergency Management Office said a 73-year-old woman was killed in Sherwood Shores, about 60 miles (95 kilometers) north of Dallas, but provided no details.
Council chiefs today said Britain's 'biggest headstone' was given permission - but it broke planning law as the finished structure didn't match its original plans.

Sheffield City Council said it had now 'reached out' to the family to discuss changes that will be needed to bring it back in line with the cemetery's regulations.

The huge marble memorial was created to honour bare-knuckle boxer Willy Collins, a dad of nine, who died aged 49 after collapsing while on holiday with his family in Majorca in July 2020.

The memorial, which is crafted from Carrara marble and features two life-sized statues of Big Willy, could be torn down after it was revealed by Sheffield Council that it was built without sticking to the agreed planning approval

Mourners who visit his final resting place can also connect to the speaker through Bluetooth to play their own songs

Big Willy Collins, pictured, was a renowned bare knuckle boxer from Athlone, in the Irish Republic

The gargantuan memorial is surrounded by Irish flags and features a statue of the Pieta, with Mary cradling Jesus

It's believed his family may have paid 200,000 to create the headstone at Shiregreen Cemetery, Sheffield, South Yorkshire, which is crafted from solid Carrara marble.

Initially, the council said that the massive mausoleum, weighing 37-tonnes, had been constructed 'without permission'.

But today (Wed), they released a new statement clarifying that while the Collins family did obtain permission for a headstone, it had failed to match the designs they had submitted.

A spokesperson said: 'Sheffield City Council approved plans for a memorial; however, the plans which were submitted and approved differ from the memorial now in place.

'This was not fully appreciated until after the structure was fully unveiled.

'We have reached out to the family and intend to discuss changes which need to be made in order to satisfy the cemetery rules and take into consideration other cemetery users.

'It would not be appropriate to discuss the details further as this is a sensitive matter and we wish to speak with the family fully in the coming days.'

Willy died aged 49 after collapsing while on holiday with his family in Majorca in July 2020
A Russian activist has been fined 50,000 roubles (362) for discrediting Vladimir Putin's armed forces by protesting in Moscow with a sign that only had asterisks on it.

Dmitry Reznikov was arrested by police in the capital on March 13 after holding up his sign against the conflict in Ukraine.

Prosecutors told the Tverskoy District Court in Moscow that Reznikov's homemade sign alluded to the phrase f**k war.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, more than 15,000 people have been detained at anti-war demonstrations across the country, according to OVD-Info.

Marina Ovsyannikova, previously coined the bravest woman in television, was only fined 30,000 roubles (210) after her protest on the Kremlin-controlled Channel One show.

One user on Twitter commented in response: Marina Ovsyannikova, the lady who protested on a live news broadcast only paid 30,000 rubles ($280) and that was a much bigger deal than some dude on the street holding a sign with asterisks. Whats up with that?.

A police officer stands next to Dmitry Reznikov as he holds a sign displaying only asterisks in Moscow earlier this month

Prosecutors told the Tverskoy District Court in Moscow that Reznikov's homemade sign alluded to the phrase f**k war

Mr Reznikov (pictured) was arrested by police in the capital earlier this month for protesting against the war in Ukraine

Dmitrys conviction is part of a new protocol brought in earlier this month, with the Russian Government buckling down on discrediting Russian troops.

His case was highlighted by OVD-Info, an independent protest monitoring group and Kevin Rothrock, an editor for the Russian independent news outlet, Meduza.

Putin also introduced new laws on March 4, criminalising independent war reporting as well as any calls to end the war - with penalties of up to 15 years in prison. Even characterisations of the attacks on Ukraine as a war or an invasion have been criminalised as fake news.

The countrys most widely consumed independent news sources, including the Echo of Moscow, TV Rain and the Znak news website were forced to shut down in early March.

Russia has also blocked access to Facebook and Russian language media produced outside the country  including the BBC.
Los Angeles county officials claim that dozens of deputies operating out of two of the city's sheriff's stations are members violent gangs.

On Monday, Inspector General Max Huntsman, the top watchdog for the Los Angeles Sherriff's Department, claimed that there are currently 11 deputies operating out of the East L.A. sheriff's station that belong to the Banditos gang and 30 members of the Executioners gang currently operating from the Compton sheriff's station.

The Banditos, who brand themselves with matching tattoos of a skeleton wearing a sombrero, bandolier and pistol, have been accused of beating and harassing young police officers who rebuff them.

Inspector General Max Huntsman (pictured) claimed that there are currently 41 deputies operating out of two of the city's sheriff's stations are linked with violent gangs

In his letter Huntsman did not name the the deputies and said he has identified additional members form other possible sources

The Executioners, who allegedly control a patrol station in Compton through force, threats, work slowdowns and acts of revenge against those who speak out, have a matching tattoos of a skull with Nazi imagery and an AK-47.

In his letter, Huntsman did not name the the deputies and said he has identified additional members form other possible sources.

'LASD has never thoroughly investigated allegations of gang corruption, and this case is no exception,' Huntsman told the Los Angeles Times.

Huntsman's letter requested that the Sheriff's department cooperate with his ongoing investigation by providing documents.

'The Sheriff's Department may not refuse to produce the records requested below by unilaterally declaring that no deputy sheriff is a member of a 'law enforcement gang,' Huntsman wrote.

But the Sheriff's Department responded to Huntsman's letter by accusing him of having an 'unhealthy obsession' to attack the department, and saying he has failed to back up his accusations with any facts.

Sheriff Alex Villanueva adopted a policy against 'deputy sub-cliques' in February 2021 in a bid to discipline deputies who join and form such groups that engage in misconduct

Huntsman said 11 deputies in the East L.A. sheriff's station are in the Banditos gang (pictured)

Huntsman said 30 members of the Executioners gang are in the Compton sheriff's station (pictured)

'This is another irresponsible attempt from Mr. Huntsman to discredit the organization, through omission and misrepresentation,' the department said in a post on Facebook. 'The timing of this letter suggests Mr. Huntsman is using his public office and resources to campaign against the sheriff leading up to the June primaries.'

The letter comes weeks after Huntsman told the LA Times that his hunt for 'deputy gang' members has led to two terminations and 13 transfers.

The Los Angeles Sheriffs Department has been heavily criticized for not cracking down on these rogue deputy cliques that purportedly encourage violence and misconduct.

Sheriff Alex Villanueva adopted a policy against 'deputy sub-cliques' in February 2021 in a bid to discipline deputies who join and form such groups that engage in misconduct.

That statement said: 'The mere existence of the Jump Out Boys' creed and its rhetoric undermines the departments goals.'

However, some say the sheriffs department hasnt actually been active in meeting that goal.

Huntsman has told the Times that Villanueva has aggressively blocked his office and the oversight commission from investigating his handling of deputy clubs.

Villanueva hasnt commented on the rehiring of the four Jump Out Boys deputies.

The Jump Out Boys arent the only illicit subgroup of officers that make up police and sheriffs departments.

Three decades ago a group called the Vikings emerged out of the Lynwood sheriffs department in California and a federal judge accused them of running a 'neo-Nazi, white supremacist gang.'

These groups are being investigated by the FBI. Some seem to have the same ideas  glorifying the use of force and targeting minority communities.

According to files from the sheriffs internal investigation into the Jump Out Boys, the department was reluctant to look into the clique.

On February 8, 2012, two supervisors discovered the groups manifesto in the trunk of a patrol car. It was found in a fitness magazine next to a news article about the Vikings deputy club.

When one of the supervisors brought the creed to a captain, a sergeant said, 'Oh, Jump Out Boys, thats old news.'

On April 20, 2012, when the LA Times ran a story about the secretive group who saw shootings as a 'badge of honor,' the department then launched a formal investigation the same day.
One of Yoon Suk-yeol's supporters raises a placard reading "POSCO to Pohang," during an election campaign event in Pohang, North Gyeongsang Province, Feb. 27. Korea Times photo by Oh Dae-keun



By Park Jae-hyuk



Concerns are growing about the possibility of POSCO facing political intervention under the incoming Yoon Suk-yeol administration, after the head of a lobby group representing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) told the President-elect earlier this week that the steelmaker's frequent price hikes have been weighing on local SMEs.



"Following the sharp rise in raw material prices, Samsung has bought products from SMEs at higher prices, but other conglomerates have not done the same, dissatisfying SMEs," Korea Federation of SMEs Chairman Kim Ki-mun said at Yoon's luncheon meeting with the nation's six largest business lobby groups, Monday. "In the case of POSCO, it raised its product prices five times last year and posted record earnings. We think such an unreasonable system should be reformed."



Prior to his meeting with Yoon, the chairman had criticized POSCO for its pricing in an interview with a local news outlet and at a press conference last month.



Steel industry insiders, however, viewed his criticism at POSCO as groundless, saying the skyrocketing global price of iron ore has forced the steelmaker to raise its product prices.



"The criticism should be leveled at conglomerates that have tried to buy products from SMEs for lower prices," an industry official said.



POSCO declined to comment on this issue.





POSCO Group Chairman Choi Jeong-woo speaks during the general meeting of POSCO Holdings shareholders at POSCO Center in Seoul, March 18. Courtesy of POSCO Group
The homeless man who killed ex-Deloitte executive Michelle Go by pushing her onto subway tracks in New York City's Times Square will not stand trial after he was deemed 'unfit,' Manhattan Supreme Court officials said.

The decision was made Tuesday after 61-year-old Martial Simon's mental evaluation results were shared by psychiatrists at Bellevue Hospital in court.

Prosecutors from New York County District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office have now requested a two week recess to review the medical evaluation, while a judge adjourned the case until April 19.

A trial can begin at a later date if Martial regains mental competency and is able to understand court proceedings and the charges brought against him - a decision that will be made at a later hearing.

If he does not regain competency, then a medical institute will have to indefinitely treat him.

The District Attorney's office did not respond to DailyMail.com's request for comment.

Simon's attorney Mitchell Schulman said that he expects Bragg's office to 'confirm' the findings, which would result in Martial being sent to a mental health facility rather than standing trial.

Martial Simon, 61, an ex-con who has battled with schizophrenia for two decades, has been deemed unfit to stand trial for the murder of Michelle Alyssa Go, who died after he pushed her onto Time Square station's subway tracks on January 15

Prior to her death, Go (pictured) was an executive manager at Deloitte Consulting, according to her LinkedIn. Her death shocked New York City residents and prosecutors from the District Attorney's office previously claimed that Simon was motivated by racial bias against Go, who was Asian American

Since becoming NYCs district attorney in January, Braggs tenure been mired in controversy due to an internal memo in which he asked prosecutors in his office to seek jail or prison time in only the most severe cases - a pledge he was ultimately forced to back away from in the face of public criticism.

Even after this outcry, Bragg unveiled a plan to implement a new division within his department that will review opportunities for diversion on an individual basis to determine if suspects in criminal cases could be placed in programs like rehabilitation or psychiatric treatment rather than traditional incarceration.

It's unclear which crimes will qualify for the more lenient punishments, or if there will be any specific crimes exempted from the office's diversionary programs.

His announcement comes as crime continues to soar in New York City, with the NYPD reporting a staggering 58.7 percent crime increase in February over the same period last year.

In January, Simon was charged with second-degree murder in the death of Go. He has a lengthy criminal history, including serving two years in state prison for attempted robbery before being released in August 2021, the New York Post reported, citing state records.

Sources earlier this month told DailyMail.com that he has been arrested at least twice in the past for robbery.

One incident was in August 2017 in Manhattan, when he was charged with first-degree robbery after allegedly entering a car, pretending to have a gun and stealing $43.

He was also arrested in July 1998 for allegedly simulating a gun in an attempt to rob a taxi driver, threatening to kill the driver. He was charged with two counts of robbery and criminal possession of a weapon at the time.

Sources told the Post that he has had three encounters with police as an emotionally disturbed person.

Newly elected Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg asked prosecutors in his office to only sentence potential criminals to jail or prison time in only the most severe cases when he first took office but has not retracted the policy

Simon Martial, 61, (pictured center) was arrested on Saturday on a charge of second-degree murder for allegedly pushing Go

Prior to her death, Go, 40, worked as a senior manager of strategy and operations for management and acquisitions at Deloitte Consulting, according to her LinkedIn.

She graduated from University of California Los Angeles with a bachelor's in economics and public policy, and earned her Master of Business Administration from New York University.

On January 15, Go was on the N/Q/R/W platform at West 42nd Street and Broadway at around 9.40am on Saturday when Simon shoved her from behind with both hands while she looked down at her phone, authorities said.

Go was struck by a train and pronounced dead at the scene by EMS personnel. Simon fled the scene and turned himself in to police soon after the attack.

A prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney's office said in January the office is seeking to determine whether the attack was motivated by racial bias against Go, who was Asian American.

Schuman, at the time, rebuffed that the prosecution's claims

'With so many unhoused people with unaddressed mental illness walking the streets of our city, it would be a shame if Mr. Simon was sacrificed at the altar of vengeful public opinion instead of seeking a deeper understanding of these complex issues now facing our society,' Schuman said.

Executive Director of the Asian American Foundation, Jo-Ann Yoo, said she hopes the combination of Simon's incompetency to stand trial and Go's tragic death would bring back to light the topic of public health for those who struggle with mental illness.

Simon, who has previously been diagnosed with schizophrenia, has spent the last 20 years going in and out of mental hospitals, according to family members.
This is the gruesome moment a robbery suspect was shot dead by his accomplice as they attempted to rob a delivery workers motorcycle in Peru.

The online food delivery man was about to leave a market when he was suddenly ambushed by Roberto Arturo Bazalar Meza, 27, and his unidentified accomplice Monday night in the city of Huacho.

A surveillance camera showed the Balazar Meza being struck by single shot to the head. He declared dead at the scene.

Peruvian newspaper El Popular reported that Balazar Meza was also worked doing deliveries for an online app.

Bazalar Meza had been arrested February 19 for allegedly stealing a motorcycle.

Roberto Arturo Bazalar Meza (right) and his accomplice (left) approach an online delivery worker (center) moments before his associate shot him dead by mistake Monday night in Peru. Bazalar Meza, who reportedly was also a food delivery worker, was struck by a single shot to the head and was declared dead at the scene. The gunman remained at large as of Wednesday

The motorcycle delivery worker (center) struggles with the shooter (right) moments after he shot and killed his accomplice (right)

Roberto Arturo Bazalar Meza had been arrested February 19 for allegedly stealing a motorcycle in Peru

Bazalar Meza and his associate were seen on camera walking up to the worker, who had his back turned towards them.

Bazalar Meza grabbed the bikers helmet as his accomplice threatened the victim with a gun.

The robbery victim appeared to turn off the ignition switch when Bazalar Meza and his accomplice both reached for the key.

Roberto Arturo Bazalar Meza (right) and his accomplice (right) were caught on camera attempting to rob an online food app delivery worker moments before he was shot dead by his cohort Monday night in Peru

The motorcycle delivery worker attempted to apprehended the gunman moments after shooting his 27-year-old accomplice, Roberto Arturo Bazalar Meza, after he shot him in the head by mistake as they tried to rob the robbery victim's motorcycle

Subsequently, the delivery man reached for the ignition switch and sparked a struggle when the gunman fired the fatal shot that sent Bazalar Meza crashing to the sidewalk pavement.

The shooter was startled by his grave mistake and was nearly apprehended by the delivery man before he took off running.

The accomplice remained at large as of Wednesday.
Bodycam footage shows the dramatic moment that a New York state trooper shot an 'erratic driver' and said 'you dumb**' when the man backed up into a ramp and died.

Trooper Anthony Nigro, a 14-year veteran, is now under investigation after he chased down James Huber, 38, shortly after 11am on February 12, according to several videos released by the office of Attorney General Letitia James.

One video shows Nigro approaching Huber after he got off Interstate 90 and started driving through downtown Buffalo.

Nigro, who makes $168,182 a year, gets out of his car with his gun drawn and points it at Huber, who is still sitting in his vehicle in the middle of the street.

'Get the f*** out! Get the f***.. .Get out! Get out!' he yells.

'Go away,' Huber responds.

Nigro grabs Huber by his jacket and tries to drag him out. Nigro then fires his handgun into the driver's seat. Huber's car suddenly backs up and flips over the side of a ramp.

'You dumba**,' Nigro says after calling for an ambulance. It's unclear whether he was referring to himself or the suspect.

A GoFundMe for Huber's burial says that Huber 'has kids who now have to bury their dad and live life without a father.'

Scroll down for video

Bodycam footage shows the dramatic moment that a New York state trooper Anthony Nigro, a 14-year veteran, shot an 'erratic driver' after a car chase in Buffalo

Trooper Nigro caught up with James Huber, 38, in the streets of downtown after a car chase. He repeatedly asked him to exit the car as he approached Huber with his gun drawn

Trooper Nigro fired two shots into Huber's car, which ended up flipped over a ramp. Huber died at the scene

Video released by the state Attorney General shows Nigro involved in a high-speed car chase shortly after 11am on February 12

Huber was seen driving 'erratically' on the highway that morning, according to the Erie Times-News. Troopers tried to stop him as he allegedly flew by at 100 mi per hour.

Attorney General James said the Office of Special Investigation was looking into the incident pursuant to state law, which requires a review any time a law enforcement officer is involved in the death of a civilian.

The state attorney's office says the videos were released 'in order to increase transparency and strengthen public trust in these matters,' according to the Buffalo News.

'The release of this footage is not an expression of any opinion as to the guilt or innocence of any party in a criminal matter or any opinion as to how or whether any individual may be charged with a crime,' the office said.

James' office did not immediately respond to questions from DailyMail.com about the status of the investigation.

Nigro is a state trooper assigned to Buffalo. He makes a base salary of $94,497 a year, which totals to $168,182 with bonuses and overtime, according to a New York state salary database operated by the nonprofit Empire Center for Public Policy.

Troopers reportedly stopped chasing him after Huber exited I-90 and hit a squad car. He was then spotted in city streets and was reportedly talking with people by the time Nigro caught up to him.

Nigro's bodycam footage shows him in what appears to be a high-speed chase down the street.

One video shows the encounter between him and Huber.

Nigro gets out of his car and, with his gun drawn, walks toward Huber.

The state trooper grabbed James Huber (above) by his jacket and tried to drag him out of his car before firing and killing him

'You dumba**,' the trooper mumbles to himself with the camera still recording.

Trooper Nigro told officers to back off through his radio. 'Everybody slow down. It's OK. Driver's deceased. We need a tow truck and a supervisor, but slow all units down.'

Mere seconds after the trooper shot at Huber, Huber's car appears flipped over the side of a ramp that seems to lead underground

He repeatedly screams at him to get out and the two engage in a scuffle as Nigro tries to forcibly pull Huber out of his car by his jacket.

He then backs up and fires at least two shots into the car. Off-camera, the car is heard backing up and loudly crashing onto something.

'7415 Buffalo. Shots fired,' Nigro says into his walkie-talkie. 'Get out of here, get out of here,' he tells an unseen passerby.

'Driver's been hit. I'm fine,' he says into his radio.

Seconds later, the car appears flipped over the side of a ramp that seems to lead underground.

'You dumba**,' the trooper mumbles to himself with the camera still recording.

Nigro approaches the car with his gun still drawn and backs away. Another man appears.

'He's dead,' Nigro says. 'Yep,' the unidentified man replies.

'So you're OK?'

'Yeah, I'll be god,' Nigro replies, at one point turning his hand to get a closer look at a cut.

He takes back to his radio: 'Everybody slow down. It's OK. Driver's deceased. We need a tow truck and a supervisor, but slow all units down.'

Meanwhile, a black cruiser races down the street.

Nigro gives out some instructions to block off the intersection. Soon, a man appears and introduces himself as a sargeant.

'I got the camera rolling and stuff so...' Nigro says before shutting it off.

Gov. Kathy Hochul released a statement the day of the pursuit.

'This morning one of our Troopers was involved in a deadly shooting of a motorist after a pursuit in Buffalo,' she said. 'I have directed the New York State Police to fully cooperate with the Attorney General's independent investigation. As we await a transparent and thorough review of the facts, our thoughts are with the victim's family and our Troopers.'

A GoFundMe page for Huber has raised $250 for burial costs.

'My daughters father, James Matthew Huber passed away unexpectedly the morning of 2/12/2022,' wrote Cary Arnold.

'He was shot and killed by the Buffalo police and we are trying to raise some money to help his mom cover the cost of the funeral so he can have a proper burial and funeral without burdening her. She has lost 2 sons now and no mom should have to bury her kids. James also has kids who now have to bury their dad and live life without a father. Anything helps.'

A Facebook fundraiser has raised $570.

'Any donation will go toward burial and funeral expenses. And anything helps. Jimmy was a well known person whether good or bad, he had a heart of gold,' Arnold wrote. 'Please help in a time like this. He didnt deserve to go out like that.'
Holiday-starved Australians can finally book a cruise as ships return to ports for the first time in two years - but time on board will look vastly different.

P&O's Pacific Explorer will be the first major cruise ship to return to Australia, leaving from Sydney on a four-night voyage to Brisbane on May 31st.

In the following months, more ships will set sail around the country but international voyages are yet to get the green light.

Passengers itching for an ocean getaway must be vaccinated under new Covid protocols.

P&O's Pacific Explorer will be the first major cruise ship to return to Australia, leaving from Sydney on a four-night voyage to Brisbane on May 31st

Australians will finally be able to enjoy a getaway on a major cruise ship after they were banned for two years amid Covid

Pre-departure Covid tests are also mandatory and passengers will need to take another swab once on board.

While individual cruise lines will determine their own rules around mask wearing, it's understood most ships will only require travellers to wear them in areas where social distancing isn't possible such as in theatres.

Staff will be thoroughly trained in Covid protocols and will be required to wear masks except when outside on deck.

Buffets will also still feature on cruises but staff will choose the food for guests from behind screens in another way to prevent the spread of Covid.

Guests will have to wear masks in some settings such as in theatres where it's not possible to socially distance while staff will also have to wear face coverings (stock image)

Buffets will also still feature on cruises but staff will choose the food for guests from behind screens in another way to prevent the spread of Covid

Guests will be required to take pre-departure Covid tests as well as another swab after embarking

Guests will also be given staggered meal times to ensure there is room to distance.

Carnival cruise lines executive David Jones said travel on cruises would be 'the same but different'.

'In the two-year suspension we have reviewed things top to bottom,' he told A Current Affair.

'It'll be safer onboard a cruise ship than at your local shopping mall.'

Australia is only now catching up to the rest of the world when it comes to cruises, with eight million people having boarded a ship overseas amid the Covid pandemic.

Mr Jones said similar protocols used on international cruises would be carried out Down Under and in the event of a positive case on board, guests would be treated to sufficient care.

'If it were to happen, you've got all the facilities on board to deal with it,' he said.

Australia is only now catching up to the rest of the world when it comes to cruises, with eight million people having boarded a ship overseas amid the Covid pandemic

'You've got mini hospitals on board, you've got medical staff, the ability to do testing, and the ability to do isolation.'

There have already been smaller cruise ships carrying out trips in Australian waters amid the pandemic, such as Coral Expeditions, who've had just two Covid cases on board in more than 100 trips.

Australia's cruise ship industry was marred by the ill-fated Ruby Princess which allowed more than 2,000 guests to disembark without adequate health checks in March, 2020.

More than 900 people were infected and 28 lost their lives.

P&O are in talks with countries like Fiji, New Caledonia and Vanuatu to resume cruises in the second half of this year.
KYIV, Ukraine  A Russian journalist has been killed by shelling in Kyiv on a reporting assignment.

The independent Russian news outlet The Insider said that Oksana Baulina was killed Wednesday when she was documenting the damage of a Russian shelling of the Podil district of the capital and came under a new strike.

It said a civilian was also killed and two people who were accompanying Baulina were wounded and hospitalized.

The Insider said that Baulina had previously worked for the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation until she was forced to leave Russia after the organization was designated 'extremist' by the authorities.

It said it will continue to cover the war in Ukraine, 'including such Russian war crimes as indiscriminate shelling of residential areas killing civilians and journalists.'

Oksana Baulina (pictured) was killed by Russian shelling while covering the destruction taken place in Kyiv due to Putin's war

A shopping mall lies in ruins (pictured today) after a missile strike of the Russian troops in the Podilskyi district

Oksana posted this picture to Twitter a month before she was killed, with the caption: 'war is not a mistake. war is a crime.'

In a Facebook post at the start of the month Oksana said: 'you often get a call from friends from Kiev, Kharkov and so on - with the words: 'I thought it was my last day.' and so resolutely, without emotion.

'I have no tears and no words left either. nothing but a fierce HATE.'

On Twitter, less than 24 hours before she was killed by Russian forces, she posted a tweet mocking '#MadVlad' about his golden toilet roll holder on his yacht.

The Russian was very pro-Ukraine, and had attended protests back in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea.

The chief of video operations had been filming an area which had already been targeted by Russian shelling, when more shells began to land

As a correspondent, Oksana went to Ukraine, where she managed to make several reports from Lvov and Kyiv.

The Insider expressed its deepest condolences to Oksana's family and friends.

The website said: 'We will continue to cover the war in Ukraine, including such Russian war crimes as indiscriminate shelling of residential areas where civilians and journalists are killed.'
A New York City public school PTA treasurer has been charged with stealing $185,000 of funds and blowing it on trips to the Caribbean, shopping in Fendi - and fines he was slapped with for stealing from his last job.

Between October 26, 2020 and July 6, 2021, 34-year-old Marc Haynes, the former co-treasurer of PS 267 Parent Teacher Association embezzled from the organization's two checking accounts to his J.P. Morgan account. Transactions ranged from $2,389 to $32,000, according to the Manhattan District Attorney's office.

The money stolen from the school between on East 63rd street went toward stays at luxury hotels in Bermuda and St. Lucia and purchases from Fendi, Restoration Hardware and Pottery Barn.

He also used the PTA's money to pay $23,838 of $51,247 in restitution owed to his former employer, a publishing company that he was convicted of stealing from in 2016.

Scroll down for video

Marc Haynes, 34 (center), is pictured at his arraignment in Manhattan Supreme Court on March 23

Between October 26, 2020 and July 6, 2021, Haynes (pictured), the former co-treasurer of PS 267 Parent Teacher Association made 17 embezzled from the organization's two checking accounts to his J.P. Morgan account, ranging from $2,389 to $32,000

Haynes' child attends PS 267, the school that Haynes embezzled from (pictured)

When one of the PTA's new co-treasurers asked Haynes about suspicious payment of $9,081 in October of last year that had no supporting documentation, he claimed the transaction was to reimburse another PTA member's credit card for an 'urgent furniture purchase.'

After that co-treasurer emailed Haynes, who was then the co-president of the PTA, and other members requesting proof, Haynes responded to that email with a resignation letter.

After more suspicious credit card transfers were discovered, the co-treasurer contacted the Manhattan District Attorney's Office and other law enforcement agencies.

'I thank the diligent PTA members who uncovered these thefts and reported them to my office,' newly-minted district attorney Alvin Bragg said of the indictment.

'As we see far too often, no organization, even one dedicated to the children of our city, is immune to insider theft and fraud.'
Company directors at a Birmingham firm have been accused of putting 'unsafe' hand sanitiser on the market during the Coronavirus pandemic, a court has heard.

Big Living Ltd are alleged to have supplied hundreds of containers of hand gel with less than 30 per cent alcohol, but advertised that they contained 80 per cent, Birmingham Magistrates Court has heard.

It is also alleged that the firm, based in Digbeth, led trading standards officers on a 'wild goose chase' as they attempted to track the product to ensure it was taken off the market, according to Birmingham Live.

L-R Jeewan Sagu, Rajika Sagu and Robert Hiley leave Birmingham Magistrates Court

Big Living, based at Birchall Street, Digbeth, denies two charges of placing an unsafe product on the market, one count of engaging in a misleading commercial practice and one offence of misleading advertising.

Jeewan Sagu, 40, and Sajika Sagu, 36, both from Moseley are named directors of Big Living, which was liquidated last year, and have pleaded not guilty to the same offences.

The pair are also involved in Desktop IT, an IT support company, also based in Digbeth. The company was represented by director Robert Hiley at the hearing on Monday (March 21).

The product label claimed the gel 'kills 99.9 per cent of germs'. But Prosecutor Mark Jackson, representing Birmingham City Council, told the court that it 'wouldn't kill anything, and certainly wouldn't kill coronavirus.'

'What this case is about is the misleading supply of hand sanitiser during the Covid-19 pandemic,' he said.

'Consumers were led to believe it had an alcohol content of 80 per cent when in fact it contained an alcohol content of 28 per cent.'

Tests on an original sample of the product found it had 27.6 per cent alcohol, and not the 80 per cent advertised on the label. Other samples tested during the investigation were found to have around 60 per cent.

Mr Jackson told the court Big Living, which is listed as selling home improvement items and clothing and footwear, 'produced' the sanitiser by re-branding it under Mr Sagu's trademark name Chemist Plus.

He added it is not known who manufactured the gel.

The case is being heard at Birmingham Magistrates Court

Concerns were raised about the product in July 2020 after a consumer purchased the gel on eBay from a wholesaler, who had obtained it from Big Living.

Mr Jackson told the court trading standards were alerted but when they contacted the business, Mr Sagu claimed the hand gel was supplied by another wholesaler.

He said over the course of the next few months, council officers were 'misled' as to where Big Living, run by Mr Sagu, had obtained the sanitiser and who they had supplied it to.

'They had been supplying this stuff all over the place and keeping it a secret,' he said.

'They were asked to give urgent information to the officer to track where the unsafe product has gone.

'At best officers were being misled. At worse they were being completely and utterly dishonest.

'The reality is even now officers don't know who they have sent this stuff to because they haven't bothered to tell them.'

He added that Jeewan Sagu gave 'misleading information and failed to cooperate with the investigation', and said that co-defendants Rajika Sagu and 'Desktop IT' showed a 'dereliction of duty' in their roles as named directors of Big Living.

'There was an absolute lamentable attitude by this company and directors to the attempts made by these officers to track an unsafe product they placed on the market during the pandemic,' he said.

'Officers were being misled left, right and centre.'

The trial continues.
President Joe Biden arrived at NATO headquarters in Brussels Thursday to kick off his effort to rally military and EU allies to stay together in opposing Russia's invasion of Ukraine and offer energy solutions to a worried Europe.

He exited his presidential motorcade Thursday morning, ignoring shouted questions about the security situation in Ukraine.

Biden's first step was a 'family photo' with members of the treaty alliance, where a grinning Biden was greeted by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and French President Emanuel Macron.

After shaking hands with Johnson, Biden went to shake hands with Turkish President Recep Erdogan, whose nation has been providing armed drones to the the Ukrainian military as it counters Russia's invasion.

He then walked alongside Macron into the first session of the day for NATO, which is announcing it is expanding battle groups and beefing up its troop presence along Russia's flank.

Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson, France's President Emmanuel Macron and US President Joe Biden talk as they arrive at NATO Headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, March 24, 2022. The leaders gathered for the extraordinary meeting to counter Russia's invasion of UKraine

Biden also spoke briefly with Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, whose country is among the smaller NATO allies bordering Russia who have watched the invasion with particular concern.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg kicked off the first meeting of the day with a short speech denouncing Russia's unprovoked attack on its neighbor.

'We are united in condemning the Kremlins unprovoked aggressions,' he said.

'We are determined to continue to impose costs on Russia to bring about the end of this brutal war,' he continued, and lauded those in Russia 'who are bravely speaking out against the war. We hear the voices. They matter,' he said.

He also paid tribute to the great courage of the Ukrainian people and the Ukrainian armed forces fighting for their freedom and their rights.'

Europe is aiming to strike a deal with Biden to secure additional U.S. liquefied natural gas supplies for the next two winters and wean the continent off it its dangerous addiction to Russian energy.

Compounding the tension was a new development in Asia, as North Korea fired the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) off its east coast, according to South Korea and Japan.

'The United States strongly condemns the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) for its test of a long-range ballistic missile,' White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement.

The meeting came as Johnson urged NATO to act 'harder' against Russia to end the war 'faster' as he unveiled a wave of new sanctions.

Among the targets are the Wagner Group, a mercenary force known as 'Putin's private army.' The measures were announced as the PM arrived in Brussels for talks.

There are claims the notorious mercenaries have been tasked with assassinating Volodymyr Zelensky and other senior Ukrainian politicians.

'We've got to step up. We've got to increase our support,' Johnson said as he arrived.

Zelensky addressed the NATO summit by video link, where he begged the 30-nation alliance for more military assistance.

'To save people and our cities, Ukraine needs military assistance - without restrictions,' he said in remarks released by his government.

'Ukraine asked for your planes. So that we do not lose so many people. And you have thousands of fighter jets! But we haven't been given any yet. We asked for tanks,' he said.

'You have at least 20,000 tanks! Ukraine asked for a percent, one percent of all your tanks to be given or sold to us! But we do not have a clear answer yet... The worst thing during the war is not having clear answers to requests for help,' he noted.

He asked NATO to do more.

'NATO has yet to show what the Alliance can do to save people. To show that this is truly the most powerful defense union in the world. And the world is waiting. And Ukraine is very much waiting. Waiting for real actions,' he said.

Meanwhile, in an effort to get Europe to crack down even further financially on Russia, a major new deal to boost US gas shipments to Europe will be announced during the summit, three US officials familiar with the plan told the Washington Post.

Russia supplies 40 percent of the EU's collective natural gas needs, 27 percent of its oil imports and 46 percent of coal imports.

Biden will also huddle with key allies in Brussels and Warsaw this week to talk through plans for imposing punishing new sanctions on Russia and dealing with an extraordinary humanitarian crisis.

The allies are also expected to develop a consensus on how they would respond if Russia were to launch a cyber, chemical or even nuclear attack.

Joe Biden (left), Emmanuel Macron (center) and Boris Johnson (right) deep in conversation at the NATO summit today, which comes a month after Russia launched its invasion

Biden was greeted by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg when he arrived. He shook hands with PM Boris Johnson during the 'family photo'

President Joe Biden shakes hands with France's President Emmanuel Macron. The leaders have been bolstering battle groups on Russia's border

NATO called the extraordinary summit to counter Russia's invasion of Ukraine

One of the first leaders Biden sought out was Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan

President Joe Biden landed in Brussels on Wednesday evening to rally allies to stay together on the Ukraine and offer energy solutions to a worried Europe

Prime Minister Alexander de Croo of Belgium welcomed President Biden upon his arrival in Brussels. President Biden thanked the Prime Minister for Belgium's robust support in the EU for sanctions against Russia and for ongoing coordination in providing security assistance to Ukraine, the White House said

Biden wants western allies to levy heavier financial sanctions on Russia for its invasion of the Ukraine but some of those nations, which are dependent on the Kremlin for their energy needs, have show reluctance to go as far as the United States wishes.

A new deal to boost US gas shipments to Europe could clear the path for allies to sign on to tougher sanctions.

'A substantial topic of conversation - a major priority for both the President and his European allies - is to reduce the dependence of Europe on Russian gas, full stop' National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Wednesday in a briefing with reporters on the flight to Europe.

He declined to offer specifics and said Biden will discuss it during his meetings with the European Union members.

He called it a 'subject of intense back and forth' over the past days and weeks. He said the U.S. would look for new ways to 'surge' liquid natural gas supplies to Europe.

U.S. exporters have already shipped record volumes of LNG to Europe for three consecutive months, as prices have jumped to more than 10 times higher than a year ago.

Leaders may also discuss a new demand from Moscow that countries pay in rubles for their Russian gas, a move some EU diplomats said could undermine existing EU sanctions by effectively unfreezing Russian assets.

President Biden in the Beast, leaving the Melsbroek military airport in Brussels

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that Russia will seek payment in roubles for gas sales to 'unfriendly' countries, a move that sent European gas prices soaring on concerns it would exacerbate the region's energy crunch.

Countries remain divided, however, on whether to sanction Russian oil and gas directly, a move already taken by the United States. An EU embargo would require unanimous approval from all 27 member states.

President Biden's schedule for his European trip THURSDAY: President Biden is in Brussels for the NATO summit, a Group of 7 meeting and a session with heads of state from the European Union. FRIDAY: Biden heads to Poland SATURDAY: Biden is in Poland where he will discuss the Ukrainian refugee situation and meet with President Andrzej Duda. He leaves for Washington D.C. in the evening. Advertisement

In a draft of their summit conclusions seen by Reuters, the leaders will agree to 'work together on the joint purchase of gas, LNG and hydrogen' ahead of next winter, and coordinate measures to fill gas storage.

The European Commission said on Wednesday it was ready to lead negotiations pooling demand and seeking gas ahead of next winter, following a similar model to how the bloc bought COVID-19 vaccines.

Leaders will discuss that plan - as well as a proposed law for countries to fill gas storage ahead of winter - on Friday.

Biden arrived on a day when NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg talked up increased military deployments on its eastern flank along the Russian border, and warned that any use of chemical weapons by Russia would be a game changer.

He said any use of chemical weapons would 'totally change the nature of the conflict.'

Stoltenberg also criticized Russia Wednesday for 'continuing nuclear saber rattling' that contradicts its own statements at the United Nations.

'Russia should stop this dangerous irresponsible nuclear rhetoric,' he told reporters a day before Biden is set to meet with NATO allies. 'But let there be no doubt about our readiness to protect and defend allies against any threat anytime.'

'I think I think that's the most important message to convey that any use of chemical weapons is is absolutely unacceptable and will have far reaching consequences.'

And Stoltenberg added: 'Russia must understand that it can never win a nuclear war.'

Air Force One carrying President Joe Biden arrives at Melsbroek military airport in Brussels

President Joe Biden and Belgian Prime Minister Alexander de Croo, left, talk to people after arriving at Brussels National Airport

Biden will meet with NATO, EU and G7 leaders on Thursday

Members of the 30-nation strong alliance have deployed four new battle groups, Stoltenberg said. They are deployed in Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, and Hungary.

Russia's invasion 'will have long-term consequences for our security,' Stoltenberg said. He said there were now 40,000 forces under NATO command at a high level of readiness alert, along with 100,000 U.S. troops in Europe.

Biden enters his day of meetings with NATO, the European Union and the G7 with a packed agenda.

Ahead of his departure, Biden acknowledged it was a 'real threat' that Vladimir Putin might use chemical weapons in the Ukraine, a topic of concern for world leaders ahead of their NATO summit.

'I think it's a real threat,' Biden told reporters ahead of his departure for Brussels.

Officials have been concerned that Putin will use more aggressive tactics and disruptive weapons as his invasion of the Ukraine reaches a stalemate.

The situation in the Ukraine is the main topic at Thursday's NATO meeting, where Biden will rally western allies and announce a new round of financial sanctions against Putin's government.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will take part of the special summit, which was pulled together in a week, via video link as the Russian invasion of his country enters its fourth week.

Biden has called for the United States to lead a 'new world order.'

'We're going to  there's going to be a new world order out there, and we've got to lead it,' Biden said on Monday. 'And we've got to unite the rest of the free world in doing it.'

On the trip, Biden intends to shore up the NATO alliance as the war in the Ukraine threatens to settle in for the long haul. He'll put pressure on the allies to continue financial sanctions, announce additional humanitarian assistance and could reveal a plan to increase U.S. boots on the ground in Eastern Europe.

'Our goal is to weaken Russia's hand, tactically, and strategically, and to strengthen Ukraine's hand on the battlefield and at the negotiating table. We know this conflict has to be resolved diplomatically if we're going to save lives,' State Department spokesman Ned Price told CNN Wednesday morning of the trip.

He will also travel to Poland to meet with U.S. troops stationed there, review the situation with Ukraine refugees and meet with Polish President Andrzej Duda.

The trip will be heavy on symbolism, with the pictures showing a united front among the allies and a compassionate Biden meeting the displaced as Vladimir Putin continues to pound away at the Ukraine.

'There will be hard days ahead in Ukraine  hardest for the Ukrainian troops on the frontlines and the civilians under Russian bombardment. This war will not end easily or rapidly,' National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said on Monday in previewing the trip.

'For the past few months, the West has been united. The President is traveling to Europe to ensure we stay united, to cement our collective resolve, to send a powerful message that we are prepared and committed to this for as long as it takes,' he added.

Biden's trip comes as the allies are pushing the boundries of what they can do to stop Putin.

Europe, which still needs Russian oil, is reaching the limits of the financial sanctions it can implement. And the West has also committed as much military assistance as it can - short of putting boots on the ground in the Ukraine.

President Joe Biden acknowledged it was a 'real threat' that Vladimir Putin might use chemical weapons in the Ukraine

President Biden headed to Brussels for meetings with NATO, the European Union and G7

Biden's trip comes as the allies are pushing the boundries of what they can do to stop Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will speak to NATO meeting via video link

Biden will start his trip Thursday in Brussels, where he attend emergency summit meetings of NATO, the European Union and the G7.

And Russia is warning the 30-nation alliance to take care what it decides at its meeting, saying a peace keeping mission to Ukraine could trigger 'direct clashes' between Russia and NATO.

Poland said last week that it would formally submit a proposal for the peacekeeping mission in Ukraine at the Thursday summit.

'I hope they understand what they are talking about,' Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told staff and students at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations on Wednesday.

'This will be the direct clash between the Russian and NATO armed forces that everyone has not only tried to avoid but said should not take place in principle.'

The Biden administration has appeared to rule that Poland's proposal, saying they are committed to not putting U.S. troops on the ground in the Ukraine.

At a summit where the administration is promising 'deliverables,' not just talk, the first arms deliveries out of an $800 million package Biden announced earlier this month have begun to arrive.

It includes 800 Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, and 100 armed drones, CNN reported.

The administration has also delivered most of the separate $200 million package Biden announced March 12. Officials are touting new announcements of material to support Ukraine at the summit.

Meanwhile, a slew of new economic sanctions will be aimed at trying to deter Putin.

'It cannot be business as usual for Russia,' Sullivan said on Monday.

The president will announce the U.S. will target 400 people, officials told the Wall Street Journal, including 328 Russian lawmakers in the Duma and other elites.

The United States has already announced a slew of sanctions against Putin himself, his inner circle, the Russian oligarchs and Russian businesses.

And though the Russian currency, the ruble, dropped down to being worth next to nothing and the nation was last week at risk of defaulting on its debt, sanctions have done little to change the Russian leader's posture.

This week, the ruble stabilized and Russia was able to make interest payments on $117 million due on two bonds denominated in U.S. dollars. And while about half of Russia's $640 billion in foreign reserves is frozen, it has been able to offset that by continued fuel sales to Europe amid a price spike in the cost of oil and gas.

Biden also announced earlier this month the U.S. would ban imports of Russian oil, natural gas and coal, though America doesn't use much of those products.

The E.U. unveiled a plan to cut Russian gas imports by approximately two-thirds this year, but it's unclear how quickly member nations will be able to accomplish that given their heavy dependence on Russian oil.

Sullivan said the U.S. would make new announcements about efforts to help European countries wean themselves off Russian energy.

Biden also may announce more U.S. troops wil be deployed to NATO countries in Eastern Europe to help ease worries among those nations that Putin's invasion could spread, NBC News reported.

Sullivan previewed the announcement on Monday when he said Biden would announce the 'next phase' of military assistance to Ukraine during his trip.

'He will work with Allies on longer-term adjustments to NATO force posture on the eastern flank,' Sullivan said.

President Biden will work to keep allies in lock step during his trip to Europe

The fighting in the Ukraine is entering its fourth week - above a marke in Kharkiv that was destroyed by Russian missiles

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has warned sending a peace keeping mission to Ukraine could trigger 'direct clashes' between Russia and NATO

Russia's offensive has now stalled on all fronts amid reports that Ukraine has started launching counter-attacks to push Putin's forces back

Biden recently reviewed options for permanent increases in the number of U.S. troops in Eastern Europe, and Poland is among the possible locations, NBC News noted.

'At the summit,' the an administration official said, 'we expect NATO leaders to review the alliance's current deterrent and defensive force posture, especially in light of the deteriorated security environment caused by Russia's unprovoked and unjustified further invasion of Ukraine.'

One fear among leaders to be addressed is Putin's next move in the Ukraine.

With the invasion at a stalement, there is concern the Russian president will step up his game, possibly using chemical or even a small nuclear weapon. The Biden administration is also warning that cyber attacks could come.

'Now Putin's back is against the wall. He wasn't anticipating the extent or the strength of our unity. And the more his back is against the wall, the greater the severity of the tactics he may employ,' Biden told business leaders in Washington on Monday.

NATO leaders could announce the addition of a new chemical and biological weapons unit to the NATO Response Force to counter Russia.

American officials have expressed concern that Putin could use chemical weapons after the Russian Defense Ministry said Ukraine could make such a move, in what U.S. officials say could be a false flag operation to justify any moves by Moscow.

Russia has wielded chemical weapons in the past.

Moscow used the deadly Novichok poison in 2018 an attempt to assassinate a defector living in Salisbury, England. And it is suspected of using a similar poison against opposition leader Alexei Navalny in 2020.

Russia also offered diplomatic cover to Syrian use of chemical agents. It accused the West of being behind the 2017 attack on Khan Shaykhun with Sarin or similar nerve agent.

The invasion has not gone well for Russia.

Ukrainian forces remain in control of all major cities across the country except for the regional capital of Kherson, where counter-attacks are now underway in an effort to recapture it.

Counter-attacks are also underway to the west of the capital Kyiv, in Voznesensk in the south, and around Izyum in the north-east.

Ukraine's generals believe Russian forces only have enough supplies to last three more days in the field, while Western experts have said Putin's men will soon need to switch on to the defensive as their stockpiles run low.

The Kremlin has refused to rule out using nuclear weapons.

Dmitry Peskov, Putin's spokesman, was asked three times on CNN whether he could definitively rule out the possibility of the Russian leader pushing the button - and three times refused to give a straight answer.

Instead, Peskov said only that Russian doctrine allows Putin to use nukes see off 'existential threats' - raising fears he could justify using the weapons over Ukraine, having previously said the country poses a direct threat to the security of Russia.

John Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, slammed Peskov's rhetoric as 'dangerous' saying it is 'not the way a responsible nuclear power should act'.

Kirby added that the US is keeping Russia's nuclear arsenal - believed to be the world's largest at 6,500 warheads - under constant surveillance and has not yet seen any indication that it is preparing to use the weapons.

Biden will also talk to E.U. leaders about China's relationship with Russia. Biden spoke to Chinese leader Xi Jinping last week amid concerns Beijing could back the invasion.

E.U. leaders have a summit with Xi on April 1.

'This will be an opportunity  Thursday  for the United States and our European partners to coordinate closely on what our message is,' Sullivan said.

Thursday's meetings will also reveal what Biden and the allies won't do.

The U.S. has already ruled out Zelensky's request for a no-fly zone over the Ukraine, arguing it could escalate the conflict into World War III.

People wait at Przemysl train station before continuing their journey back into war-torn Ukraine in Przemysl, Poland. Nearly two-thirds of the more than 3 million people to have fled Ukraine since Russia's invasion last month have come to Poland, which shares a 310-mile border with its eastern neighbor

Firefighters put out fire after Russians shelled a warehouse in Mykolaiv, Ukraine

A view of a shopping mall that was destroyed by a missile in Kyiv

Leaders may also discuss whether or not to push Russia out of the G20. Putin is expected to attend November's gathering of the world leaders and there are some countries in the 20-nation alliance that would likely opposing removing Russia.

On Friday, Biden heads to Poland, where he will discuss the situation with Ukrainian refugees. Poland has taken in nearly 2 million of them.

'He will announce further American contributions to a coordinated humanitarian response to ease the suffering of civilians inside Ukraine and to respond to the growing flow of refugees,' Sullivan said.

While in Poland, he will hold an event related to refugees, which could include meeting with some of the Ukrainians who had fled their country but the details are still being worked out, The Washington Post reported.

Biden will also visit with American troops stationed in Poland as part of NATO forces and meet with President Duda.

What's not on the table during this trip is a Biden stop in the Ukraine.

'Any president of the United States traveling into a war zone requires not only security considerations but also an enormous amount of resources on the ground, which is always a factor for us as we make considerations,' press secretary Jen Psaki said this week. 'It was a decision made about what would be most effective on the trip.'
Thousands of parents have joined infectious diseases experts in slamming the Victorian government's 'silly' and 'illogical' mask mandates for children.

While almost all mask rules were scrapped for adults at the beginning of March, primary school kids in Grades 3 to 6 are still forced to wear masks while at school.

Victorian chief health officer Professor Brett Sutton defended the decision saying it would 'put downward pressure on transmission'.

While Premier Dan Andrews added the decision was made because vaccination rates in kids aged 5-11 were slow compared to the rest of the population.

Victorian Premier Dan Andrews (pictured) said it 'wasn't his job to interpret the advice' of the chief health officer despite introducing new laws to that effect

Most mask rules were lifted for adults in Victoria earlier in March but school kids still have to wear them five days a week (pictured: Port Melbourne College)

'You've got to draw the line somewhere... it's much harder to get a little kid in prep or (Grade) 1 and 2 to wear their mask than it is for kids who are a bit older,' Mr Andrews said,

Deputy Premier James Merlino joined in too, saying his kids had 'gotten used' to wearing masks at school.

But on Tuesday, former deputy chief medical officer Dr Nick Coatsworth retweeted a post from mental health advocacy group Shadow Pandemic in which they polled thousands of parents who had a very different view.

'Mr Merlino your job is to represent constituents... we polled 20,000 parents and teachers to ask if their kids mind being masked all day five days a week, you are well out of touch,' the group said.

'That's a ridiculous statement, they shouldn't be used to wearing masks,' one parent said.

'How absurd, of course they mind. My son's glasses are always fogging up because of the mask. And let's consider how much communication is being missed by covering up everyone's speech and facial expressions,' a second said.

'They can't see their friends or teachers smiling at them, and there's no scientific evidence behind it,' added a third.

Dr Coatsworth retweeted a post of mental health advocacy group Shadow Pandemic (pictured)

Some of the thousands of messages received from parents and teachers against the mask rules (pictured)

The comments echo sentiments of respected medical experts who also disagreed with the mask rule for children.

'I continue to be definite. No masks for primary school students,' Dr Coatsworth himself previously said.

Meanwhile infectious diseases expert Professor Peter Collignon said the rule made no sense when masks are not required for adults.

'The biggest spreading events come from bars, pubs and clubs but they don't wear masks,' he said.

'It's good news that younger children are now exempt (from masks) but it really should be all primary school children.'

Dr Coatsworth (pictured) and other health experts have said the mask rules for kids don't make sense

Emma McBryde, James Cook University professor of infectious diseases modelling agreed saying she 'can see no genuine reason' for keeping the mask rules for kids.

'I would recommend they draw the line at no schoolchildren needing to wear masks anymore,' she told The Herald Sun.

'It's a silly measure to keep a small cohort of young children wearing masks. It almost feels as though they can't let go of control. To me, there's no genuine rationale of it.'

While Werribee GP Joe Garra said the rule was 'illogical' because the risk of Omicron for children was extremely low and masks 'shouldn't be mandated for kids to protect adults'.

The controversial mask rule will be reviewed at the end of the school term before the Easter holiday.
Uncertainty remains over whether former Liberal MP Gareth Ward will be suspended from NSW parliament after he was charged with sexual assault, and resisted calls from the premier to resign.

NSW Police on Tuesday charged the member for Kiama with three counts of assault with an act of indecency, and one count each of sexual intercourse without consent and common assault.

Gareth Ward has been charged over allegations of sexual violence against a 17-year-old boy and a 27-year-old man

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian (left) is pictured with embattled MP Gareth Ward (right)

Police allege Mr Ward indecently assaulted a 17-year-old boy at Meroo Meadow in February 2013, and sexually abused a 27-year-old man in Sydney in September 2015.

Shortly after news of Mr Ward's arrest, Premier Dominic Perrottet released a statement saying he had asked the now independent MP for his resignation, adding if he did not leave he would be expelled.

However on Wednesday acting premier Paul Toole said the government had received legal advice it should instead move to suspend Mr Ward until the outcome of any trial.

The motion, to go to a vote on Thursday, would also ensure the matter could no longer be debated in parliament, and would look to suspend Mr Ward's salary.

Detectives from the Child Abuse and Sex Crimes Squad in May established Strike Force Condello to investigate the historic allegations against Mr Ward

It remains uncertain whether the motion will be successful, after Opposition Leader Chris Minns accused the government of a 'rapid and major back down'.

Mr Minns, who on Tuesday indicated he'd support a motion to expel Mr Ward, said the government had "quickly moved from expulsion to suspension'.

He said NSW Labor was seeking independent legal advice over its own position.

'This back down means the people of Kiama will go without state representation for the next year  that is unacceptable,' Mr Minns said.

Mr Ward says he is 'totally innocent of the charges brought against me' and intends to prove his innocence in court.

'I deny any wrongdoing,' Mr Ward (pictured with his mother Margaret Bowcher) said.




Participants pose for a commemorative photo at the opening ceremony of the LG AI Research Center in the U.S. state of Michigan. From left, University of Michigan Associate Dean of Research Eric Michielssen, University of Michigan professor of AI Lee Hong-lak, University of Michigan Chairman of CSE Michael Wellman and University of Michigan head of AI Group Rada Mihalcea. / Courtesy of LG Group





By Kim Hyun-bin







LG AI Research has established a U.S.-based research center in Ann Arbor, Michigan, to advance in innovative technologies and recruit skilled workers in the region.







The LG AI Research Center is the first global research base of LG's AI research unit, and will be led by world-class artificial intelligence (AI) scholar Lee Hong-lak, to advance the latest AI advanced technologies.











Last month, LG AI Research Center and the University of Michigan AI Lab signed a business agreement on joint research.







The University of Michigan is considered to be among the world's top AI research facilities and won mention in a Forbes contribution, titled "The 10 Best AI And Data Science Undergraduate Courses For 2021."







Near Ann Arbor, where the University of Michigan is located, there are also headquarters and factories of three U.S. auto giants  GM, Ford and Chrysler Stellantis  making it an optimal location for industrial-educational cooperation, LG explained.







The opening ceremony held Tuesday (local time) was attended by nine leading AI research professors at the University of Michigan as well as officials from LG AI Research Center.







"The opening of the North American center is the first step for LG AI Research to leap beyond Korea and into the world," Lee said.







After the opening ceremony, LG AI Research Center plans to actively engage in recruitment, starting with a recruitment briefing session for professors and graduate students at the University of Michigan's AI department.







In addition, it plans to strengthen industry-university cooperation with several prestigious AI universities and research institutes in North America.







Earlier this month, LG AI Research established the SNU-LG AI Research Center with Seoul National University. The institute plans to secure 1,000 global AI experts by 2023.


A Liberal rival has claimed Penny Wong's lawyers sent her a 'bullying' letter after she named the under-fire senator in a social media post criticising Labor's treatment of women.

Victorian Coalition Senator Sarah Henderson shared a video in March 2021 of retiring Liberal MP Nicolle Flint recalling the abuse she suffered during her time in politics and urging parliament to better protect women.

Ms Henderson urged her Twitter followers to watch the 'brave, powerful speech' before blaming Ms Flint's treatment on Labor and tagging Ms Wong.

'No woman should endure the systematic abuse, harassment and misogynistic attacks to which she was subjected by Labor, with @SenatorWong in charge, GetUp & the unions,' Ms Henderson wrote.

The senator said she received a letter from Ms Wong's solicitors the next day threatening to sue if 'further defamatory publications' were made, The Daily Telegraph reported.

Penny Wong's (pictured) lawyers allegedly sent another Liberal senator a 'bullying' letter after she named the South Australian politician in a social media post criticising the Labor party's treatment of women

Ms Henderson said she was shocked to receive the letter as Ms Wong had not contacted her personally to complain about the tweet.

'All I was doing was standing up and supporting my good friend Nicolle Flint who had been subjected to the worst possible treatment by her political opponents,' Ms Henderson said.

'Given an applicant has 12 months to commence defamation proceedings, it is clear Senator Wong was only ever trying to bully and intimidate me.'

A spokesman for Ms Wong said the 'assertions in Ms Henderson's tweet are not true'.

The fresh accusation comes after Ms Wong and fellow Labor senators Kristina Keneally and Katy Gallagher were accused of bullying their late colleague Kimberley Kitching before her sudden death from a heart attack at the age of 52.

At Sen. Kitching's funeral, her husband Andrew Landeryou said she was under significant stress at the time of her death as a a result of 'unpleasantness' imposed by a 'cantankerous cabal'.

On Wednesday, Labor leader Anthony Albanese insisted he could not investigate the claims because Senator Kitching never made a formal complaint.

Ms Henderson urged her Twitter followers to watch retiring Liberal MP Nicolle Flint's 'brave, powerful speech' before blaming Ms Flint's treatment on Labor and tagging Ms Wong

The refusal to take any action has made Mr Albanese vulnerable to accusations of hypocrisy after Labor campaigned vigorously for inquiries and resignations over reports of mistreatment within the Liberal ranks last year.

Among those issues were the alleged rape of former Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins inside Parliament House, historical allegations of rape levelled at Christian Porter which he denied, and contested accusations that Alan Tudge mistreated former staffer Rachelle Miller.

Today show host Karl Stefanovic threw Mr Albanese's words back in his face on Wednesday when he pointed out the Labor leader promised to be 'more accountable' while criticising the Prime Minister over his handling of those claims.

Ms Wong and fellow Labor senators Kristina Keneally and Katy Gallagher pictured together right to left. They have been accused of bullying their late colleague Kimberley Kitching before her death at the age of 52

'You told the electorate you'd be more accountable. This is what you told Fran Kelly last year,' he said.

Stefanovic then played a segment from an ABC interview in March last year where Mr Albanese promised 'we'll act' on any complaints of poor treatment.

'Do you accept that action hasn't been taken when Labor heartland wants action to be taken,' he asked.

Senator Kitching, who was friendly with Coalition MPs, died of suspected heart attack on March 10 aged 52

Kristina Keneally has denied bullying senator Kitching. She is running for the safe lower house labor seat of Fowler in western Sydney. Signs in the electorate were vandalised with the word 'bully' this week

But Mr Albanese insisted the situation is different because Senator Kitching did not make a formal complaint.

Instead, she told her friends including One Nation Senator Pauline Hanson she was being ostracised by Ms Keneally, Ms Wong and Ms Gallagher.

The trio were dubbed 'mean girls' in reports on the bullying claims, which they deny.

Asked if he will call an inquiry, Mr Albanese replied: 'No, I won't, Karl. What I'll do is take the words from Bill Shorten at the funeral, which is that Kimberley Kitching would want us to move on and dedicate ourselves to a Labor victory at the election.'

Stefanovic pressed him, saying: 'You fought for several other inquiries but you're not fighting for an inquiry inside your own Party. It doesn't make any sense to me. What are you afraid of?'

The Labor leader insisted he had several meetings with Senator Kitching but she did not once claim she was being bullied.

He said: 'Karl, there was no complaint made... in terms of moving forward, there was no complaint put in by Kimberley.

Senator Kristina Keneally (pictured at Senator Kitching's funeral) has denied bullying Senator Kitching before her death aged 52

'My office is open to every member of the caucus. I had a number of one-on-one meetings with Kimberley since I've been leader and at no stage was any issues raised with me,' he said.

Senator Kitching, who raised the ire of Labor's left by being friendly with some Coalition MPs and having a hawkish stance on defence and foreign policy, died of suspected heart attack on March 10 aged 52.

She was under stress because she faced being dumped from a winnable spot on the Labor Senate ticket for the upcoming election, meaning her six-year parliamentary career could soon have been finished.

Liberals are hopeful the bullying scandal may derail Mr Albanese's election bid, but Labor sources are confident it won't make a big impact.

The party has a huge 10-point lead in the polls with the election due in May.

Senator Kitching's husband blasted her detractors in a moving speech at her funeral on Monday

Mr Morrison on Tuesday accused Mr Albanese of hiding from scrutiny - but the PM has not called for an inquiry into the bullying claims.

'At the first sign of hard questions he has gone into complete hiding,' Mr Morrison said in Cairns.

'Frankly, I think that it is pretty gutless'.

On Wednesday he turned the knife, telling Sunrise: 'If Anthony Albanese won't stand up to the bullies in his own party how can Australians trust him to stand up to the bullies in our region and those who seek to coerce Australia?'

Mr Morrison has repeatedly sought to portray Mr Albanese as weak on national security and China, a charge the Labor leader rejects.

In the year before her death Senator Kitching was ordered to do late night shifts in the Senate and dumped from Labor's tactics committee.

Last week Senator Penny Wong revealed she apologised to Senator Kitching in 2019 after insulting her childless fellow Labor senator by saying: 'If you had children you would understand' during a discussion about climate change.

Senator Kitching - who was from the Labor Right faction - made a complaint to Deputy Leader Richard Marles in June.

The Leader of the Opposition in the Senate Penny Wong arrives ahead of the funeral service for Senator Kimberley Kitching at St Patrick's Cathedral in Melbourne on Monday

Mr Albanese insisted this complaint was about being shunted off the tactics committee not being bullied.

Senator Kitching in November complained to PWC workplace safety consultants that she was being bullied - but Mr Albanese said he did not know about this.

'They were confidential discussions that people had. I do not know what happened in that room. And I have not seen anything from the PwC consultant,' he said.
Conor McGregor was arrested for alleged dangerous driving in his 140,000 Bentley Continental GT on a motorway in Dublin on Tuesday night.

The Irish MMA star is understood to have been pulled over by Gardai while travelling to the gym along the N4 between Lucan and Palmerstown.

His supercar was seized but has since been handed back to him, reported the Irish Independent.

The 33-year-old was charged with dangerous driving and is due to appear at Blanchardstown District Court next month.

Conor McGregor (pictured in a file photo), 33, was arrested for alleged dangerous driving in his 140,000 Bentley on a motorway in Dublin

A spokeswoman for McGregor told MailOnline: 'Mr. McGregor was driving to the gym when he was stopped by Gardai for alleged road traffic violations.

'He passed the drug and alcohol tests taken at the station.'

A Garda spokesman confirmed that a man was arrested in relation to the incident and taken to Lucan Garda Station. He has since been released.

In a statement, the police service said: 'Gardai arrested a man aged in his 30s in relation to an incident of dangerous driving in the Palmerstown area yesterday evening, Tuesday 22nd March 2022.

'The man was taken to Lucan Garda Station where he was later charged.

'He has been released pending an appearance before Blanchardstown District Court at a later date.'

The Irish MMA star (file photo above) was charged with dangerous driving and is due to appear at Blanchardstown District Court next month

McGregor is currently on the comeback path and has not fought since losing against Dustin Poirier back in July last year, a fight which saw him break his leg in his third defeat in four matches.

'The Notorious', a former two-weight world champion, is expected to return to the Octagon later this year and has vowed to fight again for a world title despite losing his last two bouts.

Although the date and opponent when he returns has not yet been confirmed, McGregor is reportedly keen to face the winner of the Justin Gaethje vs Charles Oliveira fight in May, with a mooted return in early July.
Six teenagers have been charged over the alleged stabbing murder of a 16-year-old boy, in a case that has 'horrified' Melbourne's most hardened homicide detectives.

Declan Cutler was on his way home from a party in Reservoir at about 2.30am on March 13, when he was allegedly set upon by the group on Elizabeth Street in Coburg.

Homicide detectives and other police officers executed warrants on Wednesday and arresting six males who have now been charged.

A female was also arrested but released pending further enquiries.

Declan Cutler was on his way home from a party in Reservoir at about 2.30am on March 13, when he was allegedly set upon by the group

Emergency services rushed to the bloody scene with paramedics and police trying desperately to save Declan's life, but he could not be revived and died at the scene.

'A 17-year-old Taylors Hill boy, 17-year-old Tarneit boy, 15-year-old Hoppers Crossing boy, 16-year-old Yarraville boy, 14-year-old Meadow Heights boy and a 13-year-old Meadow Heights boy have all been charged with murder,' Victoria Police said.

They cohort will face a children's court on Thursday.

'A 19-year-old South Melbourne man and a 15-year-old Werribee boy were both arrested by police today in relation to unrelated matters,' police said.

'The 19-year-old has been charged with burglary, theft of motor vehicle, theft and evade police and has been remanded in custody.'

Despite the breakthrough in the case, detectives say the investigation remains ongoing with police appealing for anyone who has any information about the incident to come forward.

Police (pictured) are investigating the killing of Declan Cutler, who was stabbed to death in the Melbourne suburb of Reservoir

A CCTV image shows what happened in the moments leading up to Declan's death

His mother, Sam Cutler, said she was 'broken' and called for those responsible to be held accountable.

'His whole face just lit up my day - everything about him, his cheeky little ways,' she told 7News.

'He was a very caring, loving and easy going person.'

Assistant Commissioner Bob Hill said many experienced police saw the 'profoundly violent attack' as one of the most brutal they had ever come across with Declan punched and kicked after being stabbed.

A large kitchen knife and another blade were among the items found by officers near the crime scene.

Declan's mother, Sam Cutler, said she was 'broken' and called for those responsible to be held accountable

'It's every parent's worst nightmare, having their teenage child leave the house for a night out with friends and never returning, however this is exactly what happened on this occasion,' Mr Hill said.

'The senseless nature of this incident should not be lost on anyone  I know it has impacted our police.'

Mr Hill said the charges follow an 'extraordinary investigative effort' by detectives and local police in the area.

'I know many will be horrified by the young age of those arrested today but let me be very clear  we will be relentless in pursuing anyone responsible for this level of violence, regardless of their age,' Mr Hill said.

A large kitchen knife and another blade were among the items found by officers near the crime scene

'There are so many impacted people whose lives have been changed forever by what happened the night Declan died, most of all his family.

'Our thoughts are very much with his loved ones and we will continue to ensure all the relevant support services are made available.'

Declan had been at a house party in Coburg North when a group of teenagers were chased by a group in a dark-coloured car.

He became separated from his friends and those in car caught up with him.

A GoFundMe page has now been set u by a friend of Declan's family to cover funeral costs and give him 'the send off he deserves'.
Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks hit back at Donald Trump after the former president rescinded his endorsement, saying Wednesday that only a pea-brain would believe that he is a 'woke liberal.'

Brooks said that Trump, laser-focused as ever on his 2020 election loss, repeatedly asked the Alabama Republican to 'rescind' the presidential election results and 'remove' President Biden from office. Brooks said he'd been fielding the former president's requests 'off and on again since September 2021.'

'The word he used was 'rescind,' he said. 'We didn't get into the details because it's legally impossible. And I explained that fairly promptly.'

Brooks, a longtime defender of the former president's election fraud claims, said he did not receive a courtesy call before Trump clawed back his endorsement.

'Ive told President Trump the truth knowing full well that it might cause President Trump to rescind his endorsement,' Brooks said in an earlier statement.

'When the President calls me woke, theres not anybody in Alabama with a brain larger than the size of a pea who believes that Mo Brooks is a woke liberal,' Brooks added.

Trump played take-backsies Wednesday with his endorsement for Brooks, who is vying for Alabama's open Senate seat, after the Republican suggested the country move on from the 2020 race.

'Mo Brooks of Alabama made a horrible mistake recently when he went 'woke' and stated, referring to the 2020 Presidential Election Scam, 'Put that behind you, put that behind you,' despite the fact that the Election was rife with fraud and irregularities,' Trump said.

Trump claimed Brooks tanked a '44-point lead' after he hired new campaign staff who 'brilliantly' told him to 'stop talking about the 2020 election.'

Former President Donald Trump (right) played take-backsies Wednesday with an endorsement for Rep. Mo Brooks (left), who is vying for Alabama's open Senate seat, after the Republican suggested the country move on from the 2020 race during a Trump rally in August (pictured)

Brooks said Trump made the decision because he was being manipulated by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell

'He listened to them,' Trump said. 'Then, according to the polls, Mo's 44-point lead totally evaporated all based on his '2020' statement made at our massive rally in Cullman, Alabama.'

Brooks advised rallygoers in August to put 2020 'behind you,' as Trump said, and was heckled by the crowd who shouted 'no' and booed.

'Look forward, look forward, look forward. Beat them in 2022, beat them in 2024,' he shouted over the boos. 'Alright, we'll look back at it, but go forward and take advantage of it. We've got to win in 2022, we've got to win in 2024, that's what we've got to do.'

The crowd seemingly got back on Brooks' side when he asked if they'd help Trump and MAGA candidates 'take back our country.'

'When I heard his statement, I said, 'Mo, you just blew the Election, and there's nothing you can do about it.' Very sad but, since he decided to go in another direction, so have I, and I am hereby withdrawing my Endorsement of Mo Brooks for the Senate,' Trump announced Wednesday.

'I don't think the great people of Alabama will disagree with me. Election Fraud must be captured and stopped, or we won't have a Country anymore,' the ex-president continued. 'I will be making a new Endorsement in the near future!' he said.

Trump came back for more Wednesday evening, writing in a statement: 'Mo Brooks was a leader on the 2020 Election Fraud and then, all of sudden, during the big rally in Alabama, he went woke and decided to drop everything he stood forwhen he did, the people of Alabama dropped him, and now I have done so also. The people get it, but unfortunately, Mo doesnt.'

The intraparty warfare has put Trump against Brooks and Brooks against Trump, and both against Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

In a statement sent out by Brooks Wednesday, he blasted Trump for being manipulated by McConnell, R-Ky.

'I wish President Trump wouldn't fall for McConnell's ploys, but, once again, he has,' Brooks said.

Trump shot back in his evening statement: 'As far as Mitch McConnell, I am not a fan and theres been no harsher critic than me. He has been absolutely terrible, and very bad for the GOP. The sooner he leaves Leadership, the better off the Republican Party will be.'

Less than two days ago, Brooks tied himself to Trump and against the GOP leader. 'This race is about Donald Trump and the MAGA agenda versus Mitch McConnell and the bought and paid for special interest agenda. It is time for conservatives to choose sides. It's time to Fire Mitch McConnell,' he wrote on Twitter on Monday.

'Mitch McConnell likes fighting Trump more than he likes fighting Biden. He hates Trump, he hates the candidates Trump has endorsed, and he hates the MAGA agenda,' he wrote in another Tweet.

Brooks hoped to take over the Senate seat being vacated by the retiring Republican Sen. Richard Shelby, but Shelby is already lending financial support to one of Brooke's GOP rivals, the 40-year-old Katie Britt, a former Shelby aide.

It was unclear where Trump got his '44-point' figure, but Brooks and Britt were leading in two dueling polls conducted last month.

A Club for Growth poll conducted by WPA Intelligence found that 35 per cent of GOP voters wanted Brooks to win the primary. Britt received 25 per cent of the share, coming in third after another candidate, Mike Durant.

Club for Growth is backing Brooks.

An internal survey from the Britt campaign, however, showed her winning with 29 per cent of the vote, while Brooks had 28 per cent and Durant had 23 per cent.

A Gray Tv/Alabama Daily News poll that was released Tuesday had Durant in first place.

He received 34.6 per cent support from Alabama Republicans, followed by Britt with 28.4 per cent.

Brooks came in a distant third at 16.1 per cent.

Trump met with Britt in February, Politico Playbook reported, creating speculation that he was having buyer's remorse over his Brooks endorsement - which he doled out last year.

Britt said she would 'be thrilled' to receive the endorsement of the former commander-in-chief, according to Yellowhammer News.

Brooks said that Britt was 'funded by McConnell allies, and shes still a high taxing, open borders, cheap foreign labor, Chamber of Commerce lobbyist.'

Durant met with Trump earlier this week.

Playbook said that Trump was particularly annoyed that Brooks was seeking the endorsement of former Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, who was also Trump's first attorney general.

Rep. Mo Brooks was one of the most Trump-aligned members of Congress. He spoke at the January 6 'Save America' rally on the ellipse, which happened in advance of the MAGA crowd storming the U.S. Capitol

Trump and Sessions had a falling out after Sessions decided to recuse himself from the FBI's Russia probe that looked into 2016 election interference and connections with the Trump campaign.

Sessions' No. 2, Rod Rosenstein, decided to appoint Special Counsel Robert Mueller to take over the investigation.

Brooks was a prominent Trump supporter in the U.S. Congress.

He appeared at the infamous 'Save America' rally that took place on the morning of January 6 before the MAGA crowd stormed the U.S. Capitol.

Brooks was so pro-Trump that he said he'd be 'proud' if any of his staff helped plan the rally that took place in advance of the attack, according to The Washington Post.

'Quite frankly, I'd be proud of them if they did help organize a First Amendment rally to protest voter fraud and election theft,' Brooks said in October.
Vladimir Putin's risk of being deposed by a Russian security-service led coup is growing every week, a whistleblower has claimed.

Chaos and discontent over Russia's botched invasion of Ukraine has grown within the ranks of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), and Putin's position at the head of the Kremlin is growing increasingly unstable, the source claimed.

When Russia unleashed its invasion on February 24, a swift toppling of Ukraine's democratically elected government seemed likely. But with Wednesday marking four full weeks of fighting, Russia is bogged down in a grinding military campaign.

Speaking to The Times, Vladimir Osechkin - a man wanted for his work exposing abuse in Russia's prisons - has shared updates from a source within the FSB that suggests anger towards Putin is mounting.

The Russian president is said to blame the FSB for the failure to quickly take control of the country. FSB officers meanwhile are becoming disillusioned with increasingly oppressive sanctions imposed by the West on Russia, and are growing frustrated.

Citing his source, Osechkin told the newspaper that this has meant the country's high-flying secret service agents have been prevented from travelling to their holiday homes or have been unable to 'take their kids to Disneyland Paris'.

Vladimir Putin's risk of being deposed by a Russian security-service led coup is growing every week, a whistleblower has claimed today. Pictured: Vladimir Putin (second left) at a a gala even in November 2018 along-side senior Russian military figures

FSB officers are paid far more than the average Russian, and are also handed an apartment by the state. Putin himself was the director of the FSB from 1998 to 1999, before he become president in 2000, taking over from Boris Yeltsin.

'For 20 years Putin created stability in Russia. FSB officers, policemen, state prosecutors  those people inside the system  were able to live good lives,' Osechkin told The Times.

But now, with Western sanctions, that has gone. Russia's economy has been crippled and the value of the Rouble has plummeted. Having grown accustomed to a better life, the FSB agents don't want to 'go back to the Soviet Union', Osechkin said.

The Russian said that disillusioned agents were willing to change the whole system in if necessary. 'For every week and every month that this war continues, the possibility of a rebellion by those in the security services increases,' he added.

Osechkin did not name his source, for obvious reasons, but said that they are in charge of a small analytics department within the secret service.

He told The Times that the whistleblower communicates only with the handle 'wearenotallsadists', having first got in touch in October 2021.

This came after Osechkin's human rights group Gulagu.net posted videos from inside a prison in Saratov, southwestern Russia. The video in question showed a prisoner being tortured by FSB officers.

Two days before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the whistleblower told Osechkin that FSB officers were looking to cause unrest in Ukrainian prisons that it hoped would lead to riots in an effort to sew chaos within the country.

Osechkin gained significant coverage earlier this month when, on March 4, he published a 2,000-word report from his source that said Putin's war in Ukraine would be a 'total failure' comparable to the collapse of Nazi Germany.

Destroyed buildings and a military vehicle are seen as civilians being evacuated along humanitarian corridors from the Ukrainian city of Mariupol under the control of Russian military and pro-Russian separatists, on March 21, 2022

Pictured: A shopping mall lies in ruins after a Russian missile strike of the Russian troops in the Podilskyi district of Kyiv on March 23, 2022

The report added that Russia's forces have 'no options to victory, only defeat' as they continued to meet strong Ukrainian resistance, that experts believe has surprised many in Moscow including the president himself.

The whistleblower also claimed the FSB - Russia's successor to the Soviet Union's feared KGB - was being blamed for the failure of Moscow's forces to make significant progress into Ukraine, despite being given no advanced warning of the invasion.

The report also said Russia's government has lost contact with a number of its divisions that have been sent into Ukraine, meaning they had no accurate death toll.

Christo Grozev, an expert on Russia's security services who works for investigative journalism group Bellingcat, said he has shown the report two current or former FSB contacts who told him they had 'no doubt it was written by a colleague'.

Writing on Twitter at the time, Grozev said that while his contacts did not necessarily agree with all the assertions in the report, they were confident in its origin.

Meanwhile, NATO estimated today that anywhere between 7,000 to 15,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in four weeks of war in Ukraine.

Ferocious fighting by the country's fast-moving defenders has denied Moscow the lightning victory it sought. By way of comparison, Moscow lost about 15,000 soldiers in Afghanistan over 10 years.

The most recent figure for Ukraine's military losses came from Zelensky on March 12, when he said that about 1,300 Ukrainian servicemen had been killed in action.

The anonymous NATO official said 30,000 to 40,000 Russian soldiers are estimated to have been killed or wounded.

Russia has released very little information on its casualties, saying March 2 that nearly 500 soldiers had been killed and almost 1,600 wounded.

Ukraine also claims to have killed six Russian generals. Russia acknowledges just one dead general.

The figures from NATO represent the alliance's first public estimate of Russian casualties since the war began. The U.S. government has largely declined to provide public estimates of Russian or Ukrainian casualties, saying available information is of questionable reliability.

A senior NATO military official said the alliance's estimate was based on information from Ukrainian officials, what Russia has released - intentionally or not - and intelligence gathered from open sources.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity under ground rules set by NATO.

Vladimir Putin's risk of being deposed by a Russian security-service led coup is growing every week, a whistleblower has claimed today. Pictured: A woman walks in front of the headquarters of Russia's Federal Security Services (FSB) in central Moscow on March 16, 2022

Vladimir Putin is said to blame the FSB for the failure to quickly take control of the country. FSB officers meanwhile are becoming disillusioned with increasingly oppressive sanctions imposed by the West on Russia

With Russia's ground forces repeatedly slowed or stopped by hit-and-run Ukrainian units armed with Western-supplied weapons, Putin's troops are bombarding targets from afar, using medieval tactics they deployed in Syria and Chechnya.

Late on Wednesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged citizens around the world to take to the streets to protest Russia's invasion of his country.

'Come with Ukrainian symbols to support Ukraine, to support freedom, to support life,' Zelensky said in a video address in English. 'Come to your squares, to your streets, make yourselves visible and heard.'

In a passionate speech on the eve of a one-month anniversary of Russia's invasion, Zelensky urged people around the globe 'to stand against the war starting from March 24... and after then' to speak up against Russia's bloody war.

'Show your standing, come from your offices, your homes, your schools and your universities, come in the name of peace,' Zelensky said.

'Say that people matter. Freedom matters. Peace matters. Ukraine matters. From March 24 in downtowns of your cities, all as one together who want to stop the war.'

'The War of Russia is not only the war against Ukraine, its meaning is much wider. Russia started the war against freedom as it is,' the Ukrainian president continued.

'This is only the beginning for Russia on the Ukrainian land. Russia is trying to defeat the freedom of all people in Europe - of all the people in the world. It tries to show that only crude and cruel force matters.

'It tries to show that people do not matter as well as everything else, that make us people. That's the reason we all must stop Russia. The world must stop the war.

I thank everyone who acts in support of Ukraine in support of freedom. But the war continues. The acts of terror against peaceful people go on.

'One month already. That long. It breaks my heart. Hearts of all Ukrainians and every free person on the planet,' he said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday urged citizens around the world to take to the streets to protest Russia's invasion of his country in a passionate video (pictured)

Britain sends Ukraine 6,000 more missiles to 'keep the flame of freedom alive' amid fears Kyiv is running low on weaponry By Andy Jehring for The Daily Mail Britain is giving Ukraine 6,000 more missiles and 25million to support its desperate struggle against the Russian invasion. This represents a 120 per cent increase in the amount of arms the UK has provided after previously sending 4,000 anti-tank systems. These included Javelin missiles and Next Generation Light Anti-tank Weapons, known as NLAWs. Ukrainian defenders have even been heard yelling God save the Queen! as they fire them. Boris Johnson tonight announced a huge extra delivery of equipment including anti-tank and high explosive weapons, amid fears Kyiv is running low. The UK will also provide 25million in financial backing to fund Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskys armed forces. At a major summit in Brussels today, Mr Johnson will urge other Nato members to step up support after Germany and France were accused of failing to honour their pledges on arms supply. Mr Johnson said: One month into this crisis, the international community faces a choice. We can keep the flame of freedom alive in Ukraine, or risk it being snuffed out across Europe and the world. The PM and his fellow leaders will discuss longer-term military, diplomatic and humanitarian support amid fears that Kyiv will run out of missiles in two weeks. Defending forces are using up a weeks worth of weapons every 20 hours, and need far more to take the fight to Russia. Vadym Prystaiko, Ukraines ambassador to the UK says Mr Zelensky will ask Nato to provide longer range missiles. We have enough weapons to stop tanks immediately when they approach us, he said. But to clear out our land we need something with a much greater distance. The Ukrainian president last night said that Mr Johnson had given him assurances of his support amid fears that France and Germany are backsliding on their own promises. Advertisement

Speaking on the eve of a NATO summit on Thursday, Zelensky called on the alliance to provide 'effective and unrestricted' support to Ukraine, including any weapons the country needs to fend off the Russian invasion.

'We ask that the alliance declare that it will fully assist Ukraine to win this war, clear our territory of the invaders and restore peace in Ukraine,' he said late Wednesday during his nightly video address to the nation.

Zelensky will speak to the NATO summit by video, the president's office said.

He appealed to Western countries to stay united in the face what he says are Russia's efforts to 'lobby its interests' with 'some partners' to bring them over to its side.

'We will see who is a friend, who is a partner and who has sold out and betrayed us,' he said in the emotional speech. 'Together we should not allow Russia to break anyone in NATO, the EU or G-7, to break them and drag them to the side of war.'

Zelensky noted that Ukrainian skies are still not closed to Russian aircraft and missiles and that Ukraine hasn't received the fighter jets or modern air-defence systems it requested. He said Ukraine also needs tanks and anti-ship systems.

'It has been a month of defending ourselves from attempts to destroy us, wipe us off the face of the earth,' he said.

'We have lasted six times longer than the enemy had planned . but the Russian troops are destroying our cities, killing civilians indiscriminately, raping women, kidnapping children, shooting refugees, capturing aid columns and looting.'

Switching to Russian, Zelensky appealed to Russians 'to leave Russia so as not to give your tax money to the war.' Tens of thousands of Russians already have fled Russia since the war began, fearing the intensifying crackdown at home.

Addressing Japan's parliament earlier on Wednesday, he said four weeks of war have killed thousands of his people, including at least 121 children.

'Our people cannot even adequately bury their murdered relatives, friends and neighbours. They have to be buried right in the yards of destroyed buildings, next to the roads,' he said.

Still, major Russian objectives remain unfulfilled. The capital, Kyiv, has been shelled repeatedly but is not even encircled.

Near-constant shelling and gunfire shook the city Wednesday, with plumes of black smoke rising from the western outskirts, where the two sides battled for control of multiple suburbs. Mayor Vitali Klitschko said at least 264 civilians have been killed in the capital since war broke out.

In the south, the port city of Mariupol has seen the worst devastation of the war, under weeks of siege and bombardment. But Ukrainian forces have prevented its fall, thwarting an apparent bid by Moscow to fully secure a land bridge from Russia to Crimea, seized from Ukraine in 2014.

Zelensky said 100,000 civilians remain in a city that had 430,000 people. Efforts to get desperately needed food and other supplies to those trapped have often failed.

Cleanup continues at Retroville Shopping Mall in Kyiv, Ukraine on March 23, 2022. The complex was destroyed by a Russian airstrike the day before. At least 8 people were killed initially and one person is dead after a second strike today

With the Russian advance stalled, Ukrainian forces have begun counterattacking in some parts of the country

Russian troops are using rape as an 'instrument of war', country's prosecutor-general warns By Glen Keogh for The Daily Mail Invading troops are reportedly 'using rape as an instrument of war' against Ukrainian women. In scenes reminiscent of the Red Army's treatment of German women in the Second World War, Russian soldiers have been accused of storming homes to carry out sex attacks. Ukraine's prosecutor-general Iryna Venediktova has opened the country's first official rape investigation into Putin's troops after a drunken soldier is said to have broken into a home, killed a man and repeatedly raped his wife. Mrs Venediktova said two soldiers attacked the woman in Brovary, in east Kyiv. One has reportedly been identified and charges are being sought. She added that, after shooting the husband dead and sexually assaulting his wife, the pair threatened their child with weapons. The attacked woman is said to have survived and provided evidence to investigators. Allegations of rape have been rife since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, and have even been raised by Kyiv's foreign minister, who said there were 'numerous cases' of invading troops sexually assaulting women. Mrs Venediktova said prosecutors would 'find every villain' and make them face the full 'severity of the law'. Advertisement

Zelensky accused Russian forces of seizing a humanitarian convoy. Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said the Russians were holding captive 11 bus drivers and four rescue workers along with their vehicles.

It is not clear how much of Mariupol is still under Ukrainian control. Fleeing residents say fighting continues street by street. In their last update, over a week ago, Mariupol officials said at least 2,300 people had died, but the true toll is probably much higher. Airstrikes in the past week destroyed a theater and an art school where civilians were sheltering.

In the besieged northern city of Chernihiv, Russian forces bombed and destroyed a bridge that was used for aid deliveries and civilian evacuations, regional governor Viacheslav Chaus said.

Kateryna Mytkevich, who arrived in Poland after fleeing Chernihiv, wiped away tears as she spoke about what she had seen. The city is without gas, electricity or running water, said Mytkevich, 39, and entire neighbourhoods have been destroyed.

'I don't understand why we have such a curse,' she said.

Despite plenty of evidence to the contrary, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov insisted the military operation is going 'strictly in accordance' with plans.

With casualties mounting and quick victory no longer in sight, Russia is having to work to suppress dissent and shore up morale.

It has arrested thousands of antiwar protesters and cracked down on the media. Also, under a law passed Wednesday, troops in Ukraine will get the same benefits as veterans of previous wars, including tax breaks, discounts on utilities and preferential access to medical treatment.

In an apparent reflection of growing divisions in Russia's top echelons, top official Anatoly Chubais has resigned, Peskov told the Interfax news agency.

Chubais, the architect of Russia's post-Soviet privatisation campaign, had served at a variety of top official jobs over three decades. His latest role was as Putin's envoy to international organisations.

Peskov would not say if Chubais had left the country.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said today that four weeks of war have killed thousands of his people, including at least 121 children

Western officials say Putin's forces are facing serious shortages of food, fuel and cold weather gear, with soldiers suffering frostbite, while Ukraine's defenders have been going more on the offensive.

Still, Russia's far stronger, bigger military has many Western military experts warning against overconfidence in Ukraine's long-term odds.

The Kremlin's practice in past wars has been to grind down resistance with strikes that flattened cities, killing countless civilians and sending millions fleeing.

Talks to end the fighting have continued by video. Zelensky said negotiations with Russia are going 'step by step, but they are going forward.'

With no peace, those not yet fighting prepared to do so.

'Everything's a best-seller these days,' said Zakhar Sluzhalyy, who owns a gun shop in the western city of Lviv. 'We're defending our land,' he said. 'We're fighting for our freedom and that of the rest of Europe.'
A British man has escaped from the devastated city of Mariupol by walking to Russia after becoming trapped with his wife for almost a month in hell on earth.

Charlie Gilkeson, 68, a lecturer from Yorkshire, said the couple felt very, very lucky after surviving the ferocious fighting for control of Mariupol, the key Ukrainian port, which has been blown apart and left blazing by weeks of relentless Russian bombardment.

It was just explosions everywhere, he said. You could not walk anywhere. Every explosion could be your last moment on earth. Every second could be your final one alive.

Charlie Gilkeson, 68, is a lecturer from Yorkshire who walked from Mariupol to Russia on foot alongside his Russian wife, pictured on the right, fleeing deadly shelling from Putin's army

One month after the war began, Mariupol now encapsulates the horrors of the invasion.

Satellite images show a ruined landscape with burning buildings and destroyed homes, yet almost 100,000 people remain in what the local council have called the ashes of a dead land.

Mr Gilkeson, whose wife Iryna comes from the city once home to almost half a million people on the Sea of Azov, said their experiences were beyond belief. Ive seen things I never expected to see in my life  the noise, the devastation, its all just horrendous.

The photo shows the city of Mariupol that housed 450,000 people before the Russian invasion

He told the Daily Mail about buildings riddled with bullets, chopping down trees for cooking on open fires, fetching water from the river, seeing looting from shops and  above all  the endless explosions that have left bodies littering the streets.

100,000 trapped in city as soldiers seize aid workers Thousands of civilians remained trapped in Mariupol yesterday as Russia was accused of capturing relief workers and the ravaged city came under naval attack. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video address: There are about 100,000 people in the city, in inhumane conditions, in a complete blockade. No food, no water, no medicine. Under constant shelling... constant bombing. The leader said Russian troops had unleashed shelling and deliberate terror on aid convoys, seizing 15 workers. One of the humanitarian columns was simply captured by the occupiers on the agreed route, he said. SES [State Emergency Service of Ukraine] employees and bus drivers were taken prisoner. The Pentagon said Russia is using long-range missiles fired from ships in the Sea of Azov. Mariupols Azov Battalion defenders said Russia dropped two more heavy bombs in a bid to see it razed to the ground. There was speculation that Moscow plans to use the port to move troops. Unlike the rest of the city, the port suffered relatively little bombing, a senior official said. Mr Zelensky said 7,000 people were rescued on Tuesday, as a survivor of last weeks theatre bombing which left 1,300 feared buried described heart-breaking scenes of a mother trying to reach her child while another screamed, I dont want to die. Advertisement

People have lost their city  and for what? Its so sad. We were lucky to get out alive but Im so sorry for all the people who gave their lives.

I met Mr Gilkeson, a lecturer in engineering at Wakefield College, in a Mariupol cafe last month.

After hearing me speak English, he came over to say hello before telling me that he had taken some time off work to renovate their flat in the city.

I came here to get over stress and then walked into a possible war, he said, although like many people, the academic was sceptical over the talk of invasion.

A few days later, the couple both caught Covid.

Then on the day war broke out, he texted to say their plan to fly back to Britain the following week had been wrecked after all flights were cancelled and Russian military invaded Ukraine.

I have no choice but to sit it out. A huge explosion this morning and food shortages as you would expect, Mr Gilkeson texted the next day.

Then there was silence, despite my calls and texts.

I feared the worst  like his son Carl, a lecturer in aerospace engineering at Leeds University, who told his father that hed said goodbye twice since he thought we were dead after they lost contact for two-and-a-half weeks.

But yesterday Mr Gilkeson turned up in the Russian port of Taganrog after walking through the fighting into the self-declared Peoples Republic of Donetsk with some others sheltering in a basement underneath a college of marine engineering.

I said to my wife thats it, were going and we walked out of Mariupol. It was a long way  Ive got blisters on my feet, so I can hardly walk at the moment.

He said the hardest part was the first hour and twenty minutes as they shepherded children in their party to the port from the city centre: You had thousands of gunshots and explosions going off.

You had to learn to fall flat on your face. We tried to keep as near to the buildings as possible, but bear in mind there were huge amounts of sheet glass falling all around you that could kill you anyway. But we just had to do it.

This was the culmination of the couples nightmare weeks in Mariupol, staying in their flat for as long as possible  despite seeing windows blown out and losing power on March 1  before moving into the college basement.

If you are in the basement and the building comes down, there is no way out. If you are upstairs and there is an explosion, you are also dead. But I decided I would rather be outside than trapped in a concrete bunker.

Ukrainian State Emergency Service shows firefighters putting out a fire after Russian shelling on a warehouse

Led by a neighbour, the local residents organised themselves by cutting down trees for firewood, starting with the dead ones.

There are no trees left in Mariupol  they were all cut down for people to cook food, said Mr Gilkeson.

But there is no water, no food, no gas. We had to go to the river to get water to flush the toilet. Drinking water was very difficult to find. You had to boil water on fires.

When people could not get food and water, they were breaking into all the shops.

He praised the incredible spirit of the people, although he admitted their feeling of isolation was intense after losing contact beyond the besieged city.

In the modern world without any connectivity you feel completely lost, he said.

Eventually, assisted by a local woman who spoke English, they found a spot with an occasional phone signal and Iryna managed to get a message to their families via a friend in Kyiv that they were alive. Everyone was just amazing, he said.

Mr Gilkeson, who plans to write a book on his experiences and analysis of the wars causes, said rumours of possible humanitarian corridors and ceasefires left them on an emotional rollercoaster.

He was also critical of the Azov battalion, a former militia that is now part of the Ukrainian army: Some of them were drunk. People on our block had Azov shooting at anything, using local people as human shields.

But he said soldiers and citizens on both sides assisted their escape through an area seized by Russian forces.

The couple spent a night in a school, then two more in a cinema in the so-called Donetsk Peoples Republic before they crossed into Russia.

I must admit there were one or two raised eyebrows when I went into Russia, Mr Gilkeson said. They were thinking why is the crazy Englishman trying to get into Russia, because everybody was going West.

But I used my gut instinct. I know ordinary Russians, Im married to one, so I went the other way  and so far it has worked.

Destroyed buildings and a military vehicle are seen as civilians being evacuated along humanitarian corridors from the Ukrainian city of Mariupol under the control of Russia

Dead bodies are put into a mass grave on the outskirts of Mariupol, Ukraine, Wednesday, March 9, 2022, as people cannot bury their dead because of the heavy shelling

After arriving in Russia, the couple  wearing the same clothes that had been on their bodies for 24 days and nights  discovered problems changing their money in the sanction-hit country, but managed to find sufficient funds to reach St Petersburg.

We went into a cafe. Obviously we were filthy. This guy came up and said are you from Mariupol?.

We said yes. He gave us about 1,000 roubles and said he was so sorry Mariupol had gone. As soon as he said that, it hit Iryna hard and she broke down, Mr Gilkeson said.

His wifes sister remains in the city, although the couple have been unable to make contact with her.

There were fantastic people in Mariupol and it was a fantastic city, he says. But now it has all been destroyed.
Invading troops are reportedly 'using rape as an instrument of war' against Ukrainian women.

In scenes reminiscent of the Red Army's treatment of German women in the Second World War, Russian soldiers have been accused of storming homes to carry out sex attacks.

Ukraine's prosecutor-general Iryna Venediktova has opened the country's first official rape investigation into Putin's troops after a drunken soldier is said to have broken into a home, killed a man and repeatedly raped his wife.

Russian soldiers (file photo) have been accused by Ukraine of committing sex crimes against civilians and using rape as an 'instrument of war'

Ukraine's prosecutor-general Iryna Venediktova (pictured) has opened the country's first official rape investigation after a pair of Russian soldiers reportedly killed a husband and raped the wife in east Kyiv

MP Lesia Vasylenko (pictured on Downing Street last week) said that Russia raped millions of Germans in WW2 and is now again using 'rape as an instrument of war'

Mrs Venediktova said two soldiers attacked the woman in Brovary, in east Kyiv. One has reportedly been identified and charges are being sought. She added that, after shooting the husband dead and sexually assaulting his wife, the pair threatened their child with weapons.

The attacked woman is said to have survived and provided evidence to investigators.

Allegations of rape have been rife since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, and have even been raised by Kyiv's foreign minister, who said there were 'numerous cases' of invading troops sexually assaulting women.

Mrs Venediktova said prosecutors would 'find every villain' and make them face the full 'severity of the law'.

Satellite images of Irpin (pictured), near Kyiv, shows the extent of the damage and burning buildings after a heavy assault from Russian troops this week - it is also the location of Russian soldiers have allegedly been raping women

The alleged rape in Brovary could not be verified. It is unclear how the soldier was identified and his current location is unknown.

Last night, Ukrainian politicians urged the international community to condemn what they claim are increasingly commonplace assaults by invading troops.

Referring to the Soviet occupation of parts of Germany in 1945, MP Lesia Vasylenko said: 'Two million people were raped in Germany by Russians during World War Two.

'Russia again is using rape as an instrument of war. This time in Ukraine. History repeats itself.'

Russian troops were also accused of multiple rapes of women and men during the Second Chechen War between 1999 and 2009.

Ukraine's foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba (pictured) said there are 'numerous cases of' Russian sex crimes on innocent civilians

This week a woman who escaped from the town of Irpin, which has been partly destroyed by Russian bombs, also accused invading troops of raping women and shooting innocent civilians. Anastasia Taran, 30, described how the city had been turned into 'hell'.

'There are plenty of Russian soldiers out there who just shoot people, who enter private homes and, at best, just kick people out,' she told the Ukrainian online newspaper Euromaidan Press.

'They rape women and the dead are just being dumped. They open the basements where people are hiding and shoot them.'

Addressing an event at the international affairs think-tank Chatham House in London this month, Ukraine's foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba revealed the alleged extent of Russian sex crimes on innocent civilians.

Discussing whether Putin should face a war crimes tribunal for the invasion of Ukraine, he said: 'When bombs fall on your cities, when soldiers rape women in the occupied cities  and we have numerous cases of, unfortunately, when Russian soldiers rape women in Ukrainian cities  it's difficult of course to speak about the efficiency of international law.'
Britain is giving Ukraine 6,000 more missiles and 25million to support its desperate struggle against the Russian invasion.

This represents a 120 per cent increase in the amount of arms the UK has provided after previously sending 4,000 anti-tank systems.

These included Javelin missiles and Next Generation Light Anti-tank Weapons, known as NLAWs. Ukrainian defenders have even been heard yelling God save the Queen! as they fire them.

Boris Johnson tonight announced a huge extra delivery of equipment including anti-tank and high explosive weapons, amid fears Kyiv is running low.

A Ukrainian serviceman fires an NLAW anti-tank weapon during an exercise in the Joint Forces Operation, in the Donetsk region

The UK will also provide 25million in financial backing to fund Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskys armed forces.

At a major summit in Brussels today, Mr Johnson will urge other Nato members to step up support after Germany and France were accused of failing to honour their pledges on arms supply.

Mr Johnson said: One month into this crisis, the international community faces a choice. We can keep the flame of freedom alive in Ukraine, or risk it being snuffed out across Europe and the world.

The PM and his fellow leaders will discuss longer-term military, diplomatic and humanitarian support amid fears that Kyiv will run out of missiles in two weeks.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson pictured speaking to Ukrainian President Zelensky earlier today

Defending forces are using up a weeks worth of weapons every 20 hours, and need far more to take the fight to Russia.

Vadym Prystaiko, Ukraines ambassador to the UK says Mr Zelensky will ask Nato to provide longer range missiles.

We have enough weapons to stop tanks immediately when they approach us, he said.

But to clear out our land we need something with a much greater distance.

The Ukrainian president last night said that Mr Johnson had given him assurances of his support amid fears that France and Germany are backsliding on their own promises.

Ukrainian Territorial Defence Forces members train to use an NLAW anti-tank weapon on the outskirts of Kyiv

German chancellor Olaf Scholz told his parliament yesterday: Ukraine can rely on our help. Since the beginning of the war, we have been supplying weapons and imposing sanctions that are second to none.

But Ukraines ambassador to Berlin, Andriy Melnyk, accused the country of ignoring urgent requests for weapons for the last three weeks when every day counts to save the lives of the civilian population.

Officials in Kyiv say deliveries of defensive kit have slowed to a trickle.

If we dont sort out the supply issue soon it is going to be a slaughter, said Paul Grod, president of the Ukrainian World Congress.

We are going to have 200,000 members of the territorial defence trying to fight tanks with AK47s. Quite frankly, they will become cannon fodder.

The UK has been doing a marvellous job leading the way and there is big kudos to Britain in Kyiv, but more is needed. France and Germany have been problematic... really dragging their feet.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during a broadcast speech in Kyiv

Mr Scholz struck a cautious tone yesterday on reducing Germanys energy dependence on Russia.

To do this from one day to the next would mean plunging our country and the whole of Europe into a recession, he said. Hundreds of thousands of jobs would be in danger. Sanctions should not hurt European states harder than the Russian leadership.

Meanwhile, the UKs former defence attache to Moscow claimed yesterday that the Government ignored many warnings that Vladimir Putin would attack.

Retired air commodore Carl Scott, who served from 2011 to 2016, said Russias long, dark march to war was ignored due to corrupt Russian wealth invested in London.

We reported the inevitability of conflict in detail, regularly, he said in a scathing letter to the Financial Times.

Mr Scott also said that the Kremlin had been greatly emboldened' by Brexit.
Putin loses his 15th top commander in Ukraine invasion as Russia suffers worst deaths among top brass since World War Two

Up to 40,000 Russian soldiers are believed to have been killed, injured or captured since Ukraine was invaded four weeks ago  and yet another of Moscows generals has died in action.

Nato declared the toll was having a major impact on the morale of President Vladimir Putins forces.

An official said yesterday that the number of Russians killed is between 7,000 and 15,000.

Adding in the wounded and those held prisoner takes the figure of soldiers taken out of the campaign to between 30,000 and 40,000, he suggested.

Some military experts believe Russias mission would be unsustainable if losses climbed to 30 per cent  around 60,000 men  as it has already called in reserves.

Putins invasion continued to suffer what is fast becoming Russias biggest loss of top commanders since the Second World War.

Colonel Alexei Sharov became the latest high-ranking official allegedly killed, with western officials saying they believe six of the initial 20 top generals have now been taken out.

They will have been replaced, though, they cautioned.

Putins fury would have mounted as his forces continued to stall in Kyiv, Kharkiv and Chernihiv while they achieved some success in the south at a horrendous price.

Destroyed Russian tanks are seen on a main road after battles near Brovary, north of Kyiv

Ukrainian forces are also looking to recapture Kherson  its only major city under occupation.

Western officials believe Putin will focus his gaze on the east in the coming days, halting manoeuvres on the other two fronts to try and encircle Ukraines top troops.

It comes as Russias foreign minister Sergei Lavrov admitted the scale of western sanctions had stunned the Kremlin.

When they [froze] the central bank reserves, nobody who was predicting what sanctions the West would pass could have pictured that, he told university students.
The terrorist accused of stabbing Tory MP Sir David Amess to death showed no remorse after the attack, a court heard yesterday.

Ali Harbi Ali, 26, acted like he had achieved something and had a look of self-satisfaction on his face, witnesses to the knifing at a constituency surgery said.

As Sir David lay on the floor with 21 stab wounds, Ali is alleged to have said: He deserved to die. I wanted to kill David because I want to kill every MP, whoever voted for the bombing of Syria and the Iraqi war.

Ali Harbi Ali, 26, acted like he had achieved something and had a look of self-satisfaction on his face, witnesses to the knifing at a constituency surgery said

The jury at the Old Bailey heard dramatic testimony from two of Sir Davids aides and a couple who were arriving for a surgery appointment.

The veteran MPs Westminster assistant Rebecca Hayton told police Ali seemed relaxed after tricking his way into Belfairs Methodist Church in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, on October 15 on the pretence he was moving to the area from north London.

She said Ali started grilling Sir David, 69, about his voting record on Iraq when his mobile phone rang.

In a police interview played to the jury, Miss Hayton said: [Ali] just said sorry, I thought he was saying sorry for the phone disturbing him but then he just reached in and got the knife. He just leaned straight over the table and then stabbed him in the stomach and then David screamed very loudly.

She alerted political aide Julie Cushion, who ran in to help. Asked how Ali looked after the attack, Miss Cushion told the jury: Self-satisfaction is how I would describe it.

Constituents Yvonne Eaves and Darren King, who were arriving for an appointment, ran inside and allegedly saw Ali clutching a 12-inch knife, warning them not to come closer.

Mr King told police he spoke to Ali to calm him down and, when he asked why he had attacked Sir David, was told it was for all the innocent people killed in Syria and Iraq.

Miss Eaves said: [Ali] seemed  he knew what hed done, like hed achieved something, like he was Ive done it. He wasnt remorseful, he wasnt oh my God. Ali denies murder and preparing acts of terrorism.

The trial continues.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov sits in front of a screen displaying Russian President Vladimir Putin addressing his annual press conference via a video link from the Novo-Ogaryovo state residence, at the World Trade Centre's congress center in Moscow, Dec. 17, 2020. Russia would only use nuclear weapons in the context of the Ukraine conflict if it were facing an "existential threat," Peskov told CNN International on March 22. AFP-Yonhap



Russia would only use nuclear weapons in the context of the Ukraine conflict if it were facing an "existential threat," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told CNN International Tuesday.



"We have a concept of domestic security, and it's public. You can read all the reasons for nuclear arms to be used," Peskov said. "So if it is an existential threat for our country, then it can be used in accordance with our concept."



Peskov's comment came as interviewer Christiane Amanpour pushed him on whether he was "convinced or confident" that President Vladimir Putin would not use the nuclear option in the Ukrainian context.



Days after Russian troops invaded Ukraine, Putin announced on February 28 that he had put the country's strategic nuclear forces on high alert in a move that sparked global alarm.



Asked about Peskov's statement, and Russia's nuclear stance more broadly, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby called Moscow's rhetoric on potential use of nuclear weapons "dangerous."



"It's not the way a responsible nuclear power should act," he told reporters.






Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday urged citizens around the world to take to the streets to protest Russia's invasion of his country.

'Come with Ukrainian symbols to support Ukraine, to support freedom, to support life,' Zelensky said in a video address in English. 'Come to your squares, to your streets, make yourselves visible and heard.'

In a passionate speech on the eve of a one-month anniversary of Russia's invasion, Zelensky urged people around the globe 'to stand against the war starting from March 24... and after then' to speak up against Russia's bloody war.

'Show your standing, come from your offices, your homes, your schools and your universities, come in the name of peace,' Zelensky said.

'Say that people matter. Freedom matters. Peace matters. Ukraine matters. From March 24 in downtowns of your cities, all as one together who want to stop the war.'

Hundreds of civilians have been killed, hundreds more injured and over three million Ukrainians have fled their country since Russia invaded its neighbour on February 24 with the goal of thwarting its pro-Western course.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday urged citizens around the world to take to the streets to protest Russia's invasion of his country in a passionate video (pictured)

When Russia unleashed its invasion on February 24 in Europe's biggest offensive since the Second World War, a swift toppling of Ukraine's democratically elected government seemed likely.

But with Wednesday marking four full weeks of fighting, Russia is now bogged down in a grinding military campaign.

With its ground forces repeatedly slowed or stopped by hit-and-run Ukrainian units armed with Western-supplied weapons, Russian President Vladimir Putin's troops are bombarding targets from afar, falling back on the tactics they used in reducing cities to ruins in Syria and Chechnya.

NATO estimated on Wednesday that 7,000 to 15,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in the four weeks of war, where ferocious fighting by the country's fast-moving defenders has denied Moscow the lightning victory it sought.

By comparison, Moscow lost about 15,000 soldiers in Afghanistan over 10 years.

Despite showing little sign of further Russian advancement, the Kremlin has not shown much sign of backing down on the demands it is asking for in order to withdraw its troops.

Zelensky has offered to meet Putin in person - which he has so-far declined.

'The War of Russia is not only the war against Ukraine, its meaning is much wider. Russia started the war against freedom as it is,' the Ukrainian president said in his address on Wednesday night.

Pictured: Activists and young Ukrainians demonstrate with a giant peace sign and 'Stop Putin's oil' in front of the Jusutus Lispsius; the EU Council building and the Berlaymont, the EU Commission building on March 22, 2022

'This is only the beginning for Russia on the Ukrainian land. Russia is trying to defeat the freedom of all people in Europe - of all the people in the world. It tries to show that only crude and cruel force matters.

'It tries to show that people do not matter as well as everything else, that make us people. That's the reason we all must stop Russia. The world must stop the war.

I thank everyone who acts in support of Ukraine in support of freedom. But the war continues. The acts of terror against peaceful people go on.

'One month already. That long. It breaks my heart. Hearts of all Ukrainians and every free person on the planet,' he said.

Speaking on the eve of a NATO summit on Thursday, Zelensky called on the alliance to provide 'effective and unrestricted' support to Ukraine, including any weapons the country needs to fend off the Russian invasion.

'We ask that the alliance declare that it will fully assist Ukraine to win this war, clear our territory of the invaders and restore peace in Ukraine,' he said late Wednesday during his nightly video address to the nation.

Zelensky will speak to the NATO summit by video, the president's office said.

He appealed to Western countries to stay united in the face what he says are Russia's efforts to 'lobby its interests' with 'some partners' to bring them over to its side.

'We will see who is a friend, who is a partner and who has sold out and betrayed us,' he said in the emotional speech. 'Together we should not allow Russia to break anyone in NATO, the EU or G-7, to break them and drag them to the side of war.'

Zelensky noted that Ukrainian skies are still not closed to Russian aircraft and missiles and that Ukraine hasn't received the fighter jets or modern air-defence systems it requested. He said Ukraine also needs tanks and anti-ship systems.

'It has been a month of defending ourselves from attempts to destroy us, wipe us off the face of the earth,' he said.

'We have lasted six times longer than the enemy had planned . but the Russian troops are destroying our cities, killing civilians indiscriminately, raping women, kidnapping children, shooting refugees, capturing aid columns and looting.'

Switching to Russian, Zelensky appealed to Russians 'to leave Russia so as not to give your tax money to the war.' Tens of thousands of Russians already have fled Russia since the war began, fearing the intensifying crackdown at home.

Addressing Japan's parliament earlier on Wednesday, Zelensky said four weeks of war have killed thousands of his people, including at least 121 children.

A shopping mall lies in ruins after a missile strike of the Russian troops in the Podilskyi district of Kyiv, capital of Ukraine, March 22, 2022

'Our people cannot even adequately bury their murdered relatives, friends and neighbours. They have to be buried right in the yards of destroyed buildings, next to the roads,' he said.

Still, major Russian objectives remain unfulfilled. The capital, Kyiv, has been shelled repeatedly but is not even encircled.

Near-constant shelling and gunfire shook the city Wednesday, with plumes of black smoke rising from the western outskirts, where the two sides battled for control of multiple suburbs. Mayor Vitali Klitschko said at least 264 civilians have been killed in the capital since war broke out.

In the south, the port city of Mariupol has seen the worst devastation of the war, under weeks of siege and bombardment. But Ukrainian forces have prevented its fall, thwarting an apparent bid by Moscow to fully secure a land bridge from Russia to Crimea, seized from Ukraine in 2014.

Zelensky said 100,000 civilians remain in a city that had 430,000 people. Efforts to get desperately needed food and other supplies to those trapped have often failed.

Zelensky accused Russian forces of seizing a humanitarian convoy. Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said the Russians were holding captive 11 bus drivers and four rescue workers along with their vehicles.

It is not clear how much of Mariupol is still under Ukrainian control.

Fleeing residents say fighting continues street by street. In their last update, over a week ago, Mariupol officials said at least 2,300 people had died, but the true toll is probably much higher.

Airstrikes in the past week destroyed a theatre and an art school where civilians were sheltering.
Russia yesterday boasted of firing supersonic homing missiles at Ukrainian forces from its powerful Bastion coastal defence system.

The Russian defence ministry announced the move as Vladimir Putin's stalled invasion entered its fourth week.

It released footage showing the missiles with 250kg warheads being fired.

The powerful rockets can be seen being shot vertically from the launcher before turning and disappearing into the distance.

The ministry said in a statement three Bastion missiles were fired from its coastal defence systems at targets belonging to the Ukrainian forces.

It also said that eight Kalibr cruise missiles were launched from a guided-missile warship near the Black Sea port of Sevastopol.

Posting a video of the high-precision rockets being fired on its official Facebook page, the ministry wrote: 'Never make a Russian warship angry.'

A handout still image taken from a handout video made available by the Russian Defence Ministry press service shows launch of missiles by the coastal missile system 'Bastion' on infrastructure facilities of the Armed Forces of Ukraine

The missiles were launched from an undisclosed area of Crimea on Wednesday, the ministry said

The sea-launched land-attack Kalibr cruise missiles  which have a range of up to 1,500 miles  are being used by the Russian navy to target Ukrainian cities.

It comes days after the US confirmed that Russia had used hypersonic missiles in 'at least one instance'.

It said an arsenal with weapons and military equipment of Ukrainian troops in the village of Orzhev, 14 kilometres north-west of the city of Rivne, two Tochka-U launchers near Kiev, and eight anti-aircraft missile systems were destroyed

The invading troops were said to have fired the missile 'against a fixed building at a relatively close range,' the Pentagon said on Tuesday.

The Kinzhal missile was fired on a weapons depot in Ivano-Frankivsk, in western Ukraine on Saturday.

A Russian spokesman claimed it destroyed military radio and reconnaissance centres near Odessa.
The Greens are promising to scrap all student loan debts if they hold the balance of power after the federal election.

That would mean all Aussies with student loan debt would not be required to pay it back.

The Greens have been plotting the policy for a while before education spokesperson Mehreen Faruqi spruiked it in media appearances on Thursday.

The Greens are promising to scrap all student loan debts if the party is able to secure the balance of power at the federal election

'Student debt should not be an added burden on people who are already struggling, especially after the impacts of the pandemic,' she said.

'Many current MPs, including the Prime Minister, went to university when it was free, but now students are being saddled with tens of thousands of dollars in study debt that often takes decades to repay.'

In 2020-21, the average student debt in Australia was $23,685. The total value of HELP debt in 2020 was $66.6billion.

The Greens want to make childcare, school and university free.

They will pay for their measures by increasing Australia's public debt and levying new taxes on the wealthy and big business.

The Greens have proposed a billionaires' tax which takes six per cent of wealth from anyone with a net worth of more than $1billion.

They also want a Corporate Super-Profits Tax, which applies a 40 per cent tax to companies with revenue over $100million a year.

Greens education spokesperson Mehreen Faruqi wants to scrap all student debt in Australia

University was free in Australia from 1974 but fees were re-introduced in the mid 1980s.

The Greens hold only one seat in the House of Representatives but are targeting more at the May election.

Labor has insisted it will not form a Coalition with the Greens if it fails to win a majority.

This means there is slim chance of The Greens policies ever seeing the light of day.

Anthony Albanese has pledged to fund up to 20,000 extra university places and 465,000 free Tafe places - but has no policy on student debt.
The ancestors of many animals alive today may have lived in modern China more than 500 million years ago, a new study has found.

One of the oldest groups of animal fossils currently known to science have been found in Yunnan, south-west China, including the remains of more than 250 species.

It is a key record of the Cambrian Explosion, which saw the rapid spread of bilaterian species  creatures that, like modern animals and humans, had symmetry as an embryo, i.e. having a left and a right side that are mirror images of each other.

Fossils found at the 518-million-year-old Chengjiang Biota include various worms, arthropods (ancestors of living shrimps, insects, spiders, scorpions) and even the earliest vertebrates (ancestors of fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals).

The new study discovered for the first time that this environment was a shallow-marine, nutrient-rich delta affected by storm-floods.

The ancestors of many animal species alive today may have lived in a delta in what is now China, a new study has found. Fossils of more than 250 species have been found in the 518-million-year-old Chengjiang Biota, including various worms and arthropods (pictured)

WHAT WAS THE 'CAMBRIAN EXPLOSION'? Scientists have long speculated that a large oxygen spike during the 'Cambrian Explosion' was key to the development of many animal species. The Cambrian Explosion, around 541 million years ago, was a period when a wide variety of animals burst onto the evolutionary scene. Before about 580 million years ago, most organisms were simple, composed of individual cells occasionally organised into colonies. Over the following 70 or 80 million years, the rate of evolution accelerated and the diversity of life began to resemble that of today. It ended with the Cambrian-Ordovician extinction event, approximately 488 million years ago. Advertisement

The area is now on land in the mountainous Yunnan Province, but the team studied rock core samples that show evidence of marine currents in the past environment.

'The Cambrian Explosion is now universally accepted as a genuine rapid evolutionary event, but the causal factors for this event have been long debated, with hypotheses on environmental, genetic, or ecological triggers,' said senior author Dr Xiaoya Ma, a palaeobiologist at the University of Exeter and Yunnan University.

'The discovery of a deltaic environment shed new light on understanding the possible causal factors for the flourishing of these Cambrian bilaterian animal-dominated marine communities and their exceptional soft-tissue preservation.

'The unstable environmental stressors might also contribute to the adaptive radiation of these early animals.'

Co-lead author Farid Saleh, from Yunnan University, said: 'We can see from the association of numerous sedimentary flows that the environment hosting the Chengjiang Biota was complex and certainly shallower than what has been previously suggested in the literature for similar animal communities.'

Changshi Qi, another co-lead author and a geochemist at the Yunnan University, added: 'Our research shows that the Chengjiang Biota mainly lived in a well-oxygenated shallow-water deltaic environment.

'Storm floods transported these organisms down to the adjacent deep oxygen-deficient settings, leading to the exceptional preservation we see today.'

The results of the study are important because they show that most early animals tolerated stressful conditions, such as salinity (salt) fluctuations, and high amounts of sediment deposition.

This contrasts with earlier research suggesting that similar animals colonised deeper-water, more stable marine environments.

The fossils include various worms, including the Lobopodian worm (Luolishania)

Even the earliest vertebrates, ancestors of fish (pictured), amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals have been found in the delta

'It is hard to believe that these animals were able to cope with such a stressful environmental setting,' said M. Gabriela Mangano, a palaeontologist at the University of Saskatchewan, who has studied other well-known sites of exceptional preservation in Canada, Morocco, and Greenland.

Maximiliano Paz, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Saskatchewan who specialises in fine-grained systems, added: 'Access to sediment cores allowed us to see details in the rock which are commonly difficult to appreciate in the weathered outcrops of the Chengjiang area.'

The research has been published in the journal Nature Communications.

The 518-million-year-old Chengjiang Biota  in Yunnan, south-west China  is one of the oldest groups of animal fossils known to science, and a key record of the Cambrian Explosion
Being born through IVF could lead to a better quality of life in adulthood, a study has found.

Researchers compared 193 people conceived using assisted reproduction (such as IVF) with 86 people who were conceived naturally, all aged between 22 and 35.

Those whose parents had medical help to get pregnant were significantly happier with their personal relationships, support from friends, sex lives and quality of life.

The study, by Monash University in Australia, in the journal Human Fertility, suggests parents who conceive through assisted reproduction have a particularly strong desire for and commitment to parenthood and feel lucky to have them.

And this may make them more likely to adopt an authoritative parenting style  characterised by having high expectations on children  while simultaneously providing warmth and support.

IVF can lead to a better quality of live, a study has found in people aged between 22 and 35

Dr Karin Hammarberg, who led the study, said: Our findings suggest that being ART-conceived can provide some advantages on quality of life in adulthood, independent of other psychosocial factors.

Together with previous evidence that adults conceived by ART have similar physical health to those who were naturally conceived, this is reassuring for people who were conceived with ART  and those who need ART to conceive.

The study looked at adults aged 22 to 35 who filled out a 24-item questionnaire on their quality of life.

This included three questions on social relationships, for which people conceived using assisted reproduction had higher scores.

There were eight questions on their general environment, including their happiness with where they lived, financial situation, access to leisure activities and feelings of safety.

People whose parents did not conceive naturally also scored higher on these measures for quality of life.

The study states: It is possible that people who achieve parenthood after ART have a particularly strong desire for and commitment to parenthood and feel lucky to have had a successful outcome.

This may make them more likely to adopt an authoritative parenting style which is characterised by having high expectations on children, while simultaneously providing warmth and support.

Evidence suggests this parenting style could make people born to couples who have had IVF more well-adjusted, at least when they are younger.

Since the first IVF baby, Louise Brown, was born in the UK in 1978, more than 390,000 children have been born through assisted reproduction.

Dr Hammarberg said: Children conceived via ART are nowadays a substantial part of the population  and its important to continue to evaluate the long-term effects of ART on their physical health and wellbeing as they progress through adolescence into adulthood.
Joggers and other fitness fans are increasingly turning to smartwatches to measure their heart rate during exercise and for overall health monitoring.

But a new study by the University of Alberta in Canada has found that the trendy gadgets are less effective at tracking the health of people with darker skin tones.

The study suggests this may be because the signalling process, which uses beams of light to detect heart rate and rhythm, might not work as well on darker skin that contains more melanin, as it absorbs more light.

However, the algorithms that power these devices are often developed by and tested on homogeneous white populations, which may mean the problems are not being identified prior to launch.

Smartwatches and other fitness trackers may not be giving accurate heart rate readings to people of colour because the technology used struggles to work with dark skin

HOW DO FITNESS TRACKERS WORK? Fitness trackers such as Fitbits or smart watches monitor heart rate using a technique called photoplethysmography. The tracker sends green light through the skin which is partially absorbed by arteries. As you exercise, these arteries expand as blood flow increases - meaning more green light is absorbed rather than reflected back to the tracker. The tracker estimates your heart rate by seeing how much light is reflected back. The amount of light that passes back through the skin to the tracker can be affected by the amount of melanin in the skin, and any tattoos. Advertisement

The latest study is based on a systematic review of 10 previously published studies involving more than 460 participants.

It is the first to pool figures from multiple studies to specifically examine how skin tone may affect the accuracy of heart data in wearables.

'People need to be aware that there are some limitations for people with darker skin tones when using these devices, and the results should be taken with a grain of salt,' said study co-leader Doctor Daniel Koerber, resident physician at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada.

'Algorithms are often developed in homogeneous white populations, which may lead to results that are not as generalisable as we would like.

'Ongoing research and development of these devices should emphasise the inclusion of populations of all skin tones so that the developed algorithms can best accommodate for variations in innate skin light absorption.'

The research team identified 10 studies, from 622 scientific papers, that reported heart rate and rhythm data for consumer wearable technology according to a participant's race or skin tone.

Of those studies, four found that heart rate measurements were 'significantly less accurate' in darker-skinned people compared with either lighter-skinned individuals or measurements from validated devices, such as chest strap monitors or electrocardiograms.

One study reported that although there was no difference in heart rate accuracy, wearable devices recorded 'significantly fewer' data points for people with darker skin.

Dr Koerber explained that most wearables detect heart rate and rhythm by aiming a beam of light at the wrist and then detecting how much light is absorbed.

Greater light absorption indicates a greater volume of blood flowing through the veins under the skin.

He said the study results suggest that the signalling process might not work as well on darker skin that contains more melanin, which absorbs light.

The study results suggest that the signalling process might not work as well in darker skin that contains more melanin, which absorbs light

In addition to the rising use of wearables to monitor physical activity and sleep patterns, interest in the use of consumer wearables for medical research and even early detection of heart problems has increased in recent years.

Dr Koerber said: 'There are a lot of claims that these devices can detect heart rhythm issues like tachycardia, bradycardia and even atrial fibrillation.

'We want to be able to inform health care providers about whether these are reliable sources for collecting data in all patients, regardless of skin tone.'

Dr Koerber says the study underscores the importance of ensuring technology meets the needs of diverse populations, especially when it is intended to improve health.

He said recent studies have reported that other devices  such as pulse oximeters used to measure the amount of oxygen in the blood  also don't perform as well for people with darker skin tones, which can lead to serious health consequences if problems go undetected.

'It is important to explore alternative options to make sure we can create a more equitable solution in health care and not just in the consumer industry,' Dr Koerber added.

'For example, there is some evidence to suggest that certain wavelengths of light, particularly green light, are more accurate in people across all skin tones.'

He is due to present the findings at the American College of Cardiology's annual conference in Washington DC next month.
Measuring in at a massive 60ft long, Spinosaurus was the biggest predatory dinosaur that ever lived.

It even dwarfed the fearsome T. rex, but the way the carnivorous dinosaur hunted has long been a source of scientific debate.

It is hard to guess the behaviour of an animal just from fossils; but based on its skeleton, some scientists have proposed that Spinosaurus could swim, while others think it just waded in the water like a heron.

Now a new study claims that the dinosaur had dense bones that would likely have allowed it to hunt underwater.

Measuring in at a massive 60ft long, Spinosaurus was the biggest predatory dinosaur that ever lived. A new study claims that the dinosaur had dense bones that would likely have allowed it to hunt underwater (pictured in an artist's impression)

SPINOSAURUS: ONE OF THE LARGEST CARNIVOROUS DINOSAURS Originally found in Egypt, Spinosaurus is thought to be one of the largest carnivorous dinosaurs to exist - probably reaching over 49ft in length. Spinosaurus (right) faces off against a T-rex in the movie Jurassic Park III. The 50-foot, seven-ton Spinosaurus was the largest known carnivorous dinosaur and lived in North Africa 100 million years ago Thoughts on its feeding behaviours vary, with some studies suggesting it was an active aquatic predator - chasing fish in the sea. Other studies claim it was a heron-like shoreline feeder - grabbing fish and small land prey without venturing out to sea to actively pursue fish. It lived in the Late Cretaceous era - 99 to 93.5 million years ago and lived in what is now North Africa. There are two known species of Spinosaurus that have been named so far: Spinosaurus aegyptiacus or Egyptian spine lizard

The disputed Spinosaurus maroccanus or Moroccan spine lizard The first known Spinosaurus fossils were destroyed by Allied bombing during World War II, which has hampered palaeontologist's attempts to understand the unusual creatures. More recently the dinosaur found fame in the 2001 film Jurassic Park III, where it battles and defeats a Tyrannosaurus rex. Advertisement

Researchers at the Field Museum in Chicago, Illinois came to their conclusion after studying the density of spinosaurid bones and comparing them to other animals like penguins, hippos, and alligators.

They found that while Spinosaurus and its close relative Baryonyx had dense bones that allowed them to submerge in water, another related dinosaur called Suchomimus had lighter bones that would have made swimming more difficult.

The paleontologists think this species likely waded instead or spent more time on land like other dinosaurs.

'The fossil record is tricky  among spinosaurids, there are only a handful of partial skeletons, and we don't have any complete skeletons for these dinosaurs,' said Matteo Fabbri, a postdoctoral researcher at the Field Museum and the study's lead author.

'Other studies have focused on interpretation of anatomy, but clearly if there are such opposite interpretations regarding the same bones, this is already a clear signal that maybe those are not the best proxies for us to infer the ecology of extinct animals.'

All life initially came from the water, and most groups of terrestrial vertebrates contain members that have returned to it  for instance, while most mammals are land-dwellers, whales and seals live in the ocean, and other mammals like otters, tapirs, and hippos, are semi-aquatic.

Birds have penguins and cormorants; reptiles have alligators, crocodiles, marine iguanas, and sea snakes.

For a long time, non-avian dinosaurs  species which did not branch off into birds  were the only group that didn't have any water-dwellers.

That changed in 2014, when a new Spinosaurus skeleton was described by researchers at the University of Portsmouth.

Scientists already knew that spinosaurids spent some time by water  their long, croc-like jaws and cone-shaped teeth are similar to other aquatic predators, while some fossils had been found with bellies full of fish.

But the new Spinosaurus specimen described in 2014 had retracted nostrils, short hind legs, paddle-like feet, and a fin-like tail: all signs that pointed to an aquatic lifestyle.

Since then, researchers have continued to debate whether spinosaurids actually swam for their food or if they just stood in the shallows and dipped their heads in to snap up prey.

This back-and-forth led Fabbri and his colleagues to try to find another way to solve the problem.

'The idea for our study was, okay, clearly we can interpret the fossil data in different ways. But what about the general physical laws?' said Fabbri.

'There are certain laws that are applicable to any organism on this planet. One of these laws regards density and the capability of submerging into water.'

Across the animal kingdom, bone density is a tell in terms of whether that animal is able to sink beneath the surface and swim.

Dense bone works as buoyancy control and allows the animal to submerge itself.

'Previous studies have shown that mammals adapted to water have dense, compact bone in their postcranial skeletons,' said Fabbri.

They found that while Spinosaurus and its close relative Baryonyx (pictured in an artist's impression) had dense bones that allowed them to submerge in water, another related dinosaur called Suchomimus had lighter bones that would have made swimming more difficult

'The fossil record is tricky  among spinosaurids, there are only a handful of partial skeletons, and we don't have any complete skeletons for these dinosaurs,' said Matteo Fabbri (pictured), a postdoctoral researcher at the Field Museum and the study's lead author

'We thought, okay, maybe this is the proxy we can use to determine if spinosaurids were actually aquatic.'

Fabbri and his colleagues, including co-corresponding authors Guillermo Navalon at Cambridge University and Roger Benson at Oxford University, put together a dataset of femur and rib bone cross-sections from 250 species of extinct and living animals, both land-dwellers and water-dwellers.

The researchers compared these cross-sections to cross-sections of bone from Spinosaurus and its relatives Baryonyx and Suchomimus.

'We had to divide this study into successive steps,' said Fabbri. 'The first one was to understand if there is actually a universal correlation between bone density and ecology.

'And the second one was to infer ecological adaptations in extinct taxa.'

In other words, the team had to show a proof of concept among animals that are still alive that we know for sure are aquatic or not, and then applied them to extinct animals that we can't observe.

When selecting animals to include in the study, the researchers cast a wide net. 'We were looking for extreme diversity,' said Fabbri.

Researchers including lead author Matteo Fabbri (left), Simone Maganuco (middle) and Davide Bonadonna (right) are pictured organising fossils at night

This figure above shows the relationship between bone density and ecology

Fabbri and his colleagues put together a dataset of femur and rib bone cross-sections from 250 species of extinct and living animals, both land-dwellers and water-dwellers (pictured)

'We included seals, whales, elephants, mice, hummingbirds. We have dinosaurs of different sizes, extinct marine reptiles like mosasaurs and plesiosaurs.

'We have animals that weigh several tons, and animals that are just a few grams. The spread is very big.'

This selection of animals revealed a clear link between bone density and aquatic foraging behaviour: those that submerge themselves underwater to find food have bones that are almost completely solid throughout, whereas cross-sections of land-dwellers' bones look more like donuts, with hollow centers.

Fabbri said: 'There is a very strong correlation, and the best explanatory model that we found was in the correlation between bone density and sub-aqueous foraging.

'This means that all the animals that have the behaviour where they are fully submerged have these dense bones, and that was the great news.'

When the researchers applied spinosaurid dinosaur bones to this paradigm, they found that Spinosaurus and Baryonyx both had the sort of dense bone associated with full submersion.

Meanwhile, the closely related Suchomimus had hollower bones. It still lived by water and ate fish, as evidenced by its crocodile-mimic snout and conical teeth, but based on its bone density, it wasn't actually swimming.

The new research, Fabbri said, shows how much information can be gleaned from incomplete specimens

Other dinosaurs, like the giant long-necked sauropods also had dense bones, but the researchers don't think that meant they were swimming.

'Very heavy animals like elephants and rhinos, and like the sauropod dinosaurs, have very dense limb bones, because there's so much stress on the limbs,' said Fabbri.

'That being said, the other bones are pretty lightweight. That's why it was important for us to look at a variety of bones from each of the animals in the study.'

The new research, Fabbri said, shows how much information can be gleaned from incomplete specimens.

'The good news with this study is that now we can move on from the paradigm where you need to know as much as you can about the anatomy of a dinosaur to know about its ecology, because we show that there are other reliable proxies that you can use,' he added.

'If you have a new species of dinosaur and you just have only a few bones of it, you can create a dataset to calculate bone density, and at least you can infer if it was aquatic or not.'

The study has been published in the journal Nature.
When it comes to handbags, leather may still be the material of choice for most fashionistas, but for the more eco-conscious among us there is now another option.

Researchers from the University of Boras in Sweden have found a way to make sustainable faux leather from fungus that has been fed on stale supermarket bread.

The researchers claim that their fungal leather takes less time to produce than existing substitutes already on the market, and, unlike some, is 100 per cent biobased.

The fungus could also be used to make paper products and cotton substitutes, with properties comparable to the traditional materials.

Fungal fibers can be turned into a leather substitute with a density and stiffness comparable to the real thing

To create the new material, the researchers used spores of a fungus called Rhizopus delemar, which can typically be found on decaying food.

They fed this fungus on unsold supermarket bread, which they dried and ground into breadcrumbs and mixed with water in a pilot-scale reactor.

As the fungus fed on the bread, it produced microscopic natural fibres made of chitin and chitosan that accumulated in its cell walls.

The suspension of fungal cells was then laid out flat and dried to make a leather-like material.

The first prototypes of fungal leather the team produced were thin and not flexible enough, according to Dr Akram Zamani, at the University of Boras in Sweden, who led the study.

Now the group is working on thicker versions consisting of multiple layers to more closely mimic real animal leather.

These composites include layers treated with tree-derived tannins  which give softness to the structure  combined with alkali-treated layers that give it strength.

Flexibility, strength and glossiness were also improved by treatment with glycerol and a biobased binder.

'Our recent tests show the fungal leather has mechanical properties quite comparable to real leather,' Zamani says.

For instance, the relation between density and Young's modulus, which measures stiffness, is similar for the two materials.

Your next trendy handbag could be fashioned from 'leather' made from a fungus, according to researchers from the University of Boras in Sweden

This is not the first leather substitute made from fungus. For example, last year San Francisco-based biomaterials company MycoWorks unveiled a fake leather made from mycelium  the tubular filaments found on fungi.

However, Zamani claims that most of these commercial products are made from harvested mushrooms or from fungus grown in a thin layer on top of food waste or sawdust using solid state fermentation.

These methods require several days or weeks to produce enough fungal material, she notes, whereas her fungus is submerged in water and takes only a couple of days to make the same amount of material.

Moreover, some of the fungal leathers on the market contain environmentally harmful coatings or reinforcing layers made of synthetic polymers derived from petroleum, such as polyester.

That contrasts with the University of Boras team's products, which consist solely of natural materials and will therefore be biodegradable, Zamani explains.

Fungal fibres can also be spun into yarn, which could be used in sutures or wound-healing textiles and even in clothing

It is not just faux leather but also paper products and cotton substitutes that can be made in this way, according to the researchers.

After leaving the fungus to feed on the bread for two days, the scientists collected the cells and removed lipids, proteins and other byproducts that could be used in food or feed.

The remaining jelly-like residue consisting of the fibrous cell walls was then spun into yarn, which could be used in sutures or wound-healing textiles and even in clothing.

Zamani hopes these could to be replace cotton or synthetic fibres, which can have negative environmental and ethical impacts.

'In developing our process, we have been careful not to use toxic chemicals or anything that could harm the environment,' she said.

The researchers will present their results today at the spring meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS).
It's one of the most popular fruits around the world, dating back at least 7,000 years.

But how apples have evolved over the years has been largely unstudied until now.

Researchers from Dalhousie University have studied how ancestral apples from long ago compare to modern-day varieties.

Their analysis reveals that apples today are bigger, less acidic and stay fresh for longer than their wild ancestors.

Researchers from Dalhousie University have studied how ancestral apples (yellow) from long ago compare to modern-day varieties (red)

In the study, the team, led by Dr Sean Myles, an associate professor in Dalhousie University's Faculty of Agriculture, set out to assess how the fruit has changed through domestication and breeding.

The team drew on data from Canada's Apple Biodiversity Collection, which contains more than 1,000 different apple varieties including Gala and Honeycrisp, as well as ancient heirloom varieties and wild apples from the forests of Kazakhstan.

They examined 10 traits in the apples  precocity, flowering date, harvest date, firmness, weight, acidity, soluble solids, phenolic content, percentage change in acidity during storage and percentage change in firmness during storage.

Their analysis revealed that modern apples were 3.6 times heavier than their ancestors.

'The extended storage and long-distance shipment of apples has become increasingly routine over the past several decades, and selection for reduced softening during storage may explain why firmness retention has improved over time,' they wrote

'Consumers prefer large, visually appealing fruit so selection for large fruit size may explain our observation,' the researchers explained in their study, published in PLOS One.

Modern apples were also found to be half as acidic, and far less bitter than ancient varieties.

'Acidity contributes to the sour taste of apples, and apple preference is heavily influenced by acid/sugar ratios,' the team said.

'Given this relationship, it is not surprising that cultivated apples, which are primarily consumed as fresh fruit, have lower acid than wild apples.'

Based on historical records, the team also revealed that apple breeding over the past 200 years has resulted in varieties that soften less during storage.

'The extended storage and long-distance shipment of apples has become increasingly routine over the past several decades, and selection for reduced softening during storage may explain why firmness retention has improved over time,' they wrote.

Overall, the findings highlight just how much the humble apple has changed over the past 7,000 years.

'Our results quantify the significant changes in phenotype that have taken place since apple domestication, and provide evidence that apple breeding has led to continued phenotypic divergence of the cultivated apple from its wild progenitor species,' the researchers concluded.
The Ricketts family will fly to London in hope of smoothing over growing tensions over their bid to buy Chelsea, despite receiving no confirmation that they had even made it on the shortlist of preferred offers.

Bidders were still awaiting news of which offers had made the cut on Tuesday night, nevertheless representatives of the Ricketts family - whose bid will be part-funded by hedge fund manager Ken Griffin - will fly to England amid objections from Blues supporters about their proposed takeover.

Once in the capital they are expected to meet Chelsea Pitch Owners and the clubs supporters trust.

Tom Ricketts and his family have come under further scrutiny in their bid to buy Chelsea

But they could face uncomfortable questioning from fans who do not want the Ricketts Family at the helm amid concerns over their cultural beliefs.

Patriarch of the family Joe Ricketts was forced to apologise for describing Muslims as an enemy in leaked emails dated back to 2012.

Since making the comments, Ricketts has apologised for his words and insisted they 'didn't reflect his value system'.

'I deeply regret and apologize for some of the exchanges I had in my emails. Sometimes I received emails that I should have condemned,' he said in a statement.

'Other times Ive said things that dont reflect my value system. I strongly believe that bigoted ideas are wrong.'

The Ricketts family could face uncomfortable questioning from fans who do not want the them at the helm amid concerns over their cultural beliefs

Chelsea fans have been left shocked after news that the Ricketts family are preparing an offer for the club, years after their father (pictured) said 'muslims are my enemy' in leaked emails

Sportsmail revealed last week that Chelseas muslim players including Antonio Rudiger, NGolo Kante, Hakim Ziyech and Malang Sarr would feel compromised if the Ricketts bid is successful - another problem they will have to navigate if they are selected as the clubs new owners.

Sources close to the Ricketts consortium say Joe is not part of the proposed Chelsea takeover.

But it remains an issue for fans while Paul Canoville, Chelseas first black player, took to social media in opposition of the Ricketts bid.

So Ive seen and heard enough, he wrote. Im backing the Chelsea Supporters Trust and saying a big fat anti-racism NO to the Ricketts bid!! Please can you stop even mentioning it.'
Nigerian president commissions Chinese-assisted airport terminal in economic hub

Xinhua) 11:18, March 23, 2022

ABUJA, March 22 (Xinhua) -- Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari on Tuesday commissioned the newly-built international terminal at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport in the economic hub of Lagos.

The Chinese-assisted project was designed to handle 20 million passengers in a year while creating 3,000 direct and indirect jobs, Buhari said at the commissioning ceremony in Lagos.

"With the delivery of this project, a new era of safety, security, and comfort has been ushered into the Nigerian aviation industry," the Nigerian president said.

He expressed confidence that the new terminal "would go a long way in contributing to the socio-political and economic prosperity of the country."

The facility is one of the four new international airport terminals built in the country's major airports to modernize operation and passenger facilitation. It consists of 66 check-in-counters, 16 immigration desks at arrival, 28 immigration desks at departure, and eight security screening points, among others.

Chinese ambassador to Nigeria Cui Jianchun told Xinhua that the project was very critical to the China-Nigeria cooperation and that infrastructure was of "paramount importance" to the most populous African country.

The project was executed by the China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC), which has been involved in many ongoing infrastructural projects, including rail and road construction in Nigeria.

It was done in partnership with the Chinese government, involving a loan of 500 million U.S. dollars from the Import-Export Bank of China and 100 million dollars in funding from the Nigerian government.

(Web editor: Peng yukai, Liang Jun)
Members of Ukraine's Territorial Defense Forces participate in training exercises, as Russia's invasion of Ukraine continues, in Kyiv, March 22. Reuters-Yonhap





Ukrainian forces fought off continuing Russian efforts to occupy Mariupol and claimed to have retaken a strategic suburb of Kyiv, Tuesday, mounting a defense so dogged that it is stoking fears Russia's Vladimir Putin will escalate the war to new heights.







''Putin's back is against the wall,'' said U.S. President Joe Biden, who is heading to Europe this week to meet with allies. ''And the more his back is against the wall, the greater the severity of the tactics he may employ.''







Biden reiterated accusations that Putin is considering resorting to using chemical or biological weapons, though Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said the U.S. has seen no evidence to suggest that such an escalation is imminent.







The warnings came as attacks continued in and around Kyiv and Mariupol, and people escaped the battered and besieged port city.







The hands of one exhausted Mariupol survivor were shaking as she arrived by train in the western city of Lviv.







''There's no connection with the world. We couldn't ask for help,'' said Julia Krytska, who made it out with her husband and son with the assistance of volunteers. ''People don't even have water there.''







Explosions and bursts of gunfire shook Kyiv, and heavy artillery fire could be heard from the northwest, where Russia has sought to encircle and capture several the capital's suburban areas.







Early Tuesday, Ukrainian troops drove Russian forces from the Kyiv suburb of Makariv after a fierce battle, Ukraine's Defense Ministry said. The regained territory allowed Ukrainian forces to retake control of a key highway and block Russian troops from surrounding Kyiv from the northwest.







Still, the Defense Ministry said Russian forces partially took other northwest suburbs, Bucha, Hostomel and Irpin, some of which have been under attack almost since Russia invaded nearly a month ago.







A Western official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss military assessments, said Ukrainian resistance has brought much of Russia's advance to a halt but has not sent Moscow's forces into retreat.







The invasion has driven more than 10 million people from their homes, almost a quarter of Ukraine's population, according to the United Nations.







Thousands of civilians are believed to have died. Estimates of Russian military casualties vary widely, but even conservative figures by Western officials are in the low thousands.







On Monday, Russia's pro-Kremlin Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper, citing the Defense Ministry, reported that almost 10,000 Russian soldiers had been killed. The report was quickly removed, and the newspaper blamed hackers. The Kremlin refused to comment. The Western official said the figure was ''a reasonable estimate.''







Facing unexpectedly stiff resistance that has left the bulk of Moscow's ground forces miles from the center of Kyiv, Putin's troops are increasingly concentrating their air power and artillery on Ukraine's cities and civilians.







Talks to end the fighting have continued by video. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said he would be prepared to consider waiving any bid by Ukraine to join NATO  a key Russian demand  in exchange for a ceasefire, the withdrawal of Russian troops and a guarantee of Ukraine's security.






Failing to declare a pre-existing diagnosis can result in any claim being rejected

Sheila ODonovan was planning a four-day UK trip at Easter and a Norwegian cruise in June. But she faced huge problems trying to find travel insurance to cover her pre-existing medical condition.

Sheila, 60, was diagnosed with secondary breast cancer in 2015. She has had maintenance treatment every three weeks since, to which she has responded brilliantly.

When Sheila looked for her first policy post-diagnosis, quotes topped 2,000. She then found annual cover with Insurancewith (insurancewith.com) for under 200.

Travel insurance cover for older travellers or those with health conditions is often hard to come by

Sheila ODonovan, pictured, faced huge problems trying to find travel insurance to cover her pre-existing medical condition

But, when she tried to renew in December, the firm was unable to help and the cheapest policy she could find elsewhere was a huge 3,500. She had no choice but to take out annual cover with a non-specialist provider for 138 that excluded her medical condition  something that is not recommended.

Failing to declare a pre-existing diagnosis can result in any claim, even if seemingly unrelated, rejected.

Cover for older travellers or those with health conditions is often hard to come by, with online forms that dont take into account individual situations. They never want to know what stage youre at with your treatment and how youre responding, says Sheila, below, who went back to Insurancewith and got a renewal for 230.

Here, we look at how to get cover for different types of health conditions.

BEST FOR DIABETES

Nearly five million people in the UK have type 1 or type 2 diabetes, which increase the risk of complications such as heart, eye and kidney problems. Depending on the severity of your condition it is possible to get cover without additional premiums.

I posed on medicaltravel compared.co.uk as a 65-year-old woman travelling to Spain for a week with type 1 diabetes and found a range of policies from 13.31 with Travel Insure (travelinsure.com) up to 78.44 with Start Travel (starttravel.co.uk).

BEST FOR HEART PROBLEMS

Failing to declare a pre-existing diagnosis can result in any claim, even if seemingly unrelated, being rejected

I presented online as a 43-year-old man with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy whod had a heart attack and, as a result, had an internal defibrillator fitted, travelling to Mexico for a weeks holiday. In this instance, it paid to shop around. The Post Office quote offered cover from 86.41, while the specialist providers quoted upwards of 200 (postoffice.co.uk).

BEST FOR CIRCULATION

This can be anything from high blood pressure to a serious stroke. Using Just Travel Covers online form, cover for a 50-year-old man taking blood thinners and using a walking stick or frame following a stroke, travelling to France for a week cost from 17.14 with an excess of 250, including 5 million medical cover, 1,250 cancellation and 1,000 for baggage (justtravelcover.com).

BEST FOR CANCER

Charity websites such as Marie Curie, Cancer Research and Macmillan all have information on booking travel insurance. Fiona Macrae, founder of Insurancewith, set up the company following her own breast cancer diagnosis. She says: We take a different approach when it comes to insuring those with medical conditions, asking a few more in-depth questions and using a different screening tool to the rest of the market.

I input details for a 60-year-old woman with incurable but stable metastatic breast cancer and lymphedema, for a weeks travel to Italy and received quotes from Insurancewith from 39.17, whereas other providers were charging hundreds.

BEST FOR RESPIRATORY ISSUES

The Daily Mail presented as a 70-year-old man with chronic lung disease, on medication, going on a week-long European cruise - and found AllClear offered the best value cover

Disorders affecting the lungs range from asthma to life-limiting disorders such as cystic fibrosis. We presented as a 70-year-old man with chronic lung disease, on medication, going on a week-long European cruise. Specialist insurer AllClear (allcleartravel.co.uk) offered cover from 83.17, while StaySure (staysure.co.uk) had quotes from 107.

BEST FOR ANXIETY AND DEPRESSION

Rates of these problems peaked in the UK during the pandemic, with one in six adults experiencing symptoms. We looked at the U.S. for a week, one of the most expensive destinations for medical cover, for a woman of 55 diagnosed with anxiety and depression in the past two years and found a policy with Travel Time (traveltimeinsurance.co.uk) for 38.87 and Avanti (avantitravelinsurance.co.uk) from 45.60.
Eiza Gonzalez cut a glamorous figure as she walked the red carpet at the Berlin premiere of Ambulance at the Zoo Palast cinema on Thursday.

The actress, 32, wore a floor-length black gown with a train that swept out across the ground behind her.

The off-the-shoulder garment left her naked arms and shoulders exposed to the air, with the star wearing a glitzy diamond statement necklace for her evening out in the German city.

Glitterati: Eiza Gonzalez, 32, cut a glamorous figure in a floor-length black gown as she walked the red carpet at the Berlin premiere of Ambulance at the Zoo Palast cinema on Thursday

Eiza, who plays the character of Cam Thompson in the movie, was joined by co-stars Jake Gyllenhaal, 41, and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, 35.

Jake, who portrays lifelong criminal Danny Sharp in the flick, looked dapper in a light grey suit.

He wore a navy blue shirt which he left open at the collar and sported a beard of well groomed stubble.

All stars: Eiza, who plays the character of Cam Thompson in the movie, was joined by co-stars Jake Gyllenhaal, 41 (right), and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, 35 (left)

In style: The actress wore a floor-length black gown with a train that swept out across the ground behind her

Fashion focus: The off-the-shoulder garment left her naked arms and shoulders exposed to the air, with the star wearing a glitzy diamond statement necklace

Greeting her public: Eiza was happy to spend time with fans and sign autographs as she walked the red carpet at the event

Snap happy: She posed for pictures with her devotees before heading inside the cinema to take her seat at the premiere

He completed his look with a pair of perfectly polished black leather shoes.

Yahya, who plays Will Sharp, looked stylish in a bright white suit with a long jacket which reached down to his knees.

The star opted for a pair of unique steel-capped boots as he playfully posed on the red carpet.

Looking good: Jake, who portrays lifelong criminal Danny Sharp in the flick, looked dapper in a light grey suit

Hollywood hunk: He wore a navy blue shirt which he left open at the collar and sported a beard of well groomed stubble

Strike a pose: He completed his look with a pair of perfectly polished black leather shoes as he stood in front of an ambulance at the event

Lapping it up: Jake was more than happy to stop and chat to fans and was even posed with a pen in his hand to sign autographs

Let me take a selfie! The star posed for pictures with his adoring devotees outside the event in Germany

The stars were seen posing with director Michael Bay, 57, who opted for a navy blue suit for the evening.

Eiza, Jake and Yahya were first seen in the epic trailer for Michael's latest project Ambulance when it was released in October.

In the action packed clip, Jake and Yahya's characters steal an ambulance to use as a getaway when their bank heist goes awry.

Gripping: Jake portrays lifelong criminal Danny Sharp, whose bank heist will fund surgery for his adoptive brother's wife

Dynamic duo: Jake stars alongside Yahya in the trailer for Ambulance released in October as their characters steal an ambulance to use as a getaway when their bank heist goes awry

Awkward: Eiza Gonzalez stars as a paramedic in the flick which is released in the UK this Friday 25 March

Hollywood elite: The stars were seen posing with director Michael Bay, 57 (right), who opted for a navy blue suit for the evening

Telling the tale: In one of the scenes from the promo, Jake could be seen pulling an assault rifle on Eiza's paramedic character to take her hostage and seize the emergency vehicle

Greeting fans: Michael lapped up the attention from film fans as he arrived at the event in Berlin

In one of the crucial scenes from the three-minute promo, Jake could be seen pulling an assault rifle on Eiza's paramedic character to take her hostage and seize the emergency vehicle.

Jake's character - who has a checkered past - convinces his friend to assist in a $32million robbery.

However, things take a very interesting turn when Jake's character begrudgingly lets a cop into the bank during the heist.

Stand-out style: Yahya, who plays Will Sharp, looked stylish in a bright white suit with a long jacket which reached down to his knees

Unique: The star opted for a pair of steel-capped boots as he playfully posed on the red carpet in front of the ambulance

Big action: Like any Michael Bay helmed film, it is full of action including explosions, crashes, and gunfire

That law enforcement officer gets shot and out of happenstance the two end up in the ambulance with the policeman who is being cared for by Eiza's character.

Like any Michael Bay helmed film, the trailer was full of action including explosions, crashes, and gunfire.

The entire film is set over the course of one day in sunny Los Angeles and takes place primarily in the emergency response vehicle.
Married at First Sight's Tamara Djordjevic has spoken out about Domenica Calarco's nude photo scandal.

Tamara, 29, told Hit Network's Jimmy & Nath on Wednesday the scandal wouldn't have even come up if the producers hadn't 'made it happen'.

'I don't think anyone would have spoken about it if the producers hadn't asked us,' the Gold Coast-based operations manager said.

'No one would have spoken about it': Married At First Sight's Tamara Djordjevic said Domenica Calarco's OnlyFans scandal wouldn't have come up if the producers hadn't made it happen

'Then obviously they've turned the narrative around to be everyone talking about it when no one was,' she added.

It comes after teaching assistant Olivia Frazer, 28, admitted to distributing the nude photo of Dom she'd discovered via a Google search.

Daily Mail Australia has established the photo in question came from a public Twitter profile Dom used to promote her now-deactivated OnlyFans account.

'I don't think anyone would have spoken about it if the producers hadn't asked us,' the Gold Coast-based operations manager said. Pictured Domenica Calarco

She admitted at last Sunday's commitment ceremony she felt no empathy for Domenica after exposing her racy side hustle.

Sexologist Alessandra Rampolla scolded her: 'This situation was created by the decision, for whatever reason, that you had to grab your phone and show other people [the photo].'

'That decision that you took in that moment, changed the rest of everything that happened. And [the conflict] would have been avoided if you simply respected somebody else's privacy.'

Scandal: It comes after teaching assistant Olivia Frazer, 28, admitted to distributing a nude photo of Dom she'd discovered via a Google search

Olivia tried to justify her actions by saying, 'It just wasn't a big deal', but Alessandra was having none of it.

'Maybe there's a little room there for a little human empathy,' she said, to which Olivia responded: 'As far as empathy... I just don't have it.'

In psychology, empathy refers to the ability to understand the feelings of another person.

If you have empathy, you are able to imagine what someone else might be thinking or feeling in a given situation.

Married At First Sight continues Wednesday at 7:30pm on Channel Nine and 9Now
Married at First Sight stars are known to cash in on their 15 minutes of fame by becoming Instagram influencers.

But unfortunately for this year's brides and grooms, Channel Nine bosses have put their foot down to stop them launching social media careers straight away.

While in previous seasons the participants have been handed back their Instagram accounts within two weeks of the finale, things are different this year.

Banned: Channel Nine is banning the Married At First Sight cast from becoming Instagram influencers and cashing in on their newfound fame. (Pictured: Tamara Djordjevic)

'They won't be getting their socials back until at least May after the show has finished airing in the UK,' an insider told Daily Mail Australia on Wednesday.

The source said there is 'a lot of pressure on Nine to stop the cast from going rogue' while season nine still airs in New Zealand and Britain.

'It's also another opportunity to hold their blue ticks hostage if they're caught going to the press about their "horrible edits",' they added.

Held hostage: While in previous seasons the participants have been handed back their Instagram accounts within two weeks of the finale, things are different this year

Missed opportunity: By the time the MAFS cast get access to their Instagram accounts, their engagement levels will have dropped significantly, affecting their potential earnings. (Pictured: Domenica Calarco)

By the time the MAFS cast get access to their Instagram accounts, their engagement levels will have dropped significantly, affecting their potential earnings.

While the show is still airing, participants are allowed to write their own captions on photos supplied by Nine's publicity team, but that is the extent of their permitted social media activity.

Comments have also been disabled on their posts and the cast aren't allowed to read their direct messages, which is how sponsors would contact them.

Not happy: One disgruntled bride told Daily Mail Australia some of the participants are 'worried' they will be 'old news' by the time they get their accounts back

One disgruntled bride told Daily Mail Australia some of the participants are 'worried' they will be 'old news' by the time they get their accounts back.

'We have no choice but to wait,' they said.

'We are trapped. Some people have quit their jobs and are hoping MAFS is going to be their big break to never have to work again.'

Stressed: 'We are trapped. Some people have quit their jobs and are hoping MAFS is going to be their big break to never have to work again,' the bride said. (Pictured: Brent Vitiello)

'I feel like it's going to be a numbers game this year, and some girls have been buying fake followers to come out on top,' the anonymous bride added.

'It's so obvious who it is. They've jumped 28,000 followers overnight two nights in a row, while everyone else is getting a few thousand.

'We've really got two or three months to get big before the new cast come along and we're forgotten about.'

Meanwhile, another bride has sensationally claimed the MAFS social team has been punishing them for contract breaches by not posting photos on their behalf.

'Selin [Mengu] has been out of the show for a few weeks and they're posting on her behalf, but others have been denied no matter what it is. It's not fair,' she said.

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Channel Nine for comment.

Married At First Sight continues Wednesday at 7.30pm on Channel Nine and 9Now
Advertisement

Series two will centre around his character Anthony Bridgerton's quest for love.

And Jonathan Bailey was seen putting on a playful display with his on-screen romantic interests Simone Ashley and Charithra Chandran at the premiere for the second season of the hit Netflix drama, Bridgerton.

The actor, 33, looked dapper in a grey suit with a white shirt and a black tie, as he joined his glamorous female co-stars at the hotly-anticipated screening, held at Tate Modern in London on Tuesday night.

Love triangle: Jonthan Bailey was seen putting on a playful display with his on-screen romantic interests and sisters Simone Ashley and Charithra Chandran at the premiere for the second season of the hit Netflix drama, Bridgerton

Three's a crowd! The actor, 33, looked dapper in a grey suit with a white shirt and a black tie, as he joined his glamorous female co-stars at the hotly-anticipated screening, held at Tate Modern in London on Tuesday night

Jonathan previously teased that the love triangle arc in the series would be 'intense', as he attracts the affections of both Kate Sharma (Simone) and her sister Edwina (Charithra).

The story, which is based on the Julia Quinn novel The Viscount Who Loved Me, will zero in on the eldest son of the Bridgerton family, Anthony, as he ditches his bachelor ways for long-term love.

His story begins with his pursuit of Edwina, who has just returned to England from India, though he will be faced with a choice following the arrival of her older sister, Kate, who also shows romantic interest.

Anthony told EW that the fight for his hand in marraige between the sisters provides an 'interesting and dangerous' dynamic to the show.

The fight is on! Jonathan previously teased that the love triangle arc in the series would be 'intense', as he attracts the affections of both Kate Sharma (Simone) and her sister Edwina (Charithra) [pictured]

Hugging it out! Despite their on-screen rivalrly Simone and Charithra appeared the best of friends

He said: 'You can understand why he's drawn to both. And they're both drawn to him in turn. It's an interesting love triangle; it's dangerous when it's siblings. It's bestial between them in a way season 1 wasn't. They're all animals with each other.'

Away from the cameras, the trio appeared the best of friends as they joked around together on the red carpet ahead of the screening, which was being held ahead of the March 25 Netflix premiere date.

Newcomer Simone, 26, who plays Kate Sharma, cut a dramatic figure in a structured white crop top with black lace sleeves and a matching skirt, which showcased her toned midriff

Quest for love: The story, which is based on the Julia Quinn novel The Viscount Who Loved Me, will zero in on the eldest son of the Bridgerton family, Anthony, as he ditches his bachelor ways for long-term love

He said: 'You can understand why he's drawn to both. And they're both drawn to him in turn. It's an interesting love triangle; it's dangerous when it's siblings. It's bestial between them in a way season 1 wasn't. They're all animals with each other'

Stills: Simone as Kate Sharma and love interest Jonathan in stills from series two

Sex Education actress Simone oozed Gothic glamour in the lacy ensemble, which also featured tights and a pair of strappy black heels, boosting her petite frame.

Charithra Chandran, who will join the cast as Kate's sister Edwina, looked sensational in a bold white strapless dress with billowing sleeves and a red floral print pattern.

The glamorous star, who was previously seen in the science fiction series Alex Rider, showcased her incredible gown with a series of twists and turns on the red carpet

Bridgerton girls! Newcomer Simone, 26, who plays Kate Sharma, cut a dramatic figure in a structured white crop top with black lace sleeves and a matching skirt, which showcased her toned midriff

Group shot! (L to R) Ruby Stokes, Golda Rosheuvel, Luke Thompson, Florence Hunt, Simone Ashley, Jonathan Bailey, Will Tilston, Charithra Chandran, Luke Newton, Bessie Carter, Polly Walker and Martins Imhangbe

What an ensemble! The cast and crew of Bridgerton pose for a photo ahead of the world premiere

Gothic chic! Sex Education actress Simone oozed Gothic glamour in the lacy ensemble, which also featured tights and a pair of strappy black heels, boosting her petite frame

Wow! The glamorous star, who was previously seen in the science fiction series Alex Rider, showcased her incredible gown with a series of twists and turns on the red carpet

Glam: (left to right) Showrunner Chris Van Dusen, Simone Ashley, Jonathan Bailey, Charithra Chandran, Executive Producer Betsy Beers and Executive Producer and Shonda Rhimes

What a showman! The second series of the period drama will focus around Jonathan's character Anthony

Let me take a selfie! Showrunner Chris Van Dusen, Simone Ashley, Jonathan Bailey, Charithra Chandran, Executive Producer Betsy Beers and Executive Producer and Shonda Rhimes pose for a selfie

Power couple! Simone and on-screen love interest Jonathan smouldered for the camera

The on-screen sisters were joined by lead actor Jonathan Bailey, who plays central character Anthony Bridgerton who is twisted in a complicated love triangle with the Sharma siblings.

Kathryn, 40, who plays French seamstress Genevieve Delacroix in the show, looked incredible in an elegant emerald satin gown with ruffle detailing in the skirt.

Kathryn wore her raven dresses in loose beachy curls with half of her locks swept up, while she opted for dewy make-up and diamond drop earrings.

Bridgerton showrunner Shonda Rhimes, whose company Shondaland produces the hit show, ensured she drew the eye in a plunging red gown which was covered in applique flowers.

Look of love! On-screen lovers Simone and Jonathan appeared the best of pals as they posed for snaps

Loving life! Charithra appeared to be in high spirits on her big night

Absent: Notably absent from the premiere was Daphne actress Phoebe Dynevor, who explained that she was unable to attend due to filming commitments, while sharing a throwback snap in character

Bridgerton bros! Luke Thompson and Luke Newton, who play Benedict and Colin respectively, posed together at the premiere

On-screen: Kathryn plays French seamstress, Madame Delacroix, in the drama, who dresses some of the tons' finest members

Emerald queen: Kathryn wore her raven dresses in loose beachy curls with half of her locks swept up, while she opted for dewy make-up and diamond drop earrings

Breathtaking! The cast including Kathryn posed in front of a giant Bridgerton sign

Statement dressing! Golda Rosheuvel and Executive Producer Shonda Rhimes both opted for eye-catching gowns

Regancy elegance: Adjoa Andoh as Lady Danbury with newcomer Simone in series two

Leading line-up! The cast and producers lined up together for a big group shot

Notably absent from the premiere was Daphne actress Phoebe Dynevor, who explained that she was unable to attend due to filming commitments, while sharing a throwback snap in character.

Phoebe wrote: 'Sad not to be with my Bridgerton family tonight - celebrating another season and our incredible cast and crew. I'll be raising a glass to you all from up north (or more likely a coffee-night shoots calling).

Meanwhile, model Hana, 25, cut a chic figure in front of the cameras, as she sported a white lace dress.

Radiant: Joanna Bobin, who plays Lady Cowper, attended the premiere with a guest

Fantastic floral: Joanna looked glowing in a strapless gown with pretty floral detailing

Sensational: Golda Rosheuvel, who plays Bridgerton's Queen, ensured all eyes were on her in a dramatic green and white dress

Suited and booted: Showrunner Chris Van Dusen looked dapper in a green velvet suit and black shirt

New era: Simone Ashley as Kate Sharma, Adjoa Andoh as Lady Danbury, Shelley Conn as Mary Sharma, Charithra Chandran as Edwina Sharma

The semi-sheer gown, which showcased Hana's ample bust and svelte frame, featured studded silver detailing around her slim waist.

British born Hana accessorised the glamorous look with a diamond necklace and matching earrings, as she added a touch of glitz to the ensemble.

Star studded: Bridgerton actress (L-R) Kathryn Drysdale, Hana Cross and Rachel Stevens were among the early arrivals on the red carpet at the Bridgerton series two world premiere on Tuesday evening

Couple: Lorraine Ashbourne, who plays Ms Varley the Featherington housekeeper, attended with her husband Andy Serkis

All white on the night! The semi-sheer gown, which showcased Hana's ample bust and svelte frame, featured studded silver detailing around her slim waist

Making an entrance! Bridgerton creator Shonda Rhimes wowed in a red floral dress

Elegant: Ruby Stokes who plays Francesca Bridgerton, looked classically chic in a black strapless gown with puff sleeves

Statement! Ruby's dress featured dramatic detailing on the sleeves which trained down to the floor

Leopard lady! Jessica Madsen, who plays Cressida Cowper, opted for low-key glam in the leopard print suit

The pretty media personality wore her tumbling brunette locks in boucy curls, while she opted for a full face of make-up with plenty of blusher.

Rachel Stevens' simple black dress evoked the Bridgerton era with its puff sleeves and square neckline, as she styled it with a pair of chunky platform heels with a silver jewel buckle.

Also in attendance was model Charli Howard, 30, who looked incredible on the night in a red satin gown, which hugged her sizzling frame.

Based on a series of books of the same name by Julia Quinn, Bridgerton follows the eight siblings of the Bridgerton family as they attempt to find love in Regency-era England.

Glam: The pretty media personality wore her tumbling brunette locks in boucy curls, while she opted for a full face of make-up with plenty of blusher

Looking good! Polly Walker, who plays Portia Featherington, opted for understated glamour in a black suit and polka dot blouse

So dapper! Luke Thompson, who stars as Benedict Bridgerton, looked sharp in an ivory suit and black shirt at the event

Transformed: Luke swapped his character's tousled locks for a slicked down style

In the upcoming second series, Lady Danbury takes in the Sharma family - sisters Kate (Simone) and Edwina (Charithra), and their mother Lady Mary (Shelley Conn) - who travel to London from India to take part in the social season.

Both sisters quickly fall for the charms of Lord Anthony Bridgerton, played by Jonathan Bailey.

Adapted from The Viscount Who Loved Me, the new season is set to centre on Anthony's search to find a wife.

Glam! Digital creator Violet Ezedimora wowed in a stunning fuschia mini dress

Taking centre stage! Tik Toker Hana Martin certainly caught the eye at the screening

Pose! The metres long train followed her along the grassy red carpet alternative

Lady in red! Also in attendance was model Charli Howard, 30, who looked incredible on the night in a red satin gown, which hugged her sizzling frame

Chic! Model Louis Powell, Dua Lipa's sister Rina and fashion blogger Camille Charriere attended the screening

Regency style! Munroe Bergdorf took the Bridgerton memo seriously in a ruffled pink dress and boots

Style! Bridgerton author Julia Quinn, presenter Seema Jaswal and model Ella Richards arrived at the event

But in true Bridgerton fashion, 'a considerable scandal' is promised to ensue when he gets caught up in a love triangle with the two sisters.

The new season of the show seems to be as racy as the last, with scenes of a naked Anthony covering his modesty in his bedroom and in wet clothing after falling in the river as the result of some flirtatious behaviour.

Bridgerton quickly gained the title of Netflix's most-watched series to date, garnering over 82 million views worldwide.

Bridgerton Season Two will stream on Netflix from March 25.

Wow: Eva Apio wowed in a open white jacket and matching shorts

Sophisticated: Ella Richards wore a black jacket and lace camisole

Party time! Simone was later seen attending the Bridgerton after party following the premiere

Dressed to impress! Charithra's screening gown was also perfect for a night on the tiles

Family affair! Bridgerton brothers Luke Thompson and Luke Newton were both out to party

Celebrity attendees: Hana Cross took her look from evening to party as she arrived at the venue

Glam! Rachel looked effortlessly glam following the screening

Golden girl! Saffron looked lovely as she wore her blonde locks in tumbling waves and sported full make-up
Marco Pierre White is set to make a long-awaited return to MasterChef Australia.

On Tuesday, the 60-year-old acclaimed British chef was spotted arriving at the MasterChef kitchen in Melbourne.

Production has recently resumed on the upcoming season, dubbed MasterChef Australia: Foodies vs Favourites, after a covid outbreak forced things to be shut down.

He's back! Acclaimed British chef Marco Pierre White is making a return to MasterChef Australia and was spotted arriving on the set of the show in Melbourne on Tuesday

Marco, a Michelin star chef and restauranteur, cut a casual figure as he arrived on set.

He wore a white T-shirt and black jeans and sneakers, pulling up in a chauffeur-driven car.

Marco, who previously had a long-running feud with fellow British chef Gordan Ramsay, appeared in high spirits as he joined cast and crew on set.

Ready to go: Marco, a Michelin star chef and restauranteur, cut a casual figure as he arrived on set

High spirits: Marco, who previously had a long-running feud with fellow British chef Gordan Ramsay, appeared in high spirits as he joined cast and crew on set

Channel 10's hit cooking show closed shop earlier in January when the virus spread amongst the cast and crew on set and several members tested positive.

But a green light was given for filming to continue at the MasterChef camp in Ascot Vale, Victoria, later that month.

The 2022 season of MasterChef will see 12 amateur 'foodies' facing off against franchise 'favourites', several of whom are professional chefs.

Among those set to return to the series are Julie Goodwin, Michael Weldon, Tommy Pham, Alvin Quah and Sashi Cheliah.

New season: The 2022 season of MasterChef will see 12 amateur 'foodies' facing off against franchise 'favourites', several of whom are professional chefs

Ties: New judges Jock Zonfrillo, Melissa Leong and Andy Allen will also be returning to the hit series. Jock previously revealed that Marco once gave him a job at the Hyde Park Hotel in London at the start of his career

New judges Jock Zonfrillo, Melissa Leong and Andy Allen will also be returning to the hit series.

Jock previously revealed that Marco once gave him a job at the Hyde Park Hotel in London at the start of his career.

'Marco was amazing because he understood what was going on with me as a young man,' Jock has previously said.

'People were very quick to judge a drug addict. He didn't. I was on my last chance, there's no doubt about it, but he treated me exactly the same as everybody else.'

Feud: Indeed Marco has appeared on MasterChef Australia before, but previously said he left the show for Hell's Kitchen Australia due to ex-judge Matt Preston

Indeed Marco has appeared on MasterChef Australia before, but previously said he left the show for Hell's Kitchen Australia due to ex-judge Matt Preston.

In 2017, Marco vowed 'on his mother's grave' to get back at judge Matt Preston after comments he made on Sydney radio about Marco's son, Marco Pierre White Jr.

Matt had criticised Marco Jr. on The Kyle and Jackie O Show, after the young man had boasted of his drug binges and sex with prostitutes.

'That's that whole rich, London trust fund babe, trustifarian-type stuff - it's another world,' said Preston.

Marco was so incensed by what Matt had said that he refused to even discuss it during a television interview the following year.
He is known for his rugged good looks.

But Simon Baker revealed a new scruffy beard as he headed out for breakfast in Darlinghurst, Sydney this week.

The Mentalist star appears to be growing his facial hair, as his whiskers appeared long longer that usual, as well as his blond locks.

Simon, is that you? The Mentalist star Baker revealed a VERY scruffy beard as he headed out to breakfast with a female friend in Sydney this week

The handsome 52-year-old actor looked dapper during the outing in a light blue shirt teamed with beige trousers and trendy sneakers.

He also wore a pair of black-rimmed spectacles.

Simon was seen enjoying his meal with an older female friend at popular Bill's cafe.

The Devil Wears Prada hunk broke up with his girlfriend, Byron Bay activewear designer Laura May Gibbs, last year in November.

Longer locks: The Mentalist star appears to be growing his facial hair, as his whiskers appeared long longer that usual, as well as his blond locks.

At the time, Laura categorically denied rumours the actor broke up with her because she attended an anti-vaccine mandate protest.

She slammed this 'false narrative' about their split in a lengthy Instagram post, declaring it was 'simply not true'.

She insisted their split was amicable, adding: 'I never discuss my private life, but I will say this - the friendship and respect I share with [Simon] runs too deep for the media's noise to have any true impact in our lives.'

The businesswoman also defended her decision to protest against vaccine mandates at the NSW-Queensland border last Sunday.

Catch up: Simon was seen enjoying his meal with an older female friend at popular Bill's cafe

Her post came a week after Simon's spokesperson confirmed he and Laura had quietly parted ways several months ago.

The reason for their split has not been made public.

The couple were last pictured together last August, laughing and joking during a trip to the beach in Byron Bay.

Simon and Laura first sparked romance rumours in February after they were pictured frolicking in the surf together in Byron Bay.

The pair are said to have met in Byron, where Laura's sustainable fashion design studio is based near his farm in Nashua.

News of the couple's relationship came weeks after Simon announced his split from wife Rebecca Rigg on January 29.

The pair told PEOPLE in a joint statement: 'We remain close friends and our three children will always be the most important focus of our lives.'

But according to Fox News, they actually split nine months earlier, in April 2020.
There's been no shortage of drama on Married at First Sight this year, but it looks like Wednesday's episode will take things to a whole new level.

Daily Mail Australia can reveal warring brides Tamara Djordjevic and Selin Mengu will go head to head at the upcoming reunion girls' night.

Mother-of-one Selin, 33, triggers Tamara, 29, when she offers the bossy blonde advice on her struggling marriage to Brent Vitiello - before things turn nasty.

Tears, tantrums and walkouts: The drama is set to explode on Married At First Sight when the brides and grooms reunite on Wednesday's episode. (Pictured: three brides at the girls' night)

Selin apparently kept questioning the other brides about their marriages, which pushed operations manager Tamara over the edge.

'Things got heated when Selin told Tamara she'd led Brent on. Tamara then launched into a screaming rage at her,' an on-set source revealed.

'Selin wasn't having any of it, and accused Tamara of always trying to belittle Brent by yelling at him and putting him down.'

Bad blood: Daily Mail Australia can reveal warring brides Tamara Djordjevic (right) and Selin Mengu (left) will go head to head at the upcoming reunion girls' night

Drama: Mother-of-one Selin (pictured) triggers Tamara when she offers the bossy blonde advice on her struggling marriage to Brent Vitiello - before things turn nasty

Gossip: Selin, 33, apparently kept questioning the other brides about their marriages, which pushed operations manager Tamara, 29, over the edge

Tamara also went off at intruder bride Carolina Santos for cheating on her friend Dion Giannarelli.

'Apparently Carolina sent Dion a text apologising to him [for her affair with Daniel Holmes] but it wasn't good enough in Tamara's eyes,' said the insider.

'Carolina walked into Tamara and Domenica's screaming match and just rolled her eyes then sat next to Samantha [Moitzi],' they added.

Yelling match: 'Things got heated when Selin told Tamara she'd led Brent on. Tamara then launched into a screaming rage at her,' an on-set source revealed

Having her say: 'Selin wasn't having any of it, and accused Tamara of always trying to belittle Brent by yelling at him and putting him down,' the insider added

Rivals Olivia Frazer, 28, and Domenica Calarco, 29, will also come to blows again.

'Heading into the girls' night, there was still plenty of tension between Domenica and the other brides [after the nude photo scandal], but this time no one wanted to put up with her aggressive attitude,' the source said.

'She ended up chucking a fit and storming out - and of course being the drama queen she is, started swearing at everyone while taking her microphone off.

'She could see nobody wanted to put up with her bulls**t anymore.'

More drama: Tamara also went off at intruder bride Carolina Santos (pictured) for cheating on her friend Dion Giannarelli

Feud: 'Apparently Carolina sent Dion a text apologising to him [for her affair with Daniel Holmes] but it wasn't good enough in Tamara's eyes,' said the insider. Carolina is pictured on the left with co-star Samantha Moitzi

Incoming! Jessica Seracino, who was originally paired with Daniel Holmes in the experiment, is also set to make a return on Wednesday

Ready for round two! Rivals Olivia Frazer and Domenica Calarco (pictured) will also come to blows again following the nude photo scandal

Oh dear! '[Dom] ended up chucking a fit and storming out - and of course being the drama queen she is, started swearing at everyone while taking her microphone off,' the spy said

Meanwhile, over at the boys' reunion, Daniel Holmes and Mitch Eynaud almost came to blows after a long night of drinking.

Daily Mail Australia understands that personal trainer Daniel, 31, went face to face with financial planner Mitch, 28, after he made rude remarks about Carolina.

'He randomly just said to him, "You don't care about about her and just wanted to sleep with her." It was really bizarre and even took the producers by surprise,' the on-set spy revealed.

Bit of biff: Meanwhile, over at the boys' reunion, Daniel Holmes (right) and Mitch Eynaud (left) almost came to blows after a long night of drinking

Furious: Daily Mail Australia understands that personal trainer Daniel, 31, went face to face with financial planner Mitch, 28, after he made rude remarks about Carolina

Waiting game: Daniel was seen looking nervous as he waited in the rain before producers told him when to walk into the pub

'Daniel was going to knock him out but decided it was best he just walked off.'

Daniel was pictured looking nervous while chatting to producers outside the pub before making a late entrance to join his co-stars.

Wednesday's episode will see all the show's grooms return with the exception of Texas-born Andrew Davis, who was paired with Holly Greenstein.

Love rivals: A trailer for the upcoming episode shows an angry Dion Giannarelli (pictured) calling Daniel a 'liar and a cheater', before Mitch tells him to 'p**s off'

A trailer for the upcoming episode shows an angry Dion calling Daniel a 'liar and a cheater', before Mitch tells him to 'p**s off'.

'P**s off, bra. Get out of here, man,' Mitch says as he instigates a fight.

Daniel then takes aim at Mitch, warning him: 'If you said that in the real world, you'd get yourself knocked out.'

Married At First Sight continues Wednesday at 7:30pm on Channel Nine and 9Now

Heated: 'P**s off, bra. Get out of here, man,' Mitch says to Daniel as he instigates a fight
Tilly Keeper is reportedly set to join a host of British stars in the upcoming new series of Netflix show You.

The actress, 24, who played Louise Mitchell in EastEnders from 2016 to 2020, will star in the fourth season of the Netflix psychological drama which will be filmed in the UK rather than the US, according to The Sun.

It is claimed actor Penn Badgley, 35, who plays the murderous Joe Goldberg, will be joined by the likes of Dario Coates, 29, who played Alex Neeson, the son of Kym Marshs Michelle Connor in Coronation Street, and Eve Austin, who portrayed Tabitha Taylor-Rudd in Emmerdale.

Star power: Tilly Keeper, 24, is reportedly set to join a host of British stars in the upcoming new series of Netflix show You (Tilly pictured as Louise Mitchell in EastEnders)

A TV insider told the publication: 'This will come as a huge surprise to the millions of fans of the show around the world, who got used to the first three seasons being based in various locations in the US.

'The last thing they would have expected was for the next outing to move lock, stock and barrel across the Atlantic and feature a largely British cast.

'But the producers wanted to provide a fresh take on the show, though Joe will no doubt be going back to his dark deeds when he arrives in London.'

Gripping: It is claimed actor Penn Badgley, 35, who plays the murderous Joe Goldberg, will be joined by a host of British stars in the psychological drama

Other Brit additions to the new series reportedly include Ed Speleers, who appeared as Jimmy Kent in Downton Abbey and as Stephen Bonnet US series Outlander.

Sean Pertwee is said to be also lined-up, with the actor previously starring in Foxs Batman spin-off Gotham.

Glamour puss: Tilly, who played Louise Mitchell in EastEnders from 2016 to 2020, will star in the fourth season of You which will be filmed in the UK rather than the US (pictured 2019)

Acting out: Dario Coates, 29 (left), who played Alex Neeson, the son of Kym Marshs Michelle Connor in Coronation Street, is also said to be appearing

Familiar face: Sean Pertwee is said to be also lined-up, with the actor previously starring in Foxs Batman spin-off Gotham

MailOnline has contacted Netflix and representatives for the British actors for comment.

Filming for the fourth series of You is said to have already begun in England.

A number of famous London sights popular with tourists will appear in different scenes.

The fan favourite series is based off novels by Caroline Kepnes, with Penn playing a troubled serial killer desperate for love as a method of control.

The show stars Gossip Girl vet Badgley and his love interest was played by Elizabeth Lail in the first season before Victoria Pedretti became the object of his affection as the plot thickened in season two.

The third season finale saw Joe arrive in Paris in search of his latest obsession, Marienne.
Married At First Sight bride Tamara Djordjevic has accused her husband Brent Vitiello and bride Ella Ding of setting up staged paparazzi photos in a scathing radio interview.

Brent, 33, and Ella, 27, had spurred on 'couple swap' rumours after they were spotted looking cosy during a beach date in Sydney on Valentine's Day.

The images emerged on the same day that Tamara, 29, and Ella's husband Mitch Eynaud, 27, were seen spending time together on the Gold Coast.

Sensational claim: Married At First Sight bride Tamara Djordjevic (pictured) has accused her husband Brent Vitiello and bride Ella Ding of setting up staged paparazzi photos

Speaking on Hit Networks Jimmy & Nath on Wednesday, Tamara, 29, said she's convinced her husband and Ella staged their photos for publicity - before shutting down rumours of a romance with Mitch.

'Mitch and I both live on the Gold Coast, we both work in the same office building,' the glamorous operations manager said in response to the couple swap rumours.

'Ella and Brent I think did a set-up paparazzi photo shoot to be honest, together. I don't really know why.'

Not convinced: Speaking on Hit Networks Jimmy & Nath on Wednesday, Tamara, 29, said she's convinced her husband and Ella staged these photos for publicity. Pictured: Mitch and Ella on Sydney's Maroubra Beach on Valentine's Day

'So either Brent or Ella have messaged the paparazzi to get photos done of them?' Tamara was asked, to which she replied: 'Did you not see it? It's a set up photo shoot.'

After the hosts asks if the pair 'needed to do that', Tamara coyly responded: 'I don't know, did they?

'Ask them. It's quite funny.'

Scandal: Tamara has been spotted on numerous occasions with Mitch Eynaud, but says it's because they work in the same office building together. Pictured on February 19

When asked if she thought Brent was on the show for fame, she bluntly replied: 'Yep. This is his big break.'

She claims that Brent had confessed to her 'everything he wants to do in his influencer life', before adding: 'Good on him. Whatever.

'I think he just wants to be an influencer, and I don't know. Get some free teeth.'

Both couples are currently enduring rocky marriages on the show.

Tamara and Mitch had sparked couple swap rumours after they were seen spending time together on multiple occasions since the reunion filmed in January, including on Valentine's Day.

Not happy: Both couples - including Tamara (right) and Brent (left) are enduring rocky marriages on the show

That particular outing came on the same day that Brent visited Sydney's Maroubra Beach with Ella, prompting rumours of a romance.

Speaking to Yahoo! Lifestyle last month, Brent broke his silence on reports the couples had swapped partners.

'Me and Ella are just good friends,' the hospitality manager insisted.

Brent acknowledged that Tamara had been spotted out with Mitch on 'multiple occasions', and added: 'Good luck to them, I guess.'
Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, right, and former President Bill Clinton arrive for the 59th Presidential Inauguration at the U.S. Capitol for President-elect Joe Biden in Washington, in this Jan. 20, 2021, file photo. Hillary Clinton has tested positive for COVID-19. AP-Yonhap





Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Tuesday she has tested positive for COVID-19 with ''mild'' symptoms.







On social media, the former Democratic presidential candidate said she was ''feeling fine'' and that former President Bill Clinton had tested negative and was quarantining until their household was fully cleared.







A spokesman for the former president posted on Twitter that he would continue to get tested in the days to come.







Hillary Clinton, 74, said she was ''more grateful than ever for the protection vaccines can provide against serious illness'' and urged people to get vaccine and booster shots.







Former President Barack Obama announced earlier this month that he had tested positive for the coronavirus. (AP)


Former Home and Away star Tammin Sursok has tested positive for Covid-19.

The 38-year-old actress shared the news on Wednesday, revealing her daughter Phoenix, eight, also has the virus.

It comes after Tammin's American producer husband Sean McEwen, 45, almost died during his battle with coronavirus when he contracted it early last year.

Former Home and Away star Tammin Sursok has tested positive for Covid-19. The 38-year-old actress shared the news on Wednesday, revealing her daughter Phoenix, eight, also has the virus

Tammin shared a picture of herself looking teary in bed while in isolation and said she thinks she got it from her daughter who contracted it from school.

'Someone brought something home from school yesterday,' Tammin began.

'After two years of not getting covid I finally got it. Phoenix tested positive and I just tested positive. I can't believe how fast it moves from one person to another.'

Positive: Tammin also shared a photo of her positive RAT test

'After two years of not getting covid I finally got it. Phoenix tested positive and I just tested positive. I can't believe how fast it moves from one person to another,' she explained

Tammin said she has been experience symptoms including a runny nose and a 'spicy' cough, as well as tiredness and sweats at night.

She asked fans to think of her husband and their daughter Lennon, three, who she says have tested negative so far.

'Here is to heath and well-being ASAP!' she added.

She asked fans to think of her husband and their daughter Lennon, three, who she says have tested negative so far

Last year, the South African-born Australian star spoke to Daily Mail Australia about Sean's battle with covid and said she 'didn't know if he was going to pull through'.

'It was awful. It was probably one of the worst experiences I've been through,' she explained.

'Day eight to ten was so difficult. He had a fever that was so high it didn't break for two and a half weeks.'

'It took him months to recover,' she added. 'He had hallucinations. It was such a hard thing to navigate and we're really grateful that's he's okay.'

Sean ended up losing 6.8kg during his illness.
Tones and I has revealed she can't stand her popular song Dance Monkey - the catchy single that shot her to international fame in 2019.

The ARIA Award-winning hitmaker, 28, made the surprising confession during an interview with Nova FM's Smallzy's Surgery on Tuesday night.

'I loathe that song a lot of the time,' she said of her breakthrough hit, which reached the No. 1 spot in 30 countries worldwide, including Australia.

Over it: Tones and I (pictured in February 2020) has revealed she can't stand her popular song Dance Monkey - the catchy single that shot her to international fame in 2019

'I don't want to write another song like it... and a lot of the time I don't want to sing it,' added the musician, whose real name is Toni Watson.

Tones said she started to find Dance Monkey irritating while working in Los Angeles at the end of last year because it was all her collaborators ever wanted to talk about.

She explained several producers wanted to record similar songs when she was ready to take her career in another direction.

'I loathe that song a lot of the time': The ARIA Award-winning hitmaker, 28, made the surprising confession during an interview with Nova FM's Smallzy's Surgery on Tuesday night

Tones, whose career took off in 2017 when she was discovered busking in Byron Bay, explained she now wants to do something very different to Dance Monkey.

Later in the interview, she did concede Dance Monkey was 'good for me', but said she doesn't want to spend her career 'chasing that song'.

Not long after skyrocketing to fame, Tones said she was left feeling like she was 'gross' and unattractive.

Hit: Tones (centre, in the Dance Monkey video) started to find the song irritating while working in LA at the end of last year because it was all her collaborators ever wanted to talk about

As Dance Monkey soared to the top of the British and American charts, she found herself struggling with crippling self-doubt and anxiety.

Before finding fame, Tones lived an itinerant life, sleeping in her van and earning money busking on the streets of Melbourne and Byron Bay.

Tones, whose real name is Toni Watson, announced in December a busking tour that would see her visit Victoria, Tasmania, NSW, South Australia and Western Australia.
Ben Affleck showed his full support for girlfriend Jennifer Lopez, brining his son Samuel and her daughter Emme to watch her accept the Icon Award at the 2022 iHeartRadio Awards.

The 49-year-old actor was flanked by his 10-year-old son and Lopez's 14-year-old daughter Emme at the Tuesday evening event, held at The Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles.

They all looked on as the 52-year-old Lopez stepped onto the stage to accept the award in a stunning olive-green dress with a plunging neckline.

Support: Ben Affleck showed his full support for girlfriend Jennifer Lopez, brining his son Samuel and her daughter Emme to watch her accept the Icon Award at the 2022 iHeartRadio Awards

On stage: They all looked on as the 52-year-old Lopez stepped onto the stage to accept the award in a stunning olive-green dress with a plunging neckline

Affleck stepped out with a black-on-black look, donning a slightly-unbuttoned dress shirt under a black suit coat.

He completed his look with black pants as he attended the event with his son and Lopez's daughter.

Samuel was spotted in a tie-less blue suit while Lopez's daughter Emme wore a black polo shirt and black glasses.

Ben's look: Affleck stepped out with a black-on-black look, donning a slightly-unbuttoned dress shirt under a black suit coat

Samuel, Ben and Emme: Samuel was spotted in a tie-less blue suit while Lopez's daughter Emme wore a black polo shirt and black glasses

Kids: Samuel was spotted in a tie-less blue suit while Lopez's daughter Emme wore a black polo shirt and black glasses

Lopez was presented the award by LL Cool J, who have collaborated on songs All I Have and Control Myself.

'I appreciate this so much, so very, very much. I wish I could tell you that awards were the most important to me, but that's not true. And don't think that I don't appreciate the shiny, sparkly things, because I do!' Lopez began.

'I cannot lie, everybody knows that I do. But this isn't why I do this. It's not what matters most to me. I really do it for you guys,' she added.

Collaboration: Lopez was presented the award by LL Cool J, who have collaborated on songs All I Have and Control Myself

Appreciate: 'I appreciate this so much, so very, very much. I wish I could tell you that awards were the most important to me, but that's not true. And don't think that I don't appreciate the shiny, sparkly things, because I do!' Lopez began

'Because of you, I get to do what I love the most in life and that is the most wonderful blessing,' Lopez said of her legions of fans.

'That's a gift that you give me and I just want to say thank you for that. Thank you to everyone who comes to a show, streams a song, sees a movie, follows me,' she added.

'You guys are the ones who give me the opportunity every day to live a life I couldn't even imagine would come true when I was a little girl growing up in the Bronx,' Lopez said of her roots.

Speech: 'Because of you, I get to do what I love the most in life and that is the most wonderful blessing,' Lopez said of her legions of fans

Gift: 'That's a gift that you give me and I just want to say thank you for that. Thank you to everyone who comes to a show, streams a song, sees a movie, follows me,' she added

Life: 'You guys are the ones who give me the opportunity every day to live a life I couldn't even imagine would come true when I was a little girl growing up in the Bronx,' Lopez said of her roots

She added of her fans, 'You did that for me. You made that dream come true. I'm shaking! And I will always be grateful to each and every one of you for that.'

'And I will never forget it, and I will never, ever take it for granted. So I want to say thank you to every one of you for believing in me when other people didn't, even when I didn't. Thank you for teaching me who I really am,' she said.

Before wrapping up her speech, she offered a new acronym for the word icon: 'I can overcome negativity,' concluding, 'Let me tell you something else. I'm just getting started.'

Dream: She added of her fans, 'You did that for me. You made that dream come true. I'm shaking! And I will always be grateful to each and every one of you for that'

Started: Before wrapping up her speech, she offered a new acronym for the word icon: 'I can overcome negativity,' concluding, 'Let me tell you something else. I'm just getting started.

Dream come true: She added of her fans, 'You did that for me. You made that dream come true. I'm shaking! And I will always be grateful to each and every one of you for that'

Affleck and Lopez dated from mid-2002 to early 2004 and were engaged to be married before calling off the engagement.

They re-kindled their relationship in April 2021, with Lopez confirming they were back together in July 2021.

Lopez also shares Emme's twin Maximilian David Muniz with her ex Marc Anthony while Affleck shares Violet, 16, and Seraphina, 13, with his ex Jennifer Garner.

Dating: Affleck and Lopez dated from mid-2002 to early 2004 and were engaged to be married before calling off the engagement

Back together: They re-kindled their relationship in April 2021, with Lopez confirming they were back together in July 2021

Kids: Lopez also shares Emme's twin Maximilian David Muniz with her ex Marc Anthony while Affleck shares Violet, 16, and Seraphina, 13, with his ex Jennifer Garner

Family: Earlier in the day Samuel spent time with mom Jennifer Garner

Beaming: Jennifer and Samuel were seen stepping out in the afternoon in LA
Advertisement

Bella and Gigi Hadid proved to be the ultimate supermodel sisters on Tuesday as they walked the Ralph Lauren runway show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

The siblings, 25 and 26 respectively, showcased the American designer's Fall 2022 collection, which featured a range of preppy silhouettes and glamorous monochrome gowns.

Celebrities likes Jessica Chastain and Lily Collins eagerly viewed the collection from front row seats, before mingling with Ralph, himself, backstage.

Sister act: Bella and Gigi Hadid proved to be the ultimate supermodel sisters on Tuesday as they walked the Ralph Lauren runway show

Bella looked ethereal as she first hit the runway in a curve-clinging white gown with an asymmetrical neckline.

The stunner went braless beneath the gown and added height to her already statuesque frame in a pair of black open-toed heels.

Bella's brunette hair was slicked back into a sleek bun, which allowed her to showcase her glitzy chandelier earrings.

Gigi strutted her stuff in a black floor-length gown with angular cut-outs on the waist that put her toned tummy on full display.

Contrast: The siblings, 25 and 26 respectively, showcased the American designer's Fall 2022 collection, which featured a range of preppy silhouettes and glamorous gowns

Sleek: Bella's brunette hair was slicked back into a sleek bun, which allowed her to showcase her glitzy chandelier earrings. Gigi had her lengthy bleach blonde strands styled straight and tucked behind her ears

The mother-of-one accessorized with the same earrings donned by her younger sister.

She had her lengthy bleach blonde strands styled straight and tucked behind her ears.

As for makeup, both Bella and Gigi had a wash of warm brown eyeshadow on their lids and their pouts were accentuated with a matte peach lipstick shade.

For their second runway looks, the sisters showed off their preppy sides in white button down shirts and high-waisted slacks.

Prep in her step: For their second runway looks, the sisters showed off their preppy sides in white button down shirts and high-waisted slacks

Iconic initials: Gigi had on a navy blue pullover with Ralph Lauren's initials emblazoned across the front of it in large white lettering

Androgyny: Ralph's Fall 2022 women's collection leaned on the androgynous side with many ensembles clearly inspired by menswear, but with a flattering feminine fit

Radiant: Bella showcased her natural beauty as she uploaded a stunning snap of herself to Instagram wrapped up in a white dressing gown

Bella's ensemble saw her layer her dress shirt over a black turtleneck and under a grey tweed blazer with black buttons.

The Vogue covergirl cinched in her waist with a belt and slipped her feet into a pair of black and white leather loafers.

Gigi had on a navy blue pullover with Ralph Lauren's initials emblazoned across the front of it in large white lettering.

Her belted trousers were styled with a pair of black and white leather lace up heels.

Veteran: Also present during Tuesday's show was model Taylor Hill, who stunned in a white dress shirt and bow tie

Contrasting looks: Mixed among the blazers and loafers were several awe-inspiring gowns, each featuring angular elements - whether it be a sharp neckline or cut-out

Both ladies walked the runway with large purses in their hands.

Also present during Tuesday's show was model Taylor Hill, who stunned in a white dress shirt and bow tie.

Ralph's Fall 2022 women's collection leaned on the androgynous side with many ensembles clearly inspired by menswear, but with a flattering feminine fit.

Mixed among the blazers and loafers were several awe-inspiring gowns, each featuring angular elements - whether it be a sharp neckline or cut-out.

Facing the music: After the presentation, Ralph appeared from backstage and strolled out onto the runway

On brand: The legendary designer stayed true to his label's aesthetic by rocking a pullover sweater and a white dress shirt

A variety of classic plaid patterns made their way down the runway, while other looks proved the power of monochrome.

WWD reported last month that Tuesday's in-person show would be 'an intimate experience featuring both the Ralph Lauren fall 2022 womens collection and mens Purple Label lines.'

After the presentation, Ralph appeared from backstage and strolled out onto the runway.

The legendary designer stayed true to his label's aesthetic by rocking a pullover sweater and a white dress shirt.

Stunning: Celebrity attendee Jessica Chastain turned heads as she arrived in a plunging black jeweled gown

Auburn angel: Her auburn tresses were parted down the middle and flowed down her back and chest in loose curls

Effortlessly cool: The actress, 44, layered up her stunning look with a black blazer with satin lapels

Full glory: Jessica removed her jacket in order to show her dress in all its glory

Celebrity attendee Jessica Chastain turned heads as she arrived in a plunging black jeweled gown.

The actress, 44, layered up her stunning look with a black blazer with satin lapels.

Jessica removed her jacket in order to show her dress in all its glory.

Her auburn tresses were parted down the middle and flowed down her back and chest in loose curls.

Looking sharp: Lily Collins looked incredible in a fitted back tuxedo

Staple elements: Her tux was complete with a white shirt and black bow tie

Feminine flair: The Emily in Paris actress, 33, paired her suit with some black stiletto heels

The Zero Dark Thirty star carried her essentials in a black satin clutch.

Lily Collins looked incredible in a fitted back tuxedo complete with a white shirt and black bow tie.

The Emily in Paris actress, 33, paired her suit with some black stiletto heels.

She wore her brunette hair slicked back in a bun.

Sultry gaze: As for makeup, Lily was decked out in a generous amount of pink blush and she drew attention to her eyes with a smokey eyeliner look

Lovebirds: The daughter of Phil Collins was joined at the runway show by her husband Charlie McDowell, 38

In it together: The couple posed lovingly beside one another ahead of the show.

As for makeup, Lily was decked out in a generous amount of pink blush and she drew attention to her eyes with a smokey eyeliner look.

The daughter of Phil Collins was joined at the runway show by her husband Charlie McDowell, 38.

The couple, who wed just last year, posed lovingly beside one another ahead of the show.

Zoey Deutch looked spring-ready in a pink double-breasted blazer and matching flared trousers.

Spring-ready: Zoey Deutch looked spring-ready in a pink double-breasted blazer and matching flared trousers

Funky: Janelle Monae cut a fashion-forward figure in a black velvet coat with a furry yellow collar

Bejeweled: Rachel Brosnahan showcased her slender frame in a plunging jeweled vest and a pair of black pants with velvet stripes running down each leg

The Politician star, 27, had her sleek brunette hair swept behind her and she accessorized with a pair of jewel earrings.

Janelle Monae cut a fashion-forward figure in a black velvet coat with a furry yellow collar, which she styled with a pussy bow blouse and tapered trousers.

Rachel Brosnahan showcased her slender frame in a plunging jeweled vest and a pair of black pants with velvet stripes running down each leg.

Head-to-toe black proved to be the go-to for the evening, with the likes of Melissa Barrera, Ivy Getty and Ella Balinska opting for edgy monochrome looks.

Henry Golding looked dapper in a beige suit jacket and a pair of off white trousers with a matching dress shirt.

Glitzy: Kate Bock dazzled in a glittering gold midi dress and matching strappy heels

Edgy: Head-to-toe black proved to be the go-to for the evening, with the likes of Melissa Barrera, Ivy Getty and Ella Balinska opting for edgy monochrome looks

Dapper: Henry Golding looked dapper in a beige suit jacket and a pair of off white trousers with a matching dress shirt

Style inspo: Angus Cloud, who is the face of Polo by Ralph Lauren, looked stylish in a grey tweed suit. Meanwhile, Luka Sabbat delivered some Southwestern flair by pairing a turquoise bolo tie with his black suit and denim button-up

Major: Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour rolled up to the runway show in a show-stopping black leather trench coat

Angus Cloud, who is the face of Polo by Ralph Lauren, looked stylish in a grey tweed suit. He layered the jacket over a black turtleneck and accessorized with a beanie and silver chain necklace.

Luka Sabbat delivered some Southwestern flair by pairing a turquoise bolo tie with his black suit and denim button-up.

Mayor of New York City Eric Adams made an appearance.

Evan Mock and Antoni Porowski suited up for the occasion, with Mock opting for black velvet and Porowski choosing pinstripes.

Ralph's daughter Dylan Lauren and her husband Paul Arrouet cozied up in front of the Ralph Lauren photo op before heading inside.

Represent: Mayor of New York City Eric Adams made an appearance

Suited up: Evan Mock and Antoni Porowski suited up for the occasion, with Mock opting for black velvet and Porowski choosing pinstripes

In the family: Ralph's daughter Dylan Lauren and her husband Paul Arrouet cozied up in front of the Ralph Lauren photo op before heading inside
Married At First Sight bride Tamara Djordjevic found herself caught up in Sydney's anti-lockdown protests while filming the reality show in Sydney on November 20.

The Gold Coast-based operations manager, 29, looked surprised when she stepped out of her CBD apartment and saw thousands of demonstrators in the streets.

She had received a special permit to travel from Queensland to film the series, but many ordinary Sydneysiders didn't have the same freedom of movement at the time.

Awkward! Married At First Sight bride Tamara Djordjevic found herself caught up in Sydney's anti-lockdown protests while filming the reality show in Sydney on November 20

Tamara put on a face mask as she quickly made her way through the throng of protesters before running errands in the city.

The blonde looked annoyed when she discovered several streets had been closed off, and eventually had to ask police officers for directions.

Tamara flaunted her slender figure in a form-fitting orange dress, which she teamed with box-fresh white sneakers.

Talk about bad timing! The Gold Coast-based operations manager, 29, looked surprised when she stepped out of her CBD apartment and saw thousands of demonstrators in the streets

Permit: She had received a special permit to travel from Queensland to film the series, but many ordinary Sydneysiders didn't have the same freedom of movement at the time

Tamara drew attention to her natural beauty by going makeup free for the outing.

She accessorised with a Louis Vuitton handbag slung across her shoulder and carried a Mecca shopping bag and denim jacket.

Endemol Shine, the production company behind the Channel Nine show, required all cast and crew to be fully vaccinated during filming in Sydney late last year.

Not happy, Jan! The blonde looked annoyed when she discovered several streets had been closed off, and eventually had to ask police officers for directions

Stylish: Tamara flaunted her slender figure in a form-fitting orange dress, which she teamed with box-fresh white sneakers

Natural: Tamara drew attention to her natural beauty by going makeup free for the outing

Heading out: She accessorised with a Louis Vuitton handbag slung across her shoulder and carried a Mecca shopping bag and denim jacket

The participants were also required to undergo mandatory Covid tests every 48 hours, and wear masks when the cameras weren't rolling.

For safety reasons, the stars were accompanied by minders during filming breaks. This included when going out for their hourly exercise and running errands.

For the first time, the show's cast and crew were also chauffeured around in black-tinted luxury cars rather than catching taxis and Ubers.

Each couple was assigned a designated driver and no ride-sharing was allowed.

Event: Tamara was seen filming the demonstrators as she made her way towards the crowd
Kim Kardashian and Pete Davidson arrived at an airport in Los Angeles on Tuesday after taking a quick trip to New York City.

The reality star, 41, wore a puffy black jacket over a matching sweater and a pair of black pants.

She protected her eyes from the harsh Los Angeles sun with dark sunglasses, and her hair was tied back into a tight ponytail.

Back to Cali: Kim Kardashian and Pete Davidson arrived at an airport in Los Angeles on Tuesday after taking a quick trip to New York City

Kardashian's better half, 28, wore a black vest over a gray sweater with the hood pulled over his head as he exited the airplane.

He added a pair of comfortable-looking black sweatpants to his outfit and carried a duffle bag over one of his shoulders.

It must have been a quick turnaround for The King of Staten Island actor who was spotted grabbing a meal at McDonald's in Calabasas on Monday.

The pair hopped into a large white car that Kardashian drove with the wheel on the right side of the vehicle rather than the left.

The Keeping Up With the Kardashians star and the Saturday Night Live actor chatted and laughed as they stopped at several red lights.

All black outfit: The reality star, 41, wore a puffy black jacket over a matching sweater and a pair of black pants

Accessorizing: She protected her eyes from the harsh Los Angeles sun with dark sunglasses, and her hair was tied back into a tight ponytail

Comfortable: Kardashian's better half, 28, wore a black vest over a gray sweater with the hood pulled over his head as he exited the airplane

Watch your step: The pair held on to the handrails as they disembarked from the private aircraft

The pair seemed happy to be back in Los Angeles, and their return put a cap on the incredibly busy week Kim went through.

As she continues to navigate her rocky relationship with ex-husband Kanye West, the Hulu reality star has been hard at work on her business empire.

The model had a business meeting in New York City on Monday, and she hosted a a dinner for SKIMS - her $3.2 billion shapewear brand - in Miami that was attended by Madonna's daughter Lourdes Leon over the weekend.

While Kim has been busying herself with her business endeavors, her new boyfriend Pete Davidson is said to have enjoyed a 'wild' boys night with Scott Disick.

The Saturday Night Live star joined the 38-year-old reality star - who has three children with former girlfriend Kourtney Kardashian - and a group of other pals for a movie night during the weekend.

Hitting the road: The pair hopped into a large white car that Kardashian drove with the wheel on the right side of the vehicle rather than the left

Cracking up: The Keeping Up With the Kardashians star and the Saturday Night Live actor chatted and laughed as they stopped at several red lights

Hardworking trip: As she continues to navigate her rocky relationship with ex-husband Kanye West, the Hulu reality star has been hard at work on her business empire

Scott shared a video of the evening taken by Davidson on his Instagram Story on Saturday and wrote: 'Boyz night was wild [bed emojis]'

The clip saw Pete pan the camera around the room, showing everyone else had fallen asleep, before the comedian shook his head at the camera.

Pete and Kim have been together since October and went Instagram official earlier this month, but the former Keeping Up With the Kardashians star - who has North, eight, Saint, six, Chicago, four, and two-year-old Psalm with former spouse Kanye West - recently admitted she 'doesn't know' how to deal with sharing their romance online.

She said: 'I have the cutest pictures of us and I want to be like, "Oh, were so cute!"

Fancy dinner: The model hosted a a dinner for SKIMS - her $3.2 billion shapewear brand - in Miami that was attended by her sister Khloe over the weekend

Sitting and chatting: The younger Kardashian sister were seated right next to one another during the meal

'I dont know what the right thing to do is. I havent dated since before Instagram existed. I don't know what the rules are [when it comes to posting a new relationship].'

While Pete won't be part of her new Hulu show The Kardashians, Kim insisted he may still appear in the future.

She said: 'I have not filmed with [Pete]. And Im not opposed to it. It's just not what he does.

'But if there was an event happening and he was there, he wouldn't tell the cameras to get away. I think I might film something really exciting coming, but it wouldnt be for this season.'
Married At First Sight's Brent Vitiello has hit back at his 'wife' Tamara Djordjevic for belittling his career.

During Tuesday night's episode, Tamara insulted the hospitality worker by saying he isn't a 'restaurant expert' and telling him to 'wait tables.'

'She's an operations manager at a real estate agency she acts like she's the CEO of Apple,' Brent told Hit NSW Breakfast with Maz & Lakey.

Not impressed: Married At First Sight's Brent Vitiello (pictured) hit back at Tamara Djordjevic after she belittled his career as a hospitality worker

'I'm all about everyone's jobs and what they do for their careers,' he continued.

'I've got so many things planned, but I never shared them with her because I didn't think she is the type of person that would ever understand them.'

Brent went on to say: 'I also welcome every hospitality worker to play with her foods and drinks when they serve them to her.'

Comments: During Tuesday night's episode, Tamara (pictured) insulted the hospitality worker after saying he isn't a 'restaurant expert' and telling him to 'wait tables'

It comes after Tamara told Brent on Tuesday's episode she resented being paired with him and regretted the 'whole experiment... from start to finish.'

'Tell us how you really feel,' Brent replied, looking hurt.

Tamara then told the hospitality worker, 33, he hides his insecurities behind a 'big ego', which prompted him to accuse her of being moody all the time.

'She's an operations manager at a real estate agency she acts like she's the CEO of apple,' Brent told Hit NSW Breakfast with Maz & Lakey

'If you don't want to be somewhere with someone, of course you are going to get p**sed off,' Tamara snapped.

'There it is,' Brent replied, before getting up and walking off.

Tamara later whinged to producers: 'I've got a career to go home to. He's 33 years old. I'm sorry - you wait tables. Own it!'

Married At First Sight continues Wednesday at 7:30pm on Channel Nine and 9Now
Journalist Max Walsh has died at age 84 after a long battle with dementia.

A veteran of Australian media for over fifty years, Walsh had a spectacular career in print and in television, broadcasting for Channel Nine, Seven and the ABC.

'We've lost one of the country's most important and consequential journalists,' Maxine McKew, politician and former ABC reporter said in an obituary in Wednesday's issue of The Australian.

Media giant: Australian journalist Max Walsh (pictured) died on Wednesday at age 84, after a long battle with dementia

McKew, who worked with Walsh at the ABC on the Carleton-Walsh Report, said the columnist and correspondent was known as a special mentor to up and coming journalists.

Walsh began his career as a cadet journalist at Sydney's Daily Mirror in the 1950s.

During the turbulent 1960s, Walsh made a name for himself at the Australian Financial Review and was eventually promoted to editor in 1974.

Admirable: A veteran of Australian media for over fifty years, Walsh had a spectacular career in print and in television, broadcasting for Channel Nine, Seven and the ABC

He left newspapers to start a career in television in 1981 when Channel Nine launched the Sunday program, a big budget rival to ABC's Four Corners.

Later, the esteemed journalist front The Walsh Report on Channel Ten, before hosting The Bottom Line with Maxine McKew on the ABC.

Between 1983 and 1998, Walsh also worked at the Sydney Morning Herald as a respected commentator.

Great loss: 'We've lost one of the country's most important and consequential journalists,' said Maxine McKew, politician and former ABC reporter, in Wednesday's issue of The Australian

Later in his career, Walsh was hired by Kerry Packers to restore prestige to ACP flagship news title The Bulletin.

In 1984 Walsh was awarded the Order of Australia, for his services to journalism.

Walsh is survived by his wife, Geraldine, and two daughters.
Georgia Love and Lee Elliott have deleted all of their Instagram photos from their recent trip to Saudi Arabia after receiving backlash from fans.

The couple were reportedly asked to delete their posts by Saudi tourism officials.

The 33-year-old former Bachelorette and her husband of a year were recently given an all-expenses paid trip by Visit Saudi to help promote tourism in the nation.

Disappearing act: Georgia Love and Lee Elliott have deleted all of their Instagram photos from their recent trip to Saudi Arabia after receiving backlash from fans

Georgia and Lee, 40, were asked to share photos from their holiday on their respective social media pages in exchange for the free trip.

But their holiday attracted plenty of controversy, with many fans flagging the Middle Eastern country's horrific human rights record.

Shortly afterwards, both Georgia and Lee removed all of their social media posts, supposedly at the direction of Saudi tourism officials, according to a report in The Daily Telegraph on Wednesday,

Now you see it, now you don't: According to a report by The Daily Telegraph on Wednesday, the couple was asked to delete their posts by Saudi tourism officials

'She was told by the Saudi tourism people to remove all of the posts, they were fantastic with her,' Georgia's manager confirmed.

'They were quite upset that she was getting a lot of negative reaction and they said, "We don't want this to impede on your trip so please remove all those posts and don't do any more posting."

'They were very sympathetic to her situation and said, "Remove the posts, we don't require you to do any more posting for us."'

Working holiday: The 33-year-old former Bachelorette and her husband of a year were recently given an all-expenses paid trip by Visit Saudi to help promote tourism in the nation

After teasing the holiday, Georgia revealed that she and Lee had travelled to Saudi Arabia to promote tourism in the beleaguered nation.

'After only opening to tourists in 2019, we can't state how excited we are to be among the first Aussies to tour Saudi,' she wrote in a since-deleted post on Instagram.

'To us, it is important to see, experience and learn about all cultures around us and to see how much and how fast our world is changing. We can't wait to bring you along on this incredible experience with us.'

Promotion: Georgia and Lee, 40, were asked to share photos from their holiday on their respective social media pages in exchange for the free trip

One photo showed the couple arriving at the airport in Saudi Arabia, while another saw them sipping beverages out of coconuts.

Lee later addressed the backlash in a post on Instagram, explaining that he understood the anger their holiday had garnered.

'We thought long and hard about coming and we decided to come as the world is changing for the better and Saudi along with it,' he wrote.

Backlash: Their holiday attracted plenty of controversy, with many fans flagging the Middle Eastern country's horrific human rights record

'We strongly believe by Saudi opening up to the rest of the world and by tourists being here it has to be more accountable and hope this is a change for the better.

'Trust me, we looked into it before coming and believe many things have changed for the better in more recent times and hope they continue to do so.'

Daily Mail Australia has reached out to both Georgia and Lee for additional comment.
Streaming giant Stan have renewed the hit thriller series, The Tourist, for a second season.

Starring Jamie Dornan, 39, the show centres around a British man who gets stuck in the outback after a car tries to run him off the road.

He wakes up in hospital with no idea what happened.

It's back! Streaming giant Stan have renewed the hit thriller series, The Tourist, for a second season

Jamie previously told EW that he'd happily sign up for season two, but the show was only meant to be one series in total.

'That wasn't the plan, to be honest,' he said.

'We all signed up for one... So we'll see what we get to, but I would love to.'

Candid: Jamie previously told EW that he'd happily sign up for season two, but the show was only meant to be one series in total

Jamie's father Jim tragically died while he was stuck in isolation in Adelaide ahead of filming The Tourist's first season.

Last month, he said he felt helpless and was left a 'wreck' at the time.

'Getting that news no matter where you are geographically is sh**e, you know,' Jamie told News Corp Australia at the time.

Thriller: Starring Jamie Dornan, 39, the show centres around a British man who gets stuck in the outback after a car tries to run him off the road. He wakes up in hospital with no idea what happened

'I was stuck out there, denied seeing my sisters, denied seeing my stepmother  not ideal, but you're a wreck no matter where you are when something like that happens to you.'

Despite being in immeasurable pain, Jamie carried on with filming and said the work was a good distraction from his grief.

'There might be lasting damage, who knows, but at the time it felt like a good distraction,' he said.

Jamie recently described last year as the 'worst year of his life' after losing his father.

Tragic: Jamie's father Jim had died while he was stuck in isolation in Adelaide ahead of filming The Tourist's first season. Last month, he said he felt helpless and was left a 'wreck' at the time

Speaking to The Telegraph, he said he struggled to cope with all the praise he received for his latest projects Belfast and The Tourist because of the toll the last year has taken on him.

'It's a strange thing to end the year with all this positivity... because on many levels it's been the worst year of my life, and the hardest,' the Irish leading man explained.

Jamie - who had not seen his father for 18 months before his death due to the lockdown and his filming schedule - also revealed that the family still hasn't held a funeral 10 months on from Jim's death, but did not explain the reason for the delay.

Jim died in March aged 73 after contracting coronavirus.

He was a renowned obstetrician and gynaecologist and aside from his medical career, he also took a guest role in his son Jamie's gripping BBC One series The Fall, where he played police board member John Porter, in a 2016 episode.

Watch the Stan Originals show, The Tourist now only on Stan.
Buildings are seen on fire in Mariupol, Ukraine, March 22, in this satellite image. Reuters-Yonhap





Thousands of Ukrainians sought to escape the hellish siege of Mariupol, Tuesday, as Russia pounded the city with bombs and U.N. chief Antonio Guterres appealed for Moscow to end its "unwinnable" war.







The strategic port on the Azov Sea has suffered relentless shelling but Ukrainian officials say it has not yet been captured as Russia's invasion, which began almost a month ago, splutters to a halt.







People who had managed to escape Mariupol described it as a "freezing hellscape riddled with dead bodies and destroyed buildings", according to Human Rights Watch.







Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his regular evening address that one group fleeing along an agreed humanitarian route were "simply captured by the occupiers."







"There are about 100,000 people in the city  in inhumane conditions, in a complete blockade, no food, no water, no medicine, under constant shelling," he said.







As U.S. President Joe Biden readied for a trip to Europe this week to tackle a crisis that risks spiraling into global conflict, United Nations chief Antonio Guterres called for Russia to end its "absurd war."







"Even if Mariupol falls, Ukraine cannot be conquered city by city, street by street, house by house," he said.







"This war is unwinnable. Sooner or later, it will have to move from the battlefield to the peace table. That is inevitable."







Candles and lights form a giant peace sign during the Avaaz Peace Vigil Action in front of the European Council and Commission buildings in Brussels, March 22. AP-Yonhap









With the Russian offensive stalled, Biden has warned that President Vladimir Putin was considering using chemical and biological weapons.







Officials in Washington said Tuesday that Ukraine forces have even reversed battlefield momentum and reclaimed some ground in recent days, particularly in the south of the country.







Russian troops were running out of supplies, and the military was beset by communication problems, even reduced to using mobile phones, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said.







The assessment was corroborated by Ukraine's army command which said Russian troops now had ammunition, food and fuel to last just three days.







In the southern city of Mykolaiv, one bulwark of the fierce fight-back, residents said they were determined to stay and defend it despite incessant bombardment.







At the burial of soldier Igor Dundukov, 46, his brother Sergei wept as he kissed his sibling's swollen, blood-stained face.







"We supported his commitment to defending our homeland," Sergei told AFP.







"This is our land. We live here. Where would we run to? We grew up here."






Earlier this week, she attended an event for her brand 818 Tequila at Revolve Social Club in Los Angeles.

And one day later, Kendall Jenner was seen heading to a yoga class in Beverly Hills.

The 26-year-old donned a fitted white top with a two-toned blue cardigan for the outing.

The latest: Earlier this week, she attended an event for her brand 818 Tequila at Revolve Social Club in Los Angeles. And one day later, Kendall Jenner was seen heading to a yoga class in Beverly Hills

The model showcased her lean form in black leggings as well as a flash of her flat midriff.

Kendall donned a white cropped top, adding a baby blue and dark blue cardigan with cropped sleeves.

The star wore white socks with black Birkenstocks; she donned a facemask and small framed sunglasses.

Kendall wore her red tresses center parted and pulled back into a low ponytail.

Focused: The 26-year-old donned a fitted white top with a two-toned blue cardigan for the outing

Stylish: The model showcased her lean form in black leggings as well as a flash of her flat midriff

Kendall stepped out for to visit the 818 Tequila Bar at Revolve Social Club on Monday.

The runway star decided to wear a nineties-esque look, opting for a black cropped top and a mid-length taupe colored skirt.

She rounded out her look with small framed sunglasses and black heels with her red hair loose around her.

Kendall founded the tequila brand, launching it in May 2021.

Looking great: Kendall stepped out for to visit the 818 Tequila Bar at Revolve Social Club on Monday
Below Deck Down Under finally kicked off on hayu last week, and there's already plenty of drama between the crew.

One of the main storylines so far has revolved around outspoken deckhand Ben Crawley clashing with his superior, Jamie Sayed.

And if Ben looks familiar to some viewers, it's because he already has a history on Australian television.

Familiar face: Below Deck Down Under's new deckhand Ben Crawley (pictured) has a history on television

The deckhand previously hosted the children's show What Do You Know? on ABC3 back in 2011.

The series ran for 60 episodes and saw children between the ages of 12-15 competing against each other in trivia challenges.

Unfortunately, it was a ratings flop for the network, pulling in as few as 6,000 viewers at its lowest point point.

Below Deck Down Under just launched with an explosive start, and the handsome Captain Jason Chambers already has viewers swooning.

Remember me? He previously hosted the children's show What Do You Know? (pictured) on ABC3 back in 2011

While he may be the youngest captain in the Below Deck franchise, Jason isn't afraid to do whatever it takes to ensure the guests have the best experience possible - whether that be setting up idyllic scuba diving trips or making sure there's always time to squeeze in a ride on a jet ski.

And he won't be alone in dealing with the demanding rota of charter guests, with fan favourite Aesha Scott making a welcome return as Chief Stew.

Despite having two seasons under her belt on Below Deck Mediterranean, Aesha faces a whole new set of challenges with the Down Under crew.

Exciting! Below Deck Down Under finally kicked off on hayu last week with three explosive episodes dropping at once

While her bubbly personality and charm may have got her far, she soon realises that she has her work cut out keeping everyone in check on Thalassa.

Aesha soon finds herself butting heads with the self-confessed 'arrogant' Chef Ryan McKeown, who has very particular ideas on how to run the kitchen - even if it goes against what the wealthy guests may expect.

New to yacht life is former police officer and shirtless waiter Jamie Sayed, who takes on the role of Bosun and isn't afraid to call out the others when he believes they aren't taking certain safety aspects seriously.

Below Deck Down Under is currently available to stream exclusively on hayu.
The Project host Hamish Macdonald appeared downcast as he stepped outside of his $3.8million Sydney home on Wednesday.

The 40-year-old journalist couldn't even muster a smile as he took a solo stroll down his street, days after police were called to his property following noise complaints about an 'eight hour' party on Saturday night.

Hamish is believed to have hosted the gathering at his swanky three-bedroom house in Paddington to celebrate marrying his long-term partner Jacob Fitzroy.

Tense: The Project host Hamish Macdonald, 40, appeared downcast as he stepped outside of his $3.8million Sydney home on Wednesday

During the outing, Hamish kept his head down as wondered down the road in a black T-shirt, trousers and boots.

He had a stern look on his face as he made his way out of the home, at one stage placing his head in his hands as he got some fresh air.

At least two NSW Police officers were called to the scene after complaints from neighbours over the weekend, who described Macdonald's party as 'intrusively loud'.

Low profile: During the outing, Hamish kept his head down as wondered down the street in a black T-shirt, trousers and boots

Focus: He had a stern look on his face as he made his way out of the home

Stressed: At one stage Hamish placed his head in his hands as he got some fresh air

'It's so loud. Six hours so far. I have a headache,' a disgruntled resident who lives in the same street told Daily Mail Australia when the party was still in full swing.

They added the following morning: 'It was torture for eight hours. If I had known, we would have gone to the Southern Highlands for the weekend with the children.'

Another neighbour said the speeches they overheard at Macdonald's home gave the impression it was a reception for a wedding.

Out and about: It's the first time Hamish has been seen outside of his home after the police were called to his home on Saturday night, following an 'eight-hour' party

Celbration: Hamish (left) is believed to have hosted the gathering at his swanky three-bedroom property in Paddington to celebrate marrying his long-term partner Jacob Fitzroy (right)

'I could hear the speeches but not word for word. The music was blaring like it was on in my own house. Every single room,' they said.

According to one eyewitness, the music 'suddenly went off at 11:54pm', just three minutes after officers attended Macdonald's property.

Police confirmed to Daily Mail Australia that officers were called to the home.

Loud: At least two officers were called to the scene after complaints from Paddington locals. Meanwhile, a neighbour said the speeches heard at Macdonald's home gave the impression it was a reception for a wedding, leading to rumours he and Fitzroy (left) had tied the knot

Macdonald was seen wearing a ring on his wedding finger on The Project three months ago, leading to rumours he'd secretly married Fitzroy.

While he didn't draw attention to the ring during the show, viewers were quick to speculate he may have finally sealed the deal with his partner.

Macdonald is known to be extremely private when it comes his personal life, and quit social media altogether in 2020.

Something to tell us? The journalist was seen wearing a ring on his wedding finger on The Project three months ago

The former Q&A host publicly came out as gay in June 2019 when he held hands with Fitzroy at the GQ Gentlemen's Ball.

He later said the outpouring of support he received afterwards 'was so profoundly touching'.

Fitzroy first appeared on Macdonald's Instagram account in April that year, posing alongside the Channel 10 star and friends Joanna Jolly and Lisa Millar.

'I didn't know such happiness was possible': Macdonald (left, with The Sunday Project co-host Lisa Wilkinson) was once reduced to tears when he described his relationship with Fitzroy

Public: The former Q&A host publicly came out as gay in June 2019 when he held hands with Fitzroy at the GQ Gentlemen's Ball, and later kissed in a photo booth

Macdonald was once reduced to tears when he described their special relationship.

'He's my best friend and I just feel tremendously lucky to share our lives together,' he said on The Project.

'He's... I got a bit emotional. He's really the best person I know. He makes life pretty fun. I didn't know such happiness was possible.'
Tamara Djordjevic took yet another swipe at 'husband' Brent Vitiello during a girls' night out on Wednesday's episode of Married At First Sight.

The show's brides enjoyed a night out at Brent's bar and restaurant in Sydney, but Tamara, 29, seemed completely uninterested in talking about her groom.

After being asked by Ella Ding what Brent, 33, did at the restaurant, a dismissive Tamara shrugged and said: 'I think he waits tables.'

Ouch: Tamara Djordjevic (pictured) took yet another swipe at 'husband' Brent Vitiello during a girls' night out on Wednesday's episode of Married At First Sight

In actuality, Brent co-manages the restaurant, but Tamara claimed she was unconvinced that was what he did.

'I have no f**king idea. I think he makes s**t up to sound good, to be honest. I'm so over it. I have no idea,' she added.

Her revelation left both Ella, 27, and Domenica Calarco shocked, as Tamara laughed it off and made a comment about his 'ego'.

Making fun of him: The show's brides enjoyed a night out at Brent's bar and restaurant in Sydney, but Tamara, 29, seemed completely uninterested in talking about her groom

Raising questions: After being asked by Ella Ding (right) what Brent, 33, did at the restaurant, a dismissive Tamara shrugged and said: 'I think he waits tables'

Both Ella and Domenica, 28, stared wide-eyed at Tamara as she continued to complain about Brent.

'I honestly have no idea what he does. Nah, no idea. I think he's just a hospo [hospitality] person,' she continued.

Moving the conversation along, Tamara picked up her glass of Champagne and proposed a toast 'to us five girls left'.

'I have no f**king idea. I think he makes s**t up to sound good, to be honest. I'm so over it. I have no idea,' said Tamara, pictured with 'husband' Brent Vitiello

On Tuesday's episode, Tamara told Brent that she regretted signing on for this year's season of MAFS during what was supposed to be a romantic date.

Brent had asked Tamara if she had any regrets, and she bluntly responded: 'Probably this whole experiment. From start to finish.'

'I've got a career to go home to. He's 33 years old. I'm sorry - you wait tables. Own it!' she later ranted to producers.
May Calamawy and Oscar Isaac led the stars attending the premiere of Moon Knight at the El Capitan Theatre in Los Angeles on Tuesday.

The pair were in good spirits at the star-studded event for the Marvel miniseries where Oscar was joined by his wife Elvira Lind.

May, 35, cut a glamorous figure as she walked the red carpet in a pink sleeveless gown with a plunging neckline.

Wow: May Calamawy led the stars attending the premiere of Moon Knight at the El Capitan Theatre in Los Angeles on Tuesday

The garment also featued a dark purple hemline and a sequinned detail while she added height to her frame with a pair of silver heels.

The actress, who plays Layla El-Faouly on the Disney+ series, styled her brunette locks into curls for the event.

Oscar, 43, sported a brown jacket which he paired with matching trousers and a dark brown shirt.

His wife Elvira opted for a black leather midi dress with a pleated detail and a matching pair of heels.

Star: Oscar Isaac attened the event alongside his wife Elvira Lind

Trio: May and Oscar posed for a snap with their co-star Ethan Hawke

Suave: Ethan cut a dapper fugure in a mauve suit as he was joined by his wife Ryan

Pose: May's garment also featued a dark purple hemline and a sequinned detail while she added height to her frame with a pair of silver heels (pictured with male guest)

Also in attendance at the event was Ethan Hawke who looked dapper in a mauve blazer and matching trousers with a white shirt.

Xochitl Gomez looked radiant in a dark blue dress with a sheer detail and pleated hemline.

The actress styled her locks into a ponytail and added to her outfit with a pair of heels and silver earrings.

Actress Antonia Salib looked radiant in a black sleeveless gown which featured a sequinned detail.

Diana Bermudezopted for a black dress with a grey sheer detail and shimmering embellishment.

Pals: Ethan and Oscar gave each other a hug as they met on the red carpet

Glamour: Xochitl Gomez wore a dark blue sheer dress while Antonia Salib opted for a black sleeveless gown by Isabell Kristensen Couture

Smart: Ethan, who stars as Arthur Harrow in the show, added to his outfit with a white shirt and a pair of black shoes

The show follows Marc Spector (Oscar Isaac), a mercenary with Dissociative identity disorder who is drawn into a mystery involving Egyptian gods.

Jeremy Slater (The Umbrella Academy) wrote and developed the series, with Egyptian filmmaker Mohamed Diab and Synchronic duo Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead directing the six-episode series.

There have also been rumors that surfaced last month that George Clooney is directing an episode, which would mark his first foray into the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

In addition to leading the series, Isaac is also serving as an executive producer.

Moon Knight is the first new Marvel Cinematic Universe series dropping this year, with at least three more shows dropping in 2022.

Looking good: Diana Bermudezopted for a black dress with a grey sheer detail and shimmering embellishment

Stunning: Ann Akinjirin wore a green dress with a multi-coloured sequinned detail

Couple: David Dastmalchian looked dapper in a black suit as he attended the premiere with his wife Eve

They also have Ms. Marvel, starring Iman Vellani as Kamala Khan, a.k.a. Ms. Marvel, expected in mid-2022.

Also expected for mid-2022 is She-Hulk, starring Tatiana Maslany as Jennifer Walters, a lawyer who can also turn herself into the She-Hulk like Bruce Banner.

Slated for late 2022 is Secret Invasion, which has Emilia Clarke, Olivia Colman, Christopher McDonald and Carmen Ejogo in unspecified roles.

The studio will also release the highly-anticipated The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special in December 2022.

Plot: The show follows Marc Spector (Oscar Isaac), a mercenary with Dissociative identity disorder who is drawn into a mystery involving Egyptian gods
Eddie Boxshall was busy on Instagram on Monday, giving fans an insight into his day as he hinted at returning to his career as a commodities trader.

Denise Van Outen's cheating ex shared photos from his day in East London, including a snap of a street sign for Old Broad Street.

One fan of his former love though added a critical comment to the post, telling Eddie that he cheated on 'the prettiest/charismatic/successful and LIKED ladies around,' prompting a strong response from him.

Moving on: Eddie Boxshall was busy on Instagram on Monday, giving fans an insight into his day as he hinted at returning to his career as a commodities trader

Eddie shared a series of photos under the caption: 'Old city boy meetings!!#bosh #greattobebackinthesmoke #bighandlittlehand #london #city #meetings #ec2 #lovelondon '

One photo showed the former trader making a fist for a mirror selfie before he hit Old Broad Street in London for a meeting.

A fan of Denise took umbrage at the post though, writing in the comments: '( B, In a position to cheat on One of The prettiest/charismic/successful/LIKED...Ladies around ... Ok!! eddie .. At least!!! Let it f**king drop now' [sic]

Eddie was quick to reply, telling the commenter he wasn't going to rise to her criticism: 'I'm not even going to block you! I want to hear the vile bile that comes from your mouth,' he wrote before deleting the original comment and his reply.

A dig? Denise Van Outen's cheating ex shared photos from his day in East London, including a snap of a street sign for Old Broad Street

Split: Denise announced she had split from Eddie in January after discovering he had cheated on her during their seven year relationship (pictured February 2020)

Message: Eddie also posted a snap of a British Transport Police poster on the tube which read 'we stand together against hate'

'Keep it coming please as it's people like you that need to get things off your chest. I can take it so I would rather you send it my way than to someone who is vulnerable and break them down to pieces.'

'I don't do hatred and I don't think any less of you as I don't know you personally so I won't make any negative comments Xxxxx.'

Prior to getting engaged to Denise in 2018, Eddie worked as a commodities trader but was sacked by SCB & Associates just weeks after he proposed to the TV star - for gross misconduct and material dishonesty, according to an employment tribunal hearing at the time.

Sticking up for Denise: One fan of his former love added a critical comment to the post, telling Eddie that he cheated on 'the prettiest/charismatic/successful and LIKED ladies around'

Reply: Eddie was quick to reply, telling the woman he wasn't going to rise to her criticism: 'I'm not even going to block you! I want to hear the vile bile that comes from your mouth'

He was accused of stealing customers and commercially sensitive information from his employers, where he held a 110,000 position, to set up his own rival business.

Eddie was hauled before a disciplinary panel after bosses discovered he had sent hundreds of emails containing clients contact details and confidential information from his work account to a private account.

The firm said he then sought to cover his tracks by deleting dozens of the highly sensitive emails. Eddie subsequently sued SCB for unfair dismissal, claiming he was a victim of a scheme concocted by his bosses to cut costs, but his claim failed.

Eddie moved out of Denise's home following their shock split and is now thought to be staying with friends while he works on his career.

Motto: Eddie also shared a snap of an art installation with the quote 'What's meant for you will find you even if you feel like it has already passed you'

On Monday night he was back on Instagram, sharing another scathing post about their relationship.

Eddie, 48, posted an expletive-filled message on his Instagram grid declaring: 'Unf**k yourself. Be who you were before all the stuff happened that dimmed your f**king shine.'

The post comes after Denise broke her silence on how she discovered Eddie had been cheating on her when messages flashed up on his iPad.

Message: On Monday night he was back on Instagram, sharing another scathing post about their relationship, declaring 'be who you were before all the stuff happened that dimmed your f**king shine'

Moving on: Eddie added the hashtags #don'tchange and #getyourshineback to the post

Eddie shared the post on Monday with the caption: 'Be who you were !! #dontchange #getyourshineback'.

Denise has detailed the extreme lengths Eddie went to in order to keep his affairs secret in her autobiography, A Bit Of Me: From Basildon To Broadway And Back, but the former commodities trader has since taken to Instagram to 'defend himself.'

On Sunday Eddie made a jibe at his ex-girlfriend with a thinly veiled Instagram post after she claimed he secretly stole her phone and blocked a women he had been sexting.

Hitting back: Denise has detailed the extreme lengths Eddie went to in order to keep his affairs secret in her autobiography, and he has since hit back with a series of Instagram posts

He posted a black-and-white image of Inspector Clouseau, who is described as an 'inept and incompetent police detective in the French Surete' - and the accompanying caption led many to believe he was alluding to his ex's detective skills.

It read: 'Inspector Clouseau. The 2nd worst detective in the world !!! [sic]'

'#2sides #holdinghandsup #butdefendingmyself #keepprivatelifeprivate #nolongerbeingcontrolled'.

Feeling good: On Monday morning Denise was pictured looking in great spirits as she arrived for work at the Steph's Packed Lunch studios in Leeds

Underneath, someone left the comment: 'Someone selling a book [sic]'.

Eddie's cryptic response - comprising a book and bag of money emoji - implied he believes Denise's book-writing venture is a ploy for cash.

Another penned: 'Don't listen to the noise. No one buys it, especially when someone's driven to sell books,', to which Eddie left a prayer emoji.

Despite Eddie's efforts to conceal his infidelities, Denise still found out when she was using his iPad and the messages came up, with Denise splitting from him in January after seven years together.

Denise wrote: 'There were also Instagram messages alluding to phone sex with a third woman. I quickly found the woman's profile by her screen name, only to discover I'd previously blocked her on my Instagram account - which struck me as odd.'

Hitting back: On Sunday Eddie made a jibe at his ex by posting a black-and-white image of Inspector Clouseau and the accompanying caption led many to believe he was alluding to his ex's detective skills

Interesting: Someone left the comment: 'Someone selling a book [sic]'. Eddie's cryptic response implied he believes Denise's book-writing venture is a ploy for cash

Fan support: Another penned: 'Don't listen to the noise. No one buys it, especially when someone's driven to sell books,', to which Eddie left a prayer emoji

She continued: 'This was a woman I didn't know, who'd clearly had an online connection with my boyfriend. Why would I have blocked her from my Instagram account. Straight away, I unblocked her and sent her a message saying how she knew Eddie.'

She added: 'She suggested that Eddie had probably gone into my phone and blocked her so she couldn't message me.

'She has apparently spoken to Eddie over FaceTime and text for a long period - often from our home and sometimes from my flat in Hampstead, which she seemed to think was his.

'They'd never met in person, but she said the conversations had become sexual in nature reasonably quickly - some of the stuff I found on the phone seemed to support that.

'However she was upset with Eddie because he'd apparently ghosted her.'

Despite her heartache, Denise has insisted there are 'no hard feelings' and that's she managed to move forward.

Speaking on a recent episode of Lorraine, she said: 'I'm feeling really good now because I wasn't in a good place, it was all a bit of a shock.

'These things happen. I'm not the first person it's happened to and I won't be the last, sadly. But it's life, isn't it, Lorraine?

'You just have to get on with it and there are no hard feelings on my side. It's happened and you just accept it. I can't change what's happened.'
Advertisement

Celebrities likes Jessica Chastain and Lily Collins eagerly viewed the Ralph Lauren runway collection on Tuesday at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

Jessica, 44, turned heads as she arrived in a plunging black jeweled gown, adding a black blazer with satin lapels.

Meanwhile Lily, 33, looked incredible in a fitted black and white tuxedo.

Stunning: Celebrities likes Jessica Chastain and Lily Collins eagerly viewed the Ralph Lauren runway collection on Tuesday at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City

Jessica removed her jacket in order to show her dress in all its glory.

Her auburn tresses were parted down the middle and flowed down her back and chest in loose curls; The Zero Dark Thirty star carried her essentials in a black satin clutch.

Lily Collins looked incredible in a fitted back tuxedo complete with a white shirt and black bow tie.

The Emily in Paris actress, 33, paired her suit with some black stiletto heels; She wore her brunette hair slicked back in a bun.

Auburn angel: Her auburn tresses were parted down the middle and flowed down her back and chest in loose curls

Effortlessly cool: The actress, 44, layered up her stunning look with a black blazer with satin lapels

Full glory: Jessica removed her jacket in order to show her dress in all its glory

Staple elements: Her tux was complete with a white shirt and black bow tie

Feminine flair: The Emily in Paris actress, 33, paired her suit with some black stiletto heels

Sultry gaze: As for makeup, Lily was decked out in a generous amount of pink blush and she drew attention to her eyes with a smokey eyeliner look

Lovebirds: The daughter of Phil Collins was joined at the runway show by her husband Charlie McDowell, 38

In it together: The couple posed lovingly beside one another ahead of the show.

As for makeup, Lily was decked out in a generous amount of pink blush and she drew attention to her eyes with a smokey eyeliner look.

The daughter of Phil Collins was joined at the runway show by her husband Charlie McDowell, 38.

The couple, who wed just last year, posed lovingly beside one another ahead of the show.

Zoey Deutch looked spring-ready in a pink double-breasted blazer and matching flared trousers.

Spring-ready: Zoey Deutch looked spring-ready in a pink double-breasted blazer and matching flared trousers

Funky: Janelle Monae cut a fashion-forward figure in a black velvet coat with a furry yellow collar

Bejeweled: Rachel Brosnahan showcased her slender frame in a plunging jeweled vest and a pair of black pants with velvet stripes running down each leg

The Politician star, 27, had her sleek brunette hair swept behind her and she accessorized with a pair of jewel earrings.

Janelle Monae cut a fashion-forward figure in a black velvet coat with a furry yellow collar, which she styled with a pussy bow blouse and tapered trousers.

Rachel Brosnahan showcased her slender frame in a plunging jeweled vest and a pair of black pants with velvet stripes running down each leg.

Head-to-toe black proved to be the go-to for the evening, with the likes of Melissa Barrera, Ivy Getty and Ella Balinska opting for edgy monochrome looks.

Henry Golding looked dapper in a beige suit jacket and a pair of off white trousers with a matching dress shirt.

Glitzy: Kate Bock dazzled in a glittering gold midi dress and matching strappy heels

Edgy: Head-to-toe black proved to be the go-to for the evening, with the likes of Melissa Barrera, Ivy Getty and Ella Balinska opting for edgy monochrome looks

Dapper: Henry Golding looked dapper in a beige suit jacket and a pair of off white trousers with a matching dress shirt

Style inspo: Angus Cloud, who is the face of Polo by Ralph Lauren, looked stylish in a grey tweed suit. Meanwhile, Luka Sabbat delivered some Southwestern flair by pairing a turquoise bolo tie with his black suit and denim button-up

Major: Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour rolled up to the runway show in a show-stopping black leather trench coat

Angus Cloud, who is the face of Polo by Ralph Lauren, looked stylish in a grey tweed suit. He layered the jacket over a black turtleneck and accessorized with a beanie and silver chain necklace.

Luka Sabbat delivered some Southwestern flair by pairing a turquoise bolo tie with his black suit and denim button-up.

Mayor of New York City Eric Adams made an appearance.

Evan Mock and Antoni Porowski suited up for the occasion, with Mock opting for black velvet and Porowski choosing pinstripes.

Ralph's daughter Dylan Lauren and her husband Paul Arrouet cozied up in front of the Ralph Lauren photo op before heading inside.

Represent: Mayor of New York City Eric Adams made an appearance

Suited up: Evan Mock and Antoni Porowski suited up for the occasion, with Mock opting for black velvet and Porowski choosing pinstripes

In the family: Ralph's daughter Dylan Lauren and her husband Paul Arrouet cozied up in front of the Ralph Lauren photo op before heading inside
Advertisement

Katie Price and Carl Woods were on cloud nine as they enjoyed their luxury Thailand holiday, in newly emerged photos of the break ahead of Carl's court appearance on Wednesday.

The model, 43, showed off her latest boob job in a neon print bikini as she tucked into a corn on the cob during a PDA-packed swim in the sea with her fiance, 33.

The couple used their break to Thailand as a reason to request a postponement to Carl's court appearance this month for 'abusive and threatening behaviour'.

He is now scheduled to appear to be brought before Colchester Magistrates' Court on March 23, after the couple returned from their holiday earlier this week.

Happier times: Katie Price and Carl Woods were on cloud nine as they enjoyed their luxury Thailand holiday, as new photos emerged of the break ahead of Carl's court appearance on Wednesday

In the newly released photos, taken on March 17, Katie proudly showed off the results of her recent 24th boob job in a colourful halter-neck bikini.

The string two-piece also flaunted the star's new tattoos, after she underwent two sleeve designs while on holiday in Thailand.

Styling her blonde hair into two plaits, Katie worked on her tan and frolicked in the sea with Carl, before tucking into a huge corn on the cob for a beachside snack.

Time of their lives: The couple used their break to Thailand as a reason to request a postponement to Carl's court appearance this month for 'abusive and threatening behaviour' - he is now due in court on Wednesday March 23

Tucking in: In the newly released photos, taken on March 17, Katie proudly showed off the results of her recent 24th boob job in a colourful halter-neck bikini

Love: A shirtless Carl, who has sparked pregnancy rumours with Katie during their holiday after he was previously pictured stroking her stomach, couldn't keep his hands off her

A shirtless Carl, who has sparked pregnancy rumours with Katie during their holiday after he was previously pictured stroking her stomach, couldn't keep his hands off her, pulling her in for passionate kisses.

Katie travelled to the Far East with Carl for her latest bout of cosmetic surgery - a boob job and full body liposuction procedure - and remained there for over two weeks before travelling home this week.

The couple, who got engaged last April, have experienced a tumultuous 12 months, with Carl set to face court now he has finally returned home.

Quick check: Katie was seen making sure her surgically enhance chest was remaining inside her bikini as she basked in the sunshine

New surgery: Katie travelled to the Far East with Carl for her latest bout of cosmetic surgery - a boob job and full body liposuction procedure

The 33-year-old was supposed to be brought before Colchester Magistrates' Court on March 10 to answer a public order offence charge. But after a request from his defence team the date was moved to March 23 to accommodate the couple's holiday.

A source told MailOnline: 'The change of date was instigated by the defence side. They asked for the case to be moved for a couple of weeks on the basis of him being currently in Thailand looking after Katie's mental health.

'The holiday was organised as a much needed break from it all for her.'

Happiness: Despite a tumultuous 12 months for the couple, they both looked on cloud nine as they spent time together on the stunning beach in Thailand

New ink: The tiny string two-piece also flaunted the star's new tattoos, after she underwent two sleeve designs while on holiday in Thailand

A spokesman for Woods told MailOnline: 'I can confirm this holiday was pre-booked and my client Carl and his partner Katie both having such busy schedules and pre existing work commitments that when given the opportunity to travel together and their schedules allow it they need to take advantage of it.'

The court case is expected to bring to an end long-running and denied claims of Woods 'threatening and abusive behaviour' towards Price. He had earlier accused others of creating a 'storyline' - insisting they only had an argument in public.

Woods claim he 'didn't lay a finger' on Price and said he had 'black and white proof' to clear his name after he was charged with using threatening and abusive behaviour towards her in an incident at their house in Essex.

Life at sea: Katie was pictured climbing off a jet ski as the couple enjoyed some high-adrenaline action on the water

Need for speed: Carl was in good spirits as he took his mind off of his upcoming court proceedings during the break

Own drama: Katie is facing her own court appearance next month after being charged with harassing the fiancee of her former husband Kieran Hayler

Support: Carl was supposed to be brought before Colchester Magistrates' Court on March 10 to answer a public order offence charge. But after a request from his defence team the date was moved to March 23 to accommodate the couple's holiday

The male model, who is engaged to the reality star, had been charged under section 4 of the Public Order Act.

Woods previously posted an Instagram story saying: 'Everyone that's messaging me saying 'you attacked Katie, the truth is out'. The truth is not out.' In an follow-up story, Woods wrote: 'I've tried to ignore all you trolls because I really didn't want to talk about this. But you're literally all savages and now somehow, I'm being accused of being involved and part of this little play.

'So let me say this and say this once. I found some very questionable things on Katie's phone which led to us having a shouting match in the street, then me and Katie parted ways and Katie went to her manager's house at the time. Everything after that is completely made up and b*******.

'There is no charge for any assault or control because as I've said it's b******s. But there is a charge for having an argument in a public place.

Stressed: A source told MailOnline: 'The change of date was instigated by the defence side. They asked for the case to be moved for a couple of weeks on the basis of him being currently in Thailand looking after Katie's mental health'

Relaxed 'The holiday was organised as a much needed break from it all for her,' according to sources close to the star

Court proceedings: The court case is expected to bring to an end long-running and denied claims of Woods 'threatening and abusive behaviour' towards Price

'I've been f****d. No-one else. I really won't be commenting on this again.'

In a subsequent post he added: 'O and anyone and I do mean anyone who was involved in creating that little storyline and wants to publicly argue it. Please be my guest. Because I can prove it all. Can everyone please leave me alone now and stop abusing me.'

Carl was arrested in the early hours of August 23 last year after the former model was allegedly punched in the face at her home.

Tumultuous: Woods claim he 'didn't lay a finger' on Price and said he had 'black and white proof' to clear his name after he was charged with using threatening and abusive behaviour towards her in an incident at their house in Essex

'Abusive behaviour': The male model, who is engaged to the reality star, had been charged under section 4 of the Public Order Act

Standing by her man:Woods previously posted an Instagram story saying: 'Everyone that's messaging me saying 'you attacked Katie, the truth is out'. The truth is not out.'

Moving on: Carl was arrested in the early hours of August 23 last year after the former model was allegedly punched in the face at her home

Police were called to the property at around 1.30am that morning, where he was held on suspicion of assault, theft and coercive and controlling behaviour.

Katie was taken to hospital and was pictured the following day with bruises to her face and an injured lip. Despite their troubles, the couple are understood to have resumed their relationship in November.

An Essex Police spokesman previously confirmed: 'A man arrested following an incident in Little Canfield, on August 23 2021, has been charged. Carl Woods, 33, of The Meadows, Dunmow Road, Little Canfield, has been charged under Section 4 of the Public Order Act. He is due to appear at Colchester Magistrates Court.'

Troubling time: Police were called to the property at around 1.30am that morning, where he was held on suspicion of assault, theft and coercive and controlling behaviour

Back on: Katie was taken to hospital and was pictured the following day with bruises to her face and an injured lip. Despite their troubles, the couple are understood to have resumed their relationship in November

New drama: Katie faces her own court appearance in April after being charged with harrassing Michelle Penticost - the fiancee of her former husband Kieran Hayler

Katie meanwhile is facing her own court appearance next month after being charged with harassing the fiancee of her former husband Kieran Hayler.

MailOnline has learned Katie, will appear before magistrates in Crawley in April for allegedly breaching a restraining order against Michelle Penticost.

The troubled model was arrested on January 21 over claims she sent an abusive text to Michelle.

She spent the night in a cell after being quizzed by officers at Worthing Police station who had earlier picked Katie up from her home in Horsham after a report was made.

Jetting away from it all: The troubled model was arrested on January 21 over claims she sent an abusive text to Michelle

New claims: MailOnline understands that Price may have breached the order a second time when she sent an anonymous letter attacking Michelle to a relative just before flying out to Thailand

Wish you were back here? Katie flew home from Thailand with Carl earlier this week in time for both court appearances

Katie allegedly branded flight attendant Michelle a 'c***ing w***e piece of s***' and a 'gutter s**g.

MailOnline understands that 43-year-old Price may have breached the order a second time when she sent an anonymous letter attacking Michelle to a relative just before flying out to Thailand.

A source said: 'Katie is playing a dangerous game and her actions have led her into deep trouble.

'Kieran and Michelle were deeply concerned after a relative received a letter, believing Katie is ignoring the rules of the restraining order as this is the second time it's happened in three months.

'It was sent anonymously from Heathrow on the day she left for Thailand. They know it's her and are concerned by her unpredictable behaviour.'

Still going strong: The couple packed on the PDA in multiple photo shoots during their two weeks in Thailand

Packed it in: The surgery-loving star underwent more surgery during her break which sources say was meant to recharge her after a stressful period

Kisses: The couple have barely left one another's side over the past couple of months despite the pressures on their relationship

A police source told MailOnline: 'Katie Price was arrested a few weeks ago for breaching a restraining order placed against her following an argument with the fiancee of her former partner, Kieran Hayler.

'Now she is believed to have written an anonymous note attacking Michelle Penticost via one of her family members.

'As such Katie has been charged with harassment and will appear before Crawley magistrates next month.'

Mother of five Katie was banned from contacting Michelle, 39, 'directly or indirectly' after swearing at her in a school playground in 2019.

Breaking the terms of the restraining order carries a maximum prison sentence of five years. Katie also risks jail time for being arrested while still on licence for her drink-drive shame.
They have been dating for two years.

And Jade Louise Davies and Luke Newton put on a smitten display as they attended the Bridgerton season two world premiere at the Tate Modern in London on Tuesday.

The West End star, 28, and the Bridgerton actor, 29, looked as loved-up as ever as they flocked to the event to watch the first showing of the period drama, which airs on Netflix on March 25.

Loved-up: Luke Newton and Jade Louise Davies put on a smitten display as they attended the Bridgerton season two world premiere at the Tate Modern in London on Tuesday

Family: West End star Jade is the older sister of former Love Islander Amber Davies (pictured)

Jade, who is the older sister of former Love Islander Amber Davies, was the epitome of glamour as she donned a nude floral lace layered gown.

She gave herself a few extra inches in a stunning pair of gold stilettos as she gazed lovingly at her partner.

Jade styled her brunette locks in a tight bun while she flaunted her natural beauty with a touch of blusher and a slick of coral lipstick.

She let her outfit do all the talking as she simply accessorised her glamorous ensemble with small silver hoops and a jewelled necklace.

Smitten: The Bridgerton star, 29, and the West End star, 28, looked as loved-up as ever as they flocked to the event to watch the first showing of the period drama

Couple: Luke cut a dapper figure in beige suit trousers and a white shirt, which he paired with a brown bowtie and a matching suit jacket

The star showed her support for her beau as he attended the hotly-anticipated first screening of Bridgerton season two. Luke plays Colin Bridgerton in the hit Netflix period drama.

Luke cut a dapper figure in beige suit trousers and a white shirt, which he paired with a brown bowtie and a matching suit jacket.

He swept his chocolate tresses into a slicked back style as he posed for loved-up snaps with his girlfriend on the star-studded red carpet.

Jade is a theatre actress who has tread the boards in prestigious productions like Les Miserables and Phantom Of The Opera.

Stunning: Jade, who is the older sister of former Love Islander Amber Davies, was the epitome of glamour as she donned a nude floral lace layered gown

Gorgeous: Jade styled her brunette locks in a tight bun while she flaunted her natural beauty with a touch of blusher and a slick of coral lipstick

She and Luke have been dating for at least two years, with the pair sharing snaps together on social media since 2019.

Luke was propelled to fame as part of the cast of Bridgerton, which has been renewed for a second, third and fourth season at Netflix.

Speaking at the premiere, Luke admitted that he showed his mother Michelle one of the Bridgerton episodes before he was allowed to, adding: 'So hopefully I won't get told off by Netflix'.

Reflecting on the success of season one, he added: 'It was really quite hard to comprehend actually. It really feels like we are coming to terms with it now, which feels so late with the release of season two, and to really start to get a gauge of how many people enjoy the show and success of it is mind blowing.'

Couple: The star showed her support for her actor beau as he attended the hotly-anticipated first screening of Bridgerton season two

Luke said he 'couldn't complain' when asked if his costumes for the period drama were uncomfortable compared to the women on the cast.

He added: 'We [men] feel like we can't comment no matter how long the days are in our tight ties and our boots perhaps compared to how Golda, who plays the Queen - I won't say it too loudly - she has a much more difficult time than us.'

It was recently revealed that Luke and his co-star Luke Thompson were hilariously mixed up by Bridgerton bosses.

Luke Thompson, who plays Benedict Bridgerton, was mistakenly told to get in shape for sex scenes, due to show bosses mixing him up with another cast member.

Family: Jade's younger sister Amber has also embarked on a career in the theatre following her stint on the reality show

Bosses soon realised they mixed up the 33-year-old with his namesake screen brother Luke Newton.

Nicola Coughlan, who stars as gossip columnist Penelope Featherington, revealed: 'Luke Thompson got mixed up with the other Luke  Newton  on the show.

'They offered him a personal trainer for his intimate scenes, and we don't get all the scripts at once, so he was like, "I wonder what that's going to be?".'

All was not lost though, because as soon as they realised the mix-up, the producers allowed him to keep the personal trainer.

Succes: Luke was propelled to fame as Colin Bridgerton in the hit Netflix period drama, which has been renewed for a second, third and fourth season at Netflix

Whoops: It was revealed Luke Thompson (pictured) was mistakenly told to get in shape for sex scenes, due to Bridgerton bosses mixing him up with his onscreen brother Luke Newton

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.

In the upcoming second series, Lady Danbury takes in the Sharma family - sisters Kate (Simone Ashley) and Edwina (Charithra Chandran), and their mother Lady Mary (Shelley Conn) - who travel to London from India to take part in the social season.

Both sisters quickly fall for the charms of Lord Anthony Bridgerton, played by Jonathan Bailey.

Adapted from The Viscount Who Loved Me, the new season is set to centre on Anthony's search to find a wife.

The new season of Bridgerton will be released on Netflix on March 25.
The cast of Bridgerton partied hard on Tuesday night as they celebrated the world premiere of series two of the Netflix hit show.

The new leading ladies looked gorgeous in their glam premiere gowns as they joined model Hana Cross and an array of stars at London's Sea Containers Hotel for the official afterparty.

Onscreen sisters Simone Ashley and Charitha Chandran were spotted heading to their cars in their stunning looks.

The cast of Bridgerton partied hard on Tuesday night as they celebrated the world premiere of series two of the Netflix hit show - pictured Simone Ashley and Charitha Chandran

Newcomer Simone, 26, who plays Kate Sharma, cut a dramatic figure in a structured white crop top with black lace sleeves and a matching skirt, which showcased her toned midriff.

She kept hold of her skimpy dress as she was guided to the car by an aide

Charithra Chandran, who will join the cast as Kate's sister Edwina, looked sensational in her bold white strapless dress with billowing sleeves and a red floral print pattern.

She beamed as she strutted out of the party in her towering heels after her night to remember.

Bridgerton fan: Model Hana Cross was also still looking flawless in her racy white lace dress, showing off her legs in the thigh-high split dress

Model Hana Cross was also still looking flawless in her racy white lace dress, showing off her legs in the thigh-high split dress as she headed home.

The hotly-anticipated premiere was held at the Tate Modern in London earlier in the evening with stars flocking to the event to watch the first showing of the period drama, which airs on Netflix on March 25.

Based on a series of books of the same name by Julia Quinn, Bridgerton follows the eight siblings of the Bridgerton family as they attempt to find love in Regency-era England.

Stunning: Simone, 26, who plays Kate Sharma, cut a dramatic figure in a structured white crop top with black lace sleeves and a matching skirt, which showcased her toned midriff

Inspired by the show: Hana looked gorgeous in her modern twist on regency era style

In the upcoming second series, Lady Danbury takes in the Sharma family - sisters Kate (Simone) and Edwina (Charithra), and their mother Lady Mary (Shelley Conn) - who travel to London from India to take part in the social season.

Both sisters quickly fall for the charms of Lord Anthony Bridgerton, played by Jonathan Bailey.

Adapted from The Viscount Who Loved Me, the new season is set to centre on Anthony's search to find a wife.

Partying: Rachel Stevens wowed in a chic black dress while Partying: Rachel Stevens wowed in a chic black dress

Turning heads! Munroe Bergdorf took the Bridgerton memo seriously in a ruffled pink dress and boots

But in true Bridgerton fashion, 'a considerable scandal' is promised to ensue when he gets caught up in a love triangle with the two sisters.

The new season of the show seems to be as racy as the last, with scenes of a naked Anthony covering his modesty in his bedroom and in wet clothing after falling in the river as the result of some flirtatious behaviour.

Bridgerton quickly gained the title of Netflix's most-watched series to date, garnering over 82 million views worldwide.

Bridgerton Season Two will stream on Netflix from March 25.

Family affair! Bridgerton brothers Luke Thompson and Luke Newton were both out to party
Rescuers conduct search operations at the site of a plane crash in Tengxian County in southern China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, March 22, in this photo released by Xinhua News Agency. AP-Yonhap



The crash of a Boeing 737-800 passenger jet in China's southwest started a fire big enough to be seen from space and forced rescuers to search a rugged, remote mountainside.



One day after the China Eastern Airlines flight plunged from the sky, there are more questions than answers.



What caused the crash?



The cause is unknown. Flight 5735 was at 29,000 feet (8,800 meters) on Monday afternoon when it went into a dive about an hour into its flight, according to flight-tracking website FlightRadar24.com.



The plane plunged to 7,400 feet (2,200 meters) before regaining about 1,200 feet (360 meters), then dived again. It crashed into the side of a mountain in a remote, forested area outside the city of Wuzhou.



State media and Chinese regulators gave no indication the pilot reported trouble or other information that might shed light on the cause of the disaster. The plane stopped transmitting data 96 seconds after it started to fall.



Rescue workers planned to use drones in the search for the plane's black boxes, which should contain information from instruments and sound from the cockpit.



Confirming the cause of a plane crash sometimes takes months or years due to the need to gather badly damaged debris and examine specialized technical factors.





Debris marked by numbers is seen at the site of a plane crash in Tengxian County in southern China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, March 22, in this image taken from video footage shown by China's CCTV. AP-Yonhap



How many people were aboard? Did any survive?



The plane was carrying 123 passengers and nine crew members from the city of Kunming in China's southwest to Guangzhou, an export hub in the southeast.



No survivors have been found as rescuers search the rugged, charred mountainside in the semitropical Guangxi region.



No foreigners are believed to have been on board. Two Chinese companies said their employees were on the flight, including the CFO of Guangzhou-based Dinglong Culture Co. whose interests range from mining to TV and movie production.



Family members gathered in closed-off waiting areas at the airports in both Guangzhou and Kunming. Chinese news reports said five hotels with 700 rooms had been requisitioned closer to the crash site for family members.









Is this the same Boeing model involved in earlier crashes?



No. The plane that crashed Monday was a Boeing 737-800, not the Boeing 737 Max, a newer model that was temporarily grounded worldwide following two deadly crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia.



The 737-800 is a twin-engine, single-aisle plane commonly used for short and medium-haul flights. In a typical configuration, it has 178 seats divided between the main and premium cabins. Boeing has delivered more than 5,100 of them over the past 24 years, and China is the biggest market, with nearly 1,200, according to aviation consultant IBA.





Police tape cordons off debris at the site of a plane crash in Tengxian County in southern China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, March 22, in this image taken from video footage shown by China's CCTV. AP-Yonhap



What is the history of this model?



The plane has been flying since 1998 and has an excellent safety record, said Hassan Shahidi, president of the Flight Safety Foundation. They have been involved in 22 accidents that damaged the planes beyond repair and killed 612 people. Boeing NG or Next Generation 737s, including the 737-800, have flown more than 116 million flights.



In 2019, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration ordered inspections of 38 Boeing 737 NG planes, including 737-800s, because of cracks found in a part that connects wings to the fuselage. The FAA did not ground the planes.



After this week's crash, China Eastern grounded all of its 737-800s, China's Transport Ministry said.



Boeing 737 Max jets, which first flew in 2017, were grounded after crashes in 2018 and 2019. In each case, flight-control software pushed the nose down shortly after takeoff, and pilots couldn't regain control. That software is not on 737-800s.



Airlines were allowed to resume using the 737 Max after Boeing redesigned the system in a process overseen by regulators from the United States, Europe, China and the Middle East.



What is the risk for Boeing?



Boeing clearly would suffer if Monday's crash is attributed to a malfunction of the plane, but experts downplay the likelihood of a design flaw because 737-800s have been carrying passengers for nearly a quarter-century with relatively few safety issues.



Still, the crash could further jeopardize Boeing's reputation in China, which only recently certified the revamped 737 Max. Before the crashes in 2018 and 2019, China was the biggest market for the Max and a crucial source of cash for the company.





Zhu Tao, director of China's Aviation Safety, Civil Aviation Administration, speaks at a news conference following the China Eastern plane crash, at a hotel in Wuzhou, in southwestern China's Guangxi province, March 22. AP-Yonhap
Laura Hamilton seriously let her hair down on Tuesday as she pole danced in a Spanish bar, two months after announcing her split from husband Alex Goward.

The A Place In The Sun presenter, 39, slipped into a stylish midi dress with a daring thigh split as she showcased her moves in Valencia.

She put on a leggy display in the animal printed number as she jumped up on the bar and spun herself around the pole.

Work it! Laura Hamilton, 39, pole danced in a bar in Valencia and shared the fun video on Instagram after her shock split from husband Alex Goward

The television personality, who is currently filming for the series in the holiday destination, went barefoot for her fun night out.

She flicked her blonde locks back and pulled herself up as she penned: 'Tonight is really getting strange!'

Laura first shared the news of her separation from her husband of ten years back in January, admitting it 'wasn't something she ever thought she'd be saying.'

Fun! She put on a leggy display in the animal printed number as she jumped up on the the bra and spun herself around the pole

Following the news of the separation it was reported that her increased time at home due to the pandemic was a reason for their split.

A friend told The Sun On Sunday, 'Laura is often away abroad travelling with her work on A Place In The Sun, so the couple werent used to spending so much time together under one roof.

'She really wanted to make the marriage work for the sake of the family. She threw her all into saving the relationship, but in lockdown they reached crisis point.

Oh no: Following the news of the separation it was reported that her increased time at home due to the pandemic was a reason for their split (pictured last June)

Wow! The A Place In The Sun presenter slipped into a stylish midi dress with a daring thigh split before showing off her moves

Newly single: Laura first shared the news of her separation from her husband of ten years back in January

Upset: The blonde beauty penned in her statement: 'This isn't something I ever thought I'd be saying but, after 13 years of being together Alex and I have separated

Laura married insurance broker Alex in 2012 three years after they started dating and they share two children, eight-year-old son Rocco and a daughter Tahlia, six.

The blonde beauty penned in her statement: 'This isn't something I ever thought I'd be saying but, after 13 years of being together Alex and I have separated.

'Our children are and always will be our number one priority and we would respect privacy for our family at this time.'

Alongside her message to fans, Laura shared an image which read: 'Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened.'
Naomi Campbell has revealed she was nervous to shoot her March British Vogue cover where she posed with her baby daughter for the first time.

The supermodel, 51, previously admitted she felt 'blessed' to have welcomed a biological daughter last year, at the age of 50.

Speaking to British Vogue's Editor-in-chief Edward Enninful at the Forces Of Fashion conference, the star discussed the cover and whether she would like to see her daughter have a career in the fashion industry.

Candid: Naomi Campbell has revealed she was nervous to shoot her March British Vogue cover where she posed with her baby daughter for the first time

She said: 'I was nervous because knowing you all for so many years and decades, seeing me in that different mode of being a mother, I was a bit nervous.

'So when my daughter arrived I was just like "oh my goodness", but she looked straight down the lens, and then she turned and that's the picture you all see. It was so quick.'

Asked how she would feel if her daughter went into the fashion industry, Naomi said: 'She can do whatever she wants.

'I'll never ever tell my child, or any child, that they can't do what they want to. But just like I had to finish school, she has to finish school.'

Motherhood: The supermodel, 51, previously admitted she felt 'blessed' to have welcomed a biological daughter last year, at the age of 50

Interview: The star spoke to British Vogue's Editor-in-chief Edward Enninful at the Forces Of Fashion conference

Event: Edward looked smart in a dark blue suit as he departed the event alongside socialite Emma Weymouth

Naomi said: 'I was nervous because knowing you all for so many years and decades, seeing me in that different mode of being a mother, I was a bit nervous'

Naomi cut an elegant figure for the event where she donned a black jacket with a v-neckline.

The model also sported a pair of black trainers while she wore her locks in a poker straight style.

Edward looked smart in a dark blue suit as he departed the event alongside socialite Emma Weymouth.

Naomi added: 'So when my daughter arrived I was just like "oh my goodness", but she looked straight down the lens, and then she turned and that's the picture you all see. It was so quick'

Wow: Emma donned a black and grey mini dres with a turtle neck and lace detail

Looking good: The former Strictly Come Dancing contestant styled her tresses into a ponytail

The former Strictly Come Dancing star donned a black and grey mini dres with a turtle neck and lace detail.

She added height to her frame with a pair of black heels and styled her tresses into a ponytail.

Speaking previously about her daughter to British Vogue, Naomi said: 'I'm lucky my little one loves to travel like me  no whimpering taking off or landing.

'She's a good girl: she sleeps very well, she hardly ever cries and I'm told she's very alert for her age.'

'She's just started waving, which is fun. She laughs a lot. She's almost talking. I think she might walk before she crawls. And she's got six teeth already.'
There have been rumours that she has split from her husband James Cook after eight years of marriage.

And Poppy Delevingne once again ditched her wedding ring as she stepped out for the Ralph Lauren runway collection on Tuesday at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

The model, 35, looked nothing short of sensational as she stepped out in a plunging strapped black jumpsuit, which she paired with open-toe heels.

Gorgeous: Poppy Delevingne stunned as she stepped out for the Ralph Lauren runway collection on Tuesday at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City

Bare: The model, 35, headed out without her wedding ring on amid split rumours with her husband James Cook

Gorgeous: She looked nothing short of sensational as she stepped out in a plunging strapped black jumpsuit, which she paired with open-toe heels

She accessorised her figure-hugging ensemble with a black choker necklace while she clutched a round handbag adorned with feathering detail and a gold chain strap.

Poppy flaunted her natural good looks with a smokey-eye make-up palette while she styled her signature golden tresses back into a tight high ponytail.

The outing, where she stepped out without her wedding ring, comes as rumours about her marriage to James Cook continue to swirl.

Last month, the Mail On Sunday reported that Poppy and her husband, 42, 'have consciously uncoupled' and have been little more than friends for the best part of a year.

Chic: She accessorised her figure-hugging ensemble with a black choker necklace while she clutched a round handbag adorned with feathering detail and a gold chain strap

Wow! Poppy flaunted her natural good looks with a smokey-eye make-up palette while she styled her signature golden tresses back into a tight high ponytail

Couple: Last month, the Mail On Sunday reported that Poppy and her husband, 42, 'have consciously uncoupled' and have been little more than friends for the best part of a year

In February, she flashed her ringless hand to photographers at Perfect Magazine's London Fashion Week party at The Standard, days after also being pictured without the sparkler at family friend Joan Collins ' anniversary bash.

Poppy looked gorgeous on the night in a striking black and white gown, enjoying the celeb-packed bash with friends Georgia May Jagger and Iris Law.

However, there was no sign of her unique blue diamond engagement and wedding rings or James, whom she married in 2014 at a lavish Knightsbridge church ceremony, with sisters Cara and Chloe Delevingne among her 17 bridesmaids.

The same month, Poppy's husband James was posting from Chamonix, France, enjoying a ski trip with friends.

Split? The outing, where she stepped out without her wedding ring, comes as rumours about her marriage to James Cook continue to swirl

All smiles: But Poppy appeared to be in good spirits as she cut an elegant figure in her all-black ensemble for the show

Stylish: Poppy flaunted her toned back as her jumpsuit featured a daringly low cut back

Meanwhile, Poppy recently posted about her week at Chiva-Som in Thailand, a health resort whose clients include Elle Macpherson, Naomi Campbell and Kylie Minogue. Tellingly, she appeared to be enjoying the solo tip while James celebrated his 43rd birthday back home.

'If you're searching for peace, a sanctuary where you can really stop & just BE, if you want to come home feeling like the BEST version of yourself (basically brand spanking new or a little like Beyonce must feel most days) then Chiva Som is for you,' she wrote on Instagram.

The Mail On Sunday reported last month that before the transformative Thailand trip, Poppy moved into her own place in West London, with an insider spilling: 'James is refusing to accept things are over.'

James, who works for his family's aerospace company, proposed in October 2012 with a bespoke jewellery box by Anya Hindmarch. It contained an engagement ring alongside pictures of the couple and the words 'will you marry me?' embossed in gold.

Show: Poppy painted her nails black to match her stylish all-black outfit

Ringless: Poppy has been seen at numerous outings without wearing her wedding ring in recent weeks

Wedding bells: The couple married in 2014 at a lavish Knightsbridge church ceremony, with Poppy's sisters Cara and Chloe Delevingne among her 17 bridesmaids

Poppy went on to have three different elaborate hen parties around the globe with her celebrity friends including Rosie Huntingdon-Whiteley and Sienna Miller ahead of the lavish London nuptials.

The couple, who were together five years before they wed and do not have children, with Poppy musing back in 2017 about her family plans, saying: 'You know when you have a roast dinner? My favourite bit of a roast dinner is the potatoes and gravy.

'So what I do is I eat around them and save them till last, because thats the best bit. And thats kind of how I feel about having children.

Where's the diamond? In February, she flashed her ringless hand to photographers at Perfect Magazine's London Fashion Week party at The Standard

Dazzler: James proposed in October 2012 with a bespoke jewellery box by Anya Hindmarch, containing a blue diamond engagement ring (pictured in 2018)

Speaking to The Times last month Poppy didn't mention James, instead focusing on her close relationship with older sister Chloe, 35, and younger sibling Cara, 29.

'When my sisters and I get together it's hard for anybody else to keep up, we're very loud, finish each other's sentences and it can get quite intense,' she admitted, before revealing that she had moved in with her older sister Chloe and her family during the 2020 lockdown.

Elsewhere at the Ralph Lauren show, celebrities Jessica Chastain and Lily Collins eagerly viewed the Ralph Lauren runway collection on Tuesday.

Jessica, 44, turned heads as she arrived in a plunging black jeweled gown, adding a black blazer with satin lapels.

Meanwhile Lily, 33, looked incredible in a fitted black and white tuxedo.

Stunning: Celebrities likes Jessica Chastain and Lily Collins eagerly viewed the Ralph Lauren runway collection on Tuesday at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City

Jessica removed her jacket in order to show her dress in all its glory.

Her auburn tresses were parted down the middle and flowed down her back and chest in loose curls; The Zero Dark Thirty star carried her essentials in a black satin clutch.

Lily Collins looked incredible in a fitted back tuxedo complete with a white shirt and black bow tie.

The Emily in Paris actress, 33, paired her suit with some black stiletto heels; She wore her brunette hair slicked back in a bun.

Auburn angel: Her auburn tresses were parted down the middle and flowed down her back and chest in loose curls

Effortlessly cool: The actress, 44, layered up her stunning look with a black blazer with satin lapels

Full glory: Jessica removed her jacket in order to show her dress in all its glory

Staple elements: Her tux was complete with a white shirt and black bow tie

Feminine flair: The Emily in Paris actress, 33, paired her suit with some black stiletto heels

Sultry gaze: As for makeup, Lily was decked out in a generous amount of pink blush and she drew attention to her eyes with a smokey eyeliner look

Lovebirds: The daughter of Phil Collins was joined at the runway show by her husband Charlie McDowell, 38

In it together: The couple posed lovingly beside one another ahead of the show.

As for makeup, Lily was decked out in a generous amount of pink blush and she drew attention to her eyes with a smokey eyeliner look.

The daughter of Phil Collins was joined at the runway show by her husband Charlie McDowell, 38.

The couple, who wed just last year, posed lovingly beside one another ahead of the show.

Zoey Deutch looked spring-ready in a pink double-breasted blazer and matching flared trousers.

Spring-ready: Zoey Deutch looked spring-ready in a pink double-breasted blazer and matching flared trousers

Funky: Janelle Monae cut a fashion-forward figure in a black velvet coat with a furry yellow collar

Bejeweled: Rachel Brosnahan showcased her slender frame in a plunging jeweled vest and a pair of black pants with velvet stripes running down each leg

The Politician star, 27, had her sleek brunette hair swept behind her and she accessorized with a pair of jewel earrings.

Janelle Monae cut a fashion-forward figure in a black velvet coat with a furry yellow collar, which she styled with a pussy bow blouse and tapered trousers.

Rachel Brosnahan showcased her slender frame in a plunging jeweled vest and a pair of black pants with velvet stripes running down each leg.

Head-to-toe black proved to be the go-to for the evening, with the likes of Melissa Barrera, Ivy Getty and Ella Balinska opting for edgy monochrome looks.

Henry Golding looked dapper in a beige suit jacket and a pair of off white trousers with a matching dress shirt.

Glitzy: Kate Bock dazzled in a glittering gold midi dress and matching strappy heels

Edgy: Head-to-toe black proved to be the go-to for the evening, with the likes of Melissa Barrera, Ivy Getty and Ella Balinska opting for edgy monochrome looks

Dapper: Henry Golding looked dapper in a beige suit jacket and a pair of off white trousers with a matching dress shirt

Style inspo: Angus Cloud, who is the face of Polo by Ralph Lauren, looked stylish in a grey tweed suit. Meanwhile, Luka Sabbat delivered some Southwestern flair by pairing a turquoise bolo tie with his black suit and denim button-up

Major: Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour rolled up to the runway show in a show-stopping black leather trench coat

Angus Cloud, who is the face of Polo by Ralph Lauren, looked stylish in a grey tweed suit. He layered the jacket over a black turtleneck and accessorized with a beanie and silver chain necklace.

Luka Sabbat delivered some Southwestern flair by pairing a turquoise bolo tie with his black suit and denim button-up.

Mayor of New York City Eric Adams made an appearance.

Evan Mock and Antoni Porowski suited up for the occasion, with Mock opting for black velvet and Porowski choosing pinstripes.

Ralph's daughter Dylan Lauren and her husband Paul Arrouet cozied up in front of the Ralph Lauren photo op before heading inside.

Represent: Mayor of New York City Eric Adams made an appearance

Suited up: Evan Mock and Antoni Porowski suited up for the occasion, with Mock opting for black velvet and Porowski choosing pinstripes

In the family: Ralph's daughter Dylan Lauren and her husband Paul Arrouet cozied up in front of the Ralph Lauren photo op before heading inside
Gemma Arterton donned all black to transform into her criminal character Dianne as she filmed scenes for the new series Culprits in Manchester on Wednesday.

In a first look at the eight-part drama, the Bond actress, 36, donned all black as she jumped out an exploded bank wall with a bag of cash in dramatic scenes.

Disney+'s Culprits follows the aftermath of a heist, when the crew have gone their separate ways but are being targeted one-by-one by a killer.

Star: Gemma Arterton donned all black to transform into her criminal character Dianne as she filmed scenes for the new series Culprits in Manchester on Wednesday (pictured arriving on set)

The series boasts a cast that includes Gemma, Kirby Howell-Baptiste, Niamh Algar, Eddie Izzard, Hollyoaks' Karl Collins and Nathan Stewart-Jarrett as the main part.

For the day of filming she donned a black jumpsuit with a stab vest, chunky boots and face mask as she jumped out of the side of a bank with her cash.

She was earlier seen arriving to set bundled up in a black padded jacket and wore pins in her brunette hair to hold it back.

Tense: In a first look at the eight-part drama, the Bond actress, 36, donned all black as she jumped out an exploded bank wall with a bag of cash in dramatic scenes

Plot: Disney+'s Culprits follows the aftermath of a heist, when the crew have gone their separate ways but are being targeted one-by-one by a killer

Strong: Elsewhere Karl was seen carrying a machine gun and dressed in black overalls as he strolled along the street, ready to get in on all the action

Elsewhere Karl was seen carrying a machine gun and dressed in black overalls as he strolled along the street, ready to get in on all the action.

Other scenes saw a whole group of police officers walking around and one running away when the explosion occurs.

Generation's Nathan Stewart-Jarrett was revealed in the lead role of Joe when the show was announced as one of Disney vertical Star's debut UK originals last year.

On set: The series boasts a cast that includes Gemma (pictured), Kirby Howell-Baptiste, Niamh Algar, Eddie Izzard, Hollyoaks' Karl Collins and Nathan Stewart-Jarrett as the main part

Stepping out: She was earlier seen arriving to set bundled up in a black padded jacket and wore pins in her brunette hair to hold it back

Woah! Other scenes saw a whole group of police officers walking around and one running away when the explosion occurs

Actor: Karl (pictured) is known for his television roles as Danny Glaze in The Bill, Louis Loveday in Hollyoaks, and Shaun Temple in Doctor Who

New role: The Kings Man and Black Narcissus star Arterton will play Dianne, a member of a heist crew

Stars: Generation's Nathan Stewart-Jarrett was revealed in the lead role of Joe when the show was announced as one of Disney vertical Star's debut UK originals last year

Tense times: For the day of filming she donned a black jumpsuit with a stab vest, chunky boots and face mask as she jumped out of the side of a bank with her cash

Story: It's been written and directed by J Blakeson, the Harrogate-born writer and filmmaker behind The Disappearance of Alice Creed and 2020 feature thriller I Care A Lot

It's been written and directed by J Blakeson, the Harrogate-born writer and filmmaker behind The Disappearance of Alice Creed and 2020 feature thriller I Care A Lot.

Blakeson also directed the BBC series Gunpowder in 2017, about the gunpowder plot and starring the likes of Game of Thrones' Kit Harington, Liv Tyler and Mark Gatiss.

Principal photography for Culprits began in the UK last month and as well as Manchester, the series is also being filmed in Cambridge, Ontario.

Pro: Blakeson also directed the BBC series Gunpowder in 2017, about the gunpowder plot and starring the likes of Game of Thrones' Kit Harington, Liv Tyler and Mark Gatiss

Exciting: Principal photography for Culprits began in the UK last month and as well as Manchester, the series is also being filmed in Cambridge, Ontario

Ready for action: One of the male actors wore a light grey overalls and carried a black helmet on set

Weapons: The actor carried a huge black gun and wore dark sunglasses

Got the money: She walked along with her bag

High drama: The police woman actress ran from the explosion

Stroll: The male actor was strolling with his gun and keeping an eye on things

The show is set to air next year.

Culprits is executive produced by Stephen Garrett, created by Blakeson and produced by Morenike Williams (Killing Eve).

It is produced by Garrett's UK drama indie Character 7 and executive produced by Johanna Devereaux for Disney+.

Here we go: Culprits is executive produced by Stephen Garrett, created by Blakeson and produced by Morenike Williams (Killing Eve)

Coming soon: It is produced by Garrett's UK drama indie Character 7 and executive produced by Johanna Devereaux for Disney+

Explosion: One scene filmed in Manchester showed a police woman jumping out the way of the force

All-black ensemble: She carried the bag of money down the road in a large black and blue bag
Love Is Blind star Abhishek 'Shake' Chatterjee has defended himself in a dramatic new interview after claiming the cast of the Netflix show dumped him as a friend when they saw the public's perception of him.

The veterinarian was the breakout star of the second series of the dating show when it aired this month, becoming the villain of the show due to his behaviour toward love match Deepti Vempati.

Speaking on the The Domenick Nati Show this week, Shake admitted he was 'hurt' that his ex was 'playing up the victim thing' and that his co-stars had aligned themselves with her during the explosive reunion episode.

'Playing the victim': Love Is Blind star Abhishek 'Shake' Chatterjee has defended himself in a dramatic new interview, saying he's hurt his ex Deepti Vempati 'is playing up the victim thing'

Shake said he hasn't spoken to Deepti or any members of the cast since the reunion episode was filmed a month ago.

'I'm hurt that she's playing up the victim thing so hard when we had so much fun and I took such good care of her,' Shake told the YouTube show of his ex, who confessed to MailOnline this month that she was left 'broken' by his cruel behaviour.

During the reunion episode, viewers saw the cast and hosts Nick and Vanessa Lachey round on Shake for his treatment of Deepti and his comments on the show about women's weight.

'I felt that people on the show, they became people that would say anything and do anything to protect their image,' Shake said when asked about what happened during the reunion.

Drama: Shake said he hasn't spoken to Deepti or any members of the cast since the explosive reunion episode was filmed a month ago

'I started seeing it and calling it out and they did not like it. People were lying through their teeth to protect their image and align with whoever they will align with.'

'No new true information was revealed during the show but once people saw public perception they aligned themselves with either this person or that person, or "this person is America's sweetheart now we're on this person's team".'

'"This person's a villain, we need to stand against him." These were the same people who I was spending time with the week before the show came out, they all knew all of this but once they knew who was going to be hated and who was going to be loved they jumped ship and aligned themselves.'

The reunion also saw Kyle Abrams admit he should have proposed to Deepti, with fans speculating in the weeks since the episode aired that the pair are now an item.

Going official: Shake has since moved on from Deepti, debuting his new relationship with girlfriend Emily last week

Shake said he was hurt by Kyle's declaration, claiming: 'I was literally watching the Super Bowl with him and Deepti and Shane one week before that so to feel like when the cameras are on you're going to say something like that, why didn't you tell me the 50 times we hung out before?'

'That was saved on purpose to be a dramatic statement at my expense.'

Shake later claimed that Kyle, who's own own on-show romance with Shaina Hurley fizzled out in the honeymoon stages, only went on the show to find fame.

'Everyone does to some degree, no one goes into it blind but some people made it their whole personality and that person was Kyle for sure. I lost a lot of respect for the guy.'

'I know he applied for ten different shows... and taking acting lessons,' Shake claimed.

Rumours: The reunion also saw Kyle Abrams admit he should have proposed to Deepti, with fans speculating in the weeks since the episode aired that the pair are now an item (pictured in a recent TikTiok video shared by Kyle)

Shake has since moved on from Deepti, debuting his new relationship with girlfriend Emily last week.

He admitted during the interview that 'I'll say absolutely' he found the blonde more attractive than his ex but blasted accusations that he only finds skinny girls attractive.

'Absolutely not, I find all types of women attractive, that's one of the big misrepresentations of the show. I am so attracted to all types of women, I love it all but when it comes to something like marriage, I do have a stronger preference for a certain type.'

'I'm a scrawny dude. I wish I was big enough and strong enough to pick up a thicker woman. As a man I love to pick women up, I love to pick Emily up. I feel masculine when I do it.

'The woman might want that too, to be picked up, it's a two way street. I'm too skinny and too weak in a lot of ways.'

No idea: Shake said he was hurt by Kyle's declaration, claiming: 'That was saved on purpose to be a dramatic statement at my expense'

When asked if he and Deepti had had sex on the show, Shake explained why he didn't pursue a physical connection with his ex.

'There were many opportunities but I felt in my heart of hearts that I didn't want my body to make a promise to her body. Us guys, sex is one thing but for women.'

'As a scientist I'll say this - women release a lot of oxytocin when they have sex and oxytocin is a love hormone so when you have sex with a woman there's a chemical bonding that happens that is very powerful and I didn't think it was right of me to do that when I was having such a tough time committing to the relationship'.

'I wasn't attracted enough. As a man having sex isn't that big a deal, you can have sex with someone who you don't necessarily feel is going to be a long term partner. I wasn't attracted enough to make that commitment to her'.

While Shake and Deepti's romance didn't last beyond the show, it was revealed this week that two couples  Jarrette and Iyanna and Nick and Danielle  have filed the legal paperwork to make their TV weddings official, with The Cook County Court in Illinois holding marriage records for both couples from June 2021.
Aidan Turner stepped out with his wife Caitlin Fitzgerald - who pushed the same pram she was pictured with last month - for a low-key stroll in east London on Wednesday.

The bearded Poldark star, 38, and actress, also 38, - who have not publicly confirmed if they have had a child - looked happy and relaxed as they got some light exercise.

The pair married in a secret Italian wedding in August 2020, but their nuptials didn't come to light until March 2021, when sources claimed they decided to wed because they 'didn't want to wait' during the Covid pandemic.

Family: Aidan Turner stepped out with his wife Caitlin Fitzgerald - who pushed a pram - for a low-key stroll in London on Wednesday

Caitlin looked casually chic in a khaki jacket and cream shirt which she teamed with loose fitting trousers and chunky black boots.

Meanwhile Aidan made the most of the warmer weather in a navy T-shirt and black jeans as he held his dog's lead.

MailOnline has contacted representatives for Aidan Turner and Caitlin Fitzgerald for comment.

Stepping out: The bearded Poldark star, 38, and actress, also 38, - who have not publicly confirmed if they have had a child - looked happy and relaxed as they got some light exercise

Together: The pair married in a secret Italian wedding in August 2020, but their nuptials didn't come to light until March 2021

Notoriously private Aidan and Caitlin married in a secret Italian wedding in August 2020, but the ceremony didn't come to light until March 2021.

Sources claimed they decided to wed because they 'didn't want to wait' during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the actor's parents were the only family members in attendance.

Pictures taken on August 8 showed the newlyweds days after tying the knot as they wore their wedding rings while enjoying a romantic alfresco dinner date at Pierluigi's restaurant in Rome.

Style: Caitlin looked casually chic in a khaki jacket and cream shirt which she teamed with loose fitting trousers and chunky black boots

Fresh air: Meanwhile Aidan made the most of the warmer weather in a navy T-shirt and black jeans as he held his dog's lead

Aidan's parents did not join the couple for their dinner date, despite flying out from their home in Dublin to watch the couple exchange their vows.

An insider revealed that although the couple wanted an intimate ceremony, Aidan insisted on his beloved mother Eileen and father Pearse being present.

'Aidan wouldn't have got married without them,' they said. 'The rest of the family heard about the wedding afterwards. Of course, everyone is delighted for him.'

The couple had flown to Ireland prior to the pandemic so that Caitlin could meet his relatives, and it seems she made quite the impression on his family.

Couple: Sources claimed they decided to wed because they 'didn't want to wait' during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the actor's parents were the only family members in attendance

'She's lovely and they're very happy,' the source said. 'And of course, she had Irish roots, so that helps as well.

'They're no different to any young couple in love. They didn't want to wait until after Covid to get married, so they just went ahead. Good luck to them.'

It was claimed the couple were eager to wed as soon as their schedules cleared, but kept their nuptials quiet due to their private lifestyles.

A source told The Sun: 'The couple are both madly in love and couldn't wait to get hitched when their schedules allowed. They're both very private and have kept the ceremony very much under wraps, but he has been seen taking lockdown walks with his wedding ring on show.

Love: Pictures taken on August 8 showed the newlyweds days after tying the knot as they wore their wedding rings while enjoying a romantic alfresco dinner date at Pierluigi's restaurant in Rome

Out and about: An insider revealed that although the couple wanted an intimate ceremony, Aidan insisted on his beloved mother Eileen and father Pearse being present

Romance: The couple had flown to Ireland prior to the pandemic so that Caitlin could meet his relatives, and it seems she made quite the impression on his family

Love life: Dublin native Aidan was rumoured to be engaged to a secret girlfriend in April 2018, shortly before he started dating Caitlin

'Aidan hasn't been in a rush to get wed and has very much been waiting for 'The One' to come along  and anyone who sees them knows they're the perfect match.'

Caitlin, whose dad Des FitzGerald is the former CEO of ContiGroup's ContiSea unit, was born and raised in Maine, before relocating to Massachusetts and New York City for her education.

Dublin native Aidan was rumoured to be engaged to a secret girlfriend in April 2018, shortly before he started dating Caitlin.

While little was known about his rumoured fiancee, she was believed to be ten-years his junior and based in the south-west of England.
Blanca Blanco posed in a burnt orange mini dress on Tuesday evening on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood.

The Tale of Tails was celebrating a new billboard for her heartbreaking memoir Breaking The Mold which details her impoverished childhood and rise to fame.

It became so chaotic with fans coming by to say hello to the pinup and cars stopping to honk and make cat calls that the Los Angeles police - LAPD - were called.

'Loud crowd but thanks to the cops for understanding and not cancelling event ,' wrote the partner of The Deer Hunter actor John Savage in her Instagram caption.

Her big night: Blanca Blanco posed in a burnt orange mini dress on Tuesday evening on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood

Cops: Three police officers showed up after sunset as officers asked questions but no arrests were made, an eyewitness told DailyMail.com

Three police officers showed up after sunset as officers asked questions but no arrests were made, an eyewitness told DailyMail.com.

Blanca was seen smiling with the officers after the crowd died down.

Onlookers shared with that the police asked people to disburse and for cars to move on as rush hour was in full force and the event was causing a disturbance.

The event with red and orange balloons and a line of over 25 people waiting for a book signing caused drivers to stop and look and ask questions, an eyewitness said.

All OK: Blanca was seen smiling with the officers after the crowd died down. 'Loud crowd but thanks to the cops for understanding and not cancelling event,' said the partner of The Deer Hunter actor John Savage on Instagram

No harm done: The siren walked alone after chatting up the LAPD after dark

'A lot of people were stopping to see what the balloons and photographers were there for, some people thought it was for a movie,' said an eyewitness.

'One guy kept honking, it was noisy. Then people honked at him, and it made chaos.'

Blanca looked very leggy in the dress as she added a Valentino belt and Louboutin high heels with her hair brushed back.

An author: The Tale of Tails was celebrating a new billboard for her heartbreaking memoir Breaking The Mold which details her impoverished childhood and rise to fame

Fans lined up: It became so chaotic with fans stopping by to say hello to the pinup and cars stopping to honk and make cat calls that the police were called

A fan and friend: The looker seen with Lauren McCawley as she wore all black

This sighting comes after the beauty talked about Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston and Lady Gaga at a book signing in Los Angeles last week.

Blanco chatted up at her book signing at Chevalier's Books in Los Angeles.

During a Q&A session, the actress commented on her past brushes with A list stars.

'He was a gentleman and kind,' said the Tale Of Tales star about Pitt whom she met in 2019 when at a private party in Hollywood for the film If Beale Street Could Talk. She also shared that the Oscar-winner was 'shy' and talked about how much he loved producing movies.

Before the cops came: Blanca came by SUV and photographers were on standby but when the sun went down there was chaos

Brad had not gone out much because he was in the process of divorcing Angelina Jolie and wanted to keep a low profile. A photo of him at the time was very rare, even if it was blurry and at an event.

So the photo of the two went viral and she was in shock.

'It just shows you the power of the internet that one little photo like that can be circulated and all these assumptions can be made,' said Blanca who was in a Fendi dress and Balmain boots.

So what was Pitt really like?

Brad moment: During a Q&A session, the actress commented on her past brushes with A list stars. 'He was a gentleman and kind,' said the Tale Of Tales star about Brad Pitt whom she met in 2019 when at a private party in Hollywood for the film If Beale Street Could Talk

Done: Brad and Angelina Jolie divorced in 2019 after getting married in France in 2014; seen here in 2011

The way they were: Together they raised six children; seen here in Los Angeles

'He was incredibly polite, I was taken aback by that, like a gentleman from another era,' noted Blanco.

'We talked for about 15 minutes about films and he says he loves bringing stories to the screen, he relishes his role as movie producer. And he walked me through the process a bit, saying he reads a lot of books and scripts to find the right content.'

Pitt has produced Moneyball, The Departed and 12 Years A Slave, to name a few.

But there was no romance.

Her book is in stores now

'No, there was no flirting or romance, it was just a friendly conversation, he was unassuming and almost shy,' she added.

'But I can understand he has not really dated since he split from Angelina, so everyone wants to know who's next? What is he up to? It's the nature of our culture.'

She also met Jennifer Aniston

And when asked who the most 'real' celebrity is that she has ever met in her 20 years in Hollywood, she said Lady Gaga.

'I met her a few years ago when she released an album. We were at a the Four Seasons hotel,' she said.

'We have some friends in common so she came over to our table and talked. When I spoke with her about acting she gave me her full attention and she told me how much passion she has for acting.

'I was really impressed with her because she spoke from the heart and was so genuine. She was not a star but a real person, there was no wall, she was not guarded at all. I am happy to see she is having so much success, she was fascinating to watch in House Of Gucci.'

Chevalier's Books is located at 133 N Larchmont Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90004.
Jeff Brazier treated sons Freddie and Bobby to an outdoor lunch on Tuesday after paying tribute to Jade Goody on the 13th anniversary of her tragic death.

The former Big Brother contestant passed away aged 27 in March 2009 following a short battle with cervical cancer, weeks after marrying Jack Tweed.

Sons Freddie, 17, and Bobby, 18 - Jade's children with ex-partner Jeff - were among those to pay their respects by sharing a picture of their late mother on social media.

Quality time: Jeff Brazier treated sons Freddie and Bobby to an outdoor lunch on Tuesday after paying tribute to Jade Goody on the 13th anniversary of her tragic death

In an accompanying post, Bobby wrote: 'There's birth and there's death but life is eternal. Energy cannot be created nor destroyed. She's left her human form. She's home.

'That's the way it goes, God bless her my nan and my brother.'

The pair were later joined by their TV presenter dad, 42, who appeared to lift their spirits as they dined al fresco after posting their tribute.

Jeff previously praised his sons for their resilience in dealing with Jade's death at such a young age.

Moving: Sons Freddie, 17, and Bobby, 18 - Jade's children with ex-partner Jeff - were among those to pay their respects by sharing a picture of their late mother on social media

Close: TV presenter Jeff placed a hand on Freddie's shoulder as they relaxed over lunch at a local cafe

Speaking to The Sun in 2020, he said: 'My gosh, they are just so resilient. Of course they were so young when she died and it pains me to think they never knew Jade in the same way we all did.

'When Bobby landed his first fashion magazine cover [for Man About Town] he said he hoped his mum was looking down on him and smiling. And Im sure she was.

'When I look at Bobby and Freddie I see their mothers colourful personality shining through. I mean, Jade was one of the biggest characters out there and the boys have both inherited that from her.'

Proud dad: Jeff previously praised his sons for their resilience in dealing with Jade's death at such a young age

Upbeat: Bobby cracked a smile as he passed the time with Freddie and Jeff after paying tribute to his mother on social media

All together: Father and sons enjoyed some time together on an otherwise sad day for the family

He also admitted that he felt 'a lot of male pride' after Jade died of cervical cancer when Bobby was just five and Freddie was four.

'I wasnt in a relationship with Jade when she died so I felt I didnt deserve to grieve and instead threw myself into caring for the kids and looking after their emotions.

'I had a lot of male pride in those days and didnt want to show my vulnerability, but now I know that only alienated me from family and friends.'

Speaking out: Jeff previously admitted to feeling 'a lot of male pride' after Jade died of cervical cancer when Bobby was just five and Freddie was four

Candid: 'I wasnt in a relationship with Jade when she died so I felt I didnt deserve to grieve and instead threw myself into caring for the kids and looking after their emotions,' he explained

Jeff paid tribute to Freddie at the end of September, on his 16th birthday.

Sharing a series of snaps of him surrounded by balloons, Jeff wrote a sweet caption to go alongside it: 'Its not for parents to define a childs purpose but if this kid doesnt help thousands of people somehow Ill be very surprised.

'Id give anything to have @freddybraz1ers sense of adventure, energy and enthusiasm to have fun and depth and sensitivity around caring for others.

'Excited for him to get the academic phase done this year so he can unleash his creative gifts on the world.'
Advertisement

Amelia Gray Hamlin has become one of the top supermodels in the world at the age of 20 after launching her career in 2021.

And on Tuesday the brunette bombshell daughter of Real Housewives Of Beverly Hills vet Lisa Rinna and LA Law actor Harry Hamlin shared another top campaign she landed this month.

The pouty SKIMS model was seen in a black bikini to model white cowgirl boots while on the beach in Malibu.

Top gal: Amelia Gray Hamlin has become one of the top supermodels in the world at the age of 20 after launching her career in 2021. And on Tuesday the brunette bombshell daughter of Real Housewives Of Beverly Hills vet Lisa Rinna and LA Law actor Harry Hamlin shared another top campaign she landed this month

The looker shared a number of eye-popping images from the Sonora Boots shoot which was snapped by the Morelli Brothers.

She was in the surf, in the sand, then later on a busy Hollywood street as she flaunted her incredibly lean and toned figure.

Hamlin explained that she was introducing the Sonora Spring and Summer 2022 collection.

On the Sonora Boots Instagram page, Amelia wrote, 'STOPPPPPP I CANT WAIT FOR THIS' as her sister Delilah added, 'YES SIS.'

The styling was by Marc Eram, hair by Laura Rugetti, makeup by Dillon Pena and video by Creativep Studio.

Yee haw! The pouty SKIMS model was seen in a black bikini to model white cowgirl boots while on the beach in Malibu

In September it was claimed Rinna was happy her daughter Amelia split from Scott Disick.

The TV star replied to an Instagram fan account Queens of Bravo after they shared news of the model's breakup and she posted a thinly-veiled response.

Lisa simply reacted to the news with a single smiling emoji.

Ameila and Scott, 38, split after 11 months together, and it's said she was 'the one who ended things'.

Amelia and Scott's split 'wasn't related' to the messages he is alleged to have sent over social media about Kourtney Kardashian's public displays of affection with her new boyfriend Travis Barker.

Smoking hot: The looker shared a number of snaps from the Sonora Boots shoot which was snapped by the Morelli Brothers. She was in the surf, in the sand, then later on a busy Hollywood street as she flaunted her incredibly lean and toned figure

Happy for her success: Hamlin explained that she was introducing the Sonora Spring and Summer 2022 collection. On the Sonora Boots Instagram page, Amelia wrote, 'STOPPPPPP I CANT WAIT FOR THIS' as her sister Delilah added, 'YES SIS'

Instead, their break-up is said to have been coming for a while.

A second source explained: 'They're both taking it in stride.'

News of their split emerged shortly after Amelia posted a cryptic message on social media.

The model was seemingly hinting at a split when she posted a telling quote online. She said: 'Never settle for less. Not with your jobs, your friends, and especially not with your heart. Continue to seek what you are looking for and do not shrink yourself for the sake of other people. You deserve the best.'

Something's in the air in Hollywood: While on a busy city street she had on a metallic top, blue skirt and over-the-knee cowgirl boots in white

Hitting the town in super style: And in this image, the rising star is seen getting out of a car with a cap and sunglasses on

Light it up: Models are not seen smoking in ads much these days, but Amelia gave it a try for Sonora Boots

In the caption, Amelia added: 'This is it.'

Lisa previously revealed she was shocked and 'nervous' when she found out Amelia was dating Scott after she initially claimed they were 'just friends'.

She said: 'I guess a couple of days ago, Amelia sends me a video of Amelia and Scott on the beach.'

Erika Jayne then asked: 'So there's something to it?', to which she replied: 'Yes.'

Lisa has made no secret that she didn't approve of the couple's 18-year age gap.

She admitted: 'It's a what the f*** moment. You're like, 'What the f***?' She's 19. He's 37 with three kids.'

The 57-year-old author insisted her husband was 'calm about it', however she was 'a lot more nervous'.
Love Islands Anna Vakili has admitted that she thought that she and her sister Mandi 'were going to die' after a terrifying experience with Brazilian bum lift surgery.

The influencer, 31, and her sibling jetted to Turkey for the procedure, but Anna explained that she instantly regretted the secret surgery that left her looking 'like Frankenstein'.

Speaking on their podcast Sisters In The City, Anna said that her first bum lift surgery in London made her feel 'more confident' but she 'went too far' after choosing to go under the knife abroad.

'We thought we were going to die': Love Islands Anna Vakili, 31, has detailed her 'horror' bum lift surgery in Turkey as she warned fans that 'it's cheap for a reason'

The siblings said they wanted 'a cheaper option' but were left 'covered in blood like a horror movie' from the risky surgery.

Anna confessed: 'The second time we did it, we went abroad to Turkey and me and Mandi thought we were going to die abroad. It was very scary.'

'After our surgery, within a day or two, we were in a hotel room about to faint with blood all over the hotel room.

Scary: Anna said that her first bum lift surgery in London made her feel 'more confident' but she 'went too far' after choosing to go under the knife abroad (Pictured August 2021)

Horrifying: Her sister Mandi (left) agreed as she detailed: 'We ended up like Frankenstein. The second time we went, we wanted a cheaper option so we went abroad'

She continued: 'It was like a murder scene, we both collapsed in hotel room. Bandaged up, bleeding... it was like a horror movie.'

Her sister Mandi agreed as she detailed: 'We ended up like Frankenstein. The second time we went, we wanted a cheaper option so we went abroad. Do your research thoroughly - if it's cheap, it's cheap for a reason.'

Hoping to teach her fans from her horrifying experience she warned them of the risks.

Throwback: The influencer instantly regretted the secret procedure that left her 'like Frankenstein' as she urged fans to 'do their research' (Pictured left in 2018 and right in 2021)

Anna added: 'So many people die. It's one of the most invasive surgical procedures a BBL and it's one of the most complicated and dangerous ones, so don't take the decision lightly.

'Without surgery you have a body that's not full of scars.'

In a post to Instagram she penned: 'Ive kept quiet up until now - but Ive finally opened up about what surgical procedures Ive had, any regrets/mistakes, my thoughts on surgery and this constant pressure we have in this day and age to look a certain way.

'I was always worried about talking about this topic - but I do wish sometimes I did certain things differently so if me being open can guide someone when making this life changing decision then its for the best.

'Everyone should do whatever makes them happy as long as they are doing it for themselves, theyve done their research and are sure of their decision.'

Anna added: 'So many people die. It's one of the most invasive surgical procedures a BBL and it's one of the most complicated and dangerous ones'

Now and then: Anna revealed that she's reversing 100,000 of plastic surgery and body modifications (pictured left March 2021; pictured right May 2019)

Last year, Anna revealed that she was reversing 100,000 of plastic surgery and body modifications.

The former Love Island star admitted that she has gone 'a lot more towards the natural look' and hopes reversing some of her procedures will help to achieve her desired appearance.

Anna revealed that she will undergo a boob reduction and will have her porcelain veneers removed, but won't ditch her lip filler or regular Botox injections.

Anna told The Sun: 'If I could get all the money back that I've spent on fillers, hair extensions, my teeth, boobs and everything like that  I would be rich!!!'

'I feel like everything is a trend and everyone is going more towards the natural look now!' insisted the reality star.
She's been getting on with business as usual amid the nasty fallout of her split from Eddie Boxshall.

Yet Denise Van Outen showed the strain as she left the Steph's Packed Lunch studios in Leeds on Wednesday looking sombre.

The presenter, 47, was dressed to impress in her vibrant ensemble, yet failed to raise a smile as she left work, amid a barrage of jibes from her cheating ex partner.

Strained: Denise Van Outen showed the strain as she left the Steph's Packed Lunch studios in Leeds on Wednesday looking sombre

Denise lit up the pavement as she paired vibrant yellow trousers with a baby pink blouse and court heels.

She added some glamour with dazzling chandelier earrings and partially concealed her face with oversized shades.

Her outing came as Eddie kept busy on Instagram, giving fans an insight into his day as he hinted at returning to his career as a commodities trader.

Chic: The presenter, 47, was dressed to impress in her vibrant ensemble, yet failed to raise a smile as she left work, amid a barrage of jibes from her cheating ex partner

He shared photos from his day in East London, including a snap of a street sign for Old Broad Street.

One fan of his former love though added a critical comment to the post, telling Eddie that he cheated on 'the prettiest/charismatic/successful and LIKED ladies around,' prompting a strong response from him.

Eddie shared a series of photos under the caption: 'Old city boy meetings!!#bosh #greattobebackinthesmoke #bighandlittlehand #london #city #meetings #ec2 #lovelondon '

Moving on: Denise's outing came as Eddie kept busy on Instagram, giving fans an insight into his day as he hinted at returning to his career as a commodities trader

One photo showed the former trader making a fist for a mirror selfie before he hit Old Broad Street in London for a meeting.

A fan of Denise took umbrage at the post though, writing in the comments: '( B, In a position to cheat on One of The prettiest/charismic/successful/LIKED...Ladies around ... Ok!! eddie .. At least!!! Let it f**king drop now' [sic]

Eddie was quick to reply, telling the commenter he wasn't going to rise to her criticism: 'I'm not even going to block you! I want to hear the vile bile that comes from your mouth,' he wrote before deleting the original comment and his reply.

A dig? Denise's cheating ex shared photos from his day in East London, including a snap of a street sign for Old Broad Street

Split: Denise announced she had split from Eddie in January after discovering he had cheated on her during their seven year relationship (pictured February 2020)

Message: Eddie also posted a snap of a British Transport Police poster on the tube which read 'we stand together against hate'

'Keep it coming please as it's people like you that need to get things off your chest. I can take it so I would rather you send it my way than to someone who is vulnerable and break them down to pieces.'

'I don't do hatred and I don't think any less of you as I don't know you personally so I won't make any negative comments Xxxxx.'

Prior to getting engaged to Denise in 2018, Eddie worked as a commodities trader but was sacked by SCB & Associates just weeks after he proposed to the TV star - for gross misconduct and material dishonesty, according to an employment tribunal hearing at the time.

Sticking up for Denise: One fan of his former love added a critical comment to the post, telling Eddie that he cheated on 'the prettiest/charismatic/successful and LIKED ladies around'

Reply: Eddie was quick to reply, telling the woman he wasn't going to rise to her criticism: 'I'm not even going to block you! I want to hear the vile bile that comes from your mouth'

He was accused of stealing customers and commercially sensitive information from his employers, where he held a 110,000 position, to set up his own rival business.

Eddie was hauled before a disciplinary panel after bosses discovered he had sent hundreds of emails containing clients contact details and confidential information from his work account to a private account.

The firm said he then sought to cover his tracks by deleting dozens of the highly sensitive emails. Eddie subsequently sued SCB for unfair dismissal, claiming he was a victim of a scheme concocted by his bosses to cut costs, but his claim failed.

Eddie moved out of Denise's home following their shock split and is now thought to be staying with friends while he works on his career.

Motto: Eddie also shared a snap of an art installation with the quote 'What's meant for you will find you even if you feel like it has already passed you'

On Monday night he was back on Instagram, sharing another scathing post about their relationship.

Eddie, 48, posted an expletive-filled message on his Instagram grid declaring: 'Unf**k yourself. Be who you were before all the stuff happened that dimmed your f**king shine.'

The post comes after Denise broke her silence on how she discovered Eddie had been cheating on her when messages flashed up on his iPad.

Message: On Monday night he was back on Instagram, sharing another scathing post about their relationship, declaring 'be who you were before all the stuff happened that dimmed your f**king shine'

Moving on: Eddie added the hashtags #don'tchange and #getyourshineback to the post

Eddie shared the post on Monday with the caption: 'Be who you were !! #dontchange #getyourshineback'.

Denise has detailed the extreme lengths Eddie went to in order to keep his affairs secret in her autobiography, A Bit Of Me: From Basildon To Broadway And Back, but the former commodities trader has since taken to Instagram to 'defend himself.'

On Sunday Eddie made a jibe at his ex-girlfriend with a thinly veiled Instagram post after she claimed he secretly stole her phone and blocked a women he had been sexting.

Hitting back: Denise has detailed the extreme lengths Eddie went to in order to keep his affairs secret in her autobiography, and he has since hit back with a series of Instagram posts

He posted a black-and-white image of Inspector Clouseau, who is described as an 'inept and incompetent police detective in the French Surete' - and the accompanying caption led many to believe he was alluding to his ex's detective skills.

It read: 'Inspector Clouseau. The 2nd worst detective in the world !!! [sic]'

'#2sides #holdinghandsup #butdefendingmyself #keepprivatelifeprivate #nolongerbeingcontrolled'.

Feeling good: On Monday morning Denise was pictured looking in great spirits as she arrived for work at the Steph's Packed Lunch studios in Leeds

Underneath, someone left the comment: 'Someone selling a book [sic]'.

Eddie's cryptic response - comprising a book and bag of money emoji - implied he believes Denise's book-writing venture is a ploy for cash.

Another penned: 'Don't listen to the noise. No one buys it, especially when someone's driven to sell books,', to which Eddie left a prayer emoji.

Despite Eddie's efforts to conceal his infidelities, Denise still found out when she was using his iPad and the messages came up, with Denise splitting from him in January after seven years together.

Denise wrote: 'There were also Instagram messages alluding to phone sex with a third woman. I quickly found the woman's profile by her screen name, only to discover I'd previously blocked her on my Instagram account - which struck me as odd.'

Hitting back: On Sunday Eddie made a jibe at his ex by posting a black-and-white image of Inspector Clouseau and the accompanying caption led many to believe he was alluding to his ex's detective skills

Interesting: Someone left the comment: 'Someone selling a book [sic]'. Eddie's cryptic response implied he believes Denise's book-writing venture is a ploy for cash

Fan support: Another penned: 'Don't listen to the noise. No one buys it, especially when someone's driven to sell books,', to which Eddie left a prayer emoji

She continued: 'This was a woman I didn't know, who'd clearly had an online connection with my boyfriend. Why would I have blocked her from my Instagram account. Straight away, I unblocked her and sent her a message saying how she knew Eddie.'

She added: 'She suggested that Eddie had probably gone into my phone and blocked her so she couldn't message me.

'She has apparently spoken to Eddie over FaceTime and text for a long period - often from our home and sometimes from my flat in Hampstead, which she seemed to think was his.

'They'd never met in person, but she said the conversations had become sexual in nature reasonably quickly - some of the stuff I found on the phone seemed to support that.

'However she was upset with Eddie because he'd apparently ghosted her.'

Despite her heartache, Denise has insisted there are 'no hard feelings' and that's she managed to move forward.

Speaking on a recent episode of Lorraine, she said: 'I'm feeling really good now because I wasn't in a good place, it was all a bit of a shock.

'These things happen. I'm not the first person it's happened to and I won't be the last, sadly. But it's life, isn't it, Lorraine?

'You just have to get on with it and there are no hard feelings on my side. It's happened and you just accept it. I can't change what's happened.'
She has become well known for wearing eye-catching outfits in nearly every episode of the comedy-drama program Emily In Paris.

And on Wednesday morning, Lily Collins proved that she could pull off a seriously stylish look off the series with a trio of photos that were shared to her Instagram account.

The 33-year-old performer was seen posing in a vibrantly colored outfit while preparing to appear on an episode of Live With Kelly And Ryan in all of her shots. On the show, she talked about her husband

Ooh la la! Lily Collins proved that she could pull off a seriously stylish look with a trio of photos that were shared to her Instagram account on Wednesday

Collins rocked a bright orange double-breasted coat on top of a beige sweater while posing for the shots.

The Mank actress also wore a matching pair of wide-legged pants as she prepared to appear on the program.

The Golden Globe-nominated performer added a bit of shine to her outfit with several pieces of gold jewelry.

Her lovely brunette locks fell onto her shoulders and complimented the lighter shade of her clothing.

Standing out: Collins rocked a bright orange double-breasted coat on top of a beige sweater while posing for the shots

Sparkle: The Golden Globe-nominated performer added a bit of shine to her outfit with several pieces of gold jewelry

Collins also wrote that she needed 'an extra boost of Vitamin C this morning' in her post's caption.

A video of the actress making her way onto the show's set was shared on the program's official Instagram Story on Wednesday.

The performer has appeared on Live With Kelly And Ryan on several occasions in the past.

She previously discussed her engagement to her now-husband, Charlie McDowell, during an episode that aired in October of 2020.

Showing up: A video of the actress making her way onto the show's set was shared on the program's official Instagram Story on Wednesday

During the episode, Collins noted that, although she did not expect her partner to propose during a road trip to the American Southwest, she felt as if he would pop the big question sometime or another.

'I was very surprised as to when and where it would happen...It was just a matter of when, really,' she said.

The performer also expressed that she felt as if she would end up spending the rest of her life with McDowell right after their first encounter.

'It was kind of one of those situations where I knew the second that I met him, that I wanted to be his wife one day.'

Excited: During the episode, Collins noted that, although she did not expect her partner to propose during a road trip to the American Southwest, she felt as if he would pop the big question sometime or another

Love at first sight: The performer also expressed that she felt as if she would end up spending the rest of her life with McDowell right after their first encounter

Collins and McDowell, 38, initially met while working on the set of the unreleased film Gilded Rage in 2019.

The two eventually began dating and they went Instagram official with their relationship that August.

The happy couple went on to become engaged and they held their wedding ceremony in Colorado in September of last year.
Christine Quinn was typically glamorous as she stepped out for ice cream in Los Angeles on Wednesday.

The Selling Sunset bombshell, 33, looked flashy in a strapless denim mini dress and black platform Mary Jane-style shoes.

The pinup wore her blonde bob style silky straight with a precise center part, letting her loose locks blow in the wind.

Glam girl: Christine Quinn was typically glamorous as she stepped out for ice cream in Los Angeles on Wednesday

Christine's dress hugged her curvy figure, highlighting her cleavage with a straight and low-cut neckline.

It was studded with gems along the top and bottom hemlines and pulled in at her trim waist.

Ever fashionable, Quinn teamed the number with a classic brown Louis Vuitton purse with a gold chain strap.

She also added large gold hoops and $30 Giant Vintage 'Sonic Blue' sunglasses that were reminiscent of Y2K style.

Making a statement: The Selling Sunset bombshell, 33, looked flashy in a denim mini dress and black platform Mary Jane-style shoes

The real estate guru piled on jewelry with multiple rings, a bracelet and a necklace.

The mother-of-one was spotted out and about by herself as she indulged in a small cup of ice cream.

Her makeup was applied beautifully to her gorgeous visage, complete with contoured cheeks and a shimmery nude lip stain.

She made sure not to leave out a flawless French manicure painted on almond-shaped nails.

Pretty: She wore her blonde bob style silky straight with a precise center part, letting her loose locks blow in the wind. The reality star also sported $30 Giant Vintage 'Sonic Blue' sunglasses

Coming soon: Christine's outing comes just one month ahead of Selling Sunset's season five Netflix premiere

The outing comes just one month ahead of Selling Sunset's season five Netflix premiere.

The cast has teased the forthcoming season, which will be out of April 22.

To get fans excited for the imminent debut, Netflix recently posted Selling Sunset's official release date and a cast photo, featuring Chrishell Stause, Christine, Mary Fitzgerald, Heather Rae Young, Amanza Smith, Maya Vander and Davina Potratz.

Last season's new addition Emma Hernan and Vanessa Villela as well as the Oppenheim Group's latest agent Chelsea Lazkani can also be seen front and center.

In the image, the luxury realtors, who work at one of the Hollywood Hills and Sunset Strip's most dominant brokerages, all wore various pink outfits.

Upcoming: Meanwhile Quinn has been busy promoting her book How to be a Boss B*tch ahead of its official release

Meanwhile Quinn has been busy promoting her book How to be a Boss B*tch ahead of its official release.

On Tuesday she shared an image of the literary project and wrote in her caption, 'My book is coming soon. Make sure you preorder your copy! Link in bio!!'

The author empowers women to 'stop apologizing for who you are and get the life you want.'

Additionally, the stunner is also committed to her life as a mother to her nine-month-old son Christian Georges Dumontet, whom she shares with husband Christian Richard.
Gordon Ramsay sent one of his chefs to help out a short-staffed school dinner lady after she made a plea on live radio.

The celebrity chef, 55, was a guest on the BBC Radio 2 Breakfast Show on Wednesday morning when dinner lady Tina rang in to ask for help as two other kitchen-based staff members were off sick at Edward Peake Middle School in Bedfordshire.

Gordon was quick to answer Tina's plea and rang one of his cooks, Rob Roy Cameron, who headed over to the educational establishment to lend a hand, and he also put on a cooking demonstration for the pupils.

Helping hand: Gordon Ramsay, 55, sent one of his chefs to help out a short-staffed school dinner lady after she made a plea on live on Vernon Kay's BBC Radio 2 show on Wednesday

During a call to the radio, Tina said: 'Im cooking here on my own. Im working here in a school kitchen and my chef has gone off sick, Ive got another one off with Covid and just wondered if Gordon would help me today, give me a hand after his interview?'

Gordon said: 'Darling if I did have the time Id be in Bedfordshire, I promise you, in a heartbeat, but I can send a chef there if you wish?'

Tina replied: 'Oh yeah, lovely, thatd be great.'

Sending in a pro: Gordon was quick to answer Tina's plea and rang one of his cooks, Rob Roy Cameron, who headed over to Edward Peake Middle School in Bedfordshire.

Team members down: Tina rang in to ask for help as two other kitchen-based staff members were off sick

Presenter Vernon Kay - who is sitting in for Zoe Ball, who has COVID - then asked Gordon if he was serious about sending a chef.

He replied: 'Of course Im serious, I dont want the kids to go [hungry].

'Honestly Ill make a call now and send one of my guys there. I promise you.'

Pals: Rob posed with the dinner ladies after arriving and also put on a cooking demonstration for the pupils

Plea: Tina said: 'Im cooking here on my own. Im working here in a school kitchen and my chef has gone off sick, Ive got another one off with Covid and just wondered if Gordon would help'

Question: Presenter Vernon Kay - who is sitting in for Zoe Ball, who has COVID - then asked Gordon if he was serious about sending a chef

Saving the day: Gordon replied to Vernon: 'Of course Im serious, I dont want the kids to go [hungry]'

Hot stuff: Rob posed with the staff at the school after cooking up lunch for the pupils to enjoy in their break

Tina said: 'Oh my God, OK. Theres only me, at the moment, theres only me and Ive made 195 muffins and Im prepping the veg. Ive got the potatoes in. Im on it.

'He can help me serve as well because Im on my own serving so thatd be great.'

Gordon said: 'If you need help, I promise you Ill get help sorted out this morning.'

Delighted: Radio host Vernon took to Twitter after the show to show his gratitude for Gordon and what had happened on the show

Busy man: Gordon was spotted whizzing off in his chauffeur driven after his appearance on BBC Radio 2

In style: He showed off his chic but casual style in a black short sleeved T-shirt and navy blue jeans

The Kitchen Nightmares star kept his word and later in the day, the school tweeted: 'We had a very exciting visitor today at Edward Peake. Rob Roy Cameron was sent to us by @GordonRamsay all thanks to our wonderful chef for asking Gordon Ramsey to come help her in the kitchen on @BBCRadio2 #TeamPeake #GordanRamsey #RobRoyCameron #HugeThankyou #BBCRadio2.'

They added: 'Heres an appreciation post for @GordonRamsay @BBCRadio2 and Chef Rob Roy Cameron for helping us out in the kitchen today! #TeamPeake #AppreciationPost #ThankYou (sic)'

Radio host Vernon tweeted: 'Well this is amazing!!! Bravo #TeamRamsay @GordonRamsay @BBCRadio2 breakfast!!', before adding: Phenomenal!! The power of @BBCRadio2 breakfast!!'

Ready to roll: The television star wore a pair of blue mirrored sunglasses and carried an ice coffee in his hand before going off to enjoy the rest of his day

Gordon was spotted whizzing off in his chauffeur driven after his appearance on BBC Radio 2.

He showed off his chic but casual style in a black short sleeved T-shirt and navy blue jeans.

The television star wore a pair of blue mirrored sunglasses and carried an ice coffee in his hand before going off to enjoy the rest of his day.
Sean Penn's charity has agreed a deal with Mayor of Krakow Jacek Majchrowski to supply aid to Ukrainian refugees as they continue to escape the war-torn country.

The actor and director, 61, has been filming a VICE documentary on Russia's invasion of Ukraine in recent months and, after a brief return to Los Angeles this month, he stepped out in Krakow, Poland today to announce his plans.

His charity CORE (Community Organized Relief Effort), which was founded in 2010 to help earthquake victims in Haiti, will open a centre in the city which will provide support for refugee care.

Support: Sean Penn's charity CORE is to supply aid to Ukrainian refugees as they escape the war-torn country, with the star announcing the news in Krakow, Poland on Wednesday

Local staff will be employed and they will be given full training in how to help people in need as they cross the border from their homeland roughly 500 miles to the east.

CORE will also fund the renovation of buildings designated to house up to 50 refugees in Krakow.

Poland and Romania have taken the majority of refugees since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in February this year.

Agreement: The actor and director, 61, shook hands with Mayor of Krakow Jacek Majchrowski (right) as they took their seats at a press conference

While Sean returned to Los Angeles this month prior to his trip to Poland this week, he previously revealed he walked miles to the Polish border earlier this year as he filmed a VICE documentary on Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The star said both he and his film crew decided to abandon their car and pursue on foot after seeing the thousands of Ukrainian residents fleeing for safety, with queues stretching for miles.

Taking to Twitter at the end of February, Sean described how cars were filled with women and children, with their only possession of value being the vehicle they were travelling in.

Breaking news: Sean and Mayor of Krakow Jacek Majchrowski seen together at City Hall after signing the humanitarian contract

Raising awareness: Sean has been filming a VICE documentary on Russia's invasion of Ukraine in recent months (pictured in Poland today)

Sharing a picture of himself dragging a taped up suitcase, Sean wrote: 'Myself & two colleagues walked miles to the Polish border after abandoning our car on the side of the road.

'Almost all the cars in this photo carry women & children only, most without any sign of luggage, and a car their only possession of value.'

Sean has been filming the documentary about the escalating tension in Ukraine since November last year.

Signing: They were seen signing the deal at the event (R-L Jacek, Sean and Vice-Mayor of Krakow Andrzej Kulig)

Assistance: Local staff will be employed and they will be given full training in how to help people in need as they cross the border from their homeland roughly 500 miles to the east

He has called President Vladmir Putin 's war on Ukraine a 'brutal mistake'.

Sean wrote on social media last month: 'Already a brutal mistake of lives taken and hearts broken, and if he doesnt relent, I believe Mr. Putin will have made a most horrible mistake for all of humankind. President Zelensky and the Ukrainian people have risen as historic symbols of courage and principle.'

He added: 'Ukraine is the tip of the spear for the democratic embrace of dreams. If we allow it to fight alone, our soul as America is lost.'

Cause: While Sean returned to LA this month prior to his trip to Poland this week, he previously revealed he walked to the Polish border earlier this year as he filmed his documentary

Sean flew into the capital of Ukraine, Kyiv, in February and was seen sitting front and centre at a government press briefing mere hours into the invasion as he represented VICE for the documentary about the war, which Putin deemed a 'special military operation'.

The documentary is a VICE Studios production, 'in association with VICE World News and Endeavor Content,' according to a spokesman for the media group.

In a translated Facebook post, the Ukrainian government said it was grateful for Sean being there and he was lauded as being more courageous than Western leaders.

On deck: The star flew into the capital of Ukraine, Kyiv, last month and was seen sitting front and centre at a government press briefing mere hours into the invasion

In action: The documentary - which has been in the works for months and has focused on the rising tensions in the region - is a VICE Studios production

'An American actor and filmmaker, Oscar winner Sean Penn arrived to Ukraine,' the statement read.

'The director specially came to Kyiv to record all the events that are currently happening in Ukraine and to tell the world the truth about Russia's invasion of our country.

'Sean Penn is among those who support Ukraine in Ukraine today. Our country is grateful to him for such a show of courage and honesty.

Listening: Sean has been filming the documentary about the escalating tension in Ukraine since November last year, pictured with President Volodymyr Zelensky last month

Doing his best: Their conversation was muted but Zelensky, a former comedian and actor himself, wrote in a caption: 'The more people know about the war in the Ukraine'

'This morning the director visited the Office of the President and visited the press briefing of the advisor of the head of the Office of the Head of State Mikhail Podolak and the Vice Prime Minister - the Minister of the Reintegration of temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine Irina Vere uk.

'He spoke to journalists, to our military, saw how we defend our country.

'Sean Penn demonstrates the courage that many others, especially western politicians lack.'

Fleeing: Sean previously revealed he walked miles to the Polish border as he filmed the VICE documentary on Russia's invasion of Ukraine

Harrowing scenes: The actor said both he and his film crew decided to abandon their car and pursue on foot after seeing the thousands of Ukrainian residents fleeing for safety

He then met with President Volodymyr Zelensky, who posted a video of their meeting on his Instagram account.

Their conversation was muted but Zelensky, a former comedian and actor himself, wrote in a caption: 'The more people know about the war in the Ukraine, the higher the likelihood of stopping Russia!'

The United States government officially announced on Wednesday that it believed members of Russia's armed forces have committed war crimes in its invasion of Ukraine.

'Our assessment is based on a careful review of available information from public and intelligence sources,' said Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

'As with any alleged crime, a court of law with jurisdiction over the crime is ultimately responsible for determining criminal guilt in specific cases.'

The announcement was issued as he traveled with President Joe Biden to Europe for a N.A.T.O summit.

He said the number of civilian casualties was climbing every day that Russia's brutal attacks were allowed to continue

Horrific: A school destroyed by Russia's aerial bombardment in Kharkiv, Ukraine. On Wednesday the US said it had assessed that war crimes were being committed in Ukraine

Devastation: The Russians have been accused of deliberately targeting civilian areas with missile and artillery attacks

'We've seen numerous credible reports of indiscriminate attacks and attacks deliberately targeting civilians, as well as other atrocities,' said Blinken, citing Ukrainian officials who had counted 2,400 dead in the besieged city of Mariupol.

'Russia's forces have destroyed apartment buildings, schools, hospitals, critical infrastructure, civilian vehicles, shopping centres, and ambulances, leaving thousands of innocent civilians killed or wounded.'

Terrifying: A woman injured earlier this month in Russian shelling of Mariupol's maternity hospital stands outside amid the carnage

The Russian ground invasion remains largely stalled. Fierce Ukrainian resistance and a steady flow of weapons from outside the country combined with poor planning by Moscow and failing morale mean its main advance is still about 10 miles from the capital Kyiv.

U.S. defense officials say Russia is instead relying on long range artillery, missile and rocket attacks.

The result is a terrible toll on Ukraine's civilian population. And the United Nations estimates more than 3.5 million people have fled the country since the beginning of the invasion.

The World Health Organization said it had verified 64 attacks on healthcare facilities, including ambulances.
The Queen Gambit's Anya Taylor Joy has posed in a sparkling diadem for a regal duel British Vogue cover with Queen Elizabeth II to mark the Platinum Jubilee.

The actress, 25, was one of the cover stars of the April issue of the fashion bible, as she posed with a perfect replica of the George IV State Diadem tilted atop her platinum locks.

Anya opened up about struggling with her rise to stardom during an interview with the magazine and revealed she would meditate by going clubbing at 11am while shooting Netflix hit The Queen's Gambit in Berlin.

Regal: The Queen Gambit's Anya Taylor Joy has posed in a sparkling diadem for regal duel British Vogue cover with Queen Elizabeth II to mark the Platinum Jubilee

Anya, who graced the magazine in a silver semi-sheer dress, was just one of the cover stars, as The Queen appeared in photographic form on the cover of Vogue for the first time, in a special issue celebrating her 70 years on the throne.

Speaking to the magazine, Anya touched on her about her love for raving, dealing with The Queen's Gambit fame and her new film, The Northman.

Anya explained that following the stratospheric rise of her star, she still loves to go to a club and dance - but more as a form of meditation now.

While in Berlin filming The Queen's Gambit, on Sunday' Anya would go to a club by herself, she explained: 'At 11:30 in the morning, dance until 8pm...

Glam: Anya opened up about struggling with her rise to stardom during an interview with the magazine and revealed she would meditate by going clubbing at 11am while shooting Netflix hit The Queen's Gambit in Berlin

'Not talk to anybody, then go home, have a bath, eat some spaghetti and wake up at 4am to go to work. I felt great.'

Anya explained how she doesn't feel comfortable in the spotlight and revealed that she 'blacksout' while at red carpet events for her films.

She said: '[I don't] necessarily love the red-carpet experience. I, like, blackout when it's happening. It's so, so overwhelming.'

The Last Night In Soho star admitted she is happiest barefoot and 'ankle deep in mud or plunged into the icy ocean with her belongings stuffed in a plastic bag'.

Platinum Queen: Anya, who graced the magazine in a silver semi-sheer dress, was just one of the cover stars, as The Queen appeared in photographic form on the cover of Vogue for the first time, in a special issue celebrating her 70 years on the throne

Detailing her experience while filming The Northman, she said: 'I looked insane. So infuriatingly joyful. The stunt guys would say, "Can we get out of the water now?" And I was like, "This is amazing. Nature! We're outside! We get to make art."

Despite being surrounded by celebrity types - including friend Cara Delevingne - since finding fame, Anya admitted the first time she felt she 'fit in' was on the set of The Witch. Kate Dickie, some 25 years her senior, cast as her mother, became her.

She explained: 'First real best friend. I only made friends close to my age group maybe three or four years ago. I think Ivy [Getty] was the first.'

It was to Ivy Getty's house that Anya fled after The Queen's Gambit sent her star stratospheric, she said: 'Nothing about my life changed. Then I dropped into New York and within an hour I was back at Ivy's house just like shivering on the floor.

'It was so intenseI was dressed like an East Berlin spy at all timesIt just took a second to understand it and make it ok for myself.'

While feeling down - especially about her romantic life - Anya revealed she would watch old episodes of Sex and the City.

She explained: 'I remember when I met Sarah Jessica Parker, I was going through a horrible break-up, and I went up to her and I was like, "I need you to know that I am watching you and Big and it's giving me hope."

'And she was like 'That things will work out?' and I said, "No! That this will end and I will finally move on!".

Elsewhere in the isuse, British Vogue paid special tribute to Her Majesty The Queen by looking back on its own unique relationship with the Monarch.

Club lover! Anya explained that following the stratospheric rise of her star, she still loves to go to a club and dance - but more as a form of meditation now

The twin covers feature The Queen in the early years of her reign and - in playful echo - actress Anya for her own fantasy royal dress-up moment.

In his Editor's letter, British Vogue's Editor-In-Chief Edward Enninful OBE writes: 'When I received my OBE for services to diversity in fashion several years ago, I thought carefully about what the decision to accept it would mean.

'Ultimately, I saw an ancient institution that was setting about on a programme of change and if they had noticed and wanted to recognise my work as something worth spotlighting, given the fact my endeavours were all about spotlighting under-represented people too, then I felt comfortable - keen, even - to engage.'

The April issue of British Vogue is available via digital download and on newsstands from Tuesday 29th March.
Alec Baldwin is preparing to appear on camera again following the death of Halyna Hutchins, the cinematographer who was shot and killed on the set of his film Rust.

The actor, 63, will be arriving in Rome over the weekend to begin filming two Italian films, Kid Santa and Billie's Magic World, according to Variety.

The films, which are being produced by Alec and his brother Daniel Baldwin, who is also starring in the two movies, will soon begin shooting in Rome.

Gianluca Curti, the chief of Italy's Minerva Pictures, told Variety Alec will be arriving to Rome on Saturday. His brother is already in the historic city.

Alec Baldwin is preparing to appear on camera again following the death of Halyna Hutchins, the cinematographer who was shot and killed on the set of his film Rust

Kid Santa and Billie's Magic World are both by Italian director Francesco Cinquemani, who previously worked with Alec on the 2015 film Andron. He also directed the 2021 film The Christmas Witch, which starred Alec's brother William Baldwin.

The two films are being billed as 'live-action/animation family Christmas comedies', according to Variety.

Cuti told the site the Baldwin brothers will be in Rome for four weeks shooting the two movies' live action scenes.

Curti also said Alec's participation in the two films preceded the fatal shooting on the set of Rust.

Alec's participation in the two films preceded the fatal shooting on the set of Rust, Gianluca Curti, the chief of Italy's Minerva Pictures, told Variety

Deadline, meanwhile, reports the brother working with Alec is not Daniel but William. According to the site, the brothers will be doing both live-action acting and voice work.

Alec has been dealing with an ongoing wrongful death lawsuit over the on-set shooting death of Hutchins.

The cinematographer, 42, died on October 21 last year when a prop gun used in the film Rust was fired by Alec after he was told it wasn't loaded, shooting her in the chest.

Director Joel Souza was also injured from Baldwin's prop gun, though he survived his injuries.

Earlier this month, lawyers for the film's armorer, Hannah Gutierrez, released a statement condemning the actor for pointing his firearm at crew members despite that being a violation of safety protocol.

Cuti told the site the Baldwin brothers will be in Rome for four weeks shooting the two movies' live action scenes

'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 in a statement obtained by ABC. '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.

Baldwin appeared to pass the blame onto the victim in an arbitration demand and claimed that his contract shielded him from any financial responsibility related to Hutchins' death.

Tragedy: Alec has been dealing with an ongoing wrongful death lawsuit over the on-set shooting death of Hutchins, the cinematographer on his film Rust, who was killed during a rehearsal on October 21 last year

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.

'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

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.

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.

'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.
ALISON BOSHOFF: When he was cast as Prince Charles in The Crown , the naysayers had a field day. Dominic West was too muscular, had too much hair and was far too sexy to play the role.
Rihanna flashed a massive diamond ring on her wedding finger yet again when she was spotted out Tuesday night in Santa Monica.

The 34-year-old is involved with A$AP Rocky and has reached the third trimester of her pregnancy with their first child.

When she emerged onto the sidewalk and was asked about the bauble, she laughed and teased: 'This old ring?'

Looking fab: Rihanna flashed a massive diamond ring on her wedding finger yet again when she was spotted out Tuesday night in Santa Monica

What if...?: A previous sighting of the ring set off a storm of conjecture about the stage she has reached in her relationship with A$AP Rocky as they await the arrival of their child

For her latest night out on the town, Rihanna opted for a maternity mini-dress with a swirling chrome print that emphasized her blossoming baby bump.

Her restaurant of choice was Giorgio Baldi, a Santa Monica eatery that over the years has become a hot spot for celebrities.

Rihanna teamed her dress with a mosaic coat that featured fur lining and was done in a brown-yellow-orange-pink-crimson color stream.

Letting her luxurious dark hair tumble freely over her shoulders, the Barbadian bombshell accentuated her screen siren features with makeup.

Mother to be: The 34-year-old is involved with A$AP Rocky and has reached the third trimester of her pregnancy with their first child

What an ensemble: Rihanna teamed her dress with a mosaic coat that featured fur lining and was done in a brown-yellow-orange-pink-crimson color stream

She added an extra splash of glitz to the look with a dazzling necklace and balanced expertly on a pair of vertiginous ankle-strap stilettos.

Rihanna was previously spotted wearing a huge diamond ring on her left hand fourth finger while shopping for baby clothes this Monday.

The sighting set off a storm of conjecture about the stage she has reached in her relationship with A$AP Rocky as they await the arrival of their child.

In an interview that ran in Elle last week Rihanna spoke candidly about being pregnant, saying: 'There's also those days, girl. Especially in the third trimester where you wake up and you're like, oh, do I have to get dressed?'

Radiant: Letting her luxurious dark hair tumble freely over her shoulders, the Barbadian bombshell accentuated her screen siren features with makeup

During the run-up to giving birth Rihanna has received 'A lot of advice,' she revealed, elaborating: 'Probably the best advice is to sleep now because I won't get much later. I need to work on that before it's a thing of the past.'

Rihanna unveiled her pregnancy when she stepped out in New York in January with A$AP Rocky, her burgeoning baby bump in full view.

After the news broke an insider gushed to People that Rihanna 'couldn't be happier and is so excited to be a mom.'

Said the source: 'Having a baby is something she was never focused on, but being with Rocky opened her up to the idea.'

Being honest: In an interview that ran in Elle last week Rihanna spoke candidly about being pregnant, saying: 'There's also those days, girl'

Rihanna and Rocky are 'just like any other pair of parents-to-be. Yes, they happen to be famous but they're just the cutest, giddiest young couple that's expecting kids.'

To hear the insider tell it: 'A lot of guys have tried to sweep her off her feet, but Rocky actually managed to do it.'

Rocky is 'over-the-top romantic and sends her rooms full of flowers all the time. She's never felt this way before and this relationship has changed her.'

Giving the details: She disclosed that she was in her ' third trimester where you wake up and you're like, oh, do I have to get dressed?'

Pregnancy rumors went into overdrive in late November when Rihanna briefly placed her hands on her belly during a ceremony where she was named a 'national hero' by Barbados, which had just become a republic.

During an interview with GQ last year Rocky called Rihanna 'The One' and spilled that: 'She amounts to probably, like, a million of the other ones.'

Rocky, whose own father was an immigrant to America from Barbados, called Rihanna 'The love of my life' in the interview.
Vick Hope put on a very leggy display as she attended the London premiere of Ambulance on Wednesday evening.

The 32-year-old presenter beamed as she strut down the blue carpet in a beige and silver square neck mini dress.

She looked incredible as she elevated her height in a pair of strappy silver heels at the star-studded event held at Odeon Leicester Square.

Incredible: Vick Hope put on a very leggy display as she attended the London premiere of Ambulance on Wednesday evening

Vick completed the look with several gold necklaces including a pendant, a pair of earrings and bracelets.

She went extra glam for the event as she had a matching manicure and pedicure which she showed off in the photos.

The star looked flawless as she wore her dark signature locks in bouncy curls and opted for a bronzed makeup palette.

Wow! The presenter beamed as she strut down the blue carpet in a beige and silver square neck mini dress

Gorgeous: Vick looked flawless as she wore her dark signature locks in bouncy curls and opted for a bronzed makeup palette

Work it! Vick looked incredible as she elevated her height in a pair of strappy silver heels at the star-studded event held at Odeon Leicester Square.

Ambulance stars Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Eiza Gonzalez, Jake Gyllenhaal and director Michael Bay looked incredible at the star studded event.

Eiza, Jake and Yahya were first seen in the epic trailer for Michael's latest project Ambulance when it was released in October.

In the action packed clip, Jake and Yahya's characters steal an ambulance to use as a getaway when their bank heist goes awry.

In one of the crucial scenes from the three-minute promo, Jake could be seen pulling an assault rifle on Eiza's paramedic character to take her hostage and seize the emergency vehicle.

Ambulance stars (L to R) Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Eiza Gonzalez, Jake Gyllenhaal and director Michael Bay dressed to impress at the premiere

Jake's character - who has a checkered past - convinces his friend to assist in a $32million robbery.

However, things take a very interesting turn when Jake's character begrudgingly lets a cop into the bank during the heist.

That law enforcement officer gets shot and out of happenstance the two end up in the ambulance with the policeman who is being cared for by Eiza's character.

Like any Michael Bay helmed film, the trailer was full of action including explosions, crashes, and gunfire.

The entire film is set over the course of one day in sunny Los Angeles and takes place primarily in the emergency response vehicle.
Nicolas Cage has revealed the baby names that he and his pregnant wife Riko Shibata have already chosen for their first child together.

In a new interview, the Oscar-winner said he and Riko, 26, have picked Akira Francesco if it's a boy and Lennon Augie if it's a girl.

Cage, 58, explained to GQ: 'Augie was my father's nickname. And my uncle has decided to change his name to Francesco.'

Making plans: Nicolas Cage, 58, reveals the baby names he and pregnant wife Riko Shibata, 26, have already picked for their first child together; they are seen in 2021

The names have been chosen in honor of his late father, August Coppola, and his uncle, director Francis Ford Coppola.

The Leaving Las Vegas star already has two children; Weston, 31, from his past relationship with Christina Fulton, and Kal-El, 16, who he shares with ex-wife Alice Kim.

Elsewhere in the interview, Cage revealed that he carries a picture of Shibata's ultrasound with him everywhere.

He told the magazine: 'I think it's so sweet. It's like a little edamame. A little bean.'

Picking them out: The Pig actor and his spouse are expecting their first child together and they are planning to name the tot Akira Francesco if it is a boy and Lennon Augie for a girl; they are seen earlier this month

Cage married his much-younger wife in Las Vegas last year, making her his fifth wife.

In reference to his frequent trips down the aisle, Cage explained that it's because he's 'a romantic.'

He said: 'I am a romantic, and when I'm in love, I want to give that person everything I can.'

The Face/Off star noted that his giving nature was his way of expressing affection for his partner.

'It's my expression of saying, "I love you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you." And this is it for me,' he said.

However, Cage claims that this will be his fifth and final trip down the aisle.

This is it: Cage claims that this will be his fifth and final trip down the aisle

The actor stated: 'I mean, this is not happening again. This is it. This is it.'

Cage and Shibata initially met when the actor took a trip to Shiga, Japan, and they quickly developed a relationship.

The Wicker Man star has previously been married to Patricia Arquette, Lisa Marie Presley, and Lisa Kim.

He was also involved in a short-lived marriage to Erika Koike, although he filed for an annulment just days after they tied the knot.

Starting off strong: Cage and Shibata initially met when the actor took a trip to Shiga, Japan, and they quickly developed a relationship

The 8mm star and his current wife maintained a long-distance relationship after the onset of the global pandemic, and the performer proposed via FaceTime.

The happy couple went on to tie the knot in February of last year during a wedding ceremony that took place in Las Vegas, and they announced that they were expecting to welcome a child this past January.

Cage also noted that his 'best friend' is his cat, a Maine coon named Merlin, and he admitted he sometimes mistakes his 'loving' pet's affections for his wife when he's in bed.

He said: 'He's so kind and so loving. Sometimes he puts his arm around me when he's sleeping, and I think it's my wife, and I go, "Oh, Riko." And then it's Merlin.'
The current Married At First Sight stars have been banned from becoming social media influencers and cashing in on their new-found fame.

And now Abbie Chatfield has spilled the beans on what reality stars really make, after she rose to fame on The Bachelor with Matt Agnew back in 2019.

Speaking on her podcast Hot Nights with Abbie Chatfield, Abbie said was paid around $10,000 to appear on the show.

How much?! Abbie Chatfield has revealed the VERY surprising amount she made on The Bachelor on her podcast this week - after Channel Nine banned MAFS stars from becoming influencers and cashing in on fame

She said she couldn't make money from paid promotions until three months after the finale episode aired.

'I had a job and didn't really care, people were like, "how do we make money? And I was like, don't quit your job to go on a reality show!"' she said.

'I got paid $90 a day but for me it was much more... I didn't work for three months... it's tax free, I got money back on tax that year, I came out with no expenses. I came out with $10,000, it was great.'

Not bad! Speaking on her podcast Hot Nights with Abbie Chatfield, Abbie said she made around $10,000 while appearing on the The Bachelor alongside Matt Agnew

Abbie thenwent on to explain why reality TV contestants can't use social media or become influencers right away.

She said it can be a conflict of interest between the TV network and the stars.

'They [networks] have advertisement agreements. Not because they want to be mean, people are like, it's cause they don't want us to be influencers! Um, no it's not,' she said.

She gave an example, saying if a network has a deal with a car brand and a contestant advertises the car's rival, it would be a conflict of interest.

'I got paid $90 a day but for me it was much more... I didn't work for three months... it's tax free, I got money back on tax that year, I came out with no expenses. I came out with $10,000, it was great,' she said

Unfortunately for this year's brides and grooms on MAFS, Channel Nine bosses have put their foot down to stop them launching social media careers straight away.

While in previous seasons the participants have been handed back their Instagram accounts within two weeks of the finale, things are different this year.

'They won't be getting their socials back until at least May after the show has finished airing in the UK,' an insider told Daily Mail Australia on Wednesday.

The source said there is 'a lot of pressure on Nine to stop the cast from going rogue' while season nine still airs in New Zealand and Britain.

'It's also another opportunity to hold their blue ticks hostage if they're caught going to the press about their "horrible edits",' they added.

Banned: Unfortunately for this year's brides and grooms on MAFS, Channel Nine bosses have put their foot down to stop them launching social media careers straight away

By the time the MAFS cast get access to their Instagram accounts, their engagement levels will have dropped significantly, affecting their potential earnings.

While the show is still airing, participants are allowed to write their own captions on photos supplied by Nine's publicity team, but that is the extent of their permitted social media activity.

Comments have also been disabled on their posts and the cast aren't allowed to read their direct messages, which is how sponsors would contact them.

One disgruntled bride told Daily Mail Australia some of the participants are 'worried' they will be 'old news' by the time they get their accounts back.

'We have no choice but to wait,' they said.

'We are trapped. Some people have quit their jobs and are hoping MAFS is going to be their big break to never have to work again.'
They have been dating for 20 months.

And Australian rapper The Kid Laroi and his TikTok star girlfriend Katarina Deme, both 18, looked very much in love as they attended the 2022 iHeartRadio Music Awards in Los Angeles on Tuesday.

Laroi and Katarina put on an affectionate display as they shared a kiss on the red carpet after arriving to the event.

Loved-up: The Kid Laroi and his girlfriend Katarina Deme, both 18, put on an affectionate display at the 2022 iHeartRadio Music Awards in Los Angeles

Model Katarina looked stunning in a halterneck dress and black stiletto heels.

She wore her long chestnut locks out and completed her look with a silver bracelet and watch.

Sydney-born Laroi, whose real name is Charlton Howard, opted for black pants, a white buttoned shirt and black coat.

The Indigenous star completed his look with a pair of black shoes and wore a thin tie.

Affectionate: Laroi and Katarina shared a kiss on the red carpet after arriving to the event

Laroi recently spoke about his unexpected romance with 'the most beautiful girl on the world' Katarina during an interview on KIIS FM's Kyle and Jackie O Show.

He revealed how he never expected to fall in love so young, but did so shortly after relocating from Sydney to Los Angeles, where Katarina is based.

'We met through a mutual friend that I had when I came around here,' he said.

'Around the time that I met her, I just put out the whole F*ck Love project and was not in the vibe of love.

Stylish: Model Katarina looked stunning in a halterneck dress and black stiletto heels. She wore her long chestnut locks out and completed her look with a silver bracelet and watch

'But I guess... you can't control some of that type of stuff. It was so ironic.'

The Kid Laroi, who hails from Sydney's Waterloo, has had incredible success in the United States.

He recently opened the MTV VMAs with his friend and collaborator Justin Bieber.

In September, he announced he was bringing his End of the World tour to Australia.
She is set to make her Broadway debut as Roxie Hart in Chicago next month.

And Pamela Anderson looked every inch of her seductress character as she turned heads while out in New York City on Wednesday.

The 54-year-old blonde bombshell donned a crisp white button-up shirt that she tucked into beige slacks.

Pammy hit the Big Apple in sexy nude pumps that showed off a crimson pedicure, which coordinated nicely with her red lipstick.

Fashionista: Pamela Anderson turned heads in New York City on Wednesday as she put her best fashion foot forward

The former Baywatch star also showed off a blood red manicure as she carried a black leather handbag.

Pam's signature platinum blonde locks looked luscious as she wore them in a side part with voluminous curls that tumbled over her shoulder.

The entertainer's blue eyes popped with the help of perfectly applied black eyeliner to give her a flawless cat eye.

She cuffed the sleeves of her shirt and made use of only two low buttons, giving her a plunging neckline.

Gorgeous: The 54-year-old blonde bombshell donned a crisp white button-up shirt that she tucked into beige slacks

The actress played up the look by wearing a long string of pearls around her neck that sat in the pocket of her cleavage.

Pam's trousers were high-waisted slightly wide-leg, giving the mother-of-two a youthful and fresh silhouette.

The former Playboy Playmate served up warm smiles, displaying a high-spirited mood as she greeted fans in the bustling city.

Earlier in the day she made an appearance on Good Morning America in a stunning white dress.

Busy bee: Earlier in the day she made an appearance on Good Morning America in a stunning white dress

She added to her look with a pair of perspex heels by Gianvito Rossi, while her hair cascaded across one shoulder in tousled curls.

She stopped by the talk show to discuss her forthcoming Broadway debut as the iconic Roxie Hart in Chicago.

Pam recently said the fishnet-clad character was one she's been 'rehearsing her whole life' to play.

She's set to embody the feisty Roxie from April 12 to June 5 and called the gig a 'dream role.'

Press rounds: Pam has been talking up her forthcoming Broadway debut as the iconic Roxie Hart in Chicago

Expounding on the character Anderson stated, 'I think fame for Roxie is freedom,' she said in an interview on Wednesday.

'It's not just about being famous, it's about having freedom and having attention in a loving way, so I can relate to a lot of the stuff in the show.

'There is a darkness to it,' she said. 'There's also a darkness to the media and real life. It's a very interesting play and it's iconic. It lasts forever because it's a great story. And there's always something underneath all the glamour that makes it even more glamorous.'
ABBA's Bjorn Ulvaeus, 76, and Benny Andersson, 75, took to the stage in Stockholm on Wednesday to receive the country's highest music award.

The duo beamed as they received the Government's Music Export Prize 2021 from the country's Minister of Foreign Trade Anna Hallberg- marking Bjorn's first public event since he announced the split from his wife of 43-years Lena Kallersjo last month.

The Waterloo hit-makers, who attended without fellow bandmates Agnetha Faltskog, 71 and Anni-Frid Lyngstad 76, were presented with a plaque and a large bouquet of at the large ceremony.

Happy chaps: Abba's Bjorn Ulvaeus, 76, (left) and Benny Andersson, 75, took to the stage in Stockholm on Wednesday to receive the country's highest music award

Bjorn looked smart in a suit with slate buttons, which he wore over a navy and white printed shirt.

Opting for a more casual look he wore the shirt open at the neck along with a pair of distinct spectacles.

Benny wore an indigo blazer jacket over a navy waist coat with white buttons and a crisp white shirt.

The pair sat in the audience before taking to the stage to rapturous applause, Benny even took to the piano to play one of the group's famous hits.

OVER! The event marked the first time Bjorn had been seen since splitting from wife of 41 years Lena last month (Pictured together in September 2021)

Waterloo: The duo beamed as they received the 'Governments Music Export Prize 2021' from the country's Minister of Foreign Trade

Congratulations: The Waterloo hit-makers were presented with a plaque and a large bouquet of at the large ceremony (pictured with foreign minister Anna Hallberg)

Smart guys: Bjorn looked smart in a suit with slate buttons, which he wore of a navy and white printed shirt

Superstar: The pair sat in the audience before taking to the stage to rapturous applause, Benny even took to the piano to play one of the groups famous hits on

Stage: The pair sat in the audience before taking to the stage to rapturous applause, Benny even took to the piano to play one of the groups famous hits

Piano man: Benny wore an indigo blazer jacket over a navy waist coat with white buttons and a crisp white shirt

Bjorn and his wife, who share daughters Emma, 40, and Anna, 35, announced they had ended their marriage last month, however, the pair have vowed to 'remain close friends'. Even continuing to enjoy family holidays together in the wake of their separation.

In a statement provided to HuffPost UK, the estranged couple shared: 'After many wonderful and eventful years, we have decided to go our separate ways.

'We remain close friends and will continue to celebrate our grandchildren's birthdays and other family holidays together.

Missing: The pair accepted the award without fellow band mates Agnetha Faltskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad (pictured in 1976)

The shock announcement came after the ABBA star claimed he was having sex 'four times a week' with Lena.

But Bjorn hinted the pair clashed while quarantining in Sweden during a rare insight into their marriage, which included his boast about his sexual prowess.

Speaking to The Guardian he was asked 'how often he has sex?', the Swede responded: 'I'm 75 and I can't manage more than four times a week.'

But when quizzed on his 'most annoying habit', Bjorn replied: 'If you ask my wife, it would probably be my habit of walking around in a bathrobe all day long during our corona self-isolation.'

Back in September ABBA released their first new music in 40 years.

The quartet also released Don't Shut Me Down and I Still Have Faith In You, the first two singles from their new album, Voyage.

Bjorn and Benny made the 'historic' announcement in London and unveiled the first look at the Voyage digital concert, which will see extraordinarily detailed holograms, based on movements recorded by the band, take to the stage to perform their hits. Anni-Frid and Agnetha, their ex-wives, watched from Sweden.

The news was met with excitement from fans across the world who said the band were 'back to their best' and had 'swooped in' to rescue them after a difficult 18 months.

The show will come 50 years after the founding of the group that consisted of two married couples for most of its existence, and whose name is an acronym of the first names of its members.

Their music has remained ubiquitous in the decades since their breakup, in part because of the stage musical 'Mamma Mia!' and the two films that followed it.

They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2010.
When Radio 4 star Eddie Mair left the BBC after refusing to take a drastic cut to his 350,000 salary, his move opened the floodgates of top presenters quitting to earn even more money at commercial broadcasters.

Now, however, I hear that Mair's had enough and will be leaving radio station LBC later this year. And, interestingly, the arrival of another BBC star is alleged to have played a part.

'He's leaving in late summer,' claims one of Mair's friends. 'He didn't like it at all when an hour of his show was sliced off to make way for Andrew Marr, who was suddenly the big new star from the BBC.'

Mair's defection in 2018 after more than 30 years at the BBC caused shockwaves across the media.

I hear that Mair's had enough and will be leaving radio station LBC later this year. And, interestingly, the arrival of another BBC star is alleged to have played a part, writes Richard Eden. Pictured: Eddie Mair in the LBC studios

The softly spoken Dundonian's decision to leave came days after the Corporation paid a six-figure sum to former China editor Carrie Gracie over a gender pay row.

The BBC settled the claim with the journalist, who quit after finding out that she was being paid tens of thousands less than her male counterparts.

Mair, 56, was thought to be the only top-earning male star who refused to take a pay drop to tackle the BBC's equal pay crisis.

Andrew Marr defected to LBC last month, with the BBC star declaring: 'I am keen to get my own voice back,' after being silenced by BBC rules on impartiality.

His arrival meant that Mair's drivetime show was, however, cut to just two hours instead of three from Monday to Thursday, to make way for Tonight With Andrew Marr.

Other BBC stars following Mair to LBC include Newsnight presenter Emily Maitlis and former North America editor Jon Sopel.

Andrew Marr (pictured above) defected to LBC last month, with the BBC star declaring: 'I am keen to get my own voice back,' after being silenced by BBC rules on impartiality

Marr wouldn't be the first prominent BBC star to rub Mair up the wrong way.

Robert Peston had a frosty relationship with the former PM presenter for years. Although Peston did say he 'eventually' came to the conclusion that Mair's irritation towards him was an act.

Last night, a spokesman for Mair declined to comment.

Anne Robinson reckons she's too long in the tooth to seduce famous figures into appearing on Countdown, so she offers them free stays at her swanky Cotswolds home instead.

'In order to get people up to Salford [where the Channel 4 quiz show's filmed in Greater Manchester], well, I can't offer to sleep with them any more like when I was younger, so they come to my barn for a weekend: Alastair Campbell, Stephen Fry, Jo Brand . . .' she tells me.

Speaking at the launch party for my colleague Robert Hardman's book, Queen Of Our Times, at Hatchards in Piccadilly, acid-tongued Anne, 77, adds: 'It's so we don't have northern newsreaders in Dictionary Corner.'

Power dressing look really suits you, Lily

Lily Collins ditched her customary mini skirts and red beret in favour of a bright orange double-breasted blazer and matching trousers for an appearance on a U.S. talk show

She plays a ditzy fashion marketing executive in Netflix hit Emily In Paris, but off-screen Lily Collins means business.

The 33-year-old daughter of 1980s pop legend Phil Collins ditched her customary mini skirts and red beret in favour of a bright orange double-breasted blazer and matching trousers for an appearance on a U.S. talk show. 'An extra boost of vitamin C this morning,' chirps the Surrey-born actress, explaining her choice of colour.

The suit, which costs around 2,500, was designed by Gabriela Hearst, whose handbags have been carried by the likes of Meghan Markle and Oprah Winfrey.

Expert baker Paul Hollywood is used to his dough rising, but his fortune sank by 400,000 last year. I learn the Bake Off judge saw the combined value of his two main businesses drop from 7.9 million to 7.5 million to the end of June.

Newly filed accounts reveal that assets in HJP Media Ltd went down from 5.4 million to 4.5 million, while a surge in the balances at Paul Hollywood Ltd from 2.5 million to 3 million was not enough to offset the drop.

The star, 56, is in sole control of both of the enterprises, although his ex-wife, Alexandra, was a director of Paul Hollywood Ltd until 2020.

Why Di was tickled pink

Fashion designer Dame Zandra Rhodes has revealed she was forced to change an original design because of royal rules on what Diana (pictured in 1987) was permitted to wear

When Dame Zandra Rhodes created a dress for Princess Diana, she didn't choose pink simply because it matched her own zany hairstyle.

The fashion designer has revealed she was forced to change an original design because of royal rules on what Diana was permitted to wear.

'In 1986, Princess Diana came into my shop and chose a lovely black dress, but she wasn't supposed to wear black then,' she says. 'So we redesigned it in pink.'

Diana previously revealed Charles had criticised her black dress choice on their first joint public engagement: 'He said: 'It's black! Only people in mourning wear black.' '

As Ed Sheeran and Dua Lipa find themselves embroiled in plagiarism rows, Keith Richards has a more laissez-faire approach.

'I'll take anybody's idea,' admits the 78-year-old Rolling Stones guitarist. 'You can call that collaboration  I call it thieving. Writing is a cut-throat business.'

Too much sun drives Laura up the pole

Laura Hamilton, 39, had a go at pole dancing while filming a new series of the C4 property show in Valencia, Spain, and it looked very dangerous

Laura Hamilton recently admitted that showing Britons round holiday homes in the Mediterranean or Florida as presenter of A Place In The Sun had left her needing cosmetic work on frown lines caused by prolonged exposure to the sun.

If she isn't careful, she'll end up needing treatment of another kind. Hamilton, 39, had a go at pole dancing while filming a new series of the C4 property show in Valencia, Spain, and it looked very dangerous.

'Today is really getting a little strange,' remarked Laura, once runner-up on Dancing On Ice.

Diane Morgan, who appears opposite Ricky Gervais in the Netflix hit After Life, says she gets invited to memorial services and birthday parties for stars she has never met.

'I went to Ronnie Corbett's memorial  never met the man,' she admits of The Two Ronnies legend.

'I was honoured. You think, 'This is weird, isn't it?' There was no way you were going to stop me from going to that. I went to Barry Cryer's 60th, 70th. Never met Barry Cryer.'
GENEVA (AP) - The chief of the United Nations announced a project Wednesday to put every person on Earth in range of early weather-warning systems within five years as natural disasters have grown more powerful and frequent due to climate change.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the project with the Geneva-based World Meteorological Organization aims to make the alert systems already used by many rich countries available to the developing world.

"Today, one-third of the worlds people, mainly in least-developed countries and small island developing states, are still not covered by early warning systems," Guterres said. "In Africa, it is even worse: 60% of people lack coverage."

"This is unacceptable, particularly with climate impacts sure to get even worse," he said. "We must boost the power of prediction for everyone and build their capacity to act."

Early warning systems allow for the monitoring of real-time atmospheric conditions at sea and on land as a way of predicting upcoming weather events - whether in cities, rural areas, mountain or coastal regions, and arid or polar locations.

Expanding their use has taken on urgency because more lead time allows people to prepare for potentially deadly disasters such as heat waves, forest fires, flooding and tropical storms that can result from climate change.

FILE - United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres makes a statement outside the Security Council at U.N. headquarters on March 14, 2022. Guterres announced Wednesday, March 23, 2022 a project to put every person on Earth in range of early warning systems for natural disasters, which have grown more powerful and frequent due to climate change, within five years. The project with the Geneva-based World Meteorological Organization aims to broaden the deployments and use of such climatic alert systems beyond many rich countries. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

A World Meteorological Organization report on disaster statistics released last year showed that over the last half-century or so, a climate or water-related disaster has occurred daily on average, resulting in an average of 115 deaths and $202 million in losses a day.

The U.N., its partners and many governments are striving to reach an increasingly evasive target of limiting the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).

Guterres has instructed WMO, the U.N. weather agency, to push forward an "action plan" on the early warning system by the next U.N. climate conference, which is scheduled to take place in Egypt in November.

WMO plans to build on some of its existing programs like a multi-hazard alert system for hazards such as tropical cyclones, flooding and coastal inundation, as well as an early warning system that helps inform people most at risk of some kinds of disasters, the U.N. said.

Mohamed Adow, director of Power Shift Africa, a Nairobi-based think tank, said it was "great" that people in Africa would be getting protection from an early warning system but that the work shouldn't stop there.

"The early warning systems are vital in saving lives, but we must not stop at just preventing deaths," Adow said. "If people survive a climate disaster but then are left to fend for themselves with their homes and livelihoods destroyed, its a meager blessing."

"The global community needs to ensure the victims of climate catastrophes are helped to thrive, not just survive," he added.

___

Follow AP's coverage of climate issues at https://apnews.com/hub/climate


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.
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.
The British Council also announced six fully funded scholarships for English teachers from India to study at two of the best UK universities for postgraduate study of English language teaching. (Representational Image/ AFP)

Hyderabad: The British Council, the UK's international organisation for educational opportunities and cultural relations, announced a set of postgraduate scholarships for Indians across various fields of study for 2022-23.

The Council, in collaboration with the UK government's GREAT Britain Campaign and in partnership with UK universities, announced 20 GREAT scholarships for students from India in 16 UK universities in subjects like business, Finance, humanities, psychology entrepreneurship, design, marketing, HR and music.

Each scholarship is worth a minimum of 10,000, meant towards the tuition fee for a one-year postgraduate course. For more details, candidates can visit www.britishcouncil.in/study-uk/scholarships/great-scholarships.

The British Council also announced six fully funded scholarships for English teachers from India to study at two of the best UK universities for postgraduate study of English language teaching. This opportunity is open to English teachers working in or with the primary or secondary government schools in India. For more details, candidates can visit www.britishcouncil.in/programmes/english/scholarships-english-teachers-india.
The victim, identified as Shaik Afroz, an autorickshaw driver, suffered bleeding injuries on his chest, wrist and thigh. (Representational image)

Hyderabad: A 24-year-old man was attacked with blades and knives by two transgender persons at Lalithabgh, Chatrinaka in the early hours of Tuesday.

The victim, identified as Shaik Afroz, an autorickshaw driver, suffered bleeding injuries on his chest, wrist and thigh and is being treated at the Osmania General Hospital. Sexual jealousy is said to be the reason behind the attack, according to sources.

I am married and have two children. For the past two years, I have an affair with a transgender named Mehak. At 1 am on Tuesday, I was invited by two transgender persons Shaik Ghouse and Sohil Shaik to a party. At about 4 pm, Ghouse and Sohil attacked me, Afroz said.

Afroz was rushed by his family members to the hospital.

A resident of Barkas Salala, Afroz had a physical relation with Mehek alias Tarranum Khan, said Muskan, a transgender. Afroz on several instances had stopped Mehak from commercial sex work, she said.

During the past two years, Afroz spent his money on Mehak and ran up debts. After this, Mehak started avoiding him, sources said.

Ghouse, the main accused, a police informer in Bhavaninagar police station, fled after the attack.

We have booked a case of attempt to murder," said Mohammed Majid, assistant commissioner of police (ACP) Falaknuma division.
HYDERABAD: The case involving an SUV with an MLA sticker belonging to TRS Bodhan MLA Shakir Aamir Mohammed that caused an accident on last Thursday, resulting in the death of an infant in the city, is getting curiouser by the day. This, even as Kajal Chouhan, whose baby was killed in the accident, lies in a private hospital in Ahmednagar, Maharashtra, recovering from a ruptured urinary bladder and pelvis broken in four places.

On March 17, the SUV hit Kajal, who used to sell balloons on Road No. 45 Jubilee Hills, at 8.30 pm along with two others. The accident resulted in her getting injured and her two-month-old baby Ranveer Chouhans death. The vehicle had an MLA sticker pasted on its windscreen.

The police later said one Syed Afnan Ahmed, 19, a first-year student, was driving the vehicle at the time of the accident, and that he was arrested after he surrendered himself. Two others, including the MLA's son Raheel Aamir, were in the vehicle.

The SUV is registered on the name of a private construction firm. Inquiries with the police revealed that the investigating officials are yet to find out if a vehicle registered to a private firm can be given an MLA sticker to be pasted on it.

A senior police officer of the citys west zone, a full five days after the accident, said that they were yet to cross-check if using the MLA sticker in this fashion was a violation of the rules.

Also, there is total confusion with respect to how Kajal Chouhan, who was admitted to NIMS in the city, suddenly disappeared and resurfaced in a critical condition at a private hospital in Ahmednagar, Maharashtra.

According to Kajal's father Suresh Khale, who spoke to Deccan Chronicle, a small group of policemen, along with a couple of others who claimed to be representing the TRS MLA, went to NIMS where his daughter was admitted and asked them to leave the city.

Asked how this was allowed to happen, Jubilee Hills police officials who are probing the case said that they had no idea when and how the family left the hospital. The management of NIMS informed the Panjagutta police that the family left against their medical advice, an official said.

Meanwhile, the police said they were yet to contact TRS MLA Shakil Aamir Mohammed, to whom the MLA sticker belonged, but added that a clean chit was given to the MLA's son Raheel Amir who was in the SUV since he was not the driver.

Interestingly, MLA Shakir Aamir, soon after the accident, put out a selfie video from Dubai, and clarified that the car belonged to his cousin. He claimed that he occasionally used the SUV and that was why the vehicle had the MLA sticker.
Mangaluru: Mangaluru MLA and Deputy Leader of Congress in Karnataka Assembly U T Khader has asked the government to take strict action against those responsible for communal hate.

Since last 2-3 years we are seeing banners being put near temples that could create unrest (banners stating that non-Hindus should not be allowed to open stalls outside the temple premises during the annual festival). In recent days we have seen it happen in Udupi, Mangaluru, Shivamogga, and Nelamangala. The government should take strict action, he said.

Khader took up this issue at the Karnataka assembly session on Wednesday.

It is an open market and anybody can sell anywhere. There are many places of worship where people of all religions go, pray to God, and go shopping at the nearby stalls. But there are banners put up in public places that could divide the society and result in hate. These banners do not have the name of those who put them, he said.

The government should find the motive behind such banners and take strict action against them and thereby send a clear message to the society. The communal elements should be dealt with strictly, he said.

Meanwhile, the Popular Front of India (PFI) has expressed concern over the recent development in the region.

BJP-Sangh Parivar leaders are trying to ensure Muslim traders are not allowed to open stalls during temple festivals. Hindus and Muslims have been living in harmony in the region for centuries. But Sangh Parivar is showing intolerance towards Muslim traders and trying to sow the seed of communalism. This effort is part of polarization, PFI district president Ijaz Ahmed alleged.
The VHP leaders also want a ban on the supply of fruits and other materials to the temples by non-Hindus. (Representational image: vhp.org)

Mangaluru: The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) has demanded the Karnataka government not to allow non-Hindus open stalls during the temple festivals.

Temporary stalls near the temple are auctioned during the festival celebrations. Many Muslim traders participate in the auction and open stalls near the temple.

The saffron outfits has been opposing this. The most recent one was at Kaup in the Udupi district. The VHP has decided to approach the government seeking a ban on non-Hindus from participating in the auction.

This is not a new development. We have always opposed non-Hindus participating in the auction of stalls near the temple during festivals. Only Hindus should be allowed participate in the auction. We will approach the Endowment department and seek immediate intervention in this regard, VHP Divisional Secretary Sharan Pumpwell told Deccan Chronicle.

The VHP leaders also want a ban on the supply of fruits and other materials to the temples by non-Hindus.

There are few temples where non-Hindus get the tender to supply vegetables, fruits, and flowers. We strongly oppose this. They should not be allowed to participate during the tender process. The Endowment Act is very clear. It gives freedom for the Temple Committee to decide on auctioning. The Act is clear about protecting the interest of Hindus in Hindu religious institutions. No shops near the temple can be given to non-Hindus. So there is no room for any confusion, he added.

Progressive thinkers have strongly criticized the move.

This is part of the polarization attempts by Hindutva outfits, says progressive thinker Suresh Bhat. He is the former district president of Komu Sauhardha Vedike.

The agenda of the Hindutva outfits is to portray the minorities as second-class citizens. Demand on banning non-Hindus from participating auction for temple festival stalls is a move towards it, he said.
Hyderabad: BJP vice-president D.K. Aruna demanded that Chief Minister K. Chandrashehar Rao should immediately release the recruitment notification for government jobs. Questioning the delay, she said, After announcing the recruitment, the CM is highlighting the paddy procurement issue, she alleged.

Speaking to reporters at the Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Bhavan here on Tuesday, Aruna said that the Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao had given various assurances in the Assembly and at a public meeting in Wanaparthy.

Aruna said that the Telangana state government had failed to hand over the paddy as per the agreement to the Centre.

The Centre was ready to purchase more than the agreed amount of paddy from Telangana state, she said.

She said the CM had lost confidence in himself and had engaged political strategist Prashant Kishor (PK). The CM has noticed that the people are not believing him and has started his tricks with PK, she said.

Aruna said that Telangana state had 6 per cent unemployment, against 2.5 per cent in Gujarat and 4.5 per cent in Uttar Pradesh. She demanded that the TS government stop the real estate business of selling state land.
HYDERABAD: Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) members in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday served a notice to Speaker Om Birla seeking to move a privilege motion against union minister of state for tribal welfare Bishweshwar Tudu for misleading the House on reservations for scheduled tribes (STs). The MPs also raised slogans in the House demanding sacking of Tudu from the Cabinet.

In their notice, the TRS members said they wanted to move a privilege motion under Rule 222 against the union minister for misleading the House in his answer to the question raised by Congress MP N. Uttam Kumar Reddy on March 21 pertaining to Telanganas proposal for increasing the quantum of reservation to STs in education and employment.

"The Telangana government not only made a proposal for increase of reservations but passed a Bill No-6 of 2017 (sec 4) (2) increasing the reservations to STs from 6.8 per cent to 10 per cent in April 2017 and sent it to the ministry of tribal affairs," reads the notice signed by nine Lok Sabha members of the TRS.

The MPs also pointed out that the union ministry of tribal affairs in fact gave its consent through a letter dated December 18, 2017 on the issue of increase of reservations to STs. They said the ministers answer amounted to breach of privileges of the members.

In his answer, the union minister stated that the Centre had not received any proposal from the Telangana government on increasing ST reservations.

The TRS already demanded that Tudu be sacked from the Cabinet for his blatant lies in Parliament. It also called party cadres and tribals to organise funeral processions of the BJP government in all tribal hamlets and universities in the state as a mark of protest.

TRS floor leader in Lok Sabha Nama Nageshwar Rao told reporters in Delhi on Wednesday that the union minister deliberately misled the house by uttering a lie. "There is not only a proposal to enhance ST reservations but a Bill was also passed by the state legislature. The ministry of home affairs as well as tribal affairs had also acknowledged receiving ST quota Bill from Telangana earlier and had detailed correspondence with Telangana government several times in this regard since 2017," he said. Rao alleged that Tudu's reply reflected the bias the Centre had towards Telangana.
The crash of a China Eastern passenger jet flying from Kunming to Guangzhou carrying 132 people on Monday has put flight safety in the spotlight once again.

In wake of China's first air crash in 12 years, China Eastern announced it would ground all Boeing 737-800 jets, while it has been placed under 'enhanced surveillance' in India.

Analysts are of the opinion that the incident is a huge setback for the American jet manufacturer, which was only just bouncing back after the aftermath of the 737-MAX crashes and resultant groundings in 2018.

Also Read | What we know about the China Eastern plane crash

Boeing has been struggling for over the past decade and a half, with French rival Airbus' jets emerging as the most preferred choice among carriers.

The graph below illustrates Boeing's decline and Airbus' rise.

In the 15 year period from 2006 to 2020, Boeing managed to outsell Airbus only once  in 2018.

Boeing, once king of the skies, lost its market share in the commercial jet space as it had remained bullish about the 737 NG (Next Generation) family of planes. It chose not to spend time and resources in designing a new passenger plane and first began to trail Airbus after the introduction of the A320 line of jets in the early 2000s,

The introduction of the more fuel-efficient A320neo in 2010 forced Boeing to introduce a rival  737 MAX  based on the existing 737 fleet.

However, the MAX was deemed unsafe and subsequently grounded after two fatal crashes in 2018 (Lion Air) and 2019 (Ethiopian Air). Its grounding order by multiple aviation authorities was only lifted in late 2020 and through 2021.

While orders for the MAX were either cancelled or came to a standstill, delayed deliveries of its flagship model, the 787 Dreamliner, did not help either.

The China Eastern crash spells trouble for Boeing in China, which is its second-biggest market. The world's most populous nation is home to nearly 1,200 Boeing 737-800s and a grounding order by the civil aviation regulatory body in Beijing, though unlikely according to experts, would be a massive blow to Boeing.

Check out latest DH videos here
Last year, OnePlus launched the company's first-ever smartwatch OnePlus Watch, but it was not well received by tech critics and fans alike. Except for the seamless compatibility with the OnePlus range of products such as smart TVs and smartphones, the activity tracking capability was at par only with a budget fitness band.

Now, the company is reportedly planning to make another attempt to bring a new smartwatch. Citing tipster Yogesh Brar, 91Mobiles blog claims OnePlus is expected to bring Nord-branded smart wearable along with Nord 3 smartphone soon in India.

Like the Nord phones, the upcoming Nord Smartwatch will be affordable compared to the OnePlus Watch. The former is said to be priced anywhere between Rs 5,000 and Rs 8,000. Currently, the OnePlus Watch costs Rs 14,999.



OnePlus Watch Cobalt Edition. Credit: OnePlus



The OnePlus Nord smartwatch is expected to feature a colour touch display, water splash resistant coating, and come with standard biometric vitals such as heart rate, SpO2 (blood oxygen saturation) in addition to activity tracking, steps count, calories burn count, sleep pattern, sedentary reminder and more.

Also, like the OnePlus Watch, the upcoming Nord smartwatch will offer weather forecast details, message notifications, incoming call alerts (with reject option), control music, control the camera shutter, and also has the Find My Phone feature, stopwatch, set timer, and alarm (vibration). Additionally, it allows users to control the smart TV and also Zen Mode with the OnePlus phone (select variants).

In a related development, OnePlus is expected to launch the premium OnePlus 10 Pro in India later this month.

Read more | OnePlus 10 Pro to launch in India by March-end, CEO confirms

Get the latest news on new launches, gadget reviews, apps, cybersecurity, and more on personal technology only on DH Tech.
The horrors of the war in Ukraine can be seen in 13-year-old Volodymyr's empty expression as he lies in the Okhmatdyt children's hospital in Kyiv, playing with a green balloon dog.

His father and his cousin were killed when their car was hit by gunfire two days after Russia's invasion. Volodymyr was shot in his jaw, his back, his arm and his leg.

"He can't walk yet, but the doctors told him that he'd be able to step on his feet later," says his exhausted-looking mother, Natalia, 34, sitting on a bed next to her son in a darkened room.

Before the war, he loved the things that teenagers anywhere in the world might do -- playing on his phone and taking their dog for a walk, she says.

Now he sits listlessly in bed, a livid scar running all the way up from his jaw to the dyed blonde streak of hair that hangs limp over his face.

He whispers that today he is doing "good", but doctors say that after three weeks in hospital, Volodymyr still faces more surgery.

Also read: Ukraine says 'confrontational' Russia talks moving forward as West plans more sanctions

They show AFP journalists a graphic picture on a mobile phone of the wound in his face when he was brought in.

The war was only two days old when the family's blue Lada car was caught up in a gun battle when Russian reconnaissance forces tried to push into Kyiv.

"We didn't realise who was shooting. As soon as everything ends, we will find out the details. They will be punished," his mother says, compulsively rubbing her arm.

She was also wounded. "My injuries will heal, but I can't revive my husband, and I can't revive my nephew too. He was six years old."

Ukraine's largest children's hospital is feeling the trauma of the war.

"It is really terrible, it is challenging, it is awful," says paediatrician Svitlana Onysko.

"We live in the hospital, we don't go home; we are available 24/7, at any time -- day, night, morning, evening, we hurry up to help the kids, and it's really terrible and difficult."

"It is difficult psychologically and morally because these are children. But, for us, adults, it is also difficult because it is war."

Russian President Vladimir Putin said his invasion was meant to "demilitarise and de-nazify" Ukraine, but the toll on the country's civilians has been heavy.

Kyiv has so far been spared the worst of the Russian bombardment, however the city administration says four children have been killed and 16 wounded in the capital.

Most are brought to Okhmatdyt for treatment. The staff say the memories haunt them.

There was the mother called Olga who shielded her one-month-old baby daughter after a shell hit their apartment building and caused damage to a nearby kindergarten in Kyiv. Doctors removed multiple pieces of shrapnel from Olga's body and treated her husband's injured leg.

There was the blonde four-year-old boy who suffered severe shrapnel wounds from a strike in Kyiv, rushed in on a stretcher. And the six-year-old girl whose legs were injured in a blast whose mother died in a missile strike in Hostomel, a town just outside the capital.

The hospital's neonatal unit itself was hit by shrapnel by one strike.

In the early days of the war mothers and babies were even forced to take shelter in the basement whenever air raid sirens rang out.

The hospital's hardworking staff are trying to put on a brave face as they deal with what orthopaedic surgeon Vlasii Pylypko calls "terrible injuries".

"Since the war started, we treat injured, wounded people. It's children and adults also, with injuries from missiles, from bullets, from rockets," he said.

Most of the hospital's staff had no real experience of war.

"Many of my colleagues who treat with surgery, we try to abstract, to isolate our feelings," said Pylypko.

"And maybe after the war some of us will need psycho-support, but now we only focus on people's treatment, children's treatment."

One of them will be Volodymyr, who still faces a long road to recovery.

"He has to have another surgery, another treatment, he has bullets lying near the vertebral column."
Thousands of Ukrainians sought to escape the hellish siege of Mariupol on Tuesday, as Russia pounded the city with bombs and UN chief Antonio Guterres appealed for Moscow to end its "unwinnable" war.

The strategic port on the Azov sea has suffered relentless shelling but Ukrainian officials say it has not yet been captured as Russia's invasion, which began almost a month ago, splutters to a halt.

More than 200,000 people are trapped in the city described by those who managed to escape as a "freezing hellscape riddled with dead bodies and destroyed buildings", Human Rights Watch said.

"We know that there will not be enough space for everyone (to evacuate on Tuesday, but) we will try to carry out the evacuation until we have gotten all the inhabitants," vowed Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk in a video address.

Also read: Russian air strikes wreak havoc on Mariupol, turning Ukrainian city to 'ashes'

Two "super powerful bombs" slammed into the city as rescue efforts were ongoing, according to Mariupol authorities.

As US President Joe Biden readied for a trip to Europe this week to tackle a crisis that risks spiralling into global conflict, United Nations chief Antonio Guterres called for Russia to end its "absurd war."

"Even if Mariupol falls, Ukraine cannot be conquered city by city, street by street, house by house," he said.

"This war is unwinnable. Sooner or later, it will have to move from the battlefield to the peace table. That is inevitable."

With the Russian offensive stalled, Biden has warned that President Vladimir Putin was considering using chemical and biological weapons.

Officials in Washington said Tuesday that Ukraine forces have even reversed battlefield momentum and reclaimed some ground in recent days, particularly in the south of the country.

Russian troops were running out of fuel and food, and the military was beset by communication problems, even reduced to using mobile phones, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said.

The assessment was corroborated by Ukraine's army command which said Russian troops now had ammunition, food and fuel to last just three days.

In the southern city of Mykolaiv, one bulwark of the fierce resistance, residents said they were determined to stay and defend it despite incessant bombardment.

At the burial of soldier Igor Dundukov, 46, his brother Sergei wept as he kissed his sibling's swollen, blood-stained face.

Also read: 'Powerful bombs' rock Ukraine's besieged Mariupol amid new rescue bid

"We supported his commitment to defending our homeland," Sergei told AFP. "This is our land. We live here. Where would we run to? We grew up here."

The Ukrainian army said on Facebook that 300 Russian soldiers have defected in the north-eastern Sumy region. And even in areas Russia has captured, resistance has persisted.

In the occupied southern city of Kherson, Ukraine's leaders on Tuesday accused Russian troops of firing on unarmed protesters.

Videos posted on social media and the messaging app Telegram showed citizens gathering in Kherson's "Freedom Square" protesting against Russia's recent seizure of the city.

Russian soldiers could be seen firing into the air.

Ukraine's foreign ministry said in a statement that the humanitarian situation was rapidly deteriorating in Kherson, accusing Moscow of refusing to allow for an aid corridor to evacuate civilians and channel in food.

Biden is due to travel to Brussels on Thursday for a series of summits gathering NATO, EU and G7 leaders, before heading to Poland, which has received the bulk of more than 3.5 million Ukrainians fleeing war in their country.

The two sides are holding negotiations remotely after talks between delegations meeting on the border of Belarus and Ukraine made little progress.

Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky said all issues would be on the table if Putin agreed to direct talks, including the contested eastern region of Donbas and the annexed Crimea peninsula.

But Zelensky warned his country would be "destroyed" rather than surrender.

Also Read | Ukraine retakes key Kyiv suburb; battle for Mariupol rages

Since Russia launched its invasion on February 24, at least 117 children have been killed in the war, Ukraine's federal prosecutor said.

Some 548 schools have been damaged, including 72 completely destroyed.

Russia has pushed on with its assaults, in the face of unprecedented Western sanctions that has led international companies to pull out of the country and left its key banks shut out of the SWIFT system.

More sanctions against Russia and tightening of existing measures will be announced Thursday when Biden meets European allies in Brussels.

European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell had described as a "massive war crime" the siege of Mariupol, which has killed more than 2,000 people.\

Also Read | Signs of Ukrainian forces 'going after' Russians: Pentagon

Russia had given Mariupol until Monday morning to surrender, but Kyiv rejected the ultimatum and said the city's resistance was bolstering the defence of all of Ukraine.

Mariupol is a pivotal target in Putin's war -- providing a land bridge between Russian forces in Crimea to the southwest and Russian-controlled territory to the north and east.

In the capital Kyiv, a 35-hour curfew came into effect from Monday evening, after Russian strikes laid waste to the Retroville shopping complex, killing at least eight people.

Russia claimed the mall was being used to store rocket systems and ammunition.

With businesses closed and residents told to stay home, Kyiv was a ghost town Tuesday, with air sirens and the distant sound of explosions regularly punching through the silence.

Maxim Kostetskyi, 29, a lawyer, said residents were using the "pause" imposed by the lockdown to regroup.

"We don't know if the Russians will continue with their efforts to encircle the city, but we are much more confident, the morale is high and inspiring," he told AFP.

Check out DH's latest videos
Amid the critical emerging geopolitical condition, Iran is ready to meet the energy security of India by launching rupee-rial trade for the export of oil and gas to India.

According to Dr Ali Chegeni, Ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Iran in New Delhi, the two countries share a cordial relationship and a Rupee-Rial trade mechanism can help companies from both countries to deal with each other directly and avoid third-party intermediation costs.

Iran is also willing to work closely with India to revive and find alternative routes for the stalled land pipeline project for transporting natural gas to India. India could not go ahead with the proposed Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline project because of security reasons, Dr Chegeni was quoted saying in a press statement.

Dr Chegani was speaking at an interactive meeting organised jointly by the World Trade Center, Mumbai and All India Association of Industries (AIAI), on Thursday.

Also read: India's February oil imports surge as refiners boost runs

In his welcome remarks, Dr Vijay Kalantri, Chairman, MVIRDC World Trade Center Mumbai said, In this post-Covid-19 world when the global supply chain is reshaping, India should rework its trade relation with Iran for the benefit of business communities on both sides. The Chabahar port can be a golden gateway for Indian trade to Eurasian countries and Europe. Both the countries should facilitate seamless movement of cargoes through Chabahar port.

Speaking about bilateral trade, Dr Ali Chegeni said, Official record shows that trade between India and Iran has declined sharply from US $17 billion in 2018-19 to less than US $2 billion in the current financial year because of sanctions.

However, actual trade could be at least six times more than what is reflected in the official number, as a lot of transactions are not reported officially. If both countries launch a rupee-rial trade mechanism, our bilateral trade volume could grow to US $30 billion, the Iranian envoy said.

Dr Chegeni informed that India and Iran have many complementarities as Iran is a major producer of urea, petrochemicals, organic fruits, which are generally imported by India.

According to him, Iran can meet the import needs of more than 260 products, right from urea to petrochemicals where India is import-dependent. Similarly, India is a major producer of agro commodities, pharmaceuticals, iron and steel, and automobiles, clinkers, cement, etc. which are imported by Iran. To promote the exchange of businessmen, tourists, and students, Iran has introduced a paperless, electronic multiple visa issuance system for Indians, the Ambassador pointed out.

Check out latest videos from DH:
A man has been arrested for murdering an 18-year-old Hindu girl when she resisted a bid to abduct her in Pakistan's southern Sindh province, according to a media report on Wednesday.

Pooja Kumari Oad was said to have been shot after she put up resistance to the attackers in Rohi, Sukkur in Sindh on Monday.

The Sukkur police arrested the suspect, identified as Wahid Bakhash Lashari, and registered an FIR against him under the relevant sections of Pakistan Penal Code, The News reported on Wednesday.

Lashari, along with his two accomplices, reportedly broke into the house of Sahib Oad with a gun on the day of the murder. Lashari allegedly shot Oad's daughter, Pooja Kumari, dead when the family resisted as he tried to abduct her, the paper said.

The alleged murderers escaped after the killing.

The incident sparked an uproar on social media with activists strongly condemning the brutal murder and demanding protection of religious minorities, mainly Hindus and Christians.

SSP Sukkur Sanghaar Malik ordered the arrest of the suspected killer and his aides. Lashari was arrested from the limits of Rohri, with what is suspected to be the murder weapon.

On Tuesday, a local court sent the suspect to 10-day police remand.

Pakistan Peoples' Party (PPP) Senator Krishna Kumari on Tuesday demanded capital punishment for the killer, saying that the authorities should take notice of the situation as girls of minorities were not safe in their homes.

PPP Chairperson Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, whose party rules the province, condemned the incident and said the relevant authorities should make sure that the culprits were meted out stringent punishments.

Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz president Shehbaz Sharif called the murder "heinous and condemnable" and said that such incidents represent our collective failure and put our whole society to shame.

"No girl deserves to go through this. High time we thought why we continue to hit lows one after the other," the leader of the opposition tweeted.

Pakistans minority communities have long faced the issue of forced marriages and conversions, the report said.

According to the Peoples Commission for Minorities Rights and the Centre for Social Justice, 156 incidents of forced conversions took place between 2013 and 2019, it said.

In 2019, the Sindh government attempted to outlaw forced conversions and marriages for the second time, but certain religious protestors contested the bill, the report said.

The Pakistan Bureau of Statistics reports the overall population of the Hindu community in Pakistan at 1.60 per cent, and 6.51 per cent in Sindh respectively, it said.

Hindus form the biggest minority community in Pakistan. According to official estimates, 75 lakh Hindus live in Pakistan. However, according to the community, over 90 lakh Hindus are living in the country.

The majority of Pakistan's Hindu population is settled in Sindh province where they share culture, traditions and language with Muslim residents. They often complain of harassment by extremists.

Watch the latest DH Videos here:
Talks between Ukraine and Russia are confrontational but moving forward, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Wednesday, as the West plans to announce more sanctions against the Kremlin amid a worsening humanitarian crisis. Intense Russian air strikes are turning besieged Mariupol into the "ashes of a dead land", the city council said on Tuesday, as street fighting and bombardments raged in the port city. Stay tuned for updates.
Intense Russian air strikes are turning besieged Mariupol into the "ashes of a dead land", the city council said on Tuesday, as the United States and Europe planned more sanctions to punish Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine.

Street fighting and bombardments raged in Mariupol, Ukrainian officials said, a day after it rejected an ultimatum from Russia to surrender. Hundreds of thousands are believed to be trapped inside buildings, with no access to food, water, power or heat.

Russian forces and Russian-backed separatist units had taken about half of the port city, normally home to around 400,000 people, Russia's RIA news agency said, citing a separatist leader.

Street fighting was taking place in the city, and both civilians and Ukrainian troops were coming under Russian fire, said regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko.

"There is nothing left there," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a video address to Italy's parliament.

Also read: 'Powerful bombs' rock Ukraine's besieged Mariupol amid new rescue bid

Mariupol Deputy Mayor Sergei Orlov told CNN the city was under a full blockade and had received no humanitarian aid.

"The city is under continuous bombing, from 50 bombs to 100 bombs Russian aircraft drops each day... A lot of death, a lot of crying, a lot of awful war crimes," Orlov said.

Mariupol has become the focus of the war that erupted on Feb. 24 when Russian President Vladimir Putin sent his troops over the border on what he calls a "special military operation" to demilitarise Ukraine and replace its pro-Western leadership.

It lies on the Sea of Azov and its capture would allow Russia to link areas in the east held by pro-Russian separatists with the Crimean peninsula, annexed by Moscow in 2014.

Putin's 27-day long incursion into Ukraine has forced more than 3.5 million to flee, brought the unprecedented isolation of Russia's economy, and raised fears of wider conflict in the West unthought-of for decades.

Western nations plan to heap more economic pressure on the Kremlin.

US President Joe Biden will join allies in applying additional sanctions and tightening existing ones during his trip to Europe this week, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Tuesday.

Also Read | Ukraine retakes key Kyiv suburb; battle for Mariupol rages

The trip will also include an announcement on joint action to enhance energy security in Europe, which is highly reliant on Russian gas, and Biden will show solidarity with Ukraine's neighbour, Poland, with a visit to Warsaw.

Having failed to seize the capital Kyiv or any other major city with a swift offensive, Russia is waging a war of attrition that has reduced some urban areas to rubble and prompted Western concern that the conflict could escalate, even to a nuclear war.

Russia's security policy dictates that the country would only use such weapons if its very existence were threatened, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told CNN on Tuesday.

"If it is an existential threat for our country, then it (the nuclear arsenal) can be used in accordance with our concept," he said.

Earlier he said "no one" had ever thought the operation in Ukraine would take just a couple of days and the campaign was going to plan, TASS news agency reported.

'Humanitarian catastrophe'

The United Nations human rights office in Geneva said on Tuesday it had recorded 953 civilian deaths and 1,557 injured since the invasion. The Kremlin denies targeting civilians.

Western officials said Russian forces were stalled around Kyiv but making some progress in the south and east. Ukrainian fighters are repelling Russian troops in some places but cannot roll them back, they said.

A Reuters team that reached a Russian-seized part of Mariupol on Sunday described a wasteland of charred apartment blocks and bodies wrapped in blankets lying by a road.

Ukraine says Russian shells, bombs and missiles have struck a theatre, an art school and other public buildings, burying hundreds of women and children sheltering in cellars.

Also Read | Signs of Ukrainian forces 'going after' Russians: Pentagon

Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk, speaking on Ukrainian television on Tuesday, demanded the opening of a humanitarian corridor for civilians. She said at least 100,000 people wanted to leave Mariupol but could not.

Referring to Russia's earlier demand that the city surrender by dawn on Monday, Vereshchuk said: "Our military are defending Mariupol heroically. We did not accept the ultimatum. They offered capitulation under a white flag."

Kyiv accused Moscow of deporting residents of Mariupol and separatist-held areas of Ukraine to Russia. This includes the "forcible transfer" of 2,389 children to Russia from the Luhansk and Donetsk regions, Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova said.

Moscow denies forcing people to leave, saying it is taking in refugees.

In Kherson, a city under Russian control, Ukrainian officials said Moscow's forces were preventing supplies from reaching civilians.

"Kherson's 300k citizens face a humanitarian catastrophe owing to the Russian army's blockade," foreign ministry spokesperson Oleg Nikolenko said on Twitter.

Russia did not immediately comment on the situation in Kherson.

Zelenskiy warned the crisis in Ukraine, one of the world's biggest grain exporters, would bring famine elsewhere.

"How can we sow (crops) under the strikes of Russian artillery?" he told Italian lawmakers.

In an address overnight, he also drew attention to the death of Boris Romanchenko, 96, who survived three Nazi concentration camps during World War Two but was killed when his apartment block in besieged Kharkiv was shelled last week.

In killing Romanchenko, "Putin managed to 'accomplish' what even Hitler couldn't," Ukraine's Defence Ministry said.

Check out DH's latest videos
At least 12 people have been killed in strikes across eastern Ukraine, an official in Kyiv said Tuesday, nearly one month into Moscow's invasion.

"In the Donetsk region, Avdiivka was fired on by artillery and aircraft, the city was razed to the ground. Five civilians were killed and 19 were injured," Ukraine's ombudswoman, Lyudmyla Denisova, said in a statement.

She said the attack occurred late Monday.

Avdiivka in the east of Ukraine is adjacent to the de-facto capital of pro-Moscow separatists, who wrested control of two self-proclaimed republics in 2014.

In Lysychansk, 150 kilometres north of Donetsk, another Russian strike left two dead and three wounded, she said.

In the Kharkiv region, a Russian tank had targeted a civilian-marked car, killing three adults and a child, Denisova said.

And in Severodonetsk, one person was killed and around a dozen were wounded in a strike in front of a store, she added.

Ukraine has accused Russian troops of indiscriminately targeting medical facilities, residential areas, and bomb shelters since Moscow sent troops over the borders of its pro-Western neighbour on February 24.

Russia denies purposefully targeting civilians and has instead accused Ukrainian forces of using civilians as human shields.

Check out DH's latest videos
Tens of thousands of girls were due to return to secondary school across Afghanistan Wednesday, more than seven months after the Taliban seized power and imposed harsh restrictions on the rights of women to be educated.

All schools were closed because of the Covid-19 pandemic when the Taliban took over in August -- but only boys and some younger girls were allowed to resume classes two months later.

The international community has made the right to education for all a sticking point in negotiations over aid and recognition, with several nations and organisations offering to pay teachers.

The education ministry said schools would reopen Wednesday across several provinces -- including the capital Kabul -- but those in the southern region of Kandahar, the Taliban's spiritual heartland, will not open until next month.

No reason was given.

Also Read  Don't forget Afghanistan, UN reminds to world as Ukraine crisis worsens

The ministry said reopening the schools was always a government objective and the Taliban were not bowing to pressure.

"We are not reopening the schools to make the international community happy, nor are we doing it to gain recognition from the world," said Aziz Ahmad Rayan, a ministry spokesman.

"We are doing it as part of our responsibility to provide education and other facilities to our students," he told AFP.

The Taliban had insisted they wanted to ensure schools for girls aged 12 to 19 were segregated and would operate according to Islamic principles.

Some pupils said they couldn't wait to get back -- even if it meant covering up according to a strict Taliban dress code.

"We are behind in our studies already," said Raihana Azizi, 17, as she prepared to attend class dressed in a black abaya, headscarf and veil over her face.

The Taliban have imposed a slew of restrictions on women, effectively banning them from many government jobs, policing what they wear and preventing them from travelling outside of their cities alone.

They have also detained several women's rights activists.

Despite the schools reopening, barriers to girls returning to education remain, with many families suspicious of the Taliban and reluctant to allow their daughters outside.

Others see little point in girls learning at all.

"Those girls who have finished their education have ended up sitting at home and their future is uncertain," said Heela Haya, 20, from Kandahar, who has decided to quit school.

"What will be our future?"

It is common for Afghan pupils to miss chunks of the school year as a result of poverty or conflict, and some continue lessons well into their late teens or early twenties.

Human Rights Watch also questioned the motivation for girls to study.

"Why would you and your family make huge sacrifices for you to study if you can never have the career you dreamed of?" asked Sahar Fetrat, an assistant researcher with the group.

The education ministry acknowledged authorities faced a shortage of teachers -- with many among the tens of thousands of people who fled the country as the Taliban swept to power.

"We need thousands of teachers and to solve this problem we are trying to hire new teachers on a temporary basis," the spokesman said.

Check out DH's latest videos
Heavy rain in southern China on Wednesday halted the search for victims and flight information black boxes that could tell why a China Eastern Airlines passenger plane plunged into a mountainside two days earlier with 132 people on board.

Rain water was filling the depression in the soft soil caused by the impact of the crash, state television reported, and the local weather bureau said there were risks of landslides, torrents and high winds as conditions deteriorated in the mountains of Guangxi region.

The wet weather was forecast to last for the rest of the week.

Flight MU5735 was en route from the southwestern city of Kunming, capital of Yunnan province, to Guangzhou in Guangdong province bordering Hong Kong, when the Boeing 737-800 jet suddenly plunged from cruising altitude at about the time when it would normally start to descend ahead of its landing.

Read | Wallets, IDs but no survivors in China plane crash

The cause of the crash is yet to be determined, with aviation authorities warning that their investigation would be very difficult because of the severe damage to the aircraft.

Desperate relatives of people who had been on board visited the crash site in the morning, passing checkpoints set at Lu village. Journalists and volunteers were barred from entering, but the brother-in-law of a woman on the doomed flight spoke to Reuters at the checkpoint, while another grief-stricken woman was heard wailing inside a tent.

"All I want is hope, the hope of survival, the 57-year-old man, who gave his surname as Ding, told Reuters. Describing the moment he heard about the disaster, he said: "It was like my heart just dropped.

Safety concerns

China had made great strides in improving air safety standards over the past two decades, and Monday's disaster was the first major crash in a dozen years.

Having rushed to Guangxi on Monday to oversee the emergency operations, Vice Premier Liu He held a meeting on Tuesday during which officials were urged to go "all out in their search as long as there is a glimmer of hope". It would be miraculous if anyone was found alive as the plane disintegrated on impact following its plunge from high altitude.

The disaster prompted the aviation regulator to launch a two-week inspection of the sector that will involve checks at all regional air traffic control bureaus, airline companies and flight training institutes to ensure the "absolute" safety.

The broader aviation sector was ordered to carry out special checks to prevent any other major accidents.

Since the crash, China Eastern and two subsidiaries have grounded their fleet of more than 200 Boeing 737-800 jets. The last commercial jetliner to crash in mainland China was in 2010, when an Embraer E-190 regional jet flown by Henan Airlines went down.

Read | Boeing 737 crash: How the 'eagle of the sky' fell

At the first news conference held by the government late on Tuesday night in Guangxi, an aviation official said the 737-800 jet that crashed had met airworthiness standards before take-off and crew members had been in good health.

The plane had three pilots on board on its final flight, Zhu Tao, a CAAC official said at the same press conference, which is one more than normally required on a 737.

The aircraft did not respond to repeated calls from air controllers during its rapid descent, Zhu said.

FlightRadar24 data showed the aircraft plunged at a rate of 31,000 feet per minute - the height of a 50-floor building every second.

The disaster comes as Boeing seeks to rebound from several crises, notably the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on air travel and safety concerns over its 737 MAX model following two deadly crashes.

China Eastern also faces deepening losses and closer regulatory scrutiny following the crash.

Watch latest videos by DH here:
The time when India had to rely on Russia has changed and it can now find in the United States a partner of choice, President Joe Bidens Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, said.

Indias relationship with Russia has developed over decades at a time when the United States was not able to be a partner to India, Blinken said after he and Bidens Secretary of Defence, Lloyd Austin, hosted their counterparts in the Government of India, S Jaishankar and Rajnath Singh, for the fourth round of 2+2 ministerial dialogue. Times have changed. Today we are able and willing to be a partner of choice with India across virtually every realm  commerce, technology, education, and security.

Read | Can't be 'business as usual' for Russia at G20: US

The 2+2 dialogue was preceded by a virtual meeting between Biden and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The back-to-back high-level engagement took place even as Indias refusal to toe the Biden Administrations line and its policy of avoiding directly criticizing Russia for its aggression against Ukraine turned into an irritant in its ties with the US.

Blinken and Austin conveyed to Jaishankar and Singh that the US understood that India and Russia shared decades-old relations, particularly in the defence and technology sectors. They, however, stressed that India should now expand its relations with the US too, especially in the key areas.

Jaishankar defended Indias decision to import oil from Russia, notwithstanding the sanctions imposed by the US and other western nations on the former Soviet Union nation in response to its military aggression against Ukraine.

We do buy some energy (from Russia) which is necessary for our energy security. But, I suspect, looking at the figures, probably our (Indias) total (oil) purchases for the month would be less than what Europe does in an afternoon, the External Affairs Minister said. He was replying to a question from a journalist on Indias oil purchase from Russia.

Also Read | Not in India's interest to increase Russian energy imports, Biden to PM Modi

The Biden Administration of late not-so-subtly conveyed to New Delhi its displeasure over India's discussion with Russia to explore ways to continue bilateral trade circumventing the sanctions the US and the other western nations imposed on President Vladimir Putin's nation.

Blinken, however, said that India would not be violating the US sanctions if it continued to import oil from Russia.

Id just note that there are carve-outs (in the sanctions) for energy purchases, the US Secretary of State said. Of course, were encouraging countries not to purchase additional energy supplies from Russia.

He said that every country was differently situated and had different needs and requirements. But were looking to allies and partners not to increase their purchases of Russian energy.

Watch latest videos by DH here:
In a dry dock in the Tuscan seaside town of Massa stands the "Scheherazade", the most infamous yacht in Italy today due to speculation it could belong to Vladimir Putin.

With its bow facing the Mediterranean, the 140-metre craft worth an estimated $700 million is the subject of a probe into its ownership by Italy's financial police.

Several yachts belonging to Russian oligarchs have already been seized in Europe since Moscow invaded Ukraine last month. The seizure of the "Scheherazade", however, would be the most spectacular were its provenance indeed traced to the Russian president.

Follow live updates of Russia-Ukraine crisis here

For several months, it has been parked for maintenance work at The Italian Sea Group's shipyard at the Marina di Carrara, within the western seaside town of Massa not far from Tuscany's famous marble quarries of Carrara.

On Wednesday, an AFPTV journalist witnessed no obvious signs of activity on board, although some men were working nearby.

A source close to the ongoing probe by Italy's financial police told AFP that the investigation could be wrapped up within days.

"We are in a phase of delving deeper and it's generally more complicated," said the source. "It's not always easy to attribute ownership."

Built by Germany's Lurssen in 2020, the yacht features two helipads, a swimming pool and a movie theatre, according to the SuperYachtFan website, which researches yachts and their owners.

News reports say the "Scheherazade", which flies the Cayman Islands flag, is owned by a company registered in the Marshall Islands.

Its captain is British, but the rest of the crew is Russian, according to researchers at the anti-corruption foundation of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, which on Monday posted a video on YouTube attributing the yacht to Putin.

Also Read | Russia will only accept roubles for gas deliveries to Europe

Researchers cited a crew list in their possession that included several members of Russia's federal protective service, which is charged with Putin's security.

But on Wednesday Paolo Gozzani, the head of the local CGIL union, which includes shipyard workers, said the crew of the "Scheherazade" had suddenly changed in recent days.

"The crew was exclusively made up of Russian personnel," Gozzani told AFP.

"And then suddenly all the staff was changed with a British crew, and the reasons are still not clear."

The New York Times has reported that US authorities have collected evidence linking Putin to the luxury ship, which made two trips, in 2020 and 2021, to the Black Sea resort of Sochi.

The Italian Sea Group said in a statement the yacht was "not attributable to the property of Russian President Vladimir Putin".

Its assessment was based on "the documentation in its possession and following the findings of the checks carried out by the relevant authorities", said the shipyard's owner.

Interviewed by the New York Times earlier this month, the British captain of the "Scheherazade" said Putin was not the owner of the ship and that the Russian president had never set foot on board. Refusing to give the owner's name, the captain said it was no one facing current sanctions.

Also Read | Biden admin sanctions Kremlin spokesman, 50 Russian oligarchs over Ukraine invasion

In an address to the Italian parliament on Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on Italy, a popular Russian resort destination, to seize all financial and real estate assets of the oligarchs, including yachts, "from the Scheherazade to the smallest".

Since Moscow's February 24 invasion of Ukraine and the ensuing European Union sanctions, Italian authorities have seized over 800 million euros ($877 million) of assets belonging to Russian oligarchs, Prime Minister Mario Draghi said Tuesday.

That includes the "Sailing Yacht A", the 530-million-euro sailing-assisted motor yacht linked to Russian billionaire Andrei Melnichenko, a coal and fertiliser tycoon on the EU's blacklist.

Italy also seized the 65-million-euro "Lady M Yacht" belonging to Alexei Mordashov, a Russian steel billionaire reputedly close to Vladimir Putin.

The sanctions said Draghi, "have severely affected the economy and financial markets of Russia, as well as the personal assets of the people closest to President Putin".

Check out DH's latest videos:
One of the two black boxes of the China Eastern Airlines plane that crashed on Monday has been found, rescuers said on Wednesday.

The China Eastern Airlines Boeing 737 aircraft, which departed from Kunming and was bound for Guangzhou on Monday, crashed into a mountainous area near Molang Village in Tengxian County in the city of Wuzhou, in the worst air disaster in over a decade in the country.

A black box of the China Eastern Airlines passenger plane has been recovered, rescuers at the site told state-run Xinhua news agency.

Also Read | What are the latest clues in China's plane crash?

The crashed airliner had two black boxes, one in the cockpit and one in the tail to record various data, according to the official media here.

The search for the black boxes is one of the key tasks required by the investigation team.

Aircraft black boxes are generally in bright orange-red so they can be found quickly after a flight accident. They are built to withstand explosions, disintegration, high-temperature combustion, immersion in water and other damage, and the battery lasts for about 30 days.

Also read: Wallets, IDs but no survivors found in China plane crash

Because the crash site is in a forested mountainous area, searchers are relying on drones and manpower, which will bring certain difficulties.

No survivors have been found so far among the 123 passengers and nine crew members in the plane crash, Sun Shiying, chairman of China Eastern Airlines Yunnan branch, said on Tuesday night.

The cause of the crash cannot be confirmed immediately and the investigation into the cause is difficult, said Zhu Tao, an official with the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) said on Tuesday.

At present, the investigation team is carrying out a full probe in accordance with the procedures, with rescuers exploring the crash site and going all out to search the black boxes, Zhu had said.

The team is also thoroughly investigating other aspects, including flight, maintenance, air traffic control, meteorology, aircraft design and manufacturing, Zhu said.

Based on known information, the authorities do not yet have a clear clue to the cause of the passenger plane crash, the official said.

The last domestic fatal incident was in 2010, when a plane crashed in Yichun, Heilongjiang province, killing 42 people.

Check out the latest DH videos here:
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and his fiancee Stella Moris get married on Wednesday, at the high-security London prison where he is being held during his extradition case.

Assange, 50, is fighting attempts to remove him from the UK to face trial in the United States over the publication of secret files relating to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Last week, the UK Supreme Court turned down a request to hear his appeal against the move, bringing the long-running legal saga nearer to a conclusion.

Assange and Moris announced their engagement in November and were given permission to marry at Belmarsh prison in southeast London where he is on remand.

The Don't Extradite Assange (DEA) group said the wedding would be conducted by a registrar, with just four guests, two witnesses -- and two security guards -- in attendance.

The guests will have to leave immediately after the ceremony.

Vivienne Westwood, the British fashion designer who has been a long-standing supporter of the Australian publisher, has designed Moris' wedding dress, the DEA group said.

She has also provided a kilt for Assange in a nod to his Scottish heritage, it added.

Moris, who is in her late 30s and has two young sons with Assange, will cut a wedding cake and make a speech outside the prison in front of their supporters.

Assange has become a figurehead for media freedom campaigners, who accused Washington of trying to muzzle reporting of legitimate security concerns.

If found guilty of violating the US Espionage Act by publishing military and diplomatic files, he could face the rest of his life in prison.

For critics, however, he is seen as having been reckless with classified information that may have endangered the lives of sources.

Assange initially won a ruling against his extradition, after his lawyers successfully argued he would be a suicide risk if he were transferred to the United States.

But the US government appealed, and persuaded judges that he would not be held in solitary confinement at a high-security federal detention facility.

He has spent most of the past decade in custody or holed up in Ecuador's London embassy, trying to avoid another extradition after Sweden sought his transfer to answer claims of sexual assault. That case was later dropped.

After the Supreme Court blocked his application, UK Home Secretary Priti Patel will make a final decision on the case, unless Assange's lawyers launch another challenge on a separate point in the case.

Watch latest videos by DH here:
Atiya Azimi was up all night packing and repacking her bag, feverish at returning to school for the first time since the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan.

The joy was shockingly brief.

In the middle of a lesson, just hours after the school reopened, she learned the hardline Islamists had revoked permission for girls to study.

"Suddenly we were told to leave until another order is issued," said Azimi, who was returning to grade 12 at Zarghona Girls School in the capital Kabul.

Also Read | Taliban shuts girls' school in Afghanistan hours after reopening

"What have we done wrong? Why should women and girls face this situation? I ask the Islamic Emirate to start our classes."

"I did not sleep the whole night thinking about going back to school again," she told AFP.

Secondary school-age girls have been out of education for around a year in many provinces.

Schools were first closed under the previous US-backed government as a result of the Covid-19 outbreak, and after the Taliban took power the new rulers reopened all schools for boys.

But girls were allowed to return only to primary schools and were banned from secondary institutions in most areas.

Also Read | Taliban cancel public holiday for Nowruz but say celebrations allowed

The Islamists claimed that schools needed to be adapted so girls and boys could be segregated, despite the vast majority in conservative Afghanistan already operating separate classrooms.

The Taliban's education ministry days ago announced that girls' secondary schools would reopen for the start of the new academic year on Wednesday.

But an 11th hour U-turn by the Taliban leadership was a devastating blow for students, parents and even teachers.

"Our hopes were high but now they are shattered," said Muthahera Arefi, 17, turning around from a Kabul school to head home.

Also Read | Afghanistan world's unhappiest country, even before Taliban

Amina Haidari, a mother of four daughters, was frustrated with how events unfolded.

"I think for girls living in the shadow of the Taliban, it is a total mess and waste of time," said Haidari, who herself lost her job in the election commission which was scrapped by the Taliban soon after they stormed back to power.

"All the statements that the Taliban make are just propaganda... We don't believe this government will reopen schools."

Across the country, groups of jubilant girls had arrived at schools on Wednesday morning carrying their bags and books, greeting their former classmates with grins and chatter.

Teacher Alia Hakimi, at Tajwar Sultana Girls School in Kabul, said the decision will leave "students weak and stressed."

At Kabul's Rabia Balkhi, one of the largest in the country, girls were not able to even make it through the school gates.

"They denied us entry into the school. It's heartbreaking for my girls," said a mother who asked not to be named.

One of her two daughters, both with a hijab covering their hair, was brimming with tears.

"I was looking forward to meeting my friends again, to be together again," said the girl, who also asked not to be named.

Some girls even pleaded to the guards to allow them entry into the premises.

"We are ready to fulfil all conditions of the Taliban, including wearing hijabs or anything but we urge them not to stop our education," said a girl from class 11.

Watch the latest DH Videos here:
At least 20 people have been arrested so far in connection with the violence in West Bengals Birbhum district that claimed eight lives, a senior police officer said on Wednesday.

All eight of them, including two children, were charred to death as nearly a dozen houses were set ablaze in Bogtui village early on Tuesday in a suspected fallout of the murder of a ruling TMC panchayat official.

Eleven people were arrested the same day for their involvement in the incident.

Also Read | Birbhum deaths: Calcutta HC to hear matter suo moto on Wednesday

"With nine more arrests, the number of those who have been nabbed in the case rose to 20. We are grilling them to find out if there were more people involved in the incident.

"Some accused seem to have fled the village. We are trying to trace them," the officer said.

He also stated that forensic experts were examining the ravaged houses to get an idea about the "nature of the mishap".

The West Bengal government has constituted a Special Investigation Team (SIT), headed by Additional Director General (CID) Gyanwant Singh, to probe the incident.

The Union home ministry has sought a detailed report on the incident from the state government.

Watch the latest DH Videos here:
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday, describing the killings in Birbhum a day before, as heinous, said the culprits should not be forgiven.

Speaking at a virtual event to inaugurate a gallery dedicated to freedom fighters at the Victoria Memorial, Prime Minister Modi said the central government is willing to help the state in any way required in bringing perpetrators to justice.

He said he hoped the state would take steps to bring the culprits to justice quickly. I express my condolences over the violent incident in Birbhum district in West Bengal. I hope that the state government will definitely ensure that those who have committed such heinous crimes are punished, Modi said.

Also read: BJP seeks Mamatas resignation over Birbhum killings

I would also urge the people of Bengal to never forgive the perpetrators of such incidents, and those who encourage such criminals. The centre would extend all sorts of help to the state government to ensure the culprits are booked, he said.

TMC leader and senior Bengal Minister Partha Chatterjee reacting to the Prime Ministers offer of help in ensuring justice for the victims of the Birbhum killings said, The state government is duty-bound to ensure that the rule of law should take its course. The culprits will be hunted down and punished.

Check out DH's latest videos:
China's Foreign Minister will make a stop for talks in New Delhi on Friday, an official said, though neither side has formally announced what would be the highest-level visit since border clashes soured relations two years ago.

Foreign Minister Wang Yi has attended a conference of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation in Pakistan this week and is set to also visit Nepal on Friday, as part of a tour of South Asia.

The government source, who requested anonymity, said Wang was expected to meet with EAM S Jaishankar and National Security Adviser Ajit Doval, and while the agenda was unclear, discussions over the Ukraine conflict were expected.

India's foreign ministry declined to comment. A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said at a daily news briefing on Wednesday that he had no information to offer at the moment.

Neither China or India have condemned Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Russia, which refers to its actions as a "special military operation", counts both China and India as friendly powers, having cultivated diplomatic and economic ties since the Cold War era.

Relations between China and India became fraught in June 2020, when 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers were killed during a high altitude clash in a disputed section of the western Himalayas.

India has restricted many Chinese firms from operating in the country since then.

Wang said at an annual news briefing in Beijing this month that Asia's two largest nations should help each other accomplish goals, instead of "draining each others' energies".

Without naming anyone, he said that "some forces" had tried to create conflict and division between the two countries.

Aside from the tensions in the Himalayas, India's mistrust of China stems from Beijing's support of old foe Pakistan, the competition for influence in Nepal, and concern over China's economic clout in Bangladesh, Myanmar and Sri Lanka.

In recent weeks, India has received a flurry of visits and phone calls from senior officials from Australia, Britain, Japan and the United States, while China has also stepped up diplomatic activity to set out its position over the conflict in Ukraine.

Check out DH's latest videos:
The Calcutta High Court on Wednesday took suo moto cognisance of the violence in West Bengals Birbhum district that claimed eight lives.

A bench comprising Chief Justice Prakash Srivastava and Justice Rajarshi Bharadwaj will hear the matter at 2 pm.

Eight people were charred to death as their houses were set on fire in Bogtui village near Rampurhat town of Birbhum district early on Tuesday.

The incident is suspected to the fallout of ruling TMC panchayat officials murder.

Advocate Tarun Jyoti Tiwari had said on Tuesday that he and nine others of BJP Lawyers' Cell made a mention of the incident before the division bench, seeking leave to file a petition.

Tiwari had also stated that the bench granted them permission and a case would be moved shortly.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar went for each other's jugular over the incident, while the Union home ministry sought a detailed report from the state government.

Watch latest videos by DH here:
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee will be going to violence-hit Birbhum district on Thursday to take stock of the situation.

She said she postponed her visit as "other political parties were huddling there".

Further she added that such incidents were more frequent in UP, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Rajasthan.

Mamata alleged that parties who arent in power in the state are trying to malin the government.

"I am not justifying the incident in Rampurhat. We will take action in a fair manner," the TMC leader said.

Read | 20 arrested for Birbhum killings, forensic team at site of incident

"This is Bengal, not Uttar Pradesh. I had sent a delegation of TMC to Hathras but we were not allowed an entry. But we are not stopping anyone from coming here, Action will be taken against perpetrators of violence in Birbhum, irrespective of their political colours," she said, addressing the public at a programme.

"The government is ours, we are concerned about people in our state. We would never want anyone to suffer. The Birbhum, Rampurhat incident is unfortunate. I have immediately dismissed the OC, SDPO," she added.

Mamata alleged that as the Opposition failed to find flaws in governance, they are starting a fire by igniting matchsticks. She also said that focus is being shifted to the incident to divert attention away from the fuel price hike. She also flagged the Raj Bhavans interference in states administration.

Meanwhile, West Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar fired fresh salvos at Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee over the Birbhum killings as he shot off yet another letter to her, claiming that the state governments actions in the matter smack of "political overtones" and an attempt to shield the guilty.

Eight people were charred to death as their houses were set on fire in Bogtui village near Rampurhat town of Birbhum district early on Tuesday. The incident is suspected to be the fallout of ruling TMC panchayat official's murder.

The Calcutta High Court on Wednesday also took suo moto cognisance of the violence in Birbhum. A bench comprising Chief Justice Prakash Srivastava and Justice Rajarshi Bharadwaj will hear the matter at 2 pm.

(With agency inputs)

Check out the latest DH videos here:
South India was a place of deeper faith, but the values are changing, feels Sister Mary Joseph, the newly-elected Superior General of Missionaries of Charity. There are lonely people, living alone, as their children have gone abroad, she added.

At Mothers House in Kolkata, Sister Joseph succeeds Sister Prema. The Missionaries, established by Mother Teresa, is known for their work among the destitute and the needy.

Responding to a query on challenges visible in southern Indian states, the Superior General said that the values are fast changing. The South was a place of a deeper faith. People were very religious, therefore, they had deeper values of loving, caring. All these beautiful values that come from praying Now I see that values are changing. This is my kind of sadness for Kerala. When materialism comes in, we somehow lose our humanity, and thats a pity, Sister Joseph said.

Because we are created, Mother Teresa used to say, for greater things - to love and to be loved. Thats a pity. We have money in the pocket, but feel absolutely rejected, all alone, she added.

The Sister, who has spent considerable time abroad, said that like in the West, things have changed for the South too. When a nation or state becomes overly materialistic, which means over materialistic things spiritual values are lost, and this is a great pity, she said.

Missionaries have many homes in south India for destitute women and handicapped children. An issue of concern, mentions Sister Joseph, is that there are lonely people in the home, left alone, because their children are gone abroad. So we visit them and help out whatever the people need. The Missionaries, in general, is also trying to reach out to people living alone, visiting them, while the poor on the street remains a priority, the Sister added.

Check out DH's latest videos:
South Africa: Widespread support for South African Investment Conference

International and local investors are set to attend the fourth South African Investment Conference (SAIC), which will be held on 24 March at the Sandton Convention Centre, in Johannesburg.

The conference aims to build on the successes of the first three conferences, which showcased investment opportunities available in the country.

In April 2018, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that South Africa would host an investment conference with the aim of raising R1.2 trillion over a five-year period. Since its initial launch, SAIC has drawn delegates from South Africa and the world.

As the country has evolved because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the conference will have a hybrid format, with the main event being held in person and the plenary sessions livestreamed for an online audience.

According to a statement on the SA Investment Conference website, a fifth conference will be held next year with the same objective of showcasing investment opportunities available in South Africa with an aim of growing the economy, which has been badly battered by the pandemic and the resultant worldwide economic slowdown, likely to worsen as a result of global geo-political uncertainties.

South African Naspers CEO, Phuthi Mahanyele-Dabengwa, welcomed what she saw as the business-friendly tone of the investment conference.

In order to fully drive confidence, it is critical that business leaders and policymakers work together to create a consistent policy environment that encourages investment and supports local innovation, where South African tech companies and talent can thrive, Mahanyele-Dabengwa said.

Naspers is a global internet group and one of the seven main sponsors of the conference.

Vodacom CEO Shameel Joosub said the company supports governments drive to bridging the significant digital divide, which is key for the masses who live in the rural parts of the country, so they can be part of the digital economy and reap the associated economic benefits.

This is in line with governments key priority and an objective of the investment conference  tackling unemployment, poverty and inequality.

Industry buy-in

Mining will be in the spotlight at the conference, as government is finalising its mining exploration strategy to better attract investors and encourage those who are already operating in this field.

The CEO of mining giant Anglo-American, Mark Cutifani, pointed out that mining is a critical driver of economic growth, transformation and development across many communities in South Africa.

South Africans across the public and private sectors are invested in mining through their savings, pension schemes and other investment mechanisms. This is why I am passionate about the contribution we make as an industry, and the necessity to continue transforming ourselves for the benefit of all South Africans, said Cutifani.

Cutifani said Anglo-American, which is one of the sponsors of the investment conference, is one of the biggest investors in South Africa.

One of the main aims of the investment conference is to drive job creation across the public and private sectors.

This is the outspoken intent, too, of the largest black-empowered resource company, Exxaro.

Exxaros CEO designate, Dr Nombasa Tsengwa, stressed that the company is fully aware that our prosperity as a country is linked to our continent; [and] we cannot thrive alone.

As the objectives of the investment conference and that of Exxaro are aligned, it made perfect sense to come aboard as a sponsor, Tsengwa said.

Building economic and social infrastructure is the broad background against which the investment conference takes place.

An essential part of the building blocks of this approach is a comprehensive social compact between government, business, labour and communities.

This can be seen through the sponsors of the conference, including the major brewery company, SAB.

SAB CEO, Richard Rivett-Carnac, said the company is committed to creating sustainable investments and driving real, tangible growth for the economy.

South Africa has been the home for SAB for centuries, tracing all the way back to Charles Glass and the Castle Brewery that he started in 1888, Rivett-Carnac said.

Huawei South Africa CEO, Wilson Liu, said as a proud sponsor of the 4th annual South African Investment Conference, Huawei continues to pledge support and commitment to the country and President Ramaphosas dedication to the advancement of its electronics and ICT sectors and the 4IR through innovative and revolutionary technology.

Discovery CEO, Adrian Gore, reiterated that South Africa is larger and more relevant than most people think.

Discovery, which is the seventh and final sponsor of the SAIC, is a shared value insurance company, whose purpose and ambition are achieved through a pioneering business model that incentivises people to be healthier, and enhances and protects their lives.  SAnews.gov.za

This story has been published on: 2022-03-23. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Why the number of people incarcerated in private prisons explodes in US

(People's Daily App) 13:19, March 23, 2022

Statistics show that the US has the highest incarceration rate among the world. The country accounts for only 5 percent of the world's population, but has nearly a quarter of the world's prison population. At present, about 115,000 prisoners are held in private prisons across the country, accounting for about 8 percent of the incarcerated people in the US Since 2000, the number of inmates housed in private prisons has surged 32 percent compared to a 3-percent overall increase in the country's prison population.

Why has the number of people incarcerated in private prisons exploded in recent years? Is it because they have better conditions? Click the video to know more.

(Web editor: Peng Yukai, Liang Jun)
Sivasankari and her family did not think about the consequences when they fled their village in northern Sri Lanka to take the perilous boat journey to Rameswaram in Tamil Nadu on Monday evening. The only thought on their minds was to flee hunger in their home country and reach India.

We got into the boat thinking that we will either reach India or perish in the sea. We were marooned for the whole of Tuesday, and we were not sure whether we will step our foot on the soil. Finally, we could reach Dhanuskodi. We cant live there (in Sri Lanka) anymore with hunger, Sivasankari said, after reaching Rameswaram on Tuesday evening.

The woman is among 16 Sri Lankan nationals, including a toddler and children, who reached Rameswaram after an arduous journey, which is dangerous in more ways than one. Mohammed Asim, another economic refugee, said they fled Sri Lanka to save themselves from hunger as the economic crisis was much worse than it is being projected.

The quality of the essential items that we get is also very poor though the price is exponentially high. If we get rice one day, we dont get coconut. If we get coconut, we dont get flour on that day. It is impossible to live in Sri Lanka that we decided to leave, Asim said.

Sivasankari and Asim are part of the second batch who arrived in Rameswaram on Tuesday. Ethnic Tamils in Sri Lanka find Tamil Nadu a better option to migrate, though illegally, not just due to its geographical proximity, but also because many have relatives here. These people either live in refugee camps or in their own accommodation after having fled Sri Lanka during the civil war that raged for nearly 30 years.

Theori, who was part of the first batch that was stranded in Rameswarams fourth island, said she could not buy essentials by spending exorbitant amount as she is a single mother, after having lost her husband. One kg of rice which cost Rs 130 is now sold at Rs 230. LPG which cost Rs 1,900 is now available only for Rs 4,000. Poor people like us cannot afford to live in Sri Lanka. It is difficult to give education to my children as well, she said.

The woman also said that she came to Tamil Nadu since her mother is living in the refugee camp in Gudiyatham in the Vellore district. Gajendran, who came with his wife and four-month-old son, said he was a painter in Sri Lanka and paid Rs 10,000 each to take the boat from Mannar to Rameswaram. We were dropped off at the fourth island. We did not know which place was it. Finally, we were rescued by Coast Guard. I am glad we could reach alive, he added.

Watch the latest DH Videos here:
Flamingos, the visitors to the financial capital of Mumbai have got a postal cover!

Coinciding with the International Day of Forests, the India Post has released a special cover - Flamingos - Mumbais flagship winter visitors.

Chief Postmaster General, Maharashtra Circle, Veena R. Srinivas released a special cover in presence of Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forests, Mangrove Cell, Mumbai, Virendra Tiwari, Postmaster General, Mumbai Region, Swati Pandey, Deputy Conservator of Forests, Mumbai Mangrove Conservation Unit, Adarsh Reddy and Director, Sanjay Gandhi National Park, G Mallikarjuna.

More than one lakh Lesser Flamingos and Greater Flamingos migrate to Mumbai during winters.

The Greater Flamingo is around 5 feet tall and whitish-pink in colour while the Lesser Flamingo is around 3 feet tall and rose-pinkish in colour.

In fact, the Thane Creek includes the Thane Creek Flamingo Sanctuary (TCFC), spread across 1,690.5 hectares, and will be the first Ramsar Wetland in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region.

Flamingos were first spotted in Mumbai in 1994.

In fact, the two types of birds of this species Greater flamingos (Phoenicopterus roseus) and Lesser flamingos (Phoenicopterus minor) are seen here and this prompted the Mumbai Port Trust (MbPT) to join hands with Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS-India) to protect the environs and help in promoting wildlife tourism in this megapolis.

They start arriving in October, nesting in mud-flats and leave before the onset of monsoon.

Most of these birds, which are found here, arrive from the Great Rann of Kutch in neighbouring Gujarat. Some palaeontologists and ornithologists believe that they are the birds, which is a link between the family of birds comprising storks, herons, ibises, spoonbills and cranes and the group that comprises ducks, swans and geese.

While Greater flamingos are one of the tallest birds found in India (average height of nearly four feet), the Lesser flamingos compensate for their shorter stature with their colour's richness. While the bigger ones have light pink legs and a few streaks of pink on their feathers, the smaller ones have deep pink feathers and almost red legs and a black bill. In the twilight, they look like flames and hence the name has been derived.

Besides Great Rann of Kutch, they are also found in Point Calimere in Thanjavur district of Tamil Nadu, Chilka in Orissa and Sambhar in Rajasthan. In Maharashtra, a few are also seen in Solapur and Aurangabad.

But what has attracted them to Mumbai - they like saline and alkaline water. Soda lakes, salt lagoons and mud-flats form the habitat of flamingos for their food which chiefly comprises crustaceans, worms and blue-green algae, which are abundant in alkaline waters.

Also, a special pack of 10 Picture Postcards on Avian Diversity in Maharashtra and Goa, another pack of five Picture Postcards on Leopard with Special Cancellations and AV reality were released on the occasion. These are available for sale at the Philatelic bureaux of Mumbai General Post Office (GPO), Panaji HO (Goa), Nashik HO, Aurangabad HO, Pune HO and Nagpur GPO.

Watch the latest DH Videos here:
With Congress president Sonia Gandhi meeting leaders of the G-23 grouping to resolve internal party issues, former Punjab Congress chief Sunil Jakhar on Wednesday said "indulging the dissenters too much" will encourage more dissent.

"Indulging the dissenters - 'too much' - will not only undermine the authority but also encourage more dissent while discouraging the cadre at the same time," he tweeted.

He also posted his tweet in Hindi, saying, "Jhukh Kar Salaam Karne Mein Kya Harj Hai Magar, Sar Itna Mat Jhukao Ki Dastar Gir Pade".

Jakhar also posted some newspaper clippings of Gandhi's meeting with the G-23 leaders along with the tweet.

Days after meeting Ghulam Nabi Azad, Gandhi had on Tuesday met some more leaders of the G-23 grouping, including Anand Sharma and Manish Tewari, at her residence in Delhi and held discussions on resolving the internal party issues.

Read | Cong laid foundation of brotherhood post-1947: Mehbooba

The Congress president is likely to meet more leaders of the group in the coming days.

Tuesday's interaction was part of the series of meetings that the Congress top leadership is having with some of the leaders who have raised critical organisational issues and have suggested measures to revamp the party.

These meetings are being held amidst indications that some of the G-23 leaders may be accommodated in the Congress Working Committee or a new body like the Parliamentary Board, which will be responsible for all policy decisions, including finalising chief ministerial candidates and tie-ups with like-minded parties in states.

Earlier, following the Congress' defeat in the Punjab Assembly elections, Jakhar had hit out at former chief minister Charanjit Singh Channi and called him a liability whose "greed pulled the party down".

Without taking any names, Jakhar had also targeted senior Congress leader Ambika Soni for trying to project Channi as an asset to the party.

Watch latest videos by DH here:
Amid public outrage against the Kerala government's proposed K-Rail project, Congress on Wednesday alleged that "money" was the only "motive" behind the project for Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan.

Speaking to the media, State Congress president K Sudhakaran said that the "commission" was the "driving force" behind all such major infrastructure projects in the state for the chief minister.

"For K-Rail, Vijayan is eyeing 10 per cent commission and so is the case with all new major projects. On TV, we only get to see innocent people worrying that their land and house where they lived all these years will be gone for this project," said Sudhakaran.

Also Read | Kerala Congress moots enhanced air connectivity as alternative for rail project

"Let the Vijayan government conduct a survey for this project. If the people want it, we will also support the project. Nowhere in the country is there a more arrogant Chief Minister than Vijayan," he added.

He asked the Kerala unit of the BJP to prevail upon Prime Minister to see that the project is not given clearance.

"They should do that and not engage in protests because they can use the service of Metroman Sreedharan to prevail upon the Centre," said Sudhakaran.

As in the past, Wednesday also witnessed angry protesters pulling out the marking stones being laid as part of the project in a few places.

CPI-M state secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan said that it's not a necessity that marking stones have to be laid as even without doing that things can go forward.

"This project will go forward as planned," said Balakrishnan.

At the weekly cabinet meeting this time there was no discussion on K-Rail and the ongoing protests, as per sources.

If completed, it will see a 529.45 km corridor connecting Thiruvananthapuram to Kasaragod with high-speed trains covering the distance in around four hours.

As per NITI Aayog, it might cost Rs 1.24 lakh crore when it nears completion in 2025, while the detailed project report on this published by the Pinarayi Vijayan government says it will cost ARs 63,940 crore K-Rail project.

Check out the latest videos from DH:
It was Congress president Sonia Gandhi who was not only marshalling the members of her own party in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday, but was also seen instructing the MPs of other Opposition parties to refrain from participating in the Question Hour to register their protest against the rising petroleum prices.

Gandhi was unusually more proactive and practically led the Opposition protest against the rise in the prices of petrol, diesel and LPG cylinders during the Question Hour.

As a result, the Congress MPs were louder compared to the members of other Opposition parties while protesting in the well of the House.

When National Conference (NC) MP Hasnain Masoodi stood up from his seat to ask a supplementary question to the question listed against his name, Gandhi was seen instructing him to sit down and he did so.

A similar scene was witnessed when the name of ET Mohammed Basheer, a leader of Congress ally Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), was announced by the speaker to ask his question and Gandhi ensured that he raised the issue of petroleum prices, instead of asking the question.

She was also seen giving instructions to the leader of the Congress in the Lok Sabha, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, and other party MPs who were protesting in the well.

Watch latest videos by DH here:

The Congress president continued to sit in the House even after the Question Hour.
Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann on Wednesday launched an anti-corruption helpline number that will allow people to upload videos of officials asking for a bribe or indulging in other malpractices.

Mann launched the number -- 9501200200 -- on the martyrdom day of legendary freedom fighters Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev, and called it "an anti-corruption action line".

Mann, who was sworn in as Chief Minister on March 16 at Khatkar Kalan, sought the support of people in order to root out corruption within a month.

Also Read | Will make efforts for martyr status to Bhagat Singh: Punjab CM Mann

"I had promised to you that I will launch a phone number on March 23 which will be called as an anti-corruption action line," said Mann in a video message.

"The number is 9501200200," said Mann, asking people to send videos of those who demand bribes or commission for any work to this number.

Mann said the staff will inquire into it and whosoever is found guilty, be it an officer, our minister or an MLA, strict action will be taken against them.

He urged people to share only corruption-related videos on this number.

Mann also sought the support of the people of Punjab in this regard.

"In this campaign, I need the support of three crores Punjabis. If you support, we will make Punjab a corruption-free state within a month, said Mann.

Mann said his government was committed to ensuring clean and transparent governance.

"Our government will take the message of martyrs to each and every house so that the dreams of martyrs could be realised, he added.

Mann had announced to launch the anti-corruption helpline number on March 23, the martyrdom day of Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev.

At that time, Mann had said it would be his "personal WhatsApp number".

Earlier on Wednesday, Mann paid glowing tributes to Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev at Hussainiwala in Ferozepur and at Khatkar Kalan in SBS Nagar district.

In his tweet, Mann said, "Let's make Punjab a corruption-free and prosperous Punjab by realising the dreams of the great martyrs who laid down their precious lives for the country's freedom."

The Punjab government has declared a holiday on March 23 on the martyrdom day of freedom fighters.

Check out the latest videos from DH:
Eight of the Sri Lankan Tamils who fled from the northern part of the island due to the economic crisis are being lodged in Puzhal prison in Chennai after they were booked under The Passports Act and The Foreigners Act.

The remaining eight persons, who are children, are being handed over to their relatives who are lodged in various refugee camps or staying in the state.

The Sri Lankan nationals, who arrived in two boats from Mannar in the north, were produced before a local court which ordered that they be sent to Puzhal prison. Sources said they will be treated as illegal immigrants.

Check out DH's latest videos:
Ousted AIADMK interim general secretary V K Sasikala on Wednesday said she stood vindicated by her former colleague O Panneerselvams statement that he personally had no doubts over the death of former Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa.

The truth has now come out. What god knew till yesterday is now known to the world. Truth can be delayed. There may be a delay in truth coming out. But truth can never be hidden behind a veil, Sasikala told reporters here.

She was asked to comment on Panneerselvam telling the one-man commission probing the circumstances leading to Jayalalithaas death that neither Sasikala nor her family members conspired against the late AIADMK supremo.

Also Read | No suspicion personally over Jayas death: OPS

Sasikala, who came under the scanner after OPS and several other AIADMK leaders accused her of hiding the truth in Jayalalithaas death, said she always believed the Commission would bring out the truth that there was no foul play.

I dont believe people have had doubts on Ammas (Jayalalithaa) death. The doubts might have been raised by my political opponents, she said and added that Panneerselvam has spoken the truth by admitting that he still has regards for her.

Sasikala, who is being cold-shouldered by the AIADMK leadership, said she believed that the wishes of the cadres is always supreme in the party.

I have never felt bad about (not being readmitted into the party). I had seen Amma left alone after the death of Thalaivar. Later, Amma emerged victoriously and formed a government. Since I have the experience of bouncing back, I dont feel sad. The wish of the cadres is always supreme in AIADMK, she said.

In a big volte-face four years after leading a Dharma Yudham seeking justice for J Jayalalithaa, Panneerselvam had on Tuesday said he had no suspicion personally over Jayalalithaas death that he only reflected public sentiments in this regard.

At the height of his rebellion against Sasikala in 2017, he had suggested that there was a conspiracy in the demise of his leader, and he was the first one to seek a probe. The AIADMK coordinator had also launched a full-throttle attack against Sasikala and her family members, including party rebel T T V Dhinakaran.

During cross-examination by Sasikalas counsel Raja Senthoor Pandian on Tuesday, Panneerselvam had said he still has good regards for the long-time aide of Jayalalithaa, whom he called chinnamma, a moniker for Sasikala, at a press briefing after the deposition.

No. This was Panneerselvams reply when Pandian asked him whether he thought Sasikala, and her family members conspired against Jayalalithaa. When the question of doubts over Jayalalithaas death was put forward to Panneerselvam, he had replied: Personally, I had no doubts. I was only reflecting peoples sentiments over the issue.

Check out DH's latest videos:
Karnataka Assembly Speaker Vishweshwar Hegde Kageri on Wednesday rejected Leader of the Opposition Siddaramaiahs adjournment motion on the 40% kickback allegation made by the contractors association.

Siddaramaiah was referring to a letter written by the Karnataka State Contractors Association to Prime Minister Narendra Modi alleging that they are forced to pay 40% kickbacks.

Never has the contractors association written to the PM. For every Rs 100 that we spend, if 40% goes to commission and then 15% GST, what will remain for quality work? Siddaramaiah asked, seeking to move the motion under Rule 60.

Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai rose to say that the government is ready to discuss the issue. Our stand is clear. Who did what and when...were ready to discuss everything. Theres no question of protecting anyone, Bommai said, asking the Congress to seek a discussion under a different rule.

As far as the contractors letter is concerned, it is being investigated...why they wrote the letter and at whose behest, Bommai said, adding that the letter itself was baseless without any specificity.

Law Minister J C Madhuswamy said the adjournment motion cannot be accepted. Its not a recent issue, he argued.

The Speaker rejected the motion, which Siddaramaiah challenged. The rejection is illegal. How can you say it doesnt come under Rule 60 when you havent heard me at all? The contractors letter was widely reported in the newspapers in November. Can we keep quiet? Its our duty as the Opposition to raise it, he said.

Siddaramaiah even cited Deccan Heralds report on the kickbacks issue. Deccan Herald even ran an editorial on this, he said. Corruption is rampant. How can you not allow me to discuss this? he asked.

Check out DH's latest videos:
NEP-2020 Drafting Committee Chairman and ISRO former chairman K Kasturirangan on Wednesday said that the Academic Bank of Credits (ABC) proposed by National Education Policy (NEP)-2020 promises to be a game-changer.

"It works on the principle of multiple entries, multiple exits as well as anytime learning, anywhere learning and any level learning. It will facilitate the integration of the campuses and distributed learning systems by creating student mobility within the inter and intra university system," he said at the sixth convocation of Central University of Karnataka (CUK) at the varsity campus at Kadaganchi

He stated the process does not rule out sharing of credits between public and private institutions and the ABC lends itself to lifelong learning opportunities thereby enabling everyone to be relevant to the needs of the hour-most importantly to the needs of jobs.

"India now needs an educational system aligned with the aspirational goals of 21st Century education while remaining rooted in Indias value systems and ethos. The vision of Indias new educational system has been crafted to ensure that it touches the life of each and every citizen consistent with their needs and necessities. Besides, creating a just and equitable society," the chairman told.

Explaining more about NEP, Kasturirangan said, "Major emphasis has been given to the aspect of holistic, multi-disciplinary education as a foundational component at the undergraduate level in NEP. At the Post-Graduate level, one of the key recommendations relates to strengthening research in the University system. A comprehensive liberal education develops all capacities of human beings, intellectual, aesthetic, social, physical, emotional, and moral in an integrated manner."

"The policy highlights the need to better manage research at all levels, pure research, applied research, translational research, and research to address specific needs of industry, social problems, strategic demands and many such requirements. The policy makes an explicit commitment to ensuring the effective use of technology like artificial intelligence and others in all spheres of education. The policy calls for a complete overhaul of our teacher education system," Kasturirangan said.

"The NEP also heralds the potentially explosive growth of vocational education and skill development in the country since it requires all educational institutions to integrate vocational education into their offerings. The policy takes the firm view that vocational education must be integrated within undergraduate education. The policy has also paid special attention to the promotion of Indian arts and culture as it is important both at the national and individual level. Language is the key to preserving and promoting culture. The policy recommends teaching and learning of Indian languages by integrating them within the school and higher education," he pointed out.

"On the whole, the policy aims at the development of all the requisite skills that are pertinent in the contemporary world for the learners while giving enough flexibility in making choices consistent with the interest of the learner and with the dynamics of a knowledge society," he added.

CUK Vice-chancellor Battu Satyanarayana, Registrar Basavaraj Donnur, Controller of Examinations B R Kerur and deans were present on the dais.

Check out the latest videos from DH:
Karnataka Law Minister J C Madhuswamy told the Assembly on Wednesday that the government cannot interfere in the ban on Muslim traders when it comes to them setting up shops or stalls on the premises of Hindu shrines.

Madhuswamy was replying to a heated debate over the issue of Muslim traders being banned from participating in Hindu religious fairs in coastal Karnataka.

Madhuswamy said the government will examine whether the ban was applied inside the premises of the religious institutions or outside of it.

"As per the The Hindu Religious Institutions And Charitable Endowments Act and Rules that were framed in 2002, it is prohibited to lease out the space near a Hindu religious institution to a person of another faith. If these recent incidents of banning Muslim traders have occurred outside the premises of the religious institutions, we will rectify. Otherwise, as per norms, no other community is allowed to set up shop on the premises," Madhuswamy said.

Read | Bajrang Dal 'bans' stalls by Muslims in Shivamogga fair

He pointed out that the rules were made when the Congress was in power.

Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai, too, assured to look into the issue by examining the applicability of the rules.

The issue was raised by Congress lawmakers U T Khader and Rizwan Arshad in Zero Hour. They urged the government to take action against "miscreants" who were involved in distributing pamphlets and putting up banners prohibiting Muslim roadside vendors from setting up shop at local religious fairs.

"The government must uphold the dignity of roadside vendors as they work hard to fend for their families. Certain miscreants are trying to create a discord between communities. In many instances, Hindu brethren have themselves put a stop to such propaganda. However, the police are mute spectators," Khader said, urging the government to put an end to such practices and act against those involved.

Arshad, too, raised concerns and appealed to the government to protect the constitutional rights of the minority community.

Pandemonium prevailed when Khader said people who are putting up banners and posters calling for a ban on Muslim traders as "cowards". Khader's use of the word "cowards" caused agitation among BJP lawmakers.

Some BJP MLAs alleged that their Congress lawmakers were condemning incidents selectively. "It is the Congress that did vote-bank politics all these years," CM's political secretary MP Renukacharya said.

Watch latest videos by DH here:
The Karnataka High Court on Wednesday said that sexual assault on a woman by her husband is nothing but rape, as it refused to quash proceedings against a man accused of raping his wife.

A man is a man; an act is an act; rape is a rape, be it performed by a man, the husband, on the woman, wife, Justice M Nagaprasanna said.

The court noted that it is for the legislature to delve upon the issue of marital rape by amending the provision of exception to husbands under IPC Section 375, with Justice Nagaprasanna terming the exception "regressive".

The court made the observation while refusing to interfere with the proceedings against the petitioner husband who is facing charges of rape, cruelty and offences under the Pocso Act for alleged sexual acts against his wife and daughter.

Also read: Woman sexually assaulted by five men in Vellore

Such sexual assault by a husband on his wife will have grave consequences on the mental sheet of the wife; it has both psychological and physiological impact on her. Such acts of husbands scar the soul of the wives. It is, therefore, imperative for the lawmakers to now hear the voices of silence, Justice Nagaprasanna said.

The court said the exception provided to husbands under IPC Section 375 (rape) amounts to discrimination and the legislature may consider tinkering the exemption.

The exception, after the amendment in 2013, states: Sexual intercourse or sexual acts by a man with his own wife, the wife not being under fifteen years of age, is not rape.

This court is not pronouncing upon whether marital rape should be recognised as an offence or the exception be taken away by the legislature. It is for the legislature, on an analysis of manifold circumstances and ramifications, to consider the aforesaid issue, Justice Nagaprasanna said.

The bench said the Constitution treats women as equal to men and considers marriage as an association of equals. However, the IPC code discriminates, the court noted.

Under the Code, every other man indulging in offences against woman is punished for those offences. But, when it comes to Section 375 of the IPC, the exception springs," Justice Nagaprasanna observed.

"In my considered view, the expression is not progressive but regressive, wherein a woman is treated as subordinate to the husband, which concept abhors equality. It is for this reason that several countries have made such acts of the husband penal by terming it marital rape or spousal rape.

The court further pointed out that Justice J S Verma Committee, appointed by the Union government, had recommended deleting the exception of marital rape.

But the amendment that came about only replaced the word rape with sexual assault in IPC section 375.

Check out DH's latest videos:

Delhi HC on marital rape

The Delhi High Court's division bench has reserved its judgement in a batch of matters challenging validity of Exception 2 of Section 375 IPC, which decriminalises marital rape.

Amid a demand from lawyers, activists, politicians and citizens for criminalising marital rape in Delhi, the Union government maintained that a comprehensive approach is needed on the matter rather than a strictly legal view as it have a socio-legal impact.

"The government is yet to formulate a stand. It is neither saying yes nor no because consultations have not been completed," Solicitor General Tushar Mehta has said.
Karnataka Law Minister JC Madhuswamy on Tuesday assured the Assembly that the government will not tolerate misuse of benefits meant for Dalits by people belonging to the upper castes.

He was replying to an issue raised by MLAs P Rajeev, N Mahesh, Goolihatti Shekhar, K Annadani and others on people wrongly getting certificates stating they belong to Beda Jangama, one of the 101 scheduled castes.

Mahesh showed some such certificates in which upper castes had become lower castes. There are at least 12 such certificates issued in the Bengaluru South taluk. One Rachaiahs son Gurusiddayya Hiremath got a Beda Jangama certificate. In another case, Ravishankars son Chandrashekhar Aradhya got an Adi Karnataka certificate, he said. These are the priestly class of the Lingayats. They are Brahmins who converted as Lingayats during Basavannas time, he said.

Shekhar also showed some certificates. "I will make many enemies for saying this. These certificates from 2012 issued in Bengaluru North have the names of Dr M Panchaksharaiah, MP Dwarakeshwaraiah, his daughters Sujatha and Shruthi, MP Renukacharya and daughter MR Chetana," he said. There are only some 3,000 Beda Jangamas. Lets just issue SC certificates to everyone who asks, he rued.

Madhuswamy said the Centre notified 101 SCs in 1997 and Beda Jangama was one of them. "If upper castes have taken certificates, we will take action. Government won't allow the well-off to make use of SC benefits. Government won't tolerate it," he said.

"In the Cabinet also, we've discussed that action should be initiated against those who issue these certificates. A circular has been issued as well. There's no question of compromise or protecting anyone," Madhuswamy said.

The minister urged lawmakers to approach tahsildars, assistant commissioners, deputy commissioners or the Civil Rights Enforcement cell.

Rajeev explained how castes with similar sounding names can be mistaken. In Karnataka, the Dasari caste comes under Category-1 whereas Channa Dasar is SC. Similarly, Bhoyi is Category-1, but Bhovi is SC. Jangama comes under the general category, but Beda Jangama is SC, he said.

Watch the latest DH Videos here:
Aontu Councillor, Emmet Doyle, has accused Foyle's SDLP MLAs of hypocrisy over pro-life protestors.

Cllr Doyle, who represents the Ballyarnett ward, stated that both Sinead McLaughlin and Mark H Durkan were going against their party's ethos of supporting civil rights while indicating they would vote to criminalise protestors outside abortion facilities.

MLAs will meet on Thursday in the final sitting of the Assembly before May's election to debate and vote on The Abortion Services (Safe Access Zones) Bill.

The private member's bill is expected to receive enough numbers in the Assembly to be passed into law.

However, Cllr Doyle, has hit out against Ms McLaughlin and Mr Durkan saying the SDLP seem to want to run with the hare and hunt with the hound on the right to life.

He said: The SDLPs double speak on the right to life will be laid bare in the Assembly this week when their MLAs vote to criminalise people who gather outside abortion facilities to protest, pray and offer support.

Sinead McLaughlin has been telling the public for months this is due to people attending the Brae Clinic in the Waterside being harassed by those holding vigil.

Yet when challenged to provide proof of this in the form of cautions or arrests by the PSNI, she has gone silent because the figures dont add up.

Mark H Durkan will vote to criminalise those praying outside centres like the Brae Clinic whilst still maintaining he is pro-life.

A blind man on a galloping horse can see that doesnt add up.

For a party of civil rights based on peaceful protest, the SDLP seem to want to run with the hare and hunt with the hound on the right to life but people arent fooled.

Aontu is now the only Nationalist party in the North that will stand up for the right to life.

The Private Member's Bill's sponsor, Green Party leader Claire Bailey, told the Assembly during the second reading of the bill last October, that the proposed legislation had in its origins what she witnessed as a volunteer for the Marie Stopes Clinic in Belfast a decade ago.

The Clinic, which gave advice to women who wished to discuss the options of their pregnancy, had a number of protests outside its doors with many wishing to access the premises claiming they were physically and verbally intimidated by the protestors.

Ms Bailey told the Assembly in October of her own experience saying: I was spat at, I had holy water splashed on me, I was verbally abused and I had one young woman who was so distressed she ran into four lanes of oncoming traffic to escape the protestors.

The SDLP responded to Cllr Doyle's comments saying that it was in light of this that everyone should access healthcare facilities  for whatever reason  without intimidation.

A spokesperson for the party said: The SDLP and our representatives believe that everyone attending hospitals and healthcare settings for whatever reason should be able to do so with privacy and dignity.

While not every demonstration is intimidating people, those involved may be unaware of the impact they are having.

Everyone has the right to free speech and protest, but they should not be allowed to infringe on the rights of others when doing so.

We have engaged with those affected by these protests, including those who have been re-traumatised by graphic images on display and believe this legislation will help protect the public, while allowing people to protest in an appropriate and respectful way.
It was with regret that we were forced to bring these proceedings in the first place, insisted Mickey McKinney after the High Court quashed the Public Prosecution Service's (PPS) decision to drop the murder case against Soldier F for killing of his brother William on Bloody Sunday.

The High Court ruled that the PPS should re-think the decision to dismiss the case of Soldier F who had been charged with the murder of William McKinney and James Wray on that fateful day when 14 people were killed.

However, the Court ruled that challenges to the PPS dismissing charges to other paratroopers regarding the deaths of Mr McKinney, Jackie Duddy, Michael Kelly, John Young, Michael McDaid and Bernard McGuigan should be allowed to stand.

Mickey McKinney said: We are delighted for our own family but also for the family of Jim Wray and those who were wounded in Glenfada Park.

It was with regret that we were forced to bring these proceedings in the first place but the PPS did not engage with us properly in respect of its decision making, but in fact came to Derry last July and presented us with a determination it had already decided upon.

As the Court has remarked today, this was in breach of the Charter for Victims and forced our hand.

Representing the families of William McKinney and James Wray, Ciaran Shiels of Madden & Finucane said: We warmly welcome the decision of the Divisional Court today to quash the decision of the PPS to discontinue the prosecution against Soldier F for two counts of murder and five counts of attempted murder.

The PPS must now review its decision taking into account this courts judgment, and properly applying the principals and guidance provided today by it.

We would call upon the PPS to move immediately to re-institute the proceedings at Derry District Judges Court against Soldier F and to secure his committal for trial in the Crown Court.

The families continue to be vindicated in their long pursuit of justice.

We will now study this long and complex judgment and consider if there are any further legal remedies available to families in respect of whom there will be no prosecution of any soldier.

Foyle MP and SDLP leader, Colum Eastwood, welcomed the decision but also said that his thoughts are with the families of Jackie Duddy, Michael Kelly, John Young, Michael McDaid and Bernard McGuigan who did not receive the news they wanted today.

He said: I welcome the judgment made by Lady Chief Justice Keegan today.

The decision to discontinue the prosecution of Soldier F caused deep hurt among victims and their families in Derry but todays ruling makes clear that the rationale for the decision was also flawed.

The admissibility of previous testimony is an issue which could be determined by a judge at trial. The PPS must now seriously reconsider its decision to discontinue the prosecution.

While this will give hope to the families of William McKinney and James Wray, who have been campaigning for justice with dignity for decades, I am keenly aware that there are others who will be bitterly disappointed today. My thoughts are with the families of Jackie Duddy, Michael Kelly, John Young, Michael McDaid and Bernard McGuigan. I know that they will continue to defend the dignity and memory of their family members.

People were murdered on the streets of our city. They deserve justice, their families deserve justice. And the SDLP will always stand shoulder to shoulder with them.

Sinn Fein Foyle MLA, Padraig Delargy, insisted there could no longer be an amnesty for killings connected to British State forces during The Troubles.

He said: I welcome today's ruling by the High Court overturning the original decision by the PPS to drop murder charges against Soldier F.

This is a step forward for the Bloody Sunday families in their ongoing campaign for truth and justice.

There can be no amnesty for British state forces who murdered Irish citizens.

The Bloody Sunday families have never faltered in their search for truth and justice and have campaigned with dignity.

It also highlights the need for the Stormont House Agreement legacy mechanisms to be implemented in full so that all families can get access to truth and justice.
A County Derry man who was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukaemia (AML) in 2017 has joined a campaign to boost the number of cancer nurse specialists in Northern Ireland.

Gabhan McFalone, from Maghera, has continued to campaign and work with Macmillan Cancer Support after undergoing a stem cell transplant in 2018 to treat the AML.

He is a member of the organisation's Cancer Experience Panel and last week attended an event held at Stormont to highlight their campaign ahead of the upcoming Assembly Election in May.

Macmillan are doing a drive at the minute pushing for critical nurse, or cancer nurse specialists, he told the County Derry Post.

They are looking another one hundred cancer nurse specialists here in the North by 2030 to deal with demand from the high rise in people that are being diagnosed with cancer at the minute.

"That would hopefully help alleviate some of the pressures around that. In 2015, there was a big drive and funding [was] allocated in 2016.

They'll guide you along and keep an eye on your treatments. Any support your family need as well, they're there on hand to keep in the loop with what's going on.

They also deal with the after parts of treatment, where things don't work out for people. They will allocate palliative care, so that's the type of help that they provide.

In St James Hospital, Dublin getting ready for Bone Marrow Transplant. Few tough months ahead but we will #beatAML #fightAML @AnthonyNolan pic.twitter.com/D6svYfWvi0  Gabhan McFalone (@GabhanMcFalone) October 28, 2017

I had my stem cell transplant in Dublin in October 2017 and had to liaise with the cancer nurse specialist in Dublin, so you can see how it branches out too.

They would cover the likes of dealing with other experts in Dublin as well, so it makes that journey a lot smoother.

Funding is proving a stumbling block. The delay to the Assembly's three-year budget following the collapse of the Executive is causing issues.

Funding is vital. The Cancer Strategy is coming out shortly, and it's been updated since the last one around 2008, said Gabhan.

Macmillan were the first organisation to promote and employ cancer nurse specialists in the 70s, and the funding is a big thing for it.

Macmillan would have been happy with the three-year budget, but unfortunately with the DUP not in at the minute, we can't get the budget over the line.

A one-year budget is grand, but you need a three-year budget plan to work with, especially for health.

The funding request for extra cancer nurse specialists is among a number of items on a Macmillan wishlist for the next Assembly mandate.

Others include a transformation of palliative care, a commitment from the Health Minister to publish an annual progress report and enhanced emotional and wellbeing support for those with cancer.

You can find out more about Macmillan's manifesto asks for candidates in the upcoming Assembly election by visiting www.macmillan.org.uk/get-involved/campaigns.
Statement at the UNSC Briefing on Cooperation between the UN & the League of Arab States

Statement

Thank you Mr. President, Minister Shaheen, and sincere thanks also to the Secretary General and the Secretary General of the Arab League for their remarks, and to Ms. Alaqil for bringing the perspective of young people and women to bear to our deliberations. We have heard your important messages here to us today. As you said, our future hopes lie with you, and I have to say if there are one hundred million out there like you, I think our hopes will be well looked after, so thank you.

Mr. President,

Chapter VIII of the UN Charter recognises the crucial role of regional organisations in the maintenance of peace and security. Irelands own history and national experience means that we deeply appreciate the vital contribution of such organisations in building and sustaining peace. Our membership of the European Union was central to our development and growth. Moreover, the European Union played a key role in the journey to peace and reconciliation on the island of Ireland.

Mr President,

Ireland attaches the highest importance to the role of the League of Arab States and we look forward to the adoption of the PRST this morning on cooperation between the UN and the LAS. Our commitment to the LAS was reflected in the programme of our own Council Presidency last September, when our Minister for Foreign Affairs and Defence Simon Coveney was pleased to chair the Informal Interactive Dialogue between Members of this Council, and the Arab Summit Troika. The United Nations and the League of Arab States have much to learn from each other as they work on the vital task of the maintenance of peace and security in the region.

Ireland welcomes the recent appointment of Ms. Tamara al-Zayyat as Head of the UN Liaison Office to the League of Arab States. As we heard, she is doing valuable work in helping to create synergies between the two Secretariats on a range of important issues. One of these issues, both for the region and indeed beyond, is the relationship between climate change and insecurity. This is an area where we see potential for increased cooperation, and we welcome the Secretary Generals remarks that this will be the subject of a sectoral meeting between the League and the UN.

Mr President,

Ireland firmly underlines the urgent need for lasting political solutions to disputes and conflicts in the region. We echo the UAEs call for innovative approaches to strengthen conflict prevention and mediation in the region in support of the Councils own efforts.

In Libya, the deterioration of the situation on the ground since the postponement of elections last December is of grave concern. All actors have a responsibility to safeguard the progress that the Libyan people, supported by the international community, have worked so hard to achieve.

In Yemen, innocent civilians have suffered for far too long and only a negotiated political solution will bring peace. Negotiations towards peace can only take place when there is a serious effort towards de-escalation in violence. All parties to this conflict are bound by their obligations under international humanitarian Law. I also want to reiterate here Irelands condemnation in the strongest terms of the cross border attacks against Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Mr. President,

This month marks eleven years of devastating conflict in Syria. It is critical that now more than ever, the parties adhere to a permanent nationwide ceasefire, in line with resolution 2254. This remains the only basis for a sustainable political solution.

As a leading troop contributor to UNIFIL since 1978, Ireland remains resolutely committed to the stability of Lebanon, as its people grapple with complex political and economic challenges. We urge the holding of elections as scheduled on 15 May this year, and the full implementation of relevant resolutions of this Council.

Mr President,

In these countries and others in the region, we are sadly seeing an increasingly grave humanitarian and food security crisis. As the Secretary-General has told us, Ukraine alone provides more than half of the World Food Programmes wheat supply. Russias illegal invasion of Ukraine has driven up food and commodity prices, which will compound the humanitarian misery for millions of people.

Finally, Mr. President, a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains a key element for regional and global security. In the absence of positive political progress, we must guard against the potential for disillusionment and despair to take hold, especially among young people. International and regional actors must recommit to the imperative of a two state solution, as the only way to guarantee a stable, sustainable peace between Israelis and Palestinians. This would be to the benefit of all people in the region.

Thank you Mr. President.

 Previous Item | Next Item 
Call of Duty Season 2 update of Warzone and Vanguard brings new goodies. Check them out here.

Activision is rolling out the Call of Duty (COD) Warzone and Vanguard Season Two Reloaded with a new map and a bunch of treats to tantalize the players. You would get to wield the Armaguerra 43 and engage in a close-quarters battle. The COD store brings more weapons, modes, rewards, and soon a Snoop Dogg operator bundle.

Theres a lot of existing stuff like this in the Call of Duty S02. Come, have a look.

First, the Call of Duty Season 2 roadmap:

Call of Duty Season 2 Warzone and Vanguard Update: Whats new

In Season 2 of Call of Duty Vanguard and Warzone, you get to play a new mission in the Alps and aside from the new topography, therell be new arms and additional attractions to experience.

For instance, there is a vehicular combat mode and American rapper Snoop Dogg as a playable character.

Snoops operator bundle will be part of COD Warzone and Vanguard from April 19.

As for the rest of the COD Season 2 update is concerned, the rollout begins from 9 AM PT on March 22 for Vanguard, and at 9 AM PT on March 23 for Warzone.

Call of Duty S02 Overview

New features in COD Warzone S02 includes:

COD Rebirth Island Reinforced

Rebirth Island Reinforced comes with several new points of interest like Stronghold (including structures like a radar building and a checkpoint gate), Dock (including two large ships), and Prison Yard (including a Water Tower and Redeploy Balloons).

Three Modes viz. Payload (Plunder-mode), Blood Money (Objective-based mode), and Resurgence Solos (Respawn-enabled Deathmatch for sole survival) will be part of weekly playlists along with the Rebirth modes.

Weapon Blueprints (like "Toxic Heavy" LMG configured for mid-to-long-range fights), 25000 XP to all participants (If the entire community earns enough kills), and new Features like Weapon Trade Stations and in-game events for Rebirth Island.

New things in COD Vanguard S02 includes:

New 12v12 Arms Race Mode, wherein you trail across the Alps in a 5-base fight, conquer bases, earn some cash in the process, and stock up your loadout (with weapons, equipment, killstreaks, field upgrades, etc) from the Buy Stations with the cash earned.

New Vehicles like Two-seater Motorcycles, Four-seater CD12 Transport Vehicles, and Tanks (with built-in weaponry).

Two New Rewards for ranking up the Top 250 Skill Division and Leaderboard besides party and menu updates to spice up the competition.

Vanguard Zombies gets Critical Expertise, Explosives Expert Covenants, Dedicated Server Pause, and more.

Also, in Season 2 of both Vanguard and Warzone, you get to:

COD Amraguerra 43

Complete Task Force Yeti with Gustavo Dos Santos bundle

Armaguerra 43 SMG will be a free weapon in CQB (close-quarters battle)

Pro Pack, Boston Breach CDL Pack, Attack on Titan Tracer Pack also will be available in the Store

Snoop Dogg will be a new Operator in Vanguard and Warzone by April 19, 2022. He will be wearing a 24K gold outfit.

COD Snoop Dogg

In a statement shared on the COD website, Snoop Dogg said, The D O Double G is back in Call of Duty and this time I'm in the freakin' game! Excited to be working with the COD team to bring some fly features for you all to enjoy. It's dope.. y'all can play as me and get these sick items that have Snoop written all over them. Check it out."

You can take a look at the trailer for the new COD update down below.

As for other news, reviews, feature stories, buying guides, and everything else tech-related, keep reading Digit.in.
Subscriber content preview

MacKenzie Scott has donated $436 million to Habitat for Humanity International and 84 of its U.S. affiliates  the largest publicly disclosed donation from the billionaire philanthropist since she pledged in 2019 to give away the majority of her wealth.

We could not be more excited to get the gift at a time when, in some ways, the state of housing affordability is the worst that it has been in modern times, Jonathan Reckford, Habitat for Humanity Internationals CEO, told The Associated Press. His group received $25 million from Scott and her husband, Dan Jewett, with the remaining $411 million to be distributed among Habitats local affiliates.





. . .
Subscriber content preview

SEATTLE  An industrial complex at 4 S. Idaho St. sold for $16.5 million, according to King County records.

The seller was Innovare 4 S Idaho LLC, a local investor group, which acquired the property in 2019 for about $8.8 million. Colliers was then to lease the buildings, which may have been substantially vacant.





. . .
Magnolia, AR (71754)

Today

Isolated thunderstorms this morning, then variable clouds during the afternoon hours with strong thunderstorms. Damaging winds and large hail with some storms. High 78F. Winds SSW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall may reach one inch..

Tonight

Thunderstorms during the evening will give way to mainly clear skies after midnight. A few storms may be severe. Low around 55F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
Subscriber content preview

SEATTLE (AP)  A Seattle policy meant to reduce evictions after the end of the city's eviction moratorium has been struck down by the Washington State Court of Appeals.

The Seattle Times reports an ordinance the City Council passed in May 2020 said tenants who fell behind on rent and faced eviction could, for six months following the end of the moratorium, assert a defense in court if they self-certified that they suffered financial hardship and couldn't pay the rent.





. . .
India, Japan call for peaceful, stable and prosperous post-Covid world

Prime Minister of Japan Kishida Fumio and Indias Prime Minister Narendra Modi who met for the 14th India-Japan Annual Summit on Sunday reaffirmed the Special Strategic and Global Partnership between India and Japan. The prime ministers concurred that the shared values and principles enunciated in the India-Japan Vision Statement issued in 2018 are particularly relevant in the present context, where global cooperation is required more than ever to address challenges that have become more acute.

The summit is taking place at a significant time as the two countries were celebrating the 70th anniversary of establishment of diplomatic relations and India was celebrating the 75th anniversary of its independence. They reviewed the developments since the last Annual Summit and discussed wide ranging areas of cooperation.

They highlighted their commitment to working in tandem towards a peaceful, stable and prosperous world, based on a rules-based order that respects sovereignty and territorial integrity of nations, and emphasised the need for all countries to seek peaceful resolution of disputes in accordance with international law without resorting to threat or use of force or any attempt to unilaterally change status quo.

In this regard, they reaffirmed their common vision for a free and open Indo-Pacific, free from coercion. They shared the view that the economies of both countries in such a world would be powered by robust bilateral investment and trade flows through diversified, resilient, transparent, open, secure and predictable global supply chains that provide for economic security and prosperity of their peoples.

Reaffirming that the two countries would continue to work together to realise these shared objectives, they resolved to further advance the India-Japan Special Strategic and Global Partnership.

The prime ministers appreciated the significant progress made in security and defence cooperation and reaffirmed their desire to further deepen it. They welcomed the holding of the first 2+2 meeting of their foreign and defence ministers in November 2019 in New Delhi and instructed their ministers to hold the second meeting at the earliest opportunity in Tokyo.

They also welcomed the operationalisation of the Agreement Concerning Reciprocal Provision of Supplies and Services between the Japan Self-Defence Forces and the Indian Armed Forces. They expressed their commitment to continuing bilateral and multilateral exercises, including "Dharma Guardian and "Malabar respectively, while welcoming the participation of Japan for the first time in exercise MILAN, as well as making efforts to increase their complexity in the future.

They reaffirmed the decision to proceed with coordination for the inaugural fighter exercise between the Japan Air Self-Defence Force and the Indian Air Force and welcomed the efforts to hold the exercise at the earliest. They acknowledged ongoing collaboration in the area of Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV) and Robotics and directed their ministers to further identify concrete areas for future cooperation in the area of defence equipment and technology.

With their commitment to promoting peace, security, and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific region, the prime ministers affirmed the importance of bilateral and plurilateral partnerships among like-minded countries of the region, including the quadrilateral cooperation among Australia, India, Japan, and the United States (the Quad). They welcomed the Quad Leaders summits in March and September 2021 and renewed their commitment to delivering tangible outcomes on the Quads positive and constructive agenda, especially on COVID vaccines, critical and emerging technologies, climate action, infrastructure coordination, cybersecurity, space and education. They looked forward to advancing Quad cooperation through the next Quad Leaders Summit in Japan in the coming months.

Prime Minister Kishida welcomed the Indo-Pacific Oceans Initiative (IPOI) announced by Prime Minister Modi in 2019. The prime ministers acknowledged the growing space for cooperation between the IPOI and Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP). India appreciated Japans participation as a lead partner on the connectivity pillar of IPOI. They reiterated their strong support for ASEANs unity and centrality and their full support for the "ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific (AOIP) which upholds the principles such as the rule of law, openness, freedom, transparency and inclusiveness.

The prime ministers emphasised that India and Japan, as two leading powers in the Indo-Pacific region, have a shared interest in the safety and security of the maritime domain, freedom of navigation and overflight, unimpeded lawful commerce and peaceful resolution of disputes with full respect for legal and diplomatic processes in accordance with international law. They reaffirmed their determination to continue prioritising the role of international law, particularly the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), and facilitate collaboration, including in maritime security, to meet challenges against the rules-based maritime order in the East and South China Seas. They emphasised the importance of non-militarisation and self-restraint. They further called for the full and effective implementation of the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea and the early conclusion of a substantive and effective Code of Conduct in the South China Sea in accordance with international law, especially UNCLOS, without prejudice to the rights and interests of all nations, including those not party to these negotiations.

The prime ministers condemned North Koreas destabilising ballistic missile launches in violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions (UNSCRs). They reaffirmed their commitment to the complete denuclearisation of North Korea consistent with the relevant UNSCRs, and the importance of addressing concerns related to North Koreas proliferation linkages. They urged North Korea to fully comply with its international obligations under the relevant UNSCRs, and to immediately resolve the abductions issue.

The prime ministers reaffirmed their intention to collaborate closely to realise peace and stability in Afghanistan, and stressed the importance of addressing humanitarian crisis, promoting human rights and ensuring establishment of a truly representative and inclusive political system. They also reaffirmed the importance of UNSCR 2593 (2021) which unequivocally demands that Afghan territory not be used for sheltering, training, planning or financing terrorist acts and called for concerted action against all terrorist groups, including those sanctioned by the UNSC.

The prime ministers expressed deep concern at the growing threat of terrorism and underlined the need for strengthening international cooperation to combat terrorism in a comprehensive and sustained manner. They called upon all countries to work together for rooting out terrorist safe havens and infrastructure, disrupting terrorist networks and their financing channels, and halting cross-border movement of terrorists. In this context, they also called upon all countries to ensure that territory under their control is not used to launch terror attacks, to expeditiously bring to justice the perpetrators of such attacks.

The prime ministers called on Myanmar to urgently implement ASEANs Five-Point Consensus.

They expressed serious concern about the ongoing conflict and humanitarian crisis in Ukraine and assessed its broader implications, particularly to the Indo-Pacific region. They emphasised that the contemporary global order has been built on the UN Charter, international law and respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity of states. They underscored the importance of safety and security of nuclear facilities in Ukraine and acknowledged active efforts of the IAEA towards it. They reiterated their call for an immediate cessation of violence and noted that there was no other choice but the path of dialogue and diplomacy for resolution of the conflict. The leaders affirmed that they would undertake appropriate steps to address the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine.

Prime Minister Kishida congratulated India on its successful Presidency of the UN Security Council in August 2021, including Prime Minister Modis chairmanship of the UNSC at the High-Level Open Debate on "Maintenance of International Peace and Security: Maritime Security. Prime Minister Modi reiterated India's support for Japan's candidature for a non-permanent seat at the UNSC for the term 2023-2024, to which Prime Minister Kishida expressed his appreciation. They concurred to continue to work closely on matters in the UNSC during the respective tenures of India and Japan. The prime ministers resolved to continue to work closely together for an early reform of the UNSC to reflect the contemporary realities of the 21st century. They expressed their determination to accelerate its process, including through the commencement of text-based negotiations in the Inter-Governmental Negotiations (IGN) with an overall objective to achieve concrete outcomes in a fixed timeframe. They reaffirmed their shared recognition that India and Japan are legitimate/deserving candidates for permanent membership in an expanded UNSC.

The prime ministers reaffirmed their shared commitment to the total elimination of nuclear weapons and remained resolute in the task of strengthening international cooperation to address the challenges of nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism. Prime Minister Kishida stressed the importance of early entry into force of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT). They called for an immediate commencement and early conclusion of negotiations on a non-discriminatory, multilateral, and internationally and effectively verifiable Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty (FMCT) in the Conference on Disarmament on the basis of Shannon Mandate. They pledged to continue working together for Indias membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, with the aim of strengthening the global non-proliferation efforts.
Modi, Kishida seek to boost economic, cultural ties at India-Japan summit

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Japanese counterpart Fumio Kishida at the annual India-Japan summit talks in New Delhi on Friday discussed ways to boost economic and cultural linkages between the two countries.

The announcement came after Japanese prime minister, who is on a two-day visit to India to participate in the 14th annual India-Japan summit, held bilateral talks with PM Modi at Hyderabad House in Delhi on Sunday.

The prime ministers reaffirmed their commitment to upholding and strengthening the rules-based multilateral trading system, with the World Trade Organisation (WTO) at its core, and to work closely with each other to achieve meaningful outcomes at the 12th WTO Ministerial Conference (MC12). They shared their opposition to coercive economic policies and practices that run counter to this system and committed to work collectively to foster global economic resilience against such actions.

They noted that since the elevation of bilateral ties to a Special Strategic and Global Partnership, there had been significant growth in economic cooperation. They expressed satisfaction that the investment target of JPY 3.5 trillion announced in 2014 has been achieved. Noting steps taken by India to improve the business environment for Japanese investors in India, as well as other measures to boost economic growth and improve ease of doing business, they expressed their shared intention to realise JPY 5 trillion of public and private investment and financing from Japan to India in the next five years, to finance appropriate public and private projects of mutual interest.

Prime Minister Modi expressed his appreciation for various initiatives taken by Japan to strengthen economic cooperation with India, including in the areas of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME), manufacturing and supply chains.

The two prime ministers also confirmed to work together towards reliable, resilient, efficient supply chains in the region and welcomed the progress in this regard in areas such as sharing of best practices. They emphasised the importance of collaboration to address illicit technology transfers, build resilient supply chains and strengthen the protection of critical infrastructure, including through the Quad.

They welcomed the renewal of their bilateral currency swap agreement of $75 billion.

They recognised the need for enhancing bilateral trade and welcomed the amendment promoting trade of fish surimi between India and Japan under India-Japan Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA). Stressing the importance of promoting trade and investment between the two countries, they encouraged further review of the implementation of CEPA through existing mechanisms. They welcomed Indias approval of imports of Japanese apples and relaxation of procedures of Indian mango exports to Japan.

The prime ministers recognised that digital technologies would play an increasingly important role in the post-COVID world and welcomed the growing cooperation under the India-Japan Digital Partnership with a view to enhancing digital economy through promotion of joint projects for digital transformation, support to provide opportunities for Indian IT professionals to work in Japan and Japanese companies, and collaboration made in the area of IoT, AI and other emerging technologies. In this regard, Prime Minister Kishida looked forward to attracting more highly skilled Indian IT professionals to contribute to the Japanese ICT sector.

They also welcomed the progress on the "India-Japan fund-of-funds to mobilise funds for emerging Indian start-ups. Welcoming the signing of MoCs in the fields of Cybersecurity and ICT, they appreciated progress in bilateral relationship in the cyber domain and affirmed to further deepen cyber engagement with each other in multilateral fora, including in the United Nations. They shared the view to further cooperate in various fields like 5G, Open RAN, Telecom Network Security, submarine cable systems, and Quantum Communications. They welcomed the progress of bilateral cooperation in the field of science and technology, including through the holding of the 10th meeting of the India-Japan Joint Committee on Science and Technology Cooperation in November 2020, and looked forward to the joint lunar research project. They reaffirmed the commitment to strengthen the efforts so that the vision for technologies, guided by the Quad Principles on Technology Design, Development, Governance, and Use, would be further shared by all like-minded nations.

Prime Minister Modi appreciated Japans support for Indias socio-economic development over the years. The prime ministers welcomed the signing of the exchange of notes concerning seven yen loan projects in which Japan provides over 300 billion yen (over Rs20,400 crore) in total.

The prime ministers reaffirmed the significance of collaborative projects between India and Japan in the Indo-Pacific region. They acknowledged the progress in ongoing projects in Bangladesh and looked forward to exploring expansion of such cooperation to ASEAN, Pacific island countries and others. They appreciated the importance of their continued collaboration through the Act East Forum (AEF) for sustainable economic development of Indias North Eastern Region and for enhancing the regions connectivity with Southeast Asia.

They welcomed the launch of the "India-Japan Initiative for Sustainable Development of the North Eastern Region of India, which includes "Initiative for Strengthening the Bamboo Value Chain in the North East and cooperation in health care, forest resources management, connectivity and tourism in different states of the North Eastern Region.

They highlighted their commitment to working in tandem towards a peaceful, stable and prosperous world, based on a rules-based order that respects sovereignty and territorial integrity of nations, and emphasised the need for all countries to seek peaceful resolution of disputes in accordance with international law without resorting to threat or use of force or any attempt to unilaterally change status quo. In this regard, they reaffirmed their common vision for a free and open Indo-Pacific, free from coercion.
A nurses union is calling for direct ministerial intervention to tackle Ireland's trolley crisis.

The call comes as the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) records 654 patients waiting on trolleys across the country today (Wednesday March 23).

The group yesterday (Tuesday March 22) reported the highest number of patients on trolleys since the beginning of the pandemic (660), amid news of 23,000 new cases of Covid-19.

INMO General Secretary, Phil Ni Sheaghdha, said, "After record overcrowding in our hospitals yesterday, there has been no let-up in pressure in our hospitals. With nearly 1,400 Covid cases in our hospitals as well as the huge levels of overcrowding, it is not acceptable to our members that there has not been direct intervention from government to alleviate this problem.

"Our members have been sounding the alarm to Government every day about the chronic overcrowding. The situation we now find ourselves in deserves immediate political intervention. It is not good enough for members of Government to comment on the situation our members find themselves in, we need to see direct action that will ease the pressure starting with the curtailing of non-emergency elective activity."

660 patients are on trolleys today coupled with thousands of patients in hospital with COVID-19



We are calling for:

Masks to be introduced in indoor and crowded settings

For the Minister for Health to declare a national emergency in our hospitals



https://t.co/vkcmffF91i pic.twitter.com/mvt7Kfg6wg  Irish Nurses & Midwives Organisation (@INMO_IRL) March 22, 2022

The most overcrowded hospitals in the country today include University Hospital Limerick (UHL), Letterkenny University Hospital (LUH), Cork University Hospital (CUH), University Hospital Galway (UHG), and St Luke's General Hospital in Kilkenny (SLGH).

Ms Ni Sheaghdha mentioned the INMO is particularly concerned about the situation in UHL, where 100 people are currently on trolleys waiting for beds for the second time in two months.

She said, "Overcrowding adds stress for staff and worsens patient care. It is high-risk in normal times, but even more so during a pandemic. The INMO is once again calling on HIQA to urgently investigate the overcrowding issue in the hospital and make recommendations.

"INMO members from emergency departments across the country met Minister Donnelly two weeks ago to outline what steps need to be taken to alleviate the enormous pressure they are under. The Minister must take action today."

The INMO yesterday called for the return of face masks and for Health Minister Stephen Donnelly to declare a national emergency in Irish hospitals.
Duncan, OK (73533)

Today

A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible early. Cloudy skies early, followed by partial clearing. High near 70F. Winds NW at 15 to 25 mph..

Tonight

Clear skies. Low 49F. NNE winds shifting to WNW at 10 to 15 mph.
A public meeting will take place in the Crowne Plaza Hotel, Dundalk, on Thursday 24th March at 7pm, to discuss constitutional change and the ever-increasing likelihood of a border poll and Irish unity.

This is the seventh meeting in an all island series, organised by the pro-Irish unity civic group, Irelands Future, and follows well-attended meetings the group have previously organised in Cork, Galway, Dublin, Derry, Armagh and Limerick.

Irelands Future has also hosted recent successful events in Philadelphia and New York.

The Dundalk meeting will be chaired by broadcaster and novelist Martina Devlin and panelists taking part are Cultur migrant centre program manager Tinu Achioya, Fine Gael TD Fergus ODowd, Sinn Fein TD Ruairi O Murchu, Professor Seamus McGuinness from Trinity College Dublin and Labour Party Senator Annie Hoey.

Speaking in advance Irelands Future Secretary Niall Murphy, said:

We are absolutely delighted to be bringing this conversation to Dundalk. Like the previous panels, this panel is a diverse group and reflective of the new and united Ireland we want to see. One of equality, social justice and rights.

Irelands Future wants to stimulate conversation about how our people are best served and our island is best governed in the coming time. We are organising public meetings the length and breadth of Ireland because we know the issue of referendums and constitutional change is coming and we want the people of Ireland to be involved in, and have ownership of, the conversation in advance of the referendum date being announced.

There is momentum building towards a unity referendum taking place in the not-too-distant future. Increasingly people are recognising that Irish unity is the outcome that holds most appeal and there is a growing demand for an in-depth conversation on where this all leads to.

Unionism in the north is now a minority and growing numbers of people across the island are asking the Irish Government to take the lead and prepare for a new, agreed and united Ireland.

The economic potential of a united Ireland is becoming very clear for all to see, particularly in the context of Brexit.

The benefits of Irish unity to people north and south and the economy in both jurisdictions is becoming very apparent. Much of the north has never been developed to its true economic potential and a united Ireland, will unleash that economic potential with the entire island economy growing and becoming much more productive. That will mean the entire island of Ireland developing a stronger, more robust economy with increased numbers of better jobs and higher standards of living for people in all thirty-two counties.

We encourage people in Dundalk to play a leading role in this conversation. We want to hear a broad range of voices, we want people, particularly our young, to have their say in how we build a new and united Ireland that cherishes all the children of the nation equally. Irelands Future is encouraging people to come along to the meeting in Dundalk to listen and engage and be a part of the preparation and planning for a new, agreed and united Ireland.

The event will take place at 7PM on Thursday 24th March at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, Dundalk and will also be broadcast live on Irelands Future Facebook, Twitter and YouTube channel.

Everybody is welcome to attend.

Please register here for free tickets:

https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/266365124257
Following the success of the inaugural PLATFORM 31 artist development scheme the Association of Local Authority Arts Offices (ALAAO), in collaboration with the Arts Council, has announced that applications are now open for the 2022 iteration.

Designed to support and offer career development for 31 mid-career artists (one artist in each of the 31 local authorities around Ireland), there are two elements of support for participating artists in the scheme: financial and developmental.

Participating artists will receive an 8,000 bursary to invest in themselves and their practice, combined with participation in a developmental and networking framework.

Speaking about the initiative, artist Vivienne Byrne, recipient of the bursary for Louth in 2021 said:

The Platform 31 experience was my game changer. The support it offered allowed me the time and financial breathing space to develop my practice in ways I could not have foreseen.

"It gifted me access to and connection with artists of varying disciplines and the confidence to undertake more ambitious projects for myself. Incredibly valuable.

Art Officer for Louth City Council Moya Hodgers welcomed the scheme, saying:

Louth County Council Arts Office are proud to support the Platform 31 initiative.

"Artists are at the heart of the culture and creativity sector in Louth and it is a key focus of ours to support them and their development.

"This bursary will give one artist in our county the time and resource to develop and enhance their skills which will in turn be a benefit to our county through their work and contribution.

"For over 35 years Local Authority Arts Offices have worked directly with artists to ensure the arts thrive in all communities.

"Working in a grass roots and foundational way has allowed Arts Officers to identify and to respond to the needs of artists, keeping the arts and cultural agenda focused and relevant in changing environments.

In the complex Covid times of 2021, it was important for us to be able to give 31 artists the opportunity to work without financial burden or pressure of output for a period of time through the inaugural Platform 31 scheme, said Jenny Sherwin, Wicklow County Arts Officer and Chairperson of the ALAAO.

We are very pleased to collaborate with Local Authority Arts Offices all over the country and the Arts Council to offer this opportunity to another group of artists in 2022.



The bursary seeks to provide artists with the time and resources to think, test new ideas, research new approaches and to develop new work, said Maureen Kennelly, Arts Council Director.

The Arts Council is delighted to partner with local authorities, who are responding thoughtfully and ambitiously to the ongoing challenging environment for artists. The carefully considered support network built into Platform 31 sets this bursary scheme apart.

The award is open to artists of any discipline and practice as well as multi-disciplinary practice and design of all kinds. It is designed to support mid-career artists living in each of the 31 Local Authority regions of Ireland.

Applications are open until March 30th.

For more information see:

https://platform31. localartsireland.ie/
Dundalk Institute of Technology recently hosted an innovative and collaborative international project which was undertaken to create supportive teaching content for early years and primary schools.

The DkIT Music Programme along with the Early Childhood Studies Programme accommodated a weeklong event for the Erasmus+ Arts and Mindfulness in Education (AMiE) project which focused on mindful learning and involved students and staff from the Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, Norway, and Ireland.

The goal of the week was to create a series of short arts-based mindfulness resource videos to be used by preschool and primary school teachers.

Videos were created, filmed and produced in DkIT and the Institutes students and staff were integral to the high quality of the final product.

A special note of appreciation to the DkIT year 4 Film students that volunteered to support the video production and were responsible for the excellence of the finished content.

As part of the weeklong activities, DkIT facilitated workshops in mindfulness and the creative arts along with training sessions in video filming and editing. The week also comprised of collaborative meetings, social activities for staff and students which included a visit to Dublin.

The videos created during the project were shown on Friday afternoon and a final closing session took place in the Recital Room Fr Mc Nally in the PJ Carrolls building.

The students who participated in this project will have a chance to partake in a final weeklong training session and congress to be held in Belgium in March 2023.

The conclusion next year of this Erasmus+ project will showcase the video lessons as well as the other outputs including a website, mindful music making, 100 FAQs, and curriculum framework.
A man who Dundalk district court had been told was unable to attend as he had tested positive for Covid, later arrived in the courtroom last week after hearing a bench warrant had been issued for him.

Brian McDonagh (26) with an address at The Steeples, Navan, Co. Meath was charged with stealing a bottle of Smirnoff Ice from Costcutter, Clanbrassil Street, Dundalk on December 2nd last and failing to appear before the court on bail 13 days later.

When his case was called last Wednesday his solicitor said her client had tested positive that morning with an antigen test and produced a photo, but Judge Eirinn McKiernan said she would not accept it as a test result saying maybe you can go to the High Court.

Ms. Kelly argued that under the HSE current policy her client is not entitled to a PCR test.

When Judge McKiernan suggested that Mr. McDonagh could have gone to his GP for the test, the solicitor pointed out that no GP practice would admit a patient with symptoms or who had a positive antigen test result.

A bench warrant was subsequently issued.

A barrister representing a defendant in a separate case later told the court his client had a positive antigen test and he had told him to stand across the road and not enter the courthouse.

Judge McKiernan said: Well have to set up a test centre .

That accused had their case adjourned as they had presented in person.

In the afternoon, Ms Kelly informed the judge as her client had heard the bench warrant had been issued, Mr. McDonagh had arrived in court with his positive antigen test adding now somebody with Covid had turned up and put us all at risk.

When he was asked if wished to have his case dealt with in the district court, or by judge or jury, the accused opted for trial in the Circuit Court and the case was put back to April 27th for the preparation of a book of evidence.
By Staff and wire reports

Last updated 3/22/2022 at 4:32pm

Gov. Greg Abbott has signed a disaster declaration for 16 Texas counties where severe storms swept through Monday, tearing open schools and leveling homes.

A least one person, a 73-year-old Grayson County woman, died and more than a dozen, includi...
Esra Birsayi stands in her tailoring studio, carefully examining the sleeve length of an evening dress and making final tweaks before it is shipped off to a real estate agent in Canada.

She is one of ten women leading micro businesses in Istanbul, Turkey, that have benefitted from an advisory support programme run by the EBRD as part of the Women in Business initiative and funded by J.P. Morgan as in line with the firms five-year philanthropic commitment to expanding opportunities for underserved entrepreneurs globally.

The EBRD introduced Esra to a management consultant who helped her eveningwear brand, Esra Bridal, increase export capacity and develop its export strategy.

From theory to practice

Esras entrepreneurial adventure began when she wanted to use her basic knowledge of exporting to sell wedding dresses and evening gowns, a field she had been interested in and saw as profitable. Using her own means, she founded the company from scratch in 2015.

At first, I had a hard time finding the right business contacts. I was taking orders online, but choosing the right fabric, completing the production of the dresses on time, and managing a team required experience, Esra says.

Over time, she established her own team, employing two tailors, and received training in fashion design and professional sewing.

Today, Esras company operates solely through e-commerce and sends an average of 200 wedding dresses and evening gowns per year how from Istanbul to countries across the world, including the USA. Her diverse clientele encompasses everyone from an intelligent young lady working for NASA to a wealthy individual requiring many dresses at once for a traditional extended wedding ceremony.

I find my customers through worldwide e-commerce platforms and I try to understand their specific needs to establish a trusting, long-term relationship with them. Its a privilege for me to help them look and feel their best on their special days, she says.

But 200 dresses was not nearly enough for Esra. She had ambitions to grow her business further and introduce Esra Bridal to new markets. To determine the best approach for growth, she contacted the EBRD for support, and the Women in Business programme introduced her to a management consultant to work with on marketing and strategy.

The advisory support I received from the EBRD broadened my horizons and helped me to determine my next target markets. I have already completed very promising first meetings with some prominent retailers in UK, Esra says. She plans to recruit more employees and increase her production capacity in order to expand export levels and make a significant contribution to Turkeys economy.

The importance of support to women entrepreneurs

Women entrepreneurs face more difficulties in accessing know-how and business networks than men, and added to the challenges in gaining finance and the economic consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic, women entrepreneurs have found it particularly difficult to sustain and grow their businesses over the past two years.

It was in this context that the EBRD joined forces with J.P. Morgan  the first private sector donor for the Banks activities in Turkey  and launched an advisory support programme for women-led businesses, targeting in particular micro businesses, which were most affected by the pandemic.

Ten high-potential companies were selected in the first stage to work with management consultants in the business fields they struggled with. These were Hadi Ham Yap, Esra Bridal, Ege Teknoloji Kimya, Nude Dansmanlk, Dogaclama Gda, Brev Bilisim, Buyuk Beden Stil, Ozge Makina Torna Pres, Skare Gda Pazarlama and Shamans Secret  and twelve further companies received strategic and marketing support.

As part of the programme, the participants were introduced to the EBRD Know How Academy, a free online knowledge hub that provides training modules, videos and useful resources that can benefit all small businesses. So far, over 1,000 small businesses in Turkey have joined the EBRD Know How Academy, and the EBRD is enriching the content on the platform every day to meet the emerging needs of small businesses.

An International Women's Day to celebrate

All of the selected companies have now successfully completed their advisory projects, and had the chance to share their results and stories with EBRD and J.P. Morgan representatives in Istanbul just before International Women's Day.

Arvid Tuerkner, EBRD Managing Director, Turkey, says, I was very impressed with the stories of the women entrepreneurs who benefited from the programme and the impact our advisory support had on their businesses. I am glad that, together with J.P. Morgan, we have been able to support these micro businesses, and have helped them survive and transform during an extremely challenging period for MSMEs. Womens entrepreneurship and inclusion is one of the EBRDs key priorities, and it continues to be one of our top priorities in Turkey as well.

We are proud to support this incredibly important initiative in Turkey, says Mustafa Bagriacik, J.P. Morgan Senior Country Officer for Turkey and Azerbaijan. We are not only committed to helping small businesses grow, but also to empowering more women to contribute to the Turkish economy. This programme will offer female micro entrepreneurs growth and access to a team of experienced experts.
MEMBERS of Cork North Civil Defence have been busy preparing accommodation for arriving Ukrainians escaping war.

Volunteers came together when the call was put out for assistance in preparing a former convent in Buttevant as a rest centre for those arriving into the country over the weekend.

Assistant Civil Defence Officer, Gerard Sheehan said it had been a busy couple of days and a great community effort.

Members of Cork North Civil Defence assisted in preparing a former convent in Buttevant as a rest centre for arriving Ukrainians.

He said that the building needed some TLC to get it ready as it had been unoccupied for five years, with members of the community rallying around to provide beds, couches, clothes, and bedclothes and to cut the grass, powerwash the driveway, sweep the floors, and wash the walls.

Those with any trade, including plumbers and electricians, were also involved in getting the heating and water supply to the building.

Donations were gathered and cleaned, items were organised and beds were made on time to welcome the tired arrivals at 2.15am on Saturday.

Speaking to The Echo, Mr Sheehan said there are about 55 people currently staying at the rest centre.

Over 40 people arrived on the first night and about 15 the second night. There are about 55 there now.

In terms of age group, there are people between the ages of one and 60 there at the moment, about 10 children and four men as well who got out before they were asked to stay in Ukraine, he said.

Mr Sheehan said there were 19 Civil Defence volunteers assisting on Friday between the hours of 8pm and 2.30am and 17 volunteering on Saturday, with a Civil Defence presence at the centre until about 1am.

On Sunday, there were about 10 volunteers helping out from 9am to about 7pm.

There was a lot of manpower and hours put in by Civil Defence, he said.

He said that it is expected that they would be involved in the setting up of more accommodation going forward, as more Ukrainians requiring a place to stay enter the country.

He thanked the volunteers who he said went over and above the call of duty and welcomed the new guests into the country.

In recent days the Minister for Children Roderic OGorman suggested during an RTE Radio One interview that the Green Glens Arena in Cork could be a suitable location for large-scale short-term accommodation.

The Higher Education Minister, Simon Harris said that student accommodation will be made available for Ukrainian refugees arriving in Ireland.

The Minister said Irish colleges and universities will make student beds available to refugees when they fall vacant at the end of the term.

Nearly 10,000 Ukrainian refugees have already arrived in Ireland, which has waived all visa requirements for those fleeing the Russian invasion.

Donations were gathered and cleaned, items were organised and beds were made on time to welcome the tired arrivals at 2.15am on Saturday.

Speaking on Monday, Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe said that he did not want to see financial constraints on how many refugees from Ukraine the country could take.

Overall, there are always constraints that the Government faces in relation to national finances, in relation to how much we can borrow.

But we are going to do all we can to make sure that is not the constraints that guides how our country responds back to this huge humanitarian need. Were going to mobilise all the resources that are available to us to do it.
Fota Wildlife Park has announced the death of one of its Asiatic lions, Shanto, after a "short, untreatable illness".

Ten-year-old Shanto was the only male lion at the wildlife park and had arrived from Santillana Zoo in Spain in 2016 where he joined sisters Gita and Gira who arrived from Helsinki Zoo in Finland earlier the same year as part of an Ex-situ Programme (EEP) for this species in European zoological institutions.

Shanto sired a number of offspring at Fota Wildlife Park, which have since become part of the EEP at other zoological intuitions in Europe.

This morning, Fota Wildlife Park confirmed that Shanto was put to sleep on Wednesday, February 23 after a short illness.

Despite every attempt by the veterinary team, his condition deteriorated, and the very difficult decision was made to put him to sleep. The diagnosis of kidney failure was confirmed at post mortem, a statement from the Park said.

Julien Fonteneau, Lead Ranger said that Shanto was hugely popular with visitors.

Shanto at Fota Wildlife Park.

It is hard to describe how stunned and shocked the team are here at Fota over the loss of our beloved Shanto. Its been devasting to witness such a powerful and dignified animal succumb to illness in a short space of time. He was hugely popular with the visitors and undoubtedly was a highlight of their visit. Shanto was very interactive and curious, and Fota Wildlife Park has been such a quiet place since he became ill. We all hugely miss his majestic roars every day, and its such a quieter place without him.

According to Fota Wildlife Park, there are an estimated 674 Asiatic lions existing in the wild, living in the Indian state of Gujarat, Western India.

This small population is steadily increasing but the species is listed as Endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
HRH The Prince of Wales and HRH The Duchess of Cornwall arrived at Cork Airport this afternoon ahead of a visit to some of the souths most notable public attractions.

Arriving at the airport at 3.17pm on Wednesday, HRH The Prince of Wales and HRH The Duchess of Cornwall were greeted by the British Ambassador.

On Thursday, their visit will be concentrated in Waterford City Centre and locations in County Waterford and on Friday, they will visit South Tipperary.

Gardai continue to liaise with business and local residents in the key locations and will continue to communicate directly with them during the visit.

Our objective is to continue to share as much information with the public where necessary as soon as we are in a position to do so.

We would ask members of the public to heed the advice and instructions of Gardai and we thank them for their continuing cooperation.

In general the public, in the areas affected, is advised to leave extra time for their journeys and to expect some localised delays, a spokesperson for An Garda Siochana said.

#CorkTraffic Long delays being reported, eastbound, on the N40 South Ring Road at the Kinsale Road flyover. Reason unknown at this time. pic.twitter.com/k70UO7Tn40  Cork Safety Alerts (@CorkSafetyAlert) March 23, 2022

On Wednesday evening, there were significant traffic delays on the N40 and junctions eastbound due to the arrival of the special guests.

Gardai have said that during the visit, there will be rolling road closures as the pair travel between each location and it is envisaged that there will be some traffic disruption.
Coral bleaching leaches a reef of its yellows, greens and pinks, leaving behind a graveyard of brittle white.

Now, new research indicates that it isnt just the coral that loses its colors after a bleaching event. The fish that find a home there become less brilliant, too.

We found that as the cover of structurally complex corals increases on a reef, so does the diversity and range of colours present on fishes living in and around them. But, as the cover of turf algae and dead coral rubble increases, the diversity of colours declines to a more generalised, uniform appearance, research leader Dr. Christopher Hemingson, who recently earned his Ph.D. from James Cook Universitys Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, said in a press release.

JCU researchers have found brightly coloured fish are becoming increasingly rare as coral declines, with the phenomenon likely to get worse in the future. pic.twitter.com/hKJJLSNwih  James Cook Uni (@jcu) March 16, 2022

The research, published in Global Change Biology March 16, looked at a dataset of fish color and environmental conditions in the Great Barrier Reef spanning 27 years. Specifically, the data set focused on the coral and fish in and around Orpheus Island, Science Alert reported. These reefs were hit especially hard by the Great Barrier Reefs first mass bleaching event in 1998, which devastated branching corals and led to a complete shift in fish communities. For example, lemon damselfish and green coral goby have declined by about two-thirds in the 30 years since.

The study, therefore, isnt saying that same fish become less brilliant, but rather that less brilliant corals attract less brilliant fish.

A colourful fish blends into a colourful reef, and if youre brightly coloured in a drab environment you may not fare so well in avoiding predators and things like that, Hemingson told the Brisbane Times.

Further, the structure of the marine environment makes a difference. The 1998 bleaching event led to the deaths of branching corals that provide shelter.

Having places to hide from predators may have allowed reef fishes to evolve unique colourations due to a reduced reliance on camouflage to avoid being eaten, Hemingson said in the press release.

Including the 1998 event, the Great Barrier Reef has suffered five mass bleaching events in the last 30 years, according to Science Alert. And it may be in the grips of a sixth. Coral bleaching occurs when warmer ocean temperatures force coral to expel the algae that provide them with color and food, and it is considered an important impact of the climate crisis.

Hemingson said in the press release that the corals more resilient to warmer ocean temperatures  massive and boulder corals  do not provide the hiding spots that attract brightly colored fish.

Fishes with colouration directly appealing to human aesthetics are becoming increasingly rare, with the potential for marked declines in the perceived colour of reef fish communities in the near future. Future reefs may not be the colourful ecosystems we recognize today, representing the loss of a culturally significant ecosystem service, the study authors wrote.

This might not harm the future reefs from an ecological perspective, Hemingson said in the press release.

But in a human context, loss of these colourful species may trigger a broad range of human responses, including grief, Hemingson said in the press release.
In Panama, scientists, lawyers and politicians are working together to dismantle current legal systems and popular mindsets about Nature. And, theyre collaborating to build it back better for the future of their country and the planet.

It all started with Callie Veelenturf, an American marine conservation biologist and National Geographic explorer. While studying sea turtles in Panama, she witnessed harmful practices such as plastic pollution and fishing bycatch harming the environment and the animals that live there. Because Natures rights had not been recognized, no causes of action could be brought and no help enlisted. Left without recourse to act on Natures behalf, Veelenturf felt a sense of conviction that taking a rights-based approach to Nature conservation internationally could be the system change that we need to establish balance and harmony with Nature.

Callie Veelenturf measures and examines a Hawksbill sea turtle caught as bycatch in a fishermans net in the Pearl Islands archipelago in Panama. Tiffany Duong / Ocean Rebels



In early 2020, she pitched her idea to Panamas first lady and to Congressperson Juan Diego Vasquez Gutierrez, the youngest member of the National Assembly. Both were eager to develop this new framework to protect Panamas biodiversity and ecosystems.

Panama is one of the 25 most megadiverse countries in the world, boasting an impressive array of marine and terrestrial wildlife, including many endemic species, Vasquez explained. It, therefore, plays a pivotal role in preserving biodiversity and mitigating climate change. As such, the congressman knew that a Rights of Nature approach would represent an important paradigm shift in [his] country to centralize our cultural respect and love for nature and that it would be decisive in the protection and restoration of his countrys biodiversity and resources.

While in the field researching sea turtles at the Pearl Islands archipelago in Panama, conservation biologist Callie Veelenturf was inspired by the idea of giving Nature rights. Eduardo Estrada



In short, this law recognizes that just as humans have inherent rights for existing (and similarly corporations) that Nature does as well, explained Michelle Bender, the ocean campaigns director at the Earth Law Center. Bender and her team are experts in this specific area of law and lead a global push to codify the rights of nature.

Over the next two years, Veelenturf, the Earth Law Center, Vasquez and his advisors Luisa Arauz and Jorge Jaen developed and proposed that the rights of nature to exist, persist and regenerate be legally recognized. In late Feb. 2022, their efforts paid off; Panamas President Laurentino Cortizo signed the Rights of Nature into national law.

Additionally, because western legal systems largely function under a rights-based framework, recognizing Natures inherent rights provides the natural world (and people wanting to protect it) a legal basis with which to advocate for more protective policies and under which to bring causes of action, Bender told EcoWatch.

So, what exactly does the law do? According to Veelenturf, Bender and Vasquez, it:

Acknowledges Nature as a subject of law, with an inherent list of guaranteed rights to be safeguarded  including the rights to exist, persist, and regenerate her life cycles.

Requires the state and all persons, whether natural or legal, to respect and protect Natures rights.

Authorizes any legal or natural person (regardless of nationality) to represent the interests of Nature before the courts and authorities of Panama and to hold government and industry accountable for harm done. Allows for Nature to have standing.

Creates a normative framework that enhances and complements the legal and judicial means, resources, and arguments available to environmental lawyers and activists.

Shifts the national Panamanian mindset regarding a relationship with Nature from one of separateness and superiority to one of interconnection and interdependence.

Establishes a list of Earth-centric principles to be upheld, including in dubio pro natura, which means that when in doubt, one must act in favor of protecting Nature. In contrast with widely-held anthropocentric frameworks, which place humans centrally, Panama must now consider and respect planetary boundaries and benefit for the whole, not just human society, or industry, or the one percent.

Establishes that the cosmovision and ancestral knowledge of Indigenous peoples must be an integral part of interpreting and applying the Rights of Nature.

Furthers Panamas defenses against the climate crisis.

With this latest passage, Panama joins a number of other countries and governments that recognize the Rights of Nature. Some of these include Bolivia, Ecuador, Uganda, and Chile. Bender noted that Rights of Nature laws exist, at some level, in over 20 countries.

James May, a law professor at the Widener University Delaware Law School agreed that the legislation will make it easier for people to bring legal cases on behalf of rivers, forests and ecosystems, reported Grist. He noted that this could have major implications for Panamas land and energy development policies, which are now required to respect and protect the natural worlds new rights.

Rights of Nature will require the government to look before they leap regarding decisions that affect Nature, May told Grist.

As for whats next, Bender explained that recognizing these rights is just the first step. Now, procedures need to be implemented for causes of action to be brought on behalf of Nature. In Ecuador, 30 similar lawsuits have been brought on behalf of the Rights of Nature. This shift will require the creation of new standards and criteria, such as how to legally determine what is a healthy ecosystem, what is significant and adverse harm and what is sustainable or how much fishing is sustainable, Bender said.

The public must also be educated on and informed of their new power and right to defend Nature. This, and the actual implementation of the new law, will require complex processes and changes, Veelenturf noted.

She concluded, The time is now to transform our legal systems. Nature needs us.

A keel-billed toucan in Panama. Eduardo Estrada

Tiffany Duong is a writer, explorer and inspirational speaker. She holds degrees from UCLA and the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. As a contributing reporter at EcoWatch, she gives voice to whats happening in the natural world. Her mission is to inspire meaningful action and lasting change. Follow her on Twitter/Instagram/TikTok @tiffmakeswaves.
By Osprey Orielle Lake

The message our Living Forest proposal delivers is aimed at the entire world with the goal of reaching the hearts and minds of human beings everywhere, encouraging us all to reflect on the close relation between Human Rights and the Rights of Nature. From Kawsak Sacha, The Living Forest: An Indigenous Proposal for Confronting Climate Change, presented by the Amazonian Kichwa People of Sarayaku, Ecuador

December 2015 found all eyes on Paris as government representatives from around the world debated and finalized a new international climate change agreement at the United Nations COP21 climate negotiations. The news was abuzz with stories and analysis about the Paris agreement and the commitments (or lack thereof) made by world governments, however it was just outside of the narrow glance of the mainstream media that actions and events for bold transformative change were taking place.

Mirian Cisneros, Ena Santi and Nina Gualinga open the International Rights of Nature Tribunal in Paris with a traditional ceremony of the Kichwa people of Sarayaku, Ecuador. Photo credit: Emily Arasim

Civil society, non-governmental and community organizations representing hundreds of thousands of people from diverse social movements and international networks gathered during the Paris climate negotiations for major actions on the streets, hundreds of events, assemblies, concerts and educational workshops focused on just, community driven climate solutions.

It is critical to highlight these peoples movement initiatives, planned in parallel to COP21 proceedings, because they are the ones bringing about the socio-ecologic and systemic transformation that concerned people around the world are calling forthfrom decentralized energy systems and food sovereignty to Indigenous rights and gender-responsive climate policies.

Like inconspicuous stones cast into a deep pond, the ripples from these alternative proceedings are reaching outward and broadening into ever widening circles, connecting one to another and spreading worldwide.

So it was that two significant ripples that demonstrate respect for Nature and the natural laws of the Earth, topics stunningly absent from the UN negotiations, radiated out into the corridors of COP21, to civil society gatherings and onto the streets of Paris. One ripple was the growing global movement for the Rights of Nature, the other, going hand-in-hand, the potent voice of the Indigenous Kichwa People of Sarayaku, Ecuador and their Living Forest Proposal.

International Rights of Nature Tribunal

Rights of Nature is a revolutionary and evolutionary concept, at the heart of which lies a key to addressing our horrifically dysfunctional economic system and the legal, social and political frameworks that are destroying people and planet.

Tom Goldtooth (Indigenous Environmental Network), Osprey Orielle Lake (WECAN International) and Pablo Solon (Fundacion Solon) present a Rights of Nature Press Conference inside COP21 in Paris. Photo credit: Emily Arasim

The Rights of Nature framework originated from the understanding that after decades of environmental protection laws (which surely have achieved some notable successes), our modern legal systems have failed to prevent the increasingly grave threats of climate change, ecosystem degradation, and the growing displacement of humans and other species.

The majority of the worlds legal frameworks are based on treating nature as property, meaning that our life-giving rivers, forests and mountains are seen as objects to be sold and consumed. Our current legal paradigm furthers dangerous ideas around the commodification and financialization of nature, and we can see the disastrous results of this way of thinking.

Read page 1

To avert the worst impacts of the climate crisis and move towards truly sustainable living, we must challenge the idea that Earths living systems are property and change the very DNA of our legal frameworks to adhere to the natural laws of the Earth.

Recognizing Rights of Nature means that human activities and development must not interfere with the ability of ecosystems to absorb their affects, to regenerate their natural capacities, to thrive and evolve, and requires that those responsible, including corporate actors, be held fully accountable for negative impacts on Earth systems.

The power of the global movement for Rights of Nature has been growing quickly, in part due to the popularity of local and international Rights of Nature tribunals.

Rights of Nature Tribunals give people from all around the world the opportunity to testify publicly on the destruction of the Earth and their communities, while simultaneously creating a new legal framework, providing critical alternatives for environmental protection, and offering a new vision for just social, economic and political structures.

Critically, a Rights of Nature framework also provides a path through which people can re-learn respect for Mother Earth, as Indigenous peoples of the world have been demonstrating for thousands of years. As more and more activists in Paris began to acknowledge, we are not just protecting nature, we are nature  a recognition of profound significance given that it is the belief that we are separate from the Earth that resides at the root of and furthers a destructive relationship to the natural world.

In Paris, the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature held its third International Rights of Nature Tribunal, covering topics ranging from fracking and mega-dams to GMOs, deforestation and violence against defenders of the land.

Rights of Nature Tribunals cases were founded on the mandate of the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth, drafted in 2010 at the World Peoples Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Bolivia. Outcomes and final judgments were based on scientific, technical, research-based and other expert testimony, the first-hand experiences of witnesses, as well as the world views and wisdom of Indigenous peoples who hold an ancient understanding of humans as part and particle of the living cosmos.

Kawsak Sacha: The Living Forest

Lets leave our old perceptions and ideas, to be reborn and boost a collective transformation! Now is the time to stop these destructive ideas in our ancestral territories and around the world. We as Indigenous peoples have the great opportunity to bring our visionand a clear proposalthat could call on a transformation for all of humanity. Patricia Gualinga, Director of International Relations for the Kichwa community of Sarayaku, Ecuador (Source: Amazon Watch)

Throughout the two weeks of the UN climate talks, a delegation of Indigenous Kichwa leaders from Sarayaku, Ecuador worked ceaselessly to present and spread their proposal of Kawsak Sacha, or the Living Forest, a comprehensive vision for living in harmony with the natural world based upon the practices with which their ancestors have sustainably inhabited and cared for the health of the Amazon Rainforest for millennia.

Patricia Gualinga from the Sarayaku delegation presents the Living Forests proposal at a COP21 side event organized by the Womens Earth and Climate Action Network and Amazon Watch. Photo credit: Emily Arasim

Their proposal is a profound challenge to dominant concepts and practices, which view nature as a resource to market, commodify and exploit without limit. In the context of the Paris climate change agreement, this means a challenge to the idea that we can put forests into carbon trading schemes and other market mechanisms as a means of addressing climate change.

Read page 1

The Kawsak Sacha Living Forests vision is vital for many reasons, the most fundamental being that maintaining the ecologic balance of the Amazon is essential to Earths health and capacity to mitigate climate change. Approximately 20 percent of the carbon dioxide produced from burning fossil fuels is absorbed by tropical forests around the world, and this is just one of many critical ecologic functions. Consequently, protecting the Amazon rainforest, the largest of the worlds tropical forests, must be central to climate change discussions and policies.

Rainforest of the Ecuadorian Amazon. Photo credit: Emily Arasim

Within this context, Indigenous peoples and their rights must be respected and protected because it is their intimate relationship with their forests and their courageous ongoing struggles to defend their territories that has and will continue to bring about the highest protection of these vital rainforests. It is a grave and dangerous tragedy that alongside human rights, Indigenous rights were removed from the operative part of the final Paris agreement.

The wisdom and worldview expressed in the Kawsak Sacha proposal has much to offer and is best shared through excerpts of the words of the Sarayaku people themselves:

Kawsak Sacha (The Living Forest) is a proposal for living together with the natural world that grows out of the millennial knowledge of the Indigenous Peoples who inhabit the Amazonian rainforest, and it is one that is also buttressed by recent scientific studies. Whereas the western world treats nature as an undemanding source of raw materials destined exclusively for human use, Kawsak Sacha recognizes that the forest is made up entirely of living selves and the communicative relations they have with each other. These selves, from the smallest plants to the supreme beings who protect the forest, are persons (runa) who inhabit the waterfalls, lagoons, swamps, mountains, and rivers, and who, in turn, compose the Living Forest as a whole.

Kawsak Sacha, understood as sacred territory, is the primordial font of Sumak Kawsay (Buen Vivir, Good Living). In essence, the forest is neither simply a landscape for aesthetic appreciation nor a resource for exploitation. It is, rather, the most exalted expression of life itself. It is for this reason that continued coexistence with the Living Forest can lead to Sumak Kawsay. This encourages us to propose that maintaining this lively space, based on a continuous relation with its beings, can provide a global ethical orientation as we search for better ways to face the worldwide ecological crisis in which we live today. In this manner Sumak Kawsay can become a planetary reality.

Proposal: Declaration of Kawsak Sacha (the Living Forest)

1. Our Concrete Proposal consists in attaining national and international recognition for Kawsak Sacha (the Living Forest), as a new legal category of protected area that would be considered Sacred Territory and Biological and Cultural Patrimony of the Kichwa People in Ecuador.

2. The Living Forest proposes a way of achieving Sumak Kawsay by means of the application and execution of Life Plans that are sustained by the three foundational pillars of the Sumak Kawsay Plan: Fertile Land (Sumak Allpa); Living in Community (Runaguna Kawsay); and Forest Wisdom (Sacha Runa Yachay).

3. Understood as Territory, the Living Forest, thanks to forty years of communal effort, is now demarcated by a border of flowering and fruiting trees visible from the air. We call this vital cordon a Frontier of Life or Trail of Flowers (Jatun Kawsak Sisa Nampi). By means of the flowers ephemeral beauty, the Frontier of Life conveys the fragility of life and the fertility of the Living Forest that it both surrounds and protects. At the same time it creates the possibility of beginning to dialogue with the beings that make up the Living Forest. In this way the Frontier of Life creates a permanent forum for communication among beings. This can help the entire world recuperate the original understanding of Mother Earth as a shared home.

Given the gravity and speed of climate change, it would behoove us to immediately welcome truly transformative ideas such as Rights of Nature and the Kawsak Sacha proposal. May these ripples in the pond turn into waves of change, or we will have overwhelming waves from sea level rise that will not be the transformation we are seeking.

Special thanks to Amazon Watch and the Indigenous Environmental Network for their support of the Indigenous peoples and the initiatives featured in this article.

Osprey Orielle Lake is the founder and executive director of the Womens Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN) International and co-chair of International Advocacy for the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature. Osprey is the author of the award-winning book Uprisings for the Earth: Reconnecting Culture with Nature. Follow on Twitter @WECAN_INTL.

YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE

Monsantos Glyphosate Most Heavily Used Weed Killer in History

Leonardo DiCaprio to Produce Post-Apocalyptic Climate Change Film

Lumber Liquidators Sentenced to $13.2 Million for Smuggling Illegal Wood Into the U.S.

Cancer Prevention Needs Attention Too: What if We Werent Exposed to 80,000 Toxic Chemicals Every Day?
We see ourselves not as an owner of wild rice but a symbiotic partner and a parallel entity from the Creator, says Frank Bibeau, a lawyer from the Anishinaabe indigenous group in the U.S. and Canada.

Harvesters use flailing sticks to beat the wild rice  or manoomin, by its Anishinaabe name  and release grain into the air. A good portion of the rice gets sent out in all directions to reseed the rice. Maybe half of it or a little more falls into the canoe for food, Bibeau explains. So we are part of the natural reseeding process ourselves.

Seeking ways to block an oil pipeline through the Great Lakes ecosystem where his people and the rice have thrived together for generations, Bibeau designed legislation granting wild rice its own rights under tribal law. According to the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) that advised Bibeau on the legislation, manoomin is the first plant in the world to be granted rights. But it joins a growing number of rivers, forests, and characterizations of nature as a whole, that are protected by rights of nature laws around the world.

Indigenous Approaches Written Into Law Conventional environmental laws are really about regulating how we use nature, says Mari Margil of CELDF. The consequences of that have been so devastating that people in different parts of the world are saying we need to make a fundamental shift in our relationship with nature. With the idea that indigenous peoples are the most reliable custodians of our planet now repeated by politicians and environmental NGOs alike, giving nature rights suggests a way their approaches might be adopted by broader society. It was in this spirit that Ecuador became the first country to enshrine the rights of nature  personified as Pachamama, the Andean earth goddess  in its constitution, in 2008. Bolivia and Uganda have since enshrined the rights of nature in their constitutions, and an amendment was recently proposed for Sweden to do the same.

A Healthier Relationship With Nature? Asserting that nature has intrinsic rights isnt just a legal tool to prosecute polluters. It also challenges the ecosystem services approach to environmental protection that costs up the economic value of clean air, water and biodiversity  and even the concept of conservation areas. As a national park, land surrounding the Whanganui River in New Zealand was off limits to the Iwi Maori tribe who had hunted and fished there sustainably for generations. In 2017, the dispute was resolved by making the river a person in its own right, owned by neither the state nor the tribe. Maori law professor Jacinta Ruru sees it as a major breakthrough that New Zealand law now reflects the relationship the countrys indigenous people have with the environment  one that sees no division between whats good for people and the planet. My tribe  well talk about your veins in your arms as being like the riverways of the land, explains Ruru. So youre seeing the health and wellbeing of who you are as a person, your health, your own happiness, as entirely connected with the health and wellbeing of the environment around us.

Strategic Compromise Ruru says its too soon to judge the ecological impact of the Whanganui Rivers change of status. And it remains to be seen if the Rights of Manoomin will be any match for the interests invested in the pipeline. In Ecuadors case, the new constitution has been used to block plantations and road-building that threatened forest, but it hasnt proved enough to transform an entire system geared toward economic development; cases brought by indigenous activists have ended in Pachamamas rights being trumped by those of businesses. Critics also point out that making rivers and forests honorary people owes less to any indigenous deification of nature than to the Western rights discourse. There is a strategic relationship between indigenous communities and the rights of nature, says Mihnea Tanasescu, a political scientist who authored a book on the subject in Ecuador, but there is not necessarily an intrinsic philosophical affinity, because rights are a very Western legal category.

Michelle Maloney of the Australian Earth Laws Alliance is developing legislation based on Aboriginal traditions that ground all law in relationships to the land. She says nature rights are a way for different cultural perspectives to work together. The legal personhood argument is getting traction around the world, she says, because the average Westerner-lawyer type understands it as a construct. The Ganges and Yamuna rivers now have legal personhood, as do each of Bangladeshs hundreds of rivers. The Colombian judiciary, meanwhile, has repeatedly ruled that the rights of rivers of forests had been violated by pollution and logging. These laws draw on specific local indigenous ideas. Yet a single U.S.-based organization, CELDF, has been instrumental in drafting nature rights legislation around the world.

CELDF worked on the worlds first rights of nature law  a local ordinance to stop toxic waste dumping in Pennsylvania  in 2006, and Margil says close to 40 nature rights bills have now been passed in the U.S. Many are brought by activists with no indigenous ties frustrated by a legal system that doesnt recognize damage to nature as a crime until it affects human health or livelihoods.

Conversation-Changer Last year, one such case made international headlines. Residents of Toledo, a city on the shores of heavily polluted Lake Erie in the U.S. state of Ohio, voted to give the lake rights. A local farm responded by filing a lawsuit claiming this violated the rights of agribusinesses. Since the bill was more or less quashed by Ohio state legislature, activists are fighting to revive it from legal limbo. But if nothing else, their struggle has drawn attention to the priorities of a legal system that treats nature as property but corporations as legal persons. Often people just dont think about these invisible systems that govern our world, Maloney says. So as a starting point  and a conversation- and discourse-changer  the rights of nature is very powerful.

Reposted with permission from Deutsche Welle.
Four Bengal tigers and four lions have been rescued, after much of their lives were spent in circuses and tight living quarters, as part of two rescue operations. They will now live in wildlife sanctuaries in South Africa.

In the case of the tigers, two of the Bengal tigers had been part of a circus, but the traveling circus operators asked a local farmer in San Luis, Argentina to watch after the animals temporarily. But the circus never returned. The tigers later had two cubs, and the big cats spent over 4 years together in a metal train carriage, according to Plant Based News.

The train carriage was filthy with excrements and leftover meat and bones for a long time but fortunately this is not the case anymore, said Dr. Amir Khalil, a veterinarian with Four Paws International, which led the rescue operation.

These tigers have never felt grass or earth under their paws, Khalil added, as reported by EuroNews. Its the first time they can see the sky above them, not just metal bars and a roof.

The tigers, named Sandro, Mafalda, Messi and Gustavo, now call the LIONSROCK Big Cat Sanctuary in Bethlehem, South Africa home. They are in enclosures, but their new locations are much more similar to their natural habitats, which most of this family has never experienced before.

The lions, named Angela, Bellone, Saida and Louga were rescued in an operation in France by The Born Free Foundation. Since they were cubs, these lions had been part of various circuses until 2018. After the owner relinquished them, they were held in a rescue center in Lyon, France, until Born Free could safely move them to the Shamwari Private Game Reserve in South Africa.

What a difference Born Free makes!



Our #LionsOfLockdown were cruelly exploited as circus animals, but thanks to you theyre transforming into the lions they should have been at @ShamwariReserve.



It costs 12 a day to care for each one  can you help?  https://t.co/LWNjPcWMCA pic.twitter.com/vr2MmLpC09  Born Free Foundation (@BornFreeFDN) March 9, 2022

These big cats had spent most of their lives in a small trailer or forced to perform in traveling circuses. Now, Catherine Gillson, Born Free manager at Shamwari Private Game Reserve, said the lions have enclosures the size of roughly two rugby fields planted with native vegetation to mimic the lions natural habitat.

We are delighted that Louga, Saida, Angela and Bellone are safely with us at Shamwari, Gillson said in a statement. The journey of our Lions of Lockdown has been long, but hopefully with each day spent with us in the peace of our sanctuary, they will continue to grow from strength to strength. Their re-homing to our Big Cat Sanctuary at Shamwari will allow them to get as close to experiencing the life they were denied for so many years! The sights, sounds and scents of their fellow rescued big cats will heighten their senses immediately as they begin to acclimatise to their new lives. They are now in their forever home in Africa.
Effingham, IL (62401)

Today

Rain likely. High 59F. Winds E at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall may reach one inch..

Tonight

Rain showers early will evolve into a more steady rain overnight. Thunder possible. Low 57F. Winds ESE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%.
Elkhart, IN (46516)

Today

Partly cloudy skies this morning will give way to cloudy skies and rain during the afternoon. High 59F. Winds ESE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%..

Tonight

Rain. Low around 50F. Winds E at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall near a half an inch.
Washington, MO (63090)

Today

Cloudy this morning. A few showers developing during the afternoon. High 63F. Winds ENE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 30%..

Tonight

Rain. Low near 55F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 80%. Rainfall near a half an inch.
Washington, MO (63090)

Today

Showers this morning becoming less numerous during the afternoon hours. High 63F. Winds ENE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50%. Localized flooding is possible..

Tonight

Rain likely. Low around 55F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 80%. Rainfall near a half an inch.
Athens, AL (35611)

Today

Clouds and some sun this morning with more clouds for this afternoon. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 86F. Winds S at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

Thunderstorms. Low around 65F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
Over the next few weeks, Google is rolling out new features for the Photos app that could make the daunting task of organizing shots you've taken over the years feel more achievable. To start with, the tech giant is updating the app's layout so that you can display groups of photos as a grid or a list that you can filter by type, namely albums, shared albums, favorites and on-device folders. Then, at the bottom menu, you'll find a new "import photos" section that will help you transfer photos from other services, such as Facebook and iCloud.

The new feature will also make easier to copy files from a camera, as well as to digitize old images and videos. Plus, it has a function to help you scan physical images with your phone. If you're on Android, you'll find more defined sections marked as partner sharing, shared albums and conversations under the sharing tab starting this week, as well. The sections will make their way to the iOS app in the near future.

Another update that could make organizing your images much more doable is the option to exclude your own device folder from backups. If you have a Pixel or another Android device that saves screenshots in that folder, that means you don't have to wade through snapshots of random things you found online or of bank and other payment transactions.

Google will soon add a shortcut for screenshots at the top of the main photo grid to take you right to them in case you choose not to back up your device folder. And soon, you'll also see a carousel of contextual suggestions to copy text, crop and search using Google Lens whenever you view a screenshot.
IKEA has unveiled the Vappeby Bluetooth speaker with a Spotify Tap button that doubles as an outdoor lamp, confirming an FCC filing we saw last year. With IP65 dust and water splash resistance, it's designed to illuminate outdoor parties, barbecues, etc. with LED light while delivering 360 sound, the company said.

When you press the Spotify Tap button, it will start streaming from wherever you left off and another press will play a different recommendation based on your Spotify history. It also works with other streaming services or any media stored on your smartphone or other connected device.

Vappeby offers up to 12 hours of music streaming, presumably without the light turned on. It charges via USB-C with a cable, but not a charger, included in the package. The lamp offers two LED light modes (IKEA didn't specify which), and has a grip and lantern-like design.

IKEA/Miguel Perez

Spotify Tap rolled out in September last year and was available at launch on Bluetooth headphones from Samsung, Microsoft Surface, Bose, Skullcandy, and Jabra, Spotify said at the time. The company already has a range of Vappeby Bluetooth speakers (known as Eneby in the US) priced from $25 to $90. It also offers the Symfonisk bookshelf speaker build in collaboration with Sonos, available for 99 in Europe only.

The company said that Vappeby is "an important step on IKEA's journey to democratize music... increase user experience, lower the thresholds and make music and light easily accessible." The new model is now available to order for $65 in blue or grey, though as mentioned, the USB power adapter is sold separately.
Both Microsoft and Okta have admitted that their systems were indeed infiltrated by the Lapsus$ hacking group, but both companies also said that the cyberattack's impact was limited. In a post on the Microsoft Security blog, the tech giant has revealed that the group gained limited access to its systems using a single compromised account.

When the hacking group released a torrent with stolen data, it said the package included 90 percent of Bing's source code and 45 percent of Cortana and Bing Maps code. Microsoft didn't say whether those products' codes were indeed stolen, but it explained that it "does not rely on the secrecy of code as a security measure and viewing source code does not lead to elevation of risk." Apparently, the company was already investigating the compromised account even before Lapsus$'s announcement. The group's move prompted Microsoft to move more quickly, allowing it interrupt the bad actor in the middle of its operation, thereby limiting its impact.

Meanwhile, Okta updated its old post made in response to the hacking claim and revealed that approximately 2.5 percent of its customers may have had their data viewed or acted upon. While the company has tens of thousands of customers, it actually supports "hundreds of millions of users," according to its website. Okta confirmed it has already contacted the affected customers directly via email.

Okta previously said that it discovered a five-day window in January where an attacker had access to a support engineer's laptop. However, it said the potential impact to Okta customers is limited, because support engineers only have access to limited data. Lapsus$ claimed that the statement was a lie, because it was able to log into a "superuser portal with the ability to reset the password and MFA" of around 95 percent of the company's clients.

In addition to announcing the results of its investigation, Microsoft has also detailed how Lapsus$ operates in its post. The group apparently uses various tactics to gain entry into its targets' systems, such as relying on social engineering and using password stealers. It also purchases logins from underground forums and even pays employees working in target organizations to use their credentials, approve MFA prompts and to install remote management software on a corporate workstation if needed. At times, it also performs SIM-swapping attacks to get access to a user's phone number in order to receive their two-factor codes.

If it only gains access to account credentials for someone with limited privileges at first, it explores the company's collaboration channels like Teams and Slack or exploits vulnerabilities to gain logins for users higher up in the organization. Microsoft said the group started by targeting cryptocurrency accounts, stealing wallets and funds. Eventually, it also targeted telecom companies, higher educational institutions and government organizations in South America and then worldwide.
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.

With great speed, security and reliability, Samsung's T7 Touch SSDs are among the best storage expansion options for PCs and mobile devices alike. Now is a great time to pick one up, as both the 1TB and 2TB models are available on Amazon at all-time low prices. You can pick up the 1TB model in silver or black for $130 (a savings of $60), or grab the 2TB version for $260, or $110 off the regular $370 price.

When it launched, the T7 Touch SSD won a CES Innovation Award thanks to its built-in fingerprint scanner feature with 265-bit AES hardware encryption. It supports read and write speeds of 1,050 MB/s and 1,000 MB/s thanks to the USB 3.2 connectivity, considerably faster than most portable SSDs. In addition, it comes with an LED status indicator and can withstand shocks from drops up to six feet.

Fingerprint setup is relatively simple thanks to the included software. And while some portable SSDs are stingy with cables, the T7 Touch includes both USB Type C-to-C and Type C-to-A cables so you can connect it to PCs, Macs and portable devices. Finally, it offers a sleek and compact style, fitting in the palm of your hand and weighing just 2 ounces or 57 grams. As mentioned, these are the lowest prices we've seen on the T7 Touch models, so if you've been looking, now's the time to act.

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.
You might one day control Snap Spectacles glasses with your mind. Snap has bought NextMind, a French startup developing brain-computer interface technology (BCI) to help steer wearables and other devices by focusing on virtual buttons. There's no mystery about the intentions  NextMind will aid Snap's augmented reality development, including work on Spectacles.

Snap didn't disclose the value of the deal or outline its exact plans. NextMind will remain in its hometown of Paris while helping the Snap Lab team, although The Verge learned the newly-acquired company will discontinue its BCI headband for developers.

The purchase isn't surprising given Snap's history. It bought WaveOptics, the company behind Spectacles' AR displays, in 2021. The social media giant also reportedly bought another display firm, the liquid crystal on silicon company Compound Photonics, in January. Snap is clearly interested in advancing its AR glasses beyond the simple designs of today, which rely on physical buttons to do little more than capture photos and video.

There's also plenty of competition in the space. Meta bought neural monitoring startup CTRL-labs in late 2019, while Valve is exploring the category through a partnership with OpenBCI. There's even some indirect competition with the brain implants of Elon Musk's Neuralink. Snap may need NextMind if it's going to develop advanced, hands-free AR hardware in time to fend off rivals.
Toyota and Aurora are bringing their robotaxi partnership to Texas roads. TechCrunch reports the two companies are launching an autonomous ride-hailing test in the Dallas-Fort Worth area using modified Sienna hybrid minivans. The project will focus on highways and other high-speed roads, and is already dealing with challenges like high-speed merges, construction and vehicles stopped on shoulders.

The test is small, and the vans aren't truly driverless. Each vehicle will have both a behind-the-wheel supervisor as well as a monitor in a passenger seat. The Siennas will drive autonomously up to 70MPH, however, and Aurora said it would both grow the fleet and expand testing into more urbanized areas over the months ahead.

Aurora chose Texas both due to an abundance of major trucking routes (to help with its cargo-carrying plans) and the power to develop and test high-priority trips for its Aurora Connect robotaxi platform, such as rides to the airport. The company's trucks are already ferrying goods for Uber Freight in Texas.

There's plenty of pressure for Toyota and Aurora to succeed with the test. Aurora bought Uber's self-driving unit in December 2020 to help speed-up its ride-hailing plans, and it ultimately hopes to plug Connect into Uber and other hailing services. The sooner experiments like this bear fruit, the sooner Toyota, Aurora and Uber can compete with rivals like Cruise and Waymo, both of which are already offering limited rides to the public.
ENID, Okla.  As service members relocate for new assignments there are many logistics to consider with moving, buying, selling and renting.

Each year more than 400,000 service members make a permanent change of station, according to Military One Source. While the military provides assistance in moving, personnel still have to deal with the impact on their families, finances, investments and more.

David Ruffin, owner and broker of KW Local Enid and president of MILPCS Inc., cares about military real estate clients so much he started a company to provide real estate assistance to service members who are relocating all across the United States.

On the path forward 2022: Bulding a resilient community: ALL MILITARY IMPACT STORIES On the path forward 2022: Building a resilient community is a special section that will publish in the Enid News & Eagle for eight Sundays

As a veteran and current civilian instructor on base, Ruffin said the reason he and his wife Mary originally got into real estate was because of their own military experiences.

We saw a lot of people being taken advantage of, Ruffin said. When you look at the military client, especially the young pilots we have here at Vance. They are all well-educated, they have little to no debt, great credit and guaranteed jobs for the next 10 years.

Everyone is kind of salivating at the thought of selling these people something, whether its a new car, home or credit card, Ruffin said. Its a target-rich environment for a lot of these young military, and we are just trying to educate them that they will have a lot of people coming after you to get you to buy something or loan you money, and you just need to be careful.

Watching their backs

In 2008, with decades of real estate experience in tow, Ruffin started his company  MILPCS Inc. MILPCS is an acronym for military permanent change of station  the military term for getting a new assignment. The mission behind the company is to educate personnel and assist them in their relocation, Ruffin said.

ruffin quote Its a target-rich environment for a lot of these young military, and we are just trying to educate them that they will have a lot of people coming after you to get you to buy something or loan you money, and you just need to be careful. David Ruffin, president of MILPCS Inc.

Its easy to take care of folks here in Enid, Ruffin said. I can take care of them, my wife can take care of them. We can make sure that they are being looked out for, but what happened when that client three years from now says they are moving to Charleston, South Carolina? I cant help them out there.

So Ruffin started his company to provide that help. MILPCS offers real estate education to both military and civilians and assists with military relocation across the nation.

If they move to a new city, they dont know anyone, Ruffin said. They dont know a good real estate agent from a bad real estate agent. They dont know a good lender from a bad lender. So, for over a decade and half now we have built up a good, honest top quality database of real estate professionals around the country.

The network agents in MILPCS are personally interviewed and undergo background checks before they are accepted into the free network, Ruffin said.

The organization works hard to ensure its directory of brokers and agents across the nation understand the unique military challenges and through that knowledge will really lookout for their clientele.

Whether it is South Carolina, New Jersey, Washington, Florida, California, wherever they are going we have good honest, trustworthy people that will help them, Ruffin said.

Lessons learned

With the current housing market trends, it is very challenging for the active duty to be able to purchase a home, live in it for three years, then be able to sell it when they leave without losing some money, Ruffin said.

Ruffin created a free guide and workbook about real estate 101 and also teaches classes for people looking to buy or invest in real estate.

That is the main impetus for what we do, Ruffin said. We try to teach them how to buy the home properly  at the right price, in the right neighborhood, even when youre making upgrades or improvements to the home. Some improvements are very good from an investment standpoint, other upgrades might make you happy but arent going to do anything for the investment itself.

Much of what Ruffin teaches his students are lessons and so they can learn from mistakes he has made personally and professionally.

In some fashion or another, Ive been doing real estate for 30 years, either purchasing my own home or turning those homes into investment properties and renting them out when I left, Ruffin said. Ive done fixer-uppers, Ive done flippers, Ive also built new homes. Even though I wasnt formally a real estate professional yet, I have quite a bit of experience with real estate, especially single-family homes.
Weather Alert

...FLOOD WATCH REMAINS IN EFFECT THROUGH THIS EVENING... * WHAT...Flooding caused by excessive rainfall continues to be possible. * WHERE...Portions of central Oklahoma, east central Oklahoma, northern Oklahoma, southeast Oklahoma, southern Oklahoma and southwest Oklahoma, including the following counties, in central Oklahoma, Canadian, Cleveland, Grady, Kingfisher, Lincoln, Logan, McClain, Oklahoma, Payne and Pottawatomie. In east central Oklahoma, Pontotoc and Seminole. In northern Oklahoma, Garfield, Grant, Kay and Noble. In southeast Oklahoma, Atoka, Bryan, Coal, Hughes, Johnston and Marshall. In southern Oklahoma, Carter, Garvin, Murray and Stephens. In southwest Oklahoma, Comanche. * WHEN...Through this evening. * IMPACTS...Excessive runoff may result in flooding of rivers, creeks, streams, and other low-lying and flood-prone locations. Creeks and streams may rise out of their banks. Flooding may occur in poor drainage and urban areas. Low-water crossings may be flooded. Extensive street flooding and flooding of creeks and rivers are possible. Area creeks and streams are running high and could flood with more heavy rain. * ADDITIONAL DETAILS... - Showers and thunderstorm chances will continue through Thursday early this evening, with an additional 1 to 2 inches of rainfall expected in the watch area. Rainfall totals across the watch area have already exceeded 4 inches for some locations near the I-44 and I-40 corridors across central and eastern Oklahoma. - http://www.weather.gov/safety/flood
Chinese Wisdom in Xi's Words: "A just cause should be pursued for the common good"

Xinhua) 14:56, March 23, 2022

BEIJING, March 23 (Xinhua) -- "We need to keep in mind global stability and the work and life of billions of people," said Chinese President Xi Jinping during his video call with U.S. President Joe Biden on Friday.

Xi's remarks referred to the responsibility of leaders of major countries to properly address global hotspot issues.

It echoes a saying that Xi has used in many occasions to explain China's foreign policy and the vision for a better world: "A just cause should be pursued for the common good."

This originates from the Confucian classic "The Book of Rites" which dates back some 2,000 years. The sentence was followed by the introduction of the concept "universal harmony."

In Xi's vision, the just cause refers to the shared values of humanity, such as fairness and justice, while universal harmony is mirrored in the vision of building a community with a shared future for humanity.

Xi is taking concrete action to practice his vision: expanding China's circle of friends, promoting international people-to-people exchanges, advocating the Belt and Road Initiative, and countless efforts to build a new model of major-country relations and to safeguard the international order.

"As permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and the world's two leading economies, we must not only guide China-U.S. relations forward along the right track, but also shoulder our share of international responsibilities and work for world peace and tranquility," Xi told Biden.

(Web editor: Peng yukai, Liang Jun)
Some European Union member states are pushing for sanctions on Moscows key energy sector to punish Russia for its attack on the Ukrainian port city Mariupol that the EUs foreign policy chief called a massive war crime. Whats happening now in Mariupol is a massive war crime, destroying everything, bombarding and killing everybody, Josep Borrell said at the start of a meeting of EU foreign and defense ministers in Brussels on Monday (21 March). German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock highlighted the increase in Russian attacks on civilian infrastructure, including hospitals and theaters, saying that the courts will have to decide, but for me these are clearly war crimes. Some EU nations like Poland and the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia are pushing for tougher sanctions, including a ban on Russian oil and gas imports. The ministers mulled over imposing further measures they could take to force Moscow to change course in Ukraine.

The EU and its Western allies have already imposed wide-ranging sanctions on Russia, including freezing the nations central bank assets. But the sanctions have so far not succeeded in pushing the Kremlin to halt its invasion of Ukraine, where fighting showing no sign of abating. A decision on further sanctions is going to dominate and its not going to be easy, an EU diplomat said ahead of the meeting. It is unavoidable to start talking about the energy sector and we definitely can start talking about oil, Lithuania Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said. Europe cannot look, give an impression of fatigue when the war in Ukraine hasnt ended. We cannot get tired imposing sanctions, we cannot get tired offering assistance to Ukraine, he added. The aim of these sanctions, the bloc and its allies have said, is to cripple the Russian economy and curtail its ability to raise funds for its military. But energy supplies have so far been left off the table as the EU is heavily reliant on Russia for its energy supplies.

Meanwhile, with Russias war in Ukraine in its fourth week, Germany has become the focal point of a debate about whether Europe should continue financing Russian military operations by purchasing energy from Moscow. With at least 50 million flows from Germany to Russia daily in exchange for gas, oil and coal, no European country imports more energy from Russia than Germany. As energy prices continue to rise, experts have estimated that Europe sends in total about 1 billion per day to Russia for its energy imports. To cut this dependency, Germany and Qatar have agreed upon a long-term energy partnership to help cut reliance on Russian gas over the invasion of Ukraine, German Economic Minister Robert Habeck said Sunday (20 March). Habeck, who was on a two-nation visit to the Arabian Gulf, said that Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani had pledged more support than Germany had expected. Although we might still need Russian gas this year, in the future it wont be so anymore. And this is only the start, Habeck said. Qatar is one of the three largest exporters of liquified natural gas (LNG). Habeck also visited the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which is repositioning itself as a hub for green hydrogen.
What follows is a brief history of the home at 10218 Sandbrook Hill, in the Brauns Farm neighborhood south of Loop 1604 and Bandera Road.

In May 2000, after putting the finishing touches on the homes 3 bedrooms and 2.5 baths, construction company Kaufman and Broad of Texas sold it to a couple who owned it for six years to the month before selling it to another couple.

Fifteen years later, the second owners decided to sell the home, its brick facade now half hidden behind a sprawling oak. Rather than worrying about fixing it up and finding a real estate agent, they sold it to Zillow, the online marketplace that in 2019 had joined the ranks of iBuyers  tech companies that flip houses.

Zillow bought the home in October. Then, a week later, it announced it was getting out of the house-flipping business. And on Feb. 10, it sold the home on Sandbrook Hill along with 50 others in one batch to an entity operating as SFR V TRANCHE 3 BORROWER LLC. The limited liability company shares an address with Progress Residential, an Arizona company that offers single-family homes for rent.

Based on the way Progress and other single-family rental companies have been operating in San Antonio, it seems likely the home will be a rental property for years to come.

On ExpressNews.com: Big-dollar investors squeeze into San Antonios tight housing market

More than 300 sold

In the five months since Zillow decided to shut down its iBuyer program known as Zillow Offers, it has sold at least 172 homes in Bexar County to LLCs linked to single-family rental companies, deed records show. During that time, its sold at least 136 homes to individuals.

We intend to sell our remaining inventory - which represents less than three-tenths of 1 percent of all U.S. homes sold this year  the same way we always have: by selling to buyers of all types including individuals, families, individual investors, institutional investors and nonprofits, company spokeswoman Erika Riggs said Wednesday in an emailed statement.

Billy Calzada /Staff file photo

Entities linked to Progress have purchased 115 of the homes, often in batches, the records show. It is often unclear who is behind the entities but state corporate filings list an address for them that matches the one Progress lists on its website.

Progress also acts as a property manager, boasting that it manages more than 70,000 homes across 29 U.S. metro areas. Its clients include Yamasa Corp., a conglomerate based in Okayama, Japan, which has been investing in the San Antonio single-family rental market since April 2021.

On ExpressNews.com: San Antonios newest single-family investor: Yamasa Corp., a Japanese conglomerate hit town in April

As in all U.S. cities, a surge in investment from single-family rental companies has shaken up San Antonios housing market in recent years. As of last year, 23 percent of home purchases in the local market were made by investors, according to a report from John Burns Real Estate Consulting.

LLCs linked to Tricon Residential, a publicly traded Canadian company, have purchased 25 homes from Zillow since November, the records show. Another 20 were sold in one batch to Crowne Property Acquisitions, which shares a mailing address with RENU Property Management of Carmel, Indiana.

Appealing convenience

Seattle-based Zillow introduced its iBuyer program to San Antonio in September 2019, praising the market as a dynamic, desirable area. Two tech companies, Opendoor and Perch (now Orchard) first brought the iBuyer business model to the Alamo City in 2018.

To sellers, the appeal is convenience: They dont have to brace themselves for a stressful and confusing listing process, or worry about making repairs to get the house on the market.

Someone comes in and takes away all the stresses of a sale. Thats attractive to the consumer, local broker Levi Rodgers said of the process in 2019.

Gerry Broome, STF / Associated Press

On ExpressNews.com: Zillow launches home-buying program in San Antonio

Zillow purchased at least 472 properties last year through Zillow Homes Property Trust, the entity its used since early 2021 to buy and sell properties in Bexar County, deed records show.

It was the volatility of the U.S. housing market that drove Zillow to leave the business. In November, CEO Rich Barton said in a statement the company had determined that keeping it would result in too much earnings and balance-sheet volatility.

The company expected to reduce its workforce by about 25 percent as it pulled out of the sector, a process it said would take several months.

In our short tenure operating Zillow Offers, weve experienced a series of extraordinary events: a global pandemic, a temporary freezing of the housing market, and then a supply-demand imbalance that led to a rise in home prices at a rate that was without precedent, Barton said in a statement on LinkedIn. We have been unable to accurately forecast future home prices at different times in both directions.

On Nov. 4, two days after issuing the statement, the company gave notice it would lay off 32 employees in Dallas, according to a listing made under the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act.

It closed on its last home in Bexar County on Jan. 20. As of Wednesday, there were six homes listed on its website as being owned by Zillow in San Antonio.

Its nothing new for Zillow and other iBuyers to sell often to single-family rental companies. Zillow has been selling homes to entities linked to Progress and Tricon since early 2021. Opendoor has been doing it since at least 2019.

Opendoor and Orchard remain active in Bexar County, with Opendoor in particular buying and selling nearly 200 properties so far this month, some of them to single-family rental companies, the deed records show.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Texass Republican leadership is taking an increasingly authoritarian turn, not just on culture war issues such as abortion and free speech, but also by cracking down on the liberty of investors to choose where to put their money.

In January, Railroad Commission Chairman Wayne Christian, whose job is to regulate the oil and gas industry, confronted BlackRock, one of the worlds largest investment firms with $10 trillion under management. He objected to the firms commitment to fight climate change and apparently won concessions.

It was nice to hear that BlackRock didnt mean  or no longer believes  many of the disagreeable things the company and its CEO Larry Fink have said about the oil and gas industry, Christian wrote in a post-meeting email obtained by the nonprofit Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

TOMLINSONS TAKE: Texas voters need to fire Railroad Commission Chair Christian

The Railroad Commission is supposed to be the publics watchdog over a dangerous and polluting industry. But because the elected commissioners rely on oil and gas workers for two-thirds of their campaign donations, Christian and the other two commissioners have become the industrys attack dogs instead.

BlackRock issued a statement insisting there was no inconsistency between Finks open letters advocating fewer fossil fuel investments and Christians email.

Yeah, right.

Christian was rubbing Finks nose in a new state law passed by his Republican brethren to punish firms that offer anti-fossil fuel investment strategies. Senate Bill 13 prohibits Texas state agencies from investing in financial companies that boycott fossil fuels.

Comptroller Glenn Hegar, also a statewide elected official, sent letters to 19 firms demanding clarification on their stance toward oil and gas last week. Those who dont respond within 60 days will be presumed to be boycotting energy companies, Hegar wrote.

Are they selling the hope of a green tomorrow with promises to divest or reduce their fossil fuel exposure? Hegar asked in a press release. A handful of companies are echoing promises by the Biden administration about a transition to green energy.

The horror!

Hegar is using his official position to spread lies about clean energy and electioneer. He says he is preparing letters to another 100 publicly traded investment companies that he says appear to have one or more funds boycotting fossil fuels.

These companies will be asked to list all of their mutual funds and ETFs that refuse to invest in fossil fuels, Hegars statement said. Responses collected from these entities will help finalize the Comptrollers list of companies.

Environmentally friendly funds are popular with ethical investors. State officials hope the threat of losing Texass official business will pressure firms to stop offering clean tech funds and ensure capital continues to flow to their campaign donors.

By identifying such companies, we can do our part to help ensure Texas is not investing public funds alongside those engaged in this duplicitous scheme, Hegar wrote of efforts to reduce reliance on fossil fuels.

Texas Republicans are violating the fundamental right of brokers to offer products their customers want and denying investors the right to choose where to place their money. The GOPs promise to defend liberty and protect against government overreach is pure hypocrisy.

Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan are responsible for this law, and Christian and Hegar are using it to bully investment managers. But make no mistake, its the oil and gas industry that wanted it.

Almost every CEO speaking at recent energy conferences has complained that investors are not giving them enough money. In truth, though, its their own fault. Investors are tired of CEOs spending like drunken sailors when prices are high and then failing to deliver a decent return when they drop.

Younger people, meanwhile, do not want to support an industry that is destroying the planet with carbon emissions. Oil and gas companies have known about climate risk since the 1960s and are still not doing enough to mitigate it.

TOMLINSONS TAKE: Patrick's attacks threaten innovation that drives Texass economy

So, oil and gas executives are relying on bought-and-paid for politicians to rig the system and deliver the billions they need to keep drilling.

As for BlackRock, kissing the rings of Texass rulers didnt make a difference. After Patricks staff met with Finks lieutenants, he denounced the firm.

BlackRock said it was committed to Texas and Texas vast energy footprint, but I have grave concerns that BlackRocks public statements and actions do not reflect its sentiments presented to my office, he wrote in a letter to Hegar. As you prepare the list of those that boycott Texas energy companies, I ask that BlackRock be at the top.

These guys masquerade as conservatives, but in truth they are nothing more than crony capitalist thugs.

chris.tomlinson@chron.com

twitter.com/cltomlinson
Another heir to the late Taco Cabana founder Felix Stehling has sued his former financial adviser over management of a trust.

Tammy Jo Ford, 53, of San Antonio, has accused adviser James C. Worth of self-dealing by placing his personal financial interests ahead of the purposes of a trust her grandparents  Felix and Billie Jo Stehling  created for her in 1996. Worth serves as trustee of the trust.

Ford only learned about the trust at the end of last year, according to Joseph Marrs, her Houston lawyer.

Were in a position of being kept in the dark for 20 some-odd years, Marrs said in an interview. The way trust law works, if you are the trustee, youve got a duty of disclosure to your beneficiary.

ENTER TO WIN: Tickets to Spurs vs. Trail Blazers on April 1

Fords suit follows a complaint brought by Lynn Moody, Stehlings stepson, in 2018. Moody alleged Worth had squandered Stehlings fortune, which had been valued at $20 million at the time of Stehlings death in 2012 at age 85. Worth disputed the allegations.

Moody died Dec. 31, 2019, following a long illness. He was 68.

Courtesy photo /Taco Cabana Taco Cabana Taco Cabana founders Felix and Billie Jo Stehling with their employees in front of the first restaurant on the corner of San Pedro Avenue and Hildebrand Avenue. (Courtesy Taco Cabana) Taco Cabana founders Felix and Billie Jo Stehling with their employees in front of the first restaurant on the corner of San Pedro Avenue and Hildebrand Avenue. (Courtesy Taco Cabana)

On ExpressNews.com: An heirs Taco Cabana fortune allegedly squandered

His lawsuit was moved to arbitration, where Moody's heirs and estate took up the fight. The dispute was later resolved with a mutual confidentiality provision, said San Antonio attorney Frank Guerra, who filed the suit on Moodys behalf.

Moody served as Stehlings right-hand man in building Tex-Mex restaurant chain Taco Cabana into a San Antonio success story.

Stehling founded Taco Cabana in 1978 and steadily expanded the business. Over the years, Stehling sold shares in his company to the public before Carrols Restaurant Group of Syracuse, N.Y.., bought the 126-store chain in 2000. The $154 million deal enriched Stehling by $28 million, Moody had said in his lawsuit.

A hearing had been scheduled for Wednesday in state District Court in San Antonio on Fords request for a temporary injunction against Worth. Judge Tina Torres granted Barry Snell, Worths lawyer, granted a continuance because his client is in England.

Judge Cynthia Marie Chapa had approved Fords application for a temporary restraining order on March 9. The judge ordered Worth to deposit all cash from trust-related accounts into the registry of the court.

The judge also ruled that Ford receive $40,000 in distributions to pay her lawyers and to hire a forensic accountant.

SA Inc.: Get the best of business news sent directly to your inbox

Courtesy /

Snell wasnt at that hearing to contest the TRO application. Snell got Chapas order dissolved Monday.

In her petition, Ford wants a judge to prevent the transfer of any assets that Worth has an interest in and grant her an interim distribution of $100,000.

Hes concealed the trust for 26 years from the beneficiary  just revealed it in December, Marrs said to Torres. Told her that there was $300-something-thousand dollars left, but if she has questions, in so many words, that that might disappear. Its appears thats exactly whats taking place right now.

Snell called the allegations completely outrageous and false.

Ford has been receiving monthly distributions, on behalf of her trust, since at least 2020, Snell said in an email. The distributions have been made by STW Castle Pines Ltd., a limited partnership that has real estate holdings in Colorado. STW is an amalgamation of Stehling and Worths names.

The Docket: Local crime and courtroom news, delivered to your inbox weekly

In a March 14 declaration included in a court filing, Worth said he already paid Ford $4,000 monthly distributions for April and May  above the $3,000 he had previously been distributing to her.

There has never been any threat to discontinue or disrupt these distributions, Snell said. Mr. Worth is not at liberty to discuss this any further without written authorization from Ms. Ford or her lawyer. Worth is a general partner of STW.

Ford has a 12 percent interest in the partnership, her suit says. Just what the partnership owns today couldnt be determined. In a 2019 interview, Snell said it owned 63 percent of the remaining 25 lots in a real estate development in Colorado. Those lots had an asking price of more than $13 million and had about $2.7 million in debt on them.

Fords trust has no funds and it doesnt even have a bank account, Snell told Torres.

The judge ruled that everything in the dispute should remain status quo until a hearing can be held on April 18.

pdanner@express-news.net
Wine snobs arent really that snobby; they just want to show off. Bourbon snobs are fierce, not caring what you drink as long as its not their Pappy Van Winkle. Beer snobs are the snobbiest of them all, all beardy and aggressive when you dont love the malty aromas of their favorite brew.

But coffee snobs are in a class by themselves. Literally, like a class, where theyre learning about extraction times and drying processes and altitudes. And theyre the best snobs, because they cant wait to watch your face light up when you taste what theyre talking about.

Its that enthusiasm thats fueled San Antonios coffee boom the past few years, a boom thats attracted dozens of drive-thru coffee boxes, national chains and standalone shops with a single La Marzocco espresso machine and a dream.

ENTER TO WIN: Tickets to Spurs vs. Trail Blazers on April 1

For this list of the Top 10 coffee shops in San Antonio, I visited close to 30 locally owned shops, all walk-in places with seating and WiFi and outlets for plugging in and amping up  a fair number of them didnt even exist the last time I ranked the citys coffee shops in 2019.

So sit back, crack open your computer and enjoy San Antonios coffee culture. These are the Top 10 Coffee Shops in the city, ranked.

On ExpressNews.com: Mike Sutters Top 10 best doughnut shops in the San Antonio area

Mike Sutter /Staff file photo

10. Laika Cheesecake & Espresso

Coffees about community, even when that community is halfway around the world. Laika made the national news this month when the shop donated a weekends worth of sales and donations to the Ukrainian army in the wake of the Russian invasion, an amount that exceeded $100,000, co-owner and Ukrainian native Anna Afanasieva announced on Facebook.

Even before that philanthropic gesture, San Antonians knew the Alamo Heights shop for its sidewalk cafe setting and a rainbow of cheesecakes in little screwtop jars with the face of the beloved cosmonaut dog Laika on the lid.

But Laikas underappreciated talent lies in the espresso part of its name and the array of drinks that come from it, from a rich shot of Lavazza espresso and a spicy cup of frothed Cuban coffee to a sweet Tres Leches Flat White and a mint-infused iced coffee poured straight from a cocktail shaker. 4718 Broadway, 210-462-6981, laikacheesecakes.com

Mike Sutter /Staff

9. Shotgun House Coffee Roasters

Tucked inside an old sewing machine factory on the West Side, Shotgun House is like stepping into an industrial past for a thoroughly modern coffee experience as chill as a college reading room, all of it propelled by a San Franciscan roasting machine outfitted like a compact steam train.

That roaster turns out coffee beans from places like Papua New Guinea, Brazil, El Salvador and Guatemala. In turn, those beans make nuanced espressos, cappuccinos and bottomless drip coffees, but also a dirty iced horchata latte spiked with espresso that leaves all subtlety at the door. 1333 Buena Vista St., 254-913-9031, shotgunhouseroasters.com

Mike Sutter /Staff

8. Folklores Coffee House

Emilie and Joel Tatu Herrera were on a mission to bring coffeehouse community culture to the South Side when they opened Folklores in 2018. When the pandemic hit, they expanded the idea of community, turning Folklores into an improvised food bank for area seniors. The economic stress forced them to close the original shop, but they opened another Folklores in Government Hill in 2020 and this year returned to the South Side with a new shop near the Mission Historic District.

Coffee made it all possible, with free-spirited drinks like the Siouxsie with Mexican chocolate and flame-toasted marshmallows and the Vato Rudo, a cold-brew coffee swirled with horchata and caramel, served in close quarters that encourage conversations with the people next to you. 1526 E. Grayson St., 210-455-0360, Facebook: @folklorescoffeehouse; 359 Bustillos Drive, no phone, Facebook: Folklores Coffee House-South

Mike Sutter /Staff

7. Tandem San Antonio

When you roll up to Tandem, you never know what youll find: maybe live music, yoga, stand-up comedy, a craft market or a food truck. Right off the Mission hike-and-bike trails, its a South Side hangout with tables for studying, couches for lounging and having a draft beer and a patio within earshot of the nearby San Antonio River.

What youll always find is coffee made with beans from the cult favorite Dark Matter Coffee out of Chicago, beans that transform an ordinary drip into a sensory trip. For the adventurous or the merely indecisive, Tandem pours a latte flight that flexes its skill with cinnamon, maple, gingerbread and even chile de arbol. 310 Riverside, 210-455-5400, Facebook: @tandemsatx

Mike Sutter /Staff

6. Olmos Perk

The first time I visited Olmos Perk, I was having a rough day, overcaffeinated, jittery and stressed. I felt a hand on my shoulder. Are you OK? It was Erin Eaton, who owns Olmos Perk with her husband Tres Eaton. Its the personal touch that sets Olmos Perk apart, the energy the Eatons bring to knowing their customers by name in a setting that feels like a vintage furniture shop where you can sit on everything.

In addition to a dozen sandwiches and an array of house-baked pastries, Olmos Perk pours good strong coffee made with Katz Coffee beans out of Houston. Creations include a comforting honey lavender latte, a layered jamocha frappe and one of the only Bulletproof Coffees available in San Antonio, a blend of coffee, ghee, Celtic salt, Saigon cinnamon and MCT oil thats like an IV of pure energy. Yes, Im going to be OK. 5223 McCullough Ave., 210-492-1104, Facebook: @OlmosPerk

On ExpressNews.com: The 10 best restaurants on the San Antonio River Walk

Mike Sutter /Staff

5. Estate Coffee Co.

Construction on East Houston Street has stolen some of the spartan valor from Estate, infringing on its spare, Prada Marfa-in-the-desert vibe. But the racket and dust outside cant change the science inside, producing roasts that are specific to the countries, regions, altitudes and farms from which they come.

Estate sells beans to shops all over the city, but here the focus is on you, and what you get is good drip coffee from the days featured grower, espresso served with a sidecar of sparkling water and an iced Kentucky Smoke latte spiked with bourbon-smoked salted caramel. 1320 E. Houston St., Suite A101, 210-667-4347, estatecoffeecompany.com

Mike Sutter /Staff

4. CommonWealth Coffeehouse & Bakery

Is CommonWealth a bakery, a bar, a cafe or a coffee shop? The answer is all of the above, and theyre all good. You can get a cream cheese Danish with fresh fruit, a cold pint of locally made HighWheel Betty on draft, a breakfast croissant sandwich with bacon and spinach or a strong French press coffee steeped with beans from Austins Cuvee Coffee.

At the flagship Davis Court location off Broadway, seating stretches from the front patio through the Parisian-style dining room to the shaded pergola out back, which shares space with an honest-to-god chicken coop. 118 Davis Ct., 210-560-2955, more locations at commonwealthcoffeehouse.com

Mike Sutter /Staff

3. The Brown Coffee Co.

The coffee menus just 10 lines long at this Southtown shop, but every line counts, because the beans are roasted right in the shop, a process you can watch through tall windows in the front. Theres subtle black filter coffee, showy foam-art cappuccino and an espresso more bitter than your ex. Theres also a dirty cold brew with milk, cane sugar and a single giant ice cube like a reverse old-fashioned that revs you up instead of mellowing you out.

The long, shotgun room lends itself to coffee shop officing, with electrical outlets and a view of the coffee bar at every seat in the house. 812 S. Alamo St., Suite 115, 210-274-0702, browncoffeeco.com

Mike Sutter /Staff

2. Eclipse

Coffee isnt always the most social transaction, just a few coded phrases between you and the barista. Forget all that at Eclipse, the daytime tenant of the wine bar Little Death on the St. Marys Strip. Here, owner Solomon Gerges will engage you from the minute you step inside.

The conversation might start with Gerges handing you a sample of the days drip coffee, then a followup on how you liked it. Not just how, but why.

What follows is an education, an experiment and an expression of pure joy. I tasted a Kenyan drip, chocolate from Dripping Springs, single-source hot chocolate, a cappuccino with a sidecar of espresso called a cap and one and a shaken coffee cocktail with lemon, ice and grape jelly syrup  all in one sitting.

I asked other customers if everybody gets this treatment. He does this all the time, came the reply. I cant wait for my next class. 2327 N. St. Marys St. inside Little Death, no phone, eclipsecoffeesa.com

Mike Sutter /Staff

1. Whats Brewing Coffee Roasters

Its not the roomful of pinball machines that catches my eye at Whats Brewing. Its the long row of more than 20 coffee beans leading up to the front counter, all of them roasted by a machine in the back thats fed by warehouse shelves of beans in burlap bags from all over the world.

The beans in the bins are available by the pound at some of the best prices in town. The difference at Whats Brewing is that each and every one of those beans can be ordered as a pourover, ground and brewed while you wait, so you can try a cup made with single-source Honduran or Tanzanian peaberry or Ethiopian natural process beans before committing to a bag.

As a full-on commercial roaster, Whats Brewing supplies beans for some of the best markets and coffee shops in town. But just as important, Whats Brewing has evolved into a classic coffee shop in its own right, a place to camp out on your laptop, indulge in sweet, frothy drinks like the Sami honey latte, buy an AeroPress for home brewing or play pinball like its 1980, the year Whats Brewing opened its doors. 138 W. Rhapsody Drive, 210-308-8882, sacoffeeroasters.com

msutter@express-news.net | Twitter: @fedmanwalking | Instagram: @fedmanwalking
A man stabbed himself to death Tuesday after killing a woman inside a far West Side apartment with a 7-month-old baby inside, according to Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar.

Salazar said the man called 911 at about 3 p.m. and told dispatchers he killed the woman and that there was a baby girl inside.

Nearby deputies arrived within 3 minutes at the Esperanza apartments in the 14000 block of Potranco Road. When they got to the apartment, the door was locked, but they heard the lock turn "as if someone inside wanted them to come in," Salazar said.

On ExpressNews.com: Video: Truck gets rolled in Texas tornado, drives away like nothing happened

According to Salazar, the deputies entered the residence and could see that the woman was already dead on the ground with several stab wounds and the baby was in a highchair watching cartoons on a laptop. The man was still on the phone holding a large, bloody military-type knife, the sheriff said.

Two deputies attempted to talk the man into dropping the knife and surrendering while a third deputy safely removed the baby from the apartment.

Salazar said the man stabbed himself at least twice in the upper body and neck. A fourth deputy tased the man to keep him from stabbing himself, but was unsuccessful, according to Salazar.

The deputies administered life-saving measures, but the man died shortly after.

"We ask a lot of our deputies and our first responders to make split-second decisions on whether to use deadly force or whether to use methods like a taser," Salazar said. "We ask this, and it is really easy to sit back and criticize or praise what they did with calm reflection after the incident where they had a split second to make."

Salazar said the woman's multiple stab wounds were "pretty grave" and among the worst he'd ever seen.

The sheriff said the specific relationship between the man and woman was unknown but believes the baby was their daughter.

On ExpressNews.com: 'Ain't nobody in here': Comedian David Arnold calls out San Antonio restaurant for making him wait

"I'm just really proud of the way all my folks acted today," the sheriff said. "The saving grace was that he let the deputies get that baby out safely."

The baby was taken by Child Protective Services and will be reunited with family once they are located.

Because the incident is considered as a custodial death, the deputies involved will be placed on leave for five days to decompress and deal with the magnitude of the situation, Salazar said.

The four deputies who first responded ranged from a deputy who had just graduated from the academy to deputies with more than five years on the streets.

taylor.pettaway@express-news.net
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

SAN ANTONIO  The wife of an Arizona man accused of raping and strangling a woman here 35 years ago testified that she told her son 20 years ago that her husband confided in her about a crime he committed.

I think it had to do with killing somebody, Gretchen Phelps said through tears as she testified Wednesday in the capital murder trial of her husband, Larry Leroy Moore, 69. He is accused of raping and strangling Dianna Dee Dee Lowery, 25, on Jan. 29, 1987, in a case that was reopened and produced an indictment in 2018.

Moore owned a duplex on Bailey Street on the Southeast Side of San Antonio and rented one side to Lowery and her boyfriend, Dale Andrew Martin. Martin testified Tuesday that when he got home from work, the door was unlocked, and he followed an odor of death to the bathroom, where he found Lowerys body.

Phelps, testifying for the state, told the jury that she and Moore married March 12  11 days ago  but have been together for 21 years and share a home in Arizona.

Jerry Lara /San Antonio Express-News

Prosecutor Talia Triesch questioned Phelps and allowed her to review an email exchange with her son, Scott, from 20 years ago regarding Moore.

I was angry with Scott over an abuse of information ... we were angry that I had wrongly entrusted him about information about Larrys past, she told the jury.

When pressed further by Triesch, Phelps cried, was briefly confused, and said the email was referring to Larry killed somebody.

She told the jury that at one time he had told her about it.

Jerry Lara /San Antonio Express-News

Defense attorneys Mark McKay and Daniel De La Garza objected several times outside the presence of the jury and during proceedings, and they questioned Phelps competency. She appeared confused and stated that her memory is a mish mash.

At one point, McKay asked visiting Senior District Judge Maria Teresa Herr for a mistrial, which she denied.

In cross-examination, McKay asked Phelps about the emails she had just reviewed, but Phelps said she did not remember reviewing them. McKay asked her if she knew the date or the location of the hotel she and her husband were staying at during the trial. She replied no to each question.

The trial is being heard in the 175th District Court. If convicted, Moore, 69, faces life in prison without the possibility of parole. The District Attorneys Office is not seeking the death penalty in this case.

ezavala@express-news.net | Twitter: @elizabeth2863
An expert witness in criminology on Tuesday told jurors that the two deputies who fatally shot Gilbert Flores outside a North Bexar County home in 2015 had no reason to do so.

Ron Martinelli, a forensic criminologist, testified via a recorded video for the plaintiffs  Flores family  in the civil trial over his death, which concluded its second day on Tuesday. Day 2 also included testimony from a forensic video analyst and one of the deputies being sued.

Martinelli, who owns Martinelli and Associates Justice & Forensic Consultants, gave a point-by-point analysis of video captured by a neighbor during the latter part of the 12-minute encounter between Flores and deputies Greg Vasquez and Robert Sanchez at Flores grandfathers home on Aug. 28, 2015.

Martinelli said the deputies decision to shoot Flores was inconsistent with their training.

I did not find forensic evidence that he posed an imminent threat of bodily injury or death to the deputies, Martinelli said.

Martinelli also provided a forensic analysis of Flores injuries. The first was from a bullet fired by Vasquez, which went straight through. Afterward, Flores began to buckle, and a second shot fired by Sanchez, who has since retired, went through him at an angle.

Grant Fredericks, a forensic video analyst who owns Forensic Video Solutions and has taught such analysis for the FBI, gave similar testimony. He said that Flores was not moving when he was shot.

On ExpressNews.com: We didnt know what he would do next: Deputy testifies on first day of trial in controversial 2015 killing

Courtesy photo

Besides its expert witnesses, the plaintiffs attorneys called Vasquez to the stand, who defended his actions.

Vasquez was the first deputy to arrive on the scene. He got a shield from his vehicle, which he left running, and ran inside the home, he said.

He recalled seeing people huddled around a woman in the house. Flores then appeared from an archway with an Ozark Trail knife in his hand and was walking toward Vasquez.

Vasquez said he tried to deescalate the situation, directing Flores to drop the knife and saying he would be fine. Flores responded  in Spanish and English  that he had done his 10 years and was not going back, Vasquez testified.

Vasquez said he initially considered using his pistol inside the house but was afraid he would miss and hit other family members.

Vasquez led Flores outside the house, but Flores went back inside. Vasquez said that as soon as he called for a negotiator, Flores came back outside and at one point stabbed at his shield at least 12 times.

After Sanchez arrived, Flores brandished a lawn chair and Vasquez fired his stun gun, but the prongs did not connect.

Vasquez also said that Flores had attempted to open the passenger side of the still-running patrol car once and that he feared Flores would try again.

The plaintiffs attorney walked Vasquez through a series of hypothetical outcomes. What if he had waited for backup after the negotiator was called? Vasquez said he could not be sure one would arrive soon because there often is not a qualified patrol officer on standby.

Or what if Sanchez had used his own taser, which he still had on hand? Vasquez remained adamant that Flores was a danger to them both.

Asked whether he had radioed his supervisor that Flores had his hands up in surrender, Vasquez said that he did not consider Flores stance  with a knife still in his hand  to be one of surrender.

Maybe if he had dropped the knife, we wouldnt be in this situation, Vasquez said.

Vasquez also said he was concerned that Flores would attempt to take an assault-style rifle from the deputys vehicle.

Thank goodness he didnt, Vasquez said.

On ExpressNews.com: Im going to die today: Trial begins in controversial 2015 killing by Bexar deputies; man was holding his hands up

After Vasquez was excused from the witness stand, the plaintiffs called members of Flores family, including his father and two daughters, Vanessa and Maricela Flores. The daughters talked about how their lives had been drastically changed by their fathers death and that their grandmother lost her will to live and confined herself to her bedroom.

She sees her granddaughters, and she cries because of their resemblance to their father, Maricela Flores said.

Maricela Flores had a job and was attending college to become a registered nurse when her father was killed. She had to quit her job because she couldnt handle working around others. On one occasion, a fellow student played audio of her fathers killing not knowing that his daughter was sitting next to her.

Flores family said he was an avid New Orleans Saints fan who loved to grill meat as he cooked alongside his family. He had his own special popcorn recipe infused with lime and Mexican spices that Maricela Flores said she still makes.

Flores father, Rogelio Flores, said he and his family have since moved from the home because memories of the incident became too difficult to bear.

The plaintiffs are seeking to recover the cost of Gilbert Flores funeral, which totaled at least $12,000, among other damages.

Closing arguments are expected to be heard as the trial resumes before Senior U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday.

jbeltran@express-news.net
Milan_Jovic/Getty Images

The Hays County Sheriff's Office is warning residents that scammers are posing as employees of the law enforcement agency.

In a Facebook post on Monday, the sheriff's office said it has received several reports of phone scams in the last week asking people for money while using employees' names. The phone calls even have a voicemail that says, Hays County Sheriffs Department Warrant and Citation Division.
A new plan is underway to save some of the native trees at Brackenridge Park that would have been removed in a proposal to restore a northern section of the site.

City officials asked the Historic and Design Review Commission last month for permission to cut down the trees for a 2017 bond project. But City Manager Erik Walsh delayed the request after residents protested.

As a result, the tree removals are on hold through November after the migratory bird nesting season concludes.

The city got feedback from about 75 residents Tuesday night, and officials will return for at least two more community meetings before a plan is finalized. The next meeting is set for 6 p.m. April 26 at the Witte Museum. A third meeting, at the same time and location, will be May 24, and officials said a fourth one likely will be held.

On ExpressNews.com: City delays park project to rethink concerns about tree removals

Based on what we hear tonight  at the next meeting, we should see a revised plan, City Councilman Jalen McKee-Rodriguez told Tuesdays audience.

Councilman Mario Bravo hopes the city will develop a better compromise for restoring the parks historic assets with fewer tree removals, which were not part of the public discussion five years ago when voters approved the bond money.

He believes some trees could be relocated or preserved in place.

I think there are some alternatives we can consider, Bravo said.

This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 2 1 of 2 William Luther / Show More Show Less 2 of 2 William Luther /Staff Show More Show Less



The project will restore historic man-made structures in a park where human artifacts dating more than 10,000 years have been found near the headwaters of the San Antonio River. To repair and preserve the stone walls and structures on the river banks, the city proposed removing some trees, including several heritage trees  three live oaks, two pecans, a bald cypress and a crepe myrtle in the Lambert Beach area, a once-popular swimming location in the northern section of the park.

The proposal also includes removing 23 dead or invasive species of trees and planting at least 200 at the site and another 200-400 elsewhere in the park. Some trees are leaning, have exposed roots and could hurt someone if they fall.

McKee-Rodriguez and Bravo, who each represent part of the 343-acre park, tried to allay concerns of residents who have fought the tree removals. The $7.75 million project includes restoring the 1920s river walls on Lambert Beach in its first phase, rehabilitating the historic Acequia Madre and 1776 Upper Labor Diversion Dam and stabilizing an 1870s pump house and waterworks channel.

Rose Hill, president of the Government Hill Alliance, said she knows some trees will have to be removed. But the city needs to listen to the people and reach a compromise, she said.

There can be a solution. We need to sit down at the table, back to the drawing board and find a solution so that we can all come out as winners, Hill said.

On ExpressNews.com: Residents push back against Brackenridge Park tree removals

Along with Hill, 11-year-old Moses Hollander has regularly attended meetings on the issue  with his mother. Hes concerned tree removals will destroy habitats for egrets and other birds.

I dont think it makes a lot of sense to remove the birds, Hollander said. If you have a problem, you dont push it away; you try and fix it. You dont just get rid of it because, while it might seem easier, its not ethically right, and it just doesnt work out.

The citys project team plans to seek HDRC approval this summer for the final design of Lambert Beach and conceptual design of the pumphouse and dam after receiving input from the park committee.

shuddleston@express-news.net
Bexar County Sheriffs Office /

A San Antonio man admitted he shot at a San Antonio police officer on Oct. 5, 2020, and drew a 40-year prison sentence for it Monday.

Adrian Cardenas, 23, pleaded guilty to attempted capital murder of a police officer, aggravated assault and robbery, the Bexar County District Attorneys Office said. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison on the latter two charges, to run concurrently.
Bee County Sheriff Deputy Sgt. Rick Villarreal was following the footsteps that led away from a stolen vehicle abandoned at a cemetery in rural South Texas when he spotted a rattlesnake.

Villarreal could hear the snakes rattle and noticed it lifted into a striking stance. Villarreal then unholstered his handgun, aimed and pulled the trigger.

ENTER TO WIN: Tickets to Spurs vs. Trail Blazers on April 1

One shot and the snake was down, the sheriffs office said in a Facebook post on Monday.

Included in the post was a photo of the bloody snake with Villarreal posing nearby and a message urging residents to be mindful of venomous slithering serpents.

Be careful where you step, the sheriffs office said. Please, if you are going to be outside, especially with Easter around the corner, please check the area and be cautious of your surroundings.

Snakes begin to make an appearance in South Texas during the spring, and hot and wet weather draw snakes out at the times youre most likely to encounter them.

Bee County Sheriff's Office

Snakes like tall grass and its important to be careful when stepping over fallen logs and rock outcroppings. Its also important to be careful along creek banks and underbrush.

The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department strongly urges people not to kill snakes  even a venomous one.

Snakes serve a valuable function in the environment, according to a Texas Parks and Wildlife Department online snake course.

Snakes do not prey on humans and will typically retreat or escape, if given the opportunity, the department said. The danger comes when they are either surprised or cornered.

On ExpressNews.com: Dozens of swastikas are hiding in plain sight at Landa Library in Monte Vista. Here's why.

The majority of snake bites result from people taking unnecessary or foolish risks with venomous snakes, park officials said.

Instead of attacking the snake, allow it to retreat. If you have to move, move back slowly and carefully away from the snake.

Heres how to prevent snake encounters

Keep the lawn around your home trimmed low.

Remove any brush, wood, rock or debris piles from around the residence. They make great hiding places for snakes and their prey  rodents.

Always wear shoes while outside and never put your hands where you cannot see them.

Be careful when stepping over fallen logs and rock outcroppings.

Be cautious along creek banks and underbrush.

What you should not do if bitten by a rattlesnake

Do not make incisions over the bite wound.

Do not restrict blood flow by applying a tourniquet.

Do not ice the wound.

Do not suck the poison out with your mouth.

What you should do if bitten

Stay calm

Call 911

Wash the bite area gently with soap and water if available

Remove watches, rings, etc., which may constrict swelling

Immobilize the affected area

Keep the bite below the heart if possible

Transport safely to the nearest medical facility immediately.

timothy.fanning@express-news.net
Andrew Brookes/Getty Images/Cultura RF

A San Antonio man was arrested Tuesday in connection with the abduction of a Utah teenager who was found on the Southeast Side, court records show.

Frank David Lopez, 20, was charged with aggravated kidnapping and is being held on $100,000 bail.
Courtesy of the Seguin Police Department

A Seguin man accused of a deadly shooting in 2018 was captured in Mexico this week, police said.

Mexican law enforcement on Sunday presented 54-year-old Juan Osorio to U.S. Customs and Border Protection at the International Bridge in Eagle Pass. He was detained for an active murder warrant and was booked into the Maverick County Jail.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

San Antonio police found the lifeless body of Dianna Lowery in the bathroom of her Bailey Street home on Jan. 29, 1987. She had been sexually assaulted and strangled.

On Tuesday, some 35 years later, the capital murder trial of her former landlord and neighbor, Larry Leroy Moore, 69, began.

Cold case investigators concluded years after the killing that he was the prime suspect.

On ExpressNews.com: Man indicted on capital murder charge in 1987 San Antonio killing

Prosecutor Talia Triesch told the jury in her opening statement that what happened to Dee Dee, as Lowery was known, was a horrific tale of a brutal rape, beating and strangulation.

Her boyfriend, Dale Andrew Martin, found her dead in the bathtub when he got home from work that evening. A police report said Lowery, 25, was wearing her bathrobe and socks and had abrasions on her face.

They shared a duplex owned by that man, Triesch said as she pointed to the defendant, who uses a wheelchair because of an illness, as he sat with his defense attorneys.

Triesch told the panel when Martin left that morning, Lowery was still asleep, because she worked 3 p.m. to midnight.

She never made it in to work, Triesch said. Andy got home like normal but thats where normal ended and this nightmare began.

She said Martin, who was 30 at the time, found the door unlocked and went through the apartment, calling out for Lowery. He saw a bloody comforter on an unmade bed, and followed an odor he would later tell the jury smelled like death that led him to the restroom.

Technology that did not exist 35 years ago, including DNA evidence, now could prove that Moore was the killer, Triesch said.

This case is about mistakes, countered defense attorney Mark McKay in his opening statement. He blamed a flawed police investigation that failed to examine at least 10 other witnesses through the years, and botched evidence protocols  along with the age of the case  as reason enough to find his client not guilty.

According to reports, Moore and his then-wife, Betsy, lived in a duplex next to Lowerys. In the course of an investigation, officials found that he was the owner of both units and kept a set of spare keys allowing him access to Lowerys side of the duplex.

Martin testified that Moore would sometimes hang out with them and watch TV.

Police questioned Moore after the slaying, but nothing developed until July 2005, when cold case investigators discovered DNA evidence that linked him to the scene.

A Bexar County grand jury indicted Moore in September 2005, and reports indicate Lowerys mother urged a swift resolution in her daughters killing because she was dying from a terminal illness, officials said at the time.

The Docket: Local crime and courtroom news, delivered to your inbox weekly

But in 2007, a prosecutor asked a judge to dismiss Moores case for further investigation, according to online court records.

The case went cold again until January 2018 when Lowerys niece called then-District Attorney Nicholas Nico LaHood, who reviewed the case and determined there was enough evidence to prosecute Moore.

In 2018, 30 years after Lowerys death, Moore was indicted by a Bexar County grand jury on a capital murder charge, according to online court records.

The DAs Office is not seeking the death penalty. The case is being heard in the 175th District Court, visiting Senior District Judge Maria Teresa Herr presiding. If convicted, Moore, now 69, faces life in prison without the possibility of parole.

ezavala@express-news.net | Twitter: @elizabeth2863
From more than three dozen makeup items, GlamourDDive was able to save six.

In a recent video, the San Antonio-based YouTuber sits on her porch, wearing black gloves and digging through cardboard boxes with liquid foundation dumped over them, which she calls soup boxes.

Its really disappointing seeing all of these products destroyed, she said. It makes me mad.

GlamourDDive found the boxes, mostly filled with trash and ruined products, in dumpsters outside makeup stores around town. She sorts through each one, searching for makeup she can salvage. Its not a lot. Every eyeshadow pallet was scraped out. Bottles of perfume were dumped in or on their boxes. Hair curler cords were severed.

Its why GlamourDDive never returns the makeup she buys. She knows it would be thrown out. Instead, she gives it to a friend or donates it.

On ExpressNews.com: For recyclers, these are the good times  and they could be even better

About Teen Team Ally Carter wrote this article for the Express-News' Teen Team program, which connects high school students with reporters, photographers and other Express-News journalists for one-on-one training. To learn more, visit wearesaen.com/teen-team. See More Collapse

GlamourDDive, who doesnt share her name online, is one of many YouTubers speaking out against makeup waste across the United States. Videos by employees of makeup giants such as Ulta and Sephora circulate with taglines of Makeup Destruction, while former employees share stories about makeup destroyed every week.

Its been estimated that the makeup industry wastes 120 billion units of plastic packaging each year, according to Forbes. Most products are discarded due to concerns about contamination, cleanliness and expiration dates. Critics of these practices say that instead of going to a landfill, such products can go to people in need or be recycled.

Landfill space not infinite

Makeup that customers return is often thrown out. Employees at stores in Bexar County told the Express-News that its done to protect customers from products that are expired or recalled and no longer safe to use.

The makeup giant Ulta did not return requests for comment.

Products such as eyeliner, mascara and lipstick generally last two to three years, and when they expire, the signs are fairly obvious: Liquids such as foundation or primers separate into parts, and powders crumble or become less effective.

Broken seals also pose problems for stores when consumers try makeup at home and return it.

Eventually, all that waste ends up in landfills.

In San Antonio, finding a more sustainable way to deal with waste, such as makeup, is essential for the future, experts say.

Everyone should be conscious of lowering their own trash and garbage materials and send less to the landfill, said Marcus Lee, marketing manager for San Antonios Solid Waste Management Department. Landfills are a huge commitment of acreage and resources.

On ExpressNews.com: What you need to know about recycling responsibly during the holidays

According to the department, the average San Antonio household produces 8 pounds of waste per day  2,920 pounds a year. Each landfill takes up about 600 acres, with three public ones available for the citys use and many more private ones for companies and corporations.

If we keep doing what were doing, were going to run out of landfill space, said Meredith Miller, director at William R. Sinkin Eco Centro, a community outreach center for environmental sustainability operated by San Antonio College.

Buying power

Some advocates call for customers to choose more environmentally responsible makeup brands.

Shilpi Chhotray  co-founder and executive director of People Over Plastic and founder of skin care product company Samudra Skin & Sea  said the beauty industry has a substantial impact on the amount of waste generated. Many of its products come in plastic or other recyclable materials, yet companies rarely sort through what they throw out to see what can be recycled, she said.

She advises shoppers to use your wallet power to support companies and brands making a tangible impact and walking the talk.

Also, she recommends dual-use products, such as a shampoo bar for hair and body.

In recent years, some makeup and self-care brands have tried to become more environmentally conscious. Dirty Hippie Cosmetics in Canberra, Australia, uses zero-plastic, recycled packaging for its products, which are made from formulas used by Indigenous peoples for hundreds of years.

Websites such as Cruelty-Free Kitty list products deemed sustainable.

Meanwhile, because makeup stores commonly discard items with broken seals, sustainability advocates urge consumers to give unused products to a friend, or to donate them to a charity, rather than returning them to a store, where theyre likely to be thrown away.

If companies are only looking at profit margins, theyre never going to be able to prioritize people and the planet, Chhotray said.

Spirit of the dumpster dive

In San Antonio, one of the most popular drop-off points for makeup is the Battered Women and Childrens Shelter. While the shelter cannot take used makeup, anything new is welcome, along with donations of new or gently used clothes, said Blanca Uribe, the director of external affairs at the shelter.

Donations of makeup and other items make a person feel good and maybe help them go out for that interview. To think that people have to dumpster dive in order to get a meal or look for something, we dont want that.

GlamourDDive makes her videos to show people what is being thrown away. Her work has led to donations, awareness and in one case, the rescue of a live animal  a betta fish  from of a dumpster.

Its a shame they did this, she said.


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.
This year, San Antonios mayor and City Council approved a city holiday to honor Cesar Chavez.

The paid city holiday, held on what would have been his 95th birthday, recognizes Chavez, a civil rights icon, U.S. Navy veteran and humanitarian who stood for nonviolent advocacy and inclusion. In 2014, Cesar Chavez Day was proclaimed by President Barack Obama as a U.S. federal commemorative holiday. San Antonio is the first Texas city to observe such a holiday in his honor.

Chavez visited San Antonio and mentored San Antonio labor union leaders and activists, including Rebecca Flores and Jamie P. Martinez. After his death in 1993, Martinez led the effort for the street name change of Durango to Cesar Chavez Boulevard.

Martinez also worked to establish the Cesar E. Chavez Legacy and Educational Foundation, or CECLEF, with the full support of the Chavez family and their foundation. CECLEF is a volunteer-led 501(c)(3) organization of artists, teachers, activists and business professionals that supports a scholarship program, the Cesar E. Chavez March for Justice and the Jaime P. Martinez Thanksgiving in the Barrio. San Antonio is home to the oldest and largest Cesar Chavez march in the country.

On ExpressNews.com: Cesar E. Chavez March for Justice returns March 26 after 2-year in-person COVID hiatus

Chavezs humble roots and history reflect the story of many families who traveled and worked where the harvest took them. This years 26th Chavez March for Justice will take place Saturday. Grand marshal is the first lady of San Antonio, Erika Prosper Nirenberg, who reflected on her own story during a recent news conference.

I remember getting up at 4 a.m. and my job was to lug equipment and act as a runner to get it to my family who worked in the fields, Prosper Nirenberg said. When we talk about Cesar Chavez, its more than the reflection of the humanity of the farmworker. Its also the idea that La Causa continues to evolve so we can leave a wake for those behind us.

In keeping with tradition, Paul Chavez, son of Cesar Chavez, will join the march.

This years March for Justice theme is La Causa Sigue, which translates as the cause continues. CECLEF Chairman Ernest J. Martinez reflected on the relevancy of the theme.

The issues are eerily similar to what erupted during the 1960s and 1970s, Martinez said. Educational reform, climate change, food insecurity and voting rights are the issues of the day. Our purpose is to work to unify and lend those voices to the march.

On ExpressNews.com: San Antonio could make Cesar Chavez Day paid holiday for municipal employees

As part of the march, the community is encouraged to bring canned goods as part of the Yes, We CAN food drive campaign in partnership with the San Antonio Food Bank. Dropoff bins will be available at the beginning of the march route. In addition, several nonprofit organizations will have informational tables to share resources at the end of the march.

As we celebrate Cesar Chavez Day on March 31, we acknowledge not only Chavez and his legacy but our own stories. We honor those in our families who were farmworkers. We recognize the farmworker as an essential worker. We also acknowledge the continued work of others  including living legend Dolores Huerta, who co-founded the United Farm Workers and coined the phrase Si se puede  who are still making a difference. Its up to us to educate and share the living history or else it will be forgotten. May it also be a day that we work to answer the question for ourselves, What is my legacy?

Irene Chavez Galvan serves on the Cesar E. Chavez Legacy and Educational Foundation. For more information about this years march and activities, visit www.ceclef.org
Vladimir Putins invasion of Ukraine has sent the prices of many commodities skyrocketing. And it is not just oil and gas. From a humanitarian point of view, the soaring price of food, especially wheat, may be an even bigger problem. Before the war, Russia and Ukraine produced almost a quarter of the worlds wheat, much of it exported. Both the direct effects of the war and the sanctions imposed on Russia are disrupting that supply. Nobody knows how long this disruption may last or how much suffering high food prices will cause around the world, especially in poor countries.

But how and when did the world become dependent on wheat from parts of the former Soviet Union? (The U.S. Department of Agriculture refers to the major wheat exporters as KRU, for Kazakhstan, Russia and Ukraine.) That is a more interesting story than you might think, for KRU became the worlds breadbasket not once, but twice.

Communism did many things badly, but one of the things it did worst was produce food. Josef Stalins collectivization of agriculture led to the Ukraine famine of 1932-33  the Holodomor  which killed millions. In its final years, the Soviet Union wasnt starving, but it was dependent on large-scale imports of grain.

After the Soviet collapse, however, this turned around. Starting around 20 years ago, KRU, taking advantage of the fertility of its famous black soil and the rise of globalization in general, began to export ever-larger quantities of grain.

But while this was something new, it was also something old. As students of economic history know, globalization actually began in the 19th century, made possible by the revolutionary technologies of railroads and steamships. If we think of globalization as something more recent, that is only because world trade went into retreat in the face of world wars and the Great Depression, recovering to pre-World War I levels only around 1980. And KRU initially became a huge wheat producer during that first era of globalization.

What was the epicenter of this great agricultural complex? The city of Odesa, which in an economic sense became more or less the Chicago of the East, the place where railways gathered the abundance of a vast agricultural heartland and shipped it to the world. The city wasnt even founded until 1794  by Catherine the Great  but it mushroomed along with the regions foreign trade, becoming the fourth-largest city in the Russian Empire, after St. Petersburg, Moscow and Warsaw (there is a reason the Poles are especially concerned about Putins aggression).

And the Odesa of 1913 seemed well on its way to becoming one of the worlds great cities, and not just economically. As a gateway to the world, it attracted an unusually diverse population. As part of the Pale of Settlement  the part of the Russian empire in which Jews were allowed to reside  it was especially attractive to thousands of young people seeking escape from the confines of the shtetl; Jews made up roughly one-third of its population. (My own maternal grandparents came from somewhere near Odesa.)

This mixing of people seeking freedom as well as opportunity led to a cultural efflorescence. Odesa was famed for its cafes, its literature, its music. Then history intervened.

I dont think it is silly or anachronistic to say that the things that made Odesa special, that should have made it one of the worlds great metropolises, were precisely the things that ethnonationalists, then and now, hate: ethnic and religious diversity, intellectual curiosity, openness to the world. On the eve of the Russian invasion, it looked as if Ukraine was finally managing to recover some of those things  which is, in turn, surely part of the reason Putin decided it had to be conquered.

And maybe remembering what Odesa might have become will help remind us how important it is that this attempt at conquest fail.
WASHINGTON  As the historic confirmation hearing for President Joe Bidens nominee to the Supreme Court, Ketanji Brown Jackson, got underway on Monday, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz vowed it wouldnt become a political circus.

By Wednesday, the Texas Republican was telling Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin to bang his gavel as loud as you want as the Illinois Democrat tried to move the hearing along after Cruzs time had run out.

Why do you not want the American people to know what happened? Cruz shouted over Durbin as the Texas senator sought to quiz Jackson on a child pornography case she oversaw as a judge. Why are you not allowing her to answer the question?

That exchange came after a series of questions that included Cruz pressing Jackson to define woman, and asking if he could decide Im an Asian man in order to sue for discrimination.

SCOTUS HEARING: After being mocked by Ted Cruz during SCOTUS hearing, 'Antiracist Baby' book hits bestseller list

Cruz repeatedly cut off Jackson as she tried to answer, objecting that she wasnt addressing his question.

Theres no point in responding, Durbin advised Jackson. Hes going to interrupt you.

It was one of the most heated moments in a days-long confirmation hearing that started off slowly but was roiling on Wednesday.

Though Republicans likely lack the votes to prevent Jackson from being confirmed as the first Black woman to serve as a justice on the high court, Cruz and fellow Texas Sen. John Cornyn have played significant roles in Republican efforts to portray her as an extremist.

On Wednesday, both Texans were pumping up the volume, with Cornyn saying he didnt find one of her answers credible.

In plain English, Cornyn asked, when you accuse someone of a crime are you accusing them of being a criminal?

RELATED: Cornyn rips 2015 same-sex marriage ruling in SCOTUS hearing

It depends on the context, Jackson responded. It depends on what else you say about them. It depends on the circumstances.

It depends on circumstances? Cornyn said.

When Jackson stood by her answer, Cornyn responded: I just dont think thats credible, judge.

Political scholars say the confrontational air at the hearings is both an example of the increased polarization around the Supreme Court, and of GOP efforts to score points ahead of the Nov. 1 midterm elections.

Sowing seeds for midterms

While nominees were once confirmed on broad bipartisan votes, no Democrats supported Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the last of former President Donald Trumps picks for the high court. Trumps other picks didnt fare much better: Just one Democrat voted for Justice Brett Kavanaugh and only three supported Justice Neil Gorsuch.

Republicans, meanwhile, refused to even hold a hearing on former President Barrack Obamas last pick, Merrick Garland, who now serves as Bidens attorney general. They controlled the Senate then, but this time, observers say, theyre looking to rack up political points with an eye toward the midterms, when they hope to retake control of both the Senate and the House.

The more they frame her as an extreme leftist, the more they can use that as an argument for a Republican vote up and down the ballot in 2022, said Mark P. Jones, a political scientist at Rice University. The idea is, If we dont put a check on Joe Biden, hes going to continue to nominate these types of far-left, activist judges, and we need to put a stop to that.

Cornyn spent much of his two turns questioning Jackson deep in the legal weeds, quizzing her on precedent surrounding same-sex marriage, abortion and gun rights as he sought to get a handle of her judicial philosophy.

But he also waved at Jacksons refusal to define a woman  from an earlier exchange with another senator that went viral  as he pressed her on whether accusing someone of a crime amounts to calling them a criminal, a callback to his questioning on Tuesday about whether she had called Bush a war criminal.

Jackson wrote on behalf of Guantanamo Bay detainees she represented that they were being tortured in violation of federal and international law. The inhumane treatment constituted war crimes, she wrote. Bush and Rumsfeld were named as respondents in the filings.

When Jackson told him it depends on the circumstances, Cornyn replied: So you put this in the same category as defining what a biological woman is  youre really not sure.

Texas Take: Get political headlines from across the state sent directly to your inbox

Cruz also keyed in on the issue, saying, I think youre the only Supreme Court nominee in history who has been unable to answer the question, what is a woman.

Its unclear whether others have been asked to do so. On Tuesday, U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican, asked Jackson to define a woman and Jackson said she could not, because she is not a biologist. The exchange went viral online and both Cruz and Cornyn tweeted about it before questioning Jackson on Wednesday.

I know that Im a woman, Jackson told Cruz. I know that Sen. Blackburn is a woman, and the woman I admire most in the world is in the room today, my mother.

To the extent that you are asking me about who has the ability to bring lawsuits based on gender, those kinds of issues are working their way through the courts and Im not able to comment on them, she said.

Cruz eventually turned to the child pornography cases, arguing there was a clear pattern of Jackson handing down sentences in those cases that were more lenient than those requested by prosecutors.

Jackson, who had responded to similar questions from several other Republicans, said she believed she was imposing the sentence that was required by law.

Ive taken every case seriously, she said. These are very horrible crimes.

Cruz insisted she wasnt answering his question and continued to dig for specifics.

Youve picked out, I dont know, seven, eight cases  Ive sentenced more than 100 people, she said. In every case, senator, I look at the evidence, I look at the recommendations of not just the government, because my duty as a judge is to consider all of the arguments made in the case.

Durbin eventually managed to move the hearing along.

There comes a point, senator, when you get a little bit, Durbin said, trailing off before finishing his sentence. At some point you have to follow the rules.

ben.wermund@chron.com
WASHINGTON  U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz on Tuesday grilled Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson  who would be the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court  about her views on critical race theory, reading passages and showing pages from books including Antiracist Baby that are taught at a D.C. private school where she is a board member.

Cruz used much of his time questioning Jackson on the second day of her confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee focusing on the curriculum at the school, the Georgetown Day School, which he said is filled and overflowing with critical race theory.

They include a book called Antiracist Baby, Cruz said, flipping through a copy of the picture book as his staff displayed chart-sized copies behind him. There are portions of this book that I find really quite remarkable. One portion of the book says babies are taught to be racist or antiracist, there is no neutrality.

Cruz said the book is taught to students in pre-K through second grade at Georgetown Day School.

Do you agree with this book that is being taught to kids, that babies are racist? Cruz asked.

Related: Cornyn rips 2015 same-sex marriage ruling in SCOTUS hearing

Senator, Jackson said, pausing for eight seconds before continuing: I do not believe that any child should be made to feel as though they are racist or though they are not valued or though they are less than, that they are victims, that they are oppressors. I dont believe in any of that.

Jackson said the Georgetown Day School was founded in 1945, during a time of legal segregation, by a group of white Jewish parents and Black parents, who wanted their children to be able to attend school together. The ideals of equality and justice are at the core of the schools mission, she said.

She also said the board of trustees has no say in the curriculum of the school and noted that it is a private school and every parent who chooses to send their child there does so willingly.

Pressed more broadly about her views of critical race theory, Jackson said her understanding is that critical race theory is an academic theory that is about the ways in which race interacts with various institutions.

Texas Take: Get political headlines from across the state sent directly to your inbox

I have not reviewed any of those books, any of those ideas, Jackson said. They dont come up in my work as a judge, which I am respectfully here to address.

Cruzs questioning came as Republicans began to carve out critical race theory as a key attack line against Jackson, whose nomination the party lacks the votes to block in the evenly split Senate. The GOPs official Twitter account on Tuesday posted an image of Jackson with her initials KBJ crossed out and replaced by the letters CRT.

The tweet drew criticism, including from U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Houston Democrat who called it a racial attack.

Shameful! Jackson Lee tweeted. Whoever or whatever provoked this racial attack should be exposed for their divisive wrong-headed attack!

ben.wermund@chron.com
(The Center Square)  Two Republicans are heading to a May 24 runoff election for Texas Railroad Commissioner, incumbent chairman Wayne Christian and industry attorney Sarah Stogner.

Stogner made waves as the first candidate to ever ride a jack pump like a bull wearing only her underwear and boots.

The Texas Railroad Commission, Texas oldest regulatory agency founded in 1891, was initially created to oversee the railroad industry. Now it oversees the most important industry in the largest oil-producing state in the U.S.: the $7 trillion Texas energy industry.

It has both state and federal regulatory and enforcement responsibilities. It regulates the industries of oil and natural gas, pipelines, coal and uranium surface mining operations.

Its three commissioners serve six-year staggered terms. Each seat is on the ballot every two years. This election, Christian ran for re-election against four challengers. He received 47.19% of the vote.

In a five-way race, Stogner received 15.12% of the vote. However, before the election, one of the candidates died, Marvin Sarge Summers, whose name was still on the ballot. He received 11.88% of the vote.

Christian was first elected in 2016 after serving as a state representative from 1997 to 2013.

In 1996, he made history by becoming the first Republican elected to the Texas House of Representatives from deep East Texas since Reconstruction. While in the Legislature, he was president of the Texas Conservative Coalition and served as vice-chair of Regulated Industries and as a multi-term member of the Energy Resource Committee.

While in office, he oversaw the Railroad Commission and built a record of standing for free markets and against burdensome regulations. He says he will continue to fight to ensure the public is protected from bad actors and that all decisions are consistent and predictable to give a sense of certainty to the thousands of business owners and operators who regularly deal with the Railroad Commission.

During his first term on the commission, Christian says he developed a record of fighting against frivolous regulations and standing strong for free markets and American Energy Dominance. As the official representative for Texas on the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission, hes been at the forefront of fighting against Biden Administration efforts like the Green New Deal, CLEAN Future Act, and the Paris Climate Agreement, according to his campaign website.

While he hasnt worked in the oil and gas industry, hes received numerous endorsements from the industry, including the Texas Oil & Gas Association, Texas Alliance of Energy Producers, Oil and Gas Workers Association, among others. He owns an investment company and is a registered representative of SunAmerica Securities Inc.

More from this section They're Paneling Paradise to Put Up Solar -- a Lot

He argues, big government increases costs for consumers and kills high paying jobs, while harming our economy and national security, and that all regulations should be consistent, predictable, and based on sound science.

Stogner, who describes herself as the Lady Godiva of the Oil Patch, made headlines and lost endorsements after she published a video ad of her riding an oil pump jack wearing only her underwear and boots.

In response to the backlash she received, she asked if nudity was worse than corruption, the Houston Chronicle reported.

Texans have tolerated crony capitalism far too long, Stogner argues on her campaign website. She says she has the unique ability to facilitate practical resolutions when others have failed. As an industry attorney over the past 15 years, shes represented operators, service companies, and landowners in complex legal disputes.

Her priorities include job creation to provide clean and affordable energy, preventing federal intervention in Texas energy regulation, and establishing global ESG metrics and standards.

Shes self-funding her campaign, she says, proving she is not being bought and paid for by any special interest.

After making it to the runoff election, she told News West 9: "Look, no one wants to talk about ground water, flaring and earthquakes. I have been trying to get everyone's attention to actually listen to the issues."

Referring to her nearly nude video, she said, "I posted it on TikTok, then I immediately posted it to Twitter and Instagram, the main purpose was to get everyone's attention.

I have no secrets, so let's talk about the naked truth. It's a metaphor of where we are now. We have politicians, like I said, who just lie."

She says the majority of the feedback shes received has been overwhelmingly positive.

Whoever wins on May 24 will face a Democrat, Green Party and Libertarian candidate in November. ce in the energy industry or have ever been elected to public office.
A district court judge ruled that a law that intended to ask Montana voters to decide how they want to vote for Supreme Court justices was unconstitutional.

The law, House Bill 325, was passed by the Montana Legislature last year. It intended to use a legislative referendum to charge voters with deciding if Supreme Court justices should continue being elected statewide or be confined to district-based voting.

A group of plaintiffs sued Montana Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen to prevent that from happening. District Court Judge Peter Ohmans decision sided with them, ruling the law unconstitutional and stopping Jacobsen from placing the question on the November ballot.

In this case, under HB 325 all citizens of the state would lose the right to vote for every justice of the Montana Supreme Court, Ohman wrote in the order.

Bozeman attorney Jim Goetz, who represented the plaintiffs, said he and his co-counsel, Billings-based attorney Cliff Edwards, are happy with Ohmans opinion. But Goetz said he is sure that the state will appeal the case.

Whether Jacobsen will appeal is unclear. Richie Melby, a spokesperson for the Montana Secretary of State, said Tuesday that Jacobsens office had received Ohmans order but had yet to review it.

The plaintiffs include Mary Jo Macdonald, former District Court Clerk Lori Maloney, former Democratic representatives Fritz Daily and Dorothy Bradley, former Montana Secretary of State Bob Brown, former Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribal Chairman Vernon Finley, Montana 1972 Constitutional Convention delegate Mae Nan Ellingson and the Montana League of Women Voters.

The main thrust of the plaintiffs argument was that statewide voting for Montana Supreme Court Justices was outlined in the Montana Constitution, and changing that provision would be unconstitutional.

Ohman said that the bill, HB 325, was procedurally flawed in its attempt to amend the constitution.

A previous attempt to change how Supreme Court Justices were elected was made, and subsequently shot down, in a 2012 case. The ruling in that case, Reichert v. State, determined that an attempt to change voting for Supreme Court justices was paramount to a constitutional amendment.

A section of the Montana Constitution explicitly outlines the process to amend the document with a ballot question. Ohman said that the Legislatures attempt to change the constitution with the ballot question originating from HB 325 did not follow that process.

Ohman said that the defect in the procedural process the Legislature used in attempting to push the ballot question to voters would not be solved by the electorate making a decision.

Jacobsen argued that because Montanans had not yet voted on the ballot question, a ruling would be premature. A lawsuit against the law would only be valid if voters approved the change, she said.

Ohman disagreed.

As to the argument that it would be more prudent to wait until after the election, the opposite is true  it would be a waste of time and resources and deceive the voters, Ohman said.

The state also argued that a 1992 amendment to the constitution gave the legislature the ability to change the statewide voting system. The amendment added that judges were to be elected as provided by law.

Ohman said that the Reichert case addressed that issue. The decision for that case said that nothing in the amendments language gave the Legislature power to change how Supreme Court justices are elected.

If the intent of the 1992 Amendment was to eliminate at-large voting for justices, a draconian change, one would expect serious discussion of the proposed change, Ohman said.
The Northern Irish government has opened a 45 million initiative aimed at improving soil health across the province.

The Soil Nutrient Health Scheme (SNHS) aims to boost soil nutrient health and estimate farm carbon stocks.

The scheme will represent an investment of up to 45m over four years towards improved sustainability of the Northern Irish farming sector.

The programme will be delivered by the Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute (AFBI), the Department of Agriculture (DAERA) confirmed.

The contracts for the soil collection and analysis work have now been awarded and collection of soil samples from farms will be carried out under the direction of AFBI.

The SNHS will be rolled out in stages using a zonal approach, over the next four years. Zone 1 farmers will be able to apply online during May 2022.

The collection of soil samples for Zone 1 will get underway in November 2022, according to DAERA.

Farming minister Edwin Poots said: I am delighted to open this innovative and forward looking soil sampling and carbon analysis scheme that will be available to all farmers.

"The data captured from the SNHS will provide farmers with important information on soil nutrient levels for each field on their farm, as well as an estimate of the amount of carbon stored in their soils, hedgerows, and trees."

Farmers would also be provided with specific training on understanding and using the nutrient and carbon data on their farms, Mr Poots added.

Equipping farmers with this information will help them more accurately match nutrient applications to crop need, thereby increase efficiency, reducing excess run-off to watercourses and improving their economic and environmental sustainability.

In addition the baseline data delivered through the SNHS is a key platform in my proposals for new farm support schemes which I recently consulted on.

Scheme guidance, including maps of the specific sampling zones and opening times, are available to see on DAERA's website.
The pig sector has called on UK firms to offer support to their Ukrainian counterparts as the war has caused a crisis of an 'enormous scale'.

The Association of Ukrainian Pig Breeders has issued a plea for humanitarian assistance as the war generates a crisis for the country's pig industry.

It has contacted UK groups such as the National Pig Association (NPA) to request feed and veterinary products to help the 1,400-strong Ukrainian pig sector survive.

"The war, started by Russia, has caused a crisis of enormous scale that threatens the food security, particularly the animal protein supply," the Ukrainian body said.

"The industry is currently under extreme circumstances that are far from routine: vast areas are in close proximity to war zones, numerous pig producers cannot sell pigs to be slaughtered, some of them are isolated by occupiers and have no choice but to euthanise the animals.

"Traditional supply chains are broken: access to certain feed ingredients and veterinary products is limited due to problems with logistics as well as lack of revolving funds in sending collecting and shipping to Ukraine of any amount of products listed."

The message to the UK pork sector, as well as those around the world, lists certain feed ingredients and veterinary products needed to maintain the country's 3.6 million-strong pig herd.

The letter adds: "We highly appreciate any help as it might make the consequences of the war less devastating not only for the Ukrainian pig producers, but for the whole country."

Responding to the call for action, the NPA has urged UK pig firms to consider whether they would be able to provide support.

NPA vice chairman, Hugh Crabtree said: "The appalling situation in Ukraine is having hugely negative impacts in all parts of the country's economy.

"None more so than in livestock production and the intensive sectors are at particular risk."

He asked: "Can your company help or do you know of any system that is already in place to offer such help that others might be able to support?

He urged people to get in touch with him if they wanted to offer or were already involved with a support scheme, by emailing hugh@farmex.co.uk.
The government has announced that from 1 June it will remove the 25% import tariff on maize imported to the UK from the United States.

The decision to lift the tariff aims to help mitigate the now limited maize exports coming from Ukraine and Russia amid the ongoing war.

Figures show that around 27 percent of the UKs maize imports come from Ukraine.

The move, announced today (23 March), will also improve the ability of the agri-supply chain to maintain a continued supply of animal feed to UK farmers.

The 25% import tariff on US maize was part of a group of import tariffs applied on US goods in retaliation for Section 232 tariffs imposed by the US to UK exports of steel and aluminium in 2018 under then President Donald Trump.

Since the tariff was applied, no maize has been imported to the UK from the United States.

Since 1 January 2022, the EU removed the 25% tariff on imported maize from US, whereas the UK chose to retain it.

The Agricultural Industries Confederation (AIC), an industry trade association, said today's announcement would be welcomed by the livestock sector.

Since the start of the war, the agri-supply body has been urging for more action to facilitate the continued supply of inputs to UK agriculture, such as animal feed.

Ed Barker, head of policy at AIC, said: AIC has been pressing government to review the 25% import tariff on US maize since the end of 2021.

However, there will continue to be challenges arising from the war in Ukraine that will have negative impacts on the wider agri-supply chain.

"Government must work closely with the agri-supply industry to find appropriate resolutions.

"No policy or legislative responses should be considered off the table.
Bacon Cannoli is seen during a Lehigh Valley IronPigs new menu taste test Tuesday, March 22, 2022, at Coca-Cola Park in Allentown. Bacon Cannoli will be available at the park for the 2022 season. (April Gamiz/The Morning Call)

Take a crispy pastry shell, stuff it with creamy sweet filling and roll it in chocolate and bits of crispy bacon.

Its the salty/sweet/rich treat youll need while watching the Lehigh Valley IronPigs this season.

Advertisement

With opening dayApril 5, the IronPigs unveiled the new team of delicious foods coming to the park for fans to enjoy.

Advertisement

Heres the lineup:

The grand slams

Pork Racer Dog: Take a traditional hot dog, always a classic option at the park, and turn up the flavor dial. Thats what you have here. The dog is wrapped in bacon, topped with sweet BBQ pulled pork, and topped with candied jalapenos. This dog rounds all the flavor bases  sweet, salty, rich, and spicy.

Porker Pierogie Bowl: Pierogies are a crowd favorite. This dish takes deep-fried pierogies and tops them with pulled pork and bacon with a side of coleslaw.

A Chipotle Black Bean Burger is seen during a Lehigh Valley IronPigs new menu taste test Tuesday, March 22, 2022, at Coca-Cola Park in Allentown. Chipotle Black Bean Burger will be available at the park for the 2022 season. (April Gamiz/The Morning Call)

Warning on both: These are a bit messy, so grab extra napkins.

Of course, this category also features the aforementioned bacon cannoli.

The hits

Chipotle black bean burger: If youre vegetarian, dont eat pork, or are just looking to reduce how much meat you eat, this is a really tasty option. The burger itself has good flavor, isnt overly dry like some bean burgers can be, and has a slightly smoky kick from the chipotle. Thats all topped with thousand island dressing, lettuce and tomato on a soft bun. If you get it without the dressing, this is also a good vegan option which can be rare at ballparks.

Turkey barbecue parfait: Its a cup, filled with mashed potatoes and in the well of the potatoes its filled with pulled barbecue turkey and shredded cheddar cheese  for an easy-to-eat dish. Extra points to this dish because of its portability.

Loaded Bavarian Pretzel: Soft pretzels are always a standard at the ballgame. This one kicks it up a notch with added toppings of sauerkraut, bacon and spicy mustard. Its like the best hot dog toppings on a pretzel.

Advertisement

Caramel Turtle Pretzel is seen during a Lehigh Valley IronPigs new menu taste test Tuesday, March 22, 2022, at Coca-Cola Park in Allentown. Caramel Turtle Pretzel will be available at the park for the 2022 season. (April Gamiz/The Morning Call)

Caramel turtle pretzel: Speaking of pretzels, heres another option that takes us to the sweeter side. Using the same generously-sized pretzel, its topped with chocolate syrup, caramel and kosher salt.

Three little pigs sandwich: Well it wouldnt be an IronPigs food if we didnt have at least one menu item that takes pork to the next level. This sandwich features barbecue pulled pork, fried ham and bacon on a Kaiser roll.

Also in the lineup

Two other new menu items are on deck but were not at the menu unveiling:

Cuban burger: This specialty takes all the flavors of a traditional Cuban sandwich and spins it into a burger. Its a pork patty, topped with ham, Swiss cheese and spicy mustard on a Kaiser roll.

Chickie and Petes Crab Fries: If youre been to Citizens Bank Park or the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia, you know that crab fries are a must. This season, youll be able to get them at Coca-Cola Park as well. For the uninitiated, the name comes from the seafood-seasoning they put on the crinkle-cut fries. Theres no actual crab. Gotta get them with that famous white cheese sauce too, of course.

Info, tickets and more

milb.com/lehigh-valley
The challenges of the Ukraine crisis and the suspension of P&O ferry sailings were raised at a meeting with the UK's farming ministers.

Pressing issues facing the agri-food sector were highlighted during a meeting of the Inter-Ministerial Group for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (IMG EFRA).

It was attended by Defra Secretary George Eustice, Defra farming minister Victoria Prentis, Scottish farming minister Mairi Gougeon, Welsh minister Lesley Griffiths and Edwin Poots, Northern Ireland's minister.

The meeting heard that the crisis in the Ukraine was having a knock-on impact in the UK, as food and farming businesses struggle to deal with the escalating costs of grain, energy and fertiliser in particular.

Ministers agreed that the industry had to be better prepared for further disturbances to supply chains as a result of a prolonged conflict in Ukraine.

During the talks, Minister Poots said the UK and devolved government 'must act quickly' to ensure the UK's capacity to produce food was maintained.

That is why I have asked George Eustice to urgently consider a range of measures, including financial assistance for UK farmers to support them through the crisis," he said.

"I have also asked that our local Agri-Food Industry Forum meetings take place weekly so that we have up to date information directly from the sector."

The meeting also heard that the UK faced challenges as a result of the suspension of P&O ferry sailings.

This is particularly true for Northern Ireland, due to its geographical dependence on the supply of critical goods carried on GB-NI ferries across the Irish Sea.

Aside from passenger transportation, P&O Ferries is responsible for most overseas movement of animals and goods between Northern Ireland and Great Britain.

The ferry company is also the biggest shipper of breeding sheep from Great Britain to continental Europe.

But the firm warned that there would be no future for the business without significant change to the way in which it operates.

Mr Poots said an interruption to those crucial import and export supply lines had the potential to cause short term disruption to businesses and ultimately to consumers.

I have asked that food is prioritised on any sailings coming to Northern Ireland to ensure food continues to make it onto shelves," he said.

My officials are urgently working across government and stakeholders including the Belfast Harbour, the British Retail Consortium and ferry companies to identify the issues and mitigations that will offer support to the resolution of this issue.
The Welsh government has been urged to make food security a key cornerstone of future support for farmers, and to enshrine it in law as a public good.

The Welsh Conservatives warned today that the government in Cardiff Bay 'risks the food security of Wales' if it did not support the proposals.

First Minister Mark Drakeford has been asked to convene a food summit  including farmers, processors, and retailers  to build resilience into the food supply chain.

The calls come against the backdrop of Russias invasion of Ukraine, which has jeopardised food production in Wales and across the world.

Ukraine produces a third of the worlds wheat exports as well as other fundamental agricultural products like fertiliser.

There are fears that this could lead to price increases and possible shortages that could affect the self-sufficiency of British farms.

According to figures by Defra, the UK is 64% self-sufficient in all foods and 77% sufficient in indigenous type food.

The World Economic Forum say Finland and Ireland are the top two nations for food security in the world, scoring 85.3 and 83.8, especially, on the index scale respectively, with the UK on 78.5.

Shadow Rural Affairs Minister Samuel Kurtz asked Welsh Parliament on Wednesday (23 March) to make food security a key part of future support for farmers.

The Food Bill, proposed by the party, aims to place a duty on Welsh ministers to produce an annual Food Strategy for Wales to establish access to support and incentives for local farmers.

It hopes to deliver a more localised food system, requiring local authorities and other public services to develop community food plans to strengthen public procurement.

Mr Kurtz said it was 'more important than ever' for Welsh farmers to be at the forefront of enhancing food security in the country, following Russia's invasion.

"All our leaders have a duty to ensure food security is part of the overall security agenda," the shadow minister said.

Strengthening domestic food production will make Wales more resilient to shocks in the global system and less reliant on food imports.

Empty words will lead to empty plates, so lets prioritise Welsh produce which is a world leader in quality, sustainability, and taste. "
Only subscribers with PAID Print or E-Edition subscriptions please enter here to gain access. If you are not already a Paid subscriber do not go through this portal. Please return to the subscription page to purchase one of our offers. Thank you!
Sharing the same stage for the first time in their run for U.S. Senate, the three leading contenders for the Democratic nomination  Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb and state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta  split on climate change, united on eliminating the filibuster, and shared why they think they can win such a high-stakes statewide election.

The occasion  Sundays Barbara Daly Danko Political Forum at Carnegie Mellon University  was hosted by the 14th Ward Democratic Committee and the universitys Heinz College of Information.

Advertisement

Fetterman, Lamb and Kenyatta  as well as Jenkintown Borough Councilwoman Alex Khalil, who hasnt registered by name in recent polling  fielded questions for an hour and a half, giving two-minute answers on each subject area.

Heres how they answered:

Advertisement

Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (Keith Srakocic/AP)

On abortion

Fetterman said a non-negotiable litmus test for when hes considering Supreme Court nominees  if elected  would be whether theyre committed to upholding Roe v. Wade. He called for eliminating the filibuster to pass a federal law codifying Roe v. Wade, and warned that Pennsylvania would be in danger of restricting abortion access if Democrats lose the governors mansion.

Lamb said he had co-sponsored a bill upholding abortion rights that the House passed in September of last year but died in the Senate earlier this month. He added that to protect women who are the least advantaged, the Senate should join the House in voting down the Hyde Amendment so that Medicaid can cover abortion and family planning services. Democrats are two votes away from that becoming law if the filibuster goes, he said.

Kenyatta said the Supreme Court has tacitly overturned Roe v. Wade already by allowing Texass abortion law to stand. Winning the Senate seat is important, he said, because Democrats can send a message that they value fighting to protect a womans right over her own body. He noted that he is co-sponsoring a bill in the state House to remove barriers for people seeking an abortion in Pennsylvania.

Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta (Matt Rourke/AP)

On climate change

Lamb said of the 58 billion tons of carbon dioxide emitted each year worldwide, the U.S. only accounts for 15%  and although its necessary to get that number to zero by 2050, its a problem that extends beyond American borders.

He said that goes to show that Democrats need to be politically realistic about what can pass, adding that those who dont agree with the party are usually worried about opportunities. He called for a focus on protecting existing jobs and creating new ones  not just hypothetical jobs  in nuclear energy, hydrogen pipelines and semiconductor plants.

Fetterman said the choice isnt between addressing the climate crisis and protecting jobs. He insisted that we still need to make stuff in this country and that its crucial to retain manufacturing and energy jobs in Pennsylvania that currently give the U.S. energy security, too.

Advertisement

The lieutenant governor said it will also take recognizing that the U.S. has to transition away from these fuels to a green energy economy, which must start now.

Kenyatta accused Fetterman of changing tunes on climate change, and said Democrats need to pass a bold agenda that will keep Pennsylvania as an energy leader, but one in wind, solar and geothermal.

On the filibuster

Fetterman said Democrats who believe the filibuster should remain in place think there are 10 to 12 Republican senators of conscience who are suddenly going to come to their senses to pass comprehensive legislation. Thats simply not the case, he added.

Why cant Democrats be ruthless and united and get some important legislation passed and done while we can? Fetterman asked. We know the other side, if given the chance, will run the table on us, too.

Lamb said he supports getting rid of the filibuster and would vote that way on day one if elected. Republicans will do it when it suits their interests, he said.

Advertisement

If you ask me, I actually think were going to have a more productive Senate on both sides of the aisle when the filibuster is gone because theres going to be more legislative trains leaving the station, Lamb said.

Kenyatta said some folks up here on stage waited until poll numbers were beneficial to stand against the filibuster, and said he has been in favor of eliminating it for a while. Republicans have already chipped away at it when it was useful to them, he said.

U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb (Matt Rourke/AP)

On the size of the Supreme Court

Lamb said the issue is a trap, and that hes not in favor of expanding the number of seats. He said voters need to believe that Democrats are fighting for them on issues that actually matter to them  pocketbook issues. By winning elections, Democrats can nominate better judges and pass laws codifying Roe v. Wade and changing campaign finance laws  things that are often left to the courts, he said.

Fetterman said he, too, doesnt support it  and that Democrats shouldnt structurally change things just because theyre frustrated by the current outcome, referring to the 6-to-3 conservative advantage on the bench.

Kenyatta said he would favor expanding the court, and that democracy is on the line. He said its not a new idea and that it has been done before.

Advertisement

On what they want to tell voters

Fetterman said the party has evolved to match many of the policy positions he had taken years ago, and that as a result, he has 190,000 donors with an average contribution of $28. He has donors in 90% of Pennsylvania ZIP codes, he added.

Thats a new map, Fetterman said, and I believe were going to need a new map to win in Pennsylvania in 2022.

Last Call Daily Get top headlines from The Morning Call delivered weekday afternoons. >

Lamb said that with such high stakes, it will take someone who has run successful campaigns in similar atmospheres before. He said to win, Democrats need to put their trust in someone who can build a coalition  and who will fight for ideas that would pass in the Senate if the body had more Democrats.

What I can offer you in this race is, I have voted for every bill on that list and many more, and defended my seat while doing it, Lamb said. I do have the experience of going out and talking to these people whose votes we need.

Kenyatta said a focus on who can win isnt as important as nominating a candidate whose experiences reflect the concerns of the community, and that if Democrats are looking for someone who can turn out the base  young people, progressives, Black voters  its Malcolm Kenyatta.

Advertisement

(c)2022 the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Visit the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette at www.post-gazette.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Category Select Category Apparel/Garments Textiles Fashion Technical Textiles Information Technology E-commerce Retail Corporate Association Press Release

SubCategory Select Sub-Category
No matter what caste, religion, or creed one belongs to, the word India unites us all. Patriotism gives all of us a purpose and a sense of belonging and as a testament to that, three real-life heroes sacrificed their lives on this day 92 years ago, due to their love for the nation. Shaheed Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev Thapar, and Shivaram Rajguru were hanged to death on this day but their sacrifice and love for the nation ignited a new era and led to Indias freedom in 1947. Their contribution to that fight can never be forgotten. And as we remember them on Shaheedi Diwas today, lets look at all those actors who showed new dimensions of the legendary freedom fighter on screen every time they portrayed such special characters for the world to know about them.



To what went on to become the golden standard in the genre of patriotic films, Manoj Kumar in the 1965 film Shaheed was exemplary indeed. The legendary actor played the role of Shaheed Bhagat Singh with utmost conviction and it went on to become one of his most memorable roles in his career. It is believed that because of his uncanny resemblance with the patriotic leader, he was convinced to play this prestigious role. Out of the many roles hence played to tell the story of this iconic freedom fighter, veteran Manoj Kumar's representation on screen continues to inspire actors down the years.

Manoj Kumar

Sonu Sood





A man of steel and all heart - Sonu Sood essayed the role of a determined and empathetic side of Shaheed Bhagat Singh on screen in the 2002 film Shaheed-E-Azam. His portrayal might not have garnered much attention at the time, but over the years it sure did make people fall in love with him and his representation of such a strong character more.

Ajay Devgn





If there is one portrayal of the legendary freedom fighter that will surely go down in cinematic history as one of the best, it will be Ajay Devgns performance in the 2002 film The Legend Of Bhagat Singh. The impact of his stellar performance was so impressive that he was even bestowed with the National Award for Best Actor for his performance, and there couldnt be a bigger recognition.

Siddharth





In the 2006 film Rang De Basanti, Siddharth played the character of Bhagat Singh in the flashbacks, and the way he connected the freedom fighter to his character in the present time was just exemplary. There were strong glimpses of sheer authenticity in his character portrayal of the legendary patriotic leader. The film has gained a cult status over the years and Siddharths portrayal in the film has been well appreciated.

Bobby Deol





Bobby Deol also took on the responsibility to portray the legendary freedom fighter in the film 23 March 1931: Shaheed, alongside his brother Sunny Deol as Chandrashekhar Azad. The inspiring journey of Bhagat Singh became even more impactful with the honest portrayal by Bobby.

Amol Parashar





Amol Parashar is known for his comic timing, but the actor surprised everyone last year with Shoojit Sircars Sardar Udham where he portrayed the role of Shaheed Bhagat Singh. He showed the artistic, passionate, and lively side of the freedom fighter coalesced with innocence, not to forget the constant smile on his face which made the character perpetually memorable. Even with a limited amount of screen time, the actor became a huge fan favourite with people and one could hear his praises being hailed at the mention of how amazing the film was and the lasting impression that his performance left behind with the audience.
In the summer of 2002, there was a slew of biopics based on the life of national hero Shaheed Bhagat Singh, who was martyred along with Sukhdev and Rajguru on March 23, 1931. Among the many films that were released at the time, The Legend of Bhagat Singh, directed by Rajkumar Santoshi and starring Ajay Devgn, received critical acclaim as well as a lot of love from the audience.

The film, which starred Ajay in the role of the icon, followed Bhagat Singh's life as he fought against the British and sacrificed his life for the sake of the nation. In an interview in 2002, Ajay Devgn revealed that Bhagat Singh's younger brother Kultar Singh stayed with the film's unit in Pune while they were filming and shared some insights about his brother with the crew.

During Kultar Singh's stay in Pune, Ajay was moved to tears by an incident. "You know, in Pune, someone told Kultar Singh that he should bless me," Ajay told in 2002. 'How can I bless my elder brother?' said Kultar. "I couldn't stop crying." "He gave us deep insights into his brother's life, facts that history had not revealed," Ajay added. Kultar Singh died at the age of 86 in 2004.

Ajay stated in the same interview that Bhagat Singh predicted many of the problems that the country is still dealing with. He stated, This fearless freedom fighter was a great visionary. He had clearly stated our country would be besieged with problems like communalism and corruption. Isnt that whats happening today? May I stick my neck out and say that if he had been living 15-20 years after Independence, our country would not be in the shambles it is in today, Ajay said at the time.

In 2003, The Legend of Bhagat Singh received two National Film Awards: Best Feature Film in Hindi and Best Actor for Devgn. This was Devgn's second National Film Award, following Zakhm in 1998.
Pennsylvanias charter school regulations finally are getting a makeover. Dont be fooled into believing the updates will make a big difference.

Additional rules approved Monday are the first significant reforms since the state authorized charter schools 25 years ago.

Advertisement

The new regs will add accountability and standardize some processes. They just wont do anything to reduce the excessive amount of tax dollars flowing to charters, to the detriment of school districts and taxpayers.

That problem can be solved only by changing the law. And the Republican-controlled Legislature has shown zero interest in doing whats necessary.

Advertisement

The rules added Monday came through the states regulation-making process.

They were proposed by Gov. Tom Wolfs administration, through the Department of Education, and approved by the Independent Regulatory Review Commission. Charter schools, lawmakers, the public and others were able to weigh in. Nearly 2,000 comments were received.

The regulations say they will emphasize accountability, equity, quality and transparency of charters and ensure public awareness of public money those schools receive  nearly $3 billion this year.

The regulations seek to ensure charter schools are held to the same accounting and auditing standards as school districts. They must follow Generally Accepted Accounting Principles and Generally Accepted Government Auditing Standards.

Charters with random admission policies will have to disclose how they choose students, to show they are not discriminating based on intellectual or physical abilities. The polices must be included in applications to open charters, and be posted on charter websites.

Taxpayers, families and students will benefit from seeing exactly how preferences in admissions are considered and weighted by the charter schools serving their communities, the regulations say.

The updated rules clarify that members of charter school boards of trustees are considered public officials and are subject to the state Public Official and Employee Ethics Act. That means they will have to file annual disclosure forms about financial interests. They may also have to recuse themselves from administrative or financial decisions if there are conflicts of interest.

[ Pennsylvania cyber charter schools boomed in the pandemic. Why thats crushing taxpayers ]

Many charters already comply with at least some of the new rules, according to testimony submitted to the regulatory review commission.

Advertisement

As youd expect, charter schools fought the rules. They complained they werent consulted and will face additional costs and hardships.

It will be more work for some. But if that work means they have the same level of accountability as school districts, dont shed tears for them.

Charters always stress they are public schools. They demand to be treated the same as public school districts. This just forces them to follow the same rules, too.

The Independent Regulatory Review Commissions approval of the regulations Monday isnt the final word on matter, though it might as well be.

The state Senate and House education committees can object to them, which would send them to the Legislature for a vote. If the Legislature rejects them, their resolution would be sent to Wolf, a Democrat.

Hell just veto it, as he supports these changes.

Advertisement

These regulations are a vital step in clarifying charter schools responsibilities to the taxpayers who fund them, Wolf said in a statement Monday.

Some Republican lawmakers accused Wolf of gaming the system by seeking changes through regulations instead of legislation.

Sen. Scott Martin, chair of the Senate Education Committee, asked the commission last week to reject the proposed rules for that reason.

The inclusion of significant policy changes to the laws governing charter schools within this regulation go well beyond the [Education] Departments authority and are deeply concerning to the committee as such changes should be reserved for the legislative process, Martin, R-Lancaster, said in a letter.

Republican legislators should look in the mirror before making that argument. They are doing the same thing by legislating through constitutional amendments.

Tired of being thwarted repeatedly by Wolfs vetoes of their legislation, theyre working around him and taking issues directly to the public, giving them the final say at the voting booth.

Advertisement

The governor and lawmakers should work together to address problems with the charter school system, especially how cyber charters are overpaid.

There wont be meaningful charter school reform until that happens.

Morning Call columnist Paul Muschick can be reached at 610-820-6582 or paul.muschick@mcall.com
TOKYO, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Drone and Urban Air Mobility (UAM) technology company Terra Drone Corporation announced today that it has raised $70 million (8 billion Japanese yen) in Series B funding with investments from Mitsui & Co., Ltd., SBI Investment Co., Ltd., Tokyu Land Corporation, Kyushu Electric Power T&D, and Seika Corporation. The round also saw the funding by Japan Overseas Infrastructure Investment Corporation for Transport & Urban Development (JOIN) - a public-private infrastructure fund by the Japanese Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) - to the newly established joint venture, as well as participation from existing investor Venture Lab Investment.

"Our airspace is going to get more crowded than ever, but most companies today are concentrating only on hardware development," says Toru Tokushige, founder and CEO of Terra Drone. "There's an urgent need for a global air traffic management solution to enable safe and efficient drone and UAM operations, and Terra Drone aims to be the leading player building the digital infrastructure in the sky."

To that end, Terra Drone has been working with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to coordinate flight management of both crewed and uncrewed aircraft.

Meanwhile, in the drone inspection vertical, Netherlands-based group company Terra Inspectioneering is serving Oil and Gas production and processing companies such as Shell, BASF, and Bunge. In Southeast Asia, Terra Drone offers survey, inspection, and surveillance services through group company Terra Drone Indonesia whose clients include Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and AECOM.

The company is further enhancing safety and efficiency in many other industries by implementing drone-based solutions worldwide.

"A focus on increasing recurring revenue through the sale of survey-grade hardware and cloud based software such as Terra LiDAR; providing specialized solutions such as ultrasonic thickness (UT) measurements and non-destructive testing (NDT) using drones through Terra Inspectioneering; and a strategic consolidation of overseas business has made us well-positioned for success. With this latest round of funding, we will be able to scale up operations and innovate faster," Tokushige says.

Terra Drone will continue with its commitment of "Evolving the world from the sky".

About Terra Drone

Founded in 2016, Terra Drone is a leading drone and Urban Air Mobility (UAM) technology company providing drone hardware and cloud-based software for survey and inspection such as Terra Lidar and thickness measurement by ultrasonic NDT. Also, in the field of UTM for drones and UAM, we have completed a partial technology transfer from JAXA in Japan.

We are the world's largest provider of industrial drone solutions, with offices throughout Japan, including its Tokyo headquarters, and overseas operations primarily in Europe and Southeast Asia. We've been ranked No. 1 in the world in the "Drone Services Companies Worldwide Ranking 2020" by Drone Industry Insights, a global drone market research organization, for two years in a row and and raised Series B funding in March 2022, bringing total funding to $83 million.

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1771038/TerraDrone_Logo.jpg
- Increased consumer focus on sustainability is driving demand growth

- Transport, electricity, packaging, and construction see the biggest growth

LONDON, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- A new report has revealed that global aluminium demand will increase by almost 40 per cent by 2030 and that the aluminium sector will need to produce an additional 33.3 Mt to meet demand growth in all industrial sectors - from 86.2 Mt in 2020 to119.5 Mt in 2030.

The study, Opportunities For Aluminium In A Post-Covid Economy, conducted by business intelligence analysts CRU International on behalf of the International Aluminium Institute (IAI), details demand across key industrial sectors and regions in a post-Covid economy. Transportation, construction, packaging and the electrical sectors are the four key sectors that will drive demand, accounting for 75% of the total metal required.

Two-thirds of this growth is expected to come from China, which will require 12.3 Mt, and the rest of Asia adding a further 8.6Mt, North America 5.1Mt and Europe 4.8Mt. Together, these four regions alone will account for more than 90 per cent of the additional aluminium required globally.

Commenting on the report findings, IAI Secretary General, Miles Prosser said: The IAI commissioned this report to better understand the drivers of future aluminium demand and to ascertain what we need to do as an industry to meet consumer expectations on both demand and sustainability. The figures in today's report show that as society increasingly focuses on efficiency and sustainability, so are the market opportunities for aluminium. Within each of the sectors, key drivers of demand are linked to sustainability and climate change issues."

According to the report, decarbonisation policies plus a shift from fossil fuels in the transport sector will see an increase in EV production to 31.7Mt in 2030 (compared to 19.9 in 2020).

Renewable energy demands will also see a rise in demand for aluminium for solar panels, as well as replacing existing copper cabling for power distribution. In total, the electric sector will require an additional 5.2 Mt by 2030.

The construction sector will require an additional 4.6Mt by the end of the decade. Urbanisation will account for 44% of growth, coming from Asia (excluding China).

Aluminium packaging will rise from 7.2Mt in 2020 to 10.5Mt in 2030, driven by an increase in the popularity of canned drinks across North America, Europe and China. A surge in demand for environmentally friendly packaging combined with new products is also behind the increase.

CRU's Head of Aluminium, Zaid Aljanabi said: "The aluminium industry has an opportunity to continue to advance its sustainability credentials; listen and respond to consumer expectations; and work along the value chain to deliver more sustainable products and services to consumers. CRU Consulting has been advising clients in the aluminium industry for more than four decades, providing independent and proprietary advice to clients across the value chain"

For the last 50 years, the IAI has been the voice for the global primary aluminium industry, promoting the benefits of this valuable resource. With comprehensive global data and material flow analysis, the IAI can provide the necessary information and pathways for the industry, consistent with global climate goals.

Mr Prosser added: "As we seek a sustainable future in a decarbonised world, aluminium has the qualities that consumers seek - strength, lightweight, versatile, corrosion-resistant, a good conductor of heat and electricity and is recyclable. Around 75% of the almost 1.5 billion tonnes of aluminium ever produced is still in productive use today. This metal has been at the forefront of many industrial and engineering innovations of the 20th century and continues to power a sustainable future. Meeting growing demand sustainably is a challenge for the entire value chain but the industry has the expertise and passion to find the solutions needed to reduce the carbon intensity of our primary metal."

Download full report
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - March 22, 2022) - Euro Asia Pay Holdings Inc. (CSE: EAP) ("EAP" or the "Company"), a leading fintech solutions provider, is pleased to announce the appointment of Mr. Larry Yen to the Company's Board of Directors.

Mr. Yen is a lawyer specializing in the practice of corporate and securities law. During his career of 20+ years, he has helped numerous public and private companies strategize, coordinate and plan international merger and acquisition and corporate financing transactions. He provides advice on private securities offerings, initial public offerings, regulatory requirements under Canada and U.S. federal securities statutes and business succession strategies, among other matters.

Mr. Yen commented, "I am excited to join EAP as a board director, a disruptive company that is addressing the next generation's finance necessities. I am pleased to share my expertise and experience to keep adding long-term value to Company's shareholders, employees, customers, and partners."

In connection with Mr. Yen's appointment, Don Kirkwood has stepped down as a director of the Company. "We want to take this opportunity to thank Mr. Kirkwood for his contribution to the Company; his entrepreneurial vision, valuable connections and project management skills helped guide EAP since its early stages," said Peter MacKay, EAP's CEO.

NexPay LOI Termination

Further to EAP's news release dated October 20, 2021, the Company announces that it and NexPay Pty Ltd., an Australian next-generation fintech company for "edutravel" payments ("NexPay"), have formally terminated the binding letter of intent between them dated October 19, 2021 (the "LOI"). Pursuant to the LOI, EAP had agreed to acquire all the issued and outstanding equity securities of NexPay in exchange for 14,800,000 common shares of EAP at a deemed price of $0.25 per share, for an aggregate transaction value of $3,700,000.

The LOI was terminated by mutual agreement of the parties in light of current market conditions, among other factors, and in advance of entering into a definitive agreement in respect of the transaction.

"Over the past year, we have been working together with NexPay in implementing the necessary steps towards integrating them into EAP's portfolio. However, after much consideration, we have mutually agreed not to continue with this strategy," commented Mr. MacKay. "NexPay is one of our trusted partners and we will continue to collaborate with them to offer innovative and convenient payment solutions to our subscriber base."

"As one of the leaders in global education payments, we strive to offer more convenient ways for students to pay as well as increasing the coverage and countries we operate in so more students can use our solution. We are pleased to have received such positive interest in our business from Euro Asia Pay. After an extensive negotiation process, both parties have come to a mutual decision to halt the merger and focus on their respective business plans. Nonetheless, our relationship with Euro Asia Pay is stronger and more conducive than ever," said Piew Yap, the CEO of NexPay.

About Euro Asia Pay Holdings Inc.

Euro Asia Pay Holdings Inc. is a developer of innovative financial solutions for the next generation of consumers. Its first product, SideKick, enables parents to transfer, control and monitor payments to their children in a simple, intuitive manner. The product includes a student-facing mobile application, a prepaid student payment card and a parent portal, among other features.

To learn more about EAP's products and services, visit www.euroasiapay.com.

On Behalf of the Board of Directors

Peter MacKay

Chief Executive Officer & Director

For further information, please contact:

Peter MacKay

Chief Executive Officer & Director

(800) 508-8813

ir@euroasiapay.com

For all media queries, please contact:

Euro Asia Pay Holdings Inc.

Swati Mehta

PR Associates

(403) 804-0768

smehta@prassociates.com

Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements in this news release include forward-looking statements or information (collectively "forward-looking statements") within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. The Company is providing cautionary statements identifying important factors that could cause its actual results to differ materially from those projected in these forward-looking statements. 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 "may", "anticipates", "is expected to", "estimates", "intends", "plans", "projection", "could", "vision", "goals", "objective" and "outlook") are not historical facts and may be forward-looking. The Company has based the forward-looking statements largely on its current estimates, assumptions and projections about future events and trends that it believes may affect its business, financial condition and results of operations.

By their nature, forward-looking statements involve numerous assumptions, inherent risks and uncertainties, both general and specific, which contribute to the possibility that the predicted outcomes may not occur or may be delayed. The risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond the Company's control, include, but are not limited to: the ability of the Company to establish a market for its products; competitive conditions in the mobile payments industry which could prevent the Company from becoming profitable; the effectiveness and efficiency of advertising and promotional expenditures to generate interest in the Company's products; dependency on continued growth in the adoption of mobile payment technology; volatility of the market price of the Company's securities; the inability to secure additional financing; the Company's intention not to pay dividends; claims, lawsuits and other legal proceedings and challenges; conflicts of interest with directors and management; and other relevant factors.

Factors that could cause the Company's actual results to differ from the forward-looking statements include its history of losses from operations; technology risks; its ability to obtain the additional financing required to meet long-term goals; its dependence on key personnel, including its executive officers; and uninsured risks. These factors are not exhaustive.

Further, any forward-looking statement speaks only as of the date on which such statement is made, and, except as required by applicable law, the Company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statement to reflect events or circumstances after the date on which such statement is made or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events. New factors emerge from time to time, and it is not possible for management to predict all such factors and to assess in advance the impact of each such factor on the Company's business or the extent to which any factor, or combination of factors, may cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statement.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/117734
SINGAPORE, Mar 23, 2022 - (ACN Newswire) - Singapore Exchange-listed Alset International Limited (SGX Stock Code: 40V) ("Alset", the "Company" or together with its subsidiaries, the "Group) wishes to announce that the Company has plans to embark on cryptocurrency mining business through its subsidiary Alset Mining Pte. Ltd. ("Alset Mining").Alset Mining will primarily be engaged in investment within the cryptocurrency mining industry. Cryptocurrency mining refers to the process that verifies and adds new transactions to the blockchain by solving complex mathematical equations for a cryptocurrency. The miner that solves the complex mathematical equations first is rewarded with the respective cryptocurrency. The cryptocurrency mining industry consist of stakeholders such as hardware and software manufacturers, hosting and mining service providers (akin to data centers), as well as corporate and private miners.In the year ahead, Alset Mining endeavours to take advantage of the potential of the cryptocurrency mining space by acquiring mining rigs to create a consistent stream of revenue. The company will also search for low cost sustainable sources of energy such as wind, solar or hydroelectricity for its cryptocurrency mining operations to align its sustainability efforts with the Company's mission of sustainable healthy living."As the cryptocurrency mining market is expected to reach USD5.29 billion by 2028 with a CAGR of 28.5%[1], this represents a huge upside within this emerging technology space that is rapidly changing every day. We believe that the cryptocurrency mining opportunities in the market remains profitable. We will take prudent and measured steps as the industry evolves." commented Mr Chan Tung Moe, Executive Director and Co-Chief Executive Officer of the Company.[1] https://brandessenceresearch.com/cryptocurrency/cryptocurrency-mining-marketAbout Alset Mining Pte. Ltd.Alset Mining will primarily be engaged in investment within the cryptocurrency mining industry. Alset Mining endeavours to take advantage of the potential of the cryptocurrency mining space by acquiring mining rigs to create a consistent stream of revenue.About Alset International LimitedIncorporated on 9 September 2009 and listed on the Singapore Exchange in July 2010, Alset International Limited operates as a global enterprise involved in (i) property development and investments primarily in the United States; (ii) development, research, testing, manufacturing, licensing and distribution of biomedical products; (iii) asset management with a primary focus in the US medical and housing REIT space; (iv) direct sales of a variety of health and wellness products; (v) information technology-related businesses including blockchain technology; and (vi) food and beverage business under the Group's hospitality segment. For more information, please visit: www.alsetinternational.com or email contact@alsetinternational.comSource: Alset International LimitedCopyright 2022 ACN Newswire . All rights reserved.


HAMBURG (dpa-AFX) - German-based international real estate investment company Deutsche EuroShop AG (DUSCF.PK) reported that its preliminary funds from operations for fiscal year 2021 slightly declined to 122.3 million euros from 123.3 million euros in the previous year.



Consolidated profit was 59.9 million euros compared to loss of 251.7 million euros in the prior year. Earnings per share was 0.97 euros compared to 4.07 euros in the prior year.



Consolidated revenue for the year declined 5.5% year-over-year to 211.8 million euros. This was due in particular to the rent concessions agreed with tenants owing to the coronavirus. The company had offered affected tenants a rent waiver of 50% during the closure phases in 2021 to help mitigate the major negative impact on their business and also in view of legal aspects.



Assuming that the pandemic shows signs of continued and sustainable stabilisation, the company Board expects funds from operations of 1.95 euros to 2.05 euros per share for the 2022 financial year, which as a transitional year is still affected by the after-effects of the pandemic.



The company aims to return to a sustainable dividend policy.



The company noted that the Executive Board will develop a dividend proposal together with the Supervisory Board, which will be communicated along with the publication of the Annual Report.



The 2021 Annual Report with the final audited figures will be published on 26 April 2022.







Copyright(c) 2022 RTTNews.com. All Rights Reserved



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

DEUTSCHE EUROSHOP-Aktie komplett kostenlos handeln - auf Smartbroker.de


A Value Model for Responsible Business: The new Value Research Center (VRC) white paper was officially released today. The VRC initiative is aimed at improving company performance and social impact.

KYOTO, Japan, Mar 23, 2022 - (JCN Newswire) - The Value Research Center (VRC) launched an integrated Value Model of ESG and Sustainability measures in a new white paper issued today. With the shift from short term, profit-focused thinking towards long-term, sustainable, value-focused thinking, businesses globally need to answer a fundamental question: "What value are you providing our collective future?"The VRC at Doshisha University was established in November 2021 to develop a Value Model that could guide any company to answer this question, so ensuring a more sustainable future. The VRC published its initial white paper, "Valuing Value", in June 2021, integrating 357 impact measurements from 15 of the world's top ESG and sustainability frameworks and developing a 7-stakeholder, 27-theme, 80-goal model to help businesses objectively and transparently measure and manage the value impacts that they have on their key stakeholders.The VRC's new white paper entitled "A Value Model for Responsible Business", integrates an additional 346 impact measurements from 6 new frameworks into the initial model. These 6 frameworks include the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) Prototype Climate-related disclosures; Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosure (TCFD) guidance on metrics, targets and transition plans; Stockholm Resilience Center's Planetary Boundaries; United Nations Development Program (UNDP) SDG Impact Standards for Enterprises; International Finance Corporation (IFC) Performance Standards; and Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) climate disclosures.Professor Philip Sugai, Director of the VRC, says "Our team analyzed hundreds of existing impact measurements and organized these into 27 common themes, with 81 goals that any company, regardless of their size, industry or location can use to measure, manage and use to consistently increase the value they create for their stakeholders. Unlike existing ESG or sustainability reporting models, the VRC Value Model offers companies the ability to track their actual stakeholder impacts, using this data to create forward-looking strategies aimed at further increasing the value they create for and with these stakeholders."Masato Yamazaki, Professor Emeritus of Economics at Aquinas College, Grand Rapids, Michigan, and VRC operating council member, said "The Value Model that our VRC research team offers is a more advanced approach than any other sustainability model or approach in existence today, since it can automatically help identify the root causes of the problems companies face via well-developed assessment tools.""What is needed in sustainability efforts today goes beyond simple reporting," says Dr. Kumar Iyer, Mentor for Value Creation and VRC operating council member. "The VRC Value Model is based on objective metrics and quantifiable indicators which can be independently verified. This is uniquely different from any other sustainability reporting approach as it is directly linked to creating social impact."The white paper is available for download at the VRC website:https://www.valueresearchcenter.com/2022whitepaperAbout the Value Research Center (VRC)The Value Research Center (VRC) was officially established at Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan in November 2021. The VRC aims to research and develop an open, accessible and transparent system for measuring, monitoring, assessing and reporting on value creation (destruction) impacts that organizations of any size make on the 7 stakeholder groups including (1) the organization itself, (2) shareholders or owners, (3) customers, (4) employees, (5) partners, (6) the society within which it operates, and (7) the planet.Learn more about the VRC and its projects at https://www.valueresearchcenter.com, or email Philip Sugai atinfo@valueresearchcenter.com* Webinar, March 25 - IAFOR discusses the white paper with VRC Director Philip SugaiDr. Joseph Haldane, Chairman & CEO of the International Academic Forum (IAFOR) will discuss the contents of this new white paper with VRC Director Prof. Philip Sugai in a Webinar on Friday, March 25, 5:00 - 6:00 pm JST, in collaboration with the new ESG-IREC Research Center at Osaka University. This webinar will be free to attend, and reservations can be made at: https://tinyurl.com/IRC-VRC-20220325About the IAFOR Research Center (IRC)IRC aims to provide a research centre to nurture various international and interdisciplinary research policies that use the extensive networks of both Osaka University and IAFOR. https://iafor.org/.About the ESG-IREC Research CenterThe Osaka University Graduate School of International Public Policy - ESG Integration Research and Education Center (ESG-IREC) conducts research on practically implemented "ESG integration" models in corporate business activities for the creation of a more sustainable future. https://www.osipp.osaka-u.ac.jp/en/.Source: Value Research Center (VRC)Copyright 2022 JCN Newswire . All rights reserved.
VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / March 23, 2022 / Ian Fung has spent his entire working life in construction. His journey down this path began straight out of high-school, when he immediately dove into construction work and education. His extensive, on-the-job experience is complimented by over a decade of learning at BCIT, during which Ian graduated from multiple construction related programs. With all of this under his belt, Ian has proven over and over that he is up to any challenge presented by nearly any construction project. Twenty-three years into Ian's career in construction, when the municipality where he was building homes (Vancouver) introduced a unique twist into the building code, he came across a hurdle that would test his established building methods: air leakage.

Ian soon realized that, despite experience and education, a futile battle was about to begin against something that very quickly becomes the invisible nemesis of almost all builders and trades in the industry.

Nearly every single division in the construction world needs to deal with the affect that air will have on their project. Even electrical codes contain charts that differentiate between wiring ran in free air versus wiring ran through enclosed spaces. Plumbers need to take into account air pressure and air flow in regards to venting and drainage, and roofers need to pay attention to the air movement of an attic nearly every step of the way. But these considerations pale in comparison to the difficulty of properly air sealing the envelope of a building.

During his time building high performance houses, Ian specifically remembers spending enormous amounts of effort trying to achieve the proper airtightness in homes. This is one of the most vital parts of construction, as, aside from needing to meet regulations and codes, a house that leaks air can create a multitude of different issues, including poor interior air quality, mold, and high heating costs, just as examples. Project after project, the same issues with proper sealing would arise, and, project after project, the efforts of the workers never seemed to be enough. It didn't take long before it began to feel like a useless endeavour.

And Ian wasn't alone, every builder was having the same struggle. To add to the practical issues of sealing a home, regulations, codes and the drive to Go Green has only created more pressure to find a solution to this problem. With the implementation of the BC Energy Step Code (a code that states that all new construction must be Net-Zero Energy Ready by 2032), it became obvious that changes in the way a building is sealed had to made.

And then Ian Fung learned about an innovative, new technology called AeroBarrier. This automated, envelope sealing technology provided a means to make energy efficient and performance homebuilding attainable for builders in Greater Vancouver.

Using a unique, computer-controlled and fully automated process, AeroBarrier creates a pressurized airspace within a dwelling that forces air to leak outwards through holes, gaps, and cracks in the building envelope. Nozzles are then placed throughout the dwelling, which simultaneously release atomized, acrylic, sealant particles that become airborne within the dwelling. The particles within the pressurized dwelling are forced into the areas of leakage, collecting and building up around the holes, gaps, and cracks, ultimately sealing the building from the inside out. The air sealing process is monitored in real-time, so the airtightness levels can be measured to ensure a complete seal has been achieved.

Ian knew that, without this technology, meeting the airtightness requirements of a building would be an incredibly daunting task. He understood the need for high efficiency construction, but, until now, it felt like a moving target, as code requirements were only getting more and more stringent. The focus on green energy and high efficiency housing usually lands on the method of power or heating. A renewable energy source like solar power is ultimately considered, high efficiency furnaces and windows are installed, but none of these can solve the true issue of how to contain and maintain the proper interior atmosphere once it's created. If you're catching drinking water in a spaghetti strainer, it doesn't matter what type of faucet you're using, you're still going to wind up thirsty in the end. In the same way, it doesn't matter if your heating or boiler system is of the highest efficiency, until you can keep it in your house you're not buying heat, you're renting it. But this is often missed, as it's an invisible option. You can't see airtightness. It is a process, not a purchase.

With a full understanding of these issues, Ian immediately recognized a way to make a difference in his local industry, and be a help to other builders who would be facing the same predicaments that concerned him. A plan quickly came together, and Ian Fung developed the marketplace for AeroBarrier in Vancouver. PACIFIC AEROBARRIER SYSTEMS is now the exclusive licensed dealer of this technology in the entire lower mainland.

Since implementing this technology, the change has been enormous. Passing the blower door test is no longer a day of stress and what-ifs, it's simply another check in the box. Buildings can now be sealed by replacing intensive and futile manual labour with an automated, computer-driven, precision-controlled operating system that produces measurable and guaranteed results. A future-proof dwelling that meets the Step Code has been made possible for any building project in a way that is more practical and affordable than ever before, eliminating the guesswork and headaches. To put the power of this technology into perspective, a standard home can now meet the same airtightness requirements as that of a home built in 2032 after just one application of AeroBarrier. You now have the tools at hand to future-proof your home.

Ian Fung always loved the ability to take a losing situation and turn it into a win, and, to Ian, this has been one of the most satisfying transformations of all. Not only has he been able to build a company that revolves around helping other builders, he has been able to leave a mark on the construction industry that he services, and looks forward to continuing to operate the largest air sealing company in North America for many years to come.

Working under the motto "KEEP IT TIGHT", Pacific AeroBarrier has successfully completed over six hundred applications since their establishment in the Lower Mainland. Although this is where the company is based, it also covers regions from Whistler all the way to Abbotsford.

Ian plans to showcase AeroBarrier at this year's Buildex event in Vancouver on March 23rd - March 24th, 2022. Those interested will find him at booth 1423, where Ian and his team will be sharing information and answering questions regarding his company and how they can be of service to those in the surrounding area. For more information, visit them at:

About Pacific AeroBarrier: AeroBarrier is an automated envelope sealing technology that assists builders meet BC Energy Step Code, Passive House and Net Zero requirements more consistently and more importantly, more cost-effectively than traditional envelope sealing methods. AeroBarrier is a proprietary technology that takes the guesswork out of sealing the envelope.

Website: www.pacificaerobarrier.com

Instagram: pacific.aerobarrier

SOURCE: Pacific AeroBarrier Systems

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/694302/Innovative-Approach-in-Future-Proofing-the-Comfort-of-Your-Home


PARIS (dpa-AFX) - French gas supplier Air Liquide (AIQUY.PK) announced its new strategic plan for 2025, ADVANCE, aiming mainly to deliver a strong financial performance, and to decarbonize the planet by pursuing its CO2 emission reduction targets.



The company also plans to invest in the markets of the future.



The company projects an acceleration in sales growth reaching a pace of 5 to 6% on average per year, and a return on capital employed or ROCE of more than 10% starting from 2023.



Operating margin is expected to improve by more than 160 basis points over 4 years to 2025, with a dynamic pricing policy, regular efficiencies and an active management of portfolio of activities.



Investment decisions will be increased to reach about 16 billion euros over the 2022-2025 period, half of the industrial investments will be in energy transition. On average, the annual amount of industrial decisions increases by 45%.



The company also projects a reduction of CO2 emissions in absolute terms starting around 2025.



Air Liquide aims to reduce by a third its emissions by 2035 and to reach carbon neutrality by 2050 while supporting its customers in their decarbonization process.



Benoit Potier, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, said, 'With ADVANCE, financial performance as well as environmental and societal performances are combined in our objectives. For Air Liquide, building the future means delivering strong financial results, as it is a condition to our durability and our ability to invest for the future; but it also means to act as a leader in decarbonization of the industry, to promote progress through technological innovation and to act for all.'







Copyright(c) 2022 RTTNews.com. All Rights Reserved



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

AIR LIQUIDE-Aktie komplett kostenlos handeln - auf Smartbroker.de
Regulatory News:

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220322006149/en/

AD HOC ANNOUNCEMENT PURSUANT TO ART. 53 LR

CSL Behring AG, Berne, Switzerland, a wholly-owned subsidiary of global biotechnology leader CSL Limited (ASX: CSL; USOTC: CSLLY), today announced the provisional notice of the end result of its public tender offer to acquire all publicly held shares of Vifor Pharma Ltd. (SIX:VIFN; ISIN:CH0364749348) for USD 179.25 per share as indicated in the offer prospectus of 18 January 2022.

According to the provisional end result, taking into account the Vifor Pharma shares held by the offeror and the persons acting in concert with the offeror at the end of the additional acceptance period and the Vifor Pharma shares tendered during the main offer period and the additional acceptance period, CSL's participation at the end of the additional acceptance period on 22 March 2022 amounts to a total of 94 percent of all listed Vifor Pharma shares as of 22 March 2022, subject to the completion of the offer. The provisional notice of the end result is available at www.csltransaction.com.

The definitive notice of the end result is expected to be published on 28 March 2022 and will contain statements as to the satisfaction of the offer conditions and as to the settlement of the offer, subject to the satisfaction or waiver of all offer conditions. CSL already waived the 80% acceptance rate condition set forth in the offer prospectus and declared the tender offer successful in the definitive notice of the interim result.

About Vifor Pharma Group

Vifor Pharma Group is a global pharmaceuticals company. It aims to become the global leader in iron deficiency and nephrology. The company is a partner of choice for pharmaceuticals and innovative patient-focused solutions across iron, dialysis, nephrology and rare conditions. Vifor Pharma Group strives to help patients around the world with severe, chronic and rare diseases lead better, healthier lives. It specializes in strategic global partnering, in-licensing and developing, manufacturing and marketing pharmaceutical products for precision patient care. Vifor Pharma Group holds a leading position in all its core business activities and includes the companies: Vifor Pharma, Sanifit Therapeutics, and Vifor Fresenius Medical Care Renal Pharma (a joint company with Fresenius Medical Care). Vifor Pharma Group is headquartered in Switzerland and listed on the Swiss Stock Exchange (SIX Swiss Exchange, VIFN, ISIN: CH0364749348). For more information, please visit viforpharma.com

About CSL

CSL (ASX: CSL; USOTC: CSLLY) is a leading global biotechnology company with a dynamic portfolio of life-saving medicines, including those that treat hemophilia and immune deficiencies, as well as vaccines to prevent influenza. Since our start in 1916, we have been driven by our promise to save lives using the latest technologies. Today, CSL including our two businesses, CSL Behring and Seqirus- provides life-saving products to more than 100 countries and employs more than 25,000 people. Our unique combination of commercial strength, R&D focus and operational excellence enables us to identify, develop and deliver innovations so our patients can live life to the fullest. For more information visit csl.com.

Legal Disclaimers

Important Additional Information

This release is for informational purposes only and does not constitute, or form part of, any offer or invitation to purchase, sell or issue, or any solicitation of any offer to sell, purchase or subscribe for any registered shares or other equity securities in Vifor Pharma Ltd., nor shall it form the basis of, or be relied on in connection with, any contract therefor. This release is not part of the offer documentation relating to the tender offer. Terms and conditions of the tender offer have been published in CSL's offer prospectus regarding the tender offer. Shareholders of Vifor Pharma Ltd. are urged to read the tender offer documents, including the offer prospectus, which are or will be available at www.CSLtransaction.com.

Certain Offer Restrictions

The tender offer is not made, directly or indirectly, in any country or jurisdiction in which it would be considered unlawful or otherwise violate any applicable laws or regulations, or which would require CSL or any of its subsidiaries to change or amend the terms or conditions of the tender offer in any material way, to make an additional filing with any governmental, regulatory or other authority or take additional action in relation to the tender offer. It is not intended to extend the tender offer to any such country or jurisdiction. Any documents relating to the tender offer must neither be distributed in any such country or jurisdiction nor be sent into such country or jurisdiction, and must not be used for the purpose of soliciting the sale or purchase of securities of Vifor Pharma Ltd. by any person or entity resident or incorporated in any such country or jurisdiction.

The tender offer is made in the United States pursuant to Section 14(e) of, and Regulation 14E under, the U.S. Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the "U.S. Exchange Act"), subject to the applicable exemptions provided by Rule 14d-1 under the U.S. Exchange Act and Rule 14e-5(b) under the U.S. Exchange Act and any exemptions that may be granted by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC") and otherwise in accordance with the requirements of Swiss law. Accordingly, the tender offer is subject to disclosure and other procedural requirements, including with respect to withdrawal rights, settlement procedures and timing of payments that are different from those applicable under U.S. domestic tender offer procedures and laws. Neither the SEC nor any securities commission of any State of the United States has (a) approved or dis-approved of the tender offer; (b) passed upon the merits or fairness of the tender offer; or (c) passed upon the adequacy or accuracy of the disclosure in the offer prospectus. Any representation to the contrary is a criminal offence in the United States.

The communication is not being made by, and has not been approved by, an "authorised person" for the purposes of Section 21 of the U.K. Financial Services and Markets Act 2000.

Reference is made to the offer prospectus for full offer restrictions.

Other Important Additional Information

Forward-Looking Statements

This announcement may contain statements that constitute forward-looking statements. The words "anticipate", "believe", "expect", "estimate", "aim", "project", "forecast", "estimate", "risk", "likely", "intend", "outlook", "should", "could", "would", "may", "will", "continue", "plan", "probability", "indicative", "seek", "target", "plan" and other similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements.

Any such statements, opinions and estimates in this announcement speak only as of the date hereof and are based on assumptions and contingencies subject to change without notice, as are statements about market and industry trends, projections, guidance and estimates. Forward-looking statements are provided as a general guide only. The forward-looking statements in this announcement are not indications, guarantees or predictions of future performance and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, many of which are beyond the control of CSL, its officers, employees, agents and advisors, and may involve significant elements of subjective judgement and assumptions as to future events which may or may not be correct, and may cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in such statements. You are strongly cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements.

This announcement is not financial product or investment advice, a recommendation to acquire or sell securities or accounting, legal or tax advice. It does not constitute an invitation or offer to apply for securities. It has been prepared without taking into account the objectives, financial or tax situation or needs of individuals. Before making an investment decision, prospective investors should consider the appropriateness of the information having regard to their own objectives, financial and tax situation and needs and seek legal and taxation advice appropriate for their jurisdiction. CSL is not licensed to provide financial product advice in respect of an investment in securities.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220322006149/en/

Contacts:

Media Relations

Nathalie Ponnier

Global Head Corporate Communications

+41 79 957 96 73

media@viforpharma.com

Investor Relations

Laurent de Weck

Investor Relations Treasury Senior Manager

+41 58 851 80 95

investors@viforpharma.com

CSL



Australia Asia Pacific

Jemimah Brennan

P: +61 412 635 483

E: Jemimah.Brennan@csl.com.au



Switzerland Europe

Martin Meier-Pfister (IRF)

P: 41 432 448 140

E: meier-pfister@irf-reputation.ch

United States Rest of World

Tom Hushen

P: 267-769-6728

E: Thomas.Hushen@cslbehring.com
Regulatory News:

Air Liquide (Paris: Al) signed a share purchase agreement with a financial institution in the context of its Share Buyback Program, which was approved at the Combined Shareholders' Meeting of the Company on May 4th, 2021.

The terms of the agreement, signed on March 23rd, 2022, set a volume of 1,200,000 Air Liquide shares (representing 0.25% of the share capital of the Group as of 23/03/2022) for a maximum price not exceeding the limits authorized by the Combined Shareholders' Meeting of May 4th, 2021 and the Board of Directors Meeting held on September 29th, 2021 (i.e. 200 per share).

The initial purchase price (150.74 per share) matches the share price upon closing of the stock market on the day preceding the signing date of the agreement, leading to an initial total purchase price of 180,888,000. This initial purchase price will be adjusted at the end of the share purchase period set in the share purchase agreement, such an adjustment being subject to a dedicated press release.

The shares purchased pursuant to this agreement shall in part be canceled by the Company and in part be affected to the implementation of performance share plans or employee share ownership transactions of the Company.

Details on the Share Buyback Programme can be found in the 2021 Universal Registration Document (Chapter 6 Board of Directors' report on the resolutions presented to the Combined General Meeting), available on the Company's website.

A world leader in gases, technologies and services for Industry and Health, Air Liquide is present in 75 countries with approximately 66,400 employees and serves more than 3.8 million customers and patients. Oxygen, nitrogen and hydrogen are essential small molecules for life, matter and energy. They embody Air Liquide's scientific territory and have been at the core of the company's activities since its creation in 1902.

Air Liquide's ambition is to be a leader in its industry, deliver long term performance and contribute to sustainability with a strong commitment to climate change and energy transition at the heart of its strategy. The company's customer-centric transformation strategy aims at profitable, regular and responsible growth over the long term. It relies on operational excellence, selective investments, open innovation and a network organization implemented by the Group worldwide. Through the commitment and inventiveness of its people, Air Liquide leverages energy and environment transition, changes in healthcare and digitization, and delivers greater value to all its stakeholders.

Air Liquide's revenue amounted to more than 23 billion euros in 2021. Air Liquide is listed on the Euronext Paris stock exchange (compartment A) and belongs to the CAC 40, CAC 40 ESG, EURO STOXX 50 and FTSE4Good indexes.

www.airliquide.com

Follow us on Twitter @airliquidegroup

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220323005406/en/

Contacts:

Corporate Communications

media@airliquide.com

Group Financing Treasury Director

Guillaume.Serey@airliquide.com

Investor Relations

IRTeam@airliquide.com
: M123 (), : WashingtonDC

 : The scoundrel listened to the slanderous rumor that he wanted to be a scoundrel to the end and decla

: BBS  (Tue Mar 22 21:20:40 2022, )



The scoundrel listened to the slanderous rumor that he wanted to be a

scoundrel to the end and declared bankruptcy to prevent the fine from being

paid

This is ridiculous, See you at PrisonGuo Liar!



In the past few days, the huge fine surrounding Guo Wengui has kept him in a

state of high stress, even using sleeping pills that have "no side effects"

. After all, Guo Wengui himself has never been one to respond positively to

such negative news, but today, Mr. Tang Han's tweet shows that Guo Wengui

did not pay the fine, but chose to find ways to continue to bypass it, and

even chose to file for bankruptcy for this reason, listening to the

slanderous words of ants treat the U.S. law as a child's play?

The company has been banned from leaving the United States because of

various lawsuits, as Guo Wengui revealed in his live broadcast that he could

not travel to the United Kingdom and Japan, which "invited him". In the

past few days, there has been controversy over whether or not Guo Wengui

will pay the fine. 134 million dollars is by no means a small amount for Guo

Wengui, who has just returned 480 million dollars in GTV fraud and paid

more than 30 million dollars in fines, with H-coin not being able to

replenish the huge deficit, and when the news was announced on the 9th, Guo

Wengui had said on air that he would "sue the court" because the regulations

invoked by the court and the resulting sentence violate the law, the yacht

does not belong to them, so the court cannot require them to pay the fine

for the yacht. Such an operation looks very exciting, only to have no effect

on the injunction that has been issued, the fine that should be paid will

not be less than one point.

The yacht, which originally belonged to Guo Wengui, was transferred to

another person's name, proving how hypocritical Guo Wengui is, and according

to Mr. Tang Han's documents, Guo Wengui is even more hypocritical by

claiming to the court that he is bankrupt and has a monthly income of nearly

$20,000, which comes from gifts from family, relatives and friends. Let's

not talk about how many relatives and friends Guo Wengui has left, but just

looking at Guo Wengui's claim of "no income", we can see that he is a

complete hypocrite. After all, Guo Wengui is a self-proclaimed tycoon and

uses this identity to go out and cheat, giving ants the illusion that he

is not short of money on the one hand, and the illusion that he can make

money and has good projects on the other. The bankruptcy list submitted by

Guo Wengui, about the compensation of Cheng Shuiyan, Guo Baosheng and others

, as well as some of the lawsuits of the awakened little ants, Guo Wengui

asked for a write-off, such a ridiculous request, I am afraid that only this

madman on the verge of pressure will come up with.

It can be seen that since the experience of GTV refund, Guo Wengui can be

said to be a penny do not want to pay out, and even used a "personal

bankruptcy" such bullshit reason to avoid punishment. You know, the first

step to personal bankruptcy is to auction personal property to liquidate

debts, Guo Wengui is trying to use the characteristics of his own name no

property to escape debt. But one thing he didn't learn from the GTV

investigation and yacht seizure is that the American judiciary doesn't look

at personal property, but at the ultimate beneficiary.GTV made Guo Wengui

rich, and even though he let others act as legal persons through layers of

proxy, he was the boss, but the SEC's investigation still lifted the fog and

caught him as the "boss behind the scenes". "Lady may, a yacht wholly

purchased by Guo Wengui, was transferred to someone else's name afterwards,

but Guo Wengui has been enjoying his life on it, which is why the New York

court ruled that it was Guo Wengui's property and forced it to be frozen as

an offsetting property. After so many examples, Guo Wengui still did not

learn a lesson, because his heart "criminal thinking", think that as long as

the law does not matter, they can exploit the idea, to avoid punishment and

get away with it. For this criminal, I only hope that this time the New

York federal court can give him a good lesson, with the means of jail to let

this crook completely understand that crime is to pay the price.

But the price should be paid by Guo Wengui himself, not by the ants who

were cheated and kept in the dark. Now Guo Wengui is taking the money from

the ants and seeking more benefits for his selfish self, transferring

the money to his family trust and trying to continue to "live in luxury"

after he is released from prison, which is extremely unfair to the ants

who have worked hard all their lives and have been cheated for a while.

Therefore, I hope that the court, while speeding up the case, will freeze

Guo Wengui's existing property as much as possible, and use legal means to

force Guo Wengui to return the fraudulent money while trying his series of

fraud cases, especially the recent H-coin case, so that the ants will

not suffer greater losses. As for this fraudster, I just hope he spends the

rest of his life in prison and never comes out to harm people again!

--

 :WWW  mitbbs.com [FROM: 43.]


Alter Domus, a leading provider of integrated solutions for the alternative investment industry, announces the appointment of Vincent Georgel O'Reilly as Head of Financial Institutions Strategic Partnerships. Based in Luxembourg, Vincent will report to Alter Domus' Chief Executive Officer, Doug Hart, and will become a member of Alter Domus' Group Executive Board.

Vincent joins Alter Domus from State Street where he led the alternatives segment for EMEA and was a member of their Executive Operating Group and EMEA Management Committee. He is an experienced global business leader with an advanced experience set in mergers and acquisitions, new revenue generation, and executive relationship build-up in banking, insurance, and asset management, including a heavy focus on alternatives.

In his new role, Vincent will lead the launch of Alter Domus' new business channel focused on strategic partnerships, lift-outs and acquisitions of financial operations divisions inside financial institutions, asset allocators, and global alternative investment managers.

Doug Hart, CEO, Alter Domus, said: "We look forward to welcoming Vincent to the Alter Domus Group and the executive team. Vincent's highly regarded business acumen in alternatives and experience working with strategic leaders in our industry will immediately bring value to the company. Similarly, as the global leader in alternative asset servicing, Vincent will be able to leverage the deep experience and capabilities of Alter Domus on day-one to build his new business."

Vincent will join Alter Domus in May 2022.

About Alter Domus

Alter Domus is a leading provider of integrated solutions, serving private equity, real assets and debt capital markets sectors with more than 3,600 employees across 36 offices globally. Solely dedicated to alternatives, Alter Domus offers fund administration, corporate services, depositary services, capital administration, transfer pricing, domiciliation, management company services, loan administration, agency services, trade settlement and CLO manager services.

Find out more at www.alterDomus.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220323005094/en/

Contacts:

Press

Lindsay Drake

Marketing Content Manager

+352 661 892 226

Lindsay.Drake@alterDomus.com
Enhanced mobility trends data will enable better decision-making

NEW YORK, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Unacast, a global location data and analytics firm, announced today that it has expanded its human mobility data solution to include trends for the UK. Customers will now have access to clean, location data-based trends across the UK that provide precise foot traffic insights that will enable better business decisions.

This expansion comes on the heels of the company's launch of international aggregated data sets. The UK trends capability builds on that launch to provide a deeper level of analysis into these data sets. This provides insight into foot traffic for specific locations and areas, allowing businesses to see how foot traffic in their stores compare to similar stores around them.

Unacast has done extensive work to aggregate and clean the data, allowing customers to choose any number of places and define the exact geographic area to capture only the foot traffic they want to understand, rather than muddling the data with incidental traffic that is not relevant for their needs.

These trends represent a new level of precision, allowing businesses to retrieve data for any level of granularity, such as a particular store front, a chain of hotels, a park or a city limit to provide accessible location data they can use to make business decisions. Unacast's process maintains enough granularity to provide helpful demographics while keeping the identity of consumers safe.

Frode Bjerke, chief technology officer, Unacast, said: "Businesses need aggregated, usable data about visitation trends in the UK to make business decisions and potentially open up new revenue streams. With this new offering, customers in the UK or with UK-based businesses or offices can now use our data-based trends to achieve greater insight into foot traffic within specific geographic outlines."

About Unacast

Unacast is a human mobility data company committed to understanding how people move around on the planet. Sophisticated and data-driven commercial real estate professionals, retailers, researchers, analysts and data scientists use our Real World Graph, the most accurate understanding of human activity in the physical world. Visit us online at www.unacast.com .

Logo- https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1740858/Acct_2434697_Unacast_logo_Logo.jpg
Morrow Sodali, the global investor engagement and governance consulting firm, today announced that Enzo Quattrociocche has joined the firm as a Senior Advisor. Based in London, Mr Quattrociocche's primary focus will be on providing strategic counsel around key governance, stewardship and sustainability matters impacting corporate long term value creation for the firm's clients.

Mr Quattrociocche has many years of experience leading significant organizations, including over 25 years at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), where he was the Secretary General from 2009 to 2021, and prior to this role he was a member of the Board of Directors for Italy. He has also held management positions at the Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF), where he reached the rank of Director General, as well as the International Monetary Fund.

During his tenure as Secretary General of the EBRD, Mr Quattrociocche led and successfully delivered twelve EBRD Annual Meetings, as well as leading successful high-level negotiations on new memberships, most notably with China, India, Libya, Lebanon and San Marino. He also engaged with the EBRD's resident Board of Directors daily, ensuring high standards of corporate governance in the institutional decision-making process of the bank.

Christian Sealey, Morrow Sodali's CEO International, commented, "We are very excited to welcome Enzo Quattrociocche to our team. His prestigious background in international finance institutions and government ministries brings a wealth of experience to Morrow Sodali that will benefit both our clients and employees. Given his impressive reputation, I believe that his appointment has vast potential for growth and value creation within the firm and for our corporate clients."

"I am thrilled to be part of the Morrow Sodali family and help the company achieve its growth goals. I have spent the bulk of my career in international financial institutions and I look forward to providing my understanding of the investment management landscape, along with hands-on governance expertise and insights on issues of strategic importance to the firm's current and future customers," Enzo said.

For further information about Morrow Sodali, please visit www.morrowsodali.com.

ABOUT MORROW SODALI

Morrow Sodali is a global corporate advisory firm that provides clients with comprehensive advice and services relating to corporate governance, ESG, sustainability, proxy solicitation, capital markets intelligence, shareholder and bondholder engagement, M&A, and activism and contested situations.

From headquarters in New York and London and offices in global capital markets, Morrow Sodali serves more than 700 clients in 80+ countries, including many of the world's largest multinational corporations. Clients include listed and private companies, mutual fund groups, stock exchanges and membership associations.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220322005827/en/

Contacts:

Elena Cargnello, Corporate Director of Marketing

e.cargnello@morrowsodali.com

+44 204 5136913
SANDWELL, England, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- West Midlands businesses are invited to attend a 'meet the buyer' event, being organised to highlight the potential supply chain opportunities that will be available during the three-year construction of enfinium Kelvin, a new waste-to-energy facility being developed on Kelvin Way in West Bromwich.

Construction of the facility started at the end of 2021 and is being managed by EPC (Engineering, Procurement and Construction) contractor ACCIONA on behalf of enfinium. When operational, the facility will divert 395,000 tonnes of non-recyclable household and business waste from landfill or export overseas. Instead, it will use this residual waste to generate 44MW (gross) of renewable baseload energy per annum, equivalent to the needs of more than 95,000 UK homes.

The meet the buyer event is being organised by enfinium and ACCIONA for businesses working across the West Midlands who believe they may have goods or services that will be relevant to the construction or operation of enfinium Kelvin.

The drop-in style event will offer delegates the opportunity to meet individually with representatives of the host companies to discuss their skills and experience, while also finding out more about the project's intended approach to procurement over the coming years. The day will be split into three separate sessions:

08:00-10:30 Construction and civil engineering

11:00-15:00 Ancillary and site support services

16:00-17:30 Construction and civil engineering

Mike Maudsley, Chief Executive Officer at enfinium, said "Major infrastructure projects are uniquely placed to create significant numbers of jobs and great supply chain opportunities for local businesses. We're absolutely committed to ensuring businesses operating locally to our enfinium Kelvin project can put themselves in the best position to compete for the significant opportunities we'll be creating in the coming years. I would encourage any business that thinks it can contribute goods or services to go online and register their interest for this event."

Reyes Pardo Rodriguez, Head of Procurement at ACCIONA, said "The construction of enfinium Kelvin is still in its early stages but we've already started to recruit and build a supply chain that draws from West Bromwich and the region more generally. It is clear there are a lot of businesses here that have great experience to offer our project. We're looking forward to meeting them and explaining how they can get involved."

Jessica Lewis, Assistant Director of External Engagement at Sandwell College, said "We are delighted to be able to host such a fantastic event and look forward to welcoming businesses across the region to our Vocational Campus in the heart of West Bromwich. Working with businesses, large and small, is extremely important to us. We are experts in recruiting apprentices across the region and provide a free recruitment service. Sandwell College has excellent links to industry, and our learners benefit from industry experts linked to each of our specialist areas through employer boards."

The event will take place at Sandwell College's Spon Lane campus between 07:30 and 17:30 on Thursday 21 April. Places are limited and businesses wishing to attend should visit www.enfinium.co.uk/kelvin before 12 noon on Monday 4 April, to register their interest.

Successful applicants will then receive confirmation of their place at the event by close of play on Monday 11 April.

For more information about the event please call 0800 860 6251 or email kelvin@enfinium.co.uk.

Notes to editor:

About enfinium

enfinium is the largest pure play waste-to-energy business in the U.K. and is an industry leader in the conversion of non-recyclable residential and business waste into heat and partially renewable power. enfinium currently has a platform of seven (two in construction and one under advanced development) strategically located facilities across the U.K. Today, enfinium has an annual waste processing capacity of over 2.3 million tonnes, and a total combined electric generating capacity of 247MW (gross) - enough energy to power more than 500,000 U.K. homes. The vision "Make a difference today to deliver a cleaner tomorrow" speaks to the company's ongoing commitment to the development of clean and renewable energy solutions for its customers and local communities. For more on enfinium, please visit www.enfinium.co.uk.

About ACCIONA

ACCIONA is a global group that develops and manages sustainable infrastructure solutions, especially in renewable energy. It business spans the entire value chain, from design and construction through to operation and maintenance. ACCIONA's goal is to lead the transition towards a low-carbon economy, bringing technical excellence and innovation to all of its projects to design a better planet. With a presence in more than 40 countries and sales of 8,104 billion in 2021, the company is committed to contributing to the economic and social development of the communities in which it operates. For more on ACCIONA, please visit www.acciona.com.

About Igneo Infrastructure Partners

Igneo is an autonomous investment team in the First Sentier Investors Group. It invests in high-quality, mature, mid-market infrastructure companies in the utilities and transport sectors in the UK, Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand. Operating since 1994, the team works closely with portfolio companies to create long-term sustainable value through innovation, a focus on ESG and proactive asset management. Igneo manages US$14.8 billion worth of assets (as at 31 December 2021) on behalf of more than 120 institutional investors around the world. For more information, visit www.igneoip.com.
"Open Learning Format" will accelerate the global digital education transformation

BREA, Calif., March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- ViewSonic Corp. , a leading global provider of visual solutions, showcases its latest education technologies at the BETT show from March 23rd to March 25th. myViewBoard Sens is embedded with AI technology that increases students' engagement and facilitates wellness compliance in the classroom. Moreover, ViewSonic introduces an open standard file format "Open Learning Format (.olf )". This file format is a revolution in the global educational technology (EdTech) industry, overcoming many digital whiteboarding barriers. Furthermore, "ViewSonic Universe", an interactive 3D world for education, is unveiled, leading further EdTech developments.

"ViewSonic is fundamentally committed to transforming global digital education and leading educational innovations. We have developed a total EdTech solution by integrating hardware and software. We created the myViewBoard education ecosystem, which currently has more than 5 million global users," said Bonny Cheng, COO of ViewSonic. "Our innovation didn't stop there. ViewSonic embraces emerging technologies and implements them into our education solutions. We observed the issues our users faced with open formats for digital teaching and learning, and from there, we created .olf in hopes that it will be available to all and beneficial to the education industry."

Better Engagement and Wellness with AI Technology

myViewBoard Sens can help schools gain insights into student engagement and foster an active learning environment. It detects students' attentiveness by analyzing human pose and environmental factors that may affect students' focus. These data help teachers make adjustments to their lessons.

As the pandemic continued, student wellness became an increased area of focus. Schools faced challenges with ensuring health and safety in classrooms. With myViewBoard Sens, schools can accurately measure wellness compliance. The data includes temperature, humidity, occupancy rate, audience masking, and close contact index.

To help schools monitor and manage classrooms easily, a dashboard shows these indexes and calculates the engagement and compliance levels in all rooms. If the ratings are not as expected, measures can be taken using the tailored suggestions on the dashboard, such as adjusting lesson plans or teaching environment.

Open Learning Format: Driving Openness in EdTech

The company's myViewBoard platform is cloud-based and operable across multiple operating systems, which includes Windows, Android, and, in the latest update, iOS.

ViewSonic's development of .olf is an extension of the company's open-ecosystem approach. It is an open standard file format that works on any device or digital whiteboarding software. It provides a common and extendable file format that is simple to open, edit, and save. By solving file-conversion and compatibility issues, .olf represents a major breakthrough in the digital learning industry.

Universe: Forging the Future of Learning

Universe By ViewSonic, an interactive 3D world for education, is ViewSonic's latest innovation in education technology. The development started in the first quarter of 2021 when the world was largely impacted by COVID-19, to address the challenges of using incumbent remote learning tools and applications.

Universe is a fit-to-purpose meta-learning space that provides transformative education technology to forge the future of learning. ViewSonic is exploring ways of co-creating with schools across the US, Europe and Greater Asia, such as the School of Education, University of Wolverhampton in the UK to bring this vision to life.

Comprehensive Digital Education Experiences

ViewSonic's products range across the EdTech spectrum, suitable for all kinds of learning setups, whether it is in-class or outside the confines of a traditional classroom.

For in-class engagement, ViewSonic's ViewBoard series of interactive display panels offer an incredible degree of flexibility, ranging in sizes from 24" to 100". Besides the 100" ViewBoard interactive displays, which are usually used for larger venues, ViewSonic's All-in-One Direct View LED Displays range from 108" to 216", and are designed to deliver amazing visual performance. Going even larger, the company's projectors can display images at a scale of up to 300" in a single projection. For remote and hybrid learning setups, ViewSonic offers portable devices such as pen displays and the 16" TD1655 touch monitor, which can be connected both to laptops and mobile devices.

To help assist school administrators in managing digital learning setups, ViewSonic has developed myViewBoard Manager, which allows IT departments to oversee and control their institutions' devices remotely. Using this software, schools can effectively manage their digital learning setup, including remote broadcasting of tailored messages, scheduling device operations, and gathering insights.

Visit ViewSonic at BETT 2022, ExCel London, booth No. SF40. To find more info please visit https://www.viewsonic.com/uk/bett2022.

To learn more about how Universe by ViewSonic can impact your students' learning, please visit https://universe.viewsonic.io/.

About ViewSonic

Founded in California, ViewSonic is a leading global provider of visual solutions and conducts business in over 100 countries worldwide. As an innovator and visionary, ViewSonic is committed to providing comprehensive hardware and software solutions that include monitors, projectors, digital signage, ViewBoard interactive displays, and myViewBoard software ecosystem. With over 30 years of expertise in visual displays, ViewSonic has established a strong position for delivering innovative and reliable solutions for education, enterprise, consumer, and professional markets and helping customers "See the Difference."

To find out more about ViewSonic, please visit www.viewsonic.com.

This news release contains forward-looking statements that reflect the Company's expectations with regard to future events. Actual events could differ significantly from those anticipated in this document. Program, pricing, specifications, and availability are subject to change without notice. ViewSonic and the ViewSonic trademarks are trademarks or registered trademarks of ViewSonic Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. All other corporate names and trademarks stated herein are the property of their respective companies.

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1770012/Image_1_Scenario_Photo_myViewBoard_Sens.jpg

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1587181/Logo.jpg
The "Europe Educational Robot Market Forecast to 2028 COVID-19 Impact and Regional Analysis By Type (Humanoid and Non-Humanoid) and Application (Primary Education, Secondary Education, Higher Education, and Others)" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

Higher Education Segment to Dominate Europe Educational Robot Market during 2020-2028.

According to a new market research study on "Europe Educational Robot Market to 2028 COVID-19 Impact and Regional Analysis and Forecast by Type and Application," is expected to reach US$ 927.73 million by 2028 from US$ 248.12 million in 2021. The market is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 20.7% from 2021 to 2028. The report provides trends prevailing in the Europe educational robot market along with the drivers and restraints pertaining to the market growth. Use of robots for autism is the major factor driving the growth of the Europe educational robot market. However, the huge capital required for research development of robots hinder the growth of the Europe educational robot market.

Europe is one of the key regions for the growth of the educational robot market with the presence of many developed countries such as Germany, UK, France, Italy, Norway, and Sweden, where education spending is quite high in comparison to other regions coupled with high investments in robotic startups. Also, the high adoption of advanced technology solutions in various industries makes this region an ideal market for the growth of educational robot market. All these countries are characterized by the presence of large number of companies, especially in the education technology sector. Presently, Russia, UK, Spain, Italy, Germany, Turkey, and France are some of the major countries that are affected in a negative manner due to COVID-19 outbreak. Due to COVID-19 outbreak, the governments in various European countries have imposed lockdowns/movement restrictions and closed the educational institutions to contain the outbreak. This is expected to negatively impact the demand for educational robots from these institutions. Moreover, the rapid spread of the covid-19 infection has also disrupted the supply chain of the market thereby negatively impacting the growth of the market.

The market for educational robot market is segmented into type, application, and country. Based on type, the educational robot market is segmented into humanoid and non-humanoid. In 2020, the non-humanoid segment held the largest share Europe educational robot market. Based on application the educational robot market is categorized into primary education and secondary education, higher education and others In 2020, the higher education segment held the largest share Europe educational robot market. Based on the country the educational robot market is categorized into Germany, France, Italy, UK, Russia, Rest of Europe.

Aisoy Robotics; Lego System A/S; PAL Robotics; Sanbot Innovation Technology. Ltd; SoftBank Robotics Group Corp. are among the leading companies in the Europe educational robot market. The companies are focused on adopting organic growth strategies such as product launches and expansions to sustain their position in the dynamic market. For instance, in 2016 Aisoy Robotics announced its joint venture with UMH Researchers to further expand its competencies of their robot-assistant for treating children suffering from autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

Key Topics Covered:

1. Introduction

1.1 Scope of the Study

1.2 Research Report Guidance

1.3 Market Segmentation

2. Key Takeaways

3. Research Methodology

3.1 Coverage

3.2 Secondary Research

3.3 Primary Research

4. Europe Educational Robot Market Landscape

4.1 Market Overview

4.2 PEST Analysis

4.2.1 Europe PEST Analysis

4.3 Ecosystem Analysis

4.4 Expert Opinion

5. Europe Educational Robot Market Key Market Dynamics

5.1 Key Market Drivers

5.1.1 Growing Focus Towards STEM Education

5.1.2 Use of Robots for Autism

5.2 Key Market Restraints

5.2.1 Huge Capital Required for Research Development of Robots

5.3 Key Market Opportunities

5.3.1 Rising Demand for Robots for Learning Language

5.4 Future Trends

5.4.1 Combination of Artificial Intelligence

5.5 Impact Analysis of Drivers and Restraints

6. Educational Robot Market Europe Market Analysis

6.1 Europe Educational Robot Market Forecast And Analysis

7. Europe Educational Robot Market By Type

7.1 Overview

7.2 Europe Educational Robot Market Breakdown, By Type, 2020 2028

7.3 Humanoid

7.4 Non-Humanoid

8. Europe Educational Robot Market By Application

8.1 Overview

8.2 Europe Educational Robot Market Breakdown, By Application, 2020 2028

8.3 Primary Education

8.4 Secondary Education

8.5 Higher Education

8.6 Others

9. Europe Educational Robot Market Country Analysis

9.1 Overview

9.1.1 Europe Educational Robot Market Revenue And Forecast to 2028 (US$ Mn)

9.1.2 Europe Educational Robot Market Breakdown, By Country

10. Europe Educational Robot Market COVID-19 Impact Analysis

10.1 Overview

10.2 Europe

11. Educational Robot Market Industry Landscape

11.1 Overview

11.2 Market Initiative

11.3 New Product Development

11.4 Merger and Acquisition

12. Company Profiles

13. Appendix

Companies Mentioned

Aisoy Robotics

Lego System A/S

PAL Robotics

Sanbot Innovation Technology., Ltd

SoftBank Robotics Group Corp.

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/rtdsc1

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220323005464/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
Trailblazing multi-beam terminal is the first-ever antenna able to simultaneously connect with satellites in all orbits, unleashing a new age in connectivity

The final round of tests pave the way for commercial launch in 2022

READING, England and WASHINGTON, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Isotropic Systems, the leading multi-link satellite ground terminal provider, announces that it has completed all tests demonstrating that its multi-link terminal can connect to satellites in LEO, MEO and GEO orbits, simultaneously. The tests ensured continuous, full aperture performance across all links to multiple orbits, enabling full multiplication and aggregation of data connectivity.

This announcement follows a series of field tests in various situations, including high-speed links with LEO satellites and simultaneous connections between MEO and GEO satellites for both commercial and military scenarios. The tests with the U.S. Army were part of the U.S. Air Force's innovative Defense Experimentation Using Commercial Space Internet (DEUCSI) program and demonstrated the terminal's unique abilities to maintain connectivity under challenging Military conditions. Separate tests with Telesat and SES confirmed the terminals' effectiveness across all satellite orbits with a range of civil and commercial applications. With the technology now proven, Isotropic Systems is expected to unlock unparalleled connectivity and significant enterprise opportunities for end-users.

To date, it has only been possible to connect to a single satellite at a time, obstructing users from harnessing the full capabilities of satellites. Never achieved before and with the potential to reshape the communications industry, Isotropic Systems' terminal simultaneously connects to different satellites in separate orbits with a single antenna, without any comprise in the performance of each link. Re-defining the global satellite ecosystems, the multi-beam antenna offers limitless connectivity across a range of sectors, including government, defence, maritime, enterprise and aerospace.

John Finney, Isotropic Systems Founder and CEO, said: "Our next-gen multi-beam antenna has shown its full potential to unlock a new age of multi-orbit connectivity. With thousands of satellite constellations launching in the coming years, our technology is critical to unlocking the full benefits of the enhanced broadband connectivity."

"We have completed various rigorous tests on the defence front by demonstrating our multi-beam and orbit capabilities with the U.S. Army and have also demonstrated unique multi-orbit connectivity alongside Telesat, SES and others."

"We are thrilled to provide the unprecedented capability of meshing networks without comprising efficiency, preparing ourselves for our product launch later this year."

About Isotropic Systems

With offices in the UK and U.S., Isotropic Systems is developing the world's first multi-service, high-bandwidth, low power, fully integrated high throughput terminals designed to support the satellite industry to 'reach beyond' traditional markets and acquire new customers with a full suite of high throughput services. The company's team of industry experts and scientists has pioneered several firsts in satellite terminal design resulting in a line of terminals that are customizable to meet the performance, cost and power requirements of countless applications - from the most complex government defence systems and mobile backhaul solutions capable of extending 5G, to next-gen connected experiences aboard commercial airliners, cruise ships, offshore rigs, and even small fishing boats at sea.

Investors in Isotropic Systems include Boeing HorizonX Global Ventures, SES and Promus Ventures through its Luxembourg based space investment fund, Orbital Ventures, Seraphim Capital, Firmament Ventures, Space Angels and family office investors such as Waterlow Management Limited. Further information is available at www.isotropicsystems.com

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1771642/Isotropic_Systems.jpg

Logo- https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/808814/Isotropic_Logo.jpg
Brunsbuttel / Hamburg (ots) -Following the latest developments in relation to the construction of an energy terminal in Brunsbuttel, German LNG Terminal GmbH and Shell have now signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on the import of LNG through the terminal. In it, they agree that Shell will make a long-term booking of a substantial part of the Brunsbuttel terminal's capacity for the import of LNG. Both parties are currently working towards a binding agreement on the scope and duration of their partnership, and hope to complete it as soon as possible."The signed MoU with Shell, as well as the noticeable increase in interest from the market, demonstrates the importance of the import terminal in Brunsbuttel," said Dr. Michael Kleemi, Managing Director of German LNG Terminal. "We are looking forward to working with Shell as another partner in the coming years and will do everything in our power to drive planning and implementation forward rapidly. In doing so, the terminal will not only contribute to energy supply security in Germany, but also, in perspective, to the necessary climate-neutral energy supply."Fabian Ziegler, Managing Director of Shell in Germany said: "I am delighted with our agreement with German LNG Terminal. It is a key step in contributing to security of supply in Germany in the near term as well in more widely in Europe. LNG is the most flexible form of gas supply, which can adapt quickly to shifting trade patterns and our diverse and flexible global supply portfolio enables us to deliver and import LNG efficiently where it is needed the most. With LNG we are helping to meet energy demand, as well as helping to limit CO2 emissions - a crucial part of the energy transition - as natural gas is the cleanest-burning hydrocarbon. And in future the terminal should be convertible to hydrogen or derivatives thereof such as ammonia."German LNG Terminal plans to build and operate a combined import and distribution terminal for LNG in Brunsbuttel. The plans foresee an annual throughput capacity of 8 bcm (natural gas). The terminal will consist of two tanks of 165,000 m each for the intermediate storage of LNG, a jetty with two berths for LNG carriers (up to size QMax) and smaller LNG ships as well as facilities for unloading and loading the ships, regasification facilities for conversion back to a gas-ready aggregate state and subsequent injection into the German high-pressure natural gas grid as well as facilities for loading onto tanker trucks, rail tank cars and LNG bunker ships for distribution.The future import of hydrogen or hydrogen derivatives will also be taken into account from the outset in order to prepare suitable plant components for the potential import of alternative energy sources.German LNG Terminal and its partnersIn early March, the Kreditanstalt fur Wiederaufbau (KfW) on behalf of the German government, the Dutch Gasunie LNG Holding B.V. (a subsidiary of the state-owned N.V. Nederlandse Gasunie), and RWE signed a Memorandum of Understanding on the joint promotion of the construction and operation of a multifunctional import and distribution terminal for liquefied natural gas (LNG) in Brunsbuttel. The LNG terminal will be staffed by Gasunie.The choice of a shareholder structure with highly experienced companies is intended to ensure not only that the project is completed as quickly as possible, but also that the plant will be used for climate-neutral energy sources. The possibility of converting the terminal for the import of green hydrogen or its derivatives is planned in from the outset.Pressekontakt:Katja FreitagGerman LNG Terminal GmbHTel.: +49 30 20642-975 / mobile +49 152 21700511katja.freitag@GermanLng.comDr Frank LaurichLaurich & KollegenTel.: + 49 (0)40 75 25 77-990frank.laurich@laurich-kollegen.deCornelia WolberShell Deutschland GmbHTel.: +49 (0) 40 6324 5290shellpresse@shell.comOriginal-Content von: German LNG Terminal GmbH, ubermittelt durch news aktuellOriginalmeldung: https://www.presseportal.de/pm/142930/5178028
StoreDot accomplishes pioneering milestone of producing silicon dominant extreme fast charging cells capable of charging for 1200 cycles

Breakthrough results were achieved in real-world conditions, charging to 80% at room temperature with zero applied pressure

StoreDot now able to quickly advance to producing B-sample cells that global automotive manufacturers will test in future electric vehicles

StoreDot remains firmly on track for the mass production of '100in5' cells by 2024 - capable of achieving 100 miles of range in just five minutes

HERZLIYA, Israel, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- StoreDot, the pioneer of extreme fast charging battery technology for electric vehicles, has now passed the major milestone of being the world's first company to test silicon dominant cells for more than 1000 cycles.

Using a specially designed testing form factor, StoreDot's experts have now exceeded 1200 cycles with cells that are taken to 80% of charge in 15 minutes and then discharged for one hour. These exceptional results have been achieved with a high energy density of 300Wh/kg and 680 Wh/l in real-world conditions at room temperature and with no additional pressure applied.

The company is now beginning to advance to B-samples, using larger form factors, to ship to global automotive manufacturers later this year for testing in future electric vehicles.

Yaron Fein, StoreDot Vice President R&D "I'm hugely proud of our recent achievement. 1200 consecutive cycles of extreme fast charging is a critical milestone that would have been unimaginable just two years ago. This is not only testament to the skill and dedication of StoreDot's world-leading team, but it reaffirms our roadmap of delivering '100in5' cells for global automotive manufacturers within two years, and creating batteries that will transform the experience of electric vehicle drivers by eradicating their charging and range anxieties."

When a lithium battery is charged and discharged once, it is called a cycle and Lithium battery capacity degrades as the cycle number increases. Battery cycle life is measured in cycles, with an industry standard of cycles to 80% capacity often used as a benchmark - and so creating cells that can charge for 1200 cycles whilst maintaining the industry standard is a hugely significant achievement.

StoreDot remains intensely focused on delivering its hype-free technology road map to global automotive companies. This relentless development program extends far into the future, where the target is to deliver 100 miles of range after just two minutes of charge within a decade.

StoreDot's ground-breaking extreme fast charging cells will be available in both pouch and the 4680 family form factor - the formats increasingly favored by the majority of global car manufacturers.

About StoreDot:

StoreDot is a pioneer and leader of extreme fast charging (XFC) batteries that overcome the critical barrier to mainstream EV adoption - range and charging anxiety. The company has revolutionized the conventional Li-ion battery by designing and synthesizing proprietary organic and inorganic compounds, making it possible to fully charge an EV in just five minutes - the same time it takes to refuel a conventional combustion engine vehicle. Through it's '100inX' strategic roadmap, StoreDot's battery technology is optimized for best driver experience with XFC in Li-ion batteries, as well as future technologies for extreme energy-density (XED). StoreDot's strategic investors include VinFast, BP, Daimler, Samsung Ventures and TDK. In 2019, the company achieved a world first by demonstrating the live full charge of a two-wheeled EV in just five minutes. In 2020, the company demonstrated the scalability of its XFC batteries and is on target for Electric Vehicle battery production at scale by 2024.For more information see: www.store-dot.com.

Image: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1772288/StoreDot.jpg
We Are Museums and TZ Connect have announced a new program titled Unlocking Web3 for the Arts and Culture (WAC) , beginning on April 18.

, beginning on April 18. The 8-week program will dive into Web3 through intensive and immersive educational programs, mentorships, and hands-on sessions.

Participants will include leading art and culture institutions exploring Web3 such as museums, galleries, foundations, art fairs, and auction houses.

We Are Museums, an international community of museum professionals, and TZ Connect, a Berlin-based team dedicated to advancing the Tezos ecosystem, announce the launch of a new program titled WAC Fellowship (Web3 for the Arts and Culture) that will begin on April 18. After launching a successful weekly discussion program, WAC Weekly, in December 2021, this new initiative is designed to guide arts and culture professionals through the exciting opportunities provided by Web3 innovations.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220323005168/en/

(Graphic: Business Wire)

Powered by the Tezos ecosystem, the WAC Fellowship is an 8-week program to learn about Web3 and build a project for the arts and culture from scratch, intensive and immersive educational programs, mentorships, and hands-on sessions.

The WAC Fellowship program will focus on three areas: how arts and culture institutions can use Web3 technology to further their mission for social good; the ways institutions can include Web3 in their commitment to environmental justice; and Web3 as a navigation tool through the financial crisis weighing down on the culture sector.

Beginning on April 18, the education program will offer a comprehensive body of knowledge and new practices. Covering the basics of blockchain combined with a set of hands-on and future-thinking sessions to identify new use cases, it is composed of:

Training on NFTs, DAOs, encryption, DeFi, consensus mechanisms, oracles, and more.

Workshop on the futures of the Web3 in Culture and Arts: a UNESCO-inspired Futures Literacy Lab in collaboration with MOTI Foundation.

Blockchain tech reality check: everything that is and isn't possible

possible One-to-one mentoring sessions with technologists and strategists

Weekly informal conversations where fellows meet the people shaping the space today, in collaboration with Blockchain Art Directory 2.0.

Access to resources including the latest press reviews, ecosystem mapping, a knowledge library with tutorials and useful links and bibliographies, and an open-source library to develop new projects, in collaboration with Blockchain Art Directory 2.0.

To apply for the WAC Fellowship program, click here The deadline for applications is April 4 at noon UTC.

On March 28 at 4pm UTC, an informational event will be organized to introduce the WAC Fellowship in detail and answer questions, followed by a creative "Idea Lab" to brainstorm new use cases of Web3 for arts and culture institutions. Interested in joining? Register here.

About We Are Museums:

As a result of a long journey of international conferences and local gatherings, We Are Museums opened its online platform in March 2020 to create more international gatherings, game-changing conversations, and industry-challenge solving programs. Today, the fields of discussion and exchange of the community revolve around the environmental, health and social crises, how museums are redefining their collections, understanding and fostering the development of new immersive technologies in museums, and learning how to envision better futures. https://wearemuseums.com/

About TZ Connect:

TZ Connect is a Berlin-based team that builds open-source software, provides support to projects and companies building on Tezos, and bridges different players within the Tezos ecosystem. https://www.tzconnect.com/en/

About Tezos:

Tezos is smart money, redefining what it means to hold and exchange value in a digitally connected world. A self-upgradable and energy-efficient blockchain with a proven track record, Tezos seamlessly adopts tomorrow's innovations without network disruptions today. For more information, please visit https://tezos.com/.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220323005168/en/

Contacts:

Reid Yager reid.yager@tzconnect.com
Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - March 23, 2022) - Roscan Gold Corporation ("Roscan" or the "Company") (TSXV: ROS) (FSE: 2OJ) (OTCQB: RCGCF) is pleased to announce positive Reverse Circulation ("RC") drilling results at Kabaya (Figure 1) from an additional 53 holes totaling 5,969 meters (m) at Kabaya.

In order to both discover new gold zones outside our existing resource area and to expand the potential gold resources in our existing resource at Kabaya, Roscan designed an aggressive RC drilling program. This drilling was comprised of 60% step-out holes to test for new gold zones along the North South strike from KB1 to cover the underexplored zone between KB1 and KB3. The remaining 40% of the RC drill holes were focused on an infill drilling program in KB1 and KB2. The excellent gold recovery of 95.65% in saprolite from the metallurgical test work (News release of October 25, 2021) with near surface mineralization points to the economic potential of these targets.

The current drilling results at KB3 outlines an estimated strike length of 200m, a width of 80m and a 100m vertical depth. This zone is open at depth and laterally. There is an 850m gap between KB3 and KB1-2, the main gold mineralization that is yet to be fully tested.

The infill holes at KB1 and KB2 enlarge the different grade envelopes and has infilled some areas to expand the continuity of the gold mineralization. KB1 and KB2 have a combined strike length of 985m, a horizontal width of 180m wide and still open to 225m vertical depth at KB1.

Drilling Highlights:

Kabaya - Step-out Reverse Circulation Drill Holes

1.98 gpt gold over 11m from drill hole RCDBS22-0078 from 57m (KB3) Including 5.67 gpt gold over 2m from 64m



And

2.09 gpt gold over 21m from 109m Including 4.13 gpt gold over 3m from 121m



4.79 gpt gold over 7m from drill hole RCDBS21-035 from 133m (North of KB1) Including 18 gpt gold over 1m from 137m



1.19 gpt gold over 15m from drill hole RCDBS22-0080 from 33m (KB3) Including 8.99 gpt gold over 1m from 34m



2.40 gpt gold over 4m from drill hole RCDBS21-026 from 50m Including 7.72 gpt gold over 1m from 50m (KB3)



1.56 gpt gold over 6m from drill hole RCDBS21-027 from 19m (KB3)

Drilling Highlights: - In fill Kb1-KB2 Reverse Circulation Drill Holes

7.43 gpt gold over 5m from drill hole RCDBS22-0062 from 76m Including 17.2 gpt gold over 2m from 76m



1.46 gpt gold over 31m from drill hole RCDBS22-0061 from 117m Including 3.29 gpt gold over 2m from 124m Including 5.57gpt gold over 2m from 137m



1.49 gpt gold over 28m from drill hole RCDBS22-0082 from 49m Including 4.20 gpt gold over 1m from 54m Including 4.47 gpt gold over 1m from 67m



And

1.36 gpt gold over 8m from 108m Including 3.91 gpt gold over 1m from 111m



1.52 gpt gold over 11 m from drill hole RCDBS21-047 from 22m Including 5.31 gpt gold over 1m from 30m



1.16 gpt gold over 13m from drill hole RCDBS22-0054 from 0m Including 3.72 gpt gold over 1m from 6m



1.05 gpt gold over 5m from drill hole RCDBS22-0083 from 35m Including 3.51 gpt gold over 1m from 37m



Notes: 1: True width yet to be determined; 2: Table 1 - Assay Highlights, 3: 0.5gpt used as cut-off with 2m internal dilution, 4: No top-cut.

Nana Sangmuah, President and CEO, stated, "Drilling at Kabaya continues to expand the footprint of the gold mineralization which bodes well for the pending maiden resource in Q2. We are excited by the fresh rock intercepts at KB3 that points to a larger mineralized system within the 850-meter gap zone between KB1-2 and KB3, which is yet to be fully tested.

We are currently drilling additional RC and Diamond holes at our Mankouke, Disse and Kandiole targets and look forward to reporting additional assay results as they become available."





Figure 1: Kabaya gold deposit, drilling plan view, gold contouring envelopes projected to the surface and drill holes locations



To view an enhanced version of Figure 1, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/4821/117693_bc6a4ec8a4e77b11_001full.jpg

The gold mineralization at Kabaya (Figure 2-3) is disseminated and associated with a strong kaolinization after the saprolite process going deep between the fresh foot and hanging walls. From the few fresh rock observations, this powdery zone corresponds with the albite-dolomite-pyrite-arsenopyrite alteration in a volcano-sedimentary sequence. The gold host rock is an alternate between tuffaceous and greywacke facies. As in the Mankouke gold deposit, the carbonaceous bedded mudstone constitutes the folded footwall. The gold zone is also limited by an NNE-SSW weakness, fractured, and sheared zones in hanging and foot walls contacts.







Figure 2: Kabaya gold deposit, KB3 satellite North, section A 1390600N



To view an enhanced version of Figure 2, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/4821/117693_bc6a4ec8a4e77b11_005full.jpg





Figure 3: Kabaya gold deposit, KB1 and KB2, Section 1389500N



To view an enhanced version of Figure 3, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/4821/117693_bc6a4ec8a4e77b11_006full.jpg

The Kabaya Deposit is part of a prolific regional Siribaya-Mankouke-Seko structural corridor (Figure 4). The Kabaya gold orebody is likely on an NNE-SSW splay structure contouring the Disse quartz diorite intrusion from the VTEM (Versatile Time Domain Electromagnetic) airborne survey interpretation. The Roscan large land package covers well this major auriferous structure over 25km, including the splays around Disse intrusive, occurring new gold discoveries.





Figure 4: Roscan permits on the Airborne Magnetic geophysics background with the Roscan resources zones, the targets in development, the gold deposits around



To view an enhanced version of Figure 4, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/4821/117693_bc6a4ec8a4e77b11_007full.jpg

Drilling and Analytical Protocol

Roscan uses Geodrill Reverse Circulation (RC) to drill until maximum 170m to reach the target. In 2021, (holes RCDBS21-026 to RCDBS21-048), the samples have sent for preparation and 50g fire assays to Bureau Veritas Bamako laboratory and since January 2022, the samples are sent to the ALS Laboratories in Bamako, Mali and assayed at their analytical facilities to Ouagadougou for 2 kg Bottle Roll with atomic absorption finish including tail analysis for results more than 0.05ppm. Roscan applied industry-standard QA/QC procedures to the program using reference materials, blanks, standards, and duplicates.

Table 1: Drillhole Highlights at Kabaya (Dabia South)





To view an enhanced version of Table 1, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/4821/117693_table1.jpg





To view an enhanced version of Table 1, part 2, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/4821/117693_table1.2.jpg





To view an enhanced version of Table 1, part 3, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/4821/117693_table1.3.jpg

Table 2: Drillhole ID of Kabaya (Dabia South)





To view an enhanced version of Table 2, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/4821/117693_table2.jpg

Qualified Person (QP) and NI 43-101 Disclosure

Greg Isenor, P. Geo., Director for the Company, is the designated Qualified Person for this news release within the meaning of National Instrument 43-101 ("NI 43-101") and has reviewed and verified that the technical information contained herein is accurate and approves of the written disclosure of same.

About Roscan

Roscan Gold Corporation is a Canadian gold exploration company focused on the exploration and acquisition of gold properties in West Africa. The Company has assembled a significant land position of 100%-owned permits in an area of producing gold mines (including B2 Gold's Fekola Mine which lies in a contiguous property to the west of Kandiole), and major gold deposits, located both north and south of its Kandiole Project in West Mali.

For further information, please contact:

Nana Sangmuah

President & CEO

Tel: (902) 832-5555

Email: info@Roscan.ca

Forward-Looking Statements

This news release contains forward-looking information which is not comprised of historical facts. Forward-looking information is characterized by words such as "plan", "expect", "project", "intend", "believe", "anticipate", "estimate" and other similar words, or statements that certain events or conditions "may" or "will" occur. Forward-looking information involves risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events, results, and opportunities to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from such forward-looking information include, but are not limited to, changes in the state of equity and debt markets, fluctuations in commodity prices, delays in obtaining required regulatory or governmental approvals, and other risks involved in the mineral exploration and development industry, including those risks set out in the Company's management's discussion and analysis as filed under the Company's profile at www.sedar.com. Forward-looking information in this news release is based on the opinions and assumptions of management considered reasonable as of the date hereof, including that all necessary governmental and regulatory approvals will be received as and when expected. Although the Company believes that the assumptions and factors used in preparing the forward-looking information in this news release are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on such information. The Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information, other than as required by applicable securities laws.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/117693
Estee Lauder, Philipp Plein, DKNY, Hogan, Selfridges, Dolce & Gabbana, AUROBOROS, Tommy Hilfiger, SHOW studio, DUNDAS, Karl Lagerfeld, Vogue & Hype, Fresh Couture, Placebo, Forever 21, Perry Ellis America, D-CAVE and others join an all-star lineup to mark the world's biggest Metaverse Fashion Week

LONDON, March 23, 2022(MVFW22) unveils to the world the future of fashion. Featuring AI & robots, luxury wearables, 'phygital goods,' and immersive experiences, more than 70 participating brands, artists, and designers, are coming together to be a part of MVFW22, a milestone event in the global fashion industry. A combination of legacy luxury fashion and digital-native brands will showcase their highly anticipated wearable collections, digital spaces, and breakthrough activations in Decentraland from March 24-27, 2022.



Today, the intersection of fashion and technology has birthed a new revolution, which blurs the lines between our physical and digital lives and allows us to expand our creativity beyond the limits of our tangible reality. Fashion has not only entered the metaverse, but it has also established itself as one of the pillars of the ecosystem. Diversity, decentralization, e-commerce, self-expression, sustainability, robotics, and community, are at the heart of this new era in fashion.

"Decentraland is a virtual social world for everyone, anywhere. Metaverse Fashion Week serves as the perfect, monumental event to introduce to the world the philosophy behind everything we build. A space built by and run for by its community. Through MVFW22, we endeavor to broaden the horizon of what 'metaverse' means. We just leveled up the playing field for the world of fashion and decreased the limitations. Even in the metaverse, you'll be needing a 'fit'," says Decentraland Foundation's Creative Director, Sam Hamilton.

During MVFW22, Decentraland will debut several community-run neighborhoods within the newly created Fashion District. At each of these locations, brands and designers will feature their catwalks, panels, galleries, and more. The mini-districts and neighborhoods include:

Luxury Fashion District

The Luxury Fashion District, Decentraland's newest district is housed inside the current Fashion District owned by Metaverse Group, a Tokens.com subsidiary. The 'Luxury Fashion District,' presented by UNXD and Vogue Arabia, will host a tour-de-force of fashion houses, brands, designers, and fashion devotees. Some of the industry's most iconic brands to make their Web3 debut include: Dolce & Gabbana, Etro, Elie Saab, Imitation of Christ, DUNDAS, Nicholas Kirkwood in collaboration with White Rabbit, FaithTribe, Chufy, Jacob & Co, Monnier Freres, Franck Muller, Gary McQueen, Mert Otsamo, Guo Pei, and AUROBOROS, who will be closing the MVFW22 together with the headline act and muse Grimes.

Join Auroboros x Grimes in celebrating this historical moment at their MVFW22 closing show featuring an immersive DJ set performed by their muse and superstar Grimes. Founded by Paula Sello and Alissa Aulbekova, Auroboros is the award winning digital luxury fashion house creating a utopian premise for the near future.

Franck Muller, the high end luxury Swiss watchmaker, is leading the way in crypto and metaverse themed watches with its Encrypto collection. Labeled the world's first functional Bitcoin watch, Encrypto allows customers to check their Bitcoin balance right on the watch face together with built-in Deep Cold Storage.

IOC GENESIS is the first digital collection for the Metaverse from Imitation of Christ. Co-created by visionary artists Tara Subkoff and Adam Teninbaum, in this collection, you will find a number of unique designs and wearables, including collaborations with Lynsey Addario, Nicole Buffett, and 2 BAYC NFTs. IOC GENESIS NFTs will enable token holders access to future IOC-NFT collections, as well as invitations to exclusive shows and events, and also endow the holder the ability to preview looks in advance of their release to the public. The team is donating a portion of the profits to the UKRAINEDAO.

Rarible Street

Rarible Street will host a fashion street with pop-up shops with the following brands: Placebo Digital Fashion House, The Fabricant, Artcade @ Fred Segal with exclusive drops by Atari Hotels and Subnation, Perry Ellis America, Artisant in collaboration with PUMA, Miss J Collection by Crypto Couture, Macr0matic (NFT artist), Fabeeo Breen, Girls Gang Label, The Immersive Kind, the exclusive collection of digital VAULT.swiss watches, and Fresh Couture. The Fabricant will host a runway show featuring pieces selected from thousands minted as NFTs in Season 1 of The Fabricant Studio, its newly launched digital fashion co-creation platform.

Parcel-MetaParty Community Precinct

Parcel and MetaParty have collaborated to present the Community Precinct, which celebrates the Decentraland creator community. Fashion shows and panels, as well as mini games, DJs, music performances and parkour, feature in this amazing multi-level space. On the evening of March 26, the 10 winners of the Wearables Competition will show off their designs on the Parcel catwalk. To coincide with this activation, Parcel is launching unique glasses that can be found in and around the space at dedicated dispensers. The glasses will allow avatars to navigate more efficiently from area to area and this portable experience gives users access to an entirely different interface.

Dragon City

Dragon City is bringing several designers and brands from Asia, and Parcel and Metaparty Community Precinct, to champion the creators who consistently push the boundaries from the design of their wearables every day in the metaverse.

MetaTokyo

The MetaTokyo community is launching the museum "SPACE by MetaTokyo" as well as its Wearable collection, available through the Decentraland marketplace. AMIAYA x STREET Fashion photography is also launching its collections of NFTs at OpenSea in this space.

Boson Protocol

Boson Protocol technology is exhibiting their metaverse marketplace, Boson Portal, which is enabling brands to sell luxury and exclusive physical products as NFTs. For MVFW, Boson has built a boulevard of metaverse stores where leading brands and NFT projects will offer their products for sale. Partners participating: Tommy Hilfiger, Hogan, Cider, IKKS, Deadfellaz, 8SIAN, The Rebels by House of Kalinkin, Christine Massarany, ANREALAGE, WLDFNGZ by Fang Gang, Chubbies @ Santa Monica Place x Macerich, Wonder and NGRAVE.

Metaloop

Created by Kollectiff , Metaloop is a web3 innovation and venture studio, whose unique catwalk brings to life runway shows in collaboration with DRESSX, Cider, 8SIAN, The Rebels, Christine Massarany, Anrealage, and more. The MetaLoop presented by Kollectiff will be hosting continuous shows and afterparties throughout the event. The MetaLoop event space on Decentraland also features a virtual upper deck for brands to host after-parties that can be hosted for up to an hour to extend the socialization in the metaverse.

Threedium

Threedium will host a collection of branded shops featuring 3D wearables from global brands joining in on the immersive experience including, GM (General Motors), showcasing their latest electric vehicles. "Taste of the Future," exhibited by Diageo's test and learn space, will explore the next generation of virtual brand experiences. Nestle's brand of Lion cereal will showcase their latest integrated media campaign featuring branded pajamas designed as virtual wearables for the fashion show. DKNY, CHARLES & KEITH, Prive' Porter & Phygicode by Wyldflwr will also showcase their 3D products in the Threedium plaza during MVFW. Globally recognized metaverse expert, tech futurist, and top business executive, Cathy Hackl, will act as Chair during the week.

Cash Labs

Web3 Agency Cash Labs will be launching its mixed-media art gallery during MVFW. Over 20 artists and designers, including Antoni Tudisco, Krista Kim x The Fabricant, Karl Lagerfeld x The Dematerialized, Jason Ebeyer, Botter Paris, and more, will be represented by the gallery in an exhibition titled "at the intersection of Art and Fashion." The three floors of the gallery are filled with images and video works on the walls and fashion presented as sculptures. Presented on the rooftop of the Cash Labs Gallery, SHOWstudio will be presenting five films a day during its Fashion Film Festival, from the 24th to 27th, from the illustrious archive of Nick Knight. Featuring works ranging from established brands such as Alexander McQueen and Comme des Garcons, to emerging designers, this four day fashion film extravaganza will bring the audience through a journey into the history and future of fashion on film.

"We've sought to present fashion in every form possible," says the Decentraland Foundation's guest curator David Cash, "from runway shows to retail experiences, fashion presented as art, film, photography, and even fashion presented in ways that extend beyond the confines of reality- as, in the metaverse, anything is possible."

Other brands have purchased real estate in Decentraland and are debuting their flagship stores at Metaverse Fashion Week. These brands are pushing their creative boundaries and have ventured into designing bespoke digital spaces unlike anything users have seen before. The following brands will become permanent residents of Decentraland, showcasing their commitment to a new era in fashion:

Selfridges will unveil its iconic flagship store on March 23. The Decentraland store features an immersive journey with Paco Rabanne and artist Fondation Vasarely, within a space inspired by Selfridges' iconic Birmingham store. The building itself is a giant time capsule that has mysteriously arrived in DCL the day before fashion week begins and contains important works of art from the past.

Forever 21, which has already broken ground in the Metaverse, will be launching an all-new collection within Decentraland featuring NFT wearables during Metaverse Fashion Week. Inspired by its signature fashion items, Forever 21's 3D virtual clothing will be on display in a branded storefront, designed in collaboration with the Forever 21 team and the virtual architects at Metaverse Group. Forever 21 will host an afterparty in its virtual store following the Decentraland Fashion Show.

D-CAVE, the lifestyle metaverse marketplace for the digitally minded community, has recently partnered with Bulova Watch to bring wearable luxury watches to the metaverse. "D-CAVE's mission is to define Digital Culture, that is why we are excited to be part of the Decentraland Fashion Week. In our space, we will engage users in a unique way, generating fun experiences on our event rooftop, showcasing our wearables and releasing our limited edition collaborations," says Stefano Rosso, co-founder and CEO of D-CAVE. "We want to be the Colette of the Metaverse."

PHILIPP PLEIN is debuting Plein Plaza, a prime district covering 65 Decentraland parcels, developed by NFT Auction House and Metaverse Development Studio Portion . Within Plein Plaza, users will be able to visit Philipp Plein's founded Museum of NFT Arts.

Estee Lauder will be the exclusive beauty brand participating in MVFW. In partnership with Decentraland, Estee Lauder has engaged Alex Box to create a signature wearable look that MVFW attendees can wear virtually on their avatars.

"We are thrilled to be the exclusive beauty brand participating in Metaverse Fashion Week. It marks a pivotal point for Estee Lauder in how we reach and engage new and existing consumers in the metaverse," said Stephane de La Faverie, Global Brand President, Estee Lauder & AERIN Beauty and Group President, The Estee Lauder Companies.

Hogan will be debuting a metaverse pop up store within Decentraland that will unveil the brand's first-ever NFT drop: the "Hogan Untraditional" collection, re-edition of the brand's iconic sneakers. Hogan, in collaboration with Exclusible, will host the "HoganX" Untraditional afterparty on March 26th. The event will present the first-ever dance competition in the virtual world and will be hosted by acclaimed DJ superstar Bob Sinclar.

After Parties

One of Fashion Week's most popular staples, the after-party, takes on a new meaning at MVFW. After parties are happening across Decentraland every day after the catwalks and panels. Among the confirmed names are the following: Bob Sinclar is playing in the Vegas City, powered by Hogan and Exclusible; Nicki Nicole is performing and launching her wearable collection in the Metaloop district hosted by Kollectiff; Tribute Brand launches their newest collection with ICYKOF DJ playing in the Metajuku Mall; Blond:ish will perform in Vegas City powered by the Faith Tribe brand, and the automotive brand, Acura, that recently launched an experience in DCL, will host The Acura of Decentraland After Party on the first day of MVFW. The final after party at MVFW held on March 27th will be headlined by Grimes.

Decentraland's vision for MVFW22 is to provide a space for a new era in fashion, showing the world the power of decentralization and the developing Web3 ecosystem. The platform's guiding philosophy is meant to build an alternate reality that improves upon the failures of Web2 and democratizes access to all facets of our modern economy. By building in diversity, inclusion, and accessibility, Decentraland is creating the place for the next generation of commerce and adventure.

"The blockchain revolution that is powering metaverse adoption is the perfect moment for fashion to evolve. For years the fashion industry has talked about innovating in the digital space. Decentraland's Metaverse Fashion Week enables major fashion brands to explore this new space alongside the decentralized artists and designers who created this space. MVFW22 will be a moment in time when the fashion world will witness the future of fashion, and how this world will enable them to meet new audiences, advance fashion sustainability, and reevaluate diversity and accessibility in fashion," says Giovanna Graziosi Casimiro, Head of Metaverse Fashion Week.

Anyone in the world with an internet connection is able to attend MVFW in Decentraland - there are no tickets, all are welcome. To learn more about how to access Decentraland and the schedule of events, please visit MVFW .

About Decentraland

Decentraland is a decentralized virtual social platform powered by the Ethereum blockchain. Within the Decentraland platform, users can create, experience, and monetize content and applications. Decentraland is unique in that it is owned and governed by the people who use the platform every day. Through the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), users can submit proposals for owners of MANA (Decentraland currency) and LAND (Decentraland property) to vote on.

About the Decentraland Foundation

Decentralization in Decentraland is supported by the Decentraland Foundation. The Foundation is a non-profit organization that owns the intellectual property, reports on third-party activities and developments, and works alongside companies, contributors, players, users, and community members for the benefit of the platform.

For Media Inquiry:

press@decentraland.org

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/a1b8da89-f164-4504-a2b9-aa35f3dae74f
JERSEY CITY, N.J., March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- InsightAce Analytic Pvt. Ltd. announces the release of a market assessment report on the "Global Head and Neck Cancer Market By Products (Abitrexate/ Mexate/ Folex (methotrexate), Hydrea (hydroxyurea), Taxotere (docetaxel), Platinol (cisplatin), 5-fluorouracil (5-FU), Erbitux (cetuximab), Vectibix (panitumumab), Theracim/Theraloc (nimotuzumab), Keytruda (pembrolizumab), Opdivo (nivolumab), Yervoy (ipilimumab), Tremelimumab and among others) - Clinical Trial/Pipeline Analysis, Market Trends, Industry Competition Analysis, Revenue, and Forecast To 2030."

According to the latest research, the global head and neck cancer market size is valued at US$ 2.44 Billion in 2021, and it is expected to reach US$ 9.07 Billion in 2030, with a CAGR of 16.2% during the forecast period 2022-2030.

Request for Sample Pages:https://www.insightaceanalytic.com/request-sample/1217

Head and neck cancer (HNC) is the sixth most common cancer worldwide, with an estimated 630,000 new cases every year (Source: NCBI study, 2014). Head and neck cancer (HNCs) is squamous cell carcinomas that occur in the nasal cavities, paranasal sinuses, nasopharynx, hypopharynx, oropharynx, oral cavity, scalp, and salivary glands. The oral cavity is the most common site of cancer occurrence. It is majorly associated with tobacco and alcohol use. They are a significant cause of morbidity and mortality across the world.

Multiple factors drive the head and neck cancer market, such as the rising prevalence of head and neck cancer, rising adoption of advanced medical technologies, medical errors reduction in cancer care, various government initiatives for the head and neck cancer therapy developments, and increasing awareness among people about the advanced head and neck cancer (HNC) treatments.

Furthermore, the increasing combination therapies for managing head & neck cancer and rising cigarette smoking, alcohol intake & tobacco use are anticipated to propel the global head and neck cancer market in the coming years. According to the WHO/Europe report 2021, tobacco use accounts for 25% of all cancer deaths globally and is the primary cause of lung cancer. In the European region, it is estimated that around 186 million people (or 26% of the adult population) currently use tobacco. Also, almost 11% of all cancer cases were causally linked to alcohol across the region in 2018.

However, the high cost of treatments, the side effects of available treatments, and the lack of health coverage act as major restraints of this market.

Geographically, North America dominated the global head and neck cancer market in 2020 due to the increasing prevalence of head and neck cancer, rising use of advanced medical technologies, a significant presence of major market players, high healthcare expenditures, and awareness about the modern cancer treatments.

The Asia-Pacific market is also expected to witness the fastest growth over the forecast period (2020-2030) due to the increased demand for head & neck cancer combination therapeutics, the surge in head & neck cancer patients, the growing geriatric population, government initiatives, and high healthcare expenditure.

Request for ToC/Proposal:https://www.insightaceanalytic.com/report/global-head-and-neck-cancer-market/1217

Prominent players operating in the head and neck cancer market are Advaxis, Inc. (U.S.), Amgen, Inc. (U.S.), AstraZeneca plc (U.K.), Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH (Germany), Bristol-Myers Squibb Company (Ono Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd.) (Japan), Cel-Sci Corporation (U.S.), Five Prime Therapeutics, Inc. (U.S.), GlaxoSmithKline plc (U.K.), Incyte Corporation (U.S.), IRX Therapeutics, Inc. (U.S.), MacroGenics, Inc. (U.S.), Merck KGaA (Germany), Novartis AG (Switzerland), Pfizer, Inc., Roche Holdings AG (Genentech) (Switzerland), Viracta Therapeutics (U.S.), and others. The major focus of market players is on strategies like partnerships, collaborations, mergers, agreements, and increasing R&D activities for developing head and neck cancer therapies/treatments. For instance,

In July 2021 , Novartis ( Switzerland ) collaborated with Kura Oncology, Inc., a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, to evaluate the effect of the combination of tipifarnib and alpelisib in patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma.

, Novartis ( ) collaborated with Kura Oncology, Inc., a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, to evaluate the effect of the combination of tipifarnib and alpelisib in patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma. In June 2021 , CEL-SCI Corporation (U.S.) announced results from its 9.5-year pivotal Phase 3 study for its immunotherapy Multikine (Leukocyte Interleukin, Injection) in the treatment of advanced (stages III and IV) primary (previously untreated) squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck (SCCHN). CEL-SCI's Multikine Immunotherapy produced significant 14.1% 5-year survival benefit (62.7% vs 48.6%) in the group receiving surgery plus radiotherapy in a landmark head and neck cancer phase 3 study.

, CEL-SCI Corporation (U.S.) announced results from its 9.5-year pivotal Phase 3 study for its immunotherapy Multikine (Leukocyte Interleukin, Injection) in the treatment of advanced (stages III and IV) primary (previously untreated) squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck (SCCHN). CEL-SCI's Multikine Immunotherapy produced significant 14.1% 5-year survival benefit (62.7% vs 48.6%) in the group receiving surgery plus radiotherapy in a landmark head and neck cancer phase 3 study. In October 2017 , Incyte Corporation (U.S.) and MedImmune, AstraZeneca's global biologics research and development arm, expanded their clinical collaboration. As part of the agreement, the companies checked the efficacy and safety of epacadostat, Incyte's investigational selective IDO1 enzyme inhibitor, in combination with AstraZeneca's Imfinzi (durvalumab), a human monoclonal antibody directed against PD-L1, compared to Imfinzi alone.

Get the Report Details @ https://www.insightaceanalytic.com/report/global-head-and-neck-cancer-market/1217

Market Segments

Global Head and Neck Cancer Market, by Products, 2020-2030 (Value US$ Mn)

Cytotoxic Agents

Antimetabolites



Abitrexate/ Mexate/ Folex (methotrexate)





Hydrea (hydroxyurea)



Antitubulins



Taxotere (docetaxel)



Others (Platinum Agents, Fluoropyrimidines)



Platinol (cisplatin)





5-fluorouracil (5-FU)

EGFR Inhibitors (mAbs)

Erbitux (cetuximab)



Vectibix (panitumumab)



Theracim/Theraloc (nimotuzumab)

EGFR Inhibitors (TKIs)

Tarceva (erlotinib)



Iressa (gefitinib)



Tykerb/Tyverb (lapatinib)

PD1 Inhibitors

Keytruda (pembrolizumab)



Opdivo (nivolumab)

Pipeline Drugs (Late-stage)

EGFR Inhibitors (mAbs)



Vectibix (panitumumab)



PDL1 Inhibitors



Imfinzi (durvalumab)





Bavencio (avelumab)



CTLA4 Inhibitors



Yervoy (ipilimumab)





Tremelimumab

Global Head and Neck Cancer Market, by Region, 2020-2030 (Value US$ Mn)

North America

Europe

Asia Pacific

Latin America

Middle East & Africa

North America Head and Neck Cancer Market, by Country, 2020-2030 (Value US$ Mn)

U.S.

Canada

Europe Head and Neck Cancer Market, by Country, 2020-2030 (Value US$ Mn)

Germany

France

Italy

Spain

Russia

Rest of Europe

Asia Pacific Head and Neck Cancer Market, by Country, 2020-2030 (Value US$ Mn)

India

China

Japan

South Korea

Australia & New Zealand

Latin America Head and Neck Cancer Market, by Country, 2020-2030 (Value US$ Mn)

Brazil

Mexico

Rest of Latin America

Middle East & Africa Head and Neck Cancer Market, by Country, 2020-2030 (Value US$ Mn)

GCC Countries

South Africa

Rest of Middle East & Africa

Why should buy this report:

To receive a comprehensive analysis of the prospects for pipeline drugs revenue forecast

To receive an clinical trial/pipeline analysis and future trends in the head and neck cancer market

To analyze the head and neck cancer market drivers and challenges

To get information on head and neck cancer market size (value US$ Mn) and forecast to 2030

Major investments, mergers & acquisitions in the head and neck cancer market industry

For More Information @ https://www.insightaceanalytic.com/report/global-head-and-neck-cancer-market/1217

Other Related Reports Published by InsightAce Analytic:

Global CAR T-Cell Therapy For Multiple Myeloma Market

Immuno-oncology Cell Therapy Market

Global Allogeneic Cell Therapies Market

Global Allogeneic Cell Therapy Manufacturing Market

Hematological Malignancies Drugs Market

About Us:

InsightAce Analytic is a market research and consulting firm that enables clients to make strategic decisions. Our qualitative and quantitative market intelligence solutions inform the need for market and competitive intelligence to expand businesses. We help clients gain competitive advantage by identifying untapped markets, exploring new and competing technologies, segmenting potential markets and repositioning products. Our expertise is in providing syndicated and custom market intelligence reports with an in-depth analysis with key market insights in a timely and cost-effective manner.

Contact U.S.:

InsightAce Analytic Pvt. Ltd.

Tel.: +1 718 593 4405

Email: info@insightaceanalytic.com

Site Visit: www.insightaceanalytic.com

Follow Us on LinkedIn @ bit.ly/2tBXsgS

Follow Us On Facebook @ bit.ly/2H9jnDZ

Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1729637/InsightAce_Analytic_Logo.jpg
Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - March 23, 2022) - Pancontinental Resources Corporation (TSXV: PUC) (OTCQB: PUCCF) ("Pancon" or the "Company") announces that the Company has agreed with the Brewer Gold Receiver ("Receiver") to extend the term of the Brewer Option Agreement through December 31, 2024 on a no-cost basis.

Pancon President & CEO Layton Croft stated: "Pancon is grateful to the Receiver and relevant government agencies for granting us more time to explore our flagship Brewer Gold & Copper Project. We now have more than 33 months to aggressively build on our substantial progress thus far. Our refreshed Brewer Discovery Model demonstrates that a significant zone of unoxidized gold-copper mineralization exists beneath the former pit, and that higher grade zones are associated with increased sulphide abundance focused within and along the diatreme margin. In addition to targeting these high grade feeder structures, we will target an additional breccia target to the south-southwest of the former mine, hosted within a NE-SW trending zone of favorably altered rocks."

Pancon's exclusive option to explore and purchase the 1,000-acre Brewer property began on April 1, 2020. Since then, the Company has conducted: historic data review; mapping; geophysical surveys; rotary air blast (RAB), sonic, and core drilling; assay, multielement geochemical, spectral, and petrographic analyses; preliminary metallurgical testing; data compilation; and modeling. This work included drilling and reporting lab results for more than 9,000 meters (m) of drill samples: core (5,000 m), RAB (3,900 m), and sonic (350 m). As a result of work to date, Pancon has updated its data driven Discovery Model that identifies the most prospective parts of the Brewer gold-copper system. Next steps include induced polarization (IP) geophysical surveys in four target areas, followed by drilling (see Pancon's news release of February 3, 2022 and https://panconresources.com/investors/presentation/ for more information).

Qualified Person

The technical information in this news release has been prepared in accordance with Canadian regulatory requirements as set out in NI 43-101 and reviewed and approved by Patrick Quigley, MSc, CPG-12116, a Qualified Person as defined by NI 43-101.

About Pancon

Pancontinental Resources Corp. (TSXV: PUC) (OTCQB: PUCCF), or Pancon, is a Canadian junior mining company exploring the rich, underexplored Carolina Slate Belt in the southeastern USA. In January 2020, Pancon won the exclusive right to explore and purchase the former Brewer Gold Mine property, with an option period through October 2023. Between 1987-1995, Brewer produced 178,000 ounces of oxide gold from open pits that extended to 65-meter depths, where gold (Au) and copper (Cu) sulphides were exposed but could not be processed by the oxide heap leach operation. Pancon's 100%-owned, 1,960-acre Jefferson Gold Project nearly completely surrounds the 1,000-acre Brewer property. The Brewer-Jefferson area of interest, in Chesterfield County, South Carolina, is 12 kilometers along trend from the producing Haile Gold Mine, which produced 190,000 ounces of gold in 2021 (www.oceanagold.com). Brewer is a large, epithermal, high sulphidation gold-copper system driven by a sub-volcanic intrusive, possibly connected to a large copper-gold porphyry system at depth.

For further information, please contact:

Jeanny So, External Relations Manager

E: info@panconresources.com

T: +1.647.202.0994

For additional information please visit our new website at http://www.panconresources.com/ and our Twitter feed: @PanconResources.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

This news release contains forward-looking information which is not comprised of historical facts. Forward-looking information is characterized by words such as "plan", "expect", "project", "intend", "believe", "anticipate", "estimate" and other similar words, or statements that certain events or conditions "may" or "will" occur. Forward-looking information involves risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events, results, and opportunities to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from such forward-looking information include, but are not limited to, changes in the state of equity and debt markets, fluctuations in commodity prices, delays in obtaining required regulatory or governmental approvals, and other risks involved in the mineral exploration and development industry, including those risks set out in the Company's management's discussion and analysis as filed under the Company's profile at www.sedar.com. Forward-looking information in this news release is based on the opinions and assumptions of management considered reasonable as of the date hereof, including that all necessary governmental and regulatory approvals will be received as and when expected. Although the Company believes that the assumptions and factors used in preparing the forward-looking information in this news release are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on such information. The Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information, other than as required by applicable securities laws.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/117725
SAN FRANCISCO, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The global endoscopy devices market size is expected to reach USD 81.0 billion by 2030, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. The market is expected to expand at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.4% from 2022 to 2030. Growing adoption of minimally invasive endoscopic procedures by medical professionals to look into the esophagus, colon, and stomach and also its application to perform biopsies and sclerotherapy are some of the factors boosting the market growth. In addition, the increasing trend of adopting disposable endoscopes to reduce the chances of cross contaminations is also anticipated to fuel the growth of the market over the forecast years.

Key Insights & Findings from the report:

The market is anticipated to be valued at USD 81.0 billion by 2030 owing to the growing adoption of minimally invasive endoscopic procedures by medical professionals in comparison with open surgeries.

by 2030 owing to the growing adoption of minimally invasive endoscopic procedures by medical professionals in comparison with open surgeries. The endoscopy visualization systems segment dominated with highest revenue share in 2021 owing to growing adoption of High Definition (HD) visualization systems by medical professionals for better imaging results during endoscopic procedures.

In 2021, the Gastrointestinal (GI) endoscopy segment accounted for the highest revenue share owing to the growing burden of functional gastrointestinal diseases and rising geriatric population.

Hospitals accounted for the highest revenue share of 48.1% in 2021, owing to favorable reimbursement policies and high availability of government and private hospitals performing endoscopy procedures.

North America accounted for the largest revenue share of 42.3% in 2021, owing to increasing adoption of advanced endoscopy devices and high availability of modern healthcare facilities performing minimally invasive surgical procedures.

Request a free sample copy or view report summary, "Endoscopy Devices Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report By Product, By Application, By End Use, By Region (North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, MEA), And Segment Forecasts, 2022 - 2030", published by Grand View Research.

Endoscopy Devices Market Growth & Trends

In 2021, based on product, the endoscopy visualization systems segment accounted for the highest revenue share of 36.5% of the market. This is attributed to the growing adoption of High Definition (HD) visualization systems by medical professionals for better imaging results during endoscopic procedures. In addition, continuous technological advancements of endoscopy visualization systems for the treatment and diagnosis of complex health conditions such as cancer, functional gastrointestinal disorders, lung disorders, and urinary disorders also support segment growth.

Based on application, the Gastrointestinal (GI) endoscopy segment dominated the market in 2021 in terms of revenue owing to the increasing burden of gastrointestinal diseases and the rising geriatric population. In addition, increasing recommendation by medical professionals to perform endoscopic procedures as the first line of diagnosis option for gastrointestinal disorders is also one of the major factors supporting the segment growth. The hospitals segment accounted for the highest revenue share of 48.1% in 2021. This is attributed due to the larger number of endoscopic procedures performed in the hospitals than in other end-use segments.

In addition, favorable reimbursement policies and the high availability of government and private hospitals performing endoscopy procedures are some of the prominent factors anticipated to drive the segment growth. North America dominated the market in terms of the revenue share of 42.3% in 2021. The highest revenue share of this region is attributed due to the increasing adoption of advanced endoscopic devices and the high availability of modern healthcare facilities performing minimally invasive surgical procedures. In addition, growing functional gastrointestinal disorders and other chronic diseases such as cancer also are the major factors driving market growth in this region.

Furthermore, the COVID19 pandemic has significantly impacted the market owing to the cancellation and postponement of elective procedures. Moreover, the fear of getting infected with the COVID-19 virus also reduced the number of surgical procedures which in turn led to the de-growth of the endoscopy devices adoption in 2020. For instance, according to a study published in the Arab Journal of Gastroenterology in 2020, the number of endoscopy procedures decreased about 50% during the COVID19 pandemic in the majority of countries all over the globe.

Endoscopy Devices Market Segmentation

Grand View Research has segmented the global endoscopy devices market based on product, application, end use, and region:

Endoscopy Devices Product Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2014 - 2030)

Endoscopes

Rigid Endoscopy Devices



Laparoscopes





Arthroscopes





Urology endoscopes





Cystoscopes





Gynecology endoscopes





Neuroendoscopes





Other rigid endoscopes



Flexible Endoscopy Devices



Upper gastrointestinal endoscopes





Colonoscopes





Bronchoscopes





Sigmoidoscopes





Laryngoscopes





Pharyngoscopes





Duodenoscopes





Nasopharyngoscopes





Rhinoscopes





Other flexible Endoscopy Devices



Capsule Endoscopy Devices



Disposable Endoscopy Devices



Robot Assisted Endoscopy Devices

Endoscopy Visualization Systems

Standard Definition (SD) Visualization Systems



2D systems





3D systems



High Definition (HD) Visualization Systems



2D systems





3D systems



Endoscopy Visualization Component



Camera Heads





Insufflators





Light Sources





High Definition Monitors





Suction Pumps





Video Processors

Operative Devices

Energy Systems



Access Devices



Suction & Irrigation Systems



Hand Instruments



Wound Retractors



Snares

Endoscopy Devices Application Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2014 - 2030)

Gastrointestinal (GI) endoscopy

Laparoscopy

Obstetrics/gynecology endoscopy

Arthroscopy

Urology endoscopy (cystoscopy)

Bronchoscopy

Mediastinoscopy

Otoscopy

Laryngoscopy

Other applications

Endoscopy Devices End-use Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2014 - 2030)

Hospitals

Ambulatory surgery centers

Other end uses

Endoscopy Devices Regional Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2014 - 2030)

North America

U.S.



Canada

Europe

U.K.



Germany



Italy



France



Spain



Russia



Switzerland



Denmark

Asia Pacific

China



Japan



India



Australia



New Zealand



Thailand



Indonesia



Malaysia



Vietnam



Philippines

Latin America

Mexico



Brazil



Argentina

Middle East Africa

South Africa



Saudi Arabia



UAE



Kuwait



Israel



Qatar

List of Key Players of Endoscopy Devices Market

Olympus Corporation

Ethicon Endo-surgery, LLC.

FUJIFILM Holdings Corporation

Stryker Corporation

Boston Scientific Corporation

Karl Storz GmbH & Co. KG

Smith & Nephew Inc.

Richard Wolf GmbH

Medtronic Plc (Covidien)

PENTAX Medical

Machida Endoscope Co., Ltd.

Check out more related studies published by Grand View Research:

Endoscopy Operative Devices Market - The global endoscopy operative devices market size is expected to reach USD 11.7 billion by 2028, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. It is expected to expand at a CAGR of 5.1% from 2021 to 2028. The rising prevalence of chronic diseases, surging demand for minimally invasive procedures, and increasing technological advancement in endoscope systems are the key factors aiding the market growth.

The global endoscopy operative devices market size is expected to reach by 2028, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. It is expected to expand at a CAGR of 5.1% from 2021 to 2028. The rising prevalence of chronic diseases, surging demand for minimally invasive procedures, and increasing technological advancement in endoscope systems are the key factors aiding the market growth. Endoscopes Market - The global endoscopes market size is expected to reach USD 27.9 billion by 2030, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. It is expected to expand at a CAGR of 9.4% from 2022 to 2030. Growing awareness levels about minimally invasive surgical procedures and the increasing prevalence of chronic disorders are the major factors accelerating the market growth.

- The global endoscopes market size is expected to reach by 2030, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. It is expected to expand at a CAGR of 9.4% from 2022 to 2030. Growing awareness levels about minimally invasive surgical procedures and the increasing prevalence of chronic disorders are the major factors accelerating the market growth. Endoscopy Visualization Systems Market - The global endoscopy visualization systems market size is expected to reach USD 35.0 billion by 2028, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. The market is expected to expand at a CAGR of 7.0% from 2021 to 2028. Significant increase in the number of endoscopic procedures and increasing preference for minimally invasive surgeries are major factors contributing to the expansion of the market.

Browse through Grand View Research's Medical Devices Industry Research Reports.

About Grand View Research

Grand View Research, U.S.-based market research and consulting company, provides syndicated as well as customized research reports and consulting services. Registered in California and headquartered in San Francisco, the company comprises over 425 analysts and consultants, adding more than 1200 market research reports to its vast database each year. These reports offer in-depth analysis on 46 industries across 25 major countries worldwide. With the help of an interactive market intelligence platform, Grand View Research Helps Fortune 500 companies and renowned academic institutes understand the global and regional business environment and gauge the opportunities that lie ahead.

Contact:

Sherry James

Corporate Sales Specialist, USA

Grand View Research, Inc.

Phone: 1-415-349-0058

Toll Free: 1-888-202-9519

Email: sales@grandviewresearch.com

Web: https://www.grandviewresearch.com

Grand View Compass | Grand View Pipeline

Follow Us: LinkedIn | Twitter

Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/661327/Grand_View_Research_Logo.jpg
- ISALEX 2.0 to convene law-enforcement teams from nine member states of the International Security Alliance (ISA) for VR-powered virtual exercise

- 50 security experts to tackle security threat scenarios involving cybercrime, drones, and social media over three days

DUBAI, UAE, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- In a world first, the International Security Alliance's virtual cybersecurity exercise - ISALEX 2.0 - kicked off today. Hosted at EXPO 2020 Dubai, it will be the first exercise of its kind to be held in the Metaverse. The unique simulation aims to bolster cybersecurity, while ensuring the readiness of alliance members to confront future threats through innovative, forward-looking solutions.

50 representatives drawn from the ministries of interior and law enforcement agencies from nine ISA member states will take part in ISALEX 2.0, where they will face several real-world security scenarios. The teams will be positioned in operating rooms and command and control centers across all participating countries. They will communicate both in virtual reality and through videoconferencing technologies. The UAE Ministry of Interior has set up its own operations room within Expo 2020.

The exercise is considered a first virtual cybersecurity experiment, with teams facing a variety of unplanned scenarios involving security threats modelled to simulate reality. The virtual and real-world scenarios will require coordination, decision-making under pressure and rapid assessment of threats as well as risk-mitigation. The exercise will also incorporate crisis management in all its forms, including strategic communications via traditional and social platforms.

Major Hamad Khatir, Director of the International Operations Department at the Ministry of Interior of the United Arab Emirates, says: "The UAE is on the front line of tackling next-generation threats to safety and security, and ISALEX 2.0 marks an exciting step into the future. It shows just how crucial hands-on experience in a VR environment can be to support real-time police training, facilitate the sharing of knowledge and expertise, and boost international cooperation. Today we take law enforcement into the metaverse - but it is ultimately in the real world that we will reap the benefits."

This year's ISALEX follows on from the success of ISALEX19, hosted in Abu Dhabi in 2019 - a joint international exercise which facilitated experience sharing and the exchange of best practices among alliance members. The 2019 edition focused on counterterrorism, crisis and disaster management, communications, and civil defense.

The International Security Alliance (ISA)

Formally launched in 2017 by the United Arab Emirates and France, and bringing together interior ministries from Bahrain, Israel, Italy, Morocco, Senegal, Singapore, Slovakia and Spain, the International Security Alliance functions as a working group committed to protecting communities' safety and prosperity. The ISA is aimed at enhancing collaboration, knowledge sharing and partnerships on global security issues, such as trans-national organised crime, border control, radicalisation, and violent extremism. Hosted within the Ministry of Interior of the UAE, the ISA's Secretariat is responsible for coordinating all activities - from high-level strategic and technical engagement, to live exercises, training and joint operations - allowing it to dynamically respond to the world's emerging security threats.
HIGHLIGHTS

Tempus executes an Exploration Agreement with the Stswecem'c Xgat'tem First Nation for future exploration work at the Blackdome Gold Mine

PERTH, AUSTRALIA / ACCESSWIRE / March 23, 2022 / Tempus Resources Ltd ("Tempus" or the "Company") (ASX:TMR)(TSXV:TMRR)(OTCQB:TMRFF) is pleased to announce the signing of a key exploration agreement with the Stswecem'c Xgat'tem First Nation ("SXFN") in relation to the Blackdome Gold Mine ( "Blackdome Mine"), in southwestern British Columbia, Canada (the "Exploration Agreement").

Tempus President and CEO, Jason Bahnsen, commented "The recognition of the traditional territories and rights of First Nations is paramount to the success of our mineral exploration projects. Tempus is delighted to have executed this important agreement that provides certainty for the Company and a variety of cultural heritage and environmental protections as well as commercial benefits for the Stswecem'c Xgat'tem people."

The Blackdome Gold Mine is located within SXFN Traditional Territory approximately 230 km north northwest of Vancouver and 30 km north of Tempus' Elizabeth Project. The Blackdome Mine produced approximately 230,000 oz of gold at an average mill head grade of 22 grams gold per tonne during the period from 1985 to 1991 (see Figure 1).

The Blackdome Gold Mine includes a permitted 200 tonne per day process plant and associated tailings storage facility. A metallurgical review completed by Tempus, has shown that the Blackdome process plant will achieve high recoveries (up to approximately 95%) processing both Blackdome and Elizabeth mineralised material (see Tempus announcement 19 July 2021 for further information).

In 2020, Tempus completed an initial 5,000 metre exploration drilling program at the Blackdome Mine. An alteration study completed in August 2021 has indicated that historical mining and previous exploration drilling was restricted to the upper portion of the paleo epithermal system and there is strong potential for identifying additional mineralisation below historic mined stopes and to the west of known vein sets. (see Tempus announcement of 23 August 2021 for further details).

Tempus is planning on doing further exploration work at Blackdome. The Exploration Agreement executed by Tempus and SXFN will ensure that all exploration activities at Blackdome are conducted for the mutual benefit of the Stswecem'c Xgat'tem First Nations and Tempus shareholders while recognizing the importance of the environment and cultural heritage within the Stswecem'c Xgat'tem Traditional Territory. The Exploration Agreement includes business, employment, and training opportunities for Stswecem'c Xgat'tem members.

In 2020, Tempus executed an exploration agreement with the Xwisten First Nation in relation to the ongoing exploration program at the Elizabeth Gold Project.

Figure 1 - Location of Blackdome Gold Mine and Elizabeth Project

This announcement has been authorised by the Board of Directors of Tempus Resources Limited.

Competent Persons Statement

Information in this report relating to Exploration Results is based on information reviewed by Mr. Sonny Bernales, who is a Member of the Association of Engineers and Geoscientists of the Province of BC (EGBC), a recognised Professional Organisation (RPO), and an employee of Tempus Resources. Mr. Bernales has sufficient experience which is relevant to the style of mineralisation and type of deposit under consideration and to the activity which he is undertaking to qualify as a Competent Person as defined by the 2012 Edition of the Australasian Code for reporting of Exploration Results, Mineral Resources and Ore Reserves, and as a Qualified Person for the purposes of NI43-101. Mr. Bernales consents to the inclusion of the data in the form and context in which it appears.

For further information:

TEMPUS RESOURCES LTD

Melanie Ross - Director/Company Secretary Phone: +61 8 6188 8181

About the Stswecem'c Xgat'tem First Nation

Stswecem'c Xgat'tem is Secwepemc community located in a semi-remote area on the Fraser River, approximately 85 kilometers southwest of Williams Lake. There are currently 745 registered members with a shared vision of becoming an economically and politically self-sustaining community living Secwepemc culture, language and traditions in a healthy and safe environment.

About Tempus Resources Ltd

Tempus Resources Ltd ("Tempus") is a growth orientated gold exploration company listed on ASX ("TMR") and TSX.V ("TMRR") and OTCQB ("TMRFF") stock exchanges. Tempus is actively exploring projects located in Canada and Ecuador. The flagship project for Tempus is the Blackdome-Elizabeth Project, a high-grade gold past producing project located in Southern British Columbia. Tempus is currently midway through a drill program at Blackdome-Elizabeth that will form the basis of an updated NI43-101/JORC resource estimate. The second key group of projects for Tempus are the Rio Zarza and Valle del Tigre projects located in southeast Ecuador. The Rio Zarza project is located adjacent to Lundin Gold's Fruta del Norte project. The Valle del Tigre project is currently subject to a sampling program to develop anomalies identified through geophysical work.

Forward-Looking Information and Statements

This press release contains certain "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. Such forward-looking information and forward-looking statements are not representative of historical facts or information or current condition, but instead represent only the Company's beliefs regarding future events, plans or objectives, many of which, by their nature, are inherently uncertain and outside of Tempus's control. Generally, such forward-looking information or forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "plans", "expects" or "does not expect", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates" or "does not anticipate", or "believes", or variations of such words and phrases or may contain statements that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will be taken", "will continue", "will occur" or "will be achieved". The forward-looking information and forward-looking statements contained herein may include, but are not limited to, the ability of Tempus to successfully achieve business objectives, and expectations for other economic, business, and/or competitive factors. Forward-looking statements and information are subject to various known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond the ability of Tempus to control or predict, that may cause Tempus' actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from those expressed or implied thereby, and are developed based on assumptions about such risks, uncertainties and other factors set out herein and the other risks and uncertainties disclosed under the heading "Risk and Uncertainties" in the Company's Management's Discussion & Analysis for the quarter and half-year ended December 31, 2021 dated February 14, 2022 filed on SEDAR. Should one or more of these risks, uncertainties or other factors materialize, or should assumptions underlying the forward-looking information or statements prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described herein as intended, planned, anticipated, believed, estimated or expected. Although Tempus believes that the assumptions and factors used in preparing, and the expectations contained in, the forward-looking information and statements are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on such information and statements, and no assurance or guarantee can be given that such forward-looking information and statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such information and statements.

The forward-looking information and forward-looking statements contained in this press release are made as of the date of this press release, and Tempus does not undertake to update any forward-looking information and/or forward-looking statements that are contained or referenced herein, except in accordance with applicable securities laws. All subsequent written and oral forward-looking information and statements attributable to Tempus or persons acting on its behalf are expressly qualified in its entirety by this notice.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Service 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: Tempus Resources Ltd

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/694274/Exploration-Agreement-with-Stswecemc-Xgattem-First-Nation
WOLFSBURG (dpa-AFX) - Volkswagen Group (VKW.L, VLKAF.PK, VOW.BE) said it plans to apply to the Electric Vehicle PERTE program after the Spanish government announced to open the call for applications on April 1st, 2022. Under the 'Future Fast Forward' project, more than 7 billion euros would be mobilized by Volkswagen Group and SEAT S.A., and would represent the largest industrial investment in Spanish history. The goals of Volkswagen Group and SEAT include: electrifying Spain by creating a European Electric Vehicle Hub, building up a battery cell production and full, and sustainable E-ecosystem. Volkswagen plans to build six Gigafactories in Europe with an annual capacity of 240 GWh together with partners. Volkswagen said Valencia would be the dedicated location for a new battery cell factory in Spain. Gigafactory Valencia would be Volkswagen's second location after Salzgitter and the first one outside of Germany. Volkswagen aims for a production capacity of 40 GWh annually and plans to employ more than 3,000 people in Valencia. It is estimated to be ready to start production in 2026. Volkswagen said the demand for premium cells will be met by Northvolt in Skelleftea, Sweden. Also, the company has founded a European corporation for cell development and manufacturing. Its center of gravity will be the Salzgitter plant in Germany starting production in 2025. 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.
BROOKFIELD, NEWS, March 23, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Brookfield Reinsurance (NYSE, TSX: BAMR) announced today the filing of its 2021 annual report, including audited financial statements for the year ended December 31, 2021, on Form 20-F with the SEC on EDGAR as well as with Canadian securities regulatory authorities on SEDAR.



These documents are available at bamr.brookfield.com, on SEC's website at www.sec.gov and on SEDAR's website at www.sedar.com. Hard copies will be provided to shareholders free of charge upon request.

About Brookfield Reinsurance

Brookfield Asset Management Reinsurance Partners Ltd. (NYSE: BAMR; TSX: BAMR) operates a leading reinsurance business focused on providing capital-based and annuity solutions for insurance and reinsurance companies, and pension risk transfer products for pension plan sponsors. Each class A exchangeable share of Brookfield Reinsurance is exchangeable on a one-for-one basis with a class A limited voting share of Brookfield Asset Management Inc. (NYSE: BAM; TSX: BAM.A).

For more information, please visit our website at bamr.brookfield.com or contact:
Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - March 23, 2022) - Stratabound Minerals Corp. (TSXV: SB) (OTCQB: SBMIF) ("Stratabound" or the "Company") is pleased to announce exploration work has commenced on its Fremont Gold Project in the Mother Lode Gold Belt of central California. Preliminary mine development plans are also underway including baseline environmental and engineering studies.

Exploration Work

The first phase of exploration work includes excavating 10 surface trenches at 50-metre intervals across 500 metres of strike overlying the Queen Specimen Zone. The Queen Specimen Zone is the northern-most of four separately drilled gold-mineralized zones that are connected across 4 kilometres of strike on surface by a >30 ppb gold-in-soil anomaly.

To date only one of these zones, the Pine Tree-Josephine ("PTJ") Deposit, has a defined NI 43-101 Mineral Resource Estimate1) ("MRE"). The PTJ Deposit features 526,000 ounces at an average grade of 1.60 g/t Au in the Indicated, plus 452,000 ounces at an average grade of 1.29 g/t Au in the Inferred 1) MRE categories, respectively. The PTJ Deposit covers only one km of the four km of anomalous gold-in-soil mineralization and extends only to about 300m from surface; nearly half the depth of historic high-grade underground mine production which remains open beyond.

Starting with Queen Specimen, the Company plans to expand the MRE across the remaining 3 km of strike and to depth through additional trenching and drilling campaigns planned this year.

Systematic sampling of the trenches is designed to define the at-surface gold mineralization projected from diamond and reverse-circulation ("RC") drill holes extending from 300 metres below surface. (Figure 1.) The entirety of work will be incorporated into a revised NI 43-101 MRE update later this year.





Figure 1: Queen Specimen Cross Section 26400 N

To view an enhanced version of Figure 1, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/4064/117735_1ba8f47384f23ac5_002full.jpg

Mine Development Activities

The Company is also pleased to report that its baseline environmental program has also commenced. The Company is re-establishing and upgrading water sampling points and monitoring groundwater wells for routine environmental sampling. These pre-production sampling studies are a critical component of an Environmental Impact Report ("EIR") that will be submitted to regulatory authorities in order to receive mining permit approvals. The effort is greatly assisted by a draft Environmental Impact Report ("EIR") prepared in 1989 by previous owners for which considerable work and effort has already been contributed. Independent consulting companies have also been approached to prepare proposals for an updated NI 43-101 Resource Estimate and Preliminary Economic Assessment planned for later this year.

Mr. R. Kim Tyler, President and CEO of the Company stated, "We are pleased to report that work has begun on site at Fremont pursuing two parallel objectives of a "path to production" as well as expanding the resource base. On the strength of the Property's assets enhanced by the recent compelling surface gold-in-soil results linking all the mineralized zones over the full four kilometres of strike, we are greatly encouraged to move forward."

ABOUT STRATABOUND

Stratabound Minerals Corp. is a Canadian mineral exploration and development company that is developing its advanced-stage flagship Fremont Gold Project in the Mother Lode Gold Belt of California. The Project includes the Pine Tree/Josephine Deposit hosting an NI 43-101 Mineral Resource estimate of 526,000 ounces at an average grade of 1.60 g/t Au in the Indicated, plus 452,000 ounces at an average grade of 1.29 g/t Au in the Inferred Mineral Resource categories, respectively1). Additionally, Fremont also hosts three undeveloped gold occurrences across four kilometres of strike along the prolific Mother Lode Gold Belt.

1) (Technical Report on the Fremont Gold Project, Central California, USA. Report for NI 43-101Stratabound Minerals Corp. SLR Project No: 233.33360.R0000 September 30, 2021, SLR Consulting (Canada) Ltd. Filed on SEDAR.

The Company is also advancing its pipeline of other early-stage gold exploration projects including the Golden Culvert, YT and McIntyre Brook, NB in Canada. Additionally, the Company holds two other projects both of which feature NI 43-101 Mineral Resource Estimates. These include the Dingman Gold Deposit, ON and a significant land position in the Bathurst camp of New Brunswick including the Captain Cobalt-Copper-Gold Deposit.

Mr. R. Kim Tyler, P.Geo., President and CEO of Stratabound, and a "Qualified Person" for the purpose of NI 43-101, has reviewed and approved the contents and technical information of this news release.

For more information, please visit the company's website at www.stratabound.ca or contact: R. Kim Tyler, President and CEO 416-915-4157 info@stratabound.com

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.

WARNING: The Company relies upon litigation protection for "forward-looking" statements. The information in this release may contain forward-looking information under applicable securities laws. This forward-looking information is subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those implied by the forward-looking information. Factors that may cause actual results to vary materially include, but are not limited to, inaccurate assumptions concerning the exploration for and development of mineral deposits, currency fluctuations, unanticipated operational or technical difficulties, changes in laws or regulations, failure to obtain regulatory, exchange or shareholder approval, the risks of obtaining necessary licenses and permits, changes in general economic conditions or conditions in the financial markets and the inability to raise additional financing. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on this forward-looking information. The Company does not assume the obligation to revise or update this forward-looking information after the date of this release or to revise such information to reflect the occurrence of future unanticipated events, except as may be required under applicable securities laws.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/117735
Intercepts include 15.09 meters grading 5.96% nickel equivalent starting at 202.87 meters

Tamarack, Minnesota--(Newsfile Corp. - March 23, 2022) - Talon Metals Corp. (TSX: TLO) OTC Pink: TLOFF) ("Talon" or the "Company") is pleased to provide an update on the Tamarack Nickel-Copper-Cobalt Project ("Tamarack Nickel Project"), located in central Minnesota.





Figure 1: 15.09 meters grading 4.88% Ni and 1.68% Cu (5.96% NiEq) at 202.87 meters in drill hole 21TK0355

To view an enhanced version of Figure 1, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/2443/117689_2bcc28fd94655809_001full.jpg

New assay results from drilling outside the main resource area of the Tamarack Nickel Project (CGO West area) continue to demonstrate shallow high-grade nickel-copper mineralization.

Notable assay results include the following:

Drill hole

# From

(m) To

(m) Length

(m) Ni

(%) Cu

(%) Co

(%) Pd

(g/t) Pt

(g/t) Au

(g/t) NiEq

(%) CuEq

(%) 21TK0355 202.87 217.96 15.09 4.88 1.68 0.12 0.48 0.69 0.16 5.96 15.89 21TK0348 250.25 263.44 13.19 5.41 2.29 0.12 0.55 0.71 0.26 6.75 18.00 21TK0339 152.35 157.89 5.54 1.52 1.05 0.05 0.08 0.12 0.11 2.05 5.46 21TK0341 165.53 169 3.47 2.73 0.90 0.10 0.13 0.17 0.09 3.29 8.77 21TK0345 170.88 174.93 4.05 3.05 1.35 0.08 0.22 0.34 0.13 3.81 10.16 21TK0361 157.08 162.27 5.19 1.37 0.88 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.10 1.82 4.85 and 169.99 172.52 2.53 2.06 1.20 0.05 0.14 0.21 0.07 2.67 7.12 and 192.97 194.91 1.94 1.69 0.77 0.06 0.13 0.18 0.06 2.14 5.70

Table 1: Highlighted Assay Results from New Drill Holes at the Tamarack Nickel Project

*See Table 3 for further technical information

"Given Talon's recent off-take announcement with Tesla, we are continuing to progress drilling rapidly at the Tamarack Nickel Project, with the goal of completing the necessary feasibility studies," said Brian Goldner, Chief Exploration and Operating Officer for Talon. "Today's announcement further confirms the high-grade nature of our deposit and that the project continues to expand as we drill."

Highlights: New Assays from CGO West Area

The CGO West area lies approximately 100 meters north-north-east of the Tamarack Nickel Project's resource area and extends for an additional 400 meters where drilling shows the presence of shallow, high-grade nickel-copper mineralization. The thick intersections of mixed and massive sulphides are found at the base of the overlying Fine-grained Orthocumulate ("FGO") and Coarse-grained Orthocumulate ("CGO") intrusions.

Drilling outside the pool of massive sulphides within the CGO West area intersected thick, high-grade nickel-copper mineralization , suggesting that the high-grade mineralization expands to the east (see Figure 2):

Drill hole 21TK0355: 15.09 meters grading 4.88% Ni and 1.68% Cu (5.96% NiEq1, 15.89% CuEq2).

The results from several drill holes suggest that the high-grade nickel-copper mineralization within the CGO West Area extends to the north (see Figure 2).

Drill hole 21TK0339: 5.54 meters grading 1.52% Ni and 1.05% Cu (2.05% NiEq, 5.46% CuEq) at 152.35 meters;

Drill hole 21TK0341: 3.47 meters grading 2.73% Ni and 0.9% Cu (3.29% NiEq, 8.77% CuEq) at 165.53 meters;

Drill hole 21TK0345: 4.05 meters grading 3.05% Ni and 1.35% Cu (3.81% NiEq, 10.16% CuEq) at 170.88 meters; and

Drill hole 21TK0361: 5.19 meters grading 1.37% Ni and 0.88 Cu% (1.82% NiEq, 4.85% CuEq) at 157.08 meters, and an additional 2.53 meters grading 2.06% Ni and 1.2% Cu (2.67% NiEq, 7.12% CuEq) at 169.99 meters, and an additional 1.94 meters grading 1.69% Ni and 0.77% Cu (2.14% NiEq, 5.7% CuEq) at 192.97 meters.

Drill results continue to demonstrate the consistency of the high-grade nickel-copper mineralization within the pool of massive sulphides in the CGO West Area (see Figure 2):

Drill hole 21TK0348: 13.19 meters grading 5.41% Ni and 2.29% Cu (6.75% NiEq, 18.0% CuEq) at 250.25 meters.





Figure 2. Plan view geological map of the northern portion of the Tamarack Nickel Project (CGO West area) showing the new drill holes in red

To view an enhanced version of Figure 2, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/2443/117689_2bcc28fd94655809_002full.jpg





Figure 3: Section A represents a portion of the CGO West area looking east showing the thick intersections of nickel-copper mineralization.

To view an enhanced version of Figure 3, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/2443/117689_2bcc28fd94655809_003full.jpg





Figure 4: Section B represents a portion of the CGO West area looking east showing the thick intersections of nickel-copper mineralization.

To view an enhanced version of Figure 4, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/2443/117689_2bcc28fd94655809_004full.jpg

Table 2: Collar Locations of New Drill Holes Referred to in this Press Release

Drill Hole

# Easting

(m) Northing

(m) Elevation

(masl) Azimuth Dip End

Depth

(m) 21TK0319 491077.29 5169038.73 388.4 307.3 -65 292.61 21TK0327 491077.1 5169039.7 388.5 21.1 -66 231.10 21TK0328 491076.8 5169039.9 388.5 342.1 -69 231.65 21TK0339 491143.2 5169173.9 388.0 290.0 -66 228.60 21TK0340 491009.1 5168962.1 388.0 330.8 -62 446.23 21TK0341 491143.5 5169173.9 388.0 261.5 -79 203.30 21TK0344 491142.8 5169174.4 388.0 324.0 -72 209.70 21TK0345 491142.87 5169174.88 388.0 345.9 -60 195.38 21TK0348 490988.92 5168993.91 388.0 42.3 -59 298.09 21TK0355 491137.35 5169179.35 388.0 192.4 -69 257.37 21TK0361 491134.47 5169165.54 388.0 347.7 -51 224.33

Collar coordinates are UTM Zone 15N, NAD83

Azimuths and dips are taken from survey record at collar unless otherwise noted





Table 3: Assay Results of New Drill Holes Referred to in this Press Release

Drill

hole # From

(m) To

(m) Length

(m) Ni

(%) Cu

(%) Co

(%) Pd

(g/t) Pt

(g/t) Au

(g/t) NiEq

(%) CuEq

(%) 21TK0319 191.3 194.26 2.96 0.45 0.22 0.01 0.09 0.17 0.07 0.62 1.65 and 199.34 208.52 9.18 1.39 0.71 0.04 0.14 0.22 0.10 1.80 4.80 and 222.72 223.68 0.96 2.73 1.92 0.07 0.76 1.58 0.18 4.06 10.83 21TK0327 172.48 176.84 4.36 0.57 0.35 0.02 0.13 0.25 0.12 0.84 2.23 21TK0328 180.78 183.13 2.35 0.62 0.39 0.02 0.09 0.17 0.11 0.87 2.31 and 186.35 199.08 12.73 1.27 0.55 0.05 0.10 0.16 0.08 1.62 4.31 21TK0339 137.5 162.5 25.00 0.90 0.65 0.03 0.05 0.08 0.09 1.23 3.29 including 152.35 157.89 5.54 1.52 1.05 0.05 0.08 0.12 0.11 2.05 5.46 and 176.87 178.13 1.26 0.738 1.19 0.03 0.05 0.07 0.12 1.27 3.40 21TK0340 239.53 247 7.47 0.69 0.38 0.02 0.05 0.12 0.10 0.92 2.46 and 271.66 302.8 31.14 0.76 0.46 0.02 0.06 0.10 0.07 1.01 2.70 21TK0341 165.53 169 3.47 2.73 0.90 0.10 0.13 0.17 0.09 3.29 8.77 including 165.53 167.64 2.11 4.11 1.39 0.14 0.19 0.26 0.13 4.96 13.23 21TK0344 143.86 146 2.14 0.54 0.35 0.02 0.03 0.06 0.05 0.73 1.93 21TK0345 170.88 174.93 4.05 3.05 1.35 0.08 0.22 0.34 0.13 3.81 10.16 21TK0348 250.25 263.44 13.19 5.41 2.29 0.12 0.55 0.71 0.26 6.75 18.00 21TK0355 202.87 217.96 15.09 4.88 1.68 0.12 0.48 0.69 0.16 5.96 15.89 including 202.87 207.31 4.44 3.43 1.51 0.08 0.32 0.35 0.15 4.28 11.41 including 208.61 217.96 9.35 6.24 1.98 0.16 0.63 0.94 0.19 7.56 20.16 21TK0361 157.08 162.27 5.19 1.37 0.88 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.10 1.82 4.85 and 169.99 172.52 2.53 2.06 1.20 0.05 0.14 0.21 0.07 2.67 7.12 and 192.97 194.91 1.94 1.69 0.77 0.06 0.13 0.18 0.06 2.14 5.70

Length refers to drill hole length and not True Width.

True Width is unknown at the time of publication.

All samples were analysed by ALS Minerals. Nickel, copper, and cobalt grades were first analysed by a 4-acid digestion and ICP AES (ME-MS61). Grades reporting greater than 0.25% Ni and/or 0.1% Cu, using ME-MS61, trigger a sodium peroxide fusion with ICP-AES finish (ICP81). Platinum, palladium and gold are initially analyzed by a 50g fire assay with an ICP-MS finish (PGM-MS24). Any samples reporting >1g/t Pt or Pd trigger an over-limit analysis by ICP-AES finish (PGM-ICP27) and any samples reporting >1g/t Au trigger an over-limit analysis by AAS (Au-AA26).

NiEq% = Ni%+ Cu% x $3.00/$8.00 + Co% x $12.00/$8.00 + Pt [g/t]/31.103 x $1,300/$8.00/22.04 + Pd [g/t]/31.103 x $700/$8.00/22.04 + Au [g/t]/31.103 x $1,200/$8.00/22.04

CuEq% = Cu%+ Ni% x $8.00/$3.00 + Co% x $12.00/$3.00 + Pt [g/t]/31.103 x $1,300/$3.00/22.04 + Pd [g/t]/31.103 x $700/$3.00/22.04 + Au [g/t]/31.103 x $1,200/$3.00/22.04

No adjustments were made for recovery or payability.

QUALITY ASSURANCE, QUALITY CONTROL AND QUALIFIED PERSONS

Please see the technical report entitled "NI 43-101 Technical Report Updated Preliminary Economic Assessment (PEA) #3 of the Tamarack North Project - Tamarack, Minnesota" with an effective date of January 8, 2021 prepared by independent "Qualified Persons" (as that term is defined in National Instrument 43-101 ("NI 43-101") Leslie Correia (Pr. Eng), Andre-Francois Gravel (P. Eng.), Tim Fletcher (P. Eng.), Daniel Gagnon (P. Eng.), David Ritchie (P. Eng.), Oliver Peters (P. Eng.), Volodymyr Liskovych (P.Eng.), Andrea Martin (P. E.) and Brian Thomas (P. Geo.) for information on the QA/QC, analytical and testing procedures at the Tamarack Project. Copies are available on the Company's website (www.talonmetals.com) or on SEDAR at (www.sedar.com). The laboratory used is ALS Minerals who is independent of the Company.

Lengths are drill intersections and not necessarily true widths. True widths cannot be consistently calculated for comparison purposes between holes because of the irregular shapes of the mineralized zones. Drill intersections have been independently selected by Talon. Drill composites have been independently calculated by Talon. The geological interpretations in this news release are solely those of the Company. The locations and distances highlighted on all maps in this news release are approximate.

Dr. Etienne Dinel, Vice President, Geology of Talon, is a Qualified Person within the meaning of NI 43-101. Dr. Dinel is satisfied that the analytical and testing procedures used are standard industry operating procedures and methodologies, and he has reviewed, approved and verified the technical information disclosed in this news release, including sampling, analytical and test data underlying the technical information.

ABOUT TALON

Talon is a TSX-listed base metals company in a joint venture with Rio Tinto on the high-grade Tamarack Nickel-Copper-Cobalt Project located in central Minnesota. Talon's shares are also traded in the US over the OTC market under the symbol TLOFF. The Tamarack Nickel Project comprises a large land position (18km of strike length) with high-grade intercepts outside the current resource area. Talon has an earn-in right to acquire up to 60% of the Tamarack Nickel Project, and currently owns 51%. Talon is focused on (i) expanding and infilling its current high-grade nickel mineralization resource prepared in accordance with NI 43-101 to shape a mine plan for submission to Minnesota regulators, (ii) following up on additional high-grade nickel mineralization in the Tamarack Intrusive Complex, and (iii) exploring the prospects for significant carbon storage in the ultra-mafic rocks that comprise the Tamarack Intrusive Complex through carbon mineralization. Talon has an agreement with Tesla Inc. to supply it with 75,000 metric tonnes (165 million lbs) of nickel in concentrate (and certain by-products, including cobalt and iron) from the Tamarack Nickel Project over an estimated six-year period once commercial production is achieved. Talon has well-qualified experienced exploration, mine development, external affairs and mine permitting teams.

For additional information on Talon, please visit the Company's website at www.talonmetals.com/

Media Contact:

Todd Malan

1-(202)-714-8187

malan@talonmetals.com

Investor Contact:

Sean Werger

1-(416)-500-9891

werger@talonmetals.com

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

This news release contains certain "forward-looking statements". All statements, other than statements of historical fact that address activities, events or developments that the Company believes, expects or anticipates will or may occur in the future are forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements reflect the current expectations or beliefs of the Company based on information currently available to the Company. Such forward-looking statements include statements relating to the timing and results of the exploration program, including the potential expansion of mineralization, and the completion of necessary feasibility studies. Forward-looking statements are subject to significant risks and uncertainties and other factors that could cause the actual results to differ materially from those discussed in the forward-looking statements, and even if such actual results are realized or substantially realized, there can be no assurance that they will have the expected consequences to, or effects on the Company.

Any forward-looking statement speaks only as of the date on which it is made and, except as may be required by applicable securities laws, the Company disclaims any intent or obligation to update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or results or otherwise. Although the Company believes that the assumptions inherent in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and accordingly undue reliance should not be put on such statements due to the inherent uncertainty therein.

1 Where used in this news release NiEq% = Ni%+ Cu% x $3.00/$8.00 + Co% x $12.00/$8.00 + Pt [g/t]/31.103 x $1,300/$8.00/22.04 + Pd [g/t]/31.103 x $700/$8.00/22.04 + Au [g/t]/31.103 x $1,200/$8.00/22.04

2 Where used in this news release CuEq% = Cu%+ Ni% x $8.00/$3.00 + Co% x $12.00/$3.00 + Pt [g/t]/31.103 x $1,300/$3.00/22.04 + Pd [g/t]/31.103 x $700/$3.00/22.04 + Au [g/t]/31.103 x $1,200/$3.00/22.04

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/117689
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.
PALM BAY, FL / ACCESSWIRE / March 23, 2022 / Sollensys Corp (OTCQB:SOLS), one of the first major cyber security companies specializing in ransomware recovery built on blockchain technology, today announced entry into a strategic reseller agreement with Octopy, an advanced technology company specializing in IT services, robotics, artificial intelligence and extended reality servicing the Mexican government and other major institutions.

"Trustworthy cyber defense is finally here," said Alejandro del Valle, CEO of Octopy. "Sollensys is a visionary company that reimagined blockchain technology to protect data assets. Partnering with Sollensys was an easy decision for us. Not only are they providing an advanced system to protect data assets, they have also provided for a solution to the impending threat of quantum computing by creating a quantum resistant blockchain. We believe Sollensys is the only choice to protect our customers' mission critical data."

Rather than starting with penetrable endpoints, Sollensys begins with securing a copy of what the hackers want most to hold hostage and corrupt: organizations' digital intellectual property and operational data. Sollensys exists to ensure companies and institutions never pay a ransom and their businesses can continue swiftly by safeguarding an immutable and uncorrupted copy of their data.

"Our mission at Sollensys is to create a safer world from cyber terrorists," said Don Beavers, CEO of Sollensys Corp. "Partnering with Octopy is a major win for Sollensys. Each day they are inventing and implementing highly technical intellectual property for their customers across every industry including government, manufacturing, medicine and banking, all critical institutions that serve our collective way of life and well being."

About Sollensys

Sollensys understands that cybersecurity is one of the biggest threats to our way of life. Destabilization, financial loss, data leaks, and corporate espionage create ripple effects that can be devastating. We are constantly reimagining technology to create a safer, better world to safeguard infrastructure, prevent disruptions to industry, and protect personal health, wealth, and well-being. Sollensys is based in Palm Bay, Florida and is publicly traded under the symbol SOLS. For more information please visit: https://www.sollensys.com

Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Information

Certain information in this press release contains forward-looking statements. All statements other than statements of historical facts included herein are forward-looking statements. In some cases, forward-looking statements can be identified by words such as "believe," "expect," "anticipate," "plan," "potential," "continue" or similar expressions. Such forward-looking statements include risks and uncertainties, and there are important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. These factors, risks and uncertainties are discussed in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC"). You should carefully consider these factors, risks and uncertainties described in, and other information contained in, the reports we file with or furnish to the SEC before making any investment decision with respect to our securities. Readers should not place any undue reliance on forward-looking statements since they involve known and unknown, uncertainties and other factors which are, in some cases, beyond the Company's control which could, and likely will, materially affect actual results, levels of activity, performance or achievements. Any forward-looking statement reflects the Company's current views with respect to future events and is subject to these and other risks, uncertainties and assumptions relating to operations, results of operations, growth strategy and liquidity. The Company is under no obligation (and expressly disclaim any such obligation) to publicly update or revise these forward-looking statements for any reason, or to update the reasons actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements, even if new information becomes available in the future.

Investor Relations:

Sollensys Corp

866.438.7657

www.sollensys.com

info@sollensys.com

https://www.linkedin.com/company/sollensys-corp/

SOURCE: Sollensys Corp.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/694224/Octopy-Contracts-with-Sollensys-to-Provide-Trustworthy-Cyberdefense-for-its-Customers-Including-the-Mexican-Government-and-Other-Major-Institutions
LAGUNA HILLS, CA / ACCESSWIRE / March 23, 2022 / BrainChip Holdings Ltd (ASX:BRN) (OTCQX:BRCHF) (ADR:BCHPY), the world's first commercial producer of ultra-low power neuromorphic AI chips and IP, is exhibiting the latest capabilities of its Akida neuromorphic technology in person at tinyML Summit 2022. TinyML Summit will feature technical progress and ecosystem development within the "tiny" machine learning industry to enable ultra-low power ML in edge applications.

tinyML Summit 2022

Date: March 28-30, 2022

Location: Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport

1333 Bayshore Highway

Burlingame, CA 94010

Tiny ML is a growing field of ML technologies including hardware (dedicated integrated circuits), algorithms, and software capable of performing on-device data analytics at extremely low power to enable a range of always-on applications, primarily in battery-operated devices. Tiny ML is common in audio, visual, navigational, biometric, and medical devices as well as other commercial and industrial uses.

"BrainChip appreciates the opportunity to showcase our achievements in neuroprocessing at the edge that enable even lower-power, higher-performing AI in audio, vision, olfactory, lidar and other edge sensors," said Kristofor Carlson, BrainChip's Manager of Applied Research.

Kristofor Carlson will lead the company's Poster sessions throughout the conference. Additionally, company representatives will be demonstrating the latest advancements of BrainChip's neuromorphic computing solutions in the Exhibit space.

Those interested in speaking with BrainChip at tinyML Summit 2022 can contact sales@brainchipinc.com to schedule an appointment.

About tinyML Summit 2022

tinyML Summit 2022 allows attendees to take part in the sharing, learning, and celebrating tinyML. With ever more pervasive advances in technology and algorithms, tinyML is rapidly becoming a reality. The incredibly open and collaborative nature of ML technology allows this field to advance so quickly. From its inception in 2019, the tinyML community has grown tremendously and has benefited greatly by supporting one another. Through leveraging the collective knowledge of the community, the Summit presents attendees with the opportunity to learn new ideas and approaches to solve problems and become more effective and efficient.

About BrainChip Holdings Ltd (ASX: BRN, OTCQX: BRCHF, ADR: BCHPY)

BrainChip is a global technology company that is producing a groundbreaking neuromorphic processor that brings artificial intelligence to the edge in a way that is beyond the capabilities of other products. The chip is high performance, small, ultra-low power and enables a wide array of edge capabilities that include on-chip training, learning and inference. The event-based neural network processor is inspired by the spiking nature of the human brain and is implemented in an industry standard digital process. By mimicking brain processing BrainChip has pioneered a processing architecture, called Akida, which is both scalable and flexible to address the requirements in edge devices. At the edge, sensor inputs are analyzed at the point of acquisition rather than through transmission via the cloud to a data center. Akida is designed to provide a complete ultra-low power and fast AI Edge Network for vision, audio, olfactory and smart transducer applications. The reduction in system latency provides faster response and a more power efficient system that can reduce the large carbon footprint of data centers.

Additional information is available at https://www.brainchipinc.com

Follow BrainChip on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/BrainChip_inc

Follow BrainChip on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/7792006

Contacts

Media Contact:

Mark Smith

JPR Communications

818-398-1424

Investor Contact:

Mark Komonoski

Integrous Communications

Direct: 877-255-8483

Mobile: 403-470-8384

mkomonoski@integcom.us

SOURCE: BrainChip Holdings Ltd.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/694223/Media-Alert-BrainChip-Demonstrates-Neuromorphic-AI-Capabilities-of-its-Akida-Platform-at-tinyML-Summit-2022
Cloud-based CCH Tagetik Predictive Intelligence global expert solution empowers finance leaders with data-driven insights for improved planning agility, accuracy, and transparency

Today, Wolters Kluwer announced that its cloud-based CCH Tagetik Predictive Intelligence global expert solution was named a winner in the Artificial Intelligence Excellence Awards program presented by the Business Intelligence Group. This innovative global expert solution uses artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to empower the office of the CFO with explainable predictions and actionable insights that help finance professionals go beyond basic planning and make data-driven decisions faster.

CCH Tagetik Predictive Intelligence provides finance professionals in the office of the CFO with more agility, greater accuracy, and the tools they need to deliver trusted plans that boost financial performance for their business. This out-of-the-box predictive planning solution empowers teams with explainable predictions and actionable insights they need to make better decisions faster. Its embedded machine learning technology interconnects data across the organization to help illuminate key business drivers and to shine light on the best path forward.

"We are honored that the Business Intelligence Group has recognized the innovative CCH Tagetik Predictive Intelligence solution with another prestigious award," said Ralf Gartner, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Corporate Performance Solutions, Wolters Kluwer Tax Accounting. "Disruptive and actionable innovation that applies advanced technologies like AI for predictive planning opens a new world of opportunity for finance departments by enabling real-time insights that help uncover performance drivers to allow more informed decision-making."

"We are so proud to name Wolters Kluwer as a winner in our Artificial Intelligence Excellence Awards program," said Maria Jimenez, chief nominations officer for Business Intelligence Group. "It was clear to our judges that CCH Tagetik Predictive Intelligence expert solution was using AI to improve the lives of customers and their employees. Congratulations to the entire team!"

About Business Intelligence Group

The Business Intelligence Group was founded with the mission of recognizing true talent and superior performance in the business world. Unlike other industry award programs, these programs are judged by business executives having experience and knowledge. The organization's proprietary and unique scoring system selectively measures performance across multiple business domains and then rewards those companies whose achievements stand above those of their peers.

About Wolters Kluwer

Wolters Kluwer (WKL) is a global leader in professional information, software solutions, and services for the healthcare; tax and accounting; governance, risk and compliance; and legal and regulatory sectors. We help our customers make critical decisions every day by providing expert solutions that combine deep domain knowledge with advanced technology and services.

Wolters Kluwer reported 2021 annual revenues of 4.8 billion. The group serves customers in over 180 countries, maintains operations in over 40 countries, and employs approximately 19,800 people worldwide. The company is headquartered in Alphen aan den Rijn, the Netherlands.

Wolters Kluwer shares are listed on Euronext Amsterdam (WKL) and are included in the AEX and Euronext 100 indices. Wolters Kluwer has a sponsored Level 1 American Depositary Receipt (ADR) program. The ADRs are traded on the over-the-counter market in the U.S. (WTKWY).

For more information, visit www.wolterskluwer.com, follow us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220323005135/en/

Contacts:

MARISA WESTCOTT

Wolters Kluwer Tax Accounting

212-771-0853

marisa.westcott@wolterskluwer.com

MARIA JIMENEZ

Business Intelligence Group

+1 909-529-2737

jmaria@bintelligence.com
commercetools attending Shoptalk to showcase the limitless possibilities its commerce solutions enable, joined by customers L.L.Bean, Zenni Optical, Kaiser Permanente, and Mars

commercetools, the leader in digital commerce and creator of headless commerce, today announced major company and product portfolio growth year-over-year that enabled customers of all sizes to capitalize on the shift to digital commerce.

The growth of the global eCommerce market which is expected to total $5.55 trillion in 2022 proves the demand for flexible, quick and modern commerce solutions as business-to-business (B2B), business-to-consumer (B2C) brands, and direct-to-consumer (D2C) look to compete in a digital first-economy. As the pioneer of headless commerce, commercetools will continue to disrupt the industry that's seen minimal change in 30 years by helping brands adopt modern commerce practices and grow their revenue by creating innovative and seamless commerce experiences.

"From day one, commercetools was built with the goal of modernizing commerce to provide our customers with the ability to deliver cutting-edge experiences," said Dirk Hoerig, CEO at commercetools. "commercetools has seen profound growth over the past year with customers, employees, partners and offices but it doesn't stop there. We're excited to continue our work with new, innovative companies across all industries, sizes, and business models in the years to come."

Through strong partnerships and a relentless focus on innovation, commercetools achieved key customer wins and company growth that demonstrates the strong advancement and adoption it saw in 2021:

Added major B2B and B2C brands to its client roster including H&M, Sephora, L.L.Bean, Lululemon, Zoro Tools, SanMar, Mitsubishi Chemicals, Dexcom, Hobby Lobby, Kaiser Permanente, Emma Sleep, Ashley Furniture, Powell's Books, DirecTV, among others.

- Closed $140 million in Series C funding, valuing the company at $1.9 billion.

- Acquired Frontastic to bring the Microservices, API, Cloud and Headless (MACH) movement to mid-market and digital business teams.

- Increased employee headcount YOY by 53%, reaching over 400 total employees globally.

- Expanded global presence with office openings in Spain and Portugal.

- Honored as a Google Cloud Partner award winner, Gartner Magic Quadrant Leader, and EHI Retail Institute Top Supplier Retail award winner.

As commercetools looks to the year ahead, plans include expanding its robust product portfolio for enterprise and mid-market B2C and B2B companies through development and acquisition, global expansion, rapid hiring, and partnerships across multiple industry verticals. commercetools will also continue to build a global partner network through its MDF program for partners and independent software vendors, and further establish the commercetools brand by scaling marketing efforts led by newly appointed CMO, Jen Jones.

commercetools will attend Shoptalk in Las Vegas on March 27-30, 2022, to showcase the success of its next-generation digital commerce technology. On Monday, March 28 from 4:45 5:30 pm PT at Booth 3060 (commercetools), commercetools will host fireside chats with Kaiser Permanente, Mars and Valtech on topics ranging from omni-channel, improving speed flexibility and women in commerce tech. To connect with commercetools at Shoptalk, visit here.

"commercetools has been at Shoptalk since its inception, and we're firm in our belief that it's the best meeting place for innovative brands and retailers," said Jen Jones, CMO at commercetools. "With its projected record-setting attendance this year, we're thrilled to connect with the brightest minds in the industry and showcase how commercetools is helping the best brands move away from outdated tech and inflexible legacy platforms and move toward bringing their novel ideas to life."

To learn more about commercetools offerings visit the commercetools website: www.commercetools.com

About commercetools

commercetools is the world's leading product portfolio for next-generation B2C, D2C and B2B commerce. To break the market out of being restrained by legacy suites, commercetools invented a headless, API-first, multi-tenant SaaS commerce platform that is cloud-native and uses flexible microservices. Using modern development building blocks in a true cloud platform provided by commercetools, customers can deliver the best commerce experiences across every touchpoint on a large scale. commercetools has offices across the US, Europe, and Asia Pacific, with headquarters in Germany. Since 2010, commercetools software has been implemented by Fortune 500 companies across industries, from retail to manufacturing and from telecommunications to fashion. For more information, please visit www.commercetools.com

commercetools at Shoptalk

commercetools is attending and sponsoring Shoptalk on March 27-30, 2022, located at Mandalay Bay, Las Vegas. commercetools will be located at booth #3060. To get in touch with commercetools at Shoptalk, please visit here.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220323005299/en/

Contacts:

Katie Butler

Walker Sands, for commercetools

614-507-5512
451 Research Study Commissioned by Pyramid Analytics Details How Decision Intelligence is Different than Legacy Business Intelligence

Despite accelerated digital transformation of businesses over the past two years, almost one-third of companies surveyed for a Data Analytics and Data Platforms study have yet to fully embrace a data-driven approach to strategic decision-making. A new Business Impact Brief commissioned by Pyramid Analytics from 451 Research, part of S&P Global Market Intelligence, states that the emerging discipline of Decision Intelligence could help improve business performance by placing data-driven decision-making within the reach of more personnel within an organization. This means decisions can be made by individuals beyond those who are proficient or skilled in interpreting information and crunching it for insights.

Key Points:

Almost one-third (32%) of companies have yet to fully embrace a data-driven approach to strategic decision-making, according to 451 Research's Voice of the Enterprise: Data Analytics, Data Platforms 2021 survey. That means a sizable number of organizations are missing out on the benefits of utilizing data as a decision-making tool.

Not all DI platforms provide the same functionality or meet the same needs. Companies should choose Decision Intelligence platforms with rigorous data management and a wide array of analytical functions.

Decision intelligence requires new software which includes AI and machine learning.

AI puts the "intelligence" into Decision Intelligence, lowering the skills barrier by automating the complex steps required for a data-driven approach.

Download the 451 Research report Decision Intelligence: A New Enabler for Data-Driven Decisions [Ungated].

[Ungated]. Click here to schedule a demo of the Pyramid Decision Intelligence Platform.

When an organization effectively uses data to make decisions, it can lead to increased sales, improved business agility, better customer service and engagement, and empowered internal decision-makers. Decision Intelligence: A New Enabler for Data-Driven Decisions is available exclusively from Pyramid Analytics.

Complete, Unified Decision Intelligence

Only the Pyramid Decision Intelligence Platform unifies Data Preparation, Business Analytics, and Data Science on a single, integrated platform. This eliminates the need to use multiple disparate tools and the associated license cost and management complexity. Lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), rapid rollout, quicker and direct access to all available data, and industry-leading user adoption means faster time to value. The Pyramid Decision Intelligence Platform can be deployed on-premises, into a private or public cloud, embedded into other apps or delivered through Managed Services Providers (MSP).

Pyramid's Decision Intelligence strategy was described as evolutionary in a recent analyst report. Pyramid Analytics Plants Stake in Decision Intelligence Ground, authored by Krishna Roy, Senior Research Analyst on the Data, AI Analytics team at 451 Research, examines Pyramid's Decision Intelligence Platform in the context of the emerging decision intelligence market which experts see as the next evolution in analytics and business intelligence (ABI).

Quotes

Krishna Roy, Senior Research Analyst for the Data, AI Analytics team, 451 Research, part of S&P Global Market Intelligence: "Decision intelligence is still in its infancy. But its potential to support digital transformation by increasing the levels of data-driven decision-making in an organization is significant. Increased sales, improved business agility, enhanced customer service and engagement, and more empowered and aligned internal decision-makers can all be achieved when data-driven decision-making is effectively implemented. Decision intelligence platforms are likely to play a key role in enabling organizations to realize these benefits."

Chas Kielt, Vice President of Global Corporate Communications and Partner Marketing, Pyramid Analytics: "Decision Intelligence is emerging technology that meets all traditional BI and Analytics needs, but delivers accessibility, performance, context, scalability and rich functionality that greatly surpasses legacy tools. Slapping a decision intelligence label on a limited data visualization point product doesn't make it so. With this report, the 451 Research team is helping data scientists, data analysts, and data-minded business professionals understand the Decision Intelligence market landscape."

About Pyramid Analytics

Pyramid is what's next in analytics. Our unified decision intelligence platform delivers insights for everyone to make faster, more informed decisions. It provides direct access to any data, enables governed self-service for any person, and serves any analytics need in a no-code environment. Decision Intelligence Platform uniquely combines Data Prep, Business Analytics, and Data Science in a single environment with AI guidance, reducing cost and complexity while accelerating growth and innovation. The Pyramid Platform enables a strategic, organization-wide approach to Business Intelligence and Analytics, from the simple to the sophisticated. Schedule a demo.

Pyramid Analytics is incorporated in Amsterdam and has regional headquarters in global innovation and business centers, including London, New York City, and Tel-Aviv. Our team lives worldwide because geography should not be a barrier to talent and opportunity. Learn more at Pyramid Analytics.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220323005316/en/

Contacts:

Media Contact:

Susie Evershed

Resonance: +44 (0)208 819 3170

pyramidanalytics@resonancecrowd.com



Chas Kielt

Vice President of Global Corporate Communications and Partner Marketing, Pyramid Analytics

617.687.3371

chas.kielt@pyramidanalytics.com
The remote desktop software company also was honored as the ninth best-performing UK tech scale-up.

RealVNC, a remote desktop software company that provides secure remote access and management software used by hundreds of millions of people worldwide, has been recognized as the best performing company in the "Security and Infrastructure" category among Megabuyte's 2022 Emerging Stars. Megabuyte is the leading source of independent data and insights on UK technology and tech-enabled businesses.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220323005085/en/

RealVNC awarded Megabuyte Emerging 25 award as the peer group best-performer in the security and infrastructure software category. (Photo: Business Wire)

RealVNC was also named the ninth best-performing UK tech scale-up during the annual Megabuyte Emerging Stars awards. The Emerging Stars awards recognize the 25 best-performing, scale-up technology companies within the universe of companies named to the Megabuyte100. This is the first year RealVNC has been recognized by Megabuyte as an Emerging Star. To read Megabuyte's assessment of RealVNC and the full Emerging Stars report, click here.

"We all are very proud that our growth measures up so well against our nationwide peers," said Adam Greenwood-Byrne, chief executive officer of RealVNC. "These awards are quantitatively assessed on a balanced scorecard of seven financial performance metrics, making this a solid testament to our accomplishments."

Headquartered in Cambridge, RealVNC's products for desktop, mobile, and embedded platforms make it easy for users to access and operate devices remotely while enabling remote users to work with technicians to resolve problems easily.

ABOUT REALVNC

RealVNC's secure remote access and management software is used by hundreds of millions of people worldwide. Their software helps organizations to cut costs and improve the quality of supporting remote devices and applications, as well as enabling remote working. RealVNC is the UK-based, original inventors of VNC remote access software, and they support an unrivaled mix of desktop, mobile, and embedded platforms.

ABOUT THE MEGABUYTE EMERGING STARS AWARDS

The Megabuyte Emerging Stars awards are part of the Megabuyte100 award series which collectively celebrates the 100 best performing technology companies in the UK.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220323005085/en/

Contacts:

Lauren Meckstroth

lauren@theabbiagency.com

702.499.7388
Mastercard deepens a decade long collaboration with GPS, launching and scaling hundreds of card programmes for some of the most successful fintechs in the world

GPS recently raised over US$400 million in new capital to accelerate investment in open API, cloud-based technology, driving global expansion into many of the world's largest markets over the next three years

Global Processing Services ("GPS"), a leading global payment technology platform, today announced a new strategic partnership with Mastercard.

Today's announcement expands on the two firms' longstanding relationship stretching back over a decade. Together, GPS and Mastercard have worked in partnership to launch and scale hundreds of card programmes for some of the most successful and innovative fintechs in the world including Revolut, Starling Bank and Curve, amongst many others across Europe and Asia-Pacific.

In January 2022, GPS announced a significant capital injection of over US$400 million providing GPS with a bench of experienced global growth investors including Advent International through Advent Tech and affiliate Sunley House Capital Viking Global Investors; Temasek, the global investment company headquartered in Singapore; and MissionOG, a US-based growth equity firm.

GPS intends to invest strongly in international expansion and product development with an eye on new and fast-growing verticals where adoption continues to rise including digital banks, crypto, BNPL, open banking and cross border payments, and as a result, Mastercard has made a strategic investment into the company.

GPS plays a crucial role in enabling fintech customers of networks such as Mastercard to deliver a trusted and dynamic digital commerce experience to billions of consumers who use physical and virtual cards innovatively, quickly, and securely.

Through GPS's modern and agile cloud-based technology, fintechs can access a diverse and expanding suite of modern open APIs that enable ambitious and disruptive players to scale at speed. Fintechs can also access GPS's unique ecosystem of international partners, freeing them up to focus their time and resources on what truly matters to them delivering an exceptional customer experience and continuous product innovation that disrupts and advances traditional banking, payment and lending services.

Jason Lane, Executive Vice President Market Development Europe, Mastercard, said: "We are excited to be formalising our partnership with GPS, working with them to build the fintechs of the future. Mastercard has a long history of partnering with fintechs, ensuring we have the programmes, products and tools that every innovative financial company needs even as the sector continues to evolve. We provide the solutions and expertise to iterate with fintech companies at each stage, transform together and achieve scale at pace."

Joanne Dewar, Chief Executive Officer at GPS, said: "Our partnership with Mastercard is a resounding endorsement of our API-first payment technology platform and our bold vision for the future of payments. Together, for over a decade, we have helped to reliably scale many customers at speed. We welcome them as a GPS investor and we are ready to support many more future Mastercard fintech customers to scale into global businesses with the innovation, speed, and security they expect."

-ends-

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220323005521/en/

Contacts:

Louisa Bartoszek Sumeet Vermani

Marcom@globalprocessing.com
Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - March 23, 2022) - Atrium Mortgage Investment Corporation (TSX: AI) (TSX: AI.DB.C) (TSX: AI.DB.D) (TSX: AI.DB.E) (TSX: AI.DB.F) (TSX: AI.DB.G) is pleased to announce that the underwriters of its offering of 5.10% convertible unsecured subordinated debentures due March 31, 2029 exercised, in full, their previously announced over-allotment option, resulting in the issue of an additional $5,250,000 aggregate principal amount of debentures. The exercise of the over-allotment option brings the total aggregate principal amount of such debentures issued by Atrium to $40,250,000. The debentures are listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol "AI.DB.G".

The underwriting syndicate for the offering of debentures was bookrun by TD Securities Inc. and RBC Capital Markets and co-led by CIBC Capital Markets, and included National Bank Financial Inc., BMO Capital Markets, Scotiabank, Canaccord Genuity Corp., iA Private Wealth Inc., Raymond James Ltd. and Echelon Wealth Partners Inc.

Atrium will use the net proceeds from the exercise of the over-allotment option to repay existing indebtedness under its revolving operating credit facility, which will then be available to be drawn, as required, for general corporate purposes, particularly funding future mortgage loan opportunities.

The details of the debentures are described in Atrium's press release issued on March 18, 2022 in connection with the closing of the offering of the debentures.

No securities regulatory authority has either approved or disapproved of the contents of this news release. The securities being offered have not been, and will not be, registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended, or any state securities laws, and may not be offered or sold in the United States unless an exemption from registration is available. This news release is for information purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any securities of Atrium in any jurisdiction.

About Atrium

Canada's Premier Non-Bank Lender

Atrium is a non-bank provider of residential and commercial mortgages that lends in major urban centres in Canada where the stability and liquidity of real estate are high. Atrium's objectives are to provide its shareholders with stable and secure dividends and preserve shareholders' equity by lending within conservative risk parameters.

Atrium is a Mortgage Investment Corporation (MIC) as defined in the Income Tax Act (Canada), so is not taxed on income provided that its taxable income is paid to its shareholders in the form of dividends within 90 days after December 31 each year. Such dividends are generally treated by shareholders as interest income, so that each shareholder is in the same position as if the mortgage investments made by the company had been made directly by the shareholder. For further information, please refer to regulatory filings available at www.sedar.com or Atrium's website at www.atriummic.com.

THIS NEWS RELEASE IS NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO U.S. NEWSWIRE SERVICES OR FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES.

For further information, please contact

Robert G. Goodall

President and Chief Executive Officer

Jennifer Scoffield

Chief Financial Officer

(416) 867-1053

info@atriummic.com

www.atriummic.com

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/117727
NEW YORK, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- As per Zion Market Research study, Wood Debridement industry garnered revenue worth nearly US$ 4.01 billion in 2021 and is anticipated to gain returns about US$ 8.32 billion by 2028. Additionally, Wood Debridement market is prognosis to record CAGR of almost 6.2% in 2022-2028. Additionally, growth of wound debridement market over assessment period can be credited to rise in cases of diabetic foot ulcers and other kind of wounds across globe. Apart from this, surge in burn incidences and favorable compensation policies will proliferate size of wound debridement industry. Additionally, wound debridement products assist in elimination of microbes & toxins, thereby helping in reducing wound healing and this is predicted to translate into massive expansion of wound debridement industry. Apparently, rise in cases of diabetes and obesity will catalyze market progression. Prominent rise in trauma cases and road collisions will culminate into massive increment in revenue of wound debridement industry in upcoming years.

Zion Market Research published the latest report titled as"Wound Debridement Market- By End-User (Home Care And Hospitals), By Wound Type (Burns, Wounds, Venous Leg Ulcers, Pressure Ulcers, And Diabetic Foot Ulcers), And By Product (Ultrasonic Devices, Medical Gauze & Pads, Ointments & Creams, Gels, And Surgical Devices): Global Industry Perspective, Comprehensive Analysis, And Forecast, 2022-2028."into their research database.

Wood Debridement Market: Overview

It is a medical procedure of removing contaminated & necrotic tissues from wound, thereby facilitating healing. This procedure is performed with help of chemical & enzymatic processes. Reportedly, it assists in removal of microbes, toxins, and foreign elements hindering quick healing of wounds. Moreover, wound debridement is performed through two methods, namely, selective as well as non-selective ones. Selective method includes bio-surgical therapy as well as larvae debridement treatment and autolytic debridement & chemical development. Non-selective procedure involves sharp debridement, mechanical debridement, surgical debridement, and ultrasound debridement.

Get a Free Sample Report with All Related Graphs & Charts (with COVID 19 Impact Analysis): https://www.zionmarketresearch.com/sample/wound-debridement-market

Our Free Sample Report Includes:

2022 Updated Report Introduction, Overview, and In-depth industry analysis

COVID-19 Pandemic Outbreak Impact Analysis Included

187 + Pages Research Report (Inclusion of Updated Research)

Provide Chapter-wise guidance on Request

2022 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:

Wood Debridement Market: Growth Dynamics

Expansion of wound debridement industry over forecast timespan is due to rise in occurrence of chronic disorders such as pressure ulcers, diabetic foot ulcers & other wounds. In addition to this, easy availing of compensation in developed countries along with altering lifestyles will prop up market trends. Rise in road collisions, trauma, and burns will embellish size of wound debridement market. Increment in geriatric population base and favorable government schemes will offer new growth avenues for wound debridement market.

Furthermore, increase in awareness & significance among individuals about wound care therapy will promote business landscape. Improvement in healthcare amenities and acceptance of new wound care items will enlarge scope of growth of wound debridement industry over forecasting timeline. Rise in popularity of home wound care treatments will open new vistas of business expansion in near future.

Directly Purchase a Copy of the Report @ https://www.zionmarketresearch.com/buynow/su/wound-debridement-market

Diabetic Foot Ulcers To Lead Wound Type Segment Over 2022-2028

Rapid growth of diabetic foot ulcers segment over next six years can be credited to a massive surge in number of patients affected due to diabetic foot ulcers. In addition to this, rise in occurrence of trauma incidences leading to need for wood detriment treatment will further define segmental growth.

Get More Insight before Buying@: https://www.zionmarketresearch.com/inquiry/wound-debridement-market

List of Key Players of Wood Debridement Market:

Medline Industries

ArthroCare Corporation

B. Braun Melsungen AG

Misonix Inc.

PuriCore plc

Integra Lifesciences

ConvaTec Group

Lohmann & Rauscher

Molnlycke Health Care AB

Paul Hartmann AG

Coloplast A/S

Smith & Nephew plc.

Acelity L.P. Inc.

Key Industry Insights & Finding of the Wood Debridement Market Reports:

As per the analysis shared by our research analyst, the Wood Debridement Market is expected to grow annually at a CAGR of around 6.2% (2022-2028).

(2022-2028). Through the primary research, it was established that the Wood Debridement Market was valued approximately USD 4.01 billion in 2021 and is projected to reach to roughly USD 8.32 billion by 2028.

in 2021 and is projected to reach to roughly by 2028. Prominent increment in population resulting in surge in patient population base will drive regional market trends.

Key questions answered in this report:

What are the growth rate forecast and market size for Wood Debridement Market?

What are the key driving factors propelling the Wood Debridement Market forward?

What are the most important companies in the Wood Debridement Market Industry?

What segments does the Wood Debridement Market cover?

How can I receive a free copy of the Wood Debridement Market sample report and company profiles?

Report Scope:

Report Attribute Details Market size value in 2021 USD 4.01 Billion Revenue forecast in 2028 USD 8.32 Billion Growth Rate CAGR of almost 6.2% 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 Medline Industries, ArthroCare Corporation, B. Braun Melsungen AG, Misonix, Inc., PuriCore plc, Integra Lifesciences, ConvaTec Group, Lohmann & Rauscher, Molnlycke Health Care AB, Paul Hartmann AG, Coloplast A/S, Smith & Nephew plc., and Acelity L.P. 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/6761

Free Brochure: https://www.zionmarketresearch.com/requestbrochure/wound-debridement-market

Regional Dominance:

Asia Pacific Wound Debridement Market To Record Fastest Growth In 2022-2028

Expansion of regional market over forecast timespan can be ascribed to rise in aging populace and presence of strong healthcare infrastructure in sub-continent. Prominent increment in population resulting in surge in patient population base will drive regional market trends. Easy access to skilled workforce and reduction in tax burden on wound care products through launching of GST in countries such as India will accentuate growth of wound debridement market in Asia Pacific zone.

Global Wood Debridement Market is segmented as follows:

Wood Debridement Market: By End-User Outlook (2022-2028)

Home Care

Hospitals

Wood Debridement Market: By Wound Type Outlook (2022-2028)

Burns

Wounds

Venous Leg Ulcers

Diabetic Foot Ulcers

Pressure Ulcers

Wood Debridement Market: By Product Outlook (2022-2028)

Ultrasonic Devices

Medical Gauze & Pads

Surgical Devices

Ointments & Creams

Gels

Wood Debridement 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 Wood Debridement Market: https://www.zionmarketresearch.com/news/wound-debridement-market

Browse Other Related Research Reports from Zion Market Research

In Vitro Diagnostics (IVD) Market : The global in vitro diagnostics (IVD) market was valued at $98.3 billion in 2021 and is anticipated to reach $113.2 billion by the end of 2028. The market is projected to grow with a healthy CAGR of 2.9% during the forecast period.

The global in vitro diagnostics (IVD) market was valued at in 2021 and is anticipated to reach by the end of 2028. The market is projected to grow with a healthy CAGR of 2.9% during the forecast period. Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STD) Diagnostics Market : The global Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STD) Diagnostics Market accrued earnings worth approximately 151 (USD Billion) in 2021 and is predicted to gain revenue of about 256 (USD Billion) by 2028, is set to record a CAGR of nearly 8.3% over the period from 2022 to 2028.

The global Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STD) Diagnostics Market accrued earnings worth approximately 151 (USD Billion) in 2021 and is predicted to gain revenue of about 256 (USD Billion) by 2028, is set to record a CAGR of nearly 8.3% over the period from 2022 to 2028. Cell Separation Technology Market: The global Cell Separation Technology Market accrued earnings worth approximately 4.5 (USD Billion) in 2021 and is predicted to gain revenue of about 8.01 (USD Billion) by 2028, is set to record a CAGR of nearly 9.5% over the period from 2022 to 2028.

Browse through Zion Market Research's coverage of the Global Healthcare 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 us-after all-if 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: sales@zionmarketresearch.com

Website: https://www.zionmarketresearch.com/

Blog - https://zmrblog.com/

Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1605489/Zion_Market_Research_Logo.jpg
Thunder Bay, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - March 23, 2022) - White Metal Resources Corp. (TSXV: WHM) (FSE: CGK1) (OTC Pink: TNMLF) ("WHM" or the "Company") announces the resignation of Nikolaos (Nick) S. Tsimidis as CFO. Nick will however continue to assist the Company in a consulting role.

The Company is pleased to announce the appointment of David Speck in the role of CFO. David is an entrepreneur and a specialist in capital markets. He graduated with a degree in political science with a focus on economics and finance from the University of Guelph in 1982. David comes with 35+ years' experience in the financial markets inclusive of retail sales, retail sales management, mutual fund corporate development/sales, financial forecasting/modeling, creation and the implementation of marketing and business plans, start-ups and associated financings, and marketing, of same. Amongst his achievements and awards, he has achieved the President's and Chairman's Club level as a retail broker, held senior management roles with two retail brokerages and raised several hundred million dollars in sales. He has worked with mining and medical imaging start-ups as he entered a more entrepreneurial phase of his career. David completed the Chartered Financial Analyst degree in 1994. He is a director of SEGO Resources Inc. and a Director of Rainy Mountain Royalty.

About White Metal Resources Corp.

White Metal Resources Corp. (TSXV: WHM) is a junior exploration company exploring for precious and base metals in Canada. The Company's Flagship project is the Tower Mountain Gold Project located near the port city of Thunder Bay, Ontario. For more information about the Company please visit www.whitemetalres.com.

On behalf of the Board of Directors

"Scott Jobin-Bevans"

Interim President & CEO, Director

For further information contact:

Scott Jobin-Bevans

White Metal Resources Corp.

684 Squier Street

Thunder Bay, Ontario, P7B 4A8

M:+1-647-405-3632

scott.jb@caraclecreek.com

Elliot Strashin

P:+1-416-504-0077 ext 22

elliot@strashindevelopments.com

THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE HAS NOT REVIEWED AND DOES NOT ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS RELEASE.

The information contained herein contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of applicable securities legislation. 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: risks related to failure to obtain adequate financing on a timely basis and on acceptable terms; risks related to the outcome of legal proceedings; 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 gold price and other 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. Actual events or results could differ materially from the Company's expectations or projections.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/117694
Berwyn, Pennsylvania--(Newsfile Corp. - March 23, 2022) - Annovis Bio, Inc. (NYSE: ANVS) ("Annovis" or the "Company"), a clinical-stage drug platform company addressing neurodegenerative diseases, today announced the company has been invited to present at the 2022 Virtual Growth Conference, presented by Maxim Group LLC and hosted by M-Vest, on March 28th - 30th.

Management will present an update on business activities. The pre-recorded presentation can be viewed during the days of the event. Sign up here to access the presentation.

About Annovis Bio, Inc.

Headquartered in Berwyn, Pennsylvania, Annovis Bio, Inc. (Annovis) is a clinical-stage, drug platform company addressing neurodegeneration, such as Alzheimer's disease (AD), Parkinson's disease (PD), and other chronic neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer's in Down Syndrome (AD-DS). We believe that we are the only company developing a drug for AD, PD, and AD-DS that inhibits more than one neurotoxic protein and, thereby, improves the information highway of the nerve cell, known as axonal transport. When this information flow is impaired, the nerve cell gets sick and dies. Annovis conducted two Phase 2 studies: one in AD patients and one in both AD and PD patients. In the AD/PD study Buntanetap showed improvement in memory loss and dementia associated with AD, as well as body and brain function in PD.

For more information on Annovis Bio, please visit the Company's website www.annovisbio.com and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Forward-Looking Statements

Statements in this press release contain "forward-looking statements" that are subject to substantial risks and uncertainties. Forward-looking statements contained in this press release may be identified by the use of words such as "anticipate," "expect," "believe," "will," "may," "should," "estimate," "project," "outlook," "forecast" or other similar words, and include, without limitation, statements regarding the timing, effectiveness, and anticipated results of Buntanetap clinical trials. Forward-looking statements are based on Annovis Bio, Inc.'s current expectations and are subject to inherent uncertainties, risks and assumptions that are difficult to predict. Further, certain forward-looking statements are based on assumptions as to future events that may not prove to be accurate. These and other risks and uncertainties are described more fully in the section titled "Risk Factors" in the Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2021, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Forward-looking statements contained in this announcement are made as of this date, and Annovis Bio, Inc. undertakes no duty to update such information except as required under applicable law.

###

Media and Investor Contact:

Nic Johnson

Russo Partners, LLC

(303) 482-6405

nic.johnson@russopartnersllc.com

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/117730
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - March 23, 2022) - Tower Resources Ltd. (TSXV: TWR) ("Tower" or the "Company") is pleased to advise that diamond drilling is now underway on the Company's Rabbit North property near Kamloops British Columbia (see Fig. 1).

The objective of the drilling is to expand the newly discovered Golden Zone northeast (see Fig. 2) from discovery hole RN21-026 (1.40 g/t Au over 95 m including 19.2 m of 4.21 g/t Au over 19.2 m (see Tower's January 11, 2022 press release). A minimum of six holes, Nos. RN22-028 to 033, are planned. These holes will be drilled at 50 m step-outs, initially in pairs to cross the gold zone in scissors fashion and firmly establish its strike, dip and thickness.

Qualified Person

The technical content of this news release has been reviewed and approved by Stuart Averill, P.Geo., a Director of the Company and a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101.

About Tower Resources

Tower is a Canadian based mineral exploration company focused on the discovery and advancement of economic mineral projects in the Americas. The Company's key exploration assets, both in B.C., are the Rabbit North copper-gold porphyry project located between the New Afton copper-gold and Highland Valley copper mines in the Kamloops mining district and the Nechako gold-silver project near Artemis' Blackwater project.

On behalf of the Board of Directors

Tower Resources Ltd.

Joe Dhami, President and CEO

(778) 996-4730

www.towerresources.ca

Reader Advisory

This news release may contain statements which constitute "forward-looking information", including statements regarding the plans, intentions, beliefs and current expectations of the Company, its directors, or its officers with respect to the future business activities of the Company. The words "may", "would", "could", "will", "intend", "plan", "anticipate", "believe", "estimate", "expect" and similar expressions, as they relate to the Company, or its management, are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned that any such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future business activities and involve risks and uncertainties, and that the Company's future business activities may differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements as a result of various factors, including, but not limited to, fluctuations in market prices, successes of the operations of the Company, continued availability of capital and financing and general economic, market or business conditions. There can be no assurances that such information will prove accurate and, therefore, readers are advised to rely on their own evaluation of such uncertainties. The Company does not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking information except as required under the applicable securities laws.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.





Figure 1 - Location of Tower's Rabbit North property relative to the active mines of the Kamloops district.



To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/5023/117740_4bf7ed98946eeaaa_002full.jpg







Figure 2 - Location of the drill area relative to discovery hole RN-21-26 and historical hole 97-07.



To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/5023/117740_4bf7ed98946eeaaa_003full.jpg



To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/117740
Engages Apaton Finance to Provide Investor Relations Services in Europe

Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - March 23, 2022) - NervGen Pharma Corp. (TSXV: NGEN) (OTCQX: NGENF) ("NervGen" or the "Company"), a clinical stage biotech company dedicated to developing innovative solutions for the treatment of nervous system damage, will be presenting at the 2022 Virtual Growth Conference presented by Maxim Group, being held virtually on March 28-30, 2022.

Paul Brennan, NervGen's President and CEO, will provide an overview of the Company's operations and the development plans for its lead compound, NVG-291. The presentation will be available via webcast on demand starting on Monday, March 28, 2022, at 9:00am ET using the following link:

https://m-vest.com/events/2022-virtual-growth-conference

NervGen is currently in Phase 1 clinical trials with NVG-291. Following completion of its Phase 1, NervGen intends to initiate Phase 1b/2 trials in Alzheimer's disease, multiple sclerosis and spinal cord injury with the first trials planned to start in 2022.

NervGen is also pleased to announce the appointment of Apaton Finance GmbH ("Apaton") as its public relations and investor relations consultant focused in the European Union, effective from March 18, 2022 for a one-year term. Apaton is a Hannover, Germany-based agency specializing in financial public relations and investor relations with a focus on small to mid-cap listed companies. Apaton will receive cash compensation, paid periodically, and is not anticipated to exceed US$60,000 over the term of the agreement. Apaton does not have any direct or indirect interest in NervGen, or its securities and no incentive stock options have been granted to Apaton. The appointment of Apaton as a public relations and investor relations consultant to NervGen is subject to regulatory acceptance of applicable filings with the TSX Venture Exchange.

About Apaton

Apaton Finance GmbH, is a specialist financial, public relations and investor relations agency, based in Hannover, Germany, providing services to international companies, with a focus on small to mid-cap listed companies. For more information, go to https://www.apaton.de/.

About NervGen

NervGen is restoring life's potential by creating innovative treatments for nervous system damage due to injury or disease. The Company is initially developing treatments for Alzheimer's disease, multiple sclerosis and spinal cord injury. For more information, go to www.nervgen.com.

For further information, please contact:

Huitt Tracey, Corporate Communications

htracey@nervgen.com

604.537.2094

Nancy Thompson, Vorticom Public Relations

nancyt@vorticom.com

212.532.2208

Follow NervGen on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook for the latest news on the Company.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This news release may contain "forward-looking information" and "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of applicable Canadian and United States securities legislation. Such forward-looking statements and information herein include, but are not limited to, the Company's current and future plans, expectations and intentions, results, levels of activity, performance, goals or achievements, or any other future events or developments constitute forward-looking statements, and the words "may", "will", "would", "should", "could", "expect", "plan", "intend", "trend", "indication", "anticipate", "believe", "estimate", "predict", "likely" or "potential", or the negative or other variations of these words or other comparable words or phrases, are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements include, without limitation, statements relating to: the expected compensation payable to Apaton; the timing of the clinical development of NVG-291; our clinical trial designs and timing to evaluate the therapeutic potential of NVG-291 in patients in Phase 1b/2 clinical trials in Alzheimer's disease, multiple sclerosis and spinal cord injury upon successful completion of the Phase 1 trial; and the creation of innovative treatments of nervous system damage due to trauma or disease.

Forward-looking statements are based on estimates and assumptions made by the Company in light of management's experience and perception of historical trends, current conditions and expected future developments, as well as other factors that we believe are appropriate and reasonable in the circumstances. In making forward-looking statements, the Company has relied on various assumptions, including, but not limited to: the Company's ability to manage the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic; the accuracy of the Company's financial projections; the Company obtaining positive results in its clinical and other trials; the Company obtaining necessary regulatory approvals; and general business, market and economic conditions.

Many factors could cause our actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements or future events or developments to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements, including without limitation, a lack of revenue, insufficient funding, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, reliance upon key personnel, the uncertainty of the clinical development process, competition, and other factors set forth in the "Risk Factors" section of the Company's Annual Information Form, Prospectus Supplement, financial statements and Management Discussion and Analysis which can be found on SEDAR.com. All clinical development plans are subject to additional funding.

Readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements made in this news release. Furthermore, unless otherwise stated, the forward-looking statements contained in this news release are made as of the date of this news release, and we have no intention and 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 applicable law. The forward-looking statements contained in this news release are expressly qualified by this cautionary statement.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/117754
Increase in demand for lightweight and durable aerospace components and simplification of intricate design with rapid prototyping and customization fuel the growth of the global aerospace 3D printing market.

PORTLAND, Ore., March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Allied Market Research published a report, titled, "Aerospace 3D Printing Market by Printing Technology (Selective Laser Sintering (SLS), Selective Laser Melting (SLM), Binder Jetting, Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM), Stereolithography (SLA), and Others), Platform (Aircraft, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), and Spacecraft), Application (Production and Pre-production & Post-production), Delivery (Product and Service) and Offering (Hardware (Printer and Material (Metal & Ceramics (Titanium, Aluminum, Steel, and Others), Thermoplastics (Polycarbonate (PC), Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS), Nylon/Polyamide, Fiber, and Others))), and Software): Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2021-2030." According to the report, the global aerospace 3D printing industry was estimated at $1.38 billion in 2020, and is anticipated to hit $6.80 billion by 2030, registering a CAGR of 18.4% from 2021 to 2030.

Drivers, restraints, and opportunities-

Rise in demand for lightweight and durable aerospace components and simplification of complex design with rapid prototyping and customization drive the growth of the global aerospace 3D printing market. On the other hand, limited regulatory Infrastructure and high initial investment & peripheral costs restrain the growth to some extent. However, technological advancements & material innovation and growing demand for cloud based 3D printing services are anticipated to create lucrative opportunities in the industry.

Download Report (358 Pages PDF with Insights, Charts, Tables, Figures) at https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/request-sample/16181

Covid-19 Pandemic-

The outbreak of the pandemic gave way to significant drop in the global passenger traffic, and the demand for new air traffic also experienced a steep decline, especially during the initial period, thereby impacting the global aerospace 3D printing market negatively.

However, the market is projected to get back on track soon.

The binder jetting segment to maintain the dominant share-

Based on printing technology, the binder jetting segment held the major share in 2020, generating more than one-fourth of the global aerospace 3D printing market. The same segment is also projected to cite the fastest CAGR of 19.9% during the forecast period, owing to its vast scope of application in the aviation and space industry.

Request for Customization at https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/request-for-customization/16181

The production segment held the highest share in 2020-

Based on application, the production segment held the highest share in 2020, generating nearly three-fourths of the global aerospace 3D printing market. The same segment would also cite the fastest CAGR of 18.7% from 2021 to 2030. This is due to the technological advancement and process optimization practice in the aerospace additive manufacturing space, minimizing the need for other operations.

North America held the major share in 2020-

Based on region, the market across North America accounted for the major share in 2020, contributing to more than one-third of the global aerospace 3D printing market. Developing market with the established industry players boosts the market growth. Asia-Pacific, simultaneously, is expected to cite the fastest CAGR of 20.5% throughout the forecast period. Rising demand for aircrafts over the coming years and aggressive government initiatives to establish indigenous capabilities drive the market growth.

Interested to Procure the Data with Actionable Strategy & Insights? Inquire here at https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/purchase-enquiry/16181

Prominent market players-

Liebherr

Stratasys Ltd.

Materialise NV

EOS GmbH

Markforged

3D Systems Corporation

Hoganas AB

Honeywell. General Electric

Exone

Renishaw PLC

Norsk Titanium

SLM Solution

TrumpF,

Envisiontec, Inc.

Prodways

Buy Complete Report Now! https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/checkout-final/3a2be7f21bc487b8daba2e8fd18c1904

Similar Reports We Have on 3D Printing Industry:

Automotive 3D Printing Market by Component (Technology (Material Extrusion, Powder Bed Fusion, Vat Photopolymerization, Material Jetting, Direct Energy Deposition, Binder Jetting), Material (Polymers, Metal, Others), and Services), Application (Prototyping, Tooling, Jigs & Fixtures, End-Use Parts, Others), Propulsion (ICE Vehicles, Electric Vehicles): Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2021-2030.

Military 4D Printing Market by Material (Programmable Carbon Fiber, Programmable Wood and Programmable Textiles) and End-Use (Defense, Aerospace, Automotive, Textile, Healthcare and Others): Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2020-2030.

Automotive 3D Imaging Market by Camera (Visible camera, 3D Camera, Night vision Camera, and LiDAR), Application (security & surveillance, automotive safety, parking assistance and others) and by geography (North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and LAMEA) - Global Market Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2017-2030.

3D Printing Market in Emerging Economies - China, India, UAE, Brazil, South Africa (Components and Applications) - Opportunities and Forecasts, 2013 - 2030.

4D Printing Market by Applications (Military & defense, Automotive, Medicine, Construction, Manufacturing, Infrastructure, Clothing and Aerospace) - Opportunities and Forecasts, 2022-2030.

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. Allied Market Research CEO Pawan Kumar is instrumental in inspiring and encouraging everyone associated with the company to maintain high quality of data and help clients in every way possible to achieve success. Each and every data presented in the reports published by us is extracted through primary interviews with top officials from leading companies of domain concerned. Our secondary data procurement methodology includes deep online and offline research and discussion with knowledgeable professionals and analysts in the industry.

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

UK: +44-845-528-1300

Hong Kong: +852-301-84916

India (Pune): +91-20-66346060

Fax: +1(855)550-5975

help@alliedmarketresearch.com

Web: www.alliedmarketresearch.com

Allied Market Research Blog: https://blog.alliedmarketresearch.com

Follow Us on | Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn |

Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/636519/Allied_Market_Research_Logo.jpg
The "France Ultrasound Infertility Diagnosis and Treatment Market by Care Pathway and End User: Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2021-2030" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The France ultrasound infertility diagnosis and treatment market was valued at $336.54 million in 2020, and is estimated to reach $522.36 million by 2030, growing at a CAGR of 4.4% from 2021 to 2030.

Infertility in individuals is defined as the inability of the male or female reproductive system to conceive naturally. Ultrasound-guided infertility diagnosis is a technique in which ultrasound waves are used for determination for the cause of infertility in males as well as females.

In females, infertility is caused majorly due to blocked fallopian tubes; sexually transmitted infections (STIs); uterine disorders such as endometriosis, septate uterus, and fibroids; and ovarian disorder such as the polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS). On the contrary, in males, obstruction of the reproductive tract, testicular impairment, and hormonal misbalance may result in infertility.

Fertility services help treat infertility in men and women. The different forms of fertility treatments available include in vitro fertilization (IVF), fertility testing, intrauterine insemination, and egg freezing embryo banking. These treatments are often opted by single mothers, the LGBTQ community, and couples who find it hard to procreate.

Ultrasound-guided procedures for infertility diagnosis such as hysterosonography, hysterosonosalpyngography, and hysterosalping-foam sonography are used to determine the woman's uterus for a variety of issues such as vaginal bleeding, recurrent miscarriages, fibroids, polyps, scar tissue, or other abnormalities.

Hysterosonosalpyngography is used to determine the fallopian tubes blockage. Ultrasound-guided trans-vaginal needle aspiration/biopsy and core-needle testicular biopsy in females and males are the minimally invasive techniques that assess infertility diagnosis. Treatment monitoring service such as the ovulation monitoring is one of the majorly used techniques for predicting the ovulation for conceiving through kits and is less expensive.

The major factors that drive the growth of the ultrasound infertility diagnosis treatment market include increase in prevalence of infertility rates, rise in trend of delayed pregnancies, surge in the number of median age of first-time mothers, increase in awareness of in vitro fertilization (IVF), and technological advancements for infertility diagnosis.

In addition, surge in adoption of sedentary lifestyle; rise in alcohol, smoking, tobacco consumption; excessive stress; unhealthy lifestyle; and surge in obesity cases are expected to drive the growth of the ultrasound-guided infertility diagnosis treatment monitoring services market.

Furthermore, technological advancements IVF techniques and frozen embryo transfer boost the market growth. For instance, in June 2021, France's Lower House of Parliament approved a law that will allow single women and lesbians to access medically assisted reproduction for the first time. Thus, provision of access to fertility treatments such as artificial insemination and IVF is expected to strengthen the growth of the market in France.

However, high cost of infertility diagnosis procedures, risk associated after IVF procedure, and high cost of assisted reproductive technology hinder the market growth. On the contrary, initiatives taken by governments for development of the technology sector in infertility and increase in disposable income level of consumers are expected to offer remunerative opportunities for the market growth.

In addition, surge in demand for advanced technologies in healthcare to enhance efficiency of procedures and smooth delivery of babies is expected to open new avenues for the market growth during the forecast period.

MAJOR PLAYERS

American Hospital of Paris

Amp Center St Roch

Amp Natecia Lyon

Centre Chirugical (Pierre Cherest Clinic)

Fertility Center-Parsi East

Hospital Cochin

Hospital Group Diaconesses Croix Saint-Simon

Maternite Des Bluets Hospital Pierre Rouques

Pointgyn-Pleasure,

Ramsay Healthcare Limited (Clinique De La Muette)

KEY MARKET SEGMENTS

By Care Pathways

Infertility Diagnostics

Hysterosonography

Hysterosonosalpyngography

Hysterosalping-foam Sonography (HyFoSy)

Ultrasound-guided trans-vaginal Needle Aspiration/Biopsy

Ultrasound-guided core-needle Testicular Biopsy

Treatment Monitoring

Frozen Embryo Transfer

Ovulation Monitoring

By End User

Public Hospital with Infertility Department

Infertility Diagnostics

Treatment Monitoring

Private Fertility Clinics

Infertility diagnostics

Treatment Monitoring

Ambulatory Centers

Infertility Diagnostics

Treatment Monitoring

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/gucv14

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220323005596/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
Luxfer Holdings PLC [NYSE: LXFR] ("Luxfer" or the "Company"), a global industrial company innovating niche applications in materials engineering, today announced that Andrew "Andy" Butcher has been named as Chief Executive Officer and a member of Luxfer's Board of Directors, effective May 6, 2022. The Company also reaffirmed its prior financial guidance for the year. Alok Maskara, who has served as CEO and Executive Director since May 2017, has elected to leave the Company in pursuit of another opportunity.

"We are grateful for Alok's five years of dedication to Luxfer. During his time, he successfully transformed the Company, positioning it for future growth with a focused strategy and a bolstered balance sheet. On behalf of the entire organization, we thank Alok for his meaningful contributions and wish him all the best in his future endeavors," said Patrick Mullen, Luxfer Board Chair.

Mullen continued, "With unanimous approval from the Board of Directors and consistent with the Company's succession plan, we are delighted to promote Andy to the position of Chief Executive Officer. Andy is a strategic, growth-oriented leader, bringing over 30 years of experience with Luxfer. We are confident that under Andy's leadership Luxfer will continue building on the transformation plan to deliver growth and shareholder value."

"It has been an honor to be a part of Luxfer's high-performing team, and I want to thank our Board and all our employees around the world for the opportunity to lead this great organization," said Alok Maskara. "Consistent with our established succession plans, I look forward to working with Andy to ensure a smooth transition."

Andy Butcher has served as the President of Luxfer Gas Cylinders, Luxfer's largest business unit, since 2014. Mr. Butcher joined Luxfer in 1991 and has held positions of increasing responsibility throughout his career with the Company. In 2002, he led the development of Luxfer's composite gas cylinder business, first as General Manager and then as Executive Vice President. Mr. Butcher holds an M.A. degree in Engineering from Cambridge University and an M.B.A from Keele University, both located in England.

"I am excited to accept the position of CEO and look forward to leading our dedicated worldwide team to deliver long-term growth and profitability for Luxfer," said Andy Butcher. "Luxfer has proven its resilience through pandemic-related challenges and ended 2021 with a strong balance sheet and significant opportunities in front of us. I am confident in our ability to deliver value to our customers, employees, and shareholders as we execute our strategic growth initiatives."

About Luxfer Holdings PLC

Luxfer is a global industrial company innovating niche applications in materials engineering. Using its broad array of proprietary technologies, Luxfer focuses on value creation, customer satisfaction, and demanding applications where technical know-how and manufacturing expertise combine to deliver a superior product. Luxfer's high-performance materials, components, and high-pressure gas containment devices are used in defense and emergency response, healthcare, transportation, and general industrial applications. For more information, please visit www.luxfer.com.

Luxfer is listed on the New York Stock Exchange and its ordinary shares are traded under the symbol LXFR.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220323005227/en/

Contacts:

Michael Gaiden

Vice President of Investor Relations

+1 (414) 982-1663

Michael.Gaiden@Luxfer.com


MOSCOW (dpa-AFX) - Ukrainian soldiers are successfully fighting back against Russian forces to reclaim some lost ground in parts of the country, the Pentagon says.



Ukrainian forces have continued to hold off Russian attempts at invading the Ukraine capital of Kyiv by about 15 kilometers to the northwest and about 30 kilometers to the east, according to a senior Defense Department official. There have been 'no real changes by the Russians on the ground near Kyiv,' he said in a briefing Tuesday.



Ukrainians are fighting hard to take back the city of Kharkiv from the Russians, he added.



The United States assesses that the Russians have launched more than 1,100 missiles since they invaded Ukraine 28 days ago.



Russian forces are shelling the southern port city of Mariupol from ships in the Sea of Azov. The Ukrainians are fighting very hard to keep Mariupol from falling,' according to the official.



Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky estimates that about 100,000 civilians remain trapped inside the city in 'inhumane conditions.' He said the Russian forces captured a humanitarian convoy that includes Ukrainian emergency workers.



The Armed Forces of Ukraine said in a Facebook post that they have regained control of Makariv. The Ukrainian flag is reportedly being raised in the suburb, 30 miles west of the capital Kyiv.



There are also indications that Russian forces have suffered setbacks in areas to the north of Kyiv that they have held since attacking Ukraine on February 24. Russian President Vladimir Putin's chief spokesperson Dmitry Peskov refused to rule out the possibility of using nuclear weapons against what Moscow saw as an 'existential threat.'



In an interview, CNN asked under what conditions Putin would use Russia's nuclear capability. Peskov replied, 'if it is an existential threat for our country, then it can be.'







Copyright(c) 2022 RTTNews.com. All Rights Reserved



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de
Biden's criticism of India's neutrality on Russia exposes US hypocrisy

(Global Times) 15:01, March 23, 2022

US-India Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

India's refusal to follow the US' lead in condemning and sanctioning Russia over the Ukraine crisis has increasingly irritated Washington. After White House officials issued warnings to New Delhi on multiple occasions, US President Joe Biden singled out India for its "shaky" response to Russia's military operation against Ukraine while addressing a meeting of US business leaders in Washington Monday.

Biden lauded the US-led alliance, including NATO, the European Union and key allies in the Pacific, especially Japan and Australia, for its "united front" against Russian President Vladimir Putin, but accused India of being "an exception" among Washington's allies and partners.

Not surprisingly, those who have gained a thumbs-up from Biden are blocs and countries often widely regarded as US megaphones and criticized for their lack of independent diplomacy toward the US internationally. The number of such obedient allies is quite limited - all of which seemingly have been named during Biden's Monday speech. In fact, quite a few US allies and partners in Asia and the Middle East such as Turkey and the United Arab Emirates disagree with the US approach of forcing Russia into a corner. India is definitely not the only "exception."

The US wishes to draw India to its side to act against Russia over the Ukraine crisis, which runs counter to India's own diplomatic traditions and practical interests. Since the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, New Delhi has adopted a neutral stance and has appealed for peace and constant dialogue. As Prime Minister Narendra Modi put it, India's stand is based on "connections with both Russia and Ukraine." India and Russia have long maintained a close relationship with cooperation in both the defense and security sectors. There is no motivation for New Delhi to serve Washington's interests at the cost of harming its own relationship with Moscow.

As an independent country, India has the right to make diplomatic decisions in line with its own interests and the reality. However, this has become unacceptable for the US.

"It shows the US' deep disrespect for India," said Li Haidong, a professor from the Institute of International Relations of China Foreign Affairs University. A big problem with American diplomacy is its disrespect to other countries and its arrogance in handling relations with other global powers, noted Li.

Disappointments and frustrations were also revealed in Biden's Monday speech. The US has made great efforts to court India in the past, but India has refused to serve as a "hatchet man" in the offensive against Russia. "After all, the US-India relationship is based on expediency," said Li. Unlike unwavering US lackeys like Australia, India hopes to maintain a certain strategic autonomy.

Biden's criticism of India laid bare the hypocrisy of the so-called democratic alliance. If India were to blindly follow US directives, it would be seen as a "like-minded partner," but if it were to do otherwise, it would invite condemnation and would be labeled as an "exception."

But the fact is when it comes to the Ukraine crisis, the US and the puppets it controls are the minority and "exceptions." The majority of countries including India and China support a peaceful resolution to the crisis through diplomatic efforts. They understand the crisis has its historical context, that NATO's eastward expansion led by the US has cornered Russia to counteract, and ruthlessly piling up sanctions on Russia won't help resolve the crisis.

Out of strategic selfishness, Washington has been fanning the flames of the Ukraine crisis and seeking profits. But most countries are not willing to be kidnapped by the US. They know the merits of the issue and where their interests are, and they determine their stance based on these. The true face of Washington has been made clear: It forces allies and partners to take sides regardless of their concerns or interests, which will make those countries become more cautious in developing relations with the US in future. The so-called anti-Russia united "democratic front" cannot be established.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
JERUSALEM, March 23 (Xinhua) -- An Israeli-led research found that the accelerated urban development in Israel's Red Sea resort city of Eilat significantly affected the local marine environment, Bar Ilan University (BIU) said Wednesday.

In the year-long study, published in the journal Global Change Biology, BIU researchers and their colleagues from Israel, Germany and Australia found damage to the biological function of corals in the Red Sea's northern Gulf of Eilat off southern Israel.

The team noted that Eilat releases pollutants such as chemicals, light and noise, which can be harmful to marine environments.

The researchers incorporated sampling at diel, monthly, and seasonal time points, in which they compared corals from an urban area to those from a nearby non-urban area.

It was found that despite the relatively healthy look of the urban corals, their natural biological rhythms and environmental sensory systems were disrupted.

The lunar cycles associated with coral metabolism, predation and biological clock functions have been hampered by urban conditions, resulting in lower physiological performance and the disappearance of reproductive cycles in urban corals, said the study.

"Following the results, scientists should be involved in assessing the potential impact of urbanization on marine areas ahead of urban development decisions," they concluded. 
Roger Thompson, CFO, Appointed Interim CEO effective 1 April 2022

Janus Henderson Group plc (NYSE/ASX: JHG) ("JHG" or the "Company") today announced that its Board of Directors has unanimously appointed Ali Dibadj as Chief Executive Officer ("CEO") of the Company effective no later than 27 June 2022. Ali Dibadj succeeds Dick Weil, who, as previously announced, will retire as CEO and a member of the Board as of 31 March 2022. Effective 1 April 2022, the Board has appointed Roger Thompson, Chief Financial Officer ("CFO"), to serve as Interim CEO until Mr Dibadj joins JHG. To assist in an orderly transfer of responsibilities, Mr Weil will serve as an adviser to the Company through 30 June 2022.

Ali Dibadj, 46, joins the Company from AllianceBernstein Holding L.P. ("AB") where he has served as CFO Head of Strategy since February 2021 as well as Portfolio Manager for AB Equities since 2017.Previously, he served as AB's Head of Finance and Head of Strategy from April 2020 to February 2021. He co-led AB's Strategy Committee in 2019 and served as a senior research analyst with Bernstein Research Services from 2006 to 2020, a period during which he was ranked as the number one analyst twelve times by Institutional Investor. Prior to joining AB, he spent almost a decade in management consulting, including at McKinsey Company and Mercer. Mr Dibadj holds a Bachelor of Science in engineering sciences from Harvard College and a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School.

Richard Gillingwater, Chairman of the Board of Directors, said, "We are pleased to appoint Ali Dibadj as the Company's next CEO. As part of our CEO transition planning, we conducted an extensive internal and external search to identify an executive who both understands our business and has the necessary strategic expertise to help drive the firm's next phase of growth for the benefit of our clients and shareholders. The Board is confident that Ali is the ideal choice to lead this great company into its next phase of growth and value creation."

Ali Dibadj said "I am delighted to join Janus Henderson and look forward to having the opportunity to lead such a talented group of professionals at an important time for the Company and the industry. I have long admired Janus Henderson's commitment to deliver for its clients with investment and servicing excellence. The executive team, the Board, and I look forward to identifying, expediting, and capturing growth and innovation that creates value for our clients, employees, shareholders, communities, and all stakeholders."

Mr Gillingwater added "On behalf of the Board, I also want to extend my appreciation to Roger Thompson for stepping into the role of Interim CEO during this important period of transition. Roger is representative of the deep bench of talent we have at Janus Henderson."

Mr Gillingwater continued, "We thank Dick Weil for his leadership over the years and wish him all the best in his well-deserved retirement."

Mr Dibadj is also expected to join the Board after he commences employment with the Company.

About Ali Dibadj

Ali Dibadj was appointed Chief Financial Officer Head of Strategy for Alliance Bernstein (AB) in 2021 and, previously, Head of Finance and Strategy in 2020, responsible for overseeing the Financial Planning Analysis, Tax, Treasury, Controller, Investor Relations, Strategy, and Corporate Development teams. He is a member of the firm's Operating Committee. As Portfolio Manager for AB Equities since 2017, specializing in engagement, he has worked with portfolio companies to improve their operational, ESG, and capital allocation performance. As senior analyst for AB Bernstein Research Services from 2006 to 2020, he was ranked the number one analyst 12 times by Institutional Investor. Prior to joining AB, Ali Dibadj spent almost a decade in management consulting, including at McKinsey Company and Mercer. He also worked at the law firm Skadden, Arps. He is on the Boards of Sysco Corporation and the Young People's Chorus. Throughout his career, Ali has been focused on fostering a culture of openness, diversity, and inclusion.

Ali holds an SB in engineering sciences, with a specialization in electrical engineering, from Harvard College and a JD, with a focus on law and business, from Harvard Law School. He has 16 years of experience in the asset management industry and 25 years of financial industry experience.

About Roger Thompson

Roger Thompson is Chief Financial Officer at Janus Henderson Investors, a position he has held since 2013. He is also a member of the Executive Committee. Roger joined Henderson from J.P. Morgan Asset Management, where most recently he was global chief operating officer; previously, he was head of UK and prior to that was international CFO. Roger had a broad range of roles at J.P. Morgan and worked in Tokyo, Singapore, and Hong Kong. He trained as an accountant with PricewaterhouseCoopers. Roger graduated with a BA degree (Hons) in accountancy and economics from Exeter University. He is a chartered accountant and has 30 years of financial industry experience.

About Janus Henderson

Janus Henderson Group is a leading global active asset manager dedicated to helping investors achieve long-term financial goals through a broad range of investment solutions, including equities, fixed income, quantitative equities, multi-asset and alternative asset class strategies.

At 31 December 2021, Janus Henderson had approximately US$432 billion in assets under management, more than 2,000 employees, and offices in 25 cities worldwide. Headquartered in London, the company is listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX).

Forward-Looking Statements Disclaimer

Certain statements in this press release not based on historical facts are "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the federal securities laws, including the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, as amended, Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, and Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended. Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that are difficult to predict and could cause our actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from those discussed. These include statements as to our future expectations, beliefs, plans, strategies, objectives, events, conditions, financial performance, prospects or future events. In some cases, forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as "may," "could," "expect," "intend," "plan," "seek," "anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "predict," "potential," "continue," "likely," "will," "would" and similar words and phrases. Forward-looking statements are necessarily based on estimates and assumptions that, while considered reasonable by us and our management, are inherently uncertain. Accordingly, you should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date they are made and are not guarantees of future performance. We do not undertake any obligation to publicly update or revise these forward-looking statements.

Various risks, uncertainties, assumptions and factors that could cause our future results to differ materially from those expressed by the forward-looking statements included in this press release include, but are not limited to, risks, uncertainties, assumptions and factors discussed in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2021, and in other filings or furnishings made by the Company with the SEC from time to time.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220323005485/en/

Contacts:

Investors:

Jim Kurtz

Co-Head Investor Relations (US)

+1 (303) 336 4529

jim.kurtz@janushenderson.com

Melanie Horton

Co-Head Investor Relations (non-US)

+44 (0) 20 7818 2905

melanie.horton@janushenderson.com

Media:

Sarah de Lagarde

Global Head of Communications

+44 (0) 20 7818 2626

sarah.delagarde@janushenderson.com

Stephen Sobey

Head of Media Relations

+44 (0) 20 7818 2523

stephen.sobey@janushenderson.com


London, March 23, 2022

CNH Industrial (NYSE: CNHI / MI: CNHI) has been awarded with a 'Lifetime achievement trophy' from Flanders Investment & Trade (FIT), the government agency for international entrepreneurship in the Flanders region of Belgium. This trophy recognizes the longstanding commitment and investment on behalf of foreign companies operating in the region. The awards ceremony, now in its tenth year, took place on March 22 at the Technopolis in Mechelen, and was attended by Jan Jambon, Minister-President of the Government of Flanders.

CNH Industrial has a long history in Flanders, with significant investments dedicated to its R&D, manufacturing and commercial operations. The Company's Zedelgem site commenced operations in 1906 as a medium-sized local business producing harvesting equipment and is still located on the street named after its founder, Leon Claeys. Through the years, the site has expanded considerably, and is today home to the New Holland Agriculture, a global agricultural brand of CNH Industrial, Center of Excellence for Harvesting. The most recent renovations took place in 2017 to enhance its engineering labs and production lines. Today the site employs some 2,900 people, of which 400 are engineers. Continued investments will see the Company integrate new energy sources and further automation.

"Our facilities in Flanders are key to our global strategic operations: the Zedelgem plant currently houses our global R&D Center of Excellence for forage harvesters, large square balers and combine harvesters. Our Antwerp plant is crucial in delivering tractor components to sister sites across the globe," said Tom Verbaeten, Chief Supply Chain Officer, CNH Industrial. "We are committed to further investing in and recruiting for our operations in the region, which has a unique collaborative ecosystem of universities, incubators, multinationals and start-ups. Our sites are also advantageously close to major ports and transport routes, favoring streamlined logistics, and the efficient transport of our products to even the most remote markets."

Both the Zedelgem and Antwerp sites engage in proactive recruitment and currently employ over 4,100 people.

"It is inspiring to see how a major multinational company such as CNH Industrial has become so closely embedded in our region, generating mutual growth and creating new jobs. The fact that CNH Industrial is continuing to invest in expansion and innovation projects is encouraging and we look forward to our ongoing collaboration," said Jan Jambon, Minister-President of the Government of Flanders.

CNH Industrial (NYSE: CNHI / MI: CNHI) is a world-class equipment and services company. Driven by its purpose of Breaking New Ground, which centers on Innovation, Sustainability and Productivity, the Company provides the strategic direction, R&D capabilities, and investments that enable the success of its five core Brands: Case IH, New Holland Agriculture and STEYR, supplying 360 agriculture applications from machines to implements and the digital technologies that enhance them; and CASE and New Holland Construction Equipment delivering a full lineup of construction products that make the industry more productive. Across a history spanning over two centuries, CNH Industrial has always been a pioneer in its sectors and continues to passionately innovate and drive customer efficiency and success. As a truly global company, CNH Industrial's 35,000+ employees form part of a diverse and inclusive workplace, focused on empowering customers to grow, and build, a better world.

For more information and the latest financial and sustainability reports visit: cnhindustrial.com

For news from CNH Industrial and its Brands visit: media.cnhindustrial.com

Media Contacts:

Marilu Brancato Francesca Fatibene Tel. +39 345 397 2860 Tel: +39 345 994 8874 Evelyne Vandevyvere

Belgium Tel. +32 499 99 75 57



Email: mediarelations@cnhind.com

Attachments
JERSEY CITY, N.J., March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Following the Goya Cares humanitarian and spiritual mission to the Ukraine border, Americans continue to donate tens of thousands of rosaries to Goya Foods for delivery to Ukrainian refugees. In partnership with the Knights of Columbus of Poland, Global Empowerment Mission (GEM), and anonymous ex-U.S. green berets, these rosaries, which carry a powerful message for peace, love, and protection of our precious children, will reach and soften the hearts of everyone throughout the world.

These courageous green berets have the mission of bringing safety and care to the many abandoned children of Ukraine.

At the Knights of Columbus "Mercy Hut" in Hrebenne on the Ukraine border, where compassion, food, warmth, medical attention, and a chapel welcome refugees, the Goya Cares team met one of the many refugees passing through. They hear the words of Nella who is with her 4-year-old son Andrei. She repeats her husband's plea as she left their home in Ukraine, "Love and protect our son, and I will protect and defend our country."

The Goya Cares team was moved by the incredible courage, compassion, and love of a mother entrusted with the care, protection, and nurturing of her precious child.

"Witnessing firsthand the incredible power of a mother's love and protection for her child gives hope to the world that the power of love can defeat hatred and that the power of prayer will defeat evil by moving us closer to God," said Bob Unanue, President and CEO of Goya Foods.

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 / natalie@retromedianyc.com

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1772001/Goya_Ukraine_Donations.jpg

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1153368/GOYA_Logo.jpg
NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / March 23, 2022 / ALT 5 Sigma Inc., a global fintech that provides next generation blockchain powered technologies for tokenization, trading, clearing, settlement, payment, and insured custodianship of digital instruments, announced today the appointment of Mary Marland as Global Head of Sales.

Mary Marland is a multi-faceted financial services executive with 20+ years of entrepreneurial and institutional experience in CIB sales, risk management, payments, and technology solutions. Throughout her career, she has leveraged her knowledge of electronic trading systems and workflows to help clients successfully execute strategies across multiple markets. Mary led electronic solutions sales for Deutsche Bank Americas, and has held senior positions at Barclays and HSBC. Mary was also part of the start-up team at pioneering trading platform FXall.

"As per our global sales agreement with USAM Group, Mary will lead our sales team as Global Head of Sales and her experience and knowledge of the institutional market will greatly contribute to our growing network of clients" said Andre Beauchesne, ALT 5 Sigma Inc, President. "The pace of acceptance and integration of digital assets within the traditional institutional market such as banks and broker dealers is accelerating and having a result driven team is a must at this juncture of our growth and Mary as well as the entire USAM team are certainly a key component." further added Mr. Beauchesne.

"Joining ALT 5 and being a part of this growing sector is a great opportunity" Said Mary Marland, Global Head of Sales at ALT 5 Sigma Inc. "Having introduced new trading platforms and technologies to banks and broker dealers for the most part of my career, I can see the potential pitfalls and can shape ALT 5's approach to be highly successful." Further added Mrs. Marland.

About ALT 5 Sigma

ALT 5 Sigma is a global fintech that provides next generation blockchain powered technologies for the trading, clearing, settlement, payment, and insured custodianship of digital instruments. ALT 5 was founded by financial industry specialists out of the necessity to provide the digital asset economy with security, accessibility, transparency, and compliance. ALT 5 provides its clients the ability to buy, sell and hold digital assets in a safe and secure environment deployed with the best practices of the financial industry. ALT 5 Sigma's products and services are available to Banks, Broker Dealers, Funds, Family Offices, Professional Traders, Retail Traders, Digital Asset Exchanges, Digital Asset Brokers, Blockchain Developers, and Financial Information Providers. ALT 5's digital asset custodian services are secured by Fireblocks.

Learn more at alt5sigma.com or connect on LinkedIn or Twitter .

CONTACT:

InvestorRelations@alt5sigma.com

media@alt5sigma.com

Tel. 1.888.778.7091

About USAM Group

USAM's sales and marketing system serves growth-stage fintech trailblazers. We close deals for our supplier clients by following our proven process: we articulate the essential value of each product, design and execute a strategic plan to create awareness, and build the sales pipeline to generate revenue.

Our unique shared-service approach gives our clients a global, cross-functional team of experienced business development professionals - at a lower cost and with a faster ROI than hiring a comparable staff. Fintech consumers also benefit because we save them time and risk by bringing a portfolio of new solutions that we've pre-screened for quality and value.

With headquarters in New York City, USAM has feet on the ground in major financial centers including London, Toronto, Chicago, and Singapore.

Visit us at http://www.usamgroup.com to meet our top-notch team members and learn about our best-in-class fintech suppliers.

CONTACT:

Deirdre Sullivan, Global Head of Marketing, USAM Group, Inc.

dsullivan@usamgroup.com

+1.203.434.4187

SOURCE: ALT 5 Sigma, Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/694337/ALT-5-Sigma-Appoints-Mary-Marland-as-Global-Head-of-Sales
100% of all donations will provide Ukraine NGOs with aid for civilian defenders, vulnerable citizens, and those seeking refuge from the conflict

Global Synergy Group (GSG), a Minnesota-based nonprofit organization established to promote civic engagement and develop innovative solutions to global municipal issues, announced today that it is now actively accepting donations to assist communities in Ukraine.

GSG is working directly with trusted non-governmental organizations (NGOs) on the ground in Boryspil, Kherson, Kharkiv, Mykolayev, Luhansk, and Kyiv to meet their most critical needs. Supported NGOs include NGO "CLAS, HRTC: Human Rights Training Center (Mykolaiv Region), Flying Bag International Movement Foundation (Poland), Kherson Foundation "Union", and the Kharkiv Volunteer Network. These groups are providing resources for those who are defending the country, establishing shelter for civilians, and donating medical supplies, food, and water.

GSG will transfer all donations within a few days of receiving them to provide rapid support for the most pressing needs of those in danger. The organization has pledged that 100% of all donated funds will be sent directly to partner NGOs providing immediate assistance to civilian defenders, children, the elderly, orphans, and those seeking refuge from the conflict.

"Ukraine stands bravely thanks to the courage of its people but still faces immense hardship," said Dr. Irina Fursman, founder of Global Synergy Group. "We never imagined we would turn our mission into one of survival, but we cannot stand idle during this devastating conflict. We're currently asking those in our community, and beyond, to help us provide immediate relief to the people who are fighting for their freedom, their homes, their democracy, and their lives."

For more information on the program and to make a donation, please visit: https://www.globalsynergygroup.org/donate

As part of GSG's commitment to ensuring that donated funds are spent quickly, efficiently, and transparently, they will be updating their website as they remit donated funds to NGOs currently working to help those in Ukraine. You can access the blog here: https://www.globalsynergygroup.org/updates

More information about Global Synergy Group (GSG):

Global Synergy Group, founded in 2011 by Dr. Irina Fursman and Dr. Richard Fursman, engages local government officials, civic and youth organizations, and business leaders in the exchange of ideas, knowledge and expertise in an effort to develop innovative solutions to universal municipal issues, promote civic engagement and create opportunities for partnerships that strengthen communities.

GSG has conducted multiple exchanges and education programs, seminars and conflict resolution training sessions in Ukraine. The nonprofit's partners in Ukraine are civic leaders who care about the future of an independent Ukraine. They worked tirelessly after the Revolution of Dignity in 2014 to implement local governance reforms and facilitate change away from the old Kremlin-driven system of power and control to a decentralized system of local government units (Click HEREto watch a video of GSG's 2014 work in Ukraine, produced by Shayna Allen, a University of Minnesota student.)

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220323005368/en/

Contacts:

Media:

Irina Fursman

gsynergygroup@gmail.com

(952) 525-2224
Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi will showcase thousands of natural wonders

Mission to inspire and empower younger generations to protect our planet's future through curiosity and discovery

Construction on new museum and scientific research centre expected to be completed in 2025, as the latest addition to Abu Dhabi's Saadiyat Cultural District

ABU DHABI, UAE, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Abu Dhabi today unveiled plans for the Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi, which will feature some of the rarest wonders of natural history ever found. Visitors will travel on a 13.8-billion-year journey through time and space, which will include a thought-provoking perspective into a sustainable future for planet Earth. The new museum, currently under construction and due to be completed at the end of 2025, will be located in the emirate's Saadiyat Cultural District, which is establishing itself as one of the world's leading cultural centres.

To view the Multimedia News Release, please click:

https://www.multivu.com/players/uk/9024151-abu-dhabi-unveils-new-home-for-natural-history-with-a-collection-to-inspire-the-world/

A highlight of the new museum's collection will be the world-famous 'Stan', a remarkable, mostly complete 39-foot-long (11.7 metres) Tyrannosaurus rex, which is one of the best preserved and most studied fossils of this iconic predator from the Late Cretaceous Period. Known by scientists around the world, years of scientific studies of 'Stan' have furthered our knowledge of countless aspects of T. rex. Now that 'Stan' has a new home at the Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi, this 67-million-year-old dinosaur will be in the care of expert scientists, and will continue to contribute to education and research and inspire future explorers.

'Stan' will be joined by an extraordinary Murchison Meteorite specimen, which famously crash-landed in Australia more than 40 years ago and has since revealed to scientists new information about the early solar system. Containing a huge range of organic 'stardust' compounds as well as pre-solar grains which formed over 7 billion years ago - long before our current solar system existed - the meteorite provides ancient insight into the very building blocks of life.

The museum's collection will feature numerous significant artefacts as part of its compelling curatorial vision, as well as fascinating experiences being created by a dedicated team in Abu Dhabi, supported by strategic partnerships with world leading scholars and natural history experts.

Conceived and developed by the Department of Culture and Tourism - Abu Dhabi (DCT Abu Dhabi) in partnership with Miral, Abu Dhabi's leading creator of destinations and experiences the Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi will be a scientific research and teaching institution and an educational resource for learning about the evolving story of our planet, aiming to ignite a life-long passion for the natural world in visitors of all ages.

According to HE Mohamed Khalifa Al Mubarak, Chairman of DCT Abu Dhabi, nurturing awareness of how we are impacting the planet has never been more important.

"Natural history has a new home in Abu Dhabi. A new museum which tells the story of our universe through some of the most incredible natural wonders known to mankind. These are awe-inspiring gifts from nature that we are proud to share with the world - unlocking millions of years of knowledge to not only advance scientific discovery but to inspire our children to protect our planet's future," said HE Al Mubarak. "As we nurture a new generation of global advocates that are incredibly curious and passionate about natural history, we are fulfilling our vision to enrich lives and make Abu Dhabi the place for research, collaboration and discovery."

The museum will join the diverse cultural institutions and museums in the Saadiyat Cultural District, which include Louvre Abu Dhabi and the upcoming Zayed National Museum and Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, as part of Abu Dhabi's strategy to position the emirate as a centre for culture, arts and creativity.

With a focus on immersive displays, curated collections with exceptional specimens, and innovative, interactive mediations, the Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi galleries will take visitors on a journey back to the very beginning of time, narrating the evolution of our universe, the Earth's formation, and the history of life on our planet - as well as providing a glimpse into our possible future.

In addition to global natural history, the Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi will for the first time present the history of life on Earth through an Arabian lens, where local natural assets of fauna, flora and the geological history of the region will be part of the visitor journey.

It will join a global community of natural history museums committed to public education and to the development and sharing of scientific research. Within the museum, the innovative scientific research facility will undertake studies in areas including zoology, palaeontology, marine biology, molecular research (aDNA and proteomics), and earth sciences. The primary aim will be to advance knowledge and increase understanding of our past, but also to create a think tank for future innovation and emerging technologies.

Covering an area of more than 35,000 sqm, lead architects Mecanoo designed the Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi to resonate with natural rock formations, reflecting the museum's goal of improving understanding of and engagement with the natural world. Every element of the design uses geometry as an overriding theme, with pentagonal shapes resembling cellular structures. Also playing an important role in the design are water and vegetation, potent symbols of life in the desert. In addition to the gallery display areas, the museum will include temporary exhibition spaces for special events and theatre facilities. Enabling and marine works have commenced on the Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi construction site.

The Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi will offer employment opportunities in the emirate and on the wider national and regional levels, with curators set to be appointed to cover the full spectrum of natural sciences. In addition, it aims to attract and develop young talent as part of Abu Dhabi's drive to accelerate the culture and creative industries.

The Saadiyat Cultural District is already home to Louvre Abu Dhabi, the globally celebrated universal museum designed by Pritzker-prize winning architect Jean Nouvel, and Manarat Al Saadiyat, a cultural centre that contributes to the region's vibrant arts scene with internationally relevant exhibitions and events, workshops and creative programming.

The Saadiyat Cultural District will soon also include the Zayed National Museum, the national museum of the UAE; Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, focusing on global Modern and Contemporary art; and the Abrahamic Family House, which will comprise three religious spaces in one place - a mosque, a synagogue and a church - to inspire and nurture acceptance and peaceful coexistence among people of all faiths.

About the Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi

The Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi will be a world-leading, pioneering scientific research and teaching institution based in the Saadiyat Cultural District, in Abu Dhabi. The Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi's mission will be to ignite a life-long passion for, and understanding of, the natural world among visitors of all ages. By using state-of-the-art technology for its immersive and interactive displays, the museum will take visitors on a journey narrating the evolution of our universe, the Earth's formation, the history of life on our planet and its future. The Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi will be a Museum accessible to a diverse audience and engaging with all segments of the public.

About the Department of Culture and Tourism - Abu Dhabi

The Department of Culture and Tourism - Abu Dhabi (DCT Abu Dhabi) drives the sustainable growth of Abu Dhabi's culture, tourism and creative sectors, fuels economic progress and helps achieve Abu Dhabi's wider global ambitions. By working in partnership with the organisations that define the emirate's position as a leading international destination, DCT Abu Dhabi strives to unite the ecosystem around a shared vision of the emirate's potential, coordinate effort and investment, deliver innovative solutions, and use the best tools, policies and systems to support the culture and tourism industries.

DCT Abu Dhabi's vision is defined by the emirate's people, heritage and landscape. We work to enhance Abu Dhabi's status as a place of authenticity, innovation, and unparalleled experiences, represented by its living traditions of hospitality, pioneering initiatives and creative thought.

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1760983/Culture_and_Tourism___Abu_Dhabi.jpg
CLEARWATER, FL / ACCESSWIRE / March 23, 2022 / Mercury Medical responds to the plea from the Ukrainian Medical Association of North America Foundation, UMANA, for donations to help the people of Ukraine.

Mercury Medical, a medical device company located in Clearwater, Florida heard there is a Chicago based branch of a non-profit organization, UMANA Foundation, in dire need of donations to help Ukraine during this war crisis.

From the UMANA website: "Ukraine is in the midst of a major humanitarian and medical crisis since the Russian invasion on February 24th, 2022. Numerous civilians including children have been killed and hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have fled home seeking safety. The infrastructure to deliver food and medicine has been destroyed, and there is a serious shortage of medical supplies in many hospitals and health facilities, including access to trauma care."

Mercury Medical's leadership team and employees went to work. Together with the UMANA organizers, they donated thousands of dollars of medical necessities including hemostatic gauze, tourniquets and bandages in their effort to assist the people of Ukraine during this horrific war crisis.

Mercury Medical is a leading provider of cutting-edge medical device technology in the acute care and emergency markets both in the United States and globally.

John Gargaro MD, President and CEO states: "When we heard the atrocities being carried out against the Ukrainian people, we had to act. Our mission is dedicated to delivering clinically differentiated critical care technology that saves lives throughout the world... As such, Mercury Medical believes that this donation to the UMANA Foundation will serve to help save Ukrainian lives during this time of desperate need."

In addition to the donation, Dr. Gargaro announced in early March to all employees that the company ceased to engage in all business activity with Russia.

From Maria Hrycelak, MD, UMANA Foundation President in response to Mercury's medical supply donation, "Thank you for your generous contribution for the people of Ukraine in this crisis."

About Mercury Medical

Established in 1963, Mercury Medical has a rich experience in introducing cutting edge technology in acute care and emergency markets which add safety and efficiency to clinical practice while providing a full menu of acute care solutions in over 60 countries.

Focused on the critical care areas of anesthesia, respiratory, neonatal and emergency markets, clinicians have relied on Mercury Medical as their resource for establishing a legacy of innovative, superior solutions. Mercury Medical's high-quality standards include ISO 13485, MDSAP and ISO 9001 certifications.

For more information:

Lisa Cordner

Phone/Fax #: (727) 573-4930

E-mail Address: lcordner@mercurymed.com

www.mercurymed.com

About UMANA Foundation:

For more information about the UMANA Foundation and How to Donate:

Visit their website page for donation information:

https://www.umana.org/index.php

Maria Hrycelak, MD, UMANA Foundation President

Email: rmarika3@att.net

www.umana.org

About UMANA Foundation

The UMANA Foundation as the tax-exempt 501-c-3 non-profit scientific and educational arm of UMANA, supports publication initiatives and educational exchange opportunities to promote and expand the level of medical science among the professional Ukrainian community. Gifts to UMANA Foundation are tax-deductible. Donations support the spread of medical knowledge via print and electronic publications, medical journals, scholarships and projects supporting such initiatives.

Organized in 1996 by UMANA, the Foundation has funded various projects expanding healthcare information in the US and Canada as well as Ukraine.

SOURCE: Mercury Medical

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/694336/Mercury-Medical-Donates-Medical-Devices-to-Ukrainian-Medical-Association-of-North-America-UMANA-Foundation-to-Help-Save-Lives
An increase in the number of patients suffering CNS disorders such as neurodegenerative diseases, autoimmune and inflammatory diseases, genetic disorders, and others, is likely to be the factor to lead Central Nervous System Therapeutics Market.

JERSEY CITY, N.J., March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Verified Market Research recently published a report, "Central Nervous System Therapeutics Market" By Disease (Neurovascular Diseases, Trauma, Mental Health), By Drug Class (Analgesics, Nervous System Drugs, Anesthetics), and By Geography. According to Verified Market Research, the Global Central Nervous System Therapeutics Market size was valued at USD 84.24 Billion in 2020 and is projected to reach USD 168.43 Billion by 2028, growing at a CAGR of 9.05% from 2021 to 2028.

Download PDF Brochure: https://www.verifiedmarketresearch.com/download-sample/?rid=221347

Browse in-depth TOC on "Central Nervous System Therapeutics Market"

202 - Pages

126 - Tables

37 - Figures

Global Central Nervous System Therapeutics Market Overview

Advancements in diagnostics, treatments, and drug discovery methodologies are driving the growth of the Central Nervous System Therapeutics Market. Furthermore, the rising demand for effective CNS therapeutic choices pushes big pharmaceutical companies to engage in research and development, paving the way for future growth. Furthermore, increased awareness of psychiatric diseases, an increase in the frequency of mental illness and lifestyle-related CNS disorders, and an increase in the elderly population all contribute to the global market's growth. Since the last several years, the rate of acute psychological distress among teenagers and young adults has been on the rise, fueling demand for CNS therapies around the world.

However, strict & extended drug approval procedures and increasing prices of new treatments are likely to restrict the growth of the Central Nervous System Therapeutics Market. According to the WHO, dementia affects 50 million people worldwide, with approximately 60% of them residing in low- and middle-income countries. As per the Parkinson's Foundation, there are 2.8 million people with multiple sclerosis and ten million people with Parkinson's disease in the world. These disorders have a limited number of therapeutic choices. Currently, five authorized medications are commonly used to treat Alzheimer's disease, and 146 clinical studies in Phases 1, 2, and 3 are enrolling participants. Agents capsules for Parkinson's disease when a patient's meds aren't functioning and Zeposia capsules for relapsing types of multiple sclerosis were recently approved by the FDA.

According to Alzheimer's Europe, the European Union's dementia population is expected to be at 7.8 million people. Furthermore, the Harvard NeuroDiscovery Center predicts that almost 12 million Americans will be affected by neurodegenerative disorders in 30 years if no action is taken. As a result of the rising prevalence of these diseases, the medication development pipeline, and the potential of this segment, clinical trials, product launches, and strategic alliances are becoming more common.

Key Developments

April 2021 , The National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) has approved Biogen's TECFIDERA (dimethyl fumarate) to treat relapsed multiple sclerosis, allowing the company to extend its presence in China .

, The National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) has approved Biogen's TECFIDERA (dimethyl fumarate) to treat relapsed multiple sclerosis, allowing the company to extend its presence in . April 2021 , Patients are still being recruited for phase III clinical studies of aripiprazole to treat Alzheimer's dementia, according to Otsuka and Lundbeck.

, Patients are still being recruited for phase III clinical studies of aripiprazole to treat Alzheimer's dementia, according to Otsuka and Lundbeck. June 2021 , GSK and iTeos Therapeutics have announced an agreement to develop and commercialize EOS-448, an anti-TIGIT monoclonal antibody that will enable novel next-generation immuno-oncology combinations.

Key Players

The major players in the market are Biogen Inc, Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd, Eli Lilly and Company, Merck KGaA, AstraZeneca, Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited, Novartis AG, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd, Johnson & Johnson Private Limited, and GlaxoSmithKline PLC.

Verified Market Research has segmented the Global Central Nervous System Therapeutics Market On the basis of Disease, Drug Class, and Geography.

Central Nervous System Therapeutics Market, By Disease

Neurovascular Diseases



Trauma



Mental Health



Degenerative Diseases



Infectious Diseases



Cancer



Other Infectious Diseases

Central Nervous System Therapeutics Market, By Drug Class

Analgesics



Nervous System Drugs



Anesthetics



Anti-Parkinson Drugs



Anti-Epileptics



Other Drug Classes

Central Nervous System Therapeutics Market by Geography

North America



U.S





Canada





Mexico



Europe



Germany





France





U.K





Rest of Europe



Asia Pacific



China





Japan





India





Rest of Asia Pacific



ROW



Middle East & Africa

&



Latin America

Browse Related Reports:

Regenerative Medicine Market By Therapy (Tissue Engineering, Immunotherapy, Gene Therapy), By Product (Cell-Based Products and Acellular Products), By Application (Central Nervous System Diseases, Oncology, Diabetes), By Geography, Forecast, 2021-2028

Intraoperative Radiation Therapy Market By Technology (Electron IORT & Intraoperative Brachytherapy), By Product and Service (Products, Systems/Accelerators, Applicators & Afterloaders, Treatment Planning Systems, Accessories, & Services), By Application (Breast Cancer, Brain Tumor, & Lung Cancer), By Geography, Forecast, 2021-2028

Neurostimulation Devices Market By Devices Type (Implantable Devices, Vagus Nerve Stimulators, Spinal Cord Stimulators, Deep Brain Stimulators), By Application (Parkinson's disease, Epilepsy, Depression, Dystonia), By Geography, Forecast, 2021-2028

Neurorehabilitation Devices Market By Product (Brain-computer Interface, Neurorobotic Systems, Brain Stimulators, Wearable Devices), By Brain Stimulators (Non-invasive Stimulators and Invasive Stimulators), By Application (Brain & Spinal Cord Injury, Stroke, Multiple Sclerosis, Parkinson's Disease), By Geography, Forecast, 2021-2028

Top 7 Cardioverter Defibrillator Companies offering life saving medical equipment globally

Visualize Central Nervous System Therapeutics Market using Verified Market Intelligence:-:

Verified Market Intelligence is our BI Enabled Platform for narrative storytelling of this market. VMI offers in-depth forecasted trends and accurate Insights on over 20,000+ emerging & niche markets, helping you make critical revenue impacting decisions for a brilliant future.

VMI provides a holistic overview and global competitive landscape with respect to Region, Country, and Segment, and Key players of your market. Present your Market Report & findings with an inbuilt presentation feature saving over 70% of your time and resources for Investor, Sales & Marketing, R&D, and Product Development pitches. VMI enables data delivery In Excel and Interactive PDF formats with over 15+ Key Market Indicators for your market.

About Us

Verified Market Research is a leading Global Research and Consulting firm servicing over 5000+ customers. Verified Market Research provides advanced analytical research solutions while offering information enriched research studies. We offer insight into strategic and growth analyses, Data necessary to achieve corporate goals and critical revenue decisions.

Our 250 Analysts and SME's offer a high level of expertise in data collection and governance use industrial techniques to collect and analyze data on more than 15,000 high impact and niche markets. Our analysts are trained to combine modern data collection techniques, superior research methodology, expertise and years of collective experience to produce informative and accurate research.

We study 14+ categories from Semiconductor & Electronics, Chemicals, Advanced Materials, Aerospace & Defense, Energy & Power, Healthcare, Pharmaceuticals, Automotive & Transportation, Information & Communication Technology, Software & Services, Information Security, Mining, Minerals & Metals, Building & construction, Agriculture industry and Medical Devices from over 100 countries.

Contact Us

Mr. Edwyne Fernandes

Verified Market Research

US: +1 (650)-781-4080

UK: +44 (753)-715-0008

APAC: +61 (488)-85-9400

US Toll Free: +1 (800)-782-1768

Email: sales@verifiedmarketresearch.com

Web: https://www.verifiedmarketresearch.com/

Follow Us: LinkedIn | Twitter

Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1315349/Verified_Market_Research_Logo.jpg
TORONTO, ON / ACCESSWIRE / March 23, 2022 / "Tamino" or the "Company" -(OTC Markets:TINO)- March 23, 2022, today the Company announced that it will be giving a common stock dividend to all current shareholders. The stock dividend will be a number of shares equal to 6.8% of their existing holdings of the Company's common stock as of the close of OTC Markets on April 25, 2022. Fractional Company share amounts will be rounded up to the next integer (whole number).

Those shareholders that hold a total in of 100,000 shares or more will receive a dividend that equates to 6,800 Common Shares.

The company will be contacting those shareholders to discuss further the terms and conditions of the common stock dividend.

The common stock dividend will be distributed in approximately 30 days, after the Company has completed the transition with their transfer agent from paper stock certificates to DWAC FAST and DRS and received approval from FINRA.

The Company plans to produce an additional dividend under the same guidelines of 100,000 shares or more that equates to 6,800 Common Shares on July 25, 2022 to be paid in 3 months. If a shareholder holds more than 100,000 common shares the shareholder will receive an additional dividend of 6,800 Common Shares.

Pedro Villagran Garcia, CEO of Tamino Minerals, Inc. states, "The Company is obviously experiencing explosive growth due to the notorious increase in the price of gold and the Company's recent involvement in exploring for lithium. Exploring for green metals has been highly rewarding in the mining industry most recently. Laborious and persevering work and activities for long hours devoted by our team and allies, associates and advisors to meet shareholders expectations has been our priority.

It is also obvious that we need to add resources to our team to fully capitalize on the announced opportunities, as well as additional deals we will be announcing in the next few months and upcoming quarters."

Mr. Villagran Garcia continues, "Equally as important, we are distinctly aware that our approximately 2,500 active and loyal shareholders stayed with us during the deal building period from 2012 to date and we appreciate that level of commitment to the Company.

This granting of additional shares to existing shareholders is designed to minimize the impact to their current stock position and reward our highly valued existing shareholders for their loyalty as we raise the funds needed to quickly recruit and add multiple highly qualified and experienced experts to our roster, especially our logistics and operations team and accounting team.

We need to start exploration of our mining projects, expand our Mexican office space, establish a fully staffed office/warehouse facility in Canada, and ramp up drilling as soon as possible to meet upcoming demand. The Company has several outstanding debts with several business persons that owe money to the company.

At this moment in time, execution is everything and we need the talented experienced personnel added to our team and onboarded into our Company's operations as quickly as possible so that we can give our customers and our shareholders the best possible results from these opportunities."

Therefore, completing projects on time is an indicator of efficiency, but the Mining Exploration process is subject to many variables and unpredictable factors, which result from many sources and it is necessary that a detailed assessment be conducted and calculates the loss resulted from delays on both parties in the projects with time required for the extension of projects time if the project is delayed. One of the company's exploration projects has been delayed for more than 10 years due to inefficient governmental administrations in various jurisdictions.

Based on reliable geological data gathered by our professional geologists, the Company's projects due require to raise further funding through equity. Based on current precious metals prices the management feels very optimistic to succeed in raising capital during the entire year of 2022.

For additional information about the stock dividend, please email the Company at info@taminominerals.ca

TAMINO MINERALS, INC. is exploring for Gold, Silver, Copper and Lithium, within a prolific gold producing State, Sonora. Our shift into the exploring Metals Important for Future Technologies MIFTs has helped us diversify successfully and adapt into this modern era in the Mining Industry.

www.taminominerals.ca

On behalf of the Board,

Pedro Villagran-Garcia, President & CEO

For further information, please contact the Company at 1-307-212-4657or by email at info@taminominerals.ca

Forward Looking Statements

Certain information contained in this press release, including any information as to our strategy, plans or future financial or operating performance and other statements that express management's expectations or estimates of future performance, constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, are forward-looking statements. The words "believe," "expect," "will," "anticipate," "contemplate," "target," "plan," "continue," "budget," "may," "intend," "estimate," "project" and similar expressions identify forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements. Our actual results may differ materially from the results anticipated in these forward-looking statements due to a variety of factors, including, without limitation those set forth as "Risk Factors" in our filings with the SEC which can be found at www.sec.gov. The Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable law.

SOURCE: Tamino Minerals, Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/694356/Tamino-Minerals-will-honor-Bonus-Dividends
Headliners include Kevin Gaskell, former CEO of successful world-class brands such as Porsche and Lamborghini and Dex Hunter-Torricke, former communications exec with Facebook and Google

DUBLIN, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Kaseya , the leading provider of unified IT management and security software for managed service providers (MSPs) and small to medium-sized business (SMBs), announced today that Connect IT Europe - the much-anticipated premier IT conference - returns live and in person to the Netherlands, Sept 13-15 at the Amsterdam Grand Hotel Krasnapolsky. The pandemic put a pause on the annual event, but finally, after two long-awaited years, the conference is back with in-demand speakers Kevin Gaskell and Dex Hunter-Torricke, all new training and certifications and an M&A Summit to jumpstart the event.

"It will be great to see you again, Amsterdam! We are excited to come home and be able to bring Europe's IT community together for three days of learning, networking and fun," said Fred Voccola, CEO, Kaseya. "We've totally revamped our training to reflect the new reality brought on by the pandemic and help our customers adapt and thrive in the new marketplace."

This year features keynotes by Kevin Gaskell, former CEO of successful world-class brands such as Porsche, BMW and Lamborghini and Dex Hunter-Torricke, a past communications exec with companies like SpaceX, Facebook and Google. Gaskell will talk about business transformation and delivery, how to get out of your own way and leading ordinary people to extraordinary success. Hunter-Torricke will guide attendees through the tech trends anticipated over the next two decades, how it will impact the industry and what organisations need to do to prepare.

Kaseya CEO Fred Voccola will share his vision for the evolving marketplace in the region, while Kaseya CISO Jason Manar, formerly with the FBI, will offer his unique perspective on the state of cybersecurity and what organizations need to be doing to protect themselves from ever-evolving cyber threats.

Additionally, the conference will include all new training with content specifically tailored to the European market and new sought-after certifications like the IT Glue Administrator Training, which will be offered in Europe for the very first time. There will also be a pre-day dedicated to an M&A Summit to help MSPs better understand the mergers and acquisitions process and the importance of sales and marketing. It will include informative sessions by industry experts such as transaction advisors, private equity managers and successful sellers and buyers who will discuss evaluating opportunities, preparing for an exit and avoiding common pitfalls.

Connect IT Europe would not be possible without generous sponsors such as Bitdefender and Cisco.

Get your Connect IT Europe tickets today and the most up-to-date info on programming, key announcements and news from our partners at connectit.com/europe/.

About Kaseya
BEIJING, March 23 (Xinhua) -- Chinese authorities on Wednesday released a plan on the development of hydrogen energy for the 2021-2035 period as the country races toward its carbon peaking and neutrality goals.

By 2025, China will put in place a relatively complete hydrogen energy industry development system, with the innovation capability significantly improved and the core technologies and manufacturing processes basically mastered, according to the plan jointly released by the National Development and Reform Commission and the National Energy Administration.

Annual hydrogen production from renewable energy is expected to reach 100,000 tonnes to 200,000 tonnes to become an important part of new hydrogen energy consumption by 2025 and enable carbon dioxide emission reduction of one million to two million tonnes per year.

By 2030, China is seeking a reasonable and orderly industrial layout and wide use of hydrogen production from renewable energy to offer solid support for the carbon peaking goal.

By 2035, the proportion of hydrogen produced from renewable energy in terminal energy consumption will increase significantly, which will play an important supporting role in the country's green energy transformation, according to the plan. 


WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki will not be accompanying President Joe Biden on his trip to Europe after testing positive for Covid.



Disclosing the news in a statement, Psaki said in preparation for travel to Europe, she took a PCR test Tuesday morning, and its result came back positive.



Biden's spokesperson said she had two socially-distanced meetings with the President on Monday, but he is not considered a close contact as defined by CDC guidance.



The President also took a PCR test, and was diagnosed negative, Psaki added.



She said she had only experienced mild symptoms.



'In alignment with White House COVID-19 protocols, I will work from home and plan to return to work in person at the conclusion of a five-day isolation period and a negative test,' Psaki said.



The United States on Tuesday reported one of the lowest daily tolls in all Covid metrics.



With 24,567 new cases of coronavirus infection recorded from across the country on Tuesday, the national total increased to 79,803,670, according to the latest data from Johns Hopkins University.



With 786 deaths reported on the same day, total U.S. Covid casualties reached 973,266.



There has been a 30 percent decline in Covid deaths and a 26 percent decrease in cases in the last fortnight.



Texas reported the most number of cases - 5,228 - while Missouri reported the most casualties - 150.



Just 20,984 patients remain in the country's hospitals for treatment for the viral disease. Hospital admissions have fallen by 41 percent in two weeks.



There is also a concurrent reduction in the number of patients admitted in intensive care units - 46 percent within a fortnight. I.C.U. admissions dropped to 3,565.



63,450,626 people have so far recovered from the disease, the Worldometer tally shows.







Copyright(c) 2022 RTTNews.com. All Rights Reserved



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de
C-Path in Europe works seamlessly with its U.S. counterpart to advance the development of novel regulatory-endorsed methodologies to accelerate medical product development

AMSTERDAM and TUCSON, Ariz., March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- In support of Critical Path Institute's (C-Path) mission to catalyze innovation that accelerates the path to a healthier world, C-Path is excited to announce the opening of its EU nonprofit headquarters in the Netherlands, which will focus on the development of existing and future activities in Europe.

C-Path is recognized globally as a leader in regulatory science, with extensive knowledge and experience in seeking and obtaining regulatory endorsement of drug development tools (DDTs) or novel methodologies in cooperation with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and Japan's Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices Agency (PMDA). All C-Path regulatory-endorsed tools and methodologies are freely available to the broader scientific community.

The nonprofit's headquarters in Amsterdam will extend and complement C-Path's activities to improve public health, as well as share expertise, data, risks and costs to expedite advancements in global regulatory science by facilitating public-private partnerships with members from the biopharmaceutical industry, government regulatory agencies, academic institutions and patient groups in Europe.

"C-Path already has an established and longstanding presence in Europe," said C-Path Board Member, Tomas Salmonson, Ph.D., M.S., and former Chair of the EMA Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP). "We look forward to facilitating existing and new collaborations to productively support European Regulatory Science research programs and also contribute to the delivery of the EMA Regulatory Science Strategy to 2025."

Since its inception in 2005, C-Path has worked to forge relationships and collaborations in Europe in tandem with U.S. efforts to facilitate global collaboration. Since then, C-Path has received a significant number of Qualification Opinions and Letters of Support from EMA and has a substantial track record of successful DDT and novel methodology endorsements by FDA, EMA and PMDA. These regulatory milestones have contributed to addressing different unmet needs in medical product development, which have transformed drug development in different areas (among others, tuberculosis, polycystic kidney disease, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and irritable bowel syndrome).

"Advances in drug development are rapidly playing out on a global stage, and C-Path's extensive background in accelerating the drug development and regulatory processes will fuel innovation for the development of novel approaches that can be endorsed by regulators in many countries," said C-Path Chief Science Officer Klaus Romero, M.D., M.S., F.C.P. "Working together with European organizations remains a key C-Path priority. We're excited to have an office in Amsterdam, which we know will serve to enhance our collaborative efforts and speed the development of treatments for some of the world's most complex health issues."

A webinar, C-Path in Europe: Moving Global Regulatory Science Forward, is scheduled for April 20, 2022. Register here.

To learn more, visit: https://c-path.org/c-path-in-europe.

Critical Path Institute (C-Path) is an independent, nonprofit organization established in 2005 as a public and private partnership. C-Path's mission is to catalyze the development of new approaches that advance medical innovation and regulatory science, accelerating the path to a healthier world. An international leader in forming collaborations, C-Path has established numerous global consortia that currently include more than 1,600 scientists from government and regulatory agencies, academia, patient organizations, disease foundations, and hundreds of pharmaceutical and biotech companies. C-Path U.S. is headquartered in Tucson, Arizona, C-Path in Europe is headquartered in Amsterdam, Netherlands and C-Path Ltd. operates from Dublin, Ireland with additional staff in multiple other locations. For more information, visit c-path.org.

In the U.S., Critical Path Institute is supported by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and is 54.2% funded by the FDA/HHS, totaling $13,239,950, and 45.8% funded by non-government source(s), totaling $11,196,634. The contents are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the official views of, nor an endorsement by, FDA/HHS or the U.S. Government.

Contact:

Kissy Black

C-Path

615.310.1894

kblack@c-path.org

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1772157/Critical_Path_Institute_Europe.jpg
Members of the European Parliament accused Mairead McGuinness and the EU executive of insulting their institution by reversing their vote not to include nuclear in the sustainable investment taxonomy. The commissioner said the divisive energy sources will be needed to keep the lights on.European commissioner Mairead McGuinness was given a predictably tough time by members of the European Parliament yesterday as she defended the EU executive's decision to label gas and nuclear energy as sustainable, at one point stating: "I would rather we didn't have to invest in gas at all." The commissioner ...

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.
LOS ANGELES, CA / ACCESSWIRE / March 23, 2022 / Mariam Kuregyan, Esq., founder of Davana Law Firm , whose practice focuses on personal injury and property damage claims, is being recognized by the LA Times B2B Publishing for her outstanding achievements and has been named as a 2021 Visionary in the field of Personal Injury Law.

"We take the time to understand every aspect of a client's personal injury case and ensure it will lead to a successful and fair settlement," states Kuregyan, who firmly believes individuals and families in California should have access to the protection they deserve through superior personal injury services.

The Los Angeles and Orange County Personal Injury Attorneys magazine , produced by the LA Times B2B publishing team, highlights noteworthy plaintiff attorneys practicing personal injury law in California and also covers the latest trends and overall updates in the industry.

"I engaged Mariam Kuregyan and her firm, Davana Law Firm, APLC, to represent me regarding an injury I sustained in a car accident," said one client. "I only have praise for the way I was treated and how she handled my case with exceptional judgment and great care for my well-being."

Prior to launching Davana Law Firm, Kuregyan obtained her experience within various multi-billion national and global firms, such as Viacom Inc. and Paramount Pictures. She is fluent in three languages - English, Russian, and Armenian and is passionate about giving back to the community. She is actively involved in several community organizations, including the Armenian Bar Association, which was formed in 1989 to provide an arena for lawyers of Armenian heritage to come together socially and professionally and to address the legal concerns of the Armenian community.

About Mariam Kuregyan

Mariam Kuregyan is fluent in English, Russian, and Armenian, which increases her ability to communicate more effectively and appreciate cultural diversity. She is a member of the State Bar of California, American Bar Association, Wealth Counsel, and Consumer Attorneys Association of Los Angeles. Davana Law Firm clients receive industry-leading civil litigation for personal injuries. For more information, please call (818) 501-1055, or visit https://www.davanalaw.com/ . The Davana Law Firm is located at 16000 Ventura Blvd., Suite 880, Encino, CA 91436.

SOURCE: Davana Law

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/694369/Mariam-Kuregyan-Named-2021-Visionary-in-the-Personal-Injury-Law-Field-by-the-LA-Times
VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / March 23, 2022 / Galore Resources Inc. (TSX-V:GRI) (OTCQB:GALOF) is announcing a correction to its News Release dated February 16, 2022, in regards to beginning trading on the OTCQB. Due to a misunderstanding in communications, the correct date for active trading on the OTCQB Venture Marketplace (the "OTCQB") is Wednesday, March 23, 2022.

The Company apologizes to our shareholders for this confusion; however, we are excited to be officially associated with the OTCQB Venture Marketplace and what this means for our shareholders. The ticker remains the same in the United States under the symbol GALOF. Investors can find quotes for the Company's common stock on www.otcmarkets.com. The Company's common shares will continue to trade on the TSX Venture Exchange under its symbol GRI. The Company wishes to thank its shareholders for their patience and understanding.

Galore Resources is looking forward to keeping you informed on the many exciting programs planned for 2022. We thank our stockholders for continuing to support and believe in our mission.

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. For OTCQB quotes and filings, please visit www.otcmarkets.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/694370/Correction-to-Trading-on-the-OTCQB
Acquisition Further Expands The Company's Global Managed Support Services Business

Motorola Solutions, Inc. (NYSE: MSI) today announced it has acquired TETRA Ireland Communications Limited, the provider of Ireland's National Digital Radio Service (NDRS).

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220323005723/en/

TETRA Ireland delivers mission-critical voice and data land mobile radio communications to thousands of first responders and frontline workers from national security and enforcement agencies, health and emergency services, state utilities and volunteer organizations across the country. The network is based on the latest TETRA digital radio technology from Motorola Solutions. (Credit: Motorola Solutions)

TETRA Ireland delivers mission-critical voice and data land mobile radio (LMR) communications to thousands of first responders and frontline workers from national security and enforcement agencies, health and emergency services, state utilities and volunteer organizations across the country. The network is based on the latest TETRA digital radio technology from Motorola Solutions.

"Delivering, managing and operating critical LMR networks is foundational to what we do," said Greg Brown, Chairman CEO, Motorola Solutions. "As a trusted technology partner in Ireland for over 40 years, we look forward to continuing to provide the interoperable mission-critical communications that Ireland's emergency and public service agencies rely on every day."

The investment in TETRA Ireland demonstrates Motorola Solutions' commitment to growing its worldwide Managed Support Services business. The company owns and operates networks and security operations centers around the globe, supporting customers to work more productively and safely across a wide range of industries including public safety, mining, oil and gas and public transportation.

Terms of this transaction were not disclosed.

About Motorola Solutions

Motorola Solutions is a global leader in public safety and enterprise security. Our solutions in land mobile radio communications, video security access control and command center software, bolstered by managed support services, create an integrated technology ecosystem to help make communities safer and businesses stay productive and secure. At Motorola Solutions, we're ushering in a new era in public safety and security. Learn more at www.motorolasolutions.com.

Motorola Solutions Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of applicable federal securities law. These statements are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and generally include words such as "believes," "expects," "intends," "anticipates," "estimates" and similar expressions. The company can give no assurance that any actual or future results or events discussed in these statements will be achieved. Any forward-looking statements represent the company's views only as of today and should not be relied upon as representing the company's views as of any subsequent date. Readers are cautioned that such forward-looking statements are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties that could cause the company's actual results or events discussed in these statements to differ materially from the statements contained in this release. Such forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, Motorola Solutions' ability to integrate the products and services into its portfolio and offerings to customers. Motorola Solutions cautions the reader that the risks and uncertainties below, as well as those in Part I Item 1A of Motorola Solutions' 2021 Annual Report on Form 10-K and in its other SEC filings available for free on the SEC's website at www.sec.gov and on Motorola Solutions' website at www.motorolasolutions.com, could cause Motorola Solutions' actual results or events discussed in these statements to differ materially from those estimated or predicted in the forward-looking statements. Many of these risks and uncertainties cannot be controlled by Motorola Solutions and factors that may impact forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, Motorola Solutions' ability to successfully integrate and operate TETRA Ireland. Motorola Solutions undertakes no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statement or risk factor, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220323005723/en/

Contacts:

Media Contact

Elvan Lindberg

Motorola Solutions

elvan.lindberg@motorolasolutions.com

+46 707 448 893

Investor Contact

Tim Yocum

Motorola Solutions

tim.yocum@motorolasolutions.com

+1 847-576-6899
VIENNA, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The OPEC Fund for International Development and the organization Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL) are strengthening their cooperation in the field of clean cooking, a key part of Sustainable Development Goal 7 ("Affordable and Clean Energy").

In a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed today during their joint "Finance for Clean Cooking" forum in Vienna, both organizations commit to scale-up their support of global and national efforts towards universal access to clean cooking.

Around 2.6 billion people lack access to clean cooking solutions, with the lowest access rates in sub-Saharan Africa. Indoor air pollution from the use of traditional fuels for cooking causes millions of deaths every year. The estimated cost worldwide from the use of traditional fuels for cooking is US$ 2.4 trillion each year, while finance for clean cooking solutions remains far below the estimated US$4.4 billion required annually to ensure universal access by 2030.

Damilola Ogunbiyi, CEO and Special Representative of the UN Secretary General for Sustainable Energy for All and Co-chair of UN-Energy said: "I'm pleased that through this partnership, SEforALL and OPEC Fund will continue to provide support for countries to advance clean cooking as a critical component of their integrated energy plans. Through the Energy Compact process, unlocking much-needed finance, and providing data and analysis, we will accelerate progress on Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 7 and ensure a just and inclusive energy transition that leaves no one behind."

OPEC Fund Director-General Dr. Abdulhamid Alkhalifa said: "We are very pleased to expand further our cooperation with SEforALL with the aim to unlock much-needed investments for clean cooking. Innovative planning and finance mechanisms can unleash the significant global potential of clean cooking and provide safer, cleaner and more efficient use of energy resources in households. Going forward, the OPEC Fund and SEforALL will scale up our efforts with a joint action plan."

African Agency for Integrated Development (AAID) recognized for its clean cooking work in Uganda

The OPEC Fund's 2021 Annual Award for Development, which focused on clean cooking solutions, was presented to the African Agency for Integrated Development (AAID) during the event today.

The organization was chosen for its community work in promoting clean cooking technologies, training and advocacy for women and youth in the Kyaka II refugee settlement in Western Uganda. AAID is working with the local government to lead awareness and training sessions and aims to create a ripple effect to encourage women and youth in the settlement to switch to more efficient, safe and cleaner cooking practices.

Kisembo Asuman, the President of the AAID said: "In Uganda, displaced communities heavily rely on open fires and polluting fuels for cooking. This is not only unhealthy, but also means that our forests are vanishing to support the cooking needs of the refugee settlements. We thank the OPEC Fund for prioritizing the energy challenge in Kyaka II settlement and recognizing our efforts to promote the use of clean energy and cooking resources through supplies, training and awareness."

Now in its 15th year, the OPEC Fund Annual Award for Development recognizes individuals and organizations for their outstanding work in, and contributions to, development. Previous winners include Earthspark International for scaling-up energy access in Haiti; Vida Duti in recognition of her work in striving for sustainable water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services in Ghana; Bangladesh-based BRAC for its support of Rohingya refugees; and the Bolivian Confederation of campesinos, indigenous and native women "Bartolina Sisa".

About the OPEC Fund

The OPEC Fund for International Development (the OPEC Fund) is the only globally mandated development institution that provides financing from member countries to non-member countries exclusively. The organization works in cooperation with developing country partners and the international development community to stimulate economic growth and social progress in low and middle income countries around the world. The OPEC Fund was established by the member countries of OPEC in 1976 with a distinct purpose: to drive development, strengthen communities and empower people. Our work is people-centered, focusing on financing projects that meet essential needs, such as food, energy, infrastructure, employment (particularly relating to MSMEs), clean water and sanitation, healthcare and education. To date, the OPEC Fund has committed more than US$22 billion to development projects in over 125 countries with an estimated total project cost of US$187 billion. The OPEC Fund is rated AA+/Stable outlook by Fitch and AA/Positive outlook by S&P in 2021. Our vision is a world where sustainable development is a reality for all.

About SEforALL

Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL) is an international organization that works in partnership with the United Nations and leaders in government, the private sector, financial institutions, civil society and philanthropies to drive faster action towards the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG7) - access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all by 2030 - in line with the Paris Agreement on climate. SEforALL works to ensure a clean energy transition that leaves no one behind and brings new opportunities for everyone to fulfil their potential.

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1772572/OPEC_Fund_SEforALL_1.jpg

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1772520/OPEC_Fund_SEforALL_2.jpg

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1584526/OPEC_Fund_Logo.jpg
AURP's International Conference to spotlight the tech talent and job creation prowess of Ontario's Life Sciences Corridor

TUSCON, AZ and HAMILTON, ON / ACCESSWIRE / March 23, 2022 / AURP, a global non-profit membership association serving university and institutional research park communities and innovation districts, today announced MaRS Discovery District, David Johnston Research + Technology Park and McMaster Innovation Park will co-host AURP's 2022 International Conference, September 19-22, in Toronto, Ontario.

Since 1986, AURP's International Conference annually brings together 250+ research park and innovation district leaders from around the world for high-impact knowledge exchange and networking with the industry's premier experts and leaders.

With the theme of "GLOBAL INNOVATION AT SCALE: ROBUST STRATEGY. DELIVERING IMPACT," the Ontario Life Sciences Corridor, which includes the Toronto, Hamilton and Waterloo region, represents the ideal host location for AURP's 2022 International Conference. The Ontario life sciences and innovation corridor has a diverse ecosystem with a combination of start-ups, step-up and established multi-national corporations with leading researchers and innovators who have pioneered transformational discoveries within the region and the world.

Hyatt Regency Toronto will serve as the conference hotel headquarters with programming and sessions situated at the MaRS Conference Center. The conference schedule will include tours of the MaRS Discovery District and new Waterfront Innovation Centre. Session topics include global business strategies advancing sectors including the entrepreneurial network; life sciences/biotech; partnerships to accelerate innovation and impact workforce development; and more.

"All of us in the global AURP community are truly excited and energized with MaRS Discovery District, David Johnston Research + Technology Park and McMaster Innovation Park set to team up and host our 2022 International Conference," said Leah Burton, AURP President, and Director of Centennial Campus Partnership Office at NC State University in Raleigh, NC. "The collection of talent, innovation and infrastructure represented within these three leading research parks is nearly unparalleled - and we look forward to learning more about how these institutions are powering Greater Toronto's tech and research economy."

"Greater Toronto is an undeniable hotbed of research and innovation, as well as job creation, in North America," said Brian Darmody, CEO of AURP. "We look forward to the dynamic new exchange of ideas, knowledge and best practices among our co-hosts and global AURP Member community."

"Regional and global partnerships are integral in strengthening our innovation ecosystem," said Ty Shattuck, CEO of McMaster Innovation Park. "Our [co-chairs] collaboration for AURP 2022 is recognition of our individual strengths and responsibility to co-evolve for exponential growth and success."

"Research parks have always been magnets for talented people, transformative technologies and groundbreaking ideas," said Mike Pereira, Manager, David Johnston Research + Technology Park, University of Waterloo. "The AURP International Conference is an exciting opportunity to bring park leaders from around the world to Toronto for the first time to celebrate innovation and work together to continue building communities of excellence."

"We are thrilled to be co-hosting the AURP 2022 International Conference at the MaRS Centre in Toronto in partnership with McMaster Innovation Park and the David Johnston Research + Technology Park," said Randal Froebelius, Project Executive & Senior Advisor, MaRS Innovations Hubs. "This will be one of the most engaging AURP Conferences yet, as we showcase our new physical developments, as well as our growing life sciences corridor. Be sure to attend!"

AURP's Annual International Conference is hosted by university or institution-based research parks, giving conference attendees robust opportunities to learn about and see first-hand how other research parks operate and chart their growth paths. Learn more at: https://international.aurp.net/

AURP is pleased to announce the following organizations are sponsoring the AURP 2022 International Conference. (Additional sponsorship opportunities are available.)

About the AURP 2022 International Conference Co-Hosts:

MaRS Discovery District is North America's largest urban innovation hub. A registered non-profit, MaRS supports high-growth startups and scale-ups tackling key issues in health, cleantech, fintech and other sectors. McMaster Innovation Park 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. The David Johnston Research + Technology Park is one of Canada's largest, most successful innovation districts. R+T Park is committed to fostering the development of cutting-edge technology by helping leading organizations innovate, access top talent, and tap into a world-class ecosystem of startups.

About AURP:

AURP, a non-profit international organization with offices in the Washington, DC area at the University of Maryland Discovery District and in Tucson, AZ at the University of Arizona Tech Park, focuses on creating communities of innovation and education for research parks both operating and planned, plus innovation districts, incubators, accelerators and the businesses that support the research park industry. AURP and its global membership promote research, institute-industry relations and innovation districts to foster innovation and to facilitate the transfer of technology from such institutions to the private sector. Learn more: www.aurp.net

Media Contacts:

Shauna-kay Williams

McMaster Innovation Park

Co-Host Media Representative

swilliams@mcmasterinnovationpark.ca

Ken Berlack

AURP

kenberlack@aurp.net

SOURCE: AURP

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/694331/AURP-Announces-Canadas-MaRS-Discovery-District-McMaster-Innovation-Park-David-Johnston-Research-Technology-Park-to-Co-Host-AURP-2022-International-Conference
Consolidated sales of 48.1 million, +3.9% at constant exchange rates

EBITDA down 9.0% to 9.9 million with a margin of 20.5%

Recurring Operating Profit of 1.9 million

Cash and cash equivalents of 24.6 million at December 31, 2021

Regulatory news:

Amplitude Surgical (ISIN: FR0012789667, Ticker: AMPLI, eligible for PEA-PME plans) (Paris:AMPLI), leading French player on the surgical technology market for lower-limb orthopedics, announces its results for the first half of its 2021-22 financial year to December 31, 2021.

Olivier Jallabert, Amplitude Surgical's CEO, said: "During the first half of our 2021-22 financial year, Amplitude Surgical recorded a 3.9% increase in sales at constant exchange rates. The decrease in the gross margin was a consequence of a weaker level of industrial activity than in the first half of 2020-2021 combined with an increase in Sales Marketing expenses in foot and ankle activities, leading to a 9.0% fall in EBITDA to 9.9 million. The Recurring Operating Profit was 1.9 million, a slight decrease on the previous year

Financial summary actual exchange rates:

m IFRS H1 2021-22 H1 2020-21 Sales 48,099 45,909 4.8% Gross margin 35,455 34,939 1.5% as a of sales 73.7% 76.1% -240 bps Sales Marketing costs 18,629 16,413 +13.5% General Administrative costs 5,508 6,225 -11.5% Research Development costs 1,466 1,469 -0.2% EBITDA 9,852 10,832 -9.0% as a of sales 20.5% 23.6% -310 bps Recurring Operating Profit 1,879 2,042 Non-recurring operating income/expenses -326 -887 Operating profit/loss 1,553 1,156 Financial profit/loss -4,321 -6,220 Net profit/loss Group share -2,833 -4,984 Net financial debt 119,482 114,521 Cash position at end of period 24,628 36,497

EBITDA down 9.0% with a gross margin of 20.5%

In the first half of its 2021-22 financial year (from July to December 2021), Amplitude generated sales of 48.1 million, up 4.8% in actual terms and 3.9% at constant exchange rates compared with the previous year. Despite this improvement, activity continued to be negatively affected by the public health situation associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, notably knee and hip activity.

Knee and hip activity was stable, with sales up 0.3% in actual terms and down 0.3% at constant exchange rates. Following a first quarter that was down on the previous year, notably impacted by lower operating room availability in France, the beginning of the second quarter (from mid-October to mid-November) saw an upturn in the sales momentum with fewer restrictions associated with the public health situation than the previous year. However, this rebound was slowed down again from the beginning of December following the increase in COVID-19 contaminations. Overall, during the first half, the health situation and reduced availability of operating rooms and medical personnel are continuing to have a considerable negative impact on activity.

Novastep, innovative solutions for foot and ankle surgery, generated strong growth over the half with sales totaling 7.9 million (+33.1% at constant exchange rates), driven by the United States. Novastep's activity now accounts for 16.4% of total Group sales.

Amplitude Surgical recorded a gross margin of 73.7% over the half, down 240 bps, impacted by the weaker dynamism of its industrial activities compared with first half of 2020-2021 and a negative change in the euro compared to the currencies of the Group's international distribution subsidiaries.

The Group's operating expenses totaled 25.6 million, up 6.2% compared with end-December 2020.

Sales Marketing costs increased by 13.5% due to the growth in Novastep's foot and ankle activities.

General Administrative costs decreased by 11.5% to 5.5 million, with the Group continuing its efforts to control costs in a commercial environment that has been significantly disrupted by the public health situation.

In the first half of 2021/2022, Research Development expenses represented 3.0% of sales and were stable, in absolute value, compared with the first half of the previous year.

Amplitude Surgical had a workforce of 453 staff at the end of December 2021, versus 443 at end-June 2021 and 442 at end-December 2020. Personnel costs were up 5.9% compared with H1 2020-2021.

EBITDA was thus 9.9 million, down 9.0%, with a margin of 20.5%, down 310 bps compared with the first half of 2020-21.

The Group generated a Recurring Operating Profit of 1.9 million over the half, versus 2.0 million in the first half of 2020/2021, the positive sales trend being offset by a lower margin and the increase in Sales Marketing expenses. The Operating Profit was 1.6 million, versus 1.2 million in H1 2020/2021.

The Financial Result was -4.3 million and consisted primarily of an interest expense of 4.8 million and the booking of a net currency gain of 0.7 million at end-December 2021.

Financial structure: cash of 24.6 million at the end of 2021

The net cash flow generated by operating activity was a positive 1.7 million over the half, versus a negative 1.0 million in the first half of 2020-21.

Investments totaled 4.9 million in the first half of 2021-22 versus 4.3 million in the first half of the previous year.

At end-December 2021, the Group had cash and cash equivalents of 24.6 million. Its Net Financial Debt was 119.5 million, giving gearing (Net Financial Debt over Shareholders' Equity) of 2.19, compared with 2.04 at the end of June 2021.

Key first-half events

Divestment of two Group subsidiaries

On July 23, 2021, the Group divested 100% of its Amplitude Ortho SRL subsidiary (Romania) to GBG MLD SRL, the distributor of the Group's products in Moldova. The divested company will continue to market the Group's products on the Romanian market as a distributor.

With its growth failing to meet expectations, on August 13, 2021 the Group divested 80% of its Matsumoto Amplitude Inc. subsidiary (Japan) to Mr. Takeshi Matsumoto, who already held 20% of this subsidiary through his company Matsumoto Medical. Following this divestment, the subsidiary's new shareholders initiated it winding up.

URSSAF audits on tax on the promotion of medical devices

On January 27, 2022, the Grenoble Court of Appeal rejected Amplitude SAS' request to invalidate the adjustment with regard to tax on the promotion of medical devices for the period from July 1, 2014 to June 30, 2017. The amount of this adjustment is 5.8 million. All these elements have been fully provisioned in the Group's accounts. Amplitude SAS will appeal this decision in the Court of Cassation.

On September 21, 2021, the Group received a letter of adjustment from URSSAF following a fourth audit pertaining to tax on the promotion of medical devices for the period from July 1, 2017 to June 30, 2020. This letter of adjustment would lead to the repayment of social contribution arrears of 5.9 million, a sum already provisioned in the Group's accounts in previous financial years. As with its previous disputes, the Group has formulated its observations and will table a request with the URSSAF's Amicable Settlement Board.

Should this request be rejected, the Group will ask the Valence Superior Court (Tribunal de Grande Instance) to invalidate the adjustment.

Dispute with Zimmer Biomet

On November 4, 2021, the Grenoble Court of Appeal rejected the case filed by Zimmer Biomet in the dispute pertaining to alleged unfair competition and ordered the latter to pay 25,000 to Amplitude SAS with respect to article 700 of the Code of Civil Procedure. Zimmer Biomet has decided to lodge an appeal with the Court of Cassation.

Outlook

The Group has no commercial exposure in Ukraine or Russia. Its exposure is limited to changes in energy costs and the price of raw materials, notably titanium, that impact product manufacturing costs.

The improvement of the sanitary situation in France since February has allowed since the beginning of March, a return of the market closer to normal.

Availability of the financial report

Amplitude Surgical has made its half-year financial report to December 31, 2021 available to the public and filed it with the AMF French stock market authorities.

This half-year financial report can be found on Amplitude Surgical's website at www.amplitude-surgical.com/fr, in the "Documentation Financial Report" section.

Next financial press release:

Sales for the first 9 months of 2021-22, on Thursday April 21, 2022 (after market).

About Amplitude Surgical

Founded in 1997 in Valence, France, Amplitude Surgical is a leading French player on the global surgical technology market for lower-limb orthopedics. Amplitude Surgical develops and markets high-end products for orthopedic surgery covering the main disorders affecting the hip, knee and extremities, and notably foot and ankle surgery. Amplitude Surgical develops, in close collaboration with surgeons, numerous high value-added innovations in order to best meet the needs of patients, surgeons and healthcare facilities. A leading player in France, Amplitude Surgical is developing abroad through its subsidiaries and a network of exclusive distributors and agents distributing its products in more than 30 countries. Amplitude Surgical operates on the lower-limb market through the intermediary of its Novastep subsidiaries in France and the United States. At June 30, 2021, Amplitude Surgical had a workforce of 443 employees and recorded sales of nearly 95.5 million euros.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220323005478/en/

Contacts:

Amplitude Surgical

Dimitri Borchtch

CFO

finances@amplitude-surgical.com

+33 (0)4 75 41 87 41

NewCap

Investor Relations

Mathilde Bohin/Thomas Grojean

amplitude@newcap.eu

+33 (0)1 44 71 94 94

NewCap

Media Relations

Nicolas Merigeau

amplitude@newcap.eu

+33 (0)1 44 71 94 98
UDINE, Italy, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Limacorporate S.p.A., leading global orthopedic manufacturer, is proud to introduce L.E.A.R.N. - LimaCorporate's Education and Resource Network. L.E.A.R.N. is a new and unique medical education experience, platform and network supporting surgeons in restoring the eMotion of Motion for their patients. Surgeons will be able to set up their own customized pathway for an improved learning experience according to their personal academic needs and expectations.

Since its foundation, the company has always believed in the power of medical education. Events like SkillsLABs, Surgeon 2 Surgeon meetings, Focus Sessions, Factory Tours where surgeons interact on a one-to-one basis with engineers behind design and manufacturing, and Lima Online Education, have established a strong base to take Medical Education to the next level and to build a network of surgeons that can rely on one another for sharing their experience and know-how.

With the support of a dedicated website and the local teams, surgeons can design their own program, choose virtual or in-person training and establish a new network. L.E.A.R.N. represents a global initiative where surgeons can connect and create their unique educational experience based on their needs.

"We feel that as a company it is our responsibility to favor the creation of a positive environment where surgeons can choose what's best for them and their patients, while also engaging with leading surgeons from around the world to address specific pathologies." said Luigi Ferrari, CEO of LimaCorporate. "Favoring collective intelligence is the only way to move forward in the business and transform orthopedics for better outcomes in patients and restore the eMotion of Motion. Let's L.E.A.R.N. together, let's L.E.A.R.N. from each other."

About LimaCorporate

LimaCorporate is a global orthopedic company, focused on digital innovation and tailored hardware, which advances patient centred care. Its pioneering technological solutions are developed to empower surgeons, and to improve patient outcomes from joint replacement surgery. Its primary focus is on providing reconstructive and custom-made orthopedic solutions to surgeons, enabling them to improve the quality of life of patients by restoring the joy of movement.

Headquartered in Italy, the company operates directly in over 20 countries around the world. LimaCorporate offers products ranging from large joint revision and primary implants, to complete extremities solutions, including fixation.

For additional information on the Company, please visit www.limacorporate.com

t: +39 0432 945511

e.: info@limacorporate.com





Contacts:

Stefania Antonutti (Marketing and Communication Manager - +39 366 6163444)

Elena Feresin (Social Media Specialist - +39 377 529 2473)

press@limacorporate.com




BEIJING, March 23 (Xinhua) -- In the spring of 2022, China is witnessing another wave of the COVID-19 epidemic. Jilin, one of the hardest-hit provinces, is currently still seeing four-digit daily growth in the number of new infections.

The country countered the outbreak with its dynamic zero-COVID policy. Apart from treating the patients, mass nucleic acid tests were carried out to detect hidden infections as early as possible. On the other hand, tight restrictions on traveling were implemented to cut the spread of the virus.

The aforementioned measures gave rise to another string of claims from some Western countries that China is compromising its economic and social development for the sake of epidemic control. However, this is largely a misunderstanding of the policy.

At a recent meeting, Chinese leadership called for efforts to "achieve the best results in epidemic control with minimum costs, and minimizing the epidemic's impact on the economic and social development." These words are an apt summary of the policy's intentions.

"Instead of curing illnesses, the best doctors prevent them from happening in the first place." This philosophy was carried in Huang Di Nei Jing, an ancient Chinese classic on medicine. The dynamic zero-COVID policy reflects the same philosophy, as it contains domestic virus flare-ups through timely actions before the virus becomes uncontainable and causes greater damage to people's lives.

The policy's effectiveness has been tested in China's containment of earlier outbreaks. Last November, the city of Dalian in northeast China's Liaoning Province was hit by a new wave of the epidemic. With all-out efforts from local health authorities, the epidemic that affected enterprises, residential areas and educational institutions was brought under control in about a month's time.

Due to timely containment, business operations and people's daily activities quickly resumed without difficulties. This exemplifies how swift implementation of the policy helps to contain the virus without majorly affecting the society and economy. For enterprises that were indeed affected by the epidemic and restrictions, policies to ease their financial stress were put in place in a timely manner.

Measures in accordance with policy also limited the geographical spread of the virus. In the current wave of epidemic, strict restrictions on traveling and commuting were implemented in Jilin Province to contain the virus. As of March 18, the cities of Jilin and Changchun account for about 98 percent of all infections the province reported. Also, the provinces of Heilongjiang and Liaoning, adjacent to Jilin, are seeing much fewer new cases, further proving the effectiveness of travel restrictions.

With such measures in place, hard-hit regions can devote all their efforts to fighting the virus, while economic activities in areas unaffected or less affected by the epidemic can proceed with necessary precautions. Moreover, less-affected regions can spare personnel and resources to regions in need. For example, 265 medical personnel and over 14 tonnes of medical resources from Shaanxi Province, where the epidemic is under control, arrived on March 20 in Jilin to help with the control efforts.

Apart from these considerations, the biggest reason for China to adopt the policy is the principle of putting the people and human life above anything else.

For the Chinese government, not a single life is expendable in the fight against the virus. This is why China's zero-COVID policy features timely detection of cases; preventing mass infections, severe illness and deaths; and avoiding straining medical resources to better meet people's daily medical needs.

The more infectious Omicron variant poses a great challenge to China's epidemic control. As leading Chinese epidemiologist Liang Wannian has warned, "If there is a large absolute number of people infected, the number of severe cases and deaths in the population as a whole will be high, which can still inflict great harm." Under such circumstances, the zero-COVID policy is essential for the country to detect and cure patients as early as possible.

In more than two years of fighting against the epidemic, China has summarized its experience and formulated anti-epidemic policies that suit its own situation. These policies, dynamic zero-COVID policy included, are expected to continue guiding China's efforts in containing the epidemic until the battle against the virus is won. 
23 March 2022

Rightmove plc

Share buy-back programme

Rightmove plc - Transaction in own shares

Rightmove plc ('Rightmove') announces that today it purchased 105,000 of its 0.1p ordinary shares at a volume weighted average price paid per share of 650.626p. The highest price paid per share was 664.800p and the lowest price paid per share was 643.000p. Rightmove purchased these shares through UBS AG London Branch.

The number of shares purchased represented 0.0124% of the voting rights attributable to the total ordinary shares in issue prior to such purchase. The purchased shares will be cancelled.

Since announcing a share buy-back programme on 28 December 2007, Rightmove has purchased in aggregate 461,853,729 ordinary shares.

The total number of ordinary shares in issue (excluding treasury shares) following this announcement is 844,723,970. Rightmove holds 12,476,381 shares in treasury.

In accordance with Article 5(1)(b) of Regulation (EU) No 596/2014 (the Market Abuse Regulation) as amended by The Market Abuse (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 (the "UK MAR"), the schedule below contains detailed information about the purchases made by UBS AG London Branch on behalf of the Company as part of the buyback programme.

Contact: Michelle Palmer, Assistant Company Secretary CompanySecretary@rightmove.co.uk

Schedule of Purchases - Individual Transactions
Finsbury Growth & Income Trust Plc - Transaction in Own Shares

For immediate release

23 March 2022

FINSBURY GROWTH & INCOME TRUST PLC

(the "Company")

MARKET PURCHASE OF COMPANY'S OWN SHARES

The Company announces that it has today purchased 25,000 of its own shares ("Ordinary Shares") at a price of 819.26p per Ordinary Share. Such shares will be held in treasury by the Company.

The transaction was made pursuant to the authority granted at the Annual General Meeting of the Company held on 9 February 2022.

Following this transaction, the total number of Ordinary Shares held by the Company in treasury is 1,435,421; the total number of Ordinary Shares that the Company has in issue, less the total number of Ordinary Shares held by the Company in treasury following such purchase, and therefore, the total number of voting rights in the Company is 223,555,882.

The figure of 223,555,882 may be used by shareholders as the denominator for calculations of interests in the Company's voting rights in accordance with the FCA's Disclosure Guidance and Transparency Rules.

For and on behalf of

Frostrow Capital LLP

Company Secretary

For further information, please contact:

Victoria Hale

Frostrow Capital LLP

Tel: 020 3 170 8732
Presents strong results in all operating parameters and investments of over ILS 3.5 billion this year

NOI in 2021 is up 31% year-over-year, amounting to some ILS 1.6 billion and the NOI rate in Q4/2021 was over ILS 1.8 billion and has reached record levels, thanks to the significant contribution of growth engines (the offices, senior housing, and data center segments), and despite the partial operation of the malls at the beginning of the year

FFO in 2021 is up 32% year-over-year, amounting to some ILS 1.3 billion

The net profit attributed to shareholders amounted to ILS 2.9 billion, and the comprehensive profit to ILS 3.2 billion, compared with a comprehensive loss of ILS 147 million in 2020

Same Property NOI in 2021 is up 23% year-over-year

This year, the Group closed one of the biggest deals in its history - the acquisition of Norwegian Data Center company Green Mountain, according to an EV of some ILS 2.8 billion

Financial Highlights for Q4/2021 and Y2021

NOI in 2021 amounted to some ILS 1,590 million, up around 31% year-over-year. The increase mainly derives from the relief granted to mall tenants last year following the Covid crisis, and from the opening of the Azrieli Town and Azrieli HaManor office towers. NOI in the quarter amounted to some ILS 454 million, up 103% from Q4/2020. The increase mainly derives from relief granted to mall tenants in Q4/2020 as a result of the Covid crisis, the acquisition of the Green Mountain data center company, and the opening of the Azrieli Town Tel Aviv and HaManor Holon office towers, together with the occupancy of Bezeq's former space in the Azrieli Tel Aviv Triangular Tower.

year-over-year. The increase mainly derives from the relief granted to mall tenants last year following the Covid crisis, and from the opening of the Azrieli Town and Azrieli HaManor office towers. from Q4/2020. The increase mainly derives from relief granted to mall tenants in Q4/2020 as a result of the Covid crisis, the acquisition of the Green Mountain data center company, and the opening of the Azrieli Town Tel Aviv and HaManor Holon office towers, together with the occupancy of Bezeq's former space in the Azrieli Tel Aviv Triangular Tower. Same Property NOI in 2021 was up 23% year-over-year. Same Property NOI in Q4/2021 was up 87% year-over-year.

FFO excluding senior housing amounted to some ILS 1,152 million in 2021, up some 31% year-over-year. The total FFO amounted to some ILS 1,318 million, up around 32% year-over-year . FFO excluding senior housing amounted to some ILS 323 million in Q4/2021, up some 113% compares with Q4/2020. The total FFO amounted to some ILS 362 million in Q4/2021, up around 70% compares with Q4/2020.

amounted to some ILS 1,152 million in 2021, up some 31% year-over-year. . amounted to some ILS 323 million in Q4/2021, up some 113% compares with Q4/2020. Net profit attributed to the shareholders totaled approx. ILS 2,889 million in 2021, compared with a profit of approx. ILS 184 million in 2020. The comprehensive income in 2021 totaled approx. ILS 3,235 million compared with a comprehensive loss of approx. ILS 147 million year-over-year. Net profit attributed to the shareholders totaled approx. ILS 2,209 million in Q4/2021, compared with a loss of approx. ILS 29 million in Q4/2020. The comprehensive income in Q4/2021 totaled approx. ILS 2,228 million compared with approx. ILS 10 million in Q4/2020.

attributed to the shareholders totaled approx. ILS 2,889 million in 2021, compared with a profit of approx. ILS 184 million in 2020. The in 2021 totaled approx. ILS 3,235 million compared with a comprehensive loss of approx. ILS 147 million year-over-year. attributed to the shareholders totaled approx. ILS 2,209 million in Q4/2021, compared with a loss of approx. ILS 29 million in Q4/2020. The in Q4/2021 totaled approx. ILS 2,228 million compared with approx. ILS 10 million in Q4/2020. During the year, the Group invested approx. ILS 1,143 million in investment property, in the acquisition, development, construction of new properties and in upgrading and improving existing properties. The Group also invested ILS 2.4 billion in the acquisition of the Norwegian data center company Green Mountain.





TEL AVIV, Israel, March 23, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Danna Azrieli, Chairwoman of the Azrieli Group: "2021 was a fantastic year for the Azrieli Group, with strong growth, significant development in all core segments, and excellent financial results. In addition, during the year we closed an approx. ILS 2.8 million strategic transaction, one of the largest in the Group's history, for the acquisition of Green Mountain, a data center company operating in Norway. I am proud to lead such an excellent enterprising group, with the ability to identify long-term opportunities and to constantly develop its business - qualities which place us in a strong and unique position in the Israeli market.

In the last decade we presented a number of new growth engines, including data centers, senior housing, and the omni-channel, and we are continuing to lay the groundwork for additional new areas such as hotels and long-term residential rentals. We will continue to explore new business opportunities which are a good fit with our long-term business strategy, alongside constant investment in preserving the high standard and value of the Group's portfolio".

Eyal Henkin, CEO of the Azrieli Group: "2021 was a strong year with double-digit growth in all of the operating parameters, alongside significant investments of over ILS 3.5 billion. The offices segment enjoyed increasing demand throughout the year and continued growth in the Same Property NOI. The retail operations have continued to present a positive trend since the reopening of the malls in February of 2021.

The Group continues to develop new growth engines, mainly Data Centers, a segment growing in high pace. In Q4 2021, our share in the Data Center's NOI reached an annual rate of ILS 120 million. This contribution will further increase with the completion of the many projects in development in Compass (24% ownership) active mainly in North America and in Green Mountain (100% ownership) active in the European market. The senior housing segment continues to increase and to be a strong and growing arm of the Group. In view of the successful marketing of Stage A of the project, we moved up the construction of Stage B of Palace Lehavim, and we are preparing to begin work on the new project in Rishon LeZion."

Occupancy Rates and Store Revenues

The average occupancy rate (excluding properties under lease-up) was 99% in the malls segment, 99% in the Israel offices segment, and 97% in senior housing.

(excluding properties under lease-up) was 99% in the malls segment, 99% in the Israel offices segment, and 97% in senior housing. Store revenues - From the date the malls reopened on February 21st until the end of 2021, store revenues in the malls increased by 1.8% relative to the same period in 2019 (excluding tenants that did not resume full / regular operations due to the restrictions).

Balance Sheet as of December 31, 2021

The Group has cash, deposits and short-term investments amounting to approx. ILS 2.9 billion, and together with Bank Leumi stock, cash and cash equivalents, and marketable securities - ILS 4.2 billion.

amounting to approx. ILS 2.9 billion, and together with Bank Leumi stock, cash and cash equivalents, and marketable securities - ILS 4.2 billion. The net debt totals approx. ILS 12.4 billion.

totals approx. ILS 12.4 billion. The value of investment property and investment property under construction totals approx. ILS 34 billion.

totals approx. ILS 34 billion. The equity to assets ratio is approx. 49% and the net debt to assets ratio is approx. 29%.

is approx. 49% and the is approx. 29%. Unencumbered assets total approx. ILS 29 billion.





Conference call



The Company will hold its annual conference call, hosted by the Group's senior management,

today (Wednesday, March 23rd, 2022) at 4:00 pm Israel local time (3:00 pm CET; 2:00 pm United Kingdom time, and 09:00 am Eastern Time).

The call will include a review of the Company's Q4/2021 and Y2021 performance, as well as a discussion of the Company's strategy and expectations for the future. A question & answer session will follow the discussion.







To participate, please dial:

03-9180664 from Israel

1-888-407-2553 from the U.S.

0-800-917-9141 from the U.K.

0-800-024-9936 from the Netherlands

1-888-604-5839 from Canada

or +972-3-9180664 internationally




Calgary, Alberta--(Newsfile Corp. - March 23, 2022) - Hemostemix Inc. (TSXV: HEM) (OTCQB: HMTXF) (FSE: 2VFO) ("Hemostemix" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that it has entered into a settlement agreement (the "Settlement Agreement") with Aspire Health Science, LLC ("Aspire"), and certain other persons, to settle all pending litigation with Aspire, and certain other persons, including in respect of the Delaware Federal Action, the Florida State Action and the Florida Federal Action involving those persons. If and when closing of the Settlement Agreement occurs, Aspire, and other signatories to the Settlement Agreement, are required to return all data and intellectual property in relation to ACP-01 in their possession (the "ACP-01 Data") to Hemostemix. The Settlement Agreement also calls for the performance of a data audit by Hemostemix in relation to the ACP-01 Data in order to review the ACP-01 Data to be returned to Hemostemix (the "Data Audit"), which Data Audit is currently underway.

Closing of the Settlement Agreement, including the return of all ACP-01 Data, is subject to a number of conditions and other contingencies as set forth in the Settlement Agreement, including the Data Audit. As such, there can be no assurance that the closing of the Settlement Agreement, including the return of all ACP-01 Data will be completed as proposed or at all. Hemostemix will provide further information in relation to the Settlement Agreement as further information becomes available.

ABOUT HEMOSTEMIX

Hemostemix is a publicly traded autologous stem cell therapy company, founded in 2003. A winner of the World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer Award, the Company developed and has published seven peer reviewed articles about the safety and efficacy of its lead product ACP-01 as a treatment of CLI, PAD, Angina, Ischemic Cardiomyopathy, Dilated Cardiomyopathy and other conditions of ischemia. ACP-01 has been used to treat over 300 patients, and it is the subject of a randomized, placebo-controlled, double blind trial of its safety and efficacy in patients with advanced critical limb ischemia who have exhausted all other options to save their limb from amputation.

On October 21, 2019, the Company announced the results from its Phase II CLI trial abstract presentation entitled "Autologous Stem Cell Treatment for CLI Patients with No Revascularization Options: An Update of the Hemostemix ACP-01 Trial With 4.5 Year Follow-up" which noted healing of ulcers and resolution of ischemic rest pain occurred in 83% of patients, with outcomes maintained for up to 4.5 years.

The Company owns 91 patents across five patent families titled: Regulating Stem Cells, In Vitro Techniques for use with Stem Cells, Production from Blood of Cells of Neural Lineage, and Automated Cell Therapy. For more information, please visit www.hemostemix.com.

For further information, please contact:

Thomas Smeenk, President, CEO & Co-Founder

EM: tsmeenk@hemostemix.com

PH: 905-580-4170

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Service Provider (as that term is defined under the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Forward-Looking Information: This news release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, included herein are forward-looking information. In particular, this news release contains forward-looking information in relation to: the Settlement Agreement, including the closing of the Settlement Agreement, the satisfactory completion of the Data Audit, the settlement of all litigation with Aspire, and certain other persons, and the transfer of the ACP-01 Data to Hemostemix; and the commercialization of ACP-01. There can be no assurance that such forward-looking information will prove to be accurate. Actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such forward-looking information. This forward-looking information reflects Hemostemix's current beliefs and is based on information currently available to Hemostemix and on assumptions Hemostemix believes are reasonable. These assumptions include, but are not limited to: the successful closing of the Settlement Agreement; the satisfaction or waiver of all conditions and contingencies in the Settlement Agreement, including the satisfactory completion of the Data Audit; all required parties to the Settlement Agreement executing the Settlement Agreement; agreement by all parties to the Settlement Agreement to the closing of the Settlement Agreement; the underlying value of Hemostemix and its Common Shares; the successful resolution of the litigation that Hemostemix is pursuing or defending (the "Litigation"); the results of ACP-01 research, trials, studies and analyses, including the analysis being equivalent to or better than previous research, trials or studies as well as management's expectations of anticipated results; Hemostemix's general and administrative costs remaining constant; the receipt of all required regulatory approvals for research, trials or studies; the level of activity, market acceptance and market trends in the healthcare sector; the economy generally; consumer interest in Hemostemix's services and products; competition and Hemostemix's competitive advantages; and Hemostemix obtaining satisfactory financing to fund Hemostemix's operations including any research, trials or studies, and the Litigation. Forward-looking information is subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of Hemostemix to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information. Such risks and other factors may include, but are not limited to: the ability of Hemostemix to complete its current CLI clinical trial, complete satisfactory analyses of clinical trials and other information and the results of such analyses and future clinical trials; litigation and potential litigation that Hemostemix may face; general business, economic, competitive, political and social uncertainties; general capital market conditions and market prices for securities; delay or failure to receive board or regulatory approvals; the actual results of future operations including the actual results of future research, trials or studies; competition; changes in legislation affecting Hemostemix; the timing and availability of external financing on acceptable terms; long-term capital requirements and future developments in Hemostemix's markets and the markets in which it expects to compete; lack of qualified, skilled labour or loss of key individuals; and 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, disruptions to economic activity and financings, disruptions to supply chains and sales channels, and a deterioration of general economic conditions including a possible national or global recession or depression; the potential impact that the COVID-19 pandemic may have on Hemostemix which may include a decreased demand for the services that Hemostemix offers; and a deterioration of financial markets that could limit Hemostemix'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 Hemostemix's disclosure documents on the SEDAR website at www.sedar.com. Although Hemostemix 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. 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. Forward-looking information contained in this news release is expressly qualified by this cautionary statement. The forward-looking information contained in this news release represents the expectations of Hemostemix as of the date of this news release and, accordingly, it is subject to change after such date. However, Hemostemix 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/117843
Hundreds of thousands of people expected to be impacted by donation

Medpace (MEDP), a global clinical research organization (CRO), has partnered with Matthew 25: Ministries, a humanitarian and disaster relief organization, to fund aid shipments to Ukraine and surrounding areas. The contribution will facilitate shipping and distribution of critically needed aid with an estimated value above $2.5 million. It will help hundreds of thousands of people in need in Ukraine and the surrounding areas.

"Medpace has offices in both Ukraine and Poland, so this humanitarian crisis impacts our employees, families, and friends," said Stephen Ewald JD, General Counsel, Chief Compliance Officer, and Corporate Secretary. "We wanted to show support and impact the relief efforts in a meaningful and expedient way." According to Mr. Ewald, Matthew 25 had amassed supplies of personal care products, paper products, first aid items, and clothing but needed financial assistance for shipping and distribution. "It is worth noting, Matthew: 25 has partners in place, effectively serving the needs of those who remain in the country and those who have been displaced," he stated.

"Medpace's generous contribution will help us continue to provide aid to Ukraine and the surrounding areas," said Matthew 25: Ministries' CEO Tim Mettey. "So many people urgently need help due to this crisis, and Medpace's gift will make an enormous difference, providing care and hope to refugees and others in need. We are grateful for this generous support."

Medpace encourages others to support Matthew 25 in its humanitarian efforts. "Matthew 25 is a 4-star charity on Charity Navigator, the highest designation earned by being financially efficient and transparent in their operations," said Mr. Ewald. "Every dollar contributed has a multiplying effect by facilitating the distribution of large quantities of needed supplies that Matthew 25 is ready to ship. We are proud to be able to support the efforts of Matthew 25 and bring urgently needed relief to the people of Ukraine."

Matthew: 25 uses donated funds for the acquisition, processing, tracking, maintenance, warehousing, preparation, and distribution of critically needed supplies to people in need. It uses donations to cover costs associated with the oversight and administration of these activities. 100% of funds designated for "Ukraine Relief" will be used for the purpose intended. Financial and product donations are welcome. Learn more and donate: https://m25m.org/disaster/ukraine22/

About Medpace

Medpace is a scientifically-driven, global, full-service clinical contract research organization (CRO) providing Phase I-IV clinical development services to the biotechnology, pharmaceutical, and medical device industries. Medpace's mission is to accelerate the global development of safe and effective medical therapeutics through its high-science and disciplined operating approach that leverages regulatory and therapeutic expertise across all major areas, including oncology, cardiology, metabolic disease, endocrinology, central nervous system, and anti-viral and anti-infective. Headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, Medpace employs approximately 4,500 people across 41 countries as of December 31, 2021.

About Matthew 25: Ministries

Matthew 25: Ministries rescues and reuses over 15,000,000 pounds of products each year and redistributes them to the poorest of the poor and disaster victims. Each year, Matthew 25: Ministries impacts the lives of more than 20,000,000 individuals throughout the United States and around the world. Matthew 25 is ranked on Forbes' 2021 list of the Largest U.S. Charities. Matthew 25 is also highly ranked among more than 3,700 four-star charities on Charity Navigator. Matthew 25: Ministries is accredited by the Better Business Bureau through the "Wise Giving Alliance Standards." For more information, or to schedule an interview, contact Michelle Jones mjones@m25m.org at Matthew 25: Ministries (513) 793-6256, or visit www.m25m.org.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220323005951/en/

Contacts:

Julie Hopkins

513-579-9911 x12627

j.hopkins@medpace.com
PENTICTON, BC / ACCESSWIRE / March 23, 2022 / EastWest Bioscience Inc. ("EastWest" or "Company") (TSXV:EAST), reports that, pursuant to the Board of Directors Ancillary Compensation Agreement (the "Compensation Agreement") and subject to regulatory/Exchange approval, it will compensate Directors and Officers ("Officers") of the Company for personally guaranteeing loan funds incurred by the Company. The Officers of the Company, from time to time, are required to provide personal guarantees in the form of financial security and backstopping for the Company, its subsidiaries, and affiliates ("Personal Guarantees"). The Company acknowledges that the Personal Guarantees present financial risk to such management persons and wish to compensate the Officers for providing such Personal Guarantees.

As part of and subject to the terms and conditions of the Board of Directors Ancillary Compensation Agreement (the "Compensation Agreement"), the Company agrees to pay to the Officers a cash fee of 1.5% of the total value of the loan guarantee to be paid concurrently up to the execution of any Personal Guarantee provided. The Company anticipates that it may borrow up to CAD $2,000,000 for which personal guarantees may be required. These loans would include credit cards, mortgages or any Government backed loans.

About the EastWest Bioscience Group of companies

EastWest Bioscience is a vertically integrated wellness company with a multitude of business units and assets that allow for seed-to-sale supply chain management. We source our raw material, process, manufacture, test, brand, market, and distribute our products to our customers in Canada, the United States, and beyond. The Company owns and operates retail and manufacturing subsidiaries.

The Company's retail subsidiary is the award winning, Canadian natural health retail franchise - Sangster's Health Centres - with over 40 years of legacy in the health and wellness industry. Sangster's goal is to provide natural choices through quality products and educated advice for a healthy lifestyle. Sangster's Health Centres occupies a unique position in the industry, the stores provide vast knowledge and safe natural remedies for the prevention and treatment of disease and ailments. Sangster's introduction and development of over 202 exclusively labeled products (vitamins, mineral, herbs, proteins, natural body care and organic foods) catapulted Sangster's name and product into a large number of Canadian households. From a solid base in Saskatchewan, Sangster's has become a national brand name with franchise stores located across Canada.

Orchard Vale Naturals is the Company's manufacturing arm that is certified with a Health Canada Site License and has GMP Certified NHP Manufacturing capabilities. Orchard Vale Naturals specializes in custom blends and production runs of all sizes, small to large, for top-quality products with quick turnaround times. Orchard Vale Naturals operates out of a 34,000 sq. ft. Health Canada licensed facility in Penticton, British Columbia owned by EastWest Bioscience, which acts as the Head Office for all of EastWest's Canadian operations.

The Company's subsidiary 1290185 B.C. LTD dba Spare Room Co Self Storage ("Spare Room") is building a network of automated self-storage sites in British Columbia. The subsidiary's business model is designed to be low capex with highly scalable logistics. It is focused on secondary markets, consumer automation and innovative land partnerships, allowing it to move into new regions quickly, at scale and with minimal risk. EastWest hopes to build Spare Room into a household name across Canada.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF EASTWEST BIOSCIENCE INC.

"Rodney Gelineau"

Co-Founder, Chief Executive Officer and Director

For Further Information:

Company Website: www.eastwestbioscience.com

Contact: Rodney Gelineau on 1-800-409-1930 or investors@eastwestscience.com

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 certain "forward-looking statements" under applicable Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements with respect to the matters disclosed herein. Forward-looking statements are necessarily based upon a number of estimates and assumptions that, while considered reasonable, are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors which may cause the actual results and future events to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such factors include, but are not limited to: general business, economic, competitive, political and social uncertainties; and delay or failure to receive board, shareholder or regulatory approvals. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The Corporation disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law.

SOURCE: EastWest Bioscience Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/694366/EastWest-to-Compensate-Management-for-Personal-Guarantees-of-Company-Debt
NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO U.S. NEWSWIRES OR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES

SURREY, BC / ACCESSWIRE / March 23, 2022 / Gungnir Resources Inc. (TSXV:GUG)(OTC PINK:ASWRF) ("Gungnir" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that due to significant market demand, the Company has increased the size of its previously announced non-brokered private placement from $1.4 million to $2.4 million. The upsized offering (the "Offering") will consist of up to 20,000,000 units of the Company (the "Units") at a price of $0.12 per Unit (the "Unit Price"), for aggregate gross proceeds of up to $2,400,000.

Each Unit will consist of one common share in the capital of the Company (each, a "Common Share") and one common share purchase warrant (each, a "Warrant"). Each Warrant entitles the holder to acquire one Common Share (each, a "Warrant Share") at a price per Warrant Share of $0.18 per share for a period of 24 months from the closing.

The net proceeds of the Offering will be used to continue the exploration program, inclusive of drilling, at the Company's 100% owned projects in Sweden, concentrating on the Company's nickel resources, as well as for general corporate purposes.

The closing of the Offering is subject to certain conditions, including but not limited to, the approval of the TSX Venture Exchange ("Exchange"). In connection with the Offering, the Company may pay finders' fees in cash or securities, or a combination of both, as permitted by the policies of the Exchange. All securities issued under the Offering are subject to a hold period expiring four months and one day from the closing date of the Offering.

This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any of the securities in the United States nor shall there be any sale of the securities in any state in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful. The securities being offered have not been, nor will they be, registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act"), and may not be offered or sold in the United States absent registration or an applicable exemption from the registration requirements of the 1933 Act and applicable state securities laws.

About Gungnir Resources

Gungnir Resources Inc. is a Canadian-based TSX-V listed mineral exploration company (GUG:TSX-V, ASWRF:OTCPK) with gold and base metal projects in northern Sweden. Gungnir's assets include two nickel-copper-cobalt deposits, Lappvattnet and Rormyrberget, with inferred resources totalling 177 million of nickel, and the Knaften project which hosts a developing intrusion-hosted gold system, and VMS (zinc-copper) and copper-nickel targets, all of which are open for expansion and further discovery. Further information about the Company and its properties may be found at www.gungnirresources.com or at www.sedar.com.

On behalf of the Board,

Jari Paakki, CEO and Director

For further information contact:

Head Office/Investor Relations

Phone: +1-604-683-0484

Jari Paakki, CEO

Email: jpaakki@eastlink.ca

Chris Robbins, CFO

Email: robbinscr@shaw.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.

Forward-Looking Information

Certain statements in this news release may constitute "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities laws (also known as forward-looking statements). Forward-looking information involves known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, and may cause actual results, performance or achievements or industry results, to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements or industry results expressed or implied by such forward-looking information. Forward-looking information generally can be identified by the use of terms and phrases such as "anticipate", "believe", "could", "estimate", "expect", "feel", "intend", "may", "plan", "predict", "project", "subject to", "will", "would", and similar terms and phrases, including references to assumptions. Some of the specific forward-looking information in this news release includes, but is not limited to, statements with respect to: the closing of the Offering; the anticipated Offering size; the Option Agreement and Gungnir's licences; Gungnir's plan for future exploration and development of its properties, Gungnir's plan for future disclosure relating to exploration and development of its properties within the timelines set out above or at all; the exercise of warrants; expectation to raise additional funds under the Offering; and the use of net proceeds from the Offering.

Forward-looking information is based on a number of key expectations and assumptions made by Gungnir, including, without limitation: the COVID-19 pandemic impact on the Canadian and global economy and Gungnir's business, and the extent and duration of such impact; the impact of international conflicts or wars on global economy and Gungnir's business; no change to laws or regulations that negatively affect Gungnir's business; there will be a demand for Gungnir's services and products in the future; Gungnir will be able to raise additional funds under the Offering; Gungnir will receive the required approvals to closing the Offering; and Gungnir will be able to operate its business as planned. Although the forward-looking information contained in this news release is based upon what Gungnir believes to be reasonable assumptions, it cannot assure investors that actual results will be consistent with such information.

Forward-looking information is provided for the purpose of presenting information about management's current expectations and plans relating to the future and readers are cautioned that such statements may not be appropriate for other purposes. Forward-looking information involves significant risks and uncertainties and should not be read as a guarantee of future performance or results as actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in such forward-looking information. Those risks and uncertainties include, among other things, risks related to: no certainty that any economically viable mineral deposit will be located on Gungnir's properties; that Gungnir may not be able to complete its planned drilling as anticipated; the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic; the impacts of war and/or other international conflicts; ability to access capital markets and complete successful financings on terms Gungnir determines to be reasonable; environmental matters; changes in legislation or regulations; receipt of required licenses, permits and approvals; and resource estimates may not be accurate and may differ significantly from actual mineral resources. Management believes that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking information contained herein are based upon reasonable assumptions and information currently available; however, management can give no assurance that actual results will be consistent with such forward-looking information. The forward-looking information contained this news release is expressly qualified in its entirety by this cautionary statement. Forward-looking information reflects management's current beliefs and is based on information currently available to Gungnir. The forward-looking information is stated as of the date of this news release and Gungnir assumes no obligation to update or revise such information to reflect new events or circumstances, except as may be required by applicable law.

SOURCE: Gungnir Resources Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/694431/Gungnir-Announces-Upsize-of-Previously-Announced-Non-Brokered-Private-Placement-to-C24-Million


AMSTERDAM (dpa-AFX) - Dutch automaker Stellantis NV (STLA) and LG Energy Solution have announced plans to invest about $4.1 billion through a joint venture to build a large scale, domestic, electric vehicle battery manufacturing facility in Canada.



The joint venture company will produce lithium-ion battery cells and modules to meet a significant portion of Stellantis' vehicle production requirements in North America.



Construction of the plant in Windsor, Ontario is scheduled to begin later this year with operations planned to launch in the first quarter of 2024, according to the transatlantic automaker. Once fully operational, the plant is expected to have an annual production capacity of more than 45 gigawatt hours and will create an estimated 2,500 new jobs, Stellantis said.



'Our joint venture with LG Energy Solution is yet another stepping stone to achieving our aggressive electrification roadmap in the region aimed at hitting 50% of battery electric vehicle sales in the US and Canada by the end of the decade,' said Carlos Tavares, Stellantis CEO. 'We are grateful to the Municipal, Provincial and Federal levels of government for their support and commitment to help position Canada as a North American leader in the production of electric vehicle batteries.'



'Through this joint venture, LG Energy Solution will be able to position itself as a critical player in building green energy value chains in the region,' said Youngsoo Kwon, CEO of LG Energy Solution. 'Creating a joint venture battery manufacturing company in Canada, recognized as one of the leading nations in renewable energy resources, is key for LG Energy Solution as we aim to power more electric vehicles around the world.'



Stellantis announced plans to have global annual battery electric vehicle sales of five million vehicles by 2030, reaching 100% of passenger car BEV sales mix in Europe and 50% passenger car and light-duty truck BEV sales mix in North America.



Stellantis also increased planned battery capacity by 140 GWh to approximately 400 GWh, to be supported by five battery manufacturing plants together with additional supply contracts.







Copyright(c) 2022 RTTNews.com. All Rights Reserved



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

STELLANTIS-Aktie komplett kostenlos handeln - auf Smartbroker.de
Allego Holding B.V. (NYSE: ALLG) ("Allego" or "the Company"), a leading pan-European electric vehicle public charging network, announced today that the Company's CEO, Mathieu Bonnet, will participate in the Electrification of Europe and the Future of EV Charging panel at the JP Morgan Global ESG Conference held in London on Thursday, March 24, 2022, at 7:00 am ET. The panel will include an audience Q&A at the end. Interested institutional investors that are clients of JP Morgan should contact their respective sales representatives directly.

About Allego

Allego delivers charging solutions for electric cars, motors, buses, and trucks, for consumers, businesses, and cities. Allego's end-to-end charging solutions make it easier for businesses and cities to deliver the infrastructure drivers need, while the scalability of our solutions makes us the partner of the future. Founded in 2013, Allego is a leader in charging solutions, with an international charging network comprised of approximately 28,000 public charging ports operational throughout the pan-European market and proliferating. Our charging solutions are connected to our proprietary platform, EV-Cloud, which gives our customers and us a full portfolio of features and services to meet and exceed market demands. We are committed to providing independent, reliable, and safe charging solutions, agnostic of vehicle model or network affiliation. At Allego, we strive every day to make EV charging easier, more convenient, and more enjoyable for all.

Forward-Looking Statements

All statements other than statements of historical facts contained in this press release ("Press Release") are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements may generally be identified by the use of words such as "believe," "may," "will," "estimate," "continue," "anticipate," "intend," "expect," "should," "would," "plan"" "project," "forecast," "predict," "potential," "seem," "seek," "future," "outlook," "target" or other similar expressions (or the negative versions of such words or expressions) that predict or indicate future events or trends or that are not statements of historical matters. These forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding estimates and forecasts of other financial and performance metrics and projections of market opportunity and market share. These statements are based on various assumptions, whether or not identified in this Press Release, and on the current expectations of Allego's management and are not predictions of actual performance. These forward-looking statements are provided for illustrative purposes only and are not intended to serve as, and must not be relied on as a guarantee, an assurance, a prediction, or a definitive statement of fact or probability. Actual events and circumstances are difficult or impossible to predict and may differ from assumptions, and such differences may be material. Many actual events and circumstances are beyond the control of Allego. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, including (i) changes in domestic and foreign business, market, financial, political, and legal conditions; (ii) risks related to the rollout of Allego's business strategy and the timing of expected business milestones; (iii) risks related to the consummation of the proposed business combination with Spartan Acquisition Corp. III being delayed or not occurring at all; (iv) risks related to political and macroeconomic uncertainty; (v) the risk that the installation of the charging solutions at Nissan locations is delayed or does not occur at all; (vi) the risk that the benefits to Allego of the Nissan partnership are delayed, are less than anticipated or do not occur at all; and (vii) the impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic, including its impact on any of the foregoing risks. If any of these risks materialize or Allego's assumptions prove incorrect, actual results could differ materially from the results implied by these forward-looking statements. There may be additional risks that Allego does not presently know or that Allego currently believes are immaterial that could also cause actual results to differ from those contained in the forward-looking statements. In addition, forward-looking statements reflect Allego's expectations, plans or forecasts of future events and views as of the date of this Press Release. Allego anticipates that subsequent events and developments will cause Allego's assessments to change. However, while Allego may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future, Allego specifically disclaims any obligation to do so, unless required by applicable law. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing Allego's assessments as of any date subsequent to the date of this Press Release. Accordingly, undue reliance should not be placed upon the forward-looking statements.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220323006006/en/

Contacts:

For Allego

Investors

investors@allego.eu

Media

allegoPR@icrinc.com
VEVEY (dpa-AFX) - Nestle SA (NSRGY.PK), one of the largest food company in the world, announced that it is suspending sales of some of its brands, including KitKat and Nesquik, in Russia amid ongoing pressure as Russia continues to invade Ukraine. 'We are suspending renowned Nestle brands such as KitKat and Nesquik, among others,' the company announced in a statement. 'We have already halted non-essential imports and exports into and out of Russia, stopped all advertising, and suspended all capital investment in the country. Of course, we are fully complying with all international sanctions on Russia.' Meanwhile, the company said its activities in Russia will be restricted on providing essential food, such as infant food and medical/hospital nutrition. 'While we do not expect to make a profit in the country or pay any related taxes for the foreseeable future in Russia, any profit will be donated to humanitarian relief organizations,' the company added. The company also said it has contributed hundreds of tons of food supplies and significant financial assistance to support the people in Ukraine and refugees in neighboring countries. On Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had called out at the Swiss company for continuing its operations in Russia. 'Good food. Good life.' This is the slogan of Nestle. Your company that refuses to leave Russia,' Zelensky said on Saturday during an address to the people of Switzerland. 'Even now - when there are threats from Russia to other European countries. Not only to us. When there is even nuclear blackmail from Russia.' 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.
Golden Ocean Group Limited, or in the link below. The Annual Report is also available on the website of the Commission, www.sec.gov.

Shareholders may also request a hard copy of the Annual Report, which includes the Company's complete 2021 audited financial statements, by contacting the Investor Relations department.



Golden Ocean Group Limited

Hamilton, Bermuda

March 23, 2022

Contact Person:

Peder Simonsen: Chief Financial Officer, Golden Ocean Management AS

+47 22 01 73 45

This information is subject to the disclosure requirements pursuant to section 5-12 of the Norwegian Securities Trading Act.

Attachments
TAIPEI, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The 2022 World System Integrator Conference (WSIC), organized by Industrial Development Bureau (IDB), Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA), was held as a hybrid event on March 23rd. More than 200 companies and organizations in system integration participated in the event online or in-person at Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center.

At WSIC 2022, six Taiwanese companies signed MOUs with their overseas partners to implement their solutions in foreign regions:

Quadlink and Evvo IoT from Singapore will promote smart aquaculture in Singapore .

will promote smart aquaculture in . Airtree, Leian Japan and Welfare Okinawa agreed to collaborate on implementing an innovative IoT farming method in Japan .

. YajanTech and a Singaporean company, iBosses, are going to expand on their successful experiences with AR tourism in Singapore .

. Lndata and a Vietnamese company, Mekong One, discussed the development of big data and digital marketing in Vietnam .

. Big x Reality would collaborate with Malaysian XR Associates (XRA) to implement an XR Training Simulator in Malaysia .

. Tatung System Technologies and Syslink from Thailand discussed providing smart solutions to public toilets in Thailand .

This year's conference focused on the topic of "Being Part of the International SI Ecosystem" and emphasized three actions: developing a sustainable business model, increasing capital investment, and collaborating with foreign partners to satisfy demand of overseas markets. The Director of Information Technology Industries Division of IDB, MOEA, Jiunn-Shiow Lin, and the winners of Taiwan's 2022 System Integration Award responded to these actions at the conference.

Jiunn-Shiow Lin said "as cities grow faster, system integration and the development of smart cities have become important issues. With three years of collaborative experiences, we are confident that we can realize an international ecosystem for system integration by forging partnerships with local players, developing overseas business models, and operating solutions abroad.

Through the successful cases from the winners of Taiwan's 2022 System Integration Award and the six MOUs with international partners, this conference shows our ability to provide digital service to global markets and also proves the influence of WSIC as a platform to facilitate international collaboration."

Additionally, representatives of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) shared their insights on regional development and investment trends of system integration. Speakers from the Philippines, India, Malaysia, and the United States also shared local implementation opportunities and their experiences in smart energy, smart city, 5G, and digital transformation.

WSIC, a cooperation platform established in 2019 with the vision of advancing Taiwan as a world-trusted exporting country of system integration, has been devoted to sharing our technology and experience with system integration and promoting quality solutions from Taiwan to overcome challenges with local partners worldwide.

All are welcome to visit the website at https://www.sipa.org.tw/ and SIPA Super Hub https://gis.cier.edu.tw/SIPA/casesI.php for more details about the System Integration Promotion Alliance Project (SIPA).

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1772282/20220323WSIC.jpg
ChargeAfter, a NYC-based Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) consumer financing network, raised $44M in Series B funding.

The round was led by The Phoenix, with participation from global banking giants Citi Ventures (Citigroup), Banco Bradesco, MUFG (Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group), and existing investors. The new funding follows a strategic investment and partnership with Visa, bringing the companys total amount raised to $60m.

The company intends to use the funds to continue to expand operations and its business reach.

Led by Meidad Sharon, CEO, and founder, ChargeAfter provides shoppers with responsible, approved financing offers from multiple lenders with a single application, and white-labeled BNPL platform services for global banks and financial institutions.

With dozens of pre-integrated global financing lenders and banks already on the platform, ChargeAfter offers shoppers approved and personalized consumer financing from multiple lenders through a single, quick application, wherever they shop. With the distribution of credit streamlined into a single platform, retailers can implement its BNPL offering both online and in-store. The company also provides global banks, acquirers, financial institutions, and strategic partners with a fully branded white label BNPL platform. The network provides retailers and businesses access to financing partners across the full-credit spectrum with BNPL products such as card-based installments, split pay, long and short-term installments, 0% APR financing, revolving credit, B2B financing, lease to own, and more, in a single integration.

Headquartered in New York, ChargeAfter has offices in New York, California, and Tel Aviv.

FinSMEs

22/03/2022
Eight Roads, a global venture capital firm backed by Fidelity, launched its latest dedicated technology fund for China.

Eight Roads China Technology Fund V, has US$350m of capital to deepen the firms focus on core technology areas accompanied by a deep thematic investment approach.

Since its first investment in China in the 1990s, Eight Roads has evolved with the development of the technology industry in the country and remains committed to supporting local entrepreneurs to develop the next generation of global technology companies with its deep domain expertise and global network.

Led by Jarlon Tsang, Managing Partner and Head of Eight Roads Ventures China, and Ted Chua, Senior Partner, Eight Roads Ventures China has backed over 130 companies in the countrys healthcare and technology sectors such as Alibaba, Adagene, Asia Info, BangEr, Eyebright, FenBeiTong, Innovent, Innovusion, Kyligence, Medbanks, MediTrust, PingPong, Pony.ai, WuXi Apptec, etc.

Globally, the Eight Roads platform has backed more than 300 companies including AppsFlyer, Cazoo, Icertis, Made.com, Neo4j, Paidy, Shadowfax, and Spendesk, to name a few. The firm is managing over $8bn of assets across offices in China, India, Japan, Europe and the US.

FinSMEs

22/03/2022
Layr, an Atlanta, GA-based insurtech startup using artificial intelligence and machine learning to help brokerages and agencies manage their small commercial books, raised $10M in Series A funding.

The round was led by HSCM Ventures, with participation from MGV, Sandbox Industries, Flyover Capital, and Hannover Digital Investments, as well as an experienced group of insurance brokerages and professionals from The Plexus Groupe, IMA Corp, Holmes Murphy, The Partners Group, The Graham Agency, Broker Tech Ventures, and other insurtechs. Brandon Baron will join Layrs Board of Directors as a representative of HSCM Ventures.

The company intends to use the funds to double the team and grow its presence amongst insurance agents and brokers while adding new technology advancements that enable small businesses access to the insurance marketplace.

Led by Phillip Naples, Founder, and CEO, Layr is an AI-powered cloud platform digitizing the entire insurance process by enabling brokers to sell, service, and renew policies in a private-labeled service center. When a new client is shopping for policies, the proprietary algorithms quote pricing while simultaneously shopping the pre-written package to underwriters  without any broker touch or use of APIs. Following carrier placement, the end-client can then service their own policies and access proof of insurance from the broker-branded portal.

The company currently supports P&C insurance agencies and brokerages across all 50 states by providing technology to efficiently sell and service tens of millions of dollars worth of premium across their books. Over 2022, Layr will expand its technology to offer tailored solutions to agencies of all sizes, release new features to enhance the experience of brokers and clients alike, and partner with technology providers in support of independent brokers.

FinSMEs

23/03/2022
Ramped, a San Francisco, California-based job skilling and recruitment tech platform, closed a $3.1m seed financing round.

Backers included Hustle Fund, Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures, Workplay Ventures, Vastly Viable Ventures, Eudemian Ventures, [email protected], Graph Ventures, and Operate VC.

The use of proceeds will focus on sales and marketing, and an expansion of the products capabilities.

Founded in 2020 by Chief Executive Officer Manoj Jonna, Mitch DeForest and Danny Leonard, Ramped is a career discovery and job skilling platform for job seekers to attain credentials and experience coveted by top employers. The platform allows users to augment their learning and gain new functional job skills to optimize their search process.

The company, which will look to expand its team over the next several months, has formed strategic partnerships with top employers across key industries  from tech to financial services, education, and healthcare.

FinSMEs

22/03/2022
ThriveAgric, an Abuja, Nigeria-based agtech company, raised $56.4M in debt funding.

Backers included local commercial banks and institutional investors. The raise also included a co-investment grant of $1.75M from the USAID-funded West Africa Trade & Investment.

The company intends to use the funds to grow its 200,000+ farmer base, and expand into new African markets, including Ghana, Zambia and Kenya.

Founded in 2017 (and fully operational since 2018) and led by Chief Executive Officer Uka Eje, CTO Ayo Arikawe, CFO Olurotimi Arigbede, and Head of Risk Management and Compliance Michael Kadiri, ThriveAgric empowers farmers in Nigeria to sell their products to FMCGs and food processors, leveraging its proprietary technology to access finance as well as improve productivity and sales to promote food security. The technology, an Agricultural Operating System (AOS), works entirely offline, dispatches USSD to farmers, and powers Android apps used by field agents to help digitally collate creditworthy farmers and gather relevant farm data. The company supports Africas agriculture sector by assisting smallholder farmers in producing high-quality grains. Harvests, including maize, rice and soybeans, are stored in many of the companys 450+ warehouses in Bauchi, Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano and Katsina states in Nigeria, before being commoditized and offered to local and global trade markets at a premium price.

This latest funding follows $9m the company raised in 2020. Over the past 12 months, ThriveAgrics revenues have increased five-fold, with a year-on-year increase of 277% in farmer numbers.

About ThriveAgric

Founded in 2017 (and fully operational since 2018), ThriveAgric seeks to ensure global food security, by enabling Africas agriculture sector; particularly its smallholder farmers to profitably and sustainably produce high-quality grains.

ThriveAgrics Agriculture Operating System (AOS) can be used by field agents and farmers to provide finance and enable sales for their harvest, while digitising commodities. It works entirely offline, capturing farmer onboarding and credit scoring, and ultimately links farmers to capital, data-driven best practices, and access to local and global markets.

1 205,000 farmers in 2021 accessed ThriveAgrics AOS (Agricultural Operating System) product, compared to 53,000 in 2020.2 Produced and traded up to 6% of Nigerias total maize demand.
There was a full agenda at the regular scheduled Floyd Fiscal Court meeting Tuesday, March 15.

County officials said the county is working diligently with the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA), to repair damages from the New Years Day storms.

Floyd County Judge-Executive Robbie Williams announced at the meeting he had received an email from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnells office that Floyd Countys reimbursement rate would increase from 75 percent up to 90 percent for any FEMA-related event dating back to 2020.

This will cover our two latest events, he said. This is good news for us, considering how many projects we have laying out there.

Officials said at the meeting the county is still working to get approval from FEMA or the Natural Resources Conservation Service on several projects the county needs to do as a result of recent disasters.

The court also discussed the need to clean up the county

Floyd Emergency Management Director Joe Reynolds said the countys new solid waste coordinator has got the countys roadside clean team working and they are doing a great job so far.

From what I have seen so far is  my gosh  theyre taking this thing by storm, picking up these roads, these county roads, he said. Its good to get the county roads, but when we hit these Kentucky state highways, that slows us down a lot, especially if youre talking about Ky. 122 from Martin to Melvin  thats 20-some miles.

Williams said he contacted the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet and found out that the state has budgeted nothing to clean up along state secondary roads, such as Ky. 122 or Ky. 979 in Floyd County.

They do the four lanes, thats it, Williams said, adding it is the countys responsibility to clean up the rest.

Williams also announced the countys spring cleanup is April 11 to April 16, which he pointed out does not mean the county will go out and clean up peoples property.

The landfill will let you dump for free, he said. We are not coming to your house to clean up your yard or your trash.

Williams said if there are some people who need help, especially the sick or elderly, the county will attempt to do so, but that will happen after the cleanup.

Williams said the county has been limited in what it can do to force residents to clean up nuisance properties, but that recent legislation could allow the county to actually

What were trying to do is get together an ordinance or something to that effect, something to where were not all bark and no bite, he said.  We have to do better in trying to get this county cleaned up. Were going backwards. We cant attract employers, businesses.

Williams said it is disappointing when children are asked to do better and do what they can to succeed, but the environment in which they live is filth and nastiness.

I think what happens is we clean the county up physically, it cleans a lot of our problems up mentally with a lot of these kids, he said.

Dist. 4 Magistrate Ronnie Akers mentioned that, in a recent conference, he was informed that the states proposed budget included a total of $25 million in funding for election costs retroactive to 2019. Akers pointed out that the county purchased voting machines last year and could potentially recoup those expenses.

We could get that money back, Akers said. We just have to apply for it.

Floyd County Clerk Chris Waugh told the court that the final cost for the voting machines was approximately $400,000.
A former Floyd County resident has pleaded guilty in connection with a fatal 2018 hit-and-run case that left a Teaberry man dead.

Kyle Collins, 26, of Berea, entered the plea in connection with a July 1, 2017 incident in which 60-year-old Larry Hinkle was walking along Ky. 979 and was struck by the vehicle Collins was driving, according to Floyd Commonwealths Attorney Brent Turner.

Collins then fled the scene, Turner said, which hindered authorities from naming a suspect in the case for months. The following year, police discovered a vehicle that had been intentionally pushed over an embankment in a remote area of Mud Creek in an apparent attempt to conceal the crime, Turner said. The car had been covered with brush and the VIN number had been removed.

Kentucky State Police were able to locate the VIN number on another part of the vehicle, and KSP were then able to trace it back to Collins, who had been driving the car the day of the accident, Turner said. Collins later admitted to hitting the man and leaving the scene of an accident.

The case was scheduled to begin trial on March 21, but the parties reached a resolution at a criminal mediation conducted on March 9.

The agreement reached between Turners office, the victim's family, Collins calls for a five-year prison sentence for Collins which will begin when he is sentenced in June. In exchange for the five-year recommended sentence, Collins has pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident with a fatality. This is the maximum sentence available on that charge.

According Floyd County Commonwealths Attorney Brent Turner, the ordeal has been tough for Hinkles family.

The victim's family has suffered a terrible loss and no amount of prison time can change that. But they were satisfied with this resolution and felt the defendant had to be punished for leaving the victim at the scene and not telling what happened for so many months, Turner said. It was very difficult for the family to lose their loved one and then be forced to endure such a long period of time without knowing what happened and who did it. The trial was delayed multiple times due to the pandemic and the family was very patient in seeing this case through to a conviction. They are a very strong family and I'm thankful for their patience and perseverance. I am pleased that we could get a good result for them and reward their trust in our office.

Turner also praised the officers who worked diligently on the case.

We are also very grateful for the hard work of Kentucky state police detectives Chris Phillips and Michael Coleman. They did a great job with the investigation. Without them, the case would never have been solved and no one would have been charged, said Turner.
A Knott County man was arrested on a murder charge recently, after police reported finding the body of a missing man in Johnson County.

According to a statement from the office of Floyd County Sheriff John Hunt, on March 20, the department served an arrest warrant charging James Pratt, 51, of Mallet Fork Road, Pine Top, with murder and abuse of a corpse, linked to the death of Paul Sester, 46, of Auxier.

According to the statement, Sester was reported missing to the department on Jan. 1 by family members and began an investigation.

That investigation, the statement said, included interviewing individuals who were last seen with Sester or who were associated with him in some way, as well as neighborhood canvasses, surveillance cameras, K9 tracking and cadaver dogs, drones and more.

The statement said deputies were assisted by Kentucky State Police and the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in the investigation.

On March 16, Hunt was notified by Johnson County Sheriff Doug Saylor that a body had been discovered in the Denver community of Johnson County. On March 17, the statement said, deputies, along with the State Medical Examiners Office, confirmed that the body was that of Sester.

The statement said that Hunt and deputies, along with ATF agents, continued to interview witnesses and collect evidence to identify the person responsible for Sesters death, leading to Pratts arrest.

Court documents show Pratt has a criminal history, including a November 2020 arrest in Floyd County on charges including first-degree trafficking in a controlled substance for which he was indicted by a Floyd County grand jury in February.

In addition, court documents said, Pratt was arrested on Jan. 10, after officers stopped his vehicle in Mousie for traffic violations. A search of the vehicle, according to an arrest citation, revealed two 9 mm pistols which Pratt, a convicted felon, was prohibited from possessing.

That case, court documents show, was bound over to be heard by a Knott County grand jury.

The investigation is ongoing, the statement said, and deputies are still seeking information as to any individuals who may have assisted or accompanied Pratt prior to or at the time of Sesters murder or with any events following Sesters death until the finding of his body.

Anyone with information is asked to call the Floyd Sheriffs Office at, (606) 886-6711, the anonymous tip line at, (606) 949-2020, or by texting a tip to, (606) 477-8477 or TIPS (8477) from any Appalachian Wireless phone.
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
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.
People rest at a temporary settlement site near Mariupol, Ukraine, March 17, 2022. (Photo by Victor/Xinhua)

"As Mr. Lavrov noted in January, 'the key to everything is the guarantee that NATO will not expand eastward,'" wrote U.S. political scientist John J. Mearsheimer.



LONDON, March 23 (Xinhua) -- "The West, and especially America, is principally responsible" for the Ukraine crisis, John J. Mearsheimer, a U.S. political scientist, wrote in a recent opinion piece published in The Economist.

American and European policymakers provoked the Ukraine crisis by trying to integrate Ukraine into the West and asserting that Russian President Vladimir Putin bears full responsibility for the crisis, said Mearsheimer, a political science professor at the University of Chicago, "But that story is wrong."

In his view, the Ukraine crisis "is the most dangerous international conflict since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis." The West is now increasing aid to Ukraine while imposing economic sanctions on Russia, a step that Putin sees as "akin to a declaration of war."

Ukrainian people move towards a border crossing at the border area between Ukraine and Poland. (Xinhua/Ren Ke)

Understanding the root causes is essential to finding a way to bring the crisis to an end. The trouble over Ukraine started at NATO's Bucharest summit in 2008 when George W. Bush's administration pushed the alliance to announce that Ukraine and Georgia "will become members," said the article.

In late 2021, the West ignored Russia's security concerns, with intentions of including Ukraine into NATO, which led directly to the current war, Mearsheimer wrote.

Furthermore, Russian policymakers have said "hardly anything about conquering new territory to recreate the Soviet Union or build a greater Russia," said the expert, adding that Russian leaders have repeatedly said that they view Ukraine joining NATO as "an existential threat that must be prevented."

"As Mr. Lavrov noted in January, 'the key to everything is the guarantee that NATO will not expand eastward,'" Mearsheimer said. 
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.
Fort Wayne, IN (46808)

Today

A few showers early becoming a steady rain for the afternoon. High 58F. Winds E at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90%..

Tonight

Periods of rain. Low around 50F. Winds ENE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall near a half an inch.
Galveston, TX (77553)

Today

Windy...variable clouds with thunderstorms, especially this morning. High 83F. Winds S at 20 to 30 mph. Chance of rain 40%. Higher wind gusts possible..

Tonight

Variably cloudy with scattered thunderstorms. A few storms may be severe. Low 76F. Winds SW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 60%.
Li Zhanshu, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, presides over a meeting of lawmakers from an inspection team under the NPC Standing Committee to hear a report on the enforcement of the environmental protection law, in Beijing, capital of China, March 23, 2022. (Xinhua/Wang Ye)

BEIJING, March 23 (Xinhua) -- A meeting of lawmakers from an inspection team under the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee was held Wednesday to hear a report on the enforcement of the environmental protection law.

Li Zhanshu, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the NPC Standing Committee, presided over the meeting.

China's legislation on ecological and environmental protection has made progress in terms of quantity and quality, contributing to the fight against pollution, Li said.

Underlining the environmental protection law as a fundamental and comprehensive legislation that plays a leading role in the field of ecological and environmental protection, Li said that problems discovered during the inspection should be solved under supervision.

The inspection was led by Li and has seen four teams sent to eight provincial-level regions, and other regions were inspected by standing committees of people's congresses at the provincial level. 
A Linn County man was sentenced to more than seven years in prison for assaulting a 2-year-old child in his care.

Linn County Circuit Court Judge Thomas McHill sentenced Patrick Decker, 26, to 7 years in prison on Wednesday morning, March 23. The conviction came after Decker pleaded no contest to a charge of first-degree assault.

In exchange for pleading no contest to the assault charge, the prosecution did not seek an enhanced sentence and also asked the court to dismiss a first-degree criminal mistreatment charge. McHill followed the recommendation.

Prosecutor Lindy Brownback and defense attorney Edward Talmadge both declined to comment.

According to court documents, the assault occurred on or around Nov. 14, 2021 and involved a child under the age of 6. A Lebanon Police Department news release issued in November said the agency received information Nov. 15 about a 2-year-old boy who was at Doernbecher Childrens Hospital with serious physical injury.

The boy was initially transported to Lebanon Community Hospital by Decker, the boyfriend of the victims mother, on Nov. 14. The child was later taken by air ambulance to Doernbecher.

According to Lebanon police, detectives interviewed Decker at Doernbecher and he admitted to causing the serious injury.

During Wednesdays sentencing, Brownback told the court the victim sustained a fractured femur as a result of the incident. Brownback also provided the court with a letter reportedly written by someone who shared a wall with Decker at the jail. In the letter, the man allegedly said Decker confessed to him about the assault.

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 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.
A majority of Oregonians polled say they support the Black Lives Matter movement, but residents are split on whether society is in a better place because of it.

Results of an Oregon Values & Beliefs Center survey conducted in February show about six in 10 Oregon residents polled (59%) support the Black Lives Matter movement. Among them, 36% showed strong support. Three in 10 said they oppose the movement and about one in 10, or 9%, were unsure.

According to the Oregon Values & Beliefs Center, support for the movement is higher among those with more education and income, with support being highest among Multnomah County residents.

Still, surveyors noted a lingering political divide among Oregonians on the perceptions of the social justice movement, with 87% of Democrats in support and 69% of Republicans opposed.

In 2020, the deaths of three Black individuals  two at the hands of police  catapulted the social justice movement into prominence. In February 2020, Ahmaud Arbery was murdered by three white men in Georgia who mistook him for a burglar while he jogged.

The following month, Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old EMT, was shot and killed by police in Kentucky while sleeping in her home.

In May 2020, the murder of George Floyd by Derek Chauvin, a former Minneapolis police officer who knelt on Floyd's neck until he died, catalyzed the public into action. The high-profile cases forced a spotlight on policing, racism and implicit bias in America, sparking nationwide protests and marches.

While Black Lives Matter marches and demonstrations took place in major cities, the mid-valley had several rallies. One Albany rally against racial injustice drew 1,000 people and Corvallis had multiple demonstrations that resulted in a few thousand people demonstration. Other mid-valley cities such as Lebanon and Sweet Home also had smaller rallies.

These events in Linn and Benton counties were peaceful with a wide array of residents making their voices heard  including officials such as then-Albany City Council member Alex Johnson II, now the mayor of Hub City. Organizers sometimes coordinated with authorities to ensure the public's safety.

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.

Meanwhile, Portland saw sustained protests in 2020 that garnered international media attention and defined the city for much of that time. Downtown Portland saw sometimes violent clashes between protesters and local and federal police. Police drew scrutiny from the public and lawmakers for their repeated use of tear gas, pepper spray and munitions that left one man with a fractured skull.

Antifascist protesters drew strong criticism for demonstrations that ended in repeated damage to downtown businesses. Some Oregonians say that drowned out the overall message and overshadowed the need for police reform.

Robert Williams, who lives in Multnomah County, told the Oregon Values and Beliefs Center that the ongoing protests may have hurt the message.

"Getting awareness of the issue is necessary. I believe the extended violence that accompanied actions was instigated by non-BLM agency," Williams said.

While a majority of those polled support Black Lives Matter, Oregonians are torn on the social impact of the justice movement.

OVBC polling shows 36% of Oregon residents think society is in a better place as a result of the social justice movement that followed Floyd's death. Survey results show 38% think the country is worse off and 19% of those polled said we're in the same place as before Floyd's death and the ensuing calls for reform.

"I think that BLM educated so many white Americans, resulting in (two) major impacts," Susan Heath of the Willamette Valley said. "Some whites responded with compassion and concern (and may or may not still be involved in the movement), while others responded with fear and bigotry and joined the white nationalist backlash."

Marla Cox, of Marion County, said the uprising and protests in the name of the Black Lives Matter movement were harmful, leaving society more divided.

"Black Lives Matters burned cities, rioted, looted and no one did anything about it," Cox wrote in a survey response, saying the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol in 2021 "was nothing" compared to damage done in many American cities.

Cox later said by phone that the movement has sown racial division.

"It caused me to be aware of race all at once," Cox said. "It's damaged me. I don't like seeing color. I just want to see the person as the person. I want to go back to the way it was before. I'm Lakota and my uncle was Chickasaw. My mother was born on the reservation. My grandparents were born on the reservation. You look at what's inside people, that's what we should be looking at. Not the color of their skin."

Pollsters note a significant age gap in response to the question of societal impacts. Oregonians ages 75 and older are much more likely (48% versus 28%) than those ages 18 to 29 to think our culture is in a better place.

"Overall, Republicans tend to be more pessimistic on the issue, with 69% saying our culture is in a worse place, whereas 58% of Democrats think we're better off," OVBC noted in a summary of results, saying optimism on the issue tends to increase with higher income and education levels.

Split on solutions

Mixed opinions in the latest study are consistent with a June 2021 survey of Oregonians, which found 19% felt the Black Lives Matter movement had a positive impact on their community, compared with 22% who said it was negative.

The OVBC surveys, which report a 2% margin of error and strives for representative sample size and accuracy, shows a lingering divide in the state regarding social justice and the Black Lives Matter movement in particular.

That divide has proven deadly.

On Feb. 19, five people were shot and one woman was killed just before a social justice march kicked off in Northeast Portland's Normandale Park. Brandy "June" Knightly, 60 was shot and killed by a man who lived nearby and emerged with a gun, yelling at demonstrators in the park before shooting Knightly in the head and seriously wounding at least four others.

The Normandale Park confrontation isn't the first time a demonstration in Portland has turned deadly.

Aaron "Jay" Danielson, 39, was shot and killed in August 2020, while part of a large caravan of vehicles and members of far-right group Patriot Prayer drove through the city rallying for then-President Donald Trump. The group was met with resistance from counter-protesters. The man suspected of shooting Danielson that night, Michael Forest Reinoehl, later told a freelance journalist that he shot Danielson in what he called "self defense," believing he was about to be stabbed. Reinoehl was later shot and killed by federal police in Washington who had a warrant for Reinoehl's arrest.

Oregonians are also split on solutions to reducing implicit bias and racism. When asked about potential strategies to reduce inequality between Black and white people in Oregon, a slim margin felt just two of the strategies: limiting the scope of policing and redrawing school boundaries, were effective.

Of those surveyed, 54% said limiting the scope of policing to focus on serious and violent crimes would have either a lot or some impact on reducing inequality. Similarly, 52% said redrawing school boundaries to create more racially and ethnically diverse schools would help.

Among the respondents, Democrats were twice as likely as Republicans (70% versus 35%) to think limiting the scope of policing would help. Democrats are also significantly more likely than Republicans (68% versus 35%) to think redrawing school boundaries to diversify campuses would help. College graduates are more likely to favor redrawing school boundaries than those with less formal education.

The Oregon Values and Beliefs Center is committed to the highest level of public opinion research. To help obtain that, the nonprofit is building a large research panel of Oregonians to ensure that all voices are represented in discussions of public policy in a valid and statistically reliable way.

Selected panelists earn points for their participation, which can be redeemed for cash or donated to a charity. To learn more visit oregonvbc.org/about-the-panel.

Mid-Valley Media contributed to this article.

Love 0 Funny 2 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
People with disabilities say court rulings make it harder for them to vote

MADISON

Wisconsinites with disabilities will have a tougher time voting in April because of a recent state Supreme Court decision, and some say they wont be able to vote at all.

In a 4-3 ruling in February, the justices let a Waukesha County judges decision go into effect that says voters cannot give their absentee ballots to someone else to mail or hand over to election clerks for them. That creates barrierslikely insurmountable ones in some casesfor voters who are paralyzed or have other disabilities.

It will basically make it impossible for me to vote, said Timothy Carey of Grand Chute.

Voting in person is extremely difficult for Carey because he has Duchenne muscular dystrophy. He would need to bring a portable ventilator and a boatload of gear with him to go to the polls, he said. Voting in person would increase the chances he would get COVID-19, which could easily kill him because of his disability, he said.

He has voted absentee for more than 30 years, but he doesnt see how he can do that in April because he doesnt have the ability to put a ballot in a mailbox himself.

They havent even considered us, he said of the justices. The Constitution says that you should not infringe upon anyones right to vote, and thats exactly what theyre doing. Theyre infringing on my right to vote. It doesnt say, unless youre disabled and you cant put it in the mailbox.

The state Supreme Courts ruling has mostly gotten attention for another provision that bans the use of ballot drop boxes for the April election. But disabled voters say the portion of the ruling about who can return ballots might prove to be more important.

Waukesha County Judge Michael Bohren in January ruled an elector must personally mail or deliver his or her own absentee ballot except in limited circumstances. An appeals court and the state Supreme Court blocked Bohrens order for the Feb. 15 primary, but the high court allowed it to go into effect for the April 5 election for local offices.

Supreme Court decision expected by summer

The state Supreme Court is expected to decide by this summer what the rules are for the Aug. 9 primary and Nov. 8 general election, when Wisconsinites will vote for governor, U.S. senator and other offices.

The state Supreme Courts recent ruling frustrated Stephanie Astrin because a similar policy might have kept her mother from voting in the 2020 presidential election.

Her mother, Inger Astrin, was diagnosed with lung cancer in September 2020. She was on oxygen and could not leave her Milwaukee home because of the risk of COVID-19. She filled out an absentee ballot and had her daughter place it in a ballot drop box for her.

Inger Astrin died at age 83 after the election. She had difficulty getting to her own mailbox because she had trouble navigating stairs, and her daughter said she did not know how she could have voted if the courts recent ruling had been in place in 2020.

She didnt want to leave anyways, and she couldnt stand in line, Stephanie Astrin said. She couldnt get down the stairs, but she still has the right to vote. Even if youre terminally ill, you have the right to vote. And she wanted to fulfill her civic duty because she cared deeply about the future of our country.

The lawsuit over returning ballots was brought last year by two suburban Milwaukee men represented by the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty.

The rule under state law says by the elector, so the elector has to be the one to mail their ballot or deliver it to the clerk, their attorney Luke Berg said. They cant hand it off to somebody else to do it for them.

Berg noted there are programs to help disabled and elderly people vote.

Poll workers typically visit nursing homes to assist residents. Clerks allow curbside voting for people who cant get out of their cars. In some cases, postal workers will pick up and deliver mail to someones door instead of a mailbox at the end of a driveway if the recipient has a medical condition.

Those policies will help some voters but not everyone.

Thats something that needs to be resolved either by the Legislature or by a separate case, Berg said.

You hear about Wisconsin nice. ... Now thats being criminalized

Barbara Beckert, the director of the Milwaukee office of Disability Rights Wisconsin, said she is puzzled by the court decision because provisions of the federal Voting Rights Act and Americans with Disabilities Act are meant to ensure people with disabilities can get the help they need to cast ballots.

You hear about Wisconsin nice. People want to help their neighbors and help their friends. Now thats being criminalized, Beckert said.

The court is considering the case as Republicans call for tightening voting rules. Democrats contend the Republican efforts will leave some people on democracys wayside.

The three Republicans running for governorformer Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, management consultant Kevin Nicholson and state Rep. Timothy Ramthun of Campbellsporthave hailed the courts decision, backed legislation to disband the Wisconsin Elections Commission and supported efforts to overhaul voting practices for people who are confined to their homes because of age or disability.

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has fought off such ideas.

Assembly Republicans are spending $676,000 in taxpayer funds on a review of the 2020 election by former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman. Gableman has called for restricting or eliminating mail voting and said the Legislature should consider trying to revoke the states 10 electoral votes for President Joe Biden even though legal scholars say that is impossible.

Bill Crowley of Milwaukee said he will try to vote in person in April because of the courts ruling. Crowley, who is quadriplegic and uses a wheelchair, said voting at the polls isnt feasible for him if the lines are long or the handicap-accessible voting machines are down.

Hopefully it works out that day, Crowley said. Otherwise, yeah, I might not be able to (vote).

In the past, he has voted absentee and had others put his ballot in a mailbox or drop box for him.

Im not really able to physically put a ballot in the mail on my own, he said. So essentially if the ruling prohibits somebody else from returning it for me or putting it in the mail for me, that kind of eliminates just absentee voting for me.

Don Natzke of Shorewood plans to vote in person in April. Natzke, who is blind, said he doesnt want to vote by mail this time because he needs assistance to put his absentee ballot into a mailbox and he doesnt want anyone questioning the legitimacy of his vote.

If the weather is bad, he might not be able to get to his polling place, he said. High winds can mask the sound of traffic, making it dangerous for him to cross the street, he said.

I think the cure thats being proposed is far worse than the illness, he said of the courts ruling.

As is often the case, the most closely watched justice is Brian Hagedorn, who was elected in 2019 with the backing of Republicans but sometimes sides with the courts liberals. In January, he joined the liberal justices in a 4-3 decision that allowed voters to have others return their ballots for them for the February primary. Soon after, he broke with the liberals to join a decision by the conservatives that barred that practice for the April election.

He could again prove to be the swing vote when the justices decide what the rules are for the fall election.

Stephanie Birmingham of Sturgeon Bay said she is worried the shifting court orders will create voter confusion.

Birmingham, who uses a wheelchair because of a bone condition, said in past elections she has given her absentee ballot to her father so he could put it in the mail or deliver it to the municipal clerk.

She expressed frustration with critics who use the term ballot harvesting to describe having someone return an absentee ballot on behalf of someone else. People with disabilities typically give their ballots to someone they trust, she said.

Its not like people with disabilities are out just putting an ad out on Facebook Marketplace saying, Hey, I need you to bring my ballot back. Whos there? she said.

She said the courts ruling has broad effects on people with disabilities and shouldnt be viewed as one that helps one political party over the other.

Disability doesnt know political status or political party or affiliation, so I dont see this as a partisan issue in the way that I think its often framed, she said. I see this as a civil rights issue. And the issue about ensuring that people have the ability to engage in their civic duty.
Braden Manning, Gettysburg baseball: Braden went 9-for-13 with 2 doubles, 2 triples and 7 RBI over 4 games. He also struck out 11 batters in a win over South Western.

Amy Anderson, Delone Catholic softball: Amy went 5-for-12 with 6 RBI, 3 runs scored and a triple over 3 games. She also struck out 17 batters and went 2-1 in those games.

Parker Sanders, Bermudian Springs Tennis: Parker won 3 matches on his way to a fourth-place finish in the YAIAA Class 2A Singles Tournament.

Andrew Koons, Fairfield baseball: Andrew went 5-for-11 with 8 RBI, 4 runs scored and 2 home runs over 3 games, including a grand slam. He was also the winning pitcher against Biglerville.

Ben Angstadt, Biglerville baseball: Ben went 8-for-17 with 7 RBI, 4 runs scored, a double and a home run over 4 games for the Canners.

Vote

View Results
Randy Santucci, a lifelong resident of Pennsylvania, hunter and fisherman, is a self-employed business owner. He is past president of Unified Sportsman of Pennsylvania, and served on The Governors Advisory Council for Hunting, Fishing and Conservation under Gov. Tom Corbett. Dan Davila is lifetime commonwealth hunter and fisherman. Although he now resides in Boardman, Ohio, where he is self employed, he has a rich family history in the York area, and owns property and a camp in Pa.
Eric Barlow, R-Gillette, is the Speaker of the Wyoming House of Representatives. Dan Dockstader, R-Afton, is the President of the Wyoming Senate.
Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi (2nd R) meets with Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud in Pakistani capital Islamabad, where Wang is attending the 48th session of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, on March 22, 2022. (Xinhua/Ahmad Kamal)

ISLAMABAD, March 23 (Xinhua) -- China and Saudi Arabia are good friends and brothers who trust each other and seek common development, and both have always supported each other on issues concerning their core interests, visiting Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said here Tuesday.

China is willing to forge all-round, high level cooperation with Saudi Arabia, Wang said during a meeting with Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud in the Pakistani capital, where Wang is attending the 48th session of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).

Wang said China appreciates Saudi Arabia for taking an objective, fair position on issues related to China and for its support for China's legitimate propositions.

China supports Saudi Arabia in safeguarding its sovereignty, security and national dignity, as well as its major development strategies, such as the Green Middle East initiative and the Vision 2030, Wang said.

He added that he would like to seize the opportunity of his participation in the OIC foreign ministers' meeting to elevate the ties between China and the Islamic countries to a new level.

For his part, Faisal said he is proud of the ties between the two countries and their high-level strategic cooperation, and agreed to work with China to implement the important consensus reached by the leaders of the two countries.

He said his country is willing to deepen the integration with China's Belt and Road Initiative and expand its pragmatic cooperation with China in various fields, so as to achieve the complementarity of their respective advantages.

Both Saudi Arabia and China adhere to the principle of non-interference in each other's internal affairs, uphold multilateralism and advocate that international agenda should serve the interests of the majority of countries instead of those of individual states, Faisal added.

Wang and Faisal exchanged views on the cooperation between China and Arab states, and agreed to enhance communication and coordination on the preparation work for the upcoming China-Arab summit, and to join hands to build the China-Arab states community with a shared future in the new era.

They also agreed to step up communication on upgrading the relations between China and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), accelerate the process of establishing the China-GCC strategic partnership, and work for the achievement of a free trade agreement, so as to provide a strong impetus for their development and the world economic recovery.

Both sides discussed the Yemen issue, with Wang saying that China understands the reasonable concerns of Saudi Arabia and would like to play a constructive role in pushing for a political settlement of the Yemen issue.

Wang and Faisal also held talks on matters related to Ukraine, Afghanistan and the Iran nuclear issue. 
You must be logged in to react.

Click any reaction to login.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
New York City, NY, March 02, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via NewMediaWire -- Today, Arcanum Capital LLC (the Investment Manager) of Arcanum Emerging Technologies Fund I ISA (the Fund) is pleased to announce the final close of its first fund. The Fund had an original target raise of $10 million; however, due to high demand from strategic partners who offer high-caliber deal flow and additional value-add to the portfolio through robust networks, the Arcanum team decided to extend subscriptions and close the Fund at approximately $12 million.



Arcanum Emerging Technologies Fund I ISA is an early-stage venture capital fund that provides Seed and Series A financing to blockchain technology companies in emerging markets, with a primary focus on India. As the Arcanum team members have all been investors and operators in the sector and have particularly strong networks in India, they have a proven ability to source promising opportunities at the earliest stages of product ideation. With the abundance of exciting projects emerging from the region, the Arcanum portfolio managers are confident they will deploy the Funds capital quickly and effectively.

James McDowall, Founding Partner of Arcanum Capital, explained: We work closely with experienced founders, developers, hackathons, incubators, and other investors to ensure that we discover talent at very early stages. We then help set teams up for success as they iterate and go to market. This comes naturally to us as we have all helped incubate and scale multiple projects and companies over the past several years that have gone on to reach nine and even ten-figure valuations.

One of the Funds strategic investors is Polygon Co-Founder Sandeep Nailwal. Polygon, formerly known as Matic, is the leading Layer 2 scaling solution for Ethereum and has quickly grown into a multi-billion dollar network that hosts some of the most popular DeFi, NFT and gaming protocols. This investment is a perfect fit for Sandeep, who is actively helping grow the Indian blockchain ecosystem. I believe the Fund will bolster the Polygon ecosystem by helping incubate projects building on Polygon in the gaming, NFT, metaverse, and other Web 3.0 sectors, says Sandeep.

Draper University Ventures, the investment arm of Draper University, is also a cornerstone investor in the Fund. Ive been investing in Indian tech companies for decades now and definitely see India emerging as a leading player in the blockchain industry. I have confidence the Arcanum team will continue to bring Indian projects to the global stage, commented Tim Draper, Chairman of Draper University and Draper Associates.

Tavis Digitals Fund of Blockchain Venture Capital Funds is also proud to announce its latest investment in Arcanum Emerging Technologies Fund I ISA. Tavis Digitals flagship product invests in established venture capital funds and selectively in highly promising emerging VC funds like Arcanums. Both the teams institutional quality and a highly attractive deal flow were among the main reasons to commit to the Fund upon completing an extensive due diligence process, says Bernhard Vogeli, Managing Partner at Tavis Digital. Tavis Digital is an independent, regulated Swiss asset management company focused on digital assets. Established in 2019, the company operates several blockchain validator nodes and offers investors access to digital assets through bankable securities.

The backer of Airdrop.com has also made a strategic investment into the Fund that both parties expect to benefit the portfolio. This relationship creates opportunities for companies supported by the Fund to raise awareness and increase distribution by launching on the airdrop.com platform.

Other investors in the Fund include Bybits venture capital arm, Mirana Ventures; the Founder and CEO of Ragnar Digital Investments; SevenX Ventures; Quarkchain Foundation; Foresight Ventures; and Polygon Studios.

Luchang Zheng of Arcanum Capital added: The Fund has shown tremendous growth since its first close in mid-2021. We have successfully raised capital from strong partners while simultaneously deploying funds and have already invested over $4 million into more than 20 startups, some of which we will be supporting with follow-on investments in subsequent rounds of financing.

We selected Arcanums fund to launch on our Bermuda fund platform because we were impressed with the knowledgeability of the team and their deep networks, said Lawrence Newhook, President of The Laureates ISAC Ltd. fund platform and Director of the Fund. We were delighted to provide our asset management infrastructure and support to get the Fund launched expeditiously and on solid footing, and are thrilled with its initial success.

About Arcanum Emerging Technologies Fund I ISA and Arcanum Capital LLC

Arcanum Emerging Technologies Fund I ISA is a Bermuda incorporated segregated account of the Laureates ISAC Ltd. (the Fund Platform) registered under the Incorporated Segregated Accounts Companies Act 2019 and is regulated by the Bermuda Monetary Authority as a Professional Closed Fund.

Arcanum Capital LLC is a U.S.-domiciled venture capital asset manager and serves as the Funds Investment Manager. Arcanum Capital is positioned at the forefront of a renaissance of startup activity in India, driven by the emergence of blockchain technology. The Investment Manager will take full advantage of its unique position as a leading player in the ecosystem to help propel India to the top of the global blockchain industry. Further information can be found at: https://arcanum.capital



About The Laureates ISAC Ltd



The Laureates ISAC Ltd. is a Bermuda incorporated segregated accounts company. Registered under the Incorporated Segregated Accounts Companies Act 2019, it serves as an umbrella fund platform that enables talented investment teams to launch regulated, institutional-quality master and feeder funds efficiently, with best-in-class service providers and ongoing governance support. Further information can be found at: https://aigi.io/ai-fund-platforms.

Media Contact:

Jon@PhillComm.Global

+1 (646) 854-5900 x 802

Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.
SAN FRANCISCO and TOKYO, March 22, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Swift Navigation , a San Francisco-based tech firm redefining GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) and precise positioning technology for autonomous vehicles, automotive, mobile and mass-market applications, today announced it has opened an office in the Minato ward of Tokyo, Japan. This new location is in a thriving business district, close to Shinagawa Station and within walking distance to Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology.



This new office extends Swifts international expansionhaving opened its Australia office in 2019and will support Swifts growing team in the Japanese market as they work to provide partner and customer support in the region by Swifts Managing Director of Japan and engineering staff. This office builds on supporting Swift's business commitment in the region.

We are excited to continue to expand Swifts presence in the Asia-Pacific region and this new office is indicative of the amazing growth of our team across the globe, said Timothy Harris, CEO of Swift Navigation. We look forward to supporting customers in the region who can benefit from Swifts precise positioning solutions.

We look forward to continuing to build our local team in Tokyo to support Swifts operations and bring the benefits of precise positioning to Japanese customers, said Yoshitaka Asanuma, Managing Director, Japan for Swift Navigation. Japanese companies are on the forefront of innovation and bringing the high accuracy of Swifts solutions to their applications will build on that innovation.

The new office is located at Shinagawa East One Tower 7F 2-16-1 Kounan, Minatoku, Tokyo, Japan. Learn more about Swift by visiting swiftnav.com or our Japanese website at swiftnav.com/jp .

ABOUT SWIFT NAVIGATION

Swift Navigation is changing the way we navigate and understand our planet. Swifts precise positioning technology platform improves location accuracy from several meters to centimeter-level and is used by millions of devices across the globe. Swifts technology is trusted by users across industries, enabling safer driving, improving efficiency for last-mile delivery and commercial transport operations, increasing accuracy for mobile devices and creating new possibilities for rail, robotics and machine control. Learn more about how Swift is building a safer and more connected future at swiftnav.com. Follow Swift on Twitter @Swiftnav.

Press Contact:

Swift Navigation

press@swiftnav.com
Pune, India, March 23, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The global air filters market size is anticipated to hit USD 23.83 billion by 2029 and exhibit a CAGR of 7.2% during the forecast period. The increasing demand from the automotive industry is expected to be a key growth driver for the market. Fortune Business InsightsTM has presented this information in its report titled,  Air Filters Market , 2022-2029. The market size stood at USD 13.75 billion in 2021 and USD 14.68 billion in 2022. Additionally, the rising demand for reusable air filters is anticipated to offer lucrative growth opportunities for the market in the forthcoming years.

Request to Sample PDF Brochure: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/enquiry/request-sample-pdf/air-filters-market-101676

Companies Profiled in the Market-

DAIKIN INDUSTRIES. Ltd. (Osaka, Japan)

Camfil (Stockholm, Sweden)

MANN+HUMMEL (Ludwigsburg, Germany)

PARKER HANNIFIN CORP (CLEVELAND, U.S.)

Cummins Inc. (Columbus, U.S.)

Donaldson Company, Inc. (Bloomington, U.S.)

SPX Flow, Inc. (Charlotte, U.S.)

Absolent Group AB (publ) (Lidkoping, Sweden)

Lydall Gutsche GmbH & Co. Kg (Fulda, Germany)

Purafil, Inc. (Doraville, U.S.)

Freudenberg Filtration Technologies SE & Co. KG (Weinheim, Germany)

COVID-19 Impact-

Air Filter Demand Soared due to Increasing Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) Concerns

The coronavirus pandemic has substantially fueled the market growth. The coronavirus is highly transmissible through the air. This created a high need for advanced air filters to eliminate the minute virus. The demand for air filters significantly rose during the pandemic, which bolstered the air filters market growth. Despite the supply chain disruptions and logistical hindrances, the market has expanded and will continue expanding in the forthcoming years.

To get more information on the COVID-19 Impact on this market,

Please Visit: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/industry-reports/air-filters-market-101676

Report Scope and Segmentation:

Report Coverage Details Forecast Period 2022 to 2029 Forecast Period 2022 to 2029 CAGR 7.2 % 2029 Value Projection USD 23.83 Billion Base Year 2021 Market Size in 2021 USD 14.68 Billion Historical Data for 2018 to 2020 No. of Pages 120 Segments covered By Type, End-User, Region Growth Drivers Increase in Demand across Automotive Industry to Brighten the Market Prospects Growing Demand for Reusable Air Filters is Laying Foundation for Future Market Growth COVID-19 Pandemic to Boost Market Growth Pitfalls & Challenges High Initial Installation and Maintenance Cost is Causing Hindrance to Market





Segmentation-

On the basis of type, the market is segmented into baghouse filters, HEPA filters, dust collectors, cartridge filters, and others. On the basis of end-user, the market is trifurcated into industrial, commercial, and residential. Geographically, the market is classified into the Middle East & Africa, Latin America, North America, Europe, and the Asia Pacific.

Report Coverage-

It assesses the various restraints and drivers of markets growth.

It provides a detailed analysis of critical market segments: type, application, and region.

It features an analysis of the COVID-19 pandemics effect on the market.

It incorporates SWOT Analysis and Porters' Five Forces Analysis for accurate prediction.

It includes the latest industry developments.

Drivers & Restraints-

Expanding Automotive Industry to Promote Market Growth

The automotive industry is rapidly expanding, especially in countries such as India, China, and others. The rising demand for passenger and commercial vehicles due to improving income levels, increasing urbanization, and industrialization is likely to boost the demand for air filters and fuel the global air filters market growth. Moreover, the use of these air filters in aftermarket services is likely to complement the market growth.

Additionally, the rising demand for reusable air filters is anticipated to be a key trend stimulating market growth. The growing adoption of sustainable alternatives to reduce harmful emissions and improve indoor air quality are likely to favor market growth.

However, the high maintenance and initial costs of installing air filters may hinder the market growth.

Ask for Customization: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/enquiry/customization/air-filters-market-101676

Regional Insights-

North America to Hold the Lions Share

North America is anticipated to attain the largest air filters market share during the forecast period. The expanding automotive industry and the growing adoption of preventive measures by the government in the region are likely to fuel the regions market growth.

Asia Pacific is likely to exhibit the highest CAGR. The swift industrialization and urbanization across countries such as India and China are expected to boost the regions market growth. China introduced its largest air purifier in January 2018.

Europe is predicted to witness substantial growth. The adoption of strict government initiatives in countries such as Spain, Germany, and Italy to improve air quality is likely to aid the regions market growth.

Latin America and, the Middle East & Africa are expected to exhibit steady growth due to the demand for baghouse filters and dust collectors.

Competitive Landscape-

Key Players Emphasize Acquisitions to Amplify their Market Growth

The major market players emphasize acquisitions to amplify their global market presence. They adopt several ingenious strategies such as collaborations, mergers, new product launches, and others to magnify their growth. For instance, MANN+HUMMEL and Mercedes Benz collaborated in October 2021 to launch a frontend module solution and underbody solution.

Quick Buy - Air Filters Market: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/checkout-page/101676

Industry Developments-

December 2021: Camfil USA Inc. unveiled its plans to establish a new production facility filters of air filtration in Kilgore, Texas by investing USD 50 million.

Table of Content:

Introduction Definition, By Segment Research Methodology/Approach Data Sources

Executive Summary

Market Dynamics Macro and Micro Economic Indicators Drivers, Restraints, Opportunities and Trends Impact of COVID-19 Short-term Impact Long-term Impact

Competition Landscape Business Strategies Adopted by Key Players Consolidated SWOT Analysis of Key Players Global Air Filters Key Players Market Share Insights and Analysis, 2021

Global Air Filters Market Size Estimates and Forecasts (Quantitative Data), By Segments, 2018-2029 Key Findings By Type (USD Bn) Cartridge Filters Dust Collector HEPA Filters Baghouse Filters Others (Mist Filters, and others) By End-user (USD Bn) Residential Commercial Industrial Automotive Chemical Gas Turbines Semiconductors Pharmaceuticals Healthcare Others (Food & Beverage, and others) By Region (USD Bn) North America Latin America Europe Middle East & Africa Asia Pacific



TOC Continued.

Speak to Our Analyst- https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/enquiry/speak-to-analyst/air-filters-market-101676

Have a Look at Related Research Insights:

Hand Tools Market Size, Share & COVID-19 Impact Analysis, By Product Type (Spanners, Vices/Clamps, Pliers/Pincers, Household tools, Grease Guns, Wrenches, Screwdrivers, Hammers/Sledge Hammers, Chisel/Gauges, Metal Working Tools, and Others), By Application (Industrial, Professional, and Home Use (Do it Yourself)), By Sales Channel (Retail and Online), and Regional Forecast, 2021-2028

Packaging Testing Equipment Market Size, Share & COVID-19 Impact Analysis, By Type (Tensile Strength, Compression, and Drop Testing Equipment), By Material (Plastic, Paper, Metal, and Glass), By End-use (Food & Beverage, Pharmaceuticals, Consumer Electronics, Transports & Logistics, and Others (Personal Care Products and Others)), and Regional Forecast, 2021-2028

Outdoor Heating Market Size, Share & COVID-19 Impact Analysis, By Product Type (Freestanding, Tabletop, and Wall mounted and hanging), By Fuel Type (Electric, Gas / Propane, Others (Wood, etc.)), Application (Catering and hospitality, Commercial and industrial space heating, Residential outdoors, and Indoor agriculture/Livestock brooder) and Regional Forecast, 2021-2028

Automated Guided Vehicle Market Size, Share & COVID-19 Impact Analysis, By Type (Tow Vehicles, Automated Forklift Trucks, Underride/Tunnelling Vehicles, Assembly Line Vehicles, and Others), By Navigation Technology (Laser Guided, Magnetic Guided, Vision Guided, and Others), By Application (Transportation & Distribution, Storage & Assembly, and Packaging), By Industry (Automotive, Food & Beverage, E-Commerce, and Others), and Regional Forecast, 2022-2029

Lawn & Garden Equipment Market Size, Share & COVID-19 Impact Analysis, By Equipment Type (Lawn Mower, Chainsaws, Cutters and Shredders, Trimmers and Edgers, and Others), By Power (Gas, Electric, and Manual), By End-use (Residential, Playgrounds, and Golf Courses), and Regional Forecast, 2021-2028

About Us:

Fortune Business Insights delivers accurate data and innovative corporate analysis, helping organizations of all sizes make appropriate decisions. We tailor novel solutions for our clients, assisting them to address various challenges distinct to their businesses. Our aim is to empower them with holistic market intelligence, providing a granular overview of the market they are operating in.

Contact Us:

Fortune Business Insights Pvt. Ltd.

9th Floor, Icon Tower,

Baner - Mahalunge Road, Baner,

Pune-411045, Maharashtra, India.

Phone:

US: +1 424 253 0390

UK: +44 2071 939123

APAC: +91 744 740 1245

Email: sales@fortunebusinessinsights.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fortune-business-insights

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FortuneBusinessInsightsPvtLtd

Twitter: https://twitter.com/FBInsightPvtLtd
Security personnel wearing face masks walk past a hospital in Quito, Ecuador, March 17, 2020. (Photo by Santiago Armas/Xinhua)

In an effort to stimulate the economy, Ecuador has eliminated capacity restrictions in open and closed spaces for public events, businesses and leisure activities.

QUITO, March 22 (Xinhua) -- President Guillermo Lasso said Tuesday that as Ecuador is seeing a low level of new COVID-19 infections, people can return to normal life in May if the trend continues.

"Ecuador has reached a very low level of infections, no more than 5 percent, with one of the best indicators in the region," Lasso told media.

"We will probably wait to reconfirm all the positive trends until May, and then we will make a decision for absolute and complete normalcy," he added.

The decline in infections is attributed to the mass vaccination campaign against COVID-19, which has fully immunized 85 percent of the target population over five years old, or 16.1 million people.

In an effort to stimulate the economy, Ecuador has eliminated capacity restrictions in open and closed spaces for public events, businesses and leisure activities.

As of Monday, the South American country had reported 854,252 COVID-19 cases with 25,215 deaths, according to the Ministry of Public Health. 
Pune, March 23, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The global Surge Arrester Market size was USD 1.74 billion in 2020. The market is expected to grow from USD 1.81 billion in 2021 to USD 2.50 billion in 2028 at a CAGR of 4.7% in the 2021-2028 period.

This information is provided by Fortune Business Insights, in its report, titled, Surge Arrester Market, 2021-2028.

Get Sample PDF Brochure: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/enquiry/request-sample-pdf/surge-arrester-market-100933

According to our researchers, the growing demand for smart grids infrastructure substitutes the prevailing infrastructure and presents novel end-use industries, specifically in renewable energy projects, thus boosting the market growth.

Top Players Covered in the Surge arrester market Report are:

Hitachi ABB (Switzerland)

Siemens (Germany)

Schneider Electric (France)

General Electric (U.S.)

Eaton (Ireland)

Mitsubishi Electric (Japan)

Toshiba (Japan)

Hubbell (U.S.)

Legrand (France)

CG Power (India)

Meidensha (Japan)

Tripp Lite (U.S.)

COVID-19 Impact

COVID-19 Pandemic Adversely Influences the Surge Arrester Market

Industry pioneers have predicted slowdowns among delivery and construction, owing to factory shutdowns in order to diminish the coronavirus spread. Numerous components/parts are gained from China, the U.S., and Europe. Production hindrances in China and the U.S. owing to this pandemic could substantially decline the market growth in the near future.

Additionally, owing to the COVID-19 outbreak, the worth of various nations local currencies fell, leading to financial damages for metal manufacturers. The considerable components utilized in the manufacturing procedures are frequently procured in U.S. dollars in augmented component costs.

To get to know more about the short-term and long-term impact of COVID-19 on this market, please visit: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/industry-reports/surge-arrester-market-100933

Report Coverage

The report presents valuable visions gained by a meticulous review conducted by our researchers. Extensive research was conducted to offer the expected size of the market. The data utilized to project the shares for multiple segments at the country, regional, and global levels are gained from detailed interviews with numerous stakeholders. Additionally, we have extracted admittance to numerous global and regional paid databases to offer accurate information to make business investment choices easy for our clients.

Report Scope and Segmentation:

Report Coverage Details Forecast Period 2021 to 2028 Forecast Period 2021 to 2028 CAGR 4.7% 2028 Value Projection USD 2.50 billion Base Year 2020 Market Size in 2020 USD 1.74 billion Historical Data for 2017 to 2019 No. of Pages 180 Segments covered By Type, By Class, By Voltage Level, By Application, By Region Growth Drivers Increase in Deployment of Smart Grids Infrastructure Leading Market Growth Increasing Investment in Renewable Energy Projects to Boost Market Growth Pitfalls & Challenges Growing Competition From The Unorganized Players Hampering The Market Growth





Segmentation:

Utility Segment Dominated Backed by Demand for Electricity

On the basis of type, the market is segregated into porcelain and polymeric.

In terms of class, the market is classified into station class, intermediate class, and distribution class surge arrester.

By voltage level, the market is divided into high voltage, medium voltage, and low voltage levels.

In regards of the application, the market can be divided into utility and industrial. The utility segment held the largest share in 2020 and is projected to dominate the market during the projection period.

Geographically, the market is segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and the Middle East & Africa.

Speak to Analyst: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/enquiry/speak-to-analyst/surge-arrester-market-100933

Driving Factors

Upsurge in Deployment of Smart Grids Infrastructure to Lead Market Growth

The market is expected to grow on account of the extensive usage of the arrester in substations, transmission lines, and other electrical network components. Moreover, augmented investment in transmission and distribution (T&D) networks is among the prime causes fueling the market. T&D network extension and development directly affects the surge arrester market growth. The increasing number of electrification projects in China and India and network expansions to sustain renewable energy integration in the U.S., Europe, and other established nations are estimated to spur the market in the impending years.

Regional Insights

Asia Pacific Held Dominating Share Backed by Growing Investment in Transmission

Asia Pacific holds the largest surge arrester market share. Electricity demand is rising, and utilities in the nations in this region are spending on transmission and distribution amenities; an amplification in EHV and UHV transmission investments in China and India are projected to drive the regional market growth.

North America held the second-largest share in the global market. The region's substantial industrial and electrical infrastructural development is expected to augment demand as replacements and novel installations take place.

Europe is anticipated to contribute remarkably during the forecast period. European utilities are re-evaluating their possessions and concentrating on long-term sustainable business.

Competitive Landscape

Key Players Gain Novel Contracts to Bolster Market Position

The important players embrace numerous tactics to bolster their position in the market as dominating companies. One such important tactic is procuring companies to boost the brand value among users. Another effective strategy is intermittently launching groundbreaking products with a detailed review of the market and its target audience.

Get your Customized Research Report: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/enquiry/customization/surge-arrester-market-100933

Industry Development

February 2021: TRE signed an agreement with Siemens Energy intended to install two wind farms based in Vietnam. Among other substation properties, the company will deliver digitally augmented transmission equipment with sophisticated intelligence from its Sensor based product portfolio, such as connective circuit-breakers, surge arresters, as well as power transformers.

Table of Content:

Introduction Research Scope Market Segmentation Research Methodology Definitions and Assumptions

Executive Summary

Market Dynamics Market Drivers Market Restraints Market Opportunities

Key Insights Key Emerging Trends  For Major Countries Latest Technological Advancement Regulatory Landscape Porters Five Forces Analysis

Qualitative Analysis  Impact of COVID-19 Impact of COVID-19 on the Surge Arrester Market Steps Taken by the Government to Overcome the Impact Key Developments in the Industry in Response to COVID-19 Potential Opportunities and Challenges due to COVID-19 Outbreak

Global Surge Arrester Market Analysis (USD Billion), Insights and Forecast, 2017-2028 Key Findings / Summary Market Analysis, Insights and Forecast  By Type Porcelain Polymeric Market Analysis, Insights and Forecast  By Class Station Class Intermediate Class Distribution Class Market Analysis, Insights and Forecast  By Voltage Level High Medium Low Market Analysis, Insights and Forecast  By Application Utility Industrial Market Analysis, Insights and Forecast  By Region North America Europe Asia Pacific Middle East & Africa Latin America

North America Surge Arrester Market Analysis (USD Billion), Insights and Forecast, 2017-2028 Key Findings / Summary Market Analysis, Insights and Forecast  By Type Porcelain Polymeric Market Analysis, Insights and Forecast  By Class Station Class Intermediate Class Distribution Class Market Analysis, Insights and Forecast  By Voltage Level High Medium Low Market Analysis, Insights and Forecast  By Application Utility Industrial Market Analysis, Insights and Forecast  By Country U.S. Market Analysis, Insights and Forecast  By Application Utility Industrial Canada Market Analysis, Insights and Forecast  By Application Utility Industrial

Europe Surge Arrester Market Analysis (USD Billion), Insights and Forecast, 2017-2028

Toc Continued .

Quick Buy  Research Report: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/checkout-page/100933

Have a Look at Related Research Insights:

Compressed Natural Gas Market Size, Share and Global Trend By Source (Associated Gas, Non-Associated Gas, Unconventional Sources), By Application (Light Duty Vehicles, Medium/Heavy Duty Buses, Medium/Heavy Duty Trucks, Others), and Geography Forecast Till 2022-2029

Control Valve Market Size, Share and Global Trend By Motion (Linear, Rotary), By Component (Actuator, Valve Body, Others), By Application (Flow Control, Pressure Control, Others), By End-Use Industry (Oil & Gas, Chemical, Pharmaceutical, Food and Beverage, Others) and Geography Forecast till 2022-2029

Bioethanol Market Size, Share and Global Trend By Feedstock (Starch-Based, Sugar-Based, Cellulose Based, Others), By Application (Transportation Fuel, Power Generation, Cosmetic, Pharmaceutical, Chemical, Others) and Geography Forecast till 2022-2029

Emission Monitoring System Market Size, Share and Global Trend By Type (Predictive Emission Monitoring System, Continuous Emission Monitoring System), By Component (Hardware, Software, Service), By End User (Oil and Gas, Chemicals & Fertilizers, Iron and Steel, Pharmaceuticals, Food & Beverages, Healthcare, Mining, Others), and Geography Forecast till 2022-2029

Battery Electrolyte Market Size, Share and Global Trend By Electrolyte Type (Liquid,Solid, Gel), By Battery Type (Lithium-ion, Lead Acid) and Geography Forecast till 2022-2029

About Us:

Fortune Business Insights delivers accurate data and innovative corporate analysis, helping organizations of all sizes make appropriate decisions. We tailor novel solutions for our clients, assisting them to address various challenges distinct to their businesses. Our aim is to empower them with holistic market intelligence, providing a granular overview of the market they are operating in.

Contact Us:

Fortune Business Insights Pvt. Ltd.

9th Floor, Icon Tower,

Baner - Mahalunge Road,

Baner, Pune-411045, Maharashtra, India.

Phone:

U.S.: +1 424 253 0390

UK :+44 2071 939123

APAC :+91 744 740 1245

Email: sales@fortunebusinessinsights.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fortune-business-insights

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FortuneBusinessInsightsPvtLtd
SYDNEY, Australia, March 23, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) --

Circles Life Australia recently introduced its 100GB sim only plan. According to the company, the plan comes with unlimited talk and text, voice mail, free 5 hours sim delivery, and 100GB of Data via the Optus 4G Plus network. The plan also includes VoLTE / VoWIFI, perfect for people who may find themselves in the basement or the subway where regular cell phone signals cant penetrate. If anything, that means they can continue to use their data plans, regardless of where they may be.

The 100GB sim card plans cost $35 and can be availed by existing Circles Life customers. Switching plans only require that customers fire up the Circles.Life app to upgrade their plan. However, downgrading the project will require that customers contact customer service or whats referred to as Customer Happiness Experts.

The best part is that any promotions available on the existing plan that customers want to change will also be applied once the project has changed. Plus, all customers get to enjoy features like VoLTE + VoWifi. However, the company cautions that any promotions offered by the new program will replace any waivers or bonuses associated with the existing one when upgraded.

Readers can learn more about the 100GB Circles Life Australia plan by visiting their official website https://www.circles.life/au/sim-only/100gb

At Circles Life, we are always trying to offer the best possible plans to our customers. All our customers, both new and existing, benefit from the fact that there are no hidden costs or charges associated with any of our plans. In fact, thats one of the reasons why so many Australians choose Circles Life over several competing companies, said a representative for Circles Life Australia.

She added, The 100GB of Data offers excellent value for anyone who needs to work and stay connected on the go. However, if they run out of data, it is possible to get an additional boost for $10 per 3GB. That said, this is more than enough data for most people.

About Circles Life Australia

Circles Life Australia was born with a vision to revolutionise the telco industry by putting customers in the drivers seat.

Powered by the Optus 4G Plus Network in Australia, the Circles.Life mobile app has the highest rated telco app in Australia. The digital telco offers no lock in contract with a 30 day satisfaction guarantee, BYO number options, price matching, and probably the best big data plan prices in Australia.

Circles.Lifes ambition is to offer a service that makes everyone feel special  by offering the latest plan discounts to every customer, not just the new ones. Each customer deserves the best value, freedom, and endless amounts of data that they need to live life on their terms. So thats what Circles.Life is doing. 100% satisfaction guaranteed.

Website: https://www.circles.life/au/sim-only/100gb
Dubai, United Arab Emirates, March 23, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Jetex, an award-winning global leader in executive aviation, is betting on the future of the global luxury market which increasingly is going experiential. Consumers perception of luxury is changing, especially among younger consumers, and the concept is luxury is no longer only about purchasing tangible objects  it is about opulent experiences, travel and instagrammable moments. As wealthy millennial customers shift their money from goods to experiences, Jetex presents the worlds most special Ramadan experience in partnership with Four Seasons.

Building upon the tremendous success of Iftar in the Sky last year, Jetex unveils the ultimate Ramadan experience, which features even more unique elements, blending time-honored traditions with modernity.

Suhoor in the Sky is offered onboard a larger 18-seat private jet that has more space in which to savor the spirit of the Holy Month as the aircraft soars in the moonlight above the United Arab Emirates and the shimmering Arabian Gulf.

The evening commences at the award-winning Jetex VIP Terminal with a trio of traditional musicians and light refreshments in the calm of the private lounges. The passengers are then invited to board the aircraft on one of the Jetex Rolls-Royces that whisk to the aircraft.

Onboard, passengers are warmly welcomed by the Jetex cabin crew as well as the Four Seasons culinary team. For the first time, live traditional music is performed onboard and throughout the flight to create a warm and relaxing ambiance of a private majlis in the sky. As soon as the aircraft reaches its cruising altitude, passengers can enjoy scenic views of the Dubai skyline as well as a delectable Suhoor menu, created especially for the occasion.

From traditional Ramadan starters, freshly baked artisan breads and a wide selection of mezze, to the exquisite Omani lobster, lamb shank in traditional spices and rich poultry  every gourmet taste is considered. Passengers of the 120-minute journey can enjoy Suhoor above the clouds at their own pace as the Jetex crew ensures the most comfortable private jet experience.

As soon as the aircraft arrives back at Dubai, passengers are invited to enjoy a wide range of desserts, teas and coffees at a dedicated lounge at Jetex VIP Terminal, as well as enjoy the leisure facilities of the terminal.

Jetex delivers unique experiences to discerning travelers and is known for blending the world of private aviation with exceptional hospitality. We are proud to deliver this new experience in partnership with Four Seasons, the brand synonymous with excellence in luxury hospitality. Every element of Suhoor in the Sky is designed to create timeless, one-of-a-kind lifelong memories for anyone who experiences it, said Adel Mardini, Founder & CEO of Jetex.

Dreaming up inspired experiences is a core passion for us at Four Seasons Dubai, said Leonardo Baiocchi, Regional Vice President and General Manager, Four Seasons. We are delighted to partner with Jetex throughout the Holy Month of Ramadan, to create a Suhoor experience that is nothing less than spectacular. With our trademark Four Seasons hospitality and the exceptional private aviation standards that Jetex is known for, we will be elevating luxury to a new cruising altitude.

To ensure utmost safety and comfort of travelers, aircraft cabin will be thoroughly sanitized using the signature Jetex bipolar ionization technology before and after each flight.

The unforgettable travel experience is priced from AED 140,000 for up to 14 travelers and will be available between 1 and 30 April 2022. All passengers are required to carry their passports to board the flight.

For reservations, please contact Jetex Premier Experience at experience@jetex.com.

- END -

About Jetex:

An award-winning global leader in executive aviation, Jetex is recognized for delivering flexible, best-in-class trip support solutions to customers worldwide. Jetex provides exceptional private terminals (FBOs), aircraft fueling, ground handling and global trip planning. The company caters to both owners and operators of business jets for corporate, commercial and personal air travel. To find out more about Jetex, visit www.jetex.com and follow us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

About Four Seasons:

As the worlds leading operator of luxury hotels, Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts currently manages 122 properties in 47 countries. Open since November 2014, Four Seasons Resort Dubai at Jumeirah Beach offers a vacation experience of unlimited variety, and the highly personalized, anticipatory service that Four Seasons guests expect and value around the world. Recent awards and honors include Conde Nast Traveler Gold List and Forbes Travel Guide Five-Star Awards. For more information on Four Seasons Resort Dubai at Jumeirah Beach, visit press.fourseasons.com/Dubai or check us out on www.instagram.com/fsdubai.

Attachments
MILWAUKEE, March 23, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Creative Solutions of Wisconsin, an organization dedicated to offering comprehensive support services to people with disabilities and their families, has undergone a major rebrand. "We've been focusing on our clients since we started in 2017," said founder and CEO Laura Martin, "and we looked around at this wonderful thing we've built together, and we're ready to share it even farther."

Martin, a passionate disability advocate, knows a thing or two about the pressures, stress, and anxiety that come with navigating the world of disability supports, services, and funding. As a mother of children with disabilities, Martin has made accessibility and inclusion her life's mission, starting with better support structure. "We're all about finding creative solutions to meet our client's unique needs," Martin explained. Martin fears that many people with disabilities and their families often go un- or under-served due to frustration with the system. "It can be incredibly difficult navigating everything from finding and funding support to sourcing reliable care services."

"We're dealing with truly systemic issues," said Jennifer Nicholson, Board Certified Behavior Analyst and COO of Creative Solutions. "The disability support profession is seeing unprecedented turnover and those with disabilities are feeling the strain now more than ever."

Enter Creative Solutions of Wisconsin. Focused on making life easier for their clients, the team of direct support professionals has set out to improve support structures for adults and children with disabilities from the ground up. The group takes a multi-faceted approach to support services, seeking to improve training, education, and compensation for direct support professionals while fighting for greater inclusion and accessibility in communities throughout Southeastern Wisconsin and beyond.

Rather than asking those with disabilities to adapt to flawed systems, the Creative Solutions team is working to create larger change. "We're focusing on 'bigger picture' issues like educating the community through future planning along with individualized assessments to maximize independence through daily living skills training and brokered supports," stated Nicholson.

The team balances meeting the short- and long-term needs of their clients through advocacy and daily support. "One day, it's about finding reliable in-home care or assisting our clients as they plan for future needs, and another day, it's connecting with lawmakers and business owners to push for better inclusion," explained Martin.

According to both Martin and Nicholson, there is no "one-size-fits-all" approach to support and that is exactly what they wanted to capture with their new branding. The new logo and color story made its debut with the launch of CreativeSolutionsWI.com, a new ADA-friendly website that illustrates the organization's offerings. "It's been an incredible journey so far, and we're just getting started," said Martin. "This has been an amazing step for Creative Solutions and now, more than ever, we're dedicated to removing barriers and empowering each and every person with disabilities to live the lives they choose and design for themselves."

Creative Solutions of Wisconsin works with the disability community and their families to effectively navigate disability services while encouraging growth across all aspects of life  social, emotional, financial, mental, and physical. Its team assists in securing affordable housing, finding meaningful job opportunities, and encouraging social and community engagement. Visit CreativeSolutionsWi.com to learn more.

Press Contact:

Jennifer Nicholson

Creative Solutions of Wisconsin

(262) 899-2069

jennifer@creativesolutionswi.com

Related Images











Image 1: Creative Solutions of Wisconsin





Creative Solutions of Wisconsin works with the disability community and their families to effectively navigate disability services while encouraging growth across all aspects of life.









This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com.

Attachment
English Lithuanian

MAXIMA GRUPE, UAB, a company controlling the largest food retail group in the Baltics, has successfully completed EUR 35 million Commercial Paper (Short-Term Notes) offering with 12 months tenor.

"We are well pleased to see such a strong interest in our region as well as in MAXIMA GRUPE. Having strong partners on board, including European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and Nordic Investment Bank, demonstrates that investments in our region remain attractive irrespective of such turbulent times we live in. We appreciate our partners for continuous cooperation  indeed we are truly successful only together, - says Mantas Kuncaitis, the CEO of MAXIMA GRUPE, UAB.

The notes were subscribed by institutional investors representing the Baltic states, Scandinavia, and United Kingdom. Despite volatile market conditions, investors demonstrated strong interest and support for the securities and notes were placed at 1,064% yield.

Luminor acted as the sole arranger and bookrunner of the offering and law firm TGS Baltic advised on transaction documentation.

Successful placement of MAXIMA GRUPE Commercial Papers is a reflection of strong metrics of the issuer and resilience of the capital markets in this unstable environment. We are happy to have assisted MAXIMA GRUPE in this project and, while the company remains the only issuer offering securities under such format in the Baltic region, we will work towards enabling more issuers to utilize the financing opportunities that Short-Term Notes provide, - says Paulius Zurauskas, the Head of Markets at Luminor group.

Additional information

MAXIMA GRUPE, UAB, owns the retail chains Maxima (in the Baltic countries), Stokrotka (in Poland), and T-Market (in Bulgaria), as well as e-grocer Barbora operating in the Baltics and Poland.

The company is part of the Vilniaus Prekyba group, which controls and manages the group of subsidiary companies operating chains of retail stores and pharmacies as well as real estate development and property management companies in the Baltic States, Sweden, Poland and Bulgaria.

In 2021 MAXIMA GRUPE, UAB, successfully placed EUR 40 million issue of Commercial Papers (Short-Term Notes) and redeemed notes on 17th of March this year.

Contact person :

Povilas Sulys

MAXIMA GRUPE, UAB, Chief Financial Officer

povilas.sulys@maximagrupe.eu

NOT FOR RELEASE, PUBLICATION OR DISTRIBUTION, IN WHOLE OR IN PART, DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY, IN OR INTO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, CANADA, AUSTRALIA, JAPAN OR IN ANY OTHER JURISDICTION IN WHICH SUCH RELEASE, PUBLICATION OR DISTRIBUTION WOULD BE UNLAWFUL. THIS ANNOUNCEMENT IS ALSO NOT ADDRESSED TO ANY PERSON WHO IS A RETAIL CLIENT (AS DEFINED IN DIRECTIVE 2014/65/EU OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL OF 15 MAY 2014 ON MARKETS IN FINANCIAL INSTRUMENTS AND AMENDING DIRECTIVE 2002/92/EC AND DIRECTIVE 2011/61/EC (RECAST)).
AB Ignitis grupe (hereinafter  the Group) informs that on 22 March 2022 the Management Board of the Group approved the intention of its subsidiary UAB Kauno kogeneracine jegaine (hereinafter  the Company) to conclude a long-term loan agreement of EUR 110 million (hereinafter  the Agreement) with AB Swedbank.

The loan funds will be used to refinance a long-term loan concluded with AB Swedbank with a maturity date of 31 May 2022.

The maturity term of the loan is 10 years with a possibility to extend the term of the Agreement for additional 5 years if both the Company and AB Swedbank agree. The Agreement includes additional measures ensuring the fulfilment of obligations that include all tangible fixed assets of the Company as collateral and the pledge of funds in the Company's bank accounts. Other loan terms and conditions are confidential.

The Agreement will be signed in the near future, the Group will not inform about its signing in a separate material event notice.

For more information please contact:

Arturas Ketlerius

Head of Public Relations at Ignitis Group

arturas.ketlerius@ignitis.lt

+370 620 76076
HOCHIMINH CITY, Vietnam, March 23, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- PEB Steel Buildings Co., Ltd. (Pebsteel), a leading company in the pre-engineering steel construction industry, launches its refreshed brand identity to the market. The rebrand supports Pebsteel's long-term vision of offering customers innovative, sustainable, and cost-effective solutions during a new development phase.



Construction and industrial sectors are expected to recover strongly after COVID, resulting in enormous demand for pre-engineered steel buildings, steel structures. According to Global Industry Analysts, the world market for pre-engineered steel construction is estimated to grow from $27.1 billion in 2020 to $49.1 billion in 2026 at a compound annual growth rate of 10.1%. Asia-Pacific is the fastest-growing market for pre-engineered buildings and steel structures due to rapid industrialization and urbanization in emerging economies.

Additionally, pre-engineered buildings have become increasingly popular in the construction market thanks to their numerous advantages. They are more cost-effective and energy-efficient than conventional construction methods. Warehouses, office complexes, hangarsare among other various applications.

Pebsteel is a long-standing company with a solid record of 6,000 pre-engineered buildings and steel structures in over 50 countries. Pebsteel's outstanding projects include the highest Unilever factory in Indonesia with a height of 68 meters; the largest clear span of 128 meters for the Lufthansa hangar in the Philippines; and the longest FCB Warehouse building in Thailand with a total length of one kilometer. Pebsteel also broke its own record by building a 14-story office tower in Manila, as well as creating a unique curved corridor for the Okada Manila hotel and resort complex.

Founded in 1994 by Sami Kteily and Adib Kouteli in Europe with Japanese stakeholders (Nippon Steel and Okaya & Co., Ltd), Pebsteel operates in 10 regional sales offices and has the headquarters in Vietnam. Sami Kteily, Executive Chairman of Pebsteel, said: "The rebrand is an important milestone for Pebsteel. After 27 years of development, Pebsteel reaffirmed its leading position as a total solution provider for pre-engineered steel buildings and steel structures. Amidst the ever-evolving fast-paced construction market, Pebsteel has introduced a new brand tagline  ENGINEERED BUILDING SOLUTIONS - to reflect its aspiration of creating effective solutions for a prosperous future. The company has also updated the logo to demonstrate its efforts to evolve and move towards prosperity with its customers, partners, and employees."

Media contact : marketing@pebsteel.com.vn

https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/f73e0d2a-94de-4cf7-905f-4097b942c582












New York, March 23, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Reportlinker.com announces the release of the report "Pharmaceutical Secondary Packaging Market by Type of Secondary Packaging, Type of Primary Packaging Packed and Key Geographies: Industry Trends and Global Forecasts, 2022-2035" - https://www.reportlinker.com/p06247375/?utm_source=GNW

, In addition, over the next five years, the global pharmaceutical market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 4.7%, with global drug sales anticipated to raise revenues worth USD 1.5 trillion in 2023. This continuously growing pipeline of pharmaceutical drug products has inadvertently led to an increase in the demand for their associated primary and secondary packaging solutions. Specifically, pharmaceutical secondary packaging is a vital step in the product supply chain as it encloses life-saving drugs and therapies, preserving the identity, quality, integrity and stability of the packaged drug product. It also plays a key role in marketing and brand projection for a product. However, the process of secondary packaging usually involves time consuming and complex activities, such as blister carding, thermoforming, labeling, kitting, assembly and cold chain storage (for temperature sensitive biologics). Other key challenges faced by developers are limiting variability in packaging materials and ensuring compliance to stringent regulatory guidelines (for packaging designs). Considering the aforementioned concerns, many pharmaceutical players now prefer to collaborate with qualified packaging providers that offer non-traditional packaging solutions and have the required capabilities to create unique packaging designs, in a cost and time effective manner.



As per the CDMO Outsourcing Survey conducted by Nice Insight, specifically for clinical and commercial scale operations, nearly 60% of the pharmaceutical companies currently outsource their primary packaging needs, while 43% of the players outsource their secondary packaging requirements. At present, more than 160 companies offer secondary packaging solutions to the firms engaged in the pharmaceutical sector. Further, several recent advancements in packaging designs, technologies and materials have enabled service providers to offer a wide range of user-friendly pharmaceutical secondary packaging solutions. In addition, substantial expansions, mergers and acquisitions, and partnerships have been reported in this market as service providers strive to become one-stop-shops, in order to cater to the diverse needs of their clients engaged in the healthcare industry. Driven by the ongoing innovation in this field, continuous growth in the pharmaceutical drugs pipeline and a steady rise in drug approvals, the pharmaceutical secondary packaging market is likely to witness positive growth in the foreseen future.



SCOPE OF THE REPORT

The Pharmaceutical Secondary Packaging Market  Distribution by Type of Secondary Packaging (Boxes, Cartons and Pouches), Type of Primary Packaging Packed (Ampoules, Blister Packs, Bottles, Cartridges, Syringes and Vials) and Key Geographies (North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, MENA, Latin America, and Rest of the World): Industry Trends and Global Forecasts, 2022-2035 report features an extensive study of the current market landscape and future potential of the pharmaceutical secondary packaging market. The study features an in-depth analysis, highlighting the capabilities of pharmaceutical secondary packaging providers.



Amongst other elements, the report features:

A detailed overview of the overall landscape of companies offering secondary packaging solutions to the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, along with information on several relevant parameters, such as their year of establishment, company size (in terms of employee count), location of headquarters (North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and rest of the world) and scale of operation (preclinical, clinical and commercial). The chapter also covers details related to the type of service provider (one-stop-shop service providers and stand-alone service providers), type of secondary packaging offered (cartons, boxes and others), type of primary packaging packed (blisters, vials, bottles, conventional syringes, ampoules, prefilled syringes and others), type of molecule packed (biologics, small molecules and unspecified), type of finished dosage form packed (solids, liquids / injectables, semi-solids, powders and others) and type of additional service(s) offered (labeling, serialization, kitting and cold-chain storage).

An insightful competitiveness analysis of the pharmaceutical secondary packaging providers, based on supplier power (in terms of years of experience), company competitiveness (type secondary packaging offered, type of primary packaging packed, type of molecule packed, type of finished dosage form packed, and type of additional services offered) and their respective scale of operation.

An analysis of recent partnerships inked between stakeholders engaged in this domain, during the period 2018-2021, covering acquisitions, manufacturing and packaging agreements, service alliances, packaging agreements, distribution agreements, technology utilization agreements and other related agreements. Further, the partnership activity in this domain has been analyzed based on various parameters, such as year of partnership, type of partnership, type of molecule packed, type of finished dosage form packed and most active players (in terms of number of partnerships). It also highlights the regional distribution of the partnership activity witnessed in this market.

A detailed analysis of the recent expansions undertaken by various pharmaceutical secondary packaging providers, based on several relevant parameters, such as year of expansion, type of expansion (capacity expansion, facility expansion and new facility), scale of operation, type of primary packaging packed, type of molecule packed, type of finished dosage form packed, company size, location of headquarters, location of expanded facility, most active players (in terms of number of recent expansions) and geographical distribution (region-wise and country-wise).

An in-depth analysis to estimate the current and future demand for pharmaceutical secondary packaging, based on several relevant parameters, such as type of secondary packaging (boxes, cartons and pouches), type of primary packaging packed (ampoules, blister packs, bottles, cartridges, syringes and vials) and key geographical regions (North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, MENA, Latin America and rest of the world), for the period 2022-2035.

Elaborate profiles of prominent players (shortlisted based on a proprietary criterion) engaged in offering pharmaceutical secondary packaging solutions, across North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific. Each profile provides an overview of the company, featuring information on the year of establishment, number of employees, location of their headquarters, key executives, details related to its secondary packaging offerings, recent developments, and an informed future outlook.



One of the key objectives of the report was to evaluate the current opportunity and future potential associated with the pharmaceutical secondary packaging market, over the coming 13 years. We have provided an informed estimates of the likely evolution of the market in the short to mid-term and long term, for the period 2022-2035. Our year-wise projections of the current and future opportunity have further been segmented based on relevant parameters, such as [A] type of secondary packaging (boxes, cartons and others), [B] type of primary packaging packed (ampoules, blister packs, bottles, cartridges, syringes and vials) and [C] key geographical regions (North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, MENA, Latin America and rest of the world). To account for future uncertainties in the market and to add robustness to our model, we have provided three forecast scenarios, portraying the conservative, base and optimistic tracks of the markets evolution.



The opinions and insights presented in the report were also influenced by discussions held with senior stakeholders in the industry. The report features detailed transcripts of interviews held with the following individuals:

Jake Aspinall (Commercial Director, Active Pharma Supplies)

Silvio Del Deo (Managing Director, Depo Pack)

Joe Luke (Vice President, Sales and Marketing, Reed-Lane)



RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

The data presented in this report has been gathered via secondary and primary research. For all our projects, we conduct interviews / surveys with experts in this domain (academia, industry, medical practice and other associations) to solicit their opinions on emerging trends in the market. This is primarily useful for us to draw out our own opinion on how the market will evolve across different regions and technology segments. Wherever possible, the available data has been checked for accuracy from multiple sources of information.



The secondary sources of information include

Annual reports

Investor presentations

SEC filings

Industry databases

News releases from company websites

Government policy documents

Industry analysts views



All actual figures have been sourced and analyzed from publicly available information forums and primary research discussions. Financial figures mentioned in this report are in USD, unless otherwise specified.



KEY QUESTIONS ANSWERED

Who are the leading players engaged in the pharmaceutical secondary packaging domain?

What is the relative competitiveness of different pharmaceutical secondary packaging providers?

Which type of partnership models are most commonly adopted by industry stakeholders?

What kind of expansion initiatives have been undertaken by pharmaceutical secondary packaging providers?

What is the present and likely future demand for secondary packaging solutions in the pharmaceutical sector?

How is the current and future market opportunity likely to be distributed across key market segments?



CHAPTER OUTLINES

Chapter 2 is an executive summary of the key insights captured during our research. It offers a high-level view on the likely evolution of the pharmaceutical secondary packaging market in the short to mid-term, and long term.



Chapter 3 provides a general overview of pharmaceutical packaging and importance / need for packaging in the pharmaceutical industry. Further, it contains a brief introduction to pharmaceutical secondary packaging, different types of pharmaceutical secondary packaging solutions and importance of secondary packaging in the pharmaceutical industry. The chapter concludes with a discussion on the key opportunity areas for secondary packaging providers and inputs on their projected growth in the coming years.



Chapter 4 features a detailed review of the current market landscape of around 165 companies offering pharmaceutical secondary packaging services. Additionally, it features an in-depth analysis of service providers, based on a number of relevant parameters, such as year of establishment, company size (in terms of employee count), location of headquarters and scale of operation (preclinical, clinical and commercial). Further, the chapter also covers details about type of service provider (one-stop-shop service providers and stand-alone service providers), type of secondary packaging offered (cartons, boxes and others), type of primary packaging packed (blisters, vials, bottles, conventional syringes, ampoules, prefilled syringes and others), type of molecule packed (biologics, small molecules and unspecified), type of finished dosage form packed (solids, liquids / injectables, semi-solids, powders and others) and type of additional services offered (labeling, serialization, kitting and cold-chain storage).



Chapter 5 presents an insightful competitiveness analysis of the pharmaceutical secondary packaging providers, located in North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific and rest of the world. The companies are further segmented based on their employee count, into three categories, namely small (1-200 employees), mid-sized (201-500 employees) and large (>500 employees) across these geographies. The analysis compares the service providers on the basis of various parameters, such as supplier power (in terms of years of experience), company competitiveness (type secondary packaging offered, type of primary packaging packed, type of molecule packed, type of finished dosage form packed, and type of additional services offered) and scale of operation (preclinical, clinical and commercial).



Chapter 6 consist of detailed profiles of the prominent players (shortlisted based on a proprietary criterion) that are engaged in offering pharmaceutical secondary packaging in North America. Each profile provides an overview of the company, its pharmaceutical secondary packaging offerings and details on recent developments, as well as an informed future outlook.



Chapter 7 consist of detailed profiles of the prominent players (shortlisted based on a proprietary criterion) that are engaged in offering pharmaceutical secondary packaging in Europe. Each profile provides an overview of the company, its pharmaceutical secondary packaging offerings and details on recent developments, as well as an informed future outlook.



Chapter 8 consist of detailed profiles of the prominent players (shortlisted based on a proprietary criterion) that are engaged in offering pharmaceutical secondary packaging in Asia-Pacific. Each profile provides an overview of the company, its pharmaceutical secondary packaging offerings and details on recent developments, as well as an informed future outlook.



Chapter 9 features an insightful analysis of the various partnerships and collaborations that have been inked by stakeholders engaged in this domain (since 2018). It includes a brief description of the partnership models (including acquisitions, manufacturing and packaging agreements, service alliances, packaging agreements, distribution agreements, technology utilization agreements and others) adopted by stakeholders in the domain of pharmaceutical secondary packaging. Further, it comprises of analysis based on several relevant parameters such as year of agreement, type of agreement, type of molecule packed, type of finished dosage form packed and most active players (in terms of number of partnerships). Further, the chapter includes a world map representation of all the deals inked in this field in the period 2018-2021, highlighting both intercontinental and intracontinental partnership activity.



Chapter 10 presents a detailed analysis of the recent expansions undertaken (since 2018) by various pharmaceutical secondary packaging providers, based on several relevant parameters, such as year of expansion, type of expansion (capacity expansion, facility expansion and new facility), scale of operation (preclinical, clinical and commercial), type of primary packaging packed (blisters, bottles, syringes, vials, ampoules, sachets), type of molecule packed (biologics and small molecules), type of finished dosage form packed (solids and liquids), company size (in terms of employee count), location of headquarters (North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and rest of the world), location of expanded facility, most active players (in terms of number of recent expansions) and geographical distribution (region-wise and country-wise).



Chapter 11 includes an in-depth analysis in order to estimate the current and future demand for pharmaceutical secondary packaging, based on several relevant parameters, such as type of secondary packaging (boxes, cartons and pouches), type of primary packaging packed (ampoules, blister packs, bottles, cartridges, syringes and vials) and key geographical regions (North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, MENA, Latin America and rest of the world), for the period 2022-2035.



Chapter 12 presents an insightful market forecast analysis, highlighting the likely growth of the pharmaceutical secondary packaging market, for the period 2022-2035. Additionally, the report features the likely distribution of the current and forecasted opportunity across various relevant parameters such as [A] type of secondary packaging (boxes, cartons and others), [B] type of primary packaging packed (ampoules, blister packs, bottles, cartridges, syringes and vials) and [C] key geographical regions (North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, MENA, Latin America and rest of the world).

Chapter 13 summarizes the overall report. In this chapter, we have provided a list of key takeaways from the report, and expressed our independent opinion related to the research and analysis described in the previous chapters.



Chapter 14 provides the transcripts of the interviews conducted with representatives from renowned organizations that are engaged in providing pharmaceutical secondary packaging. The chapter contains the details of our conversation with Jake Aspinall (Commercial Director, Active Pharma Supplies), Silvio Del Deo (Managing Director, Depo Pack) and Joe Luke (Vice President, Sales and Marketing, Reed-Lane).



Chapter 15 is an appendix, that provides tabulated data and numbers for all the figures included in the report.



Chapter 16 is an appendix that provides the list of companies and organizations that have been mentioned in the report.

Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p06247375/?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 23, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Africa & Middle East Embedded Finance Business and Investment Opportunities - 50+ KPIs on Embedded Lending, Insurance, Payment, and Wealth Segments - Q1 2022 Update" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.



Africa & Middle East's Embedded Finance industry in the region is expected to grow by 45.3% on annual basis to reach US$10,359.2 million in 2022.



The embedded finance industry is expected to grow steadily over the forecast period, recording a CAGR of 27.8% during 2022-2029. The embedded finance revenues in the region will increase from US$10,359.2 million in 2022 to reach US$39,820.0 million by 2029.



Strategic partnership with global players to drive financial inclusion through embedded lending in the Africa and Middle East region



In the Africa and Middle East region, there is a large proportion of the young population who do not have access to financial services. Targeting such consumer demographics, firms are entering into strategic alliances with global players to drive financial inclusion in the region.

In June 2021, Aafaq Islamic Finance entered into a strategic partnership with The Social Loan Company, a Singapore-based artificial intelligence-powered cutting-edge, big data-driven credit enablement platform company.

Under the collaboration with The Social Loan Company, the firm is planning to launch embedded lending services, thereby offering credit to the underserved young population in the region.

Notably, The Social Loan Company has had a phenomenal upward trajectory through its flagship embedded lending brand CASHe in India over the past four years.

The publisher expects more such strategic alliances with global players in the embedded lending industry over the next four to eight quarters, which will subsequently drive the growth of the market in the Africa and Middle East region from the short to medium-term perspective.



Strategic collaboration with online and offline businesses will be the key to driving the growth of embedded lending in the Africa and Middle East



To provide an increasing number of consumers and businesses with embedded lending solutions, the publisher expects that strategic alliances with both online as well as offline businesses will be the major driving factor for the growth of the industry in the Africa and Middle East region. Notably, buy now, pay later (BNPL) firms have adopted this strategy widely in the region.

In the Middle East, BNPL firms are aggressively partnering with various businesses across industry verticals. Dubai-based Tabby, for instance, has partnered with 2,000 global brands, which also include small and medium-sized businesses in the region. Similar, Tamara, the Saudi Arabian BNPL firm, has entered into a strategic collaboration with 1,000 merchants to offer consumers short-term loans in the UAE as well as Saudi Arabia.

While the BNPL sector is growing strongly in the online space, the publisher expects that strategic partnerships in the offline space will remain a key factor in driving the industry's future growth in this region. This is primarily because businesses are reopening again as the effect of the global pandemic subsides and consumers return to physical stores. Consequently, future growth will be driven by partnerships with offline retailers in the region.



Embedded insurance market gained a huge traction in mobility sector in the Africa & Middle East region



The Africa & Middle East region witnessed significant growth in the embedded insurance demand by the mobility sector. Moreover, the embedded insurance market has already crossed the growth stage in the mobility embedded insurance product life cycle and now are moving towards the maturity stage at a considerable pace. The market witnessed numerous collaborations among ride-hailing, driver-sharing, and embedded insurers.

Uber (India) launched in-ride embedded insurance for its drivers and delivery partners across Saudi Arabia in 2018.

Additionally, in In December 2019, UAE based ride-hailing app Careem (Uber's subsidiary) launched in-ride insurance for passengers and drivers across 15 cities. The insurance policy will cover up to $20,000 in expenses incurred due to death or major injury sustained during a Careem ride.

The developments mentioned above show that the mobility sector has provided embedded insurance to its clients and drivers for years. Additionally, the market for mopeds and e-bikes is expanding rapidly due to the surge in food and grocery delivery requirements due to the Covid-19 pandemic. As a result, insurtech firms have been drawn to capitalize on the expanding market for usage-based insurance for e-bike and moped fleets.



Market participants are introducing new products through newly obtained funds. The launch of new products will assist fleet businesses by providing flexible and seamless embedded insurance options.

In August 2020, Israel-based mobility insurtech firm Bambi Dynamic raised US$ 6 million led by MS&AD Ventures and backed by existing investor The Phoenix Insurance Company. The newly raised funds were utilized to enhance its offerings across the mobility sector.

The Africa & Middle East embedded payment industry is going through a trial phase, and incumbents in the payments market ecosystem must evolve to stay relevant in the industry, as the everchanging demand from clients is making the current system outdated.



Established and new-age fintech companies have invested heavily in embedded payment solutions in the last four to six quarters, resulting in market growth.



Moreover, customers expect e-commerce platforms to provide a smooth buying experience. Embedded payment can be the solution to this ever-growing client requirements. This also allows the companies to provide value-added benefits to clients and increase loyalty. Consequently, the publisher expects strong market growth over the next four to eight quarters.



The embedded payments industry is still in its nascent stages of development in most of the big economies such as Egypt and the UAE. However, in the last six to eight quarters, it was observed that a spike in the number of start-ups in the embedded payment market, spurred by the collaborative efforts of the governments and other stakeholders, enhanced the payment systems.



The region has several diverse factors driving the market growth, including a vast economy, a large young population, and an abundant skilled workforce. As a result, the region has enormous potential to grow its fintech industry in 2022 and beyond.



Scope



Embedded Finance Market Size and Forecast

Embedded Lending Market Size and Forecast

Embedded Lending by Consumer Segments, 2020 - 2029

Business Lending

Retail Lending

Embedded Lending by B2B Sectors, 2020 - 2029

Embedded Lending in Retail & Consumer Goods

Embedded Lending in IT & Software Services

Embedded Lending in Media, Entertainment & Leisure

Embedded Lending in Manufacturing & Distribution

Embedded Lending in Real Estate

Embedded Lending in Other

Embedded Lending by B2C Sectors, 2020 - 2029

Embedded Lending in Retail Shopping

Embedded Lending in Home Improvement

Embedded Lending in Leisure & Entertainment

Embedded Lending in Healthcare and Wellness

Embedded Lending in Other

Embedded Insurance Market Size and Forecast

Embedded Insurance by Industry, 2020 - 2029

Embedded Insurance in Consumer Products

Embedded Insurance in Travel & Hospitality

Embedded Insurance in Automotive

Embedded Insurance in Healthcare

Embedded Insurance in Real Estate

Embedded Insurance in Transport & Logistics

Embedded Insurance in Others

Embedded Insurance by Insurance Type, 2020 - 2029

Embedded Insurance in Life Segment

Embedded Insurance in Non-Life Segment

Embedded Insurance by Type of Offering, 2020 - 2029

Embedded Insurance in Product Segment

Embedded Insurance in Service Segment

Embedded Payment Market Size and Forecast

Embedded Payment by Consumer Segments, 2020 - 2029

B2B

B2C

Embedded Payment by End-Use Sector, 2020 - 2029

Embedded Payment in Retail & Consumer Goods

Embedded Payment in Digital Products & Services

Embedded Payment in Utility Bill Payment

Embedded Payment in Travel & Hospitality

Embedded Payment in Leisure & Entertainment

Embedded Payment in Health & Wellness

Embedded Payment in Office Supplies & Equipment

Embedded Payment in Other

Embedded Wealth Management Market Size and Forecast



For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/e8vlyc
TORONTO, March 23, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Petrolympic Ltd. (TSX.V:PCQ) (OTC:PCQRF) (the Company) is pleased to announce that the Company will begin a drilling campaign, with an initial minimum of approximately 1,000 meters, to test coinciding structural features with IP-Resistivity Axes and extensions of previously drilled auriferous mineralizations on its 100% controlled Belcourt Property in Abitibi, Quebec.



The property consists of 125 map-designated claims in four blocks (Belcourt North, South, Central and West blocks), all proximal to one another and covering a total of 5,479 hectares (54.79 square km, 13,539 acres) in the Barraute, Carpentier, Courville and Fiedmont townships in the Abitibi region. The Property is accessible year-round by Route 386 and a network of secondary roads and trails.

The Belcourt Property is located within the volcanic belt of the Landrienne Formation and is underlain by the important NW-SE Uniacke Deformation Corridor which hosts several mineralized zones such as Heva-Cadillac, Glasnost, Jolin, Thibodeau Zone (Pershing-Manitou) and Eastville showings.

Figure 1: Belcourt Geology

https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/3e58df27-f399-4646-8c40-3ec002c1f532

Initial drilling will validate and test the extensions of previously drilled gold mineralization recognized by Placer Dome. The mineralization was recognized to be hosted within quartz-carbonate-pyrite veins at the contact of porphyritic basalt and gabbro revealing an intersection of 6.96 g/t Au over 2.17 meters (including 38.5 g/t Au over 0.43 m). The technical team will also focus on making a better understanding of the controls of the mineralization and host structures with respect to the main geophysical axes coinciding with associated structures and vein corridors.

Furthermore, the Property is located within a very favourable metallogenic environment hosting several gold-mineralized structures, mineralized occurrences and mines within a few kilometres of the Property limits and includes the following:

McKenzie Break deposit with a NI 43-101 compliant Indicated Resources of 146,000 ounces grading 2.48 g/t Au and Inferred Resources of 250,550 ounces grading 2.34 g/t Au (2021);

Jolin (Main Zone): Inferred Resources of 907,944 tonnes at 2.06 g/t Au (non-compliant NI 43-101);

Thibodeau Zone (Pershing-Manitou Deposit) : Measured Resources of 4,200 tonnes at 4.29 g/t Au, Indicated Resources of 19,100 tonnes grading 3.96 g/t Au and Inferred Resources of 3,000 tonnes grading 2.95 g/t Au (2021);

Eastville showing: 25.7 g/t Au over 1.6 meters (drillhole A-9);

Heva-Cadillac showing (which channel samples grades up to 10.95 g/t Au over 5.5 m);

Glasnost showing: 59.52 g/t Au over 1.15 meters in drillhole GPS-09-01.

Bartec (Ontex) deposit with reserves of 113,400 tonnes grading 7.9 g/t Au (MERNQ SIGEOM, 1987);

Vendome No. 1 (Mogador) deposit with reserves of 559,506 tonnes grading 1.18 g/t Au, 62.18 g/t Ag, 0.52 per cent Cu and 8.11 per cent Zn, and 116,048 tonnes grading 4.55 per cent Zn, 0.49 per cent Cu, 0.73 g/t Au, 40.78 g/t Ag classified as inferred resources (2013);

Tri-Cor showing (103.6 g/t Au over 1.83 m in a drillhole).



Qualified Persons

Alain-Jean Beauregard, P. Geo., independent qualified person as defined by Canadian National Instrument 43-101, has reviewed and approved the geological information reported in this news release. 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. Mr. Beauregard is independent of the company.

For further information please contact:

Mendel Ekstein

President

Tel. 845-656-0184

Fax 845-231-6665

82 Richmond St East

Toronto, ON M5C 1P1

This news release contains information about adjacent properties on which the Company has no right to explore or mine. Readers are cautioned that mineral deposits on adjacent properties are not indicative of mineral deposits on the Company's properties.

NEITHER THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE NOR ITS REGULATIONS SERVICES PROVIDER HAVE REVIEWED OR ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS RELEASE.

CAUTIONARY STATEMENT REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION

Certain information contained or incorporated by reference in this press release, including any information regarding the proposed acquisition, constitutes forward-looking statements. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, are to be considered forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are necessarily based on a number of estimates and assumptions that, while considered reasonable by the Company, are inherently subject to significant business, economic, geological and competitive uncertainties and contingencies. Although the Company believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not guarantees of future performance. Known and unknown factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. Such factors include but are not limited to: economic and global market impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, fluctuations in market prices, exploration and exploitation successes, continued availability of capital and financing, changes in national and local government legislation, taxation, controls, regulations, expropriation or nationalization of property and general political, economic, market or business conditions. Many of these uncertainties and contingencies can affect our actual results and could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in any forward-looking statements made by, or on behalf of, us. Readers are cautioned that forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and, therefore, readers are advised to rely on their own evaluation of such uncertainties. All of the forward-looking statements made in this press release, or incorporated by reference, are qualified by these cautionary statements. We do not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements.
Nation sets targets for energy capacity

By ZHENG XIN (China Daily) 15:04, March 23, 2022

Technicians carry out maintenance work on turbines at a wind farm in Zhoushan, Zhejiang province, in January. [PHOTO BY YAO FENG/FOR CHINA DAILY]

China vowed on Tuesday to raise its annual comprehensive energy production capacity to more than 4.6 billion metric tons of standard coal by 2025, with its annual crude production gradually increasing to around 200 million tons and annual natural gas output to exceed 230 billion cubic meters.

According to the modern energy system plan under the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25) released by the National Development and Reform Commission and the National Energy Administration on Tuesday, China's share of nonfossil energy consumption is to increase to around 20 percent by 2025 and the proportion of nonfossil power generation will be around 39 percent by then.

The country will also gradually develop solar and wind power on a large scale with high quality, giving priority to local development and utilization while speeding up the construction of decentralized wind power and distributed photovoltaic in load centers and surrounding areas, the plan said.

The government also encourages steady construction of coastal nuclear power projects with an emphasis on security. Installed capacity for nuclear power plants in operation will reach 70 million kilowatts by 2025, it said.

According to the NDRC, the proportion of nonfossil energy in the nation's total energy consumption had risen from 12 percent in 2016the starting year of the 13th Five-Year Plan period (2016-20)to 15.9 percent by the end of 2020.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
HONG KONG, March 23 (Xinhua) -- With the Chinese mainland's steadily growing economy, Hong Kong will gradually regain its economic growth momentum as the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government implements multiple economic relief measures, experts have said.

Hong Kong has recently seen underperformance in export, employment and some other aspects. Observers believe that multiple internal and external factors have led to a slowdown in Hong Kong's momentum of economic recovery.

Data released by the Hong Kong Trade Development Council showed that Hong Kong's export index for the first quarter of 2022 was 24.7, down 12.5 points from the previous quarter, recording a downward trend for the third consecutive quarter.

Hong Hao, managing director and chief strategist of the Bank of Communications (International), said the extent of Hong Kong's economic slowdown will depend largely on the development of its epidemic situation.

Liang Haiming, a Hong Kong economist and chairman of China Silk Road iValley Research Institute, said the recent economic slowdown is due to volatility in the peripheral markets and mounting geopolitical tensions coupled with the epidemic situation in Hong Kong, which resulted in continued damage to the Hong Kong economy.

In order to lower the rising unemployment rate under the epidemic, the HKSAR government launched a new round of Employment Support Scheme, which is expected to involve 26 billion to 31 billion Hong Kong dollars (about 3.3 billion to 3.96 billion U.S. dollars) to benefit 1.1 million to 1.3 million employees in Hong Kong.

A new round of the Consumption Voucher Scheme is also launched, with 5,000-Hong Kong-dollar (about 640 U.S. dollars) vouchers of Phase I to be disbursed in April, valued at over 30 billion Hong Kong dollars (about 3.8 billion U.S. dollars).

"It is hoped that the scheme will relieve the public's pressure in the face of the epidemic and will help the business of small and medium-sized enterprises," said Paul Chan, financial secretary of the HKSAR government.

Liang noted that as personal consumption accounts for more than 60 percent of Hong Kong's GDP, the new round of the Consumption Voucher Scheme will help stimulate the retail market and support Hong Kong's economy.

With the full support of the central government and concerted efforts of all sectors of the Hong Kong community in the fight against the epidemic, Hong Kong's economy will gradually recover, Liang said.

Observers believe that the epidemic has the short-term impact. Hong Kong's economy will be able to overcome the challenges with its own unique advantages and resilience. They are still confident in Hong Kong's competitiveness in the long run.

"As long as the epidemic situation is under control, Hong Kong will still have its attractiveness and a good economic outlook when traveling between places is resumed," Paul Chan told a recent press conference.

An assessment report released by the International Monetary Fund earlier this month reaffirmed Hong Kong's status as a major international financial center and agreed that Hong Kong's financial sector continued to expand and develop even during the epidemic.

Yang Yuchuan, a professor with the Hong Kong Financial Services Institute, believes that once the epidemic is controled and exchanges between Hong Kong and the mainland resume, Hong Kong's economy is expected to achieve an even better development.

Liang said that the mainland's economy maintains steady growth and is the firm backup for Hong Kong. With the full support of the central government, Hong Kong's economy will regain growth momentum when the epidemic is contained. (1 U.S. dollar equals 7.8 HK dollars) 
Dublin, March 23, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Insurance Analytics Market: Global Industry Trends, Share, Size, Growth, Opportunity and Forecast 2022-2027" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.



The global insurance analytics market reached a value of US$ 9.87 Billion in 2021. Looking forward, the publisher expects the market to reach US$ 21.78 Billion by 2027, exhibiting a CAGR of 13.30% during 2022-2027. Keeping in mind the uncertainties of COVID-19, they are continuously tracking and evaluating the direct as well as the indirect influence of the pandemic. These insights are included in the report as a major market contributor



Insurance analytics refers to the process of collecting, analyzing and extracting insights from data sources for minimizing the risks associated with underwriting, pricing, rating, claims and marketing of insurance policies. It utilizes a software platform integrated with data analysis tools, artificial intelligence (AI) and big data solutions to generate leads and identify market trends.

The software enables the organizations and individuals to track insurance payments, liquidity and other financial operations. Insurance analytics also aids in reducing the overall operational costs, preventing fraudulent activities, optimizing client relations and utilizing predictive analytics in insurance models. These solutions can be deployed on-premises or on the cloud and are widely used by insurance organizations, third-party administrators, brokers and consultants



Insurance Analytics Market Trends:

Significant growth in the banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) industry across the globe is one of the key factors creating a positive outlook for the market. Large and medium-sized organizations are widely adopting insurance analytics tools integrated with cloud computing, application programming interfaces (APIs), data analytics, robotic process automation (RPA), chatbots and machine learning solutions for enhanced operational efficiency. Insurance analytics aids in preventing internal frauds, rate evasions and underwriting and cybersecurity fraud committed by applicants, policyholders, third-party claimants and professionals.

Moreover, the increasing number of fraudulent activities, such as insurance padding, inflated claims, staged accidents and submission of inaccurate information evidence, is also providing a thrust to the market growth. Additionally, the widespread adoption of big data and predictive modeling-integrated insurance analytics solutions is acting as another growth-inducing factor. These solutions can collect information from internal and external sources, such as telematics, agent and customer interactions and social media platforms and develop countermeasures to mitigate losses and risks. Other factors, including the implementation of stringent government policies to prevent cyberattacks, along with the increasing requirement to reduce claim management time, are anticipated to drive the market toward growth



Key Market Segmentation:

The publisher provides an analysis of the key trends in each sub-segment of the global insurance analytics market, along with forecasts at the global, regional and country level from 2022-2027. Our report has categorized the market based on component, deployment mode, enterprise size, application and end user



Breakup by Component:

Solution

Service

Breakup by Deployment Mode:

On-premises

Cloud-based

Breakup by Enterprise Size:

Small and Medium-sized Enterprises

Large Enterprises

Breakup by Application:

Claims Management

Risk Management

Customer Management

Sales and Marketing

Others

Breakup by End User:

Insurance Companies

Government Agencies

Third-party Administrators, Brokers and Consultancies

Breakup by Region:

North America

United States

Canada

Asia-Pacific

China

Japan

India

South Korea

Australia

Indonesia

Others

Europe

Germany

France

United Kingdom

Italy

Spain

Russia

Others

Latin America

Brazil

Mexico

Others

Middle East and Africa

Competitive Landscape:

The competitive landscape of the industry has also been examined along with the profiles of the key players being Applied Systems Inc., Hexaware Technologies Limited, International Business Machines Corporation, LexisNexis Risk Solutions (RELX PLC), Microsoft Corporation, MicroStrategy Incorporated, Open Text Corporation, Oracle Corporation, Pegasystems Inc., Salesforce.com inc., SAP SE and Sapiens International Corporation



Key Questions Answered in This Report:

How has the global insurance analytics market performed so far and how will it perform in the coming years?

What has been the impact of COVID-19 on the global insurance analytics market?

What are the key regional markets?

What is the breakup of the market based on the component?

What is the breakup of the market based on the deployment mode?

What is the breakup of the market based on the enterprise size?

What is the breakup of the market based on the application?

What is the breakup of the market based on the end user?

What are the various stages in the value chain of the industry?

What are the key driving factors and challenges in the industry?

What is the structure of the global insurance analytics market and who are the key players?

What is the degree of competition in the industry?

Key Topics Covered:



1 Preface



2 Scope and Methodology

3 Executive Summary



4 Introduction

4.1 Overview

4.2 Key Industry Trends



5 Global Insurance Analytics Market

5.1 Market Overview

5.2 Market Performance

5.3 Impact of COVID-19

5.4 Market Forecast



6 Market Breakup by Component

6.1 Solution

6.1.1 Market Trends

6.1.2 Market Forecast

6.2 Service

6.2.1 Market Trends

6.2.2 Market Forecast



7 Market Breakup by Deployment Mode

7.1 On-premises

7.1.1 Market Trends

7.1.2 Market Forecast

7.2 Cloud-based

7.2.1 Market Trends

7.2.2 Market Forecast



8 Market Breakup by Enterprise Size

8.1 Small and Medium-sized Enterprises

8.1.1 Market Trends

8.1.2 Market Forecast

8.2 Large Enterprises

8.2.1 Market Trends

8.2.2 Market Forecast



9 Market Breakup by Application

9.1 Claims Management

9.1.1 Market Trends

9.1.2 Market Forecast

9.2 Risk Management

9.2.1 Market Trends

9.2.2 Market Forecast

9.3 Customer Management

9.3.1 Market Trends

9.3.2 Market Forecast

9.4 Sales and Marketing

9.4.1 Market Trends

9.4.2 Market Forecast

9.5 Others

9.5.1 Market Trends

9.5.2 Market Forecast



10 Market Breakup by End User

10.1 Insurance Companies

10.1.1 Market Trends

10.1.2 Market Forecast

10.2 Government Agencies

10.2.1 Market Trends

10.2.2 Market Forecast

10.3 Third-party Administrators, Brokers and Consultancies

10.3.1 Market Trends

10.3.2 Market Forecast



11 Market Breakup by Region

12 SWOT Analysis



13 Value Chain Analysis



14 Porters Five Forces Analysis



15 Price Analysis



16 Competitive Landscape

16.1 Market Structure

16.2 Key Players

16.3 Profiles of Key Players

16.3.1 Applied Systems Inc.

16.3.1.1 Company Overview

16.3.1.2 Product Portfolio

16.3.2 Hexaware Technologies Limited

16.3.2.1 Company Overview

16.3.2.2 Product Portfolio

16.3.3 International Business Machines Corporation

16.3.3.1 Company Overview

16.3.3.2 Product Portfolio

16.3.3.3 Financials

16.3.3.4 SWOT Analysis

16.3.4 LexisNexis Risk Solutions (RELX PLC)

16.3.4.1 Company Overview

16.3.4.2 Product Portfolio

16.3.5 Microsoft Corporation

16.3.5.1 Company Overview

16.3.5.2 Product Portfolio

16.3.5.3 Financials

16.3.5.4 SWOT Analysis

16.3.6 MicroStrategy Incorporated

16.3.6.1 Company Overview

16.3.6.2 Product Portfolio

16.3.6.3 Financials

16.3.6.4 SWOT Analysis

16.3.7 Open Text Corporation

16.3.7.1 Company Overview

16.3.7.2 Product Portfolio

16.3.7.3 Financials

16.3.7.4 SWOT Analysis

16.3.8 Oracle Corporation

16.3.8.1 Company Overview

16.3.8.2 Product Portfolio

16.3.8.3 Financials

16.3.8.4 SWOT Analysis

16.3.9 Pegasystems Inc.

16.3.9.1 Company Overview

16.3.9.2 Product Portfolio

16.3.9.3 Financials

16.3.9.4 SWOT Analysis

16.3.10 Salesforce.com inc.

16.3.10.1 Company Overview

16.3.10.2 Product Portfolio

16.3.10.3 Financials

16.3.10.4 SWOT Analysis

16.3.11 SAP SE

16.3.11.1 Company Overview

16.3.11.2 Product Portfolio

16.3.11.3 Financials

16.3.11.4 SWOT Analysis

16.3.12 Sapiens International Corporation

16.3.12.1 Company Overview

16.3.12.2 Product Portfolio

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/o9xgmr

Attachment
WASHINGTON, March 23, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Howard University officials today announced plans for the largest construction real estate initiative in the institutions history. The University will invest $785 million to build three new state-of-the-art multidisciplinary academic halls and renovate several existing structures, including the historic Myrtilla Miner Building, which sits prominently on Georgia Avenue, that will house the School of Education and the Howard University Middle School for Mathematics and Science. The new academic centers will house teaching and research in health sciences; arts and communications; and associated science, technology, engineering, and mathematics programs. The new construction projects are slated to begin this year and are expected to be completed by 2026.

This is a watershed moment in the history of our institution, said Wayne A. I. Frederick, president of Howard University. Because of the tremendously enhanced financial posture we have worked so hard to achieve, the state of the University has never been stronger. The leadership of our board and executive team, along with the caliber of students we have enrolled, the illustrious faculty we have assembled, the dedicated staff we have hired, and the committed alumni base we have cultivated, presents an opportunity for us to solidify Howards status as one of the preeminent institutions of higher education in the country.

Emerging from continued improvement in the Universitys ratings and in conjunction with the priorities established in the Howard Forward strategic plan, this is by far the largest real estate investment in Howard Universitys history. The historic investment is part of a phased Central Campus Master Plan (CCMP). Announced in 2020, the CCMP serves as the Universitys roadmap for the long-term transformation of Howards main campus through capital improvements that align with the Universitys mission and vision. These efforts are made possible in part because of enrollment growth, increased philanthropic and public investment in the University, and the Universitys efforts to build financial strength as outlined in the five-year strategic plan.

A Major Step in the Campus Master Plan Ignited by $300M Bond and Record-Breaking Philanthropic Giving

This historic investment begins the implementation of Howard Universitys 2020 Central Campus Master Plan. Unanimously approved by the DC Zoning Commission in 2021, the CCMP serves as the Universitys roadmap for long-term transformation of Howards main campus through capital improvements that align with the Universitys mission, vision and strategy. While the CCMP serves as the roadmap to the largest investment in capital projects on Howards campus, this investment would not have been possible apart from an intentional focus on improving the financial strength of the University  a pillar of the Howard Forward strategic plan.

The University reached record-breaking fundraising totals last year, ending the 2021 fiscal year with $170 million in philanthropic contributions. Already, the University is on track to supersede that record in 2022 with $120 million in philanthropic commitments just six months into the fiscal year. These unprecedented totals represent a far-reaching commitment from Howard University alumni, as well as individual and institutional donors, in the bold vision of Howard Forward.

In February, the University announced a shift in its national bond ratings by the Fitch and Standard and Poors (S&P) credit agencies from stable to positive. Both agencies affirmed Howard Universitys $300 million series 2022A taxable bonds, which will support the campus master plans first phase.

The bonds are a critical component in the financing plan that will support the implementation of the CCMP.

Howard Constructs New Academic Buildings for the First Time Since 1984

Howard University will construct new academic-targeted centers on its campus, marking the largest investment in academic classroom space in 38 years. The investment in these academic centers was approved specifically to fund academic real estate projects and represents a continuation of the Universitys overall investment in campus infrastructure. Howard has undergone significant campus renovations to include the full renovation of the Undergraduate Library in 2021, re-opening of the historic Frederick Douglass Memorial Hall in 2021, and the construction of the Interdisciplinary Research Building (IRB) in 2015. Over the last five years, the University has renovated 80 percent of residence halls with improved security and building system upgrades. The University Central Campus Master Plan also includes roughly 1,500 additional housing units.

Of the $785 million real estate investment, $670 million will be used to fund three new academic centers: the Health Sciences Complex, which will house the College of Medicine, College of Dentistry, College of Pharmacy and the College of Nursing and Allied Health Sciences; the Center for Arts and Communications, which will house the Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts and the Cathy Hughes School of Communications; and the STEM Center, which will house various STEM programs and disciplines including physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, mathematics and associated labs. The University will pursue naming right opportunities related to these campus investments in the coming months. This investment will contribute to the Universitys growing $2 billion portfolio of real estate and other assets.

For more information, read The Next Step in the Campus Master Plan: Revitalizing Howards Academic Buildings

Attachment
Ottawa, March 23, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Precedence Research, Recently Published Report on Pharmacy Market (By Product: Prescription, and OTC; By Pharmacy: Retail, e-Pharmacy; By Application: Hospital-grade, Personal Use) - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, Regional Outlook, and Forecast 2022  2030.



The E-pharmacy market's rapid growth is a crucial factor driving the market. The introduction of e-pharmacies is being aided by a dramatic increase in online purchasing of pharmaceuticals during the COVID-19 epidemic, as well as increased acceptance of digital technologies. Furthermore, big e-commerce companies are venturing into the e-pharmacy industry, bolstering market growth prospects.

Many pharmacies have begun to implement clinical programs aimed at promoting medication adherence and improving health outcomes. They're also using subscription and loyalty programs to boost patient involvement. Prescription refills are now available online through pharmacies' websites, smartphone apps, and automated telephonic systems. The market is growing due to leading players' increasing embrace of automation technology and digitalization activities.

Get the Sample Pages of Report for More Understanding@ https://www.precedenceresearch.com/sample/1568

North America dominates the pharmacy market both in demand and drug development. Researchers from FLANKE estimated that the U.S. makes up about 55% of medication sales, but only 24 per cent of sales volume. A solid system that rewards innovation and the improvement of current treatments ensure a supportive pharmaceutics markets for open public companies.

About 3 of the 10 top drug manufacturers of pharmaceutical drugs are based in Europe. Swiss hosts the top two drug producers; Roche and Novartis. The eighth rank is held by Frances Sanofi. Amongst the geographic marketplaces, Europe is the number one cedar of pharmaceutical drugs, with shipments in 2020 totaling US$328.4 billion which accounts for 80.5 per cent of the global total. The nations around the world experiencing the most growth in phrases of pharmacy export products are Slovenia, Ireland in Europe, India and Italia. Europe is known for innovation as well, and there are many products in the R&D stages right now. One of the latest breakthrough enhancements to come out there of the region is Gavre to (pralsetinib) for the treatment of grownups with RET fusion-positive state-of-the-art non-small-cell lung cancer tumor, developed by Rocher. With such benefits India enjoys an important position in the global pharmaceutical drugs sector. This factor will strengthen Indias position in global pharmacy industry.

Report Scope Details Market Size by 2028 USD 1481.78 Billion Growth Rate from 2022 to 2030 CAGR of 4.7% Largest Revenue Holder North America Fastest Market Asia Pacific Base Year 2021 Forecast Data 2022 to 2030 Companies Covered CVS Health, Cigna, Boots Walgreens,Well Pharmacy, Walmart, Kroger, Lloyd Pharmacy, Rite Aid Corp., Humana Pharmacy Solutions, Matsumoto Kiyoshi

Report Highlights

The E-pharmacy segment is expected to grow with fastest CAGR in during the forecast time period. With the occurrence of COVID-19 pandemic, adoption of online pharmacies increased. Post-pandemic, consumers will continue adopting e-pharmacies because of benefits, such as affordability, accessibility, and convenience

In 2020, the prescription product type segment had the highest revenue share of more than 80%.The rising prevalence of chronic diseases, as well as the ageing population, is pushing up prescription drug demand.

Ask here for more customization study@ https://www.precedenceresearch.com/customization/1568

Market Dynamics

Driver

Availability of Health and Wellness services in Pharmacies Increasing Consumer Base of Pharmacies

Over the past few years established industry players have invested hugely in delivering innovative and superior service, while pharmacies are focusing significantly towards increasing customer satisfaction by offering health and wellness services. The key driver of overall customer satisfaction is the availability of overall wellness services. Supply of these services is showing improvement in overall customer satisfaction. These kinds of services are at present seen in 86% of chain drug stores, 83% of superstore pharmacies and 73% of mass merchandiser medical stores in U.S. Many pharmacies are focusing on on-time delivery through mail orders Customer satisfaction is highest when they get a health professional prescribed medicines ready/delivered when assured. Such innovative services provided by pharmacies are driving the market growth.

Restraint

Increasing competition From E-pharmacies to pose Major Threat for Retail Pharmacies

Competition in the pharmacy industry is projected to intensify in the approaching years, especially from big-box merchants and mail-order and online pharmacies. Payors also have piloted consumers email ordering, such as by covering a 3 month supply of medications sent to the home just a 30-day supply offered at a brick-and-mortar drug-store. Finally, Internet medical stores are aggressively focusing on cash-paying customers by providing medications at a lower cost.

The multinational companies such as Amazon entering in E-pharmacy segment is a menace to retail medical stores on multiple methodologies. Amazon entered into the health professional prescribed industry with their 2018 acquisition of PillPack and the 2020 launching of Amazon Pharmacy and an Amazon Excellent prescription discount profit. And furthermore Amazon is planning to create physical pharmacies. With such moves Amazon will still be a thorn in the side and tension on the underside line of list pharmacies. This factor may act as a major threat for the expansion of retail pharmacies.

Opportunity

Innovations in Technology Evolving Pharmacy Industry

Innovation in technology may provide promising opportunities for the market growth of pharmacy market during forecast time period. For years, researchers have been working on smart mirrors that utilize advanced cameras and customers breadth to detect health variations and smart toilets. Several companies are testing and developing basic home health care bots, and elderly workers in Japan are already wearing exoskeletons to help them perform manual labor.

Smartphones are progressing to the point where they can be used as point-of-care and home health diagnostic tools for ailments including urinary tract infections6 and diabetic eye disease. Labs have created an ingestible origami robot that can be swallowed and controlled to, for example, patch a wound, and are experimenting with xenobots, programmable organisms made from frog stem cells that could deliver medicine. As pharmaceutical are innovating and competing in the growing pharmacy market planning, adapting, and investing for the future offers lucrative opportunities.

Browse our Ready to Dispatch Reports

Challenge

Low Margins for Pharmacy Owners Challenging Growth in Sales Value

Retail pharmacies are likely to face downward stresses on their profitability. Compensation is tightening and costs are on the rise for everything from wages to rent to more cumbersome certification and licensing requirements. In addition, medical stores have found themselves pushed to purchase new technology and products that can help keep them up to date and competitive. All this contributes to constantly shrinking margins that threaten long-term stability.

Market Segmentation

By Product Type

Prescription

OTC

By Pharmacy Type

Retail

E-pharmacy

By Application

Hospital-grade

Personal Use

By Geography

North America

Europe

Asia-Pacific

Latin America

Middle East & Africa (MEA)





Click Here to View Full Report Table of Contents

Buy this Premium Research Report@ https://www.precedenceresearch.com/checkout/1568

You can place an order or ask any questions, please feel free to contact at sales@precedenceresearch.com | +1 9197 992 333

About Us

Precedence Research is a worldwide market research and consulting organization. We give unmatched nature of offering to our customers present all around the globe across industry verticals. Precedence Research has expertise in giving deep-dive market insight along with market intelligence to our customers spread crosswise over various undertakings. We are obliged to serve our different client base present over the enterprises of medicinal services, healthcare, innovation, next-gen technologies, semi-conductors, chemicals, automotive, and aerospace & defense, among different ventures present globally.

For Latest Update Follow Us:

https://www.linkedin.com/company/precedence-research/

https://www.facebook.com/precedenceresearch/

https://twitter.com/Precedence_R
ISRAEL and NEW YORK, March 23, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- CGS, a global provider of business applications, enterprise learning and outsourcing services, today announced that it has appointed industry veteran Sam Netzer to the role of Country Manager for CGS Israel, a subsidiary of CGS, headquartered in the United States. Netzer brings more than 25 years experience in general management, international strategy and outsourcing expertise.



With optimized call center resources to serve global clients, CGS offers a unique hybrid approach through automation and live agents in its contact centers located in North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Its AI-enriched chatbot and RPA technologies complement the customer support services provided by thousands of multilingual call center agents. CGS supports many of the worlds industry-leading global brands from retail, hospitality, healthcare, technology and telecom. CGSs innovative, scalable and flexible business process outsourcing (BPO) solutions include technical and customer support, tele sales, channel enablement and back-office support.

"This is an exciting time and opportunity for me to lead the Israeli branch of a large international company that already provides an amazing service to a world-class roster of leading technology and consumer products companies, said Netzer. The outsourcing industry in the world and in Israel is undergoing significant change, with incredible opportunities to grow and further differentiate CGS from the competition by focusing on the highest level of customer service and satisfaction. Along with the entire Israeli team, Im thrilled to build upon our successes and look to significantly grow our client base in the region.

Steve Petruk, President for CGS Global Outsourcing division commented, We are proud to have Sam join the CGS team in Israel. His extensive delivery and solutions experience is a welcome addition as we grow through the development and delivery of innovative solutions.

Netzer is a technology and outsourcing services veteran, cited by industry analysts and experts as one of the pioneers in communications and telecom industry in Israel. Prior to joining CGS, Netzer was Founder and CEO of JAG, a consulting and project management company in the IOT/M2M, mobile and satellite industries. His background also includes being one of the founders of the 012 Gold Lines company, most recently holding the key position of vice president of global operations. Prior to that role, Netzer served as director of international services for Partner (formerly Orange) in Israel and has consulted for leaders, including Mobileye, Telit, Golan Telecom, XFONE and a host of regional technology start-ups.

Netzer received an MBA from Harriot-Watt University and bachelors degree in Political Science from Tel Aviv University. He also served in the Elite Army Intelligent unit for the Israeli Army service.

About CGS

For nearly 40 years, CGS has enabled global enterprises, regional companies, and government agencies to drive breakthrough performance through business applications, enterprise learning and outsourcing services. CGS is wholly focused on creating comprehensive solutions that meet clients complex, multi-dimensional needs and support clients' most fundamental business activities. Headquartered in New York City, CGS has offices across North America, South America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. For more information, please visit www.cgsinc.com and follow us on Twitter at @CGSinc and @BlueCherryCGS and on LinkedIn.

CGS Israel

For more information on CGS Israel, visit http://cgs.co.il and follow us on our regional LinkedIn page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/cgs-israel/

Media Contacts:

Mark D. Tullio (CGS Corporate)

newsroom@cgsinc.com

Oz Nava (CGS Israel)

oz.nava@cgsinc.com





A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/8a1077b9-4d66-483f-8ac6-1cbe9097b3f9




New York, March 23, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Dataiku, the platform for Everyday AI, today announced the appointment of tech veteran Adam Towns as Chief Financial Officer. Towns, who previously took Mimecast through its successful IPO and oversaw a 15-fold increase in revenue, joins a rapidly scaling company with 60% year-over-year ARR growth, surpassing $150M in ARR.

The demand will only continue to grow to empower anyone to run successful AI to make better decisions, solve complex problems, and run businesses more efficiently, said Towns. This massive market potential, combined with Dataikus already outstanding track record, culture, and team, made it an easy decision to come on board.

Before joining Dataiku, Towns served as the CFO of Sisense, where he led the companys global finance and business operations team. Before that, he was Senior VP of Strategic Finance and FP&A at Mimecast, managing the company through a successful IPO in 2015 and scaling the company globally from 100 employees and $30M in revenue to nearly 2,000 employees and over $500M in revenue.

Towns will lead Dataikus financial strategy and operations focused on scaling its already thriving business. He joins as the company has experienced remarkable momentum over the past year, with highlights including:

A $400M Series E funding round at a $4.6B valuation

Almost doubled headcount, hiring over 400 new employees across the globe. 40 percent of the new hires are women

Opened 11 new offices worldwide, including locations in Raleigh, N.C., Chicago, Ill., Frankfurt, Germany, and Shibuya, Japan

Introduced new and expanded partnerships with cloud industry leaders, launching in the Microsoft Azure Marketplace, Amazon Web Services Marketplace, and Google Cloud Marketplace while being recognized by Snowflake as Data Science Partner of the Year

Adam joins our company at the perfect time as AI breaks into the mainstream and we enter our next phase of growth, said Florian Douetteau, co-founder and CEO of Dataiku. His experience guiding a company through a period of hyper global expansion, combined with his passion for data analytics and emerging technologies, gives me tremendous confidence that Dataiku is set up for long-term success as we work together to empower our customers with Everyday AI.

About Dataiku

Dataiku is the platform for Everyday AI that allows companies to leverage one central solution to design, deploy, govern, and manage AI and analytics applications. Since its founding in 2013, the company has been the leader in democratizing data and empowering organization-wide collaboration. Today, more than 450 companies worldwide use Dataiku to integrate and streamline their use of data, analytics, and AI, driving diverse use cases from fraud detection and customer churn prevention, to predictive maintenance and supply chain optimization. Stay connected with us on our blog, Twitter (@dataiku) and on LinkedIn.

Attachment
New York, March 23, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Reportlinker.com announces the release of the report "Global and China Cobalt Industry Report, 2021-2026" - https://www.reportlinker.com/p04873771/?utm_source=GNW

Spurred by the sales boom of new energy vehicles and a rise in electricity of each vehicle, the demand from power batteries for cobalt has been growing steadily, while that from consumer batteries has plunged due to the COVID-19, resulting in global cobalt consumption with a year-on-year decrease of 0.6 % to 137,500 tons in 2020.



Although power battery cathode materials tend to feature high nickel and zero cobalt in the future, the unit cobalt consumption will edge down. With the explosive production and sales of new energy vehicle globally and the electricity increase per car, the global cobalt use in new energy vehicles will continue a bullish trend with an expected CAGR at least 30% by 2025. Benefiting from new trends like remote work and online education, the cobalt use in 3C consumer electronics is expected to grow stably or slightly. Besides, the cobalt used by cemented carbides and high-temperature alloys is projected to keep a CAGR of 3% to 4% driven by the high-end manufacturing.



Batteries are the largest consumer of cobalt with a share of about 57%, followed by nickel-based alloys with 14%.



On a regional basis, China is the largest and fastest-growing cobalt consumer, sweeping approximately 32% of global consumption in 2020 when the second-ranked Europe seized about 23% and the No.3 United States 18%.



The global cobalt resource reserves are roughly 7.1 million tons, as is revealed by the data from USGS. Congo-Kinshasa boasts the most abundant resources, with 3.6 million tons of cobalt reserves (nearly a half of the worlds total); the follower Australia has 1.4 million tons of cobalt resources as a percentage of about 20%; China holds about 80,000 tons of cobalt resources, sharing only 1.12% of the worlds total, and has to rely heavily on imports to meet its own demand annually.



Concerning output, the global cobalt metal output fell 6% year-on-year to about 145,000 tons in 2020, mainly because Mutanda, the worlds largest cobalt mine, was closed at the end of 2019. By country, Congo-Kinshasa took a lions share 66% of the global total with the output about 96,000 tons, while other countries had small shares like Australia 5%, Russia 4%, the Philippines 4%, Cuba 3%, Canada 3%, etc.



Notably, Glencore became the worlds largest cobalt ore manufacturer in 2020 by 31,800 tons as a percentage of 23.7% of the worlds total, followed by China Molybdenum Co., Ltd. (CMOC) (which acquired cobalt ore resources from Freeport-McMoRan in 2017) 11.2% and Vale 3.3%.



Glencore, headquartered in Baar, Switzerland, is the worlds largest commodity trader, dedicates itself to the production and marketing of metals & minerals, energy products and agricultural products. Its metals & minerals mainly include copper, zinc, cobalt, lead, nickel, ferrochrome, gold, silver, etc., among which zinc, cobalt and copper are the fields where Glencore remains superior. Glencore owns the Mutanda Mine and Katanga Mining as its core cobalt assets. The Mutanda Mine is an open-pit copper mine in the Katanga Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Katanga Mining operates a major mine complex in the Congos Katanga Province, producing refined copper and cobalt. The Mutanda Mine ceased production in late 2019. Katanga Mining resumed production in early 2018. Also, Glencore possesses INO (Integrated Nickel Operations) in Canada and Murrin Murrin (100%) in Australia.



Headquartered in Luoyang city, China, CMOC is devoted to the mining, smelting, deep processing, trade and scientific research of rare and noble metals such as molybdenum, tungsten and gold. In 2016, CMOC acquired an 80% stake in Tenke Fungrume Mining (TFM), a copper-cobalt mine owned by Freeport-McMoRan in the United States for US$2.65 billion. The mines cobalt output was about 15,000 tons in 2020. On December 31, 2020, CMOC acquired a 95% indirect interest in the Kisanfu copper-cobalt mine in Congo-Kinshasa from Freeport-McMoRan for US$550 million; the Congo-Kinshasa government holds the rest 5% in the mine. In April 2021, CMOC signed a "Strategic Cooperation Agreement" with Brunp Times, an indirect holding company of CATL, allowing Brunp Times to acquire a 25% stake in KFM at a total consideration of US$137.5 million through its wholly-owned subsidiary Hongkong Brunp and CATL Co., Limited. As yet, the mine has not been put into production. According to the latest estimates, the average grade of cobalt in the mine is about 0.85%, and the amount of cobalt-containing metals hits about 3.1 million tons.



Global and China Cobalt Industry Report, 2018-2023 highlights the following:



The cobalt industry (definition, classifications, development trends, industry policies, etc.);

Global cobalt industry (reserves, output, demand, and competitive landscape, etc.);

Chinas cobalt industry (output, demand, import and export, competitive landscape, etc.);

Output, sales volume, import and export, etc. of global and Chinese cobalt segments;

The cobalt application market, covering lithium batteries, high temperature metals, hard metals, magnetic materials, etc.;

18 cobalt-related manufacturers in the world and China, including Glencore, Umicore, Vale, Freeport, CMOC, Huayou Cobalt, GEM, Jinchuan, etc. (profiles, financials, output, sales volume, hit products, production base distribution and the latest dynamics).

Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p04873771/?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.



__________________________
British Virgin Island, BVI, March 23, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- DewVPN is a peer-to-peer VPN that enables a community of users to pool and route their internet connections through each other by sharing idle resources.

DewVPN is 100% free for private (non-commercial) use. You'll have access to all the functions of the app and enjoy unlimited bandwidth, speed and location switching on all our servers - Everything is unlimited. Users will have full access to all the functions of the app and enjoy unlimited bandwidth, speed and location switching on all the available servers, all for free of charge.

For commercial use of DewVPN for corporations or some users may prefer not to contribute their idle resources to the community-powered network, and can pay for the DewVPN Premium Subscription.

Some notable and impressive features of DewVPN are accessing any content, even geo-restricted contents, get global internet access from over 50 countries, enjoy ultra-fast speed, zero logging, 256-bit encryption to protect data, IP address masking, DNS leak protection, IPv6 leak protection,WebRTC leak protection, split tunneling.

DewVPN's core mission is to keep users information private. They employ top-of-the-line military-grade 256-bit encryption to protect users data, and keep their real IP address safely hidden while browsing the internet with complete privacy.

In service of this mission, DewVPNs headquarters and registered place of business is in the British Virgin Islands (BVI), which has stricter laws concerning information disclosure than most countries.

The BVI has no data retention laws, and any legal order requiring a BVI company to disclose customer records must come from the BVI Supreme Court. Under BVI law, information requests from foreign courts or law enforcement are subject to a "dual criminality" provision, meaning that the request is upheld by the BVI Supreme Court only if the same crime is punishable by at least a one-year prison sentence under BVI law, had it taken place in the BVI.

For more information on how DewVPN encrypts internet connection and more of its useful features, please visit https://www.dewvpn.com/.

About DewVPN

DewVPN is one of the best free VPN available with unlimited time, bandwidth, ultra-fast speed and location switching. DewVPN provides free VPN services for different lifestyles such as gaming or travelling, for different platforms and for apps such as Netflix, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and more. The VPN services are free and enables a community of users to pool and route their internet connections through each other by sharing idle resources.

Media Details:

Name: DewVPN

Email: sp@dewvpn.com

City: British Virgin Island, BVI

Country: USA



There is no offer to sell, no solicitation of an offer to buy, and no recommendation of any medical related or any other product or service in this article. It is your responsibility to determine whether any investment, purchase, or related transaction is appropriate for you based on your objectives, circumstances, and risk tolerance. Consult your medical advisor, attorney, or medical professionals regarding your specific medical situation.Newsroom: abrelease.submitmypressrelease.com

Attachment
Companies Mentioned in the Report: Chevron Phillips Chemical Company LLC, ENI S.p.A., INEOS Styrolution Holding Ltd., Saudi Basic Industries Corp. (SABIC), Total S.A., The Dow Chemical Company, Americas Styrenics, LG Chem, E & T Plastics Mfg. Co., SAE Manufacturing Specialties Corp, Hydrite Chemical Co., Transcendia, Plastic Products, Polyscope Polymers North America, Kind Chemical, Nova Chemicals Corp., Deltech Corp., Progressive Plastics, Westlake Chemical Corp., Deltech Polymers Corp., Hanwha International LLC, Lotte Advanced Materials



NEW YORK, March 23, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- IndexBox has just published a new report: 'World  Styrene - Market Analysis, Forecast, Size, Trends and Insights' . Here is a summary of the report's key findings.

Styrene Market Statistics

Imports 7,752.9 Million USD Exports 6,878.5 Million USD Top Importers China, India, South Korea Top Exporters U.S., Saudi Arabia, Netherlands

Styrene Market Size

In 2021, the global styrene market decreased by -X% to $X, falling for the second year in a row after three years of growth. Overall, consumption showed a slight slump. The most prominent rate of growth was recorded in 2010 when the market value increased by X% year-to-year. Global consumption peaked at $X in 2013; however, from 2014 to 2021, consumption failed to regain the momentum. REQUEST FREE DATA

Styrene Production

In value terms, styrene production shrank to $X in 2021 estimated in export prices. Over the period under review, production saw a slight decline. The pace of growth was the most pronounced in 2010 when the production volume increased by X% against the previous year. Global production peaked at $X in 2013; however, from 2014 to 2021, production remained at a lower figure. REQUEST FREE DATA

Production By Country

The countries with the highest volumes of styrene production in 2021 were the U.S. (X tonnes), the Netherlands (X tonnes) and China (X tonnes), with a combined X% share of global production. Saudi Arabia, India, Japan, Canada, Indonesia, Pakistan, Russia, Spain, Italy and the UK lagged somewhat behind, together comprising a further X 2007 to 2021, the biggest increases were in Russia, while styrene production for the other global leaders experienced more modest paces of growth. REQUEST FREE DATA

Styrene Exports

Exports

In 2021, shipments abroad of styrene increased by X% to X tonnes, rising for the second year in a row after five years of decline. Overall, exports, however, showed a relatively flat trend pattern. The pace of growth appeared the most rapid in 2009 when exports increased by X% y-o-y. Global exports peaked at X tonnes in 2013; however, from 2014 to 2021, exports failed to regain the momentum.

In value terms, styrene exports dropped remarkably to $X in 2021. Over the period under review, exports, however, continue to indicate a pronounced curtailment. The growth pace was the most rapid in 2010 when exports increased by X% against the previous year. Over the period under review, global exports attained the peak figure at $X in 2013; however, from 2014 to 2021, exports failed to regain the momentum.

Exports by Country

In 2021, the U.S. (X tonnes), distantly followed by Saudi Arabia (X tonnes), the Netherlands (X tonnes), South Korea (X tonnes), Japan (X tonnes), Canada (X tonnes), Singapore (X tonnes) and Kuwait (X tonnes) represented the key exporters of styrene, together committing X% of total exports.

From 2007 to 2021, the biggest increases were in Kuwait (+X% per year), while shipments for the other global leaders experienced more modest paces of growth.

In value terms, the U.S. ($X), Saudi Arabia ($X) and the Netherlands ($X) appeared to be the countries with the highest levels of exports in 2021, together accounting for X% of global exports. These countries were followed by South Korea, Japan, Kuwait, Singapore and Canada, which together accounted for a further X (+X% per year) saw the highest rates of growth with regard to the value of exports, among the main exporting countries over the period under review, while shipments for the other global leaders experienced mixed trends in the exports figures.

Export Prices by Country

The average styrene export price stood at $X per tonne in 2021, declining by -X% against the previous year. Over the period under review, the export price continues to indicate a perceptible contraction. The most prominent rate of growth was recorded in 2017 an increase of X% y-o-y. Over the period under review, average export prices hit record highs at $X per tonne in 2013; however, from 2014 to 2021, export prices failed to regain the momentum.

Average prices varied noticeably amongst the major exporting countries. In 2021, major exporting countries recorded the following prices: in Kuwait ($X per tonne) and Japan ($X per tonne), while the U.S. ($X per tonne) and Saudi Arabia ($X per tonne) were amongst the lowest.

From 2007 to 2021, the most notable rate of growth in terms of prices was attained by Saudi Arabia, while the other global leaders experienced a decline in the export price figures.

Styrene Imports

Imports

In 2021, supplies from abroad of styrene increased by X% to X tonnes, rising for the second consecutive year after two years of decline. Over the period under review, imports showed a relatively flat trend pattern. The most prominent rate of growth was recorded in 2010 when imports increased by X% against the previous year. As a result, imports reached the peak of X tonnes. from 2011 to 2021, the growth of global imports failed to regain the momentum.

In value terms, styrene imports contracted dramatically to $X in 2021. In general, imports saw a perceptible slump. The pace of growth appeared the most rapid in 2010 when imports increased by X% y-o-y. Over the period under review, global imports hit record highs at $X in 2013; however, from 2014 to 2021, imports failed to regain the momentum.

Imports by Country

China was the major importer of styrene in the world, with the volume of imports recording X tonnes, which was near X% of total imports in 2021. It was distantly followed by South Korea (X tonnes), Mexico (X tonnes), India (X tonnes), Belgium (X tonnes), the U.S. (X tonnes) and Turkey (X tonnes), together generating a X% share of total imports. The following importers - Germany (X tonnes), the Netherlands (X tonnes), Taiwan (Chinese) (X tonnes), France (X tonnes), Hong Kong SAR (X tonnes) and Brazil (X tonnes) - together shaped X% of total imports.

China experienced a relatively flat trend pattern with regard to volume of imports of styrene. At the same time, Turkey (+X%), India (+X%), Mexico (+X%), Brazil (+X%) and South Korea (+X%) displayed positive paces of growth. Moreover, Turkey emerged as the fastest-growing importer imported in the world, with a CAGR of +X% from 2007-2021. The Netherlands and Germany experienced a relatively flat trend pattern. By contrast, Belgium (-X%), the U.S. (-X%), Hong Kong SAR (-X%), France (-X%) and Taiwan (Chinese) (-X%) illustrated a downward trend over the same period. While the share of Turkey (+X p.p.), India (+X p.p.) and Mexico (+X p.p.) increased significantly in terms of the global imports from 2007-2021, the share of Taiwan (Chinese) (-X p.p.) and China (-X p.p.) displayed negative dynamics. The shares of the other countries remained relatively stable throughout the analyzed period.

In value terms, China ($X) constitutes the largest market for imported styrene worldwide, comprising X% of global imports. The second position in the ranking was occupied by India ($X), with a X% share of global imports. It was followed by South Korea, with a X% share.

In China, styrene imports shrank by an average annual rate of -X% over the period from 2007-2021. In the other countries, the average annual rates were as follows: India (+X% per year) and South Korea (-X% per year).

Import Prices by Country

The average styrene import price stood at $X per tonne in 2021, shrinking by -X% against the previous year. Over the period under review, the import price recorded a perceptible downturn. The pace of growth appeared the most rapid in 2017 an increase of X% year-to-year. Over the period under review, average import prices hit record highs at $X per tonne in 2013; however, from 2014 to 2021, import prices stood at a somewhat lower figure.

Average prices varied noticeably amongst the major importing countries. In 2021, major importing countries recorded the following prices: in India ($X per tonne) and France ($X per tonne), while the Netherlands ($X per tonne) and the U.S. ($X per tonne) were amongst the lowest.

From 2007 to 2021, the most notable rate of growth in terms of prices was attained by Brazil, while the other global leaders experienced a decline in the import price figures.

About IndexBox

IndexBox is a market research firm developing an AI-driven market intelligence platform that helps business analysts find actionable insights and make data-driven decisions. The platform provides data on consumption, production, trade, and prices for more than 10K+ different products across 200 countries.

For more information, please visit

Website https://www.indexbox.io

Twitter https://twitter.com/indexbox

YouTube https://www.youtube.com/IndexBox

LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/indexbox-marketing/

Product Coverage

Styrene.

Related Links

Styrene Market

Polystyrene Market

Expansible Polystyrene Market

Non-Cellular Polystyrene Films, Sheets, Foil and Strip Market

Styrene-Acrylonitrile Copolymers Market
San Francisco, California, March 23, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- AstroGen, a visionary user-friendly, Generative NFT Launchpad has been unveiled, built by AstroVerse Collective, a team aiming to build their own mini-ecosystem of products on the NEAR network. AstroGen aims to be a lifeboat for traditional and non-traditional artists planning to launch NFTs by giving them full control and ownership of their NFT collection.

Any artist from all around the globe can apply. Head over to their website to apply and the team will look over and review the application. AstroGen welcomes artists of all different styles and types. To ensure quality control, launching on AstroGen is currently by application only. The minting revenue AstroGen receives is 10%. Of this 10%, 50% of it goes to AstroGen and the other 50% goes to NearNauts NFT holders.

What is NearNauts NFT ?

NearNauts is a community-driven collection of 7777 PFP NFTs built on the Near Network consisting of randomly generated Nauts with varying traits and rarity.

NEARNauts aims to pioneer the NFT space on NEAR, by growing a completely organic, loyal community around the project. By entering the NEARNauts family, you are climbing aboard what aims to be the most sought after, rewarding club in the NEAR Ecosystem.

The core team consists of Ted (the founder) with a background in design and development and a natural affinity for NFTs, hence NEARNauts was born. The resident artist Goose, is an NFT artist who was acquainted with the founder on twitter. Donny, the head marketer - who has a long history in cryptocurrency and marketing. Putting his passions together for NFTs and blockchain technology, he stepped up to the NEARNauts team to help bring eyes to the project. These visionaries teamed up with the intention of bringing an NFT project with a never before seen style of artwork, with every aspect being absolutely original.

Of course, there's still more to this project. The project has a well planned-out roadmap and a long-term utility. The NearNauts Ecosystem currently has two phases. Phase 1, which was completed last year Q4 2021 consisted of Marketing Phase 1, Community Engagement, Vigorous Testnet, Testing Main net launch and Live Minting. Phase 2, which is still ongoing, consists of Community DAO, Marketing Phase 2, Continued Community Engagement, First Phase of Community Project Direction, and Further Development.

For long-term utility, NearNauts holders will get rewarded with 50% of the 10% revenue share that AstroGen gets from each NFT that builds, creates, and releases in their launchpad. "AstroGen (NearNauts) is for anyone who is looking to learn, connect, invest in a utility-driven NFT and wants a genuine project that truly delivers ," said Norah Brooks

Closing Remarks:

NFTs are truly this generations gold rush, AstroGens NFT launchpad aims to provide the shovel and impact the lives of artists by giving them full control of their collection. AstroGen is doing things right. Other reputable NFT project creators who have had their assets sell out within minutes have stated how impressed they were after spending time in AstroGen (NearNauts) Discord.

Without a doubt, AstroGen (NearNauts) has the great potential of becoming the world's leading-edge generative NFT launchpad . To learn more about the project, make sure to check out the official website.

Meanwhile, those interested in joining the growing community can follow the project via Twitter (12.3k followers), and Paras.Id (1972 NFT holders).

In addition, the AstroGen (NearNauts) Discord channel is a great place to learn, connect, and grow alongside other holders who believe in the project's vision.

Website: https://nearnauts.io



Discord: https://discord.com/invite/t8d8xdPsJm



Twitter: https://twitter.com/nearnauts

Media Details:



Name: NearNauts

Email: astroverseholdings@gmail.com

City: San Francisco, California

Country: USA

There is no offer to sell, no solicitation of an offer to buy, and no recommendation of any medical related or any other product or service in this article. It is your responsibility to determine whether any investment, purchase, or related transaction is appropriate for you based on your objectives, circumstances, and risk tolerance. Consult your medical advisor, attorney, or medical professionals regarding your specific medical situation. Newsroom: abrelease.submitmypressrelease.com

Attachment
SAN DIEGO, March 23, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- As demand increases for ASTERRAs Earth observation technology, the company continues to add jobs and has expanded to a new larger location within San Diego. The new space allows for continued growth and is positioned close to UC San Diego in the University City area.



The new location for ASTERRAs North American headquarters accommodates the needs of the many existing and new members of our team. Its central location offers more options for employees and guests, said Executive Vice President James Perry. The newly completed trolley extension, upgraded Westfield UTC mall and restaurants, and being situated at the intersection of three main highways, are all benefits.

ASTERRAs products use synthetic aperture radar (SAR) from space-based satellites and their patented, artificial intelligence-powered algorithm to determine the locations of subsurface moisture, contributing to the global effort of sustainability. Since 2017, the ASTERRA Recover product has saved over 169,280 million gallons of potable water, and the MasterPlan and EarthWorks products are used for infrastructure monitoring in multiple verticals.

Recently, Recover was awarded the innovation award by the American Water Works Association and it was used in Toyota City, Japan, where a similar award was presented by the Japanese Water Works Association. ASTERRA is currently undertaking a project in conjunction with the San Diego County Water Authority.

In April, ASTERRA will report on findings and positive outcomes realized by a California Energy Commission water leak detection study when Perry serves on a panel discussion in San Diego at the P3 Water Summit. We are pleased that these water industry experts will gather to stress the importance of bringing innovation through public-private partnerships to the water industry, said Perry. The state of California were real trailblazers in funding the study of water innovations for the sole purpose of saving electricity.

The new ASTERRA office is located at 4180 La Jolla Village Drive in San Diego. A grand opening open house is planned for fall of 2022.

ABOUT ASTERRA

ASTERRA (formerly Utilis) provides data-driven solutions for water utilities, government agencies, and the greater infrastructure industry in the areas of roads, rails, dams, and mines. ASTERRA products use synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data from satellites and turns this data into large-scale decision support tools. The companys proprietary algorithms and highly educated scientists and engineers are the key to their mission, to deliver actionable intelligence to advance Earths resource resilience. Since 2017, ASTERRA technology has been used in over 59 countries, saving over 169,280 million gallons of potable water, reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 108,339 metric tons, and saving 423,200 MWH of energy, all in support of United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. ASTERRA is headquartered in Israel with offices in the United States, United Kingdom, and Japan. Their innovative data solutions are used in multiple verticals around the globe. ASTERRA is investing in artificial intelligence (AI) to bring their products to the next level. For more information on ASTERRA and to learn more about their technology, visit https://asterra.io.

Media Contact

Karen Dubey

Corporate Marketing Director

inquiry@asterra.io

(858) 798-6709

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/6d157357-44f3-4c38-b5dc-b1e10d5cbaca
UNITED NATIONS, March 23 (Xinhua) -- The 15-member UN Security Council on Wednesday failed to adopt a resolution on the humanitarian situation in Ukraine.

Two members (Russia and China) voted in favor of the text and 13 others abstained. The text submitted by Russia was rejected.

A Security Council resolution needs at least nine votes in favor and no vetoes by Russia, China, Britain, France or the United States to be adopted.

Russia's draft resolution expresses grave concern about reports of civilian casualties and the deteriorating humanitarian situation in and around Ukraine, including the growing number of internally displaced persons and refugees. The draft text also calls for the protection of civilians, including humanitarian and medical personnel, respect for international law and the protection of civilian objects and critical infrastructure, safe and unhindered evacuation of all civilians, and unhindered humanitarian access in Ukraine.

The council has held three briefings on the humanitarian situation in Ukraine since the conflict erupted, respectively on Feb. 28, March 7 and March 17. 
Washington, March 23, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- New Frontier Data (https://newfrontierdata.com), the premier data, analytics and technology firm specializing in the global cannabis industry, in partnership with FTI Consulting, releases its annual market update, the 2022 U.S. Cannabis Report: Industry Projections & Trends, which provides expert analysis of the drivers shaping the U.S. cannabis economy including potential state market activations, consumption trends, product innovation and sustainability efforts.

The report projects annual U.S. legal cannabis sales to exceed $57 billion by 2030 (a CAGR of 14%) in current legal states, and if the 18 additional state markets poised to legalize activate, this figure would top $72 billion. Overall growth is fueled by convergent forces including strong consumer demand and an influx of newly operational legal state markets in recent years. Additionally, more adults are consuming cannabis regularly amid normalization and increasing societal recognition of the plants therapeutic and wellness applications.

The seismic shift in public perception around cannabis is fueled in part by the growing exposure that Americans have through legal, regulated markets, said Gary Allen, New Frontier Datas CEO. Even in the absence of a federal framework, the resilience and growth potential of a determined industry is laying the foundation for a safe and sustainable consumer category.

Other Key Findings:

Self-reported usage rates have risen sharply since 2012, and if sustained, the number of U.S. consumers will grow from 47 million in 2020 to 71 million by 2030.

U.S. medical markets continue to expand, with the number of registered patients forecast to increase to 5.7 million in 2030 (1.6% of the adult population).

Assuming legalization in all 18 potential markets by 2030, 47% of total demand would be met by legal cannabis purchases, up from 27% in 2021, indicating continued disruption of illicit markets.

Despite strong state-level momentum, the near-term prospects for federal reform are dim, but a limited measure, like cannabis banking reform, is possible following the 2022 mid-term elections.

Download a complimentary copy of 2022 U.S. Cannabis Report: Industry Projections & Trends: https://info.newfrontierdata.com/us-cannabis-2022.

About New Frontier Data:

New Frontier Data is the premier data, analytics and technology firm specializing in the global cannabis industry, delivering solutions that enable investors, operators, advertisers, brands, researchers and policy makers to assess, understand, engage and transact with the cannabis industry and its consumers.

Our mission is to inform policy and commercial activity for the global legal cannabis industry. We maintain a neutral position on the merits of cannabis legalization through comprehensive and transparent data analysis and projections that shape industry trends, dynamics, demand and opportunity drivers. Founded in 2014, New Frontier Data is headquartered in Washington, D.C. with a presence in Europe, Latin America and Africa. For more information about New Frontier Data, please visit us at https//www.NewFrontierData.com.

Attachment
WASHINGTON, March 23, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The official wreath-laying at the United States Air Force Memorial marks the start of the 2022 Tuskegee Airmen Commemoration Day, celebrating the 81st Anniversary of the Airmen tomorrow, on Thursday, March 24. Tuskegee Airmen Commemoration Day, recognized annually on the fourth Thursday in March, honors the accomplishments of these Airmen and pays tribute to the "Lonely Eagles" on this momentous occasion, The East Coast Chapter Tuskegee Airmen, Inc. will celebrate these heroic patriots and acknowledge the national service of Brigadier General Charles McGee and General Colin Powell.

"I believe Tuskegee Airmen Commemoration Day is as important as many of the nation's holidays and recognition days on the calendar and is essential to the legacy. Like many holidays, the struggle to get Tuskegee Airmen Commemoration Day on state calendars is dependent on individual states and not the accomplishments of the more than 15,000 Original Tuskegee Airmen," said Jerry 'Hawk' Burton, National President, Tuskegee Airmen Incorporated.

This year's theme: "The Legacy of the Tuskegee Airmen Continues: Black Excellence Rising to New Heights" embodies the spirit of distinction of these noble men and women; captures how their enduring legacy inspires the next generation of scholars. The Commemoration Day Tribute and Fundraiser will be hosted virtually later in the evening of Thursday, March 24 at 7 pm ET. The goal is to generate awareness about the Tuskegee Airmen and raise funds to preserve the mission of motivating, inspiring and stimulating young people's minds to achieve successful careers in the STEM, aeronautics, and aerospace arena.

Veteran journalist Maureen Bunyan will serve as the mistress of ceremonies for this fundraising tribute, highlighting recently signed proclamations. Special guest appearances will include Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch, Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, Rear Admiral Arthur Johnson (Ret.), members of General Colin Powell's and Brigadier General Charles McGee's families, and national President Jerry Burton.

The Commemoration Day committee can be reached at commemorationday@ecctai.org or call Vanessa Butler, Strategic Partnership and Engagement, at 571-534-7466.

About ECCTAI

The East Coast Chapter Tuskegee Airmen Incorporated (ECCTAI) is the oldest and largest chapter. ECCTAI serves as the host for this annual Commemoration Day in the nation's Capital. To learn more about funding our programs, to register or donate, visit us at www.ECCTAI.org or www.ECCTAIcommemoration.com.

Related Images











Image 1: East Coast Chapter Tuskegee Airmen Inc.





Lonely Eagle









This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com.

Attachment
An Emerging Markets Sponsored Commentary



ORLANDO, Fla., March 23, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Its funny, just a few years ago small and micro cap stocks were considered the Wild West, these volatile, mercurial investments.

Weve published previously about SPYR Technologies (OTCQB:SPYR), which offers a real product line that people can use to improve their lives via enhanced connectivity to their electronics. SPYR, you see, is a technology company that through its wholly-owned subsidiary, Applied Magix, Inc., operates in the Internet of Things (IoT) market, and develops and resells Apple ecosystem compatible products with an emphasis on the growing smart home market. SPYR continues to identify and target acquisitions that potentially will grow its footprint in the industry and expand the products it offers consumers, including companies developing artificial intelligence (AI) and smart-technology products.

Adding to the appeal of SPYR is the Companys proactive decision to create an independent Advisory Board. As veterans of the small cap space for decades, pre-dot com if were being specific, we can tell you that we absolutely LOVE when young companies start Advisory boards. It potentially provides a window into the Companys future potential and adds to the talent pool.

For us, it foremost assigns credibility to the Company. The board member is attaching their name and reputation to the Company, which will potentially enhance its profile and provide a valuable addition to its business.

Already, SPYR and Applied Magix have added Fred Tio, former senior creative director of Worldwide Marcom, Apple Inc., to the Applied Magix advisory board as well as Michael Teitelbaum, senior brand integrity manager at Jazwares.

Again, these are industry veterans with their own rolodexes and relationships, with time earned experience that is now available to SPYR and Applied Magix. And more than anything, in a world of choices, these technology pros have chosen to join the SPYR and Applied Magix team.

For more on SPYR and Applied Magix:

https://spyr.com/

https://appliedmagix.com/

About The Emerging Markets Report:

The Emerging Markets Report is owned and operated by Emerging Markets Consulting (EMC), a syndicate of investor relations consultants representing years of experience. Our network consists of stockbrokers, investment bankers, fund managers, and institutions that actively seek opportunities in the micro and small-cap equity markets.

For more informative reports such as this, please sign up at https://emergingmarketsconsulting.com/

Must Read OTC Markets/SEC policy on stock promotion and investor protection

Section 17(b) of the Securities Act of 1933 requires that any person that uses the mails to publish, give publicity to, or circulate any publication or communication that describes a security in return for consideration received or to be received directly or indirectly from an issuer, underwriter, or dealer, must fully disclose the type of consideration (i.e. cash, free trading stock, restricted stock, stock options, stock warrants) and the specific amount of the consideration. In connection therewith, EMC has received the following compensation and/or has an agreement to receive in the future certain compensation, as described below.

EMC has been paid $150,000 by SPYR, Inc. for various marketing services including this report. EMC does not independently verify any of the content linked-to from this editorial. https://emergingmarketsconsulting.com/disclaimer/

Emerging Markets Consulting, LLC

Florida Office

390 N Orange Ave. Suite 2300

Orlando, FL 32801

E-mail: jamespainter@emergingmarketsllc.com

Web: https://emergingmarketsconsulting.com/
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, March 23, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Reservoir Capital Corp. (CSE: REO) ("REO" or the "Company") announced today that the cease trade order issued by the British Columbia Securities Commission and the Ontario Securities Commission on August 4, 2021 for failure to file financial statements and other continuous disclosure documentation has now been revoked. The required continuous disclosure documents of the Company have now been filed and are available for review by interested parties on the SEDAR filing system.



About Reservoir Capital Corp.

REOs asset portfolio comprises minority indirect economic interests in clean power assets (currently 4 hydro power plants) representing 46.3MW of net operating capacity.

REOs Vision & Mission is to assemble a balanced portfolio of producing and near-production clean energy assets (with a current focus on Hydro & Geothermal) in growing economies (with a current focus on Africa).

REOs strategy to achieve its Vision is to approach shareholders of privately held quality assets and offer them diversification, liquidity and exposure to a growing portfolio assembled following a disciplined investment policy.

REOs investment policy consists essentially in taking carefully selected minority economic interests in quality clean power assets in key geographies, targeting regular dividend income over long periods, while offering the potential for capital gain in the medium term.

Further Information

For more information on the Company, please visit www.reservoircapitalcorp.com. Investors are cautioned that trading in the securities of REO should be considered highly speculative. Additional information on these and other factors that could affect the operations or financial results of REO are included in REO's CSE Listing Statement and most recently filed quarterly report, each of which is filed with applicable Canadian securities regulators and may be accessed through the SEDAR website (www.sedar.com). The CSE have neither approved nor disapproved the contents of this news release.

For any clarification, one may contact:

Lewis Reford

CEO, Reservoir Capital Corp.

Telephone: 416-399-2274

Email: ceo@reservoircap.team

NEITHER THE CSE NOR THE INVESTMENT INDUSTRY REGULATORY ORGANIZATION OF CANADA ACCEPTS RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS RELEASE.
Toronto, Ontario, March 23, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Advocis, The Financial Advisors Association of Canada, applauds the Minister of Finance for approving FSRAs Financial Professionals Title Protection Rule. The Rules, and related guidance, will come into effect once the related legislation has been proclaimed into force on March 28, 2022.

This initiative creates minimum standards for individuals using the Financial Planner and Financial Advisor titles, so that consumers can have confidence that the individual they are dealing with has a minimum standard of education, is being actively supervised by an approved credentialing body and is subject to a complaints and discipline process. It will also offer consumers greater clarity by minimizing confusion around the wide array of titles and credentials being used in the financial services marketplace.

Individuals using the Financial Planner or Financial Advisor title will need to hold an approved credential from a FSRA-approved credentialing body. Advocis has applied to become a FSRA-approved credentialing body and submitted the Professional Financial Advisor (PFA) credential for use of the Financial Advisor and Financial Planner title, and the Chartered Life Underwriter (CLU) credential for use of the Financial Planner title in Ontario.

This is an important step forward in raising the professional bar for our members and clients. Not only will this help strengthen consumer confidence in choosing who to partner with, but will also help promote consistency and professionalism among those individuals using the titles, says Greg Pollock, President and CEO of Advocis.

FSRAs approach to Financial Planner and Financial Advisor title protection leverages existing requirements already administered by licensing and professional designation bodies, which mitigates duplication of regulatory requirements on individual title users. This initiative will also be phased in over time. FSRAs transition periods  four years for Financial Planners and two years for Financial Advisors  provide individuals who were using these titles prior to and on January 1, 2020 ample time to comply with the framework following its implementation. This chart can help Financial Planners and Financial Advisors determine if the transition period applies to them.

For more information on the implementation of Financial Planner and Financial Advisor title protection in Ontario, including FSRAs Financial Professionals Title Protection Rule and related Guidance, transition periods and titles covered, visit FSRAs Industry page.

About Advocis

Advocis, The Financial Advisors Association of Canada, is the largest voluntary professional membership association of financial advisors in Canada, representing more than 17,000 member-clients and 40 Chapters across the country. Advocis has a code of professional conduct, continuing education requirements, best practices, and a disciplinary process.
Dallas, Texas, March 23, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Puration, Inc. (OTC Pink: PURA) today revealed its vision for connecting the carbon sequestering benefit of hemp cultivation to income opportunities for hemp growers monetized through cryptocurrency.

Hemp is a carbon sequestering heavyweight, one of the most carbon-gobbling crops in agriculture. On average, an acre of hemp sequesters about 11,000 pounds, or 5 metric tons of CO2 throughout photosynthesis during its growth cycle, according to New Frontier Data. ( Lets Talk Hemp )

Work is already under way to create a recognized CO2 measurement standard for hemp cultivation  learn more .

At least one cryptocurrency backed by carbon credits has also already been created.

PURA believes connecting a CO2 standardized measurement for the carbon sequestered by hemp with a cryptocurrency that represents the carbon credit value of the sequestered carbon can create meaningful income for hemp growers that adds to the income generated from selling hemp fiber and extracts.

It was not long ago that Tesla added carbon credit sales to its auto sales to generate its first profit, commented Brian Shibley, CEO of PURA. Certainly, hemp farmers should be eligible to take advantage of this same opportunity.

PURA has implemented a strategy to disrupt major global markets with the introduction of hemp-based alternatives that contribute to carbon neutral objectives.

Under its new Farmersville Hemp Brand, PURA is working to introduce hemp as a multi-industry disruptor that can be a base of a better product or service contributing notably to the 2050 sustainability objectives. PURA recently announced a strategy targeted at disrupting the $600 billion global lumber market and the $200 billion steel rebar market .

PURA has initiated construction on a facility in Farmersville, Texas where the company will conduct consultative education customized for each corporate customer to hands on demonstrate how hemp can be utilized to improve the efficiency of existing products and services and meet 2050 sustainability targets.

Read the companys latest comprehensive update on PURAs Farmersville Hemp Brand rollout .

For more information on Puration, visit http://www.purationinc.com

Disclaimer:

This News Release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other important factors that could cause our actual results, performance or achievements, or industry results, to differ materially from any these statements. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on any those forward-looking statements. Except as otherwise required by the federal securities laws, we undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements after the date of this news release. None of such forward-looking statements should be regarded as a representation by us or any other person that the objectives and plans set forth in this News Release will be achieved or be executed.
CALGARY, Alberta, March 23, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Today the Canada Energy Regulator (CER) released full details of its $100,000 Administrative Monetary Penalty (AMP) to Trans-Northern Pipelines Inc. (TNPI). The company did not apply to the Commission of the CER for approval before conducting decommissioning activities at their Mirabel Metering Station in Mirabel, Quebec, as required by section 45.1 of the Onshore Pipeline Regulations (OPR). TNPI did not request a review of the AMP and has paid the full amount.



This AMP was associated with other non-compliance issues related to TNPIs decommissioning activities. CER Inspection Officers observed these non-compliances in 2020 and 2021. Immediate safety and compliance issues were addressed at the time by the Inspection Officers by an Inspection Officer Order (IOO) LMR-001-2021.

On May 18, 2021, CER Inspection Officers observed that TNPI had permanently stopped operations meeting the definition for decommissioning at the Mirabel Metering Station without the approval of the Commission. Decommissioning is when a company shuts down the operation of a pipeline, but service is still provided through other pipelines owned by the operator. CER compliance verification activities at the deactivated Mirabel Lateral Pipeline and the Mirabel Station identified that TNPI had performed some decommissioning activities at Mirabel Station, such as removing buildings and a sump tank in 2008 and 2011.

TNPI has satisfied the measures of the IOO, and the CER continues its oversight of the decommissioned facility and associated pipeline maintained in a deactivated state. As part of their decommissioning project at the Mirabel station, all above-ground equipment and underground infrastructure have been removed.

Enforcement actions are a way for the CER to bring regulated companies back into compliance, promote future compliance with CER acts and regulations, and prevent harm to people and the environment. An AMP is only one tool in the CERs enforcement toolkit. Other enforcement tools available to the CER include Notices of Non-Compliance, IOOs, Safety Orders, and revocation of a companys authorization to operate.

Quick Facts

This is the third AMP issued to TNPI in the past three years. TNPI was issued an AMP in 2021 for failing to have an adequate environmental protection program, particularly related to contaminated sites, as required by section 48 of the OPR (AMP-001-2021).

TNPI was also issued an AMP in 2020 for failing to ensure maintenance activities were conducted as stated in their company manual, as per section 29 of the OPR (AMP-001-2020).

An AMP is a financial penalty the CER can issue to companies or individuals for not being in compliance with the CER Act, regulations, decisions, permits, orders, licenses, or certificate conditions intended to keep people safe or protect the environment.

The maximum daily penalty for an AMP is $100,000 for companies. If an issue is recurring, there is no limit to how many consecutive days that fine can be implemented. There is no total limit to how much an individual or company can be fined for a single violation, only a daily maximum for each violation.

Associated Links

The Canada Energy Regulator (CER) works to keep energy moving safely across the country. We review energy development projects and share energy information, all while enforcing some of the strictest safety and environmental standards in the world. To find out how the CER is working for you visit us online or connect on social media .

Contacts
Houston, TX, March 23, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via NewMediaWire -- China Infrastructure Construction Corp (OTC: CHNC): CHNC has announced the publication of its audited financial statements for its fiscal year ended May 31, 2021. These statements were audited by PWR CPA, a Houston, Texas accounting firm registered with the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (the PCAOB). The Company believes that these financial statements comply with the regulations of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Dante Picazo, CHNCs Chief Executive Officer, said, The completion of this audit is a significant milestone for our company. We have devoted a great amount of time and attention to this project and believe that our audited financial statements will provide investors with more reliable information about our company and its financial condition. He added that the company plans to change its corporate name to Cannabis Bioscience International Holdings, Inc. in order to better reflect its core business. The company plans to become an SEC reporting company.

Despite the ink still being wet, we are more than excited to have completed the audit which represents a management achievement for CHNC. This is the result of hard work from a multidisciplinary team that dedicated all their efforts into this project, and we look forward to the next steps that could be unlocked with this official tool, said Henry Levinski, the companys treasurer, who oversaw the audit. He added, The completion of the audit begins a new chapter for both the company and its investors.

The company has raised approximately $1.5 million through private placements and believes that its audited financial statements will enhance its ability to raise additional capital in the public and private markets.

We have the energy, the determination and now with our housekeeping matters fully in order, we have no limitations to conquer the global cannabis education market, clinical studies, cannabis clinical trials, university education, and online products.

To learn more visit: https://www.chnc-hdh.com/

Safe Harbor Statement

The information posted in this release may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. You can identify these statements by use of the words "may," "will," "should," "plans," "explores," "expects," "anticipates," "continue," "estimate," "projects," "intends," and similar phrases. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ from those projected or anticipated. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, general economic and business conditions, effects of geopolitical conditions, competition, changes in technology and methods of marketing, and various other factors beyond the company's control.
DALLAS, March 23, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- ePayResources presented three awards at its 26th annual conference, ePayConnect 2022, held March 6 - 8 at Disney's Swan and Dolphin Resort in Orlando.

German Vargas was presented the Richard R. Oliver Leadership in Payments Award for his exemplary leadership in the advancement, implementation, and promotion of electronic payments. Vargas, AVP and ePayments Supervisor for Ocean Bank, was recognized for implementing cross-payment fraud monitoring and emerging payment solutions and enhancements, including RTP, Same Day ACH, real-time posting for deposit products, and other cash management solutions.

"I am deeply honored to receive this recognition and I am grateful to ePay for the ongoing support and guidance they provide through their conferences, education events, and Payments Answerline," said Vargas. "I'm also grateful to my employer, Ocean Bank, for making payments a priority in the Bank's digital transformation strategy."

The Innovation in Payments Award was presented to Corporate One FCU and Sherpa Technologies for their joint effort to enable emerging payments solutions and products for credit unions, including enablement of RTP and the ability to connect with an open-platform, core-agnostic solution. Corporate One and its credit union service organization (CUSO), Sherpa Technologies, have earned participant certifications on the RTP network and together built a real-time payment suite of services to empower credit unions to take advantage of all the benefits offered by instant payments.

"We are grateful for this award and for all that ePay does to support and amplify the efforts of payments industry innovators," said Melissa Ashely, President/CEO, Corporate One. "Corporate One and Sherpa are proud to receive recognition of our work developing solutions that make real-time payments more widely accessible to credit unions and we look forward to helping all credit unions realize the benefits they offer."

ePay also presented its first-ever Lifetime Achievement Award to Joe Proto, a payments industry leader, collaborator, and influencer who has founded many successful companies, including Financial Telesis/CashFlex, Remitco, and Transactis, that have helped the banking and payments industries thrive. Proto's work has led to growth of transactions on the ACH Network and greater access to payments systems for middle market and small businesses. He has been a tireless payments industry supporter, providing his expertise as a conference speaker and board advisor for numerous organizations. In retirement he continues to help companies grow and invest in the payments and fintech space.

"I am honored to be the first recipient of ePay's Lifetime Achievement Award," said Proto. "It is thrilling to be part of this dynamic industry in partnership with ePay and other stakeholders, and I am proud to have played a role in facilitating its exponential growth and its accessibility to a broad range of businesses."

About ePayResources: ePayResources has been empowering financial institutions and businesses to be informed, compliant, and competitive in payments for 48 years. As an innovative Payments Association and a founding sponsor of the Center for Payments, we provide emerging and legacy payments expertise, professional development, and industry leadership through education, publications, compliance support, risk management, and advocacy. Our staff of nationally accredited payments and risk professionals provides situational analysis and response guidance on our Payments Answerline and keeps you informed of industry developments that impact operational processing, fraud detection, and your bottom line. Our subsidiary, ePayAdvisors, provides payments audits and risk assessments and customized payments strategy consulting. Visit epayresources.org and follow us on Twitter (@ePayResources_), LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram.

CONTACT:

Anne-Marie J. Leake

Vice President, Communications

ePayResources

1-800-475-0585, ext. 1401

Related Images











Image 1: ePay





ePay Logo









This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com.

Attachment
English French

Paris, March 23, 2022

Press release: publication of Compagn ie de Financement Fonciers 202 1 Universal Registration Document including the a nnual financial report

Compagnie de Financement Foncier announces the publication of its 2021 Universal Registration Document (Document denregistrement universel), including the annual financial report.

It was filed with the French Financial Markets Authority (Autorite des Marches Financiers - AMF) on March 23, 2022 under the number D.22-0138

This report is available on the companys website at https://foncier.fr/ under: Financial Communication / Regulated information.

Copies of this document are also available at the following address:

COMPAGNIE DE FINANCEMENT FONCIER

4 quai de Bercy

94 220 CHARENTON LE PONT

Contact : Financial Communication - bal-comfi@creditfoncier.fr





Compagnie de Financement Foncier

S.A with share capital of 2,537,459,936

Registered in the Paris Trade and Companies Register under number 421 263 047 RCS Paris

Registered office : 182, Avenue de France | 75013 Paris



Attachment
Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad (R, center) meets with visiting Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian (L, center) in Damascus, Syria, March 23, 2022. Abdollahian said on Wednesday that his country is close to reaching an agreement on the restoration of the 2015 nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). (Photo by Ammar Safarjalani/Xinhua)

DAMASCUS, March 23 (Xinhua) -- The visiting Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian said on Wednesday that his country is close to reaching an agreement on the restoration of the 2015 nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

"We believe that today, more than ever, we are closer to reaching an agreement and finalizing the deal in Vienna," Amir Abdollahian told reporters after a meeting with his Syrian counterpart Faisal Mekdad and other senior officials in Damascus.

"If America adopted a realistic view and dealt realistically with this matter, we are ready to declare this agreement," he said.

"We have made our final proposals to the United States through the EU coordinator," he said, adding that Iran has made it clear to the American side not to cross its redlines.

Iran signed the JCPOA with world powers in 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 JCPOA parties, with the United States indirectly involved, to revive the deal. 
DALLAS, TX, March 23, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Leading technology Chief Marketing Officer Jason Dyer has joined the team of more than 100 Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) at Chief Outsiders, one of the nations top marketing consulting agencies focused on strategic growth.

Dyer  with deep practical experience honed at such blue-chip brands as Google, Nokia, and Nortel Networks  is available for right-sized client engagements with the mid-market businesses that comprise Chief Outsiders client base.

Lauded as a scrappy broad-spectrum" marketer, Dyer delivers insights that have grown subscribers, revenues and sales. He is particularly adept at preparing companies to deal with digital disruption and maintain their competitive advantage in their marketplace.

As the CMO at SaaS company TrueSpot, Dyers efforts leading both strategic and tactical marketing efforts helped the platform secure new funding while achieving triple-digit growth projections. He took his well-crafted growth formula to the American Heart Association, where, as Senior VP of Integrated Marketing, he led efforts to grow content syndication reach from 4 billion to 36 billion annually across the globe. This new content-monetization model is responsible for a seven-figure revenue stream that the worldwide charity can now count on to fund its charitable efforts.

An earlier highlight, as the sales and marketing leader for QuickOffice, led to explosive application growth among Apple, Amazon, and Android markets and the eventual sale of the entity to Google.

Jason applies decades of mobile technology knowhow to solve problems for companies facing disruption to accelerate the business and force exit events, said Clay Spitz, Managing Partner, Chief Outsiders. Jason creates and implements strategies and roadmaps that drive sales and build brand equity for blue-chip brands and start-ups alike.

Dyer earned his MBA from Southern Methodist University, and holds a B.S. in Journalism and Advertising from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.

About Chief Outsiders

Chief Outsiders, LLC is a nationwide "Executives-as-a-Service" firm, with more than 100 fractional Chief Marketing Officers/Chief Marketing Outsiders (CMOs) engaged from coast-to-coast. Unlike other strategic marketing and management consulting firms, each CMO has held the position of VP Marketing or higher at one or more operating companies. Chief Outsiders have served on the executive team of over 1,400 client companies to drive growth strategy and execution plans by offering instant access to talent with highly customized and flexible engagements.

Because of its market-based growth plans, quality of leadership, and experienced team, Chief Outsiders has been recognized for the past eight years by Inc. Magazine as one of the 5,000 fastest growing privately held companies in the US, and was recognized in 2019 as a Forbes Small Giant. Chief Outsiders CEO Art Saxby and Principal Pete Hayes are the co-authors of The Growth Gears: Using a Market-Based Framework to Drive Business Success, an Amazon #1 best-seller for business owners and CEOs. For additional information about the companies who trust Chief Outsiders as their premier source for business growth acceleration, click here.

Attachment
Chicago, March 23, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The global synthetic lubricants market is expected to grow at a CAGR of over 3% during 2021-2027. The increasing demand from fuel-efficient vehicles, and high-performance machinery are driving the growth of the market. There is a shift from conventional lubricant to synthetic lubricant due to longer service life and greater thermal stability.



Synthetic lubricants are the highest performing engine oils in the market. Synthetic lubricants have a higher percentage of highly refined base oils than conventional mineral oils, which provides better engine protection, performance and they also reduce sludge development.

Synthetic Lubricants Market Report Scope

REPORT ATTRIBUTES DETAILS MARKET SIZE (REVENUE) $16 Billion (2027) MARKET SIZE (VOLUME) 7 Million Ton (2027) CAGR Over 3% (2022-2027) BASE YEAR 2021 FORECAST YEAR 2022-2027 LARGEST MARKET APAC GEOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS North America, Europe, APAC, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa COUNTRIES COVERED US, Canada, Brazil, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, UAE, South Africa, China, India, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, Germany, UK, France, Italy, and Spain

Click Here to Download the Free Sample Report

Recent Developments

The FUCHS Group, had signed an agreement to acquire the lubricants business of Gleitmo Technik AB, and is expected to integrate it into its subsidiary FUCHS LUBRICANTS SWEDEN AB.

Sinopec entered the South African market by acquiring a majority stake in Chevrons lubricant facility.

Shell Indonesia announced investment to double the production capacity of its lubricants oil blending plant (LOBP) located in Jakarta, Indonesia. When completed the plant would produce up to 300 million litres of finished lubricants, annually.



APAC Dominating market for synthetic lubricants

APAC accounted for 45% market share in 2021. The growth in the region is associated with the increasing demand for automotive and high-performance industrial machinery and equipment. APAC region consists of emerging as well as developed economies such as Japan, China, India, South Korea, and Australia. These countries have considerable demand for automotive, agricultural, and construction vehicles. APAC region to create lucrative growth opportunities for vendors due to the growth of new industrial developments such as advanced manufacturing, development of smart cities, and smart construction.

Key Offerings:

Market Size & Forecast by Revenue | 20212027

Market Dynamics  Leading trends, growth drivers, restraints, and investment opportunities

Market Segmentation  A detailed analysis by application, end-user, type, and geography

Competitive Landscape  5 key vendors and 18 other prominent vendors are profiled in the report

Insights Offered in the Report:

Engine oil is the largest segment and it accounted for a market share of 29.38% in 2021. Higher viscosity indices improved thermal and oxidative stability, and decreased volatility are the characteristics which boost demand for synthetic base stocks in engine oil lubrication. Automotive and transportation synthetic lubricants accounted for 32.20% market share in 2021. The automotive and transportation segment is expected to register a CAGR of 3.76% during the forecast period. Factor driving the demand for synthetic lubricants are wear and tear prevention, reduced friction, proper heat dissipation, oxidation and corrosion prevention, component stress relieving, and maintaining proper engine functionality. Poly alpha olefin is the most popular synthetic base stock. It eliminates many of the drawbacks of mineral oil lubricants. PAO based lubricants dont require viscosity modifiers, have higher flash points and low volatility, lower pour-points, and high temperature operability. Shell (US), ExxonMobil (US), British Petroleum (UK), Chevron (US), and Sinopec (China) are some of the key players in the synthetic lubricants market. The market is largely commoditized, with price serving as a significant differentiator. Manufacturers are constantly involved in developing new and sustainable products as per customer requirements and safeguard environment.

Click Here to Download the Free Sample Report

Synthetic Lubricants Market Competition Overview

The competition among the players in the synthetic lubricants market is intense. The fast-changing technological environment could undesirably affect vendors as customers expect continous innovations and upgrades in lubrication formulation. The present scenario is forcing vendors to alter and refine their unique value proposition to achieve a strong market presence. Also, vendors can boost profitability by practicing efficient production techniques that minimize product costs and mitigate associated risks.

Partnerships and acquisitions can also increase product offerings and access new geographical markets. Manufacturers can also improve quality by employing gas-to-liquids (GTL) plants, which generate highly pure, proprietary GTL base oils.

Key Vendors

Royal Dutch Shell

ExxonMobil

British Petroleum

Chevron

Sinopec



Other Prominent Vendors

Total Energies

Fuchs

Idemitsu Kosan

Lukoil

Petronas

Indian Oil

Dow

Morris Lubricants

Sasol

Valvoline

Penrite oil

Bharat Petroleum

Liqui Moly

Peak Lubricants

Amalie Oil

Eni

Addinol

Engen Petroleum

Croda International

Petro-Canada Lubricants

Explore our chemicals & materials profile to know more about the industry.

Click Here to Download the Free Sample Report

Read some of the top-selling reports:

About Arizton:

Arizton Advisory and Intelligence is an innovation and quality-driven firm, which offers cutting-edge research solutions to clients across the world. We excel in providing comprehensive market intelligence reports and advisory and consulting services.

We offer comprehensive market research reports on industries such as consumer goods & retail technology, automotive and mobility, smart tech, healthcare, and life sciences, industrial machinery, chemicals and materials, IT and media, logistics and packaging. These reports contain detailed industry analysis, market size, share, growth drivers, and trend forecasts.

Arizton comprises a team of exuberant and well-experienced analysts who have mastered in generating incisive reports. Our specialist analysts possess exemplary skills in market research. We train our team in advanced research practices, techniques, and ethics to outperform in fabricating impregnable research reports.

Click Here to Contact Us

Call: +1-312-235-2040

+1 302 469 0707
NOI in 2021 is up 31% year-over-year, amounting to some ILS 1.6 billion and the NOI rate in Q4/2021 was over ILS 1.8 billion and has reached record levels, thanks to the significant contribution of growth engines (the offices, senior housing, and data center segments), and despite the partial operation of the malls at the beginning of the year

FFO in 2021 is up 32% year-over-year, amounting to some ILS 1.3 billion

The net profit attributed to shareholders amounted to ILS 2.9 billion, and the comprehensive profit to ILS 3.2 billion, compared with a comprehensive loss of ILS 147 million in 2020

Same Property NOI in 2021 is up 23% year-over-year

This year, the Group closed one of the biggest deals in its history  the acquisition of Norwegian Data Center company Green Mountain, according to an EV of some ILS 2.8 billion

Financial Highlights for Q4/2021 and Y2021

NOI in 2021 amounted to some ILS 1,590 million, up around 31% year-over-year. The increase mainly derives from the relief granted to mall tenants last year following the Covid crisis, and from the opening of the Azrieli Town and Azrieli HaManor office towers. NOI in the quarter amounted to some ILS 454 million, up 103% from Q4/2020. The increase mainly derives from relief granted to mall tenants in Q4/2020 as a result of the Covid crisis, the acquisition of the Green Mountain data center company, and the opening of the Azrieli Town Tel Aviv and HaManor Holon office towers, together with the occupancy of Bezeqs former space in the Azrieli Tel Aviv Triangular Tower.

year-over-year. The increase mainly derives from the relief granted to mall tenants last year following the Covid crisis, and from the opening of the Azrieli Town and Azrieli HaManor office towers. from Q4/2020. The increase mainly derives from relief granted to mall tenants in Q4/2020 as a result of the Covid crisis, the acquisition of the Green Mountain data center company, and the opening of the Azrieli Town Tel Aviv and HaManor Holon office towers, together with the occupancy of Bezeqs former space in the Azrieli Tel Aviv Triangular Tower. Same Property NOI in 2021 was up 23% year-over-year. Same Property NOI in Q4/2021 was up 87% year-over-year.

FFO excluding senior housing amounted to some ILS 1,152 million in 2021, up some 31% year-over-year. The total FFO amounted to some ILS 1,318 million, up around 32% year-over-year . FFO excluding senior housing amounted to some ILS 323 million in Q4/2021, up some 113% compares with Q4/2020. The total FFO amounted to some ILS 362 million in Q4/2021, up around 70% compares with Q4/2020.

amounted to some ILS 1,152 million in 2021, up some 31% year-over-year. . amounted to some ILS 323 million in Q4/2021, up some 113% compares with Q4/2020. Net profit attributed to the shareholders totaled approx. ILS 2,889 million in 2021, compared with a profit of approx. ILS 184 million in 2020. The comprehensive income in 2021 totaled approx. ILS 3,235 million compared with a comprehensive loss of approx. ILS 147 million year-over-year. Net profit attributed to the shareholders totaled approx. ILS 2,209 million in Q4/2021, compared with a loss of approx. ILS 29 million in Q4/2020. The comprehensive income in Q4/2021 totaled approx. ILS 2,228 million compared with approx. ILS 10 million in Q4/2020.

attributed to the shareholders totaled approx. ILS 2,889 million in 2021, compared with a profit of approx. ILS 184 million in 2020. The in 2021 totaled approx. ILS 3,235 million compared with a comprehensive loss of approx. ILS 147 million year-over-year. attributed to the shareholders totaled approx. ILS 2,209 million in Q4/2021, compared with a loss of approx. ILS 29 million in Q4/2020. The in Q4/2021 totaled approx. ILS 2,228 million compared with approx. ILS 10 million in Q4/2020. During the year, the Group invested approx. ILS 1,143 million in investment property, in the acquisition, development, construction of new properties and in upgrading and improving existing properties. The Group also invested ILS 2.4 billion in the acquisition of the Norwegian data center company Green Mountain.





TEL AVIV, Israel, March 23, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Danna Azrieli, Chairwoman of the Azrieli Group: 2021 was a fantastic year for the Azrieli Group, with strong growth, significant development in all core segments, and excellent financial results. In addition, during the year we closed an approx. ILS 2.8 million strategic transaction, one of the largest in the Groups history, for the acquisition of Green Mountain, a data center company operating in Norway. I am proud to lead such an excellent enterprising group, with the ability to identify long-term opportunities and to constantly develop its business  qualities which place us in a strong and unique position in the Israeli market.

In the last decade we presented a number of new growth engines, including data centers, senior housing, and the omni-channel, and we are continuing to lay the groundwork for additional new areas such as hotels and long-term residential rentals. We will continue to explore new business opportunities which are a good fit with our long-term business strategy, alongside constant investment in preserving the high standard and value of the Groups portfolio".

Eyal Henkin, CEO of the Azrieli Group: 2021 was a strong year with double-digit growth in all of the operating parameters, alongside significant investments of over ILS 3.5 billion. The offices segment enjoyed increasing demand throughout the year and continued growth in the Same Property NOI. The retail operations have continued to present a positive trend since the reopening of the malls in February of 2021.

The Group continues to develop new growth engines, mainly Data Centers, a segment growing in high pace. In Q4 2021, our share in the Data Center's NOI reached an annual rate of ILS 120 million. This contribution will further increase with the completion of the many projects in development in Compass (24% ownership) active mainly in North America and in Green Mountain (100% ownership) active in the European market. The senior housing segment continues to increase and to be a strong and growing arm of the Group. In view of the successful marketing of Stage A of the project, we moved up the construction of Stage B of Palace Lehavim, and we are preparing to begin work on the new project in Rishon LeZion."

Occupancy Rates and Store Revenues

The average occupancy rate (excluding properties under lease-up) was 99% in the malls segment, 99% in the Israel offices segment, and 97% in senior housing.

(excluding properties under lease-up) was 99% in the malls segment, 99% in the Israel offices segment, and 97% in senior housing. Store revenues  From the date the malls reopened on February 21st until the end of 2021, store revenues in the malls increased by 1.8% relative to the same period in 2019 (excluding tenants that did not resume full / regular operations due to the restrictions).

Balance Sheet as of December 31, 2021

The Group has cash, deposits and short-term investments amounting to approx. ILS 2.9 billion, and together with Bank Leumi stock, cash and cash equivalents, and marketable securities  ILS 4.2 billion.

amounting to approx. ILS 2.9 billion, and together with Bank Leumi stock, cash and cash equivalents, and marketable securities  ILS 4.2 billion. The net debt totals approx. ILS 12.4 billion.

totals approx. ILS 12.4 billion. The value of investment property and investment property under construction totals approx. ILS 34 billion.

totals approx. ILS 34 billion. The equity to assets ratio is approx. 49% and the net debt to assets ratio is approx. 29%.

is approx. 49% and the is approx. 29%. Unencumbered assets total approx. ILS 29 billion.





Conference call



The Company will hold its annual conference call, hosted by the Group's senior management,

today (Wednesday, March 23rd, 2022) at 4:00 pm Israel local time (3:00 pm CET; 2:00 pm United Kingdom time, and 09:00 am Eastern Time).

The call will include a review of the Company's Q4/2021 and Y2021 performance, as well as a discussion of the Company's strategy and expectations for the future. A question & answer session will follow the discussion.







To participate, please dial:

03-9180664 from Israel

1-888-407-2553 from the U.S.

0-800-917-9141 from the U.K.

0-800-024-9936 from the Netherlands

1-888-604-5839 from Canada

or +972-3-9180664 internationally




Washington, D.C., March 23, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Diesel Technology Forum (DTF) welcomes Stanadyne as its newest member. The not-for-profit organization is dedicated to raising awareness about the current and future role of diesel engines, equipment, and fuels. Forum members are leaders in advanced diesel technology, emissions controls, and petroleum, and renewable biofuels.

Stanadyne designs, manufactures, remanufactures, and sells best-in-class fuel systems and air-management technologies that are at the heart of powertrain performance for passenger and commercial vehicles as well as a full range of off-road applications including construction, agriculture, power generation and utility markets.

We couldnt be happier to welcome Stanadyne to the forum. Stanadyne is a recognized global automotive technology leader in engine-based fuel and air management systems. Theyre pioneering technologies in gasoline and diesel fuel injection systems, as well as in aftermarket and remanufactured components, says Diesel Technology Forum Executive Director Allen Schaeffer.

Stanadynes commitment to engineering and innovation is driving a bright future for the internal combustion engine, one that is more efficient and lower in emissions, and ensuring that it is part of the solution to meeting the dual challenge of customer and societal demands, said Schaeffer.

Stanadyne is proud to join the Diesel Technology Forum, said Stanadyne Chief Technology Officer Dr. Brad Stroia. The diesel engine is the prime mover for the majority of over-land transport, construction, industrial, rail, marine, and agricultural activity. Our industry is pursuing engine innovation and optimization to power our planet and tackle global challenges, like climate change. The Forums research and outreach efforts bring the industry together to discuss important developments in fuels and propulsion technology for the future. We are proud to be a part of this organization supporting our commitment to developing sustainable internal combustion engines as we travel down the road toward carbon neutrality.

# # #

About Stanadyne

Stanadyne designs, manufactures, remanufactures, and sells best-in-class vehicle and powertrain pumping, injection, air and fluid management, and control solutions. Founded in 1873, the company specializes in pioneering cleaner, more efficient fuel injection technology for engines that move our world and the aftermarket and remanufactured components that help keep them operating. Stanadyne provides customers with customized design, engineering, and manufacturing solutions from its United States, China, Italy, India, and United Arab Emirates locations in partnership with its global aftermarket service dealers and distributors network. For more information, visit Stanadyne.com.

About the Diesel Technology Forum

The Diesel Technology Forum is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to raising awareness about the current and future role of diesel engines, equipment, and fuels. Forum members are leaders in advanced diesel technology, emissions controls, and petroleum-based and renewable biofuels. For more information visit http://www.dieselforum.org.

Connect with Us

For the latest insights and information from the leaders in clean diesel technology, join us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter @DieselTechForum, or YouTube @DieselTechForum and connect with us on LinkedIn. Get it all by subscribing to our newsletter Diesel Direct for a weekly wrap-up of clean diesel news, policy analysis and more direct to your inbox.
Chicago, March 23, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- According to the latest research report, the Greece data center market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 5.6% during 2022-2027. In Greece, the government is currently taking initiatives to develop a national artificial intelligence (AI) strategy. Greece is working towards generating 60% of renewable energy by 2030. Hyperscale investment are expected to increase over the forecast period and hyperscale operators will adopt renewable energy sources to power their facilities in the country.



In October 2020, Telecom Italia Sparkle was the first colocation provider in Greece to power its data centers with renewable energy sources in Koropi, Metamorfosis (Athens), and Chania.

GREECE DATA CENTER MARKET REPORT SCOPE

REPORT ATTRIBUTES DETAILS MARKET SIZE (REVENUE) $1.3 Billion (2027) MARKET SIZE (AREA) 196 Thousand Sq. Feet (2027) MARKET SIZE (POWER CAPACITY) 40 MW (2027) COLOCATION MARKET SIZE (REVENUE) 280 Million (2027) CAGR (2022-2027) 5.6% BASE YEAR 2021 FORECAST YEAR 2022-2027

Click Here to Download the Free Sample Report

KEY COLOCATION PROVIDERS ARE ENTERING THE GREECE MARKET

Major colocation providers are entering the Greece market via acquisitions and mergers of local data center operators. For instance, Digital Realty acquired a leading data center provider, Lamda Hellix, in 2020. Telecom Italia Sparkle and Digital Realty (Lamda Hellix) are investing in Greece data center market.

REPORT COVERAGE:

Snapshot of existing and upcoming third-party data center facilities in Greece

Facilities Covered (Existing): 10

Facilities Identified (Upcoming): 03

Coverage: 2 Cities

Existing vs. Upcoming (Area)

Existing vs. Upcoming (IT Load Capacity)

Data center colocation market in Greece

Market Revenue & Forecast (2021-2026)

Retail Colocation Pricing

The industry investments are classified into IT, power, cooling, and general construction services with sizing and forecast.

A comprehensive analysis of the latest trends, growth rate, potential opportunities, growth restraints, and prospects for the industry.

Business overview and product offerings of prominent IT infrastructure providers, construction contractors, support infrastructure providers, and investors operating in the industry.

A transparent research methodology and the analysis of the demand and supply aspect of the market.



Request for a Free Sample now: https://www.arizton.com/request-sample/3292

IMPORTANT FACTS TO KNOW

Greece is a major intercontinental data hub, acting as a bridge among Asia, Africa, and European countries for data transfer. Athens is the major location for data center development, with 9 existing third party data center facilities contributing to over 90% of the existing capacity in Greece.

The increasing demand for cloud, 5G, big data, & IoT, and digitalization in Greece is driving investment in data center.

Under the Greece 2.0 vision, the country aims to develop business parks across the country and have planned the development of 9 modern business parks which will attract new investments into the country.

Greece is witnessing entry of major cloud service providers. For instance, Microsoft announced its plans to develop its first data center in Greece as part of GR for Growth, an initiative for digital transformation.

Renewable energy procurement is increasing in the country. For instance, in May 2021, Greeces Regulatory Authority for Energy (RAE) announced a 350 MW auction for solar photovoltaic (PV) and wind projects. Around 15 companies were awarded solar projects in this auction.



GREECE DATA CENTER MARKET VENDORS

IT INFRASTRUCTURE PROVIDERS:

Broadcom

Cisco Sytems

Dell Technologies

Extreme Networks

Fujitsu

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Huawei Technologies

IBM

Juniper Networks

NEC Corporation

NetApp

Oracle

Super Micro Computer



CONSTRUCTION CONTRACTORS & SUB-CONTRACTORS:

AECOM

LDK Consultants

ELLAKTOR GROUP



SUPPORT INFRASTRUCTURE PROVIDERS

3M

ABB

Airdale International Air Conditioning

Carrier

Caterpillar

Cummins

Condair

Daikin Applied

Eaton

KOHLER-SDMO

Legrand

Mitsubishi Electric

Munters

Perkins Engines

Rittal

Schneider Electric

STULZ

Socomec

Siemens

Trane ( Ingersoll Rand)

Vertiv Group



KEY INVESTORS

Digital Reality (Lamda Helix)

Telecom Italia Sparkle

Synapsecom Telecoms



TARGET AUDIENCE

Data center Real Estate Investment Trusts (REIT)

Data center Construction Contractors

Data center Infrastructure Providers

New Entrants

Consultants/Consultancies/Advisory Firms

Corporate and Governments Agencies

Click Here to Download the Free Sample Report

Read some of the top-selling reports:

About Arizton:

Arizton Advisory and Intelligence is an innovation and quality-driven firm, which offers cutting-edge research solutions to clients across the world. We excel in providing comprehensive market intelligence reports and advisory and consulting services.

We offer comprehensive market research reports on industries such as consumer goods & retail technology, automotive and mobility, smart tech, healthcare, and life sciences, industrial machinery, chemicals and materials, IT and media, logistics and packaging. These reports contain detailed industry analysis, market size, share, growth drivers, and trend forecasts.

Arizton comprises a team of exuberant and well-experienced analysts who have mastered in generating incisive reports. Our specialist analysts possess exemplary skills in market research. We train our team in advanced research practices, techniques, and ethics to outperform in fabricating impregnable research reports.

Click Here to Contact Us

Call: +1-312-235-2040

+1 302 469 0707
Enhatch is building an open ecosystem of technologies powered by artificial intelligence to personalize and accelerate the entire surgical workflow



Partnership intended to merge advanced capabilities of each organization to make design and delivery of patient-specific medical devices more efficient

ROCK HILL, S.C. and HOBOKEN, N.J. and TULSA, Okla., March 23, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Today, 3D Systems (NYSE:DDD), the leading additive manufacturing solutions partner, and Enhatch Inc, the Hoboken, New Jersey and Tulsa, Oklahoma-based developer of the Intelligent Surgery Ecosystem, announced they have entered a partnership. The technologies which drive Intelligent Surgery streamline and scale the design and delivery of patient-specific medical devices by automating the process. Incorporating these capabilities into 3D Systems proven workflow for patient-specific solutionswhich includes advanced software, expert treatment planning services, custom implants and instrumentation design, and industry-leading production processeswill help more efficiently meet the growing demand for personalized medical devices.

3D Systems partners with medical device manufacturers to offer its VSP surgical planning solutions to support craniomaxillofacial and orthopedic medical specialties to help reduce procedure time and improve surgical outcomes. Likewise, Enhatch develops software applications powered by artificial intelligence to streamline every element of the patient-specific digital workflow. Enhatch is the first company to market an ecosystem of surgical technologies driven by artificial intelligence, which helps evaluate and mitigate potential risks in the surgical planning process. Combining the application and technology expertise of both companies creates an optimized, automated, and scalable medical device workflow.

Our partnership with Enhatch will enable us to deliver the healthcare industrys most comprehensive approach to additive manufacturing, said Menno Ellis, executive vice president, healthcare solutions, 3D Systems. Integrating these technologies and capabilities into 3D Systems surgical planning solutions will make processes more efficient, trackable, and cost-effective. This is another step in our ongoing commitment to innovation that helps our customers remain at the forefront of medical device development and healthcare delivery.

Peter Verrillo, co-founder and CEO of Enhatch, agrees, Enhatch is proud to welcome 3D Systems to the Intelligent Surgery Ecosystem. Healthcare ecosystems have tremendous potential to disrupt and reshape the entire industry, leading to improved patient outcomes, faster, more accurate, and safer procedures. Enhatch and 3D Systems have a shared goal of bringing surgeons and industry together with the best leading-edge technologies available.

As a pioneer in personalized healthcare solutions, 3D Systems has worked with surgeons over the last decade to plan more than 140,000 patient-specific cases, and manufacture more than two million implants and instruments for 100+ CE-marked and FDA-cleared devices from its world-class, FDA registered, ISO 13485-certified facilities in Littleton, Colorado, and Leuven, Belgium. The company will feature its solutions, including its partnership with Enhatch, in its booth (#1014) at the AAOS 2022 Annual Meeting, March 23-25 at McCormick Place in Chicago, Illinois. For more information, please visit the companys website.

Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements made in this release that are not statements of historical or current facts are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the company to be materially different from historical results or from any future results or projections expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements, including the ability of Enhatch and 3D Systems to consummate the transaction as expected. In many cases, forward-looking statements can be identified by terms such as "believes," "belief," "expects," "may," "will," "estimates," "intends," "anticipates" or "plans" or the negative of these terms or other comparable terminology. Forward-looking statements are based upon managements beliefs, assumptions, and current expectations and may include comments as to the companys beliefs and expectations as to future events and trends affecting its business and are necessarily subject to uncertainties, many of which are outside the control of the company. The factors described under the headings "Forward-Looking Statements" and "Risk Factors" in the companys periodic filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as other factors, could cause actual results to differ materially from those reflected or predicted in forward-looking statements. Although management believes that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, forward-looking statements are not, and should not be relied upon as a guarantee of future performance or results, nor will they necessarily prove to be accurate indications of the times at which such performance or results will be achieved. The forward-looking statements included are made only as of the date of the statement. 3D Systems and Enhatch undertake no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements made by management or on its behalf, whether as a result of future developments, subsequent events or circumstances or otherwise, except as required by law.

About 3D Systems

More than 30 years ago, 3D Systems brought the innovation of 3D printing to the manufacturing industry. Today, as the leading additive manufacturing solutions partner, we bring innovation, performance, and reliability to every interaction - empowering our customers to create products and business models never before possible. Thanks to our unique offering of hardware, software, materials, and services, each application-specific solution is powered by the expertise of our application engineers who collaborate with customers to transform how they deliver their products and services. 3D Systems solutions address a variety of advanced applications in healthcare and industrial markets such as medical and dental, aerospace & defense, automotive, and durable goods. More information on the company is available at www.3dsystems.com.

About Enhatch

Enhatch is a medical technology company that created the industrys first Intelligent Surgery Ecosystem, connecting companies, technologies, and surgeons to provide insights from every surgery, patient, and device to elevate patient care. The Intelligent Surgery Ecosystem harnesses the power of AI to streamline each phase of orthopedic surgery, achieving better patient outcomes, unprecedented efficiency and accuracy in patient-specific procedures, and a new level of precision to surgical devices and techniques. To learn more, please visit www.enhatch.com.

3D Systems Corporation

333 Three D Systems Circle

Rock Hill, SC 29730

www.3dsystems.com

NYSE:DDD

Investor Contact: investor.relations@3dsystems.com

Media Contact: press@3dsystems.com

Enhatch Inc

2 Hudson Place  Fourth Floor

Hoboken, NJ 07030

www.enhatch.com

Media Contact : press@enhatch.com

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/8d43da68-1665-4c7c-8ea1-17fa34ace798












CHICAGO, March 23, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- WarPaint International Beauty Agency, a leading on-site beauty services company, has entered into a partnership with Chicago Style Weddings, a publication of the Nei-Turner Media Group, in the Chicagoland area.



The wedding industry is back in a big way, said Jessica Mae, Founder of WPI Beauty. Were excited to expand our team into the Chicago market. The demand in 2022 for wedding services, specifically on-site hair and makeup, has exponentially increased across the freelance industry with dates and weekends filling quickly. Many brides-to-be and corporate clients are securing dates well into 2023 for professional beauty services.

WarPaint International Beauty Agency, a Minneapolis-based company, is a brand that has championed change in the freelance beauty sector by raising the standards in the freelance contractor realm of on-site styling and artistry. WPI Beauty offers its clients intimate experiences from Artisans that are interviewed and technically tested. Contractors are also nationally background-checked for the safety of their clients private spaces, homes, and wedding event venues.

Our onboarding process and continued education and support of our team ensure an intimate and professional experience for wedding parties and other hairstyling and makeup artistry clients in the Chicago market," said CEO Samuel Koza, WPI Beauty.

The partnership with Chicago Style Weddings is an important one for WPI Beauty. The advertising relationship offers a strong print and digital advertising footprint for wedding beauty services in Chicago, while providing high-talent artistry for publication and styled shoots to the magazine.

About Chicago Style Weddings

For over three decades, Chicago Style Weddings has provided inspiration with style & sophistication for every couple planning their unique wedding. Since our first issue in 1987, Chicago Style Weddings has paired over 30 years of expertise with an appetite for what's new and noteworthy. The magazine's print issues are complemented by a digital edition, multimedia web site and social media channels.

Chicago Style Weddings is proud to be the area's only wedding magazine with newsstand distribution, with copies circulated at major retailers such as Walgreens, Jewel-Osco, Mariano's, Target and CVS.

About WarPaint International Beauty Agency

WarPaint International is a privately owned Beauty Agency providing professionally managed beauty services for the bridal, consumer, editorial, and commercial beauty markets. The company is based in Minneapolis and operates on-site beauty teams in Manhattan New York, Chicago, Jacksonville Florida as well contracting work nationally.

WarPaint International is the Ultimate Symbol of Luxury and Excellence in Hair & Makeup Artistry.

PRESS CONTACT:

Samuel J. Koza

info@warpaintinternational.com

651-343-2080

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/b2afd674-6bdb-460d-b224-02d074149846

A video accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/4e72fa99-3a7e-4948-89f5-844f91e0eb37
LYON, France, March 23, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- iExec, a decentralized marketplace for computing assets, today announces the launch of the iExec Portal, a new user-friendly interface intended for its community. With the iExec Portal, iExec aims to better support its growing community by offering them the possibility to vote on community-related decisions, recognize their contributions to the project with a Community Rewards Program, and help them to make the most of their RLC - the iExec token.

Involving iExec Followers in Community-Related Decisions

As the community grows, iExec aims to more closely involve individuals in community-related activities. To achieve this, the iExec Portal introduces a voting system. Via proposals submitted by the iExec team, followers can now have a say on decisions concerning the community. For example, deciding the format for AMA sessions, allocating community rewards, or even deciding on future features for the iExec Portal.

Using the Snapshot platform, the iExec community can vote on the submitted proposals. Each vote is weighted by the amount of RLC owned. Anyone that holds RLC tokens in their wallet can vote and have their say. Voting works by taking a "snapshot" of the number of tokens held in the wallet at the time of voting. It does not cost any RLC or Ethereum gas fees.

Rewarding the Community for Their Contributions to the Project

iExec is proud to have a committed community supporting the project. To value its followers' contributions, iExec has released a Community Rewards Program. This new program recognizes and rewards the most active, engaged community members for their contributions to the project. RLC prizes are distributed monthly for contributions ranging from content creation to tech expertise. From the iExec Portal, users can learn more about the types of prizes available and what they can do to qualify for rewards.

iExec followers will also have the opportunity to claim NFT POAP collectibles after contributing to the project or participating in events. These collectibles will be displayed on the iExec Portal.

Giving the Holders an Interface to Make the Most of Their RLC

Another goal of iExec Portal is to provide the community with an interface for their RLC portfolio, allowing holders to see their portfolio balance. In addition, the iExec Portal offers educational resources on other ways to use their tokens such as platforms like Uniswap or Bancor.

Finally, the iExec Portal provides a single point of entry for the project's resources and products. For instance, the iExec Oracle Factory to create custom oracles from any kind of data in less than 5 minutes, or the iExec Developer Rewards Program application form, where developers can submit their project based on the iExec protocol.

Speaking about the new platform, iExec's Head of Adoption, Nelly Cornejo said:

"With the iExec Portal, we want to offer an open door where anyone can join and benefit from our vibrant ecosystem. The iExec Portal will be a place to listen to our community, recognize and reward them for their contributions and help them make the best out of their RLC tokens."

A Metamask or Portis wallet is required to connect to the iExec Portal. More features will be added in the future, to deliver the best experience to the iExec community.

Visit the iExec Portal here.

About iExec

iExec is a blockchain company that provides a decentralized Marketplace for computing assets, allowing anyone to monetize datasets, decentralized applications, and computing power. Ethereum blockchain is used to organize the exchanges between stakeholders with the maximum level of trust and security, without a centralized authority. iExec owns its native utility token, the RLC, used as the method of payment on the Marketplace. The RLC token is listed on over 40 exchanges, including Coinbase, Binance, Bithumb, Huobi, and more.

For more about iExec and its new community-focused platform, visit their main website here.

Follow iExec on Twitter

Join the iExec community on Telegram

Read the iExec blog on Medium

Contribute to the conversation on Discord

Stay up to date on Slack

Media Contact Details

Contact Name: Marianne Negrello (Communication Manager)

Contact Email: press@iex.ec

iExec 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
SAN FRANCISCO, March 23, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Hagens Berman urges CIRCOR International, Inc. (NYSE: CIR) investors with significant losses to submit your losses now. The firm is investigating the companys admitted improper accounting and possible securities law violations.



Visit: https://www.hbsslaw.com/investor-fraud/CIR Contact An Attorney Now:

CIR@hbsslaw.com 844-916-0895



CIRCOR International, Inc. (CIR) Investigation:



The investigation focuses on the propriety of CIRCORs accounting and reported financial performance.

Specifically, in past years, CIRCOR has repeatedly assured investors that its financial reporting and financial statements were prepared in accordance with GAAP.

But, on Feb. 6, 2020, after the market closed, CIRCOR announced its CFO resigned effective Mar. 2, 2020.

Then, on Mar. 2, 2020, after the market closed, CIRCOR announced it would not timely file its year end 2019 financial report, it has identified material weaknesses in its internal control over financial reporting, and it is investigating accounting and reporting matters at one of its domestic business units that has been classified as discontinued operations.

Finally, on March 14, 2022, within months after the abrupt departures of the Companys CFO and its CEO, CIRCOR announced that it and its auditor uncovered accounting irregularities in the financial statements with respect to the Companys Pipeline Engineering business unit, which is a part of its Industrial reporting segment.

CIRCOR revealed the irregularities preliminarily appear to account for balance sheet and income statement entries in the range of $35 to $45 million of pre-tax income on a cumulative basis over a period of at least five years.

The Company also disclosed it would restate its 2019  2021 financial statements and investors should no longer rely on them.

In response, the price of CIRCOR shares fell sharply lower.

Were focused on investors losses and whether CIRCOR cooked its books to conceal the extent of its losses, said Reed Kathrein, the Hagens Berman partner leading the investigation.

If you invested in CIRCOR and have significant losses, or have knowledge that may assist the firms investigation, click here to discuss your legal rights with Hagens Berman.

Whistleblowers: Persons with non-public information regarding CIRCOR should consider their options to help in the investigation or take advantage of the SEC Whistleblower program. Under the new program, whistleblowers who provide original information may receive rewards totaling up to 30 percent of any successful recovery made by the SEC. For more information, call Reed Kathrein at 844-916-0895 or email CIR@hbsslaw.com.

About Hagens Berman

Hagens Berman is a global plaintiffs rights complex litigation law firm focusing on corporate accountability through class-action law. The firm is home to a robust securities litigation practice and represents investors as well as whistleblowers, workers, consumers and others in cases achieving real results for those harmed by corporate negligence and fraud. More about the firm and its successes can be found at hbsslaw.com. Follow the firm for updates and news at @ClassActionLaw.
HOUSTON, March 23, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Targa Resources Corp. (Targa or the Company) (NYSE: TRGP), announced today the pricing of an underwritten public offering (the Offering) of $750 million aggregate principal amount of its 4.200% senior notes due 2033 and $750 million aggregate principal amount of its 4.950% senior notes due 2052 at a price to the public of 99.815% and 99.333%, respectively, of their face value. The Offering is expected to close on April 6, 2022, subject to customary closing conditions. The Company intends to use a portion of the net proceeds from the Offering to fund the previously announced purchase (the Tender Offer) of 5 7/8% Senior Notes due 2026 (the 2026 Notes) of Targa Resources Partners LP or to fund the previously announced redemption of any 2026 Notes not purchased in the Tender Offer, with the remaining net proceeds to be used to repay a portion of the amounts outstanding under the Companys revolving credit facility. The Offering is not conditioned on the consummation of the Tender Offer. The Tender Offer is conditioned on, among other things, the Offering.



This Offering is being made pursuant to an effective shelf registration statement and prospectus filed by the Company, with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and may be made only by means of a prospectus and prospectus supplement related to such Offering meeting the requirements of Section 10 of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the Securities Act). This announcement shall not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any of these securities, except as required by law.

About Targa Resources Corp.

Targa Resources Corp. (NYSE: TRGP) is a leading provider of midstream services and is one of the largest independent midstream infrastructure companies in North America. The Company owns, operates, acquires, and develops a diversified portfolio of complementary domestic midstream infrastructure assets. The Companys assets connect natural gas and natural gas liquids (NGLs) to domestic and international markets with growing demand for cleaner fuels and feedstocks. The Company is primarily engaged in the business of: gathering, compressing, treating, processing, transporting, and purchasing and selling natural gas; transporting, storing, fractionating, treating, and purchasing and selling NGLs and NGL products, including services to liquified petroleum gas exporters; and gathering, storing, terminaling, and purchasing and selling crude oil.

The principal executive offices of Targa Resources Corp. are located at 811 Louisiana, Suite 2100, Houston, TX 77002 and their telephone number is 713-584-1000.

Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements in this release are "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. All statements, other than statements of historical facts, included in this release that address activities, events or developments that the Company expects, believes or anticipates will or may occur in the future, are forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements rely on a number of assumptions concerning future events and are subject to a number of uncertainties, factors and risks, many of which are outside the Companys control, which could cause results to differ materially from those expected by management of the Company. Such risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, weather, political, economic and market conditions, including a decline in the price and market demand for natural gas, natural gas liquids and crude oil, the impact of pandemics such as COVID-19, commodity price volatility due to ongoing conflict in Ukraine, actions by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and non-OPEC oil producing countries, the timing and success of business development efforts; and other uncertainties. These and other applicable uncertainties, factors and risks are described more fully in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its Annual Reports on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and Current Reports on Form 8-K. The Company does not undertake an obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Contact the Company's investor relations department by email at InvestorRelations@targaresources.com or by phone at (713) 584-1133.

Sanjay Lad

Vice President, Finance & Investor Relations

Jennifer Kneale

Chief Financial Officer
Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi (R) meets with Mamadou Tangara, Gambian minister of foreign affairs and international cooperation, on the sidelines of the 48th session of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation in Islamabad, Pakistan, March 23, 2022. (Xinhua/Jiang Chao)

ISLAMABAD, March 24 (Xinhua) -- Visiting Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said here Wednesday that sustained, stable and healthy development of the China-Gambia relations serves the long-term and fundamental interests of the two peoples.

Wang made the remarks while meeting with Mamadou Tangara, Gambian minister of foreign affairs and international cooperation, on the sidelines of the 48th session of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) held in the Pakistani capital.

Wang noted that China appreciates Gambia having adhered to the one-China policy to maintain the political foundation for bilateral relations since the two countries resumed diplomatic relations.

The two countries' mutual support in international affairs have showed that bilateral relations are at a high level, Wang added.

China will continue to support Gambia's efforts for national development and improving its people's well-being, he said.

During the meeting, the Chinese foreign minister also said that China is willing to work with Gambia to strengthen bilateral strategic communication and jointly safeguard the principle of non-interference in each other's internal affairs -- the basic norm governing international relations which is of crucial importance to the developing countries.

Wang said China has never engaged in proxy wars nor sought so-called spheres of influence. China opposes power politics and bloc confrontation, stands for equality among all countries regardless of their sizes, and advocates promoting greater democracy in international relations.

Wang congratulated Gambia on its hosting the upcoming OIC summit this year, saying that Gambia will continue to play an active role in the OIC, boosting the solidarity and advance of the Islamic world.

Tangara said the relations between his country and China have weathered changing circumstances and moved forward steadily, enjoying smooth progresses in their cooperation in every field as well as a reliable and strong partnership.

Tangara reaffirmed his country's adherence to the one-China policy. He said that like China, Gambia sticks to an independent foreign policy and firmly supports multilateralism.

The Gambian foreign minister also noted that China has played a leading role in promoting global development and made significant contributions to the world's joint fight against COVID-19. 
BERLIN, March 23 (Xinhua) -- While dealing with the Ukraine crisis, China will neither follow the West nor Russia, said Zheng Yongnian, a scholar with the Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen), in a recent interview with German weekly newspaper Die Zeit.

China is going its own way, said Zheng, director of the Advanced Institute of Global and Contemporary China Studies of the university. He noted that the Russia-Ukraine conflict is damaging the entire global economy and thus also China, and China definitely wants the conflict to end as soon as possible.

China needs a stable world order for its further modernization and is genuinely concerned about the conflict, but understands Russia's security concerns, Zheng said.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a product of the Cold War, was created as a bulwark against the Soviet Union, Zheng said, adding that the U.S.-led military alliance continues to exist after the Soviet Union's disintegration, and that is the reason why Russia regards NATO's eastward expansion as a threat. 
Goshen, IN (46526)

Today

Partly cloudy skies this morning will give way to cloudy skies and rain during the afternoon. High 58F. Winds ESE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%..

Tonight

Rain. Low near 50F. Winds E at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall around a half an inch.
Formula 1 wants to further expand the calendar in the coming years, but will also have to say goodbye to circuits with expiring contracts. Circuit Zandvoort does not have to worry according to De Telegraaf, but Spa-Francorchamps does.

New F1 Calendar

With 23 races in 2022, Formula 1 is setting a record this year. Never before have there been so many races in a season, but that is not enough. F1 wants to expand to 24 races in 2025, but there is the potential to grow to a total of thirty races, Stefano Domenicali previously announced.

For now, however, the sport is stuck with the maximum of 24 races, as stated in the Concorde Agreement, which applies until 2025. This means that there is still one spot left on the calendar, but with the return of China, Qatar and the possible arrival of a race in Las Vegas, two races would already have to disappear.

Read more Verstappen holds unwanted record after Bahrain

Racing at Zandvoort

Zandvoort does not have to worry according to sources from De Telegraaf. Formula 1 would prefer to continue for years with the event in Zandvoort that was a huge success in 2021. The big party in the dunes was an example for many other organizations.

''That we are on the right track is obvious, but at the same time we are not going to take any chances. We are one hundred percent a privately financed event, so then all the pieces of the puzzle have to fall together. That means we are dependent on our ticket buyers, sponsors and other partners. It is logical to make a decision after the upcoming Dutch Grand Prix," says circuit director Robert van Overdijk to De Telegraaf.

Problems for Spa-Francorchamps

Zandvoort is in a luxurious position in that respect. The contract with F1 runs until 2023 and Zandvoort itself still has a unilateral option that it can exercise for another two years. For the future of Zandvoort, fans do not have to fear, but they do have to fear for the future of Spa-Francorchamps and Paul Ricard.

The circuits in Belgium and France have expiring contracts and are not among the parties with the biggest bag of money. Spa is a favorite circuit of many drivers and there was still a lot of investment in recent years to modernize the circuit. Paul Ricard is less loved by drivers and fans, but F1 will also look at the wallets of the two circuits.
ROOSENDAAL, the Netherlands, March 23 (Xinhua) -- A senior official from the Dutch Foreign Ministry on Tuesday advocated a partnership with China to tackle global challenges such as climate change.

Peter Potman, deputy director general for foreign economic relations at the ministry, made the remarks at an event held Tuesday night in Roosendaal, a city in the southern Netherlands, to mark the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries.

Potman, a veteran diplomat who once served as the Dutch consul-general in Shanghai, said China is a fast-growing market for Dutch businesses. Its big R&D budgets, large pool of talent and high-quality knowledge infrastructure offer Dutch companies and institutions many opportunities, especially in sectors such as agriculture, health, environment, and logistics, he said.

It is important for the two countries to seize opportunities, pursue cooperation and work together on the basis of shared interests, he said, calling bilateral ties "strong and long-lasting."

Chinese Ambassador to the Netherlands Tan Jian also attended the event. Tan highlighted the "expanding and deepening" cooperation between the two countries over the past five decades.

"Both support multilateralism," Tan said. "Our two countries maintain consultations on major international and regional issues within the frameworks of the UN, G20, WTO and WHO."

"We cooperate closely on climate change, sustainable development goals and many others high on the international development agenda," he added.

Tan noted that over the past 50 years, bilateral trade has grown nearly 1,700 times, from less than 69 million to over 116 billion U.S. dollars, and over the past two years, bilateral trade has increased by 7.8 percent and 27 percent respectively despite the COVID-19 pandemic.

China has been firmly committed to "win-win economic cooperation," Tan said, adding that China, the Netherlands and Europe need each other and should strengthen their partnership of shared interests. 
McLaren has both feet on the ground after the Bahrain Grand Prix. The team from Woking remained scoreless, but above all the fact that the team does not understand the car is a big problem.

Setback in Bahrain

In Barcelona, it was still all looking good for McLaren. The team drove the most laps in Spain after Ferrari and Mercedes and also seemed very fast. Andreas Seidl already saw in Barcelona that his team was losing ground in low speed corners, but didn't expect the team to fall so far back in Bahrain either.

During the test week in Bahrain, major problems already arose for McLaren with the brakes. They became too hot and caused many problems. They had to be replaced before the Bahrain Grand Prix. The temporary solution is to replace the carbon brakes for a metal version, reports Auto, Motor und Sport.

No panic at McLaren

The brakes were therefore no longer a problem in Bahrain, but the team no longer understands its own car. ''The balance was actually okay,'' Seidl informed the German medium. ''If your car is fast, that's a good sign, but in this case, of course, it's not.'' The team was mainly working on different front wings and flow vis, to see what the airflow does. This picture may also have been changed by McLaren's new brakes.

The problem is that McLaren also lost a lot of testing time due to the brake problems in Bahrain. Whereas in Barcelona it was still third in the list in terms of the number of laps driven, in Bahrain it drove by far the fewest laps. As a result, the team lacks data on the car, which it has now collected from the first race weekend. It was therefore more of a test for McLaren than a real race weekend.

Although the blow to McLaren is big, Seidl does not want panic to break out at the team. ''There is no point in being hectic. We have to analyze everything very calmly. We have the resources, the talent and the experience in the team to come back. This was only the first race. The season is long enough to come back,'' the McLaren team boss concluded.
Max Verstappen is keen to put the disappointing result of the Bahrain Grand Prix behind him. In a preview to the Saudi Arabia Grand Prix, he says the disappointment was tough for the whole team, but Red Bull Racing has good papers in hand for the second race on the Formula One calendar.

"Last weekend was tough for all of us to deal with," Verstappen begins in a Red Bull Racing press release. After the race he was critical of his team, but he stresses that they are in it together. "We win and lose as a team and we will come back stronger this week," assures the reigning world champion.

Verstappen looks ahead to Saudi Arabia

"We have a good package," he says, something that was clearly evident in Bahrain. He also emphasizes that only one race has been driven and that they still have a whole season ahead of them.

Looking ahead to the Saudi Arabia Grand Prix, the Red Bull driver notes that in 2021 the humidity was a big challenge. There was also a lot of talk about the Jeddah Corniche Circuit: some even labeled it as dangerous. As a result, a number of adjustments were made.

"They've made some small adjustments to the visibility in sector one, so I'm curious to see how it's going to be this time around," Verstappen continued. "It's a really quick track with high speed straights and this year the cars are slightly heavier so it's going to be really interesting to see how they will perform. Im really looking forward to it, it should be enjoyable," concluded the world champion.
For the Mercedes team, the Bahrain Grand Prix was all about damage limitation, and they succeeded - partly due to Red Bull Racing's double retirement. Toto Wolff emphasizes that his team is currently the "third team on the grid" but at the same time sees that the W13 has potential.

According to the Mercedes boss, his team has improved on the winter test in Bahrain, where it was plagued by porpoising. Since then the German racing team has had great difficulty in getting rid of the problem without having to compromise on speed.

Wolff: 'Mercedes the third team behind Ferrari and Red Bull'

Consequently, during the opening weekend in Bahrain, Mercedes could not keep up with the pace of Ferrari and Red Bull Racing. "We were clearly third quickest behind Ferrari and Red Bull," Wolff notes in a press release. "We know the W13 has potential, and we need to continue learning, find out how to unlock it, and maximise our opportunities for points in the meantime."

Despite Mercedes' disappointing performance, an unexpected podium finish was in the cards due to Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez 's crashes. "We scored the maximum points we could and more than we were expecting to. That's partly down to others' misfortune but reliability has always been a crucial factor in Formula 1," Wolff said.
Grand Haven, MI (49417)

Today

Partly cloudy this morning, then becoming cloudy during the afternoon. High around 60F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Cloudy skies early, then off and on rain showers overnight. Low near 50F. Winds NE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 40%.
OTTAWA, March 22 (Xinhua) -- Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Tuesday announced an agreement reached by his Liberal Party and the New Democratic Party (NDP) in Parliament to ensure the ruling party to govern through 2025.

"It's a minority government, so parties need to work together," Trudeau said at a press conference. The parties agree to partner from March 22, 2022 until the next election when Parliament rises in June 2025.

The partnership arrangement allows four budgets from 2022 to 2025 to be presented by the government during this time, meaning that the NDP agrees to support the government on confidence and budgetary matters. The NDP would not move a vote of non-confidence, nor vote for a non-confidence motion during the term of the arrangement.

The parties have identified key policy areas where there is a desire for a similar medium-term outcome, focusing on growing the economy by creating green jobs that fight the climate crisis, making people's lives more affordable with housing and childcare, expanding and protecting the healthcare as well as advancing reconciliation with Indigenous peoples.

"It is about ensuring those differences do not stand in the way of delivering on shared goals for the benefit of each and every Canadian," a statement from the prime minister office said. "No one benefits when increasing polarization and parliamentary dysfunction stand in the way of delivering these results for Canadians."

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said later in his virtual press conference that he's not concerned if his party gets credit for enacting these programs and that his party is simply "using our power to get help to people."

On average, minority governments in Canada survive for about 18 months before falling and having to return to the polls. Currently the House of Commons has 338 members. The Liberals have 159 seats, Conservatives 119, Bloc Quebecois 32, NDP 25, Green Party two, and Independent one. 
WASHINGTON, March 23 (Xinhua) -- Madeleine Albright, the first female secretary of state of the United States, died Wednesday, her family announced. She was 84.

Albright died of cancer, her family said in a statement, adding she was "surrounded by family and friends" during the final moment of her life.

A native of Prague, then Czechoslovakia, Albright migrated to the United States in 1948 as an 11-year-old refugee, rising to the top of U.S. Foreign Service as she held the post of secretary of state from 1997 to 2001 during the Bill Clinton administration.

During her tenure at the State Department, Albright championed the eastward expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), pushing in particular for the alliance's military intervention -- led by the United States in 1999 -- into the conflict in Kosovo between the Serbs and ethnic Albanians.

NATO's 78-day airstrike campaign against then Federal Republic of Yugoslavia extended to the bombardment of the capital city of Belgrade.

Before becoming the secretary of state, Albright was the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations between 1993 and 1997. She was a professor at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service at the time of her death. 
Graphex Technologies, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Graphex Group Limited, announced that, as part of its previously announced collaboration with Emerald Energy Solutions LLC (EES), the Emerald Business Park (EBP) in the City of Warren has been selected for the future site of a new 150,000 square-foot graphite processing facility. The processing facility would be developed under a joint venture between Graphex and EES.

The EBP location features key existing infrastructure that allows for a streamlined construction schedule and a rapid transition into production, including a newly installed 12-megawatt power substation on the property and vacant structures that can be revitalized and repurposed relatively quickly.

The talent base, existing automotive supply chain infrastructure, available state and local support and available incentives, and proximity to customers at the heart of the automotive industry, helped to differentiate Michigan from competing regions for this first foothold for Graphex in the US.

The processing facility development is subject to customary conditions, including finalization of definitive documentation and permitting.

Graphex plans that the facility will be capable of delivering up to 15,000 metric tons per annum (TPA) of coated purified spherical graphite and that it will be operational before the end of Q2 2023. Coated purified spherical graphite is the predominant anode material for most Li-ion batteries used in EVs and renewable energy storage.

The facility would provide timely and localized anode material production capabilities to supply major North American EV automakers and EV battery manufacturers and to rapidly deliver consistent high-quality materials at scale, mitigating some of the supply chain interruption concerns that have plagued the EV industry in the past. This facility would be the first of several that Graphex may potentially construct in the US, Canada, and Europe as warranted by market conditions and commercial opportunities.

The processing and supply of coated purified spherical graphite is expected to significantly increase year over year to keep pace with the projected significant increase in demand for EVs in the US and worldwide. Developing this initial US location is an important part of Graphexs strategy for the global expansion and diversification of its graphene production capabilities.

The EBP facility will house production, storage, testing and administrative offices at a site that played a supporting role to the Michigan automotive dynasties for decades before falling into disrepair. The sites historical character as a 20th century supplier to the automotive industry is meaningful and noteworthy to both EES and Graphex. All 150,000 square feet of the buildings that will be used to produce, store, test, and distribute EV battery anode material were previously home to one of the more significant electroplating and rustproofing service providers to time-honored Michigan automakers. A plaque found on site dating back to 1963 will be preserved for its historical distinction, serving as a reminder of the past and as a motivation to return an otherwise defunct site back to its original vitality and usefulness in the community and the industry.

Proficient in commercial deep processing of graphite, Graphex is currently producing more than 10,000 metric tons of spherical graphite annually. With a strategy to expand its global operations to support energy transition and electrification efforts worldwide, Graphex Group is currently among the top suppliers of specialized spherical graphite to the EV and renewable energy industries and holds patents in areas including products, production methods, machinery design, and environmental protection.


OPPOSITION Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) Bulawayo structures have refused to work with MDC-T leader Thokozani Khupe after she offered to rally behind Nelson Chamisas candidates in the weekend by-elections and 2023 polls.

Khupe made the announcement at a Press conference in Bulawayo on Monday.

The province said Khupes previous association with Zanu PF leader President Emmerson Mnangagwa made it difficult for them to trust her.

The development is threatening to divide the party, after the CCC national leadership embraced Khupe.

The party leadership also pointed out that the party was new and leadership positions would be decided by citizens.

CCC Bulawayo spokesperson Swithern Chirowodza said if Zanla freedom fighters did not accommodate Morris Nyathi who was accused of selling out the liberation struggle, why should CCC entertain Khupe?

On August 9, 1976, Rhodesian Selous Scouts aided by former Zanla commander Nyathi attacked a Zanla camp at Nyadzonia in Mozambique, killing hundreds of Zimbabwean political refugees.

There is no need for diplomatic talk with an enemy. We will call a spade a spade. Zulu king Tshaka, a victorious military general, taught his warriors never to forgive an injured enemy lest the enemy heals, gathers courage and jumps to slit your throat, Chirowodza said.

We are Bulawayo, the headquarters of Matabeleland. We will not accept to be led by a person who run Mnangagwas schemes. The ink has not dried on the paper on which she wrote to two senators in the United States pleading with them to lift sanctions. This is the same Mnangagwa who was the State Security minister during the Gukurahundi era.

This is the same Mnangagwa who was commander-in-chief of the army (Zimbabwe Defence Forces) that shot and killed six Zimbabweans on August 1, 2018. We will not drink with Khupe. She is political poison, Chirowodza said.

Khupe said her decision to support Chamisa emanated from talks between the two parties. Recently, she was seen posing for pictures with CCC interim vice-president Welshman Ncube and member Abednico Bhebhe.

In 2018, opposition supporters accused Khupe of dividing the opposition vote, scuttling Chamisas chances of winning the presidential elections. She garnered around 45 000 votes.

Her decision to rally behind Chamisa came a few months after she was fired from the MDC Alliance by Douglas Mwonzora where she was vice-president. She then declared herself leader of the MDC-T. Newsday
LG Energy Solution (LGES) is investing $1.7 billion and creating 1,200 jobs at its current location in Holland. Michigan. LGES expansion will quintuple the plants capacity to help produce battery components into the future as Michigans electric vehicle industry grows.

The LGES expansion announcement comes two months after GM announced its $7-billion investment in the state, which includes up to $2.5 billion to build Ultium Cell LLCs third US battery cell plant in the city of Lansing and Delta Township, a joint venture between GM and LG.

The two companies have a longstanding relationship, and GM acted as a key partner in bringing LG to Michigan in 2010. The Holland investment will fall under the LGES entity, which recently completed a record-breaking IPO in South Korea.

LG Energy Solution, formerly known as LG Chem Michigan, manufactures large lithium-ion polymer battery cells and packs for electric vehicles. The company has had a presence in Holland since 2010 when it built its first EV battery plant in the US and now has 1,495 employees in Michigan.

As the future of the electric vehicle industry grows, LG Energy Solution needs the additional capacity to allow for the production, testing and storage of materials needed for battery manufacturing. The expansion includes the construction of several new facilities on LGES existing footprint in Holland.

The facility will manufacture the companys new long-cell design batteries with improved energy density with technologies that allow engineers to utilize the space within the battery pack more completely . The long-cell design batteries are expected to advance EVs driving range and ESS energy storage, and at the same time, simplify the overall structure of battery pack.

The Michigan Strategic Fund approved a package of incentives to support the companys new battery manufacturing facilities:
In preparation for the launch of its all-new 2023 bZ4X battery electric SUV (earlier post) later this year, Toyota Motor North America, Inc. will work with ChargePoint, Inc. to offer customers home and public EV charging solutions.





For home charging, bZ4X customers will have the option to purchase a ChargePoint Home Flex Level 2 charger from participating Toyota dealerships or directly from ChargePoint online. ChargePoint Home Flex is ENERGY STAR certified and Wi-Fi enabled, can be installed indoors or out, comes with a 23-foot charging cable to support different parking configurations and can charge electric vehicles up to nine times faster than a standard outlet.

Translated for the bZ4X, the home charger can charge up to 25 miles of range per hour and fully charge the battery when plugged in overnight.

To install the ChargePoint Home Flex, Qmerit has been selected to help guide bZ4X customers through the process of locating a certified EV charger installer, offering an initial free quote and additional services to support them all the way through to installation completion.

ChargePoint also offers an extensive public network of Level 2 and Level 3 (DC fast) chargers, including roaming partner stations, across North America. With a vast network of charging stations to choose from, bZ4X drivers can access more than 80% of charging spots in North America, providing them the opportunity to charge when, where and how they want. In utilizing ChargePoint public charging APIs, Toyota offers seamless access to bZ4X drivers with the convenience of being able to find, use and pay for vehicle charging via the Toyota App.

The bZ4X is the first of a global series of battery-electric vehicles to be introduced under the global Toyota bZ brand umbrella. bZ4X will have a manufacturer-estimated range of up to 250 miles for XLE front-wheel drive models.
A Look Around: Out Of The Mouths Of Babes
Greeneville native Andy Ross is a raconteur, film buff, record collector and former member of the Capitol Theatre Board of Directors. Under The Marquee prints monthly.
 How to Clip

Click and hold your mouse button on the page to select the area you wish to save or print. You can click and drag the clipping box to move it or click and drag in the bottom right corner to resize it. When you're happy with your selection, click the checkmark icon next to the clipping area to continue.
TEACHERS unions have condemned Zanu PF for disrupting learning and frog-marching students to its campaign rallies ahead of the Saturday by-elections.

Yesterday, students from Chaminuka Primary School in St Marys, Chitungwiza, were part of the crowd at a rally addressed by President Emmerson Mnangagwa.

Amalgamated Rural Teachers Union of Zimbabwe (Artuz) Obert Masaraure said political parties should desist from turning schools into campaign bases.

We do not want politicians in our schools. Our schools should never be abused in terms of private political beings, Masaraure said.

In 2017, we reported the case of political interference to the Zimbabwe Human Rights Commission. We are glad that at some point we had this commission issuing a damning report on Zanu PF condemning the abuse of schools, condemning the abuse of properties, condemning the dragging of learners and teachers to political rallies.

He said Artuz was preparing a court challenge, seeking an order barring political parties from accessing schools as well as initiating a citizen-led process of producing safe schools regulations.

Zimbabwe National Teachers Union president Manuel Nyawo also called for de-politicisation of learning institutions.

It is not ideal for politicians to hold rallies in school premises because we have always called for depoliticisation of learning institutions, Nyawo said.

We are not politicians and schools are not political grounds for politicians and, therefore, we appeal to these politicians to stay away from using school premises as rallying points for politics. Newsday
The writer is editor of National Review and a political commentator. Copyright 2022, by King Features Syndicate.
Greensburg, IN (47240)

Today

Cloudy with rain developing this afternoon. High near 65F. Winds ESE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90%..

Tonight

Periods of rain. Thunder possible. Low 58F. Winds ESE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
China-Mongolia border port sees robust fruit, vegetable exports

Xinhua) 16:25, March 23, 2022

HOHHOT, March 23 (Xinhua) -- From 2018 to the end of February 2022, a total of 364,000 tonnes of fruits and vegetables were exported from China to Mongolia via the border port of Erenhot in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, according to the Erenhot Customs.

The total trade value of fruit and vegetable exports to Mongolia through the port reached 423 million yuan (about 66.4 million U.S. dollars).

In 2018, a green channel for agricultural products was launched, which has since been putting more than 30 kinds of fruit and vegetables, including apples, oranges, lemons, onions, peppers and cucumbers, on the tables of Mongolian people.

Thanks to this green channel, the average customs clearance time for fruit and vegetable exports has been reduced to 30 minutes.

Erenhot, the largest land port on the China-Mongolia border, supplies about 80 percent of Mongolia's fruit and vegetables.

(Web editor: Peng yukai, Liang Jun)


PRESIDENT Emmerson Mnangagwa yesterday warned chiefs against supporting the opposition, saying traditional leaders must remain loyal to the ruling Zanu PF party if they want to retain their positions.

He also threatened to sabotage development projects and frustrate service delivery in urban local authorities led by opposition councillors.

Addressing thousands of ruling party supporters in St Marys, Chitungwiza, Mnangagwa warned that the party would not hesitate to dethrone chiefs found hobnobbing with opposition officials.

We liberated the country through war. Some men and women perished. We said we would work with chiefs and when you see a chief supporting the opposition, that chief should do a cleansing ceremony and ask his ancestors why they would have forsaken him, Mnangagwa said.

The Constitution explicitly bars traditional leaders from dabbling in partisan politics.

Chapter 15 of the Constitution says traditional leaders must not be members of any political party or in any way participate in partisan politics, act in a partisan manner, further the interests of any political party or cause or violate the fundamental rights and freedoms of any person.

But Chiefs Council president Fortune Charumbira has on several occasions publicly declared his allegiance to Zanu PF.

Late last year, Chief Charumbira told delegates at a Zanu PF national conference in Bindura, Mashonaland Central province, that traditional leaders were the owners and stokeholders of Zanu PF.

In December, Vice-President Constantino Chiwenga read the riot act to Chief Murinye of Masvingo after the traditional leader warned Mnangagwa that he risked losing the 2023 presidential race if he continued surrounding himself with corrupt lieutenants.

In his address yesterday, Mnangagwa threatened to block development in opposition-led local authorities if the electorate votes for Nelson Chamisas Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) councillors.

If you want the government to listen to your concerns and address them, you will have to send them via channels which we recognise and not through the opposition, Mnangagwa said.

Here is the opportunity to vote for people who submit your concerns to the leaders. You hear the young boy (Chamisa) saying if I win, he will make this country ungovernable. Let us make sure he wont get into government.

The opposition has accused Zanu PF through the Local Government ministry of sabotaging service delivery in urban councils through late approval of budgets.

The ministry has in the past fired opposition councillors and replaced them with Zanu PF-aligned commissioners.

Mnangagwa also said his government was determined to deregister non-governmental organisations that refused to toe the ruling party line.

The threat came at a time when the Zanu PF administration has railroaded the Private Voluntary Organisations (PVO) Amendment Bill through Parliament to regulate the operations of non-governmental organisations (NGOs), civic, groups and trusts perceived to be anti-government.

According to civic groups, the Bill is a ploy to stop them from exposing misgovernance, corruption and human rights abuses.

NGOs, which fail to stick to their mandate, I will push them out of the country, we can do without them, we dont need them, said Mnangagwa, before warning secessionists that they risked arrest.

There are some Mthwakazi (members) who say they want Zimbabwe to be divided. They will speak, get old and die. Zimbabwe will remain a unitary State. No leadership in this world encourages its country to be divided. No one will divide it. If you want to do that you will leave shortly. Walk in the right path. We want peace, we want development. This country has its owners and its led by its owners. It cant be led by people who get advice from whites, he said.

Yesterdays rally was probably Mnangagwas last before the country votes on Saturday to fill 28 parliamentary and 105 local government seats following recalls, deaths and diplomatic postings. Newsday
White House Press Secretary and Stamford-native Jen Psaki tested positive for COVID Tuesday morning, she announced on her Twitter page.

Psaki took a COVID test prior to traveling with President Joe Biden to Europe. There, Biden is scheduled to stop in Belgium to meet with European leaders on Russias war in Ukraine and Poland, which shares a border with Ukraine, according to the Associated Press.

Psaki said she had two socially distanced meetings with Biden Monday and he is not considered a close contact as defined by CDC guidance.

Biden took a PCR test Tuesday and tested negative, Psaki added.

I am sharing the news of my positive test today out an abundance of transparency, she said on Twitter Tuesday afternoon. Thanks to the vaccine, I have only experienced mild symptoms.

In the meantime, Psaki said shell be working from home. She plans to return to work in person after a five-day isolation period and a negative test.

This is the second time a positive COVID test has stopped the Greenwich High School graduate from traveling to Europe with Biden. On Oct. 31, 2021, Psaki said she contracted the virus and experienced mild symptoms, causing her to skip a trip with Biden to Rome and Scotland, the Associated Press reported.
In the 12th century the rabbinical scholar Maimonides defined eight levels of charity. The highest level of charity is entering into a partnership with or finding employment for a person in need so that they will not be dependent upon others.

The lowest level of charity is giving inadequately and unwillingly, having been forced to give.

Our state government is focused on lowest form of charity, and ironically some believe they are morally superior for perpetuating and encouraging this sorry situation.

Connecticut is failing in high charity by every conceivable measure: Our Gross Domestic Product  the sum of all our labor  is flat in real terms since 2005. We have fewer employed than in 1998, and this number has declined since November 2021. The number of people receiving nutrition assistance, including children in schools, is climbing to levels not seen since 2011 and has been on an upward trend since 1997. Connecticuts unemployment rate is 5.8 percent, 49 percent above the national average of 3.9 percent. Businesses and residents are exiting Connecticut. And household income now trails neighboring Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New Hampshire. Even Utah has surpassed Connecticut.

Yet, state legislators are increasing taxes and creating new hidden taxes through regulations such as 8-30g to make up for their failure to help residents help themselves with a self-sufficient life of work and dignity. The result of such policies is detrimental to their recipients who suffer anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues.

Sure, we need a safety net, but what we need most is opportunity. The measure of our success as a society should not be how many we help, but rather how few need that help.

Giving residents the means to help themselves requires removing needless barriers to new businesses and providing a more friendly environment to existing businesses. It requires encouraging entrepreneurs and providing support for our university graduates. It requires low taxes and low energy costs to attract businesses. It requires creating the infrastructure of tomorrow, not sprucing up the infrastructure of 1950.

What we see in Connecticut is an out-migration of the employed. People flee high taxes when they can, and as is more evident than ever before, an over-reaching government hurts all residents.

The first step toward a solution is to acknowledge that Connecticut has been badly run for years with failed welfare-focused policies. But instead of accepting responsibility, legislators are diverting attention, shouting about racism, virtue signaling with double-think slogans for useless hidden taxes such as 8-30g in a last-ditch attempt to outsource their failures to well-run towns.

Creating jobs, improving education outcomes, supporting businesses, providing safe neighborhoods are all a lot harder than shouting racist and blaming successful residents or the other party. Democrats in Hartford are mired in blame and denial, focused on the lowest form of charity  welfare programs using tax dollars. We must send new people to Hartford who are focused on jobs, economic growth and opportunity. That is the highest form of charity, and a must for Connecticut.

Michael Spilo is a District 11 member of Greenwichs Representative Town Meeting. The opinions expressed here are his own.
Tracy City, TN (37387)

Today

A mix of clouds and sun. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 82F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Cloudy skies this evening followed by scattered showers and thunderstorms overnight. Low 64F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60%.
Samsung is about to announce a new smartphone, called Galaxy M53. It will arrive on March 27 in Vietnam, but its specs, features and renders already leaked online, as well as another Geekbench listing of the SM-M536B variant.

The phone will arrive with a Dimensity 900 chipset, four cameras and 25W fast charging for the 5,000 mAh battery, but without the adapter in the retail box.



Samsung launch in Vietnam

The rest of the specs, look pretty solid - a 6.7 Super AMOLED screen with 120Hz refresh rate and a 32MP camera on the waterdrop notch.

The main camera is getting an upgrade and to a 108MP sensor. The phone will also pack an 8MP ultrawide shooter, and two 2 MP shooters - one for macro shots, the other for depth data.

The Galaxy M53 is said to arrive with Android 12 and One UI 4.1 on top.

We also expect to see the Galaxy M33 5G at the event in Vietnam. There already is an LTE-only M33, so were curious what chipset Samsung decided to use and whether there will be any other changes between the two phones.

Source 1 (in Vietnamese)  Source 2  Source 3 | Via
Boonie Stompers Inc. is inviting hikers to join a trek on Saturday from Mount Sasalaguan to Mount Finacresta.

This hike is rated very very difficult and expected to take five hours to travel 4 miles. Climb and enjoy the outstanding views of Guams southeastern mountains as you climb steep uphill climbs and high sword grass.

Be prepared for this hike by wearing hiking shoes and gloves. You should also bring 4 quarts of water, electrolytes, sunscreen, lunch and a camera.

Special conditions for this hike include sword grass, steep climbs and little shade.

To join the hike, meet at 9 a.m. in the parking lot behind Chamorro Village in Hagatna.

The cost is $5 for hikers over the age of 17.

Children must be accompanied by a responsible adult, and hikers should provide their own transportation.

If you complete 10 hikes, you get a free Boonie Stomp T-shirt.
Stevie Merinos plans to teach anthropology at the college level took a detour with the birth of her son. Soon after, she found her calling to be a doula providing emotional and physical support for women in pregnancy, birth and postpartum.

Two months after I had my son, I found doula training and the rest is history. My life trajectory, career trajectory, everything changed, said Merino, who was born and raised in Long Beach, California.

My life is all things pregnancy and birth. When I look back, everything that I was doing was preparation for this work that Im supposed to be doing.

During her doula training, she would have eerie and unexplainable experiences.

I (would) take a class learning massage or working with certain plants and itll feel like Ive known how to do this, like all of my life, the 34-year-old said. Its like this visceral blood memory or something. My body just remembers.

I was taking this workshop on basic massage for people who are pregnant, and it was my first time ever doing it, she recalled. It was quite complicated and intricate and right when I started doing it, I just knew how to massage, it just felt like second nature, like I had done this before, and that I knew how to do it. And so things like that would happen in a lot of different instances and it definitely freaked me out.

She resisted sharing these transcendental experiences for fear of being labeled weird by her family and friends. But it kept happening and she started to embrace it.

I talked so much about reconnecting and reclaiming and so Im going to accept that whatever is happening for whatever reason is a gift and an offering, she said. I like to think that somewhere in my lineage, one of my ancestors was doing this work, and it lives in me now.

Merino was born in a Catholic hospital in Long Beach. Her mother Tina Emilia Perez Mesa, familian Dodo, is from Sinajana and her father, Steve Merino, grew up in Hawaii and is of Puerto Rican descent.

Her family grew up in Long Beach with her grandparents, Jesus Perez Mesa Jr. of Sinajana and Gaynel Condrey Mesa of Florida. Merino has enduring memories of her grandfather.

We lived with them until he passed. He essentially raised us, he took care of us, he was our connection to CHamoru culture. He would make the foods, take us to rosaries and all of those things, she said. He instilled who and what CHamoru was for me. He was the one who made me curious and proud to be CHamoru.

Growing up, she would do school projects on her grandfather surviving the Japanese occupation on Guam.

Wartime trauma

The only story he would ever tell was that he remembers there was like a Japanese soldier who was on the familys land, and he put him in a chokehold, and was taken as prisoner of war. He was the eldest of nine siblings when the war happened, and he was taken as a slave by the Japanese, she said.

That wartime trauma scarred her grandfather, and after the war he joined the U.S. Merchant Marine and left the island. He never wanted to go back, it was something he wanted to move past and he rarely spoke of it.

I still do projects on my grandpa but its like grasping for straws, because he was a man of very few words  particularly related to the experience of being CHamoru and living during the war. And my mom seems to know even less, she said.

Thankfully, I do have other elders in my family who would tell me stories about my grandfather. I learned a lot more about the CHamoru side of my family that my grandpa had never shared with us.

Jesus Perez Mesa Jr. died in 2005 at the age of 82, when Merino was in her late teens. His influence stayed with Stevie Merino.

I think Im the only one who is really invested in reconnecting and reclaiming my CHamoru culture, said Merino, who has an older sister and two younger half brothers.

Cultural research

She received her bachelors in anthropology in 2014 from California State University, Long Beach. In May, she will receive her masters in anthropology, with a focus on medical anthropology, also from Cal State Long Beach.

It took me six years. I finished the program in two years with a 4.0 GPA but it took four more years to complete the thesis, she said. All while raising a toddler, going through a divorce and working as a doula full time as a single mom.

Her masters thesis explores birthing traditions of CHamorus living in Southern California through an anthropological lens from someone who considers themselves a traditional healer or cultural practitioner.

I wanted to see if people that are CHamoru have been able to maintain cultural traditions surrounding these themes, or if theyve been lost as a result of being in diaspora. And so its like, what do we reclaim? Or what do we continue to perpetuate, when so much is lost?

Throughout the writing of the thesis, she remains optimistic because there are CHamorus who are invested in the resurgence and (the) continuation of our traditions and practices related to birth and pregnancy.

Doula business

She has embedded her anthropological and womens studies knowledge with her CHamoru-ness into her thriving business as a doula helping women of color in Southern California.

I provide support for people who are pregnant or postpartum, it could be physical comfort, pain management, emotional support or just planning. I educate them on their options and their rights in terms of what they can have, or that they can do in labor, she said.

I have worked with Pacific Islander clients, and people of color. So it looks different depending on how folks identify and what theyre interested in. Some people want herbs and I do work with herbs since Im an herbalist. They might want a massage, and I use coconut oil because of the connection to the island, but also there are a lot of health benefits.

She also provides advocacy guidance so that women know they have the right to birthing in a certain way and that they can refuse certain things. They have agency to have the birth that they want or that they envision, and they should be treated with respect and dignity.

Mutual healing

She also has a doula collective, and has trained hundreds of people to become doulas.

Its culturally specific, and every training that I do, I start with a CHamoru chant. There are all these people from all over the country and even internationally, who have never heard of CHamorus, never heard our language, and are all saying this chant with me to open up our space, she said proudly. That feels so powerful as a CHamoru person, to be able to bring us to the table in this ancestral way. And so I do that.

When I do this work, I always feel like, Oh, Im going to help this person. Im going to support them and help their healing process and their familys healing process. And then I support them. And I realize, Oh, Im actually the one who is having a healing experience from their journey, she said.
A man and woman were found with methamphetamine as they sat in a car parked outside a home where police had executed a search warrant, a magistrates complaint filed in the Superior Court of Guam stated.

When questioned by police, the man told officers he had been selling the drug to make ends meet, the complaint stated.

Jason Vince Leon Guerrero, 28, was charged with possession of a Schedule II controlled substance with intent to deliver. Deeana Marie Babauta, 26, was charged with possession of a Schedule II controlled substance and possession with intent to deliver.

The two were questioned by police after they were seen in a car parked outside of a Talofofo home that was being searched Tuesday morning, the complaint stated.

Officers saw a green case on the dashboard, which Leon Guerrero said was his and contained brass knuckles. An officer placed the case on top of the car.

Then officers noticed Babauta was exhibiting signs of methamphetamine abuse that included excessive, uncontrollable jaw movements, grinding of teeth and clenching of her jaw, according to the complaint.

When asked if there were illegal drugs or weapons in the car, both Babauta and Leon Guerrero said yes before being asked to step out of the car.

Officers then searched, with consent of Leon Guerrero, the car and green case to find 15 baggies and cut straws with meth residue, a digital scale and small scissors in the case and two glass pipes and a plastic spoon in the car, according to the complaint.

Babauta was seen by officers grasping her right front pocket, and when asked what was in her pocket, she said its ice, but its not mine. It belongs to my boyfriend, referring to Leon Guerrero. About half a gram of methamphetamine and a baggie of oxycodone pills were found in Babautas pocket, the complaint stated.

Leon Guerrero admitted to owning the ice in Babautas pocket and said he had been selling to make ends meet, the complaint stated.
A total of 16 patients were admitted to island hospitals due to COVID-19, according to a news release from the Joint Information Center. Of these patients, 12 were hospitalized at Guam Regional Medical City, where two patients were in the intensive care unit with one on a ventilator.

Guam Memorial Hospital reported three COVID-19 patient admissions with neither receiving intensive care treatment. Naval Hospital Guam reported one COVID-related admission.

No pediatric admissions were reported.

The Department of Public Health and Social Services reported 49 new cases of COVID-19 taken from 525 specimens analyzed Tuesday. Of these cases, nine were reported by the Department of Defense.

To date, Guam has recorded 340 COVID-related deaths and 46,942 officially reported cases of COVID-19.

Vaccines

Vaccines and boosters are available at the clinic at the Agana Shopping Center. Hours are 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday through Saturday. Appointments are available at tinyurl.com/vaxguam.

Shots also are available 9 a.m.-noon Monday through Saturday at Southern Region Community Health Center in Inalahan and 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday through Saturday at the Northern Region Community Health Center in Dededo.

Community testing

Community testing is available 8 a.m.-3 p.m. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and 8-11 a.m. Saturdays at the old carnival grounds in Tiyan.

No symptoms are needed for testing. Appointments can be made at tinyurl.com/covidstopswithme. As of Tuesday, 135,805 of Guams eligible population is fully vaccinated and 56,692 booster shots have been administered.
A man testified that he tackled and restrained murder suspect Rudy Quinata in Barrigada shortly before Quinata was arrested in the death of former Humatak Mayor Daniel Sanchez.

I executed a tackle on him, Gerard Damian testified on Quinatas fifth day of trial.

Damian, a Chalan Pago resident, explained he was dropping off food for his elderly parents when a large individual was near the home.

I actually thought at the time it was my cousin, because he looked like he was walking through my cousins yard, and then of course as I got closer I had seen a large individual right at about the boundary of my moms property, Damian explained.

Damian asked Quinata, whom he had never met, what he was doing at the residence. Quinata said he wanted to use the phone.

I said What number do you want to dial? and he goes, I want to call the police. I want to turn myself in, Damian said.

So already after he mentioned that, red flags are flying, Damian said. He said he tried to get Quinata to leave the property and go toward the main road.

Why did you want to keep him off your property? Rapadas asked.

Well because hes a large individual and, you know, I have two elderly parents inside the house, Damian replied.

Quinata refused. Instead, he stopped at Damians car and asked for a cigarette and water. Damian said his nephew gave him a cigarette, but Quinata still refused to leave.

We got him the cigarette, and after he lit the cigarette he started walking into the garage, Damian said. At a particular moment he got just too close to the garage so I told him Stop! and right when he turned, I took off and took him down.

Damian said he held Quinata on the ground and restrained him from moving.

The whole time he was on the ground he kept saying, I just want to turn myself in. I just want to get arrested, Damian recalled. He said Quinata did not struggle.

Arrest

Guam Police Department Officer Joe Nucum testified that minutes later, he arrived at the residence and placed Quinata under arrest.

Nucum said Quinata told him he wanted to use the phone.

Why did he want to use the phone? Rapadas asked.

He wanted to turn himself in, Nucum replied.

Quinatas attorney, Peter Santos, asked Nucum if Quinata said he knew the police was looking for him.

Thats correct, sir, Nucum replied.

How did he know the police were looking for him?

He did not know, sir. He just said the police were looking for him because his family told him.

According to previous testimony from GPD detective Eric Barcinas, after Quinata was arrested at the Barrigada residence on the criminal trespass complaint, he was arrested in the murder. Sanchez was found beaten and stabbed in Quinatas home.

Quinatas trial continues Friday.
The Port Authority of Guam began the demolition and removal of five inoperable cranes and two barges on Wednesday.

The areas in front of these two gantry cranes will once again be revenue generating, said Port Authority of Guam General Manager Rory Respicio, adding that the old cranes and barges would be replaced with new cranes for the ports commercial activities and military readiness.

Four gantry cranes, one mobile harbor crane and two sunken barges will be removed and shipped off island by Guam Shipyard employees with the assistance of contractors from Smithbridge. Pieces from the demolition and removal will be shipped off to be recycled.

Modernization of the port facilities will create more operational efficiencies and maximizes the ports capacity to bring in additional vessels, said Guam Shipyard President and CEO Mathews Pothen.

The project will cost a total of $2.5 million according to Respicio.

The ceremony also had Father Richard Kidd from Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in Santa Rita-Sumai give a blessing for the success and safety of those involved in the project.

Jones Act

Gov. Lou Leon Guerrero during the ceremony announced her administration is working to make Guam exempt from the Jones Act, and that she has written to members of Congress on the issue.

The Jones Act is a federal law that requires goods shipped between U.S. ports to only be carried out by vessels that are built, owned and operated by U.S. citizens or permanent residents.

If we do have the exemption we will see more products, goods and services come to our island at a lesser cost to the people of Guam, Leon Guerrero said.
New York investigators suspect a second accounting firm has information on tax filings by the Trump Organization, new court papers reveal.

In a letter filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, Trump Organization lawyer Lawrence Rosen discussed Attorney General Letitia James interest in seeking documents from RSM, a firm that says it provides audit, tax and consulting services.

Advertisement

Rosens letter was included in a filing by James office last week. In the letter, dated March 14, Rosen complains of James request that the Trump Organization must do more and faster to hand over documents relevant to her probe.

Rosen complained that the the AGs office had been belied by its own investigatory delays in its civil investigation of the Trump Organization and former President Donald Trump.

Advertisement

New York Attorney General Letitia James and former President Donald Trump. (New York Daily News / AP)

Rosen said James asked RSM to disclose tax documents in a request on March 10. Yet, Rosen complained, James office first noted an interest in RSM  formerly known as McGladrey LLP  over four months ago in November.

Months have passed, Rosen wrote, and by its own admission the [AG] has yet to serve McGladrey with a subpoena or pursue a document production from them.

The filing came a month after Trumps former accounting firm Mazars USA said on Feb. 14 it would no longer work for him or his company, finding it could not trust his statements of financial condition.

Breaking News As it happens Get updates on the coronavirus pandemic and other news as it happens with our free breaking news email alerts. >

It is unclear when the Trump Organization retained RSMs services. An RSM spokeswoman, Kimberly Bartok, said the firm does not comment on legal or regulatory matters. RSM has not been accused of legal wrongdoing.

A spokesman for James declined to comment, and Rosen and a Trump Organization spokeswoman did not respond to the Daily News calls seeking comment.

James long-running civil probe is examining whether Trump and the Trump Organization manipulated the value of properties to tax authorities, lenders and insurers to enrich themselves, according to court filings.

In February, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron ruled that James may depose Trump and his adult children in the probe. They have appealed that ruling.

Trump sued James in December, describing her investigation as one against a private citizen who she views as a political opponent. Hes repeatedly decried the probe and the Manhattan district attorneys criminal one running parallel to it as a witch hunt.

Advertisement

In June, the Manhattan district attorneys office won an indictment against the Trump Organization and its long-serving chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, for failing to pay more than $1.7 million in income tax during a 15-year fraud scheme. The company and Weisselberg have asked a judge to dismiss the felony charges.

Lead investigators Carey Dunne and Mark Pomerantz abruptly resigned from the Manhattan DAs office last month, signaling the criminal probe may soon conclude without charges against the former president.
Proponents of a stand your ground law on Guam say crime victims shouldnt have to worry about prosecution if they use lethal force to protect themselves or others. Opponents say the measure could lead to more violence in the community.

Guam law allows people to use deadly force to defend themselves against attack and if the attack occurs in the victims home, car or place of work, they dont have to try to get away before using lethal force.

Bill 12, sponsored by Sen. Joe S. San Agustin, expands the concept of the Castle Doctrine to any place where the victim is legally allowed to be  walking along a street, going to a beach or other public or private places.

Similar bills have been proposed and rejected before on Guam. Nationally, stand your ground laws have been enacted in 30 states, according to The Associated Press.

While discussing the bill during a hearing Wednesday, San Agustin read news headlines about violent crimes on Guam over the last few years. He said the headlines turned up when he searched home invasion.

Thats just home invasion. Imagine if I searched murder, rape, kidnapping or robbery, what would I find? he asked.

Former chief prosecutor Philip Tydingco said the crimes described in the headlines were already covered by Castle Doctrine law on Guam.

All those examples you gave, Sen. San Agustin, they have nothing to do with retreating. Someone invades your house, you dont have to retreat, Tydingco said. So I dont know what the problem is. I dont know why you need to make us like, I mean, you know, Texas, Georgia, other places.

Not gun law

Deborah Reyes testified that the stand your ground bill extends the protections of the Castle Doctrine, allowing people to defend themselves without fear of prosecution wherever they are.

What if Im taking a walk, a leisure walk to exercise in the morning and Im approached? What if Im walking from ... the doors of my business, my office and Im in the parking lot trying to get in my car and Im approached? she asked.

The stand your ground bill is not a gun law, she said, despite what some people might say.

It includes guns and firearms. But it is really the right to defend yourself, she said. I support the right to defend myself, should I be attacked, should I find myself in a corner. And I should not have to run, or retreat, if Im faced with deadly force.

Chief prosecutor J. Basil OMallan III provided written testimony stating Guam law already provides our people with a reasonable, viable legal justification for engaging in self-defense. This same law already provides a person the ability to stand their ground and use deadly force wherever the person may be. The only restriction imposed on a person standing their ground is a duty to retreat only if they can do so in complete safety.

Opposition

Agnes Matanane, whose son, Joseph Michael Matanane Zamora, was shot and killed on June 23, 2020, in Agana Heights, said she was opposed to any expansion of the Castle Doctrine.

Zamora was shot three times at close range and the shooter used the Castle Doctrine law as his defense, or reason to kill my son. He was initially charged with murder, but because he claimed Castle law later, the murder charge was then put up for dismissal, she said.

The shooter knew my son, they called each other brother. He called me Auntie Agnes. He had my number on his phone, she said. The shooters mother would call my son from time to time to help her clean up her yard. My son Joey was welcomed into his home and was allowed to stay and bring his personal items in the house.

She said the law has also been used by abusers in family violence cases.

The law as I see it is broken and its an insult to me as a mother, she said. Because of the poor wording of the Castle Law doctrine, many who are using unreasonable deadly force under the guise of the law will get away with it. Its allowing people to use it and take another persons life.

Disturbing

Public Defender Service Corporation Deputy Director John Morrison, whos also opposed to the bill, said communities with similar laws have seen an increase in homicides.

Also, I think even more disturbing than that is a sample of 300 stand your ground cases found that in 69% of them, the triggering event was not the threat of violence against the shooter or the person claiming the justification, he said. In 69% of those cases, it was simply an argument.

Former Police Chief Paul Suba said he agrees with the Office of the Attorney General regarding the self-defense law thats already in place. But I do appreciate the fact that Castle Doctrine and the expanded version of stand your ground puts a greater emphasis on the victims rights to be protected.

He said each case has its own evidence, merits and substance.

The law is not the issue necessarily. It underscores the need for people to be able to protect themselves and not have that burden of proof always to defend themselves in court or in civil litigation, he said. It is to show the community that something is being done.
Members of the Legislature and some of those called to testify at a virtual oversight hearing May 21, 2020.
State tax authorities on Wednesday auctioned off the inventory of a Brooklyn restaurant tied to two convicted fraudsters close to Mayor Adams.

The downtown Brooklyn pizzeria Forno Rosso was seized by the taxman early this month for failing to pay nearly $400,000 in back taxes  and the authorities are determined to get the money back $1 barstool by $1 barstool.

Advertisement

Brooklyn restaurant Forno Rosso was seized earlier this month for failing to pay nearly $400,000 in back taxes. (Noah Goldberg)

The auction was a new low for Forno Rosso, a once-hopping Italian joint where personal burrata, provola and speck pizza sold for $23. Adams, then Brooklyn borough president, attended the ribbon-cutting opening ceremony in 2014.

The restaurant, according to a lawsuit, was partially controlled by Zhan and Robert Petrosyants, twin brothers who pleaded guilty that same year to a conspiracy charge in connection with a medical billing scheme involving no-fault insurance claims. Adams has defended his longstanding friendship with the brothers, saying that a felony conviction does not mean someone should be discarded forever. The Petrosyants twins also have ties to Adams top adviser, Frank Carone.

Advertisement

Zhan (Johnny) Petrosyants, left, and his twin brother Robert. (Monica Schipper/FilmMagic)

An advertisement for Wednesdays auction said the full contents equipment & fixtures of well known pizzeria would be up for bid.

Eight bar chairs, a brick oven pizza, a La Marzocco cappuccino machine, 25 dining tables, 400 bottles of wine and liquor and 40 cases of beer were among the items on the chopping block, according to the ad.

The eatery was seized by the state because of an outstanding balance of $380,785 in taxes that has accrued since warrants were first issued in 2018, according to authorities.

FILE - Then-Borough President Eric Adams attended the ribbon cutting opening ceremony at Forno Rosso. (Seth Wenig/AP)

The Department of Taxation and Finance slapped a SEIZED sign on the glass front door, which the restaurant initially covered with a sign that said closed for renovations.

Breaking News As it happens Get updates on the coronavirus pandemic and other news as it happens with our free breaking news email alerts. >

The Petrosyants brothers hold an ownership stake in the restaurant, according to a lawsuit filed against them in 2016 by four former business partners that remains pending. They could not be reached for comment.

The restaurants principal owner, Akiva Ofshtein, as well as the Department of Taxation and Finance, said the money gotten from the auction would go toward paying off the tax debt. Despite the fiscal importance of the auction, Ofshtein did not attend.

It would have been hard to watch, he said.




Haiti - Diaspora Covid-19 : Daily Bulletin #733





GLOBAL SITUATION 2019-2022:

Epidemiological situation:



On Wednesday March 23, 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 474,766,341 cases (+2,046,566 in 24 hours ), the day before (+1,629,272)



Number of infected countries: 224



*Healings: 410,522,080 people have been cured of Covid-19 worldwide (+1,579,447), the day before (+1,642,651)

*Deaths: 6,122,986 people have died of Covid-19 worldwide since the start of the pandemic (+16,719 in 24 hours), the day before (+5,077)

*Active cases (minus deaths and recoveries) in the world is currently 58,121,275 cases (+450,400 in 24 hours), the day before (-8,456)



Average cure rate in the world: 86.46% (+)



Average mortality rate in the world: 1.28% (-)



World: Number of daily confirmed cases:





(Day-1)



Vaccination: 11.15 billion doses of vaccine injected (+30 million doses injected in 24 hours. Updated March 22, 2022 (latest data available).



HAITI:

Warning: The Ministry of Public Health and Population (MSPP) did not make available after March 18, 2022 daily data on the Covid-19 situation in Haiti. Accordingly, the data below on the situation in Haiti is the latest available.



According to the Ministry of Public Health, +15 new cases of Covid-19 and its variants have been confirmed in Haiti as of March 18, 2022 (latest partial data available ) for a total of 30,509 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 (+16 cases as of March 16, 2022).



Healings: 27,492 (+155)



Cure rate: 90.11% (+)



Deaths: 827 deaths (+0) ()



Death rate: 2.71% (=)



5th Wave (Omicron Dominant):

Total of the 5th wave (starting December 27, 2021) 4,515 confirmed cases and 61 deaths



Haiti: Active Cases Trend: (less recoveries and deaths)







Screening since the start of the pandemic: 185,288 tests (+850 in 3 days) since March 19, 2020, latest data available. Note that the very small number of people screened every day at the national level out of a population estimated at 11.6 million citizens, does not statistically allow us to make a representative estimate of the situation in Haiti, which translates into a < B>number of daily confirmed cases largely underestimated.



TOP 5 of the most affected municipalities in the West (2022):

Delmas: 738 (+0); Petion-ville 618 (+0); Port-au-Prince 406 (+0); Tabarre 287 (+1); Croix-des-Bouquets 237 (+0)



Confirmed cases by department (2022 / 2021 / 2020):

West: 2022: 2,542 cases; (2021: 9.890); (2020: 6,945 cases)

North: 2022: 265 cases; (2021: 664); (2020: 677 cases)

Center: 2022: 225 cases; (2021: 1.001); (2020: 508 cases)

Artibonitis: 2022: 178 cases; (2021: 855); (2020: 593 cases)

Northeast: 2022: 148 cases; (2021: 404); (2020: 314 cases)

Southeast: 2022: 252 cases; (2021: 768); (2020: 274 cases)

South: 2022: 214 cases; (2021: 891); (2020: 262 cases)

North West: 2022: 249 cases; (2021: 383); (2020: 229 cases)

Grand'Anse: 2022: 172 cases; (2021: 861); (2020: 176 cases)

Nippes: 2022: 39 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:

161,164 Haitians (1.4% of the population) +1,844 in 6 days have received a 1st dose of vaccine since July 16, 2021, date of the first injection through 149 open vaccination centers and 110,329 Haitians are fully vaccinated (2 doses, 0.95% of the population) +1.879 in 6 days. Update March 16, 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): 81,476,269 cases (+27,867 in 24 hours), the day before (+38,301)

*Healings: 63,450,626 healings (+195,708), the day before (+248,156)

National Cure Rate: 77.87% (+)

*Deaths: 999,792 deaths (+952), the day before (+907)

National mortality rate: 1.22% (+)

*Active cases (minus deaths and recoveries): 17,025,851 (-168,793), yesterday (-210,762)



USA: Trend active cases: (minus recoveries and deaths)





(Day 1)



Vaccination: 558.99 million doses of vaccine injected since December 14, 2020, date of the first injection in the United States (+150,000 doses in 24 hours). Updated March 22, 2022 (latest data available).



DOMINICAN REPUBLIC:

Confirmed cases since March 1, 2020: 577,354 cases (+16 in 24 hours) the day before (+21 in 24 hours). First case (March 1, 2020)

Healings: 572,641 healings (+207 in 24 hours), the day before (+68)

National Cure Rate: 99.18% (+)

Deaths: 4,375 deaths (+0), previous (+0)

Death rate: 0.75% (=)

Positivity rate over 4 epidemiological weeks: 1.17% (-)

Active cases: (excluding deaths and recoveries) 338 cases (-191 in 24 hours) the day before (-47)



Dominican Republic: Number of daily confirmed cases:





(Day-1)



TOP 5 Provinces with the most new cases in the last 24 hours:

Santiago: +8 new cases in 24 hours (+)

ALtagracia: +6 new cases in 24 hours ()

La Vega: +1 new cases in 24 hours (=)

Santo Domingo: +1 new cases in 24 hours ()

National District: +0 new cases (-)



Vaccination: 15.43 million doses of vaccine injected since February 16, 2021, date of the first injection in the Dominican Republic (+20,000 doses injected in 24 hours). Updated March 22, 2022 (latest data available).



QUEBEC:

Confirmed cases since the first case (February 27, 2020): 946,889 (+1,383 in 24 hours), previous (+3,224 in 72 hours)

Healings: 919,292 people (+1,015 in 24 hours) previous (+3,522 in 72 hours)

Cure rate: 97.08% (-)

Deaths: 14,272 (+7 in 24h) previous (+20 in 72h)

Death rate: 1.50% (=)

Active cases: (excluding death and recovery) 13,325 cases (+361 in 24 hours), previous (-318 in 72 hours)



Quebec: Trend of daily confirmed cases:





(average weekly trend)



Vaccination: 18,575,295 doses of vaccine injected since December 14, 2020, date of the first injection (+3,804 doses in 24 hours), latest data available - MSSS as of March 21, 2022)



FRANCE:

*Confirmed cases since the first case (January 24, 2020): 24,342,116 cases (+180,777 cases in 24 hours), previous (+24,179)

*Heals: 22,699,088 heals (+57,564), previous (+79,642)

National Cure Rate: 93.25% (-)

Deaths: 141,218 (+133 in 24 hours), previous (+152)

Death rate: 0.58% (=)

Active Cases: 1,501,810 (+123,080), previous (-55,615)



France: Trend of active cases: (minus recoveries and deaths)





(Day-1)



Vaccination: 141.55 million doses of vaccine injected since December 27, 2020, date of the first injection in France (+40,000 doses injected in 24 hours. Update March 22, 2022 (latest data available)



Previous bulletin : https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-36241-haiti-diaspora-covid-19-daily-bulletin-732.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...





Michel Martelly : Mysterious political meeting...

Tuesday, March 22 "a political meeting took place at the residence of former President Michel Martelly in Peguy ville. Many vehicles belonging to the diplomatic corps and a large number of police officers were noticed in the courtyard. The press was not invited," informed Frantz Exantus, Secretary of State for Communication.



PM praise to the Police officers

Earlier this week, Prime Minister Ariel a.i. Henry paid a visit to the Central Directorate of Judicial Police (DCPJ), to encourage the police officers. He also praised the bravery and determination that animates the police officers in their fight against armed gangs. He also expressed the Government's gratitude to the valiant police officers, the efforts made and the sacrifices made to curb the phenomenon of insecurity.



45.2% of Haitians without access to drinking water

Tuesday, March 22, as part of World Drinking Water Day, the International Action for Human Rights (AIDH), reported that only 54.8% of the Haitian population had access to drinking water. This rate makes Haiti the country with the lowest drinking water coverage in the Caribbean.



Jovenel Moise public square

Fils Aime Ignace Saint Fleur, Director General of the Office of Monetization of Development Assistance Programs (BMPAD), proceeded on March 20, to the inauguration of a public square bearing the name of the late President Jovenel Moise, in Laguamithe, a district of Mombin Crochu (North-East Dept.).



Minister Loreus in New York

Sofia Loreus, the Minister for the Status of Women and Women's Rights, has been invited to participate in the 66th session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women, which is being held in New York from March 14 to 25, 2022 This Commission, among other things, urges Member States to review laws and policies that impede the full participation of women in all aspects of public life and to set specific targets for achieving parity in the legislative and judicial branches of government.



SEMANAH : Distribution of rescue materials

Tuesday, as part of a sea rescue and rescue project in coastal areas Erick Prevaut, the Director General of the Maritime and Navigation Service of Haiti (SEMANAH) proceeded to the distribution of a batch of materials to the heads of the institution in the ten departments. These include, among other things, life jackets, long-range LED flashlights, telephones and solar back-ups. This equipment will enable SEMANAH to protect seafarers and limit the loss of human life in the event of shipwreck.



HL/ HaitiLibre


















Update Required

To play the media you will need to either update your browser to a recent version or update your Flash plugin.
By William Schwartz | Published on 2022/03/22

A new photoshoot was recently released of actors Jung Woo and Lee Hong-nae in relation to the upcoming film "Hot Blooded" which will make its theatrical premiere on March 23rd. The two also appear in an interview for the lifestyle magazine. Jung Woo mentions there how he had to read the script two times to get proper inspiration for his character, realizing that "Hot Blooded" differs from a typical noir in that it focuses on realism, rather than bombast, in its depiction of the lives of enforcers.

Advertisement

Despite this grim description, elsewhere Jung Woo describes the filming environment as fairly jovial, with everyone in a joking mood. Lee Hong-nae, who had to pass an audition for his role, echoed these sentiments by noting that he had to put the most energy he'd ever had in twenty years to getting the part. Lee Hong-nae said that his love was especially profound for his character Army, and that he shivered with excitement getting the chance to work to bring that character to screen.

The supporting role of Army is a big one for Lee Hong-nae, who's appeared in South Korean screen roles since 2011 but only recently started getting big breaks. The first one was "The King: Eternal Monarch" in 2020 where he played a royal guard. Then in "The Uncanny Counter" Lee Hong-nae played the show's ultimate villain, a demon. Lee Hong-nae was also the lead in the independent gay romance film "Made in Rooftop" though "Hot Blooded" will be a big mainstream role for the actor.

Written by William Schwartz

___________

"Hot Blooded" is directed by Cheon Myeong-gwan, and features Jung Woo, Kim Kap-soo, Choi Moo-sung, Yoon Ji-hye, Jung Young-joo, Lee Hong-nae. Release date in Korea: 2022/03/23.
A Brooklyn driver has been charged with fatally striking a woman at an intersection near her home last month, police said Wednesda.

Shmuel Zupnick, 22, was hit with charges of failure to yield to a pedestrian and failure to exercise due care. He was also issued a violation for improper safety glass, police said.

Advertisement

Adilova Rahima was crossing 18th Ave. at E. 2nd St. in Kensington Feb. 21 when an Infiniti sedan driver rammed into her. (Theodore Parisienne/for New York Daily News)

Zupnick is accused of slamming into Adilova Rahima, 65, with his 2021 Infiniti sedan as she was crossing 18th Ave. at E. Second St. in Kensington on Feb. 21.

Zupnick was making a left turn from E. Second St. onto 18th Ave. when he hit Rahima, cops said. She was rushed to Maimonides Hospital, where she died the following day.

Advertisement

Zupnick remained on the scene after the crash.
Published on 2022/03/22 | Source

New stills added for the upcoming Korean movie "Yaksha: Ruthless Operations" (2022)

Advertisement

Directed by Nah Hyeon

With Sol Kyung-gu, Park Hae-soo, Yang Dong-geun, Lee El, Song Jae-rim, Jinyoung,...

Synopsis

"Yaksha: Ruthless Operations" is a story about the leader of a spy agency's secret operation team in Shenyang, China, and the prosecutor who was demoted to the spy agency as he searched for a missing high-ranking North Korean official.

Release date in Korea : 2022/04/08
Thank you for reading!

You have reached our free-content limit. If you are a current subscriber, please log in to continue viewing content or purchase a subscription by clicking the Subscribe button below. Thank you for supporting independent Journalism.
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.
Hartford City, IN (47348)

Today

Cloudy with rain developing this afternoon. High near 60F. Winds E at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch..

Tonight

A steady rain this evening. Showers continuing overnight. Low 54F. Winds E at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 80%. Rainfall around a half an inch.
Hastings, NE (68901)

Today

Rain showers early will evolve into a more steady rain for the afternoon. High 52F. Winds N at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 70%..

Tonight

Rain showers this evening with mostly cloudy conditions overnight. Low near 45F. Winds N at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 40%.
We're always interested in hearing about news in our community. Let us know what's going on!

Submit
An Upper East Side PTA treasurer with a checkered past funded lavish trips to St. Lucia and Bermuda and a luxe lifestyle with $185,000 he embezzled from the childrens school fund, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg charged Tuesday.

Marc Haynes, 34, also violated the terms of his probation from a 2016 embezzlement case by using $23,838 of the PTA money to pay off the restitution he owed for stealing more than $50,000 from his former employer, Assouline Publishing, prosecutors say.

Advertisement

Haynes  whose child attends an Upper East Side public school  charged anywhere from $2,289 up to $32,000 for upscale hotels in St. Lucia and Bermuda, and bought goods from Fendi, Restoration Hardware and Pottery Barn with money earmarked for field trips and enrichment programs, according to prosecutors.

(Shutterstock)

Marc Haynes is accused of using his own childs elementary school PTA to bankroll luxury vacations, shopping sprees and even to pay court-ordered restitution from a prior conviction for stealing from his former employer, Bragg said.

Advertisement

The scheme unraveled for Haynes, who was also the PTA co-president, in October 2021 when a co-treasurer noticed an unexplained $9,081 charge against the parent association account that had no receipt, according to the DA. Haynes told the parent the money was a reimbursement for an urgent furniture purchase on another parents card. When that story didnt hold up, and more parents started asking questions about the charge, Haynes quit his PTA posts.

The remaining co-treasurer then started digging into the books, finding more sketchy purchases and contacted authorities.

I thank the diligent PTA members who uncovered these thefts and reported them to my office, Bragg said. As we see far too often, no organization, even one dedicated to the children of our city, is immune to insider theft and fraud.

.
Gradually, Americans are coming to grips with the corrosive effects of social medi
Area could take advantage of online work and low housing prices, one suggests

Patrick Barkey, executive director of University of Montana's Bureau of Business and Economic Research, left, moderates a panel discussion Wednesday last week during the Economic Outlook Seminar 2022 in Hensler Auditorium in Montana State University-Northern's Applied Technology Center.

A panel of experts talked about local economic issues during a discussion last week at the end of the Economic Outlook Seminar 2022 put on by University of Montana's Bureau of Business and Economic Research, with two issues becoming intertwined - housing and remote work.

Bureau Executive Director Patrick Barkey moderated the panel discussion, which included Bear Paw Development Corp. Exectuive Director Paul Tuss, bureau Associate Director Paul Sonora, Jeremy Sage, Montana State University Extension Specialist Joel Schumacher and Montana High Tech Business Alliance Executive Director Christina Henderson.

Tuss, also a Democratic candidate in the race for Montana House District 28 faceing Rep. Ed Hill, R-Havre, in the general election, fielded a question on how Havre and the surrounding area could capitalize on outside money coming into the state to areas like Bozeman, Billings, Kalispell and Missoula.

"I don't know if there's a great answer," he said. "It's a very good question.

"The truth is, Bozeman, Kalispell, Missoula, they're going to have more economic development, economic growth, by the time I get done with breakfast in the morning than we're going to have all year... it's just the nature of the beast," he added. "I don't know what the answer is."

Barkey agreed. He said a lot of people have made a lot of money writing books saying how communities should attract workers, business and economic development - "And not one of them has the same answer.

" ... It's a very difficult question and I will never figure out the answer to it," he added.

Tuss said while this region does not have the boom economy of some parts of the state, that is not always bad - these areas also are more likely to see a bust.

"Sometimes we're jealous when it happens there because of highs they experience when they have highs, but we also have a very stable economy. ...Sometimes you see those things happening in Bozeman or Kalispell up here but two years later they're down here while were still up here.

"So it's good, but it's not always, always good," he said.

And that discussion also tied into remote work done online and housing prices in the area.

The group discussed housing prices rising rapidly in those areas with high growth, with panel members saying they don't think it will lead to a housing bust like what started the Great Recession in 2008.

They said people buying houses - and driving up prices - in places like Bozeman, Billings, Missoula and the Flathead Valley generally are selling high-priced homes in places like California or New York and then paying high prices in Montana.

The mortgage situation actually is in good shape, Barkey and Sonora said, unlike in 2008, although it is making it difficult for first-time homebuyers.

Henderson said this part of Montana could take advantage of that, especially with more and more businesses letting people work remotely.

"As I'm traveling the state, I'm meeting the people who got priced out of Missoula and Bozeman and bought a house someplace more affordable, so its benefiting Great Falls, Helena, Butte and it could benefit Havre, too," she said. "if you're housing price is $200,000 or less, you can't find a house for that price in those places.

"A lot of folks have left your communities who would be willing to come home as they weight these different options," she added, "well, I could rent forever or I could have a home in Havre again - have a nice house, be around my family again, have help with my kids."

She said the trend on remote work makes that an option as long as the community has broadband, and rural areas often have an advantage there due to work by cooperatives.

She said earlier she had a meeting the night before, Tuesday of last week, with local people involved in the high-tech industry, and they said rural coverage for broadband is good.

"A lot of rural towns, because of cooperatives, it's better than it is in downtown Missoula or Bozeman in a lot of cases, and you're ... at your ranch or a smaller town. I think it's an opportunity that way."

Schumacher said that is happening with MSU Extension. MSU was having troubles attracting people to Bozeman, so they made location optional for one Extension position, and it is now filled by a Chouteau resident.

Extension did a search for the director of the 4-H Foundation but couldn't find anyone who would move to Bozeman and made location optional for that position, he said. It now has applicants including one qualified person from The Golden Triangle, he said.

It's one tool MSU, which has a limited budget for staffing, can use, he said. Extension can't add $25,000 to every salary, but optional location is "a tool we're using to try to get the right people on our team."
ShareBar

Comments must be on-topic and civil in tone (with no name calling or personal attacks). Any promotional language or urls will be removed immediately. Your comment may be edited for clarity and length.
This site, located at the intersection of Clearwater Paseo and Rio Monte Drive, has been selected by the City of Kerrville as the future site of the proposed Public Safety Facility.

Courtesy Photos
News

featured popular urgent

East Lake Parkway property rezoning stalls due to Henry County commission tie vote

Special Photo Halpern Enterprises was requesting rezoning of property on East Lake Parkway which they would then build 84 townhomes.

McDONOUGH  A request to rezone 20 acres on East Lake Parkway and build 84 townhomes ended in 3-3 tie vote Tuesday at the Board of Commissioners meeting.

Chair Carlotta Harrell and Commissioners Johnny Wilson and Dee Anglyn voted against while commissioners Vivian Thomas, Dee Clemmons and Bruce Holmes were in favor.

A tie vote is considered not taking action resulting in the request not going forward.

Residents, many living in the subdivision behind the property, spoke against the development stating they want the area to remain rural; others adding theyve lived there for several generations and dont want the change.

A 300-signature petition against the development was also presented.

We dont want this. We dont want townhomes  People that have lived there for generations are fleeing the county because youre cramming in as many voters as you can into 20 acres, said resident Lewis Roberts. Our voices have not been listened to in the past. I just hope this time maybe we will be heard.

The request by Halpern Enterprises entailed rezoning the property from general commercial to mixed use at 5855-5909 East Lake Pkwy. and 38 Oak Valley Road.

Plans included building an 84-unit townhome development featuring an open air pavilion, grilling area, community fire pit and playground. The front portion of the property would remain commercial.

During a previously held community town hall meeting, Thomas acknowledged that residents expressed their desire for the area to remain commercial.

She said she worked with the developers to strike a balance between residential and commercial.

The entire area is changing. In 30 years, its going to change. The plan for this change was already in place, Thomas said. Youre talking about your area changing so much. Its because your parents and grandparents are selling the land. This is a balanced, well-thought-out development and takes into consideration of the neighborhood concerns.

Its unclear what the developers next steps will be; however, Thomas warned they could take the issue to court.
The NYPD, still reeling from a weekend of extraordinary gun violence and facing pressure from Mayor Adams to make the city safer, announced Wednesday it will renew its focus on quality-of-life offenses.

The announcement comes after Adams told Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell and Chief of Department Kenneth Corey that last weekends mayhem, which included 29 people shot, one fatally, cannot happen again, police sources said.

Advertisement

New York Mayor Eric Adams talks with New York City Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell. (Evan Vucci/AP)

Lets put it this way, one source said. The mayor was not happy.

The new initiative amounted to an escalation of broken windows-style enforcement. Sewell cast the effort as a way to respond to both community concerns and a continued spike in shootings.

Advertisement

To be clear this is NOT a return to stop, question, and frisk  nor is it policing for numbers, Sewell said in a statement.

This is precision-policing aimed at reducing violence in the neighborhoods seeing disproportionate numbers of shootings  and it is what the public is demanding.

But critics see as it a return to a policing model that targeted minorities for minor offenses, fostering a mistrust of the nations largest police force.

Lets be clear: this plan reinstates broken-windows policing, and it will undoubtedly send more Black and Latinx New Yorkers to Rikers Island, a facility that is wholly incapable of caring for the people in its custody, said Legal Aid Society attorney Jennvine Wong. Broken windows policing has long been discredited for furthering mistrust between the police and the communities we serve, and this rebranded version will yield those same results, with the same disparate enforcement.

Adams campaigned on the promise he would bring back a better version of the plainclothes Anti-Crime Unit that was tasked with taking guns off the street. The unit was disbanded nearly two years ago because it was involved in a disproportionate number of shootings and citizen complaints.

Adams spokesman Fabien Levy said the mayor has made clear that keeping New Yorkers safe is his top priority.

New Yorkers are looking for action to stop the everyday crimes they are reporting, and, through precision policing, the NYPD can be trusted to enforce our laws and protect New Yorkers, the spokesman added.

The new Public Safety Unit hit the streets March 14. But sources said Adams was at the same time pushing for a more proactive approach to quality of life offenses, such as public urination and drinking, that he believes contribute to a feeling of disorder in many pockets of the city.

Advertisement

The Daily News Flash Weekdays Catch up on the days top five stories every weekday afternoon. >

For a lot of people, its about the loud noise, the public drinking, all these quality of life violations, a second police source said. Those are the complaints we hear most about, even with all the violence.

Mayor, Eric Adams, addresses press at the NYPD, PSA, Area 7 Command, located at 757 Melrose Ave, Bronx. The Mayor is flanked by members of the "Neighborhood Safety Patrol Officers that operate out of PSA 7. (Sam Costanza/for New York Daily News)

According to the NYPD, quality of life complaints since 2019 have soared. Drinking in public complaints have doubled, to 3,193 from 1,452. Calls about loud parties in public have more than doubled, to 9,013 from 3,338.

According to NYPD stats through Sunday, 284 people were shot in the city so far this year  up 17% from the 242 during the same period last year.

We know from experience, as the weather gets warmer, that 30% of all shooting incidents are preceded by multiple reports of other lawbreaking and violations leading up to that violence, said Chief of Crime Control Strategies Michael LiPetri. Engaging in proactive enforcement can be the difference that prevents that next shooting, and prevents the next child from being harmed.

But Christopher Dunn, legal director for the New York Civil Liberties Union, said the answer to reducing violent crime is not another Giuliani-era broken-windows policing initiative.

Locking up people caught drinking a beer in public or shoplifting food will only ensnare more Black and brown New Yorkers in a regressive and abusive criminal legal system  not address violent crime, Dunn said.
David Wayne Tarrant, 63, of Mesquite, passed away Wednesday, April 20, 2022. David was born in Greenville, to Wendell and Joyce Tarrant on August 12, 1958. He married his love Sharon Brown on March 10, 1978. He dedicated 44 years to the Excavation business where he was very well respected. H
Anderson, IN (46016)

Today

Cloudy skies with periods of rain this afternoon. High 61F. Winds E at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall around a quarter of an inch..

Tonight

Rain. Low near 55F. Winds E at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 80%. Rainfall around a half an inch.
NYPD officers investigate a shooting incident at the intersection of W. 155th St. and Edgecombe Ave. Wednesday, March 23, 2022 in Manhattan, New York. (Barry Williams) (Barry Williams/for New York Daily News)

A gunman opened fire on an off-duty NYPD cop after getting into a fender-bender in Harlem early Wednesday, police said.

The officer was nearing the corner of Edgecombe Ave. and W. 155th St. at about 6:30 a.m. when he got into a minor collision with a silver Ford Explorer, police said.

Advertisement

As the two motorists began arguing, an occupant in the Explorer pulled a gun and opened fire at the off-duty cop.

The officer was not hit and did not return fire. The Ford, which has New Jersey plates, sped off as the cop called 911.

Advertisement

Police were conducting a grid search of the area as they continued their search for the SUV and its occupants.
The Herald-Chronicle is a weekly newspaper printed in Winchester, Tennessee

You will receive full, ad-free access to HeraldChronicle.com as well as full access to the Electronic Edition of the newspaper.



ONLY $2.99 per month for the first 3 months!

Only $3.99 per month after promotional period.



Or



ONLY $33.99 per year for the 1st year

Only $37.99 per year after promotional period.
Today, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra joined fellow G7 health ministers in issuing the statement below condemning the attacks on Ukraine health facilities:

We, the G7 Health Ministers, strongly condemn President Putins unprovoked and unjustified military aggression against Ukraine, which has already caused thousands of deaths and suffering for millions of people and which grossly violates international law, including the UN Charter, and undermines international peace and security. We demand that Russia immediately cease its unprovoked and unjustified military actions, withdraw all its forces from the territory of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders, fully respect Ukraines territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence, and abide by UN General Assembly resolution titled Aggression against Ukraine supported by 141 states at the 11th emergency special session as well as the legally binding decision by the International Court of Justice ordering Russia to immediately suspend its war of aggression against Ukraine.

We also condemn in the strongest possible terms indiscriminate attacks on the Ukrainian population, and health facilities and health workers who are caught in the crossfire in Ukraine. We fully support the joint statement issued by the United Nations Childrens Fund (UNICEF), the United Nations Population fund (UNFPA) and the World Health Organization (WHO) on 13 March to stop the devastating impact of attacks on health care facilities in Ukraine, such as the horrific shelling of the maternity hospital in Mariupol. Intentionally directing attacks at civilians and civilian infrastructure, including health care facilities and workers, violates International Humanitarian Law. Health must remain a priority, with health workers being protected so they can provide emergency care to save lives, and with health systems and facilities being protected so that they remain accessible to all who need them.

Aid organisations are finding it increasingly difficult to deliver medical aid to people in need, with the problem becoming more acute as the war spreads, having a direct negative impact on public health. Humanitarian partners and health care workers must be able to safely maintain essential health service delivery for civilians across Ukraine as well as for refugees crossing into neighbouring countries. International humanitarian and human rights law must be upheld, and the protection of civilians must remain a top priority.

Since the start of Russias further invasion, 64 attacks hitting health care facilities have been documented in the WHOs Surveillance System for Attacks on Health Care, resulting in 15 deaths and 37 injuries. In most of the cases, health care facilities were damaged or destroyed. Beyond the immediate deaths and injuries, these attacks have a huge impact on peoples lives and reduce access to essential health services  especially for sick and wounded people as well as for children, pregnant women, older persons and other vulnerable populations  and can lead to delayed treatments, worsening the prognosis of affected people and resulting in indirect deaths. Attacks on health care facilities will have a long-term impact on peoples ability to recover from illnesses many years after the conflict is over. These attacks must stop immediately. Health workers on the frontline must have unhindered access to support populations in need.

The healthcare system in Ukraine is under significant strain. We are extremely concerned about the disruptions in medical supplies and essential and routine health services as well as widespread destruction of water infrastructure and sanitation. The lack of access to such essential services is having an extremely serious negative impact on the health of people in Ukraine and the region. Every effort to prevent collapse of the healthcare system must be made.

We commend the work of organizations and staff coordinating and delivering essential health support and services to people affected in Ukraine and the neighboring countries, including WHO, ICRC, UN agencies and international organizations. We also remain vigilant of the ongoing spread of COVID-19 and other infectious diseases in Ukraine and amongst displaced persons and refugee populations who have taken shelter in the neighboring countries, and we are ready to provide specific support through safe and efficacious COVID-19 vaccines dose-sharing.

WHO has issued an emergency appeal for 57.5 million US Dollars for Ukraine. WHO is delivering care and support to people affected by this crisis via the WHO Contingency Fund for Emergencies through the government and partners. So far, WHO has rapidly delivered more than 100 metric tons of medical commodities to Ukraine and released more than 10 million US Dollars from its Contingency Fund for Emergencies to respond to the regions urgent health needs. The WHO Contingency Fund for Emergencies has proven to be one of the highly effective tools in emergencies. However, it is nearly depleted.

We thank WHO and other international organizations and entities across the region for their tireless work as well as coordination with Ukraines Ministry of Health, providing health supplies, including medicines and diagnostics, trauma and emergency surgery kits, to Ukraine to keep medical supply chains open and deliver life-saving care as well and psycho-social support to those in need, as well as their support to neighboring countries.
Long before my time as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, I have worked to ensure older Americans  and all Americans  have access to safe, nutritious food.

As a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for more than two decades, I worked tirelessly to support funding for programs that prevent hunger and food insecurity in our communities.

And as Attorney General of the State of California, I fought to protect the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), protecting access to food for those who need it most.

This work is critical to advancing health equity. The evidence is clear: Good nutrition helps cut down on chronic disease, which disproportionately hurts our most vulnerable communities. Thats why weve partnered with agencies like the Food and Drug Administration to reduce the level of sodium in foods across the country and mitigate chronic disease that is often tied to salty food.

Im proud to continue this work as HHS Secretary. And today, Im delighted to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Older Americans Act (OAA) Nutrition Program.

The Older Americans Act Nutrition Program was signed into law on March 22, 1972, creating the first federal program to support the health and well-being of older adults through nutrition services. Decades later, the OAA Senior Nutrition Program  administered by the Administration for Community Living (ACL)  continues to fund local agencies and organizations that help older adults access healthy meals and other resources so that they can remain independent, well, and connected in their homes and communities.

Each day, about 5,000 nutrition program providers serve an estimated 1 million meals to older Americans across the country. The programs focus on underserved communities and others in greatest need -- people with low income, those in rural areas, and members of minority communities, including those with limited-English proficiency. These meals make a difference  over half of participants tell us that the meal they receive through the program supplies 50% or more of their total food for the day, and more than 70% report that they eat healthier foods because of the program.

But the OAA Senior Nutrition Program is about more than access to healthy meals  it also provides nutrition screening, education, and counseling, as well as a vital link to health resources, social connections, and an array of home and community-based services that support older adults overall well-being. The home-delivered meal program also provides older adults with an opportunity for social interaction with a friendly face that they may not otherwise see. And congregate meals  where older adults can gather to eat with others in their community  provide invaluable opportunities for meaningful connections that maintain the health of participants.

Despite the unprecedented challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic over the past two years, the OAA Senior Nutrition Program has continued to provide these vital services. Local programs pivoted to use flexible, creative approaches to continue serving their communities, from curbside meal events and partnerships with restaurants to safe-distanced doorstep food drops and virtual nutrition education.

As we commemorate this milestone anniversary of the OAA Senior Nutrition Program, I want to commend the organizations and individuals who run local senior nutrition programs across the country every day  and the perseverance of the older Americans they serve. Now as Secretary of HHS, I will keep working as I have done throughout my career to ensure all Americans have access to safe, nutritious food and the services needed to support overall well-being. Together, we will build on 50 years of progress and close the equity gaps that plague our health care system. And we will continue innovating to ensure that, as the older American population grows, we can provide the support they need to age independently in their communities, with dignity, and in good health.
A gang flooded the streets of a Manhattan neighborhood with a surplus of drugs over the course of at least three years, the Drug Enforcement Administration said Wednesday, announcing the arrest of eight people.

The Own Every Dollar gang  who refer to themselves as OED  pushed fentanyl, heroin, cocaine, crack, oxycodone and weed in Washington Heights between 2019 and 2022, the feds said.

Advertisement

The narcotics crew ran in shifts, primarily selling drugs between W. 180 St. and W. 193 St. between Audobon and St. Nicholas Aves., according to a criminal complaint.

The Own Every Dollar gang logo.

But the gang made several fatal, and brazen, errors  they sold to undercover officers, were frequently arrested in possession of drugs packaged for resale and regularly flaunted their cash on social media, the DEA said.

Advertisement

Three of the men involved  Jerrin Pena, 20, Ariel Oliver, 22, and Jowenky Nunez, 19  habitually posted photos and videos of themselves holding guns on social media.

Others simply showed off their illegal cash online, according to the complaint.

Jerrin Pena was arrested Wednesday, March 23, 2022, and hit with drug and weapons possessions charges.

Brian Hernandez, 22, who was arrested in the roundup, posted a photo of a pile of money on his lap with the caption No abc but this trap s--t is easy.

Hernandezs bold post prompted a swift text message from one of his colleagues. Bro dont ever post that, Nunez warned in a message.

Jowenky Nunez is being sought for his role in a Washington Heights drug ring.

DEA Acting Special Agent-in-Charge Timothy Foley had his own warning for anyone selling street drugs and boasting about it on social media.

The Own Every Dollar gang used social media to glamorize their drug enterprise, conduct drug transactions and brandish weapons instilling fear in the community, Foley said. Our drug trafficking investigations have a way of uncovering links to the threat of gun violence and gang-related criminal activity.

The Daily News Flash Weekdays Catch up on the days top five stories every weekday afternoon. >

Pena, Wilson Mendez, 19, Victor Colon, 24, Jose Gutierrez, 20, and Nijmah Marte, 21, were arrested in the Bronx Tuesday for their alleged roles in the ring.

Oliver, Hernandez and Justin Deaza, 20, were already in police custody. Nunez, along with gang member Argenis Taverez, 22, are still being sought, authorities said.

Advertisement

The men were all charged with conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute 400 grams and more of fentanyl, conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute heroin, cocaine, crack cocaine, oxycodone and conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute marijuana, the feds said.

A still image of what investigators believe are oxycodone pills allegedly posted to social media by Jerrin Pena.

The fentanyl charges alone will land the men behind bars with a mandatory minimum prison sentence of ten years, the DEA said.

Pena, Mendez, Nunez, Hernandez, Colon and Marte were also hit with weapons possession charges.

NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell commended the agencies involved in the arrests.

The details of this investigation make clear: Criminal gangs, illegal guns, and illicit drugs are a dangerous combination  and will never be tolerated in our city, and any person who deals in the criminal behavior alleged in this case will be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law.
The homeless man who confessed to pushing Manhattan consultant Michelle Go to her death in front of a Times Square subway car has been deemed unfit to stand trial by a court-appointed psychiatrist.

The report was filed by the psychiatrist that found that he was found unfit, H. Mitchell Schuman, of the New York County Defenders, told the Daily News.

Advertisement

Simon Martial, charged with murder, is escorted by detectives from the Midtown South Precinct, on Jan.15. (Jeff Bachner/for New York Daily News)

The Manhattan District Attorneys office has asked for two weeks to review the report; the case was adjourned until April 16.

Simon, 61, who has a history of mental illness, shoved Go, a consultant with Deloitte, from behind about 9:30 a.m. Jan. 15 as she stood on the platform in the busy subway hub waiting for her train.

Advertisement

Michelle Alyssa Go

I pushed a woman in front of a train, Simon told police when they caught him.

Simon had been arrested 10 times since 1998 and was briefly incarcerated after a 2018 robbery of a taxi driver in Greenwich Village for which he was placed on parole that expired last year.

Schuman said his client has been hospitalized for mental illness 24 times.

Although theres no indication Simon chose his victim because of her race, the death added to the sense of fear many Asians in New York feel on the street.

There were 131 hate crimes against Asians in 2021, according to the NYPD  up from 27 the year before.
A judge has ordered immediate hearings for 91 detainees jailed on Rikers Island for parole violations whose hearings were delayed after state prison officials argued a new law doesnt apply to cases that began before the bill took effect.

In the decision issued Tuesday, Bronx Supreme Court Judge David Lewis ordered the new hearings forthwith and directed that they be held in regular courthouses rather than in special hearing rooms on Rikers Island, records show.

Advertisement

Gov. Hochul signed the Less is More law on Sept. 17. The bill is meant to sharply reduce the number of parolees jailed for minor violations, like missing a meeting with their parole officers or failing to report a new address, or an arrest for a low-level crime.

When the law came into effect March 1 officials with the state Department of Correction and Community Supervision (DOCCS) took the position it didnt apply to cases that began before that date. And even then, the hearings would only start when courtroom space was reasonably available.

Advertisement

Lawyers with Legal Aid argue the law is retroactive.

The Daily News Flash Weekdays Catch up on the days top five stories every weekday afternoon. >

The law is clear: these New Yorkers were entitled to a release hearing as of March 1, 2022 and DOCCS had no legal authority to deny them, said Lorraine Mc Evilley, Director of the Parole Revocation Defense Unit at The Legal Aid Society.

Legal Aid lauds this ruling, which upholds the explicit intent of Less Is More to facilitate the decarceration of local jails.

Rikers Island (Theodore Parisienne/for New York Daily News)

The law requires hearings within 24 hours of parolees arrest  a much shorter time period than in the past  to determine if they should be released. The hearings are all supposed to be conducted in courthouses and not in relative secret behind Rikers Island walls.

The detainees can only be held if the state convinces a judge they wont show up for court unless they are in jail.

A look inside of Rikers Island. (GREGG VIGLIOTTI/for New York Daily News)

Three weeks after the laws passage, some post-March 1 hearings are still taking place on Rikers Island.

In a statement issued Wednesday, DOCCS said it is complying with the decision. By Thursday, March 24, the department will have requested recognizance hearings or lifted the warrants for the 91 individuals who are still in custody, DOCCS spokeswoman Rachel Connors said.

Judge Lewis is expected to issue a more detailed decision at some point in the future. Meanwhile, Legal Aid has filed papers in Bronx Supreme Court seeking the release of the 91 Rikers Island detainees.
Domestic enterprises need to increase their initiative in seizing incentives in the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) to optimise the deal, experts said.

According to Nguyen Cam Trang, deputy director of the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT)s Import-Export Department, meeting the rules of origin is one of the prerequisites for Vietnamese goods to enjoy preferential tariffs from the CPTPP. However, the awareness of domestic enterprises about the rules has been slow and remained restricted as the rules are relatively complicated and different from those of other free trade agreements.

While enterprises couldnt follow the rules rapidly, the support of the State management agencies to the enterprises on the issue hasnt been as effective as expected.

Therefore, to make effective use of the CPTPP, according to Trang, State management agencies should improve the efficiency of enforcement, while continuing to streamline legal documents.

In addition, communications should continue to be focused on providing information related to commitments, tariff incentives and rules of origin in a more specialised direction, going deep into each market, each specific product, with specialised training offered to have a more strengthened impact on specific target groups.

Information on import markets related to taste, capacity and especially management policies should also be provided to businesses for their production orientation.

On the business side, they also need to improve their activity in capturing the above information.

After more than three years of implementing the CPTPP, Viet Nam's exports to CPTPP countries have achieved impressive results, especially in new markets such as Canada, Mexico, and Peru. Besides markets with large export turnovers such as the US, China, and EU, other markets in Latin America or Oceania have also gained double-digit growth in import and export turnover.

In the Canadian market, for example, despite difficulties caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the export of goods from Viet Nam to Canada rose 20.8 per cent to US$5.3 billion, according to the Vietnamese Trade Office in Canada. This was the third consecutive year Viet Nam gained positive growth in exports to Canada since 2019 when the two countries officially became members of the CPTPP.

Viet Nam's agricultural and fishery products have continued to affirm their foothold in the Canadian market. For example, Vietnamese cashew nuts have accounted for 90 per cent of the Canadian markets total quantity while the numbers for pepper and shrimp were 50 per cent and 30 per cent, respectively.

According to representatives of the Vietnamese Trade Office in Canada, though Viet Nam is currently Canada's largest trading partner in Southeast Asia, opportunities for Vietnamese goods to access the Canadian market is still very large as the market share of Vietnamese goods in the market accounts for only 1.7 per cent of Canada's import value. As the Canadian government is continuing to pursue a strategy of market diversification and considering Viet Nam an important partner in Asia, it will be a great opportunity for Vietnamese enterprises to access this market.

Tran Thanh Hai, deputy director of the MoITs Import-Export Department, said since the CPTTP took effect, export turnover to the CPTPPs markets has grown impressively.

CPTPP markets, especially American countries like Canada, Mexico, and Peru, were relatively new for Vietnamese exporters before the CPTPP took effect and Vietnamese exports to the markets were modest. However, after the implementation of the CPTPP, Viet Nam's export turnover to the markets has increased significantly, according to Hai.  VNS
Mayor Adams jail chief has a solution to the problem of city correction officers who critics say exploit union rules by calling in sick: Hire more of them.

At a City Council hearing Wednesday, Correction Commissioner Louis Molina signaled that he will ask for as many as 2,000 new officers to solve the staffing crisis at Rikers Island, which has led to a guard shortage at the islands jails that endangers detainees and staff and has forced many officers to work triple shifts.

Advertisement

The department has nearly 2,000 fewer correction officers today than it did at the end of 2019, Molina said.

This attrition of staff, coupled with staff that is unavailable because of the impact of pandemic surges and other medical needs, has diminished our staffing levels. It is vital that we take action now to address these issues.

Advertisement

Rikers Island (Seth Wenig/AP)

Council members blasted Molinas proposal, saying he instead should focus on holding correction officers accountable for abusing the departments lax absence policies.

Many of us believe you have a crisis in the existing staffing that needs to be addressed to get them back to work, said Councilman Keith Powers. This is the central issue that is facing an agency in turmoil right now.

Adding staff has been proven not to address the underlying issues in the department or improve conditions in Rikers, Councilwoman Carlina Rivera, chair of the Criminal Justice Committee, told Molina.

The crisis is felt deeply felt throughout the city and needs to be addressed urgently. I do think you have a ton of resources. I understand you might disagree.

City Comptroller Brad Lander noted at the hearing that between July and October of last year, the Fire Department had a paid absence rate of about 10% and the Sanitation Department had a paid absence rate of about 11%  while the Correction Departments absence rate swelled to 27%.

The agency cannot keep its house in order when it is paying nearly a third of its staff not to work, Lander said. The Department of Correction doesnt need more resources  it needs fundamental reform.

The Correction Department spends $556,000 per inmate per year  four times what it spent a decade ago, the city Comptrollers Office reported in December.

Moreover, DOC has a far better staffing ratio and a much larger budget comparatively than any other jail agency in the country, according to the federal monitor that oversees the jails.

Advertisement

Mary Lynne Werlwas of Legal Aids Prisoners Rights Project called the Correction Department the biggest grift in city government today.

DOC remains the most over-staffed jail in the U.S. The problem is the staff dont come to work and its having catastrophic consequences for health and safety in the jails, Werlwas said. The council simply cannot rubber stamp this budget.

Over the last week, Correction Department figures show, an average 1,400 officers per day were on sick leave and hundreds more were on light duty. Those officers make up nearly 30% of the agencys uniformed staff.

Correction Commissioner Louis Molina (Barry Williams/for New York Daily News)

In a report issued Wednesday, Landers office said officers calling in newly sick hit 25% the week of Feb. 4, even though COVID-19 cases declined.

Hundreds of officers have abused the departments unlimited sick leave policy, and more of them call out sick on weekends and holidays, a Daily News analysis of city data shows. Between Sept. 27 and Jan. 26, 6,637 posts went unstaffed.

On Friday, detainee Herman Diaz choked to death on an orange at the Eric M. Taylor Center in part because there was no correction officer nearby as required to render aid or call for help. The incident was seen as another example of how the crisis is affecting concrete events in the jails.

Advertisement

City Council Member Carlina Rivera (Luiz C. Ribeiro/for New York Daily News)

Molina did not specify the number of new staff he seeks. Were currently working to assess what is the right operating level needed, and that is ongoing, he said. Its not just about how many officers we have. We have outdated facilities whose footprint impacts the ability to deploy staff.

He has an ally in Benny Boscio Jr., head of the correction officers union, who said 2,500 to 3,000 new officers are needed and blamed the media and certain special interest groups for grossly mischaracterizing the staffing situation.

The previous administrations experiment to divest from our workforce, while forcing our officers to do more with less has failed miserably, he said. Those failures have needlessly hurt the lives of countless correction officers and the inmates in our custody.

Correction Officers Benevolent Association President, Benny Boscio Jr. (GREGG VIGLIOTTI/for New York Daily News)

The Daily News Flash Weekdays Catch up on the days top five stories every weekday afternoon. >

In a hearing that was at times tense, councilmembers cited Daily News articles and the recent federal monitors report several times in criticizing Molina over transparency and a failure to have data to answer their questions during the preliminary budget hearing.

You come before this committee with no answers to basic information thats been public record in the media for a long time, and were being told, with the whole team from DOC here, were unable to get basic information on topics you should have prepared for, said Councilman Shekar Krishnan of Queens.

Molina said he takes issue with the monitors suggestion he was stonewalling them. I am committed to collaboration with all oversight bodies, he said. The DOC provided voluminous amounts of data to the monitoring team.

Advertisement

Correction Commissioner Louis Molina signaled Wednesday during a council budget hearing that the agency will ask for more officers - as many as 2,000 - to solve the ongoing Rikers Island staffing crisis. (Todd Maisel/New York Daily News)

Meanwhile, Lander, the comptroller, said the city has to reduce the current jail population of roughly 5,600 40% to 3,300 to achieve the population required in the plan that would close Rikers and create four new new borough-based jails.

We need to look with a real set of open eyes, because without a strong, clear re-committment to the bold plan to close Rikers, I fear we will reach 2027 with crumbling facilities on Rikers still open and many more people incarcerated than new facilities can hold, Lander said.

Lander said the DOCs budget is expected to rise to $1.34 billion in fiscal year 2022, or 7% more than in fiscal 2021. That increase includes overtime, which has soared 71% to $132 million since before the pandemic. Overtime is expected to grow by $116 million over the next two years.

Many other city agencies are expecting budget cuts.
JW Marriott Masai Mara Lodge signals growth in the continent as the global hospitality leader enters the luxury safari segment.

Marriott International, Inc. today announced it has signed an agreement with Baraka Lodges LTD. to enter the safari segment in Africa. JW Marriott Masai Mara Lodge will be located within the Mara National Reserve, one of Africa's most renowned wildlife conservation and wilderness regions. Offering discerning travellers an unparalleled setting, the elegant retreat expects to welcome guests in 2023.

Overlooking the famed banks of the River Talek and on the edge of the reserve, JW Marriott Masai Mara Lodge's prime location will offer guests a distinctively elevated camp from which to discover the Masai Mara National Reserve, its stunning vistas, abundant wildlife, and endless plains. Plans for the new-build lodge feature 20 private tents, including one presidential canvas-topped pavilion and two interconnecting canopied suites, ideal for families, each with a private terrace overlooking the river. Shared spaces will include a restaurant, lounge bar, spa, and a large outdoor terrace with fire pits that will play host to traditional Masai dance performances in the evening.The untamed landscape will offer guests the opportunity to observethe "Big Five" that Masai Mara is home to: lions, leopards, buffalos, rhinoceros and elephants. Between June and September, the reserve is also host to the annual great wildebeest migration, when more than 10 million animals travel a distance of 1,800 miles from the Serengeti in neighbouring Tanzania.

Conservation of the land and its inhabitants will be at the heart of JW Marriott Masai Mara. The safari lodge aims to employ up to 50 locals from the Masai community, and will offer robust learning opportunities for guests looking to immersive themselves in the destination.

A nod to the captivating surroundings, guests can expect an authentic sense of place through artful design and architecture. Sophisticated, interiors will be led by Kristina Zanic. The location and surrounding landscape will be reflected at every turn, creating harmony with the natural world and drawing inspiration from the elements: earth, wind, fire and water. Warm touches of neutrals and natural materials, will lend to a warm ambience, while a earth tone colour palette promises to sit in harmony with the landscape, inviting guests to connect with nature and focus on their wellbeing.

During their stay, guests will enjoy the immersive, holistic approach to wellness while being mindful of the environment and their impact on the land.

Hotel website
CWT, the business-to-business-for-employees (B2B4E) travel management platform, announces that its Chief Executive Officer, Michelle McKinney Frymire, has been appointed to the United States Travel and Tourism Advisory Board by U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo. In her role, she will provide the Secretary with advice and counsel on issues and concerns that affect the U.S. travel and tourism industry.

The United States Travel and Tourism Advisory Board

United States Website
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

For the first 18 months of the pandemic, Bill McKeon, the CEO of Texas Medical Center, woke up at 3 a.m. every day to review the latest hospital data on coronavirus cases before hosting 7 a.m. meetings with the heads of the major Texas Medical Center hospitals and 8 a.m. meetings with government officials to discuss the data.

The rest of his days were an onslaught of tasks as he helped manage the response to the biggest health crisis in a century.

But even through all of that, McKeon and Texas Medical Center institutions kept working in the background on TMC3, an ambitious 37-acre biomedical research campus planned before the pandemic. Looking at architectural plans and hosting Zoom meetings about the project offered a respite during the some of the worst moments of the pandemic, he said.

It was frankly the thing that kept us most sane at the time, McKeon said. It allowed us to look toward the future beyond this pandemic.

Godofredo A. Vasquez, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer

The first pieces of the potentially game-changing biomedical research campus are now starting to come to fruition just outside the Texas Medical Center, along Old Spanish Trail about five miles south of downtown Houston.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Texas Medical Center breaks ground on TMC3, a massive research campus with shops, DNA-shaped parks

Contractors with Vaughn Construction topped out this week on the first building in the project, meaning the six-story building has reached its highest point. The 250,000 square-foot Collaborative Building represents the first piece in a broader 6 million square-foot mixed-use development.

TMC3 is expected to help solidify Houstons reputation as a major life science hub by bringing together medical entrepreneurs with leading biopharmaceutical and health care companies, as well as academics, researchers and health professionals. The project leverages the activity in the already bustling Texas Medical Center, which is often described as the world's largest medical complex spanning more than 50 million square feet of space.

The TMC3 projects founding institutions include Texas Medical Center (TMC), Texas A&M University Health Science Center, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) and The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

After years of planning and construction, the first few buildings and public parks in the project are expected to open next year.

The first floor of the Collaborative Building will be open to the public with a 7,000 square-foot atrium featuring natural light spilling into a stadium-style seating space capable of hosting events such as lectures for up to 500 people.

Godofredo A. Vasquez, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer

The second floor will house wet and dry labs for researchers working with MD Anderson, Texas A&M Health and UT Health Houston. The third floor includes space for yet-to-be-announced private industry partners.

The fourth floor will host offices for TMC's data and clinical research collaborative programs, the TMC Venture Fund, which invests in life sciences startups, the hedge fund Braidwell, and other venture and equity fund partners.

Historically, TMC was comprised of institutions siloed in buildings that were designed to be separate rather than collaborative, McKeon said. This new Collaborative Building is meant to bring together healthcare, educational and private industry leaders under one roof to mingle and develop new concepts.

Its going to be the clearinghouse for the free exchange of ideas that doesnt happen today, McKeon said.

Across from the Collaborative Building, work is progressing on the first few levels of what eventually is expected to be 700,000 square-feet spread across two connected buildings dedicated to additional industry partners and educational research space.

Godofredo A. Vasquez, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer

The buildings in the project will curve to wrap around six public parks linked together in the shape of double helix in designs by Elkus Manfredi Architects and landscape architect Mikyoung Kim Design, both of Boston.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Construction starts for Levit Green, life sciences district near Texas Medical Center

By the end of this year, Majestic Realty  a California real estate firm partnering with TMC is expected to break ground on a 521-room hotel and a 350-unit residential project, McKeon said. The Houston real estate firm Transwestern is working with TMC to develop the campus, which is expected to get an additional six industry and research buildings.

Houston already has a place on the world stage as a leader in clinical care and life sciences, said Mayor Sylvester Turner in a statement. With the launch of the TMC3 Collaborative Building and larger TMC3 campus, we showcase why our city leads in the areas of innovation and technology.

marrisa.luck@chron.com

twitter.com/marissaluck7
Candela, a master-planned community near the Westpark Toll Road and FM 359 in Richmond that opened in spring 2021, is getting bigger.

Johnson Development Services has purchased 117 acres along FM 359, just south of Settegast Ranch Road, as an extension of its Candela community. The land, about two miles south of Candela, will add 346 homes to the development.

The land was purchased from two separate sellers in deals brokered by Claudia Wright with R&W Real Estate.

This is a prime property in a growing area of Fort Bend County, Michael Cox, president of Johnson Development Services, said in an announcement. With Candela so close and having such a strong brand identity that has rapidly drawn home buyers, its natural for us to continue the name. This property will be developed in the same manner as Candela.

Candela was originally planned for 1,500 homes on 460 acres. The sales pace has continued to accelerate, bringing the total number of home sales to 323 since late 2020, according to the developer.

RELATED: Lamar Consolidated ISD to build elementary school in Cross Creek Ranch

Sales in the new southern section are expected to begin in mid to late 2023. The same builders  Coventry Homes, Perry Homes and Westin Homes  will build homes in the new section. The plans include 40-, 50- and 60-foot lots, curving cul-de-sac streets, a community lake and a 2.3-acre park.

Amenities include the Axis Amenity Center with meeting space, a courtyard with fire pit, a fitness center, resort pool, a yoga lawn and a splash pad, a playground and future dog park. The neighborhood is zoned to the Lamar Consolidated Independent School District.

The developer expects the lots to be sold out in 2024 and that builders will likely sell out of homes in 2025.

Johnson Development Services, an affiliate of Houston-based Johnson Development Corp., focuses on smaller master-planned communities in the Johnson portfolio.
Roger Stone, the disgraced longtime adviser to Donald Trump, made a surprise appearance at NYPD headquarters Wednesday to support a cop on departmental trial for working off-duty as Stones armed bodyguard.

Looking tan and smartly dressed in a pin-striped suit and gray tie, Stone sat in the front row of the NYPD trial room at One Police Plaza in lower Manhattan flanked by a small entourage.

Advertisement

Roger Stone, the longtime advisor to Donald Trump, is pictured leaving NYPD headquarters Wednesday afternoon. (Luiz C. Ribeiro/for New York Daily News)

He watched intently as NYPD prosecutors went through phone records, hotel bills, photos, social media posts and videos they say prove Officer Salvatore Greco and Stone were in repeated contact and at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C. during the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Prior to the riot, Stone was protected by members of the far-right Oath Keepers militia.

A member of the anti-government group, who is now cooperating with the feds, told authorities he and Greco worked security for Stone but that the NYPD cop had nothing to do with the insurrection.

Advertisement

Sal Greco did nothing wrong, Stone, 69, told the Daily News Wednesday. This whole thing appears to be built on guilt by association.

Stone, Greco and a few others spent the lunch break together, sharing a pizza.

Roger Stone speaks to the press outside NYPD headquarters Wednesday afternoon. (Luiz C. Ribeiro/for New York Daily News)

The NYPD seeks to discipline Greco for violating departmental rules by allegedly acting as Stones bodyguard.

Stone claims the beleaguered cop never provided any security despite photos and videos showing the 14-year NYPD veteran standing either behind or at a distance from Stone holding a walkie talkie as if he was part of a protective detail.

Im just here to be supportive of Officer Greco whos become a friend of our family, Stone said. Hes visited us on Easter. Hes visited us on Christmas.

Greco also is accused of violating departmental rules barring cops from associating with convicted felons. Stone was sentenced in February 2020 to 40 months in prison for lying to Congress and later pardoned by President Donald Trump. Greco also palled around with Stones friend Manhattan Madam Kristin Davis, who was convicted of prostitution-related activities and selling prescription drugs.

NYPD prosecutors says Greco carried a gun as he worked uncompensated security for Stone and Davis during the Jan. 6 riot.

During Wednesdays testimony, prosecutors used photos and videos to show that Greco was in the company of the far-right Proud Boys, which provided security for Stone at a Dec. 11, 2020 rally in Washington, D.C. They also introduced photos of Greco among the Oath Keepers.

Advertisement

Salvatore Greco, a 12-year NYPD veteran, is pictured second from left with sunglasses next to Roger Stone (center with fedora) on Jan. 5, 2021. (Caroline Brehman/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

In the images, Stone and Greco were photographed in the company of Proud Boys leader Ethan Nordean and Stones Oath Keeper bodyguard Roberto Minuta. Both men have pleaded not guilty to taking part in a coordinated attack on the Capitol.

Grecos lawyer Stuart London objected to most of the images, claiming that the department was trying to kill an ant with an elephant gun.

This is really about the riot and my client had nothing to do with the riot, London told the administrative judge. Neither did Roger Stone.

NYPD Officer Salvatore Greco is pictured in a 2018 photo. (@NYPDChiefofDept / Twitter)

Greco, London said, merely picked Stone up at the airport and took him to the Willard Hotel, then accompanied him on various outings to the mall and to get his hair cut.

Greco didnt leave the hotel during the riot, he said.

Advertisement

The Daily News Flash Weekdays Catch up on the days top five stories every weekday afternoon. >

Roger Stone poses for a photo outside NYPD headquarters Wednesday afternoon. (Luiz C. Ribeiro/for New York Daily News)

Earlier this month, Stone defended Greco on The Gateway Pundit, describing the cop as an upstanding officer who followed the rules.

I can honestly say I have never seen his badge or his service weapon, Stone wrote.

Video published by The Washington Post, however, showed otherwise.

Footage captured by a documentary crew shows Stone and Greco in a room at the Willard during insurrection. Greco stands an arms-length away from Stone, his gun in a shoulder holster and NYPD shield on his belt.

When previously asked about the footage, Stone replied to The News. I have no memory of that. Immaterial.

Advertisement

With Graham Rayman
An omicron subvariant known as BA.2 is driving up COVID case numbers in the United Kingdom, sparking worry of another surge in the United States.

In Houston, however, case numbers remain flat, and experts say its difficult to predict what may happen locally in the coming weeks. While national trends show that BA.2 is making inroads throughout the U.S., now accounting for up to 34 percent of all cases, Houstons data tells a different story.

Wastewater surveillance shows no detectable samples of the subvariant at any of the citys treatment plants as of March 14, according to the citys online dashboard. The vast majority of treatment plants show decreasing COVID levels as of that date, with only two treatment plants reporting an increase compared to the previous week.

According to Houston Methodist Hospitals genome sequencing data, BA.2 has yet to make any meaningful progress since it was first detected in January, accounting for about 1 to 3 percent of COVID samples in the hospital system.

BA.2 is likely to become the dominant strain across the country by April, but its unclear whether that will translate to a substantial surge or a more modest bump, said Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and co-director of the Texas Childrens Hospital Center for Vaccine Development.

What I expected to see was  instead of a sharp peak that we would get sort of a shoulder on the right-hand side, Hotez said. Thats what I was expecting, because thats what I saw in Europe, but that hasnt happened. So well see. Maybe it wont be as bad. We cant always predict the basis of these peaks and waves.

In the U.K., daily average cases have more than doubled over the last month, from 28,430 on Feb. 27 to 84,793 on March 22, according to the New York Times virus tracker.

Cases in the U.S. usually track behind the U.K. numbers by about three weeks, but as of March 22, the average number of daily cases in the U.S. has steadily declined. The story is much the same in Houston. Texas Medical Center hospitals this week reported a 2.5 percent testing positivity rate  the lowest point since before the delta surge in June. The average number of daily cases, 315, is back at pre-omicron levels.

BA.2 is about 30 to 50 percent more infectious than the original omicron strain, experts previously told the Chronicle, and right now its hitting the northeast the hardest.

In the regions that encompass Massachusetts and New York, for example, the subvariant accounts for 55 and 51 percent of cases, respectively, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Meanwhile, the 7-day average of new cases is rising in New York, while Massachusetts is holding steady, according to the New York Times Virus Tracker.

Regional differences in behavior  and varying levels of protection from either vaccination or previous infection  make it difficult to compare future spread in Houston based on virus trends in another part of the country, experts say.

The higher prevalence of the BA.2 in the northeast may be due to tighter COVID restrictions there, said Dr. Luis Ostrosky, chief of infectious diseases with McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston. With a smaller portion of the population in the northeast exposed to omicron, natural immunity may not be as widespread compared to Texas, he said.

We (in Texas) had very extensive spread over the winter, but were starting now to get into the window where we could be losing that immunity, Ostrosky said.

He predicts that Houston will see a modest bump in cases from the rodeo and Spring Break gatherings with a larger increase in the summer, when natural immunity will have waned, he said.

Hotez agrees that Houston will likely see another summer surge, potentially from a new variant that arises out of predominantly unvaccinated populations around the world.

I think we have to be reflective of whats happened in Texas and in the southern states the last two summers and falls, he said. We see these summer waves and I think we have to anticipate thatll happen again.

julian.gill@chron.com
Modernas COVID-19 vaccine works in babies, toddlers and preschoolers the company announced Wednesday -- and if regulators agree it could mean a chance to finally start vaccinating the littlest kids by summer.

Moderna said in the coming weeks it would ask regulators in the U.S. and Europe to authorize two small-dose shots for youngsters under 6. The company also is seeking to have larger-dose shots cleared for older children and teens in the U.S.

The nations 18 million children under 5 are the only age group not yet eligible for vaccination. Competitor Pfizer currently offers kid-sized doses for school-age children and full-strength shots for those 12 and older.

But parents have anxiously awaited protection for younger tots, disappointed by setbacks and confusion over which shots might work and when. Pfizer is testing even smaller doses for children under 5 but had to add a third shot to its study when two didn't prove strong enough. Those results are expected by early April.

Vaccinating the littlest has been somewhat of a moving target over the last couple of months, Dr. Bill Muller of Northwestern University, an investigator in Modernas pediatric studies, said in an interview before the company released its findings. Theres still, I think, a lingering urgency to try to get that done as soon as possible.

The younger the child, the smaller the dose being tested. Moderna said a quarter of the dose it uses for adults worked well for youngsters under age 6.

THE LATEST NUMBERS: Interactive maps, charts show spread of COVID across Houston

Moderna enrolled about 6,900 tots in a study of the 25-microgram doses. Early data showed after two shots, youngsters developed virus-fighting antibody levels just as strong as young adults getting regular-strength shots, the company said in a press release.

Moderna said the small doses were safe, and the main side effects were mild fevers like those associated with other commonly used pediatric vaccines.

Once Moderna submits the data to the FDA, regulators will debate whether to authorize emergency use of the small doses for tots. If so, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention then will decide whether to recommend them.

While COVID-19 generally isnt as dangerous to youngsters as to adults, some do become severely ill. The CDC says about 400 children younger than 5 have died from COVID-19 since the pandemics start. The omicron variant hit children especially hard, with those under 5 hospitalized at higher rates than at the peak of the previous delta surge, the CDC found.

COVID-19 vaccines in general dont prevent infection with the omicron mutant as well as they fended off earlier variants -- but they do still offer strong protection against severe illness.

Moderna reported that same trend in the trial of children under 6, conducted during the omicron surge. While there were no severe illnesses, the vaccine proved just under 44% effective at preventing any infection in babies up to age 2, and nearly 38% effective in the preschoolers.

Moderna said also said Wednesday it will ask the Food and Drug Administration to clear larger doses for older children.

THE NEWS YOU NEED: Sign up for free newsletters and get the best of the Houston Chronicle delivered to your inbox

While other countries already have allowed Modernas shots to be used in children as young as 6, the U.S. has limited its vaccine to adults. A Moderna request to expand its shots to 12- to 17-year-olds has been stalled for months.

The company said Wednesday that, armed with additional evidence, it is updating its FDA application for teen shots and requesting a green light for 6- to 11-year-olds, too.

Moderna says its original adult dose -- two 100-microgram shots -- is safe and effective in 12- to 17-year-olds. For elementary-age kids, its using half the adult dose.

But the FDA never ruled on Modernas application for teen shots because of concern about a very rare side effect. Heart inflammation sometimes occurs in teens and young adults, mostly males, after receiving either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines. Moderna is getting extra scrutiny because its shots are a far higher dose than Pfizer's.

The risk also seems linked to puberty, and regulators in Canada, Europe and elsewhere recently expanded Moderna vaccinations to kids as young as 6.

That concern has not been seen in the younger children, said Northwesterns Muller.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institutes Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

A collective 609 nights of camping, 182 merit badges and countless memorable moments are just some of the takeaways for seven scouts in BSA Troop 848 who recently achieved their Eagle ranking.

Alexander Beel, Austin Blazine, Brayden Fredrickson, Mark Keller, Alexander King, Simon Lamarche and Nathan Samuell celebrated their Eagle Court of Honor in January with family, friends and fellow scouters. All seven were elected by their troop to the BSA honor society Order of the Arrow.

For their Eagle Project, four of the scouts chose local churches as beneficiaries. Keller constructed eight circular flower beds and relocated a 7-foot cement cross. Lamarche created a path of gravel and stone and planted a memorial tree. Fredrickson refurbished a youth group sand volleyball court. Blazine freshened up playground landscaping and parking lot islands to eliminate tripping hazards.

At the Environmental Institute of Houston, King constructed two planting tables, a hopper and a retractable shade system. Samuell built two specialized growing tables for native plant species.

Beel returned to Armand Bayou Nature Center, a place hes enjoyed since age 5, to make a trail wheelchair accessible.

Learn more at www.bsatroop848.org.

Houston nonprofit supports Galveston jail diversion effort

Justice Forward has expanded its service network to include two Galveston County programs promoting rehabilitation and therapy-based solutions rather than incarceration.

The Houston-based nonprofit in March launched a program to fund counseling, recovery, housing, transportation, tuition assistance and more for individuals participating in the countys specialty courts. HOPE Drug Court is a supervised treatment program for nonviolent, repeat drug offenders with an addiction to drugs or alcohol. The countys mental health court connects eligible defendants with community-based treatment and supervision.

We have seen the inarguable impact that collaboration between courts and community resources can have on the health and happiness of the individuals we serve, said Devon Anderson, CEO and president of Justice Forward. We are looking forward to extending our support to the Galveston County specialty courts as they redefine the traditional justice system  reducing recidivism, improving public safety and transforming lives in the process.

For information, visit www.justiceforwardtx.org.

UHCL alum, new hospital CEO reflects on relationships with professors

Simone Boulet envisioned her life as a care provider  either a veterinarian or medical doctor. But with her acceptance into University of Houston-Clear Lakes joint Master of Healthcare Administration/Master of Business Administration program, that plan changed.

I love health care, the science behind it, and I had the skills in marketing, patient advocacy and project management, she said. I wanted to see how I could merge all these things that I love into one strategic path, and found that healthcare administration was just perfect.

Boulet completed her MHA/MBA at UHCL in 2017 and recently was named CEO of Kindred Hospital of Tampa Bay in Florida. She said the professors she met along the way still check in with her.

Its what every student should have, she said. I didnt have that relationship with professors anywhere else. Any student would love to have professors like them and receive those benefits from what they have to offer.

She said she often thinks about advice her UHCL professors gave her. They said to find a way into healthcare in the system you want, and just find a place to grow and start navigating, she said. Thats what worked for me. When people ask me what I did, I tell them to just find a way in.

Learn more at https://bityl.co/BS46.

Hospital appoints nursing head

HCA Houston Healthcare Southeast, 4000 Spencer Highway, recently named Gurvir Saini chief nursing officer, effective April 18.

Saini has served as assistant CNO at HCA Houston Healthcare Clear Lake since April 2020. She graduated from the HCA Healthcare Advanced Leadership program in 2021 and will complete the hospital groups executive development program later this year. For information, visit HCAhoustonhealthcare.com/southeast.

Area credit union earns national recognition

A member feedback platform recently recognized Gulf Coast Educators Federal Credit Union as a 2022 Best of the Best award winner.

MemberXP presents the awards each year to credit unions that provide exceptional service as reported by their own members. Learn more at www.gcefcu.org.

Deer Park council examines census data

The percentage of Deer Park residents with a high school degree or higher hovered at about 88.5 precent between 2014 and 2019, according to a recent review of 2020 census data by the Deer Park Community Advisory Council.

The DPCAC Program Planning Committee undertook the review after a 2019 University of Texas Medical Branch study noted a correlation between cancer rates and residents proximity to refineries. Committee members also wondered if the census data would confirm or counter stereotypes about Deer Park and other ship channel communities.

Facilitator Diane Sheridan presented census data on population, age, race and ethnicity, education, health insurance coverage, median household income and poverty level for Deer Park and 18 area cities within 10 or 30 miles of the city during a Feb. 28 DPCAC meeting. Slides are available at www.deerparkcac.org .
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Jersey Village Police Department received a new honorary assistant chief in Devarjaye DJ Daniel, a 10-year-old with terminal spine and brain cancer on a mission to become sworn in by a variety of police departments.

Daniel was sworn in on March 21 during a Jersey Village City Council meeting. Originally Daniel had the goal of being sworn into 100 law enforcement agencies while spreading awareness about childhood cancer.

On HoustonChronicle.com: 10-year-old Houston cancer patient has been sworn in at over 100 police departments

Daniel, who has now been sworn into hundreds of agencies, is also pursuing this goal for Abigail Arias, who passed away from cancer in 2019 at the age of 7 and had the dream of becoming a police officer.

Tonight, it is an honor to recognize DJ Daniel, Jersey Village Police Chief Kirk Riggs said. This young warrior has been battling cancer since the age of 6 and one of his main goals was to be sworn in by 100 agencies. Tonight, his dad told me hes going to be (sworn into) more than 400 agencies

Riggs said Daniels original Make-A-Wish Foundation wish was to go on a Carnival cruise, but he instead decided to continue his swearing-in mission.

We want to thank you for the positive thing that youre doing for our agencies and the positives of showing that cops do have a heart, we do want to take care of people, Riggs said. On behalf of the men and women in all law enforcement, thank you for what youre doing. Youre a shining light.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Lone Star College-CyFair alumnis space tool invention receives patent

Daniel was also on the cover of the March 2022 issue The Blues Police Magazine, discussing his journey.

Jersey Village Mayor Bobby Warren declared March 21, 2022, Devarjaye DJ Daniel Day. Daniel was also sworn into the Jersey Village Fire Department.

Whereas DJ carries on the legacy of Abigail Arias, who dreamed of becoming a law enforcement officer before losing her battle with cancer at the young age of 7, Warren said. Whereas DJ has honored the City of Jersey Village by agreeing to be sworn in as the first ever honorary assistance chief of the Jersey Village Fire Department. Now therefore, I Bobby Warren, mayor of the City of Jersey Village hereby proclaim Monday the 21st day of March 2022 to be Devarjaye DJ Daniel Day and take great pleasure in presenting this proclamation to him for his outstanding recognition.

Daniel hugged every council member before singing a rendition of Mississippi Childrens Choirs Inside Out to the crowd, urging them to clap along or he would have to start from the top.

Daniel expressed his appreciation for the swearing in ceremony.

I aint gonna lie, this is the best one yet, Daniel said.

chevall.pryce@chron.com
Lupe Mendez  poet, Houston ISD educator and activist  is planning to deliver for the people of Texas when his term as the states poet laureate begins in May.

He doesnt have to. The post carries no official responsibilities  or pay. The Texas poet laureate doesnt even have a set term: the appointment is made by the Legislature, which begins its next regular session in January.

Still, Mendez sees the post as an opportunity, as well as an honor.

Im super-proactive, Mendez told me Friday. Im going to take my one year, or nine months, and try to liven it up and find ways to sneak as many party opportunities in for the time that Ive got.

More from Erica Grieder: Brittney Griner and other U.S. citizens detained in Russia should be released

Republicans such as Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who played a role in Mendezs appointment, are invited to these parties too, of course. If they turn up, though, they might get the vapors.

Sir, do you know what you have selected? Mendez asked, with unbridled mischief.

Indeed. Mendez is a Galvestonian by birth, born and raised on the island, whos built a successful career as a poet and community leader in Houston while also working as an educator in the Houston ISD. His first collection, Why I Am Like Tequila, was published in 2019 to acclaim. Hes the founder and curator of Tintero Projects, which began as a reading series and now promotes writing opportunities for Latinos in Houston and the Gulf Coast region.

Mendez is also part of the Librotraficante movement, a group that coalesced in Houston a decade ago after Arizona passed a law banning Ethnic Studies in that states public schools and pulled dozens of books from school shelves, most of them by Black or Latino authors.

Sound familiar?

In fact, Mendez has been doing battle with the Republican lieutenant governor for nearly a decade. In 2013, as a state senator, Patrick put forward a proposal to restrict how U.S. history requirements could be fulfilled by students at Texas public colleges and universities. It was an example of micromanaging our universities, the veteran Texas journalist Paul Burka wrote at the time. It was also a harbinger of things to come, according to Mendez and the rest of the Librotraficantes  who had, as the groups name suggests, already begun smuggling banned books and other works of Latino literature into Arizona.

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.

The Arizona law was eventually struck down. But, as we have seen, Patrick has not lost his interest in micromanaging. And over the past decade, many Republicans, in Texas and across the country, have joined him in this endeavor.

That leads us to, as Mendez put it, the irony of ironies: while Patrick and like-minded conservatives in the Texas Legislature last year were waging an all-out assault on anything that might be construed as critical race theory, they also honored and elevated a poet who is intimately familiar with both the history that conservatives would rather we not talk about, and their efforts to suppress it to date.

The Texas Commission on the Arts prepares a list of finalists for the poet laureate position, as well as other state artist slots. But the appointments are ultimately made by a committee, appointed by the lieutenant governor, the Texas House speaker, and the governor, and approved by the Texas Legislature during its regular sessions. Resolutions honoring the 2021 and 2022 appointees, including Mendez, were adopted without objection last May, the Texas Senate journal notes.

More from Erica Grieder: Harris County Attorney Menefee thinks state leaders have been pushing us around. He intends to push back

Mendez reflected on the life of his mother, who died due to COVID-19. She was 21 when she graduated from high school, a puzzling detail with a dispiriting explanation: in Texas, Hispanic students of her generation were routinely made to repeat first grade several times, supposedly to learn English, meaning that they would earn their diploma late, if at all.

Whether Patrick realizes any of this is unclear. An email to Patricks office did not elicit a response.

Well, hell figure it out eventually.

In the meantime, Mendez will be doing poetry. Hes planning a reading series, to be held in six cities across the state, where hell be joined by other poets of color  a nod to the states future, but also its history.

There is no spot in Texas where you can go that does not have the mark or the imprint of a body of color, Mendez said, And if you cannot see that, thats why Im here.

Mendez is also planning a series of workshops. And participants who have never written a scrap of poetry shouldnt be shy, he explained. Hell kick things off by asking everyone to make a list, in response to his questions. The list might include something you eat or drink when you are celebrating a great accomplishment, for one. A song that reminds you of your mother.

Questions like these, he continued, cause you to think in a different way  reflectively, intuitively  and elicit memories. The sound of a box fan whirring in a hot apartment, maybe. The smell of cinnamon boiling on the stove. The sound of the wind chimes your grandmother had, which you didnt even realize youd been missing.

More from Erica Grieder: Targeting trans kids, again? Harris County has other priorities

And, by the end of his term as poet laureate, Mendez aims to produce an audio anthology, highlighting his own work, as well as that of other Texas poets hed like to elevate.

I get to represent all the poets that started at open mics, Mendez said. I get to represent all the writers who arent traditional writers  Im an educator; I got a degree in bilingual ed; I didnt get my MFA until I was in my 30s. Im a first-gen kid, born of an undocumented father. Theres more than just me with this position.

And if Republicans such as Patrick dont appreciate how Mendez is using this honor, this opportunity  this responsibility  they have no one to blame but themselves.

Now I get to have the last word, he said Friday  before taking his 3-year-old daughter to the zoo, to enjoy a beautiful day.

erica.grieder@chron.com
Authorities responded Wednesday to a north Harris County bank where the FBI said there was an attempted robbery of an armored car and an exchange of gunfire.

Three armed suspects fired at an armored car guard around 1:32 p.m. at the Comerica Bank at 855 FM 1960 after getting out of a black Mercedes, according to the FBI. The guard, who had been servicing an ATM machine there, fired back, per the FBI.
Houston Chronicle file

M.C. Russell, an automobile salesman from Cleburne, was fined $1,000 after being found guilty of negligent homicide in the death of a 5-year-old.

Sammy Hurlbut was killed earlier in the month when he was struck by a car driven by Russell while playing on the Conroe Highway. The Chronicle article says he was killed near the intersection of that highway and the Tomball Road. (Curiously, I can't tell where those roads intersect. The Conroe Highway is thought to be U.S. 75, which runs north from Houston by Spring and into Conroe. In articles from around this time, the Tomball Road was referred to as West Montgomery, which runs from Tomball into North Shepherd today. Any help in solving this is appreciated.)
The owner of a Staffordshire Bull Terrier that attacked a 3-year-old girl last month inside a Spring restaurant has been ordered not to keep any dogs in her home as her criminal case proceeds in court.

State District Judge Hilary Unger on Wednesday set bond conditions for Jennifer Romano, also requiring that the 46-year-old woman not have contact with the injured girl or her family.

Romano was booked Monday into the Harris County Jail on felony charges of injury to a child and tampering with evidence. She made her combined bond of $7,500 on Wednesday, according to court documents.

Her attorney, Angela Weltin, said Romano owns several dachshunds that she will no longer be able to keep in her home. She also owned Kingston, the terrier who on Jan. 9 lunged and bit Ronin Waldroup on the face at the Loose Caboose Restaurant, deputies said.

The girl was treated at Memorial Hermann Hospital in the Woodlands for deep lacerations, puncture wounds and tearing to the skin on the right side of her face. She received 14 stitches and may have to receive plastic surgery, court records state.

Weltin on Wednesday called the attack by Kingston, a rescue dog, a tragedy.

Our hearts go out to (Ronin) and her family, Weltin said. We are praying for a swift recovery and full healing. Kingston has since been euthanized. The sad story continues as the rescue dog owner, Jennifer Romano, is charged by the District Attorneys Office with two serious felony offenses arising out of the sorrowful event.

Through their attorney, Maureen Farrell, the girls family said they were grateful that the district attorneys office charged Romano with the felonies.

While the criminal process does not heal Ronin's wounds, it brings the family comfort to know that our community takes seriously the horrible decision Romano made to put Kingston, who had bitten before, in a service vest and bring him into a restaurant, Farrell said. Romano knew the staff would probably not say a word and were likely not trained in the ADA-compliant questions they could and should ask."

The Waldroup familys statement points at whether Romano complied with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Kingston had been wearing a service dog vest during the attack, authorities said, and Romanos doctor had previously stated that her animals helped her with her general anxiety disorder.

Dogs that only provide comfort or emotional support do not qualify as service animals, which the act defines as dogs trained to do work or perform tasks for a person with a disability.

Service dog educator Kaydin Downey said her company, Hamilton at Your Service, LLC, which conducts workshops and consultations about service dogs, was relieved to see charges filed.

Knowing she was roaming free with multiple other animals with potentially more service dog vests of their own, as a witness testified to in court, was frightening to everyone, especially the Waldroups who are trying their best to resume back to normal life, Downey said.

Ronin is still trying her best to cope everyday and though we specialize in disabilities including PTSD and aiding families in offering support and techniques, Cece and James have been doing flawlessly on their own. Ronin has a long journey ahead of her but she has the absolute best parents in the world to support her during this time.

Witnesses said Romano fled the scene after the unprovoked attack, and authorities also said Romano concealed Kingston from deputies while they were trying to seize the dog. Kingston was euthanized following a Montgomery County judges ruling to do so, despite Romanos claims that the dog could be re-trained.

The dog has bitten people in at least two other attacks, including one within the last year, one Harris County investigator said.

The latest attack occurred while both parties stood in line at the restaurant at 26403 Preston Ave. One witness, who arrived at the Loose Caboose with Kingston, told investigators the girl grazed the dog before the incident. He added that Romano told him it was the girls fault, according to charging documents.

Another witness claimed that they saw Ronin Waldroup standing 1 or 2 feet behind the dog before it turned around and bit her face.

In recent years, Romano has also been named in multiple lawsuits surrounding a different pit bull, Gus, who she claimed to be rehabilitating through her now-defunct business, Maggies House Rescue.

In a previous bite case in 2013, a Montgomery County judge ruled that Gus caused serious bodily injury and ordered the dog euthanized.

Staff writer Julian Gill contributed to this article.

samantha.ketterer@chron.com
A bouncer has been arrested for the murder of a young Marine veteran who was fatally stabbed outside a Boston bar over St. Patricks Day weekend.

Daniel Martinez, from Illinois, was killed on Saturday outside Sons of Boston, a popular bar and grill by Faneuil Hall Marketplace, CBS 4 reported. Police found him on the ground near the watering hole around 7 p.m. suffering from a fatal stab wound. The 23-year-old victim was rushed to hospital, but he was pronounced dead a short time later.

Advertisement

Martinez, in town to celebrate St. Patricks Day with a friend, left the Sons of Boston earlier in the evening. When the pair returned a short time later, they were denied entry, triggering a verbal altercation with the bouncer, who has been identified as Alvaro Larrama.

Surveillance video captured Larrama chasing down the duo with what appeared to be an unknown object in his right hand, which he was extending towards the victim as he pursued him, according to a police reported obtained by Boston 25 News.

Advertisement

Apparently aware he was being pursued, the victim turned and faced Larrama, extending his left hand as if to block or fend off an imminent attack. The victim then struck Larrama on the left side of Larramas head with what appeared to be an aluminum beer bottle.

Larrama can also be seen striking in the area of the victims left chest two times, the second of which caused the victim to grasp the area of his left chest with his hand, according to the police report.

Royalty-free stock photo ID: 222952348 Police car on the street at night (Jaromir Chalabala/Shutterstock) (Shutterstock)

Several people milling about the downtown area attempted to break up the altercation, but they could not save Martinez, who served in the Marines between 2017 and 2021. He was deployed in 2019 with the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit and was most recently assigned to the 3rd Assault Amphibious Battalion, 1st Marine Division, at Camp Pendleton, California, according to News 5. he attained the rank of sergeant during his years of service.

On Monday, Larrama surrendered to Boston Police and was taken into custody.

He is charged with murder.
The city on Wednesday unanimously approved a new, three-year contract with the police union, cementing a deal that gives officers 10.5 percent in raises over objections from advocates who want negotiations to take place publicly.

City Council voted 16-0 to approve the deal, already ratified by membership of the Houston Police Officers Union, after rejecting a delay proposed by Councilmember Tarsha Jackson.

Councilmember Mary Nan Huffman, who works as an attorney for the union, left the chambers and did not participate in the vote.

At the end of the day, I believe this is the best deal  not for this administration, not for the HPOU  but for the city of Houston, Mayor Sylvester Turner said.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Proposed contract would give Houston police 10.5 percent raises over 3 years

Officers will get 10.5 percent in raises staggered over three years, bringing pay for an officer with one year of experience from $56,440 now to $58,697 in July, and to $62,574 in 2024.

The contract also makes a change that enables the city and department to discipline officers who commit a crime within 180 days of discovering it. Previously, the city had to take action within 180 days of the crime occurring, even if it had not learned of it within that time.

Many advocates had called into the councils public meeting Tuesday to urge council members to delay a vote and route it instead to the public safety committee for review. They wanted the contract negotiations to take place publicly, as it happens in cities such as San Antonio and Austin. Advocates have been calling for a public process for this contract since at least July 2020.

Jennifer Carreon, criminal justice project director for Texas Appleseed, one of the groups that urged a delay, said local governments must strive to build trust between the community and police.

Making decisions, such as this one, behind closed doors and out of the public eye, does nothing to establish that trust and even worse, it erodes the trust and faith that residents have in local government, Carreon said.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Houston advocacy groups urge Mayor Turner to delay vote on police contract, negotiated in secret

Jackson, who was an advocate for criminal justice reform before her election to City Hall, proposed a two-week delay to give residents time to read the contract and engage with the city before coming up for a vote.

I understand the delay, possibly, wont change anything, but ultimately it will give the community the chance to be a part of the process, Jackson said.

Turner said the process, during which he and his administration negotiated directly with the union, has been the same for years.

Its not like its new I just want to assure you all and the general public  the process we have utilized during my term, the process used by the previous administration, is the same process we used here, Turner said, adding later: Lets say you delay, is anything going to change? Im going to be very direct and tell you: no.

At-Large Councilmember Mike Knox, the only former police officer on council, pointed out the city charter gives the mayor all administrative authority in city government. Council members, as part of a legislative body, cannot take part in negotiations; they only can vote to accept or reject the deal. Knox described any delay as a flagrant demonstration of no confidence in our police officers.

Only Jackson and At-Large Councilmember Letitia Plummer supported postponing the vote, and the motion failed. Jackson said she would like to see a more public process the next time the contract comes up for negotiation, which will occur after Turner leaves office in January 2024.

At some point, we have to change how we do business, and we have to be more inclusive, Jackson said.

The disciplinary change to the 180-day rule was recommended by the mayors task force on policing reform, launched by Turner in 2020. The mayor claimed Wednesday that 70 percent of the groups recommendations have been implemented.

The report recommended other changes to labor contracts that were not included in this agreement, and advocates argued the city did not advocate for them forcefully enough.

It is disappointing that the council pushed through a vote without giving the public a meaningful chance to review the contract, said Lauren Johnson, a policy strategist in justice and police for the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas. This process bargained away so many opportunities to hold police accountable for misconduct.

The task force recommended increasing the disciplinary window from 180 days to 210 days to allow another month of investigation. It also recommended requiring officers who face an investigation to give statements at the beginning of the probe, rather than waiting for the complete investigation. The current practice allows officers to defer their statement until they can review the full investigative file.

At the council meeting, Plummer raised the so-called 48-hour rule, which says officers accused of misconduct must be given 48 hours notice before they are questioned about the alleged impropriety.

Some people think  as the former police chief suggested  that rule cannot be changed at the city level because it is codified in state law, Plummer said. City Attorney Arturo Michel confirmed the administration and union could change the 48-hour provision in the contract if they agreed to do so.

Those changes did not make it into the agreement, despite the previous endorsements of several council members.

The 48-hour rule, the 180-day rule, those are two big points. We got one, Councilmember Ed Pollard said. As a negotiator, you live to fight another day. You might not get everything that you want, but you did get some.

dylan.mcguinness@chron.com
Roughly 15 years before Herman Melville introduced the world to Moby Dick, a whaling ship from Massachusetts sank near the mouth of the Mississippi River.

Nearly 190 years later, experts say, its still the only whaler known to have gone down in the Gulf of Mexico, where the threat of enslavement at Southern ports posed a risk for Black and mixed-race men who often were part of whaling crews.

Researchers checking out odd shapes during undersea scanning work on the sandy ocean floor believe they've finally found the shipwreck about 70 miles offshore from Pascagoula, Mississippi. It was documented in February by remotely operated robots in about 6,000 feet of water.

Not much is left of the two-masted wooden brig thought to be Industry, a 65-foot-long whaler that foundered after a storm in 1836. An old news clipping found in a library shows its 15 or so crew members were rescued by another whaling ship and returned home to Westport, Massachusetts, said researcher Jim Delgado of SEARCH Inc.

Melvilles Moby-Dick; or, The White Whale, published in 1851, told the story of American whaling from a Northeastern view. The discovery of Industry shows how whaling extended into a region where relatively little is known about whaling despite the Gulfs extensive maritime history.

The Gulf is an undersea museum of some incredibly well-preserved wrecks, said Delgado of SEARCH Inc., who a few years ago helped identify the remains of the last known U.S. slave ship, the Clotilda, in muddy river waters just north of Mobile, Alabama.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Houston's bayous are known for colossal alligator gar. This angler may have caught his biggest yet.

The find also sheds light on the way race and slavery became entangled in the nations maritime economy, said historian Lee Blake, a descendant of Paul Cuffe, a prominent Black whaling captain who made at least two trips aboard the Industry.

Southern slave owners felt threatened by mixed-race ship crews coming into port, she said, so they tried to prevent enslaved people from seeing whites, Blacks, Native Americans and others, all free and working together for equal pay.

There were a whole series of regulations and laws so that if a crew came into a Southern port and there were a large number of mixed-raced or African American crew members on board, the ship was impounded and the crew members were taken into custody until it left, said Blake, president of the New Bedford Historical Society in Massachusetts. Black crew members also could be abducted and enslaved, she said.

Images of Industry captured by NOAA Ocean Exploration aboard the research ship Okeanos Explorer show the outline of a ship along with anchors and metal and brick remnants of a stove-like contraption used to render oil from whale blubber at sea, elements Delgado described as key evidence that the wreck was a whaling vessel.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Giant, golden 'big ugly' black drum caught along Texas City Dike

The Industry photos pale in comparison to those recently released of Endurance, which sank in 10,000 feet (3,048 meters) of frigid Antarctic water a century ago and is incredibly well preserved. Bottles believed to date to the early 1800s are visible around Industry, but no ship's nameplate; what appears to be modern fishing line lies near the metal tryworks used to produce oil from whale fat.

The Gulf was a rich hunting ground for sperm whales, which were especially valuable for the amount and quality of their oil, before the nations whaling industry collapsed in the late 19th century, said Judith Lund, a whaling historian and former curator at the New Bedford Whaling Museum in Massachusetts.

In the 1790s there were more whales than they could pluck out of the Gulf of Mexico, she said in an interview.

While at least 214 whaling voyages ventured into the Gulf, Lund said, ships from the Northeast rarely made extended port calls in Southern cities like New Orleans or Mobile, Alabama, because of the threat to crew members who weren't white. That may may have been a reason the whaling ship that rescued Industry's crew took the men back to Massachusetts, where slavery was outlawed in the 1780s, rather than landing in the South.

The people who whaled in the Gulf of Mexico knew it was risky to go into those ports down there because they had mixed crews," said Lund.

___

Reeves is a member of AP's Race and Ethnicity team.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Krish Himmatramka, an entrepreneur and native Houstonian, swam out of the "Shark Tank" with a deal but nearly drowned after an intense back-and-forth on the latest episode of ABC's hit business-themed reality TV series.

Himmatramka launched his business, Do Amore, in 2014, right around the time he was shopping for an engagement ring to pop the question to his now-wife. He didn't find anything he liked so he made his own ring.

Now, the ecommerce engagement ring company has made nearly $20 million in combined sales in 2020 and 2021, according to Himmatramka. And unlike many startup companies that seek capital investment before launching, Himmatramka started Do Amore solely with the $18,000 he saved up before quitting his job at an oil and gas company.

In fact, Himmatramka's first time attempting to raise funds was in front of five ferocious "sharks."

"$18,000 is a very small investment for a company that wanted to change the jewelry industry, for sure," he said Tuesday. "I always thought I would have had to raise capital, but I never thought I would be able to find the right partner that would care about our mission as much as I did."

Alongside its everyday business, Do Amore partners with charity: water to help provide clean water wells to various countries across the world.

Now in its 13th season, "Shark Tank" gives budding entrepreneurs the chance to turn their dreams into reality by presenting their ideas to "sharks" like Mark Cuban, Barbara Corcoran and Lori Greiner  entrepreneurs who made aspirations into lucrative empires.

In the show, contestants attempt to convince any one of the sharks to invest money in their idea. When more than one of the sharks decides they want a piece of the action, the stakes are raised and a bidding war can erupt, driving up the price of investment.

Friday's episode welcomed the return of Daniel Lubetzky, founder of Kind Snacks, as one of the sharks.

EXCLUSIVE: Cast of new 'Marry Me Now' series based in Houston talks what to expect on the show

Himmatramka's pitch came at the tail-end of the episode. After touting his company, Himmatramka concluded by dropping to a knee with a ring in his hand, asking the sharks to "say yes" to his proposal of a $600,000 investment for a 6% stake in the company.

Although the sharks complimented him on a lovely presentation, most didn't jump to attack.

"Anybody else can walk in the door and try to do the same thing," Cuban said on the show. "There's no barriers to entry to compete with you, and that makes it hard to invest in."

But one wanted a bite.

Kevin O'Leary, a Canadian entrepreneur and founder of O'Leary Fine Wines, placed a bid accepting Himmatramka's proposal ... with a catch: a royalty fee of $100 per unit sold until the $1.8 million was paid.

"If we add a royalty to each sale, does that mean we would have to increase our prices? That would be unfair to our customers," Himmatramka said. "Part of being ethical is charging a fair price."

The sharks tried to convince Himmatramka to accept the deal in a tense negotiation, but he wouldn't budge, emphasizing that he developed a successful business without any outside capital or additional investments beyond his initial $18,000.

"Maybe my confidence is what led to some of the drama and tension," Himmatramka said. "I think, with that confidence, I took it the limit."

Eventually, O'Leary rescinded his offer. But Himmatramka was able to reel Lubetzky back in.

Ultimately, Himmatramka and Lubetzky settled on a deal for a $600,000 investment, with Lubetzky receiving a 15% stake in the company and 3% of that stake going to charity: water.

"Daniel understood what we're trying to do," Himmatramka said. "Daniel's entire life's work has been social impact. He was the perfect shark."

"He's the only shark whose book I've read. So I really wanted to work with him. Any of the five would've been a lifetime change no matter what, but knowing social impact is at the heart of what [Lubetksy] does, I was really excited."

MORE ON CUBAN: Mark Cuban's latest business venture is a cash-only pharmacy that takes aim at crushing drug prices
In Berlin this week, 40 Ukrainian elementary school kids weaved their way through what should have been an ordinary day, doing normal kids-at-school things: painting pictures, sharpening pencils, playing outside. But nothing was really normal. For the first time, these students  all Ukrainians, but mostly strangers to one another  also took German lessons for the first time as part of a hastily assembled curriculum at a makeshift school far from their homes, supported by funds rapidly raised by the kindness of strangers.

This bewildering mix of the routine and the extraordinary constitutes life for children and their families fleeing the devastation brought on by Russias unconscionable war on Ukraine. Similar scenes are playing out across Europe in staggering numbers. UNICEF says 1.5 million children have been forced to flee with their mothers or relatives in the month since the war began Feb. 24. Thats a refugee child nearly every second since Russia invaded Ukraine. Since then, 3.6 million Ukrainians have left the country. The United Nations said its likely the fastest forced displacement in Europe since World War II.

More than half have fled to Poland, with hundreds of thousands more now in Romania, Moldova, Slovakia and Hungary. In packed shelters and with impromptu karate classes, Europeans are extending warm welcome to those fleeing Putins senseless invasion. Yet those same nations infrastructures are beginning to buckle under the strain.

The United States needs to do its part to ease that burden and open our doors to Ukrainian refugees. The Biden administration and Congress have sent billions in aide to Ukraine, but so far our nation has done little to help provide shelter for the millions who are fleeing their homeland. Reuters reported Tuesday that just seven Ukrainians have been resettled in the United States between March 1 and March 16. About 500 were admitted in January and February during the build-up to the war.

The Biden administration must do better than that. And the public appears to agree. A Pew Research poll released last week found that about 80 percent of Democrats and 57 percent of Republicans favor admittance of thousands of refugees from Ukraine.

Of course, most Ukrainians will want to stay in Europe, where they do not need a visa to travel. But with the total number of refugees expected to pass 4 million soon, many of these displaced families are far beyond first-choice territory. The United States should offer refugee status to thousands of Ukrainians under the existing humanitarian parole option, as we did nearly 80,000 Afghans who fled last fall. That will speed up the necessary vetting and provide help when its most needed, which is right away.

Other nations are finding ways to creatively respond to the crisis. Canada announced an accelerated pathway for Ukrainians and immediate family members to live in Canada for three years. The program launched a week ago and has already received more than 20,000 applications. In the United Kingdom, more than 150,000 people have applied to be hosts under the governments Homes for Ukraine plan. America should look for similar ways to bring in refugees. Our nation has the organizational resources and nonprofit infrastructure to welcome thousands of everyday people in dire need of respite from war, and we should be bending over backward to help.

Despite promises to quickly ramp up refugee admissions, the Biden administration has so far been disappointingly slow in undoing the damage to the program during President Trumps administration. Annual acceptance of refugees fell from about 85,000 in 2016 down to a paltry 11,800 in 2020. Though the Biden team raised the cap back up to 122,000 for this fiscal year, actual admittance so far this year is 6,500. As the administration welcomes Ukrainians, it should raise the cap on the total so as to not squeeze out other would-be refugees whove been waiting longer.

Systemic changes will take time  time Ukrainian refugees dont have. Thats why its essential that the administration use existing pathways for temporary refugees. There are early signs that may be happening.

In a welcome move, the administration has granted Ukrainians already in this country temporary protected status, which means they wont be subject to deportation for at least 18 months. State Department spokesperson Ned Price has said in recent days that the department will take a very close look at making reunification easier for those with family here, and at resettling refugees here, if there is a need.

Helping refugees, no matter where they are from, ought to be instinctive for Americans. After all, refugees are just normal people facing abnormal circumstances, says Ali Al Sudani, chief programs officer at Interfaith Ministries of Greater Houston and a former refugee himself. Afghans, Ukrainians, Iraqis, Serbians  any person may at some point find themselves in need of helping hands because of something outside of their control, he told us this week.

Refugee resettlement groups in Houston, a city buoyed by all sorts of immigration, are already building contingencies for when the U.S. adopts a more caring posture toward Ukrainians.

Houston-based Interfaith Ministries has assisted 1,348 Afghans in adjusting to Houston life since the fall, president and CEO Martin Cominsky told us. CEO Cynthia Colbert said Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston has resettled 1,200. In all, nearly 5,000 of the 11,000 Afghan refugees resettled in Texas since U.S. withdrawal are living in Houston.

We can offer refuge to Ukrainians as well, and help them face all the hurdles ahead. Some will have language barriers. Theres childcare to obtain, anxieties and stresses to work through, and new skills to learn.

Houstonians know all about sudden reversals of fortune brought on by outside forces. When the waters rise, or the power goes out, we often rely on each other. An unprovoked assault on their homeland has forced Ukrainians to flee everything familiar. They are now at the mercy of strangers. Let America, and especially Houston, join the ranks of Berlin schoolteachers and other European strangers opening their arms to our neighbors in need.
Ever since President Biden told Americans hed nominate a Black woman to fill his first vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court, some Republicans have been complaining that it just isnt fair. If you're a white guy, tough luck. If you're a white woman, tough luck. You don't qualify, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas said on his Jan. 30 podcast.

But in nominating Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the seat now held by retiring Justice Stephen Breyer, Biden has kept a solemn promise all Americans should value: To ensure that a judiciary that has been overwhelmingly white and male for 200 years finally begins to reflect the diverse nation its speaking for. Jackson, in fact, would be not only the first Black woman to sit on the high court; shes the first ever nominated.

That historyand the blistering efficiency with which Biden has filled 47 federal judicial vacancies, overwhelmingly with women, more than half of them people of colorhovers over this weeks hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, where Republicans such as Cruz and Texas senior senator, John Cornyn, have promised a cordial hearing but have shown no signs of having open minds about whether to vote to confirm her.

Cruz, Cornyn and other senators have a duty to bring a barrel of questions to the hearings, and to scrutinize Jacksons record. A seat on the high court is for life. There is no room for anyone but highly qualified nominees.

But as theyre finding out, diversity and historic significance are merely two factors in a deep well of qualifications, experience and judicial wisdom that Brown would bring to the nations highest court.

If confirmed, Jackson, 51, would be the first former federal public defender to serve as a justice. That lends a different kind of diversity that will deepen the high courts capacity to understand how the law impacts the people who come in contact with it.

Of course, politics, a bit like the courtroom, is an adversarial process, and Republicans are doing their diligence in trying to sniff out weaknesses in the Democratic appointees record. Apparently in the absence of anything truly troubling or compelling, some have resorted to criticizing Jackson for being too good of a lawyer. Cornyn, for instance, criticized Jacksons defense of suspected terrorists as zealous advocacy that went beyond the pale. In each case, its worth noting, the suspects were never convicted.

Cornyn knows better. Any good defense lawyering is zealous, regardless of the lawyers personal belief. Thats the job.

A Harvard law graduate and a former Supreme Court clerk, Jackson also has been a federal judge for nearly nine years, at the trial court and appellate levels. Thats more judicial experience than President Trumps final nominee, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who served just more than three years as a judge prior to her nomination in 2020. Heck, its more experience than Chief Justice John Roberts had when he was first appointed to the court. And of the justices Jackson would serve with on the court, only Justice Sonia Sotomayor had served as both a trial judge and court of appeals judge, as Jackson has.

That experience creates a presumption that shes highly qualified to sit on the high court. Senators should test that presumption, but that doesnt justify distorting her record.

Some Republicans have insisted on associating her with soft-on-crime liberals, even though she comes from a law enforcement family and has the strong endorsement of the Fraternal Order of Police.

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., posted a 17-tweet jeremiad ahead of the hearings alleging Jackson has been unconscionably soft on sentences for those convicted of child porn-related crimes. His broadside has been repeatedly debunked, but has nevertheless become a talking point among conservatives hoping to keep her off the Supreme Court.

As a member of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, Jackson did recommend sentencing guidelines for some kinds of child porn convictions be eased. As a judge, she did impose sentences that were below those guidelines and less than what prosecutors asked for. But what Hawley left out is that the commissions recommendations in question were bipartisan and unanimous, and that her departures from guidelines as a judge were in keeping with how the majority of federal judges have ruled in similar cases. The guidelines themselves have been widely debated in the legal community for years. In response to questions about imposing shorter sentences than prosecutors asked for, Jackson explained that Congress required her to consider other factors, including the probation offices recommendation, the nature of the defendants offense and any unique circumstances.

Hawley wasnt the only one reaching in their efforts to impugn her record. On Tuesday, Cruz went so far as criticizing Jackson for the books allegedly aligned with critical race theory that are taught at the private Georgetown school where Jackson serves as a board member.

The kind of bad-faith gamesmanship displayed by Hawley and Cruz demeans the process.

Jacksons calm, measured, thorough responses, meanwhile, were even more evidence of fairness and a judicial temperament befitting a Supreme Court justice.

More than the theatrics or even the legal banter, what Americans watching from home will likely remember of these momentous hearings is Jacksons young daughters Leila and Talia looking on as Sen. Cory Booker recalled how at age 11, Leila had written President Obama urging him to appoint her mom to the high court. The more you spoke about your personal story, Booker said, the more I know it is an American story that folks from all backgrounds can relate to.

We urge the committee to ask its questions and then promptly schedule a vote. Biden has put forth an impressive, highly qualified nominee for the court. The fact that her appointment will also make history is just one more reason to celebrate this moment.

Update: March 23, 6:14 p.m. The spelling of the name of Judge Ketanji Brown Jacksons daughter Talia Jackson has been corrected.
Regarding Pitts: A war against your lying eyes, (March 20): Leonard Pitts Sunday column starts out well enough by reporting that Russian citizens are very vulnerable to the lies of Putin because they live in a bubble created by the Russian government. He then extrapolates this information by comparing what he says are similar situations in the U.S. He mentions the alternate reality that is QAnon and even those who are waiting for JFK to reappear. I suggest that all of these similar groups comprise a number that could fit into the Toyota Center and even practice social distancing.

What Mr. Pitts is (conveniently) forgetting is that the left is doing the same thing by calling any Hunter Biden story Russian disinformation. The day he references the New York Times story confirming the truth about Hunters laptop, is the day I will know that he is an objective journalist.

Philip Tereskiewicz, Houston

Ukraine resistance

Regarding Ukraine thwarts Russian advances; fight rages for Mariupol, (March 22): The day after the victory over Santa Anna, one of the Texan commanders, Thomas J. Rusk, wrote words cited on a pillar that can be seen at the battleground: It was freemen fighting against the minions of tyranny, and the result proved the inequality of such a contest. As it was on April 21, 1836, on the plain of San Jacinto, so it will be in Ukraine.

Chase Untermeyer, Houston

Unequal impact

Regarding Opinion: I dont like taxes. No one does. But heres why I support a carbon tax., (March 21): For many folks, the cost of gasoline and electricity represents huge chunks of disposable income. Adding on a carbon tax could be the last straw for a family fighting to decide how to spend its last twenty dollars.

The taxs impact on the poor was not raised by the author, an investment banker. Perhaps, like the cost of filling his tank, it was just not a big deal.

Tom Schmal, Houston

Silence is loud

Regarding Opinion: Ukraine refugee experiences affirm one thing: white lives matter more., (March 18): The author, Christina Suarezs statement, when disgraceful actions are treated with inaction, it sends a message that the behavior is not only acceptable but encouraged is what I have been trying to point out to anyone who silently tolerates their friends embrace of white supremacy or Christian nationalism as legitimate political positions. I suppose Putin believes his view of Russian imperialism to be legitimate and he has no one speaking the truth to him. I dont doubt that some of his advisers wish they had been more proactive before Putins decision was cast in stone. I hope we have learned authoritarianism can happen here. As for me, Ive learned that if unification means unifying with pure evil, forget it. I think that is what Ukraine is telling Putin and Mother Russia.

Ray Pickens, Pearland

Regarding Families of trans kids are living in fear of CPS investigations, some leaving Texas altogether, (March 20): Cowardice and greed have taken over our electoral process. This article reports that the mother of a trans child has had Republican lawmakers tell her privately that they dont support anti-trans bills, but will feel political pressure when its time to vote. This is the same thing were hearing from backroom discussions in Washington, D.C. Our legislators have become more interested in keeping their jobs than doing their jobs. We, the voters, need to be more educated about the people we elect. And not from ads, commercials or billboards. The League of Women Voters can provide nonpartisan information on candidates, as well as other resources for voters.

Its worth it to take the time to be more educated about those asking to represent our interests. The more you know, the better equipped you will be at the ballot box. Its time we, the people, became the ones pressuring our legislators.

Tierney Lancaster, Kingwood
Regarding Twitter flags AG Ken Paxton's tweet misgendering U.S. official as 'hateful', (March 18): Good for Twitter! Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton  along with Gov. Greg Abbott  have become caricatures of bigoted, ignorant antipathy toward transgender persons. Paxtons tweet about Assistant Health Secretary Rachel Levine was outrageous and wholly gratuitous. It was absolutely necessary that Twitter flag it, to which Paxton responded that he is simply following the science. And exactly what science might that be, Mr. Paxton? Might it come from the same sources that you and Abbott used to fight against mask mandates during the pandemic?

Monica Perin, Sugar Land

Regarding National Butterfly Center targeted by conspiracy theorists reopens along Texas border, (March 16): I was pleased to see that the National Butterfly Center is reopening, even if only partially. The reasons for its closure are so completely ridiculous, even for conspiracy nuts, that it wouldve been funny, except for the threat to employees.

Bob Gayle, Houston

Regarding Russian businesses in US face backlash from war in Ukraine, (March 17): I read the article about the New York store, Moscow on the Hudson, and the hateful phone calls to the store just because they sell Russian products. A lot closer to home is the Russian General Store, in southwest Houston on Hillcroft Avenue just south of South Braeswood Boulevard.

I live in the area, and happened to drive by it coming back from the Goodwill store on the west side of the street.

Theres a lot of Russian people who live in this area; I have a lot of Russian Jewish friends here whom Ive known for over 30 years. I looked over and saw that the two-tier store sign above the door, which said Russian on the top and General Store on the bottom, now only says General Store. The owners ripped the Russian sign off the top tier. I dont know whether the owners received any threatening phone calls, but it just seems like too many haters are ruining American lives and livelihoods because of something going on in a foreign country many thousands of miles removed from our shores.

Rusti Stover, Houston

Appeasement

Regarding Russia-Ukraine war: Key things to know about the conflict, (March 21): Is President Biden going to be the reincarnation of Neville Chamberlain? Are we and the rest of NATO going to stand by and watch the destruction of Ukraine and the slaughter or enslavement of its people in order to avoid confrontation with Russia? Putin waves his nukes under our nose to threaten us, to make us afraid to help Ukraine repel this invasion. Is this the new "peace for our time," the declaration which Chamberlain touted after his negotiations with Hitler's Germany? Such diplomacy contributed to World War II because Hitler knew he would have no opposition to his conquests. First the annexation of Austria, then the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia to protect ethnic Germans, followed by the invasion of Poland, the Nazi conquest of Europe and nearly six years of bloody war.

Now we have the invasion of Ukraine to "protect" ethnic Russians. If Russia wins you can kiss Georgia and Moldova goodbye shortly thereafter. Who will then be next on Russia's expansion list?

Weston Holmes, Houston

Regarding Editorial: Amid Zelenskyys extraordinary appeal to Congress, Biden right to be cautious, (March 16): President Biden is the consummate politician, in the best sense of the word. Much like George H.W. Bush who gathered a coalition to battle Saddam Hussein, Joe Biden has quietly and expertly managed the members of NATO into a formidable bulwark against what he rightly calls Putins war. But the difference is that the Gulf War was about oil and the world energy market after the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein. Putins war is the most dangerous threat to world democracy in this century, and the United States and her allies stand together in its defense.

If Kyiv falls, and the Zelenskyy government is toppled or goes into exile, what happens next? Even with Russia hobbled by economic sanctions, Putin could move against Moldova, a former Soviet republic which is not a member of NATO, and Ukraine could be ground up by an insurgent war. There would be no winner, and the world could have the expanded war we fear even without the no-fly zone or the Polish MiGs. NATO is far more powerful than Russia, and even though Vladimir Putin appears unshakeable in his desire for a legacy, I believe he is not, as some have posited, unhinged enough to use nuclear weapons. Kyiv must not fall. If this means sending the Polish MiGs to defend the skies over Ukraine, Biden should authorize it.

Jerry Wilt, Houston
What does President Joe Biden think he will get out of a new nuclear deal with Iran?

A year ago, the answer seemed reasonably clear to the administration: Tehran had responded to Donald Trumps decision to walk away from the original 2015 deal  known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA  by enriching uranium to ever-higher levels of purity, bringing it increasingly close to a nuclear bomb or at least the capability to build one quickly. Barring a new deal that put limits on enrichment, Iran seemed destined to cross the nuclear finish line sooner rather than later. Hence the urgency of a deal.

But today we live in a different world. Its a world in which Russia and China  parties to both the JCPOA and the current negotiations  are definitely not our well-wishers, and a world in which Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates wouldnt answer Joe Bidens phone calls in the midst of the greatest geopolitical crisis of the 21st century. Maybe the administration needs to think through the broader implications of a new deal a little more carefully before it signs on again.

So far, that isnt happening. The deal is said to be mostly finalized, barring last-minute haggling over whether the United States will remove Irans Revolutionary Guard  which Washington has said is responsible for killing hundreds of Americans  from the list of sanctioned foreign terrorist organizations.

Asked earlier this month whether Russias invasion of Ukraine would affect the nuclear negotiations, Antony Blinken was definitive: These things are totally different and are just, are not, in any way, linked together, the secretary of state told Margaret Brennan of CBS.

But they are linked together, in ways large and small, tactical and strategic. The United States isnt even negotiating directly with Tehran  the Iranians wouldnt allow the Americans into the room, and the administration, incredibly, agreed  but is instead relying on its intermediaries.

And how are those intermediaries doing? I am absolutely sincere in this regard when I say that Iran got much more than it could expect, much more, Mikhail Ulyanov, the top Russian diplomat at the negotiations, said earlier this month in an interview. Our Chinese friends were also very efficient and useful co-negotiators.

Maybe Ulyanov was exaggerating. But with or without the deal, Moscow will be able to build nuclear power plants in Iran, irrespective of the sanctions over the war in Ukraine. And Beijing  which in 2021 signed a 25-year, $400 billion strategic partnership with Tehran  will be able to conduct a lucrative business in Iran with little concern for U.S. sanctions.

Combined with Februarys no limits friendship pact between Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, an Iran deal represents another step toward a new anti-democratic Tripartite Pact.

But what about the nuclear deals upside? Last year, Blinken promised an agreement that would be longer and stronger, hinting that it would seek to extend some of the JCPOAs sunset provisions that were set to expire in the next decade, as well as place limits on Irans testing of ballistic missiles.

It isnt clear the new deal will meet either goal, but at a minimum it will likely extend Irans breakout time  the time it needs to acquire sufficient enriched uranium for a bomb  from as little as three weeks to about six months, establish an intrusive nuclear-inspection regime, give future diplomacy more time to work, and forestall, for now, a nuclear crisis in the Middle East while the worlds attention is engaged elsewhere.

This is not nothing, and  should the deal go through  the administration will work hard to make the case that this is a good-enough answer for a problem to which every other solution is worse. It will also stress that all options are on the table should Iran choose to go for a bomb.

Except nobody in the region seems to believe that line or any other U.S. security assurances  hence the phone call snub. Reaching a kick-the-can-down-the-road agreement may seem like a diplomatic victory to the State Department. But its a strategic defeat when it does little more than delay a crisis for the future in exchange for strengthening our adversaries in the present. Tehran attacked Iraq with ballistic missiles earlier this month and (through its Houthi proxies) launched missile and drone strikes on Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, in January. What can Irans neighbors expect from it when its coffers are refreshed with tens of billions in oil revenues, free from sanctions?

Though the administration and its friends will fiercely deny it, the principal geopolitical challenge the United States faces today is the perception, shared by friends and foes alike, that we are weak  diffident, distracted and divided. The heroic resistance that Ukraine has put up against Russia, bolstered by U.S. military aid and the power of our sanctions, has helped shift that perception, at least somewhat. But we are still far from achieving any kind of victory there, much less gaining the upper hand against the new axis of autocracy.

The Biden administration urgently needs to telegraph strength. An Iran deal that leaves us even weaker and meeker than the previous deal accomplishes the opposite at a moment when we cant afford another reversal.

Bret Stephens is a columnist for the New York Times.
Parents of young children have some good news about COVID vaccines. Moderna announced its two-dose pediatric vaccine is safe for children under five and produces an immune response. The data, however, dont yet give us a clear picture of how effective it is at preventing illness  a problem pediatricians and researchers foresaw in 2020.

Developing new treatments takes time, as does the testing for safety and effectiveness. Pediatricians and parents are right to expect a thorough process that earns their trust. That process, however, should not be delayed because pharmaceutical companies dont include children in trials.

For too long, we have taken as a given that therapeutics and vaccines are first tested and approved for adults, and only then in children. There is some sense to that approach for conditions where the risks outweigh the benefits. But that is not the case with HIV/AIDS or COVID-19, where more than 1,350 American children under 18 years old already have died from COVID-19, and more than 409 of them were under five. Thousands more have suffered severe disease from which they may not recover fully for months or years. By prohibiting access to therapeutic agents and vaccines, which prevent severe disease and restore health, we are neglecting COVID-19s youngest victims.

COVID-19 has provided the first real test since HIV/AIDS of our ability to quickly bring lifesaving new medications and vaccines to market for children in an urgent epidemic setting, and the results, at best, have been mixed. Paxlovid, an oral medication used to treat mild-to-moderate COVID-19 in patients at high risk for severe disease, is not available to children under 12 years old. Similarly, two important monoclonal antibody preparations used to treat or prevent severe COVID-19 are not available to patients under 12 years old. Finally, while Moderna says it will submit its data to the Food and Drug Administration, more than one year after the availability of vaccines for adults, there still is no authorized vaccine for children less than five years of age.

With only limited options available for protecting their children, parents of those under five have spent the last two years making the difficult choice between isolation and infection, even though American leaders  from President Biden, to the American Academy of Pediatrics, to the FDA  agree that vaccination is the best option. Those same leaders continue to neglect to provide protection for these children beyond masking. And, as of last week, mask mandates  the only line of defense against COVID-19 for many immunocompromised adults and children  have been all but entirely removed across the country. So, to secure vaccines, parents scour social media for open trials in which their child has a 66 to 75 percent chance of receiving a vaccine instead of a placebo. Others with greater resources fly to Germany for off-label pediatric vaccines.

Before HIV/AIDS, pharmaceutical companies had a long history of studying and seeking approval for their drugs only for adults, assuming that pediatricians would extrapolate data from those studies and prescribe the medications off-label for children. By the time HIV/AIDS hit, only about 20 percent of the medications that were being prescribed by physicians in the U.S. had been formally studied in children and approved for use in that age group.

In the mid-1990s, at the height of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, potent antiretroviral therapy transformed the prognosis of HIV/AIDS in American adults from almost certain death to a disease that almost overnight became chronically manageable, like diabetes or hypertension. Men and women who, in some cases, were in hospice care or on their deathbeds reclaimed their lives. Children were not as fortunate. The medications were not available in formulations suitable for children and very little was known about pediatric dosing and safety. It would be several years before the medications that saved the lives of their parents became available routinely for HIV/AIDS youngest victims  time many of these children did not have.

HIV/AIDS shone a bright light on the necessity of including children in studies of drugs used to treat potentially lethal diseases. The FDA Modernization Act (1997) and Best Pharmaceuticals for Children Act (2002) incentivized pharmaceutical companies to perform pediatric studies by extending patent protection and market exclusivity periods. The Pediatric Research Equity Act (2003) also gave the FDA the authority to require pediatric studies if a new drug was likely to be used in children. This carrot-and-stick approach led to hundreds of pediatric studies and the addition of pediatric information to the labeling of dozens of prescription drugs.

The initial delays in approving pediatric therapeutics for children with HIV/AIDS showed how inaction and adherence to convention could lead to preventable suffering and death. One of us treated hundreds of these children in Houston in the late 1990s.

The precedent has been established. Now is the time to act. Although the lessons from the HIV/AIDS crisis led to new laws, we can see that encouraging the FDA to grant emergency use approval of vaccines for children under five will take an engaged public demanding that vaccines and treatments are developed and deployed for children.

The FDA has the regulatory authority to ensure pediatric access to lifesaving therapeutics and vaccines. So, before the next COVID-19 variant lands thousands more children in intensive care units across America, they must exercise that authority to ensure that children under five have access to the same safe and effective therapeutics as their older siblings and parents.

Mark W. Kline, M.D. is physician-in-chief, senior vice-president and chief medical officer at Childrens Hospital New Orleans; and professor of pediatrics at the Tulane University School of Medicine and LSU Health Sciences Center in New Orleans. Sophie Rosenblum, Ph.D. is a writer, teacher and co-founder of Protect Their Future, a grassroots organization advocating on behalf of young children and patients for access to COVID-19 vaccines.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Amanda Edwards, a former at-large member of Houston City Council and candidate for U.S. Senate, announced Wednesday she is running for mayor of Houston in 2023.

Edwards return to politics comes two years after her fifth-place finish in the 2020 Democratic Senate primary. She previously had served a single term as one of Houstons five citywide council members, before passing up a second term to run for Senate.

With Edwards announcement, there now are three major candidates vying next year to succeed Mayor Sylvester Turner, who cannot run again due to term limits. Edwards, who would be the first Black woman to lead Houston city government, said her experience at City Hall sets her apart from the other two candidates, former Harris County clerk Chris Hollins and state Sen. John Whitmire, both of whom, like Edwards, are Democrats and attorneys.

There are complicated issues that are facing the next mayor. The easy stuff, that was done many years ago, Edwards said. It's the hard stuff that's left, and you've got to have somebody at the helm on Day One that is ready to lead and knows how to navigate the city and all of its challenges and opportunities that may be in front of us.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Former Harris County clerk Chris Hollins announces run for Houston mayor

During her four-year tenure on Houston City Council, Edwards served as vice chair of the councils Budget and Fiscal Affairs Committee and helped direct a task force focused on boosting the citys tech and startup economy.

She proposed amendments to the annual city budget  one of the few levers of power for council members under Houstons strong-mayor form of government  that sought to speed up the permitting process, expand internet access for low-income communities and improve conditions for women- and minority-owned businesses.

As mayor, Edwards said she would focus on cultivating opportunity for everyone, including businesses owned by women and minorities, who she said face great disparities when they're trying to access traditional forms of capital to grow their businesses.

On HoustonChronicle.com: State Sen. John Whitmire announces he will run for mayor of Houston in 2023

Other priorities, Edwards said, include flood control and handling the citys rising crime rate. She argued her experience on council had equipped her to address those issues under a city budget in which revenues have struggled to keep up with expenses.

We can talk about great ideas, but they will not materialize unless you have the proper funding or support for them, Edwards said. When you talk about law enforcement, everybody talks about what needs to happen. Most things cost money, and we've got to make sure that the resources are in place at the city.

Edwards, 40, attended Eisenhower High School in Aldine ISD, then worked for U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee before earning her law degree from Harvard. She served as a judicial clerk for U.S. District Judge Ivan Lemelle in New Orleans, then returned to Houston in 2008. Before her election to council, she worked as an attorney at the law firms of Vinson & Elkins and Bracewell, focusing on municipal finance law.

Though candidates cannot officially file to run for mayor until next year, Edwards appointed a campaign treasurer Wednesday morning, allowing her to start accepting political contributions. She reported about $42,000 in her city campaign account in her latest public filing from January  putting her several steps behind Whitmire, who had $11 million in his state campaign account last month.

Edwards acknowledged the race would be tough, but argued she would be able to build the same type of broad coalitions that powered her to a decisive runoff win during her 2015 citywide campaign.

Michael Adams, chair of the political science department at Texas Southern University, said Edwards enters the race with name recognition among voters from her Senate run and time on council. He also noted voters  particularly Democrats, who outnumber Republicans in Houston  have tended to favor Black women candidates in recent cycles.

She has a pedigree that I think will make her a formidable candidate, Adams said. African American women have been very influential in local politics, and also state and national politics, in terms of turning out in elections.

Edwards and Hollins likely will compete for support among similar groups, including Black voters, Adams said. That dynamic alone is unlikely to propel Whitmire to victory, he said, because the race likely will come down to a runoff between Whitmire and a second candidate.

Certainly, John Whitmire will be well funded, but he will not win outright, Adams said.

Whoever wins the election will inherit numerous immediate challenges, including a long-running firefighter pay dispute, a cash-strapped Solid Waste Management Department and costly infrastructure demands that range from long-neglected city streets to federally mandated improvements to the sanitary sewer system.

Edwards noted that Houston is far less dense than most other large cities, which she said leaves city leaders with insufficient revenue to fund services  such as public safety and trash pickup  and infrastructure across more than 650 square miles of land.

It's not a sustainable structure long term, Edwards said. We've got to bring more people into our city, and we've got to keep those that are here, here.

jasper.scherer@chron.com
Two Detroit brothers convicted for rape and murder solely on the testimony of a convicted rapist whose DNA was found at the scene were exonerated Tuesday and released from prison after 25 years behind bars.

An Oakland County judge vacated the first-degree murder convictions of Melvin and George DeJesus for the July 11, 1995 rape and murder of Margaret Midkiff, who had been kicked to death in her basement and was found with a pillowcase over her head.

Advertisement

Im thankful that the truth is finally realized, George DeJesus, 44, said after the ruling, according to the Detroit News. I realize that justice for us opens up old wounds for the Midkiff family. I just hope one day our families can all heal and we can have a relationship.

Brandon Gohagen, now 50, claimed at the time that the DeJesus brothers had forced him to rape 43-year-old Midkiff and that they were the ones who had killed her. In exchange for his testimony, he was offered a plea deal  second-degree murder and first-degree sexual assault  and sentenced to up to 35 years in prison.

Advertisement

George DeJesus is embraced by family and supporters at a restaurant parking lot Tuesday. (Anna Liz Nichols/AP)

In 2016, new DNA tied Gohagen to the Aug. 29, 1994 rape and murder of a 22-year-old local, whose body was dumped in a nearby park. He was convicted a year later for the first-degree murder of Rosalia Brantley and sentenced to life in prison.

Through investigations by the Attorney Generals office, the University of Michigan Innocence Clinic and the Western Michigan University-Cooley Law School Innocence Project, Gohagen was tied to at least a dozen more rapes.

As we pulled at the thread, we discovered that during the 1990s, before and after the two murders, Brandon had been terrorizing women in his neighborhood, Robyn Frankel of the Michigan Attorney Generals Conviction Integrity Unit said Tuesday in court.

Weve identified 12 women who were violently assaulted by Brandon. Several of those cases resulted in DNA confirmation.

Oakland County Circuit Court Judge Martha Anderson agreed to vacate the convictions and the DeJesus brothers, separated for decades, reunited Tuesday afternoon.

When the judge told me I was free, I was real emotional, Melvin DeJesus told Fox 2. I tried to hold it back but I couldnt. Tears just started coming down. I was like, man, just be strong. Sure enough, I couldnt do it.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday called Texas child abuse investigations into the families of transgender children one of the most heinous policies she has encountered in 35 years in public office.

During an evening event at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library, Pelosi also took aim at Texas new voting restrictions and near-total abortion ban. But her harshest words came for Gov. Greg Abbotts order to investigate parents for abuse if they provide their children with gender-affirming health care.

Families embrace their child, and what is the right of the governor of this state ... to intervene in that? Pelosi said.

Abbott issued the directive last month, citing Attorney General Ken Paxtons nonbinding legal opinion that gender-affirming care, including hormone therapies, constitute child abuse by denying a childs right to procreate. The countrys largest medical groups consider such care medically necessary and, in many cases, life-saving for children experiencing gender dysphoria.

Kin Man Hui, San Antonio Express-News / Staff photographer

The state has launched investigations into at least nine families since then, as civil rights groups sued to overturn Abbotts order. Late Monday, an appeals court again temporarily blocked the enforcement by Child Protective Services as litigation continues.

IN-DEPTH: Families of trans kids are living in fear of CPS investigations, some leaving Texas altogether

Pelosi is scheduled for additional events in Texas on Wednesday, including a health care panel with U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin. As she tours the state, Republicans have attacked her for declining to also visit the southern border, where state leaders have attempted to crack down on migrant crossings.

While Democrats continue to ignore the Biden border crisis, the Biden gas hike and Bidenflation, Texans are gearing up to fire Nancy Pelosi once and for all in November, said Macarena Martinez, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee.

At Tuesdays event, Pelosi also discussed Texas new voting restrictions, which introduced extra identification requirements for mail-in ballots and the applications for them.

The new mandate led to record mail ballot rejection rates during the March 1 primary, with more than 18,000 ballots tossed across 15 of Texas 20 most populous counties. A full tally of rejected ballots will be released by the Secretary of States office in the coming weeks.

We will not give up on federal voting rights legislation, said Pelosi, who also committed to codifying the landmark Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion access. Texas last year enacted a law prohibiting abortions after roughly six weeks of pregnancy, which the U.S. Supreme Court has allowed to stay in place.

This is fundamental to respect  respect for women and their judgment about their lives, the timing and size of their family, Pelosi said. But not just women  families. And why would it be that somebody in Washington, D.C. should be deciding the size and timing of your family?

cayla.harris@express-news.net
Nearly a year after the Biden administration revoked approval of billions in future Medicaid dollars for Texas, state and federal officials are at an impasse over the safety net funding, with a deadline looming Friday.

The money, funneled through whats known as an 1115 waiver, has brought more than $30 billion to Texas since its start in 2012 and now accounts for nearly a third of the states Medicaid budget. Those dollars primarily prop up hospitals for emergency care to patients without government or private insurance.

Last April, the new Democratic administration withdrew a surprise, 10-year waiver renewal made in the final days of the Trump presidency. Republican state leaders sued to reinstate it and a federal judge ordered both sides to negotiate. They remain locked in disagreement over how the state funds its portion of the waiver.

The judge, J. Campbell Barker in East Texas, has ordered the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to make a final decision on the payments by the end of this week.

John Hawkins, president and chief executive of the Texas Hospital Association, said the stalemate is costing hospitals about $7 million a day and could force some to roll back medical services or increase charges if the waiver expires this fall, as originally scheduled. Under the initial plan, new payments to hospital would have already begun.

Our concern is why all of a sudden has CMS chosen to make this a bigger deal than its been in the past, and particularly given that were in the middle of a pandemic? Hawkins said last month.

IN-DEPTH: Texas AG Ken Paxton sues Biden administration over billions in rescinded Medicaid funding

The Biden administrations reversal last year set off a firestorm among hospital and patient advocates, many of whom are divided over the states increasing reliance on waiver dollars to compensate for the states bare-bones Medicaid program.

Patient advocates had assumed the waiver would shrink over time as Texas expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. But Republicans have refused to expand, leaving about a million low-income Texans without Medicaid or other coverage that could pay for routine checkups and other preventative care. Many of them later end up in hospitals for untreated medical conditions.

Texas has both the biggest uninsured population and the highest uninsured rate of any state.

Under pressure to close the coverage gap, Republicans leaders in the Legislature often point to the waiver as a backstop, making up for whatever funding gaps hospitals incur. But they have little control over that money, and its unclear whether they can force the Biden administration into carrying out a Trump-era decision, especially when many of the details of the waivers renewal had yet to be worked out.

Theyre now in a game of chicken with the administration, Sara Rosenbaum, a health law and policy professor at George Washington University, said of the states position.

A problem of the states own making

In revoking the Trump renewal, Rosenbaum said its possible that federal officials are trying to pressure Texas into contributing more toward indigent care. Aside from Medicaid expansion, the state also has historically low reimbursement rates for providers, including hospitals.

I dont think the Biden administration will let the entire health care system collapse, she said. But I dont think it has any particular interest in solving a problem of the states own making.

Medicaid experts widely agree that Texas will need federal help even if it expands the program. The state has about 5 million uninsured people, many of them undocumented or who would otherwise be ineligible for expanded Medicaid.

But Judy Solomon, who studies health policy at the progressive Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said CMS has raised valid questions about the states funding mechanism. Typically, states access waiver dollars with matching funds from their general revenue or through statewide provider taxes.

Texas devised a workaround in which the state is one-step removed. Under the model, called a Local Provider Participation Fund, private hospitals essentially tax themselves and send the money up through their local governments and the state to CMS. Those hospitals are then eligible for enhanced Medicaid payments on treatment they provide.

Not all providers that pay the tax come out on top, however, and in 2019, a hospital consultant inadvertently tipped off CMS that the hospitals that profit from payments were privately covering the cost of the tax for others. Medicaid rules prohibit such arrangements if the government is directly or indirectly involved.

This dispute really comes down to whether these payments conform to the rules that CMS administers, Solomon said.

The state has repeatedly declined to provide CMS with details about the arrangements, and proponents say the setup is legal, since the deals are done privately. The federal inspector generals office has opened an investigation into the provider funds, which are also taking off in Florida, another state where lawmakers have rebuffed Medicaid expansion.

Originally, the funds were only intended for counties without a public hospital district, like those in South Texas, because they couldnt raise matching funds through property taxes or sales taxes. They have since spread to 28 jurisdictions, many of them with sprawling metros and large public hospitals, including Harris, Bexar and Dallas.

A disaster for our state

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services declined to comment, citing the ongoing Texas litigation. In remarks earlier this month to state health officials, it said the agency is committed to ensuring a strong and vibrant social safety net across the nation, including in Texas.

This includes making sure that providers in Texas receive all Medicaid payments for providing services to Medicaid beneficiaries to which they are entitled, it wrote.

Christine Mann, a spokeswoman for the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, said the state plays a limited role in helping Texas hospitals draw down the waiver funding.

Federal officials are asking Texas to regulate private agreements between non-governmental actors, which neither CMS nor HHSC has the legal authority to do, she wrote. HHSC has offered attestations that it is complying with applicable federal law, which CMS rejected.

Neither the governors nor the attorney generals offices responded to requests for comment. Attorney General Ken Paxton has said previously that the impasse is meant to force the state into expanding Medicaid, which he opposes.

This would be a disaster for our state, Paxton said last year, and yet President Biden seems intent on thrusting his bloated model of government on everyoneincluding Texas.

jeremy.blackman@chron.com
Chicago, IL (60637)

Today

Showers this morning becoming a steady light rain during the afternoon hours. High around 50F. Winds NE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 80%..

Tonight

Periods of rain. Low 47F. Winds NE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 80%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch.
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.
The woman accused of running down a pedestrian and a pair of Pennsylvania State troopers bragged that she was best drunk driver ever in tweet posted just weeks before the deadly DUI crash.

Jayana Tanae Webb is facing a slew of counts, including third-degree murder, homicide by vehicle while DUI, homicide by vehicle, manslaughter of a law enforcement officer in the second degree, driving under the influence. according to CBS 3. She was arraigned late Tuesday and scheduled to have her preliminary hearing on Wednesday, but it has been postponed until April 5.

Advertisement

The deadly crash occurred shortly before 1 a.m. Monday on I-95 southbound near the Stadium Complex in Philadelphia. State troopers Branden Sisca, 29, and Martin Mack III, 33 at the time were responding to a dispatchers call about a man attempting to cross Interstate 95 on foot.

This combination of photos provided by the Pennsylvania State Police shows Trooper Martin F. Mack III, left, and Trooper Branden T. Sisca. (AP)

When they arrived on the scene, both troopers exited the patrol vehicle and approached the pedestrian, who has since been identified as 28-year-old Reyes Rivera Oliveras. As they escorted him back to their SUV, another vehicle traveling at a high rate of speed struck the men, sending the officers into the northbound lanes of I-95.

Advertisement

The vehicle then hit a jersey barrier and continued a short distance along before pulling over onto the right shoulder.

By the time the more troopers arrived on the scene, several passersby had pulled over and were trying to revive Mack, Sisca and Rivera Oliveras. All three were pronounced dead at the scene.

Jayana Tanae Webb will have her next hearing April 5.

Webb reportedly confessed to drinking ahead of the crash during a tearful appearance in court on Tuesday. She is being held without bail.

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf in a tweet said the tragedy is a reminder that our law enforcement officers risk their lives to keep us safe.

Frances and I send our deepest condolences to the loved ones and colleagues of Trooper Sisca and Trooper Mack, he added

Mack enlisted in the Pennsylvania State Police in November 2014 and graduated as a member of the 141st cadet class. Sisca joined the force in February 2021 and graduated as a member of the 161st cadet class. Both troopers spent their entire careers assigned to the Patrol Section of Troop K, Philadelphia.
News outlets are finding creative ways to get around the Kremlin's efforts to block independent reporting inside Russia, utilizing everything from carbon-copy websites to encryption tools and anonymous browsers.

Why it matters: While old-school circumvention methods like short-wave radio are being reintroduced, journalists trying to break through Russia's iron curtain for media argue sophisticated digital techniques can often be more effective and efficient.

"The fact is, there are many digital channels that remain open and a lot can be done to reach people online," said Patrick Boehler, head of digital strategy at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

Tech workarounds, he notes, don't require big investments in new (or old) technologies since audiences already have smartphones and computers. The bigger challenge in many cases is educating the audience about the best options.

Driving the news: Boehler and his colleagues at the U.S. government-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty have been mirroring websites for news sites being censored  making exact copies of them at new internet addresses.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) recently said it used mirror site technology to unblock access to Meduza, an independent Russian publication based in Latvia, that was blocked by the Kremlin earlier this month.

It said it's ready to create mirror sites "for all censored media outlets" and thereby "return them to the front line of the resistance to Moscows war on information."

Be smart: The Kremlin can block the mirrored domain once it's discovered, forcing news outlets to constantly shift to new domains.

Placing mirror sites on content delivery networks (CDNs) that host other vital services make it much harder for the Russian government to shut them down, "because they rely on these CDNs for their own use," Boehler said.

Encrypted messaging channels like Telegram or Whatsapp are often used by outlets to communicate with their audiences to let them know which domains are active. (While most social platforms are blocked in the region, encrypted messaging platforms are mostly still available.)

Between the lines: News organizations also using those encrypted channels to communicate with individual Russians on the ground who may provide photos and videos to Western outlets to verify and report on.

What to watch: News sites and social networks are also beginning to establish their own Tor networks, which encrypt internet traffic and reroute it through thousands of servers around the world, making it virtually impossible to track.

Twitter last week announced its own Tor service that helps Russians access its site despite Russian government efforts to block it.

The big picture: Both VOA and RFE, which are funded by the U.S. government but editorially independent, have a lot of experience when it comes to circumventing censorship, but the speed of the crackdown in Russia took many by surprise, said Matthew Baise, director of digital strategy and audience development at the VOA.

"Before the invasion, we have had long-standing relationships with circumvention vendors," he said, referring to circumvention tools like Psiphon and ACI. Circumvention technology has long been used by the VOA and other independent channels to penetrate China, Iran, Pakistan and Ethiopia.

"We're seeing that mass migration to circumvention tools, which is pretty new to the Russian market," said Nat Kretchen, senior VP of programs of the Open Technology Fund, a government-supported nonprofit focused on advancing internet freedom.

That migration began when the Kremlin began blocking major Western media outlets and social networks.

Even though Russia has long been a propaganda state, it "was not a high censorship market until a couple weeks ago," Kretchen said.

By the numbers: So far, data suggests many Russians are desperate to get their hands on accurate information.

Use of virtual private networks, or VPNs, which enable users to hide their locations to evade location-based restrictions, has skyrocketed in Russia.

Top10VPN.com, which has tracked search volume data, saw the demand increase for VPN services peak at 2,692% above normal on March 14 after Russia announced it would ban Instagram.

Atlas VPN also reported a new high that day of VPN installs in Russia, increasing 11,253% above the norm.

Yes, but: "A lot of news organizations were as prepared as they could've been," said Dan Shelley, executive director of Radio Television Digital News Association. It was Russia's fake news law that caught most outlets in the region by surprise, he said.

That law, which makes it punishable with up to 15 years of jail time to even call the conflict a "war," has driven most independent journalists out of the country, forcing many Western news outlets to rely on stringers.

"To be a stringer for a western news agency inside Russia today is an extremely dangerous proposition. It's almost 007-like dangerous," Shelley said.

Source: https://news.yahoo.com/news-media-uses-digital-back-094522432.html
Sixth-graders at Clarksburg School created this quilt more than 20 years ago for the town's 200th anniversary.

Clarksburg Historical Commission Seeking Info on Student Quilt



The commission is hoping to confirm these names and make sure no one was left out. CLARKSBURG, Mass.  The Historical Commission is seeking more information on a quilt made by Clarksburg School sixth-graders for the town's bicentennial.

The quilt, featuring what appear to be buildings and scenes from around the town, was probably made in 1997 or 1998 for the 1998 anniversary. There's a list of students who are identified as making the squares but nothing else, including who sewed the quilt together. A newspaper article at the time only mentions it was made.

"We'd like to make sure that everyone who worked on the quilt is mentioned," said Commissioner Jeanne Moulthrop at Monday's meeting.

Commissioners have tried to track down who was the art teacher at the time, but she moved away and is thought to be in a nursing home.

The commission is hoping to verify the list of students, identify who put the quilt together and identify the scenes in the blocks for the town's 225th anniversary next year.

Anyone with more information on the quilt can contact Moulthrop at 413-663-3630.

The commission has a lot on its plate after being revived just two years ago. In addition to planning for the 225th anniversary, it's working on a demolition delay bylaw and preserving town documents.

The commissioners were reviewing demolition delays used by other communities after attending a virtual workshop earlier Monday. The delays are used by historical societies to prevent the loss of significant natural and manmade structures.

Most of the delays range from three months to a year, encouraging the property owners to find alternatives to razing a building. North Adams put in an ordinance a number of years ago, largely in response to proposals to tear down St. Francis' Church (which came down anyways).

The commission was looking at similar local bylaws that would be suitable for the town's small workforce in terms of timing and notifications.

"I was trying to find something that wasn't too detailed for what we need," said Commissioner Susan Brandon. "We should have a meeting with [the building inspector] just to talk about it."

Moulthrop agreed that it would take time for the building inspector to notify the commission, and then get the information together, and to talk with the owners or contractor to see they could be helped in finding an alternative.

"We've already lost a lot of historical buildings here," she said.

A stumbling block is not having an updated list of historical properties. There are 51 identifications for Clarksburg on the Massachusetts Historical Commission's Massachusetts Cultural Resource Information System.

Some, like the Mellis-Hosley House on Middle Road, and the Briggs mill have already been demolished. Most of the listings appear to have been made in the 1980s and largely cover 19th-century structures, with the newest being the 1950 River Road Bridge and the 1959 Hairpin Turn gift shop (Golden Eagle). It doesn't include the former North Adams Country Club lodge.

The commissioners are also hoping to ask the town for $500 to buy steel shelving, acid-free boxes and protective covers for documents. They have been working to properly store records, including old selectmen's minutes, that had been kept in the back room by the boiler.

The commission has moved into the south front room at Town Hall and has requested the use of the old town clerk's office next door for storage of historical artifacts. The town clerk now works on the ground floor to be more accessible to residents.
Transfer any credit card balance Get control of your Debt. 0% APR* for 6 mo. NO transfer fee!
Great Barrington Public Theater Rolls Out 2022 Summer Season

GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass.  In summer 2022, from early June to mid-August, Great Barrington Public Theater is expanding its season to introduce a new Solo Festival with four premiere, full-length, single-actor plays, followed by two new ensemble plays on the main stage.

The Solo Festival lineup includes premiere works featuring Berkshire resident, and writer/comedienne Alison Larkin, multiple Emmy-nominated actress Sharon Lawrence, as well as new works by actor/writers Will LeBow and James Morrison. The ensemble plays will include a brand-new comedy by Mark St Germain, as well as a new drama.

"After last season's ringing success, we decided to widen our lens celebrating the concept of new work," Artistic Director Jim Frangione said. "We're very excited about these new works, all of which revolve around themes of humanity that we hope will resonate with audiences as we emerge from months of isolation."

Great Barrington Public Theater will bring this run of new plays to the Liebowitz Black Box Theater and the McConnell Theater in the Daniel Arts Center at Bard College at Simon's Rock, Great Barrington. Tickets will be priced between $20 and $50.

"We invite every theater lover here in the Berkshires, Boston, the Hudson Valley, New York City and beyond to be with us for an especially lively summer," Deann Simmons Halper, Executive Director added. "We're thrilled to present new comedies and dramas with superb writers, actors and designers as we look forward to lighting up the summer on two separate stages."

The Public's season opens in the Daniel Arts Center's Liebowitz Black Box Theatre with the Great Barrington Public Solo Fest running June 3  July 10. This four-show series begins with "Grief," the Musicala Comedy, written and performed by Alison Larkin, with music by Gary Schreiner and directed by James Warwick (June 3  12).

Next in the Great Barrington Public Solo Fest (June 16  19), is Robin Gerber's new play, "The Shot," based on the life of Katherine Graham, the Pulitzer Prize-winning publisher of The Washington Post. "The Shot" is directed by local writer and director Michelle Joyner and stars Emmy-nominated and award-winning actress Sharon Lawrence in the role of Katherine Graham.

"Leave Your Fears Here" (June 30  July 10) is a memoir written and performed by stage and screen actor James Morrison. The play will be directed by Housatonic resident Robert Egan, Artistic Director of the internationally renowned Ojai Playwright's Conference, where this piece was developed.

The final play in the Great Barrington Public Solo Fest is "The Bard The Beat The Blues." This piece will run in rotation throughout the Solo Fest (June 8  July 8).

On July 14 with "Public Speaking 101," a brand-new comedy by Berkshire playwright Mark St. Germain, will run at the McConnell Theater mainstage. It will run through July 24. Jim Frangione will direct.

From Aug 4 to Aug. 14 "Things I Know to Be True," by award-winning playwright Andrew Bovell (BroadwayWhen the Rain Stops Falling) will run. Great Barrington Public will present the East Coast premiere of this new play. Judy Braha will direct.

More information on the ten-week, two-stage season can be found in the coming weeks as plans roll out on the Great Barrington Public Theater site and on Facebook. Tickets will go on sale on April 1, but seating is limited, especially in the case of the Berkshire Solo Series. Early purchase is encouraged.
Your support is needed now more than ever

Help support your local news

Local news sources need your help. Stay in the know on Coronavirus, local updates, and more.
The Arkansas State Police said an arrest had been made in connection to a shooting at a car show that left one dead and 27 hospitalized last Saturday.

The incident, which occurred in Dumas, about 90 miles southeast of Little Rock, was a gunfight between two individuals, ASP Col. Bill Bryant said during a news conference.

Advertisement

Cameron Schaffer, 23, was identified as the deceased, but police determined he was not one of the shooters.

(Shutterstock)

An additional 27 people, include six children under 18, were sent to various hospitals.

Advertisement

Brandon Deandra Knight, 22, was arrested after he was released from the hospital Wednesday morning. He faces charges of first-degree battery and aggravated assault.

However, the state police did not detail how Knight was connected to the shooting and have not publicly released a motive or other information.

Police said the investigation is ongoing.

Knight is being held at the Dumas City Jail ahead of his first court appearance on Thursday.
A San Diego appeals court judge made history in California on Tuesday, after becoming the first Latina member of the California Supreme Court.

Justice Patricia Guerrero, 50, is a daughter of Mexican immigrants who grew up in Southern Californias Imperial Valley.

Advertisement

She was nominated by Gov. Gavin Newson last month and approved by a 3-0 vote of the Commission on Judicial Appointments.

Chief Justice Tani G. Cantil-Sakauye, chair of the commission, announced her confirmation Tuesday, according to a news release.

Advertisement

Guerrero, who has served as an associate justice on the states 4th District Court of Appeal since 2017, will fill the vacancy left by Associate Justice Mariano-Florentino Cuellar, who stepped down last year.

Justice Patricia Guerrero speaks during her confirmation hearing to the Supreme Court of California before the Commission on Judicial Appointments on Tuesday in San Francisco. (Eric Risberg/AP)

Breaking News As it happens Get updates on the coronavirus pandemic and other news as it happens with our free breaking news email alerts. >

She has also served as a judge at the San Diego County Superior Court, worked as a partner at a law firm, and served as an assistant U.S. attorney at the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Southern District of California.

According to a report by the Commission on Judicial Nominees Evaluation, Guerrero is exceptionally well qualified for the states high court, and universally lauded for her superior intellect, clear writing, judicial temperament, work ethic, and compassion.

Two dozen family members and friends  including her father, sister, husband, as well as friends who grew up with her in Imperial Valley  attended the confirmation hearing in the Supreme Court Courtroom in San Francisco.

Guerrero said that she was humbled by the magnitude of the moment, praising those who came before her.

As Ive tried to express, this is not just about me, or really even just about my parents, but its about so many others just like us, she said, according to The Associated Press.

This is a story of the American dream, the belief that with hard work, perseverance and opportunities, anything is possible. And for that I am thankful.

Justice Guerrero is expected to be sworn in Monday by Gov. Newsom.
Dousing the flames: Candidates for sheriff in Grant County react to findings of flaws in agency they want to lead
The Alliance awarded the 2021 Person of the Year award to three individuals: Nate and Sara Reilly from the Three Magnets Brewing Company and Chris Knudson from Well 80 Brewing.
The Las Vegas driver who caused a crash that killed 9 people  including himself and four unrelated children  had alcohol, cocaine and PCP in his system, according to a coroners report.

According to the Clark County coroners office, Gary Dean Robinson, 59, was going 103 mph in a red Dodge Challenger on Jan. 29, 2022. Robinson blew a red light and collided with the passenger side of a Toyota Sienna van which spun and hit a third vehicle.

Advertisement

This photo released by the North Las Vegas Police Department shows a Dodge Challenger following a crash in North Las Vegas on Jan. 29, 2022. (AP)

Robinson died of blunt-force trauma, the coroners office said. A passenger in his car also died.

All seven people in the Toyota Sienna, three adults and four children, were killed, as well.

Advertisement

Six vehicles and 15 people in total were involved in the crash.

Both the North Las Vegas Police Department and National Transportation Safety Board are investigating the crash.

We are conducting a safety investigation looking at broader safety issues of national significance, NTSB member Tom Chapman said back in January. Our mission is to understand not just what happened but why it happened, and to recommend changes to prevent it from happening again.
At the beginning of the war in Ukraine and the bombing of major cities the IFJ and the EFJ launched a special Safety Fund to support journalists in need in the country through their affiliates IMTUU and NUJU as well as journalists trying to flee Russia. Ernest Sagaga is the head of IFJ Safety and Human Rights Department. He tells us about the use of the fund and the IFJ/EFJ work to support journalists in the region.

1. There has been a massive show of solidarity by journalists across the globe to support media professionals in need in Ukraine. Can you describe the type of aid the IFJ has received so far?

R: Yes, we are delighted by the solidarity from journalists, individuals and institutions alike from around the world. We have received over 223.000 Euro and counting to our Safety Fund since we launched the Ukraine appeal and have received other important direct support from UNESCO and others for the purchase of safety equipment and safety training .

2. How is this aid being processed?

R: The aid is being distributed, in close coordination between the IFJ, EFJ and our affiliates in Ukraine (NUJU and IMTUU), focusing on the security needs of journalists, such as personal protection equipment (PPE) as well as safe communication. A fact-finding mission was organised to assess the safety situation for journalists, work out the priority in terms of assistance and how this can best be delivered. Possible safe corridors for relocation within the country and evacuation outside as and when needed were also discussed. To date, the funds donated have helped purchase the PPE for journalists, support the relocation of the unions offices and provide safety advice to journalists. Our affiliates have also received lump sums to address specific needs of journalists on the ground. There are also plans to set up centres in safe areas of the country to coordinate the delivery of assistance near to journalists in need.

3. What are journalists covering the conflict's most urgent needs right now?

R: The most pressing need for journalists is protective equipment. Sadly, many of them had no such equipment when the invasion began, including several colleagues working for European media organisations. The IFJ has had to give out flak jackets from our stock to colleagues who had none as they left for Ukraine. We hope to supply another 110 sets of body armour in the next few days thanks to support from UNESCO.

4. How about Russian journalists trying to flee Russia? Do we have an estimation of the number of media professionals on the run and how the IFJ/EFJ helps them?

R: We are aware of at least 35 Russian journalists who have fled to Turkey and more in other neighbouring countries. The IFJ and EFJ are urging EU countries to facilitate Russian colleagues to obtain Schengen visas and trying to provide support for those who need it in Istanbul and Tbilisi. We are in discussions with other organisations about the best ways to provide such support.

5. We have seen individual initiatives from some of our affiliates, providing support directly to Ukraine via IMTUU and NUJU. What advice would you give to those unions who want to follow suit?

R: Yes, there have been such initiatives from our Greek affiliate JUADN who coordinated with the IFJ and SDP in Poland as well as Ukrainian affiliates and managed to travel to Ukraine to deliver aid directly to their colleagues. It was an inspiring show of solidarity. Like they did, such initiatives should always be coordinated with Ukrainian affiliates, the IFJ and the EFJ. That way, we can provide information on the exact situation, where to travel and stay as well as the exact needs of journalists in Ukraine.

6. There are a number of reports of foreign journalists going to Ukraine totally unprepared and unequipped. What would be your best advice to a journalist willing to cover the conflict?
Fahad Shah, editor of The Kashmir Walla, who has faced multiple charges since his initial arrest on February 4, was sentenced under Jammu and Kashmirs Public Safety Act (PSA) on March 14, which allows up to two years detainment without trial. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and its Indian affiliate, the Indian Journalists Union (IJU), condemn continued legal harassment under the draconian PSA, and urge the regions administration to immediately drop all charges against him.

The journalist was first arrested on February 4, 2022, by Pulwama district police under Section 13 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) and Sections 124-A and 505 of the Indian Penal Code, and held for 22 days. Police were allegedly investigating a Facebook post , Shah published regarding a gunfight in Naira village on January 30.

Shah was granted bail by the National Investigation Court on February 26, but was rearrested by Shopian district police the same day under a separate case filed on January 30, 2021. The case related to the Kashmir Wallas publishing of a news report concerning the Indian Armys pressure on a Shopians private school to hold a Republic Day Celebration. Shah was granted bail for this second case on March 5.

Hours after he was released on bail for the second time, Shah was again arrested by Srinagar district police in connection with a second Kashmir Walla report on a gunfight in May, 2020, where security forces allegedly looted cash and jewellery. The case was filed by Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) police in May 2020 under Sections 109 (abetment), 147 (rioting), 307 (attempt to murder), 501 (printing defamatory matter), and 505 (public mischief), of the Indian Penal Code.

J&K police invoked the PSA against Shah on March 11, a day before the scheduled hearing of the third case against him. The PSA allows J&K police to detain any person without charges for up to two years. Shahs lawyer, Umair Ronga, said that PSA was being used to prolong his custody and to prevent the journalist from returning to his work.

The J&K region has seen an intensification of attempts to silence critical voices within the media, with attacks, arrests, intimidation, and legal harassment widespread since August 5, 2019, when the Indian Government revoked Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, which acknowledged the special status of the J&K state.

IJU president, Geetartha Pathak, said: The IJU is enraged at the multiple arrests of Fahad Shah for his reporting. We demand the immediate release of Mr Shah.

The IFJ said: The cycle of arbitrary arrests and charges against Fahad Shah is evidence of the Jammu and Kashmir administrations misuse of its draconian laws to silence critical voices and quash press freedom. The IFJ urges the authorities to drop all charges the journalist, release him immediately, and work to repeal any legislation that stifles media freedom in the region.
The Starbucks white cup with its green logo of a two-tailed mermaid is one of the most iconic features of any brand. It doesn't even have the word Starbucks in it, but you know exactly what it is. In fact, for many people, it doesn't just signify the world's largest coffee brand, it represents, well, coffee. Period.

That's largely because, for the better part of 35 years, Starbucks has been what many people think of when they think of coffee. It was Starbucks, after all, that introduced and popularized espresso drinks, and those drinks have been served--since 1987--in a white cup with some version of the company's green logo.

Now, Starbucks has announced it wants to get rid of those cups. At least, the company is trying hard to get rid of the paper version.

When you think about it, that makes sense. Starbucks has already said it wants to reduce its waste by half over the next decade. While it's good for the brand to have its logo on cups everywhere, those cups have to end up somewhere. Billions of them end up in landfills. So, Starbucks wants to transition people away from carrying around its iconic cups in favor of a more sustainable option.

You might say it's a bittersweet announcement, and not because of the combination of dark roasted espresso and sweet 2 percent milk and flavored syrup. It's bittersweet because, while Starbucks is trying to ditch the universal symbol for a cup of coffee, it's doing it for a noble cause.

In fact, the truth is, Starbucks is making the changes in an effort to eliminate the billions of its white paper cups that end up in landfills around the world every year. Starbucks is trying to eliminate the disposable cup altogether in favor of more environmentally sustainable options.

To do that, the company announced it's testing a few different environmentally friendly approaches. Here's how the company describes its effort:

To help reach the company's goal of reducing waste by 50 percent by 2030, Starbucks is shifting away from single-use plastics and piloting reusable cup programs in six markets around the world. By the end of next year, customers will be able to use their own personal reusable cup for every Starbucks visit in the U.S. and Canada--including in cafe, drive-thru, and mobile order and pay.

In addition, the company is testing reusable cups under a pilot program called "borrow a cup." The idea is that Starbucks will put your cup in a reusable cup that you take with you, and then bring back to be professionally cleaned and used again.

And, if you're planning to stay and hang out while you enjoy your drink, Starbucks will put your drink in what it calls "for-here-ware." The company said that in a test in South Korea, its efforts eliminated 200,000 paper cups that would have ended up in the trash, in just three months.

Honestly, I prefer to have my coffee in my favorite travel mug. It stays warmer longer, and I'm less likely to spill coffee on myself. I don't know if it's just me, but my family can usually tell how much coffee I've had in a given day by the number of times I managed to drip some on myself.

If you think about it, it's an interesting move by Starbucks. There's no doubt that billions of white cups sporting the iconic logo helped to establish it as the default option for coffee for millions of people. Getting rid of those cups means there's a cost to the company's brand awareness. Still, the company is making an intentional decision that it's more important to its brand that those cups don't end up in landfills.
Few people know how to foster close relationships with consumers better than Outdoor Voices founder Ty Haney. At its zenith in 2018, the Austin-based activewear company had a valuation of $110 million and legions of fans on social media. When the brand premiered its first bathing suit line that same year, 10,000 people were on the waiting list.

So it's hardly surprising that in her next act, after getting pushed out at Outdoor Voices in 2020, she's attempting to once again forge tight bonds with consumers: This time, however, she wants to help other companies make those connections.

Earlier this month, the 33-year-old entrepreneur launched Try Your Best, a web 3.0 platform designed to help consumer goods brands offer their most loyal customers incentives to share their feedback and preferences. The effort might be the key to successful digital community-building, particularly as the sun sets on third-party cookies.

How it works: Brands sign on to join the platform and pay a flat monthly fee for their membership. It's free for consumers to sign up for the platform, which is currently in beta mode and accepting new users on a rolling basis each week. Once accepted, consumers can follow their favorite brands and engage with them, answering questions and providing feedback about their preferences (for example, they might be asked to vote on their favorite color that an article of clothing might come in). In return for their valuable advice, which is shared directly with brands on a blockchain--which means the information is secure and accessible without the use of a middleman (like a social media platform)--users earn tokens and collectibles that can then be used to redeem benefits like discount codes, exclusive products, and more.

So far, 10 pilot partners have signed up to join Try Your Best, including the New York City-based fashion and home goods brand Hill House Home and the jewelry and eyewear brand Vada, out of Austin. Try Your Best, which is based in Tucson, Arizona, will also incubate and launch brands directly onto its platform; the first one is Joggy, a cannabis-based wellness product line, which will launch in April.

Haney believes that the potential to connect closely with loyal customers is a compelling reason for brands to sign on to Try Your Best. "Investing in community is crucial for brand-building, but it needs redefining and a few new tools," she says. With the proliferation of direct-to-consumer brands, it's become more expensive for businesses to attract new customers through paid advertising on traditional social media platforms, she adds.

What's more, community-building on these platforms presents some challenges. Social platforms give brands the opportunity to connect with customers, allowing them to solicit direct feedback in polls and submission boxes through Instagram stories, for example. Haney points out, however, that Instagram data is hard to measure and organize. "Insights are not actionable that way," she says.

In a world with ever-changing algorithms and a lack of third-party cookies, the chance for companies to directly and easily communicate with customers on a blockchain is very valuable--there's no middleman that can hide or misinterpret data. Try Your Best operates on Avalanche, a carbon-neutral blockchain that uses less energy than both Ethereum and Bitcoin.

Haney sees Try Your Best as a platform for the growth of other brands, but she knows she still has to persuade users to get on board with the business itself. Eventually, as more brands join the platform, they'll be able to recruit new users. In the meantime, she says customer education will be key, as it will take time to get customers to sign up in the first place.

"One hurdle is definitely, 'What the f*ck is an NFT?'" she says.

Haney specifically selected the 10 brands that will pilot on Try Your Best because they already have dedicated communities of followers, which means it should be easier for them to convince loyal fans that the digital tokens associated with their brands have inherent value. They have commercial value, too, which distinguishes Try Your Best from potential competitors like Novel and NFT Pro. But a token on Try Your Best isn't just a badge of honor or a piece of digital art. "Each tokenized experience has utility, so it unlocks access to something or special perks or exclusive product," she says.

Try Your Best currently has 22 employees, many of them Outdoor Voices alums, and the company received a $2 million investment from Castle Island Ventures.

The platform, Haney says, has the potential to dramatically alter how consumer goods companies grow their audiences. Her experience with Outdoor Voices, after all, taught her that community-building is what creates "passionate, engaged fans that buy 20 colors of the Exercise Dress" (one of Outdoor Voices's top-selling items). While the relationship between web 3.0 and physical products is still in its early stages, Haney thinks it's one that can be nothing short of groundbreaking.
Bengaluru-based Maini Precision Products Limited (MPPL), an end-to-end solution provider engaged in process design, engineering, manufacturing, testing, and supply of a variety of precision products with close tolerances of upto 3 microns and assemblies, has received approval from the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) to raise Rs900 crore through an initial public offering (IPO).Maini Precision, which filed preliminary IPO papers with Sebi in December 2021, obtained its observations letter on March 22 2022, an update with the regulator showed on Tuesday.In Sebi's parlance, its observation implies its go-ahead to float the initial share-sale.As per market sources, the issue size will be approximately in the range of Rs800-900 crore.The initial public offering (IPO) with a face value of Rs2 per equity share consists of a fresh issue of equity shares aggregating to Rs150 crore, and an offer for sale of up to 2,54,81,705 equity shares, with promoters to offload 60,20,765 equity shares, individual shareholders up to 6,45,865 equity shares, up to 5,13,390 by other selling shareholders and 1,83,01,685 equity shares by investor shareholders.Proceeds from the fresh issue will be used to repay/prepay  Rs112.5 crore of its borrowings and will be used for general corporate purposes.Promoted by Sandeep Kumar Maini, Gautam Maini and Chetan Kumar Maini, the company was incorporated in 1973. Maini is capable of diverse and critical manufacturing and finishing processes, including machined castings, die castings, machined forgings, bar route machining, plate machining, surface treatment, heat treatment, critical assembly, as well as ancillary activities such as end of line testing, export packing and warehousing, which encompasses end-to-end solutions for its customers both domestic and global.MPPL has a diversified business, wherein the products are classified into two businesses, being aerospace, which it ventured into in 2004 and comprises precision products manufactured for aerospace and defense; and automotive and industrial, which comprises precision products manufactured for clean internal combustion engines, fuel injections and transmissions (internal combustion engines, fuel injections and transmissions collectively referred to as Clean Powertrain), hydraulics and industrial, agriculture and legacy automotive.Being an export oriented business primarily exporting to the United States of America, France, Sweden, Italy, Slovakia, England, Japan, Spain, Poland and Germany, its revenue from operations stood at Rs560.30 crore for FY19, Rs570 crore for FY20 and Rs427.36 crore for FY21, 65.26%, 71.99%, 66.23% of its revenues being attributed to exports.Automotive components are expected to remain the largest contributor of the precision parts market over FY21-25 at ~60% with the rest of the market catering to non-automotive sectors like aerospace, defence and allied, engineering and capital goods and power. Precision engineering is expected to log a 9-11% CAGR between fiscals 2021-2026, aided by growth in the domestic auto components and export demand and indigenous manufacturing for the defence segmentICICI Securities Limited, IIFL Securities Limited are the book running lead managers to the issue.
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.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) recently in its report, warned that the energy sector's overall methane emissions are substantially underreported, as it recommended cuts to the most potent greenhouse gas as a quick approach to make a significant impact on global warming. According to the IEA's latest annual Global Methane Tracker, energy sector emissions are around 70% higher than official government numbers.

What is methane?

indiaspend.com

According to the UN, methane, a greenhouse gas which is also a byproduct of natural gas, is accountable for 25% of the current global warming. Because it is a GHG, its presence in the atmosphere increases the Earth's temperature.

Methane is produced in a number of ways, including both natural and anthropogenic (human-caused) sources. Landfills, oil and natural gas pipelines, agricultural practices, coal mining, wastewater treatment, and some industrial operations are also sources of methane, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency. One of the major sources of man-made methane emissions is the oil and gas industry.

Anthropogenic sources of methane account for 60% of worldwide methane emissions, according to NASA. The fossil fuels combustion, decomposition in landfills, and agriculture all contribute to these emissions.

Methane is trapped underneath the coal surface and is retrieved by drilling into the seam and releasing the groundwater. As a result of the pressure loss, methane is released from the coal.

What are the environmental consequences of methane emissions?

Unsplash

Carbon dioxide and methane are examples of greenhouse gases (GHGs) that trap heat in the atmosphere. They absorb heat from the earth's surface and re-emit it to the lower atmosphere, thus raising the temperature.

In terms of the quantity of GHG emissions, methane has the second-highest radiative forcing effect, i.e. warming, behind carbon dioxide. According to the Global Methane Budget 2020, the warming effect of methane is 28 times that of carbon dioxide.

According to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), methane is around 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide at raising the atmospheric temperature over a 20-year period. When methane has a significantly shorter atmospheric lifetime (12 years versus centuries for CO2), it is a lot more effective greenhouse gas simply because it absorbs more energy while in the atmosphere, according to the IEA. The average methane leak rate of 2.3 percent "erodes much of the climate advantage gas has over coal," according to the study.

Methane only lasts approximately a decade in the atmosphere, compared to centuries for carbon dioxide, but according to the UNEP, human emissions of methane are second only to carbon dioxide in terms of contributing to global warming.

The Paris-based watchdog said in its 2022 Global Methane Tracker report that the globe needed to scale up its monitoring efforts and policy measures to reduce damaging gas emissions.

Global methane tracker 2022

Unsplash

Methane is accountable for roughly 30% of the rise in global temperatures during the Industrial Revolution, according to the IEA Global Methane Tracker 2022 report. This, it added, demonstrated the necessity for greater transparency and also "stronger policy action to reduce emissions of this potent greenhouse gas," which has been blamed for the rise in global temperatures since the Industrial Revolution.

"If we can reduce man-made methane emissions by 30 percent by the end of this decade from where they are now, the effect on temperature increase in mid-century will be the same as switching all of the world's cars, trucks, planes, and ships to zero emissions technologies," IEA chief energy economist Tim Gould said during a briefing.

According to the IEA, the energy industry accounts for roughly 40% of human-caused methane emissions. Other industries, including agriculture, are major methane emitters. According to the IEA's annual Global Methane Tracker study, energy sector emissions increased by over 5% last year. The amount of methane released was estimated to be around 180 billion cubic metres of natural gas, according to the report. "This is adequate to relieve today's market constraint and is equivalent to all gas utilised in Europe's power sector," the IEA said.

New satellites have aided specialists in identifying the sources of huge emissions, yet the equator, far north, and offshore regions remain neglected. China, Russia, the U.S, Iran, and India are the countries with the largest emissions, according to the IEA.

The findings emphasize "the critical need for increased monitoring efforts and stronger policy action to reduce emissions of the potent greenhouse gas.".

30-percent cut target

Leaks and operations in the energy industry are a major source of methane emissions. Many older oil wells flare up undesired methanewhich is essentially natural gas used to heat homesdue to the high expense of constructing infrastructure. However, with gas prices rising, the expenses of measures to capture methane and limit leaks will fast pay for themselves, reducing supply constraints.

honeywell

Participants signed a Global Methane Pledge to limit methane emissions by 2030 at the COP26 Climate Change Conference in Glasgow last year.

The US and EU announced the pledge in September, and it essentially amounts to a global pact to cut methane emissions. One of the main goals of this agreement is to reduce methane emissions by up to 30% by 2030 compared to 2020 levels.

Rapidly lowering methane emissions complements action on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, and is widely recognised as the single most effective option for reducing global warming in the short term and keeping the 1.5 degree Celsius target within reach.

Methane's impact on climate, past and future

According to reports, methane may have also been the cause of dramatic warming occurrences millions of years ago. Methane forms into a slush-like material called methane hydrate when exposed to extreme pressures, such as those found deep beneath the ocean's surface. In this chemical state, vast amounts of methane are "frozen" in place at the bottom of the sea, though the exact amounts and locations are still being investigated. Unless something disturbs the hydrates, such as a plume of warm water, they remain stable.

According to some scientists, destabilised hydrates may have triggered a huge warming event some 55 million years ago. Methane seeps up from the bottom into the atmosphere, overwhelming it with the heat-trapping gas and causing the planet to rapidly overheat.

Since 1750, methane concentrations in the modern atmosphere have increased by more than 150 percent. It's unclear whether or not this trend will continue, or at what rate, but the IPCC warns that limiting methane emissions is critical to preventing additional global warming.

Where does India stand?

BCCL

According to research backed by the EU's climate change initiative, India is the third-biggest producer of methane emissions, owing to the scale of its rural economy and the fact that it has the world's largest cattle population. Existing low-cost options to reduce methane emissions, such as better waste and livestock management practices, are mentioned in both the article and the UNEP report. Methane, which is emitted during the manufacturing of fossil fuels, can be trapped and used as an useful energy source.

India has previously indicated that it intends to deploy technologies to capture methane for use as a source of energy. Agriculture (manure management), coal mines, municipal solid waste, and natural gas and oil systems account for about 20% of India's anthropogenic methane emissions, according to a communication to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) claims to have invested considerably in a national strategy to enhance biogas production and reduce methane emissions in order to tap into this "potential."

China, Russia, the United States, Iran, and India are the five countries mentioned in the IEA research as having the highest methane emissions from their energy sectors - only the United States is a signatory to the Pledge. Although no official reason has been given for India's refusal to sign up, rumours imply that Indian officials are concerned with the wording of the promise, which suggests that satisfying the pledge's commitments could result in trade restrictions.





For more on news and current affairs from around the world please visit Indiatimes News.
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.
Author and billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott gave a record $436 million to Habitat for Humanity, the housing organization announced Tuesday.

The money, which went to Habitat for Humanity International and 84 U.S. Habitat affiliate organizations, including five in New York State, will be life-changing for generations, the charity announced. It eclipses last weeks $281 million award to the Boys & Girls Clubs America and 62 of its local chapters nationwide, The Chronicle of Philanthropy noted in reporting the donation.

Advertisement

In this March 4, 2018, file photo, MacKenzie-Scott arrives at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Evan Agostini/Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

This incredibly generous gift will allow us to dramatically increase capacity and implement programs that will have a multi-generational impact on communities around the U.S. and our global mission for many years to come, said Jonathan Reckford, CEO of Habitat for Humanity International, in a statement. With this donation, Habitat is well-positioned to meaningfully advocate for the systemic and societal changes needed to improve equitable access to affordable housing.

The international branch of the housing organization will put its $25 million portion toward increasing the affordable-housing supply as well as prioritizing advocacy and programs to support millions who are shut out of the housing market.

Advertisement

Volunteers for Habitat for Humanity International, work on a house at the Carter Work Project in Nashville in 2019. (Jason Asteros/AP)

Innovating, engaging new volunteers and advancing Black homeownership will also be enabled by the money, Habitat said. A number of those homeowners will be in Minnesota, where the Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity was granted $13.5 million, the largest single donation in its 40 years of operation, the Star Tribune reported.

Twin Cities Habitat is one of the largest in the U.S., according to the Star Tribune, and counts within its focus building and rehabbing homes for low-income residents of color, among other home-ownership-expansion efforts to narrow racial disparities. The grant is nearly half as big as the city Habitats annual $33 million budget, the Star Tribune said.

This is very significant for us, Twin Cities Habitat spokesperson Kaitlyn Dormer told the Star Tribune. Were an organization that can be part of closing that gap.

Other large recipients included Atlantas branch, which received $25 million, according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy. In New York State the Habitat for Humanity affiliates in Rochester, Buffalo, Dutchess County, Newburgh and Suffolk County are receiving funds.

This gift gives us the opportunity to increase and improve equity in our work, policies, practices and programs throughout our organization, our affiliated network, but especially in the communities with which we partner, said Natosha Reid Rice, Habitats chief global diversity, equity and inclusion officer, in the organizations statement. We look forward to bringing diverse groups of people together to focus on the ways we can address systemic racism and injustices in the housing sector that continue to limit access and harm people of color.

In addition, as part of Habitats tithing program, under which U.S. affiliates contribute 10% of their annual unrestricted revenue to global efforts, some of the money will go toward helping Ukrainian refugees through its Tithe International Disasters Fund.

Scott has been shedding money since signing the billionaire Giving Pledge in 2019 after her divorce from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Over four months in 2020 alone, she gave away $1 billion a month. She has donated more than $9 billion to more than 800 charities since 2020, the Chronicle of Philanthropy reported. Only 260 of those charities have publicized their gifts, meaning more than half has gone under the radar, the publication noted.
Kimberly Jeffries Leonard speaks as emcee Andrea Roane looks on at the 2020 Red Dress event put on by local chapters of Links Inc. Held online the past two years, organizers hope to be back in person in 2023.
Everything has transpired organically; someone sees what we are doing, believes in it, and then asks to helpit has honestly been that seamless. I went from funding much of this out of pocket to having corporate sponsors, and that is nothing but Gods grace.
Virginias governor signed into law Monday a ban on squatted trucks just weeks after a crash that left a 27-year-old man dead.

The legislation signed by Gov. Glenn Youngkin prohibits modifications that make a vehicles front bumper 4 or more inches higher than the rear bumper. Critics of the modification  sometimes called the Carolina Squat  say the upward tilt may leave drivers unable to clearly see ahead. The governors office said Monday that the ban will become law within the next day after a final technical step.

The family of Jody BJ Upton Jr., who was killed in a Feb. 16 crash in Mecklenburg County, pushed for the legislation and joined the governor for the signing ceremony in Lynchburg. Virginia State Police said the crash remains under investigation, including whether modifications to the truck that hit Uptons were a contributing factor.

Nothing can bring BJ back, but with faith, time and love we can begin to heal from the pain of losing him, Youngkin said in a statement. But the spirit of Virginia is strong, and when Virginians see a problem they come together and act.

A similar ban went into effect in North Carolina last year.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Auto Virginia
Russia offered to compensate owners of jets commandeered by the country, a bid to smooth relations with leasing companies that stand to lose billions of dollars on rented aircraft they cant get back.

Authorities in Moscow are seeking ways to legally get round sanctions requiring international firms to recall the planes, Transport Minister Vitaly Savelyev said Tuesday. Options include payments or an outright purchase of the jets, he said.

Lessors have so far been unwilling to negotiate on the matter, according to Savelyev. Thats most likely because any financial accord with Russian airlines would appear to present a clear breach of the sanctions.

We are not losing hope but we are not giving them back, because that would mean to leave oneself without aviation, Savelyev said.

Leasing firms doing business in Russia have demanded the return of hundreds of Airbus SE and Boeing Co. planes to comply with economic sanctions imposed by the European Union and U.S. in response to the invasion of Ukraine. Under EU rules, they have until March 28 to cancel contracts, but have no way of repossessing the aircraft after Russia moved to keep them within its borders.

Read More: Aviation Re/insurers Face Claims as High as $10B From Planes Grounded in Russia

AerCap Holdings NV, the worlds biggest lessor with more than 150 planes in Russia, traded 2.8% higher as of 2:03 p.m. in New York. Still, its down 12% from the last trading day before the invasion.

Lessors stand to lose as much as $10 billion as the value of their fleet in Russia declines. The purchase offer would ease the impact and give Russian airlines a potential pathway for re-establishing business ties after the crisis passes. But moving forward would put foreign lessors at risk of being penalized by authorities in the U.S., EU or other jurisdictions.

Lost Planes

Russia has moved almost 800 aircraft to the local register, according to Savelyev. Bermuda and Ireland, where many of them have been registered, have suspended the airworthiness certificates of planes tied to Russia. The minister said 78 have been lost after being seized overseas.

Read More: Aircraft Insurers Brace for Barrage of Russia Claims in Possibly Biggest Aviation Loss

International flights that remain possible even after widespread airspace closures are being operated by Russian-owned aircraft, including almost 150 Sukhoi Superjet 100s and 44 Boeing and Airbus models, he said.

The minister warned that sourcing parts for the remaining planes will become an issue and said authorities are examining how Iran managed to maintain flights under years of restrictions. He said Russia had 1,367 aircraft in total.

Aviation consultancy Ishka said the transfer of the leased fleet to the Russia registry could be seen as a step toward the state-seizure of foreign-owned planes.

With assistance from Siddharth Philip.

Copyright 2022 Bloomberg.

Topics Russia
European lawmakers have agreed to force roughly 28,000 foreign subsidiaries to comply with the blocs ESG rules, marking a blow to representatives for U.S. corporations who had lobbied for the opposite outcome.

In a wide-reaching revamp of the EUs reporting requirements for non-financial firms, the blocs parliament has dropped a planned exemption that had been backed by the American Chamber of Commerce to the European Union, according to draft documents seen by Bloomberg. An announcement is expected on Wednesday, as part of a wider package of corporate reporting proposals.

Europe has been working for years to ensure its rules for environmental, social and governance standards become a global benchmark. The latest proposal means the local operations of giant corporations such as McDonalds Corp. and General Motors Co. would all be required to live up to the same ESG reporting requirements as their European peers.

U.S. SEC Unveils Landmark Climate Change Risk Disclosure Rule

The plan put forward by EU lawmakers, which will now be negotiated with member states, seeks to make it impossible for foreign companies to gain any competitive advantage via less rigorous ESG standards, according to Pascal Durand, the lawmaker overseeing the introduction of the EUs Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive.

Allowing foreign companies to apply potentially laxer ESG standards was politically impossible, Durand, who represents the Renew Europe party in the EU parliament, told Bloomberg.

Europes proposed ESG rules for companies are probably going quite far in terms of how much an EU law can export itself, or export its content, into the global economy, said Mirjam Wolfrum, director of policy engagement for the European operations of CDP, a nonprofit voluntary environmental disclosure system.

But Wolfrum said it was a welcome approach because such regulations could help get the attention of what is needed in terms of environmental reporting into the global economy.

U.S. Climate Reporting

The development comes as the Securities and Exchange Commission sets its own ESG requirements for companies operating in the U.S. The SEC will require firms to provide detailed information on greenhouse gas emissions; corporations with big indirect carbon footprints will be expected to disclose so-called Scope 3 emissions, which is the broadest and most challenging gauge.

New ESG demands across jurisdictions are part of a global response to increasingly alarming reports from scientists that climate change is accelerating at a dangerous pace. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change provided its bleakest assessment yet last month, and warned that the private sector isnt doing enough to avert a climate catastrophe.

European lawmakers say theyre trying to redirect the flow of capital in ways that shield the environment and promote social justice. The EUs toolbox is based on a so-called taxonomy, which is a multi-year undertaking thats still finalizing rules intended to define sustainable businesses. Lawmakers in the bloc worry that they cant rely on other jurisdictions to come up with adequate rules.

The European Union is not the only power involved in drawing up new non-financial standards, Durand said. But if others prevail, then sustainable development would be defined by a non-European vision, making it more difficult for European values to be effectively taken into account.

A key feature of Europes ESG rules that is largely absent in other parts of the world hinges on the concept of double-materiality, whereby a company takes into account not only the impact of the outside world on its business, but also the impact of the company on the outside world. That includes elements such as biodiversity and social and human rights, which are values important for European policy makers, Durand said.

The American Chamber of Commerce to the European Union has warned requiring subsidiaries to report risks creating a misleading picture of a groups sustainability profile. It says that consolidated ESG reports, based on similar requirements set in home markets, are more comprehensive.

EU lawmakers behind the proposal cited what they referred to as ample evidence that stakeholders in the bloc arent getting the information they need to support sustainable investing. Much of the EUs focus relies on disclosure, and the new directive will require companies to report how strategies and business models align with a climate-neutral economy, restore biodiversity and provide greater transparency around their supply chains and workers rights.

Photograph: European Union (EU) flags hang from flagpoles outside the Berlaymont in Brussels, Belgium, on Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2020. Photo credit: Geert Vanden Wijngaert/Bloomberg.

Copyright 2022 Bloomberg.

Topics Legislation Europe
This edition of International People Moves details appointments at TigerRisk Partners, HDI Global, and BMS.

A summary of these new hires follows here.

TigerRisk Hires Aons Tuttle as Partner, Senior Reinsurance Broker

TigerRisk Partners, the Stamford, Conn. insurance and reinsurance broker, has announced the appointment of Bill Tuttle as partner, senior reinsurance broker.

Tuttle will be responsible for guiding key clients through complex property placements in this difficult time in the market cycle. He has over 35 years experience in the property/casualty industry, and joins most recently from Aon, where he was managing director with a focus on property catastrophe clients. Based in Minnesota, Tuttle will report to Dan Miller.

Tuttle began his career at E.W. Blanch Co. in 1985, working as a reinsurance broker, where he was also involved in the development of new catastrophe models. He then moved to Risk Management Solutions Inc. (RMS) in 2000 as vice president of Product Marketing, helping to improve catastrophe modeling products and develop new exposure management solutions.

Bill will provide an immediate benefit in helping our clients navigate their property placements in this difficult time in the cycle, said Rob Bredahl, chief executive officer of TigerRisk Partners. Bill has established an impressive reputation during his time in the P&C markets, broking complex programs with significant limits in both hard and soft markets. That combined with his know-how in cat modeling and exposure management will add tremendous talent and expertise to our firm, and continues our commitment to providing clients with senior level expertise and unparalleled service.

Founded in 2008, TigerRisk has offices in Stamford, New York, Bermuda, London, Hong Kong, Minneapolis, Chicago and Raleigh.

***

HDI Global Promotes 3 for UK, Ireland Teams

HDI Global SE  UK & Ireland (HDI) announced three new appointments in its regional and Irish teams to support its 2022-2025 growth ambitions.

In Ireland, Barry Woods has been promoted to the role of property manager and will be responsible for growing and steering the portfolio in the country. Woods will report to Niall Carberry, head of Underwriting, Ireland, who joined the company in January.

In the UK, Dave Hall has been promoted to the role of head of Liability, UK Regions, and will assume responsibility for the regional liability portfolio and team.

Similarly, Carley Clifton has been promoted to the role of property manager, UK Regions, and will assume responsibility for the regional property portfolio and team. Both Hall and Clifton will continue to report to Paul Williams, head of Underwriting, UK Regions.

All appointments are effective immediately.

Biographies

Barry Woods . Wood joined HDI Global in February 2017 as senior underwriter, a role he held until March 2022. Previously, he also was a key account underwriting specialist at Liberty Insurance Ireland (December 2013 to January 2016), according to his LinkedIn profile. He was commercial underwriting manager at QBE Ireland, between March 2007 and December 2013, and key underwriting account manager with Aviva Ireland (1990-2007).

. Wood joined HDI Global in February 2017 as senior underwriter, a role he held until March 2022. Previously, he also was a key account underwriting specialist at Liberty Insurance Ireland (December 2013 to January 2016), according to his LinkedIn profile. He was commercial underwriting manager at QBE Ireland, between March 2007 and December 2013, and key underwriting account manager with Aviva Ireland (1990-2007). Dave Hall. Prior to his promotion to head of Liability, UK Regions, Hall was HDIs head of Region  Underwriting, a role he had held since April 2016, his LinkedIn profile said.

Prior to his promotion to head of Liability, UK Regions, Hall was HDIs head of Region  Underwriting, a role he had held since April 2016, his LinkedIn profile said. Carley Clifton. Clifton joined HDI Global as senior property underwriter in October 2020. She became property manager, UK Regions, in February 2022, according to her profile.

***

BMS Appoints Howdens Powell as Chief Commercial Officer

BMS, the London-based independent insurance and reinsurance broker, announced the appointment of Eliot Powell as group chief commercial officer, effective March 21. Based in London and reporting into Nick Cook, CEO of BMS, Powell will take a vital role in further expanding and delivering on BMS strategic business goals.

Powell joins BMS with more than 25 years of industry experience, having grown a successful, independent brokerage business, before being acquired by Howden in late 2014.

At Howden he held a variety of senior roles, most notably global chief transformation officer. In his previous position, he was responsible for much of the digital development across the business and had oversight over the adoption of digital strategies and new ways of working.

Powell will join the BMS Group executive committee and will focus on delivering our strategic goals, our continued digital transformation, and the companys geographical expansion through M&A, commented Cook.

Topics Agencies Commercial Lines Reinsurance Aon
The city of Detroit has reached a $7.5 million settlement with a man who entered prison as a teenager and spent eight years there before a prosecutor agreed to drop four murder convictions.

Davontae Sanford was just 15 when he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the fatal shootings of four people in 2007.

But the case took a strange turn when a professional hit man, Vincent Smothers, stepped forward and said he was responsible for the killings, not Sanford.

The financial settlement with Sanford is on the Detroit City Councils agenda March 22.

Although he pleaded guilty, Sanford later insisted he was innocent and took a plea deal only because he felt helpless and poorly represented by a lawyer. He was 14 at the time of the murders.

In 2016, the convictions were dropped at the request of Wayne County prosecutor Kym Worthy and Sanford was released from prison.

Worthy, however, did not cite Smothers as the reason. She said misconduct by Detroit police during Sanfords interrogation had spoiled the case.

At the time, David Moran, director of the Innocence Clinic at the University of Michigans law school, said the case revealed a complete breakdown in the criminal justice system. The clinic as well as the law school at Northwestern University helped free Sanford.

Smothers, meanwhile, has never been charged in the Runyon Street homicides. He was sentenced to 52 years in prison after pleading guilty in 2010 to eight other killings.

Smothers said he was regularly hired by drug dealers to kill others in the trade but would never take on a teenager as a sidekick.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Lawsuits
Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. announced the acquisition of Springfield, Missouri-based Commercial Insurance Underwriters, Inc. (CIU). Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Founded in 1984, CIU is a surplus lines agency offering commercial, personal and professional lines coverages for businesses and individuals with complex, unique or hard-to-place risks, primarily throughout the upper and lower Midwest. Kim Moore and her associates will remain in their current location under the direction of Matt A. Lynch, head of Central Region-Binding for Risk Placement Services, Inc., Gallaghers U.S. wholesale brokerage, binding authority and programs division.

Source: Arthur J. Gallagher & Co.

Topics Mergers & Acquisitions Commercial Lines Business Insurance Underwriting Missouri A.J. Gallagher
A large tornado struck New Orleans on Tuesday night, causing extensive damage to a densely populated area.

The tornado was captured on local NBC affiliate WDSUs weather camera and could be seen on the stations live broadcast for several minutes.

Advertisement

Injuries from the storm werent immediately reported. Rubble littered the streets and power lines could be seen lying on the ground and wrapped around all manner of objects.

Because New Orleans sits below sea level, very few people have basements where they could have sheltered from the violent winds.

Advertisement

Authorities survey damage in the Lower 9th Ward, Tuesday in New Orleans, after strong storms moved through the area. (Gerald Herbert/AP)

If you have damage please report but DO NOT go sightseeing!!! People have lost homes and businesses and need help right now!! said Benjamin Schott, chief meteorologist with the National Weather Service in New Orleans.

Breaking News As it happens Get updates on the coronavirus pandemic and other news as it happens with our free breaking news email alerts. >

The tornado struck New Orleans Lower Ninth Ward and the suburbs of Arabi and Chalmette, according to reports from the city.

@MargaretOrr here is a video of the tornado my husband matthew burke took in chalmette on chinchilla st. you all have permission to use it! pic.twitter.com/QgTyALUFXp  drew  (@cemeteryfairyyy) March 23, 2022

It just kept getting louder and louder, Arabi resident Michelle Malasovich told the Associated Press. After it passed they came out to survey the damage. Our neighbors house is in the middle of the street right now.

More than 14,000 people in the New Orleans metro area had lost power as of Tuesday night, according to the local electric company, Entergy.

Tornado warnings for the area were called off by 8:30 p.m., implying that the storm had moved on.

State agencies are assisting local officials as needed as they assess the damage and impacts of these tornadoes, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards tweeted. My prayers are with you in Southeast Louisiana tonight. Please be safe.

A debris lined street is seen in the Lower 9th Ward, Tuesday, March 22, 2022, in New Orleans, after strong storms moved through the area. (Gerald Herbert/AP)

The same storm system hit north and central Texas on Monday, spawning multiple tornadoes. At least one person was killed, a 73-year-old woman living in Grayson County, north of Dallas.

While people often dont expect tornadoes in high-population areas, an EF3 twister struck New Orleans in February 2017 and caused serious damage.
Last week, information services firm Verisk said it had taken steps that align with one investors call for the firm to commit to being a standalone insurance-focused business. Yesterday, Verisk promised several additional changes and publicly committed to a pure-play insurance path after the private equity firm D.E. Shaw said the previous steps were not enough to reverse what it says is a longstanding pattern of underperformance.

If Verisk is to reach its full potential and generate significant value for all of its shareholders, further change is necessary, D.E. Shaw said in a March 17 letter to members of the Verisk board.

We believe that with the right set of changes, including an unequivocal commitment to positioning the company as a standalone insurance-focused business, a commitment to organic growth acceleration and profit margin expansion within that business, and credible board oversight, Verisks stock price could appreciate by over 70%, which would equate to more than $20 billion of value creation for shareholders, D.E. Shaw wrote.

In its response to D.E. Shaw last week, Verisk, which has subsidiaries in the insurance, financial services, real estate and energy sectors, noted that it sold its financial services business (for $515 million to TransUnion) and separated the role of chairman and chief executive officer. In January, Verisk also agreed to sell its 3E business, a part of its energy and specialized markets segment, for $950 million.

These actions are contributing to significant progress in the companys ongoing efforts to generate strong performance for shareholders, deliver mission-critical solutions to customers, and position the company for sustainable growth and success, Verisk said. New Verisk Board Members Verisks newly-nominated directors are: Jeffrey Dailey, an insurance industry veteran who currently serves as chief executive officer of Farmers Group, Inc. Wendy Lane, a member of the Willis Towers Watson board of directors and a former director at MSCI and Corelogic. Kimberly S. Stevenson, a senior operating executive with expertise in technology, finance and digital innovation and an experienced independent board member at publicly traded technology companies.

Last month, Verisk also acted on an investor recommendation in announcing that Scott G. Stephenson, chairman, president and chief executive officer, will be retiring. Stephenson will be succeeded as CEO by Lee M. Shavel, who is currently chief financial officer and group president. At the same time, Mark V. Anquillare, currently chief operating officer and group president, will become president of Verisk.

Yesterday, Verisk stepped up its response, agreeing that becoming an insurance-focused data analytics firm is the best route and vowing to develop a plan to divest its remaining energy sector holdings by September. The firm has indicated this energy sector repositioning might include creation of a stand-alone public entity.

As it continues its ongoing and comprehensive bottom-up review of Verisks non-insurance businesses and overall portfolio composition, the company has determined that moving towards being a global insurance-focused data analytics solutions provider represents the optimal path towards enhancing shareholder value, Verisk said in a statement.

Underperformance

D.E. Shaws analysis shows Verisks organic revenue growth has missed the 7%-8% benchmark in each of the last six years. Also, over the same period, Verisk shareholders have experienced profit margin declines while information services peers with similar business models expanded margins by well over 100 basis points annually.

The private equity firm said that Verisk has acquired several non-core businesses that have distracted management and diluted the quality of Verisks insurance assets. It cites the example of Verisks Wood Mackenzie acquisition, which it says has generated only a 4% return on invested capital. Wood Mackenzie is a data analytics firm for the energy, chemicals, metals and mining sectors.

D.E. Shaw said last week that Verisk had agreed to many of its recommendations privately, including to committing to becoming a pure-play insurance business through separation of all non-insurance assets; however it believes the most important changes had not been pursued. These other changes included forming an operations review committee to pursue a no stone unturned review of Verisks insurance business.

Ongoing Review

Yesterday Verisk said it is continuing an ongoing and comprehensive bottom-up review of Verisks non-insurance businesses and overall portfolio composition. It also committed to achieving margin expansion through sustainable cost efficiencies that reflect the focus on insurance and it nominated three new independent directors to its board.

Back to Its Roots

In remaking itself as an insurance-oriented organization, Verisk is going back to its roots in a way. Verisk was established to serve as the parent holding company of Insurance Services Office, Inc. upon the completion of the initial public offering in 2009. ISO was formed in 1971 as an advisory and rating organization for the property/casualty insurance industry to provide statistical and actuarial services, develop insurance programs, and assist insurance companies in meeting state regulatory requirements.

Verisk remains a leading provider of statistical, actuarial and underwriting data for the U.S. property/casualty insurance industry. However, over the past decade, Verisk has entered a number of new markets, placed a greater emphasis on analytics, and pursued acquisitions. Its acquisitions have included Data Driven Safety, ACTINEO, Jornaya, Franco Signor, FAST, BuildFax, Genscape and Keystone Aerial Surveys, Rulebook, PowerAdvocate, Sequel, LCI, Fintellix, G2 , Greentech Media, Validus-IVC, MAKE, MarketStance, Arium, Healix Risk Rating, The GeoInformation Group, Analyze Re, Risk Intelligence Ireland, Emergent Network Intelligence and 4C Solutions.

2021 Results

For the full year 2021, Verisk reported consolidated revenue growth of 7.7% and adjusted EBITDA growth of 6.8%. That quarter saw the impact of acquisitions including Jornaya, Data Driven Safety, Roskill and Whitespace. On an organic basis, Verisk grew revenue 5% and adjusted EBITDA 4.7%.

In its Insurance business, it reported 6.9% organic revenue growth and 6.5% adjusted EBITDA growth. The company said it experienced exceptional new sales growth across the broad range of insurance products including underwriting, claims, extreme events and international software and strong uptake for new insurtechs.

In discussing 2021 insurance results, CEO Stephenson said Verisk has been seeing see strong demand for its ESG-related services for corporate customers, including its country, climate and human rights data and analytics solutions. It grew its statistical agent database to support ratemaking, expanded its library of real-time images of damaged property in autos for claims settlement; expanded its data use rights for automated underwriting, analytics and subrogation; and experienced exponential growth in its small business database, which should fuel future opportunities across the small business lines of Insurance.

Anquillare, the incoming Verisk president, said on the year-end analyst call that Verisk enjoys a great nurturing type of relationship with insurtechs and that they have helped bolster new sales and growth.
Two construction workers in Boynton Beach were killed Tuesday when a concrete wall they were installing fell and crushed them.

One local TV news station said the fatalities happened when a construction crane collapsed at the Riverwalk Plaza, but other reports indicated that the pre-fabricated wall may have slipped from the rigging the crane was hoisting.

It does look like something may have dislodged and fell from the crane, Boynton Beach Fire Rescue Assistant Chief Jarvis Prince told WPBF TV.

The men were identified as Jeremias Mendez, 32, and Eduardo Cruz-Moran, 25.

A South Florida newspaper reported that investigators from the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration arrived about 2 p.m. Construction at the site, at Woolbright Road and U.S. 1, began in October. The name of the contractors on the job were not available.

Topics Florida Numbers Construction
The first line of Pillow Queens debut album In Waiting had singer Pam Connolly drawling: Im still a baby. On that 2020 record, the Dublin band had channeled a few years of local hype into an anthem-busting 42 minutes, tracks like 'Gay Girls' proclaiming their manifesto, and comparisons soon being drawn to bands like Weezer and Illuminati Hotties.

Two years later, and with the follow-up album ready to go, Connolly echoes that opening line of In Waiting when discussing the successes Pillow Queens have notched up since. We're not a baby band, we've been together for five-and-a-half years, but we still consider ourselves as, 'Oh, we're just trucking along'. No, we're not. We're professionals. And we've been doing this for a while - we work really hard. It's hard to not feel like that sometimes because it feels like it has been a long journey, she says. We know that we're good enough, but we also have that self-doubt.

Perhaps those misgivings will be assauged by the potential reception to the release of Leave the Light On, due April 1 on Canadian indie imprint Royal Mountain Records, home to the likes of Alvvays and Mac DeMarco. The release follows on from Pillow Queens signing a publishing deal with the legendary Sub Pop label.

And while the title of In Waiting proved sadly telling, seeing the aspirations that come with an acclaimed debut album grounded by Covid-19 and confining them to their bedrooms around Dublin, Leave the Light On is released with the band halfway through a month-long US tour. That adventure began at SXSW in Austin, Texas, in mid-March, and has just seen them make their second appearance on The Late Late Show with James Corden on CBS.

How does the band, completed by Sarah Corcoran (co-vocals, bass), Cathy McGuinness (guitar), and Rachel Lyons (drums), think of the past two years? Obviously, you don't really want to take too many positives from a global pandemic, but we did. We got so much not out of it, but during that time, we did so much, says Connolly. We're lucky that we had that creative output during a time when people were more cooped up than we were, because we were doing things to have an excuse to get dressed up, even if it was just going to a studio and doing a stream.

Lyons continues: At one point I remember my friends saying 'Pillow Queens are our only friends in Dublin that are allowed to do anything right now.' And that's because we were doing that - getting dressed up and going on the telly. 'Well, it's for broadcast!' We're allowed to - literally nobody else could do anything for a while. So we had that. And that kept us going.

While In Waiting was recorded in snatches and blocks at erstwhile Villagers guitarist Tommy McLoughlins Attica Audio studio in Donegal, Leave the Light On was done in one go at the same facility. Written in spring 2021 - very much around the strict lockdown of the blurry first five months of the year - they recorded it with McLoughlin in August.

It wasn't as difficult as we thought it was gonna be. We definitely were very stressed out about it, admits Lyons.

Another stress was physically manifested while recording in Donegal. I broke my arm when I was there," says Lyons, explaining that she accidentally fell over, and stressing that no drink had been involved.

Leave The Light On is the second album from Pillow Queens.

The live arena is where even the casual listener can imagine the songs on Leave the Light On thriving. Intentionally less personal (a side-effect of Covid - What can you write about when you can't write about your interactions with other people in the world?), the likes of opener Be By Your Side take the Pillow Queens blueprint and turns it up. A gentle bass intro into Connollys aching vocals, it builds over pulsing drums and striking guitar riff, the four-part harmonies that are becoming their calling card sealing the deal.

Its a lot more vulnerable than we've been before - but a confident vulnerability, says Connolly. There's a little bit of warmth there, but we wanted it to sound not out of place in a stadium, but also to be really... big and intimate.

Pillow Queens use of religious symbols and iconography was an interesting theme of In Waiting that they reprise on the new record, most obviously on Hearts & Minds: Save my feelings, no more novenas, you came to worship but the godless kind.

Connolly says: I like to speak in analogies a lot and doing it with religious stories, there's just so much there. And you can put across a notion or an idea or a feeling just by referencing something religious and it will tell the entire story that you want to tell. And I just find a lot of the language quite beautiful.

We use that language as a vehicle because mostly we find it really beautiful and it says so much.

None of the group are religious, however. We have a religious hangover, explains Connolly.

Theyre proud of what theyve created, and having had their first album cycle derailed, are eager to get back on course. Theyve packed in their day jobs to concentrate on music full-time, and after a pre-St Patricks Day/SXSW send-off at the US embassy in Dublin, they find themselves rubbing shoulders with Phoebe Bridgers in Austin and touring from west to east coast. No more baby talk, no more waiting - Pillow Queens have arrived.

Leave the Light On is released on April 1

Musicians United for Tolka Park

Pam Connolly, like Choice Prize winner David Balfe aka For Those I Love, is involved in the Save Tolka Park campaign for Shelbourne FC.

I am a huge Shelbourne fan. And they asked me to get involved; myself and Dave spoke at one of their online events there last year. Ever since I started going to matches, the idea that Tolka was going to be gone was always prevalent, but I was always like, that's not gonna happen not for another few years. I was worried as well that the campaign happened at the very last moment, but it hit the ground running and bolted. They did so well, you see the stickers everywhere, the T-shirts and now it looks like we might be allowed to stay.

As for her expectations for Shelbourne and new manager Damien Duff this season: I'm excited to see what happens. And we finished top of the league [First Division] last year, so I can only hope but, you know, one of the things we always say about Shels is, if you like torture, you should be a Shels fan. But the ladies are great. So you know what, we can always go to a ladies match and always be happy.

Five more Irish guitar bands to check out
The St Patrick's Day weekend saw almost 64,000 new cases of Covid-19 while the number of people being hospitalised with the virus has risen to the highest level since February 2021.

With the number of cases rising, we take a look at what the rules are around testing and self-isolation for those with symptoms and those who are close contacts.

I have symptoms of Covid-19. Should I get a PCR test?

In most cases, no. Only a certain group of people are currently eligible for PCR testing.

You can get a PCR test if you have Covid symptoms and you:

are age 55 or older and have not had a Covid-19 vaccine booster dose;

have a high-risk medical condition;

have a weak immune system (immunocompromised);

live in the same household as a person who has a weak immune system or provide support or care for them;

are pregnant;

are a healthcare worker.

If you fit into one of those categories and you have symptoms, you should self-isolate and book a PCR test. You should then follow the advice that is given as per the test result.

However, if you have a positive antigen test and need a Covid-19 Recovery Cert, you can book a PCR test.

A worker at the Dundalk Stadium Covid-19 drive-through test centre prepares to give a PCR test.

I'm not eligible for a PCR test, but I have symptoms. What now?

If you have symptoms of Covid-19, even if they are mild, the HSE has advised that people should self-isolate until 48 hours after their symptoms are mostly or fully gone.

Self-isolation means staying in your room. You are also asked to wear a face mask if you have to be around other people.

Even if you have been fully vaccinated or have had the virus in the past, you should still self isolate.

The HSE has said you do not need a test if you are:

under 55 years of age with symptoms of Covid-19 and you are otherwise healthy;

age 55 or older and you are fully boosted, even if you have symptoms of Covid-19.

However, you should still self-isolate if you have any symptoms.

I am a close contact. What do I do?

First off, you don't have to self-isolate or restrict your movements.

You also do not need to do a Covid test unless you are a healthcare worker.

However, all close contacts should watch out for any Covid symptoms as it can take up to 14 days after you are infected for symptoms to show.

If symptoms do develop, you should self-isolate.

I am a healthcare worker and a close contact. What do I do?

If you don't have any symptoms, you should take an antigen test. If that test is positive you should self-isolate and register the result with the HSE.

You won't need a confirmatory PCR test.

If you have symptoms and a negative antigen test, you should self isolate and arrange for a PCR test.

If the PCR test is negative healthcare workers can return to work 48 hours after symptoms have resolved.

An antigen test.

If you are asymptomatic and a close contact, you are asked to complete three antigen tests  one as soon as possible, one three days later and a final one on the seventh day.

All healthcare workers must isolate for a full seven days and follow public health advice if they have a positive test.

Healthcare workers who are household close contacts can get antigen tests if they do not have symptoms of the virus or have not had Covid-19 in the past three months.

Staff should also wear a face mask if they have to be around other people.

The requirement of testing does not apply if they have recovered from Covid in the previous three months.

What do I do if have Covid-19?

If you a positive Covid-19 test, via either a positive antigen or PCR test you should self isolate.

You should self-isolate as soon as you notice symptoms or get a positive test result. "Either of these are considered day zero when youre counting your days of self-isolation," according to the HSE.

You must self-isolate for seven full days and can stop isolating after seven days if you have had no symptoms for the last 48 hours.

After the full seven days, you should still take care in crowded or enclosed areas for another three days to reduce the risk of passing the virus on.
The next wave of refugees from Ukraine will be more vulnerable, aid agencies have warned Irish politicians.

A meeting of the Oireachtas Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee heard harrowing testimony on Tuesday from aid agencies and charities about the humanitarian crisis sparked by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

But TDs and senators were also warned that the crisis will also have a knock-on impact on the worlds poorest countries.

Ros OSullivan, head of emergency operations at international humanitarian organisation Concern Worldwide, joined the meeting virtually from Krakow in Poland.

He told TDs that if the war continues, the next wave of refugees to flee the country will need extra help.

While millions have already fled, he said: They have some resources. They have connections.

That will not be the same with any subsequent wave.

These people, if they do have to cross out of Ukraine, will have little or no resources to look after themselves.

They will likely never have been out of their region, let alone the country before.

A very different type of Ukrainian, and a person leaving the country with different and advanced needs.

Mr OSullivan also warned that the systems rapidly established to support displaced Ukrainians can only be maintained and sustained for a short while.

Describing them as being held together by sheer goodwill and affinity, he said they could easily be overwhelmed by larger numbers.

He said: There is a risk of confusion between military and humanitarian roles and operations, and a very real threat of diversion of humanitarian aid as Ukraine is on a full war footing and under martial law.

The Ukraine crisis is very dynamic, uncertain and fast-moving.

Humanitarian operations and funding needs to be flexible in order to be able to shift operations to different activities, sectors and/or geographic areas within Ukraine as well as into the EU and Moldova.

The same meeting heard that the knock-on impact of the war on food programmes for developing countries would be severe.

Ukraine, often dubbed the breadbasket of the word, is a vital source of global wheat and grain.

Aid agencies warned of the perils facing people in nations depending on the UN World Food Programme.

Jane-Ann McKenna, chief executive of Dochas, the Irish Association of Non-Governmental Development Organisations, told politicians: The closure of ports and cessation of exports will have widespread humanitarian implications for Africa and other low-and middle-income countries.

Twenty-three African countries are dependent on Russia and Ukraine for more than half the imports of one of their staple goods.

Dominic MacSorley, chief executive of Concern, echoed this.

There is talk in Brussels of the doubling of the militarisation budget. Were not hearing about a doubling of the humanitarian budget for Ukraine.

Cash, and cash assistance, is critical. We are going to be using that in Ukraine.

But he stressed the need for a wider outlook. Ukraine, yes, in terms of donor funding. But as well as, and not instead of, all the other crises.
Ireland will take in up to 500 Ukrainian refugees who have fled to Moldova, the Government has announced.

The Cabinet met today virtually to discuss the ongoing humanitarian crisis caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

One of Europe's poorest countries, Moldovan services are said to be under "extreme pressure" from the numbers fleeing west from Russia's invasion.

Moldova has taken in more than 325,000 Ukrainians since the war broke out three weeks ago. Ireland, for comparison, has taken around 6,500, though that number will grow in the coming days.

Speaking after chairing the meeting, Mr Martin said more than 6,600 people have arrived here from Ukraine and the Government is working to secure hotel and B&B accommodation and are sifting through the thousands of offers which have been made by the general public.

"Thousands of units of accommodation have been secured by the Department of Children and they are continuing to secure additional accommodation.

Mr Martin said as well as securing hotels and B&Bs officials are "working beyond that to look at the pledges that have been received and they have commenced with those properties that are empty with a view to ensure that we can accommodate those who continue to come into the country."

"We again call on Russia to end the war," he said adding that it is an "immoral" attack on the people of Ukraine.

Responding to reports in the Irish Examiner that some Ukrainians have been offered a place to stay in Ireland in exchange for sex, Mr Martin said that would be "morally reprehensible kind of behavior."

He added: "The minister [Roderic O'Gorman] and the Government have been working with hotels, bed and breakfast, other forms of accommodation like that, securing premises that we can reconvert into housing units, that work is already happening because of those very reasons, and those experienced in this field are very conscious that... there has to be vetting, and they are working with Tusla and the gardai in respect of what would be the proper vetting procedures to be adopted to make sure we protect children in particular, in situations like this."

The Cabinet was told that plans are being advanced to house refugees in:

Hotels, guest houses and B&Bs;

Accommodation pledged by the general public;

State-owned or private properties which may be suitable for short-term accommodation;

Religious properties;

and Local authority facilities.

It is understood that St Patrick's week has thrown up a problem for departments finding accommodation for refugees as many hotels in Dublin are fully booked. This "pinch point", sources said, will ease after the weekend.

Speaking to the Irish Examiner yesterday, Taoiseach Micheal Martin said that there was an acknowledgement that states that border Ukraine are being asked to carry more of the fall-out from the conflict. Ireland has said it will take 2% of all displaced people, which could end up being over 100,000 refugees.

Mr Martin also said that the EU had agreed further sanctions against Russia.

The European Union have announced further sanctions this morning particularly in terms of iron and steel, listing further individuals, getting rid of the most favoured nation status that Russia enjoyed at the WTO, so the benefits derived from the WTO would be denied Russia, and a number of other measures as well and further sanctions would be kept under constant review.

Today the Government said that it had decided to "ramp-up the humanitarian response in order to provide accommodation and other essential supports rapidly and at scale" as well as offering to accept from Moldova up to 500 people who have fled from Ukraine given the "extreme pressure being faced by Moldova in the current circumstances".

"Russias ongoing military aggression against Ukraine includes indiscriminate attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure and the use of weapons that are prohibited. It must cease immediately for the sake of the lives and safety of people in Ukraine.

Russias actions are simply unacceptable and the Government reiterates its strong solidarity with the Government and people of Ukraine.

"The Department of Foreign Affairs remains in ongoing contact with Irish citizens registered in Ukraine.

"Given the current circumstances there, they are advised to shelter in a secure place, and only to consider leaving Ukraine if they judge it safe to do so. "

A Government statement said that while a major response to the crisis "presents challenges", it is a "very necessary response in the face of the appalling and immoral war being levied by Russia against the people in Ukraine".
At nearly 14 million square kilometres in area, Antarctica is a gigantic landmass, around one and a half times the size of the continental United States. The ice shelves perched on top of this vast southern continent contain an almost unimaginable 26 million cubic kilometres of frozen water. A single cubic kilometre of ice weights one billion tonnes.

This frozen giant has lain dormant for at least the last 15 million years. Now, there are worrying signs that it is beginning to stir from its deep slumber.

In recent days, scientists have reported that temperatures in parts of eastern Antarctica have risen by 40C above normal for three consecutive days. The Vostok research station, located close to the south pole at an elevation of nearly 3,500 metres, is the coldest place on the planet, having recorded a temperature of minus 89.2C in 1983.

However, in recent days, Vostok experienced an almost balmy minus 17.7C, an astonishing 15C warmer than ever recorded at that location. Computer simulations and observations across Antarctica indicate that in some locations, temperatures may have risen by up to 50C above normal.

Heatwave in March

To visualise how dramatic a shift this is, consider that in Ireland, the average March temperature range is from 5.210.7C. Now, try to imagine a March heatwave in Ireland with temperatures above 50C.

Wow, I have never seen anything like this in Antarctica, remarked Ted Scrampos, ice scientist at the University of Colorado, who has recently returned from a research expedition to the region.

Ice floes are seen on Penola Strait as the floes melt due to global climate change in Antarctica. Picture: Sebnem Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Isolated from the worlds continental landmasses by oceans and in continuous darkness for its four to five month winter, Antarctica to a large extent generates its own weather systems.

Except for its vulnerable western Antarctic peninsula, which has shown worrying signs of ice shelf collapse, the main continental shelf hasnt been considered to be at significant risk of warming. In fact, it has been warming more slowly than the world as a whole.

Polar scientists believe the recent heatwave event is linked to a giant atmospheric river that has drawn in masses of warm, wet air from the Pacific ocean. The moist air has trapped heat over the continent, resulting in the warm surface temperaturesthis is an extraordinary event, said Australian climatologist Prof Julie Arblaster.

Reliable long-term temperature records in the Antarctic only go back as far as the late 1950s, making it difficult to assess just how unusual the current heatwave really is. Weather systems on the frozen continent are notoriously fickle; in 2021, the south pole recorded its coldest ever April-September, yet last month, the level of sea ice surrounding Antarctica fell to its lowest on record.

While attributing a specific meteorological event to climate change is especially challenging in Antarctica, the warming global climate is loading the dice to make extreme instances like this ever more likely, according to Jonathan Wille, a French polar meteorology researcher. Temperatures like this, he added, are never supposed to happen.

As scientists were pinching themselves in disbelief at the extreme and unprecedented heatwave racking Antarctica, at the other end of the world, weather stations in Greenland and Norway recorded temperature spikes in the Arctic region 27C higher than normal for this time of year.

Polar bear populations continue to decline due to thinning ice as a result of climate change. But current trends now indicate we are putting our own existence in jeopardy. Picture: University of St Andrews/Tiago Marques/PA Wire.

Warming fast

Overall, the Arctic is heating three times faster than the global average, with temperatures in the region having increased by a full 1C in just the last decade. This in turn is leading to a sharp rise in extreme events. Temperatures deep in the Russian Arctic hit 38C during the summer 2020 heatwave. Unlike the Antarctic, almost all the Arctic ice cap is floating on open ocean, but sea ice has been thinning precipitously as temperatures in the region increase.

A phenomenon known as the ice albedo effect explains why Arctic temperatures are rising so quickly. An intact ice sheet reflects almost all incoming sunlight back into space. However, as soon as it begins to thin and expose the ocean beneath, up to 90 per cent of incoming solar energy is absorbed by the dark waters, causing ocean temperature to begin to rise. As this happens, more ice melts, and so the cycle of warming accelerates.

A so-called blue ocean event is where the Arctic ocean is virtually ice-free during the summer, something that has not occurred in at least two and a half million years. Scientists now believe this could happen within the next 10-12 years, with profound consequences for the climatic system in the entire northern hemisphere.

Loss of polar ice cover across the entire Arctic region would be the equivalent of shutting down a gigantic air conditioning system that helps regulate both temperatures and weather patterns across the northern hemisphere, with profound consequences scientists are only beginning to fully grasp.

NASAs former chief scientist, Prof James Hansen and colleagues have researched the likely effects of ice melt on ocean currents and weather systems. The giant Greenland ice shelf is losing an average of one million tonnes of ice per minute. In 2019, this amounted to 600 billion tonnes of ice melt.

Catastrophic consequences

This massive influx of cold freshwater into the North Atlantic could potentially trigger the shut-down of the Gulf Stream, the warm current that transfers huge amounts of heat energy from the tropics and keeps north-western Europe several degrees warmer than its latitude would suggest.

Such an event would have catastrophic consequences for Ireland, causing our temperatures to plummet and our grass-based agricultural system to fail. In addition, a sudden increase in the temperature gradient between the tropics and the northern hemisphere would, according to Prof Hansen, fuel super-storms stronger than any seen in modern times. All hell would break loose in the north Atlantic, he added.

The profound energy imbalance that is causing these seismic events at both poles is driven by the annual emission of around 40 billion tonnes of heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the global atmosphere, mainly as a result of fossil fuel burning.

A shut-down of the Gulf Stream, as a result of melting ice caps, would cause our temperatures to plummet and our grass-based agricultural system to fail.

To understand just how dramatic these changes are, scientists estimate that the worlds oceans are heating at the rate equivalent to the energy released by five Hiroshima-sized nuclear bombs per second, or nearly 160 million Hiroshimas a year.

A small reminder of just how rapidly the Arctic system is changing occurred in November 2020, when a time capsule was washed up on the coastline at Gweedore, Co. Donegal. The capsule had been embedded deep in the sea ice at the North Pole just two years earlier, in August 2018. Sometime later, due to rapid thawing, it had come adrift and floated over 3,700 kilometres on the currents before arriving in Ireland.

The seemingly remote Arctic and Antarctic regions are intimately connected with the very waters that lap our shores and the atmosphere above us. What happens at the poles profoundly affects all life on Earth.

At the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow last November, UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres warned that humanity is digging our own graves through failing to tackle the climate emergency. Our addiction to fossil fuels is pushing humanity to the brink. We face a stark choice: either we stop it, or it stops us. The only question remains: will we choose to act, or cling to denial as we stumble towards a climate apocalypse?

John Gibbons is an environmental journalist and commentator
The battle for Ukraines cities thundered across its suburbs Tuesday, with the Ukrainian military forcing Russian troops out of a strategically important Kyiv neighborhood, while Russian forces took partial control of three northwest suburbs where theres been fighting for weeks.

A senior US defense official said Tuesday that Russian ground forces were still largely stalled outside the capital city, but Russian ships spent the last 24 hours shelling the already devastated southern port city of Mariupol from offshore.

Civilians making the dangerous escape from Mariupol described fleeing through street gun battles and past unburied corpses as Russian forces tried to pound the city into submission.

One woman who made it out said planes flew overhead and dropped bombs everywhere.

WHATS THE LATEST ON MARIUPOL?

A woman walks past a burning apartment building after shelling in Mariupol, Ukraine. Picture: AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka

The Russian assault has turned living in Mariupol into a fight for survival.

Electricity, water and food supplies have been cut off, as well as communication with the outside world. Its unclear how many remain in the city with a prewar population of 430,000.

About a quarter were believed to have fled early in the war and tens of thousands more have escaped over the past week by way of humanitarian corridors.

Other attempts to leave have been thwarted by Russian efforts to pound Mariupol into submission. On that, Moscow has not succeeded, Britains defense ministry said Tuesday.

But Russia now controls the land corridor from Crimea, the peninsula it annexed in 2014, and is blocking Ukraines access to the Sea of Azov.

Those who have made it out of Mariupol described a devastated landscape.

There are no buildings there anymore, said 77-year-old Maria Fiodorova, who fled to Poland.

They bombed us for the past 20 days, said 39-year-old Viktoria Totsen, who also fled to Poland.

During the last five days the planes were flying over us every five seconds and dropped bombs everywhere  on residential buildings, kindergartens, art schools, everywhere.

WHAT ARE RUSSIAS LATEST MILITARY MOVES?

A woman cleans up her kitchen from debris in an apartment block damaged by a bombing the previous day in Kyiv, Ukraine. Picture: AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda

A senior US defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to provide the US military assessment, said Tuesday that Russian ships in the Sea of Azov have been shelling Mariupol from offshore over the last day.

The official said that, in contrast, the U.S. did not see indications that ships in the northern Black Sea were firing on Odesa, as they had during the weekend.

The officials said the US believes Russia has about 21 ships in the Black Sea, including about a dozen surface combatant warships and some landing ships that carry troops. There are about seven ships in the Azov Sea.

According to the official, Russian ground forces are still largely stalled outside Kyiv.

The official said there are indications that Russia has used a significant number of its precision guided munitions, particularly its air-launched cruise missiles, and is exploring ways to resupply those weapons.

More broadly, the defense official said Russia is struggling to get food and fuel to its troops, and there are indications that some troops dont have proper cold weather gear and are suffering frostbite.

A day after US President Joe Biden said Russian President Vladimir Putins back is against the wall and reiterated accusations that Putin is considering resorting to using chemical or biological weapons, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said the US has seen no evidence to suggest that such an escalation is imminent.

WHAT ABOUT DIPLOMACY?

A Ukrainian evacuee hugs a child in the train station in Przemysl, near the Polish-Ukrainian border. Picture: ANGELOS TZORTZINIS/AFP via Getty Images

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he was prepared to discuss a commitment that Ukraine would not seek NATO membership in exchange for a cease-fire, the withdrawal of Russian troops and a guarantee of Ukraines security.

Zelensky also said that Ukraine will be ready to discuss the status of Crimea and the eastern Donbas region held by Russian-backed separatists after a cease-fire and steps toward providing security guarantees.

The Kremlin is demanding Ukraine disarm and declare itself neutral. Russian presidential spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday that he could not share details of ongoing talks, saying that making them public would damage negotiations.

Biden travels to Europe this week, where he will attend a summit with NATO leaders looking for ways to strengthen the blocs own deterrence and defense to deal with the now openly confrontational Putin.

The Kremlin has bristled at remarks coming from the Americans. The Russian Foreign Ministry has warned that relations with the US are on the verge of a breach and summoned the US ambassador.

Biden has added a stop to Poland during his trip, visiting a crucial ally of Ukraine which has taken in more than 2 million refugees.

ALEXEI NAVALNY GIVEN NINE-YEAR JAIL TERM

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, centre, is seen via a video link provided by the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service, standing among Penitentiary Service officers during a court session in Pokrov, Vladimir region, about 100 kilometers (62 miles) east of Moscow, Russia. Picture: AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has been convicted of fraud and contempt of court and sentenced to nine years in a maximum security prison.

A Russian judge also ruled that Navalny would have to pay a fine of 1.2 million roubles (about 10,300).

Navalny is currently serving another prison sentence of two and a half years in a prison colony east of Moscow.

His associates have said the new trial was intended to keep Navalny, President Vladimir Putins long-time foe, behind bars for as long as possible.

Navalny has rejected the charges as bogus. He can appeal the ruling.

Navalny was accused of embezzling money that he and his foundation raised over the years, and of insulting a judge during a previous trial.

The politician has rejected the allegations as politically motivated.

The prosecution had asked for 13 years in a maximum security prison for the anti-corruption crusader and a 1.2 million-rouble (about 10,300) fine.
The QUANTUM attack system is the most powerful cyberattack tool of the NSA. /CFP

The QUANTUM attack system, the most powerful cyberattack tool of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), which is capable of monitoring, intercepting and utilizing data that the NSA collected from the global network communication and internet system, has been revealed, Chinese newspaper the Global Times reported.

The NSA has been launching cyberattacks against 47 countries and regions for a decade, with Chinese government departments, high-tech companies and military-related institutes among the key targets, the Global Times learned from internet security company 360.

Cybersecurity experts warned that under the surveillance of the NSA, the privacy and sensitive information of hundreds of millions of people around the world are exposed, "like running around naked."

Established in 2004, the QUANTUM system can attack online users browsing U.S. websites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Amazon, as well as Chinese social media apps like QQ.

Besides the QUANTUM system, the expert also revealed that the major tactics for the U.S. cyberattacks are varied and covert, including backdoor program UnitedRake and fake server FOXCID, with the latter being a powerful vulnerability attack platform designed by the NSA which can allow operators with little experience to participate in cyberattacks.

The NSA has launched large-scale network attacks around the world with China being one of the main victims. /CFP

China is key target of NSA

Being an affiliate of the U.S. Department of Defense, the NSA specializes in electronic communications surveillance, with its main mission to collect information from various countries, expose the communications activities of potential spies and provide processed intelligence information to the U.S. government.

In order to achieve the purpose of intelligence collection, for a long time, the NSA launched large-scale network attacks around the world, with China being one of the main victims.

According to 360, since 2008, they have captured a large number of complex attack programs. Through long-term analysis and field evidence from multiple victim units, combined with global threat intelligence, as well as tracks to the Planning Tool for Resource Integration, Synchronization and Management (PRISM) scandal and the "Shadow Broker" hacker groups, the company confirmed that these attacks targeting leading enterprises for more than 10 years were carried out by the NSA.

A cybersecurity expert from the company told the Global Times that they found the NSA organized attacks on targets in China, such as the government, finance, scientific research institutes, communications operators, education, military, aerospace, medical-related industries, with high-tech companies accounting for a large proportion.

According to the FOXCID server code names described in classified NSA documents, it can also be found that attacks have been launched against 47 countries and regions around the world, including the UK, Germany, France, South Korea, Poland, Japan and Iran, covering 403 targets, the expert said.

The NSA has developed numerous operational plans to monitor global targets. The expert said that through statistical analysis of the backdoor configuration field of the NSA's exclusive Validator, the potential attack against China is estimated to be very large.

The most conservative estimate for Validator alone is that hundreds of thousands or even millions of computers have been infected by the virus, said the expert, adding that the U.S. government and politicians behind the NSA only focus on their political self-interests.

The expert stressed that such invasion seriously infringes on the legitimate interests of Chinese and global citizens, according to the Global Times.

The NSA has been launching attacks on leading companies for more than 10 years. /CFP

U.S. cyberattack is omnipresent

The NSA has been launching attacks on leading companies for more than 10 years, the Global Times reported, citing 360.

With diverse and concealed attack techniques, the NSA launched attacks on key network management servers and terminals of a large number of enterprises.

The security experts said apart from fighting on the battleground, cyberspace is also an important battlefield for the great powers. Once the system attacks a country, it can paralyze its transportation, banking, aviation, water and electricity systems.

In addition, the attacks can be used to damage the country's political stability and economic lifeline.

The communications industry has been a key target of the NSA as it has been peeping and secretly collecting personal and key data of the industry for a long time.

As a result, a large number of netizens' private data, such as their identities, property, home address and even voice messages and recordings are being maliciously collected, abused or transferred overseas, the expert told the Global Times.

The Global Times quoted the expert as saying that the U.S. government and politicians behind the NSA treated human rights as a chip for political games, and their intrusion seriously infringed on the legitimate interests of Chinese and people around the world.
Six high school girls were killed in a car crash in southern Oklahoma on Tuesday.

Oklahoma Highway Patrol said the crash involved a tractor-trailer slamming into a smaller vehicle in Tishomingo, according to Oklahoma City TV station KFOR. The stations helicopter crew captured distressing images of a mangled vehicle at the scene.

Advertisement

Absolutely terrible news from Tishomingo, OK at US377/OK 22 intersection 6 HS students killed in collision with Semi truck. @kfor #Chopper4 https://t.co/otSvSwuF48 pic.twitter.com/FFQQUFrlj3  Marc Dillard (@F5Video) March 22, 2022

The victims have not been identified. The cause of the crash remained under investigation Tuesday.

The wreck occurred at the intersection of U.S. Route 377 and Oklahoma state highway 22, the Johnston County Sheriffs Office said in a Facebook post. Tishomingo, a city of about 3,000 people sits halfway between Dallas and Oklahoma City.

Advertisement

Our district has suffered a great loss today involving high school students, Tishomingo Public Schools superintendent Bobby Waitman said in a letter shared on Facebook. Our hearts are broken, and we are grieving with our students and staff.
It has been claimed that Russia has seized rescue workers from a convoy trying to bring food and supplies into the bloodied port city of Mariupol as Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied that the invasion of Ukraine has stalled.

Asked on CNN what Russian President Vladimir Putin has achieved in Ukraine, he said: Well, first of all not yet. He hasnt achieved yet.

But he insisted the military operation was going strictly in accordance with the plans and purposes that were established beforehand.

Mr Peskov reiterated that Mr Putins main goals were to get rid of the military potential of Ukraine and ensure that Ukraine changes from an anti-Russian centre to a neutral country.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russian forces not only blocked a humanitarian convoy trying to reach besieged Mariupol with desperately needed supplies on Tuesday, but took captive some of the rescue workers and bus drivers.

Russia has been accused of seizing 15 rescue workers and drivers from a humanitarian convoy trying to get desperately needed food and other supplies into Mariupol.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia kidnapped rescue workers and bus drivers (Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via AP)

He said the Russians had agreed to the route ahead of time.

We are trying to organise stable humanitarian corridors for Mariupol residents, but almost all of our attempts, unfortunately, are foiled by the Russian occupiers, by shelling, or deliberate terror, Mr Zelenskyy said.

Mr Zelenskyy estimated that 100,000 civilians remained in Mariupol, the scene of some of the wars worst devastation, as Russia presses a nearly month-old offensive by bombarding cities and towns. Those who made it out described a shattered city.

They bombed us for the past 20 days, said 39-year-old Viktoria Totsen, who fled into Poland. During the last five days, the planes were flying over us every five seconds and dropped bombs everywhere  on residential buildings, kindergartens, art schools, everywhere.

Mr Zelenskyy, speaking late Tuesday in his nightly video address to his nation, accused Russian forces of blocking the aid convoy despite agreeing to the route ahead of time.

The Red Cross confirmed a humanitarian aid convoy trying to reach the city had not been able to enter.

The convoys attempt to deliver assistance came as Russian navy vessels joined in what have been weeks of Russian air and land strikes into Mariupol, U.S. officials said.

A senior US defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity to give the Pentagons assessment, said Russian ships in the Sea of Azov added to the shelling of Mariupol. The official said there were about seven Russian ships in that area, including a minesweeper and a couple of landing vessels.

Elsewhere, Russian military forces destroyed a new laboratory at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant that, among other things, works to improve management of radioactive waste, the Ukrainian state agency responsible for the Chernobyl exclusion zone said on Tuesday.

The Russian military seized the decommissioned plant at the beginning of the war. The exclusion zone is the contaminated area around the plant, site of the worlds worst nuclear meltdown in 1986.

Russian military forces reportedly destroyed a new laboratory at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant (SSE Chornobyl NPP/PA)

The state agency said the laboratory, built at a cost of six million euros (4.9 million) with support from the European Commission, opened in 2015.

The laboratory contained highly active samples and samples of radionuclides that are now in the hands of the enemy, which we hope will harm itself and not the civilised world, the agency said in its statement.

In another worrying development, Ukraines nuclear regulatory agency said on Monday that radiation monitors around the plant had stopped working.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that reports of the strip search of Child Q were deeply distressing and deeply concerning.

Child Q was strip-searched by female Metropolitan Police officers at her school in 2020 without another adult present and in the knowledge that she was menstruating.

The 15-year-old had been wrongly suspected of carrying cannabis.

The case has sparked outrage from politicians and the public, with London mayor Sadiq Khan sharing his dismay and disgust, and equalities minister Kemi Badenoch calling it an appalling incident.

Protests took place during the weekend in London over the incident.

The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) launched its investigation following a complaint in May 2021, and said it had completed its inquiries and was finalising its report.

In the Commons on Wednesday, Labours Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) asked Mr Johnson whether he believes that the characteristic dither and delay of his Government in responding to this appalling case is remotely acceptable when it comes to the safety of children?

Mr Johnson replied: I think that is a completely ridiculous characterisation of the response of the Government because, of course, the reports of this incident are deeply distressing and deeply concerning.

Everybody shares her feelings about that but the Metropolitan Police have rightly apologised and the IOPC is investigating, and for that reason it would not be right to comment further.

On Tuesday, mayor of Hackney Philip Glanville  the borough where the incident took place  said that the headteacher of Child Qs school should stand down.

Writing on social media, he said that he and Labour councillor and deputy mayor Anntoinette Bramble had been in contact with the school that Child Q attended, seeking assurance on the actions that have been taken in response to this horrific incident, and on future work to rebuild trust with students, parents, and the wider community.

Since then weve sadly only heard more troubling reports from staff, families and young people disturbed about the situation and eager for change, he said.

We dont say this lightly, but we feel weve no choice but to express our lack of confidence in the current leadership of the school.

He added that they both wished to ask that the headteacher should stand down and allow that school and its community the new start it needs to heal from this traumatic experience and by doing so also fully recognise the traumatic impact on Child Q and her family.

Facing questions about the incident from the London Assemblys police and crime committee, Met assistant commissioner Louisa Rolfe said: Were very concerned about whats happened here.

The safeguarding review findings  which the Metropolitan Police were very keen to co-operate with and support fully  has identified the exceptional nature of this. But, in saying that, Im not suggesting that this is something that we shouldnt be incredibly concerned about, or that its an isolated matter.

Of course, any search of children in any circumstances is something that should be  rigorously reviewed and thoroughly understood.

The IOPC investigation will look in detail at the officers actions. The safeguarding review will pick up the actions of the school and their involvement in this matter.

She said she thought it would be unusual for response officers to be called to a school to deal with an incident of this nature and the force instead expected its schools officers  who have a higher level of training in safeguarding  to develop close relationships working with schools to address any concerns.
Burma Australias Embrace of Defectors Sends Shockwaves Through Myanmar Military

Myanmar soldiers during the Armed Forces Day parade in Naypyitaw. / The Irrawaddy

The Australian governments granting of protection to defectors from the Myanmar regimes armed forces has elicited interest even among senior officers, especially those who oppose military rule in the country. Some have already quit the military, which has become notorious for killing its own people.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported last week that the Australian government has accepted defectors seeking asylum down under since January.

Since the coup in February last year, Myanmars military has been struggling with an unprecedented and rising number of striking soldiers. According to some army defectors, the main reason is the peoples hatred of soldiers due to the regimes brutal crackdowns on protesters following the takeover. So far, the junta has killed more than 1,600 people mainly for anti-regime activism. Another reason is the growing and effective popular armed resistance and guerrilla warfare against the regimes troops. As a result, soldiers no longer dare to step out of their units alone in uniform. Whenever army casualties are reported, people are elated.

Given this situation, the Myanmar military has started to see strikers quitting their battalions since the middle of last year. The number keeps growing. According to Myanmars parallel National Unity Government (NUG), the number of army defectors so far is nearly 3,000, including some battalion commandersthe highest position among those to defect so far.

Then came the news about Australias acceptance of army strikers last Friday, which has caused interest in defecting to rise, said Nyi Thuta, a former army captain who left his unit right after the coup last year and now helps his fellow soldiers to defect via his Facebook page Peoples Goal, formerly known as Peoples Soldiers.

In three days, I have received hundreds of enquiries about defections from people who are still in the service, the ex-captain told The Irrawaddy on Tuesday.

Unlike before, he said, there were some senior level officers whose ranks were higher than lieutenant colonel showing interest.

But they have someone else ask about it for safety reasons. Also there are some who previously were hesitant to leave, he added.

Lin Htet Aung, an ex-army captain who is on strike and now helps soldiers to defect via his Facebook page Peoples Embrace, told The Irrawaddy that Australias granting of asylum to army defectors has sent shockwaves through Myanmar military circles, adding that he has received hundreds of enquiriesincluding, Is it true?within days of the news, even from senior officers.

We can say that its good news for those trying to join the Civil Disobedience Movement [CDM, a movement of civil servants and others striking against the regime], he said.

The former captain, who left his unit last year, said there are two types of defector: those who leave their battalions to join the peoples armed resistance against the regime, and those who leave behind the notorious army just to live in peace with their families.

The asylum news is really encouraging, especially for the second type, he added.

Huge incentive

Dr. Miemie Winn Byrd, a professor at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies (APCSS) in Hawaii, said military defection is really an important strategy for a successful resistance, especially in Myanmars case, in which the army has unrivaled fire power.

Weapons dont get up and shoot themselves if they dont have a human behind it. You can deprive the trigger pullers. The resistance side doesnt have fire power but you can tackle it from a different perspective by depriving soldiers, she said.

It has long been known that there are many in the military who are reform-minded and are sick of the institutions deteriorating image. In reality, the militarys restrictions, including on the freedom of movement of individual members, as well difficulties like accommodation and how to make a living after defecting, make even those who are eager to join the CDM hesitate.

Ex-captain Nyi Thuta said a lack of guarantees for their wellbeing is a great obstacle for soldiers who want to join the CDM. He recalled the rise in defection enquiries last year after the National Unity Government (NUG) called for a nationwide armed struggle against the regime in September.

I received hundreds of messages at the time but no significant number of defections followed, he said.

But this time seems different.

Dr. Byrd said that according to previous studies, a third country incentive is really important in defection, and the Australian governments offer of asylum to defectors is great for those who want to leave the army.

This is a huge development for the peoples side while a huge negative for the military side. When Australia [opens] themselves, other countries may open up as well, including other European countries, she added.

Daw Zin Mar Aung, the foreign minister of the NUG, agreed that a third country incentive is also an effective tool in the fight against the regime.

While she admitted the NUGs limited budget meant it was unable to offer monetary incentives for army defections, the shadow government has engaged with some countries to provide asylum for defectors.

We asked them, if you cant assist us with arms, please accept defectors because its also supporting the revolution in another way. Thats why some countries have already welcomed defectors, but not publicly, she said.

My message to possible defectors is countries have their limit for annual refugee acceptance. So, the earlier you leave, the earlier you will get to a third country, the foreign minister added.

Meanwhile, the regime is struggling hard to hold on to its men. Ex-captain Lin Htet Aung said that since Australias asylum news broke, the junta has tightened restrictions in the military.

They launched a peer-to-peer scrutinizing system while imposing restrictions on the use of mobile phones and social media as well as the freedom of movement, he said.

The recent defection of a battalion commander, Myo Min Tun, was a huge blow for the junta because he was the highest-ranking officer to defect so far. The lieutenant colonel left his troops on the front line in Karen State in February, according to Nyi Thuta, adding that the number of defecting battalion commanders so far has risen to nearly five.

Unsurprisingly, the juntas No. 2 man, Vice Senior General Soe Win, labeled army defectors as deserters who violated the rules and ran away from their unit fearing punishment. He also blamed some countries, local resistance groups and the media for destroying military unity by praising the deserters as democracy heroes. Coincidentally, his comments came on the same day as the Australian asylum news broke.

Nyi Thuta said the battalion commanders defection reflected just how badly the situation within the military had deteriorated.

After seeing the lieutenant colonels defection, I wouldnt be surprised if there were more, or even some from higher levels, he said.

The more third country incentives, the more defections form senior levels there will be, he added.

Editors Note: Dr. Miemie Winn Byrds comments in this story do not represent the positions and policies of the US government or any other agencies.

You may also like these stories:



Myanmar Junta Kills 10 Children in a Week

Junta Demolishes Homes in Striking Myanma Railways Town

Witness Disputes Myanmar Junta Allegation of Suu Kyi Power Abuse
Burma Former Myanmar First Lady Refuses to Meet ASEAN Envoy

Daw Su Su Lwin, wife of former President U Htin Kyaw. / The Irrawaddy

Daw Su Su Lwin, the wife of former President U Htin Kyaw and a National League for Democracy (NLD) lawmaker, has refused to meet the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) special envoy to Myanmar, according to NLD lawmakers.

The special envoy, Cambodias Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Prak Sokhonn, was set to meet Daw Su Su Lwin at the Park Royal Hotel in Yangon.

However, Daw Su Su Lwin refused to meet the envoy, citing health issues, an NLD lawmaker told The Irrawaddy on condition of anonymity. Even if Daw Su Su Lwin had met with him, she could only have do so as a private individual and not as a representative of the NLD, added the lawmaker.

One point of the five-point consensus is for the ASEAN special envoy to meet all stakeholders. Without Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and President U Win Myint, it is impossible to represent the NLD as well as democratic forces, said the NLD lawmaker.

Junta spokesman Major General Zaw Min Tun also told the BBC that Daw Su Su Lwin could not meet Prak Sokhonn because of her health.

One Myanmar-based political analyst said Daw Su Su Lwin deliberately avoided meeting the ASEAN envoy because she is concerned that it might result in friction within the NLD.

If she meets him, I am not sure about other results, but it will definitely cause friction within the party. As the ASEAN envoy is the guest of the regime, meeting him amounts to recognizing the regime. That could lead to friction within the party, so Daw Su Su Lwin evaded the envoy, said the political analyst.

The central executive committee of the NLD also told the media that Daw Su Su Lwins meeting with the special envoy couldnt be as an official representative of the NLD, while the NLD leadership is being detained by the military regime.

Another political analyst said that while the junta has detained senior NLD leaders to try and kill off the party, it was attempting to make use of Daw Su Su Lwin to show the international community that the NLD still exists.

China apparently does not like [the regime] ditching the NLD. China accepts that the NLD should exist in Myanmars politics. Although the regime dares not continue with its plan to dissolve the NLD under such circumstances, and it also dares not release NLD leaders, they want to show that the NLD still has representation. So they arranged a meeting between Daw Su Su Lwin and the special envoy. But Daw Su Su Lwin backed off as she cant represent the NLD, said the political analyst.

ASEANs special envoy arrived in Myanmar on Monday and met junta leader Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, foreign minister U Wunna Maung Lwin, international cooperation minister U Ko Ko Hlaing and Peoples Party chairman U Ko Ko Gyi.

As Prak Sokhonn wrapped up his Myanmar visit on Wednesday, political analysts said that he only met regime representatives and failed to meet with all stakeholders, which goes against the five-point consensus.

Another political analyst said: As he did not meet other stakeholders, the ASEAN consensus cant be implemented. One of the points in the consensus is to bring all the concerned parties to constructive dialogue. But the regime is not willing to engage in dialogue. So the ASEAN envoy cant implement the ASEAN consensus.

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 Myanmar Junta Deploys Militias in Key Strategic State

PDF fighters in Kayah State. / Loikaw PDF

Myanmars junta has mobilized militias against resistance groups in Kayah State, according to the Karenni Nationalities Defense Force (KNDF).

Some militias are fighting alongside regime troops while others act as guides, said the KNDF.

A KNDF spokesman said: We heard the Kayan National Guard (KNG) is fighting alongside the regime. Those who cooperate with the enemy will be treated as the enemy and we will retaliate.

This month the commander of juntas Eastern Command Major General Ni Lin Aung met and provided supplies to the Mawchi militia, KNG, Karenni National Peace and Development Party militia, Loilem Lay militia, Karenni National Solidarity Organization militia, Kayan New Land Party militia.

The regime launched large-scale attacks in Kayah State on Feb. 16, along with air raids and artillery strikes while using armored vehicles and rocket launchers.

From March 9 to 16, junta troops clashed heavily with the Karenni Army, KNDF and Peoples Defense Forces. Twenty-five junta soldiers and six resistance fighters died in clashes, according to the KNDF.

Three resistance groups from Shan and Kayah states and Naypyitaw overseen by the parallel National Unity Government (NUG) have joined resistance forces in Kayah, which NUG defense minister U Yee Mon described as sowing the seeds for a federal army.

Kayah State is seen as strategically key because of its proximity to Naypyitaw.

You may also like these stories:



Junta Forces Massacre 14 People in Upper Myanmar

Myanmar Junta Sentences Veteran Activist on his Birthday

Junta Court Charges Myanmar Journalist With Incitement


Like the Ithaca Times?

Please help support local journalism by whitelisting this site in your ad blocker. Thank you!
Identity services provider Okta has now changed its tune and says that 2.5% of its customers  which amounts to about 375 companies  have been affected by the January breach to which it admitted.

Chief security officer David Bradbury said the data of this number may have been exposed and used by the attackers.

Earlier, Bradbury had insisted that the service had not been breached and that there were no corrective actions that needed to be taken by Okta's customers.

A brutally honest depiction of this industry pic.twitter.com/WX3YEKzMHf  Daniel Cuthbert (@dcuthbert) March 22, 2022

In the update, he reiterated this and said those affected had already been contacted by email.

Meanwhile, Lapsus$ are sipping pina coladas. 2/2 pic.twitter.com/qREE7zCoUy  Brett Callow (@BrettCallow) March 23, 2022

were made on Monday by a group known as Lapsus$ that has been associated with successful intrusions into both Samsung and Microsoft.

The group said in a new message on its Telegram chat that a few of its members were taking a break until the end of the month.

Bradbury said he would host a webinar on Wednesday to share more technical details about what had happened.

Okta has just now published another statement providing slightly more details. Interesting to hear Okta say they were not breached and the attempt was "unsuccessful" while at the same time admitting some customer data was accessed. https://t.co/YxCBk9XkLN  Bill Demirkapi (@BillDemirkapi) March 22, 2022

There would be two sessions, one at 8am (2am AEDT Thursday) and one at 4pm (10am AEDT Thursday), both Pacific time, he added.
The chief security officer of the identity services firm Okta has issued an updated statement about the claims of a breach of the company, saying there has been no breach and everything is fully operational.

"There are no corrective actions that need to be taken by our customers," David Bradbury said in the statement issued on Tuesday US time.

Claims of a breach were made on Monday by a group known as Lapsus$ that has been associated with successful intrusions into both Samsung and Microsoft.

If youre confused about Okta saying the service has not been breached, remember that the statement is purely a legal word soup. Fact is that a third-party was breached; that breach affected Okta; failure to disclose it affected Oktas customers.  Runa Sandvik (@runasand) March 22, 2022

In its initial reaction to the Lapsus$ claims, Okta said the data posted by the attackers to their Telegram account had probable come from what Bradbury described as "an unsuccessful attempt to compromise the account of a customer support engineer working for a third-party provider".

They promise *a lot* in their official documentation. Depending on how you interpret this it could mean they have to work with each individual customer to come up with a remediation plan, and then help them see it through. pic.twitter.com/SlrcMNv2rB  Robert Hafner (@tedivm) March 22, 2022

Bradbury added: "As part of our regular procedures, we alerted the provider to the situation, while simultaneously terminating the users active Okta sessions and suspending the individuals account. Following those actions, we shared pertinent information (including suspicious IP addresses) to supplement their investigation, which was supported by a third-party forensics firm.

He said after the investigation was completed, Okta had been sent a report by the forensics firm but only this week.

"The report highlighted that there was a five-day window of time between 16 to 21 January 2022, where an attacker had access to a support engineers laptop. This is consistent with the screenshots that we became aware of yesterday," Bradbury explained.

"The potential impact to Okta customers is limited to the access that support engineers have. These engineers are unable to create or delete users, or download customer databases. Support engineers do have access to limited data - for example, Jira tickets and lists of users - that were seen in the screenshots. Support engineers are also able to facilitate the resetting of passwords and multi-factor authentication factors for users, but are unable to obtain those passwords."

Okta competitor Duo Security has raised doubts about the company's version of events, with its co-founder and chief technology officer Jon Oberheide saying: "Based on past experience, I'd suggest taking Okta's public assurances on this incident with a grain of salt. Here's a quick anecdote from a few years ago that where Okta played some misleading word-games on the impact of a vulnerability in their service."

Based on past experience, I'd suggest taking Okta's public assurances on this incident with a grain of salt. Here's a quick anecdote from a few years ago that where Okta played some misleading word-games on the impact of a vulnerability in their service... https://t.co/vDLRsXWCAq  Jon Oberheide (@jonoberheide) March 22, 2022

Oberheide cited the case of a critical 2018 SAML vulnerability, CERT VU#475445, found by Duo that "allowed user impersonation that impacted quite a few SAML libraries and SSO vendors: OneLogin, Shibboleth, Duo ourselves, and...yes, Okta as well".

But Oberheide said the CERT page for this vulnerability listed Okta as not being affected. "As Okta communicated to CERT and to customers, Okta was "not affected" because they patched the vulnerability after we reported it to them. That's not how things work," he said.

"While it may be 'technically correct' that Okta was not vulnerable at the exact point in time they made that statement because they had patched it, they had been vulnerable to this bypass for years, which was the risk that customers were trying to understand in their IR work.

"I talked to customers who were confused about this and had closed out their IR cases because of the "Not Affected" status. It was disappointing to see a leading security vendor make the choice to obscure risk to their customers, to minimise PR/brand impact."

Lapsus$, rumoured to be a group based in Brazil, issued a statement after Okta' explanation about the data it had put online. That statement is below:

Cloudflare has also issued a statement about the issue, since it is one of a number of prominent companies that uses Okta's products.

"We use Okta internally for employee identity as part of our authentication stack. We have investigated this compromise carefully and do not believe we have been compromised as a result. We do not use Okta for customer accounts; customers do not need to take any action unless they themselves use Okta," the statement said.
A Germantown, Md., oral surgeon has been accused of supplying his drug-addicted girlfriend with ketamine and other drugs until her fatal overdose.

James Michael Ryan, 48, was arrested Tuesday and charged with second-degree murder in the death of 25-year-old Sarah Harris.

Advertisement

Harris, a former patient, began working at Ryans practice as a surgical technician in October 2020 and the two began a romantic relationship in January 2021, according to the Montgomery County Department of Police.

At some point, she moved in with Ryan and he allegedly began feeding her controlled substances, including propofol, ketamine, diazepam and midazolam.

Advertisement

I dont think youll find a vein. Im so dehydrated, Harris texted Ryan on Sept. 27, according to court documents obtained by the Washington Post.

Ryan allegedly instructed her to drink water and take a Xanax.

Breaking News As it happens Get updates on the coronavirus pandemic and other news as it happens with our free breaking news email alerts. >

Sarah Harris developed an ever-worsening addiction that was continuously fed over the months by Ryan, investigators wrote.

James Michael Ryan is charged in his girlfriend's death. (Montgomery County Dept. of Police)

Texts also showed Harris admitting a ketamine overdose to a friend, according to the court documents.

On Jan. 26, Harris was found dead at Ryans home from a drug overdose.

The loss of such a remarkable daughter, sister, granddaughter, aunt and one of a kind woman is utterly devastating. Sarahs family and friends will strive to honor her elegant memory by living their lives with love and compassion, reads an online obituary for Harris.

Sarah had a passion for learning, drawing, and spending time with her puppy Winston. She loved photography, traveling, meeting new people, exploring Gods creations, animals, laughing with her sisters, and most of all creating precious memories with her family. She had a personality that would light up a room and she carried a radiant smile along with it. She marched to the beat of her own drum and was like no other. She loved fiercely and passionately, feeling incredibly blessed each day of her life.

Along with reckless endangerment and a series of drug charges, Ryan was charged with depraved heart second-degree murder, meaning that he did not kill Harris with premeditation but rather showed an extreme indifference to her life and should have known better about the dangers of the drugs he was providing.

Advertisement

Ryan was ordered held without bail.
The company will deploy Infors cloud solution to ensure water utility meets the demands of the digital world where customers expect 24/7 convenience.

Riverina Water, the recipient of the Sam Samra Award, is leading the creation of the software platform. It will use Infor CloudSuite Public Sector which includes financials and supply management, customer and billing management, and Infor Birst for integrated planning, budgeting, forecasting, and financial consolidation, business intelligence and analytics.

The solution allows Riverina Water to overcome current challenges with legacy systems to better control costs, future-proof IT investments, and enhance service delivery to more than 76,000 customers across four local government areas in southern New South Wales.

Riverina Water has built a strong foundation as one of the best local water utilities in NSW, with a commitment to providing safe and reliable drinking water to our growing region, says Riverina Water CEO Andrew Crakanthorp.

We are happy to work with Infor as our strategic partner to achieve Riverina Waters transformation goals. After a very robust tender process and a large pool of participants, Infor ultimately won our trust for their deep industry knowledge, experience in deploying major digital transformation programs in entrenched legacy environments, and agile ability in responding to our needs.

Infors purpose-built CloudSuite solution will improve Riverina Waters ability to deliver better outcomes for internal and external stakeholders, and help drive Riverina Water to further becoming a customer-centric leading utility service provider.

Infor vice president and managing director Jarrod Kinchington says With Infor, Riverina Water will find solutions that are robust, flexible, intuitive and easy to use  all key ingredients to address rapidly-evolving customer expectations in a highly-digitised world.
Next-gen data management provider Cohesity has appointed Brian Higgins as head of channels in the Asia-Pacific and Japan region.

Based in Singapore, Higgins brings more than 25 years of relevant experience working for leading information technology (IT) and communications companies to the role at Cohesity. and has a strong track record in business development, channel go-to-market, and managed service provider (MSP) partnerships.

Cohesity says Higgins will leverage his experience to empower partners and customers in the Asia-Pacific and Japan region to embrace its ext-gen data management solutions.

Today thousands of customers around the world rely on Cohesity to easily backup, secure, manage, and derive value from data  across the data center, edge, and cloud. Cohesity is a 100 percent channel-focused company, noted Cohesity.

Prior to joining Cohesity, Higgins spent nearly a decade with VMware in senior sales and partner leadership positions, including most recently as senior director for the Asia-Pacific and Japan Commercial Business.

Before his tenure at VMware, Higgins held several key sales and partner leadership roles at Citrix, Cognos (an IBM company) and BusinessObjects (an SAP company), where he drove transformational partner go-to-market initiatives and strategies.

Cohesity is already helping numerous organisations throughout the Asia-Pacific and Japan region radically simplify how they backup, secure, manage, and derive value from data. Our unique, next-gen approach to data management continues to provide a tremendous opportunity for our ecosystem partners to advance their businesses, said Higgins.

I am excited by the opportunity to work closely with our partners, as we jointly empower customers throughout the region to do more with their data.

Brian has a proven track record in leading and enhancing channel go-to-market, strategic initiatives, and sales enablement throughout the Asia-Pacific and Japan region for a number of leading IT solutions providers,  said Ravi Rajendran, vice president, Cohesity Asia-Pacific and Japan.

As organisations continue to adopt our next-gen data management offerings, Brian will play a key role in driving our go- to-market strategy through partners in the region while cultivating our partner ecosystem.
COMPANY NEWS: Climate change is becoming a high profile topic all around the world -- it is a Pandoras box that will continue to unleash complex consequences that are increasingly challenging for humanity to assess and cope with.

Responsible technology companies around the world should be pledging to become carbon neutral and act immediately, and in December 2021, Alibaba Group did just that. In the "Alibaba Group Carbon Neutrality Action Report", the Group pledged to realise carbon neutrality for its own operations by 2030. In collaboration with stakeholders and partners across the Alibaba digital ecosystem, Alibaba aimed to reduce its value chain (Scope 3) emission intensity by half by 2030, using 2020 levels as a baseline. Moreover, as a digital infrastructure and service provider for a green economy, Alibaba Cloud, the digital technology and intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group, will take the lead and aim to achieve Scope 3 carbon neutrality by 2030.

Digitalisation is key for building a low-carbon circular economy

The worlds economy needs to move from a linear model of take, make, dispose and move towards a lower-carbon circular model of refuse, reduce, reuse, refurbish, and recycle". This is a non-negotiable way to achieve carbon neutrality and maintain a healthy environment that sustains human lives.

Achieving this robust transition to a low-carbon circular economy, Alibaba Group will incorporate the adoption of the following pillars for economic growth and environmental improvements:

Energy transition from reliance on fossil fuels to universal uses of clean energy, focusing on renewables

from reliance on fossil fuels to universal uses of clean energy, focusing on renewables Science and technology innovations , focussing on low, zero and negative carbon technologies

, focussing on low, zero and negative carbon technologies Stakeholder economy, focussing a collaborative governance model in which regulations and market mechanisms work hand in glove, where governments at every level work with small, medium and large enterprises, and where consumers and other stakeholders are all motivated to transition to a new economic system with renewed social contracts and lifestyles

Increased digitisation will provide Alibaba Group with a great opportunity that will enable the transformation to a sustainable economy  a win-win economy in which every progress in the economy improves the environment. This will be possible by increasing the penetration of digitalisation to enhance the speed and efficiency of emission reduction. Adopting digital technologies that are reliable and scalable makes it much easier to measure and manage our carbon footprints.

Why Scopes are important

To ensure that Alibaba Group reaches carbon neutrality and looks into a greener future, the company has committed to join the Science-Based Targets initiative (SBTi) to help limit the global temperature increase to 1.5C and has set the following targets:

Decarbonising Alibaba Scopes 1 and 2: By 2030, Alibaba will achieve carbon neutrality in its own operations

Greening the value chains Scope 3: By 2030, Alibaba will collaborate with its upstream and downstream value chain partners to cut emission intensity by 50% in regard to the base year of 2020. Alibaba Cloud provides the key digital infrastructure and will achieve Scope 3 carbon neutrality during the same period.

Enabling low-carbon circular digital ecosystem Scope 3+: Beyond its own operations and direct value chains, Alibaba Group pledges to leverage its digital platforms to encourage even broader participation. The company commits to facilitate 1.5 gigatons of decarbonisation in its ecosystem by 2035.



While its own carbon neutrality plan is important, Alibaba Group has placed a large focus on Scope 3+, to influence and advocate for low carbon products, services and behaviour among a wider group of stakeholders in the Alibaba digital ecosystem.

How businesses can reduce their emissions

There are many ways that businesses can reduce their carbon emissions and reduce their carbon footprint, from changing transportation to a greater emphasis on green logistics and cloud computing. For example in 2017, Chinas urban and rural residents, directly and indirectly, emitted about 4.15 billion tons of carbon dioxide, accounting for approximately 40% of total emissions. The ongoing challenge for businesses is to influence consumers to make more carbon-friendly purchases.

Smart transportation

Transportation accounts for a large portion of a persons carbon footprint. Decarbonising transportation systems won't be successful without the wide participation of businesses and consumers. For example, Alibabas Amap uses intelligent navigation technology and behavioural incentives to promote emission reductions in trillions of vehicle kilometres travelled and greener transportation choices by millions of urban residents. Scaling this further up and having the technology embraced by the bigger masses requires further coordinated efforts from public, private enterprises and the governments.

Green logistics

Parcel deliveries experienced a new round of sharp increases worldwide since the beginning of the pandemic, and China's overall delivery exceeded 100 billion items in 2021. While these parcels bring convenience, they also result in larger carbon emissions. Alibaba is leading an effort for all its logistics participants to reduce emissions in every single express package, thereby moving the logistics industry closer to a low-carbon future. Working with both upstream and downstream partners will ensure businesses contribute to the sustainability transition of the entire logistics industry. This includes leveraging inventory data and intelligent algorithms, the optimisation of the box design and establishing a standardised circulating box system, and cutting down on carton usage from warehouse to warehouse.

Cloud computing

Cloud computing plays a pivotal role in facilitating energy-efficient electrification and digitalisation processes, and thus is an important and cost-efficient emission reduction tool for both large and small businesses. Digital collaboration has completely changed the way organisations communicate and cooperate, greatly improving enterprise agility and efficiency.
GUEST OPINION: The conflict between Russia and Ukraine is raging not only in the physical realm but also on the cyber front, where governments, hacktivist groups, and individuals are trying to play their part. Here we analyse some examples of the cyberattacks that have taken place as part of the current conflict and review their methods and impact.

Russian cyber warfare: Wiper malware

The military campaign was preceded by a sophisticated cyberattack launched by Russia against multiple Ukrainian organisations. It included highly destructive malware called IsaacWiper and HermeticWizard, which are new variants of the wiper malware. The malware attack, alongside the military campaign, aimed to make an impact on the conflict.

The malware was installed on hundreds of machines in Ukraine and was followed by a wave of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. The new wipers can corrupt the data on a machine and make it inaccessible. In addition to the worm ability of spreading across a local network to infect more machines, they can also launch a ransomware attack and encrypt files on the compromised machine.

To our knowledge, this new wiper attack is targeting only Windows systems. According to internal Team Nautilus research, most cloud native environments (96%) are based on Linux. Thus, we assess that the risk to cloud native environments from this type of wiper malware is low. However, Russia's cyber arsenal might include similar tools that are designed to attack Linux environments.

Hacktivists step in

As the Russia-Ukraine conflict unfolded, it attracted the attention of global threat actors such as the hacktivist group Anonymous. Anonymous regularly launches cyberattacks in support of its social and political ideals as well as against governments and their resources. In this case, Anonymous has declared cyberwar on Russia and called for hackers around the world to target Russian organizations and government.

Cloud native technologies used in cyber campaigns

The attacks got our attention, and we at Team Nautilus tracked recent events to get an overview of the cyberattacks that have taken place. We gathered data from public repositories that contain code and tools aimed to target either side.

Among the repositories, we analysed container images in Docker Hub as well as popular code libraries and software packages, including PyPI, NPM, and Ruby. We searched for specific names and text labels that called for an active action against either side.

We investigated types of activities on these public sources. About 40% of the packages we observed were related to denial-of-service (DoS) activity aimed at disrupting the network traffic of online services. Other public repositories provided information to Ukrainian and Russian citizens or tools to block user networks from the conflict area.

We also saw activity with a banner that can be added to a website in support of Ukraine. Moreover, there were sources that suggested doxing, which is publicly revealing personal information of high-ranking individuals. Finally, one resource collected donations to Ukrainian citizens.

Analysis of container images in Docker Hub

Next, we analysed the container images "abagayev/stop-russia:latest" and "erikmnkl/stoppropaganda:latest", which were uploaded to Docker Hub. The main reason for studying them was that together they gained more than 150K pulls.

These container images have published instructions and source code on GitHub, including a list of targets with Russian website addresses. Among other things, the guidelines explained how to initiate an attack and what tools to download, allowing non-professionals to launch an attack on their own.

As we see, the repositories have played a major role in the ongoing virtual conflict, making cloud native tools widely available to a less technical audience. This once again shows that today you don't have to be a skilled hacker to take part in cyber war.

To analyse the container images above, we scanned them with Aqua's Dynamic Threat Analysis (DTA) scanner. It executed the container images in a secure sandbox, which allowed us to gain more insights into these tools and their impact.

The container image "abagayev/stop-russia:latest" contains a DoS attack tool that targets financial data and service providers in Russia.

The container image "erikmnkl/stoppropaganda:latest" contains a DDoS attack tool over TCP protocol through multiple connection requests. It's used to initiate the attack and targets multiple service providers in Russia.

Both container images also included attack tools that initiate DNS flood carried out over the UDP protocol, sending a large number of DNS requests to UDP in port 53, and aimed against Russian banks.

Attacks in the wild

As part of our research efforts, we regularly deploy honeypots, ie misconfigured cloud native applications, based on Docker and Kubernetes or other widely used applications such as databases. We analysed the data recorded by our honeypots with a focus on attacks that launched DDoS attacks in the wild and collected only IP addresses that belonged to Russia and Ukraine.

Based on the data accumulated in our honeypots, we found that 84% of the targets were affiliated with IP addresses in Russia and only 16% in Ukraine. Further sector segmentation of the organisation metadata linked to the IP addresses shows that network and media organisations were the prime targets and were attacked most often.

Conclusion

Our findings highlight the significant role that the cyber domain can play in a modern geopolitical conflict. As technology advances, experienced threat actors can create and distribute simple automated tools that allow less skilled individuals to participate in cyber war.

These advances also allow individuals and organised hacking groups to influence the conflict, using their knowledge and resources. We can see how emerging technologies are relevant in these efforts and can have an impact.

To learn how to protect against these cyberattacks, check out the blog The Russia-Ukraine Cyber Attacks: A CISO's Advice.
More than 150,000 spectators will pack into Churchill Downs on May 7 to watch the 148th Kentucky Derby: the race thats been dubbed the greatest two minutes in sports. Whether youre picking a dark horse or sticking with the favorite, we at Stacker have ranked all the thoroughbreds running t Click for more.
Two South Carolina hotel security guards were arrested after allegedly trying to poison their boss with eyedrops.

The two men, 47-year-old Andrew Doty and 30-year-old Hunter Howard, were employees at Sea Pines, a resort on Hilton Head Island.

Advertisement

A witness said the two put eye drops into their supervisors personal coffee maker on March 6, but the witness was able to warn the boss before he drank any of the coffee. Doty and Howard were arrested Friday and charged with tampering with a human drug product or food item with the intent to do bodily harm to a person, a felony.

Hunter Howard (left) and Andrew Doty face charges for attempting to poison a supervisors coffeemaker with eye drops, according to the Beaufort County Sheriffs Office. (BEAUFORT COUNTY DETENTION CENTER)

Both men face up to 20 years in prison if convicted.

Advertisement

According to Poison Control, eye drops can cause sleepiness, lowered blood pressure and a slowed heart rate when used in high amounts. If swallowed, eye drops can result in serious toxicity or death.
Jacksonville, TX (75766)

Today

Cloudy skies this morning followed by strong thunderstorms during the afternoon. Damaging winds and large hail with some storms. High 78F. Winds SSW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 90%..

Tonight

A few thunderstorms this evening. Mostly clear skies late. A few storms may be severe. Low 58F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 60%.




Donate Now As a public service during this pandemic, the Jewish News is providing free, unlimited access to all articles. Jewish News is a nonprofit publication that is owned by the community and relies on community support.
Theres no room for that.

A South Dakota hotel owner is drawing rebukes from the local government and members of the community after trying to ban Native American guests.

Advertisement

Connie Uhre, an owner of the Grand Gateway Hotel in Rapid City, near Mount Rushmore, wrote on Facebook on Sunday that she cannot allow a Native American to enter our business including Cheers, the attached bar and casino.

The post, which Uhre later deleted, came after two Native American teens were involved in a shooting early Sunday morning. In the post, Uhre wrongly described the shooting as a killing and said she did not know who is a bad Native or a good Native.

Advertisement

Grand Gateway Hotel in Rapid City, S.D. (Google)

Quincy Bear Robe, 19, was arrested after the shooting. The victim was left with multiple injuries.

Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Chairman Harold Frazier called the post racist and discriminatory and demanded an apology.

It is foolish to attack a race of people and not all of the issues affecting the society in which we live. This includes racism, Frazier said in a statement. The members of the Great Sioux Nation who visit our sacred Black Hills are often subject to this kind of behavior. Those members that choose to live on our treaty territory are often treated as a problem, no matter how we choose to live.

Breaking News As it happens Get updates on the coronavirus pandemic and other news as it happens with our free breaking news email alerts. >

Rapid City mayor Steve Allender said the shooting and Uhres response were both unacceptable.

I just felt that I couldnt be silent and pretend like this is just a harmless venting out of frustration, he said. This is an attack on not only the 12% of Rapid Citians who are Native American, but also the larger Native American population nationwide.

The mayor said such a policy at the hotel would be wrong morally as well as illegal.

This is a much larger issue that theyll have to defend to someone else, not me, Allender told the Rapid City Journal.

Nick Uhre, the owners son, told South Dakota Public Broadcasting no such ban would go into effect.

Advertisement

About 8,000 Rapid City residents are American Indian or Alaska Native, according to the U.S. Census Bureaus latest data.

With News Wire Services
ALBANY  Backlash over Gov. Hochuls proposed bail overhaul is growing as critics from all corners take issue with the potential changes despite Lt. Gov. Brian Benjamin promising a scalpel-like approach.

Benjamin at first embodied the administrations attempts to avoid the issue Tuesday as he ignored questions and dashed into an elevator. He declined to comment on the governors leaked proposals, including rolling back reforms by making more crimes bail-eligible and granting judges more discretion in deciding if a person should be detained pretrial.

Advertisement

Later, Benjamin, a former state senator, apologized for giving reporters the slip and sought to clarify the governors position.

We are talking with the Legislature on all proposals, he said. The governor believes we should have a scalpel-like approach here. We should only try to address things that would meaningful address what were seeing in our streets.

Advertisement

Hochul, hoping to convince legislative leaders to include the changes in the state budget, said a day earlier she will not negotiate in public and likewise refused to expand upon the 10-point public safety plan that has drawn pushback from both progressives and conservatives.

Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, mounting a Democratic primary challenge against Hochul, condemned the governor for not being more forthcoming as budget negotiations get underway.

A Williams Administration will openly discuss tough issues like Public Safety and answer tough questions from the press, he tweeted after railing against the rollbacks. Governor Hochul must be transparent and provide answers to the people she represents, not just her political donors.

Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-L.I.), also hoping to defeat Hochul in the June primary, supports expanding bail but calls the governors plan half baked.

How is that leadership? Suozzi said during an event outside Hochuls Manhattan office. Youre the governor of New York State; youre not going to discuss what your proposal is to address the biggest crisis we are facing right now?

Lieutenant Governor @brianbenjaminny is not taking questions on bail reform, as seen in this video from about 10 minutes ago.@ZachReports, @therealjsolo and @JonCampbellNY, among others, can be heard here. pic.twitter.com/BTfWl23yDW  Darrell Camp (@TheTDCamp) March 22, 2022

Hochuls plan, which blindsided many legislators when it was leaked to the press last week, calls for allowing judges to consider a defendants criminal history when setting bail and making repeat, gun-related, hate crime, and subway offenses bail-eligible. It would also allow police to arrest repeat offenders for low-level crimes that currently only result in an appearance ticket.

It also includes rolling back reforms to the states discovery laws, which force prosecutors to share evidence with defense attorneys, and the Raise the Age statute, meant to keep teens out of criminal court.

Advertisement

New York Lt. Gov. Brian Benjamin (left) and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (right) (Richard Drew/AP)

The Democratic-led Legislature approved sweeping changes to the states bail laws in 2019, essentially doing away with cash bail for most charges, in an attempt to reduce the number of people jailed while awaiting trial simply because they were poor.

Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bronx) and Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (D-Yonkers) maintain the issue is being used as a political tool by opponents, and that other factors, including the pandemic, have contributed to rising crime rates.

Well, you know, for me, I feel like the rising crime, Ive said this, on numerous occasions is a nationwide issue, Heastie said on Tuesday. Even though the press and different elected leaders want to have something to blame.
Johnson City, TN (37604)

Today

Sunny to partly cloudy. High 82F. Winds W at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Partly cloudy skies this evening will become overcast overnight. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low near 65F. Winds SSE at 5 to 10 mph.
Weather Alert

...The Flood Warning continues for the following rivers in Missouri and Kansas... Elk River near Tiff City affecting McDonald County. Spring River at Carthage affecting Jasper County. Spring River above Baxter Springs affecting Cherokee County. Spring River near Waco affecting Jasper County. .Heavy rainfall received overnight and additional rainfall expected today will cause river levels to rise well above flood stage. For the Elk River Basin...including Tiff City...Minor flooding is forecast. For the Spring River Basin...including Baxter Springs, Waco, Carthage...Minor flooding is forecast. PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS... Motorists should not attempt to drive around barricades or drive cars through flooded areas. Turn around, don't drown when encountering flooded roads. Many flood deaths occur in vehicles. Additional information is available at www.weather.gov. Friday morning at 915 AM CDT. && ...FLOOD WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL LATE SATURDAY EVENING... * WHAT...Minor flooding is occurring and minor flooding is forecast. * WHERE...Spring River at Carthage. * WHEN...Until late Saturday evening. * IMPACTS...At 14.0 feet, moderate flooding occurs at the gage site. The levee system closes due to flood waters affecting the north central industrial section of Carthage. Flood waters affect low lying areas and country roads north and west of Carthage along the river. Kellogg Lake Park floods and is closed. * ADDITIONAL DETAILS... - At 8:45 AM CDT Thursday the stage was 10.4 feet. - Forecast...The river is expected to rise to a crest of 13.6 feet just after midnight tonight. It will then fall below flood stage early Saturday morning. - Flood stage is 10.0 feet. - Flood History...This crest compares to a previous crest of 13.7 feet on 02/25/2018. &&
Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert again reminded her constituents of the importance of education  and it wasnt intentional.

As allergy season gets underway, I encourage everyone to take their allergy medicines so that my allergy medicines can work, she jokingly tweeted Wednesday. You know, it doesnt work unless everyone takes it.

Advertisement

As allergy season gets underway, I encourage everyone to take their allergy medicines so that my allergy medicines can work.



You know, it doesnt work unless everyone takes it.



  Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) March 23, 2022

Boebert  a high school dropout who got her GED shortly before entering Congress in 2021  was parroting a factually flawed claim by conspiracy-theory types that mass-vaccination does not slow the spread of COVID-19. The Centers for Disease Control finds Getting vaccinated is the best way to slow the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

Twitter users were quick to point out to the 35-year-old politician that allergies are different from contagious, airborne viruses.

Advertisement

Yeah. Youre so right, wisecracked one critic. I remember when I caught that terrible allergy last year from someone who didnt take their meds because as everyone knows allergies are terribly contagious, and I died.

Rep. Lauren Boebert seems to be allergic to common sense. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)

As explained by the Mayo Clinic: Allergies occur when your immune system reacts to a foreign substance  such as pollen, bee venom or pet dander  or a food that doesnt cause a reaction in most people.

Another Twitter user posted a comment that may have the nail on the head.

FYI, allergy is something which dont (sic) spread from person to person, that person tweeted. High school biology, but maybe you missed it.

The Durango Herald reports that according to Boebert, she did indeed miss that class.

I was a brand-new mom, and I had to make hard decisions on successfully raising my child, or getting to high school biology class, she said in 2020. And I chose to take care of my child.

Boebert claimed she got good marks in school and enjoyed the experience, but had different priorities.

A tweet from a commenter self-described as occasionally ornery simply read Stay in school, kids.

Advertisement

[ Lauren Boebert said she was thanked by the mother of a lieutenant corporal, which isnt a thing ]

Boeberts inflammatory postings on Twitter often attract ridicule. Last week, she posted video claiming that the mother of a lieutenant corporal supported her yelling at the president during the State of the Union Address as if she were attending a rodeo. Retired Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman joined the chorus of critics to note that there is no such rank as lieutenant corporal.

Boebert later confessed shes misspoke. She has echoed claims tied to the bizarre QAnon conspiracy theory cult.
Wharton, TX (77488)

Today

Windy and partly cloudy this morning. Scattered thunderstorms developing this afternoon. High 88F. Winds S at 20 to 30 mph. Chance of rain 50%. Higher wind gusts possible..

Tonight

Scattered thunderstorms during the evening. Partly cloudy skies after midnight. A few storms may be severe. Low 69F. SSW winds shifting to N at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 50%.
Madeleine Albright, the groundbreaking global diplomat appointed by President Bill Clinton as the first female U.S. secretary of state, died Wednesday of cancer at the age of 84, her family announced.

Albright, the nations 64th secretary of state, became the highest-ranking woman in American history at the time of her ascension to the position in 1996. The death of Albright, who previously served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, was announced in a brief statement by her family.

Advertisement

We are heartbroken to announce that Dr. Madeleine K. Albright passed away earlier today, said the family statement. She was surrounded by family and friends. We have lost a loving mother, grandmother, sister, aunt and friend.

Secretary of State Madeline Albright testifies before a House Appropriations committee in 1999. (Harry Hamburg/New York Daily News)

Clinton, who said he last spoke with Albright two weeks ago, described her as one of the finest secretaries of state, an outstanding UN ambassador, a brilliant professor, and an extraordinary human being. ... She never lost her great sense of humor or her determination to go out with her boots on, supporting Ukraine in its fight to preserve freedom and democracy.

Advertisement

She rose to her unprecedented positions in the U.S. after fleeing both Nazis and Communists in her native Czechoslovakia. Her family arrived in the United States as refugees in 1948, long before her improbable ascent to the topmost reaches of American diplomacy.

[ Madeleine Albright mourned by a grateful nation ]

Albright, born in Prague, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012 from President Barack Obama, who praised her work during her service as Americas global diplomat and hailed her life as an inspiration for all Americans.

Madeleines courage and toughness helped bring peace to the Balkans and paved the way for progress in some of the most unstable corners of the world, he said.

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright speaks during the second day of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, July 26, 2016. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)

President Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken were informed of her passing on their flight to Brussels for an emergency NATO meeting about Ukraine.

Former President George W. Bush issued a statement saying, Laura and I are heartbroken by the news of Madeleine Albrights death. She lived out the American Dream and helped others realize it. ... She served with distinction as a foreign-born foreign minister who understood firsthand the importance of free societies for peace in our world.

FILE - President Barack Obama awards Madeleine Albright the Presidential Medal of Freedom in the East Room of the White House, on May 29, 2012, in Washington. (Carolyn Kaster/AP)

Albright, born Marie Jana Korbelova on May 15, 1937, was the daughter of a Jewish diplomat. The family converted to Catholicism when she was a 5-year-old to protect its members during the Holocaust and World War II.

Three of her Jewish grandparents died in concentration camps, and she eventually learned that 26 family members died in the Holocaust.

Once the family landed in the U.S., her father became a teacher at the University of Denver, where his students included a young Condoleezza Rice. She would later succeed his daughter as secretary of state, becoming the first Black woman to hold that office.

Advertisement

Albright was a little-known quantity until Clintons arrival in the White House in 1993, when the new president named her chief U.S. ambassador to the UN.

She emerged quickly as a vociferous advocate for American global interests as she and the administration clashed repeatedly with then-UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali over an assortment of issues, including the Bosnian civil war, as well as peacekeeping operations in Somalia.

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton (R) hugs former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright (C) after Clinton received the Fulbright Prize for International Understanding April 12, 2006, in Washington, DC. (Win McNamee / Getty Images)

The future diplomat graduated from Wellesley College in 1959, working as a journalist before moving on to study international relations at Columbia University, where she earned a masters degree in 1968 and a Ph.D. eight years later. She also wrote several books, including The New York Times best seller Hell and Other Destinations.

At a time when refugees are fleeing a brutal war of aggression, Madeleine Albrights inspiring life is a powerful reminder of how those who arrive here with nothing but dreams have made our nation stronger and our world more peaceful, said former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg.

Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 33 Naomi Judd, the Kentucky-born matriarch of the Grammy-winning duo The Judds and mother of Wynonna and Ashley Judd, has died, her family announced Saturday, April 30, 2022. She was 76. (Josh Anderson/AP)

Albright married journalist Joseph Albright, a descendant of Chicagos Medill-Patterson newspaper dynasty, in 1959. They had three daughters and divorced in 1983.

Albright was, at the time of her death, a Georgetown University professor in the School of Foreign Service and chairwoman of the Albright Stonebridge Group, a global strategy business.
Reporter

Susan covers the towns of Somers and Enfield. She joined the JI in May 2021 and graduated from Skidmore College. She recently completed docent training for the Wadsworth Atheneum and hopes to start giving tours some time next year.
BRUSSELS (AP)  As war rages on in Ukraine, President Joe Biden will huddle with key allies in Brussels and Warsaw this week to talk through plans for imposing punishing new sanctions on Russia and dealing with an extraordinary humanitarian crisis, while developing a consensus on how they would respond if Russia were to launch a cyber, chemical or even nuclear attack.

Biden arrived in Brussels on Wednesday for a four-day trip that will test his ability to navigate Europes worst crisis since World War II ended in 1945. There are fears that Russia could use chemical or nuclear weapons as its invasion becomes bogged down in the face of logistical problems and fierce Ukrainian resistance.

Advertisement

President Joe Biden is greeted by Belgian Prime Minister Alexander de Croo after arriving at Brussels National Airport, Wednesday, March 23, 2022, in Brussels. (Evan Vucci/AP)

I think its a real threat, Biden said of the possibility of Russia deploying chemical weapons. He spoke during a brief exchange with reporters at the White House before his departure.

As Biden made his way to Brussels, his top diplomat announced he had made a formal determination that Russian troops have committed war crimes in Ukraine.

Advertisement

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, traveling with Biden, said in a statement the assessment was made on a careful review of public and intelligence sources since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine a month ago. He said the U.S. would share that information with allies, partners and international institutions tasked with investigating allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Weve seen numerous credible reports of indiscriminate attacks and attacks deliberately targeting civilians, as well as other atrocities. Russias forces have destroyed apartment buildings, schools, hospitals, critical infrastructure, civilian vehicles, shopping centers and ambulances, leaving thousands of innocent civilians killed or wounded, Blinken said.

U.S. President Joe Biden steps off Air Force One as he arrives at Melsbroek military airport in Brussels, Wednesday, March 23, 2022. (Olivier Matthys/AP)

Jake Sullivan, Bidens national security adviser, said the president would coordinate with allies on military assistance for Ukraine and new sanctions on Russia during meetings Thursday with NATO officials, Group of Seven leaders and European Union allies.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said four new battlegroups, which usually number between 1,000 and 1,500 troops, are being temporarily set up in Hungary, Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria. A permanent force posture is expected to be formally announced at the next NATO summit in Madrid in June, Sullivan said.

At the meeting of the Group of Seven, leaders from the bloc of wealthy, industrialized nations are expected to unveil a new initiative to coordinate sanctions enforcement and unveil additional sanctions against Russian officials.

Sullivan said additional Russian oligarchs and political figures would be among those designated in the sanctions unveiled Thursday.

Central to the presidents agenda during his time in Europe is making certain that the U.S. and its allies remain on the same page.

What we would like to hear is that the resolve in unity that weve seen for the past month will endure for as long as it takes, Sullivan told reporters on Air Force One en route to Brussels.

Advertisement

Sullivan also said the United States is looking for ways to surge supplies of liquified natural gas to Europe to help make up for supply disruptions. The European Union imports nearly all of the natural gas needed to generate electricity, heat homes and supply industry, with Russia supplying nearly half of EU gas and a quarter of its oil.

Sullivans description of Bidens trip was another sign that the crisis is entering a new and uncertain phase.

After the initial invasion failed to topple Ukraines government, the war has become a grinding endeavor for Putin, who is relying on airstrikes and artillery that are devastating civilian communities. Negotiations between Ukraine and Russia have not produced a cease-fire or a path to ending the conflict, and the U.S. continues to rush weapons like anti-tank missiles to Ukrainian forces.

This is one of those decisive moments for an American leader that defines their legacy internationally, said Timothy Naftali, a presidential historian at New York University.

Biden travels to Warsaw on Friday to meet Polish officials to discuss the enormous humanitarian strain caused by the Ukrainian refugee crisis. Biden is scheduled to meet with Polish President Andrzej Duda on Saturday.
Opinion Columnist

Chris Powell has worked for the Journal Inquirer since 1967, first as a reporter, then as an editor, and now as a columnist. He was managing editor from 1974 until retiring from that position in 2018.
WINDSOR  Windsor Town Council members are hoping to use a portion of an expected $8.5 milli

ELLINGTON  Gov. Ned Lamont visited Oakridge Dairy Wednesday to announce that hes directing

STAFFORD  The town is seeking resident feedback for how it should spend $3.5 million in fed

SOMERS  More than 50 people attended a kick-off event in Town Hall this week for the COVID-

ENFIELD  Over 70 members of the North Central Connecticut Chamber of Commerce attended an e

ENFIELD  The town is using $50,000 in American Rescue Plan federal funding to offer free PC

ELLINGTON The Board of Selectmen has established a task force to review ideas that departme

COVID FUNDS

AMOUNT: Enfield received $12,920,906 in American Rescue Plan Act funds for COVID-19.

SO FAR: $2,448,230 has already been spent and committed.

REMAINING: The town still has $10,472,676 available.

DEADLINES: The town has until Dec. 31, 2024 to obligate the funds and until Dec. 31, 2026 to spend the cash.
Today

Partly cloudy. High near 80F. Winds light and variable.

Tonight

Partly cloudy skies early will give way to cloudy skies late. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low near 60F. Winds light and variable.

Tomorrow

Isolated thunderstorms in the morning, then mainly cloudy during the afternoon with thunderstorms likely. A few storms may be severe. High 79F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
A leading exiled Belarusian opposition figure on Wednesday urged the West to strengthen sanctions against President Alexander Lukashenko and his regime for supporting Russias invasion of Ukraine.

Lukashenko has backed President Vladimir Putins war, allowing him to launch attacks from Belarusian territory and prompting critics to brand him a partner-in-crime and co-aggressor.

Although he has faced tightening sanctions since violently cracking down on mass protests in Belarus following elections in 2020 widely condemned as rigged, critics argue Western nations could and should go further.

Lukashenko deserves far more global opprobrium than has come his way, Pavel Latushko, a leading Poland-based Belarusian dissident wrote in The New European newspaper.

He may be Putins pawn. But he is also a major player in this horror show, and it is time the West realised it, and acted accordingly. Both of these monsters need to be held to account.

Latushko, who fled his homeland amid the crackdown that has seen tens of thousands of people detained, has penned an open letter to world leaders urging them to mirror in Belarus the sanctions recently imposed on Russia.

He also wants the international community to consider including Lukashenko in any war crimes charges filed, noting dissidents have also been amassing evidence of his brutal repression inside Belarus.

The West needs a serious response; prosecution for his past crimes; sanctions for his current crimes, Latushko stated in the letter.

Anything less is playing his, and Putins game.

 Renewed sanctions 

The United States earlier this month renewed sanctions against Lukashenko, who has faced measures there since 2006, while it has tightened restrictions on his government and the countrys economy.

They include visa restrictions on dozens of people allegedly involved in undermining democracy in Belarus as well as a ban on luxury goods exports to the eastern European country and other moves.

Meanwhile the UK currently has 108 individuals and 10 entities from Belarus under sanctions, after expanding its target list earlier this month.

The US and UK are also set to suspend the most favoured nation trade status of both Russia and Belarus, while the European Union is looking at doing the same.

However, the measures against Belarus pale in comparison to the actions taken against Moscow, which has faced unprecedented measures.

The United States, UK and EU have hit hundreds of Russian individuals and companies with asset freezes and travel bans and hiked tariffs on imports of goods such as vodka and steel.

Washington has imposed an immediate ban on Russian oil and other energy imports, while London has said it will cut out such oil imports by the end of this year and Brussels is mulling how it can reduce its imports.
Saying she saw with her own eyes her two daughters killed by the Myanmar military, Rahima Khatun is hopeful the US designation of the 2017 onslaught against the Rohingya as genocide will bring some justice.

The girls, thrown into a burning house as their village was razed to the ground, were among thousands of victims of a brutal crackdown against Myanmars long-marginalised Muslim minority.

Myanmars junta denies the allegations and the case is currently being heard at the United Nations highest court at The Hague, but the US declaration has provided hope for justice among many Rohingya.

The Myanmar military slaughtered and raped women. One day they came and threw our children alive into the fire. My two daughters were among them, said Khatun, 52, tears rolling down her cheeks at a refugee camp in Bangladesh.

The crackdown prompted an exodus of about 740,000 people into Bangladesh, joining more than 100,000 others who had fled earlier waves of violence.

They live in a vast network of squalid camps made up of bamboo shacks, refusing to return home until Myanmar ensures the rights of the Rohingya.

Washington said this week there was clear evidence of an attempt at the destruction of the minority group.

Community leaders in the camps, activists and victims told AFP that the US move would bring Myanmars military to account and  perhaps  allow them to go back and rebuild their villages and lives across the border.

We have been waiting for a long time for this day. The US is the worlds most powerful nation. Their decision will reverberate across the world. Maybe well get justice soon, local leader Sayed Ullah told AFP.

Ullah, 33, who heads a Rohingya rights group in the camps, also lost several relatives and dozens of fellow villagers during the 2017 offensive.

Young Rohingya activist Sawyeddollah, 23, said news of the US decision spread like wildfire through the settlements, with people sharing video of Secretary of State Antony Blinkens speech on cellphones.

I hope the Biden administration will create a quick tribunal to go for action to implement their decision, Sawyeddollah said.

America didnt say anything all these years. But yesterdays decision made all of us very happy, said Robi Ullah, 45, another refugee.

Siraj Ullah, 65, said he offered prayers to God to express gratitude to the United States.

I hope they (the US) can ensure our repatriation as early as possible. If we get all of our rights back we are agreed to go back to our homeland instantly, Ullah told AFP.

 No genocidal intent 

Myanmars junta on Tuesday said it categorically rejects the US declaration.

Myanmar has never engaged in any genocidal actions and does not have any genocidal intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, racial or religious group or any other group, it said.

Bangladesh, which has borne the brunt of sheltering the refugees, called the US decision overdue but still good news, and said it would strengthen the case against Myanmar at the International Court of Justice.

I believe, hopefully after the statement of the US Secretary of State, they (Washington) will also put more pressure on the Myanmar government so that they take back their people as they have already promised, Bangladesh Foreign Minister A.K. Abdul Momen said.

He added however that Myanmar was continuing to stall repatriation efforts, most recently by issuing a list of 700 Rohingya who could return which he said was defective and likely to be rejected by the Rohingya community.

The way the list is prepared, it feels like it lacks goodwill and smacks of ulterior motives, he said.

Mohammad Zafar, another Rohingya community leader in Kutupalong, the biggest of the refugee camps  and the largest in the world  played down the prospect of returning home any time soon.

I highly doubt whether it will bring any change to our fate. We are literally stranded in a foreign land for years, barely surviving, he said.

The damage has been done to us. Nothing can compensate unless there are visible actions, Zafar told AFP.
The Russian bear wing of the GOP is growling again.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) has denounced Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as corrupt, along with his government.

Advertisement

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)

MTG effectively put herself in the same camp as far right-wing colleague Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.), who has harshly slammed Ukraines leader even as leads the fight against the Russian invasion.

Do you agree with Madison Cawthorn that Zelenskyy is corrupt and that the Ukrainian government is corrupt? Greene said, reading a question submitted by a participant in a Tuesday evening town hall.

Advertisement

Yes and yes. Thats an easy one, the lawmaker said.

Greene also pinned a tweet that denounces Zelensky(y) & Nazi militias in his corrupt country.

The unfounded reference to Nazi militias echoes Russian propaganda that laid the groundwork for the invasion and ignores the Ukrainian presidents Jewish background.

I do not support:



Putin & his murderous war in Ukraine.



Zelensky & Nazi militias in his corrupt country.



Neocons, Neolibs, or the Uniparty foreign policies that have spent trillions in senseless foreign wars.



I support the American People only and call for all of this to end.  Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (@RepMTG) March 20, 2022

Although they say they oppose Russian President Vladimir Putins invasion, Greene and Cawthorn were two of only eight House lawmakers to vote against imposing harsh new sanctions against Russia for invading its smaller neighbor.

The staunch supporter of President Trump called the measure a trick that would lead to American troops being sent into harms way to confront Russia.

Greene spoke at a recent conference of a white nationalist group at which a cheering crowd greeted her with chants of Putin, Putin.

Cawthorn even called Zelenskyy a thug.

In this image from video provided by the Ukrainian Presidential Press Office, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks from Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, March 22, 2022. (AP)

Zelenskyy has unified the world behind the people of Ukraine as they bravely fight to repel the Russian invasion, which has deliberately targeted civilians. He won repeated standing ovations from Congress when he delivered a video speech last week.

Advertisement

Trump, who enjoyed a cozy relationship with Putin while in office, initially praised the Russian leader for his very savvy invasion but has since changed his tune, saying President Biden should take a tougher stand against Russia.
Almost 100,000 people are trapped by Russian bombardment and facing starvation in the ruins of Mariupol, Ukraines leader said, as Moscow accused Washington of undermining peace talks.

Tens of thousands of residents have already fled the besieged southern port city, bringing harrowing testimony of a freezing hellscape riddled with dead bodies and destroyed buildings, according to Human Rights Watch.

As the UN demanded Russia end its absurd and unwinnable war, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was Wednesday delivering a message of defiance to the Japanese and French parliaments.

Nearly a month on since Russia invaded Ukraine, stop-start peace talks have agreed on daily humanitarian corridors for refugees, and Ukraine says it is willing to countenance some Russian demands subject to a national referendum.

But it has refused to bow to Russian pressure to disarm and renounce all Western alliances, and Zelensky was also due Thursday to address a NATO summit in Brussels joined by US President Joe Biden.

The talks are tough, the Ukrainian side constantly changes its position, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Wednesday.

Its hard to avoid the impression that our American colleagues are holding their hand, he said, claiming that Washington apparently wants to keep us in a state of military action as long as possible.

Russia meanwhile refuses to rule out using nuclear weapons if it were facing an existential threat, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told CNN.

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby slammed Moscows dangerous rhetoric, and Biden warned that Russia may also use chemical and biological weapons in Ukraine as its ground offensive stalls.

 Charred landscape 

For Ukrainians besieged in Mariupol and other cities, Russian talk of peace rings hollow as they come under indiscriminate shelling that Western countries say amounts to a war crime.

Failing in their war against the Ukrainian people, the enemy is executing the total destruction of critical infrastructure, Ukraines armed forces command said on Facebook.

In his latest video address, Zelensky said more than 7,000 people had escaped Mariupol in the last 24 hours, but one group travelling along an agreed humanitarian route west of the city were simply captured by the occupiers.

Today, the city still has nearly 100,000 people in inhumane conditions. In a total siege. Without food, water, medication, under constant shelling and under constant bombing, he said.

Satellite images of Mariupol released by private company Maxar showed a charred landscape, with several buildings ablaze and smoke billowing from the city.

Ukrainian forces also reported heavy ground fighting, with Russian infantry storming the city after they rejected a Monday ultimatum to surrender.

UN relief agencies estimate there have been around 20,000 civilian casualties in Mariupol, and perhaps 3,000 killed, but they point out that the actual figure remains unknown.

Even if Mariupol falls, Ukraine cannot be conquered city by city, street by street, house by house, United Nations chief Antonio Guterres said.

This war is unwinnable. Sooner or later, it will have to move from the battlefield to the peace table. That is inevitable.

Mariupol is a pivotal target in President Vladimir Putins war  providing a land bridge between Russian forces in Crimea to the southwest and Russian-controlled territory to the north and east.

 Putin threatens Russias future 

Putins offensive is stuck despite all the destruction that it is bringing day after day, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said in a speech to the Bundestag, warning of further Western sanctions against Russia.

Putin must hear the truth that not only is the war destroying Ukraine, but also Russias future, he said.

Along with NATO, Biden was also due to attend EU and G7 summits Thursday before heading to Poland, which has received the bulk of more than 3.5 million Ukrainians fleeing the war.

The president will consult with allies on new sanctions, and on potentially throwing Russia out of the G20, US officials said.

We believe that it cannot be business as usual for Russia in international institutions and in the international community, White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters.

Washington has also not observed any Chinese arms shipments to Russia since Biden held a call with President Xi Jinping last week in which he raised concerns about Beijings support for Moscow, Sullivan said.

China, a leading member of the G20, pushed back against expelling Russia from the group of major economies.

The G20 is the main forum for international economic cooperation, foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said. Russia is an important member, and no member has the right to expel another country.

On the ground, Russias defence ministry has reported some advances in the southeast of Ukraine and boasted of strikes using next-generation weaponry against military infrastructure across the country.

But Ukraine and its allies have claimed Russian forces are severely depleted, poorly supplied and still unable to carry out complex operations.

For the first time, there are signs that Ukrainian forces are going on the offensive, retaking a town near Kyiv and attacking Russian forces in the south of the country.

 Morale is high 

In the southern city of Mykolaiv, one bulwark of the fightback, residents said they were determined to stay despite incessant bombardment

At the burial of soldier Igor Dundukov, 46, his brother Sergei wept as he kissed his siblings swollen, blood-stained face.

We supported his commitment to defending our homeland, Sergei told AFP. This is our land. We live here. Where would we run to? We grew up here.

In the capital Kyiv, a 35-hour curfew ended early Wednesday after Russian strikes laid waste to the Retroville shopping complex, killing at least eight people.

Russia claimed the mall was being used to store rocket systems and ammunition.

Maxim Kostetskyi, 29, a lawyer, said residents had used the curfew to regroup.

We dont know if the Russians will continue with their efforts to encircle the city, but we are much more confident, the morale is high and inspiring, he told AFP.

burs-jit/spm

Meta
Ukraine appealed for more Western military help ahead of a NATO summit, as it warned that almost 100,000 people are trapped by Russian bombardment and facing starvation in the ruins of the besieged port of Mariupol.

Tens of thousands of residents have already fled the southern city, bringing harrowing testimony of a freezing hellscape riddled with dead bodies and destroyed buildings, according to Human Rights Watch.

As the UN demanded Russia end its unwinnable war, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told the Japanese parliament that the UN Security Council was dysfunctional and in need of reform, after Russia wielded its veto to nix condemnation of its invasion.

Nearly a month on, peace talks have agreed on daily humanitarian corridors for refugees, and Ukraine says it is willing to countenance some Russian demands subject to a national referendum.

But it has refused to bow to Russian pressure to disarm and renounce all Western alliances, and Zelensky was also due Thursday to address a NATO meeting in Brussels joined by US President Joe Biden.

Ukraines lead negotiator Mykhaylo Podolyak said the peace talks were encountering significant difficulties, after Moscow accused the United States of undermining the process.

Russia meanwhile refuses to rule out using nuclear weapons if it faces an existential threat, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told CNN.

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby slammed Moscows dangerous rhetoric, and Biden warned en route to Europe that Russia may also use chemical weapons in Ukraine as its ground offensive stalls.

Our armed forces and citizens are holding out with superhuman courage, Andriy Yermak, a top advisor to Zelensky, said as Biden travelled to the summits of NATO, the G7 and European Union in Brussels.

But we cannot win a war without offensive weapons, without medium-range missiles that can be a means of deterrence, Yermak said.

NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said the leaders at Thursdays summit would agree to major increases of forces including four new battle groups in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia.

The allies will also offer additional support to Ukraine against nuclear and chemical threats, he said.

 Charred landscape 

For Ukrainians besieged in Mariupol and other cities, Russian talk of peace rings hollow as they come under indiscriminate shelling that Western countries say amounts to a war crime.

In a video address, Zelensky said more than 7,000 people had escaped Mariupol in the last 24 hours, but one group travelling along an agreed humanitarian route west of the city was simply captured by the occupiers.

Today, the city still has nearly 100,000 people in inhumane conditions. In a total siege. Without food, water, medication, under constant shelling and under constant bombing, he said.

Satellite images of Mariupol released by private company Maxar showed a charred landscape, with several buildings ablaze and smoke billowing from the city.

Ukrainian forces also reported heavy ground fighting, with Russian infantry storming the city after they rejected a Monday ultimatum to surrender.

UN relief agencies estimate there have been around 20,000 civilian casualties in Mariupol, and perhaps 3,000 killed, but they stress the actual figure remains unknown.

Even if Mariupol falls, Ukraine cannot be conquered city by city, street by street, house by house, United Nations chief Antonio Guterres said.

This war is unwinnable. Sooner or later, it will have to move from the battlefield to the peace table. That is inevitable.

Mariupol is a pivotal target in President Vladimir Putins war  providing a land bridge between Russian forces in Crimea to the southwest and Russian-controlled territory to the north and east.

 Putin threatens Russias future 

Putins offensive is stuck despite all the destruction that it is bringing day after day, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said in a speech to the Bundestag, warning of further Western sanctions against Russia.

Putin must hear the truth that not only is the war destroying Ukraine, but also Russias future, he said.

After Brussels, Biden will head on to Poland, which has received the bulk of more than 3.6 million Ukrainians fleeing the war.

The president will consult with allies on new sanctions and on potentially throwing Russia out of the G20, US officials said.

We believe that it cannot be business as usual for Russia in international institutions and in the international community, White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters.

China, a leading member of the G20, pushed back against expelling Russia from the group of major economies, and Moscow said Putin still intended to join its November summit in Indonesia.

On the ground, Russias defence ministry has reported some advances in the southeast of Ukraine and boasted of strikes using next-generation weaponry against military infrastructure across the country.

But Ukraine and its allies have claimed Russian forces are severely depleted, poorly supplied and still unable to carry out complex operations.

For the first time, there are signs that Ukrainian forces are going on the offensive, retaking a town near Kyiv and attacking Russian forces in the south of the country.

 Morale is high 

In the southern city of Mykolaiv, one bulwark of the fightback, residents said they were determined to stay despite incessant bombardment.

At the burial of soldier Igor Dundukov, 46, his brother Sergei wept as he kissed his siblings swollen, blood-stained face.

We supported his commitment to defending our homeland, Sergei told AFP. This is our land. We live here. Where would we run to? We grew up here.

In the capital Kyiv, a 35-hour curfew ended early Wednesday after Russian strikes laid waste to the Retroville shopping complex, killing at least eight people.

Russia claimed the mall was being used to store rocket systems and ammunition.

Maxim Kostetskyi, 29, a lawyer, said residents had used the curfew to regroup.

We dont know if the Russians will continue with their efforts to encircle the city, but we are much more confident, the morale is high and inspiring, he told AFP.

burs-jit/

Meta
US President Joe Biden has called his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin a war criminal. But it is the job of Iryna Venediktova, Ukraines prosecutor general, to make the case.

Yes, we can prove it, Venediktova told AFP.

Id even say more. He is the main war criminal of the 21st century.

Venediktova is investigating and tallying the mounting cases of suspected crimes by Putins invading forces.

The 43-year-old shuffles a grim sheaf of printouts: a maternity hospital wrecked by shelling; a burnt-out theatre that was sheltering children; and an ash-covered street strewn with the rubble of apartment buildings.

These are just a few of the cases she is building against Russias commanders, ministers and Putin himself.

He actually wants to destroy Ukraine as a state, she said, speaking from the western city of Lviv  for security reasons, she asked AFP not to reveal her exact location.

 The judicial front 

Atrocities committed in the fog of war often remain hidden from justice forever. Investigations are rare and can take years, if ever, to come to fruition.

But Ukraine is making a major effort on what Venediktova calls the judicial front to be successful in the nearest future.

Time flies very, very fast in war, she says.

As of Wednesday midday the prosecutors office had recorded 2,401 crimes of aggression and war crimes and 1,516 crimes against national security in the first month of conflict.

There are 127 wanted suspects in what Venediktova calls the anchor case against Russias civil and military regime.

Since the invasion began on February 24 Venediktova has been travelling the length and breadth of unoccupied Ukraine gathering evidence.

There are before and after satellite images of flattened buildings, interviews with captured Russian soldiers, and the testimony of refugees fleeing across the border.

I try to be in the place where I need to be, she says.

The crimes she identifies vary enormously. There are a lot of cases of wartime rape; there is the indiscriminate shelling of civilian buildings; and a child who died of dehydration in a blockaded city.

The besieged port city of Mariupol is foremost in her mind. I try to be a very cold prosecutor, she says.

What now I see in Mariupol its not about war, its about genocide.

Theatres of war have some rules, some principles. What we see in Mariupol, [are] no rules at all.

The city has been taken hostage, she says. Its impossible to give them food, water, electricity  and the Russian Federation exactly knows what they are doing here.

But the most upsetting case she has considered so far is of a 14 year-old boy reportedly killed in a Russian tank attack on the fourth day of the war.

On a mobile phone she shows a graphic photo of a munition round lodged in his open chest.

That, for her, was the most powerful case, she said, her voice trailing off.

The prosecutors running tally shows 121 children killed so far in the war.

 Pursuing an international prosecution 

Ukraine may feel its case against Russia is strong, but the prospect of seeing meaningful justice will be complex.

Venediktova says cases will be prosecuted in Ukraines domestic courts. But the highest prize would be conviction in an international court.

Ukraine is not a member of the International Criminal Court (ICC) but it has accepted its jurisdiction in the past, leaving the door open to a tribunal.

ICC prosecutor Karim Khan has opened an investigation after 41 other member states referred Ukraines case to his office.

There is a reasonable basis to believe that both alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity have been committed, he said earlier this month.

However, because Russia is not an ICC member it cannot adjudicate on the more straightforward case of crimes of aggression.

The ICC also does not conduct trials in absentia, and the prospect of seeing Russian suspects transported from the pariah state to the dock at the Hague seems remote.

Venediktova is optimistic, however.

She believes there is a strong case for Russia to face charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide at the ICC.

Her team is collecting evidence so Khans prosecution will be successful if and when Ukraine has its day in court.

Nobody knows what will be in the future, she says.
The United States has reached the assessment that Russian military forces committed war crimes in Ukraine, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced Wednesday.

The US top diplomat said last week that he believed Russia was guilty of committing war crimes by attacking civilians in Ukraine  echoing a statement by President Joe Biden who has branded his counterpart Vladimir Putin a war criminal.

On Wednesday Blinken said the US government  after documenting and assessing evidence that civilians had been deliberately targeted during the month-long invasion  had now made a determination.

Today, I can announce that, based on information currently available, the US government assesses that members of Russias forces have committed war crimes in Ukraine, Blinken said in a statement.

Our assessment is based on a careful review of available information from public and intelligence sources, he added, noting that as with any alleged crime, a court of law with jurisdiction over the crime would ultimately be responsible for determining criminal guilt.

Western nations and the Ukrainian government have repeatedly argued that indiscriminate Russian shelling that has claimed hundreds of civilian lives in the besieged southern port of Mariupol and other cities amounts to a war crime.

Blinken said the US government would continue to track reports of war crimes and share information gathered with allies, partners, and international institutions and organizations.

We are committed to pursuing accountability using every tool available, including criminal prosecutions, he said.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson said late Wednesday Britain would send 6,000 missiles and 25 million ($33 million, 30 million euros) in financial aid to Ukraines army to help it fight Russian forces.

The announcement of the funding and additional military hardware, consisting of anti-tank and high explosive weapons, comes on the eve of NATO and G7 summits set to discuss the Russian invasion.

The British leader will urge Western allies to step up a gear in their responses to Moscows actions, including by providing enhanced defensive support to Ukraine and doubling down on economic sanctions, according to his office.

He will detail Londons intention to work with partners to bolster Ukraines defence capabilities, including longer-range targeting and intelligence, Downing Street added.

We cannot and will not stand by while Russia grinds Ukraines towns and cities into dust, Johnson said in a statement unveiling the new support package for Kyiv.

The United Kingdom will work with our allies to step up military and economic support to Ukraine, strengthening their defences as they turn the tide in this fight.

Johnson added the international community faced a choice of keeping the flame of freedom alive in Ukraine or risking it being snuffed out across Europe and the world.

London has already provided Kyiv with over 4,000 anti-tank weapons, including Next-Generation Light Anti-Tank Weapons Systems (NLAWs) and so-called Javelin missiles.

The UK government is also supplying Starstreak high-velocity anti-aircraft missiles to help counter aerial bombings, as well as body armour, helmets and combat boots.

The hardware has been credited as playing a key part in helping Ukraine stall Russias invasion.

Britain has previously committed 400 million in humanitarian and economic aid for the crisis in Ukraine.

The new 25 million funding will help pay the salaries of Ukrainian soldiers, pilots and police and ensure the countrys armed forces are well equipped with high-quality equipment, Downing Street said.

In addition to the new military kit and funding, Britain will also provide an additional 4.1 million for the BBC World Service as part of a cross-government effort to tackle disinformation in Russia and Ukraine, it added.

Funding and administrative support will also go towards the International Criminal Courts investigation into war crimes, Johnsons office noted.
Modernas COVID-19 vaccine works in babies, toddlers and preschoolers the company announced Wednesday  and if regulators agree it could mean a chance to finally start vaccinating the littlest kids by summer.

Moderna said in the coming weeks it would ask regulators in the US and Europe to authorize two small-dose shots for youngsters under 6. The company also is seeking to have larger-dose shots cleared for older children and teens in the US

The nations 18 million children under 5 are the only age group not yet eligible for vaccination. Competitor Pfizer currently offers kid-sized doses for school-age children and full-strength shots for those 12 and older.

But parents have anxiously awaited protection for younger tots, disappointed by setbacks and confusion over which shots might work and when. Pfizer is testing even smaller doses for children under 5 but had to add a third shot to its study when two didnt prove strong enough. Those results are expected by early April.

Vaccinating the littlest has been somewhat of a moving target over the last couple of months, Dr. Bill Muller of Northwestern University, an investigator in Modernas pediatric studies, said in an interview before the company released its findings. Theres still, I think, a lingering urgency to try to get that done as soon as possible.

The younger the child, the smaller the dose being tested. Moderna said a quarter of the dose it uses for adults worked well for youngsters under age 6.

Moderna enrolled about 6,900 tots in a study of the 25-microgram doses. Early data showed after two shots, youngsters developed virus-fighting antibody levels just as strong as young adults getting regular-strength shots, the company said in a press release.

Moderna said the small doses were safe, and the main side effects were mild fevers like those associated with other commonly used pediatric vaccines.

Once Moderna submits the data to the FDA, regulators will debate whether to authorize emergency use of the small doses for tots. If so, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention then will decide whether to recommend them.

While COVID-19 generally isnt as dangerous to youngsters as to adults, some do become severely ill. The CDC says about 400 children younger than 5 have died from COVID-19 since the pandemics start. The omicron variant hit children especially hard, with those under 5 hospitalized at higher rates than at the peak of the previous delta surge, the CDC found.

COVID-19 vaccines in general dont prevent infection with the omicron mutant as well as they fended off earlier variants  but they do still offer strong protection against severe illness.

Moderna reported that same trend in the trial of children under 6, conducted during the omicron surge. While there were no severe illnesses, the vaccine proved just under 44% effective at preventing any infection in babies up to age 2, and nearly 38% effective in the preschoolers.

Moderna said also said Wednesday it will ask the Food and Drug Administration to clear larger doses for older children.

While other countries already have allowed Modernas shots to be used in children as young as 6, the US has limited its vaccine to adults. A Moderna request to expand its shots to 12- to 17-year-olds has been stalled for months.

The company said Wednesday that, armed with additional evidence, it is updating its FDA application for teen shots and requesting a green light for 6- to 11-year-olds, too.

Moderna says its original adult dose  two 100-microgram shots  is safe and effective in 12- to 17-year-olds. For elementary-age kids, its using half the adult dose.

But the FDA never ruled on Modernas application for teen shots because of concern about a very rare side effect. Heart inflammation sometimes occurs in teens and young adults, mostly males, after receiving either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines. Moderna is getting extra scrutiny because its shots are a far higher dose than Pfizers.

The risk also seems linked to puberty, and regulators in Canada, Europe and elsewhere recently expanded Moderna vaccinations to kids as young as 6.

That concern has not been seen in the younger children, said Northwesterns Muller.
A sign reads "Dear KU, I pay for education not violation." On Sept. 14, 2021, hundreds of people gathered at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house for a second night of protesting.
As South Korea's most sought-after actress, Moon Geun Young practically lived a heavily packed life. Her long-term career continues to grow, and so is she.

The "Autumn in My Heart" star doesn't get any younger. But to everyone's surprise, she doesn't intend to marry. Keep on reading to know more!

Moon Geun Young and Kim Bum, Former Korea's Power Couple

Given the fact that the actress doesn't want to get married, it's safe to say that her heart isn't always closed.

Throughout her career, she had her fair share of romances and heart-fluttering experiences. Not only South Korea, but also the whole world rejoiced when she and then-boyfriend Kim Bum announced their relationship.

The two hot stars were South Korea's power couple! Moon Geun Young and the "Boys Over Flowers" actor met for the first time through the classic drama "Goddess of Fire" in 2013.

In the drama, they were cast as spouses, which let the two bond together in the filming set more often.

After the drama ended, the two were reportedly dating. In response to the reports, the two actors confirmed their relationship.

Unlike most artists in South Korea, Moon Geun Young and Kim Bum never tried to hide their relationship from the public. In fact, they always looked good when appearing in public together.

They also spent special moments together in many parts of the world like Southeast Asia and Europe, exploring and enjoying each other's warm company.

The two made a lot of heart-warming memories. They became one another's anchor and source of happiness for a year.

Unfortunately, Moon Geun Young and Kim Bum called it off in 2014. Their respective agencies confirmed the actors' breakup without disclosing the main reason behind it.

The two actors reassured the fans that they decided to walk their own paths in good terms, and promised to support each other in their individual endeavors.

Moon Geun Young Relationship Status 2022: Doors For Marriage Are Open

The "Autumn in My Heart" actress felt what it's like to be loved in many acting roles that she played.

In spite of that, Moon Geun Young is still mostly focused on achieving her goals in real life rather than being committed to a partner.

At 36, she's single but she's thriving in her career, living a happy life without depending on someone else.

While she doesn't completely close doors for marriage, she couldn't imagine herself as a married woman just yet.

YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE THIS: Kim Hye Soo Relationship 2022: THIS Is Why the 'Juvenile Justice' Actress Never Wants to Marry

According to Moon Geun Young, she'd most probably feel bad for her potential husband and children for being away too often for work, especially now that she's widening her career spectrum as a film director.

Moon Geun Young is currently working on her directorial debut film "Bach, Come Back to My Dream," a three-part movie starring her "Catch the Ghost" co-star Ahn Seung Gyun.

KDramaStars owns this article.

Written by Elijah Mully.
Without a doubt, viewers are hooked on Kim Tae Ri and Nam Joo Hyuk's "Twenty Five, Twenty One." Depicting the lives of five young adults whose dreams were tested by fate, they go on a journey that lets them see the beauty of life, love and hope.

As the drama's conclusion draws nearer, here are some of the "Twenty Five, Twenty One" theories that might come true at the end of the drama!

1. Na Hee Do and Baek Yi Jin: Are They Each Other's Endgame?

"Twenty Five, Twenty One" focuses on the two lead characters, Na Hee Do (Kim Tae Ri) and Baek Yi Jin (Ahn Hyo Seop), who both go through different journeys in their lives.

Fans and viewers, who need to satisfy their insatiable obsession with the drama, speculate that the ending of the drama can be predicted through artist Jaurim's song of the same name, which was used in the drama multiple times.

In Jaurim's "Twenty Five, Twenty One" song, some of the lyrics don't seem to celebrate the relationship:

"I thought it would last forever,

I can't hold on to the scattered pieces of you."

Since the song shows the melancholic yearning of a lover, it is predicted that the events in the present timeline and the past don't match up: which hints at the change in Na Hee Do and Baek Yi Jin's relationship.

The numbers 25 and 21 are the most significant in the drama, which might depict how Hee Do and Yi Jin fell in love with one another at the age of 21 and 25, or those are the ages where they part ways.

2. The Truth Behind Kim Min Chae's Unknown Father

The non-linear drama is told by Hee Do's daughter, Kim Min Chae, who reads the gold medalist fencer's diary after she quits ballet and runs to her grandmother's house to cool off.

Fans are very much confused about the real identity of Min Chae's father who unfortunately hasn't made any appearance yet. However, small details about him have been revealed as the story progressed.

Theories suggest that Hee Do and Yi Jin did have a romantic affair as young adults, but might not have lasted until the end as Min Chae's last name is Kim and he doesn't know anything about Yi Jin.

The photo albums in her mother's room that contain the Tae Yang High School Squad's old photos were intricately arranged, but Min Chae doesn't recognize Yi Jin or any of them.

In particular, Min Chae knows her father and he is currently present in her life. Fans don't see how Min Chae wouldn't recognize his father, even as a young adult.

3. Kim Yi Jin Is Adopted

Of course, who doesn't want a happy ending? Some fans speculate Baek Yi Jin is an adopted child of the Baeks, and was born Kim Yi Jin-hinting at Min Chae's family surname.

When the IMF crisis hit South Korea and affected the industry, Yi Jin's family went bankrupt. However, some of their properties were saved and was turned over to Yi Jin's younger brother's name.

In South Korea, traditional families give special attention to first born males, which heightens suspicion especially when Yi Jin's father told him "he can fend for himself" when they all separated.

Because of this, a glimmer of hope binds Hee Do and Yi Jin at the end of the drama.

Which of these do you think are true? Do you have your own speculations? Share it with us in the comments below!





KDramaStars owns this article.

Written by Elijah Mully.
Han So Hee and Park Hyung Sik showed off their unique chemistry as the lead stars graced the "Soundtrack #1" press conference.

As always, the 27-year-old actress never fails to wow the crowd with her stunning beauty. She dazzled in a hot pink asymmetrical long dress from Balenciaga and capped off the look with ankle-cut boots.

Meanwhile, the South Korean heartthrob took everyone's breath away with his dashing charm, donning a slightly oversized suit over a pastel-colored button-down that compliments Han So Hee's outfit.

Unfortunately, "Soundtrack #1" director Kim Hee Won wasn't able to attend the press briefing after being diagnosed with COVID-19

Apart from the duo's head-turning visuals, "Soundtrack #1" lead stars went to introduce their upcoming K-drama and experienced filming the series.

Han So Hee and Park Hyung Sik Answer Tough Questions About Love and Friendship

Since the upcoming K-drama revolves around friendship and love, the lead stars were asked about their true feelings if ever they got caught up in the same situation as their characters.

As cited by Star Today, Han So Hee revealed that she will definitely choose love over friendship.

However, for one-sided love, the female lead compared it to an "instant food," explaining that it is something that she "has no choice but to continue even though I know it's bad for my body."

Meanwhile, Park Hyun Sik compared unrequited love to "dark chocolate," saying that for him, love has its bitter and sweet side.

On the other hand, he also shared the same thoughts as Han So Hee when it comes to love and friendship.

For the actor, he explained that "once you have an emotion, you can't hide it, and you have to endure it for the rest of your life."

In addition, he also mentioned that he would rather confess his feelings instead of hiding it.

Park Hyung Sik on His Working Relationship with Han So Hee

The 30-year-old actor went to praise Han So Hee for her stunning visuals.

At the press conference, he spoke about how bad of a photographer he actually was but was thankful that her co-star made it easier for him, saying:

"So Hee was so pretty that no matter how bad I clicked it, the pictures always turned out to be good."

On the other hand, Han So Hee revealed why she chose to appear in the drama. She said it was because of the director and the storyline, sharing that she wanted to do "fun and happy scenes" this time.

In addition, she also mentioned Park Hyung Sik's name, whom she described as a "positive" person making it easier for her to portray her character.

'Soundtrack #1' Release Date, Details and More

The upcoming Disney+ series is described as a "music drama," which depicts the story of Han Sun Woo (Park Hyung Sik) and Lee Eun Soo (Han So Hee), who have been best friends for 20 years and end up living together for two weeks.

With their current set-up, they learn about each other's true feelings. Will they give their friendship a shot at love or ignore their emotions?

Park Hyung Sik transforms as a rising photographer while Han So Hee becomes a passionate lyricist who is vocal about her feelings.

Following the intriguing trailer and heart fluttering still, cuts, "Soundtrack #1" will debut on March 23 exclusively on Disney+.

KDramastars owns this article

Written by Geca Wills
KYIV, Ukraine (AP)  NATO estimated on Wednesday that 7,000 to 15,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in four weeks of war in Ukraine, where fierce fighting by the countrys fast-moving defenders has denied Moscow the lightning victory it sought.

By way of comparison, Russia lost about 15,000 troops over 10 years in Afghanistan.

Advertisement

A serviceman carries the photo of Capt. Andrei Paliy, a deputy commander of Russia's Black Sea Fleet, during a farewell ceremony in Sevastopol, Crimea, Wednesday, March 23, 2022. Paliy was killed in action during fighting with Ukrainian forces in the Sea of Azov port of Mariupol. (AP)

A senior NATO military official said the alliances estimate was based on information from Ukrainian authorities, what Russia has released  intentionally or not  and intelligence gathered from open sources. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity under ground rules set by NATO.

When Russia unleashed its invasion on Feb. 24 in Europes biggest offensive since World War II, a swift toppling of Ukraines government seemed likely. But with Wednesday marking four full weeks of fighting, Moscow is bogged down in a grinding military campaign.

Advertisement

With its ground forces slowed or stopped by hit-and-run Ukrainian units armed with Western-supplied weapons, Russian President Vladimir Putins troops are bombarding targets from afar, falling back on the tactics they used in reducing cities to rubble in Syria and Chechnya.

As U.S. President Joe Biden left for Europe to meet with key allies about new sanctions against Moscow and more military aid to Ukraine, he warned there is a real threat Russia could use chemical weapons.

The U.S. has also determined that Russian troops have committed war crimes in Ukraine, and it will work to prosecute the offenders, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said. He cited evidence of indiscriminate or deliberate attacks against civilians and the destruction of apartment buildings, schools, hospitals, shopping centers and other sites.

Addressing Japans parliament, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said thousands of his people have been killed, including at least 121 children.

Members of Japan's lower house of parliament applaud as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy delivers a virtual address to Japanese lawmakers in Tokyo, Wednesday, March 23, 2022. (Behrouz Mehri/Pool Photo via AP) (094836+0000/AP)

Our people cannot even adequately bury their murdered relatives, friends and neighbors. They have to be buried right in the yards of destroyed buildings, next to the roads, he said.

A customer checks his rifle in a gun shop in Lviv, western Ukraine, Wednesday, March 23, 2022. The rush for guns and gun training continued in the western city of Lviv. The state of war has streamlined gun purchasing in Ukraine, now simplified. (Bernat Armangue/AP)

Still, major Russian objectives remain unfulfilled. The capital, Kyiv, has been bombarded repeatedly but is not even encircled.

Near-constant shelling and gunfire shook the city Wednesday, with air raid sirens wailing and plumes of black smoke rising from the western outskirts, where the two sides battled for control of multiple suburbs. Mayor Vitali Klitschko said at least 264 civilians have been killed in the capital since the war broke out.

In the south, the encircled port city of Mariupol has seen the worst devastation of the war, enduring weeks of bombardment and, now, street-by-street fighting. But Ukrainian forces have prevented its fall, thwarting an apparent bid by Moscow to fully secure a land bridge from Russia to Crimea, seized from Ukraine in 2014.

Advertisement

This satellite image provided by Maxar Technologies shows destroyed apartment buildings in Mariupol, Ukraine Tuesday, March 22, 2022. (AP)

Zelenskyy accused Russian forces of seizing a humanitarian convoy. Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said the Russians were holding captive 11 bus drivers and four rescue workers along with their vehicles.

In their last update, over a week ago, Mariupol officials said at least 2,300 people had died, but the true toll is probably much higher. Airstrikes in the past week destroyed a theater and an art school where civilians were sheltering.

In the besieged northern city of Chernihiv, Russian forces bombed and destroyed a bridge that was used for aid deliveries and civilian evacuations, regional governor Viacheslav Chaus said.

Kateryna Mytkevich, who arrived in Poland after fleeing Chernihiv, wiped away tears as she spoke about what she had seen. The city is without gas, electricity or running water, said Mytkevich, 39, and entire neighborhoods have been destroyed.

A woman losing her consciousness, receives help from Polish paramedics as other Ukrainian refugees pass the border crossing in Medyka, southeastern Poland, on Wednesday, March 23, 2022. (Sergei Grits/AP)

I dont understand why we have such a curse, she said.

Despite plenty of evidence to the contrary, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov insisted the military operation is going strictly in accordance with plans.

Advertisement

The most recent figure for Ukraines military losses came from Zelenskyy on March 12, when he said that about 1,300 Ukrainian servicemen had been killed in action.

The NATO official said 30,000 to 40,000 Russian soldiers are estimated to have been killed or wounded.

Western officials say Putins forces are facing serious shortages of food, fuel and cold weather gear, with soldiers suffering frostbite, while Ukraines defenders have been going more on the offensive.

Still, Russias far stronger, bigger military has many Western experts warning against overconfidence in Ukraines long-term odds. The Kremlins practice in past wars has been to grind down resistance by flattening cities, killing countless civilians and sending millions fleeing.

Talks to end the fighting have continued by video. Zelenskyy said negotiations with Russia are going step by step, but they are going forward.

In the coastal city of Odesa, the scene of sporadic Russian shelling, merchant sea captain Sivak Vitaliy carried sandbags over each shoulder, loading them onto trucks for barricades being erected in case of a Russian assault.

Advertisement

No matter how bad the situation is in Mariupol, Kharkiv, it doesnt matter, he said. We will win.
Renowned filmmaker Steven Spielberg draws flak after describing the "Squid Game" cast as "unknown people" at PGA Awards Zanuck Award.

The two-time Oscar-winning director appeared as one of the nominees for the ceremony held in Los Angeles.

Per Deadline, the "Jurassic Park" director went to praise the success of "Squid game," calling it a game-changer in the TV and film industry. He said that the Netflix series "comes along and changes the math entirely for all of us."

Moreover, he also thanked Ted Sarandos, Co-CEO and Chief Content Officer of Netflix, for introducing the nine-part episode K-drama for the global audience.

Unfortunately, upon pointing out the importance of casting, Steven Spielberg was criticized for using the term "unknown" to describe the actors.

Director Steven Spielberg in Hot Waters After Calling 'Squid Game' Cast 'Unknown'

As mentioned by the Independent, some netizens are furious about how the award-winning filmmaker described the cast. Fans pointed out that the cast boasts "most famous actors in Korea," including Lee Jung Jae, a renowned actor in the country.

Apart from it, Lee Byung Hun, who played The Frontman, has tons of recognition under his belt and played in a slew of international movies.

The same goes for Gong Yoo, who made a cameo in "Squid Game." He is one of the most sought-after leading men and not to mention, among the highest-paid K-drama actors.

In addition, others raised that using the word "unknown" is a "poor choice of words."

While one mentioned, "Another day, another American thinking the world revolves around them."

The report also cited a tweet mentioned by one user saying, "Unknown????? Western exceptionalism rotting everyone's brains lmfao."

The criticisms came after Steven Spielberg mentioned in the PGA Awards Zanuck Award how the industry was cyclical on casting star-studded or famous actors on a project.

"A long time ago, it was domestic stars that brought the audience into movies," the veteran director said, adding, "Today, it's interesting, unknown people can star in entire miniseries, can be in movies."

While some slammed the "West Side Story" director, others defended him and pointed out that he might be referring to Korean actors who are unknown to the global audience, speaking in a general sense.

The Time Lee Jung Jae Professionally Answered Rude Question From an American Reporter

Amid the success and popularity of "Squid Game," the Netflix series has encountered impolite comments from the Western media.

In November, while the cast alongside director Hwang Dong Hyuk graced the Squid Game screening in Los Angeles, Lee Jung Jae was asked by NBC Extra TV reporter about his most significant life change since the series came out.

Prior to this, the host mentioned, "I'm sure you can't leave the house anymore without people recognizing you," which made some of the fans cringe.

However, the award-winning actor was lauded for politely answering the question in a very professional way.

At the time, he shared that the biggest change was how he was recognized by "everybody everywhere, specifically in the United States."

Lee Jung Jae is an A-lister in South Korea, raking recognitions left and right. His latest was the SAG Awards 2022 Best Actor and Best Male Performance at Independent Spirit Awards 2022

KDramastars owns this article

Written by Geca Wills
SOMERS  The University of Wisconsin-Parkside has announced the first Smart Cities U. The virtual certificate program is designed to assist and empower local leaders to better understand and manage the multidimensional nature of economic development.

The sessions (offered virtually on Zoom) will be held March 24 and 30, and April 7 and 14 from 9 a.m. to 2:45 p.m. This new series is sponsored by the Center for Research in Innovation and Smart Cities, the College of Social Sciences and Professional Studies, and Professional and Continuing Education. It will be taught by faculty and industry-recognized experts.

Participants will learn about smart city development planning, including the importance of collaboration among stakeholders through case studies, activities, and additional resources. These sessions are beneficial for non-government and government organizations, including individuals looking to do business with governmental organizations.

This focus this year will be on readiness, referring to the ability of the public and private sector to be able to assess their readiness to implement a technology based improvement to services for the community. The introductory and general sessions will assist participants in the assessment of technology as it relates to economic development and provides tools to make decisions regarding their communities needs, capacities, and return on investment.

Focus areas

Smart Cities U is constructed with specialized certificates in different smart cities topics, allowing participants the opportunity to focus on their area of greatest need. The topics are Smart Mobility, Smart Infrastructure, and Smart Security. Each topic has three separate workshops focusing on assessment, government capacity, and action planning. Participants must take part in all three workshops of that specialty topic to receive the certificate and shareable digital badge. Introductory sessions to accompany certificates are also available.

The three certificates focus on specific areas of economic development that can be addressed through technology and take the general theme of readiness and apply it more directly to the challenges of mobility, infrastructure, and security.

Each track provides participants with tools to assess needs and capacity of their local communities, how to gather and interpret data to inform those decisions, and also provides a local case study that allows participants to see the decision making and implementation process of a real local community in Wisconsin.

For more information, visit: https://www.uwp.edu/learn/continuingeducation/smartcitiesu.cfm

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
Armed police and militia forces continue the overnight search for the black boxes of crashed passenger plane on the evening of March 22, 2022. (Photo/CNR)

WUZHOU, March 23 -- According to on-site report, in the afternoon of March 22, members of the Peoples Armed Police (PAP) and the militia involved in the search and rescue work of the China Eastern Airlines crashed plane took the new task to retrieve the black boxes while continuing personnel search and rescue.

A 600-person search and rescue team including fire fighting, armed police and militia forces carried out the full probe overnight at the crash site in the mountains.

As the crash site was in the mountains, the search for the black boxes has to mainly rely on drones and manpower. What's more troubling was that intermittent rainfall began on Tuesday, and heavy rain and gale-force wind would arrive in the next two days according to the weather forecast. All these will complicate the search and rescue efforts.
It took one look for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to put Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) firmly in his place.

After answering questions for hours from the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, the Supreme Court nominee gave a withering look to Cruz when he sought to cast doubt on her membership on the board of a liberal private school that proudly promotes social justice.

Advertisement

Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson answers a question from Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, during her Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, March 22, 2022. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)

The conservative senator tried to paint fellow Harvard Law alum, Supreme Court Justice nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson as a proponent of so-called critical race theory because Georgetown Day School had placed books including How To Be an Anti-Racist in its curriculum.

Jackson, who would become the first Black woman to ever serve on the nations top court, took a long measured pause before answering.

Advertisement

Senator, I do not believe that any child should be made to think that any child is racist or less than, Jackson said.

The look on Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson's FACE listening to Cruz speak says all that needs saying. #SupremeCourt pic.twitter.com/m8BwlgMcpX  Kit for Ukraine  (she/her) (@KitAbridged) March 22, 2022

The poised jurist looked incredulously over her glasses as Cruz claimed that another book was inappropriate for recommended summer reading because it suggested that America is not a color-blind society.

This book says the exact opposite of what Dr. King spoke about, blustered Cruz. Are you comfortable with these ideas being taught to children?

Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 40 U.S. President Joe Biden embraces Ketanji Brown Jackson moments after the U.S. Senate confirmed her to be the first Black woman to be a justice on the Supreme Court in the Roosevelt Room at the White House on April 7, 2022, in Washington, DC. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Jackson wasted little time shutting down his argument, which echoes GOP campaign complaints against white kids being taught about the history of racism.

Senator, I have not reviewed any of those books, she said matter-of-factly. They dont come up in my work as a judge, which respectfully, I am here to address.

Cruz quickly backed down, returning to other lines of attack, like criticism that she gave sentences that were too lenient to sex offenders.
168 Shares Share

Over coffee each morning, I quickly skim the headlines on my laptop before heading to work. It is Washington winter, it is dark outside, and the headlines in health care news are grim. Health care workers are burned out. Doctors are working hard all day and coming home to find scathing reviews on online rating sites. Some have their compensation tied to the results of patient surveys. Patients are trusting Google searches over their doctors advice. Doctors are leaving their practices. Should I leave too? I could become a dog-walker. Dogs cannot write online reviews.

I thought I loved my job, but these daily reminders of how terrible it is to be a doctor make me want to climb back in bed and wait for the sun to rise. This forced morning person ritual is for the birds anyway, I tell myself. Instead, I will pour more coffee, flip on my happy light, and try to find a reason why I should not leave today. Yesterday I stayed because I remembered that I get paid to do this.

Today I am not leaving clinical practice because my patients appreciate what I do.

I know this because they have told me in person. They say things like, You saved my life, when all I did was take out a herniated disc. Others say, You saved my life, and they actually were on deaths door when we met. Sometimes they are grateful enough to write a note or bring me elk meat, salmon, or chocolates. The chocolates are my favorite. I keep a drawer in my desk just for warm fuzzies: notes and gifts from my patients. On top of my desk is a rock carving that a patient made to show me how much better his hands were working after surgery. When I have had a rough day in the hospital or worked with a more challenging patient in the clinic, I take a deep breath through my nose and look through some of the notes. It is therapeutic.

Sure, I have had a negative review, and it stings. I was stunned when a person using a cartoonish pseudonym wrote some outrageous comments about me on Google. It probably served me right for Googling myself. Egomaniac!

A few years ago, I was faced with the news that, although I believed myself to be quite the sensitive doctor, I was one percent less sensitive than I needed to be. I scored 84 percent on the key question on my Press-Ganey patient surveys and needed to score 85 percent. Anyone in my organization scoring less than 85 percent was required to attend a three-hour session on patient experience. Being time-obsessed, I was outraged that I had to spend three precious hours on training that was clearly geared toward those other boors who dont know how to communicate with their patients. I went. The doctors leading the session had some clever hacks for getting more out of a patient visit. I made peace with Press-Ganey since it is not going away. Looking at the data they collect, my actual patients leave some nice feedback. I have become at least one percent more sensitive.

Today, I will ask my patients if they are glad that they had surgery. Most will say, Yes, if I am doing my job right. I will spend some time with the ones who are not sure and listen to their concerns. This is what I would have liked for Ms. Cartoon Name if she had come to me. Often we can solve simple misunderstandings face-to-face, like explaining that the term cerebrovascular accident is not an accident at all.

Today I will stay.

Barbara Lazio is a neurosurgeon.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
KYIV, Ukraine  Ukrainian forces fought off continuing Russian efforts to occupy Mariupol and claimed to have retaken a strategic suburb of Kyiv on Tuesday, mounting a defense so dogged that it is stoking fears Russias Vladimir Putin will escalate the war to new heights.

Putins back is against the wall, said President Biden, who is heading to Europe this week to meet with allies. And the more his back is against the wall, the greater the severity of the tactics he may employ.

Advertisement

A car destroyed by shelling is seen in a street in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, March 22, 2022. (Andrew Marienko/AP)

Biden reiterated accusations that Putin is considering resorting to using chemical or biological weapons, though Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said the U.S. has seen no evidence to suggest that such an escalation is imminent.

The warnings came as attacks continued in and around Kyiv and Mariupol, and people escaped the battered and besieged port city.

Advertisement

The hands of one exhausted Mariupol survivor were shaking as she arrived by train in the western city of Lviv.

Theres no connection with the world. We couldnt ask for help, said Julia Krytska, who was helped by volunteers to make it out with her husband and son. People dont even have water there.

Explosions and bursts of gunfire shook Kyiv, and heavy artillery fire could be heard from the northwest, where Russia has sought to encircle and capture several of the capitals suburban areas.

Early Tuesday, Ukrainian troops drove Russian forces from the Kyiv suburb of Makariv after a fierce battle, Ukraines Defense Ministry said. The regained territory allowed Ukrainian forces to retake control of a key highway and block Russian troops from surrounding Kyiv from the northwest.

Ukrainian serviceman has a rest on his position in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, March 22, 2022. (Andrew Marienko/AP)

Still, the Defense Ministry said Russian forces partially took other northwest suburbs, Bucha, Hostomel and Irpin, some of which have been under attack almost since Russia invaded nearly a month ago.

A Western official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss military assessments, said Ukrainian resistance has brought much of Russias advance to a halt but has not sent Moscows forces into retreat.

Western officials say Russian forces are facing serious shortages of food, fuel and cold weather gear, leaving some soldiers suffering from frostbite. Ukrainians have reported hungry soldiers looting stores and homes for food.

The invasion has driven more than 10 million people from their homes, almost a quarter of Ukraines population, according to the United Nations.

Advertisement

Facing unexpectedly stiff resistance that has left the bulk of Moscows ground forces miles from the center of Kyiv, Putins troops are increasingly concentrating their air power and artillery on Ukraines cities and civilians.

Talks to end the fighting have continued by video. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said he would be prepared to consider waiving any bid by Ukraine to join NATO  a key Russian demand  in exchange for a ceasefire, the withdrawal of Russian troops and a guarantee of Ukraines security.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy appears on the television inside a bar in downtown Lviv, western Ukraine, Tuesday, March 22, 2022. (Bernat Armangue/AP)

Thousands have managed to flee Mariupol, where the bombardment has cut off electricity, water and food supplies and severed communication with the outside world. The city council said Tuesday that more than 1,100 people who had escaped the siege were in a convoy of buses heading to a city northwest of Mariupol.

But the Red Cross said a humanitarian aid convoy trying to reach the city with desperately needed supplies still had not been able to enter.

Perched on the Sea of Azov, Mariupol is a crucial port for Ukraine and lies along a stretch of territory between Russia and Crimea. The siege has cut the city off from the sea and allowed Russia to establish a land corridor to Crimea.

Beyond the terrible human toll, the war has shaken the post-Cold War global security consensus, imperiled the world supply of key crops, and raised worries it could set off a nuclear accident.

Advertisement

Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 191 Firefighters work to extinguish a fire after an airstrike hit a tire shop in Lviv, Ukraine, Monday, April 18, 2022. Russian missiles hit the city of Lviv in western Ukraine on Monday, killing at least six people, Ukrainian officials said, as Moscow's troops stepped up strikes on infrastructure in preparation for an all-out assault on the east. (Mykola Tys/AP)

Wildfires broke out near the decommissioned Chernobyl nuclear power plant, but Ukraines natural resources minister said the flames had been extinguished and radiation was within normal levels. Chernobyl in 1986 was the scene of the worlds worst nuclear disaster.

As part of a series of addresses to foreign legislatures, Zelenskyy urged Italian lawmakers to strengthen sanctions against Moscow, noting many wealthy Russians have homes in the country.

Dont be a resort for murderers, he said from Kyiv.
Local auto shops are reporting a rise in repair requests due to catalytic converters being stolen off certain types of cars. One Spokane resident was able to get hers welded back on when thieves failed to remove it, but they came back within days to finish the job.
Lifestyles

'No one is ever forgotten': Group remembers 85 years after London School explosion

Longview News-Journal Photo by LES HASSELL Guests sing the school song Saturday during a Day of Remembrance ceremony in honor of the 85th anniversary of the 1937 London School Explosion that killed almost 300 students and teachers. Les Hassell/News-Journal Photos Reunion and memorial guests visit Saturday during a day of remembrance in honor of the 85th anniversary of the 1937 London School explosion that killed almost 300 students and teachers. LES HASSELL Terry Dorsey plays The Star Spangled Banner Saturday during a ceremony in honor of the 85th anniversary of the 1937 London School explosion. LES HASSELL Rachel Sutton Ledbetter, who was in the fourth grade at the time of the explosion, reads her program Saturday during a day of remembrance ceremony in honor of the 85th anniversary of the 1937 London School explosion. LES HASSELL Names of victims are read Saturday during a day of remembrance ceremony in honor of the 85th anniversary of the 1937 London School explosion that killed almost 300 students and teachers. (Les Hassell/News-Journal Photo) Les Hassell/News-Journal Photos Ron Clower performs Saturday during a day of remembrance ceremony in honor of the 85th anniversary of the 1937 London School Explosion. LES HASSELL ABOVE: Guests join in prayer Saturday during a Day of Remembrance ceremony in honor of the 85th anniversary of the 1937 London School Explosion that killed almost 300 students and teachers. BELOW: The Class Reunion Quartet perform Saturday during the ceremony. LES HASSELL Bruce Bockhorn speaks Saturday, March 19, 2022, during a "Day of Remembrance" ceremony in honor of the 85th anniversary of the 1937 London School Explosion that killed almost 300 students and teachers. (Les Hassell/News-Journal Photo) Les Hassell/News-Journal Photos The Class Reunion Quartet perform Saturday during a Day of Remembrance ceremony in honor of the 85th anniversary of the 1937 London School Explosion that killed almost 300 students and teachers.

NEW LONDON  The names of the nearly 300 people killed in the nations worst school tragedy were spoken aloud Saturday to mark 85 years since the explosion at London School in East Texas.

Families, friends and graduates gathered at West Rusk High School for a ceremony to remember March 18, 1937, when just minutes before school ended for the day undetected natural gas caused an explosion leveling the London High and Junior High schools. The blast killed an estimated 294 people  mostly children  and is often referred to as the day a generation died.

The day of remembrance is typically scheduled only on odd years; however, it was set again for this month to mark 85 years since the explosion.

Jean Tyner Davidson is secretary of the board of the West Rusk Alumni Association, which organizes the memorials. She said the day of remembrance serves as a way to be sure the victims are not forgotten.

We have this event because there is a saying which says, No one is ever forgotten as long as we say their names, Davidson said. That is what we do, we say their names at this day of remembrance.

According to news reports at the time, victims from the explosion filled hospitals and morgues of half a dozen East Texas oil field cities and towns and prompted a martial law declaration from then-Gov. James V. Allred.

Molly Ward was 10 years old when she witnessed the blast. She was in her school bus parked just outside when she saw her school  with her best friend inside  go up in a cloud of dust.

In a 2005 interview, Ward said she heard a muffled boom that sounded like an oil well backfire, which was not uncommon.

When the building collapsed and the dust cloud went up, we were scared to death, she said. A man came running out to us after a few minutes and told the driver, Better get these few kids home, cause there aint gonna be many more.

A massive relief and rescue effort began following the explosion.

Davidson, a 1959 graduate of London High School, said it is important to remember the positive changes that came as a result of the tragedy.

Because of what happened, we now have an odor in our natural gas and many lives all over the world have been saved because of what occurred here, she said.

The explosion was blamed on a natural gas leak beneath the school building that went unnoticed. Within weeks of the disaster, the Texas Legislature passed a law requiring a chemical to be added to natural gas to give it a scent in hopes of preventing anything similar from again happening.

Saturdays remembrance event included a business meeting, the memorial and class reunion meetings followed by lunch. The London Museum & Cafe, which is across the street from West Rusk High School, was also open to visitors at no fee.

Museum Secretary Debbie Stuart said the focus; however, is on the people who died that day in 1937.

It is important we not forget the victims of this horrific event, she said.

Related
Potential sites for a new state-of-the-art fire station in Kilkenny City have now been shortlisted, according to Kilkenny Chief Fire Officer John Collins.

The Chief Fire Officer briefed councillors on the development at this months full meeting of Kilkenny County Council.

One of the primary front-runners is a site located close to Danville Business Park just off the ring road in the city.

We are looking for a large and suitable three acre site in a bid to future-proof the new station, he said.

In 2020, 6million in funding for a new headquarters in Kilkenny was announced as part of a new Fire Service Capital Programme.

Chief Fire Officer Collins entertained the possibility that the new city station may also be able to accommodate local Civil Defence services.

Funding for a new fire station in Urlingford was also allocated under the same scheme.

As part of the Fire and Emergency Operations Plan 2022-2026, Kilkenny Fire and Rescue Service have also confirmed plans to retain their current staffing complement of retained fire personnel and maintenance personnel.
A woman has been banned from keeping animals for five years after pleading guilty to offences under the Animal Health and Welfare Act.

At Letterkenny District Court on Tuesday, defence solicitor Rory OBrien entered a guilty plea on behalf of Ms Chrissie McGinley of Glenwood Park, Letterkenny, Co. Donegal to an offence under section 12(1)(a) of the Animal Health and Welfare Act (AHWA) 2013.

Judge Deirdre Gearty fined the woman 200 and disqualified her from keeping animals for five years.

The case related to the discovery of a male Siberian Husky dog by An Garda Siochana on September 13, 2019, in the course of a routine search. Due to their concerns for the dog, the Gardai contacted the ISPCA for assistance and Senior Inspector Kevin McGinley attended the property.

Senior Inspector McGinley said: I was immediately struck by the condition of the dog and his living accommodation. His coat was extremely matted and he was living in filthy conditions covered in faeces and muck. He was in a pen at the back of the yard and his only bed was a wooden pallet which was also extremely dirty and covered in muck.

The dog, called Beckham, was surrendered to the ISPCA and transferred to a local veterinary practitioner for examination and treatment. On assessment, it was found that Beckham was also underweight under his blanket of matted fur. Later that evening, Beckham was transferred to the ISPCAs Donegal Animal Rehabilitation Centre in Ramelton for care and a badly needed groom.

ISPCA Centre Manager Denise McCausland said: Beckham needed to be sedated before his coat could be groomed. Due to the extent of the matting, 2.2kgs had to be removed to prevent further suffering. He received the expert care that he needed and was fully rehabilitated by our dedicated animal carers and volunteers here at the Centre. Beckham has since been rehomed where he is loved and cared for.

Kevin added: As an Authorised Officer, unfortunately, I see situations like this far too frequently, where animals are not provided with even a basic level of care such as a clean living area or failing to ensure their dogs are groomed, which is simply unacceptable.

The ISPCA thanked Garda Connaughton and Garda Kilcoyne for bringing the situation to the attention of the ISPCA.

The ISPCA relies on public donations to continue our vital work rescuing, rehabilitating and responsibly rehoming hundreds of vulnerable animals that desperately need our help. If you would like to help the ISPCA continue this vital work, rescuing Irelands most vulnerable animals, please if you can, make a kind donation here to help the animals that are suffering now.

The ISPCA encourages members of the public to report any animal welfare concerns to the ISPCAs National Animal Cruelty Helpline in confidence on 0818 515 515, email helpline@ispca.ie or report online here.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki has again tested positive for COVID and will have to skip President Bidens trip to Europe.

Just minutes before a scheduled press briefing, Psaki issued a statement announcing that she had tested positive for the second time in a few months.

Advertisement

I will be adhering to CDC guidance and no longer be traveling on the presidents trip to Europe, Psaki said. I am sharing the news of my positive test today out of an abundance of transparency.

Psaki said she has had two socially distanced meetings with Biden Monday and would not be considered a close contact to him.

Advertisement

White House press secretary Jen Psaki takes questions during a White House daily press briefing at the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House on Monday, March 21, 2022. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

The president tested negative for COVID Tuesday, the White House said.

After a brief delay, deputy press secretary Chris Meagher appeared before the waiting White House press corps. He introduced national security adviser Jake Sullivan, who gave an update on the Russian invasion of Ukraine and took questions.

Psaki, who has been fully vaccinated, said she will follow CDC guidance and White House protocols that require her to isolate herself at home for five days.

She said she only has had mild symptoms and credited the vaccine for keeping her safe.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki (Patrick Semansky/AP)

Biden will travel to Belgium for a series of meetings with European leaders on Russias war in Ukraine. He will continue to Poland, a NATO ally that shares a border with Ukraine and has been inundated with millions of refugees from the invasion.

It is the second time COVID-19 has forced Psaki to bow out of accompanying Biden abroad. After disclosing she had tested positive, she sat out last falls trip to Rome and Glasgow, Scotland.

Doctors said that being previously infected with a different variant of COVID does not necessarily prevent one from testing positive for the virulent omicron strain. But it can prevent more severe illness and death, particularly if a person has also been vaccinated.
Man on the run for murder of 75-year-old Austin man taken into custody
One of two black boxes was recovered Wednesday from the wreckage of a Chinese plane that fell from the sky with 132 people onboard.

The recorder is so badly damaged that investigators have not been able to determine whether its the flight tracker or cockpit voice recorder, both of which can provide key details into what caused the China Eastern Boeing 737-800 to crash after its departure from Kunming in Yunnan Province.

Advertisement

The commercial jetliner, carrying 123 passengers and nine crew members, slammed into a mountain in the city of Wuzhou in the Guangxi region Monday.

The crash site was about 150 miles from the planes destination in Guangzhou, which means the aircraft traveled about 500 miles before it went down.

Advertisement

In this image taken from video footage run by China's CCTV, an emergency worker puts an orange-colored "black box" recorder into a plastic bag at the China Eastern flight crash site on Wednesday. (AP)

Mao Yanfeng, the director of the accident investigation division of the Civil Aviation Authority of China, said an all-out effort is being made to find the other black box. He also said it is still too early to speculate on the cause of the crash, which is likely to be the deadliest in China in decades.

Search efforts were put on hold Wednesday with heavy rainfall in the region, which has left the debris field slick and dangerous. Earlier in the day, crews armed with hand tools combed through the heavily forested slopes for clues with the help of cadaver sniffing dogs. Drones circled the area from above as well.

In this photo released by Xinhua News Agency, rescuers conduct search operations at the site of a plane crash in Tengxian County, China, on Tuesday. (Zhou Hua/AP)

Aviation officials said the plane went into a sudden dive about an hour after takeoff and stopped transmitting data 96 seconds into the fall. An air traffic controller tried to contact the pilots several times after seeing the planes altitude drop sharply, but did not get a response.

Video shared on social media in China shows the Boeing 737 hurtling straight down into the mountainous area and then disappearing into a blast of flames and smoke.

With News Wire Services
An 18-year-old student stabbed two teachers to death Tuesday at a school in Sweden.

The attack occurred around 5:12 p.m. local time at Malmo Latin School, in Malmo, the countrys third-largest city which is connected to Copenhagen, Denmark, by a bridge.

Advertisement

Police officers attend the scene at a school in Malmo, Sweden, Monday. (Johan Nilsson/TT/AP)

Police responded about 10 minutes later and took the suspect into custody. According to news outlet Aftonbladet, the suspect was found near the teachers with a knife and an ax.

The teacher, both women in their 50s, were rushed to a hospital but died from their injuries.

Advertisement

Police said the motive was unknown and it was not immediately clear what connected the student to either woman.

A police man stands outside Malmo Latin School in Malmo, Sweden, on Tuesday. (Johan Nilsson/TT/AP)

Now a great deal of work awaits to be able to understand what happened and the underlying motive for this terrible event, Malmo North police chief Asa Nilsson said, according to BBC News.

Malmo chief of police Petra Stenkula said at a news conference they were investigating whether the suspect called police himself and admitted to the attack. She added that multiple calls to emergency services were made regarding the incident.

People react outside Malmo Latin School the day after two teachers were killed, in Malmo, Sweden, Tuesday March 22, 2022. (Johan Nilsson/TT/AP)

This is absolutely terrible, head teacher Fredrik Hemmensjo told Aftonbladet.

In a Facebook post, Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson said she was filled with sadness and dismay upon hearing about the attack.

Now the police and prosecutors must find out what happened, so that the person behind this is held accountable for their actions, Andersson said.
Jasper, TX (75951)

Today

Cloudy early with scattered thunderstorms developing this afternoon. High 87F. Winds SSW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 50%..

Tonight

Thunderstorms likely this evening. Then a chance of scattered thunderstorms overnight. A few storms may be severe. Low 63F. Winds W at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 100%.
In 2019, the Legislature enacted landmark reforms to our bail laws. The goal of these changes was to overhaul a system where race and access to money all too often determined whether defendants would be locked up before facing trial. These disparate outcomes, which disproportionately impacted Black and Brown communities, were not only fundamentally unjust, but undermined trust in our criminal justice system.

The reforms were successful: Fewer New Yorkers are kept behind bars just because they cant pay, and weve saved taxpayer dollars in the process.

Advertisement

Still, since the law was passed, we have seen a distressing increase in shootings and homicides. The data does not, however, suggest that bail reform is the main cause: In New York City, the percentage of people who are arraigned and released for gun crimes who go on to be rearrested has barely changed since bail reform took effect, from 25% before bail reform to 27%, according to an analysis from the state Division of Criminal Justice Services. Outside of New York City, that percentage went from 20% to 22%.

Similarly, the percentage of shooting arrests in New York City where the defendant had an open felony charge has hovered around 25% for years, though it crept up from 24% in 2019 to 28% in 2021, according to NYPD data.

Advertisement

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, accompanied by Lt. Gov. Brian Benjamin, left, speaks before signing the "Less is More" law, during ceremonies in the governor's office, in New York, Friday, Sept. 17, 2021. (Richard Drew/AP)

Blaming bail reform for the increase in violence that cities across America are facing isnt fair and isnt supported by the data. Doing so risks distracting us from what are likely far more significant factors: upheaval from the pandemic, the availability of illegal guns, increased gang activity, lower arrest rates and a backed-up court system, to name a few.

But that doesnt mean the bail law as it currently stands is perfect, either. When one out of four people arrested for gun crimes goes on to be re-arrested, we havent done enough. These repeat offender rates were a failure before bail reform, and they remain a failure today.

We are committed to protecting the progress weve made toward a fairer criminal justice system. But that is not at odds with making thoughtful, measured changes to our laws that would strengthen public safety.

First, we need to address the problem of repeat offenders. If someone is committing a second or third offense while out on pretrial release, officers should be able to make an arrest and not be limited, as they are in many cases, to issuing a desk appearance ticket. Similarly, hate crimes should be subject to arrest, not desk appearance tickets. And for repeat offenders, judges should be allowed to set bail  even if the crime would not currently be bail-eligible.

Second, we should make it possible for judges to set bail in all felony cases involving illegal guns, including when illegal guns are sold or given to minors  a crime that is, astonishingly, not currently bail-eligible.

The Daily News Flash Weekdays Catch up on the days top five stories every weekday afternoon. >

Finally, for violent crimes and crimes involving guns, we should make it possible for judges to set more restrictive pretrial conditions, based on concrete criteria. Right now, all decisions about bail and pretrial detention must be based solely on the least restrictive conditions necessary to ensure the defendant returns to court. In domestic violence cases, the Legislature already gave judges more factors to consider (such as whether the defendant has a history of firearm use or previously violated an order of protection).

This is not a subjective dangerousness standard  decisions must be based on specific, factual circumstances. We should apply this model, based on whats already in the law for domestic violence, to other serious crimes.

These changes will improve our laws, but they wont suddenly reverse the rise in violence. That will require a holistic approach. We are already stepping up our efforts to stop the flow of illegal guns, support community-based violence interruption, and increase resources for local law enforcement. And well keep investing in solutions that work.

Advertisement

Another key piece of the equation is mental health. We propose changes to the law to better enable licensed mental health professionals to collaborate with crisis intervention teams and police. Along the same lines, we need to strengthen Kendras Law to make it easier for judges to require individuals who are struggling with serious mental illness and present a danger to themselves or others to participate in mandatory outpatient treatment. Along with these proposals, we should provide additional resources for more psychiatric beds in community-based hospitals and housing, so that no one is turned away when they need help.

We should also make it easier for people who have served their time to reenter society successfully. Thats why we are proud to have enacted Less Is More legislation, so that individuals are not imprisoned for technical parole violations, and why we have proposed allowing people behind bars to participate in the states Tuition Assistance Program, so that they can come out of prison with more education and skills than when they went in.

Taken together, these changes will continue the work of improving our laws, policies and practices to make our state a fairer and safer place  exactly what the Legislature endeavored to do in 2019 and what we pledge to keep working with them on.

Hochul is governor and Benjamin is lieutenant governor of New York.
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.
In Alaska, Covid-19 cases are leveling off after reaching record highs during the Omicron surge, but a new and even more highly contagious variant is on the rise. The BA.2 variant of Omicron now accounts for over 50% of new cases nationally, and just under half of cases in Alaska, state epid
Kokomo, IN (46901)

Today

Cloudy skies with periods of rain this afternoon. High 59F. Winds E at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall around a quarter of an inch..

Tonight

Rain. Low 53F. Winds E at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch.
After more than three years of partisan bickering, bargaining and obstruction, Congress finally sent President Biden a bipartisan reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act to sign into law. This achievement  the result of relentless grassroots advocacy by advocates for womens safety  builds on the work Biden began when he first authored the Violence Against Women Act as a senator in the 1990s.

Unfortunately, the new law doesnt protect everyone. While the reauthorization of VAWA is a necessary and incredibly important step for women, children and survivors of domestic abuse, it fails to explicitly address the dating partner loophole, an ambiguity in federal law that allows dating partners convicted of domestic abuse to have access to firearms.

Advertisement

Every month in America, 70 women are shot and killed by intimate partners. With couples waiting longer to get married, abuse often begins long before a couple signs a marriage license. In fact, women in America are now just as likely to be killed by an abusive dating partner as by an abusive spouse. But like so many vulnerabilities in our federal gun laws, the NRA opposes closing the dating partner loophole because it would result in fewer gun sales  womens lives be damned.

Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the NRA has claimed for years that women sometimes lie about abuse in order to take mens guns away, and even lobbies against efforts to broaden the definition of domestic abusers. The gun lobby isnt embarrassed to peddle lies about abused women; in fact, a NRA spokesperson said closing the dating partner loophole would be ripe for abuse because emotional women may consider mean tweets grounds for gun removal.

Advertisement

President Joe Biden speaks in the South Court Auditorium on the White House campus in Washington, March 16, 2022. (Patrick Semansky/AP)

Instead of following the data, the NRA wants us to believe women are killed by shadowy intruders during home invasions. In reality, women overwhelmingly die at the hands of men they know.

No one should fear for their safety  or be left unprotected by gun laws  because of their marital status. Yet the dating partner loophole puts women at risk by making it easier for convicted abusers to obtain or retain their firearms. Current federal law prohibits convicted domestic abusers from having a gun if theyre married to, lived with, have children with, or are similarly situated to their victim. While several federal courts have ruled that dating partners are in fact similarly situated and covered by the law, this interpretation isnt uniformly applied.

Thankfully, Biden has the authority to address the dating partner loophole with another stroke of his pen. He can and should immediately direct the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to clarify that dating partners are similarly situated to a spouse, and therefore protected from armed abusers. This would provide clear guidance for prosecutors and background check operators and ensure dating partners convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence crimes are prohibited from purchasing or possessing guns, just like married offenders.

The price of inaction will be paid in lives: Women in America are 28 times more likely to be killed by guns than women in other peer nations. Nearly 1 million women alive today have reported being shot or shot at by intimate partners, and 4.5 million women have reported being threatened with a gun by an intimate partner. In more than half of mass shootings over the past decade, the perpetrator shot a current or former intimate partner or family member as part of the rampage

We know strong gun laws can stem the tide of domestic gun violence. State gun safety laws have proven that keeping guns out of the hands of abusers protects women. In 29 states, Moms Demand Action volunteers have worked to pass 51 laws that disarm domestic abusers. And since 1998, the FBI reported it has denied more than 200,000 sales to domestic abusers.

When some Senate Republicans refused to address the dating partner loophole in VAWA, they made it clear who they really work for  and it isnt the women who live in their states. But thats why in 2020 women overwhelmingly voted for a president who would stand up for the safety of their mothers, sisters, daughters and friends. Biden wrote the original bill that helped reduce the intimate partner violence rate by 64%. Now he has the opportunity to finish the job and address the dating partner loophole.

Watts is the founder of Moms Demand Action and the author of Fight Like a Mother: How a Grassroots Movement Took on the Gun Lobby and Why Women Will Change the World.
Crews comb through devastated neighborhoods in the New Orleans area after a tornado kills 1 and leaves thousands without power
An inside view of the Ministry of Unification / Yonhap





By Kang Hyun-kyung







President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol's transition team denied media reports about the doomed fate of the Ministry of Unification, saying it never considered abolishing the ministry.







In fact, the opposite is true, according to deputy spokesman Won Il-hee.







Won said during a regular press briefing on Wednesday that the transition committee is preparing a plan to diverge from the current policies led by the Moon Jae-in administration and implemented by the ministry, to reinforce the ministry's inherent duties and functions, such as inter-Korean exchange and cooperation as well as humanitarian aid.







"Some media reported that the Ministry of Unification would be abolished, but that has never been considered. The transition committee members will ponder ways to help the ministry regain its inherent role and functions and work autonomously," he said.







When asked what he meant about the ministry's inherent role and functions, he said inter-Korean exchange and humanitarian aid are two of the important roles the ministry was supposed to fulfill.







According to Won, the members of the presidential committee on security and foreign policy are convinced that the ministry has failed to fulfill its initial goals, as key decisions on inter-Korean relations were made in and dominated by Cheong Wa Dae. Won said that the top-down way of decision-making has made it difficult for the unification ministry to live up to its commitment to promote inter-Korean relations and exchanges.







The abolishing of the unification ministry, which had been established to promote and manage inter-Korean relations, was considered by the presidential transition team of Lee Myung-bak when he was elected president in 2007. The premise for the ministry's proposed abolition was the supposed duplication of roles between the unification and foreign ministries. For example, North Korea's missile and nuclear programs are international security issues, and negotiations to resolve the security threat had taken the form of international talks. The foreign ministry is responsible for the nuclear talks.







At the time, some experts questioned whether the unification ministry should exist at all due to the international nature of North Korea issues.







But the ministry survived the government reshuffle back then.







The unification ministry was one of the three ministries that were speculated to have uncertain futures if Yoon is sworn in as president on May 10. The two others are the ministries of gender equality and education.







The presidential transition committee said the gender equality ministry may be abolished in the government shake-up as announced before. Presidential Spokesperson Shin Yong-hyun told reporters that President-elect Yoon's stance on the ministry has been consistent, reiterating his campaign pledge to abolish it.







The fate of the ministries will be discussed by a subcommittee designed for the government shake-up.







The transition committee announced that it has established three task force teams, one for the government shake-up and two others for digital platform government and real estate, respectively.










Members of the CIECO team pose with a banner introducing their reusable cup circulation system at Chadwick International School in Songdo, Incheon. Courtesy of CIECO





By Kwon Mee-yoo







The Earth Foundation CEO Angela McCarthy / Courtesy of Earth Foundation

A group of students from Chadwick International School who created a reusable cup circulation system for cafeterias, have been selected among the 10 finalists for the Earth Prize.







Working under the name CIECO, the students invented the "Cupy" system to reduce plastic waste at school. The system is currently in use at their international school in Songdo, Incheon.







The Earth Prize is a global environmental sustainability competition for teenagers, operated by the Earth Foundation established by Switzerland-based Irishman Peter McGarry.







Angela McCarthy, CEO of the Earth Foundation, emphasized that the Earth Prize aims to be a platform where the youth can have their voice heard.







"My passion really came from a big belief in teenagers and I was always so amazed at the brilliant ideas they had. But because they were teenagers, no one took them seriously and there was nowhere to take those ideas, which leads to a lot of frustration, depression in the current circumstances of the world," McCarthy said in a Zoom interview with The Korea Times, March 7.







"Through the understanding that this glorious planet we live on is suffering and (teenagers) are going to be left with a serious mess, why not let them bring some power, self-esteem and confidence that they can do something to help the earth while also inspiring them, educating them and having them bring their solutions to life."







"So we want (the Earth Prize) to be a platform where we want to hear your voice, help inspire that creative spark in you, hear your incredible solutions and, through our network, to raise the money to bring the solution to life so that you can really see an impact and how you can change people's lives," McCarthy said.







The idea of the Earth Prize is to have this opportunity accessible to students all over the world from different backgrounds. Over 650 teams of students from 516 schools in 114 countries and territories had signed up for the competition from some of the most elite boarding schools in the United Kingdom and Switzerland to schools in refugee camps in the West Bank and Jordan. The 10 finalists showcase the diversity the foundation seeks as the list includes teams from Jamaica and Kenya to Canada and Armenia.







"It's such an incredible mix and that's what we want  all the kids to look at what other teams are doing and interact with them. They will now be part of our alumni," McCarthy said.







The Earth Prize has mentors who provide guidance to the participants and ambassadors who promote the foundation's initiatives. As years go by, winners, finalists and participants of the award will become alumni, creating a network of youngsters interested in environmental sustainability.







"I want to build something so that we can follow these incredible students and solutions that they're going to come up with and see the real impact and change. Next year, two years, five years, 10 years and we be able to have those students come back and be an ambassador for us, come back and run parts of the alumni, come back and be a mentor, inspire many, many more teenagers to realize that they have incredible ideas," McCarthy said.











Jung Dong-yun, 17, Head of CIECO, said the rapid increase of plastic consumption during the COVID-19 pandemic made him take an interest in the impact of plastic consumption on the environment.







"South Korea is a small country considering its territory, but for the plastic consumption per capita it is ranked first in the entire world... As I researched more about plastic cups, I found that they result in a tremendous amount of environmental problems when produced, disposed, incinerated, buried or thrown away, like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch," Jung said.







"The fundamental solution to preventing plastic consumption is to actually reduce the initial consumption itself."







Jung looked around his school, and saw that the cafeteria deli had been consuming about 100 to 150 plastic cups every day before COVID-19, which adds up to at least 20,000 plastic cups used every year. He decided to resolve the problem in the local community first.







The Cupy system offers reusable cups with QR codes and a mobile application with personal QR codes. When scanned, a beverage is served in the reusable cup. After use, students and faculty can put the cup in the collection boxes throughout the school, where they are collected and returned to the cafeteria by CIECO members.







Jung said the Cupy system differs from other reusable cup systems due to the mobile application.







"With the adoption of an app  as we have to scan our QR code for every rent and every return  we can use that data to track people's usage and encourage people to return their cups by the action of scanning them, and also to make use of the big data collected during the operation to later make an analysis, for example, on the return rate of the cups, the peak time and where the most cups are collected," he said.







Jeong Da-eun, 17, CIECO's management team leader, is in charge of operating the system in the school.







"We have two important jobs in this club  collecting the cups and helping how the students use the reusable cups," Jeong said.







"One of the important jobs the management team does is distributing the work schedule. Because we have only 11 members in our club and not all of us can work at every moment, we have to organize the work schedule so we can distribute the work."







Promotion team leader Lim Tae-eun said participating in the Cupy system made her more conscious of environmental issues.







"My initial impression was that, since we have to collect the cups from the collection boxes in our school, the members have to see a lot of cups being thrown in the boxes, and when I collect them I'm really proud of myself that I was able to save that amount of plastic cups that would have been disposed. I think I became more passionate in environmental problems and plastic problems as I can see that I'm being engaged in that," Lim said.







McCarthy described what CIECO is doing at their school as "truly unbelievable."







"This is where the adjudicating panel is seriously impressed. Because this is not just on paper, it's already in practice. Let's not forget, this is not even we hope it works  this is what we're doing. They already have an impact, they already have data of how much of an impact they're creating. So that is extremely powerful," McCarthy said.







The winner of the Earth Prize will be announced Friday.




By Kathy Kelly



The United Nations' goal was to raise more than $4.2 billion for the people of war-torn Yemen by March 15. But when that deadline rolled around, just $1.3 billion had come in.



"I am deeply disappointed," said Jan Egeland, the secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council. "The people of Yemen need the same level of support and solidarity that we've seen for the people of Ukraine. The crisis in Europe will dramatically impact Yemenis' access to food and fuel, making an already dire situation even worse."



With Yemen importing more than 35 percent of its wheat from Russia and Ukraine, disruption to wheat supplies will cause soaring increases in the price of food.



"Since the onset of the Ukraine conflict, we have seen the prices of food skyrocket by more than 150 percent," said Basheer Al Selwi, a spokesperson for the International Commission of the Red Cross in Yemen. "Millions of Yemeni families don't know how to get their next meal."



The ghastly blockade and bombardment of Yemen, led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, is now entering its eighth year. The United Nations estimated last fall that the Yemen death toll would top 377,000 people by the end of 2021.



The United States continues to supply spare parts for Saudi/UAE coalition war planes, along with maintenance and a steady flow of armaments. Without this support, the Saudis couldn't continue their murderous aerial attacks.



Yet tragically, instead of condemning atrocities committed by the Saudi/UAE invasion, bombing and blockade of Yemen, the United States is cozying up to the leaders of these countries. As sanctions against Russia disrupt global oil sales, the United States is entering talks to become increasingly reliant on Saudi and UAE oil production. And Saudi Arabia and the UAE don't want to increase their oil production without a U.S. agreement to help them increase their attacks against Yemen.



Human rights groups have decried the Saudi/UAE-led coalition for bombing roadways, fisheries, sewage and sanitation facilities, weddings, funerals and even a children's school bus. In a recent attack, the Saudis killed 60 African migrants held in a detention center in Saada.



The Saudi blockade of Yemen has choked off essential imports needed for daily life, forcing the Yemeni people to depend on relief groups for survival.



There is another way. U.S. Reps. Pramila Jayapal of Washington and Peter De Fazio of Oregon, both Democrats, are now seeking cosponsors for the Yemen War Powers Resolution. It demands that Congress cut military support for the Saudi/UAE-led coalition's war against Yemen.



The Saudis have long insisted on a deeply flawed U.N. resolution that calls on the Houthi fighters to disarm but never even mentions the U.S. backed Saudi/UAE coalition as being among the warring parties. The Houthis say they will come to the negotiating table but cannot rely on the Saudis as mediators. This seems reasonable, given Saudi Arabia's vengeful treatment of Yemenis.



The people of the United States have the right to insist that U.S. foreign policy be predicated on respect for human rights, equitable sharing of resources and an earnest commitment to end all wars. We should urge Congress to use the leverage it has for preventing continued aerial bombardment of Yemen and sponsor Jayapal's and De Fazio's forthcoming resolution.



We can also summon the humility and courage to acknowledge U.S. attacks against Yemeni civilians, make reparations and repair the dreadful systems undergirding our unbridled militarism.





Kathy Kelly, a peace activist and author, co-coordinates the Ban Killer Drones campaign and is president of World Beyond War's board of directors. This column was produced for Progressive Perspectives and distributed by Tribune News Service.






By Steven L. Shields





Christians, and perhaps other faith traditions, seem to have a love affair with guilt. Years ago, someone in my church posted a list of the members and how much each had donated. His rationale? People will see where they stand in the "ranking" and be persuaded to give more. Motivation by guilt is powerful. When guilt is weaponized, it can be lethal.







Guilt has become a way of life for many Christians and their pastors. Pastors often preach hellfire and damnation to their congregations. They believe this will help people overcome their shortcomings. Most churches have long lists of "shortcomings." They claim or believe these come from the Bible. Indeed, many do. They call these shortcomings "sins."







I grew up in a Christian denomination that had the guilt trips well-defined. Not only were pastors and elders always on the lookout to tell someone they were wrong but parishioners were also encouraged to keep one another in line and report failings to the leaders. Pastors brought everyone in for "worthiness" interviews to make sure you were donating a full 10 percent of your income, or if a teenager, that you were not touching yourself or another inappropriately. The burden of guilt was constant and horrendous.







We get into a considerable problem when other religious traditions say the same thing about their beliefs. Over the past 2,000 years, Romans killed Christians because the Christians refused to worship the Roman gods. Christians killed Jews because they refused to recognize Jesus as the prophesied Messiah. Christians did the same to Muslims.







Then Muslims did the same to Christians and Jews. Buddhists are not exempt. In Sri Lanka a few years ago, Buddhist monks led a campaign against Christians, burning Christian churches and sometimes killing Christians. In Korea, some Christian groups defaced and destroyed Buddhist temples. In India, Hindus have attacked Christians, killing them, burning their villages and driving them into the forests. They've also attacked Muslims. Everyone but me is a pagan, a heathen. The list goes on, and on and on. All in the name of "god" (or whatever the common metaphor is for a particular religion).







This condemnation and pursuit of "others" is a problem among Christians. The atrocities committed in the name of God in Europe alone can fill many volumes of history books. I grew up in a denomination that believed itself to be the only true Christian denomination, that all others (Catholics, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists and so forth) were in error and were condemned by God. We proudly sang the old hymn, "Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war " Our war was with Catholics and Protestants, and though it was not a war of arms, it was a war of words. I think this happens the other way around, too. Christians are a highly judgmental group of people.







Some Christians are good at condemning the LGBT community but ignore premarital sex among their parishioners or a big-business donor or politician who keeps a mistress. I've never heard any preach against divorce, even though Jesus condemned it in the New Testament (while saying nothing about homosexuality).







Obsession with homosexuality says more about some Christians' repressed sexual frustration than anything else. It's getting old  ignoring the obvious, strange and deranged sexual frustrations that underpin the conservative Christian fixation on LGBT people.







My friend Rob expressed this eloquently, "When any single book  is regarded as the final authority on all matters of faith, the focus of religion becomes centered on defending (that book) and twisting or denying reality so as not to challenge (that book). Such a religion becomes defensive and backward-looking. It ceases to engage with the world as we know and experience it, failing to address our real concerns and struggles.







Instead, it demands that we deny the importance of those concerns and struggles and then use blame to instill guilt when we fail to do that. Unable to deal honestly with present realities, such a religion cannot possibly be genuinely prophetic because, so often, the future it envisions is a return to a "more simple and moral" past that never really was  a past in harmony with its narrow understanding of scripture.







Who is the rightful controller of the "sin list"? There's a severe problem with religious groups when each one believes itself to be the only rightful judge of society; by condemning all others according to their interpretations of the Bible (why do you think there are thousands of Christian denominations?).







How does a nation, a group of people, an organization decide morals in each society? How does one frame an ethical foundation for behavior? Cultures worldwide have developed ethics and other standards that apply to that culture. It is acceptable for Christians, or the tea club, to have their rules and require members to observe them. But it's not okay for that group to declare their way is the only way, and everybody else must obey them.







When someone says, "God told me " or "The Bible says " get away as fast as you can. Such people don't need my attention or yours. For my Christian readers, seeing God as all-powerful and all-mighty rather than all-loving and all-merciful is the difference between a world falling apart and a world coming together. The gospel is less about how to get into the kingdom of Heaven after you die and more about how to live in the kingdom of Heaven before you die. Your job is not to judge. Your job is not to figure out if someone deserves something. Your job is to lift the fallen, restore the broken and heal the hurting.







God is not upset that Gandhi was not a Christian because God is not a Christian. All of God's children and their different faiths help us to realize the immensity of God.









Rev. Steven L. Shields





(slshields@gmail.com) has lived in Korea for many years, beginning in the 1970s. He is president of the Royal Asiatic Society Korea. He served as copy editor of The Korea Times in 1977.
In September of 2016, Bryn Mawr freshman Andi Moritz posted a Facebook message looking for someone to share a ride with her to a rally for the GOP presidential candidate, Donald J. Trump. She soon faced a tsunami of social-media vitriol from other students at the college, who reviled her as a racist.

Nobody has the right to an opinion of bigotry, one student wrote. A second asked, Why yall doing this free labor for white supremacists? And a third respondent threatened her with physical violence: I promise, if I ever hear some slick s---- like that from any of yall white people on this campus, you will get your s--- rocked. You better be ready to catch these black ass hands.

Advertisement

Moritz, who had struggled with anxiety and depression, felt hopeless under the torrent of abuse. Two days later, she left Bryn Mawr and never came back. But if you believe some progressives these days, she got what she deserved.

Witness the backlash against the New York Times editorial on Sunday, which denounced cancel culture, especially at colleges and universities. It came on the heels of a Times op-ed piece earlier this month by University of Virginia senior Emma Camp, who said that demands for strict ideological conformity have made students afraid to speak their minds.

Advertisement

Nonsense, the Twitterverse replied. All of this talk about restrictions on free speech comes from conservatives who dont want to be held accountable for what they say, progressives claimed. Never mind that Camp describes herself as a member of the political left. (Full disclosure: She interviewed me for her essay but did not quote me in it.) The so-called assault on free speech is a chimera, progressives argued, brought to you by Fox News and its friends. Fox calls it cancel culture; progressives call it consequences.

Hold on. What, precisely, did Andi Moritz do to deserve being dragged through the digital mud? Should anyone who supported Trump face the same consequences? And wont that lead other students to bite their tongues, instead of saying what they think?

It already is doing that. At Haverford College, students said they were afraid to question a strike that was called last year after Philadelphia police killed an African-American man with a history of mental illness. At the University of Pennsylvania, where I teach, female swimmers who dont think trans woman Lia Thomas should be allowed to compete on their team have refused to let newspapers use their names. If they identified themselves, they worry, theyd be kicked off the squad.

We have created a climate of fear on our college campuses. But dont tell that to progressives, whose reply to the two Times articles followed a predictable script:

1: Deny the problem. As soon as Camps essay hit the web, critics rejected her claim that students are self-censoring. They took aim at her reference to a study by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), which reported that 83% of students self-censor at least part of the time. Many of these articles/columns [cite] the same study but its never been clear to me which type of students are self-censoring and which views, tweeted former Times reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones.

The Daily News Flash Weekdays Catch up on the days top five stories every weekday afternoon. >

But FIRE has posted all of its data, which draws on a survey of more than 37,000 students at 159 campuses. Its the largest poll of campus free expression in American history. If there was a serious problem with the study, critics would have found it already. Its so much easier just to dismiss it out of hand.

2. Pretend it only affects white people. Despite what Hannah-Jones tweeted, the FIRE survey carefully breaks down its data according to race. Fifty percent of Black students reported self-censoring occasionally, fairly often, or very often, as opposed to 51% of white students and 49% of Hispanics. Theres no real difference here: everyone is doing it, at pretty much the same rate.

3. Say that the other side censors, too. Of course it does. As the Times free-speech editorial correctly noted, the gravest danger to free speech right now are laws enacted by GOP-led state legislatures restricting school instruction about race and sexuality. But thats a reason for liberals to avoid the censorship game, not to inscribe their own versions of it. How can we resist the Republican assault unless we uphold free speech ourselves?

Advertisement

4: Say that the Constitution protects Americans from government censorship, not from each other. Also true. Theres nothing illegal about the effort to shame, bully and silence people like Andi Moritz. Its simply immoral.

A few years after Moritz left Bryn Mawr, I got an email from her thanking me for defending her from her assailants. Im not mad at them anymore, she graciously added. We were all young (and still are), just finding our footing in ourselves and our beliefs.

Thats exactly right. And thats also why we need to make sure all of our young people  whatever their political or racial background  feel free to speak. Fear puts them on the wrong footing. Only freedom can help them find themselves, and what they truly believe.

Zimmerman teaches education and history at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author (with cartoonist Signe Wilkinson) of Free Speech and Why You Should Give a Damn.
Butler, IN (46721)

Today

Partly cloudy early then becoming cloudy with periods of rain this afternoon. High 58F. Winds E at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%..

Tonight

Rain likely. Low 49F. Winds ENE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall around a half an inch.
Kendallville, IN (46755)

Today

Cloudy skies with periods of rain this afternoon. High 56F. Winds ESE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%..

Tonight

Cloudy with periods of rain. Low 49F. Winds E at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall around a half an inch.
Angola, IN (46703)

Today

Partly cloudy early then becoming cloudy with periods of rain this afternoon. High 58F. Winds ESE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%..

Tonight

Rain likely. Low 48F. Winds E at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall near a half an inch.
Christina Ricci is going back to the family roots for her next screen role.

The Golden Globe and Emmy nominated actress will reportedly star in Netflixs forthcoming series Wednesday, based off The Addams Family character she played on the big screen.

Advertisement

Christina Ricci arrives at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party on Sunday, Feb. 9, 2020, in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

According to Deadline, Ricci wont be reprising the role of the macabre moppet from Barry Sonnefelds 90s era big screen adaptation of the ghastly, campy TV series; Scream 5 star Jenny Ortega will play the titular role.

Instead, the 42-year-old Black Snake Moan star will be cast in a recurring role that filmmakers want to keep under wraps in order to protect the surprise for fans.

Advertisement

Academy Award-winner Catherine Zeta-Jones was previously cast as Wednesdays mom, Morticia Addams, in the Tim Burton-produced series.

Luis Guzman (of Shameless fame) will portray family patriarch Gomez, who was played by the late Raul Julia in the films.
Auburn, IN (46706)

Today

Partly cloudy early then becoming cloudy with periods of rain this afternoon. High 58F. Winds E at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%..

Tonight

Periods of rain. Low 49F. Winds ENE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall around a half an inch.
The choreographer behind BTS 3J's "Butter" special performance revealed which one among J-Hope, Jungkook, and Jimin picks up the moves the fastest. Who is your guess?

Continue reading to know which member he chose.

BTS 3J 'Butter' Choreographer Names Which Member Learned the Dance Moves the Fastest

On March 21, STEEZY uploaded a new video on YouTube featuring Nick Joseph. He is the choreographer who worked with several HYBE artists for six months last year.

In the video, Nick had a chat with Clay Boonthanakit, the company's Director of Video. Nick shared his experience as a choreographer in South Korea.

One of the recent choreographies he created is for the special performance of BTS' "Butter" (featuring Megan Thee Stallion)." He collaborated with BTS 3J (J-Hope, Jungkook, and Jimin) on this one.

In less than an hour after its release on Sept. 8 of last year, the video racked up more than one million views already. ARMYs praised the three BTS members on a job well done.

During the talk with Clay, Nick Joseph shared that the choreography for the track went through multiple versions before getting to the final one. He continued that when he gave the final choreography to Jimin, Jungkook, and J-Hope, the three idols were nervous but at the same time ready to learn it.

Despite being nervous, BTS 3J still managed to learn the dance moves for the "Butter" special performance "super-duper fast," as per Nick.

"That's like an over-arching thing with K-pop idols... I don't know why, they just all learn super-duper fast," he commented.

In relation to this, Clay Boonthanakit asked who picks up the dance moves the fastest. Nick named BTS J-Hope.

He explained, "The three of them all have super different personalities, so he (J-Hope) was super, like, on it."

The "Butter" choreographer said that BTS Jungkook was also "on it" but the problem is he seemed more nervous while learning the choreography. He questioned whether he is doing the moves right.

As for BTS Jimin, Nick Joseph described him as the "funny guy." Whenever they had a break, Jimin would lie on the floor and say, "I'm tired."

Fancams of BTS Jungkook, Jimin Among the Most-Viewed of All Time

In other news, some fancams of BTS members were included in the list of "Top 10 Most-Viewed Idol Fancams" in history (male idols and female idols) as of March 21, 2022.

On the list focusing on male idols, BTS members dominated the top 10. While Jimin's "Fake Love" ranked second with 106 million views, Jungkook's "Boy With Luv" placed third with 60 million views.

Additionally, Jungkook's "Fake Love" fancam secured No. 4 with 34 million views, while Jimin's "Perfect Man" claimed No. 10 with 14 million views.

Meanwhile, BTS V's "Boy With Luv" ranked No. 1 with 138 million views. His other fancams on the list are: "MIC DROP" at No. 5, "On" at No. 7, "Pied Piper" at No. 8, and "Butter" at No. 9.

The No. 6 on the list went to actor Lee Jong Suk's cover of PSY's "New Face," which has garnered 22.6 million views to date.

For more K-Pop news and updates, keep your tabs open here at KpopStarz.

KpopStarz owns this article

Written by Mhaliya Scott
Hes cleared for takeoff. Again.

Actor John Travolta celebrated a big addition to his aviation resume this week by becoming a licensed 737 pilot. He invited fans to join his new high on Instagram.

Advertisement

Very proud moment in my aviation history, Travolta said Monday. To add to my 747 and 707 licenses, I just received my 737 license and it went very well, so just sharing my moment with you.

The 68-year-old Be Cool star smiled ear-to-ear as he stood in front of a plane and made his announcement. According to the Boeing airline company, their 737s carry up to 220 passengers.

Advertisement

[ John Travolta celebrated by Brooklyn ]

VelvetRopes.com reports that Travolta got his first pilots license in 1976 and is the owner of a Boeing 707. The Englewood, N.J., native has played a pilot in the 1996 action film Broken Arrow as well as the blockbuster Look Whos Talking series.

John Travolta poses during a red carpet at the Rome Film Fest on Oct. 22, 2019. (Andrew Medichini/AP)

Travolta married actress Kelly Preston in 1991. They remained together until her death in 2020 at the age of 57.
YEELOWSTONE COUNTY, Mont. - Sheriff's deputies are seeking the identification of a woman Tuesday with alleged involvement in a theft investigation.

The Yellowstone County Sheriff's Office asked in a Facebook post for the public's help in identifying the woman.

Anyone with information is asked to contact YCSO through Facebook Messenger or by calling 406-256-2929, referencing case number 22-703737.
Have a news tip or would like to report a typo? Email Anthony Victor Reyes at areyes@kvoa.com.
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?
By Jun Sheng

At the critical juncture when the Ukraine crisis is weighing on our minds, the US, the initiator of this crisis, is picking up its old trade of blame-shifting and buck-passing in the attempt to mislead the public, scapegoat other countries, and divert attention from its accountability by fabricating and spreading disinformation.

New York Times recently quoted the so-called western intelligence agency as saying that China warned Russia not to take action in Ukraine during Beijing Winter Olympics, even claiming that China was somewhat familiar with Moscows military plan. Coincidentally, an unnamed American senior official reportedly told China about Russias plan to attack Ukraine, whose warning however fell on deaf ears. The Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson solemnly dismissed such reports as fake news, saying that China firmly rejects the disinformation fabricated by the US to smear China.

Its crystal clear why and how the Ukraine issue has evolved to what it is today  it is the US-led NATO and its aggressive actions that have, step by step, pushed the Russia-Ukraine conflict to the brink of outbreak. During the leadup to the ongoing war, Washington had kept hyping up tension and fanning up flames in Ukraine, but as soon as the fire caught on, it began to twist facts, deflect attention, and scapegoat China by making groundless accusations, pretending not to see its own blood-covered hands. What a brilliant show of lying through its teeth and pinning the blame on others!

The past few decades are a track record of Americas misdeeds on this account. In 1999, holding up the banner of preventing a humanitarian crisis in Kosovo, the US-led NATO blatantly bombed the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia without authorization from the UN Security Council. The then Department of State Spokesperson Rubin publicly accused Kosovo of a racial cleansing, which later proved to be disinformation according to NATO spokesperson Jamie Shea.

In 2003, the US and its western allies started the eight-year-long Iraqi War on the grounds that the country owned weapons of mass destruction, which, however, still havent been found today.

In early April 2018, several American and western media reported chemical weapon attacks in Douma, Syria, following which the US attacked Syria. However, a British media producer Riam Dalati said in his article on social media in 2019 that his six-month-long investigation convinced him that the so-called chemical weapon attack in Douma was intentionally directed and staged.

An unlimited number of facts tell us that for the US, lying is just a normal part of its daily tricks and cheating the world is a necessary sleight of hand to preserve its hegemony. Cuban Minister of Foreign Affairs Rodriguez called the US adept at achieving its political goals through lying.

For some time now, the US has been calling black white, distorting facts, and concocting and spreading China-related rumors and lies in the international community to besiege and suppress China. The US government and some of its political groups and media platforms have all played a contemptible role in this.

The US government has spread rumors about Chinas Xinjiang in a well-planned and well-organized manner. The news agencies under the US Agency for Global Media knocked up fake news about Xinjiang in a dozen languages and asked media outlets in American allies for wider coverage. During Trumps term, the Republican National Committee circulated a 57-page memo to all factions in the party, which listed in great detail the anti-China assault moves and standard answers to be used when answering COVID-related questions.

Such tricks of confusing right and wrong and manipulating public opinions seriously deviate from the basic norms governing international relations and the human values of honesty and honor. Americas lies have been constantly debunked both by facts and visionary figures. We urge the US side to come back to its senses. Going further down the current path of lying and mudslinging will only accelerate the collapse of its credibility.
An autopsy for The Walking Dead actor Moses J. Moseley couldnt establish whether there was suicidal intent in his fatal shooting, as the manner of his death remains unclear.

The autopsy report, which was obtained by the Daily News, says Moseley died at age 31 of a gunshot wound to the head, using similar wording to a death certificate released earlier this week.

Advertisement

At the time this report is issued, the information available does not establish suicidal intent, wrote Rachel Geller, the doctor who conducted the examination for the Henry County Coroner in Georgia. For this reason, the manner of Mr. Moseleys death is undetermined.

A death certificate published Monday by TMZ also says Moseley shot self with intent unknown, noting that it couldnt be determined if he died from suicide, an accident or homicide.

Advertisement

Moses J. Moseley (Paul Archuleta/Getty Images)

In the autopsy report, Geller said the case could be revisited if more information becomes available.

Moseley was found dead in the drivers seat of a car in January, according to the autopsy report. A gun was in his lap when his body was discovered.

Moseleys sister told TMZ last month that she believes the actor was kidnapped and killed.

He appeared on The Walking Dead from 2012 to 2015, portraying a pet zombie of Michonne, the character played by Danai Gurira.

He was always a delight to be around, always happy and excited about life, Moseleys manager, Tabatha Minchew, said in a statement after his death. The world has lost an amazing and talented person.
Life in the post-Covid world is getting back to normal at Traver Elementary School.

For the first time since 2019, Travers annual Evening with the Arts celebration returned to the 112-student school at W3490 Linton Road, Town of Linn.

The two-hour event at the school which hosts Grades 4K-8, included an all-grades, zoo-themed art show, plus the schools second trimester recognition program and a wind and percussion band concert.

We shut down when the whole country, the whole world, went into quarantine, one week before the 2020 art show, recalled Traver School art teacher Julie Juszczyk. We were still trying to stay away from crowds in 2021. And now, finally, in 2022, were back. I have three years worth of artwork. I kind of hoarded it.

The end result of Juszyzks hoarding was an ambitious zoo-themed Traver Zoo art show that filled half the gymnasium and spilled over into adjacent storage rooms and connecting hallways.

The art is set up in categories that you would see in a zoo, she explained. The aviary house, the reptile section, primates, big cats ... and a sensory aquarium section with a pond area.

In the black-lit aquarium, playful Day-Glo jellyfish hung overhead, while while the adjacent student art pond featured recordings of the sounds of the wetland inhabitants pictured.

Other zoo artwork sections included those featuring Arctic animals, pets, North American mammals, and animals native to Africa and China. The art show also featured arts in a wide range of themed categories ranging from nerdy trees, mythical creatures and ancient ruins to medieval times and stained glass windows.

The shows Caves of Traver entrance, meanwhile, featured Grades 5K-3 student artwork depicting prehistoric cave drawings, rock formations, bats and Cuban boa snakes.

Travers art show also featured an interactive table where attendees could play with student-made rainforest rainsticks, which offered the audio stimulation of a cascading rain shower, or the opportunity to color their own animals to take home.

Keeping with the zoo theme, the Traver Zoo also featured complimentary snacks at the zoo cafe, which offered up animal crackers and goldfish.

Its member appreciation day so theyre free today only for zoo visitors, Juszczyk said of the whimsical animal-themed snacks.

Particularly noteworthy, she noted, were the artworks of this years eighth grade graduating class, which heads to Badger High School this fall.

Im especially sad to see this years eighth-graders graduate because they are an especially talented group of artists, Juszczyk said. Anytime you see anything thats wowing you, it was probably done by an eighth-grader. Theyre just really, really a great group of artists. Its gonna be a tough year to say goodbye to them.

Art show praisedDistrict grandmother Mary Krauss, of Lake Geneva, was among the art show attendees at Traver.

My grandbabies go here, and where they go I go, Krauss explained. I love the variety. I love the theme of the zoo. Its very cleverly thought out. You definitely see the educational process at work. Theyre doing a good job.

Also among those attending the art show was district parent Jim Leedle of Lake Geneva, who was touring the exhibit with his son Silas, a Traver third-grader.

I like it, Jim Leedle said. I like that they took the time to keep all their art. Instead of sending it all home to the parents, everybody gets to enjoy it.

Band concertAfter the 5 p.m. art show and 6 p.m. recognition program, Traver School music director Charmane Kolmos directed the middle school concert band to close out the Evening with the Arts Night celebration.

The band, comprised mostly of fifth- and sixth-graders, with one eighth-grader, played a concert that included performances of Regal March and Rio Bravo, both by Bruce Pearson; the Calypso song Montego Bay; and a classical canon by Franz Joseph Haydn.

I am very fortunate to have very enthusiastic students who are eager to learn and play wonderful music, Kolmos said. It is a joy and pleasure to work in a small school who values the importance of music in a students education. We may be small, but we are able to create wonderful experiences for our students.

The Traver concert bands Evening at the Arts performance was its second of the 2021-22 school year.

Traver School was able to have a Christmas concert this year and the band performed at it, she noted. Previously, for the past two years, we have been cautious about contact with instruments and students. We are very grateful that we have been able to resume the band program this year.

Traver Schools fourth grade Beginner Band will perform at the Grades 4-7 Spring Concert on Thursday, April 28, at 6:30 p.m.

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 22-year-old man is facing four charges in connection with a burglary that happened at Warhawk Catholic Ministries in Whitewater on Feb. 21.

Camil T. Maroun, of Whitewater, reportedly illegally entered the religious property, stole the Eucharist and caused a flood in the building.

A Whitewater police officer spoke with a person at Warkhawk who said the backdoor and window were open when they arrived. The person told police the sinks push drain in the bathroom was closed with the water running. That and a spurting water line, disconnected from a toilet, caused the flood.

Others at Warhawk told police the Eucharist, a blessed communion wafer, was also missing from its storage area. Usually, it is locked away in a metal container.

A detective spoke with another member of the church who claimed to receive a phone call from the defendant, acknowledging that the blood of sacrament was stolen and asking why it was being kept secret.

Video footage also showed a man exiting a black Volkswagen SUV who matched the description of Maroun, a member of the church who knew the code to get into the building.

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.
Maple Fest returned to its regular format this year with the traditional pancake breakfast buffet and family-orientated activities.

The 75th annual event was held March 20 at the Covenant Harbor Christian Camp and Retreat, 1724 W. Main St. in Lake Geneva.

The event was scaled back the past couple of years because of concerns related to the coronavirus.

Last year, Maple Fest featured a breakfast market in which attendees purchased ingredients from local vendors to cook their own pancake breakfast at home. The previous year, the event was held virtually and included online cooking demonstrations.

Emma Mueller, program director for Covenant Harbor Christian Camp and Retreat, said she was excited for Maple Fest to return to its traditional format of the pancake breakfast buffet.

It feels really good. Lots of people have come, Mueller said. Weve seen so many people some new families and some returning families. Theres a lot of friendly faces. So everyone seems really excited to eat some pancakes.

Mueller said she was pleased with the attendance for the event.

This is probably double than what we anticipated, Mueller said. Lots of people are here. It feels really good.

Besides the pancake breakfast, Maple Fest featured an outdoor market, family activities and maple tours where people learned about the process of making maple syrup.

Mueller said Covenant Harbor staff usually begins preparing for the event in December, and staff members and about 100 volunteers work during the day of Maple Fest to make sure the event is a success.

Its an all hands-on-deck event, Mueller said. We have a phenomenal kitchen staff who makes pancakes all day. We have our outdoor education team doing maple tours and conducting activities. Everybody who is a part of Covenant Harbor jumps in, so lots of people are involved.

Mueller said about 30 gallons of pancake batter are used and thousands of pancakes are made throughout the event.

Its gallons and gallons of pancake mix, she said.

The proceeds from Maple Fest are used to help fund Covenant Harbors summer day camp scholarship program, which helps children pay the cost to attend one of the organizations summer camps.

Covenant Harbor offers several summer camps including day camps for children who attend first grade through sixth grade; Kishwauketoe camp for children in second grade through fourth grade; Pier 30 camp for children in fourth through ninth grade; senior high camp for students in ninth through 12th grade; and Alpha camp for students in 10th through 12th grade.

We have a variety of programs for kids of all different ages, Mueller said.

For more information about Covenant Harbor Christian Camp and Retreat , visit www.covenantharbor.org.

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.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected Wisconsins 10-year legislative maps drawn by Gov. Tony Evers and sent the matter back to the states high court, which had adopted the Democratic governors amended proposal.

The rejection of Evers Assembly and Senate district maps by the nations highest court puts the issue back in the hands of the Wisconsin Supreme Court and will further delay the states redistricting process, which state election officials say needs to be resolved in order to prepare for the August primary and November election.

The federal court accepted Evers congressional maps that the state Supreme Court approved, denying a request from Wisconsins Republican congressional lawmakers seeking to block those boundaries.

In an unsigned decision with two liberal justices, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor dissenting, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the state Supreme Court did not properly determine whether Evers maps, which create a new, seventh Black majority Assembly district in Milwaukee, comply with the federal Voting Rights Act.

We agree that the court committed legal error in its application of decisions of this Court regarding the relationship between the constitutional guarantee of equal protection and the VRA, the justices wrote.

Evers issued a statement Wednesday that the maps he drew comply with federal and state laws, including the equal protection clause and the Voting Rights Act, as well as the state Supreme Courts previous ruling that new maps must include minimal changes to existing boundaries.

If we have to go back to the Wisconsin Supreme Court  who have already declared our maps superior to every other proposal  to demonstrate again that these maps are better and fairer than the maps we have now, then thats exactly what well do, Evers said.

The order stipulates that the state Supreme Court is free to take additional evidence if it prefers to reconsider Evers maps, but any new analysis, however, must comply with our equal protection jurisprudence. The majority also notes that the states high court has sufficient time to adopt maps before the Aug. 9 primary.

Sotomayor and Kagan described the decision as unprecedented.

This Courts intervention today is not only extraordinary but also unnecessary, the justices wrote.

The Legislature in its March 7 request for appellate review focused on Evers decision to add a seventh majority-Black Assembly district in Milwaukee, which would dilute the Black majority in the six existing districts. The Legislature argued the state high court never decided whether the seventh district was required by the Voting Rights Act.

The lawmakers claimed Evers used the federal Voting Rights Act as a shield for open and obvious violations of the Constitution.

Evers maps create a total of nine Black majority districts, with two in the Senate and seven in the Assembly. All districts have Black majorities of between 50.09% and 51.39%, according to court filings. The state currently has six majority-Black Assembly districts and two in the Senate, all with a majority range between 51% and 62%.

State Sen. Lena Taylor, D-Milwaukee, also filed a legal challenge to the state Supreme Courts adoption of Evers maps. Taylor, whose district sees its majority drop from 58.4% to 50.62% under Evers boundaries, said the way Evers added a seventh majority-Black Assembly district ultimately waters down the Black vote in all of the districts.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the state court did not properly consider whether a race-neutral alternative that did not add a seventh majority-black district would deny black voters equal political opportunity.

Rick Esenberg, president and general counsel for the conservative law firm Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, said in a statement the U.S. Supreme Courts decision is a critical victory to ensure that our government not make decisions on the basis of race.

UW-Madison Law School associate professor Robert Yablon said the ruling was highly unusual but not entirely surprising.

Although the (Voting Rights Act) aims to ensure fair representational opportunities for communities of color, the court has been cautioning mapmakers to avoid overreliance on race when drawing district lines, he said.

Upcoming elections

With the state Supreme Court now tasked with drafting legislative maps not inconsistent with the U.S. Supreme Courts order, the Wisconsin Elections Commission is sure to face additional delays in implementing new maps for upcoming elections.

From the beginning of the court battle over the states 10-year maps, the commission said in a filing, it had asked the state Supreme Court to put a new redistricting plan in place by March 1.

To properly administer the next election, the commission told the U.S. Supreme Court it needs maps by April 15 in order to record the maps new boundaries in the statewide voter registration system, integrate the new data with voters information and manually review local ward map changes to make sure each voter was in the correct district.

On March 11, the commission told the federal high court that any delay in implementing new maps beyond March 15 would increase the risk of errors in (the statewide voter registration system) and decrease the time available to correct those errors before circulation of nomination papers begins.

This is going to create some real complications for our election process, and I think what were going to see is a flurry of court action coming out of this regarding what the next maps will look like, Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul said in a WisPolitics.com online luncheon Wednesday.

Fair Elections project director Sachin Chheda said in a statement the U.S. Supreme Court is throwing Wisconsins legislative elections into chaos just three weeks before candidates in the November election need to begin gathering signatures.

Never has it been clearer that the U.S. Supreme Court majority will do anything it can to advance Republican interests, rather than the law, the Constitution, and the will of the people, Chheda said.

Ongoing battle

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

Evers ultimately submitted new maps to the court, which reduce but maintain Republican majorities in the Legislature while likely preventing them from claiming a veto-proof supermajority. Those maps were drawn after the state Supreme Court in November ruled it would follow a least change approach from the current maps, which are considered some of the most gerrymandered in the nation.

The states high court issued a 4-3 ruling earlier this month in favor of Evers maps.

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

Evers office has said the governors maps would have elected 44 Democrats and 55 Republicans in the Assembly, and 13 Democrats and 20 Republicans in the Senate. In Congress, Republicans would maintain five seats to Democrats three.

An analysis of Evers congressional maps by PlanScore, a program that predicts precinct-level votes for districts based on past election results and U.S. Census data led by the Campaign Legal Center, a national nonprofit organization that advocates for nonpartisan maps, found that the governors maps maintain two Democratic-leaning U.S. House districts  Districts 2 and 4, which are held by Reps. Mark Pocan, D-Black Earth, and Gwen Moore, D-Milwaukee.

The already competitive 3rd Congressional District, currently held by departing Rep. Ron Kind, D-La Crosse, would lean Republican under the new maps. With the district up for grabs, the Wisconsin Democratic Party is set to hold its first in-person convention since 2019 in La Crosse in June.

In an interview with WKBT, Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler noted the competitive nature of the 3rd Congressional District and said, This is an area where, as Democrats, we need to earn every vote.

The 1st District seat, held by Bryan Steil, R-Janesville, still leans Republican but could become more competitive under new maps.

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

Yablon said the state Supreme Court will likely ask the litigants to weigh in on how to proceed. Going forward, Yablon said, the justices could choose another map besides Evers that the court received, ask for amended maps redrawing the Milwaukee-area Assembly districts at issue, conduct additional factfinding to decide whether Evers map is necessary under the Voting Rights Act or explain that its sticking with Evers map for race-neutral reasons.
For 150 years, the Lake Geneva Regional News and its predecessors have been informing the Lake Geneva area about what is going on throughout the area.

Many times, living in a resort town, that is the fun news about weekend festivals and celebrations. Other times it can be more serious news, such as public safety announcements pertaining to crimes or tragedies on the lake. The news is also there to keep people informed about how much their parking costs, how much their taxes are going up and why.

Without newspapers, people are often kept in the dark. They can end up with higher taxes because there is no one there to ask what is happening or tell the community about it.

There are a lot of places to get news, but after 150 years, the Lake Geneva Regional News remains the newspaper for the Geneva Lake region, both in the city of Lake Geneva and on the west end of the lake.

Because of technology, residents dont have to wait until the papers hit their doorsteps once a week to get the news. The lakegenevanews.net website is updated regularly, especially with breaking news, along with the papers Facebook page. Also, the e-edition comes out online first thing Wednesday morning, giving subscribers a sneak peek that they can page through digitally on their phones or tablets.

While throughout the country, many small communities have lost their papers over the years, Lake Geneva is blessed to have a strong newspaper that is not going away.

We thank all of our subscribers and advertisers for the support and loyalty over the years that has helped continue the legacy of the Lake Geneva Regional News and helped to preserve the history of our community one week at a time for 150 years.

The Regional News editorial board consists of General Manager Robert Ireland, Editor Stephanie Jones and community members Patrick Quinn and Elizabeth Lupo DiVito.
Keeping up with the times  while sticking with tradition  is how the 450-acre Dressel Farms in New Paltz, New York, has become a viable family farm and been thriving in the hard cider industry.
Recent test results for the presence of forever chemicals in deer reveal some potentially good news, and some questions that may require more testing.
Kim Kardashian is trying to keep up with her daughters taste.

The reality star and SKIMS founder, 41, confessed in a new interview with Vogue that 8-year-old daughter North West is very opinionated when it comes to what Im wearing.

Advertisement

Shell always complain when Im wearing too much black, continued Kardashian.

Kim Kardashian and North West are seen on a carousel at the Eiffel Tower on March 1, 2020 in Paris. (Pierre Suu/GC Images)

But North doesnt just want her mom to add more pops of color to her otherwise enviable wardrobe. She wants Kardashian to steer clear of black  maybe to make up for how much shes worn over the years.

Advertisement

I showed up at her school on Valentines Day wearing head-to-toe pink, and she got so excited she ran over and hugged me, said Kardashian. She opened my coat, saw the black lining, and says, Mom, youre still wearing black.

Kardashian of late has been making headlines as part of her very public divorce from Kanye West, with whom she shares North as well as Saint, 6, Chicago, 4, and Psalm, 2.

The 44-year-old rapper this week was reportedly banned from performing at the Grammys due to his concerning online behavior. That behavior has largely which hes harassed Kardashian and new beau, Saturday Night Live star Pete Davidson.
New Delhi [India], March 23 (ANI): After two years, the Government of India revoked provisions of the Disaster Management Act for COVID containment measures, as per the order issued by the Ministry of Home Affairs on Wednesday.

The order copy signed by Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla reads that after taking into consideration the overall improvement in the situation and preparedness of the Government to deal with the pandemic, National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) has taken a decision that there may not be any further need to invoke the provisions of the DM Act for COVID containment measures.

Also Read | Hyderabad Fire: 11 Migrant Workers from Bihar Killed in Huge Blaze at Scrap Godown in Secunderabad.

Accordingly, after the expiry of the existing Ministry of Home Affairs orders dated February 25, 2022, no further order may be issued by the MHA.

However, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MOHFW) advisories on COVID containment measures, including the use of face masks and hand hygiene, will continue to guide the overall national response to the pandemic.

Also Read | Samsung Galaxy M33 5G With 6,000mAh Battery To Be Launched in India Soon: Report.

"I would like to mention that in view of the nature of the disease, we still need to remain watchful of the situation. Wherever any surge in the number of cases is observed, the States/UTs may consider taking prompt and proactive action at the local level, as advised by MOHFW from time to time," the Home Secretary said in the order.

He also advised States and UTs to discontinue the issue of orders and guidelines under the DM Act.

"I would, therefore, advise all the States/UTs to consider appropriately discontinuing issue of orders and guidelines under the DM Act, 2005 for COVID containment measures. The States/UTs may continue to follow the SoPs/advisories that have been or are being issued by the MoHFW from time to time for COVID containment measures, vaccination and other related aspects, including observing COVID Appropriate Behaviour," he said in the order.

Since March 24, 2020, on the direction of the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), the Ministry of Home Affairs has been issuing Orders and Guidelines under the Disaster Management Act, (DM Act) 2005, for the containment of COVID-19 in the country.

The Central Government, in close coordination with the State Governments and Union Territory Administrations (UTS), has taken various proactive measures to deal with the unprecedented global crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The MHA order further reads that over the last 24 months, significant capacities have been developed for various aspects of management of the pandemic, such as diagnostics, surveillance, contact tracing, treatment and vaccination, hospital infrastructure and the general public has a much higher level of awareness on the COVID appropriate behaviour.

States and UTs have also developed their own capacities and systems and implemented their detailed State/UT specific plans for managing the pandemic, over the last seven weeks or so there has been a steep decline in the number of cases, it said.

The total caseload in the country stands at 23,913 only and the daily positivity rate has declined to 0.28 per cent. It is also worth mentioning that with the combined efforts, a total of 181.56 Cr vaccine doses have been administered. (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, Mar 23 (PTI) External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Wednesday held extensive talks with his Greek counterpart Nikos Dendias, covering the crisis in Ukraine, the situation in Afghanistan and exploring the possibility of enhancing the bilateral ties to the level of strategic partnership.

Both sides noted the importance of the movement of people in an orderly and legal way and signed a declaration of intent on migration and mobility.

Also Read | Delhi Shocker: Woman Held For Allegedly Thrashing, Sexually Assaulting 8-Year-Old Boy in Dwarka.

Dendias arrived in India on Tuesday on a two-day visit.

The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said the two countries agreed to work together to further enhance collaboration in mutually beneficial sectors such as the shipping and maritime sector, information technology, agriculture, new and renewable energy, and pharmaceuticals.

Also Read | India Achieves $400 Billion Merchandise Exports Well Before Target Date, Says Union Minister Piyush Goyal.

It said detailed discussions were held on the importance of keeping our oceans free and open for movement and trade and both sides underlined the need to support and adhere to the Laws of the Seas (UNCLOS).

The MEA said both sides shared views on regional and global issues of mutual interest in the context of new geopolitical and geo-economic realities.

"Developments pertaining to the European Union, Eastern Mediterranean, Afghanistan and Ukraine were discussed," it said in a statement.

It said the two sides conveyed their deep commitment to multilateralism, and a rules-based international order while reaffirming the importance of the urgent reform of the UN.

"Will work closely together on maritime issues. Benefitted from insights on the Ukraine situation, Mediterranean and the European Union," Jaishankar tweeted.

On his part, Dendias said, "We aspire our relation to becoming a strategic one. We see many things in a very similar way."

The MEA said discussions covered the entire gamut of bilateral relations and the two sides explored ways to further strengthen the close and friendly ties.

"The two ministers expressed hope that the 8th round of Joint Economic Committee Meeting scheduled at Athens on 15 April 2022 will provide further impetus to trade and investment ties," it said.

"They appreciated that trade has shown a significant increase, and has crossed USD 1 billion despite the challenges posed by the pandemic," it said.

Considering their rich ancient past, the two sides agreed to continue their relationship in the field of culture and education.

A cultural and educational exchange programme for the period 2022-2026 was signed during the visit.

The MEA said the Greek foreign minister handed over the Instrument of Ratification of Greece as a signatory to the framework agreement on International Solar Alliance.

"The two sides discussed the possibility of enhancement of the bilateral relationship to a strategic partnership," the MEA said.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Amritsar, March 23: The fifth consignment of 2,000 metric tonnes of wheat has been dispatched for Afghanistan on Wednesday out of the 50,000 MT of wheat, which is to be sent to Afghanistan as Humanitarian aid.

Rahul Nangare, Customs Commissioner at the Attari Border said, "This is the 5th assignment of 2000 metric tonne (MT) of wheat, which is being sent to Afghanistan via Attari-Wagah border."

"This was an initiative of the Ministry of External Affairs, under a total of 50000 MT of wheat will be sent to Afghanistan as humanitarian aid," he added.

A driver from Afghanistan said, "There is a huge shortage of food in Afghanistan. I would like to thank the Indian government for its help. This will further strengthen the relationship between both the countries." India is Sending 5th Consignment Having 2000 Mt of Wheat to Afghanistan.

The first consignment of humanitarian aid of 2,500 tonnes of wheat from India reached Afghanistan's Jalalabad through Pakistan on February 26.

Meanwhile, the second convoy of India's humanitarian assistance carrying 2,000 MTs of wheat left Attari, Amritsar on March 3 for Jalalabad, Afghanistan, the MEA had said.

Moreover, India sent the third consignment of 2,000 metric tonnes of wheat to Afghanistan in 40 trucks via the Attari-Wagah border on March 8.

The fourth consignment of 2,000 metric tonnes of wheat is being dispatched for Afghanistan via the Attari-Wagah border on March 15.

Earlier, India had announced that it will send 50,000 metric tonnes (MT) of wheat to Afghanistan overland through Pakistan. Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla had flagged off the first such consignment from Amritsar.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Srinagar, Mar 23 (PTI) Five people, including three cops and a CRPF jawan, were injured in a grenade attack by militants in Rainawari area of Srinagar on Wednesday, police said.

"There was a grenade attack at a naka in Rainawari area which missed the intended target," Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Srinagar, Rakesh Balwal said.

Also Read | China Investing Over $400 Billion in 54 Muslim Countries, Says Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

In the attack, he said, a CRPF personnel and a policeman sustained minor splinter injuries.

"Three other passersby, including two off-duty traffic men riding a motorcycle and one civilian, also got minor splinter injuries," the SSP said.

Also Read | Russia Calls For Transition To Oil Trading in National Currencies, Says Russian Deputy PM Alexander Novak.

Balwal said all the injured were in a stable condition.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Srinagar, Mar 23 (PTI) A policeman and a CRPF personnel were injured in a grenade attack by militants in Rainawari area of Srinagar on Wednesday, an official said.

Militants hurled the grenade towards the security personnel at Zind Shah Chowk in the city this evening, he said.

Also Read | Russia Calls For Transition To Oil Trading in National Currencies, Says Russian Deputy PM Alexander Novak.

Police constable Mohammad Amin and the CRPF jawan received minor splinter injuries in the explosion, he said.

They were shifted to a nearby hospital for treatment. The area was cordoned off and a search was launched to nab the attackers, he added.

Also Read | India Will Continue to Partner with League of Arab States in Combating Terrorism, Promoting Plurality, Says Harsh Vardhan Shringla at UNSC Meet.

(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 23 (ANI): Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha and senior Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge on Wednesday hit out at Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan for raking up Kashmir issue in the meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), asserting that Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK) is an integral part of India.

Kharge said that Imran Khan is facing political challenges in Pakistan and he's resorting to raking up Kashmir to deflect attention.

Also Read | Uttar Pradesh Shocker: Man Kills Paramour's Husband in Kanpur; Arrested.

"Imran Khan is facing political compulsions and he is chanting Kashmir-Kashmir. No one is going to listen to Imran Khan. He is talking about giving away India's land to someone else. India is not going to tolerate this," said Kharge.

"Pakistan Occupied Kashmir is an integral part of India and we won't let it go. Jammu and Kashmir is and will remain an integral part of India," the Congress leader further said.

Also Read | Hyderabad Fire: 11 Migrant Workers from Bihar Killed in Huge Blaze at Scrap Godown in Secunderabad.

Kharge's remark came in the backdrop of the Pakistan Prime Minister raking up the Kashmir issue at the OIC meeting in Islamabad.

In his keynote address at the inaugural session of the 48th session of the Council of Foreign Ministers (CFM) of the 57-member body of Muslim countries, Khan said, "We have failed both the Palestinians and the people of Kashmir. I am sad to say that we have been able to make no impact at all. They don't take us seriously, we are a divided house and those powers know it."

With Opposition leaders moving a no-confidence motion against him, Khan, who is on shaky political grounds, in an attempt to deflect from the attention urged member countries of the OIC to present a united front to make a significant impact on Palestine and Kashmir.

At the OIC inaugural address, the Pakistan Prime Minister also raked up the issue of the abrogation of the special status to Kashmir. On August 5, 2019, the government of India had revoked the special Constitutional status of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir under Article 370 of the Constitution and abrogated Article 35A.

Pakistan has repeatedly sought to raise the Kashmir issue at the OIC even while India's relations with several key players in West Asia and in the Islamic organisation, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, Indonesia and Bangladesh, have seen marked improvements in recent years. (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 23 (ANI): Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla on Tuesday held meetings with Tourism Ministry officials and tourism officials of the Rajasthan government in which several key decisions were taken to boost tourism in Rajasthan. It was decided to take steps towards building an international-level museum in Jaipur and a tribal museum in Udaipur.

It was also decided that the glimpses of the history and rich culture and traditions of the Rajasthan will be reflected in the old building of the Rajasthan Legislative Assembly.

Also Read | Delhi SEC Likely To Decide on Civic Body Polls in Second Week of April, Say Sources.

In the meeting, the Speaker said that during his recent visit to Bihar, he had seen the museum built in Patna, in which Kalinga, Magadha and Ashoka era resources have been preserved very well.

He said all these things reflect the glory of that time in history.

Also Read | AAP MLA Saurabh Bhardwaj To Be New Vice-Chairman of Delhi Jal Board.

Noting that the history of Rajasthan also has its own unique identity, he said more and more people should know about it and a proposal should be prepared and sent to the Centre to build an international level museum in Jaipur.

He said there is a rich tribal culture in Udaipur, Banswara, Dungarpur and there is a need to build a Tribal Museum in Udaipur.

Union Tourism Minister G. Kishan Reddy and Minister of State for Culture Arjun Ram Meghwal said that the central government is committed to the development of tourism in Rajasthan.

They said that whatever proposals come from the state government, the Centre will try to accede to them on priority. In the meeting, discussions were held to encourage desert tourism in Jaisalmer, to establish a special tourism zone, to develop panorama in Beneshwar Dham and to bring Govind Guru Dham located in Mangarh on the tourism map.

A discussion was also held on developing tourism in Hadoti. Under this, the state government will soon send a proposal to the Central Government to develop Bundi as a city of step-wells. Apart from this, work will also be done on the proposal to connect the Kaulvi caves in Jhalawar with the Buddhist circuit and to bring the Ramgarh crater of Baran on the international platform.

Officials from Rajasthan said that there is a need to discuss some issues with the Ministry of Railways regarding the Palace on Wheels. Lok Sabha Speaker assured that he will talk to the Railway Minister about this so that the operation of this train can start from September. Apart from this, the Centre will also cooperate in developing the heritage rail network between Marwar Junction to Kamli Ghat.

According to an official release, the central and state governments will work together to give a new identity to Pushkar Festival, Bundi Festival and Kota's Dussehra Fair.

Birla said that there is an attraction among the tourists towards the fairs of Rajasthan. (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 23: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday met Bharatiya Janata Party MPs from Bihar and Jharkhand over breakfast. More than 24 MPs, including BJP President JP Nadda, Bihar BJP President Sanjay Jaiswal, Union Ministers Giriraj Singh, RK Singh, Union Minister of State Annapurna Devi, Nishikant Dubey, were present at the meeting.

Speaking to ANI, after the meeting, Bihar MP Pradeep Singh, said that PM Modi spoke about the impact of the party's recent victory in four states. "Prime Minister meets us like the guardian of a family. He is the first Prime Minister who meets his MPs frequently," he said. Singh also informed that PM Modi is calling on MPs of all states one by one.

"The meeting was to generally take stock. We had breakfast there and clicked a group photo," the Bihar MP said. He further said that PM Modi also asked the MPs about the latest updates. Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan To Meet PM Narendra Modi in Delhi Tomorrow.

When asked about organisational talk at the meeting as Nadda was there, Singh said, "When party's MPs are meeting with the Prime Minister, it is imperative to have a national president. He did not say anything in the meeting. Not a big deal, he (Nadda) is also an MP."

Singh also informed that the MPs introduced themselves and shared their experiences with PM Modi. "The meeting was a short one and it was just a courtesy call," he said.

PM Modi often meets MPs of different states during the Parliament session.

Earlier, during the Budget Session too, he had met MPs of several states.

PM Modi talks more on non-political issues in these meetings, mostly about motivating MPs to do more. Recently, PM Modi interacted with MPs of North East, Uttar Pradesh, and some other states.

(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, Mar 23 (PTI) Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday paid tributes to socialist icon Ram Manohar Lohia on his birth anniversary, saying he is widely respected for his principled politics and intellectual prowess.

Born in 1910, Lohia was a freedom fighter and Gandhian before he became a pioneer for the political empowerment of underprivileged communities and worked to unite opposition parties against the then hegemony of the Congress.

Also Read | WhatsApp Rolls Out Emoji Reactions for Some Android Beta Users: Report.

He is credited with the first phase of the rise of anti-Congress forces in the early 60s. He died in 1967.

Paying homage to him, Modi tweeted, "Remembering Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia on his birth anniversary. He was at the forefront of many historical events and played a key role in our freedom struggle. He is widely respected for his principled politics and intellectual prowess."

Also Read | Qualcomm To Invest Rs 3,904 Crore To Expand Its Hyderabad Operations: Report.

The prime minister also posted on Twitter some correspondence involving Lohia, considered an intellectual giant.

He tweeted, "Some interesting nuggets from the pages of historya letter from Dr. Lohia to Lord Linlithgow and correspondence between Dr. Lohia's father and him."

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
By Siddharth Sharma

New Delhi [India], March 23 (ANI): With G-23 leaders stepping up demands for organizational changes, Congress interim president Sonia Gandhi is learnt to have told the leaders from the dissident faction that no major changes in the organisation could be possible until the election for the post of party's president is held in August-September this year.

Also Read | Oppo K10 & Enco Air 2 Earbuds To Be Launched Today in India; Check Expected Price, Features & Specifications Here.

Sonia Gandhi on Tuesday afternoon met G23 leaders Anand Sharma, Manish Tewari and Vivek Tankha at her residence in New Delhi as part of her efforts to resolve the deepening rift within the party after the poll rout of Congress in fives states in the recently concluded Assembly elections. As per sources, the Congress leaders in the meeting pointed out a lack of collective leadership in the decision-making process.

While G-23 leaders are pressing for organizational changes, Sonia Gandhi is learnt to have said that the requisite measures will be taken after the August-September elections for party president.

Also Read | Realme Narzo 50A Prime With Triple Rear Cameras Launched, Check Price & Other Details Here.

Quoting Sonia, sources said, "By August-September, the election for party's president will be over. Focus on that. I can make changes only to a certain extent by then."

As per sources, during the meeting, neither the Gandhi family nor the G-23 leaders mentioned Kapil Sibal, who had questioned the party's leadership.

The G23 members have been raising the issue of a few leaders in the party taking every decision while their accountability is not being fixed.

The three Congress leaders told Sonia Gandhi that the general secretaries are making decisions in the name of Rahul Gandhi while accusing them for the poll rout.

"Who will take responsibility for the consequences of decisions being taken by a few in the party? The party cannot be handed over to a few people. Sonia Gandhi said that she will consider the issues raised by the party leaders in the meeting," sources said.

The G23 leaders are also demanding "collective and inclusive" leadership. The ire of the G23 members in the Congress is seen aimed at party leaders Randeep Surjewala, Ajay Maken and KC Venugopal, the general secretaries of Congress, said sources.

According to sources, Gandhi's meeting with more G-23 leaders is an attempt to bridge the gap between the disgruntled bloc and the Congress leadership.

On March 18, Ghulam Nabi Azad met Gandhi after the recent poll rout. (ANI)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Steven Spielberg is drawing backlash after he referred to the Squid Game stars as unknown actors  despite the fame some of the cast had in Asia prior to the series.

The 75-year-old Oscar-winning director, who this year is nominated for best director for his West Side Story remake, was taking part in a panel Saturday alongside other PGA Awards Zanuck Award nominees when he noted that Netflixs hit Korean show changes the math entirely for all of us, Deadline reports.

Advertisement

Steven Spielberg arrives at the 94th Academy Awards nominees luncheon on Monday, March 7, 2022, in Los Angeles. (Jordan Strauss/Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

A long time ago it was domestic stars that brought the audience into movies, said the Schindlers List and Saving Private Ryan filmmaker. Today, its interesting, unknown people can star entire miniseries, can be in movies.

Given that multiple Squid Game actors, like Lee Jung-jae and Park Hae-soo, are already well-known in Korea, despite not being being known by most in the U.S. before the show, thousands took umbrage at Spielbergs suggestion the cast was made up of newbies.

Advertisement

This image released by Netflix shows Lee Jung-jae, center, Park Hae-soo, right, and Oh Young-soo in a scene from the Korean series "Squid Game." (Noh Juhan | Netflix/AP)

While some defended the director as having meant unknown to domestic audiences, others saw his remarks as idiotic.

I dont care for celebrities, but these actors are exactly that in their country, said one Twitter user. And Koreans produce better stuff than most of the garbage Hollywood makes now.

You either write a movie about fossils... or you live long enough to see yourself become one, quipped another, referring to the 1993 adaptation of Michael Crichtons Jurassic Park, which Spielberg directed but did not pen.

Its almost like there are thriving film industries in other parts of the world that have nothing to do with the nepotistic hollywood circus thats been pumping out the same cliche and boring s--t for years now, wrote another user.

Among its many accolades, Squid Game, which debuted on the streaming service last year to critical acclaim and record numbers, took home a Golden Globe, and won multiple Screen Actors Guild Awards  including for Lee Jung-jae.

The show sees financially desperate people fighting for their lives in deadly games. Within barely three weeks of having been available on Netflix, it drew more than 87 million viewers.
Nashik (Maharashtra) [India], March 23 (ANI): A scuffle broke out at a film theatre in Nashik after some women who arrived to watch 'The Kashmir Files' wearing saffron stoles were allegedly made to remove the same before entering the cinema hall.

A woman while speaking to ANI said, "We were a group of ladies who came to watch 'The Kashmir Files', and as a mark of identification we all were carrying saffron stoles as we did not have any other badge. There was nothing else behind it but we are asked to remove the stoles and only after that we were allowed to enter the movie hall."

Also Read | China Investing Over $400 Billion in 54 Muslim Countries, Says Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

Police Inspector, Pramod Chouhan said, "There was a brawl earlier, but all is peaceful now."

He refrained to comment on why the saffron stoles were asked to be removed.

Also Read | Russia Calls For Transition To Oil Trading in National Currencies, Says Russian Deputy PM Alexander Novak.

The film, which focuses on the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits from the Valley in the 1990s, has been mired in controversy since its release on March 11 with the BJP and Opposition parties sparring over the portrayal of the incidents.

The movie, which was released in theatres on March 11, stars Anupam Kher, Mithun Chakraborty, Pallavi Joshi, Darshan Kumaar, and others.

The movie revolves around the genocide of Kashmiri Pandits in 1990 and has been directed by Vivek Agnihotri, known for films like 'Tashkent Files', 'Hate Story' and 'Buddha in a Traffic Jam'. (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, Mar 23 (PTI) NHRC chairperson justice (retd) Arun Kumar Mishra on Wednesday expressed serious concern over climate and environment degradation impacting human rights, even as he said that time has come to supervise supervisory bodies like various pollution control boards.

He said this while chairing a meeting of the commission's first Core Advisory Group on Environment, Climate Change and Human Rights here, the rights panel said in a statement.

Also Read | China Investing Over $400 Billion in 54 Muslim Countries, Says Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

Efforts and funds pumped in to clean the Ganges and the Yamuna rivers, without yielding the desired results, are the two most visible and glaring examples of our collective failure to keep our environment clean and pollution-free, he was quoted as saying in the statement.

Mishra said human beings have not spared even the Mt Everest, which also requires to be cleaned now.

Also Read | Russia Calls For Transition To Oil Trading in National Currencies, Says Russian Deputy PM Alexander Novak.

Mindless mining is going on so much that even Antarctica has not been spared. Development without following norms is not sensible, the NHRC chief lamented.

He also expressed concern over a recent estimate, according to which, of all the polluted cities in the world, a large number are from India.

Delhi was found to be the most polluted capital in the world for the fourth consecutive year in 2021 and 35 of the 50 cities with the worst air quality were in India, according to World Air Quality Report 2021, prepared by Swiss organisation IQAir and released globally on Tuesday.

In 2021, none of the cities in India met the prescribed World Health Organization air quality standards of 5 micrograms per cubic metre, stated the report.

As part of the global fraternity, we all as individuals have to take up the responsibility to protect and save planet earth from environment degradation to ensure that it doesn't lead to massive climate change impacting lives and ecological imbalances, Mishra said.

Time has come to act or perish," he added.

Mishra expressed serious concern over climate and environment degradation impacting human rights.

Despite the enabling laws and rules, the ground situation is not changing for good much due to ineffective implementation of regulatory measures to check various environmental pollution, which may be impacting climate change and thus the lives of the people.

Time has come to supervise the supervisory bodies like various pollution control boards, he was quoted as saying in the statement.

He also questioned how would the society achieve the Sustainable Developmental Goals without fixing the problems related to the environmental hazards, agricultural practices, industrial and domestic waste management, among other issues.

Earlier, highlighting the significance of the meeting of the core advisory group, NHRC Secretary General Bimbadhar Pradhan said that there is no doubt that climate change is real and its effects are disastrous.

He said environment degradation is leading to climate change resulting in forced migration of people causing miseries, which need to be given a serious thought to shape up the enabling policies through deliberations.

A gamut of issues concerning environment, clean air and water pollution were discussed as part of the four specific agenda points of discussion, including gaps in implementation and monitoring of laws, judgments and schemes/initiatives concerning environment, climate change and human rights.

Best practices in environment management in India and abroad and replication thereof; empowering the local government and authorities to tackle environmental issues, and protecting the population, especially vulnerable sections from the impacts of climate change were other agenda points, according to the statement.

Besides the discussions and the presentations in the meeting, the NHRC chairperson asked the participants to send their specific suggestions, identifying the gaps in the laws, rules, regulations and implementation thereof to chalk out recommendations for the way forward to protect environment and check climate change, the statement said.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
New Delhi, Mar 23 (PTI) The second inter-ministerial meeting to discuss the celebration of International Day of Yoga-2022 was held here, the Ministry of Ayush said on Wednesday.

Several Union ministers attended the meeting on Tuesday and apprised the participants about the activities being carried out by their ministries to create awareness about the event this year. They also gave suggestions to enhance the outreach, the ministry said in a statement.

Also Read | China Investing Over $400 Billion in 54 Muslim Countries, Says Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

The meeting was organised with the aim of making the International Yoga Day a success with the cooperation of all the ministries, it said.

Ayush Minister Sarbananda Sonowal, Minister of Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal, Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya, Minister of Tourism, Culture and Development of North Eastern Region G Kishan Reddy, Labour Minister Bhupender Yadav, Women and Child Development Minister Smriti Irani, Electronics and Information Technology Minister Ashwani Vaishnav and Minister of Fisheries and Animal Husbandry Purushottam Rupala were present in the meeting.

Also Read | Russia Calls For Transition To Oil Trading in National Currencies, Says Russian Deputy PM Alexander Novak.

The Ministry of Ayush has ben organising the event since 2015.

The key purpose behind the United Nations recognising June 21 as the International Day of Yoga was to underline the potential of Yoga in public health globally.

The International Yoga Day resolution of the United Nations General Assembly in December 2014, it may be recollected, came at the initiative of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi and was passed by unanimous consent, which was a record in itself. Since 2015, it has evolved into a mass movement for health, around the world, the ministry said in the statement.

The event, over the years, has not only boosted Yoga's popularity, but also expanded its geographical presence by inspiring its adoption in several new territories, it stated.

The International Yoga Day, it said, has also triggered new advances within the field of Yoga, such as development of universal protocols for people of all ages, development of specific protocols addressing lifestyle diseases and research into its potential as a productivity enhancing tool.

(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 23 (ANI): The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MPs from West Bengal on Wednesday staged a demonstration in the Parliament premises over the Birbhum incident where eight charred bodies were found after their houses were set on fire.

The BJP MPs held protests carrying placards "We want central government intervention in West Bengal to stop state-sponsored terrorism". The BJP leaders demanded CBI inquiry over the matter.

Also Read | Delhi Shocker: Woman Held For Allegedly Thrashing, Sexually Assaulting 8-Year-Old Boy in Dwarka.

"We want Centre's intervention. Twelve bodies were recovered so far. Locals saying more people have died. This kind of barbarism should be probed. Twenty-six people were murdered in the last week. Our councillors were killed. An MP was attacked with bomb," West Bengal BJP president Sukanta Majumdar told ANI.

As many as eight people were burnt to death in the Rampurhat area of West Bengal's Birbhum on Tuesday after a mob allegedly set houses on fire following the killing of Trinamool Congress leader Bhadu Sheikh.

Also Read | India Achieves $400 Billion Merchandise Exports Well Before Target Date, Says Union Minister Piyush Goyal.

Director-General of Police (DGP) West Bengal, Manoj Malviya informed that 11 arrests have been made in the case so far. He further informed that Bhadu Shaikh's murder was reported last night, an hour after which 7-8 houses nearby had caught fire.

A special investigation team has been formed to probe the matter.

Meanwhile, the Calcutta High Court on Wednesday took cognizance of the Birbhum incident.

The Leader of Opposition in the state Assembly Suvendu Adhikari on Tuesday called for President's rule in West Bengal. Further, BJP demanded the resignation of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. (ANI)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Washington, Mar 23 (PTI) US President Joe Biden would attend an emergency NATO Summit, address European Union leaders and hold meetings with G-7 leaders, his national security advisor has said on the eve of his departure for Brussels and Poland.

Biden is scheduled to leave for Europe to show a united front and take stock of the situation in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Also Read | Russia-Ukraine War: Germany Refuses To Boycott Russian Energy Supplies.

He will attend an emergency NATO Summit, joined by the leaders of the other 29 NATO Allies. He will join the G7 leaders. And he will address the 27 leaders of the European Union at a session of the European Council. He will have the opportunity to coordinate on the next phase of military assistance to Ukraine, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters at a White House news conference on Tuesday.

He will join our partners in imposing further sanctions on Russia and tightening the existing sanctions to crack down on evasion and to ensure robust enforcement, Sullivan said, adding that Biden will work with Allies on longer-term adjustments to NATO force posture on the eastern flank.

Also Read | Russia-Ukraine War: Russia Says Putting Peace Terms Up for Vote in Ukraine Will Harm Negotiations.

He will announce joint action on enhancing European energy security and reducing Europe's dependence on Russian gas at long last. He will announce further American contributions to a coordinated humanitarian response to ease the suffering of civilians inside Ukraine and to respond to the growing flow of refugees, he said.

From Brussels, Biden will travel to Poland, where he will engage with US troops who are now helping to defend NATO territory, and he will meet with experts involved in the humanitarian response. He will also hold a bilateral meeting with President Andrzej Duda of Poland.

For the past few months, the West has been united. The President is travelling to Europe to ensure we stay united, to cement our collective resolve, to send a powerful message that we are prepared and committed to this for as long as it takes...helping the Ukrainian people defend themselves, imposing and increasing costs on Russia, and reinforcing the Western alliance, Sullivan said.

Sullivan said Biden will announce new sanctions, but on ensuring that there is joint effort to crack down on invasion.

We have applied an enormous amount of economic pressure. In order to sustain and escalate that pressure over time, part of that is about new designations, new targets, but a big part of it is about effective enforcement and applying the lessons that we've learned from other circumstances where we have, in fact, imposed sanctions on countries, he said.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Washington, March 23: US President Joe Biden is expected to announce this week new sanctions against more than 300 members of the Russian State Duma over Moscow's special military operation in Ukraine, The Wall Street Journal reported citing American officials.

The report said on Tuesday that the Biden administration could announce the sanctions as soon as Thursday when Biden will meet with NATO leaders to discuss the situation in Ukraine. Also Read | Russia-Ukraine War: Germany Refuses To Boycott Russian Energy Supplies.

Earlier in the day, US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Biden will announce new sanctions against Russia while he is in Brussels meeting with NATO and European partners. The report, citing US officials, confirmed that the sanctions will be announced in coordination with the European Union and members of the G7. Also Read | Russia-Ukraine War: Russia Says Putting Peace Terms Up for Vote in Ukraine Will Harm Negotiations.

A US official said the planned sanctions packaged are often postponed and changed during the interagency review process prior to being finalized.

Russia launched a special military operation in Ukraine on February 24 with the goals of demilitarizing the country, neutralizing nationalist battalions, ensuring Ukraine remains a neutral country and that Crimea is recognized as a part of Russia that cannot be taken away. Russia also seeks to ensure Ukraine also recognizes the Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics are independent states.

According to the Sastellum.Al sanctions tracker, Russia has become the most sanctioned country in the world with more than 7,100 restrictive measures imposed against the country since 2014 - a majority of which came after Russia launched its military operation in Ukraine in February.

On March 20, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said it had recorded 2,361 civilian casualties since the start of the operation in Ukraine, including 902 deaths and 1,459 injuries. 992 of the total casualties occurred in Donetsk and Luhansk and 1,369 in other regions of Ukraine, according to the OHCHR.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Islamabad, Mar 23 (PTI) Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Wednesday met Pakistan's Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Qamar Javed Bajwa and discussed matters of mutual interest, regional security and bilateral defence cooperation.

According to a statement by the Pakistan Army, Wang, who is also the State Councilor, said that the Pakistan-China relationship is based on the convergence of views and mutual respect.

Also Read | India Sends 5th Consignment of 2,000 Metric Tonnes of Wheat to Afghanistan.

He pledged to play his role for further improvements in diplomatic cooperation with Pakistan at all levels, it said.

Wang reviewed the security provided to the projects being completed under the banner of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and said that China believes in inclusive prosperity.

Also Read | China Investing Over $400 Billion in 54 Muslim Countries, Says Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

Gen. Bajwa thanked Wang for China's continued support to Pakistan.

Wang was invited for the first time to attend the 48th session of the foreign minister of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) which was attended by the ministers and delegates from 57 Muslim states and international organisations.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
United Nations, Mar 24 (PTI) India abstained in the UN Security Council on a vote on a draft resolution by Russia on the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine on Wednesday.

Permanent and veto-welding Council member Russia had called for a vote in the 15-nation Security Council on its draft resolution that demands that civilians, including humanitarian personnel and persons in vulnerable situations, including women and children are fully protected, calls for negotiated ceasefire for enabling safe, rapid, voluntary and unhindered evacuation of civilians, and underscores the need for the parties concerned to agree on humanitarian pauses to this end."

Also Read | India Sends 5th Consignment of 2,000 Metric Tonnes of Wheat to Afghanistan.

Russia and China voted in favour of the resolution while India was among 13 countries who abstained.

India had previously abstained on two occasions in the Security Council and once in the General Assembly on resolutions on Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Also Read | China Investing Over $400 Billion in 54 Muslim Countries, Says Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla is visiting the United Nations and addressed a Security Council briefing on Cooperation between the UN and the League of Arab States chaired by Council President UAE.

The Russian resolution, which makes no reference to its invasion of Ukraine, calls upon all parties concerned to allow safe and unhindered passage to destinations outside of Ukraine, including to foreign nationals without discrimination, and facilitate safe and unhindered access of humanitarian assistance to those in need in and around Ukraine, taking into account the particular needs of women, girls, men and boys, older persons and persons with disabilities.

The Russian resolution in the Security Council was one of the three resolutions on the humanitarian situation in Ukraine that were put up before the UN General Assembly and the Security Council Wednesday. The UN General Assembly resumed its 11th Emergency Special Session on Ukraine Wednesday and had two resolutions for consideration before it.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Washington, Mar 24 (AP) For all of the talk about slapping sanctions on Russian oligarchs, there was a notable omission in the Ukraine aid package approved this month by Congress: An infusion of money for the IRS criminal investigation arm tasked with tracking down the pricey properties of the Russian elite didn't make the cut.

The White House request to give the IRS $30 million for tracing financial activities associated with sanctioned people appeared to run afoul of broader reluctance by Republicans to put more money into IRS enforcement actions. Republicans close to the spending bill negotiations said the mission of the IRS should be to administer and enforce the U.S. tax code, not to enforce sanctions.

Also Read | India Sends 5th Consignment of 2,000 Metric Tonnes of Wheat to Afghanistan.

While the money for Ukraine in the spending bill includes $25 million for the Treasury Department's terrorism and financial intelligence unit, $17 million for its departmental offices and $19 million for the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, the only Treasury agency that did not receive its request was IRS Criminal Investigation.

Many of the sanctions levied on Russia's elite and its Central Bank are imposed by the Treasury Department and its various enforcement arms, including those at the IRS. Along with the newly formed KleptoCapture group led by the Justice Department, the IRS plays a major part in imposing sanctions on oligarchs and supporters of Vladimir Putin.

Also Read | China Investing Over $400 Billion in 54 Muslim Countries, Says Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

A lack of funding for the IRS criminal investigations unit damages the ability of our law enforcement community to do its work said Danny Glaser, a former Treasury assistant secretary for terrorist financing and financial crimes. The IRS criminal investigators are some of the best financial investigators in the world. It's important they are at full strength."

In its funding request to Congress, the White House said the $30 million would expand IRS Criminal Investigation's capability to find links between various businesses, conduct digital asset tracing, and identify the ownership of assets owned by oligarchs and others linked to Putin.

That money would have included purchasing more than 50 licenses to databases that can access global public records, a Treasury official told The Associated Press, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters. Currently, only five people have that capability.

The workforce of the investigations unit has shrunk by 25% over the course of the last decade, according to Treasury.

The unit "is in desperate need of stable, long-term funding to develop a deeper understanding of the global financial landscape and trace and seize assets that today are in the hands of criminals," Treasury said in a statement last week.

Chye-Ching Huang, executive director of the Tax Law Center at NYU Law, said the funding woes for the IRS investigations unit are part of a larger issue with the federal government relying on the IRS to step in during national and international emergencies.

We saw that during the pandemic, when the administrative apparatus was used to get billions of dollars of aid to people and businesses in a short amount of time, and we're seeing it during a foreign policy emergency," she said.

That points to its critical role and why lawmakers should not be starving the IRS," she said, adding that the IRS is key to preventing criminal corruption, which is corrosive to democracy.

Biden signed the giant spending bill into law earlier this month to fund the government through September. Included in the funding is $5.4 billion dedicated to IRS enforcement outside of criminal investigations, an increase of $225 million above fiscal 2021.

Jorge Castro, who served as counsellor to the IRS commissioner during the Obama administration, said he was hopeful the agency will get more money, as the war in Ukraine shows no signs of ending.

I suspect we're not done with additional sanctions-related bills and I'm assuming the Biden administration would like to make this a feature of its next request," he said. (AP)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Karachi, Mar 23 (PTI) A man has been arrested for murdering an 18-year-old Hindu girl when she resisted a bid to abduct her in Pakistan's southern Sindh province, according to a media report on Wednesday.

Pooja Kumari Oad was said to have been shot after she put up resistance to the attackers in Rohi, Sukkur in Sindh on Monday.

Also Read | Taliban Shuts Afghan Girls' Schools Just Hours After Reopening.

The Sukkur police arrested the suspect, identified as Wahid Bakhash Lashari, and registered an FIR against him under the relevant sections of Pakistan Penal Code, The News reported on Wednesday.

Lashari, along with his two accomplices, reportedly broke into the house of Sahib Oad with a gun on the day of the murder. Lashari allegedly shot Oad's daughter, Pooja Kumari, dead when the family resisted as he tried to abduct her, the paper said.

Also Read | Ramadan 2022 Traditions Around The World: From UAE To Indonesia, Heres How Different Countries Celebrate The Holy Month of Ramazan.

The alleged murderers escaped after the killing.

The incident sparked an uproar on social media with activists strongly condemning the brutal murder and demanding protection of religious minorities, mainly Hindus and Christians.

SSP Sukkur Sanghaar Malik ordered the arrest of the suspected killer and his aides. Lashari was arrested from the limits of Rohri, with what is suspected to be the murder weapon.

On Tuesday, a local court sent the suspect to 10-day police remand.

Pakistan Peoples' Party (PPP) Senator Krishna Kumari on Tuesday demanded capital punishment for the killer, saying that the authorities should take notice of the situation as girls of minorities were not safe in their homes.

PPP Chairperson Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, whose party rules the province, condemned the incident and said the relevant authorities should make sure that the culprits were meted out stringent punishments.

Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz president Shehbaz Sharif called the murder "heinous and condemnable" and said that such incidents represent our collective failure and put our whole society to shame.

"No girl deserves to go through this. High time we thought why we continue to hit lows one after the other," the leader of the opposition tweeted.

Pakistan's minority communities have long faced the issue of forced marriages and conversions, the report said.

According to the Peoples Commission for Minorities' Rights and the Centre for Social Justice, 156 incidents of forced conversions took place between 2013 and 2019, it said.

In 2019, the Sindh government attempted to outlaw forced conversions and marriages for the second time, but certain religious protestors contested the bill, the report said.

The Pakistan Bureau of Statistics reports the overall population of the Hindu community in Pakistan at 1.60 per cent, and 6.51 per cent in Sindh respectively, it said.

Hindus form the biggest minority community in Pakistan. According to official estimates, 75 lakh Hindus live in Pakistan. However, according to the community, over 90 lakh Hindus are living in the country.

The majority of Pakistan's Hindu population is settled in Sindh province where they share culture, traditions and language with Muslim residents. They often complain of harassment by extremists. PTI

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Tom Hanks is taking over the Steel City once again.

The two-time Academy Award winner is in Pittsburgh while filming A Man Called Otto, and has been making the rounds among the local set.

Advertisement

In this Jan. 18, 2017 photo, Tom Hanks arrives at the People's Choice Awards at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles. (Jordan Strauss/Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

On Saturday, the beloved star of movies such as Forest Gump, Saving Private Ryan and Philadelphia spotted a wedding party at the Fairmont Pittsburgh, and rolled up on event photographer to request a photo with the bride.

Rachel Rowland told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that he said, My name is Tom Hanks! Can I take a photo with the bride?

Advertisement

We all started screaming and were pretty much in shock, she said.

The bride-to-be Grace Gwaltney was joined by her bridesmaids for photos with the A-lister.

The Daily News Flash Weekdays Catch up on the days top five stories every weekday afternoon. >

He was just as wonderful and charming as youd assume, Rowland told the outlet. His wife, Rita [Wilson], was there and got in some photos, too.

On Monday, the Hollywood power couple posed for pictures with employees of the Busy Beaver home improvement store.

We were so honored to have Tom Hanks, Rita Wilson & the rest of the cast & crew film at our Lawrenceville, PA location today!

Set for a December release, A Man Called Otto, the Marc Forster-helmed life affirming comedy is the second film adaptation of the international best-seller novel A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman.

In 2015, Hannes Holm directed the Swedish film version.

Also starring Mariana Trevino, Rachel Keller and Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, the film about love and unexpected friendships began filming in February and is expected to wrap in May.

Advertisement

Hanks previously brought his star power to Pittsburgh to film the Fred Rogers biographical film A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood in 2018.
Quetta [Pakistan], March 23 (ANI): As Pakistan celebrated Constitution Day, a Baloch organization carried out protests against overwhelming Punjabi domination in the country while launching a social campaign to support freedom for the provinces of Balochistan, Sindh and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.

"On 23 March, as the unnatural state of Pakistan observes its constitution day (read Punjabi hegemony day), a campaign will run to remind the world to undo this historical catastrophe and help free the nations of Baluchistan, Pashtunistan and Sindh," Munir Mengal President of Paris based NGO Baloch Voice Association said in a tweet.

Also Read | Imran Khan Says He Wont Resign Under Any Circumstances Ahead of No-Confidence Motion.

In a detailed Facebook post, Mengal further said that the three provinces of Sindh, Balochistan, and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa were promised a federal polity at the time of independence but were later suppressed by the Punjabi elite.

"At their forced union in 1947, these nations were promised a federal polity and greater autonomy, however, the Punjabi elite has not only denied people their legitimate rights but has instead suppressed and criminalized, through its Punjabi Army, any expression of grievance, autonomy, and self-determination," Mengal said.

Also Read | Taliban Shuts Afghan Girls' Schools Just Hours After Reopening.

Talking further on Balochistan, he said, "Pakistan wrested Baluchistan illegally with its military might in 1948. But, the people of Baluchistan never bowed down in front of the occupying Pakistani army and continuously fought with them against this illegal occupation."

"The Pakistan army has been committing crimes in Baluchistan. Tens of thousands of civilians have been killed and hundreds of thousands of people have been affected all across Baluchistan. Baluch nationalists continue their movement for the independence of Baluchistan and every day the occupational army is accounted for the crimes it commits on the people," he said.

Earlier this month, the Baloch Voice Association in Geneva, Switzerland organized exhibitions, conferences, and seminars to protest against thousands of cases of enforced disappearances in Pakistan's Balochistan region.

According to the Human Rights Council of Balochistan, only during the month of December 2021, more than 63 people were abducted and are missing while 37 were killed.

According to the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances, an entity established by the Pakistani government, 8122 cases of enforced disappearances have been registered officially. Most of them are still unresolved.

Independent local and international human rights organizations put the numbers much higher. 20,000 have reportedly been abducted only from Balochistan, out of which more than 3000 have turned up dead as bullet-riddled dead bodies, bearing signs of extreme torture.

Human rights group Amnesty International has called for Pakistani authorities to end the use of enforced disappearances as a tool of state policy, as it releases a new briefing documenting the effect of such illegal abductions on the families of those who go missing.

Mengal also talked about the oppression of Pashtuns in the northern province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, saying, "Pashtuns are facing intimidation, threats, and arrests from the Pakistani army for aspiring for the state of Pashtunistan."

"At least 70 thousand Pashtuns have been killed in the last 16 years. More than one thousand tribal elders have been killed, thousands of Pashtuns have disappeared showcasing the Pakistan army's gross human rights violations," Mengal said citing a report. (ANI)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Islamabad [Pakistan], March 23 (ANI): The Pakistan police has arrested a suspect connected with the shooting of an 18-year-old Hindu girl, who was shot dead on Monday in Sindh province.

The assailant and two of his accomplices broke into the Hindu girl's house and opened fire on her after she refused to marry him, the Dawn newspaper reported citing the police.

Also Read | Taliban To Open High Schools for Girls Today.

The girl identified as Pooja Kumari was shot in Rohi, Sukkur after she put up resistance to the attackers.

This is not a stand-alone incident in Pakistan. Human rights activists say that hundreds of Christian and Hindu girls are forced to convert to Islam every year.

Also Read | US President Joe Biden Expected To Announce New Sanctions Against 300 Members of Russian State Duma Tomorrow.

Women belonging to minority communities are regularly abducted and forcibly converted. Rights group says the country's minority communities have long faced the issue of forced marriages and conversions.

Multiple rights organisations have accused the Pakistan government of not taking necessary actions over the rising crimes against Hindus and other minorities.

Earlier, the provincial government in Sindh had attempted to outlaw forced conversions and marriages. However, religious protestors contested the bill, stating that girls only convert after falling in love with Muslim men.

The overall population of the Hindu community in Pakistan at 1.60 per cent, and 6.51 per cent in Sindh, according to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics. (ANI)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Islamabad [Pakistan], March 23 (ANI): Succumbing to the pressure of a local Member of Provincial Assembly (MPA) in Pakistan's Punjab province, Lodharan District Police Officer (DPO) refused to register an FIR of a kidnapping, torture and vehicle snatching incident.

Even if everything was proved in the initial investigations, the DPO was reluctant to register an FIR on the matter. Rao Ashraf, the complainant, alleged that DPO Abdul Rauf Qaisrani in the presence of a local MPA had said, "Do whatever you want to do. I will not register an FIR of the incident," reported The News International.

Also Read | Russia-Ukraine War: Germany Refuses To Boycott Russian Energy Supplies.

On March 15, 2022, five people riding a bike intercepted the car of one Ashraf when he was on his way to a court along with his cousin. The accused gave a good thrashing to the victim, tore his clothes and snatched the vehicle. They let the victim's cousin go home. However, they kidnapped Ashraf and took him to a deserted place.

The brother of the victim reached out to the police. After receiving the call the Lodhran police responded to the call and recovered the victim but did not do anything to recover the vehicle.

Also Read | Russia-Ukraine War: Russia Says Putting Peace Terms Up for Vote in Ukraine Will Harm Negotiations.

The victim approached the DPO on next day and described the incident in detail. The DPO took action and directed the SHO to recover the vehicle within half an hour.

As the complainant requested to give a personal hearing and register FIR against them if they were proved guilty, the DPO allegedly straightforwardly refused to register the FIR.

The complainant also accused that the local MPA had also allegedly become a hurdle in the way of justice however DPO Abdul Rauf Qaisrani denied the allegation of MPA's intervention.

In order to investigate the matter and unearth the truth, The News International also tried to contact the local MPA but his both cell numbers were not responding. (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 23 (ANI): Pakistan on Wednesday said it wishes to have mutually beneficial relations with all its neighbours including India and resolve all outstanding disputes.

Pakistan Charge d'Affaires in New Delhi, Aftab Hassan Khan stressed that it is essential to resolve the core issue of Jammu and Kashmir for lasting peace and stability in the region.

Also Read | Russia-Ukraine War Latest Updates: 2 Children Killed After Russian Troops Attack Rubizhne; Russians Destroy Chernobyl Laboratory.

"The Charge d'Affaires underlined that Pakistan wishes to have mutually beneficial relations with all its neighbours including India and believes in resolving all outstanding disputes through peaceful means of dialogue and diplomacy," the Pakistan High Commission said in a press release as it observed Pakistan Day.

"For lasting peace and stability in the region, it is essential to resolve the core issue of Jammu and Kashmir in accordance with the UN resolutions and aspirations of the people of Kashmir," the release added.

Also Read | Russia President Vladimir Putin, France President Emmanuel Macron Discuss Ukraine Issue Over Phone.

India has on several occasions said that it desires normal neighbourly relations with Pakistan.

India's consistent position is that issues between India and Pakistan should be resolved bilaterally and peacefully, in an atmosphere free of terror and violence.

New Delhi has maintained that the onus is on Pakistan to create such a conducive environment.

Pakistan continues to sponsor cross border terrorism against India; restrict normal trade, connectivity and people-to-people exchanges; and engage in hostile and fabricated propaganda to vilify India, according to the Ministry of External Affairs annual report.

Last year, both countries had renewed ceasefire understanding between Director Generals of Military Operations (DGMOs).

The understanding held quite well for the first few months, but Pakistan again upped the ante in terms of cross-border infiltrations and ceasefire violations from July 2021. (ANI)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Washington [US], March 23 (ANI/Sputnik): Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov said the Pentagon has already forgotten how US and NATO planes bombed the cities of Yugoslavia, Iraq and Libya.

The Russian ambassador's statement came in response to statements by Pentagon spokesman John Kirby about the alleged involvement of the Russian Armed Forces in war crimes in Ukraine.

Also Read | US President Joe Biden Expected To Announce New Sanctions Against 300 Members of Russian State Duma Tomorrow.

"The feeling is that the Pentagon has already forgotten how, quite recently, aircraft of the United States and their NATO allies bombed the cities of Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Libya [in] live [TV broadcasts] . Washington does not remember the egregious crimes of American military personnel and mercenaries in Afghanistan and Syria either," Antonov said in a statement posted in the Russian diplomatic mission's Telegram channel.

He said Russian Armed Forces' strikes target only Ukrainian military infrastructure facilities.

Also Read | COVID-19 Surges in China, 2,591 New Local Cases Reported: National Health Commission.

Russia launched a special military operation in Ukraine on February 24 in response to calls from the Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics (DPR and LPR) for protection against intensifying attacks by Ukrainian troops.

The Russian Defense Ministry said the special operation, which targets Ukrainian military infrastructure, aims to "demilitarize and denazify" Ukraine. Moscow has said it has no plans to occupy Ukraine. Western nations have imposed numerous sanctions on Russia. (ANI/Sputnik)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Kyiv, Mar 24 (AP) A senior US defence official said Wednesday that Russian ground forces appear to be digging in and setting up defensive positions between 15-20 kilometers (9-12 miles) outside Kyiv, as they continue to make little to no progress moving toward the city center.

The official said it appears the forces are no longer trying to advance into the city and, in some cases east of Kyiv, Ukrainian troops have been able to push Russian soldiers further away. The official said Russian forces had been 20-30 kilometers (12-19 miles) away to the east and northeast, and are now about 55 kilometers (34 miles) away.

Also Read | India Sends 5th Consignment of 2,000 Metric Tonnes of Wheat to Afghanistan.

The official said that, instead, Russian troops are exerting more energy and effort in the eastern Donbas region, specifically in Luhansk and Donetsk. The official said the U.S. is seeing Russia prioritize the fight there, in what could be an effort to cut off any Ukrainian troops in those areas and prevent them from moving west to defend other cities.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss military assessments.

Also Read | China Investing Over $400 Billion in 54 Muslim Countries, Says Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

The official said the U.S. has seen some activity from Russian ships in the Sea of Azov, including what appears to be efforts to send landing ships ashore with supplies, including vehicles.

Weapons and other security assistance from the U.S. continues to move into Ukraine. The official said that the final shipments from the $350 million package approved by the U.S. will be arriving in Ukraine in the next day or so, and the first shipments from the latest $800 million package will start arriving soon. (AP)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Kyiv, Mar 24 (AP) A Russian journalist has been killed by shelling in Kyiv on a reporting assignment.

The independent Russian news outlet The Insider said that Oksana Baulina was killed Wednesday when she was documenting the damage of a Russian shelling of the Podil district of the capital and came under a new strike. It said a civilian was also killed and two people who were accompanying Baulina were wounded and hospitalized.

Also Read | India Sends 5th Consignment of 2,000 Metric Tonnes of Wheat to Afghanistan.

The Insider said that Baulina had previously worked for the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation until she was forced to leave Russia after the organization was designated extremist by the authorities. It said it will continue to cover the war in Ukraine, including such Russian war crimes as indiscriminate shelling of residential areas killing civilians and journalists. (AP)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Lviv, March 23: Russian military forces have destroyed a new laboratory at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant that among other things works to improve management of radioactive waste, the Ukrainian state agency responsible for the Chernobyl exclusion zone said Tuesday.

The Russian military seized the decommissioned plant at the beginning of the war. The exclusion zone is the contaminated area around the plant, site of the world's worst nuclear meltdown in 1986. Also Read | Russia-Ukraine War: Germany Refuses To Boycott Russian Energy Supplies.

The state agency said the laboratory, built at a cost of 6 million euros with support from the European Commission, opened in 2015. The laboratory contained highly active samples and samples of radionuclides that are now in the hands of the enemy, which we hope will harm itself and not the civilized world, the agency said in its statement. Also Read | Russia-Ukraine War: Russia Says Putting Peace Terms Up for Vote in Ukraine Will Harm Negotiations.

Radionuclides are unstable atoms of chemical elements that release radiation.. In another worrying development, Ukraine's nuclear regulatory agency said Monday that radiation monitors around the plant had stopped working.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Doha, Mar 23 (AP) Iran, under sweeping economic sanctions, was hawking weapons on Wednesday at a Qatari defense exhibit, a surprising sight at the major conference also showcasing American companies and fighter jets.

Tucked away in the far left corner of the carpeted convention center, commanders from Iran's defense ministry marketed their missiles and air defense weapons systems.

Also Read | India Sends 5th Consignment of 2,000 Metric Tonnes of Wheat to Afghanistan.

The defense ministry manufactures arms for both Iran's military and its powerful paramilitary Islamic Revolutionary Guard, a group that plays a singular role in the creation and execution of Iran's national security and foreign policy.

The DIMDEX exhibition serves to promote Qatar, a major non-NATO ally of the United States that's home to the largest American military base in the Middle East. The tiny Gulf Arab country, however, also maintains good relations with Iran, with which it shares the world's largest gas field.

Also Read | China Investing Over $400 Billion in 54 Muslim Countries, Says Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

Iranian representatives declined to speak with The Associated Press. They handed out brochures to an AP journalist promoting their homemade jet trainers, helicopters and hovercraft.

The Qatari armed forces chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Salem al-Nabet, toured Iran's pavilion before the exhibition wrapped up, inspecting displays of lethal merchandise in glass cases and listening to a sales pitch about machine guns. A giant American flag representing U.S. military contractor General Atomics Aeronautical Systems could be seen hanging just beside the Iranian stand.

Notably, Iran's pavilion cannot be found on the conference map. The country's defense ministry and armed forces logistics remain under crushing U.S. sanctions over suspected illegal weapons trade.

The Revolutionary Guard, for its part, is widely regarded as a toxic business partner for its designation as a terrorist group by the Trump administration, its global reputation for meddling in regional conflicts and sanctions over its ballistic missile programs and alleged human rights violations.

With talks to restore Tehran's tattered nuclear deal with world powers nearing a resolution four years after former President Trump abandoned it, the possible removal of the Guard's terrorism designation has drawn fierce criticism from America's Mideast allies, like Israel.

The U.S. has balked at the Iranian demand, barring commitments from Tehran to stop funding and arming extremist groups in the region and beyond. Nuclear negotiators have yet to reconvene in Vienna. (AP)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
United Nations, Mar 23 (AP) The United Nations on Wednesday will now face three resolutions on the worsening humanitarian situation in Ukraine after Russia decided to call for a vote on its Security Council resolution which makes no mention of Russian aggression against its smaller neighbour.

The General Assembly is also scheduled to consider two rival resolutions  one that makes clear Russia is responsible for the humanitarian crisis, one that doesn't.

Also Read | Russia-Ukraine War: Germany Refuses To Boycott Russian Energy Supplies.

France and Mexico decided to seek a humanitarian resolution in the 193-member General Assembly after Russia signalled it would veto the measure in the Security Council. The measure makes clear the aid crisis is a result of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

A letter sent to the assembly president Monday from the two countries and 20 others, including Ukraine and the U.S., asked for a resumption of its special session on Wednesday to put the resolution to a vote.

Also Read | Russia-Ukraine War: Russia Says Putting Peace Terms Up for Vote in Ukraine Will Harm Negotiations.

A rival South African draft resolution which makes no mention of Russia's aggression circulated Monday. It was sent to the assembly Tuesday, and could also be put to a vote on Wednesday.

U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said supporters of the France-Mexico resolution are working with South Africa and assembly members to address any concerns in their resolution in order to try to have only one resolution put to a vote in the assembly.

Thomas-Greenfield said the supporters are hoping to get the same vote for the France-Mexico resolution as for the March 2 General Assembly resolution that demanded an immediate halt to Russia's military action and withdrawal of all its forces. That vote was 141-5, with 35 abstentions, and was hailed by its supporters as a demonstration of Russia's global isolation. (AP)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Vanessa Hudgens is ready to strike a chord on the Academy Awards red carpet.

Hudgens, who appeared in the Oscar-nominated musical Tick, Tick... Boom, will be one of the hosts of Sundays Oscars red carpet show, producers announced Wednesday.

Advertisement

Shell be joined by Queens-born actor and entertainer Terrence J and fashion designer Brandon Maxwell as hosts of the red carpet show, which begins at 6:30 p.m. on ABC.

The 90-minute special will highlight Oscar nominees, performers and presenters, and give fans around the world the ultimate insiders sneak peek at Hollywoods biggest night, reads Wednesdays announcement.

Advertisement

Vanessa Hudgens at the Screen Actors Guild Awards Feb. 27, 2022. (Jordan Strauss/Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

The red carpet show will lead into the main Oscars ceremony, which will air live from the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood beginning at 8 p.m. on ABC.

Wanda Sykes, Regina Hall and Amy Schumer are hosting the Oscars, marking the first time the Academy Awards have featured three women hosting the show.

The 33-year-old Hudgens, who rose to fame as a star of Disneys High School Musical movies, has been busy this awards season. She previously announced the nominees for the Screen Actors Guild Awards, and was a presenter at that show in February.
Sanaa, Mar 23 (AP) A car bomb rocked Yemen's southern city of Aden on Wednesday, killing a senior military official and at least four others, officials said.

The bombing targeted the convoy of Maj. Gen. Thabet Jawas, commander of the Al-Anad Axis in southern Yemen, said the officials.

Also Read | India Sends 5th Consignment of 2,000 Metric Tonnes of Wheat to Afghanistan.

Jawas was driving to his home in Aden after he attended the funeral of a relative in Laj province when the attack happened. A parked car exploded as his convoy passed near a fuel supply facility, the officials said.

The dead included Jawas, three guards and one of his relatives, according to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief media.

Also Read | China Investing Over $400 Billion in 54 Muslim Countries, Says Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

Images from the scene showed fire with charred bodies on the ground.

Aden has been the seat of the internationally recognized government since the Houthi rebels seized the Yemeni capital of Sanaa in 2014, triggering the country's conflict.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the bombing. The coastal city however has been rocked by several explosions in past years, which were blamed on local affiliates of al-Qaida and the Islamic State groups.

The Iran-backed Houthi rebels have also targeted the city with ballistic missiles and explosives-laden drones.

In October, at least 14 people were killed in two separate explosions in Aden. In the southern province of Abyan, a car bombing last week claimed by the al-Qaida affiliate targeted a senior security official, leaving four of his companions dead. (AP)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Kyiv, March 23: With United Nations confirming that more than 3.3 million refugees have now fled Ukraine since the Russian invasion, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's office has launched a humanitarian aid website helping to find out how to and whom to address the aid.

Ukraine's local media outlet, The Kyiv Independent, wrote, "President's Office launches humanitarian aid website. The official website http://help.gov.ua helps to find out how to send and whom to address humanitarian aid. The portal also provides contacts of foreign and Ukrainian humanitarian hubs." Russia-Ukraine War: Russia Says Putting Peace Terms Up for Vote in Ukraine Will Harm Negotiations.

An estimated over 3.2 million people have left Ukraine for neighbouring countries from February 24, the UN refugee agency said on Friday. UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, acknowledged the enormous support of the Polish authorities and civil society for those who have been forced to flee Ukraine after the number of arrivals passed the two million mark within three weeks. More than 3.3 million refugees have now fled Ukraine since the Russian invasion, the United Nations said Saturday, while nearly 6.5 million are thought to be internally displaced within the country. Russia-Ukraine War: Vladimir Putin Wants To Conquer Not Only Ukraine but Also Baltic States, Says Volodymyr Zelensky

UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, said 3,328,692 Ukrainians had left since the war began on February 24, with another 58,030 joining the exodus since Friday's update. "People continue to flee because they are afraid of bombs, airstrikes and indiscriminate destruction," said UNHCR chief Filippo Grandi.

On February 24, Russia began a special military operation in Ukraine after the Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics requested help in defending themselves. What followed the military operation was a slew of sanctions imposed by the western countries targeting the Russian economy.

(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 23: A Delhi Court on Wednesday granted regular bail to former Union Minister P. Chidambaram and his son Karti Chidambaram in connection with the Aircel-Maxis case filed against them by the CBI and the ED.

Earlier in 2019, Chidambarams got the anticipatory bail in the same case on a personal bond of Rs one lakh and surety of like amount following the direction to join the probe. A detailed order of the verdict is expected to be released later.

The case, which is being probed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and Enforcement Directorate (ED), relates to alleged irregularities in the grant of Foreign Investment Promotion Board approval in the Aircel-Maxis deal. CBI Arrests Senior Intelligence Official and Another Person in Connection With Bribery Case in Ghaziabad.

The probe agencies say the approval was granted in 2006 when P. Chidambaram was the Union Finance Minister. According to rules and the foreign direct investment policy in force at that time, Chidambaram was allegedly empowered to give approval to proposals involving foreign investment only up to Rs 600 crore.

It is alleged that Chidambaram withheld Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) clearance of the deal until his son, Karti Chidambaram received the five-per cent share in the company.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Mar 23, 2022 08:03 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).
Islamabad, March 23: China is investing over $400 billion in nearly 600 projects across the Muslim world under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said, Express Tribune reported.

Speaking at the foreign ministers' meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Islamabad, Wang Yi said that Beijing has close ties with the Muslim world, which are based on respect and mutual cooperation.

"China will continue to stand firmly on the side of the Palestinian people and support the early convening of a more authoritative and representative international peace conference on the basis of the two-state solution so as to promote a comprehensive and just settlement of the Palestinian issue," Wang said, according to the transcript of his speech released by Pakistan's Information Ministry. About the war between Russia and Ukraine, Wang said that China supports peace talks between Moscow and Kiev. Russia Calls For Transition To Oil Trading in National Currencies, Says Russian Deputy PM Alexander Novak.

He also spoke about the current humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, and said that Beijing would support Afghanistan in achieving an inclusive government and steady governance to open a new chapter of peace and reconstruction.

"China is ready to work with the Islamic countries to promote a multi-polar world, democracy in international relations and diversity of human civilisations, and make unremitting efforts to build a community with a shared future for mankind," Wang concluded.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Mar 23, 2022 10:54 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).
The Union Minister of Commerce and Industry, Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution and Textiles, today said that the achievement of USD 400 billion exports was the result of a concerted, collective effort by every sector, every stakeholder in the nation.

Merchandise exports from India have crossed $400 billion in the current financial year, 9 days ahead of schedule. This is far higher than the previous record of USD 330 billion achieved in 2018-19. Honble Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has tweeted the following:

India set an ambitious target of $400 Billion of goods exports & achieves this target for the first time ever. I congratulate our farmers, weavers, MSMEs, manufacturers, exporters for this success.

This is a key milestone in our Aatmanirbhar Bharat journey. The Minister was addressing a Press Conference held to mark the occasion in New Delhi today. Shri Goyal said that the achievement of the lucrative export target showed the world that inspite of facing numerous challenges, with sheer grit, determination, capability and talent, India would surmount all obstacles.

The Minister expressed his gratitude to all the exporters, farmers, weavers, MSMEs, manufacturers, Indian missions abroad and all other stakeholders who he said, were the real heroes behind this achievement. Rajya Sabha Passes Jammu and Kashmir Appropriation Bill, 2022 With Voice Vote.

He thanked the Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi for leading from the front and for his relentless focus on exports. It was the clarion call given by the Prime Minister that inspired the industry to make a quantum jump in exports, he said.

The Minister said that there was a detailed strategy in place, including specific targets set - country-wise, product-wise & EPC-wise, monitoring and course correction, behind the achievement of the export target.

Shri Goyal said that the 'whole of govt approach' had been taken to the next level to 'whole of country approach' to acheive this remarkable target. He also said that the achievement was not just about meeting targets but about building confidence and about exploring new markets.

The Minister applauded the media for consistently encouraging businesses through positive reporting, encouraging editorials, helping making this a national mission. Underscoring the direct linkage that exports have with employment generation, especially in labour intensive sectors, the Minister said that when products of a brass trader from Moradabad and farmers from Varanasi get appreciated in the global market, it is a testimony to the fact that employment and prosperity is increasing from exports

The Minister also appreciated Indian exporters for maintaining the momentum throughout the year despite challenges caused by successive COVID-19 waves. The Minister said that the achievement truly called for a celebration and added that it sent out the message of a confident future for the nation. India is ready for the World with a new identity of quality and reliability, he said.

Keeping in view the critical role of exports in catalyzing economic activities which were impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Department of Commerce embarked upon the inspiration provided by Honble PM Shri Modi during his Address and interaction with exporting community, Ambassadors / HCs / Commercial Missions, Line Ministries/ Departments, State/UTs, EPCs, Commodity Boards/ Authorities, Industry/Trade Associations, etc on 6th August 2021 on the theme of Local Goes Global - Make in India for the World.

During the Address, Honble Prime Minister set an ambitious target of US$ 400 billion of merchandise exports for 2021-22 for the nation to achieve. He exhorted the exporting community to search for new products in the export basket, look for newer destinations and ensure deeper penetration of the existing product and markets.

Thus, in order to achieve the target and approach set by the Honble PM, the Department of Commerce disaggregated the $400 Billion target in terms of regions and countries as well as product/commodity groups. The government prepared a detailed strategy for achieving the targets and an elaborate monitoring system.

The disaggregated targets have enabled tight monitoring by Country/Region/Mission/Export Promotion Councils. The Commodity Divisions of Department of Commerce have held regular review meetings with the concerned EPCs under their jurisdiction.

Thus, notwithstanding the challenges posed by successive waves of Covid, Indias merchandise trade performance has shown impressive growth and exports remained above USD 30 Billion for eleven consecutive months (likely to be twelve consecutive months at the end of March) during April to February wherein December 2021 in particular recorded the highest ever monthly merchandise exports recorded at USD 39.3 billion.

Engineering goods exports have gone up by nearly 50% vis-a-vis last year. Higher engineering exports, apparel and garment export, etc. indicate that the misconception of India being a major exporter of primary commodities is gradually changing. We are now exporting more and more value added and high end exports and this effort by our technology driven industries should continue. Export of Cotton Yarn/Fabrics/Made-ups, Handloom Products etc, Gems and Jewellery, Other Cereals and Man-Made Yarn/Fabrics./Made-up etc. have registered a growth rate between 50%-60%.

Agriculture sector has made noteworthy progress, especially during the pandemic, with India emerging as a major global supplier of food / essential agriculture products. Agriculture exports buoyancy is driven by commodities such as rice (both basmati and non-basmati), marine products, wheat, spices and sugar, among others, recording the highest ever agricultural products export in 2021-22. Air India Pushed Into Losses, Disinvestment to Protect Public Money, Says Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia.

Till 21st March 2022, Australia, Taiwan, Korea Rp, Bangladesh Pr, Poland, Brazil, Indonesia, Belgium, Saudi Arab, Turkey, Italy, Japan, Canada, U S A, South Africa, Netherland, Nigeria, Egypt and Mexico are the major countries which have achieved more than the export target. The Major Countries Thailand, Israel, Nepal, Vietnam Soc Rep, China, France and Sri Lanka Dsr which have achieved between 90% to 100% of total export target.

Till 21st March 2022, Organic & Inorganic Chemical, Other Cereals, Petroleum Products, Cotton Yarn/Fabrics/Made-ups, Handloom Products Etc., Mica, Coal and Other Ores, Minerals Including Process, Engineering Goods and Plastic and Linoleumare the major Commodities which have achieved more than the export target.

The Major Commodities Rice, Marine Products, Jute Mfg. Including Floor Covering, Carpet, Cereal Preparations And Miscellaneous Processed Item, Electronic Goods, Coffee, Gems And Jewellery and Handicrafts Excl. Hand Made which have achieved between 90% to 100%of the total export target.

The government has been working round the clock to provide a conducive environment and infrastructure for our industry and exporters to enhance their export performance. Policies and schemes aligned with the goal are being introduced and implemented for their benefit.

The smooth roll out of RoDTEP and ROSCTL even in the midst of the pandemic reflects the strong resolve of the government to walk the talk. The Interest Equalisation Scheme has been extended to exporters and is likely to benefit a large number of MSME exporters.

Rigorous efforts for domestic capacity enhancement for deepening integration in the Global Value Chains are being made by working in close partnership with the industry to identify areas where Indias competitive advantages. We will therefore work on strengthening our capabilities and create for the world on the lines of Make in India. PLI schemes for 13 key sectors of manufacturing starting from FY 2021-22 have been announced.

A policy shift in the approach envisaged in the Districts as Exports Hub (DEH) initiative has been adopted to boost local production and make Districts active stakeholders in driving export growth of local products/services. Consistent efforts to build and provide export promoting infrastructure are being undertaken via providing appropriate funding, insurance, credit provisions etc.

Thus, an effort has been made to set up a firm backward - forward linkage, starting from the district level to the overseas market with the help of multiple stakeholders. In between, the emphasis has been effective and efficient coordination among all stakeholders i.e. district units, State and Central Governments, line Ministries, EPCs, MSMEs exporting communities and our mission overseas to ensure breaking of silos to achieve a coherent and coordinated action for fulfilment of exports target.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Mar 23, 2022 07:15 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).
Three engineers, who have gone missing after they went to Mexico's state of Michoacan plagued by Mexican drug cartels, have yet to be found after a month.

According to Periodico AM, the missing engineers were identified as Erika Paulina Polanco Camarena, 28; Edgar Alejandro Delgadillo Rodriguez, 28; and David Rafael Reyes Betancourt, 42.

The outlet reported that the three were returning from Michoacan on February 22. However, they did not make it back to their homes in Jalisco state.

Earlier this month, the special prosecutor for missing persons in Jalisco, Blanca Trujillo Cuevas, said authorities in Michoacan should handle the case of the missing engineers since it has been found that they were not able to reach Jalisco.

However, the Michoacan Prosecutor's Office has yet to report any progress in the investigation to the three missing engineers.

READ NEXT: Mexico: 17 Bodies Found in Abandoned Sonora Homes Amid Bloody Turf War Between Mexican Drug Cartels

3 Engineers Went Missing in Mexico's State of Michoacan Plagued by Mexican Drug Cartels

Periodico AM reported that the three engineers went to the municipality of Tancitaro in Michoacan on February 22 to install a new communication "network" equipment for the avocado growers in the state.

The three engineers reportedly worked as computer support specialists. According to reports, Erika's last communication was made on February 22 at around 5:10 p.m., when she sent a message to her mother, telling her they were on their way back to Guadalajara, Jalisco.

Since then, nothing has been heard from them. The three reportedly traveled aboard a Chevrolet Trax SUV with license plates JRS4311.

Marlene, the sister of Erika, said she and her mother went to the Jalisco State Prosecutor's Office on February 24 to file a complaint about her sister's disappearance. However, she noted that the Prosecutor's Office did not carry out a search or provide additional information about the incident, Milenio reported.

Marlene said the family was suffering every day from not knowing if her sister was okay or not.

"We as a family are desperate to find Erika because every day that passes, we don't know what is happening [with her], how she is," she noted.

Families and friends of the missing engineers have already spread photos of the three through social media.

#Desaparecida

Erika Paulina Polanco Camarena, 28 anos, fue desaparecida el 22 de febrero de 2022 entre #Guadalajara, #Jalisco y #Uruapan, #Michoacan



Si tienes informacion comunicate con la Fiscalia General del Estado de Jalisco al (33) 38376000 ext. 16149 pic.twitter.com/l0aBMq22LU  ZonaDocs (@ZonaDocs) February 28, 2022

Una amiga y vecina nos pide compartir para que David Rafael Reyes Betancourt regrese a casa. #AlertaAmberMx #AlertaAmber pic.twitter.com/u5oTqeXolK  Lied Miguel (@lied_miguel) February 28, 2022

Marlene noted that the missing engineers have families and children who "obviously" wanted them back.

Michoacan State in Mexico Is Being Fought Over by Mexican Drug Cartels

Mexico's state of Michoacan, the largest avocado producer in the world, is known to be home to several Mexican drug cartels.

Several Mexican drug cartels have been fighting for the control of the state, namely the Jalisco Cartel, Carteles Unidos, the remaining members of La Familia Michoacana, and the Caballeros Templarios. The Carteles Unidos or United Cartels reportedly had the support of the Sinaloa Cartel.

Many avocado growers in Michoacan said that drug cartels threatened them or their family members with kidnapping and death unless they paid protection money.

Drug cartels also targeted U.S. personnel working in the state. It can be recalled that the U.S. government suspended all imports of Mexican avocados last month after an American plant safety inspector carrying out an inspection in Uruapan, Michoacan received a threatening message from a drug cartel.

READ MORE: Texas Border Patrol Agents Rescue 4-Year-Old Child Left by Human Traffickers

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Joshua Summers

WATCH: The Bodies Of Missing People Are Rapidly Turning Up In Mexico (HBO) - From VICE News
Climate and conservation groups sued the U.S. Interior Department on Friday for failing to release public records, including documents behind the development of a federal oil and gas leasing report, related to President Joe Biden's 2021 executive order to address climate change.

READ NEXT: U.S. Forest Service Cannot Log its Way Out of the Climate Crisis, Wild Earth Guardians Says

The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Montana by the Western Environmental Law Center on behalf of the Montana Environmental Information Center, Center for Biological Diversity and WildEarth Guardians.

It seeks drafts of the November 2021 report, including the version transmitted to the White House, and all internal communications about the report's development.

"President Biden's executive order directed Interior to complete 'a comprehensive review and reconsideration' of the federal oil and gas leasing program in light of its significant contributions to the climate crisis," said Barbara Chillcott, a senior attorney at the Western Environmental Law Center. "Interior's report merely discusses royalty rates, minimum bids and bonding rates. The people deserve to know why their president, who campaigned on strong climate action, is failing so 'comprehensively' to fulfill these promises. Further, we deserve to know if the president is using our climate future as a political bargaining chip."

Groups Filed a Request for Records

In December, the groups filed a request for records with the Interior Department under the Freedom of Information Act. By law, federal agencies must respond to FOIA requests within 20 working days and promptly provide responsive records.

More than three months after the request was filed, three of the four Interior agencies subject to the FOIA request have not responded or provided responsive records. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management partially responded but withheld more than 75 percent of the responsive documents.

"Biden's dangerous failure to address climate in his review of federal oil and gas programs is made worse by his agency's refusal to release public records," said Taylor McKinnon at the Center for Biological Diversity. "We're in a climate emergency and people deserve to know why his promise to end oil and gas leasing turned into greenwashed propaganda. Withholding these records sure makes it seem like there's something to hide about how this disappointing report came together."

Days after taking office, Biden signed an executive order directing Interior to complete "a comprehensive review and reconsideration of Federal oil and gas permitting and leasing practices" and to address "potential climate and other impacts associated with oil and gas activities on public lands or in offshore waters."

The order directed Interior to take "appropriate action" to account for the climate costs of federally approved fossil fuel production.

In November 2021, the Interior Department issued a report purporting to respond to Biden's executive order. Contrary to the order, the report did not address "potential climate and other impacts associated with oil and gas activities" and did not recommend any actions to account for the climate costs of federally approved fossil fuel production. The report, issued Friday after Thanksgiving, mentions the word "climate" only three times.

"It increasingly seems like this administration is just paying lip service to tackling the climate crisis and prioritizing transparency for federal agencies," said Anne Hedges with Montana Environmental Information Center. "It's hard to take them seriously when they continue to hide their reasoning for shirking their commitments to addressing the climate crisis."

Last week, Attorney General Merrick Garland issued long-anticipated FOIA guidelines to federal agencies with a reminder that "fair and effective administration of FOIA requires that openness prevail in the face of doubt."

The lawsuit comes as Interior announced plans to restart federal oil and gas leasing. This would lock in more oil and gas extraction and more climate pollution at a time when scientists worldwide have found that global fossil fuel production must start declining immediately to limit long-term warming.

"It's intolerable that the Biden administration not only seems to be actively undermining climate action, but fighting transparency in the process," said Jeremy Nichols, climate and energy program director for WildEarth Guardians. "It's time to put an end to this cover up and hold President Biden and his Interior Department accountable to real action to confront the climate crisis."

READ MORE: WildEarth Guardians Condemns Biden's Plan to Sell Public Lands for Fracking As Climate Hypocrisy and More Broken Promises
Need help logging in?

We have transitioned to a new user-friendly interactive website. You will need an account and a subscription to see the site in its entirety.

HOME DELIVERY subscribers get online access for free with their subscription. If you are a home delivery subscriber, create a new account and follow the directions to validate your home delivery subscription.

If you were a previous ONLINE ONLY subscriber, you should have received an email with directions on how to log in. If you are still experiencing issues contact us at bulletincirc@gmail.com.
John Cheek, owner of Orlando Brewing, is pictured at the business on Friday, March 18, 2022. (Stephen M. Dowell/Orlando Sentinel) (Stephen M. Dowell/Orlando Sentinel)

A summer deadline is looming for Orlando Brewing, the citys oldest independent craft brewery, to raise enough money to move or face being sold off.

The industrial building where Orlando Brewing has made and served beer for 16 years is being sold to Orlando Health on July 5 to support the nearby hospitals campus south of downtown.

Advertisement

John Cheek, the brewerys president and founder, said the business, which started in 2002 and opened in its current space in 2006, is deciding between three new locations: Pointe Orlando, Dezerland Park, and a shopping plaza near Orange and Hoffner Avenues just west of Belle Isle.

But the brewery needs help to move its equipment across town and set up a new space, so it has launched a GoFundMe aiming to raise $200,000. It had brought in $11,025 as of Friday afternoon.

Advertisement

If I dont have the money, then I cant do the move, said Cheek, 68. So basically what Im going to end up doing is just selling everything.

Ron Reese, a cellarman at Orlando Brewing, moves kegs at the business on Friday, March 18, 2022. (Stephen M. Dowell/Orlando Sentinel) (Stephen M. Dowell/Orlando Sentinel)

Cheeks brewery, which has 13 employees, isnt likely to see much foot traffic from people out and about in the neighborhood. The business at 1301 Atlanta Ave. is in an industrial part of the city just blocks west of Orlando Health Orlando Regional Medical Center.

Cheek remembers when laws restricted where breweries could go and even the size of their taprooms.

When we moved into this space, we were required to be in an industrial area, Cheek said. Since then, things have changed and you can have a brewery anywhere that you have a restaurant.

Orlando Brewing has been a special place for Stephanie Cassidy, 33, whose mother Ann Cassidy, 61, was in town recently from Virginia to visit Stephanie and her 8-month-old, Olivia Lash. The family worked in a trip to the brewery.

This was actually one of the first dates my husband took me on, said Stephanie Cassidy, of Orlando. It was the first place we took the dog to when we got the dog. The first place we took the baby out to.

Ann Cassidy (left) holds granddaughter Olivia Lash (8 months old), as Stephanie Cassidy watches at right while they enjoy themselves at Orlando Brewing on Friday, March 18, 2022. (Stephen M. Dowell/Orlando Sentinel) (Stephen M. Dowell/Orlando Sentinel)

The number of breweries in Florida has skyrocketed, especially over the past decade. Florida went from 45 in 2011 to 368 in 2020, according to the Brewers Association, which described Orlando Brewing as a pioneer of the industry.

Hes been open for one of the most dynamic, if not the most dynamic periods, for small breweries in our countrys history, said Bart Watson, chief economist for the association, which promotes U.S. craft breweries. Somebody starting in 2002 was really still helping to create the market.

Advertisement

Beer taps are pictured at Orlando Brewing on Friday, March 18, 2022. (Stephen M. Dowell/Orlando Sentinel) (Stephen M. Dowell/Orlando Sentinel)

Building that market included a time when a dart league didnt want to play at Cheeks brewery.

When we opened this place in 2006, nobody wanted to come play here because we didnt have Guinness, and we didnt have Corona and we didnt have Bud Light, Cheek said.

Today, thats not an issue, with its popular options that include Blonde Ale and I-4 IPA.

Now there are dozens of breweries serving customers thirsty for craft beer made in the Orlando area.

Theres a brewery everywhere now, and everybodys got an opinion on whos the best, Cheek said. Everybody has their own way of doing things, and its pretty good. If you go to Ellipsis [Brewing] down by the airport, they do hazy IPAs. I dont do hazy IPAs.

Cheek said he will need to move in June ahead of the July 5 closing date on the property.

Advertisement

Orlando Health is purchasing the property as it continues to plan and prepare for the regions future health care needs, said Kena Lewis, senior director of public affairs and media relations. Lewis didnt disclose the purchase price or what specifically it will become.

Cheek was told in 2018 that Orlando Health would be buying the property in four years and his lease would not be renewed after that, Lewis wrote in an email. The property is owned by Matterhorn II LLC, Orange County records show.

Cheek points to the coronavirus pandemic as the reason he needs to raise money for the move.

All the money that we had set aside, COVID ate, Cheek said.

Cheek sells beer in the building, but his wholesale business revolves around kegs sold through a distributor to be served at other establishments.

Florida requires craft breweries to sell their beer through a distributor, not directly to restaurants and bars. Selling directly to other venues is legal in 39 other states, Watson said.

Advertisement

Breweries that relied on distributing their beer to bars and restaurants were hit the hardest during the pandemic and nationally draft beer has not recovered to 2019 levels, Watson said.

2020 was the first year where small brewery production collectively dropped, and it dropped pretty sharply, Watson said.

afuller@orlandosentinel.com
Delegates from Ireland bond with Lake County residents on the roof of Treeline Kitchen on Sunday evening. Pictured in the top row from left is Niall OSullivan, Tadhg OSullivan, Mayor Greg Labbe, Tara Hanley, Cooper Mallozzi, Bill Harrington, Dennis Hasty and Alan Goarke. Pictured in the front row from left is Luke Finken, Kathleen Fitzsimmons, Anne McNally and Ashley Goarke.
A Laois artist with a rapidly growing following has had a painting featured on the popular RTE television show Home of the Year.

Aishling Hennessy from Portlaoise is an abstract artist who creates canvasses filled with a joyous blend of colours.

She was commissioned to do a large, more muted colour piece by a Dublin couple whose beautiful home featured on the television show broadcast on Tuesday, March 22.

She told the Leinster Express about it.

"I'm over the moon. The house is a renovated home in Dublin. I was approached by Niamh in October 2021 to create a one of a kind textured commission that would add to the earthy vibe of their home. I had no idea it was going to be on Home of the Year," she said.

Aishling said that the publicity has helped gain her more customers already.

"Since a commission for a well known client locally and the show, I have a lot more tuning in now," she said.

She shared these lovely photos of the house and her painting.

"Super excited to see #rtehomeoftheyear tonight ! I have an Earthy textured commissioned painting in this beautiful home. It's name is 'Saimhe' which means Serenity in Irish. Best of luck to Niamh and James Such a well designed home and such lovely people too," Aishling said on her social media page.

The couple were pipped at the post in the episode by a stunning extended renovated farmhouse. Watch the episode on RTE Player.

For more of her work find Aishling Hennessy Artist on social media. It is also now for sale in a Portlaoise furniture shop, Cloud 9 Interiors.
Builders are being lined up to carry out a major overhaul an Abbeyleix school which as problems with leaks, sewerage and insulation.

Management at Scoil Mhuire NS has opened a prequalification tender process for builder interest in winning a contract which is funded by the Department of Education and Skills (DES) and the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI).

The school has told potential bidders that the works shall consist of the internal refurbishment of the 1980s block. This will include new floor and ceiling finishes, disposal of asbestos, new internal doors, new sanitary ware, alterations of classroom toilet layouts, new classroom fixtures and fittings, new accessible toilet.

The energy retrofit works to the school building will include and insulated external render system, pumped cavity wall insulation, partial internal drylining works, new insulated roof coverings, new external windows and doors and air tightness works to external wall openings.

An electrical upgrade will include new lighting installation, solar panels, emergency lighting, electric vehicle charging and electrical works to new heating installations.

The school is also in line to get a new back up gas boiler installation, new heating and distribution pipework and radiators, new renewable heating installation.

It is anticipated the Works Programme are to be completed during 2022. The project will also be completed in a phased manner to facilitate continual school operation.

The school has been seeking the work for a number of years but serious shortcomings were raised by parents in the run up to the 2020 General Election at a public meeting organised by teachers in Portlaoise.

At the time they outlined leaking roofs, blocked toilets and numerous other problems. Classrooms had to be vacated due to the extent of the issues.

A entirely new school was put forward as a solution but the deep retrofit proposed by Minister for Education Norma Foley was accepted by the school community in late 2021.

The refurbishment is being carried out under the School Energy Pathfinder Programme 2022.
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.
Members of the Arthritis Ireland Kildare Branch have signed up for the organisation 5km a Day challenge to raise funds and awareness around arthritis this April. The challenge kicks off on April 4 and the aim is to complete 5km a day for 7 days straight, in the location and format of your choice! Anyone can participate and details are on www.arthritisireland.ie

National Arthritis Week takes place this year on 4-10 April. The theme is based around physical activity and its importance for people living with arthritis. Arthritis Ireland is encouraging people living with arthritis to try even small amounts of physical activity, which they say can help you stay strong and remain independent. Being active can have a big impact on the health and wellbeing of people with arthritis.

The Kildare Branch committee have organised their AGM for Saturday morning April 2 in Lawlors Hotel Naas at 10.30am. All are welcome to attend and meet the committee. Guest speaker is Professor Ronan Mullan, Rheumatologist at Naas and Tallaght University Hospital.

Keith Nix is the Chairperson of the Arthritis Ireland Kildare Branch and an Arthritis Ireland Board member. He is retired and actively involved as a volunteer. The reason he is doing the 5km challenge is that he firmly believes in exercise because he has found it helps in reducing the effect of Arthritis. Keith has osteoarthritis in his knee and fingers and exercising has helped him to reduce the pain that he experiences and increases his mobility. He walks at the local dog shelter, KWSPCA three times a week and usually walks about 10kms per day with the dogs. He also regularly exercises his fingers by holding weights in his hands which strengthens the fingers thus helping reduce the pain. He usually does this at the local gym a couple of times per week as well as using weights and the walking machines.

Aine Rushe is a mother to two boys. Originally from North Wicklow she moved to the Curragh, Kildare in 2015. She was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis at the end of 2014. Shortly after arriving in Kildare Aine contacted Arthritis Ireland and went to some of their events. She did the Living Well with Arthritis Course and after that joined the Kildare Branch committee. She has had so much support and learned so much through Arthritis Ireland that she is taking on this challenge to give back to the organisation that has changed her life for the better. She will be forever grateful to all the kind people involved with Arthritis Ireland. "Living with Arthritis is not easy but with the support provided it feels easier," she said.

Ava Price from Rathangan now living in Kildare town is taking part in the 5km a day for National Arthritis Week. She was diagnosed with Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis when she was 13 years old. She has been a member of Kildare Branch of Arthritis Ireland for 5 years now and is Chair of the Young Arthritis Network. She is taking part in this fundraising event as she feels its important for her to give back to an organisation that has provided her with support during her journey with arthritis. Ava looks after the branch social media pages and is looking forward to posting updates about their 5k challenge.

Mary Cocoman has osteoarthritis in her knee which needed replacing in 2011. A retired nurse and native of Kill, Mary participated in the Kildare Branch exercise activities before her knee replacement and resumed walking on the Curragh as soon as possible afterwards. She joined the committee and learned how to do Nordic Walking through the Branch and became a walking leader shortly afterwards. Mary also trained as an Arthritis Ireland self-management leader and co leads the Arthritis Ireland 6-week self - management programme. Mary is participating in Arthritis Irelands 5km a day challenge because she feels well able to do it!
Ahead of Daffodil Day on the March 25, Centra and Jess Redden, pharmacist and lifestyle influencer, are encouraging people to Take Part and Take Back from Cancer, supporting communities as they raise funds and give hope to cancer patients and their families.

Centra has been a proud supporter of the Irish Cancer Society for 13 years and this year as the lead partner in this years Daffodil Day campaign, from March 24 to 27 in participating Centra stores nationwide, customers can choose to tap and donate at the till to support this worthy cause. 100% of donations will go directly to the Irish Cancer Society enabling them to provide crucial support services such as the Irish Cancer Society Freephone Support Line, the Volunteer Driver Service, the Night Nursing Service, and the free Counselling Service.

I am delighted to support Centra and this years Daffodil Day Campaign," said Jess Redden. I am only too aware of the devastating impact of cancer as I lost my dad to the disease in 2020. The support services that the Irish Cancer Society provide are invaluable to those who have been diagnosed and also their families."

Last year donations raised through fundraising allowed the Irish Cancer Society to provide vital cancer support services to patients across Kildare, including 544 counselling sessions through the Remote Counselling service and at Affiliate Cancer Support Centres, 206 nights of Night Nursing, 776 Volunteer Driver service journeys and 455 supporting and comforting conversations though the Support Line and Daffodil Centres.

Those who cant make it into a Centra store this weekend can donate to this worthy cause by visiting the Irish Cancer Society donation link.
Two local affiliates of Habitat for Humanity International are getting a record $9.25 million donation from global philanthropist and author MacKenzie Scott, allowing them to build new homes, rehabilitate older ones, educate prospective home buyers and keep low-income seniors safely housed.

Scott, the ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and one of the companys first employees, pledged in 2019 to give away most of her wealth to charity. She has made several massive gifts since then, including a $436 million donation announced this week for Habitat for Humanity International and 84 of the charitys 1,100 U.S. Habitat affiliate organizations.

Advertisement

Seven of those affiliates were in Florida, two of them in Central Florida: Habitat for Humanity Greater Orlando & Osceola County, which received $5.75 million, its biggest gift ever, and Habitat Seminole-Apopka, which received a transformational $3.5 million.

The gift will have an exponential impact on our community for generations, said Catherine Steck McManus, president and CEO of Habitat Orlando & Osceola. We are trying not only to build more homes, but because this is the most expensive time in history to build, were also diversifying how we can make it impact and truly preparing people to become home ready.

Advertisement

It costs her organization about $25,000 more to build the same house in the same neighborhood than it did two years ago, and there are long backlogs for building materials, McManus said. But because of soaring rental prices, more people than ever are turning to Habitat hoping to become homeowners.

So were really working one on one with them so that either they can get approved for the Habitat program or they get a more cost-effective rental home in the meantime, she said. Because its not just that apartment homes are ridiculously priced right now, but [landlords] also look at your background, they run credit checks, they want to see all sorts of stuff about you, and in many cases they can charge you more if your credit is not what they think it should be.

The charity is also helping low-income senior homeowners replace their roofs and make other repairs so that they can safely stay in their current homes.

In Seminole and Apopka, the $3.5 million grant will continue the quest to bridge the homeownership wealth gap in underprivileged areas, according to a statement issued by the Habitat affiliate there.

This amazing contribution validates our work locally in Seminole County and Greater Apopka over the past 30 years, the statement said. Even more, it is a testament to the donors and volunteers who have enabled us to build more than 200 houses so far.

Jonathan Reckford, CEO of Habitat for Humanity International, called Scotts donation transformational and said his nonprofit would use its $25 million portion not only to build more homes but also to work on systemic changes to improve equitable access to affordable housing.

This summer, he said, Habitat International will launch an initiative to increase Black homeownership.

In 2020, Scott donated $5.8 billion to nonprofits working on racial justice, LGBTQ equality, democracy, climate change, food insecurity and poverty. In June 2021, she announced another $2.7 billion to 286 nonprofits across the country, and earlier this month she gave $281 million to the Boys & Girls Clubs of America and 62 of its chapters.

Advertisement

ksantich@orlandosentinel.com
Today, the Minister for Defence, Mr Simon Coveney and the Chief of Staff of the Irish Defence Forces, Lieutenant General Sean Clancy, attended an event in Casement Aerodrome, Baldonnel to mark the 100th anniversary of the Irish Air Corps.

They were joined by the General Officer Commanding the Air Corps, Brigadier General Rory O'Connor in celebrating this momentous occasion.



The ceremony commenced with the Minister for Defence receiving a ceremonial Guard of Honour. A centenary monologue was then narrated by Commandant Orla Jennings. A poem titled "Onto the Curve of the World" which was written and read by serving Air Corps member, Cpl Michael J. Whelan, was then recited.



Today was also a very important and proud day for the members of the 26th and 27th Young Officers Wings Course as the Young Officers were awarded with their Military Pilots Wings. The Minister for Defence and the General Officer Commanding the Air Corps both addressed the wings ceremony and congratulated them for their dedication and commitment to their training.

The event concluded with a PC9M Fly-past during the National Anthem, followed by a mass flypast review by the full fleet of aircraft from the Irish Air Corps.



The Chief of Staff, marking the important milestone, thanked all members of the Air Corps, past and present for their commitment and dedication; "I am so proud of all who serve, have served and who support the Irish Air Corps.

"No matter what tasking, be it on maritime surveillance patrols, assisting with forest fires, search and rescue operations or the additional COVID-19 related taskings that you undertook, the selfless manner in which you meet these challenges head on, reflects the spirit of the generations that proceed you and inspires the next to make a difference. I am honoured to celebrate with you all on your 100th Anniversary and thank you for your service and sacrifice".
People have been asked not to attend Naas Hospital unless it is absolutely essential due to a very busy period.

A statement on behalf of the hospital by the Dublin Midlands Hospital Group urged people to first go to their GP or pharmacy if appropriate.

There were 18 Covid-19 patients in the hospital today and four with suspected symptoms, according to the HSE.

The statement said: "Naas General Hospital is experiencing a very busy period with an increased number of people attending the Emergency Department.

"The Hospital is reminding members of the public to consider their care options before presenting to the Emergency Department (ED).

"We advise that the public only attend our emergency services if absolutely essential.

"If you are unwell, please go to your GP or pharmacy in the first instance.

"It is essential that we protect our emergency services for those who require emergency care.

"Do not delay in seeking medical attention if you suspect you are having a heart attack or stroke, please dial 999 or 112 in an emergency."

People who attend the ED in emergency situation are asked to ensure they wear a mask, practice social distancing and inform the triage personnel if you have any signs/symptoms of Covid-19.
Speaking in Dail Eireann, Deputy Marian Harkin called on the Taoiseach to appoint a Minister with full responsibility to co-ordinate and manage Irelands response to the Ukrainian refugee crisis.

So many of the pieces are already in place, the generosity of the Irish people in offering assistance and shelter, the local community and voluntary groups ready to support refugees, the different NGOs, the Local Authorities and all the other bodies ready, willing and able, but Government has the ultimate responsibility to join the dots and to put structures and supports in place at local, at county, at regional and at national level.

The Taoiseach himself has said, we are in a war situation and we need a wartime type of response. This is going to be far more difficult than we think at both individual and national level, but we can make it work. At the very least, a co-ordinating body and a Minister are essential to manage the unfolding humanitarian crisis that is landing on our shores every single day. If this does not happen, the difficulties will multiply  they will multiply anyway, but if somebody is in charge, it makes all the difference, Deputy Harkin concluded.
The Central Bank has issued a fresh warning on the risks of investing in crypto assets, in the face of "aggressive promotion" of such currencies.

The Central Bank again emphasised that crypto assets are highly risky and speculative, and may not be suitable for retail customers.

In particular people need to be alert to the risks of misleading advertisements, particularly on social media, where influencers are being paid to advertise crypto assets, the Central Bank said.

Derville Rowland, Director General Financial Conduct said: "In Ireland and across the EU we are seeing increasing levels of advertising and aggressive promotion of crypto asset investments.

"While people may be attracted to these investments by the high returns advertised, the reality is that they carry significant risk.

"Before you buy crypto assets, you need to think about whether you can afford to lose all the money you invest. Do the promised fast or high returns seem too good to be true?

"People should also be aware that if things go wrong, you do not have the protections you would have if you invested in a regulated product," Ms Rowland said.

The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) is an independent EU Authority that contributes to safeguarding the stability of the EU's financial system by enhancing the protection of investors and promoting stable and orderly financial markets.
One hundred years of the Irish Air Corps is being celebrated today (Wednesday March 23) with the Minister for Defence calling it "a landmark event".

Minister Simon Coveney marked the occasion by attending Casement Aerodrome, where he commended all Air Corps personnel for their dedication and thanked them for their ongoing service to the State.

The minister said, "It is pertinent that we celebrate today after two years of an especially high tempo of operations by the Air Corps on behalf of the State. Each of you have supported the national effort in the face of a national emergency and in support of ongoing military activities."

He also congratulated members of the 26th and 27th Young Officer Wings Courses, who received their military pilot's wings at the event.

It included a flypast of Air Corps aircraft, commencing with the Irish Flag draped on display.

Today we celebrated a Centenary of Irish Military Aviation. The newest IAC pilots received their wings and the sun shone for the flypast.it was a good day!!#IAC100#Strengthenthenation@defenceforces pic.twitter.com/3ZGPC7WMn4  Irish Air Corps (@IrishAirCorps) March 23, 2022

Minister Coveney continued: "Over the last 100 years, we have faced many tests and challenges and will continue to do so, however with the drive, ambition and dexterity shown by Air Corps personnel, I know they will be met head on.

"Among the recommendations of the Commission on the Future of the Defence Forces are of course recommendations related directly to the role of the Air Corps. I believe this is a positive and evolving time for the Air Corps and the Defence Forces in general."

An investment in the Air Corps of 228m is currently underway, with the provision of two new Maritime Patrol Aircrafts due to arrive next year.
The Irish Government has appealed for special treatment for the island, citing serious concerns about a planned UK requirement for foreigners to have an Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) pass when crossing the border.

On Tuesday, MPs in the House of Commons voted to reject a Lords amendment that sought to ditch the requirement for foreigners to have an ETA pass when making a local journey to Northern Ireland from the Republic.

The plan has proved controversial, even as the UK Government has insisted it will not mean checks at the border between the Republic and Northern Ireland.

The border proved a major sticking point in Brexit negotiations amid concerns the seamless nature of movement between the two jurisdictions could be effected by the UK exit from the EU.

Irish Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney raised the issue during a meeting with Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Brandon Lewis in Dublin on Wednesday, as part of the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference.

Mr Coveney said he made his concerns clear during the meeting but acknowledged the plan would not mean checks.

The concern we have is that for many, many years now the British and Irish governments have worked together to ensure free movement in the island of Ireland, north and south, is protected, Mr Coveney said.

He said he held out hope that Irish concerns might still be heeded, adding: I think it is important to say that this is not legislation that is finalised yet.

Mr Coveney said the relationship between the Republic and Northern Ireland was a unique one.

He added: I suppose not for the first time well be asking for special treatments to try to protect that relationship.

Mr Lewis defended the move and played down the concerns that have been raised about the proposal.

He stressed there would be no checks at the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.

Mr Lewis said: The ETA is a system that countries around the world have been bringing into place over the last decade or so. Weve seen the EU bringing a variation of an ETA and the idea is very simple, very clean, simple, fast system for people to be able to use.

He said it would not have an impact on the Common Travel Area.

Mr Lewis added: Were keen to ensure this one works for businesses as well in the way that it has done in other countries around the world.

Mr Coveney spoke at length about his worries about the scheme following his discussion with Mr Lewis, which he described as good.

The essence of our issue here is that for many years now, since a peace process was agreed, the creation of normality on this island between North and South in terms of relationships, business travels, study, work, and so on has been based on uninterrupted travel opportunities and movement of people.

And we think thats worth protecting.

Even though I accept that what the British Government are designing here is a streamlined system based on international best practice and so on in terms of how people cross borders, and so forth.

But Northern Ireland and the island of Ireland, in terms of the relationships between North and South, is a very unusual construct and series of relationships and treaties and agreements and so on.

In a joint communique issued after the meeting, both sides said they noted with regret, the developments at Stormont since it last met in December.

The UK and Irish governments reaffirmed their commitment to the full functioning of all of the political institutions established by the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement, including the North South Ministerial Council, and the importance of respecting the agreement in all of its strands.

The conference noted the importance of addressing the outstanding issues in the context of the Northern Ireland Protocol which is currently subject to continuing engagement between the EU and the UK.

The Irish Government and the UK Government provided an update on their respective commitments under the New Decade, New Approach agreement, which restored the institutions in January 2020.
THE FRS Network team in Limerick has joined with their counterparts around the country to provide a 20,000 donation to the victims of the conflict in Ukraine.

The donation was made via Irish Red Cross who are delivering life-saving food and hygiene supplies to families who are impacted, supporting health facilities and working to repair vital infrastructure.

FRS Network said the donation was made in light of the unfolding humanitarian crisis and in the name of the many Ukrainians who have worked with the organisation over the years.

The organisation currently has several Ukrainian team members based in that country who are working with Herdwatch. FRS Networks panel for farm relief support also includes a number of workers who originally came from Ukraine, while their recruitment business, FRS Recruitment, has placed a number of Ukrainian candidates into employment.

Reacting to the donation, Pat Carey, Chair of the Irish Red Cross said they are grateful to have received this significant donation from FRS Network  one which is badly needed given the developing situation in Ukraine.

"We have been greatly humbled by the level of generosity shown by the Irish people since the outset of this crisis. All of the donations are helping us to support the delivery of essentials to families and individuals who are facing massive upheaval, fear and loss on a daily basis. As the conflict escalates the human impact will intensify and we are appealing for more donations to help us help the people of Ukraine, said Mr Carey.

What is happening in Ukraine is devastating, said Colin Donnery, Group CEO of FRS Network.

"This is an unfolding humanitarian crisis which is going to be felt throughout Ukraine and far beyond. We are already seeing that first hand in FRS with several of our colleagues and friends being based in Ukraine and others having come to Ireland from that part of the world.

"In light of the unfolding crisis and the direct connection our organisation has to Ukraine, we wanted to try to help in some way. By working with the Irish Red Cross we hope this donation will help some of those who have been impacted by this crisis to get the food, medicine, shelter and water they need. We are also continuing to liaise directly with our team members on the ground to see what other assistance we may be able to provide.

"The way events are unfolding it does seem like a huge level of support will be needed for the people of Ukraine and obviously this is a situation we are following closely. We will be working with our teams across the country and in Ukraine to see what other help we can provide as this crisis continues  while hoping a peaceful and immediate resolution is found, said Mr Donnery.

Irish Red Cross is continuing to collect donations to assist the people of Ukraine. Anyone who would like to make a donation is asked to visit www.redcross.ie
A TOTAL of 17 Ukrainians, newly arrived to Castleconnell, have been made feel very welcome in the locality.

"We have had donations left, right and centre," said Theresa OKeeffe, of the Castle Oaks House Hotel, where they are staying.

The group of 17 is made up eight families, mostly women and children. They have arrived in East Limerick over the last few days.

"A baby arrived on Monday and they had nothing. They parents were just carrying the baby. We all put out messages on our own private Facebook pages to try and get buggies, sterilisers and bottles etc

"I think all of our Facebook pages flew off the handle! We have just had donations left, right and centre of everything - clothes, toys, items for the baby, you name it. They even thought of swim suits for the kids to use in the pool in the leisure centre. People in the locality have been so generous," said Theresa.

The deputy general manager of the hotel said the Ukrainians are settling in well.

"There is one young chap and he his making friends with other kids. The women have made friends with our accommodation team who would be predominantly Slovakian, speak Russian and are able to converse with them.

"They are looking to get themselves sorted with PPS numbers. They want to work. They don't want to be sitting around all day," said Theresa.

Separately, Pat McDonagh, who owns both the Castle Oaks and Supermacs, was able to accommodate around 60 Ukrainians were travelling from Rosslare to Clare. They needed to be fed along the way. The bus driver contacted the Supermacs on Ballysimon Road with management and staff happy to oblige.
A LIMERICK school's new multi-million euro development has taken an exciting step forward.

Ardscoil Mhuire, an all-girls voluntary secondary school with an enrolment of just under 600 students, has been approved to go to tender for the appointment of the Design Team.

Last month the Department of Education approved the construction of the new 650 pupil school in Corbally.

The new state of the art school will be built on a greenfield site adjacent to the current school building.

Plans for the school have not been revealed yet however the new building will include two special education classrooms.

The current stage is expected to be completed towards the end of May 2022. Upon appointment, the Design Team will prepare the Stage 1 Report, an outline of the plan for the new school development, to be approved by the Department of

Education (DE).

Ardscoil Mhuire is delighted to announce that we have just gone to tender to appoint the design team for our brand new, multi-million euro school development. Exciting times ahead for our school community! pic.twitter.com/WiArirfTns  Ardscoil Mhuire (@ASM_Limerick) March 22, 2022

This report will be followed by a more detailed plan for the project requiring further DE approval. Planning permission will then be sought and, once granted, the project will go to tender for a contractor and the construction stage will begin.

Principal Brid Herbert said: "Ardscoil Mhuire is proud to be central to the community that it serves.

"This exciting development, which sees the construction of a brand new multi-million euro school on the current campus, will ensure that we remain at the heart of our community, continuing to provide the best education possible to our students for decades to come."
A DISTRIBUTOR road is vital if Newcastle West is to grow, councillors attending a special meeting of Newcastle West Municipal District have emphasised.

And there was frustration that the plan for the road, on the south side of the town, had not made any real progress even as traffic congestion was growing in the town.

This road has been on the table for a long, long time, said Cllr Michael Collins, who had called for the special meeting to take place.

What has been spent to date, what has been done to date and what has been done to make it shovel ready?, Cllr Collins demanded. Why was this put on the back burner?

The project needed to be driven on and funded, he stressed, pointing out that peoples livelihoods were also being affected.

The distributor road, which is included in the Local Area Plan, is not to be confused with the proposal for a bypass on the north side of the town.

While a bypass is required, a distributor road is an absolute priority, said Cllr Jerome Scanlan, who argued that linking up the three roads to the south of the town would solve the traffic screw-up that occurs on a daily basis.

Robert Gallagher, senior executive engineer, told councillors that it was unrealistic to expect that Limerick City and County Council could fund a distributor road from its own resources and funding from Transport Infrastructure Ireland would not be available for it as they were funding the bypass.

If co-funding for the project was to be sought from the Department of Transport, he said, they would have to put forward the strongest business case for it, in the context of the next Local Area Plan. The point would also have to be made that we are not looking for a second by-pass, he stressed.

The current Local Area Plan is due to be replaced by mid to late 2023, Cllr Liam Galvin was told. But he questioned why they should have to wait for the new area plan when the road proposal was already included in the current plant.

We must have the most robust case, Gordon Daly, director of services for the district said. It is not an excuse. It is not trying to delay it. But funding agencies were not likely to favour something coming to the end of its shelf-life, he pointed out.

I think we should refocus on the next step, he added. The indicative route in the current area plan would have to be revisited, he said.

I still believe it is the correct route, said Cllr Michael Collins.

On the issue of the proposed Newcastle West bypass, Mr Gallagher pointed out that the proposal had now reached the stage that a preferred corridor route to the north of the town had been selected.

That is not to say it is definitely going to be the bypass route, he said. It is highly likely but it is not definite.

The corridor would now have to be examined and a definite route chosen over the next months and the plan would have to go to An Bord Pleanala where it could fall. It is highly unlikely, he said.

If it goes through all formalities, we are very confident there will be funding to build that, it will be paid for fully by somebody else.

Councillors are to be given detailed figures on any monies spent on the distributor roads in Newcastle West and Abbeyfeale.
Royal Caribbeans Mariner of the Seas departs Port Canaveral, Fla., on a 4-night Bahamas cruise, Tuesday, January 11, 2021. Royal Caribbean temporarily suspended cruise operations on three of its ships sailing from other Florida ports earlier in the week due to the surge of COVID cases in the state. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel) (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)

COVID-19 and the omicron wave took its toll on Port Canaverals plans for the first two months of the year, but March is trending toward a rebound.

This past weekend, we had 100,000 guests transit the port in one week, said Port Canaveral CEO John Murray at the port commission meeting Wednesday. So our numbers are really strong right now in March and theyre strong in all brands, some higher than other. We have some ships operating in excess of 100% capacity at double occupancy, and most of them are pretty close to it.

Advertisement

Thats a big shift from the big drops seen in January and February.

When the omicron variant hit, cruise lines canceled five sailings in January and expected passengers dipped to less than 40,000 in some weeks. The port had budgeted that ships would begin sailing at 75% capacity as of January, but most ships were not hitting that number.

Advertisement

Cruise revenue in January was down more than $2.5 million below budget, and down nearly $1.3 million in February.

The good news is that cruise parking is surging. For the fiscal year that began Oct. 1, 2021, the port has brought in more than $5.6 million, which is more than $2.6 million above budget. In February alone, parking was up nearly $300,000 despite a lower than expected passenger count.

Money from recreation such as visitors to Jetty Park is also adding to the ports bottom line, having brought in more than $1.8 million for the fiscal year, which is more than $625,000 above budget.

Cargo revenue also is above budget, having brought in more than $7 million through five months, which is more than $483,000 above budget.

And expenses continue to run under budget, costing the port a little over $19 million for the fiscal year, which is nearly $1.8 million under budget.

Overall, reported revenue is still ahead of its plan, having brought in nearly $43 million, nearly $1.3 million more than planned.

For the year, the port has seen more than 1.2 million passengers from 329 ship calls.

January and February traditionally is a slower cruise season with business picking up during spring break. That normal trend is now coupled with lower restrictions from cruise lines as the COVID-19 prevalence has fallen in recent weeks, such as allowing passengers to go maskless at sea.

Advertisement

Murray also announced some unexpected shifts that will increase capacity at the port. On April 21, Carnival Freedom is taking over sailings from the smaller Carnival Elation and Norwegian Getaway will come the the port from June 27 through November.

The NCL arrival comes as the line pulled it from planned Baltic Sea sailings this summer because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and itineraries no longer stopping in St. Petersburg. The 18 sailings were not part of Port Canaverals budget for the year.

Were please theyve elected to bring the ship here, Murray said.

The port also expects a bump when Disney Cruise Line brings new ship Disney Wish to Florida this summer, although revenue sailings have been delayed until July 14.

Looking into the new fiscal year, Royal Caribbean announced it would base two Oasis-class ships at the port for the first time, with Allure of the Seas taking over the three- and four-night sailings of Independence of the Seas starting Oct. 23.

MSC Cruises, though, will be shifting the massive MSC Meraviglia to New York, but will replace it with another ship to be announced later.

Advertisement

I think the ships are going to get back to normal capacity as we evolve toward summer and youre going to see some strong numbers, Murray said.

At least one travel agency, AAA Travel, reported that bookings in the last four weeks has been twice as strong compared to March 2021, although the cruise industry did not return to sailing until last June, and some ships still havent returned to service.

Cruising is more available now than it ever was during the pandemic, said Debbie Haas, vice president of AAA Travel. Destinations are loosening travel restrictions and cruise lines hope to reach full capacity in the second half of the year. As a result, our travel agency is seeing a wide mix of bookings that include everything from short weekend excursions to worldwide voyages.

Part of that is coming from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention further dropping its cruise warning level now to below where it was when the pandemic first surged two years ago. Now the CDC only recommends travelers to be up-to-date on their COVID vaccinations when cruising as cruise lines continue to work in a new program to ensure safety protocols on board.

Things are looking good that omicrons behind us, Murray said. All the ships are signed into the new CDC program and theyre selling out the ships, which is a good thing. ... We should have a good second half of the year, robust second half of the year.
Eleven people were charred to death in a major fire accident at a scrap godown in Hyderabad in the early hours today, news agencies reported.

The deceased, all migrant workers from Bihar, were found on the first floor of the building at Bhoiguda in the city, police and fire officials said.

Out of 12 people, one person survived. DRF reached the spot to douse the fire. A shock circuit could be the reason for the fire. We are investigating the matter: Mohan Rao, Gandhi Nagar SHO, ANI tweeted.

Telangana | 11 people died after a fire broke out in a scrap shop in Bhoiguda, Hyderabad



Out of 12 people, one person survived. DRF reached the spot to douse the fire. A shock circuit could be the reason for the fire. We are investigating the matter: Mohan Rao, Gandhi Nagar SHO pic.twitter.com/PMTIDa5ilg  ANI (@ANI) March 23, 2022

The fire control room received a call around 3 am and the blaze was completely extinguished after about four hours, they said.
US President Joe Biden flies to Europe on Wednesday for an emergency NATO summit on Ukraine, where invading Russian troops are stalled, cities are under bombardment and the besieged port of Mariupol is in flames.

Four weeks into a war that has driven a quarter of Ukraine's 44 million people from their homes, Russia has failed to capture a single major Ukrainian city, while Western sanctions have ostracised it from the world economy.

After failing in what Western countries say was an attempt to seize Kyiv swiftly and depose the government, Russian forces have taken heavy losses, are frozen in place for at least a week on most fronts and face supply problems and fierce resistance.

They have turned to siege tactics and bombardment of cities, causing massive destruction and many civilian deaths.

Moscow says its aim is to disarm its neighbour, and its "special military operation" is going to plan. It denies targeting civilians.

Worst hit has been Mariupol, a southern port completely surrounded by Russian forces, where hundreds of thousands of people have been sheltering since the war's early days, under constant bombardment and with food, water and heat supplies cut.

New satellite photographs from commercial firm Maxar released overnight showed massive destruction of what was once a city of 400,000 people, with columns of smoke rising from residential apartment buildings in flames.

No journalists have been able to report from inside the Ukrainian-held parts of the city for more than a week, during which time Ukrainian officials say Russia has bombed a theatre and an art school used as bomb shelters, burying hundreds of people alive. Russia denies targeting those buildings.

Biden, due to arrive in Brussels on Wednesday evening, will meet NATO and European leaders in an emergency summit at the Western military alliance's headquarters. The leaders are expected to roll out additional sanctions against Russia on Thursday. Sources said the U.S. package would include measures targeting Russian members of parliament.

Biden will also visit Poland, which has taken in most of the more than 3.6 million refugees who have fled Ukraine and served as the main route for Western supplies of weapons to Ukraine.

Talks 'confrontational'

Kyiv hopes that Russia's President Vladimir Putin, having failed to swiftly subdue what he describes as an illegitimate nation, can now be compelled to negotiate a ceasefire and withdrawal. Peace talks have been ongoing since last week.

"It's very difficult, sometimes confrontational," President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in an overnight address. "But step by step we are moving forward."

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also described the talks as difficult, saying the Ukrainian side "constantly changes its mind and backs away from its own proposals".

Poland has proposed sending NATO peacekeepers to Ukraine, although Biden has long since ruled out any such ground presence. Lavrov said that could lead to war with the West.

Despite its losses so far, Russia may still be hoping to make more gains on the battlefield, especially in the east, in territory including Mariupol which Moscow demands Ukraine cede to Russian-backed separatists.

In a daily intelligence update, Britain's defence ministry said the entire battlefield across northern Ukraine - which includes huge armoured columns that once bore down on Kyiv - was now "static", with invaders apparently trying to reorganise.

But in the east, the Russians were trying to link troops at Mariupol with those near Kharkiv in the hope of encircling Ukrainian forces, while in the southwest they were bypassing the city of Mykolayiv to try to advance on Odesa, Ukraine's biggest port.

Ukrainian officials described sporadic shelling in other cities overnight, with two civilians killed in the Mykolayiv region, a bridge destroyed in the Chernihiv region, and residential buildings and a shopping mall struck in two districts of Kyiv, wounding at least four people.

Meanwhile, life continues under the relentless bombardment. In Kharkiv in the east, a maternity clinic had moved patients into the basement for safety. Tearful mother Yana cradled her baby in a room with beds lining the walls. Her house has been bombed. "I have nowhere to go," she said.

Far away in Mykolaiv, a southern port which Russian forces tried and failed to storm over the past 10 days, Tamara Kravchuk, 37, lay blissfully with her baby just minutes old on her chest. She had been scared, especially when explosions burst just 500 metres from the hospital, she said. But baby Katya melted her fears away.

"I think the war will end and we will live as it was before, our life will be calm again," she said. "I hope our children won't see all these crazy things and everything will be good."

This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text. Only the headline has been changed.
Sri Lanka is currently facing its worst economic meltdown since independence in 1948, with crippling shortages of essentials and fears it will default on its foreign debt or ask bondholders to take a "haircut" on repayments.

Around $6.9 billion of Colombo's debt needs to be serviced this year but its foreign currency reserves stood at about $2.3 billion at the end of February.

The island nation had about $3.5 billion in debt from China by end-2020, excluding loans to state enterprises, according to central bank data.

Amidst hardships and sufferings, its nationals have started fleeing to India.

Check latest developments:

Six Sri Lankan nationals who allegedly entered India illegally and were left stranded at mid-sea were rescued on Tuesday and being interrogated by the Coast Guard. Among the six, three children were present as they attempted to land at Dhanushkodi by a boat. A woman among them said they had crossed over to India following the economic crisis in Sri Lanka.

The Coast Guard said it had located the Lankan nationals from fourth island, Rameswaram following receipt of "illegal migration of Sri Lankan nationals to India."

Sri Lanka posted soldiers at hundreds of state-run gas stations on Tuesday as shortages forced tens of thousands of people to queue for hours. Tension over the scarcity of supplies has fed sporadic violence among those scrambling to buy fuel and other essential items.

The decision to deploy troops near petrol pumps and kerosene supply points came after three elderly people dropped dead during their wait in long queues.

Sri Lanka has cancelled exams for millions of school students as the country ran out of printing paper. "School principals cannot hold the tests as printers are unable to secure foreign exchange to import necessary paper and ink," the department of Education of the Western Province said.

The cash-strapped nation has secured a billion-dollar credit line from India to buy urgently needed food and medicine, news agency AFP reported last week. India and Sri Lanka formally entered into the credit agreement on last Thursday during finance minister Basil Rajapaksa's visit to New Delhi, as per reports.

reported last week. India and Sri Lanka formally entered into the credit agreement on last Thursday during finance minister Basil Rajapaksa's visit to New Delhi, as per reports. The latest loan was on top of another $500-million Indian credit line to help its island neighbour buy oil.

The Indian line of credit came a month after Sri Lanka purchased 40,000 metric tonnes of diesel and petrol from India's oil major Indian Oil Corporation to meet the urgent energy requirements.

The International Monetary Fund on Friday confirmed it was considering President Gotabaya Rajapaksa's surprise Wednesday request to discuss a bailout. "We will discuss with the authorities how best we can assist Sri Lanka going forward," IMF spokesman Gerry Rice said in a statement.

Chinas ambassador to Sri Lanka on Monday said his country is considering up to $2.5 billion in fresh assistance to the South Asian nation. The ambassador, Qi Zhenhong, told reporters in Colombo on Monday that China is considering a $1 billion loan and a $1.5 billion credit line to purchase goods from China, both of which would be new lines of financing.
New Delhi: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal today attacked the BJP over the "postponement" of municipal elections. Taking to Twitter, the Delhi CM said that AAM Aadmi Party (AAP) will quit politics if BJP gets these polls conducted timely and wins them.

"We (the AAP) will leave politics if BJP gets the MCD polls held (timely) and wins them," Kejriwal tweeted

" BJP    !



MCD                "



- CM @ArvindKejriwal pic.twitter.com/okEMkGUjNh  AAP (@AamAadmiParty) March 23, 2022

His remarks came after the Union Cabinet on Tuesday approved a bill to unify the three civic bodies -- North, East and South -- in Delhi.

He also said that deferring the elections is an "insult to martyrs".

                                         ,          https://t.co/QHhAE1nV4Y  Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) March 23, 2022

"Postponement of Delhi Municipal Corporation elections by BJP is an insult to the martyrs who had made sacrifices to establish democracy in the country by driving the British out of the country. Today they are postponing the Delhi Municipal Corporation elections due to fear of defeat, tomorrow they will postpone the elections of the states and the country," Kejriwal tweeted in Hindi
The final voting for Sundays 94th Oscars has closed. What can we expect?

A two-year global pandemic, which is still in progress, changed the mindset of humankind, and the Hollywood industry. The awards season seemed to be back on track but just prior to the holiday break, events were being postponed, and a familiar dark passenger started showing its face once again, under different name variants.

Its no secret that Oscar voters have been looking for a good mood. After the nominations were announced on Feb. 8, where Netflixs The Power of the Dog led the charge with 12, it looked as though the streaming giant had finally arrived at its golden moment with the Academy after falling short with previous films like Roma (2018) and The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020).

Read more: Varietys Awards Circuit Predictions Hub

Ive long believed that the importance of the Academy Awards is its ability to provide a snapshot of the world during a time in history, not only with what they reward, but what they dont. The 14th annual Oscars in 1942 is significant in history because John Fords How Green Was My Valley bested Orson Welles Citizen Kane, the movie many consider the best ever made. Taking place three months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, Fords drama that depicts hope and a family seeking a better life hit at the right moment, where the country was in a passionate Pro-America mood.

Now the world is gazing upon the atrocities and war crimes happening in Ukraine, where the invasion began on Feb. 24, four days before Apple Original Films CODA won the SAG Award for cast ensemble. A joyful, loving cast that includes Emilia Jones, Marlee Matlin, Troy Kotsur, Eugenio Derbez and Daniel Durant brought smiles to all of our faces. How could you not see a sense of hope in a dark time with that cast?

This also happened right in the middle of final voting for the Producers Guild of America and BAFTA Awards, which both closed on March 8. Riding high, the goodwill for the $25 million Sundance purchase stayed intact, leading to a win at the PGA Awards this past weekend, and even though CODA was not nominated for best film at BAFTA, it won a very telling adapted screenplay prize.

In the world of the Oscars, timing is everything. Even Focus Features Belfast, which has been thought of as a positive, happier film, has an opening sequence with nine-year-old Buddy (played by Jude Hill) experiencing the outbreak of unrest in Northern Ireland.

CODA presented itself at the right time to a world thats looking for some hope. Although Jane Campions The Power of the Dog is a gorgeously crafted, and exquisitely directed achievement, the dark, brooding Western doesnt provide any semblance of hope for generations to latch onto, nor does it have too many lighter moments.

Sian Heders family drama that tells the story of a young girl trying to balance her love of music with her familys economic future packs a wallop in its final 20 minutes, bringing even some critics of its simple approach to a puddle of tears.

In the early 2000s, the Oscars were in a trend of rewarding films with tinges of death, depression, racism and violence, illustrated by best picture winners such as Million Dollar Baby (2004), Crash (2005), The Departed (2006) and No Country for Old Men (2007). While taking a break with uplifting material like Slumdog Millionaire (2008), they slid back into bleaker selections like The Hurt Locker (2010), 12 Years a Slave (2013), Spotlight (2015) and arguably Parasite and Nomadland.

Speaking with multiple AMPAS members over the past six days of voting, one thing is for certain, its going to be a photo-finish in many categories, with some surprises lurking in the wings.

Final Oscar predictions will be revealed on Thursday, ahead of Sundays ceremony. Warner Bros Dune is expected to win the most prizes, and we could see some record-breaking moments like Billie Eilish becoming the second youngest original song winner ever (behind Marketa Irglova, the Czech-Icelandic songwriter who co-wrote Falling Slowly for Once) or Lin-Manuel Miranda becoming our newest EGOT recipient, the fastest to ever achieve it.

Stay tuned.

Sign up for Varietys Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Click here to read the full article.

Buzzy titles such as Guian, Rhinoceros and Of Books and Women I Sing are among the 14 titles at Malagas extensive WIP showcase, a springboard in the past for the discovery of titles such as Spanish horror thriller The Platform which, winning the Latido Films Prize at WIP, has gone on to become the second most-watched non-English language movie ever on Netflix.

Awarded the biggest plaudit at last years Malaga WIP, Adrian Silvestres My Emptiness and I made a splash at Februarys Rotterdam Festival and now competes at Malaga.

In a 2022 spread of titles presented over March 22-25, six hail from Spain and eight from Latin-America

In addition to the Malaga Film Festival award, private-sector prizes from Aracne Digital Cinema, Damita Joe, Latamcinema.com, Latido Films, Music Library, Yagan Films are also at stake.

The Spanish sections jury comprises Madrid Film Schools Luis Ferron, Quatre Films producer Alejandra Mora and Joana Gusmao, DocLisboa co-director.

Jury members for the Latin America section are Pamela Bienzobas, a Locarno selection committee member, Cup Filmes producer Ivan Carlos De Melo and Antoine Sebire, general delegate at the Biarritz Latin America Festival.

2022 Malaga WIP Lineup:

Spanish WIP

Of Books and Women I Sing, (Maria Elorza, TxintxuaFilms)

A creative documentary about four women who have spent their lives reading and studying, safeguarding a precious heritage. By the producers of Karmele and Mouths of Sand, a solo feature from Elorza, part of the Basque collective Las Chicas de Pasaik, selected by Variety as a Talent to Track in 2017.

Finding La Singla, (Paloma Zapata, La Fabrica Naranja)

A portrait of one of the biggest and more ephemeral icons of Flamenco culture in 60s Spain, La Singla, who disappeared from the stage before she was 30. Antonia Singla was deaf, which makes her singular skills for dancing more amazing as she relied on her memory of music. By 17, she was considered one of the best flamenco dancers in the world. Project awarded at Abycine Albacete International Film Festival.

Notes On A Summer, (Diego Llorente, Failo Cine, Baltico)

The summer holidays are the time when, unexpectedly, Marta could change her life project with her boyfriend. While Martas boyfriend remains in Madrid she runs into an old love in Gijon. Llorentes previous work, a doc feature, premiered at the Indie Memphis Film Festival.

Ramona, (Andrea Bagney, Tortilla Films)

A romantic comedy following Ramona, a wannabe actress, who meets Bruno. She doesnt know hes the director that could change her professional life, but she begins to have some feelings for him. Whats more: Ramonas current boyfriend encourages her to accept the job that Bruno offers her. Project put forward by Tarragonas REC festival.

Sica, (Carla Subirana, Alba Sotorra Producciones)

First fiction feature from Subirana, a Malaga Special Jury Prize winner, for Kanimambo. A coming-of-age drama threaded with ecological themes, it follows a young girl whose father, a fisherman from Costa da Morte, died while working. However, the sea wontgive his corpse back.

Land of Our Mothers, (Liz Lobato)

Actress-turned-director Lobato directs a rural tragedy-comedy with darker touches about elderly Rosario and her disabled son Ofelio, her donkey, her friends and her goat. Rosario defends her ancestral way of living despite the opposition of her neighbors, all ruined by gambling.

Ibero-Americas WIP

Salt Water, (Steven Morales Pineda, Esuna Casa Audiovisual, Colombia)

Dark drama about a Catholic priest on his way out of the clergy following accusations of sexual abuse. He reconnects with Jacobo, a much younger boy. Jacobo must face his long-buried contradictory feelings about the priest.

The Sharp Scissors, (David Marcial Valverdi, Argentina)

An animated feature documentary set in in 1990s Argentina, following David, a nine-year-old boy who is fascinated by the toned and masculine bodies in the sport magazines at his grandmothers hair salon,

70 Mile Zoo, (Daniel Ross Mix, Costa Rica)

Hybrid documentary that follows 40-year-old Damian who, alongside his childhood friend Rex, travels to the camp they call the Zoo in the middle of a burnt forest, where they will dig for morel mushrooms that grow in the ashes. Director produces and stars.

Guian, (Nicole Chi, Costa Rica, Noche Negra Producciones)

Doc exploring the directors own Costa Rican-Chinese identity through a journey in which she travels to China after her grandma Guian passes away. Chi decides to undertake this initiatory trip to look for the house Guian left when she emigrated to Costa Rica.

History and Geography, (Bernardo Quesney, Chile)

After Natural Disasters, the Chilean directors new dramedy turns on a a TV comedian, Gioconda Martinez, who returns to her hometown to stage a play, adapting Alonso de Ercillas 16th-century epic poem La Araucana which turns on the Mapuche peoples confrontation with Spanish conquistadors. Submitted by Sanfic Industry.

Nothing, (Adriano Guimaraes, Machado Filmes, Brazil)

Multihyphenate artist Guimaraes delivers a rural drama portraying the relationship between an artist, Ana, and her sister Tereza, stricken by an enigmatic illness that alters her consciousness. Backed by Brazils Cinemundi.

I Dont Want to Be Dust, (Ivan Lowenberg, Pensilvania Films, Mexico)

The director-producers dramedy on 55-year-old Bego, a bored wife with whose life mainly focuses on caring for her husband. But everything could change when a great cataclysm is announced in Begos meditation group. By the co-producers of Meritxel Colells Duo, a competition title at Malagas Zonacine.

Rhinoceros, (Arturo Castro Godoy, Altocine, Argentina)

Castros third feature follows 11-year-old Damian, who, when separated from a violent family and taken to a childrens home, has to learn that his former life is behind him and that a future of unknown possibilities awaits.

Malaga WIP is organized by the City Council, Malaga Procultura and the Malaga Film Festival in collaboration with Spanish state agency ICAA, the Ibero-American Audiovisual and Film Authorities (CAACI) and the Federation of Ibero-American producers (FIPCA).

Sign up for Varietys Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Click here to read the full article.

On Tuesday, employees of the Walt Disney Company rallied in person and online in protest of the companys response to a raft of anti-LGBTQ legislation that have either passed or are in the works in several state legislatures across the country. Some Disney employees, however, still had to work, especially those promoting Moon Knight, the latest Marvel Studios series to debut on Disney Plus.

That did not stop the two stars of the series, Oscar Isaac and Ethan Hawke, from speaking out on the topic.

I guess my comment would be: gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gayyyyyy! Isaac told Variety, breaking into song during the virtual Moon Knight junket.

Its an absolutely ridiculous law, Isaac continued, speaking specifically about the Dont Say Gay law that passed in Florida that prohibits instruction regarding gender identity and sexual orientation. Its insane. Its insanity. And I hope that Disney as a company comes out as forcefully as possible against this idea. Its astounding that it even exists in this country.

While Hawke did not address the specifics of the legislation and the controversy surrounding Disneys response to it  Im not educated about it  he did offer insight on the importance of LGBTQ visibility in popular culture.

My lifes work is dedicated to creating empathy, Hawke said. I feel the power of stories that we tell each other. If you tell the truth about human experience, you invite empathy. And the more places we shine light, the less dark places there are, and theres less to be afraid of. And the more we understand each others experiences, the more humanity we find in them, and the better we all actually feel. So thats my job, and thats what I believe in.

Other A-listers have spoken out in support of the Disney employee protests via social media. Larry Wilmore posted a photo of himself, producer Pilar Savone, actor Kerry Washington, and writer Raamla Mohamed from set.

Were taking the time today on set to stand in solidarity with the LGBTQIA+ employees of Disney. Were all in this together!! pic.twitter.com/HILTLTWLt4  Larry Wilmore (@larrywilmore) March 22, 2022

Washington also tweeted a statement supporting Disneys LGBTQIA+ employees  and I stand with them in this walk out today. She also said, I dont condone the actions or inactions of Disney in this moment.

Marvel Studios regular Mark Ruffalo retweeted Washingtons statement: Standing proud and in solidarity with our LBGTQIA+ family!

Sign up for Varietys Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
The Laredo Metropolitan Planning Organization voted unanimously to approve its participation in the River Road planning study with the Regional Mobility Authority at its recent meeting.

This River Road project is seen as a way to alleviate congestion in the FM 1472/Mines Road area.

The River Road/Aquero Boulevard project has been an active idea for the last few years in Laredo, but the RMAs involvement in the study has only recently come up in the last few months with the first mention of such a partnership coming in October.

With approval on March 16, the RMA and MPO will join together to carry out an alignment study which will seek to map out a potential road in the Mines Road area which would potentially be free of tractor-trailer traffic and alleviate congestion for pedestrian vehicles in the area.

The study  once officially started  has a 12-month completion schedule. It will also incorporate older studies done in the area including the North Laredo Webb County Planning study which was a master plan for the north area of the city spanning from north of IH 69-W to SH 255 and bordered by the Rio Grande to the west and IH-35 to the east.

Cost for the River Road alignment study would be $250,000 to be split between the MPO and the RMA. Money for the project from the MPO will come from Federal Planning Funds.

The breakdown of the cost of the study would include $25,000 for project management, $15,000 for an environmental constraint mapping and analysis, $70,000 for public involvement and stakeholder workshops, $70,000 for traffic analysis and cost estimating, and $70,000 for corridor analyses and reports.

I appreciate the initiative and the support (of the RMA) because its not going to get any better unless we do something like this, said District VII City Councilmember Vanessa Perez  whose district the planning study will be done in. Theres a big outcry and need for it, and its a safety issue and its important.

The River Road Project was identified as one of the necessary improvements as part of the North Laredo Webb County Planning Study and planning phases for it were determined to begin in 2021-22.

According to a study done by the Texas A&M Transportation Institutes Mobility Division in 2021, the congestion on Mines Road/FM 1472 between Pan American Boulevard and Bob Bullock Loop/SL 20 ranks as the 37th worst in the state which included more than 1,800 stretches of road. The same study revealed it was the eighth most congested road in terms of trucks in Texas.

District Engineer for the Texas Department of Transportation and member of the MPO David Salazar said this study has the full support of TxDOT.

City Councilman Dr. Marte Martinez said landowners and private businesses in the area are also in support.

Weve been working with some of the private developers, he said. I think theyre starting to jump in and try to give also  either of land donation or money  I think in collaboration with the private sector this is something thats very feasible and very necessary.

In addition, he said he has spoken with these same developers and said they are planning for future development with this road in mind.

He went on to say this was a project that has needed to happen for a long time and said the city is some 20 years behind, in this kind of work.

This was a project the MPO brought to the RMA in hopes it would help expedite the process of getting it done, and getting it done well. And Jed Brown  appointed as the presiding officer of the Webb County, City of Laredo Regional Mobility Authority by Gov. Greg Abbott back in 2019  saw the value in it. That is why they agreed to join.

Dr. Martinez is the one that teed this up and brought it to us and put it on our radar, Brown said. Once we started looking at it, (we) saw how important it was.

Theres two parts of town that are experiencing a lot of growth that need attention, and certainly, your district is one of them. And this road is hopefully part of a solution to help improve circulation in the area and safety.

thomas.lott@lmtonline.com

956-728-2577
Rex Clonts harvests celery at BigDaddys Organic Farm in Oviedo. The family farm is USDA Certified Organic, producing a diverse yield of sustainable crops in the Black Hammock area of Oviedo, near Lake Jesup. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)

Theres no space in BigDaddy because to Charles Roy Clonts grandchildren, his nickname was one word, mashed together and pronounced thusly  as southern a way of doing things as the man himself.

BigDaddy grew up on a hardscrabble farm in north Georgia with a bunch of brothers  and he knew he had to do something other than farm, Rex Clonts, one of those grandchildren, tells me. So BigDaddy became a banker.

Advertisement

But when he arrived in Oviedo in 1923, the man whod learned to manage money saw exactly where it was in this burgeoning Central Florida town. And he decided to get back into farming.

Is it intentional that youre just like him? I ask Clonts, whose own Oviedo operation  BigDaddys Farm  bears his grandfathers name. He laughs.

Advertisement

Its not  but perhaps it is. He is my hero.

Clonts, too, wears the dual hats of banker and man of the soil. His granddad was a founding member of the Citizens Bank of Oviedo. And hes on the board of several area banks. But today, were not discussing finance  were talking celery. Because March is National Celery Month  and this crisp delight, which adds so much to so many dishes, was once the backbone crop of Oviedo and Sanfords farming communities.

Rex Clonts with his wife, Denise, and a basket of harvested vegetables at BigDaddys Organic Farm in Oviedo Their farm stand is open several days a week. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)

Clonts and his wife and partner, Denise, hatched the plan for BigDaddys Farm on a napkin over dinner at a Winter Park farm-to-table restaurant. It was 2019. Farming wasnt new to the couple, of course, nor was celery  but organics was. But Denise, whod been appointed marketing manager on the ride home from that fateful dinner, was adamant.

Florida is challenging terrain for such endeavors, but theyve made it work.

BigDaddys Farm now grows roughly 50 varieties of produce, 100 percent of which is organic. In three growing seasons, theyve picked up some impressive kitchens as clients  Lukes Kitchen + Bar, 1921 Mount Dora, the JW Marriott and The Foreigner among them  and as of September, are open to the public.

Wednesdays are for online-order pickups only, but the stand is open for walk-in shopping three days a week, and whatever you grab up  beefsteak tomato or shishito pepper or sizable stalk of celery  was grown just steps from the barn-ensconced stand. The little market sits on a patch of land that BigDaddy purchased back in 1923.

We dont do the farmers markets, says Denise. We encourage folks to come here, to see where their food is grown, meet the farmer and have that farm experience. We want it to be so fresh that much of it was picked that morning and people really like the fact that it traveled only steps to be there.

Farmer Rex Clonts walks by the barn at BigDaddys Organic Farm in Oviedo. It sits on a piece of property his grandfather purchased in 1923. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)

In the year I was born, there were thousands of boxes of celery, 80 lbs. each, that were loaded onto train cars in Oviedo on the two railroads that serviced the city. Rex tells me (it was 1949, among the peak years for celery in this part of Central Florida).

Advertisement

Earlier in the areas celery-farming history, product was carried by mule cart to steamships that would take the produce north. When the railroads came, it just boomed. When I was a kid, both lines not only went to Oviedo, they also had spurs that went directly to Black Hammock. There was so much business, theyd go right out to the farms.

By the mid-1950s, says Rex, celery farming had mostly moved out of town to areas like Zellwood and down near Lake Okeechobee. BigDaddys is among a few growers who have brought it back.

Were not shipping nationwide, he notes, but countywide for sure. BigDaddys only produced an acre of celery, but its proven so popular, Rex says theyll be expanding the crop next year.

All the juicers! Denise exclaims. Some people come here and get seven stalks so they can juice it every single day!

Celery is difficult but rewarding to grow, says Rex.

Now, where's the world's largest Bloody Mary? Farmer Rex Clonts shows off an impressive specimen at BigDaddy's Farm. (BigDaddys Farm / Courtesy photo)

If you do everything right, it is a beautiful, high-yielding crop, he notes. If you do something wrong, itll let you know quickly and if you catch it right away, it will respond the same way. Its forgiving.

Advertisement

And delicious.

BigDaddys offers loads of recipes on its website for the many things they grow, celery included. Because of its rich history in Oviedo, there are two versions for chowder. One standard, the other a staple from notable Oviedoan Henry Walcott. Its the one Denise Clonts uses  but there are no measurements. Shes shared both with Sentinel readers.

Folks who cook can feel their way through it easily, she says. For everyone else, theres the other one.

Celery has many fine attributes. Its touted as anti-inflammatory and beneficial to the bodys digestive flora. Its part of the hallowed chefs bases of mirepoix (onion, carrot, celery) and its Cajun variation, the trinity (onion, celery, bell pepper). Even those less enthused by vegetables have a place in their hearts  not to mention their wing plates and Bloody Marys  for this Central Florida farm icon.

Rex and Denise Clonts on BigDaddy's Farm. They grow many crops here, all of them 100 percent organic. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)

Clonts is delighted to have a hand in bringing it back home  and that his grandfather is a part of it.

BigDaddy lived to the age of 96, so I got to spend a lot of time with him  growing orange trees and watermelons, hunting and fishing. He was a great man. He supposes he could have called the farm something sleeker and more modern like Oviedo Organics, he suggests.

Advertisement

But BigDaddys is friendlier for striking up a conversation, he says. And as we tell them the story of why we call it that, people invariably say, I love that heritage.

More info: 285 Howard Ave. in Oviedo, 407-451-4455; bigdaddysorganics.com

The juicing trend has made BigDaddy's organic celery a bigger hit than the Clontses even imagined. They'll be expanding the crop next season. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)

Celery Chowder

From historical Oviedoan Henry Walcott, 1951

Instructions

Boil together equal parts of diced celery and potatoes.

When tender, add evaporated milk and flour and water mixture to thicken.

Advertisement

Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Add chopped hard-cooked eggs and butter.

Serve with saltines

Celery Chowder

Ingredients

1 large onion, chopped

2 cups celery (leaves, too)

Advertisement

2 potatoes, diced

3 cups milk

Freshly ground black pepper and salt

1 tablespoon each, fresh parsley and fresh thyme

1/4-cup each, milk and flour

Instructions

Advertisement

Cook onion, celery, and potato in a pot with water enough to cover until potatoes are soft.

Add 3 cups milk and all spices. Bring to a gentle boil, stirring often.

Make mix of additional 1/4-cup milk and flour. Stir into soup mixture promptly and bring to boil, stirring until thickened.

Want to reach out? Find me on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram @amydroo or on the OSFoodie Instagram account @orlando.foodie. Email: amthompson@orlandosentinel.com. For more fun, join the Lets Eat, Orlando Facebook group or follow @fun.things.orlando on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
Five-year-old Gabriella Evans, center, pulls Parks, the two-year-old Labrador retriever in his little red wagon with her mother, Kelly Evans, right, followed by specialist Kimberly Burbage at Orlando Health Arnold Palmer in Orlando, Fla., Tuesday, March 22, 2022. Burbage and Parks help comfort and entertain sick children at the hospital by retrieving things, pushing drawers and following more than 40 commands. (Willie J. Allen Jr./Orlando Sentinel)

One of Orlando Healths newest team members is about 2 years old, 2 feet tall and a very good boy.

Parks, a Labrador retriever who loves to work and snuggle, is the first-ever facility dog at Orlando Health Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children. Facility dogs are trained beyond the role of a comfort animal to work with a handler in settings such as health care or criminal justice.

Advertisement

Parks joined the hospital about six weeks ago as part of the Child Life Program, which helps patients and their families have positive health care experiences. He can travel around most of the hospital, including the intensive care unit, to comfort kids with chronic conditions and motivate kids who are struggling to meet their hospital goals. His handler, Kimberly Burbage, has been a child life specialist with the childrens hospital for 15 years.

Whats nice about a dog is sometimes you forget that youre working towards goals, Burbage said on Tuesday as Parks slept at her feet. If you have a child whos refusing to get out of bed, and say hey, lets take the dog for a walk, it doesnt feel like work.

Advertisement

Orlando Health Arnold Palmer specialist Kimberly Burbage sits with Gabriella Evans, 5, as she brushes Parks, the 2-year-old Labrador Retriever at Orlando Health Arnold Palmer in Orlando, Fla., Tuesday, March 22, 2022. Burbage and Parks help comfort and assist sick children at the hospital by retrieving things, pushing drawers and following more than 40 commands. (Willie J. Allen Jr./Orlando Sentinel)

Parks will eventually work from Monday to Friday, eight hours a day. After months of intensive training, he knows over 40 commands and is constantly learning more. He can use his nose to push things, such as elevator buttons. He can lay over someone like a weighted blanket, and he can use tug ropes to open doors, or play tug-of-war with kids who need to exercise their arms in rehab, Burbage said.

On Tuesday, he showed off his newest trick  wagon riding  to his friend, 5-year-old Gabriella Evans.

Gabriella pulled him through the halls of the childrens hospital as he sat calmly in his red wagon. Then, he curled up next to her as she combed his fur and his eyes drooped into sleep.

Research suggests facility dogs reduce pediatric patients stress and encourage them to become more active. Burbage also plans to use Parks to alleviate staff burnout.

Its been a really challenging couple years in healthcare with COVID and everything else going on, she said.

The Health Report Weekly A weekly update on health news in Florida. >

One 2021 study by researchers at Purdue Universitys College of Veterinary Medicine suggests facility dogs improve pediatric hospital staffs mental health and reduce their desire to quit.

Parks was donated by Canine Companions, a charity that has trained and matched free facility dogs with professionals working in health care, criminal justice and education for 75 years, as well as dogs that provide other services. According to its website, 373 service and facility dog teams graduated in 2021, and over 7,000 have graduated from the program in total.

Burbage and Parks were placed together by the dogs trainer, Robyn Bush, after Burbage finished a lengthy application process. The Labradors can-do attitude and calm demeanor made him perfect for the hospital.

Advertisement

Parks and Kim were an excellent match from the start, Bush explained. Hes very eager to learn, hes eager to please, and he is just very quick to pick things up.

Canine Companions has also placed dogs at Health Firsts Viera Hospital in Melbourne; Johns Hopkins All Childrens Hospital in St. Petersburg; and Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, among other locations nationwide, said spokesperson Martha Johnson.

Were just really honored that we could partner with the Arnold Palmer hospital, Johnson said. Knowing the impact that Parks is going to have on a lot of people is really heartwarming to us, and thats our mission.

Kelly Evans, left, strolls with her 5-year-old daughter Gabriella Evans as she walks Parks, the 2-year-old Labrador retriever in his little red wagon along with specialist Kimberly Burbage at Orlando Health Arnold Palmer in Orlando, Fla., Tuesday, March 22, 2022. (Willie J. Allen Jr./Orlando Sentinel) (Willie J. Allen Jr./Orlando Sentinel)

Email: ccatherman@orlandosentinel.com; Twitter: @CECatherman
Workers pack boxes with packets of Nesquik confectionary during the final stages of processing at the Rossiya chocolate factory, operated by Nestle SA, in Samara, Russia, on Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2014. In Aug. Nestle cited Russia as a key driver of 1H sales growth in eastern Europe, especially in ice cream and confectionery. Photographer: Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg via Getty Images
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the US is trying to prevent as much death and destruction as possible.
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson reacts to questioning from Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) during the third day of the Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill. Sarah Silbiger for CNN
If you do not have a current print subscription to the Lodi News-Sentinel, but want to view unlimited articles for the month, please choose this option.
The next wave of refugees from Ukraine will be more vulnerable, aid agencies have warned Irish politicians.

A meeting of the Oireachtas Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee heard harrowing testimony on Tuesday from aid agencies and charities about the humanitarian crisis sparked by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

But TDs and senators were also warned that the crisis will also have a knock-on impact on the worlds poorest countries.

Ros OSullivan, head of emergency operations at international humanitarian organisation Concern Worldwide, joined the meeting virtually from Krakow in Poland.

The 6.5 million people internally displaced within #Ukraine must be afforded the same dignity as those who have left the country. We must double down on efforts to make sure this happens  Concern's Ros O'Sullivan's closing comments to Oireachtas Joint Comm on Foreign Affairs pic.twitter.com/GAvOoENTlk  Concern Worldwide (@Concern) March 22, 2022

He told TDs that if the war continues, the next wave of refugees to flee the country will need extra help.

While millions have already fled, he said: They have some resources. They have connections.

That will not be the same with any subsequent wave.

These people, if they do have to cross out of Ukraine, will have little or no resources to look after themselves.

They will likely never have been out of their region, let alone the country before.

A very different type of Ukrainian, and a person leaving the country with different and advanced needs.

Dochas ask that the members of the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence support these vital asks: 1) A peaceful resolution to the conflict in #Ukraine must be the top priority. (cont. below)  Dochas (@Dochasnetwork) March 22, 2022

Mr OSullivan also warned that the systems rapidly established to support displaced Ukrainians can only be maintained and sustained for a short while.

Describing them as being held together by sheer goodwill and affinity, he said they could easily be overwhelmed by larger numbers.

He said: There is a risk of confusion between military and humanitarian roles and operations, and a very real threat of diversion of humanitarian aid as Ukraine is on a full war footing and under martial law.

The Ukraine crisis is very dynamic, uncertain and fast moving.

Humanitarian operations and funding needs to be flexible in order to be able to shift operations to different activities, sectors and/or geographic areas within Ukraine as well as into the EU and Moldova.

The same meeting heard that the knock-on impact of the war on food programmes for developing countries would be severe.

The war in #Ukraine is already impacting millions of lives inside AND outside the country. Food prices have reached a new all-time high according to the @FAO Food Price Index. The collateral damage? Catastrophic global hunger. pic.twitter.com/nSbuG8JNLL  World Food Programme (@WFP) March 22, 2022

Ukraine, often dubbed the breadbasket of the word, is a vital source of global wheat and grain.

Aid agencies warned of the perils facing people in nations depending on the UN World Food Programme.

Jane-Ann McKenna, chief executive of Dochas, the Irish association of Non-Governmental Development Organisations, told politicians: The closure of ports and cessation of exports will have widespread humanitarian implications for Africa and other low-and middle-income countries.

Twenty-three African countries are dependent on Russia and Ukraine for more than half the imports of one of their staple goods.

Dominic MacSorley, chief executive of Concern, echoed this.

There is talk in Brussels of the doubling of the militarisation budget. Were not hearing about a doubling of the humanitarian budget for Ukraine.

Cash, and cash assistance, is critical. We are going to be using that in Ukraine.

But he stressed the need for a wider outlook. Ukraine, yes, in terms of donor funding. But as well as, and not instead of, all the other crises.
Local News, Business & Finance, Health & Wellness

By Chris Boyle Published: March 23 2022

I want to thank the essential workers of our local supermarkets, who worked tirelessly throughout the worst days of the COVID-19 pandemic, said Legislator Anker.

Suffolk County Legislator Sarah Anker recently visited three local supermarket stores to distribute COVID-19 at-home test kits to their employees. She met with managers and employees of the Stop and Stops in Rocky Point and Miller Place, as well as the King Kullen in Middle Island, where she distributed over 700 test kits between the three stores.

This effort follows Legislator Ankers recent Drive-Thru Test Kit Distribution event which was open to all residents, as well as the dissemination of boxes of test kit to the various senior communities and day care centers in the area.

I want to thank the essential workers of our local supermarkets, who worked tirelessly throughout the worst days of the COVID-19 pandemic, said Legislator Anker. It is my hope that these COVID-19 test-kits will help to keep the stores workers and patrons safe and healthy as we start to work our way back to a sense of normalcy.

Legislator Anker added, I also want to express my appreciation for our Local Unions 338 and 1500, who represent the workers of Stop and Shop and King Kullen. Through these challenging times, our local unions have continued to dedicate themselves to ensuring workers and their families are protected and supported.
SYDNEY, March 23 (Xinhua) -- In the aftermath of what is likely to be Australia's most costly and devastating flood, tens of thousands of residents have lost their homes and lack the proper insurance to rebuild.

Insurance data provided to Xinhua by the Insurance Council of Australia, the nation's representative insurance body, showed that as of Wednesday insurance claims related to the floods in the states of New South Wales and Queensland had reached 2.39 billion Australian dollars (about 1.78 billion U.S. dollars).

Nearly 80 percent of the nearly 160,000 individual claims were for property damages.

Professor Michael Sherris from the School of Risk and Actuarial Studies at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Business School told Xinhua on Wednesday these numbers paint only part of the full picture.

"Insurance premiums were revised after the last flood in 2021. And a lot of people found them too expensive, and decided just to take the risk."

In Lismore, the worst-hit area in NSW, residents have returned to over 4,000 homes rendered uninhabitable by the record-high floodwaters that engulfed the small town.

One such resident is Harley Nelson, who told Xinhua that many people in the town are on low incomes and have no way of rebuilding their homes which were underinsured and still in the process of being paid off.

"It's easy to move away when you're young and renting, but imagine you're halfway through paying off a five hundred-thousand-dollar house and it's just been destroyed," said Nelson.

As natural disasters, primarily bushfires and floods become more severe, the worst-affected residents will continue to be priced out of insurance. Sherris said that this will make it harder and harder for large numbers of people to rebuild.

"Insurance really works on the principle where not a very large group of people have claims at the same time," said Sherris.

He said it is becoming more and more necessary to provide financial assistance at the national and state levels in the form of a disaster relief fund.

"Much better, organized and funded schemes would make a lot more sense for these catastrophic risks."

An Australian think tank, The Australia Institute, proposed on Wednesday a National Risk Assessment and a National Adaptation Plan that would place a levy on fossil fuel exports to provide public funding to those impacted by natural disasters.

"So-called once in 100-year disasters like the devastating recent floods and the catastrophic Black Summer bushfires are becoming all too frequent," said Richie Merzian, inaugural Climate and Energy Program Director at the Australia Institute.

A survey of over 1,000 Australians conducted by the institute found that 74 percent agreed that the country needed a national fund for disaster relief.

"There is clear support for a national climate disaster fund, so that those profiting from fossil fuels help contribute to the climate impacts, rather than disaster-stricken communities who are currently bearing the brunt."

Apart from the economic cost of the floods, as residents return to destroyed homes and towns that have spent weeks underwater - the social and human cost has been brought into sharp relief.

A survey from the University of Sydney has shown that temporary or extended displacement following natural disasters left up to one in five of those impacted with some form of mental illness, such as anxiety or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

Despite this urgency, the sheer number of people who have had residences destroyed in the floods means it will likely take weeks or months to receive insurance payments, and even longer to rebuild.

Sherris said as climate change worsens, people and governments across Australia would have little choice but to stop development in areas that are continually hit by natural disasters.

"The outcome of that building in flood-prone areas is regular, quite substantial losses people are bearing, and it just doesn't make a lot of sense to allow development and building in these kinds of areas." 
When Miya Marcanos family members called the Orange County Sheriffs Office to report her missing on a Friday night in late September, the deputy who responded to the Arden Villas apartments was shown several indications that all was not right.

Marcanos roommate  who entered Marcanos bedroom through a window  noted that a small shelving unit was wedged against the door, evidently to prevent anyone from entering the room from the outside, according to OCSOs final investigative report, which was released Tuesday.

Advertisement

A small set of shelves was found wedged against the door to Miya Marcano's bedroom inside her apartment on the night she went missing. Detectives say she likely was killed and removed from the room through the window. (OCSO final report)

Locks Marcanos father had installed that should have prevented anyone from opening the window were missing. Jewelry was on the floor and luggage for a flight to Fort Lauderdale shed missed that night, arousing concerns, sat next to her desk. And there was a small patch of dried red substance on her pillow  where tests would later confirm hers and her killers blood had been spilled, the report said.

Though Marcanos loved ones called twice more that night and named the man later identified as her killer, Arden Villas maintenance worker Armando Caballero, as a possible perpetrator, it would take eight days before her decomposing body was found.

Advertisement

The report released Tuesday confirmed several details that Marcanos family had previously made public, including that a security guard at Arden Villas and family members discovered potential evidence in her apartment  including a box cutter that was under a rug and a fingerprint on her windowsill  that the initial deputy to respond didnt find.

Marcanos family has repeatedly accused OCSO of initially failing to treat her disappearance seriously. However, Sheriff John Mina has defended his agencys investigation, saying that its likely Marcano was killed in her apartment before the agency was ever called and deputies lacked probable cause to detain Caballero the night she disappeared.

Key fob data documented in the report shows Caballero accessed Marcanos apartment using a master key shortly before she came home from work. According to investigators, Marcano was likely killed in her apartment after a struggle and put in the trunk of Caballeros car from her bedroom window, which leads to a parking lot and a wooded area, to avoid witnesses.

Security cameras at Arden Villas recorded Miya Marcano leaving the complex's office after her last shift before she went missing Sept. 24. (OCSO final report)

This is the most logical explanation as Miyas front door is surrounded by numerous other apartment doors and leads to the main parking lot, which was very active and busy around this time based on surveillance footage reviewed by deputies, the report concluded.

Marcanos family, who are suing Arden Villas for wrongful death and negligence in hiring Caballero, have argued the use of duct tape over her limbs and mouth indicated she might have been alive when she was taken.

A spokesperson for the familys lawyers did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment on the report. In December, Daryl Washington, one of the attorneys, blasted what he said was the Sheriffs Offices inability to take Miyas disappearance seriously and the Preiss Companys failure to provide the Key Fob reports in a timely manner.

We do know that you do not duct tape and bound a person if they are already dead, which gives us reason to believe Miya may have left that apartment alive, Washington said at the time.

Marcanos loved ones said Caballero pursued a relationship with Marcano, who also worked for the complex, but was rebuffed multiple times. According to the report, Marcanos friends described Caballero as obsessive, sending Marcano inappropriate texts and offering her gifts, including hundreds of dollars which Marcano declined.

Advertisement

Her body was found Oct. 2 in a wooded area near Tymber Skan, a dilapidated apartment complex in Orlando. The OCSO report shows that deputies went there Sept. 28 to see if anyone had information about her disappearance but, unlike other areas investigators were looking at the time, no search of the complex was done.

Officials would later reveal a cellphone belonging to Caballero had pinged there the day the 19-year-old Valencia College student went missing. During the search, Caballero killed himself in the maintenance shed of an apartment complex in Longwood.

After her death, Marcanos family created the Miya Marcano Foundation, which offers its support for other missing persons cases, including the controversial disappearance of Osceola County woman Paola Miranda Rosa.

Breaking News As it happens Be the first to know with email alerts on important breaking stories from the Orlando Sentinel newsroom. >

The foundation also pushed for Miyas Law, which would require apartment complexes with more than five units to conduct national background checks, including of sex offender registries, for new hires and keep a log of who has access to apartments. The law, which unanimously passed the Florida Legislature this month, would also give tenants 24-hour notice for non-emergency maintenance work.

Though Arden Villas issued a statement saying Caballeros background check came up empty for charges of burglary or sexual assault, a background check report provided by a lawyer of Marcanos family showed he faced past charges, including a 2016 conviction for aggravated assault.

The report released Tuesday shows investigators were looking at Caballeros roommate as a possible accomplice after he was allegedly caught trying to create a false alibi. According to the report, the roommate initially told deputies he was with Caballero at their apartment watching movies the night Marcano went missing, which was later found to be a lie.

Advertisement

The roommate later said he had been asleep and didnt notice Caballero had left the apartment, but phone records showed the two spoke on the phone that night, the report said.

Investigators attempted to search the phone but couldnt recover deleted records and cellphone data suggested he wasnt with Caballero at Arden Villas or Tymber Skan, according to the report.

The report concluded there was no clear evidence implicating the roommate with Marcanos disappearance, and he wasnt charged with a crime.

creyes-rios@orlandosentinel.com
Crime

By Long Island Published: March 23 2022

Attorney General James Releases Footage From Investigation Into the Death of James Huber

New York Attorney General Letitia James today released police body-worn camera footage from the New York State Police (NYSP) that her office obtained as part of its ongoing investigation into the death of James Huber. Mr. Huber died on February 12, 2022, following an encounter with a member of NYSP in Buffalo.

The release of this footage follows Attorney General James directive that videos obtained by her office in the course of investigations conducted by the Office of Special Investigation (OSI) be released to the public in order to increase transparency and strengthen public trust in these matters.

Pursuant to New York Executive Law Section 70-b, OSI assesses every incident reported to it where a police officer or a peace officer, including a corrections officer, may have caused the death of a person, by an act or omission. Under the law, the officer may be on-duty or off-duty, and the decedent may be armed or unarmed. Also, the decedent may or may not be in custody or incarcerated. If OSIs assessment indicates an officer caused the death, OSI proceeds to conduct a full investigation of the incident.

The release of this footage is not an expression of any opinion as to the guilt or innocence of any party in a criminal matter or any opinion as to how or whether any individual may be charged with a crime.

Warning: These videos contain images that viewers may find disturbing.
Activate your all-inclusive access for print subscribers:

Link your losaltosonline.com account to your print subscription here.

Your account number is your one-line street address as printed on your newspaper  use normal capitalization.

Example: 138 Main St.

When your current subscription expires later this year, you will be able to renew at losaltosonline.com/users/admin/service/purchase.

If you have any trouble accessing your account or linking your subscription, our Subscription FAQ may have the answer you need.

Contact howardb@latc.com or call him at (650) 397-5213 with any questions or to learn more.
Ensure you get a print copy of the Loudoun Times-Mirror delivered weekly to your home or business!

Complete online access is included with all print subscriptions purchased online. Plus, up to four other members of your household can share online access through this subscription with their own, individual linked accounts at no additional charge.

(Are you a current advertiser? Ask your sales rep for our special advertiser rate code!)
LIVONIA, MICH.  Pictured at right are Madonna students who, over spring break, traveled to Costa Rica with a staff member from Cru. Detroit Cru organized spring break mission trips to several different countries.

Madonna and a few other schools with the same spring break visited two communities in the San Jose area in Costa Rica. There, they partnered with Filter of Hope and installed water filters in homes to provide families with clean drinking water and to share the gospel with the people in those communities. The groups installed 43 filters into homes and shared the gospel with 65 residents.

###
The National Police in Manacor are investigating the case of a Dominican Republic citizen, who is accused of bigamy, falsification of documents and misappropriation.

His case started with having been found guilty by a Spanish court for drugs offences. The court ordered his expulsion from Spain and a ten-year ban on his returning. In order to get round this, he obtained false documentation and married a Spanish woman at the Spanish embassy in the Dominican Republic. The aim was to be able to obtain a residence permit in Spain.

Using this identity, he made a number of trips to Spain and stayed in the country for extended periods without being detected. He later left the woman. When his residence permit expired, he married another Spanish woman at the Spanish embassy in the Dominican Republic.

On this occasion, he used his true identity in order to obtain a new residence permit. On both occasions he had used false documents. In addition, he appropriated jewellery and other valuables from the second woman, which he then sold. He was detained at Madrid-Barajas Airport.
Three women accused a man of raping them at an off-campus home identified as a Frat House.

Jacksonville Sheriffs Officers arrested Mateo Borda Boyanovich, 21, on Friday for all three rape accusations, according to a WTLV-WJXX report. The former University of North Florida senior was already facing charges after prosecutors say he made a social media threat of a mass shooting at a fraternity event at the school.

Advertisement

According to Boyanovichs Linkedin profile, he had been named the vice president of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity.

An affidavit shows police interviewed one victim in 2021 and the other two in 2022. All three victims are UNF students.

Advertisement

In the 2021 interview, the alleged victim said she met Boyanovich on Tinder in 2020. He picked her up from campus and took her to a Frat House, which was a home he shared with other men, WTLV reported. The victim said she suffered injuries during the assault but didnt come forward until she was urged by her friends to report what happened.

Two other women alleged they were assaulted at the same party in September 2021. The second victim said it started as a consensual encounter before becoming violent and nonconsensual, WTLV-WJXX reported. The third alleged victim said she didnt report the assault at the time but did so after hearing about other women coming forward.

The third alleged victim said Boyanovic gave her a drink and ordered her not to put it down before she experienced a big blank period, according to WTLV-WJXX.

Boyanovich, of Peru, was already in federal custody from the federal charges in February after which UNF suspended him and revoked his student visa. He pleaded not guilty to that charge, but was in ICE custody until Friday when he was transferred to the Duval County Jail. He has yet to be charged for the rape accusations, the station reported, but has a court hearing next week.

Read the full report on firstcoastnews.com.
Mankato, MN (56001)

Today

Light rain this morning. Then remaining cloudy. High near 60F. Winds E at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 70%..

Tonight

Cloudy skies this evening will become partly cloudy after midnight. Low near 45F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph.
A Florida man faces criminal mischief charges after dumping scooters into Tampa Bay.

Parker Leonard, 20, was out with his friends just after midnight on Sunday tossing scooters into the water, WFLA reported.

Advertisement

St. Petersburg police said Leonards friends could also face charges if they also tossed scooters into the water.

Leonard allegedly threw eight scooters into the water, each valued at $750 for a total loss of $6,000, WFLA reported.

Advertisement

Read the full report on wfla.com.
Although the gas price has been dropping in recent days, some western states, such as California, are experiencing the opposite, an increase in the value of gasoline, which many find difficult to understand.

After nationally the price of gasoline hit a record high of $4.33 on March 11, there has been a drop of $4.25 per gallon.

However, in California the price of gasoline keeps going up and last Monday it reached a price of $5.84 per gallon after rising another penny, almost 10 cents from a week ago.

In San Francisco on Monday the average price was $5.92 a gallon, while in Oakland it rose to $5.849 and elsewhere the price has stabilized, at $5.79 in Santa Cruz/Watsonville, $5.93 in San Rafael and $5.82 a gallon in San Jose.

Why are gas prices more expensive in California?

Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in late February, the global price of crude oil skyrocketed, only to drop $20. However, the onset of spring has a direct influence on the rising price of gasoline.

"Usually this time of year, with warmer weather and longer days, we'd see an uptick in gasoline demand as more people hit the road," said AAA spokesperson Andrew Gross in a news release.

But the case of California (including Oregon and Washington) is different, as another reason it has the most expensive gasoline prices in the country is due to less access to refineries, as well as its higher taxes for environmental regulations and infrastructure.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky criticized Nestle for its continued relationship with Russia.

"'Good food. Good life.' This is the slogan of Nestle. Your company that refuses to leave Russia" said President Zelensky.

"Even now when there are threats from Russia to other European countries. Not only to us. When there is even nuclear blackmail from Russia."

The Swiss company is the world's largest food and beverage company. Nestle is the maker of brands like Gerber, KitKat, and Dreyer's ice cream.

According to Nestle, they made several changes since Russia invaded Ukraine.

"We have significantly scaled back out activities in Russia: we have stopped all imports and exports from Russia, except for essential products," a Nestle spokesperson said in a statement."

"We no longer make investments or advertise our products. We do not make a profit from our remaining activities."

The Swiss company employs more than 7,000 workers in Russia. Most of their employees are local people.

"The fact that we, like other food companies, supply the population with important food does not mean that we simply continue as before," Nestle said.

"We are still one of the few active food companies in Ukraine and sometimes even manage to distribute food in Kharkiv,"

On March 11, Nestle suspended exports of its products from Russia, except for essential items like baby suppliers and food.

Nestle said it stopped importing products such as Nespresso into Russia, except for essential goods such as baby food, cereal, nutrition, and pet foods.

At the time, Nestle said it was "shocked and deeply saddened by the invasion of Ukraine."

Last week, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal smashed Nestle CEO Mark Schneider for their continued presence in Russia.

"Unfortunately, he shows no understanding," Shmyhal wrote on Twitter after speaking with Schneider.

"Paying taxes to the budget of a terrorist country means killing defenseless children & mothers. Hope that Nestle will change its mind soon."
Allegedly, Russia's main argument for invading Ukraine is that they vehemently oppose Ukraine joining the NATO ranks. Since the killing started in the entire country, President Volodymir Zelensky's main argument was a plea to NATO to accept his country as part of them. But so much chaos and destruction has apparently made him rethink his strategy. It seems Russia's intentions are finally becoming the better solution for everybody. As Zelensky gets ready to speak directly to NATO on Wednesday, new information just emerged about a statement he made on what he is willing to negotiate with Russia in order to bring peace to his country. However, his agreement won't come with other demands to president Vladimir Putin.

Should they meet in person and negotiate, President Zelensky finally realized he won't be able to join NATO. Doing so would definitely start World War III and he doesn't want that to happen with the rest of the world. In his willingness to reject NATO, Zelensky also confirmed he won't stop pursuing the most obvious and urgent demands for Ukraine. If he gives up on the country joining NATO, Ukraine would also demand a complete cease fire from Russian forces and also a complete withdrawal from his territory. President Vladimir Putin would have to sit down and analyze this possible proposal because he doesn't just want to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO.

Would Putin agree to this proposal from Zelensky?

In his demands, President Vladimir Putin also wants to completely demilitarize Ukraine and his alleged demazification of the country. There still hasn't been any real proof that nazis actually exist in Ukraine and Zelensky won't demilitarize his country. However, not joining NATO could be a way to finally reach the end of this conflict. Zelensky would want Russia to also make international commitments that can ensure peace in Ukraine. Should these meetings happen between both presidents, that's exactly how the negotiations would go.
Thank you for reading!

Please log in, or sign up for a new account to continue reading.

To subscribe, click here. Already a subscriber? Click here.
Mayfield, KY (42066)

Today

Cloudy skies this morning followed by thunderstorms during the afternoon. A few storms may be severe. High 76F. Winds SSW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 80%..

Tonight

Scattered thunderstorms this evening becoming more widespread overnight. A few storms may be severe. Low 62F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%.
Weather Alert

...FLOOD WATCH NOW IN EFFECT THROUGH THIS EVENING... * 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 this evening. * IMPACTS...Significant and potentially life threatening flash flooding is ongoing just south of I-44 across Okfuskee and Okmulgee counties. Numerous main-stem rivers will likely rise above flooding. Extensive low land flooding will be likely, especially where the heavier rain has already occurred. Many low-water crossings will likely become flooded. Area creeks and streams are already running high. * ADDITIONAL DETAILS... - Widespread heavy rainfall has fallen over the past 24 hours across much of northeast Oklahoma and far northwest Arkansas. Heavy rains will continue to spread east and southward through the morning. Additional showers and storms are likely to develop through the day Thursday. Any locally heavy amounts could lead to rapid onset flooding. Rains will taper off by late afternoon from west to east. - 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. &&
Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright introduces Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton at a campaign event at Rundlett Middle School, in Concord, N.H., Feb. 6, 2016. 'Theres a special place in hell for women who dont help each other," Albright said. (Jacquelyn Martin / Associated Press)

WASHINGTON  Madeleine Albright fled the Nazis as a child and climbed to the summit of diplomacy and foreign policy in the United States, breaking the glass ceiling as the first female secretary of state and setting the pace for other women to follow.

She has watched her world fall apart, and ever since, she has dedicated her life to spreading to the rest of the world the freedom and tolerance her family found here in America, President Bill Clinton said in announcing his historic choice for Americas top diplomat in December 1996.

Advertisement

Albright, whose family said she died Wednesday of cancer at age 84, was the daughter of a Czech diplomat, and was born just as Adolf Hitlers Germany started its move down a path of conquest. The bleak years that followed uprooted Albrights family and intimidated Europe.

She grew to be outspoken and advised women years later to act in a more confident manner and to ask questions when they occur and dont wait to ask.

Advertisement

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, on Oct. 22, 2009 before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on NATO. (Haraz N. Ghanbari/AP)

It took me quite a long time to develop a voice, and now that I have it, I am not going to be silent, Albright told HuffPost Living in 2010.

Her determination to use her academic background and her instinct for world affairs, combined with a formidable drive, led to her becoming the first woman to head the State Department. She was not part of the presidential line of succession, however, because of her birth outside the United States.

For decades, Albright was a popular professor at Georgetown Universitys School of Foreign Service, where her Modern Foreign Governments was a required course and examined autocracies and the rise and fall of nation states, including in Ethiopia, the Czech Republic and the Soviet Union. A scholar influenced heavily by the Cold War, she also took a profound interest in arms control and was a proponent of combating dictatorships.

Albright remained outspoken after leaving government. She criticized President George W. Bush for using the shock of force rather than alliances to foster diplomacy. She said he had driven away moderate Arab leaders and created the potential for a dangerous rift with European allies.

When the Senate Foreign Relations Committee asked her in January 2007 whether she approved of Bushs proposed surge in U.S. troops in bloodied Iraq, she responded: I think we need a surge in diplomacy. We are viewed in the Middle East as a colonial power and our motives are suspect.

An internationalist, Albright was shaped in part by her background as a refugee. She played a key role in persuading Clinton to go to war against the Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic over his brutal treatment of Kosovar Albanians in 1999.

My mindset is Munich, she said frequently, referring to the German city where the Western allies in 1938 abandoned her homeland to the Nazis.

She helped win Senate ratification of NATOs expansion and a treaty imposing international restrictions on chemical weapons. She led a successful fight to keep Egyptian diplomat Boutros Boutros-Ghali from a second term as secretary-general of the United Nations; he accused her of deception and posing as a friend.

Advertisement

A Democrat, she was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in Clintons first term, but sought to work with Republicans in Congress on issues ranging from Russia to Cuba. As secretary of state she worked with both political parties to reform the State Department and the U.S. Information Agency, which had run Washingtons anti-Soviet messaging since the end of World War II.

Albright advocated a tough U.S. foreign policy, particularly in the case of Milosevics treatment of Bosnia. She once exclaimed to Colin Powell, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: Whats the point of having this superb military youre always talking about if we cant use it?

Albright has known firsthand what tyranny and totalitarianism can do to ordinary people, said Michael Zantovsky, a Czech ambassador to Washington. The lesson of Munich is that you do not appease aggressors, you stick by your friends, and you take a stand for values and principles that you really believe in.

I am an eternal optimist, Albright said in 1998, amid an effort to promote peace in the Middle East. But she said getting Israel to pull back on the West Bank and the Palestinians to rout terrorists posed serious problems.

As secretary of state, she made limited progress at first in trying to expand the 1993 Oslo accords that established the principle of self-rule for the Palestinians on the West Bank and in Gaza.

But in 1998, she played a leading role in formulating the Wye Accords that turned over control of about 40% of the West Bank to the Palestinians. Still, a comprehensive peace in the Middle East between Israel and the Arabs eluded the Clinton administration.

Advertisement

Albright also helped guide U.S. foreign policy during conflicts in the Balkans and the Hutu-Tutsi genocide in Rwanda.

She enjoyed her reputation for plain-speaking. And she turned her love of jewelry into a weapon, telegraphing her messages with the brooch she chose to wear. Called a snake by the Iraqi government under Saddam Hussein, she sported a snake pin during a U.N. debate on Iraq.

When devious, I wear a spider; when ready to sting, a bee, she said.

Marie Jana Korbel was born in Prague on May 15, 1937, the daughter of diplomat Joseph Korbel. The family was Jewish and converted to Roman Catholicism when she was 5. Three of her Jewish grandparents died in concentration camps. Albright later said that she only became aware of her Jewish background after she became secretary of state.

The family returned to Czechoslovakia after World War II, before fleeing again, this time to the United States, in 1948, after the communists rose to power. They settled in Denver, where her father obtained a job at the University of Denver.

Breaking News As it happens Be the first to know with email alerts on important breaking stories from the Orlando Sentinel newsroom. >

She married journalist and publishing heir Joseph Albright in 1959, three days after her graduation from Wellesley College. They had three daughters before divorcing in 1983.

Advertisement

Years later, in an interview with biographer Ann Blackman, Albright said: Do powerful women attract men? My own experience happens to be yes, in a way that was not true before.

After college she worked as a journalist and later studied international relations at Columbia University, where she earned a masters degree in 1968 and a doctoral degree in 1976.

Democratic Sen. Edmund S. Muskie launched her career in politics and diplomacy as a legislative assistant in 1976. She later worked for the National Security Council during the Carter administration and advised Democrats on foreign policy before Clintons election. He nominated her as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in 1993.

She was fluent in Russian, French and Czech, and knew some Polish, Serbian and German. When meeting in Moscow in 1997 with Russian President Boris Yeltsin, her grasp of Russian was so secure that Yeltsin waved away the interpreter as not necessary.

Following her service in the Clinton administration, she headed a global strategy firm, Albright Stonebridge, and was chair of an investment advisory company that focused on emerging markets. She also wrote several books.

She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nations highest civilian honor, by President Barack Obama in 2012.
At 26, ZsaQueria Martin has been an activist for nearly a decade.

Often willing to travel to witness historic moments, she marched in Minneapolis after George Floyd was killed by a police officer. When activists protested in Louisville following Breonna Taylors death, she traveled there too and was among the 87 people arrested outside Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Camerons home in July 2020.

Advertisement

This week she joined another group rallying in the name of a Black woman  this time in celebration.

Martin, a second-year at Florida A&M University College of Law, was among 10 students who traveled to Washington D.C. to watch the U.S. Supreme Court confirmation hearing for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Advertisement

As a Black woman, law student and future civil rights attorney... it was beautiful watching her confirmation hearing, Martin said. Seeing her beautiful natural hair, seeing her carry herself with style and grace, seeing people say her name correctly  because I have an ethnically difficult name, as some would say  it gave me butterflies inside. I want to remind everyone that her story is our story. It also meant a lot to me to rally in support of a Black woman and that this rally wasnt centered around trauma and pain like our normal protests and rallies are.

Traveling for the hearing made her emotional, she said.

Being a civil rights activist who has gotten arrested, who has marched at many protests and spoken out against a lot of injustices, this moment was like a sigh of relief, Martin added.

Back in Orlando on Wednesday, Martin shared her experience from the trip with her schoolmates, each of them finding different ways to connect with Jackson, who could become the first Black woman to be confirmed to the highest court in the nation.

For Suwana Janvier, a third-year student and mom, it was hearing Jackson touch on the sacrifices she made as a mother while building her career.

For Daniel Helligar, also a third-year, listening to Jackson talk about coloring at the kitchen table as a toddler next to her father, who was in law school at the time, reminded him of when he sat with his mother at his own kitchen table as a child.

For Tiana Loving, a second-year who has long dreamed of seeing a Black woman on the Supreme Court, watching Jacksons work bring her before Congress to even be considered for the role is meaningful.

Breaking News As it happens Be the first to know with email alerts on important breaking stories from the Orlando Sentinel newsroom. >

Coming to law school thats always been in the back of my mind: When is someone who looks like me going to be in the highest court in the land, Loving said. Those students who are interested in law... I think they are going to be inspired by this very moment and will be ecstatic about seeing someone who looks like them on the Supreme Court. Just her representation matters. Just her being there.

Advertisement

Still watching the hearings unfold was bittersweet for the students and faculty that either witnessed it in Washington D.C. or watched from Orlando.

I wondered, as did many of my students, would a white candidate have been asked about Critical Race Theory, said FAMU Law professor Patricia Broussard, who watched the hearings from Orlando with her students. Would a white candidate have been put in a position [of] being viewed as a Jezebel who endorses child pornography and over-sexualization? Would a white candidate have been asked that?

Republican senators during the hearings have accused Jackson of handing down light sentences to child porn offenders, though experts say her sentencing practices were within the mainstream.

As African Americans, were proud. As women, were proud. But we all understand the cost that it took. The lashing that she is taking in our name is to be commended. I have faith in the broken system that somehow she will emerge from this and we will all be better for it.

The Senate will still need to vote on Jacksons confirmation. Democrats are hopeful that will happen before lawmakers leave for Easter recess next month.

dstennett@orlandosentinel.com
With nearly 1,300 vacant positions, Orange County government is offering sign-on bonuses to attract critical employees, longevity rewards to encourage workers to stay and referral incentives to employees who recruit job candidates, County Manager Byron Brooks said.

In Orange County government, like every other sector across the country, were faced with the challenges of retaining and finding employees, Brooks said after county commissioners updated a pay policy Tuesday. Demand in the marketplace is so tremendous right now.

Advertisement

The nations quit rate reached a 20-year high in November, according to U.S. Department of Labor statistics.

A Pew Research Center survey, conducted in February, found low pay, a lack of opportunities for advancement and feeling disrespected at work were top reasons cited by Americans who quit their jobs last year. At least a third said those issues were major factors in their decisions, according to the Washington-based nonpartisan group, which conducts public opinion polling and other data-driven social science research.

Advertisement

Many also cited child-care conflicts, inflexible work schedules, insufficient health-care benefits and limited time off with pay.

County interviews with exiting employees in 2021 showed many left for another job, spokesperson Despina McLaughlin said. Others named poor work-life balance, family needs, health concerns or relocation as reasons for their exodus.

Orange County employs 6,727 people, but has 1,297 vacancies after 1,000 left their jobs in 2021, county figures show.

Among short-handed divisions are corrections, which has 282 openings, and utilities, with 183 vacancies.

Orange County Fire-Rescue, which has 1,422 employees, has 110 open positions, including 40 firefighter-EMT jobs.

All the shifts are covered; all the stations are covered. There is some overtime that people have put in, but it hasnt affected our operations, said Lisa McDonald, spokesperson for Fire-Rescue. But we just actually started a recruitment campaign on social [media].

HIRING NOW: Orange County Fire Rescue is now recruiting certified firefighters to join one of the largest fire... Posted by Orange County Fire Rescue Department, Florida on Monday, March 21, 2022

In 2020, after COVID-19 forced convention organizers to cancel face-to-face group meetings, about 190 Orange County Convention Center employees were loaned to other county programs. Some answered calls to 311, the countys information hotline. Others helped process applications for federally funded eviction-diversion, family-relief and business-assistance programs.

While big shows have returned to the Orange County Convention Center, some reassigned workers have not.

Advertisement

Orange County Human Resources lists 101 job vacancies at the complex on International Drive, which welcomed nearly 29,000 attendees last week for the 2022 convention of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, a week-long gathering.

While the availability of part-time staff, which we relied on very heavily pre-pandemic, has been a struggle, our outstanding full-time staff has risen to the occasion and we have been able to maintain our high level of customer service, said Mark Tester, executive director of the Convention Center. Efficiency and detailed pre-planning are a must as we slowly increase our staffing levels.

The county has curtailed weekend hours at its landfill and a transfer station because of worker shortages.

The hyper-competitive nature of the current hiring market has made it difficult to employ positions that require specialized training, including heavy-machinery drivers, staff with [commercial drivers] licenses, industrial electricians, and industrial mechanics, said spokesperson Sarah Lux. In such a rapidly changing market, its hard to stay competitive with rising pay and incentives as a recruitment tactic.

The front page of Orange Countys website now includes a We Are Hiring link, which explains eligibility for the sign-on bonus.

With nearly 1,300 positions vacant, Orange County is using social media to search for job candidates, offering a $1,000 bonus for certain newly hired workers. (Twitter.com/OrangeCoFL)

New employees hired for a permanent, full-time position that has been pre-identified as critical or difficult to fill are eligible for a $1,000 bonus, payable in $500 installments. The first will be paid in the employees second paycheck.

Advertisement

The second $500 will be paid after the employee completes a probationary period, ranging from three to six months.

Breaking News As it happens Be the first to know with email alerts on important breaking stories from the Orlando Sentinel newsroom. >

A full-time employee can earn a $400 incentive for referring an applicant who is subsequently hired. The person referred must successfully complete a probationary period.

Brooks said the county has hosted hiring events and offered the referral incentive to spread the word about job openings.

COVID-19 also may have spurred more veteran employees to retire earlier, he said.

In the past, we could quickly replace those people, Brooks said. Now it is much more difficult.

To learn more about job opportunities with the county, visit orangecountyfl.net.

Advertisement

shudak@orlandosentinel.com

An earlier version of this story misstated the status of reassigned convention center workers.
Meadville, PA (16335)

Today

Areas of patchy fog early. A mix of clouds and sun during the morning will give way to cloudy skies this afternoon. High 67F. Winds light and variable..

Tonight

Showers this evening, becoming a steady rain overnight. Low 54F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall around a quarter of an inch.
Advertisement

Chief Secretary Renu Sharma has called an urgent meeting on Wednesday to review the situation and to finalise the strategies to prevent the further spread of the infectious disease. The extremely contagious ASF was first detected in Lungsen village in Lunglei district in March last year and subsequently, it has spread to all the 11 districts claiming the lives of 33,417 pigs affecting over 10,000 families causing financial loss of Rs 61 crore.Around 11,000 pigs were culled last year and compensation for culled pigs amounting around to Rs 12 crore was sought from the Central government.Officials said that though since December last year ASF related pig death was not reported but of late fresh cases surfaced.The northeast region's annual pork business is worth around Rs 8,000-10,000 crore, with Assam being the largest supplier. Pork is one of the most common and popular meats consumed by the tribals and non-tribals in the region.Source: IANS
Veto outrageous anti-solar bill

Unfortunately, the Florida Legislatures anti-solar bill, HB 741 (net metering), has passed. Gov. Ron DeSantis must veto this outrageous bill. Its hard to fathom why the Legislature would want to eliminate thousands of middle-class jobs, destroy hundreds of small businesses, and deprive Floridians of one of the best tools we have to combat the climate crisis and move toward urgently needed energy independence. Only DeSantis has the ability to do anything about it now.

Does the governor really want to tell voters, eight months before Election Day, that he doesnt care about their jobs, businesses, or the environment? That he is inhibiting homeowners and businesses who might choose rooftop solar? We know that 84 percent of Floridians (including 76 percent of Republicans) support the rates that this bill would eliminate.

Advertisement

The answer is clear: if Gov. DeSantis really is interested in jobs, freedom, or the environment, he can start by vetoing the anti-solar bill. Anything less is proof that he doesnt care.

Steve Wonderly Daytona Beach

Advertisement

Steve Wonderly is the chair of Sierra Club Florida.

Sen. Scott insults Hispanic voters intelligence

I almost fell out of my chair when I read Sen. Rick Scotts guest column (Why has Joe Biden turned his back on Latin America? March 21).

As a Latina, I am sick and tired of Scott and Sen. Marco Rubio using fearmongering strategies against Hispanic voters. Please stop insulting our intelligence by trying to convince us that the Democrats master plan is to destroy our freedoms and turn our country into a fascist/socialist/Communist dictatorship. Both of you should be ashamed of such repulsive lies.

Political Pulse Weekly Get latest updates political news from Central Florida and across the state. >

Millions of us have suffered the dire consequences of oppressive dictators. It is beyond insulting to have these two politicians exploit one of our biggest fears for personal gain. Stop using my Cuban family members, as well as my Colombian and Nicaraguan friends, for your vulgar political game.

In my culture we have a saying: Tell me who youre with, and I will tell you who you are. Senators, since you are with those who separated babies from their mothers and locked our children in cages, refuse common-sense immigration reform, and support an archaic physical wall between Mexico and the U.S., youre nothing more than cruel, cheap opportunists.

Emily Romero-Figueroa Oviedo

U.S. shouldnt buy oil from Venezuela

We are in the middle of an unprecedented energy crisis, and we need leaders who will work quickly to find solutions that lower the surging cost living in America. So its ironic, and shameful, that the White House is considering buying oil from Venezuela.

For years, Florida has been a refuge for Venezuelans seeking to escape the human-rights abuses and economic mismanagement of their Communist government. In the past, Rep. Darren Soto has been a leader in balanced, fair policy toward Venezuela. Last year, Soto introduced a bill in Congress to allow Venezuelan nationals to live temporarily in the U.S. without fearing deportation.

Advertisement

Soto has been a strong voice in Congress against the oppressive regime in Venezuela. So why hasnt Rep. Soto condemned Bidens outreach to the Venezuelan government? This energy crisis was caused by an authoritarian government in Russia, and it wont be fixed by an authoritarian government in Venezuela. Rep. Soto owes it to all Floridians  and particularly immigrants to this country  to call out this total lack of integrity from the White House.

Kyle Heck Winter Garden
Last year, a biopic on Vinayak Damodar Savarkar aka Veer Savarkar was announced to be helmed by filmmaker and actor Mahesh Manjrekar.

Almost a year later, the makers have now announced Randeep Hooda as the lead star.

Sharing the details, trade analyst Taran Adarsh tweeted, RANDEEP HOODA TO PORTRAY TITLE ROLE IN 'SWATANTRA VEER SAVARKAR'... #RandeepHooda will portray the title role in #SwatantraVeerSavarkar... Directed by #MaheshManjrekar... Produced by #AnandPandit and #SandeepSingh... Co-produced by #RoopaPandit and #SamKhan.

 Randeep Hooda Twitter

Randeep Hooda too shared the announcement as he wrote, Kuch kahaniyaan batayi jaati hai aur kuch jee jaati hain!



Grateful, excited and honoured to be part of #SwatantraVeerSavarkar's biopic.

Soon after Randeep was announced as its lead star, a lot of social media users reacted to the film.

One user called it a propaganda film like the recently released The Kashmir Files and wrote, Another propaganda movie after Kashmir Files.

Another wrote, In the climax scene, Savarkarji ask forgiveness from Britishers will be a mass scene in theatres.

One user questioned the people backing the project and wrote, Be very wary of this. The ppl in this project are highly suspect. I dont trust them to do any justice to the subject.

One tweet read, Terrific! This will ruffle up too many feathers,rattle cages & bring out the sand from sugar. Good!

It should be called #MaafiVeerSawarkar, suggested one user.

Check out the tweets below:

Another propaganda movie after Kashmir Files.  Ashish (@Jashish31) March 23, 2022

Bapu*  K S Bhat (@kiranbhats) March 23, 2022

Be very wary of this. The ppl in this project are highly suspect. I dont trust them to do any justice to the subject.  Ashwini (@Ashkandy1980) March 23, 2022

In the climax scene, Savarkarji ask forgiveness from Britishers will be a mass scene in theatres  JO (@JocinJohnson) March 23, 2022

The name of the movie should be SorrySavarkar!  Human Being (@HumanityAbvAll) March 23, 2022

Ok, another propaganda movie which Taran is happy to promote on twitter.... Now producer and director know what kind of content sells and earn them lot of money.  Mallangouda Aski (@Mallangoudaaski) March 23, 2022

@akshaykumar ji... please ise bhi matt cheena...u already did that in kesari  Mahesh Bieber (@princeanurag64) March 23, 2022

It should be called #MaafiVeerSawarkar  Knull (@King_In__Black) March 23, 2022

Now everyone in bollywood want to milk it on a wave!!  Left&Right (@LeftokRight) March 23, 2022

Terrific! This will ruffle up too many feathers,rattle cages & bring out the sand from sugar. Good!  Ankita Das (@AnkitaDasDey1) March 23, 2022

Will be super hit in England as how can the British forget his courage to beg and seek mercy so shamelessly, serve the empire with heart and soul, divide India  yaseen (@nomadbrit) March 23, 2022

Film bahut choti par jaegi . Ek 8 episode ka webseries banni chahiye to show all the sides of Veer Savarkar.   | Aman |  (@Amankupa) March 23, 2022

Good choice for the role.

Eagerly waiting for this film.  Priyam (@___priyam2) March 23, 2022

Akshay kumar will release a movie in a same avatar before him with a same story  Ghabranan Nahin Hai!!! (@tattufreedom) March 23, 2022

This isnt the first time that a film will be made on Veer Savarkar. 21 years back in 2001, a film titled Veer Savarkar was made starring Shalendra Gaur in the lead role.



 Savarkar Darshan Pratishthan

Directed by Ved Rahi, the movie also starred Navni Parihar, Pankaj Berry, Surendra Rajan and Rohitashv Gaur among others.


The famous line ye dosti hum nahi todenge sometimes doesnt stand true for all friendships. Bollywood and the world of glamour is a tricky place to maintain relationships but some celebrities have managed to stay close through thick and thin. However, some friendships have faded with time and some have gone down a level of being social friends only. Here are few celebrities who were extremely close back in the day:



1. Suzanne-Hrithik & Arjun-Mehr

The two ex-couples used to be very thick before they got divorced and sadly all four went their separate ways. However, Suzanne and Hrithik continue to be very good friends and even take vacations together with their kids.

 instagram

2. Kareena Kapoor & Esha Deol

Not many know but long before the internet and the paparazzi clicking stars at social gatherings became normal, the two actresses were extremely close but not much was written about them. There are various reasons known for their friendship going sour, including Esha not liking Kareenas statements around her closeness with Zayed Khan back in the day.

 Twitter

3. Jacqueline Fernandez & Sonam Kapoor

The two beautiful actresses were once upon a time extremely close and were spotted at events together. However, while the friendship seems to exist even now, they are not the best of friends or the 3 AM friends they once called each other.

 instagram

4. Katrina Kaif & Alia Bhatt

The two leading ladies of Bollywood are still cordial and close but probably not the BFFs they were, once upon a time. Katrina was in a steady relationship with Ranbir Kapoor and now she is married to Vicky Kaushal, while Alia Bhatt is now all set to get hitched with Ranbir this year.

 instagram

5. Riteish Deshmukh & Shreyas Talpade

The two actors who have previously worked together in films like Housefull 2 and Apna Sapna Money Money, were also close friends before reportedly their Marathi films clashed at the box-office. Apparently Shreyas wanted Riteish to push the release of his film Lai Bhaari, so it didnt clash with Shreyas Poshter Boyz.

 instagram

6. Salman Khan & Sanjay Leela Bhansali

The duo which worked their magic in Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam have been friends for years before the relationship fell apart after his movie Inshallah, which was supposed to star Alia Bhatt along with Salman, got shelved. The reasons were reportedly creative differences and while the director has already offered the olive branch of peace, hes waiting on Salman Bhai to extend the hand of friendship now.

 Twitter
Meridian, MS (39302)

Today

Mainly sunny to start, then a few afternoon clouds. High 89F. Winds SSW at 10 to 20 mph..

Tonight

Scattered thunderstorms this evening becoming more widespread overnight. Low 66F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%.
Both the Democratic and Republican parties of Florida have long held annual events at Disney World - including the one featuring supporters of Elizabeth Warren in October of 2019 - but also at Universal Studios. Why? Because the theme parks, which want favors from lawmakers, give the parties millions of dollars in free rooms, food and park tickets. (Steven Lemongello / Orlando Sentinel)

Today were talking about the possibility of higher taxes in Orange County, tasty eats at the Orlando airport and how lawyers for Gov. Ron DeSantis got smacked around by a conservative judge who wondered if they even understood their own legal arguments.

But first, lets talk about Florida Democrats boycotting Disney over the companys tepid response to Floridas so-called Dont Say Gay bill. Democrats announced theyre moving their June conference away from Disneys Coronado Springs.

Advertisement

I get the reasoning here. But I bet theyll return before too long.

Why? Because the reason both political parties have long staged events at Orlando theme parks isnt the turkey legs and customer service. Its because the parks give them free hotel rooms, park tickets, meals and meeting space  which many politicians enjoy right before considering those same parks legislative requests.

Advertisement

Its one of the longest-running scams in Florida politics.

See, its supposedly illegal for a public official to take something like a free or reduced-price vacation in exchange for policy favors. Weve actually seen people jailed for such a thing.

But the theme parks and politicians discovered a seedy work-around: The parks donate the rooms, meals and tickets to the political parties  which then provide the goodies to the public officials. Its legalized laundering.

The Sentinel has documented this for years. Back in 2008, the Sentinel wrote about a Democratic fundraiser at Disneys Yacht & Beach Club where Dems ran up a $125,000 tab  which Disney then comped that year and for similar events many years after. Mickey also makes hearty in-kind donations to Republicans, the power party thats better positioned to do favors.

Its the same at Universal. From 2008 to 2017, Universal Orlando reported donating more than $1.7 million worth of hotel rooms, tickets, VIP tours, food, drink and more to both major political parties. (Again, both. So its not even like these guys can act like they make these donations for ideological reasons. Just financial ones.)

This is a sampling of the free hotel rooms, food and theme park tickets that Universal Orlando donated to both of Florida's major political parties. (Source: Florida Division of Elections records) (Orlando Sentinel)

I can respect people and parties taking a stance on principle. Id just respect them more if one of those principles was refusing to take things from the special interests who want favors.

Soaring cuisine

In happier news, perhaps you saw that Central Florida celebrity chef Art Smith is about to debut his twist on a modern American diner inside the new terminal at Orlando International Airport.

The former personal chef to Oprah Winfrey will open his American Diner with everything from fresh bread and key lime pie to Smiths private-label moonshine.

Advertisement

Whats really worth noting and applauding here is how airport leaders decided years ago to look beyond the chain outlets to showcase some of Central Floridas premier chefs and eateries. (Cask & Larder is one of the earlier examples.)

The airport has had its share of scandals. But credit where its due for leaders making an effort to offer travelers unique eats that also show off this regions increasingly impressive culinary talents.

A taxing proposal

Speaking of credit, give Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings and his team some for coming right out of the gate and telling voters that, if they support his plan to raise sales taxes by one penny for transportation projects, it will hit them in the wallet.

As the story on Wednesdays front page revealed, the county estimates the average taxpayer would pay an extra $390 a year.

I still have a lot of questions about this proposed hike. (See such previous columns as: Before raising sales taxes, Orange County should tap hotel tax.)

But I give Demings credit for hitting the cost angle head-on. You cant fairly evaluate any financial proposal unless you know the costs. And too often, politicians try to gloss over that part.

Advertisement

Legally bombed

Last week, lawyers for Gov. Ron DeSantis suffered a brutally embarrassing verbal beatdown by federal judges who seemed baffled by the attorneys inability to explain the legal justification for Floridas new so-called anti-riot law.

The judges were frustrated, according to Florida Politics, that the states lawyers seemed unable to explain how this new law allowed them to prosecute criminals anymore than existing laws already do and how they could ensure peaceful protestors wouldnt be unfairly targeted.

At one point Judge Edward Carnes, an appointee of George W. Bush, asked a state lawyer: Doesnt the fact that youre having a problem telling me what the statute does, that the common law it amends didnt do, indicate to you that theres a problem with your theory?

That from a hard-core, Alabama-born, death-penalty-supporting conservative.

Political Pulse Weekly Get latest updates political news from Central Florida and across the state. >

This is what happens when you try to legislate by sound bites.

When DeSantis explained the alleged need for the law  after Black Lives Matter protests in other parts of the country  he claimed he wanted to send a message that: If you throw a brick and hit a police officer, youre going to jail.

Advertisement

Well, what kind of gullible rube believes that isnt already a jail-worthy offense in Florida? (If you happen to be among said rubes, feel free to consult chapter 784 of the Florida statutes.)

Political sound bites making for lousy legal doctrine.

The judges havent issued a ruling in this case. But a lower court judge already ruled the law bunk. And weve seen one federal judge after another toss these guys other culture-war bills.

You might just laugh or shake your head, except your tax dollars are paying lawyers as much as $675 an hour to defend this garbage.

smaxwell@orlandosentinel.com
Jerry Ray Davis Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram dealership moved Saturday to its new 27,300-square-foot showroom at 3900 Frederica St.  part of the old Texas Gas property.

On Tuesday, the dealership gained national exposure on RFD-TV during its AgRally 22 Farm Show on National AgDay.

Alan Watts, farm director for WKDZ radio in Cadiz and a staff member at the Kentucky Ag Network, represented RFD-TV.

He said he planned to interview Davis and Barry Alexander, vice chairman of the Kentucky Soybean Association, as well as a board member of the national United Soybean Board, during the five-minute live feed from the dealership at 2:15 p.m.

The Kentucky Ag Network, Watts said, represents 85 radio stations across the state.

Kalene Rumley, internet sales manager at the dealership, said she heard about plans for the telecast last year and applied to try to get Jerry Ray Davis CDJR selected as one of the remote sites for the day.

She applied, and we were accepted, Davis said.

Jerry Ray Davis CDJR is a local certified agriculture dealership.

That program offers farmers an AgPak program that says it saves farmers up to $20,000 on the purchase of a new truck and a variety of accessories.

Rumley said her parents are farmers, and she understands the need for the program.

We wanted to give back to farmers just before the start of their busiest season, she said.

Davis said his dealership is the only certified agriculture dealer in western Kentucky.

The only other one in Kentucky is in Louisville, he said.

Patrick Driscoll, president of the Certified Agriculture Dealer Program, which puts on the national farm rally, said in a news release, We selected Jerry Ray Davis CDJR to hold a local event and provide live camera feed because of the great job they do in serving local farmers, growers and ranchers.

He said live local reports Tuesday also came from dealerships in Colorado, North Dakota, Michigan, Florida, California and Texas, along with national reports from Washington, D.C.

Davis move from the corner of Fourth and Frederica streets leaves downtown without a new vehicle dealership for the first time in more than a century.

He said he has 180 new and used vehicles on his new lot, along with 45 people on the payroll.

In 2020, Davis and his wife, the former Kym Williams, an Owensboro native, moved back and took over Steve Jones Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram dealership.

But Davis wasnt happy with the location.

He had one-way streets on the north and the south sides of the dealership, and it was hard to get in and out.

So, Davis began preparing for the move.

RFD-TV says its available in 50 million homes.

Keith Lawrence, 270-691-7301, klawrence@messenger-inquirer.com.
After tattooing 101 people Saturday, Downtown Classic Tattoo raised approximately $5,000 to help tornado survivors in western Kentucky.

Sean Manea owns Downtown Classic Tattoo on Market House Square in Paducah. On Saturday, he and his staff hosted a Helping Hands Community Fundraiser to assist community members affected by the devastating tornadoes last December.

We dont do roofs or build houses, but we thought  in another way  we could do something that was beneficial, Manea said. It was a bigger turnout than expected.

Manea is a Paducah native. After leaving the Navy and returning home in 2015, he arrived intrigued by tattoo culture and the craft.

He opened Downtown Classic Tattoo during the COVID-19 pandemic in December 2020. He works with four tattoo artists, an apprentice and a full staff.

Manea and the artists did not set out seeking recognition for their cause, he explained. They figured making memories with tattoos and donating to the tornado recovery cause was necessary.

Manea said people showed up ready to donate, but werent necessarily there for a tattoo. Not all donors got tattoos that day.

He said a line formed on Broadway Street, leading to the shop Saturday morning an hour before the event. People traveled from nearby counties and states.

Square Up Tattoo Company in Murray hosted a similar event in January.

Manea said his shop was supposed to host its event in conjunction with Square Ups, but inclement weather forced a rescheduling.

Square Up donated supplies that facilitated the event, as did Ultimate Tattoo Supply and Kingpin Tattoo Supply, both national distributors.

Manea is working with His House Ministries and other local charities.

We tattooed people who were affected by the storm, Manea said. One of the ones we tattooed was in the candle factory when it came down in Mayfield.

He added that the majority of people discovered the event on social media.

They wanted to help out, and since they like tattoos, they figured it would be a good opportunity to help out and get a good tattoo at the same time.

Sarah Cumbie traveled Saturday from Kevil to get tattooed and donate. She jumped at the chance to get inked for the 13th time. A friend joined her.

I just wanted to donate and I love tattoos. It worked out well, Cumbie told The Sun.

Jeremy Duffy is in the formative stages of his tattoo apprenticeship at the shop. His father, Patrick Duffy, is one of the artists. Jeremy Duffy is back and forth between Toms River, New Jersey, and Paducah. He moved to Paducah at age 3.

I enjoy Paducah as a town and a place I was raised in, he said. So, it doesnt surprise me to see all these people help out.

He said the shop is a space for cultural continuity and provides a gathering space for tattoo enthusiasts.

Its given people the freedom to come and donate and come to downtown Paducah, Jeremy Duffy said.
Miami, FL (33127)

Today

Sunshine to start, then a few afternoon clouds. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 86F. Winds E at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

Clear to partly cloudy. Low 73F. Winds SSE at 5 to 10 mph.
Miami, FL (33127)

Today

Sunny to partly cloudy. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 86F. Winds E at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

Mainly clear skies. Low 73F. Winds SSE at 5 to 10 mph.
The Florida Democratic Party revealed Tuesday night it will choose new dates and venues for its Leadership Blue gala, after party leaders decision to hold the June fundraiser at Disney World sparked a backlash from its LGBTQ+ caucus and gubernatorial candidates.

NBC News reported Disney has come under fire by some Democrats for not doing enough to oppose the so-called dont say gay Bill, a contentious measure that limits classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity. The legislation, which Gov. Ron DeSantis is expected to sign, spurred a walkout Tuesday from about 100 Disney employees in California.

Advertisement

This is the last place the Florida Democratic Party should be holding a fundraiser  especially during Pride Month, Stephen Gaskill, the head of the partys LGBTQ+ caucus, told NBC News. ... We should not be at Disney this year.

Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, the only statewide elected Democrat who is also running for governor, urged the party to reconsider its decision to host the fundraiser at Disney World.

Advertisement

Another Democratic gubernatorial candidate, U.S. Rep. Charlie Crist, acknowledged on Twitter that the company made mistakes but was trying to do the right thing amid the governors attacks on our LGBTQ+ community.

Political Pulse Weekly Get latest updates political news from Central Florida and across the state. >

But given the timing and conversation going on right now at Disney, its prudent the party consider other options, Crist added.

I will always advocate for our LGBTQ+ community.



I urge the Democratic Party of Florida to reconsider its decision to host June's Leadership Blue Gala at Disney. https://t.co/T46P51XUIJ  Nikki Fried (@NikkiFried) March 22, 2022

In a statement issued late Tuesday, Florida Democratic Party Chair Manny Diaz said he heard the feedback regarding the Leadership Blue fundraiser, including conflicts with Pride Month, Juneteenth, and Fathers Day events, all of which we intended to honor during the weekend.

Our timing was not ideal, Diaz said. " We also acknowledge that in our fight for freedom and fairness, we can always do more. In that spirit, the Florida Democratic Party will choose new dates and venues to hold Leadership Blue.

In response, Gaskill said the caucus appreciated the partys willingness to listen and change course.

Thank you to everyone who reached out to the Florida Democratic Party to support the LGBTQ+ community, Gaskill said in a statement. ... While it may seem like a family squabble that spilled into the street, this situation underscores that the many groups, organizations and individuals that make up the FDP can pull together when the cause is right.

Earlier this month, Disney CEO Bob Chapek apologized to employees for his earlier silence on the controversial bill and said the company is pausing all of its political donations in Florida.

mcordeiro@orlandosentinel.com
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.
With the extra time weve been spending at home during the pandemic, more of us have welcomed a four-legged family member into our lives. For instance, puppy adoption spiked across the country in February 2022.

The beginning of 2022 represented a 12% increase in puppy adoption compared to the last two months of 2021, according to a report by TOP Agency, a marketing company.

The Michigan Department of Attorney General has seen a surge in complaints of internet scammers using the pandemic as an excuse to refuse in-person visits or to demand additional fees, including fees for shipment in special "protective" crates, for pandemic insurance or a COVID-19 vaccine or medication for dogs  none of which exist, according to the department. Such methods are in addition to the typical scam practices of advertising puppies that do not exist or demanding exorbitant fees once the purchase price is paid.

Several Michiganders have recently been tricked into paying for pets that do not exist. Due to these thieves often being outside the United States, the prospects of getting money back are extremely low, according to the department.

To highlight the importance of doing the research before getting a pet to avoid scams, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel released a video Wednesday as part of her "Consumer Alert" series focused on protecting Michigan consumers.

"It remains imperative that future pet owners do their research before committing to anything," Nessel said in a statement. "And if you think you encountered a scam, contact my Consumer Protection Team right away."

The video, which is available on the Department of Attorney General's YouTube page, reminds you to conduct an internet search of the breeder from whom you intend to purchase the puppy and to avoid wiring money, sending gift cards or sending money using apps such as Venmo or CashApp, to best avoid scams.

More reminders in Nessels Puppy Scams Consumer Alert include:

Research the breed : Take the time to understand ideal breeding conditions, common health issues and their average selling price if youre looking at different breeders.

: Take the time to understand ideal breeding conditions, common health issues and their average selling price if youre looking at different breeders. Research the breeder : Conduct an internet search of the breeder from whom you intend to purchase the puppy. You should also search the email address that is advertised on the breeders website or that the breeder uses to contact you, as scammers often use the same email address across multiple websites. If the breeders website contains testimonials, conduct an internet search of the text of the testimonial. If the same or similar text appears on other websites, the breeder is likely a scammer.

: Conduct an internet search of the breeder from whom you intend to purchase the puppy. You should also search the email address that is advertised on the breeders website or that the breeder uses to contact you, as scammers often use the same email address across multiple websites. If the breeders website contains testimonials, conduct an internet search of the text of the testimonial. If the same or similar text appears on other websites, the breeder is likely a scammer. Do not purchase a puppy sight-unseen : If you are unable to do so, request that the breeder video chat with you or send you a photo or video with your name and the date written on a piece of paper next to the puppy. Be sure to do this before making any sort of deposit. In addition, request to see the premises and the mother. Avoid breeders who offer to meet you at a "convenient" public location and will not allow you to see where the animals are kept.

: If you are unable to do so, request that the breeder video chat with you or send you a photo or video with your name and the date written on a piece of paper next to the puppy. Be sure to do this before making any sort of deposit. In addition, request to see the premises and the mother. Avoid breeders who offer to meet you at a "convenient" public location and will not allow you to see where the animals are kept. Use a credit card to make the purchase : Avoid wiring money, sending gift cards or sending money using apps such as Venmo, Zelle or CashApp, as such transactions cannot be refunded and are not traceable. Use a credit card to the extent possible, which will allow you to dispute a purchase.

: Avoid wiring money, sending gift cards or sending money using apps such as Venmo, Zelle or CashApp, as such transactions cannot be refunded and are not traceable. Use a credit card to the extent possible, which will allow you to dispute a purchase. Retain all documents and communications from the breeder : Be sure to retain all records of the sale, including screenshots of the original advertisement, written communications and any other paperwork associated with the breeder.

: Be sure to retain all records of the sale, including screenshots of the original advertisement, written communications and any other paperwork associated with the breeder. Consider contacting your local shelter: Most shelters are looking for adopters or fosters to prevent overcrowding and to relieve stress on the animals. Many animals at the shelter are immediately available for adoption. Shelters also may be able to offer references to reputable local rescues or breeders.

Nessel also suggests visiting the Humane Society of the United States website for more information on finding a puppy, how to find a responsible breeder, how to recognize shady pet store practices and to obtain additional resources.

The Department of Attorney General provides a library of resources for consumers to review anytime on a variety of topics.

Consumer complaints can also be filed online at the attorney general's website here. If you have questions, call 877-765-8388.

You can also report a puppy scam to the Better Business Bureau, the Humane Society of the United States and the FBIs Internet Crime Complaint Center.
Metro Creative Graphics/File Photo

A former Ubly man was sentenced to 15 years in prison in Huron County Circuit Court March 21 on multiple charges of criminal sexual conduct.

Tracy Lee Clapper, 46, was convicted of three counts of second-degree criminal sexual conduct for assaulting a child under the age of 13. According to the criminal complaint, the crimes occurred in March of 2021.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

MANISTEE COUNTY  Around this time last year, Norman Township experienced a handful of wildfires with two requiring significant effort by agencies to respond to, and it has prompted a new collaboration starting this weekend.

Leaders with the Norman Township Fire Department and Manistee National Forest are teaming up for the first time to create an educational event called the Wildland Fire Urban Interface Workshop to help residents who live near fire-prone areas like ones in and near the Manistee National Forest.

Jack VanderBie, Norman Township fire chief, said the two entities want to get the community prepared for prevention and reducing risk of wildland fire.

The workshop is scheduled for 10 a.m. on Saturday at the Norman Township Community Center, 1273 S. Seaman Road in Wellston. The workshop is also expected to be livestreamed through the private Facebook group called Whats Happening Around Wellston Michigan. However, since the group is private, anyone seeking to view the livestream event would need to be added to the group ahead of time.

Anyone with questions about the event can leave a voicemail with the Norman Township Fire Department at 231-848-4495 or email 140firechiefjack@gmail.com.

Last March

VanderBie noted that there were two large fires last year that sparked the need for this workshop.

What started out as a grass fire ended in the loss of a farmhouse, two barns and several other structures on Dorothy Road southeast of Wellston on March 20, 2021. Seven fire agencies responded.

Two days later, fire crews at Manistee National Forest were getting the Warfield wildfire under control that grew to more than 600 acres on the Norman Township-Wexford County border area.

Submitted photo/National Forest Service

Luckily on that particular fire there (were) very few residents that were in the fire path. It if had been in a more highly populated area, it would have (had) structure loss, he said.

Ben Wagner, fire management officer who oversees the fire operations for the Manistee side of the Huron-Manistee National Forest, said the forest has a great deal of wildland urban interface spread across really all of the state of Michigan.

Within proximity to the Manistee National Forest, the national forest ownership is very mixed, Wagner said. That puts homes and infrastructure intermingled with wildland fuels and so that means that Jack and I spend a lot of time seeing each other and coordinating.

He emphasized that the idea to team up came from VanderBie who approached Wagner several months ago.

VanderBie said the goal is to get ahead on preparing residents for the fire season and provide information on the fire risks and what people can do to minimize risk.

VanderBie said at this time, the event only involves the Norman fire department, but he wants to expand education efforts in the future with other departments like the Sauble Elk Eden Townships Fire Station in Irons.

When we go on a fire, theyre usually on our fires. If they get a fire, were usually on their fires as mutual aid, he said. So, I brought it up to their chief several months ago and he thought it seemed like a great idea.

Manistee National Forest

Wagner said there are also some areas that exist in the Manistee National Forest where there have not been fires in recent times and those areas have existing fire fuels such as grasses, twigs and pine needles near residences.

I think people often underestimate wildfire in Michigan because it doesnt get a lot of the national attention, he said. We do experience a lot of fires within our protection area, at least for the forest.

He said there are about 115 wildfires each year on average for the Huron-Manistee National Forest.

About 70% of those are on the Manistee side of the forest.

A lot of those are small, but as we say every fire starts small and it doesnt take a big fire to cause significant damage. Small fires can do a great deal of damage, he said.

When asked why there are so many fires, Wagner said it was due to people.

We have a lot of people. Most of our fires are human-caused. We have a landscape that is very fire prone and we have vegetation that dries quickly because it is sitting on top of sand, he explained.

This means that even if the area gets 0.5 inches of rain, people let their guard down.

They go out and they light brush piles on fire. Everything dries out six hours later, they leave it unattended, the wind comes up and away it goes, he said. Wherever you have a lot of people and you place them in a landscape that is very fire prone, fires are the outcome.

Provided images/U.S. Drought Monitor

According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, the region has also been under moderate drought this month, compared with last year at this time when the area was in the lesser category of abnormally dry.

This includes all of Manistee, Benzie and Leelanau counties as well as a large section of Grand Traverse, Lake, Wexford and Mason counties. This is the only section in the Lower Peninsula that is under moderate drought.

From mid-Michigan north to the tip of the mitt in the Lower Peninsula, the state is under abnormally dry conditions.

Weve been tracking that all winter definitely with the intention of not being caught off guard this spring, Wagner said. If we arrive in spring fire season and were still in moderate drought, Jack and I have been talking about it and the implications for us is what we can expect for our fire season.

He said that would mean more fires, larger fires, ones that take more work to extinguish since they burn deeper, and there would be the expectation of more time spent mopping up and patrolling fires as well.

For VanderBie in his role as chief, these types of fires can stress an already limited staffing situation.

We have limited personnel. And with being all volunteer, last year when Warfield started, we had three people there, he said.

The Forest Service also has a fire program set up to respond with equipment like bulldozers, a fire crew and out of state fire responders.

Like right now, Im expecting firefighters from South Carolina, Montana and then well put orders in for additional ones, Wagner said. The fire season moves around the country at different times of the year. So, in the summertime when we green up, we spend time in Oregon and Washington and Montana.

But he noted that the Forest Service is struggling with the same issues with staffing and recruiting as well.

Wagner urged residents to check the Michigan Department of Natural Resources Burn Permit Management System online at www2.dnr.state.mi.us/burnpermits if they are planning debris burning.
The East Carolinian has created a forum that centers around topics within the community where readers can express their experiences and concerns. With Valentine's Day coming up, do you think the ECU community and the City of Greenville is doing all they can to make people feel loved and supported?

Survey
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

NEW LONDON  Gov. Ned Lamont stood behind a canopy of cranes moving acres of crushed rock into the Thames River on Tuesday and renewed his commitment to transforming the states aging pier on the river into a launching-pad for offshore wind projects, despite the projects ever-growing price tag.

The governors tour of the construction site at the State Pier in New London  where he was tailed by a gaggle of press and cameras  preceded the announcement Tuesday afternoon that additional costs associated with permitting delays would bring the projects total cost to more than $242 million, and likely to rise even higher.

In addition to its inflated budget, critics have honed in on the project's ties to former state budget official Konstantinos Diamantis, who is the subject of a federal investigation into his work involving public construction projects.

Rather than shy away from the project, however, Lamont championed the work Tuesday as part of an overall reimagining of the city of New London and the ports decline since its days as a whaling epicenter.

This is going to be one of the most major ports in the country, just like New London was 100 years ago, Lamont said.

Its about wind, its about the environment, it's about a new economy going forward, its about hundreds of amazing jobs, the governor continued. This is going to be a major facility for decades and decades to come.

Once completed, the redeveloped State Pier site will feature a heavy-lift platform capable of offloading turbine parts from Europe, as well as areas to begin assembly of the turbines before loading them on to a 472-foot long jack-up vessel that be used to construct wind farms off the coast of New York and Rhode Island.

Part of that process observed by Lamont and other officials Tuesday included machines removing earth from a portion of the site formerly known as the hill, and grinding the dirt and rocks to create some of 7.4 acres of fill being placed into the river between the two existing piers on the site.

Nearby, workers were driving steel pilings as long as 100 feet into the riverbank to support the massive delivery berth needed to offload cargo weighing dozens of tons.

David Kooris, the chairman of the board of directors for the Connecticut Port Authority, which owns the pier, told reporters Tuesday that the project was on track to be substantially completed by spring 2023, after several months of delays obtaining the final permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Close to 200 workers were employed at the site Tuesday, Kooris said, a number that is expected to double during the construction phase. About 100 people will be employed at the completed site assembling wind turbines, he said.

For decades we have known that we have had to upgrade this antiquated facility from the two finger piers to a larger port and to bring the heavy lift capacity and the upland storage to compete with other facilities and attract a broad range of cargo, Kooris said.

The governors visit to the state pier, meanwhile, also elicited questions about Diamantis involvement in the project as well as calls for the lawmakers to increase their scrutiny of the Port Authority.

As much as [Lamont] wants to continue touting the benefits of the Sate Pier, I think the public is losing faith, said House Minority Leader Vincent Candelora, R- North Branford.

Kooris told reporters that Diamantis was involved in the selection of the projects construction manager, Kiewit Corporation, as well as some of the early day to day oversight of construction work. He added that the Port Authority has not received any requests from federal investigators for documents related to Diamantis work on the pier project.

As far as we know, we have nothing to do with the investigation, Kooris said.

Within minutes of completing the governors tour, Kooris was on a conference call Tuesday with the other directors announcing the latest cost overruns of about $6.8 million, pushing the total costs to over 50 percent above the agreed-upon price of $157 million reached two years ago as part of a public-private partnership.

About a third of the projects overall costs  $75 million  will be paid for by a joint venture between Eversource and the Danish energy company rsted as part of their 10-year lease of the completed pier as a staging ground for offshore wind projects.

The cost overruns, however, will be the states responsibility to bear, according to a spokesman for the Port Authority.

Critics of the project argue that the ballooning size of the project even predates the initial contract between the state and Eversource/rsted, noting that initial estimates pegged the cost of the project at $93 million.

At what point is enough enough, and at what point are people going to step in and say We need to get our arms around this? Candelora said.

Kooris conceded on Tuesday that the Port Authority could have done a better job of explaining its preliminary cost estimates to the public and lawmakers, while also anticipating some of the work that was later factored into the budget.

Other challenges, such as pretty significant modifications to the projects design to avoid interfering with ferry boats departing from New London Harbor, contributed to the inflated costs, he said.

Kooris declined to estimate the final costs of the project while speaking to reporters on Tuesday, and in the subsequent call with the Board of Directors said that Port Authority would attempt to negotiate acceleration of the projects completion date with the contractor.

Kooris told the board that the cost of expediting the project would likely be in the same range as the $6.8 million in additional costs announced on Tuesday. The full cost of that additional work will be better known by mid-April, he said.

In the meantime, the Port Authority will begin the search for a new executive director after the current director, John Henshaw, announced last week that he would step down to pursue career opportunities in Maine. Kooris said Tuesday that he did not expect Henshaws departure to impact the timeline of the pier project.
MIDDLETOWN  The local police force has gained a 4-year-old four-legged officer, the department announced on Wednesday.

Middletown police introduced Officer Jared White and his partner, police dog Sonny, in a Facebook post. The department said White and Sonny are lateral officers from the Old Saybrook police force. They joined the Middletown ranks in the fall of 2021.

White has been an officer for four and a half years.

Sonny, a 4-year-old German shepherd, was born in the Czech Republic before he was brought to the United States to be trained as a working dog.

They currently work the midnight shift in Middletown.

When Sonny is off duty, police said, he loves to play ball with his little brother, Odie.

White and Sonny graduated from the Connecticut State Police K9 patrol school in December 2019. The duo graduated narcotic detection school in April 2021.
RTHK: Up to 15,000 Russian troops dead in Ukraine: Nato

Nato estimated on Wednesday that between 7,000 and 15,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in four weeks of military operations in Ukraine, where ferocious fighting by the country's defenders has denied Moscow the lightning victory it sought.

By way of comparison, Moscow lost about 15,000 soldiers in Afghanistan over 10 years in the 1980s.

A senior Nato military official said the alliance's estimate was based on information from Ukrainian officials, what Russia has released  intentionally or otherwise  and intelligence gathered from open sources. The official spoke on condition of anonymity under ground rules set by Nato.

When Russia began its campaign on February 24, a swift toppling of Ukraines elected government seemed likely. With Wednesday marking four full weeks of fighting, however, Russia is bogged down in a grinding military effort.

With its ground forces repeatedly slowed or stopped by hit-and-run Ukrainian units armed with Western-supplied weapons, Russian President Vladimir Putin's troops are bombarding targets from afar.

As US President Joe Biden left for Europe on Wednesday to meet with allies about possible new sanctions against Moscow and more military aid to Ukraine, he warned there is a real threat" Russia could use chemical weapons.

Addressing Japans parliament on Wednesday, meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said four weeks of war had killed thousands of his people, including at least 121 children.

Our people cannot even adequately bury their murdered relatives, friends and neighbours, he said.

Still, major Russian objectives remain unfulfilled. The Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, has been shelled repeatedly but has not been encircled.

Talks to end the fighting have continued by video. Zelenskyy said negotiations with Russia are going step by step, but they are going forward. (AP)

This story has been published on: 2022-03-23. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
We want to applaud Hearst Connecticut Medias editorial board for its recent editorial regarding the proposed gas tax holiday and shining the light on some issues related to the idea.

We have another issue wed like to bring to the table. Its an important one. When and if the gas tax holiday goes into effect, consumers may not see relief right away. Heres why.

We have been working diligently with the state to ensure that a gas tax holiday has an immediate benefit to consumers, but its unclear if that will happen. Since gas stations pay state consumer gasoline taxes up front for the fuel that is already in their tanks, the only way for the tax holiday to actually result in reduced prices immediately is if the state refunds those consumer taxes that gasoline retailers have already paid in full.

Just to put this in perspective, an average gas station typically has two tanks: 10,000 gallons each, or 20,000 gallons total. One tank is for unleaded gasoline and one tank for premium gasoline. If the state excise tax of 25 cents per gallon is suspended and those tanks are full, the gas station owners would lose $5,000 in tax money  if not more  already paid in full to the state of Connecticut. We are simply asking for that tax money to be refunded so that it can be passed along immediately to the consumer.

If not, customers will have to wait days until that pre-paid taxable fuel is sold off. This means, it would be two to three days or more before customers see any relief at the pump. We have the same goal in mind to provide relief at the pump, but if it is not executed properly, consumers will have to wait longer before they receive the benefit of the tax suspension.

We have told the administration and Connecticut lawmakers that this is the case. They are well aware of the issue at hand. We dont want customers to be upset if they do not see immediate relief in the prices they pay to fill up. We think asking for a refund for taxes that were already paid is a fair and effective solution. The state has no problem asking us for more money when taxes go up on other products that we sell. It is only right to give us back the money we paid in state taxes when taxes are reduced.

To be clear, we want to be able to offer immediate relief to consumers struggling to fill up their tanks. However, our gasoline retailers only make pennies per gallon when the prices spike the way they have recently. We could not and should not be asked by the State of Connecticut to eat millions of dollars in state taxes.

We really hope that we can fix this issue at hand before the tax holiday goes into effect. We want to help the legislature do the right thing by our customers and hope to reach some type of agreement with the state before consumers become confused about promised tax relief that may take days to actually occur. We want the people of Connecticut to understand that no business should be on the hook for state taxes that are collected, and that we will pass on those saving to them as soon as our taxable fuel, already in the tanks, is sold.

Chris Herb is president and CEO of the Connecticut Energy Marketers Association.
Read the original article on Coffee or Die Magazine. Follow Coffee or Die on Instagram.

An East Tennessee man who deserted the U.S. Navy in 1976 and stole another man's identity while on the lam will spend the next 25 months behind bars. And when he gets out, the Navy wants to recall him to active duty for some military justice.

On Monday, March 21, in Greeneville, Senior US District Judge J. Ronnie Greer also sentenced Jerry Leon Blankenship to three years of supervised release when he exits federal prison.

According to federal records, an active Navy warrant  8804455  seeks to try Blankenship at court-martial for desertion, and the U.S. attorney said the military plans to extradite him.

In an agreement he forged with those federal prosecutors on Aug. 24, 2021, Blankenship, 65, of Newport, agreed to plead guilty to two civilian charges: misuse of a Social Security number and fraud with identification documents.

He had faced up to seven years in a federal penitentiary and $500,000 in fines, although the typical sentence runs from 24 to 30 months for the two charges.

It all began to unravel for Blankenship in March of 2021, when Randy T. Clark received a message from Walgreens about a COVID-19 vaccination he never received. Clark provided a detective in North Carolina the address the drug chain said the man was using in Newport, Tennessee.

The case was turned over to Sgt. James Knipper of the Tennessee Highway Patrol's Criminal Investigative Division. He found that Blankenship had renewed his Tennessee driver's license using Clark's identity, including his birthdate and Social Security number. And it was the third time Blankenship had done that.

Video surveillance from the Walgreens also showed Blankenship got the COVID-19 shot, not Clark, although he used Clark's identity to obtain it. On May 27, 2021, authorities arrested Blankenship and he made a full confession.

Court records reveal that Blankenship walked away from the Navy after completing boot camp. After a failed marriage in the 1980s, he hooked up with a woman he called Cookie. She was in a child support battle with Clark, and that's how Blankenship obtained his Social Security number.

According to court documents, he never formally divorced his wife. Cookie soon left him and Blankenship began dating Chrystal Parker, the estranged daughter of his wife, although Blankenship wasn't her biological or adoptive father.

He and Parker settled in Newport and over the next 26 years raised three children. The couple established a successful home repair business. And Parker and their children and grandchildren apparently never realized that Blankenship was a deserter who had stolen another man's identity until he was arrested.

A dozen Cocke County citizens wrote letters to the judge asking for leniency, including a retired soldier and a retired Marine.

Coffee or Die Magazine's attempts to reach Blankenship were not successful. Messages left on cell phones linked to his name and his business were not returned. His public defense attorney also didn't reply to an email seeking comment.

Carl Prine came to Coffee or Die Magazine after stints at Navy Times, The San Diego Union-Tribune, and Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. He served in the Marine Corps and the Pennsylvania Army National Guard.
Russian use of a weapon of mass destruction in Ukraine could trigger NATOs collective defense pact if any fallout drifts into an allied country, the leader of the Senate Armed Services Committee said Wednesday.

During a virtual roundtable with reporters, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jack Reed, D-R.I., was asked if Russian President Vladimir Putin using a chemical, biological or nuclear weapon would prompt the United States to reverse its stance on direct U.S. military involvement in the war in Ukraine.

While Reed doubted President Joe Biden would unilaterally send in U.S. troops, the senator raised the possibility of such an attack in Ukraine being considered an attack on NATO.

Read Next: Gendered Scoring, No More Leg Tucks: Army Unveils New Fitness Test. Heres What You Need to Know.

It would all be viewed through the lens of, is this an attack against a NATO country triggering Article 5? Reed said at the event hosted by the Defense Writers Groups, referencing the clause in the NATO charter that covers collective defense.

If a nuclear device is detonated and the radiation goes into a [neighboring] country, that could very well be perceived as an attack against NATO, Reed continued, adding that could also be true of some chemical, biological attacks.

Under Article 5 of the NATO treaty, an attack on one ally is considered an attack on all allies. Ukraine is not a NATO member, but several of its neighbors, including Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania, are. The first and only time Article 5 has been invoked was after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States.

Days after invading Ukraine last month, as Russian forces were already foundering, Putin ordered his military leadership to put Russias nuclear forces on a "special regime of combat duty. The order was not an official phrase from Russian nuclear doctrine, but was widely interpreted as meaning putting nuclear forces on higher alert.

Since Putins order, U.S. officials have repeatedly said they have seen no significant changes in Russian nuclear posture. But fears persist among commentators that Putin, feeling cornered by a failing invasion, could turn to a so-called tactical nuclear weapon.

Meanwhile, U.S., Ukrainian and NATO officials have been sounding the alarm about the possibility of Russia using chemical or biological weapons, saying that Moscow is spreading disinformation that the U.S. military has helped Ukraine develop biological weapons as a pretense for its own biological or chemical attack.

I think it's a real threat, Biden told reporters Wednesday when asked about the threat of Russian chemical warfare in Ukraine.

Biden was speaking as he left the White House to head to Brussels for an extraordinary NATO summit, where heads of state from the allied countries are expected to agree to bulk up NATOs posture on its eastern flank.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg also warned Wednesday that Russian use of chemical weapons in Ukraine could have wide-ranging consequences.

"Any use of chemical weapons would totally change the nature of the conflict, it would be a blatant violation of international law and would have far-reaching consequences," Stoltenberg said at a news conference ahead of the summit.

Reed on Wednesday commended Biden for doing a remarkable job in unifying NATO so far, but acknowledged that a NATO response to a weapon of mass destruction could be a very difficult call.

The Biden administration this week also warned about heightened threats of Russian cyberattacks.

NATO has said for years that a serious cyberattack could trigger Article 5, but Reed expressed concern Wednesday that the threshold for what type of cyberattack would spark a NATO military response is ill-defined.

My instincts are, it will be a function of scale and probably of the human consequences, Reed said of what type of cyberattack could trigger Article 5. If there's a cyber attack that takes out a small section of electricity in an area and no one is hurt, well that's a message. If it's a significant cyberattack and there are significant casualties, that's more than a message. I think that's when you get NATO sitting at the table saying, we can and we must do something. But we're on basically new ground on this.

-- Rebecca Kheel can be reached at rebecca.kheel@military.com. Follow her on Twitter @reporterkheel.

Related: Russia's False Ukraine Biolab Claims Challenge Pentagon and Spark Biden Warning
Matthew Parker's sentences are short and direct, rarely mincing words in the way an Army man leading soldiers into combat wouldn't, a reflection of his past career. His ready comfort with Army lingo betrays his 21 years of service.

He talks about "war toys," the dangers of marching in steel toe boots and how to know you have the right body armor with an assertiveness that makes you think you're getting some on-the-spot Army training instead of an interview.

Until recently, he was a retired senior non-commissioned officer who ran a company that specializes in diplomatic and executive protection. That all changed last month when he answered the call for help in Ukraine. Parker is now headed to the fight, enlisting to repel the Russian invasion that has decimated that country.

Read Next: VA to Halt Dismissals from Caregiver Program, Pending Review

But before he left, Parker says he was tasked by the Ukrainian embassy with a critical job as it builds a foreign legion: vetting retired American service members, thousands of whom had reached out offering to fight.

He says that he's checked out between 50 and 100 folks and, as one may suspect, not everyone passed. "Guys were wanted, deadbeat dads, fake military records, war tourists," Parker said.

A handful of volunteers whom he's recently helped go to Ukraine have already come home, too.

Military.com reached out to officials at the Ukrainian embassy for verification of Parker's work and was told that the embassy would not comment, citing "security reasons."

Earlier this month, several outlets, citing embassy officials, said that at least 3,000 Americans had volunteered to fight. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy touted numbers that exceeded 15,000 from around the world.

In a recent interview with Canadian news network CTV, Damien Magrou, a spokesman for the International Legion of Territorial Defense of Ukraine, the formal name for the fighting force of foreigners that Ukraine is assembling, emphasized that the group is only looking for experienced volunteers because they "don't do that much training at this stage."

"This is one of the reasons we are looking for experienced fighters that know their way around a battlefield ... won't become shell-shocked the first time they run into enemy fire," he explained

Magrou noted that the only training that is available is "top up" training for specialists to help them translate their skills to Ukrainian weapon systems.

Despite this need for experience, Parker recalled several accounts from volunteers - people he says have critical skill sets - of arriving in the war-torn country but being assigned basic grunt work. He is quick to point out that in the cases he's dealt with, it's not a question of mismatched expectations or remorse but frustration at being underutilized.

The former soldier's account echoes other reports that have surfaced in the media and social networks from disheartened volunteers.

Parker explained that the frustrations of the American volunteers came from former helicopter pilots and soldiers trained in air defense and Stinger missile operations. Instead of being assigned to work with their skills, they were reportedly just told, "Here's your rifle; you're infantry."

"These guys are not prepared for the assignment that you're giving them," the retired Sgt. 1st Class added. The Army confirmed that Parker served from 1990 to 2011 as a cavalry scout, deploying to Iraq several times along the way, and earning more than a few medals, including a Bronze Star.

He says he's worked with many volunteers to make sure they'd covered the basic necessities: wills, powers of attorney and solid gear.

One guy drove out from Florida to Parker's home in South Carolina. On a whim, Parker said, "Do me a favor, dump your gear, just let me take a look at what you have."

"He's dropping ACU uniforms ... I'm like - 'Dude you can't wear ACUs over there 'cause these things don't work anywhere,'" Parker said.

The Army Combat Uniforms and their pixelated camouflage pattern famously cost billions of dollars only to blend with almost nothing. They were phased out in 2019.

"Here are my boots," the volunteer then said. "He had his desert combat boots," Parker recalled with a tone that had that special blend of an E-7s frustration and bemusement.

The weather in Kyiv has been wet and hovering around freezing temperatures for most of March.

"He's telling me about his kids, his wife, I'm like here - just take my stuff," Parker said before giving the man body armor plates, three sets of the newer OCP uniform and cold weather boots.

Parker said he's also had to line up pro-bono lawyers to draw up wills, set up AK-47 shooting classes at a local range and, for one volunteer, help deal with a lingering speeding ticket.

That last one went much smoother thanks to the prosecutor being a former Army JAG.

David Malet, a professor at American University's School of Public Affairs and an expert on foreign fighters, said there's historical precedent for dissatisfaction among foreign recruits.

"That happened to American volunteers in the Israeli war of independence back in the 1940s," he said. "You can imagine that they're not really taking the time to figure out where somebody could best work or maybe they can't afford to do that right now."

Malet noted that "something that you see just across the board with foreign volunteers [is] that local commanders tend to use them as shock troops or cannon fodder."

"They don't necessarily trust them," he added.

Alyssa Demus, a senior policy analyst with Rand and an expert on Ukraine, explained that "it's important to keep in mind that the Ukrainian military has now dealt with this issue [of volunteers] for eight years."

Demus said that the influx of people who have wanted to fight on behalf of the country goes back to 2014 when a popular uprising unseated pro-Kremlin President Viktor Yanukovych and led to Russian intervention and annexation of Crimea as well as the formation of two breakaway regions along the Ukraine-Russia Border.

The ensuing conflict led to volunteer battalions being established - including the now-infamous Azov battalion that has had reported neo-Nazi ties.

These ties, along with Ukraine's undeniable history of collaboration with the Nazis during World War II, seem to serve as the backing for Russian President Vladimir Putin's absurd "de-Nazification" rationale for his invasion of his neighbor. Almost no regular observer or expert of the region takes these claims seriously, if for no other reason then the fact that Zelenskyy himself is Jewish and the country recently passed a law combating anti-Semitism. There's also the fact the Russian air strikes hit the memorial at Babyn Yar, the site of the mass murder of thousands of Jews during World War II.

Now, Demus has observed that the volunteers flocking to Ukraine serve two important functions. In addition to spreading their specialized operational experience, she noted that "when you have foreigners showing up to your country, willing to put their life on the line for your cause, I think that does a lot for morale."

Parker's tone often has a forcefulness that can be intimidating, like many senior non-commissioned officers, but he couldn't help but make sure the guys he met were as ready as they could be to meet the challenges of war.

Although one would think that former veterans should have no trouble equipping themselves for a combat zone, Parker points out that things become more complicated when you, not the Army, are entrusted to make sure gear like body armor is up to snuff.

One volunteer told him that these efforts led to a special honorific. "We kind of have a Facebook group, and we've been referring to you as Papa Bear," that volunteer told him.

Parker says that 29 volunteers received what he calls his "full" treatment, 39 more he helped with some aspect of their journey. "I think my grand total is ... in the 60s somewhere," he said.

He's done with that work and, despite all the things he's heard, is determined to head to Ukraine himself.

The 21-year veteran said he felt that when Zelenskyy made his plea for volunteers that "he was talking to me."

"When the president says, 'Hey, I need help,' ... You can't say no," he added.

-- 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
TAIPEI, Taiwan  Taiwan is considering extending its four-month compulsory military service, its defense minister said Wednesday, amid concerns about the self-governing island democracy's tensions with China, which have been underscored by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Defense Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng said the government would not implement any changes immediately but he vowed it would release the results of its internal research regardless of what it decides. Any changes would only be effective a year after being announced and would be made following consultation with legislators, he said.

Currently, we are still in the research stage. This year we will definitely have results, Chiu said.

Some in Taiwan have suggested the four-month compulsory military service should be longer.

In recent years, China has stepped up its military harassment of the self-ruled island, which China claims as its own territory, sending fighter jets flying toward Taiwan on a near-daily basis. Taiwan and China split during a civil war in 1949.

Many experts have drawn comparisons of the Taiwan-China situation to Russias invasion of Ukraine in February. However, the situation does not fit a simple narrative, and experts have so far said military action from China is unlikely. The war in Ukraine did prompt a lawmaker from the ruling Democratic Progressive Party in Taiwan to publicly say it is necessary to extend the mandatory service period.

Russia's war against Ukraine has drawn sympathy in Taiwan, where the public raised more than $10.6 million in five days to help fund Ukrainian refugee relief efforts.

Taiwan has more than 215,000 members in its military, with the majority being volunteers. Taiwanese men over the age of 18 are required to serve for four months in the military.

___

AP senior video producer Johnson Lai contributed to this report.
Read the original article on Business Insider.

Crosshairs on the grainy screen float to the right, latching onto the olive-green hulk lurking in a field beyond. The screen hazes for a moment with a "whoosh," and then resolves as the missile's rocket flickers away. Six seconds pass.

Boom.

Another Russian T-72 battle tank is out of action, many of its crew likely dead.

These aren't state-of-the art missiles, like the shoulder-fired Javelin. This is a Stugna-P, a less sophisticated anti-tank warhead made by Ukraine. A small group of soldiers can set up the missile on a tripod and wait for tanks to come into range. Using a remote control panel that looks like a hard camera case, an operator can paint the target with a laser until the missile strikes or allow its own laser-guidance to self-direct into the target.

It's proving quite effective. In three weeks of fighting, Russia has lost at least 270 tanks, according to the open source weapons tracking site Oryx  almost 10% of its estimated active force.

Ukraine's defense is proving so effective, in fact, that many analysts are attributing the failure of Russia's offense not only to its commanders, or to its tanks, but to the very idea of the tank itself, as a front-line weapon platform that can gain ground.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin sits in a Russian-made tank T-90AM as he visits the Russian Armament Exhibition in the Urals city of Nizhniy Tagil on Friday, Sept. 9, 2011. (AP Photo/RIA Novosti, Alexei Druzhinin, pool)

The emerging evidence of tanks' tactical weakness is "striking," as one expert put it, and it has opened up a debate about whether tanks might be on their way to joining chariots and mounted cavalry in the boneyard of military history.

Cheap, low-flying drones are striking tanks from above. Soldiers are using charred suburban landscape to ambush tanks with a new generation of fire-and-forget weapons that makes tank-killing unsettlingly simple, even in the hands of a volunteer.

"An infantry that is determined to fight is now super-empowered by having things like a huge number of point-and-shoot disposable anti-tank rockets," Edward Luttwak, a military strategist who consults for governments around the world, told Insider.

Tanks have ruled land warfare for more than 80 years. It's their job to punch through enemy positions so infantry can flood in and hold the newly gained ground. Tanks have long been susceptible to soldier-carried weapons like bazookas and recoilless rifles, as well as improvised explosives such as the anti-tank "sticky bombs" seen in the film "Saving Private Ryan."

But looking at the ineffectiveness of Russian tank attacks in Ukraine, one can see how technology  particularly advances in high explosives and guided missiles  is further tipping the odds to favor anti-tank defenders, to the point where tanks could arguably be rendered obsolete.

One defense analyst who spoke with Insider compared the role of tanks to that of the Swiss pikemen, Renaissance-era fighters armed with pikes and halberd who once were an army's frontlines.

This vanguard role, held then by foot soldiers and now by tanks, will likely shift to drones, robotic vehicles, and long-range strike systems.

"Tanks are going to move, over time, into more of a mopping-up role," said Paul Scharre, a former US Army Ranger and a director of studies at the Center for a New American Security.

'Point and shoot'

Shoulder-fired weapons are changing warfare.

With very little training, troops and even volunteers can defeat tanks. The Javelin is a fire-and-forget missile that allows its user to immediately move or take cover after firing. It has a mode to hit a tank where its armor is weakest: on top. Ukraine has been training its reservists, some of whom only recently joined, on these weapons since the war broke out.

The British- and Swedish-designed NLAW, or Next-generation Light Anti-tank Weapon, is also relatively simple to use. It weighs about as much as a case of beer. Balanced on a shoulder, an operator tracks a target within half a mile for a few seconds and then fires. The missile's fire-and-forget guidance system takes over.

"The weapon that makes a huge difference is these NLAWs, a light anti-tank weapon, the plastic tube with a hollow charge rocket," Luttwak said. "You point and shoot. A truck can drop 500 of them at the street corner in Kyiv."

And NLAWs are designed for exactly the kind of war Ukraine finds itself in.

"NLAW can attack from almost any position, from up high in a building to behind a tree or in a ditch," weapons manufacturer SAAB advertises on its website. "You can fire down 45 degrees and can shoot from inside a building, from a basement or from the second floor of a building out of the range of most tanks."

As the SAAB brochure implies, tanks are at their most vulnerable when in or approaching cities. Fighters can ambush them from around a corner, or fire from a window and slip away. These are known dangers to tanks but far beyond what they'd faced in World War II or Vietnam from the ground.

A century ago, the British conceived of tanks as land-going battleships, armored hulks that can traverse most terrain and surprise an enemy with an unmatched combination of speed and firepower. They were first deployed during World War I to break the stalemate of trench warfare.

Like battleships, they are fuel-guzzlers that pack a massive punch. A modern US M1A2 main battle tank weighs over 73 tons and fires a 120mm round. But even it, with its heavier-than-lead armor and missile jammers, is at risk near a city.

And the world is increasingly urban. By 2045, six billion people will be living in cities around the world, according to the World Bank, growing the city centers and suburban sprawls that armies must battle through.

Ukraine is exploiting the contours of its suburbs to negate Russia's advantages. Russia's advance on Kyiv stalled in the city's outlying suburbs, where determined fighters met their vehicle columns. The fighting has been block to block for weeks.

In Irpin, to Kyiv's northwest, Ukrainian artillery hammered armored vehicle columns that got within range, and small teams of troops and volunteers set up ambushes with anti-tank weapons. In Brovary, on Kyiv's east, a lieutenant told The New York Times that her teams set up anti-tank weapons along major highways and thoroughfares and lie in wait for them to come within the three-mile range of their Stugna-P missiles.

And then there's drones. They range from the size of fighter jets to the palm of a soldier's glove, and a technology scramble is underway to nullify them. But with so many makes and models, there's no one-size-fits-all way to jam, confuse, or destroy them.

Combat in Ukraine has shown that drones offer big advantages. They can loiter close to armored vehicles and strike them with guided missiles, as the Turkish TB2 has shown again and again, or spot their positions to relay for artillery fire. The TB2 is like a poor man's MQ-9 Reaper, a drone the size of a Cessna aircraft that can loiter more than a day, fire up to four missiles or bombs, then return to base to be reloaded.

"We're actually seeing the Ukrainian military employ drones, the TB2 and smaller drones, to significant effect against Russian armored vehicles," said CNAS's Scharre. "Drones can be very effective in contested airspaces, in part because they can fly lower and in part because you're not risking a pilot."

Even smaller drones will also play a role. The Biden administration is sending 100 Switchblade drones to Ukraine, a single-use aerial vehicle the size of a backpack that can take out armored vehicles by kamikaze flying into them and detonating.

No way to run a war

Russian commanders have made bad decisions that have wasted their forces' potential. That includes tanks.

Soldiers, unsure of their ability to navigate through the mud, have been driving them down main roads. Russian tanks have been outrunning the infantry who can protect them.

With a range of around 600 miles, the T-72 weighs 40 tons and gets less than one mile per gallon. In Ukraine, many have strayed too far from the trucks they need to refuel; others have reportedly been sabotaged by their own crews. They have mostly stuck to streets, largely opting not to go off-road, disperse, or conceal their positions. In some instances, they've bunched together within range of artillery and paid a heavy cost.

Many Western analysts say they see few signs that Russia is capable of combined arms  where, for example, air power and artillery work in tandem to support the movements of tanks.

So tank proponents can rightly chalk up a lot of Russia's ruined tanks to terrible tactics, which means that the US's own tank-centric approach to land warfare is unlikely to change anytime soon.

Tanks have long been central to US Army doctrine against powerful rivals, and play a central part in Army lore.

It was the tanks of Patton's Third Army that helped to rescue the surrounded 101st Airborne in the Battle of the Bulge. And during the Gulf War, in 1991, US tanks routed Iraq's. In one encounter, a US group of nine tanks came upon a much larger Iraqi tank force and smashed through them in the Battle of 73 Easting in a classic tank clash.

"Mobile protected firepower will continue to be important to fighting and winning battles," said retired Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, the commander of the Eagle tank troop at 73 Easting, who would go on to serve as national security adviser under President Donald Trump, in an email interview with Insider.

"No arm is decisive in close combat," McMaster continued. "To defeat a defending enemy in restrictive or urban terrain, commanders must integrate infantry with mobile protected firepower and fires from artillery or aircraft.

"From my distant vantage point, the Russian army appears to be incompetent in combined arms operations."

A destroyed Russian tank is seen after battles on a main road near Brovary, north of Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, March 10, 2022. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)

Still, guided munitions fired from ground and air are posing a massive challenge. Even tank proponents acknowledge that tanks must, like warships, become harder to kill via armor and defensive systems to confuse or intercept missiles.

One path, suggested the historian Jeremy Black in his 2020 book, "Tank Warfare," is to convert a battle tank into a drone mothership that can launch and control aerial drones or unmanned land vehicles.

Even armed with drones, tanks are still likely to be relegated to lesser roles as weaponry becomes more powerful and accurate.

When asked what a conventional clash between NATO and Russian forces might look like, Scharre said, "the ideal way to respond would not be necessarily to send tanks upfront," but rather to strike Russia's advancing armored vehicles with long-range artillery and missiles.

"Sure, armored vehicles would come but they're probably part of the second wave after we turned those armored columns into rubble."
At the time of the battle, the U.S. victory over the British was so celebrated, it catapulted Andrew Jackson to national fame and, later, the presidency. Today, the Battle of New Orleans is one of the most storied fights in American military history, known even to those who may know nothing else about the War of 1812 because the stakes were high.

It pitted an estimated 8,000 professional British troops against an American force of just more than 5,000 regular troops, militia, native allies, former slaves and French pirates under Jean Lafitte. They were fighting for control of roughly half of the young United States (more on that in a second), and it came after the treaty ending the War of 1812 was signed.

The pirate Jean Lafitte is seen here holding a scowl long enough for it to be his portrait.

Like most stories, time and retelling can exaggerate the facts surrounding what really happened, and misconceptions tend to turn into "truths." Here are just a few of those key points that might need a little clarification.

1. It Wasn't Just About the City of New Orleans.

When the United States purchased the Louisiana Territory from France, it paid Napoleon's French Empire for it. The British did not recognize any treaty made by the emperor's government, so a British victory at New Orleans might have led to Britain taking control of all the former Louisiana Purchase.

Although historians dispute what the British might have done with the large swath of land, most believe they would have created an independent country for American Indians as a buffer state between the U.S. and British North America. The worst-case scenario would have had Britain ceding the entire purchase back to Spain.

2. The Battle of New Orleans Was Actually a Series of Fights.

What we commonly think of as the Battle of New Orleans came on the east bank of the Mississippi river on Jan. 8, 1815. In the days before, however, the two sides were jockeying for better positions for their forces.

The British first sailed into Lake Borgne in December 1814, clearing it of American vessels. They then landed troops and marched to the plantation of Maj. Gabriel Villere. After capturing his home, they made camp, but Villere escaped and warned Jackson of the British advance. Jackson attacked the British encampment.

Jackson's forces were busy constructing earthwork reinforcements during the entire time period. Although his attack on the British failed, he gave them a pretty decent black eye. The British next launched a reconnaissance attack on Jackson's fortified position on Dec. 28, 1814, to test the defenses. On Jan. 1, 1815, the sides began an artillery duel that demoralized the British. This all happened before the decisive battle.

3. The War Wasn't Technically Over During the Battle.

The Treaty of Ghent that ended the War of 1812 was signed in what is today Belgium on Dec. 24, 1814. Back in New Orleans, the British were still ransacking the home of Maj. Villere, and Gen. Jackson was planning his counterattack. What Jackson didn't know was that the commander of British ground forces, Maj. Gen. Sir Edward Pakenham, had orders to continue the war, even if he'd heard rumors of peace.

The enduring story of the Battle of New Orleans is that it was fought after the war ended, but according to the terms of the treaty, it didn't take effect until February 1815. The British might have saved the lives of some redcoats if they hadn't attacked New Orleans, but they were still technically at war.

4. Poor British Planning Was as Important as the American Defense.

The British made a lot of mistakes during the battle and in the days leading up to it. The British attack on the Villere plantation allowed Jackson to deal a blow to the British troops. Even if he lost that engagement, the British were hit pretty hard. The attack and counterattack also bought the Americans time to bolster their earthwork defenses on the Mississippi River banks.

During the reconnaissance-in-force attack on the American lines, Maj. Gen. Pakenham saw his left get chewed up by the American defenders, who used two sets of cannons in an enfilading fire that devastated the British attack. What he didn't see was the right side of his line nearly break through the defenses and send American militia scurrying away from the line entirely. He withdrew before the right side could capitalize on their gains.

And Packenham would pay for it with his life when the actual battle started. (Library of Congress)

5. The U.S. Army Was Better than History Gives It Credit for.

At the start of the War of 1812, the U.S. Army was largely underprepared and under-equipped to take on the British Empire in a second war for independence. Two years later, the regular army was an effective fighting force, with troops as good as anyone, anywhere in the world, including the veteran British redcoats.

The British not only underestimated American regulars, but also the militia that fought alongside them. Despite the militia's performance during the British reconnaissance attack, American militia performed well behind defensive positions, just like those Jackson built to defend New Orleans.

Maybe a full-on assault on the Americans' strongest position wasn't the way to go. (U.S. Navy)

They completely overlooked the importance of the sailors, Marines, free Black men and Choctaws who joined the battle for the Americans -- and it cost them. The Battle of New Orleans was over in just 30 minutes.

-- Blake Stilwell can be reached at blake.stilwell@military.com. He can also be found on Twitter @blakestilwell or on Facebook.

Want to Learn More About Military Life?

Whether you're thinking of joining the military, looking for post-military careers or keeping up with military life and benefits, Military.com has you covered. Subscribe to Military.com to have military news, updates and resources delivered directly to your inbox.
During the American Invasion of Sicily in 1943, the 3rd Military Police Platoon, 30th Infantry Regiment landed near Licata. As the sun rose that morning and the soldiers made their way across the island, they were suddenly pinned down by a machine gun nest. One of the privates in the platoon charged the enemy position and cleared it, taking four prisoners.

This private was already a veteran of Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of North Africa, and had guarded President Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Casablanca Conference earlier that year. For his heroics during the invasion of Sicily, he earned the Silver Star and a Purple Heart.

But there was just one problem for the Army. This particular soldier was a dog, a collie-husky mix named Chips.

Pvt. Chips was one of more than 10,400 dogs that served during World War II. Most of those were trained as sentries, "manning" the defenses of the U.S. coastline, but an estimated 1,000 dogs were volunteered by their civilian owners to deploy overseas as scout dogs for U.S. troops.

Chips enlisted in the Army in 1942 from Pleasantville, New York. The Army sent him to the War Dog Training Center in Front Royal, Virginia, where he was teamed with his handler, Pvt. John R. Rowell. Like many American soldiers in World War II, Rowell and Chips got their first taste of action during Operation Torch in 1943.

On July 9, 1943, the United States launched Operation Husky, the Allied invasion of Sicily. Rowell and Chips were part of the initial amphibious landing that led them to the enemy pillbox near Licata. When Chips assaulted the position, he was wounded when one of the Italian defenders tried shooting him. The discharge burned his skin, but it was easily treated by medics.

On the night of July 10, Chips was on guard duty as his fellow soldiers slept. During his shift, 10 Italian soldiers tried to infiltrate their encampment. Chips alerted his handler, and the Americans captured all 10 infiltrators. As word of Chips' heroics got around, Chips was awarded his Purple Heart and Silver Star. The platoon's commander, Capt. Edward G. Parr, recommended Chips for the Distinguished Service Cross.

The commander of the 3rd Infantry Division, Maj. Gen. Lucian Truscott, waived the requirement that a recipient of the Distinguished Service Cross be a human and awarded Chips the medal personally.

By July 14, 1944, the news of the heroic dog invading Sicily was published to jubilant crowds in newspapers stateside. The War Department and the national commander of the Military Order of the Purple Heart were not as jubilant. The Military Order of the Purple Heart wrote to President Roosevelt that the medal was meant for humans, and the War Department opened an investigation.

After three months, the War Department decided that no more awards would be given to non-humans and Pvt. Chips was stripped of his awards. In the end, his fellow soldiers would give him a theater ribbon with an arrowhead device (for his assault landing) and eight battle stars.

Chips survived the war and returned home to his original owners in Pleasantville, New York, in December 1945.

The Wren Family of Upstate New York welcomes Chips back home in 1945, blissfully unaware of the things Chips had seen. (National Archives)

-- Blake Stilwell can be reached at blake.stilwell@military.com. He can also be found on Twitter @blakestilwell or on Facebook.

Want to Learn More About Military Life?

Whether you're thinking of joining the military, looking for post-military careers or keeping up with military life and benefits, Military.com has you covered. Subscribe to Military.com to have military news, updates and resources delivered directly to your inbox.
Fort Madison, IA (52627)

Today

Rain early...then remaining cloudy with showers in the afternoon. High around 55F. Winds E at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%..

Tonight

Considerable cloudiness with occasional rain showers. Thunder possible. Low near 50F. Winds NE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 60%.
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.
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
Public Relations Officer of Charterhouse, Mr. Robert Klah has revealed the reason why Dancehall artist Shatta Wale did not receive any nomination in this years Vodafone Ghana Music Awards whiles his arch-rival Stonebwoy did.

According to him, Stonebwoy expressed interest when nominations were opened whereas the former failed to do so.

This comes after Shatta Wales absence from the nominees for this years edition sparked a lot of questions from the public.

According to Mr. Klah, the nomination board of the awards scheme duels on the consent of the musicians before including them.

He added that the board and academy focus on artists who express interest in wanting to be part of the nominations.

The scheme is in such a way that you need to show interest in order to be part. Once you show interest, we will work with you. The interest can be in the form that you are filing or giving consent. So, Stonebwoy showed interest and we worked with him, he told Andy Dosty on Daybreak Hitz.

Aside from artists filing for nominations themselves, the organizers of the VGMA gather suggestions from board members and research personnel who establish a nomination based on the airwaves of a song, album, or music video within the year under review.
Host of Happy FMs social and religious program, Wisdom Agodza also known as Pastor Nyansa Boakwa has successfully graduated from the College of Counselling And Psychology (CCP) with an Executive Certificate in Counseling.

Pastor Nyansa took to his social media pages to express his excitement and gratitude to all who made this experience possible for him. He shared that, the one year experience was worthwhile and the knowledge acquired would come in handy in his radio programme.

The graduation ceremony was held on Saturday 19th March, 2022 at the College of Counseling and Psychology premises at Atomic in Accra.

President of the institution, Rev. Prof. Samuel Oheneba Dornyo, hailed the 99 successful graduands for accepting the vision and availing themselves to be trained as professional counselors who can heal a hurting world.

He encourages them to however take up the task of administering sound mental, behavioral and psychosocial support to all in need of their services.

The graduation ceremony had in attendance dignitaries like CEO of Global Media Alliance, Mr. Ernest Boateng, Chairperson of the Governing Council of the College of Counseling and Physiology, Dr. Mrs. Mary Anane, Licensed Clinical Pastoral Counselor -Advanced Certified, Rev Professor Samuel Oheneba Dornyo, Rev Dr. Hannah Dekowski, President of the Trinity Theological Seminary Rev. Prof Johnson Kwabena Asamoah -Gyedu and Rev Dr. Dorothy BEA Akoto.
The Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana, the Rt. Rev. Prof. Joseph Obiri Yeboah Mante has called on the people of troubling Bawku to let peace reign.

He said for the sake of development and the lives of women and children in Bawku, peace must be given a chance.

Speaking at a service in Bolgatanga as part of his eight days pastoral visit to the Upper Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana to dedicate a new chapel for the Penial Congregation, the Moderator who is also the President of the Christian Council of Ghana appealed to the feuding factions to ceasefire.

He noted that even though Bawku is made up of people from different tribes and ethnic backgrounds, building a prosperous and developed nation or community required the deliberate and conscious effort of all.

Rt. Rev. Prof. Joseph Obiri Yeboah Mante is asking the feuding factions to consider the future of their children and eschew historical differences and tribal hatred.

He, therefore, appealed to the opposing tribes, the Kusasis and Mamprusis to see each other as brothers and a people with a common future, sighting inter-marriages between the two tribs as sufficient basis to give peace a chance.

Meanwhile, his appeal also followed his visit to Bawku on March 19, 2022, which saw him and other pastors of the church knelt and prayed for peace in the area.

Bawku has been in the news for the past few months due to the resurgence of a protracted ethnic and chieftaincy conflict between the Kusaasis and Mamprusis that has left several dead and others including personnel of the Ghana Armed Forces injured.
Research is a means to an end. It produces new knowledge that helps to improve welfare. Social science research in particular connects directly to the challenges of less developed countries like Nigeria.

It is generally aimed at strengthening policies and practices for economic growth, development and societal welfare. Good social science research has ultimate social relevance . In Nigeria, however, our study shows that research evidence and policies are disconnected. This is due to two main problems. It is evident from past research and our findings too corroborate this.

First, the people who make and use policies don't look for scientific evidence as much as they should. For instance, most lawmakers do not use scientific evidence on a regular basis. And when they do, policymakers would rather seek expert opinions than read academic journals.

Second, the supply of capacity and skills - this refers to the training and performance of social scientists - for science communication and policy advice is short. This is probably as a result of the general tradition among academics and the low demand for evidence by policymakers. Researchers are still obsessed with purely academic products like journal papers and books to share their research findings even when they have clear policy implications.

Globally, a research article is read in full by only about 10 people on average. The researchers should focus more on communicating their results via channels that connect readily with policymakers, such as: through policy briefs ; and in more political and public fora, such as public hearings that Houses of Assembly sometimes organise.

To reduce the gap between social science research and policies, it's necessary to understand the current research diffusion landscape. Our research assessed how social science research is currently being disseminated in Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa and the second largest producer of this research in Africa.

Our results highlight the need for consistent capacity building in science communication and broader stakeholder interactions.

Read more: Nigeria needs more social science research: how to boost output

.

Actors and networks

We gathered data from interviews of 17 key informants and surveys of 684 individuals. These included 506 researchers, 117 research administrators and 61 policymakers. They were asked to present their opinions about how social science research is produced, disseminated and used in Nigeria.

Our results show that the universities and research institutes that produce most of the research are the main disseminators. Foreign donors and civil society organisations contribute to research dissemination through funding and the use of research results in advocacy activities, respectively. Collaboration is pervasive among different stakeholders but is dominated by actors within the national university system.

We found a strong tendency for the research community to be inert. For instance, a senior staff member of the National Universities Commission noted in an interview that university academics operate as orphans in their silos and bunkers. Though social science researchers do collaborate with other professionals, most of their interactions are within the academic circle. Researchers mostly reported co-authorship with someone in their home institution. Far fewer co-wrote with professionals outside the academic circle, such as nongovernmental organisations or donors.

Research communication products

Social science researchers in Nigeria do not communicate their research results to policymakers and the general public. Largely as a result of academic tradition and promotion requirements, researchers mainly share their research findings within academic circles, for academic purposes.

In our study, an average of two policy briefs per researcher was produced by 85 researchers compared with an average of eight research articles per researcher produced by 242 researchers.

Previous research suggests that policymakers and other research users tend to rely on the Internet as a source of research information. Therefore social science research should be visible online. Most of the local scientific journals do not operate online; thus, most of the research outputs they publish are not visible .

Only a third of all the surveyed researchers were affiliated with institutions that provided web pages. Fewer than half of the researchers were registered as authors in internationally visible databases or repositories. Any researcher in any discipline can create a free Google Scholar profile. Alternatives like ResearchGate, Academia.edu and ORCiD also exist to enhance the visibility of researchers and their work. ORCiD is a digital identifier that distinguishes a researcher from others. So research visibility is not just a matter of infrastructure or research quality; awareness and capacity also play a role.

International Network for Government Science Advice 2020 specifically suggests that researchers need to feature more regularly on media programmes to communicate their research findings. Also, they should present research in a way that's easy to understand, via communication channels like public seminars or roundtables on contemporary issues. Our survey results show that Nigerian research producers perform poorly in this regard.

In general, the proportion of researchers who have had any media exposure at all is small. It ranges from 13% for print media to 22% for radio channels. The average number of media appearances per researcher is about one a year for print media and about three a year for radio channels. This is perhaps due to the costs of media interventions, which are lower for radio than for newspapers or the TV. It may also be because radio channels have wider coverage especially in local languages, compared with the Internet, TV or newspapers.

Taken together, the above results suggest that there is still a big gap in the Nigerian social science research system as far as effective communication of research beyond academic publications is concerned.

The way forward

To create a strong connection between research and policy in Nigeria, two steps are critical.

One, changes are required in the assessment of researchers' contribution to knowledge. Researchers are committed to formal scientific publications because of globally driven academic traditions and career requirements. A system that objectively weighs and awards points for less conventional outputs such as policy briefs, policy advisory services and media appearances is likely to have a positive effect.

Two, there is a need to build the capacity of researchers to communicate with others outside the academic circle, especially policymakers. The National Universities Commission, which regulates the universities, is well positioned to initiate a capacity-building effort. Moreover, some academics are already advocating science and could train others.

Research donors may help too, by requiring clear dissemination plans as part of research grant applications.

The personnel, practice, products and place for communicating research evidence matter. They are critical links that connect research to development. Having skilled social scientists, who use the right channels to present evidence to policymakers and the general public will benefit everyone, from the researchers to the citizens and the nation as a whole.

Adedayo Olofinyehun received funding from the Global Development Network (GDN) for this study.

Abiodun Egbetokun received funding from the Global Development Network (GDN) for this study.

By Adedayo Olofinyehun, Researcher, National Centre for Technology Management (NACETEM) And

Abiodun Egbetokun, Assistant Director, Research, National Centre for Technology Management (NACETEM)
President Nana Akufo-Addo says the Government will adopt the necessary measures to remedy the current economic crisis facing the country.

He said the exigencies of the time demanded that difficult decisions had to be taken to put the economy on an even keel to bring relief to Ghanaians.

The President said this when the members of the Council of State conferred with him at the Jubilee House, Accra, on Tuesday to brief him on their deliberations from the beginning of the year, and their suggestions on how the economy could be rescued.

He told the Council that the recent Cabinet retreat arrived at some difficult decisions that are necessary to move the country from recession.

"It is no secret that our economy is going through difficult times. It is also no secret that we are not alone in the exercise that many of the phenomena we are facing are apparent in many other parts of the worldbut that doesn't therefore mean that government is impotent in trying to find solutions.

I don't think that there is anybody in Ghana who would expect today that things can be just easily resolved, he said, noting that difficult times called for difficult decisions.

President Akufo-Addo told the Council that some of the challenges the country was facing was the net effect of global happenings, but nevertheless, there are things that we ourselves can do to right things.

He said the Finance minister, as instructed by him after the cabinet meeting, would on Thursday engage the nation on the specifics of the measures the Government intended to adopt to put the economy back on track.

The Council of State members were briefed by the Finance minister on the collective decisions taken at the Cabinet retreat behind closed doors.

Nana Otuo Siriboe, Chairman of the Council, announced that the Council had decided to reduce its monthly allowances by 20 per cent to help in the economic recovery process.

We are particularly delighted to read that you and your Cabinet have decided to reduce some of your emoluments and allowances. Mr President, in tandem with your decision, we as the Council of State also decided that we will reduce our monthly allowance by 20 percent until the end of this year, hopeful that other state organs would emulate the example.

The Chairman told the President that the Council had for the past few weeks been deliberating and collating views and suggestions on the economic situation in the country, and was eager to share them with the Government to shape decisions that would be taken to ameliorate the problem.

He said the Council had deliberated on and had arrived at some proposals to make some of the Government's flagship initiatives, including the Free Senior High School programme, to be a lot more efficient and practicable.

Nana Otuo Siriboe expressed the Council's confidence in the Presidents' political ability and will to overcome the current economic challenges and to put the smile back on the face of Ghanaians.

The President, at the cabinet retreat, sanctioned some major decisions as part of efforts to put the economy back on the path of recovery and growth.

The decisions included measures to arrest the depreciating Cedi, tackling the rising price of fuel, easing of CoVID-19 restrictions, and measures to curb the rising cost of goods and services.

GNA
Justice Henrietta Mensah-Bonsu a Supreme Court Judge, says the recruitment of properly skilled personnel into the Ghana Prisons Service would help in the implementation of prison reforms.

She said it was therefore crucial to focus on proper planning to ensure that the needs of personnel were appropriately satisfied during recruitment.

The absence of properly skilled personnel to implement enlightened regimes cannot be brushed aside. Even if prisons were provided with all the money they required, much of it would go to waste without the necessary personnel, she said.

Madam Mensah-Bonsu made the comments during the launch of a Book titled: Transformation of Prisons Service in Africa authored by Dr Richard Kuuire, former Director-General, GPS in Accra.

She said the inability to improve conditions in prisons had a bearing on the economic conditions of any country.

The Justice of the Supreme Court said overcrowding in prisons remained a major problem everywhere in Africa and more so in post conflict countries.

"Courts are overwhelmed by the sheer number of cases requiring attention. In addition to these, the slow pace of investigations sometimes occasioned by inadequate police personnel, slow pace of trials all contribute to overcrowding by pre-trial detainees.

No transformation will be possible if the multi-faceted problems are not holistically addressed. Issues of inadequate infrastructure remain serious as Governments have to choose between building of schools and prisons," she said.

Dr Richard Kuuire noted that prison reforms were not about having beautiful prison structures, but rather, about the treatment of prisoners, their livelihoods after imprisonment, humane treatment of prisoners and respecting their human rights while in prison.

He said prison reforms also meant adequately preparing and equipping prisoners for re-entry into society after serving their sentences to reduce crime in communities.

The author said prisoners should be perceived as sick people who had been taken to the hospital, which in their case was the prison.

He recommended that various criminal justice institutions should consider using his book as a source book for prison officers training at all levels.

Dr Kuuire also said they should create space for the use of the book in training of new judges and magistrates and continuous training of judges, lawyers, police and social workers at all levels.

He said it was necessary for the criminal justice system to work together in a coordinated way.

Most Reverend Peter Paul Yelezuome Angkyier, Chairman, Prisons Service Council, said the mandate of the GPS can be accomplished through good leadership, with a passionate commitment to the development of the Service.

He said the Prisons needed policies that would define the type of physical and administrative structures, management practices and systems, health systems of inmates, recruitment, training, man-power planning, procedures and processes, which should be put in place to ensure efficiency and effectiveness.

This must however represent the noblest ideals of the profession as well as just to be specific historical times in which we are, keeping in mind the best practices or modules which enhance work practice and professionalism, he added.

GNA
The spokesperson for the petitioner in the parliamentary election petition matter of the Assin North seat, Richard Takyi Mensah has called for immediate enforcement of the High Court Judgment declaring the seat vacant.

This follows the Court of Appeal's striking out of the disputed MP's appeal for his failure to file his written submissions on the case.

Richard Takyi Mensah told Citi News that by implication, no appeal subsists against the High Court judgment and that the necessary action must be taken.

No appeal was made, neither was any request sent to the Court. As it stands, the Cape Coast Court of Appeal has trashed out his appeal. Meaning, the decision of the Cape Coast High Court made on 28th of July 2021 stands.

Mr. Quayson was earlier dragged to court by Michael Ankomah-Nimfa, a resident of Assin Bereku in the Central Region after he was declared winner in the constituency's election.

Mr. Akomah-Ninfa filed a petition at the Cape Coast High Court seeking to annul his declaration as the MP for Assin North because he had Canadian citizenship.

In November 2020, a group calling itself 'Concerned Citizens of Assin North' petitioned the Electoral Commission in the Central Region to withdraw the candidature of Mr. Quayson, arguing that he owes allegiance to Canada.

According to Article 94 (2) (a) of the 1992 constitution of Ghana, A person shall not be qualified to be a member of Parliament if he or she  (a) owes allegiance to a country other than Ghana.

Mr. Quayson's election in the 2020 general elections was annulled by the Cape Coast High Court , after which an appeal was filed.

The National Democratic Congress (NDC), had insisted that its MP is a full citizen of Ghana who owes no allegiance whatsoever to any other country. He is a Ghanaian in law and, in fact, qualifies to be a Member of Parliament according to the laws of Ghana.

By Citi Newsroom
The Western Regional Police MTTD Commander, Chief Superintendent, Isaac K Sorkpah, is urging persons whose relatives travelled on Tuesday from Tarkwa to Accra and have not arrived at their destinations to immediately contact the Tarkwa station.

According to him, it will aid in identifying passengers who boarded a Ford vehicle with registration number GW 6628-21 which was involved in a fatal accident.

14 people onboard an Accra-bound Ford vehicle from Tarkwa died in a car crash at Asem Asa in the Shama District, near the boundary between Western and Central Regions.

Chief Superintendent Isaac K Sorkpah who spoke to Citi News said at the moment we have been able to estsblish the identity of the ford bus, which is GW 6628-21. We urge persons whose relatives travelled between the two towns to contact the Tarkwa police station and be very sure which of the buses their relatives boarded.

They can as well contact the Central Regional Police MTTD for the needed assistance.

citinewsroom
A former Deputy Finance Minister under the erstwhile Mills administration, Fifi Fiavi Kwetey, has faulted the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) for the worsening economic situation in the country.

He says the Akufo-Addo administration has failed to turn around the economy as promised in the build-up to the 2016 election.

He said the NPP government lied its way into power.

The fundamental struggles of Ghana's economy have remained since the NPP took office under the Akufo-Addo-Bawumia government, and the indicators appear to be unfavourable.

Fuel prices have skyrocketed within the last few weeks due to global factors and the depreciation of the Ghanaian cedi against other major trading currencies.

There have been general increases in prices of goods and services, thus widening the poverty gap in the country.

But speaking on Citi TVs Face Face program, Fifi Kwetey mentioned that the NPPs constant attribution of the economic mismanagement to the NDC during its campaign was indicative that it was taking the citizenry for granted.

I think right from the onset, the foundations were established on deception. And when you build something on deception, within a matter of time, it is going to collapse. So basically, they came into office riding on lies. They came into office pretending that somehow they were going to reduce taxation and at the same time increase expenditure. So right from the word go, they were deceiving the people.

Right from the beginning, they absolutely lied to the country, especially when they made it look as if the whole of the problem was simply about the question of mismanagement when they knew it was not.

Fifi Kwetey, also a former Agriculture Minister, touted what he said was unprecedented infrastructural development by the NDC.

He explained that the financial resources at the disposal of the NPP should reflect in the output of its various flagship programs but, unfortunately, that has not been the case.

If you put together all their policies, in terms of the resources they have used, it means that they could have done far more. If you look at the projects and infrastructure that we put in place, they cannot point to any significant infrastructure by them in the history of our country. It does not only tell you about how incompetent they are but that they have no business being in power.

citinewsroom
Welcome Guest! You Are Here:
Deputy Communications and Digitalisation Minister, Ama Pomaa Boateng has said, the growing problem of cybercrime in Africa requires countries to build effective laws, policies, and international cooperation frameworks together with the aim of solving the issue to the best satisfaction.

Speaking on behalf of sector minister at the maiden African Union  Global Forum on Cyber Expertises (AU-GFCE) Africa Cyber Experts (ACE) Community meeting in Accra, Madam Ama Boateng, expressed Ghanas readiness to support, collaborate and importantly learn from other African states to secure the continents digital ecosystem.

Cybercrime is a trans-border issue and we need an interoperable system  legislations and criminal justice procedures  to better cooperate and respond to the issues through incident reporting, information sharing, investigations and prosecutions.

Cyberattacks have serious implications on socio-economic development and the national security of our countries. Many of our citizens have experienced cybersecurity incidents including online fraud, online blackmail, online impersonation and identity theft, publication of non-consensual intimate images, unauthorised access, social engineering scams, hacking into protected systems and other cybersecurity-related breaches. A single cybersecurity incident can have global reach and devastating effects on governments, businesses and individuals.

She added, The Government of Ghana through the Ministry of Communications and Digitalisation, working closely with other relevant ministries and agencies, international partners and private sector stakeholders, is committed in its efforts to ensure that various digitalisation interventions rolled out are secured. Since cybercrime has no boundaries, and is not limited to one geographical location, we are happy to cooperate with our African partners and stakeholders to further develop our capacity through joint initiatives such as this.

Elaborating on the interventions the Akufo-Addo administration has achieved through the sustainability and achievements upon cyber related matters, she indicated the revision of the National Cybersecurity Policy and Strategy to provide a national direction and implementation plan for Ghanas cybersecurity development; the passage of the Cybersecurity Act, 2020 (Act 1038) to provide a legal basis for cybersecurity development; the institutionalisation of cybersecurity to foster domestic cooperation and collaboration; and the ratification of the Convention on Cybercrime also known as the Budapest Convention; and African Union Convention on Cyber Security & Personal Data Protection also known as the Malabo Convention."

In addition, she revealed government has also adopted the ECOWAS Regional Cybersecurity and Cybercrime Strategy & Regional Critical Infrastructure Protection Policy to strengthen Ghanas regional and international response in fighting cybercrime and improve on cybersecurity.

Education

Acting Director-General of the Cyber Security Authority (CSA), Dr. Albert Antwi Boasiako in his welcome address said fighting cybercrime would require a multi-stakeholder approach, with the collaboration of all relevant parties.

The Republic of Ghana joined the GFCE last year to promote and strengthen capacity building through international collaboration and ultimately to improve our national cyber response and resilience. Hosting this event, therefore, means a lot to us, as it forms part of our national strategy to work with our peers on the continent to improve our collective capacity to mitigate cybercrimes and other cybersecurity challenges.

As a national institution responsible for cybersecurity matters, I wish to express CSAs support and commitment to developing this community of Africa Cyber Experts to be able to support our respective governments to address the current state of cyber insecurity being experienced on the continent.

He added, I am of the opinion that, the ACE Community meeting will meet its expectations by identifying the capacity building needs of the continent. I believe experts gathered here will also come out with innovative ways of deploying capacity building initiatives, taking into consideration our specific developmental needs and the cyber context of our respective countries. I also wish to recommend the inclusion of African private sector cybersecurity actors in our gatherings to promote public-private sector development of continental capacity building programmes. Capacity building on the continent should be homegrown, developed, and owned by Africans and I believe this group has been established to lead us to achieve these goals.

Assessment

The head of Economic Integration AUDA-NEPAD, Towela Nyirenda-Jere on her part revealed her outfit has undertaken assessments in 10 countries using a cybersecurity assessment framework with the support of partners and member states adding that the assessment report detailing key and providing recommendations will take the process to a better stage in cyber-capacity and cybersecurity matters in the continent.

Meeting

The Africa Cyber Experts (ACE) Community meeting kicked off at Alisa Hotel, located at North Ridge.

The three-day meeting on Cybersecurity related matters aimed at enhancing and improving security capacity building in the African continent.

The program which benefitted about 31 countries with 65 participants also aimed at finding sustainable ways to lead efforts towards a digital Africa among other needed topics.

The countries are Mauritania, Benin, Spain, Serbia, Kenya, Nigeria, AU, Cameroon, Sierra Leone, Republic of Congo, Namibia, Burkina Faso, South Africa, among others.

The meeting was on the theme, setting the scene for cyber security status in Africa. It was also aimed at attracting private sector support from the African Union, in dealing with the threat of cybercrimes on the continent.

It was hosted by the Cyber Security Authority under the Ministry of Communications and Digitalisation, in collaboration with African Union (AU), Global Forum on Cyber Expertise (GFCE) and Africa Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD).
Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky will address French deputies at the Assemblee nationale on Wednesday as part of his international diplomatic effort to maintain support for his country.

Zelensky has spoken to the US Congress as well as German MPs to plead for assistance following the decision of the Russian president Vladimir Putin to send his country's forces into Ukraine.

He will speak to deputies via a video link from his office in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv.

It is understood Zelensky will ask French MPs to argue Ukraine's case for swift integration into the European Union.

Idea

The proposal was placed on the back burner two weeks ago during a meeting of European heads of state in Versailles, just to the south of Paris.

President Emmanuel Macron of France, who hosted the meeting, said he wanted to send a strong signal to Ukraine and to the Ukrainians of solidarity.

But he added: "We must be vigilant. I do believe it is possible to open an accession procedure with a country at war."

The Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte added: "There is no fast-track procedure to become a member of the EU."

Address

During his address, which will be translated simultaneously from Ukrainian, It is believed Zelensky will also allude to France's celebrated resistance to the Nazi occupation during the second world war between 1939 and 1945.

Zelensky's move to woo French politicians comes as Ukraine's deputy prime minister, Iryna Vereshchuk, said an agreement had been reached to try to evacuate civilians trapped in Ukrainian towns and cities through nine humanitarian corridors.

In Moscow, the Russian foreign ministry announced that the foreign minister Sergei Lavrov will hold talks with Peter Maurer, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

The agenda of the meeting envisages discussion of the key areas of the ICRC's work in the field of humanitarian response, the foreign ministry said in a statement on Wednesday.
Members of Ghanas Council of State have agreed to cut their allowance by 20% until the end of 2022 to help the government deal with the ongoing economic crisis in the country.

This has been disclosed by Chairman of the Council of State, Nana Otuo Siriboe II during a meeting with President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo at the Jubilee House on Tuesday, March 22, 2022.

Mr President, over the past few weeks, the Council has been deliberating on the current economic conditions of the country and have been collecting views with the view to sharing with you as early as possible.

As we were going through our routines, you and your cabinet were at a retreat over the same issues. Since [Monday], we have been fed with snippet of information regarding some of the decisions that you have made.

We are particularly delighted to read that you and your cabinet have decided to reduce some of your emoluments and your allowances. Mr President, in tandem with your decision we as Council of State had also decided that we will reduce our monthly allowances by 20 per cent until the end of this year, Nana Otuo Siriboe II told President Akufo-Addo on Tuesday.

After receiving the news, H.E Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo expressed his excitement and thanked the members of the Council of State for the decision to cut their monthly allowance.

We intend to do it and Im grateful for the act of solidarity on the part of the council for doing the same thing, the president told the council during the meeting.

Meanwhile, the government is set to introduce far-reaching measures to help address the economic challenges in the country.

This is to mitigate the hardships on the Ghanaian citizenry in this tough times.
Member of Parliament for Ningo Prampram, Sam Nartey George has said the four-month extension of the SIM card registration exercise is not enough but, however, welcomes it as a good step toward resolving some of the problems associated with the nationwide exercise.

The Ministry of Communications and Digitalisation extended the deadline from 31 March 2022 to 31 July 2022.

A statement from the ministry issued on Tuesday, 22 March 2022 said: As of 17 March, 14,091,542 SIM cards had been linked to the Ghana card while 10,348,532 bio-captures had been conducted and 99,445 new SIMs registered.

The ministry said, Due to a number factors including the fact that over 7.5 million citizens and residents are yet to obtain Ghana cards to enable them to register their SIM cards, it is clear that the deadline for the completion of the registration of the remaining active SIM cards cannot be met.

Also, it said, More time will also be required to update the SIM registration app for the registration of diplomats while a self-service SIM registration app is also being developed to facilitate the registration of SIM cards for Ghanaians resident abroad.

This will be operational by mid-April, the statement noted.

The Ministry of Communication and Digitalisation has, therefore, extended the deadline for the registration of SIM cards to 31 July 2022, the statement announced.

Speaking on the extension, the Deputy Ranking Member of the Communications Committee of Parliament told Korku Lumor on Class91.3FMs 505 evening news programme on Tuesday, 22 March 2022: Well, I think common sense has finally prevailed.

What weve been calling on the ministry to do is just common sense. You may have your desires but the reality on the ground do not support your desires and, so, extend the deadline, allow more people to get involved, allow a better process thats more inclusive, the opposition MP explained.

In Mr Georges view, The ministry had been quite recalcitrant on it.

Unfortunately, this morning [Tuesday, 22 March 2022], we saw a stampede at the offices of the NIA because people were trying to beat the deadline and it just beats our imagination why the ministry will put Ghanaians through that, he pointed out.

Mr George surmised: Maybe that has woken them up and got them to give the extension.

He, however, noted: I think the extension in itself is inadequate but at least, it is a good first step that says that finally common sense is prevailing and the ministry is listening to wise counsel that has been given for quite a while now.

Our condolences go to the injured persons at the NIA offices. We wish them speedy recovery, he said.

Source: Classfmonline.com
23.03.2022 LISTEN

Think Tank Baskin Africa has urged government to consider decentralizing procurement as part of the review of the free Senior High School policy to augment its cost-cutting agenda aimed at loosening the rigidities in the budget to create fiscal space for more targeted spending.

In a press statement issued and copied to Modern Ghana News by its Executive Secretary, Issifu Seidu Kudus Gbeadese, Baskin Africa said the plan by government to review the free SHS policy is welcoming as it will afford government and other key stakeholders in the Education sub-sector an opportunity to relook at the policy holistically and proffer sustainable solutions.

"With the impending review, we want to use this opportunity to call on government to consider decentralizing procurement of food and other supplies to the Senior High School managements. This will not only engineer local participation in the policy implementation process but will equally revamp the local economy in the long run".

Find the full press statement below:

Press Release

For Immediate Release

22/03/2022

GOVERNMENT SHOULD DECENTRALIZE PROCUREMENT AS PART OF THE REVIEW OF THE FREE SHS POLICY.

The Government of Ghana in its preliminary communique after the cabinet retreat in Peduase indicated among others, its intention to review the Free SHS policy. This is in line with the government cost-cutting agenda aimed at loosening the rigidities in the budget to create fiscal space for more targeted spending.

It has always been the position of Baskin Africa for the review of not only the Free SHS policy, but the other flagship programs that do not necessarily contribute significantly to the growth of the economy. So, this plan to review the free SHS policy is welcoming as it will afford the government and other key stakeholders in the education sub-sector an opportunity to relook at the policy holistically and proffer sustainable solutions going forward.

With the impending review, we want to use this opportunity to call on government to consider decentralizing procurement of food and other supplies to the senior high school managements. This will not only engineer local participation in the policy implementation process but will equally revamp the local economy in the long run.

The government can still allow for the buffer stock company to supply some of the food and other supplies especially the ones the local economies cannot produce to make up for any possible shortfalls, so that the school managements can also procure from the local suppliers those that the local economy can produce. In this way, the central government will have some level of control over the policy while allowing for local participation in the implementation process.

-Signed-

Issifu Seidu Kudus Gbeadese

(Executive Secretary-Baskin Africa)

Contact: 0244198031
Launching its 2022 edition, the Michelin Guide celebrated an increasingly green and diverse French food scene, as well as its resilience after emerging from two difficult years of pandemic.

Expected each year with apprehension by chefs and gourmet food lovers, the famous red book revealed this year's winners in Cognac in south-western France  the first time in its 122 years the ceremony has taken place outside Paris.

Two restaurants were awarded its highest distinction of three stars.

Arnaud Donckele, 44, known for his extraordinary sauces, shot straight to the top ranking for his new restaurant Plenitude in the Samaritaine department store in Paris.

Husband-and-wife team Dimitri and Marielle Droisneau also joined the top rank for their Mediterranean restaurant, La Villa Madie, in Cassis, near Marseille, which judges praised for its "poetic home-style cuisine".

"With 49 restaurants promoted this year, included two three-star restaurants, we see that it is more than just resilience  that the French gastronomic scene is showing incredible vitality and creative power," said the guide's director Gwendal Poullennec.

"2021 was another difficult year for restaurants. The impact of the pandemic continues to weigh on them. Prices for ingredients are rising enormously, and recruiting and keeping staff is a challenge for everyone," he added.

"Despite everything, we have a great selection, but I see that we have too few women," he said, calling on restaurants to continue the "profound changes" they have been making to improve the imbalance.

Green star restaurants

Much focus in recent years has been on more minimalist, sustainably sourced cooking, which the guide has been rewarding with "green stars" since 2020.

There are now 87 green star restaurants in France, with six new additions in the new guide.

Last year's ceremony, in the midst of a months-long shutdown caused by the pandemic, was a low-key affair with only one chef  Alexandre Mazzia  promoted to three stars.

But this year marked a rejuvenation, with a maskless crowd packing out the theatre in Cognac, a small town in western France, with a huge international reputation for its namesake spirit.

Created in 1900 by tyre manufacturers Andre and Edouard Michelin as a guide for motorists, it now has editions across Europe, Asia, North and South America.

In March, it announced it was suspending operations in Russia due to the war in Ukraine, just a few months after launching its first guide in Moscow.

(with AFP)
A former Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Nii Ayikoi Otoo, has joined the chairmanship race to lead the governing New Patriotic Party as National Chairman ahead of the 2024 general elections.

The decision by Ghanas former High Commissioner to Canada is gaining momentum on social media through his supporters who are pushing his bid to replace Mr Freddie Blay.

A WhatsApp platform known as Ayikoi Otoo 4 National Chairman has been formed to lead the charge in rallying support for the former High Commissioners ambition.

The spokesperson for the group, Mr Kwame Sarpong, said they are using social media to garner support for Nii Ayikoi Otoos bid as they await the official opening of the contest by the national leadership of the NPP.

Nii Ayikoi Otoo's profile

Though christened Joseph, he rarely uses that name.

Nii Ayikoi Otoo is a Ghanaian lawyer, diplomat, and politician.

He belongs to the New Patriotic political party.

He served as Attorney General and Minister of Justice of Ghana in the John Agyekum Kufuor administration.

He was Ghana's High Commissioner to Canada between 2017 and 2020.

Nii Ayikoi Otoo was born in Mamprobi, a town in the Greater Accra Region of Ghana, to E. K. A. Otoo, a co-founder of Ebenezer Secondary School and Emelia Otoo.

He was called to the Ghana Bar in 1981.

The lawyer did his one-year mandatory national service at ADB and then sojourned to Nigeria briefly from September 1982 to January 1983. He returned to Ghana to join his grand uncle's Chambers Adamafio & Associates, a law firm in Accra where he worked for more than 20 years, rising, in the process, to become the Master of Chambers.

In the early 2000s, he started his own chambers called Otoo & Associates, Leo Chambers, at Larterbiokorshie in Accra.

He served as the Regional Secretary and later President of the Greater Accra Bar Association.

He was elected unopposed as the National Secretary of the Ghana Bar Association for three consecutive terms.

He served with his learned senior colleague Nana Akufo-Addo on the National Council of the Ghana Bar Association in their capacities as President and Secretary, respectively.

Ayikoi Otoo was appointed as the Attorney General and Minister of Justice by President John Agyekum Kufuor in 2005 to succeed Papa Owusu-Ankomah.

He was appointed chairman of the Constitutional Committee of the New Patriotic Party in 2010 and served as a member of the party's Vetting Committee that vetted the presidential hopefuls for the 2011 primaries.

He served as a member of the Disciplinary Committee and National Elections Appeals Committee of the party.

Nii Ayikoi Otoo swore in the newly-elected National Executives at the Tamale Stadium in 2012.

In December 2011, the GaDangme Youth petitioned the leadership of the New Patriotic Party to consider making Nii Ayikoi Otoo the running mate to then-presidential candidate Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo.

Nana Akufo-Addo eventually settled on Dr Mahamudu Bawumia as his running mate.

Ayikoi Otoo was also the Chairman of the Governance Sub-Committee of the Campaign Team and also chaired the Executive Assets Committee of the Transitional Team in 2017.

In March 2017, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo appointed Ayikoi Otoo as Ghana's High Commissioner to Canada.

He follows in the line of distinguished Ga Chairmen of the Party Peter Ala Adjetey, Samuel Odoi-Sykes and Jake Otanka Obetsebi-Lamptey.

Source: Classfmonline.com
I wonder if Africans know about this, despite the continent's vast amount of resources that Europe and America can't do without them, Africa is only known or described as a poverty-stricken continent with many deadly diseases, including HIV, Aids, and malaria.

It hurts and is very sad at the same time, if a continent that is supposed to be greater than all the continents because of its earthen treasures, rather becomes the most disrespectful continent on earth with face continuously being dragged in the mud in such a manner. Why should this happen?

In Africa, it's tribalism and in the white man's country, it's racism. I think about this hostile attitude among Africans in Africa and that towards dark-skinned people in Europe at the same time as somehow ambiguous.

Africans are not given the respect they deserve because the black man has lost his identity even though we didnt call for slavery, colonialism brutalities, and Apartheid horrors.

However, the question we need to ask ourselves is why Africa cant move forward decades after the abolition of slavery and every atrocity holding back the continent?

While it has been a major task for people to see the development of Africa, it is also the desire of others to see the destruction of the continent because of tribalism.

The Nation of Islam leader, Louis Farrakhan shows concern about African leaders leaving riches of the continent behind to beg for food and money in developed countries

There is no love in Africa and whereby the people lack unification there is never progress than disputes and misunderstanding. It seems Africans have made it possible for Europeans and Americans to know they don't like themselves

Its shocking and these are some of the reasons in many parts of the developed world, some Europeans and Americans still hold the view of Africans as subhuman beings without brains but that's not true.

Africans from time to time have shown their weakness as people who can't manage their affairs or survive on their own without any foreign aid. The majority of African leaders have no means to deal with challenges.

This is exactly what the leader of the Nation of Islam leader, Louis Farrakhan spoke about. According to him, even though African leaders have whatever they are looking for under their foot, they go somewhere else looking for help.

Who gives respect to people in a continent with so many resources yet they cant even create jobs or develop their countries? Who gives respect to a continent that grows cocoa, yet remains poor, while non-cocoa-growing countries in the developed world remain very rich?

Decades after independence swept through Africa, we still cant find our way to liberate ourselves without depending on foreign governments. African leaders leave all their riches behind and go to foreign countries begging for food and money.

Even in Ghana, some of the people's hostile attitudes against others are affecting the country.

Everything in Ghana is politicized, once you start to criticize things affecting the country under the NPP government, youll be accused of being an NDC and when you criticize the NDC, you'll be accused as an NPP member.

These are our problems, therefore, Ghana is stagnant, its not moving, even though the development in Ghana is for everyone not for any political party.

Politicians take money stolen from Ghana and deposit them in foreign accounts under different names to avoid detection, while our leaders borrow money and pay interest on them. Is this not stupidity?

The politicians want the people's votes and after getting those votes, they deny them proper education and health facilities to seek medical treatments in developed countries.

Africa has a long way to go but the sad part of our story is we have nowhere to go because we are not one and we dont want development. Europe and America are already developed, yet that's where stolen monies are kept.

In the abundance of water, Ghanaians are thirsty, so if Ghana hasnt any gold, diamond, bauxite, oil, cocoa, etc; how are we going to live? Human errors and poor management have brought untold hardships on common Ghanaians.

The worst no one is expecting is the disconnection of electricity at the Kotoka International Airport and other important places in Accra because the government is in debt. Why is it that only such things happen in Africa?

What kind of respect do we deserve as Ghanaians when such news goes viral in developed countries? They will never give us; one of the reasons Donald Trump has never said anything good thing about Africa and its leaders.

Its more disappointing to realize that nothing changes in Africa because many of the African leaders have institutionalized corruption by creating weak judiciary systems.

Just imagine, how corruption has set back development in all African countries, including Ghana, and in my country, the president Nana Akufo Addo, who claimed to protect the publics purse have politicians involved in corruption in his government. How can the developed world respect African leaders?

As if the embarrassment isnt enough, suddenly the appointed Special Prosecutor, Kissi Agyebeng, comes out and makes a headline, Special Prosecutor to name and shame corruption peddlers. What a mockery?

Does naming or putting someone involved in corruption into shame an effective measure to fight corruption?

Why Ghanaian politicians are so corrupt yet nobody has ever served his time in prison for the crimes they commit? There is no way corruption in Ghana can be reduced if the criminals are prevented to face the law.

I have said it over and over that in any good country, people like Paul Adom Otchere, Kwasi Anin-Yeboah, Eugene Arhin, and Charles Bissiw, should have long resigned or served their time in prison.

I don't hate them but the fact that because of them more disrespect is given to African leaders as senseless people, I am always overwhelmed with embarrassment when I think about these people still serving Ghana.
A Ugandan court has issued an arrest warrant for an award-winning author who fled the country after being charged with insulting President Yoweri Museveni and his son, his lawyer said Wednesday.

Kakwenza Rukirabashaija was arrested shortly after Christmas and charged with "offensive communication" in a case that raised international concern, with the European Union and the United States calling for his release.

The 33-year-old said he was tortured during his month-long detention and slipped out of the country last month to seek treatment abroad for his injuries.

But on Wednesday, prosecutors asked the Kampala court to issue a warrant of arrest against the satirical novelist after he failed to show up for the trial.

The magistrate ordered he "be arrested and brought to court," lawyer Samuel Wanda told AFP.

It was not immediately clear if the warrant would include an extradition request to Germany where Rukirabashaija said he was exiled.

The charges against him relate 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".

The author was awarded the 2021 PEN Pinter Prize for an International Writer of Courage, which is presented annually to a writer who has been persecuted for speaking out about their beliefs.

Rukirabashaija has been repeatedly arrested since the publication of "The Greedy Barbarian", which describes high-level corruption in a fictional country.

At the time, he was accused of breaching Covid-19 social distancing rules, inciting violence and promoting sectarianism.

He described his earlier stint in detention as "inhumane and degrading" in his most recent book "Banana Republic: Where Writing is Treasonous".

The East African country has seen a series of crackdowns on those opposed to Museveni's rule, with journalists attacked, lawyers jailed, election monitors prosecuted and opposition leaders violently muzzled.

Human Rights Watch on Tuesday asked the government to close illegal detention centres in a report documenting the prevalence of torture at such sites, a claim denied by the military as "baseless".

"We do not condone torture as alleged in the report," Ugandan military spokesman Brigadier-General Felix Kulayigye told AFP, adding they had "investigated and taken action against our own officers implicated in human rights violations."

The report came on the heels of another court decision Monday ordering the release on bail of author and activist Norman Tumihimbise and a female journalist, who were charged with cyber-stalking Museveni.
23.03.2022 LISTEN

It grows millet, rice, guinea corn and corn as grain and cassava, yam, sweet potato and Irish potato as root staples, all of which can be converted into flour.

Fifty six years ago, wheat was part of the strategy that made many Ghanaians go out on the streets to hail the coup makers of 1966. As explained to us almost 30 years ago in London by the late Viscount Anthony Wedgewood Benn known as Tony Benn after he relinquished his peerage in the U.K. Hw was a Minister in the Wilson and Callaghan governments of the U.K and knew what he was talking about. The strategy had been to extricate Nkrumah from the people and the country best placed to do that was Britain.

The price of cocoa tumbled on the world market making it almost impossible for the government to achieve its touted and well costed seven year development. In addition, milk, canned sardines, tomato paste were no more available as readily as Ghanaians would want it. The price of bread also went up because there was shortage of wheat flour. Making life a bit unbearable for the average Ghanaian and therefore paving way for the 24th of February 1966 coup d'etat.

Why should a non wheat producing country create an impression that bread can only be made from wheat flour? Most European countries produce bread, biscuits and all other pastries using a variety of flour from many sources. Why has Ghana, sixty five years after independence and fifty six years of the overthrow of the first democratically elected government taken the decision not to change or adapt?

It is most likely the same situation in most African countries.

Russia is the world's largest exporter of wheat and Ukraine the fifth and between them produce, a third of the wheat consumed in the rest of the world. The Russian invasion of Ukraine a month ago has already created a ripple effect in Egypt and many other Arab countries where bread is a staple food. The prices are set to rise and further take its toll on particularly the ordinary people.

Bread is certainly not a staple in Ghana but no doubt many people eat bread as part of their morning meal. Despite the author speaking about beans cake (koose) and millet porridge (Hausa koko) being the best breakfast in Ghana, many cannot change the habit and continue to eat bread. Even more hilarious is the koose sandwich (beans cake in bread) that has become so popular in parts of the country. So what needs to happen to make the Ghanaian change and adapt?

The Food Research Institute of the CSIR mandated to provide technical, analytical services and consultancy services to governmental agencies, micro-medium and multinational agro-food processing industries and international development agencies is best placed to not only provide flour from the above list of grains and root staples but assist in its use for bread or other pastries, through a state funded research mechanism that will over time, ensure we gradually ease ourselves from this slavish dependency in Ghana.

Ghanaians must be thought to eat what they produce and produce what they want to eat in a sustainability and resilient system that ensures there is a net zero deficit to the nations economy and not all the current imports, draining away our resources. Recipes from corn bread, rice bread, millet and guinea corn bread and even sweet potato bread must be an aspiration of many young entrepreneurs provided of course, the nation is prepared to stand behind them through effective start-up venture capital.

It would not surprise me if the Food Research Institute has it all on their selves waiting for support. A nation that does not spend anything on research and development is most certainly doomed to miss out on the current innovation revolution. We missed out on the preceding three, agricultural, industrial and information revolutions and should not on the fourth.

Our research and development experience must start on the basic fundamentals of our existence; food, clothing, shelter, health and education.

Prof. Agyeman Badu Akosa
Ukraine is a battlefield and also a negotiating table. An area of dispute of the "Clash of Civilizations" predicted by Samuel Huntington in the near but distant 1996. Ukraine is where it all ends and starts. Its where Eurasianism ends (the dream of a Europe from Lisbon to Vladivostok) and is where the new chapter of the perpetuum bellum begins between the extremes of the West: North America and Russia. And it is, above all, a key theatre of operations of the "Third World War in pieces".

In Ukraine a new chapter is being fought of what Pope Francis had already called "Third World War in pieces" in 2014. History proved that the present Summum Pontifex was right: those conflicts that exploded like wildfire across the planet were part of a wider hegemonic confrontation between blocs. Geopolitical blocks that in 2022, after eight years of germination alternating with latency phases, began their tectonic shocks.

Analysts fear the "internationalization of the conflict," but the truth is that it is already global. In a way, it has always been. But it officially became global when Ukraine created a Foreign Legion, began to receive weaponry from NATO, and when Russia assembled its own platoons of loyalists, with its own debts with Kiev.

From the Peripheries to the Core: some scenarios

The Third World War in pieces, or "Great Powers competition", entered a new stage in which there is an increase in the presence of the conflict "from the Peripheries to the Cores".

The peripheries, that is, the marginalized, the laggards of globalization, the satellites, the disputed land fringes, the States on the margins of the great empires, the remnants of colonial times. The peripheral States had been the ones overwhelmed in the recent years by civil wars, coups and hybrid operations in the pre-war period in Ukraine. Kazakhstan was the latest example recently. And it is the peripheral states that will experience a crescendo of instability in a hypothetical post-war period (or temporary truce).

For example, the Atlantic is a suburb with lots of powder kegs to explode, is the scenario where the Moscow-Beijing axis would try to move its pieces with bold, but predictable, reactions to the Western advance (AUKUS in the Indo-Pacific and NATO in Eastern Europe) into the respective "neighbourhoods" of Russia and China. The logic of these "Revisionist Powers" will be very clear: if they do not have the right to have their own Areas of Influence, nor the United States should have the right. The "Monroe doctrine" in the XXI century might be put to the test.

To be short, the Atlantic could become as geo-relevant as the Indo-Pacific is today. This is suggested by some events that happened in 2021: the renewed Russian support for Latin American political forces with critical stances to Washington; the official arrival of China in Nicaragua; the wave of instability that affected the French dominions in Latin America; and last but not least, the striking Chinese endorsement of Argentinas claim to sovereignty over the Malvinas-Falklands Islands.

A different world

The "total economic war" against Russia is the symbol of the new globalization that is emerging: a Globalization in Compartments" of several rails, and at several speeds, with compartments of micro and macro regional nature. A process led by the Trump administration, which has been speeded up by the COVID-19 pandemic and the recent war in Ukraine.

In the new model of globalization that is emerging, regional integrative processes such as the European Union (EU) and the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) are articulated but at the same time they are decoupling (in a kind of competition among continental projects).

A globalization and regionalization with a more progressive de-dollarization would be another example this implies that Europe and Asia could be two increasingly separate blocs

In this hypothetical "Globalization in Compartments", after the recent events in Ukraine theres the possibility that Russia -de facto- will become a part of the Asian bloc (perhaps the dream of Eurasianism, the dream of a Europe extended from Lisbon to Vladivostok, died on 24 February 2022, or at least it will not be possible to restore for a long time).

Changing geopolitical realignments

As globalization is changing, so is the formation of blocs, poles and alliances at the international stage. Theres a risk that the times of moderation and passive neutrality may be closer to the end. Even Switzerland, absent from the two world wars, has broken a centuries-old tradition of neutrality by condemning Russian action in Ukraine.

We live in troubled times, of geopolitical realignments through the choice of sides, surely the Great Powers will ask for tests of loyalty to the peripheral countries. Some will respond firmly, while others "will change their teams jersey" unexpectedly. Only a few days ago, the Biden administration initiated an attempt to approach Maduros Venezuela, which was vilified years ago by the North-Americans. Tomorrow there can be several cases of other "rivals" to seduce. Tomorrow everything is possible: the Great Powers, the Core zones are few, the Peripheries are numerous.

One thing is certain: the war in Ukraine has changed many things; the cards on the table have been scrambled.

By appealing the Russian leadership to direct military intervention in the dispute, they have crossed the Rubicon and have dragged the world, conscious of it or not, into unexplored scenarios whose nature, like the Owl of Minerva, will only be better understood with the passage of time.
A former National First Vice Chairman of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP), Stephen Ntim, has called on Ghanaians to rally behind the Akufo-Addo government as it intends to implement new measures to navigate the economy through the current turbulence.

According to him, the current challenges are a result of external factors which make it difficult to solve as a country.

He said, We find ourselves in difficult times because there is COVID-19 and now, the Russia and Ukraine war.

These things have adverse impacts on nations, whether you like it or not. Today, prices of fuel and other essential commodities are going up, so I urge Ghanaians to understand the current situation and support this government as it intends to roll out new measures to address our challenges. We have done pretty well since we came to power, so it is unfortunate these things are happening now, he added.

Speaking to some party members in the Greater Accra Region, Mr. Ntim tasked them to also project the positives of the government for Ghanaians to also appreciate the current situation.

He also descended on the opposition National Democratic Congress, accusing the party of creating the impression that they could have done something better in this current situation when their abysmal record on economic management is not something to be forgotten anytime soon.

Under the NDC, he stressed, Ghana's economy was run aground. Hopelessness was the order of the day. Even without Covid they couldn't employ teachers and nurses, let alone pay them, Mr. Ntim argued.

By Citi Newsroom
The Eastern Region Director of Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL), Ing Asomani Nyarko, has expressed worry sand-winning activities and bad farming practices threaten the water production at the Nsawam Treatment Plant.

He warned perpetrators to desist from the practice.

Desist from bad farming practices which affect the cost of water treatment in the region. Some chemicals used as fertilisers affect the quality of water which require more than the normal treatment requires.

Ing Asomani also advised owners of borehole and underground water projects to submit sample for testing twice every year for advice.

He explained borehole and underground water projects may contain harmful chemicals which may increase chances of contracting cancer.

He made the revelations at Eastern Regions celebration of the 2022 World Water Day at Nsawam in the Nsawam Adoagyiri municipality.

According to Ing Asomani Nyarko, the groundwater, which is the borehole water, is highly acidic which aids cancer cells to multiply quickly.

He warned the country may not achieve the SDG 6 if stringent measures are not taken by authorities to regulate activities of farmers and sand winnings.

According to the Director of Community Water and Sanitation Agency, Ing. Sampson Atakora, 99 percent of the over 1,000 systems the agency manages is groundwater-based.

He noted it was necessary to educate the citizenry of the existence of groundwater and the need to protect them.

The Eastern Region Minister, Seth Acheampong, called for enforcement of all laws that regulate drilling in the country.

He believes this will protect the underground water from over exploitation and contamination which will save millions of lives.

The Drilling Licence and Groundwater Development Regulations 2006 (L.I. 1827) regulates the prospecting and drilling of water wells in an environmentally sustainable manner. We therefore owe it a responsibility to protect our water wells from abuse and indiscriminate destruction.

I would therefore admonish all M/DCEs in the region to ensure that activities in relation to drilling of water that affects our ground water must first obtain a drilling licence from the Water Resources Commission. I, therefore, advise all stakeholders in this sector to ensure that existing laws on ground water be enforced at both the local and national levels with the aim of protecting our underground well from toxic products.

Chiefs, students and various stakeholders joined in the celebration of the 2022 World Water Day by planting trees around the Nsawam Treatment Plant.

The celebration was on the theme Groundwater: Making the Invisible Visible.

---3news.com
Twin attacks in Mali this week have killed 16 soldiers and wounded 18, the army said late Tuesday, in the latest violence sweeping the Sahel state.

The statement lifted the casualty toll of four soldiers dead and 17 injured in separate attacks Monday in the northeast and centre of the conflict-torn country.

Thirty-seven "terrorists" were also killed during the attacks, and weapons and munitions captured, the army said.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for one of Monday's attacks, on a military outpost in northeastern Mali.

An impoverished nation of 21 million people, Mali has struggled to contain a jihadist insurgency that emerged in 2012, before spreading to neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger.

Thousands of soldiers and civilians have been killed in the brutal conflict and hundreds of thousands of people have fled their homes.

Mali's ruling military junta, which seized power in 2020, stated Tuesday that jihadists were being "routed".

However, its latest claimed military successes have come at a high human cost.

An ambush on a army camp in the centre of country on March 4 killed 27 soldiers, for example, in the deadliest reported attack against the army in several months. The military said it killed 70 militants in the fighting.

Poor access to Mali's conflict areas and a relative lack of independent information sources means that figures provided by either the government or jihadist groups are difficult to verify.

Seek and destroy

Islamic State (IS) claimed an attack on a military outpost in Tessit in northeastern Mali, near the border with Burkina Faso and Niger, on Monday.

"The mujahideen took full control over the military base and torched it," the group said in a statement, verified by SITE Intelligence which monitors jihadist activities worldwide.

IS added that it had also captured seven vehicles and taken a "quantity of ammunition and weapons as spoils".

The same day, unidentified militants ambushed a patrol in Boni in central Mali.

Mali's army vowed on Tuesday to maintain their "dynamic offensive to seek out and destroy terrorists and their sanctuaries".

The latest flare-up of violence comes amid changes to the army's modus operandi.

Mali's government has said that Russian advisers are in the country to help the military. However, the United States and France say they are paramilitaries from Russia's controversial Wagner private security firm.

France, which intervened in Mali in 2013, decided last month to withdraw its forces in the country after a decade-long fight against jihadists.

Vast swathes of Mali lie beyond government control due to the brutal conflict, and jihadist attacks have begun to spread into coastal African states, such as Benin.

Insecurity in the Sahel region has also gone hand in hand with political instability. Mali's military has staged two coups since 2020. Burkina Faso's army seized power in January.
23.03.2022 LISTEN

Fire has gutted the building complex that houses Kisseiman branch of the GCB Bank near Achimota in the Greater Accra Region.

The incident occurred on Wednesday, March 23, 2022.

The fire which was detected at 5:11am was successfully extinguished by personnel of the Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS) with the support of the security services and the community.

There was no casualty during and after the fire outbreak.

In a statement issued by the Corporate Affairs of the Bank, the Kisseiman branch of the Bank will however not open for business today to allow for further assessment of the extent of damage to the building as well as safety measures aimed at protecting staff and customers.

It added that customers in and around Kisseman branch are advised to use our Dome, Achimota, Haatso, Dzorwulu, Abelenkpe, Tantra Hill, Abeka-Lapaz, Legon, Tetteh-Quarshie and any GCB Bank Branch of their choice for their banking business.

"Customers are also encouraged to make use of our alternate channels including internet banking, GCB Mobile banking, ATMs and G-Money Mobile Wallet.

"We shall inform customers of any new development," the statement added.

Read full statement below:

GCB BANK PLC

FIRE OUTBREAK AT KISSEIMAN BRANCH BUILDING

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

23RD MARCH, 2022.

On Wednesday, March 23, 2022, there was fire outbreak at the building complex that houses our Kisseiman branch near Achimota in the Greater Accra Region.

The fire which was detected at 5:11am was successfully extinguished by personnel of the Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS) with the support of the security services and the community.

There was no casualty during and after the fire outbreak.

The Kisseiman branch of the Bank will however not open for business today to allow for further assessment of the extent of damage to the building as well as safety measures aimed at protecting staff and customers.

Customers in and around Kisseman branch are advised to use our Dome, Achimota, Haatso, Dzorwulu, Abelenkpe, Tantra Hill, Abeka-Lapaz, Legon, Tetteh-Quarshie and any GCB Bank Branch of their choice for their banking business.

Customers are also encouraged to make use of our alternate channels including internet banking, GCB Mobile banking, ATMs and G-Money Mobile Wallet.

We shall inform customers of any new development.

GCB, your bank for life.

Emmanuel Kojo Kwarteng, Head of Corporate Affairs

GCB Bank PLC
A pressure group, Concerned Citizens of Atewa Landscape, has accused management of the Forestry Commission of looking on aloof for the natural resources in the Atewa Forest reserve of the Eastern Region to be desecrated.

According to the group, the country does not need any new set of laws to protect and safeguard the environment and natural resources.

The group, in a statement dated Tuesday, 22 March 2022, and signed by its president Mr Oteng Adjei, said what the country needs is attitudinal change at all rungs toward tackling environmental degradation.

It is this negligence that has led to the numerous futile interventions put in place by the government to stop illegal mining and its debilitating effect on both the environment and economy, the statement argued.

The statement explained that it is this same negligence that has brought about the wanton desecration of the Atewa forest, an important water tower in Ghana, as well as an internationally-recognized biodiversity area of global significance.

Our monitoring of the forest and the evidence we have gathered show that in the past 6 months and more, illegal activities in the forest are getting out of hand and there is no deliberate effort by the Forestry Commission to stop this.

The statement said: We are in very dark days in the life of the Atewa Forest Reserve just as the Minerals Commission, Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources, and the Environmental Protection Agency neglected their core mandates of protecting the environment leading to the creation of a myriad of artificial pools and in some cases, craters filled with water that has taken the lives of a lot of precious innocent souls. We are all privy to the surcharges that were brought on them by the Auditor General after their investigations to no avail.

In the groups view, the same negligence on the part of the Forestry Commission, if not exorcised, will lead to the destruction of the Atewa Forest even before the legal battle in the courts to stop the mining of bauxite in the protected wildlife zone, would be concluded.

We have local community information that indicates that illegal mining and logging is being carried out at unprecedented levels with the tacit connivance and approval of some officers of the Forestry Commission and some unnamed faces within the jurisdiction of the reserve.

Nana Sir Ofori Atta I is grimacing in his grave that the legacy he selflessly fought to preserve for posterity has been left to rot thus rendering useless his lofty ideals and ideas he bequeathed to posterity, the statement said.

It said: Not long ago, an excavator was in the forest mining but it took the alertness of the leadership of Concerned Citizens of the Atewa Landscape working in tandem with A Rocha to highlight that illegal activity.

Below is the full statement:

FORESTRY COMMISSION NEGLIGENCE KILLING ATEWA FOREST

The country does not need any new set of laws to protect and safeguard the environment and natural resources. What the country needs is attitudinal change because negligence, the canker, has eaten up the entire fabric of natural resource governance and permeates governance even to the forest ranger.

It is this negligence that has led to the numerous futile interventions put in place by the government to stop illegal mining and its debilitating effect on both the environment and economy.

It is this same negligence that has brought about the wanton desecration of the Atewa Forest, an important water tower in Ghana as well as an internationally recognized biodiversity area of global significance. Our monitoring of the forest, and the evidence we have gathered show that, in the past 6 months and more, illegal activities in the forest is getting out of hand and there is no deliberate effort by the Forestry Commission to stop this.

We are in very dark days in the life of the Atewa Forest Reserve just as the Minerals Commission, Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources and the Environmental Protection Agency neglected their core mandates of protecting the environment leading to the creation of a myriad of artificial pools and in some cases, craters filled with water that has taken the lives of a lot of precious innocent souls. We are all privy to the surcharge that was brought on them by the Auditor General after their investigations.

The same negligence on the part of the Forestry Commission, if not exorcised will lead to the destruction of Atewa Forest even before the legal battle in the courts to stop the mining of bauxite would be concluded.

We have local community information that indicates that, illegal mining and logging is being carried out in unprecedented levels with the tacit connivance and approval of some officers of the Forestry Commission and some unnamed faces within the jurisdiction.

Nana Sir Ofori Atta I is grimacing in his grave that the legacy he selflessly fought to preserve for posterity has been left to rot thus rendering useless his lofty ideals and ideas he bequeathed to posterity.

Not long ago, an excavator was in the forest mining but it took the alertness of the leadership of Concerned Citizens of the Atewa Landscape working in tandem with A Rocha to highlight on that illegal activity. Even that the Forestry Commission took offence and took the two NGOs to the learners in that the commission could not be alerted before making public their findings.

Again, not long ago two souls were lost in their illegal quest for gold at the Asiakwah stretch of the reserve and even though the Police was involved as well as the traditional leaders who carried out the pacification and cleansing exercise, yet the incidence never saw the light of day.

The question that readily comes to mind therefore is whether or not the Forestry Commission executes its mandate of protecting and preserving the forest resource and whether or not the commission is entitled to the remunerations at the end of every month besides other emoluments.

Yesterday was International Day of Forests under the theme, Forest and Sustainable production and consumption. Today is international water day with the theme, Groundwater: making the Invisible Visible. As a country we will mounting podiums and acclaiming our commitment to sustainable use of our natural resources and protection of water bodies, but right in our backyard, we are watching the most critical forest in Ghana, to be destroyed. Atewa Forest is a unique forest not only to Ghana but also to the world. Its hills provide the invisible sources of water, whose impact is felt everywhere by the over 5 million people who depend on the 100 plus streams flowing down the hills. Out of sight, under our feet, its groundwater is a hidden treasure that is enriching our lives.

We acknowledge that it is good we will be spending millions of public and donor money to plant over 20 Milion trees in July under the Green Ghana Agenda. However, it will be an exercise in futility and very sad to note that, whiles we are planting, the same system is sitting aloof and watching without any long-term proactive plans to save existing forests like Atewa and many others across the country.

The negligence and lackadaisical attitude to managing forests must stop now. The Forestry Commission should know that their so-called avowed vision and mission is at stake and risk jeopardizing the future for all of us.

The carnage in the footage did not take place overnight, and no heavy-duty equipment involved, but for all these days no ranger of the Forestry Commission could detect it to report it let alone stop it.

Notice is therefore being served to the staff and management of the Forestry Commission that sooner than later, the entity would be asked to justify why it must enjoy emoluments after grossly and recklessly abandoning its core mandate for which they were employed. When state institutions renege on their mandate, the overtaxed tax payer suffers because the scarce resources are used in an effort to correct the anomalies. Galamstop and Operation Vanguard brought in its wake heavy cost when the minerals commission failed woefully to enforce its rules and regulations of mining thus paving the way for the pollution of river bodies with the accompanying societal problems.

We are therefore by this statement requesting for a full-scale investigation of the Forestry Commission Staff at the Kyebi District Office, on why these illegal activities are escalating without any proactive measures in place to address them. The reactive actions is not yielding any results and leading to further impunity. We need to wise up please.

The Concerned Citizens of Atewa Landscape is also entreating all environmental NGOs and Associations both local and international and the general public to join hands and call for a halt of these nefarious activities in the Atewa Forest.

We are also using this platform to ask for both civil and legal support to enable us compel the Forestry Commission to do their mandated work of protecting our forests as they are supposed to. There is too much pretense around.

The burden of protection therefore now lies on the shoulders of civil society. We must rise up and protect this priceless gem of nature for now and posterity as our forefathers who were classified living in a period of abagyimi br could out of their supposed ignoramus see the need to preserve the Forest Reserve for posterity.

Ephiram Amu the visionary musician admonished society in his classic Yn ara asase ni. He sang thus, adu me ne wo nso so s y bi atoa so, but are we doing so. As if he knew, nimde ntraso, kotokrane ne aps menko me nya, adi yn bra mu dm ama yn asase ho d at mu s.

The time is now or never.

Thank you.

Oteng Adjei

(President Concern Citizens of Atewa Landscape)

Source: Classfmonline.com
An officer with the Ghana Immigration Service (GIS) attached to the Operation Conquest Fist (OCF) at the Hamile detachment, has been shot dead at Kokoligu in the Nandom Municipality.

AICO I Michael Otu, the deceased allegedly sustained six gunshots and lost his life in the process.

His body has been deposited at the Nandom St. Theresa's Hospital for preservation.

A statement from the Service, signed by Ibn Yussif Duranah Abdul-Mumin Seidu, the Upper West Regional Public Affairs Officer of GIS, and copied the Ghana News Agency in Wa, said the command picked up the information about the incident at about 1815hrs Tuesday.

The statement said preliminary investigations revealed that the officer met his untimely death in a struggle with his assailants who were largely suspected to be smugglers.

His body was hidden under a bridge whilst his motorbike and helmet were found some 100 meters away from the remains. It was further revealed that his weapon was taken away from him by his assailants, the statement said.

It added that the deceased AICO I Michael Otu was for night duty on the Ghana-Burkina Faso border when he met his untimely death.

While we call for calm, together with the Defense Intelligence and Police, all efforts in the pursuit of the perpetrators and their modus operandi behind the callous killing of this selfless Patriot is a necessity.

We call on anyone with positive leads to volunteer same to allow justice to take its own course. We shall leave no stone unturned in pursuit of the perpetrators of this barbaric incident. They may run but they can't hide, the statement said.

GNA
Samuel Abu Jinapor, the Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, has called on Gold Fields Ghana Limited and other large-scale mining companies to partner government in building Ghana into a viable mining hub of Africa.

He said the Akufo-Addo-led Government's vision was to ensure that all components of the mining value-chain existed in the country.

"From exploitation to mining itself, refinery to the downstream industry, to the various linkages in the mining industry will get established here, including the mining financial centre of Africa," he said.

Mr Jinapor made the call when he paid a working visit to the Tarkwa Mine of Gold Fields Ghana Limited.

He noted that the Government could not achieve that feat without partnership and co-operation of mining companies and, therefore, called for stronger collaborations with the key stakeholders to achieve the desired results.

"I'm here to extend a hand of partnership. Let us work together to build the mining industry in Ghana. Let us be partners, let us co-operate. We don't have to operate on the basis of adversaries, but rather on the basis of partners," he added.

"We are the regulators, you are the operators, at the end of the day we need each other to build the mining industry, and I, as your Minister, I'm fully committed to working with Gold Fields to build the company into the biggest mining industry in the world, not just Africa."

Mr Jinapor said the Government was committed to playing its regulatory role by creating a conducive environment to enable Gold Fields and other mining companies to thrive and invest more in the sector.

The Ministry, he said, would engage the Executive of the Ghana Chamber of Mines to get mining institutions to support the Green Ghana Project to ensure that planting of trees to restore the vegetative cover of the country was realised.

He commended Gold Fields Ghana Limited for its initiative to green Ghana through oil palm plantations and other vegetative initiatives.

"I'm hoping that when we get the opportunity to meet, we will be able to engage and chart a way forward to green our country for our people to ensure that Ghana is a country that is contributing to the global fight against climate change, he said.

The Minister applauded the company for its generous donation of one million dollars to the Appiatse Support Fund to complement government's efforts at rebuild the Appiatse community.

The working visit of the Minister also saw him touring the Tarkwa Mine, mainly the gold room, where gold ore is smelted.

Mr Stephen Osei-Bempah, the General Manager of Gold Fields Ghana Limited, Tarkwa Mine, said following the Appiatse explosion, the company had taken pragmatic steps to ensure that explosives transported met all the regulatory standards to ensure safety.

Due to the adherence of safety measures at the mine site, the company had managed to reduce injuries from 69 to five between 2010 and 2021, he said, adding that it was working hard towards achieving zero harm on all sites.

Mr Osei-Bempah hinted that as part of the mine's corporate social responsibility, it would soon construct a stadium at Tarkwa and Abosso, a girls dormitory for the Huni-Valley Senior High School, a healthcare centre among other essential facilities in its respective operational areas.

GNA
DRC President Felix Tshisekedi waves an official copy of the nationamp;39;s Constitution during his swearing in on January 24, 2019. - Source:

23.03.2022 LISTEN

Shortly after his controversial electoral victory in early 2019, the President of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) Felix Tshisekedi sought to get his country admitted into the East African Community. Recently , the East African Community ministers recommended the DRC's admission, a decision set to be formalised by the bloc's presidents when they meet on 29 March. Regional integration expert Jonathan Ang'ani Omuchesi discusses key points of the decision.

What's the state of East African Community integration?

East African Community is one of the most vibrant and best performing in Africa. This is according to the African Regional Integration Index which ranks blocs on five aspects of integration - trade, productive, macroeconomic, infrastructural and movement of people.

Currently, it has six members: Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda.

East Africa's integration is envisioned under four pillars . These are the customs union, the common market, the monetary union, and the political federation. So far, the bloc has been implementing protocols on a customs union and a common market. These have helped improve trade and investments in the region since 2006 and boosted country relations.

Under the customs union protocol taxes on goods produced within the region have been eliminated. East Africa is also applying a common external tariff on imports from outside the region.

In the long run, an operational customs union should open up the regional economy so that small economies are able to gain access to industries that would otherwise be out of their reach.

For its part, the purpose of a common market is to ease cross-border movement of goods, persons and workers. It's implementation has seen the east African governments harmonise immigration procedures and order border posts to operate for 24 hours. Some of the governments in the region, notably Rwanda and Kenya, have also waived the work permit fee for citizens from the region.

The bloc is now preparing the ground for its third pillar, the monetary union . This began with the adoption and signing of the East African Monetary Union Protocol on 30 November 2013. The protocol set a timeline of 10 years within which the partner states need to have a common currency. That's in 2023, a deadline that's unlikely to be met. There has been mixed progress in the implementation of agreed action on this front.

How do countries get admitted?

The criteria for admission into the bloc is provided under Article 3 of the East African Community treaty signed in 1999. The regional law provides the following grounds for admission of a new member:

acceptance of the Community as set out in the East African Community Treaty;

adherence to universally acceptable principles of good governance, democracy, the rule of law, observance of human rights and social justice;

potential contribution to the strengthening of integration within the East African region;

geographical proximity to and interdependence between it and the partner states;

establishment and maintenance of a market driven economy; and

social and economic policies being compatible with those of the Community.

So far, the body has had three admissions: Rwanda and Burundi in 2007 and South Sudan in 2016. The DRC shares borders with Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda and South Sudan. There has been opposition to its plan to join the East African Community due to its past human rights record.

What does the East African Community gain?

The DRC's admission would give the bloc its first port on the Atlantic coast. At the moment, the region relies on Indian Ocean-based seaports of Kenya and Tanzania for trade with the rest of the world. The challenge of intermittent piracy off the Somalia coast has exposed the need for an alternative trade route.

The DRC is also set to significantly expand the regional trading bloc's size. The DRC's geographical area is far much larger than all the six East African states put together. The DRC has a geographical area of 2.4 million sq km while the bloc is about 1.8 million sq km. The additional geographical area - known uniquely for its copper, coltan, cobalt, tin and other minerals - is set to boost East Africa's profile as an investment destination.

On a world stage, the East African Community gains a bigger clout with the DRC's huge population (consumer base) of about 90 million people and an economy of nearly US$50 billion . It is estimated that the bloc has a population of 177 million people and an economy of US$193.7 billion.

What's in it for the DRC?

The DRC is already doing substantial trade with the East African Community bloc which could benefit from lower or eliminated tariffs. Goods produced in the DRC will no longer be subjected to customs taxes at any of the region's border points.

It already has established trade relations with Rwanda , Burundi and Uganda . For imports, parts of the DRC rely on the trade corridor that runs from Mombasa port via Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi. These connections are set to firm up as national agencies of the East African governments ease tariffs and administrative barriers on the new bloc member.

Does it matter that this is the third bloc the DRC is joining?

Generally, membership in more than one customs union is technically impossible. Firstly, one country cannot apply different common external tariffs. Secondly, integration agenda differs from one bloc to the next meaning overlapping membership may lead a country to conflicting obligations. According to the World Trade Organisation, the practice hurts global trade liberalisation , especially when affected traders have to meet multiple sets of rules.

But analysis of the treaties of the Southern African Development Community, the East African Community and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa shows they do not preclude members from maintaining prior trade arrangements or entering into new ones.

The DRC is already a member of the Southern African Development Community and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa. But it won't be the only East African Community country with overlapping membership of regional blocs. Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi are members of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa while Tanzania is a member of Southern African Development Community.

The East African Community, for instance, has not been able to establish a full customs union since it had to allow Tanzania to grant preferences to its southern Africa partners.

The three blocs are currently harmonising their agenda and laws with the aim of integrating their economies and markets. This fits into the broader objective of the African Union , of accelerating economic integration of the continent.

Jonathan Ang'ani Omuchesi 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 Jonathan Ang'ani Omuchesi, Lecturer In Governance and Regional Integration, Catholic University of Eastern Africa
Chief in law

Series of millennia ago, when Britain was but a land of barbarians, the prostitute male inviting endless solicitations, an easy and free ground inviting foreign conquestsseries and series of conquests in factThose centuries when Caesar treated Britain like bonus lands for conquests in his incessant attempts at conquering Gaul Leaving Rome, he would kraa the people around him, saying, I am headed for Gaul to defeat the land. I might just pass by Britain when I have free time leftwho knows. Those centuries when Caesars distracted destructive poking and prodding of England left the land further atop the list of territories for conquistadors to watch Emperor Claudius also of Rome, inspired by Caesar, was to in 43 AD invade England. And for almost 400 years, the land remained under Roman rule.

Yet as time went on, slowly but surely the Roman empire, itself, fell. So then, a retreat from the land of the Brits ensued. Britain was at last free. You would think.

Before the Romans could get to packing and leaving the Brits free, the Anglo Saxons were knocking forcefully on Englands door. So back to square one, the Brits found themselves once again under colonial rule. From the 5th all the way to the 11th century, the Anglo Saxons ruled England. For six whole centuries, they ruled the British people. Their reign could have continued, possibly endlessly, had it not been for William.

In the year 1066, Normans proceeding from northern France, in an area called Normandy, led by their king, William, Duke of Normandy, set sail for Britain. With conquering and ruling on their minds, they set sail for this very much prodded land of the Britons. Their quest of conquest was realised, and William of Normandy became William the Conqueror. He ruled with an iron fist, and set about morphing England, then a series of differing tribes who cohabitated, into a singular unita nation.

Let There Be Law

So then, the law. How does one rule if there are no laws to keep a people in check? How does one make piecemeals into a whole if there are no singular laws, a singular yardstick by which to hold all the people to? Also, what at all are laws? How do they emerge? Where does a person go to find them so as to utilise them in this bid at ruling a people? William the Conqueror needed to rule over the people of England with the law. But where does William go in search of it?

Trouble preceded the law. Wherever two or more people meet, you have in their midst, squabbles. So, the British people, going about their act of living, from time to time had their toes stepped on by one another. The King then became to them, that parent to whom they went complainingto whom they went in search of relief. The King, he appointed aids, wise men who would serve as additional ears for these complaints, for how much blabber can one person take? As these complaints kept pouring in, a body of law was slowly forming. A mechanical enacting of cause and effect ensued with each case heard. They became standardised, formalised, and laid downwith differing solutions given to differing problems. And when the matter at hand were the same or similar, same or similar solutions were proffered for them. And just like that, this crucial thing that we call judicial precedent emerged.

As these complaints kept pouring in, judicial precedents kept piling up, a system of courts and hierarchies thereof began forming. The law did not fall down from heaven unto the laps of the King and heads of the people of Britain. Rather, the law was formed from the very ground upfrom experience, from the peopleday in, day out. So, it is apt that this legal system is dubbed the common law system. A system which, with colonisation, interestingly by these same English people (former colonisees themselves) spread to a vast majority of the world our own country inclusive.

This cramped up reading into the history of our common law system reveals this fact: the sheer power and importance of the courts. The courts predate the law itself. In the common law family, a system of which we form a part, the law emanated from the courts. The courts, they orchestrated, decided upon what the law ought to be. We owe the law what it is now to the courts. The courts, they are a powerful thingpowerful thing, I tell you.

If we are to contrast the present with history, what we discover is that the courts was in the past, the executive, the legislature, and judiciary all combined. This demonstration of the courts power is a demonstration first of their sheer responsibility. But of course, as the centuries went by, realising the indispensable abuse such enormous power ultimately wields in the bearer, the concept of separation of powers emerged. Yet, this power and privilege of having the law resting in their bosoms remains intact. In interpreting the law, the courts in the end become the ultimate determiner of what the law is. Such power! This is a power to be guarded, guided, and scrutinised jealously.

The Facts at Hand

Let us for a moment strip ourselves off the knowledge of the matter at hand. The very contentious political background that led one Justice Abdulai to bring the matter of the voting rights of the Deputy Speaker before the Supreme Court, praying that this superior court exercises its power and original jurisdiction of Constitutional interpretation as donned it by Articles 2 and 130 of the 1992 Constitution.

We know that there has been some sort of musical chairs wahala ensuing in Parliament, concerning specifically, the passing of a new lawthe e-levy law. This is a very contentious subject matter. Because more taxes for well-fed people are controversial; how much more same, for a hungry group of people? So, blinded by this infamous e-levy bill, how are we to see the law clearly? Especially when the law itself, in this case, is not in its most literal of formsarguably.

But for these few minutes today, and next week in fact, let us strip ourselves off this infamous background, and attempt deciphering for ourselves, the law as it really is (or as it really intends to be, at least). Today, you and I are going to comb through the lawwith you being the judge. You might just find yourself agreeing with the Supreme Court. You might on the other hand find yourself disagreeing with its ruling. But wherever you stand on these two polar ends, you might just leave with the respect of the Court still preservedor new respect for it attained.

You Be The Jury

Article 102 of the Constitution reads, A quorum of Parliament, apart from the person presiding, shall be one-third of all the members of Parliament.

Article 104(1) says, Except as otherwise provided in this Constitution, matters in Parliament shall be determined by the votes of the majority of members present and voting, with at least half of all the members of Parliament present.

These two provisions undoubtedly make reference to some forms of quorum. And it would be rather repetitive and contradictory if these two were talking about the exact same thing, wouldnt it? It is clear that the latter (Article 104(1)) is making reference to a voting quorum. It stipulates the quorum required to be attained before a voting on a matter can be said to have been undertaken and a decision passed in Parliament. Article 102, on the other hand, talks about the quorum required so that the ordinary business of Parliament can be said to have been carried out. These two provisions quite clearly, we iterate, cannot be concerning the same thing. But it is the personnel stated in these two differing articles that causes some contentions. Because Article 104(2) comes in right after (1) declaring, The Speaker shall have neither an original nor casting vote.

Article 102 uses the phrase the person presiding when talking about the quorum required for business of Parliament, while Article 104(2) uses the word, the proper noun, the Speaker when touching on the exclusion to voting rights as established in Article 104(1).

You are right in asking if the Speaker in Article 104(2) is solely in reference to the Speaker properly-so-called, or extends to include any person presiding, in which case the Deputy Speaker of Parliament would fall under this restrictive Article 104(2).

You are right in pointing out the fact that if Article 104(2) wanted the Speaker included, it would have used such expression as used under Article 102the expression the person presiding.

You are right in thinking, if the Constitution intended to preserve the voting right of the Deputy when acting as Speaker, it would have expressly stated so, and not left us with these wordings that give wiggle room for differing interpretations.

But then again, you are right in pointing to Order 108(3) of Parliaments Standing Orders which expressly state, A Deputy Speaker or any other member presiding shall not retain his original vote while presiding as being all the decisive pronouncement we could ever ask for.

Orders 108(1) and (2) of the Standing Orders are very much a strict adherence to Articles 104(1) and (2) of the Constitution. But we have in Order 108(3) what might be deemed a variance. But that is with good reason. Because, as indicated, the Constitution clearly did not expressly provide for the voting rights of the Deputy Speaker during his/her brief ascension to the Speakers seat in the latters absence. The keyword here is expressly. At least, this was an omission the enactors of the Standing Orders saw in the Constitution and sought to remedy, so they expressly provided, A Deputy Speaker or any other member presiding shall not retain his original vote while presiding. Lets fully come back to the Standing Orders later (maybe next week even). For now, lets attempt dissecting the Supreme Courts ruling, as we wait for forever for the law report.

On Interpretation

Interpretation of the law lies with the courts. This is one of the many babas Ghanaian students have had to chew in their lifetime. It goes: the legislature enacts the law; the judiciary interprets it; and the executive enforces the law. This is a very crucial babaan expatiation into the doctrine of separation of powers; a legal, political, and sociological doctrine that sees to the democratic running of societyto ensure that all power is not centralised in one person or groups of persons.

And in interpreting the law, the judiciary, having dedicated itself in study of the lawso much so that in nations of countless citizens of numerous, differing professions, this group dub themselves the learned, as though the rest are all unlearneduses certain tools to aid its interpretations. The judiciary in interpreting the law does not go in consultation of the lawmaker (i.e. the legislative arm. i.e., Parliament) to derive meaning. Because that would be quite redundant, wouldnt it? For this whole separation of powers thing, it would be quite redundant for the judiciary in interpreting the law to go back to the legislature to ask for meaning. That would mean giving the legislative arm too much power. It may twist and turn the law as it pleases if it is given the pleasure of not only enacting the law, but interpreting it too. And a law twisted and turned by the legislature with that much ease would mean a twisted-and-turned enforcement by the executive. Because the executive, they enforce the lawas enacted and interpreted.

In interpreting the law, the courts look for the literal meaning of enacted provisions, if there are any. If a thing is expressly stated, the Courts are bound by the words as statedall things being equal. Things get more dicey, however, when the law is stated but is ambiguously so, or when the law is unambiguous yet leads to absurd conclusions when interpreted just the way it is, or when the law seems not stated at all, etc. Lets remember, the courts are not sheep that they may go obediently with the law even if it leads to absurd conclusions.

That is why in interpreting the law the courts may do so purposively. In interpreting the law, the Supreme Court does not only look to the letter of the law, but its spirit too. Because the lawthe Constitution to bootis an organic instrument capable of growth. Its essence exceeds its physical form. The ultimate end of any good law is to ensure free, fair, just results. But one persons justice is anothers injustice, no? Quite easily, we the people of this earth can find ourselves on differing ends of almost every spectrum.

A Seat and a Vote: Purposively or Purposelessly?

That is why it becomes particularly chaotic when we get on our hands provisions like these, that speak in half tongues, leaving room for us all to impute our own meanings. For instance, seeking to reconcile articles 102 and 104, a person may cite Article 97(1)(b) of the Constitution, regarding the terms of office of MPs, which states A member of Parliament shall vacate his seat in Parliament if he is elected as Speaker of Parliament and argue that in stripping the Deputy Speaker off his/her vote when he/she temporarily ascends to the thrown of the Speaker would be like arguing that in so doing he/she has been elected as Speaker of Parliament hence must lose his/her seattheir duty as MP of a constituency. One can further state that had the lawmaker intended stripping the Deputy Speaker of his/her vote (by implication, their seat), it would have listed such instances when they temporarily take the seats of Speaker, under Article 97 as one of such instances where they shall be made to vacate their seats (in this case, their vote).

But a lay person can counter by saying that such an assertion may just be too much of a stretch, pointing to the heading of that particular provision which reads Tenure of Office of Members as reason why. They may argue that a Deputy Speakers temporary ascension to Speakership does not particularly qualify as matter to be treated under tenure of office of members. Whereupon the former may counter this countering by saying that in interpreting the law the Courts do not look to mere headings of provisions as guides to deriving meaning, and that it is in fact the case that should the temporary ascension to Speakership by the Deputy have been intended as stripping them off their vote, this would have been provided for under Article 97(1)(b) as cause for them losing their seats as MPstemporarily.

One may win or lose this Article 97(1)(b) round.

Or one may refer to dissecting the matter of purpose even further. Does a Deputy Speaker, acting as Speaker, get to vote and then rule on the vote just had? How can ones decision be trusted and regarded as having adhered to the laws end of fairness and justness, if they who just voted on a subject matter, get to decide on the outcome of said vote? On the other polar end, an opponent may also come in with this purposive argument: does a Deputy Speaker (being a representative of an entire constituency of people) lose the opportunity of speaking for his/her constituency merely because he/she has, for a few minutes or hours, ascended to acting in anothers stead?

You see, in arguing purposively, none of these two opposing teams have argued stupidly.

Lets Try Literal

If in arguing purposively we have each brought to the table very cogent reasons, lets try our hands again at literal interpretation. Those who are for the Deputy Speaker losing their votes will quickly refer us to Order 108(3) which clearly states and strips the Deputy off his voting right when acting in the Speakers stead. Damning, damning!this provision. This subordinate legislation, as enacted by Parliament per the power vested in it by Article 110 of the Constitution which reads, Subject to the provisions of this Constitution, Parliament, may, by standing orders, regulate its own procedure has done what the Constitution itself failed to do. It has filled the gap that existed in the sovereign law of the land.

Yet, the other person will come in with the phrases the person presiding in Article 102 and the Speaker in Article 104(2) as clear indication that by using general words in the former, but a proper noun in the latter, the latter sought to restrict its restriction only to The Speaker properly so-called. Hence, they would argue strongly that the Constitution is indeed clear on the point: the Deputy Speaker retains their vote. Worse, they would go on to cite Article 1(2) which says, This Constitution shall be the supreme law of Ghana and any other law found to be inconsistent with any provision of this Constitution shall, to the extent of the inconsistency, be void to support their case. They may also refer to this same Article 110 (Subject to the provisions of this Constitution, Parliament may, by standing orders, regulate its own procedure) and argue that a combined reading of Article 102 and 104(2) show clearly that the Constitution did in fact make provision for the matter of the Deputys voting right when acting as Speaker, hence renders Order 108(3) ultra vires, hence voidbecause it wasnt so enacted, subject to the provisions of the Constitution.

Even in arguing quite literally (arguably), you can also say that none of these two have argued stupidly.

At this point we all seem to be right, so whos wrong?

Your Honour, have you made up your mind yet? Are you ready to make a pronouncement? Or should we adjourn the case to next week?

[Published in the Business & Financial Times (B&FT) - 23rd March 2022]
The ECOWAS Community Court of Justice has awarded a cost of $750 against Ghana for wasting its time in a suit filed against Government of Ghana over the controversial Agyapa deal.

This translates to about GH5,611.33 at current exchange rates.

Transparency International (GI), Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII), and the Ghana Anti-Corruption Coalition (GACC) sued the Ghana Government before the ECOWAS Court over the botched controversial Agyapa deal.

The three anti-graft institutions filed the suit in July last year, questioning the Government's move to collateralise the country's gold without active engagement and consultation with Ghanaians, the true owners of the mineral resource.

They are thus praying the Court to pull the brakes on the deal and for the Ghana Government to follow due process in broaching the deal.

The Akufo-Addo Administration received intense public backlash on the deal led by civil society, compelling it to withdraw the deal. Strong indications however remained that the deal would be revisited.

When the case was called in the ECOWAS External Court session in Accra on Wednesday, March 23, 2022, a Chief State Attorney, Dorothy Afriyie Ansah told the Court that the Ghana Government needed one week to enable it to respond to the plaintiffs' response to their filed defense.

Counsel for the plaintiffs, Olumide Babalola however did not take kindly to the prayer.

He lamented that the Ghana Government has had over one year to file all the necessary responses, and wondered why Ghana was now asking for an adjournment to enable it to respond. He told the court that it was an inconvenience to his side since they had to rebook hotels and change their flights. Consequently, Mr. Babalola said he had no option but to ask for a cost of one thousand dollars against the Ghana Government.

Counsel for the Ghana Government, Dorothy Afriyie Ansah, however, pleaded with the Court to reduce the cost to four hundred dollars ($400). She explained that the delay was not occasioned by the office of the Attorney General, but by her absence due to an ailment she suffered.

President of the Court, Hon. Edward Amoako Asante, not impressed with the explanation, wondered why no other lawyer took up the case in her absence.

He said that the Court was in Ghana for the sole purpose of the cases and did not have the luxury of such adjournments.

The Community Court further ordered the Ghana Government to file all the necessary documents by Monday, March 28, 2022, for the case to be heard on Wednesday, March 30, 2022.

---Citinewsroom
A Ghana Immigration Service (GIS) officer stationed at the Hamile Border post in the Upper West Region has been shot dead by unidentified persons.

Assistant Immigration Control Officer 1 (AICO I) Michael Ekow Otoo who was with the Hamile detachment of Operation Conquest Fist was shot at about 5AM on Tuesday, March 22, 2022 in Kokoligu-Bekyiiteng, a community in the Nandom Municipality.

He met his untimely death while on night duty patrolling the border with Burkina Faso.

Preliminary investigations revealed that the officer had six gunshots from the rear by his attackers largely suspected to be smugglers.

His family which got the news of his death on social media is demanding justice for Assistant Immigration Control Officer 1 Otoo.

The family is in a dilemma about breaking the news to Assistant Immigration Control Officer 1 Otoos wife, Abigail who was hospitalised two days before the sad incident and is yet to be informed.

Assistant Immigration Control Officer 1 Otoo and the wife have a daughter who is one and half years old.

A community member who spoke on condition of anonymity explained that they heard a gunshot at about 5am.

We heard the gun shot. We didnt know someone was shot. Later in the day, we heard one of the Immigration officers on patrol was shot and killed. This route is one of the many unapproved routes highly used by smugglers to cross into Burkina Faso, he said.

Assistant Immigration Control Officer 1 Otoo was using an all-terrain vehicle (squad bike) during his patrols when he was shot and killed and his body dumped under a bridge and the bike and his uniform kept under tree shrubs.

The Regional GIS Command, in a statement said that at about 6:15pm on Tuesday, March 22, 2022, the Nandom Police Command picked information that an Immigration Service Personnel was shot dead at Kokoligu, a village between Nandom and Hamile.

Preliminary investigations revealed that the officer had six gunshots from the rear by his attackers largely suspected to be smugglers.

It was further established that the fallen officer might have had a struggle with his assailants preceding his slain.

His body was hidden under a bridge whilst his motorbike and helmet found some 100 meters away from his remains, the statement read.

The body of Assistant Immigration Control Officer 1 Otoo has been deposited at the St. Theresas Hospital in Nandom awaiting doctors report.

The statement added that the weapon of the slain officer was taken away from him by the assailants.

Meanwhile, Officers of the GIS, Defense Intelligence and Police are calling for calm and asking the general public to volunteer information that will lead to the apprehension of the culprits.

In March, 2020, an Immigration Officer with the Hamile border post was also shot at by smugglers and had to be flown to the 37 military Hospital for urgent medical attention.
Mr. Richster Nii Amarh Amarfio, Secretary of the Ghana Tuna Association (GTA) has called on the government to create artificial reefs to help save the countrys fishing industry as it is one of the many tools used by marine conservationists to protect fish stock.

Mr Amarfio noted that the reefs could be made from a variety of natural or synthetic materials to provide a stable growing area and habitat for fishes where they could migrate to lay their eggs and replenish.

He said another tool was also to reduce the huge number of canoes and trawlers on Ghanas seas disclosing that it was unacceptable to have over 4,000 canoes chasing the dwindling stock saying that even though the sea does not dry, the fishes in Ghanas side was getting finished and if care was not taken the industry would collapse.

Mr. Amarfio, who is also the Director of Operations for Laif Fisheries, stated at the Ghana News Agency-Tema Regional Industrial News Hub Boardroom Dialogue, which is a media think-tank platform for commercial and business operators to communicate to the world monitored by Communication for Development and Advocacy Consult (CDA Consult).

Speaking on recent developments in the fishing industry, Mr. Amarfio called on the authorities in the fisheries industry to involve interested parties in the sector during deliberations, the old notion that players in the industry are unlearned therefore others must make decisions for them is long past.

We now have people with high professional qualifications, but chose to work in the fishing industry, now we have people with doctorates who are fishermen, we must therefore invite them to the table for discussion for the development of the industry, Amarfio stated.

Mr. Amarfio noted that the only way to take control of the fishing industry is through pragmatic enforcement of laws, training of seamen, and other key players in the sector.

The Director of Operations for Laif Fisheries explained that the fishery industry globally has measures to monitor, control, and surveillance to ensure compliance to fishery management procedures.

He, therefore, called on the Ministry of Fisheries and Aquaculture to activate its monitoring role to gather information on the fishery sector to assist in developing and accessing appropriate management measures.

Mr. Francis Ameyibor, the Ghana News Agency, Tema Regional Manager, urged the media to upscale the blue economy reportage to ensure that operations on the ocean do not remain there.

He said modern journalism practices demanded a comprehensive dynamic approach to issues that affected society, through which the media must provide a platform for proactive engagement and exchange of ideas towards shaping national development.

Mr. Ameyibor said: We have progressed from docile journalistic practices where media practitioners depend solely on projecting agenda set by others. Journalists cannot claim to be agenda setters when they are only mirroring what someone wants them to project.
Techiman Municipal Assembly has supported 59 Persons living with Disabilities (PWDs) with logistics and cash to empower them economically.

The Persons living with disability were drawn from Ghana Society with Physical Disability, Society of Intellectual Disability and Ghana National Association of the Deaf has received 94,788 as part of their share of the District Assembly Common Fund (DACF).

As part of the total figure about Ghc15,200 was used to purchase logistics including water pumping machines, fufu pounding machines, refrigerators among others for the PWDS.

An amount of Ghc57,553 was given out to the PWDS to support them in education, health, petty trade while Ghc25,028 was also used to renovate their offices and organization support.

Mr Solomon Amaning Acting Director at the Techiman Municipal Social Welfare and Community Development disclosed this on Tuesday at Techiman during the disbursement of the logistical support to the PWDs.

Mr Amaning noted that the disbursement covers the 4th quarter of 2020 and 50 percent of first quarter 2021, 41 people received cash amounts while 18 people received items to help improve their socio-economic lives among others.

Mr Benjamin Yaw Gyarko, Techiman Municipal Chief Executive (MCE) noted that government was committed to promoting the welfare of persons with disability, however these efforts were to empower them so they could meet societal demands.

Mr Gyarko indicated that aside this, government has implemented many social interventions such as National Health Insurance registration for PWDs, Planting for Food and Jobs, Rearing for Food and Jobs and support from the district assembly common fund.

He urged the beneficiaries to use the cash and logistics judiciously so as to elevate them from their current predicament. Use these support to empower yourself so you will not turn back to say government has not been supportive, he stressed.

The MCE hinted that the Assembly would continue to monitor and supervise the use of items to ensure they are being used for their intended purpose

Madam Mary Akua received a water pumping machine for her farm, Madam Abena Saah received 30 bags of cement for the construction of her provision store, Mr Hudu Dabanga received fufu pounding machine while Mr Johnson Dufia received a refrigerator for his cold store business while others also received various items.

Madam Georgina Afrah, a representative for the Ghana Federation of the Disability Group on the common fund committee commended government for listening to the plight of the PWDs and supporting them.

She added that they would use the items to improve their lives.
Some Members of Parliament from the Kusaug Traditional area in the Upper East Region are demanding an immediate interdiction of three police personnel for their alleged involvement in the killing of a 37-year-old man, Issahaku Abdulai.

The three policemen are alleged to have broken into the house of the deceased at Buabula during a swoop and shot him to death.

Speaking to Citi News, during a fact-finding mission, Member of Parliament for the Bawku Central constituency, Mahama Ayariga, described the conduct of the three police officers as unprofessional and must be sanctioned.

He further demanded compensation for residents whose property were vandalized by security personnel in the area.

The police went into a house and pulled out somebody and shot him in the presence of his wife. They want justice, and I explained to them that we have already taken up the matter with the Regional Police Command. We have reported to the Military and the Divisional Command. They said there were three police officers that came to the house, so we are insisting that all the three officers should be interdicted and investigated to ascertain what exactly happened.

At least over 14 people have lost their lives and several others including three military personnel injured.

The mission of the MPs among others is to ascertain the extent of damage caused by the disturbances and deliberate on measures to bring lasting peace to the area .

Leader of the delegation and Member of Parliament for Zebilla, Cletus Avoka said we don't blame the army. We don't blame anybody. We want to come and find out what triggered the attacks.

He stressed that their priority was peace in the area.

If there is no peace, there can be no development and as Members of Parliament, we are committed to the peace of the area.

Recent tensions in the area have led to multiple arrests following some acts of violence.

The tensions can be traced to December 27, 2021, when there was gunfire in parts of the town after attempts to perform the final funeral rites of a Chief who died about 41 years ago.

The violence resulted in a curfew being placed on the entire township, a ban on smock-wearing, and a ban on the use of motorbikes.

The government has said it is engaging the National Peace Council to find a lasting solution to the disturbances that have characterized Bawku in the past few months.

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo had urged the feuding factions in the Bawku chieftaincy dispute to ceasefire and dialogue.

citinewsroom
The leadership of the Majority Caucus in Parliament has dispelled rumours that they have an agenda against fellow MP Sarah Adwoa Safo, who has failed to be present in the House for more than two months.

According to Majority Chief Whip, Frank Annoh-Dompreh, the leadership of the Caucus has nothing against the Minister of Gender, Children and Social Protection to warrant her refusal to pick up their phone calls or respond to their numerous text and WhatsApp messages.

Mr Annoh-Dompreh, who is the MP for Nsawam-Adoagyire in the Eastern Region, revealed, for instance, that Adwoa Safo was the first to call to congratulate him on his appointment as Majority Chief Whip and, so, he harbours no ill feelings against her.

Annoh, you deserve it, the Majority Chief Whip recalled Adwoa Safo saying, adding: This is how far Adwoa Safo and I have come and, so, there is no way I will have anything against her person or her office.

Mr Annoh-Dompreh said he, therefore, finds it very befuddling that Ms Safo has cut off the leadership of the Majority Caucus by not responding to their correspondence.

She does not respond to her calls and WhatsApp messages, he revealed.

We have all served the party at both lower and higher levels but if the way Adwoa Safo is treating the party was the way our forebears treated the party, then there would have been no NPP by now, he argued.

Mr Annoh-Dompreh warned that if care is not taken, everybody in the NPP will give up on Adwoa Safo and nobody will be willing to dabble in her affairs.

The Majority Chief Whip wondered why Ms Safo has abandoned parliament at this critical time when the NPP needs every single member to be on the floor to enable the Majority Caucus to pass the e-levy in the 137-137 hung parliament.

It is the party that made her who she is today, Mr Annohn-Dompreh pointed out, adding that President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has honoured her with one of the highest positions in his government, so what else does she want from the party.

Is this the way to pay back the government that has honoured you? he asked.

If even the party has committed a crime against you, is this the best way to treat it by making the party suffer in parliament? he wondered.

He was of the view that Adwoa Safo is making a very big mistake.

Mr Annoh-Dompreh made these comments on Accra-based Neat FMs morning show.

Source: Classfmonline.com
Three of the 14 persons who were crashed and burnt in a road accident at Komenda-Sefwi on Tuesday afternoon have been identified by their relatives at the Cape Coast Teaching Hospital (CCTH) as of 1100 hours, on Wednesday.

The driver of the Ford bus is among the dead.

The Public Relations Officer of the CCTH, Mr Fredrick Nyankah, said all those identified were females.

He said relatives of the Chinese national said to be among the victims could, however, not identify him because of the state of the bodies.

The regional criminal investigative team, would, therefore, take over to conduct a forensic test to identify him.

The Central Regional Police Command has given the assurance that the identification processes were underway to Identify all the victims.

Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Irene Serwaah Oppong, told the Ghana News Agency that her outfit was receiving calls from relatives and was ready to assist all families to exhaust the processes.

The driver and the mate of the Tipper truck who sustained injuries are responding to treatment at the Cape Coast Teaching Hospital.

On Tuesday, March 22, at about 1345 hours, some 14 passengers of a Ford bus from Tarkwa to Accra were crashed to death on when a tipper truck from the opposite direction lost one of its front tyres and collided with their vehicle.

The out-of-control vehicle veered into the reverse lane at Asemasa, near Komenda-Sefwi, and the two vehicles were set ablaze, burning all the occupants of the Ford bus beyond recognition.

The tipper truck loaded with stones was from Saltpond heading towards Takoradi.

GNA
The Executive Director of the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA), Sulemana Braimah has lambasted Members of Parliament, particularly those who continually absent themselves from sitting.

Last Friday, the house could not approve a 20 million agreement between the government of Ghana and the German Development Bank Group, Frankfurt, due to the lack of quorum.

During proceedings, talks on the agreement were concluded for a motion to be filed for its approval.

With more than 120 MPs reportedly absent that day, the motion for the approval of the agreement had to be dropped.

Taking to his social media page today, Sulemana Braimah has lashed out at MPs insisting that they must stop playing with the future of this country.

According to him, MPs must know that they were not elected to go to parliament to serve their partisan interests.

"Our MPs must stop playing with Ghana's future. We didn't elect them for narrow partisan interests. How can a House of 275 MPs not have a decision-making quorum of 138 MPs for a number of sittings, a post on the Twitter page of the MFWA boss page reads.

Read the full post in the attachment below:
A Zongo group has asked government to intervene and stop discrimination against people within Zongo communities in the acquisition of identity documents.

According to the group, which calls itself the Concerned Zongo Citizens of Ghana, although a number of ethnic groups within Zongos have legal Ghanaian citizenship, they are perceived as aliens and allegedly denied these national identification documents.

Many Ghanaians are currently registering for the Ghana Card as it slowly becomes the most important form of identification in the country.

Speaking at a press conference, the spokesperson of the group, Haruna Maiga, complained that it is appalling that tribes such as Hausas, Fulanis who have been in Ghana since pre-colonial times suffer such discrimination.

Getting an ECOWAS card, voters ID card, passport, and others to enable us to perform Hajj, for example, is a very difficult task for many of our people.

It seems the 1992 constitution which guarantees the fundamental human rights of every Ghanaians does not apply to us, Haruna Maiga lamented.

He said these concerns had persisted despite formal attempts at redress.

We have sent countless petitions to all those who matter to help stem the tide of discrimination against Zongo people in this regard, but the problems still persist.

By Citi Newsroom
A fire on Wednesday badly damaged a main bridge in Nigeria's commercial capital Lagos, razing dozens of shops and risking more traffic chaos, the emergency services and witnesses said.

The blaze broke out during an extended nationwide electricity shortage, which along with a spike in global fuel prices is already hurting households and businesses in Africa's largest economy.

"The blaze gutted the Eko bridge. A section of the bridge at Apongbon in Ebute Ero was affected. The bridge has been physically damaged," Ibrahim Farinloye of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) told AFP.

Many small businesses and shops operate around and under parts of the bridge. By Benson Ibeabuchi AFP

Eko bridge is one of three flyovers linking mainland Lagos to the upscale and business districts on the islands of the city which sits between a lagoon and the Atlantic Ocean.

Many small businesses and shops operate around and under parts of the bridge.

"Lots of shops have gone," Farinloye said, adding that traders selling baking materials and ingredients were mostly affected.

Eko bridge is one of three flyovers linking mainland Lagos to the upscale and business districts. By Benson Ibeabuchi AFP

Farinloye said no one was hurt in the incident but due to the damage to the bridge, authorities would have to conduct integrity tests to see if the flyover can reopen.

Rukayat Balogun, a market leader, said a sudden surge of electricity caused the fire.

"We have not had light for six days. So when they brought the light around two am, there was a spark that caused the fire," she said, showing AFP burnt wires and cables at the scene.

Locals said a sudden surge of electricity caused the fire. By Benson Ibeabuchi AFP

Oil-producer Nigeria has suffered nation-wide blackouts in the past few weeks, with homes and businesses forced to rely on fuel-powered generators to keep the lights and power on.

The cost of diesel, gas and fuel have gone up, in part due to the Russia-Ukraine war which has also distorted global supplies of grains and petroleum products.

Nigeria is Africa's biggest oil producer, but the country imports the bulk of its fuel for domestic use due its current lack of fully functioning refineries.
The UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, has reprimanded private sector entities funding coal.

He considers them as stupid investments.

Mr. Guterres, in a tweet, said that private sector entities still funding coal projects must be held accountable.

The first report by the IPCC Working Group 1 indicated that human activities have caused climate change.

According to the IPCC, without a reduction in carbon emissions, the world heads into self-destruction with an increase in global temperature.

Currently, the UN and various governments have agreed to limit emissions to 1.5 global temperature.

He further added that we are sleepwalking to climate catastrophe. Our planet has already warmed by as much as 1.2 degrees  and we see the devastating consequences everywhere. We need a 45% reduction in global emissions by 2030 and carbon neutrality by mid-century to keep our climate goals alive.

citinewsroom
The Alliance for Social Equity and Public Accountability (ASEPA), has written to the Inspector General of Police, Dr. George Akuffo Dampare, over a recent publication in the Daily Guide newspaper that alleged that the Speaker of Parliament, Alban Bagbin, had requested an additional US$50,000 spending money while on his medical trip in Dubai.

According to ASEPA, the report amounts to the publication of false and malicious publications which is punishable under Ghanas laws.

It said the police must fairly apply the countrys law to the editors of the Daily Guide newspaper just as it was applied to many other persons including its Executive Director, Mensah Thompson.

ASEPA is only calling for the laws of the country to be applied equally to the editors of the Daily Guide Newspaper just as it has been applied to persons alleged to have made False and Malicious Statements against certain persons in government including the Executive Director of ASEPA who was arrested and detained for over 48 hours for similar publications, it said in a statement.

The Daily Guide Newspaper earlier this month reported that the speaker had requested an additional $50,000 from parliament for his trip to Dubai, but parliament in a statement said the report is false and must be ignored.

ASEPA said the editors of Daily Guide must be taken on for the report which ASEPA says is false, but the newspaper has refused to issue a rejoinder.

In recent times, the Officer of the Speaker has had to deny a similar report by the Daily Guide against the Speaker.

Office of the Speaker denies appointing 'NDC man' as acting Speaker

The office of the Speaker on March 14, 2022, issued a disclaimer following a publication in the 'Daily Guide' newspaper dated March 11, 2022, that the Rt. Hon. Speaker, Alban Bagbin has appointed an NDC man, Kofi Attor as acting Speaker.

Read the full statement below: ASEPA PETITIONS IGP OVER FALSE AND MALICIOUS PUBLICATIONS AGAINST THE SPEAKER OF PARLIAMENT BY EDITORS OF THE DAILY GUIDE NEWSPAPER

ASEPA has this morning filed a complaint with the IGP over malicious publications by Editors of the Daily Guide Newspapers against the Speaker of Parliament.

Among other things ASEPA has included copies of a series False and Malicious publications by Daily Guide specifically concocted to court public disaffection for the Speaker of Parliament.

ASEPA is only calling for the laws of the Country to be applied equally to the editors of the Daily Guide Newspaper just as it has been applied to persons alleged to have made False and Malicious Statements against certain persons in Government including the Executive Director of ASEPA who was arrest and detained over 48hours for similar publications.

It must be noted that our checks at the office of the Speaker revealed that several attempts to get the Daily Guide to issue a rejoinder over their false and malicious publications against the Speaker of Parliament has all proven futile.

ASEPA is therefore employing the Police to eschew selectivity and apply the laws of this Country irrespective of whose ox may be gored.

---Citinewsroom
Morning show host for Onua FM Captain Smart has taken the Council of State to the cleaners on Wednesday morning after its pledge to cut monthly allowances by 20 percent until the end of the year.

The Onua Maakye host said God will punish all members of the Council from the Chairman, Nana Otuo Siriboe II, to the least member for their actions.

After a meeting with President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo at the Jubilee House on Tuesday, March 22, Nana Siriboe II, on behalf of the members, offered to cut their allowances in order to help mitigate the economic crisis in the country.

Mr President, over the past few weeks, the Council has been deliberating on the current economic conditions of the country and have been collecting views with the view to sharing with you as early as possible, he said.

As we were going through our routines, you and your cabinet were at a retreat over the same issues. Since [Monday], we have been fed with snippet of information regarding some of the decisions that you have made.

We are particularly delighted to read that you and your cabinet have decided to reduce some of your emoluments and your allowances. Mr President, in tandem with your decision we as Council of State had also decided that we will reduce our monthly allowances by 20 per cent until the end of this year.

But the radio host said this move by the Council is just populist and instigated by the Akufo-Addo-led government to plunder the state coffers further.

He called the government names and said it has nothing to offer Ghanaians anymore.

They are all thieves with a capital T.

He asked that if the Council is indeed committed to assisting to solve the economic crises, the members should park their V8s at orphanages to show they care.

---3news.com
The Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) in Kumasi, has invested an amount of GH30 million to provide ultra-modern equipment and retool its entire operations.

This has helped to revamp the operations of the hospital, the second-largest referral facility in the country built resilience in its quest to provide quality, affordable and accessible healthcare.

Dr Oheneba Owusu-Danso, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of KATH, said these at the hospital's 2021 Performance Review meeting in Kumasi.

The theme for the meeting was, Building a resilient and affordable healthcare system; the role of Teaching Hospitals and the Healthcare Practitioner.

The meeting afforded participants the platform to formally and comprehensively access the collective performance of the various directorates and units, against set targets and devise strategies to address the challenges.

It also gave them the opportunity to introduce the new board to the staff of KATH.

Dr Owusu-Danso pointed out that the new equipment were making a remarkable difference in the ability to provide a broader range of specialist care to the public and training of healthcare professionals in the country.

He mentioned some of the units, which were renovated and retooled as the maternity block, the KATH guest house, reconstruction and asphalting of the hospital's roads and car parks, the construction of a paediatric care unit and the construction of a four-story building for officers.

Additionally, some of the machines purchased were Surgical Plants, two Oxygen plants with various accessories, an Electroconvulsive Therapy machine, Endoscopic suits for medical directorates, 128 slice Siemens CT scan and UV - VIS Spectrophotometer.

According to the CEO, the hospital also witnessed an appreciable increase in all clinical performance and other related indicators.

He said building a resilient healthcare system needed the right investment for health institutions, staff motivation and welfare as well as the creation of enabling environment for research, innovation, and learning.

He said the hospital's management with the support of other stakeholders were committed to the enhancement of the hospital's resilience and by extension, the healthcare system of the country.

Dr Emmanuel Odame Ankrah, Director for Policy Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation (PPME), at the Ministry of Health (MOH), said the vision of KATH rightly falls in place with that of the President, Nana Addo Dankwah Akufo  Addo's vision.

It is the President's vision that the country becomes a medical tourism hub in the West African sub-region and beyond, he added.

He added that healthcare was a human right issue regardless of socio-economic status and that Ghanaians must not be denied healthcare due to the cost.

Dr Ankrah said the Universal Health Coverage could be achieved by promoting Public-Private Partnerships, adding that, relationship in healthcare was also key, and stressed the need for health workers to have a good relationship with patients for them to have trust in them.

GNA
23.03.2022 LISTEN

Many Ghanaians beginning to skew fashion preferences from European to African Clothing, Ms. Saada Mahmud, Chief Executive Officer, Sahas Creation has said, stressing more people opt for dresses made from African cloths over that of imported.

Ms. Mahmud in an interview with the CDA Consult at Tema said that many Ghanaians and some foreigners have recognized and beginning to appreciate the fashionable designs that could be sewn with African print and were therefore going for that.

She noted that African cloths are currently being used to sew wedding gowns, suits, jumpsuits, the traditional kaba and slit, office wear, and trousers among others.

According to her, it was perfectly serving the fashion needs of the public and fit well into peoples self-expression at a particular time, be it for work, leisure, church, wedding, parties, or funerals.

The fashion designer indicated that to bring out the best of styles using the African print, they blend the colours, and motives of the cloths to sew a befitting dress to suit whichever occasion.

She further said they also combine the cloths with appropriate laces, polished cotton, bridal satin, organza, and other plain materials to create styles.

Ms Mahmud noted that the options for the usage of African prints were enormous, indicating that it has been used for earrings, bangles, necklaces, fascinators, shoes, hats, slippers, bags, clutches, many others.

She said the current prices of African prints on the markets were affordable and therefore urged all especially the youth to express themselves through African clothes.

She noted that they must not only imitate their Western peers but must help tell the story of the Ghanaian and African origin through the dresses they wear irrespective of their religious affiliation.

She said the youth could even learn on their own how to use the African print to meet their unique needs by following the numerous step-by-step video lessons taught by fashion college professors online.

This, she noted included how to make clothes by learning draping, pattern making, art, sewing, and how to dress, noting that they could build their confidence and self-esteem through the fashion statement they make.

Source: CDA Consult
World Water Day has been celebrated in Obuasi with a call by stakeholders for an increase in public education on the importance of groundwater which is a crucial water resource.

At a grand durbar to climax activities for the celebrations, the Senior Manager- Environment, Anglogold Ashanti Nixon Asante said many people are oblivious of the impact of their activities on groundwater. This he said has compelled Anglogold Ashanti to team up with the Ghana Water Company Limited to initiate a public sensitization drive to drum home the impact of open defecation, illegal mining, spillage of oils and chemicals and indiscriminate land use patterns on groundwater.

This year's World Water day was under the theme " Groundwater- making the invincible visible."

Mr. Asante said Anglogold Ashanti appreciates the importance of groundwater as a primary source of water for most communities within Obuasi hence it has drilled a monitoring borehole for underground water monitoring which enables the company to detect any adverse impact of mining on groundwater.

He again mentioned the programmes Anglogold Ashanti has introduced to mitigate the impact of climate change on water access. He said "as a global mining business, we regard our role in accelerating the transition to a low- carbon economy as crucial. In 2008, AGA announced its initial emission reduction goals ,which it met in 2018. Its carbon intensity has however reduced by 43% and overall emissions have almost halved."

In an interaction with the media at the sidelines of the event, the Senior Manager, Environment dispelled assertion by some people that mining activities of AngloGold Ashanti destroy water bodies. He noted that the company is into responsible mining hence their activities are regulated by institutions like the Environmental Protection Agency will not approve their licenses if their operations are having negative effects on the environment.

Adding her voice to the call for an increase in public sensitization on groundwater, Abena Dufie Wiredu Bremang Principal Officer and Head of Pra Basin Water Resources Commissions said it is important to provide the needed technical knowledge to locate, abstract ,treat and protect groundwater for future generations.

Laurent Piat, Managing Director of Veolia Ghana Limited on his part pledged the company's ongoing efforts to improve access to resources, preserve available resources, and replenish them.

GOVERNMENT IS COMMITTED TO DEALING WITH ILLEGAL MINING TO PROTECT WATER BODIES

Then Municipal Chief Executive for Obuasi Honorable Elijah Adansi-Bonah has reiterated the Government's commitment to deal with illegal mining. He said chemicals used by illegal miners pollutes water bodies which make it unsafe for human consumption.

He noted, " if we do not maintain and protect our water bodies, a time will where we might import water and not all of us will be in the position to afford ".

Nana Amoanimaa Dede II, Adansihemaa in her remarks talked about how to protect groundwater by using water wisely and learning to recycle paper, plastics cardboard glass and other materials.

She again pledged Nananom's commitment to protect and preserve groundwater.

The World Water Day celebration in Obuasi was spearheaded by Anglogold Ashanti Ghana in partnership with Water Resources Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency, Ghana Water Company Limited, Veolia Ghana Limited, Rural Relief Services, the Obuasi Municipal Assembly, the Obuasi East District Assembly, the Ghana Education Service Directorates in Obuasi Municipal and Obuasi East District Assembly.

It is an annual United Nations (UN) observance day held on 22 March that highlights the importance of fresh water. The day is used to advocate for the sustainable management of freshwater resources. The theme of each day focuses on topics relevant to clean water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), which is in line with the targets of Sustainable Development Goal 6.

It was first held in 1993.
Dr. Mustapha Abdul-Hamid, Chief Executive of the National Petroleum Authority(NPA), has assured Ghanaians of government's effort to ameliorate the effect of the rising prices of petroleum products at the pumps in Ghana.

"There is going to be heavy sacrifices on the part of government, NPA and everybody so that together, we can move our country forward," he added.

The CEO intimated that the total amount of tax that goes to central government on a litre of fuel is around 1.90 cedis which may not be that significant to the individual consumers given the recent frequent rising cost of fuel on the international market.

On the flip side, he said " this, will be a huge revenue lose to government because, that amount to a loss of GHc 4 billion and over on government revenue side yet, everybody wants their road to be tarred".

Dr Mustapha Abdul-Hamid however alluded to genuine demands of Ghanaians on government to provide one facility or the other for the people at the time government will be bleeding from its revenue points.

Dr Abdul-Hamid said these when he paid a visit to the Western Regional Minister, Kwabena Okyere Darko-Mensah as part of his familiarization tour in the region.

I am here to familiarize myself with the operations at Atuabo Gas Plant, CEPS among others, he said.

Kwabena Okyere Darko-Mensah, Western Regional Minister was happy about the visit.

He noted that NPA, is known to handle the pricing of petroleum product; the space to manage is difficult especially were we expecting crude oil prices around, $61 and now we are looking at $120 per barrel, it becomes very difficult and a lot of Ghanaians do not seem to know or appreciate.

According to him, all the taxes that government has put in place are very little saying, "You have a problem with such situation, whether to take-off these taxes and stop development or keep it and do development and people will cry.

He added, You should find a way to get our message directly to the people for them to know that in the budget is only 60 but currently, the price is 120. If we decide to go and borrow money or cushion Ghanaians, no matter what, we will still pay! we are going to pay!

Let Ghanaians know how prices are changing and how it is affecting the real price that we need to pay; if you cannot buy the petrol, definitely, there should be alternative to use as it is done in other countries.

Mr. Darko-Mensah continued, We, at a Regional Coordinating Council (RCC) we do acknowledge the problem that you have been encountering, such as illegal bunkering on petroleum product; you need to come and visit these communities and then engage them rather than arresting them so that the other people will know that what they are doing is wrong.

If the NPA dissociate themselves, on this issue it will continue to come up. If you engage and invest in some kind of corporate social responsibility programmes, it will do us a lot of good."

Responding, the NPA Boss announced that this years Consumers Week will be held in Takoradi. So, we will come back and do proper engagement with the people.
23.03.2022 LISTEN

The Executive Editor of Daily Guide, Mr. Fortune Alimi has accused the Executive Director of the Alliance for Social Equity and Public Accountability (ASEPA), Mensah Thompson of trying to always be in the news even when it doesn't merit it.

This is his reaction to a petition filed by the ASEPA boss asking the Inspector General of Police to go after editors of Daily Guide newspaper over some alleged malicious publications against the Speaker of Parliament, Rt. Hon. Alban Bagbin.

READ MORE: https://www.modernghana.com/news/1147119/asepa-drags-daily-guide-editors-before-igp-over.html

Speaking on the matter in an interview with Citi News on Wednesday evening, Mr. Fortune Alimi stressed that it is either Mensah Thompson is running an errand for the Speaker or he is just making himself a busy body.

He himself, he has no facts. But Im not surprised. Dont forget he consults for the Speaker. Mensah Thompson consults for the Speaker. If he is acting on behalf of the Speaker maybe its one of the consultancy jobs that the Speaker might have given to him. Otherwise, he is making himself busy-body or an octopus looking for a story where there is no story, the Executive Editor for Daily Guide shared.

According to him, his outfit is ready and on standby waiting for an invitation from the IGP to answer whatever questions regarding the publication made by his outfit.

We are waiting for the IGP to bring his operatives so that they can come and arrest us because according to ASEPA boss Mensah Thompson he said he was arrested or put behind bars so maybe he is always expecting the same thing. So far nobody has contacted us so we are waiting.

We are standing on something so if the IGP wants to invite us we are ready to honour any invitation from the IGP but he should have his facts before he goes public, Mr. Fortune Alimi noted.

Speaking on the same platform, Mensah Thompson who denied consulting for Speaker Alban Bagbin, described the claim by Mr. Alimi as malicious.

Let me correct some malicious attempts by the Editor of the Daily Guide, I do not consult for the Speaker of Parliament, the ASEPA boss noted.

He questioned why the Daily Guide has refused to publish the extravagant travels of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo but chooses to focus on the Dubai trips of the Speaker of Parliament, Alban Bagbin.

Mensah Thompson said it appears there is a smear campaign to make the Speaker unpopular in the eyes of the public due to his stance on the controversial electronic transaction levy.

We are in this country when the President is consistently spending 15 thousand pounds an hour to rent a jet for sometimes over 36 hours and the state is paying for it. Mr. Alimi has not seen these reckless expenditures and has not consistently published these things to malign the president. There is no aorta of truth in what he has published [about the Speaker].

It looks as if there is a deliberate attempt to court public disaffection for the speaker because of his stance on this E-Levy bill but that cannot be how we continue to practice in this country, Mensah Thomas stressed.

The ASEPA boss further indicated that just like the Police protect the Judiciary and the Executive, some level of protection should be given to the Speaker of Parliament as well.
After facing public outrage over unaccounted loans appearing on the credit reports of people Dhani Loans and Services Ltd (Dhani) has called for a joint action from the digital lending sector to deal with the problem at a systemic level. To begin with, Dhani has requested credit information companies (CICs) like TransUnion CIBIL to send alert messages to customers whenever there is any new enquiry or borrowing in the customer's credit profile. This was a suggestion made by Moneylife Foundation in its interaction with Dhani, over what is essentially identity theft by submitting morphed documents to obtain loans that appear in the books on non-borrowers. ( Read: Ghost Loans by Faulty Fin-tech: Credit Bureaus Should Send Real-time Alert about Change in Credit Reports

In a letter sent to Indian Banks' Association (IBA), Pinank Shah, chief executive officer (CEO) of Dhani, says, "CICs should send out a mobile phone and email alert to individuals when any new enquiry or new borrowing is reported on any one's credit profile. The message should include a number and email to allow people to raise an immediate dispute in case the reporting is incorrect. This would protect individuals by providing immediate information and giving them better control over their credit reports."

Involvement of credit information companies in increasing awareness will help in ensuring that innocent citizens do not suffer from identity thefts and the consequent loss of future credit opportunities, Mr Shah says.

According to him, a centralised system that would cover all four CICs operating in India can be set up, with regulated entities (RE) sharing costs, for the convenience of fast on-boarding while also reducing the incidence of fraud.

"Such a system would help create better awareness, increase transparency, ensure a drastic improvement in grievance redressal, and allow better oversight by the regulator," Mr Shah says.

A few days ago, in a possible identity theft at a mass level, several Indians were left high and dry on discovering unaccounted outstanding loans by Dhani. ( Read: Systemic Issues with KYC Verification Leads to Wrong Credit Disbursal by Dhani and Other Digital Lenders; Urgent Solution Needed

Gagan Banga, the then non-executive director of Dhani Loans and its senior management team, had reached out to Moneylife to say that they have received a total of 162 complaints and each one of these will be resolved and the credit scores corrected.

Moneylife Foundation sent 18 complaints to Dhani. The lender resolved all genuine complaints on a priority basis.

Coming back to the letter sent by the CEO of Dhani, while digital lenders can reach new credit customers in tier 2, 3 and 4 cities, there remain some gaps between process discovery and process improvement. One of these has been the incidence of identity thefts whereby innocent customers are being targeted by fraudsters who avail loans by forging the know-your-customer (KYC) documents.

The mandatory KYC process across lenders in the country is standardised. The borrower can provide documents such as a permanent account number (PAN) card, Aadhaar, voter ID card, passport, and driving licence to verify the name, photo, and address.

However, Dhani says, "using gaps currently existing on account of non-linkages of the Aadhaar database, PAN database and bank accounts; fraudsters have been using tampered documents to avail of loans in other people's name."

The industry uses two modes of KYC verification. One is the more commonly used Aadhaar route which allows users to verify themselves through a one-time password (OTP) sent to their mobile number linked to the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI).

If customers claim that their Aadhaar and phone number are not linked, the loan on-boarding is done by allowing borrowers to upload images of identification documents to complete the KYC process. This leads to fraud because dubious borrowers have been uploading fake and morphed identification documents.

Most people are not aware of credit bureau scores or do not check it regularly. They only get to know of such fraudulent loans when they go to avail loans and are made aware of low credit scores on account of overdue loans.

"The loss for such customers is not only monetary, but their identity is also compromised, and they are at the risk of being targeted by similar scams across other financial institutions. Damaged credit scores will also have a significant impact on their access to credit going forward. Not only customers, but such instances of fraud also has the potential to increase the bad loans of lenders, burgeoning the already existing non-performing asset (NPA) problem for the industry," Dhani says.

According to Mr Shah from Dhani, this problem can be resolved if the industry can work with CICs or credit bureaus and follow the practice adopted by credit card companies to report fraud and disputed transactions.

The CICs collect, collate, and aggregate data from its members, including individual consumers and lending institutions, to provide information related to an individual's credit history and creditworthiness.
While both the Union government and Reserve Bank of India (RBI) emphasise providing education loans to every needy and deserving student, a much more prudent question is: Are the loans reaching the poor, as per the mandate of the education-loan policy to benefit poor students, that has been in place since 2001? Over the past two financial years, prominent public sector banks (PSBs) are falling short of their targets; when the need for the educational loan has increased, the Lok Sabha was informed.

As per the reply given in Lok Sabha, PSBs are allocated educational loan disbursement targets at the bank level, not state-wise or district-wise. SBI (State Bank of India), Canara Bank and PNB (Punjab National Bank) have been leading lenders in this category. However, they are successively falling short of their targets, especially in the past two financial years, when the need for educational loans has increased.

In this regard, Naleen Kumar Kateel, a member of Parliament (MP) has raised questions in Lok Sabha about targets fixed by the government for educational loans and whether the economically weaker sections of society are getting these loans from the banks.

The leading states in sanctioning educational loans in India are: Tamil Nadu (Rs16,302 crore), Kerala (Rs11,051 crore), Maharashtra (Rs8,882 crore), Karnataka (Rs7,965 crore) and Andhra Pradesh (Rs6,190 crore). Together, these five states constitute 55% of outstanding educational loans as of 31 December 2021.

We try to address these questions, some through the answers in the Lok Sabha and some through our research and analysis. According to CRIF High Mark Credit Information Services Pvt Ltd, 90% of education loans are from PSBs by value and volume.

Under the education loan scheme, banks can lend up to Rs7.5 lakh for studies in India and up to Rs15 lakh for studies abroad. For education loans up to Rs4 lakh, no collateral or margin is required, while for loans above that limit, the borrower is required to provide collateral, however, banks are reluctant to lend to this category so the social purpose of helping those students, who are struggling to finance their higher education costs, is lacking.

The Indian Banks Association (IBA) formulated a Model Education Loan Scheme for its member banks in 2015. The RBIs circular on model education loan scheme in 2001 stated that No deserving student is denied an opportunity to pursue higher education for want of financial support.

Rising costs of education is making it difficult for parents to finance childrens education. An MBA from a leading private business school costs upwards of Rs20 lakh. The cost of education in a top Ivy League College is more than US$75,000.

According to a study by management consulting group RedSeer, the spending on overseas education is expected to increase to US$80bn (billion) by 2024.

The increasing cost situation has been exacerbated by the pay cuts and job losses associated with the pandemic. It is estimated that one in five of the students found it difficult to cover their fees, even after being in college for a year. Education being a key concern for Indians, education loans are critical in terms of skill formation and enhancing productivity and efficiency of the economy and people. However, the education loan portfolio forms only a tiny fraction of the retail loan portfolio of all commercial banks in India at about 3.3%.

In August 2015, the IBA released Revised Guidance Notes on the education loan scheme. The student borrower has no credit history and as such he is assumed to be creditworthy as this is a futuristic loan, it stated.

As per the RBI circular, The main emphasis is that every meritorious student though poor is provided with an opportunity to pursue education with the financial support from the banking system with affordable terms and conditions.

Yet, students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds who apply for an education loan are commonly rejected by PSBs, citing their parents low credit score. Banks are expected to sanction loans to students who belong to economically weaker sections, keeping their respective board-approved loan policies in view. However, this is not implemented in practice.

As per RBI data and answer to another question raised by MP DK Suresh and Mr Kateel again, the following figures show an outstanding amount of educational loans in India.

Outstanding Amount of Education Loans in India (In Rs Crore)

The other side of this story is high NPAs (non-performing assets or bad loans) in the education loan segment. The NPA figure for education loans stood at 8.1%, 8.3% and 7.6%, respectively, for FY17-18, FY18-19 and FY19-20, next only to the industrial and agriculture sector. This figure stood at 9.17% in September 2021, down from 10.32% in the June 2021 quarter. In absolute terms, the NPA in September 2021 stood at Rs1,023 crore.

However, there were benefits given to the borrowers to deal with the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on their income. RBI allowed a moratorium of six months on payment of all instalments falling due between 1 March 2020 and 31 August 2020 without an asset classification downgrade. Further, in its monetary policy in August 2020, RBI introduced measures to restructure the debt if the loans were classified as standard as of 1 March 2020.

This included rescheduling of payments, conversion of any interest accrued, or to be accrued, into another credit facility, or granting moratorium based on assessment of income stream of the borrowers, subject to a maximum of two years. Correspondingly, the overall tenor of the loan may also get modified commensurately.

The borrowers did get the required help for tiding over pandemic-induced difficulties; however, we have a long way to achieve educational equity through loans even after these loans being available in India for over two decades now!
Posted by Liam on at 09:05 AM CST



Boba Fett: Enemy of the Empire (1999) - Fett wasnt always Vaders favorite bounty hunter in the galaxy, as his flexible moral code saw him working for various galactic employers. Fett and Vader trade blows in this installment in the Boba Fett anthology comic series.







- Fett wasnt always Vaders favorite bounty hunter in the galaxy, as his flexible moral code saw him working for various galactic employers. Fett and Vader trade blows in this installment in the Boba Fett anthology comic series. Shadows of the Empire (1996) - Before The Force Unleashed , the other major movie without a movie project Shadows of the Empire prominently featured Fett. Its a critical bit of backstory, and shows how Fett transported his new carbonite frozen captive Han Solo from Bespin to Tatooine in between the events of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi . Not only must he elude the Rebels, but Fett wards off other bounty hunters looking to steal his prize.







- Before , the other major movie without a movie project prominently featured Fett. Its a critical bit of backstory, and shows how Fett transported his new carbonite frozen captive Han Solo from Bespin to Tatooine in between the events of and . Not only must he elude the Rebels, but Fett wards off other bounty hunters looking to steal his prize. Blood Ties (2010) - One of the more emotional comic storylines to feature Fett, Blood Ties gives insights on the interesting relationship with his father Jango. Shortly prior to Attack of the Clones , Jango is hired to track down a rogue clone who escaped Kamino and started a family. Jango kills him, but leaves the escaped clones son alive. Years later after Boba Fett has become established, he discovers that the clones son has stolen his identity. Both men share a face, and they must confront the death of their fathers together when theyre forced to team up.







- One of the more emotional comic storylines to feature Fett, Blood Ties gives insights on the interesting relationship with his father Jango. Shortly prior to , Jango is hired to track down a rogue clone who escaped Kamino and started a family. Jango kills him, but leaves the escaped clones son alive. Years later after Boba Fett has become established, he discovers that the clones son has stolen his identity. Both men share a face, and they must confront the death of their fathers together when theyre forced to team up. Dark Empire (1991) - The first Star Wars Dark Horse comic revealed that Emperor Palpatine had returned after the end of Return of the Jedi in a cloned body, and is attempting to bring Luke Skywalker to the Dark Side as his new apprentice. Palpatine isnt the only villain to return; this was the story that revealed that Fett was still alive and had escaped the Sarlacc Pit.







- The first Dark Horse comic revealed that Emperor Palpatine had returned after the end of in a cloned body, and is attempting to bring Luke Skywalker to the Dark Side as his new apprentice. Palpatine isnt the only villain to return; this was the story that revealed that Fett was still alive and had escaped the Sarlacc Pit. Underworld: The Yavin Vassilika (2000-2001) - This epic heist story combines all of the galaxys greatest scum and villainy in an exciting hunt for a prized treasure that the Hutt clan wants their hands on. Searching for the prize is Fett, Han Solo, Chewbacca, Lando Calrissian, Greedo, IG-88, Bossk, Dengar, Zuckuss, 4-LOM, and more!

Welcome back,fans! This week on the site were taking a look at, and how it continued the beloved storyline established by the first installment. Make sure to read about the projects production and importance in our  Expand Your Mind  article first, but stay tuned throughout the week for more articles, insights, videos, and information on the best merchandising content that youll want to look out for.Like its predecessor,told its story in a game, book, merchandising line, and tie-in material, but the comic book adaptation took a slightly different direction. The comic wasnt a straight retelling of the adventures of Starkillers clone, and instead showed the aftermath of some of the most important levels from the perspective of Boba Fett as he tracks down his new target. It was an interesting take on the story that fleshed out the most famous bounty hunter in the galaxy.Boba Fett is more popular than ever right now. After his appearance in the second season of, the spinoff seriesshowed how he escaped the Sarlacc Pit, built a new criminal empire by taking over Jabbas palace, and brought honor back to Tatooine. Fett is surely going on more adventures soon, and fans eager for more will definitely want to readto hear about some of his previous missions. In addition, here are some other Boba Fett comics that youll definitely want to check out.What do you think,fans? What are some of your favorite Boba Fett adventures in the comics? Do you prefer the Legends or new canon stories? Let us know in the forums , and as always, may the Force be with you!Check out Rebelscum.com merch!Be sure to follow us on all of our social media platforms:
A massive sum of Rs182 crore has been paid out in legal, consulting and audit fees to the team working on the resolution of the giant Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services (IL&FS). Importantly, they are the only ones who have got paid in the past 3.5 years (other than employees and directors who get their salaries, sitting fees, expenses and increments) after a new board was put in place to resolve this gigantic mess of 347-odd entities with deep inter-linkages.

This information is not in the public domain and was shared with me only after I pointed out that a government-appointed board, engaged in a clean-up, cannot get away with a decline to comment stance. I was still not given a break-up of the fees paid to the two law firms and four expensive consultants engaged by IL&FS.

On the face of it, IL&FS submits regular Progress Reports to the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) under the supervision of a retired judge; but this does not require it to provide all the information that any set of listed companies would need to put out. No annual report or balance sheet is available for three years, since the accounts are being recast, I was told. So, creditors have no information beyond submissions to the NCLT.

This is not to say that the government-appointed board is not doing a sincere jobit probably is. But, until the resolution gets past the never-ending, multi-level litigation and actually makes payments to deserving creditors, the resolution cannot be called a success.

Pension funds together are owed Rs10,173 crore (these include pension and provident funds, employee welfare funds, superannuation funds, gratuity funds and army group insurance funds) and constitute 10.79% of IL&FSs debt. They are the worst affected by the corrupt and collusive actions of regulators, rating agencies, statutory auditors, bureaucrats, institutional investors and senior managers who allowed IL&FS to doctor accounts and hide losses, for over five years.

Among the sufferers are people like Kanthimathy David, who writes: I invested hard my hard-earned retirement benefits in IL&FS in November 2017. I have received nothing from them so far. We are senior citizens with no other bank balance and are living on the government pension. This is not enough for our medicines to lead our normal life. Please help me to get back my money at the earliest This was in response to my column last week, where I said unless fixed, the IL&FS resolution could drag on for decades ( Like Scam 1992, IL&FS Resolution, Criminal Investigation and Litigation Looks Set To Drag for Decades ).

The government-appointed board, led by banker Uday Kotak, has done well to preserve the value of many special purpose vehicles (SPVs) as going concerns and reduce the number of group companies from 347 to about 100 by selling or shutting down many of them. This has netted over Rs16,000 crore in liquid assets for which it has proposed a pro-rata distribution approved by NCLT, but caught up in litigation. It has proposed an InvIT (infrastructure investment trust) for road assets of around Rs35,000 crore, that is included as successful resolution. This takes the claimed recovery to Rs52,000 crore and one optimistic estimate is that as much as Rs60,000 crore may, eventually, be recovered. Given the outrageous write-offs under the bankruptcy process, this would be considered a success if the pro rata distribution of funds and the InvIT is a success; but it has yet to be cleared by the capital market regulator.

Curiously enough, on 23rd March, Union transport minister Nitin Gadkari told Parliament that he intends to attract investment from farmers, senior citizens and retired government officials into InvITs by offering them 7% returns and that the plan is awaiting clearance by the market regulator. (See link: https://twitter.com/officeofng/status/1506544357083856900?s=21

His statement was greeted with applause from his party members, but is highly ironic in the context of repeated losses inflicted on pensioners and retirees over the past five years. The government has offered no support or sympathy for pensioners like Kanthimathy David, quoted above, who put their retirement nest-egg in seemingly safe investments (secured non-convertible debenturesNCDsof IL&FS, pensions invested in IL&FS, AT-1additional tier 1bonds of Yes Bank and Lakshmi Vilas Bank, etc), only to be defrauded by phony credit ratings and falsified audited balance sheets.

If Mr Gadkari wants to have a go at the precious, tax-paid next-egg of more pensioners, the government must resolve IL&FS and clean up the system by punishing those responsible for this mega debacle.

The real problem with IL&FS is that the recovery process has to bypass the legal quagmire of claims and counter-claims that could take decades to resolve. The revised distribution framework proposed by IL&FS has already been challenged before the Supreme Court (SC) as well as the appellate tribunal. Does the government, or its chosen board, have any incentive or pressure to push for early resolution? Barring Uday Kotak, it is a sinecure for most of its directors and a very lucrative assignment for lawyers and consultants. All of them have also been granted indemnities for their actions.

IL&FSs response to my query about the hefty payments was: the professional advice (from them) has enabled the new board to develop an unprecedented and unique group resolution framework outside the IBC (Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code) while retaining going concern status. On the contrary, bankers and resolution experts tell me that the confused process of resolution through NCLT without following the bankruptcy law is largely responsible for the mess, which is only worsened by the additional red tape of having every decision ratified by a retired judgejustice DK Jain.

IL&FS needs a different process to deal with the complexities of its resolution, given the vast number of legitimate claims and counter-claims from various creditors who have been defrauded by the cabal of executives, led by Ravi Parthasarathy, who controlled the conglomerate for over two decades. Otherwise, IL&FS will keep forking out extremely high fees without real progress on the resolution front.

Why Are only Consultants Being Paid?

As I wrote earlier, IL&FSs law firms and consultants have already been paid a whopping Rs182 crore. The consultants are: JM Financial and Arpwood Capital to evaluate group assets; Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas (CAM) and P&A Law Offices for legal advice, Alvarez & Marshal India Pvt Ltd, which was appointed by the previous management, to come up with a revamp plan, and Grant Thornton India, the forensic auditor and claims management adviser. The company says this is 0.35% of the expected resolution of Rs52,000 crore; but, as I pointed out earlier, we have yet to see concrete results in the form of cash distribution or the InvIT even as high fees continues to be paid. Heres how it has happened.

In 2019, IL&FS submitted a plan for pro-rata distribution, in a fair and equitable manner, of Rs16,000 crore recovered through the sale and dissolution of assets. National company law appellate tribunal (NCLAT) approved the plan in March 2020, but the ruling has been contested by some creditors. The plan proposed that payments would first go towards all resolution process costs incurred including but not limited to fees payable to financial and transaction advisors in full.

So, the expensive consultants jumped the queue and are being paid regularly. Interestingly, there is no information in the public domain about the terms of engagement, selection process or incentives and indemnities offered to them, although the resolution is being done by a special, government-appointed board. We also do not have annual reports or balance sheets of these companies because the accounts are being recast (I was told).

So what is the way out of this legal quagmire? Since the IL&FS resolution is not under the bankruptcy process anyway, it makes better sense to take it out of NCLT and negotiate a fair settlement through discussions and consent of creditors. It would need a process that is truly equitable and does not give preference to secured creditors, especially those who are also investors and are equally responsible for the debacle by failing in their fiduciary duties and, perhaps, actively colluding with the erstwhile management.

If anything, the role of public sector bank (PSB) chiefs, who got lucrative directorships on IL&FS group companies, ought to be investigated for complicity in the fudging and obfuscation that went on since 2012-13. It would be a travesty if they walked away with the best deal because the bankruptcy law favours secured creditors.

Such lenders include: IL&FS shareholders such as State Bank of India (SBI), which held 6.2% of the equity in the parent but was a lender to many of the SPVs, Central Bank of India (7.67%), HDFC (9%), Life Insurance Corporation of India (25.34% stake) along with Orix Corporation of Japan (23.54%) and Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (12.56%).

An equitable resolution process ought to give a fair deal to pension funds and debenture-holders who were defrauded by fake credit ratings and manipulated accounts. But who will speak for them? It is time the finance ministry or the prime ministers office took an interest in the lackadaisical progress of the IL&FS resolution which has happened entirely during the tenure of this government.
While asking the central registrar of multi-state co-operative societies to furnish a report after examination of applications of Sahara group investors claiming that they have not received their money even after maturity, the Delhi High Court (HC) has restrained Sahara group societies from accepting any new deposits, says a report.

In the report, Bar & Bench says , "A division bench of acting chief justice Vipin Sanghi and justice Navin Chawla directed the registrar to furnish a report within two weeks after examination of applications of investors claiming that they have not received their money even after maturity."

The HC was dealing with a batch of petitions filed by Sahara India Credit Cooperative Society, Hamara India Credit Cooperative Society, Saharyan Universal Multipurpose Society Ltd, challenging the order of the central registrar restraining them from taking fresh deposits as well as renewing the investment or deposit of existing members.

Though the central registrar's order was stayed by the Delhi HC in January last year, hundreds of applications were filed in petitions by the people claiming to be investors in the societies, the report says, adding, the applications alleged that even though their investments have matured, the societies are yet to pay them matured amount.

According to the report, additional solicitor general (ASG) Chetan Sharma told the bench that around seven to ten crore people have invested in these societies, and now thousands of them have approached different fora with complaints that their money is not being paid.

"He submitted that more than Rs60,000 crore were taken out from these societies and invested in the Amby Valley Project near Lonavala. It was submitted that an amount of over Rs2,000 crore was also taken out of these societies and deposited with Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) to secure bail of the group's promoter Subrata Roy," the report says.

However, senior counsel SB Upadhyay, representing Sahara group, questioned the genuineness of the applications and complaints, arguing that in terms of the government's orders and the internal mechanism created to deal with them.

"Mr Upadhyay said that the complaints amount to less than 0.006% of the total number of investors and that the societies have paid over Rs20,000 crore to its depositors since January 2021. He referred to a special audit of the societies to the point that the report was in their favour and requested the court to not impose any stay on accepting further deposits because it is one of the ways in which it can pay its investors," the report says.

The HC, however, said that the petitioners need to show their bonafides.

According to Bar & Bench, though the HC was earlier inclined to order an investigation by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) into the affairs of the society or to appoint a retired judicial member to examine the complaints, it later asked the central registrar to complete the task, considering the infrastructure required.

Earlier this month, the Patna High Court (HC) has directed Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) to file its response, in writing on or before 25th March, on the matter pertaining to repayment to Sahara's investors.

It also directed that a 'responsible officer' from the market regulator's head office at Mumbai be present in the court on 28th March to answer all the questions posed by it.

In December 2021, Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman told the Lok Sabha that investors of Sahara India Real Estate Corp Ltd (SIRECL) and Sahara Housing Investment Corp Ltd (SHICL) have been paid back Rs138.07 crore, including Rs70.09 crore as principal and Rs67.98 crore as an interest.

On 31 August 2012, the Supreme Court of India (SC) handed down a historic verdict asking SIRECL and SHICL to refund Rs19,400.87 crore and Rs6,380.50 crore, respectively, to investors as the funds were illegally raised through quasi-debentures without regulatory clearance.

These two Sahara group companies collected Rs25,781.37 crore from around 30.7 million investors through red herring prospectuses (RHP) on optionally fully convertible debentures dated 13 March 2008 and 16 October 2009 of SIRECL and SHICL, respectively.

As of 30 November 2021, the Sahara companies have deposited an aggregate amount of Rs15,485.80 crore against the principal amount Rs25,781.37 crore into the designated 'SEBI-Sahara Refund' account, the minister had said.
Press release from the Office of the Governor:

HELENA, Mont.  Following through on his commitment to meet with Montanans in each of the states 56 counties, Governor Greg Gianforte tomorrow will kick off his second annual 56 County Tour in eastern Montana.

Meeting with and listening to Montanans is the best way I know to do the job they elected me to do, Gov. Gianforte said. I look forward to visiting communities across our state and hearing firsthand from folks about the successes they enjoy and the challenges they face.

The governor will kick off the 2022 56 County Tour in Custer County tomorrow, with additional stops in Powder River and Carter counties.

In his first year in office, Gov. Gianforte logged thousands of miles on his first tour, meeting with Montanans in each of the states 56 counties.

Highlights from the governors 2021 tour included a town hall focusing on drought conditions and the modernization of the states outdated drought response plan in McCone County, visiting a job center in Ravalli County to discuss the importance of workforce development and trades education, and convening a roundtable of Lincoln County residents about the impact of the extended closure of the U.S.-Canadian border on their families, businesses, and community.

Information on Governor Gianfortes 2021 56 County Tour can be found here.
MISSOULA, Mont. - The pandemic sparked labor shortages across nearly all aspects of life. Additional data now shows more upcoming challenges as baby boomers retire.

The Missoula Economic Partnership reports Missoula's total workforce is 61,531. 34,492 of those are categorized as retiring soon, meaning they're 55 years or older.

That's 56% of Missoula's workforce.

Grant Kier, president and CEO of Missoula Economic Partnership, said these numbers are something they've monitored since before COVID-19.

Then when the pandemic hit, the national retirement rate nearly doubled.

According to Kier, the percentage of people retiring soon here in Missoula is actually slightly lower for a town of this size because of the university.

He explained why it's still a significant issue.

If we think our labor shortages are only because of COVID, were missing a really important part of whats happening in our community," Kier said. "It means we are in for a strain. Weve really got to be focused in as a community on what we can do to attract and retain good talent here, so that we have the workers that our business can use to continue to grow and succeed in Missoula."

To help prepare for changing demographics, MEP works with both the university and local employers to, one, make sure students are learning the most relevant skills, and two, help fill job openings quickly.

One business that's adapting is Clearwater Credit Union.

Robert Farmer, senior vice president of people solutions, said they're improving recruitment and retention by making job postings easier to find, adjusting wages and being flexible.

Weve had several coworkers have a childcare issue, so working through that with them," Farmer said. "Weve had a handful of schedule change requests, so trying to meet employees where they are, and really being flexible has helped.

The company also prepares for retirements as soon as they're notified, starting as early as two years before the person retires, he added.

The Missoula Economic Partnership said it will be a hard push for the next decade to get jobs filled in Montana.

The partnership will continue to focus on these challenges at the Big Sky Business Insight Summit in May.
(THe Center Square)  Exclusionary zoning is keeping low- and middle-income Montana residents from finding homes they can afford, but its a problem local governments and state lawmakers can solve, according to the Frontier Institute.

The Frontier Institute, a think tank that promotes economic freedom, created the Montana Zoning Atlas, an interactive map that displays how strict zoning regulations play a role in driving up housing costs across the state.

We noticed in a lot of the debates about the housing crisis and affordable housing in Montana was really this kind of skepticism from local city councilors and county commissioners about the viability of a strategy like reducing strict regulations for addressing our housing crisis, Frontier Institute CEO Kendall Cotton told The Center Square.

The organization analyzed exclusionary zoning regulations which Cotton said limit where affordable homes can be built in Montana cities. Single-family zoning prohibits all other types of homes beside the traditional large lot, single-family homes. Minimum lot size requirements prevent construction of multi-family homes when existing lots are too small.

Multi-family homes like duplexes and triplexes cost less to build because more units are put on one foundation, Cotton said.

The institute's analysis showed single-family zoning is pervasive in many of the cities assessed in the Montana Zoning Atlas. Missoula prohibits multi-family homes in more than 75% of the city through single-family zoning, according to Cotton.

Minimum lot areas set a requirement for the minimum lot size. A duplex or triplex typically require larger lots, effectively prohibiting multifamily development when the existing lots are too small.

That in our view creates de facto single-family zoning and so that adds even more areas to cities where multifamily development affordable types of homes are prohibited, Cotton said.

A fact sheet issued in March 2021 from the Biden administration called for an end to exclusionary zoning.

For decades, exclusionary zoning laws  like minimum lot sizes, mandatory parking requirements, and prohibitions on multifamily housing  have inflated housing and construction costs and locked families out of areas with more opportunities, the White House release said.

A November 2021 PEW Charitable Trusts report, titled Montana Housing Shortage, said that strict zoning regulations like large minimum lot sizes and single unit per lot limits increase costs and reduce growth.

One of the most noticeable effects is more expensive homes. The median home price in Bozeman is currently over $750,000.

In our view, it's completely within the power of local governments right now to eliminate and reduce these strict types of regulations and allow new development to start happening so we can start catching up ... with our housing shortage, Cotton said.

Home costs are having a big impact on the availability of workers. Cotton said business owners have told him applicants say they cant afford to move to Montana due to high housing costs.

That's where these strict regulations that are making our housing shortage in Montana worse don't just have an effect on the availability of homes, Cotton said.

The Frontier Institute has proposed that local governments and state legislators simply restore the right to build housing.

State lawmakers can consider passing House Bill 134, first introduced in 2021, Cotton noted.

That would have given landowners all across the state the right to build two- to four-family homes in zones which currently only permit single family, he said.
The number of people cited for driving under the influence in and around Butte March 16 through March 20 was higher than previously reported.

Troopers with the Montana Highway Patrol were kept busy March 16-17, issuing 12 tickets in Butte-Silver Bow County. As the weekend came and went, nine more tickets were issued by the MHP, giving a total of 21 DUIs by Sunday.

People were not making good decisions, said Sgt. Dave Oliverson of the Montana Highway Patrol.

Oliverson said from March 16-20, 70 people were cited for driving under the influence throughout Montana, with 21 of those DUIs coming out of Butte-Silver Bow.

I believe we have had more arrests this year than we have had in the past five years, he said.

Although some people were booked, in some cases, due to the high numbers in the Butte jail, first offenders were issued citations instead and then released to a sober adult or taken home by a trooper.

Along with a number of troopers in Butte, a DUI enforcement team was in place, as was MHPs criminal interdiction team, which is responsible for investigating any criminal acts.

One such act was the felony arrest of two women from Fresno, California, who were traveling through Butte on their way to Chicago to allegedly illegally distribute 96 pounds of marijuana.

It was a busy time for sure, said Oliverson.
A Place for All Conservatives to Speak Their Mind.
Good afternoon, everyone, Christopher Neely here, ruminating still on the issue of rural broadband and internet service.

Its an issue I tackled last week, from the angle of South County leaders in Salinas, Soledad, Gonzales, King City and Greenfield banding together to form a joint powers authority and plump up the weight of their calls to bring middle mile broadband infrastructure to the region. You can think of broadband service in a similar way to the countrys highway system. There is a backbone network of high-speed, long distance transmission lines that connects data hubs across the country, similar to the interstate highway system. Branching out from those transmission lines are middle-mile networksthink state highwayswhich can travel dozens or hundreds of miles to connect surrounding regions. The final piece is the last mile network, like local routes and roads, that provide internet network access to local communities.

When it comes to rural broadband access, middle-mile infrastructure seems to be the issue that garners the most attention. Existing middle-mile infrastructure ends in Soledad, leaving a gaping service hole that extends south into San Luis Obispo County. Communities in South County can still connect to the internet, but they are limited to either AT&T or Spectrum, two companies that own their own, private broadband infrastructure. A new, publicly funded middle-mile line, an expensive and intensive undertaking, would allow more companies to enter the market, ideally heightening competition, increasing quality/reliability, and reducing prices.

However, there is another dimension to broadband access playing out in North County, where middle-mile already infrastructure exists: keeping service affordable for low-income residents. Even if you have healthy market forces in play, the market prices still may not be low enough for people to afford.

Stephen Blum, an executive member of the Monterey Bay Economic Partnerships Central Coast Broadband Consortium, says in the world of broadband access, there is good, fast and cheap service, you just pick any two. The trick is to make it good quality, high-speed and at an affordable price.

You make our work happen. The article youre about to read is from our reporters doing their important work  investigating, researching, and writing their stories. We want to provide informative and inspirational stories that connect you to the people, issues and opportunities within our community. Journalism takes a lot of resources. Today, our business model has been interrupted by the pandemic; the vast majority of our advertisers businesses have been impacted. Thats why the Weekly is now turning to you for financial support. Learn more about our new Insiders program here. Thank you. JOIN NOW

This is an issue seen at the San Jerardo Housing Cooperative just outside Salinas. The middle-mile broadband infrastructure built between Santa Cruz and Soledad that came online in 2017 opened up the potential for reliable and affordable internet in the area. Last fall, the CPUC awarded a grant to Cruzio Internet to install last-mile broadband infrastructure. The build could begin next month. However, the market price for the internet is still too high for the community, so Cruzio, the county, MBEP and its broadband consortium are working to raise $200,000 so residents can have free internet access for five years.

Blum says although middle-mile infrastructure is receiving much attention right now, its the last-mile projects that are more challenging, as it deals with individual customers and the dynamics of a given community.

However, the option for reliable, fast, affordable internet for residents in a place like the San Jerardo Housing Cooperative largely cannot exist without publicly-available middle-mile infrastructure. A project between Soledad and San Luis Obispo has been proposed along Hwy 101 under the next phase of the states middle-mile broadband plan. Whether that will open up the affordable and reliable internet for South County residents could still depend on the efforts by organizations like Blums.

Read full newsletter here.
I didnt want to tell anybody at Disney because I didnt want anyone to freak out, she told Variety .

But I was already having some contractions when we were scheduled to record that day. I was like Well, fingers crossed I finish the song before [the baby] comes!

Director Byron Howard was aware of Stephanie's pregnancy but had no idea during the recording how close she was to giving birth.



We knew she was very, very, very, very ready to have that baby. But she did not tell us she was almost, almost ready.

The 'Brooklyn Nine-Nine' actress welcomed her baby last August, and shared on Instagram how she was in "awe" of her beautiful daughter.
The U.S. Attorneys Office has stated that Midlands Jenny Cudd showed no remorse for her actions during the Jan. 6, 2021, riots, and it uses a 25-minute, drunken diatribe to help make its case.

Cudd made the video on the night of the riots, giving an explanation for her role that day and an explanation of the events of the day in her eyes. It includes profane language, alcohol consumption and an appearance that Cudds own attorneys -- in a sentencing memorandum -- describe as her speech erratic, her eyes bloodshot and glassy, her skin flushed. Ms. Cudds appearance, mannerisms, speech, and disposition were observably affected by the alcohol.

F*** yes Im proud of my actions. I f***ing charged the Capitol with patriots today, Cudd said in the video as stated in the U.S. Attorneys sentencing memo. Hell yes, Im proud of my actions.

In addressing the video in the sentencing memorandum, Cudds attorney wrote, Jenny Cudd is known for her effervescent personality. The inebriated profanity was exceptionally unusual and uncharacteristic of her. She sounded devastated. Her speech was filled with bombastic rhetoric and unverified hearsay that she presented as her personal stories. Jenny is rather embarrassed looking back at that moment; she holds herself to a higher standard.

The U.S. Attorneys Office mentions that 25-minute Facebook Live presentation at least 11 different times in its 27-page sentencing memo. The U.S. Attorneys Office recommends that the court sentence Cudd to a sentence that includes 75 days of incarceration.

Warning: The video below has profanity.

Such a sentence protects the community, promotes respect for the law and deters future crime by imposing restrictions on her liberty as a consequence of her behavior, the Attorneys Office wrote

Cudds social media use from Washington, D.C., didnt just include the 25-minute drunken diatribe  a phrase offered by Cudds own counsel. The U.S. Attorneys Office references social media use in its memo.

Those posts, according to the U.S. Attorneys Office, included that a lot of  the speakers this evening were calling for a revolution. Now I dont know what yall think about a revolution, but Im all for it  Nobody actually wants war, nobody wants bloodshed, but the government works for us and, unfortunately, it appears that they have forgotten that, quite a lot. So if a revolution is what it takes then so be it. I dont know if that is going to kick off tomorrow or not. We shall see what the powers that be choose to do with their power, and we shall see what it is that happens in Congress tomorrow at our United States Capitol. So, either way I think that either our side or the other side is going to start a revolution.

In the section, called factual and procedural background, the U.S. Attorneys Office lists 18 different quotes from the video that it uses to help explain Cudds role in the riots.

Those quotes listed included:

Really grateful that my boyfriend bought me this bulletproof hoody before I got here.

We start walking up to the Capitol, and we get the news that Pence betrayed us. He had way more power, and he wasnt willing to exercise it. And when Pence betrayed us is when we decided to storm the Capitol.

So, we get to the Capitol and some of the patriots had already broken down all of the barricades, and they had literally ripped out the fence ... Pushing and pushing and pushing. And we got the police to back off. So, we get up there and the scaffolding that they had put up for the inauguration, there were people that were starting to climb it. We had to scale a wall to get there. There were people that were starting to climb the scaffolding. And we just pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed and yelled go and yelled charge and on and on and on. We just pushed and pushed and pushed, okay? And we got in. We got up the top of the Capitol. There was a door that was open. We went through the door. And we were inside.

We didnt vandalize anything. But we did. We did, as I say that. We did break down the Nancy Pelosis office door and somebody stole her gavel and took a picture sitting in the chair flipping off the camera.

I also heard that 5 other state Capitols were overrun by patriots today and I love that. I love that.

If yall dont know what 3 percent is you should probably look that up, okay? Because there are only 3 percent of the country thats willing to fight for the other 97 percent. A whole bunch of those three percenters were there today.

I was here today on January 6, when the new revolution started. I was here at the Capitol.

Im proud of everything that I was a part of today. And Ill be proud of everything that Im a part of at the next one. And well see what happens at that.

I wish I didnt go on TV or make those selfie videos before fully appreciating everything that happened and how it was perceived, Cudd is quoted in a pretrial service report, according to the U.S. Attorneys Office memo.

Cudds attorney also explains Cudds use of the word revolution and we from the videos in its sentencing memo.

It is also important to note the governments emphasis of Ms. Cudds use of the word revolution, Cudds sentencing memo states. The term revolution has been politically co-opted and redefined by modern politics. Politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez used the term revolution to mean political change.

As far as the use of we, Cudds attorney states, Cudd attempted to explain the use of the word in later statements and that It is also material to the understanding that Ms. Cudds January 6 videos are full of bombastic rhetoric that is not indicative of reality.

The video also was a chance for Cudd to address Republicans in Midland and Odessa  especially Odessa -- who she said stated that those who charged the Capitol should be ashamed of ourselves

Here is how I will respond to that, Cudd said in the video, F*** you, you F***ing coward. F*** you.
Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

Jenny Cudd was sentenced to two months of probation and a $5,000 fine for her role in the riots at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, according to a report from Television Station WUSA9.

The reporter there said that U.S. District Court Judge Trevor McFadden rejected the recommendation from the Department of Justice that Cudd be sentenced to 75 days in jail.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Jenny Cudd was supposed to learn her sentence on Wednesday for her actions on Jan. 6, 2021, at the U.S. Capitol. Instead, at 9:42 p.m. Tuesday, the government filed for a continuance based on defendants repudiation of an element of the offense.

Specifically, it is the governments position that the defendant has repudiated an element of the offense through statements reflected in the presentence investigation report and made in her sentencing memorandum, according to the motion filed.

As of 4 p.m. Wednesday, one hour after the sentencing was set to begin, there was no word as to whether that continuance had been allowed.

Not surprisingly, Cudds attorney, Marina Medvin of Alexandria, Virginia, filed an objection to the notice of a continuance request. She indicated that the continuance was to determine what steps, if any, are appropriate based upon Cudds statement on March 10 to a probation officer during which, among other things, she acknowledged her actions.

The word tepidly was used to describe, by U.S. Attorneys, their reaction to her avowal of responsibility. However, during subsequent conversations over nearly two weeks, no concern was voiced, Medvin declared.

The following is an excerpt from the U.S. Attorneys motion:

On March 10, 2022, the U.S. Probation Officer filed the final Presentence Investigation Report (PSR). The PSR quotes Cudds statements in the presentence interview. According to the

PSR, Cudd stated, I did not realize, at the time, that I was breaking the law when I walked inside through open doors to the Capitol. When I said on TV that I didnt do anything unlawful I genuinely meant that I did not believe that I did anything illegal. I am not trying to absolve myself of responsibility for entering the Capitol, but I wanted the court to know what I did not know at the time I walked in.

On March 16, 2022, the defendant filed her sentencing memorandum, which included similar sentiments.  Specifically, the memorandum states, Ms. Cudd did not realize that entering the Capitol building was a criminal offense at the time she went in.  In the sentencing memorandum, the defendant also requests sanctions against the government for failing to timely provide exculpatory evidence, specifically the location of Vice President Pence at the time Cudd entered the U.S. Capitol building.

On March 21, 2022, undersigned counsel spoke with defense counsel over the phone. Undersigned counsel noted that the statements made in the memorandum and PSR appeared to be a repudiation of one of Section 1752(a)(1)s elements. Undersigned counsel asked whether defense counsel intended to repudiate these post-plea agreement statements or withdraw her plea.

Defense counsel notified government counsel that Cudd was not withdrawing her plea and did not intend repudiate these post-plea agreement statements.

It boils down to whether Jenny Cudd violated her plea agreement when she told probation officers that at the time (Jan. 6, 2021), she didnt realize she was entering the Capitol illegally. Medvin writes the governments claims and requests are ridiculous, not based in law, and suspiciously malicious. They also amount to gamesmanship by a prosecutor, she continued.
Sun Valley, ID (83353)

Today

Partly cloudy this morning. Increasing clouds with periods of showers this afternoon. High 54F. Winds S at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 30%..

Tonight

Mostly cloudy with occasional light rain...mainly this evening. Low around 35F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60%.
Sun Valley, ID (83353)

Today

Partly cloudy skies during the morning giving way to a few showers late. High 58F. Winds SSE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 30%..

Tonight

Mostly cloudy with occasional light rain...mainly this evening. Low 38F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60%.
We're always interested in hearing about news in our community. Let us know what's going on!

Contact us
Jeffersons recipe for macaroni can be found on Monticellos website. James Hemings, Jeffersons chef, and other plantation cooks elsewhere helped make macaroni and cheese the Southern classic it is today.
Actress Pooja Hegde, who is constantly shuffling between Tamil, Telugu and Hindi film industry with multiple releases in the pipeline, reveals why she decided to act in Rohit Shetty's upcoming film 'Cirkus'.

On one hand, Pooja will be next seen in Vijay Thalapati's 'Beast' that is releasing on April 13 and on the other hand, she also has two Bollywood films - Salman Khan's 'Bhaijaan' and 'Cirkus', Rohit's directorial also starring Ranveer Singh.

She will also be seen in Telugu film 'Acharya' starring Chiranjeevi and Ram Charan.

In conversation with IANS the actress shares the major reason behind doing a Rohit Shetty film.

Pooja told IANS: "I have to mention that in our house even though all of us love watching Rohit sir's films because they are super entertaining, my father is the biggest fan of Rohit Shetty. My father is one of those movie buff in the house who live with the character, behave like them for as long as one week post the watching of the movie.

"I mean, who put a tika on the forehead and a rudraksha bracelet and change his voice like Mr Bachchan and talk to me and my brother like the way he was doing in the film 'Sarkar'! My father did (laughed)."

While Pooja shared that 'Singham', 'Golmaal 1', 'Simmba' were some of her personal favorites, she shared another incident of how her father reacted to few of these films.

"After we watched the film 'Singham', my dad got a temporary 'Singham' tattoo and 'Aata Majhi Satakli' was his takiya kalam for few days. My father is such a big fan that he also loved and laughed on the film 'Bol Bachchan'. Yes, in our house, my father is the greatest entertainer and I have done Rohit sir's film 'Cirkus' for my father. I hope, when the film releases we all get some extraordinarily entertaining response from papa," Pooja signed off.
After the refusal of AIIMS Delhi to admit Bihar's former Chief Minister Lalu Prasad, the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) strongly condemned the act of the premier hospital and said that ' there was a conspiracy behind this'.

Bhai Virendra, the RJD MLA from Maner and chief spokesperson of the party said: "It is a well-planned conspiracy against our leader Lalu Prasad Yadav for discharging him from the emergency ward and refusing to admit him in the hospital for further treatment."

"Our leader is suffering from multiple illnesses and the medical board of Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS) Ranchi has referred him for the treatment in AIIMS Delhi. I don't know who those people are doing politics with a particular leader. The people of the country would not forgive them," Bhai Virendra said.

Lalu Prasad's health deteriorated on Tuesday. Hence, the RIMS administration of Ranchi after forming a medical board decided to send him to Delhi for better treatment.

Lalu Prasad reached Delhi in an air-ambulance. He was put under observation in the emergency ward of AIIMS Delhi on Tuesday night and discharged at 4 a.m. on Wednesday. Sources said that he was expected to return to Ranchi in a chartered flight which would take off from Delhi at 3 p.m. on Wednesday.

Dr Vidyapati, the chairman of the medical board of RIMS told the mediapersons in Ranchi that Lalu Prasad was suffering from kidney failure apart from blood pressure issues, and high diabetes with sugar level reaching up to 270 level (Very High). He is also having heart-related problems, said the doctor.

Lalu Prasad is convicted in the illegal withdrawal of Rs 139.5 crore from Doranda treasury in a fodder scam. His bail plea was recently rejected by the special CBI court. Hence, he was lodged in the jail. On health grounds, he is under observation of doctors in a special ward of RIMS Ranchi.
A longtime Myrtle Beach city employee will take over as chief municipal judge in the coming weeks following a tight vote in city council.

Joi Page, who has been the assistant city attorney for 21 years, was appointed to chief municipal judge during Tuesdays city council meeting by a 4-3 vote. Page edged out Myrtle Beach City Judge Glenn Ohanesian for the position and will replace Judge Jennifer Wilson, who will retire at the end of March.

Council members Mike Lowder, Phil Render, Jackie Hatley and Mike Chestnut voted in approval of Pages appointment while Mayor Brenda Bethune and councilmen John Krajc and Gregg Smith voted against.

The city council held two interview sessions for the position within the past month, the first being on Feb. 28. Another session was held on March 10, where three finalists were ultimately selected.

With both Page and Ohanesian in the council chamber Tuesday, Bethune said council was in a situation where were never going to make everybody happy but they had a duty to carry out.

We are given the responsibility by the voters of this community, by the residents of this community to make decisions based on what we feel is for the greater good, Bethune said. And this is a decision that is being made for the greater good of our city and the greater good of our court system.

Despite the close vote, Krajc addressed the public during Tuesdays meeting say the council was not divided.

While all of us may not support the vote, we are united on this council, Krajc said.

Smith echoed his fellow councilman.

She will do a great job, Smith said.

While being the assistant city attorney for over two decades, Page also acted as the senior city solicitor. Prior to her coming to Myrtle Beach, Page was a senior solicitor for Horry County for four years from 1996 to 2000.

While council did appoint Page to the position of chief municipal judge, they did not set a salary or term limit. City spokesperson Mark Kruea said council has a few options as to when they can discuss those matters.
Lori Nebel was 7 years old when she got her first pet  an orange white tomcat named Fluffy. Fast-forward to now through her college years and first career in corporate America working in manufacturing and being downsized, she started to ask herself whats next?

Through brainstorming and a strong desire to do her own thing, she landed on a childhood dream to help animals and decided to invest in Pet Supplies Plus as a franchisee.

These days, Nebel is an established owner/operator and entrepreneur. Her first store was in Summerville. She has owned the store in Goose Creek for five years and the Murrells Inlet store has been open since last July.

Pet Supplies Plus has grown to 600 stores nationwide since its inception in 1985.

The store is full service, boasting a line of supplies for any pet: dog, cat, bird, fish, reptile.

Redford Naturals is the brands own line of top quality dog and cat food and is named for the location of their first store in Redford, Michigan. They offer dog grooming, delivery (10-mile radius and $35 minimum order), auto-ship, prescriptions online, price match and a rewards program saving customers an average $100 annually.

One of the most unique offerings is the Self Service Dog Wash. Individual wash stations cost $10 per wash for a maximum of 30 minutes. All equipment and supplies are provided and stations are sanitized between customers.

Theres even a Dirty Dog Discount that gets you five washes for $25. Skinny Pigs, ferrets, and horned worms are a few of the stores more unusual pet options.

Originally from Boston, Nebel now calls South Carolina home and lives in Myrtle Beach. She loves the area and being a part of the community. The store regularly provides space for cats from All 4 Paws Animal Rescue to be seen who are available for adoption. Two adorable Calicos were there on a recent visit. She has been involved in the rescue of more than 1,500 animals housed at high-kill shelters (known as death row dogs) in the last three years in Horry, Colleton, Dorchester and Berkeley counties. She has participated and sponsored events like Dogapalooza, a festival to raise money to support rescues from Myrtle Beach to Charleston, and her corporate office regularly sponsors the adoption of those pets needing a forever home by covering the related costs for adoptive families. They give a bag of food and coupons to every family adopting a new pet from All 4 Paws.
CHANDLERVILLE  Bail has been set at $100,000 for a Chandlerville man arrested on child pornography charges.

Bryce A. Eilers, 20, of Chandlerville was arrested Monday and lodged in the Morgan County jail.

During a first appearance in court Wednesday, he formally was charged with one count of dissemination of child pornography and one count of possession of child pornography involving a victim under age 13. Both charges are felonies.

Agents from the Illinois State Police Division of Criminal Investigation said the arrest followed an investigation that started in May into the distribution of child pornography through a social media application.

Investigators from the Office of the Illinois Attorney General Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force gathered evidence and the Morgan County States Attorneys Office filed the charges against Eilers on Monday.

A preliminary hearing is scheduled for Tuesday.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

A communications powerhouse, a growing family business and a non-profit group whose mission is to keep people healthy were honored Tuesday with top annual awards from Jacksonville Area Chamber of Commerce.

During its annual meeting at Warehouse 200, the chamber named Worrell Land Services as its small business of the year and Cass Communications as business of the year. Morgan County Health Department was honored as not-for-profit business of the year.

The small business of the year is given to companies with fewer than 25 employees.

Allan Worrell started Worrell Land Services in 1995 in a spare bedroom at his house with the intention of helping those planning agricultural investments. It soon added rural real estate, auction and appraisal services to its portfolio.

Worrells son, Luke, and his wife, Allison, now lead a company of four full-time employees and six independent contractors.

The family remains committed to the community through social organizations such as Kiwanis. Allan Worrell has served as chamber board president and is a member of the agri-industry division, as well as a member of the Ag Hall of Fame. Luke Worrell helped establish an agribusiness program at Illinois College, and both have given time to Jacksonville Regional Economic Development Corp., the Morgan County Fair board and other organizations.

The business of the year is given to a company with 25 or more employees.

Cass Communications had its beginnings more than 120 years ago, when the Virginia and Little Indian Telephone Co. was given a franchise in 1898 to provide telephone service within the city. The company was incorporated in 1910 as Cass County Telephone Co. by Edward J. and Ada Huff, great-grandparents of current chairman of the board Gerald E. Gill and great-great-grandparents of President Gerald S. Gill II.

CassComm now serves nine counties and 33 communities through Cass Communications Management, Cass Cable TV, Cass Internet, Cass Telephone, Cass Tech Center, Cass Long Distance, Cass Advertising, Gillcrest Farms and Gillcrest Estate.

CassComm has almost 100 employees and offers internet, phone, television and multi-media advertising capabilities. During the pandemic, Cass Communications offered promotions to school districts to ensure that teachers and students had internet access needed for remote learning, and added more than 50 hotspots in 33 communities.

Morgan County Health Department was honored for its efforts in fighting COVID-19 in the community in addition to providing its other health care-related services. In the past two years, the agency provided more than 5,000 tests and more than 20,000 vaccinations. It also assisted long-term care facilities with addressing virus outbreaks, worked with school districts to ensure safety for in-person learning and responded to more than 10,000 confirmed or probable cases by providing contact tracing or quarantine and isolation orders.

The health department was organized in May 1922 and was the first full-time county health department in Illinois. It provides services in 16 programs, including clinical services, environmental services, family planning, maternal child health, immunizations and vital records. It provides about 10,000 immunizations annually and partners with SIU Center for Family Medicine Jacksonville to provide medical care to residents regardless of the ability to pay.

Retiring Jacksonville Area Chamber of Commerce board members Casey French, Jim Krug, Lindsay McQueen and Emily Winters and past President Maryjane Million were recognized during the meeting and new board members were introduced.
JERSEYVILLE  A Jerseyville man has been arrested in the sexual assault of an 11-year-old girl, authorities said Tuesday.

Joshua G. Eastham, 37, of Jerseyville was arrested March 16 on a charge of aggravated predatory criminal assault.

He is accused of committing several sexual acts with the girl in January, according to court documents.

The charges come just months after he was arrested Jan. 27 on four counts of child pornography involving dissemination of material involving a victim under 13.

He is accused of possessing and disseminating images of a nude prepubescent girl in various sex acts in October, court records indicate.

Bail has been set at $1 million.

The charge of aggravated predatory criminal assault is classified as a Super Class X felony. A Class X felony is the most serious charge possible in Illinois outside of murder. The designation of "super" status calls for increased minimum and maximum penalties if found guilty.

A conviction could bring up to 60 years in prison without the possibility of parole.
Nuclear weapons have an irresistible allure. Nations stake their prestige on them. Crowds have cheered at the news of a countrys first nuclear test. For a nation to be called a nuclear power is evidence its as strong as any other country, ready to annihilate enemy forces and hostile citizens by the millions.

No country is prouder of its nuclear success than North Korea. After each of its half dozen nuclear tests, the Norths state media have burst into applause for all the great physicists and engineers who made possible such a momentous accomplishment. North Korea, however, is still knocking at the door for formal admittance as the ninth member of the global nuclear club.

The United States has been refusing to recognize the North as a nuclear power ever since Kim Jong-uns father, Kim Jong-il, ordered its first nuclear test on Oct. 9, 2006. CBS, for which I was filing radio reports from Seoul, had me madly gasping out the news. The next time Kim ordered a nuclear test, on May 25, 2009, I was driving in downtown Washington. Al-Jazeera called for comment. I unloaded my thoughts at a red light.

Kim Jong-un, having ordered North Koreas next four nuclear tests, is eager to test another but may be hesitating for several reasons. One is they cost multi-billions, maybe trillions, of dollars to make these devices, only to blow one up in a test. Thats a lot of money for a destitute country that cant feed its people adequately. Kim himself has prattled to no end about the need to uplift an economy suffering during the COVID-19 pandemic, which North Korea refuses to acknowledge. The North is also hard hit by U.N. and U.S. sanctions imposed after each of its six nuclear tests, the last in September 2017.

Now North Korea is warming up for test-firing an ICBM for the first time since November 2017. They say they launched a couple of satellites this month in order to test the electronics for a satellite. The great difference between a satellite and an ICBM is the former orbits the Earth while the latter flies a parabolic course to a target. Otherwise, they have a lot in common. A pro-North paper in Japan, Choson Sinbo, has said the North will test its next satellite at a time and place decided by the supreme leadership, as if we couldnt have guessed whod order the launch.

For his coming ICBM/satellite launch, Kim need not worry about more sanctions. The reason for testing ICBMs is to figure out how they can carry nuclear warheads to the United States. Vladimir Putin should appreciate the need for Kim to be able to nuke an enemy. With his forces rampaging through Ukraine, Russias president will block any move by the U.N. Security Council to scold Kim yet again for his transgressions.

For Putin and Kim, nuclear power is a cudgel that both of them are wielding against a common foe, the United States. Putin has put his nuclear forces on alert against the NATO nations, led by the United States, that are providing arms for the Ukrainians in a war in which theyre badly outgunned and outnumbered.

Might Putin be tempted to drop or fire a tactical nuke if NATO countries were to send their own forces into the fray and the fighting flared from Ukraine into Russia? A crucial step toward all-out war would be for NATO nations to try to enforce a no-fly zone over Ukraine, as Ukraines president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has asked them to do.

Shootouts between NATO and Russian planes would be inevitable. Its no exaggeration to imagine Putin pressing the nuclear button if NATO planes attacked the Russian bases from which his planes were flying.

Kim Jong-un would understand completely. Like Putin, he believes security is the reason for deploying nukes even if his engineers are still not sure how to fix one to a missile.

Nuclear power is at the apex of North Koreas military structure. Kims 60 or so nukes add up to about 1 percent of Russias nearly 6,000 nukes. His 1.2 million troops may be hungry, physically weak. Equipment may be dilapidated, short of spare parts, worn out. Kim, however, believes the sacrifice of hungry people makes it all worthwhile. Hes sure the threat of using just one nuke will keep his enemies at bay.

For Putin, the nuclear threat hangs over fears of escalation of a war that could spread across Europe. He and Kim share a common bond: The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Russian forces dropped two "super powerful bombs" in Mariupol on Tuesday as local authorities made a fresh attempt to rescue civilians from the besieged Ukrainian port city that has suffered relentless shelling since Moscows invasion began about a month ago.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said there was "nothing left" of the strategic city amid Kyivs appeal to Moscow to allow the evacuation of at least 1,00,000 people who want to leave.

"There is nothing left there. Only ruins," Zelenskyy said of Mariupol, which has a peacetime population of 4,00,000, in a video address to the Italian parliament.

As he was speaking, the city council said Russian forces had dropped two large bombs on Mariupol but gave no details of casualties or damage.
U.S. Senator Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, delivered opening remarks during the confirmation hearing for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to possibly be the next Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

Padilla was Wednesdays KVML Newsmaker of the Day. Here are his words:

Judge Jackson, Welcome back to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The last time you appeared before us, you mentioned that every so often, you walk a few blocks from your courthouse to the National Archives.

You shared that there, at the home of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, you reflect on the momentousness of the office you hold.

Its a fitting place to be reminded of our Nations highest ideals: our pursuit of a Union that is more free, more fair, and more perfect.

Its also a place to see how for two and a half centuries, our democracy has remained a work in progress.

And that it is incumbent on all of us  yes as a nation, but also as individuals  to continue making that progress.

The men who wrote our Founding documents could never have imagined that you would one day be here.

A former public defender, a proud graduate of a public high school, a working mom.

And yes  the first Black woman  nominated to serve on our nations highest court.

They could never have imagined that the Senators sitting before you would include the first women to represent California, Hawaii, and Tennessee; the first Jewish man to represent Georgia; the first Hispanic man to represent Texas; and the first Black man to represent New Jersey.

Nor could they have imagined that list to include me.

I am here as the proud son of immigrants from Mexico, who came to this country with little formal education, but a tremendous work ethic and big dreams.

Because of the decades of hard work and sacrifice by Santos and Lupe Padilla, my dad as a short order cook and my mom as a housekeeper, Ive enjoyed tremendous opportunities in my life.

That includes the honor of representing the state of California in the United States Senate and being the first Latino to do so.

Like you, like so many of us in this room, I am blessed to live the American dream.

Looking around, you can see the strides that our democracy has made; toward strengthening our institutions by including more voices and more perspectives.

And if you are confirmed, well take another step toward making our government better reflect the America it serves; toward making the promise of America more real.

We know that progress doesnt come easily.

Breaking barriers and being the first means not just significant opportunity, but also tremendous responsibility.

But Judge Jackson, I also know that you are equipped with a tremendous record of experience and accomplishment, and you are ready to blaze this trail.

A trail that your grandparents would have found unfathomable, but one that your daughters  and my sons  will now see as a natural part of the American story.

Judge Jackson, even before your next opinion or dissent, your appearance before us today already begins a new chapter in our nations history.

And I can say for certain that by the end of these hearings, those watching across the country will know of your outstanding qualifications, your experience, and your accomplishments, which bear repeating over and over again.

A public education including graduating from Miami Palmetto Senior High; followed by degrees from Harvard College and Harvard Law School.

Clerkships at the federal district court, the federal court of appeals, and the United States Supreme Court.

Two years as a federal public defender, two years as a staff member of the US Sentencing Commission, and four years as its Vice Chair.

Youve been confirmed by the Senate not once, not twice, but three times  each on a bipartisan basis  including two lifetime judicial appointments.

And you bring nearly a decade of judicial experience, which is more than the combined total of four currently sitting Justices at the times they were nominated.

You are clearly more than qualified to serve as a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

And yes, you bring a wealth of other important experiences and perspectives to the Court  including as a working mother, and as a Black woman.

In these hearings, I look forward to speaking further about your background, your experiences on and off the bench, and your approach to the law.

But based on our conversations already, and my review of your record, I believe that you have the expertise, the insight, and the heart to elevate the weighty deliberations of the Supreme Court.

Every year, the Supreme Court decides dozens of cases that shape the fundamental rights and the lives of the American people.

Only a small percentage of those cases will be highlighted in history books, make the front page of newspapers, or go viral on social media.

But the choices of the Supreme Court will certainly shape the future of labor rights, voting rights, womens rights; criminal justice, immigration, technology, environmental protection, and so much more.

And let me be clear about something very important, if youre confirmed, I dont expect to agree with every detail of every decision you reach.

That is not my test.

That is not our test.

Our job on this Committee is to make sure the next Justice will honor the rule of law and the principle of equal justice for all.

We must ensure the next Justice will help the Supreme Court live up to its responsibility to the American people.

America is watching.

America is watching these hearings to see what the future holds, not just for themselves, but for the Court as well.

Judge Jackson, like you, I believe in the greatness and promise of this nation.

I believe that we can continue building on our dream of a more perfect Union: and that includes building a government that better reflects and represents the people it serves.

Its a dream we have spent two and a half centuries struggling to realize.

And while this hearing will not be the last step on our journey, it is a momentous step forward.

Judge Jackson, you are an outstanding nominee for our nations highest court.

I thank you for your service. And I thank you for sharing your faith in Americas promise  a faith that is stronger because you know how far our nation has come.

Before closing, Id like to share a few words in Spanish on the importance of this nomination.

La Corte Suprema decide docenas de casos cada ano que afectan nuestras vidas y derechos fundamentales de los estadounidenses.

Y esas decisiones afectaran el futuro de nuestro pais atreves de temas como el derecho al voto, inmigracion, proteccion ambiental y mucho mas.

Esta semana, el Senado y el pais veran lo calificada que esta la jueza Jackson para la Corte Suprema.

Espero escuchar mas sobre la jueza y las perspectivas importantes y necesarias que traeria a la Corte Suprema.

Judge Jackson, I look forward to your testimony over the next few days.

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.
We have much to learn from the necropolitics of the present in terms of how such resilience narratives will shape future crisis scenarios, therefore such narratives should be carefully tracked and forensically examined for what they ideologically assume and, conversely, what they dangerously conceal.

by Nessa Cronin

Its a curse to live in interesting times, so goes the ancient Chinese proverb that Hannah Arendt was known to cite in the last years of her life.[1] In her essay No Longer and Not Yet, Arendt observes that sometimes dramatic moments occurring in human history are experienced more as a real rupture heralding a new era, rather than the gradual unfolding of the old. The decline of the old and the birth of the new, she writes, is not necessarily an affair of continuity as between the generations, between those who for some reason or other still belong to the old and those who either feel the catastrophe in their very bones or have already grown up with it, the chain is broken and an empty space, a kind of historical no mans land, comes to the surface which can be described only in terms of no longer and not yet.[2]

For many of us living through these pandemic times we seem to be living in such an empty space in a collective caesura of an indistinct now caught between pre- and post-COVID-19 worlds, stuck in an historical no mans land that has somehow continued in calendar time but has not yet quite fully moved on to the future, whatever that may be. Since the arrival of COVID-19 there has been a feeling that life before the pandemic seemed to belong to another time and epoch. W. J. T. Mitchell has noted how the year 2019 now seems to belong to another century.[3] The past is indeed another country. While the present may seem to be of a different time and order, one gets the distinct feeling that we have not yet fully come to terms with the suspended space of our now.

After the first wave of the pandemic in Europe Turkish novelist Elif Shafak wrote of the world to come, and argued that This is a threshold. The old world is simply no more. . . . The old world is gone, and yet we do not know what kind of a new world we want to build. It is a state of in-between-dom, full of anxiety and uncertainty, and fertile ground for demagogues and their false promises of redemption.[4] Stuck between calendar time in real life and an atemporal experience of the virtual, the frozen zoom screen seems to be the best visual representation and haptic experience of the pandemic now, signifying a moment in which time is seen to jump, skip, crack and freeze, through different spaces and time zones and sometimes, confusingly, happening all at once as seen in the work of digital artist and philosopher EL Putnam.[5] Screens now act as third parties in relationships, and often as a third party mediating between our real and virtual selves. As Jedediah Britton-Purdy has noted, we are now an infrastructure species, a category he uses to describe our physical and technological relationship to the world we have created.[6]

The compression chambers of climate change and COVID-19 makes this contemporary period an event in itself. What has become increasingly visible throughout the pandemic is how language and rhetoric associated with the 2008 global financial crisis has re-appeared as an individualizing resilience narrative. Neoliberal narratives of personal responsibility foreground the primacy of the individual rather than the responsibility of the state in protecting the public and environmental health of its citizens. Such narratives also demonstrate an apparently wilful lack of understanding of epidemic or other crisis events and can even go further by viewing such events as opportunities in the Malthussian sense (no more fucking lockdowns - let the bodies pile high in their thousands[7]), echoing the narratives of disaster capitalism as previously observed by Naomi Klein post-2008.[8]

More troublingly, however, is that the mantra of personal responsibility singularly assumes a level playing pitch for all members of society, with the concept concealing a dangerous assumption that everyone has the same level of social supports and economic security to help cushion them in a time of crisis. Not everyone can exercise personal responsibility by not exposing themselves to the virus when commuting to work on public transport, shielding a close relative, teaching or caring for unvaccinated children, or working in a meat-packing plant. Indeed, the mandates to work from home blithely assumed that everyone has an adequate home-space to work/learn from. Such narratives assume that home is a safe space and sanctuary from the viral dangers in the public sphere, instead of being a private space of harm for many in what has been regarded as a shadow pandemic of domestic violence.[9]

The assumptions behind the the phrase personal responsibility are therefore highly gendered, class-based, and politically structurally-biased; they make already inequitable social systems even more dangerous for many. These are just some examples of a highly problematic resilience narrative that has gained traction without sustained critique, and will undoubtedly re-emerge in future times. The failure to protect yourself and your loved ones, so the narrative goes, implies a moral failing on your part to assess the risk and act with personal responsibility to swerve and dodge that COVID-19 or climate wave coming your way.

We have much to learn from the necropolitics of the present in terms of how such resilience narratives will shape future crisis scenarios, therefore such narratives should be carefully tracked and forensically examined for what they ideologically assume and, conversely, what they dangerously conceal. Caught between the vice grips of the biopolitical crisis of the virus and the existential crises of climate change, we are living in a threshold decade, a pivotal time when decisions made now will set in train biopolitical tipping points that will determine the future of life to come, for better or for worse.

Nessa Cronin is a lecturer in Irish Studies, Centre for Irish Studies, and associate director of the Moore Institute at NUI Galway, Ireland.

[1] Quoted in Jerome Kohn, Introduction to Hannah Arendt, Essays in Understanding, 1930-1954: Formation, Exile, and Totalitarianism (New York, 1994), p. ix.

[2] Hannah Arendt, No Longer and Not Yet, p. 158.

[3] W. J. T. Mitchell, Present Tense 2020: On the Iconology of the Epoch, Moore Institute Webinar, 9 June 2021, National University of Ireland, Galway https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WFCen3FmbE, later published as, Present Tense 2020: On the Iconology of the Epoch, Critical Inquiry 47 (Winter 2021), pp. 370-406. I am very grateful to Professor Mitchell for discussions on this theme when I presented at this webinar as a panelist respondent to his paper, much of which gave rise to the considerations expressed here.

[4] Elif Shafak, The World to Come, New Statesman, 20 August 2020. https://www.newstatesman.com/uncategorized/2020/08/world-come-old-world-gone Also see, Elif Shafak, How to Stay Sane in an Age of Division (2020).

[5] See http://www.elputnam.com/

[6] Jedediah Britton-Purdy, This Land is Our Land: The Struggle for the New Commonwealth (Princeton, New Jersey, 2019).

[7] Prime Minister of Britain Boris Johnson was allegedly to have said this rather than impose further restrictions or lockdowns in Britain at the height of the wave. See, Jessica Elgot and Robert Booth, Pressure mounts on Johnson on alleged let the bodies pile high remarks, The Guardian, 26 Apr. 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/apr/26/pressure-mounts-on-boris-johnson-over-alleged-let-the-bodies-pile-high-remarks

[8] Initial media reporting of the COVID-19 crisis in Britain made reference to the tenor of conversations in government circles in relation to the impact of the virus on the elderly population in particular and a policy of herd immunity: The report claimed that at one private event at the end of February, Cummings outlined then governments strategy at the time in a way that was summarised by some present as herd immunity, protect the economy, and if that means some pensioners die, too bad. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/mar/22/no-10-denies-claim-dominic-cummings-argued-to-let-old-people-die And that the excess deaths of 125,000 people in the UK by March 2021 means that the Treasury will save more than 1.5 billion in state pension payments in 2022. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/12/covid-crisis-social-care-elderly-people On Naomi Klein see, The Shock Doctrine (2008)

[9] Im making the distinction here between home environments and living quarters to highlight the particular challenges that men, women and children who live in asylum and detention centers encountered during successive periods of lockdown in Ireland (known as Direct Provision Centers) and Europe more widely.
Joe Sohm/Visions of America/Joe Sohm/Visions of America/Univ

This year, March 22 is recognized as National Agriculture Day, a day intended to highlight the contributions of the sector and the people in this industry. In Texas, the agriculture sector is a primary component of the Lone Star State economy.

Overall, Texas leads the nation in cattle, cotton, hay, sheep, goats and mohair production, according to the Texas Department of Agriculture.
Crews were still on scene Tuesday cleaning up after a grass fire ravaged some grassland in Floyd County on Sunday. According to the Floyd County Record, the fire affected an estimated 400 acres near the Floyd County Friends Unity Center in Muncy, an unincorporated community between Floydada and Lockney. Eight area fire departments assisted with the callout including the Lockney and Floydada Volunteer Fire Departments and volunteer fire departments for Petersburg, Silverton, Ralls, Matador, Quitaque and Dougherty, according to FCR. Cleanup is expected to continue for several more days.
Click here to read the full article.

Amanda Bynes conservatorship has been terminated, coming to end after nearly nine years.

Bynes, who rose to fame as a child actor on Nickelodeons All That in the 90s and then starred in a slew of hit movies in the early 2000s, has been under a conservatorship since 2013.

The conservatorship is no longer need or required, and therefore, the petition of termination is granted, Judge Roger L. Lund said Tuesday morning at the Superior Court of California, County of Ventura, in Oxnard, Calif. Shes done everything the court has asked over a long period of time, the judge added, before congratulating Bynes.

Bynes was not present at the hearing. Her attorney, David A. Esquibias, spoke on her behalf.

With no objections in the courtroom, the hearing lasted all of five minutes, and termination was expected. The day before the hearing, the judge issued a tentative ruling, stating that the conservatorship is no longer required, setting the stage for the end of the court-ordered arrangement that Bynes had been living under for over the past decade.

With the conservatorship of both her person and her estate being terminated, Bynes will now have control over her finances and is able to choose where she wants to live, how she wants to conduct her life and will have oversight over all day-to-day responsibilities.

Bynes filed a petition to terminate the conservatorship on Feb. 23 with the support of her mother, attorney and psychiatrist. Along with the petition to terminate was a capacity declaration from Feb. 22 because the state of California requires all conservatees to provide updated information on their mental state from their physician or medical practitioner. Bynes psychiatrist supported ending the conservatorship, writing that Bynes has no apparent impairment in alertness and attention, information and processing, or ability to modulate mood and affect, and suffers no thought disorders.

In 2013, the former child stars parents, Rick Bynes and Lynn Organ, originally petitioned the court for a conservatorship when their famous daughter allegedly set a driveway on fire and was hospitalized on an involuntary psychiatric hold. In 2014, her mother was granted a full conservatorship, becoming her official conservator.

Two of Bynes former All That cast mates were present at hearing, as were a trio of #FreeBritney activists who were at the courthouse to support Bynes, as part of their continued mission to raise awareness for conservatorship abuse, following the termination of Britney Spears conservatorship last November.

We hope to speak to her and celebrate with her in some way, said Leon Frierson, who starred on All That in the 90s. Fellow Nickelodeon co-star Christy Knowings added, We would love to see Amanda.

Bynes, who is now 35 and engaged, is currently a student at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising, where she is pursuing a bachelors degree.

Were all excited and were all anxiously looking forward to Amanda living a life as a private and normal citizen, Bynes attorney told Variety earlier this week, before the hearing.

Since 2020, Bynes had been living in a structured community for women in need. The facility typically addresses drug, alcohol or substance dependency issues, and also medical issues. Esquibias told Variety this week that Bynes has done very well in a very short period of time that shes been there, and is now able to live on her own independently and free of the conservatorship.

In 2014, Bynes displayed erratic behavior on Twitter, posting a series of tweets accusing her father of abuse; she then walked back the comments, saying she had a microchip in her brain, which caused her to tweet the false claims. Shortly after, Bynes was admitted to an involuntary emergency psychiatric hold at a California facility. During that time, Bynes had tweeted that she was diagnosed bipolar and manic depressive, though her attorney declined to comment on any medical issues and whether Bynes was ever diagnosed as bipolar, citing client attorney privilege.

Bynes spoke about her past in 2018, telling Paper Magazine, I got really into my drug usage and it became a really dark, sad world for me. She told the publication that she began smoking marijuana when she was 16 years old. Later on it progressed to doing molly and ecstasy, she said in that interview, adding that she abused Adderall and tried cocaine a few times.

An individual close to Bynes told Variety that the retired actress never had a drug addiction, explaining that she had a medical condition that required supervision and required assistance and education.

Last month, when Bynes filed to terminate the conservatorship, a family attorney for her mother, Lynn Organ, said that the conservatorship was always intended to be temporary and stated that Lynn is extremely happy and thrilled and proud of Amanda and ready to terminate this conservatorship based on the hard work Amanda has done.

When asked what Bynes is focusing on with her newfound freedom, Esquibias recently told Variety, Besides normalcy as a person and a student, I know that she is looking forward to what her next step is going to be. She is very creative, so shes trying to find an outlet for that. The attorney mentioned that Bynes is interested in starting a fragrance line and possibly a clothing line and that she wouldnt necessarily rule out a return to acting.

Bynes has remained out of the entertainment business for more than a decade. Her last credit was the 2010 film Easy A, in which she starred opposite Emma Stone. After her breakthrough as a child star on All That, she landed her own sketch variety series as a preteen, The Amanda Show, which ran for three seasons and cemented her status as a comedic prodigy. In the 2000s, Bynes had continuous work, leading popular television and film projects, including Shes the Man with Channing Tatum, What a Girl Wants, Sydney White, the 2007 movie adaptation of Hairspray and the TV sitcom What I Like About You, in which she co-starred with Jennie Garth from 2002 to 2006.

Bynes case is the second high-profile conservatorship to recently capture interest from the public, following Spears conservatorship, which was put in place in 2008 and was terminated last November, dominating international headlines with worldwide rallying from the #FreeBritney movement. The pop stars legal proceedings remain ongoing as Spears contentious uphill battle against her father continues to play out, both in the courtroom and in the court of public opinion. With Spears case at the forefront of media attention, Bynes conservatorship also began to gain traction on social media with many fans finding interest in the actress story and making public calls to free Bynes, though the inner workings of the two cases are very different.

Sign up for Varietys Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Click here to read the full article.

Madeleine Albright, the first female Secretary of State in U.S. history, died Wednesday of cancer, according to CNN. She was 84.

Albright served as the 64th Secretary of State from 1997-2001 under President Bill Clinton. She was credited with helping steer U.S. foreign policy after the Cold War, and in 2012 she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama.

She was born on May 15, 1937 in Czechoslovakia, and she and her family moved to the United States in 1948. She became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1957, then attended Wellesley College and studied political science, graduating in 1959. After getting her PhD from Columbia, she worked for several politicians in Washington, D.C., conducted international research and went on to be a major foreign policy advisor for the Democratic Party.

Geraldine Ferraro and Michael Dukakis both enlisted Albright as an advisor in 1984 and 1988, and in 1993 Clinton nominated her to be a U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. During his second term, Albright became the first female Secretary of State and was the highest-ranking woman in the history of the U.S. government at that time.

During her tenure, she played a major role in U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and she pushed for the growth of NATO into former Soviet nations of Eastern Europe. In the early 2000s, Albright became one of the first and highest-level Western politicians to meet former North Korean leader Kim Jong-il during an official visit, and she pushed for the eradication of Iraqs weapons of mass destruction.

After her time in the White House ended, Albright founded the Albright Stonebridge Group, an international strategy consulting group in Washington, D.C. She was a professor at Georgetown University, president of the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation, chair of the National Democratic Institute, chair of the U.S. Defense Policy Board and an author. In Hollywood, Albright appeared on episodes of Gilmore Girls and Parks and Recreation.

Sign up for Varietys Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Arlene Richie/Getty Images

If you look like Selena (and it's not just your nice tia telling you so on Facebook), then you might want to make plans for a Friday night contest at a Northside club.

Annual celebrations honoring the Texas trailblazer's legacy always crop up around this time of year. They coincide with the anniversaries of Selena's death (March 31, 1995) and birthday (April 16).
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(0x55e8388dbdf8)', 'main') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 948 HTML::Mason::Request::call_dynamic('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x55e838818900)', '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(0x55e8388dbdf8)') 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(0x55e838818900)') 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(0x55e8388ef290)') 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(0x55e838818900)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 165 HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x55e838818900)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 831 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handle_request('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x55e82d414e40)', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x55e8387e0de8)') called at (eval 592) line 8 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handler('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x55e8387e0de8)') called at -e line 0 eval {...} at -e line 0
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 3 1 of 3 Raising Cane's Show More Show Less 2 of 3 Raising Cane's Show More Show Less 3 of 3





Raising Cane's will soon be opening its door to the largest Texas location at 4001 E. 42nd St. in Odessa. Local Caniacs can expect a huge grand opening celebration from March 29 to April 1.

On March 29, Odessa's mayor, fire chief, police chief and chamber of commerce officials will host an official ribbon-cutting ceremony starting at 9:30 a.m. Cane's will be accepting entries from 8:30 to 9 a.m. for its "Lucky 20" drawing to award 20 customers ages 13 and older free Cane's for a year. Winners will be drawn from 9 to 10 a.m. and entries must be present to win. The first 100 dine-in customers will receive a free Cane's T-shirt. The University of Texas Permian Basin band, Odessa High School band and cheerleaders and Permian High School band and cheerleaders will be performing on site.
Culinaria Wine + Food Festival

San Antonio's annual Tasting Texas Wine and Food Festival will be the first statewide culinary festival to partner with the James Beard Foundation this fall. The James Beard foundation is known as the "Academy Awards" of the food world. The Culinaria event will feature foodie offerings from award-winning chefs from San Antonio, Texas, and across the country.

The bulk of the festival will be defined by the three day Culinary Market on October 28-30 from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily. During the market, 100 prestigious chefs will set up post in downtown's Travis Park. On October 29, a locally inspired top-shelf tequila tasting will take place on the banks of the San Antonio River Walk.
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson's confirmation hearings in the Senate Judiciary Committee began Monday, though the public hardly heard from her, as senators from both sides of the aisle used their time to make partisan speeches, vaguely addressing Jackson instead of asking her questions.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, began his speech with an attempt to give Jackson, who if confirmed would be the first Black woman on the court, a history lesson.

"Supreme Court confirmations weren't always controversial," Cruz said. "In fact, Bushrod Washington, when nominated to the Supreme Court in 1798, was confirmed the very next day."

It is true that Bushrod Washington - a favorite nephew of George Washington who had never served as a judge before - was officially nominated to the Supreme Court on Dec. 19, 1798, and confirmed the next day by voice vote in the Senate. However, he had already been serving on the court since Nov. 9 via recess appointment from President John Adams. (Ten justices have been recess appointed, the last coming during the Eisenhower administration.)

It is also true that Washington was an enslaver. If Cruz was merely looking for an example of a nominee who was quickly confirmed, there have been about 10 nominees confirmed the same day they were nominated and at least another dozen confirmed in only one day, just like Washington, according to Senate records. Washington was neither the first nor the last to be confirmed that quickly.

Of the 31 senators at the time of Washington's confirmation, at least 18 of them - 58% - were also enslavers, according to a database created and maintained by The Washington Post. (The slaveholding status of four of them is unknown, and nine do not appear to have been enslavers. One Senate seat, representing the slave state of Delaware, was vacant at the time of the vote.)

Washington served on the court for more than 31 years, longer than any of the current justices. And in those 31 years, he was definitely controversial, largely because of his actions as an enslaver.

In 1802, Washington inherited his famous uncle's Mount Vernon estate upon the death of first lady Martha Washington. He did not inherit the people his uncle had enslaved; most of them were freed by Martha before her death, and others had been freed earlier in the first president's will. Despite a boom in the voluntary manumission of enslaved people in the post-Revolutionary War years, and his uncle's example, Bushrod Washington brought his own enslaved people with him to Mount Vernon.

Then in 1812, he co-founded the American Colonization Society, a group that sought to send the growing group of free Black Americans to Africa, a place a vast majority of them had never been. The society claimed the immigrants were volunteers, but according to historian Ousmane K. Power-Greene, many were pressured to leave. Some were promised freedom from their enslavers only if they left.

By and large, Black Americans and abolitionists hated colonization and actively fought against it. Washington himself complained of "unworthy persons" having conversations "with my negroes, and to impress upon their minds the belief that as the nephew of General Washington, or as president of the Colonization Society, or for other reasons, I could not hold them in bondage," according to a 1980 paper in the Supreme Court Historical Society.

He had also been a fairly terrible steward of Mount Vernon, an already difficult property, and in 1821, he sold 54 enslaved people for $10,000 to pay off debts. He made his buyers promise not to separate families - something his uncle detested - but regardless, the group of men, women and children were sent on a brutal trip over land, in chains, to Louisiana, which several newspapers wrote about critically, according to the historical society. One newspaper called it "excessively revolting."

So that is who Cruz mentioned in his speech Monday. For all intents and purposes, it was a throwaway line meant only to introduce Cruz's real historical point: what had changed from those halcyon, uncontroversial days.

"So what changed?" he continued. "Well, what changed is, starting in the 1960s and the 1970s, the Supreme Court's role in our society changed dramatically. The Supreme Court became a policymaking body rather than a merely judicial body. . . . Starting in the sixties and seventies, the Supreme Court decided its place in our democracy - at least, too many justices - was to set aside the democratic decision of the people and instead mandate the policy outcomes they themselves supported."

Cruz didn't mention which specific cases he was referring to in this era of the court - which is, of course, best known for its many landmark rulings supporting civil rights for Black Americans, women and other historically marginalized groups.
@BrackenridgeParkConservancy

It's time to have your voices heard. San Antonio officials are hosting a series of three public meetings regarding the Brackenridge Park 2017 Bond Project. The community can voice their concerns about the controversial updates regarding the popular park starting this week.

The city's parks and recreation and public works departments will discuss the restoration and preservation of the park's historic assets. Those features include the 1776 Upper Labor Diversion Dam, 1870's Brackenridge Park Pump House, and the 1920s River Walls.
The City of San Antonio Parks and Recreation Department and the Public Works Department held the first forum of its three-part public meeting series regarding the proposed plan at Brackenridge Park on Tuesday, March 22.

In February, the city departments received criticism for their planned project to remove 105 trees  10 heritage trees  to repair and restore some of the historical features at Brackenridge Park. After public backlash and pushback from the Historic Design and Review Committee, the city postponed its vote of approval to remove the trees to the summer.

The city said it needed more time to hear from the public and to work with other stakeholders to ensure the historic structures in the park are adequately protected and the removal of heritage trees is minimized. Via the Brackenridge Park 2017-2022 bond project, the proposed plan aims to restore natural park features and improve water quality. It also hopes to restore, preserve, and articulate park cultural and historical features.

San Antonio Parks and Recreation Department

During the meeting, city officials said Phase 1 of their project aims to repair the Brackenridge Pump House, the Lambert Beach river walls and stairs, the steps of Lambert Beach, and conduct grading and earthwork improvements. To repair and preserve the stone walls and structures on the river banks, the city hopes to remove some trees impacting the areas, including several heritage trees.

For Phase 2, the city aims to restore the Upper Labor Lily Pond, uncover and stabilize the Labor Dam, dredge and repair the historic Acequia Madre, re-water the raceway, and provide native trees and planting.

After the presentation from city officials, the public was able to give feedback by writing down their concerns via paper and talking to leaders on the project through an open forum. Several members in the community urged the public meetings to be more of a town hall meeting, rather than an open forum.

However, City Council member Jalen McKee-Rodriguez said he hopes the format of the meeting helps everyone be heard. He and city council member Mario Bravo have stressed to public works and the parks and recreation department how they believe the public needs more input on the proposed project.

Moving forward into the next meeting, the council members are hopeful the city staff heard the concerns of the community and will unveil an updated plan. The next meeting is set for 6 p.m. April 26 at the Witte Museum. A third meeting, at the same time and location, will be on May 24, and officials said a fourth one likely will be held. The meeting format may change after concerns from the first meeting.
An old adage, an adaptation of a Thomas Wolfe novel, holds that you can never go home again, referencing the physical and personal change that has taken place once one leaves.

But dont tell that to Kendall Hoes. Shes not buying it.

The Steele High School chemistry teacher  a 2010 Steele graduate who set off for a journalism degree at the University of Texas at Austin  is in her fifth year of teaching chemistry and engineering at her alma mater.

Hoes is being recognized for her innovation, devotion and inspiration in the classroom as she was one of eight San Antonio area educators named as finalists in the 2022 H-E-B Excellence In Education Award competition.

All state finalists are invited to the Excellence In Education Awards dinner April 30 in Austin. Two principals and six educators will be named winners along with two school districts (one large and one small), a public school board and an early childhood facility at the celebratory dinner.

Six top teachers will be named in three categories, one each from the elementary and secondary levels.

The Rising Star Award honors exceptionally promising teachers with less than 10 years of experience. Each receives a $5,000 check for themselves and a $5,000 grant for their school. The Leadership Award honors teachers with 10-20 years in the classroom and delivers $10,000 to the individual and $10,000 to the school. The Lifetime Achievement Award honors instructors with more than 20 years of experience, paying $25,000 per teacher and $25,000 to their respective schools.

The award was the first time I really got validation that what Im doing in my classroom matters, Hoes said. To be recognized at the state level for what Im doing is really humbling, honoring and really special.

Hoes started teaching in 2014 at Austin Bowie High school, following her graduation from UT. In 2017, Hoes moved to the Schertz-Cibolo area to be closer to family, she said, and began teaching at Steele.

To be recognized in a subject that is a core subject to begin with, something that there is such a big demand for in the job field, is awesome, Hoes said.

Hoes left Steele as a member of the Class of 2010, bound for UT where she planned to major in journalism, marketing and advertising. When she found how selective the schools senior journalism program was, she decided not to waste time on something she was not overly passionate about.

So I found myself in chemistry because I have a love for math, she said. Calculus, for me, was the best subject I ever took.

Science is great, she said, watching her sixth-period chemistry class engage in a project to test how salt and sugar dissolve in water.

Im not a life sciences person; Ive always been physical science. Chemistry has always come really naturally for me. I just naturally found myself in chemistry by junior year labs.

Rather than take labs for quantum physics, she opted for a lab to teach high school chemistry classes through the UTeach program at UT, which is how she entered the teaching profession.

Upon her return to Steele, she teamed up with a familiar face. Scott Thomas, who taught at Steele when Hoes was a teenager, is now an instructional cohort.

Its a cool story. I taught junior high school (at Dobie Junior High in Cibolo) for four years. I first taught Kendall there in eighth grade. I moved to Steele and then had her in two AP chemistry classes, in 10th and 12th grades, Thomas said.

She was a superstar at all levels, from eighth grade all the way up to college-level chemistry, Thomas added.

Even after Hoes went off to UT, Thomas said he kept in touch with her and eventually found out she wanted to go into teaching.

I begged her to come to Steele then, but she was living in Austin, he said. Finally, one day I got an email from her and she said they were moving to the area and asked if I could get her a spot. I said, Of course.

Thomas and Hoes form the Steele chemistry faculty and have created what he called a great personal-professional relationship.

She has a completely different teaching style than I do. Shes very innovative and cutting-edge, where I am more old school. We kind of tug-of-war with each other, but its a perfect relationship, he said. Sometimes shes overly ambitious and I have to pull her back. And sometimes she gets me out of my box, as we try new things. But I absolutely love working with her.

Hoes leads two engineering classes and four chemistry classes during the day. In the classroom, she said she focuses more on the life-skills aspect of teaching and learning, even more so than the subject matter itself.

On Day One I tell my students, Maybe one percent of you might go into a science degree or chemistry degree. Other than that, is this class useful to you? she said. Subject-wise, not really. Skill-wise, yes. Can you look at problem and critically think? Can you collect data? Analyze that data and get an outcome? Those are the skills I want to teach.

She said the students will leave her classroom learning more than just the Periodic table, chemical equations, and how to present findings.

I get them to buy in. Youre learning teamwork, youre learning how to communicate with different people. When I can get those kids to hook into that, they trust me to teach them the hard content, she said. Having them hands-on 40 percent of the time is what inspires me to keep doing the projects. Project-based instruction is real-world problem-solving.

Hoes received a check for $1,000 in early March and hopes to land the $5,000 Rising star Award in April.

jflinn@express-news.net




New solar array proposed in South Everett would benefit PUD bill-aid program EVERETT  The Snohomish County PUD is looking to build a new solar panel array in South Everett.

On March 30, the Everett City Council will hold a public hearing at 6:30 p.m. on Zoom to consider a 15-year lease of city property to the PUD for this project. The property is about 1.75 acres sited adjacent to Walter

E. Hall Park on Casino Road.

The money that the PUD would save by generating electricity here will be donated into its program to help people with their utility bills, known as Project Pride.

The utility is targeting to start construction later this year. The system will be slightly smaller to the PUDs Arlington solar array, PUD spokesman Aaron Swaney said. It could generate upward of $25,000 annually in funding for the Project Pride program, Swaney said.

The solar array at this location will have high visibility to the local community and park visitors, bringing clean renewable energy to the neighborhood. The site is an area where the PUD experiences summer peaking loads, said Suzy Oversvee, PUD Senior Customer and Energy Services Program Manager, through a statement.

In 2021, 611 households received bill reductions through Project Pride, totaling nearly $90,000 in assistance, Swaney said.

Customer donations mainly keep the 40-year-old program going. Donation slips are often inserted in monthly power bills or you can give on www.snopud.com

People can apply for power bill help through St. Vincent de Paul, 425-374-1243.

The PUD has been talking with the city of Everett for a year about leasing the site.

In 2021, the PUD received a $860,000 state grant toward the solar array from the state Department of Commerces Washington Clean Energy Fund, which spread $3.7 million in project grants in 2021.

Check out our online publications!
Multiple tornadoes touched down in Central Texas on Monday, March 21, leaving behind catastrophic damage to several homes and businesses in their wake. Round Rock was no exception. Resident Maya Talamantez described a feeling of helplessness as she watched the tornado hit her apartment.

My heart immediately sunk, Talamantez said. I started spam calling every single one of my family members and got no reply. I truly thought they were dead.

After 15 minutes, Talamantez said she received a call from her sister saying her family was okay. However, their house in the Kensington Place neighborhood, just off Gattis School Road in the southern end of Round Rock, was destroyed.

My family is no doubt in complete shock, Talamantez told MySA. It was the only home we ever lived in as a family, so the loss is very emotional.

Glass, shattered lumber, and roof shingles lined the streets of Talamantezs neighborhood. Talamantez created a GoFundMe on Tuesday, March 22 to help her family with the restoration of their home. As of Wednesday, March 23, $9,895 has been raised.

We are feeling the pressure of building from the ground up again, but the support from the community has made us feel so protected, Talamantez said. Its been a rollercoaster, but the emotions swing from despair to fear to joy and appreciation as weve seen people that are so ready to help.

Zoe Talamantez

According to Round Rock city officials, between 350 to 400 homes were damaged by the tornado. Williamson County Judge Bill Gravel held a press conference on Tuesday to update residents of the latest damages, according to an CBS Austin article.

The process is going to take some time, Gravel said. The city of Round Rock will go methodically through their system, inspections, or third party inspections to help businesses and residents get back into their places.

Taqueria Jaguar's, a family-owned food truck in Round Rock, also launched a GoFundMe after their business was affected by the tornado.

This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 3 1 of 3 Zoe Talamantez Show More Show Less 2 of 3 Zoe Talamantez Show More Show Less 3 of 3





"Our business is so well loved by so many of our customers and family and it hurts to see it has been destroyed," Taqueria Jaguar's owner Belen Morales said. "Looking back at the photos, we are blessed our family is alive."

Morales told MySA a friend had called to tell her the truck had been destroyed by the tornado.

"I just grabbed the keys and left," Morales said. "When I arrived, I couldn't believe it. Seven years, I've been working so hard with my family and my heart was destroyed to see how bad the tornado impacted our business."

Family and friends have helped Morales and over $1,300 has been raised to help build their taco truck back up.

"The situation has brought my family closer and we are so thankful to those who have helped us so far," she said.

Belen Morales

Heres how else you can help those in need after the storm:
What do Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson and California state Sen. Scott Wiener all have in common? Beyond being highly visible public officials, they were also all at Harvard Law School together in the 1990s.

During the second day of Jackson's Senate Judiciary Committee hearings, Wiener took to Twitter to bemoan Cruz's method of questioning, replying to a tweet stating that Cruz frequently interrupted Jackson.

"Ketanji Brown Jackson was in my law school class," the San Francisco Democrat tweeted. "Everyone thought she was a nice & brilliant person. Ted Cruz was a year ahead of us in law school. Everyone thought he was a major jackass, as he is demonstrating yet again today."

Cruz's main lines of questioning centered around critical race theory and Jackson's handling of child pornography cases.

After Jackson said that she does not use critical race theory  a legal theory relating to race and policy that first originated in the 1970s but has since become a catch-all term for topics relating to race and social justice more broadly  as a judge, Cruz then pivoted to the curriculum at the Georgetown Day School, a private K-12 Washington, D.C., school where Jackson serves on the board of trustees.

While holding a copy of Ibram X. Kendi's "Antiracist Baby" (with illustrations from the book put on a poster behind him for good measure), Cruz asked Jackson if she believes that "babies are racist." Cruz quoted lines from "Antiracist Baby" stating, "babies are taught to be racist or antiracist  there is no neutrality" and that babies should "confess when being racist."

"Senator," Jackson said with a sigh and long pause. "I do not believe that any child should be made to feel as though they are racist or though they are not valued or though they are less than, that they are victims, that they are oppressors, I don't believe in any of that."

Cruz also criticized Jackson for having a pattern of giving those convicted of child porn offenses shorter sentences than prosecutors recommended, which Jackson countered by stating that she was also bound to follow other recommendations, including ones given by probation offices. Recommendations from probation offices have not been made public. Several critics have charged that Republican attacks on Jackson's child pornography record lack context, and conservative legal writer Andrew McCarthy of the National Review even wrote that "the allegation appears meritless to the point of demagoguery."
Whether youre an avid outdoor adventurer or simply like to travel to the rainier corners of the world, everyone can agree that arriving at your destination only to find soaking wet is bad, to say the least. Thankfully, Patagonia has a line of bags and suitcases designed to protect your luggage, clothes and electronics alike from water, snow or other adverse weather.

Made from durable, recycled materials, the Black Hole Duffel bag is one of the most popular bags in the Black Hole line. However, these bags arent cheap, and understanding what you can get out of them, so to speak, is critical to determining whether or not you should invest in one. Ive been using a pair of Black Hole duffel bags for more than 3 years now and am here to report on what I liked, what I didnt like and most importantly, what I learned.

What is the Black Hole duffel?

The Patagonia Black Hole duffel bag is a durable, waterproof and flexible adventure-ready bag. Although the Black Hole line includes a variety of bags, the duffel is the most popular product. There are a variety of colors and sizes to choose from; the smallest duffel has a 40 liter capacity and the largest duffel has a 100 liter capacity, but you can also grab a middle size with 70L as well as a few other variations.. Each Black Hole product is entirely made from recycled materials, and is backed by Patagonias renowned product guarantee. The duffel is made from 900-D ripstop polyester and has a TPU-film coating that increases weatherproofing. All in all the Black Hole duffel is a simple, but reliable bag.

PATAGONIA Black Hole Duffel 70L, Multi-Coloured, One Size Patagonia amazon.com $237.33 Shop Now

Pros and cons of the Black Hole duffel

Pros

All Black Hole bags are backed by Patagonias signature Ironclad Guarantee. Not only does the Ironclad Guarantee function similarly to a traditional warranty, it also supports reasonably priced product repairs.

Durable and well-made. By my measure, they exceed normal durability expectations for standard luggage and are more than capable of handling rugged camping, hiking or backpacking conditions.

Multiple carrying options, including traditional handles that loop together as well as hidden backpack straps, and in some cases a shoulder strap. If youre willing to splurge, you can also get wheels.

The hidden backpack straps are well cushioned; Ive carried my fully loaded 70L bag as a backpack for more than a few hours without discomfort.

The 900-D polyester thats used to make the Black Hole duffels is durable, and you dont have to worry about tearing it while hiking or while its in transit.

Cons

The Black Hole duffel bag doesnt have a lot of individual pockets for organizing. If youre looking for a more traditional suitcase style carry-on bag, you might want to check out the Black Hole MLC, which has internal storage compartments and a slim, rectangular design that mimics a briefcase.

If you dont want to travel through the airport with a potentially misshapen and likely overstuffed bag, a Black Hole duffel isnt going to be great for you.

While the backpack handles can easily be stowed out of sight, there isnt a place to store the duffle bag handles while you are using the bag as a backpack.

How much does a Black Hole duffel cost?

Considering the quality and durability of the Black Hole duffel bags, I think theyre all fairly reasonably priced. The smallest 40 liter option is the cheapest with a price tag of $129. The slightly larger 55 liter bag costs $139, the 70 liter bag costs $159 and the largest 100 liter bag costs $179. The 70 liter bag is a great value for your money if you are going on an extended trip. If you want to get a duffel with wheels, you have to spend a minimum of $300.

My take on the Black hole duffel

Ive taken my duffel all over the world on almost every type of transport you can imagine. From propeller planes in Belize and the London underground to camping trips in Utah and numerous apartment moves, my set of duffels has served me well time and time again. Despite how much Ive subjected my bags to, neither of them have needed to be repaired or replaced. Although I didn't test the waterproofing to the extent that some users may need, I never arrived at my destination to find the contents of my bags wet.

The only troubles Ive encountered while traveling with my Patagonia duffel bags are related to the lack of structure. Although this bag is supremely versatile, the lack of structure and internal organization makes it difficult to use for professional or any other dress-code activities. Even if you take the time to securely fold your clothes, the bag will shift and compress during transit, which may leave your clothes wrinkled. The second complaint I have regarding the lack of structure is the fact that the Black Hole doesnt offer any drop or bump protection. This is something to keep in mind if you plan on checking your duffel back on an airplane. Lastly, also regarding air travel, the lack of structural support actually allows you to overstuff a 40 liter bag to the extent that it no longer fits airline carry-on dimensions. While the natural expandability can be a plus, make sure to be mindful of this before heading to the airport.

Patagonia Black Hole duffel FAQ

How many average days of clothing can you fit into each of the sizes?

The answer to this varies greatly from person to person and destination to destination. However, you can expect to get at least 3-6 full days of clothing and gear in a 40 liter pack, 6-8 days in a 55 liter bag and more than 10 in a 70 liter bag. The 100 liter bag can hold weeks worth of clothing.

What style zipper do Black Hole duffel bags have?

Each duffel has a large U-shaped zipper that leaves a wide opening for you to put things in, and take things out of. The main compartment has two zippers, one that opens to the right and the other to the left. I prefer the U-zipper over traditional duffle bag center zippers because it doesn't restrict visibility on the inside.

What is the largest carry-on compatible sized Black Hole?

Unfortunately, carry-on restrictions change depending on whether the flight is domestic or international and what airline you choose to fly. However, the standard 40 liter duffel should fit into almost all carry-on dimensions, regardless of the airline or destination. Ive heard of some people managing to get the 55 liter bag onto the plane if its not too full, but thats never a guarantee. If youre worried about having to check your bag its best to pack light and go with the 40 liter option.

Should you get a Black Hole duffel?

The Black Hole duffels are excellent, no-frills bags that you can rely on in a variety of situations. If youre in the market for a versatile piece of luggage that does a bit of everything, the Black Hole is right for you. However, if you have a specific, single purpose need in mind, there are probably better options out there. For example, if you want a pack for mountaineering specifically, I wouldnt recommend the Black Hole because of its size, weight and lack of maneuverability in comparison to climbing-specific packs. Furthermore, if youre looking for a duffel that you can take on business trips or to other events that require a suit or dress, you should look elsewhere for your luggage, especially at this price point. Just like the bag itself, the ideal Black Hole duffel owner is someone who likes to be prepared for spontaneous adventure and needs something that can handle nearly anything you throw at it.
My Nashville Post role has evolved since 2000 when I joined the now-defunct The City Paper. TCP became a Post sister publication in 2008 (when I began doing some Post work) and folded in 2013. I have been managing editor of the Post since late 2011.

Follow William Williams 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
(Natural News) Young boys with physical illnesses that require hospitalization are now being solicited by Doernbecher Childrens Hospital in Portland to tape their genitals and visit local sex shops in order to become their true transgender selves.

The progressive medical facility has created a handout for gender-confused boys explaining to them how to hide their private parts in order to appear more female. The pamphlet also encourages boys to visit sex-positive perversion stores that sell gender-affirming clothing items as well as sex toys, videos and more.

Entitled Safe Tucking, the handout from Doernbecher Childrens Hospital gives a step-by-step breakdown about genital tucking, which it says will help to minimize or hide the contour (bulge) of their genitals, creating a flatter and more feminine appearance, according to Pride in Practice, an LGBTQP  the P stands for pedophilia  health care site.

Using tape to strategically tuck ones genitals can help to reduce any concerns you have about your body, how your clothes fit and how safe you feel in public, the handout further explains.

Doernbecher Childrens Hospital also recommends that young boys put their testicles inside your body, which can cause damage to boys reproductive organs.

Press gently on your testicles with two or three fingers, and try to guide them into the inguinal canals, the handout instructs. This can feel strange at first, possibly even uncomfortable. You should not feel faint or nauseated or have extreme pain. If you do, take a break and try again later.

Once the testicles are tucked, pull the penis back between your legs, it adds. If you find yourself getting aroused, take a break and try again later. An erection will make it impossible to tuck.

Doernbecher Childrens Hospital promotes puberty blockers for boys, calls young men people with testicles

The handout does admit later on that all this shoving, tucking and taping has some risks, including urinary tract infections, problems with urine flow, and twisting or inflammation in the testicles.

It still, however, encourages boys to harm themselves physically because doing so will supposedly help to affirm their play-pretend fantasies about becoming a girl simply by moving body parts around to try to hide them from view.

Going to local sex shops will also help to affirm a boys gender dysphoria, according to Doernbecher Childrens Hospital. Even though they are for people age 18 and older, they offer appointments before or after hours for younger shoppers, the handout explains.

You can schedule an appointment by calling them or emailing, it adds.

If this is not considered grooming, then we do not know what is. Also, what kind of parent would allow his or her young son to make an after-hours appointment at a local sex shop to play around with his genitals? Oh, right, a Portland parent would.

It gets even worse, though. Doernbecher Childrens Hospital also has a puberty blockers handout for young boys that pushes them to block their normal male development.

Young boys are not actually young boys, according to the hospital. They are just people with testicles, and if they want those testicles to never form or to be removed if they have already formed, then Doernbecher is ready and willing to slice and drug in order to make that happen.

Jesus says, It is impossible but that offenses will come: but woe unto him, through whom they come! It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea, than that he would offend one of these little ones and cause them to stumble (Luke17:1,2), commented someone at the Western Journal about what the future holds for those at Doernbecher Childrens Hospital who are committing all these evil against innocent children.

More related news content can be found at Evil.news.

Sources include:

WesternJournal.com

NaturalNews.com
(Natural News) The worlds largest fertilizer producer, Nutrien Ltd., recently announced its plans to increase potash output by nearly one million tons this year in response to the uncertainty of supply from Eastern Europe.

Potash is a key input necessary for producing nitrogen-containing fertilizers. While Canada is the biggest potash producer, Russia and Belarus come in second and third, which means that much of the industry is affected.

In a press release, Nutriens interim president and CEO, Ken Seitz, said the impacts of the Russian-Ukraine conflict extend beyond Eastern Europe, as the disruption affects the supply of key agriculture, fertilizer and energy commodities that could have implications for global food security. He added that Nutrien is responding to the period of unprecedented market uncertainty by safely expanding potash production to help provide customers with their needed crop inputs.

Potash production is expected to increase by nearly 20 percent compared to 2020, and Nutrien will account for more than 70 percent of global production during this period. The company also expects a small increase in its capital expenditures for 2022 and said it will hire additional employees at its mines.

We continue to closely monitor market conditions and will evolve our long-term plans to ensure we utilize our assets in a safe and sustainable manner that benefits all our stakeholders, Seitz said.

The additional supply will come gradually. Andrew Wong, an analyst from RBC Dominion Securities Inc., said: Adding too much supply too quickly could raise concerns on longer-term oversupply. We also believe this prudent move reflects interim CEO Ken Seitzs significant experience and understanding of potash market dynamics and should be encouraging for investors that management continues to execute well despite the turnover over the past year. (Related: Soaring fertilizer prices to spark global famines unseen in modern history.)

BMO analyst Joel Jackson added that this move was inevitable. He said there could be a supply gap this year, even with a resolution of the Russia-Ukraine war.

The next move would be to invest and hire a material number of new miners to be able to target utilizing the last few millions of tons, but we think that would be some months away, Jackson added.

Meanwhile, potash prices have soared since the economic sanctions were imposed against Russia after its invasion of Ukraine. Belarus, Russias ally, has also been subject to European and U.S. sanctions that have since restricted its exports.

According to Nutrien, the additional volume of potash is expected to be produced in the second half of the year.

Canadian Pacific Railway, which moves potash fertilizer into the United States, has now sent a lock-out notice to its employees after talks with a union on wages and other issues failed. This move could disrupt the supply of the commodity, as a lockdown at the railroad company could have serious implications for potash transport to ports of shipment, including offshore buyers.

Potash shortage could create a ripple effect in food prices

Potash is present everywhere: from slowing the aging of wine, to preserving canned food and giving chocolate aroma. However, its most important role is getting all kinds of produce and processed food on the shelves for consumption.

As a key nutrient to fertilize basic crops like rice, wheat, sugar and soybeans, it is important to ensure that there is enough potash to grow staple grains and cereals to feed both people and livestock. Potash-based fertilizers will be crucial in ensuring that the worlds farms can keep up with the global population. (Related: Food prices to rise as nitrogen shortage forces American farmers to scale back on fertilizers.)

Rising energy prices have already been driving fertilizer prices through the roof, and the lack of potash exports is likely going to exacerbate the trend. Food experts say the consequences will be global, and the harvest outside Europe could suffer the most.

The disruption in potash supplies, coupled with the already turbulent energy market, can continue to push food prices up worldwide.

Follow Collapse.news for more updates on how the Russia-Ukraine crisis is affecting people worldwide.

Watch the video below to know more about how fertilizer shortage can affect global food supplies.

This video is from the BPEarthWatch channel on Brighteon.com.

More related stories:

Russia-Ukraine war will further worsen global food shortage as poor nations face starvation, unrest.

Russia-Ukraine conflict hits global fertilizer supply, threatens food security for billions of people.

If the Ukraine conflict doesnt end soon, the world will starve.

American agriculture threatened by skyrocketing fertilizer prices stemming from fiat currency inflation.

Corn and soybean farmer warns Americans that average grocery bill could increase by $1,000 per month.

Sources include:

AGWeb.com

GlobalNews.ca

Politico.eu

Brighteon.com
(Natural News) The Hong Kong Stocks Exchange (HKSE) just suspended trading in shares for Evergrande, Chinas largest property developer and one of the worlds most indebted corporations.

China Evergrande Group has become quite notorious in recent months due to its financial troubles, which could have debilitating effects on the global economy. (Related: On the brink of economic collapse: How Chinas fall will affect the world.)

At one time, Evergrandes chair, Hui Ka Yan, became the richest man in Asia. One of its investors even became the richest woman in Hong Kong.

Evergrande first started showing signs of big problems last summer when it ran into severe liquidity issues. By September, the company was missing payments on international bonds. Work on the companys hundreds of construction projects ground to a halt and it began experiencing trouble raising the funds to pay both workers and creditors.

Right around that time, it also came to light that Evergrande was the most indebted corporation in the world. It had more than 1.97 trillion yuan ($309.5 billion) in liabilities, including more than $20 billion worth of dollar-denominated debt.

Late last year, Evergrande defaulted on its debt, alongside many other large corporations in the Chinese real estate industry. This caused a nationwide liquidity crisis in the property sector, which makes up a significant component of the Chinese economy  as much as 25 percent of the countrys Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The industry drives up economic growth and provides jobs to keep unemployment statistics down.

The effect this crisis has had on the Chinese economy cannot be understated. For January to February of this year, local governments revenue from land sales contracted by nearly 30 percent. This is the biggest slump period since early 2015 when comparable data collection began.

At a time when local government units in China are under enormous pressure from the central government in Beijing to bolster economic growth, especially by spending on infrastructure, the figures underscore the massive impact Evergrandes crisis had on the Chinese economy.

According to an analysis by Goldman Sachs, combined local government income from land sales and property taxes in China may have shrunk by nearly 25 percent in January to February compared to a year ago and versus a 0.4 percent gain in December 2021.

In response to the crisis caused by Evergrande, China has lowered its economic growth expectations for 2022. Beijing unveiled a growth target of 5.5 percent, the lowest in three decades. Chinas Ministry of Finance announced it will not expand a pilot property tax program given the current conditions.

HKSE suspends Evergrande from trading until it learns more about companys restructuring efforts

To add to the companys financial scandals, Hong Kong just suspended Evergrande and its subsidiaries from trading pending a release of inside information from the company that could provide Hong Kong authorities with more information on the companys restructuring process and the fate of the companys international investors.

One insider who spoke with Financial Times said Evergrande is expected to hold a call with international investors soon to provide them with an update.

Evergrandes international investors have been frequently left in the dark over the companys financial status. Many even warned the company that they might take legal action over the lack of engagement.

In January, Evergrande claimed that it would soon unveil a plan to reorganize the companys portfolio, restructuring everything from its core real estate to its investments in different markets, including electric cars, water bottling and sports.

Evergrande said in January that it would continue to listen carefully to the opinions and suggestions of the creditors, and that it would receive help from local authorities in Guangdong province, where the company is based.

To further aid it in its restructuring efforts, Evergrande contracted American restructuring expert Houlihan Lokey and Hong Kong-based investment firm Admiralty Harbour Capital to provide a detailed assessment of the companys capital structure.

The coming report will be assessed by a risk management committee set up by Evergrande at the height of the financial crisis in December. The company also promised to actively engage with creditors regarding whatever restructuring plan it comes up with.

Evergrande was also aided in its restructuring by some of its creditors, who gave it some breathing room on its debt payments. Hengda Real Estate Group, for example, gave Evergrande a 12-month extension until September to collect their coupon payment of four billion yuan ($628.5 million) in bonds, due in full in 2025.

Finally, to continue stimulating the Chinese economy, the company vowed to continue working on at least half of its ongoing projects throughout 2022.

Learn more about the state of the global economy at MarketCrash.news.

Watch this episode of the Health Ranger Report as Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, talks about the global consequences of the Evergrande financial crisis.

This video is from the Health Ranger Report channel on Brighteon.com.

More related stories:

World braces for renewed supply chain crisis as COVID outbreaks shut down highly vaccinated China.

While the worlds attention was averted by war in Ukraine, China has entered an economic spiral with tanking stocks, new COVID spread.

Chinese city confiscates land from defunct Evergrande as scandal over property developer grows.

Evergrandes future in limbo amid debt repayment default.

Two Chinese real estate giants face financial disaster: Kaisa and Evergrande.

Sources include:

TheGatewayPundit.com

FT.com

SCMP.com

Bloomberg.com

Brighteon.com
(Natural News) Viral footage on Chinese social media revealed that peasants were ordered to clear forests to make way for arable land, amid fears of worsening food shortages.

The person recording the footage said: We just received a notice that we are required to cut down these trees and grow grains instead, even if financially it ends up being a loss. Commodity prices are so high nowadays  fertilizers, pesticides and prices are ridiculously high.

According to the video, the forests being cleared out for growing grains are located at the city of Weifang in Shandong province. Local authorities in Weifang ordered the clearing of forest land. The video showed many trees in the background that had already been chopped down, with some having their roots exposed. Other peasants had removed a large area of mature trees at the behest of Weifang officials.

The footage also captured a speaker in the village making an announcement. The speaker said trees are prohibited from being planted in farmland, and that the newly cleared forest land cannot be used for fish ponds or fruit orchards. They also reiterated that the trees must be cut down within a limited timeframe before authorities forcibly kill them.

Another man in the footage, who identified himself as a resident of Jining city in the same province, said authorities commanded them to remove trees to grow crops as the country faces looming food shortages. Chainsaws for cutting trees are now out of stock at local stores, he added.

The Jining resident said that in the past, we were told If you want to get rich, first of all, plant some trees. Now, they told us we are forbidden to plant trees.

A government official in Shandong province confirmed the tree removal operations to the Chinese-language version of the Epoch Times. Even fish ponds must be filled to grow crops. Anyway, you have to do what the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) requires you to do, said the Shandong official.

The forest clearing operations in Shandong follow admissions by Beijing that its domestic capability to grow food crops is low. Data from the General Administration of Customs found that China imported 164 million tons of grain in 2021, which means that its dependence on foreign imports is almost 20 percent. (Related: China buying up American corn due to flooding, creating food shortage crisis.)

Analysts blame incompetent leadership for Chinas food crisis

Several commentators shared their analyses of Chinas food crisis with the Epoch Times. Current affairs commentator Yang Si pointed out that aside from possessing yellow soil, Shandong is prone to drought and removing trees can lead to soil erosion.

The Japan-based Yang noted that the newly cleared land will require more than the average amount of fertilizers and pesticides to ensure a good harvest. Peasants will have a hard time making any profit due to the increasing costs of fertilizers and pesticides, he added.

Independent commentator Zhang Sutian, meanwhile, pointed his finger at the CCPs fraud and corruption as the reasons behind Chinas food shortages. According to Zhang, who has two decades of experience in the food industry under his belt, many grain depots in China are actually empty due to corruption. He described the countrys grain reserves as equivalent to a huge bad debt with too many interest groups involved.

Zhang also remarked that the situation in the grain depots has been covered up, with the problem being exacerbated yearly. He cited a 2013 incident when the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection sent a team to inspect the China Grain Reserve (CGR) for the first time. Following the commissions probe, 78 CGR grain depots in Heilongjiang province at Chinas northeastern tip caught fire.

Scholar Xue Chi agreed with Zhang that the CCPs incompetent governance exacerbates Chinas food shortage problem.

The CCP has never successfully established a modern agricultural production system. Its agriculture development is far behind its industrial development. Not only is its agriculture industry unable to compete with developed countries, it cannot even meet the domestic demand. This is caused by the CCP system.

Xue cited the CCPs deception, fraud and all kinds of messy conduct as the underlying reasons for Chinas worsening food crisis. Once the dark curtain is pierced through and truth exposed, the disaster will be out of control, he said.

Read more stories like this at FoodSupply.news.

Watch the video below talking about how Chinas food supply crisis is actually artificial.

This video is from the ZGoldenReport channel on Brighteon.com.

More related stories:

Russia-Ukraine war will further worsen global food shortage as poor nations face starvation, unrest.

World Alternative Media: Global food shortage is part of Great Reset agenda.

Natural disasters are killing Chinas food supply at breakneck speed.

Sources include:

TheEpochTimes.com

Brighteon.com
Madrid, March 22, 2022(SPS) - The Spanish Foreign Minister, Jose Manuel Albares, will appear urgently today before Congress as a result of the political crisis generated by the mistaken statement by Pedro Sanchez regarding the process of decolonization of Western Sahara, even before the date, several deputies and senators have taken advantage of the parliamentary work on yesterday to condemn the decision and wear the colors of the Saharawi flag.

In a debate on the extension of maternity or paternity leave in single-parent families, the deputy spokesperson for Unidos Podems in Congress, Sofia Castanon, wanted to show the support of the confederal group of Unidos Podems to the representatives of the Saharawi people who were in the tribune of hemicycle guests. Among the attendees was the Delegate of the Frente POLISARIO in Spain, Abdullah Arabi, who thanked this and other political groups for the expressions of affection received before and during the plenary session.

"I want to convey to you the firm commitment to Western Sahara because it is a matter of historical responsibility, coherence and memory", Castanon stated to the applause of his colleagues from the confederal group, who took advantage of the end of the intervention to remove several flags from the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic in full hemicycle.

Also in the upper house, the Senate, there have been proclamations and posters in favor of the Saharawi people. During the session, the Valencian senator from the Compromis formation, Carles Mulet, took out several flags and posters that read "Free Sahara". Before, the political representative described the Prime Minister as a "traitor" for supporting Morocco.

The image highlights the gaps between the unilateral policy of Pedro Sanchez and the bulk of the Spanish political class, critical not only of form but of substance for betraying the Saharawi people.SPS

125/090/TRA
(Natural News) Ukraines Mobile Hospital Head Gennadiy Druzenko is celebrating the fact that he gave strict orders to Ukrainian troops to castrate all wounded Russian soldiers they capture because Russians are cockroaches, not humans, according to Druzenko. And fake news giant CNN is praising Druzenko for doing and saying all this.

What Druzenko basically admitted in a translated Channel 24 interview that is going viral amounts to war crimes. And yet, CNN apparently sees nothing wrong with war crimes just so long as they are committed against Russians, which have become the worlds whipping post.

Druzenko is a lawyer, a Maidan activist, and a veteran of the Donbass war, we are told. His Facebook page also reveals that he used to work for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which is connected to the Ukrainian bioweapons laboratories, the Pentagon, the Biden crime family, Jeffrey Epstein and other Deep State players.

CNNs Fareed Zakaria hosted Druzenko during a recent segment. Zakaria called Druzenko an intellectual and had nothing but glowing things to say about him as he is joining the fight against Vladimir Putin, whom CNN seems to have long hated.

Zakaria even went so far as to dub Druzenko a medical angel, also calling the soldiers that Druzenko ordered to castrate wounded Russian soldiers medical angels whose job it is to save lives on front line.

Druzenko backtracks, says Ukrainian soldiers do not castrate anyone and are not going to

Much like how we were falsely told that ventilators, Remdesivir and now the vaccines are saving lives from the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19), the fake news media is claiming that Druzenko, a eugenics butcher, and those under his command are saving lives by castrating Russian men.

People prefer DENIAL over accepting (the fact that) we are ARMING NAZI battalions & those who encourage WAR CRIMES, tweeted Maajid Nawaz, a Twitter account that put much of this information together in a tweet feed.

It turns out that the United States, using American taxpayer dollars of course, is directly funding Druzenko and his Nazi soldiers as if these are Americas allies.

After Druzenko got exposed by Nawaz and others, he went on Facebook to claim that he and his soldiers are not castrating anyone and are not going to.

Those were the emotions. Im sorry, Druzenko wrote. We are saving lives. Period.

Unfortunately for Druzenko, there is circulating footage that appears to show Ukrainian forces torturing Russian soldiers. If these are real, then there are a lot more than just emotions running high in all this.

GRAPHIC WARNING: THREAD of VIDEOS appearing to depict OUR ALLIES the so-called good guys in Ukrainian militia dishing out ISIS-STYLE PUBLIC PUNISHMENT & TORTURE, Nawaz added in another tweet, linking to graphic footage.

Such abuse seems normalized & widespread there. It MUST be investigated ASAP by human rights organizations @Amnesty.

The PDMS later issued a statement apologizing for Druzenkos comments about castrating Russian soldiers, claiming they were taken out of context and propagated by Russian propaganda channels.

Once again, Russia, Russia, Russia! is being blamed for the actual words uttered by someone else, showing that no matter what the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and its allies say or do, Putin will always be blamed for it.

Democracy and free speech in general in our woke Western regions is over, wrote someone at Natural News. Is there still a way, I wonder, to get access to Russia Today somehow? I am fed up with biased Western propaganda.

It turns out that RT is still accessible to Americans, though it is important to remember that discernment and critical thinking are required with anything a person reads, no matter the source.

More related news coverage about the conflict in Ukraine can be found at Chaos.news.

Sources include:

TheReaderApp.com

NaturalNews.com

DailyExpose.uk
(Natural News) A top journalist has exposed the widespread media collusion that shielded Hunter Biden from scandal in an effort to protect Democrat Joe Biden.

(Article by Jay Greenberg republished from NeonNettle.com)

Independent journalist Glenn Greenwald has detailed the efforts by government officials, media outlets, Big Tech, and so-called fact-checkers to lie to the American public about reports on Hunters notorious Laptop from Hell.

In a Twitter thread, Greenwald lays into corporate media, detailing how government officials and media outlets had effectively colluded to protect Joe Bidens embattled son, Hunter  before, during, and after the 2020 presidential election.

Greenwald ultimately left The Intercept, the outlet he co-founded, when he was asked to sanitize an article he was writing about then-candidate Joe Biden.

The story was about Biden, his son Hunter, and their past dealings with both China and Ukraine.

He has now exposed multiple media outlets that had been drawn into the coordinated effort to protect the Bidens.

His comments come in the wake of a report from The New York Times  which, in addition to confirming that Hunter Biden remains under a federal investigation, let slip that the emails found on the laptop he reportedly abandoned at a Delaware repair shop were, in fact, authentic.

People familiar with the investigation said prosecutors had examined emails between Mr. Biden, Mr. Archer and others about Burisma and other foreign business activity. Those emails were obtained by The New York Times from a cache of files that appears to have come from a laptop abandoned by Mr. Biden in a Delaware repair shop. The email and others in the cache were authenticated by people familiar with them and with the investigation.

The New York Posts Miranda Devine, author of The Laptop From Hell, noted that none of the senior ex-intelligence officials  who swore that reports about Hunter Biden were nothing more than Russian disinformation  were willing to walk back their statements.

Spies who lie: The @nypost contacted the senior ex-intelligence officials who signed the shameful 2020 letter declaring Hunter Bidens laptop and its emails we ran were Russian disinformation, she tweeted.

Not one apologized. Most refused to comment.

Read more at: NeonNettle.com
(Natural News) This upcoming weekend, Australian Premier Mark McGowan of Western Australia is deploying a Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) testing army to go door-to-door and collect swab samples from residents of Perth.

McGowan said he fears that the omicron (moronic) variant is still hiding in the community somewhere, so he wants government troops to randomly jam swabs up Aussies nasal cavities to try to find it.

About 875 people, reports indicated, are expected to get swabbed over the next two weeks as part of a collaboration between Telethon Kids and Curtin University.

The Western government confirmed that numerous suburban communities around Perth, including Belmont, Bassendean, Claremont, and Melville, will be probed as part of the testing sweep.

The testing protocol being used, however, is something that has never been seen before. This one called Loop Mediated Isothermal Amplification (LAMP), is entirely experimental and has not even been approved by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), which is Australias version of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

LAMP tests can be used for screening purposes only and those who test positive will need to get an official PCR test to confirm their result, reports explained.

Perth residents tell McGowan to keep his army of swabbers away from them and their properties

Area residents, upon hearing the news, expressed outrage along with warnings to McGowan to keep his government goons far away from their homes and neighborhoods.

Not coming on my property, one of them wrote on social media.

Not interested  its invading our privacy, wrote another.

If Im not showing symptoms, Im not doing a test, said someone else.

McGowan claims that the program is voluntary, but time will tell if Perth-area residents end up getting harassed and coerced into complying, should they be randomly chosen as part of the sweep.

In a statement, McGowan fearmongered about reaching another caseload peak of moronic, which he says will be followed by a hospitalization peak.

I think what this shows, certainly the low hospitalization rate and the low rate of ICU (cases), is that our preparedness and our high first, second and third dose vaccination rates have paid huge dividends, he added.

In the coming weeks, McGowan said he will decide whether or not to ease the areas level-two restrictions, which include capacity limits at private homes and public venues.

Im very keen for level two to be reduced back to level one but well just see how were tracking towards the end of this month, McGowan said.

This is the same McGowan, by the way, who hired an indigenous elder to translate his previous Fauci Flu messaging into Aboriginal-English, which many said was highly racist.

McGowan is still up to his fascist tricks even today, having threatened to close his areas borders (?) if another strain of the Wuhan Flu appears out of nowhere.

You can never guarantee these things, McGowan said while recently opening the border, even as he claimed that he never had any intention whatsoever of ever doing so.

Obviously, if another strain comes along that is deadly or a different illness comes along, or something of that nature, no government can guarantee that, he explained.

And Ill just remind you all: the Commonwealth Government put in place a border around Australia as well, and every state in Australia actually at one point in time or another had borders in place.

McGowan said that all of his fascism is intended to make Western Australia achieve a reputation for being the safest jurisdiction in the world, and the one that handled COVID the best in the world.

More related news about the push to keep the plandemic alive can be found at Pandemic.news.

Sources include:

DailyMail.co.uk

NaturalNews.com
(Natural News) New Hampshire could permit pharmacists in the state to dispense ivermectin without the need for a doctors prescription. The move allows ivermectin, widely discredited by the medical establishment, to be used by patients infected with the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19).

A new bill by the New Hampshire House of Representatives seeks to make this possible. The Republican-sponsored House Bill (HB) 1022, which aims to make ivermectin available over the counter (OTC), passed last March 16 in a 183-159 vote. Following its passing in the lower chamber, HB 1022 was sent to the New Hampshire Senate for review.

In a January 2022 legislative hearing, GOP State Rep. Jim Kofalt noted ivermectins good safety profile and the fact that it is available as an OTC drug in 79 countries. Meanwhile, GOP State Rep. Leah Cushman pointed out that making ivermectin easier to obtain through pharmacies is safer than having to go to the farm store.

We still have patients who dont know how to find the doctors who will write prescriptions for ivermectin, said Cushman, who is also a nurse. (Related: New Hampshire seeks to make ivermectin available as an alternative COVID treatment.)

On the other hand, Democratic Rep. Gary Woods voiced out his disagreement with the proposal. I dont think the [New Hampshire] legislature should be practicing medicine, which is basically what this is, said the retired doctor and former president of the New Hampshire Medical Society.

An article about HB 1022 by the Portsmouth Herald proceeded to paint ivermectin in a negative light. During the pandemic, vaccine skeptics and anti-vaccine activists have latched onto ivermectin  though it has not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration as a treatment for COVID-19, nor is there evidence to support that it can treat the virus, wrote Josh Rogers of New Hampshire Public Radio.

He added: Supporters of [HB 1022] said granting broad access to ivermectin, which is available OTC in some countries and also used in veterinary medicine, will allow individuals to make medical choices denied to them by the medical establishment.

New Hampshires move follows Nebraska guidance on ivermectin

HB 1022 followed a legal opinion issued by Nebraska Attorney General (AG) Doug Peterson in October 2021. The Cornhusker States top attorney remarked then that he will not punish doctors who prescribe ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) as off-label medicines to treat COVID-19.

In a legal opinion published Oct. 14, 2021, Peterson said: The available data does not justify filing disciplinary actions against physicians simply because they prescribe ivermectin or HCQ to prevent or treat COVID-19. Allowing physicians to consider these early treatments will free them to evaluate additional tools that could save lives, keep patients out of the hospital and provide relief for our already-strained health care system.

The top attorneys opinion came as a response to Dannette Smith, the chief executive officer of the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services. She asked whether it was deemed unlawful, or otherwise subject to discipline for doctors to prescribe off-label medications such as ivermectin and HCQ for COVID-19, to which Peterson answered in the negative.

Despite this, the Nebraska AG pointed out that health care providers may still be subjected to disciplinary action if they neglect to obtain informed consent, deceive their patients, prescribe excessively high doses, fail to check for contraindications or engage in other misconduct.

Infectious disease specialist Dr. Louis Safranek welcomed Petersons guidance. The physician has helped countless COVID-19 patients toward recovery with the use of ivermectin. Im happy to have the AGs backing in my attempts to use the drug for the benefit of my COVID-19 patients, he said.

The Omaha, Nebraska-based doctor added: I havent focused on the legality of it. I focused on the possible benefits that [ivermectin] might have for my patients, many of whom are quite ill with COVID-19. Ive been comfortable using it for patients. I think its helped, and Ive had basically no reports of any side effects with it.

Visit HealthFreedom.news to read more stories like this.

Watch the testimony below of a British woman who recovered from COVID-19  thanks to her husband who smuggled ivermectin using a chocolate bar.

This video is from the Heaven Reigns channel on Brighteon.com.

More related stories:

Japan ends vaccine-induced pandemic by legalizing IVERMECTIN, while pharma-controlled media pretends masks and vaccines were the savior.

Medical ethics professor wants to sanction doctors who treat COVID patients with cheaper, safer and more effective drugs.

They hope you DIE: Democrats kill Virginia bill that would have allowed ivermectin to be prescribed for covid.

Doctors can now prescribe ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 in Nebraska.

FDA, mainstream media attack ivermectin using fake news and shameful fallacies.

Sources include:

100PercentFedUp.com

AMGreatness.com

SeacoastOnline.com

TheEpochTimes.com

MSN.com

Brighteon.com
(Natural News) The regime behind Joe Biden appears to relish the prospect of dragging out this crisis as long as possible, despite the fact that we have about zero national interest in the fate of Ukraine, except perhaps for our fears about the dark secrets that reside there.

(Article republished from Kunstler.com)

Amid an all-out campaign of contrived World War Three hysteria, our country aims to send about $14-billion in aid to Ukraine post-haste, including more javelin anti-tank missiles and weapons described as kamikaze drones, posing some thorny questions for curious observers.

How do we propose to get these things into Ukraine? Fly the stuff in on USAF C-17 Globemaster transport planes? To what airfield, exactly? And with what assurance that they can make delivery without encountering, shall we say, induced mechanical failure before landing? Drive the weapons across the border from Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, or Moldova? Do you not suppose that Russia has satellite surveillance of the limited number of road crossings along that frontier, and will be watching for truck convoys?

More likely, that dollar number and the weaponry talk are fantasies intended to propitiate the roughly thirty percent of Americans who, pollsters report, are avid for an apocalyptic nuclear showdown with Russia. Thirty percent, by the way, is the estimate by psychologists of any given population susceptible to mass formation psychosis  the transfiguration of anxiety-and-anomie-driven persons from something like harmless grasshoppers into ravaging human locusts.

That group derangement phenomenon has been managed artfully by Americas Deep State in recent years starting with the Russia Collusion hoax against the alleged monsterdom of Mr. Trump, then shifted to the frenzy around Covid-19 virus, with all its sickening rituals of obedience and submission, and now segued seamlessly to the melodrama of Vladimir Putin cast as King Kong manhandling Fay Wray as personified by Ukraine.

Readers assure me that Russia is getting its ass kicked in that sore-beset, yawning expanse of wheat and mud that has been, one way or another, a domain of Russia longer than the USA has been a nation  except the past thirty-odd years when it has been a playground for homegrown oligarch-looters, US State Department and CIA gamesters, and grift-seeking rogues such as Mr. R. Hunter Biden and the relatives of John Kerry and Nancy Pelosi.

Americas gift of javelin missiles by former president Trump has reportedly taken a heavy toll on Russian tanks and helicopters, confounding their advance. That is hardly the whole story. The Russians have surrounded the hardiest units of Ukraines army in the contested Donbass region. These include the alleged neo-Nazi Azov brigades dug-in around Luhansk and Donetsk for eight years, and busy all that time shelling the Russian-speaking population there with American-supplied munitions. Those Azov brigades now face the choice of surrender or annihilation. They have no contact with whatever remains of the Ukrainian military command.

The regime behind Joe Biden appears to relish the prospect of dragging out this crisis as long as possible, despite the fact that we have about zero national interest in the fate of Ukraine, except perhaps for our fears about the dark secrets that reside there  especially the full story behind those recently discovered Pentagon-run bio-labs, stuffed with dangerous disease-based science projects. Looks at least suspicious, a little bit, to the casual observer. What did we have in mind with all that? Is it not bad enough that the human race shares the planet with many opportunistic micro-organisms that like to periodically kill off multitudes? Is it a good idea to enhance them, to play lab games with them? And why there, close to Russias border? And why so many labs?

Western Civ has suffered the consequences of that Frankenstein-style science for two-plus years. And is it a coincidence that Joe Biden provoked Russia to invade Ukraine just as the Covid-19 crisis was veering toward the discovery that the touted vaccines are found to disable and kill off large numbers of people in the prime of their lives? The terrible news of all that cant be squelched despite the mainstream medias calculated indifference to it. Between an engineered die-off and a wrecked economy, the Joe Biden government and its Deep State enablers dont have a whole lot to brag about.

Only Wednesday at his podium, the president laid down a string of bizarre hypotheticals saying, everybody knows somebody subject to blackmail. That may have been an overstatement about Americans general state of moral relations. But then, whaddaya know? Twenty-four hours later, The New York Times  of all parties  very conspicuously walks back its two-year-old claim that the existence of Hunter Bidens laptop, stuffed with incriminating memos and emails about the Biden familys global bribery and racketeering operations, was a Russian ploy to make then-candidate Joe Biden look bad.

Do they mean to say no such Russian ploy happened? And that the fifty former-and-current US intel officers who signed a letter to that effect were lying? Is damaging info busting to come to the publics attention now? Were both Joe Biden and The Times trying to get ahead of a story? And if, say, Hunter Biden happens to face some federal charges, will they somehow implicate his dad? Or perhaps some other party, Russia or maybe China, has possession of a Hunter Biden laptop  there were more than a few of them loose in the world  and may be on the verge of releasing its contents. Maybe wagging the tail of that Ukrainian dog wasnt such a bright idea after all.

Read more at: Kunstler.com
(Natural News) Data from the federal Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) database already showed alarming spikes in cardiovascular problems for the first two months of 2022, possibly due to the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccines.

Reports showed that 11,289 combined cases of pericarditis and myocarditis after COVID vaccinations were reported to VAERS between January 1 and February 25. This is already 47 percent of the 24,177 reports submitted in all of 2021.

This is only the latest apparent affirmation of the reservations of many regarding the safety of the vaccines, mostly because of their rushed nature. The vaccines have been developed and released in a tenth of the time that development usually takes, and only a quarter of the time it took the previous fastest manufactured vaccine, which was developed against mumps. However, their advocates have done little to address these hesitations.

Instead, defenders of the vaccine shots claim that the system offered an exaggerated view of its potential risks, considering that anyone can submit a report without vetting it first.

However, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) researchers themselves have acknowledged that there had been a higher verification rate of reports of myocarditis to VAERS after mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccination. This led to the conclusion that underreporting is more likely than overreporting. (Related: CHD says Pfizer and FDA dropped data bombshell on COVID vaccine consumers.)

Moreover, a 2010 report submitted to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality warned that VAERS caught fewer than one percent of vaccine adverse events in the past. Further, on the problem of underreporting, it is also likely that the VAERS website showed that only serious and unexpected medical events are probably more likely to be reported than minor ones.

Authorities want to shove adverse effects under the bed

Project Veritas shed light on some of the reasons for such underreporting last year when they obtained undercover video from inside the Phoenix Indian Medical Center, a facility run by the HHSs Indian Health Service program. The video showed multiple medical professionals who admitted seeing adverse reactions more frequently than the impression given by the mainstream media.

The footage even showed a physician, Dr. Maria Gonzales, lamenting that myocarditis cases go underreported because authorities want to shove it under the mat. A nurse, Deanna Paris, also attested to seeing a lot of people who got sick from the side effects of the vaccines, but that nobody is reporting them to VAERS because it takes over a half-hour to write the damn thing.

Furthermore, the CDCs advice on the matter is for males age 12 to 39 years old, who are the most at risk for myocarditis from the vaccines, wait eight weeks between the first and second doses of their jabs because the risks are lower if they wait this long.

However, other eligible individuals can wait three weeks between Pfizer shots and four weeks between Moderna, especially the elderly and those with compromised immune systems. (Related: COVID vaccines found to increase risk of myocarditis in children by over 13,000 percent.)

The risk of myocarditis in men ages 18 to 39 is about 1.5 times higher after a second Moderna dose compared to Pfizer. Men in this age group also report about 68 myocarditis cases per 1 million for the second Moderna dose, compared with 47 myocarditis cases per 1 million of the Pfizer dose.

Other evidence against the vaccines was unearthed during the Second Opinion hearing held by Republican Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin. Attorney Thomas Renz presented medical billing data from the Pentagons Defense Medical Epidemiology Database. Data showed that 2021 saw drastic spikes in diagnoses for serious medical issues over the previous five-year average.

Diagnoses for hypertension, neurological disorders, Guillain-Barre syndrome, breast cancer, female infertility, pulmonary embolism, migraines, ovarian dysfunction, testicular cancer and tachycardia all soared to record highs.

The COVID-19 vaccines failed to end the pandemic, but the federal government continued giving them to more than 216 million Americans despite the rising number of deaths.

Follow Vaccines.news for more updates on the adverse effects of COVID-19 jabs and more.

Watch the video below to know more about the skyrocketing vaccine injuries during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This video is from the Mike Martins Channel on Brighteon.com.

More related stories:

BREAKING: Sweden, Denmark both ban Moderna covid vaccine for causing myocarditis in young people.

British MP: Scale of COVID vaccine damage a NIGHTMARE.

Cardiologist says no case of COVID-19 vaccine-induced myocarditis is mild.

Florida surgeon general: COVID vaccine risks OUTWEIGH benefits for healthy children.

SHOCK: German physicians discover astonishing impurities in COVID vaccine.

Sources include:

LifeSiteNews.com

CNBC.com

Brighteon.com
(Natural News) With Russian forces advancing on his countrys major cities, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyys first tendency has been to become an authoritarian leader even as he pleads for international assistance under the guise that his country yearns for freedom and democracy.

According to reports this week, Zelenskyy banned 11 political parties he said showed some loyalty to Russia while also nationalizing his countrys media to create a no-opposition zone around him and his ruling faction.

As Axios reported, the list of parties now banned include Platform For Life, Shariy Party, Nashi, Opposition Bloc, Left Opposition, Union of Left Forces, State, Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine, Socialist Party of Ukraine, Socialists Party and Volodymyr Saldo Bloc.

In a speech that was posted online, the Ukrainian president said his countrys National Security and Defense Council agreed to his banning the activities of those parties, The Hill reported.

Given the full-scale war waged by the Russian Federation and the ties of some political structures with this state, any activity of a number of political parties during the martial law is suspended, Zelenskyy noted in his address to the country.

In addition, Zelenskyy noted that Ukraines Ministry of Justice had been instructed to immediately take comprehensive measures to ban the activities of these political parties in the prescribed manner, the Washington Post added.

Any activity of politicians aimed at splitting or collaborating will not succeed, Zelenskyy added. But it will get a tough response.

In a Sunday interview with CNN host Fareed Zakaria, the Ukrainian president also warned that it is possible the conflict could escalate into a third world war if negotiations with Russia prove fruitless.

Unfortunately, our dignity is not going to preserve the lives, so I think that we have to do any format, any chance, so in order to have  the possibility of talking to Putin. But if these attempts fail, that would mean  a third world war, Zelenskyy told Zakaria.

Antiwar.com notes that the Platform for Life Party is Ukraines largest opposition faction and at present holds 44 seats in parliament. And last year, Viktor Medvedchuk, the leader of the party, was accused by the government of committing treason and placed under house arrest.

Another of the banned parties, Nashi, is led by Yevhen Myrayev. The United Kingdom previously accused him of working with the Kremlin and President Vladimir Putin to overthrow the Ukrainian government. That said, Murayev was actually sanctioned by Russia in 2018.

Ukraines Russian minority has faced increased discrimination since the 2014 coup. The opposition parties largely represent 17 percent of the Ukrainian people who are ethnic Russians. Language and cultural laws have targeted Russian movies, including one starring [Zelenskyy], Antiwar.com reported.

The new presidential order is a part of [Zelenskyys] effort to create a unified political narrative in Ukraine. He has announced an information policy that combines all national TV channels[into] a single information platform of strategic communication,' the site added.

Reuters reported that until Zelenskyys media crackdown this week, privately-owned outlets in the country operated without interference.

In a statement on Tuesday, March 22, Zelenskyy claimed that Russian troops were kidnapping and torturing Ukrainian children and that Putins forces had completely devastated Mariupol, a port city that Russian troops surrounded and cut off more than a week ago.

Kyiv has been through harsh wars throughout its history. After all of the victims and sacrifice it deserves to live in peace just as the same as Rome deserves to live in eternal peace, or any other city in this world, Zelenskyy said in an address to Italian lawmakers.

Unfortunately, this is not the case. The bombs are falling every day, these attacks are happening in Kyiv and around towns in Kyiv. Russian troops around Kyiv are killing and torturing. They are torturing and kidnapping children, they are stealing what we have there, robbing everything, Zelenskyy continued.

This is what happened in Europe last time due to the Nazis when they were occupying other countries. Russian artillery and missiles are not stopping destroying Ukrainian cities. Some cities like Mariupol as you have heard have been completely destroyed.

Sources include:

TheHill.com

Axios.com

News.Antiwar.com

Reuters.com

FoxNews.com
(Natural News) Unbeknownst to the vast majority of Americans, the Biden regime has deployed U.S. military personnel on the ground in Ukraine in what appears to be a direct effort to draw the country into a conflict with Russia that will spark World War III.

According to Trending Politics, there are new reports that U.S. Special Forces troops are currently in Ukraine performing operational prep of the battlefield.

Seth Harp, an investigative reporter and contributing editor for Rolling Stone, noted on Twitter: US special operators are currently on the ground in Ukraine doing operational prep of the battlefield, according to a well informed source. The military unit is JSOCs Advance Force Operations, including members of Delta Force and SEAL Team 6.

A search of Harps Twitter feed did not turn up this tweet, so its likely he has deleted it; Trending Politics got a screengrab of it, however, which can be seen below.

While such developments have no doubt concerned the Americans who are eager for our country to stay out of this conflict, Harp cautioned his followers in a second (also deleted) tweet that it would be wrong to automatically presume the stationing of U.S. troops in Ukraine following Russias invasion is an escalation.

This should NOT necessarily be perceived as an escalation in Ukraine. Small JSOC teams routinely penetrate foreign countries to do covert work (not fighting) as part of long-shot contingency planning, he wrote, adding: These are denied operations under Title 10, no different from CIA activities.

Heres the since-deleted tweet, compliments of Trending Politics:

While some reportedly blasted Harp online for revealing what is no doubt top-secret information, other open-source reporting appears to confirm his.

U.S. special operators are continuing with a mission to build up an elite fighting force in Ukraine, military officials said, even as Russia threatens invasion with its thousands of troops, tanks and artillery massed along their borders, Stars & Stripes reported on January 19, 2022, more than a month before the Russian invasion.

The bottom line is that our training mission in Ukraine is ongoing, said Lt. Col. Juan Martinez, spokesman for U.S. Special Operations Command Europe.

Martinez told the outlet that there are a ton of outside factors at work, but went on to add that the command hasnt stepped back from Ukraine.

We continue to view our mission in Ukraine as part of an ongoing effort in enhancing Special Operations Forces capabilities as a keystone for regional stability, he said.

The Stuttgart-based SOCEUR has quietly operated out of a training center outside of Kyiv for the past several years, Stars & Stripes reported further. The missions focus is assisting Ukrainian forces to defend more effectively against Russian aggression.

The presence of U.S. special operators is part of a small American military contingent that remains in Ukraine, the outlet added.

There are also more than 100 Florida National Guard troops in Ukraine in an advisory role, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said at the time.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has warned that should peace negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin and his government fail, World War III is a near-certainty.

Im ready for negotiations with Putin, but if they fail, it could mean World War III, Zelensky said as reported by the Kyiv Independent.

Zelensky told CNN that hes ready to negotiate with Putin, but warned that if negotiation attempts fail, it could lead to a new World War, the report added.

?? Zelensky: Im ready for negotiations with Putin, but if they fail, it could mean World War III. Zelensky told CNN that hes ready to negotiate with Putin, but warned that if negotiation attempts fail, it could lead to a new World War.  The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) March 20, 2022

Im ready for negotiations with him, Zelensky said in the interview, referring to Putin. I was ready for the last two years, and I think that  I think without negotiations we cannot end this war. I think that all the people who think this is shallow and wont resolve anything, they just dont understand this is very valuable.

This war is set to spiral out of control and the Biden-friendly Deep State is obviously setting America up to become involved.

Sources include:

TrendingPolitics.com

Stripes.com
(Natural News) The Brazilian Supreme Court has banned the free speech app Telegram, claiming that misinformation (meaning non-globalist propaganda) is spread on the platform.

(Article by Shane Trejo republished from BigLeaguePolitics.com)

Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes suspended Telegram on Friday after the platform did not adhere to Draconian censorship orders meant to harm controversial right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro.

Bolsonaro has used Telegram to speak to his people after Facebook, WhatsApp, Google and Twitter have bowed to censorship orders from the nations high court. Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov claimed his company was guilty of negligence after the ruling, in a pathetic showing that his platform is getting ready to grovel and submit to censorship orders.

I am certain that once a reliable channel of communication is established, well be able to efficiently process takedown requests for public channels that are illegal in Brazil, Durov said.

Bolsonaro is not happy about this courts incredible overreach against the fundamental rights of his people.

It is cowardice what they are trying to do to Brazil, Bolsonaro said in response to the order.

Big League Politics has reported on Telegram folding to increased pressure in recent weeks as the globalists ruthlessly enforce the Orwellian nightmare to crush dissent underneath their boot:

Russia Today (RT), a Kremlin-funded news network, has been banned from spreading its message on Telegram, the popular and growing encrypted messaging application that is ostensibly meant to protect freedom of speech.

Telegram caved after receiving pressure from the European Union to censor their content, which the globalist body claims is a haven for conspiracy theories undermining Ukrainian support in their current conflict with Russia.

The rules are clear. There cannot be any circumvention, said V?ra Jourova, the European Commissions vice president for values and transparency, to POLITICO.

All actors should take their responsibilities. First, because it is the law in the EU. Second, everyone has understood what is at stake by now, Jourova added, making the case for ubiquitous censorship of all non-globalist operations.

We will not rest until everyone  including messenger services  take their responsibility in countering the Kremlins war propaganda, Thierry Breton, the EUs internal markets Commissioner, said in a statement of demands sent to Telegram.

Bolsonaro, who has vowed to leave office only through imprisonment or death, is locked in an existential fight for his nations freedom. If he succeeds against globalism, he will give hope to the rest of the world that they too can resist this demonic technocracy.

Read more at: BigLeaguePolitics.com
(Natural News) A fight over a 99-year-old sharing compact between Colorado and Nebraska could end up in court as the South Platte River in Julesburg threatens to run dry for half the year.

Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts announced plans to build a canal into Colorado to drain water from the South Platte several miles upstream from Julesburg, which is allowed under the 1923 agreement between the states. The project, which would cost around $500 million and would consist of some 60 miles of canals and several reservoirs, would be among the biggest nonfederal interstate water infrastructure projects in decades.

Ricketts said Nebraska wanted to get ahead of a host of projects that he believes Colorado is planning to build, mostly to serve the Denver area, which would use up water from the South Platte before it can get to the state line.

Our estimate is that if they were to complete all of these, they would reduce the amount of water coming to Nebraska in the South Platte by 90 percent, he said. He added that the canal will be a historic opportunity for the state.

The proposal stunned Colorado Governor Jared Polis, who said that Ricketts only shared his plans about the canal a few hours before announcing it publicly, adding that the move is misguided, as it is based on a list of projects that have been proposed by local governments and agencies but havent been approved or funded by the state. (Related: Great Salt Lake drying up amid extreme drought.)

Polis said the move seems to be based on the misunderstanding of Colorados intentions, adding that the plan is this really bizarre boondoggle of a project that wouldnt benefit Nebraska or Colorado.

Moreover, he said Nebraskas plan isnt clear enough to require an urgent response, but predicted it would face court battles from landowners and other environmental groups.

He also said Colorado would defend its water rights. We will continue to protect and aggressively assert Colorados rights under all existing water compacts. Colorado has been in full compliance with the South Platte Compact for the 99 years the agreement has been in place, and water has not and is not being withheld from Nebraska.

Nebraskas legislature took the first votes to approve the project on March 9, with funding expected to come from state reserves and $100 million in Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) recovery aid, earmarked for water quality.

Western states fight over water

Western states have been fighting over water since the start of the 20th century, with the fights intensifying amid rising populations. The area also experienced reduced snow and rainfall over the past few decades.

Because of the abundance of snowmelt from the Rocky Mountains, Colorado is now a prime source of water in the West, with nine signed compacts with other states over the years to define how much water it can use and how much it must let flow downstream to its neighbors.

The 1923 South Platte Compact guarantees that Colorado will send 120 cubic feet of water per second to Nebraska from April to mid-October. In the other five and a half months of the year, the state is not guaranteed any water assistance but can get water that isnt being used by Colorado, which is typically around 250 to 300 cubic feet per second.

But there is a loophole in the compact. If Nebraska was to build a then-planned canal starting near Ovid, Colorado, it would be entitled up to 500 cubic feet of water per second from mid-October to April 1 for irrigation purposes.

While the canal has never been built despite several tries, Nebraska continues to attempt reviving it. (Related: Despite record-breaking drought conditions, California officials are draining reservoirs.)

Nebraska officials are now framing the debate as a desire to protect their water from rapid growth in the Denver area. However, the compact allows Colorado to use all the water it wants from that part of the river, or its upper basin.

Still, there are other threats to the flow of water across the state line that can only be protected if the state builds the canal. Tom Riley, the head of the Nebraska Department of Natural Resources, estimates that the canal could protect water due to Nebraska with an estimated value of $1 billion over the next 50 years, helping the state meet its goals.

Follow CleanWater.news for more related stories.

Watch the video below to learn more about water crisis.

This video is from the UD channel on Brighteon.com.

More related stories:

Water shortage on Colorado River poses severe challenge for Arizona farmers.

Drought threatens US wheat harvest, deepening global supply challenges.

Exceptional drought stressing crops in American West.

Catastrophic drought puts a strain on Californias hydropower supply.

California to cut water supply to cities and farmlands amid worsening drought.

Sources include:

WSJ.com

USNews.com

Brighteon.com
Policyholders of Avatar Property & Casualty Insurance Co., which was declared insolvent earlier this month, have until April 13 to find new carriers.

And it doesnt look like any private carrier is offering to take them over in the fashion that startup insurer Slide absorbed 147,000 policies after St. Johns Insurance went into receivership in February.

Advertisement

Avatar, based in Tampa, insured 37,000 homeowners when it was ordered into receivership on March 14. The liquidation order followed the withdrawal in February of Avatars financial stability rating by analysis firm Demotech.

Avatar had 38,282 policies at the end of 2021, according to data compiled by the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation. Of those, 10,592 were in Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties. Another 2,462 were in Orange, Seminole, Lake and Osceola counties.

Advertisement

Avatar Property & Casualty customers have about three weeks to find new coverage from another insurer if they don't want to be caught unprotected. Questions about the company's dissolution and what's next can be found on its website at avatar-liquidation.com (Florida Department of Financial Services)

Agents are scrambling to find new insurers for their clients.

Yes, we are pulling our hair out right now, said Dulce Suarez-Resnick, vice president at Acentria Insurance in Miami.

Kyle Ulrich, president and CEO of the Florida Association of Insurance Agents, said agents are doing everything they possibly can to find private-market alternatives for them.

A bulletin sent by Avatar to insurance agents identified a handful of companies that expressed interest in covering some of the displaced homeowners. They are Security First, Florida Peninsula and Cypress Insurance.

[ RELATED: Your home insurance coverage costs so much because big-money forces are at war ]

Ryan Papy, president of the Palmetto Bay-based Keyes Insurance agency, said his agency is working to relocate hundreds of policies out of Avatar.

Most Avatar customers unable to get a coverage offer from a private-market company will be able to sign up with state-owned Citizens Property Insurance Corp., the so-called insurer of last resort, Ulrich said.

One problem agents are discovering is that Avatars rates were significantly lower than most former competitors, he said. Policyholders can opt to be placed with Citizens as long as no other company offers comparable coverage for less than 20% more than what Citizens charges.

In addition, seven insurers have stopped writing new business in the state since January, while other are non-renewing existing policies if the homes are past a certain age or their roofs are more than 10 years old.

Advertisement

So far, 150 former Avatar policies have been absorbed by Citizens and another 250 are in the application process, said Citizens spokesman Michael Peltier.

Ulrich predicted 75% of the Avatar policies will end up with Citizens, just as Citizens governing board and state lawmakers are worried that Citizens is growing too large. The company now has more than 800,000 policies  nearly twice as many as in 2018.

According to Suarez-Resnick, The market of last resort is the market right now.

[ RELATED: Proposed bills would tighten eligibility to keep Citizens Insurance ]

Insurance industry leaders see the Avatar failure and the high Citizens population as symptoms of deep financial problems within the private insurance market. Nearly all carriers have raised their rates significantly over the past two years, while Florida-based carriers as a whole collectively reported more than $1 billion in net losses in 2021.

Insurers blame a combination of higher-than-expected hurricane losses, fraudulent roof claims driven by contractors and their attorneys, and litigation rates that far exceed those of any other state.

Avatar was the fourth Florida-based insurer over the past year to go out of business. The others were American Capital Assurance Corp., in April 2021; Gulfstream Property & Casualty, in July 2021; and St. John Insurance Co., in February.

Advertisement

Now under control of the Department of Financial Services Division of Rehabilitation and Liquidation, Avatars website redirects to a page with key dates and deadlines, along with frequently asked questions about the dissolution and what policyholders should expect. The page can be accessed directly at avatar-liquidation.com.

It states that Avatar policies will be canceled as of 12:01 a.m. on April 13 unless otherwise terminated prior to that date.

[ RELATED: Insurers are dropping homeowners left and right. Many will be forced to accept less coverage ]

Policyholders are advised to contact their agent about their insurance options. Refunds for whatever was left of policyholders terms will processed by the Florida Insurance Guaranty Association within 30 to 60 days after policies are cancelled. Policyholders are not required to take any action or submit any information.

Still, the 30- to 60-day wait means that many policyholders will have to pay for their new policies before getting their refunds, Ulrich said.

The web page also notes that premium refunds will be sent directly to policyholders, even if their premium was paid directly by their mortgage servicer.

However, if policyholders are owed money for services provided prior to the liquidation, they should contact the receiver by phone at 404-465-2814, by writing Avatar Property & Casualty Insurance Company, P.O. Box 519, Stuart, VA 24171.

Advertisement

Processing of claims filed prior to April 13 might be delayed during the transition period, the website states, while all lawsuits or administrative proceedings against the company have been suspended during the liquidation process.

Ron Hurtibise covers business and consumer issues for the South Florida Sun Sentinel. He can be reached by phone at 954-356-4071, on Twitter @ronhurtibise or by email at rhurtibise@sunsentinel.com.
(Natural News) A new survey by the Canadian national polling firm EKOS has found that the more vaccine injections a person gets for the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19), the more likely he or she is to believe every word of corporate media propaganda about the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Unvaccinated Canadians, EKOS found, are 12 times more likely than those who received three doses of a Fauci Flu shot to believe that Vladimir Putins invasion of Ukraine was justified. Almost nobody who is fully vaccinated supports Putins actions, the survey revealed.

A mere two percent of triple vaccinated Canadians said they support Putins attack compared to 26 percent of people who received no jabs. This, says EKOS president Frank Graves, shows that vaccination status is a strong predictor of ones views on the war.

From the seizing of property from Russian oligarchs to providing non-military aid to Ukraine, the fully jabbed support just about anything that is pro-Ukraine, the survey found. And this is because the same media that told them to get injected for their own safety is now saying that Ukraine is good and Russia is bad.

In each case, a vast majority of vaccinated Canadians agreed with measures to help Ukraine and oppose Russia, a view held by only a small minority of unvaccinated people, reported the Toronto Star, which apparently supports Ukraine.

Graves says unvaccinated support Russia because they read too much news online

Conducted from March 9 to March 13, the survey asked a random sampling of 1,035 Canadians a series of questions about Russia and Ukraine. It reported a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

Ten percent of those surveyed, or about 105 people, identified as unvaccinated. The rest had received anywhere from one to three injections of a Fauci Flu shot in obedience to Justin Trudeaus regime.

Of those Canadians who received three injections for COVID, a whopping 82 percent said they agree with imposing tougher sanctions on Russia, even if doing so means much higher prices for food and fuel at home.

Conversely, only 18 percent of unvaccinated survey respondents said they support sanctions.

As for taking in Ukrainian refugees, 85 percent of triple-jabbed respondents said they would welcome an influx with open arms. Only 30 percent of unvaccinated respondents feel the same.

Based on what the Western media and government officials are saying, the triple jabbed almost unanimously believe that Russia is guilty of committing war crimes with the invasion. Less than 33 percent of unvaccinated Canadians, meanwhile, believe similarly.

All in all, the study found, a plurality of vaccine refusers are much more sympathetic to Russia. This is probably due to the fact that, just like they did with COVID injections, the unvaccinated did their own due diligence and independent research, and did not simply digest whatever they were told about the war by propagandists.

Naturally, the Toronto Sun reported this as a negative thing. Graves himself was also upset by the results, calling them evidence of the highly corrosive influences of disinformation.

Unironically, Graves said that the unvaccinated believe differently than the fully jabbed because they are reading this online and consuming this from the same sources that were giving them the anti-vax stuff.

The same is true of the fully jabbed, of course, who receive all of their information from the likes of CNN, but Graves made no mention of that. Instead, he tried to pretend as though his opinions are facts and everyone elses beliefs are misinformation.

More related news about how the fully jabbed believe and obey everything they are told by the media can be found at Propaganda.news.

Sources include:

Archive.ph

NaturalNews.com
(Natural News) Investigative journalist, businessman and former White House economist and budget specialist James Simpson told InfoWars host Harrison Smith that Russian President Vladimir Putins ultimate goal with his invasion of Ukraine may not be the supposed denazification of the country, but instead the reestablishment of the former Soviet Union.

Putin is angry that the Soviet Union fell, and hes jealous, and now he wants to reconstitute it, said Simpson. Hes not angry [at the West], he just knows what the agenda is.

Simpson added that Putin is making his moves now to reestablish a communist superpower to take on the United States because America is currently at its weakest.

And Id say [we have the] most duplicitous  and even treasonous  president in our history, he added. And [Putins] saying there is no better time than right now to decide to, you know, reconstitute the Soviet Union.

Simpson believes the modern Russian state is already the communist Soviet Union in all but name, with Putin as its supreme ruler. The whole thing is a false flag operation, he said. These people havent changed their stripes. (Related: Russian ambassador to the UN claims his country does not plan to occupy Ukraine.)

Ukraine bans left-wing parties in attempt to curtail communist influence

Simpson believes Putins war in Ukraine may be an attempt to expand the borders of Russia to encompass all of the countries formerly ruled by the Soviet Union.

To help Russia achieve this, it has spent the last few decades attempting to influence Ukrainian politics from the inside with the help of left-wing and pro-Russian political parties. Ukraine has caught on to these parties and has moved to limit their influence.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy recently banned 11 political parties, claiming that their extensive ties to Russia and their Russophilic tendencies constituted a significant threat to national security.

The ban was passed by Ukraines National Security and Defense Council. Officially called a suspension from all political activity, the ban affected mostly small political parties. However, the ban also involved the Ukrainian parliaments largest opposition party, the Opposition Platform  For Life, which has 44 seats in the 450-seat legislature.

The Opposition Platform is led by Ukrainian oligarch and Member of Parliament Viktor Medvedchuk, who has extensive ties with Russia and Putin himself. Party officials claim Zelenskyy had no legal basis for banning them.

The activities of these politicians aimed at division or collusion will not succeed, but will receive a harsh response, said Zelenskyy in a video address published on Sunday, March 20. Therefore, the National Security and Defense Council decided, given the full-scale war unleashed by Russia, and the political ties that a number of political structures have with this state, to suspend any activity of a number of political parties for the period of martial law.

Other parties banned include the Party of Shariy, Nashi (Ours), the Opposition Bloc  Party for Peace and Development, the Left Opposition, the Union of Left Forces, Derzhava (State), the Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine, the Socialist Party of Ukraine, the Socialists Party and the Volodymyr Saldo Bloc.

Of the above-mentioned parties, only the Opposition Bloc has any representation in the Ukrainian parliament, winning six seats in the 2019 election. Some of the other parties, like the Party of Shariy, have representation in regional legislatures or city councils.

Zelenskyy noted that the Ukrainian Ministry of Justice will take immediate action to enforce the ban. Everyone must now take care of the interests of our state, the interests of Ukraine, he said. Because its for us. Because it is for the sake of life.

Read more about the spread of communism around the world at Communism.news.

Watch Harrison Hill Smiths full interview with investigative journalist Jim Simpson on the formers InfoWars show, American Journal.

This video is from the InfoWars channel on Brighteon.com.

More related stories:

Russia vows to block transfer of S-300 missile defense system to Ukraine, threatens to target arms shipments.

Ukraine declares journalist a Russian terrorist as her reporting undermines Western narratives (video).

Scott Lively tells Dr. Alan Keyes: Americas leaders are Marxists, US now a Marxist totalitarian state  Brighteon.TV.

Sources include:

Brighteon.com

TheGuardian.com

BusinessInsider.com
(Natural News) It was recently uncovered that a company called Metabiota is in charge of managing the Pentagon-run bioweapons laboratories in Ukraine, Africa and elsewhere. We know now that Metabiota founder Nathan Wolfe is also linked to the infamous EcoHealth Alliance, as well as the Global Virome Project (GVP), the World Economic Forum and pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

GVP, it turns out, is the sister non-profit group of Metabiota, and is also funded by a range of Department of Defense (DoD) branches. It is also funded by Hunter Bidens Rosemont Seneca and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) venture capital company In-Q-Tel  and this is merely scratching the surface of those backing the biolabs in Ukraine, reported the Daily Expose.

Metabiotas current lead investor is Pilot Growth Management, which was co-founded by Neil Callahan, its current CEO. Callahan also sits on the Board of Advisors at Metabiota, having co-founded and formerly worked as managing director at Rosemont Seneca Technology Partners (RSTP).

Callahans name appears many times on Hunter Bidens infamous laptop, which makes sense as Rosemont Seneca Partners and Rosemont Realty are both offshoots of Rosemont Capital, an investment fund founded in 2009 by Hunter Biden and Christopher Heinz, John Kerrys stepson.

Metabiota was a subcontractor for Black & Veach, which signed contracts for the construction and operation of biolabs in Ukraine, Georgia and elsewhere. Google was also involved, having contributed at least $1 million to the effort.

It seems like all the evil players are connected to this thing

Wolfe is a World Economic Forum (WEF) Young Global Leader, it turns out (as is Ivanka Trump). In 2021, WEF awarded Metabiota for being a Technology Pioneer.

He also sat on the editorial board of EcoHealth Alliance, as well as on Defense Advanced Research Projects Agencys (DARPA) Defense Science Research Council (DSRC).

Wolfe has received more than $20 million worth of funding from Google.org, The Skoll Foundation, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Science Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the National Geographic Society, Merck Research Laboratories and various branches of the DoD.

Two of the core partners in USAIDs PREDICT project, which involved creating an early warning system for new and emerging diseases in 21 countries  including coronaviruses spread by bats, were none other than EcoHealth and Metabiota, with Wolfe being one of the projects co-authors.

Together with Peter Daszak, Wolfe put together what would become a study on coronaviruses in bats that was published in 2017 right around the time Donald Trump became president.

PREDICT was a forerunner of the more ambitious Global Virome Project, reported the Expose, adding that GVP is a founding member of The Trinity Challenge, which was launched in conjunction with Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus of the World Health Organization (WHO).

Although Wolfe was one of initiators of GVP in 2018, on their website he isnt shown as being directly involved, the Expose further revealed. However, Edward Rubin, Metabiotas chief scientific officer, is a board member of GVP. And it was Rubin who, in 2016, attended a Rockefeller Foundation forum alongside Daszak to discuss the GVP.

The news outlet added: In an interesting twitter thread  linking Wolfe and Metabiota to EcoHealth, DARPA, the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the World Economic Forum  HashTigre shared an image of page from a book Wolfe wrote in 2012 titled, The Viral Storm: The Dawn of a New Pandemic Age, where he thanked friends including deceased pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and biotech venture capitalist Boris Nikolic.

Nikolic was named as the back-up executor on Epsteins will, it turns out, and Wolfe has been spotted in photographs hanging out with Ghislaine Maxwell.

Always nice to see a name from Epstein/Maxwell associate Nathan Wolfes CIA funded company Metabiota  as the first name on an article related to dangerous virus collection tactics/research in China, HashTigre tweeted.

Be sure to read the rest at the Expose.

More related news can be found at Pandemic.news.

Sources include:

NaturalNews.com

DailyExpose.uk

WinePressNews.com
(Natural News) Even as reports over the weekend claimed that Russian President Vladimir Putins ally, Belarus, was preparing its military to invade Ukraine in support of Moscow, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is imploring Germany and other European countries reliant on Russian gas and oil to completely embargo all trade with the aggressor nation.

Declaring in his latest address, no euros for the oppressors, Zelenkskys appeal could signal a monumental shift in Europes long-term relationship with Putin specifically and Russia in general, including shunning Moscows biggest export  energy.

Please do not sponsor the weapons of war of this country, of Russia. No euros for the occupiers. Close all of your ports to them. Dont export them your goods. Deny energy resources. Push for Russia to leave Ukraine, he said, according to Barrons, though Berlin has so far refused to end its oil imports from Russia.

Zelensky knows that by choking off Putins energy cash flow, he will also choke off Russias war machine, which is being ground up steadily by Ukrainian resistance (hence the need for Belarusan forces).

The Ukrainian leader was addressing his remarks specifically to Germany, where left-wing climate change fanatics have, for decades, pressured the government into shuttering reliable, cheap, fossil fuel-powered energy production (and zero-emissions nuclear power) for green alternatives like wind and solar that will never be capable of producing enough power for that modern society. To make up for a dearth of domestic energy production, Germany has become heavily reliant on Russian fossil fuel production.

You have the strength. Europe has the strength, Zelensky said in his appeal  though thats not at all certain, given the low tolerance Germany and the rest of NATO have for difficult times.

The Ukrainian leader made his appeal shortly before a meeting of European Union foreign ministers on Monday, March 21, who were to consider whether to tighten sanctions against Putin and Russia, and also ahead of President Joe Bidens call with the leaders of Germany, Italy, France and the UK, Reuters reported.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov followed up Zelenskys appeal with a direct warning against a European oil embargo, saying that while it will affect everyone, it will impact Europe the most and the hardest. Peskov told reporters: Such an embargo would have very serious consequences for the world energy market. It will have a very serious negative impact on Europes energy balance.

Peskovs comments followed a ban on the importation of Russian oil by the Biden regime  which should not have been importing Russian oil in the first place, had Biden not begun an assault on the American fossil fuel industry the moment he took office to placate his lunatic leftist base. Britain has also pledged to cut out all importation of Russian oil by the end of this year.

As such, Peskov said cutting Russian fossil fuels will be tough for the population of Europe.

He also acknowledged that while the ban wont be as impactful for American consumers, who will feel much better than the Europeans  It will be tough for the Europeans.

#EuropeanUnion considers imposing embargo on #oil supplies from #Russia. According to #Reuters, the embargo on energy resources may be introduced in the case of a massive bombing of #Kyiv or the use of chemical weapons. Especially, the Baltic states insist on an oil embargo. pic.twitter.com/aGnw7upvdt  NEXTA (@nexta_tv) March 21, 2022

Reuters added: Diplomats have said a Russian chemical weapons attack in Ukraine, or a heavy bombardment of its capital Kyiv, could be a trigger for an energy embargo. Russia says it targets military, not civilian infrastructure. Moscow itself has warned that EU sanctions on Russian oil could prompt it to close a gas pipeline to Europe. For now, the 27-nation EU, which relies on Russia for 40 percent of its gas, with Germany among the most dependent of the blocs large economies, is divided on how to tackle the energy issue.

Americans would remain as they are and would feel much better than Europeans (in the event of oil embargo). This would be hard for Europeans  such a decision would hit everyone, Peskov said.

Oil prices are bound to go higher still  thanks in part to embargoes of Russian oil, an attack on Saudi Arabian oil infrastructure on Monday by Houthi rebels in Yemen and the fact that Biden is carrying out an assault on Americas oil and gas industry to round out the perfect storm of stupidity.

Sources include:

Barrons.com

GlobalNews.ca

NDTV.com
(Natural News) The medical community in Louisville, Kentucky was shocked to find out that one of their own, Dr. SarahBeth Hartlage, passed away suddenly and unexpectedly on March 17. The medical community and the media refuse to ask questions about her death. Why did the lockdown-loving, mask-wearing, triple-vaxxed doctor not survive the winter of death that was supposed to plague the unvaccinated? Why did the young, fully boosted medical doctor suddenly die without reason?

Instead, the community used her death to promote the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccines. We are stunned and deeply saddened by the sudden and unexpected passing of Dr. SarahBeth Hartlage, said Dr. Sarah Moyer, Department of Public Health and Wellness director. As a result of her leadership, knowledge and planning, thousands of our Louisville residents received life-saving COVID-19 vaccines.

Kentucky medical community grieves loss of most staunch vaccine propagandist

As the associate medical director for the Louisville Metro Department of Public Health and Wellness, Hartlage was on the front lines of the COVID-19 response, carrying out Dr. Anthony Faucis orders with dutiful allegiance.

Hartlage was formerly an assistant professor of Anesthesiology at the University of Louisville. Because Hartlage was willing to promote government propaganda about COVID-19 vaccines and lock downs, she quickly rose to fame in 2020 as the associated medical director for the city of Louisville. In her puppet role, she often spoke during the citys weekly COVID-19 updates, only to promote vaccine/mask mandates and civil liberty restrictions. Not once did she speak up about natural immunity, treatment options, the medical fraud used to diagnose COVID-19 or the inhumane policies of subjugation that separated families and unlawfully detained people in their homes. Not once did she provide informed consent about hospital protocol and the issues with the COVID-19 vaccines.

She took the government funds and the pharmaceutical propaganda and dutifully advertised the LouVax initiatives. She made sure to coerce as many people as possible to get inoculated with spike protein mRNA, holding the city hostage until mass compliance was attained. When she addressed the city, she was quick to advertise new COVID-19 variants to scare the public into taking vaccines that ultimately enhanced outbreaks, hospitalizations and deaths throughout 2021. She supported mandates and the loss of body autonomy rights.

Dishonest medical community uses doctors death to promote vaccines (that the deceased doctor took religiously)

But none of her actions seem to matter because the medical community views her as a hero, and wants to remember her passing as martyrdom. This arrogance is why the American Medical System is the third leading cause of death and played a major role in the hospital fatality rate during the COVID-19 scandal. These doctors are not honest about the mistakes they have made. They are not held accountable for deaths caused by medical fraud and malpractice because their insurance pays to keep families quiet. They are not held accountable even when vaccine failures are obvious, when people are acutely injured and disabled by vaccines.

Even though Hartlage was a leading voice in the Louisville medical community, none of her colleagues dared to look into her death and understand what caused her to pass away so suddenly at the age of 36. Instead, the mayor touted her actions over the past two years as inspirational while praising her for leading the city of Louisville through the coronavirus pandemic, especially with the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccines. It seems she was used.

If doctors cannot be honest about the blood clots, immune depletion, cardiovascular disorders and stroke risk from these shots, then they cannot be trusted at all. Brushing the cause of their young colleagues death under the rug is NOT how medicine or science progresses in a compassionate or humane manner. Praising the very thing (the vaccines) that could have been implicated in her death is sadistic, to say the least.

Sources include:

CourierJournal.com

WLKY.com

USSANews.com

NaturalNews.com
The quantity of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions generated by vegetable oil production has been exposed in new worldwide research, stressing the need for more sustainable growing alternatives.

GHG emissions from practically all feasible methods now utilized to generate palm, soybean, rapeseed, and sunflower oil worldwide were examined for the first time by scientists from the University of Nottingham's Future Food Beacon. The research was a meta-analysis that included all relevant papers published between 2000 and 2020 on the environmental effect of oil extraction. The findings were published in the journal Science of the Total Environment.

Oil Research

This new research represents over 6,000 producers in 38 nations, accounting for more than 71% of worldwide vegetable oil output. GHG emissions were 3.81 kg CO2e per kilogram of refined oil across all oil crop systems. Crop-specific median CO2e emissions per kilogram of refined oil varied from 2.49 kg CO2e for rapeseed oil to 4.25 kg CO2e for soybean oil.

Despite receiving more unfavorable attention, median emissions from soybean oil were greater than those from palm oil. However, median rapeseed and sunflower oil systems produced fewer emissions than palm and soybean oil, indicating more environmentally friendly options.

Also Read: By 2024, Gas-Powered Stoves and Heating in New Buildings Will be Banned in New York

Harms

When a forest is cleared to make way for agriculture, the carbon stored in the trees and flora is released as CO2. A significant amount of carbon contained in the soil is frequently released. The researchers studied the influence of this form of deforestation on agricultural sustainability. They also considered the carbon costs of agricultural land occupancy, even when deforestation occurred more than a century ago (as is likely the case for most of Europe). This is because, even if no land-use change carbon is released today due to utilizing the land for agriculture, the chance to store carbon, such as by re-planting trees, is lost.

The researchers discovered that land use contributed significantly to GHG emissions, accounting for around half of total emissions.

Dr. Thomas Alcock, a Future Food Beacon research fellow and postdoctoral researcher at the Technical University of Munich, led the study.

They can find the most sustainable systems for each crop type and campaign for them to be adopted more broadly because there are so many diverse production systems covered in this study, he says.

The findings, particularly in terms of land use, suggest that they should focus production on land with low carbon storage capacity. However, other sustainability indices such as biodiversity must also be considered.

Emphasis

The study emphasizes the need for and potential for improving sustainability within present production systems, such as boosting yields while reducing the use of high-carbon inputs, in the case of palm oil, more widespread deployment of methane capture devices in processing stages.

Dr. Alcock explains that this implies using as little synthetic nitrogen on crops. It is the most common source of GHG emissions on farms. This is difficult since crops require a lot of nitrogen to be productive. Still, there are ways to lessen this, such as adopting nitrogen-efficient crop cultivars and integrating leguminous plants in crop rotations, which naturally contribute nitrogen to the soil.

Related Article: 200 Health Journal Calls Out World Leaders to Address How Climate Change Causes Health Hazard

For more environmental news, don't forget to follow Nature World News!
Only days after Saharan dust wreaked havoc on the air quality, coating everything from automobiles and houses to entire mountain ranges, parts of Spain will be hit by yet another wave of bad weather.

According to AccuWeather experts, days of persistent rain will cause catastrophic flooding across a big part of Spain this week.

Warnings

AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Tyler Roys warned that a highly hazardous situation is expected to develop throughout areas of Spain's eastern coast this week.

This week, while high pressure will stay entrenched throughout most of central and eastern Europe, deep, damp air will continue to surge across much of Spain. A procession of storms is expected to sweep through the Iberian Peninsula through the end of the week, with a new storm arriving every few days.

These storms will be slow-moving and able to take advantage of the copious moisture in the sky, resulting in spells of heavy rain throughout Spain and southern Portugal. On Monday, the first of these storms developed over the region.

Much of southern and eastern Spain might have 1-2 inches (25-50 mm) of rain by the end of the week, while places from northern Alicante to Castellon could see 4-12 inches (100-300 mm), according to Roys.

Also Read: Spring to Bring Extreme Weather Conditions in the US



Trouble All Over Spain

According to Roys, there are 20 inches (500 mm) of rainfall in the hardest-hit areas where the strongest downpours persist daily.

To put this in context, Madrid, Spain's capital, had little over 19 inches (490 mm) of rain for 2021. While the city itself is expected to be spared from the downpour, certain parts of eastern Spain might have as much rain as Madrid did in a year this week.

The city of Castellon had already gotten 4.60 inches (116 mm) of rain as of early Tuesday, while other parts of the province had received 2-4 inches (50-100 mm). Many localities in the Valencia province received nearly 6 inches (150 mm) of rain in under 24 hours.

According to Roys, significant floods are at risk because this rain needs to go someplace.

After days of rain, rivers and streams may expand and exceed their banks. Residents living near rivers or streams may need to reach higher ground this week, as rain is expected to pour continuously.

Satying Vigilant

As local emergency services kept a careful check on increasing river levels, flooded neighborhoods, and storm damage early this week, a stunning video trickled out of the nation.

When rain falls rapidly enough that the overburdened earth cannot absorb it, flash flooding is likely when the ground is already saturated. Furthermore, if the rain continues to fall and the soil becomes shaky, the risk of landslides and mudslides will grow for higher elevation locations throughout the week.

These waves of torrential rain arrived only days after Saharan dust blanketed most of Spain and other parts of Europe.

Water All Over Spain

Residents across the region sought to go about their daily lives as usual last week. However, dust choked the sky, turning everything into a rusty orange haze and drastically lowering air quality. As the week proceeded, the dust thinned out and finally evaporated, allowing for better air quality to return.

While the rain this week will help wash away any lingering dust caked on hard-to-clean surfaces, it will also pose a severe flood danger.

Forecasters at AccuWeather will continue to monitor the forecast across Europe in the following days but predict drier weather might be on the way by the weekend.

Related Article: As Spring Marches in, Noticeable Changes in Weather Patterns May Follow in the US

For more news about the environment, don't forget to follow Nature World News
Tornadoes wreaked havoc in the states of Texas and Oklahoma on Monday, March 21.

The windstorms caused some airports to close as damaging winds uprooted trees and damaged properties, including houses.

Combined with severe thunderstorms, one person died and seven others were injured in Texas.

Twisters, the rotating vortex of air, is one of the deadliest natural phenomena in the US.

This March, several US tornado forecasts revealed that both short-term and long-term timelines will put the US under increased risk from tornadoes in terms of coverage, duration, and frequency.

Multiple Casualties

At least 20 tornadoes reportedly occurred across Texas on Monday, affecting the areas of Crocket, Jacksboro, Madisonville, Bowie, Elgin, and Rock Round.

The twisters also rampaged through Kingston, Oklahoma, as per NBC News.

A woman was killed at her house in Sherwood Shores, Texas.

Meanwhile, dozens of injuries were also reported, and widespread power outages affected thousands of homes in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas.

An ongoing storm system paved the way for severe weather to cause the formation of tornadoes in the Southwest.

Furthermore, the US weather authorities have issued a forecast predicting that the current system will continue to cause weather hazards in the coming days.

Also Read: US Meteorologist Issues Warning for Tornado 'Threat Area' Expansion

Regional Severe Weather Outbreak

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) - National Weather Service (NWS) issued a regional severe weather outbreak that is expected to affect states in the Southern US, including the Lower Mississippi Valley and the middle Gulf Coast from Tuesday, March 22.

The NOAA - NWS emphasized that tornadoes and potentially damaging winds will pose the highest weather hazards from the severe weather.

Moreover, heavy rain will also bring the risk of flash floods in urban areas and river flooding.

The US weather agency's Storm Prediction Center (SPC) specified that most of Mississippi, southern and eastern Louisiana, and western Alabama are expected to experience severe thunderstorms until Tuesday evening.

Furthermore, some winds with hurricane forces, a few tornadoes, and large hail may occur.

Storm Preparedness Actions

The SPC issued the following several storm preparedness actions to mitigate or avoid the lethal repercussions of the regional severe weather outbreak, which is caused by an ongoing storm system:

Review severe weather safety procedures

Monitor local weather reports, including watches and warnings from the NOAA Weather Radio

Move to a safe place, preferably on the lowest floor of a building

However, the given disaster preparedness measures are not absolute.

Depending on the current situation it is still in the discretion of an individual on whether to follow or not actions.

Increasing Tornado Risks

The tornado outbreaks in Texas and Oklahoma were preceded by some forecast of the increasing risks posed by the twisters or windstorms across the country in the coming months.

On March 19, US meteorologist Paul Pastelok from AccuWeather issued a long-term tornado warning, indicating that there are signs that climate change, including variations in weather and climatical patterns, will increase the tornado "threat area" expansion in the country.

This means that tornado outbreaks in the country's Tornado Alley regions of the Midwest and Southeast can also occur in other parts of the US.

The term Tornado Alley was coined by the media to depict the areas that experience the most tornado outbreaks.

AccuWeather meteorologists also previously issued a tornado forecast for the US in 2022, highlighting that an increased tornado occurrence is expected for March, April, and May.

It also added to the common frequency of tornadoes during the spring season which started on Sunday, March 20.

Related Article: US Severe Weather and Tornado Forecast Issued for March, April, and May
Self-replicating RNA molecules were found by scientists from Japan in a new study. They then created a similar molecule that can imitate the mechanisms and emergence of complex life-like systems.

The discovery of the self-replicating RNA molecule added to the current scientific perspective and growing evidence that the origins of life are a result of abiogenesis and evolution.

Self-Replicating RNA and Evolution

In the new study published in Nature Communications on Friday, March 18, researchers from the University of Tokyo in Japan discovered and created a self-replicating RNA molecule that can copy and produce complex life-like systems for the first time.

The findings in the study are considered to be the first evidence that biological molecules can contribute to the origins or emergence of diversified life-like systems.

It also shedded light on how a single molecule can transform into a complex one.

Also Read: Researchers Offer Novel Findings On The Origins Of Life

Where Did Life Come From?

The formation of Earth around 4.5 billion years ago has led to a cascade of violent yet necessary geological and climatical changes on the planet.

The once harsh environment has transformed into a tolerable environment, including hospitable temperatures, as per NASA.

Natural geological phenomena, such as volcanic eruptions and tectonic plate movements, have shaped the landscape of today.

Meanwhile, climatical phenomena, such as the emergence of oxygen and other gases have constructed an atmosphere suitable to support life.

However, these gradual natural events have not answered the life-long questions surrounding what factors allowed for the origins of life on Earth to take place.

Abiogenesis and The Great Filter Theory

The new study by University of Tokyo researchers highlights the concept of abiogenesis, a biological natural process of life arising from the state of lifelessness.

In summary, abiogenesis is the emergence of life from a non-living matter.

Nevertheless, this circumstance is where The Great Filter Theory comes in, which tackles the possibility that life might have formed if it passes through a so-called "Great Filter" and is the basis of the Fermi Paradox.

The Great Filter can mean any natural or artificial factors that can prevent the formation of life or cause the extinction of current civilization, as per Astronomy.com.

The theoretical underpinnings of the Fermi Paradox, in relation to theory, were first proposed by Nobel laureate and Italian physicist Enrico Fermi in 1950 when he reportedly asked his colleagues about the whereabouts of other lifeforms beyond Earth.

Until today, the scientific community considers the emergence of life on Earth as an extremely rare occurrence.

Self-replicating RNA may have been an evident manifestation of abiogenesis, in the case of Earth, has become possible since scientists claim that our planet has passed The Great Filter.

This feat has likely prompted abiogenesis and evolution.

Tip of the Iceberg

Despite our current knowledge of abiogenesis, evolution, and The Great Filter Theory, the understanding of science toward the origins is just the tip of the iceberg.

This is evident as scientists are still unable to directly answer and explain how life on Earth emerged, according to a research article by the Georgia Institute of Technology (GATECH).

In relation to The Great Filter Theory, the GATECH research article highlighted the prevailing concepts from other studies on what are the necessary requirements for the origins of life and principles for life's evolution by natural selection.

Based on the article, carbon, molecular segregation in the environment, energy, and hereditary mechanisms, are some of the requirements for the emergence of life to take place.

Regardless of the scientific theoretical obstacles, the discovery and creation of the self-replicating RNA by researchers in Japan can be the first step toward our further understanding not only of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution but also the origins of life.

Related Article: Origin of Life? Planetary 'Smash Up' With Mercury-Like Planet May Have Started Life on Earh
Forest fires have erupted near the Chernobyl nuclear reactor, with Ukraine saying that Russian management of the decommissioned power station is obstructing efforts to put out the fires.

Fire Burning Near the Power Plant

According to a statement released by Ukraine's parliament, satellite data collected by the European Space Agency has revealed at least seven flames within Chernobyl's exclusion zone.

The flames were likely started by "Russian federation's armed aggression," according to the parliament, but it's unclear if the outbreak was triggered by shelling, arson, or some other motive. According to the statement, fires within 10 kilometers of the plant are "hazardous," with Ukraine saying that its firemen are unable to put out the fires because of Russia's presence.

In the early days of Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February, the Chernobyl nuclear power station was taken. The facility is famous for a 1986 explosion and fire that resulted in a massive nuclear accident that spread radioactive pollution over Europe. Since then, the facility and its environs have been mostly walled off.

Also Read: UN Worried That Russia-Ukraine Crisis May Direly Impact Global Heat Goals

Extreme Risk

However, over 200 tons of fuel remain exposed at the bottom of the disabled reactor. Experts are concerned that the intense fighting in the vicinity would further damage the plant and allow radioactive material to escape.

The prolonged conflict in Ukraine, according to Ukrainian authorities, is obstructing efforts to monitor radiation levels at Chernobyl. "There is no data on the present condition of radiation contamination in the exclusion zone's environment," stated Energoatom, Ukraine's state-run nuclear corporation. "This makes it hard to respond to risks appropriately." Radiation levels in the exclusion zone and beyond, including Ukraine and possibly neighboring nations, might deteriorate dramatically.

A forest fire near the reactor caused radiation levels to rise to 16 times their typical levels in 2020. After a two-week effort by firemen, the blaze was put out, and a man was detained for reportedly lighting the fire "for fun."

Affected by Global Warming

According to climate experts, such potential calamities are partly a consequence of global warming, with rising temperatures forcing forests to dry up and become more ideal fire fuel. Unprecedented fire outbreaks have occurred across Europe, from Sweden to the Mediterranean, in recent years.

Warmer temperatures, according to LeRoy Westerling, a wildfire researcher at the University of California, are generating longer fire seasons across the world. However, the situation in Ukraine is exacerbated by the fact that it is in the midst of a conflict with many atypical ignition sources.

He warned that burning near Chernobyl is a worry because it might mobilize hazardous particles deposited decades ago when the reactors broke down.

The death of surrounding trees due to the nuclear catastrophe has left a vast amount of dead, fire-prone wood in the Chernobyl region, making it vulnerable to big fires. In 2015, an international group of experts warned that climate change's growing flammable region would result in significant danger of radioactive contamination in the future, with distinctive fire peaks. Even before the Russian invasion, the research found that the area's firefighting apparatus was understaffed and underfunded.

Related Studies

Separate studies released last year proved that forest fire smoke might contain radioactive material. The rising climate catastrophe poses a threat of nuclear wildfires [that] is a serious but poorly discussed issue.

According to Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Penn State University, the fires in Ukraine fall into a trend of climate change-fueled wildfire that has ravaged nations like the United States and Australia.

The conflict and the climate catastrophe, according to Mann, have a common cause: their continuous reliance on fossil fuels.

He claims that fossil fuels keep authoritarian petrostates like Russia afloat by allowing them to expand their military with the enormous cash they have gained from mining and selling fossil fuels to the rest of the globe.

Related Article: Russia's Attack on Ukraine Raises Risk of Nuclear War: How Bad Will a Nuclear Fallout Be?

For similar news, don't forget to follow Nature World News!
Manalapan resident and philanthropist Lois Pope recently donated $1 million to Save the Children, an organization working to help Ukrainian refugees. (Save the Children/Courtesy )

Manalapan resident and philanthropist Lois Pope recently donated $1 million to Save the Children, an organization working to help children and families fleeing escalating violence in Ukraine.

Save the Children, which has been working in Ukraine since the start of the conflict in 2014, has begun scaling up its operations to support the individuals impacted, distributing emergency supplies and establishing safe spaces for children where possible.

Advertisement

Popes donation, which will be used to establish a fund through her foundation called Lois Care for Refugees, will help provide food, water, hygiene products, medicine and other humanitarian assistance. The assistance is being provided in neighboring countries such as Poland, Romania and Lithuania.

A Save the Children staff hands out a toy to a boy whose family fled the conflict in Ukraine seeking shelter in Romania. (Dan Stewart/Save the Children/Courtesy )

Over 3.6 million refugees have fled Ukraine in four weeks, according to the United Nations. In addition, 6.5 million individuals have been displaced within the country.

Advertisement

What these innocent children are now going through, being ripped from the safety of the only homes they know by a war they cannot really comprehend, is devastating, Pope said in a statement.

I couldnt sit idly by in the comfort of my own home when the plight of these children is so perilous, she said. Their needs are so great, from nutritious food and clean water to medicine and health care products. My goal in creating this fund to support Save the Children is to help meet these needs today and moving forward throughout this humanitarian crisis.

Founded over a century ago, Save the Children is a leading independent organization for the health, education and protection of children.

Many Ukrainian refugee families are transitioning through the train station in Bucharest. Save the Children has set up Child Friendly Spaces so children can play and relax, while volunteers organize games for them. (Save the Children/Courtesy )

According to the organization, it reached over 197 million children in 2020, including 1.1 million inside the United States.

Save the Children expresses its deepest gratitude for Mrs. Popes much-needed support during this time of crisis in Ukraine, Save the Children Chief Development Officer Luciana Bonifacio said in a statement. This generous gift will help us protect children from harm, and provide immediate assistance to children and their families who are in grave danger across Ukraine and the region.

Visit savethechildren.org.
According to AccuWeather analysts, a big multiday severe weather outbreak that caused tornadoes in Texas and points east will continue through Wednesday night across the Southeast.

From northern Florida to eastern Virginia and maybe southeastern Maryland, the day will bring further severe weather, including the possibility of a few tornadoes. Hundreds of miles to the northwest, the second round of strong thunderstorms is expected.

Because the atmospheric energy producing the dangerous conditions will be departing, the risk of severe thunderstorms at midweek [in the Southeast states] may be short-lived compared to previous days during the outbreak, Meteorologist Paul Pastelok said.

Severe Thunderstorms

Severe thunderstorms that swept across Mississippi, Louisiana, and southern Alabama Tuesday night will continue to move eastward into northern Florida and south Georgia until the noon hours of Wednesday. Storms in the north were not deemed severe, but they were dumping a lot of rain. During the morning commute, motorists and pedestrians in the Atlanta metro region saw heavy downpours, locally strong gusts, and thunder and lightning.

Thunderstorms will strengthen across central and eastern regions of the Carolinas and southeastern Virginia during Wednesday afternoon and evening, as the danger of locally severe thunderstorms remains in parts of northern Florida and southeastern Georgia.

Strong wind gusts, hail, and flash floods are among the weather events that residents in the Southeast should be prepared for. Tornadoes and waterspouts aren't entirely out of the question.

Also Read:

1st Week of Spring Met by Changes in Temperature

US Braces as Another Intense Winter Storm to Hit the Southeast

Increasing Concerns

AccuWeather experts are increasingly concerned about a secondary region of severe weather on Wednesday and the southeastern United States. Severe thunderstorms are expected to erupt across a large area of the Ohio Valley on Wednesday afternoon.

Storms are expected to hit a vast area of the country, from eastern Indiana through Kentucky, West Virginia, and southern Pennsylvania, bringing severe wind gusts, heavy rain, and perhaps an isolated tornado. Due to rapidly shifting circumstances, residents of large cities such as Louisville, Kentucky; Cincinnati and Columbus, Ohio; and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, will need to keep an eye on the sky Wednesday afternoon and evening.

Forecasts

Forecasters predict a storm could build following a cold front that slows and stalls over the Southeastern states on Thursday, potentially causing further severe weather over parts of the Atlantic coast.

According to Meteorologist Mary Gilbert, the major hazard with any bigger storm that roars to life on Thursday appears to be locally destructive winds and quick, torrential downpours.

One or two tornadoes may spin up along the coast anywhere from southern Virginia to Florida as they did on Wednesday.

Showers and thunderstorms are expected to spread from eastern North Carolina to parts of the Florida Peninsula on Thursday.

Related Article: Storm Anxiety: How to Handle Extreme Weather Phobias During Hurricane Season

For more climate and weather updates, don't forget to follow Nature World News!
AERALIS, the transformational British military jet developer, On March 21, 2022, hosted a ceremony attended by The Emir of Qatar, His Highness Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, unveiling two full-scale replicas of the company's innovative modular jet at DIMDEX 2022, Qatar International Maritime Defence Exhibition. The unveiling took place on AERALIS' Stand H7-329 in the Barzan Holdings Pavilion in Hall 7 of the Qatar National Convention Centre.

Aeralis unveils its new innovative modular jet at DIMDEX 2022, Doha International Maritime Defence Exhibition, March 21, 2022. (Picture source Aeralis)

The unveiling took place on the AERALIS stand and was led by His Highness. Also present were representatives from Barzan Holdings, senior figures from the Qatari and British Governments and Military, and members of the media.

The aircraft models are life-sized replicas of two variants of the AERALIS modular jet, with a length of 11.3m and a wingspan of 10m. One model is fully assembled in the Advanced Jet Trainer configuration and decorated with a livery inspired by the Qatari Emiri Air Force (QEAF). The second model is a modular version presented in a semi-disassembled state to demonstrate how the common-core fuselage can form the basis of a number of other aircraft variants. The replicas were produced in the UK and shipped to Qatar specifically for this event.

The event follows a successful 2021 for the British jet developer. Last year the company signed a three-year contract with the Royal Air Force's Rapid Capabilities Office (RCO), as well as Collaboration Agreements with Thales in the UK, Atkins and Siemens. AERALIS also signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Rolls-Royce to explore initial and future options to meet the company's propulsion requirements. In 2021 AERALIS also signed an investment agreement with Barzan Holdings of Qatar, who have provided initial investment to support AERALIS in the preliminary design phase.

AERALIS's founder & CEO Tristan Crawford remarked:

"It was an enormous privilege to have His Highness attend the unveiling of our stand at DIMDEX today. His presence here signifies our commitment to this region, as well as to industry and government in Qatar, and we are enormously pleased to be able to present a tangible visualisation of our cutting-edge modular jet."
Sign up to get breaking news, weather forecasts, and more in your email inbox.

Sign Up Now
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 3 1 of 3 Grace Duffield / Hearst Connecticut Media Show More Show Less 2 of 3 Grace Duffield / Hearst Connecticut Media Show More Show Less 3 of 3





NEW CANAAN  After Albe Bassett was promoted to full-time fire chief by the Board of Selectmen Tuesday, he requested the three-member board approve a contract for $34,000 for a new fire station alerting system.

In the case of an emergency, the alarms to alert the department will gradually ramp up in volume, as opposed to its current sound. When a call comes in, there are sudden loud noises, without warning, and, at times, you're jumping out of your skin, Bassett said.
Woburn, MA (01801)

Today

Sunshine and a few clouds. High 69F. Winds NNW at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

Mostly cloudy. Low 46F. Winds NW at 5 to 10 mph.
MIAMI (AP)  Former Trump adviser Paul Manafort was removed from a plane at Miami International Airport before it took off for Dubai because he carried a revoked passport, officials said Wednesday.

Miami-Dade Police Detective Alvaro Zabaleta confirmed that Manafort was removed from the Emirates Airline flight without incident Sunday night but directed further questions to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. That agency did not immediately respond to an email Wednesday seeking comment.

Advertisement

A lawyer who has represented Manafort did not immediately return a call and email seeking comment Wednesday.

Manafort, 72, led former President Donald Trumps campaign for several months during the 2016 presidential race but was ousted in August of that year after revelations about his business dealings in Ukraine.

Advertisement

FILE - In this May 23, 2018, photo, Paul Manafort, President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman, leaves the Federal District Court after a hearing in Washington. Manafort was removed from a plane at Miami International Airport before it took off for Dubai because he carried a revoked passport. Miami-Dade police confirmed Wednesday, March 23, 2022, that Manafort was removed from the Emirates Airline flight without incident on Sunday night. ( AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana) (Jose Luis Magana/AP)

He was later indicted on a broad array of financial crimes as part of special counsel Robert Muellers investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. He was convicted by a jury in August 2018 and later pleaded guilty in federal court in Washington.

In May 2020, Manafort was released from a low-security prison where he was serving a more than seven-year federal sentence amid concerns about the coronavirus. Although Manafort had not served long enough to be eligible for release under the guidelines, the Bureau of Prisons decided to free him because of his age and health vulnerabilities, a person familiar with the matter has said. Trump pardoned Manafort in December 2020.

Manaforts removal was first reported by the website Knewz.com.
Who was Mary Ann Scully? Each year, the Greater Pittsburgh Region of the American Heart Association bestows its Mary 

Heart attack victims who received a life-saving stent at UPMC Jameson likely never got the chance to thank Donna Cochran.

So on Saturday, the American Heart Association did it for them.

Cochran, director of cardiac services at Jameson, received the prestigious Mary Ann Scully Excellence in Nursing Award from the associations Greater Pittsburgh chapter at its annual Heart Ball. The award celebrates and highlights an individual nurse for his or her lifetime accomplishments in the field of stroke or cardiovascular nursing.

The honor recognizes Cochrans work 20 years ago in bringing a then-controversial, now-routine approach to treating certain heart attack victims to New Castle, as well as her continuing efforts to ensure excellence in the hospitals cardiac programs.

Cochran was nominated for the award by Dr. Elizabeth Piccione, a cardiologist and interim president of both UPMC Jameson and Horizon hospitals.

Piccione explained that certain heart attacks are caused by the total or near-total blockage of a coronary artery. Piccione called this the most serious type of heart attack, as every minute the artery is blocked, heart muscle dies.

Today, the accepted treatment for these STEMI attacks is for a doctor to go through an artery in the arm or leg to insert a stent, which reopens the blocked blood vessel. However, up until the early 2000s, hospitals that performed this procedure also had to have an in-house cardiac surgeon in case problems develop in the cath lab. An independent community hospital at the time, Jameson could not support a cardiac surgery program.

Around 2003, though, the thinking began to change, Piccione said, and Pennsylvania began exploring the idea of allowing heart attacks to be treated with stents without cardiothoracic  or CT  surgery being available in the building.

Now its considered the norm, Piccione said. But it was unbelievably controversial at the time, and there were a lot of people who didnt want it to happen. Donna recognized that our population was vulnerable, had travel barriers and that we have a lot of disease.

Quote There are people walking around and enjoying time with their families and loved ones because of the work Donna did, Dr. Elizabeth Piccione said. Thats why she deserves this award. Hands down, she has made an impact on peoples ability to live their life.

Story continues below video

She was the driver of that program and continues to be one of the main leaders. The degree of quality control, oversight and logistical hoops that we had to go through to develop that program were considered insurmountable by a lot of hospitals. A lot of them even stopped trying. Donna was our champion, and we have today a very vibrant program because of her dedication.

Since then, Piccione went on, data has shown that if a problem does develop in a cath lab, surgery can do little to help. and if surgery is necessary, I can Lifeflight somebody to (UPMC) Presbyterians OR quicker than they could probably get from Presbyterians cath lab to their OR.

Piccione added that Jameson has treated about 500 people who have had a STEMI heart attack in its cath lab  patients who might not have survived had Cochran not spearheaded efforts to develop the current program.

There are people walking around and enjoying time with their families and loved ones because of the work Donna did, Piccione said. Thats why she deserves this award. Hands down, she has made an impact on peoples ability to live their life.

Cochran, who came to Jameson around 1988 as a critical care nurse and who later developed a telemetry monitoring unit with a focus on cardiac arrhythmias and post-heart attack care, called the American Heart Associations recognition overwhelming and surreal.

You dont really expect to get that, said Cochran, who has been director of cardiac services since 1992. I come to work every day. Part of my job is how do you each day take better care of patients.

I have an excellent team that I work with. Everyday we do it better than we did it the day before, being very dedicated to this population of parents in both Lawrence and Mercer counties. We want to get the best care we can get for them.

Today, Piccione said, Cochran continues her dedication to her work.

Every part of treating a heart attack at our hospital has Donnas fingerprints on it, she said. The impact she has had on our community is unbelievable. It was never her intent to be recognized like this. You dont work in a community hospital because you expect to have accolades. Those things come a lot easier in bigger hospitals.

She does things because she believes theyre the right thing to do. Theres no ulterior motive, she was never trying to parlay this job into another job. It was always that she really felt the needs of our patients and our community and wanted to help.

d_irwin@ncnewsonline.com
New Castle, PA (16103)

Today

A mix of clouds and sun during the morning will give way to cloudy skies this afternoon. High 67F. Winds light and variable..

Tonight

Rain likely. Low 54F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall around a quarter of an inch.
Two workers who were killed when a wall fell on them at a Boynton Beach apartment complex construction site have been identified.

Jeremias Mendez, 32, and Eduardo Cruz-Moran, 25, both of West Palm Beach, were trying to slide a concrete wall into place when it crushed them.

Advertisement

The accident happened about 10:15 a.m. Tuesday at Riverwalk Plaza along Federal Highway and Woolbright Road. Members of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration are investigating the accident.

Officer Vinny Melo, a spokesperson for the Boynton Beach Police Department, said authorities used a crane to lift the wall off the men, who were pronounced dead at the scene.

[ LEE EN ESPANOL: Identifican a trabajadores que murieron aplastados por muro de concreto en construccion de Boynton Beach ]
Newburyport, MA (01950)

Today

Mainly sunny to start, then a few afternoon clouds. High near 65F. Winds NW at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Mostly cloudy skies. Low 46F. Winds NW at 5 to 10 mph.
Gov. Ron DeSantis hasnt been overwhelmed with applications to fill the Broward School Board seat vacated this month by Rosalind Osgood.

The governors office provided four applications for the District 5 School Board seat to the South Florida Sun Sentinel as as part of a public records request.

Advertisement

Those four are Mourice Hylton, who runs a scholastic chess program in Sunrise; Jeff Holness, who owns an education learning center in Coral Springs and is the cousin of Dale Holness, Browards former mayor; Gloria Lewis, a charter school facilities manager and former Lauderdale Lakes commissioner; and Nathalie Lynch-Walsh, chairwoman of the districts Facilities Task Force, a member of the district Audit Committee, and a longtime critic of district administration.

But theres no guarantee that DeSantis will pick one of those four  or anyone at all. The appointed term would expire in November, with an election scheduled for Aug. 23 and runoff Nov. 8 if needed. A DeSantis appointment could give a candidate the advantage of incumbency.

Advertisement

[ RELATED: Rosalind Osgood wins state Senate seat in Broward ]

The governor can appoint someone who has not applied. We do not have a set time frame for when the appointment will be made, DeSantis press secretary Christina Pushaw said. It is possible that there wont be an appointment prior to the election in August, but I would anticipate that the governor will probably make his appointment before that.

District 5 is a majority Black district that includes Lauderdale Lakes, Lauderhill and parts of Fort Lauderdale, Sunrise and Plantation. Osgood stepped down to run for state Senate and was elected March 8. Although the seat is non-partisan, the district is heavily Democratic. If DeSantis chooses a Republican, the person could have a tough time getting elected.

A possible fifth contender to immediately replace Osgood, education consultant Ruth Carter Lynch, said she too has applied to DeSantis. Or at least thinks she has.

A couple of people were supposed to put that in for me, said Lynch, who ran against Osgood in 2012. I was in talks with the governors office.

Both Lynch and Lewis have filed to run for the seat in August.

At least two others have also filed their intent into run. They are Antonio Burgess, a district coordinator for equity programs, and Jimmy Witherspoon, a student adviser for Dillard 6-12 in Fort Lauderdale.

[ RELATED: Browards new school superintendent vows sweeping changes to district, starting with its culture ]

There are a plethora of qualified competent individuals running, Osgood told the Sun Sentinel. District 5 will continue to have strong leadership.

Candidates have until June to file to run for the elected seat.

Advertisement

Holness, who lost to Debbi Hixon in a county seat in 2020, couldnt be reached Tuesday.

Neither Lynch-Walsh, who ran against Osgood in 2016, nor Hylton, said theyd made a final decision about the August election.

I have no plan to do that at this time, Lynch-Walsh said. Im waiting to see what [DeSantis] does.

[ FROM 2016: Incumbent, active volunteer vie for Broward School Board District 5 seat ]

Hylton, a Republican who described himself as a DeSantis supporter, said he wants to serve but has concerns about running a campaign.

I could run and probably should run, and I feel like I could win, he said. But I feel like once I start running and get political, I could get jaded.
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.
Theres a light at the end of the tunnel this school year for teachers whose classrooms were plagued by violence, fights and disruptions.

Amid a shortage of school district officers, deputies from the Palm Beach County Sheriffs Office will be stepping in to fill staffing gaps in the countys public schools. Under a new plan, 20 deputies and two sergeants will be on guard during the school day.

Advertisement

Were doing it to help them out, its that simple, Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw told the South Florida Sun Sentinel on Wednesday. They dont have enough people, so were going to help them in the elementary schools until they can get squared away and have enough people.

As far as teachers go, theyll take all the help they can get, said Justin Katz, who heads the teachers union in Palm Beach County.

Advertisement

In December 2021, the school district released data showing six times as many student suspensions for felonies compared to before the pandemic, and weapon incidents on campus increasing roughly 118% in that time.

Theres been an uptick in student violence, not only against themselves and their peers, but against employees and teachers as well, Katz said. Were attributing that to coming back from virtual learning and COVID, and students needing to readjust. However the school district fills those vacancies, whether thats through PBSO or district police officers, teachers welcome the support and the added security.

The Palm Beach County School Board approved the contract for the deputies Wednesday. Though every School Board member voted in favor of the contract, it ignited discussion about some Board Members and members of the publics wishes to merge the school districts police department with the sheriffs force.

School Board Members Karen Brill and Debra Robinson said they wanted to discuss the long-standing issues plaguing the school districts department, such as limited training, lack of proper equipment such as radios to protect school campuses, and poor compensation for officers.

Bradshaw, who had already signed off on the plan, said most of his agencys deputies will be stationed at elementary schools. Thats the way they were back in 2018 when the agency first agreed on a contract for deputies to work at about 15 elementary schools.

[ RELATED: South Florida school districts scrambling to hire police officers ]

Filling vacancies

The school district has its own police department with more than 200 sworn police officers to carry out all law enforcement activities throughout the districts schools and facilities, according to its website.

Still, the district has faced staffing challenges. In December, the school districts police department had 60 job openings for police officers. If fully staffed, the department would have 319 sworn officers. Updated numbers for March werent immediately available.

Staffing shortages are a problem locally as well as nationally, with vacancies across counties and school districts.

Advertisement

Much like teaching, law enforcement is a difficult profession, and fewer people are willing to go into it these days.

[ RELATED: We are scared every day: Student fights and assaults on teachers trouble schools amid pandemic ]

The new contract would run through May 2023. The school district would pay the Sheriffs Office $100 per hour for each deputy and $136 per hour for each sergeant. If the district police department is still short-staffed when the contract expires, its possible itll renew it, Bradshaw said.

The sheriff will get full discretion on any law enforcement issues and the principal of each school is the ultimate decision-maker regarding disciplinary issues. But any dispute on duties and functions would be decided by the sheriff.

[ RELATED: Singing the blues: Law enforcement departments struggle with hiring and retaining officers ]

Information from WPEC-CBS12, the South Florida Sun Sentinels news partner, was used to supplement this news article.

Brooke Baitinger can be reached at: bbaitinger@sunsentinel.com, 954-422-0857 or on Twitter: @bybbaitinger
News

featured popular urgent

Clayton County schools offering COVID booster shots

JONESBORO  Beginning March 28, Clayton County Public Schools will begin offering COVID-19 booster shots to students ages 12 and older.

Whos eligible

To be eligible, students must have had a completed first Pfizer-BioNTech vaccination at least five months ago. Those under the ages of 18 must present a signed consent form.

Registration To register, visit https://forms.gle/LscghB8y7T2hLu5u7. Parental consent forms can also be completed at the link. Students can also visit the nurses at their school

Where and When

 March 28 from 9-11 a.m. at Point South Middle; Adamson Middle; Kendrick Middle; and Eddie White Middle

 March 29 from 9-11 a.m. at Babb Middle; Riverdale Middle; Mundys Mill Middle; and Rex Mill Middle

March 30 from 9-11 a.m. at Forest Park Middle; Sequoyah Middle; and M.D. Roberts Middle

 March 31 from 9-11 a.m. at Morrow Middle; Clayton Middle; and Jonesboro Middle

 April 11 from 9-11 a.m. at Drew High; Jonesboro High; Forest Park High; and Lovejoy High

 April 12 from 9-11 a.m. at North Clayton High; Mount Zion High; Morrow High; and Mundys Mill High

 April 13 from 9-11 a.m. at Riverdale High; Elite Scholars; and Perry Learning Academy

For more information, visit www.clayton.k12.ga.us.
Champaign, IL (61820)

Today

Cloudy with periods of rain. High 57F. Winds E at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall near a half an inch..

Tonight

Periods of rain. Thunder possible. Low 54F. Winds ENE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
A tiger mauled a worker Tuesday afternoon at a Florida airboat attraction, officials said.

The attack occurred at Wootens Everglades Airboat Tours in Ochopee, according to the Collier County Sheriffs Office. According to Wootens website, the attraction includes an animal sanctuary that features two tigers, two lions, otters, turtles, crocodiles and alligators.

Advertisement

A caretaker was feeding a tiger in its enclosure when another worker who wasnt authorized to be with the tiger entered the enclosure, deputies said. The tiger attacked the 50-year-old man and caused injuries to both of his arms, officials said.

The man was transported to a hospital. Officials didnt immediately disclose his condition.

Advertisement

[ RELATED: Tiger shot, killed after biting arm of man near Florida zoo enclosure ]

The tigers caretaker was able to safely contain the big cat, officials said. The tiger was not injured.

In December, a custodial worker was mauled by a tiger at Naples Zoo at Caribbean Gardens after entering an unauthorized area. A Collier County deputy shot the animal as its jaw were wrapped around the mans arm.
Champaign, IL (61820)

Today

Cloudy with periods of rain. High 57F. Winds E at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall possibly over one inch..

Tonight

Rain showers early will evolve into a more steady rain overnight. Thunder possible. Low 54F. Winds ENE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
Click the image to the left and log in to get your exclusive reader perks.
Longview, TX (75601)

Today

Cloudy early then strong thunderstorms developing this afternoon. Damaging winds and large hail with some storms. High 77F. Winds SSW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 90%..

Tonight

Scattered thunderstorms early, then becoming clear after midnight. A few storms may be severe. Low 56F. Winds W at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50%.
Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright introduces Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton at a campaign event at Rundlett Middle School, in Concord, N.H., Feb. 6, 2016. 'Theres a special place in hell for women who dont help each other," Albright said. (Jacquelyn Martin / Associated Press)

WASHINGTON  Madeleine Albright fled the Nazis as a child and climbed to the summit of diplomacy and foreign policy in the United States, breaking the glass ceiling as the first female secretary of state and setting the pace for other women to follow.

She has watched her world fall apart, and ever since, she has dedicated her life to spreading to the rest of the world the freedom and tolerance her family found here in America, President Bill Clinton said in announcing his historic choice for Americas top diplomat in December 1996.

Advertisement

Albright, whose family said she died Wednesday of cancer at age 84, was the daughter of a Czech diplomat, and was born just as Adolf Hitlers Germany started its move down a path of conquest. The bleak years that followed uprooted Albrights family and intimidated Europe.

She grew to be outspoken and advised women years later to act in a more confident manner and to ask questions when they occur and dont wait to ask.

Advertisement

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, on Oct. 22, 2009 before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on NATO. (Haraz N. Ghanbari/AP)

It took me quite a long time to develop a voice, and now that I have it, I am not going to be silent, Albright told HuffPost Living in 2010.

Her determination to use her academic background and her instinct for world affairs, combined with a formidable drive, led to her becoming the first woman to head the State Department. She was not part of the presidential line of succession, however, because of her birth outside the United States.

For decades, Albright was a popular professor at Georgetown Universitys School of Foreign Service, where her Modern Foreign Governments was a required course and examined autocracies and the rise and fall of nation states, including in Ethiopia, the Czech Republic and the Soviet Union. A scholar influenced heavily by the Cold War, she also took a profound interest in arms control and was a proponent of combating dictatorships.

Albright remained outspoken after leaving government. She criticized President George W. Bush for using the shock of force rather than alliances to foster diplomacy. She said he had driven away moderate Arab leaders and created the potential for a dangerous rift with European allies.

When the Senate Foreign Relations Committee asked her in January 2007 whether she approved of Bushs proposed surge in U.S. troops in bloodied Iraq, she responded: I think we need a surge in diplomacy. We are viewed in the Middle East as a colonial power and our motives are suspect.

An internationalist, Albright was shaped in part by her background as a refugee. She played a key role in persuading Clinton to go to war against the Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic over his brutal treatment of Kosovar Albanians in 1999.

My mindset is Munich, she said frequently, referring to the German city where the Western allies in 1938 abandoned her homeland to the Nazis.

She helped win Senate ratification of NATOs expansion and a treaty imposing international restrictions on chemical weapons. She led a successful fight to keep Egyptian diplomat Boutros Boutros-Ghali from a second term as secretary-general of the United Nations; he accused her of deception and posing as a friend.

Advertisement

A Democrat, she was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in Clintons first term, but sought to work with Republicans in Congress on issues ranging from Russia to Cuba. As secretary of state she worked with both political parties to reform the State Department and the U.S. Information Agency, which had run Washingtons anti-Soviet messaging since the end of World War II.

Albright advocated a tough U.S. foreign policy, particularly in the case of Milosevics treatment of Bosnia. She once exclaimed to Colin Powell, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: Whats the point of having this superb military youre always talking about if we cant use it?

Albright has known firsthand what tyranny and totalitarianism can do to ordinary people, said Michael Zantovsky, a Czech ambassador to Washington. The lesson of Munich is that you do not appease aggressors, you stick by your friends, and you take a stand for values and principles that you really believe in.

I am an eternal optimist, Albright said in 1998, amid an effort to promote peace in the Middle East. But she said getting Israel to pull back on the West Bank and the Palestinians to rout terrorists posed serious problems.

As secretary of state, she made limited progress at first in trying to expand the 1993 Oslo accords that established the principle of self-rule for the Palestinians on the West Bank and in Gaza.

But in 1998, she played a leading role in formulating the Wye Accords that turned over control of about 40% of the West Bank to the Palestinians. Still, a comprehensive peace in the Middle East between Israel and the Arabs eluded the Clinton administration.

Advertisement

Albright also helped guide U.S. foreign policy during conflicts in the Balkans and the Hutu-Tutsi genocide in Rwanda.

She enjoyed her reputation for plain-speaking. And she turned her love of jewelry into a weapon, telegraphing her messages with the brooch she chose to wear. Called a snake by the Iraqi government under Saddam Hussein, she sported a snake pin during a U.N. debate on Iraq.

When devious, I wear a spider; when ready to sting, a bee, she said.

Marie Jana Korbel was born in Prague on May 15, 1937, the daughter of diplomat Joseph Korbel. The family was Jewish and converted to Roman Catholicism when she was 5. Three of her Jewish grandparents died in concentration camps. Albright later said that she only became aware of her Jewish background after she became secretary of state.

The family returned to Czechoslovakia after World War II, before fleeing again, this time to the United States, in 1948, after the communists rose to power. They settled in Denver, where her father obtained a job at the University of Denver.

She married journalist and publishing heir Joseph Albright in 1959, three days after her graduation from Wellesley College. They had three daughters before divorcing in 1983.

Advertisement

Years later, in an interview with biographer Ann Blackman, Albright said: Do powerful women attract men? My own experience happens to be yes, in a way that was not true before.

After college she worked as a journalist and later studied international relations at Columbia University, where she earned a masters degree in 1968 and a doctoral degree in 1976.

Democratic Sen. Edmund S. Muskie launched her career in politics and diplomacy as a legislative assistant in 1976. She later worked for the National Security Council during the Carter administration and advised Democrats on foreign policy before Clintons election. He nominated her as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in 1993.

She was fluent in Russian, French and Czech, and knew some Polish, Serbian and German. When meeting in Moscow in 1997 with Russian President Boris Yeltsin, her grasp of Russian was so secure that Yeltsin waved away the interpreter as not necessary.

Following her service in the Clinton administration, she headed a global strategy firm, Albright Stonebridge, and was chair of an investment advisory company that focused on emerging markets. She also wrote several books.

She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nations highest civilian honor, by President Barack Obama in 2012.
Cementless knee replacement, an alternative approach to traditional cemented knee replacement surgery, is garnering interest in the field of orthopedic surgery. Researchers at Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) launched a study to compare outcomes of a modern cementless knee implant to the standard knee implant that requires bone cement for fixation.

HSS hip and knee surgeon Geoffrey H. Westrich, MD, and his colleagues found no difference in hospital length of stay, complications, hospital readmission within 90 days of surgery, or rates of revision surgery at two-year patient follow-up. The findings were presented today at the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons 2022 Annual Meeting in Chicago.

With respect to time spent in the operating room (OR), researchers found that using the cementless implant reduced OR time by 25%, saving an average of 27 minutes.

In a cementless total knee replacement, you do not have to wait for the cement to harden and dry like you do in a cemented knee replacement." Brian P. Chalmers, MD, hip and knee surgeon at HSS and study co-author

"Reduced time in the OR under anesthesia is advantageous to patients, but that is not the only potential benefit of the cementless prosthesis," added Dr. Westrich, who is also the research director emeritus of the Adult Reconstruction and Joint Replacement Service at HSS. "With the cementless knee replacement, the components are press fit into place for 'biologic fixation,' which basically means the bone will grow into the implant. If there is initial biologic fixation, implant loosening over time should be less likely and a total knee replacement could potentially last much longer."

In a traditional knee replacement, implant components are secured in the joint using bone cement. It's a tried-and-true technique that has worked well for decades. But eventually, over time, the cement starts to loosen from the bone and/or the implant. When it wears out or loosens, patients generally need a second knee replacement, known as a revision surgery.

Dr. Westrich believes that a well-designed cementless implant will make loosening over time less likely, enabling a total knee replacement to last much longer. Implant longevity is an important consideration, especially for younger patients with arthritis who opt for joint replacement to maintain their active lifestyle. They generally put more demands on their joint, causing more wear and tear and potential loosening. The cemented knee implant used in a traditional joint replacement usually lasts 15 to 20 years.

"Cementless implants have been used successfully in total hip replacement surgery for many years. It has been much more challenging to develop a cementless prosthesis that would work well in the knee because of the knee's particular anatomy," Dr. Westrich explained.

"In the past, a number of cementless knee implants were shown to have design flaws, with loosening from the tibia," he added. "The newer cementless prosthesis used in our study did not demonstrate this type of loosening as in previous published studies. We set out to see how the implant fared in HSS patients."

Researchers reviewed 598 primary unilateral total knee replacements at HSS (170 cementless and 428 cemented) of the same design from 2016 to 2018. Demographic information, operative details and any complications were obtained from patients' medical records. Patients undergoing the cementless procedure were younger overall, with a mean age of 63, versus 68 for those having a traditional cemented knee replacement. Good bone quality is important in the success of cementless knee fixation. Therefore, orthopedic surgeons preferentially select younger patients for the cementless procedure, Dr. Chalmers noted.

There was no statistically significant difference in hospital length of stay, complications, or hospital readmission for a problem in the first 90 days after surgery. Ninety-six percent of cementless knee replacement patients versus 95% of those with a cemented knee replacement maintained their implant without the need for revision surgery at two-year follow-up.

"The biggest question now is whether or not cementless total knee replacement will have better long-term durability and fixation than cemented knee replacement," Dr. Chalmers said. "Following these patients to assess long-term outcomes is the next step."
In a recent study published on the medRxiv* preprint server, researchers have revealed that a booster dose of a messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA)-based coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccine is more effective than the two-dose primary vaccination regimen in preventing severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infections. However, the effectiveness is higher against the Delta variant than the Omicron variant.

Study: Relative effectiveness of booster vs. 2-dose mRNA Covid-19 vaccination in the Veterans Health Administration: Self-controlled risk interval analysis. Image Credit: Exahardiwito / Shutterstock.com

Background

Real-world studies investigating the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines have demonstrated satisfactory outcomes. However, due to the emergence of new SARS-CoV-2 variants with improved immune fitness, a sharp rise in vaccine breakthrough infections has been reported in many countries worldwide. This has prompted public health authorities to recommend booster vaccination against COVID-19 for the general population.

In September 2021, the United States began administering booster doses of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines. Preliminary findings of several observational studies have shown that the effectiveness of booster mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine dose is lower against the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant as compared to that against the Delta variant. However, observational studies that compare vaccinated people with unvaccinated people to assess vaccine effectiveness may suffer from various confounding factors, including misclassification of vaccination status.

In the current study, the scientists have applied a self-controlled risk interval study design to reduce such confounding factors and assess the real-time effectiveness of COVID-19 booster vaccination against SARS-CoV-2 infection. The current study, which fully accounts for time-fixed confounding factors, relied on Veterans Health Administration data to collect vaccination details of U.S. veterans.

The primary benefit of the self-controlled risk interval study design is a complete adjustment for all time-fixed confounding factors. An additional advantage of this study design is that it is suitable for identifying an unbiased comparable study group of vaccinated as compared to unvaccinated, thus allowing the inclusion of only infection-positive cases and the identification of periods of exposure and non-exposure around the event of booster vaccination.

Study design

The study analysis included U.S. veterans who received the two-dose primary regimen of mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines from either Pfizer or Moderna, followed by an mRNA booster vaccination of either of the primary vaccines.

Based on the self-controlled risk interval study design, the efficacy of booster vaccination over primary vaccination was analyzed at two fixed intervals referred to as control and booster exposure intervals during the Delta- and Omicron-dominated COVID-19 waves. The control interval was defined days four to six post-booster vaccination, which is before the vaccinated individual would gain booster immunity. The booster exposure interval is defined days 14 to 16 post-booster vaccination, which is after booster immunity should be acquired.

The scientists selected short intervals of exposure and non-exposure to reduce the impact of time-modified confounding factors. Moreover, since the control and risk intervals belonged to the same individual, a complete adjustment for all time-fixed confounding factors was possible in the study.

The vaccine efficacy at two study intervals was determined by estimating the incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection in boosted veterans during the Delta- and Omicron-dominated waves.

Important observations

A total of 1,240,999 veterans were identified who had received the booster dose of mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines between September 2021 and March 2022. The average interval between the second and third (booster) vaccine doses was eight months. Of boosted veterans, 301 tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 infection during the Delta wave and 7,621 tested positive during the Omicron wave.

Considering the study-defined intervals, a total of 42 and 14 cases were identified at the control and booster exposure intervals, respectively, during the Delta wave. During the Omicron wave, a total of 137 and 66 cases were identified at the control and booster exposure intervals, respectively.

The relative effectiveness, which is defined as the reduction in the risk of testing positive, of the booster vaccination over two-dose primary vaccination was calculated by analyzing the numbers of SARS-CoV-2-positive cases during the Delta and Omicron waves. The relative effectiveness of the booster vaccination was estimated to be 70% during the Delta wave and 56% during the Omicron wave. These estimates were similar for veterans aged below or above 65 years during the Omicron wave.

A separate set of analyses was conducted on boosted veterans who had a history of COVID-19. The findings revealed that the relative effectiveness of booster vaccination in this subset of the study participants over two-dose primary vaccination was 68% during the Delta wave and 56% during the Omicron wave. These estimates reveal that prior exposure to SARS-CoV-2 did not impact the efficacy of booster vaccination.

Study significance

The current study highlights the importance of booster COVID-19 vaccination in reducing the risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection. Based on the study findings, a booster dose of Pfizer- and Moderna-developed mRNA COVID-19 vaccines are more effective against Delta infections as compared to Omicron infections.

*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.
Astronauts might one day grow and eat genetically modified plants to ward off disease associated with long spaceflights. Researchers at the University of California, Davis College of Engineering have developed a transgenic, or genetically modified, lettuce producing a drug to protect against bone density loss in microgravity. The work will be presented March 22 at the Spring meeting of the American Chemical Society in San Diego.

Our bones are constantly balanced between growth and resorption, allowing bones to respond to injury or changes in exercise. Spending time in microgravity disrupts this balance, tipping bones towards resorption, so astronauts lose bone mass. This can be treated with a drug called parathyroid hormone, or PTH, but it requires regular injections.

Kevin Yates, a graduate student working with Professor Karen McDonald and Adjunct Professor Somen Nandi at the UC Davis Department of Chemical Engineering, developed a transgenic lettuce that expresses a fusion protein combining PTH with part of a human antibody protein. The fusion protein is designed to be stable in the bloodstream and to allow astronauts to potentially purify the drug from plant extracts, Nandi said.

The team is evaluating the plants for how much of the drug they can produce, which leaves contain the most product and the best time to harvest the leaves.

Growing plants in space

Growing plants in space has multiple benefits, Nandi said. A mission to Mars might take several years to complete. Experience from the International Space Station shows that being able to grow some food in addition to pre-packaged meals is a big morale booster for astronauts, he said.

Long space flights also require supplies of medicines, such as PTH. But conventional medicines would expire on the way, so astronauts need ways to replenish supplies. By carrying medicines in the form of transgenic plant seeds, astronauts can both save weight and potentially have a new source of fresh drugs, Nandi said.

Ideally, the drug would be in an orally available form, so that astronauts could dose themselves with PTH by eating lettuce leaves. But if that turns out not to work, they should still be able to extract and purify the drug from the plants.
Doctors tend to overestimate the progress made towards gender equality in UK medicine, suggest the results of a snapshot survey published in the open access journal BMJ Open.

These misperceptions are associated with greater reluctance, particularly among male doctors, to back initiatives to promote gender equality in the profession, the survey responses show.

The recruitment of women doctors to several specialties has failed to keep pace with their representation in medicine in general in the UK. Women are well represented in general practice/primary care, yet remain underrepresented in medical and surgical specialties, particularly at senior level.

The researchers wanted to find out whether doctors are accurately able to gauge women's representation in different specialties and roles, and whether these perceptions affect their willingness to support initiatives to promote gender equality in medicine.

The researchers surveyed online 425 UK-based consultants, GPs, specialist trainees/junior doctors on their perceptions of doctors within the UK medical profession. Nearly half (47%) the respondents were women.

Respondents were recruited via social media; a dedicated doctors' web forum; and through listservs maintained by the 24 medical royal colleges and faculties, 214 health service trusts, and 46 medical subspecialty and social societies.

Respondents were asked to indicate what proportion (0-100%) of doctors in different grades, including trainees, and in different specialties, were female.

To calculate the extent to which participants under- or over-estimated true proportions, the researchers subtracted from their responses the actual percentages of women working within each area/role.

To gauge support for initiatives designed to promote gender equality in the UK medical profession, respondents were asked to indicate how much they (dis)agreed that these activities were necessary, fair, excessive/'over the top' or put men at a disadvantage on a scale of 1-7, where 1 equals strong disagreement and 7 equals strong agreement.

Analysis of the responses showed that both men and women tended to overestimate the proportion of female consultants and GPs.

They estimated the proportion of female consultants to be 43% (actual proportion 37%) in medicine and 25% (actual proportion 14%) in surgery. The estimated proportion of female consultants/GPs in general practice was 58% (actual proportion 54%).

Estimated proportions of female trainees varied more by specialty area, but overestimates were still evident when limiting analyses for a given area to the respondents who were themselves in that particular area of medicine.

Respondents underestimated the proportion of female GP trainees (63.5% vs 69%) and more or less accurately estimated the proportion of female medical trainees (54% vs 53%).

But they overestimated the proportion of surgical trainees (37.5% vs 33%) and female medical school graduates (60% vs 55%).

Overestimating female representation in medicine across areas and roles was associated with greater reluctance to back initiatives to promote gender equality, particularly among men.

Among female respondents, regardless of their estimates of the proportion of women in medicine, there was no systematic difference in their level of support for gender-based initiatives.

The gap in support for gender equality initiatives between male and female respondents who correctly estimated female representation was small, with men's support nominally lower than women's.

Yet among those who overestimated female representation by just 10%, that gender gap grew by 150%, reflecting a significant drop in support among male doctors. Women's support remained steady.

The researchers checked to see whether this pattern was associated with stereotypical beliefs that male doctors are inherently better than female doctors.

Those who more strongly endorsed this belief were less supportive of gender-based initiatives, overall. But even after accounting for this, support for gender-based initiatives among the men was still significantly tied to the tendency to overestimate the proportion of women in medicine.

This is an observational study, and as such, can't establish cause, added to which the areas/roles included weren't comprehensive, so the findings may not translate to the whole of the UK medical profession, say the researchers.

But they write: "Men who overestimate the true progress that has been made in women's representation are at highest risk of undermining it."

They add: "This points to an insidious consequence that can arise when women's representation grows within a given field. It seems to prompt some to misperceive and overstate the actual degree of change, and following from this, particularly for men, mistakenly infer that gender equality initiatives in the field are no longer worth supporting.

"This ultimately hinders efforts to promote true equality, whether it be promoting women's representation in areas of the field where they are still under-represented or combating issues of gender bias that exist independent of women's numerical representation."
The ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, caused by the rapid outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2), has massively impacted the global healthcare system and economy. SARS-CoV-2 is an RNA-based respiratory virus that belongs to the family Coronaviridae.

Background

Scientists have extensively investigated blood profiles and lungs of COVID-19 patients to understand the acute phase immunopathogenesis. These studies also helped researchers to identify diagnostic and protective markers. Two components of the blood, i.e., antibodies and T cells, play a critical role in the clearance of SARS-CoV-2 viruses and also protect from severe COVID-19.

Recent studies have reported long-term complications of the COVID-19 infection, which is known as Long COVID or post-acute sequelae of COVID-19 (PASC). These studies revealed that the immunopathogenesis of COVID-19 sustained beyond the recovery of pulmonary disease. In addition, uncharacteristic innate immune signaling cascades and inflammation were reported in COVID-19 convalescent patients. More studies are required to understand the pathophysiology associated with the initiation of aberrant innate immune activation at mucosal surfaces, which are in direct contact with the viral particles.

Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 primarily occurs through saliva, i.e., droplets generated by an infected individual while talking or coughing. This is why saliva is regarded as the optimal target to monitor alterations of the mucosal immune system by respiratory infection. In addition, several studies have reported the association between the oral/gastrointestinal mucosal alterations and the pathophysiology of PASC, highlighting the importance of saliva to identify the molecular mechanisms and early indicators of SARS-CoV-2.

A New Study

A new study posted to the bioRxiv* preprint server has focussed on the chronic inflammatory response during the early convalescent phase, i.e., two weeks post clinical symptoms of SARS-CoV-2. In this study, the blood and saliva samples were obtained from COVID-19 donors who visited the COVID clinic at the University of California, San Diego. Researchers investigated the association between biological and demographic factors. They evaluated the plasma antibody levels of the study cohort, which is considered to be the gold standard to analyze immune responses to viral infection. Scientists further examined the mucosal antibody response and proteomic alterations at systemic and mucosal levels.

Study design

Key Findings

The current study revealed the presence of strong inflammatory responses to the SARS-CoV-2 in convalescent plasma and saliva, even in the absence of clinical manifestation of PASC. Scientists detected aberrant immune responses and blood clotting dysfunctions in the study samples. They observed that the biofluids contained antibodies against the SARS-CoV-2 receptor-binding domain (RBD), spike protein (S1 and S2), and the nucleoprotein (NP). The authors reported the presence of RBD binding IgA in both saliva and plasma, RBD binding IgM in saliva, and S1 binding IgG in plasma. This result implies that saliva could be used to detect the presence of specific SARS-CoV-2 antibodies and immune responses.

Saliva also exhibited unique patterns associated with antibody and proteomic profiles that were different from plasma. Researchers also demonstrated that IgA response in COVID-19 convalescent individuals was significantly higher in saliva than plasma. However, IgG response followed an opposite trend. Importantly, the plasma samples provided information about the dysregulated blood clotting functions, while saliva samples conveyed greater information regarding immunopathogenesis, including information concerning dysregulated fibrin clot and dysregulated neutrophil pathways.

The authors assessed the biofluid samples via shot-gun proteomics to understand immunoglobulin patterns found during COVID-19, which affects the composition and function of the entire repertoire of human proteins. The authors stated that investigation of molecular patterns would help identify early signals associated with disease manifestations. Interestingly, the plasma proteomics of COVID-19 samples demonstrated dysregulated blood clot process, and salivary proteomics revealed responses linked to the innate immune compartments.

Network analyses depicted biological functions altered in convalescent plasma and saliva.

Saliva analysis of recovered COVID-19 individuals revealed that an increase in numerous proteins, such as antileukoproteinase and Matrix metalloproteinase-9, affects neutrophil functions or migration. Further, it also showed significant enhancement in transmembrane protease serine, responsible for activating the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein to enable the viral-cell fusion process. Proteomic analyses also exhibited significant correlations between salivary fibrinogen and salivary annexin-1. Scientists detected a strong IgA response in saliva to the SARS-CoV-2 infection, with a limited range of neutralizing activity. Interestingly, salivary IgAs secreted in polymeric form (dimeric and tetrameric) confer greater neutralizing activity compared to IgGs.

Limitations

One of the limitations of this study was its study cohort, which contained only SARS-CoV-2 infected individuals and no healthy donors. Additionally, the control samples came from the pre-COVID era, with matched demographics. Another limitation was that samples were collected at only a one-time point and the proteomic responses and antibody levels were not adjusted as per the baseline of each individual.

Conclusion

The current study reveals that saliva could serve as a potential immune biofluid. As saliva samples are easy to collect, they can be used for early detection and prevention of virus-induced chronic inflammatory sequelae. In the future, COVID-19 vaccines must be designed such that they can also activate a robust mucosal antiviral response, which could protect individuals against the disease.

*Important Notice

bioRxiv publishes preliminary scientific reports that are not peer-reviewed and, therefore, should not be regarded as conclusive, guide clinical practice/health-related behavior, or treated as established information.
What are the most important factors to consider for developing effective drug use prevention programs? Many current programs for adolescents focus on elements including peer and family relationships, school connection, and youth's self-confidence and self-assertion.

However, a new study from the University of Illinois suggests another factor may be equallyor even moreinfluential: whether the youth believes drug use is wrong.

Inherent to the success of drug use prevention programs is ensuring activities are targeting those risks and protective factors that are most influential and salient for youth substance use." Allen Barton, Study Lead Author and Assistant Professor and Extension Specialist, Department of Human Development and Family Studies, College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences, University of Illinois

"As we aim to develop more effective drug use prevention programming, we have to ask whether any pertinent factors have been overlooked."

Barton and his colleagues found individual beliefs that drug use is wrong had twice the magnitude of impact compared to other risk and protective factors examined in the study. Thus, influencing adolescents' beliefs about drug use may be an important, but relatively underemphasized, key to modifying their behavior.

The researchers based their work on cognitive dissonance theory, which has not been used commonly to inform drug prevention efforts.

"The basic idea of cognitive dissonance theory is that individuals strive for harmony or agreement between their beliefs and their behavior. When there's a disconnect or dissonance, they try to reconcile either by changing their behavior to match their beliefs, or by changing their beliefs to allow for their behavior," Barton explains.

The researchers analyzed information from the 2018 Illinois Youth Survey, which measured risk behaviors among middle and high school students. The study included more than 128,000 youths in grades 8, 10, and 12 from schools across Illinois. Respondents noted whether, and how frequently, they had used alcohol, cannabis, or tobacco in the past year. They also answered a range of questions about their attitudes, school, family, and health.

"It is not surprising that drug use beliefs are linked to behavior; we certainly would expect a correlation between them. What's most noticeable is the magnitude of the effect, particularly in comparison to more established factors included in the analyses," Barton states.

In the survey, youth were asked how wrong they think it is for someone their age to consume alcohol or drugs, ranking from "not wrong at all" to "very wrong" on a four-point scale. For each unit increase in response, the likelihood of past-year drug abstinence increased by 39% for 8th graders, 50% for 10th graders, and 53% for 12th graders.

Beliefs not only correlated strongly with past usage, but also with frequency of use.

"Even among individuals who used drugs in the past year, individual beliefs that drug use is wrong were associated with less frequent use," Barton says.

The researchers found parents' beliefs also had a protective effect, albeit smaller than individual beliefs, while peer acceptance of drug usage was a risk factor. Perhaps more surprisingly, parental communication about drugs was associated with higher usage.

"These conversations may be happening because parents are already suspicious that youth are using drugs or trying to experiment," Barton notes. He suggests parents might want to speak with their kids about drugs at an earlier age, perhaps during the middle school years, rather than wait until they perceive a problem.

The study's findings can inform research and prevention efforts in various ways, the scientists say. First steps are to investigate how youths' beliefs about drug use are formed and influenced. Practitioners might also consider how they can support parents and caregivers in transmitting their beliefs to youth.

"Our work suggests this is a construct that warrants more attention in both the research and practice communities as it demonstrates a strong protective effect when it comes to drug use," Barton says. "As we are trying to improve drug use prevention programming for youth, these results suggest it may be useful to think about how educators, mentors, and parents can help instill the belief that drug use is wrong."
In a recent study posted to the medRxiv* pre-print server, researchers used genomic sequencing to examine severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) genomes from Alaska, United States (US), between December 2020 and June 2021.

During this period, Alaska witnessed a surge in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases due to the SARS-CoV-2 lineage B.1.1.519 (Epsilon), and a founder effect contributed to the unique pattern of B.1.1.519 emergence and dissemination in Alaska.

Background

Several studies have suggested that geographic and sociodemographic factors contribute to the emergence, evolution, and transmission of SARS-CoV-2 variants globally.

Despite being the largest state in the US by area, Alaska has the lowest population density and has unique community dynamics compared to the contiguous US states (lower 48). While its two economic regions are densely populated and highly intersected, its rural areas are sporadically populated and reachable by water or air transportation.

It is approximately 800 km from the lower 48, so the researchers explored how different was Alaskas pattern of SARS-CoV-2 variant emergence. Expectedly, they observed prominent differences in the prevalence of the SARS-CoV-2 Epsilon variant between Alaska and the lower 48 in early 2021.

About the study

In the current study, researchers downloaded 2,323 SARS-CoV-2 genomic sequences available on the Global Initiative on Sharing Avian Influenza Data (GISAID), and starting February 2022, they analyzed these sequences to increase genomic surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 variants as part of the Alaska SARS-CoV-2 Sequencing Consortium. The serum samples for these sequences were collected by the authorities of the Alaska Division of Public Health (AKDPH) and volunteers of the University of Alaska between 29 November 2020 and 26 June 2021 in Alaska, US.

For the lower 48, the research team gathered 1,331,799 sequences from GenBank, including Pangolin assignment, geolocation, and isolate for all the samples; additionally, they filtered out cases from Hawaii, Alaska, and other US territories to limit study comparisons to the lower 48. They used the Centers for Disease and Control and Prevention (CDC) COVID-19 data tracker site for gathering daily case data with a mean of seven days.

The study presented an estimate of the prevalence of the following SARS-CoV-2 lineages - B.1.617.2 and AY sublineages (Delta), B.1.525 (Eta), B.1.1.519, B.1.427/429 (Epsilon), B.1.617.1 (Kappa), C.37 (Lambda), B.1.526 (Iota), B.1.621 (Mu), B.1.351 (Beta), B.1.1.7 (Alpha), and P.1 (Gamma) in Alaska compared to the lower 48.

The SARS-CoV-2 variant prevalence data were computed for each week during the study period and compared to prevalence rates in other geographical locations, especially the lower 48.

The researchers used the Nextclade version 1.13.2 to determine the number of the amino acid (AA) mutations in the SARS-CoV-2 spike (S) glycoprotein. The Wilcoxon test was used to identify the differences in AA mutations between the emerging sublineages and lineages.

Study findings

The analysis of genomic data from outbreak.info, a sequence repository of GISAID, showed that Epsilon was highly prevalent worldwide in early March 2021, a month before Alaskas peak prevalence. Notably, this variant was detected in sequencing data from Alaska five weeks after its detection in the US, i.e., in December 2020.

By the end of January 2021, Alpha and Epsilon had emerged and were being steadily detected in the US sequencing data, thus, 5% of sequenced cases in the lower 48 were due to Alpha by this time. However, at this time, Alaska had only one case of Alpha and no cases of Epsilon. In February 2022, Epsilon constituted 10.4% of Alaskas SARS-CoV-2 sequences; such high prevalence rates also point at temporal and spatial heterogeneity in sequencing data.

Epsilon reached a peak prevalence of 77.9% in Alaska, five weeks after attaining the peak in the lower 48. Epsilon comprised a high percentage of sequenced cases from January to March 2021 in the Interior economic region of Alaska, 360 miles away from its another large economic region, the Anchorage-Mat Su.

By the end of February, Epsilon accounted for 37.8% and 10.5% of sequenced cases in the Anchorage-Mat Su and the Interior regions, respectively. By April 2021, the proportions of Epsilon sequenced cases in the Interior and the Anchorage-Mat Su regions were 77.2% and 72.6%, respectively. After attaining a peak on April 4, 2021, the prevalence of Epsilon in May decreased to 74.1% and 38.8% for the Interior and Anchorage-Mat Su regions, respectively.

The study revealed that the mutations in the SARS-CoV-2 genomes (from Alaska) occurred in a clockwise manner. The Wilcoxon test results suggested that Epsilon had more AA substitutions in the S protein than lineages detected in Alaska before its peak prevalence. Therefore, it had a competitive advantage over pre-peak circulating lineages; however, genomes sequenced after its peak prevalence were assigned to Alpha and Delta, having more AA mutations than Epsilon. This finding indicates that both Alpha and Delta had a selective advantage that allowed them to replace Epsilon in Alaska, a phenomenon also previously observed across Alpha and Delta waves in the USA.

The founder effect reduced the genetic diversity from a founding SARS-CoV-2 lineage that helps it outcompete its previously circulating lineage(s) because the founding population had a selective advantage, thus explaining how Epsilon likely emerged and became dominant in Alaska. In other US states, especially the lower 48, the same trend was not observed. This was most likely because Alpha, which could potentially outcompete Epsilon, had already established itself within the population.

At a country level, for instance, in Mexico, Epsilon was first detected in November 2020, about three months before its detection in Alaska. Thereafter, Epsilon rapidly outcompeted existing variants to become the dominant variant in Mexico comprising 51.5% of sequenced genomes by January 2021.

Conclusions

The stud demonstrated the importance of robust genomic sequencing efforts to examine the distinctive and unique patterns of SARS-CoV- 2 variant emergence and transmission. Further, the study highlighted how founder effects influenced the observed regional differences in the circulating SARS-CoV-2 lineages in Alaska.

Overall, the study data could prove beneficial in informing public health decisions when SARS-CoV-2 will become endemic in Alaska and globally.

*Important notice

medRxiv publishes preliminary scientific reports that are not peer-reviewed and, therefore, should not be regarded as conclusive, guide clinical practice/health-related behavior, or treated as established information.
Engineers and scientists have developed proof of concept for a robot that can reach some of the smallest bronchial tubes in the lungs - to take tissue samples or deliver cancer therapy.

Known as a magnetic tentacle robot, it measures just 2 millimetres in diameter, about twice the size of the tip of a ballpoint pen.

Magnets on the outside of the patient will be used to guide the tentacle robot into place.

The device has been developed by a team of engineers, scientists and clinicians based at the STORM Lab at the University of Leeds, which is pioneering the use of robotic systems to assist in endoscopy and catheter procedures, where a fine tube is inserted into body.

The researchers have published their findings in the journal Soft Robotics.

The proof of concept was based on laboratory tests involving a 3-D replica of a bronchial tree modelled from anatomical data. The next phase of the research will investigate the effectiveness of the device in navigating lungs taken from a cadaver.

Limits of existing technology

Currently, doctors use an instrument called a bronchoscope to carry out an examination of the lungs and air passages. The procedure involves passing a flexible tube-like instrument, about 3.5 to 4 millimetres in diameter, through the nose or mouth and into the bronchial passages.

Because of its size, the bronchoscope can only travel as far as the upper levels of the bronchial tree.

To delve deeper into the lungs, a catheter or fine tube - measuring about 2 millimetres in diameter - is passed through the bronchoscope and then into the smaller tubes of the lungs.

But doctors are limited in how they can move a bronchoscope, making it difficult to navigate the instrument and the catheter to where they are needed.

The magnetic tentacle robot, however, has been developed to be much more manoeuvrable and uses a robotic guidance system that is personalised for each procedure.

A magnetic tentacle robot or catheter that measures 2 millimetres and whose shape can be magnetically controlled to conform to the bronchial tree anatomy can reach most areas of the lung, and would be an important clinical tool in the investigation and treatment of possible lung cancer and other lung diseases. Our system uses an autonomous magnetic guidance system which does away for the need for patients to be X-rayed while the procedure is carried out." Pietro Valdastri, Professor and Director of the STORM Lab, University of Leeds

Innovative technology

To develop the robotic system, the research team had to overcome two major challenges.

Firstly, they had to make a device that was small, flexible and able to navigate the twists and turns of the anatomy of the bronchial tree.

Secondly, they needed an autonomous system to guide the magnetic tentacle robot into place, doing away with the need for a doctor to manually manoeuvre an instrument into place, which often involves the patient being exposed to x-rays, and can be technically challenging for medical staff.

Small and flexible robot

To reduce the size of the robot while retaining controllability of motion, the researchers manufactured it from a series of interlinked cylindrical segments, each 2 millimetres in diameter and around 80 millimetres in length. The segments were made of a soft elastomeric or rubber-like material which had been impregnated with tiny magnetic particles.

Because of the presence of the magnetic particles, the interlinked segments can move somewhat independently under the effect of an external magnetic field. The result is a magnetic tentacle robot which is highly flexible, able to shape shift and small enough to avoid snagging on anatomical structures in the lungs.

Guidance system

Magnets mounted on robotic arms on the outside of the patient would be used to guide the device into the lungs in a process that would be tailor-made for each procedure.

The route through the bronchial tree is planned from pre-operative scans of a patient's lungs and programmed into the robotic system. As the magnets outside of the patient move, they develop forces on the magnetic particles in the segments of the catheter, causing them to change shape or direction - enabling the robot to be manoeuvred through the lungs and to a site of a suspicious lesion.

Once at the target location, the robot is used to take a tissue sample or deliver treatment.

It may be several years before "magnetic tentacle" technology is available in a hospital setting.

The STORM lab at the University of Leeds is revolutionising the technology used in endoscopic and catheter investigations.

They have created a protype of a low-cost endoscope - used to investigate the upper gastrointestinal tract - which could be used in low to middle income countries where lack of access to expensive equipment is hampering screening programmes.

Magnetic technology is also at the heart of a robotic colonoscopy system that is easier for staff to operate and kinder for patients.

The STORM lab is part of the Leeds Centre for Cancer Research which was launched earlier in the year.
New York Blood Centers Project ACHIEVE and Columbia Universitys Columbia Research Unit are working in partnership for the New York City effort to advance the use of messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) technology in an HIV preventive vaccine study  HVTN 302. The global research effort is sponsored by the HIV Vaccine Trials Network (HVTN), headquartered at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, WA and funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) of the National Institutes of Health, and sponsored by NIAID.

The Phase 1 trial, titled HVTN 302, is the second trial of its kind and will be enrolling up to 108 people across 10 sites in the United States to test 3 different experimental vaccines against HIV using the mRNA vaccine technology that has been successful in fighting COVID-19. The vaccines are experimental, meaning that they have not been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Researchers will study the safety of and immune responses to the different vaccines, focusing on which might be the best vaccine candidate as well as what might be the best dosage.

Both organizations have an extensive history of conducting research spanning all phases of HIV vaccine clinical research. They have conducted longstanding work in community engagement and recruitment throughout New York City, developing a reputation for enrolling a diverse pool of study participants and addressing mistrust in vaccine trials among racial, ethnic, and sexual minority communities.

Seeing the first participant in HVTN 302 receive their initial injection of the study vaccine at our clinic site provides me hope that we can make a major contribution to the scientific communitys goal to prevent the spread of HIV. Globally more than thirty-seven million people are living with HIV. There have been major advances in HIV prevention, care, and treatment, but a vaccine will impact the broadest segment of society. Were looking forward to applying what we learned from the COVID-19 vaccine trials to our research on this potentially groundbreaking vaccine, stated Hong Van Tieu, MD, MS, Head, Laboratory of Infectious Disease Prevention, LFKRI, New York Blood Centers Project ACHIEVE.

We are immensely excited to be working on this significant advancement in HIV vaccine research. We have been studying various HIV vaccine products for decades and the science continues to progress. The major advancements in COVID-19 vaccine development involved the use of the mRNA technology. Applying this technology to the realm of HIV vaccine research is a major turning point. Community members in New York City continue to enroll in this study which will help further the global effort to develop an HIV preventive vaccine. Magda Sobieszczyk, MD, MPH, Principal Investigator, Columbia Universitys Columbia Research Unit

The HVTN 302 trial is evaluating three experimental vaccines; each participant in the trial will get one of the vaccines, all of which use mRNA technology. The International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) on behalf of Scripps Consortium provides these study vaccines, developed by researchers at Scripps Research, for the study for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Development (CHAVD).

These study vaccines are manufactured using mRNA technology, a piece of genetic code carried into your body by the vaccine as a message with instructions. The mRNA technology was developed by Moderna for the COVID-19 vaccine, which instructs the bodys cells to make the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. Instead of showing the immune system pieces of HIV, the study vaccines carry instructions that show human muscle cells how to make small pieces that resemble parts of HIV but are not actual pieces of the virus. Therefore, participants cannot get HIV from the vaccines.

When people get a vaccine injection in the muscle of their arm, the cells in that muscle will get the instructions and start to make the different types of HIV pieces and display these pieces on the surface of the muscle cell. The immune system will then be able to see these HIV pieces and learn how to recognize them.

Researchers hope that the immune system will respond by making antibodies and T-cells that could fight HIV if a person is ever exposed to the virus in the future.

The mRNA instructions do their work in the part of the muscle cell called the cytoplasm and only remain in the body for a couple of days before they break down naturally. The mRNA does not enter the nucleus of the cells, which is where human DNA is located. Therefore, the mRNA cannot interact with human DNA.

The study vaccines have not been given to people before. Prior research in animals was promising and found to be safe. The HVTN 302 trial is conducted in a way in which safety is carefully monitored.

The process is simple: participants indicate that they are interested, they complete an online screener, and staff contact them to complete a pre-screen over the phone. They then schedule their first study visit, where the participant receives more information on the study, signs consent forms and undergoes a physical exam. After that, if the participant is approved for the study, they are scheduled for their first vaccination.

Project ACHIEVE and Columbia University are appealing to community members to screen for and join the HVTN 302 trial. As with recent advances in the COVID-19 vaccine development, study participants are essential in furthering the science. Tens of thousands of people have participated in the studies that led to the development of the lifesaving COVID-19 vaccines. As with the COVID-19 vaccine trials, Project ACHIEVE and Columbia University highly encourage those from racial, ethnic and sexual minority communities to participate in the study, as a diverse pool of participants is essential in the success of the study.
A recent article posted to the Research Square* preprint server and under consideration at Scientific Reports evaluated a novel hygiene concern that emerged during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, i.e., the adherence of fungi and bacteria to face masks.

Background

The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic has prompted people to use face masks in public regularly. The three kinds of commercially marketed face masks are 1) cloth or gauze masks, 2) non-woven masks, and 3) polyurethane masks.

The World Health Organization (WHO) states that masks are only beneficial in combating COVID-19 when combined with non-pharmaceutical interventions such as hand hygiene. Moreover, the factors like correct mask use and disposal are also of paramount significance in curtailing the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

While viruses cannot multiply without infecting host cells, most fungi and bacteria may exist and reproduce on various substrates (public transportation system, currency notes) depending on the circumstances. Despite substantial research into the efficiency of face masks in preventing SARS-CoV-2 transmission, there is no clarity on the possible hygiene difficulties caused by fungi and bacteria adhered to the mask surfaces. Furthermore, the hygiene of face masks during the COVID-19 pandemic is critical as the fungal and bacterial infections from the masks could aggravate COVID-19 infection.

About the study

In the current work, the researchers demonstrated 1) the types and duration of mask use, 2) the number of fungi and bacteria adhering to the masks, and 3) the characterization of the fungi and bacteria sticking to masks. The team surveyed 109 medical students at Kindai University Faculty of Medicine, Japan, on their mask use during September and October 2020. The scientists assessed the association between microbes adhered to masks and factors associated with the subjects like gender, age, gargling habit, duration of mask use, natto consuming habit, and transportation. In addition, they also cultured bacteria and fungus on these volunteers' masks.

Before enrollment, informed consent was procured from all subjects, of which 63 were males, and 46 were females. The scientists ensured that none of the study participants were treated with antimicrobials during the research period. Microbes attached to the face masks were isolated by pressing the outer side and face side of the masks separately onto agar plates. These plates were then immediately covered to prevent contamination and then cultured. Subsequently, the fungal and bacterial colony counts were estimated.

Employing MiSeq, the 16S ribosomal ribonucleic acid (rRNA) sequencing was conducted. Fungi were identified by examining the colony microscopically and their morphology following lactophenol cotton blue staining.

Findings and discussions

The results indicated that the bacteria colony counts were overall more than fungus colony counts on face masks. Further, fungal and bacterial colony counts were higher on the outer side and face side of the mask, respectively. The longer the mask was worn, the higher the fungal colony counts were, but this was not the case for bacterial colony counts. Non-woven masks harbored fewer fungi on the outside than other mask varieties. Despite the fact that bacterial colony counts were equivalent in all mask kinds, women had lower face-side counts than males.

According to the findings of the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis, the Cladosporium genus, which was the most often identified fungus in this investigation, was discovered more frequently in females. B. subtilis was found more often on the masks of individuals who ate natto at least monthly. On the other hand, transportation systems were not linked to bacterial or fungal colony numbers. Of note, the ROC results were congruent with the study's findings.

There were no significant variations in microbial colony counts across non-woven and other mask types when comparing the microbial colony counts based on mask type. The high fungal colony counts on the outer side of masks, according to these data, were linked to the length of mask use rather than the mask type. Immunocompromised individuals should be urged to use non-woven masks regularly, although the majority of the fungus found in this investigation were opportunistic pathogens.

A foodborne pathogen named B. cereus was found on the outside of masks in 5% of the volunteers. This suggests that B. cereus may have gotten onto the masks through the hands from excrement. The authors advised intensive handwashing as it effectively lowered the occurrence of diarrhea.

Females who applied foundation on the left half of the face and wore face masks for four hours demonstrated no variation in bacterial colony counts across both sides of the face. Additionally, while facial skincare probably lowered bacteria on masks, it increased the presence of fungi. Similarly, those who used facial cleansers in the morning demonstrated lower bacterial counts but higher fungal counts.

Conclusions

The study findings implied that bacterial colony counts were higher on the face side of the masks than on the outer side. On the contrary, fungal colony numbers were lower on the face side than on the outer side of the masks. While the fungal colony counts were considerably higher after wearing the mask for extended periods, this was not the case for the bacterial colony counts. Although the majority of the detected microbes such as S. aureus, Cladosporium, and S. epidermidis were non-pathogenic, pathogenic microbes such as Microsporum, B. cereus, Aspergillus, and S. saprophyticus were also found.

Collectively, the present research indicates that individuals, particularly those with impaired immune systems, should avoid repeated usage of masks to forestall microbial infection. The present findings shed light on the usage of face masks to prevent potentially pathogenic infections during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.

*Important notice

Preprints with Research Square publish 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.
KYIV, Ukraine  One month of war, still defiant. With its government still standing and its outnumbered troops battling Russian forces to bloody stalemates in multiple places, Ukraine is scarred, wounded, mourning its dead but far from beaten as it braces for a second month of bombing, combat, casualties and resistance.

When, on Feb. 24, Russia unleashed its Ukraine invasion force in Europes biggest offensive since World War II and brandished the prospect of nuclear escalation if the West intervened, a lightning-swift toppling of Ukraines democratically elected government seemed possible.

Advertisement

But with Wednesday marking four full weeks of fighting, Russia is instead bogged down in an increasingly costly, uncertain and grinding military campaign, with untold numbers of dead, no immediate end in sight, and encircled by western sanctions biting hard on its economy and currency. U.S. President Joe Biden and key allies meeting in Brussels and Warsaw this week will discuss possible new sanctions and additional military assistance for Ukraine.

The economic and geopolitical shockwaves  with soaring energy prices, fears for global food supplies, and Russia and China aligning in a new world order with echoes of the Cold War  have reverberated across the planet that still hasnt emerged from the ongoing crisis of the coronavirus pandemic.

Advertisement

With his military-olive tops, rugged and resolute look and impassioned appeals to governments across the world for help, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been transformed into a wartime communicator and No. 1 thorn on the side of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Addressing Japans parliament on Wednesday, Zelenskyy said four weeks of war have killed thousands of people and 121 of Ukraines children.

Our people cannot even adequately bury their murdered relatives, friends and neighbors, they have to be buried right in the yards of destroyed buildings, next to the roads, he said.

A Ukrainian firefighter shouts to a colleague while trying to extinguish a fire inside a house destroyed by shelling in Kyiv, Ukraine, March 23, 2022. (Rodrigo Abd/AP)

Repeatedly pushed back by hit-and-run Ukrainian units armed with Western-supplied weapons, Russian troops are shelling targets from afar, falling back on tactics they previously used in reducing cities to ruins in Syria and Chechnya. Major Russian strategic objectives remain unfulfilled: The capital Kyiv has been repeatedly hit but not taken or even encircled.

More shelling and gunfire shook the city again Wednesday, with plumes of black smoke rising from the western outskirts, where the two sides battled for control of multiple suburbs. A shopping mall and buildings were hit, injuring four people, the city administration reported.

In the south, the port city of Mariupol has seen the worst devastation of the war, under weeks of siege and bombardment. So far, the Ukrainian forces defense has prevented its fall. That is thwarting the Russian aim of opening up another permanent and secured land link from the Crimean peninsula, seized from Ukraine in 2014, to Russia.

Zelenskyy says 100,000 civilians remain in the city, which had a pre-war population of 430,000 and has been shattered by strikes from air, land and sea. Repeated efforts to get desperately needed food and other supplies to those trapped have often failed.

They bombed us for the past 20 days, said 39-year-old Viktoria Totsen, who fled from Mariupol into Poland. During the last five days, the planes were flying over us every five seconds and dropped bombs everywhere  on residential buildings, kindergartens, art schools, everywhere.

Zelenskyy, speaking Tuesday in his nightly video address to his nation, said efforts to establish stable humanitarian corridors for Mariupol residents are almost all being foiled by the Russian occupiers, by shelling or deliberate terror.

Advertisement

He accused Russian forces of seizing one humanitarian convoy. Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said the Russians were holding captive 11 bus drivers and four rescue workers along with their vehicles.

The head of the International Committee of the Red Cross traveled Wednesday to Moscow for expected discussions with Russian foreign and defense officials on prisoners of war, the conduct of hostilities, aid delivery and other humanitarian issues.

The devastation caused by the conflict in recent weeks, as well as eight years of conflict in Donbas, has been vast, Peter Maurer, the ICRC president, said.

A senior U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity to give the Pentagons assessment, said Russian ships in the Sea of Azov added to the shelling of Mariupol.

The hands of one exhausted Mariupol survivor shook as she arrived by train in the western city of Lviv.

Theres no connection with the world. We couldnt ask for help, said Julia Krytska, who was helped by volunteers to make it out with her husband and son. People dont even have water there.

Advertisement

Perched on the Sea of Azov, Mariupol is a crucial port for Ukraine and lies along a stretch of territory between Russia and Crimea. Its not clear how much of the city Russia holds, with fleeing residents saying fighting continues street by street. In their last update on March 15, Mariupol officials said at least 2,300 people had died in the siege. Accounts from the city suggest the true toll is much higher, with bodies lying uncollected. Airstrikes the past week destroyed a theater and an art school where many civilians were taking shelter.

Russian forces also bombed and destroyed a bridge in the encircled northern city of Chernihiv that crossed the Desna River and connected the city to Kyiv, regional governor Viacheslav Chaus said Wednesday. Deliveries of humanitarian aid and evacuations of civilians went through that bridge. Local authorities have warned of a humanitarian disaster in the city, with no water or electricity.

But as Biden embarked Wednesday on a four-day trip to Europe to shore up pressure on Russia, the Kremlin said Putin isnt finished fighting yet.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov insisted that the military operation was going strictly in accordance with the plans and purposes that were established beforehand.

Putins aims remain to get rid of the military potential of Ukraine and to ensure that Ukraine changes from an anti-Russian center to a neutral country, Peskov said.

Officially, Russia is still insisting on the euphemism special operation for the campaign. It has effectively outlawed terms including invasion and war and police have carted away thousands of anti-war protesters. But as casualties mount and a quick victory is no longer in sight, Russia is having to adjust to keep up morale.

Advertisement

Under a law passed Wednesday by Russias parliament, troops in Ukraine will get the same benefits as veterans of previous wars, including tax breaks, discounts on utilities and preferential access to medical treatment

Western officials say Ukrainian resistance has brought much of Russias advance to a halt and that Russian forces are facing serious shortages of food, fuel and cold weather gear, leaving some soldiers suffering from frostbite. Britains defense ministry said Wednesday the war in northern Ukraine is largely static, with Russian forces trying to reorganize.

We have seen indications that the Ukrainians are going a bit more on the offensive now, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters separately in Washington. He said that was particularly true in southern Ukraine, including near Kherson, where they have tried to regain territory.

Russias far stronger, bigger military has many Western military experts warning against overconfidence in Ukraines long-term odds. Russias practice in past wars in Chechnya and Syria has been to grind down resistance with strikes that flattened cities, killing countless civilians and sending millions fleeing.

But Russian forces appeared unprepared and have often performed badly.

The U.S. estimates Russia has lost a bit more than 10% of the overall combat capability it had at the start of the fight, including troops, tanks and other materiel.

Advertisement

The invasion has driven more than 10 million people from their homes, almost a quarter of Ukraines population, according to the United Nations.

Thousands of civilians are believed to have died. Estimates of Russian military casualties vary widely, but even conservative figures by Western officials are in the low thousands.

Talks to end the fighting have continued by video. Zelenskyy said negotiations with Russia are going step by step, but they are going forward.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he saw progress coming into view on several key issues, and that the gains are enough to end hostilities now. He gave no details.

Anna reported from Lviv, Ukraine. Associated Press writer Yuras Karmanau in Lviv, and other AP journalists around the world contributed to this report.
Research published today in Nature Chemical Biology reveals new opportunities for using small molecule drugs to target KRAS, the most commonly mutated protein in cancer. Promega research scientists collaborated with the University of California  San Francisco research group led by Dr. Kevan M. Shokat, a global leader in KRAS biology, to study the binding of potentially therapeutic molecules to common mutants of the KRAS protein. This study represents the first observation and quantification of direct target engagement of KRAS(G12D) and other hotspot oncogenic mutants of KRAS in cells using reversible binders.

KRAS and cancer

KRAS is a protein that serves as a master switch for regulating cell proliferation. It is the most commonly mutated protein in cancer. KRAS was long considered to be undruggable until 2013 when the Shokat lab identified covalent drugs targeting KRAS(G12C), a common mutant in which a glycine amino acid is changed to a cysteine. That discovery led to increased drug discovery research, and eventually the first inhibitors targeting KRAS(G12C).

Unfortunately, other mutants of KRAS presented different challenges. All of the known inhibitors of KRAS(G12C) relied on an inactive state of the protein that other mutants do not frequently exhibit. The G12C mutation also provided the opportunity to employ covalent drug discovery methods that would not apply to other hotspot mutants. For those reasons, alleles such as KRAS(G12D) and KRAS(G12V) continued to be considered undruggable.

Targeting hotspot mutants for drug discovery

The research published today in Nature Chemical Biology utilized a Bioluminescence Resonance Energy Transfer (BRET) assay to quantify target engagement of RAS complexes in live cells. They found that the switch-II pocket of KRAS was a privileged drug binding site for non-covalent ligands, and that this was not dependent on the activation state of KRAS. These results open new opportunities for targeting non-G12C mutants of KRAS in drug discovery.

Weve shown that some of these highly aggressive mutants are indeed vulnerable to small molecule inhibitors, says Matt Robers, Senior Research Scientist at Promega.

With our new target engagement method, we can measure binding within living cells and show that the binding we see at these hotspot mutants actually translates into anti-proliferative effects in the pancreatic cancer lineages. Matt Robers, Senior Research Scientist, Promega

In addition to the BRET methods for measuring target engagement, the paper also describes nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy methods for observing reversible ligand binding in vitro and determining the state of the KRAS protein. The authors hope that the methods they describe will be a valuable tool for researchers to develop treatments for some of the most aggressive KRAS mutants previously thought to be undruggable.

Promega offers a comprehensive selection of tools to accelerate RAS pathway drug discovery based on a sensitive bioluminescence platform.
In a new study posted to the Research Square* preprint server, researchers demonstrated the daily variations in time-varying transmission heterogeneity (k t ) through three coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic waves of sustained local transmission in Hong Kong.

Background

Super-spreading seems like a distinct feature of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the causative agent of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Epidemiological measures, such as the effective reproductive number (R e ), and time-varying effective reproduction number (R et ), could quantify SARS-CoV-2 transmission rates and predict the pandemic progression.

However, these measures often overlook heterogeneity in the individual-level transmission and super-spreading events. Moreover, the Poisson distribution model that measures transmission variance (as R e ) is inappropriate to model datasets that feature super-spreading.

On the other hand, the negative binomial distribution is a fitting model to measure transmission heterogeneity variations over time for COVID-19. For low values of dispersion parameter k (0 < k < 1), the corresponding distribution concentrated around zero. Such overdispersion indicated the likelihood of super-spreading events with the potential to alter the COVID-19-pandemic dynamics.

Unlike R e and R et , scientific studies have interpreted k as a fixed parameter unaffected by non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) or time, and few studies have investigated temporal variations in k and the relative effect of NPIs on time-varying transmission heterogeneity.

About the study

In the current study, researchers used a novel approach to compare the epidemiology and k t of two beta-coronavirus datasets from Hong Kong between January 23rd, 2020, and April 5th, 2021. Notably, Hong Kong had witnessed two beta-coronavirus epidemics: SARS in 2003 and the currently ongoing COVID-19-pandemic.

The researchers presented the fluctuations in k t of COVID-19 on a continuous scale (daily) with no international introductions to confound local transmission results and in correlation with super-spreading events, defined as more than six secondary cases per primary case.

They used the k values to compute the proportion of cases responsible for 80% of onwards transmissions (Prop 80 ). Further, the researchers used sensitivity analyses on the hypothetical worst-case scenarios to assess the potential impact of under and over observation (imperfect) of COVID-19 cases on estimates of k t .

The research team generated additional evidence that favored greater levels of transmission heterogeneity for COVID-19 than previous estimates by increasing the number of transmission pairs, 4,697 pairs vs. 169 pairs (used previously).

Study findings

The authors found that the measures of transmission heterogeneity for SARS and COVID-19 fluctuated temporally and were partially associated with super-spreading events, with SARS exhibiting more heterogeneity and less temporal variability than SARS-CoV-2.

The values for kt and Prop80t decreased throughout three epidemic waves of COVID-19 in Hong Kong, and these reductions correlated with the NPIs that prevented potential super-spreading events. They also observed a correlation between k t , Prop 80t with Ret for COVID-19; however, for SARS, this correlation was inconclusive.

The most plausible explanation is that implementing stringent NPIs, such as social distancing and mandatory masking during the COVID-19-pandemic reduced random contacts at the community level, thereby increasing the proportion of cases that terminated the infection chain. It prevented super-spreading events during the COVID-19-pandemic, which is a hallmark feature of transmission heterogeneity.

These findings elucidate why the interpretation of k t and measures of transmission heterogeneity over time, including response to NPIs, could help devise pandemic mitigation strategies and prevent super-spreading events and widespread SARS-CoV-2 transmission, much before it occurs.

The global estimates showed less than 10% of COVID-19 cases were responsible for 80% of onward transmissions. The estimates of the current study were slightly higher, with a k t of 14.2%, indicating a unique pathogen-population dynamic in Hong Kong. An underdetection of COVID-19 cases in Hong Kong might have led to a moderate overestimation of k t .

In a worst-case scenario, where half of the COVID-19-cases remained undetected in Hong Kong, the observed marginal distribution of k t for COVID-19 was not higher than SARS. However, applying the same rate of underdetection to the overall k estimates showed higher heterogeneity for SARS (k = 0.04) than for COVID-19 (k = 0.1).

Conclusions

Overall, the study estimated temporal variations in transmission heterogeneity on a continuous scale for COVID-19 and SARS. Notably, 14.2% of cases were responsible for 80% of all onwards transmissions of COVID-19 in Hong Kong, and ~70% did not cause any onward COVID-19 transmission. To conclude, time-varying estimates of transmission heterogeneity could be potential indicators for all the emerging pandemics and used robustly for epidemic surveillance.

*Important notice

Research Square publishes preliminary scientific reports that are not peer-reviewed and, therefore, should not be regarded as conclusive, guide clinical practice/health-related behavior, or treated as established information.
The National Cancer Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, recently awarded a five-year, $ $1.9 million grant to C. Patrick Reynolds, M.D., Ph.D., director for the School of Medicine Cancer Center at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center. The grant, "Targeting Shared Vulnerabilities in Alternate Telomere Lengthening (ALT) Cancers," will allow Reynolds and his team to investigate their theory that certain types of cancers share common mechanisms that help them resist standard therapies, and certain vulnerabilities that may be exploited for therapy.

To survive and multiply, cancer cells must maintain their telomeres, which are DNA strands located at the end of their chromosomes. If they are not maintained by telomere maintenance mechanisms (TMM), telomeres will begin to erode and the cancer cell will die. The most common TMM uses a cell enzyme known as telomerase that has the ability to add DNA to the ends of chromosomes. However, there are some cancers that continue to grow by using a non-telomerase mechanism known as alternate lengthening of telomeres (ALT). These are known as ALT positive, or ALT+ cancers.

ALT+ tumors contain specific and sensitive ALT biomarkers known as C-circles. By employing the C-circle assay, Reynolds and his team have evaluated a variety of childhood and adult cancers and found 11 whose histology (microscopic tissue structure) with ALT-positivity ranges from 10% to 74%, and five other cancers with an ALT+ histology between 1% and 5%.

ALT cancers have a poor clinical outcome. Regardless of their histology, ALT+ cancer cell lines manifest high resistance to DNA damaging agents relative to telomerase-positive cancers. ALT cancers have dysfunctional telomeres, which provides unique vulnerabilities that can serve as novel therapeutic targets." C. Patrick Reynolds, M.D., Ph.D., Director, School of Medicine Cancer Center, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center

The Reynolds team recently demonstrated that the enzyme ATM kinase is a driver of ALT. They also found that ALT+ cancers are addicted to ATM, which is a protein kinase that adds a group of phosphates to several other key proteins. This in turn triggers activation of the cell's DNA damage checkpoint, which leads to cell cycle arrest, DNA repair or cell death. They also demonstrated that this process can be reversed with a clinical-stage ATM inhibitor known as AZD0156.

For this study, the Reynolds team will evaluate a large panel of patient-derived cell lines (PDCLs) and patient-derived xenografts (PDXs) from ALT+ cancers. This will advance their overall study of ALT+ cancer biology, increase the chances of identifying and validating novel therapeutic targets, and enable the comparison of ALT+ cancers across a range of histologies.

They also will compare the ALT+ results to those of several PDCLs and PDXs that are positive for telemerase. These include pediatric cancers such as neuroblastoma, rhabdomyosarcoma and osteosarcoma, and adult cancers such as triple negative breast cancer, colon cancer and soft tissue sarcomas.

Using this unique panel of patient-derived models, Reynolds said his team will demonstrate that ATM kinase activation resulting from telomere dysfunction is a common feature of ALT+ cancers, regardless of histology.

To survive having high ATM, cancer cells must inactivate a tumor protein known as p53. Reynolds said many ALT+ cancers have mutant p53. This is an inherent vulnerability for ALT cancers because high ATM activation required by ALT cells makes ALT cancer cells highly sensitive to active p53.

"We are focusing on further development of ATM kinase inhibitors for ALT+ cancers, as well as leveraging the ATM kinase activation that ALT cancers are addicted to, which requires that they have inactivated p53, often by mutation," Reynolds explained. "Thus, a major component of the grant is testing the ability of the p53 reactivating drug APR-246 against ALT cancers, and then developing optimal drug combinations to use with APR-246. "

For cell lines and xenografts of selected histologies, Reynolds said his team will evaluate whether or not AZD1390 can reverse resistance to irinotecan. They hypothesize that ALT+ cancers tolerate ATM activation due to dysfunctional p53, and that p53 restored to functionality by APR-246 will be activated by ATM.

"We will demonstrate that APR-246, alone or in combination with irinotecan, especially as the new nanoliposomal irinotecan formulation, will be selectively cytotoxic to ALT+ relative to telomerase+ cancer cell lines and xenografts," Reynolds said. "This project will demonstrate that the unique vulnerability conferred by the dependence of ALT+ cancers cells on ATM kinase is common to ALT+ cancers across a range of cancer histologies found in adults and children."

Reynolds said data from this project will aid in the development of clinical trials seeking to enroll patients with ALT+ cancers that are readily identifiable with a robust tumor biomarker.

"We hypothesize that ALT+ cancers have common mechanisms of resistance to chemotherapy, and also common sensitivity to novel drugs," Reynolds added. "Therefore, we will test both standard drugs and novel investigational drugs against ALT+ cancer models to inform future clinical trials."
Published in JAMA, research from the University of Minnesota assessed if there is a link between heart health and dementia.

Using echocardiography -; visual ultrasound of the heart -; the research team was able to identify novel measures that are linked to a higher dementia risk.

Atrial myopathy, a condition characterized by abnormal left atrial function and size, is an independent risk factor for dementia. In this community-based cohort study, lower left atrial function was associated with higher risk of dementia." Dr Lin Yee Chen, Director of the Cardiac Electrophysiology Section, University of Minnesota Medical School and M Health Fairview

Chen is the principal investigator of the NIH grant that funded this study.

The study observed a cohort of 4,096 participants with an average age of 35 years. Participants were 60% women, 22% Black and 78% white. Of the cohort, there were 531 participants who developed dementia over a six year period.

When comparing the lowest to the highest quintile of left atrial function measures (reservoir strain, conduit strain, and contractile strain), the lowest quintile was significantly associated with 1.5 to 2.0-fold higher risk of developing dementia. These associations were independent of cardiovascular disease and atrial fibrillation. The research team found that the more common measures of left atrial size were not significantly associated with dementia.

"Results of this epidemiological study improve our understanding of the link between cardiovascular disease and increased risk of dementia," said Jacqueline D. Wright, Dr.P.H., a program officer in the division of cardiovascular sciences at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health. "This study suggests that atrial myopathy increases risk of dementia, independently of atrial fibrillation. Further research may confirm this finding, help us to better define and diagnose atrial myopathy, and ultimately lead to improved treatments that reduce the chance of developing dementia later in life."

Researchers recommend additional studies to confirm their findings and to establish a robust definition for atrial myopathy.
Jeffersonville, IN (47130)

Today

Partly cloudy skies this morning will give way to occasional showers during the afternoon. High 74F. Winds ESE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50%..

Tonight

Rain likely. Thunder possible. Low 63F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%.
Jeffersonville, IN (47130)

Today

Partly cloudy this morning. Increasing clouds with periods of showers this afternoon. High 74F. Winds ESE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50%..

Tonight

Periods of rain. Thunder possible. Low 63F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%.
A tornado tore through parts of New Orleans and its suburbs Tuesday night, ripping down power lines and scattering debris in a part of the city that had been heavily damaged by Hurricane Katrina 17 years ago.

There were no immediate reports of injuries from the New Orleans tornado. Other tornadoes spawned by the same storm system hit parts of Texas and Oklahoma, killing one person and causing multiple injuries and widespread damage.

Advertisement

A video taken by a local television station showed a large black funnel visible in the darkened sky looming among the buildings in the eastern part of New Orleans.

The tornado appeared to start in a New Orleans suburb and then move east across the Mississippi River into the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans and parts of St. Bernard Parish  both of which were badly damaged by Katrina  before moving northeast.

Advertisement

A debris lined street is seen in the Lower 9th Ward, Tuesday, March 22, 2022, in New Orleans, after strong storms moved through the area. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert) (Gerald Herbert/AP)

Reggie Ford was nearby when the tornado struck. He drove from the area, only to return once it passed, to offer help to anyone who needed it. So far, he says, the streets are eerily quite, only filled with fresh devastation from the twister.

I see downed powerlines. A church is completely destroyed. Three businesses are completely destroyed. There are eight blocks of houses missing their rooves, the New Orleans resident said. Video he posted on Instagram shows debris cluttered streets and shredded buildings. A battered car lies on its roof.

In the New Orleans suburb of Arabi, there was a strong smell of natural gas in the air as residents and rescue personnel stood in the street and surveyed the damage. Some houses were destroyed while pieces of debris hung from electrical wires and trees. And the power was out to the entire neighborhood.

Michelle Malasovich lives in Arabi. Initially she had been worried about family that lives in areas north of Louisiana that were also getting hit by bad weather. She was texting with her family there when, she said, All of a sudden the lights started flickering.

She didnt hear the distinctive freight train sound that many people say comes with a tornado but it was extremely windy, and her husband yelled at her to get out of the bedroom. He was out on the porch and saw the tornado coming.

It just kept getting louder and louder, Malasovich said. After it passed they came out to survey the damage. Our neighbors house is in the middle of the street right now.

Malasovichs house fared relatively well, she said. Some columns were blown off the porch and the windows of her Jeep were blown out. Down the street a house was severely damaged, and parked vehicles had been moved around by the winds: This is serious for down here.

Authorities survey damage in the Lower 9th Ward, Tuesday, March 22, 2022, in New Orleans, after strong storms moved through the area. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert) (Gerald Herbert/AP)

Guy McGinnis, president of St. Bernard Parish, told WWL-TV that the parish had widespread damage in parts of the parish that borders New Orleans to the east. Search and rescue teams were going through homes looking for people and responding to at least two calls from people who said they were trapped in their homes in their bathrooms.

Advertisement

As of right now no major injuries are reported, McGinnis said. Its going to be a long night.

It wasnt immediately known whether anyone was injured. While the metropolitan region is often struck by severe weather and heavy rains, its rare that a tornado moves through the city.

High winds uprooted trees in Ridgeland, Mississippi, as a possible tornado passed the Jackson-area city Tuesday afternoon, but there were no immediate reports of any injuries or serious damage to buildings. Campus police at Mississippi State University, in Starkville, shared a photo of a large hardwood tree lying across a street.

Many schools were closing early or canceling after-school activities Tuesday in parts of Louisiana and Mississippi to allow students to get home before the weather deteriorated. Shelters opened for residents who needed a place to stay while the storms traveled through.

High water posed a threat to motorists early Tuesday in Louisiana on several roads, including a stretch of Interstate 20 and several state highways after rains overnight, authorities said. Deputies in Caddo Parish, which includes Shreveport, rescued three drivers from high waters during the night, the sheriffs office tweeted before dawn.

The storms were expected to intensify throughout the day as temperatures rise, increasing the threat of tornadoes, hail and strong winds. Forecasters predicted intense tornadoes and damaging winds, some hurricane-force with speeds of 75 mph or greater, in much of Mississippi, southern and eastern Louisiana, and western Alabama. Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Jackson, Mississippi, were among the cities at risk for bad weather.

Advertisement

The system dumped heavy rain, downed trees and prompted multiple tornado warnings as it moved into Alabama Tuesday evening. The roofs of several homes were damaged in Toxey, Alabama, after a storm preceded by tornado warnings passed through the area, the National Weather Service tweeted.

Louisianas federal and state authorities reminded thousands of hurricane survivors living in government-provided mobile homes and recreational vehicle trailers to have an evacuation plan because the structures might not withstand the expected weather. More than 8,000 households live in such temporary quarters, officials said.

In Texas, several tornadoes were reported Monday along the Interstate 35 corridor, particularly in the Austin suburbs of Round Rock and Elgin, as well as in northern and eastern Texas and southern Oklahoma.

In Elgin, broken trees lined the rural roads and pieces of metal  uprooted by strong winds hung from the branches. Residents stepped carefully to avoid downed power lines as they worked to clean the remnants of broken ceilings, torn down walls and damaged cars.

J.D. Harkins, 59, said he saw two tornadoes pass by his Elgin home.

There used to be a barn there, Harkins said, pointing to an empty plot on his uncles property covered with scattered debris. He said the building was empty when the first tornado hit Monday, and that his family is thankful nobody was hurt.

Advertisement

It was crystal clear, well defined, Harkins said. And then one went up and another one came down.

The tornadoes came on a wild weather day in Texas  wildfires burned in the west and a blizzard warning was issued for the Texas Panhandle, where up to 9 inches of snow fell.

Theres absolutely nothing out of the ordinary in terms of what we saw yesterday and we see today, said Victor Gensini, a meteorology professor at Northern Illinois University, who studies severe storms. Its the time of year when tornadoes and storms are to be expected and there are usually more during years with a La Nina, a natural cooling of parts of the Pacific that alters weather across the globe, he said.

The biggest concern remains tornadoes that strike at night, Gensini said.

At news conferences in Jacksboro and Crockett, two communities severely damaged by tornadoes, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced a disaster declaration for 16 hard-hit counties.

Abbott said 10 people were injured by storms in the Crockett area, while more than a dozen were reportedly hurt elsewhere.

Advertisement

The Grayson County Emergency Management Office said a 73-year-old woman was killed in the community of Sherwood Shores, about 60 miles north of Dallas, but provided no details.

Homes and businesses in at least a dozen Texas counties were damaged, according to Storm Prediction Center reports.

Officials reported damage throughout Jacksboro, about 60 miles northwest of Fort Worth. Photographs posted on social media showed a storm ripped the wall and roof from parts of Jacksboro High School, including its gym.

It brought tears to my eyes, school principal Starla Sanders told WFAA-TV in Dallas.
(Newser)  Russia is seeking truck drivers to move goods, including fuel, ostensibly along Ukraine's border with Russia and Belarus. But the Ukrainian government says the online ads really are looking for drivers from the area who are familiar with the roads, to help the Russian military in Ukraine, NPR reports. Ukraine's Center for Countering Disinformation warns that drivers hired would risk being placed in danger and could be taken hostage. They might be forced to commit crimes against Ukraine, the center said. Ads seeking truck drivers have spiked in the past few days, the agency reported.

Clues in the ads would include wanting drivers with experience with fuel tankers, the agency said, which could be used to supply Russian military vehicles. A request for experience with refrigerated cargo could indicate the Russians need drivers to help move bodies, the center said. Nations throughout Europe are looking for truck drivers. Drivers from Ukraine in other nations have left their jobs to go back home to fight the Russian invasion, per the New York Times. That's exacerbated the existing shortage of drivers, per Freight Waves. (Read more Russia-Ukraine conflict stories.)
(Newser)  Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is set to stay in power until 2025 after cutting an unexpected deal with the opposition New Democratic Party. Trudeau's Liberal Party fell short of a majority in September's election and it has been relying on the leftist NDP to help pass legislation. Minority governments in Canada usually only last around two years but the unusual written deal with the NDP will allow Trudeau to serve a full four-year-term, reports Reuters. Under the "confidence and supply" agreement, Trudeau's party will back NDP priorities including national dental care plans and prescription drug plans, child care funding, and the phasing out of government support for the fossil fuel sector.

"We've agreed to work together, Trudeau said Tuesday, per the AP. "It's about focusing on what we agree on instead of what we disagree on." He said the deal would allow the government to " function with predictability and stability" during "this uncertain time." Interim Conservative Party leader Candice Bergenno relation to the Murphy Brown actressslammed the agreement as a "backroom deal" and a "Justin Trudeau power grab," the CBC reports. Trudeau has said he plans to run again in 2025. (Read more Canada stories.)
(Newser)  Ukrainian President Volodmyr Zelensky said Tuesday that after weeks of relentless Russian bombardment, "only ruins" remain of Mariupolbut some 100,000 people remain in the besieged city. They are in "inhumane conditions. In a complete blockade. No food, no water, no medicine. Under constant shelling, under constant bombing," Zelensky said, per the BBC. He said Russia is continuing to interrupt humanitarian corridors "by shelling or deliberate terror," but around 7,000 people were rescued Tuesday despite the difficulties.

Zelensky said Russian forces not only blocked a convoy taking humanitarian aid to Mariupol, they seized all the buses along with 15 drivers. "Theres no connection with the world. We couldnt ask for help," said Julia Krytska, who made it out of Mariupol with her husband and son Tuesday, per the AP. "People dont even have water there." The country's defense ministry said Ukrainian forces managed to retake the Kyiv suburb of Makariv after a fierce battle early Tuesday, preventing Russian forces from surrounding the capital's northwest.

Zelensky said Tuesday that negotiations with Russia are going forward "step by step", with delegations meeting via video. "It's very difficult. Sometimes its scandalous," he said. The New York Times reports that according to a senior Pentagon official, Russian forces are "struggling on many fronts" and the Russian "combat power" in the region has dipped below 90% of the original force. The official said that with progress on the ground largely stalled, Russian forces are continuing to rely on long-range attacks on cities, and there are clear signs that civilian infrastructure like hospitals is being " deliberately and intentionally targeted." (Read more Russia-Ukraine conflict stories.)
(Newser)  It was just one laser-guided bomb that destroyed a drama theater in Mariupol, Ukraine, last week. That's the conclusion of Mckenzie Intelligence Services, which performed an analysis of the attack for the BBC. But that single bomb is all it took to wreak devastating havoc, and the broadcaster is now relaying stories from those who survived. "This is a theater in which Russian language shows were held," a Mariupol politician posted on Facebook after the bombing, per the Daily Beast. "It is a sanctuary in which the residents ... were rescued from the continuous shelling. The world is obliged to hear the screams, moaning, voices of [those] who were buried." For the first time, from survivors themselves:

Mariia Rodionova, 27, a teacher who was sheltering with her dogs in the theater, describes a loud boom, then the sound of glass breaking, then screams everywhere. "There was only rubble," she tells the BBC. "For two hours, I couldn't do anything. I just stayed there. I was in shock."

A 27-year-old locksmith named Vladyslav who'd gone to the theater to look for friends was also there when the bomb hit. "Terrible things were happening," he describes the scene just minutes after the blast. "One mother was trying to find her kids under the rubble. A 5-year-old kid was screaming: 'I don't want to die'. It was heartbreaking."

CNN talks to Serhii, a 56-year-old editor in Kyiv who knew his wife and two daughters, one with a disability, were sheltering inside the theater when the bomb hit, because he was the one who told them to seek safety there. "I almost went crazy, insane," he describes how he felt after hearing about the attack. "Because I actually sent them under the bombs."

Serhii's family made it out, but now he's trying to find someone to rescue them from the famine-stricken village they escaped to nearby. "The destruction now is greater than the Nazis did during World War II," he says. "This is a historical remake, this is another war crime."

Mariupol officials say other locals have been forcibly deported or even gone missing, including Julia "Taira" Paevska, a renowned medic who was said to have been captured by Russian forces earlier this month. She's said to be one of many "activists, law enforcement officers, army veterans, and volunteers" abducted by the Russians, per CNN. Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US' ambassador to the UN, calls such allegations "unconscionable" if true.

Rodionova, who couldn't find her dogs after the theater bombing, ended up fleeing the city on foot, walking for days until she reached the port city of Berdyansk. "People were in [a] panic," she tells the BBC. "No one took me in their car." Read much more about Rodionova's ordeal here.

(Read more Mariupol stories.)
(Newser)  MacKenzie Scott has donated $436 million to Habitat for Humanity International and 84 of its US affiliatesthe largest publicly disclosed donation from the billionaire philanthropist since she pledged in 2019 to give away the majority of her wealth, the AP reports. "We could not be more excited to get the gift at a time when, in some ways, the state of housing affordability is the worst that it has been in modern times, Jonathan Reckford, Habitat for Humanity Internationals CEO, told the AP. His group received $25 million from Scott and her husband, Dan Jewett, with the remaining $411 million to be distributed among Habitats local affiliates. Scott's donation amounts to nearly 8% of the $325 million in donations that Habitat for Humanity International received in its 2020 fiscal year.

Reckford said Habitat for Humanity will use Scotts donation of unrestricted funds to increase the supply of affordable housing, especially in communities of color. Though they approach the problem in varying ways, most local affiliates will pursue projects in their communities, while the international group will focus on broader advocacy and efforts to build homes for working-class families. Even before COVID, we already had one in seven families paying over half their income on rent or mortgage, Reckford said. The last two years made that issue even worse, with many people seeking to buy larger homes to ride out the pandemic. The scarcity of housing drove up the price in many markets across the country, putting homes out of reach for many first-time buyers.

"For low- and moderate-income families, who are service workers and did not have adequate shelter and still have to go out to work, this has been a catastrophe, Reckford said. Scott, who is worth about $48 billion, according to Forbes, has signed the Giving Pledge, through which many billionaires have promised to donate more than half their wealth. Aside from an occasional blog post, Scott, an author and philanthropist, doesnt discuss her donations, which exceeded $8 billion in the past two years after her divorce from Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder, who was then the richest person in the world. As part of the divorce settlement, Scott received 4% of Amazon's shares. In December, in hopes that she would reduce the attention she draws, Scott declined to announce how much or to whom she donated money. She said she would prefer to let the recipients announce her gifts, as Habitat for Humanity is expected to do on Tuesday.

(Read more MacKenzie Scott stories.)
(Newser)  Dozens of well-known leaders in Jamaica including professors and politicians are demanding an apology and slavery reparations as the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge prepare for a trip to the former British colony, the AP reports. The group is rejecting the visit of Prince William and Kate scheduled for Tuesday, part of a larger trip to the Caribbean region that coincides with the 60th anniversary of Jamaicas independence and the 70th anniversary of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. We see no reason to celebrate 70 years of the ascension of your grandmother to the British throne because her leadership, and that of her predecessors, have perpetuated the greatest human rights tragedy in the history of humankind, read a letter published Sunday ahead of the couples visit and signed by 100 Jamaican leaders.

Protesters in Jamaica raised their fists Tuesday as they donned T-shirts emblazoned with a pair of shackled Black wrists surrounded by the phrases Seh Yuh Sorry! and Apologize now! as they demonstrated just hours before William and Kate arrived, the AP reports. Kings, Queens and Princesses and Princes belong in fairytales, NOT in Jamaica!" read one sign held by a little girl at the protest in front of the British High Commission in Kingston. The weeklong royal tour of Central America and the Caribbean that began on Saturday was taken at the behest of the queen. The trip aims to strengthen Britains ties with Commonwealth countries, but its off to a rocky start and comes as some countries consider cutting ties to the monarchy like the eastern Caribbean island of Barbados did in November.

Local opposition forced the royal couple to cancel a visit to a cacao farm in Belize that was planned for Saturday. During their two-day stay in Jamaica, Prince William and Kate are expected to celebrate Bob Marleys legacy, a move that also has riled some Jamaicans. As a Rastafarian, Bob Marley embodied advocacy and is recognized globally for the principles of human rights, equality, reparations and repatriation, stated the letter of those demanding an apology. The group said that it would be celebrating 60 years of freedom from Britain, adding that it is saddened that more progress has not been made given the burden of our colonial inheritance. We nonetheless celebrate the many achievements of great Jamaicans who rejected negative, colonial self-concepts and who self-confidently succeeded against tremendous odds. We will also remember and celebrate our freedom fighters.

(Read more Jamaica stories.)
(Newser)  Update: The six teen girls killed Tuesday in an Oklahoma crash were on their high school's lunch break, riding in a car that only seats four. Just the 16-year-old driver and the front-seat passenger were wearing seatbelts, the AP reports; Oklahoma is the only state that allows passengers older than 7 to ride in the back seat without a seatbelt. Along with the driver, three 15-year-olds and two 17-year-olds were killed. The cause of the crash is not yet clear, and while it was initially reported that the 2015 Chevrolet Spark was attempting to execute a U-turn when it was struck by a semi, police now say the girls were making a right turn. Our original story from Wednesday follows:

An unimaginable tragedy for the community of Tishomingo, Okla., on Tuesday when a car collided with a tractor-trailer and six high school girls were killed. The district "suffered a great loss today involving high school students," according to a letter sent to parents by the Tishomingo Schools superintendent, though no details have yet been released on the girls' ages or identities. They reportedly all attended Tishomingo High School. The accident took place at the intersection of US 377 and State Highways 22 and 99, the Oklahoman reports. It happened in the early afternoon, KXII reports.

The semi truck was driving south on 377, and the car was going east on 22, according to state troopers. The car stopped at a stop sign and then tried to make a U-turn; that's when troopers say it was struck by the semi. "When we got to the scene you could see the car about 100 feet or so from the intersection completely totaled," an Oklahoma Highway Patrol official tells KFOR. "Tishomingo is a very close knit community, and I know this afternoon that little town is in sorrow," state Sen. Frank Simpson said. Counselors will be made available at the high school. "Our prayers are with each of the families involved and our community. This is an absolute tragedy which will have life long effects," says the Johnston County Sheriff's Department. (Read more Oklahoma stories.)
(Newser)  Weeks before she allegedly struck and killed two Pennsylvania state troopers and a pedestrian while driving under the influence, Jayana Tanae Webb allegedly bragged on social media that she was the "best drunk driver ever." Fox News cites a tweet allegedly from the 21-year-old's Twitter account saying as much from Jan. 15, one of several posts referring to alcohol in recent weeks. The last tweet she posted before the tragedy, which took place in the wee hours of Monday morning, read that she was "f---ing Kelly drive up rn !!!!" in the early hours of Sunday morning. Kelly Drive is a well-known area in Philadelphia, the city where the troopers and the man they were trying to help were killed about 24 hours later.

Webb faces 18 criminal charges including three counts of third-degree murder, three counts of homicide by vehicle while driving under the influence and two counts of second-degree manslaughter of a law enforcement officer; she reportedly put her head down and sobbed as the charges were read Tuesday night. CBS Philadelphia reports she was driven to the jail where she is currently being held locked up in the handcuffs carried by the two troopers she is accused of killing. Bail was denied due to the seriousness of the allegations and the public safety considerations; Webb allegedly confessed while at the crash site to drinking earlier in the evening. Martin F. Mack III, 33, leaves behind a wife and two daughters; Branden T. Sisca, 29, leaves behind a wife and unborn child. (Read more Pennsylvania stories.)
(Newser)  The Dutch publisher is recalling Rosemary Sullivan's The Betrayal of Anne Frank, a new and controversial release that claims Jewish notary Arnold van den Bergh told the Nazis where Anne and her family were hiding in Amsterdam. Though the researchers behind the book said van den Bergh emerged as the most likely suspect during a six-year investigation, historians questioned many details, including the purported existence of a list of Jews in hiding, which van den Bergh was said to have obtained. Indeed, in a new report, a team of World War II experts pan the book as "amateurish," the BBC reports.

"It is without exception very weak, sometimes based on an evidently erroneous reading of the sources, fabricated additions to sources, and has not in any way been subjected to a critical assessment," according to the report released in the Netherlands, per Reuters. The experts conclude "there is not any serious evidence for this grave accusation." Dutch publishing house Ambo Anthos, which had already halted printings of the book following its release in January, said it was asking bookstores to return their copies with "sincere apologies" to anyone offended by the contents.

Van den Bergh's granddaughter has now joined the European Jewish Congress in calling on HarperCollins to pull the English-language edition. "With this story, you are exploiting the story of Anne Frank, you are falsifying history and you are contributing to great injustice," she said, per the BBC. In making the same request last month, the president of the European Jewish Congress, which represents 42 national Jewish communities across Europe, said "Ambo Anthos has stated that it relied on the judgment of Harper Collins Publisher, as the holder of publishing rights worldwide regarding the contents of the book," per the Times of Israel. (Read more Anne Frank stories.)
Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., right, speaks to reporters after a Republican strategy meeting at the Capitol in Washington, March 8, 2022. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)

Rick Scott, last seen calling for raising taxes on the poor and ending federal programs (read: social security and Medicare) after five years, has demanded that President Joe Biden do more to help Ukraine.

But if help depended on Floridas junior senator, Ukraine would be in even more trouble.

Advertisement

Start with the latest example.

Last week, the Senate passed a spending bill to keep the government operating through Sept. 30. The legislation includes $13.6 billion for Ukraine.

Advertisement

Scott was one of 31 Republicans who voted against the bill. So did Floridas other GOP senator, Marco Rubio.

(Mike Slaughter / Sun Sentinel)

But Scott has been especially hyperbolic. Sending American ground forces to Ukraine, he said, should not be off the table. If Biden doesnt supply planes or enforce a no-fly zone, Scott said, he will show himself to be absolutely heartless and ignorant of the deaths of innocent Ukrainian children and families.

Scott might point out that he asked for a separate vote on the Ukraine money. Since the House had passed the bill, however, altering it would have meant another House vote and more debate, causing a shutdown and delaying the money for Ukraine.

Now lets go farther back for a better example of Scotts hypocrisy on Ukraine.

Two years ago last month, former President Donald Trump was on trial in the Senate. The House had impeached him for withholding $391 million for Ukraine until President Volodymyr Zelensky investigated Biden. Trump had linked the money to the investigation during a July 2019 phone call.

Removing Trump would have showed American solidarity with Ukraine against Russia. It would have rebuked Vladimir Putin, who tried to influence the 2016 election to help Trump.

But Mitt Romney was the only Republican who put country over party. Scott called the trial a fiasco and theater. After declaring that would not vote to convict, Scott said, My conscience is clear.

In the context of Russias invasion, however, that decision looks even worse.

Advertisement

Trumps defenders cite Zelenskys comment in September 2019 that nobody pushed me to investigate Biden and his son, Hunter. Zelensky said that during a public meeting with Trump.

In private, things were different. Four months earlier, the Associated Press reported, staff members at the U.S. embassy in Kyiv learned of a meeting at which Zelensky asked his top aides and an American for advice on how to navigate the difficult position he was in  

Ukraine needed the $391 million that Congress had approved. Zelensky, though, didnt want to involve his country in the 2020 election.

Eventually, though, Zelensky relented. He was prepared to announce an investigation of Burisma, the gas company that had put Hunter Biden on its board. Another investigation would focus on Trumps lie that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the election to help Clinton.

According to news reports, Zelensky planned to go public during a Sept. 13, 2019 interview on CNN. Two days before that, however, the aid was released. Zelensky cancelled the interview.

All this information was available to Scott, Rubio and the other Republicans who refused to hold Trump accountable. It was a pattern. They didnt push back hard in 2018, when Trump took Putins word over U.S. intelligence agencies about election interference.

Advertisement

Scott and Rubio had one final chance to show Ukraine and all Western-aligned nations that the worlds leading democracy believes in democracy. But they failed to convict Trump for trying to stay in office by subverting the Constitution.

With Ukraine, Trumps tactics have become Putins tactics.

Each man starts with a lie. I won the election. Ukraine threatens Russia.

Then comes the propaganda. In the U.S., its Fox News, Newsmax, OAN and other far-right outlets. In Russia, its state-owned media.

Finally comes demonization of dissent. Trump smeared those who revealed the favor he demanded of Zelensky. Putin passes laws to punish purveyors of fake news, meaning the truth.

Recently, Scott was asked repeatedly whether Trump should condemn Putin, whose invasion he called genius. Scott ducked the question three times, finally saying that Republicans are focused on making sure we get the Senate back.

Advertisement

Scott already has revealed how dangerous that prospect is. As for Ukraine, Scott wants Biden to risk World War III by confronting Putin. Why couldnt Scott risk only a GOP conflict by confronting Trump?

Contact Randy Schultz at randy@bocamag.com.
(Newser)  Afghanistan's Taliban rulers decided against opening schools to girls above the sixth grade, reneging on a previous promise and opting to appease their hardline base at the expense of further alienating the international community. The unexpected decision, confirmed by a Taliban official Wednesday, came at the start of the new school year in Afghanistan. It's bound to disrupt Taliban efforts to win recognition from potential international donors, at a time when the country is mired in a worsening humanitarian crisis. The international community has been urging Taliban leaders to open schools and give women their right to public space. A statement by the country's Education Ministry earlier in the week urged "all students" to come to school.

The decision to postpone a return of girls going to school in higher levels appeared to be a concession to the rural and deeply tribal backbone of the hard-line Taliban movement, which in many parts of the countryside is reluctant to send their daughters to school. The decision to cancel the return of girls to school came late Tuesday, Taliban rep Waheedullah Hashmi told the AP. "It was late last night that we received word from our leadership that schools will stay closed for girls," said Hashmi, adding, "We don't say they will be closed forever." He conceded, however, that "leadership hasn't decided when or how they will allow girls to return."

There have been persistent reports since the Taliban swept to power in August of differences among the senior leadership, with the more hard-line among the movement at odds with the pragmatists among them. The pragmatists reportedly want to see a greater engagement with the world and, while staying true to their Islamic beliefs, be less harsh than when they last ruled Afghanistan, banning women from work and girls from schools. Television is allowed in Afghanistan today, unlike in the past, and women aren't required to wear the all-encompassing burqa, but they must wear the traditional hijab, covering their heads. Women have also returned to work in the health and education ministries and at Kabul International Airport at passport control and customs. Girls, however, have been banned from school beyond the sixth grade in most of the country since the Taliban's return.

Universities opened up earlier this year in much of the country, but since taking power, the Taliban edicts have been erratic, and while a handful of provinces continued to provide education to all, most provinces closed educational institutions for girls and women. In the capital of Kabul, private schools and universities have operated uninterrupted. The religiously-driven Taliban administration fears that enrolling girls beyond sixth grade could alienate their rural base, said Hashmi. Mariam Naheebi, a local journalist who has protested for women's rights, spoke to the AP in Kabul about the move. "We did everything the Taliban asked in terms of Islamic dress," Naheebi said. "They promised that girls could go to school and now they have broken their promise. They have not been honest with us."

(Read more Taliban stories.)
(Newser)  It's been a turbulent couple of decades for Nicolas Cage, but he's happily married, his career is in back on track, and with his highly praised new movie The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, his debts to the IRS and other creditors have finally been paid off. Some highlights from a new GQ interview:



His two-headed snake. Interviewer Gabriella Paiella spoke to Cage at his Nevada home, where the kitchen was full of turtles and other animals he ended up with after the owner of a local pet store died. He said he plans to donate the animals as he did with a two-headed snake he once owned. Cage said he bought the snake for $80,000 after he had a dream about a two-headed bird but gave it to the Audubon Zoo after he stopped the heads fighting while he was feeding it. It was donated in 2008 and died recently at age 14. Cage told People last year that he named the snake Harvey after Batman villain Harvey Dentaka Two-Face.

Being a meme . Cage said he was initially uncomfortable with Cage memes and supercuts like "Nicolas Cage Freak-Out Montage," but he's learned to live with them. He said the real Nic Cage, however, is very different from manic moments on-screen. "The misconception that I'm crazy, which people seem to enjoy, the madman or whateverto which I simply say you can't survive 43 years in Hollywood or star in over 120 movies if you're crazy," he said.

. Cage said he was initially uncomfortable with Cage memes and supercuts like "Nicolas Cage Freak-Out Montage," but he's learned to live with them. He said the real Nic Cage, however, is very different from manic moments on-screen. "The misconception that I'm crazy, which people seem to enjoy, the madman or whateverto which I simply say you can't survive 43 years in Hollywood or star in over 120 movies if you're crazy," he said. Where the money went. Cage stressed that it wasn't purchases like a $276,000 dinosaur skull that wrecked his finances. Instead, it was too many risky investments in top-end properties, including an English castle, and trying to juggle too many mortgages when the 2008 crash hit. "I didn't believe in stocks because I think they're like gambling and they're dangerous, but you can dump a stock, he said. "You can't get out of real estate that quickly.

He gave every movie his all . With debts mounting and blockbuster roles drying up, Cage appeared in a long string of video-on-demand movies, but he insists that he cared about all of them. "When I was doing four movies a year, back to back to back, I still had to find something in them to be able to give it my all," he said. "They didn't work, all of them. Some of them were terrific, like Mandy, but some of them didnt work. But I never phoned it in. So if there was a misconception, it was that. That I was just doing it and not caring. I was caring."

. With debts mounting and blockbuster roles drying up, Cage appeared in a long string of video-on-demand movies, but he insists that he cared about all of them. "When I was doing four movies a year, back to back to back, I still had to find something in them to be able to give it my all," he said. "They didn't work, all of them. Some of them were terrific, like Mandy, but some of them didnt work. But I never phoned it in. So if there was a misconception, it was that. That I was just doing it and not caring. I was caring." He's already bought his tomb. Cage, 58, has already bought his tomba 9-foot-tall white pyramid in New Orleans' famous St. Louis Cemetery No. 1. He said he bought it in 2010, not longer after father, August Coppola, died. "It's just a wise thing to do to take pressure off your family," he told Paiella. "Who wants to be dealing with all that when someone's passed on?"

He's got a baby on the way . Cage married his fifth wife, 27-year-old Riko Shibata, a year ago and they have a baby on the way. "I am a romantic, and when I'm in love, I want to give that person everything I can," he said of marriage. "It's my expression of saying, I love you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. And this is it for me ... I mean, this is not happening again. This is it."

. Cage married his fifth wife, 27-year-old Riko Shibata, a year ago and they have a baby on the way. "I am a romantic, and when I'm in love, I want to give that person everything I can," he said of marriage. "It's my expression of saying, I love you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. And this is it for me ... I mean, this is not happening again. This is it." Why they're honeymooning in Venice. Cage said that when they finally take their honeymoon, they will be going to Venice, where he scattered his father's ashes in the Grand Canal years ago, as per his wishes. He said that after a long journey, during which security at LAX inspected the box with the ashes, he got a water taxi to the ancient canal. "It's midnight, and it's a full moon, and it's Halloween," he said. As he started pouring the ashes in the water, "all the church bells start ringingall at the same time."

Click for the full GQ profile . (Read more Nicolas Cage stories.)
(Newser)  Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine works in babies, toddlers, and preschoolers, the company announced Wednesdayand if regulators agree it could mean a chance to finally start vaccinating the littlest kids by summer, per the AP. Moderna said in the coming weeks it would ask regulators in the US and Europe to authorize two 25-microgram doses for youngsters under 6. The company also is seeking approval of two 100-microgram shots (the original adult dose) for 12- to 17-year-olds and two 50-microgram shots for 6- to 11-year-olds. The nation's 18 million children under 5 are the only age group not yet eligible for vaccination. Pfizer currently offers kid-sized doses for school-age children and full-strength shots for those 12 and older.

But parents have anxiously awaited protection for younger tots, disappointed by setbacks and confusion over which shots might work and when. Pfizer is testing even smaller doses for children under 5 but had to add a third shot to its study when two didn't prove strong enough. Those results are expected by early April. Moderna said a quarter of the dose it uses for adults worked well for youngsters under age 6. Moderna enrolled about 6,900 tots in a study of the 25-microgram doses. Early data showed after two shots, youngsters developed virus-fighting antibody levels just as strong as young adults getting regular-strength shots, the company said. Moderna said the small doses were safe, and the main side effects were mild fevers.

COVID-19 vaccines in general don't prevent infection with the omicron mutant as well as they fended off earlier variantsbut they do still offer strong protection against severe illness. Moderna reported that same trend in the trial of children under 6, conducted during the omicron surge. While there were no severe illnesses, the vaccine proved just under 44% effective at preventing any infection in babies up to age 2, and nearly 38% effective in the preschoolers. Once Moderna submits the data to the FDA, regulators will debate whether to authorize emergency use of the small doses for tots. If so, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention then will decide whether to recommend them. (Read more coronavirus vaccine stories.)
(Newser)  Update: Naomi Irion is still missing, but Nevada cops now have a suspect in her disappearance in custody. KTVN reports that Troy Driver, 41, of Fallon was arrested Friday, with the Lyon County Sheriff's Office noting he's being held on kidnapping charges. Authorities say they've also impounded a pickup truck that was "possibly involved" in the 18-year-old's disappearance on March 12 from the parking lot of a Walmart in Fernley. Officials say the search for Irion continues. Her brother is organizing his own search with volunteers on Saturday, per KTVN. Anyone with any further info is asked to call 775-322-4900. Our original story from Wednesday follows:

The FBI is renewing pleas for help in finding a Nevada teen who hasn't been seen since a man forced his way into her vehicle in a Walmart parking lot nearly two weeks ago. Naomi Irion's disappearance in the early morning hours of March 12 is "suspicious in nature," the Lyon County Sheriff's Office says in a release, per CNN. "She was abducted by a nondescript male who entered the driver's seat of her vehicle," according to the FBI. The 18-year-olddescribed as 5'11", up to 250 pounds, with brown hair dyed black, green eyes, nose piercings, and a smiley face tattoo on one anklearrived at the parking lot in Fernley around 5am with plans to catch a shuttle to her job at Panasonic Energy of North America.

Irionsaid to be wearing a blue Panasonic shirt, gray cardigan sweater, and gray sweatpantsvisited a convenience store before parking outside the Walmart. She scrolled social media between 5:09am and 5:23am, per CNN. A minute later, a man in a gray hoodie and dark pants approached her vehicle. He was observed behind the wheel as the vehicle left the parking lot at 5:25am. "This person did say or do something to Naomi to make her move over from the driver side to the passenger side," Irion's older brother and housemate Casey Valley said at a recent press conference, per the Independent. Irion's phone stopped emitting a signal a few miles away. Her vehicle was found March 15, not far from the Walmart.

Authorities have released surveillance footage of the suspect, who they say may be driving a dark 2020 or newer Chevrolet Silverado 2500-3500 High Country pickup truck. "We're releasing everything we can," Lyon County Sheriff's Deputy Eric Kusmerz said at a Tuesday press conference, per the Independent, though he added "there's a lot more that we know." "We need everyone's help across the nation because the incident happened so close to I-80," added Irion's mother, Diane Irion, who traveled 36 hours from her home in South Africa with funds raised on GoFundMe, per CNN and the Independent. "She could be anywhere." (Read more abduction stories.)
(Newser)  President Biden is headed to Europe Wednesday for a four-day trip that has Russia and the Ukraine at its nexus. As national security adviser Jake Sullivan put it to reporters on Tuesday, per the AP, "This war will not end easily or rapidly. For the past few months, the West has been united. The president is traveling to Europe to make sure we stay united." What you need to know:

On the agenda: Biden will spend most of Wednesday traveling and on Thursday attend what ABC News calls "an extraordinary summit of all 30 NATO leaders" in Brussels. He'll then attend G7 and European Council meetings before heading on Friday to Poland, which has taken in 2 million Ukrainian refugees. There, he'll meet with US troops ahead of a Saturday meeting with Polish President Andrzej Duda.

Biden will spend most of Wednesday traveling and on Thursday attend what ABC News calls "an extraordinary summit of all 30 NATO leaders" in Brussels. He'll then attend G7 and European Council meetings before heading on Friday to Poland, which has taken in 2 million Ukrainian refugees. There, he'll meet with US troops ahead of a Saturday meeting with Polish President Andrzej Duda. Expectations: Former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul puts it like so to NBC News: "It will feel very flat if there is this giant meeting of NATO, the most powerful alliance in the world, and the only outcome from it is a statement of solidarity. That will not look like a strong move. That will be demoralizing for Zelensky and uplifting for Putin." He'd like to see fresh sanctions against Russian oligarchs, more military equipment directed to Ukraine, and ramped-up economic pressure in the form of an oil embargo.

Sanctions: Sullivan said they're coming in a joint announcement set to be made by Biden and EU leaders Thursday. He didn't give details, but the Wall Street Journalwhich notes the existing sanctions are already "the biggest coordinated package of sanctions ever levied against a major economy"had some insight. Per sources and documents it viewed, the paper reports more than 300 members of the Russian State Duma will have sanctions slapped on them.

Sullivan said they're coming in a joint announcement set to be made by Biden and EU leaders Thursday. He didn't give details, but the Wall Street Journalwhich notes the existing sanctions are already "the biggest coordinated package of sanctions ever levied against a major economy"had some insight. Per sources and documents it viewed, the paper reports more than 300 members of the Russian State Duma will have sanctions slapped on them. Also: European diplomats say they're considering putting the squeeze on Russian ships' ability to call at ports on the continent. The Journal adds that the US and EU are hoping to resolve some unrelated issues (including around digital data stored in the US regarding European citizens), in a bid to show a more united front across the board.

European diplomats say they're considering putting the squeeze on Russian ships' ability to call at ports on the continent. The adds that the US and EU are hoping to resolve some unrelated issues (including around digital data stored in the US regarding European citizens), in a bid to show a more united front across the board. Nuclear discussions: Sullivan said Biden and his European counterparts would be talking about potential responses" should Vladimir Putin decide to use a nuclear weapon.

(Read more President Biden stories.)
(Newser)  Four teens are facing murder charges in a "heinous and unthinkable" fatal carjacking in New Orleans on Mondayafter two sets of parents turned them in. A 17-year-old male, 16-year-old female, and two 15-year-old females will be charged with second-degree murder in the death of 73-year-old Linda Frickey, who was wrapped up in a seat belt and dragged from her SUV for a block, reports the AP. Her arm was ultimately severed, and the grandmotherwhom family members describe as an "angel"bled to death in the street around 1:30pm as witnesses attempted to comfort her.

At a Tuesday press conference, Police Superintendent Shaun Ferguson commended the parents who made the "incredibly difficult decision" to identify their children hours after surveillance footage was released, per NOLA.com. "The parents of one 15-year-old female immediately called our investigators," Ferguson said. He added the parents of the male, the suspected driver, also identified their son, per NOLA.com. Ferguson noted he would ask the Orleans Parish District Attorney's Office to charge the teens, who had prior arrests, as adults. "I mean, look at the nature of the crime," he said. "Look at the brazenness, in broad daylight, with no regard to this woman hanging from the vehicle."

District Attorney Jason Williams added his office would prosecute anyone involved in the "heinous and unthinkable" murder "to the absolute fullest extent of the law." "It's just beyond comprehension. It's evil," said Frickey's sister-in-law Kathy Richard, per WVUE. She said Frickey was due to join her husband in retirement in a month's time and was looking forward to her son's wedding next year. Frickey's sister, Jinny Griffin, added Frickey would have simply "walked away" if the teens had allowed her the time, per NOLA.com. City councilmen described a violent "pandemic in our streets" on Monday. There have been at least 62 homicides in the city this year, a 47% increase from 2021. (Read more murder stories.)
(Newser)  Steven Spielberg is taking flak for describing Squid Game as a series starring "unknown actors"which is a bit like a South Korean director saying Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan starred unknown actors like Tom Hanks and Matt Damon. Spielberg told a Producers Guild of American panel over the weekend that the Netflix hitwhich stars well-known South Korean actorsmarked a change from the days when stars "brought the audience into movies," the New York Post reports. He praised Netflix for giving the "unknown actors" a chance and said the massive success of Squid Game shows "unknown people can star [in] entire miniseries, can be in movies."

The stars of Squid Game include Lee Jung-jae, who has been one of South Korea's most successful actors for decades. Critics slammed Spielberg for what appeared to be a very US-centric view. "Folks, todays whitest take, brought to you by Mr. Steven Spielberg and the LITERAL all-star cast of Squid Game," one critic tweeted. Spielberg hasn't clarified his remarks yet, and some of his defenders say that while his choice of words wasn't great, he may have been trying to make the point that Hollywood stars are no longer required to attract the attention of Western audiences, Screen Rant notes. (Read more Squid Game stories.)
(Newser)  The logo on Rep. Mo Brooks' Senate campaign website boasts "Endorsed by Trump," but it's going to need an update: Donald Trump has pulled his endorsement of the Alabama lawmaker, who was long one of his staunchest allies. The former president said he was withdrawing his endorsement because of remarks Brooks made last year suggesting it was time to "move on" from the 2020 election, the New York Times reports. "When I heard his statement, I said, 'Mo, you just blew the election, and theres nothing you can do about it,'" Trump said in a statement on Wednesday. "Very sad but, since he decided to go in another direction, so have I."

Trump, who continues to insist that his loss to President Biden was the result of fraud, slammed Brooks as "woke" and disloyal, reports the Hill. "When I endorsed Mo Brooks, he took a 44-point lead and was unstoppable. He then hired a new campaign staff who 'brilliantly' convinced him to 'stop talking about the 2020 Election,'" Trump said. A source tells Politico that Brooks, who was fading in the polls even before Trump pulled his endorsement, plans to stay in the race to replace retiring Republican Sen. Richard Shelby. Brooks' rivals include Mike Durant, who visited Mar-a-Lago on Monday, according to Politico's sources.

In 2020, Brooks was the first House lawmaker to say that he planned to challenge the Electoral College when Congress met on Jan. 6 to certify it. On the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, before Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, Brooks spoke at Trump's rally, saying, "Today is the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass." The Times reports in a "last-ditch effort" to keep Trump's endorsement, Brooks used footage from the rally last week in an ad, which has him saying, "On January 6th, I proudly stood with President Trump in the fight against voter fraud." In another ad seen as an appeal to Trump, Brooks slammed "open-border RINO Republican" Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a frequent Trump target. (Read more Mo Brooks stories.)
(Newser)  Madeleine Albright, the first female US secretary of state, has died of cancer, her family said Wednesday. She was 84. President Bill Clinton chose Albright as Americas top diplomat in 1996, and she served in that capacity for the last four years of the Clinton administration. At the time, she was the highest-ranking woman in the history of US government. She was not in the line of succession for the presidency, however, because she was a native of Czechoslovakia, the AP reports. Albright was born in Prague in 1937. Her family fled to Britain in 1939, months before World War II broke out, and moved to the US in 1948.

"She was surrounded by family and friends," her family announced on Twitter. "We have lost a loving mother, grandmother, sister, aunt and friend." Her family said the cause was cancer. Albright remained outspoken through the years. After leaving office, she criticized President George W. Bush for using "the shock of force" rather than alliances to foster diplomacy and said Bush had driven away moderate Arab leaders and created potential for a dangerous rift with European allies.

In a New York Times op-ed last month, Albright warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin was making a "historic mistake" with his invasion of Ukraine. She recalled becoming the first senior US official to meet Putin in his capacity as acting president of Russia. Her notes from the time described him as "small and pale" and "so cold as to be almost reptilian." She also wrote, "Putin is embarrassed by what happened to his country and determined to restore its greatness." (Read more Madeleine Albright stories.)
(Newser)  NATO estimated on Wednesday that 7,000 to 15,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in four weeks of war in Ukraine, where fierce fighting by the country's fast-moving defenders has denied Moscow the lightning victory it sought. By way of comparison, Russia lost about 15,000 troops over 10 years in Afghanistan.A senior NATO military official said the alliance's estimate was based on information from Ukrainian authorities, what Russia has releasedintentionally or notand intelligence gathered from open sources, the AP reports. The official spoke on condition of anonymity under ground rules set by NATO.

When Russia unleashed its invasion Feb. 24 in Europes biggest offensive since World War II, a swift toppling of Ukraines government seemed likely. But with Wednesday marking four full weeks of fighting, Moscow is bogged down in a grinding military campaign. With its ground forces slowed or stopped by hit-and-run Ukrainian units armed with Western-supplied weapons, Russian President Vladimir Putin's troops are bombarding targets from afar, falling back on the tactics they used in reducing cities to rubble in Syria and Chechnya.

Addressing Japans parliament Wednesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said thousands of his people have been killed, including at least 121 children. "Our people cannot even adequately bury their murdered relatives, friends, and neighbors. They have to be buried right in the yards of destroyed buildings, next to the roads," Zelensky said.With cities like Mariupol cut off and heavily bombarded, death tolls are difficult to determine. In their last update, over a week ago, Mariupol officials said at least 2,300 people had died, but the true toll is probably much higher. Airstrikes in the past week destroyed a theater and an art school where civilians were sheltering. (President Biden headed to Europe Wednesday for an extraordinary NATO summit.)

(Read more Russia-Ukraine conflict stories.)
Speaker of the House Chris Sprowls responds to questions from the media during gaggle Monday, March 14, 2022. (Alicia Devine/Tallahassee Democrat via AP) (Alicia Devine/Tallahassee Democrat /AP)

In the legislative session that ended March 14, state lawmakers made diapers and baby clothes tax-free for an entire year and childrens books tax-free during the summer. They waived sales taxes on mobile home purchases. Students in public schools will now have the most funding ever per student. Hearing aids for low-income children will now be free.

Thousands of disabled Floridians on the waiting list for state services will be served, finally, and the Legislature made the largest investment of state dollars for affordable housing in 16 years.

Advertisement

But if you get your news on Twitter or in the newspaper, all you would hear is that this session was all about culture wars.

You wouldnt need to look far to find examples. In The Associated Press, a headline on a story distributed nationwide on Monday read, Florida ends legislative session marked by culture wars; in the Orlando Sentinel and Sun Sentinel shared session-end story, the headline read, Florida Legislature wraps up combative culture-war session; and in the Miami Herald and Tampa Bay Times last week, Culture wars session of Florida Legislature is nearly over, but emotions are still raw.

Advertisement

House Speaker Chris Sprowls, R-Palm Harbor. (Chasity Maynard/Orlando Sentinel)

Lawmakers fought for many issues that voters sent us here to accomplish, like combatting the fatherhood crisis, supporting our foster youth, and ensuring our hometown heroes can afford to own a home. Headlines like those above reflect the bulk of the press coverage, though.

A total of 285 bills passed this session, and overwhelmingly they were supported by both parties. In all, 193, or 60% of the bills heard on the House floor, passed unanimously, and all but seven bills had bipartisan support in their final House floor vote.

The news media has missed the story here: The Florida Legislature is one of the last great places where a person can work across the aisle to make a major, meaningful impact for the residents of this state. That is what our lawmakers did this last session.

Yet, 90 headlines over the past week contained the phrase culture wars when describing Floridas legislative session, according to Muck Rack, a media analysis tool. If Democrats were in charge, and they spent this session running unbridled with their priorities to teach kids that assigned sex does not exist, require that the 1619 Project be taught in every school, and make abortion free for all, the newspapers would call it a social justice session, not culture wars.

When Republican lawmakers decry the press for biased reporting, editorializing, and ignoring stories like the one I highlight here, think back to this op-ed and to these headlines.

At the Legislatures closing Sine Die ceremony I said that politics shouldnt be about cowering to the loudest voices or catering to the most powerful ones. Its about standing up for the everyday person  the moms and dads who are busy going to work, paying their bills and raising their kids.

These are the people we work for, and these are the people who suffer when the media ignores the bigger story about the overwhelming success of this past session for them in their everyday lives.

Chris Sprowls of Palm Harbor is Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives.
Local

top story

Fire in 1600 block of West Arch Street in Coal Township damages three homes

Tim Zyla / TIM ZYLA/STAFF PHOTO A home at 1622 W. Arch St., Coal Township, caught fire Tuesday morning resulting in heavy damage to the residence along with a connected dwelling at 1620 W. Arch St. One female occupant was inside 1622 W. Arch St. at the time of the fire and was uninjured during the blaze.

COAL TOWNSHIP  An accidental fire that started in the kitchen of a half-double brick home in the 1600 block of West Arch Street caused damage to three insured properties Tuesday morning.

No injuries were reported.

The two-alarm fire was reported at 9:49 a.m. to Northumberland County Communications Center and declared under control at 10:23 a.m.

Coal Township Fire Chief Russ Feese, who was assisted at the scene by Deputy Fire Chief Mike Timco in directing firefighting operations, said the blaze started in the kitchen of 1622 W. Arch St. inhabited by Terry Swartz, 64.

Feese said 1622 W. Arch St. sustained extensive fire, smoke and water damage, while 1620 W. Arch St., which is vacant and posted for sale, also sustained fire, water and smoke damage. Feese said the owner of 1620 W. Arch St. is Pastori Properties, LLC, Coal Township, which is a corporation affiliated with Christopher Dailey, of Coal Township.

A single home at 1626 W. Arch St., owned and inhabited by C.R. Williams, sustained fire damage to siding on the second floor above a garage, smoke and water damage, and damage to several windows.

Feese said the three homes involved in the fire are insured.

Swartz and Williams were able to flee their homes safely.

Swartz, who was comforted at the scene by neighbors, said she was sleeping on her couch when she woke up and spotted flames coming from her kitchen, which is located at the rear of her residence. Swartz said she then fled out the front door.

Swartz, who is on oxygen, was left homeless as a result of the fire and plans to stay with relatives.

Fire officials said Williams was able to return to his home Tuesday afternoon.

Feese, who labeled the fire accidental, said State Police Fire Marshal James Nizinski assisted Coal Township fire officials in the investigation. He said the cause of the fire remains undetermined.

Feese said cylinder caps on propane tanks on the back porch of Swartzs home popped off and windows at the residence blew out during the fire.

Feese said UGI workers inspected gas utilities at 1620 W. Arch St. and PPL employees cut power to 1622 W. Arch St., which is heated by oil.

Fire units cleared the scene at about noon, while fire chiefs remained at 1622 W. Arch St. for several hours to continue their probe.

Responding to the fire were firefighters from Coal Township, Shamokin, Mount Carmel, Kulpmont, Atlas and Overlook, Elysburg Ambulance and AREA Services personnel, Coal Township and Shamokin police, and fire police.
Please purchase a subscription read this premium content. If you have a subscription, please sign up for a digital website account or log in.
Ben Shapiro, 38, is a graduate of UCLA and Harvard Law School, host of The Ben Shapiro Show, and editor-in-chief of DailyWire.com. He is the author of the New York Times bestsellers How To Destroy America In Three Easy Steps, The Right Side Of History, and Bullies.
TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune  www.newsofbahrain.com

A special function will be held today at the Pakistan Embassy in Bahrain on the occasion of Pakistan Day.

The Pakistani community in Bahrain will also host special functions marking the day. All preparations have been finalised in Islamabad to celebrate Pakistan Day in a befitting manner as the nation marks the passing of the Lahore Resolution, when a separate nation was demanded on March 23, 1940 in Lahore.

Elaborated arrangements were underway to celebrate the day with great national zeal and patriotic spirit. As the Pakistan Day holds a significant place in the history of Pakistan and to mark it in a befitting manner, Armed Forces were busy in rehearsals and drills yesterday at Shakarparian Parade Ground to celebrate the day in a spectacular way.

The day will see gun salutes and special prayers in mosques for the progress and prosperity of Pakistan. The nation would pay tributes to leaders of Pakistan Movement including Father of the Nation, Muhammad Ali Jinnah and National Poet Philosopher, Dr Allama Muhammad Iqbal for their matchless services for Pakistan.

In Karachi and Lahore respectively, officials, parliamentarians and people from all walks of life would throng their tombs. The national flag would be hoisted atop of all important and historic buildings which are decorated with colorful lights and buntings to mark the day.

The youth have decorated their vehicles, motorcycles, cars and motorbikes while residents decorated their houses, bazaars and markets to express their love for the country.

Participating troops include foot columns of Pakistan Army, Pakistan Navy, PAF, Frontier Corps, Northern Light Infantry, Islamabad Police, Tri-Services Lady officers, Tri-Services Armed Forces Nursing Service, Girls Guide, Boys Scouts, Special Service Group from three Services, mechanised columns of Armored Corps, Artillery, Army Air Defence, Signals, Engineers, Army Strategic Force Command, Camel Band and Presidents Body Guard.
TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune  www.newsofbahrain.com

A Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Tourism team conducted an inspection visit to Manamas Central Market to ensure that vegetables, fruits, meat, fish and other basic foodstuffs are sufficient and that their prices remain stable ahead of the Holy Month of Ramadan.

The visit, in cooperation with the Capital Municipality and the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Tourism, was in accordance with royal directives and in fulfillment of His Royal Highness Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, the Crown Prince and Prime Minister, to verify the availability of consumer goods and control prices in the markets.

According to Abdulaziz Al Ashraf, Assistant Undersecretary for Control and Resources, the ministry continuously monitors and follows up on the movement of central markets in terms of the flow of food commodities, identifying the obstacles that prevent this and working on overcoming them in coordination with the relevant authorities, which contributes to limiting the rise in food prices in general.

It also ensures that any illegal activities are monitored and dealt with in accordance with the established procedures. During the inspection visit, the supervision team emphasised that the market situation is favourable, indicating merchants readiness for the Holy Month by importing key commodities at an early date.

They also noted that the food stock, including those locally produced, is sufficient for several months even after Ramadan. Local traders also confirmed that food prices are reasonable and that they are doing everything possible to supply the market with an abundance of food products.

They added that many food shipments are on their way to the Kingdom to supply the markets with the main commodities of foodstuffs, and they are diversifying sources. Apart from vegetable, fruit market and meat, the inspection team also visited a few commercial markets.

Al Ashraf met with a number of merchants, who raised a number of issues such as increasing the availability of lowcost products and the organisational processes that take place to create appropriate market conditions, whether for sellers or consumers.
TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune  www.newsofbahrain.com

Staff Reporter

LuLu Hypermarket will today open its first branch fully staffed by women in Bahrain. The store covering an area of 2,000 square metres in Danat Al Lawzi in Hamad Town will be located on the lakeside of the housing project in the area.

The store will provide residents with a wide range of grocery products and fresh daily products such as vegetables and meat in addition to an indoor bakery.

Speaking to The Daily Tribune, Rebecca, who is the import co-ordinator and merchandiser, said she is really excited to be part of the all-women team.

The whole hierarchy here, starting with sales staff to supervisors and managers, are women. I feel really proud to be part of the team. Zaina Ali Yousuf, a sales staff at the store, said its a special feeling to be part of the all-women team.

I am really happy to be part of this team. Earlier, the concept was only implemented in Saudi Arabia. I am sure this will help us in serving the women customers better. A self-service payment machine forms a special attraction at the store.

The LuLu Group owns nine hypermarkets and two-shopping centers in Bahrain, employing nearly 3,000 staff, of which Bahrainis make up more than 40 per cent.
The average price of land in Japan rebounded on the back of solid housing demand after falling for the first time in six years the previous year due to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, the government said Tuesday.

Land in all categories nationwide, including that for residential and commercial use, rose 0.6 percent from a year earlier as of Jan. 1, according to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism.

The ministry said a recovery trend has been observed, driven by housing demand in urban areas and vicinities, as the influence of the pandemic is waning. The survey covered 26,000 locations across the country before the so-called "sixth wave" of the infections hit Japan.

The prices of residential land rose 0.5 percent on average and those of commercial land went up 0.4 percent.

In Tokyo, the prices of residential and commercial land rebounded for an increase of 1.0 percent and 0.6 percent, respectively, as housing demand expanded with people reviewing their residential environment amid the spread of telework.

The prices of residential and commercial land also rose in three prefectures adjacent to Tokyo -- Saitama, Chiba and Kanagawa. ...continue reading
A letter writer opines how biased the Sun Sentinel must be to criticize Gov. Ron DeSantis and the defeated former president 100 percent of the time. The simple reason could be that these demagogues really are that bad 100 percent of the time.

State laws to protect condos from collapsing? No. Fix ridiculous costs of homeowners windstorm insurance? Dont even mention it. Instead, the governor and legislature focus on things that divide citizens. They allow lawsuits against one another, intrude into womens privacy, demean and separate people, stack the elections and meddle with private companies and the training of their employees.

Advertisement

These are not the Republicans I knew in the 1980s. These are not even the reactionary conservatives of years past who were considered fringe. This is a new order of dangerous dictator wannabes who just know whats best for everyone else.

James Carbone, Fort Lauderdale

Advertisement

A tyrant senses weakness

Reader Joel Elin writes in his Praise for the President letter to the editor (March 22) that President Biden is performing marvelously in the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Say what? Are you for real? Why would the Sun Sentinel print such a blatant distortion of reality?

The Russians are dropping bombs from the sky, slaughtering women and children while MiG-29 fighter jets sit in Poland instead of preventing this barbarism, thanks to Joe. Biden is weak, and history will judge him as the main reason why Russia invaded. They took Crimea under Obama and are obliterating Ukraine on Bidens watch. Even leftists know there was no invasion under Trumps watch and never would be.

Tyrants like Putin can sense weakness and know they can threaten without ever being checked by the worst president in history. First the border crisis, then the Afghan pullout fiasco and now vetoing a transfer of MiG-29s to give Ukrainians a chance not to be annihilated.

Shame on Biden for waiting until its too late to take decisive action. Sanctions wont stop Russians from raining down bombs. MiG-29s would have. Mr. Elin, what part of genocide while we do nothing are you not getting?

Marcus Elliott, Boca Raton

Ukraine and NATO

Re: President Joe Biden seeks new sanctions, help for Ukrainians in Europe

Putins invasion of the Ukraine provides Volodymyr Zelensky with all the more reason to join NATO. After all, had Ukraine been a member of NATO, Putin would never ever have dared to invade it.

Advertisement

Deep down, Putin is a bully and a coward, now elevated to being a war criminal as well.

Erik Schot, Lauderdale-By-the-Sea

Scared? Then leave

Re: A scary time to be a Floridian | Letters to the editor

This is to all you readers who opine that these are scary times to be a Floridian because our governor and Legislature are passing laws they disagree with. A lot of you came down here fleeing other states with their draconian taxes and regulations, mask and vaccine mandates and crumbling cities and infrastructure due to decades of government run by Democrats.

My suggestion: Move back and make it better there. Planes and trains are leaving here every hour.

Osvaldo Valdes, Hollywood
The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) has revealed that a Vietnamese man in his 30s was wrongfully arrested on suspicion of assault on Sunday, before confirming his identity with the victim and an eyewitness.

According to the MPD, police received a call at around 8:45 p.m. on Sunday, in which the caller stated that a foreigner was being rough with his friend who had admonished him for being loud on a street in Nishi-Ikebukuro in Toshima Ward, Sankei Shimbun reported. Two police officers went to the scene and arrested a Vietnamese man nearby at around 9:10 p.m., based on a general description given to them by the victim and his friend. The Vietnamese man denied any involvement in the incident.

At the police station, the caller and his friend, both in their 50s, were asked to confirm if the Vietnamese man was the person in question. However, they said it was not the same person. The Vietnamese man was released around 11:45 p.m. on Sunday.
If you already subscribe to our print edition, sign up for FREE access to our online edition. Thanks for reading The Henderson News.
Top Energy to Introduce and Onboard Carbon Credits Derived From Clean Energy Projects to the MintCarbon.io Platform of DeepMarkit's Wholly Owned Subsidiary First Carbon Corp.

CALGARY, AB, March 23, 2022 /CNW/ - DeepMarkit Corp., ("DeepMarkit" or the "Company") (TSXV: MKT) (OTC: MKTDF) (FRA: DEP), a technology company focused on creating new tools and technologies to aid businesses in sales development and increasing profitability, is pleased to announce that it has signed a letter of intent ("LOI") with Top Energy USA ("Top Energy"). DeepMarkit and Top Energy are currently working to crystalize the LOI into a definitive agreement in order to form a carbon offset arrangement pursuant to which Top Energy will introduce and onboard carbon credit projects onto the blockchain through MintCarbon.io, which is the platform developed by DeepMarkit's wholly owned subsidiary, First Carbon Corp.

By way of the arrangement, DeepMarkit expects to benefit from extensive and diverse exposure to numerous alternative electricity-based carbon projects. Under the terms of the LOI, DeepMarkit and Top Energy will conduct necessary due diligence and negotiate the terms of a definitive agreement to govern the terms of the arrangement. The ultimate structure of the arrangement will be subject to applicable regulations as well as applicable securities, corporate and tax laws. The definitive agreement, and any transaction completed in connection therewith, may be subject to TSX Venture Exchange approval.

Based in the United States, Top Energy is a company focused on eco-friendly energy solutions in Mexico and Spain. Top Energy has specialized in clean energy technology in Spain since 2003 and expanded into Mexico in 2013. Top Energy has installed more than 41.8 megawatts ("MW") of clean energy across 23 states of the Mexican Republic representing more than 100 institutional clients.

Management Commentary

"Top Energy foresees incredible potential in this strategic alliance with First Carbon, bringing transparency and validation to an obscure market. We seek to take the 'wild west' out of the carbon trading world by marrying our clean energy credits with blockchain technology. This will offer an additional layer of assurance to our buyers, as well as making Top Energy credits internationally accessible. This sector is in severe need of additional green financing mechanisms to help the mass adoption of renewable energy in developing nations, especially in parts of the world without proper carbon markets. Through our partnership with the First Carbon platform, Top Energy seeks to realize liquidity through providing tokenized access to carbon projects," said Jonathan Gonzalez, CEO of Top Energy.

"Top Energy is an exciting business that we are looking forward to becoming our newest counterparty. Their group shares DeepMarkit's commitment to the environment, specifically by providing ecological solutions to modern day energy mandates. We are excited to bring a diverse array of technology-based offset credits to the MintCarbon.io platform. Once formalized, this arrangement will provide liquidity to Top Energy's carbon credits, while delivering DeepMarkit important and valuable transaction volume," said Ranjeet Sundher, Interim CEO of DeepMarkit.

ABOUT DEEPMARKIT

DeepMarkit Corp. is a technology company focused on creating new tools and technologies to aid businesses in sales development and increasing profitability. Its common shares are listed on the TSX Venture Exchange under the "MKT" stock symbol. DeepMarkit's wholly owned subsidiary, First Carbon Corp. ("FCC"), is a software infrastructure company operating in the tokenization vertical of the blockchain. FCC's primary asset, MintCarbon.io, is a web-based, software-as-a-service platform that facilitates the minting of carbon credits into non-fungible tokens. MintCarbon.io is currently undergoing testing and FCC anticipates an official launch of the platform in 2022.

On behalf of:

DEEPMARKIT CORP.

"Ranjeet Sundher"

Ranjeet Sundher, Interim CEO

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 news release.

CAUTIONARY STATEMENT

Statements in this press release may contain forward-looking information. Any statements that are contained in this press release that are not statements of historical fact may be deemed to be forward-looking statements, including, without limitation, statements with respect to DeepMarkit entering into a definitive agreement with Top Energy and completing the transactions described hereunder, statements with respect to the benefits expected to be received from DeepMarkit from the arrangement with Top Energy (and the quantum of such benefit), and statements regarding the launch of MintCarbon.io. The reader is cautioned that assumptions used in the preparation of any forward-looking information may prove to be incorrect. Events or circumstances may cause actual results to differ materially from those predicted, as a result of numerous known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors, many of which are beyond the control of DeepMarkit. Factors that could cause the actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, failure to enter into a definitive agreement, failure to obtain necessary final regulatory approvals for the transactions described hereunder, failure to enter into a definitive agreement, the decision by Top Energy or DeepMarkit to not complete the transactions as a result of due diligence investigations or as a result of regulatory or other legal considerations. The reader is cautioned not to place undue reliance on any forward-looking information.

The forward-looking statements contained in this press release are made as of the date of this press release and DeepMarkit does not undertake any obligation to update publicly or to revise any of the included forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by securities law.

SOURCE DeepMarkit Corp.

For further information: Ranjeet Sundher, Interim CEO, Tel: 403-537-0067, Email: [email protected], Web: www.deepmarkit.com, Twitter: @DeepMarkit
Survey findings include:



30% of 1834-year-old new Canadians and 23% of university-educated new Canadians say they are likely to move to another country in the next two years.

While most Canadians and new immigrant Canadians alike believe that Canada provides immigrants with a good quality of life, Canadians have a much more positive outlook on Canada's immigration policy compared to new Canadian immigrants.

provides immigrants with a good quality of life, Canadians have a much more positive outlook on immigration policy compared to new Canadian immigrants. New Canadian immigrants are more likely to believe that Canadians don't understand the challenges that immigrants face and feel the rising cost of living will make immigrants less likely to stay in Canada .

. Immigrants with university degrees tend to have less favourable opinions on matters related to fair job opportunity and pay than other immigrants.

Among those who would not recommend Canada as a place to live, current leadership and the high cost of living were the top two reasons.

The full survey data is available at inclusion.ca, here.

"The data suggest that younger, highly skilled immigrants in particular are starting to fall between the cracks," said Dave Scholz, Executive Vice-President at Leger. "We need to continue working hard to ensure that we are welcoming newcomers with the resources they need to succeed, and that we continue to be a country that provides opportunity."

About the Study

The study included an online survey of 1,519 general population Canadians aged 18+ completed between February 25th  27th 2022, using Leger's online LEO panel, in addition to an online survey of 2,103 New Canadians using ICC's New Canadian panel completed between February 24th  28th. Weighting has been employed to ensure that the sample composition accurately reflects the adult population of Canada, as per the latest Census Data.

No margin of error can be associated with a non-probability sample (i.e. a web panel in this case). For comparative purposes, though, a probability sample of 2000 respondents would have a margin of error of 2.5%, 19 times out of 20.

About the Institute for Canadian Citizenship

The Institute for Canadian Citizenship (ICC) is a national non-profit organization co-founded by The Rt. Hon. Adrienne Clarkson and John Ralston Saul. The ICC works to inspire Canadians to be inclusive, create opportunities to connect, and encourage active citizenship. Since 2005, the ICC has also supported more than 300,000 new Canadian citizens with programming to encourage a sense of belonging and build a more inclusive Canada.

About Leger

Leger is the largest Canadian-owned market research and analytics company, with more than 600 employees in eight Canadian and US offices. Recently, Leger presented the most accurate polling results for the 2021 Canadian federal election (including the most accurate results in Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia) and the 2019 Canadian federal election. This accuracy is due to the quality of the company's LEO panel and its employees' expertise. For more information: leger360.com

SOURCE Institute for Canadian Citizenship

For further information: [email protected]
Now available at restaurants across Canada, our Freshly Brewed Iced Tea Quencher is the latest creation crafted by our beverage innovation experts. They have blended a green tea with delicious accents of tropical fruits such as pineapple and passionfruit, plus a hint of blackcurrant.

Our unsweetened Freshly Brewed Iced Tea Quencher is a refreshing zero-calorie option, while a medium-size sweetened Freshly Brewed Iced Tea has 80 calories.

"Our guests love our cold beverages year round but with the start of spring we're gearing up to introduce more new innovations in our cold beverage lineup, starting with our Freshly Brewed Iced Tea Quencher. It's brewed fresh in restaurants daily and is delicious on its own or the perfect complement to your meal," said Hope Bagozzi, Chief Marketing Officer for Tim Hortons.

"Our amazing range of cold beverages at Tims has something to suit every taste, from our new Freshly Brewed Iced Tea Quencher and Real Fruit Quenchers, to Iced Capps, Cold Brews, Iced Coffees and Iced Lattes, to Creamy Chills and Frozen Lemonades. And stay tuned for more delicious, fun and innovative cold beverages launching this summer."

Guests can choose a Freshly Brewed Iced Tea Quencher as part of a combo for no extra charge. And a purchase of a Freshly Brewed Iced Tea Quencher earns guests a Roll to play Roll Up To Win through April 3.

About Tim Hortons

In 1964, the first Tim Hortons restaurant in Hamilton, Ontario opened its doors and Canadians have been ordering Tim Hortons iconic Original Blend coffee, Double-Double coffees, Donuts and Timbits in the years since. Over the last 55 years, Tim Hortons has captured the hearts and taste buds of Canadians and has become synonymous with serving Canada's favourite coffee. Tim Hortons is Canada's largest restaurant chain operating in the quick service industry with more than 4,000 restaurants across the country. More than a coffee and bake shop, Tim Hortons is part of the Canadian fabric and guests can enjoy hot and cold specialty beverages  including lattes, cappuccinos and espressos, teas and our famous Iced Capps  alongside delicious breakfast, sandwiches, wraps, soups and more. Tim Hortons has more than 5,100 restaurants in Canada, the United States and around the world. For more information on Tim Hortons visit TimHortons.ca

SOURCE Tim Hortons

For further information: [email protected]
With an 80 paise/litre hike in prices, petrol is now being sold in Delhi at Rs 97.01 per litre, whereas, diesel is now Rs 88.27 in the national capital.

India saw a hike in fuel prices for the second day in a row on Wednesday as petrol and diesel rates were increased by around 80 paise across the country. With an 80 paise/litre hike in prices, petrol is now being sold in Delhi at Rs 97.01 per litre, whereas, diesel is now Rs 88.27 in the national capital.

In Mumbai, the prices of petrol and diesel are now Rs 111.67 and Rs 95.85 per litre respectively, after a hike of 85 paise a litre. Fuel prices in Chennai went up by 75 paise per litre for petrol and 76 paise per litre for diesel. The petrol rate in Chennai is now Rs 102.91 per litre, and the rate of diesel is Rs 92.95 in the city.

Kolkata will now buy petrol at a rate of Rs 106.34 per litre and diesel at a rate of Rs 91.42 per litre. The city witnessed an increase of 83 paise per litre in petrol rates and an increase of 80 paise per litre in diesel rates on Wednesday.

Fuel prices were hiked for the first time in four months on Tuesday. India uses dynamic pricing to decide on fuel rates on a daily basis.

Earlier on Tuesday, opposition parties created a ruckus in the Rajya Sabha against rising fuel prices in the country. Parties, including TMC, Shiv Sena and Congress, protested after the Rajya Sabha Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu rejected their plea to hold a discussion over rising fuel prices under Rule 267.
One of the main accused in the case, a Tamil Nadu Thowheed Jamath functionary, has been sent to 8 days of police custody for allegedly issuing the death threats.

Tamil Nadu Thowheed Jamath functionary Covai R. Rahmatullah is one of the main accused in the case.

Karnataka Home Minister Araga Jnanendra on Tuesday said that the state government is considering handing over the investigation to National Investigation Agency (NIA) in the case pertaining to death threats issued to the three Karnataka High Court judges who presided over the hearing in the Hijab matter. One of the main accused in the case, a Tamil Nadu Thowheed Jamath functionary, has been sent to 8 days of police custody for allegedly issuing the death threats.

Araga Jnanendra said the Karnataka government is taking the threats very seriously. He stated, We are thinking of giving this case to the NIA and are taking note of other aspects related to the case. The government has taken it very seriously. It is not right to comment on and threaten the sitting judges.

The Karnataka Home Minister further added, The government has taken the threat to judges seriously, as it amounts to challenging the system. Magistrate Court here has remanded him for eight days of police custody. Bengaluru police will investigate the case.

As per my information, two persons have been taken into custody by the Tamil Nadu police, the Karnataka Home Minister informed.

Post the threats, the three judges were provided with Y category security.

The three judges, including Karnataka High Court Chief Justice Ritu Raj Awasthi, had struck down the various pleas challenging a ban on Hijab in educational institutions in the state. The bench had ruled that wearing a Hijab is not an essential religious practice of Islam.
The Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has sought a detailed report on the violence that ensued in West Bengals Birbhum districts Rampurhat where eight people were reportedly burnt alive after several houses were set on fire over the alleged murder of a Trinamool Congress leader Bahadur Sheikh the deputy chief of the Barshal gram panchayat.

MHAs intervention comes after a delegation of nine Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MPs met Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Tuesday. An MHA official quoted by ANI said, MHA has sought a detailed fact report from West Bengal government over Birbhum incident which claimed lives of eight people after houses were set on fire.

BJP leader and the Leader of Opposition in West Bengal Assembly and Suvendu Adhikary in a series of tweets urged the central governments intervention in the matter. One of his tweets read, The nightlong barbarity has lead to the death of at least 12 people till now; mostly women. Charred bodies are being recovered as of now. Administrative cover-up has already begun with attempts being made to lower the body count. IMMEDIATE CENTRAL INTERVENTION REQUIRED

Meanwhile, Congress leader in Lok Sabha Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury has said he will urge President Ram Nath Kovind to impose Article 355 in West Bengal citing the law and order situation in the state. Chowdhury said, Special Investigation Team is of now use. I will meet the President of India over the Birbhum incident and will suggest him to consider (imposing) Article 355 in the state. Law and order situation getting worse, people feel unsafe in Bengal.

Director-General of Police (DGP) West Bengal, Manoj Malviya has informed that 11 persons have been arrested in the case so far.
A meeting of the North Atlantic Council (NAC) at the level of Heads of State and Government will take place on Thursday.

NATO has invited Ukrainian President Zelenskyy to virtually address a summit organized by the military alliance to speak on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. A NATO official was quoted as saying by France 24, President Zelensky is invited to address the NATO summit via video link.

The official said that the summit will allow the alliance leaders to hear directly from the Ukrainian leader about the dire situation in his country. This will be an opportunity for allied leaders to hear directly from President Zelensky about the dire situation facing the people of Ukraine because of Russias aggression, stated the official.

A meeting of the North Atlantic Council (NAC) at the level of Heads of State and Government will take place on Thursday. The meeting will be in person and will be chaired by the NATO Secretary-General, Jens Stoltenberg.

Earlier on Monday, Zelenskyy took a dig at NATO and said that the military alliance is afraid of Russia. He was quoted as saying by The Kyiv Independent, NATO should either say now that theyre accepting us, or openly say that they are not accepting us as they are scared of Russia, which is true.


The press conference centred around the issue of human rights violations in Pakistan and China. The conference was attended by Dr Naseer Dashti of Baloch Human Rights Council (BHRC) and Dr Lakhu Luhana of the World Sindhi Congress.

An international NGO based out of the Netherlands, Global Human Rights Defence (GHRD), organized a press conference centred around the issue of human rights violations in Pakistan and China. The conference was attended by Dr Naseer Dashti of Baloch Human Rights Council (BHRC) and Dr Lakhu Luhana of the World Sindhi Congress.

Emma Barnard, coordinator for team Pakistan at GHRD, whose research is focused on atrocities against minority and marginalized groups in Pakistan, said, We think of women and children, disabled children, religious minorities such as Hindus and the Christians but also the LGBTQ plus community. They continuously face issues such as force conversions, forced marriages, honour killings a discriminatory application of the blasphemy laws.

Dr Lakhu Luhana of the World Sindhi Congress apprised attendees of the ordeals that the people of Sindh face in Pakistan. More than 67 per cent of girls are out of education in Pakistan. There is 80 per cent of the schools dont have water or sanitation facilities. According to the supreme court, the drinking water that the people of Sindh use, 80 per cent of it not suitable for even animal consumption and creating a pandemic of disease, Dr Luhana.

At the conference, Marco Respinti, Director-in-Charge of Bitter Winter, an online magazine on religious liberty and human rights all over the world, commented on religious freedom in China. He stated, In China today, there is what we call, the war on the very idea of god. Communist China has always judged religion as unnatural and thus sooner and later doomed to extinction while awaiting this faith the CCP has contributed to reaching the extinction of religion with varying degrees of harshness.
Sources cited by Geo News suggest that all three allies of the ruling government will soon (expectedly till March 25) announce to join the Opposition in the campaign to oust Imran Khan.

Pakistan Prime Prime Minister Imran Khan is seemingly unable to catch a break as the ill-fated leaders government today lost three of its major allies. The Muttahida Qaumi Movement Pakistan (MQM-P), Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) and Balochistan Awami Party (BAP) have decided to side with the opposition ahead of the no-trust vote against the Imran Khan government, according to sources cited by Geo News. The sources suggest that all three allies of the ruling government will soon (expectedly till March 25) announce to join the Opposition in the campaign to oust Imran Khan.

Imran Khans party is facing an internal coup. Several dissident MNAs of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) have deserted the PTI and joined opposition ranks.

Earlier, around 24 lawmakers announced to vote in favour of the no-trust move and dissociated themselves from the Imran Khan-led Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) government. The disgruntled lawmakers later took refuge in the Sindh House in Islamabad.

Opposition parties in Pakistan had submitted the no-trust motion in the National Assembly secretariat on March 8. The opposition has repeatedly claimed that the Imran Khan government has lost the majority in the National Assembly and asked the leader to step down voluntarily. Meanwhile, the PTI government has exuded confidence to defeat the no-confidence motion.

In the last few days, Imran Khan has even tried cosying up to Pak Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa in an apparently desperate attempt to save his government.

In the 342-member National Assembly, the Imran Khan government requires at least 172 members to sail through the no-confidence vote.
In an interview with CNN, while replying to a question about the conditions under which Putin would consider using nuclear warheads, his spokesperson Dmitrt Peskov said that nukes can be used in an event of 'existential threat' for Russia.

Russia has said that the use of nuclear weapons cannot be ruled out in an event of an existential threat to the country. In an interview with CNN, while replying to a question about the conditions under which Putin would consider using nuclear warheads, Russian President Vladimir Putins spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said, If it is an existential threat for our country, then it can be.

When asked about what Putin thinks he has achieved so far, Peskov stated, Well, first of all, not yet. He hasnt achieved yet, adding the special military operation was, going on strictly in accordance with the plans and the purposes that were established beforehand.

Earlier, during the initial days of the invasion of Ukraine, Russias nuclear triad was put on high alert on Putins orders. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres had termed the decision as a chilling development during a UN General Assembly emergency session.
Note: Special one-year subscription at a reduced price for first-time subscribers or for subscriptions that have been expired for at least one year  those living in Jackson County and the Cherokee Indian Reservation (28719) addresses qualify. Offer good through Friday, Aug. 2, 2019.

We accept Visa, Mastercard and Discover; we do not accept AMEX.
As funding for the states rental assistance program dwindles, the number of eviction filings in Connecticut is on track to hit its highest level since at least 2017.

As of March 16, there were 1,275 evictions filed in March, the highest number in a month since the first COVID-19 case hit Connecticut. If filings continue at that rate per day, theyll be just over 2,400 by the end of the month, the highest of any month since at least 2017, data from the Connecticut Fair Housing Center shows.

The centers data on filings goes back to January 2017.

As of Monday, all of the $400.6 million in federal money that Connecticut had for rental assistance had either been given out or was labeled as payments in progress on the UniteCT dashboard. Aaron Turner, a Department of Housing spokesman, said program staff are still reviewing applications.

We know that we are about to jump off the cliff, and were about to see a lot of people in need, said Carla Miklos, executive director of Operation Hope of Fairfield.

The nonprofit previously would get about five or six calls per week from people facing eviction and seeking rent assistance. Now, theyre getting three to five per day, Miklos said.

Two key events occurred in mid-February that housing experts say have led to more evictions: the states temporary rental assistance program stopped taking new applications, and a gubernatorial order expired that gave tenants more time to leave the apartment or pay rent.

UniteCT, the states rental assistance program, had about $400.6 million set aside for rental and utility assistance payments. Tenants who were financially impacted by the pandemic and earn up to 80 percent of area median income could get up to $15,000 in assistance.

The Consolidated Appropriations Act and American Rescue Plan Act funded the federal Emergency Rental Assistance program. The U.S. Department of the Treasury distributed that money to states and localities for rent assistance.

Many states were slow to dole out funds, and some have had their funds partially reallocated to states that spent the money more quickly. Although Connecticut applied for more money, the Department of Housing hasn't received any more.

Connecticuts program stopped taking applications on Feb. 15 as funding began to run low. Pending applications need to be completed by the end of the month to be considered, according to the UniteCT webpage.

Weve seen a huge increase in phone calls. The vast majority of them are people facing eviction, said Pamela Heller, a staff attorney with the Connecticut Fair Housing Center. Some still have UniteCT applications pending, and theyre desperately hoping it will come through.

Applications for tenants facing evictions are prioritized in the UniteCT program, Turner said.

The National Low Income Housing Coalition estimates that about 20 states will run out of funding and close their programs by the end of the year, said Sarah Gallagher, senior project director for the End Rental Arrears to Stop Evictions project at the coalition.

It wasnt enough to meet the need for anybody, Gallagher said, of the localities that received funding. There are many renters, even in Connecticut, where people didnt receive the money who needed it.

The program was never meant to be permanent, but the coalition is encouraging states to maintain their staffing and web portals in the hopes a more permanent fund can be established. Some localities are using additional American Rescue Plan Act money to do that, Gallagher said.

The UniteCT program cut down on some of its temporary staffing for the program after it hit its peak in the fall.

One of Gov. Ned Lamonts emergency orders also gave tenants 30 days to either fix the problem that caused the eviction  such as not paying the rent  or vacate a property once they got whats called a notice to quit from their landlord.

Since the order expired in February, tenants again have three days to pay rent or leave after receiving an eviction order, Heller said.

What were seeing here is a return to a pre-pandemic eviction crisis, said Cecil Thomas, a staff attorney with Greater Hartford Legal Aid.

Thomas said tenants with pending UniteCT applications can request a 30-day stay in court while they wait for money.

Over the past year, Connecticuts 2-1-1 phone line through the United Way has received just over 319,000 calls regarding housing and shelter needs. About 20 percent of those were about rental assistance, according to a data dashboard.

Miklos, of Operation Hope, said the number of calls for rent assistance has been going up for a while.

I anticipate that theres going to be a lot of people looking for help, and Im fearful that over the past so many months that, if they havent been able to pay that, the amounts they owe are going to be prohibitive, Miklos said.

It may also be difficult for people who lose their homes to find new housing in a market where demand is higher than supply and rent prices are rising, Miklos said.

Its just a recipe for disaster, she said.

To prepare for an influx of people facing housing instability, theyve dedicated a staffer to help with rental assistance and applied for more funding through the Federal Emergency Management Agencys Emergency Food and Shelter Program.

Previously, the group was only able to give out one months rent, but now theyll be able to dole out two or three, Miklos said.

The states Homeless Prevention Program is also available for residents who may be at risk of becoming homeless if theyre evicted. Anyone going through an eviction and facing homelessness can call 2-1-1 for help, Turner said.

And Connecticut's newly launched Right to Counsel program provides legal assistance during eviction proceedings for veterans or people who live in 14 ZIP codes and earn up to 80 percent of area median income.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

ANSONIA  Mayor David Cassetti cruised past city hall on Tuesday afternoon. But he wasnt driving his car.

Instead, Cassetti was testing an electric scooter. If all goes according to plan, the scooters, provided by transit company Bird, should be located around the city available for use via app by the end of April.

After a short spin around Main Street, Cassetti delivered his verdict.

Its fairly easy to drive. I mean, you got a throttle and brakes, youre in good shape, Cassetti said.

The city recently entered an agreement with Bird to place e-scooters around the city. The company has similar arrangements with numerous municipalities in other states, but city officials say Ansonia will be the first in Connecticut to receive them.

On Tuesday, a handful of city officials took turns riding the scooters, which have a top speed of about 18 mph. They feature electric motors with rechargeable batteries. The company recommends riders wear helmets, which Bird will provide free for those who sign up for the service.

Economic Development Director Sheila OMalley said it was exciting to see the new scooters arriving. She said they would complement the ongoing downtown revitalization project in Ansonia.

Im hoping it draws people down here, she said. That means theyre coming down here, that maybe theyll stop in a restaurant. Maybe theyll see the new apartments going in.

The company plans about 50 pickup locations within the city, mostly in the downtown area. The scooters have a usable radius of about five miles, which puts places like the Big Y in Derby and the Seymour Industrial Park within their range.

According to Bird, users can unlock the scooters and make payments through an app. The costs are not yet final, but Bird has previously said users typically pay $1 to unlock the scooter, and $.39 per minute to ride.

Subcontractors will collect and recharge the scooters each night, then replace them at designated pick up spots. OMalley said the company is already communicating with several prospective subcontractors in the city.

OMalley said the scooters will also bring jobs into Ansonia.

Jeremy (Bird representative Jeremy Lynch) has told me before we brought it to the alderman, he already had nine people interested in the job so thats encouraging and hopefully itll be people from Ansonia and the region, so we can get some jobs in here, OMalley said.

While city officials previously expressed concern about the safety of the scooters during an alderman meeting in early March, Cassetti said his experience zipping around city hall showed him it was safe to operate the scooters on Main Street.

Its definitely safe. Theres no question about it, he said. We have a wide enough Main Street and some of the other streets are wider where you can utilize this. People would want to go to the west side or Roma Pizza or somewhere to eat. They can get on it and follow it right up to the back.

Alderman Josh Shuart said the scooter feels similar to a skateboard and he was able to accelerate and brake smoothly. He was one of the city officials who had reservations about the scooters, but now he said he is on board.

I thought was gonna be a disaster, he said. Now that Ive seen it and Ive heard it and weve talked about the safety and legality of it, (Im) very confident that this can be well executed here. I think it will be great on the Riverwalk as well.

However, Shuart wasnt sure if he would be a regular rider.

I dont know about day to day, but I will definitely use it, he said.
Scott Hapgood will likely take the stand to tell his story if the lawsuit he filed against the Anguillan resort where he has been accused of killing a hotel worker goes to trial, his attorney told a California civil court judge on Wednesday.

My expectation is that Mr. Hapgood will testify, said attorney Thomas Watson, representing Hapgood and his family in the lawsuit filed against Auberge Resorts. He has repeatedly maintained that he is completely innocent of all allegations.

The Anguillan manslaughter charge against Hapgood has not moved forward even though a magistrate has ruled there is enough evidence for the case to proceed, Watson told Marin County civil court Judge James Chou during a brief status conference on the lawsuit against Auberge, which is based in California.

There have been no further updates nor have any documents been released to the public, Watson said.

Hapgood is charged by Anguillan authorities with manslaughter in the 2019 death of Kenny Mitchel, an employee of the Malliouhana Resort owned by Auberge Resorts.

Anguillan Attorney General Dwight Horsford has not said how he plans to proceed following the magistrates ruling.

Hapgood is considered a fugitive from justice after he failed to return to the Caribbean island for a court date in November 2019.

The federal wrongful death lawsuit filed against Hapgood by Mitchels estate is also temporarily stalled after a judge issued a stay last month, Watson said.

Even with the lack of documentation in the criminal case, Watson told Chou he wanted to move forward with depositions with an eye toward scheduling a trial for the end of the year.

But staging a trial that soon is likely not feasible, according to attorney Michael Cooper, who is representing Auberge in the lawsuit Hapgood filed against the company. Witnesses in Anguilla may be reluctant to talk during a deposition if there continues to be a gag order in the criminal case, Cooper said.

Were having a lot of problems getting documents as you know from the criminal proceedings, Cooper told Chou. I dont know how were going to set a trial date. I dont think well get through them (the documents) by the end of this year.

But Watson said he wanted to take the Auberge case to trial before the criminal proceedings play out in Anguilla.

However, Chou said he was reluctant to set a trial date. He explained that while the federal wrongful death lawsuit will not affect the Auberge complaint, the criminal proceedings against Hapgood would have an impact.

Chou asked for both sides to consider mediation and provide an update to him on the status of depositions and the criminal case on June 8.

Hapgood and his family were on vacation on the Caribbean island in April 2019 when Mitchel showed up at their hotel room to fix a sink that had not been reported broken, according to documents filed in the Auberge lawsuit.

After Hapgood allowed Mitchel inside the room, the hotel worker allegedly pulled out a knife, demanded money and then physically attacked the Darien resident as his two young daughters were nearby, the lawsuit claims.

Hapgood fought the younger man who was biting, clawing and hitting during the attack, his attorneys said.

Hapgood was able to restrain Mitchel but hotel employees who were summoned by his daughters initially did not try to intervene and did not call police or an ambulance until nearly 40 minutes had elapsed, the lawsuit stated. Hotel security eventually took over restraining Mitchel until police arrived, the lawsuit stated.

Mitchels family claimed in their wrongful death lawsuit that Hapgood kept his arm on Mitchels neck, cutting off his airway for an extended period of time, which caused his death. However, Hapgoods lawsuit claims Mitchel's cause of death was attributed to a cocaine overdose based on an Anguillan toxicology report.
Only two states are smaller in size, but Connecticut has played an outsized role in the history of guns in this country, from serving as the lead manufacturer of weaponry to leading the way in quelling the carnage wrought by its homemade products.

In a recent remote talk to the Humanists and Freethinkers of Fairfield County, Joshua Koskoff, an attorney in the $73 million settlement against Remington rifles, shared what he has learned about the states place in gun history.

The details are telling, and while Connecticut lawmakers discuss an initiative meant to lessen gun homicides in the state, we should remember that the conversation about how much weaponry is too much started at least a century ago.

Back then, government action was able to remove from the market a particularly dangerous weapon  the so-called Tommy gun  manufactured in Connecticut.

And the National Rifle Association was on board. Back then, no one wanted to see innocents shot down in the streets.

Koskoff, a third-generation attorney, has an easy, conversational style that is well suited for courtrooms and Zoom presentations. He was quick to tell his audience that when he took the case years ago, he had a lot to learn about gun culture.

And so he set out to answer the question: How did we arrive at a place where a sick young man could get hold of such a dangerous weapon, walk into an elementary school and create such lasting havoc?

Among Koskoffs first slides in the presentation were photos of the gangsters Al Capone and Pretty Boy Floyd, who with others terrorized the streets of America using weaponry that was beyond what the country had seen outside of battlefields. Those weapons included the Thompson submachine gun  or Tommy gun, which, if you have been watching the news from Ukraine, has been found among Ukrainian citizens defending their land against Russian invaders.

The Tommy gun was the answer to World War Is slower infantry rifles. It was meant to serve as a trench sweeper  a quick and certain weapon that would deliver battlefield victories  but the gun wasnt ready until after peace was declared.

There was another market. Prohibition made the Tommy gun the weapon of choice for people such as Capone who built fabulous wealth outside the law. Manufactured for a time at Hartfords Colt plant and later in Bridgeport, the Tommy guns price placed it out of reach of most police departments, but bootleggers had both cash and motivation to buy the best killing machine available.

In the 1930s, the desire to limit gun violence was fairly universal among people who believed in the rule of law. Connecticuts own Homer Cummings, FDRs attorney general who had once been Stamfords mayor, led the fight to put high-powered weapons out of the reach of the general public  all the public, not just criminals.

In 1934, Cummings told a House of Representatives committee: A machine gun, of course, ought never to be in the hands of any private individual ... I think the sooner we get to the point where we are prepared to recognize the fact that the possession of deadly weapons must be regulated and checked, the better off we are going to be as a people.

The NRA president at the time agreed and decried the general promiscuous toting of guns. He said he wasnt sure legislation would be an effective antidote, but it was. By employing tactics such as requiring gun owner registration and permits, and by imposing stiff taxes on higher-powered weaponry, the sale of machine guns was effectively ended in three short years.

In a 1938 interview for NBC radio, Cummings said that stronger measures on gun ownership would further quell crime.

Remington made the AR-15-style weapon used in the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook School that killed 20 first-graders and six adults. The settlement, announced in February, was called historic by President Joe Biden, who said the case should launch the necessary work of holding gun manufacturers accountable for selling military-grade weaponry to the public and peddling those products in the most craven way imaginable.

After Sandy Hook, Connecticut enacted some of the countrys most comprehensive gun laws, and it did so despite fierce lobbying efforts of the National Rifle Association. Ninety years ago, NRA leadership saw the wisdom of removing high-powered weapons from the publics grasp. Todays NRA response to Sandy Hook was to suggest putting more armed guards in schools.

As Cummings said nearly 100 years ago, limiting civilians access to battle-ready firearms made sense. It still does. Heres something else that hasnt changed: Knowledge, as Koskoff said in his presentation, is power. Thats still true, too.

Susan Campbell is the author of Frog Hollow: Stories from an American Neighborhood, Tempest-Tossed: The Spirit of Isabella Beecher Hooker and Dating Jesus: A Story of Fundamentalism, Feminism and the American Girl. She is Distinguished Lecturer at the University of New Haven, where she teaches journalism.
An Old Saybrook police officer is facing a breach of peace charge after he allegedly choked a man in a restaurant while off-duty, as the towns police chief remains silent about what, if any, disciplinary action may result.

On Feb. 27, Tyler Schulz shoved a man into a shuffleboard table at Scotch Plains Tavern in Essex and grabbed the neck of a second man who tried to intervene, according to an arrest warrant affidavit filed in Superior Court in Middletown. State police investigated the case.

The warrant cites interviews with witnesses as well as surveillance footage, which reportedly shows Schulz pushing the first man. One witness said Schulz only stopped choking the second man because about six people pulled him away, according to the affidavit, which describes photographs of red marks on the mans neck.

Police Chie Michael Spera did not respond to an inquiry about whether the department had disciplined Schulz in connection with the arrest. Schulz, who did not return requests for comment, still was listed on the departments online roster Tuesday.

Schulz is charged with one count of second-degree breach of peace, a Class B misdemeanor. If convicted, he faces up to six months in prison and a maximum fine of $1,000.

Both alleged victims in the restaurant incident said they did not want to press charges, according to the warrant affidavit, which states persons involved in this incident relayed to (the investigating officer) their hesitation with pursuing additional charges against Schulz due to the potential for retaliation.

Though the case is closed, Schulzs charges could be altered at the judicial level, a spokesperson for Connecticut State Police said via email.

At this time the case has a status of closed by arrest, Sgt. Dawn Pagan wrote. However, should new information be developed that warrants an investigation or further investigation that would be handled accordingly.

Alfred Wilcox, chairman of the Old Saybrook police commission, said he did not know the status of any internal investigation stemming from Schulzs arrest but planned to inquire about the matter during a Tuesday meeting with Spera.

I would hope that (Schulz) is on administrative leave pending the outcome of an internal investigation, Wilcox said.

If any disciplinary recommendation were to go beyond a 10-day suspension, Wilcox said, the matter would go before the commission for approval. He was reserving judgment so as not to disqualify himself from sitting in on a potential hearing, he said.

The alleged Scotch Plains Tavern incident reportedly stemmed from a prior dispute between Schulz and the man he allegedly shoved, according to the warrant affidavit, which refers to the man as the Victim.

That man told police he had known Schulz for years, according to the affidavit; the two had seen each other regularly until about a month before the alleged fight, when Schulz called the mans fiancee derogatory names, per the affidavit.

The Victim advised that the behavior was unprovoked and the latest in a series of disturbing behavioral changes since Schulzs divorce, it says.

The alleged victim was at the Scotch Plains Tavern with a group of about 10 people, according to the affidavit, which says he told investigators he did not know Schulz would be at the restaurant. He also said he did not interact with Schulz until the end of the night, the warrant says.

Both the alleged victim and his fiancee, who also was present, said Schulz appeared intoxicated when he approached them, the affidavit said. The Victim reported telling Schulz he did not wish to speak with him, it says.

Schulz then shoved the Victim and reportedly grabbed the neck of a second man who tried to intervene, per the affidavit, which describes the second man as someone who also knew Schulz.

Asked about what occurred, Schulz stated that others from the group at the Scotch Plains Tavern had been picking fights and that nice guys finish last, according to the affidavit. It notes surveillance footage did not show any interaction between Schulz and the group prior to the altercation.

According to the state court database, Schulzs next court date is set for April 22.

Schulz also was a codefendant in a 2020 lawsuit alleging he let his police dog bite a woman while she was pinned to the floor by another officer. The town settled that case for $145,000 in an agreement that did not admit wrongdoing.

No known criminal charges were brought in connection with the dog bite case.

Editors note: This story has been updated to reflect that the town settled the 2020 lawsuit for $145,000.

Staff writer Christine DeRosa contributed to this story. meghan.friedmann@hearstmediact.com
Niagara Falls, NY (14301)

Today

Some sun this morning with increasing clouds this afternoon. High 62F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Cloudy. Low 47F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph.
President Muhammadu Buhari has condemned the terrorist attack on four locations in Kaura Local Government in Kaduna State. Two military pers...





President Muhammadu Buhari has condemned the terrorist attack on four locations in Kaura Local Government in Kaduna State.





Two military personnel and dozens of civilians were murdered in cold-blood.





The President stated that mindless act of violence have no place in a civilized society.





Buhari said cowardly attack on innocent civilians, law enforcement officials and the destruction of properties were extremely painful.





The nation mourns with the Kagoro community, where the attacks took place and the military which lost their brave compatriots, he noted.





The Nigerian leader says he is following the efforts of the state government and security agencies to track the attackers and bring them to justice.





His statement by spokesman Garba Shehu warned against reprisals that may lead to further violence.
President Muhammadu Buhari has directed Aviation Minister Hadi Sirika to fast-track the concessioning of the four major airports in Nigeria....





President Muhammadu Buhari has directed Aviation Minister Hadi Sirika to fast-track the concessioning of the four major airports in Nigeria.





Buhari gave the order on Tuesday at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA) in Lagos, during the launch of the new terminal.





The facility was constructed by the China Civil Engineering and Construction Company (CCECC).





The President also directed Finance Minister Zainab Ahmed to raise funds for the construction of a second runway at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport (NAIA) Abuja.





He said concessioning of Lagos, Kano, Port Harcourt and Abuja terminals would further boost development to the sector and grow the economy.





NAN quoted him saying the new Lagos terminal would create unemployment for the youths.





He said 3,000 direct and indirect jobs are expected to be generated in addition to an enhanced Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for the country.





The President said the aviation road map developed in 2016 has been constituency with infrastructural development.





This event showcases our strong commitment to the growth of the Nigerian economy despite the challenges of finance.





The commitment of this administration includes: agriculture, aviation and infrastructure development, among others.





We have designated Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt and Kano airports as free trade zones, while we have also removed Valued Added Tax (VAT) from air transport, he added.
The federal government says it will begin an immediate assessment of the damage caused by a fire outbreak which affected the bridge in Apo...

The federal government says it will begin an immediate assessment of the damage caused by a fire outbreak which affected the bridge in Apongbon, Lagos.

Fire that broke out on Wednesday morning at Apongbon market on Lagos Island.

Firefighters are still battling to stop the inferno whose cause is yet to be established.

Sympathisers also joined in efforts to put out the inferno, using buckets of water and sand to tackle the fire spreading between shops.





According to NAN, Kayode Popoola, the federal controller of works in Lagos, said officials of the federal ministry of works were already at the scene of the incident.

Popoola said the bridge would be shut for immediate integrity tests after a joint inspection, which will be conducted by a team of engineers from the federal ministry of works and a team from Lagos.

Our engineers are already there working. We will shut the bridge for integrity tests, he said.

Ibrahim Farinloye, south-west zonal coordinator of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), said it was difficult for the firefighters to access the actual location of the fire under the bridge.

Farinloye, however, said no casualty had been reported and assured residents that adequate security measures are being taken to prevent hoodlums from exploiting the situation.

As of now, we have taken control of the whole situation. The boys (area boys) have been managed, and I just asked for more deployment of police officers, he said.

The zonal coordinator also raised fears about the safety of the bridge, hence the closure for integrity tests.

He said there was no fire on top of the bridge, but noted that interventions are ongoing to prevent the fire from spreading.

A trader, who identified himself as Chukwuma, told journalists that the fire might have been caused by petrol stored under the bridge.

He said two weeks earlier, some traders complained to the market leadership of the dangers of flammable materials, and that they ensured that petrol stored in the area was removed.
Nigerian mechanics are agents of frustrations and waste. Majority of Nigerians have been victims of the vices of mechanics or so-called eng...

Nigerian mechanics are agents of frustrations and waste. Majority of Nigerians have been victims of the vices of mechanics or so-called engineers and wrong vehicle diagnoses. All that most Nigerians have with these mechanics are bad experiences, waste of money, and more damage done to their vehicles. Mechanics, who are meant to be the heroes of automobile repairs and servicing, are the villains that cost more pain and hurt.

Woman stranded after car breaks down

Its also possible that you may not have had bad luck with mechanics, but you have been helpless due to the inability to get a mechanic or mechanic shop near you. Being stranded, not only being the worst possible case scenario, poses severe threats like robbery, kidnapping, etc.

This was almost the case of Mrs. Jane Doe (identity withheld); at around 9pm, her car broke down in the middle of nowhere. In desperate need of help, she combed her contact list looking for help; her husband could not drive out to get to her. Scared and helpless, a contact reached out, referring her to an online automobile repair platform. In fifteen minutes after placing the order for a mechanic, a mechanic showed up, and in no time the mechanic fixed her car correctly.



The next day her husband reached out to the company, leaving an excellent remark and top rating.

WHAT IS THIS PLATFORM?

TRACK A MECHANIC is an automobile repair and online service platform for all vehicular emergencies.

Track a mechanic is an online platform that connects drivers in distress to verified mechanics by using the GPS features embedded in their mobile phones. Their services are centered on car repairs and self-help information.

One key feature of this platform, aside from being convenient and affordable, is that all their registered mechanics are competent and mobile. In addition, each mechanic is vetted, and their success rate is determined before registration and deployment to help customers.

Transparency is at the core of Track a Mechanic. Understanding how important your car is to you, they work hard to make sure that getting your car repaired on-site is easy, professional, and safe.

Say goodbye to the unlucky touch of so-called mechanics and being stranded due to a sudden vehicle breakdown.

File Photo: Auto mechanic fixing a car issue





Their services include about 80 percent of car repairs ranging from a simple oil change to repairing ignitions and exhaust problems. The company offers a range of affordable packages.

Check out their websites for more information, www.trackamechanic.africa

Curious about how the mechanics are vetted?

HOW DO MECHANICS WORK WITH TRACKAMECHANIC?

TRACKAMECHANIC also acts as a network of expert mobile mechanics and workshops. Independent mechanics apply to join our network. Every mechanic goes through an extensive screening process that includes background, criminal, and reference checks. Once approved, mechanics are booked for jobs through Track A Mechanic platform. Your service agreement is with Track A Mechanic, not the individual mechanic.

HOW ARE THE MECHANICS SCREENED?

Mechanics are screened through a two-step process:

Step 1: A background check and skills check is performed, as well as a one-on-one interview with the mechanic. About 5-10% of the mechanics who apply are approved.

Step 2: If the mechanic passes the screening process, they are allowed to accept jobs from customers. Our mechanics are rated by the customer after every job to ensure the highest service standards are upheld.

WHY THIS PLATFORM SHOULD BE YOUR CHOICE?

So many reasons to give, but let this experience tell you the reason.

Hi, my name is Chris, I drive a Toyota Avensis. Knowing how frustrating mechanics are, I tried to do all the fixing and servicing myself with online tutorials and street knowledge. But all to no avail, there are lots of inaccurate information out there, and this misinformation finally led me to seek out a mechanic.

First, I asked my friends for their mechanics and if I could trust them. With all the assurance, my car got worse.

As a young guy trying to hustle in Lagos, mobility is essential for me. So my car was of grave concern to me; I finally resorted to an online search for a good mechanic, I was desperate. I stumbled on an auto repair service platform; the first consultation was good. But the second consultation was awful, and the mechanics did not service my car correctly. So I was back to square one.

On Instagram, one day, I saw a sponsored post for Track A Mechanic. I checked out their website and was impressed; their service cost was surprisingly cheaper than the last platform. I booked a full car service and was satisfied with the work done. I still use them to date, and its my consistency.

Visit Track a Mechanic today, www.trackamechanic.africa

Instagram: @trackamechanic

Facebook: @trackamechanic

Twitter: @Trackamechanic
A Lagos-based preacher, Elijah Emenendu, has been arrested by the police in Lagos for sodomising three brothers. Mr Emenendu, the pastor of ...





A Lagos-based preacher, Elijah Emenendu, has been arrested by the police in Lagos for sodomising three brothers.





Mr Emenendu, the pastor of Chapel of Revelation Ministry, allegedly raped the three brothers under the pretence of releasing powers into them.





He was reportedly arrested by the police officers under the Ajegunle division in Lagos.

The news outlet reported that three brothers who are members of his church were lured in turns and raped by the pastor.





Mr Emenendu started having anal s3..x with the eldest sibling after prophesying that God wanted him to stop internet fraud Yahoo Yahoo. The eldest brother bled through his anus for days, the paper reported.





After his first victim, Mr Emenendu told the second brother that the quality of his s3m3n and p3nis was low. He then taught him how to ma..sturbat3 and had oral s3x with him.





The pastor falsely prophesied to the youngest brother and had s3x with him.





Mr Emenendu lured all three brothers into his hotel room to have s3x with each other after church service.





The s3..xual molestation was revealed after one of his victims summoned courage and reported the molestation.





The case has been transferred to Area B Police Command, Apapa for further investigations.
Shehu Sani, a former Kaduna Central Senator, on Tuesday, said bandits have become the fourth tier of government in Nigeria. Sani noted the s...





Shehu Sani, a former Kaduna Central Senator, on Tuesday, said bandits have become the fourth tier of government in Nigeria.





Sani noted the series of attacks by bandits show that Nigerians need no additional proof that bandits have become the fourth tier of government.





The socio-political activist was reacting to a comment by Governor Abubakar Sani Bello of Niger State that bandits occupied 12 of the 25 Local Government Areas in the state.





Bello had disclosed this during his recent visit to the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) at the Central Primary School, Gwada.





Reacting, Sani noted that Niger State is a neighbour to the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, yet bandits are occupying its local governments.





In a tweet, the former lawmaker wrote: The Governor of Niger revealed that terrorists occupy 12 of the 25 Local Governments in the state.





Niger is a state that neighbours the Federal Capital. What additional proof is needed that bandits have become the fourth tier of Government?
Yes. It's important for Southerners to honor the region's heritage.

No. It only stirs up bad feelings and honors a racist past.

Vote

View Results
NOLA Public Schools approved three schools -- Morris Jeff Middle School, Audubon Elementary and EQA: New Orleans Accelerated High School -- to move out of their current locations and into school buildings that will be empty at the end of the school year, schools Superintendent Henderson Lewis Jr. announced on Tuesday.

The buildings will be vacated at the end of this year after the schools currently in them announced they will close in part because of declining enrollment, leaving the school district to reallocate the buildings to schools in too-small or poor-quality facilities.

We have seen the data that shows fewer children will be entering kindergarten in the coming years and we have to be prepared to face that fact and make adjustments where necessary to continue to provide that high quality public education, Lewis told the Orleans Parish School Board at a special meeting Tuesday.

IDEA Oscar Dunn and FirstLine Live Oak volunteered to close at the end of the 2021-2022 school year because of low enrollment and Arise Academy was closed because of poor academic performance. That prompted these moves:

Morris Jeff Middle School grades 5-8, currently in Mid-City, will move to Drew Elementary, located at 3819 St. Claude Ave. in the 9th Ward. Drew Elementary currently houses Arise Academy.

Audubon Elementary grades 3-8, currently in Uptown, will move to Live Oak Elementary at 3128 Constance St. Live Oak currently houses FirstLine Live Oak.

EQA: New Orleans Accelerated High School, currently in Uptown, will move to Gaudet Elementary at 12000 Hayne Blvd. in New Orleans East. Gaudet currently houses IDEA Oscar Dunn.

NOLA Public Schools Chief Operating Officer Tiffany Delcour said if EQA chooses to move to Gaudet that would free up their current building for another school.

Delcour stressed the importance of putting schools into buildings that would utilize their full occupancy, pointing out that "capital funding is driven by the number of students served in our buildings."

A number of schools had applied for the open buildings; their applications were ranked by a school district committee.

Little Red Schoolhouse

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

Among the schools not selected to move was Homer Plessy, which currently occupies the building known as the Little Red Schoolhouse in the French Quarter and is in desperate need of renovation.

Delcour and School Board member J.C. Wagner-Romero, who represents Plessy's district, said they received copious feedback from parents, most of whom said they did not want the school to move.

"Those opinions of our parents are important but the realities are the realities," Delcour said. "Currently that school can only serve about 375 students which barley makes it financially sustainable."

To add an elevator, ADA complaint bathrooms, widen stairwells and other improvements would require removal of interior space and further shrink the number of students the school could fit, making it "completely financially unsustainable." Delcour said immediate necessary upgrades to the school to simply make it watertight would total about $2 million.

"These are some of the realities that we have to face." Delcour said. "They are hard and many people are going to have very strong opinions on these things."

Lewis said there were other schools who need to move but the three open spaces did not fit their programs and they did not apply.

CORRECTION: Earlier versions of this story gave an incorrect current location for Audubon Elementary.
President Joe Biden pitched his plan to modernize the countrys infrastructure during two Louisiana stops on Thursday, telling a small crowd in Lake Charles that he wanted to replace the aging Interstate 10 bridge that served as a visual backdrop there and touring an antiquated water plant in New Orleans where vital machinery frequently breaks down.

The president was highlighting a $2.3 trillion proposal before Congress that he calls the American Jobs Plan and that aims to rebuild bridges, highways, ports and other parts of the nations transportation network. The plan also proposes providing money for child care and caregiving for older adults and the disabled, items that Biden says are key to Americas future but that Republicans in Congress have said dont belong in an infrastructure plan.

Only 5% of it is infrastructure, said U.S. Sen. John Kennedy, a Republican, after talking with Biden and other political leaders for 15 minutes on the tarmac after Air Force One landed at Louis Armstrong International Airport. The rest is the Green New Deal, new welfare programs and reparations. Asking me to vote for this bill when its only 5% infrastructure and 95% non-infrastructure is like asking me to buy a car to get the cup holders.

Republicans are proposing to spend $568 billion but haven't fully explained how to pay for it. Biden is proposing to reverse President Donald Trump's tax cuts by raising corporate taxes for 15 years to finance his plan.

Biden also met with U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy, New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell and Congressman-elect Troy Carter, whose district stretches from New Orleans to Baton Rouge. Cassidy is a Republican, while Cantrell and Carter are Democrats.

Carter said he pitched two other infrastructure needs to Biden  tearing down the Claiborne Avenue overpass in New Orleans and building another bridge over the Mississippi River in Baton Rouge.

The president was familiar with calls to replace the Interstate 10 overpass above North Claiborne Avenue, Carter said. Biden highlighted that possibility when he announced his infrastructure plan five weeks ago.

We talked about infrastructure and his total commitment to Louisiana. These are issues that Republicans and Democrats can agree on, said Carter, giddy after having the president visit his district even before he formally takes office on Tuesday.

Kennedy and Cassidy discussed ways to get more disaster relief aid to southwest Louisiana, which was hit by two devastating hurricanes last year and still has several thousand people who have been unable to return home.

In a short video he released after leaving the airport, Cassidy echoed Kennedy in saying Bidens plan doesnt spend enough on roads and bridges, but added an optimistic note: Hopefully we get to common ground, Cassidy said.

Biden made no public comments in New Orleans as he made four stops at the Carrollton water plant operated by the much-maligned Sewerage & Water Board on South Claiborne Avenue.

Ghassan Korban, executive director of the S&WB since 2018, and Ramsey Green, Cantrells infrastructure chief, showed off a water purification pond, along with Cantrell. Biden then saw the inside of a water tower.

At each stop, the city officials laid out the problems that have led old turbines to break down, forcing city residents, all too frequently, to live under boil-water advisories.

At one point, Biden walked by reporters and joked, Im taking up a collection after this.

What for? asked one reporter.

Water, replied the president, and moved onto the new pumping station, built in 1958.

At his final stop at the water plant, in the boiler room, used to power water pumps, Biden and Kaitlin Tymrak, a board employee, spoke over the clanging of machinery and hissing pipes.

Biden shook his head when Tymrak said some of the machinery is more than 100 years old.

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

In all, the president spent about 2  hours in New Orleans.

Accompanying him was Cedric Richmond, who represented New Orleans in the U.S. House for a decade before resigning in January to become a senior adviser to the president.

Earlier in the day, Biden, dressed in a navy blue suit and his trademark aviator sunglasses, spoke along the Lake Charles waterfront adjacent to its downtown, the hulking I-10 bridge over the Calcasieu River and its arched truss in the distance behind him.

Also within sight was the citys 22-story Capital One tower and its dozens of blown-out and boarded-up windows, perhaps Lake Charless most prominent example of the damage left in the wake of the two hurricanes that devastated the region in August and October last year.

Signs around his podium included a picture of the bridge with the slogan: Getting America Back on Track. A smattering of local officials, along with Gov. John Bel Edwards, were in attendance, as was a group of workers in hard hats whom Biden spoke with after finishing his speech, exchanging fist bumps with a few.

Its hard to believe that you got hit as badly as you have within the timeframe you have, Biden said of Hurricanes Laura and Delta, which ripped through southwestern Louisiana last year.

He added later: I believe you need the help. Were going to try to make sure you get it. But the people of Louisiana always have picked themselves up, just like America always picks itself up  I promise you were going to build back better than ever, more resilient.

But Biden's message in Lake Charles was much more focused on infrastructure than hurricane recovery. Biden pitched a new I-10 bridge as part of his infrastructure plan, questioning why its taken so long to build one given the bridges age and condition.

It shouldnt be this hard or take so long to fix a bridge thats this important. It makes no sense, Biden said. But the truth is across the country, we have failed. We have failed to properly invest in infrastructure for half a century.

Earlier, Edwards and Lake Charles Mayor Nic Hunter also made pitches for hurricane relief along with a new bridge. Local officials have been concerned that the region's dire recovery needs would be overshadowed by the focus on the infrastructure bill.

Lake Charles is a great American city and we continue to need a great American response, Hunter said.

Local officials in Lake Charles and Calcasieu Parish see federal hurricane relief as long overdue and desperately needed to help move more residents back into their homes and reopen businesses that havent been able to do so more than eight months after Hurricane Laura, which was followed six weeks later by Delta.

Category 4 Laura was one of the most powerful storms to ever hit the U.S., with winds of up to 150 mph, causing an estimated $19 billion in damage in the state. Delta, a Category 2 storm, left behind further misery and followed an eerily similar path.

Lake Charles officials estimate that some 3,000 residents remain displaced, while that number rises to around 4,000 for all of Calcasieu. FEMA has been providing mobile homes and travel trailers as temporary residences.

Calcasieu Parish Police Jury President Brian Abshire said he believes both hurricane recovery and infrastructure are important and made the case in a brief meeting with Biden before his address, he said.

I did tell him Trump couldnt get us a bridge, but Im confident you can, Abshire said. Trump visited Lake Charles in May 2019 and promised a new span.

Few if any will argue that it shouldnt be replaced. It was completed in 1952, before the I-10 existed, and was later integrated into the interstate system. Among other deficiencies, its very steep and lacks shoulders.
Africa has over the years fallen behind in development as compared to the Asian countries.

Zambia with US$303 per capita was considered way richer in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) terms than South Korea (US$109 per capita in 1965) in the sixties but by the year 2020, South Korea was at US$31 489-00 per capita and was way ahead of Zambia, which was at a US$1050-00 per capita. South Korea has not had it easy with its share of conflict and war. The Vietnam War from 1964 to 1973 affected them greatly, not to mention the Korean DMZ Conflict. The North and the South Korea have technically been at a proxy war between China and the United States (US) for decades. Their people split into two to satisfy economic egos of two these two superpowers. They have managed to still develop and industrialise an amazing rate as seen above.

Hyundai Motor Company

Hyundai Motor Company has a history, dating back to the 1940s, but was really established in 1967 as a State funded company working with Ford Motor Company. In 1968 they decided to develop their own car and break away from Ford. They hired George Turnbull in February 1974 the, former Managing director of Austin Morries at British Layland. He in turn hired five other top British engineers. In 1974, the Pony was released being the first South Korean car. It was styled by Giorgio Giugiaro of Italy and had the power train technology bought from Japan Mitsubishi Motors. They started with the regional market and later the international market by 1986 one million Hyundai cars were built for export. The rest is history as Kia Motor company was born and later bought out by Hyundai and their pension fund is now an 8.6 per cent shareholder of this multinational corporation, which has subsidiaries all over the world.

What happened in Africa

While the sixties decade saw development growth in teams of GDP in most African economies, it become clear that the growth was slowing down. In other words, while other nations were growing, and industrialising, Africa was slowing down and getting deeper into poverty. During the 70s, many African economies who had western-educated economists were slipping deeper into huge foreign debt. They had been sold democracy and free market economy policies, but soon political parties conflicts, western exploitation, poverty and debt was tearing Africa apart.

Lagos Plan of Action for the development of Africa

In April 1980, the Lagos Plan of Action for the Economic Development of Africa 1980-2000 was adopted by several African heads of State. The plan directed at economic self-reliance, the democratisation of development process, industrialisation and self-sufficiency in food security, stipulated that African development should recognise the importance of:

Domestic, sub-regional and regional market within the continent.

Protection and beneficiation of African natural resource base

Multiple objectives for economic planning

Strengthening intrasectoral and intersectoral linkages in and between agricultural, communications, energy industry, mining, technology and transport.

Establishing an African common market to inculcate an African economic community (jolly 2009)

The Africans were ready and willing to take control of their destiny, however, the west was not convinced and it soon failed just like many more that followed including New Partnership for Africas Development (NEPAD) by President Thabo Mbeki and President Obasanjo of Nigeria.

Washington Consensus

There was little support from outside Africa for the Lagos Plan so much so that in 1981, which was the following year the World Bank issued its own plan for African development. It was the opposite of the Lagos Plan and stressed export-oriented growth within a globalising capitalist system. Africa should simply export raw materials to the west and not industrialise or integrate. All transportation infrastructure would lead to the seaports for exports. The new plan was rejected by several African leaders but in 1982 it still gained hegemonic status. Lawrence (2010:34) refers to the 1981 World bank report on the state of African economies, which advocated the liberation of internal markets, (opening of African markets) trade and exchange rates, cuts in government expenditure, cuts government size, elimination of subsidies, elimination of all forms of price controls and the privatisation of State enterprises as ways to smooth the path for structural adjustments programmes (SAPs) as a way of implementing neo-liberalisation policies.

Neo-liberalisation policies

The team neo-liberalisation was coined at a meeting in Peris in 1938 . Among the delegates were two men, who came to define the ideology, Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek. Basically, in neo-liberal teams everything is market oriented. This is very good if you are a rich industrialised country because you can compete globally. What if you are an African country, you basically turn into a net importer without the ability to export competitively. The markets determine the price, and if government cannot regulate, the poor African citizens starve. This system basically gives too much power to the markets or the capitalist. It says never mind unemployment if you dont have a job its because you are unenterprising. It asserts that the rich have accrued their wealth through merit, ignoring privilege, colonialism, and advantage such as better education inheritance and class that may have helped the rich along the way.

Conclusion

The Kingdom of Eswatini needs to establish national corporations that will create businesses that will generate money for the country. We cannot depend on taxes only. We need to establish the National Mining corporation with will exploit our natural resources, create employment, and create opportunities to further process the raw minerals into finished products. Our country is too small to have a domestic market which means we must compete globally. This will require global partnerships with international players; however, we cannot just wait for them to come. The factory shells are a good start, but we need to establish national companies which will start operations. If countries like South Korea did it, we can do it too. They were able to produce their own COVID-19 test kits and much more. The pension funds can play a big role in funding these national corporations and maybe the constant flow of our money to develop South Africa can stop.

septembereswatini@gmail.com
Two tornadoes ripped through metro New Orleans late Tuesday, killing one person in Arabi and injuring several others.

The hardest-hit area so far appears to be in Arabi in St. Bernard Parish, but damage surveys are ongoing. There are no reports of missing people.

See the latest photos and video of tornado damage.

The tornado that hit Arabi appears to be at least an EF-3, according to preliminary information from the National Weather Service. One that hit Lacombe in St. Tammany was an EF-1.

Gov. John Bel Edwards declared a state of emergency and toured the damage in St. Bernard.

Follow the live coverage below to see what's happening on the ground today.

Live coverage

Staff photographers and reporters are out in the devastated areas. Follow their updates below, along with other developments from officials.

Can't see the feed? Click here.

Fatalities, injuries

One storm-related death has been confirmed in Arabi, authorities said. Neighbors talked with our news partners at WWL-TV and said the man was in his 20s and was in his truck when the tornado hit. A witness told the station that the man was parked in his driveway when the tornado picked up the vehicle and slammed it into a nearby tree.

Authorities have not released his name.

At least seven Arabi residents were taken to a hospital after the tornado with minor injuries, St. Bernard Parish President Guy McInnis told WWL-TV early Wednesday.

One of the people injured was a girl in a wheelchair. She was rescued from a house that the tornado picked up and dropped in the road in a traumatic "Wizard of Oz ride," neighbors said.

Damage in Arabi

+2 Photos, video: Daylight view of tornado damage in Arabi, including aerial images A tornado ripped through Arabi on Tuesday night, leaving one person dead. On Wednesday morning, photographers got a first look at the damage i

Residents and first responders cleaning up and salvaging what they can. Here are safety tips from officials in the aftermath of a storm:

Beware of downed power lines, broken gas lines and sharp debris.

Avoid damaged areas.

Stay off roads to allow rescue workers to respond.

2 confirmed tornadoes

Two tornadoes touched down in metro New Orleans on Tuesday night, according to the National Weather Service in Slidell.

Arabi and New Orleans East: The tornado that tore through Arabi and New Orleans East was at least an EF-3, based on preliminary information, forecasters said.

The damage survey is happening right now, and a final assessment is expected to be released in a day or two, according to the National Weather Service.

Lacombe: The tornado that touched down in Lacombe was an EF-1, forecasters said. It started at 7:25 p.m. near Big Branch Marsh National Wildlife Refuge on Highway 190 and was on the ground for eight minutes. It has peak winds of 90 mph.

The path was 12.2 miles long and crossed Interstate 12, according to preliminary damage assessments. The primary damage was snapped trees and minor roof damage.

Here are the strength categories for tornadoes:

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

EF0 (weak) 65 TO 85 mph

EF1 (weak) 86 TO 110 mph

EF2 (strong) 111 TO 135 mph

EF3 (strong) 136 TO 165 mph

EF4 (violent) 166 TO 200 mph

EF5 (violent) >200 mph

No damage to refineries

No damage has been reported to chemical plants and refineries in the path of last night's storm, according to the state Department of Environmental Quality.

No chemical releases were reported either.

Roads open

Judge Perez Drive and St. Bernard Highway are both open in both directions in and out of St. Bernard as of noon, according to the sheriff.

Drivers are asked to use caution due to ongoing cleanup efforts.

School closed

Classes at Arabi Elementary School are canceled on Wednesday, following a tornado that tore through St. Bernard Parish Tuesday night. The school suffered damage in the storm; a bus was overturned in front of the campus Wednesday morning.

All other public schools in St. Bernard Parish are open, schools Superintendent Doris Voitier said.

Power outages

About 2,900 Entergy customers in Louisiana were without power as of 7:30 a.m. Wednesday, according to the company's outage map.

The largest outages are in St. Bernard Parish and Orleans Parish.

Check the current outage status on Entergy's online map.

Previous tornadoes in New Orleans

Several strong tornadoes have hit New Orleans since 1950. Here's a look at the previous tracks from WAFB meteorologist Steve Caparotta. (Can't see the tweet? Click here.)

Tracks of strong (EF-2+) tornadoes in #NOLA area since 1950. Strongest on record occurred just 5 years ago (2/3/17) when an EF-3 produced max estimated winds near 140 mph.



Would seem a good chance that last night's tornado gets added to this plot, but will await survey. #LAwx pic.twitter.com/AOZGKhWkPY  Steve Caparotta, Ph.D. (@SteveWAFB) March 23, 2022

Have storm damage?

Here are some tips from FEMA if you have damage from the tornadoes:

Before you start cleaning up, take photos of the damage to your home and belongings. Make a list of damaged/lost items and gather any original receipts you have for the items. Call your insurance agent to submit a claim.

Today's front page

Here's a look at the front page of today's Times-Picayune. Journalists fanned out last night to tell this story quickly and accurately. More coverage to come today on NOLA.com.

Staff writers John Simerman, Tristan Baurick, Bob Warren and Kayla Gagnet contributed to this story.
Wind-whipped flames are marching across more of New Mexicos tinder-dry mountainsides, forcing the evacuation of area residents and dozens of patients from the state's psychiatric hospital as firefighters scramble to keep new wildfires from growing. The big blaze burning near the community of Las Vegas has charred more than 217 square miles. Residents in neighborhoods on the edge of Las Vegas were told to be ready to leave their homes. It's the biggest wildfire in the U.S. and is moving quickly through groves of ponderosa pine because of hot, dry and windy conditions that make for extreme wildfire danger. Forecasters are warning of extreme fire danger across New Mexico and in western Texas.
Harrisburg, Pa.  The driver of a car that struck and killed two state troopers and a pedestrian Monday morning has been charged with murder, according to the Pennsylvania State Police.

Jayana Tanae Webb, 21, of Eagleville, was reportedly drunk when she hit troopers Martin F. Mack III and Branden T. Sisca after they stopped to help a man walking along Interstate 95 around 1 a.m.

Police identified the pedestrian as 28-year-old Reyes Rivera Oliveras of Allentown.

Webb is charged with three counts of third-degree murder, homicide by vehicle while DUI, homicide by vehicle, involuntary manslaughter, and reckless endangerment. She is also charged with DUI and several traffic violations, including driving at an unsafe speed and reckless and careless driving.

Related reading: State Troopers, pedestrian die after being hit by a suspected drunk driver

After receiving several calls about Oliveras walking along the southbound lanes of I-95, the troopers stopped to pick him up, PSP stated.

That's when all three were violently struck by Webb, who was allegedly traveling at a high rate of speed. The impact threw Mack and Sisca across the center barrier and into the northbound lanes, police say.

All three were pronounced dead at the scene, PSP reports.

Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner released a statement Tuesday afternoon following Webb's arrest, calling the deaths a tragedy.

"I again extend my deepest condolences to the colleagues and loved ones of Troopers Mack and Sisca, as well as Mr. Oliveras," Krasner said. "My office will now seek to ensure this defendant is held accountable for her alleged actions that resulted in this senseless loss of life."

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.
Lewisburg, Pa.  Jury selection for a trial for the homicide case against 76-year-old Myrle Miller of Winfield is pushed back to July.

The decision came during an omnibus motion hearing scheduled Monday morning at the Union County Court of Common Pleas. Instead of holding the hearing, President Judge Michael Sholley granted a continuance to the defense after District Attorney Pete Johnson and Public Defender Brian Ulmer met with him briefly the judge's chambers.

All parties agreed to the continuance, as Ulmer sought more time to review several thousand pages of case documents he recently received. Judge Sholley granted Ulmer's request to move the jury selection for Miller's trial from April to July 2022.

Miller was charged in May with first-degree murder, perjury, and felony fraud insurance theft for the death of her husband, John W. Nichols, 76, of Millmont. He died at the couple's home on Lamey Road on April 14, 2018.

Related Reading:

State police filed the charges after a state grand jury concluded that Miller had administered a lethal dose of Verapamil from her own prescription to her husband of seven years, who also was her third husband. She also is accused of fraudulently taking thousands of dollars from his bank accounts and life insurance policies.

The medication allegedly caused Nichols heart to fail. Verapamil, which is used to treat high blood pressure, had a negative effect on Nichols heart disease and caused his death, according to court documents. A forensic pathologist who reviewed Nichols' autopsy confirmed that Verapamil would have been fatal to Nichols.

Court documents from the state grand jury outline evidence that Nichols' death came on the heels of years of fraud and theft perpetuated by Miller who systematically drained his bank accounts and had others impersonate him for the purpose of obtaining loans in his name."

Authorities caught onto Miller's deceptive practices when a lead investigator visited Nichols' home on April 5, 2018 and got permission from him to investigate his finances.

"At that point, Miller realized that her deception was finally going to be exposed, the grand jury report stated.

Investigators determined that Miller had conducted Google searches on April 11, 2018, that included the terms marriage laws in PA, divorce lawyers in PA, and dividing assets in divorce.

In the following days, Miller, who is a certified nursing assistant, also conducted online queries for the medications Flexeril, Donopezil, Ativan, and Verapamil.

Pharmacy records show Miller picked up a 90-day supply for Verapamil on Feb.1, 2018, and signed for another bottle of the medication on April 12, 2018, just 71 days into her supply, according to the grand jury report.

Miller appeared surprisingly calm on April 14, 2018, when Nichols family came to the home after learning of his death, the report stated. She seemed overly concerned about finding Nichols will and power of attorney documents, and told her son she didnt want anybody else or his (Mr. Nichols) kids getting their hands on them, according to the report. Miller was made sole benefactor on Nichols will in 2015.

Hours before Nichols death, Miller corresponded with another man via Facebook Messenger and wrote to him, Alex I am in love with you, according to the report. She had been engaging in online exchanges with other men for months prior to Nichols death, professing her love to them and sending them money.

Investigators found that Miller had retained complete control of Nichols finances during their marriage and fraudulently made herself sole benefactor on two of his three life insurance policies, according to the report. She also had taken out a $19,000 loan in Nichols name and depleted $170,000 from a bank account and $87,000 from another.

Miller remains incarcerated in Northumberland County Jail, where she has been since her arrest on May 27, 2021.

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.
Lewisburg, Pa.  Lycoming County Senior Judge Dudley Anderson could potentially hear the case of a whistleblower lawsuit filed against Bucknell University by a former public safety officer.

Union County judges Michael H. Sholley and Lori R. Hackenberg recently recused themselves from the case.

In a filing on Monday at Union County Court of Common Pleas, the university requested the lawsuit be dismissed, claiming the complaint filed in January by plaintiff Colby Snook was in bad faith and there was no evidence of wrongdoing on the university's part.

Snook claimed in the original complaint that he was subjected to a hostile work environment after he reported alleged misconduct of then-Chief of Public Safety, Steve Barilar. Snook said he was forced to resign in November.

The allegations are from a May 17 incident in which Snook claimed Barilar allowed a student involved in a sexual harassment incident to access his cell phone and erase evidence. The phone was eventually turned over to Pennsylvania State Police who confirmed a factory reset was conducted on the phone.

Snook alleged that when he reported the incident to university officials, he was subjected to a hostile work environment by both his peers in the public safety office and counsel at the university. Snook eventually took the allegations to Union County District Attorney Pete Johnson, who forwarded the case to the Pennsylvania Attorney General's office, which is reportedly investigating the matter.

Bucknell's preliminary objection claims that Snook's allegations are not grounds for a whistleblower lawsuit, and that it amounted to "nothing more than a disagreement with how his boss handled a specific case." The university also claims in the preliminary objection that Snook is "no-doubt disgruntled" and is "neither a victim nor a hero." The university also alleges Snook's resignation in November was voluntary.

The student had been given access to his phone, which was placed in the public safety office's evidence room after the incident, due to taking final exams. He was supervised by police at the time, according to the preliminary objection documents.

The case has drawn much interest on campus, as students led a walk-out event last month to voice dissatisfaction of the alleged mishandling of campus crimes.

Barilar retired by the end of January, and new Chief of Public Safety, Anthony Morgan, took his place. The university held a community conversations forum on March 3 in which Morgan addressed students, faculty, and staff about his vision for improving the public safety department. Morgan also took questions from concerned students, who are asking for accountability and transparency from the public safety department.

Bucknell is being represented by attorneys Michael E. Baughman and Adam R. Martin of law firm Troutman, Pepper, Hamilton, Sanders, LLP in Philadelphia. Attorney Scott M. Pollins of Ardmore, Pa., is representing Snook.

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.
MANZINI - The Rock of Hope had a challenge convincing some pastors and capacitating them on homosexuality yesterday.

This was during a workshop hosted by The Rock of Hope to capacitate the men of the cloth about homosexuality. It took place at the Family Life Association of Swaziland (FLAS) conference room. The pastors were presented with information on lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgender, intersex and queers (LGBTIQs), and their integration into the church. The meeting was aimed at relaying a message on the LGBTIQ communitys wish to attain support within the religious sector, to assist the movement in breaking cultural barriers in the move towards full discrimination and full acceptance in Eswatini.

However, the men of the cloth seemingly had a tough time accepting what was being presented to them. One pastor submitted that homosexuality was wrong because the Bible clearly stated that it was a sin. You cannot then twist and turn against what the Word of God says. It is simply wrong, the man of the cloth said. He further expressed his concerns on some religions that reportedly wished for The Holy Bible to be reviewed. Another pastor wondered why LGBTIQ couples still wanted to balance the role of male and female. If they are LGBTQI, why is there a need for them to still want to fit into the role of man and woman? Why cant they just be woman and woman, or man and man? he queried.

Another pastor averred that the Bible was totally against homosexuality. He was of the view that LGBTQIs, just like traditional healing, was a concept of socialisation. The pastors submissions came after Rock of Hope Executive Director Sanele Sibiya, addressed some of the misconceptions that people had about the LGBTIQ community. He told the pastors that there was a general notion that certain sexual acts were only done by gays. The executive director stated that some gays did not engage in certain sexual activities but found other ways to give themselves sexual pleasure.

Instead, he made mention that some people who were not within the LGBTIQ community enjoyed unconventional sexual acts that were mostly associated with homosexuals. Sibiya also stated that most LGBTIQs were still not living their truth because they were governed by societal standards, which compelled them to take wives and reproduce to extend their family legacies. He added that some parents even forced their children not to embrace those who were in the LGBTIQ community.
Ukrainians go on counteroffensive near capital even as Russia moves into strategic port

LVIV, Ukraine  Ukrainian forces defending the capital, Kyiv, managed to wrest back control of a strategic outlying town that Russian troops had earlier captured, Ukrainian officials said Tuesday, but invading troops were reported to have breached the besieged port city of Mariupol, scene of some of the wars most harrowing attacks on civilians.

Russias massive but seemingly foundering invasion of its western neighbor lurched toward the beginning of a second month. Western officials redoubled warnings that an increasingly frustrated Russian President Vladimir Putin might resort to use of chemical or other unconventional weapons  a concern expected to dominate a NATO summit Thursday, with President Joe Biden in attendance.

In Russia, where Putin has recently imposed some of the most repressive measures of his more than two decades in power, the countrys premier opposition figure, Alexei Navalny, was sentenced to nine more years in prison on charges of fraud and contempt of court. Navalny responded by calling online for his compatriots to topple Putin, whom he described as a toad sitting on an oil pipe.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, meanwhile, sought to frame the Russian attack as a menace that extends well beyond Ukraines borders. In a speech to the Italian parliament  the latest in a series of stirring virtual addresses to Western lawmakers  he described Ukraine as a vital gateway by which they mean to enter Europe.

International appeals for a halt to the fighting have so far been fruitless, but U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres made a forceful call Tuesday, branding the war morally unacceptable, politically indefensible and militarily nonsensical. Guterres urged serious negotiations, though Russia again rebuffed Zelenskyys call for direct talks with Putin.

In Mariupol, where satellite photos and accounts from residents who have escaped painted a picture of unending destruction, desperate rescue attempts continued Tuesday. Officials have said survivors of missile attacks, including strikes on a theater and an art school that together sheltered more than 1,400 people, have been trapped under rubble for days.

In Washington, a senior U.S. defense official told reporters Tuesday that Russian forces were inside the devastated city, whose prewar population of more than 400,000 has dwindled to about a quarter of that amount, according to Ukrainian officials. Seizing control of Mariupol, on the Sea of Azov, would give Russia a coveted land bridge to the Crimean Peninsula, which it grabbed and illegally annexed eight years ago.

The push-and-pull of combat continued elsewhere, with outgunned Ukrainian forces at times trying counteroffensives and at times being driven back. Ukraine reported Tuesday that its forces had recaptured a western Kyiv suburb, Makariv, giving them control of a major access point to the capital and allowing them to block Russian advances from the northwest.

At the same time, the Ukrainian defense ministry said Russian troops had partially taken other northwestern Kyiv suburbs, including Bucha and Hostomel.

In an overnight video address, Zelenskyy said that Russia also launched strikes in Zaporizhzhia in the south, leaving four children hospitalized.

Rescue crews were in Zhytomyr, west of Kyiv, where the Ukrainian emergency service said 13 residential buildings were destroyed or damaged by shelling.

The mayor of Boryspil, a city 25 miles east of Kyiv, called on residents to abandon their homes because of the violence.

In the Dnipropetrovsk region, north of Mariupol, local authorities reported blasts in two towns, Zelenodolsk and Mala Kostromka, though injuries were unknown.

The enemy is slowly trying to move, to go on the offensive somewhere, Zelenskyy said.

The continued assault on Ukrainian cities came as international authorities said Russia was resorting to more destructive weapons. On Monday, Biden said Russia was observed launching hypersonic missiles, which travel at up to 15 times the speed of sound.

Putin has made unfounded allegations that Ukraine is developing chemical weapons with U.S. assistance  which Biden said was a clear sign hes considering using such weapons on Ukrainians.

Hes already used chemical weapons in the past, and we should be careful about whats to come, said Biden, who also warned of Russian cyberattacks on American companies in retaliation for Western sanctions.

The war has sent more than 3.5 million people fleeing Ukraine and made air-raid sirens, rubble and fires part of everyday life in Kyiv and other cities. In addition to refugees who have left for such countries as Poland and Romania, more than 6.5 million people are internally displaced in Ukraine, according to the U.N.  meaning that nearly 1 of every 4 residents has been displaced inside or outside the country.

The fighting shows little sign of stopping even as international intelligence groups and Western officials said Ukrainians were largely fending off Russian advances and even notching some gains.

The U.S. is starting to see indications that (Ukraine is) now able and willing to take back territory that the Russians have taken, said the senior U.S. defense official who briefed briefing reporters on condition of anonymity.

Weeks after the invasion was launched Feb. 24, the official said there was no indication Russia was managing to resupply its troops, and some soldiers were even suffering from frostbite because they were not given the right cold-weather gear.

The British defense ministry, in an analysis released Tuesday, said Russian forces outside Mariupol and elsewhere have endured yet another day of limited progress with most forces largely stalled in place. On hypersonic missiles, the ministry said that they were highly likely intended to distract from a lack of progress in Russias ground campaign.

In another assessment, the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said that Russia was sending low-quality and low-readiness reserve troops in the face of losses.

Accurate figures on military deaths are hard to come by. Numbers released this month by the Ukrainian government said that at least 1,300 of its soldiers have died, while Russia claims the number is higher. Russia has put its own troop losses at about 500, but on Monday, Komsomolskaya Pravda, a pro-Kremlin news site, said that more than 9,800 Russian soldiers had died. It later deleted the information and said it had been hacked.

The United Nations says more than 900 civilians are dead from the war. The actual number is likely much higher; Mariupol officials say that more than 3,000 people in their city alone have been killed.

Despite near-daily Russian strikes on Ukrainian population centers, the loss of territory to Russian forces in the east and south and millions of lives upended by the fighting, government officials have portrayed Ukraine as positioned to eventually prevail.

27th day of the war. Ukraine is combat-ready and logistically mature. It is bad that the war started in Ukraine, but we have proved that Ukraine is the most mobilized country, Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak tweeted Tuesday.

Some areas of Ukraine have remained relatively safe. In Lviv, a western city thats become a stopping point for refugees traveling to Poland, sirens sound each day, but populated areas have not been attacked. The closest hit has been on an unoccupied aircraft repair center on the city outskirts last week.

Despite Russian military setbacks  or perhaps because of them  the Kremlin again threw cold water on Zelenskyys request for a meeting with Putin, saying that from the Ukrainian side, there had not been sufficient progress to merit such an encounter.

Talks are moving much more slowly and less substantively than we would like, Peskov said Tuesday, according to Russian state-backed news agency Tass.

Zelenskyy said last week that he accepts that NATO membership is unlikely. Russia has listed nixing Ukraines NATO aspirations as one of several non-negotiable demands.

Zelenskyy has also suggested that relinquishing Ukrainian claims to Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, and Donbas, a southeastern region thats home to a pro-Russian separatist movement, were also up for discussion. But he added that any historic changes would require a national referendum.
MBABANE  Somntongo Member of Parliament Dumisani Mbhamali yesterday came to the rescue of a patient who was abandoned next to the Engen Filling Station after inhaling tear gas.

The patient who was confined to a wheelchair inhaled the tear gas fired by police officers when dispersing some of the incarcerated MPs supporters. It was gathered that the supporters who forced their way to the capital city after they were turned back at various roadblocks manned across the country roads, proceeded to the filling station where they anticipated feedback from the MPs legal team.

Roadblocks

One of the roadblocks which saw some of the MPs supporters being turned back was manned along the Mbabane-Manzini Freeway, at Mvutjini. Noted was that some of those who were turned back were clad in red T-shirts with EFFSWA and CPS inscriptions. The supporters were travelling in a mini-truck. Worth noting is that the MPs supporters and the MPs legal team had found it a better strategy to meet at the filling station as they believed that police officers could not fire tear gas next to the fuel pumps. The police are said to have fired tear gas a few metres away from the filling station before forcing the supporters out.

Eyewitnesses claimed that the police officers removed the patient from the crowd before firing the tears gas, which, however, reached her. I dont know this woman, but I am familiar with her face since she frequently visits the Mbabane Government Hospital for medical checkup. I usually see her with her children, said a hospital employee found at the scene. The employee was among the good Samaritans who provided the patient with water after she inhaled the tear gas. The employees further stated that she believed that the patient was on her way to the hospital when she inhaled the tear gas.

At that time, some police officers were littered around the garage with an armoured tactic vehicles and truck parked on the other side of the road. Mbhamali promised to ferry the patient to hospital. The MP returned in a space of five minutes and loaded the patient into his car and drove her to the Mbabane Government Hospital. An independent investigation by this publications pointed out that the patient was Bahlalisile Kunene of Magwaneni in Mbabane. It was established that she was waiting for transport to ferry her home after visiting the hospital. The investigations pointed out that the officers of the law removed Kunene from the crowd before they fired the tear gas but it reached her.

Departure

The gathering of the MPs supporters happened a few minutes after PUDEMO President Mlungisi Makhanya had stated before his departure at the High Court that he would make a plan to update the supporters on what transpired in court as he had an opportunity to follow the proceedings. Makhanya left the High Court along with Manzini Regional SWAYOCO Chairperson Sakhile Awviva Nxumalo. The duo had an opportunity to follow the proceedings as they were among those allowed entry into the courtroom. Makhanya said the act of turning back people by the police officers showed that Eswatini was allegedly not governed by laws.
Napoleon, OH (43545)

Today

Cloudy with occasional rain during the afternoon. High 61F. Winds E at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%..

Tonight

Rain. Low around 50F. Winds ENE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall near a half an inch.
China doubled its import of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Russia in February from a year earlier, undermining Chinas proclaimed neutral stance in the ongoing Ukraine war.

Beijing bought nearly 401,000 tons of Russian LNG last month, Bloomberg reported on March 21, citing data from Chinese customs officials. That volume made up 8 percent of Chinas total LNG imports in February.

Overall, China imported 12 percent less liquid natural gas last month compared to February 2021, according to Bloomberg.

Meanwhile, China imported a total of 12.67 million tons of crude oil from Russia in the first two months of this year, according to Chinas customs data.

Chinas continued energy purchases from Russia are providing important revenue for Moscow, as its energy sector has become increasingly isolated after being hit with sanctions and other retaliatory moves over its aggression in Ukraine.

On March 8, President Joe Biden announced the United States would ban imports of Russian coal, liquefied natural gas, and coal. The very next day, the UK announced that it would phase out imports of Russian oil by the end of this year.

On March 15, the European Union announced another package of sanctions against Moscow, among which is a ban on new investments in the Russian energy sector. Additionally, the bloc introduced a comprehensive export restriction on equipment, technology, and services for the energy industry.

China, however, has criticized sanctions imposed by Western countries. During a daily briefing on March 2, Wang Wenbin, one of Chinas foreign ministry spokespersons, said Beijing and Moscow will continue to conduct normal trade cooperation.

On March 9, a day after Bidens announcement banning Russian energy products, Zhao Lijian, Chinas foreign ministry spokesperson, said the two neighbors always maintain sound energy cooperation and will continue to conduct normal trade cooperation including on gas and oil.

Some U.S. lawmakers are calling for secondary sanctions against Russia, including Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee.

To cut off Mr. Putins oil and gas sales globally, the administration and Congress should impose secondary sanctions on the entirety of Russias financial sector, Toomey wrote in an op-ed published on March 21 in The Wall Street Journal.

He added, These penalties would effectively prohibit foreign banks anywhere in the world, under the threat of U.S. sanctions, from making payments to Russian banks, including for oil and gas.

Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho), ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, took to Twitter to express his support for Toomeys suggestion.

Secondary sanctions would seal off #Russia from the rest of the world, prohibiting foreign banks, like those in #China, from doing business with #Putin & inadvertently funding the #UkraineWar, Risch wrote. This is the next step the Biden Admin must take.

Beijings effort to cast itself as a neutral party has drawn criticism. On March 15, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg called on Beijing to condemn Russia over what he called Moscows brutal invasion of Ukraine.

Andriy Yermak, head of the office of Ukraines President Volodymyr Zelensky, said on March 22 that China should play a more noticeable role in ending the war, during a virtual news conference organized by London-based think tank Chatham House.

So far weve seen Chinas neutral position. And, as I said before, we believe that China  should play a more noticeable role in bringing this war to [an] end and in building up a new global security system, Yermak said.

Weeks before the war, Beijing and Moscow updated their bilateral relationship to a no-limits partnership, following a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping. The two leaders also said there would be no forbidden areas of cooperation between their nations.

Reuters contributed to this article.

From The Epoch Times
MBABANE - In what is believed to be a staged suicide, a lawyer was yesterday found dead in his house at Fonteyn.

The body of Zwelakhe Hlophe (29) of Hawane, who is the son of Supreme Court Judge Nkululeko Hlophe, and Industrial Court Judge Lorraine Hlophe was found in the bathroom of his flat by some of his neighbours on Monday at 6:30pm. His body was found in a sitting position between a toilet seat and bathtub, with a pyjama belt tied around his neck and the burglar bars of a window behind the toilet. Zwelis body was found dressed in black trousers and a waistcoat, a white shirt and a bib, which is how lawyers dress when appearing at the High Court. According to a source, Zweli, as he was popularly known, was supposed to meet his mother in town, but he did not show up. His mother, according to the source, proceeded to his rented flat at Fonteyn and found the burglar door ajar. The door is said to have been locked and when Judge Lorraine called him on his cellphone, he did not pick up.

Challenge

The source also said the thought was that Zweli probably had financial challenges at the time and his mother had transferred a certain amount of money to him via Mobile Money, which he had not withdrawn when he met his death. This, according to the source, was an indicator that he did not leave the house since then. The deceased is suspected to have been in the house at the time. Those who discovered his body are said to have found the door unlocked. This was despite the fact that his mother had found the door locked on Saturday and the burglar door slightly opened. The source stated that on Sunday, they noticed that the burglar door was still in the same position and on Monday, they opened the door and found that it was not locked. The question is, according to the source; who had then unlocked the door and where did the key come from?

In Zwelis motor vehicle, there were some of his clothes, some of which were torn, including a black waistcoat, and a mud-stained bib, as well as a short wooden stick. Inside the house, the wardrobe appeared to have been ransacked and some of his clothes were missing. Police, who attended to the scene, took cupcakes and a Coca-Cola soft drink which was in a two-litre container. The investigators also took Zwelis cellphone, which might have information that could lead them to a breakthrough in their investigations. Zwelis death was confirmed by his father, who said they were leaving everything in the hands of the police to do their investigations. It has been reliably gathered that a postmortem will be conducted at the Mbabane Government Hospital to determine the actual cause of his death.

A number of lawyers took to social media after learning about the death of Zweli, and described him as a jolly, hardworking lawyer, who was willing to assist anyone. Among those who were found at the scene yesterday, was Senior Lawyer Mangaliso Magagula of Magagula & Hlophe Attorneys, where the deceased worked. Others were the deceaseds grandfather and sister Zinhle.
White Lodging is selling 25 management contracts for suburban hotels as it continues to execute its plan to exit suburban markets.

The Merrillville-based hospitality company also has been selling off individual suburban hotel properties as part of a multi-year strategy to shift focus to more upscale urban and lifestyle hotels. The company will hone in on high-end downtown hotels that "deliver memorable and elevated guest experiences."

It is selling off management contracts to Pennsylvania-based HHM for an undisclosed sum.

This strategic portfolio shift further defines our position in the industry and reinforces our focus on urban luxury and lifestyle hotels with independent destination restaurants, said Bruce White, founder and chairman of White Lodging. In a sea of commodity hotel properties and expanding management portfolios, we are positioned to create the highest level of guest experiences and an environment where associates thrive. Our interest is to develop the best associates, while building the best hotel, restaurant and bar concepts in every market we operate in.

No layoffs will take place at either the Merrillville corporate headquarters or the hotels themselves.

"The transaction does not impact any employment at corporate office in Merrillville," White Lodging spokesman Mike Banas said. "All associates at the included hotels were offered equivalent positions with HHM."

The company, which White founded in 1985, is focusing on urban markets like Indianapolis, Austin, Louisville, Chicago, Denver, San Antonio, Nashville and Charlotte. It now has 50 hotels, 40 restaurants and 10 rooftop bars.

Last year, the company opened four new hotels and nine new restaurants. Its new additions included the J.W. Marriott Charlotte, Canopy San Antonio Riverwalk, Austin Marriott Downtown and the Moxy Austin University.

White Lodging plans to continue to develop new hotels. It's also developing career development and training programs in partnership with Purdue University.

At the same time we are investing in our associates, our opportunity and capacity for new hotel development is targeted and robust, said Ken Barrett, president of White Lodging. We expect to continue to build the very best lifestyle hotels that offer exceptional food, beverage and service experiences.

The company plans to invest in its training, development and mentorship programs. It believes its reshaped portfolio will offer clearer career paths for workers in the same urban market without having to move or change companies.

We want to show associates that  from the day they are hired to the time they retire  hospitality is an exciting career, and one that can work with a modern lifestyle, said Jean-Luc Barone, White Lodging CEO of Hospitality Management. We are developing real curriculum and programs to meet the growing demands and thirst for personal development that this workforce is looking for. The way we win the talent war is by creating a company that allows each individual to be their best selves and grow, and thats just what were doing."

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.
A lot of people thought legendary director Steven Spielberg took a pretty big chance doing his first musical, a remake of "West Side Story." After all, did the 1961 movie of the 1950s musical really need a reboot? And was the visionary who gave us "Jaws" and the Indiana Jones films and "E.T." and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" the right person to do it? It turned out he was. Ariana DeBose has Best Supporting Actress locked up, though that's likely to be the flim's only trophy Sunday night. Spielberg is up for directing, but won't beat Jane Campion. The film also is up for its costumes, Sound and Production Design.
MERRILLVILLE  Pierce Middle School students and staff were evacuated Tuesday following a bomb threat around noon.

Students were transported to the high school, where parents were able to pick them up. The investigation is ongoing, the statement said.

Later in the afternoon, Merrillville schools updated students' parents via email, thanking them and their children for their "patience and cooperation in working through the emergency situation."

"Our first priority was making sure everyone got out of the building safely," the email said. "Law enforcement has completed a thorough sweep of the building and has determined the school is safe for reentry. (Wednesday) will be a normal school day at Pierce Middle School."

Merrillville Police Department did not immediately respond to a request for information.

Staff Writer Mike Clark contributed to this story.

Check back at nwi.com as this story is updated.

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.
EAST CHICAGO  The City Council has approved an ordinance appropriating $4,150,000 from money received from the Local Fiscal Recovery Fund to fund two street projects.

Of that amount, $2,400,000 will go toward the Magoun Avenue Reconstruction Project in the city's first and second districts, and $1,750,000 will be used for the Exchange Avenue Reconstruction Project in the first district.

A total of $4,750,000 had previously been appropriated for the Magoun Project in a separate ordinance.

City Engineer William Allen said the Magoun Reconstruction Project runs from Chicago Avenue to 151st Street and the Exchange Reconstruction Project is between Indianapolis Boulevard and Todd Avenue.

"Everything will be replaced from the ground up, all the underground utilities as well as all the surface work, which encompasses the asphalt, concrete sidewalks, curbs, gutters and landscaping," Allen said.

The council also gave final approval to an ordinance that appropriates $1.5 million from the city's general fund to the Department of Waterworks.

Water Department Director Winna Guzman said the additional appropriation was needed to cover expenses involved with maintenance of the city's water distribution system.

The council did not approve an additional appropriation of $2,070,000 for the Department of Parks and Recreation because it said it did not have enough votes to be taken off the table for consideration.

Parks and Recreation Director Vanessa Hernandez-Orange had addressed the council and said that in anticipation of opening facilities, the funding was needed for the performance of minor updates, programming, events and a funds transfer to the marina.

Councilman Robert Garcia, D-5th, said the council's finance committee had recommended the ordinance be tabled until more information could be received from the controller's office.

The Council did override two vetoes issued by Mayor Anthony Copeland regarding ordinances the Council approved last month.

One is an ordinance that seeks to safeguard collective bargaining rights of city employees and the other deals with the establishment of bidding practices and submission requirements on Public Works projects.

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.
U.S. Sen. Mike Braun, R-Ind., would welcome the U.S. Supreme Court rescinding its 1967 ruling that legalized interracial marriage nationwide in favor of allowing each of the 50 states to decide such issues on its own.

Speaking Tuesday on a conference call with Indiana reporters, the Hoosier senator unambiguously declared his belief that many of the high court's key civil rights decisions of the past 70 years were wrongly decided and an improper usurpation of states' rights.

Braun initially limited his claim to the national right to abortion established by the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision he hopes the current, more conservative, Supreme Court will overturn in coming months when it rules in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.

But, when asked by The Times, Braun admitted there are many Supreme Court decisions he believes improperly established federal rights that would be better handled on a state-by-state basis, including Loving v. Virginia that legalized interracial marriage, and Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) establishing a right to privacy concerning contraceptive use.

"You can list a whole host of issues," Braun said. "When it comes down to whatever they are, I'm going to say they're not going to all make you happy within a given state. But we're better off having states manifest their points of view, rather than homogenizing it across the country as Roe v. Wade did."

Specifically concerning interracial marriage, Braun rejected the reasoning of a unanimous Supreme Court that the freedom to marry is a fundamental constitutional right and states depriving Americans of it on an arbitrary basis, such as race, is unconstitutional.

He acknowledged leaving such a question to states is likely to lead to situations where a marriage may be recognized in one state and not in another, but he shrugged it off as "the beauty of the system."

"This should be something where the expression of individual states are able to weigh-in on these issues through their own legislation, through their own court systems. Quit trying to put the federal government in charge," Braun said.

To that end, Braun pointed to the widespread adoption of state laws legalizing individual use of medicinal and recreational marijuana, notwithstanding the fact cannabis remains an illegal controlled substance under federal law.

"That's part of the way that we navigate through issues that are generally going to be divisive, that are generally very vitriolic, and you solve that by not trying to nationalize it," Braun said. "One side of the aisle, out here, wants to do more of that all the time, and I think we've gone far enough there into a variety of issues.

"I think if you're not wanting the Supreme Court to weigh in on issues like that, you're not going to be able to have your cake and eat it, too. I think that's hypocritical."

Braun later walked back his comments by claiming he misunderstood the question, despite the question being asked multiple times in different ways to ensure Braun meant and understood what he said concerning interracial marriage.

"Let me be clear on that issue  there is no question the Constitution prohibits discrimination of any kind based on race, that is not something that is even up for debate, and I condemn racism in any form, at all levels and by any states, entities or individuals," Braun said.

Braun's original statement was condemned by the Indiana Democratic Party as "not only un-American, but beneath any respectable person wishing to hold public office."

"The United States Supreme Court has affirmed many times that marriage equality in our country extends to any committed couple regardless of sex, race, orientation, or religious affiliation, and to question that legitimacy questions the very fabric of America and its people," said Mike Schmuhl, Indiana Democratic chairman.

"Democrats implore all Hoosiers to ask themselves if they want to be associated with someone as embarrassing as Mike Braun and a form of partisanship that endorses white nationalist views  because these are the same views that led to the insurrection against our nation on January 6, 2021. If Mike Braun wants to question the legitimacy of anything, it should be his own standing as a United States senator."

As for the current judicial vacancy on the high court, Braun said he hasn't yet decided whether he will vote to confirm Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson and make her the first black woman to serve alongside the eight other Supreme Court justices.

Braun said he wants to see what Jackson says under questioning this week by the Senate Judiciary Committee and then he plans to carefully review her past rulings to see if they conform to his expectations for federal judges.

"She seems well-qualified. But whenever I vote for a Supreme Court justice it's going to be, basically, how are you going to interpret the law," Braun said. "If your record shows that you're going to be kind of an activist there, I don't think that's good, and I don't think the Founders intended it that way."

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 5

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.
GARY  A Region woman has been accused of murder after a man was found fatally shot early Monday morning at a gas station in Gary. Court documents stated the man had punched her before she fired a shot in the vehicle.

Isedra Simone Brooks, 28, of Gary, is charged with murder in the death of Armani Darnell Handy, according to Lake County Superior Court records.

Handy, 33, of Gary, was pronounced dead at 2:10 a.m. after he was found unresponsive at a gas station in the 4800 block of Broadway, according to the coroner.

At 1:45 a.m. Monday, Gary officers responded to the scene to find Brooks crying hysterically and asking for help while standing on the passenger side of a Honda, according to the court records.

Handy was found lying on his back on the ground between the Honda and blue Toyota Sienna. He was not responsive and medics transported him to Methodist Hospitals Northlake campus, where he was pronounced dead from multiple gunshot wounds.

Upon further investigation, police found a loaded handgun in the Honda on the passenger seat.

Surveillance footage showed the Honda parking on the south side of the gas station. After the vehicle stops, movement can be seen inside, police said.

On the video, a man is seen exiting the vehicle, approaching the passenger side of the vehicle and entering through the passenger side.

The court documents states the man appears to initiate a physical altercation with someone in the vehicle. Next the man is seen exiting from the passenger side to go back to the driver's side.

Once back in the vehicle, it appeared that more activity was happening inside, the footage showed. Then, a short time later, a female is seen exiting the Honda and firing a handgun into the vehicle, according to court records.

The man is then seen exiting the vehicle and collapses next to the driver's side door.

The surveillance video shows the woman taking a phone from the vehicle and making calls while holding the firearm, court reports alleged.

Finally, the female is shown placing the firearm back inside the vehicle, walking to the driver's side where the man is and sitting down and checking on the man.

Brooks told police that she and Handy were driving from a bar when they began to get into an altercation because they believed a gun was missing from the vehicle, court records stated.

After they pulled into the gas station, she stated that Handy punched her in the face. After that, she told police she could not remember what happened but allegedly said she fired the gun into the vehicle but was not sure if the bullet struck him, police reported.

She said she then went to check on him and he was on the ground.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 1 Sad 1 Angry 2

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.

Dan Carden Chief Political Reporter Dan has reported on Indiana state government for The Times since 2009. He also covers casinos, campaigns and corruption. Follow Dan Carden 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
MICHIGAN CITY  Alicia Guerrero was doing some genealogical research about her great-great-grandmother Naomi Anderson when she decided to search for Naomi online. What she found amazed her.

Naomi Bowman Talbert Anderson became more than just a name to Guerrero. Anderson was a fiery orator who advocated for equal rights, including womens right to vote.

Anderson, who grew up and was married in Michigan City before ultimately settling in California, will be remembered through Bernard Williams $140,000 sculpture at Wescott Park that not only shows her likeness and her name but also some of her deeds and travels through a permanent timeline.

The sculpture was dedicated Saturday. Wescott Park is on Michigan Boulevard near 4th Street.

Guerrero, said she was doing genealogy research when she decided to see if Google could help her learn more about the ancestor she knew by name only.

I was surprised but also really moved, Guerrero said, to learn Anderson had done so much during her lifetime to help other people. She was just inspiring to me.

Anderson, born in 1843, was invited to study at Michigan Citys only public school, even though it was segregated, at age 12 because of her gift for writing poetry.

She became the mother of eight children, founded orphanages for children of color, became a teacher and hairdresser, and she published articles and poems.

There flows through my veins a combination of blood from four distinct nations, of which the greater part is Dutch, part African, part Indian and the lesser part Irish, the fiery orator wrote. Poetess Carnessa Carnes portrayed Anderson at the dedication ceremony.

Anderson headlined with suffragette Susan B. Anthony, whose image was later memorialized on silver dollars from 1979 to 1981 and again in 1999.

Tens of thousands of people in 19th century America read her writings and heard her speak, Celebrating Naomi Anderson project co-chair Bonnie Schaaf said.

Indiana Humanities President and CEO Keira Amstutz was thrilled to offer support for the project.

This was an incredibly competitive grant, she said, but this project was worthy. Naomis contributions have been overlooked for many years, Amstutz said.

Ronald Matthews, Guerreros cousin, said he now knows his great-great-grandmothers traits continue to be evident in his own children.

I now know why my son writes poetry. I now know why my daughter and my cousin are beauticians. I now know why I am a strong advocate in the NAACP, he said.

Sculptor Williams said the new sculpture says much about Michigan City as well as Anderson.

A lot of communities around the country are pulling monuments down because they really dont speak to the moment and they dont speak to the history that we really want to celebrate, he said. This sculpture speaks to people of all different races, he said. We are all one people, Anderson wrote. It doesnt mean we area all the same, but it means that we share the same ideas, we share the same beliefs, and we believe in each other.

Williams said he hopes benches can be put amid the sculpture in the future so people will be able to sit and reflect on Andersons accomplishments and contributions to todays America.

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.
MANZINI - Some teachers, especially those who are marking external examination scripts, are reportedly working day and night.

This, according to some stakeholders in the education sector, could compromise the overall results in schools. A source close to the matter said some of the external examination script markers had not finished marking the internal examination scripts. As such, the source said some of them went to the marking centres during the day and marked the internal examination scripts at their places of residence at night. Sikelela Dlamini, the Secretary General of the Swaziland National Association of Teachers (SNAT), said this was happening because of the pressure to meet deadlines, since according to the 2022 school calendar, schools would close only for a week, from March 25, 2022 and open on April 5, 2022.

Reports

He said this meant that teachers should mark internal examinations scripts and prepare reports before the schools close on March 25, 2022 (Friday) for the third term of 2021 and reopen on April 5, 2022 for the first term of 2022. He said this meant that they then had to mark and prepare reports for the pupils, yet on the other hand, there were external examination scripts to be marked as well. Again, he said the issue of remuneration of teachers, which he referred to as poor, was another issue why their members had found themselves in a situation where they worked day and night. They are after the money, he claimed. He said it was a pity that government was still reluctant to address the issue of salaries, as it was continuously refusing to review their pay.

Civil servants salaries were due for a review during the 2021/22 financial year, which end on March 31, 2022. Moreover, the unionist said this could affect the overall results because it meant that the teachers would mark the scripts while tired. He said when a teacher and any person in general worked day and night, their stress levels went up and level of concentration would go the other way.

Rest

Meanwhile, the Eswatini Principals Association (EPA) President, Welcome Mhlanga said even though they had not heard about the issue of teachers who worked day and night, he said generally, it was important for teachers to get enough rest, especially when marking. He said this was because they marked a lot of scripts per day. He said the level of concentration of a teacher who did not get enough rest would be compromised. He said schools were supposed to make arrangements on how things would be balanced if some teachers were going to mark external examination scripts. However, he was quick to mention that no one anticipated this. He emphasised that in order for the teachers to deliver as expected, they needed to rest. Thereafter, he asked not to comment further as the Exams Councils of Eswatini (ECESWA) was in a better position to address the matter.

Meanwhile, a questionnaire was sent to ECESWA Communications Officer Hlengiwe Ndlovu yesterday at 2:55pm. She acknowledged receipt and asked to be given time to consult the relevant structures. However, by the time of compiling this report, she had not responded. In the questionnaire, the communications officer was asked whether ECESWA was aware of the matter, as there was a concern that it might negatively affect the results. She was also asked what ECESWA would do to ensure that results would not be compromised.
VALPARAISO  Longtime Valparaiso University chemistry educator Jonathan Schoer died in 2020 after a battle with Lou Gehrig's disease. Now his legacy lives on through an annual environmental symposium.

After Schoer was first diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease, formally known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS, in January 2019 his Valparaiso University colleagues organized a spring symposium focused on water quality to honor his work. Schoer was able to attend the 2019 symposium, but died in May 2020.

"Every year we want to open up to the public and the Valparaiso community and share the ideas that John was really passionate about," said Paul Smith, assistant professor of chemistry.

The symposium was canceled in 2020 because of the pandemic. It was held online in 2021 and looked specifically at climate change. This year the symposium will be held in-person at the Christopher Center Library and will highlight advances in solar energy. Scheduled for April 9, the event is free and will go from 8:45 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Speakers will cover everything from installing solar panels on homes to the $1.5 billion solar project coming to Northwest Indiana.

As educators it is pretty easy for us to make a case for why you should go solar, but the bigger issue is how do you go solar, Smith explained. "The story around the Mammoth Solar farm is all about how do you store solar energy? How do you persuade land owners to host these things?"

Covering 13,000 acres in Starke and Pulaski counties, the Mammoth Solar farm will be the largest solar installation in the country. Israeli-based Doral Renewables LLC is working with American Electric Power on the project, which is expected to generate 1.3 gigawatts of clean energy. Construction on the project is set to begin this spring and take about three years.

Symposium speakers Nick Cohen, president and co-founder of Doral LLC, and Nathan Origer, executive director of the Pulaski County Community Development Commission, will share how the project came to fruition.

The nation's largest solar farm is coming to our back yard. ... Mammoth was quite literally too big to ignore, Smith said. "There are all sorts of logistics that are far outside any chemists' curriculum. ... They [Cohen and Origer] will discuss the motivation for wanting to do it as well the means and logistics for putting it right here in Indiana.

A presentation on the solar movement in Germany will also "shed light on" the feasibility of the solar industry in Northwest Indiana, Smith said. Even with harsh, overcast winters, Indiana can produce plenty of solar power because, Smith explained, it does not take much.

The amount of solar energy that hits the earth in one hour is more than all of humanity uses in one year, Smith explained. So we can afford to be really bad at collecting solar and it would still be significant because the scale is so massive.

Participants can register for the symposium at valpo.edu/climateconference/registration, and the event will also be livestreamed on YouTube.

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.
DECATUR  Helena Sunny Beams was chopped to death with an ax, but an inquest jury heard Wednesday the Decatur woman died trying to defend herself with her bare hands.

Macon County Coroner Michael E. Day read the results of an autopsy to the jury, which outlined in bloody detail the nature of her many injuries.

The cause of death of this 35-year-old female, Helena S. Beams, are multiple chopping wounds, causing severe injuries and a large blood loss, Day said, quoting from the autopsy report.

The injuries had a combined sharp and blunt-type pattern, consistent with a large combined blunt and sharp-edged weapon, such as an ax or hatchet. Defensive type injuries were identified on the arms and hands of the victim.

The autopsy showed that Beams had fought for her life but ultimately died from multiple blows to the head. On Jan. 27 her body was found wrapped in a blanket in a bedroom of a house in the 600 block of South Haworth Avenue, the home of her boyfriend, Daniel S. Boehme Sr. The ax used to kill her lay next to the body.

Decatur Police Detective James Weddle, giving evidence, said the 63-year-old Boehme had been the prime suspect from the start after an anonymous Crimestoppers tip said he had killed his girlfriend. Police found the body of Beams when they executed a search warrant.

Was the boyfriend present at the time the search warrant was executed? asked the coroner. Weddle said he was not. We had been told that he was basically on the run from the police, the detective added.

The jurors, who unanimously returned a verdict of homicidal death, were told that Boehme was found and arrested Jan. 31 and is now in the custody of the Macon County Jail with bail set at $2 million. He is pleading not guilty to three alternate charges of murder.

Questioned by the coroner, Weddle said witnesses had described Boehme and Beams sharing a violent relationship in which she was frequently battered.

Weddle said police inquiries revealed Boehme had indicated his guilt for the murder in several comments to friends. And one person said that he said I finally killed her this time, the detective added.

Boehme is due back in Macon County Circuit Court for a pretrial hearing April 14.

Contact Tony Reid at (217) 421-7977. Follow him on Twitter: @TonyJReid

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
HELL AND OTHER DESTINATIONS

A 21st Century Memoir

By Madeleine Albright

with Bill Woodward

A few years ago, on a summer day when the Middle East was flaring and it seemed as if the United States was ricocheting from one crisis to the next, I was sitting next to former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright at an annual foreign policy conference. You must be relieved not to be in your old job at a moment like this, I said, making small talk.

She looked at me, fixing a stare that made it clear this wasnt the first time she had heard such an inane observation. I miss it every day, she said. We changed the topic.

Now Albright has written a memoir about how she has stayed relevant in the nearly 20 years since she took the elevator down from the seventh-floor suite of the Department of State. It is by turns poignant and hilarious, as she moves from the classroom to the boardroom of the New York Stock Exchange (where someone mistakenly thought they would get a big name who wouldnt push back at $140 million executive compensation packages) to the indignities of being a former somebody.

There was, for example, the moment she arrived at a Washington hospital after falling, gashing her forehead. Bleeding, without her drivers license or insurance card, she grew frustrated as a hospital receptionist was laboriously registering her.
3. Judge Ketanji Brown Jacksons Supreme Court nomination hearings opened their second day with Senator Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat and the Senate Judiciary Committee chair, warning her that yesterday was just a throat-clearing warm-up.

Republicans combative line of questioning could be a preview of strategies theyll use in the midterm elections to attack Democrats. Is it your personal hidden agenda to incorporate critical race theory into our legal system? Senator Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, asked Judge Jackson.

The judge was also asked about her work on behalf of Guantanamo Bay detainees and whether shed been too lenient with defendants in child sexual abuse cases. She responded that nothing could be further from the truth.
BERLIN  Tesla officially began making cars in Europe on Tuesday, opening an assembly plant in a critical market where Elon Musk, the chief executive, plans to build 500,000 electric vehicles a year.

Mr. Musk escorted Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany and other officials on a tour of the huge, low-slung $7 billion plant just outside Berlin. It was constructed in a little more than two years, a speed that amazed German officials and commentators.

Electromobility will shape the mobility of the future, Mr. Scholz said after the tour.

Robert Habeck, the German vice chancellor and the countrys economy minister, said it was a special day for the region, a special day also for Germany and a special day for the mobility transformation in Germany.

Mr. Musk wrote on Twitter: Danke Deutschland!!

He celebrated the day by handing over the first 30 European-built Teslas to customers who had ordered them and been invited to the event. Tesla will build its Model Y sport utility vehicle at the plant.
The Biden administration said on Tuesday that it would roll back Trump-era tariffs on British steel and aluminum, moving to resolve a trans-Atlantic trade clash that had soured relations with a key ally.

Under the agreement, the United States will allow a certain volume of metals from the United Kingdom to be imported duty-free starting June 1. In return, Britain agreed to lift tariffs on more than $500 million worth of American whiskey, blue jeans, motorcycles and other products, removing barriers imposed on U.S. exports during the trade spats of the Trump administration.

The announcement, which came at the conclusion of two days of trade talks between British and American officials, removed some of the last remaining vestiges of the trans-Atlantic trade clashes of the last few years.

The European Union  which included the United Kingdom until 2020  imposed the tariffs on American products as retaliation for the levies that former President Donald J. Trump placed on foreign steel and aluminum in 2018. Post-Brexit, the United Kingdom maintained many of those tariffs on American goods.
Weve also learned more about the nature of the threat. It has been an open question whether Omicron is a much less severe variant of the Covid virus than earlier strains, or if it has caused much less severe disease because it had run into a wall of immunity from vaccination and prior infection in the United States, Europe and parts of Asia with high vaccination rates. The deadly outbreak in Hong Kong answers that question: Covid remains ferocious, and Omicron is lethal in an immunologically naive population, particularly among unvaccinated older people. This has caused the devastating surge in deaths there and helps explain why the United States continues to report around 1,000 deaths per day, the vast majority among people not up-to-date with vaccination.

Unfortunately, in the United States and many other high-income countries, vaccination has slowed to a trickle: Its down in the United States by more than 95 percent from the peak of 4 million vaccinations a day. In some countries of Africa, where competing health risks are substantial and the health care infrastructure is stretched thin, vaccination rates are very low and are likely to remain so for many months.

The risks for the United States are clear. BA.2 is increasing and will likely soon account for most new cases in the country. Masks have come off and approximately 60 percent of Americans, including more than one third of people above age 65  more than 15 million seniors  are not up-to-date with vaccination. This doesnt mean that BA.2 will inevitably cause a deadly surge. But it does mean that cases may increase soon, and that unvaccinated and under-vaccinated elderly and medically vulnerable people could face a deadly threat.

Leaders need to redouble efforts to get more Americans, particularly older adults, vaccinated and boosted. Also, people who are older or immunocompromised and those around them should consider masking with a more protective N95 or equivalent mask. Increasing access to rapid testing could blunt the case increase by isolating people faster and linking those who test positive to rapid treatment with medications which drastically reduce the risk of severe illness.

Improving vaccination rates may be harder with the rollback of vaccine mandates, which increased vaccine uptake and saved lives. With vaccine mandates politically or legally infeasible in some places, other strategies become increasingly important. These include ensuring that every physician offers Covid-19 vaccination to every patient at every clinical visit. Outreach programs and media campaigns can engage people without a regular doctor or who are otherwise not receiving care. Providers and health systems should reach out to every Medicare patient who may not be up-to-date to schedule vaccination.
Often, we are treated to slang in the past as something exotic that flowered, for example, among flappers in the 1920s. It can seem as if slang is something that happens when the culture sparks up for some reason, or as a way of expressing some urgently oppositional identity, such as among teenagers. But slang is also just eternal  dirty pup, doc, syndicating. Its just that traditionally, while norms of written language have been more formal, slang hasnt been written down much for posterity. We encounter slang of the past today in shards, from the occasional attempt to compile a dictionary of it, or a quick article about it, although often only capturing what is heard in its place and time.

The elusiveness of how so many people actually expressed themselves in the past is much of why I cherish the informalization of public language in our times. Before the countercultural revolution of the 1960s, public language in America was largely business-casual, in feel at least, with informal speech largely restricted to unrecorded settings. The airing of teenage slang, say, or Black slang, was considered an interesting but trivial departure from the norm, worthy of a snicker after which we would settle back into the real English, the hallowed standard variety.

But this ignored so much variety, development and even wit, ever roiling amid people living lives beyond the printed page. With the vernacularization of public language since then, and with how social media allows so many more people to express themselves in the public square, we can be sure that the way we use language now will be resonantly available to people in the future. English in its totality is, in this way, better documented than it once was.

I cant even!  the deftness of the use of even in that expression alone makes it worth the ticket. If you doubt it, try explaining to someone new to the language how even in this one conveys what you mean. Even what? Think also of the current skeptical intonation of But is it though? where on the is it though the melody jumps up about a musical fifth. If people had been saying that in the 1860s, wed never know, because even if someone had deigned to put it in print (they almost certainly wouldnt have), we couldnt have heard their voices.

More: Black internet slang and rap lyrics include yeen, short for you dont even. Yeen know is a dismissive you dont even know, with a finger-wagging flavor. Yeen may pass away, but posterity will know of it because it will live online.
Dr. Birbaumer stood by the conclusions and has taken legal action against the German Research Foundation. The results of the lawsuit are expected to be published in the next two weeks, said Marco Finetti, a spokesman for the German Research Foundation. Dr. Chaudhary says his lawyers expect to win the case.

The German Research Foundation has no knowledge of the publication of the current study and will investigate it in the coming months, Mr. Finetti said. In an email, a representative for Nature Communications who asked not to be named declined to comment on the details of how the study was vetted but expressed confidence with the process. We have rigorous policies to safeguard the integrity of the research we publish, including to ensure that research has been conducted to a high ethical standard and is reported transparently, the representative said.

I would say it is a solid study, said Natalie Mrachacz-Kersting, a brain-computer interface researcher at the University of Freiburg in Germany. She was not involved in the study and was aware of the previously retracted papers.

But Brendan Allison, researcher at the University of California San Diego, expressed reservations. This work, like other work by Birbaumer, should be taken with a massive mountain of salt given his history, Dr. Allison said. He noted that in a paper published in 2017, his own team had described being able to communicate with completely locked-in patients with basic yes or no answers.

The results hold potential promise for patients in similarly unresponsive situations, including minimally conscious and comatose states, as well as the rising number of people diagnosed with ALS worldwide every year. That number is projected to reach 300,000 by 2040.

Its a game-changer, said Steven Laureys, a neurologist and researcher who leads the Coma Science Group at the University of Liege in Belgium and was not involved in the study. The technology could have ethical ramifications in discussions surrounding euthanasia for patients in locked-in or vegetative states, he added: Its really great to see this moving forward, giving patients a voice in their own decisions.
WASHINGTON  Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson alternated between two kinds of answers on her first day of facing questions at her Supreme Court confirmation hearing on Tuesday. On legal issues, she was opaque and noncommittal, emphasizing the limits of the judicial role.

But on more concrete matters, she was direct and even impassioned. She talked forcefully about the terrible and lasting trauma caused by the sexual abuse of children, the fraught aftermath of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, and the crucial role criminal defense lawyers play in upholding constitutional values.

That two-step helped neutralize some of the lines of attack developed by Republicans since President Biden announced Judge Jacksons nomination last month: that she would let politics play a role in her work on the Supreme Court and that aspects of her professional background indicated that she was out of the legal mainstream.

In the legal realm, she insisted that she had no judicial philosophy but only what she described as a methodology bordering on the robotic, one that considered the parties submissions and then applied the relevant law to the facts in the record.
MANZINI - Government has declined a proposal by Eswatini Principals Association (EPA), to defer the opening of schools for the 2022 calendar year, especially the first term.

The principals association had officially written a proposal to the Ministry of Education and Training, in particular to the office of the principal secretary (PS). The letter, which was signed by EPA Secretary General (SG) Mduduzi Masilela, is dated March 8, 2022 and titled; Re; proposal to review the school calendar - 2022. This was confirmed by EPA President Welcome Mhlanga, who said the national executive committee (NEC) of the association had been inundated with a number of concerns from their members regarding challenges which might be the result of the dates of the 2022 school calendar - in particular, the start of the first term.

Overwhelmed

He said in their submissions to the ministry; they mentioned that they were of the view that the one-week school break (March 25, 2022 to April 5, 2022) was not reasonable for them. He said teachers needed time to rest as they were overwhelmed. One reason he mentioned was that delivering on the compressed syllabus under intense pressure to cover most of it, balancing teaching and also supervising the classes of their colleagues who were away to mark the external examinations, was and would continue to be strenuous. Furthermore, Mhlanga said the teachers who remained behind still had to prepare and mark the internal examinations, as well as compile progress reports for the learners. Again, he said marking of the external examinations was energy-consuming and exerted further stress to meet the set deadlines. In that regard, the teachers will need to rest and rejuvenate the mind in preparation for the first term of 2022, the EPA president said.

Furthermore, he said some teachers would be marking the Form V external examinations after March 31, 2022 and they would need to rest thereafter. On another note, he said the admission process of new learners required time and was undertaken by both the school management and the admissions committee, which comprised of teachers. On top of that, he argued that parents also needed sufficient time to look for spaces and make the necessary arrangements, as per the school requirements for admission, like payment of school fees and submission of proof of payments to the schools. The one week is not sufficient to carry out this activity, he said.

Thereafter, the leader of the principals associations said teachers, through the heads of department, needed time to prepare mini budgets, which would be incorporated into the main school budget. He said teachers had to juggle this exercise with the other instructional responsibilities mentioned above. Moreover, he added that the school committees also required time to convene parents meetings for the presentation of financial reports as well as the budget of the institutions, for the parents approval of new fees and other pertinent school matters.

It is against the above chronology of activities that the EPA proposes a school break of two weeks; by closing schools on March 25, 2022 and reopening on April 12, 2022, instead April 5, 2022, Mhlanga said. Meanwhile, the PS in the Ministry of Education and Training, Bhekithemba Gama, said they received the proposed from the principals association. However, he said their proposal was declined.

Request

He said the request was denied because as a ministry, they reported to international bodies where there were minimum standards set for operations of schools. In particular, the PS said the number of hours spent in school mattered. The ministry claimed that it responded to the principals association through an electronic mail and fax last Friday, March 18, 2022. However, the EPA leadership said they did not receive feedback from the ministry. As such, they said they would make a follow-up today. It is worth noting that this academic year, there would be two terms, instead of three. This was according to an announcement which was made by the Minister of Education and Training, Lady Mabuza, on January 21, 2022.
But with no way to collect damages, the rulings seemed like symbolic gestures  until last fall, after the government of Afghanistan collapsed during the Taliban takeover. As part of the fallout, the Federal Reserve of New York blocked access to an account for the Afghan central bank  known as Da Afghanistan Bank or D.A.B.  in which it had deposits of about $7 billion.

In September, lawyers for a group of about 150 Sept. 11 victims, known as the Havlish case, persuaded a judge to send a U.S. marshal to serve the legal department of the Federal Reserve of New York with a writ of execution to begin seizing the Afghan bank funds to pay off its judgment against the Taliban, including more than $2 billion in compensatory damages.

(A smaller group of State Department victims of an attack linked to the Taliban, known as the Doe case, also began the process of trying to seize some of the funds to pay off a $137 million judgment debt in September.)

Meanwhile, the Biden administration intervened, saying it wanted to weigh in on what would serve the national interest. In February, President Biden issued an executive order that invoked emergency power to seize half of the central bank assets for what the government described as a fund to help the Afghan people. But the White House left behind the other half of the money for the Sept. 11 families to continue pursuing in court.

In the meantime, controversies had erupted around that effort. One dispute concerned whether it was proper for any of the Afghan funds to be used to pay off Sept. 11 families as an immense humanitarian disaster is unfolding in Afghanistan. The other dispute centered on how any such funds to terrorism victims should be allocated, if a court were to decide they can legitimately be used to pay off the Talibans default judgment debts.
At the event, Laxalt criticized the 2020 Trump campaign and outside groups for their handling of election-fraud claims, saying that they went on the offensive too late. In 2020, it was nothing, he said, according to the audio recording. And then the campaign was late and the party was late. So, its just different now. Theres a lot of groups that are saying theres election fraud.

And should he be unable to find help, Laxalt pledged that his campaign would shoulder the cost of bringing in lawyers and mapping out a strategy, even at the expense of other core programs necessary to run a campaign.

If I get into July and Im like, Dear God, no ones going to do this right, we will pay from our campaign, which means less voter contact for the reason you said, Laxalt told an attendee. If someones not going to do it, weve got to do it. And Im willing to lose on the other side because were going to take it off.

The biggest issue of the campaign

Of course, there was no widespread fraud in the Nevada presidential election in 2020, nor anywhere else in the country, as numerous audits, recounts, court challenges and investigations have confirmed. The secretary of state in Nevada spent more than 125 hours investigating allegations brought by the Nevada Republican Party and found no widespread fraud. And there has been no evidence in the run-up to this years election of any fraud in the state.

But the pledge from Laxalt is yet another indication of how vital the specter of voter fraud remains to the Republican base, an issue deemed so critical that a statewide candidate would be willing to sacrifice one of the most essential campaign tasks to ensure a litigation path was in place, months before any actual voting occurred.
WASHINGTON  Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson on Tuesday pushed back on Republican attacks on her record, defending her work representing terrorism detainees and sentencing child sex abusers as she presented herself as a firm believer in judicial restraint fit to be confirmed to a seat on the Supreme Court.

Under intense questioning from senators in a daylong hearing on her nomination, Judge Jackson said repeatedly that she understood the narrow role that judges played in American government and refused to be drawn into political fights such as whether seats should be added to the Supreme Court.

I am acutely aware that as a judge in our system, I have limited power, and I am trying in every case to stay in my lane, she said, a formulation she repeated several times during hours of interrogation in what Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, called a trial by ordeal.

I dont think anyone can look at my record and say it is pointing in one direction or another, that it is supporting one viewpoint or another, she told senators.
WASHINGTON  After all of the entreaties from top Republicans to show respect at Judge Ketanji Brown Jacksons confirmation hearings, Senator Ted Cruz on Tuesday afternoon chose to grill the first Black woman nominated for the Supreme Court on her views on critical race theory and insinuate that she was soft on child sexual abuse.

The message from the Texas Republican seemed clear: A Black woman vying for a lifetime appointment on the highest court in the land would, Mr. Cruz suggested, coddle criminals, go easy on pedophiles and subject white people to the view that they were, by nature, oppressors.

The attack, the most dramatic of several launched from inside and outside the Senate Judiciary Committees hearing room, contained barely coded appeals to racism and clear nods to the fringes of the conservative world. Two other Republican senators, Josh Hawley of Missouri and Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, had already signaled they would go after Judge Jackson by accusing her of having a soft spot for criminals, especially pedophiles, and an allegiance to woke racialized education. Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, also pressed the issue on Tuesday night.

None of those issues were connected to cases coming before the Supreme Court  or to cases ever decided by the court. They were amplified outside the chamber by institutional Republicans and the conservative media. Fox News ran a headline reading Ketanji Brown Jackson serves on board of school that promotes critical race theory, and the Republican National Committee shared a GIF on Twitter showing the judges picture with her initials, KBJ, crossed out and replaced by CRT.
South Africa will begin lifting Covid-19 restrictions on Wednesday, President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Tuesday in an address that marked the start of what he called a new era in the countrys fight against the pandemic.

Masks will no longer be required outdoors in South Africa but will continue to be required in public indoor spaces, including shops, offices and public transportation.

Indoor and outdoor venues that require proof of vaccination or a negative test no more than 72 hours old will be allowed to fill up to 50 percent of their capacity. Venues without such requirements must continue to adhere to the existing limits of 1,000 people indoors and 2,000 people outdoors.

The maximum capacity at funerals will double, to 200 attendees from 100. Post-funeral gatherings remain prohibited.
As Russian forces struggled to make progress across Ukraine, losing control of a contested town west of the capital, Moscow advanced on a different front on Tuesday, expanding the toughest crackdown on dissent during President Vladimir V. Putins 22 years in power.

In what appeared to be a signal move in that expansion, a Russian court sentenced the already imprisoned opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny to nine years in prison on fraud charges. The verdict was widely seen as a way to keep him behind bars as the Kremlin tries to tightly control the wars narrative at home amid glimmers of defiance. Mr. Navalny has been urging Russians to protest the invasion via letters from jail that his lawyers post on social media.

The move came as Russia amended an already draconian censorship law to make discrediting the activities abroad of all government bodies  not just the military  a potentially criminal offense. The law punishes anyone spreading false information about the invasion with up to 15 years in prison. Russia has taken other moves to quell information, including blocking access to Facebook.

On the ground, Ukrainians continued to mount a spirited defense of the capital, Kyiv, and said they had raised the blue and gold Ukrainian flag over Makariv, a town about 40 miles to the west, where control has gone back and forth between Russian forces and Ukrainians. Tuesdays announcement reflected Ukrainian efforts to keep Russian forces from encircling Kyiv. After 26 days of fighting, a senior U.S. defense department official said that the Russians had not been able to advance beyond nine miles northwest of Kyiv or 18 miles from the citys east  essentially where they were last week.
President Biden is heading to Brussels on Wednesday to meet with NATO allies and is expected to announce new sanctions aimed at Russian lawmakers as the United States and its allies aim to pressure Russia from all sides. His trip comes as Ukrainian forces have mounted a counteroffensive that they say has retaken ground outside Kyiv.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said in an address to his nation Wednesday morning that any new sanctions should be aimed at people responsible for this war and that efforts to force Russia to peace are difficult and sometimes scandalous but that step by step we are moving forward.

On the ground, Ukraines forces have slowed Russias advance, though the heavily armed Russian army continues to try pounding Ukrainian cities and people into submission.

Ukrainian forces have launched counteroffensives on multiple fronts, and military officials say they retook a key town outside Kyiv on Tuesday. In the south of the country, they have sought to reclaim the Kherson region.
Russia would consider using its nuclear weapons if it felt there was an existential threat for our country, a Kremlin spokesman said in an English-language television interview on Tuesday. The spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, made the comment after describing Ukraine, the neighboring country Russia invaded a month ago, as having been created by anti-Russian Western powers.

Mr. Peskov was speaking in an interview with CNNs Christiane Amanpour. Video excerpts from the interview were posted on her Twitter account.

In it, Ms. Amanpour asked Mr. Peskov several times whether Russias president, Vladimir V. Putin, intended to use nuclear weapons.
Ukrainian forces pressed to thwart the Russian invasion, mounting counteroffensives on multiple fronts and retaking a town outside of Kyiv on Tuesday, while the more heavily armed Russians, unable so far to gain a decisive upper hand, tried to pound Ukraines cities and people into submission.

As the fighting seesawed around Kyiv, Ukrainian military officials said their forces had prevailed in Makariv, a key crossroads on the western approaches to the city, while in the south of the country they sought to reclaim the Kherson region. The southern port of Mariupol still endured a brutal siege, however, with the government saying that some 100,000 civilians remained trapped in that ruined city with little food, water, power or heat.

This war will not end easily or rapidly, Jake Sullivan, the U.S. national security adviser, told reporters on the eve of President Bidens departure for a NATO summit in Europe.

Mr. Biden is set to impose sanctions this week on hundreds of members of the State Duma, Russias lower house of Parliament, according to a person familiar with the planned announcement.
PARIS  Yvan Colonna, a Corsican activist who was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the murder of a top French official, and who became a symbol of Corsicas nationalist movement and of the Mediterranean islands ambivalent relations with mainland France, died on Monday in a hospital in Marseille. He was 61.

His lawyers confirmed his death in a statement.

Mr. Colonna died three weeks after being strangled and suffocated by another inmate in a prison on the French mainland, where he was serving a life sentence for the 1998 murder of Claude Erignac, a government-appointed prefect in Corsica.

The prison attack had left Mr. Colonna in a coma, infuriating many in Corsica and sparking violent protests. Corsica is closer to Italy than France in language, culture and geography, and it is home to a nationalist movement that has mostly renounced violence but remains deeply rooted on the island.

His death is an injustice and a tragedy that will mark Corsicas contemporary history and its people, Gilles Simeoni, Mr. Colonnas former lawyer and the head of the executive council that oversees Corsica, said in a statement on Tuesday.
Bank ABC (Arab Banking Corporation) has announced that its shareholders have approved the distribution of cash dividends worth $31 million (30% of the groups annual profits) for the financial year ended December 31 2021.

The announcement was made at its Annual Ordinary General Meeting (AGM) held virtually today (March 23). In addition to the AGM, the bank had held an Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) this year, both chaired by the Chairman of the Group Board, Saddek Omar El Kaber.

During the AGM, the shareholders approved, amongst other resolutions, the consolidated financial statements for the financial year ended December 31, 2021, with a net profit attributable to shareholders of $100 million, underpinned by excellent revenue growth and normalised ECL charges.

The distribution of approximately 30% of the Bank ABCs annual profits will ensure that the group retains sufficient equity to drive future growth without depleting its capital ratios.

During the EGM, Bank ABC obtained the shareholders approval for an issuance of $390 million AT1 securities, which will increase the Banks Tier 1 capital ratio by approximately 130 basis points, taking it back above 17%.

Additionally, the Bank obtained the shareholders approval to increase its authorised share capital from $3.5 billion to $4.5 billion, which will provide for any capital actions necessary to support future growth.

Another key outcome of the AGM was the election and appointment of the members for the Groups Board of Directors on its 14th term for three years.

Addressing the gathering, Chairman Saddek Omar El Kaber said: "As we welcome the new board of the Bank and we thank the outgoing board for its achievements, we also celebrate the Banks robust results, with a net profit of $100 million, which demonstrate the strength and resilience of our ambitious strategy."

"Moreover, our solid balance sheet and prudent and disciplined governance and risk management approach, together with our investments in building a digitally driven Bank of the future and our historic acquisition in Egypt, position us well for significant further growth in 2022," he added.-TradeArabia News Service
While Thomasos paintings refer to the systems and structures that shape our world, they are also deeply personal. The thick, opaque and accumulating forms also reference the sense of exile felt by her father, who died three months before she went to graduate school. In fact, Displaced Burial is thought to have been a memorial to him as much as to the enslaved housed on Goree Island off Senegal before their departures to the Americas, where she had visited during her travels. She described her father as a brilliant physicist and mathematician whom I saw suffer under racism in Canada. I thought of my father to be a compelling character, a typical immigrant story of hard work and, ultimately, the sacrifice of ones own life for his familys well-being and potential.

An immigrant twice over, Thomasos was born in Trinidad in 1964, moved with her family to Toronto as a child in 1970, and to the United States in 1987. Her grandfather, Clytus Arnold Thomasos, was the first and longest serving Black speaker of the House in the Parliament of Trinidad and Tobago, from 1961 to 1981.

She received a B.A. in art and art history from the University of Toronto in 1987 and an M.F.A. at the Yale University School of Art in 1989. Thomasos lived in the East Village with her husband, Samein Priester, and their daughter, Syann, until her untimely death in July 2012. She was a professor at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey.

While organizing the Biennial David and I had discussed the importance of mapping the connections between artists we were seeing and figures who had not received the recognition that they deserved. We opened the door to what we now lovingly describe as our ghosts with Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, an American artist and writer of South Korean birth, as well as Steve Cannon, the poet and playwright who founded the interdisciplinary gallery and magazine A Gathering of the Tribes, and it was as if a clarion call went out. Others began to show up.
Even before the artist Robert Rauschenberg famously objected to seeing a 1958 painting he originally sold for $900 flip for $85,000 in 1973, artists have been frustrated by not receiving royalties for their work when it changes hands.

Previous efforts to address this over the years have failed. But now, as musicians and other creative producers assert more control over their future sales and blockchain technology has allowed for easier tracking of intellectual property, two Stanford alumni have started a business to help visual artists reap the financial rewards when their work is resold privately or comes up for auction, in some cases at many multiples of the original price.

There has been exponential growth in the secondary market, but artists have largely been left behind, even though they are essential to it, Max Kendrick, one of the founders, said. How do we create a more sustainable model for the artist and the galleries that support them?

Charlie Jarvis, 24, a computer scientist, and Kendrick, 36, a former diplomat and a son of the sculptor Mel Kendrick, started the company, called Fairchain, in 2019. Little by little, it is gaining traction with artists and gallerists.
A faltering Russian advance

Russian progress has slowed: Ukrainian forces have mounted multiple counteroffensives, and they said yesterday they had recaptured the strategic town of Makariv, west of Kyiv. Satellite imagery also shows that Russia has withdrawn most of its helicopters from the airport in Kherson, the largest city that it had captured so far.

Russian military losses have mounted: The Pentagon has assessed that its combat power in Ukraine has dipped below 90 percent of its original force for the first time.

Now, questions are mounting about President Vladimir Putins leadership, as deaths of high-ranking officials continue to climb. Retired military officials are leveling thinly veiled criticisms of the invasion and the quality of the intelligence that preceded it. The enemy was underestimated in every aspect, one former leader said.

Amid the military disappointments in Ukraine, a Russian court sentenced the already imprisoned opposition leader Aleksei Navalny to nine years in prison on fraud charges. The move is widely seen as a Kremlin attempt to control the wars narrative: Navalny, via letters from jail that his lawyers post to social media, has been urging Russians to protest the invasion.
The chief executives of the largest U.S. airlines asked President Biden on Wednesday to allow a federal mask mandate at airports and on planes to expire next month.

The group also asked that the government drop a requirement that visitors from abroad provide a negative coronavirus test before traveling to the United States.

The persistent and steady decline of hospitalization and death rates are the most compelling indicators that our country is well protected against severe disease from Covid-19, the chief executives of American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, United Airlines and several other passenger and cargo carriers wrote in a letter to Mr. Biden.

Given that we have entered a different phase of dealing with this virus, we strongly support your view that Covid-19 need no longer control our lives, they said, citing a phrase the president used in his State of the Union address earlier this month.
The Biden administration will allow some products imported from China to once again bypass stiff tariffs imposed by President Donald J. Trump, the Office of the United States Trade Representative said on Wednesday.

The trade office said it would reinstate certain tariff exclusions that had expired at the end of 2020, allowing some companies to avoid the taxes on Chinese products that could not be obtained elsewhere.

Mr. Trump hit China with tariffs on $360 billion worth of goods in the midst of a trade war between Washington and Beijing. Amid business outcry, the Trump administration allowed certain products to avoid the tariffs. But Mr. Trump declined to extend those exclusions at the end of his term, a decision that angered many business leaders.

The decision announced on Wednesday reinstates 352 of the 549 eligible exemptions, keeping them in place through the end of 2022.
Plans for a meeting this week between Ms. Yellen and lawmakers were reported earlier by Axios.

Lawmakers have been working on a variety of bills that would tighten sanctions and restrict trade with Russia. The Biden administration has broad authority to act alone on many of these measures, but Congress sometimes enacts legislation to pressure or force action from the White House.

The sanctions on gold reserves were proposed earlier this month and would block Russia from selling gold on international markets. The senators suggested that Russias $130 billion worth of gold reserves were a loophole in the sanctions that were imposed on Russias central bank. They said that Russia was laundering money through gold by buying and selling it for high-value currency.

Eswar Prasad, a former official at the International Monetary Fund, said that targeting gold would be another step in tightening the financial noose around Russia.

Gold sales are not specifically banned by the existing sanctions that are in place. The lawmakers who drafted the legislation are seeking to understand why the Treasury Department appears to be reluctant to impose sanctions on Russias gold reserves, according to one of the people with knowledge of their thinking.

The Treasury Department has not said that it is seeing Russia use gold to evade sanctions, though it has made clear that use of alternative assets such as cryptocurrencies would be a violation of U.S. law.
Since first promising in 2019 to give away her entire fortune, the billionaire MacKenzie Scott has handed out over $12 billion to nonprofits, per a tally of her publicly announced gifts since 2020. That enormous sum has vaulted her to the top ranks of philanthropists worldwide.

In her latest essay on the website Medium on Wednesday, Ms. Scott described an additional $3.9 billion in gifts to 465 nonprofits in just the last nine months, including funds dedicated to areas she had given to in the past, such as climate and education, as well as newly pressing needs, like Ukraine relief efforts.

Our teams focus over these last nine months has included some new areas, but as always our aim has been to support the needs of underrepresented people from groups of all kinds, Ms. Scott wrote.

On Wednesday, Habitat for Humanity International announced that Ms. Scott had donated $436 million to the group and 84 affiliates. She also gave $275 million to Planned Parenthoods national office and 21 affiliates around the country, which the group called the largest gift from a single donor in its history.
BERLIN  A boycott of Russian oil and gas would have severe economic and social consequences in Germany and the rest of Europe, Chancellor Olaf Scholz told lawmakers on Wednesday.

Conceding that Germany has grown dependent on Russia for its energy, Mr. Scholz vowed to end its reliance as quickly as possible, but said: To do so from one day to the next would mean plunging our country and all of Europe into recession.

Hundreds of thousands of jobs would be at risk, he added, speaking on the floor of the Bundestag, the German legislature.

The United States and some eastern European Union countries, such as Poland and the Baltic States, have been pressuring the bloc to boycott Russian energy exports.
Stellantis and a partner, LG Energy Solution, said on Wednesday that they would jointly build a battery plant in Windsor, Ontario, to provide the critical components for a range of electric Jeeps and trucks the automaker aims to introduce over the next several years.

The two companies expect to invest $4.1 billion in the factory and create 2,500 jobs. Stellantis, which was formed last year through a merger of Fiat Chrysler and the French automaker Peugeot, has long operated a minivan plant in Windsor.

The new factory is the latest in a series of plants that automakers have said they will build in North America as they rush to produce electric cars and trucks and catch up to Tesla, which dominates the fast-growing market for electrics. General Motors expects a battery plant in Lordstown, Ohio, to start production this summer, and it is building a second one in Tennessee. Ford Motor has announced plans to build two battery plants in Kentucky and a third in Tennessee. Toyota has chosen North Carolina for a battery plant.

Stellantis said this month that it aimed to introduce 25 electric vehicles in the United States by 2030 and planned to build at least two battery plants in North America. The new models include an electric Jeep to be introduced next year and an electric Ram pickup truck in 2024.
The Economic Development Board (EDB) Mauritius has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry to boost bilateral trade and investment opportunities across strategic sectors.

As part of the agreement, EDB Mauritius will establish a representative office within the premise of Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry for an initial period of two years.

The key objectives of the EDB Dubai Office will be to identify trade and investment opportunities which will benefit UAE and Mauritian businesses with a specific focus on the Financial Services, ICT, Manufacturing, Healthcare, Logistics, Ocean Economy, Renewable Energy and Property Development sectors.

Stronger business relations

Both parties have committed to establishing a framework for developing stronger business relations and cooperation procedures to enhance the achievement of their respective economic objectives and create new channels of business exchange.

The MoU also aims to strengthen institutional relations and capacity building through cooperation, exchange of information and exchange of best practices.

Prithvirajsing Roopun GCSK, President of the Republic of Mauritius and head of the Mauritius delegation at the MoU signing ceremony, said: Throughout our successful presence at Expo 2020 Dubai, we have observed several economic ambitions that are shared between the UAE and Mauritius. The commitment and progress in areas such as financial services, technology, and energy, among others, in the UAE is truly remarkable.

Abdul Aziz Al Ghurair, Chairman of Dubai Chambers, congratulated the Economic Development Board of Mauritius for setting up their representative office at Dubai Chamber of Commerce, and the partnership established by the MoU signing.

New channels of exchange

The agreement lays the groundwork for developing stronger business relations and create new channels of business exchange, Al Ghurair explained, describing the strategic move and signing as important developments that will take Dubais trade relations with Mauritius to the next level and create many bilateral business opportunities.

The MoU signing ceremony took place on March 16 at the Dubai Chamber of Commerce and in the presence of Al Ghurair, Roopun GCSK and Dr Renganaden Padayachy, Minister of Finance, Economic Planning & Development.

The delegation was led by the President of the Republic of Mauritius, who arrived in Dubai on March 15 to commemorate Mauritius national day celebrations at Expo 2020 and to bear witness to the agreement.

Accompanying the President was Minister of Foreign Affairs, Regional Integration and International Trade; Minister of Finance, Economic Planning and Development; Secretary to Cabinet and Head of the Civil Service; Ambassador of Mauritius to the UAE; Chairman of EDB Mauritius and CEO of EDB Mauritius among other senior government representatives. Signing on behalf of the Dubai Chamber of Commerce was Hassan Al Hashemy, Vice President - International Relations at Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry in the presence of Ken Poonoosamy, CEO of EDB Mauritius.

Industry events at Expo 2020

The agreement comes after more than five months since Expo 2020 Dubai began. During this time, EDB Mauritius has hosted a range of successful industry events to showcase the nations leading capabilities and potential in financial services, real estate, logistics and distribution, and responsible manufacturing.

The signing ceremony took place shortly after Mauritius national day festivities at Expo 2020 which included a cultural show at Al Wasl plaza and a public dodo collage contest at the Mauritius Pavilion, located in the Opportunity District.-- TradeArabia News Service
The language in the C.I.A. memo was unequivocal: The 3,500-mile gas pipeline from Siberia to Germany is a direct threat to the future of Western Europe, it said, creating serious repercussions from a dangerous reliance on Russian fuel.

The agency wasnt briefing President Biden today. It was advising President Reagan more than four decades ago.

The memo was prescient. That Soviet-era pipeline, the subject of a bitter fight during the Reagan administration, marked the start of Europes heavy dependence on Russian natural gas to heat homes and fuel industry. However, those gas purchases now help fund Vladimir V. Putins war machine in Ukraine, despite worldwide condemnation of the attacks and global efforts to punish Russia financially.

In 1981, Reagan imposed sanctions to try to block the pipeline, a major Soviet initiative designed to carry huge amounts of fuel to Americas critical allies in Europe. But he swiftly faced stiff opposition  not just from the Kremlin and European nations eager for a cheap source of gas, but also from a powerful lobby close to home: oil and gas companies that stood to profit from access to Russias gargantuan gas reserves.
Pfizer is recalling some shipments of its blood pressure drug Accuretic, as well as authorized generic versions of the medication, saying that a cancer-causing compound in those lots exceeded the acceptable daily intake level.

The compound in the medication is nitrosamine, which is also found in water and beer as well as some foods including bacon and grilled meats. It is believed to pose a small risk of cancer in patients taking the drugs for an extended time.

Such recalls have become common in recent years as private labs and companies have detected cancer-causing impurities and set off wide recalls, especially in blood pressure drugs. In September 2020, the Food and Drug Administration urged companies to look for these compounds on a regular basis. The agency announced another nitrosamine-related recall on Wednesday for a Sandoz drug meant to reduce discomfort related to painful musculoskeletal conditions.

In 2018, the F.D.A. announced a recall of medications that contain valsartan after NDMA, a probable carcinogen, was discovered in them.
Two doses of Chinas Sinovac vaccine offered older people only a moderately high level of protection against severe disease and death from Covid-19, but a third dose significantly bolstered their defenses, according to a new study by scientists in Hong Kong.

The study, based on patients infected during the current devastating Omicron wave in Hong Kong, serves as a cautionary note for mainland China, where Sinovac is a pillar of the countrys vaccination program. Many older people there have yet to receive booster shots.

For people 60 and older, two Sinovac doses were 72 percent effective against severe or fatal Covid-19 and 77 percent effective against Covid-related death, the study found. Those levels of protection were lower than those provided by two Pfizer-BioNTech doses. The same study found they were 90 percent effective against severe or fatal Covid and 92 percent effective against death among Hong Kong residents of the same age group.

A Sinovac booster shot helped considerably, proving to be 98 percent effective against severe or fatal Covid among people at least 60 years old, the study found.
An auspicious first feature, Barney Platts-Millss Bronco Bullfrog fell between the cracks  a belated example of British kitchen sink naturalism that arrived in 1969 before the wave of disaffected youth films by Mike Leigh and Alan Parker.

Still, the writer-director Platts-Mills lived to see his movie restored and revived, if not to enjoy its American rediscovery, heralded by a weeklong run at Film Forum in New York.

Platts-Mills intended Bronco Bullfrog as a British equivalent of Italian neo-realism: A cast of nonactors recruited from the streets of Londons depressed East End enact a story that might have been their own. Indeed, the movie grew out of a short documentary, Everybodys an Actor, Shakespeare Said, that Platts-Mills made about an improvisatory workshop established by the radical theater artist Joan Littlewood in the neighborhood.

The camera tilts down from smoky factories to a world of grimy alleys, dreary housing projects and aimless teenagers, who are introduced smashing into a cheap cafe to find nothing more than a few pence and some stale cakes  the first of many disappointments. A similarly barren establishment is where diffident Del (Del Walker), 17, an apprentice welder with a bad Beatles haircut, first courts discomfited Irene (Anne Gooding), a gawky 15-year-old schoolgirl in a micro mini.
A judge on New York States highest court could face removal from the bench for failing to comply with the states Covid vaccination mandate, according to court guidelines and state officials.

Jenny Rivera, an associate judge on the state Court of Appeals, has participated remotely in the courts activities since the fall, when the state court systems vaccination mandate took effect and unvaccinated employees were barred from court facilities.

She is now one of four state judges who face referral to the states Commission on Judicial Conduct, according to a person familiar with the process who spoke on background to discuss a personnel matter. The commission could move to admonish Judge Rivera, or remove her from the bench.

Judge Rivera, 61, was nominated to the Court of Appeals in 2013 by former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and confirmed by the State Senate to a 14-year term. She had previously served as a tenured professor at the City University of New York School of Law, where she directed the schools center on Latino and Latina rights and equality.
While the clinics will help certain parents by making vaccines easier to access, they may not be enough to convince others, who have not been persuaded about the safety and efficacy of the shots and who in some cases have absorbed misinformation about them. One surefire way to improve vaccination rates would be to mandate the shots, some experts said.

I think clinics will help, it helps remove the logistical barriers, but they only get the vaccination rates so far, said Dr. Denis Nash, an epidemiologist at the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy.

I would imagine that to get the vaccination coverage up there for kids, vaccine requirements would be the way to do it, he added.

While more than 87 percent of adults and 79 percent of children ages 13 to 17 in New York City are fully vaccinated, according to city data, the same is true for just about 45 percent of those ages 5 to 12. (The national vaccination rate for children ages 5 to 12 is even lower, at 27 percent, according to The New York Timess database.)

White children ages 5 to 17 have the lowest vaccination rate in the city: Forty percent are fully vaccinated, compared to 43 percent of Black children, 54 percent of Latino children and 99 percent of Asian children, according to city data.

The city has required teachers and school staff to be vaccinated, but there is no such requirement for students. Early this month the Supreme Court rejected the latest effort by New York City teachers to challenge the vaccine mandate.

The citys new health commissioner, Dr. Ashwin Vasan, said on Tuesday that he was weighing a vaccine mandate for public school students. He said that vaccination rates for 5- to 11-year-olds, the most recent age group to become eligible for the shots, were too low and that health and education officials were working to raise them.
The M.T.A. cannot compel a return to daily commuting. But Mr. Davey said he planned to focus on the factors within its control: reliable service, boosting some of the slowest buses in the country and public safety.

We cant tell employers to bring employees back, he said. But on the flip side, if the employees dont feel safe or were not providing good service, theyre not going to want to come back.

While overseeing the Boston system, Mr. Davey was criticized for implementing fare hikes that some transit advocates said burdened working-class and older people and for not doing more to reduce delays. Working in the private sector in recent years, Mr. Davey has focused on transportation issues, but he has not managed the daily operations of a public transit agency in a decade.

Though he has spent most of his life in Massachusetts, Mr. Davey is not inexperienced with New Yorks transit system. He worked at a law firm in Manhattan from 1999 to 2002 and commuted daily by subway from the Upper East Side.

In 2003, Mr. Davey began working for the Massachusetts Bay Commuter Railroad Company in Boston, which operated the Boston areas commuter rail system. After becoming general manager there, he was tapped in 2010 to lead the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, the transit system serving greater Boston.

New York Citys transit system dwarfs Bostons. When Mr. Davey was in charge, he oversaw about 6,000 employees, and Bostons subways, buses and rails carried about 1.3 million riders every weekday.

But Mr. Davey said that he believed the two systems were also similar.

Boston and New York are the oldest systems in the United States, he said. So maintenance and lack of capital investment were some of the big issues there.
Pundits like to say demography is destiny, but the people who know the subject best  demographers  dont entirely agree. Russias invasion of Ukraine is an example of how a purely demographic analysis can be more confounding than clarifying, says Jennifer Sciubba, the author of a forthcoming book, 8 Billion and Counting: How Sex, Death and Migration Shape Our World.

After the breakup of the Soviet Union, many experts viewed its remnant, Russia, as a lessened threat because of its low birthrate and high death rate, says Sciubba. In her book she cites Robert Gates, who served as secretary of defense under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama from 2006 to 2011. In a 2009 article in Foreign Affairs, Gates, who has a doctorate in Russian and Soviet history from Georgetown University, wrote that Russias nonnuclear forces were weaker than those of the Soviet Union and adverse demographic trends in Russia will likely keep those conventional forces in check.

Sciubba, who has a doctorate from the University of Maryland and teaches at Rhodes College in Memphis, had heard that argument before. When I worked in the Pentagon in the mid-2000s, people were eager to write off Russia because of its dire demographics, she writes in 8 Billion and Counting. (President Vladimir Putin of Russia himself said in 2006 that population decline was the biggest crisis facing the country.)
But this leads to the second point, which is that dissent can still be important in cases where the interventionists are initially correct. Our decision to topple the Taliban in 2001, for instance, remains the right and necessary call in hindsight, notwithstanding the debacles that followed. But that didnt make Lees dissenting vote any less important  because it anticipated the disaster of our nation-building effort, the over-expansive application of the authorization to use military force, the various abuses of presidential power in the War on Terror.

Likewise, in the current moment theres no way to know for sure whether Thomas Massies libertarian warnings about the Houses measures  that theyre overly broad, escalatory and liable to presidential abuse  will be borne out by events. But its entirely possible for arming Ukraine to be good policy and for Massie to be right that some elements of the American response to Russian aggression could go badly or disastrously astray.

Finally, dissent matters because the potential scale of a disastrous outcome in a conflict with Russia is so much greater than even the worst-case scenarios in other recent wars. Lets say, for the sake of argument, that because of the Biden administrations caution, theres only a 5 percent chance that our support for Ukraine leads to unexpected escalation, to the American militarys direct involvement in the war. Whereas if you looked at the Bush administrations policy toward Iraq in late 2002, you would have said that the odds of a war for regime change in that case were well over 50 percent.

On that level, the Biden policy seems much safer for a cautious realist to support. But that hypothetical 5 percent risk carries with it some still-more-fractional risk of nuclear escalation, which is a much more existential danger than even the more disastrous scenarios for Iraq. That has to create its own distinctive set of calculations. Even if the Biden policy is the best course, you still need an unusual level of vigilance, a somewhat hyperactive caution, around the possibility of escalation. And here the anticipatory critique of elite failure that were getting from the populists becomes valuable: Not because it will necessarily be vindicated, but because even a small risk of elite folly is worth worrying over when nuclear weapons are potentially involved.

For a practical example of that folly from Republican politics, consider the G.O.P. Senate primary in Ohio, where J.D. Vance has been running as a populist traitor to the intelligentsia that helped make his Hillbilly Elegy a best seller. (Full disclosure: I used to have long conversations with Vance about the future of the G.O.P., if youd like to hold me responsible for the tone of his campaign.) That populist pitch has included a strong dose of anti-interventionism, which led him to declare his indifference to what happens to Ukraine, relative to domestic concerns, just before Vladimir Putin gave the order to invade.

Its a comment that has been highlighted and condemned by populisms critics since the invasion, and in the recent Republican Senate debate Vance took predictable fire over the issue. But in the same debate the two candidates who are seemingly ahead of him in the polls, Mike Gibbons and Josh Mandel, both endorsed an improbable halfway kind of escalation  a no-fly zone somehow imposed by Europeans rather than Americans, with the idea that this would thread the needle between thwarting Russia and accidentally starting World War III.

It was an idea that only Vance wholeheartedly condemned, and he was right. Under wartime conditions, the escalatory fantasies of his rivals  have our European allies close Ukraines skies, and then when they get into a shooting war with Russia, we do  what?  carry a more immediate risk than the dangers of populist indifference, the flaws of isolationist dissent.
Dennis P. Sullivan, a professor of mathematics at Stony Brook University and the City University of New York Graduate Center, is the winner of this years Abel Prize  the equivalent of a Nobel in mathematics.

In its citation, the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, the organization that administers the Abel, said Dr. Sullivan was honored for his groundbreaking contributions to topology in its broadest sense, and in particular its algebraic, geometric and dynamical aspects.

Topology is the study of space and shapes, and most of Dr. Sullivans work involves what mathematicians call manifolds  the higher-dimensional versions of two-dimensional surfaces. While that work is abstract, some of his recent research in fluid flows and turbulence could add to the understanding of the paths of hurricanes, the dispersions of air pollutants and the whorls of vortices behind airplane wings.

There is no Nobel Prize in mathematics, and for decades, the most prestigious awards in math were the Fields Medals, awarded in small batches every four years to the most accomplished mathematicians who are 40 or younger.
Saudi-based alfanar, a specialist in the manufacture of high voltage electrical products and provider of conventional and renewable energy solutions, will be setting up a sustainable aviation fuel plant at Teesside in the North East of the UK, at an investment of SR5 billion ($1.3 billion).

The project is part of alfanar's ongoing Green Energy Development programme in different parts of the world, including Spain, India, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, said a statement from the company.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson was briefed on the upcoming 'sustainable aviation fuel from waste' plant when he toured the Sabic Development Centre in Riyadh during his official visit to Saudi Arabia.

The "Lighthouse Green Fuel" project, which is the first of its kind in the UK, will be producing more than 180 million liters of sustainable aviation fuel annually in the country.

This amount of sustainable aviation fuel is sufficient to operate 15,000 flights per year, reducing harmful carbon emissions from conventional fuels by more than 700,000 tonnes annually, it stated.

A leading player in the manufacturing and trading of a wide variety of low, medium, and high voltage electrical products, alfanar also boasts a portfolio of conventional and renewable energy solutions, oil and gas, water treatment, infrastructure, technical services, digital and electronics engineering solutions.

Its manufacturing operations hub is alfanar Industrial City (Medinet alfanar Alsinaiya), a 700,000 sq m complex located in Riyadh. It houses an array of ultra-modern manufacturing facilities and laboratories equipped with state-of-the-art technologies.

In addition, the Saudi group has a network of manufacturing and distribution facilities around the world including Contactum (UK), ZIV (Spain), Kopp (Germany), EA (Italy), SAFA Electric (Turkey), alfanar Electrical Systems (UAE) and alfanar Engineering Services (India).-TradeArabia News Service
The shipwreck formally known as No. 15563 has been identified as Industry, the only whaling ship known to have sunk in the Gulf of Mexico.

On Wednesday, scientists announced they were confident the wreck was Industry, which was built in 1815 and capsized in a storm on May 26, 1836. Its rediscovery  and the newly discovered fate of its crew, which most likely included Black Americans, white Americans and Native Americans  opens a window into the maritime and racial life of the antebellum United States.

The ships remains were first documented in 2011, when a geological data company scanning an oil lease area spotted the carcass of a ship at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. Following standard procedures, the company reported its finding to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which logged the wreck as No. 15563 and left it alone.

The worlds seabeds are covered in shipwrecks, and oil contractors stumble across them all the time. But James P. Delgado, senior vice president of Search Inc., a firm that manages cultural resources such as archaeological sites and artifacts, was interested in this one because the description from the oil contractor mentioned a tryworks, a type of furnace unique to whaling vessels.
It wont just be SpaceX going to the moon if NASA officials get their wish. That could be a boon to the space dreams of Jeff Bezos.

As part of Artemis, NASAs program to send astronauts back to the moon, the agency in 2019 looked to hire two companies to provide the landers to take its astronauts from lunar orbit to the surface of the moon. But with insufficient financing from Congress, the agency decided in April last year to give just one contract, to SpaceX.

Other companies would have the opportunity to compete for future missions, NASA officials said.

On Wednesday, Bill Nelson, the NASA administrator, said the space agency would soon announce a competition to develop a second lunar lander.

I promised competition, Mr. Nelson said, so here it is.

The second company would share NASAs moon missions  about one a year over the course of a decade or so  with SpaceX. These are not isolated missions, Mr. Nelson said. Each is going to build on the past progress.
The James Charles Palette, from the makeup company Morphe, had it all: 39 eye shadows in glittery pinks and blues, audacious neons and nonshimmery neutrals  and a solid gold tie-up with James Charles, the beauty influencer. It sold out several times and generated tons of attention for Morphe since the palettes debut in late 2018.

But last year Morphes business relationship with Mr. Charles ended after accusations emerged that the influencer had sent sexual messages to underage boys, the latest in a series of controversies for Morphe and its parent company, Forma Brands. Forma also owns Morphe 2, a makeup and skin line geared toward Gen Z; Jaclyn Cosmetics, a label from the influencer Jaclyn Hill; and helped to create R.E.M. Beauty, Ariana Grandes makeup line. (Forma Brands declined to comment for this article.)

Morphe, which gained popularity with its approachably priced eye shadow palettes (a 35-pan palette costs $25) and makeup brushes, is best known for its collaborations with the biggest YouTubers of the last decade. Makeup, especially eye shadow palettes, created with Mr. Charles, Ms. Hill and Jeffree Star, the beauty influencer, could sell out in less than an hour.

But most people outside of its dedicated online following never heard of the brand. Product drops and gossip about its collaborators remained largely within the confines of the devoted YouTube and Reddit beauty communities.
Ms. Coly remembered some of the calls she has handled.

Parents call wanting to help their children who they worry might be possessed. Or after 9/11, someone called wanting to know if souls could be trapped on a plane. People need help getting through the experience, whether or not it is paranormal. And that does not mean sending them to a random psychic on the street.

Ms. Damalas, perhaps because of her proximity to the family vocation, has had difficulty handling paranormal questions in her own life. While a new area of research is exploring psychic sensitivity as a genetic inheritance, Ms. Damalas hesitates to embrace trance mediumship, even though shes had incidents her whole life.

When I asked for an example, an amused Ms. Damalas shared a series of stories, one about her childhood realization that a restaurant her family frequented on Long Island didnt actually have a haunted theme.

Upon understanding that no one else saw the macabre atmosphere, Ms. Damalas became perpetually guarded. Like her great-grandmother, she sleeps with the lights on.

In general, I think our materials can really help people find comfort. I could imagine a building in the city, with membership, and a Soho House-like atmosphere, she said of the business model shed like to follow. But do I want spirits in my face? No. I do not.
After President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia claimed that action against Ukraine was taken in self-defense, the Fox News host Tucker Carlson and the conservative commentator Candace Owens repeated the assertion. When Mr. Putin insisted he was trying to denazify Ukraine, Joe Oltmann, a far-right podcaster, and Lara Logan, another right-wing commentator, mirrored the idea.

The echoing went the other way, too. Some far-right American news sites, like Infowars, stoked a longtime, unfounded Russian claim that the United States funded biological weapons labs in Ukraine. Russian officials seized on the chatter, with the Kremlin contending it had documentation of bioweapons programs that justified its special military operation in Ukraine.

As war has raged, the Kremlins talking points and some right-wing discourse in the United States  fueled by those on the far right  have coalesced. On social media, podcasts and television, falsehoods about the invasion of Ukraine have flowed both ways, with Americans amplifying lies from Russians and the Kremlin spreading fabrications that festered in American forums online.

By reinforcing and feeding each others messaging, some right-wing Americans have given credibility to Russias assertions and vice versa. Together, they have created an alternate reality, recasting the Western bloc of allies as provokers, blunderers and liars, which has bolstered Mr. Putin.
In 2005, Mr. Jobs gave a commencement address at Stanford, cited Mr. Brand as a major influence in his life and explained what Whole Earth was to a younger generation: It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along, he said. It was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Mr. Brand coined the term personal computer in 1974, several years after writing an article for Rolling Stone that drew a picture of the future of the digital world. Computers, he predicted, would be the next important trend after psychedelic drugs: Thats good news, maybe the best since psychedelics. Its way off the track of the Computers  Threat or menace? school of liberal criticism but surprisingly in line with the romantic fantasies of the forefathers of the science, he wrote.

Now Mr. Brand, considered by many to be one of the nations pre-eminent futurists, is busy helping to build that 10,000-year clock  a path toward what he believes will be a long-term future for civilization.

Mr. Brand has long had an eerie knack for being able to spot trends early on or show up in the midst of them like some high-I.Q. Forrest Gump, only to leave for the next big thing just when everyone else catches up.

For example, in 1967, just when many of his friends were going back to the land to found communes, Mr. Brand arrived squarely in the middle of the region soon to be named Silicon Valley. In his journal at the time, he wrote that he was living in Menlo Park with the intent to let my technology happen here.

His Whole Earth Catalog was subtitled Access to Tools, and recently, as the national zeitgeist soured on Silicon Valley, a wide variety of authors, including Franklin Foer in World Without Mind, Jill Lepore in These Truths and Jonathan Taplin in Move Fast and Break Things, have all pointed to Mr. Brand as the original technological utopian. His words and ideas, they argue, seduced and inspired the engineers who created the modern digital world.

Mr. Brand, who considers himself a relentless pragmatist, winces at the label. All utopias are dystopias, he said during a conversation this month in the ramshackle office he has inhabited on the Sausalito, Calif., waterfront since the early 1970s.
As secretary, I will do my best to talk about foreign policy not in abstract terms, but in human terms and bipartisan terms, she said. I consider this vital because in our democracy, we cannot pursue policies abroad that are not understood and supported here at home.

She then embarked on a nine-nation world tour, with stops in Rome, Paris, London, Brussels, Bonn, Moscow, Tokyo, Seoul and Beijing. It was a getting-to-know-you circumnavigation that showed off her grasp of issues, her language skills and her centrality as Mr. Clintons chief foreign policy maker and spokeswoman. She generated excitement everywhere, and appeared to have a wonderful time.

Everybody has their own style, and mine is people to people, she said on a walk in Rome. Im trying mine, and I am enjoying it.

A Test in Iraq

As Mr. Clintons top diplomat during relatively peaceful years, Ms. Albright dealt with regional conflicts in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Haiti, Northern Ireland and the Middle East, but no wide wars. She promoted the expansion of NATO into the former Soviet bloc nations of Eastern Europe and defended continued economic sanctions against Iraq.

A crisis on Ms. Albrights watch developed in late 1997 and early 1998, after Iraqs president, Saddam Hussein, blocked the access of United Nations inspectors to sites where Iraqi chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction were believed to have been hidden, in violation of a Security Council resolution passed at the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf war.

After months of warnings and an American military buildup in the region, Ms. Albright and Mr. Clinton threatened to launch devastating aerial attacks on Iraq unless the sites were reopened to inspection. Iraq has a simple choice, Ms. Albright said in a public warning to Hussein. Reverse course or face the consequences.
All three authorized vaccines vastly surpassed that. But now Omicrons uncanny ability to dodge the immune systems defenses is changing the calculus, leaving an open question: How effective must a pediatric Covid vaccine be?

So far, no standard has been set. Federal regulators authorized the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for those 12 to 15 in May, after a trial showed zero infections in the vaccine arm and 18 in the placebo group  a ratio Pfizer described as 100 percent efficacy. But the F.D.A. relied only on immune response data  the level of neutralizing antibodies the vaccine produced  in authorizing the Pfizer vaccine in October for children 5 to 11.

At the time, the agency was unwilling to wait for infections to slowly accrue in the trial population to estimate efficacy. But the Omicron variant infected so many people over the winter, including young trial participants, that both Moderna and Pfizer were able to gauge efficacy.

Pfizer and BioNTech decided last month to hold off on seeking emergency use authorization after disappointing data, gathered during the Omicron surge, on the effectiveness of two doses. The companies had always planned to pursue a three-dose regimen, but the F.D.A. had hoped two doses would be strong enough to at least get the vaccination campaign for the nations younger children started. Both the F.D.A. and the companies agreed to wait, however, after seeing the Omicron data.

Pfizer has said it will have data on how well three doses work in early April. That could allow the F.D.A. to compare Modernas two-dose and Pfizers three-dose results before deciding on both applications. Moderna is saying it expects young children will need a third dose as a booster, but is hoping for authorization for a two-dose regimen to start.
In pressing his attack, Mr. Hawley dug into the details of the Hawkins case, running through a disturbing tally of the sex acts, violence and abuse that was portrayed in what he claimed were more than 600 videos and images the authorities found on Mr. Hawkinss computer. According to court papers, however, Mr. Hawkins downloaded 16 images and 17 videos, the latter of which were technically counted as 75 images each.

When Mr. Hawley asked Judge Jackson if the case reflected a heinous or egregious offense, she agreed with some exasperation that it did, but she also noted that judges consider many factors in deciding how long people should go to prison.

Sentencing is a discretionary act of a judge, but its not a numbers game, she said.

The line of questioning pursued by Mr. Hawley and other Republicans appeared to have some echoes of the QAnon conspiracy theory. Many of its followers believe baseless assertions that elites, including top Democrats, are child traffickers and pedophiles.

Andrew C. McCarthy, a conservative former federal prosecutor, defended Judge Jackson in an essay for National Review, saying that while he did not support her nomination, Mr. Hawley seemed to be misleadingly conflating sex offenders, who consume offensive imagery, with criminals who prey on children through acts of sexual violence.

The allegation that Judge Jackson had shown an alarming pattern of being soft on sex offenders, especially those preying on children, as Mr. Hawley put it, appears meritless to the point of demagoguery, Mr. McCarthy wrote.

According to ABC News, Mr. Hawley himself has voted to confirm at least three federal judges who also handed down sentences in cases involving images of child sexual abuse that were lighter than what the federal guidelines recommended. The guidelines are advisory, and as some Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee pointed out, federal judges considering cases involving child sexual abuse imagery often issue sentences far less severe than what the guidelines suggest.

The Hawkins case began in 2012 when Mr. Hawkins, who was then in high school, started downloading pornographic images from the internet and, according to his lawyer, felt confusion and shock rather than arousal.
But the real heat of the exchange came when the senator revisited accusations that Judge Jackson had been particularly lenient in her sentencing in cases involving images of child sexual abuse. At one point, he said of consumers of child sex abuse imagery, put their ass in jail.

Judge Jackson tried to explain how such cases had changed since Congress passed a law that enhanced sentences based on the number of images found in possession of a defendant. At the time of the law, such images primarily came through the mail, and the number of images indicated the lengths that a consumer had gone to obtain them.

But, she tried to explain over Mr. Grahams repeated interruptions, in the internet age, huge stores of images can be acquired with a few clicks of a mouse.

You can be doing this for 15 minutes, and all of a sudden you are looking at 30, 40, 50 years in prison, she said, when Mr. Graham interrupted, Good, absolutely good.

Judge Jackson, a former member of a federal sentencing commission that examined the issue, continued, Senator, I am trying to explain that our sentencing system that Congress created, the system the sentencing commission is a steward of, is a rational one. It is designed to help judges do justice in the terrible circumstances by eliminating unwarranted disparities, by ensuring that the most serious defendants get the longest periods of time.
Itaipu Binational, a global leader in clean and renewable energy generation, is showcasing its tried and tested practices in water conservation for biodiversity, climate and energy at Expo 2020 Dubai.

The company is showing its prowess at a thematic exhibition during Water Week at the Brazil Pavilion.

The worlds second largest hydroelectric power plant located on the Brazilian and Paraguay border, equally owned by Brazil and Paraguay showcases the interconnections between water, biodiversity, climate, and energy.

Under the patronage of ApexBrasil, the Brazilian Trade and Investment Promotion Agency, the 12-day exhibition concluding on March 31, 2022, is aimed at helping the Expo visitors experience the abundance of water resources from the South American nation.

Richness of Brazils ecosystems

With state-of-the-art interactive and immersive technologies, we are presenting the richness of Brazil's ecosystems and sensitise visitors about environmental conservation, and water care, said Anatalicio Risden Junior, Director General of Itaipu Binational.

The sustainability theme reflects the potential of Brazil for a green economy, which associates economic development with nature, exemplified by Itaipu's case. Our activities also featured events addressing sustainability and covering a variety of themes such as territorial development, renewable energies, preservation of water resources, and biodiversity, among others, he added.

Commenting on the Itaipu exhibition, Elias Martins Filho, Commissioner-General for Brazil pavilion at the Expo 2020, said: We are extremely proud to host the 12-day exhibition at our pavilion and expand our contributions to the global community, with the sharing of successful experiences in the management of water, energy and ecosystems. Itaipu extensive initiatives at the pavilion received positive response for the practices on how to balance energy generation with the environment.

Cutting-edge technology

The activities include presentation of state-of-the-art technological resources, such as augmented reality, virtual reality, immersion in scenarios with 360-degree projection, among others. Visitors will have the experience of visiting Itaipu, the natural beauties that surround the plant, and other scenarios that show the exuberance of nature in Brazil.

These attractions are presented, throughout different itineraries: Water as Movement (with emphasis on the "flying rivers" installation, which shows the interconnections between Brazilian biomes through the rain); Water as Energy (where it is possible to learn about the importance of water and biodiversity for energy generation); Water as Life (which includes ballet performances specially created for the Expo by Quasar Cia. de Danca); and Waters for Peace (in which the partnership between Brazil and Paraguay that generated Itaipu will be explored, including the company's contributions to the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda, and the importance of this agenda for the world).

Starting from March 20, the exhibition also presents ballet performances taking place every night at 7 pm until the last day of Expo.

Most energy in history

Brazil and Paraguay created Itaipu to jointly generate hydropower on the Parana River, the border between the two countries. It is the single plant that has produced the most energy in history, with more than 2.8 million Gigawatts/hour, enough to supply the world for 45 days.

Around its reservoir, the plant develops a series of environmental and social actions. An example is the green belt of more than 100,000 hectares of Atlantic Forest, which received the title of Biosphere Reserve from Unesco, in The Man and the Biosphere (MAB) Programme.

The Brazil Pavilion at the Expos Sustainability District showcases a water mirror at the ground level referring to the enormous availability of water resources in Brazil, which owns 12% of the world's fresh water and a coastline of almost 11 thousand kilometres in length.

The Pavilion received a series of attractions prepared by Itaipu that aimed to raise awareness of the importance of water for ecosystems and, consequently, for the quality of life of all people.-- TradeArabia News Service
All three authorized vaccines  from Moderna, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson  vastly surpassed that at first. But Omicrons uncanny ability to dodge the immune systems defenses is changing the calculus, and so far, no new standard has been set.

The F.D.A. authorized the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for those aged 12 to 15 in May after a trial showed zero infections in the vaccine arm and 18 in the placebo group  a ratio Pfizer described as 100 percent efficacy. But in October, when the agency authorized Pfizers vaccine for children 5 to 11, it relied solely on immune response data, which showed that the vaccine triggered a powerful surge in antibodies. That was also the criterion set for the trials of younger children.

At the time, given the antibody response, regulators were unwilling to wait for Covid infections to accrue in enough trial participants to gauge efficacy. But because the Omicron variant spread through so much of the population over the winter, both Moderna and Pfizer are now able to gauge efficacy in their youngest trial participants.

Pfizer decided last month to hold off on a request for emergency authorization of two doses after seeing efficacy data from the Omicron surge.

Moderna is asking for similar authorization, citing efficacy data that is just as weak. On the other hand, Modernas two-dose regimen achieved better results than Pfizers in boosting the immune systems of young children. Pfizer said in December that after two doses of its vaccine, children aged 6 months to 2 produced antibody levels comparable to those of older teenagers and young adults.

But children ages 2 through 4 produced only 60 percent of the sought-after antibody response. After two doses of Modernas vaccine, the antibody response of children in both subsets compared favorably to that of people 18 to 25, meeting the trials primary criterion for success.

Im heartened by the strong neutralizing antibody response indicating long-lasting cellular immunity, said Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease doctor and professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.
KYIV, Ukraine  The Israeli government rejected requests from Ukraine and Estonia in recent years to purchase and use Pegasus  the powerful spyware tool  to hack Russian mobile phone numbers, according to people with knowledge of the discussions.

Israel feared that selling the cyberweapon to adversaries of Russia would damage Israels relationship with the Kremlin, they said.

Both Ukraine and Estonia had hoped to buy Pegasus to gain access to Russian phones, presumably as part of intelligence operations targeting their increasingly menacing neighbor in the years before Russia carried out its invasion of Ukraine.

But Israels Ministry of Defense refused to grant licenses to NSO Group, the company that makes Pegasus, to sell to Estonia and Ukraine if the goal of those nations was to use the weapon against Russia. The decisions came after years of Israel providing licenses to foreign governments that used the spyware as a tool of domestic repression.
But Justice Hagedorn, a conservative who sided with the Wisconsin courts three liberals, added that a map with fewer majority-Black districts could impermissibly pack Black voters into some districts, diluting their power.

In dissent, Justice Annette Kingsland Ziegler wrote that Mr. Evers had overemphasized race in drawing his map.

History is littered with racial animus, hostility, discrimination and disparate treatment, she wrote. The equal protection clause demands that governments in the United States rise above the human temptation of dividing by race and treat individuals how basic dignity demands they be treated: as individuals.

In response, lawyers for Mr. Evers said that the Legislature and the voters who filed the emergency application had not suffered the sort of direct injury that gave them standing to sue; that it was too late for the Supreme Court to intervene given the preparations needed for this years elections; and that it was not the Supreme Courts role to serve as the map-drawer for Wisconsin.

Wisconsins legislative maps have for the last decade been among the most gerrymandered in the nation, a result of aggressive cartography from the Republican majority elected in 2010. In 2018, when Mr. Evers led a Democratic sweep of statewide elections, Republicans retained a 19-to-14 advantage in the State Senate and a 63-to-36 majority in the Assembly.

Mr. Evers created his own commission to draw new maps based on the 2020 census figures. The Republican majority ignored them, and in November, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that new maps must hew to a least-change approach from the gerrymandered 2010 maps.

The governor and the Legislature both submitted maps to the court, which selected Mr. Everss versions this month. Under his proposal, Republicans were highly likely to retain their legislative majorities, though they were certain to shrink by a few seats.
I know what the legal remedy for a contested presidential election is, he continued. There is one and only one per the Constitution and U. S. Code and it occurs on the first Jan. 6 after each presidential election. Period. Game over after January 6.

Mr. Brookss high-profile break with Mr. Trump raised the possibility that he might cooperate with the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, providing information the panel has so far been unable to secure about what Mr. Trump told his allies in Congress before, during and after the riot. Other Republicans involved in the effort to overturn the 2020 election  Representatives Jim Jordan of Ohio and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania  have refused requests from the panel for interviews.

Mr. Brooks did not immediately respond to further questions. In his statement, he said he had fought on behalf of Mr. Trump between Nov. 3 and Jan. 6  when it counted.

On Dec. 21, 2020, Mr. Brooks and other House Republicans met with Mr. Trump at the White House to discuss plans to object to the election. On Jan. 6, he wore body armor as he addressed the throng of Trump supporters who gathered at the Ellipse near the White House, telling them to start taking down names and kicking ass.

Are you willing to do what it takes to fight for America? Mr. Brooks said, prodding the crowd to cheer more loudly. Will you fight for America?

Later on Capitol Hill, after a pro-Trump mob rampaged through the building, Mr. Brooks tried to object to electoral votes from several states for Mr. Biden. He also spread false claims that people who identify with antifa, a loose collective of antifascist activists, might have been responsible for the violence, and gave a speech on the floor falsely claiming the election was stolen from Mr. Trump.

Noncitizens overwhelmingly voted for Joe Biden in exchange for the promised amnesty and citizenship and, in so doing, helped steal the election from Donald Trump, Republican candidates and American citizens all across America, Mr. Brooks said at the time.
Republican senators who have criticized Judge Ketanji Jackson for her approach to sentencing child sexual abuse defendants have focused on a single case from 2013 in which they argue she was inappropriately lenient on a teenager who pleaded guilty.

Heres what happened in that case, United States v. Hawkins:

A high-school student downloaded pornographic images, and was arrested.

In 2012 Wesley Hawkins, an 18-year-old who was then in high school, started downloading pornographic images from the internet and, according to his lawyer, felt confusion and shock rather than arousal.

A gay boy from a religious family that strongly disapproved of homosexuality, Mr. Hawkins was driven by a kind of curiosity about the images and his connection to the people in them seemed, his lawyer said, to be one of identifying rather than of exploiting them sexually.

Many of images were, however, extremely disturbing, showing young boys engaged in a variety of sex acts, some of them violent. When Mr. Hawkins reposted some of the images onto YouTube, law enforcement officials got a cyber-tip about him and soon a police detective posing as a fellow child pornography collector reached out to him by email and suggested they trade images.
In New York City, many neighborhoods where shootings have long been part of the fabric of daily life  largely lower-income with predominantly Black and Latino residents  bear the brunt of the pandemics sustained spike in gun violence. Last weekend, 29 people were shot, including two patrons at a bar in Queens; a man on a subway platform in Brooklyn; and a Jamaican immigrant, who was killed after an argument in the Bronx.

Mayor Eric Adams, who took office at the start of the year after campaigning on a message of public safety, has focused on the prevalence of firearms on city streets, attempting to curtail their spread through legislative and policing changes. He has repeatedly asked the courts and state lawmakers to treat weapon offenses with harsher penalties, calling for decreasing the minimum age that someone can be charged as an adult in certain situations and for revising the states 2020 bail reform laws.

I say this over and over again, Mr. Adams said at a news conference on Monday, we need help from Washington, we need help on the state level. We need help. But with or without that help, were going to make our city a safe city.

Mr. Adams, a former police captain, also played a crucial role in the reinstatement of a specialized N.Y.P.D. unit that focuses on gun arrests, which was disbanded in 2020, amid citywide protests following the murder of Mr. Floyd. Officers in the unit last week began to patrol about 25 areas of the city to recover weapons where shootings are particularly high.

Around the country, gun purchases, which surged in 2020, have begun to level off, at least when measured by the number of federal background checks, a proximate measure of Americans gun-buying habits. After setting records during the pandemic  in a single week in March of 2021 the F.B.I. reported more than 1.2 million background checks, the highest ever  figures have largely returned to prepandemic levels.

Still, researchers estimate that there are at least 15 million more guns in circulation in the country than there would have been had there not been such a large increase in purchasing during the pandemic.
The bill also prohibits both instruction and classroom discussion of gender identity and sexual orientation. That, too, is vague.

Classroom instruction could mean eliminating books with L.G.B.T.Q. characters or historical figures. But classroom discussion is broad. That could discourage a teacher from speaking about gay families with the whole class, even if some students have gay parents.

The bill also targets mental health and counseling services  a place where students often have difficult conversations about gender identity and sexuality, especially if they struggle to talk about those conversations at home.

It comes as Florida revises its school counseling standards, adopted in 2010, which affirm gender and sexual diversity in counseling. The intent of the bill may be to influence the revision to remove this type of affirming language and strengthen parents rights, Dana writes.

In so doing, the bill fits in with the goal of the parents rights movement: House Bill 1557 aims to give parents more control over what their children hear at school.

For more: Will Larkins, a high school junior in Florida, wrote a guest essay for The Times about what the bill would mean for teenagers like him. We have a mental health crisis in the queer community, and Governor DeSantis and the Republican Party want to outlaw the solution, he writes.

See for yourself: Read the bill here.

Fallout: Hoping to avoid controversy, the Walt Disney Company initially shied away from taking a public stance on the bill. Now, an internal outcry has stretched into its third week, and employees staged a walkout on Tuesday. More than 150 other companies have signed a Human Rights Campaign letter opposing the legislation.
KABUL, Afghanistan  The Taliban on Wednesday abruptly reversed their decision to allow girls high schools to reopen this week, saying that they would remain closed until officials draw up a plan for them to reopen in accordance with Islamic law.

The move is likely to deal a significant blow to the credibility the Taliban had been trying to build with international donors in recent months. And it could threaten the billions of dollars of humanitarian aid that have helped keep millions of Afghans from famine as the country grapples with a devastating economic collapse.

The news was crushing to the over one million high school-aged girls who had been raised in an era of opportunity for women before the Taliban seized power in August last year  and who had woken up thrilled to be returning to classes on Wednesday.

One 12th-grade student in Kabul said the decision had stamped out her last bit of hope that she could achieve her dream of becoming a lawyer.
Rescuers found one of the flight recorders of the Boeing 737 plane that crashed in southern China with more than 130 people on board, officials said Wednesday, as regulators and the airline faced growing pressure to release more information about the disaster.

Search efforts have been underway since the plane plummeted into a rural mountainside on Monday. The device recovered from the China Eastern Airlines plane was believed to be the cockpit voice recorder, officials said during a brief news conference on Wednesday. More fragments of the aircraft and body parts were also recovered, they added.

No survivors have been found, and it is increasingly unlikely that anyone on board made it out alive.

The Chinese government, faced with its worst air plane disaster in more than a decade, has moved quickly to control the flow of information, using a playbook it has honed over recent years that deploys propaganda and censorship.
But it is good that we can all go out now, she said. We told him, Were going to the zoo, but you need your shot first before you can get in. That helped to calm him down.

The question now is how long China can hold onto its zero-Covid policy.

This month, officials imposed stringent restrictions on residents movement in two major cities, Shanghai and Shenzhen, on a day when each megacity reported fewer than 70 new cases.

But there are signs that even China is tweaking its approach, after the countrys leader, Xi Jinping, urged officials to limit the economic pain of the countrys Covid response.

Still, the virus controls retain the support of many.

Ryan Liu, 33, who works at an internet company in Shenzhen and has barely left home this month, said he was happy to make a sacrifice for the greater good.

In our view, or in the view of most of us, we prefer this kind of strict control measures, he said. We must take some measures, and we cant let it go.

Jason Gutierrez reported from Manila, and Mike Ives and Victoria Kim from Seoul. Reporting was contributed by Hari Kumar in New Delhi, Keith Bradsher in Beijing, Muktita Suhartono in Jakarta, Indonesia, and Amy Qin and Amy Chang Chien in Taipei, Taiwan. Li You contributed research.
Over 300 leading local and international jewellery companies and brands from 20 countries are taking part in the 49th edition of the Watch & Jewellery Middle East Show (WJMES), which opened on March 23.

This year's edition of WJMES is featuring national pavilions from the leading countries in the watch and jewellery industry, which offer luxurious and exclusive designs of gold with the signature of the most important names in the global jewellery markets.

Italy and India are participating with more than 100 exhibitors, in addition to leading companies and major brands from the US, the UK, China, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Poland, Singapore, Thailand, Turkey, Bahrain, Colombia, Kuwait, Lebanon, Lithuania, and Yemen.

Royal patronage

Under the patronage of His Highness Sheikh Dr Sultan bin Muhammad Al Qasimi, Supreme Council Member and Ruler of Sharjah, Sheikh Abdullah bin Salem bin Sultan Al Qasimi, Deputy Ruler of Sharjah Deputy Chairman of Sharjah Executive Council, inaugurated the show, organised by the Expo Centre Sharjah with the support of the Sharjah Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Sheikh Abdullah toured the exhibition halls, where he met with exhibitors and officials of Emirati companies and foreign pavilions. He was accompanied by Abdullah Sultan Al Owais, Chairman of the Sharjah Chamber of Commerce, and Chairman Expo Centre Sharjah, a number of members of the Board of Directors of the SCCI and Expo, Mohammed Ahmed Amin Al Awadi, Director-General, SCCI, and Saif Mohammed Al Midfa, CEO of Expo Centre Sharjah.

Latest products

During the tour, Sheikh Abdullah was briefed on the latest products, technologies and innovative solutions in the gold industry, and the latest collections in the watch and jewellery.

The Deputy Ruler of Sharjah lauded the ongoing success of the WJMES when it comes to attracting new national pavilions and major global brands of watch and gold. This reflects Sharjah's distinguished role and status on the map of the global exhibition industry.

He commended the services provided by the Expo Centre Sharjah to exhibitors and visitors alike.

Al Owais said: "WJMES, which was launched 25 years ago, has turned from just a regional event to a global platform of a prominent position and importance among a wide segment of businessmen, investors, and workers in the field of manufacturing and designing watches and jewellery. The gold and jewellery sector is one of the important sectors in the UAE. Gold trade accounts for more than 29% of the total national non-oil exports. Hence the importance of the exhibition in enhancing the competitiveness and position of the gold industry in the UAE on the global trade map."

Unique position

"WJMES enjoys a unique position among our exhibitions and events at the Expo Centre, as it represents a global destination in the manufacture of gold, diamond, and watches. The world's big names in this industry are keen to participate in the event to reinforce their presence and expand their investments in local and regional markets," said Al Midfa.

He added: "The leading status of the exhibition has spurred us to step up our efforts to develop its activities and advance its role as a prominent contributor to the gold and jewellery industry and trade market, both locally and regionally."

In its quest to make the event more dazzling, Expo Centre has invited the Lebanese megastar, Najwa Karam, as a guest of honour of the WJMES, along with Emirati composer Fayez Al Saeed, the Ambassador of Melody, and a number of social media celebrities.

Prizes to be won

Visitors to WJMES are having a wonderful chance to win valuable prizes. A raffle draw will be organised on the last day of the five-day event, March 27, on a collection of gemstones and diamonds, in addition to raffle draws on the grand prize of AED100,000 ($27,226).-- TradeArabia News Service
In brief remarks to Japans Parliament on Wednesday, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine appealed to the Asian nations memories of nuclear disaster and a chemical weapon attack in an attempt to persuade lawmakers there to increase their support for his country amid the Russian invasion.

Over the course of 12 minutes, the Ukrainian leader warned that Russias invasion could set off a nuclear catastrophe in Chernobyl, invoking memories of the 2011 meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant that displaced thousands and led countries like Germany to reconsider their own use of nuclear power.

He also alluded to another national tragedy by warning that Russia could use chemical weapons, such as the nerve gas sarin, in Ukraine. In 1995, members of a Japanese cult used the chemical in an attack on Tokyos subway system, killing 14 people and injuring nearly 6,000.

And he thanked Japan for being the first Asian nation to take action against Russia after its invasion and urged lawmakers to continue sanctions against the country.
AMSTERDAM  A Dutch publisher has said that it will cease publication of a best-selling book, The Betrayal of Anne Frank, and remove it from bookstores, in response to a report by historians that objects to its finding.

The book had claimed to identify the informant who alerted Nazi police to the Frank familys hiding place, but the reports authors said the conclusions were based on faulty assumptions and careless use of sources.

The publisher, Ambo Anthos, which released the Dutch translation of the book by Rosemary Sullivan, a Canadian author, on Jan. 17, said on Tuesday that it would halt publication in response to the refutation by five prominent Dutch historians.

Based on the conclusions of this report, we have decided that, effective immediately, the book will no longer be available, Ambo Anthos, which had apologized for the book last month, wrote in a statement on its website. We will call upon bookstores to return their stock.
A U.S. citizen wanted by the F.B.I. on charges including assaulting police officers at the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, has been granted asylum in Belarus, state media for the repressive Eastern European country announced.

Evan Neumann, a former California resident whom prosecutors in Washington have accused of more than a dozen crimes, including striking police officers and using a metal barricade as a battering ram, left the United States soon after the riot last year.

After crossing into Belarus near the southwestern city of Pinsk last August, Mr. Neumann, 49, formally applied for asylum, according to state media. Belarusian authorities confirmed Tuesday that the request had been granted, airing footage on Belta, the state news agency, that appeared to show Mr. Neumann, 49, formally signing an immigration document.

Now you are completely under the protection of the Republic of Belarus, said an official identified by Belta as Yuriy Brazinskiy, an immigration official in Brest, the city where Mr. Neumann is living. The status was valid for an indefinite period of time, Mr. Brazinskiy said.
BRUSSELS  NATO is doubling its battlegroups on the alliances eastern flank in response to Russias continuing war in Ukraine, the groups secretary general said on Wednesday, a day ahead of major summits in which President Biden will meet with European allies in Brussels.

The secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, also focused on what import Russias potential use of any chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine could hold for NATO, saying that such use would fundamentally change the nature of the conflict. And he upped the rhetoric on Chinas role in bringing the conflict to an end, cautioning Beijing not to provide material support to Moscow.

Mr. Stoltenberg made his remarks in a news briefing one day before the start of an unusual series of back-to-back summits over Russias brutal monthlong invasion of Ukraine, which shows no sign of ending.

The first step is the deployment of four new NATO battlegroups in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia, along with our existing forces in the Baltic countries and Poland, he said, detailing the bolstering of NATOs posture along its eastern frontier with the combat-ready, battalion-size units, which typically have several hundred troops each. This means that we will have eight multinational NATO battlegroups all along the eastern flank, from the Baltic to the Black Sea, he added.
President Vladimir V. Putins climate envoy was reported to have become the senior-most Russian government official to quit over the war in Ukraine.

Bloomberg reported that the envoy, Anatoly Chubais, had left the country, citing his opposition to the war. The state news agency Tass said only that Mr. Chubais, a former deputy prime minister under President Boris N. Yeltsin in the 1990s, had stepped down from his Kremlin post.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Chubais declined to comment.

His departure would be the most striking example of discord in Russias ruling elite over Mr. Putins invasion, which appears to have taken even many senior officials by surprise.

A slew of Russian performers and state television journalists have already left the country since the wars beginning and spoken out against it. But government officials, for now, have stuck to the Kremlin line.
The alliance has so far proved remarkably unified in trying to turn Russia into a pariah and help Ukraines outgunned defense forces to frustrate the Russian militarys ground advances in the country.

And Russia may have incurred more losses than previously thought, according to a senior NATO military official who, speaking on the condition of anonymity on Wednesday, said that 7,000 to 15,000 Russian troops had been killed in Ukraine over the past month. The upper range is more than double the Pentagons figure of around 7,000.

New signs of strain within the Kremlin hierarchy surfaced Wednesday as well. Bloomberg reported that Russias climate envoy, Anatoly Chubais, had left the country, citing his opposition to the war. The Russian state news agency TASS said only that Mr. Chubais, a former deputy prime minister under Boris N. Yeltsin, the former Russian president in the 1990s, had stepped down.

If anything, Russias diplomatic isolation appeared to deepen on Wednesday. Poland expelled 45 Russian diplomats, accusing them of spying. At the United Nations, a General Assembly resolution condemning Russia for causing a humanitarian disaster appeared on its way to approval, because it is a forum in which Moscow does not hold a veto.

And a humanitarian resolution proposed by Russia at the Security Council  where it can veto any resolution  made no mention of Russias military assaults in Ukraine, prompting criticism that verged on ridicule. The measure failed with only Russia and China voting in favor, and 13 abstentions. (A resolution needs nine yes votes and no vetoes.)

Despite Russias frustration in Ukraine so far, Mr. Putin has shown no sign of backing down in his campaign to subjugate the former Soviet republic with bombings and shellings that have leveled all or parts of some cities, displaced a quarter of the population and created the biggest refugee crisis in Europe since World War II.
To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.

RUKLA, Lithuania  When the signal came over the radio that the NATO border was under attack, German armored vehicles fanned out into the forest to stall the enemys advance. In short succession, men in camouflage tumbled out of the back of the vehicles and took cover between the trees, assault rifles at the ready.

The battle that ensued one recent afternoon near the town of Rukla in Lithuania, 60 miles from the Russian border, was only an exercise. But since Russias invasion of Ukraine, the mission of NATOs battlegroup in Lithuania to defend the alliances external border no longer feels abstract to the soldiers and the country most of them come from.
JERUSALEM  A United Nations special rapporteur has accused Israel of committing the crime of apartheid in the occupied territories, joining a growing group of international, Israeli and Palestinian rights watchdogs that have sought to recast the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a struggle for equal rights instead of a territorial dispute.

Strongly denied by Israel and its supporters, who accuse the U.N. investigator of bias, the claim is the first time that a U.N.-appointed investigator has accused Israel of apartheid in such an unequivocal way.

The rapporteur, Michael Lynk, a Canadian law professor appointed by the U.N. Human Rights Council to investigate rights abuses in the occupied territories, did not directly compare the situation there to that of apartheid-era South Africa, where a white minority ruled over a Black majority. However, he said that it met the legal definition of apartheid set out by international law.

The two-tier legal system enforced by Israel in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, he said, enshrined a system of domination by Israelis over Palestinians that could no longer be explained as the unintended consequence of a temporary occupation.
JERUSALEM  Many of the refugees milling about the lobby of a Jerusalem hotel one recent morning had endured harrowing journeys from Ukraine, and in many cases were forced to leave close family members behind.

Now safely in Israel, they were picking up SIM cards issued by the Ministry of Immigration and Absorption and starting to contemplate next steps.

I feel safe here, which is probably the most important thing for now, said Lena Ivanova, 32, who owns a fashion business in Odessa and came to Israel with her two sons, Vadym, 9, and Evgen, 2. Now Im focusing on where to live. I need to make a lot of decisions.

These were the lucky ones.

By virtue of their being Jewish, having at least one Jewish parent or grandparent or, as in Ms. Ivanovas case, having a Jewish spouse, they automatically qualified for Israeli citizenship upon landing at Ben-Gurion Airport.
A little more than 10 years ago, I began looking back at the diaries I had kept over the previous decade. I wondered if Id changed. So I loaded all 500,000 words of my journals into Excel to order the sentences alphabetically. Perhaps this would help me identify patterns and repetitions. How many times had I written, I hate him, for example? With the sentences untethered from narrative, I started to see the self in a new way: as something quite solid, anchored by shockingly few characteristic preoccupations. As I returned to the project over the years, it grew into something more novelistic. I blurred the characters and cut thousands of sentences, to introduce some rhythm and beauty. When The Times asked me for a work of fiction that could be serialized, I thought of these diaries: The selfs report on itself is surely a great fiction, and what is a more fundamental mode of serialization than the alphabet? After some editing, here is the result.

This is part 10 of a 10-part series.

Waking up, I found an email message from him  I knew it would be hard: he was in New York without a phone, going to a concert. Waking up, I thought: I will start going to synagogue. Walking to the Price Chopper yesterday, he asked me if we had ever walked together when there was snow on the ground. Walking up Spadina Avenue last night, I saw myself as stepping off a spinning wheel onto safe ground, and that I didnt have to keep going round and round in circles anymore. Wandering and wandering. Wandering in Toronto. Wandering just this little square of earth. Warhol made himself into such an image that he tried to look the same throughout his entire life. Was he sexist? Was it about love? Was it too late to be loving? Watching a debate on CNN between Obama, Clinton and Edwards, in a hotel room, alone. We agreed to meet up again when I was in Brooklyn or something. We agreed, in the parking lot, that sometimes love happens slow and sometimes happens all at once  fast. We all turned into particles and fell onto a beach as particles, sparkles. We are at the cottage. We are drunk. We can only look out at the world. We cant help ourselves. We cant look at humans directly because its too hard. We cant look at ourselves.

We cant see where our cruelty or selfishness comes from. We do what we do. We dont have a reigning morality. We dont have a unified religion or philosophy. We dont have to cling to each other when we are so much a part of each other  through every minute and so many thoughts throughout the day. We dont regret having gotten married, nor do we regret having gotten divorced. We dont. We drank long into the night. We drank wine, and he sat on a chair by the window and read it all as I accidentally fell asleep on the bed. We ended up talking about what was real and not real in our books. We gossiped about everyone. We had been so young then. We hailed a cab in the street and hugged and kissed goodbye. We hung around a long time. We kept looking and not looking at each other. We laughed and laughed. We lay down on the grass in the park and slept. We lay in bed all morning, until two p.m. on Friday, which was the last day of the year. We looked in some shops, then went onto the boats, then looked in more shops. We love each other, and we want to be together. We said goodbye, and I went upstairs, sure of everything. We smiled at each other, me from the street and him from a window in his house. We spoke as though it was the last time we would ever speak, and I was in tears. We stood by the doorway, drinking cherry brandy from a sour cream container. We talked in the car on the way home about how certain men in certain times navigated the seas with their testicles  putting their testicles on the rudder to feel the seas currents. We walked through the rain to the gallery. We walked toward West House, in the direction of the pool, as we drank the vodka and the orange juice he had squeezed with his bare hands. We walked up and down the hills yesterday on our way to the village, and it was sunset, and the clouds were red and pink, and the village in the distance was reddish with earth. We went back and sat in the bathtub, and all our clothes were wet, then Lark got up and hung them on the line. We went to Le Paradis. We were all in a car together, and the streets were snowy. We were living in a world that had very dark skies. We were reading the newspaper together. We were sitting around a table, and she was reading to me a list of things she could eat: lemon and meringue. We, all of us, act like we are celebrities, as if it matters much how thin we are, or how well-dressed we are. What a hot sun. What a load of rubbish all this writing is. What a stupid thing to do. What a terrible thing to write. What a week its been. What a week. What am I going to do? What beauty could be made from this randomness? What did Beckett know? What do actors know? What do I want to do this year? What do most people do in a year? What do the birds do? What does it all add up to? What does it mean to love writing? What else can I do? What happened all summer long? What happened was that I had a sense of loneliness and loss. When I got into bed, I closed the window. White glare of publicity. Who am I to tell myself not to be with a difficult man? Who cares? Who cares? Who do you know at The New Yorker?

Yes, exactly. Yes, I admitted. Yes, I replied. Yes, it does. Yes, it would be a good thing for a book to do  to counter the emotional extravagances of our time with a counter-emotion, so to bring the age to a neutral middle. Yesterday I bought a book on St. Petersburg, which I didnt want to read once I had bought it. Yesterday I felt tired of all the people around me, and again I thought of escaping this place. Yesterday night a phone call from Lark  a surprise  I always think that I will never hear from him again, and I always am fine with that, that its over. Yesterday night I was emailing with Vasily  more break-up stuff  it feels more real this time, more of a decision. Yesterday night  I cant believe it was only yesterday! Yesterday was the day I met that man  the divorce lawyer  on the streetcar. Yet some sudden, intimate life. You apply your love to a person for a long time and look what happens. You are 32 years old. You are a lover of beauty. You are fine. You are just getting started. You are not an example to anyone. You are okay. You are the acrobat without a net who will never fall. You are the woman with the 900-page book. You can always rely on yourself. You can ask for olives if you like olives, or you can ask them to hold the olives if you dont like olives. You can deal with whatever comes; no vows or decisions need to be made. You can forget about him. You can kill things. You can make more friends. You can say, You dont mind if I write this down, do you? You can take notes  its flattering to a person. You can talk to people, visit with people. You can tell by looking at a womans hand. You can write songs in this way but not novels. You did it  now move on. You did not wish for peace or understanding or a soul mate or contentedness. You did this, he said. You did. You have had 29 years of evidence. You have learned how to write. You have to do it  if not now, then never. You know what I mean? You know what I mean? You probably wont move to New York. You probably wont move to Paris. You want to win the lottery? You want to write  to do nothing but write? You will go into it. You will have nothing. You will probably live in Toronto. You will see a few people, and that will be that. Youre killing me here. Youre killing me. Your apprentice books. Your apprentice life. Your marriage is over. Your time here is precious. Your ugly hollow aspiration.

Zadie Smith is married. Zadie Smith looks good on a stage.
The contribution of non-oil sectors in Oman is expected to reach 90% of the total GDP by the end of 2040, said Ahmed Al Hajri, Director General of Nizwa Industrial City.

The economic stimulus plan, approved by the Council of Ministers and endorsed by His Majesty Sultan Haitham bin Tarik, presents incentives to ensure economic growth rates of more than 2.5%, he said at a seminar entitled Nizwa Industrial City: Reality and Prospects, organised as part of Madayns Oman Manufacturing Group (OMG) series of events for the year 2022.

Al Hajri said the investment volume in Al Dakhiliyah Governorate has touched approximately OMR900 million ($2.34 billion), of which OMR600 million is the total investment volume of Nizwa and Samail Industrial Cities, representing 66% of the total investment volume in Al Dakhiliyah. The number of localised projects in these two industrial cities has reached nearly 300, which employ around 6,647 of workforce.

Incentives for investors

Al Hajri then outlined the incentives offered by Madayn to the investors and business owners in its network of industrial cities across the sultanate. These include: lease period of lands and facilities for up to 30 years, renewable for the same period; usufruct contracts for up to 99 years; right to waive the lease right for the remaining period of the contract; right to sell constructions and buildings on the leased land; right to involve new partners in the lease contract; fair evaluation of buildings and facilities upon the termination of the lease contract; developed and equipped lands with basic services (water, electricity, telecom, roads); and transparent legal frameworks illustrating rights and obligations; punctuality in service delivery; in addition to other incentives.

Madayn Vision 2040

On her part, Mariya Al Zadjali, Director of Strategic Planning and Corporate Performance Assessment at Madayn, briefed the audience on Madayn Vision 2040, which aims at creating world-class business cities while maintaining the Omani identity to contribute to economic growth.

The vision revolves around promoting comprehensive and sustainable economic and social development through strengthening Public-Private Partnership, developing and operating business cities with integrated services, keeping pace with the variables and adopting best solutions and technologies to meet business requirements while conforming to the environmental standards.

Investment complexes

Eng Samar Al Hosni, Director of Planning and Geographical Systems at Madayn, delivered a presentation on the investment opportunities available in Madayn Investment Complexes in Sur, Samail, Suhar and Al Buraimi Industrial Cities. In Sur Industrial City, investment opportunities are offered in food investment complexes on an area of 42,000 sq m, and multiple industries investment complexes on an area of 41,000 sq m.

Samail Industrial City offers investment opportunities in food investment complexes (53,000 sq m), multiple industries investment complexes (22,000 sq m), and logistics investment complexes (61,000 sq m). Suhar Industrial Citys available investment opportunities include food investment complexes (60,000 sq m), multiple industries (60,000 sq m), and plastic industries investment complexes (50,000 sq m). Al Buraimi Industrial City also offers investment opportunities in food investment complexes (27,000 sq m) and multiple industries investment complexes (32,000 sq m).-- TradeArabia News Service
Haider Ali, one of Pakistans most famous truck art masters, has recently discovered a new and lucrative niche  sneakers painted in traditional, bright motifs.

Truck art is an iconic part of Pakistani culture. For decades, it has been used to turn simple means of locomotion into driveable works of art to be looked at and admired. Now, this traditional art style is branching out to other mediums, the latest of which is sneakers. Haider Ali, a Pakistani truck art specialist was one of the first to jump on the truck-art-sneakers bandwagon, after getting an order for a custom pair and seeing his outrageous price being accepted by the client.

Photo: Haider Ali

A client came to see me from the United States, asking me to paint shoes, Ali recently told AFP. I gave him an exorbitant price to discourage him, but he said okay. So I decided to do it.

Photo: Haider Ali

Haider Ali started doing truck art sneakers in January of this year, and he has so far made eight pairs, each of which sold for an eye-watering $400. That may seem like a lot of money for a simple pair of sneakers, but each is hand-painted according to the wishes of the customer, a laborious process that can take up to four days.

Photo: Haider Ali

While the vibrantly-colored shoes may not be everyones cup of tea, Haiders truck art sneakers have been getting a lot of attention on social media ever since photos of them went viral. People have been asking where they can get their hands on a pair, so I suspect the truck art master will soon find himself inundated with requests.

Photo: Haider Ali

For more of Haider Alis colorful truck art, keep an eye on his Instagram.
Deputy Michael Lowry wants the Irish government to introduce the Right to be Forgotten Beyond Cancer in Ireland, similar to many other EU countries.

What is not generally known is that a cancer diagnosis can present a lifelong financial burden for patients, long after they have recovered. New research from the Irish Cancer Society has revealed that many people affected by cancer at any time during their lives face being refused financial products.

'These include both insurance and mortgage protection cover. Even if the adult individual was diagnosed with cancer as a child or a teenager, they can still face challenges when trying to access financial protection for their future stated Deputy Michael Lowry when addressing Tanaiste Leo Varadkar on the need to introduce the Right to be Forgotten Beyond Cancer in Ireland, similar to many other EU countries.

People who have a cancer diagnosis in their past are three times more likely to have difficulties getting insurance than the general population. They are twice as likely to have problems obtaining a mortgage.

It seems that their past diagnosis is being used as a stick to beat them with financially. Despite the fact that more and more people are now cancer survivors, they continue to be discriminated against.

The Irish Cancer Society is calling on the Government to implement the Right to be Forgotten into legislation so that people do not have to declare a cancer diagnosis five years after recovery. This has been implemented by many other EU countries.

People who have been diagnosed with cancer in the past are simply asking that their future lives are not defined by cancer. They have completed their cancer journey. They have navigated the endless issues that cancer patients must face.

They have struggled with the loss of income due to inability to work. Many do not qualify for a medical card which subjects them to hospital charges, the cost of travel and parking, and many other associated bills. Many have had pressure and embarrassment of debt collectors arriving at their doors demanding payment for unpaid medical expenses they have not yet managed to pay.

Their journey with cancer itself may be over. They have been blessed to have survived. Penalising them further is both cruel and heartless  they deserve the right to forget said Deputy Lowry.

The Tanaiste, in acknowledging Deputy Lowrys ongoing advocacy for people who have cancer and those who have survived it, said that the five year survival rate for all invasive cancers is now 65%, as opposed to 42% in the 1990s. We are now in a situation in Ireland where you are more likely to survive cancer than die from it he said.

In relation to the issue raised by Deputy Lowry I acknowledge that this is a real problem. I want to assure the Deputy that officials are now engaging with stakeholders and colleagues across Europe to better understand how they have dealt with this issue. A number of EU States have implemented the Right to be Forgotten Beyond Cancer policy and officials are examining the approach taken in these jurisdictions. We need to consider what might work best in an Irish context. We will hopefully be able to make some proposals in the coming months he concluded.
The Health Service Executive (HSE) has confirmed healthcare information for refugees arriving in Ireland is now available to read in both the Ukrainian and Russian languages.

The update to the HSE website (available here) was made yesterday (Tuesday March 22), with further updates expected to take place on a regular basis.

It comes as the number of Ukrainian refugees in Ireland is expected to reach 20,000 by the end of March and 40,000 by the end of April.

We have updated our website with healthcare information for people arriving into Ireland from Ukraine. The information is available in English, Ukrainian and Russian. The page will be updated regularly with more information. You can read it here: https://t.co/iMK0lhMZh2 pic.twitter.com/5zuVbK95JD March 22, 2022

That's according to Tanaiste Leo Varadkar who yesterday said, "As of this morning, more than 10,000 Ukrainians had arrived in Ireland and registered for international protection. We expect that number will rise to 20,000 by the end of the month. It is reasonable to assume that figure will probably hit approximately 40,000 by the end of next month, although nobody can know for sure.

"What we are seeing is effectively a 1% increase in our population in the course of a few weeks. That is going to have serious impacts on education, healthcare, housing, social protection, the public finances and even on things like greenhouse gas emissions. Absolutely all calculations change when the population increases by 1% or 2% in the course of a few weeks."

Refugees can turn to the HSE website for information on finding a place to stay, accessing financial support such as social welfare, obtaining the right to work as well as healthcare services.

Mr Varadkar called the influx of refugees "an enormous crisis".

He said, "We have approximately 20,000 pledges from members of the public who are offering to provide accommodation. That effort is being led by the Irish Red Cross. Of these 20,000 pledges, for which we are very grateful to the public for its generosity in making those pledges, 4,000 are for independent own-door units or vacant properties.

"They are being assessed and we hope to bring them into use as soon as possible. That is the priority. After that, we will move on to people who can offer a spare room, particularly those with access to public transport."
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.
Are you a current print subscriber? You qualify for online access to the Omak Chronicle. To receive your access, create a website account and then verify your print subscription or e-edition subscription with your subscriber number, which may be found on your bill or mailing label.
The Bahrain-Qatar Causeway is among the most important strategic and development projects to promote the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) economic development, strengthen ties between the peoples of the two countries in particular and boost the pace of GCC cooperation and integration, reported BNA, citing the Undersecretary for Bahrain's Land Transportation and Post.

Bahrain has supported the project based on its belief in the importance of its economic objectives and its strategic significance to both parties.

Under a MoU signed in 2005 to launch the project, a joint institution was formed and it was entrusted with managing, maintaining and operating the causeway and investing in its facilities.

The kingdom was committed to attending the periodic board meetings of the Bahrain-Qatar Causeway Institution to discuss all matters related to the construction work of the causeway after the phase of determining the locations and the basic engineering designs was completed, stated the report.

Bahrain reiterates its commitment to continue supporting the Bahrain-Qatar Causeway Institution as well as its activities and work even though the Kingdom senses that Qatar has the intention to dissolve it, it added.

Bahrain's stance was clear in the statement of the Undersecretary for Land Transportation and Post on March 21 on the importance of the Bahrain Causeway Institution continuing work on developing designs and operational plans.

The project holds a significantly positive impact in promoting the strong and historical ties between the citizens of the two countries and it will achieve their aspirations for rapprochement and ease of travel, he had stated.

"We in the Kingdom of Bahrain renew the call for the start of bilateral talks between the two sides in accordance with the mechanisms agreed upon in Al Ula statement," he added.

The official referred in this regard to the invitation sent by the Bahraini Ministry of Foreign Affairs in January last year to its Qatari counterpart to start bilateral talks, and to the second invitation sent on February 22, 2021.

Bahrain regularly has affirmed its sincere intentions to enhance Gulf cohesion and stressed the importance of consolidating the unified and integrated Gulf action for the sake of the GCC peoples, the BNA report said.

Based on such principled stance, it initiated and reiterated its call for Qatar to start bilateral talks on the outstanding issues and matters between the two countries in order to activate Al Ula statement that stressed the strengthening the process of joint Gulf action, it stated.

Such an invitation will consolidate fraternal ties and pave the way for the completion of major vital projects between the two countries, it added.
Donbass Arena (Ukrainian:   [donbs rn]; is a stadium with a natural grass pitch in Donetsk, Ukraine, that opened on 29 August 2009. The facility is located in the center of the city, in the Lenin Comsomol park. With a capacity of 52,518 spectators, the stadium used to host FC Shakhtar Donetsk matches and also hosted some matches of Euro 2012. The final cost of construction for Donbass Arena was $400M. The stadium has been unused and closed to the public since May 2014, due to the War in Donbas.
 2008-2022 One News Page Ltd.

All rights reserved.

One News is a registered trademark

of One News Page Ltd.
Jakartas ambition to be a global player is under the spotlight as it wrestles with the G20 presidency following Russias invasion of Ukraine.
Experienced Queensland teachers are being encouraged to take a tree change in rural areas to fill vacancies at understaffed schools.
Several Republican candidates for Ohios U.S. Senate seat will debate next week in an event to be broadcast by Nexstar Media stations.
Ukraine's president has accused Russia of "simply capturing" refugees trying to make their way out of the besieged city of Mariupol. Vietnam is to suspend flights to Moscow. Follow DW for the latest.
At a summit on Thursday, the EU is to release its concept to bolster security and defense policy. It will include plans for a defense force but not one that competes with NATO, says DW's Bernd Riegert in Brussels.
New Zealand Herald 29 Mar 2022

In what appeared to be a co-ordinated action to tackle Russian espionage, at least four European allies expelled dozens of Russian..
The European Union has agreed to double its military aid to Ukraine to 1 billion. NATO estimates say 7,000 to 15,000 Russians have died in the invasion. Follow DW for the latest.
Woodville, AL (35768)

Today

Sun and clouds mixed. High 87F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Isolated thunderstorms this evening becoming more widespread overnight. Low 67F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60%.
Taj Exotica Resort & Spa, The Palm, Dubai has announced the appointment of its management team, led by Ranjit Phillipose, Area Director - Middle East and General Manager.

Phillipose brings with him over 29 years experience in the hospitality industry and a wealth of knowledge to this role. He is joined by Greg Kocsis, Hotel Manager; Dorsai Khaghani, Director of Sales & Marketing; Lionel Dousse, Director of F&B; Sonu Koithara, Executive Chef; and Dr Arun Aravind, Director of Spa.

We are very pleased to have launched Taj Exotica Resort & Spa, The Palm, Dubai this month. We look forward to establishing the Taj Exotica name in the region and to showcase Tajness to our esteemed guests. As a brand we take pride in everything we do, and the team will embody this in the ethos of their work. I'm confident every guest will enjoy the resorts unique offerings and world-class hospitality," said Phillipose.

Philliposes professional achievements include overseeing multiple hotel openings and rebranding projects across IHCL hotels, resorts and palaces in Asia, UK, the USA and the Middle East. His accolades include being a recipient of the JRD Tata Award for Quality and Excellence, winning the prestigious Best New Hotel in the MENA region at the Conde Nast Traveller Readers Choice Awards 2020 (Taj Jumeirah Lakes Towers), Favourite Business Hotel at the 2017 Conde Nast Traveller Readers Choice Awards (Taj Dubai) and Best of Best Hotels 2011 by Robb Report and 100 Best Suites, Elite Traveler USA (Taj Exotica Resort & Spa Maldives). In 2018, 2019 and 2020 Ranjit was recognized by Hotelier Middle East as one of the most influential professionals in the industry in the Power 50 list.

Originally from Hungary, Greg Kocsis is an experienced Hotel Manager and seasoned hospitality professional with extensive international experience in the luxury market, having previously worked in Beverly Hills, Miami, Barbados, London, Oman and Maldives for leading hotel brands over the course of 18 years.

A highly accomplished sales & marketing professional with over 15 years of experience, Dorsai Khaghani has led a number of successful launches of some of Dubai's biggest and most successful hotel brands. She prides herself on truly understanding the Middle East market when it comes to what guests really want. With achievements such as being named one of the top 25 women in hospitality in 2020 and the Best salesperson of the year' in 2017 both by Hotelier Middle East, Dorsai brings her award-winning experience to Taj Exotica Resort & Spa, The Palm, Dubai.

The Swiss-born Lionel Dousse brings 14 years of experience to his new role having previously worked in various countries, including Djibouti, Ghana, Latvia, and most recently, the UAE. He specialises in creating dining concepts for pre-opening restaurants and bars.

Originally from Kerala (India), Chef Sonu Koithara believes in the importance of working with quality ingredients, a philosophy he will bring to each dish he curates at Taj Exotica Resort and Spa, The Palm, Dubai. Having been a part of the IHCL (Indian Hotels Company Limited) for over 15 years, Chef Sonu has been an integral part the culinary teams for several hotels in India and recently in Dubai with the opening of Taj Jumeirah Lakes Towers.

Taking a whole new meaning to holistic wellness, Taj Exotica Resort & Spa, The Palm, Dubai will house its very own resident Ayurvedic expert. Dr Arun Aravind, a seasoned wellness professional, joins the team with over 22 years of experience and brings in-depth knowledge of the ancient practice of Ayurveda to JIVA, our award-winning spa.  TradeArabia News Service
Six high school students were killed in a crash Tuesday when the vehicle they were riding in collided with a semi-truck, the..

Upworthy 23 Mar 2022
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres urges Moscow to end its invasion that is "going nowhere fast." After weeks of bombardment, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said there is "nothing left" of Mariupol. Follow DW for the latest.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has reiterated a plan to bolster defense spending while pledging to take on more refugees. "We are standing before a monumental challenge," he said.
Newsy 21 Mar 2022

Watch VideoAfter Donald Trump was caught on video bragging about sexually assaulting women, Mike Pence stayed on his ticket. As the..
The Israeli government is preparing for a wave of refugees from Jewish communities in Ukraine, as people flee war there. With 200,000 Ukrainian Jews eligible for immigration to Israel, it seems to have already begun.
Poland's interior minister said the country would expel 45 individuals who were accused of spying on behalf of Russia.
The Taliban have sent girls home in tears from secondary schools in Afghanistan just days after announcing that they would be..

Sky News 23 Mar 2022
The children were supposed to leave Poland on Monday but were held up by paperwork problems.
Some residential areas of Shanghai are cordoned off with high yellow barricades, where many cases of covid-19 have been confirmed.
Emirates has announced the second daily flight on its Dubai-Melbourne route, served by its flagship A380 aircraft.

Starting May 1, the airline will offer customers 14 weekly services from Dubai to Melbourne. The expansion of services is supported by Australia's Victorian Government to help fast-track the return of international flights to Melbourne and bring more visitors to the state, the airline said.

The additional daily frequency between Dubai and Melbourne will grow Emirates seats to over 1,000 a day totalling 700,000 a year between the airlines global Dubai hub and Victoria, with 516 seats on each flight. Travellers can choose from 14 First Class suites, 76 lie-flat seats in Business Class and 426 ergonomically designed seats in Economy Class.

Before the pandemic, international flights brought more than 3.1 million visitors to Victoria each year and injected $8.8 billion into the economy. Emirates carried 22 per cent of the 1.3 million passengers that arrived in Victoria from key European countries such as Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Switzerland, which added $86 million to the Victorian economy in 2019, it said.

Airline serving Australia market for overs 25 years

Barry Brown, Emirates Divisional Vice President for Australasia said: "As an international airline that has been serving Australia for over 25 years, we are especially delighted to boost our services to Melbourne, adding yet more seats and flight options to the Victorian capital. Our second daily A380 service reaffirms our ongoing commitment to Australia and our loyal passengers as demand for international travel continues to increase. The newly expanded flight schedule also means our customers can experience three continents in one day, enjoying their breakfast in Australia, lunch in Dubai, and dinner in Europe.

"Emirates inaugural flight to Australia arrived in Melbourne in 1996. Since then, we have carried more than 11 million passengers on this key route and we are delighted that Victorian travellers and businesses can continue to enjoy the global reach that our expansive network offers."

Emirates increasing operations

With Australia being the third-largest destination for Emirates A380 operations, the airline has been continuously committed to increasing flights to Australia which will soar to 42 weekly flights in May, with the airlines flagship flying to Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.

From then Victoria and News South Wales capitals will be served by twice daily flights and the Queensland capital once daily, operating on the iconic A380 aircraft. Emirates also provides passenger services to Perth with the airlines other wide-body aircraft in its fleet, the Boeing 777-300ER, which will operate daily from May 1.- TradeArabia News Service
A group of Ukrainian sailors on a motor boat, most of them children, tried to block Russian billionaire Roman Abramovichs 456-foot superyacht Solaris from docking at the Turkish city of Bodrum on Monday, March 21, before being briefly detained.
Nestle has announced it is pulling popular brands including KitKat chocolate bars and Nesquik out of Russia due to its invasion of..

Sky News 23 Mar 2022
Most Ukrainians seeking refuge in Israel are non-Jews. Some Israelis see a moral imperative to take them in, but others see a threat to the countrys Jewish character.
The reversal by the Taliban took many by surprise, leaving students in tears and drawing condemnation from humanitarian agencies, rights groups and diplomats at a time when the Taliban administration is seeking international recognition.
Foreign secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla arrived in New York on Tuesday, a day before the UN General Assembly and the Security Council are expected to vote on draft resolutions on the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine. Shringla will participate in the Security Council meeting on cooperation between the UN and the League of Arab States on Wednesday.
A Kremlin spokesman said that Moscow was not ruling out the potential use of nuclear weapons if Russia was faced with an "existential threat" amid its invasion of Ukraine. President Vladimir Putin previously warned of consequences to any nation that stands in the way of his goals.
The aide to Alexei Navalny warned about the possible assassination of the Russian opposition leader after he was found guilty and sentenced to nine more years in a maximum-security prison. The situation comes as protests rage across the country over President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine.
The Ohio Supreme Court has rejected legislative maps three times. With weeks to go until the primary, voters don't know who their candidates are and candidates don't know where their districts are.
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have landed in Jamaica on a visit to boost ties with Commonwealth countries. Jamaicans protested in front of the British High Commission in Kingston just hours before Prince William and Kate arrived. (March 23)


As travellers begin flying for the spring break, Etihad Airways is preparing to welcome a large volume of passengers at Abu Dhabi International Airport over the weekend and had urged travellers to follow the below tips.

Covid related travel restrictions have been completely removed for travellers flying to UK, Bahrain and Ireland, while travellers to Jordan, Maldives or Saudi Arabia need only provide a health declaration form. More information can be found on etihad.com/destinationguide.

Travellers departing from Abu Dhabi will only need to take a PCR test if it is a requirement of their final destination. Passengers who are fully vaccinated do not need a PCR test when returning to Abu Dhabi.

Terry Daly, Executive Director Guest Experience, Brand and Marketing, Etihad Airways, said: With the removal of most travel restrictions, were looking forward to welcoming our guests on board over the coming holiday period. Were particularly excited to host families over the school spring holiday, who will experience our new Little VIPs family-friendly travel experience.

At Abu Dhabi International Airport, Etihads Little VIPs offers a dedicated check-in space for families with minimised queuing to make their journeys as smooth as possible. Thoughtful touches include a small set of stairs at check-in counters meaning the younger ones can take a peek at the check-in process with ease. Special Warner Bros. World Abu Dhabis themed gifts will also be offered inflight.

Etihad Airways travel tips

 Arrive at the airport early: Travellers should check in online and arrive early to complete the airport formalities. During peak times, check-in opens four hours before departure and closes one hour before departure for non-US flights and two hours before departure for US flights. Boarding for all Etihad Airways departures closes 20 minutes before departure.

 Get Verified to Fly: For destinations with travel restrictions, travellers should visit Manage my booking on etihad.com to upload their Covid travel documents. Approval will be shared by email giving passengers confidence that all required documents are in place. Approved passengers can use fast-track Verified to Fly desks at the airport, or the self-service kiosks.

 Use Home Check-in: For more convenient travel options, guests can also check in for their Etihad flight from the comfort of their own home by visiting etihad.com/homecheckin up to seven hours before their flight. This means passengers can check in their bags, choose their seat and collect their boarding pass and luggage tags from their home in Abu Dhabi. Once at Abu Dhabi International Airport, all non-transit passengers who have used the home check-in service can skip the queues bag-free, making the airport journey seamless. Luggage will need to be collected at the destination baggage belt.

 Check the flight timing and departure terminal: Given the significant increase in passenger numbers, Etihad Airways will relocate check-in for Economy class guests travelling on selected flights. Please check the latest information on etihad.com or the Etihad app, the airline said. - TradeArabia News Service
Months after she was evicted from her home due to Hurricane Ida, Danielle Wetzel's new home was struck by a tornado that swept through New Orleans.


About 200 dancers from Ukraine and Russia have recently requested help from Berlin's famous State Ballet after fleeing to Germany.


Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said today that she has tested positive for Covid-19 with "mild" symptoms.On social media, the former US Democratic presidential candidate said she was "feeling fine" and that former...
Civilians in Hungary are organising to make sure Ukrainian refugees have safe housing  and a bit of fun  when they flee the war.
US President Joe Biden departs for Brussels on Wednesday for talks with European leaders about Russia's invasion of Ukraine, carrying with him plans for more sanctions on Moscow that sources said include members of the Russian parliament.
Watch VideoOne of the worlds largest and most expensive yachts named the Scheherazade is now docked in Italy and rumored to..

Newsy 26 Mar 2022
Newsy 15 Mar 2022

Watch VideoRussia stepped up its bombardment of Kyiv on Tuesday, smashing apartments and a subway station, while civilians in 2,000..
Two superyachts linked to Roman Abramovich have docked in the sanction-free waters of Turkey this week. One of them was met at the dock by a Ukrainian youth sailing team protesting the war.
A delegation from the South African Parliament has distanced itself from an international resolution stating that "the ongoing Russian use of force against Ukraine is a violation of the Charter of the United Nations, including the principle of sovereignty and territorial integrity".
The cast of Ravens Home are joining the nationwide Disney employees walk out in protest of the companys mishandling of their..

Just Jared Jr 22 Mar 2022
A safari taxi drives away after dropping off tourists at the Carnival Victory cruise ship at the West Indian Co. dock in Havensight during pre-pandemic times on St. Thomas.
Rumble 29 Mar 2022

Everyone has seen this clip by now. Joe Bidens SCOTUS pick Ketanji Brown Jackson was asked during her confirmation hearing by..
Former Trump aide Paul Manafort's trip to Dubai was cut short after he was removed from a plane at Miami International Airport..

cbs4.com 23 Mar 2022
Images

Sorry, there are no recent results for popular images.
Matthias Knab, Opalesque for New Managers:

Privium Fund Management announced that the Savin Multi-Strategy Arbitrage Fund won the prestigious Eurohedge 2021 award in the category 'new fund of the year - macro, fixed income & relative value. The EuroHedge awards are solely based on a combination of both absolute and risk-adjusted returns. Receiving the award reflects the outperformance of the Savin Multi-Strategy Arbitrage Fund versus its peer group.

The Savin Multi-Strategy Arbitrage Fund was launched in February 2021, after receiving commitments to invest in access of USD 25 million and after signing up with ABN AMRO Clearing as the prime broker.

In the pursuit for absolute and uncorrelated returns, Savin specializes in arbitrage strategies.

The target return of the fund is on average >8% per annum, net of fees. During 2021 most of the returns came from the fund's volatility strategies. The rise of SPAC's as a new asset class also presented the fund with novel arbitrage opportunities. On the back of a net return of more than 24%, since the launch of the fund (as of February 28, 2022), the fund AUM has grown to USD 85 million.

Live presentation available

Savin Fund Management's Managing Director Bass Emmerig explained the fund's strategy at a recent Opalesque SKILLSLAB Webinar "Small Managers - BIG ALPHA - Episode 7".

The webinar replay can be accessed here: https://www.opalesque.com/webinar/#pw35

The replay is a user-friendly video, viewers can fast forward and navigate to the individual presentations:
Laxman Pai, Opalesque Asia:

After launching in 2020, the Finance for Biodiversity Pledge initiative is now backed by 89 financial firms committed to improving and sharing knowledge, and engaging with companies on biodiversity.

With its latest additions of five new signatories - Societe Generale Assurances, La Francaise, EAB Group, Future Food Fund, and Planet A - the initiative has reached a milestone with managing a combined 13tn ($14tn) in assets.

Its signatories are committed to protecting and restoring biodiversity by collaborating and sharing knowledge, engaging with companies, assessing impact, setting targets, and reporting their progress publicly before 2025.

The Open-Ended Working Group on the Post-2020 Biodiversity Framework is tasked with advancing preparations for the development of the post-2020 global biodiversity framework. This process is expected to lead to the adoption of a post-2020 global biodiversity framework during the second phase of the UN Biodiversity Conference in August-September 2022.

The OEWG3 meeting is held in a physical setting from 13 to 29 March 2022 in Geneva, Switzerland.

The Finance for Biodiversity Pledge is a commitment of financial institutions to protect and restore biodiversity through their finance activities and investments.

Laurent Jacquier-Laforge, global head of sustainable investing at La Francaise Group said: "As a responsible investor, our goal is to design and manage investment solutions that combine......................

To view our full article Click here
Laval, Quebec - When an electric panel, the very engine of the home, celebrates its 20th anniversary by packing up, then Erco's professional team of technicians will be more than happy to get your life switched back on in no time. The Laval-based experts, led by company owner Eric Gagne, are now the preferred choice for residents and businesses across Quebec to replace electric panels safely and install new ones. 
Schaghticoke, NY - New York State licensed home inspector Jason Federico is willing to demystify mold test results for homeowners around the world and assure them of the best course of action. Federico's online service - How To Read A Mold Report - provides reviews and recommendations based on mold results from other mold inspection vendors and contractors. This service will provide clients with the most up to date published 
Oskaloosa, IA (52577)

Today

Cloudy this morning. A few showers developing during the afternoon. High 59F. Winds E at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 30%..

Tonight

Overcast with rain showers at times. Low 49F. Winds NE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 50%.
Journeys lasting months, often years, until their lives changed in Jerusalem.



And so we travel, one might say, to look at the phenomenon of Christian pilgrimages, which developed in the Holy Land from the time of Constantine. One sets off out of devotion, and we are not discouraged despite the innumerable difficulties we encounter along the way, whether that be bandits, pirates, meteorological obstacles, hunger, thirst or cold. These impediments would severely test anyones will, especially those who, like women pilgrims, do not seem to have the necessary physical means. However, the history books document hundreds of instances of women, who were driven by their love for Christ, to travel for months, often even years, to change their lives in Jerusalem.



This was what happened to Mary of Egypt, a prostitute redeemed by the pilgrimage to the Holy Land. The patriarch Sophronius (550-639) has handed down, her hagiography in the oldest version. Upon finding herself blocked by a mysterious force when about to enter the Holy Sepulchre, the pilgrim turned to the Virgin, who showed her the point of the Baptism in Jordan. Mary Egyptian crossed the river and on the opposite bank, began her new hermitic and ascetic life. Pilgrimage is a rite of passage; it purifies and regenerates.

In Late Antiquity, high society women were among the protagonists of pilgrimages at the time of their first great development. Egeria is the author of an Itinerarium in which she recounts her journey to the holy places of Christianity. In the text, she writes and addresses the dominae sorores, who belonged to a high social class, which has been proven by various data. The details therein include: the deference with which she is received by the highest religious authorities; the escort of soldiers and imperial officers that accompanies her in some parts of her journey; the duration and cost of the journey; the use of well-equipped wagons and mounts; the possession of a diploma (a sort of ante litteram passport) that permitted her to move along the cursus publicus.

Egeria set off from Galicia for a pilgrimage across the Red Sea and Arabia, which led to Antioch and Constantinople, after it had passed through Palestine. In Jerusalem, the pilgrim describes in precise detail the Constantinian basilicas and the liturgies of the Holy Places, transmitting the atmosphere of the festivities. The fortune of the Itinerarium Egeriae is an exceptional case in the historiography of the pilgrimage. Her diary was discovered barely a century and a half ago in the library of the Fraternity of Santa Maria della Misericordia in Arezzo. Only a decade after the discovery of the codex, there were already five editions and four complete translations: Russian (1890), Italian (1890), English (1891), Danish (1896), followed in the next years by those in Greek, German, Spanish, French, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Catalan and Hebrew. However, Egeria was neither the only nor the first pilgrim to Jerusalem.

It was the Empress Helena, the mother of Constantine, who started the tradition of pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 326. Upon the conclusion of the Council of Nicaea, St Helena visited Bethlehem and Jerusalem where, accompanied by Bishop Macarius, rediscovered the places of the Passion and - so state Ambrose and Paulinus of Nola - the True Cross. Eusebius of Caesarea, who emphasizes the role of Constantine, notes the convergence between the desires of the mother and the operations of her son, who initiated the construction of the then tripartite Holy Sepulchre, consisting of a basilica with five naves, triportico with an atrium, and the Anastasis rotunda.

The pilgrims Elia Eudocia Atenaide, wife of Theodosius II; Eudossia, daughter of Elia Eudocia and Theodosius, who married Valentinian III; Licinia Eudocia, daughter of Eudoxia and Valentinian; Anicia Giuliana - the patron par excellence -, daughter of Placidia the Younger and Flavius Anicius Olibrio, were also from imperial families.

A halo of holiness surrounded Eudocia in particular. The recovery of the relics of the protomartyr Stephen and the chains of Saint Peter contributed to this, as did her intense building activity. After her daughter Eudoxias marriage, which was celebrated in Constantinople on October 28, 437, Eudocia decided to fulfill a vow, that of a pilgrimage. She departed around the years 438-439, went a second time to Palestine in 443 and remained there until her death. While there, she founded two monasteries, three oratories and a convent with an adjoining hospice. She financed the construction of the Praetorium church -St Sophia-, St Peters at the palace of Caiaphas, St John the Baptist south of the Holy Sepulchre and the St Stephen basilica where she was buried in 460.

Then there is the Saint Jerome circle of matrons. During his Roman years, the then secretary of Pope Damasus  here we are in the fourth century - met a group of clarissimae (women of high social ranking) on the Aventine, to whom he inculcates the ideal of detachment from the world. A letter from his epistolary is addressed to the young Eustochius after the death of his mother, Saint Paula. Jerome recalls Paulas pilgrimage, who arrived at the port of Ostia accompanied by relatives, friends and servants. The separation from her affections makes the embarkation dramatic. The woman tries to dissimulate her emotion. On the other hand, the faith that urged her to leave was stronger than anything else. Paola visited Palestine and monasteries in Egypt, and founded a hospital in Bethlehem. In their letter to Saint Marcella, Paula and Eustochius urged their addressee to join them. In doing so, mother and daughter contrasted the wealth and grandeur of Rome with the parvula Bethlehem. The noble Paola had dressed in silk robes, had been served by slaves, now she edifies herself through the hardships of pilgrimage and the rigors of monastic life.

Saint Melania Seniores pilgrimage dates back to the middle of the fourth century. Melania was in Palestine when, on hearing the news of her nieces marriage, she decided to return to Rome. However, it was not long before she sold all her properties and returned to Jerusalem, where she founded a monastery. Saint Melania Iuniore and Piniano also led a life of faith opposed to the worldly model of Rome. They were an aristocratic Christian couple, who travelled from Italy in 410-411 to Tagaste, the city of Numidia, and then, taken by the call of Jerusalem, left everything for the Holy Land.

The many pilgrims who arrived in the Holy Land during the Lower Empire seem to have vanished by the end of the fifth century. Ugeburga, who was not a pilgrim, but the nun relative of the German bishop St Willibaldo, wrote her travel journal in the 8th century, and would seem to be the only female presence in the history of the Jerusalem pilgrimage during the High Middle Ages.

After the year one thousand, the overall picture changed radically. Instead of discouraging pilgrimages, the destruction of the Holy Sepulchre by the Caliph Fatimid al-Hakim (1009) caused a development in interest. In the medium term, connected to the new geopolitical framework of the Balkan Peninsula that favored the land route and an eschatological longing that was constant and intense between 1033 and 1099, the year of the Crusader takeover of the Holy City. This was when there was a shift from travelling alone or in small companies to large groups of pilgrims who in some cases included a few thousand faithful. Among those who departed, many women are named in the documentation. Indeed, there is reason to believe that there are many, who have remained unnamed, among the components of those multitudes of which Rudolph the Glabrus, the monk who was one of the greatest chroniclers of the medieval age speaks. There are lay and clerics, rich and poor, knights and hermits, all who set out on a pilgrimage to the East. Instead, there are those who may have grasped at the chance of a somewhat surrogate more accessible form of sacred travel, which in their eyes, was nonetheless meritorious, and went to visit the many Jerusalems that are established in Europe.

Many pilgrims departed for the last pilgrimage. On the eve of the Crusade, Hildegard of Anjou, went to die in Jerusalem secundum desiderium cordis sui and asked to be buried near the tomb of the Savior.

The theme of pilgrims is a timeless one. In the late Middle Ages, there are the examples of Bridget of Sweden and Margery Kempe, who were both married and mothers, yet in the second part of their lives, chose to leave on a pilgrimage. St Bridget, a daughter of pilgrims, was born into a high aristocratic family, and could afford a retinue for protection. After the death of her husband - with whom she had already been to Compostela - she decided to go to Rome and Jerusalem. Kempe had a more difficult experience. After a vision, she departed alone, and without means, for the three peregrinationes maiores, and wrote a travel diary known as the Book of Margery Kempe.

To conclude, even if it does not do so specifically, in the history of pilgrimages, the female presence defeats the conventional image of male Middle Ages.

by Giuseppe Perta

Professor of Medieval History, University of Naples Suor Orsola Benincasa


The experience of the English mystic in the fifteenth century



In the early 1400s, a group of pilgrims paused for thirteen weeks in Venice before embarking for Jerusalem. Among the travelers, there was an English woman who claimed to speak with Jesus every day, and to have received a vision ordering her to dress in white like cloistered nuns. However, being the mother of fourteen children, she could not claim virginal purity.



Her name was Margery Kempe, who was legally married and just turned forty, but her manifestations of faith had caused her to be accused of heresy in England, and receive the reproach of priests and bishops, and even a brief spell of imprisonment. Now that she has embarked alone on a long holy journey that will take her to Rome, Assisi, Santiago de Compostela, the Holy Land, Holland and Norway, the persecutions continue. For example, her Venetian traveling companions, who had become annoyed by her mysticism, banish her from the hostels communal canteen, because during meals she constantly speaks of Christs miracle and weeps profusely when she prays.

A similar hardship had happened on the previous stage, in Constance, Germany, where the pilgrims with whom she was traveling had even cut off her skirt and forced her to walk around dressed in just a jute sack. In Bologna, one of the pilgrims offered her a hand of mercy, saying If you want to continue to stay with us, we must come to an agreement: you must not talk about the Gospel when we are in your presence, and you will have to remain seated and cheerful as we do during lunch and dinner. It is the Margery herself who recounts these episodes in her Book of Margery Kempe, the first autobiography in English. The book, dictated to a scribe because she was illiterate, documents her journey in generous with priceless details. For example, the story, while in Venice, of the chartering of a commercial ship bound for Jerusalem with beds rented to pilgrims for whom there were also barrels of wine to make the crossing less austere. However, even on this leg of her journey, Kempe was mocked and marginalized.

In fact, her presence acts as a revelation of others souls. The people who experience faith as a cloak of social formality mock her, while the pure of heart, the poor and the marginalized welcome and support her. During her travels, the pilgrim often finds shelter in the homes of people who have nothing and of which only she has left a trace in her writing about them.

Kempe was born in 1373 just when her contemporary Geoffrey Chaucer began to compose the masterpiece The Canterbury Tales. His is the story of a group of pilgrims who walk the distance between London and the cathedral where the sacred remains of the Church martyr Thomas Becket are kept. At that time, pilgrimages were a living reality and occurred daily, and often for reasons unrelated to the depth of faith. After all, upon arrival in a sanctuary it was possible to buy indulgences for themselves and their loved ones with cash. It was also quite a common occurrence that women joined these holy journeys without an escort. In Chaucers volume  with which English literature is founded, there is the story of the extraordinary woman of Bath, who had been widowed five times, devoted to God in her own way, and who was travelling with a carnal and earthly hope of finding a new husband.

Margery Kempe, this womans peer, belonged to the same social stock; an entrepreneur and lover of expensive clothes, but then took the opposite path. She was born in Kings Lynn in the east of England, a daughter of a notable and married for twenty years to a rich bourgeoisie. After their first child was born, Kempe suffered from evil visions. She saw devils chasing her and committed acts of self-harm until one day she saw Jesus dressed in purple silk for the first time. The mystical dialogue continued everyday for forty years, and became a loving and supportive encounter. Kempe recounts that it was Jesus himself who at one point urged her to put aside motherhood and dedicate herself to a holy life.

The mystic and pilgrim went to Mass several times a day and indulged in uncontrollable crying even while on her way. In Rome, while wandering in a working-class neighborhood, she took children from their mothers arms and kissed them, convinced that they were the incarnation of Christ.

These are the signs of that affective piety that had taken hold in the early Middle Ages; however, they caused Margery Kempe great strife. This was still more than a century before the Anglican schism, but in English society, there was a growing impatience with a Church that was considered distant. This was when the Lollard movement was founded which would then be bloodily repressed. The mayor of Kings Lynn accused her of Lollardism in public because she dared to claim a direct dialogue with God, without the mediation of priests. Kempe responded to the annoyance of her fellow citizens and pilgrims with the strength of her faith, Im sorry but I must speak to my Lord Jesus Christ despite the world forbidding me to do so.

She understood it deeply. Her husband John Kempe, of whom the book preserves the portrait of a man who for love of his wife, albeit with some reluctance, embraced chastity. He left her free to undertake a long pilgrimage in the footsteps of St Bridget of Sweden, she too a mystic and tireless pilgrim. St Bridget had been canonized in 1391 by Pope Boniface IX who was a spiritual example she mentions several times in her autobiography.

After months of travel, around 1414 Margery Kempe finally set foot in Jerusalem riding a donkey from which she risked falling because she could hardly bear the sweetness and grace that God had embroidered in her heart.

When she arrived on Mount Calvary, she recounted that she felt the suffering of Christ in her flesh as if she could really see the body of Jesus suspended in front of her. So great was the effect, that from that moment on when she saw a crucifix, or a man or even a wounded animal, or if she saw a man beating a child or a beast with a whip, she always thought she saw the Lord beaten or wounded and on those occasions her weeping reached paroxysm.

The Holy Sepulcher friars approached her with wonder. They had heard of a woman born in England who talked to God every day. After seeing the place of Christs burial, then the place where the apostles had received the message of the Resurrection, and after touching Lazarus tomb and visiting Bethany, where Mary and Martha lived, Margery Kempe received an order from God to return.

On the ship to Venice, her fellow passengers suffered and fell ill. Instead, she was comforted by Jesus words, Do not be afraid, my daughter, no man will die in the ship where you are traveling.

Upon landing in Italy, her fellow pilgrims abandoned her once again. Alone and mocked, Margery Kempe the pilgrim crossed the English Channel and landed in Dover where fortunately she received the help of a poor man who, sensing her holiness, accompanied her to Canterbury on horseback. Her faith is in fact strengthened day after day thanks to the constant presence of a compassionate God who found a way to help her along the way. Even though she was alone, Kempe was never actually alone thanks to Gods voice: The greater the shame, the greater the spite and disapproval that you suffer because of me, the greater is my love for you.

by Laura Eduati
The rite at the Holy Mosque in the footsteps of Ishmaels mother



Why should one undertake a pilgrimage? To where? With what intention? Moreover, what will change afterwards? There is one womans story, of Hagar, which helps us reflect on these questions and more besides.



An Egyptian slave, who belonged to Sarah, wife of Abraham, to whom was born a son, was considered a second class woman, not only in married life but also in social life. Despite this, she is presented, proposed and indicated in a clear and evident way as an example to imitate and follow.

Hagar is a woman on a journey. She was ordered to make a pilgrimage; infact, she had no choice, she had to leave, to emigrate, and it was even the good prophet of the time who ordered her to break away from everyone and everything. She was abandoned in an arid land taken into the desert, but she was not alone, as with her was baby Ishmael, the beloved son of the prophet. One might say that life sometimes leads us to perform irrational acts, like that of Abraham.

However, where does pain take us? The suffering? Toward whom or what? Moreover, why?

Lost in the desert, Agar could not even cry out since there was no one who could hear her. She could just lay down and wait to die. And, why not?

Instead, here is the Woman! A sign and example of fertility, life, acceptance, nourishment, love, courage, faith and hope.

Hagar is not overcome by adversity; she cannot cry out but she can walk, run for water and hold on, for her son and for herself.

For the Islamic pilgrimage rite of the Al Hajj, the pilgrims coming to Mecca, be they women or men must imitate Hagar in order to perform the religious act correctly and completely.

Her effort to run seven times between the two hills of Safa and Marwa in search of water, and they must run having in mind her and her path, her faith, her courage, her love. Moreover, her hope.

The name Agar means pilgrim. On the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, she who appears as the guide, the lighthouse, the authentic model of a true believer. This woman is an example for men and women of all times and places. She represents the feminine force, the one who first offers life itself through the welcoming space of her womb and later, during the journey of existence, she gives the vital space of her soul and her perseverance to believe and hope.

Hagar is the woman who does not give up, who believes and hopes in the resurrection. With her immense will, she makes the Muslims pilgrimage a free path towards faith and hope. A pilgrimage to find, rediscover, know, meditate, discover and perhaps touch the meaning of the mystery of pain. The Islamic rite of pilgrimage indicates the direction of life. To walk and not stop, have a sublime goal on their way, and, having reached Mecca, meet God in their brothers and sisters and achieve a vision of unity. This is how the great Persian mystic poet Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi contemporary of St Francis of Assisi describes the meaning of pilgrimage:

There are many paths of quest, but the quest is always the same. Perhaps you do not see that the roads leading to Mecca are different, one coming from Byzantium, another from Syria, and still others passing by land or sea? As a result, the distance to travel is different each time, but when they reach the end, the disputes, arguments, and differences of view disappear, because hearts are united. This impulse of the heart is neither faith nor disbelief, but love. (Rumi, Fihi-ma fih, The Book of Inner Depths).

Today, Muslims from the four corners of the earth travel to Mecca in the pilgrimage month to perform a religious act. Everyone dresses the same, whether they are women, men, young, and old, rich, poor, rulers or subjects; everyone wears a white cotton robe and circle the Kaba, bayt Allah house of God, seven times. The pilgrims repeat Allahumma labbayk, Lord here I am, and walk around a cube form which is 15 meters high. Inside this cube? There is nothing inside! The image seen from above is that of a white wave in movement, from which rises a constant sound: Here I am. A sea of women and men who have their fellow Muslims in front, behind and beside them, the Kaba is empty. In this way that Here I am reaches the ears of a fellow pilgrim. A movement of harmonious unity despite the many diversities of color, languages, traditions and backgrounds.

For fourteen centuries, the Islamic pilgrimage has sought to teach the faithful to imitate Hagars steps. The message is: be like her, a courageous mother and woman with a steadfast faith despite everything. Today, the faithful drink from a fountain called Zemzem that recalls the miraculous sparkling of water under the feet of the child, Ishmael.

Agar becomes central in the Islamic pilgrimage not only because the rite is not completed without running seven times between the two hills as she did, but also because it becomes an integral part of Gods own house in Mecca, which is the to where the canonical prayer of about two billion Muslims on earth is directed. In the north-west, part of the Kaba there is a semicircular wall called hijr-Ismail. According to tradition, it was in this area that Hagar lived and was then buried, and later Ishmael too. Out of respect, we cannot walk on it.

The message goes beyond ritual, symbols and gestures. Once again, Rumi draws the intelligent gaze towards a penetrating reading of ritual. To see and find in oneself and in one's neighbor the face of God.

O people set out on pilgrimage! Where on earth are you, where on earth are you?

The Beloved is here, come back, come back!

The Beloved is your neighbor, live wall to wall,

What is the idea of wandering in the desert of Arabia?

On closer inspection the formless form of the Beloved,

The Master and the House and the Kaba is you!

Try once from this house to climb to the roof!.

(Rumi, Poesie mistiche [Mystical Poems], BUR)



by Shahrzad Houshmand Zadeh



Saudi Arabia, women travelling to Mecca without a guardian



Last year, the Saudi Arabian authorities decreed that women could take part in Al Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, for the first time without the obligation of being accompanied by a man.

They can leave for the holy city without a mahram, a man or a first-degree relative of the woman who acts as guardian and chaperone. To do so, however, they have to abide by the condition of traveling as a group.
OTTUMWA [mdash] Dorothy Helen Cox 92 of Ottumwa Iowa went home to be with the Lord March 17th, 2022. She was born to Reece and Eva Carnes in Ottumwa. She was preceded in death by her daughter Connie Van Niewall and a great great grandchild. Surviving is her son Kevin (Vicki) Palmer, Son in l
Do you appreciate the work we do as the only independent media outlet dedicated to serving OU students, faculty, staff and alumni on campus and around the world for more than 100 years?

Then consider helping fund our endeavors. Around the world, communities are grappling with what journalism is worth and how to fund the civic good that robust news organizations can generate. We believe The OU Daily and Crimson Quarterly magazine provide real value to this community both now by covering OU, and tomorrow by helping launch the careers of media professionals.

If youre able, please SUPPORT US TODAY FOR AS LITTLE AS $1. You can make a one-time donation or a recurring pledge.
The following list includes recent reports from the Midland County Sheriffs Office and the Midland Police Department. Compiled by reporter Collin Periatt.

Monday, March 21

10:59 p.m.  Deputies conducted a traffic stop at a City of Midland location. Deputies made contact with the 41-year-old driver. Upon further investigation, it was discovered that the man didn't have a valid driver's license, and there was a warrant for his arrest. The man was arrested on the warrant and given a citation. The man was transported to Midland County Jail without incident.

10:40 p.m.  Officers conducted a warrant arrest on Ashman Street.

9:56 p.m.  Officers investigated a verbal domestic disturbance on Mertz Street.

9:32 p.m.  Deputies conducted a traffic stop at a Midland Township location. They made contact with the 38-year-old driver. Upon further investigation, it was discovered that there was an arrest warrant for the 29-year-old passenger. The passenger was arrested on the warrant and turned over to Michigan State Police without incident.

8:33 p.m.  A deputy spoke with a 41-year-old Lee Township man following an incident of urinating in public at a Mount Haley Township business.

8:04 p.m.  A deputy and an MSP trooper responded to a Jerome Township roadway for a report of a possible fight in the roadway between multiple people. The suspects left the area prior to arrival. The deputy and trooper checked the neighborhood and were unable to locate the parties involved.

8:03 p.m.  Officers investigated a crash leading to an injury near Sturgeon Avenue and Airport Road.

4:25 p.m.  MCSO Detective Bureau received a referral from the Department of Health & Human Services suggesting the possible sexual assault of a minor child years ago. Once contacted, the parent of the child confirmed that an incident did happen, but that it occurred in another jurisdiction and had already been investigated and was currently in court proceedings.

12:29 p.m.  Deputies were dispatched to a Jerome Township residence for a report of a verbal argument. Deputies spoke with a 27-year-old Jerome Township man and his 33-year-old live-in girlfriend. The couple advised it was a verbal argument with no assault and did not need assistance.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

BIG RAPIDS  Those looking to build a new home in Big Rapids may soon have the option of a lot near Clay Cliffs nature park.

During its meeting this week, the city commission approved a bid from Morningstar Enterprises, Inc. in the amount of $173,182 for completion of the Rust Avenue extension.

Rust Avenue, at this time, terminates at Escott Street. This would extend Rust Avenue beyond Escott to a small cul-de-sac, at which there will be three lots that border the Clay Cliffs nature area, city manager Mark Gifford said. These would be wonderful lots to build a home.

The board approved a proposal from Fleis & VandenBrink to complete a survey and a proposal for bids in June, Gifford told the board. Bids were received from five companies, with Morningstar Enterprises being the lowest.

Morningstar does construction in our community and has been a frequent bidder for city projects, Gifford said. We are obviously very comfortable working with them and recommend awarding the bid to Morningstar.

He added that although the bid is higher than the previously budgeted amount of $140,000 for the project, it is within the citys means to fund the project.

The Rust Avenue extension project is part of an effort to create more housing options for Big Rapids residents.

The city purchased the 40-plus acres about 15 years ago, Gifford said previously. Although much of the property was purchased with Department of Natural Resources grant funds, which came with restrictions on development, the city kept three acres that were purchased with city funds for future development.

This project has been in the planning stages for many years, and now seems like a good time with the housing issues and the momentum we have around creating new housing opportunities in the city, Gifford said.

Mayor Fred Guenther added they will be three beautiful lots for sale with sewer and water already available for anyone that is interested.

ADDITIONAL ACTIONS

In other business, the board approved a resolution to direct the planning commission to look into the possibility of closing of two alley ways along Maple Street across from Big Rapids Products.

According to information provided to the board, Big Rapids Products personnel requested the city look into closing the two alleys that enter Maple Street out of concerns for public safety.

The two streets (Gilbertson and Pemberton avenues) were closed years ago and for some reason the alleys remained open, Guenther said. There has been a request to close the two alleys or make them enter and exit in the same direction.

The request came from Big Rapids Products, and they are trying to reduce traffic where the big trucks zoom by, he continued. When they closed the roads the traffic got much better, but people still come up they alley and shoot (out onto Maple Street) and they feel it is dangerous and would like to see that stopped. I think it is well worth looking into.

The city commission is seeking public input regarding the matter, and a recommendation from the planning commission as to how the request would comply with the Michigan Land Division Act and the city code.

Gifford added the alleys only have 20 foot right of ways so anyone using the alleys would not be able to turn around without some type of cul-de-sac or a loop around. Those are some possible solutions for that, he said.

The planning commission will review the issue and make a recommendation to the city in the coming months.

During the meeting, the board approved the following:
LANSING  Electric vehicle battery maker LG Energy Solution plans a $1.7 billion expansion in western Michigan that will add up to 1,200 jobs by 2025, officials announced Tuesday.

The project at the company's site in Holland, located about 138 miles southwest of Midland, was approved for $56.5 million in state grants and a 20-year tax break worth $132.6 million.

Michigan Economic Development Corp. CEO Quentin Messer Jr., who chairs the Michigan Strategic Fund, said the expansion will quintuple the plant's ability to produce battery components. The average wage will be $1,257 a week, or about $65,000 annually, plus benefits.

We look forward to the incredible impact this project will have on the region's economy, small businesses and workforce for generations to come, Messer said.

A state memo requesting the incentives says LG Energy Solution was considering facilities in the southeastern U.S. and potentially in Poland and China.

The company, which is headquartered in South Korea, could begin hiring later this year. It manufactures large lithium-ion polymer battery cells and packs for electric vehicles and other applications.

It has joint-venture partnerships with General Motors, with which it is building three U.S. battery plants in Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee, and Stellantis, formerly Fiat Chrysler. Stellantis would not confirm reports that it will build a battery factory in Windsor, Ontario, with LG. The site of a planned fourth GM-LG battery plant has not been announced.

The impact of this win will be felt around the entire state for decades to come, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said in a statement.

LG Energy Solution, formerly known as LG Chem Michigan, has nearly 1,500 Michigan employees, including more than 1,300 in Holland near Lake Michigan. The company plans to construct several new buildings totaling 1.4 million square feet on vacant land it already owns.

Then-President Barack Obama attended the plant's 2010 groundbreaking, which was aided by a $151 million federal stimulus grant. Production began in 2013.

Michigan was a natural choice to our commitment of building an impact global business because of its rich pool of talent, being close to the geographic epicenter of the automotive industry and its strong support, said Bonchul Koo, president of LG Energy Solution Michigan.
To the editor:

I am writing today because of how important it is for Michigan (and the rest of the country) to invest in green energy, especially in the transportation sector. Currently, emissions from gasoline and diesel engines make transportation the single largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. Greening transportation is a key to solving climate change  and there is good news about progress in that direction.



Viewers of this years Super Bowl who stayed tuned during commercials (or who tuned in just for them) may have been surprised to see as many as six auto ads  including an ad from GM  focused on electric vehicle (EV) offerings. The ads both reflect and build demand for EVs  the wave of the future. In late January, GM announced its plans to invest $6.5 billion in electric vehicles, creating up to 4,000 new Michigan jobs. In Congress, Rep. Dan Kildee and Senator Debbie Stabenow are working to expand the electric vehicle tax credit, making the purchase of EVs more attractive.



Prospective EV buyers concerned about the cars driving range can begin to relax. Earlier this month, Congressman Kildee announced that $16 million from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill will be invested in electric vehicle charging stations across Michigan. This money will provide good paying jobs in Michigan, as workers build a reliable and accessible network of EV charging stations.



An additional step is still needed: to transition toward renewable energy and away from coal as Michigans source of electricity. Kildees support of the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act shows that he knows both how to make that transition and that solving climate change will be necessary to ensure a livable future for all our children.



In the middle of February, it was raining outside. Once upon a time, February was more likely to get snow. Nowadays, rain is as likely in February as snow is. This is something that should concern all of us, especially after the spate of floods in the area over the last few years. I want to thank Congressman Kildee for his efforts in mitigating climate change.
Paducah, KY (42003)

Today

Thunderstorms likely this morning. Then a chance of scattered thunderstorms this afternoon. A few storms may be severe. High near 75F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%..

Tonight

Rain showers in the evening with thunderstorms developing overnight. Low 63F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%.
Palestine, TX (75801)

Today

Cloudy skies this morning followed by strong thunderstorms during the afternoon. Damaging winds and large hail with some storms. High 79F. Winds SW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 90%..

Tonight

Partly to mostly cloudy skies with scattered thunderstorms during the evening. A few storms may be severe. Low 58F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 50%.
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (PANA) - The African Union Commission (AUC) and the European Union (EU) have committed to deepen their cooperation in digital technologies, healthcare, governance and education to bolster development
Tripoli, Libya (PANA) - Libya's Deputy Foreign Minister for Political Affairs, Mohamed Khalil Issa, said Wednesday Libya was "still suffering from the disease of foreign interference in its internal affairs, through the negative orientations of some parties in a way that has hindered the possibility of reaching the desired consensus"
Photo: (Photo : ARIS MESSINIS/AFP via Getty Images)

A 27-year-old Ukrainian woman was seriously injured after acting as a shield to shelter her baby from shrapnel blasts in the capital city of Kyiv. Olga talked to Reuters about the incident, recalling her shock when she saw blood covering her young child after a Russian missile strike shattered glass all across their room.

Olga, who is getting treatment at the Okhmatdyt Children's Hospital, was emotional, saying, "I was wounded in the head, and blood started flowing. And it all flowed on the baby." Olga was confused when that happened, saying, "I couldn't understand; I thought it was her blood."

Pictures of Olga holding her baby Victoria, with her head heavily bandaged and her upper body draped in cuts, have gone viral on social media. People have been drawn to their photographs as it is in an image that perfectly encapsulates the heavy toll being paid by Ukrainian civilians in Russia's military invasion of their country.

Olga and Dmytro protected their daughter from a missile strike

Olga, who refused to share her family name, said she started screaming that her daughter had been cut as Victoria's father, Dmytro took the young girl. Olga recalled that Dmytro calmed her down, saying that her blood was on the baby and not Victoria's.

Photos of the 27-year-old Ukrainian woman, holding her baby close to her bare chest on a hospital bed under a foil blanket in the aftermath of the blast, were shared widely, highlighting the toll of Russias invasion on civilians in Ukraines capital. https://t.co/QSG5PWcReh  The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) March 21, 2022

Olga said she had woken up to feed her six-week-old baby and had already covered her daughter with a blanket to keep her warm when the missile strike suddenly happened. Olga believed that it was what kept her baby alive, adding that she just got her covered in time. Olga also thanked the quick thinking of her partner, saying, "Dmytro jumped up and covered us too."

According to CBS News, Olga suffered multiple injuries and is being treated by doctors at the hospital for various cuts to the head and body. However, the good news for Olga and Dmytro is that their baby was basically unharmed from the blast, apart from some bruises and a scratch.

Read Also: U.K. Doctors Complete Mercy Mission to Bring Families of Ukraine Children With Cancer to Great Britain

Russian attacks on Ukrainian civilians increasing

Despite the horrors that his family experienced, Dmytro continues to have a positive outlook on life. He said that there is nothing left for them to do but to stay positive and believe that it was the worst, the most horrible thing that could have happened in their lives.

It is hard to maintain that outlook with casualties rising in Kyiv. According to Ukrainian authorities, at least 60 civilians have been killed in the capital city since Russia launched its military invasion of Ukraine on February 24. Several of the victims were killed in missile strikes on residential buildings in Kyiv.

Just last week, a maternity hospital in the city of Mariupol was targeted with a missile strike by Russian troops. Russia's military then bombed an art school in that same city that was sheltering some 400 people. Local Ukrainian officials also confirmed that a theater in Mariupol was also bombed, with CNN reporting that around 1,300 people were believed to be inside the building during the missile strike.

Related Article: Ukrainian Family Tells Story of Surviving Russian Forces Fire at Checkpoint Near Kyiv
Photo: (Photo : Rich Fury/Getty Images)

Kylie Jenner delighted her fans when she gave them a glimpse of her second pregnancy and footage of her son Wolf's delivery. The 24-year-old "Keeping Up With the Kardashians" alum posted a Youtube video on Monday, March 21, titled "To Our Son."

According to Elle magazine, the release of the 9-minute-plus documentary-style video was a complete surprise as Jenner was pretty much secretive about her latest pregnancy, keeping much of the details surrounding her and Travis Scott's second child private.

The footage began with the makeup mogul and her on-again, off-again partner, Travis Scott, discovering that their second baby was on the way. The video showed the power couple attending an ultrasound appointment.

Kylie Jenner shares never-before-seen pregnancy footage

Jenner showed fans multiple maternity shoots and her baby shower last January. Her daughter Stormi's 4th birthday party, which she jointly celebrated with cousin Chicago that same month, was also featured in the Youtube video.

In the video, Jenner had an interesting conversation with Stormi, with the reality star telling her daughter that she and her sibling may share the same birthday. Jenner asked Stormi if she was OK with that, with the four-year-old replying "Yes" before saying goodbye.

Family members then gave special messages to the future addition in the Kardashian-Jenner household. According to Us Weekly, Khloe Kardashian issued a fun message in the baby shower, saying, "Baby, we love you, and we adore you. I cannot wait for me to be your favorite aunt." Khloe then reminded those in attendance that she was everyone's favorite aunt.

Kendall Jenner then paid tribute to her sister, with the 26-year-old model saying that Kylie inspires her so much with being a mom. Kendall noted that even though she is not a mom yet herself, she looks up to Kylie so much about how she raises Stormi and how they are going to raise their new baby. Kendall concluded her speech by saying, "I'm so excited, and I already love the baby so much. I'm just ready to meet them."

Read Also: Grieving Parents of Late 'Rust' Cinematographer Halyna Hutchins Trapped in War-torn Kyiv, Ukraine

Kylie decides to change son Wolf's name

Kylie ended her YouTube video with a bang, giving glimpses of baby Wolf's nursery and footage from her labor. In the social media upload, Jenner asked Scott, "Are you ready to have another baby? The footage then switched to audio-only, with Kris Jenner telling them, "He's out!" Scott also could not hide his excitement, saying "What's up, big boy?" repeatedly.

Jenner grabbed the headlines again on Monday when she announced that she was changing her baby boy's name. People magazine reported that Jenner posted the shocking news on her Instagram stories, telling her followers that his son will no longer go by the name of Wolf as they just really did not feel like it was him.

Related Article: Young Pregnant Ukrainian Influencer Used by Russia in Disinformation Campaign on Mariupol Bombing
Photo: (Photo : Getty images )

Taking care of four kids under four years of age may be a daunting task for any mom. More so when the mom is blind. Ebony Uamaki said that blindness never stood in her way of being a mom, she told Honey9.

She admitted that many people had questioned her ability to parent because she is blind. But she said her eyesight had not hindered her parenting ability. For her, children require patience and resilience, which has nothing to do with not being able to see.

No eyesight since birth

The mom had retinitis pigmentosa (RP) and has lost her eyesight since birth. She has only one percent eyesight on her left eye, while on her right eye, she is completely blind. According to Better Health Channel, retinitis pigmentosa (RP) is a condition where the light-sensitive cell of the retina gets damaged, causing the loss of vision.

She said that she had lost a big chunk of eyesight over the years, so she had to readapt and do things differently. But doing things differently is like a grieving process, she said. She thinks that because of the challenges she experienced as a kid, she had to learn from an early age that if she wanted to be happy, she had to change her perspective.

The lack of eyesight became a concern among family, friends, and medical practitioners. As a mother at 28 years old, they questioned her parenting ability.

The family doctor encouraged her to terminate the pregnancy when she first got pregnant. The doctor said that she might not be able to cope with the pregnancy, or she would pass her genetic condition to her children.

She said that the greatest challenge was people telling her that being blind is the worst thing imaginable. She said that there is a perception that disabled parents cannot do something.

Read Also: Community Schooling: San Francisco School Opens Its Gym For Homeless Students

On my own

When she was pregnant with their daughter, she remembered posting on one forum with about 500,000 members. She asked if there was any blind mom in the group, and no one answered. Since then, it became clear that she had to work it out independently. As per Research net, she had problems like other blind moms are facing.

So when she had her daughter, it was a trial and error thing. She would research, listen to podcasts and forums on how other women did something, and adapt to her situation. When she had her son, she had tried other things, and it was a different ballgame when she had the twins.

Ebony is confident with all four kids on her own at home because she has set up everything. When at home, she says that no one can tell that she is blind because she knows the surroundings well.

Raising compassionate kids

Ebony is proud of how compassionate her kids are. She said her daughter would show her things and make her touch them. Her kids understand the concept of not being able to see. The other day she said she tripped over her son's truck. The son apologized, saying, "I'm so sorry mom I left them there."

Ebony said that losing her sight "helped me be a better parent."

Related Article: Boy, 12, Speaks Out After Burning Himself in Tiktok Fire Challenge
Recognizing the strategic importance of human capital in the process of improving operational efficiency, revenue collection, trade facilitation and transparency, the General Directorate of Customs and Excise of the Democratic Republic of Congo (GDCE-DRC) attaches particular importance to the design and the effective implementation of a modern and competency-based HRM system. As part of the activities of the agreed HRM modernization roadmap previously developed, the WCO successfully delivered a 10 days expert advisory mission from March 07 -18, 2022 in Kinshasa, DRC.

His Excellency the Minister of Finance of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Vice-Chair of the WCO-WCA region, the Director General of the GDCE and the Deputy Director of the Capacity Building Directorate of WCO personally oversaw the successful kick-off and closing of the mission that engaged 24 GDCE senior officials including the president of the union that constitute the HRM working group during its deliberations. The objectives of this mission were to: (i) validate the competency-based HRM tools that have been developed by the team with the support of WCO through 2 virtual missions, (ii) launch the communication and change management activities related to HRM modernization internally and externally, and (iii) initiate the competency assessment exercise at the selected pilot site, namely the Customs Office at Kinshasa International Airport.

In his opening address, His Excellency Mr. Nicolas Kazadi Minister of Finance outlined the importance of investing in human capital as it is the most crucial and strategic asset of the organization. His Excellency highly welcomed and fully supported the implementation of a modern HRM system in Customs as a key enabler to enhance the organizational performance and fight corruption and unethical practices. He underlined that this initiative will be widespread to all departments of the Ministry of Finance where GDCE will be expected to assume a leadership role for the HRM modernization efforts. As for the vice-president of the WCO-WCA region, Dr. Guenole MBONGO KOUMOU, he underlined the critical role of human capital in the context of operationalizing the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) which requires the development of a new customs culture based on people and professionalization. He emphasized that the lack of strategic human resources management and documented operational practices and procedures undermines the performance and transparency of Customs Administrations in the region. He concluded that the key element to achieving Customs missions, fighting corruption and promoting integrity is the execution of an ambitious HRM modernization programme.

The mission met its objectives by achieving the following outputs: (i) Finalization and validation of all Competency-based HRM tools, (ii) Alignment of the organizational structure and organization chart with international standards and best practices, (iii) Initiation of the development of a manual of procedures and an HR information system (iv) communication and change management sessions successfully conducted in the pilot site (airport) with the participation of over 300 staff. The mission also recalled key elements of the Revised Arusha Declaration related to the critical role of human capital management and practices in promoting integrity and preventing corruption in a Customs environment.

In her closing remarks, Ms. Blandine KAWANDA, Director General of the DGCE thanked WCO for the valuable support and reaffirmed her commitment to successfully modernize HRM with the support of the WCO to become a champion in the region.

For more information on this mission and People Development Programme, please contact Capacity.Building@wcoomd.org<.
Photo: (Photo : Megan Lee via Unsplash)

In most places, spring is just around the corner-kids are back in school, people are returning to the office, and the world is opening back up after an extended shutdown. As this happens, there's more traffic on highways and urban streets, and auto accidents are increasing in frequency.

Bus accidents are far more dangerous than car-on-car collisions. Because buses are bigger than commuter vehicles and carry more passengers, there's more of a risk of serious injury. When there's an accident with a bus involving motorcyclists, pedestrians, and other vehicles, the results are often catastrophic.

The time after a bus accident is often a chaotic and confusing one. Victims are often overwhelmed, angry, and unable to protect their rights and health. Here are a few steps that may help them regain control of the situation and get back on the right track.

Don't Leave the Scene

After a collision involving a bus, safety is the most important consideration. Call 911 to report the accident and summon emergency aid if there are serious injuries. If emergency assistance isn't required, notify the police of the accident, and request a copy of the report.

If you're unhurt and it's safe, stay on the scene and help other passengers. However, if your vehicle has been hit by a bus, you'll need to exchange information with the driver and other motorists. Florida has a hit-and-run law that keeps people from leaving an accident scene without providing their information, unless they've been seriously injured and need emergency medical care. After a bus accident, the best step to take is to stay calm and try to help others.

Find Important Evidence

The next thing to do is to gather evidence and information. Many victims do it while they're at the scene of the accident, and it has a significant effect on these cases. Take plenty of photos of the area, involved vehicles, and visible injuries. Get contact information from the bus driver and other passengers, as well as first responders.

Get Medical Care

If you're hurt after a bus accident, prompt medical attention is essential. As a vehicle occupant or bus passenger, it is common to experience soft tissue injuries, broken bones, cuts, and bruises. Some injuries may take days, weeks, or even months to appear, and early intervention may prevent them from becoming worse. After receiving emergency care, follow the doctor's treatment plan.

Document Everything

Notes, bills, receipts, and other papers related to the incident should be retained. These records may help an attorney determine the extent of your financial losses, including vehicle repairs, physical therapy, doctor visits, and other accident-related costs. Consider scanning important documents and saving them to the cloud so they don't get lost. Remember, it's the smallest details that make or break a personal injury claim!

Contact Us

Bus accident claims are often complex, with numerous potentially liable parties and victims. In most cases, there's stiff opposition from the bus company, as well as their insurer. Furthermore, many victims fail to seek compensation from bus manufacturers and other lesser-known liable parties. Our lawyers will protect your interests and help you get the economic recovery you deserve. Get more information via our online form or call today to schedule a no-obligation initial consultation with an experienced injury attorney.
Photo: (Photo : ELMER MARTINEZ/AFP via Getty Images)

According to a new study, people infected by COVID-19, including those with mild coronavirus infection, are likely to develop new COVID symptoms linked to increased diabetes risk.

Experts from the VA Saint Louis Health Care System learned that those who survived a coronavirus infection might develop type 2 diabetes within one year of their recovery, while one in 100 COVID-19 patients elevate their risk of being diagnosed as a diabetic. The experts published their findings in The Lancet journal.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 80 million people have had a coronavirus infection since the pandemic started two years ago. This means that there could potentially be 795,000 new diagnoses of diabetes cases.

Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, the chief of research at the VA Saint Louis Health Care System, said that it's becoming clearer COVID-19 does not just have acute effects after studying nearly 200,000 COVID-19 recoveries. Patients are bound to have long-term health consequences and new COVID symptoms, which is a jarring realization for many healthcare workers.

Read Also: New Study Reveals 4 Signs That You Might Get Long COVID

It's Evident in All Groups

The doctor further stated that they initially thought the increased diabetes risk would only manifest in people whose risk factors include obesity. However, their findings revealed that it's evident in all groups, regardless of age, gender, or race.

"It was also evident even in people who had no risk factors for diabetes at all," Al-Aly said, per ABC News.

In recovered COVID-19 patients diagnosed with diabetes, about 99 percent developed type 2 diabetes, the most common form of when the pancreas becomes insulin resistant.

Al-Aly and his team have some theories on why COVID-19 patients are now more prone to develop diabetes. The experts surmised that the virus infection had impaired the body's insulin sensitivity. It has also impacted the body's microbiome composition and function.

But they are not the only medical team studying the links between diabetes and new COVID symptoms. In Germany, experts at the Heinrich Heine University also saw an increase in diabetes diagnosis among mild COVID-19 patients compared to those who have never been infected.

Professor Wolfgang Rathmann and his team studied nearly 36,000 cases in the United Kingdom, and 28 percent have had an uptick in type 2 diabetes development. They published their findings in the Diabetologia journal.

Kids with COVID at Risk, Too

Another team learned that children infected with COVID-19 are at high risk of becoming type 1 diabetic, as per the American Diabetes Association. The experts noticed how fast the diagnosis doubled during the early phase of the pandemic. Type 1 diabetes, which develops in childhood, prevents the body from producing insulin.

Dr. Inas Thomas of Mott Children's Hospital in the University of Michigan said that they had a 30 percent rise in type 1 diabetes, which is a cause of concern. In San Diego's Rady Children's Hospital, diabetes in kids rose to 60 percent during the pandemic. The experts, however, are still trying to understand the direct triggers of these new COVID symptoms.

Related Article: Gestational Diabetes Linked to Cardiovascular Disease: Diagnosis, Tests Call For Urgent Review
This service applies to you if your subscription has not yet expired on our old site. You will have continued access until your subscription expires; then you will need to purchase an ongoing subscription through our new system. Please contact the Parsons Sun office at (620) 421-2000 if you have any questions
On Thursday, March 17th, a statue of Our Lady of Fatima arrived from Portugal to the city of Lviv in Western Ukraine. It will remain there until April 15th.

The official page of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church reported that the Metropolitan Archbishop of Lviv, His Excellency Ihor Voznyak, C.SS.R., welcomed the statue along with many faithful and clergy at the Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. This is a big event for our city. We are grateful to those who gladly agreed that the statue come to us and we were able to offer our prayers for peace in Ukraine to the Virgin Mary, said the Archbishop. He further addressed the faithful making an allusion to the story of David and Goliath, today we are witnessing how God restored in the hearts of the people the Spirit of the living, which no one can overcome. According to Gods will, little Ukraine will defeat the enemy that at the whole world fears.

In the midst of uncertainty and suffering as the conflict between Russia and Ukraine intensifies, the whole Church seeks divine assistance through prayer.

Pope Francis will consecrate Russia and Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, as asked by Our Lady of Fatima during her apparitions in 1917. Though this consecration has been done previously by the Pope, it has been a source of controversy due to the manner in which the consecration was carried out. Archbishop Voznyak made a reference to the upcoming consecration on March 25th, the Feast of the Annunciation, by recalling the words of the Blessed Mother, a moment has come in which God calls on the Holy Father, together with the bishops of the whole world, to consecrate Russia to my Immaculate Heart.

In my own Diocese of Savannah, Bishop Parkes will celebrate noon Mass at the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist in union with Pope Francis.

Pictures taken from Facebook Page of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church [ - ]
Dr Richmond Atuahene, a banking and governance consultant says the US$2billion intervention to save the cedi is a short term measure.



The government plans to inject US$2billion into the economy to shore up the strength of the cedi against major trading currencies in the country.



Even though Dr Atuahene believes it's a good call, he has asked government to look for a medium or long term measure.



Speaking in an interview on Peace FM's morning show 'Kokrokoo', the banking expert said if the nation continue to import everything, the cedi will certainly depreciate.



" . . we import everything and so demand of the currency is high but the supply is limited. That intervention is good but we need to look at the medium and long term measures . . . Let's put aside pride, bring people together and think of how best to change the structure of the economy or else countries will leave us behind," he urged.



IMF Short term



There have been reports that the government is likely to go to IMF for money to save the economy.



However, Dr Atuahene believes going to IMF will also be a short term measure.



"The problems are not insurmountable. We can turn things around in a year or two if the right measures are put in place . . . even if we go to IMF, they will help us in a short term and then what happens afterward? But we need a long term . . . we need a productive capacity. Lets all think of restructuring the economy from a foreign base to a local base," he said.



Tighten your belt



Meanwhile, he has asked government to also tighten it's belt since Ghanaians can't do it alone.



"We need fiscal discipline; even if we need to consolidate some of the ministries we should; we need to tighten our belt," he averred.





Listen to him in the video below



Meanwhile, he has asked government to also tighten it's belt since Ghanaians can't do it alone."We need fiscal discipline; even if we need to consolidate some of the ministries we should; we need to tighten our belt," he averred.

Source: Rebecca Addo Tetteh/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
U.S. prosecutors have charged a former Apple Inc (AAPL.O) employee with defrauding the iPhone maker out of more than $10 million in a series of schemes.



Dhirendra Prasad faces five criminal counts after exploiting his "position of trust" as a buyer in Apple's global service supply chain to defraud the company, according to filings on Friday with the federal court in San Jose, California.



Prosecutors said that as an Apple buyer, Prasad negotiated with vendors and placed orders, with Apple making payments based on invoice amounts he entered into its purchasing system.



Prasad allegedly defrauded Apple by taking kickbacks, stealing parts using false repair orders, and causing Apple to pay for items and services it never received



Prosecutors said Prasad also evaded taxes on and laundered proceeds from his schemes. Apple fired him in December 2018 after a decade of employment, court papers show.



It is unclear whether Prasad has a lawyer. Prasad could not immediately be reached on Sunday for comment. A phone number listed for him has been disconnected.



Two owners of vendors that did business with Apple and who allegedly conspired with Prasad on similar fraud schemes pleaded guilty to related charges in December, court records show.



Prasad faces charges including conspiring to commit wire and mail fraud, commit money laundering and defraud the United States, as well as tax evasion.



His arraignment is scheduled for March 24. Prosecutors also want Prasad to forfeit millions of dollars of real property and other assets.













Source: REUTERS









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 South African court has halted construction of Amazon's new Africa headquarters after some descendants of the country's earliest inhabitants said the land it would be built on was sacred.



The Western Cape division of the High Court interdicted the project developer from continuing with works at the Cape Town site until there had been meaningful engagement and consultation with affected indigenous peoples.



"This matter ultimately concerns the rights of indigenous peoples .... The fundamental right to culture and heritage of indigenous groups, more particularly the Khoi and San First Nations Peoples, are under threat in the absence of proper consultation," Judge Patricia Goliath said in her ruling.



The Khoi and the San were the earliest inhabitants of South Africa, the latter roaming as hunter gatherers for tens of thousands of years, and the former joining them as pastoralists more than 2,000 years ago.



Some of their descendants had objected to the River Club development, where Amazon would be the "anchor tenant" but which also includes plans for a hotel, retail offices and homes, as it lies at the confluence of two rivers considered sacred, the Black and Liesbeek Rivers. r



Not everyone identifying with the Khoi and San was against the project. An association of Khoi and San who supported it was among the respondents in the case.



Amazon was not named as a respondent, and the company did not respond to an emailed request for comment sent outside office hours. When the court case was launched early this year a spokesperson declined comment. read more



Goliath said her ruling should not be construed as a criticism of the development but that the core issue was that there needed to be proper consultation before it could go ahead.



Amazon already employs thousands of people in data hubs in Cape Town, and with over a third of South Africans unemployed authorities are keen to encourage foreign investment.



Construction of the River Club development had continued despite the case being before the court.

Source: REUTERS









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
Australia has imposed an immediate ban on exports of alumina and aluminum ores, including bauxite, to Russia, the government said on Sunday as part of its ongoing sanctions against Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine.



"Russia relies on Australia for nearly 20 percent of its alumina needs," the Australian government said in a joint statement from several ministries, including the prime minister's office. It added that the move will limit Russia's capacity to produce aluminium, which is a critical export for Russia.



"The Government will work closely with exporters and peak bodies that will be affected by the ban to find new and expand existing markets," the statement said.



Anglo-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto (RIO.L) owns an 80% stake in Queensland Alumina Ltd (QAL) in a joint venture with Russia's Rusal International PJSC (RUAL.MM), the world's second-largest aluminum producer.



Last week, Australia imposed sanctions on two Russian businessmen with links to its mining industry, one of them being billionaire Oleg Deripaska who holds stakes in QAL.



Australia has so far imposed a total of 476 sanctions on 443 individuals, including businessmen close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, and 33 entities, including most of Russias banking sector and all entities responsible for the country's sovereign debt, the statement said.



The government also said it will donate at least 70,000 tonnes of thermal coal to Ukraine to meet its energy needs.



Australian coal producers have been bombarded with calls for supply over the past few weeks from Ukraine and other countries like Poland that have been reliant on Russian supplies.



"The Australian Government has worked with the Australian coal industry to source supplies," the statement said.



Whitehaven Coal has quickly arranged a shipment, and the Government is now working with the company and the Ukrainian and Polish Governments to deliver the supplies at the earliest available opportunity, the statement said.



The government also pledged additional military equipment and humanitarian aid for Ukraine.

Source: REUTERS









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
Executive Director of Child Right International, Mr Bright Appiah, has urged the government to maintain its Free SHS programme despite some economic challenges in recent times.



He said the flagship programme has been of help to many who couldnt have afforded education over the years.



Speaking on NEAT FMs morning show, Ghana Montie, Mr Bright Appiah reiterated the benefits of the programme for the needy but brilliant children across the country.



The statistics are there to show, he said.



The government has suggested that it will review the Free SHS programme among other policies due to financial challenges the country is facing  many feared the educational policy will be cancelled.



But Bright Appiah said an annulment of the policy will be disastrous.



They [government] shouldnt even think about that at all. If there is a need to amend the policy, they should, he told host Kwesi Aboagye.

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
Newman, CA (95360)

Today

Sunshine and clouds mixed. High 87F. Winds NNW at 10 to 20 mph..

Tonight

Some clouds this evening will give way to mainly clear skies overnight. Low 53F. Winds NNW at 10 to 15 mph.
Mrs Agnes Teiko Nyemi-Tei, the Director, Down Syndrome Ghana Foundation, has appealed to parents of children with Down syndrome to desist from hiding them from public places.



She said the condition, where parents of children with special needs like Down syndrome, felt ashamed of their children, and preferred to hide them from the eyes of the public was completely wrong and worsened the condition of the children.



The worlddownsyndromeday.org defines Down syndrome (or Trisomy 21) as a naturally occurring chromosomal arrangement that has always been a part of the human condition, being universally present across racial, gender or socioeconomic lines in approximately one in 800 live births.



It usually causes varying degrees of intellectual and physical disability and associated medical issues.



Mrs Nyemi-Tei said: Hiding your child does not do any good to your child. Lets come out, showcase our children, and lets not be afraid that they will be marginalized or something.



So if you are going to church or market, go with him or her. Just try hard to accept your childs condition, set achievable standards for the child and work at it. Because I believe that even though they have a little intellectual disability, there are a lot of things they can do if they are exposed to them.



In sharing her experience as a mother of a child with Down Syndrome, Mrs Nyemi-Teiko, said: Yesterday I was peeling cassava, she just brought a bowl, fetched water and was washing it. She put it in a cooking utensil for us to cook and it was lovely. Everything you do, she wants to do same. She can wash her own undies and handkerchiefs; she can get dressed herself and do everything herself.



It was difficult for me when my child was diagnosed of it but I have come to accept it. Such children like music and dancing, so I have enrolled her in a dance factory and shes doing well. She doesnt attend a special school but the normal school and I think that is helping a lot, she added.



The Director cautioned parents with such children to desist from moving from spiritualists to herbalists to seek solutions to the conditions, and asked some s-called Prophets with no knowledge on Down syndrome to stop giving unrealistic and incapable directions to such desperate parents.



March 21, 2022 was World Down Syndrome, observed on the theme: We Decide.



According to the United Nations, it is not yet know why down syndrome occurs, however, it has always been a part of the human condition.



The UN admonished people around the world to advocate full inclusion in society for people with Down syndrome and for everyone.



It said the estimated incidence of Down syndrome was between one in 1,000 to one in 1,100 live births worldwide and each year, approximately 3,000 to 5,000 children were born with this chromosome disorder.



The quality of life of people with Down syndrome could be improved by meeting their health care needs, including regular check-ups with health professionals to monitor mental and physical condition and to provide timely intervention.



Such timely interventions include physiotherapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, counseling or special education.



The UN also states that individuals with Down syndrome could achieve optimal quality of life through parental care and support, medical guidance, and community based support systems such as inclusive education at all levels.



This facilitated their participation in mainstream society and the fulfillment of their personal potential.





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
This year's Ramadan fasting is expected to start on Saturday, April 2 or Sunday, April 3, 2022, depending on the day a new moon will be sighted.



If the moon is sighted on Friday, April 1, 2020, fasting will commence the next day. However, if the moon is sighted on April 2, then Sunday, April 3, 2022, shall be the first day of the 2022 Ramadan.



This was contained in a communique issued at the close of the 28th annual national Ramadan conference in Koforidua, the Eastern Regional capital, last Saturday.



The three-day conference, which started on March 17, 2022, was attended by Regional Chief Imams, secretaries, Muslim chiefs, as well as some Islamic scholars.



The conference, on the theme: "Peace: Essential tool for stability and prosperity, did not deliberate only on the specific day for the commencement of this year's Ramadan but also discussed some issues of national interest.



Call for peace



The deputy national secretary of the Hilal Committee, Baba Dawud, who read the communique, called on Muslims, particularly those in Bawku in the Upper East Region, to give peace a chance, while efforts were made to find a lasting solution to the impasse in the area.



That, he said, would enable the youth to exert their time and energy on more productive ventures to build their future for better livelihoods.



On the upbringing of children, Alhaji Dawud said the conference resolved that children should be properly catered for by their parents and guardians, including providing them with opportunities that would enable them to grow into useful citizens.



With regard to food security, he said the Ministry of Food and Agriculture must ensure that farming inputs, such as fertiliser, were made available.



Alhaji Dawud further appealed to the government and other stakeholders to intensify awareness of the COVID-19 virus to help contain its spread.



On the 2021 Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) results, he claimed that about 70 per cent of the candidates had called for the re-marking of their examination scripts due to poor performance.



The deputy secretary, therefore, asked for the immediate publication of the chief examiners report and statement from the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) explaining the wide gap in passes between this year's results and those of previous years.



Road accidents



Speaking about the prevailing situation of road accidents that were claiming lives and maiming others, Alhaji Dawud urged the law enforcement agencies to ensure that all broken-down vehicles were removed from the roads, while speed limits were also adhered to.



Others who addressed the conference were the executive secretary of the Office of the National Chief Imam, Alhaji Awaisu Bio Salisu, and the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Inner Cities and Zongo Development Fund, Alhaji Ben Abdallah.



The rest were the Municipal Chief Executive (MCE) for New Juaben South, Mr Appaw-Gyasi, and the Member of Parliament for New Juaben South, Mr Michael Okyere Baafi.





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
Amber Group, a leading global digital asset platform, is proud to announce the appointment of Ehsan Haque as its General Counsel for the Europe, Middle East and Africa region (EMEA). Amber Groups latest appointment comes amid the companys global expansion plans and its ambitious licensing and regulatory roadmap.



The company, now valued at US$3 billion following two successful Series B and Series B+ rounds, has since been expanding with new offices worldwide and regulatory licenses secured in Europe, Latin America and Asia.



As Amber Groups General Counsel, Ehsan will work closely with Chief Operating Officer (COO) Wayne Huo to lead Amber Groups legal and regulatory risk management in the EMEA region, and ultimately deepen the companys relationship with regulatory authorities in these markets.



Ehsan joins Amber Group after an illustrious career as an in-house counsel at various established investment banks, broker dealers, private equity firms and fintech start-ups. Ehsan trained at renowned international law firm, Slaughter and May, before joining Deutsche Bank as an in-house counsel, overseeing Equities Sales Trading and Global Markets Derivatives. He later joined Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) Global Banking and was part of the senior management team at Nomuras EMEA Legal Department where he led the Equities legal product coverage for the region.



Ehsan was most recently a General Counsel at two different fintech start-up businesses, including Lending block, a cryptocurrency borrowing and lending platform. He served as Global General Counsel at a private equity firm that has US$13B AUM across the fintech and digital assets space prior to joining Amber Group. Ehsan also acts as an advisor to a leading fintech accelerator and was featured in The Lawyer Hot 100 2022 list.



I am excited to be joining Amber Group at this stage of its incredible growth journey so far. The regulatory landscape for digital assets is ever-evolving and these coming few years will be defining ones for the industry as we work towards securing eventual regulatory clarity across the EMEA region and the world. I look forward to supporting the companys growth and to guiding the legal and regulatory risk management as part of Amber Groups strategy in the EMEA region, says Ehsan Haque.



The EMEA region has long been a strategic market for Amber Group as the region has led a variety of neobank and neobroker-related innovations for the global financial ecosystem. We are proud to be welcoming Ehsan who makes a great addition to our team at Amber Group. With his strong track record in both traditional finance and emerging fintech start-ups, we are excited to work with Ehsan and build a strong regulatory framework that supports the viability and utility of new industry innovations in the EMEA region and accelerate the company into the next phase of growth, says Amber Group Global COO, Wayne Huo.



About Amber Group



Amber Group is a leading digital asset platform operating globally with offices in Asia, Europe, and the Americas. The firm provides a full range of digital asset services spanning investing, financing, and trading, servicing over 1,000 institutional clients and a growing number of individual investors worldwide.



For more information, please visit www.ambergroup.io.









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 Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Upstream Petroleum Chamber has spoken about the industry's three main concerns in a world quickly trying to recover from COVID-19 and its effects.



Mr. David Ampofo spoke in a frontpage interview with the Business and Financial Times. The interview was published on Monday 21st March 2022 and delved into the CEO's calls for closer collaboration between the government and the industry.



"We are guided by a policy of win-win for both the government and the companies who form our membership. These include Exploration and Production Companies, International Service Companies and Ghanaian Service Companies.", Mr Ampofo said in the widely circulated conversation.



He highlighted the tendency to overlook existing investors, whilst trying to attract new investments. Mr. David Ampofo stated, "I think that whilst attracting new investment is a good thing, we tend to overlook the fact that there are already some major investors in the sector whom we must work with.



It is not enough to simply invite investors in and not nurture them" and added, "After all, it would be much easier for already existing investors to make further investments than entirely new investors."



When asked about the state of oil production in Ghana, the GUPC boss suggested that there is the need to bring on stream new oil producing fields to address the current decline in oil production.



The interview comes at a time when various industries are grappling with the realities of a post-covid world. Mr. David Ampofo indicated that, "The Chamber will work hard to synthesize the best ideas from among its membership to promote the industry in Ghana. As I like to say We are in this together





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
Kojo Oppong-Nkrumah, Information Minister, has said the recent cabinet retreat chaired by Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo at the Peduase Lodge over the weekend was very heated.



According to him, all the ministers who were present at the retreat had various views as to how the current economic crisis should be managed by the government and the President interrogated each one of them but it ended well.



[Peduase] was good, very heated. When you have all sorts of views being proffered about how to manage the current situation, and the President seems to interrogate each one of them, it gets heated sometimes but it ended well, Kojo Oppong-Nkrumah told Paul Adom-Otchere on the Tuesday, March 22, 2022 edition of the Good Evening Ghana show.



President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo led a crunch three-day cabinet retreat that took place at Peduase in the Eastern Region over the weekend.



At the end of deliberations, some major decisions to deal with economic recovery, amid the harsh aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, were agreed upon.



The reliefs include the opening of the countrys land borders, the easing of general COVID-19 restrictions, and measures to arrest the depreciation of the cedi.



There are also measures to tackle rising fuel prices occasioned by the global economic turmoil brought on by the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict and measures to address the persistent rise in the prices of goods and services.



In a tweet last Thursday, the Minister for Information, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, disclosed that the essence of the retreat was to enable the government to proffer solutions to ease the burden on Ghanaians.



In the coming days, details will be announced, including when and how the borders will be opened, the removal of some testing protocols, shoring up the currency and further cutting expenditures while assuring growth," the minister told journalists on the sidelines of the retreat.



It is expected that Ken Ofori-Atta, the Finance Minister, will provide details on the reliefs and which sectors will experience expenditure cuts.



The reliefs are also expected to answer questions being posed by economic watchers on how the government will respond to current global economic challenges.





Source: ghanaweb.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 Minister for Food and Agriculture, Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto, has inaugurated a nine-member of Board of Directors for the Grains and Legumes Development Board (GLDB).



The inauguration was held in Accra, Tuesday, March 22, 2022, at the Ministrys conference hall.



The newly inaugurated board appointed by President Nana Akufo-Addo is chaired by Alexander Akwasi Acquah, who is also the Member of Parliament for Akyem Oda Constituency in the Eastern Region.



It includes; Seth Osei-Akoto (Directorate of Crop Services), Peter Oteng Darko (Farmers Representative), Samuel Danquah Arkhurst (Ministry of Finance) and William Oppong Bio (Business).



The rest are; Samuel Boadu (Ag Executive Director), Monica Boakye-Kutin (Consumer), Robert Agyeibi Asuboah (Ex GLDB Executive Director) and Francis Kwasi Adzalo, a representative of the Seed Growers Association.



The Minister for Food and Agriculture, Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto who sworn-in the newly constituted board at a short ceremony wished them well in their term of office.



In his acceptance speech, Chairman of the inaugurated Grains and Legumes Development Board, Alexander Akwasi Acquah, expressed gratitude to President Akufo-Addo for the trust repose in them and promised work tirelessly to lift the image of agriculture in the country.



Agriculture is the backbone of Ghanas economy and employing about 60% of the workforce, my team will work assiduously to come out with policies and programmes that will augment the Ministry of Food and Agricultures agenda to promote agriculture, he said.



He added: This will ensure sustainable food production and food security in the country. Seed, which is the basic unit of plant propagation and very critical to crop production, will be made available to farmers at all times in order to increase their household incomes and reduce poverty.



He pledged the Boards readiness to support the government flagship programme Planting for Food and Jobs with the provision of quality foundation seeds of the major staple crops to farmers and the commodity value chain development as envisioned by the sector Minister.



Mr Acquah pledged the board will ensure that the importation of seeds from other countries, as happened in the previous years, will be a thing of the past.



The GLDB was established by the MoFA in September 2021, to among others, produce and distribute good quality foundation seeds of cereals, legumes, and vegetable seeds as well as vegetative propagated planting materials of cassava, plantain, yam and citrus seedlings.













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
In 2022, Ghana is not particularly known to be a manufacturing country, as data from the Observatory of Economic Complexity (OEC), an online data visualization and distribution platform focused on the dynamics of global economics activities, shows.



According to the OEC, in 2019, Ghana imported $18.4 billion worth of items, making it the number 81 trade destination in the world, a situation that also changed from $238 million to $18.7 billion in 2014.



But in the early days of Ghanas independence, the trajectory looked a lot more promising; Ghana seemed to have been on course to becoming a competitive exporter of its own manufactured products.



In this Sankofa Series article, GhanaWeb brings back a newspaper clipping that detailed how some Made-in-Ghana refrigerators and air-conditioners were to be sold.



With the headline, Sale of Ghana-made fridges, the article, written L. Therson-Coffie & Tess Kallon, described the plan for the electric products.



The first locally-assembled refrigerators and air conditioners are to be put on the market by the end of this month.



Mr. J. E. G. Dentu, Technical Manager of the Ghana Sanyo Electrical Manufacturing Corporation, who disclosed this at Tema yesterday said the corporation is at present assembling 100 consignment of air conditioners and ten refrigerators on trial basis, the opening paragraphs of the report said.



The report added that beyond these two products, there was a plan to expand production to cover others like television and electric cookers.



Mr. Dentu, who conducted the newsmen around the factory said the prices of the fridge and the air conditioners would be about those of the imported ones.



The corporation would add electric cookers, and washing machines to their line of products soon. This, he said, would however depend on the market demand.



Television and radio sets, electric fans, pressing irons and tape recorders are among the products of the corporation  a joint State and private enterprise, it added.



On how to get Ghanaians at the time to buy into the idea and encourage others to promote it, the report said the corporation considered a hire-purchase system.



Mr. Dentu said the corporation would consider introducing a hire-purchase system to enable workers to buy its products and pay the instalments at source, he said.



See the newspaper clipping below:













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
Acting President of the Akwamu Traditional Council and representative of the Eastern Regional House of Chiefs, Nana Yaw Boadu IV has lauded the National Energy Transition agenda and further appealed to stakeholders to come out with proper solutions to the energy problems facing the nation.



He made these remarks during the National Energy Transition Tour held at the Capital View Hotel in Koforidua in the Eastern Region with the Eastern Regional Minister, Hon. Seth Acheampong, Deputy Energy Minister, Hon. Andrew Mercer, Deputy Transport Minister, Hon. Alhassan Tampuli and other government representatives in attendance.



In his remarks, the Regional Minister emphasized the relevance of this agenda as consistent to achieving Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 7, which prioritizes affordable and clean energy.



I strongly believe that developing a national plan for energy transition would set the right stage for Ghanas position to be outdoors on the matter, he said.



The Deputy Transport Minister also shared governments plans and preparation towards embracing the usage of electronic vehicles in Ghana.



We are currently developing an electronic mobility policy to guide the development and scale-up of electric vehicles in the country, Mr. Tampuli stated, adding we are also working assiduously to introduce the first batch of electric-powered busses for public transportation.



The National Energy Transition Committee is currently pursuing Regional engagements in all 16 Regional capitals to solicit opinions of Ghanaians in order to develop a robust policy as an important bedrock for national development.

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
The Vice President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, has reiterated government commitment to support Ghana Post in discharging their core mandate as the country's designated Postal Service Operator. According to the Vice President, when Ghana Post is well resourced, the company can be more profitable considering the current global drive towards Ecommerce and digitalization.



He indicated that the development of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is crucial for the economic development of any country. Meanwhile, one constraint for SMEs is having reliable and cost-effective courier service for deliveries.



Dr Bawumia made this statement when the board and management of Ghana Post, led by its Managing Director; Bice Obour Osei Kuffour paid a courtesy on him at the Jubilee House.



The Board Chairman, Mr George Afedzi Hayford, extended appreciation from the board, management, and staff to Nana-Bawumia led NPP government for reviving Ghana Post by introducing the National Digital Property Address System (NDPAS) and other transformational initiatives, including Government bailout during the Covid 19 pandemic.



Bice Osei Kuffour, MD Ghana Post added that, with the successful implementation of digitalization in Ghana Post's significant operations, Ghana Post is ready to serve Ghanaians with customer-centred innovations and continue to distinguish itself as the lifeline to everyone's deadline. He, therefore, appealed to the government to support Ghana Post's collaboration with other state institutions to integrate government services in all 360 networked branches to complement the government's decentralization and digital agenda, make Ghana Post more profitable and offer comfort to individuals and organizations.



"We have commercially positioned ourselves to run these services with speed, efficiency, and security. We wish to ask for your support to lead the campaign of bringing Government services to the doorstep of Ghanaians through our strategically positioned branches nationwide. We are efficient, diligent and cost-effective."  Bice Osei Kuffour



In his response, the Vice President stated that the call for support is timely and in line with the government's agenda of supporting state agencies to be stable and profitable.



The seven-member board, chaired by Mr George Afedzi Hayford, with Mr Alfred Nii-Nortey Nortey; Mr Frederick Akuffo-Gyimah; Mr Yiadom Boakye Kessie; Mr Micheal Omari Wadie, and Madam Abena Durowaa Mensah as members, is poised to support the MD, Bice Osei Kuffour and the management of Ghana Post to transform the company into a dividend-paying company that provides job satisfaction to its employees and customers.

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
Minister for Communications, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful has appealed to all Ghanaians to register their SIM cards by the extended deadline provided by the Ministry.



The SIM re-registration, which began in October last year, was supposed to end this March but the Ministry of Communications in consultation with the Telecom service providers has extended the deadline to July 31st.



A statement issued by the Minister read that ''as at 17th March, 14,091,542 SIM Cards have been linked to the Ghana Card, 10,348,532 Bio-Captures conducted and 99,445 New SIMs registered. Due to a number of factors including the fact that over 7.5 million citizens and residents are yet to obtain Ghana Cards to enable them register their SIM cards, it is clear that the deadline for completion of the registration of the remaining active SIM cards cannot be met''.



It further read; ''More time will also be required to update the SIM Registration App for the registration of diplomats, while a Self-Service SIM Registration App is also being developed to facilitate registration of SIM cards for Ghanaians resident abroad. This will be operational by mid April.''



Speaking on Peace FM's flagship programme ''Kokrokoo'', Hon. Ursula Owusu-Ekuful cautioned Ghanaians not to take the July 31st deadline for granted as there won't be another extension.



She stated emphatically that ''this is the last one''.



She explained that the extension is necessary because the Ministry realized a lot of Ghanaians are facing difficulties in acquiring their Ghana cards, so they would need more time to register their SIM cards.



She also disclosed, as part of measures to facilitate the registration process, her outfit has held talks with the National Identification Authority to create avenues to ease the registration for Ghana cards and issuance of the cards to the registrants.



''There have been many appeals and when we also look at the pace at which we are registering, we can't cover everything. That is why we are registering, so I plead that people won't ignore it and think we will make another noise when we get to the deadline and they will postpone it again. From October (last year) to July (this year), I think we have been magnanimous enough, therefore by then, every person who must register should have finished undergoing the process,'' she 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
Press Release

March 23, 2022 De Lima pushes for family-friendly & nature-oriented, not vice-oriented tourism developments Re-electionist Senator Leila M. de Lima urged the government to develop nature-oriented family destinations both for local and international tourists. De Lima said that as much as possible, the local tourist destinations should be free from vices, particularly the ones associated with gambling. "Our tourism havens must be developed as family-friendly areas, with less focus on gambling and other vice-oriented tourism developments," she said. "By now, the government should already be aware of the adverse social and moral impacts of gambling and other vices. Tourism developments that are vice-oriented would create more problems instead of helping boost our tourism industry," she added. Aside from local travelers, more foreigners are expected to spend summer in the country, with the Bureau of Immigration (BI) expecting international arrivals to reach an average of 12,000 per day in the coming weeks. According to BI, to date, an average of 10,000 inbound travelers arrive daily, noting that the number has been rising steadily since the government eased restrictions on the entry of fully vaccinated foreign travelers. With leisure travel now being allowed, the lady Senator from Bicol said the government must come up with policies discouraging vice-oriented attractions. "Policies and legislation must be made to discourage and disincentivize vice-oriented attractions and activities in major tourist destinations and ensure that our tourism is nature-oriented, where our natural wonders are made accessible to all in accordance with their respective carrying capacities," she said. "Buong mundo ang humahanga sa magagandang destinasyon sa Pilipinas. Sa paglago ng turismo, dumarami ang trabaho para sa Pilipino. Umuunlad ang ekonomiya at kakayahan ng gobyerno na palawakin ang kanilang mga serbisyo. "Sa mga atraksyong ito dapat tumutok ang pamahalaan, hindi sa pagkunsinti sa mga sugalan na naglululong sa mga Pilipino sa bisyo, kung saan iilan lamang ang tunay na nakikinabang, habang marami ang winawasak na pamilya at kinabukasan. Hindi ito ang gusto nating maging destinasyon, lalo na ng mga kabataan," she added. In Sept. 2021, De Lima proposed Senate Resolution (SR) No. 907 calling for a Senate investigation into the lifting of the moratorium on the opening of casinos in the rehabilitated Boracay island, allowing a Chinese company to put-up an integrated casino-resort project in the country's famous tourist destination.
Villager Zhou Ling shows sealwort, a kind of traditional Chinese herb, freshly harvested in Yinchang Village, Zhaotong City of southwest China's Yunnan Province, Sept. 22, 2020. (Xinhua/Hu Chao)

KUNMING, March 22 (Xinhua) -- From laboratories to farmland, Yang Shaobing has helped those in remote areas in southwest China find a new cash cow by planting traditional Chinese medicinal herbs.

Yang, a 37-year-old researcher with the Yunnan Provincial Academy of Agricultural Sciences, arrived in the Dulongjiang Township in Nujiang Lisu Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan Province, in 2016 to aid locals in poverty alleviation.

Dulongjiang is home to the Dulong people, an ethnic minority group that long endured poverty and poor access to the outside world.

In Dulongjiang, Yang guided the villagers to plant Amomum Tsao-ko, Chonglou, and other medicinal herbs.

The academy where Yang works has built medicinal herb farming technology demonstration base in Longyuan Village of Dulongjiang Township. Many villagers were trained at the base.

Jiang Jianhua is one of them. He gains a stable income of over 100,000 yuan (about 15,700 U.S. dollars) every year by planting herbs with the newly-mastered techniques.

In Ainishan Township of Chuxiong Prefecture, half of the farmers are growing medicinal herbs. The total planting area of medicinal herbs exceeds 4,300 hectares.

Wang Guolei, one of them, earned 600,000 yuan last year.

"Our Chinese medicinal herbs make sales but can also be made into medicinal food, such as stewed chicken and beef with the herbs, to name a few," said Wang. "Now, there are four medicinal food restaurants in our townships."

On March 7, Yunnan Province announced that it would establish 100 large-scale breeding and growing bases of traditional Chinese medicinal materials and 50 breeding and growing bases of geo-authentic medicinal materials.

The panax notoginseng is an example Yunnan's success in planting geo-authentic medicinal herbs. In Wenshan City, the yield of seeds of such medicinal materials was 720,000 kg in 2020, accounting for 90 percent of the national total.

Zhu Zhaoyun, an academic with the Chinese Academy of Engineering, is now leading a project to utilize panax notoginseng in treating heart diseases.

"The development of Chinese medicinal materials should improve its added value and application rate via modern science and technology," she said.

"To develop the traditional Chinese medicine industry, there must be large-scale planting of medicinal herbs, which will lead to increased income for farmers," she said. 
The impact of climate change is threatening access to safe and sustainable water resources in many communities in Northern Ghana, a study conducted by WaterAid Ghana, a water and sanitation focused organisation, has revealed.



Challenges posed by climate change including long droughts, high temperatures, increased and erratic rainfall and floods are lowering ground water level and contaminating existing water sources, thus posing threat to access to quality and sustainable water.



The Research was conducted in four districts, the Bongo, Kassena-Nankana West and Bawku West Districts in the Upper East Region and Wa Municipality in the Upper West Region.



The findings were made known to stakeholders in Bolgatanga.



Dr Francis Bukari, a Senior Lecturer, Department of Community Development, University for Development Studies in Tamale, who was the lead consultant, conducted the research with support from Dr Raymond Aabeyir, Senior Lecturer, Department of Geography, University of Business and Integrated Development Studies, Wa.



The research, part of WaterAid Ghanas water security and climate resilience advocacy plan revealed that many communities in Northern Ghana were already water stressed and the increased climate variability presented a significant challenge to water security.



The findings revealed that the most common source of safe drinking water in the communities was hand pump boreholes but due to climate changes there were seasonal changes in the water table, thereby affecting sustainable access to safe water by many communities.



Climate Change is already affecting water access to more people in the selected districts, Majority of the respondents (67.4 per cent) have experienced change in access to water and more effort was being used to pump water due to seasonal change in water table, it added.



It said Water Sector Strategic Development Plan and the National Environmental Sanitation Strategy and Action Plan, two national documents that guide the development and management of environment and sanitation sector in Ghana gave little attention to climate change as an environmental problem.



The research recommended that apart the urgent need for government to prioritise the provision of WASH services especially boreholes to communities in Northern Ghana, the National Development Planning Commission needed to support the District Assemblies to integrate climate change and water security into local development planning and make adequate resource allocation for implementation.



It said government should effectively implement the National Climate Adaptation Plan/Strategy and Nationally Determined Contributions with clear synergies and opportunities to help address water security and reduce vulnerability and build climate resilience in Ghana.



To guide effective country-driven climate change adaptation, Ghana should reflect the importance of water management for reducing vulnerability and building climate resilience, by putting adaptive Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) at the centre of planning and investment for climate change adaptation.



Promoting investment and implementation that incorporates management, restoration and sustainability of natural infrastructure  the ecosystem services provided by healthy watersheds and coasts  and their benefits for climate resilient development of the agriculture and energy sectors



Mr Jesse Danku Coffie, the Head of Programmes, WaterAid Ghana, noted that water security was not only a human right but a catalyst to attaining the Sustainable Development Goals and there was the need to address the climate change issues and ensure communities had access to sustainable and safe water for use.





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
An appeal filed by the embattled Member of Parliament for Assin North, James Gyakye Quayson at the Court of Appeal in Cape Coast to overturn the annulment of his election, has been struck out.



This is because the appellant, James Gyakye Quayson failed to file his written submission within the stipulated period allowed under the Court of Appeal Rules, 1997 (C.I. 19).



The written submission was to state the reasons for the appeal against the High Court ruling.



Related: Assin North 2020 parliamentary election results cancelled by Cape Coast High Court



Per Rule 20 (1) of C.I. 19, an appellant before the Court of Appeal shall within three weeks of filing a notice of appeal, file written submissions.



According to Rule 20 (2), "Where the appellant does not file the written submissions of his case in accordance with sub-rule (1), the appeal shall be considered to have been struck out and the Registrar shall inform the parties accordingly."



Background



Mr Quayson polled 17,498 votes against 14,793 by the New Patriotic Party's (NPP) Abena Durowaa Mensah in the December 7, 2020, parliamentary election.



On December 30, 2020, a resident of Assin North, Mr Ankomah-Nimfah, filed a parliamentary election petition at the Cape Coast High Court challenging the eligibility of Mr Quayson to be an MP.



On July 28, 2021, following that petition by Mr Ankomah-Nimfah, the Cape Coast High Court declared Quayson's election as void, on the basis that he owed allegiance to another country other than Ghana, contrary to Article 94(2) of the 1992 Constitution.



It was the considered view of the court that as of the time Mr Quayson filed to contest the MP position, he had not renounced his Canadian citizenship and, therefore, he was not qualified to become a legislator.



The court, presided over by Justice Kwasi Boakye, ordered the EC to organise a new election in the constituency.



Meanwhile. Mr James Gyakye Quayson, has been dragged to the Supreme Court for the court to stop him from holding himself as a legislator.



A resident of Assin Breku, Michael Ankomah-Nimfah, who secured a judgement from the Cape Coast High Court nullifying the election of Mr Quayson on the basis that he held a Canadian citizenship, wants an injunction from the apex court restraining him from holding himself as an MP.



The plaintiff argues that despite the judgement of the Cape Coast High Court, Mr Gyakye continues to parade himself as a sitting MP.



He is also seeking an interpretation of Article 94(2)(a) of the 1992 Constitution which bars a person owing allegiance to another country from contesting as an MP, the same constitutional provision the High Court used to nullify the election.



The defendants in the case are Mr Quayson, the Electoral Commission (EC) and the Attorney-General.



The Supreme Court is yet to rule on that case. It would be heard on March 29, 2022.



Read also: Assin North MP charged with perjury, other criminal offences



Aside the other cases pending, the Attorney-General (A-G) has also charged James Gyakye Quayson with criminal offences in relation to his alleged dual nationality when he contested the 2020 parliamentary elections.



The Attorney-General (A-G) has dragged Mr Quayson to the Accra High Court on five counts of forgery of passport or travel certificate, knowingly making a false statutory declaration, perjury and false declaration for office.



It is the case of the A-G that Mr Quayson allegedly made a false statement to the Passport Office that he did not hold a passport to another country when he applied for a Ghanaian Passport.



In addition, the A-G has accused Mr Quayson of making a false declaration to the Electoral Commission (EC) to the effect that he (Quayson) did not owe any allegiance to a foreign country when he filed to contest as candidate for the Assin North seat.

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
Dr Obed Yao Asamoah, a former Chairman of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), has advised the 2020 flagbearer of the NDC, John Dramani Mahama, to turn his attention to the Volta region in order to win the 2024 presidential elections.



He said in an interview on Joy News that, the former President must put his house in order to give him the strength to be able to win easily and massively.



He noted that if John Dramani Mahama runs against Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia in the 2024 general elections, it will be very difficult for him to win the elections.



Dr. Asamoah explained, Lets take the Savannah region. The NPP and NDC have equal strength. In the case of the Northern Region itself, I think the NPP has an edge. Then you have Bawumia in the East, Walewale area. He will have a considerable influence.



Comparing John Mahama's vote count in the last election to the vote count of his predecessors, the former Attorney-General and Minister of Justice argued that he [Mahama] was unable to generate massive votes in the Volta region.



He said, Volta Region is supposed to be the World Bank of the NDC. What exactly did Mahama do for the Volta Region? Remember the last election, he didnt get the kind of votes Jerry and others were getting  the 80/90 per cent. They lost a seat in Hohoe. Hes got some homework to do.



Dr. Obed Yao Asamoah further indicated that Prof Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang, the 2020 running mate of John Dramani Mahama, could not make any impact for the NDC in the Central Region, therefore, she needs to be changed.



The lady who is a running mate to Mahama lost the Central Region in the last election; lost a whole constituency.



"So it means there has to be some fresh thinking. There could be some amends we make to make her succeed. But for now, she didnt make an impact, he said.



Dr. Asamoah is of the view that Alan Kyerematen, when elected as the flagbearer of the NPP, could also spell doom for the opposition party as he may not be able to garner enough votes in the Central Region.



Alan Kyerematen is a factor to consider. He could win. If he does, it poses a threat to the NDC in the Central region because his mothers side is from Central Region.



He, however, advised the NDC to make substantial gains in the capital city, Accra.



The reason they made the progress was first of all in the case of Greater Accra, there was a rift between the government and spare parts dealers. They thought that the taxation against them was too much. A lot of them supported the NDC.



We were prepared to allow Okada. That was also a significant factor against the NPP, he added.





Source: ghanaweb.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
Joyce Bawah Mogtari, an aide to former President John Dramani Mahama, has said that the government together with the Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has lost touch with the economic realities citizens are confronted with.



Citing a number of headlines attributed to President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo which sought to absolve him from blame on the economic downturn, Bawah-Mogtari said the President and his vice are responsible for running down the economy.



She noted that corruption and the profligacy by the president, his vice and party devotees were key drivers of the economic downturn.



According to her, the result of the government's profligacy is what has plunged Ghanaians into hardship especially with the increase in prices of goods and petroleum products.



She mentioned that the governments desire to implement the Electronic Transactions Levy (E-Levy) was a reflection of its insensitivity and how Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has lost touch with the economic realities facing the citizenry.



What we are experiencing today is an economy that has been run down by a potpourri of bad governance, bad policies, misappropriation and misapplication of state funds, multiple acts of corruption at the highest levels of government, and the profligacy of President Akufo Addo, Bawumia and their aficionados.



The end result is the hardship they are inflicting on Ghanaians especially the poor, who are worse affected, the rampant increases in the prices of goods and petroleum products.



Governments quest to worsen our plight with the imposition of an E-levy, is a reflection of the insensitivity of this government and how the economic management team led by Dr. Bawumia has lost touch with the economic realities we are confronted with, she posted on her Facebook wall.



The economy in recent times has witnessed a downward spiral.



Many economists have cited the depreciating Cedi, increase in fuel prices and general cost of living as pointers to this claim.



Some analysts have asked the government to seek an IMF bailout programme however government has shot down the proposal whiles banking its hopes on the E-levy.



The President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, over the weekend held a crunch meeting with key members of his government to decide the best way out for the administration.



Whiles government is yet to announce the outcome, Information Minister Kojo Oppong-Nkrumah, has hinted that all government flagship programmes are up for review.



Read below the full post by Joyce Bawah Mogtari



Good morning Everyone!!



New Headlines Attributed to President Akufo-Addo and Co!



Lets build our country together



Ghana is not the only Country facing challenges etcetcetc



Let's not continue to mince words, my brothers and sisters.



What we are experiencing today is an economy that has been run down by a potpourri of bad governance, bad policies, misappropriation and misapplication of state funds, multiple acts of corruption at the highest levels of government, and the profligacy of President Akufo Addo, Bawumia and their aficionados.



The end result is the hardship they are inflicting on Ghanaians especially the poor, who are worse affected, the rampant increases in the prices of goods and petroleum products.



Governments quest to worsen our plight with the imposition of an E-levy, is a reflection of the insensitivity of this government and how the economic management team led by Dr. Bawumia has lost touch with the economic realities we are confronted with.





Source: ghanaweb.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
National Democratic Congress (NDC) Member of Parliament(MP) for Bia East constituency, Richard Acheampong, has also jumped on the "where is the Bawumia" bandwagon, asking about the whereabout of Vice-President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia when Ghanas economy is in a critical condition.



According to him, the most hyped economic Strategist has failed to perform when Ghanas economy is in such a critical condition and the country needs him most.



They [NPP] told us Bawumia is the best Economist we have in this country. Where is he now when his knowledge is needed to revive the ailing economy?



It was a scam, they made us believe he is the best. Have you heard his views on the E-levy? Someone who was noted to have arrested the cedi, he said in an interview with NEAT FMs morning show, Ghana Montie.



Richard Acheampong is of the view that the Nana Addo- led government has plunged the country into crisis after they promised mouthwatering policies for the country.



The NPP came with a plan to deceive people to vote for them. Theyve gotten power and now they cant deliver, he said.



He told host Kwesi Aboagye that, It's time we throw NPP out of power and bring someone who can better manage the situation.









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
A former Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Nii Ayikoi Otoo, has joined the race to lead the governing New Patriotic Party as National Chairman ahead of the 2024 general elections.



The decision by Ghanas former High Commissioner to Canada is gaining momentum on social media through his supporters who are pushing his bid to replace Mr Freddie Blay.



A WhatsApp platform known as Ayikoi Otoo 4 National Chairman has been formed to lead the charge in rallying support for the former High Commissioners ambition.



The spokesperson for the group, Mr Kwame Sarpong, said they are using social media to garner support for Nii Ayikoi Otoos bid as they await the official opening of the contest by the national leadership of the NPP.



Nii Ayikoi Otoo's profile



Though christened Joseph, he rarely uses that name.



Nii Ayikoi Otoo is a Ghanaian lawyer, diplomat, and politician.



He belongs to the New Patriotic political party.



He served as Attorney General and Minister of Justice of Ghana in the John Agyekum Kufuor administration.



He was Ghana's High Commissioner to Canada between 2017 and 2020.



Nii Ayikoi Otoo was born in Mamprobi, a town in the Greater Accra Region of Ghana, to E. K. A. Otoo, a co-founder of Ebenezer Secondary School and Emelia Otoo.



He was called to the Ghana Bar in 1981.



The lawyer did his one-year mandatory national service at ADB and then sojourned to Nigeria briefly from September 1982 to January 1983. He returned to Ghana to join his grand uncle's Chambers Adamafio & Associates, a law firm in Accra where he worked for more than 20 years, rising, in the process, to become the Master of Chambers.



In the early 2000s, he started his own chambers called Otoo & Associates, Leo Chambers, at Larterbiokorshie in Accra.



He served as the Regional Secretary and later President of the Greater Accra Bar Association.



He was elected unopposed as the National Secretary of the Ghana Bar Association for three consecutive terms.



He served with his learned senior colleague Nana Akufo-Addo on the National Council of the Ghana Bar Association in their capacities as President and Secretary, respectively.



Ayikoi Otoo was appointed as the Attorney General and Minister of Justice by President John Agyekum Kufuor in 2005 to succeed Papa Owusu-Ankomah.



He was appointed chairman of the Constitutional Committee of the New Patriotic Party in 2010 and served as a member of the party's Vetting Committee that vetted the presidential hopefuls for the 2011 primaries.



He served as a member of the Disciplinary Committee and National Elections Appeals Committee of the party.



Nii Ayikoi Otoo swore in the newly-elected National Executives at the Tamale Stadium in 2012.



In December 2011, the Ga Dangme Youth petitioned the leadership of the New Patriotic Party to consider making Nii Ayikoi Otoo the running mate to then-presidential candidate Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.



Nana Akufo-Addo eventually settled on Dr Mahamudu Bawumia as his running mate.



Ayikoi Otoo was also the Chairman of the Governance Sub-Committee of the Campaign Team and also chaired the Executive Assets Committee of the Transitional Team in 2017.



In March 2017, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo appointed Ayikoi Otoo as Ghana's High Commissioner to Canada.



He follows in the line of distinguished Ga Chairmen of the Party Peter Ala Adjetey, Samuel Odoi-Sykes and Jake Otanka Obetsebi-Lamptey.





Source: class fm









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
Edric Chu (L), CEO of Huawei Angola, and Maria Rosario Braganca, the head of Angola's Ministry of Higher Education, Science, Technology and Innovation, attend the launching ceremony of the "Angola National ICT Star" program in Luanda, Angola, March 21, 2022. Huawei and Angola's Ministry of Higher Education, Science, Technology and Innovation launched the "Angola National ICT Star" program on Monday, during the National Ecological Forum of Talents. The Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) training program mainly targets undergraduate, master's and doctoral students with excellent academic performance. (Photo by Engracia Matias/Xinhua)

LUANDA, March 22 (Xinhua) -- Huawei and Angola's Ministry of Higher Education, Science, Technology and Innovation (MESCTI) launched the "Angola National ICT Star" program on Monday, during the National Ecological Forum of Talents.

The Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) training program mainly targets undergraduate, master's and doctoral students with excellent academic performance.

Scholarship recipients will have the opportunity to study and research in the field of ICT.

During the event, Edric Chu, CEO of Huawei Angola, expressed that the program aims to guarantee and accelerate the digital development of Angola, training the technicians that the country lacks.

"We hope that through joint efforts with industry partners, we can invest in and develop education and expand an ever-widening path of inclusive development, and thus fill the gap that exists as much as possible," he said.

The head of MESCTI, Maria Rosario Braganca, also recognized the urgency of accelerating the training of young people in new technologies.

"I emphasize the importance of qualifying technical and senior staff in the field of ICTs, being aware that it is essential to invest in the sustainable development of technical and personal skills of our young people, to ensure our technological future, in a global context where they will only survive societies capable of accompanying the digital transformation," she said.

Huawei has cooperated with 16 Angolan universities, to which it provided teacher training programs and online courses. It built a laboratory and trained 1,000 students, certifying 600 talents. 
Pedestrians make their way along Sparks Street Mall near the Peace Tower on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Tuesday, Nov. 9, 2021. The mayor of Canada's capital city has urged the federal government to send its workers back to their downtown offices to bolster flagging local businesses. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick
A tradesperson works on a balcony at a condo tower under construction, in Burnaby, B.C., on Wednesday, March 2, 2022. The organization representing British Columbia's municipal governments says resolving the provinces affordable housing crisis is more complex than just building more homes.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck
Logansport, IN (46947)

Today

Showers this morning, becoming a steady rain during the afternoon hours. High 58F. Winds E at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch..

Tonight

Rain likely. Low 51F. Winds E at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall around a half an inch.
Thank you for reading the Philadelphia Tribune.

You have exhausted your free article views for this month. Please press the "subscribe" button below and see our introductory price of $0.10 per week for 10 weeks. Otherwise, we look forward to seeing you next month.
Triple Check-Raise Secures Fourth Super MILLION$ Title for Martirosian

March 23, 2022 Matthew Pitt Editor

Artur Martirosian was already in an exclusive club of GGPoker players who had triumphed in the Super MILLION$ three times. Not that club has even more exclusivity because the Russian grinder joins Niklas Astedt and Michael Addamo as the only players to have secured four Super MILLION$ titles.

Martirosian sat down second in chips with less than half the stack size of chip leader Mike Watson. Martirosian never gave up and secured his fourth title, and $394,326, under the watchful eyes of Kevin Martin and Eugene Katchalov on GGPoker's YouTube channel.

Super MILLION$ Season 2 Episode 35 Final Table

Place Player Country Prize 1 Artur Martirosian Russia $394,326 2 Mike Watson Croatia $309,184 3 Manuel "OPPikachu" Fischer Austria $242,426 4 Weiran Pu China $190,083 5 Jeff "DollarVig" Berwick Canada $149,041 6 Simon Mattsson Norway $116,860 7 FJAGMA Canada $91,628 8 Sterke Vis Netherlands $71,844 9 Joao Vieira Brazil $56,332

It took almost 30-mins of action for the final table to lose its first player. Joao Vieira limped in from the small blind with pocket jacks before calling off his 15 big blind stack when Weiran Pu moved all-in from the big blind with ace-trey. An ace on the flop and a wheel on the river for Pu resigned Vieira to a ninth-place finish.

Pocket jacks remained true a few hands later and sent Sterke Vis home in eighth. Manuel "OPPikachu" Fischer min-raised to 120,000 from early position with pocket sevens, Vis three-bet all-in for six big blinds with nines, only for Martirosian to four-bet to 760,000 with jacks in the hole from the big blind. Fischer folded, and the five community cards ran ace high, and Vis busted.

"FJAGMA" busted on the very next hand after three-betting all-in for eight big blinds with ace-six after Weiran Pu opened to 132,000 with king-jack. Pu called, flopped a king, and sent the all-in player to the showers.

Simon Mattsson

The eliminations continued with the demise of Simon Mattsson approximately 20 minutes after FJAGMA crashed out. Blinds had increased to 35,000/70,000/8,500a, and Pu raised to 154,000 with pocket nines. Mattsson responded with a three-bet to 434,000 with ace-king of hearts, only for Watson to wake up in the small blind with a pair of aces! Watson made it 854,000 to go, which folded out Pu, but Mattsson pushed his 2,757,838 stack over the line. Of course, Watson instantly called. The aces held and Watson's stack soared to more than 6.9 million with his nearest rival on 4.4 million.

The final five became four with the elimination of Canada's Jeff "DollarVig" Berwick. He open-shoved for only 4.5 big blinds with a pair of deuces in the hole but his timing was off because Fischer laid in wait in the big blind with pocket tens and made the call. Fischer flopped a set and Berwick was drawing dead on the turn.

Fourth-place and $190,083 went to Pu in a cooler of a hand. Fischer opened the betting with a min-raise to 200,000 from under the gun which Pu called on the button. Martirosian called from the small blind, meaning it was three-ways to the queen-queen-jack flop. Martirosian checked, Fischer also checked, and Pu tested the waters with a 287,500 bet. Only Fischer called. The turn was a five, and Fischer checked again. Pu set the price to continue at 887,750 and Fischer paid the asking price. An ace on the river saw Fischer check for a third time, and Pu move all-in for 2,572,252 into the 3,100,500 pot. Fischer snap-called and flipped over queen-jack for a flopped full house, crushing Pu who had turned a smaller full house with his pocket fives!

Fischer was the next player out of the door despite having almost twice as many chips as his final two opponents at the start of three-handed play. First, he lost a large pot to Watson then the rest of his stack to Martirosian. Martirosian made it 352,000 to go from the button with pocket eights and eventually called when Fischer moved all-in from the big blind for 5,845,610 with pocket threes. An ace-high board sent the tournament into the heads-up stage.

Mike Watson had to make do with a runner-up finish

Martirosian held a 2.5-to-1 lead over Watson going into heads-up and it did not take too long for him to get his hands on Watson's stack. The final hand was an epic encounter that saw Martirosian pull off a triple check-raise to win the tournament.

The hand started with Watson limping in with six-deuce of diamonds, and Martirosian calling with queen-ten. Martirosian flopped trip queens with a gutshot straight draw while Watson had nothing but air. Despite this, Watson fired a 200,000 bet after his Russian opponent checked. Martirosian check-raised to 440,000, and was called. Martirosian check-raised Watson's 332,500 turn bet to 840,000 when a deuce turned, and Watson called. The river was another deuce, improving Watson to a worse full house than his opponent. Martirosian checked once again, Watson bet 1,505,000 and called off the 426,539 chips he had behind when Martirosian check-raised all-in. Game over for Watson and Super MILLION$ title number four for Martirosian.
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.
Photo taken on March 22, 2022 shows a damaged tree after tornados in Round Rock in central Texas, the United States. At least one person was killed and more than two dozens of others injured when tornados hit large areas of south central U.S. states Texas and Oklahoma on Monday evening, authorities said Tuesday. (Photo by Bo Lee/Xinhua)

HOUSTON, March 22 (Xinhua) -- At least one person was killed and more than two dozens of others injured when tornados hit large areas of south central U.S. states Texas and Oklahoma on Monday evening, authorities said Tuesday.

The storm system's destructive path on Tuesday moved into Louisiana and Mississippi.

A 73-year-old woman was killed in Sherwood Shores, Grayson County, in northern Texas, Sarah Somers, the county's emergency management director, confirmed on Tuesday.

Somers said 10 more people were transported to local hospitals with injuries. Initial reports said dozens of homes were damaged or destroyed in the area which is just south of Kingston, Marshall County of Oklahoma, on the Texas side of Lake Texoma.

Many homes and structures including a Dollar General store in Kingston was also damaged, reported local media.

Marshall County emergency management told News 12 Monday night there were no known fatalities, but several people have been taken to local hospitals with injuries.

The storm knocked out power in the area, said the reports.

The first tornado touched down around 4 p.m. local time (2100 GMT) on Monday in Jacksboro, a city of some 5,000 people in northern Texas, causing damage to an elementary school, a high school, an animal shelter and 60 to 80 homes. The storm left behind a two-mile (3.2 km) wide debris field, said city officials.

No students at either Jacksboro school were hurt. Four residents there were injured and rescued from a damaged home, though none of them seriously hurt.

The city of Elgin, east of the state's capital Austin, also saw significant damage and some injuries, authorities said.

Another tornado was reported in the city of Round Rock, an Austin suburb, with debris in roadways and structural damage to multiple homes and businesses being sighted along the path of tornados.

The Weather Channel reported on Monday that an outbreak of severe weather would continue through midweek, and that tornadoes, damaging winds, large hail and flooding rain are all threats.

An area from central and eastern Texas to western Louisiana and southwest Arkansas has the highest potential for severe weather through Monday night, said the report.

The report said a multiday severe thunderstorm threat is a classic setup for spring, with a potent jet stream disturbance spreading into increasingly humid air over the southern United States, which will give rise to widespread rain and thunderstorms across the area. 

Photo taken on March 22, 2022 shows a damaged car after tornados in Round Rock, Texas, the United States. At least one person was killed and more than two dozens of others injured when tornados hit large areas of south central U.S. states Texas and Oklahoma on Monday evening, authorities said Tuesday. (Photo by Bo Lee/Xinhua)

Photo taken on March 22, 2022 shows a damaged car in front of damaged houses after tornados in Round Rock, Texas, the United States. At least one person was killed and more than two dozens of others injured when tornados hit large areas of south central U.S. states Texas and Oklahoma on Monday evening, authorities said Tuesday. (Photo by Bo Lee/Xinhua)

Photo taken on March 22, 2022 shows a damaged building after tornados in Round Rock, Texas, the United States. At least one person was killed and more than two dozens of others injured when tornados hit large areas of south central U.S. states Texas and Oklahoma on Monday evening, authorities said Tuesday. (Photo by Bo Lee/Xinhua)

Photo taken on March 22, 2022 shows a damaged house after tornados in Round Rock, Texas, the United States. At least one person was killed and more than two dozens of others injured when tornados hit large areas of south central U.S. states Texas and Oklahoma on Monday evening, authorities said Tuesday. (Photo by Bo Lee/Xinhua)

People look at their damaged house after tornados in Round Rock, Texas, the United States on March 22, 2022. At least one person was killed and more than two dozens of others injured when tornados hit large areas of south central U.S. states Texas and Oklahoma on Monday evening, authorities said Tuesday. (Photo by Bo Lee/Xinhua)
The ultimate fate of the building formerly housing Hotel Aiken has long been a hot topic in the city.

The structure's approved demolition as part of Project Pascalis, the downtown Aiken revitalization project, has drawn the ire of some citizens and caught the interest of Preservation South Carolina.

The organization is a statewide nonprofit with the mission to preserve, protect and advocate for historic places around South Carolina, according to Mike Bedenbaugh, a preservation development consultant with Preservation S.C.

Project Pascalis calls for redeveloping parts of downtown Aiken into a new hotel, convention center, apartments and parking garage.

Bedenbaugh said the group saw activity online relating to Hotel Aiken and heard from some concerned residents in Aiken.

"In speaking with (those citizens), we saw that there was an opportunity for us to lend a hand to those folks who understand the importance of preserving places and telling the story of economic development in their communities," Bedenbaugh said.

Hotel Aiken's history

Bedenbaugh said he and his wife have traveled to Aiken frequently and in passing the hotel several times, he has "bemoaned the fact that this wonderful building is sitting there empty and not being utilized."

Built in 1898, Hotel Aiken was first owned by Henry Hahn. Renovations both in name and style have occurred several times over the years, according to previous Aiken Standard articles, with the Hotel Aiken moniker being introduced in 1922.

While the building would have several more name changes , the Hotel Aiken was brought back in 2001 when Shah Investments purchased the property.

In late 2017, Neel Shah revealed an $11 million plan to both refurbish and expand the hotel. The boutique result, Shah said at the time, would mix the hotels history with contemporary accommodations.

Those plans were delayed a few times, with the project ultimately sitting in limbo.

The Aiken Municipal Development Commission approved a $9.5 million purchase of seven parcels of land in downtown Aiken in November 2021  which included the parcel housing the Hotel Aiken building  for the purpose of redevelopment.

The commission was created by Aiken City Council in 2019.

Inside the structure

Bedenbaugh traveled to Aiken recently to tour the building along with Craig Bennett, of Bennett Preservation Engineering, which is an engineering firm focused on structural engineering for historic preservation.

Bedenbaugh said he was struck by the "incredibly good shape" the building was in, "considering the neglect that it suffered the past five years."

"You walk into the lobby and the beautiful marble tile floors there underneath tons of dirt," Bedenbaugh said. "You walk up into the building, and I was astonished how little damage had occurred from leaks. I was expecting a lot more damage from what I had heard other people say."

In a letter written post-visit, Bennett said the building appears to qualify for the historic provisions of the International Existing Building Code, as the hotel "appears to be eligible for listing in the National Register" and "there is no change of use anticipated for the building."

"Under the provisions of that code, if a structure has been maintained, or if it is to be repaired to its original structural condition, the structure can continue to be used for its current use without being brought up to the provisions of the current building code for new construction," Bennett wrote.

He believes that with "appropriate repairs to only the damaged portions of the structural systems, or with that and some strengthening, the building may be reused as a hotel under the provisions of the International Existing Building Code."

Bedenbaugh concurred with Bennett's observations and feels that the building can still contribute to downtown Aiken's economy. He also brought up the potential demolition of the old C.C. Johnson building next door to the hotel, where apartments and a parking garage are proposed to stand.

"We have always found and stand by the premise that when new economic systems are put into historic downtowns, you ignore the traditional built environment at your peril," Bedenbaugh said. "You default to short-term trends, short-term style of architecture that is trendy today, but is out of date 10, 15, 20 years from now."

Viability of renovating

Previously, a representative from Taylor and Viola Structural Engineers, out of Charlotte, North Carolina, visited the hotel Jan. 4 to "assess the condition of the existing structure and evaluate the building for future occupancy."

The report was commissioned by ODA Architecture, which is the lead master architect for Project Pascalis as a whole and the lead architect for the hotel and conference center.

The assessment notes that two types of structural deficiencies were found in the building.

The first type is structural elements that are in "generally poor condition." The report says that "these elements have either degraded over time, have been modified excessively or have suffered water or other environmental damage."

Examples listed include cracking in mortar joints, excessively modified wall framing and water-damaged roof framing.

The second type is existing structural elements that are in fair condition, but are "sized inappropriately to meet current design standards."

One example given is "that both existing floor joists and existing 2-by-4 interior bearing walls are inadequate, regardless of condition, for the current configuration and intended use."

Overall, the analysis concludes that "much of the building can be preserved if desired, but it should be expected that preservation measure would be extensive in nature."

"The issues (raised in the report) about the structural integrity of the building are very major issues, especially when we look at the viability of renovating, what we would get and how much money it would cost to get there," Jay Ham, senior vice president of development for Raines Development, said during a previous Design Review Board meeting.

"I understand (residents') comments about, 'Can the building be saved?'" Ham later said. "I think the structural assessment said, 'Yes, it could.' It's a matter of what does it cost to do it, and what do you get at the end of that?"

This report was done in addition to relevant officials touring the building, including the Aiken Design Review Board. The board, which is tasked with preserving and elevating the city's historic features, toured the hotel in January to get a sense of the building's condition in preparation for development.

The board approved the hotel's demolition during a March 1 meeting, as members concluded that demolition was the best option for what the developers aim to accomplish.

"I know theres a value in renovating buildings, and I know that the history of the downtown, (the) different buildings, different building types (are) important," said McDonald Law, board chair, during the meeting. "But yet, we need a hotel, and Im not sure that we can do the hotel we need in that building, personally."

Project Pascalis overview

In total, Project Pascalis is made up of eight parcels in downtown Aiken, bounded by Laurens Street, Richland Avenue and Newberry Street. Of those, seven were purchased by the Aiken Municipal Development Commission for $9.5 million in early November 2021.

The eighth parcel is 121 Newberry St. S.W., the former home of a State Farm Insurance office. This parcel is owned by Aiken Alley Holdings LLC, of which Ray Massey is listed as the registered agent.

The Aiken Standard has previously reported that Massey is part of a group of local investors involved with Project Pascalis.

While plans remain fluid, a previously proposed master plan shows a layout for a hotel, conference center, apartments, parking structure and a reconfigured Newberry Street.

The conference center would wrap around an existing building in The Alley that currently houses local businesses including Gallery J Salon, Takosushi, The Alley Downtown Taproom, Art & Soul of Aiken, Bechtel, Woodchuckers Axe Throwing and Huntington Ingalls Industries. Officials have said none of the businesses fronting The Alley would be impacted by the redevelopment.

In a way, The Alley will be extended with the construction of the conference center along Newberry Street. The street currently has a northbound lane and a southbound lane; the vision is that the southbound lane, closest to The Alley, would be torn up and built on top of, including widened sidewalks.

The plan is for the conference center to be owned by the city and operated by what is currently Newberry Hall, officials previously said.

Several businesses on Richland Avenue, including Taj Aiken, Security Finance, Nationwide and On Board Realty, would be impacted by these plans. On Newberry Street, Newberry Hall and Warneke Cleaners would be impacted.

The city has said it will work with impacted businesses to assist them with finding new locations.

'Historical importance'

Overall, Bedenbaugh said Preservation S.C. fully embraces the economic planning that Aiken "wants to do in regards to meeting spaces and convention centers if that is what the community desires. The more income and the more investment, the better."

"It just cannot be at the expense of the historic places and story that Aiken communicates that makes it so unique," he said.

While the group doesn't have any real authority to control what happens to the building, they want to ensure that "the building can speak for its own historical importance."

"We're advocating for the building's reuse, and hopefully giving information that local advocates and citizens that care about such things can utilize," Bedenbaugh said.

The group has worked in communities around the state since 1990, with Bedenbaugh saying the group has been successful over the years in helping communities preserve their historic buildings.

"Were here to tell you Aiken could have a conference center here, could have meeting spaces, could have a 110 room place and still have this building and the historic storefronts there intact, telling the story and giving another reason for 110 people to want to spend the night here," Bedenbaugh concluded.
Editor's note: This article has been updated from its original form to reflect that the following candidates have filed for office since this article's original publication: Joe Cunningham, Jerry Govan, Bob Rozier and Russ Tony Farrara.

Candidates are already throwing their hats into the ring to hold elected office in South Carolina and locally in Aiken County.

Filing for the General Election in November opened at noon March 16 and closes at noon March 30.

The statewide primary will be held June 14, and the general election will be Nov. 8.

As of March 22, several candidates have filed against incumbent Republican Gov. Henry McMaster, according to scvotes.org.

Harrison Musselwhite and Mindy L. Steele have filed alongside McMaster as Republicans. Joe Cunningham and Mia S. McLeod have filed as Democratic candidates for governor. Jokie Beckett Jr. has filed as an Independence Party candidate, and Gary M. Votour has filed as a Labor Party candidate.

For the office of Secretary of State, incumbent Mark Hammond has filed as a Republican.

For the office of State Treasurer, incumbent Curtis Loftis has filed as a Republican. Sarah E. Work has also filed for state treasurer as an Alliance Party candidate.

For the office of Attorney General, incumbent Alan Wilson has filed as a Republican. Challenger Lauren Martel has also filed as a Republican for the office.

For the office of Comptroller General, incumbent Richard Eckstrom has filed as a Republican.

State Superintendent of Education Molly Spearman is not seeking reelection. As of March 22, three candidates have filed as Republicans for the position: Sheri Few, Kizzi Gibson, Jerry Govan and Ellen Weaver.

For the office of Commissioner of Agriculture, incumbent Hugh Weathers has filed as a Republican. Bob Rozier has also filed as a Republican for the position.

Incumbent U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., has filed as a Republican for the District 2 U.S. Senate seat.

Incumbent U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., has filed as a Republican for the U.S. House of Representatives District 2 seat. Challenger Judd Larkins has filed as a Democratic candidate for the seat.

Incumbent Bart Blackwell, R-Aiken, has filed as a Republican candidate for the State House of Representatives District 81 seat. Challenger Betsy Lamb has also filed as a Republican for the District 81 seat.

Incumbent William "Bill" Clyburn, D-Aiken, has filed as a Democratic candidate for the State House of Representatives District 82 seat.

Incumbent Bill Hixon, R-North Augusta, has filed as a Republican candidate for the State House of Representatives District 83 seat.

Incumbent Melissa Oremus, R-Graniteville, has filed as a Republican candidate for the State House of Representatives District 84 seat.

Incumbent Bill Taylor, R-Aiken, has filed as a Republican candidate for the State House of Representatives District 86 seat.

Four seats on Aiken County Council are up for grabs in this year's election.

Ron Felder has filed as a Republican candidate for the Aiken County Council District 1 seat. Kathy Rawls, who currently holds the seat, is not seeking reelection. District 1 comprises much of eastern Aiken County.

Mike Kellems and Russ Tony Farrara have filed as Republican candidates for the Aiken County Council District 2 seat. Camille Furgiuele, who currently holds the seat, is not seeking reelection. District 2 comprises the Woodside Plantation development in Aiken and much of southern Aiken County.

Incumbent Sandy Haskell has filed as a Republican candidate for the Aiken County Council District 5 seat. Challenger Kurt Mueller has also filed as a Republican candidate for the District 5 seat. District 5 comprises much of the area around I-20's Exit 5 in the North Augusta area.

Incumbent Phil Napier has filed as a Republican candidate for the Aiken County Council District 6 seat. District 6 comprises the Graniteville area, the area around I-20's Exit 11 and northern parts of the county above I-20.

Any candidate seeking a political partys nomination for any office in the 2022 General Election must file with the appropriate county board of voter registration and elections or the South Carolina election Commission during the filing period.

The filing location for Aiken County Council seats is the Aiken County Board of Voter Registration and Elections located inside the Aiken County Government Center, 1930 University Parkway, Ste. 1200.

Candidates are required to file a Statement of Economic Interests and a Campaign Disclosure online with the Sate Ethics Commission at ethics.sc.gov. Failure to file these documents may results in a candidate fine but will not disqualify a candidate from the election. Contact the State Ethics Commission for more information.

For more information, call the the Aiken County Board of Voter Registration and Elections at 803-642-2028 or visit scvotes.org.
A new Dollar General has opened.

The store is located at 1339 W. Martintown Road off Exit 1, and is the third Dollar General store within the North Augusta city limits.

At Dollar General, we believe the addition of each new store provides positive economic growth for the communities we proudly serve, and the addition of our new North Augusta store highlights our commitment to deliver a pleasant shopping experience that includes great prices on quality products in a convenient location, Dan Nieser, Dollar Generals senior vice president of real estate and store development said.

We look forward to welcoming customers to our new store and hope they will enjoy shopping at our new location, he continued.

Dollar General is also donating to the community as a part of its national campaign, Serving Others. The company's literacy initiative, along with national partner Kellogg Company, will donate 100 books for elementary school students within 15 miles of the school.

The store is set to employ six to 10 people. To learn more about hiring, visit the companys website.
A New England retailer that makes handbags from recycled sail cloth recently dropped anchor in downtown Charleston.

Maine-based Sea Bags now offers a second South Carolina location at 84 N. Market St. across from the historic City Market. It opened March 18.

The company has been designing and crafting an assortment of bags, totes and accessories from old sails since 2006.

The retailer has another store in Myrtle Beach and is planning a third Palmetto State location in the Hilton Head Island area later this spring. The Charleston site is the company's 39th in the U.S. Four other stores are in the works for Florida, Michigan and Massachusetts.

The new Charleston shop is open 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Sunday.

"With its cobblestone streets, horse-drawn carriages and pastel buildings, Charleston is truly one of the most charming port cities in the country," said Don Oakes, CEO of Sea Bags.

He hopes the new shop will help the company expand its sail trade program that allows people to donate old or unused sails. For every usable sail, the retailer offers customers a Sea Bags product in trade. The company can arrange to pick up a sail or customers can drop them off at a retail location.

Since the program started in 2017, the company has reclaimed more than 700 tons of sail cloth material. Last year, it collected over 7,000 sails.

Branching out

Sandwich, breakfast and frose eatery Co-op is planning a fifth location.

The new cafe plans to open May 1 at 190 Gardners Circle in the Harris Teeter-anchored Freshfields Village Shopping Center between Kiawah and Seabrook islands. The restaurant is taking over the space currently occupied by Ladles Soups, which plans to close April 1, according to Colin Keenan of Co-op.

The quick turnaround for the opening of the new location is the result of "an equipment buyout," Keenan said.

The cafe currently operates on the Isle of Palms and Sullivan's Island as well as next to Edmund's Oast Brewing Co. on Charleston's upper peninsula.

Another site is planned for 81 Cannon St. in Charleston.

"It's moving along," Keenan said. "We are in the permitting phase."

An opening is tentatively set for late summer.

Making a home

A nomadic housewares retailer has scrapped plans to build a new store and is hosting an open house after settling into a new location.

The owners of Coralberry Cottage  now at 1751 U.S. Highway 17 in Mount Pleasant  paid $895,000 for a parcel at 1135 Chuck Dawley Blvd. in February 2020, just before the COVID-19 pandemic struck.

Business partners Rutledge Carter, Melissa Hempstead and Liz Baker planned to build a new shop on the site and posted a rendering of the new store on a sign along the road.

Last summer, the retailer pulled out of Northcutt Plaza on Coleman Boulevard when the lease expired and operated virtually for a while, as they hoped construction would be done before long on the new structure.

After delays on the proposed new building for numerous reasons, they landed in a new location in November between Interstate 526 and Mount Pleasant Towne Centre.

At the time, they signed a three-year lease and planned to operate on site while their building was being built.

With construction not progressing as they hoped, Carter said she and her partners decided to sell the Chuck Dawley property and stay where they are since they had signed on for three years. The transaction to an undisclosed buyer is expected to close in May.

Now that they have decided to stay anchored for a while, the business partners will host an open house 1-5 p.m. March 26.

The event will feature Zuma Turkish rugs and 3L Collective, a fabric printing business for custom pillows, curtains and other items. Light bites and drinks will be available as well.
The lights are back on at a longtime high-profile bank branch at a nexus of the downtown Charleston tourist district, more than two years after they went dark.

JPMorgan's Chase subsidiary opened its first full-service peninsula location on March 22 at Meeting and Market streets. It announced it had leased the former Wells Fargo ground-floor space for its local flagship office last March.

The expansion plants the Chase flag and brand at one of the city's busiest pedestrian intersections that includes Charleston Place and the historic City Market. The setup includes seven on-site parking spots for customers, two automated teller machines and about 6,200 square feet of office space in the building for commercial bankers and support staffers.

The early walk-in traffic on opening day was split roughly 50-50 between cash-seeking visitors who bank with Chase at home and local customers, said Melissa Matthew, branch manager.

"We met people from New Jersey, from New York, from North Carolina, from Georgia," Matthew said.

The bright and largely uncluttered interior includes restaurant-style booths, a TV-equipped sitting area and just two teller lanes. Matthew said the casual, streamlined look reflects the evolution of a typical branch in the digital-banking era, from deposit-taking, transaction-driven hubs to financial advice centers.

"It's not so much of an office feel," she said.

The 177 Meeting St. branch is the 18th that JPMorgan Chase & Co. has opened in South Carolina since the financial services giant brought its consumer-facing business to the Palmetto State about three years ago. The first was a full-service location near Clemson University.

Chase now has seven branches in the Charleston area. The next is planned for Sam Rittenberg Boulevard in West Ashley, spokeswoman Allison Reed said Tuesday.

"We'll keep looking," she said of the bank's future expansion plans. "And that applies to all of South Carolina, not just the Charleston market."

Chase originally planned to put its showcase downtown branch at 309 King St., partly to be near students at the nearby College of Charleston. It paid $3.2 million for the former Mellow Mushroom restaurant in December 2020 and started renovating the property.

It switched course early last year after learning that rival Wells Fargo was relocating its commercial banking and wealth management businesses to Broad Street. By that point, the longstanding corner retail branch at 177 Meeting had been closed for about two-and-a-half years, since October 2018.

The King Street building that Chase bought remains vacant and is up for sale. The asking price for the 4,638-square-foot property was not disclosed in an online marketing brochure.
South Carolinians who buy their power from Dominion Energy could get hit with a rate hike and an additional temporary increase on upcoming bills if state regulators approve two of the utility's recent requests.

Customers could see their rates climb after a review of fuel expenses showed the utility under-collected about $142 million.

Dominion notified customers in this month's billing that it filed for a rate increase. If approved, residential customers could see an increase in their monthly bills of about 5.19 percent, or $6.53, for every 1,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity beginning in May, according to an Associated Press report.

"Although we have taken steps to minimize this year's fuel cost adjustment so that customers see the lowest possible impact to their bills, we must recover the costs of purchasing and transporting fuel to produce the electricity our customers rely on every day," Dominion spokeswoman Rhonda O'Banion said. "These fuel costs are a direct pass-through to customers, as Dominion Energy does not earn a profit on this portion of electric rates."

Power providers in the Palmetto State account for their fuel purchases annually based on their best estimate for the next 12 months.

A spokesperson for Charlotte-based Duke Energy, which operates two electric utilities in South Carolina, said the actual costs get tallied at the end of each year. They're adjusted up or down afterward and passed through dollar for dollar to ratepayers to reflect the difference.

A key reason some electricity providers did not charge enough for fuel last year was natural gas, which drives some power plants. The economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic drove up demand for the commodity, and prices followed, nearly doubling to about $5.50 per million British thermal units  the standard industry measurement  by the end of the year from around $2.60 mid-year.

Prices remain elevated, currently holding around the $5.25 range.

Dominion notified its 758,000 electric ratepayers in 24 counties that its fuel-bill review will take place virtually on April 7 before the S.C. Public Service Commission, which is expected to make its decision in late April.

Customers served in the Pee Dee region by Duke Energy Progress could see similar adjustments appear on their July bills, after an April meeting with regulators.

The commission will review fuel costs for Duke Energy Carolinas in July.

Customers of Santee Cooper wont have to worry about the issue for at least the next two years. The state-owned utility is under a court-ordered rate freeze through 2024, so fuel increases will not be passed on to customers.

The freeze is part of a 2020 lawsuit settlement stemming from Santee Coopers role in the failed expansion of the V.C. Summer Nuclear Station.

Any rate increase Dominion customers see would be in addition to a temporary charge the Richmond, Va.-based company is seeking for repayment of about $60 million for a series of programs it was required to develop to help South Carolina customers cut their electricity usage.

If approved, residential ratepayers would be charged an extra 87 cents a month for every 1,000 kilowatt hours of power they use, starting in May. The temporary charge will expire after the April 2024 billing cycle, Dominion said.
A North Carolina-based textile firm plans to invest $3.3 million in a new sewing facility in Hemingway, saying the coronavirus pandemic and resulting supply chain snarls have highlighted the need to bring manufacturing back to the United States.

Beverly Knits of Gastonia said its Hemingway Sewing Solutions factory at 60 Apparel Drive will create 242 jobs and supply fabric for several area companies and the Department of Defense.

"Our investment ... is extremely important as more products are reshored to the U.S.," Ron Sytz, chief executive of Hemingway Sewing, said in a written statement. "Made in the USA is the best way to guarantee quality and delivery of textile products."

Textile and apparel firms played a key role in producing personal protective equipment such as face masks during the pandemic. Among the companies Hemingway Sewing will supply, for example, is North Charleston-based Vapor Apparel, which produced hundreds of thousands of face coverings for customers starting in 2020. Other customers will include Purple Mattress and Indigo, the company said.

The new factory will provide cutting, sewing, packaging and shipping services and adds to South Carolina's "proud tradition" of contributing to the nation's textile industry, Gov. Henry McMaster said.

"The 242 new jobs they are creating will make a significant and positive impact on the Williamsburg County community," he said.

Hemingway Sewing parent Beverly Knits was among the textile firms U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai cited during a Sept. 23 visit to the Charlotte area to promote U.S. manufacturing.

"I think that, in the scramble that we had a year and a half ago over PPE, for example, that was a real realization for probably everybody in our economy that the erosion of our manufacturing base has gotten to a point where, in a moment of crisis, there is a certain set of things that there just aren't enough of in the world, we need to be able to step up and produce," Tai said, according to a report by the Charlotte Business Journal. She said the textile industry "really stepped up" to fill the shortages of face masks and other personal protection equipment.

In addition, the company makes fabric for a variety of markets including sportswear, outdoor products, mattresses and bedding, automotive, industrial and medical. Beverly Knits, which bills itself as one of the nation's largest circular knitters, also makes fire retardant products for apparel, bedding and industrial uses.
COLUMBIA  Attorneys representing relatives of a Columbia man shot and killed by a Richland County sheriff's deputy over the weekend said police knew he was mentally ill after previous episodes and escalated the confrontation by drawing their guns.

Police responded to a call about a man threatening relatives with a knife in a north Columbia home on March 19. Irvin Moorer Charley, 34, came out of the home holding a narrow piece of wood at his side and approached a deputy, according to bodycam footage released March 23. A second deputy arrived and tased Charley, who charged at the officer. Charley was shot four times and killed.

Charley's family said he was having a mental health crisis, something that led to previous police calls. He never raised the wooden object threateningly, the family's attorneys said.

"We believe officers could have disarmed Mr. Charley without the use of deadly force," family attorney Shaquana Cuttino told reporters March 23. "Yet they came in with guns blazing."

The family and their attorneys called for an independent agency to investigate the shooting.

Richland County Sheriff's Department is an outlier in the state in investigating its own officers in cases of a deputy firing their weapon, said attorney Brendan Green, one of the lawyers representing Charley's family. The State Law Enforcement Division typically investigates shootings by police officers elsewhere in South Carolina.

The shooting death was the first at the hands of a Richland County deputy since 2013, Sherriff Leon Lott said. The deputies had a right to protect themselves, he said, and Charley was not listening to deputies' commands to drop a weapon and kept approaching them.

After the family called for the release of body camera video during a news conference March 23, the sheriff's department released video that afternoon from cameras worn by deputies John Anderson and Zachary Hentz.

Richland County received a 911 call at 5:49 p.m. March 19 from a woman who said she was Charley's sister complaining about a man pulling a knife on their mother, stepfather and brother. He also was punching some of them.

"He was about to jump on them," the woman said in the 911 recording released March 23.

The first officer to respond at the home on Heyward Brockington Road was Anderson.

Anderson's body camera footage begins with the deputy approaching the house of Charley's mother, Connie Craig, and Craig standing out front telling Anderson he needs to get in the house.

"Is it Irvin?" Anderson asks.

Craig tells Anderson that Charley had hit her in the head. Charley's brother, Ivan, initially tells Anderson that his brother had a knife but quickly clarified it was scissors, and that he had gone after other people in the house.

As Anderson approaches the door to the home, Ivan Charley tells Anderson not to shoot, that his brother doesn't have a gun. Anderson orders Ivan Charley away from the house.

In the next instant, the door to the house opens and Irvin Charley walks down the wooden steps toward Anderson, the wooden object in his right hand. Anderson begins backing away with his gun pointed at Charley and yells repeatedly for Charley to to get on the ground and "drop the weapon."

Craig can be seen in a 48-second dash camera video walking between Charley and an officer and asking officers not to hurt her son. Deputies order her to move out of the way, and Craig walks several feet away and collapses under a tree.

As the second deputy, Hentz, approaches with his gun drawn, Charley walks backward a few steps while saying "Y'all can shoot me, y'all can shoot me" before slowly advancing toward one of the officers again.

Hentz can be heard for the first time in Anderson's body camera about a minute after Anderson approaches yelling for Craig to move away from her son, and for Charley to "drop the knife."

Anderson then radios dispatchers to say that Charley has a knife and officers have him at gunpoint. As Charley continues walking toward Anderson, Hentz says "Taser, Taser, Taser" and deploys his stun gun toward Charley.

Charley then appears to run toward Hentz, who fires several shots from a gun in his left hand while still holding the Taser in his right. Hentz can be seen falling backward to the ground at the same time Charley falls in front of him.

Charley was shot four times, with bullets striking his heart and liver, Richland County Coroner Naida Rutherford said.

One minute and 40 seconds pass from the time Anderson approaches the house and when Charley is shot.

Video shows Anderson roll Charley facedown and secure his hands in handcuffs behind his back after he is shot. Hentz can be seen getting back to his feet and holstering his gun and Taser.

Charley's mother can be heard screaming in the background.

"All you had to do was drop the knife," Hentz can be heard saying. "That's all you had to do."

Hentz begins chest compressions on Charley about 90 seconds after the shooting and the officers trade off a few minutes later.

In the 48-second video clip from the dash camera, someone can be heard off the camera telling officers Charley has a mental health problem.

Richland County Sheriff's Department also released a photo of what the object Charley was holding, a narrow piece of wood 16 inches long that ends in a point. Lott said the object could have been the arm of a chair.

Seth Stoughton, professor of criminal law and police policies at the University of South Carolina School of Law, said in reviewing only the dash camera video that officers appeared to be trying to maintain distance and had a common configuration of one deputy prepared with a non-lethal weapon, the Taser, while the other covers with deadly force if necessary.

After the Taser was fired, the situation changed quickly with Charley running toward Hentz and the officer's options were limited in defending himself, Stoughton said.

Using a Taser is not ideal because of its potential to escalate an encounter, Stoughton said, but it could have been appropriate given Charley was moving toward the officers.

"I think it's perfectly reasonable for an officer to say: 'We can't maintain this situation with him coming forward and us backing up. It's not safe for us to maintain this situation. So we have to do something to change it,' " Stoughton said "If that's the call, then using a Taser is an appropriate means of doing so."

The professor maintained he was speaking only to the dash camera video and had questions about how the encounter began.

Lott acknowledged during a news conference March 20 that mental health is a problem in the community and needs to be better addressed.

"We don't need to lose anybody else to something like this," Lott said. "But we also have to protect our community and protect our deputies."

Green questioned why the sheriff's department didn't employ a crisis-intervention team with a mental health professional that Lott unveiled to much publicity in 2021. When family members told officers of Charley's mental health issues, deputies should have relayed the information to dispatchers, Green said.

"My son did not deserve this," Craig told reporters. "I know they could have taken better action. The only thing I want is justice."

Lott said his agency will investigate the shooting and turn the records over to the Fifth Circuit Solicitor's Office to determine if Hentz acted appropriately in shooting Charley.

SLED or another law enforcement agency should fully investigate the shooting in the interest of transparency and learning how the death could have been prevented, Green said.

"This is the fox guarding the hen house," Green said during a news conference at his Columbia law office March 23.

Richland County Sheriff's Department has investigated its own officer's shootings since 2014 and has the technology and expertise to do everything in house, said Capt. Maria Yturria, an agency spokeswoman. The coroner's office and citizen's advisory council are also involved to ensure proper oversight, she said.

"The videos speak for themselves," Yturria said. "They show exactly what happened and how quickly everything happened."

SLED Chief Mark Keel said in a statement that his agency, along with multiple statewide law enforcement organizations including the S.C. Sheriff's Association, advocates for independent investigations of officer shootings and deaths that occur while in police custody. Independent investigations are part of guidelines in a joint document penned by those groups outlining steps law enforcement can take to build community trust and confidence in the state's police agencies, Keel noted.

SLED requests outside agencies to investigate shootings involving its agents and uses an out-of-state lab to process evidence, the agency's chief said.

"This is not about capability," Keel said in a statement that didn't directly address the Richland County Sheriff's Department. "It is about conducting independent investigations with the utmost integrity and impartiality.

The family's attorneys said before the body camera footage was released that the agency was selectively releasing records that cast the department in the most positive light.

Lott initially said the body camera video wouldn't be released publicly but the agency decided to release the footage after the family and others have viewed the video, Yturria said.
COLUMBIA  Accusing the school system's critics, including her own colleagues, of spreading misinformation, Richland One School District's board chairwoman championed a proposal to dictate how fellow board members could speak with media during a fiery debate March 22.

In the wake of several Post and Courier stories digging into spending issues at Richland One, board Chairwoman Cheryl Harris erroneously insisted that fellow board members werent allowed to criticize her or other district leaders because their statements could be defamatory. The 10-year board veteran and Eastover native insisted the district's finances are sound.

During the board's three-hour meeting March 22, Harris successfully pushed for the initial approval of a policy that requires Richland One board members to specify in future media interviews that they are speaking only for themselves, not on behalf of the board.

The vote followed an intense debate in which Robert Lominack and Beatrice King, two board members who have been critical of the districts management, insisted that attempting to mute criticism of the district would violate the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

At various points in the debate, Harris made claims that revealed a misunderstanding of those federal free-speech rights.

You can only speak about you, Harris told Lominack at one point. What you can say is, I need to do a better job of having a discussion or I need to do this. But when you say, The board needs to do a better job, well, thats your opinion.

You cannot say The board dont this, The board dont that. The board needs to this,  Harris told Lominack at another point. Because you cannot speak for the boards performance. Thats not the role you play.

In yet another exchange, Harris told Lominack, who was elected to the board in October 2021, You cant even criticize me to them (the media) because you dont know me. You just got here.

I can criticize you, Lominack insisted.

No, you cannot criticize me, Harris said.

I can, Lominack said.

OK, well, do it, Harris said.

The board debate came two days after The Post and Courier published a story about an internal investigation that alleged a former Richland One employee misspent tens of thousands of public dollars over the span of several months before he was caught. The story also referenced reports by a group of parents and the districts own internal auditor that raised questions about how the district oversees hundreds of thousands of dollars in credit card spending by its employees.

The story quoted Lominack and King criticizing the districts handling of its credit card program and Harris defending it. Another board member, vice chairwoman Angela Clyburn, declined to comment, referring questions to Harris.

Richland One is one of many boards across the state that  at the urging of the S.C. School Boards Association  has adopted policies designating the boards chairperson as the boards official spokesperson.

The associations executive director, Scott Price, told The Post and Courier that policy is meant to hopefully allow a board and a district to maintain a consistent message.

But it does not  and cannot  bar individual school board members from speaking out against district actions or policies they disagree with, Price said.

Price declined to comment on Harris assertions at the March 22 meeting.

School board members and even local council members across South Carolina often refer to such policies in declining to comment on their actions and referring all media questions to their chairperson.

Free-speech advocates say such policies are unhelpful to the democratic process, which requires a free flow of ideas and information so voters can make informed decisions.

Bill Rogers, who recently retired as head of the S.C. Press Association, called the Richland One debate part of a disturbing trend where these autocratic board members want to stifle any criticism.

Is this Russia? he asked.

In nearby Lexington-Richland Five School District, a district leader has recently lashed out against critics with legal action.

Board vice chairman Ken Loveless filed two libel suits last week against constituents over Facebook comments that questioned his ethics and called him a "loser."

Harris insisted that the new Richland One media proposal was legally sound. She said the new policy wouldnt stop board members from speaking to the press but said board members need to be clear that they are speaking for themselves only.

Harris said she had to put her foot down after seeing certain board members spread false statements to media outlets. She did not specify which statements she was referencing, or who made them. But such criticism could lead to defamation lawsuits against board members, Harris warned.

I dont have to accept when individuals put false narratives out here, Harris said. Its a sad thing when we should be working to build the district, we put false narratives out here. We tell mistruths.

Lominack and King were the only board members to vote against the measure.

Later in the meeting, Harris pushed back against criticism of the districts financial oversight. She said The Post and Courier story highlighted how well Richland Ones internal auditor has worked to identify shortcomings and make improvements. She said Richland One has adopted the auditors recommendations and addressed any issues.

We control our story, Harris said.

Andrew Shain contributed to this report.
NEW YORK, March 22 (Xinhua) -- New York City Mayor Eric Adams on Tuesday said the mask mandate for children under five years old in schools and day-care facilities would be removed on April 4 if current low levels of risk sustain.

"If we continue to see low levels of risk, then, on Monday, April 4, we will make masks optional for 2-4 year old children in schools and daycare settings," said Adams in a press conference.

Adams added that masks would continue to be available to children and school staff members who wish to continue wearing them.

New York City dropped its school mask mandate on March 7 for students aged five and over.

It was reported that parents and students staged a protest against the mask mandate for younger students on Sunday in City Hall Park.

Children under the age of five are still not qualified to get COVID-19 vaccine, according to the latest rules.

The seven-day average percentage of positive COVID-19 test results ending Sunday stays at a low level of 1.45 percent within New York City, according to data issued by the New York State government. 
AWENDAW  This small town's planning board moved to stall consideration of the two largest housing developments ever contemplated here after a standing room-only meeting that left some concerned residents waiting outside of town hall.

Awendaw, a town of about 1,400 in the northern rural reaches of Charleston County, is weighing two developments that could bring more than 400 homes. The plans have sparked concern not only because of the relative density it would bring to a community hemmed in by a national forest and wildlife preserve, but also because of what would go underground.

Hundreds of septic systems would be needed for the houses. There is no piped sewer system in Awendaw, and environmentalists worry the septic systems, which filter partly treated effluent through soil, could imperil the waters of Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge by tainting groundwater that flows there.

Residents echoed those concerns and also said the developments would bring many more cars to narrow country roads. They want to ensure the sprawl of Mount Pleasant, to the immediate south, doesn't arrive in Awendaw.

Latarsha Porcher, who said she grew up in the town, moved to Columbia for 10 years and then returned, recalled an idyllic childhood playing in the area's forests.

"I want to have a family in Awendaw, and I want my kids to have the same opportunities I did, and grow up and come outside," Porcher said.

Representatives for the builders at the March 21 public meeting said they followed the zoning rules of the town with their plans and stressed they're planning for fewer homes than are allowed under the current zoning.

In both cases, the zoning for the land was approved years ago. Landowners have the right to develop both sites; the town Planning Commission was only reviewing the initial plans to do so.

The first project, near the intersection of Doar Road and U.S. Highway 17 and named Romain Bay Preserve, would eventually put 249 houses on 184 acres, with construction on the first phase slated to start later this year. Tim Cook, an engineer who represented the builders at the gathering, did not respond to multiple phone messages afterward.

The second project, on a piece of land commonly known as the White Tract in Awendaw, would eventually put 204 houses on 148 acres near the intersection of Bulls Island Road and Seewee Road. The national homebuilder PulteGroup would build the subdivision. Graham Hawkins, a representative of Pulte, did not respond to multiple follow-up calls after the meeting.

The owner of the White Tract, Lewis White Jr., is the chair of the Planning Commission. He did not attend the meeting where commission members weighed the project. Reached later by phone, he said, "Ive got no comment, thank you," and hung up.

Growth concerns

One of the major concerns for environmental groups who showed up to the town's meeting, including the Coastal Conservation League and Friends of Coastal South Carolina, is that hundreds of new septic tanks could eventually send sewage, if they fail, into the pristine waters of Cape Romain.

The refuge is important habitat for nesting sea turtles, shorebirds and other iconic species of the South Carolina coast. It's also a low-lying matrix of streams, marshes and islands.

Grace Gasper of Friends of Coastal South Carolina said during the meeting that by building nearby, the proposals would put "hundreds of homes at ground zero for climate change."

"We understand there will be development, and we would like to see it done in a manner that's more appropriate for the scale of the town and the existing resources," she added.

Septic tanks have been a problem elsewhere in the Lowcountry. They have been tied to pollution in Shem Creek, a popular destination in Mount Pleasant lined with restaurants where bacteria readings regularly register at levels that make it unsafe to swim. Similar problems exist in James Island Creek on the other side of Charleston Harbor, where investigations are ongoing but DNA tests indicate human sewage is a major driver of water quality problems.

Beyond that, the willingness of a major homebuilder like Pulte to use this many septic tanks in a larger suburban development is a new salvo in longtime efforts to manage sprawl reaching out from the Charleston region's urban core, said Jason Crowley of the League.

"Sewer systems used to be a way to sort of manage and direct growth," Crowley told The Post and Courier. "If you had an agreement that sewer won't be extended into rural areas, you could control (growth)."

The housing site near U.S. 17 and Doar Road has been the site of a controversial proposal before to manage sewage. In 2019, a plan was floated to put a new high school on the space next to some houses and use a package plant, which is a small-scale sewage treatment plant.

These types of facilities have a history of failing in the Lowcountry. Ultimately, the Charleston County School District passed on the proposal.

Managing the land

Septic tanks bring other worries, too. There must be distance between where effluent is released into soil and the water table so that microorganisms in the dirt are able to break down any contaminants.

But if the water table is too high, the groundwater will carry the resulting contaminants to local rivers and streams. And as climate change pushes sea levels higher, the water table is expected to rise, too. This is already causing problems in places like Florida where Miami-Dade County is trying to replace failing septics. One estimate put the cost of the effort at $3 billion, the Miami Herald reported.

Cook, the engineer representing the Romain Bay Preserve project, said there had been extensive soil evaluation on that site, and based on the infiltration rates, homes with three, four and five bedrooms are planned.

Hawkins and another representative of Pulte did not comment on what analysis had been done on the White Tract site during the planning meeting. Both locations are partially covered by wetlands.

If they eventually get plan approval from the town, developers for both projects will have to secure septic permits from the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control.

Another concern for the League is the smoke coming from Francis Marion National Forest. U.S. Forest Service officials have to control burn the land periodically because the longleaf pines require forest fires as a part of their life cycle. Also because burning the material on the ground at smaller intervals removes fuels that could contribute to larger, out-of-control fires.

Crowley said that in addition to a plan to manage septics, Awendaw should require homebuilders write language into deeds for the new homes making it clear the land is subject to smoke from nearby burning.

Beyond specific concerns about the protected lands around these sites, resident after resident of the town spoke up to say they had been blindsided by the proposals, which could increase the population of Awendaw by as much as 50 percent.

Karen Claussen, who lives just north of the Romain Bay Preserve site, asked whether the town was equipped for hundreds of new cars there, which would probably try to enter and exit U.S. 17 at an intersection where there is no traffic light.

"Have we thought about this at all?" she said. "The infrastructure is not there."

The Planning Commission deferred both proposed housing projects during the meeting this week; the soonest one of them will be heard again is at the next regular meeting, in April.
Its said we first eat with our eyes. This seems especially true in these Instagram days of primped and prettied food.

But what if you can't see your meal?

Thats the premise of the blindfolded dinner at the Noir Gala, the main fundraiser sponsored by the Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired of South Carolina, held on March 3.

The gala this year featured a dinner created by Cru Catering, and sighted diners were encouraged to eat the entree blindfolded. This involved slicing pan-seared tenderloin, stabbing into a root vegetable hash, and forking up spinach cream with garlic and a truffle fingerling kettle chip garnish.

Eating without being able to see your plate poses a logistical challenge, and ABVI Administrative Assistant Kimberly Taylor gave a brief tutorial before diners dug in, suggesting that they treat the plate like a clock, dragging the protein to 6 and the vegetables to 3. Steady the meat with your fork, she advised, and cut the entire piece in one direction, then rotate the plate slightly and cut the meat on the diagonal in another direction. And whatever you do, dont make any sudden moves or your neighbor might wind up with your wine in his lap.

"As soon as the food hit the table, I smelled it and knew the plate was here," said Dakota Lester, who said hed done this event virtually via Zoom during COVID and was motivated to attend because he has no central vision in one eye. "In hindsight, if I didnt have a mental map of the plate, I guess I would have used my hands to walk them over the plate."

Eating blind is more than a logistical challenge, though.

A foods color can tell us if the food is ripe, and there have been studies that show people associate flavors with certain colors: Red means hot and white means fatty. Shapes, too, play a part. The chocolate company Cadbury changed the shape of its popular chocolates in 2012 from rectangular to circular, and customers complained that the rounded candy was too sweet and oily, despite the fact that the company hadnt changed the recipe.

For Cru Catering, coming up with meals that satisfy both the logistical and the taste challenges is one they embrace.

"For us, we deal with a lot of browns, so the challenge (with most clients) usually is to make the food look good," said John Zucker, Cru Catering executive chef and owner. "This was fun. We realized that we had to address certain things on the plate though, like to make sure were not stacking components, because if it falls down its not easy to eat, so keep everything on the plate level. We also eliminate things that may crumble if you put a fork through it. And we dont do things that have too much sauce so its not dripping down someones chin and shirt."

"Years ago, we explained we wanted multiple textures because people are using senses other than vision," ABVI President and CEO Courtney Plotner said, adding that she remembers nixing one suggestion early on for two items on a plate that were meant to be eaten together, but would require navigating to get each item on the fork at the same time.

"Whatever flavors youre trying to get across have to be easy to put on one fork," Zucker said. "Of course, we wanted to make sure there are textures involved, that there is crunch and smoothness and that the flavors were combining together that needed to be combined."

Plotner said she was with a group on a board committee when they came up with the idea for the fundraiser, first executed at Grill 225 in 2015. The event outgrew the restaurant a year later.

"That first year, I took off my blindfold after a few bites to see what people were doing and they still had their blindfolds on," Plotner said. "Everybody left glowing and excited, and more connected to what we do. Weve all gone to a lot of fundraisers, and its rare to actually get to experience the mission."

Some restaurants have taken up blind dining as their overall concept. Opaque, with restaurants in California, feeds diners in a pitch-black room and servers who are blind or visually impaired serve as guides. At Abigails Kitchen in New York, blindfolded dining is pitched as a sensory sensation.

But at the Noir Gala, the blindfolds are all about experiencing dining as the associations clients do.

Attorney Sean Wilson, a board member, said he didnt last long blindfolded at this years gala. He said hed learned that "I wont be taking the luxury of vision for granted."

A friend of his, Terry Scipio, got through the entire entree blindfolded using the clock method.

"I ate it all, but I didnt drink," he said.

Samantha McGovern, a certified low-vision therapist on the ABVI staff, said the key to eating out blind is to advocate for yourself, including asking the server where things are on your plate and whether the silverware is next to the plate or rolled in a napkin, for instance.

"I went through feelings of, 'This is very challenging' to 'I hope nobody can see I have food all over my face, I hope I dont spill food all over my dress,'" Plotner said of her first blindfolded experience. "These are feelings our clients probably feel all the time. With the Noir Gala, weve opened our guests' eyes to challenges our clients face. But people can still enjoy themselves and enjoy the food without vision. Its eye-opening, and it shows the resilience of humans to adapt."
Chef Kimberly Brock Brown, who will be inducted into her new role during the American Culinary Federation's national convention in Orlando on Aug. 5, is the first woman and person of color to serve in the position since the organization was founded in 1929.

Brown, who lives in Charleston, is serving her second two-year term as Southeast Region Vice President. She previously served as president of the Charleston chapter and on the ethics committee.

She wasn't planning on vying for the top position of the educational culinary organization that stands for career professionalism and offers certification programming, but she saw a need for more diverse membership and leadership.

At a conference in Phoenix, she realized a trend she had been seeing for years in the organization that she's been a member of since 1981 when she was just 19 years old: A lack of programming and networking dedicated to women and minorities.

"I've been asking for years, let's have the women all get together so we can meet and network, but that never really happened," said Brown. "I've never considered myself to be an activist, but I was like, 'yeah, I'm not going to let you kick me and put me down.'"

She assured that although the board she currently resides on is full of White men, there are many members in the organization who are also seeking to foster a more diverse organization.

"It's not like all guys are against us," she said. "It's those guys who voted me in over another White man."

Frank Halasz, the current president of the American Culinary Federation's Charleston chapter, is one such supporter.

Halasz has known Brown for more than 30 years and has worked with her for the past half-decade or so at catering events around the Lowcountry at venues like the Volvo Car Open and Gaillard Center. He was the first to nominate Brown for the national presidency in a Zoom call meeting.

"She is definitely the best person for the position," said Halasz. "She's the square peg in the square hole. She knows ACF (American Culinary Federation), she's dedicated, I've seen it in action. It was a no-brainer."

Last year, when the Charleston chapter president stepped down, Halasz filled in after being motivated to do so by Brown.

After one of the board members suggested dissolving the chapter, Halasz got breakfast with Brown and asked for help figuring out what to do to keep it afloat. For both, ending the chapter was never an option.

Brown is a go-getter with a strong work ethic and she not only has lofty ideas but she follows through, said Halasz.

"She's a machine in networking and bringing people together," he said.

"And she has a million things to do," he added.

Sipping a large coffee at Cuppa Manna in Summerville on a Tuesday morning next to her bulging file folder filled with notes and ideas, Brown listed out a few of those millions of things.

Her campaign has centered around promoting student education and mentoring, engaging more women and minorities and supporting the pastry community.

More youth competitions are on the agenda, like a recent local challenge between culinary programs at Wando and West Ashley high schools. The winner, Nathan Goller-Deitsch, received an all-expenses paid trip to the national convention where Brown will be sworn in as president.

"I know that the skills I've learned throughout the program will follow me into my professional life," Goller-Deitsch told The Post and Courier. "I'm immensely grateful to the ACF ... and excited to keep learning."

Mentoring is a particularly important subject for Brown, since she didn't have many women or people of color to look up to when she was starting out in the organization in the '80s.

She said Black women students have already told her how much it means to see someone like them in a leadership culinary role.

"I mean, I grew up watching Julia Child," Brown said. "But other than that, I never saw women doing things. I think it would've made a difference for me."

She embraced both motherhood and her role as executive pastry chef at Charleston Place, which she held for almost a decade. And she felt like she was swimming against the current through it all. She wants to change that for up-and-coming chefs.

"How do we make ACF applicable to women and people of color? Where are the Black chefs in fine dining, white tablecloth restaurants?" Brown said.

In addition to taking more significant strides to make women and minorities feel welcome in the organization, Brown wants to partner with other change-focused groups that are "already doing the work."

She cited FairKitchens, a movement of chefs supporting chefs to create a more sustainable and workable kitchen culture.

And she cited how just five years ago she ran across a restaurant that was hiring but "didn't want any women in the kitchen."

"More people need to be advocates," she said. "It's not even about #MeToo, it's just being respected and thought of as equal."

Brown is clearly not foreign to the concept that the culinary world is still male-dominated.

She's the author of Here I Am!: Chef Kimberlys Answer to the Question Where are the Female and Minority Chefs, and she has contributed to other books, including training manuals Real Women, Real Leaders: Surviving and Succeeding in the Business World and Toques in Black: A Celebration of Black Chefs.

She insisted she won't be making changes just to make changes. But there will be a shift in thinking with a Black woman at the helm.

She's long been ready for it.
Georgetown, SC (29440)

Today

Mainly sunny to start, then a few afternoon clouds. High 88F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Partly to mostly cloudy. Low 67F. Winds light and variable.
Summerville High freshman Tatiana Fasnacht won first place in the fiction category in the Govie Writing Awards, a statewide writing competition held for students in grade 6-12.
Like with other animal abuse laws in the state critics say 16-17-650(A) Cockfighting, doesnt go far enough. The crime is still a misdemeanor.
Summerville native Petty Officer First Class Lee R. Norwood was awarded the Navy Marine Corps Commendation Medal for meritorious service while serving at Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay in Georgia.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (L) welcomes visiting Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte (R front) in Ankara, Turkey, March 22, 2022. Turkey has been playing a "critical role" in mediation efforts to solve tensions in Ukraine, visiting Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said on Tuesday.

Rutte visited Turkey on Tuesday ahead of an extraordinary NATO leaders' summit on Thursday, which will discuss the Ukraine crisis. (Photo by Mustafa Kaya/Xinhua)

ANKARA, March 22 (Xinhua) -- Turkey has been playing a "critical role" in mediation efforts to solve tensions in Ukraine, visiting Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said on Tuesday.

Rutte said his country supports the mediation role of Ankara between Kiev and Moscow.

Rutte visited Turkey on Tuesday ahead of an extraordinary NATO leaders' summit on Thursday, which will discuss the Ukraine crisis.

"Turkey, which is one of few countries that have open channels with both countries, is doing everything it can to bring about a solution and plays a critical role," he said at a joint press conference after meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the capital Ankara.

Asked about Turkey does not impose sanctions against Russia, Rutte said, "Turkey applies UN sanctions.... We would like Turkey to implement all the sanctions, but we are pleased that Turkey is currently playing a diplomatic role."

The Dutch prime minister underlined that Ankara has political and military importance for NATO and is a crucial partner for the European Union.

"We have a common will to further develop our relations and dialogue on regional issues with our NATO ally, the Netherlands," Erdogan said.

Declaring that the trade volume with the Netherlands reached 11 billion U.S. dollars with an increase of nearly 30 percent last year, Erdogan said that the new target is 15 billion dollars at first and then they aim 20 billion dollars.

"The Netherlands is the country with the highest direct investment in Turkey with 27.5 billion dollars," the Turkish president said.

Responding to the claim that the mines drifted from the Odessa Bay are floating to Turkish territorial waters, Erdogan said, "This is currently being discussed. Our defense ministry is taking every precaution. Whatever is necessary will be done." 

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (R) and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte attend a a joint press conference in Ankara, Turkey, March 22, 2022. Turkey has been playing a "critical role" in mediation efforts to solve tensions in Ukraine, visiting Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said on Tuesday.

Rutte visited Turkey on Tuesday ahead of an extraordinary NATO leaders' summit on Thursday, which will discuss the Ukraine crisis. (Photo by Mustafa Kaya/Xinhua)
A land deal for a property that was going to be used for homeless outreach services was scuttled by Charleston City Council on March 22.

City Council approved their earlier Ways and Means Committee meeting vote of 7-5 to scrap the deal.

The purchase was originally delayed because of the building's price as well as ethics concerns surrounding the mayor's connection to the property's owners.

In February, City Council agreed to commission a second appraisal of the property. The first and second appraisals came in at $1.3 million and $1.6 million, respectively. The Neck Area office building at 11 Cunnington Ave. is a former crematorium nearly surrounded by a graveyard.

We can do better than this, Councilman Keith Waring said during Tuesday's Ways and Means Committee meeting.

The new building would have replaced the city's homeless outreach hub, the Navigation Center at 529 Meeting St., which is on a month-to-month lease.

The owner of 529 Meeting said he plans to redevelop the site, Charleston Housing and Community Development Department Director Geona Shaw Johnson said.

Some council members said both appraisals were too high for the building's location and that the proposal was not an efficient use of funds that were specifically raised for homeless outreach services. Those in support of the idea said it was the best deal the city was going to get on the peninsula.

Mayor John Tecklenburg abstained from the vote because he said the previous discussion of his son's connection to the property owners was a distraction, even though not a violation of state ethics law.

During a previous City Council meeting in February, Waring pointed out that the mayor's son, Joseph Tecklenburg, works with the owners of the office building at the Real Estate Firm Clement, Crawford & Thornhill Inc.

Because the owners of the building, Robert Clement III and Stuart Coleman, bought the building under an LLC as a personal investment property, Tecklenburg's son would not benefit financially from its sale.

Although the mayor abstained, he first gave an impassioned speech about serving Charleston's homeless community.

"I really dont want a personal issue to get in the way of yall keeping focus on what I think is the prize here, which is helping those experiencing homelessness," he said.

Charleston housing and community development officials proposed buying the office building because it is next to a piece of land on which the city is already planning to build affordable housing.

Most of the funding for the new homeless outreach service hub was raised by the Mayors Commission on Homelessness and Affordable Housing, a regional group that raises money for homelessness prevention efforts. The commission raised $1 million to put toward the new outreach hub.

Several council members were unconvinced that the Cunnington Avenue office building was worth the investment. Waring said he thought neither appraisal reflects the true market value of the property because both appraisals use office buildings farther south on the peninsula as comparable properties to determine the value.

You dont have to be an expert to know that if you start north on the peninsula and drive south, properties are going to get more expensive," Waring said.

Councilman Robert Mitchell, who has been involved in the planning process for the new outreach center and represents the district where the office is located, said it was the best opportunity the city has identified so far.

The money is not coming from the city," Mitchell said. "If we are going to help people with homelessness, we need to start moving and not speculating about this or that.

Stephen Buckman, an assistant professor of real estate development at Clemson University, said commissioning multiple appraisals is generally a best practice. Given the office's location and former use, he said it is likely difficult to nail down a fair price.

"With a unique building, it becomes harder to appraise," Buckman told The Post and Courier. "This isnt a standard, five-story office building with a nice little lobby."

Council members Waring, Boyd Gregg, Kevin Shealy, William Dudley Gregorie, Mike Seekings, Peter Shahid and Caroline Parker voted in favor of terminating the deal. Council members Mitchell, Jason Sakran, Karl Brady, Stephen Bowden and Ross Appel voted in favor of buying the property.
The South Carolina Environmental Law Project is calling for the states health agency to require the regular inspection of storage tanks to protect drinking water, following an Uncovered investigation.

Without that change, residents in the state could be exposed to "illness-causing" water from their taps, the law firm said in a petition, which it filed on behalf of concerned residents and organizations.

The proposal would require the state Department of Health and Environmental Control to force public systems to examine the inside of water tanks every year and report their findings. If contaminants are found, SCELP suggested the tanks be cleaned within six months.

We shouldnt have to rely on the good graces of a water system to check its own tank, said Ben Cunningham, an attorney who filed the petition.

The request follows an October investigation by The Post and Courier and The Sumter Item, which found that a water tank owned by the town of Summerton was not cleaned for years. Several inches of sludge grew inside the tank, which fed to a nearby housing complex, turning its white interior black and brown.

Discolored water flowed from faucets and gave shower curtains a brown tint, according to residents who lived in the complex. White clothes turned beige after they were washed. And the town's new water operator determined the tank wasn't cleaned in at least 12 years. The inside was cleaned in August.

Uncovered is an initiative by The Post and Courier to team up with community outlets across the state to investigate questionable conduct.

SCELP, in its petition, said the issue in Summerton exposed a gap in South Carolina's existing rules, and it referred to laws in other states that require the inside of tanks be inspected. It said mandating the reviews was "both necessary and economically justifiable." It also called for other changes to drinking water rules in response to issues in communities, including in Denmark and Darlington County.

Currently, DHEC and the federal government recommend, but dont require, that water utilities check inside their tanks. DHEC recommends that they are cleaned and examined every three to five years, in line with what the water industrys top trade group suggests. Instead, the agency relies on water quality tests to identify health risks, a spokesperson said last year.

According to state law, DHEC has 30 days take action on the petition or deny it. A spokesperson in an email said the agency looked "forward to reviewing and responding to" it.
Ocean shipping company Matson announced Tuesday new appointments and promotions involving four executives from Guam, according to a release.

Patrick Bulaon, current operations manager of Guam and Micronesia, will assume his new position as vice president and general manager for Guam and Micronesia effective April 1.

Success! An email has been sent to with a link to confirm list signup. Error! There was an error processing your request.

In his new role, Bulaon assumes responsibility for overseeing all operations and sales activity of Matsons Western Pacific and Micronesia regions, which include Guam, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Palau, Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands and Okinawa, Japan.

Originally from Guam, Bulaon joined Matson in 2021 and previously served in various operations and sales management positions over 28 years in Guam, CNMI, Micronesia, South East Asia, and the South Pacific for ExxonMobil and PacifiCare Asia Pacific.

Bulaon has been a member of the Rotary Club of Northern Guam, the Guam Chamber of Commerce, and Guam Contractors Association. He holds a bachelors in business administration and finance from Marquette University in Milwaukee and is a 1986 graduate of Father Duenas Memorial School.

Bulaon succeeds Bernadette Bernie Valencia, who has been appointed vice president of Hawaii sales, with responsibility for all sales and marketing activities in Matsons largest trade lane, effective April 1.

Valencia succeeds Len Isotoff, who is being promoted to succeed Vic Angoco as senior vice president, Pacific, also effective April 1.

Angoco has been appointed to succeed the retiring Bal Dreyfus as senior vice president, Alaska, based in Anchorage, effective July 1.

Chairman and CEO Matt Cox said, Matson works at developing talented leaders and Guam has certainly produced more than its share. Vic is one of Matsons most experienced and trusted leaders. Likewise, Len, Bernie and Patrick are among the next generation of senior leaders at Matson and are well positioned to help lead us into the future.

Valencia joined Matson in 2008, bringing a successful 15-year track record of business accomplishments in Guam and Micronesia. Starting as a sales and customer service manager, she was later named Guam general manager, and was promoted to her current position in 2017.

Valencia holds a bachelors in aviation maintenance from San Jose State University. She is the co-founder and a board member of iCAN Resources, a Guam nonprofit organization that employs and provides life skills to disabled residents and was recently appointed to the University of Guam Board of Regents. She has been an active member of many organizations, including the USO Advisory Council, The Employers Council, and the Guam Womens Chamber of Commerce.

In his new role as Pacific senior vice president, Isotoff will be responsible for all of Matsons Hawaii, Guam, Micronesia and South Pacific operations. A native of Chuuk, Isotoff joined Matson in 1999 as logistics manager on Guam and has served in a variety of successive roles, including sales/customer service manager in Guam, Pacific Northwest sales manager, container operations manager in Honolulu, and Guam/Micronesia general manager. He was promoted to his current position in 2016.

Isotoff holds a bachelors in business management from Oregon State University. He serves on the Historic Hawaii Foundation board of trustees and the Navy League Honolulu Council.

Angoco began his 32-year maritime career on Guam and has held a wide range of operations and sales management roles. He joined Matson in 1996 as operations manager on Guam, and rose through the ranks in successive sales, customer service and operations leadership positions in Guam and Hawaii. He was promoted to his current position in 2010.

We are proud of our roots in Guam and Micronesia. Having four executives from the Pacific advance simultaneously in one company is a testament to Matsons investment in its team and our region, Angoco said. Patrick will carry on the tradition of leading the Guam and Micronesia operations as a son of Guam and proudly serve the community we call home.
Editor's note: This is the first in a two-part series that covers Wednesday's public hearing on Bill 12-36.

"What is happening that would make you want to push such a law?" Agnes Matanane told lawmakers at a public hearing in opposition to a bill that would create a "stand your ground provision" in Guam law.

Matanane's son, Joseph Michael Matanane Zamora, was killed in 2020. The shooter called on the existing Castle Doctrine law in defense and a murder charge against him was later dropped.

Success! An email has been sent to with a link to confirm list signup. Error! There was an error processing your request.

People are using Castle Doctrine wrong, according to Matanane, who hoped lawmakers would "fix" the law instead of expand it.

"My son will probably never get the justice he is due, but if you push this law into existence, it will be much easier for people to get away with murder. And let me assure you, that blood doesn't wash away that easy. It will cause havoc on many lives," Matanane said.

Bill 12-36 would expand Guam's Castle Doctrine into a "stand your ground" law, as seen in some stateside jurisdictions.

Some testified in support of the measure, saying they should be able to defend themselves with out fear of prosecution.

Others opposed the bill, including members of social work groups and the Public Defender Service Corp. They said the bill would only harm abuse victims and minorities, and is not needed considering what's already in the books.

Under the current Castle Doctrine, a person is presumed to have held a reasonable fear of peril, death or serious bodily injury when using deadly force in specific circumstances.

Bill 12 would allow the use deadly force if it is believed necessary for protection and one is somewhere they have the right to be, regardless of location. Current law applies this exemption only in one's home, place of work or vehicle.

Attorney Phillip Tydingco, a former chief prosecutor, described Bill 12 as granting the right to "shoot first and ask questions later."

Tydingco said the "ugly truth" behind the bill is that it will likely impact minority groups in Guam.

That concern was shared by Jamela Santos, vice president for the Guam chapter of the National Association of Social Workers.

People of color have been disproportionately impacted by "stand your ground laws, she said. And while it isn't known how that would translate to Guam, there is a risk that what is seen in the states would happen on island "especially with regard to implicit, ethnic and racial biases," Santos said.

"Our brothers and sisters throughout Micronesia are often stereotyped to exhibit dangerous, aggressive and criminal-like behavior," she added. "This is even more imperative when within the past few years, current events in the United States have pushed us ... to educate ourselves on the impacts of institutional racism, fear and how deep rooted stereotypes can lead to violence in our communities."

Self defense

Meanwhile, Rose Taitano stated that she relies on herself for protection in the event of a threat to herself or loved ones.

"Police presence is not immediately available or a guarantee," Taitano said through testimony read out by her daughter.

Taitano said current law is not enough as she also checks on her elderly mother, and her work includes late night calls and extended shifts, while her drive to work goes through isolated areas known for criminal activity.

"I ask that our senators do more to protect the rights of law abiding citizens and work to expand (the law)," Taitano said through her daughter.

Deborah Reyes said Bill 12 is not a gun law, but about the right to defend oneself.

"The reason why I support this bill is because, what if I'm taking a leisurely walk and I'm approached? What if I've exited the doors of my office and I'm in the parking lot and approached?" Reyes said, adding her concerns of prosecution and public scrutiny for having to defend herself, while also bearing the weight of having taken a life.

Morrison stated during his testimony that self defense as it currently exists has been a viable defense that's worked in the vast majority of cases.

"It's based on common sense and it's a justification defense. When it's truly justified, we don't really need additional standalone piece of law to codify it," Morrison said.
MOSCOW, March 23 (Xinhua) -- The United States would not like to see a rapid completion of the Moscow-Kiev peace talks but hopes that Russia is mired in prolonged hostilities, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Wednesday.

"It is unprofitable for Americans that this (negotiation) process will be completed quickly. They want to continue to send weapons to Ukraine," Lavrov said during a meeting with students and teachers of Russia's MGIMO University.

"Apparently, they (Americans) want to keep us in a state of hostilities for as long as possible," he said.

Lavrov expressed concern over the delivery of MiG fighter jets and U.S. Stinger man-portable air defense systems to Ukraine, which will pose "an enormous threat, because they will surely spread all over Europe."

The foreign minister stressed that the United States has used sanctions on Russia as an instrument to maintain its dominance in the world.

"These sanctions are aimed at removing Russia as an obstacle on the way to building a unipolar world ... This is not about Ukraine. This is about the world order in which the United States wants to be the sole sovereign," he said. 
Terrific time last night in Washington speaking about Stan Evans to the Frank Meyer Society.

With the Ukraine crisis dividing the right, I thought readers might like this passage from the penultimate chapter, where Evans expressed some skepticism about neoconservative foreign policy (by the way, one of his quips from this period was: A paleoconservative is a conservative who has been mugged by a neoconservative):

When President George H.W. Bush began assembling a war coalition in the aftermath of Iraqs invasion of Kuwait in 1990, Evans noted that it wasnt clear the coming war was necessarily a vital interest of the United States (while also rejecting the idea that we were intervening at the behest of Israel), and moreover questioned the sudden neo-interventionism of the left: Where were the usual indignant cries of no more Vietnams, against backing foreign autocrats, and concerns about the imperial presidency? This skepticism of Middle Eastern policy should not be regarded as isolationism of the old Robert Taft variety, he argued, but rather flowed from his long-running contempt for our hubristic foreign policy establishment. In another column Evans came close to repudiating the Vietnam War: our Middle East blunders that had helped strengthen the Baathist regimes in Iraq and Syria reminded him of the grim effects of early Vietnam syndrome, which might best be described as creating such a mess through mistaken intervention that U.S. troops are sent in to set the situation right. In the aftermath of Operation Desert Storm in 1991, Evans thought his skepticism was fully vindicated, arguing that the ambiguous post-conflict conditions in Iraq proved that U.S. strategy and messaging had been incoherent.

Evans returned to this problem in the aftermath of September 11, 2001. He had given up his column by that point and was only writing intermittently about current issues, but Human Events reporter John Gizzi caught up with Evans in December, 2001 to ask him about the wider war strategy then being contemplated in Washington. In particular, Gizzi wanted Evanss reaction to a comment from William Kristol in the Washington Post: Whether we take on Iraq has huge implications for the U.S. role in the world and, fundamentally, its whether were going to take it upon ourselves to shape a new world order. Evans was not enthusiastic about the idea, telling Gizzi:

I dont know where the idea came from that conservatives favor a new world order or any variant of that notion. That sounds more like the globalism of Woodrow Wilson and FDR than the limited constitutional government U.S. conservatives have historically favored. As to conservative doctrine on such issues, my personal view is that the proper role of the U.S. government is to defend our country against attack or imminent security damage. Im no military expert, but judging by results to date, the President and his team have done a superlative job of responding to the attacks of September 11th. I would specifically include in this their reluctance to expand the fighting in all directions.
Wang Yang, chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference National Committee, meets via video link with Khalid Hilal Al Ma'awali, chairman of the consultative council of Oman, in Beijing, capital of China, March 23, 2022. (Xinhua/Liu Weibing)

BEIJING, March 23 (Xinhua) -- China's top political advisor Wang Yang on Wednesday met via video link with Khalid Hilal Al Ma'awali, chairman of the consultative council of Oman.

Wang, chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) National Committee, said the mutual political trust between China and Oman has been consolidated and bilateral cooperation in various fields has seen positive progress under the guidance of the two heads of state.

China has always viewed China-Oman relations from a strategic height and a long-term perspective, and stands ready to work with the Omani side to consolidate mutual political trust, enhance people-to-people exchanges, strengthen anti-pandemic and practical cooperation in various fields, and further enrich the China-Oman strategic partnership, said Wang.

He said the CPPCC National Committee is willing to strengthen exchanges with the consultative council of Oman and contribute to advancing bilateral ties.

Ma'awali expressed consolation over the recent China Eastern Airlines plane crash, and spoke highly of China's development achievements.

He said Oman attaches great importance to developing ties with China and is willing to strengthen pragmatic cooperation with China in various fields under the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative.

The Omani consultative council is ready to further strengthen exchanges and cooperation with the CPPCC National Committee and play its role in the development of bilateral ties, he added. 

Wang Yang, chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference National Committee, meets via video link with Khalid Hilal Al Ma'awali, chairman of the consultative council of Oman, in Beijing, capital of China, March 23, 2022. (Xinhua/Liu Weibing)

Wang Yang, chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference National Committee, meets via video link with Khalid Hilal Al Ma'awali, chairman of the consultative council of Oman, in Beijing, capital of China, March 23, 2022. (Xinhua/Liu Weibing)
Naira recorded no significant movement against the U.S. dollar at the official market on Wednesday, extending the spot market stability run to two business days this week.

The naira closed at N416.25 to a dollar at the close of business Wednesday, the same rate it traded with the greenback in the previous session on Tuesday, data published by the Central Bank of Nigeria showed.

The weakest rate naira has traded since the opening of trade this week was when it closed at N416.32 per $1 on Monday. the CBN data showed.

However, the domestic unit inched towards N590.00 to a dollar at the black market.

Currency exchangers in Uyo said the naira was exchanged within the range of N583.00-N585.00 to a dollar in the morning, but dropped to N577.00 to a dollar by Wednesday evening.

The demand for the U.S. dollar reduced in the evening today thats why the price dropped to N577 to a dollar in the evening today, a trader who identified himself as Shuaibu told PREMIUM TIMES.

Currency dealers in Abuja said naira exchanged at N585.00 and sold at N586.00 to a dollar on Wednesday.
The Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Mahmood Yakubu, says the regulations and guidelines for the 2023 general election will be ready ten months before the election.

The elections commence in February 2022, an indication that INEC plans to release the guidelines before the end of April.

This is contained in the INEC Daily Bulletin issued on Tuesday.

Mr Yakubu gave the hint when he received a delegation from John D and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, in Abuja

The INEC chairman recalled that In 2019, the commission was constrained by time due to the uncertainty that trailed the electoral legal framework.

He said that saw the commission signing off on the regulations and guidelines on January 19, 2019, few weeks to the election.

But we hope that this time around we will sign off on the regulations and guidelines at least 10 months before the next general election, which is very good progress for us.

Speaking further on the commissions source of power to develop the guidelines and regulations, the INEC Chairman said the commission was happy with the assent of President Muhammadu Buhari to the Electoral Bill.

We now have a new electoral law, on the bases of which we commenced work on the regulations and guidelines.

Electoral Act cannot say everything, so the National Assembly donates part of its power to INEC to make Regulations and Guidelines and these Regulations and Guidelines have forms of subsidiary legislation.

He further disclosed that INEC had virtually finished the processes.

Our Election Project Plan (EPP) is ready and about to be published, the Strategic Plan is already completed and published.

We also publish and gazette the Guidelines and send the three documents to the stakeholders and general public next month.

Earlier in his remarks, the President of John D and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, John Palfrey, congratulated INEC for the successes achieved in areas where it made recommendations after 2019 general election.

He recalled that the foundation was able to visit in 2019 and discussed with INEC several things that were underway at that time

One was the progress of the Electoral Act, and Id like to congratulate you on the passage of the Electoral Act.

Second, we discussed and encouraged the creation of a new department on Gender and Inclusivity, here at INEC and congratulate you on the creation of this department and the successful implementation.

The third thing we discussed was the creation of new polling units and I understand that these too have been completed and that you are well in preparation for 2023.

Mr Palfrey explained that their mission at the commission was to learn more about INECs plans the 2023 general election .

We also thank you for your leadership at the international level and for your partnership with us as we seek to ensure government accountability and anti-corruption in countries around the world with particular focus on Nigeria.

Mr Buhari signed the electoral act amendment bill into law on February 25.

The legislation was transmitted to the president on January 31 after both chambers of the National Assembly had reworked it.

Mr Buhari had initially rejected the bill after the National Assembly made direct primary compulsory for political parties in the country.

Advertisements





The president said the provision violates the spirit of democracy.

It was on that basis the senate and house of representatives reworked the bill to provide for indirect and direct primary, as well as consensus candidates.

(NAN)
A final year medical student of Zaporozhye State Medical University, Ukraine, Huzaifa Modachi, has died two weeks after their evacuation from the war-torn country.

Mr Modachi died last Friday in a Sokoto hospital.

Russian forces have been attacking Ukraine since February.

Nigerian students trapped in the country are being evacuated after calling for help following the invasion.

The Sokoto State governor, Aminu Tambuwal, has also met representatives of parents if students from the state studying in Ukraine during the first week of the invasion.

Later, Sokoto State students were evacuated from the war-torn country.

How Huzaifa died

Huzaifas father, Habibu Modachi, a lawmaker representing Isa local government area at the Sokoto House of Assembly, told BBC Hausa as monitored by PREMIUM TIMES that his son was in good health when he returned to Nigeria among other students.

He said that when his son returned, he did not show signs of sickness but later began to show some signs of weakness and lack of appetite, after which he was taken to the hospital.

The senior Mr Modachi did not, however, say what sickness his son was diagnosed with.

When he returned, we were happy because of the situation in Ukraine. He was in sound health for the whole days. He later began to become weak and he was at the hospital for only one day before he died. The doctors have not even informed me what his sickness was, he said.

The lawmaker said the family has accepted the death of their son as a will of God.

As I told you, he only complained of lack of appetite so I decided to take him to the hospital and he was examined and drugs given to him but he died in the night.

My discussion with him

Mr Modachi said his son told him a lot of things about his experience in Ukraine.

I was the one that took him from the airport when they were evacuated. I took him home and he was in a good mood as we were discussing and laughing. He told me of his experiences in Ukraine before and after the invasion began. Like many other students and people living there, Huzaifa told me they were in constant fear of the unknown during the invasion before they decided to leave the country, he said.

He added that his son told him they trekked for three days before they reached the Hungary boundary to escape the attack.

While they were in Hungary, Sokoto State government and the Embassy made arrangements and evacuated them back to Nigeria. Of course, he told me he showed (pictures) me some of the shellings thrown by the Russian soldiers and people trekking to the borders, he said.

Mr Modachi said his son spent three years in Ukraine studying before his return.

All those years, he spent them there without coming back home. He was an excellent student and was in his final year. I am happy for him. We have to thank God that Huzaifa returned home before his death and we saw him because if he had died in Ukraine, we would have been in great discomposure. He ran away from death but met it here. God gives and takes. It is from God and nothing more; we thank him for giving us Huzaifa, he said.
At least 169 persons have obtained nomination forms to contest for various positions in the National Working Committee (NWC) of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) ahead of its March 26 National Convention.

The convention is scheduled to hold at Egles Square in Abuja and will be attended by about 4,000 delegates from the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

Altogether the aspirants will contest for 22 positions in the NWC at the event.

According to the list obtained exclusively by PREMIUM TIMES, seven aspirants purchased the expression of interest and nomination forms for chairmanship seat at N20 million each, generating a total of N140 million for the party.

The aspirants include two former governors of Nasarawa State and serving senators, Tanko Al-Makura and Abdullahi Adamu; Minister of Special Duties and Inter-Governmental Affairs, George Akume; a Niger East Senator, Sani Musa; Saliu Mustapha from Kwara State and the aide to the Niger State Governor, Mohammed Etsu.

They all hail from the North-central geo-political zone to which the party zoned the position.

One aspirant, Abdulaziz Yari, a former governor of Zamfara in the North-west, who defied the zoning arrangement and picked the form last week, also made the list.

Barring any last minute withdrawal, the seven aspirants may be slugging it out at the convention.

There are indications, however, that the party is working towards producing a consensus candidate from among the array of aspirants.

Six aspirants are gunning for the position of the Deputy National Chairman ((North) zoned to the North-east.

They are a former governor of Bauchi State, Isa Yuguda; a former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, also from Bauchi State and a former senator, Abubakar Girei.

The others are Sunny Moniedafe from Adamawa State, Abubakar Kyari and Faruk Aliyu.

Messrs Yuguda and Moniedafe had eyed the position of the national chairman but were shut out of the race after the party zoned the position to the North-central.

Mr Aliyu, though from Jigawa State in the North-west, snubbed the zoning arrangement to obtain the form.

He is alleged to be a favourite of President Muhammadu Buhari for the position.

For the position of the Deputy National Chairman (South) which was zoned to the South-east, only Ken Nnamani, a former Senate President, and Emmanuel Joseph purchased the form.

The party generated a total of N60 million from the sale of the forms for the position.

Omisore, Shittu for National Secretary

Four aspirants purchased the form as of Wednesday morning for the position of the national secretary zoned to the South-west.

They are a former Deputy Governor of Osun State, Iyiola Omisore; a former Minister of Communication from Oyo State, Adebayo Shittu; Olaiya Olaitan, and Ife Oyedele, who is alleged to be Mr Buharis favourite.

Each of the aspirants purchased the form for N10 million thereby raking in a total of N40 million for the party.

The governor of Ondo State, Rotimi Akeredolu, earlier claimed that regions leaders had microzoned the seats allotted to the region to different states, but the list suggests otherwise.

He had warned against a plot by leaders outside the South-west to truncate their arrangements for the seats reserved for the region.

For emphasis, what we are going for is national vice-chairman with Kekemeke as our candidate, and not national secretary. Those outside the South-west, who are attempting to micro-zone our offices for us in the South-west, are only creating unnecessary confusion and any such of their permutations outside the decision of stakeholders in the South-west should be ignored, he alleged in a statement issued over the weekend.

Advertisements





Sources in the party in the region spoke with this newspaper about Mr Omisores acceptance for the seat by the APC governors in the South-west.

Giadom, Nabena in race for NWC seat

According to the list, a former deputy National Secretary of the APC, Victor Giadom and deputy Publicity Secretary of the party, Yekini Nabena, are also contesting for the National Vice Chairman (South-south) seat.

The duo, although non-members of the NWC, were vocal at the end of the Adams Oshiomhole leadership of the party.

While Mr Nabena jostled for the position of national publicity secretary to replace Lanre Issa-Onilu, Mr Giadom took the centre stage in the drama at the NWC of the party when he declared himself the acting national chairman following the suspension of Mr Oshiomhole by the Court of Appeal in June 2020.

Interestingly, both Messrs Nabena and Giadom will be contesting for the position with Worgu Boms, a man Mr Oshiomhole-led NWC controversially appointed then in place of Mr Giadom as Deputy National Secretary.

Abiolas daughter, four others vie for National Youth Leader

Five aspirants purchased forms for the position of the National Youth Leader zoned to the South-west.

According to the list, the aspirants gunning for the seat are Dada Olusegun, Dayo Israel, Kareemat Abiola (MKO Abiolas daughter), Olalekan Edwards and Buhari Sadeeq.

While Mr Israel has been widely endorsed by the Bola Tinubus camp in Lagos State, Ms Abiola and Mr Olusegun are said to be enjoying the support of the partys youth for the seat.

From the sale of form for the seat, the APC has reportedly raked in N25 million.

Other positions that will be keenly contested fo at the convention are those of the National Vice Chairman in the North-east, North-west, South-east and South-west.

Five aspirants obtained form for the seat in the North-east while four aspirants each are jostling for the seat in the North-west, South-east and South-west respectively.

The form costs N5 million each, an indication that N85 million was generated by the party.

There are five aspirants contesting for the position of the National Organising Secretary zoned to the North-west.

The partys interim National Youth Leader, Ismaeel Ahmed, is one of the aspirants.

Silas Buowe and Felix Morka from South-south picked up form to contest for the position of national publicity secretary.

With a 50 per cent slash for females interested in the race, Effiom Boco, Mary Ekpere and Betta Edu from South-south have obtained forms to contest for the position of the National Women Leader.

Screening

Meanwhile, PREMIUM TIMES gathered that the screening of the aspirants initially slated for March 17 and 18 did not commence until late Tuesday in Abuja.

The aspirants vying for the chairmanship and some other positions were screened by the Katsina State Governor, Aminu Masari-led committee between 10 p.m. on Tuesday and 3 a.m. on Wednesday.

The screening of the second batch has been slated for a later time on Wednesday.
Women groups have issued a seven legislative day ultimatum to the Federal lawmakers to recommit and pass the five gender constitution bills.

This call was made at a World Press conference in Abuja following the suspension of the daily protests at the gates of the National Assembly.

The National Assembly had earlier in March, at a constitution review exercise voted against the five amendment bills termed gender bills proposed to address certain issues affecting women through the constitution.

Since then, women and Gender groups occupied the gates of the federal parliament for 10 legislative days demanding reconsideration of the bills.

This was done as a movement termed #nigerianWomenOccupyNass under the auspices of WOMANIFESTO across national and sub-national level to ensure a coordinated response to the need for the passage of the five gender demands.

Although the Senate sent a delegation to address the women, no action was taken.

The House of Representatives on the other hand rescinded its rejection on three gender bills.

Yet, the daily protests by the women continued.

On Tuesday, March 22, during the usual protest, the women gained entrance into the federal parliament which forced a delegation from the green chamber led by the House Majority Leader, Alhassan Ado Doguwa to meet the protesters. He asked them to give the parliament time to work on the bills prompting a suspension of the protest.

Consequently, the women groups held a press conference on Wednesday giving a seven legislative day ultimatum.

We are determined to hold them accountable to their promises to ensure that within seven legislative days, the gender bills are recommitted and positively voted for the inclusive growth and development of Nigeria, Abiodun Akiyode-Afolabi said on behalf of the women groups

Should the federal lawmakers fail to act on the bills, the women groups promised to return to the gates and we are going to occupy in a bigger way because they are giving us more time to plan from state to state.

It is not a matter of threat but affirming our presence in the country, she added.

Details

One of the bill is on citizenship as it seeks to amend section 26 of the 1999 Constitution to grant citizenship to foreign husbands of Nigerian women as is currently guaranteed in section 26(2)(a) for foreign wives of Nigerian men.

Another bill addresses section 31 and 318(1) of the 1999 constitution to allow women to claim their husbands state of origin after at least five years of marriage.

The third bill, on affirmative action, is to specifically amend section 223 of the Nigerian constitution to ensure women occupy at least 35% in political party administration and appointive positions.

There is the bill on Ministerial or Commissioner Nomination to amend Sections 147 and 192 of the constitution so that at least 35% of the nominees are women.

The fifth gender bill seeks to create reserved seats by amending sections 48, 49 and 91 to create additional 37, 74, and 108 seats for women at the Senate, House of Representatives, and the State AAssembliesrespectively.

Demands

The women have seven demands requesting the attention of the government.

They include the urgent re-convening, reconsideration, and immediate passage of the all women/gender-related bills by the National Assembly and the passage of the Gender and Equal Opportunities (GEOB) Bill, currently before the Senate.

They also asked for resuscitation and passage of the Bill on support for Women Participation in Elective and Appointive positions, the immediate domestication of the African Charters Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa, which Nigeria ratified in 2004 and the United Nations Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), ratified by Nigeria since 1985.

As our representatives, we demand to know your voting pattern on sensitive matters of citizen rights and all the bills be passed by March 31st 2022 to gloriously end the womens month, Ms Akiyode-Afolabi said.
The Senate has passed a motion seeking to appeal the judgment of the Federal High Court, Umuahia, Abia State, on Section 84(12) of the Electoral Act 2022.

The Senate, in the motion, seeks to follow appropriate channels to ask the Court of Appeal to set aside the judgment.

The motion, titled Urgent need to appeal the Judgment of the Federal High Court, Umuahia, on Suit No: FHC/UM/CS/26/2022, on Section 84(12) of the Electoral Act 2022, was sponsored by George Sekibo (PDP-Rivers) and 81 Senators.

The judgement

Nduka Edede, a member of the Action Alliance (AA), had approached the court for the nullification of the said section on the ground that it conflicts with the 1999 Constitution.

He picked the Attorney General of Federation and Minister of Justice, as the only defendant, leaving out other important bodies such as the National Assembly and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) with high stakes in the making and operation of the Electoral Act.

In her judgement on Friday, Evelyn Anyadike, agreed with the plaintiff that the provision violated the constitutional rights of Nigerian citizens.

She stated that sections 66(1)(f), 107(1)(f), 137(1)(f) and 182(1)(f) of the 1999 Constitution already provide that appointees of government seeking to contest elections were only to resign at least 30 days before the date of the election.

The Senates motion

Mr Sekibo in his lead debate, observed that a court in Umuahia, Abia, had in a suit marked FHC/MU/SC/26/2022, faulted the provision of Section 84(12) of the Electoral Act 2022, and declared it unconstitutional, invalid, illegal, null, void and of no effect.

Section 84(12) of the Electoral Act 2022 states as follows:

No political appointee at any level shall be a voting delegate or be voted for at the convention or congress of any political party for the purpose of the nomination of candidates for any election.

Mr Sekibo said the Judge, Evelyn Anyadike, in her ruling said that Section 84(12) of the Electoral Act 2022 was inconsistent with Sections 66(1)(f), 107(1)(f), 137(1)(g) and 182(1)(g) of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended).

Notes that for ease of reference, the sections relied upon in the judgment as stated above are as follows:

Section 66(1): No person shall be qualified for election to the Senate or the House of Representatives.

(f) If he is a person employed in the public service of the Federation or of any State and has not resigned, withdrawn or retired from such employment 30 days before the date of election.

Section 107 (1)(f) (1): No person shall be qualified for election to a House of Assembly if  (f) he is a person employed in the public service of the Federation or of any State and he has not resigned, withdrawn or retired from such employment thirty days before the date of election.

Section 137(1)(g) (1): A person shall not be qualified for election to the office of President if: (g) being a person employed in the civil or public service of the Federation or of any state, has not resigned, withdrawn or retired from the employment at least thirty days before the date of the election.

Section 182(1)(g) 182 (1): No person shall be qualified for election to the office of Governor of a State if (g) being a person employed in the public service of the Federation or of any State, he has not resigned, withdrawn or retired from the employment at least thirty days to the date of the election.

Note further that Section 4 (1,2 and 3) of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria as amended vested the power of law making for the Federal Republic of Nigeria on the National Assembly.

The legislative powers of the Federal Republic of Nigeria shall be vested in a National Assembly for the Federation, which shall consist of a Senate and a House of Representatives.

Aware also that in furtherance to the powers vested in the National Assembly, the 1999 Constitution under the roles of the Executive in that deals with political parties in Section 228 (a, b and d) confers more powers on the National Assembly, more particularly on political parties and effective management of the electoral process by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

That the National Assembly may by law provide  (a) guidelines and rules to ensure internal democracy within political parties, including making laws for the conduct of party primaries; party congresses and party conventions.

(b) The conferment on the Independent National Electoral Commission of powers as may appear to the National Assembly to be necessary or desirable for the purpose of enabling the Commission more effectively ensure that political parties observe the practices of internal democracy, including the fair and transparent conduct of party primaries, party congresses and party conventions, Mr Sekibo explained.

Due process

He said the Electoral Act 2022 enacted by the National Assembly followed due process of the provisions of the 1999 Constitution.

Advertisements





He said the Senate believes that Section 84 (12) of the 2022 Electoral Act exclusively refers to nomination, conventions and congresses organised for candidates selection and not participation in the general election, which Sections 66(1)(f), 107(1)(f), 137(1)(g) and 182(1)(g) were referring to.

He said it was his belief that the interpretation of the meaning of the words Civil Service and Public Service as provided in Part IV of the 1999 constitution as amended constitution, on Interpretation, Citation and Commencement in Section 318 of the constitution, was unambiguous.

He said there was a difference between the civil service or public service and political appointments.

He said that the Senate should show concern on the judgment, especially when opportunity was not given to it to represent itself in a matter that emanated from her legitimate functions.

Mr Sekibo expressed concern that allowing the judgment to go without concern would become a precedent on which any person could go to the court and obtain judgment to ridicule the good intentions of the National Assembly as an institution.

The senators unanimously voted in support of the motion.

Reps tackle Malami

Meanwhile, the House of Representatives also on Wednesday resolved to appeal the controversial judgement.

It also decided to petition the Nigeria Judicial Council (NJC) over the circumstances surrounding the procedure of the suit in court.

In addition, the House asked the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami not to execute the directive of the court to allow it to appeal the judgement.

These resolutions followed a point of order raised by the Minority Leader, Ndudi Elumelu (PDP, Delta) on Wednesday.

The debate

The Chief Whip, Mohammed Monguno (APC, Borno), said the judge erred on the principle of fair hearing.

He declared the judgement as a clear violation of the elementary principle of fair hearing, adding In that case, the whole exercise is an exercise in futility.

Also speaking in support of appealing the judgement, Ado Doguwa (APC, Kano), said the judgement violates the institutional and operational running of a democratic system.

From the point of institutional and systemic operation of democracy, it is not a jungle system.?We must make a very strong statement and condemn this judgement.

He described the judgement as an aberration and urged lawmakers to stand against it.

Speaking on the judgement, the Speaker, Femi Gbajabiamila, said he will not tolerate the ridiculing of the National Assembly.

He also raised suspicion on the process of the judgement and the locus of the plaintiff, noting that the fact the National Assembly was not joined as a party to the case calls for curiosity.

I believe the president relies(like he should) on legal advice that is given to him. He relied on the legal advice that was given to him that this section was unconstitutional. However, I cannot sit here and allow this institution which I head to be ridiculed. I hold a sacred responsibility as we all do, individually and collectively, to make sure we leave the 9th Assembly with our heads held high knowing that we have done everything we can to protect the institution.

The fact that the National Assembly was not joined as a necessary party was very curious to me. More curious was the fact that the judgement was obtained in faraway Umuahia, when I know that the court direction says that you should file a case where the defendants are residents. It seems to me like forum shopping and venue shopping.

Even more curious is the fact that the so-called plaintiff, in this case, had no injury that he sustained in the matter. Unless I am wrong, I dont know him to be a political appointee or affected by the law. He was really nothing more than a meddlesome interloper.

More curious is the fact that the power of the legislative body was usurped. Under any guise, you cannot remove punctuation, unless done by those with constitutional authority to do so.

Mr Gbajabimaila also said the lawmakers will assume the judgement to be a mistake, and urged Mr Malami not to foreclose an appeal.

Let me at best say a mistake was made. I will not want to ascribe anything other than a mistake was made. It is now for us to correct that mistake.

I will appeal to the attorney general of the federation to tarry and not to usurp or go into the legitimate function of the National Assembly because apparently, he intends to carry out the order of the court. I will appeal that the attorney general should stop and desist for now and not foreclose the constitutional right of appeal, he said.

Following his speech, Mr Gbajabiamila converted the point of order to a substantive motion.

When the motion was put to vote by the Speaker, it was overwhelmingly supported by members.

Background

President Muhammadu Buhari had signed the bill on February 25, however, with a condition that the lawmakers should expunge section 84(12) of the Act.

He said the clause constitutes a disenfranchisement of serving political office holders from voting or being voted for at conventions or congresses of any political party.

He added that it violates the Constitution.

On March 1, Mr Buhari had conveyed an executive bill to the two chambers of the National Assembly to remove the section. Although the Senate already rejected the bill, the House was yet to act on it.

It is believed that the bill will affect members of Mr Buharis cabinet and other appointees, including Mr Malami, who is reported to be nursing governorship ambition in his native Kebbi State.

Meanwhile, a few hours after the controversial judgement was given in Abia State, Mr Malami, in a statement by his spokesperson, Umar Gwandu, appeared to have foreclosed any appeal being filed against the judgement.

He declared that the government will enforce the verdict by gazetting the Electoral Act with the offensive provision deleted from it.
The former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, has formally declared to run for the office of the Nigerian president in 2023 under the platform of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

The former vice president, who made the declaration at an elaborate event at the International Conference Center (ICC), in Abuja, also vowed to hand over at the end of his tenure to the younger generation.

The event which witnessed the presence of many dignitaries was hosted by the Adamawa State governor, Umaru Fintiri.

Mr Abubakar, an indigene of Adamawa State, clinched the ticket of the opposition party in 2019 but was defeated by incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari.

To clinch the PDP ticket in 2019, he defeated other aspirants such as a former senate president, Bukola Saraki, Governor Aminu Tambuwal of Sokoto, former Kano governor Rabiu Kwankwaso, amongst others.

Mr Abubakar is expected to compete for the ticket with Mr Tambuwal, Governor Bala Mohammed of Bauchi and other PDP presidential aspirants.

Plans

The former vice president while reeling out some of the plans he has for the country vowed to hand over to a younger generation if elected.

He also said he intends to focus on five key areas which he listed as unity of Nigeria, security, economy, education and devolving more resources and powers to the federating units.

Since the civil war, the unity of Nigeria has never been threatened as it is today. Nigerians are losing hope in the oneness of this country. My fellow Nigerians, I am the unifier that is coming to bond the broken union.

We will open doors for dialogue to hear the grieving voices of all Nigerians. Under my presidency, there will be a new Nigeria, where everybody has an equal voice and is heard.

Throughout my life, I have never looked at Nigerians as divided people. In my eyes, all Nigerians are the same. When I see you, I dont see Yoruba or Hausa or Igbo or Fulani or a northerner or southerner; when I see you, I only see a Nigerian, and I expect the best from you.

All Nigerians are equal and should be seen and treated equally. There is no unity without justice and fairness. That is why I will deliver leadership of justice and fairness, he said.

Mr Abubakar accused the governing All Progressives Congress (APC) of failing to live up to its responsibilities of protecting the lives and properties of Nigerians which he said will be his top priorities.

The APC administration has failed in its fundamental responsibility of protecting the lives and properties of Nigerians. The most significant human right is the right to life, which has not been protected under the APC administration.

Our military forces are fighting on the front lines without equipment and morale. That is not fair.

If we get into power, we will increase the welfare of all security forces. We will use modern technology and intelligence to combat insecurity.

We will also increase the number of personnel for our security agencies.

Why security? Because national security is the first sign of a functional government, and where it does not exist, we must not blame those who threaten it. We can only blame a government that allows it to be threatened. And if I am elected as your President, insecurity is one thing I will not tolerate, he said.

He also vowed to secure the rural communities to boost agricultural activities.
The Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, said on Wednesday that the process of implementing the judgement of the Federal High Court, Umuahia, Abia State, on the Electoral Act is still in progress.

Mr Malami stated this while speaking with State House correspondents after the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting in Abuja.

A judge,Evelyn Anyadike, had on Friday declared that Section 84(12) of the Electoral Act 2022 passed by the National Assembly was inconsistent with Sections 66(1)(f), 107(1)(f), 137(1)(g) and 182(1)(g) of the 1999 Constitution.

The section reads: No political appointee at any level shall be a voting delegate or be voted for at the convention or congress of any political party for the purpose of the nomination of candidates for any election.

A member of the Action Alliance (AA), Nduka Edede, had approached the court for the nullification of the section on the ground that it conflicts with the 1999 Constitution.

Mr Edede picked the Attorney-General of Federation and Minister of Justice, as the only defendant, leaving out other important bodies such as the National Assembly and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) with high stakes in the making and operation of electoral laws.

Mrs Anyadike agreed with the plaintiff that the provision violated the constitutional rights of Nigerian citizens.

Shortly after the judgement, Mr Malami, in a statement by his spokesperson, Umar Gwandu, appeared to have foreclosed any appeal against the judgement by declaring that the government will enforce the verdict by gazetting the Electoral Act with the offensive provision deleted from it.

Implementation process still on

On Wednesday, the Senate and House of Representatives said though they were not joined in the suit, they would appeal it.

The House of Representatives did not only ask Mr Malami not to execute the directive of the court to allow it to appeal it, the lower chamber also vowed to petition the National Judicial Council (NJC) over the circumstances surrounding the procedure of the suit in court.

Some lawyers and members of the civil society organisations (CSOs) had also criticised Mrs Anyadike and Mr Malami over the decision toppling one of the most significant innovations in the new law.

But speaking on Wednesday, Mr Malami said the process of implementing the judgement is still on.

My clear response arising therefrom is the fact that truly there exists a court judgement.

By the judgement, the court directed the Office of the Attorney General to take the necessary steps to delete the provision, which in essence implies that the provision should not form part of our laws.

Whether it has been deleted, or has not been deleted, is indeed a function of agencies of government and associated relevant parastatals.

But the true position of it in that respect, is the fact that government printers, and indeed Law Reform Commission, among others, that are responsible for the codification and gazetting of our laws, are working naturally, hand-in-hand with the Office of the Attorney General for the purpose of ensuring that what goes into our laws are indeed in line with the provision of the law.

So, what I am saying in essence, it is indeed a work in progress against the background of the fact that the Law Reform Commission is involved statutorily, which is a parastatal under the Office of the Attorney General, is a party to the process of codification.

The government printers, which are saddled with the responsibility of gazetting our laws on the request of the Office of the Attorney General, are equally involved. And above all, as you rightly stated, the possibility of an appeal is equally there.

So, what I am saying in effect is deletion of Section 84 Subsection 12 is a work in progress and is being considered as such.

(NAN)
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) Wednesday evening released Willie Obiano, former governor of Anambra State, on bail

Mr Obianos passport was withheld as part of the bail conditions.

The ex-governor was arrested last week at the Murtala Muhammad International Airport, Lagos, as he was preparing to board a flight to Houston, the United States.

The arrest was said to have taken place at about 8.30p.m. last Thursday, hours after he left office as governor and, thus, lost his immunity from arrest and prosecution.

Mr Obiano, who had been on the EFCCs watchlist for some time, was arrested over corruption allegations.

Obiano was arrested for alleged misappropriation of public funds, including, N5 billion Sure-P and N37 billion security vote which was withdrawn in cash. Part of the funds was also allegedly diverted to finance political activities in the state, EFCCs spokesperson, Mr Uwujaren told Punch newspaper.

Both the EFCC spokesperson and the commissions chairman, Abdulrasheed Bawa, refused to provide further details.

I dont know what update you want me to give, because you have been accusing us of media trials, and you want me to say we are doing this and that. No, we (EFCC) would not do that. We would continue to do our investigation professionally as we have been doing, Mr Bawa told journalists in Abuja.

A 12-second video of Mr Obiano in EFCC custody also went viral and caused controversy. In the video, he was dressed in shorts and a white shirt, drinking water from a bottle in a closed room presumed to be in EFCC custody.

The video elicited a wide range of opinions with many Nigerians denouncing it and demanding an investigation into how such was taken and leaked from the EFCC office.

The EFCC said it has identified the officer responsible for the act and the official is currently being subjected to appropriate disciplinary action.

Investigation

The EFCC had since last year placed the former governor on its watch list.

PREMIUM TIMES reported in November last year that the EFCC had in a letter to the Comptroller General of the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) dated November 15, 2021, requested the service to place the governor on a watchlist and inform it anytime he is travelling out of the country from any of the international airports and other points of entry and exit.

Chiamaka Okafor is a reporter at Premium Times in partnership with Report for the World, which matches local newsrooms with talented emerging journalists to report on under-covered issues around the globe.
A man who was standing trial for alleged terrorism has escaped from custody in Akwa Ibom State, Nigerias South-south, according to the police.

The suspect, identified as Etiene Malachy Akpan, is said to have escaped at a court premises in Akwa Ibom during the continuation of his trial, the police spokesperson in Akwa Ibom, Odiko MacDon, said in a statement on Tuesday.

The police did not give details about the suspects escape.

The police said he was also standing trial for serial murder, kidnapping, and armed robbery.

The suspect, also known as Anthony Malachy Akpan, is 34, and hails from Atan Midim in Abak Local Government Area of Akwa Ibom State.

He is dark in complexion and 1.6 metres tall, according to the police.

He is wanted by the Police in connection with series of armed robberies, kidnapping, murders and terrorism in the (Akwa Ibom) State.

The suspect who was on trial for the above offences escaped within the court premises when brought for the continuation of his trial, said Mr MacDon, a superintendent of police.

The police spokesperson said Mr Akpan has been declared wanted. He appealed to members of the public with useful information on the whereabouts of the suspect to contact the nearest police station or any security agency.
The Adamawa State governor, Umaru Fintiri, has declared his support for the presidential bid of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar.

Mr Fintiri made this known on Wednesday in Abuja during the official declaration of Mr Abubakar to run for president come 2023 on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

The governor, also a member of the PDP, said the former vice president is the most experienced of all the presidential aspirants in all the political parties in the country.

He added that Adamawa State would rally around him to achieve his presidential bid.

Mr Abubakar is an indigene of Adamawa State. He was the countrys vice president between 1999 and 2007.

He was the PDP presidential candidate in 2019.

Mr Fintiris declaration of support for Mr Abubakar comes amidst controversies in the opposition PDP over the zoning of the presidential ticket.

Last year, the party zoned its national chairman position to the North and also micro-zoned it to the North-central geopolitical zone.

Consequently, former Senate President Iyorchia Ayu, from Benue State in the zone, emerged as the national chairman.

Many had thought that by the decision, the party would zone the 2023 presidency to the South to achieve the North-South rotational arrangement which the party is known for since 1999.

Mr Fintiri was the chairman of the PDP National Convention Committee under which the Zoning subcommittee chaired by Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi of Enugu State served.

The zoning committee said at the time that it was not given the mandate to decide on the zoning of the presidential slot of the party.

Members of the PDP who have joined the presidential race, apart from Mr Abubakar include Pius Anyim, Governor Aminu Tambuwal of Sokoto State, his Bauchi counterpart, Bala Mohammed, former Senate President, Bukola Saraki, Dele Momodu and Sam Ohuabunwa.
The Deputy Inspector General of Police in charge of the South-West, Johnson Kokumo, on Tuesday held a meeting with police officers in Ogun State Command over the plans of junior officers to down tools.

The police boss visited the command in compliance with the directive of the Inspector General of Police for senior officers to look out for the junior ones over the planned March 26.

Although police authorities have continued to deny the reports, documents seen by PREMIUM TIMES showed that junior officers are planning an industrial action over poor working conditions. It was gathered that the strike would begin on March 26, the same day the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) will be holding its national convention in Abuja.

The DIG, who arrived at the state police command, Eleweran, Abeokuta at 1:22 p.m. went straight into the meeting where he tried to persuade the officers to shelve their planned strike.

He enjoined the command to observe, obey the law and respect the rights of the citizens while discharging their duties.

He also reminded the corps of their duties as the lead security agency in the country which is saddled with the responsibility of protecting the citizens.

As officers, we have to observe and obey the law. We have to ensure we use our power within the confines of the law.

Conduct yourself professionally. Let there be a healthy respect for the rights of the citizens we are to protect.

We want to see a Nigerian Police Force that is people-friendly, professional and that has respect for the rights of the citizens.

The public will then see us as their friends when we do these.

Earlier at the meeting, the Commissioner of Police, Lanre Bankole, assured the DIG of complete loyalty to the Nigerian Police Force promising that the command will remain professional in discharging its duties.

I want to assure you that no member of this command will involve in any form of planned strike action.

I am sure I am speaking the minds of the officers who are here including the generality of the member of the Nigerian police force, Ogun State command.

We must assure you and we also want you to take this message to the inspector general of police that our loyalty to the Nigerian Police Force is total 100 per cent.

We will continue to be dedicated to our duty, we will continue to be loyal to the federal republic of Nigeria and the Nigerian police force.

We will continue to be dedicated to the Nigeria Police Force.

We will continue to discharge our duties professionally and to the best of our ability.
The Senate on Wednesday confirmed the nomination of seven members of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).

The confirmation of the nominees followed the consideration of a report of the Committee on Banking, Insurance and Other Financial Institutions.

The report was presented by the Chairman of the committee, Uba Sani (APC-Kaduna).

President Muhammadu Buhari, had in the letter to the Senate dated February 23, explained that the confirmation and membership renewal request was made pursuant to Section 12(4) of the Central Bank Act, 2007.

Those confirmed by the Senate included Mohammed Adaya Salisu and MoOmamegbe, both of whom are newly appointed members.

Other five members of the committee for renewal are Michael Obadan, Festus Adeola Adenikinju, Aliyu Sanusi Rafindadi, Robert Asogwa and Aliyu Ahmed.

Mr Sani, in his presentation, said the nominees possessed the academic qualifications, technical knowledge and professional experience to be members of the Monetary Policy Committee of the CBN.

The chairman said the Senate Committee on Banking did not receive any petition against their nominations.

He added that the nominees were all cleared by the Nigeria Police Force and the State Security Services (SSS) and possessed the Code of Conduct Bureau acknowledgment slip.

According to him, one of the nominees, Aliyu Ahmed, Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning, will serve as the representative of the ministry in the Monetary Policy Committee.

(NAN)
A governorship aspirant in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Mohammed Jibrin, has accused the Gombe State government of unlawful demolition of his campaign office in the state capital.

Mr Jibrin told journalists on Tuesday that the demolition was in disregard of an injunction of the state high court restraining the government from demolishing the building managed by Gombe Good Leadership Association.

But the state government has refuted the allegation, saying the building was pulled down because the owners did not meet the requirements of the law to erect the permanent structure that was demolished.

Our campaign office has been demolished by the Government of Gombe State and we are taken aback, the politician had narrated to journalists.

Sometimes, around December 2021, we planned on completing the campaign office, we went to the state development board to revalidate an already existing plan alongside our billboard, which was approved in 2018.

It is just a political witch-hunt from the governor to demolish it. The board was duly served with the notice. The demolition is flagrant disobedience of the subsisting court order of Gombe States state high court restraining the government, its allies, agents, whatsoever from demolishing the property, he said.

The government has no respect for the rule of law, he added.

Reaction

However, the Gombe State Urban Planning and Development Authority (GOSUPDA), has debunked the allegation of illegal demolition.

In a press release signed by its Executive Chairman, Bitrus Bilal, and issued on Wednesday, the agency said the demolition followed the associations refusal to comply with the Urban Planning and Development Law.

On 29th December 2021, following an application by Gombe Good Leadership Association for a temporary approval for the erection of billboard, GOSUPDA granted a temporary approval upon meeting terms and conditions attached therein.

Some of these conditions required developers to furnish the Authority with detailed working drawings in addition to title documents and the applicant is also required to send in his acceptance in writing, the statement said.

The agency said GGLA did not meet the requirements of the law to erect the permanent structure it demolished.

Gombe Good Leadership Association without fulfilling all the conditions commenced the construction of a permanent structure, contrary to what they applied for.

This authority drew the attention of the organisation by serving STOP NOTICES twice and DEMOLITION NOTICES on 2 occasions. All servings were between 9th February and 5th March 2022.

Despite all the written notices on their wall and several visits, the Gombe Good Leadership Association went ahead to plaster on the notices written on their wall and they continued with their construction work, contravening section 27 of Gombe State Urban Planning and Development Board Law as (Amended) 2011.

It was further observed that such a structure (belonging to an opposition party) was too close to the presidential lodge and could compromise security. Therefore, in keeping with its mandate, the authority made plans and carried out the demolition of the said property.

GOSUPDA said it does not operate on a directive of any political party or figure, but in line with the provisions of its established laws

Citizens of Gombe State are once again reminded that ignorance of Urban Planning and Development Law is not an excuse. It has also become imperative to state that from inception GOSUPDA has carried out its activities without selection and it knows no face in the discharge of its mandates.
Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu of Lagos State on Wednesday rolled out 1,000 technology-driven GAC-branded automobiles, codenamed LAG RIDE.

Mr Sanwo-Olu said during the rollout ceremony held at Lagos House Ikeja, that the LAG RIDE was a ride hailing taxi initiative, being operated on a lease-to-own basis.

The initiative is a partnership between Lagos State-owned IBILE Holding Ltd. and CIG Motors Company with the objective to provide clean and reliable means of taxi movement across the metropolis at an affordable cost.

Operators are required to pay about N1.9 million down payment, of which the sum covers the 20 per cent equity of the cost of vehicle, registration and insurance.

Each car being used in the scheme comes with technology-enabled security features that monitor every journey undertaken.

He said the state had moved another step forward in its drive to develop an efficient transportation model in tune with modernity and comfort.

The governor said the aim was not to run existing hailing ride operators out of the business, but to offer safer alternative and clear the roads of rickety cars being used for taxi business.

He said the scheme would provide opportunities to the operators to become owners of the vehicles within three to four years period.

According to him, the need for better, dignifying and more rewarding means of transportation and livelihood for unemployed and underemployed population necessitate the new Lagos State Taxi Scheme.

Under this arrangement, a beneficiary will be provided a brand-new car which will become the drivers property after completion of the payment of the vehicles subsidised cost, he said.

Mr Sanwo-Olu said that to improve riders and passengers security, a full security gadget, including a 360 dashboard camera, that would give 24-hour audio-visual feeds to the control centre, had been pre-installed on each car deployed for the scheme.

He added that each car came with a physical panic button that could be used by anyone on board, in case of assault or emergency.

The governor said the panic button was also on the mobile application and was connected to the Control and Command Centre.

He said the automobile assembly plant being set up in Lagos  another component of the partnership between CIG Motors and the state government  stood at 60 per cent completion, with anticipated start of operations expected by September.

A milestone achievement

The Commissioner for Transportation, Frederic Oladehinde, said the scheme was another milestone achievement by the state government.

Mr Oladeinde said that to make the rides affordable, the technology on which the scheme was operated had made ride-sharing possible for passengers, who would agree to share ride and share transit costs.

The Chairman of CIG Motors, Nigeria, Diana Chang, said the roadmap for the urbanisation of the transportation system in Lagos started in November 2019, when Mr Sanwo-Olu and members of his cabinet visited the Republic of China for bilateral partnership.

Mrs Chang said the unveiling of the LAG RIDE was the glorious end of the partnership sealed with Chinese investors.

We are using this partnership to promote a Greater Lagos where opportunities abound for citizens of the state, while creating a win-win model for all stakeholders, she said.

The Managing Director of IBILE Holding, Abiodun Amokomowo, said that over 5,700 drivers had downloaded the drivers mobile apps as of Tuesday, out of which 1,786 drivers submitted applications.

Mr Amokomowo said that registration and enrolment fee had been accepted from 359 drivers, while others were awaiting screening.

As part of the process each operator will go through for the safety and security of life and effective operations of the scheme.

We will conduct full verification of applicants Lagos State Drivers Institute (LASDRI) ID cards, medical history, background check and verification of NIN and Lagos resident registration numbers, he said. (NAN)

Advertisements




The Oyo State Government is set to hand over Government College Ibadan to its Old Boys Association (GCIOBA) for management, operation and development.

A statement issued in Ibadan, on Wednesday, by Taiwo Adisa, chief press secretary to Governor Seyi Makinde, indicated that government made this known after signing an agreement with the Incorporated Trustees of the GCIOBA.

According to the statement, the handover plan is as a result of the request made by the Old Boys Association, to manage, operate and develop the school in order to maintain and sustain its legacy.

The statement further revealed that the agreement was signed by both parties on Wednesday in Ibadan.

The Secretary to the State Government (SSG) Olubamiwo Adeosun and the Commissioner for Education, Abdulrahman Abdulraheem, represented the state government during signing of the agreement.

Also, Wale Babalakin, who is the president of the Incorporated Trustees of the GCIOBA, led its team to the signing table.

Speaking on behalf of the governor during the agreement-signing ceremony, the SSG said Oyo State, through the agreement, is initiating a process that will ensure that it gets the best from the education sector.

A study conducted by this government upon assumption of office in 2019, indicated that it needed over N40 billion to take the education sector to standard.

According to her, it was clear from the beginning that the state could not do it alone.

She expressed the hope that GCIOBA would bring the school to a standard that other schools would follow.

She added that the agreement was a pilot scheme that the state hoped would bring the best to its education sector.

Mr Babalakin said the trustee members were happy to pull through the unusual agreement.

I want to let you know that you would see a massive transformation of this institution and it will be what the governor wants it to be; the envy of schools in Nigeria.

A copy of the agreement indicated that the GCIOBAs desire to maintain and sustain the preeminent status of the institution, founded in 1929, Mr Babalakin said.

(NAN)
An All Progressives Congress (APC) chairmanship aspirant, Sani Musa, has promised that members of the party at the National Assembly will get the first right of refusal for return tickets during the elections, if elected.

Mr Musa, a serving senator, made the promise while addressing the APC caucus of the House of Representatives on Tuesday in Abuja.

He was responding to a question from Ahmed Jaha (APC, Borno) on the high turnover of members of the National Assembly.

Mr Jaha had lamented the inability of legislators to get return tickets of their party and asked the aspirant what he would do about the situation, if he is elected at the partys national convention on March 26.

Mr Musa said he would make it a policy of the party to give lawmakers the right of refusal for tickets. He, however, said the privilege will be based on the performance of the lawmakers.

He explained when the policy is in place, peer review will be carried out to assess the performance of every lawmaker elected on the partys platform.

Every one of us collects allocation as constituency projects. Every one of us has his/her own initiative and manifesto that he or she intends to do for its constituents. Are you discharging it?

By that peer review that we will do, we will be able to get enough data on the party. So, by the time we say no, we are refusing you the ticket, we will say go and compete with others. But we know that when you compete you will fail.

And if you want to challenge us on why we have given Mr A and we are refusing you, we will bring out the data. That will enhance performance. When we do that, it will take care of dropping of the members all the time. And then we will make it as a policy of the party. Everywhere, they do that, even in the United States, he said.

Mr Musa also spoke on the need for a sustainable source of funding for the ruling party.

According to him, the party has no reason to depend on the governors of the party for funding but that it should leverage on its 42 million registered members to raise funds.

We have websites, APC, APC, APC..Everything can be collapsed into one, and by the press of one button.. Why is it that when you open your mail, you see different kinds of spam messages you dont even welcome sometimes? But you see a topic or heading that will attract you to open. But by the time you open (it), you will realise that it is rubbish. But someone is making money from it.

We all have our smartphones. All the 42 million members or at least the majority of us have telephones. I can see in the register, there is a column where phone numbers are fixed. Why cant we take advantage of that and collect our subscription without making our members feel it by collecting on a monthly basis?

The senator, who represents Niger East Senatorial District, also pledged support for the inclusion of women.

He stated that there is a plan for youth and women, noting that the party must define affirmative action because the concept is so vast.

Under my leadership, the womenfolk will have their way because I dont see why women should buy forms. I dont even see why we should allow women to go around the constituencies, men should do that for them, he said.

Were are not going to have Buharis 12 million votes in 2023 Yari

Meanwhile, another aspirant, Abdulaziz Yari, has said the APC needs someone with his experience to run the party in order to win the 2023 presidential election.

Mr Yari, a former governor of Zamfara State, stated this on Tuesday during a meeting with the House of Representatives APC Caucus.

He said the APC will be going into the 2023 elections without the12 million votes President Muhammadu Buhari secured in the previous elections to defeat his opponents and therefore, the party needs to get someone with his experience to navigate it.

We know that our party is in a delicate situation, which needs to be resolved before we get to the polling booths in 2023. I know that I have the capacity to work with each and every one of you, he added.

Mr Yari, a former member of the House of Representatives, who is in the race despite the micro-zoning of the chairmanship position to the North-central geopolitical zone, said he was not aware of the zoning arrangement of the party.

I do not know anything about the issue of zoning because it was not communicated to me, I only saw it on social media.

I have picked form and we are ready to meet at the ballot, he said.

Advertisements





The former governor, who frowned at zoning, said that members of the party were trying to break the jinx called zoning by embracing real democracy.
The leaders of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the South-south region have insisted that the next president of Nigeria should come from the southern part of the country.

The demand is contained in the communique issued at the end of the meeting of the PDP leaders from the zone on Monday in Uyo.

The Chairman, South-South PDP Governors Forum, and Governor of Delta State, Ifeanyi Okowa, as well as Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State, and Governor Udom Emmanuel of Akwa Ibom State, were at the meeting.

Governor Douye Diri of Bayelsa State also attended the meeting.

The zone is fully in support of the provision of the Southern Governors Forum that the next President of Nigeria comes from the Southern part of Nigeria, the party leaders said in the communique.

Governor Okowa said PDP has a mission to rescue Nigeria from the ruling All Progressives Congress, and appealed to the party to remain united in the zone, ahead of the 2023 general elections.

We believe that by February 2023, we shall be victorious as a party and rescue our country, Nigeria, he said at the meeting which had in attendance the National Assembly members and zonal officers of the PDP.

Governor Wike, in his contribution at the meeting, said PDP now has an opportunity that should not be taken for granted.

Nigerians are waiting for the PDP to take over power in 2023, but we cannot take over if we are not united, we cannot take over if we dont work together.

It is important for us to know that unity is the strength of a people. And we can see that 2023 is almost here. It is time for us to put our house together and make Nigerians proud, he said.

Governor Emmanuel, on his part, said PDP is the only party with the capability to revamp Nigerias ailing economy.

The PDP South-south leaders frowned at the continuous running of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) by a sole administrator.

The zone frowns at the continuous and unlawful violation of the Niger Delta Development Commission Act by the use of Sole Administrator in the management and running of the agency and calls on the federal government as a matter of urgency to immediately constitute a Governing Board.

The zone also demands that the forensic audit of the NDDC be made public and implemented without further delay, the communique stated.
The extradition proceedings filed against Abba Kyari by the federal government to seek the courts approval to surrender him to the United States government suffered a setback on Wednesday.

The judge, Inyang Ekwo, of the Federal High Court in Abuja, had to adjourn the hearing based on the complaints of non-service by Mr Kyaris legal team.

Earlier on Wednesday, the federal governments lawyer from the office of the Attorney-General of the Federation, Pius Akuta, informed the judge that the case was for a preliminary hearing.

But Mr Kyaris lawyer, Nureni Jimoh, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), told the court that the governments relevant filings had not been served on him.

Mr Akuta then undertook to serve the necessary court documents on the defence within two days.

The judge then adjourned the suit until April 27, with a directive to Mr Kyaris lawyer to respond to the governments filing within 14 days of being served.

Background

The AGF office filed the extradition application against Mr Kyari, a suspended deputy commissioner of police and former head of the Inspector-General of Police Intelligence Response Team (IRT), following a request by U.S. authorities.

Mr Kyari is being wanted by the American government over pending fraud charges filed against him and others at the Central District Court of Central District of California.

U.S. prosecutors accuse him of complicity in the $1.1million international fraud spearheaded by Abbas Ramon popularly known as Hushpuppi, a former Nigerian Instagram celebrity, who now awaits sentencing after pleading guilty to the scam and other criminal financial activities.

Mr Kyari while on suspension over his roles in the Hushpuppis case, was fingered by the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) in a 25kg cocaine deal earlier this year.

The formerly celebrated police officer and four members of his former police unit, who are remanded in the custody of the NDLEA, pleaded not guilty to the charges.

But two other men accused of importing the illegal drug into Nigeria through the Akanu Ibiam International Airport, Enugu, in January, have pleaded guilty.

On March 14, 2022, the judge, Emeka Nwite, also of the Federal High Court in Abuja, heard the bail application filed by Mr Kyari and others.

The judge adjourned further proceedings till March 28.

Concerns over extradition

There are concerns in legal circles that the cocaine charges may scuttle the extradition proceedings initiated against Mr Kyari.

The concerns are anchored on section 3 (6) of the Extradition Act, which prohibits the extradition of a fugitive standing trial on different criminal charges in Nigeria.

The part of the Extradition Act reads, (A) A fugitive criminal who has been charged with an offence under the law of Nigeria or any part thereof, not being the offence for which his surrender is sought; or

(B) Who is serving a sentence imposed in respect of any such offence by a court in Nigeria, shall not be surrendered until such a time as he has been discharged whether by acquittal or on the expiration of his sentence or otherwise.

Recently asked by journalists to address the seeming contradiction of pressing criminal charges against Mr Kyari in Nigeria and seeking to extradite him to the U.S. at the same time, the Attorney-General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, merely said there was no confusion over the two cases.

Mr Malami did not address the more important issue of the likelihood of the court dismissing the extradition proceedings once Mr Kyaris legal defence team is able to show the court that the police officer is still facing charges in Nigeria.

In his application for extradition application filed in court, Mr Malami only said there were no criminal proceedings pending against Mr Kyari in Nigeria on the same offences he was being sought for in the U.S.

Mr Malamis lack of clarity on the likely impact the Extradition Act provision may have on the move to surrender the suspect to the U.S. continues to fuel speculations that the extradition proceedings were programmed to fail to enable the police officer to remain in Nigeria where his trial on cocaine charges can drag on for many years.

U.S extradition request

Earlier, the Diplomatic Representative of the U.S. Embassy in Abuja, had in its request to Mr Malami, noted that a warrant for Mr Kyaris arrest issued by a U.S. District Court remains valid and executable to apprehend Kyari.

Advertisements





According to the request, On April 29, 2021, based on the indictment filed by the grand jury and with the approval of the United States District Court for the Central District of California, a deputy clerk of the court issued a warrant of arrest for Kyari.

The arrest warrant remains valid and executable to apprehend Kyari for the crimes with which he is charged in the indictment.

Kyari is wanted to stand trial in the United States for conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering, and identity theft.

Kyari is the subject of an indictment in case Number 2:21-cr-00203 (also referred to as 2:21-MJ-00760 and 2:21-CR-00203-RGK), filed April 29, 2021, in the United States District Court for the Central District of California.

Mr Kyari, along with five other defendants, faces three charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, money laundering and identity theft.

U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) alleged that Mr Kyari and co-conspirators were part of a scheme spearheaded by Hushpuppi to defraud a businessperson in Qatar between November 2019 and April 2020.
Nigerias Toyin Tofade, last Wednesday, became the first black female president of the Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences (ACPHS) founded in 1881.

According to a press release by the college, Ms Tofade was selected to become the 10th president of the college, following a comprehensive search.

Dr Tofade is the first Black woman to serve as president of Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences in the colleges 141-year history. She begins her term on July 1, 2022, the release said.

Christopher Di Lascia who chaired the presidential search committee said, Dr Tofade possesses all the qualities desired, including her deep commitment to academic quality, scholarship, and service, as well as a proven track record of successful management and resource development

Since 2016, the release noted that Ms Tofade had served as the Dean and Professor at the Howard University College of Pharmacy in Washington, D.C. during which the college has nearly doubled enrollment for the class of 2021; doubled the number of student internships; expanded clinical, industrial and international partnerships; and received the maximum number of Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE) re-accreditation years possible.

Under her leadership, the college diversified its faculty composition and expertise; revised the curriculum which has led to improved educational outcomes; entered into a one-of-a-kind partnership with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Glaxo to provide fellowship opportunities in regulatory affairs and policy.

In accepting her new role, Ms Tofade reportedly said, It is an honour to be selected for this distinguished role by the Board of Trustees at Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences.

My sincere thanks go to Howard Universitys provost and president for their leadership, ongoing support, and mentorship over the years, the entire Howard University College of Pharmacy for their dedication to excellence and leadership, my distinguished colleagues for making Howard a great place to work, and my family for their unwavering support. I am grateful to God for this new opportunity, and I look forward to serving the ACPHS community as president.

During Ms Tofades time at Howard University, residencies with Walgreens and Trusted Health Plans were established; multiple partnerships with the pharmaceutical industry yielding postdoctoral fellowship opportunities for Howard graduates have been created under her leadership.

Alumni giving increased by over 70 percent and the student residency match rate increased from 36 per cent to over 50 percent.

Anthony Wutoh, Provost and Chief Academic Officer of Howard University said, Dean Tofade has been an integral part of the Howard University community for the past six years, and has represented the College of Pharmacy well as a respected leader.

He noted that although her departure is certainly a loss to the University, he is thrilled for her that she will expand her leadership responsibilities in her new role as president.

Toyin Tofade

Ms Tofade received a Bachelor of Pharmacy from the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria, a masters degree in pharmacy practice and a Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD) degree both from UNC Chapel Hill in 1994 and 1997, respectively.

She completed a residency with emphasis on clinical pharmacokinetics in 1994 from UNC Chapel Hill, and an American Society of Health-System Pharmacy-accredited residency in 1995 at UNC hospitals.

In 2008, she was named Wake AHEC Mentor of the Year and was recognised by the internal medicine teaching service for her continued excellence and dedication to the internal medicine resident and student lecture. In 2016, she received an award for Excellence and Distinction in medicine and health from the Christian Association for Nigerian Americans.

A leader in global professional pharmacy organisations, Ms Tofade was appointed in 2020 as president-elect of the International Pharmaceutical Federation (FIP) academic pharmacy section.

FIP is the global federation representing over five million pharmacists and pharmaceutical scientists worldwide.

In 2018, Tofade was the first Black woman to be named an FIP Fellow, which recognises those who have exhibited strong leadership internationally, distinguished themselves in pharmaceutical sciences and/or practice of pharmacy, contributed to advancement of pharmaceutical sciences and/or practice of pharmacy, and who have served FIP.

On the national front, she was appointed as chair-elect of the council of deans for the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy in 2020 and has participated on a variety of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion task forces nationally.

She has received numerous awards, including the American Society of Health System Pharmacists (ASHP) 2022 Board of Directors Donald E. Francke Medal which honours pharmacists who have made significant international contributions to advance pharmacy practice.

In 2021, her alma mater, University of North Carolina (UNC) Eshelman School of Pharmacy, honoured her with the Pharmacy Alumni Association Distinguished Service Award.
MOSCOW, March 22 (Xinhua) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday held a phone conversation with his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, during which they discussed the situation in Ukraine.

"A thorough exchange of views on the situation in Ukraine, including on the ongoing negotiations between Russian and Ukrainian representatives, continued," the Kremlin said in a statement.

The phone conversation was held at the initiative of the French side, it added. 
The Federal Executive Council (FEC) has approved N92.1 billion for the construction of a second runway at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the Councils approval came barely 24 hours after the inauguration of the new terminal building at the Murtala Mohammed International Airport (MMIA), Lagos, by President Muhammadu Buhari.

At the inauguration of the terminal, the president directed the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning to look for special funding for the construction of the Abuja second runway.

The president also directed the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory to conclude the documentation of the approved 12,000 hectares of land to accommodate the runway and other developmental projects.

Addressing State House correspondents on the outcome of the Councils meeting, presided over by Mr Buhari, on Wednesday in Abuja, the Minister of Aviation, Hadi Sirika, said the administration would use same pattern it had used to raise funding for all of its other projects across sectors to achieve the new task.

According to him, the Abuja runway project is expected to be completed within the next 12 months.

The federal government had in 2017 repaired the airports runway at the cost of N5.8 billion.

Mr Sirika said then that the runway became necessary in view of the fact that it was as critical as the economy of the country, adding that the runway was constructed over 30 years ago with no major repairs.

The minister gave a guarantee of 10 years, saying that the runway would serve the country for a long time after the repair.

While construction was in progress, the Kaduna airport served as an alternative.

(NAN)
To prevent population explosion in Nigeria, the country must create more awareness about the importance of family planning.

This was the consensus when some members of the Partnership for Advocacy in child and family health @Scale (PACFaH@Scale), health experts and policymakers met at a one-day panel session in Abuja on Tuesday.

The event was organised by the Population Association of Nigeria (PAN) in collaboration with PACFaH@Scale, a Bill and Melinda Gates funded project, anchored by the development Research and Projects Centre (dRPC).

The session began shortly after PANs annual conference with the theme; Rising wave of global insecurity: addressing population data needs for sustainable development in the 21st century.

Speaking at the event, the Director, Family Health Department, Federal Ministry of Health (FMOH), Salma Kolo, said family planning is one of the most effective methods of controlling Nigerias population growth.

Ms Kolo said most women are not adopting family planning methods due to a lack of awareness.

She said it is important to educate women and girls, especially those in rural communities that the benefits of using family planning outweigh the risk of not using it.

Apart from the fact that it guarantees the mothers health, it is a way of empowerment for the women and their families. It is also a way for sustainable development and economic empowerment, she said.

Ms Kolo said that it has been scientifically proven that every pregnancy after four children is a risky pregnancy.

Evidence shows that some mother dies after the fourth pregnancy and pregnancy that is also undergone by a mother older than 35 years is risky.

Pregnancy that is too early as a result of early marriage is also a risky one because the girl is grossly immature, she said

Population explosion

Several estimates, including that of the National Population Commission (NPC), pitch Nigerias population at about 200 million, a number expected to double in less than 25 years if Nigerian women continue to reproduce at the current rate.

But the population growth is not matched by economic growth, especially in infrastructure and job opportunities. This has been identified as a major factor in the security, poverty and other crises that have befallen Africas most populous country.

The Nigerian government had foreseen a population crisis almost a decade ago and identified family planning as a way to slow down the burgeoning population and reduce the high maternal and child mortality rate.

The country is however struggling to put a substantial number of women on modern contraceptive usage.

To salvage the situation, President Muhammadu Buhari recently launched the revised national population policy for sustainable development.

The policy emphasises the urgency to address Nigerias sustained high fertility rate, through expanding access to modern family planning, counselling and commodities as well as promoting births spacing.

Population Crisis

Ms Kolo said Nigeria is experiencing a security crisis, poor infrastructure, high poverty level among others, partly due to its booming population.

Are we going the right way in terms of quality of children produced?  Nigeria does not have enough resource capacities to handle the population explosion, she said.

In her remarks, the Executive Director, International Society of Media in Public Health (ISMPH), Moji Makanjuola, said the consequences of population explosion especially for women in the country is terrible.

Ms Makanjuola said there is no state in Nigeria where children are not seen roaming the streets during the day and young women coming out at night.

In terms of us looking at the crises we have; we have to look at the government and ensure they give an account of the policies they made, she said.

Involving community leaders

The Chairman of the Association for the Advancement of Family Planning (AAFP), Umar Jabbi, said the government must engage traditional rulers and communities leaders to effectively introduce family planning to the people.

Advertisements





Mr Jabbi said traditional rulers are the custodian of customs and traditions and they help bridge the gap between service providers and people in the communities.

We sensitise people and educate them, we reach out to them through various activities to know the benefits of family planning, he said.

Ms Kolo, the director of the family health department (FMOH), said the government will continue to work with religious and community leaders, women and men groups, and other stakeholders to address the issues of cultural beliefs.
The All Progressives Congress (APC) in Edo State has advised Governor Godwin Obaseki to concentrate on fulfilling his re-election campaign promises to the people, rather than indulging in self-adulation.

The party gave the advice on Wednesday in Benin via a statement signed by its Assistant State Publicity Secretary, Victor Osehobo.

The APC was reacting to Mr Obasekis lecture delivered at the Nigeria Institute of International Affairs, Lagos, on Tuesday, where he reportedly referred to himself as a successful administrator.

Mr Osehobo said Edo people were worried about such feedback of chest-beating by Mr Obaseki that his administration in the last six years had done exceedingly well.

The APC spokesperson said the bitter home-truths remained that the major pillars of Mr Obasekis administration, including signing of frivolous MoUs and partnerships with all-comers, were not working.

As it has become customary for Governor Obaseki to travel to Lagos periodically to whitewash his administration, we owe it to posterity to let the governor know our candid assessment.

The government entered its fifth year in office with an unattainable MEGA (Make Edo Great Again) theme that will focus on how to use governance to support Edo people, create enabling business environment so that Edo people can do their business without being harassed.

But the reverse is the case. Official thugs are all over Edo, harassing innocent citizens, all in the name of collecting taxes.

As it stands today, the average Edo person is tired of the Obaseki-led PDP government because of its failed promises, multiple taxation, including promotion of street trading with daily levies of all actors and others.

Edo state debt has more than doubled on the domestic front while on the international scene the state under Governor Obaseki has been turned into the most foreign indebted in the country.

Mr Osehobo said public schools have no teachers while many of them lack basic materials like desks and chairs.

(NAN)
The Federal High Court in Abuja on Wednesday okayed the filing of a contempt suit against the Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, for allegedly flouting an earlier restraining order.

Mr Amaechi faces allegation of violating a December 17, 2021 order of the court restraining him and other parties to the suit over the appointment of an operator for a sensitive international cargo tracking system.

The court will not close its eyes when being told that its orders are being flouted. We have to suspend proceedings for the court to ascertain the veracity of the allegations, the judge, Donatus Okorowo, said when the the substantive case challenging the appointment process came up for hearing on Wednesday.

Once the issue of contempt is raised, the court must suspend proceedings, the judge maintained.

Mr Amaechi risks being jailed if found guilty at the end of the contempt hearing.

A civil society orgainsation, the Citizens Advocacy for Social & Economic Rights (CASER), had filed a suit last year to challenge the ongoing process for the appointment of an operator the International Cargo Tracking Note (ICTN).

The organisation alleged that there were irregularities in the appointment process.

Two firms  Medtech Scientific Limited and Rozi International Nigeria Limited  said to have been penned down for the appointment by Mr Amaechi are joined in the suit as defendants.

The other defendants are Mr Amaechi, the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP), the Attorney-General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, and the two firms.

On December 17, 2021, the court, following an ex parte application by the plaintiff, made an order restraining parties from taking further steps towards nominating any company or entity to be operators of the ICTN in Nigeria pending the hearing and determination of the motion on notice.

Report of violation

Earlier on Wednesday, CASERs lawyer, Abdulhakeem Mustapha, told the court that Mr Amaechi had violated the court order, and confirmed that he has filed Form 48 to initiate the contempt suit against the minister.

Mr Mustapha, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, who informed the judge that Mr Amaechi allegedly breached the order for the maintenance of status quo, also confirmed that he was in the process of filing application for the minister to be sent to prison.

He (Amaechi) has taken fundamental steps on the subject matter of this suit, and we have documents to be placed before the court to establish that he has ignored the order of the court completely, Mr Mustapha said.

In order to protect the sanctity of this honourable court, we have issued Form 48 against the Minister of Transportation. With the commencement of this committal process, which takes precedence over any other matter, we urge this court to suspend further proceedings in the substantive suit, he said.

Reactions

Reacting, Mr Amaechis lawyer, Omosanya Popoola, confirmed receiving a letter notifying him of the issuance of Form 48 on his client.

Mr Popoola said his client is a law-abiding citizen and he was yet to be personally served with the Form 48.

On his part, the counsel for BPP, Akin Olujinmi (SAN), said his client had not been served with the Form 48 personally as required by law.

Mr Olujinmi, a former Attorney-General of the Federation, argued that there was no motion for committal before the court, adding that the plaintiffs lawyer had to file affidavit to establish his allegations that the defendants, including Mr Amaechi had violated the courts order.

The AGFs lawyer, Mohammed Sheriff, agreed with the submissions by lawyers to Mr Amaechi and BPP that proceedings in the main suit should not be halted.

Adjournment

The judge, after listening to the lawyers, directed the suspension of the main suit to give way to the hearing of the contempt suit.

He said the court could not close its eyes to the allegation of violation of its order by anyone.

The judge then directed plaintiffs lawyer to proceed to file a motion on notice with an affidavit to establish the facts of the alleged violation of courts orders, which must be filed and served before the next adjourned date.

The court scheduled ruling for May 9 on the application filed by a firm, Antaser Nigeria Limited to be made a party in the suit.

Advertisements





Antasers lawyer, James Ogwu Onoja (SAN) told the court that his client was a necessary party in the case because it sought to participate in the bidding process but was unlawfully excluded.

Background

Plaintiff in the suit, CASER, stated, in an affidavit supporting the substantive suit, that the purported procurement process, leading to the appointment of the fourth and fifth defendants (Medtech and Rozi) as companies providing ICTN services shows that it was riddled with non-compliance with the known procurement procedures as stipulated in the law.

The plaintiff claimed that President Muhammadu Buhari was misguided in granting an anticipatory approval for a direct appointment of the fourth and fifth defendants companies.

The approval by Mr. President cannot waive the procurement process stipulated under the Public Procurement Act, the plaintiff said.

It added that the steps by Mr Amaechi and BPP by opting for selective bidding and or direct procurement method amount to a wilful violation of due process.

It also said the move was a desperate design to circumvent the provisions of the Procurement Act by abandoning the demands of fairness, competitiveness, accountability and transparency as envisaged by the Act.

The failure of the relevant agencies to follow due process and appoint qualified companies contributed immensely to the failure of the ICTN project in the year 2010 and 2015, it added.

The International Cargo Tracking Note is an electronic cargo verification system that monitors the shipments of seaborne cargoes and enables a real-time generation of vital data on ships and cargo traffic in and out of Nigeria.
The Federal High Court, Abuja, on Wednesday, fixed April 11 for judgement on a suit filed against a former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, over his defection from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to the All Progressives Congress (APC) in 2020.

The PDP, on whose platform, Mr Dogara won his re-election to the House of Representatives in 2019 for another four-year term, had filed the suit asking the court to declare his seat vacant on the grounds of his defection to the APC.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the judge, Donatus Okorowo, had fixed today (Wednesday) for his judgement. But, at Wednesdays hearing, the judge said the judgement was not ready, and then rescheduled for April 11.

This comes on the heels of recent court judgement of the Federal High Court in Abuja sacking Governor David Umahi of Ebonyi State and his deputy, Kelechi Igwe, alongside, on the account of their last years defection from the PDP to the APC.

In a related development, the court, on Monday, sacked 20 Cross River State House of Assembly members along with two members of House of Representatives from the state, who joined Governor Ben Ayade in defecting from the PDP to APC last year.

The court has also fixed Friday for judgement on a suit also by the PDP seeking the sack of Mr Ayade of Cross River State over his defection.

Dogara suit

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that PDP had asked the court to remove the former Speaker, House of Representatives, Dogara, as member representing Dass, Tafawa Balewa and Bogoro Federal Constituency of Bauchi State, over his defection to APC.

While the PDP and its Bauchi State chairman, Hamza Akuyam, are the plaintiffs, Mr Dogara, the speaker of the House of Representatives, the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF), Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the APC are the 1st to the 5th defendants respectively in the suit marked: FHC/ABJ/CS/1060/2020.

Mr Dogara had defected from the PDP to the APC on July 24, 2020 when he submitted a resignation letter to the chairman of the Bogoro C Ward in Bauchi State.

The plaintiffs, through their counsel, Jubrin Jubrin, said by virtue of section 68(1)(g) of the Constitution, Mr Dogara, by defecting from the party that sponsored him to the 9th National Assembly before the expiration of his tenure, ought to vacate the seat as he was no longer qualified to partake in the activities of the lower house.

(NAN)
PMNCH, the global alliance for womens, childrens and adolescents health in partnership with the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office of the UK, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare of the Government of Bangladesh, the United States Mission to the United Nations and the International Disability and Development Consortium (IDDC), held a special side-event on Tuesday, 22 March, 2022 during the 66th session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW66).

The central topic discussed was Equity and Inclusion for Adolescent Girls Everywhere: Policy and advocacy approaches to promote disability inclusion.

During that event held both virtually and in person, delegates called for greater focus on reducing the structural discrimination caused by gender, age and disability through provision of more resources and technical support.

They urged governments and civil society to adopt an intersectional approach which empowers women and girls with disabilities by consulting and involving them in developing the programmes that affect them.

The Global leaders were urged to end discriminations that push adolescent girls with disabilities farthest behind in life.

The media release sent to PREMIUM TIMES on Wednesday is reproduced below:

Gender, disability and age are key drivers of inequity and discrimination. When they intersect, their negative impact is compounded, meaning adolescent girls with disabilities in particular face overwhelming barriers to realizing their health and rights.

Compared to their peers who have no disabilities, children and adolescents (0-17 age group) with disabilities are 27% more likely to be out of upper-secondary school, 41% more likely to feel discriminated against and 51% more likely to feel unhappy.

Adolescent girls with disabilities fare particularly poorly, facing additional inequities in accessing education, affordable health and other key services, and risking greater violations to their personal safety and security, as their disabilities are compounded by gender and age.

Delegates attending a special side-event being held on Tuesday, 22 March, 2022, virtually and in person, during the 66th session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW66) have called for greater focus on reducing the structural discrimination caused by gender, age and disability through provision of more resources and technical support. They urged governments and civil society to adopt an intersectional approach which empowers women and girls with disabilities by consulting and involving them in developing the programmes that affect them.

Equity and Inclusion for Adolescent Girls Everywhere: Policy and advocacy approaches to promote disability inclusion, is co-sponsored by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office of the UK, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare of the Government of Bangladesh, the United States Mission to the United Nations, PMNCH, the global alliance for womens, childrens and adolescents health, and the International Disability and Development Consortium (IDDC).

Despite the fact that children and adolescents with disabilities are among the most marginalised and discriminated against groups, their priority on the general health agenda is low. The number of children and adolescents (0  17 age group) with disabilities globally is estimated at almost 240 million (1 in 10 worldwide).

Adolescent girls and young women with disability face particular barriers to accessing sexual and reproductive health rights (SRHR) services and information, despite having the same rights as other girls and young women, as recognised in various international conventions, such as the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). Yet, provision of accessible SRHR information and services for girls and young women with disabilities is largely non-existent.

When women and girls with disabilities try to access SRHR services, they can experience negative and hostile attitudes among service providers, lack of accessible buildings, equipment, and transportation, low affordability of services, and isolation in institutions, displacement camps, family homes, or group homes.

Women and girls with disabilities also suffer up to three times greater risk of rape, and are twice as likely to be survivors of domestic violence and other forms of gender-based violence (over a longer period and with more severe injuries) than women without disabilities.

Despite a lack of recorded evidence, it is generally accepted that the pre-existing inequities and discrimination women and adolescent girls with disabilities face on a daily basis has been further amplified during the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, some women and girls with disabilities who require assistance from others, such as sign language interpreters, to access SRH or other health services, were no longer allowed to bring those individuals with them due to social distancing rules.

The situation for girls and women with disabilities only worsens in humanitarian settings, and delegates at the CSW66 side-event have also reflected on the current humanitarian crises unfolding in Ukraine, Afghanistan, Syria and in many other parts of the world. Conflict and displacement heighten the discriminations that women and girls with disabilities already face in times of peace, and destroys their protection systems, making them more vulnerable to exploitation. They may find themselves cut off from general and specialised health- and disability- related support services, or facing significant barriers to affording and accessing such services, as well as food, clean water, housing, sanitation items, and other basic needs.

Delegates at the event have shared evidence on the impact and drivers of discrimination, as well as policy approaches and practical improvements to improve equity and reduce exclusion, to support girls and women with disabilities to live their lives to their full potential.

The session has highlighted lived experiences, and explore current challenges and policy opportunities for adolescent girls with disabilities, outlining critical next steps to promote their inclusion. The 2030 Agenda for sustainable development is clear that disability must be included with regard to access to development programming and the realisation of human rights.

Delegates called for more resources and technical support to be made available to address the needs of all persons with disabilities, and to find and integrate innovative solutions and additional normative guidance with explicit consideration of disability, to create more enabling and accessible environments. Disability-related support services must also be classified as essential services.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) include seven targets which explicitly refer to persons with disabilities. Agenda 2030 is underpinned by the leave no one behind principle, which means none of the SDGs can be truly achieved unless people with disabilities are included. Furthermore, strengthening health systems and promoting disability inclusion in the health sector are crucial preconditions both to building back better after the COVID-19 pandemic, and for the achievement of Universal Health Coverage (UHC).

More data is required in this arena to support programme development. Delegates encouraged states to prioritise the collection and dissemination of disability-related and disaggregated data and information to drive evidence-based programming and accountability.

Finally, but most importantly, those attending the event have called for women and adolescent girls with disabilities to be empowered and meaningfully engaged in the development of all policies, programmes and legal processes that effect their health, well-being and status, which is one of the central tenets of PMNCHs Adolescent Call to Action: https://www.adolescents2030.org/

Advertisements




President Muhammadu Buhari on Wednesday met behind closed doors with governors of the All Progressives Congress (APC) over the forthcoming National Convention of the party, slated for March 26.

Speaking with State House correspondents at the end of the meeting, the Chairman of the Progressive Governors Forum, who is also the Governor of Kebbi State, Atiku Bagudu, said the governors had resolved to support whoever the president supports at the convention.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the governors were led to the meeting by the Chairman of the Interim Committee of the party and Governor of Yobe State, Mala Buni.

Mr Bagudu said the governors agreed to support any process that would lead to a consensus.

Mr Buhari had last month said he was in favour of the consensus mode for selecting candidates for the partys national positions.

He had urged the governors to explore the option of consensus.

Mr Bagudu revealed that the president was updated on what they (governors) had been doing in support of the convention.

Today, members of the Progressive Governors Forum were hosted by Mr President at a meeting to discuss what the governors have been doing in preparation for the March 26, National Convention.

Some of you may recall that last week there was a letter that was widely circulated in the media, addressed to me as the Chairman of the Progressive Governors Forum and copied to a number of others, including the Chairman of the Caretaker Committee, the acting Chairman of the Caretaker Committee and indeed the Secretary to the Government of the Federation.

That letter led to a series of actions, including meetings between the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Chairman of the National Caretaker Committee, Acting Chairman, Gov. Abubakar Bello of Niger State, as he was then, and myself.

We all restated our commitment to working together to ensure that the convention takes place on March 26, 2022 and then we agreed to support all the decisions that were taken by the Caretaker Committee, both acting as a working committee and acting with the donated powers given to it by the National Executive Committee.

Indeed, the Chairman of the Caretaker, upon his return, also appreciated what the Caretaker Committee did and the decisions that were taken in his absence.

Today we all briefed Mr President on that, and our support for Mr Presidents endorsement of the candidate for the National Chairman of the party.

No fewer than seven aspirants have picked the expression of interest and nomination forms to contest for the office of the national chairman of the ruling party.

They include two former governors of Nasarawa State and serving senators, Tanko Al-Makura and Abdullahi Adamu; Minister of Special Duties and Inter-Governmental Affairs, George Akume; a Niger East Senator, Sani Musa; Saliu Mustapha from Kwara State and the aide to the Niger State Governor, Mohammed Etsu.

They all hail from the North-central geo-political zone to which the party zoned the position.

One aspirant, Abdulaziz Yari, a former governor of Zamfara in the North-west, who defied the zoning arrangement and picked the form last week, also made the list.

Meanwhile, the governor stated that the president was also briefed on the issue of distribution of political party offices to the respective zones.

He added that the various geo-political zones took turns to brief the president on what they had been doing to generate consensus in their respective zones.

Most of the zones have been allocated National Working Committee positions that are fewer than the number of states, but however, there are zonal executive committees from which the zones are working to produce a consensus list, he said.

Mr Bagudu said: The governors are unanimous in support of Mr President. The governors are unanimous in the support of the caretaker committee; we thank the caretaker committee for what they have been doing.

Naturally, there will be hiccups one day, but we have overcome them and we are a human organisation, which is bound sometimes to generate emotions and anxiety, but we are united and unanimous and by Gods grace, well have a very successful and peaceful National Convention.

(NAN)

Advertisements




The House of Representatives is to investigate alleged imposition of multiple processing and administration fees by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) and its accredited agents on candidates.

The resolution followed the adoption of a motion by Sergius Ogun (PDP-Edo) at plenary on Wednesday in Abuja.

In his motion, Mr Ogun said section 88(1) and (2) of the constitution empowers the National Assembly to conduct investigations into the activities of any authority executing or administering laws.

He said JAMB was established to control the conduct of matriculation examinations for candidates seeking admission into universities, polytechnics and colleges of education in Nigeria.

He added that in recent times, in addition to the registration fees for the examination, all sorts of processing and administrative fees were imposed on JAMB examination candidates.

He noted that for every other service, apart from the JAMB registration provided in relation to the examination, an administrative fee is imposed by JAMB.

Mr Ogun added that this does not include the Computer-Based Test (CTB), centre service charge collected by JAMB accredited CBT centers.

He listed some of the charges to include: Application for transfer N7,000, change of admission letter with registration number N5,000 and application for correction of data N2,500.

Other charges according to him include: Printing of JAMB Result Slip N1,000, printing of JAMB admission letter N1,000, change of Institution/Course N2,500 and retrieving of JAMB Registration Number N1,000.

He said that by virtue of its establishment, JAMB remains an examination conducting body and not primarily a revenue generating organ of the Federal Government.

Mr Ogun said JAMB candidates who were not privileged to afford the charges suffered undue hardships and ultimately lost out from taking the examination.

The lawmaker said the majority of the candidates dwell in villages often without CBT accredited centres and as such, would have to travel long distances.

He said that by this, they often incur additional transportation costs in order to register for the examination or carry out a JAMB related service offered only in a CBT Centre.

The House therefore mandated the Committee on Tertiary Education and Services to investigate multiple processing and administrative fees by JAMB.

The House asked the committee to report back within four weeks for further legislative action.

(NAN)
A police officer told the #EndSARS panel on Wednesday that the police do not torture suspects, but only scare them to extract the truth from them.

Gambo Gadzama, an inspector, appeared to give testimony concerning a case of the alleged killing of one Obinna Jonah in a police detention facility in Abuja in January 2020.

The independent investigative panel set up by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) in the aftermath of the October 2020 #EndSARS protest against police brutality, is probing cases of rights violation allegations allegedly committed by the defunct Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) and other police units.

Mr Gadzama, who appeared as a defence witness on Wednesday, told the panel that the suspect, Mr Jonah, was never tortured as alleged in the petition.

Nobody tortured anybody. We dont torture suspects, we only scare them with words like I will beat you so they can confess, Mr Gadzama told the panel.

Petition

Okechukwu Jonah, the suspects brother, had petitioned the panel alleging that his brother was killed extrajudicially by the police in 2020. He said the deceased persons body had not been handed to the family for proper burial since then.

In his testimony, Mr Jonah narrated how members of his family searched for Mr Obinna at different police stations in Abuja, but were told there is no record of his arrest or detention.

The panel had then summoned Mr Gadzama alongside other police officers named in the case to appear to tell their side of the story.

Defence

In his testimony, Mr Gadzama told the panel that Mr Obinna was arrested as a member of an armed robbery and cult gang on January 29, 2020 after the leader of the gang, Chikazor, confessed and named 13 individuals whom he claimed were members of the gang.

He added that Mr Obinna was indisposed at the time of his arrest and his condition worsened in detention.

I was called the next day that he had slumped and, we rushed him to Area 1 police clinic, Mr Gadzama said.

He added that Mr Obinna was confirmed dead on arrival at the clinic and his body was deposited at the Wuse General hospital mortuary by the investigating team leader.

He went on to say that they couldnt do autopsy because they couldnt track any of Mr Obinnas relations.

Cross-examination

Fielding questions from members of the panel under cross-examination, Mr Gadzama said none of the 14 arrested suspects was tortured.

Obinna was never tortured because he admitted to the allegations against him. Nobody tortured any of them, Mr Gadzama said.

Mr Gadzama told the panel he did not know if the body of the deceased was still in the mortuary as he was not the one that deposited the body.

Background

Another respondent in the case, Adebayo Jogbo-jogbo, a deputy superintendent of police, had testified regarding the case given in December 2021.

Mr Jogbo-jogbo had told the panel that Mr Obinna died after he slumped and was taken to hospital on January 31, 2020. He said he was rejected at the hospital because it coincided with the period of Covid-19 pandemic as it was difficult to secure a bed space.

This claim was faulted by the petitioners lawyer who noted that Nigeria had not recorded any Covid-19 cases as of January 2020.

A suspect arrested along with the deceased, Abba Onuojha, had testified before the panel in December 2021 that he witnessed how the police had tortured Mr Obinna before he slumped and died.

Panels ruling

The panel ordered the police to find out if the deceaseds body is still at the mortuary.

Garba Tetengi, one of the panel members, who presided over the hearings , said the panel can only order the release of the corpse of a deceased after confirmation that it is still the mortuary.

The panel adjourned the matter until March 29 for the adoption of written addresses.

Advertisements




A Federal High Court in Yenagoa on Tuesday adjourned until May 4, hearing in a N700 billion oil spill compensation suit filed by members of Aghoro I community in Bayelsa State.

The people of Aghoro I in Ekeremor Local Government Area in Bayelsa sued Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) over the May 17, 2018 oil leak from the oil firms Trans Ramos Pipeline.

When the suit came up for hearing of pending motions, counsel to SPDC, O Onasanya, SAN, challenged the courts jurisdiction to hear the case because he said it was statute barred.

He further argued that the originating process in the case through originating summons which does not provide for oral evidence and cross examination of witnesses deprives the defendants of their rights to fair hearing.

The size of the claims is better imagined, and gives me sleepless nights and I will do everything legally possible to defend our position, including approaching the court of appeal.

The witnesses who arrived at the cost in damages, must be brought into the witness box for cross examination because we have denied the allegations they made and it cannot stand, Mr Onasanya submitted.

He said he was also seeking the relief of the court to approach the Court of Appeal to interpret the statutes as it concerns one of the reliefs sought by the plaintiffs.

Counsel to the plaintiffs Mohammed Mohammed, SAN, told judge, Isa Ndahen that the efforts of the defendants to challenge the courts jurisdiction and seek relief to approach the appeal court was a delay tactic.

Mr Mohammed said the Supreme Court rule on cases that started by originating summons requires that when there is a challenge on jurisdiction, the court should take the motions alongside the substantive case.

He said it was strange and a breach of procedure for a party to seek leave of a trial court to approach the appellate court on a motion which he described as an attempt to buy time and frustrate the plaintiffs.

Judges remarks

Following heated arguments between counsels, Justice Ndahen urged the lawyers to show leadership to younger counsels to ensure speedy dispensation of justice.

The judge regretted that in spite of his meeting with the senior advocates aimed at fast-tracking the processes, he was besieged with a plethora of applications including the one challenging the courts jurisdiction.

This case cannot be different from other cases and we must make progress.

I have met with all the senior advocates who are ministers in the temple of justice to ensure we make progress.

We have been going back and forth without making progress and keeping other litigants waiting.

I will fix a date exclusively for this and take all the pending motions and applications, Justice Ndahen said.

He adjourned the case to May 4 for hearing of the pending applications, with priority to the one challenging jurisdiction.

The plaintiffs are Victor Akamu, Erebimienkumor Goddey, Jane Alex, Edith George, Israel To money and FASF Associates Ltd on behalf of Aghoro 1 community.

They are seeking redress for the damages caused by the oil spill and are claiming that the N33.49 million offered by SPDC was a far cry from the N700 billion claim, based on an impacted area damage assessment.

Listed as defendants in the suit are SPDC, Shell International Exploration and Production BV, Attorney-General and Minister of Justice and Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation.

(NAN)
Press Release

March 23, 2022 Newly rehabilitated MRT 3, other infrastructure projects praised as Bong Go highlights PRRD's commitment of providing a more comfortable life for all Senator Christopher "Bong" Go praised the government's latest effort to upgrade public transportation infrastructure during a ceremony to mark the rehabilitation of the Metro Rail Transit Line 3 at the Shaw Boulevard Station in Mandaluyong City on Tuesday, March 22. Go joined President Rodrigo Duterte who led the unveiling of the marker of the project, which aims to give commuters faster, more efficient and more reliable rail services. The rehabilitation phase of the project began in mid-2019 and was completed in late 2021. The PhP17.74-billion project was mainly funded by an Official Development Assistance grant from the Japanese government through the Japan International Cooperation Agency, signed in 2018. Thanks to the rehabilitation, train speeds can now reach up to 60 kilometers per hour (kph) from 25 kph while the interval between arrivals is reduced from eight to ten minutes to just four minutes. The number of carriages per train unit has also been increased from 12-15 to 18-22 carriages. Moreover, the Department of Transportation reports that all elevators and escalators are operational. Unloading incidents have significantly decreased from a monthly average of 45 incidents from January 2016 - November 2017 to 1.6 incidents since May 2019. In a message, the senator welcomed the President's announcement that all MRT rides will be free from March 28 to April 30, 2022. He underscored the importance of public transportation in growing the economy and expressed confidence that the new effort will improve the system to the benefit of people and businesses across the region. "Dahil sa mga proyektong ito ng gobyerno, naisasakatuparan natin ang pangako ng Pangulo na mabigyan ng mas komportableng buhay ang mga Pilipino. Mababawasan ang hirap ng mga kababayan natin dahil mas mabilis at maayos na ang kanilang biyahe," said Go, who has supported numerous infrastructure projects nationwide as Vice Chair of the Senate Finance Committee. "Ramdam talaga ng ating mga kababayan ang ginhawa na dala ng mga bagong imprastrakturang ito. To sustain these gains amidst the unprecedented challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, all we need to do is to continue to enforce, implement and improve these projects for the benefit of the Filipino people ," he added. Go then accompanied President Duterte, Secretary Arthur Tugade and other officials in a train ride from Shaw Boulevard Station to Santolan Station, and vice versa, after the ceremony. In a speech to guests, the President reaffirmed his government's commitment to ensuring that key infrastructure investments will be kept to help spur the country's economic recovery. He pledged to keep up the momentum so commuters can enjoy a better public transportation experience in the new normal. "This project is part of this administration's effort to improve connectivity and mobility which is critical in sustaining economic growth and development despite these challenging times. While we are steadfast in addressing the set-backs caused by COVID-19 pandemic, the government still strives to finish crucial projects like this," said President Duterte. "As President, I recognize the deep need for urgent response to challenges that confront us daily. Hence, I am determined to help you selflessly and give myself unreserved to champion the best interests of everyone," Duterte added.
DAMASCUS, March 23 (Xinhua) -- The Syrian foreign ministry on Wednesday slammed what it described as the "U.S. hypocrisy" in planning to exempt areas outside the Syrian government control from its sanctions, the state news agency SANA reported.

News has been circulating recently about a U.S. plan to exclude certain areas in Syria from its sanctions, including areas controlled by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which are backed by Washington in northern and northeastern Syria, and areas under the control of the Turkish Operation Euphrates Shield.

The U.S. "hypocrisy" aims to justify its policies under the pretext of facilitating humanitarian aid and mitigating the impact of the economic crisis in the areas outside the government control, the ministry said.

"Such hypocrisy is just a cheap trick to international legitimacy and the values of the United Nations," it added.

The U.S. policies would undermine the political process for ending the Syrian crisis and create more chaos and violence in the world, the ministry noted. 
White Bear Lake, MN (55110)

Today

A mix of clouds and sun early followed by cloudy skies this afternoon. High 64F. Winds ESE at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Some clouds. Low around 45F. Winds light and variable.
A Chinese teacher displays Chinese calligraphy at a ceremony celebrating the 15th anniversary of the Confucius Institute at the Saint Joseph University (USJ) in Beirut, Lebanon, on March 22, 2022. An increasing number of Lebanese students have become interested in learning the Chinese language and exploring China's culture and civilization, said Nisrine Abdel Nour Lattouf, director of the Confucius Institute at the USJ. (Xinhua/Liu Zongya)

BEIRUT, March 23 (Xinhua) -- An increasing number of Lebanese students have become interested in learning the Chinese language and exploring China's culture and civilization, said Nisrine Abdel Nour Lattouf, director of the Confucius Institute at the Saint Joseph University (USJ).

"Lebanese parents are keen to let their children learn the Chinese language ... for good job opportunities in the future as China is an economic superpower and attracts a lot of businesses from all over the world," Lattouf told Xinhua on the sidelines of a ceremony held on Tuesday at the USJ to celebrate the 15th anniversary of its Confucius Institute.

During the celebration, students expressed their great interest in the Chinese culture by giving speeches in Chinese and performing Chinese calligraphy.

The annual enrolment on the Confucius Institute has increased to about 400, Lattouf said, adding the USJ will offer a new one-year diploma program in Chinese civilization and translation in September, mainly the studies of Chinese-English translation and Chinese-Arabic translation.

The Chinese Embassy in Lebanon "has showed great support and promised to find training centers for students graduating from the program," the institute's director noted.

At the ceremony, Chinese Ambassador to Lebanon Qian Minjian praised the institute's role in promoting people-to-people exchanges and mutual understandings between China and Lebanon.

"We encourage and support the two countries to further strengthen cooperation in culture, education and youth so that more Lebanese friends, especially the young people, can experience and understand the unique charm of the Chinese culture and deepen people-to-people exchanges and traditional friendship between the two countries," Qian said. 

Nisrine Abdel Nour Lattouf, director of the Confucius Institute at the Saint Joseph University (USJ), speaks at a ceremony celebrating the 15th anniversary of the Confucius Institute at the USJ in Beirut, Lebanon, on March 22, 2022. An increasing number of Lebanese students have become interested in learning the Chinese language and exploring China's culture and civilization, said Nisrine Abdel Nour Lattouf, director of the Confucius Institute at the USJ. (Xinhua/Bilal Jawich)

A Chinese teacher performs paper cutting at a ceremony celebrating the 15th anniversary of the Confucius Institute at the Saint Joseph University (USJ) in Beirut, Lebanon, on March 22, 2022. An increasing number of Lebanese students have become interested in learning the Chinese language and exploring China's culture and civilization, said Nisrine Abdel Nour Lattouf, director of the Confucius Institute at the USJ. (Xinhua/Liu Zongya)

Lebanese girls display their Chinese names at a ceremony celebrating the 15th anniversary of the Confucius Institute at the Saint Joseph University (USJ) in Beirut, Lebanon, on March 22, 2022. An increasing number of Lebanese students have become interested in learning the Chinese language and exploring China's culture and civilization, said Nisrine Abdel Nour Lattouf, director of the Confucius Institute at the USJ. (Xinhua/Liu Zongya)

A Chinese teacher performs tea art at a ceremony celebrating the 15th anniversary of the Confucius Institute at the Saint Joseph University (USJ) in Beirut, Lebanon, on March 22, 2022. An increasing number of Lebanese students have become interested in learning the Chinese language and exploring China's culture and civilization, said Nisrine Abdel Nour Lattouf, director of the Confucius Institute at the USJ. (Xinhua/Bilal Jawich)
FILE - In this June 16, 2015 file photo, the casket bearing Kalief Browder is loaded into a hearse after his funeral service in the Bronx borough of New York. Two years into New York's bold quest to eliminate pretrial incarceration for most crimes, state officials are considering abandoning some bail reforms, and locking up more people upon arrest a amid public pressure to curb rising violence. Browder spent three years at New York City's notorious Rikers Island jail complex a including nearly two years in solitary confinement a before eventually being released without trial. He later killed himself. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II, File)
KIGALI, Rwanda, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The Kigali International Finance Centre (KIFC) is welcoming leading financial centres from around the world to Rwanda, as the World Alliance of International Financial Centres (WAIFC) meets in the country for the first time.

WAIFC will be in Kigali to hold its Board Meeting, during a three-day series of events which will include an ecosystem tour of the Norrsken Foundation where fintech companies will pitch their business ideas and a discussion panel focussing on sustainable finance.

KIFC is using the gathering to call on global finance centres to continue putting green finance and fintech at the heart of future investments.

Powered by an entrepreneurial attitude towards sustainability, Rwanda is making strides towards developing a carbon-neutral and climate resilient economy.

Rwanda has huge potential for renewable energy, and the country established the Cleaner Production and Climate Innovation Center (CPCIC) in 2019 to facilitate the reskilling of Rwanda's workforce towards putting sustainability and green growth first.

Nick Barigye, CEO of Rwanda Finance Limited said:

"It gives me great pleasure to welcome our colleagues from around the world to Rwanda.

"This week is historic for our country. WAIFC bringing its Board Meeting to Kigali reflects the strategic achievements that Rwanda has made over a short space of time and is thanks to the hard work of our team, the direction of our board led by Tidjane Thiam, and our stakeholders.

"Despite the pandemic, Rwanda has been working around the clock to reform its laws and regulatory environment and innovate in ways never thought possible.

"Today, we are using the WAIFC platform to call on our fellow financial centres to continue the momentum toward more sustainable finance. Here in Rwanda, the Sustainable Finance Roadmap for KIFC is being developed to position the Centre as a regional hub for sustainable finance and will be published later this year".

Dr Jochen Biedermann, Managing Director of the World Alliance of International Financial Centres said:

"It's great to be here in Rwanda for the first time. It is a huge tribute to KIFC and Nick Barigye's team that they can host this Board Meeting so soon since their inception.

"The work that has been done on the ground here in Kigali to modernise and innovate has been fast but thorough and we cannot wait to see where Rwanda goes from here".

About Kigali International Financial Centre (KIFC)

Kigali International Financial Centre is a financial centre facilitating international investment and cross-border transactions in Africa. KIFC positions Rwanda as a preferred financial jurisdiction for investments into Africa and by providing an attractive destination for investors with a legal and regulatory framework fully compliant with international best practices

About Rwanda Finance Limited (RFL)

Rwanda Finance Limited is the agency tasked with leading the development of Rwanda as a preferred destination for international investment and cross-border transactions in Africa. RFL is working with key stakeholders to develop and support the Kigali International Financial Centre through investment promotion, policy advocacy and sector upskilling.

About the World Alliance of International Financial Centres (WAIFC)

WAIFC facilitates cooperation between financial centres, the exchange of best practices and communication with the general public.

For more information

KIFC / RFL Website

Linkedin

SOURCE Kigali International Finance Centre (KIFC)
DUBLIN, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Global Embedded Insurance Business and Investment Opportunities - Q1 2022 Update" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

According to this report the industry is expected to grow by 31.9% on annual basis to reach US$56,979.8 million in 2022.

The embedded insurance industry is expected to grow steadily over the forecast period, recording a CAGR of 20.7% during 2022-2029. The embedded insurance revenues in the region will increase from US$56,979.8 million in 2022 to reach US$161,598.3 million by 2029.

The Asia Pacific is the largest embedded insurance market. The region is home to one-third of the world's population and one of the world's fastest-growing economies. The most significant number of insurtech firms are emerging in China and India. This is primarily due to a large uninsured population and the strong growth of the fintech industry.

Insurers and insurtech firms are widely experimenting with new insurance offerings, distribution models, and technological advancements resulting in innovations. In the recent four to eight quarters, there has been a significant increase in the number of funds raised by market players in the embedded insurance ecosystem.

Additionally, substantial growth in digitization in emerging countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, India is attracting the attention of market players. However, the number of technology companies trying to underwrite and sell policies will be limited in the region due to regulatory restrictions on issuing carrier licenses.

Insurers are making strategic investments in insurtech firms to expand their digital distribution channels

Leading insurance companies are planning to expand their operations across the globe, taking advantage of the tremendous growth opportunity that exists in the global embedded insurance industry. For instance,

In September 2021 , Singapore -based insurance provider Sompo Holdings ( Asia ) Pte. Ltd. (Sompo Asia) made an investment in Cover Genius, a United States -based insurtech firm and embedded insurance company.

, -based insurance provider Sompo Holdings ( ) Pte. Ltd. (Sompo Asia) made an investment in Cover Genius, a -based insurtech firm and embedded insurance company. This is a strategic move by Sompo Holdings to expand its distribution channels in the embedded insurance market by leveraging Cover Genius' global network.

Cover Genius has many e-commerce platforms as partners in multiple industries, including Booking Holdings, Skyscanner, Ola, Intuit, Shopee, and other well-known leading brands, across the globe.

According to Sompo Holdings, the company is planning to utilize Cover Genius's client network to embed its insurance products and enhance distribution channels.

Conversely, Cover Genius will utilize the support from Sompo Holdings to expand its global insurance distribution platform.

The embedded insurance landscape is booming in Europe, and countries like the United Kingdom, Germany, and France have made significant contributions to the region's embedded insurance business growth.



To remain competitive in the market and to keep pace with the ever-changing customer requirements, insurers in Europe are modifying their business models and working to improve their distribution channels. Furthermore, with the rising number of new entrants in the region, the European embedded insurance market is soaring. Considerable increases in fresh fundraising rounds are propelling the market to new heights.



According to the publisher analysis, European insurtech start-ups have surpassed the total capital investment of 2020 by more than US$ 1 billion in the first quarter of the year 2021, with a total of nearly US$ 2 billion invested across more than 50 transactions. Over the next four to eight quarters, rising finance activities are likely to raise embedded insurance demand. For instance,

In June 2021 , German digital insurance start-up Wefox has raised a $650 million Series C funding round led by Target Global. Wefox is a digital insurer that specializes in personal insurance products such as home insurance, auto insurance, and personal liability insurance. With the latest fundraising round, the company has reached a total worth of US$ 3 billion .

, German digital insurance start-up Wefox has raised a Series C funding round led by Target Global. Wefox is a digital insurer that specializes in personal insurance products such as home insurance, auto insurance, and personal liability insurance. With the latest fundraising round, the company has reached a total worth of . In June 2021 , Bought By Many, a pet insurance provider based in London, United Kingdom , raised US$ 350 million in Series D funding, totaling the company's value to over US$ 2 billion .

, Bought By Many, a pet insurance provider based in , raised in Series D funding, totaling the company's value to over . Both the companies are planning to utilize these funds to expand their operation across European countries.

The publisher anticipates continued investment rounds in the embedded insurance industry in Europe over the next four to eight quarters.

The Africa & Middle East Embedded insurance market gained a huge traction in mobility sector



The Africa & Middle East region witnessed significant growth in the embedded insurance demand by the mobility sector. Moreover, the embedded insurance market has already crossed the growth stage in the mobility embedded insurance product life cycle and now are moving towards the maturity stage at a considerable pace. The market witnessed numerous collaborations among ride-hailing, driver-sharing, and embedded insurers. For instance,

Uber ( India ) launched in-ride embedded insurance for its drivers and delivery partners across Saudi Arabia in 2018.

) launched in-ride embedded insurance for its drivers and delivery partners across in 2018. Additionally, in In December 2019 , UAE based ride-hailing app Careem (Uber's subsidiary) launched in-ride insurance for passengers and drivers across 15 cities. The insurance policy will cover up to $20,000 in expenses incurred due to death or major injury sustained during a Careem ride.

The developments mentioned above show that the mobility sector has provided embedded insurance to its clients and drivers for years. Additionally, the market for mopeds and e-bikes is expanding rapidly due to the surge in food and grocery delivery requirements due to the Covid-19 pandemic. As a result, insurtech firms have been drawn to capitalize on the expanding market for usage-based insurance for e-bike and moped fleets.



Market participants are introducing new products through newly obtained funds. The launch of new products will assist fleet businesses by providing flexible and seamless embedded insurance options. For instance,

In August 2020 , Israel -based mobility insurtech firm Bambi Dynamic raised US$ 6 million led by MS&AD Ventures and backed by existing investor The Phoenix Insurance Company. The newly raised funds were utilized to enhance its offerings across the mobility sector.

Latin America is witnessing evolution in embedded health & life insurance technology by insurtech firms



The global coronavirus pandemic has propelled the demand for health insurance products in the Latin American region. Looking at this growing demand for health insurance in the region, insurtech firms are improving their offerings to serve the health insurance segment in a better way.



Furthermore, amid the insurtech boom in the region, firms are aggressively raising funds to scale their platforms and expand their list of partners in the healthcare industry. The firms are upgrading their offerings by adding new product features and technologies. For instance,

In July 2021 , Mexico -based insurtech Guros raised US$5.8 million in the new funding round, totaling the company's valuation to US$30 million . Guros's funding round was led by F-Prime Capital, while Cometa with Clocktower and Insurify participated as contributors. The company aims to utilize the funds to improve its platform's capabilities, customize APIs for commercial partners across various sectors, enter the health insurance market, and expand internally across technology, product, and operations.

, -based insurtech Guros raised in the new funding round, totaling the company's valuation to . Guros's funding round was led by F-Prime Capital, while Cometa with Clocktower and Insurify participated as contributors. The company aims to utilize the funds to improve its platform's capabilities, customize APIs for commercial partners across various sectors, enter the health insurance market, and expand internally across technology, product, and operations. In September 2021 , Brazilian insurtech firm Pier raised US$20 million in its Series B funding round. Currently, Pier is distributing insurance products by allowing consumers to access auto insurance cover using a smartphone. With the newly raised funds, the company is expanding its foothold into newer segments, including life insurance.

Reasons to buy

In-depth Understanding of Embedded Finance Market Dynamics: Understand market opportunities and key trends along with forecast (2019-2028).

Insights into Opportunity by end-use sectors - Get market dynamics by end-use sectors to assess emerging opportunity across various end-use sectors.

Develop Market Specific Strategies: Identify growth segments and target specific opportunities to formulate embedded finance strategy; assess market specific key trends, drivers, and risks in the industry.

Get Sector Insights: Drawing from proprietary survey results, this report identifies opportunities across embedded lending, embedded insurance, embedded finance, and embedded wealth sectors.

Key Topics Covered:



1 About this Report



2 Embedded Insurance Industry Revenue Trend Analysis, 2020-2029



3 Embedded Insurance Industry Market Size and Forecast by Type of Insurance

3.1 Market Share Analysis by Type of Insurance

3.2 Life Insurance - Embedded Insurance Industry Revenue Trend Analysis, 2020-2029

3.3 Non-Life Insurance - Embedded Insurance Industry Revenue Trend Analysis, 2020-2029



4 Embedded Insurance Industry Market Size and Forecast by End Use Industry

4.1 Market Share Analysis by End Use Industry Segments

4.2 Consumer Products - Embedded Insurance Industry Revenue Trend Analysis, 2020-2029

4.3 Travel & Hospitality - Embedded Insurance Industry Revenue Trend Analysis, 2020-2029

4.4 Automotive - Embedded Insurance Industry Revenue Trend Analysis, 2020-2029

4.5 Healthcare - Embedded Insurance Industry Revenue Trend Analysis, 2020-2029

4.6 Real Estate - Embedded Insurance Industry Revenue Trend Analysis, 2020-2029

4.7 Transport & Logistics - Embedded Insurance Industry Revenue Trend Analysis, 2020-2029

4.8 Other - Embedded Insurance Industry Revenue Trend Analysis, 2020-2029



5 Embedded Insurance Industry Market Size and Forecast by Type of Offering

5.1 Market Share Analysis by Type of Offering

5.2 Product Based Insurance - Embedded Insurance Industry Revenue Trend Analysis, 2020-2029

5.3 Service Based Insurance - Embedded Insurance Industry Revenue Trend Analysis, 2020-2029



6 Further Reading



For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/fnu7w3

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
Increase in demand for lightweight and durable aerospace components and simplification of intricate design with rapid prototyping and customization fuel the growth of the global aerospace 3D printing market.

PORTLAND, Ore., March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Allied Market Research published a report, titled, "Aerospace 3D Printing Market by Printing Technology (Selective Laser Sintering (SLS), Selective Laser Melting (SLM), Binder Jetting, Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM), Stereolithography (SLA), and Others), Platform (Aircraft, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), and Spacecraft), Application (Production and Pre-production & Post-production), Delivery (Product and Service) and Offering (Hardware (Printer and Material (Metal & Ceramics (Titanium, Aluminum, Steel, and Others), Thermoplastics (Polycarbonate (PC), Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS), Nylon/Polyamide, Fiber, and Others))), and Software): Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2021-2030." According to the report, the global aerospace 3D printing industry was estimated at $1.38 billion in 2020, and is anticipated to hit $6.80 billion by 2030, registering a CAGR of 18.4% from 2021 to 2030.

Drivers, restraints, and opportunities-

Rise in demand for lightweight and durable aerospace components and simplification of complex design with rapid prototyping and customization drive the growth of the global aerospace 3D printing market. On the other hand, limited regulatory Infrastructure and high initial investment & peripheral costs restrain the growth to some extent. However, technological advancements & material innovation and growing demand for cloud based 3D printing services are anticipated to create lucrative opportunities in the industry.

Download Report (358 Pages PDF with Insights, Charts, Tables, Figures) at https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/request-sample/16181

Covid-19 Pandemic-

The outbreak of the pandemic gave way to significant drop in the global passenger traffic, and the demand for new air traffic also experienced a steep decline, especially during the initial period, thereby impacting the global aerospace 3D printing market negatively.

However, the market is projected to get back on track soon.

The binder jetting segment to maintain the dominant share-

Based on printing technology, the binder jetting segment held the major share in 2020, generating more than one-fourth of the global aerospace 3D printing market. The same segment is also projected to cite the fastest CAGR of 19.9% during the forecast period, owing to its vast scope of application in the aviation and space industry.

Request for Customization at https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/request-for-customization/16181

The production segment held the highest share in 2020-

Based on application, the production segment held the highest share in 2020, generating nearly three-fourths of the global aerospace 3D printing market. The same segment would also cite the fastest CAGR of 18.7% from 2021 to 2030. This is due to the technological advancement and process optimization practice in the aerospace additive manufacturing space, minimizing the need for other operations.

North America held the major share in 2020-

Based on region, the market across North America accounted for the major share in 2020, contributing to more than one-third of the global aerospace 3D printing market. Developing market with the established industry players boosts the market growth. Asia-Pacific, simultaneously, is expected to cite the fastest CAGR of 20.5% throughout the forecast period. Rising demand for aircrafts over the coming years and aggressive government initiatives to establish indigenous capabilities drive the market growth.

Interested to Procure the Data with Actionable Strategy & Insights? Inquire here at https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/purchase-enquiry/16181

Prominent market players-

Liebherr

Stratasys Ltd.

Materialise NV

EOS GmbH

Markforged

3D Systems Corporation

Hoganas AB

Honeywell. General Electric

Exone

Renishaw PLC

Norsk Titanium

SLM Solution

TrumpF,

Envisiontec, Inc.

Prodways

Buy Complete Report Now! https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/checkout-final/3a2be7f21bc487b8daba2e8fd18c1904

Similar Reports We Have on 3D Printing Industry:

Automotive 3D Printing Market by Component (Technology (Material Extrusion, Powder Bed Fusion, Vat Photopolymerization, Material Jetting, Direct Energy Deposition, Binder Jetting), Material (Polymers, Metal, Others), and Services), Application (Prototyping, Tooling, Jigs & Fixtures, End-Use Parts, Others), Propulsion (ICE Vehicles, Electric Vehicles): Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 20212030.

Military 4D Printing Market by Material (Programmable Carbon Fiber, Programmable Wood and Programmable Textiles) and End-Use (Defense, Aerospace, Automotive, Textile, Healthcare and Others): Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 20202030.

Automotive 3D Imaging Market by Camera (Visible camera, 3D Camera, Night vision Camera, and LiDAR), Application (security & surveillance, automotive safety, parking assistance and others) and by geography (North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and LAMEA) - Global Market Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2017-2030.

3D Printing Market in Emerging Economies - China, India, UAE, Brazil, South Africa (Components and Applications) - Opportunities and Forecasts, 2013  2030.

4D Printing Market by Applications (Military & defense, Automotive, Medicine, Construction, Manufacturing, Infrastructure, Clothing and Aerospace) - Opportunities and Forecasts, 2022-2030.

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. Allied Market Research CEO Pawan Kumar is instrumental in inspiring and encouraging everyone associated with the company to maintain high quality of data and help clients in every way possible to achieve success. Each and every data presented in the reports published by us is extracted through primary interviews with top officials from leading companies of domain concerned. Our secondary data procurement methodology includes deep online and offline research and discussion with knowledgeable professionals and analysts in the industry.

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

UK: +44-845-528-1300

Hong Kong: +852-301-84916

India (Pune): +91-20-66346060

Fax: +1(855)550-5975

[email protected]

Web: www.alliedmarketresearch.com

Allied Market Research Blog: https://blog.alliedmarketresearch.com

Follow Us on | Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn |

SOURCE Allied Market Research
Updated and significantly increased Mineral Resource estimate (as at January 11, 2022 ) constrained within a conceptual pit shell at a gold price of US$1,800 per ounce includes an initial Indicated Mineral Resource estimate of 32,400,000 tonnes at 1.08 g/t gold for a total 1,130,000 ounces of gold, and Inferred Mineral Resource estimate of 63,700,000 tonnes at 1.12 g/t gold for 2,280,000 ounces of gold

) constrained within a conceptual pit shell at a gold price of per ounce includes an initial Indicated Mineral Resource estimate of 32,400,000 tonnes at 1.08 g/t gold for a total 1,130,000 ounces of gold, and Inferred Mineral Resource estimate of 63,700,000 tonnes at 1.12 g/t gold for 2,280,000 ounces of gold The Mineral Resource estimate includes first time reporting of 1,130,000 ounces of Indicated Mineral Resources and an increase of 1,510,000 ounces (196% increase) of Inferred Mineral Resources since the initial Inferred Mineral Resource estimate in 2017 (21,590,000 tonnes at 1.11 g/t gold, for 767,000 ounces)

Mineral Resource estimate (as at January 11, 2022 ) constrained within a conceptual pit shell at a gold price of US$1,600 per ounce includes an initial Indicated Mineral Resource estimate of 30,800,000 tonnes at 1.12 g/t gold for a total 1,105,000 ounces of gold, and Inferred Mineral Resource estimate of 53,610,000 tonnes at 1.20 g/t gold for 2,075,000 ounces of gold

) constrained within a conceptual pit shell at a gold price of per ounce includes an initial Indicated Mineral Resource estimate of 30,800,000 tonnes at 1.12 g/t gold for a total 1,105,000 ounces of gold, and Inferred Mineral Resource estimate of 53,610,000 tonnes at 1.20 g/t gold for 2,075,000 ounces of gold Ongoing drilling to infill and extend the saprolite resource area and to follow up on the sulphide mineralization at the Anaconda area, including the Mamba and Adder zones, as well as several other targets below the saprolite mineralization. The good gold grade and width combinations at the Anaconda area continue to provide a strong indication of the potential for Fekola-style south plunging bodies of sulphide mineralization, which remains open down plunge below the saprolite

area, including the Mamba and Adder zones, as well as several other targets below the saprolite mineralization. The good gold grade and width combinations at the area continue to provide a strong indication of the potential for Fekola-style south plunging bodies of sulphide mineralization, which remains open down plunge below the saprolite US$33 million budgeted in 2022 to fund development of infrastructure for Phase I saprolite mining at the Anaconda area, including road construction

Click here to view B2Gold's West Mali tenements map

Mineral Resource Estimate

(as at January 11, 2022, reported on a 100% basis)

Indicated Mineral Resources (including US$1,600/oz Au sensitivity case)



At US$1,800/oz Au At US$1,600/oz Au Domain Tonnes Gold

Grade

(g/t Au) Contained

Gold

Ounces Tonnes Gold

Grade

(g/t Au) Contained

Gold

Ounces Oxide (includes Laterite, Saprolite

and Saprock) 32,400,000 1.08 1,130,000 30,800,000 1.12 1,105,000 Total Indicated Mineral

Resources 32,400,000 1.08 1,130,000 30,800,000 1.12 1,105,000

Inferred Mineral Resources (including US$1,600/oz Au sensitivity case)



At US$1,800/oz Au At US$1,600/oz Au Domain Tonnes Gold

Grade

(g/t Au) Contained

Gold

Ounces Tonnes Gold

Grade

(g/t Au) Contained

Gold

Ounces Oxide (includes Laterite, Saprolite

and Saprock) 19,100,000 0.81 500,000 16,660,000 0.86 460,000 Sulphide 44,600,000 1.25 1,790,000 36,950,000 1.36 1,615,000 Total Inferred Mineral

Resources 63,700,000 1.12 2,280,000 53,610,000 1.20 2,075,000



Notes: 1. The Qualified Person as defined under National Instrument 43-101 for the Mineral Resource estimate is Tom Garagan, P.Geo., B2Gold's Senior Vice President, Exploration. 2. Mineral Resources have been classified using the 2014 CIM Definition Standards. Mineral Resources that are not Mineral Reserves do not have demonstrated economic viability. 3. Mineral Resources are reported on a 100% basis. For the Menankoto permit area, B2Gold has an 85% attributable interest; under the applicable Malian mining legislation, the State of Mali has a 10% free-carried interest with an option to acquire an additional 10% participating interest, and 5% is held by a Malian third party. For the Bantako North permit area, B2Gold has an 80% attributable interest; under the applicable Malian mining legislation, the State of Mali has a 10% free-carried interest with an option to acquire an additional 10% participating interest, and 10% is held by a Malian third party. 4. Mineral Resource estimates for the Anaconda area assume an open-pit mining method. Pit shells were run using a gold price of US$1,800/oz, metallurgical recovery of 94%, selling cost of US151.00/ounce produced which includes royalties, operating cost estimates of US$0.97-US$2.00/t mined (mining at surface) plus a sinking rate of US$0.035/10 metres depth, US$8.37-US$13.11/t processed (processing), US$3.50/t processed (hauling) and US$2.33/t processed (general and administrative). 5. Mineral Resources are reported at a cut-off of 0.3 g/t gold for oxide material and a cut-off of 0.4 g/t gold for sulphide material. 6. All tonnage, grade and contained metal content estimates have been rounded; rounding may result in apparent summation differences between tonnes, grade, and contained metal content.

Anaconda Area Development

In 2022, the Company has budgeted US$33 million to fund development of infrastructure for Phase I saprolite mining at the Anaconda area, including road construction. Based on the updated Mineral Resource estimate and B2Gold's preliminary planning, the Company has demonstrated that a pit situated on the Anaconda area could provide selective higher grade saprolite material (average grade of 2.2 g/t) to be trucked to and fed into the Fekola mill commencing as early as late 2022 at a rate of 1.5 million tonnes per annum. Subject to obtaining all necessary permits and completion of a final development plan, the trucking of selective higher grade saprolite material to the Fekola mill would increase the ore processed and annual gold production from the Fekola mill, with the potential to add an average of approximately 80,000 to 100,000 ounces per year to the Fekola mill's annual gold production. The plan to truck the selective higher grade saprolite material is not included in the Company's 2022 production guidance and the Anaconda area Mineral Resources have not been included in the current Fekola life of mine plan.

Based on this updated Mineral Resource Estimate and the 2022 exploration drilling results, the Company has commenced a Phase II scoping study to review the project economics of constructing a stand-alone mill near the Anaconda area. Subject to receipt of a positive Phase II scoping study, the Company expects that the saprolite material would continue to be trucked to and fed into the Fekola mill during the construction period for the Anaconda area stand-alone mill. The two sensitivity cases outlined in Schedule A demonstrate the upside potential for a possible stand-alone mining and milling project at the Anaconda area. The first sensitivity case includes zones within the Anaconda area reported above a cut-off of 0.6 g/t gold within the pit shell used for reporting Mineral Resources. The second sensitivity case includes Mamba and Cascabel zones only reported above a cut-off of 0.6 g/t gold within the pit shell used for reporting Mineral Resources.

This additional feed from the Anaconda area to the Fekola mill has the potential to provide immediate value to B2Gold and the State of Mali, B2Gold's partner at the Anaconda area, and communities near the project, and create significant long-term benefits for the Government of Mali as well as employment opportunities and value generation for the communities located both near the Menankoto deposit, regionally and nationally.

Anaconda Area 2021 Exploration Program

In 2021, the Company incurred US$27 million in exploration expenditures in Mali, with approximately US$12.7 million focused on the ongoing exploration of the Anaconda area to complete approximately 57,000 metres of combined reverse circulation and diamond drilling. Drilling focused almost entirely on the Bantako North portion of the Anaconda area. The 2021 exploration program combined growth through step out exploration holes with the infill of previously defined mineralized zones, in preparation for the updated Mineral Resource estimate for the Anaconda area. Drilling at the Anaconda area commenced in January 2021, with two drill rigs completing step-out drilling at the Mamba zone. One of the key geological features of the Mamba zone is the continuity in the high-grade mineralization through the transition from saprolite- to sulphide-hosted zones of mineralization and the 2021 continues to demonstrate this aspect. The 2021 drilling has increased the known strike extent of the Mamba zone to over 3.2 kilometres.

Expansion of the known saprolite and sulphide resources at each of the Adder, Cascabel, Viper and Mamba zones was the priority of the exploration program in 2021. The most significant intersections are from Adder and Mamba and a table of some selected and representative results, highlighting the success of the additional drilling, is presented in the following table.

Target HoleID From To

Metres Au_gp/t Domain BN_Adder BNR_428 54.00 86.00

32.00 1.27 Saprolite BN_Adder BNR_431 17.00 45.00

28.00 2.32 Saprolite BN_Mamba BND_020 132.00 174.00

42.00 1.99 Sulphide

Incl 155.50 174.00

18.50 2.55 Sulphide BN_Mamba BNR_319 1.00 29.00

28.00 1.63 Saprolite

BNR_319 96.00 132.00

36.00 1.30 Sulphide BN_Mamba BNR_322 33.00 67.00

34.00 1.50 Saprolite

BNR_322 73.00 128.00

55.00 4.60 Saprolite BN_Mamba BNR_337 0.00 32.00

32.00 1.07 Saprolite BN_Mamba BNR_368 42.00 62.00

20.00 3.92 Saprolite BN_Mamba BNR_383 16.00 32.00

16.00 2.90 Saprolite BN_Mamba BNR_478 47.00 115.00

68.00 0.99 Saprolite BN_Mamba BNR_481 127.00 181.00

54.00 1.22 Sulphide BN_Mamba BNR_491 6.00 20.00

14.00 11.25 Saprolite

BNR_491 21.00 57.00

36.00 1.55 Sulphide BN_Mamba BNR_496 7.00 20.00

13.00 2.62 Saprolite BN_Mamba BNR_534 81.00 129.00

48.00 2.04 Sulphide

Incl 98.00 116.00

18.00 4.44 Sulphide



Sulphide composites are reported above 0.6 g/t gold cut-off; Saprolite composites are reported above a 0.2 g/t gold cut-off.

Additionally, the Company has completed environmental and social studies to support permitting efforts.

Anaconda Area 2022 Exploration Program

The 2022 Mali exploration program, with a budget of approximately US$28.4 million, is currently underway, including approximately US$12 million focused on exploration drilling at the Anaconda area. In 2022, the Company will continue drilling to infill and extend the saprolite resource area and to follow up on the sulphide mineralization at the Anaconda area, including the Mamba and Adder zones, and several other targets below the saprolite mineralization. The good grade and width combinations at the Anaconda area continue to provide a strong indication of the potential for Fekola-style south plunging bodies of sulphide mineralization, which remains open down plunge. Five drill rigs are currently drilling in the Anaconda area.

In addition to the drill holes outlined above, holes BND_040 (2.1 g/t gold over 23.1 metres, from 252.9 metres) and BND_048 (1.85 g/t gold over 24.8 metres, from 127 metres) are recent examples of significant sulphide drill results below the limits of the current Mineral Resource pit and provide excellent potential for follow up targets for further exploration.

At the Mamba zone, approximately 500 kilograms of sulphide mineralization drilled in the 2019-2021 drilling campaigns has been selected for metallurgical recovery and comminution testing. Samples selected for testwork represent various ranges in grade and mineralogy across the deposits and were taken from sample preparation coarse rejects.

Resource Model Methodology

The updated Anaconda area Mineral Resource models were prepared in-house by B2Gold personnel. Drilling completed in support of the Mineral Resource estimate includes 302 diamond drill holes (60,565 metres), 1,435 reverse circulation holes (178,147 metres) and 2,769 aircore holes (120,524 metres) for a total of 4,506 drill holes (359,236 metres).

Mineralization and weathering domains were modeled in three-dimensions with mineralization domains used to control estimation of gold grades. Laterite, saprolite and saprock were modeled using logged weathering and lithology codes. Mineralization within the weathered profile is interpreted as an extension to underlying sulphide mineralization. The main controls on sulphide mineralization are west-dipping shear zones with an underlying lithological and alteration component.

Assays were capped by mineralization domain, with capping ranging from 1.5 g/t to 2.5 g/t gold in the low grade zones, 3.0 g/t to 4.0 g/t gold in the medium grade zones and 12.0 g/t to 27.0 g/t gold in the high-grade zones. Gold grades were capped prior to compositing to 2 metres. Grades were estimated into the block models using Ordinary Kriging with searches dynamically controlled along main mineralization zone directions.

Approximately 15,400 bulk density measurements were made at site on drill core samples using the Archimedes water-displacement method. Average densities by weathering type were applied to the model. Nominal drill hole spacing for saprolite and saprock Indicated Mineral Resources is aircore drilling at 40 x 40 metres and reverse circulation or core drilling at 80 x 80 metres, and for Inferred Mineral Resources drill hole spacing is nominally 80 x 80 metres.

QA/QC on Sample Collection and Assaying

The primary assay laboratory for Bantako North and Menankoto exploration samples is SGS Laboratories in Bamako, Mali. The Fekola Mine laboratory and Bureau Veritas laboratories in Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire, have served as alternate laboratories. At each laboratory samples are prepared and analyzed using 50-gram fire assay with atomic absorption and/or gravimetric finish. Umpire assaying of exploration samples is conducted on a quarterly basis. SGS Bamako is accredited under ISO17025 and is an independent laboratory. The Fekola Mine laboratory currently holds no accreditations and is not independent of B2Gold. Bureau Veritas Abidjan laboratory is independent of B2Gold and is operating to the guidelines of ISO9001 and ISO17025 protocols in accordance with procedures specified within the Bureau Veritas group.

Quality assurance and quality control procedures include the systematic insertion of blanks, standards and duplicates in the sample sequence. The results of the control samples are evaluated on a regular basis with partial batches re-analyzed and/or resubmitted on exploration samples, as needed. All results stated in this announcement have been accepted according to B2Gold's quality assurance and quality control protocols.

Qualified Person

Tom Garagan, Senior Vice President of Exploration at B2Gold, a qualified person under National Instrument 43-101, has reviewed and approved the information contained in this news release.

About B2Gold Corp.

B2Gold is a low-cost international senior gold producer headquartered in Vancouver, Canada. Founded in 2007, today, B2Gold has operating gold mines in Mali, Namibia and the Philippines and numerous exploration and development projects in various countries including Mali, Colombia, Finland and Uzbekistan. B2Gold forecasts total consolidated gold production of between 990,000 and 1,050,000 ounces in 2022.

On Behalf of B2GOLD CORP.

"Clive T. Johnson"

President & Chief Executive Officer

For more information on B2Gold, please visit the Company website at www.b2gold.com or contact:

Ian MacLean Katie Bromley Vice President, Investor Relations Manager, Investor Relations & Public Relations +1 604-681-8371 +1 604-681-8371 [email protected] [email protected]

Schedule A

Sensitivity Cases

Anaconda area, cut-off grade of 0.6 g/t gold, within Mineral Resource Pit



Classification Tonnes Gold Grade

(g/t Au) Contained Gold

Ounces Oxide (includes Laterite, Saprolite and Saprock) Indicated 18,900,000 1.57 950,000 Total Indicated Mineral Resources 18,900,000 1.57 950,000

Oxide (includes Laterite, Saprolite and Saprock) Inferred 8,400,000 1.30 350,000 Sulphide Inferred 32,500,000 1.53 1,600,000 Total Inferred Mineral Resources 40,900,000 1.48 1,950,000

Mamba and Cascabel Zones only, cut-off grade of 0.6 g/t gold, within Mineral Resource Pit



Classification Tonnes Gold Grade

(g/t Au) Contained Gold

Ounces Oxide (includes Laterite, Saprolite and Saprock Indicated 5,500,000 1.79 310,000

Oxide (includes Laterite, Saprolite and Saprock Inferred 2,700,000 1.46 130,000 Sulphide Inferred 21,300,000 1.68 1,150,000 Total Inferred Mineral Resources 24,000,000 1.66 1,280,000



Notes: 1. The Qualified Person as defined under National Instrument 43-101 for the Mineral Resource estimate is Tom Garagan, P.Geo., B2Gold's Senior Vice President, Exploration. 2. Mineral Resources have been classified using the 2014 CIM Definition Standards. Mineral Resources that are not Mineral Reserves do not have demonstrated economic viability. 3. Mineral Resources are reported on a 100% basis. For the Menankoto permit area, B2Gold has an 85% attributable interest; under the applicable Malian mining legislation, the State of Mali has a 10% free-carried interest with an option to acquire an additional 10% participating interest, and 5% is held by a Malian third party. For the Bantako North permit area, B2Gold has an 80% attributable interest; under the applicable Malian mining legislation, the State of Mali has a 10% free-carried interest with an option to acquire an additional 10% participating interest, and 10% is held by a Malian third party. 4. Mineral Resource estimates for the Anaconda area assume an open-pit mining method. Pit shells were run using a gold price of US$1,800/oz, metallurgical recovery of 94%, selling cost of US151.00/ounce produced which includes royalties, operating cost estimates of US$0.97-US$2.00/t mined (mining at surface) plus a sinking rate of US$0.035/10 metres depth, US$8.37-US$13.11/t processed (processing), US$3.50/t processed (hauling) and US$2.33/t processed (general and administrative). 5. All tonnage, grade and contained metal content estimates have been rounded; rounding may result in apparent summation differences between tonnes, grade, and contained metal content.

The Toronto Stock Exchange and NYSE American LLC neither approve nor disapprove the information contained in this news release.

Production guidance presented in this news release reflect total production at the mines B2Gold operates on a 100% project basis. Please see our Annual Information Form dated March 30, 2021 for a discussion of our ownership interest in the mines B2Gold operates.

This news release includes certain "forward-looking information" and "forward-looking statements" (collectively forward-looking statements") within the meaning of applicable Canadian and United States securities legislation, including: projections; outlook; guidance; forecasts; estimates; and other statements regarding future or estimated financial and operational performance, gold production and sales, revenues and cash flows, and capital costs (sustaining and non-sustaining) and operating costs, and including, without limitation: total consolidated gold production of between 990,000 and 1,050,000 ounces in 2022 the potential upside to increase Fekola's gold production in 2022 by trucking material from the Anaconda area, including the potential to add approximately 80,000 to 100,000 per year to Fekola's annual production profile, and for the Anaconda area to provide saprolite material to feed the Fekola mill starting in late 2022. All statements in this news release that address events or developments that we expect to occur in the future are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are statements that are not historical facts and are generally, although not always, identified by words such as "expect", "plan", "anticipate", "project", "target", "potential", "schedule", "forecast", "budget", "estimate", "intend" or "believe" and similar expressions or their negative connotations, or that events or conditions "will", "would", "may", "could", "should" or "might" occur. All such forward-looking statements are based on the opinions and estimates of management as of the date such statements are made.

Forward-looking statements necessarily involve assumptions, risks and uncertainties, certain of which are beyond B2Gold's control, including risks associated with or related to: the duration and extent of the COVID-19 pandemic, the effectiveness of preventative measures and contingency plans put in place by the Company to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, including, but not limited to, social distancing, a non-essential travel ban, business continuity plans, and efforts to mitigate supply chain disruptions; escalation of travel restrictions on people or products and reductions in the ability of the Company to transport and refine dore; the volatility of metal prices and B2Gold's common shares; changes in tax laws; the dangers inherent in exploration, development and mining activities; the uncertainty of reserve and resource estimates; not achieving production, cost or other estimates; actual production, development plans and costs differing materially from the estimates in B2Gold's feasibility and other studies; the ability to obtain and maintain any necessary permits, consents or authorizations required for mining activities; environmental regulations or hazards and compliance with complex regulations associated with mining activities; climate change and climate change regulations; the ability to replace mineral reserves and identify acquisition opportunities; the unknown liabilities of companies acquired by B2Gold; the ability to successfully integrate new acquisitions; fluctuations in exchange rates; the availability of financing; financing and debt activities, including potential restrictions imposed on B2Gold's operations as a result thereof and the ability to generate sufficient cash flows; operations in foreign and developing countries and the compliance with foreign laws, including those associated with operations in Mali, Namibia, the Philippine and Colombia and including risks related to changes in foreign laws and changing policies related to mining and local ownership requirements or resource nationalization generally, including in response to the COVID-19 outbreak; remote operations and the availability of adequate infrastructure; fluctuations in price and availability of energy and other inputs necessary for mining operations; shortages or cost increases in necessary equipment, supplies and labour; regulatory, political and country risks, including local instability or acts of terrorism and the effects thereof; the reliance upon contractors, third parties and joint venture partners; the lack of sole decision-making authority related to Filminera Resources Corporation, which owns the Masbate Project; challenges to title or surface rights; the dependence on key personnel and the ability to attract and retain skilled personnel; the risk of an uninsurable or uninsured loss; adverse climate and weather conditions; litigation risk; competition with other mining companies; community support for B2Gold's operations, including risks related to strikes and the halting of such operations from time to time; conflicts with small scale miners; failures of information systems or information security threats; the ability to maintain adequate internal controls over financial reporting as required by law, including Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act; compliance with anti-corruption laws, and sanctions or other similar measures; social media and B2Gold's reputation; risks affecting Calibre having an impact on the value of the Company's investment in Calibre, and potential dilution of our equity interest in Calibre; as well as other factors identified and as described in more detail under the heading "Risk Factors" in B2Gold's most recent Annual Information Form, B2Gold's current Form 40-F Annual Report and B2Gold's other filings with Canadian securities regulators and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC"), which may be viewed at www.sedar.com and www.sec.gov, respectively (the "Websites"). The list is not exhaustive of the factors that may affect B2Gold's forward-looking statements.

B2Gold's forward-looking statements are based on the applicable assumptions and factors management considers reasonable as of the date hereof, based on the information available to management at such time. These assumptions and factors include, but are not limited to, assumptions and factors related to B2Gold's ability to carry on current and future operations, including: the duration and effects of COVID-19 on our operations and workforce; development and exploration activities; the timing, extent, duration and economic viability of such operations, including any mineral resources or reserves identified thereby; the accuracy and reliability of estimates, projections, forecasts, studies and assessments; B2Gold's ability to meet or achieve estimates, projections and forecasts; the availability and cost of inputs; the price and market for outputs, including gold; foreign exchange rates; taxation levels; the timely receipt of necessary approvals or permits; the ability to meet current and future obligations; the ability to obtain timely financing on reasonable terms when required; the current and future social, economic and political conditions; and other assumptions and factors generally associated with the mining industry.

B2Gold's forward-looking statements are based on the opinions and estimates of management and reflect their current expectations regarding future events and operating performance and speak only as of the date hereof. B2Gold does not assume any obligation to update forward-looking statements if circumstances or management's beliefs, expectations or opinions should change other than as required by applicable law. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate, and actual results, performance or achievements could differ materially from those expressed in, or implied by, these forward-looking statements. Accordingly, no assurance can be given that any events anticipated by the forward-looking statements will transpire or occur, or if any of them do, what benefits or liabilities B2Gold will derive therefrom. For the reasons set forth above, undue reliance should not be placed on forward-looking statements.

SOURCE B2Gold Corp.
"Bank of America is committed to providing small business owners with innovative solutions and advice that can help them grow their business and establish long term financial wellness," said Sharon Miller, president of Small Business and head of Specialty Banking and Lending at Bank of America. "These latest offerings are designed to empower entrepreneurs by providing them with access to resources that will help them to start or strengthen their businesses."

Business Advantage Unlimited Cash Rewards Secured credit card

As small business owners continue to navigate a challenging business environment, the Business Advantage Unlimited Cash Rewards Secured credit card provides a new tool to help them establish, strengthen or rebuild their business credit  all while providing cardholders with the benefits that matter most to their business.

The new credit card is available now and has no annual fee. Benefits include:

Client-determined credit line from $1,000 to $10,000

to 1.5% cash back on all purchases, with no annual rewards earn cap

Preferred Rewards for Business eligibility, providing access to a wide range of valuable rewards, benefits and savings  all with no fee to join or participate

Secured Business Advantage Credit Line

Additionally, Bank of America will offer a Secured Business Advantage Credit Line for small business owners, scheduled to launch later in 2022.

The credit line includes:

Client-determined credit line from $1,000 to $50,000

to Convenient access to funds via online banking, convenience checks and linked Visa card

Annual renewal fee of $150

"Straightforward and convenient access to capital is crucial to ensuring small business owners have the resources they need to succeed," said Chris Wong, Small Business Products executive at Bank of America. "With the launch of the new Business Advantage Unlimited Cash Rewards Secured Credit Card and Secured Business Advantage Credit Line, Bank of America remains committed to helping our 11 million business owner clients build and strengthen their business credit."

Start a Business Center Digital Experience

Bank of America has also introduced a new resource to assist clients with starting a new small business. The Start a Business Center digital experience guides existing small business clients and aspiring business owners on exactly how to start and run their new business. It also offers an exclusive discount on business formation for Bank of America clients through Incfile.1

The digital experience offers resources such as business plan templates, partners for critical services and access to Bank of America Small Business specialists. Clients can utilize tips and considerations on topics such as writing a business plan, business legal structures, marketing strategy and business financing options.

To learn more about our small business resources, download the Bank of America app or visit bankofamerica.com.

1Bank of America does not deliver and is not responsible for the products, services or performance of Incfile. You are responsible for separately purchasing Incfile's products or services. Bank of America and/or its affiliates or service providers may receive compensation from third parties for clients' use of their services. Internet access may be required. Internet service provider fees may apply

Bank of America, N.A. provides access to third-party websites only as a convenience, and is not responsible for, does not guarantee or endorse the services offered, and does not monitor or review such information for accuracy, completeness or otherwise. Neither Bank of America, its affiliates, nor their employees provide legal, accounting and tax advice.

Bank of America

Bank of America is one of the world's leading financial institutions, serving individual consumers, small and middle-market businesses and large corporations with a full range of banking, investing, asset management and other financial and risk management products and services. The company provides unmatched convenience in the United States, serving approximately 67 million consumer and small business clients with approximately 4,200 retail financial centers, approximately 16,000 ATMs, and award-winning digital banking with more than 54 million verified digital users. Bank of America is a global leader in wealth management, corporate and investment banking and trading across a broad range of asset classes, serving corporations, governments, institutions and individuals around the world. Bank of America offers industry-leading support to approximately 3 million small business households through a suite of innovative, easy-to-use online products and services. The company serves clients through operations across the United States, its territories and approximately 35 countries. Bank of America Corporation stock (NYSE: BAC) is listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

For more Bank of America news, including dividend announcements and other important information, visit the Bank of America newsroom and register for news email alerts.

Reporters May Contact:

Don Vecchiarello, Bank of America

Phone: 1.980.387.4899

[email protected]

SOURCE Bank of America Corporation
WASHINGTON, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- On Wednesday, Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA) and Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) introduced the Shenandoah Mountain Act of 2022, which would designate more than 92,000 acres of the George Washington National Forest as the Shenandoah Mountain National Scenic Area. If enacted, the National Scenic Area will preserve majestic forests, spectacular vistas, and more than 150 miles of trails on the western edge of the Shenandoah Valley.

The new designation would allow forest visitors to continue enjoying these incredible lands  which are separate from and to the west of Shenandoah National Park  as they do today, while prohibiting logging and industrial development like gas drilling and pipeline construction.

"National Scenic Areas strike a great balance between recreation and preservation," Friends of Shenandoah Mountain Co-Chair Lynn Cameron said. "This unique designation ensures that hunters, hikers, anglers, mountain bikers, and many others will be able to continue to enjoy the exceptional landscapes for generations to come."

The proposal has the support of more than 400 local businesses, organizations, and faith groups who recognize the immense benefits the new designation will have on nearby communities. Rockingham and Augusta Counties, as well as the nearby cities of Staunton and Harrisonburg, have also endorsed the proposal. The U.S. Forest Service  which recommended designation of a national scenic area and wilderness areas on Shenandoah Mountain in 2014  estimates that visitors to national forests in Virginia generate $1.4 billion a year. The Shenandoah Mountain National Scenic Area will attract even more visitors and provide a boost to the region's growing tourism industry.

"This bill is the product of 18 years of collaborative work from an incredibly diverse group of local conservationists, recreation groups, timber industry representatives, hunters, and anglers. Over that time, people with different outlooks on forest management came together and agreed that this exceptional place deserves the permanent protection that a National Scenic Area will provide," Friends of Shenandoah Mountain Co-Chair Thomas Jenkins said.

"The Shenandoah Mountain area is one of the largest stretches of undeveloped land east of the Mississippi River, and boasts some of the most spectacular, uninterrupted views in the Southern Appalachians," Southern Environmental Law Center Senior Attorney Kristin Davis said. "Designating this as a National Scenic Area will protect these special public lands and all they have to offer."

The Shenandoah Mountain National Scenic Area would also include four Wilderness Areas, totaling around 28,000 acres of new Wilderness, which would have the highest level of protection public lands can receive. Wilderness Areas are popular among people in the South, and a recent study showed 88 percent of Southerners surveyed said they support more Wilderness designations.

"Wilderness Areas are some of the nation's least developed lands and offer a one-of-a-kind experience to visitors looking for solitude. These protections are becoming increasingly important as more and more areas  especially in the Eastern US  are being rapidly developed, leaving fewer pristine and untouched landscapes," Mark Miller, Executive Director of the Virginia Wilderness Committee, said.

Important natural resources would also be protected by Shenandoah Mountain National Scenic Area, which lies within a biodiversity hotspot. The area is home to black bear, wild turkey, more than 250 species of birds, and many other species, including rare or endangered species that only live in the Shenandoah Mountain area. Creating this designation would help preserve these wildlife and plant habitats, allowing visitors to continue to enjoy the plants and animals that make this area unique. The National Scenic Area designation will also protect important water sources for people living in Harrisonburg, Staunton, and many other towns and communities downstream.

Introducing the Shenandoah Mountain Act of 2022 in the United States Senate is just the first step in establishing these much-needed protections for this extraordinary area. In order to permanently protect Shenandoah Mountain, Congress must pass this important bill, and send it to the President for his signature.

Wilderness and National Scenic Area FAQs

Some of our most spectacular federal lands are designated as National Scenic Areas and Wilderness areas. While there are some key differences between them, there are many similarities:

Only Congress has the power to designate portions of national forests or other federal lands as National Scenic Areas or Wilderness Areas, and only federal land can be designated. Private lands near or within the proposed National Scenic Area are not included, and there are no private inholdings within the proposed Wilderness areas. Since this land is already federally owned and part of the George Washington National Forest, no land acquisition is required.

Hiking, camping, backpacking, horseback riding, paddling, birdwatching, and many other forms recreation are allowed in both the National Scenic Area and Wilderness areas. Hunting and fishing are also allowed in both the National Scenic Area and Wilderness areas. This designation does not affect hunting or fishing rules, which are determined by the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources.

The Forest Service can continue to fight fires and damaging outbreaks of insects and disease in both the National Scenic Area and Wilderness areas.

Most timber harvest and industrial development, such as gas drilling, would be off-limits in both the National Scenic Area and Wilderness areas.

The proposed Shenandoah Mountain National Scenic Area and Wilderness areas were both developed by and brought to Congress by local citizens, as most successful proposals are.

Wilderness is the highest level of protection available for public land. Wilderness areas are some of the nation's most remote and least developed places. They have a natural character, and the imprint of any prior land uses is substantially unnoticeable.

To preserve the wild character of Wilderness areas, timber harvest, permanent roads, drilling, and other development are not allowed. The use of motorized equipment, motor vehicles, or other mechanical transport is normally not allowed, except when necessary for control of fire, insects, diseases, and for search and rescue operations. There are no existing roads in the proposed Wilderness areas.

Designated Wilderness offers outstanding opportunities for people to enjoy solitude and backcountry recreation, and also protect forested refuges for wildlife and fish, clean water and air, and other natural values.

National Scenic Areas are more flexible, protecting the exceptional scenic and natural value of an area while allowing compatible uses to continue. Certain activities that are not allowed in Wilderness areas may be allowed in National Scenic Areas.

Mountain biking is allowed on trails within the National Scenic Area.

No existing roads within the National Scenic area will be closed, and visitors can continue to use them, including for scenic drives and to access campsites and trailheads.

Virginia is already home to three popular National Scenic Areas. The Mount Pleasant, Seng Mountain , and Bear Creek National Scenic Areas contain some of Virginia's most popular trails, and are popular destinations for camping, fishing, and other recreation.

The Southern Environmental Law Center is one of the nation's most powerful defenders of the environment, rooted in the South. With a long track record, SELC takes on the toughest environmental challenges in court, in government, and in our communities to protect our region's air, water, climate, wildlife, lands, and people. Nonprofit and nonpartisan, the organization has a staff of 170, including 90 attorneys, and is headquartered in Charlottesville, Va., with offices in Asheville, Atlanta, Birmingham, Chapel Hill, Charleston, Nashville, Richmond, and Washington, D.C. southernenvironment.org

SOURCE Southern Environmental Law Center
ADEN, Yemen, March 23 (Xinhua) -- A massive explosion caused by a booby-trapped vehicle hit a security checkpoint in Yemen's southern port city of Aden on Wednesday, killing and injuring a number of security members, a security official told Xinhua.

"Unknown assailants detonated a booby-trapped vehicle near a security checkpoint in the northern parts of Aden, causing a massive explosion," the local security source said on condition of anonymity.

Witnesses confirmed to Xinhua that an exchange of gunfire occurred following the explosion that was heard in various neighborhoods of Aden.

Security vehicles and ambulances rushed to the bombing site that was surrounded by soldiers.

Local authorities are trying to maintain security and stability in the strategic Yemeni port city. However, sporadic bombing incidents and drive-by shooting attacks still occur in Aden.

Yemen has been mired in a civil war since late 2014, when the Houthi militias seized control of several northern provinces and forced the Saudi-backed government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi out of the capital Sanaa. 
TORONTO, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ - Candyverse Brands Inc. ("Candyverse" or the "Company"), is pleased to announce the further expansion of its Better Bears brand within Canada's largest grocery retailer. Better Bears are now available for the first time in 449 grocery locations across several Canadian provinces. Additionally, Better Bears products are available through this retailer's large online shopping and loyalty platform.

The Company continues to accelerate retailer acceptance of its Better Bears Mixed Berry, Tropical Citrus and Variety Pack products across Canada. This latest milestone pushes the number of stores to nearly 1,000 retail locations across Canada. The Company plans further expansion of retailers carrying the made in Canada, bursting with flavor alternative to high sugar candy and is on track to be merchandised in more than 1,350 retail locations in Canada by June of 2022.

Jeff O'Neill, President of the Company commented "As more try our Better Bears products, we continue to strategically expand our network of retailers across the country, and our partnership with Canada's largest grocery chain, provides us with a key national presence. We also look forward to beginning expanding into key US market locations now that we have the Canadian channel working for our customers."

About Candyverse Brands Inc.

Candyverse Brands Inc. is leading the future of snacking through innovative plant-based, low-sugar and planet-friendly snack brands. The Candyverse portfolio currently consists of the wholly owned Better Bears brand of all-natural plant-based low sugar gummy bears. The Company is currently in the process of launching more brands in the future. Candyverse products fill key unmet needs in modern nutrition that sees a larger focus on healthier options and better ingredients.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Information

This news release contains forward-looking information. Such forward-looking statements or information are provided for the purpose of providing information about management's current expectations and plans relating to the future. Readers are cautioned that reliance on such information may not be appropriate for other purposes. Any such forward-looking information may be identified by words such as "proposed", "expects", "intends", "may", "will", and similar expressions. Forward-looking information contained or referred to in this news release includes but is not limited to the Company's expectations concerning the expansion of the Company's retail network in Canada and the United States, as well as all other statements that are not historical in nature.

Forward-looking statements or information are based on a number of factors and assumptions which have been used to develop such statements and information, but which may prove to be incorrect. Certain assumptions in respect of continued demand, and growth in demand, for the Company's products; that future added production capacity will enable us to increase our sales volume, that we do not experience material interruptions or supply chain failures as a result of COVID-19, our ability to retain key personnel, the availability of labour, and changes and trends in our industry or the global economy are material assumptions made in preparing forward-looking statements or information and management's expectations. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements or information are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on forward-looking statements because the Company can give no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in such forward-looking information include, but are not limited to: changes in consumer demand, negative cash flow and future financing requirements to sustain operations; dilution; limited history of operations and revenues and no history of earnings or dividends; competition; economic changes; regulatory changes in the Company's primary markets and the impact of and risks associated with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, including the risk of disruption at the Company's contracted production facilities or in its supply and distribution channels. The forward-looking information in this news release reflects the current expectations, assumptions and/or beliefs of the Company based on information currently available to the Company.

Any forward-looking information speaks only as of the date on which it is made and, except as may be required by applicable securities laws, the Company disclaims any intent or obligation to update any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or results or otherwise. The forward-looking statements or information contained in this news release are expressly qualified by this cautionary statement.

SOURCE Candyverse Brands Inc.
With episodes focused on everything from mitochondrial disease and repairing birth defects in utero to the future of research at CHOP, the series gives listeners a glimpse into the world and minds of leading female pioneers at CHOP.

Episode 1  "Research Is Our North Star": The Future of Breakthroughs at CHOP

In 2021, Susan Furth, MD, PhD, was named CHOP's Chief Scientific Officer, becoming the first woman in CHOP's 166-year history to hold this prestigious role. She joins Madeline to discuss CHOP's trailblazing Frontier Programs, the importance of mentorship, and what the future holds for research at CHOP.

Episode 2 - "We Have So Many Spine-Tingling Moments": Treating Birth Defects Before Birth

Pediatric and fetal surgeon Holly Hedrick, MD, has made life-changing breakthroughs for children with congenital diaphragmatic hernia (CDH) and other rare birth defects. She joins Madeline to talk about advice her mentors shared with her along the way  and the children who continue to inspire her every day.

Episode 3  "There Was an Unmet Need": Breakthroughs in Endocrinology

While growing up in Panama, Diva DeLeon-Crutchlow, MD, MSCE, always wanted to understand how things worked. She speaks to Madeline about how her curiosity led her to pursue a career in medicine  and the work she's doing today to develop new treatments for congenital hyperinsulinism and diabetes.

Episode 4  "I've Always Loved to Ask Why": The Power of Mitochondrial Medicine

Our mitochondria make the energy that keeps us alive. Geneticist Marni Falk, MD, joins Madeline to discuss what happens when our mitochondria don't work properly, the breakthroughs she and her team are making for patients with mitochondrial disease, and the importance of having a strong vision for your career.

Episode 5  "Do What You Love": Finding Medicines for Rare Diseases

Hematologist and oncologist Denise Adams, MD, specializes in treating vascular anomalies, which occur when arteries, capillaries, veins or lymphatic vessels fail to develop correctly. She joins Madeline to discuss what the future holds for her field  and the surprising advice that inspired her to move forward in her career.

"Women Leading the Way" is part of Madeline Bell's podcast, Breaking Through, which takes listeners behind the scenes to meet the brilliant minds who are making and supporting incredible breakthroughs in pediatric medicine at CHOP. The podcast, which began in 2018, has featured a range of experts, including Stephan Grupp, MD, PhD, the oncologist who pioneered CAR T-cell immunotherapy for cancer at CHOP, and Jesse Taylor, MD, and Gregory Heuer, MD, PhD, the surgeons who led a team that separated conjoined twins in 2016. Each of the 32 episodes explores the visionary research that is driving cutting-edge clinical care at CHOP  and the role philanthropy plays in this important work.

About Children's Hospital of Philadelphia: A non-profit, charitable organization, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia was founded in 1855 as the nation's first pediatric hospital. Through its long-standing commitment to providing exceptional patient care, training new generations of pediatric healthcare professionals, and pioneering major research initiatives, the 595-bed hospital has fostered many discoveries that have benefited children worldwide. Its pediatric research program is among the largest in the country. The institution has a well-established history of providing advanced pediatric care close to home through its CHOP Care Network , which includes more than 50 primary care practices, specialty care and surgical centers, urgent care centers, and community hospital alliances throughout Pennsylvania and New Jersey, as well as a new inpatient hospital with a dedicated pediatric emergency department in King of Prussia. In addition, its unique family-centered care and public service programs have brought Children's Hospital of Philadelphia recognition as a leading advocate for children and adolescents. For more information, visit http://www.chop.edu.

Contact: Natalie Solimeo

Children's Hospital of Philadelphia

Phone: 267-426-6246

[email protected]

SOURCE Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
TORRANCE, Calif., March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Emmaus Life Sciences, Inc. (OTCQX: EMMA) a commercial-stage biopharmaceutical company and leader in the treatment of sickle cell disease, today announced the approval of its application for marketing authorization of Endari from the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.) Ministry of Health after a five-month review of the company's marketing authorization application. During the review period, Endari was available in the U.A.E. on a named patient, or early access, basis only.

Emmaus estimates that as many as 600 sickle cell disease patients live or work in the U.A.E. and that there are approximately 225,000 sickle cell disease patients throughout the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region who could potentially be treated with Endari.

"We are grateful to have received the Ministry of Health's approval of Endari for the treatment of sickle cell disease patients in the U.A.E. and will move as quickly as possible to reach this population," stated Yutaka Niihara, M.D., M.P.H., Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Emmaus. "This is the first of several full marketing approvals we hope to obtain in Gulf Cooperation Council states, which represent a very important market, given that there are more than double the number of sickle cell disease patients within these areas than there are in the United States."

George Sekulich, Senior Vice President of Global Commercialization of Emmaus added, "After the extensive review by the Ministry of Health, the approval to market Endari is an important step forward for Emmaus in the MENA region. We look forward to working with our distribution partner to make Endari available to sickle cell disease sufferers in the U.A.E."

About Emmaus Life Sciences

Emmaus Life Sciences, Inc. is a commercial-stage biopharmaceutical company and leader in the treatment of sickle cell disease. The company currently markets U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Endari (L-glutamine oral powder) indicated to reduce the acute complications of sickle cell disease in adults and children 5 years and older. The company is also engaged in the discovery and development of innovative treatments and therapies for certain rare and orphan diseases as well as those affecting larger populations, such as diverticulosis. For more information, please visit www.emmausmedical.com.

About Endari (prescription grade L-glutamine oral powder)

Endari, Emmaus' prescription grade L-glutamine oral powder, was approved by the FDA in July 2017 for treating sickle cell disease in adult and pediatric patients five years of age and older. Sales of Endari began in the United States in 2018.

Indication

Endari is indicated to reduce the acute complications of sickle cell disease in adult and pediatric patients five years of age and older.

Important Safety Information

The most common adverse reactions (incidence >10 percent) in clinical studies were constipation, nausea, headache, abdominal pain, cough, pain in extremities, back pain, and chest pain.

Adverse reactions leading to treatment discontinuation included one case each of hypersplenism, abdominal pain, dyspepsia, burning sensation, and hot flash.

The safety and efficacy of Endari in pediatric patients with sickle cell disease younger than five years of age has not been established.

For more information, please see full Prescribing Information of Endari at: www.ENDARIrx.co/PI.

About Sickle Cell Disease

There are approximately 100,000 people living with sickle cell disease (SCD) in the United States and millions more globally. The sickle gene is found in every ethnic group, not just among those of African descent; and in the United States an estimated 1-in-365 African Americans and 1-in-16,300 Hispanic Americans are born with SCD.1 The genetic mutation responsible for SCD causes an individual's red blood cells to distort into a "C" or a sickle shape, reducing their ability to transport oxygen throughout the body. These sickled red blood cells break down rapidly, become very sticky, and develop a propensity to clump together, which causes them to become stuck and cause damage within blood vessels. The result is reduced blood flow to distal organs, which leads to physical symptoms of incapacitating pain, tissue and organ damage, and early death.2



1Source: Data & Statistics on Sickle Cell Disease  National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, December 2020.

2Source: Committee on Addressing Sickle Cell Disease  A Strategic Plan and Blueprint for Action -- National Academy of Sciences Press, 2020.

Forward-looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, as amended, including statements regarding potential increased sales of Endari following full marketing authorization for Endari in the U.A.E. and other countries in the Middle East North Africa region. These forward-looking statements are subject to numerous assumptions, risks and uncertainties which change over time, including risks inherent in the regulatory approval process and other factors set forth in the company's Annual Report on Form 10-K/A filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on August 10, 2021, and other SEC reports, and actual results may differ materially. Such forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they are made, and Emmaus assumes no duty to update them, except as may be required by law.

SOURCE Emmaus Life Sciences, Inc.
CHICAGO, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- According to a research report "Emotion Detection and Recognition Market with COVID-19 Analysis, by Component (Software (Facial Expression Recognition, Speech & Voice Recognition), Services), Application Area, End User, Vertical and Region - Global Forecast to 2027", published by MarketsandMarkets, the global Emotion Detection and Recognition Market size is projected to grow from USD 23.6 billion in 2022 to USD 43.3 billion by 2027, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 12.9% during the forecast period.

The major factors driving the market growth include the rising need for accretion of speech-based emotion detection systems to analyze emotional states, Adoption of IoT, AI, ML, and deep learning technologies across the globe, growing demand in the Automotive AI industry, growing need for high operational excellence, and rising need for socially intelligent artificial agents.

Browse in-depth TOC on "Emotion Detection and Recognition Market"

321  Tables

34  Figures

324  Pages

Download PDF Brochure: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/pdfdownloadNew.asp?id=23376176

Based on the end user, the commercial segment to grow at the fastest rate during the forecasted period

Emotion detection technology is mostly used by commercial end users, such as gaming hubs, shopping malls, restaurants, movie theaters, gaming arenas, auditoriums, consumer stores and outlets, airports, marine, and seaports. The technology is highly used to measure customer satisfaction through video assessment and image processing. It can detect the moods of a customer across various demographic groups. The integration of AI technology is a leading trend in the commercial end user segment. AI experts are working with commercial teams to enhance the experience of shoppers.

North America to hold the highest market share during the forecast period

North America is the largest revenue contributor to the Emotion Detection and Recognition Market, as the growth of the region is being driven by the rising internet penetration and increasing adoption of cloud-based and Internet of Things (IoT) applications across verticals. Countries in North America are well-established economies, enabling investments in advanced technologies.

The US and Canada have made significant investments in Research and Development (R&D) activities, contributing to the growth of new technologies. In addition, massive government funding and a strong technical base aid the growth of the Emotion Detection and Recognition Market in the region. The demand for emotion detection and recognition technologies, such as facial feature extraction and 3D modeling, biosensors technology, and Natural Language Processing (NLP) is increasing across end users, such as enterprises, defense and security agency, and commercial and industrial. Key pure play vendors, such as Affectiva, Kairos, and Eyeris, along with several start-ups in the region, offer enhanced emotion detection and recognition solutions to cater to the needs of customers. Such factors are expected to fuel the growth of the global Emotion Detection and Recognition Market in North America.

Request Sample Pages: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/requestsampleNew.asp?id=23376176

Market Players:

The major vendors covered in the Emotion Detection and Recognition Market include NEC (Japan), IBM (US), Microsoft (US), Apple (US), Google (US), Tobii (Sweden), Affectiva (US), Elliptic Labs (Norway), Intel (US), Cognitec (Germany), NVISO (Switzerland), Noldus (Netherlands), Gesturetek (Canada), iMotions (Denmark), Numenta (US), PointGrab (Israel), Ayonix (Japan), Pyreos (UK), Eyeris (US), Beyond Verbal (Israel), Kairos (US), Sentiance (Belgium), SightCorp (Holland), Crowd Emotion (UK), and Sony Depthsense Solutions (Belgium).

Browse Adjacent Markets: Analytics Market Research Reports & Consulting

Related Reports:

Edge AI Software Market by Component (Solutions and Services), Data Source, Application (Autonomous Vehicles, Access Management, Video Surveillance, Remote Monitoring and Predictive Maintenance, and Telemetry), Vertical, and Region - Global Forecast to 2026

Facial Recognition Market by Component (Software Tools (3D Facial Recognition) and Services), Application (Law Enforcement, Access Control, Emotion Recognition), Vertical (BFSI, Government and Defense, Automotive), and Region - Global Forecast to 2025

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/emotion-detection-recognition-market.asp

Visit Our Website: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com

Content Source: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/PressReleases/emotion-detection-recognition.asp

SOURCE MarketsandMarkets
Partnership provides long term financing to JCG Advisors, a California corporation, to refinance its existing repurchase facilities ("Repo Refinancing") as well as to support additional acquisitions of residential mortgage portfolios.

SAN DIEGO, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- ETHOS ASSET MANAGEMENT INC USA , announced a new long-term financing partnership with JCG who wholly owns RMS Asset Management, LLC ("RAM"). RAM was founded in 2003 as a specialty finance company acquiring troubled residential mortgages.

JCG Advisors Inc.,

Carlos Santos, President, and CEO of Ethos, stated,

"We are honoured and very pleased to announce this very important deal in our home state of California with JCG. From the outset we were very impressed with the exceptionally talented and experienced entrepreneur, Jack Getzelman, the Chief Executive Officer of RAM. Since cofounding RAM in 2003, Mr. Getzelman has held responsibility for RAM operational, strategic, financial and administrative activities. Mr. Getzelman has more than 30 years of experience in the investment banking and finance services industry. We believe this is a great partnership for Ethos, bringing together our joint expertise in finance to enable investment in 1st lien residential mortgage loans throughout the United States. After the Repo Refinancing and depending on market condition and available offerings, JCG will continue to use the term loan to finance additional Portfolio Acquisitions in years 20232026 without using its existing higher cost repurchase facility. The majority of the proceeds from the proposed term finance will be used to refinance and repay existing repurchase facilities. The investment will generate additional job and career opportunities for local people and impact positively on the local and national mortgage market. We are very proud to be partnering with Mr. Getzelman and look forward to seeing the growth and success of JCG over the coming years."

Jack Getzelman, Chief Executive Officer, JCG Advisors Inc., said,

"We are looking forward to completing a long-term financing facility with Ethos Asset Management Inc. This facility will enable us to cost effectively refinance a repurchase facility and will provide the capital to make additional acquisitions in the residential mortgage secondary market. The facility will lower our cost of funds and thereby increase the competitiveness of our pricing on sub and non-performing residential mortgages. We anticipate growing our balance sheet with Ethos as our partner. We look forward to a long-term relationship with Ethos and extend our sincere appreciation to Mr. Carlos Santos and his expert team at Ethos for the transaction".

About Ethos Asset Management:

Ethos Asset Management (Ethos) is an independent, US-based company with a global reach in resource mobilization and project financing.

For more information, please visit https://www.ethosasset.com/ .

About JCG Advisors Inc:

JCG Advisors, Inc (JCG), is a holding company that invests in residential mortgages as well as other residential assets. JCG wholly owns RAM, a company that Jack Getzelman founded in 2003. RMS has participated on over 275 distinct buy and sell side transactions that totalled over $12 billion in principal balance (UPB) as well as provided surveillance services on over $70 billion in UPB.

For more information, please visit https://www.residentialms.com/

Contacts:

JCG Advisors Inc:

Jack Getzelman, Chief Executive Officer

[email protected]

Mr. Hans Kastensmith

Attributed Holdings International  Ethos Associate

[email protected]

www.attributedholdings.com

Ethos:

Ethos Asset Management INC:

Press Office

[email protected]

+18585354814

SOURCE Ethos Asset Management Inc
OR YEHUDA, Israel, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Exero Medical has enrolled the first patient in its multi-center safety and feasibility study of the company's flagship product, the xBar tissue monitoring and diagnostic system.

xBar is a sensor designed to track tissue healing internally from the surgical site following an operation. It is first being utilized for the early detection of anastomotic (AI) leaks following low anterior resection gastrointestinal surgery.

Drs. Ian White, Shimon Dolnikov and Alberto Moran, with the Exero Medical team after the first implantation at Beilinson Campus, Rabin Medical Center

The data collected will be used to refine the system's machine-learning algorithms and evaluate the system against the institutional standard of leak diagnosis.

"An anastomotic leak is the most fretted complication of colorectal surgery. Of the more than five million patients undergoing GI surgery every year, as many as 10% percent could develop this devastating complication. Of those, up to 40%, will need multiple revision surgeries, longer hospitalization stays in terms of weeks and, frankly some won't make it. Mortality depends on how early a leak is detected and how quickly intervention begins. The diagnostic monitoring system developed by Exero Medical is intended to provide timely intervention that could save lives and improve the prognosis of hundreds of thousands of patients as well as save the healthcare system billions of dollars every year," said Professor Nir Wasserberg, M.D., Chair of the Israel Colorectal Society and Director, Division of Colorectal Surgery, Department of Surgery, Beilinson Campus, Rabin Medical Center."

Exero Medical CEO Dr. Erez Shor said, "The severe complications associated with AI leaks cost the healthcare system in excess of $7 Billion annually. It's important to understand that these complications can be avoided by detecting such leaks early. Exero Medical's breakthrough technology is designed to directly monitor the healing of the surgical site so that post-op complications can be circumvented."

About Exero Medical

Exero was founded in 2018 by MEDX Xelerator, an Israeli Innovation Authority incubator, and Clalit HMO, the largest HMO in Israel. Exero Medical's goal is to provide high quality, actionable post-surgery tissue healing that can save lives, improve prognosis and reduce cost. The company's flagship product, xBar, which has an FDA Breakthrough Designation, is intended for the early detection of anastomotic leaks following gastrointestinal (GI) surgeries, a $2 billion market. Exero Medical is backed by seed investment from the MEDX Xelerator, Boston Scientific, MEDX Ventures, Intellectual Ventures, and CBG Group.

For more information, please visit https://www.exeromedical.com/.

Follow Exero Medical on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Press Contact

Marjie Hadad

General Manager

Must Have Communications

On behalf of Exero Medical

917-790-1178

[email protected]

SOURCE Exero Medical
Hagopian has more than 20 years of experience in higher education and health care, leading public affairs, brand management, internal and external communications and crisis communications for a variety of organizations.

"Sonya joins a dynamic leadership team at a critical time for our fast-growing organization," said Kate Begley, CEO, Christie Campus Health. "Her experience will be invaluable to us as we continue to work with our college and university clients to ensure their students are supported through whatever mental health challenges they may face."

Most recently, Hagopian served as Vice President of Corporate Communications and Public Relations for Tufts Health Plan, a regional, not for profit health insurance organization providing commercial and government-sponsored health plans, where she led public relations, corporate marketing and branding, and internal, external and crisis communications. Prior to that, she served as Vice President of Communications at the Association of Colleges and Universities of Massachusetts, the leading voice on public policy matters affecting independent colleges and universities across the state.

Nick Motu, who previously served as Executive Vice President of Business Development and External Affairs, is transitioning to a leadership role at the Mary Christie Institute, a national, non-profit think tank sponsored by Christie Campus Health. Dedicated to improving the mental health of college students, the mission of the Mary Christie Institute is to help young people thrive by examining the issues of teen and young adult health and wellbeing. The Mary Christie Institute produces regular programming on a range of issues affecting teen and young adult behavioral health, including emotional wellbeing, substance use, diversity, equity and inclusion, and college success and degree attainment, sharing its findings with key stakeholders, including policy decision makers and campus leaders.

About Christie Campus Health

Based in Lexington, Massachusetts, Christie Campus Health is led by a team with decades of experience in college student health, solely focused on partnering with colleges and universities to deliver efficient, high-quality mental health services to students. In response to the campus mental health crisis, Christie Campus Health's team of experts in public health, clinical psychology, student health insurance and higher education policy together created [email protected], a comprehensive solution that expands counseling center capacity and helps colleges reach and support students in need.

Christie Campus Health is the lead sponsor of the Mary Christie Institute, a national non-profit think tank dedicated to improving the emotional well-being of college students. Through convening, research, journalism and advocacy, it is on the leading edge of initiatives and new ideas in college-age behavioral health.

CONTACT: Sonya Hagopian, [email protected]

SOURCE Christie Campus Health
The Food & Drug Administration (FDA) has cleared a game-based digital therapeutic to improve attention in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) . The agency has cleared mobile apps to help treat substance use disorders , to help increase retention in outpatient treatment for individuals with opioid use disorder , and for treating adults with chronic insomnia .

HCPCS Level II is a standard, national medical code system Medicare and other health insurance programs use to ensure that health care payment claims are processed in an orderly and consistent manner. HCPCS Level II is used primarily to identify items, supplies, and services not included in the American Medical Association's Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) coding system when used outside a health care provider's office.

"CMS believes that establishing a code at this time may facilitate options for non-Medicare payers to provide access to this therapy in the home setting," the agency stated in its February 2022 coding decision.

In December 2021, Aimed Alliance, which leads a working group to advance patient access to evidence-based digital therapies, supported a third-party request for CMS to issue a HCPCS Level II code for FDA-cleared digital therapeutics.

"Access to a variety of in-person and remote treatment options is essential to ensure patients can conveniently obtain the health care they need," Eifer Lyddane, Aimed Alliance Board Member, stated.

"CMS's decision will facilitate payment for FDA-cleared digital behavioral therapies, expand access to individually appropriate treatment, and improve public health," Ms. Lyddane said.

In December 2021, the Center for U.S. Policy (CUSP), a member of the Aimed Alliance working group, urged the federal Interdepartmental Substance Use Disorders Coordinating Committee to provide federal coding for FDA-cleared digital therapies to help address the mental health, substance use disorder, and drug poisoning crises.

"We thank CMS for acting with speed to expand access to evidence-based digital therapies for behavioral health," Michael Barnes, Chairman of CUSP, said.

Marsha Stanton, Ph.D., R.N., President of the International Health Facility Diversion Association, which is also a working group member, said, "We applaud the federal government for facilitating the use of digital therapies and monitoring programs. Anything that we can do to improve interactions and support trust-based relationships between patients and their clinicians is a step in the right direction."

About Aimed Alliance

Aimed Alliance is a not-for-profit health policy organization that works to protect and enhance the rights of health care consumers and providers. Aimed Alliance leads a multidisciplinary stakeholder group that seeks to expand patient access to evidence-based digital therapies. For more information on Aimed Alliance and its initiatives, go to aimedalliance.org and follow @aimedalliance on Twitter.

About the Center for U.S. Policy (CUSP)

CUSP is a nonpartisan, 501(c)(3) not-for-profit research and education organization. CUSP's 2022 issue priorities include reducing substance use disorders and their consequences, including drug poisonings. For more information on CUSP and its initiatives, go to centerforuspolicy.org and follow @USPolicyCenter on Twitter.

About the International Health Facility Diversion Association (IHFDA)

IHFDA is an international network of professionals devoted to protecting patients, staff, and facilities from the harms associated with drug diversion and substance misuse by healthcare personnel. For more information on IHFDA, go to ihfda.org and follow @ihfda_org on Twitter.

SOURCE Center for U.S. Policy
Visual tool provides easy access to evidence-based literature and society recommendations for a broad-based approach to UI screening and treatment in women

BOSTON, March 23, 2022 Renovia Inc. ("Renovia"), a women-led company that develops prescription digital therapeutics for female pelvic floor disorders, congratulates the authors of a visual tool and accompanying narrative published in the Journal of Women's Health that synthesizes the compendium of literature and professional guidelines for female urinary incontinence (UI) screening, evaluation and treatment. The infographic's compelling visual format serves as a first-of-its-kind shared decision-making tool for facilitating a population-focused approach to education and treatment for UI on a broad scale.

While moderate to more severe UI affects over 28 million women in the U.S., effective, first-line treatment remains largely inaccessible with fewer than 25% seeking care. The open-access manuscript and infographic, "Female Urinary Incontinence Evidence-Based Treatment Pathway: An Infographic for Shared Decision-Making," seeks to increase access to treatment, including first-line therapy, such as pelvic floor muscle training (PFMT), by packaging evidence-based guidelines for UI screening and treatment in a graphical, easy to access format for use by clinicians on the frontlines of women's health. Professional organizations and health systems may also find it valuable for clinician and member education.

The infographic depicts female UI risk factors, influences on care-seeking, screening and evaluation. It also includes a stepwise treatment approach, for which there is broad international and multidisciplinary agreement. It synthesizes current evidenced-based literature as well as multiple UI screening guidelines, position statements, and associated references from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, Women's Preventive Services Initiative, American Academy of Family Physicians, American College of Physicians, the Society of Urodynamics and Female Urology, the American Urological Association, and the American Urogynecologic Society.

Study authors include Renovia's Chief Medical Officer Samantha J. Pulliam, M.D., VP of Medical Affairs & Clinical Advocacy, Jessica L. McKinney, PT, DScPT, MS, and Senior Manager of Medical Affairs, Laura E. Keyser, DPT, MPH. Commenting on the study, Dr. Pulliam said, "Female urinary incontinence is arguably a public health crisis in the U.S. with more than 50% of women aged 50 and older affected. It's also a progressive health condition that's unlikely to resolve without treatment and symptom management. It's burdensome  socially, economically, and psychologicallyand can contribute to other significant and potentially severe medical conditions. While there's universal consensus for first-line care, which includes PFMT, there are multiple, long-standing emotional, sociocultural, structural and economic barriers combined with women's difficulty performing strengthening exercises correctly on their own that keeps first-line care out of reach. The infographic offers an easy, appealing way to diagnose and treat female UI according to evidence-based guidelines, which we hope will dramatically improve the number of women who can access first-line treatment. No woman should have to live with an easily treatable condition."

Additionally, Dr. McKinney said, "The reality is that UI is untreated for most women, from those needing first-line care to advanced therapies. Our team endeavored to create a resource for healthcare professionals and patients alike to facilitate conversations and decisions around treatment. We are so pleased to share our work in the Journal of Women's Health and additionally delighted that the timing of the print publication coincided with March's important societal focus on women's history. Among the many women who have contributed to the field of pelvic health are Minnie Randall and Margaret Morris, a British midwife and physiotherapist, respectively, who wrote and taught in the UK and US during the 1930s about the importance of exercising the pelvic floor muscles. Nearly a century later, we recognize that we are still building upon their work."

About Renovia

Boston-based Renovia Inc. is a women-led company dedicated to improving the lives of women with pelvic floor disorders. Renovia's flagship product, the leva Pelvic Health System, offers a novel, effective, first-line treatment for urinary incontinence (UI), an underreported condition experienced by over 78 million women in the U.S. alone. Renovia's technology enables non-invasive, drug-free treatment via precise visualization of movement in real time during pelvic floor muscle training, while monitoring usage and progress. For more information about Renovia or leva please visit www.renoviainc.com and www.levatherapy.com and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram.

Important Indication and Other Information for the leva Pelvic Health System

The leva Pelvic Health System is intended for strengthening of pelvic floor muscles, and rehabilitation and training of weak pelvic floor muscles for the treatment of stress, mixed, and mild to moderate urgency urinary incontinence (including overactive bladder) in women. Treatment with the leva System is by prescription and is not for everyone. Please talk to your prescriber to see if leva is right for you. Your prescriber should discuss all potential benefits and risks with you. Do not use leva while pregnant, or if you think you may be pregnant, unless authorized by your doctor. For a complete summary of the risks and instructions for the leva System, see its Instructions for Use available at www.renoviainc.com and www.levatherapy.com.

Renovia Inc. and leva are trademarks or registered trademarks of Renovia Inc. in the United States and other countries. All Rights Reserved.

Media inquiries:

Shanti Skiffington

mobile: 617 921-0808

SOURCE Renovia Inc.
FOUNTAIN VALLEY, Calif., March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Identifinders International, in conjunction with the Pullman Washington Police Department (PPD) is pleased to announce the identification of 47-year-old Kenneth Downing as the suspect in a series of home invasion sexual assaults that occurred in Pullman between November 2003 and March 2004. Downing was taken into custody by the Spokane Police Department yesterday at a job site in Spokane where he works construction. It is not believed that Downing knew or had any connections to the victims nor did he live near them.

Officers with the Spokane Police Department Special Investigations Unit arrest Kenneth Downing, 47, of Elk, Washington. (Courtesy of Spokane Police Department)

Downing faces charges including four counts of first-degree rape, one count of indecent liberties, two counts of first-degree burglary, three counts of second-degree assault and three counts of unlawful imprisonment. These charges involve a home invasion that occurred in November 2003 in which a Pullman woman was raped, and a second home invasion in March 2004, in which one Pullman woman was raped and second woman assaulted.

Before DNA was collected, the PPD believed the two cases were connected because of similarities in the attacks. The connection was confirmed by the crime lab when the DNA profiles from the incidents matched. In 2004, the profile was uploaded to CODIS, the FBI's DNA database. In 2005, a John Doe arrest warrant was obtained on the case to satisfy the statute of limitations when no hit was achieved. In 2020, with no further leads, the PPD engaged Identifinders International to apply forensic genetic genealogy to try to solve the case.

"The use of forensic genetic genealogy and the work Identifinders did on this case was instrumental in identifying and apprehending a violent offender. Your work is greatly appreciated," said Det. Sgt. Aaron Brashears of the Pullman Police Department.

"We appreciate the Pullman Police Department for the confidence they have placed in us," stated Dr. Colleen Fitzpatrick, President of Identifinders. "We are also grateful to the Washington State Attorney General's Office for the funding they provided through their SAKI program. We look forward to future collaborations."

Identifinders International is a fee-based forensic service that works with law enforcement agencies and medical examiners to apply forensic genetic genealogy to solving violent crime cold cases and identifying unidentified remains. For more information, please visit www.identifinders.com. For Media Relations contact Lori Jonasson - [email protected] / (714) 576-6377

SOURCE Identifinders International
NAIROBI, March 23 (Xinhua) -- The eradication of cruelty and suffering facing Africa's wildlife and domesticated animals should be at the heart of the continent's quest to attain universal goals related to food security, health and environmental sustainability, experts said Wednesday.

Speaking in Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, during the launch of World Animal Protection's 2021-2030 global strategy, the experts were categorical that enhanced protection of iconic wildlife species and farmed animals will cushion African communities from hunger, malnutrition and risk of pathogens.

Nick Nwankpa, the acting director of the African Union Interafrican Bureau for Animal Resources (AU-IBAR), said that a harmonious relationship between animals, humans and nature was critical to tackling climate change, disease and conflicts.

"We must secure a healthy future for our animals and their habitat by tackling threats like exploitation, illegal trade and encroachment on their natural habitats," Nwankpa said.

While acknowledging that Africa's rapid population growth and urbanization had presented new threats to animal welfare, to the detriment of public health and resilience of local communities, Nwankpa stressed that countries should enact policies and legislation that promote hygienic and environmentally sound rearing of domestic animals in a bid to promote water and food safety and eliminate anti-microbial resistance.

Tennyson Williams, the director for Africa at World Animal Protection, said that transforming the continent's food systems was key to tackling threats facing the farmed and wild animals including zoonotic diseases.

He said that implementation of the World Animal Protection's ten-year strategy will help end cruelty meted on both farmed and wild animals through policy and legislative reforms, public education and retooling conservation financing.

Victor Yamo, farming campaigns manager at World Animal Protection, said that enactment of policies that promote high animal welfare standards in the continent's food systems was key to tackling pollution, halting the spread of superbugs and restoring ecosystems' health.

Yamo believed that genetic alteration and excessive use of antibiotics were detrimental to animal welfare, adding that Africa's sustainability agenda was guaranteed through the adoption of organic livestock rearing practices. 
SAN FRANCISCO, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Unicorn Hunters, a global platform that connects companies looking for expansion capital to achieve a billion-dollar valuation with millions of investors around the world, announced today that Rosie Rios, 43rd Treasurer of the United States, has joined its Board of Directors. Ms. Rios' experience in the financial industry, both in the private and public sectors, will be instrumental to achieving the company's strategic objectives, which include making Unicoin the number one equity-backed cryptocurrency in the world.

Rosie Rios on the set of Unicorn Hunters. Rosie Rios and the Circle of Money.

Ms. Rios is one of the most influential women in finance. She served as the managing director of a multi-billion dollar investment firm before becoming the Treasurer of the United States under President Obama, and her signature appears on $1.8 trillion of the U.S. currency in circulation today. She is an expert on blockchain technology and currently serves on the Board of Directors of Ripple. Ms. Rios is also a member of the Unicorn Hunters show's Circle of Money, a panel of judges comprised of business luminaries and policymakers whose role is to hear the pitch of founders and ask questions to help people decide if they want to invest in the featured companies.

"As a Circle of Money member, Rosie Rios has been instrumental to delivering on the Unicorn Hunters' promise to democratize access to wealth by giving founders access to funding, and providing the masses access to pre-IPO investment opportunities," said Silvina Moschini, Chairwoman and President of Unicorn Hunters. "We are thrilled to welcome an exceptional leader whose expertise spans investment management, public policy, and cryptocurrency to our board. Her role as one of the architects of the JOBS Act demonstrates her visionary leadership and we are excited to join forces to disrupt financial markets and unleash the next wealth-creation revolution."

"Unicorn Hunters is the culmination of the work that began in 2012 through the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act, which made it possible for individuals to invest in pre-IPO companies, something that was previously reserved for Wall Street insiders," said Rosie Rios, 43rd Treasurer of the United States. "Financial empowerment has been at the forefront of my career, and I am proud to be a part of this game-changing platform that has made entrepreneurial capital more accessible, brought investment opportunities to Main Street, and will now bring investments in crypto to a whole new level through Unicoin."

About Unicorn Hunters

Unicorn Hunters (a DBA name of TransparentBusiness, Inc.) is a pioneering business show that democratizes access to funding, giving founders the possibility to raise expansion capital from millions of viewers around the world, and gives people the opportunity to invest in pre-IPO opportunities alongside business luminaries, like Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple. Unicoin is a next-generation coin from the producers of Unicorn Hunters that solves for volatility, the greatest challenge of traditional crypto, by offering inherent value instead of perceived value through equity positions in the high-growth companies that are part of the Unicorn Hunters platform.

Contact:

Pilar Planells

3059726471

[email protected]

SOURCE Unicorn Hunters
2021 Annual Results Summary and Highlights:

Total operating revenue for the year amounted to RMB161.29 billion , representing a year-on-year increase of 18%; profit attributable to owners of the parent reached RMB10.09 billion , representing a year-on-year increase of 26%;

, representing a year-on-year increase of 18%; profit attributable to owners of the parent reached , representing a year-on-year increase of 26%; Profit of industrial operations [1] amounted to RMB10.59 billion , representing a year-on-year increase of 30%;

amounted to , representing a year-on-year increase of 30%; Investment in technology and innovation [2] for the year reached RMB8.9 billion . As of 31 December 2021 , the Group owned over 1,500 patents for inventions in total and with more than 500 new products under development;

for the year reached . As of , the Group owned over 1,500 patents for inventions in total and with more than 500 new products under development; Revenue from over 30 overseas countries and regions accounted for 42% of the total revenue for the year. Revenue from overseas amounted to RMB67.7 billion ;

; The FC2M ecosystem acquired 27 million new available members [3] , bringing the total number to 396 million operational members;

, bringing the total number to 396 million operational members; Established the four major committees of ecosystem, overseas operations, technology and innovation, FES as top priority to support the building of organizational capability for the implementation of key strategies.

HONG KONG, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Fosun International Limited (HKEX stock code: 00656, "Fosun International"), together with its subsidiaries ("Fosun" or the "Group"), today announced its financial results for the year ended 31 December 2021 (the "Reporting Period").

During the Reporting Period, the Group's core financial indicators posted steady growth. The total revenue for the year was RMB161.29 billion, representing a year-on-year increase of 18%; the profit attributable to owners of the parent reached RMB10.09 billion, representing a year-on-year increase of 26%; profit of industrial operations amounted to RMB10.59 billion, representing a year-on-year increase of 30%.

Based on long-term observations, the 10-year compound growth rate of the Group's total revenue, the 10-year compound growth rate of net profit attributable to owners of the parent, and the 10-year compound growth rate of profit of industrial operations reached 11%, showing a sustainable gradual upward trend.

During the Reporting Period, the Group maintained a sound financial position, and its debt structure continued to be optimized. Open market financing was active, the Group raised nearly RMB33.2 billion in the open market; cash, bank balances and term deposits remained abundant, reaching to RMB96.78 billion; the average financing cost was at a historically low level of 4.6%; the adjusted NAV improved continuously to HK$28.1 per share; the leverage ratio reduced steadily to 53.8%.

Guo Guangchang, Chairman of Fosun International, said, "This year, Fosun enters into the 30 years of establishment. After nearly 30 years of development, Fosun has grown into one of the few domestic enterprises that is equipped with global operations, investment capabilities, and accumulated profound technology and innovation capabilities. Over the years, Fosun has endured different stages of development, but we have always adhered to the values of 'Self-improvement, Teamwork, Performance, and Contribution to Society'. Through the continuous upgrade in strategic evolution, we remain committed to our mission of serving one billion families worldwide and creating happier lives for families worldwide. Fosun has developed business for good with a customer-oriented focus. We have always believed that people's pursuit of happier and brighter life remains unchanged regardless of the external situation. The significance of the existence of an enterprise is to bring more warmth and love to the society. As the market becomes more volatile, the challenges become more complex, and Fosun's perseverance to stand firm on its strategy will become increasingly important. It is this perseverance that made the one and only Fosun today."

Leveraged the twin-driver to achieve steady growth in the four business segments

Despite the severe challenges brought about by the global epidemic situation in 2021, Fosun leveraged its comprehensive innovation and globalization capabilities built over the years to drive steady growth in the four business segments of the Group, namely Health, Happiness, Wealth, and Intelligent Manufacturing through the twin-driver of industry operations and industrial investment.

During the Reporting Period, the revenue of the Group's Health segment was RMB43.98 billion, representing a year-on-year increase of 27.1%. Pharmaceutical, devices and diagnosis, healthcare services and products developed synergistically and steadily. Among them, Fosun Pharma's operating revenue for the year reached RMB38.86 billion, representing a year-on-year increase of 28.8%, and the net profit attributable to shareholders of the listed company reached RMB4.74 billion, representing a year-on-year increase of 29.3%. The revenue of new products and sub-new products of Fosun Pharma, including but not limited to Comirnaty, Han Li Kang, Han Qu You and Su Ke Xin, accounted for more than 25% of revenue from the pharmaceutical manufacturing segment. The revenue of the first domestically approved biosimilar drug Han Li Kang (rituximab injection, ) of Fosun Pharma amounted to RMB1.69 billion, and it has benefited more than 100,000 patients and families within three years of its launch.

The Group continued to deepen industry operations in the happiness business segment. During the Reporting Period, the revenue of the Happiness segment was RMB66.9 billion, representing a year-on-year increase of 19.4%. The jewelry and fashion business of Yuyuan, a subsidiary of the Group, maintained robust growth, with a net opening of 602 stores throughout the year, bringing the total number to 3,981 stores at the end of the year. It also launched a new of lab-grown diamonds, LUSANT. Moreover, Laomiao's blockbuster series, "Guyun Gold" recorded sales of nearly RMB4.0 billion. Fosun Tourism's operating indicators improved significantly, and the total revenue for the year amounted to RMB9.26 billion, representing a substantial increase of 31.2%. In terms of investment, Lanvin Group acquired Sergio Rossi, an Italian luxury footwear brand to further improve the strategic brand matrix.

The Group continued to improve capital efficiency and returns in the wealth segment. During the Reporting Period, the revenue of the Wealth segment amounted to RMB43.7 billion, representing a year-on-year increase of 2.8%; profit grew 13.5% year-on-year to RMB5.16 billion. Among which, revenue from insurance segment amounted to nearly RMB32.15 billion, representing a year-on-year increase of 7.7%. Fosun Insurance Portugal achieved total premium income of EUR4.91 billion, representing a year-on-year increase of 38%. In terms of asset management segment, H&A successfully acquired Bankhaus Lampe, a private bank with a history of nearly 170 years, and was renamed itself as HAL, aiming to develop it into one of the top three private banks in Germany.

During the Reporting Period, the total revenue of the Group's Intelligent Manufacturing segment was nearly RMB7.74 billion, representing a year-on-year increase of 56.3%. While deepening industry operations, the Group also continued to improve the industrial ecosystem through high-quality investment. Nanjing Iron & Steel has actively developed new industries, and invested in coke projects with an annual output of 2.60 million tons and 3.90 million tons in Indonesia. Nanjing Iron & Steel has extended its scope to the field of new materials and achieved substantial progress in the acquisition of Wansheng. On 28 February 2022, Wansheng announced that the non-public share offering was approved by the China Securities Regulatory Commission.

Driving development with four core competencies, investment in technology and innovation reached RMB8.9 billion

In 2021, the four core competencies that Fosun has built in the past 30 years, FC2M ecosystem, globalization 3.0, innovation-driven, and FES system, drove the steady development of the Group.

During the Reporting Period, the FC2M ecosystem acquired 27 million new available members, bringing the total number to 396 million operational members. Fosun Family Season achieved sales of consumer products of RMB9.2 billion with 6 billion cumulative reach in total. The launch of Fosun Alliance has facilitated cross-sector consumption from 20% of its active members. The total number of registered users of Fosun Health reached 13.34 million. The FC2M ecosystem continued to promote the quality and efficiency enhancement of industry operations, catalyze the "chemical reaction" of various business segments, and realize the multiplier effect. For example, Pramerica Fosun cooperated with Fosun Care and achieved a win-win situation between the enhancement of insurance products and the investment and development of health care communities. In 2021, the cross-marketing of Pramerica Fosun Life Insurance and Fosun Care achieved 477 endowment insurance orders.

Fosun has long adhered to the strategic positioning of being rooted in China and developing globally. During the Reporting Period, revenue from overseas countries and regions accounted for 42% of the total revenue for the year, and the Group has established profound industrial development in over 30 countries and regions. Revenue from overseas amounted to RMB67.7 billion. The Group has 20 global partners and more than 16,000 employees in overseas. The Group's global innovation capability has continued to improve. Fosun Pharma has upgraded and established a global research and development (R&D) center, and strengthened its global clinical and drug registration and application capabilities, deployed cutting-edge fields through an open R&D ecosystem; Lanvin Group has established a creative center in Italy, and has built a digital sharing platform in the United States, building a global network of high-quality fashion resources.

The Group's investment in technology and innovation provided "hard core" support for the sustainable and steady development of its business. During the Reporting Period, the Group's investment in technology and innovation reached RMB8.90 billion. As of 31 December 2021, the Group owned over 1,500 patents for inventions in total and with more than 500 new products under development. Fosun's long-term persistence in R&D investment has ushered in a harvest period. In June 2021, Fosun Kite's Yi Kai Da (Ejilunsai Injection) became the first CAR-T cell therapy approved for commercialization in China. As of the end of February 2022, and there are about 100 patients entered the treatment process. Comirnaty (mRNA COVID-19 vaccine) jointly developed by Fosun Pharma and BioNTech was included in the government vaccination program in Hong Kong SAR and Macau SAR in March 2021, and administered in Taiwan region in September 2021. As of the end of February 2022, over 20 million doses have been administered in Hong Kong SAR, Macau SAR and Taiwan region, playing a positive role in the prevention and control of the epidemic in the regions. Nanjing Iron and Steel's technological innovation, special weathering steel has been widely used in the "Snow Dragon" (National Sliding Centre) in the Beijing Winter Olympics 2022.

The FES (Fosun Entrepreneurship / Ecosystem System) system that Fosun is building vigorously, is a continuously evolving management system that will help the Group build core competitiveness of a longstanding enterprise and nurture talents with Fosun's entrepreneurship. Based on Fosun's strategy of "industry operations + industrial investment", the core of the FES system is to refine the best practices accumulated over the years into replicable and scalable tools and processes to empower Fosun's global enterprises. The FES system consists of five modules: ecosystem growth, entrepreneurial organization, value growth, refined operations, and risk control.

The operations of the four core competencies are inseparable from the assurance of organizations, mechanisms and talents. In 2021, the Group established four major committees of ecosystem, overseas operations, technology and innovation, and FES, as top priority to support the building of organizational capability for the implementation of key strategies. In addition, the Group constructed a multi-level and multi-dimensional talent system and created a "pyramid" partner backup array. At present, there are more than 140 global partners.

ESG rating jumped to AA, with ongoing anti-epidemic efforts

Along with our rapid development, Fosun leveraged its own industrial advantages to actively contribute to the society through public welfare programs such as supporting the combat against the pandemic, providing disaster relief, Rural Doctors, universal education, culture promotion, and entrepreneurship support.

Fosun has participated in the joint construction of the "Malaria-Free World" project for more than 15 years. According to incomplete statistics, since 2005, Fosun Pharma has supplied more than 200 million vials of artesunate for injection (Artesun) to the international market and has saved more than 40 million lives of patients with malaria, most of which are African children under five years old.

The Rural Doctors Program was launched in December 2017, and as of the end of 2021, it has covered 73 counties across the country, assisted 24,000 rural doctors and benefited 3 million grassroots families.

During the Reporting Period, the Group continued to promote the sustainable development of ESG (environmental, social, and governance). In December 2021, Fosun International's MSCI ESG rating jumped to AA. In addition, it was included in the Hang Seng ESG 50 Index (Top 50 Mid-Large Cap); its FTSE Russell ESG and S&P ESG score have also improved significantly, which are higher than the industry average.

In 2022, the challenges posed by the COVID-19 epidemic will continue. At the beginning of the year, when the fifth wave of the epidemic broke out in Hong Kong, Fosun immediately announced the donation of HK$10 million anti-epidemic materials to Hong Kong. At present, the epidemic prevention and control in the Chinese Mainland is at a critical stage, Fosun has quickly reactivated the "wartime mechanism" and continued to respond to the needs of all parties.

2021 Annual Results Announcement

Full details of the annual results announcement of Fosun International can be found on the Company's website (www.fosun.com) and on the website of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

Fosun International's 2021 annual results presentation will be held online on 24 March 2022, from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. The management will introduce the key financial performance and strategic outlook of the Group. The live webcast is available in the links below. The latest PPT presentation of the Company is also available for download on Fosun's website.

Chinese live webcast: https://fosun.dajun.tv:8443/live/f.do?roomCode=10271700

English live webcast: https://fosun.dajun.tv:8443/live/f.do?roomCode=10271704

[1] Profit of industrial operations includes the profit contribution from operation subsidiaries, associates and joint ventures which are under equity method accounting. [2] Investment in technology and innovation includes scientific research investment (expense and capitalization), but does not include digital investment. [3] Available members: Customers agreed to official member terms of the brand and authorized privacy right, provided personal information, including phone numbers in any channels, and who are identifiable, accessible and traceable, are defined as registered members (e.g. available members). Starting from 2021, this number includes customers accumulated in Fosun Health ecosystem.

About Fosun

Fosun was founded in 1992. Fosun's mission is to provide high-quality products and services for families around the world in health, happiness, wealth and intelligent manufacturing segments. Fosun International Limited is a global innovation-driven consumer group that has been listed on the main board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (stock code: 00656.HK) since 2007, with total assets of RMB806.37 billion (c. US$126.48 billion) as of 31 December 2021. Fosun International ranks No.459 on the 2021 Forbes Global 2000 List.

Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This press release includes forward-looking statements. All statements, other than statements of historical facts, that address activities, events or developments that Fosun International Limited (the "Company") expects or anticipates will or may occur in the future (including but not limited to projections, targets, estimates and business plans) are forward-looking statements. The Company's actual results or developments may differ materially from those indicated by these forward-looking statements as a result of various factors and uncertainties, and other risks and factors beyond our control. In addition, the Company makes the forward-looking statements referred to herein as of today and undertakes no obligation to update these statements. The full year 2021 financial figures in this press release are calculated using the average exchange rate for the Reporting Period from January to December 2021 (USD/CNY= 6.45308HKD/CNY= 0.83026EUR/CNY=7.63721), and period-end exchange rate as of 31 December 2021 (USD/CNY=6.3757HKD/CNY=0.8176EUR/CNY=7.2197), unless otherwise stated.

SOURCE Fosun
NEW DELHI, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- According to the study undertaken by Astute Analytica the global bioplastics market was valued at US$ 5,487.2 Million in 2021 and is forecasted to reach US$ 10,169.9 Million by 2027. The market is expected to register a CAGR of 10.8% during the forecast period 2022-2027. In terms of volume, the market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 11.8% during the forecast period.

Bioplastics are plastic materials which are produced from renewable biomass sources such as vegetable fats and oils, corn starch, straw, woodchips, sawdust, recycled food waste, etc. The global bioplastic market is driven by environmentally friendly properties and favorable government policy and high consumer acceptance and renewable raw material sources. Bioplastics do not harm earth or environment as these materials do not have any toxicity and can degrade easily. Some bioplastics are obtained by processing directly from natural biopolymers including polysaccharides (e.g., starch, cellulose, chitosan and alginate) and proteins (e.g., soy protein, gluten and gelatin) while others are chemically synthesized from sugar derivatives (e.g., lactic acid) and lipids (oils and fats) from either plants or animals or biologically generated by fermentation of sugars or lipids. In contrast, common plastics such as fossil-fuel plastics (also called petrol-based polymers) are derived from petroleum or natural gas. Bioplastic is also suitable material for organic farming as farmers are using biodegradable mulching films in agriculture and horticulture.

Request a Sample Report of Global Bioplastics Market: https://www.astuteanalytica.com/request-sample/bioplastics-market

Environment friendly properties of bioplastics, high consumer acceptance for bio-based products, favorable government policy regarding developing degradable packaging materials and availability of renewable raw material sources for the production of bioplastics are some of the major market drivers for bioplastics. Moreover, various governments across the world adopted favorable regulations and policies to promote sustainability and biodegradability of bioplastics. Also, the increase in consumer acceptance boosts the growth in demand for bioplastic in the emerged and emerging economies. However, high cost of product is one of the biggest issues associated with global bioplastics market. Also, the poor mechanical, thermal and water absorption properties of bioplastic is not suitable for many applications. Furthermore, growth in corporate social responsibility (CSR) along with decrease in dependency on petroleum resource and R&D activities creates a positive outlook for the growth of bioplastic market.

Market Segmentation

Biodegradable type holds the highest market share in 2021 in the Global Bioplastic Market

Based on type, the bioplastics market is segmented into biodegradable and non-biodegradable. The biodegradable segment is further classified into starch-based, poly lactic acid (PLA), poly hydroxylalkanoates (PHA), polyester (PBS, PBAT, and PCL) and other biodegradable plastics. Also, the non-biodegradable segment is bifurcated into bio-polyethylene terephthalate (PET), bio-polyethylene, bio-polyamides, bio-polytrimethylene terephthalate and other non-biodegradable plastics. The biodegradable segment is estimated to have the highest market share in 2021 owing to stringent regulations pertaining to single-use plastic ban across various regions including Europe, North America and Asia. Further, the segment is projected to grow at the highest CAGR of 11.6% during the forecast period due to increasing environmental concerns and an increase in demand for flexible packaging based on these materials.

Consumer goods segment is expected to register at a highest CAGR during the forecast period

On the basis of mode of application, the bioplastics market is segmented into rigid packaging, flexible packaging, agriculture & horticulture, consumer goods, textile, automotive & transportation, building & construction and others. The rigid packaging is further classified into bottles & jars, trays and others. Similarly, the flexible packaging segment is also bifurcated into pouches, shopping/waste bags and others. The flexible packaging segment is estimated to have the highest market share during the forecast period as packaging has wide scope in various applications including food packaging, cosmetic & personal care packaging, shopping bags and others, thereby augmenting the growth of the segment. Whereas the consumer goods segment is expected to register a CAGR of 12.4% during the forecast period.

Asia Pacific held the major share in the Global Bioplastics Market in 2021

Asia Pacific accounted for the largest bioplastics market revenue share in 2021 owing to the presence of well-established food & beverage industry as well as increasing consumer preferences towards eco-friendly plastic products with the rapidly growing population of the region and consumer purchasing power. Also, Asia Pacific bioplastics market is expected to project the highest CAGR of 12.5% during the forecast period.

Directly Purchase a copy of report with TOC @ https://www.astuteanalytica.com/request-sample/bioplastics-market

Report Attribute Details Market Size Value in 2021 US$ 5,487.2 Million Market Outlook for 2027 US$ 10,169.9 Million Expected CAGR Growth 10.8% from 2022 - 2027 Base Year 2021 Forecast Period 2022-2027 Top Market Players NatureWorks LLC, Braskem, BASF SE, Novamont S.p.A., Mitsubishi Chemical Holdings, Toray Industries, Toyota Tsusho, E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company, Galactic and Showa Denko K.K. Segments Covered By Type, By Mode of Application, By Region Geographies Covered North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East & Africa, South America Customization Options Get your customized report as per your preference. Ask for customization

Company Profile

Toyota Tsusho is a trading and project management company that has a varied product portfolio. The company provides products and services in various domains including metals, global parts & logistics, automotive, machinery, energy and project, chemicals & electronics, food & consumer services and others. Also, the company has a global network of subsidiaries in Thailand and Singapore . The company focuses on developing products and services based on renewable energy and uses advanced technologies and sustainable strategies to improve services and reduce environmental pollution. Refinery and shared facilities hold the highest percentage share in terms of business revenue segmentation.

and . The company focuses on developing products and services based on renewable energy and uses advanced technologies and sustainable strategies to improve services and reduce environmental pollution. Refinery and shared facilities hold the highest percentage share in terms of business revenue segmentation. Biome Technologies plc. is a manufacturer of naturally based plastics such as oil-based polymers and it operates through two divisions: Biome Bioplastics and Stanelco RF Technologies. It produces plant-based plastics which are compostable and biodegradable. The company is aiming to expand its R&D activities for the development of cost-effective products and services in order to offer sustainable products in the growing market era. Based on geographical revenue segmentation, North America holds the highest share in the marketplace.

holds the highest share in the marketplace. Danimer Scientific is primarily engaged in manufacturing plastic products with the use of renewable and sustainable biopolymers. Biopolymers produced by the company are majorly used in aqueous coatings, fibers, filaments, additives, hot-melt adhesives, films and injection-molded articles. Danimer Scientific adopted partnership as its key developmental strategy to sustain the intense competition and improve its product portfolio.

Competitive Insight

Global Bioplastic Market is highly competitive in order to increase their presence in the marketplace. Some of the key players operating in the global bioplastic market include NatureWorks LLC, Braskem, BASF SE, Novamont S.p.A., Mitsubishi Chemical Holdings, Toray Industries, Toyota Tsusho, E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company, Galactic and Showa Denko K.K. among others.

Segmentation Overview

Global Bioplastic Market is segmented based on type, mode of application and region. The industry trends in global bioplastic market are sub-divided into different categories in order to get a holistic view of the global marketplace.

Following are the different segments of the Global Bioplastic Market:

By Type Segment of the Global Bioplastic Market is Sub- Segmented into:

Biodegradable



Starch-based





Poly lactic Acid (PLA)





Poly hydroxylalkanoates (PHA)





Polyester (PBS, PBAT, and PCL)





Other Biodegradable Plastics



Non-biodegradable



Bio-polyethylene Terephthalate (PET)





Bio-Polyethylene





Bio-Polyamides





Bio-Polytrimethylene Terephthalate





Other Non-Biodegradable Plastics

By Mode of Application Segment of the Global Bioplastic Market is Sub- Segmented into:

Rigid Packaging



Bottles & Jars





Trays





Others



Flexible Packaging



Pouches





Shopping/Waste Bags





Others



Agriculture & Horticulture



Consumer goods



Textile



Automotive & Transportation



Building & Construction



Others

By Region Type Segment of the Global Bioplastic Market is Sub- Segmented into:

North America



The U.S.





Canada





Mexico



Europe



UK





Germany





France





Italy





Spain





Poland





Russia





Rest of Europe



Asia Pacific



China





India





Japan





Australia & New Zealand

&



ASEAN





Rest of Asia Pacific



Middle East & Africa (MEA)



UAE





Saudi Arabia





South Africa





Rest of MEA



South America



Argentina





Brazil





Rest of South America

Enquire more about this report before purchase @ https://www.astuteanalytica.com/request-sample/bioplastics-market

For Additional Information OR Media Enquiry, Please Mail Us At: [email protected]

About Astute Analytica

Astute Analytica is a global analytics and advisory company which has built a solid reputation in a short period, thanks to the tangible outcomes we have delivered to our clients. We pride ourselves in generating unparalleled, in depth and uncannily accurate estimates and projections for our very demanding clients spread across different verticals. We have a long list of satisfied and repeat clients from a wide spectrum including technology, healthcare, chemicals, semiconductors, FMCG, and many more. These happy customers come to us from all across the Globe. They are able to make well calibrated decisions and leverage highly lucrative opportunities while surmounting the fierce challenges all because we analyze for them the complex business environment, segment wise existing and emerging possibilities, technology formations, growth estimates, and even the strategic choices available. In short, a complete package. All this is possible because we have a highly qualified, competent, and experienced team of professionals comprising of business analysts, economists, consultants, and technology experts. In our list of priorities, you-our patron-come at the top. You can be sure of best cost-effective, value-added package from us, should you decide to engage with us.

Contact us:

Aamir Beg

BSI Business Park, H-15,Sector-63, Noida- 201301- India

Phone: +1-888 429 6757 (US Toll Free); +91-0120- 4251598 (Rest of the World)

Email: [email protected]

Website: www.astuteanalytica.com

Follow US: LinkedIn | Twitter

SOURCE Astute Analytica
Get a free sample of this data, download our sample report: https://spendedge.com/procurement-report/clinical-decision-support-system--procurement-market-intelligence-report

Who are the Top Suppliers in the Clinical Decision Support System Market?

The report analyzes the market's competitive landscape and offers information on several top suppliers. Some of the leading Clinical Decision Support System suppliers profiled extensively in this report include:

UnitedHealth Group

McKesson

General Electric

These are a few of the key suppliers in Clinical Decision Support System market. Discover more about these vendors, including the detailed analysis of procurement strategies deployed by major category end-users across several industries while sourcing for Clinical Decision Support System requirements.

Download a free sample of this report: https://spendedge.com/procurement-report/clinical-decision-support-system--procurement-market-intelligence-report

What are the Most Adopted Procurement Strategies for the Clinical Decision Support System Market?

The research includes a complete analysis of the most commonly used procurement strategies by buyers across sectors, as well as an insight into these strategies' innovation, regulatory compliance, quality, supply, and cost. Adopting these procurement tactics would enable buyers to minimize category TCO and achieve cost savings while sourcing Clinical Decision Support System.

What Are the Most Effective Price Strategy That a Vendor Can Adopt and What is The Forecasted Incremental Spend?

It is critical to monitor current and future pricing changes in order to maximize the value of the purchase. Price forecasts can assist in purchase planning, especially when combined with constant monitoring of price-influencing factors. The market expects an incremental spend of USD 1 billion over the forecast period as a result of several market drivers prevalent across multiple geographies. In addition, the sourcing and procurement report discusses different cost-cutting factors by analyzing the following criteria:

Identify favorable opportunities in Clinical Decision Support System TCO (total cost of ownership)

Expected changes in price forecast and factors driving the current and future price changes

Identify pricing models that offer the most rewarding opportunities

Download the free sample report to get detailed insights into few more pricing strategies.

Which are the Key Regions for Clinical Decision Support System Market?

The Clinical Decision Support System market will register an incremental spend of about USD 1 billion during the forecast period. However, only a few regions will drive the majority of this growth. Moreover, on the supply side, North America, Europe, and APAC will have the maximum influence owing to the supplier base. The growth is expected to be primarily driven by increasing demand and adoption of the category across those few regions.

To get more information on the volume drivers that are driving the adoption of the category across regions, download our free sample report.

Smart Procurement Starts Here:

SpendEdge's procurement intelligence platform is the go-to tool for companies looking to access latest procurement research insights and supplier data on an easy to use platform:

Subscribe now for free, to get instant access to over 1000 market-ready procurement intelligence reports without any additional costs or commitment.

Table of Content

Executive Summary

Market Insights

Category Pricing Insights

Cost-saving Opportunities

Best Practices

Category Ecosystem

Category Management Strategy

Category Management Enablers

Suppliers Selection

Suppliers under Coverage

US Market Insights

Category scope

Appendix

About SpendEdge:

SpendEdge shares your passion for driving sourcing and procurement excellence. We are the preferred procurement market intelligence partner for 120+ Fortune 500 firms and other leading companies across numerous industries. Our strength lies in delivering robust, real-time procurement market intelligence reports and solutions.

Contacts

SpendEdge

Anirban Choudhury

Marketing Manager

Ph No: +1 (872) 206-9340

https://www.spendedge.com/contact-us

SOURCE SpendEdge
Global competitiveness and key competitor percentage market shares

Market presence across multiple geographies - Strong/Active/Niche/Trivial

Online interactive peer-to-peer collaborative bespoke updates

Access to our digital archives and MarketGlass Research Platform

Complimentary updates for one year

Edition: 7; Released: February 2022

Executive Pool: 7987

Companies: 62 - Players covered include BAE Systems PLC; Collins Aerospace; Elbit Systems Ltd.; FLIR Systems, Inc.; General Dynamics Mission Systems, Inc.; Instro Precision Limited; Israel Aerospace Industries; L3Harris Technologies, Inc.; Leonardo DRS; Lockheed Martin Corporation; Rheinmetall AG; Saab AB; Safran S.A.; Textron Systems; Thales Group and Others.

Coverage: All major geographies and key segments

Segments: Platform (Airborne, Ground, Naval); System (Imaging, Non-Imaging); Application (Military, Commercial)

Geographies: World; USA; Canada; Japan; China; Europe; France; Germany; Italy; UK; Rest of Europe; Asia-Pacific; Rest of World.

Complimentary Project Preview - This is an ongoing global program. Preview our research program before you make a purchase decision. We are offering a complimentary access to qualified executives driving strategy, business development, sales & marketing, and product management roles at featured companies. Previews provide deep insider access to business trends; competitive brands; domain expert profiles; and market data templates and much more. You may also build your own bespoke report using our MarketGlass Platform which offers thousands of data bytes without an obligation to purchase our report. Preview Registry

ABSTRACT-

Global Electro Optical Systems Market to Reach $14.2 Billion by 2026

Electro optical systems or infrared systems constitute imaging systems primarily used by law enforcement and military departments for achieving better situational awareness of environments, during daytime and nights, and even in conditions of low light. Comprising of infrared sensors as well as electro-optical sensors, the EO systems are capable of offering precise optical data during the day and night. Growth in the global market is being driven by rising adoption of EO systems in homeland security (airborne), fire control system, for situational awareness, target acquisition, search and rescue operations, and in ISR (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance). Demand for EO systems is mainly fueled by the rising use of sophisticated sensor-based systems in the military space. The global market for these systems is propelled by increasing adoption in unmanned vehicles and for battle-space awareness along with increasing use by armed forces for efficiently dealing with security threats. Another primary driver for the market is increasing focus of several countries to modernize armed forces and upgrade to new products. These systems are used in the aerospace sector for non-destructive testing as well as by border protection agencies to monitor intrusion. Also, the growing focus on miniaturization will support the emergence of sophisticated, portable, and small EO systems for ISR and situational awareness applications globally.

Amid the COVID-19 crisis, the global market for Electro Optical Systems estimated at US$11.8 Billion in the year 2022, is projected to reach a revised size of US$14.2 Billion by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 4.1% over the analysis period. Airborne, one of the segments analyzed in the report, is projected to record a 3.5% CAGR and reach US$9.8 Billion by the end of the analysis period. After a thorough analysis of the business implications of the pandemic and its induced economic crisis, growth in the Ground segment is readjusted to a revised 4.7% CAGR for the next 7-year period. Airborne platforms are emerging as an important resource for defense forces to ensure an efficient and robust security & surveillance environment. The growth of airborne segment is likely to be supported by the increasing use of these systems in UAV applications including surveillance, mapping, search & rescue and reconnaissance that require cameras to capture data and transfer video information to ground control stations.

The U.S. Market is Estimated at $4.3 Billion in 2022, While China is Forecast to Reach $1.8 Billion by 2026

The Electro Optical Systems market in the U.S. is estimated at US$4.3 Billion in the year 2022. China, the world`s second largest economy, is forecast to reach a projected market size of US$1.8 Billion by the year 2026 trailing a CAGR of 5.8% over the analysis period. Among the other noteworthy geographic markets are Japan and Canada, each forecast to grow at 2.9% and 3.9% respectively over the analysis period. Within Europe, Germany is forecast to grow at approximately 3.1% CAGR. The US dominates market growth due to the huge investments being made in the development and procurement of electro optical systems used in military platforms such as aircraft, armored vehicles, helicopters, naval vessels, submarines and UAVs. Europe is witnessing increasing focus on R&D for these systems to develop lightweight, robust and cost-efficient solutions for mission-critical operations. Asian economies are poised to emerge as promising regional markets for advanced military electro optical and infrared systems. Supported by strong growth exhibited by Japan, Australia, China and India, the spending on electro optical systems is rising. These systems are widely used by armed forces for make quick decisions using superior imagery and intelligence gathering.

Naval Segment to Reach $2.3 Billion by 2026

Escalating territorial disputes among countries and the resulting focus on the naval warfare is prompting naval agencies to use advanced electro optical and infrared systems, sensors and combat systems to update target acquisition capabilities of naval platforms. Naval forces use electro optical systems in different ways like infrared search & track systems and fire control directors. Naval platforms are using these systems in CIWS (Close-in Weapon System) for target acquisition and engagement. Ongoing research is likely to result in launch of advanced sensors for body armor and weapons along with communication systems. In the global Naval segment, USA, Canada, Japan, China and Europe will drive the 5.6% CAGR estimated for this segment. These regional markets accounting for a combined market size of US$1.2 Billion will reach a projected size of US$1.8 Billion by the close of the analysis period. China will remain among the fastest growing in this cluster of regional markets. Led by countries such as Australia, India, and South Korea, the market in Asia-Pacific is forecast to reach US$197.6 Million by the year 2026. More

MarketGlass Platform

Our MarketGlass Platform is a free full-stack knowledge center that is custom configurable to today`s busy business executive`s intelligence needs! This influencer driven interactive research platform is at the core of our primary research engagements and draws from unique perspectives of participating executives worldwide. Features include - enterprise-wide peer-to-peer collaborations; research program previews relevant to your company; 3.4 million domain expert profiles; competitive company profiles; interactive research modules; bespoke report generation; monitor market trends; competitive brands; create & publish blogs & podcasts using our primary and secondary content; track domain events worldwide; and much more. Client companies will have complete insider access to the project data stacks. Currently in use by 67,000+ domain experts worldwide.

Our platform is free for qualified executives and is accessible from our website www.StrategyR.com or via our just released mobile application on iOS or Android

About Global Industry Analysts, Inc. & StrategyR

Global Industry Analysts, Inc., (www.strategyr.com) is a renowned market research publisher the world`s only influencer driven market research company. Proudly serving more than 42,000 clients from 36 countries, GIA is recognized for accurate forecasting of markets and industries for over 33 years.

CONTACTS:

Zak Ali

Director, Corporate Communications

Global Industry Analysts, Inc.

Phone: 1-408-528-9966

www.StrategyR.com

Email: [email protected]

LINKS

Join Our Expert Panel

https://www.strategyr.com/Panelist.asp

Connect With Us on LinkedIn

https://www.linkedin.com/company/global-industry-analysts-inc./

Follow Us on Twitter

https://twitter.com/marketbytes

Journalists & Media

[email protected]

SOURCE Global Industry Analysts, Inc.
Global competitiveness and key competitor percentage market shares

Market presence across multiple geographies - Strong/Active/Niche/Trivial

Online interactive peer-to-peer collaborative bespoke updates

Access to our digital archives and MarketGlass Research Platform

Complimentary updates for one year

Edition: 10; Released: February 2022

Executive Engagements: 449

Companies: 26 - Players covered include Big Pawer Electrical Technology Xiangyang Inc. Co., Ltd.; CellCube Energy Storage Systems Inc.; Dalian Rongke Power Co., Ltd.; H2, Inc.; HydraRedox Iberia S.L.; Invinity Energy Systems PLC; LE SYSTEM CO., Ltd.; Pinflow energy storage, s.r.o.; StorEn Technologies Inc.; Storion Energy; Sumitomo Electric Industries, Ltd.; UniEnergy Technologies LLC; VisBlue A/S; VoltStorage GmbH; VRB Energy and Others.

Coverage: All major geographies and key segments

Segments: Type (Graphite Felt Electrodes, Carbon Paper Electrodes); End-Use (Large-Scale Energy Storage, Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS), Emergency Power Supply)

Geographies: World; USA; Canada; Japan; China; Europe; France; Germany; Italy; UK; Rest of Europe; Asia-Pacific; Rest of World.

Complimentary Project Preview - This is an ongoing global program. Preview our research program before you make a purchase decision. We are offering a complimentary access to qualified executives driving strategy, business development, sales & marketing, and product management roles at featured companies. Previews provide deep insider access to business trends; competitive brands; domain expert profiles; and market data templates and much more. You may also build your own bespoke report using our MarketGlass Platform which offers thousands of data bytes without an obligation to purchase our report. Preview Registry

ABSTRACT-

Global Vanadium Redox Battery Market to Reach $592.4 Million by 2026

Redox flow batteries differ from other conventional batteries in that the energy storage occurs in a liquid media, and charging and discharging processes can take place within a single cell. This distinguishing feature of redox flow batteries allows energy storage and conversion to be scaled flexibly and separately as per the specific requirements of the application. Similar to other electrochemical energy storage systems, redox flow batteries can also be developed in various different size classes, ranging from few hundred megawatts of power and watt-hours of storage to multi-megawatts and megawatt-hours systems for use as large grid-scale energy storage devices. Redox flow batteries can be effectively utilized for all types of stationary energy storage tasks, though their higher lifetimes result in the lowest levelized cost of energy storage. Currently, there are various types of redox flow batteries that are being evaluated. However, the best known redox flow batteries is the vanadium redox battery.

Amid the COVID-19 crisis, the global market for Vanadium Redox Battery estimated at US$237.5 Million in the year 2022, is projected to reach a revised size of US$592.4 Million by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 20.9% over the analysis period. Graphite Felt Electrodes, one of the segments analyzed in the report, is projected to grow at a 21.5% CAGR to reach US$558.6 Million by the end of the analysis period. After a thorough analysis of the business implications of the pandemic and its induced economic crisis, growth in the carbon paper electrodes segment is readjusted to a revised 19.4% CAGR for the next 7-year period. This segment currently accounts for a 26.2% share of the global Vanadium Redox Battery market.

The U.S. Market is Estimated at $51.9 Million in 2022, While China is Forecast to Reach $84.7 Million by 2026

The Vanadium Redox Battery market in the U.S. is estimated at US$51.9 Million in the year 2022. The country currently accounts for a 21.9% share in the global market. China, the world second largest economy, is forecast to reach an estimated market size of US$84.7 Million in the year 2026 trailing a CAGR of 25.4% through the analysis period. Among the other noteworthy geographic markets are Japan and Canada, each forecast to grow at 18.8% and 20.1% respectively over the analysis period. Within Europe, Germany is forecast to grow at approximately 19.6% CAGR while Rest of European market (as defined in the study) will reach US$109.3 Million by the close of the analysis period.





The market is expected to be driven primarily by factors, such as their lower environmental impact in terms of battery disposal and higher energy capacity owing to the presence of larger tanks for electrolyte storage. These batteries contain no toxic or highly reactive substance and pose no fire hazard, making them more environment-friendly as compared to lead-acid and lithium-ion batteries. Vanadium redox batteries are widely used in the sensor components of some critical military equipment, including ammunitions and weapons. However, their higher capital costs and lower energy density are anticipated to impede the market growth over the next few years. Utilities are expected to be a major application market for vanadium redox batteries, attributed to the rising deployment of wind turbines and solar panels, and the continuous adoption and installation of energy storage technologies. Wind energy and solar photovoltaic sectors are projected to witness over 830 GW and 970 GW increase in capacity by 2025, which is likely to drive the adoption of vanadium redox batteries in the coming years. Vanadium redox batteries offer suitability for both grid as well as off-grid connections. In contrast to lithium-ion batteries, vanadium redox batteries can be completely discharged and allow for reuse of the electrolyte. Moreover, the battery's electrolyte is used in an aqueous form that makes the technology inherently nonflammable and safe.

By End-Use, Large-Scale Energy Storage Segment to Reach $491.7 Million by 2026

Global market for Large-Scale Energy Storage (End-Use) segment is estimated at US$198.2 Million in 2022, and is projected to reach US$491.7 Million by 2026 reflecting a compounded annual growth rate of 20.8% over the analysis period. Europe constitutes the largest regional market for Large-Scale Energy Storage segment, accounting for 33.7% of the global sales. China is poised to register the fastest compounded annual growth rate of 25.3% over the analysis period, to reach US$89.2 Million by the end of the analysis period. More

MarketGlass Platform

Our MarketGlass Platform is a free full-stack knowledge center that is custom configurable to today`s busy business executive`s intelligence needs! This influencer driven interactive research platform is at the core of our primary research engagements and draws from unique perspectives of participating executives worldwide. Features include - enterprise-wide peer-to-peer collaborations; research program previews relevant to your company; 3.4 million domain expert profiles; competitive company profiles; interactive research modules; bespoke report generation; monitor market trends; competitive brands; create & publish blogs & podcasts using our primary and secondary content; track domain events worldwide; and much more. Client companies will have complete insider access to the project data stacks. Currently in use by 67,000+ domain experts worldwide.

Our platform is free for qualified executives and is accessible from our website www.StrategyR.com or via our just released mobile application on iOS or Android

About Global Industry Analysts, Inc. & StrategyR

Global Industry Analysts, Inc., (www.strategyr.com) is a renowned market research publisher the world`s only influencer driven market research company. Proudly serving more than 42,000 clients from 36 countries, GIA is recognized for accurate forecasting of markets and industries for over 33 years.

CONTACTS:

Zak Ali

Director, Corporate Communications

Global Industry Analysts, Inc.

Phone: 1-408-528-9966

www.StrategyR.com

Email: [email protected]

LINKS

Join Our Expert Panel

https://www.strategyr.com/Panelist.asp

Connect With Us on LinkedIn

https://www.linkedin.com/company/global-industry-analysts-inc./

Follow Us on Twitter

https://twitter.com/marketbytes

Journalists & Media

[email protected]

SOURCE Global Industry Analysts, Inc.
GMarkU Launches Marketplace which supports the government contractor ecosystem with year-round learning

WASHINGTON, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Government Marketing University - an innovative learning platform that applies a collaborative, community-based approach toward knowledge sharing and skills development for the public sector market - has announced the 2022 GAIN Conference taking place in a two-part format in June and October 2022. Both events will be hybrid allowing for in-person or virtual attendance.

GAIN 2022, is the premier conference focused on training, research, insights, networking and member-only experiences that enhance a company's ability to reach the influential government audience. Government Marketing University's annual conference will support the entire GovCon ecosystem this year with training topics, featured industry and government thought leaders and a hybrid attendance capability that aligns with the needs of government marketing, communications, sales and business development professionals.

"Since we created GAIN, it has grown into a must-attend event for the GovCon community," said Stephanie Geiger, Co-Founder and Executive Vice President of Government Marketing University. "Together we can work to better hone our skills and craft as we market and sell into the U.S. Public Sector. By creating a program that provides access to the leaders who are at the forefront of the latest marketing intelligence, important trends and issues of the day, we can all up our game and provide top quality service to government leaders and help them achieve their missions."

The June conference will feature a visionary keynote speech from GovExec CEO Tim Hartman as well as cover a wide range of sessions such as Government Innovators - featuring a panel of government movers and shakers that are making change happen in their agency or organization, The Art of Relationship Building - developing customer intimacy using the virtual skills, body language and pace the elite have been using for over a decade, Federal Systems Integrator Roundtable- candid insights from former CEOs who have been in the trenches and share their perspectives on the future of government contracting and the evolving role of systems integrators. and multiple networking sessions. The goal of the conference is to help attendees from all industries learn, connect, and gain insights into the world of government. Registration for the event is now open and can be found here .

"Carahsoft has been a sponsor of the GMarkU GAIN Conference for years," said Craig P. Abod, Carahsoft President. "We appreciate the value the program provides to our team and to our vendor marketing community through its focus on learning and networking across the GovCon space. And through this year's partnership with Washington Technology, the breadth of the programming and the audience reach will expand to include our sales, reseller and integrator partners. We're looking forward to two great GAIN events."

Part two of the GAIN conference will take place in late October, with key speakers and more information to be announced in the next few months. This perennial must-attend event connects public sector executives and managers with the critical tools they need to gain knowledge, develop their company's annual sales and marketing strategies, foster their careers and network with business to government professionals.

Responding to its community request for year-round support, GMarkU is also excited to announce the launch of its new Marketplace which provides downloadable learning tools including training modules, planning templates and helpful resources supporting business professionals responsible for marketing and selling into the public sector market.

For more information on the GAIN conference please visit: https://thegainconference.com/.

About Government Marketing University:

Government Marketing University , part of GovExec's portfolio, is an innovative learning platform that applies a collaborative, community-based approach toward knowledge sharing and skills development in the field of public sector marketing. Experts from all corners of the U.S. public sector marketplace  marketers, thought leaders, government, media, and sales  are contributing their knowledge to this unique, content-rich platform. Government Marketing University offers training, research, certifications, mentoring, and community resources all in one place.

About GovExec:

As the market-leading information platform, for over fifty years GovExec has empowered the government ecosystem to engage and support government leaders as they work to achieve their missions across federal, defense, and state and local agencies. All powered by the largest and most sophisticated database in the public sector, GovExec's platform services are three-folddata that informs, content that connects, and marketing services that activate. Reaching 3.3 million government influencers each month, GovExec's brand and platform portfolio includes Government Executive , GovTribe , Market Connections , Nextgov , Public Sector 360 , Government Contracting Institute, Government Marketing University , Defense One , Military Periscope , Forecast International , The Atlas for Cities , Route Fifty , City & State New York , City & State Pennsylvania , News Service of Florida , Professional Development Academy , and a strategic investment in Power Almanac .

Media Contact:

Liz Stein

[email protected]

240.461.3053



Erin Walsh

[email protected]

SOURCE Government Marketing University
Customer outreach and education, cybersecurity, costs, and competition between transmission and distribution systems for flexibility are among global barriers to growth

BOULDER, Colo., March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- A new report from Guidehouse Insights examines the virtual power plant (VPP) market in five select countries across North America, Europe, and the Asia Pacific region as well as the Latin America and Middle East & Africa regions. The report provides projections segmented by VPP type and show VPP spending and revenue from 2022 through 2031.

VPPs have gained significant traction across all customer segments in recent years as distributed energy resources (DER) deployment continues to increase. VPPs can aggregate and dispatch hundreds or thousands of DER assets to balance the grid when renewable output is not sufficient. According to a new report from Guidehouse Insights, mixed-asset VPP capacity dominates the market and in all but one region it also has the highest expected average compound annual growth rate (CAGR). Australia and Japan are expected to have the highest CAGR for total VPP capacity at 30.9%.

"Though still relatively new to the energy landscape, VPPs have experienced significant growth," says Dan Power, research analyst with Guidehouse Insights. "Australia and Japan have embraced VPPs through government funding, increasing competition in the marketplace, and offering more options for customers and businesses."

VPPs are still an emerging energy technology, and as such, the market is not as mature worldwide as other, more established technologies. Other barriers to growth include customer outreach and education, customer privacy and cybersecurity, system and DER costs, and competition between transmission and distribution systems for flexibility.

The report, Market Data: Country Forecasts for Virtual Power Plants, examines the VPP market in five select countries across North America, Europe, and the Asia Pacific region. Regional-level estimates for Latin America and the Middle East & Africa are also presented. Individual projections segment capacity by VPP type and show total VPP spending and revenue in each market from 2022-2031. An executive summary of the report is available for free download on the Guidehouse Insights website.

About Guidehouse Insights

Guidehouse Insights, the dedicated market intelligence arm of Guidehouse, provides research, data, and benchmarking services for today's rapidly changing and highly regulated industries. Our insights are built on in-depth analysis of global clean technology markets. The team's research methodology combines supply-side industry analysis, end-user primary research, and demand assessment, paired with a deep examination of technology trends, to provide a comprehensive view of emerging resilient infrastructure systems. Additional information about Guidehouse Insights can be found at www.guidehouseinsights.com.

About Guidehouse

Guidehouse is a leading global provider of consulting services to the public sector and commercial markets, with broad capabilities in management, technology, and risk consulting. By combining our public and private sector expertise, we help clients address their most complex challenges and navigate significant regulatory pressures focusing on transformational change, business resiliency, and technology-driven innovation. Across a range of advisory, consulting, outsourcing, and digital services, we create scalable, innovative solutions that help our clients outwit complexity and position them for future growth and success. The company has more than 12,000 professionals in over 50 locations globally. Guidehouse is a Veritas Capital portfolio company, led by seasoned professionals with proven and diverse expertise in traditional and emerging technologies, markets, and agenda-setting issues driving national and global economies. For more information, please visit www.guidehouse.com.

* The information contained in this press release concerning the report, Market Data: Country Forecasts for Virtual Power Plants, is a summary and reflects the current expectations of Guidehouse Insights based on market data and trend analysis. Market predictions and expectations are inherently uncertain and actual results may differ materially from those contained in this press release or the report. Please refer to the full report for a complete understanding of the assumptions underlying the report's conclusions and the methodologies used to create the report. Neither Guidehouse Insights nor Guidehouse undertakes any obligation to update any of the information contained in this press release or the report.

For more information, contact:

Jennifer Peacock

+1.404.575.3859

[email protected]



SOURCE Guidehouse Insights
As per DelveInsight Analysis in the Hernia Repair Devices Market, the rising prevalence of patients suffering from a Hernia, rising number of surgeries for treatment of hernia, the entrance of major players, among others are expected to drive the Hernia Repair Devices market growth during the forecasting period.

LAS VEGAS, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- DelveInsight's Hernia Repair Devices Market Insights and Forecast report provides the current and forecast Hernia Repair Devices Market, upcoming innovation in the devices, individual market shares, challenges, drivers and barriers, market trends, and key competitors in the Hernia Repair Devices Market.

Some of the salient features from the Hernia Repair Devices Market report:

As per DelveInsight analysis, in terms of revenue share, North America is predicted to register the fastest growth in the Hernia Repair Devices market.

is predicted to register the fastest growth in the Hernia Repair Devices market. Some of the Global Hernia Repair Device companies with their Hernia Repair surgery procedures/ products in various stages of development include Medtronic, Johnson & Johnson, Inc., B. Braun Melsungen AG, Cook, Gem Srl, PRIMEQUAL SA, Becton, Dickinson and Company, Deep Blue Medical Inc., Meril Life Sciences Pvt. Ltd., Changzhou Medical Equipment General Factory Co., Ltd., Sinolinks Medical Innovation, Inc., W.L. Gore & Associates, Herniamesh S.r.l., KATSAN Katgut Sanayi ve Tic. A.S., Dipromed Srl, BioCer Entwicklungs-GmbH, SAMYANG HOLDING CORPORATION, Betatech Medical, Cousin Surgery, Aspide Medical S.A.S., and others.

and others. DelveInsight analyzes that the Global Hernia Repair Devices Market was valued at USD 3.81 billion in 2020, growing at a CAGR of 5.06% during the forecast period from 2021 to 2026 to reach USD 5.11 billion by 2026.

in 2020, growing at a during the forecast period from 2021 to 2026 to reach by 2026. Advanced Medical Solutions Ltd. collaborated with Imarc Research, Inc. for a clinical trial to study the safety and efficacy LiquiBand FIX8 Open Hernia Mesh Fixation Device for the treatment of inguinal Hernia. The study is expected to be completed by the year 2022.

collaborated with for a clinical trial to study the safety and efficacy for the treatment of inguinal Hernia. The study is expected to be completed by the year 2022. In February 2021 , W. L. Gore & Associates launched GORE SYNECOR Intraperitoneal Biomaterial in Europe , the Middle East , and South Africa to address unmet needs in the Complex Hernia Repair Devices market.

launched in , the , and to address unmet needs in the Complex Hernia Repair Devices market. In September 2020 , Surgical Innovation Associates received CE Mark for its flagship absorbable mesh, DuraSorb for reconstructive and aesthetic indications including abdominal hernia prophylaxis, breast tissue support, and prosthetic breast support.

received CE Mark for its flagship absorbable mesh, for reconstructive and aesthetic indications including abdominal hernia prophylaxis, breast tissue support, and prosthetic breast support. On August 11, 2020 , Deep Blue Medical, a company dedicated to addressing the high rate of hernia occurrence and recurrence received 510(k) FDA clearance for its T-Line Hernia Mesh with integrated suture-like extensions for superior and high anchoring strength.

a company dedicated to addressing the high rate of hernia occurrence and recurrence received 510(k) FDA clearance for its with integrated suture-like extensions for superior and high anchoring strength. In June 2020 , W. L. Gore & Associates received CE mark for GORE SYNECOR , tri-layer hybrid material designed for ease of use during laparoscopic, robotic, and open surgical procedures.

received CE mark for , tri-layer hybrid material designed for ease of use during laparoscopic, robotic, and open surgical procedures. In March 2020 , Novus Scientific AB received FDA approval for TIGR Matrix Surgical Mesh indicated for use in procedures involving soft tissue repairs, such as for the repair of Hernias or other facial defects.

received FDA approval for indicated for use in procedures involving soft tissue repairs, such as for the repair of Hernias or other facial defects. Thus, owing to the approvals and launch of several devices, there will be a rapid growth observed in the Hernia Repair Devices market during the forecast period.

To pick on the latest highlights related to Hernia Repair Devices market, get the snapshot of the key highlights entailed in the Hernia Repair Devices Market Report

Hernia Repair Devices Overview

Hernia Repair Devices include the mesh and fixators for the Hernia treatment. These devices especially the mesh support damaged tissue around hernias as it heals. The surgeons place the mesh across the area that is surrounding the Hernia, thereby attaching it with stitches, glues, or staples. The pores in the mesh allow the tissue to grow within the device. The main reason for using Hernia Repair Devices is to lower the risks associated with hernia recurring, or appearing back, as there is a high chance of hernia returning after a repair surgery is performed.

Hernia Repair Devices Market Insight

Geographically, the Global Hernia Repair Devices market is studied for North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and the Rest of the World. In terms of revenue share North America currently leads the Global Hernia Repair Devices market and is expected to remain constant during the forecast period. This domination is owing to the growing demand for Hernia Repair Devices because of the high prevalence of hernia in US, rising adoption of hernia repair devices, especially the biologic mesh devices that are highly adopted in the United States, presence of key Hernia Repair Devices market players is the maximum in the United States owing to which access to new and advanced hernia repair devices is also at peak in the region among other factors in the region.

Furthermore, the prompt and well-established healthcare services and infrastructure contributes to the growth of the regional Hernia Repair Devices market growth. Moreover, the presence of large pool of hernia patients in the region and supportive reimbursement programs further provide immense growth opportunities for the Hernia Repair Devices market.

Additionally, the product approvals in the region will further spur the Hernia Repair Devices market in the region. For instance, in March 2020, Novus Scientific AB received FDA approval for TIGR Matrix Surgical Mesh indicated for use in procedures involving soft tissue repair, such as for the repair of hernias or other facial defects.

Also, in July 2020, BD (Becton, Dickinson and Company) received FDA clearance for 3DMax MID Anatomical Mesh indicated for use in the reinforcement of soft tissue, where weakness exists, in the repair of inguinal hernias.

Click here to understand more about the key players in the Hernia Repair Devices Market and their future @ Hernia Repair Devices Future Assessment

Hernia Repair Devices Market Dynamics

The rise in demand for Hernia Repair Devices is primarily attributed to the rising incidence of Hernia, growing surgeries for Hernia treatment, technological advancement in the product portfolio, and favourable reimbursement scenarios, among others directly increasing the Hernia Repair Devices market growth. The Global Hernia Repair Devices market is expected to witness significant growth owing to the rising prevalence of Hernia amongst the patients, increasing product approvals pertaining to Hernia Repair Devices. Furthermore, due to the availability of a large number of Hernia mesh products in the market will lead to a rise in the overall demand for Hernia Repair Devices, leading to an overall increase in the Hernia Repair Devices market growth. In addition, rising clinical trials for establishing the safety of Hernia meshes are also anticipated to fuel the Hernia Repair Devices market.

However, on the contrary, certain factors such as the high cost of the Hernia Repair surgery along with the devices and stringent regulatory process may pose a minor hurdle for the growth of the Hernia Repair Devices market. Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic had a profound impact on elective and non-urgent surgeries across the countries. The Hernia Repair Devices market is primarily affected by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The government imposed lockdowns to curb the spread of the virus leading to restrictions in movement and a decrease in regular check-ups. Owing to the COVID-19 pandemic situation, various forms of hernia repair procedures were temporarily reduced in contrast to the COVID-19 affected patients that were given utmost priority leading to a decrease in the Hernia Repair Devices market growth.

To gain a better understanding of the COVID-19 impact on Hernia Repair Devices, get a snapshot of the COVID-19 Impact On Hernia Repair Devices Market

Scope of the Hernia Repair Devices Market Report

Coverage : Global

Global Study Period: 2021-2026

2021-2026 Market Segmentation By Product Type - Hernia Mesh [Synthetic Mesh And Biologic/Bioresorbable Mesh], Hernia Fixators [Tack Applicators, Staplers, Sutures, Glue Applicators]

- Hernia Mesh [Synthetic Mesh And Biologic/Bioresorbable Mesh], Hernia Fixators [Tack Applicators, Staplers, Sutures, Glue Applicators] Market Segmentation By Type- Devices And Consumables

Devices And Consumables Market Segmentation By Surgical Type - Inguinal Hernia Repair, Incisional Hernia Repair, Ventral Hernia Repair, Femoral Hernia Repair, Umbilical Hernia Repair

- Inguinal Hernia Repair, Incisional Hernia Repair, Ventral Hernia Repair, Femoral Hernia Repair, Umbilical Hernia Repair Market Segmentation By Procedure Type - Open And Laparoscopic

Open And Laparoscopic Market Segmentation By End-User - Hospitals, Ambulatory Surgical Centers, And Others

- Hospitals, Ambulatory Surgical Centers, And Others Market Segmentation By Geography - North America , Europe , Asia-Pacific , and Rest of World

- , , , and Rest of World Key Hernia Repair Devices Companies - Medtronic, Johnson & Johnson, Inc., B. Braun Melsungen AG, Cook, Gem Srl, PRIMEQUAL SA, Becton, Dickinson and Company, Deep Blue Medical Inc., Meril Life Sciences Pvt. Ltd., Changzhou Medical Equipment General Factory Co., Ltd., Sinolinks Medical Innovation, Inc., W.L. Gore & Associates, Herniamesh S.r.l., KATSAN Katgut Sanayi ve Tic. A.S., Dipromed Srl, BioCer Entwicklungs-GmbH, SAMYANG HOLDING CORPORATION, Betatech Medical, Cousin Surgery, Aspide Medical S.A.S., among others

Medtronic, Johnson & Johnson, Inc., B. Braun Melsungen AG, Cook, Gem Srl, PRIMEQUAL SA, Becton, Dickinson and Company, Deep Blue Medical Inc., Meril Life Sciences Pvt. Ltd., Changzhou Medical Equipment General Factory Co., Ltd., Sinolinks Medical Innovation, Inc., W.L. Gore & Associates, Herniamesh S.r.l., KATSAN Katgut Sanayi ve Tic. A.S., Dipromed Srl, BioCer Entwicklungs-GmbH, SAMYANG HOLDING CORPORATION, Betatech Medical, Cousin Surgery, Aspide Medical S.A.S., among others Porter's Five Forces Analysis

Product Profiles

Case Studies

KOL's Views

Analyst's View

Delveinsight Analysis: The Global Hernia Repair Devices Market was valued at USD 3.81 billion in 2020, growing at a CAGR of 5.06% during the forecast period from 2021 to 2026 to reach USD 5.11 billion by 2026.

Know more about which MedTech player is set to emerge as the trendsetter in the Global Hernia Repair Devices Market @ Key Hernia Repair Devices Companies Analysis

Table of Contents

1 Hernia Repair Devices Market Report Introduction 2 Hernia Repair Devices Market Executive summary 3 Hernia Repair Devices Market Regulatory and Patent Analysis 4 Hernia Repair Devices Market Key Factors Analysis 5 Hernia Repair Devices Porter's Five Forces Analysis 6 COVID-19 Impact Analysis on Hernia Repair Devices Market 7 Hernia Repair Devices Market Layout 8 Hernia Repair Devices Market Global Company Share Analysis  Key 3-5 Companies 9 Hernia Repair Devices Market Company and Product Profiles

9.1 Medtronic 9.2 Johnson & Johnson, Inc. 9.3 B. Braun Melsungen AG 9.4 Cook 9.5 Gem Srl 9.6 PRIMEQUAL SA 9.7 Becton, Dickinson and Company 9.8 Deep Blue Medical Inc. 9.9 Meril Life Sciences Pvt. Ltd. 9.10 Changzhou Medical Equipment General Factory Co., Ltd 10 Project Approach 11 KOL Views 12 DelveInsight Capabilities 13 Disclaimer 14 About DelveInsight

Learn more about the report offerings @ Hernia Repair Devices Market Outlook

Related Reports

Inguinal Hernia Devices Market

"DelveInsight's 'Inguinal Hernia Devices Market Insight, Competitive Landscape and Market Forecast, 2026' report delivers an in-depth understanding of Inguinal Hernia devices and the historical and forecasted Inguinal Hernia market trends, drivers and barriers as well as key Inguinal Hernia devices companies involved such as B Braun Melsungen AG, Cook Medical, Medtronic Plc, W.L. Gore & Associates, C.R Bard Inc, Atrium, LifeCell Corporation, Baxter International, Herniamesh S r l, and several others.

Inguinal Hernia Market

DelveInsight's "Inguinal Hernia Market Insights, Epidemiology, and Market Forecast-2032" report delivers an in-depth understanding of the Inguinal Hernia, historical and forecasted epidemiology, as well as the Inguinal Hernia market trends, market drivers and barriers, as well as key Inguinal Hernia companies, involved such as B Braun Melsungen AG, Cook Medical, Medtronic Plc, W.L. Gore & Associates, C.R Bard Inc, Atrium, LifeCell Corporation, Baxter International, Herniamesh S r l, and several others.

Hiatal Hernia Market

DelveInsight's "Hiatal Hernia Market Insights, Epidemiology, and Market Forecast-2032" report delivers an in-depth understanding of the Hiatal Hernia, historical and forecasted epidemiology as well as the Hiatal Hernia market trends, market drivers and barriers, as well as key Hiatal Hernia companies involved.

Ventral Hernia Market

DelveInsight's "Ventral Hernia Market Insights, Epidemiology, and Market Forecast-2032" report delivers an in-depth understanding of the Ventral Hernia, historical and forecasted epidemiology as well as the Ventral Hernia market trends in the United States, EU5 (Germany, Spain, Italy, France, and United Kingdom) and Japan.

Ventral Hernia Epidemiology

DelveInsight's "Ventral Hernia Epidemiology Forecast to 2032" report delivers an in-depth understanding of the disease, historical and forecasted Ventral Hernia epidemiology in the 7MM, i.e., the United States, EU5 (Germany, Spain, Italy, France, and the United Kingdom), and Japan.

Dermatome Devices Market

DelveInsight's 'Dermatome Devices Market Insights, Competitive Landscape and Market Forecast-2026' report delivers an in-depth understanding of dermatome devices and the historical and forecasted dermatome devices market trends, market drivers, market barriers, unmet needs and key Dermatome Devices companies involved like Nouvag, Aesculap, Integra, Zimmer Biomet, B.Braun Melsungen, Humeca, DeSoutter Medical, Aygun Surgical Instruments, Richard Wolf GmbH, Surtex Instruments Limited, and many more.

Radiofrequency Ablation Devices Market

DelveInsight's 'Radiofrequency Ablation Devices Market Insights, Competitive Landscape and Market Forecast - 2026' report delivers an in-depth understanding of Radiofrequency Ablation Devices and the historical and forecasted Radiofrequency Ablation Devices market trends in the US, EU5, Japan, market drivers, market barriers and unmet medical needs to curate best of the opportunities and key Radiofrequency Ablation Devices companies involved like Stryker Corporation, St. Jude Medical, Inc, Medtronic Plc, Boston Scientific Corporation, C. R. Bard, Inc., AngioDynamics, Inc., Hologic, Inc., AtriCure, Inc., Johnson & Johnson, Baylis Medical, Arthrex, Inc, and many more.

Laser Resurfacing Devices Market

DelveInsight's 'Laser Resurfacing Devices Market Insights, Competitive Landscape and Market Forecast - 2026' report delivers an in-depth understanding of Laser Resurfacing Devices and the historical and forecasted Laser Resurfacing Devices market trends, market drivers, market barriers and key Laser Resurfacing Devices companies involved like Altair Instruments, Lynton Lasers Ltd, Cutera, Quanta System, Candela Medical, Quanta System, Sciton, Inc, SharpLight Technologies Inc, Coherent, Inc. and many more.

Urology Lasers Market

DelveInsight's 'Urology Lasers Market Insights, Competitive Landscape and Market Forecast2026' report delivers an in-depth understanding of Urology Lasers and the historical and forecasted Urology Lasers market trends, market drivers, market barriers, and key Urology Lasers companies involved such as Olympus Corporation, Stryker Corporation, Boston Scientific Corporation, Richard Wolf GmbH, Cook Medical Incorporated, KARL STORZ GmbH, Lumenis Ltd. and many others.

Other Trending Reports by DelveInsight

Interested to know more about the breakthrough happenings? Take a look at the posts below

MedTech Industry Roars Back as FDA Approvals Soar

Medical Devices Market Blooms as the Key MedTech Companies Continue to Bring-In Innovation

Wearable Devices : Weighing the Potential Benefits and Pitfalls of the Innovative Wearable Products

About DelveInsight

DelveInsight is a leading Business Consultant, and Market Research firm focused exclusively on life sciences. It supports Pharma companies by providing comprehensive end-to-end solutions to improve their performance.

Connect With Us at LinkedIn | Facebook | Twitter

Contact Us

Shruti Thakur

[email protected]

+1(919)321-6187

www.delveinsight.com

SOURCE DelveInsight Business Research, LLP
NEW YORK, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Inato, the leading clinical trial platform for community sites, today announced the appointment of Liz Beatty to its Board of Directors. Beatty brings decades of experience in leadership and clinical trial management, along with over three years of hands-on experience serving as Inato's Chief Strategy Officer.

Liz Beatty brings decades of experience in leadership and clinical trial management, along with over three years of hands-on experience serving as Inato's Chief Strategy Officer.

Since joining Inato in 2019, Beatty has focused on advancing the company's corporate strategy, driving commercial growth with sites and pharmaceutical companies, and establishing Inato's United States organization as the US General Manager. During this time, the company has formed key commercial relationships with more than half a dozen of the top-30 global pharmaceutical companies and added more than 1,300 community-research sites to its network.

"Liz's vision has been instrumental in shaping Inato's growth and pursuing our mission of bringing clinical trial access to patients around the globe," said Kourosh Davarpanah, CEO & Co-founder of Inato. "We are thrilled to welcome her to the Board, and I know her deep experience and insights will continue to be invaluable."

"As a thoughtful leader, Liz has spearheaded conversations on improving inclusivity in clinical trials and worked tirelessly to ensure Inato's platform is making a positive impact for underserved patients," said Nan Li, Inato Board member and Venture Partner at Obvious Ventures. "Her passion and unique perspective bring diverse experience and understanding to Inato's Board."

"I am honored to join Inato's Board of Directors," said Liz Beatty. "I truly appreciate the board's confidence and look forward to working with the team to continue driving Inato's mission forward at such a critical time for our industry."

Beatty has vast experience in trial planning, protocol management, and digital technology. Prior to joining Inato, she headed digital clinical trials at Bristol-Myers Squibb, where she led digital innovation efforts across Global Clinical Operations.

About Inato

Inato is improving access to clinical research by enabling community-based investigators to bring the right trials to their patients, regardless of who they are or where they live. To do this, our platform connects global pharmaceutical companies with a broader range of research sites, while ensuring reliable high performance through collaborative, evidence-based enrollment planning, and ongoing support. By enabling community sites to select the right opportunities for them, we make trials more accessible, efficient, and inclusive. For more information, visit inato.com .

Media Contact:

Jennifer Rodriguez, Firecracker PR

(888) 317-4687 ext. 703

[email protected]

SOURCE Inato
Vehicles exit a petrol station in Accra, Ghana, on March 22, 2022. The Road Transport Coordinating Council in Ghana announced a 15 percent increase in transport fares in February as the ex-pump price of petroleum products increased constantly since the beginning of this year.(Photo by Seth/Xinhua)

ACCRA, March 23 (Xinhua) -- Amid the rising cost of petroleum products and transport fares, many Ghanaians told Xinhua in a street interview this week that they are feeling increasing hardships.

The Road Transport Coordinating Council in Ghana announced a 15 percent increase in transport fares in February as the ex-pump price of petroleum products increased constantly since the beginning of this year.

Richmond Larbie, a banker who commutes between the capital Accra and the eastern port city Tema daily, told Xinhua that the additional one Ghana cedi (0.13 U.S. dollars) charged fare per trip along that corridor had a rippling effect on his cost of living.

"The cost of living has increased due to higher transport fares and has reduced the general standard of living since there is no corresponding increase in incomes to compensate for the increasing fares and higher prices of general goods and services," Larbie said.

The situation becomes critical for urban populations, many of whom change buses at least once daily before reaching their destinations.

Vivian Braimah, a secondhand clothes vendor, said the higher transport costs and commodity prices had crippled businesses and affected the incomes of traders.

"Things are even more difficult for those with children of school-going age, because with my three children, their transport costs, food subsidies, and other costs have all doubled, and families can't even enjoy three square meals a day," Braimah told Xinhua.

Braimah urged the government to introduce some measures to ease the hardships of citizens and lessen their plights a little.

Amid the hue and cry by Ghanaians, commercial bus drivers still have to seek further increases in their fares in line with the constant rise in petroleum prices.

"We have to start training to commute to work on foot because the transport fares may become unbearable," said Rebecca Akordor, a clothes vendor at Makola, the central market in the CBD.

"It is no secret that our economy is going through difficult times. It is also no secret that we are not alone in this situation. Many of the phenomena we face are also apparent in many parts of the world," Ghanaian President Nana Addo Dankwa Akuffo-Addo said late Tuesday, during a meeting with the Council of State, the constitutionally mandated advisory body to the president.

The president vowed that the government would make some "difficult but necessary decisions" to bring the economy back on track and lessen the impact of these challenges on the people.

Ernest Addison, the central bank governor, said Monday that the government planned to pump about two billion dollars into the economy through budget financing.

Addison said he was hopeful that this action would strengthen the Ghana cedi together with monetary policy measures.

Some Ghanaians told Xinhua that they hope a stronger cedi would also reduce the impact of exchange rate depreciation on petroleum price build-up, thereby resulting in lower ex-pump prices, transportation costs, and commodity prices, to ease the harsh economic conditions in the country. 

Vehicles run on the main road in Accra, Ghana, on March 22, 2022. The Road Transport Coordinating Council in Ghana announced a 15 percent increase in transport fares in February as the ex-pump price of petroleum products increased constantly since the beginning of this year.

TO GO WITH "Feature: Ghanaians lament hardships amid fuel price, transport fare hikes" (Photo by Seth/Xinhua)

Vendors sell products in a busy street in Accra, Ghana, on March 21, 2022. The Road Transport Coordinating Council in Ghana announced a 15 percent increase in transport fares in February as the ex-pump price of petroleum products increased constantly since the beginning of this year.

TO GO WITH "Feature: Ghanaians lament hardships amid fuel price, transport fare hikes" (Photo by Seth/Xinhua)

A ticker seller waits for passengers in a street in Accra, Ghana, on March 21, 2022. The Road Transport Coordinating Council in Ghana announced a 15 percent increase in transport fares in February as the ex-pump price of petroleum products increased constantly since the beginning of this year.

TO GO WITH "Feature: Ghanaians lament hardships amid fuel price, transport fare hikes" (Photo by Seth/Xinhua)

Vendors sell products in a busy street in Accra, Ghana, on March 21, 2022. The Road Transport Coordinating Council in Ghana announced a 15 percent increase in transport fares in February as the ex-pump price of petroleum products increased constantly since the beginning of this year.

TO GO WITH "Feature: Ghanaians lament hardships amid fuel price, transport fare hikes" (Photo by Seth/Xinhua)
AUSTIN, Texas, March 22, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Digital Realty (NYSE: DLR), the largest global provider of cloud- and carrier-neutral data center, colocation and interconnection solutions, announced today the appointment of Jordan Sadler as Senior Vice President, Public and Private Investor Relations. Mr. Sadler will be responsible for directing and further developing Digital Realty's market-leading Investor Relations program. He will begin in mid-April and will report directly to Digital Realty President and Chief Financial Officer Andrew P. Power.

Mr. Sadler brings extensive experience within the investment community. He joins Digital Realty from KeyBanc Capital Markets, where he built and led one of Wall Street's largest and most prominent REIT research franchises. He most recently served as a Managing Director, Equity Research Analyst at KeyBanc, overseeing a team that covered more than 65 stocks across all property subsectors, including Digital Realty and other data center REITs. Prior to KeyBanc, Mr. Sadler was a senior member of Citigroup's top-ranked real estate research team and previously served on the leveraged finance team at Natexis Banques Populaires. He began his career as an Associate with Fleet Financial Group's Large Corporate Banking Group.

"We're thrilled to welcome Jordan to the Digital Realty team," said Digital Realty Chief Executive Officer A. William Stein. "Jordan is one of the most seasoned and well-regarded research analysts within the data center sector and has covered Digital Realty since 2006. Over the past two decades, he has built deep relationships and provided invaluable insights across the analyst and investor community, and we are confident that his strong standing and extensive expertise will help ensure a strong understanding of the continued growth of our global platform."

"Digital Realty is an industry leader at the forefront of data center innovation," said Sadler. "Over the past several years, Digital Realty has enhanced and extended its global platform, broadening its appeal to investors around the world in the process. I'm delighted to have the opportunity to work closely with the company and its global public shareholder base while collaborating with its growing pool of private capital partners."

Mr. Sadler replaces John Stewart, who has assumed the role of Chief Executive Officer of Digital Core REIT, a standalone publicly traded company on the Singapore Stock Exchange sponsored by, and externally managed by Digital Realty.

About Digital Realty

Digital Realty supports the world's leading enterprises and service providers by delivering the full spectrum of data center, colocation, and interconnection solutions. PlatformDIGITAL, the company's global data center platform, provides customers a trusted foundation and proven Pervasive Datacenter Architecture (PDx) solution methodology for scaling digital business and efficiently managing Data Gravity challenges. Digital Realty's global data center footprint gives customers access to the connected communities that matter to them with over 280 facilities in nearly 50 metros across 25 countries on six continents. For more information, please visit digitalrealty.com or follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Media & Industry Analyst Relations

Helen Bleasdale

Digital Realty

+1 (737) 267-6822

[email protected]

Public Investor Relations

Jim Huseby

Digital Realty

+1 (415) 738-6500

[email protected]

Safe Harbor Statement

This press release contains forward-looking statements which are based on current expectations, forecasts and assumptions that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual outcomes and results to differ materially, including statements relating to strategy, our plans and organization. For a list and description of risks and uncertainties, please see the company's reports and other filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. 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.

SOURCE Digital Realty
Award-Winning Product Line Unveils Fun New Packaging

CHICAGO, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Koita Foods , the maker of premium Italian plant-based milks, is pleased to announce that it has expanded the distribution of its products through United Natural Foods, Inc. (UNFI) and KeHE Distributors.

Koita has also launched new packaging for its award-winning line of five plant-based milks. The new designs incorporate fun, personified images to breathe new life into the shelf-stable, plant-based milk aisle.

Named a "Best Plant-Based Milk" by The Wall Street Journal last year, Koita is also the winner of a sofi Award from the Specialty Food Association and the Healthy Food Award from Prevention Magazine.

"Last year was an award-winning year for Koita. Now we are thrilled that UNFI and KeHE have started to distribute our delicious plant-based milks to get them placed on more shelves and in consumers' hands," said Koita Foods' Founder Mustafa Koita. "The U.S. is the 11th country launch for our products, and after looking at the shelf-stable milk aisles, we realized it was time for a bolder look that brought more fun and life into the category. We hope our new packaging entices more shoppers to give our uniquely Italian plant-based milks a try."

The line is currently rolling out in 50 more independent stores in New York and New Jersey, including Green's Natural Foods, The Natural Green Market, Green Life Market, and Health & Harmony. In addition, Koita is also launching in food service and gaining traction in bubble tea cafes.

Koita's non-dairy, vegan milks are all gluten free, non-GMO and free of carrageenan, and three flavors are certified organic. The products are made with ingredients grown in the Italian Alps, which boasts one of the purest soils in the world. It's that nutrient-rich soil that leads to Koita's incredibly creamy and clean-tasting set of plant-based milks. All of Koita's milks are produced in Italian factories that follow strict cleanliness guidelines.

All flavors of Koita Plant-Based Milk are shelf stable at room temperature. They are steam-treated using an innovative process that retains taste and extends shelf life. Koita is sustainable, with Tetra Pak packaging that is recyclable and shipments that arrive by sea to ensure a lower carbon footprint.

The full line is available in 1-liter packs (approx. SRP $5.49). Koita Plant-Based Milks are available in five mouthwatering flavors: Organic Almond, Organic Coconut, Organic Almond Coconut, Oat, and Rice.

About Koita Foods

Koita Foods is a family-run, minority-owned, international business. Mustafa Koita, a dynamic entrepreneur from Chicago, founded the company in 2013 after moving to Dubai and discovering that healthy milk options were unavailable. The company sells organic, lactose-free and dairy-free milks at 1000+ retailers across 10 emerging markets spanning the Middle East and Asia. Now in the U.S., Koita's premium, Italian plant-based milks are non-GMO, shelf stable and uniquely clean tasting. In addition to grocery retailers, Koita milks are available on amazon.com . Visit koita.com and follow @koitausa on Instagram and Facebook .

Lisa Lazarczyk

[email protected]/617-838-7327

SOURCE Koita Foods
Real-time quoting on key commercial lines of business is a game-changer for independent agencies to offer clients choice and modernized service

DENVER, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Vertafore, the leader in modern insurance technology, today announced that CNA Insurance is the latest carrier to join its Commercial Submissions solution. As one of the country's largest commercial property and casualty insurance companies, CNA's addition to the platform brings independent agencies even greater choice to quickly quote coverage for their business clients.

Commercial Submissions solves one of the insurance industry's most enduring friction points for quoting for essential business coverage. With automated data entry, seamless integration with Vertafore's agency management systems and real-time connectivity between agencies and carriers, Commercial Submissions significantly reduces the manual labor, multiple touchpoints and duplicate data entry that independent agents currently spend to find the right coverage for their business clients.

CNA works with highly professional independent agents to ensure clients receive the personal service and attention they look for in a carrier. The insurer plans to start its participation on Commercial Submissions in the coming weeks with workers' compensation, followed by BOP in the first half of the year.

"Joining Commercial Submissions can help drive value for the agents we work with, helping grow their businesses and meet their business objectives," said Stephen Marohn, Senior Vice President, Small Business at CNA. "It has always been our goal to provide innovative solutions and leveraging Commercial Submissions offers another avenue for our clients to meet their goals effectively and efficiently."

Commercial insurance quoting at the speed of modern business

Vertafore is the industry's leader in market connectivity. In 2021, the company facilitated more than $13 billion in real-time carrier/agency premium submissions through its rating and connectivity solutions. Vertafore leverages its connectivity expertise to simplify and automate commercial lines for the independent agency channel.

"Commercial Submissions delivers a game-changing experience for commercial quotes," said Vertafore CEO Amy Zupon. "This is technology that brings agencies and carriers closer together. It cuts through manual work and clutter. And it enables agencies to deliver the service and risk management advice their clients are looking for."

Early agency adopters report that Commercial Submissions saves time, improves their profitability on commercial policies and enables them to better service their clients by offering multiple quotes in less time than it takes to get one quote through traditional workflows.

Carriers on the platform also benefit from greater visibility for their commercial lines products within Vertafore's unparalleled community of independent agencies.

A competitive edge for independent agencies

Leavitt Group, the nation's twelfth largest privately held insurance brokerage, is a Commercial Submissions early adopter and leverages CNA's products for its clients. With CNA on the platform, Leavitt is looking forward to being able to provide more coverage choices at the speed that their small commercial clients need.

"One of the reasons CNA is such a key partner for us is because of their strength in the small business coverage space," said Joe Callister, chief operating officer at Leavitt Group. "We're so excited about what Commercial Submissions is going to offer our agents because it brings everything into one place with one convenient application that's seamlessly tied into our management system."

"Our clients want quicker results and faster answers when they come to us, and more digital capabilities so they can engage with us when and where they want to," Callister added. "That's what a commercial quoting platform provides usthe ability to give our clients the experience they need and want. And for our agents, it frees up their time so they can focus on advising clients instead of chasing paperwork."

Vertafore will showcase Commercial Submissions and its latest innovations in market connectivity at Accelerate, powered by NetVU, March 2831, 2022. Accelerate is the industry's first and longest running Insurtech conference.

About CNA

CNA is one of the largest U.S. commercial property and casualty insurance companies. Backed by more than 120 years of experience, CNA provides a broad range of standard and specialized insurance products and services for businesses and professionals in the U.S., Canada and Europe. For more information, please visit CNA at www.cna.com.

About Vertafore

As North America's InsurTech leader for more than 50 years, Vertafore is modernizing and simplifying the insurance life cycle so that our customers can focus on what matters most. Vertafore's solutions provide end-to-end connectivity across the distribution channel, improve the client and agent experience, unlock the power of data, and streamline essential workflows to drive efficiency, productivity, and profitability for independent agencies, MGAs and carriers. For more information about Vertafore, visit www.vertafore.com.

2022 Vertafore and the Vertafore logo are registered trademarks of Vertafore. All rights reserved. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

MEDIA CONTACT:

Liz Reilly

Next PR

[email protected]

SOURCE Vertafore
Scott's philanthropic investment will accelerate National Medical Fellowships' work developing diverse leaders committed to dismantling systemic and structural racism in health care.

ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- National Medical Fellowships (NMF) announced that philanthropist MacKenzie Scott has made a $12 million gift to the organization, which is the single largest gift in the organization's 76-year history.

NMF has worked for decades to build health equity by providing scholarships to Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) medical students. In recent years, it has extended its support to scholars seeking to serve in other critical roles in the health care workforce.

NMF is the only organization devoted exclusively to this mission and centering its work on the health-wealth gap. The Education Data Initiative reported in 2021 that the average medical school student debt was $215,900, but it can soar to as high as $300,000, and these figures do not account for premedical education debt. Economic disparities create conditions where more student underrepresented in medicineBlack, Indigenous, and Latino studentsgraduate with debt and at higher levels. NMF is working to lower the barriers to medical education and increase the diversity of the health care workforce to ensure all communities receive equitable care.

"MacKenzie Scott's transformative philanthropic investment is the jet fuel NMF needs to take bold and decisive action to build a more equitable and healthy future for communities of color in the U.S.," says NMF President and CEO Michellene Davis, Esq. "This gift is particularly timely as the COVID-19 pandemic takes a disproportionate toll on communities of color and shines a spotlight on the human cost of health inequity. NMF will use this unrestricted gift to build its endowment and accelerate our work to invest in the development of BIPOC health care leaders who are laser-focused on eliminating unnecessary and preventable health disparities experienced by communities of color."

The allocation of funds with be determined by NMF's president and CEO and board of directors in the coming weeks.

"NMF is deeply grateful that MacKenzie Scott has recognized the impactful work we have been doing for more than 75 years to advance health equity by providing scholarships to students underrepresented in medicine" says NMF Board of Directors Chair and alumna Sandra B. Nichols, MD, FAAFP, MHCDS, MS. "This gift sends a message to these students who are interested in pursuing a career in health care. It tells them they are needed, welcomed, and will be supported as they work to attain their degrees so they may transform the health care system into one that serves all communities equally."

About National Medical Fellowships

National Medical Fellowships, Inc. is the only private national organization devoted to providing scholarships and support specifically for students underrepresented in medicine and the health professions. Over the course of its history, NMF has provided over $45 million to more than 32,000 students and aspiring health professionals. NMF was founded in 1946 and was one of the first diversity organizations in the U.S.

Contact: Samantha Gordon

[email protected]

Skai Blue Media

SOURCE National Medical Fellowships
The free virtual event will offer community members information on affordable housing.

CHICAGO, March 18, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Meridian of Illinois, a leading provider of government-sponsored managed care services in Illinois, is partnering with the Chicago Urban League and the Chicago Housing Authority for a free webinar on affordable housing, rent, and homeownership.

Meridian, a managed care organization that partners with HealthChoice Illinois, is hosting the virtual event to provide the community with helpful information on renting, buying a home, preparing to move, and available options for anyone who might be behind on their rent or mortgage. Also, there will be a Q&A to answer attendees' questions during the live webinar.

"Housing is one of many social determinants of health that affect our overall quality of life. When families spend most of their income on where they live, this can leave them with less to spend on healthy food or healthcare, which can lead to increased stress and risk for disease," said Mayank K. Shah, M.D., Chief Medical Officer of Meridian of Illinois. "With the help of our partners, the webinar will provide information and much-needed resources to address some of the issues that impact the health and well-being of those in the communities we serve."

Meridian is hosting the webinar as part of an ongoing series called "Meridian Mondays" to provide helpful information from experts on various topics, free of charge. In February, they hosted an event on "What You Need to Know About Your Taxes in 2022," which shared best practices and education on filing an income tax return.

The event will take place on Zoom on Monday, March 21 from 6 to 7 p.m. To attend, community members can register at http://bit.ly/meridianmondayhousing.

For more information about Meridian, visit ILmeridian.com.

About Meridian of Illinois

Meridian of Illinois offers three managed care plans: the Meridian Medicaid Plan, the Meridian Medicare-Medicaid Plan, and the Meridian Managed Long Term Services & Supports Plan. We connect members to care and offer comprehensive services to support lifelong health and wellness. Learn more at ILMeridian.com.

About the Chicago Urban League

Established in 1916, the Chicago Urban League works to achieve equity for Black families and communities through social and economic empowerment. For more information, visit www.ChiUL.org.

About the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA)

The CHA's vision is to foster strong, vibrant communities throughout Chicago by increasing affordable housing choices for low-income families. The CHA is also the largest rental housing owner in the City of Chicago. It serves more than 133,000 people in 63,000 households across the city through our Public Housing, Housing Choice Voucher, and Project-Based Voucher programs. For more information, visit www.thecha.org.

SOURCE Meridian of Illinois
PORTLAND, Ore., March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The Dyrt, the No. 1 app for camping with the most active camping community in the world, found that 40 percent of the people who went camping for the first time in 2021 identified as Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. This is up from just 23 percent in 2018, representing a two-thirds increase in four years according to the 2022 Camping Report , an in-depth look at the industry recently released by The Dyrt .

First-time campers are increasingly more diverse

"Our mission from the very beginning has been to make camping easier and more accessible for everyone," says Sarah Smith, co-founder of The Dyrt. "Seeing these statistics is so encouraging. The camping community is becoming increasingly more diverse, and that's a wonderful trend that we hope continues. The outdoors are truly for everyone."

The 2022 Camping Report found that 8.3 million people went camping in the US for the first time in 2021. That puts the total number of new campers who identify as BIPOC at 3.3 million. In total, one in five Americans camped last year.

The report is based on a random sample of thousands of The Dyrt users, as well as two separate third-party surveys. The Dyrt also interviewed some respondents, including these members of The Dyrt community who camped for the first time in 2021.

Jose Delgado of West Covina, CA: "I always wanted to do real camping. We ended up on a private ranch in Zion, and I've never seen the stars as clearly as I did there. After a long day of hiking, enjoying the sunset and the stars at night with the crackling fire ... it amplifies the experience of enjoying Mother Nature with the ones you love."

Zixuan "Felicity" Meng of Alberta, Canada: "My family went to an RV show and we were inspired to buy a trailer. As a person with a mild intellectual disability, I would say to anyone with a disability, go camping  it can boost your confidence as a person and bring you fullness and happiness. I love camping, end of story."

Caroline Munoz of San Diego, CA: "My mom and dad weren't into hiking or being outside. My girlfriend loved the outdoors so we went camping together. She showed me how to pitch a tent and build a fire. It was super helpful to have someone to guide me. We broke up, but I wanted to go camping again. I have planned a bunch of trips in 2022."

About The Dyrt

The Dyrt's mission is to expand the camping community and help more people enjoy the outdoors. With over 30 million annual camper visits and 4 million user-generated reviews and photos for US campgrounds, The Dyrt is the No. 1 app for camping and the largest source of camping information. The Dyrt PRO enables campers to plan road trips, find free camping areas on public lands, use the app offline and more. www.thedyrt.com

Media Contact

Maggie Fisher

860-526-1555

[email protected]

SOURCE The Dyrt
A new zero-cost launch program is now available to mobility companies with a drive to enter the Latin American market. Tweet this

"The current global energy crisis precipitated the need for sustainable user-centric mobility solutions around the world," said Kazuna Yamamoto, guil VC specialist. "Guil supports high-impact startups intending to scale to the Latin American market. The program is based on years of research and experience across the company as well as the Kaufmann group's mission to facilitate mobility. Our methodology lets us test and grow a wide range of solutions."

Guil Mobility Ventures' portfolio includes Awto, the largest Latin American car sharing startup; EVSY, the "waze" of electric vehicle owners; eTrans, which develops fleet management systems for transportation; Kupos, which digitizes payment methods for transport in Chile; Quickspace, a marketplace for cargo services, and others.

"We want guil to become a global mobility player, helping to create better solutions for mobility worldwide," said Juan Pablo Hernandez, guil business designer. "That's why our objective this year involves investing in global mobility-centered VCs as an LP, to expand our network and our reach."

The program serves as a gateway to Latin America, providing access to the region's most established stakeholders and VCs as well as possible pilots with corporations. Among the funds that have already confirmed their participation in the program, notable names include: BDev Ventures (U.S.), MobilityFund (Germany), WAYRA (Spain), Endeavor Chile, WeBoost, Alaya Capital, Overboost, iThink VC, Proeza Ventures, Liil Ventures, FEN Ventures, and DADNEO Ventures (LatAm).

Startup founders, coding bootcamp leaders, and mobility policy decision makers from Europe, Asia, and the U.S. have confirmed their participation as guil accelerator mentors and experts. The application will be available until March 31.

Startups raised a record $14.8 billion across 800 deals in LatAm in 2021, making it the fastest-growing region for VC and global players, including Uber. The need for sustainable mobility solutions has never been greater: LatAm is one of the world's most urbanized regions, with about 80% of the population in large cities. By 2025, only the shared scooter market in LatAm is expected to grow at 25.4 CAGR.

About the Kaufmann Group

Kaufmann S.A. Vehiculos Motorizados is an automobile distributor established in 1950 and headquartered in Santiago, Chile. The company offers cars, trucks, buses, minibuses, vans, and more. The group employs around 2,000 people across different locations.

About guil Mobility Ventures

The company was founded in 2019 by the Kaufmann group with the objective to create and support startups focused on mobility. These solutions are designed to be user-centric, with a social, environmental, or economic impact. Guil Mobility Ventures consists of an accelerator, a company builder, and a VC fund. The word "guil" itself has two meanings: "wheel," as in mobility, and "will," as in "willpower."

SOURCE guil Mobility Ventures
Industry Veteran and Brand Co-Founder to Provide Global Vision and Strategic Direction

MIAMI, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Oceania Cruises, the world's leading culinary- and destination-focused cruise line, announced the appointment of Frank Del Rio Jr. as Chief Sales & Marketing Officer for the brand. As Chief Sales & Marketing Officer, Del Rio will be responsible for all sales and marketing activities across the globe and lead the teams based in the brand's offices in Miami, Southampton, Sydney, and Sao Paulo. This appointment marks Del Rio's return to the company and a continuation of his 14-year tenure, which ran from 2003 through 2017.

During his time at Oceania Cruises, Regent Seven Seas Cruises, and ultimately at Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd., Del Rio rose to the rank of Senior Vice President and led all aspects of Port and Destination Services along with Onboard Revenue. During this period, Del Rio spearheaded tremendous leaps in innovation and product development, achieved significant financial efficiencies and organizational synergies, and drove record-breaking and industry-leading results in the form of revenue increases.

"I'm delighted to add Frank and his many talents to the already stellar team at Oceania Cruises. His passion, enthusiasm, and day-one familiarity with the brand, our guests, and our travel partners will take us from strength to strength," stated Howard Sherman, President & CEO of Oceania Cruises.

Del Rio is well acquainted with the line's travel partners and the retail distribution network that drives the industry. Over the course of his career, he has worked closely with many of the top travel companies such as Go Next, Food & Wine Trails, and Virtuoso Travel Network to develop new and unique destination programs for their clientele.

"I'm thrilled to be returning to a brand that I am so truly passionate about and is embedded in my DNA. I'm also eager to reconnect with the best sales and marketing team in the industry," stated Frank Del Rio Jr. "Oceania's successes are often imitated but never replicated and I look forward to many more of these great successes as we evolve and grow the acclaimed Oceania Cruises brand," added Del Rio.

Most recently, Del Rio has been involved in the private equity, finance, and tech spaces, where he was involved across a wide spectrum of products and industries, including AI, telecommunications and 5G network solutions, medical, and real estate development. A consistent thread across all of his experiences in these realms was digital transformation and disruption.

Del Rio resides in south Florida with his wife and two children. An ardent philanthropist, Del Rio devotes much of his free time to fundraising and volunteer work for multiple charities and nonprofits that provide support to those less fortunate.

For additional information on Oceania Cruises' small-ship luxury product, exquisitely crafted cuisine, and expertly curated travel experiences, visit OceaniaCruises.com, call 855-OCEANIA, or speak with a professional travel advisor.

About Oceania Cruises

Oceania Cruises is the world's leading culinary- and destination-focused cruise line. The line's seven small, luxurious ships carry a maximum of 1,210 guests and feature the finest cuisine at sea and destination-rich itineraries that span the globe. Expertly curated travel experiences aboard the designer-inspired, small ships call on more than 450 marquee and boutique ports across Europe, Alaska, Asia, Africa, Australia, New Zealand, New England-Canada, Bermuda, the Caribbean, the Panama Canal, Tahiti and the South Pacific in addition to the epic 180-day Around the World Voyages. The brand has a second 1,200-guest Allura Class ship on order for delivery in 2025. With headquarters in Miami, Oceania Cruises is owned by Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd., a diversified cruise operator of leading global cruise brands which include Norwegian Cruise Line, Oceania Cruises and Regent Seven Seas Cruises.

About Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd.

Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd. (NYSE: NCLH) is a leading global cruise company which operates the Norwegian Cruise Line, Oceania Cruises and Regent Seven Seas Cruises brands. With a combined fleet of 28 ships with nearly 60,000 berths, these brands offer itineraries to more than 490 destinations worldwide. The Company has nine additional ships scheduled for delivery through 2027, comprising of approximately 24,000 berths.

SOURCE Oceania Cruises
The Charter School Growth Fund is a nonprofit philanthropic venture capital fund that identifies the country's best public charter schools, funds their expansion, and helps to increase their impact. One City joined the Growth Fund's portfolio of high quality public charter schools in 2019, after successfully completing a comprehensive due diligence process. The Growth Fund will contribute $850,000 to One City over the next two years to support the launch of One City Preparatory Academy that will open in September 2022 with grades 6, 9 and 10.

Additionally, One City was awarded a $900,000 federally-funded Charter School Startup and Implementation Grant from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction. This grant will support the startup and operating costs of One City Preparatory Academy over the next five years.

One City's Founder and CEO, Kaleem Caire, stressed the importance of these investments in helping One City successfully launch its new early college and career secondary school. He said, "One City's transformational schools would not exist without the extraordinary giving of our local and national philanthropic communities. One City Prep will combine middle and high school, and be Wisconsin's first early college and career preparatory school where "every" student will complete college courses or professional training towards college degrees and professional certifications while they pursue their high school diplomas."

Caire further stated that, "Academic achievement and opportunity gaps have persisted between students of color and their white peers for a long time. One City's schools are focused on eliminating this gap. However, we are also focused on addressing the gap between what our children are learning in school and what they need to know and experience in middle and high school to be adequately prepared to solve major local, national and global problems that we are punting to their generation to address. Black and Latino youth in South Madison are not intentionally being trained to solve the nation's housing, food insecurity, public governance or poverty crises, and aren't being prepared to solve the twin crises of global warming and water insecurity around the world. However, they will be prepared at One City Prep Academy."

One City Preparatory Academy will open on One City's new Pleasant T. Rowland Leadership Campus in Monona/Madison, Wisconsin. It will grow to serve nearly 600 students by 2025, when it graduates its first class for high school seniors. One City expects that more than 75% of its students will complete a minimum of 30 college credits by the time they graduate from high school, while others complete professional certifications through its partnership with Madison College.

One City Schools is partnering with Madison College, the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh and the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Education. They will continue to add new college and career education partners going forward. There are more than 300 early college high schools in the United States and a number of career education programs in the United States, but none in Wisconsin that require all students to complete college and career courses starting in ninth grade.

About One City Schools

One City Schools, Incorporated is a Madison, Wisconsin-based nonprofit organization that operates three schools: a tuition-based independent preschool that serves 2 and 3-year-olds, and two tuition-free public charter schools, authorized by the University of Wisconsin System. Its mission is to seed a new model of public education that ensures young children are on track to succeed in a college or career preparatory program from birth through high school graduation. One City will eventually enroll 926 children from age 2 through through 12th grade.

SOURCE One City Schools
LAKEWOOD, Colo., March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- William Howard Taft University is currently offering a limited time tuition grant for their Master of Science in Taxation (MST) program. The first 25 eligible applicants that enroll by April 26, 2022 for the May 2022 start date will save 15% on their tuition rate for the duration of the program, lowering the cost to only $420.00 per credit.

Grant Opportunity Flyer

One of the many benefits of Taft University's MST program is that it can be completed 100% online. The program is presented using online technology requiring no classroom or seminar attendance. Their Independent Study modality gives students the flexibility to fit manage school around your career and lifestyle, making it a great option for certified public accountants, enrolled agents, and other tax professionals. Students have 8 weeks to complete each course, working independently with the support of a faculty mentor. The time to degree completion may be accelerated or extended, within the guidelines of the University.

In addition to convenience, affordability, and flexibility, Taft University has experienced faculty and relevant curriculum. The program presents current and focused information necessary to perform tax planning activities. Using many of the same reference materials found in the offices of tax professionals, the program provides the conceptual understanding and technical competence advantageous for advancement in the tax consulting profession, corporate finance departments, and government tax agencies. Each course in the program contains a series of lesson assignments, generally consisting of reading assignments supplemented occasionally by various multimedia. Students are evaluated through examinations and/or research assignments, which are submitted for faculty evaluation.

Consistent with the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) Statement on Standards for Continuing Professional Education (CPE) Programs, the University recommends 15 credits (hours) be awarded for each semester unit completed. Generally, a grade report reflecting the completion of the course is sufficient documentation. If requested by an accountancy board an official transcript will be provided at no cost. With respect to continuing education for Enrolled Agents, courses within the program also meet the standards of Treasury Department Circular 230.

To assist students with the payment of tuition, the University offers a completely interest-free installment plan - each semester, the student only needs to make a 30% down-payment at the time of enrollment, followed by 3 monthly installments.

Prospective applicants can request more information about the MST program by visiting https://www.taft.edu/2022-may-mst-15-grant-req-info or they can email [email protected] or call 303-867-1155.

Media contact:

Annie Cruz

[email protected]

714-850-4800

SOURCE William Howard Taft University
DAR ES SALAAM, March 23 (Xinhua) -- Tanzania has made enormous initiatives to enhance provision of early warning services in the country geared towards reduction of weather and climate related disasters, a senior official said on Wednesday.

Makame Mbarawa, the Minister for Works and Transport, said such initiatives include strengthening of the provision of weather and climate early warning services through the Tanzania Meteorological Authority (TMA).

He said weather forecasts and services provided by TMA have greatly improved in terms of quality and accuracy where in the recent seasons the accuracy of weather forecasts is between 93 percent and 96 percent.

Mbarawa said this accuracy is higher compared to the minimum threshold of 70 percent accuracy recommended by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

He made the remarks in a statement to mark the World Meteorological Day whose theme is Early Warning and Early Action.

"The choice of this theme seeks to put emphasis on enhancing effort to reduce impacts of disasters caused by weather and climate related hazards," he said.

Mbarawa said in recent years, the productivity of socio-economic climate sensitive sectors has been affected and increasingly vulnerable to the risks posed by climate variability and change.

"Responding to these challenges implies taking effective steps to minimize risks to the disasters," he said, adding that they include preventing new and reducing existing risks as well as managing residual risks. 
Orion Health founder and CEO, Ian McCrae, says he can't imagine being a clinician forced to make decisions based on incomplete information.

"Globally, there are too many clinicians operating without all the details regarding medications, lab results, diagnoses and medical history. As a result, patient health is often compromised and in some situations with serious consequences.

"Saudi Arabia is picking another path. Heading into a post-pandemic world, Saudi Arabia is the first country to revolutionise the delivery of healthcare for their citizens through technology and many others will follow," says McCrae.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia briefed Orion Health to create a system that allows clinicians to make informed decisions and help keep people healthier, happier and out of hospital. The brief is also to create an ecosystem of data that enables the Kingdom to apply machine learning and AI to analyse and better manage large scale disease outbreaks, pandemics and ongoing chronic conditions such as diabetes.

"Every clinician deserves to have simple, safe and secure access to the right information, at the right time. At Orion Health, we have the global view of how healthcare systems are evolving in the wake of COVID-19  and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is about to prove what's possible," says McCrae.

Orion Health's appointment builds on the company's reputation as the world leader in population health technology, operating across 15 countries including 12 US states, seven Canadian provinces and 56 percent of UK NHS regions.

About Orion Health

Orion Health is a leading global technology company that develops software to support the delivery of optimised healthcare. We provide flexible technology solutions that bring together all types of health data to support the management of individualised patient care across a health system. With 30 years' experience, Orion Health has the global healthcare experience and capabilities to help organisations realise value quickly, without compromising on the local touch required for successful delivery and support. Find out more at www.orionhealth.com.

Media Contact

Nicole Gray

Communications Manager

[email protected]

+64 21 229 0811

SOURCE Orion Health
CORRECTION NOTICE FROM PREVIOUS RELEASE DATED MARCH 11, 2022

CHARLOTTE, N.C., March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- ORPHEUM Property, Inc. (OTC: PLFF) (the "Company"), a Delaware corporation, issued a release on March 11, 2022, providing an Update on Tokens which requires the following correction:

Update on Tokens

In October 2021, the Company published a release reporting that it had contracted to receive $25,000,000 in XUSD Prime (XUSDP) crypto coins, offset by a Convertible Note for the tokens being developed by the Company. The Company received 31,911 XUSDP coins that began marketing in late 2021 at a rate exceeding the purchase price paid. The Company subsequently sold 5,000 XUSDP coins to a related party in early 2022 in exchange for a Promissory Note in the amount of $5,000,000.

The Company is also currently working with RoRa Corp to develop its own tokens based on the RoRa Prime platform and using its own assets. RoRa Corp has no relation to or affiliation with XUSD Blockchain Holdings and has no contracts or other agreements using XUSD coins.

About RoRa Corp:

RoRa Corp, based in Ciudad de Mexico, is a collection of disruptors who have embraced blockchain technology in order to identify and eliminate the existing inefficiencies and outdated processes that have plagued previous models. The firm was founded by bankers, cryptocurrency specialists, Fintech consultants, and other alternative investment experts. RoRa Corp is paving the way for digital monetization, allowing asset holders and financial institutions to buy and profit from stable coins and gold coins for their assets. RoRa's objective is to provide one million investors and high-quality asset holders the opportunity to benefit from the economic prosperity that a blockchain future promises.

Forward-Looking Statements:

Statements herein express management's beliefs and expectations regarding future performance and are forward-looking and involve risks and uncertainties, including, but not limited to, raising working capital and securing other financing, responding to competition and other risks. Actual results may differ materially from such forward-looking statements.

SOURCE ORPHEUM Property, Inc.
aUSD Ecosystem Fund will support and invest in early-stage startups building on parachain with strong aUSD use case

PALO ALTO, Calif., March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Parallel Finance, the leading decentralized lending and staking protocol that aims to bring decentralized finance to the mainstream, today announced its partnership with Acala Network on its new aUSD Ecosystem Fund that supports and invests in early-stage startups building on any parachain with a strong aUSD use case. Acala is a decentralized finance hub and stablecoin platform powering cross-blockchain liquidity and applications.

Enabling aUSD would allow users to transfer to any parachain on Polkadot and Kusama without trusting a bridge. The native decentralized stablecoin of Polkadot, aUSD is a multi-collateral, crypto-backed stablecoin that allows users to release liquidity from reserve assets to earn yield while maintaining ownership. In this partnership, the Ecosystem Fund will increase aUSD use cases within the Polkadot and Kusama ecosystems. Currently, reserve assets include DOT, KSM, ACA and KAR. Parachain tokens such as BTC and ETH will be available in the near future.

"aUSD is a key infrastructure for Polkadot's multi-chain ecosystem that will empower our users. We are proud to be joining the aUSD Ecosystem Fund as a parachain partner to grow aUSD utility within our ecosystem," said Yubo Ruan, Founder of Parallel Finance. "Anyone building in the Parallel Finance ecosystem with strong aUSD use cases can apply for funding and support here: https://medium.com/acalanetwork/polkadot-parachains-and-venture-funds-team-up-to-launch-250-million-ausd-ecosystem-fund-to-grow-1592f925799a

Additional participating parachain teams that qualify for the fund include Astar, Centrifuge, Efinity, Hydra, Manta, Moonbeam, OriginTrail and Zeitgeist.

For additional information on Parallel Finance, please visit www.parallel.fi

About Parallel Finance

Parallel Finance is a trailblazing technology company that aims to bring decentralized finance to the mainstream. Specializing in DeFi-related services and products that enable lending, trading, staking, and derivatives on multi-chains, Parallel Finance empowers everyone access to financial services through its secure, easy-to-use platform.

The California-based firm recently passed Binance to become the largest third-party program on Polkadot  just over a month since its launch. Committed to constant innovation and backed by top-tier investors, Parallel Finance plans to bring DeFi to one billion people. Learn more at https://parallel.fi

SOURCE Parallel Finance
2022 and 2023 ongoing earnings guidance to be affirmed during meetings

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M., March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- PNM Resources (NYSE: PNM) management will meet with analysts and investors this week in New York and Baltimore.

During the meetings, management is expected to affirm the company's 2022 and 2023 consolidated earnings guidance of $2.50 to $2.60 per diluted share and $2.60 to $2.75 per diluted share, respectively. Presentation materials are available on the company's website at http://www.pnmresources.com/investors/events.cfm.

Background:

PNM Resources (NYSE: PNM) is an energy holding company based in Albuquerque, N.M., with 2021 consolidated operating revenues of $1.8 billion. Through its regulated utilities, PNM and TNMP, PNM Resources provides electricity to approximately 800,000 homes and businesses in New Mexico and Texas. PNM serves its customers with a diverse mix of generation and purchased power resources totaling 3.1 gigawatts of capacity, with a goal to achieve 100% emissions-free energy by 2040. For more information, visit the company's website at www.PNMResources.com .

CONTACTS:



Analysts Media

Lisa Goodman Ray Sandoval

(505) 241-2160 (505) 241-2782







Safe Harbor Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995

Statements made in this news release for PNM Resources, Inc. ("PNMR"), Public Service Company of New Mexico ("PNM"), or Texas-New Mexico Power Company ("TNMP") (collectively, the "Company") that relate to future events or expectations, projections, estimates, intentions, goals, targets, and strategies, including the preliminary unaudited financial results and earnings guidance, are made pursuant to the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Readers are cautioned that all forward-looking statements are based upon current expectations and estimates and apply only as of the date of this report. PNMR, PNM, and TNMP assume no obligation to update this information. Because actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements, PNMR, PNM, and TNMP caution readers not to place undue reliance on these statements. PNMR's, PNM's, and TNMP's business, financial condition, cash flow, and operating results are influenced by many factors, which are often beyond their control, that can cause actual results to differ from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Additionally, there are risks and uncertainties in connection with the proposed acquisition of us by AVANGRID which may adversely affect our business, future opportunities, employees and common stock, including without limitation, (i) the expected timing and likelihood of completion of the pending Merger, including the timing, receipt and terms and conditions of any remaining required governmental and regulatory approvals of the pending Merger that could reduce anticipated benefits or cause the parties to abandon the transaction, (ii) the occurrence of any event, change or other circumstances that could give rise to the termination of the Merger Agreement, (iii) the risk that the parties may not be able to satisfy the conditions to the proposed Merger in a timely manner or at all, and (iv) the risk that the proposed transaction could have an adverse effect on the ability of PNMR to retain and hire key personnel and maintain relationships with its customers and suppliers, and on its operating results and businesses generally. For a discussion of risk factors and other important factors affecting forward-looking statements, please see the Company's Form 10-K, Form 10-Q filings and the information included in the Company's Forms 8-K with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which factors are specifically incorporated by reference herein.

Non-GAAP Financial Measures

GAAP refers to generally accepted accounting principles in the U.S. Ongoing earnings is a non-GAAP financial measure that excludes the impact of net unrealized mark-to-market gains and losses on economic hedges, the net change in unrealized gains and losses on investment securities, pension expense related to previously disposed of gas distribution business, and certain non-recurring, infrequent, and other items that are not indicative of fundamental changes in the earnings capacity of the Company's operations. The Company uses ongoing earnings and ongoing earnings per diluted share to evaluate the operations of the Company and to establish goals, including those used for certain aspects of incentive compensation, for management and employees. While the Company believes these financial measures are appropriate and useful for investors, they are not measures presented in accordance with GAAP. The Company does not intend for these measures, or any piece of these measures, to represent any financial measure as defined by GAAP. Furthermore, the Company's calculations of these measures as presented may or may not be comparable to similarly titled measures used by other companies. The Company uses ongoing earnings guidance to provide investors with management's expectations of ongoing financial performance over the period presented. While the Company believes ongoing earnings guidance is an appropriate measure, it is not a measure presented in accordance with GAAP. The Company does not intend for ongoing earnings guidance to represent an expectation of net earnings as defined by GAAP. Since the future differences between GAAP and ongoing earnings are frequently outside the control of the Company, management is generally not able to estimate the impact of the reconciling items between forecasted GAAP net earnings and ongoing earnings guidance, nor their probable impact on GAAP net earnings without unreasonable effort, therefore, management is generally not able to provide a corresponding GAAP equivalent for ongoing earnings guidance.

SOURCE PNM Resources, Inc.
Leon's mother Rachelle says, "I'm not nervous. I think Leon's racing will be nostalgic for me. It will bring back memories of my youth watching my dad, race around the track. We just want Leon to have fun." Rachelle is a Service Coordinator for the service department in Power Systems West's Boise office where she manages major commercial backup generator accounts.

Leon's Legends Car is 5/8 scale, fiberglass version of the original NASCAR modified series and has the look of a classic Ford Roadster. Leon's car also has a history of successful racing. It was purchased from Legend's racer Tom Matheson who lives in Pasco, Washington. Tom raced it often at Hermiston, Oregon and at Meridian Speedway where Leon will race it on April 16. Thanks to Tom, Leon's car already has a bit of reputation for winning among the drivers who race there.

"We're excited about sponsoring Leon and his Legends car," says Brad Lyons, Power Systems West President. "We believe in supporting our employees, their families and the communities we serve in. I am honored we can be a small part of Leon's dream to be the next generation of his family's rich racing legacy. PSW employees will be cheering for him all across the Rocky Mountains and Pacific Northwest!"

Media Contact: Kimberly Myers, [email protected]

SOURCE Power Systems West
Partnership to Provide Use-case Specific Flash LiDAR for Automotive, Trucking, Industrial Automation and Robotics

PORTLAND, Ore. and SARGANS, Switzerland, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- PreAct Technologies, an Oregon-based developer of near-field flash LiDAR technology and ESPROS Photonics, a Swiss company leader in the design and production of time-of flight chips and 3D cameras, today announced a collaboration agreement to develop new flash LiDAR technologies for specific use cases in automotive, trucking, industrial automation and robotics. The collaboration combines the dynamic abilities of PreAct's software-definable flash LiDAR and the versatile and ultra-ambient-light-robust time-of-flight technology from ESPROS to create next-generation near-field sensing solutions.

"Our partnership with ESPROS is a major milestone for our company in our goal to provide high performance, software-definable sensors to meet the needs of customers across various industries," said Paul Drysch, CEO and co-founder of PreAct Technologies. "Looking to the future, vehicles across all industries will be software-defined, and our flash LiDAR solutions are built to support that infrastructure from the beginning."

The automotive and trucking industries continue to rapidly integrate ADAS and self-driving capabilities into vehicles, and as NHTSA just announced the requirement for human controls in fully automated vehicles , the need for ultra-precise, high performance sensors is paramount to ensuring safe autonomous driving. The sensor solutions created by PreAct and ESPROS will address top ADAS and self-driving features such as traffic sign recognition, curb detection, night vision and pedestrian detection with the highest frame rates and resolution of any sensor on the market.

In addition to providing solutions for automotive and trucking, PreAct and ESPROS will show superior performance, functionality, and cost to the expanding robotics industry.

According to a new report published by Allied Market Research , the global industrial robotics market size is expected to reach $116.8 billion by 2030. PreAct and ESPROS solutions will enable a wide range of robotics and automation applications including QR code scanning, obstacle avoidance and gesture recognition. They will also fill the void left for OEM robotic customers which emerged when key suppliers unexpectedly ceased offering 3D cameras to the market.

"We have extensive plans to demonstrate the incredible capabilities of our 3D chipsets with PreAct's hardware and software. The ESPROS Pre-Act partnership ensures customers can benefit from the shortest possible time to market for advanced tools such as simulation. Our combined resources and expertise will allow us to enable groundbreaking products across every industry" said Beat DeCoi, President and CEO of ESPROS Photonics. "By combining our best in class TOF chips with PreAct's innovation and drive, we will see great results with clients benefiting from this partnership."

About ESPROS Photonics

ESPROS Photonics AG was founded in 2006 and is a highly specialized IC (Integrated Circuit) design and production company. The company is built around a unique CMOS/CCD process developed and owned by ESPROS. Swiss precision, quality, and innovation are its core driving forces. Products are TOF and LiDAR imagers as well as custom ASICS. The company also develops and produces 3D camera modules, all based on its own 3D imagers. It is headquartered in Sargans, Switzerland. For further information, please contact [email protected].

About PreAct Technologies

PreAct Technologies creates the world's fastest flash LiDAR that powers near-field sensing and object tracking solutions for automotive, trucking, robotic and industrial markets. Its patent-pending suite of sensor technologies is also the only software-definable LiDAR on the market designed specifically to support the extended life of software-defined vehicles. The company is located in Portland, Oregon. For sales inquiries, please contact [email protected]. For more information, visit www.preact-tech.com.

Press Contact

Angela Simoes

4153022934

https://www.preact-tech.com

SOURCE PreAct Technologies
CHESAPEAKE, Va., March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Sera-Brynn, LLC, announced today it has successfully renewed its accreditation to evaluate cloud-based solutions for federal government agencies as a Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) Third Party Assessment Organization (3PAO).

After a rigorous assessment by the American Association for Laboratory Accreditation (A2LA), Sera-Brynn remains one of fewer than 40 accredited assessors in the nation certified to help cloud service providers (CSPs) who want to deliver services to the federal government. FedRAMP is a government-wide program designed to support the federal government's "cloud-first" initiative by providing a standardized approach to security assessment, authorization, and continuous monitoring for cloud-based services. Sera-Brynn Assessors help CSPs develop implementation programs to adopt cybersecurity and privacy controls that meet the FedRAMP standard based on NIST Special Publication 800-53 Rev 4.

"It's imperative that we maintain the availability of this critical assessment and compliance service to the larger technology market. Current geopolitical conditions notwithstanding, we've seen 300% increase in year-over-year requests for FedRAMP support from our North American-based clientele," said Rob Hegedus, CEO of Sera-Brynn. "The broader market is adopting a more government-focused strategic approach, and cybersecurity-related regulatory service providers such as Sera-Brynn are an important part of ensuring that transition is technically compliant and financially efficient."

With the growing threat of cyber-attacks, Sera-Brynn recommends all CSPs even if they do not support the federal government, strive to meet the NIST 800-53R4 standards and seek a FedRAMP or StateRAMP certification to make their services more competitive.

Sera-Brynn received the original accreditation to become a FedRAMP 3PAO in June 2017.

About Sera-Brynn

Founded in 2011 by former members of the U.S. intelligence community, Sera-Brynn partners with some of the world's most respected and recognized brands to help them secure their infrastructure and meet cybersecurity compliance requirements. Sera-Brynn is proud to be only one of only a few companies worldwide to be certified as both a Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) Third Party Assessment Organization (3PAO) and a Payment Card Industry (PCI) Qualified Security Assessor We use these and other individual advanced certifications (CISSP, CEH, i.e.) to help companies develop cybersecurity programs to meet Federal and Commercial Compliance Requirements (800-171, DFARS 7012, CMMC). Our experts, with their specialized comprehensive experience, will solve your most complex cyber challenges.

Additional Information:

Follow Us: Twitter | LinkedIn | YouTube | Facebook

SOURCE Sera-Brynn
Founded in 2004, Smartee focuses on the R&D of original technology in digital invisible orthodontics as well as medical design, manufacturing, sales and services for customized clear aligners. Smartee has medical design centers with a team of hundreds of staff and built self-developed whole process automatic intelligent manufacturing bases in Jiaxing, Zhejiang Province and Ziyang, Sichuan Province (Chinese Dental Valley). Smartee has designed more than 500,000 cases up to now and produced over 10 million invisible aligners annually to serve doctors and consumers around the world. Smartee is one of the leading brands in the invisible orthodontics industry in China and the top Chinese provider of clear aligners with the largest market share overseas, expanding its business to markets including the USA, Canada, Columbia, Mexico, UK, Spain, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Australia, Singapore, Philippines and Thailand etc.

From Angel to Series D funding, over the past 18 years, Smartee has achieved fruitful results in many fields, such as new clinical technology, new classification of diagnosis, clear aligner materials, big data and algorithms, digital simulation technology, intelligent manufacturing and so on. As of February 2022, more than 530 patents have been applied for domestic and abroad. The number and quality of patents are ahead of its domestic counterparts. Smartee has become one of the well-known high-tech enterprises with innovation and growth in the dental industry.

Talking about the future, Mr. Yao Junfeng, the founder of Smartee, said "Smaree has received the capital investment from RZJ Capital for the Angel Round in 2013, the Series A investment of CS Capital and KaVo in 2015, the Series B investment of bioVENTURE and CD Capital in 2017, and the Series C investment of CICC Capital, Neovision Capital, Costone Capital and Qianhai FOF in 2019. The company carefully manages the financing rhythm and focuses more on growing the company with business revenue. The completion of the Series D funding will undoubtedly further accelerate Smartee's development and support our strategic layout. As a fast-growing Chinese Clear Aligner brand, Smartee will continue to invest in the R&D of invisible orthodontic technology, strive to inject more innovative ideas and energy into the industry, and enable more consumers to enjoy the cutting-edge invisible orthodontic technology."

Mr. Huang Shengxuan, CEO of Beijing Taikang Investment, said "After more than ten years of accumulation, Smartee Denti-Technology has established a solid leading position in the industry and maintained a growth rate far exceeding that of the market. On the basis of the deep technical cooperation between Smartee and Taikang Bybo, we will continue to promote the business cooperation among Smartee, Taikang Insurance and Taikang Bybo, and jointly create a new ecological model of mutual synergy among insurance, oral medicine and dental innovative technology."

Mr. Wang Xin, General Manager of China Resources Consumer Fund II, said "The rapid growth of Smartee's case accumulation in recent years is the evidence that the potential of the orthodontic industry is rapidly being released. The fund team is honored to join hands with Smartee team to participate in the development of the national invisible orthodontic industry. I believe that under the leadership of founder Mr. Yao Junfeng, Smartee will become an important player in global orthodontic industry. Together with professional doctors in the industry, Smartee will strive to create greater development opportunities and provide better orthodontic services for patients around the world."

For more information, please visit the company's website at www.smartee.uk.

SOURCE Smartee Denti-Technology Co.,Ltd.
First of its kind cybersecurity solution delivers unbeatable identity protection at scale

MENLO PARK, Calif. , March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Notorious bank robber Willie Sutton when asked why he robbed so many banks, gave an answer that became a part of history  "Because that's where the money is." Fast-forward to today, and the world's most notorious thieves don't steal money, they steal data. Identity theft, and related criminal acts of data theft, are relentlessly on the rise. Anonomatic's SaaS prevents identity theft because all personal data is rendered useless to thieves.

Anonomatic Anonomatic

Anonomatic's PII Vault software anonymizes sensitive personal data, so an individual's privacy is protected, and an organization's risk is mitigated in the event of a data breach. The data is useless to hackers but fully functional to the organization because that data is de-identified using Anonomatic's patent pending Poly-Anonymization, ensuring the data loses none of its functionality. This unique approach changes the entire cybersecurity paradigm; hackers may gain access to sensitive data only to find all that data is useless because none of it can be tied to any individual. In other words, hackers may break in, but they cannot steal what is not there.

Anonomatic's software uses other patent-pending innovations such as Pass-Through Anonymization to either fully redact, partially redact, or mask dangerous personally identifiable information (PII). This means information such as medical and financial data can be separated from personal data that includes any identifying details, drastically reducing the time, cost, and regulatory risk normally associated with current data privacy practices.

Anonomatic's PII Vault can be deployed in minutes based on a straightforward subscription model. As domestic and global demand continues to soar, the company is positioned to be a market leader in an ever-growing space. This bootstrapped startup is already booking revenue with its sights set on robust, realistic growth year over year.

Investors are invited to inspect this investing opportunity while it is still available.

The Anonomatic equity crowdfunding campaign on StartEngine  https://bit.ly/3tmRsYZ

The Anonomatic corporate website - https://anonomatic.com/

Media contact:

Howard Sherman

[email protected]

833-276-9377

SOURCE Anonomatic, Inc.
Healthcare Pioneer Dr. Albert Bourla, Chairman and CEO of Pfizer, slated to deliver a Grand Keynote with Rich Karlgaard as the virtual conference targets 50,000 attendees from 100 countries

SANTA CLARA, Calif., March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- TiE Silicon Valley , a not-for-profit organization dedicated to fostering global entrepreneurship, has announced that virtual TiEcon 2022 will be held May 5-7. TiEcon 2022, the world's largest technology-anchored entrepreneurship conference, is expected to attract 50,000 attendees and will showcase global thought leaders and bring together innovators, venture capitalists, and technology firms from around the world to inspire and advance entrepreneurship.

Among the top 10 conferences worldwide for ideas and entrepreneurship, TiEcon has attracted thousands of entrepreneurs and professionals from over 100 countries since its inception. TiEcon 2022 will focus on the hottest areas of innovation including artificial intelligence and machine learning, cloud technologies, crypto, cybersecurity, health, supply chain, sustainability, and many more.

Slated to deliver a grand keynote is Dr. Albert Bourla, Chairman and CEO of Pfizer Inc. Bourla became the head of Pfizer in 2019 and accelerated the company's transformation to be more innovative and science-driven just before it was put to test by the Covid-19 pandemic. Mobilizing Pfizer amid some of the most strenuous conditions experienced in modern times, he oversaw the nine-month journey to deliver a breakthrough COVID-19 vaccine. A Greek immigrant, former veterinarian, and child of Holocaust survivors, Bourla was named the 2022 Genesis Prize Laureate in recognition of his leadership during the pandemic.

"It gives me great pleasure to address a global audience of innovators and changemakers at TiEcon 2022. I look forward to sharing our journey of delivering a COVID-19 vaccine in record time. This effort showed us that nothing is impossible, a lesson that I know will resonate with innovators in all fields." - Dr. Albert Bourla

"We're beyond excited to have Dr. Bourla, an iconic leader, to inspire the audience attending TiEcon 2022." - A.G. Karunakaran, president, TiE Silicon Valley

"I'm grateful to welcome and host Dr. Bourla at the grand stage in an intimate conversation with Rich Karlgaard, a media personality, former publisher, and now editor-at-large and futurist of Forbes." - Vish Mishra, Council of Trustees and former president, TiE Silicon Valley

"On behalf of the entire TiEcon leadership team and volunteers organizing the conference, we're beyond thrilled to have Dr. Bourla grace the occasion." - Kamal Anand and Dipty Desai, joint conveners chairing TiEcon 2022

For more information, visit www.tiecon.org .

About TiE Silicon Valley

Founded in 1992 by entrepreneurs and executives of South Asian origin in Silicon Valley, TiE is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to fostering entrepreneurship globally. TiE strives to inspire entrepreneurs through mentoring, networking, education, incubating, and funding programs and activities. TiE events bring together the entrepreneurial community to learn from leaders, as well as each other. Besides social values, the economic value created through TiE entrepreneurial endeavors is estimated to exceed over $500B globally.

SOURCE TiE Silicon Valley
WELLINGTON, March 23 (Xinhua) -- New Zealand will ease the COVID-19 restrictions "that have prevented widespread health and economic damage" in early April, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Wednesday as the country reported 20,087 new community cases.

"The evidence shows we are coming off the Omicron peak with cases in Auckland having already declined significantly, and a decline (is) expected nationally by early April," Ardern told a press conference.

New Zealand to date has more than 500,000 reported cases of COVID-19 and expert modelers say there have probably been 1.7 million actual infections. "That figure, coupled with 95 percent of New Zealanders being fully vaccinated, means we now have a high level of collective immunity," Ardern sad.

From April 4, "My Vaccine Pass" will no longer be required by the government, which means Kiwis will no longer have to be vaccinated in order to enter those venues covered by the Pass. Vaccine mandates will also be removed, except for health and disability, aged care, corrections and border workforces, said the prime minister.

From midnight this Friday, outdoor gathering limits will be lifted, and indoor gathering limits at the current highest Red settings of the COVID-19 Protection Framework will double from 100 to 200, but wearing mask will still be necessary, she said.

Among Wednesday's new community infections, 4,122 were in the largest city Auckland. The rest of the cases were identified across the nation, including 3,468 in Canterbury, according to the ministry.

In addition, there were 43 new cases of COVID-19 detected at the New Zealand border, said the ministry.

There were 960 COVID-19 patients in New Zealand hospitals, including 31 people at the intensive care unit or high dependency unit.

The ministry also reported 11 deaths from COVID-19, taking the total number of publicly reported deaths in the country to 210, it said.

New Zealand has reported 537,582 confirmed cases of COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic. 
Miller Joins as the Chief Business Officer/Chief Operating Officer, Brings Decades of Corporate Strategy and Business Development Experience in the Biotech and Pharmaceutical Industries

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Totus Medicines, a drug discovery company using revolutionary chemical biology technologies to create life-changing covalent therapeutics for untreatable diseases, today announced the hiring of Laura Miller as the company's first Chief Business Officer (CBO)/Chief Operating Officer (COO). Miller will report directly to CEO and co-founder Dr. Neil Dhawan, Ph.D., and help to execute the company's strategy and vision.

Miller joins Totus with over 20 years of business development experience in the biotech and pharma industries. In her new position, she will be responsible for leading corporate strategy efforts, overseeing operations, and developing and transforming the company to meet evolving business needs. Miller comes to Totus from Genentech, where she was most recently Executive Director and Head of Product Development Excellence, Portfolio and Product Development Strategy. Prior to Genentech, Miller served as the Senior Manager of WW Commercial/PDA and Business Development at Pfizer.

"We are excited to welcome Laura to the team during an important phase of Totus's evolution as we enter clinical trials later this year and continue to grow our company," said Dr. Dhawan. "Laura's wealth of relevant experience and expertise will bring Totus one step closer to making the entire human genome druggable."

This year, Totus Medicines plans to grow internally through the hiring of over 50 new employees while also expanding its TOS-358 drug program that targets the PI3K mutation, an affliction impacting more than 500,000 people in the U.S. every year. This mutation drives a significant percentage of breast, colon, lung, bladder, stomach, and other cancers.

"Totus is in a period of rapid growth  from expanding internally to quickly entering clinical trial stages  and I am excited to join at such a pivotal time," Miller said. "This is a unique opportunity with a brilliant, nimble company, and I look forward to leveraging my experience to help Totus reach its profound growth potential."

About Totus Medicines

Founded in 2019, Totus Medicines uses revolutionary chemical biology to create life-changing therapies to treat previously untreatable diseases across the entire human genome. Totus is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

For more information, please visit totusmedicines.com and follow Totus on LinkedIn and Twitter .

SOURCE Totus Medicines
OMAHA, Neb., March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ --Union Pacific is making its largest-ever corporate disaster relief donation of $500,000 to support humanitarian relief in Ukraine. Giving will be split evenly between the American Red Cross and Save the Children and comes after an overwhelming showing of employee generosity.

Earlier this month, Union Pacific announced a 2:1 match for employees donating to six organizations providing direct support for the Ukrainian people:

Salvation Army

American Red Cross

UNICEF

Global Giving Foundation

Doctors Without Borders

Save the Children

To date, Union Pacific employees have driven nearly $50,000 in matching donations from the company.

"Our hearts are with the Ukrainian people who did nothing to provoke this attack and whose lives are irrevocably changed," said Chairman Lance Fritz. "Our employees' charitable donations clearly demonstrate they're taking a stand with the Ukrainian people, and we're proud to let their generosity guide our corporate contribution to two of many worthy organizations providing immediate aid."

Union Pacific's 2:1 employee match for humanitarian relief is unlimited and will not count toward the company's annual match limit.

ABOUT UNION PACIFIC

Union Pacific (NYSE: UNP) delivers the goods families and businesses use every day with safe, reliable and efficient service. Operating in 23 western states, the company connects its customers and communities to the global economy. Trains are the most environmentally responsible way to move freight, helping Union Pacific protect future generations. More information about Union Pacific is available at www.up.com .

www.up.com

www.facebook.com/unionpacific

www.twitter.com/unionpacific

SOURCE Union Pacific Railroad
Global competitiveness and key competitor percentage market shares

Market presence across multiple geographies - Strong/Active/Niche/Trivial

Online interactive peer-to-peer collaborative bespoke updates

Access to our digital archives and MarketGlass Research Platform

Complimentary updates for one year

Edition: 20; Released: February 2022

Executive Pool: 5621

Companies: 89 - Players covered include Allegheny Technologies, Inc.; ASM Inc; Astron Ltd.; Foskor Zirconia (PTY) Limited; Iluka Resources Limited; Imerys Fused Minerals Murg GmbH; Kenmare Resources plc; Luxfer Holdings plc; Oxkem Limited; Richards Bay Minerals; The Chemours Company; TiZir Limited; Tosoh Corporation; Tronox Limited; Zhejiang Jinkun Zirconium Industry Co., Ltd.; Zircomet Limited and Others.

Coverage: All major geographies and key segments

Segments: Occurrence Type (Zircon, Zirconia, Other Occurrence Types); End-Use (Ceramics, Chemicals, Refractories, Foundries, Other End-Uses)

Geographies: World; USA; Canada; Japan; China; Europe; France; Germany; Italy; UK; Spain; Russia; Rest of Europe; Asia-Pacific; Australia; India; South Korea; Rest of Asia-Pacific; Latin America; Argentina; Brazil; Mexico; Rest of Latin America; Middle East; Iran; Israel; Saudi Arabia; UAE; Rest of Middle East; Africa.

Complimentary Project Preview - This is an ongoing global program. Preview our research program before you make a purchase decision. We are offering a complimentary access to qualified executives driving strategy, business development, sales & marketing, and product management roles at featured companies. Previews provide deep insider access to business trends; competitive brands; domain expert profiles; and market data templates and much more. You may also build your own bespoke report using our MarketGlass Platform which offers thousands of data bytes without an obligation to purchase our report. Preview Registry

ABSTRACT-

Global Zirconium Market to Reach 1.1 Million Metric Tons by 2026

Zirconium represents an obscure, but a vital element with immense potential for comprehensive spectrum of applications. Generally found in zircon, the element is an indispensable component of nuclear power facilities, mobile phones, paints, ceramics, catalytic convertors and dialysis equipment. Based on its unique chemical and physical characteristics, zirconium is bound to find use in emerging applications, including sustainable and more efficient clean technologies. Factors responsible for driving long term growth in the market include increasing urbanization, escalating growth in consumption of ceramic tiles and increasing demand for Zirconium Chemicals in various industries. Further, maturing long term contracts, increasing popularity of zircon flour, emergence of innovative applications as well as vertical integration in the Zirconium market are some of the on-going trends in the industry. Some of the growth inhibitors include low pigment plant capacity utilization, radiological concerns, exchange rate fluctuation as well as other disruptions apart from threat from substitute materials, price fluctuations, related health issues and its outright elimination from use in product formulations such as TV glass.

Amid the COVID-19 crisis, the global market for Zirconium estimated at 1 Million Metric Tons in the year 2022, is projected to reach a revised size of 1.1 Million Metric Tons by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 3.1% over the analysis period. Zircon, one of the segments analyzed in the report, is projected to record a 3.3% CAGR and reach 845.3 Thousand Metric Tons by the end of the analysis period. After a thorough analysis of the business implications of the pandemic and its induced economic crisis, growth in the Zirconia segment is readjusted to a revised 2.7% CAGR for the next 7-year period.

The U.S. Market is Estimated at 89.2 Thousand Metric Tons in 2022, While China is Forecast to Reach 511.2 Thousand Metric Tons by 2026

The Zirconium market in the U.S. is estimated at 89.2 Thousand Metric Tons in the year 2022. China, the world`s second largest economy, is forecast to reach a projected market size of 511.2 Thousand Metric Tons by the year 2026 trailing a CAGR of 2.7% over the analysis period. Among the other noteworthy geographic markets are Japan and Canada, each forecast to grow at 2.3% and 3.4% respectively over the analysis period. Within Europe, Germany is forecast to grow at approximately 3.3% CAGR. China ranks as the largest consumer of Zirconium owing to rising demand from end-use industries including ceramics, construction, and medical and healthcare. Additionally, the country emerged as one of the largest producers of Zirconium sponge. South Africa and Australia, holding huge reserves of the mineral, represent the largest producers of Zirconium, worldwide.

Global Zirconia Market Segment to Reach 224.1 Thousand Metric Tons Billion by 2026

Global market for Zirconia is estimated at 204.9 Thousand Metric Tons in 2022, and is projected to reach 224.1 Thousand Metric Tons by 2026 reflecting a compounded annual growth rate of 2.7% over the analysis period. China constitutes the largest regional market for Zirconia segment, accounting for 41.1% of the global consumption. Asia-Pacific is poised to register the fastest compounded annual growth rate of 3.8% over the analysis period, to reach 26.6 Thousand Metric Tons by the year 2026.

More

MarketGlass Platform

Our MarketGlass Platform is a free full-stack knowledge center that is custom configurable to today`s busy business executive`s intelligence needs! This influencer driven interactive research platform is at the core of our primary research engagements and draws from unique perspectives of participating executives worldwide. Features include - enterprise-wide peer-to-peer collaborations; research program previews relevant to your company; 3.4 million domain expert profiles; competitive company profiles; interactive research modules; bespoke report generation; monitor market trends; competitive brands; create & publish blogs & podcasts using our primary and secondary content; track domain events worldwide; and much more. Client companies will have complete insider access to the project data stacks. Currently in use by 67,000+ domain experts worldwide.

Our platform is free for qualified executives and is accessible from our website www.StrategyR.com or via our just released mobile application on iOS or Android

About Global Industry Analysts, Inc. & StrategyR

Global Industry Analysts, Inc., (www.strategyr.com) is a renowned market research publisher the world`s only influencer driven market research company. Proudly serving more than 42,000 clients from 36 countries, GIA is recognized for accurate forecasting of markets and industries for over 33 years.

CONTACTS:

Zak Ali

Director, Corporate Communications

Global Industry Analysts, Inc.

Phone: 1-408-528-9966

www.StrategyR.com

Email: [email protected]

LINKS

Join Our Expert Panel

https://www.strategyr.com/Panelist.asp



Connect With Us on LinkedIn

https://www.linkedin.com/company/global-industry-analysts-inc./



Follow Us on Twitter

https://twitter.com/marketbytes



Journalists & Media

[email protected]

SOURCE Global Industry Analysts, Inc.
SAN FRANCISCO, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The Vial Ophthalmology network has announced Dr. Joseph Tauber as their Head of Ophthalmology Research. Dr. Tauber is an internationally recognized authority in Ophthalmology and specializes in anterior segment surgery, corneal transplantation, and the treatment of corneal and external diseases. Dr. Tauber has been in the field for 32+ years, and is the Founder and CEO of Tauber Eye Center in Kansas City, MO.

The Vial Ophthalmology network officially launched in early 2022 with the mission of creating a network of top investigators enabled by Vial's central services. In this role, Dr. Tauber will help grow Vial's Ophthalmology site network, while also lending his expertise to the Vial team as they create best practices around patient recruiting, training, and more.

Dr. Tauber stated, "I couldn't be more enthusiastic about joining Vial. The rapidly growing team brings high energy, the most advanced IT capabilities available to accelerate database mining, patient recruitment, and marketing to bring studies to the attention of our existing patients and those outside of our practice. Vial has professionalized much of what took me decades to become good at on the way to build my clinical research program. Sharing this expertise with other excellent researchers and making them even better will change ophthalmic research dramatically. I am all in!"

A board-certified ophthalmologist, Dr. Tauber received his doctorate from Harvard Medical School, his training in internal medicine at Beth Israel Hospital and in ophthalmology at Tufts-New England Medical Center, all located in Boston, MA. Dr. Tauber enhanced his medical education with two years of ocular immunology and corneal and external disease fellowship training at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary.

Throughout his career, Dr. Tauber has been avidly involved in research. He has been a principal investigator in 150+ research studies of high-risk corneal transplantation, inflammation and allergic eye diseases, corneal infectious diseases and numerous studies related to dry eye syndrome, including investigator-initiated trials. Dr. Tauber has been centrally involved in virtually every significant dry eye development project during the past 25 years, including all of those approved by the FDA to treat dry eye.

Dr. Tauber's scientific and clinical background are the basis for his knowledge in strategic clinical development, competitive landscape analysis, new drug applications, product launch, and life cycle management for ophthalmic drugs and devices in the areas of inflammatory, immunologic, and ocular surface diseases.

Read the full release here.

SOURCE Vial
SAN JOSE, Calif., March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- At the culmination of a two-year period that presented a variety of challenges requiring extraordinary communication efforts in education at district and county levels, the California School Public Relations Association (CalSPRA) announced the winners of the 2022 Excellence in Communication Awards.

The work of Voler Strategic Advisors was recognized with four CalSPRA awards for promoting school districts' efforts to proactively engage with the public, including promoting messaging about COVID-19 safety, student achievement during remote learning, affordable housing opportunities for educators and awareness through video storytelling.

Category Distinction Project Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion - Multimedia Materials Excellence Bilingual Multimedia Campaign to Increase COVID-19

Awareness and Safety among School-Aged Children from TK to 8th Grade Special Events Excellence 8th Grade Promotional Ceremonies Tactics - Media Relations Merit Affordable Housing for Teachers Crisis Communication and Issue Management Merit Video Messaging

"It is extremely exciting to honor education communicators with this award," said CalSPRA President Matthew Jennings. "CalSPRA members across California helped lead our school communities through the challenges of this pandemic, providing effective communication in the face of uncertainty and polarization. Now, more than ever, successful communication is at the heart of public education."

Voler CEO Perla A. Rodriguez expressed enthusiasm about the partnerships with education leaders that effectively reached communities across the state. "To know that we are working towards a common goal to empower, educate and touch people's lives is incredibly rewarding and serves as a motivator for our team to continue to strive for excellence."

CalSPRA's Excellence in Communication Awards program recognizes superior achievement in meeting strategic goals through high-quality communications and public relations programs. Each entry is evaluated by seasoned communication professionals from around the country on the overall excellence of the entry. Awards were presented at CalSPRA's Annual Conference and Awards Banquet on March 10 in Sacramento.

About Voler Strategic Advisors: Voler Strategic Advisors is a full-service strategic communications firm offering public relations, crisis management, and communications strategies that help organizations achieve their full potential. At Voler, we believe that great communications drive great results. We offer solutions that are client-inspired, success driven and always inclusive of the communities that you serve. For more information: www.volersa.com

About CalSPRA: The California School Public Relations Association (CalSPRA) is a nationally recognized leader in school communications with a membership of more than 600. Members represent school districts and county offices of all sizes, ranging from the largest urban districts to those located in remote areas serving one or two schools, as well as other professionals in the field of education. For more information: www.calspra.org

SOURCE Voler Strategic Advisors
NESS ZIONA, Israel, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- FoodTech start-up Wanda Fish Technologies, Ltd. has signed two agreements with Tufts University to advance the company's goals in the emerging field of cultivated fish. Under a licensing agreement, Wanda Fish gains exclusive rights to certain intellectual property in fish cell cultivation developed by Tufts researcher David Kaplan, a leader in the field of cellular agriculture. Additionally, a two-year sponsored research agreement with the university supports Kaplan's research into cellular agriculture-based production of fish tissue. Taken together, the moves will significantly propel Wanda Fish's strategies for producing sustainable, tasty, cultivated fish fillets.

Israeli start-up to accelerate production of cell-cultivated fish with David Kaplan, PhD, a leading researcher in cellular agriculture, credited by Marcomit

Approximately 20% of the protein currently consumed by the global population emanates from the ocean. As a highly satiating, nutritionally dense food source, the appetite for seafood, and especially fish, is only projected to keep growing. This is putting increasing strain on the existing seafood industry to keep up, not to mention already overfished waterways.

"More than three billion people depend on the ocean and its surroundings for their living," stresses Dr. Daphna Heffetz, CEO of Wanda Fish. "Marine biodiversity is critical to the survival of people and our planet. Overfishing, as well as water pollution, is damaging the vast and vital ocean ecosystem. Many wild fish populations are sadly in decline." Heffetz brings more than 20 years of experience in establishing and growing biotechnological companies.

Producing seafood from fish cells is a niche within the alt protein scene that is rapidly gaining ground in the collective quest to address the challenges of the seafood industry. Wanda Fish was formed last year with financial and technical support from the Israeli Innovation Authority (IIA) and in conjunction with the The Kitchen FoodTech Hub. Wanda Fish already secured USD 3M in its pre-seed funding round led by The Strauss Group's, The Kitchen FoodTech Hub. It has also gained investments from Peregrine Ventures, Pico Partners, CPT Capital, and MOREVC.

Wanda's development team in Israel is led by R&D Director Malkiel Cohen, Ph.D., a respected expert in stem cells and genome engineering for the biomedical and AagTech fields.

To create a top-notch multidisciplinary R&D team, the team turned to Kaplan, the Stern Family Endowed Professor of Engineering at Tufts University, a distinguished University Professor, and Professor and Chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering. A well-known expert in biopolymer engineering, Kaplan is also a leading academic authority on cultivated meat, having recently received a USD 10M grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to establish the first national center in the US dedicated to research in cellular agriculture.

Closest isn't close enough

Using R&D facilities in the US and Israel, Wanda Fish is establishing a proprietary, GMO-free platform for producing cell-based finless fish fillets of varying species, without placing any burden on the ocean and the lifeforce within it. "We start with a single, one-time sample of a real native fish muscle and fat tissues," explains Kaplan. "We then pursue the replication of the biological growth of fish, with the nutritional attributes, including protein and omega 3 content, as well as the flavor and textural properties. The results are clean, safe fish free of microplastics, mercury, or other chemical toxicities that are commonly found in some of the wild catch."

Heffetz reveals the team have already made some headway in developing its first prototype of a fish fillet directly from fish cells. "Our platform includes animal-free growing medium, know-how in producing native muscle and fat tissues and specially customized bioreactors that will give us the capacity to scale up production and eventually bring our cultured fish products to cost parity with conventionally fished counterparts," states Heffetz. "By integrating innovative proprietary applications from multiple disciplines, including cell culture, biotechnology, food tech, and culinary design, we will produce a versatile range of fish species to satisfy all preferences, at affordable prices, and with uncompromising quality."

"Having nurtured already a successful venture in meat cultivation, Wanda Fish cements our dominant position within the relatively nascent cellular agriculture category," enthuses Jonathan Berger, CEO of The Kitchen FoodTech Hub. "With Increasing acidification, pollution, and warming of our oceans, a growing global population, and the concurrent dwindling of the sea biomass and its fish populations, the need to rehabilitate the sea and sea life has never been more pressing. Wanda Fish offers a new approach to meeting the increasing global demand for nutritious seafood without harming aquatic life. With cultivated fish, the world can eat the fish it craves while giving the ocean and its ecosystems space to heal."

For more information, please contact:

Company Contact:

Wanda Fish Technologies

Dr. Daphna Heffetz, CEO

E-mail: [email protected]

Web: www.wandafish.com



Press Contact:

NutriPR

Liat Simha

Tel: +972-9-9742893

E-mail: [email protected]

Twitter: @NutriPR_

Web: www.nutripr.com

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1772302/Wanda_Fish_Technologies.jpg

SOURCE Wanda Fish Technologies
To date Zacatecas has drilled ( 7420 m ) at the Panuco Project, of which ( 4707 m ) has been drilled at Panuco North, from which multiple assays are currently pending.

SEMARNAT has now approved 27 additional drill permits at Panuco North which will allow drill targeting along the entire interpreted strike length of the vein system.

Drilling at Panuco North includes follow up on a previously announced discovery hole in a previously undrilled area of the system which returned 2.17m at 823 g/t AgEq.

Panuco North Vein

The focus of the drilling to date has been along the south-eastern portion of the Panuco North vein where high grade silver mineralization has been intercepted near surface over widths of up to 6.8 m downhole and a strike length of least 500 m. While most holes targeted mineralization within 50 m of surface, several deeper holes intercepted mineralization at down-hole depths of up to 150 m (approximately 120 m vertical) including previously reported 2.17 m @ 823 g/t AqEq (798 g/t Ag and 0.34 g/t Au) in hole Pan 2021-009.

Dr. Chris Wilson, Chief Operating Officer and a Director of Zacatecas Silver comments, "The approval of 27 additional drill pads at Panuco North will allow the Company to drill test the entire Panuco north vein which has a strike extent of almost 2 km within Company Concessions. The recently approved drill pads are well positioned to allow fan drilling of multiple holes from each pad, to target both near surface and deeper depth extensions."

To date Zacatecas Silver has received and reported assays for 16 holes at Panuco North. Assays are pending for an additional 24 holes, many of which intercepted dark sulphide quartz veins, with textures and mineralogy consistent with being at the top of an intermediate sulphidation system. Assays are expected in the next three weeks.

El Cristo

The Company now has access agreements in place and environmental studies completed for those areas if El Cristo where drilling is planned. An application filed with SEMARNAT for an additional 29 drill pads.

El Cristo is the direct strike extension of the Veta Grande which has a reported, but unverified, historical production of 200 Moz AgEq. The veins at El Cristo show similar characteristics to those at Veta Grande, have a similar orientation, and are part of the same sigmoidal zone of dilation.

Historically the El Cristo vein system has only been tested by 8 angled diamond drill holes, despite comprising multiple veins within a zone of dilation that is 3 km long and up to 600 m wide. There are over 20 known historical near surface shafts and multiple areas with near surface historical workings. The Company plans to target the near surface depth extension of veins when drill pads are permitted.

Additional Areas

The Company is presently completing environmental studies at Muleros and San Manuel ahead of drill pad applications.

Qualified Person

The contents of this news release have been reviewed and approved by Chris Wilson, B.Sc. (Hons), PhD, FAusIMM (CP), FSEG, Chief Operating Officer of Zacatecas Silver. Dr. Wilson is a Qualified Person as defined by NI 43-101 and is responsible for all technical information in this news release.

About Zacatecas Silver Corp.

The Zacatecas Silver property is located in Zacatecas State, Mexico, within the highly prospective Fresnillo Silver Belt, which has produced over 6.2 billion ounces of silver. The company holds 7,826 ha (19,338 acres) of ground that is highly prospective for low and intermediate sulphidation silver-base metal mineralization and potentially low sulphidation gold-dominant mineralization. On December 15, 2021, Zacatecas announced a mineral resource estimate at the Panuco Deposit consisting of 2.7 million tonnes at 187 g/t AgEq (171 g/t Ag and 0.17 g/t Au) for 16.4 million ounces AgEq (15 million ounces silver and 15 thousand ounces gold) (see news release dated December 15, 2021).

The property is 25 km south-east of MAG Silver Corp.'s Juanicipio Mine and Fresnillo PLC's Fresnillo Mine. The property shares common boundaries with Pan American Silver Corp. claims and El Orito which is owned by Endeavour Silver. There are four main high-grade silver target areas within the Zacatecas concessions: the Panuco Deposit, Muleros, El Cristo and San Manuel-San Gill. The Property also includes El Oro, El Orito, La Cantera, Monserrat, El Penon, San Judas and San Juan silver-base metal vein targets. These targets are relatively unexplored and will be the focus of rapid reconnaissance.

On behalf of the Company

Bryan Slusarchuk

Chief Executive Officer and Director

Forward-Looking Statements

Information set forth in this news release contains forward-looking statements that are based on assumptions as of the date of this news release. These statements reflect management's current estimates, beliefs, intentions and expectations. They are not guarantees of future performance. Zacatecas Silver cautions that all forward looking statements are inherently uncertain and that actual performance may be affected by many material factors, many of which are beyond their respective control. Such factors include, among other things: risks and uncertainties relating to Zacatecas Silver's limited operating history, its proposed exploration and development activities on is Zacatecas Properties and the need to comply with environmental and governmental regulations. Accordingly, actual and future events, conditions and results may differ materially from the estimates, beliefs, intentions and expectations expressed or implied in the forward-looking information. Except as required under applicable securities legislation, Zacatecas Silver does not undertake to publicly update or revise forward-looking information.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

SOURCE Zacatecas Silver Corp.
Thrive restaurant group has partnered with Mobotory Technologies to implement an end-to-end claim workflow through Mobotory's AI-driven SaaS platform. The platform manages loss, risk, and underwriting for insurance claims in hospitality, retail, medical, industrial, and other industries.

SANTA MONICA, Calif., March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- "Mobotory's technology is helping us better serve our people by improving the transparency, efficiency and management of safety practices in our restaurants. Their suite of technology services has improved our data-based decision-making creating faster response times and has enabled us to measure our performance in ways that have not been possible with other technology and processes we've used. We've been impressed with the accuracy of their algorithms, and the visibility we now have around risks and costs. Overall, Mobotory is helping us improve safety and as an added benefit is lowering our costs too. We believe in investing in technology like Mobotory to enable better and safer operations."

Mobotory's advanced machine learning spans the full claim process from incident data capture and claim analysis to resolution. The tools integrate advanced AI algorithms, notification, loss prediction, and cost factors, with likely settlement outcomes clearly visualized on user-tailored management dashboards. This complete claim workflow will enable rich insight, allowing for accurate risk prediction, mitigation, and management.

"Our goal is to future-proof companies with machine learning technology to ensure accurate decision making when it comes to assessing risks," said Jon Stevenson, CEO of Mobotory. "We are thrilled to take these steps with Thrive and look forward to supporting their operational goals."

Mobotory's AI technology will be deployed in all of Thrive's restaurants and will deliver rapid actionable knowledge and deep insight into Workers' Comp and General Liability risk, reducing losses, identifying & mitigating cost factors, and supporting safety improvements.

About Thrive

Thrive Restaurant Group is a dynamic and growing 50-year-old restaurant business that believes in making a difference in the communities they serve and in the lives of their people. Based in Wichita, Kansas, thrive operates four brands (Applebee's, Carlos O'Kelly's, HomeGrown and Peace Love and Pie) in 100 restaurants across 13 states with a team of over 5,000 people. For more on Thrive: https://www.thriverestaurantgroup.com

About Mobotory Technologies

Mobotory, a leading Insuretech AI company for commercial insurance, revolutionizes the efficiency and accuracy in business decision-making with its advanced Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning platform. Mobotory connects many blue-chip clients, such as Arthur J. Gallagher, Allianz, and McDonalds, helping them make and save millions of dollars in the process. Headquartered in Santa Monica, CA, Mobotory has additional offices in Barcelona, Spain, Alabama and Indiana. For more information on Mobotory's products and services go to https://mobotory.com

Media Contact:

Amy Tu

310-906-0919

[email protected]

SOURCE Mobotory Technologies
Recent release "Un campesino sonador" from Page Publishing author Alex Manjarrez is an inspiring biography of a man who founded a well-renowned restaurant, thrived in the business, and supported many people in their dreams.

Alex Manjarrez, a brilliant entrepreneur, has completed his new book "Un campesino sonador": a stirring memoir about a person who worked his way towards his dreams and rose in success despite the challenges of being in a place that's not his hometown.

NEW YORK, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire-HISPANIC PR WIRE/ -- "At just 17 years old, he entered the United States like any immigrant fleeing from La Migra. Timoteo 'Alex' Manjarrez traveled by truck from his ranch to Tijuana, and then climbed a huge hill. A mountain similar to those of his native San Francisco. Like those that he had to go up and down when, as a child, he helped his parents in the fields.
SYDNEY, March 23 (Xinhua) -- A piece of DNA, previously considered as "junk" material by scientists, could be the key to extinguishing fear-related memories for people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and phobias, according to a new study led by Australian researchers.

Team leader associate professor Timothy Bredy, a neuroscientist at the Queensland Brain Institute (QBI) which is affiliated with the University of Queensland, said the discovery could ultimately help in the development of a therapy to target areas in the brain that directly modify disturbing memories.

Their findings, published in the journal Cell Reports on Wednesday, are based on a study into the impact of trauma on a genome, which is the complete set of genes or genetic material in a cell.

Speaking to Xinhua on Wednesday, Bredy explained how researchers had tested mice that had been trained to respond to stimuli in a certain way.

"We behaviorally train mice and then, immediately following the experience, we examine specific cell types from their prefrontal cortex to see how genes are expressed in response to experience," Bredy said, adding that the results had defied expectations.

"Until recently, scientists thought most of our genes were made up of 'junk' DNA, which essentially didn't do anything," he said. "But when we began to explore these regions, we realized most of the genome is active."

Bredy and his team, including scientists from China and the United States, were "very much surprised" by how many long non-coding RNA (lncRNAs) were actively expressed in response to the experience.

He said their breakthrough had been made possible by the use of a powerful new sequencing approach which "shines a very bright light on regions of the genome that one cannot see with standard sequencing methods".

"It is a really interesting way to zero in on sites within the genome that would otherwise be masked," Bredy said. "It's like harnessing the power of the Hubble Telescope to peer into the unknown of the brain."

The technology enabled them to identify 433 lncRNAs from relatively unknown regions of the human genome.

Bredy said a new gene, called ADRAM (which stands for Activity Dependent lncRNA Associated with Memory) acted as a "scaffold for molecules inside the cell" and helped coordinate the formation of fear-extinction memory.

"Our findings suggest that lncRNAs provide a bridge, linking dynamic environmental signals with the mechanisms that control the way our brains respond to fear," he said.

"Our next steps are to continue exploring lncRNA activity in the brain to look at their roles in different compartments of the cell and to harness the selectivity of lncRNAs ... to treat cognitive impairment disorders." 
Investor Vincent Carney from Kansas City to bring his fuel and trip permit company to the Great Lakes State

KANSAS CITY, Mo., March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Allied Permits , a company specializing in providing fuel and trip permits for the transportation industry, proudly announced today that they have expanded their operations to the state of Michigan. The customer-focused company prides itself on having several features that are not found with its competition including a completely paperless platform, online permit deliveries that occur in minutes, and a fully US-based support team.

"Michigan is virtually synonymous with vehicles and transportation, and its position as a main border crossing to Canada is pivotal to the industry," commented company Founder and President Vince Carney. "It's for these reasons that we are so excited to be expanding our service to the state of Michigan on Allied Permits and the AlliedPermits.com platform."

Michigan is a critically important state for transportation and logistics. According to the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT), 37% of the $526 billion US/Canadian annual trade flows through the state's borders. Furthermore, MDOT has an aggressive Five-Year Transportation Plan to continue investing in the state's infrastructure through various initiatives such as highway and bridge projects.

Commercial trucks that frequently travel across state lines will often carry an International Fuel Tax Agreement (IFTA) decal as well as an International Registration Plan (IRP). These agreements ensure that each state or municipality receives their fair share of registration and fuel tax without requiring trucks to register in every region. In Michigan, Trip and Fuel permits are required by any vehicles with three or more axles, or any vehicles over 26,000 pounds as well as vehicles traveling in multiple IFTA member jurisdictions. These permits are required to avoid expensive fines for non-compliance.

For those not often traveling across state lines, the IRPs and IFTAs can be expensive and the registration process can be cumbersome. Temporary fuel and trip permits are a much easier and less costly alternative. Often, commercial trucks with IRPs will even utilize temporary permits when traveling through a region in which they don't often find themselves.

ABOUT ALLIED PERMITS

Founded by Vince Carney in Kansas City, Missouri, Allied Permits seeks to streamline the process for those looking to obtain fuel and trip permits, while providing the best customer support in the industry. The company is currently licensed and operating for providing permits in Michigan, with expansion plans underway. For more information, please visit AlliedPermits.com or email [email protected] .

Press Contact

Vince Carney

816-343-8857

https://www.alliedpermits.com/

SOURCE Allied Permits
TORONTO, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ - Global IT research and advisory firm Info-Tech Research Group has released a new research blueprint designed to build an agile enterprise architecture (EA) practice that is sustainable and relevant and continuously delivers business value.

In the new research, Info-Tech explains that a business strategy is influenced by market forces and may change quickly and drastically, and the business architecture changes along with it. Meanwhile, technology is slower to adapt to forces because of its complexity and interdependencies that require long-term planning. Info-Tech's research indicates that the EA practice should strive to have an agile organizational structure and be agile in its delivery. This is achievable by adopting strategy-based design principles to guide operational design.

"Enterprise Architecture evolves from an 'ivory tower' to a practical, proactive, no-nonsense approach. It behaves as a trusted advisor, ensuring close collaboration with the business on digital transformation, eventually influencing the overall strategy. It has a synchronization role across all guilds such as business, data, application, infrastructure, integration, security, etc.," explains Principal Research Director Milena Litoiu. "Enterprise Architecture also has a holistic optimization role as it guides an implementation to obtain superior results. EA might also assume an increasingly important role in external coordination, such as with suppliers, vendors, and partners, to enhance an organization's ability to adapt to change while making decisions that ensure flexibility and extensibility."

This blueprint details a strategy-driven EA organizational design that allows for the creation of value by blending strategy, culture, and service rather than a purely functional design. It takes corporate values and culture into account to ensure the EA practice blends in. This strategy also has stakeholders define the services required from the EA practice, allowing for aligned engagement and deliverables. This provides the EA practice with the required capabilities, a well-defined way of working, and the governance needed to remain successful.

During the design of the EA operating model, the primary question is how to integrate the EA function with the rest of the business. If the EA function becomes completely embedded within business units, it will become siloed with no enterprise value. If the EA practice functions independently, it will end up with ivory tower syndrome and be seen as a dictatorship. Organizations need to decide on a balance that will work best for them, given culture and development methodologies.

Info-Tech recommends organizations consider implementing the following approach for creating a successful agile EA operating model:

Design an EA Operating Model  Leaders should rethink the EA organization and define a sound set of design principles before they begin to design the EA organization.



Define the EA Organizational Operating Model  The EA operating model structure should be rigid yet flexible enough to meet the needs of the stakeholders it serves.



Implement the EA Organization  A phased approach and a good communications strategy is key to the success of the new EA organization. This will help mitigate the risk of resistance both internally in the EA practice and from the whole organization.

Business architecture is the cornerstone that sets the foundation for all other architectural domains  security, data, application, and technology  and enterprise architecture spans across all of the domains of architecture. A well-managed EA practice will help an organization understand the current state of its systems, promote desirable change toward the future state, enable regulatory compliance, and improve effectiveness.

To learn more about Info-Tech Research Group and to download all the latest research, visit www.infotech.com and connect via LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.

Media professionals are encouraged to register for Info-Tech's Media Insiders program for more research and insights. This program provides unrestricted, on-demand access to IT, HR, and software industry content and subject matter experts from a group of more than 200 research analysts. To apply for access, contact [email protected].

Supporting Resources

View and download the complete Agile Enterprise Architecture Operating Model blueprint.

About Info-Tech Research Group

Info-Tech Research Group is the world's fastest-growing information technology research and advisory firm, proudly serving over 30,000 IT professionals. The company produces unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. Info-Tech partners closely with IT teams to provide them with everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.

SOURCE Info-Tech Research Group
"We are proud to support Chesapeake Utilities in developing this CNG station by providing the infrastructure to deploy natural gas vehicles across the state," said Pedro Cherry, president and CEO of Atlanta Gas Light.," said Pedro Cherry, President, and CEO of Atlanta Gas Light. "It's by collaborating with great leaders on projects like this that we will continue to bring clean, safe, reliable and affordable natural gas infrastructure to our state to help customers meet their sustainability goals."

The station is designed to serve local CNG fleets as well as renewable natural gas (RNG) fueled vehicles, including high-capacity dispensers for fueling Class 8 trucks. It will also be used as a staging area for Chesapeake's Marlin Gas subsidiary to fill CNG transport trailers used in providing virtual pipeline services. In 2020, Atlanta Gas Light announced it entered into an agreement with Chesapeake Utilities to construct and maintain the station for Chesapeake.

Atlanta Gas Light has a long history of supporting CNG initiatives and is committed to building a sustainable energy future for the state. In 1969, Atlanta Gas Light helped write the foundation for today's Natural Gas Vehicle Codes and Standards. CNG vehicles have been a part of the Atlanta Gas Light's fleet since the late 1970s, helping fuel the way forward for CNG vehicles across the state in a variety of businesses.

For more information on Atlanta Gas Light's CNG initiatives and to find a public CNG fueling station near you, visit http://www.atlantagaslight.com

About Atlanta Gas Light

Atlanta Gas Light is one of four natural gas distribution companies of Southern Company Gas, a wholly owned subsidiary of Southern Company (NYSE: SO). Atlanta Gas Light provides natural gas delivery service approximately 1.7 million customers in Georgia. In operation since 1856, the company is one of the oldest corporations in the state. For more information, visit atlantagaslight.com.

About Southern Company Gas

Southern Company Gas is a wholly owned subsidiary of Atlanta-based Southern Company (NYSE:SO), America's premier energy company. Southern Company Gas serves approximately 4.3 million natural gas customers through its regulated distribution companies in four states with approximately 666,000 retail customers through its companies that market natural gas. Other businesses include investments in interstate pipelines and ownership and operation of natural gas storage facilities. For more information, visit southerncompanygas.com.

SOURCE Atlanta Gas Light
"Through this program we are recognizing the impact of inspiring leaders in our country who are creating real change," said D. Steve Boland, chief administrative officer at Bank of America. "Supporting nonprofits and their leaders has been core to our approach of investing in the local communities we serve. We are proud to honor these brilliant leaders and empower nonprofits with resources to continue their work in support of communities of color."

The Racial Equality Award is an extension of Bank of America's signature philanthropic program, Neighborhood Builders , which focuses on economic mobility and nonprofit leadership. Awardees have the opportunity to direct $200,000 in flexible funding to a nonprofit of their choice and the selected organizations will also be invited to participate in the company's year-long Neighborhood Builders Leadership Program, which provides strategic growth and development trainings, setting the organizations up for long-term success.

The 2022 group of awardees includes:

Edgar Villanueva , Founder and Principal of Decolonizing Wealth Project  New York : As the founder of the Decolonizing Wealth Project and Liberated Capital, Villanueva is a globally-recognized author and expert on the intersection of race, power, and wealth. He offers hopeful and compelling alternatives to the dynamics of colonization in the philanthropic and social finance sectors. Through this recognition, Villanueva plans to direct Bank of America's funding to Liberated Capital.

As the founder of the Decolonizing Wealth Project and Liberated Capital, Villanueva is a globally-recognized author and expert on the intersection of race, power, and wealth. He offers hopeful and compelling alternatives to the dynamics of colonization in the philanthropic and social finance sectors. Through this recognition, Villanueva plans to direct Bank of America's funding to Liberated Capital. John Rice , Founder and CEO of Management Leadership for Tomorrow (MLT)  Bethesda, MD : Rice and his organization pioneered a college-to-career model, helping students of color overcome barriers to success. By preparing low-and-moderate income undergraduates to land and succeed in competitive first jobs, Rice is ensuring they achieve lasting economic mobility. He plans to direct funding to Management Leadership for Tomorrow (MLT).

: Rice and his organization pioneered a college-to-career model, helping students of color overcome barriers to success. By preparing low-and-moderate income undergraduates to land and succeed in competitive first jobs, Rice is ensuring they achieve lasting economic mobility. He plans to direct funding to Management Leadership for Tomorrow (MLT). Luz Corcuera , Executive Director of UnidosNow  Sarasota / Manatee, FL : As a leader of UnidosNow, Corcuera is committed to empowering Hispanic-Latinos to achieve the American dream through education, integration, and civic engagement. She has a proven track record in community-building and engagement, developing and overseeing diverse community-based initiatives to empower underserved communities through prevention and education. Corcuera will drive funding to UnidosNow.

As a leader of UnidosNow, Corcuera is committed to empowering Hispanic-Latinos to achieve the American dream through education, integration, and civic engagement. She has a proven track record in community-building and engagement, developing and overseeing diverse community-based initiatives to empower underserved communities through prevention and education. Corcuera will drive funding to UnidosNow. Manjusha (Manju) P. Kulkarni , Executive Director at the AAPI Equity Alliance, Educator/Community Advocate  Los Angeles, CA : Kulkarni co-founded the Stop AAPI Hate campaign, which has become one of the leading voices in the effort to identify and oppose hate crimes against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. Recently, Kulkarni and the other co-founders of Stop AAPI Hate were named to the Time Magazine "Most Influential People of 2021" list. South Asian Network will be the recipient of Kulkarni's grant.

: Kulkarni co-founded the Stop AAPI Hate campaign, which has become one of the leading voices in the effort to identify and oppose hate crimes against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. Recently, Kulkarni and the other co-founders of Stop AAPI Hate were named to the Time Magazine "Most Influential People of 2021" list. South Asian Network will be the recipient of Kulkarni's grant. Nathaniel Smith , Founder and Chief Equity Officer of Partnership for Southern Equity (PSE)  Atlanta, GA : Smith and his organization work toward balanced growth and shared prosperity in Georgia and the American South. In collaboration with its ecosystem of diverse partners, PSE helps local communities of color advocate more effectively for themselves on relevant state, local, and federal economic issues, including energy policy through its 'Just Energy' program. Smith plans to direct funding to Partnership for Southern Equity.

This newly-established award is one example of how Bank of America continues to build on its philanthropic programs with opportunities to drive economic and social progress, including through its $1.25 billion, five-year commitment to advance racial equality and economic opportunity, of which it has directly funded or invested more than $450 million. Since 2004, through its Neighborhood Builders  and Neighborhood Champions programs, Bank of America invested more than $285 million in 92 communities across the U.S., partnered with more than 1,400 nonprofits, and helped more than 2,800 nonprofit leaders strengthen their leadership skills. Nearly 17 years after its launch, Neighborhood Builders is one of the nation's largest philanthropic investments in nonprofit leadership development.

Bank of America Environmental, Social and Governance

At Bank of America, we're guided by a common purpose to help make financial lives better, through the power of every connection. We're delivering on this through responsible growth with a focus on our environmental, social and governance (ESG) leadership. ESG is embedded across our eight lines of business and reflects how we help fuel the global economy, build trust and credibility, and represent a company that people want to work for, invest in and do business with. It's demonstrated in the inclusive and supportive workplace we create for our employees, the responsible products and services we offer our clients, and the impact we make around the world in helping local economies thrive. An important part of this work is forming strong partnerships with nonprofits and advocacy groups, such as community, consumer and environmental organizations, to bring together our collective networks and expertise to achieve greater impact. Learn more at about.bankofamerica.com , and connect with us on Twitter ( @BofA_News ).

For more Bank of America news, including dividend announcements and other important information, visit the Bank of America newsroom and register for news email alerts .

www.bankofamerica.com

Reporters May Contact:

Vanessa Cook, Bank of America

Phone: 1.980.683.2247

[email protected]

SOURCE Bank of America Corporation
BioFluidica LiquidScan Next-Generation Testing Platform, Can Detect Diseases in 15 Minutes

SAN DIEGO, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- BioFluidica, a privately held biotechnology company, today announced they have been awarded a continuation grant from the Midwest Biomedical Accelerator Research Consortium (MBArC) on behalf of the National Institutes of Health Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics (RADx Tech) program. The grant is to continue support for development of the BioFluidica liquid biopsy platform, LiquidScan in a handheld device. Development of the handheld device is on-track from the original grant. Initially, the "at-home" handheld device is for the rapid and precise testing for COVID-19 with a sensitivity of qPCR and the speed of an antigen test using microfluidics-based detection methods.

The automated laboratory benchtop version of BioFluidica LiquidScan is presently in commercialization and will first be exhibited at the upcoming AACR 2022 conference April 8-13 in New Orleans, LA. LiquidScan is a novel platform to aid in diagnostic testing that can be applied to many diseases, including cancer types, prenatal diagnostics, stroke, and infectious diseases. LiquidScan isolates and enhances from whole blood most categories of biomarkers. Whereas a CT or MRI scan surveys the whole body to detect diseases, LiquidScan can search a blood sample for rare biomarkers in the bloodstream, such as circulating tumor cells, cell-free DNA, exosomes and infectious disease agents. The platform, expanded to use saliva samples, can be used for point-of-care testing in hospitals, CLIA labs, research institutes, and now in the comfort of home with the handheld device

"A self-administered rapid test produces confidential results at home and in minutes, while laboratory tests take longer and at increased cost," said Steven A. Soper, Ph.D., co-founder of Biofluidica, Kansas University's Foundation Distinguished Professor in Chemistry and Mechanical Engineering, and director of the Center for BioModular Multi-scale Systems for Precision Medicine. "The hope is that easier access to tests and faster, accurate test results will make frequent testing more desirable and encourage people to protect themselves and others in the community."

For COVID-19 testing, as well as other infectious diseases, BioFluidica LiquidScan generates results in 15 minutes, does not require cold storage of sample, and enables improved commercial and home diagnostics at lower costs. The leap in technological advantages provided by BioFluidica LiquidScan was made possible by developing a patented microfluidic chip. This chip offers efficient capture, release, enumeration, and molecular analysis of viral particles, such as SARS-CoV-2. The BioFluidica technology allows high-throughput and low-cost manufacturing, which results in low test costs that can be readily covered by insurance and is suitable for large-scale screening.

The RADx initiative was launched in April 2020 to speed innovation in the development, commercialization, and implementation of technologies for COVID-19 testing. The RADx initiative partners with federal agencies, including the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Health, Department of Defense, the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, and U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The initiative has four programs: RADx Tech, RADx Advanced Technology Platforms, RADx Underserved Populations, and RADx Radical. In an April 2021 NIH news release that described the program he leads, Bruce Tromberg, Ph.D., director of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering said, "NIH's RADx Tech program has turbocharged the development, scale-up, and deployment of powerful testing platforms. Accessible screening and surveillance testing will continue to help the community manage COVID while providing essential new capabilities for responding to future pathogens, variants, and other diseases."

About University of Kansas and MBArC

The University of Kansas is a major comprehensive research and teaching university. The university's mission is to lift students and society by educating leaders, building healthy communities and making discoveries that change the world. The KU News Service is the central public relations office for the Lawrence campus. For more information, please visit www.ku.edu.

The Midwest Biomedical Accelerator Consortium (MBArC) was established in 2019 as a 4-year, $3.9 million partnership between the University of Missouri, Columbia (lead)/ University of Kansas Medical Center (KUMC), Kansas City and the National Institutes of Health Research Evaluation and Commercialization Hubs (NIH REACH). The goal of MBArC is to provide funding, training, and education to academic researchers to accelerate the transition of discoveries originating from research labs into products that National Institutes of Health, under Grant No. U01HL152410. For more information, please visit www.medicine.missouri.edu/offices-programs/midwest-biomedical-accelerator-consortium.

About BioFluidica

BioFluidica is a privately held biotechnology company that has developed a revolutionary liquid biopsy platform. The Biofluidica platform can precisely capture and isolate disease biomarkers. LiquidScan is designed to capture three important biomarkers (rare cells, exosomes and cfDNA) as well as infectious disease agents on one fully automated instrumentation platform. Their ability to scan blood for the first signs of a disease, finding the rarest biomarkers with unmatched sensitivity, means fulfilling the promise of a true liquid biopsy. For more information please visit https://www.biofluidica.com/

Business Development Contact:

Brent Keller

[email protected]

Media Contact:

Julie Ferguson

[email protected]

(312) 385-0098

SOURCE BioFluidica, Inc.
Modern Upscale Brand Relaunches with Opening of Vib Tempe in Arizona

TEMPE, Ariz., March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Best Western Hotels & Resorts (BWHR) today announces the relaunch of its urban, upscale boutique brand, Vib, debuting a new prototype with the opening of Vib Tempe in Tempe, Arizona. The Tempe hotel joins the global Vib portfolio as a shining example of the newly relaunched brand, serving as a model for future Vib properties through its thoughtfully designed spaces that invite collaboration and socialization while still offering flexible function with a stylish flair.

"The new Vib prototype is designed for urban and dense suburban areas, delivering the upscale vibrance and modern amenities that today's younger and more remote workforce are seeking such as unique Food & Beverage offerings in every hotel," said Ron Pohl, Senior Vice President and Chief Operations Officer. "Vib Tempe is the perfect example of what our Vib brand can offer to today's travelers and the next generation of hotel developers, and we are thrilled to welcome this property to our portfolio as our first corporate owned and managed property."

"Best Western's global headquarters have been part of the thriving Phoenix area for more than six decades. The opening of our Vib Tempe hotel not only represents a relaunch of this exciting boutique brand, but it also reflects our company's appreciation of this remarkable community and our commitment to grow our presence in the Valley of the Sun," said Larry Cuculic, President and Chief Executive Officer.

A reflection of the inter-connected modern world, Vib can be found at the heart of the fastest-moving cities around the globe. This successful new brand boasts 10 properties in its global pipeline including destinations like Cape Town, South Africa; Denver, Colorado; and the Greek island of Crete, joining hotels already open in Bangkok, Thailand; Antalya, Turkey; and Springfield, Missouri. The brand has garnered significant interest among developers who appreciate Vib's new, bold product offering which is also supported by BWHR's powerhouse brand. Every Vib hotel is given unparalleled systems and support and is on-boarded with access to BWHR's award-winning website, global partnerships and sales team, and state-of-the-art revenue management system. Hoteliers benefit from BWHR's reputation for providing superior guest service and gain access to the award-winning Best Western Rewards program, which boasts over 48 million members worldwide.

"Vib not only appeals to the modern traveler with a truly engaging stay experience, but it also presents a tremendous investment opportunity for developers. To ensure developers are able to capitalize this exciting new prototype, we are excited to offer financial incentives associated with opportunities that line up the right market and the right operator." said Brad LeBlanc, Senior Vice President and Chief Development Officer.

Vib Tempe features a modern lobby designed for collaborating with peers, using as a workspace for the day, or socializing after a local sporting event. The versatile public space can also flex to provide an extended lobby with flexible furnishings suitable for large events and functions. Its Food & Beverage offerings include being the home to Arizona's first Cousins Maine Lobster restaurant bringing Maine lobster to the heart of downtown Tempe. The lobby bar provides the perfect hangout spot to indulge in crafted cocktails, light dining, and espresso beverages. The hotel also features a signature rooftop lounge offering guests breathtaking views of the valley.

"The investment by Best Western Hotels & Resorts in Tempe is proof that the tourism and hospitality industry in our community is of growing regional importance," said Tempe Mayor Corey Woods. "For those who attend special events like the Tempe Festival of the Arts or work for corporate offices in the new building at 100 Mill, the Vib will become a hotel of choice".

"Developers across the globe have recognized the vast potential of this upscale brand," said Pohl. "Vib balances tech-infused amenities that keep guests connected to the pulse of downtown culture, with contemporary comforts that create a relaxing escape from the hustle  and Vib Tempe is certainly no exception."

For more information on the Vib brand, please visit BestWesternDevelopers.com and Vib.BestWestern.com .

About Best Western Hotels & Resorts:

Best Western Hotels & Resorts headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona, is a privately held hotel brand within the BWH Hotel Group global network. With 18 brands and approximately 4,700 hotels in over 100 countries and territories worldwide*, BWH Hotel Group suits the needs of developers and guests in every market. Brands include Best Western, Best Western Plus, Best Western Premier, Executive Residency by Best Western, Vib, GLo, Aiden, Sadie, BW Premier Collection and BW Signature Collection. Through acquisition, WorldHotelsTM Luxury, WorldHotels Elite, WorldHotels Distinctive and WorldHotels Crafted collections are also offered. Completing the portfolio is SureStay, SureStay Plus, SureStay Collection and SureStay Studio franchises**. For more information visit www.bestwestern.com , www.bestwesterndevelopers.com, www.worldhotels.com and www.surestay.com.

* Numbers are approximate, may fluctuate, and include hotels currently in the development pipeline.

**All Best Western, WorldHotels and SureStay branded hotels are independently owned and operated.

CONTACT: Ines Lei, [email protected]

SOURCE Best Western Hotels & Resorts
CHICAGO , March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- BPOC , one of the longest-tenured healthcare private equity firms, today announced it is a recipient of the inaugural 2022 Top 50 Private Equity Innovator Awards, in recognition of the firm's innovative approach to due diligence, value creation, firm operations, and ESG. Created by BluWave , a private equity-focused B2B Intelligent Marketplace, the Top 50 Private Equity Innovator Awards recognize select private equity firms for exemplary innovation and leadership. The award is given to the top 1% of private equity firms for innovative investment practices and operations.

"We are honored to be a part of this elite group. We pride ourselves on thinking differently and are proud to be recognized for our innovative approach," said Greg Moerschel, Managing Partner at BPOC. "This award is a testament to BPOC's continued commitment to work alongside founders to help accelerate their next stage of growth. We are excited to continue to collaborate with our partners to build a better, more cost-effective healthcare system."

The Top 50 Private Equity Innovator Award recipients were selected by BluWave based upon a rigorous assessment in consultation with leading limited partners, investment bankers, and other thought leaders in the private equity ecosystem. BluWave partners with more than 500 leading private equity firms and has a one-of-a-kind perspective that enables it to uniquely understand best practices and innovation in private equity.

The private equity firms considered for this recognition were assessed across the following criteria:

Proactive Due Diligence Practices

Transformative Value Creation

Progressive Private Equity Firm Operations

ESG

"The private equity industry is rapidly evolving, and we applaud the award-winning firms for their leadership across the four areas measured to achieve new levels of business success," says Sean Mooney, Founder and CEO, BluWave. "They are transforming the way private equity helps businesses grow and develop and deserve this well-earned recognition."

For further information on the BluWave 2022 Top 50 Private Equity Innovator Awards, including the selection process, selection criteria, and recipients, please visit https://www.bluwave.net/awards/ .

ABOUT BPOC

Founded in 1996, BPOC is a Chicago-based private equity firm that invests exclusively in healthcare companies and is one of the nation's most experienced investors in the industry having raised five funds with total capital commitments of nearly $1.8 billion. BPOC has invested in numerous provider, manufacturing, outsourcing, distribution and information technology companies through growth equity, management buyouts and leveraged recapitalizations. For more information, visit www.bpoc.com .

ABOUT BLUWAVE

BluWave, LP is an innovative B2B Intelligent Marketplace that uses technology, data, and human ingenuity to connect more than 500 leading private equity firms and thousands of proactive businesses with best-in-class, pre-vetted, third parties for critical due diligence, value creation, and preparing for sale needs. BluWave's invitation-only Intelligent Marketplace includes private equity-grade service provider groups, independent consultants, and interim executives. Visit www.BluWave.net for more information.

CONTACT:

Alex Nye

M: 814 671 7497

E: [email protected]

SOURCE BPOC
Tickets on Sale Now for Orange County's #1 Family Friendly Event Starting March 30  April 17

SANTA ANA, Calif., March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The bubbles are back! Discovery Cube, Southern California's leading children's science museum, is excited to welcome back Orange County's #1 family-friendly annual event, Bubblefest, running March 30-April 17. The Southland's most popular spring break event features a hands-on festival of soapy science fun and activities throughout the Orange County campus, as well as the award-winning Mega Bubblefest Laser Show starring world-famous bubble artist Melody Yang. The festival combines all the wonders of music, lasers and bubbles for an exciting, one-of-a-kind soapy science sensation.

Tickets for the annual event are currently on sale through Discovery Cube's website and includes access to the Mega Bubblefest Laser Show and a Bubble courtyard filled with silly, soapy science fun with hands-on exhibits, a paddle boat attraction, an inflatable obstacle course and much more. The event is open to children and parents of all ages. Tickets to the Bubblefest show also provide guests with admission and access to the rest of Discovery Cube's award-winning STEM exhibits throughout the science center.

"We're bringing the bubbles back to the OC," said Joe Adams, CEO, Discovery Cube. "For decades, Bubblefest has been a family-favorite spring break tradition and our most popular annual event. This year we've made it even more spectacular with tons of soap, suds and science fun for the whole family. You don't have to be a kid to enjoy all the silly science fun and education you can have with bubbles."

Bubblefest 2022 will feature many bubble-filled interactive exhibits and activities that demonstrate the science behind the art of bubble making such as surface tension, elasticity, air pressure, friction and energy. Each activity is steeped in science and brimming with bubble fun. This year's event will also feature a dazzling display of bubble stunts and soapy tricks at the Mega Bubblefest Laser Show, starring Melody Yang. The Mega Bubblefest Laser Show will run seven days a week, with scheduled showtimes at 11:00 a.m., 12:00 p.m., 2:00 p.m. and 3:30 p.m. Advanced ticket purchases are highly encouraged.

Tickets for Bubblefest are now available for purchase: https://www.discoverycube.org/oc-bubblefest/

To learn more about Discovery Cube Orange County and reserve your tickets, visit: https://www.discoverycube.org/buy-tickets/.

Discovery Cube Orange County is located at 2500 N. Main Street, Santa Ana, CA 92705 and open Monday  Sunday: 10 a.m.  5 p.m.

About Discovery Cube

Established in 1989, the Discovery Cube is one of Southern California's leading children's science museums. With locations in Los Angeles and Orange County, the Cube's focus is to INSPIRE, EDUCATE and IMPACT young minds through engaging science-based programs, activities and exhibits. Discovery Cube was named one of the "10 Most Trusted Brands" in Orange County and awarded the National Medal of Service from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Last year, Discovery Cube adopted a digital-first approach to STEM education with the launch of Discovery Cube Connect, a digital platform for the development and distribution of interactive STEM educational offerings, activities and gameplay. For more information, visit discoverycube.org and discoverycubeconnect.org

Media Contact:

Tania Weinkle, Discovery Cube

[email protected]

(917) 359-6799

SOURCE Discovery Cube
Signs Affiliate Program with OnPharm-United with over 600 pharmacies in Ontario

Receives approval from the Province of Saskatchewan to begin sales

TORONTO, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ - Canntab Therapeutics Limited (CSE: PILL.CN) (OTCQB: CTABF) (FRA: TBF1.F) (the "Company" or "Canntab"), a leading innovator in cannabinoid and terpene blends in hard pill form for therapeutic applications, is pleased to announce that the Company has entered into an affiliate agreement (the "Agreement") with OnPharm-United, a 600 plus network of independent pharmacy owners throughout the Province of Ontario. OnPharm-United is dedicated to providing its members with the ability to maintain their independent status while benefiting from increased buying and negotiating power. The network also provides access to a suite of innovative programs, services and resources.

All member pharmacies will have access to educational information on medical cannabis, Canntab's exclusive hard tablet medical products including cannabidiol ("CBD") and tetrahydrocannabinol ("THC") and all necessary tools to permit the pharmacists to refer patients to the Canntab.ca website to fulfill their prescriptions for medical cannabis.

"Canntab is very excited to have established this significant milestone affiliate agreement with OnPharm-United. This important relationship, with a large network of highly respected pharmacists, is a testament and recognition of the importance of the health benefits of medical cannabis as well as Canntab's key role in delivering true pharmaceutical grade THC and CBD to those medical patients in a trusted and precise dosage format. As an example, many pharmacies are either in proximity or often affiliated with pain clinics and therefore providing both the pharmacist and patient with ease of access to the necessary information required to access medical cannabis and the Canntab solid oral dose offerings," stated Larry Latowsky, Chief Executive Officer of Canntab.

Fady Fares, co-Chief Executive Officer of OnPharm-United stated: "our agreement with Canntab is consistent with our objective to enable independent pharmacies to thrive in a highly competitive and continuously changing market. This agreement will help to keep our network of pharmacies at the leading edge of medical cannabis from an educational and professional development perspective. Our partnership with Canntab is a tremendous fit for our members and their patients."

Mr. Latowsky went on to add "the pharmacy affiliate program will significantly extend and leverage our reach to a greater population and with the potential of adding a significant number of patients for Canntab's medical cannabis offerings. We believe that this is only one of many other affiliate agreements which Canntab hopes to enter into with other pharmacy networks."

Province of Saskatchewan Approval

Canntab also is pleased to announce that the Company has received approval from the Province of Saskatchewan to sell the entire portfolio of Canntab solid oral dose products to their wholesale and provincial stores effective immediately.

Since receiving a Medical Sales License from Health Canada on November 11, 2021, Canntab has been focused on the full commercialization of its brand and products. The recently announced OCS ("Ontario Cannabis Store") initial shipment and the Agreement are just 2 examples of what is expected to be numerous developments in the very near future. In addition, affiliates across Canada like pharmacy groups, health and wellness practitioners, sleep and pain clinics and other medical professionals will now be able to recommend or prescribe our product and be compensated for doing so.

About Canntab Therapeutics Limited

Canntab is a Canadian phytopharmaceutical company focused on the manufacturing and distribution of a suite of hard pill cannabinoid formulations in multiple doses and timed-release combinations. Long referred to as Cannabis 3.0 by the Company, Canntab's proprietary hard pill cannabinoid formulations provide doctors, patients and consumers with medical grade solutions which incorporate all the features one would expect from any prescription or over the counter medication sold in pharmacies around the world. These include once a day and extended-release formulations, both providing an accurate dose and improved shelf stability.

Canntab holds a Cannabis Standard Processing & Sales for Medical Purposes License and a Cannabis Research License.

Canntab trades on the Canadian Securities Exchange under the symbol PILL, on the OTCQB under the symbol CTABF, and on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange under the symbol TBF1.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward Looking Statements

This press release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. These statements relate to future events or future performance. The use of any of the words "could", "intend", "expect", "believe", "will", "projected", "estimated" and similar expressions and statements relating to matters that are not historical facts are intended to identify forward-looking information and are based on the Company's current belief or assumptions as to the outcome and timing of such future events. The forward-looking information and forward- looking statements contained herein include, but are not limited to, statements regarding: the adoption of the Company's products; the future plans and goals of the Company; affiliates, including OnPharm-United, recommending and prescribing the Company's products; the future product offerings and distribution channels of the Company, including the Company's website; the synergies established through the Agreement; the Company gaining patents through the affiliate program; and the Company continuing to establish affiliate programs.

Forward-looking information in this news release are based on certain assumptions and expected future events, namely: the Company's ability to continue as a going concern; the continued commercial viability, adoption and growth in popularity of the Company's products; continued approval of the Company's activities by the relevant governmental and/or regulatory authorities; the Company continuing to develop products; continued growth of the Company; the Company hitting its future plans and goals; affiliates, including OnPharm-United, will recommend and prescribe the Company's products; the Company will realize synergies through the Agreement; the Company will gain patents through the affiliate program; and the Company will continue and be successful in establishing additional affiliate programs.

These statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, which may cause actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such statements, including but not limited to: the potential inability of the Company to continue as a going concern; risks associated with potential governmental and/or regulatory action with respect to the Company's operations; competition within the industry; risks that the Company will be unable to execute its plans and/or meet its goals; risk that the Company will not grow as anticipated; risks that consumers will not purchase its products; risk that affiliates, including OnPharm-United, will not recommend and prescribe the Company's products; risk that the Company will not meet its anticipated timelines; risk that the Company will be unable to realize synergies through the Agreement; risk that the Company will be unable to gain patents through the affiliate program; and risk that the Company will be unable to establish or reap benefits from additional affiliate programs.

Readers are cautioned that the foregoing list is not exhaustive. Readers are further cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, as there can be no assurance that the plans, intentions or expectations upon which they are placed will occur. Such information, although considered reasonable by management at the time of preparation, may prove to be incorrect and actual results may differ materially from those anticipated.

Forward-looking statements contained in this news release are expressly qualified by this cautionary statement and reflect the Company's expectations as of the date hereof and are subject to change thereafter. The Company undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, estimates or opinions, future events or results or otherwise or to explain any material difference between subsequent actual events and such forward-looking information, except as required by applicable law.

SOURCE Canntab Therapeutics Limited
Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan (C) meets with Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi (2nd L) in Islamabad, Pakistan, March 22, 2022. (Xinhua/Ahmad Kamal)

ISLAMABAD, March 23 (Xinhua) -- Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan and visiting Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi met here on Tuesday, pledging to push for more achievements in practical cooperation in all fields between the two countries.

During the meeting, the Pakistani prime minister spoke highly of the increasingly closer communication and exchanges between the two countries and expressed his willingness to work with China to promote cooperation in all fields so as to make more achievements.

The iron-clad friendship between Pakistan and China is not only the decision made by the two governments, but also the choice of the two peoples, the prime minister said.

He noted that the cooperation between Pakistan and China has provided positive energy for both sides and the world, and the Pakistani side is full of confidence in the future development of the bilateral ties.

For his part, Wang said that the China-Pakistan friendship is time-tested and rock-solid. The two sides have always understood and supported each other, and stood firmly together.

The Chinese side appreciates Pakistan for giving priority to development, and stands ready to provide Pakistan with assistance within its capacity to help it overcome difficulties and restore economy, and to promote practical cooperation in all fields between the two sides to make more achievements, Wang said.

China encourages Chinese enterprises to invest in Pakistan to help expand employment and accelerate industrialization in Pakistan, Wang noted.

The two sides spoke highly of the strategic significance of China-Pakistan relations, saying that in face of the turbulent international situation, China and Pakistan should further strengthen unity and cooperation and continue to play a stabilizing role in the region and the world at large.

The two sides fully recognized the positive role of the China-Afghanistan-Pakistan foreign ministers' meeting and the foreign ministers' meeting among the neighboring countries of Afghanistan.

The Pakistani prime minister stressed that the China-Afghanistan-Pakistan cooperation is conducive to the stability in Afghanistan and helps Afghanistan play a pivotal role in regional connectivity.

The Pakistani side is ready to work with China to pursue high-quality Belt and Road cooperation and push for the extention of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor to Afghanistan, he added.

The two sides exchanged views on the Ukraine issue, saying that Ukraine should become a bridge between the East and the West, not a frontline for major power rivalry.

Noting that efforts should be made to prevent spillover of the Ukraine crisis, the two sides agreed that the United States, Europe and NATO should have dialogue with Russia, and set up a balanced, effective and sustainable security architecture based on the principle of indivisible security. 
On Deck 8, in the same location as La Piazza on sister ship Mardi Gras , 820 Biscayne will feature a similar layout and venues but with influences and design elements that reflect the urban-meets-laid back vibes of Miami, perfect for relaxing and people watching or enjoying fresh sea air and ocean views. Bringing Miamian food and beverage offerings to the fleet, 820 Biscayne will feature:

Bar 820  a half inside, half outside retro-inspired bar that will feature a "vintage cool" design with grab-and-go Cuban and specialty coffees for early risers on their way outside for some morning sunshine, as well as Miami -inspired tropical frozen drinks and creative martinis day and night.

 a half inside, half outside retro-inspired bar that will feature a "vintage cool" design with grab-and-go Cuban and specialty coffees for early risers on their way outside for some morning sunshine, as well as -inspired tropical frozen drinks and creative martinis day and night. Deco Deli  designed as a nod to Miami's Art Deco mecca with colorful fonts and signage, the space will serve more than the classic deli sandwiches with an expanded menu that also highlights Miami staples including the Cubano (pork, ham, swiss cheese and mustard), a croqueta sandwich (ham and cheese croqueta, shaved ham and pickles), and pan con lechon (slow cooked pulled pork, melted onion and mojo sauce) all on Cuban bread.

designed as a nod to Art Deco mecca with colorful fonts and signage, the space will serve more than the classic deli sandwiches with an expanded menu that also highlights staples including the Cubano (pork, ham, swiss cheese and mustard), a croqueta sandwich (ham and cheese croqueta, shaved ham and pickles), and pan con lechon (slow cooked pulled pork, melted onion and mojo sauce) all on Cuban bread. Miami Slice  continuing to give guests the 24-hour pizza they know and love, the always-popular walk-up spot will offer authentic, fresh-from-the-oven and hand-tossed slices of cheesy goodness amid a contemporary and vibrant decor reminiscent of the late-night eateries on Miami's bustling Ocean Drive.

Throughout this zone, guests will experience a unique take on Miami, combining elements from its past with its present. From beautiful artwork to fun photo opportunities like posing with flamingoes on skateboards, guests will feel like they're truly walking around the '305.'

"Miami has been our home for 50 years, and in bringing a brand new ship to its port, we wanted to show some extra love to the city that helped us become who we are today," said Christine Duffy, president of Carnival Cruise Line. "Carnival Celebration will celebrate all things Carnival, intertwining where we have been with where we are going, and we can't think about where we started without thinking about Miami and all of the fun that it represents."

"We wanted to continue to give our guests the delicious and fun offerings they know and love from Mardi Gras but with new identities that pay tribute to the rich culture of Miami, a city that is so special to all of us," said Ben Clement, senior vice president of new builds, refurbishment and product innovation. "Miami is a one-of-a-kind city with many different sides to it, so we tried to capture all of that in 820 Biscayne  from the tropical feel and original Art Deco designs that can still be found on Miami Beach today to the modern city look of Brickell  and of course, with a huge emphasis on the delicious flavors throughout."

Guests can still expect to find their favorites in the zone like Rudi's Seagrill, which was introduced on Mardi Gras, and Cucina del Capitano, which will be redesigned with a new look and feel that reflects the sleek and airy restaurants often found in Miami, as well.

Carnival Celebration will be the second Carnival ship to be powered by a Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) propulsion system, part of Carnival Corporation's green cruising platform, and will include an award-winning roller coaster at the top of the ship. Celebration will debut in November from the redesigned state-of-the-art Terminal F at PortMiami, the line's third terminal at the port and its largest in South Florida. The terminal will be among the first to be shore-power ready in 2023.

Additional details and zones on Carnival Celebration will be revealed in the coming months leading up to the ship's inaugural sailing from Miami on Nov. 21.

For additional information on Carnival Cruise Line and to book a cruise vacation, call 1-800-CARNIVAL, visit www.carnival.com, or contact your favorite travel advisor or online travel site.

ABOUT CARNIVAL CRUISE LINE

Carnival Cruise Line, part of Carnival Corporation & plc (NYSE/LSE: CCL;NYSE: CUK), is proud to be known as America's Cruise Line with a total of 23 ships, sailing from 14 U.S. homeports and employing more than 40,000 team members from 120 nationalities. Carnival's newest ship, Mardi Gras, featuring the first roller coaster at sea and the first in the Americas powered by eco-friendly Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG), sailed from Port Canaveral, Fla., July 31, 2021. As part of its 50th Birthday festivities, Carnival Celebration, sister ship to Mardi Gras, is scheduled to debut in late 2022 from PortMiami, as well as Carnival Jubilee from Galveston in 2023.

SOURCE Carnival Cruise Line
SEOUL, South Korea, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Insurance technology platform Carrot General Insurance Corp. (Carrot) and two established insurance companies, Hanwha General Insurance (Hanwha) and Lotte Non-life Insurance Co. (Lotte), are uniting to revolutionize South Korea's insurance claims adjustment system. The parties announced Monday that they are joining forces in "an exclusive strategic alliance" across the South Korean peninsula with the goal to "change the face of the accident handling and claims process". Carrot, holding the largest share stakes in the joint venture, will spearhead the development of the new business with its proprietary data and technology while Hanwha and Lotte support Carrot's leadership. The newly formed platform will commence operations in April 2022 under the name Hero Claims Management Inc. (Hero).

A Carrot spokesperson stated, "[the new business] will deliver revolutionary claims management capabilities to its insured clients, lowering settlement time and costs, while making the post-accident process fast, fair and frictionlessBy leveraging combined resources, shared infrastructure advantage and technology, Carrot and our partners will realize economies of scale while maximizing operational efficiency."

Carrot anticipates that having formed the joint venture will stabilize losses while eliminating obstacles that may hinder the company's rapid growth. Furthermore, Carrot's innovative approach creates a strong systemic foundation for Korean insurers of small to medium sizes, as the service will also be available to other insurance companies. The Hero business will not only increase their cost-effectiveness but will also enable them to offer fast and convenient care to their customers rapidly, regardless of where they are in the country without taking much financial burden.

The core service will include AI-driven auto-claims damage assessments, automated FNOL intake, prompt dispatch of adequate services, categorization, automated claims payout, and settlement variability. Furthermore, the new company will develop an extra layer of service tailored for electric and autonomous vehicles, which are clearly on the rise while requiring distinguished solutions. (Note: FNOL is "first notification of loss.")

The board has decided to name Eun Lee as the new CEO of Hero. Lee brings decades of extensive experience from Hanwha, including leadership roles in auto insurance, operations, and HR. Carrot recently announced its sales of more than half a million UBI policies within a two-year timeframe. Carrot's driving data analytics, accident restructuring technique, and various machine learning algorithms that enable the automation of processes will form the basis of the future business of Hero.

About Carrot General Insurance Corp.

Based in Seoul Korea the company was established through a JV partnership with some of the big-name investors, including Hanwha, SK Telecom, Hyundai Motor Group, Altos Ventures, and Stic Investments. Being the nation's first fully-licensed 100% digital insurance carrier, Carrot has been disrupting the market with innovative products and has outpaced its global peers in terms of the speed of acquiring customers to its usage-based insurance program. The company's successful footprint owes itself to strong customer value propositions, including easy and accessible insurance, transparent premiums, AI automated accident registration and prompt dispatch of help services all made possible via proprietary technology. The company is also pursuing business in Pay-As-How-You-Drive auto insurance, which assesses the premiums as per customer's driving patterns and behavior through sensor data analytics. In line with the company's open innovation strategy, Carrot has 100+ national & international partnerships, including South Korean government unit that oversees national highways and traffic controls.

About Hanwha General Insurance

Hanwha General Insurance Co Ltd is a South Korean company mainly engaged in the non-life insurance business with USD 17.9 billion in total assets. Established in 1946, the company is the first South Korean insurance company funded solely by domestic capital. Their insurance products include fire insurance, marine insurance, automobile insurance, specialty insurance, long-term insurance, private pension insurance and others. The Company also has footprints in the reinsurance sector. In addition, the Company engages in the provision of loan services, such as insurance contract loan, apartment mortgage loan and credit loan services.

About Lotte Non-life Insurance

Lotte Non-Life Insurance Co., Ltd. is a South Korean insurance company specialized in non-life insurance business. The Company's insurance products include fire insurance, marine insurance, automobile insurance, guarantee insurance, specialty insurance, foreign casualty insurance, long-term insurance, annuity insurance and retirement income insurance, among others. In addition, the Company also provides loan services.

SOURCE Carrot General Insurance Corp.
CT053: completed subject enrollment for pivotal Phase II trial in China , NDA submission expected in H1, 2022

, NDA submission expected in H1, 2022 CT053: initiated pivotal Phase 2 clinical trial in North America

CT041: initiated confirmatory Phase II clinical trial in China

CT041: was granted PRIME by the EMA, and granted RMAT by the FDA

New product candidates (e.g. CT0590, CT0180 and CT0181) advanced to clinical stage

Development of innovative technologies (e.g. LADAR  )

) RTP Manufacturing Facility, a cGMP manufacturing facility in the U.S., began operations

Dr. Zonghai Li, Founder, Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer, and Chief Scientific Officer of CARsgen Therapeutics Holdings Limited, commented that, "This is the first Annual Results following CARsgen's listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on June 18, 2021. In the past year, CARsgen has made important progress, especially in pipeline development, technology innovation, CMC capacity expansion, business development, and strengthening our leadership team. Driven by the vision of Making Cancer Curable, we will continue to advance our product pipeline, develop innovative technologies, and consolidate our global strategy. We believe that we can bring innovative and differentiated cell therapy to cancer patients around the world as soon as possible, creating value for investors and the public."

1. Rapid progress of pipeline products

CT053

CT053 is an autologous CAR T-cell product candidate against BCMA being developed for the treatment of relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma (R/R MM). It incorporates a CAR construct engineered by CARsgen that features a fully human BCMA-specific single-chain variable fragment with lower immunogenicity and increased stability, which reduces the self-activation of CAR T-cells in the absence of tumor associated targets.

CARsgen has completed subject enrollment in the pivotal Phase II trial in China (LUMMICAR STUDY 1). In addition, CARsgen has started the pivotal Phase 2 clinical trial in North America (LUMMICAR STUDY 2) and treated the first subject in the pivotal Phase 2 trial in August 2021. As communicated with the U.S. FDA, the company is adding outpatient administration of CT053 into its U.S. clinical investigations.

CARsgen plans to make regulatory submissions for marketing approval to the NMPA in the first half of 2022 and plans to submit the BLA to the U.S. FDA in 2023. The company also plans to conduct additional clinical trials to develop CT053 as an earlier line of treatment for multiple myeloma.

Additional data update from the Phase I/II study in China (LUMMICAR STUDY 1) and an integrated analysis in participants with R/R MM by high-risk factors have been available as posters at the 2021 American Society of Hematology ("ASH") Annual Meeting in December 2021.

CT041

CT041 is an autologous CAR T-cell product candidate against the protein Claudin18.2 (CLDN18.2) and has the potential to be first-in-class globally. CT041 targets the treatment of CLDN18.2 positive solid tumors with a primary focus on gastric/gastroesophageal junction cancer (GC/GEJ) and pancreatic cancer (PC). In addition to the investigator-initiated trials, CARsgen has initiated a Phase Ib clinical trial for advanced GC/GEJ and PC and a confirmatory Phase II clinical trial for advanced GC/GEJ in China, and initiated a Phase 1b clinical trial for advanced gastric or pancreatic adenocarcinoma in North America.

In North America, CARsgen has initiated the Phase 1b trial of CT041-ST-02 and has treated the first subject in July 2021.

In 2020 and 2021, CT041 received Orphan Drug designation from the U.S. FDA for the treatment of GC/GEJ and Orphan Medicinal Product designation from the EMA for the treatment of advanced gastric cancer. In November 2021, CT041 was granted PRIME eligibility by the EMA for the treatment of advanced gastric cancer. In January 2022, CT041 was granted Regenerative Medicine Advanced Therapy (RMAT) Designation for the treatment of advanced gastric or gastroesophageal junction adenocarcinoma with CLDN18.2 positive tumors.

CARsgen plans to submit an NDA to the NMPA in China in the first half of 2024 and also plans to initiate a Phase 2 clinical trial in the second half of 2022 in North America and to submit the BLA to the U.S. FDA in 2024.

CT041 has demonstrated promising therapeutic efficacy and safety in the ongoing investigator-initiated trial. The updates on the investigator-initiated trial of CT041 have been presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology Congress 2021 ("ESMO Congress 2021").

CT011

CT011 is an autologous CAR T-cell product candidate with proof-of-concept clinical data for the treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and has the potential to be the first-in class globally. The company has completed enrollment of a Phase I trial in China.

CT032

CT032 is an autologous CAR T-cell product candidate against CD19 being developed for the treatment of B cell Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL). The company is conducting a Phase I/II clinical trial in China.

AB011

AB011 is a humanized monoclonal antibody product candidate against CLDN18.2 being developed for the treatment of CLDN18.2 positive solid tumors. During the second quarter 2021, CARsgen received supplemental application approval by CDE regarding the addition of a chemotherapy combination cohort with AB011 in Phase Ib, and the company has subsequently initiated the combination cohort of AB011 with chemotherapy. The company completed Phase I monotherapy cohort enrollment and initiated combination with chemotherapy.

The company plans to consult with the NMPA in the second half of 2022 and to initiate the subsequent Phase II clinical trial.

CT0180

CT0180 is an autologous T cell product engineered to express a fusion protein of GPC3-targeted antibody fused T cell receptor (aTCR). Preclinical studies have shown that CT0180 could effectively recognize and kill GPC3-positive hepatocellular carcinoma cells and significantly inhibit HCC tumor growth in mouse xenograft models with reduced cytokine release compared to GPC3-CAR T-cells in vitro and in vivo, which improve the safety and applicability of adoptive cell therapies.

CT0181

CT0181 is an autologous T cell product engineered with GPC3-targeted antibody fused T cell receptor co-expressing IL-7 cytokine. Preclinical studies have shown that CT0181 displays superior antitumor efficacy, T cell persistence, and immunological memory in solid tumors xenografts with low cytokine release compared to GPC3-CAR T-cells.

KJ-C2111 (CT0590)

CT0590 is an allogeneic CAR T-cell product candidate deploying THANK-uCAR technology that targets BCMA. CARsgen is developing CT0590 for the treatment of relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma (R/R MM). The company has initiated IIT trial to evaluate the efficacy and safety of CT0590 for the treatment of R/R MM.

In addition, there are other IND-enabling or pre-clinical stage product candidates: KJ-C1807 (CT048), KJ-C2112, KJ-C2113 and KJ-C2114.

2. Continuous Discovery and Technology Development

Despite the approved CAR T-cell products for the treatment of terminal line hematologic malignancies, there are still significant challenges. CARsgen strives to explore and develop innovative technology platforms to address these challenges to generate better cell therapy products to global cancer patients. The main focus includes:

Increasing efficacy against solid tumors: developing innovative technologies, such as CycloCAR  technology, to enhance efficacies of CAR T-cell against solid tumors. CycloCAR  is a next generation CAR T technology, which co-expresses cytokine IL-7 and chemokine CCL21 and potentially has greater clinical efficacy and reduced requirement for lymphodepletion conditioning.

technology, to enhance efficacies of CAR T-cell against solid tumors. CycloCAR is a next generation CAR T technology, which co-expresses cytokine IL-7 and chemokine CCL21 and potentially has greater clinical efficacy and reduced requirement for lymphodepletion conditioning. Enhancing safety profile: developing innovative technologies to minimize safety concerns including CRS/neurotoxicity/on-target off-tumor toxicities.

Expanding patient accessibility: advancing differentiated allogeneic THANK-uCAR  technology to reduce costs and increase affordability. THANK-uCAR  technology has the potential to overcome inefficient expansion and persistence associated with existing universal CAR T-cells.

technology to reduce costs and increase affordability. THANK-uCAR technology has the potential to overcome inefficient expansion and persistence associated with existing universal CAR T-cells. Improving target availability: exploring innovative technologies that can potentially enhance drug target availability and specificity of CAR T-cell therapy. CARsgen has developed Local Action Driven by Artificial Receptor (LADAR) technology, in which the intracellular transcription of the gene of interest is controlled by a chimeric regulatory antigen receptor. Through the LADAR artificial receptor, the intracellular activity is only triggered when the extracellular domain is activated upon binding to specific antigen, making it possible to precisely control when and where immune cells act against cancer cells.

These technologies are currently being developed in-house with global rights and can be used alone or combined to upgrade CARsgen's existing product candidates as well as to generate future innovative pipeline product candidates.

As of December 31, 2021, CARsgen had more than 300 patents of which more than 60 patents had been issued globally including China, the United States, Europe, and Japan.

3. Manufacturing Capacity Expansion

CARsgen has established in-house end-to-end clinical and commercial manufacturing capabilities for all three stages of CAR T manufacturing, including production of plasmids, lentiviral vectors, and CAR T-cells. With the clinical manufacturing facility in Xuhui, Shanghai and commercial GMP manufacturing facility in Jinshan, Shanghai, CARsgen has been manufacturing CAR T-cells in house to support clinical trials in China and manufacturing the lentiviral vectors in house to support clinical trials globally.

The company has been expanding manufacturing capacity in China and the U.S. to support both the clinical trials and the subsequent commercialization of pipeline products. The company has opened its CGMP manufacturing facility located at the Research Triangle Park (RTP) in Durham, North Carolina ("The RTP Manufacturing Facility"). The RTP Manufacturing Facility, with a total gross floor area of approximately 3,300 sq.m, will provide additional manufacturing capacity of autologous CAR T-cell products for 700 patients annually, and it will support the company's ongoing clinical studies and early commercial launch in North America and Europe.

4. External License Agreement

CAFA Therapeutics, a subsidiary of CARsgen Therapeutics, has entered into a licensing agreement with HK inno.N Corporation (KOSDAQ: 195940) to develop and commercialize CT032 and CT053, for the potential treatment of various cancers in the Republic of Korea, with an upfront and additional milestone payments totaling up to USD50 million plus up to double-digit percentage royalties on net sales. The collaboration with HK inno.N showcases CARsgen's commitment to establishing more external partnerships with leading pharmaceutical companies to maximize the application of its technology platform and the value of its product pipeline to benefit more cancer patients globally.

About CARsgen Therapeutics Holdings Limited

CARsgen is a biopharmaceutical company with operations in China and the U.S. and is focused on innovative CAR T-cell therapies for the treatment of hematologic malignancies and solid tumors. The Company has built an integrated cell therapy platform with in-house capabilities that span target discovery, antibody development, clinical trials, and commercial-scale manufacturing. CARsgen has internally developed novel technologies and a product pipeline with global rights to address major challenges of CAR T-cell therapies, such as improving the safety profile, enhancing the efficacy in treating solid tumors, and reducing treatment costs. The Company's vision is to become a global biopharmaceutical leader that brings innovative and differentiated cell therapies to cancer patients worldwide and makes cancer curable.

Contact Us

For more information, please visit https://www.carsgen.com/

SOURCE CARsgen Therapeutics
80% of California wine (255 million cases) is made in 178 certified sustainable wineries.

wine (255 million cases) is made in 178 certified sustainable wineries. 55% of California's vineyard acreage is certified sustainable.

vineyard acreage is certified sustainable. 2,402 Certified California Sustainable Winegrowing vineyards farm 204,857 acres, or 33% of California winegrape acres.

winegrape acres.

Another 22% of California winegrape acres are certified to other sustainability programs  including Fish Friendly Farming, LODI RULES, Napa Green, and Sustainability in Practice (SIP Certified)  with some vineyards certifying to more than one program.

While sustainable practices may include elements of organic, Biodynamic and regenerative farming, sustainability is broad in scope, encompassing energy and water efficiency, employee relations, community engagement and more.

"As the fourth largest wine-producing region, California has the most comprehensive and widely adopted sustainability programs in the world," said Robert P. Koch, president and CEO of Wine Institute. "April is the perfect time to support our member wineries across California, whether by visiting to taste and learn in-person or virtually."

All month long, wineries and regional associations across California will highlight their sustainable farming, winemaking and business practices through a variety of fun and engaging events and activities , from wine tastings to vineyard hikes to behind-the-scenes sustainability tours. Many California wineries host outdoor activities  including active and wellness-oriented offerings  that encourage visitors to explore their beautiful, sustainably farmed winery estates.

There's an array of Down to Earth Month winery events and offers to enjoy; see some examples below and the full list at the Discover California Wines' website .

North Coast

April 1-30: Celebrate Earth Month Discount

Visitors who bring their used wine corks to the tasting room at BARRA of Mendocino in Redwood Valley will receive a free sunflower seed pack and a 10% discount on regular-priced wines.

Central Coast

April 1-30: "Get Down to Earth with Us" Tasting

All month long at Austin Hope and Treana Tasting Cellar in Paso Robles, take a deep dive into how the estate's soils impact what's in the glass.

Sierra Foothills

April 22-24: El Dorado Passport to the Great Out There

Your passport provides access to more than 25 participating wineries across El Dorado County, with many producers committed to sustainable growing and winemaking practices.

Southern California

April 2-30: Ponte Vineyard Estate Tour

Board a 10-passenger electric bus and tour the 310-acre ranch at Ponte Family Estate Winery in Temecula. See how Ponte grows and makes its certified sustainable wines.

Inland Valleys

April 2: Lodi Wine Festival

The Lodi Wine Festival features wine tasting from up to 40 wineries, many committed to sustainability and certified through LODI RULES, pouring over 200 varieties.

Download images & documents here .

About Wine Institute

Established in 1934, Wine Institute is the public policy advocacy group of 1,000 California wineries and affiliated businesses that initiates and advocates state, federal and international public policy to enhance the environment for the responsible production, consumption and enjoyment of wine. The organization works to enhance the economic and environmental health of the state through its leadership in sustainable winegrowing and by showcasing California's wine regions as ideal destinations for food and wine travelers to the state. To learn more about California wines, visit DiscoverCaliforniaWines .

SOURCE Wine Institute
- Company Announces Expansion of its Contour Neurovascular System Platform -

FREMONT, Calif. and OXFORD, England, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Cerus Endovascular Ltd., a privately held, commercial-stage medical device company, announced today that it has received U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) 510(k) clearance for its 027 micro-catheters, available in two lengths, expanding its product portfolio which includes the already FDA cleared 021 micro-catheter platform. The company expects to submit for CE Marking of both sizes under the EU new Medical Devices Regulation, later this year.

A limited U.S. market release of the 027 micro-catheters is expected to begin in the second quarter of 2022, with the 021 micro-catheters platform to follow shortly thereafter.

"Our focus on continually meeting the demands of the clinical and physician communities, including interventional radiologists, with timely, value-added products, is evidenced by this latest FDA approval for the 027 micro-catheters, for which sales will commence shortly, both domestically and internationally," commented Dr. Stephen Griffin, President of Cerus Endovascular.

Jeff Sarge, Vice President of Research & Development at Cerus Endovascular, noted, "Our development work has demonstrated the superior characteristics of our micro-catheters, in comparison to currently commercially available devices and we look forward to their more broad-based usage. Importantly, the micro-catheters are not limited to supporting just the Cerus Endovascular Contour Neurovascular System and Neqstent family of products but can also be used by any other company devices which are compatible with 021 and 027 micro-catheters.

"Today's therapeutic devices place more demands on a delivery system, and we have developed a micro-catheter platform designed to provide exceptional support and stability when delivering these devices within the neurovasculature," concluded Mr. Sarge.

Cerus Endovascular also announced today that it is expanding the size offerings of its Contour Neurovascular System platform. The newer additional sizes, currently in development (3mm, 18mm and 22mm), will allow for the treatment of aneurysms up to 18mm in diameter. Dr. Griffin noted, "Upon approval, these larger sizes, in particular, will meet an unmet clinical need for treating aneurysms 80% larger than current commercially available endo-saccular solutions. Our work is progressing as planned and we look forward to making these new sizes commercially available as soon as possible."

Cerus Endovascular envisions a future where the more simplified endo-saccular approach to treating aneurysms will be a 'go-to' solution, significantly reducing the need for parent artery stents and flow diverters in most procedures.

"The continued expansion of our portfolio and the increased market penetration are key elements of our ongoing commercialization strategy," stated Dr. Sam Milstein, Chairman of Cerus Endovascular. "The company's commercial footprint now extends to over 330 clinical centers, worldwide, and will shortly be expanding further into Asia and launching in Central and South America. Enrollment in the Cerus Endovascular IDE trial in the United States continues as scheduled."

About the Contour Neurovascular System

The Contour Neurovascular System, composed of fine mesh braid, represents a unique intrasaccular advancement in the market, as it targets the neck of the aneurysm, away from the vulnerable dome. The System is designed to be self-anchored for stability, re-sheathable for precise placement, and because it is deployed across the neck, sizing criteria are less restrictive than other commercially available intrasaccular devices, making it easier to use in the clinical setting. Contour Neurovascular System and Neqstent are CE Marked. The Contour Neurovascular System is for investigational use in the United States and Neqstent is not available for sale or use in the United States.

About Cerus Endovascular

Cerus Endovascular is a privately held, commercial-stage, medical device company engaged in the design and development of highly differentiated and proprietary interventional neuroradiology devices and delivery systems for the treatment of acute, life-threatening neurological conditions, specifically, intracranial aneurysms. The company's CE Marked products, the Contour Neurovascular System and the Neqstent Coil Assisted Flow Diverter, expand the number and types of treatable intracranial aneurysms. For more information, please go to: www.cerusendo.com.

Contact:

Melody A. Carey

Rx Communications Group, LLC

917-322-2571

[email protected]

SOURCE Cerus Endovascular Ltd.
In addition to fleet fueling, the station will be utilized as a staging area for Marlin Gas Services to fill CNG transport trailers for its virtual pipeline services. A dedicated lane for filling the transport trailers will allow Marlin to better serve its Southeast customers.

Today's ribbon-cutting event celebrated the opening of the fueling station and included representatives from the Georgia Public Service Commission, Georgia Ports Authority, City of Savannah and the City of Port Wentworth, among others.

The Marlin Compression CNG fueling station is located along the I-95 corridor near the Port of Savannah, within the Port Fuel Center. The newly constructed Port Fuel Center offers customers fuel options that are sustainable and decrease fuel costs at the Port of Savannah and surrounding communities.

Marlin Compression constructed the station in partnership with Atlanta Gas Light, a subsidiary of Southern Company Gas. In 2020, Atlanta Gas Light announced it entered into an agreement with Chesapeake Utilities to construct and maintain the station.

"The Marlin Compression CNG station is yet another example of Chesapeake Utilities' leadership in the transition to lower carbon energy," said Jeff Householder, president and CEO. "Our service expansions not only provide access to lower carbon energy, but they also contribute to the economic well-being of the communities we serve. In partnership with Atlanta Gas Light, Southern Company Gas and the Port Fuel Center, we are excited to offer CNG as a low emissions fuel option for the truck fleets and other vehicles that operate in and around the Port of Savannah. In the near future, we will provide an RNG option at the same site to further advance our efforts in developing sustainable energy projects."

As part of the Company's mission, Chesapeake Utilities strives to make life better for the people and communities where its employees live, work and serve. During the grand opening event earlier today, Chesapeake Utilities announced a $10,000 donation to the United Way of the Coastal Empire. The organization serves members of the Bryan, Chatham, Liberty and Effingham communities.

About Atlanta Gas Light

Atlanta Gas Light is a natural gas distribution company owned by Southern Company Gas, a wholly owned subsidiary of Southern Company (NYSE: SO). Atlanta Gas Light provides natural gas delivery service to approximately 1.7 million customers in Georgia. In operation since 1856, the company is one of the oldest corporations in the state. For more information, visit atlantagaslight.com.

About Southern Company Gas

Southern Company Gas is a wholly owned subsidiary of Atlanta-based Southern Company (NYSE:SO). Southern Company Gas serves approximately 4.3 million natural gas customers through its regulated distribution companies in four states with approximately 666,000 retail customers through its companies that market natural gas. Other businesses include investments in interstate pipelines and ownership and operation of natural gas storage facilities. For more information, visit southerncompanygas.com.

About Marlin Compression, LLC

Marlin Compression is owned by OnSight Renewables, LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Chesapeake Utilities Corporation (NYSE: CPK). Marlin Compression operates a CNG public fueling station located at the Chesapeake Utilities Corporation's Energy Lane operations center in Dover, Delaware. The Port Fueling Center will be its second CNG station.

About Chesapeake Utilities Corporation

Chesapeake Utilities Corporation is a diversified energy delivery company, listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Chesapeake Utilities Corporation offer sustainable energy solutions through its natural gas transmission and distribution, electricity generation and distribution, propane gas distribution, mobile compressed natural gas utility services and solutions, and other businesses. For more information, visit www.chpk.com.

Please note that Chesapeake Utilities Corporation is not affiliated with Chesapeake Energy, an oil and natural gas exploration company headquartered in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

For more information, contact:

Holly Lovett

PR and Media Relations Manager, Southern Company Gas

404.275.9321

[email protected]

Brianna Patterson

Manager, Public Relations and Strategic Communications, Chesapeake Utilities Corporation

302-217-7050

[email protected]

SOURCE Chesapeake Utilities Corporation
HONG KONG, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- China International Capital Corporation Hong Kong Asset Management Limited ("CICC HKAM"), a wholly owned subsidiary of China International Capital Corporation Limited ("CICC"), announced today the launch of the CICC Carbon Futures ETF (the "ETF"), the first of its kind in Greater China. Units of the ETF will begin trading today on the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong ("SEHK") under the ticker 3060 for HKD counter, 83060 for RMB counter and 9060 for USD counter.

The ETF invests in the most liquid and most representative ICE EUA Futures Contracts by tracking the ICE EUA Carbon Futures Index (Excess Return)[1], which measures the performance of a long-only basket of EUA Contracts. Each European Union Allowance ("EUA") is an entitlement to emit one metric tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent gas under the European Union Emissions Trading System ("EU ETS").

Established in 2005, the EU ETS is the world's largest carbon market. EUA notional traded in 2021 was 683 billion EUR[2], accounting for around 90%[2] of the global emission trading that year. The EU ETS works on a "cap and trade" principle, where a cap is set on the amount of greenhouse gases ("GHG") that can be released into the atmosphere. The EU ETS is a cornerstone of the European Union's ("EU") climate policy, and it contributed to the EU's reduction of GHG emissions by 31%[3] from 1990 to 2020. The new ETF allows investors to participate in the carbon market efficiently in the Asia-Pacific time zone.

"This ETF highlights our commitment to the development of climate-themed products and our overall capabilities in structuring innovative investment solutions," said Ning Lin, Managing Director at CICC HKAM. "This new ETF will allow investors to access one of the largest, most liquid and most actively traded carbon markets in the world. Better still, as the carbon market exhibits low correlation with other assets, it is an excellent choice to deliver portfolio diversification."

The launch of the ETF marks another milestone for CICC HKAM, which provides a wide range of asset management products and services for investors. It is the fifth ETF under its unit trust CICC Fund Series. The other Hong Kong listed ETFs under the CICC Fund Series are CICC CSI Select 100 ETF (a China A-shares ETF under the ticker 3093 for HKD counter and 83093 for RMB counter), CICC Bloomberg China Treasury 1-10 Years ETF (a China government bond ETF under the ticker 3079 for HKD counter and 83079 for RMB counter), ICBC CICC USD Money Market ETF (a USD money market ETF under the ticker 3011 for HKD counter and 9011 for USD counter) and CICC HKD Money Market ETF (a HKD money market ETF under the ticker 3071).

[1] "Excess Return" does not mean any additional return on the ETF's performance.

[2] Data source: Refinitiv. As of January 2022. See https://www.refinitiv.com/content/dam/marketing/en_us/documents/gated/reports/carbon-market-year-in-review-2022.pdf

[3] Data Source: European Commission. See https://ec.europa.eu/clima/system/files/2021-10/com_2021_962_en.pdf

- Ends -

About China International Capital Corporation Limited (CICC):

China International Capital Corporation Limited (CICC, 03908.HK, 601995.SH) is a top tier investment bank, founded in China in 1995, providing first-class financial services to corporates, institutions and individuals worldwide. As the first international joint-venture investment bank in China, CICC plays a unique role in supporting China's economic reforms and liberalization through the provision of comprehensive one-stop domestic, overseas and cross-border financial services including investment banking, equities, FICC, wealth management, asset management, private equity investment, and research. As a China expert, CICC provides in-depth and insightful interpretation and analysis on the Chinese economy and markets. With sustainability at the core of CICC's values, we seek to create long-term value for society and actively practice corporate social responsibility at the highest industry standard. Headquartered in Beijing, CICC has over 200 branches in Mainland China and offices in Hong Kong SAR, New York, Singapore, London, San Francisco, Frankfurt and Tokyo. For more information about CICC, please visit www.cicc.com or follow us on LinkedIn.

About China International Capital Corporation Hong Kong Asset Management Limited:

China International Capital Corporation Hong Kong Asset Management Limited ("CICC HKAM") was established in 2005 in Hong Kong as a wholly owned subsidiary of China International Capital Corporation Limited ("CICC"), a leading Chinese investment bank. CICC HKAM is licensed by the Securities and Futures Commission ("SFC") to carry out Type 4 (Advising on Securities) and Type 9 (Asset Management) regulated activities.

CICC HKAM provides full-range asset management products and investment solutions, including SFC-authorized funds, ETFs, non-SFC authorized funds, as well as discretionary account management. CICC HKAM's capabilities cover major asset classes, including fixed income, equities, commodities as well as quantitative strategies. CICC HKAM also manages one of the largest* QFII ("Qualified Foreign Institutional Investors") schemes.

Adhering to CICC's core value of "Chinese roots and international reach", CICC HKAM is committed to serving investors with the best-in-class asset management products and investment solutions.

*Source: State Administration of Foreign Exchange, as of 31 May 2020

Disclaimer:

This document is issued by China International Capital Corporation Hong Kong Asset Management Limited ("CICCHKAM") and has not been reviewed by the Securities and Futures Commission of Hong Kong. This document is provided for information purposes only. Nothing contained herein constitutes investment advice or invitation for investment, or should be relied on as such.

Although the information provided in this document has been obtained from sources which CICCHKAM believes to be reliable, it does not guarantee the accuracy of such information and such information may be incomplete or condensed.

Please refer to the offering documents for the index provider disclaimers.

Important Risk Warnings:

The CICC Carbon Futures ETF is a futures-based exchange traded fund which is subject to risks associated with derivatives and is different from conventional exchange traded funds. The ICE EUA Carbon Futures Index consists of only ICE EUA Futures Contracts whose price movements may deviate significantly from the spot price of EUA. The ETF does not seek to deliver a return of the spot price of EUA.

An investment in the ETF involves risks which include without limitation to carbon emissions allowance market risks, futures contracts risks, risk of material non-correlation with spot/current market price of EUA, concentration / single commodity risk and new index risk. Movement in the prices of futures may be highly volatile. It is possible that the entire value of your investment could be lost. Please note that the aforementioned investment risks are not exhaustive. Investors should not base on this document alone to make investment decisions, but should read the prospectus of the ETF in detail (including the product features and risk factors).

SOURCE China International Capital Corporation Limited
BETHESDA, Md., March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Revered clinical geneticist and pediatrician Elaine H. Zackai, MD, FACMG has been selected for the 2022 ACMG Foundation for Genetic and Genomic Medicine's David L. Rimoin Lifetime Achievement Award in Medical Genetics.

Dr. Zackai, a fellow of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia and a founding fellow of ACMG, directs the Clinical Genetics Program at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and holds the Letitia B. and Alice Scott Endowed Chair in Human Genetics and Molecular Biology. She was chosen for this award to recognize her renowned expertise diagnosing birth defects and genetic disorders; her compassionate and resourceful care for patients and families; her prolific research collaboration with colleagues around the world; and her mentorship and teaching of clinicians, researchers, and genetics counselors who have in turn modeled their work on her standards for excellence.

"Dr. Zackai is precisely the person who embodies all the qualities of the David L. Rimoin Lifetime Achievement Award in Medical Genetics," said ACMG President Max Muenke, MD, MBA, FACMG. "Dr. Rimoin influenced Dr. Zackai's early training in genetics. And Dr. Zackai passed on not just knowledge and commitment to patient care but a deep passion for teaching and mentoring to the next generation(s) of trainees. I am personally grateful to Dr. Zackai who trained me and had an imprint on my career."

Dr. Rimoin's widow, Dr. Ann Garber-Rimoin said, "It is with pleasure that the Rimoin family honors Elaine Zackai, MD, FACMG with the 2022 David L. Rimoin Lifetime Achievement Award in Medical Genetics. Dr. Zackai's outstanding career is aligned with the qualities that characterized David's career in medical genetics, including her excellence in teaching and mentoring, her ability to apply lab-based genomics into her clinical practice, and her gift for connecting with patients and their families. We congratulate Dr. Zakai as the recipient of the Rimoin Lifetime Achievement Award for 2022."

With her career now spanning half a century and close to 600 research publications during that time, Dr. Zackai has collaborated with, by one expert's count, at least 4,307 colleagues around the world. Her work, which has elucidated dozens of new genetic conditions, falls into the general categories of craniofacial dysmorphia, neural tube defects, neurofibromatosis, and chromosomal abnormalities.

Touched and honored by the news that she was selected for the David L. Rimoin Lifetime Achievement Award, she explained the significance of his role in her training, going back to when she was one of his first fellows.

"I have modeled my whole career around what I learned from David Rimoin, always putting the patient first and treasuring the exceptions that don't fit the obvious diagnoses," Dr. Zackai said. "I spent hours xeroxing his entire set of journal articles before he left St. Louis to become an attending in California. This was back in the day before computers! They are still one of my most valuable tools and when I use them, I think of him and what he would have done for the patient I have at hand. I would not be where I am today without the essential foundation that he imparted to me."

President of the ACMG Foundation, Bruce R. Korf, MD, PhD, FACMG said, "Dr. Zackai has trained at least a generation of clinical geneticists and provided care to children and families dealing with genetic disorders for decades. Her commitment, compassion, and expertise are precisely in keeping with the values we seek to recognize in the David L. Rimoin Lifetime Achievement Award in Medical Genetics. Indeed Dr. Zackai began her genetics training with Dr. Rimoin, making this award all the more appropriate."

Dr. Zackai's ability to recognize and recall details that align phenotype with genotype is legendary, and it has earned her the colloquial reputation of master geneticist. In the corridors of CHOP, clinicians regularly use her name as a verb: Has the patient been Zackai'd yet?

"The nonverbal body language Dr. Zackai exudes lets you know that she knows what a patient's diagnosis is just after walking through the door," explained Ian Campbell, MD, PhD, an attending physician at CHOP who completed his fellowship in medical genetics with Dr. Zackai's mentorship. "She has this ability to take in everything about a patient, including the physical exam, and match it in mere seconds to among 5,000 rare genetic diseases. That is an ability I certainly don't have, and I think it shows what an amazing mind she has."

Exceptional thoughtfulness and compassion were also qualities emphasized in Dr. Zackai's nomination letters. "She treats patients and trainees like they are family," more than one colleague said. Small gestures such as arranging transportation, reaching out to colleagues for additional consultation, requesting additional studies in hematology or radiology to shore up possible diagnosis, and coming to the bedside when her particular style of explanation can be the most helpfulthese are the standards of care that have left an indelible mark on the people who benefit from Dr. Zackai's expertise and care.

Elaine Zackai was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1943, the older of two children. Her father was a metallurgist who formulated fine-gauge wires, and her mother taught high school science. Her brother studied drama and went on to teach theater, as well as English as a second language, while Elaine was drawn to science and mathematics. "I just liked studying," she recalled. "I liked learning new things, and I was good at it. And that's how it all started."

She attended New York University expecting to major in math, but once she reached a point in calculus where the course turned toward theory, she was lost and switched to her next-favorite subject: human-focused science. Elaine graduated magna cum laude in 1964 with her bachelor of arts in biology and chemistry, earning the Sigma Pi Sigma Prize in Physics, and immediately she commenced medical studies at New York University, completing her medical degree in 1968.

"Medical school was fun," Dr. Zackai said. "I knew I was in the right place. I understood why I was doing it, the purpose of it. It wasn't just theory; you could actually touch it, see it, and do it." In recognition of her performance as a medical student, Dr. Zackai was elected to the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Society and received its Outstanding Woman Graduate Medical School Alumni Key Pin.

Pediatrics brought her to St. Louis Children's Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1970. This is where she met David Rimoin, who had arrived just two years earlier to direct the new Medical Genetics Clinic at the Washington University School of Medicine. Medical genetics was an emerging specialty at the time, and in it, Dr. Zackai said, "I saw a field that encompassed many different specialties, and a field where I could use my love of math to figure out the chance of something happening again in a family, the recurrence risk. I also shied away from minute-to-minute management of glucose or fluids or things like this. So, it was clear that this was an ideal spot for me." She began her fellowship in medical genetics with Rimoin in 1970 and transferred to Yale during her second year to complete her training in 1972.

The next job she tookas an instructor of pediatrics and clinical genetics in Philadelphiais one she has remained in ever since. She joined the faculty at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in 1972 and then founded the Clinical Genetics Program at CHOP in 1974, overseeing its expansion to include specialty services for neurogenetics, orthogenetics, ophthogenetics, a Craniofacial Clinic, as well as the 22q and You Center, which offers diagnosis and multidisciplinary management of patients who have any number of symptoms associated with chromosome 22q11.2 deletion.

"The environment at CHOP is excellent," Dr. Zackai said. "We have a wonderful esprit de corps, where the attitude is really about answering the question about colleagues, 'How can we elevate you?' The population of patients here is excellent, too. They come from the surrounding neighborhood for general pediatrics, but we also receive patients from a 200-mile catchment area, so cases come in regularly that really challenge us to think."

Her collaboration with various departments at CHOP is one of the key factors that helped grow the Clinical Genetics Program into what it is today. It also facilitates exceptional care for patients and families who come from around the world. In 2007 CHOP recognized her achievement with the Master Clinician Award.

"The thing that is most striking about herand it's why she can't retire because nobody will ever be able to replace heris she really understands both the scientific and emotional implications of our field," said Alanna Strong, MD, PhD, Instructor of Pediatrics at CHOP who also trained with Dr. Zackai. "She feels the responsibility to share her lifetime of experience with the families she works with and with her trainees. It's not just a job for her, something she is required to do. She genuinely loves the science, the thinking, the work, the mentoring, and the families. She truly makes a difference in the lives of everyone she meets. I hope she never retires, but if she ever does, it will be a loss to her students, her patients, to the field of Genetics, and frankly to everyone."

Fortunately, Dr. Zackai said she has no interest in retirement. "It's daunting to hear the words 'Lifetime Achievement,' since I'm still achieving. But I have nine lives, and this is the first one," she said. "I feel that I often know the answer, and why should people struggle if someone like me knows the answer? I get a lot of satisfaction out of that. It makes me happy."

The excitement she feels while tracking down a patient's diagnosis manifests with the expression, "We're having a moment!" whenever she has a new idea about what should happen next. Two years, 10 years, even 20 years after she has assessed a patient, she will gladly resume the conversation with family if something new in the literature adds to understanding of that child's particular diagnosis.

"The most important thing she taught me was to be persistent until you find the answer for the patient," said Sarah Sheppard, MD, PhD, FACMG, who completed her training at CHOP and is now a tenure-track investigator at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute for Child Health and Human Development. "She's so patient-centered in her approach to everything, and she won't hesitate to find the right person, whether it's a different specialist at CHOP or an external researcher or clinician, who can help address the patient's issue."

Dr. Zackai has made a conscious effort to pass on this never-give-up approach to her trainees, and for it, she has been recognized with the 2002 Blockley-Osler Award presented by the Blockley Section of the College of Physicians, the American Society of Human Genetic inaugural Mentorship Award in 2016, and the 2019 CHOP Award for Excellence in Mentoring Research Trainees.

"I try to teach them to pay attention to the rarest finding, something they can use as an anchor, because many times our cases are complicated and it can be easy to feel overwhelmed," Dr. Zackai explained. "Finding an anchor gives us a moment to pause and ask, 'Ok, if all the patient's fingerprints are whorls, what does that mean to me?' Then you look for the next clue, and the next one. I love going to the bedside with them to teach like this, and I think they're getting it. They have to keep up with my pace. I get a new crop every two or three years, and I feel young with them."

The David L. Rimoin Lifetime Achievement Award is the most prestigious award given by the ACMG Foundation. A committee of past presidents of the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics selects the recipient following nominations, which come from the general membership.

About the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics Foundation and the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ACMG)

The ACMG Foundation for Genetic and Genomic Medicine, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, is a community of supporters and contributors who understand the importance of medical genetics and genomics in healthcare. Established in 1992, the ACMG Foundation supports the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ACMG) mission to "translate genes into health." Through its work, the ACMG Foundation fosters charitable giving, promotes training opportunities to attract future medical geneticists and genetic counselors to the field, shares information about medical genetics and genomics, and sponsors important research. To learn more and support the ACMG Foundation mission to create "Better Health through Genetics" visit www.acmgfoundation.org.

Founded in 1991, the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ACMG) is the only nationally recognized medical society dedicated to improving health through the clinical practice of medical genetics and genomics and the only medical specialty society in the US that represents the full spectrum of medical genetics disciplines in a single organization. The ACMG is the largest membership organization specifically for medical geneticists, providing education, resources and a voice for more than 2,400 clinical and laboratory geneticists, genetic counselors and other healthcare professionals, nearly 80% of whom are board certified in the medical genetics specialties. ACMG's mission is to improve health through the clinical and laboratory practice of medical genetics as well as through advocacy, education and clinical research, and to guide the safe and effective integration of genetics and genomics into all of medicine and healthcare, resulting in improved personal and public health. Four overarching strategies guide ACMG's work: 1) to reinforce and expand ACMG's position as the leader and prominent authority in the field of medical genetics and genomics, including clinical research, while educating the medical community on the significant role that genetics and genomics will continue to play in understanding, preventing, treating and curing disease; 2) to secure and expand the professional workforce for medical genetics and genomics; 3) to advocate for the specialty; and 4) to provide best-in-class education to members and nonmembers. Genetics in Medicine, published monthly, is the official ACMG journal. ACMG's website (www.acmg.net) offers resources including policy statements, practice guidelines, educational programs and a 'Find a Genetic Service' tool. The educational and public health programs of the ACMG are dependent upon charitable gifts from corporations, foundations and individuals through the ACMG Foundation for Genetic and Genomic Medicine.

Note to editors: To arrange interviews with experts in medical genetics, contact ACMG Senior Director of Communications and Public Relations, Kathy Moran, MBA at [email protected].

SOURCE American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics
Collecting and utilizing essential social-emotional data is one of the biggest challenges facing K-12 schools todayNow, it doesn't have to be

LOS ANGELES, MARCH 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Closegap , a nonprofit and daily mental health check-in tool for K-12 schools, today announced the launch of Closegap Insights. Insights builds on the popular free Closegap Essentials, currently used in over 3,000 schools in 25 countries to track, analyze, and manage individual students' emotional health through daily self-reported check-ins. Insights utilizes the real-time responses from students to provide a wider snapshot of the wellbeing of students, grades, and schools to drive systemic change.

Most school districts lack the funding and resources to adequately track and provide solutions to students' fluctuating biophysical, psychological, and social-emotional states; Utilizing Insights, educators can make informed decisions and positive changes toward improved academic and emotional health of students.

50% of mental health problems begin by age 14. Rising student anxiety and depression caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and increased climate anxiety are troubling realities for youth nationwide. In California, there are 600+ students for every one counselor (compared to the recommended 250-to-1 ratio). Closegap Insights encourages students to self-report, providing educators with robust, actionable data.

"Our goal with Closegap is to make it easy for schools to support the emotional health of K-12 students through daily mental health check-ins," said Closegap CEO and founder Rachel Miller. "Closegap Insights changes the way we collect and utilize data on a schoolwide level, giving students a safe digital space for emotional discovery and sharing, allowing educators to provide real-time support to individual students in need and systemic support over time based on the specific challenges the school/district is facing."

Closegap Insights Features:

Provides a comprehensive overview of a school's emotional landscape and student body challenges, allowing counselors and teachers to intervene and provide support

Day-to-day data points covering emotions, needs, energy levels, and more, as well as follow-up activities for students from a self-guided Social Emotional Learning (SEL) library and other evidence-based interventions

Communicate and collaborate with all staff across devices to intervene quickly and collaboratively

 and more!

What are K-12 schools saying?

"Staff are responding to student needs in a more proactive manner because of the check-ins. We do not have to wait for a crisis to identify students who need assistance." said John Crocker, Director of School Mental Health & Behavioral Services at Methuen Public Schools.

"Closegap is helping students learn to self-advocate for their needs and not be afraid to ask for help," said Jacqueline Parks, Principal at Champlain Valley School District.

As public schools look toward public-private partnerships and the future of education, Closegap makes it easier for students to share how they're feeling, allowing teachers, counselors and administrators to give their student body the support and resources they need to thrive.

For more information, visit Closegap.org .

About

Closegap is a nonprofit that makes it easy for schools to support the emotional health of K-12 students through daily mental health check-ins. These check-ins help kids express themselves, connect with a trusted adult, or explore self-guided social emotional learning activities. Backed by evidence-based research and developed alongside students, teachers, school counselors, social workers, and administrators, Closegap makes daily check-ins fun for students, while giving educators the information they need to provide support in real time. By combining crisis & early intervention, real-time support, mental health monitoring, and a safe, digital space for emotional discovery - Closegap makes it easy for schools to make mental health accessible to all. For images, check out our media kit .

CONTACT:

[email protected]

SOURCE Closegap
GLEN ELLYN, Ill., March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- VOLT Grow has partnered with the College of DuPage's food pantry to grow fresh produce to donate to food-insecure community members year-round.

VOLT Grow donated LED grow lights to the College of DuPage's horticulture program to support its learning and research in plant sciences. The fresh produce grown in the greenhouses is then donated to the college's food pantry known as the Fuel Pantry.

"The Fuel Pantry's mission is to support students working toward their degrees by providing brain fuel, as well as the faculty and staff in need through increased food security," stated Emmi Chambers, AmeriCorps member, and Fuel Pantry worker.

The College of DuPage's Phi Theta Kappa chapter created the Fuel Pantry as their "College-Wide Project." They conducted surveys and data, which showed that 100 out of 750 students reported they only had access to less than one to two meals per day. This classifies them as food insecure.

"VOLT Grow's donation of grow lights has ensured we can provide a continuous supply of healthy, fresh food to our clients year-round," Chambers stated. "In the winter months, nearly all our produce is grown using VOLT Grow's lights, and many of the crops we harvest in the summer months started in the greenhouse."

Fresh produce is only a section of the Fuel Pantry's offerings. Most food products in the Fuel Pantry are non-perishable items. Additionally, they offer non-food items like toiletries. Their focus is on increasing people's well-being to focus on what they are there to do learn and teach.

"Many college students who experience food insecurity struggle to reach milestones such as year-to-year persistence and certificate or degree completion," stated Higher Education Today.

Public Relations Manager for VOLT Grow, Casey Brynjolfsson, stated, "We are happy that our light donation is not only supporting horticulture research but also helping the students and staff who need food, especially fresh produce."

VOLT Grow is proud to make a positive impact in the community and is looking forward to continuing to support these types of initiatives.

About VOLT Grow: Headquartered in Tampa, FL, VOLT Grow is a line of commercial LED grow lights for the indoor horticulture market. VOLT Grow is a division of VOLT Lighting, one of the largest manufacturers of lighting in the U.S., known for its industry-leading customer satisfaction and quality. VOLT Grow is a factory-direct brand that distributes its own product from distribution centers in FL, PA, TX, and NV, allowing for quick delivery at unmatched value. For more information, visit www.voltlighting.com/led-grow-lights or contact the company at [email protected] .

Press Contact:

Casey Brynjolfsson

[email protected]

SOURCE VOLT LIGHTING
Staff members work on a production line of COVID-19 vaccines at Myanmar Pharmaceutical Industry in Yangon, Myanmar, March 23, 2022. Myanmar launched the production of Myancopharm COVID-19 vaccines here on Wednesday at Myanmar Pharmaceutical Industry in collaboration with China. (Xinhua/U Aung)

YANGON, March 23 (Xinhua) -- Myanmar launched the production of Myancopharm COVID-19 vaccines here on Wednesday at Myanmar Pharmaceutical Industry (MPI) in collaboration with China.

Lt.-Gen. Aung Lin Dwe, secretary of the State Administration Council (SAC), said Myanmar has trialed and produced COVID-19 vaccines domestically in cooperation with Sinopharm CNBG.

"Technology for vaccine production was obtained and foreign currency use would be reduced as Myancopharm COVID-19 vaccines were successfully produced in the country," he said.

Chinese Ambassador Chen Hai said Sinopharm's cooperative Ready to Fill (RTF) Bulk vaccine plant with Myanmar is the Chinese pharmaceutical company's first COVID-19 vaccine plant officially put into operation in the Asia-Pacific, which will help Myanmar strengthen its capacity to independently produce vaccines.

Union Minister for Ministry of Industry Charlie Than said the ministry and Sinopharm CNBG signed the agreement of RTF Bulk purchase for the production of COVID-19 vaccines in Myanmar on Dec. 22 last year.

The ministry will be manufacturing 1 million doses of vaccine per month, targeting 10 million doses for 2022-2023 Fiscal Year. The vaccines will be distributed to the Ministry of Health starting in April, he stressed.

As of March 19, over 21.6 million people have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 across the country, according to the Ministry of Health. 

Vials of Myancopharm COVID-19 vaccine are seen on a production line at Myanmar Pharmaceutical Industry in Yangon, Myanmar, March 23, 2022. Myanmar launched the production of Myancopharm COVID-19 vaccines here on Wednesday at Myanmar Pharmaceutical Industry in collaboration with China. (Xinhua/U Aung)

Chinese Ambassador to Myanmar Chen Hai speaks during the launching ceremony of the production of Myancopharm COVID-19 vaccines at Myanmar Pharmaceutical Industry in Yangon, Myanmar, March 23, 2022. Myanmar launched the production of Myancopharm COVID-19 vaccines here on Wednesday at Myanmar Pharmaceutical Industry in collaboration with China. (Xinhua/U Aung)

Union Minister for Ministry of Industry Charlie Than speaks at the launching ceremony of the production of Myancopharm COVID-19 vaccines at Myanmar Pharmaceutical Industry in Yangon, Myanmar, March 23, 2022. Myanmar launched the production of Myancopharm COVID-19 vaccines here on Wednesday at Myanmar Pharmaceutical Industry in collaboration with China. (Xinhua/U Aung)

Staff members pack vials of Myancopharm COVID-19 vaccines at Myanmar Pharmaceutical Industry in Yangon, Myanmar, March 23, 2022. Myanmar launched the production of Myancopharm COVID-19 vaccines here on Wednesday at Myanmar Pharmaceutical Industry in collaboration with China. (Xinhua/U Aung)

A staff member works on a production line of COVID-19 vaccine at Myanmar Pharmaceutical Industry in Yangon, Myanmar, March 23, 2022. Myanmar launched the production of Myancopharm COVID-19 vaccines here on Wednesday at Myanmar Pharmaceutical Industry in collaboration with China. (Xinhua/U Aung)
CHANUTE, Kan. and WARRENSBURG, Mo., March 22, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Community Bancorp, Inc. ("Community Bancorp"), the bank holding company of Community National Bank & Trust ("Community National" and collectively with Community Bancorp, "Community"), a national bank with its principal office in Chanute, Kansas, have reached a definitive agreement with Quarry City Savings and Loan Association ("Quarry City") (OTC Pink: "QRRY"), a Missouri savings association headquartered in Warrensburg, Missouri, to acquire Quarry City.

The all-cash aggregate merger consideration for the transaction, after accounting for all of the estimated transaction costs on a tax-effected basis, is estimated to be $10.37 million, subject to further adjustment as provided in the definitive agreement. Quarry City currently estimates that, without any further adjustments, this will result in approximately $25.42 per share cash consideration to the current holders of Quarry City common stock. However, the estimated per share consideration may be subject to significant adjustment based on a variety of factors, including, but not limited to, transaction costs. As a result, Quarry City shareholders should not assume they will receive $25.42 per share upon closing of the transaction.

Quarry City operates a full-service banking office in Warrensburg, Missouri. As of December 31, 2021, Quarry City reported $71.3 million in total assets and total equity capital of $9.6 million. The proposed transaction will merge Quarry City with and into Community National with Community National surviving the merger and Quarry City will cease to exist.

Daniel Mildfelt, President and Chief Executive Officer of Community Bancorp and Community National, said, "We are pleased with the opportunity to welcome Quarry City and its employees and customers to Community National. Both institutions share the principles of caring for their employees, the communities they serve and providing high quality products and services to their customers. As two community-minded banks, we are proud to strengthen our local impact and support new markets."

Steve Andrew, President and Chief Executive Officer of Quarry City, said, "We are excited to partner with Community National, a leading community bank. The merger will provide an opportunity for our customers to join a much larger, yet community bank-oriented, banking network, with expanded products and services, while employees will benefit from the opportunity to work for a growing community bank. Our customers should rest assured that they will continue to see the same friendly faces they always have except that now we will be able to offer additional cutting-edge products and services. This is good news for our community as Community National will continue to maintain our Warrensburg office and the Bank will have significantly more financial strength."

The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions, including the receipt of approvals from the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the shareholders of Quarry City. We currently anticipate that the transaction will close in the third quarter of 2022.

Quarry City is being advised by The Capital Corporation as financial advisor and Luse Gorman, PC as legal counsel. Community National is being advised by Minter & Pollak, LC.

About Community Bancorp and Community National

Community National Bank & Trust is a community bank, headquartered in Chanute, Kansas with 39 locations in Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma. Community National Bank & Trust offers a wide array of unique checking account products, internet and mobile banking, savings, diversified lending in residential, agricultural, commercial, and consumer lending, leasing, commercial cash management and trust services.

About Quarry City Savings and Loan Association

Quarry City is a Missouri-chartered savings association which offers financial services to individuals, families and businesses through its full-service office located in Warrensburg, Missouri, which is the County Seat of Johnson County, located in west central Missouri. Quarry City has operated continuously in Warrensburg, Missouri since its founding in 1890.

Important Cautionary Notes Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This press release includes forward-looking statements that relate to the business and expected future events or future performance of Quarry City and Community and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause its actual results, levels of activity, performance or achievements to differ materially from any future results, levels of activity, performance or achievements expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. Words such as, but not limited to, "believe," "expect," "anticipate," "estimate," "intend," "plan," "targets," "likely," "will," "would," "could," and similar expressions or phrases identify forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from management's projections, forecasts, estimates and expectations include, but are not limited to: fluctuation in market rates of interest and loan and deposit pricing, adverse changes in the national or regional economy as well as adverse economic conditions in the local market areas, including as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, the ability to complete the transaction and recognize the expected benefits and synergies, maintenance and development of well-established and valued client relationships and referral source relationships, and acquisition or loss of key production personnel. Although management believes that the assumptions underlying the forward-looking statements are reasonable, any of the assumptions could prove to be inaccurate. Therefore, management of Quarry City or Community can give no assurance that the results contemplated in the forward-looking statements will be realized. The inclusion of this forward-looking information should not be construed as a representation by Quarry City or Community or any person that the future events, plans or expectations contemplated will be achieved. All subsequent written and oral forward-looking statements attributable to Quarry City or Community or any person acting on their behalf are expressly qualified in their entirety by the cautionary statements above. The forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this press release. Neither Quarry City nor Community undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statement to reflect circumstances or events that occur after the date the forward-looking statements are made, except as required by law.

SOURCE Quarry City
"We hope and expect fundamental legal change for nonhuman animals in the United States isn't far behind." Tweet this

Ecuador was the first country to include a rights of nature provision in its national Constitution. When the case came before Ecuador's Constitutional Court, the judges elected to consider several issues, including: the scope of the country's rights of nature provision; whether animals qualify as the subject of rights; and whether Estrellita's rights were violated. The Court found by a vote of seven to two that the scope of the rights of nature includes animals and thus animals are the subject of rights. The Court also indicated that habeas corpus could be an appropriate action for animals and that they may possess rights that derive from other sources in addition to the Constitution.

"This verdict raises animal rights to the level of the constitution, the highest law of Ecuador," said leading Ecuadorian environmental lawyer Hugo Echeverria, who brought the case to the attention of NhRP. "While rights of nature were enshrined in the constitution, it was not clear prior to this decision whether individual animals could benefit from the rights of nature and be considered rights holders as a part of nature. The Court has stated that animals are subject of rights protected by rights of nature."

The court's detailed ruling directly refers to the joint amicus curiae supporting Estrellita's case submitted by Professor Kristen Stilt and Research Fellow Macarena Montes of the Brooks McCormick Jr. Animal Law & Policy Program at Harvard Law School (ALPP) and attorneys Steven M. Wise and Kevin Schneider of the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP), assisted by students Marianne Nunez Nunez and Raquel Cerezo Martinez, both of whom interned with NhRP through the Autonomous University of Barcelona's Master's Program in Animal Law and Society. The decision is available in both the original Spanish and an English translation the groups have prepared.

Their joint amicus brief asserted that the rights of nature should protect nonhuman animals, including individual animals such as Estrellita. It argued that even if the Court was mainly concerned with protection at the species level, species are made up of individual animals, and what happens to an individual animal can have an important impact on the species. It explained that it would be arbitrary to draw a line at a number of animals needed to count2, 3, 4, 10? One should be enough. The Court accepted the brief's arguments that challenged the traditional view that only ecosystems and species are protected by the rights of nature, not individuals.

In short, the ALPP and NhRP representatives urged the Court to determine that:

(1) Nonhuman animals can be subjects of rights.

(2) Writs of habeas corpus can be appropriate for nonhuman animals.

(3) Nonhuman animals are subjects of rights protected by the rights of nature.

The brief also requested that the relevant governmental entities create protocols to guarantee the rights of nonhuman animals under the rights of nature and habeas corpus.

Responding to the decision, Professor Kristen Stilt, Faculty Director of the Brooks McCormick Jr. Animal Law & Policy Program at Harvard Law School, said: "The concept of the rights of nature is not well known in the U.S., but in other parts of the world, including South America, it is proving to be an important legal tool to protect nature, including animals. And even in the U.S., efforts are underway to recognize the rights of rivers, lakes, and other natural habitats. The Ecuadorian Court's decision is a model for all jurisdictions worldwide."

Steven M. Wise, President of the Nonhuman Rights Project, added: "This decision is a huge step forward in the global struggle for nonhuman rights. We hope and expect fundamental legal change for nonhuman animals in the United States isn't far behind."

Notes to Editors:

Ecuador was the first country in the world to recognize the rights of nature at the constitutional level. On Dec. 2, 2021 in what is hailed as a landmark ruling, the Constitutional Court applied the rights of nature provision to prohibit mining in the Los Cedros Protected Forest.

Experts will discuss the Estrellita decision as part of Harvard Law School's Animal Law Week 2022 on Thursday, March 24 at 12:45pm ET. The panel discussion is open to members the press and public. Register here. For additional information or to interview Hugo Echeverria, Steven Wise, or Professor Kristen Stilt, contact:

Read further work on constitutional provisions related to animal protection by the Brooks McCormick Jr. Animal Law & Policy Program.

Background on ALPP and NhRP:

The Brooks McCormick Jr. Animal Law & Policy Program at Harvard Law School is committed to analyzing and improving the treatment of animals by the legal system. Professor and Faculty Director Kristen Stilt and Rights Research Fellow Macarena Montes wrote on behalf of the ALPP.

The Nonhuman Rights Project is the only civil rights organization in the United States dedicated solely to securing rights for nonhuman animals. President Steven M. Wise and Executive Director Kevin Schneider wrote the brief on behalf of the NhRP.

More on the verdict:

The Constitutional Court of Ecuador warned that animals should not be protected only from an ecosystemic perspective or from a view that focuses on the needs of human beings, but mainly from a perspective that focuses on their individuality and intrinsic value (paragraph 79).

This becomes relevant because protecting only the species of animals  neglecting the protection of individual animals, which in turn make up the species  endangers a significant number of animals and fuels the idea of the possibility of extinction. Even in the case of animals whose species is not endangered, neglecting or failing to protect individuals also has an impact (paragraph 126).

The Court not only recognized animals as subjects of rights protected by the rights of nature, but also outlined the rights that apply to some or all animals. These include the:

Right to exist (paragraph 111).

Right not to be hunted, fished, captured, collected, extracted, kept, detained, trafficked, traded, or exchanged (paragraph 112).

Right to the free development of their animal behavior (paragraph 112), which includes the right to behave according to their instinct, the innate behaviors of their species, and those learned and transmitted among the members of their population, and the right to freely develop their biological cycles, processes, and interactions (paragraph 113). Animals must be guaranteed sufficient space and social conditions to ensure the possibility of the free development of their animal behavior (paragraph 137).

Right to freedom and good living (paragraph 119). Animals have the right to freedom of movement (paragraph 137).

Right to food according to the species' nutritional requirements (paragraph 119). Animals must have access to adequate food and water to maintain their health and strength (paragraph 137).

Right to live in harmony (paragraph 119).

Right to health (paragraph 119). Animals must be ensured adequate sanitary conditions to protect their health and physical integrity (paragraph 137).

Right to a habitat (paragraph 119).

Right to demand their rights from the competent authorities (paragraph 121).

Right to physical, mental, and sexual integrity (paragraph 133).

Right to live in an environment that is suitable for each species, with adequate shelter and resting conditions (paragraph 137).

Right to life (paragraph 155). Animals must be ensured life in a violence-free environment, as well as an environment free from disproportionate cruelty, fear, and distress (paragraph 137).

Additionally, the Court noted that a wild animal's rights to life, freedom, and integrity, among others, must be protected regardless of the claims, intentions, or desires of third parties. If the judges determine "that the deprivation or restriction of the freedom of a wild animal is unlawful, they must provide the most suitable alternative for the preservation of the life, freedom, integrity, and other related rights of the victim []" (paragraph 173). The implication is that the environmental authority in Ecuador failed to meet this requirement by confining Estrellita in the Zoo. It is possible that the conditions in the Zoo contributed to her death.

Although the writ of habeas corpus was unavailable in Estrellita's case due to her death, the Court stated that it can be an appropriate action to request the release of a wild animal depending on the circumstances of the case.

The Court explained that even though it has examined the rights of nature thus far in "action for protection" cases, which is a specific type of action in Ecuador, this does not mean that the action for protection is the only adequate action to protect the rights of nature or any of its elements, including animals. Therefore, the Court stated that judges must examine which action best suits the context and the claims of the case, suggesting that other actions may be adequate to protect the rights of nature, and animals, such as habeas corpus.

Additionally, the Constitutional Court of Ecuador ordered the Ministry of Environment to develop a protocol to assess the circumstances and needs of captive wild animals to guarantee their protection; the brief proposed this very idea. Furthermore, the Court ordered the Ombudsman and Congress to prepare and approve a bill on the rights of animals, based on the rights and principles developed in the ruling.

In this time of catastrophic climate crisis and the sixth mass extinction of species, the Constitutional Court of Ecuador's judgment constitutes one of the most important legal advances in the field of animal rights and environmental law in recent years. Until this ruling, legal practitioners, scholars, and advocates have centered the protection of nature on ecosystems and species, not individuals. Moreover, much of the work on the rights of nature did not consider animals as rights holders. The Court's groundbreaking ruling advances the constitutional protection of animalsranging from the level of species to the individual animalwith their own inherent value and needs.

SOURCE Nonhuman Rights Project
Crayfish Market: Growing demand for aquaculture-based fish varieties to drive growth

The growing demand for aquaculture-based fish varieties is one of the key drivers supporting the crayfish market growth. Global fish production can be divided depending on the cultivation type into capture fishery and aquaculture. Human consumption accounted for around 88% of global fisheries and aquaculture production volumes in 2018. The growth of capture fishery production has been stagnant, and the aquaculture segment has been aiding to meet the demand for fish for human consumption. For instance, according to data provided by the FAO of the United Nations, in 2018, world aquaculture fish production reached 82.1 million tonnes and was dominated by crustaceans such as crayfish. The total global production of crustaceans in 2018 was 9.4 million tonnes. The contribution of world aquaculture to global fish production reached 46.0% in 2018, increasing from 25.7% in 2000. Such an increasing demand will drive the segment growth during the forecast period.

Crayfish Market: Demand for processed and packaged crayfish to be a major trend

Demand for processed and packaged crayfish is one of the key trends contributing to the crayfish market growth. Nowadays, there are different varieties of processed crayfish available in the market, including boiled, cooked, chilled, frozen, seasoned, and ready-to-cook canned varieties. Another trend in crayfish packaging is purging the crayfish on the farm where it caught. Also, the crayfish are displayed in a tank from which consumers can choose what they want. For instance, Louisiana Crawfish is engaged in such practice of selling purged crayfishes. Small-scale vendors (farmers) collectively work together to fulfill big orders on demand. These options are nowadays made available in single or party packs, in both flexible and rigid packaging. Thus, the demand for processed and packaged crayfish is rising among the global consumers of crayfish, as it involves fewer efforts to prepare it for cooking. Such factors will propel the growth of the market during the forecast period.

To know about more drivers, trends along with challenges - Request a Free Sample Research Report

Crayfish Market: Segmentation Analysis

Technavio market research report segments the crayfish market by Type (Farmed crayfish and Wild crayfish) and Geographic (North America, Europe, APAC, South America, and the Middle East and Africa).

The crayfish market share growth by the farmed crayfish segment will be significant for revenue generation. Prominent vendors in the market, such as Louisiana Crawfish Co., offer a wide range of farmed crayfish, including live crawfish, boiled crawfish, purged crawfish, crawfish tail meat, among others. The company offers 24 hours delivery of its products to consumers directly from its farms. They also provide station pickup through FedEx and UPS. Thus, due to the increased demand for fish protein from aquaculture (including crayfish) from consumers across the world, farmers are focusing more on farmed crayfish varieties to sustain in the market. Thus, the market segment will witness growth during the forecast period.

For additional information on the contribution of each segment - Request a free sample report

Related Reports:

The fresh fish and seafood market size will grow up to 24.38 mn tons at a CAGR of 3.80% during 2021-2025. Download a free sample report now!

size will grow up to 24.38 mn tons at a CAGR of 3.80% during 2021-2025. The frozen fish and seafood market value is projected to grow by USD 24.84 million at a CAGR of 6.78% during 2021-2025. Download a free sample now!

Crayfish Market Scope Report Coverage Details Page number 120 Base year 2021 Forecast period 2022-2026 Growth momentum & CAGR Accelerate at a CAGR of 7.02% Market growth 2022-2026 USD 2.40 billion Market structure Fragmented YoY growth (%) 5.9 Performing market contribution North America at 40% Competitive landscape Leading companies, competitive strategies, consumer engagement scope Companies profiled Acadia Crawfish Co. LLC, Alfocan SA, Bocage Crawfish, Cajun Crawfish Co., Fruge Seafood Co., Happy Crab Seafood, Harlons LA Fish, Kenney Seafood, Live Aquaponics, Louisiana Crawfish Co., Louisiana Seafood Co., Mackay Reef Fish Pty Ltd., and Mah Protein Inc. Market Dynamics Parent market analysis, Market growth inducers and obstacles, Fast-growing and slow-growing segment analysis, COVID-19 impact and future consumer dynamics, market condition analysis for 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 Content

1 Executive Summary

1.1 Market overview

Exhibit 01: Executive Summary  Chart on Market Overview



Exhibit 02: Executive Summary  Data Table on Market Overview



Exhibit 03: Executive Summary  Chart on Global Market Characteristics



Exhibit 04: Executive Summary  Chart on Market by Geography



Exhibit 05: Executive Summary  Chart on Market Segmentation by Type



Exhibit 06: Executive Summary  Chart on Incremental Growth



Exhibit 07: Executive Summary  Data Table on Incremental Growth



Exhibit 08: Executive Summary  Chart on Vendor Market Positioning

2 Market Landscape

2.1 Market ecosystem

Exhibit 09: Parent market



Exhibit 10: Market Characteristics

3 Market Sizing

3.1 Market definition

Exhibit 11: Offerings of vendors included in the market definition

3.2 Market segment analysis

Exhibit 12: Market segments

3.3 Market size 2021

3.4 Market outlook: Forecast for 2021-2026

Exhibit 13: Chart on Global - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)



Exhibit 14: Data Table on Global - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)



Exhibit 15: Chart on Global Market: Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)



Exhibit 16: Data Table on Global Market: Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

4 Five Forces Analysis

4.1 Five forces summary

Exhibit 17: Five forces analysis - Comparison between 2021 and 2026

4.2 Bargaining power of buyers

Exhibit 18: Bargaining power of buyers  Impact of key factors in 2021 and 2026

4.3 Bargaining power of suppliers

Exhibit 19: Bargaining power of suppliers  Impact of key factors in 2021 and 2026

4.4 Threat of new entrants

Exhibit 20: Threat of new entrants  Impact of key factors in 2021 and 2026

4.5 Threat of substitutes

Exhibit 21: Threat of substitutes  Impact of key factors in 2021 and 2026

4.6 Threat of rivalry

Exhibit 22: Threat of rivalry  Impact of key factors in 2021 and 2026

4.7 Market condition

Exhibit 23: Chart on Market condition - Five forces 2021 and 2026

5 Market Segmentation by Type

5.1 Market segments

Exhibit 24: Chart on Type - Market share 2021-2026 (%)



Exhibit 25: Data Table on Type - Market share 2021-2026 (%)

5.2 Comparison by Type

Exhibit 26: Chart on Comparison by Type



Exhibit 27: Data Table on Comparison by Type

5.3 Farmed crayfish - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

Exhibit 28: Chart on Farmed crayfish - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)



Exhibit 29: Data Table on Farmed crayfish - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)



Exhibit 30: Chart on Farmed crayfish - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)



Exhibit 31: Data Table on Farmed crayfish - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

5.4 Wild crayfish - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

Exhibit 32: Chart on Wild crayfish - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)



Exhibit 33: Data Table on Wild crayfish - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)



Exhibit 34: Chart on Wild crayfish - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)



Exhibit 35: Data Table on Wild crayfish - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

5.5 Market opportunity by Type

Exhibit 36: Market opportunity by Type ($ million)

6 Customer Landscape

6.1 Customer landscape overview

Exhibit 37: Analysis of price sensitivity, lifecycle, customer purchase basket, adoption rates, and purchase criteria

7 Geographic Landscape

7.1 Geographic segmentation

Exhibit 38: Chart on Market share by geography 2021-2026 (%)



Exhibit 39: Data Table on Market share by geography 2021-2026 (%)

7.2 Geographic comparison

Exhibit 40: Chart on Geographic comparison



Exhibit 41: Data Table on Geographic comparison

7.3 North America - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 Exhibit 42: Chart on North America - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

Exhibit 43: Data Table on North America - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

Exhibit 44: Chart on North America - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

- Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

Exhibit 45: Data Table on North America - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

7.4 Europe - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 Exhibit 46: Chart on Europe - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

Exhibit 47: Data Table on Europe - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

Exhibit 48: Chart on Europe - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

- Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

Exhibit 49: Data Table on Europe - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

7.5 APAC - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

Exhibit 50: Chart on APAC - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)



Exhibit 51: Data Table on APAC - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)



Exhibit 52: Chart on APAC - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)



Exhibit 53: Data Table on APAC - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

7.6 South America - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 Exhibit 54: Chart on South America - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

Exhibit 55: Data Table on South America - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

Exhibit 56: Chart on South America - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

- Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

Exhibit 57: Data Table on South America - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

7.7 Middle East and Africa - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

and - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 Exhibit 58: Chart on Middle East and Africa - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

and - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

Exhibit 59: Data Table on Middle East and Africa - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

and - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

Exhibit 60: Chart on Middle East and Africa - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

and - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

Exhibit 61: Data Table on Middle East and Africa - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

7.8 US - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

Exhibit 62: Chart on US - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)



Exhibit 63: Data Table on US - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)



Exhibit 64: Chart on US - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)



Exhibit 65: Data Table on US - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

7.9 China - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 Exhibit 66: Chart on China - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

Exhibit 67: Data Table on China - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

Exhibit 68: Chart on China - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

- Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

Exhibit 69: Data Table on China - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

7.10 Germany - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 Exhibit 70: Chart on Germany - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

Exhibit 71: Data Table on Germany - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

Exhibit 72: Chart on Germany - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

- Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

Exhibit 73: Data Table on Germany - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

7.11 Canada - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 Exhibit 74: Chart on Canada - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

Exhibit 75: Data Table on Canada - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

Exhibit 76: Chart on Canada - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

- Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

Exhibit 77: Data Table on Canada - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

7.12 UK - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

Exhibit 78: Chart on UK - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)



Exhibit 79: Data Table on UK - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)



Exhibit 80: Chart on UK - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)



Exhibit 81: Data Table on UK - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

7.13 Market opportunity by geography

Exhibit 82: Market opportunity by geography ($ million)

8 Drivers, Challenges, and Trends

8.1 Market drivers

8.2 Market challenges

8.3 Impact of drivers and challenges

Exhibit 83: Impact of drivers and challenges in 2021 and 2026

8.4 Market trends

9 Vendor Landscape

9.1 Overview

9.2 Vendor landscape

Exhibit 84: Overview on Criticality of inputs and Factors of differentiation

9.3 Landscape disruption

Exhibit 85: Overview on factors of disruption

9.4 Industry risks

Exhibit 86: Impact of key risks on business

10 Vendor Analysis

10.1 Vendors covered

Exhibit 87: Vendors covered

10.2 Market positioning of vendors

Exhibit 88: Matrix on vendor position and classification

10.3 Acadia Crawfish Co. LLC

Exhibit 89: Acadia Crawfish Co. LLC - Overview



Exhibit 90: Acadia Crawfish Co. LLC - Product / Service



Exhibit 91: Acadia Crawfish Co. LLC - Key offerings

10.4 Alfocan SA

Exhibit 92: Alfocan SA - Overview



Exhibit 93: Alfocan SA - Product / Service



Exhibit 94: Alfocan SA - Key offerings

10.5 Bocage Crawfish

Exhibit 95: Bocage Crawfish - Overview



Exhibit 96: Bocage Crawfish - Product / Service



Exhibit 97: Bocage Crawfish - Key offerings

10.6 Cajun Crawfish Co.

Exhibit 98: Cajun Crawfish Co. - Overview



Exhibit 99: Cajun Crawfish Co. - Product / Service



Exhibit 100: Cajun Crawfish Co. - Key offerings

10.7 Fruge Seafood Co.

Exhibit 101: Fruge Seafood Co. - Overview



Exhibit 102: Fruge Seafood Co. - Product / Service



Exhibit 103: Fruge Seafood Co. - Key offerings

10.8 Happy Crab Seafood

Exhibit 104: Happy Crab Seafood - Overview



Exhibit 105: Happy Crab Seafood - Product / Service



Exhibit 106: Happy Crab Seafood - Key offerings

10.9 Live Aquaponics

Exhibit 107: Live Aquaponics - Overview



Exhibit 108: Live Aquaponics - Product / Service



Exhibit 109: Live Aquaponics - Key offerings

10.10 Louisiana Crawfish Co.

Exhibit 110: Louisiana Crawfish Co. - Overview



Exhibit 111: Louisiana Crawfish Co. - Product / Service



Exhibit 112: Louisiana Crawfish Co. - Key offerings

10.11 Louisiana Seafood Co.

Exhibit 113: Louisiana Seafood Co. - Overview



Exhibit 114: Louisiana Seafood Co. - Product / Service



Exhibit 115: Louisiana Seafood Co. - Key offerings

10.12 Mackay Reef Fish Pty Ltd.

Exhibit 116: Mackay Reef Fish Pty Ltd. - Overview



Exhibit 117: Mackay Reef Fish Pty Ltd. - Product / Service



Exhibit 118: Mackay Reef Fish Pty Ltd. - Key offerings

11 Appendix

11.1 Scope of the report

11.2 Inclusions and exclusions checklist

Exhibit 119: Inclusions checklist



Exhibit 120: Exclusions checklist

11.3 Currency conversion rates for US$

Exhibit 121: Currency conversion rates for US$

11.4 Research methodology

Exhibit 122: Research methodology



Exhibit 123: Validation techniques employed for market sizing



Exhibit 124: Information sources

11.5 List of abbreviations

Exhibit 125: List of abbreviations

About Technavio

Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. Their research and analysis focus on emerging market trends and provide actionable insights to help businesses identify market opportunities and develop effective strategies to optimize their market positions.

With over 500 specialized analysts, Technavio's report library consists of more than 17,000 reports and counting, covering 800 technologies, spanning across 50 countries. Their client base consists of enterprises of all sizes, including more than 100 Fortune 500 companies. This growing client base relies on Technavio's comprehensive coverage, extensive research, and actionable market insights to identify opportunities in existing and potential markets and assess their competitive positions within changing market scenarios.

Contacts

Technavio Research

Jesse Maida

Media & Marketing Executive

US: +1 844 364 1100

UK: +44 203 893 3200

Email: [email protected]

Website: www.technavio.com/

SOURCE Technavio
Vendor Insights

The global Crowdfunding Market is fragmented and the vendors are deploying various organic and inorganic growth strategies to compete in the market.

The growing competition in the market is compelling vendors to adopt various growth strategies such as promotional activities and spending on advertisements to improve the visibility of their services. Some vendors are also adopting inorganic growth strategies such as M&As to remain competitive in the market.

The report analyzes the market's competitive landscape and offers information on several market vendors, including:

AngelList Holdings, LLC

CircleUp Network Inc.

ConnectionPoint Systems Inc.

Crowdcube Ltd.

Crowdfunder Ltd.

DonorsChoose

FUELADREAM Online Ventures Pvt. Ltd.

Fundable LLC

Fundrise LLC

GoFundMe Inc.

Indiegogo Inc.

ioby

Ketto Online Ventures Pvt. Ltd.

Kickstarter PBC

Milaap Social Ventures India Pvt. Ltd.

Patreon Inc.

RealCrowd Inc.

Find additional highlights on the growth strategies adopted by vendors and their product offerings, Read Free Sample Report .

Geographical Market Analysis

During the forecast period, APAC will account for 63 percent of market growth. In APAC, China and Australia are the most important markets for global crowdfunding. The market in this region will increase at a quicker rate than the market in other regions.

Furthermore, increased Internet and smartphone usage will aid global crowdfunding market growth in APAC. This market research report includes thorough information on competitor intelligence, marketing gaps, and geographical potential for suppliers, all of which will aid in the development of effective business plans.

Moreover, countries such as the US, China, Australia, the UK, and Germany are expected to emerge as prominent markets for Crowdfunding during the forecast period.

Know more about this market's geographical distribution along with the detailed analysis of the top regions. https://www.technavio.com/report/crowdfunding-market-industry-service-analysis

Key Segment Analysis

The P2P lending category will raise its worldwide crowdfunding market share significantly. Several government efforts from around the world are assisting in the expansion of this business. Individuals can access funds for planned activities in a shorter period of time since P2P lenders liquidate the funds before the duration of the loan expires. However, due to a decreasing number of participants choosing for the P2P business model, notably from MEA and APAC, the global crowdfunding market by P2P lending is predicted to increase slowly throughout the projection period.

View FREE Sample: to know additional highlights and key points on various market segments and their impact in coming years.

Key Market Drivers & Challenges:

The free-of-charge promotion through social media is one of the primary aspects fueling growth in the crowdfunding business. It allows you to pre-sell a product while simultaneously serving as a low-cost marketing strategy. As a result, an active crowdfunding campaign can accomplish more than merely raising the necessary funds. These campaigns are low-cost and can quickly reach out to various channels.

Many crowdfunding projects use social media as a platform since it allows them to measure referral traffic to their websites. As a result, a company can promote an idea for free through social media, which is expected to drive the worldwide crowdfunding market during the forecast period.

However, time consumption will be a major challenge for the crowdfunding market during the forecast period.

Download a free sample for highlights on market Drivers & Challenges affecting the Crowdfunding Market.

Customize Your Report

Don't miss out on the opportunity to speak to our analyst and know more insights about this market report. Our analysts can also help you customize this report according to your needs. Our analysts and industry experts will work directly with you to understand your requirements and provide you with customized data in a short amount of time.

We offer USD 1,000 worth of FREE customization at the time of purchase. Speak to our Analyst now!

Related Reports:

Photography Equipment Market by Product, Distribution Channel, and Geography - Forecast and Analysis 2021-2025

Non-Life Insurance Market in Iran (Islamic Republic of Iran) by Product, Distribution channel, and Geography - Forecast and Analysis 2022-2026

Global Crowdfunding Market Scope Report Coverage Details Page number 120 Base year 2021 Forecast period 2022-2026 Growth momentum & CAGR Decelerate at a CAGR of 16.81% Market growth 2022-2026 $ 239.78 billion Market structure Fragmented YoY growth (%) 18.97 Regional analysis APAC, North America, Europe, South America, and Middle East and Africa Performing market contribution APAC at 63% Key consumer countries US, China, Australia, UK, and Germany Competitive landscape Leading companies, Competitive strategies, Consumer engagement scope Key companies profiled AngelList Holdings, LLC, CircleUp Network Inc., ConnectionPoint Systems Inc., Crowdcube Ltd., Crowdfunder Ltd., DonorsChoose, FUELADREAM Online Ventures Pvt. Ltd., Fundable LLC, Fundrise LLC, GoFundMe Inc., Indiegogo Inc., ioby, Ketto Online Ventures Pvt. Ltd., Kickstarter PBC, Milaap Social Ventures India Pvt. Ltd., Patreon Inc., RealCrowd Inc., Seedrs Ltd., Chuffed.org Pty Ltd., and Kiva Microfunds Market dynamics Parent market analysis, Market growth inducers and obstacles, Fast-growing and slow-growing segment analysis, COVID-19 impact and recovery analysis and future consumer dynamics, Market condition analysis for the forecast period Customization purview If our report has not included the data that you are looking for, you can reach out to our analysts and get segments customized.

Table of Contents

1 Executive Summary

1.1 Market overview

Exhibit 01: Executive Summary  Chart on Market Overview



Exhibit 02: Executive Summary  Data Table on Market Overview



Exhibit 03: Executive Summary  Chart on Global Market Characteristics



Exhibit 04: Executive Summary  Chart on Market by Geography



Exhibit 05: Executive Summary  Chart on Market Segmentation by Type



Exhibit 06: Executive Summary  Chart on Incremental Growth



Exhibit 07: Executive Summary  Data Table on Incremental Growth



Exhibit 08: Executive Summary  Chart on Vendor Market Positioning

2 Market Landscape

2.1 Market ecosystem

Exhibit 09: Parent market



Exhibit 10: Market Characteristics

3 Market Sizing

3.1 Market definition

Exhibit 11: Offerings of vendors included in the market definition

3.2 Market segment analysis

Exhibit 12: Market segments

3.3 Market size 2021

3.4 Market outlook: Forecast for 2021-2026

Exhibit 13: Chart on Global - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ 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 P2P lending - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

Exhibit 28: Chart on P2P lending - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)



Exhibit 29: Data Table on P2P lending - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)



Exhibit 30: Chart on P2P lending - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)



Exhibit 31: Data Table on P2P lending - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

5.4 Equity investment - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

Exhibit 32: Chart on Equity investment - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)



Exhibit 33: Data Table on Equity investment - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)



Exhibit 34: Chart on Equity investment - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)



Exhibit 35: Data Table on Equity investment - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

5.5 Hybrid - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

Exhibit 36: Chart on Hybrid - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)



Exhibit 37: Data Table on Hybrid - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)



Exhibit 38: Chart on Hybrid - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)



Exhibit 39: Data Table on Hybrid - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

5.6 Reward - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

Exhibit 40: Chart on Reward - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)



Exhibit 41: Data Table on Reward - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)



Exhibit 42: Chart on Reward - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)



Exhibit 43: Data Table on Reward - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

5.7 Others - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

Exhibit 44: Chart on Others - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)



Exhibit 45: Data Table on Others - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)



Exhibit 46: Chart on Others - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)



Exhibit 47: Data Table on Others - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

5.8 Market opportunity by Type

Exhibit 48: Market opportunity by Type ($ billion)

6 Customer Landscape

6.1 Customer landscape overview

Exhibit 49: Analysis of price sensitivity, lifecycle, customer purchase basket, adoption rates, and purchase criteria

7 Geographic Landscape

7.1 Geographic segmentation

Exhibit 50: Chart on Market share by geography 2021-2026 (%)



Exhibit 51: Data Table on Market share by geography 2021-2026 (%)

7.2 Geographic comparison

Exhibit 52: Chart on Geographic comparison



Exhibit 53: Data Table on Geographic comparison

7.3 APAC - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

Exhibit 54: Chart on APAC - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)



Exhibit 55: Data Table on APAC - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)



Exhibit 56: Chart on APAC - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)



Exhibit 57: Data Table on APAC - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

7.4 North America - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 Exhibit 58: Chart on North America - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)

Exhibit 59: Data Table on North America - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)

Exhibit 60: Chart on North America - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

- Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

Exhibit 61: Data Table on North America - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

7.5 Europe - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 Exhibit 62: Chart on Europe - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)

Exhibit 63: Data Table on Europe - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)

Exhibit 64: Chart on Europe - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

- Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

Exhibit 65: Data Table on Europe - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

7.6 South America - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 Exhibit 66: Chart on South America - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)

Exhibit 67: Data Table on South America - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)

Exhibit 68: Chart on South America - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

- Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

Exhibit 69: Data Table on South America - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

7.7 Middle East and Africa - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

and - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 Exhibit 70: Chart on Middle East and Africa - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)

and - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)

Exhibit 71: Data Table on Middle East and Africa - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)

and - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)

Exhibit 72: Chart on Middle East and Africa - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

and - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

Exhibit 73: Data Table on Middle East and Africa - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

7.8 China - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 Exhibit 74: Chart on China - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)

Exhibit 75: Data Table on China - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)

Exhibit 76: Chart on China - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

- Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

Exhibit 77: Data Table on China - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

7.9 US - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

Exhibit 78: Chart on US - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)



Exhibit 79: Data Table on US - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)



Exhibit 80: Chart on US - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)



Exhibit 81: Data Table on US - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

7.10 UK - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

Exhibit 82: Chart on UK - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)



Exhibit 83: Data Table on UK - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)



Exhibit 84: Chart on UK - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)



Exhibit 85: Data Table on UK - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

7.11 Germany - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 Exhibit 86: Chart on Germany - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)

Exhibit 87: Data Table on Germany - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)

Exhibit 88: Chart on Germany - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

- Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

Exhibit 89: Data Table on Germany - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

7.12 Australia - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 Exhibit 90: Chart on Australia - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)

Exhibit 91: Data Table on Australia - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ billion)

Exhibit 92: Chart on Australia - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

- Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

Exhibit 93: Data Table on Australia - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

7.13 Market opportunity by geography

Exhibit 94: 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 95: Impact of drivers and challenges in 2021 and 2026

8.4 Market trends

9 Vendor Landscape

9.1 Overview

9.2 Vendor landscape

Exhibit 96: Overview on Criticality of inputs and Factors of differentiation

9.3 Landscape disruption

Exhibit 97: Overview on factors of disruption

9.4 Industry risks

Exhibit 98: Impact of key risks on business

10 Vendor Analysis

10.1 Vendors covered

Exhibit 99: Vendors covered

10.2 Market positioning of vendors

Exhibit 100: Matrix on vendor position and classification

10.3 AngelList Holdings, LLC

Exhibit 101: AngelList Holdings, LLC - Overview



Exhibit 102: AngelList Holdings, LLC - Product / Service



Exhibit 103: AngelList Holdings, LLC - Key news



Exhibit 104: AngelList Holdings, LLC - Key offerings

10.4 CircleUp Network Inc.

Exhibit 105: CircleUp Network Inc. - Overview



Exhibit 106: CircleUp Network Inc. - Product / Service



Exhibit 107: CircleUp Network Inc. - Key offerings

10.5 ConnectionPoint Systems Inc.

Exhibit 108: ConnectionPoint Systems Inc. - Overview



Exhibit 109: ConnectionPoint Systems Inc. - Product / Service



Exhibit 110: ConnectionPoint Systems Inc. - Key offerings

10.6 Crowdcube Ltd.

Exhibit 111: Crowdcube Ltd. - Overview



Exhibit 112: Crowdcube Ltd. - Product / Service



Exhibit 113: Crowdcube Ltd. - Key offerings

10.7 Crowdfunder Ltd.

Exhibit 114: Crowdfunder Ltd. - Overview



Exhibit 115: Crowdfunder Ltd. - Product / Service



Exhibit 116: Crowdfunder Ltd. - Key news



Exhibit 117: Crowdfunder Ltd. - Key offerings

10.8 Fundable LLC

Exhibit 118: Fundable LLC - Overview



Exhibit 119: Fundable LLC - Product / Service



Exhibit 120: Fundable LLC - Key offerings

10.9 Fundrise LLC

Exhibit 121: Fundrise LLC - Overview



Exhibit 122: Fundrise LLC - Product / Service



Exhibit 123: Fundrise LLC - Key offerings

10.10 GoFundMe Inc.

Exhibit 124: GoFundMe Inc. - Overview



Exhibit 125: GoFundMe Inc. - Product / Service



Exhibit 126: GoFundMe Inc. - Key offerings

10.11 Indiegogo Inc.

Exhibit 127: Indiegogo Inc. - Overview



Exhibit 128: Indiegogo Inc. - Product / Service



Exhibit 129: Indiegogo Inc. - Key news



Exhibit 130: Indiegogo Inc. - Key offerings

10.12 Kickstarter PBC

Exhibit 131: Kickstarter PBC - Overview



Exhibit 132: Kickstarter PBC - Product / Service



Exhibit 133: Kickstarter PBC - Key offerings

11 Appendix

11.1 Scope of the report

11.2 Inclusions and exclusions checklist

Exhibit 134: Inclusions checklist



Exhibit 135: Exclusions checklist

11.3 Currency conversion rates for US$

Exhibit 136: Currency conversion rates for US$

11.4 Research methodology

Exhibit 137: Research methodology



Exhibit 138: Validation techniques employed for market sizing



Exhibit 139: Information sources

11.5 List of abbreviations

Exhibit 140: List of abbreviations

About Us:

Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. Their research and analysis focus on emerging market trends and provides actionable insights to help businesses identify market opportunities and develop effective strategies to optimize their market positions. With over 500 specialized analysts, Technavio's report library consists of more than 17,000 reports and counting, covering 800 technologies, spanning across 50 countries. Their client base consists of enterprises of all sizes, including more than 100 Fortune 500 companies. This growing client base relies on Technavio's comprehensive coverage, extensive research, and actionable market insights to identify opportunities in existing and potential markets and assess their competitive positions within changing market scenarios.

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
Selby Steps in to Scale and Globalize DataShapes' Patented Technology

SAN FRANCISCO, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- DataShapes, Inc., a human-in-the-AI-loop company, announced today that Logan Selby has been appointed President of the company as of January 2022. An experienced business leader, Selby will assist in scaling and commercializing DataShapes technology in the global market.

Selby has held key positions in the defense industry and with Fortune 100 companies. This experience, along with his knowledge of start-up organizations means Selby brings a robust and eclectic background to DataShapes.

"It was clear that few possess Logan's talent both technically and operationally," said Jon Myers, DataShapes CEO and Founder. "I have been searching for the right person to take DataShapes to the next level and I know Logan will exceed all expectations."

Selby has served in various roles throughout the Department of Defense, in the U.S. and overseas, as a soldier, civilian, and contractor. Selby's technical background in Data Science and Applied Machine Learning has earned him several esteemed honors. Most recently, Selby was named an Innovation Fellow for Indiana University's Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, an honor bestowed on individuals who have made noteworthy and innovative contributions to their professions.

Currently, Selby is finalizing his PhD in Autonomous Systems and Robotics. He remains a Reserve Army Officer.

About DataShapes

DataShapes offers SaaS solutions that use "AI for the rest of us" capabilities to capture and automate industry expertise. The company's patented Vector Learning technology instantly transforms unstructured data to rich, structured data that lets knowledge workers and domain experts in security, defense, media, and healthcare get actionable information, intelligence, and insight in real time.

For more information, contact:

Jon Myers

CEO and Founder, DataShapes, Inc.

866-422-2060

[email protected]

SOURCE DataShapes
Demand for dodecanedioic acid is increasing in painting materials, nylon, engineering plastics, and other uses, which is likely to boost the global dodecanedioic acid market

Growing demand for dodecanedioic acid as a raw ingredient for synthetic musk perfumes and number of organic synthesis methods is expected to propel the market

ALBANY, N.Y., March 22, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The global dodecanedioic acid market was worth more than US$ 756.9 Mn in 2020. It is likely to develop at a CAGR of 7.2% during the forecast period, from 2021 to 2031. The global dodecanedioic acid market is anticipated to cross the valuation of US$ 1.5 Bn by 2031. The utilization of dodecanedioic acid has increased significantly as the demand for painting materials and nylon has grown globally. In addition, the global dodecanedioic acid market is predicted to be driven by increasing production as well as demand for engineering plastics, nylon, and painting materials.

Consumers all around the world are interested in a novel way of generating dodecanedioic acid utilizing yeast. Market participants are expected to profit from the growing demand for biotech dodecanedioic acid production. Since dodecanedioic acid is made from yeast and paraffin wax at a low cost, it is in high demand from a variety of industries.

At ambient temperature, dodecanedioic acid stays in solid form and has a faint odor. It can be utilized in the production of compounds such as polyesters. This polyester is utilized in the making of lubricants, toothbrushes, adhesives, paints, coatings, automobile components, cosmetics, perfumes, medicines, and fuel line tubing, among many other things. Synthetic musk perfumes can also be made with dodecanedioic acid as a basic ingredient. The global dodecanedioic acid market is also being driven by the increasing use of dodecanedioic acid in different production processes and in the form of a rust preventative agent in cutting oil.

Get PDF Brochure for More Insights  https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=14270

Key Findings of Market Report

Nylon 6 resins are widely utilized as engineering polymers due to their excellent strength and rigidity at high temperatures, as well as their hardness at low temperatures. Dodecanedioic acid has great fatigue resistance and outstanding welding characteristics, owing to these features. As a result, companies in the global dodecanedioic acid market are more likely to witness growth as engineering plastics become more widely used.

In 2020, the synthetic production segment led the global dodecanedioic acid market in terms of production process. This is due to rise in demand for synthetic dodecanedioic acid in a variety of applications, such as engineering plastics, nylon, and painting materials.

Get Covid 19 Analysis - https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=covid19&rep_id=14270

Dodecanedioic acid is utilized in the making of lattices, epoxy resins, phenolic resins, unsaturated polyester resins, aromatic hydrocarbon resins, acrylates, specialty resins, as well as other specialized intermediates, among many other nylon resins. These resins are utilized in a variety of industrial settings.

Asia Pacific accounts for a significant portion of the global dodecanedioic acid market. The regional market is expected to grow at a CAGR of more than 9.7% during the forecast period. The Asia Pacific market is being driven by growing demand for the acid in different applications such as painting materials and nylon. In this market, China is a major player. It had considerable proportion of the regional market in 2020.

Request a Sample  https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=14270

Dodecanedioic Acid Market: Growth Drivers

Dodecanedioic acid is produced from yeast (Candida Tropicalis) and paraffin wax utilizing biotechnology, which makes it a cost-effective product. As such, the biotech production segment is projected to increase at a steady rate during the forecast period.

Transportation and construction industries have seen an increase in demand for performance polymers, resulting in growing utilization of nylon resins, which is likely to propel the global market

Global Dodecanedioic Acid Market: Key Players

Some of the key market players are

Evonik Industries AG

Shandong Guangtong New Materials Co., Ltd.

Cathay Biotech Inc.

Shijiazhuang Dongao Chemical Technology Co., Ltd.

Tokyo Chemical Industry Co., Ltd.

Santa Cruz Biotechnology, Inc.

Make an Enquiry Before Buying - https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=EB&rep_id=14270

Global Dodecanedioic Acid Market: Segmentation

Production Process

Synthetic Production

Biotech Production

Application

Antiseptics

Nylon

Adhesives

Painting Materials

Corrosion Inhibitors

Automotive Lubricants

Surfactants

Engineering Plastics

Others

End Use

Food Manufacturers

Foodservice

Retail/Household

Extraction Method

Air Drying

Spray Drying

Freeze Drying

Drum Drying

Vacuum Drying

Chemicals & Materials Industry battles Tangible Impact of Economic and Cultural changes, Explore Transparency Market Research's award-winning coverage of the global Chemicals & Materials:

Paraffin Wax Market - https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/paraffin-wax-market.html

EV Adhesives Market - https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/ev-adhesives-market.html

About Transparency Market Research

Transparency Market Research is a global market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. Our experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyse information.

Our data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts, so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With a broad research and analysis capability, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques in developing distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.

For More Research Insights on Leading Industries, Visit our YouTube channel - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8e-z-g23-TdDMuODiL8BKQ

Contact

Rohit Bhisey

Transparency Market Research

State Tower,

90 State Street,

Suite 700,

Albany NY - 12207

United States

USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453

Email: [email protected]

Website: http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com

Press Release Source: https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/pressrelease/dodecanedioic-acid-market.htm

SOURCE Transparency Market Research
Fellowship to provide entrepreneurs with fundamental blockchain education, Accelerator to support fast-growing blockchain startups

SAN MATEO, Calif., March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Draper University, an immersive entrepreneurship program founded by venture capitalist Tim Draper, is pleased to announce it has partnered with VeChain, the world's leading blockchain application platform driven by enterprise adoption, to launch two incredible programs for participants to start and scale Web3 businesses.

The first is the VeChain Fellowship, a four week online certificate program for future founders to learn the fundamentals of entrepreneurship and blockchain by Silicon Valley legends and industry experts. Past Draper University speakers have included Naval Ravikant, Co-founder of AngelList, Vanessa Grellet, Head of Portfolio Growth at CoinFund, and Andy Bromberg, Co-founder of CoinList. The program will offer two tracks - one for developers and one for entrepreneurs - that will run in parallel. Each track will enable participants to learn the skills necessary to launch a successful Web3 startup, powered by VeChainThor. There will also be 40 scholarships available to eligible future founders.

The second program is the VeChain Web3 Accelerator, which is intended for high-growth blockchain companies building across DeFi, SmartNFT projects, virtual worlds and gaming, and the Metaverse that already operate using VeChainThor or are intending to build on top if its technology. Twelve teams will be admitted to the program, with each to receive $100,000 in funding for a 5% equity stake in their businesses.

"Great to see VeChain team up with Draper University to bring entrepreneurs together to develop on the VeChainThor platform. Draper Ecosystem supported VeChain early, and it is awesome to see them become a blockchain market leader. Founders in the program will have access to Draper University entrepreneurial education in addition to VeChain technical resources," said Tim Draper, Founder of Draper University.

"We are thrilled to be partnering with Draper University to bring this fellowship and accelerator to life," said Sunny Lu, Founder and CEO at VeChain. "Passionate Web3 entrepreneurs will have an unprecedented opportunity to learn from some of the brightest minds in the space while also gaining access to Draper University's global network of investors, mentors and alumni connections."

The VeChain Fellowship program will run from April 18th - May 13th and the Web3 Accelerator will operate from July 11th - September 7th, 2022. Both programs are currently accepting applications at www.drapervechain.com.

About Draper University

Draper University is a Silicon Valley based accelerator offering a combination of on-site and virtual programs designed to build understanding and foundations for the next generation of startup founders and entrepreneurs. With the aim to connect international startup ecosystems, Draper University has always worked towards building bridges between these ecosystems and Silicon Valley.

About VeChain

Launched in 2015, VeChain Technology is a global leading enterprise-friendly blockchain company which aims to connect blockchain technology to the real world. Starting from 2021, VeChain specifically aims to help SDGs implementations by using Web3 as the format and DAO as the gvernance step by step.

It offers VeChain ToolChain, a low-code blockchain-based SaaS platform that allows enterprise clients to rapidly build and drive digital transformation on a global scale, enabling the evolution of a trust-free, distributed ecosystem.

VeChain Technology is a pioneer of real-world blockchain applications, with international offices in China, Singapore, Luxembourg, Japan, France, Italy and the United States. With strong independent development capabilities, combined with the professional compliance guidance of our strategic partners, PwC and DNV GL, VeChain has established partnerships with many leading enterprises in various industries, including Walmart China, Bayer China, BMW Group, BYD Auto, PICC, H&M Group, Shanghai Gas, LVMH, D.I.G, ASI Group etc.

SOURCE Draper University
VANCOUVER, BC, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Drone inspection and monitoring market size reached USD 9.80 Billion in 2021 and is expected to register a significantly steady revenue CAGR during the forecast period, according to latest analysis by Emergen Research. LiDAR drones are increasingly used for surveillance, which is one of the major factors expected to continue to drive market revenue growth.

Drivers:

The increasing number of installations of new wind turbines worldwide is expected to drive market growth over the forecast period. Drones are outfitted with cutting-edge sensors such as thermal and infrared sensors that are specifically created and calibrated for wind turbine and blade inspection. These sensors capture information (data) quickly and can see up to 15cm deep inside wind turbines. The wind industry has acknowledged the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) on-site for enhanced monitoring and surveillance. Drones, in collaboration with AI and Machine Learning, provide practical and impressively dependable methods for exploring wind turbines and their related infrastructure. In comparison to traditional inspection techniques in renewable energy, drones increase safety by removing personnel from potentially hazardous conditions on-site, reduce maintenance and inspection expenses, and even limit downtime.

Get Free Sample PDF Copy of the [email protected] https://www.emergenresearch.com/request-sample/958

Restraints:

The United States Federal Aviation Administration has set stringent regulations for flying unmanned aircraft vehicles or drones due to safety concerns from commercial and passenger flights. Certain critical regulations have been implemented to avoid serious accidents caused by drones or UAVs. The government has limited drone flying and carrying activities to a one-kilometer radius. These factors are expected to hamper market growth.

Growth Projections:

Global drone inspection and monitoring market is expected to register a CAGR of 15.8% over the forecast period and revenue is projected to increase from USD 9.80 Billion in 2021 to USD 36.16 Billion in 2030. Increasing number of wind turbines is leading to increase in demand for drone for inspection purpose is expected to drive the market revenue growth.

Increasing number of wind turbines is expected to drive the market revenue growth.

Discount Available on Drone Inspection and Monitoring market report [Click Here]@ https://www.emergenresearch.com/request-discount/958

COVID-19 Impact Analysis:

The COVID-19 outbreak increased demand for aerial spraying and public space monitoring drones, as their advantages outweighed the potential hurdles and difficulties associated with them. They are utilized in Africa, Asia Pacific, and North America to administer COVID-19 vaccinations and investigate and monitor the pandemic in distant areas of countries such as China. Drones have been used by police and government officials worldwide to conduct distant policing and impose social alienation., Current pilot projects are increasing drone tests throughout the pandemic, as organizations look to technology to address operational inefficiency

Current Trends and Innovations:

Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) with LiDAR is widely preferred for oil and gas rig inspection applications since these are equipped with modern laser and sensor technology-based systems and components. Customers may obtain precise, consistent, and rapid inspection results with the drones, including a global navigation system, an inertial navigation unit, a laser scanning unit, and an inertial measurement unit. Thus, LiDAR drones are increasingly used for surveillance, which is expected to drive market revenue growth.

Geographical Outlook:

Drone inspection and monitoring market in North America is expected to account for largest revenue share over the forecast period owing to increasing demand for drones in industries such as infrastructure and construction, agriculture, oil and gas, mining, and utilities.

Explore Complete Report Description and Table of Contents of Drone Inspection and Monitoring Market [email protected] https://www.emergenresearch.com/industry-report/drone-inspection-and-monitoring-market

Strategic Initiatives:

Some major companies included in the market report include Aerodyne Group, SZ DJI Technology Co. Ltd, AeroVironment, Inc., Sky Futures Partner Ltd., Lockheed Martin Corporation, BAE Systems PLC., Qualcomm Technologies Inc., AgEagle Aerial Systems Inc., Teledyne FLIR LLC, and Israel Aerospace Industries.

In August 2021 , Qualcomm Technologies Inc., a pioneer in developing breakthrough technologies in power robotics and drone platform enabling low power computing and camera system combined with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and long-range connectivity such as 5G and Wi-Fi 6. The device has hardware processing that is smaller, lighter, inexpensive, and high-definition camera technology.

Emergen Research has segmented drone inspection and monitoring market on the basis of solution, technology, type, application, end-use, and region:

Solution Outlook (Revenue, USD Billion; 20192030)

Software



Services



Platform



Infrastructure

Technology Outlook (Revenue, USD Billion; 20192030)

Remotely Piloted



Optionally Piloted



Fully Autonomous

Type Outlook (Revenue, USD Billion; 20192030)

Fixed Wing



Multirotor



Hybrid

Application Outlook (Revenue, USD Billion; 20192030)

Agriculture



Construction and Infrastructure



Oil and Gas



Mining



Utilities



Others

End-Use Outlook (Revenue, USD Billion; 20192030)

Pipeline Monitoring and Inspection



Offshore Platform Inspection



Wind Turbine Inspection



Power Plant Inspection



Solar Panel Inspection



Others

Get Customized Report as Per Your Specific [email protected] https://www.emergenresearch.com/request-for-customization/958

Regional Outlook (Revenue, USD Billion, Volume, Tons; 20192030)

North America



US





Canada





Mexico



Europe



Germany





France





UK





Italy





Spain





Benelux





Rest of Europe



Asia Pacific



China





India





Japan





South Korea





Rest of APAC



Latin America



Brazil





Rest of LATAM



Middle East & Africa

&

Saudi Arabia





UAE





South Africa





Turkey





Rest of MEA

Latest Blog Articles Published by Emergen Research:

World's Top 10 Companies That Offer Reliable Newborn Screening Tests

Top 10 Insurance Companies That Will Lead The Market In 2022

Non-Fungible Token (NFT) Market Trends and Demands Set to Shake the World in 2022 and Beyond

Top 10 Companies in the World Shaping the Future of Healthcare with Innovative Blockchain Solutions

World's Top 10 Companies Striding towards an All-electric Future of Mobility with Fast EV Charging Solutions

E Skin Market Size, Share, Trends, By Product (Electronic skinsuit and Electronic patches), By Component (Stretchable circuits, Photovoltaics system, and Others), By Sensor Type, By Application, and By Region Forecast to 2030

Smart Building Sensors Market, By Component (Solutions, Services), By Type (Temperature Sensors, Humidity Sensors, Motion Sensors, Contact Sensors, Gas Quality Sensors, Electrical Current Monitoring Sensors) By Application, and By Region Forecast to 2028

Radiation Hardened Electronics Market, By Product Type (Custom Made, Commercial-Off-The-Shelf), By Material Type (Silicon Carbide, Gallium Nitride), By Manufacturing Technique, By Component Type, By Application, and By Region Forecast to 2030

About Emergen Research

Emergen Research is a market research and consulting company that provides syndicated research reports, customized research reports, and consulting services. Our solutions purely focus on your purpose to locate, target, and analyze consumer behavior shifts across demographics, across industries, and help clients make smarter business decisions. We offer market intelligence studies ensuring relevant and fact-based research across multiple industries, including Healthcare, Touch Points, Chemicals, Types, and Energy. We consistently update our research offerings to ensure our clients are aware of the latest trend's existent in the market. Emergen Research has a strong base of experienced analysts from varied areas of expertise. Our industry experience and ability to develop a concrete solution to any research problems provides our clients with the ability to secure an edge over their respective competitors.

Contact Us:

Eric Lee

Corporate Sales Specialist

Emergen Research | Web: www.emergenresearch.com

Direct Line: +1 (604) 757-9756

E-mail: [email protected]

Visit for More Insights: https://www.emergenresearch.com/insights

Explore Our Custom Intelligence services | Growth Consulting Services

Read our Press Release on Drone Inspection and Monitoring @ https://www.emergenresearch.com/press-release/global-drone-inspection-and-monitoring-market



SOURCE Emergen Research
Public-private effort in South Carolina provides training and support services to help remove barriers to successful reintegration

FLORENCE, S.C., March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- A unique public-private workforce effort neared a milestone Tuesday as participants in the inaugural Energy Industry Second Chance Pilot Program  designed to reduce recidivism by removing barriers to success for former prisoners  wrapped up on-the-job training and prepared to re-enter the workforce full time.

The program is an initiative designed to use proven best practices in restorative case management to prepare and guide formerly incarcerated individuals along a path to successful reintegration while growing the energy industry's workforce of tomorrow.

This unique initiative began as an in-prison, paid employment and re-entry program for four inmates who volunteered to be trained and offered full-time employment in utility vegetation management, a field critical to utilities like Duke Energy across the state.

The program was developed by Lewis Tree Service in partnership with the S.C. Department of Corrections and professional services firm DESA (through the organization's nonprofit arm Joseph Outreach) and the REEMERGE program (funded by the U.S. Department of Commerce Minority Business Development Agency).

Lewis Tree Service began the training at Wateree River Correctional Institution two weeks prior to release. In early March, participants were released to continue training with entry-level jobs in Florence, S.C.

The Duke Energy Foundation supplied nearly $27,000 in grant funding to the initiative that provides the training and support services needed to ensure the participants' success and help them adapt from prison to the workforce and be reintegrated into society. These services include transportation, meals, transitional housing and required work clothing, as well as classes on soft skills and financial literacy.

Once training is complete, participants will work for Lewis Tree Service at locations across the Carolinas. They will continue to receive certain services including an assigned case manager and assistance finding permanent housing as they rejoin their families and communities.

Video is available of participants training at Wateree River Correctional Institution. Video and photos from the March 22 press conference are also available.

Quotes

"Our Second Chance pilot initiative is a prime example of how private-public collaborations can expand life and career options for those preparing for release from prison," said Diane E. Sumpter , operator of the U.S. Department of Commerce Minority Business Development Agency's Formerly Incarcerated Program and president of DESA, Inc. "Our main objective has been to give them the tools needed to positively adjust to hurdles along their path toward reintegration. The foundation and individual donor support we received made it possible for REEMERGE and Joseph Outreach to extend their services while creating solutions for the unique resource and behavioral health challenges that each participant faced as a returning citizen."

, operator of the U.S. Department of Commerce Minority Business Development Agency's Formerly Incarcerated Program and president of DESA, Inc. "Our main objective has been to give them the tools needed to positively adjust to hurdles along their path toward reintegration. The foundation and individual donor support we received made it possible for REEMERGE and Joseph Outreach to extend their services while creating solutions for the unique resource and behavioral health challenges that each participant faced as a returning citizen." "What began as Lewis seeking solutions to an industry-wide labor shortage has turned into an innovative partnership that taps into a unique labor pool," said Dennis Brown , President and COO, Lewis Tree Service . "We hired dedicated professionals with tremendous growth potential. We are extremely proud that they joined our strong and growing company of employee owners."

, President and COO, . "We hired dedicated professionals with tremendous growth potential. We are extremely proud that they joined our strong and growing company of employee owners." "We are grateful to these business community partners who see the value of hiring formerly incarcerated people," said Bryan Stirling , Director of the S.C. Department of Corrections. "Programs like this truly give people a second chance."

, Director of the S.C. Department of Corrections. "Programs like this truly give people a second chance." "We are committed to keeping South Carolina's economy and communities resilient and strong," said Mike Callahan , Duke Energy's South Carolina president. "One of the ways we do that is to continually look for innovative ways to support and grow our state's workforce. This unique program is a step in the right direction in addressing some of those needs and we hope it can be a model for other industries to explore."

Duke Energy Foundation

The Duke Energy Foundation provides philanthropic support to meet the needs of communities where Duke Energy customers live and work. The foundation contributes more than $30 million annually in charitable gifts, and is funded by Duke Energy shareholder dollars. More information about the foundation and its Powerful Communities program can be found at duke-energy.com/foundation.

Duke Energy (NYSE: DUK), a Fortune 150 company headquartered in Charlotte, N.C., is one of America's largest energy holding companies. Its electric utilities serve 7.9 million customers in North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky, and collectively own 51,000 megawatts of energy capacity. Its natural gas unit serves 1.6 million customers in North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Ohio and Kentucky. The company employs 27,500 people.

Duke Energy is executing an aggressive clean energy strategy to create a smarter energy future for its customers and communities  with goals of at least a 50 percent carbon reduction by 2030 and net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. The company is a top U.S. renewable energy provider, on track to own or purchase 16,000 megawatts of renewable energy capacity by 2025. The company also is investing in major electric grid upgrades and expanded battery storage and exploring zero-emitting power generation technologies such as hydrogen and advanced nuclear.

Duke Energy was named to Fortune's 2021 "World's Most Admired Companies" list and Forbes' "America's Best Employers" list. More information is available at duke-energy.com. The Duke Energy News Center contains news releases, fact sheets, photos and videos. Duke Energy's illumination features stories about people, innovations, community topics and environmental issues. Follow Duke Energy on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook.

Contact: Ryan Mosier

24-Hour: 800.559.3853

SOURCE Duke Energy
There is an epidemic of loneliness around the world, with 61% of Gen Z admitting they feel lonely and 46% of Gen Z reporting that their loneliness grew since the pandemic. essie aims to identify impactful methods to help diminish the effects of loneliness on the Gen Z community and has partnered with FAH to promote creative expression as an innovative approach to alleviate loneliness.

"At essie, we're obsessed with color and its power to bring people together through storytelling," said Isabelle Carramaschi, Vice President of essie. "We've never been more connected by technology, but an overwhelming amount of people are simultaneously struggling with a level of disconnection never seen before. As a brand that drives personal connections and has a large community of Gen Z cohorts, essie feels a responsibility to help create a positive change. Hands All In aims to create colorful connections to uplift those who feel lonely."

Through Project UnLonely, which broadens public awareness for the negative physical and mental health consequences of loneliness, FAH works to explore creative arts-based approaches to address the impact of loneliness. FAH developed an evidence-informed workshop through Project UnLonely called Colors & Connection to connect students and college communities through the use of color and art-making, and story-sharing. In partnership with essie, Colors & Connection has been implemented on college campuses across the country, including Harvard University, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Emerson College. The one-hour workshops are held in-person in group settings, and are rooted in color's proven power of facilitating personal reflection, imagination, self-expression, and connection. They feature guided "connecting through colors" activities and thought-provoking exercises that stimulate rich conversations and authentic engagement with oneself and others in a comfortable and supportive environment. essie and Project UnLonely will continue to roll out additional Colors & Connection programs throughout college campuses in the U.S. in 2022.

"FAH launched Project UnLonely in 2016 well before the rise of loneliness was becoming a global concern, and its urgency now cannot be overstated," explained Jeremy Nobel, MD, MPH, Harvard Medical School faculty member and Founder and President of the Foundation for Art & Healing. "Through our programs we're continuing to see the power of creative expression and the arts having remarkable impact, improving connection and fostering a sense of belonging. We're excited to partner with essie to bring these novel approaches to college students navigating the social and emotional challenges of the campus experience."

In celebration of the new partnership, the brand is building a skate park in Los Angeles on March 23 and 24 at the Annenberg Community Beach House in Santa Monica and installing a colorful and interactive community art mural. Through the skate organization Grlswirl , the brand will be inviting the local skating community to come together and share in a creative and colorful transformation together. Through these events, essie aims to reach a wider community and bring more visibility to loneliness and their Hands All In cause mission.

Visit www.essie.com/colors-and-connections to learn more about how essie and Project UnLonely are creating a positive impact, and how your college campus can get involved with the Colors and Connection program this year.

ABOUT essie

America's nail salon expert since 1981, essie aims to inspire a love for the manicure experience with a wit and style that touches the hearts of people everywhere. essie is the go-to nail brand for beauty professionals, industry insiders, celebrities and fashion icons around the world. the brand offers a portfolio of nail products and diverse palette of colors that includes: essieoriginal, a vast range of iconic and on-trend nuanced colors, gel couture, 2-step longwear system, TREAT LOVE & COLOR advanced color and strength, and new expressie, quick dry on-the-fly polish. essie is beloved for its salon-quality formulas, witty shade names and over 1,000 colors. whether in salon, at home, on the runway or red carpet, essie believes in bringing people together through color; something powerful, collectible, personal and so much fun! since its introduction by Essie Weingarten, essie has delighted the color-obsessed with a love shared all over the world.

ABOUT The Foundation for Art & Healing

The Foundation for Art & Healing (FAH) is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization that uses creative expression and the arts to address some of the most urgent public health issues today. Rooted in medicine and science, FAH develops high impact, scalable programs that address the physical and mental health challenges of diverse populations including front-line healthcare workers, older adults, caregivers, those with major illness, employees, and college students. Its national, regional, and community-based partnerships enable effective and equitable program delivery, amplifying the powerful effect of using creativity and the arts to connect and heal. FAH created Project UnLonely to focus public awareness on the negative physical and mental health consequences of loneliness, and to develop and broaden the use of effective arts-based programming. The Colors & Connection workshop was developed to engage the college community in combating loneliness on campus. www.artandhealing.org

For more information on FAH and Project UnLonely, please contact: [email protected]

For more information, please contact:

ALISON BROD MARKETING + COMMUNICATIONS

[email protected]

SOURCE essie
Press Release

March 23, 2022 DENR-NCR cites Villar for championing environmental protection and water sustainability IN recognition of her invaluable contributions to keep the environment and waterways clean ang healthy, Senator Cynthia Villar was an awardee in the Department of Environment and Natural Resources- National Capital Region (DENR-NCR) "Gawad Taga-Ilog 2.0: Search for the Most Improved Estero in Metro Manila" during the celebration of World Water Day (WWD). The DENR-NCR also acknowledged Villar for her strong advocacy in the protection of natural resources, solid waste management, sustainable tourism and community development. In her Acceptance Speech in the event held at Radisson North EDSA, Quezon City, Villar noted that as an individual, a legislator and a public servant, these have always been her priorities and advocacies. The senator has been at the forefront of maintaining a healthy enviroment, especially now that we are facing a global health crisis. She has likewise been making strides for the realization of water sustainability. Villar, chairperson of the Senate committee on environment and natural resources, recalled that "four years ago on this day in 2018, together with the Manila Bay Site Coordinating Management Office and all other organizations, the DENR-NCR also awarded me as "Kampeon ng Katubigan" for my efforts in leading the protection of bodies of water such as the Las Pinas Zapote River and the Las Pinas Paranaque Wetland Park." "Eleven years ago, in 2011, I also received an award for the river rehabilitation program. I started in my home city- the Sagip Ilog program. It bested other initiatives from 38 other countries and won the United Nations Water for Life Best Water Management Practices during World Water Day celebration in Zaragosa, Spain," also said Villar. Such recognitions, the senator asserted, challenged her to do even more for the environment. "Now, it's World Water Day again, and the theme of this year's celebration is, "Groundwater: making the invisible visible", which highlights an otherwise invisible water resource," related Villar. The United Nations' International Groundwater Resources Assessment Center (UN-IGRC) said groundwater is a vital resource providing almost half of all drinking water worldwide, about 40% of water for irrigated agriculture and about 1/3 of water required for industries. Because the Philippines is an agricultural country, Villar stressed that water is vital for the country's food security, among others. "We do have to keep on reminding people that water is not an infinite resource and it is in fact getting scarce," she said. "The World Economic Forum, water scarcity is among the biggest challenges to the global economy. So, water security becomes an even more important and urgent concern for all of us," said Villar. Furthermore, she stressed that groundwater in particular sustains ecosystems and maintains the baseflow of rivers. Groundwater is also an important part of climate change adaptation process and is often a solution for people without access to safe water. But despite these impressive facts and figures, Villar lamented the UN-IGRC cited that invisible groundwater is out of sight and out of mind for most people. There are already over 663 million people around the world without access to safe drinking water and the world's population continues to grow at such a fast pace. "So, we need to ensure that we have a steady and sustainable supply by addressing the various challenges confronting water resources and of course, finding solutions," added the senator. ### ________________________________________________________________ DENR-NCR, kinilala ang pagiging "champion" ni Villar sa environmental protection at water sustainability BILANG pagkilala sa kanyang natatanging kontribusyon na mapanatiling malinis at malusog ang ating kapaligiran at waterways, awardee si Sen. Cynthia Villar sa Department of Environment and Natural Resources- National Capital Region (DENR-NCR) "Gawad Taga-Ilog 2.0: Search for the Most Improved Estero in Metro Manila" sa pagdiriwang ng World Water Day (WWD). Pinuri rin ng DENR-NCR si Villar sa kanyang adbokasiyang alagaan ang ating natural resources, solid waste management, sustainable tourism at community development. Sa kanyang Acceptance Speech sa okasyong ginanap sa Radisson North EDSA, Quezon City, iginiit ni Villar na ang mga ito ang palagian niyang prayoridad at adbokasiya bilang isang indibiduwal, legislator at public servant. Nangunguna ang senador sa pagtataguyod sa malusog na kapaligiran lalo na ngayong nahaharap tayo sa Isang global health crisis. Pinagsisikapan din niya ang water sustainability. Ginunita ni Villar, chairperson ng Senate committee on environment and natural resources, na four years ago on this day in 2018, together with the Manila Bay Site Coordinating Management Office and all other organizations, the DENR-NCR also awarded me as "Kampeon ng Katubigan" for my efforts in leading the protection of bodies of water such as the Las Pinas Zapote River and the Las Pinas Paranaque Wetland Park." "Eleven years ago, in 2011, I also received an award for the river rehabilitation program. I started in my home city- the Sagip Ilog program. It bested other initiatives from 38 other countries and won the United Nations Water for Life Best Water Management Practices during World Water Day celebration in Zaragosa, Spain," sabi pa ni Villar. Naging hamon sa kanya ang mga pagkilalang ito para mas marami pa siyang gawin sa ating kapaligiran. "Now, it's World Water Day again, and the theme of this year's celebration is, "Groundwater: making the invisible visible", which highlights an otherwise invisible water resource," ayon kay Villar. Ipinahayag ng United Nations' International Groundwater Resources Assessment Center (UN-IGRC) na mahalaga ang groundwater na pinagkukunan ng kalahati ng ating iniinom na tubig sa buong mundo. May 40% ng tubig mula rito ang gamit sa irrigated agriculture at 1/3 ng tubig sa mga industriya. Dahil agrikulturang bansa ang Pilipinas, iginiit ni Villar na importante ang tubig sa ating seguridad sa pagkain. "We do have to keep on reminding people that water is not an infinite resource and it is in fact getting scarce," ani senador "The World Economic Forum, water scarcity is among the biggest challenges to the global economy. So, water security becomes an even more important and urgent concern for all of us," dagdag pa niya. Malaking tulong din ang groundwater sa ating ecosystems at sa baseflow ng mga ilog. "Groundwater is also an important part of climate change adaptation process and is often a solution for people without access to safe water." Dismayado naman si Villar sa sinabi ng UN-IGRC tungkol sa kakulangan ng groundwater.May 663 milyon sa buong mundo ang walang malinis na inuming tubig sa kabila ng mabilis na pagdami ng tao. "So, we need to ensure that we have a steady and sustainable supply by addressing the various challenges confronting water resources and of course, finding solutions," added the senator. ###
COLOMBO, March 23 (Xinhua) -- Sri Lanka Customs on Wednesday detected 350 kilograms of cocaine hidden in a container from Panama at the Colombo Port.

Customs media spokesman Sudatta Silva told journalists that the value of the haul is estimated to have a street value of 6 billion rupees (21 million U.S. dollars).

The container had been to Belgium and then to Dubai before arriving in Sri Lanka, and it was destined for India, he said.

The shipment was stopped and searched in Sri Lanka by the Port Control Unit of the Customs, following a tip-off received from the customs intelligence unit, Silva said.

He said this is one of the biggest drug busts in 2022.

The goods in the containers were declared as scrap metal and the cocaine had been handed over to the Police Narcotic Bureau. 
These courageous green berets have the mission of bringing safety and care to the many abandoned children of Ukraine.

At the Knights of Columbus "Mercy Hut" in Hrebenne on the Ukraine border, where compassion, food, warmth, medical attention, and a chapel welcome refugees, the Goya Cares team met one of the many refugees passing through. They hear the words of Nella who is with her 4-year-old son Andrei. She repeats her husband's plea as she left their home in Ukraine, "Love and protect our son, and I will protect and defend our country."

The Goya Cares team was moved by the incredible courage, compassion, and love of a mother entrusted with the care, protection, and nurturing of her precious child.

"Witnessing firsthand the incredible power of a mother's love and protection for her child gives hope to the world that the power of love can defeat hatred and that the power of prayer will defeat evil by moving us closer to God," said Bob Unanue, President and CEO of Goya Foods.

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/1772001/Goya_Ukraine_Donations.jpg

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1153368/GOYA_Logo.jpg

SOURCE Goya Foods, Inc.
Educational Webinar Details AI Professional Development Training from UF Now Available to Startups

AUSTIN, Texas, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Flapmax announced today it is working with the University of Florida (UF) to help support training and upskilling opportunities in Africa through its recently launched FAST accelerator program. UF joins Microsoft and a growing team of international partners led by Flapmax that are helping strengthen the entrepreneurship ecosystem in Africa. Startups, entrepreneurs, and innovators (including students) based in Africa are invited to attend one of the program's specialized webinars focusing on agricultural technology (AgTech) and AI, starting March 24, 2022.

FAST, created in partnership with Microsoft, is designed for startups building cloud technology and AI-enabled products and services supporting Africa's communities, governments, companies, as well as small and medium-scale enterprises (SMEs). Starting this month, a diverse cohort of FAST accelerator participants selected from over 800 startup applicants across the continent will access training and upskilling opportunities from one of the top universities in the U.S.

"Artificial intelligence is more than just the next wave of high-tech. It is transforming nearly every sector of the economy," says Dr. Regina Rodriguez, AI Professional Education, University of Florida. "The applications of AI are limitless, and whatever your interest level you can increase your working knowledge of AI through professional development. UF is excited to tailor professional development courses for the African startups participating in FAST. We look forward to the global impact UF can have as the AI University."

With the emergence of Agtech companies in Africa, Flapmax incorporated UF's Agricultural and Life Sciences specialization course into the FAST accelerator curriculum. Participants will gain hands-on experience through online interaction with the university's professors and by using AI tools provided by Flapmax to apply the knowledge they acquire to solve real-world agricultural and life sciences problems.

"We are very excited for the opportunity that this collaboration brings," says Dr. Dave Ojika, CEO, Flapmax. "As a former resident of the Florida region, and a UF Alumni, it brings me great joy to give back to a community that gave so much. We want to bring AI training accessibility to the future of our workforce. Thus, bringing trained individuals from underrepresented communities to startups serving underserved communities."

Flapmax will sponsor a limited number of enrolments via its Flapmax Learn platform. At the end of the training program, participants of the AgTech course will receive a certification from the university, qualify for a micro-credential and earn 1.5 Continuing Education Units (CEUs), which can be applied towards future professional certifications and diplomas.

To learn more about the professional development resources offered by Flapmax and the University of Florida, individuals are encouraged to attend an introductory webinar on March 24 (2 PM WAT). Highlights of the webinar will be shared on LinkedIn and Twitter.

To register for the free AgTech Webinar with UF, visit: https://bit.ly/fastaiweb

Learn more at www.fastaccelerator.com and www.flapmax.com

SOURCE Flapmax
VANCOUVER, BC, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ - Galiano Gold Inc. ("Galiano" or the "Company") (TSX: GAU) (NYSE: GAU) today announces that Mr. Fausto Di Trapani, Galiano's Chief Financial Officer ("CFO") has informed the Company that he will be stepping down as CFO to pursue another opportunity.

Fausto will continue to serve as CFO until his departure in early May 2022 and will work during the coming weeks to ensure an orderly transition of his responsibilities. Following Fausto's departure the Company intends to appoint Matt Freeman, current SVP Finance as its new CFO, in line with the Company's succession plan.

"I want to thank Fausto for his contribution to Galiano over the past decade," said Matt Badylak, Galiano's President and Chief Executive Officer. "He has been instrumental in the financing, construction, operation and eventual joint venturing of the Asanko Gold Mine as well as managing the Company's finances. We appreciate Fausto's commitment to ensuring a smooth transition and wish him well in his new endeavor. Matt Freeman has a detailed understanding of all the financial aspects of our business and we look forward to having him as our new CFO in due course."

About Galiano Gold Inc.

Galiano is focused on creating a sustainable business capable of long-term value creation for its stakeholders through exploration and disciplined deployment of its financial resources. The Company currently operates and manages the Asanko Gold Mine, located in Ghana, West Africa which is jointly owned with Gold Fields Ltd. The Company is strongly committed to the highest standards for environmental management, social responsibility, and health and safety for its employees and neighbouring communities. For more information, please visit www.galianogold.com.

SOURCE Galiano Gold Inc.
For the Eighth Consecutive Year, 12 Scholarships Available to Students for the 2022-2023 School Year

SOUTHFIELD, Mich., March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Garage Gurus, the industry-leading training and support platform from Tenneco's DRiV group, will again award up to $30,000 in scholarships to future automotive technicians who are accepted or currently enrolled in accredited, U.S.-based automotive technical schools, colleges, and universities, or enrolled full-time at a U.S. high school. Applications are now available on the Garage Gurus website for the opportunity to receive one of 12 $2,500 Garage Gurus Automotive Technician Scholarships for the 2022-2023 school year. All materials must be submitted by May 31, 2022; winners will be announced on or about July 1, 2022. This year, Garage Gurus is again partnering with Autel US to also provide all 12 winners with an Autel MaxiSYS MS906TS diagnostic tablet. This premium tool offers TPMS, maintenance services, diagnostic reports, ADAS module identifications, and FCA Secure Gateway Access.



In addition to the application, students are also required to submit 2 letters of recommendation from non-family members as well as a typed essay or video introducing themselves and indicating "Why I Want to Be a Top Technician." (Applicants must be legal residents of the United States, in the United States on a valid student visa, or possess resident alien status.) All applications and related materials will be reviewed and winners selected by Garage Gurus' team of ASE Master-certified technicians, as well as other team members.

"We are thrilled to be able to once again assist and encourage those students interested in pursuing careers in the automotive repair industry," said Dennis Sheran, director, Garage Gurus. "Every year, we see the impact that technician shortages have on the automotive aftermarket sector, and as such, Garage Gurus remains committed to helping address skills gaps and technician shortages through our full training classes and through this scholarship program."

"We are proud to be a sponsor of Garage Gurus 2022-2023 Scholarship program and its continuing efforts to encourage and support the next generation of technicians," said Daniel Beimiss, marketing director, Autel. "The MaxiSYS MS906TS has been one of Autel's most popular tablets since its release, and as many of our users refer to the MS906TS as their go-to tool, it seemed only natural that these scholarship recipients should have one of their own as they continue their journey toward professional technician. We wish them well and are confident that with our tablet in hand, these aspiring technicians will be ready to meet the challenge."





Offering onsite, online and on-demand instruction, Garage Gurus is a national training platform designed to help front-line automotive service professionals keep pace with the latest vehicle technologies. State-of-the-art Garage Gurus technical education centers operate in 11 U.S. markets  Atlanta; Baltimore; Boston; Chicago; Dallas/Fort Worth; New Hyde Park, N.Y.; Rancho Dominguez, Calif.; South Florida; St. Louis; suburban Detroit; and Van Nuys, Calif.

To learn more about the Automotive Technician Scholarship Program, to apply, and to read the full set of rules and eligibility requirements, visit www.garagegurus.tech.

About Tenneco

Tenneco is one of the world's leading designers, manufacturers and marketers of automotive products for original equipment and aftermarket customers, with full year 2021 revenues of $18 billion and approximately 71,000 team members working at more than 260 sites worldwide. Through our four business groups, Motorparts, Performance Solutions, Clean Air and Powertrain, Tenneco is driving advancements in global mobility by delivering technology solutions for diversified global markets, including light vehicle, commercial truck, off-highway, industrial, motorsport and the aftermarket.

Visit www.tenneco.com to learn more.

CONTACT:

Karen Shulhan (DRiV)  313.617.2086

[email protected]

Bill Dawson (DRiV)  847.482.5807

[email protected]

SOURCE DRiV
Global competitiveness and key competitor percentage market shares

Market presence across multiple geographies - Strong/Active/Niche/Trivial

Online interactive peer-to-peer collaborative bespoke updates

Access to our digital archives and MarketGlass Research Platform

Complimentary updates for one year

Edition: 9; Released: February 2022

Executive Engagements: 742

Companies: 43 - Players covered include ACR Electronics, Inc; Aeronautical Accessories, Inc (Bell, Textron Inc); Amphenol Corporation; Antcom Corporation; Astronics Corporation; Azimut; Beijing BDStar Navigation Co., Ltd; Cobham Limited; Collins Aerospace; Emergency Beacon Corporation; Honeywell International Inc; HR Smith Group of Companies; JDA Systems; L3Harris Technologies Inc; RAMI; Sensor Systems Inc; Spectrum Antenna & Avionics Systems (P)Ltd; Stt-systemtechnik GmbH; Smiths Interconnect; The Boeing Company; Trig Avionics Limited; U B CORPORATION; Verdant Telemetry & Antenna Systems and Others.

Coverage: All major geographies and key segments

Segments: Wing Type (Fixed, Rotary); Application (Navigation & Surveillance, Communication); End-Use (Aftermarket, OEMs)

Geographies: World; USA; Canada; Japan; China; Europe; France; Germany; Italy; UK; Spain; Russia; Rest of Europe; Asia-Pacific; Australia; India; South Korea; Rest of Asia-Pacific; Latin America; Argentina; Brazil; Mexico; Rest of Latin America; Middle East; Africa.



Complimentary Project Preview - This is an ongoing global program. Preview our research program before you make a purchase decision. We are offering a complimentary access to qualified executives driving strategy, business development, sales & marketing, and product management roles at featured companies. Previews provide deep insider access to business trends; competitive brands; domain expert profiles; and market data templates and much more. You may also build your own bespoke report using our MarketGlass Platform which offers thousands of data bytes without an obligation to purchase our report. Preview Registry



ABSTRACT-



Global Aircraft Antenna Market to Reach $618.2 Million by 2026

Antennas are a critical and indispensable component of an aircraft due to their ability to support communication and other systems. There are different types of antennas mounted on an aircraft, general on its belly, which are intended for different purposes. Often termed as aerials by pilots, aircraft antennas assist users in communicating with other people. Mission-specific and large airframes are equipped with multiple radio systems that demand dedicated antennas. As airlines brace to move to high-speed connectivity, antennas are expected to play a major role in enabling the adoption. The importance of antennas as an enabler for high-speed connectivity is increasing, leading to the evolution of new antenna technologies. Presently, antennas denote the major bottleneck and researchers are working to address the issue by improving their capacity, while reducing the footprint of the antennas. Electronically Steerable Antennas are a new technology that aim to drastically reduce the size of the antenna, for improved reliability. The increasing significance of satellite communication in facilitating seamless communication services and supporting carbon-mitigation efforts is bound to bring antenna technology at the fore. Aircraft antennas are also expected to benefit from growing adoption of UAVs, as they play a key role in helping UAVs to communicate with either satellites in the orbit or ground control stations.

Amid the COVID-19 crisis, the global market for Aircraft Antenna estimated at US$461.7 Million in the year 2022, is projected to reach a revised size of US$618.2 Million by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 6.6% over the analysis period. Fixed, one of the segments analyzed in the report, is projected to grow at a 6.5% CAGR to reach US$459.2 Million by the end of the analysis period. After a thorough analysis of the business implications of the pandemic and its induced economic crisis, growth in the Rotary segment is readjusted to a revised 6.9% CAGR for the next 7-year period. This segment currently accounts for a 30.2% share of the global Aircraft Antenna market.

The U.S. Market is Estimated $171.8 Million in 2022, While China is Forecast to Reach $63.5 Million by 2026

The Aircraft Antenna market in the U.S. is estimated at US$171.8 Million in the year 2022. The country currently accounts for a 37.11% share in the global market. China, the world's second largest economy, is forecast to reach an estimated market size of US$63.5 Million in the year 2026 trailing a CAGR of 7.9% through the analysis period. Among the other noteworthy geographic markets are Japan and Canada, each forecast to grow at 5.6% and 6.2% respectively over the analysis period. Within Europe, Germany is forecast to grow at approximately 6.1% CAGR while Rest of European market (as defined in the study) will reach US$68.9 Million by the end of the analysis period. As the epicenter of the outbreak shifts towards Europe, several European countries are seeking to deploy drones in ways hitherto unimagined in pandemic management and anti-epidemic efforts. In the coming years, drones will be adapted for disease detection and crowd management, something that has never been done before. The scenario although grim for the world economy and public health, is nevertheless emerging into a catalyst for the development and deployment of drones. As drones prove indispensable for timely and effective epidemic monitoring and response, demand for drones is fast tracking and UTM will also grow in prominence and urgency as the world anxiously awaits for safe drone operation. More



MarketGlass Platform

Our MarketGlass Platform is a free full-stack knowledge center that is custom configurable to today`s busy business executive`s intelligence needs! This influencer driven interactive research platform is at the core of our primary research engagements and draws from unique perspectives of participating executives worldwide. Features include - enterprise-wide peer-to-peer collaborations; research program previews relevant to your company; 3.4 million domain expert profiles; competitive company profiles; interactive research modules; bespoke report generation; monitor market trends; competitive brands; create & publish blogs & podcasts using our primary and secondary content; track domain events worldwide; and much more. Client companies will have complete insider access to the project data stacks. Currently in use by 67,000+ domain experts worldwide.



Our platform is free for qualified executives and is accessible from our website www.StrategyR.com or via our just released mobile application on iOS or Android



About Global Industry Analysts, Inc. & StrategyR

Global Industry Analysts, Inc., (www.strategyr.com) is a renowned market research publisher the world`s only influencer driven market research company. Proudly serving more than 42,000 clients from 36 countries, GIA is recognized for accurate forecasting of markets and industries for over 33 years.

CONTACTS:

Zak Ali

Director, Corporate Communications

Global Industry Analysts, Inc.

Phone: 1-408-528-9966

www.StrategyR.com

Email: [email protected]



LINKS

Join Our Expert Panel

https://www.strategyr.com/Panelist.asp

Connect With Us on LinkedIn

https://www.linkedin.com/company/global-industry-analysts-inc./

Follow Us on Twitter

https://twitter.com/marketbytes

Journalists & Media

[email protected]

SOURCE Global Industry Analysts, Inc.
Global competitiveness and key competitor percentage market shares

Market presence across multiple geographies - Strong/Active/Niche/Trivial

Online interactive peer-to-peer collaborative bespoke updates

Access to our digital archives and MarketGlass Research Platform

Complimentary updates for one year

Edition: 21; Released: February 2022

Executive Engagements: 5402

Companies: 102 - Players covered include 3M Company; Bondo Corporation; Arkema S.A.; Bostik S.A.; Ashland Global Holdings Inc.; BASF SE; Bemis Associates, Inc.; Covestro AG; DuPont de Nemours, Inc.; EMS-Chemie Holding AG; H.B. Fuller Company; Henkel AG & Co. KGaA; Huntsman Corporation; Illinois Tool Works, Inc.; Permatex, Inc.; Lord Corporation; Nippon Paint Co., Ltd.; Nitto Denko Corporation; Royal Adhesives and Sealants, LLC; RPM International Inc.; The Dow Chemical Company; ThreeBond Co., Ltd.; Transtar Autobody Technologies, Inc.; Wacker-Chemie AG and Others.

Coverage: All major geographies and key segments

Segments: Function (Bonding, NVH, Sealing/Protection); Vehicle Type (Passenger Cars, LCV, HCV & MCV); Application (Body in White (BIW), Assembly, Powertrain, Paint Shop)

Geographies: World; USA; Canada; Japan; China; Europe; France; Germany; Italy; UK; Spain; Russia; Rest of Europe; Asia-Pacific; Australia; India; South Korea; Rest of Asia-Pacific; Latin America; Argentina; Brazil; Mexico; Rest of Latin America; Middle East; Africa.

Complimentary Project Preview - This is an ongoing global program. Preview our research program before you make a purchase decision. We are offering a complimentary access to qualified executives driving strategy, business development, sales & marketing, and product management roles at featured companies. Previews provide deep insider access to business trends; competitive brands; domain expert profiles; and market data templates and much more. You may also build your own bespoke report using our MarketGlass Platform which offers thousands of data bytes without an obligation to purchase our report. Preview Registry

ABSTRACT-

Global Automotive Adhesives Market to Reach $5.1 Billion by 2026

Automotive adhesives are adhesive materials that find applications in structural bonding of auto components. Automotive adhesives are intended to address various needs of automakers such as conformal coating, thermal management, potting or casting, mechanical bonds, EMI or RFI shielding, electrical connections, impregnation and stress dissipation. These adhesives are commonly used in engine control units, anti-lock brake systems (ABS), displays, climate controls, navigation systems, transmission control units, vehicle stability control, vision system, sensors, connectors, detectors, instrument panel, security devices and battery monitoring systems. On the back of electrification and electronification technologies, vehicle manufacturing and design is dramatically changing. Among the components to gain significance is automotive adhesives. The rising focus on weight reduction of automobiles to meet increasingly stringent fuel economy mandates is expected to fuel demand for advanced automotive adhesives. Focus on reducing chemical consumption and decreasing process steps, which also contribute to emission of volatile organic compounds, are driving innovation in the glass bonding adhesives market.

Amid the COVID-19 crisis, the global market for Automotive Adhesives estimated at US$4.2 Billion in the year 2022, is projected to reach a revised size of US$5.1 Billion by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 4% over the analysis period. Bonding, one of the segments analyzed in the report, is projected to grow at a 3.8% CAGR to reach US$2.6 Billion by the end of the analysis period. After a thorough analysis of the business implications of the pandemic and its induced economic crisis, growth in the NVH segment is readjusted to a revised 5% CAGR for the next 7-year period. This segment currently accounts for a 31.5% share of the global Automotive Adhesives market. Manufacturers are leveraging benefits of adhesives as bonding technology for achieving greater productivity, reducing costs, improving flexibility in manufacturing process and realizing goals of producing vehicles with high fuel efficiency & lower emissions, superior durability and packaging capabilities. Therefore, adhesives are now being used in applied in practically every nook and corner of the car be it for the body, under the hood and exterior trims of vehicles where they offer many benefits over conventional bonding technologies.

The U.S. Market is Estimated at $607 Million in 2022, While China is Forecast to Reach $1.5 Billion by 2026

The Automotive Adhesives market in the U.S. is estimated at US$607 Million in the year 2022. The country currently accounts for a 14.41% share in the global market. China, the world's second largest economy, is forecast to reach an estimated market size of US$1.5 Billion in the year 2026 trailing a CAGR of 5.4% through the analysis period. Among the other noteworthy geographic markets are Japan and Canada, each forecast to grow at 2.4% and 3.5% respectively over the analysis period. Within Europe, Germany is forecast to grow at approximately 2.7% CAGR while Rest of European market (as defined in the study) will reach US$1.6 Billion by the end of the analysis period.

Sealing/Protection Segment to Reach $899.1 Million by 2026

Adhesives also have a role to play in combating the thermal runaway issues in electric vehicles which rely on lithium ion batteries. Innovative sealing technologies protect the battery from external fluids. In the global Sealing/Protection segment, USA, Canada, Japan, China and Europe will drive the 2.6% CAGR estimated for this segment. These regional markets accounting for a combined market size of US$597.1 Million will reach a projected size of US$716.8 Million by the close of the analysis period. China will remain among the fastest growing in this cluster of regional markets. Led by countries such as Australia, India, and South Korea, the market in Asia-Pacific is forecast to reach US$136.1 Million by the year 2026, while Latin America will expand at a 3.2% CAGR through the analysis period. More

MarketGlass Platform

Our MarketGlass Platform is a free full-stack knowledge center that is custom configurable to today`s busy business executive`s intelligence needs! This influencer driven interactive research platform is at the core of our primary research engagements and draws from unique perspectives of participating executives worldwide. Features include - enterprise-wide peer-to-peer collaborations; research program previews relevant to your company; 3.4 million domain expert profiles; competitive company profiles; interactive research modules; bespoke report generation; monitor market trends; competitive brands; create & publish blogs & podcasts using our primary and secondary content; track domain events worldwide; and much more. Client companies will have complete insider access to the project data stacks. Currently in use by 67,000+ domain experts worldwide.

Our platform is free for qualified executives and is accessible from our website www.StrategyR.com or via our just released mobile application on iOS or Android

About Global Industry Analysts, Inc. & StrategyR

Global Industry Analysts, Inc., (www.strategyr.com) is a renowned market research publisher the world`s only influencer driven market research company. Proudly serving more than 42,000 clients from 36 countries, GIA is recognized for accurate forecasting of markets and industries for over 33 years.

CONTACTS:

Zak Ali

Director, Corporate Communications

Global Industry Analysts, Inc.

Phone: 1-408-528-9966

www.StrategyR.com

Email: [email protected]

LINKS

Join Our Expert Panel

https://www.strategyr.com/Panelist.asp

Connect With Us on LinkedIn

https://www.linkedin.com/company/global-industry-analysts-inc./

Follow Us on Twitter

https://twitter.com/marketbytes

Journalists & Media

[email protected]

SOURCE Global Industry Analysts, Inc.
Global competitiveness and key competitor percentage market shares

Market presence across multiple geographies - Strong/Active/Niche/Trivial

Online interactive peer-to-peer collaborative bespoke updates

Access to our digital archives and MarketGlass Research Platform

Complimentary updates for one year

Edition: 8; Released: March 2022

Executive Engagements: 9196

Companies: 89 - Players covered include Autotalks Ltd.; BMW Group; Cisco Systems, Inc.; Cohda Wireless Pty Ltd.; Continental AG; General Motors Company; Harman International; Infineon Technologies; Kapsch TrafficCom AG; NXP Semiconductors; Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.; Robert Bosch GMBH; Savari Inc.; STMicroelectronics; Toyota Motor Corporation; Volkswagen AG and Others.

Coverage: All major geographies and key segments

Segments: Offering (Software, Hardware); Propulsion Type (Internal Combustion Engine (ICE), Electric); Connectivity (Dedicated Short Range Communication (DSRC), Cellular Connectivity); Vehicle Type (Passenger Cars, Commercial Vehicles)

Geographies: World; USA; Canada; Japan; China; Europe; France; Germany; Italy; UK; Rest of Europe; Asia-Pacific; Rest of World.



Complimentary Project Preview - This is an ongoing global program. Preview our research program before you make a purchase decision. We are offering a complimentary access to qualified executives driving strategy, business development, sales & marketing, and product management roles at featured companies. Previews provide deep insider access to business trends; competitive brands; domain expert profiles; and market data templates and much more. You may also build your own bespoke report using our MarketGlass Platform which offers thousands of data bytes without an obligation to purchase our report. Preview Registry



ABSTRACT-



Global Automotive Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) Market to Reach $3.3 Billion by 2026

The idea of V2X communication involves transmission of data from vehicles to specific devices that are capable of influencing the vehicle. The vehicular transportation system covers various communication methods including vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V), vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I), vehicle-to-grid (V2G), vehicle-to-pedestrian (V2P) and vehicle-to-device (V2D). The communication leverages Wi-Fi and directly works among vehicles or communications to outline vehicular ad-hoc network, eliminating the requirement of infrastructure or communication for vehicles. Growth in the global market is set to be fueled by increasing focus on efficient traffic management and automobile safety. The increasing number of cars on road and the resulting congestion has prompted various governments to implement automotive V2X solutions to reduce fuel wastage and reduce carbon emissions. Rising environmental concerns and the need for real-time traffic flow alerts are expected to drive the demand for automotive V2X technology. Other factors spurring growth include macroeconomic scenario, rising incomes, rapid urbanization & industrialization, increasing automation and technological advances.

The market is expected to receive a major stimulus from expansion of the global automotive industry as a result of increasing disposable income in emerging economies such as India and China, boosting automotive sales. The increasing number of cars on road and the resulting congestion has prompted various governments to implement automotive V2X solutions to reduce fuel wastage and reduce carbon emissions. Rising environmental concerns and the need for real-time traffic flow alerts are expected to drive the demand for automotive V2X technology. The market growth is also catalyzed by ongoing advances related to driverless cars. Amid the COVID-19 crisis, the global market for Automotive Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) estimated at US$730.6 Million in the year 2022, is projected to reach a revised size of US$3.3 Billion by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 38.3% over the analysis period. Software, one of the segments analyzed in the report, is projected to grow at a 42.4% CAGR to reach US$3.4 Billion by the end of the analysis period. After a thorough analysis of the business implications of the pandemic and its induced economic crisis, growth in the Hardware segment is readjusted to a revised 29.2% CAGR for the next 7-year period. This segment currently accounts for a 37.3% share of the global Automotive Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) market.

The U.S. Market is Estimated at $220.7 Million in 2022, While China is Forecast to Reach $552.9 Million by 2026

The Automotive Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) market in the U.S. is estimated at US$220.7 Million in the year 2022. The country currently accounts for a 28.9% share in the global market. China, the world's second largest economy, is forecast to reach an estimated market size of US$552.9 Million in the year 2026 trailing a CAGR of 48.3% through the analysis period. Among the other noteworthy geographic markets are Japan and Canada, each forecast to grow at 28.2% and 38.4% respectively over the analysis period. Within Europe, Germany is forecast to grow at approximately 33.2% CAGR while Rest of European market (as defined in the study) will reach US$353.6 Million by the end of the analysis period. Europe has experienced significant progress in terms of automotive technology and emerged as the leading force in the global automotive vehicle-to-everything (V2X) market. Growth in European market is bound to gain from stringent safety norms encompassing features like blind-spot detection and adaptive cruise control. The heavy reliance of these technologies on V2V communication is expected to facilitate expansion of the market. The regional market is slated to benefits from the collaboration of major companies including Ford, BMW, Groupe PSA and 5GAA with Savari and Qualcomm to demonstrate C-V2X communications in countries like Germany and France. The North American market is buoyed by implementation of sophisticated technologies in countries including the US and Canada. The region is a major automotive market, and accounts for a huge global automobile population playing on roads. More



MarketGlass Platform

Our MarketGlass Platform is a free full-stack knowledge center that is custom configurable to today`s busy business executive`s intelligence needs! This influencer driven interactive research platform is at the core of our primary research engagements and draws from unique perspectives of participating executives worldwide. Features include - enterprise-wide peer-to-peer collaborations; research program previews relevant to your company; 3.4 million domain expert profiles; competitive company profiles; interactive research modules; bespoke report generation; monitor market trends; competitive brands; create & publish blogs & podcasts using our primary and secondary content; track domain events worldwide; and much more. Client companies will have complete insider access to the project data stacks. Currently in use by 67,000+ domain experts worldwide.



Our platform is free for qualified executives and is accessible from our website www.StrategyR.com or via our just released mobile application on iOS or Android



About Global Industry Analysts, Inc. & StrategyR

Global Industry Analysts, Inc., (www.strategyr.com) is a renowned market research publisher the world`s only influencer driven market research company. Proudly serving more than 42,000 clients from 36 countries, GIA is recognized for accurate forecasting of markets and industries for over 33 years.



CONTACTS:

Zak Ali

Director, Corporate Communications

Global Industry Analysts, Inc.

Phone: 1-408-528-9966

www.StrategyR.com

Email: [email protected]



LINKS

Join Our Expert Panel

https://www.strategyr.com/Panelist.asp

Connect With Us on LinkedIn

https://www.linkedin.com/company/global-industry-analysts-inc./

Follow Us on Twitter

https://twitter.com/marketbytes

Journalists & Media

[email protected]

SOURCE Global Industry Analysts, Inc.
What's New for 2022?

Global competitiveness and key competitor percentage market shares

Market presence across multiple geographies - Strong/Active/Niche/Trivial

Online interactive peer-to-peer collaborative bespoke updates

Access to our digital archives and MarketGlass Research Platform

Complimentary updates for one year

Edition: 17; Released: February 2022

Executive Engagements: 1653

Companies: 152 - Players covered include Albany Molecular Research, Inc.; Charles River Laboratories International, Inc.; Covance Clinical Biotech; ICON plc; IQVIA Inc; Jubilant Biosys Ltd.; Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings; Olon Ricerca Bioscience; PAREXEL International Corp.; Pharmaceutical Product Development, LLC.; Pharmaron; PRA Health Sciences, Inc.; Sygnature Discovery Limited; Syneos Health; SynteractHCR; WuXi AppTec and Others.

Coverage: All major geographies and key segments

Segments: Service Type (Clinical, Discovery, Pre-Clinical, Laboratory Services); End-Use (Pharmaceutical & Biopharmaceutical Companies, Medical Device Companies, Academic Institutes)

Geographies: World; USA; Canada; Japan; China; Europe; France; Germany; Italy; UK; Spain; Russia; Rest of Europe; Asia-Pacific; India; Rest of Asia-Pacific; Latin America; Rest of World.

Complimentary Project Preview - This is an ongoing global program. Preview our research program before you make a purchase decision. We are offering a complimentary access to qualified executives driving strategy, business development, sales & marketing, and product management roles at featured companies. Previews provide deep insider access to business trends; competitive brands; domain expert profiles; and market data templates and much more. You may also build your own bespoke report using our MarketGlass Platform which offers thousands of data bytes without an obligation to purchase our report. Preview Registry

ABSTRACT-

Global Contract Research Outsourcing Market to Reach $67.1 Billion by 2026

Contract Research Outsourcing extends from mere manufacture of active pharmaceutical intermediates to development and manufacture of dosage forms, development of clinical research, and also to such areas as basic research and packaging. CROs provide specialist and innovative services in the areas of high throughput screening, potential drug target (gene/protein) identification, cGMP synthesis and scale up, impurity profiling, and advanced analytical chemistry techniques. Growth in the global market is being driven by multiple factors, one of the most important being the increasing number of drugs being developed, which has almost doubled over the past 10 years (from around 7500 in 2007 to 1500 in 2018). The emergence of new therapeutic modalities, drug discoveries, coupled with the increase in number of biotech companies and the advent of novel biological drugs are the other growth drivers. Patent expiries of major drugs worth around $200 billion during the next five years and rising competition from generic drugs, is enabling companies to increasingly turn to outsourcing of R&D so as to remain competitive and profitable. Demand for CRO services is forecast to increase with mounting pressure on pharma and biotech companies to lower costs and augment productivity. Technological advancements in recent times, such as data mining, artificial intelligence, digital health, big data technologies, and data-driven diagnostics are giving a boost to market growth. Further, the rising focus on personalized medicine is enabling pharma companies to strategize their research pipelines.

Amid the COVID-19 crisis, the global market for Contract Research Outsourcing estimated at US$49.8 Billion in the year 2022, is projected to reach a revised size of US$67.1 Billion by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 7% over the analysis period. Clinical, one of the segments analyzed in the report, is projected to grow at a 7.4% CAGR to reach US$48.4 Billion by the end of the analysis period. After a thorough analysis of the business implications of the pandemic and its induced economic crisis, growth in the Discovery segment is readjusted to a revised 6% CAGR for the next 7-year period. This segment currently accounts for a 15% share of the global Contract Research Outsourcing market. Drug discovery represents a key service offered by CROs. Under drug discovery services, the CROs focus on offering highly efficient and well considered scientific solutions to facilitate various drug discovery programs against a broad array of drug targets.

The U.S. Market is Estimated at $20.1 Billion in 2022, While China is Forecast to Reach $3.8 Billion by 2026

The Contract Research Outsourcing market in the U.S. is estimated at US$20.1 Billion in the year 2022. The country currently accounts for a 40.41% share in the global market. China, the world's second largest economy, is forecast to reach an estimated market size of US$3.8 Billion in the year 2026 trailing a CAGR of 9.3% through the analysis period. Among the other noteworthy geographic markets are Japan and Canada, each forecast to grow at 6.1% and 6.2% respectively over the analysis period. Within Europe, Germany is forecast to grow at approximately 6.7% CAGR while Rest of European market (as defined in the study) will reach US$4.2 Billion by the end of the analysis period. Robust growth in the US market is attributed to high quality standards within the pharmaceutical sector, spurt in clinical trials, robust growth posted by the biologics and biosimilars markets, and increasing focus of pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical firms to embrace outsourcing services. The region boasts of the highest number of clinical trials - undertaken as well as outsourced in the world. There is also enormous support to the market from the federal government. The region's strong position is also attributed to presence of various industries that make huge investments in R&D activities. Growth in the Asia-Pacific region is supported by rapidly expanding pharmaceutical industry, low cost of clinical trials, supportive government policies, and increasing efforts by pharmaceutical companies to set up new manufacturing facilities.

Pre-Clinical Segment to Reach $8.8 Million by 2026

To increase the likelihood of a drug candidate's success during regulatory process, CROs offer services such as pre-clinical services. Pre-clinical R&D outsourcing allows players to purchase molecules during the latter stages of drug development for mitigating risks. In the global Pre-Clinical segment, USA, Canada, Japan, China and Europe will drive the 6.5% CAGR estimated for this segment. These regional markets accounting for a combined market size of US$5.3 Billion will reach a projected size of US$8.2 Billion by the close of the analysis period. China will remain among the fastest growing in this cluster of regional markets. Led by countries such as Australia, India, and South Korea, the market in Asia-Pacific is forecast to reach US$769.2 Million by the year 2026. More

MarketGlass Platform

Our MarketGlass Platform is a free full-stack knowledge center that is custom configurable to today`s busy business executive`s intelligence needs! This influencer driven interactive research platform is at the core of our primary research engagements and draws from unique perspectives of participating executives worldwide. Features include - enterprise-wide peer-to-peer collaborations; research program previews relevant to your company; 3.4 million domain expert profiles; competitive company profiles; interactive research modules; bespoke report generation; monitor market trends; competitive brands; create & publish blogs & podcasts using our primary and secondary content; track domain events worldwide; and much more. Client companies will have complete insider access to the project data stacks. Currently in use by 67,000+ domain experts worldwide.

Our platform is free for qualified executives and is accessible from our website www.StrategyR.com or via our just released mobile application on iOS or Android

About Global Industry Analysts, Inc. & StrategyR

Global Industry Analysts, Inc., (www.strategyr.com) is a renowned market research publisher the world`s only influencer driven market research company. Proudly serving more than 42,000 clients from 36 countries, GIA is recognized for accurate forecasting of markets and industries for over 33 years.

CONTACTS:

Zak Ali

Director, Corporate Communications

Global Industry Analysts, Inc.

Phone: 1-408-528-9966

www.StrategyR.com

Email: [email protected]

LINKS

Join Our Expert Panel https://www.strategyr.com/Panelist.asp

Connect With Us on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/global-industry-analysts-inc./

Follow Us on Twitter https://twitter.com/marketbytes

Journalists & Media [email protected]

SOURCE Global Industry Analysts, Inc.
Global competitiveness and key competitor percentage market shares

Market presence across multiple geographies - Strong/Active/Niche/Trivial

Online interactive peer-to-peer collaborative bespoke updates

Access to our digital archives and MarketGlass Research Platform

Complimentary updates for one year

Edition: 21; Released: February 2022

Executive Engagements: 5807

Companies: 60 - Players covered include AB Sciex LLC ; Alex Stewart International; ALS Limited ; Bureau Veritas S.A.; Eurofins Scientific S.E.; Intertek Group plc.; Merieux NutriSciences ; Microbac Laboratories, Inc. ; SGS SA; and Others.

Coverage: All major geographies and key segments

Segments: Sample (Wastewater/Effluent, Soil, Water, Air, Other Samples); Technology (Rapid, Conventional); Contaminant (Organic Compounds, Microbial Contamination, Heavy Metals, Residues, Solids)

Geographies: World; USA; Canada; Japan; China; Europe; France; Germany; Italy; UK; Spain; Russia; Rest of Europe; Asia-Pacific; Australia; India; South Korea; Rest of Asia-Pacific; Latin America; Argentina; Brazil; Mexico; Rest of Latin America; Middle East; Iran; Israel; Saudi Arabia; UAE; Rest of Middle East; Africa.

Complimentary Project Preview - This is an ongoing global program. Preview our research program before you make a purchase decision. We are offering a complimentary access to qualified executives driving strategy, business development, sales & marketing, and product management roles at featured companies. Previews provide deep insider access to business trends; competitive brands; domain expert profiles; and market data templates and much more. You may also build your own bespoke report using our MarketGlass Platform which offers thousands of data bytes without an obligation to purchase our report. Preview Registry

ABSTRACT-

Global Environmental Testing Market to Reach $11.7 Billion by 2026

Environmental testing involves the analysis of air, water and soil to assess their quality and impact on health and ecological environment. Environmental testing continues to be an integral part of efforts intended to discourage local and regional air, water and land pollution. Rising concerns over food, air, and water safety and tightening environmental regulations globally continue to increase the need for testing of contaminants, thereby creating strong demand for Environmental Diagnostics. Also driving growth is the increasing list of products recognized as toxic as part of environmental monitoring regulations. Changing international environmental policies and the increased need to comply with various environmental safety regulations play a significant role in preventing outbreak of environment associated illnesses and threats. With governments, industrial enterprises and general population becoming more engaged in environmental issues, the role and importance of environmental testing is taking center stage. An increase in outsourcing of tasks such as environmental monitoring, testing and analysis by enterprises aimed at improving their environmental footprint to specialists also auger well for market growth. The market is also bolstered by increasing industrialization across regions like Asia-Pacific and Africa. The situation is driving governments to implement environmental-protection acts and amend environmental safety laws. These efforts are augmenting the demand for environmental testing across developing countries in the Asia-Pacific region. The market is poised to also gain from continuing development of sophisticated testing techniques for contaminants like pesticide residues, organic chemicals and heavy metals.

Amid the COVID-19 crisis, the global market for Environmental Testing estimated at US$8.7 Billion in the year 2022, is projected to reach a revised size of US$11.7 Billion by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 7% over the analysis period. Wastewater/Effluent, one of the segments analyzed in the report, is projected to grow at a 8% CAGR to reach US$6.2 Billion by the end of the analysis period. After a thorough analysis of the business implications of the pandemic and its induced economic crisis, growth in the Soil segment is readjusted to a revised 6.5% CAGR for the next 7-year period. This segment currently accounts for a 27.7% share of the global Environmental Testing market. As an effective epidemiological tool, wastewater-based epidemiology is expected to play a significant part in mitigating the COVID-19 outbreak and minimizing associated domino effects like economic stress and impact on people. Testing wastewater for traces of COVID-19 virus provides an early warning and allows timely interventions. Soil testing involves analysis of soil sample to estimate the concentration of plant nutrients to determine nitrogen fertilizer addition in agriculture, or to determine the presence of trace elements such as potassium, magnesium, and calcium for plant growth and also detection of potential heavy metal contamination for or ecological investigations.

The U.S. Market is Estimated at $3.2 Billion in 2022, While China is Forecast to Reach $952.3 Million by 2026

The Environmental Testing market in the U.S. is estimated at US$3.2 Billion in the year 2022. The country currently accounts for a 37.18% share in the global market. China, the world's second largest economy, is forecast to reach an estimated market size of US$952.3 Million in the year 2026 trailing a CAGR of 10% through the analysis period. Among the other noteworthy geographic markets are Japan and Canada, each forecast to grow at 6.3% and 5.9% respectively over the analysis period. Within Europe, Germany is forecast to grow at approximately 7% CAGR while Rest of European market (as defined in the study) will reach US$1 Billion by the end of the analysis period. North America along with Europe is anticipated to remain at the forefront of environmental testing due to high level of awareness and the robust laboratory infrastructure. Stringent regulations with strong focus on sustainable development are expected to drive the market. In addition, testing laboratories are sprouting in the region and support efforts to maintain the environment. Important factors benefiting the environment testing market in developing countries include rising levels of pollution driven by growing population, industrialization and urbanization, underpenetrated and unpenetrated nature of the market, and growing consumer awareness levels of water, air, and food contamination. Also the expanding middle class income group is driving gains in the market, as higher incomes is leading to increased expenditure on high-quality and safe consumption, fueling increased demand for pathogen testing.

By Sample Type, Water Segment to Reach $1.8 Billion by 2026

Water testing plays a major role in determining the quality of the end product in several industries. Testing is important not just for drinking water supplies, but also for environmental waters. Strict regulations enforced on pharmaceutical, environmental, and food sector are encouraging companies from various industries to employ instruments that monitor and control water quality to ensure safety and compliance with set standards. The need to measure as well as control water quality for domestic and industrial uses to address increasingly stringent environment regulations is the overarching driver of the market for water analysis instrumentation. In the global Water segment, USA, Canada, Japan, China and Europe will drive the 5.4% CAGR estimated for this segment. These regional markets accounting for a combined market size of US$1.2 Billion will reach a projected size of US$1.7 Billion by the close of the analysis period. China will remain among the fastest growing in this cluster of regional markets. Led by countries such as Australia, India, and South Korea, the market in Asia-Pacific is forecast to reach US$80.1 Million by the year 2026, while Latin America will expand at a 6.8% CAGR through the analysis period. More

MarketGlass Platform

Our MarketGlass Platform is a free full-stack knowledge center that is custom configurable to today`s busy business executive`s intelligence needs! This influencer driven interactive research platform is at the core of our primary research engagements and draws from unique perspectives of participating executives worldwide. Features include - enterprise-wide peer-to-peer collaborations; research program previews relevant to your company; 3.4 million domain expert profiles; competitive company profiles; interactive research modules; bespoke report generation; monitor market trends; competitive brands; create & publish blogs & podcasts using our primary and secondary content; track domain events worldwide; and much more. Client companies will have complete insider access to the project data stacks. Currently in use by 67,000+ domain experts worldwide.

Our platform is free for qualified executives and is accessible from our website www.StrategyR.com or via our just released mobile application on iOS or Android

About Global Industry Analysts, Inc. & StrategyR

Global Industry Analysts, Inc., (www.strategyr.com) is a renowned market research publisher the world`s only influencer driven market research company. Proudly serving more than 42,000 clients from 36 countries, GIA is recognized for accurate forecasting of markets and industries for over 33 years.

CONTACTS:

Zak Ali

Director, Corporate Communications

Global Industry Analysts, Inc.

Phone: 1-408-528-9966

www.StrategyR.com

Email: [email protected]

LINKS

Join Our Expert Panel

https://www.strategyr.com/Panelist.asp

Connect With Us on LinkedIn

https://www.linkedin.com/company/global-industry-analysts-inc./

Follow Us on Twitter

https://twitter.com/marketbytes

Journalists & Media

[email protected]

SOURCE Global Industry Analysts, Inc.
Global competitiveness and key competitor percentage market shares

Market presence across multiple geographies - Strong/Active/Niche/Trivial

Online interactive peer-to-peer collaborative bespoke updates

Access to our digital archives and MarketGlass Research Platform

Complimentary updates for one year

Edition: 10; Released: February 2022

Executive Pool: 19794

Companies: 59 - Players covered include Arvato Systems; Blue Yonder Group, Inc. (JDA Software); Cardinal Health; Cerner; Global Healthcare Exchange; Harris Affinity; Hybrent; Infor; Jump Technologies; LLamasoft; LogiTag Systems; Manhattan Associates; McKesson Corporation; Oracle Corporation; Premier; SAP SE; TECSYS and Others.

Coverage: All major geographies and key segments

Segments: Component (Software, Services, Hardware); Delivery (On-Premise, Cloud); End-Use (Manufacturers, Healthcare Providers, Distributors)

Geographies: World; USA; Canada; Japan; China; Europe; France; Germany; Italy; UK; Spain; Russia; Rest of Europe; Asia-Pacific; Australia; India; South Korea; Rest of Asia-Pacific; Latin America; Argentina; Brazil; Mexico; Rest of Latin America; Middle East; Iran; Israel; Saudi Arabia; UAE; Rest of Middle East; Africa.

Complimentary Project Preview - This is an ongoing global program. Preview our research program before you make a purchase decision. We are offering a complimentary access to qualified executives driving strategy, business development, sales & marketing, and product management roles at featured companies. Previews provide deep insider access to business trends; competitive brands; domain expert profiles; and market data templates and much more. You may also build your own bespoke report using our MarketGlass Platform which offers thousands of data bytes without an obligation to purchase our report. Preview Registry

ABSTRACT-

Global Healthcare Supply Chain Management Market to Reach $3.6 Billion by 2026

The healthcare ecosystem is highly complex in nature owing to intangible nature of the product signified by better health sought by customers on affordable prices. The supply chain for the industry is characterized by unique challenges due to changing patient expectations along with stringent regulations. The idea of supply chain management strives to balance diverse elements associated with the industry, including quality care, affordability and cost structure of providing organizations. With cost representing a major expense, participants in the industry focus on boosting productivity and reducing costs associated with the supply chain. These factors make healthcare supply chain as a primary focus area to improve efficiency and achieve cost savings. The holistic approach to the industry's supply chain extends beyond cost savings and pushing productivity to encompass provisioning of enhanced healthcare without delay and in a cost-efficient manner. These goals underscore the important of healthcare supply chain that can be exploited for capturing actionable data. The supply chain data is a valuable asset and provides insights into product requirements and strategies to stabilize inventory and reduce waste. These data-driven insights go a long way in reducing overall costs. Technology-based, automated supply chain offers relevant data as well as improves efficiency and patient outcomes by allowing enhanced patient care. These requirements are driving future-oriented organizations to elevate the role played by the healthcare supply chain to turn care into an enriching experience.

Amid the COVID-19 crisis, the global market for Healthcare Supply Chain Management estimated at US$2.5 Billion in the year 2022, is projected to reach a revised size of US$3.6 Billion by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 9.9% over the analysis period. Software, one of the segments analyzed in the report, is projected to record a 10.5% CAGR and reach US$1.6 Billion by the end of the analysis period. After a thorough analysis of the business implications of the pandemic and its induced economic crisis, growth in the Services segment is readjusted to a revised 9.4% CAGR for the next 7-year period.

The U.S. Market is Estimated at $1.1 Billion in 2022, While China is Forecast to Reach $192.9 Million by 2026

The Healthcare Supply Chain Management market in the U.S. is estimated at US$1.1 Billion in the year 2022. China, the world`s second largest economy, is forecast to reach a projected market size of US$192.9 Million by the year 2026 trailing a CAGR of 9.2% over the analysis period. Among the other noteworthy geographic markets are Japan and Canada, each forecast to grow at 7.5% and 8% respectively over the analysis period. Within Europe, Germany is forecast to grow at approximately 10.9% CAGR.

The current COVID-19 crisis is paving way for digital transformation as businesses look to explore options of shifting their operations to cope with supply disruptions, movement restrictions, and office closures. Digital technologies and technology-based business models are expected to play an important role in the post COVID-19 period for companies to improve the resilience of their global supply chains. On the basis of the lessons learnt from the current COVID-19 crisis, businesses can take several vital steps towards making supply chains more resilient once the crisis is over. One of the major steps would be to reduce the requirement of human workforce across logistics, warehousing, and transportation. This could be achieved through core digital technologies for Industry 4.0, including Internet of Things (IoT), control towers, blockchain, machine learning/artificial intelligence-enabled demand forecasting, rule-based/self-adjusting stock allocations, and autonomous devices, such as drones and automated guided vehicles (AGVs). Factories capable of modularizing production and shifting production lines based on changes in demand are expected to become the new norm in the future.

These modular factories would need to be supported by intelligent supply networks capable of seamlessly communicating with each other, thereby significantly enhancing their agility and effectiveness. In addition, businesses are expected to host their critical systems in the cloud environment to ensure that their employees can access them remotely while working from home. For many companies considering cloud migration for long, the COVID-19 crisis is expected to provide that final push with the aim of enabling business continuity. Safety parameters and supplier risk management would become critical factors while undertaking strategic planning initiatives. The COVID-19 crisis has demonstrated the possibilities of working remotely across a wide range of businesses, domains, and industries.

Hardware Segment Reach $1 Billion by 2026

In the global Hardware segment, USA, Canada, Japan, China and Europe will drive the 10% CAGR estimated for this segment. These regional markets accounting for a combined market size of US$502.9 Million will reach a projected size of US$980.7 Million by the close of the analysis period. China will remain among the fastest growing in this cluster of regional markets. Led by countries such as Australia, India, and South Korea, the market in Asia-Pacific is forecast to reach US$48.8 Million by the year 2026, while Latin America will expand at a 8% CAGR through the analysis period. More

MarketGlass Platform

Our MarketGlass Platform is a free full-stack knowledge center that is custom configurable to today`s busy business executive`s intelligence needs! This influencer driven interactive research platform is at the core of our primary research engagements and draws from unique perspectives of participating executives worldwide. Features include - enterprise-wide peer-to-peer collaborations; research program previews relevant to your company; 3.4 million domain expert profiles; competitive company profiles; interactive research modules; bespoke report generation; monitor market trends; competitive brands; create & publish blogs & podcasts using our primary and secondary content; track domain events worldwide; and much more. Client companies will have complete insider access to the project data stacks. Currently in use by 67,000+ domain experts worldwide.

Our platform is free for qualified executives and is accessible from our website www.StrategyR.com or via our just released mobile application on iOS or Android

About Global Industry Analysts, Inc. & StrategyR

Global Industry Analysts, Inc., (www.strategyr.com) is a renowned market research publisher the world`s only influencer driven market research company. Proudly serving more than 42,000 clients from 36 countries, GIA is recognized for accurate forecasting of markets and industries for over 33 years.

CONTACTS:

Zak Ali

Director, Corporate Communications

Global Industry Analysts, Inc.

Phone: 1-408-528-9966

www.StrategyR.com

Email: [email protected]

LINKS

Join Our Expert Panel

https://www.strategyr.com/Panelist.asp

Connect With Us on LinkedIn

https://www.linkedin.com/company/global-industry-analysts-inc./

Follow Us on Twitter

https://twitter.com/marketbytes

Journalists & Media

[email protected]

SOURCE Global Industry Analysts, Inc.
LONDON, March 22 (Xinhua) -- London's Metropolitan Police had recruited more than 100 cops with criminal convictions in the past two years, according to an official report released Tuesday.

The report by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services, the official police inspection body in Britain, said that the Met recruited people with criminal connections and more than 100 people who have committed offences in the past two years. "Some of these recruitment decisions may have been justifiable, but the force failed to properly supervise these people to lessen the risks."

As the largest police service in Britain, the Met doesn't know whether all those in sensitive posts, such as child protection, major crime investigation and informant handling, had been cleared to the level of security vetting needed, said the report.

From failing to adequately supervise police officers who have previously committed offenses to inadequate vetting procedures, "we found substantial weaknesses in the Met's approach to tackling police corruption," said Her Majesty's Inspector of Constabulary Matt Parr. 
Global competitiveness and key competitor percentage market shares

Market presence across multiple geographies - Strong/Active/Niche/Trivial

Online interactive peer-to-peer collaborative bespoke updates

Access to our digital archives and MarketGlass Research Platform

Complimentary updates for one year

Edition: 17; Released: February 2022

Executive Engagements: 10697

Companies: 28 - Players covered include Abbott Laboratories; Boston Scientific Corporation; Colibri Heart Valve LLC; CryoLife, Inc.; Edwards Lifesciences Corporation; JenaValve Technology, Inc.; Lepu Medical Technology Co. Ltd; LivaNova PLC; Medtronic plc; Micro Interventional Devices, Inc. and Others.

Coverage: All major geographies and key segments

Segments: Type (Transcatheter Heart Valves, Tissue Heart Valves, Mechanical Heart Valves); End-Use (Hospitals, Ambulatory Surgical Centers, and Other End-Uses)

Geographies: World; USA; Canada; Japan; China; Europe; France; Germany; Italy; UK; Spain; Russia; Rest of Europe; Asia-Pacific; Australia; India; South Korea; Rest of Asia-Pacific; Latin America; Brazil; Mexico; Rest of Latin America; Middle East; Africa.

Complimentary Project Preview - This is an ongoing global program. Preview our research program before you make a purchase decision. We are offering a complimentary access to qualified executives driving strategy, business development, sales & marketing, and product management roles at featured companies. Previews provide deep insider access to business trends; competitive brands; domain expert profiles; and market data templates and much more. You may also build your own bespoke report using our MarketGlass Platform which offers thousands of data bytes without an obligation to purchase our report. Preview Registry

ABSTRACT-

Global Prosthetic Heart Valves Market to Reach $8.8 Billion by 2026

Prosthetic Heart Valves (PHVs) are used for the replacement of pathologic native valves in patients suffering from either valvular incompetence or stenosis, or both. Factors such as aging population and increasing number of patients diagnosed with heart valve disorders are driving demand for heart valve replacement therapies worldwide. The prosthetic heart valve space has been witnessing significant technological advances over the past several years, which are enabling manufacturers to develop highly effective, durable devices with better hemodynamics, contributing to growth in their demand. Development of durable tissue heart valves, and suture-less valves as well as anti-calcification technologies are expected to push revenues in the coming years. Regulatory approvals for advanced and new prosthetic valve development, increased government funding for research on heart valves, growing awareness about heart valve disease, and favorable reimbursement policies and wider availability of individual insurance policies are also expected to boost market growth. Companies operating in this space are geared to make significant technological advances to minimize issues, improve efficacies, and expand indications of their products. Some notable technologies used to develop prosthetic valves are anti-calcification technology, transcatheter valves, polymers, suture-less valves, and carbon-based technologies.

Amid the COVID-19 crisis, the global market for Prosthetic Heart Valves estimated at US$6.7 Billion in the year 2022, is projected to reach a revised size of US$8.8 Billion by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 6.5% over the analysis period. Transcatheter Heart Valves, one of the segments analyzed in the report, is projected to grow at a 9.3% CAGR to reach US$5.3 Billion by the end of the analysis period. After a thorough analysis of the business implications of the pandemic and its induced economic crisis, growth in the Tissue Heart Valves segment is readjusted to a revised 6.3% CAGR for the next 7-year period. This segment currently accounts for a 37.5% share of the global Prosthetic Heart Valves market. Transcatheter heart valves (THVs) which are implanted through a minimally invasive surgery, would benefit from the ongoing trend towards minimally invasive surgeries worldwide. Biological/Tissue valves are mainly composed of material originating in the form of living tissue, such as porcine (pig) aortic valves, bovine (cow) pericardium-based valves, patient's autografts, and homografts (valves engrafted from other persons).

The U.S. Market is Estimated at $2.8 Billion in 2022, While China is Forecast to Reach $836.1 Million by 2026

The Prosthetic Heart Valves market in the U.S. is estimated at US$2.8 Billion in the year 2022. The country currently accounts for a 41.26% share in the global market. China, the world's second largest economy, is forecast to reach an estimated market size of US$836.1 Million in the year 2026 trailing a CAGR of 8.5% through the analysis period. Among the other noteworthy geographic markets are Japan and Canada, each forecast to grow at 6.3% and 6.1% respectively over the analysis period. Within Europe, Germany is forecast to grow at approximately 5.6% CAGR while Rest of European market (as defined in the study) will reach US$906.1 Million by the end of the analysis period. The developed markets in Europe and the US have been pioneers in heart valve technologies, and have been the epicenter of significant advancements in this area. With high appetite for advanced and new products, along with high prevalence and incidence of targeted patient population, the US and Europe have been at the forefront of prosthetic heart valve usage. Japan, with its significant aging population, also represents a major market. Preference for heart valves in these markets is shifting towards biological valves, and further towards Transcatheter Heart Valves, driven mainly by favorable reimbursement environment and improved patient outcomes. Increasing prevalence of rheumatic heart disease, aging population in some markets, and growing prevalence of heart diseases in general are expected to drive growth in the Asia-Pacific market.

Mechanical Heart Valves Segment to Contract to $708.6 Million by 2026

Mechanical heart valves, the most conventional form of Prosthetic Heart Valves, continue to be used worldwide, although their use is on the decline, particularly in the developed world. Mechanical valves/mechanical prostheses are manufactured completely from man-made/synthetic material and are generally based on carbon, plastic or metal alloys. In the global Mechanical Heart Valves segment, USA, Canada, Japan, China and Europe will drive the -6.7% CAGR estimated for this segment. These regional markets accounting for a combined market size of US$811.2 Million will reach a projected size of US$498.1 Million by the close of the analysis period. China will remain among the fastest growing in this cluster of regional markets. Led by countries such as Australia, India, and South Korea, the market in Asia-Pacific is forecast to reach US$69.2 Million by the year 2026, while Latin America will expand at a 0.5% CAGR through the analysis period. More

MarketGlass Platform

Our MarketGlass Platform is a free full-stack knowledge center that is custom configurable to today`s busy business executive`s intelligence needs! This influencer driven interactive research platform is at the core of our primary research engagements and draws from unique perspectives of participating executives worldwide. Features include - enterprise-wide peer-to-peer collaborations; research program previews relevant to your company; 3.4 million domain expert profiles; competitive company profiles; interactive research modules; bespoke report generation; monitor market trends; competitive brands; create & publish blogs & podcasts using our primary and secondary content; track domain events worldwide; and much more. Client companies will have complete insider access to the project data stacks. Currently in use by 67,000+ domain experts worldwide.

Our platform is free for qualified executives and is accessible from our website www.StrategyR.com or via our just released mobile application on iOS or Android

About Global Industry Analysts, Inc. & StrategyR

Global Industry Analysts, Inc., (www.strategyr.com) is a renowned market research publisher the world`s only influencer driven market research company. Proudly serving more than 42,000 clients from 36 countries, GIA is recognized for accurate forecasting of markets and industries for over 33 years.

CONTACTS:

Zak Ali

Director, Corporate Communications

Global Industry Analysts, Inc.

Phone: 1-408-528-9966

www.StrategyR.com

Email: [email protected]

LINKS

Join Our Expert Panel https://www.strategyr.com/Panelist.asp

Connect With Us on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/global-industry-analysts-inc./

Follow Us on Twitter https://twitter.com/marketbytes

Journalists & Media [email protected]

SOURCE Global Industry Analysts, Inc.
"Mololoa continues to contribute strong results with high grade intercepts in addition to wider intercepts of potentially bulk mineable material," said Brad Langille, President and CEO. "We believe these results will contribute to our goal of aggressively expanding our mineral resources at Los Ricos in 2022."

Table 1: Drill Hole Intersections

Hole ID Area / Vein From To Length1 Au Ag AuEq2 AgEq2



(m) (m) (m) (g/t) (g/t) (g/t) (g/t) LRGM-21-093 Mololoa 85.4 87.0 1.7 0.19 111.5 1.68 126.1

and 91.1 93.4 2.3 0.16 213.4 3.01 225.6

including 92.9 93.4 0.5 0.59 912.0 12.75 956.2

and 99.0 133.5 31.9 0.28 100.5 1.62 121.9

including 124.3 124.9 0.6 3.33 827.0 14.36 1,076.7 LRGM-21-095 Mololoa Vein 269.0 273.5 4.5 0.85 219.7 3.78 283.2

including 271.0 272.0 1.0 2.03 632.0 10.46 784.3 LRGM-21-099 Mololoa - Tamara 136.5 138.0 1.5 0.83 298.0 4.80 360.3 LRGM-21-102 Mololoa - Tamara 134.8 136.5 1.8 0.08 77.7 1.11 83.6 LRGM-21-103 Mololoa - Tamara 305.5 309.2 3.6 0.28 69.6 1.21 90.7

including 305.5 306.7 1.2 0.69 176.0 3.04 227.8 LRGM-21-104 Mololoa - Tamara 266.4 299.8 33.4 1.09 235.1 4.22 316.6

including 266.4 276.1 9.8 3.56 765.2 13.76 1,032.4

including 268.6 272.2 3.5 8.48 1,681.6 30.90 2,317.4

including 271.0 272.2 1.1 17.15 3,080.0 58.22 4,366.3

Not true width AqEq converted using a silver to gold ratio of 75:1 at recoveries of 100% Holes LRGM-21-100 and 101 are pending assays.

The Mololoa deposit is located approximately 1 km north of the El Favor deposit and may be an eastward extension of the Casados deposit. The deposit consists of multiple veins with a total strike length exceeding 1,000m to date and numerous historical workings have been encountered in the drilling to date.

Table 2: Drill Hole Locations

Hole ID Easting Northing Elevation Azimuth Dip Length LRGM-21-093 584712 2338397 968 208 240 -50 LRGM-21-095 584463 2338642 1090 323 180 -58 LRGM-21-099 584586 2338478 1003 177 180 -70 LRGM-21-102 584976 2337818 1040 140 240 -55 LRGM-22-103 584511 2338651 1105 354 180 -52 LRGM-22-104 584438 2338608 1079 352 180 -65

VRIFY Slide Deck and 3D Presentation

VRIFY is a platform being used by companies to communicate with investors using 360 virtual tours of remote mining assets, 3D models and interactive presentations. VRIFY can be accessed by website and with the VRIFY iOS and Android apps.

The VRIFY Slide Deck and 3D Presentation for GoGold can be viewed at: https://vrify.com/decks/10437 and on the Company's website at: www.gogoldresources.com.

Los Ricos District Exploration Projects

The Company's two exploration projects at its Los Ricos Property are in Jalisco state, Mexico. The Los Ricos South Project began in March 2019 and an initial Mineral Resource was announced on July 29, 2020 which disclosed a Measured & Indicated Mineral Resource of 63.7 million ounces AgEq grading 199 g/t AgEq contained in 10.0 million tonnes, and an Inferred Mineral Resource of 19.9 million ounces AgEq grading 190 g/t AgEq contained in 3.3 million tonnes. An initial PEA on the project was announced on January 20, 2021 indicating an NPV 5% of US$295M.

The Los Ricos North Project was launched in March 2020 and an initial Mineral Resource was announced on December 7, 2021, which disclosed an Indicated Mineral Resource of 87.8 million ounces AgEq grading 122 g/t AgEq contained in 22.3 million tonnes, and an Inferred Mineral Resource of 73.2 million ounces AgEq grading 111 g/t AgEq contained in 20.5 million tonnes. The Company has a drill program for an additional 100,000 metres of drilling for 2022 in place.

Procedure, Quality Assurance / Quality Control and Data Verification

The diamond drill core (HQ size) is geologically logged, photographed and marked for sampling. When the sample lengths are determined, the full core is sawn with a diamond blade core saw with one half of the core being bagged and tagged for assay. The remaining half portion is returned to the core trays for storage and/or for metallurgical test work.

The sealed and tagged sample bags are transported to the ALS Chemex facility in Zacatecas, Mexico. ALS Chemex crushes the samples and prepares 200-300 gram pulp samples with ninety percent passing Tyler 150 mesh (106m). The pulps are assayed for gold using a 30-gram charge by fire assay (Code AA23) and over limits greater than 10 grams per tonne are re-assayed using a gravimetric finish (Code ME-GRAV21). Silver and multi-element analysis is completed using total digestion (Code ME-ICP61 Total Digestion ICP). Over limits greater than 100 grams per tonne silver are re-assayed using a gravimetric finish (ME-GRA21).

Quality assurance and quality control ("QA/QC") procedures monitor the chain-of-custody of the samples and includes the systematic insertion and monitoring of appropriate reference materials (certified standards, blanks and duplicates) into the sample strings. The results of the assaying of the QA/QC material included in each batch are tracked to ensure the integrity of the assay data. All results stated in this announcement have passed GoGold's QA/QC protocols.

Mr. David Duncan, P. Geo. is the qualified person as defined by National Instrument 43-101 and is responsible for the technical information of this release.

About GoGold Resources

GoGold Resources (TSX: GGD) is a Canadian-based silver and gold producer focused on operating, developing, exploring and acquiring high quality projects in Mexico. The Company operates the Parral Tailings mine in the state of Chihuahua and has the Los Ricos South and Los Ricos North exploration projects in the state of Jalisco. Headquartered in Halifax, NS, GoGold is building a portfolio of low cost, high margin projects. For more information visit gogoldresources.com.

CAUTIONARY STATEMENT:

The securities described herein have not been, and will not be, registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act"), or any state securities laws, and may not be offered or sold within the United States or to, or for the benefit of, U.S. persons (as defined in Regulation S under the U.S. Securities Act) except in compliance with the registration requirements of the U.S. Securities Act and applicable state securities laws or pursuant to exemptions therefrom. This release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy of any of GoGold's securities in the United States.

This news release may contain "forward-looking information" as defined in applicable Canadian securities legislation. All statements other than statements of historical fact, included in this release, including, without limitation, statements regarding the Los Ricos South and North projects, and future plans and objectives of GoGold, including the intention to undertake further exploration at Los Ricos North, and the prospect of further discoveries there, constitute forward looking information that involve various risks and uncertainties. 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, including, but not limited to, assumptions in connection with the continuance of GoGold and its subsidiaries as a going concern, general economic and market conditions, mineral prices, the accuracy of mineral resource estimates, and the performance of the Parral project. There can be no assurance that such information will prove to be accurate and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such forward-looking information.

Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from GoGold's expectations include exploration and development risks associated with GoGold's projects, the failure to establish estimated mineral resources or mineral reserves, volatility of commodity prices, variations of recovery rates, and global economic conditions. For additional information with respect to risk factors applicable to GoGold, reference should be made to GoGold's continuous disclosure materials filed from time to time with securities regulators, including, but not limited to, GoGold's Annual Information Form. The forward-looking information contained in this release is made as of the date of this release.

SOURCE GoGold Resources Inc.
IRVINE, Calif, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Golden State Foods (GSF), one of the largest diversified suppliers to the foodservice and retail industries, marks its 75th Anniversary with a year of celebrations throughout 2022. GSF associates have been engaging in the company's milestone year through a new GSF 75th Anniversary website, along with activities, contests, giveaways, and videos, plus upcoming opportunities for associate scholarships, local Associate Appreciation Week events in every facility, and more.

"It's a momentous year for all of us throughout GSF and our family of companies," said GSF Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Mark Wetterau in a message to the company's 6,000 associates across the globe. "Over the past year or so, GSF's 75th Anniversary Steering Committee has been planning for a special year of celebrations to make the anniversary celebrations memorable and meaningful for our associates, our customers, our community partners, and all who have taken part in shaping GSF through the years."

Since the company's founding in 1947, GSF has thrived as a leading values-driven, people-first organization. Built on a solid cultural foundation cultivated by three dedicated CEOs throughout its 75-year history, GSF today remains steadfastly rooted in its Creed and Values. During the 75th Anniversary year, associates have the opportunity to celebrate GSF's successful legacy of reliable assured supply and quality service to its customers, as well as global growth, innovation, leadership, and community involvementincluding its ongoing volunteer service through the GSF Foundation.

To share the GSF story, a new video highlights the company's significant moments, notable accomplishments, and enduring culture throughout its seven and a half decades. Now available on the newly launched GSF 75th Anniversary website, GSF75th.com, invites viewers to explore the company's past, present, and future. For more information about GSF and its 75th Anniversary, please visit GSF's 75th Anniversary website and GoldenStateFoods.com .

About Golden State Foods

Golden State Foods (GSF), one of the largest diversified suppliers to the foodservice and retail industries, feeds 1 billion people every day! Headquartered in Irvine, California, the multi-national company is values-based with proven performance in superior quality, innovation, and customer service. Established in 1947, GSF and its family of companies currently service 100+ leading brands (125,000+ restaurants/stores in more than 50 countries) from its 50+ locations on five continents. Its core businesses include: manufacturing of liquid products, protein, produce, dairy/aseptic, and provides custom distribution services. The company employs approximately 6,000 associates and is 100 percent management-owned and run. Golden State Foods also operates a national non-profit organization, the GSF Foundation.

Media Contact:

Marline Valencia, Porter Novelli

[email protected]

310-754-1919

SOURCE Golden State Foods
IRVINE, Calif., March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Good Culture , the clean-label, cultured foods brand credited with revolutionizing cottage cheese, is teaming up with celebrity fitness trainer, fitness influencer and founder of The Sculpt Society , Megan Roup , to engage health-conscious consumers and help them experience how good cultured foods can make them feel. Good Culture's humanely and sustainably-sourced dairy products, including cottage cheese, provide high protein and gut-friendly live and active cultures in one ridiculously good superfood. Good Culture's clean, delicious and healthy products can fuel fitness aficionados, busy moms and dads or anyone looking for all-day energy from the inside out.

The Sculpt Society's Megan Roup is teaming up with Good Culture to spread the word to health-conscious consumers about how foods like Good Culture can help increase your protein intake, boost gut health and deliver delicious sustenance.

As the founder of The Sculpt Society and a new mom, Megan brings energy and positivity to her audience on a daily basis with her popular, do-them-anywhere, streaming workouts that allow for flexibility in a busy world. Megan stresses the importance of properly fueling your body, not only for workouts, but for your daily routine, and knows firsthand how foods like Good Culture can help increase your protein intake, boost gut health and deliver delicious sustenance.

"Protein and live and active cultures help build energy, muscle, gut health and good feelings - all things my community cares about," says Megan. "Good Culture is a delicious and sensible indulgence with unparalleled taste and thick and creamy texture, but what it does for your body is what makes it a real star. When you eat good food, you feel good! That's why I feel so strongly about incorporating Good Culture cottage cheese into my daily routine."

More and more, consumers are becoming aware of the benefits of gut health, including the impact gut health has on the brain, and how a healthy gut leads to a healthier immune system. In fact, from 2020-2021, there's been a 83% increase in Google searches for "gut health" and a 63% increase in searches for "gut brain axis."

"Megan inspires her fans and followers to feel good by giving back to their bodies through exercise, self care and healthy eating every day. She's a great example of someone who understands how what you eat impacts how you feel," says Jesse Merrill, CEO and co-founder, Good Culture . "We're committed to creating the best tasting, nutrient dense, healing cultured foods using only simple ingredients, gut-friendly live and active cultures and milk sourced from small family farms in the midwest, many of whom use pasture practices. This way, consumers can feel good about what they are eating and giving to their families. We're thrilled to have Megan help us spread the good word."

Megan loves the versatility of cottage cheese too - like mixing it into a bowl of oats, spreading it on some toast, or enjoying it on its own for a light snack. Megan has partnered with Good Culture to develop several recipes from quick snacks for parents on the go to post-workout snacks. The recipes, including a tuna salad sandwich with tomato on sourdough bread and a Good Culture Snack Board, are available now on Good Culture's website .

Starting today, consumers can enter to win a collection of Megan's feel-good favorites by commenting on Good Culture's latest Instagram post featuring Megan. Enter to win by tagging two friends in the comments, like the post and follow @good_culture to enter. Winners will receive a "Feel Ridiculously Good" kit, containing The Sculpt Society Ankle Weights, a LARQ water bottle, yoga mat and Good Culture product vouchers, plus a one-year subscription to Megan's Sculpt Society. A total prize value of $450.

In addition, Megan will be hosting a special 20-minute Mother's Day Sculpt Society slow and controlled sculpt class and stretch on Saturday, May 7. The class will be sponsored by Good Culture and help moms tap into a positive energy that will last throughout their special day. Sign-up at www.goodculture.com/meganroup

Consumers can find Good Culture products at major retailers including Whole Foods, Target, Publix, Kroger and other fine grocery and natural specialty stores. Keep up with Good Culture's latest news at www.goodculture.com or follow them on Instagram and Facebook .

ABOUT GOOD CULTURE

In 2015, founders Jesse Merrill and Anders Eisner saw that cottage cheese, an overlooked superfood, had the potential to catapult to the forefront of the real food trend, so they decided to shake up and reinvigorate the dairy aisle with their certified organic, pasture-raised, stabilizer and additive-free cottage cheese. Good Culture leads the way with organic, family farm-raised, high-protein, low-sugar, thick and creamy products that never use gums, thickeners or chemical preservatives. This disruptive company is dedicated to using only real foods and simple ingredients across their growing portfolio of cultured foods. The overwhelming success of their flagship product led to expansion into other cultured food offerings including probiotic-rich sour cream and lactose-free sour cream. Good Culture is a proud partner of 1% for the Planet, supporting soil health and regenerative agriculture and is a Certified B-Corporation.

ABOUT MEGAN ROUP

Known for her simplified dance cardio moves (that anyone at any level can feel successful), Megan Roup launched The Sculpt Society in 2017 by combining her passion for dance and love for fitness. Her programs include dance cardio and sculpting workouts that are designed to create long, lean, and strong bodies. Megan takes the pressure off of results and "before + afters" as it helps her community focus on finding the joy in movement and creates a healthy balance in their lives. Megan is continuously adding to the TSS library and recently launched her pre/post natal TSS Mama program, a new injury safe program Slow + Controlled and has an ever-expanding library with over 400 on-demand workouts and multiple LIVE classes a week including yoga, meditation, dance cardio and sculpt.

On the heels of her first national pop-up tour, "TSS IRL," where she visited four cities to celebrate the 2 year anniversary of The Sculpt Society app and reconnect with her community IRL, Megan is feeling even more motivated to support + encourage others to safely break a sweat. The past 18 months have also included a mico-wedding, the birth of her first daughter and a move from NYC to LA. www.thesculptsociety.com | @meganroup

Media Contact: Anjie Oberholzer, [email protected], 484.241.6926

SOURCE Good Culture
The Ohio Attorney General's Office is in the process of licensing both manufacturers and distributors of Electronic Instant Bingo devices along with the charities, fraternals, and other nonprofit organizations that will use the devices in Ohio.

"We are very excited about the NexLevel team joining our Grover Gaming family," stated Garrett Blackwelder, President and Owner of Grover Gaming, "We have known the principals and most of the employees for quite some time and are thrilled to bring onboard such experienced sales, marketing, and customer service professionals. We believe that, when licensed, we will have a truly spectacular team to service the charities of Ohio."

Grover Gaming was already licensed by the Ohio Attorney General's Office as a Bingo Supply Manufacturer and has applied for the separate Distributor license and the Electronic Instant Bingo endorsement to each of those licenses. Under the new law the Ohio Attorney General's Office cannot issue any of Electronic Instant Bingo licenses until April 1st.

"We are in the process of onboarding these new team members right now and I really look forward to seeing this newly constituted team in action," said Jimmy Forrest, Vice President of Sales for Grover, "Ohio is a very important market for us and we are planning to duplicate the success we have had in other states such as Virginia and North Dakota."

While acting as both a manufacturer and distributor in Ohio, Grover has previously stated that they will not be requiring any long-term commitments from the charities and fraternals in Ohio. "We will not be asking the charities to sign contracts," said Forrest, "We want to continue to earn their business by providing the best performing games in charitable gaming and giving world-class service."

Grover Gaming develops software, game content, and gaming systems for lotteries and charitable gaming jurisdictions, and is licensed in Ohio, New Hampshire, Kentucky, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Washington, Ontario Canada, Louisiana, and Virginia. Based in Greenville, NC, Grover Gaming has over 360 employees across nine states including a design studio in Wilmington, NC and a Software Development Center in Chicago, IL.

The company is also a 3-year Inc 5000 award recipient, recognizing the fastest-growing privately held companies in the United States and was recently honored with a Glassdoor Employees' Choice Award. Glassdoor ranked Grover Gaming # 2 in its Best Places to Work list in 2022 among companies across the US with less than 1,000 employees.

SOURCE Grover Gaming, Inc.
Hanwha Solutions to become the largest shareholder of Norway -based U.S. polysilicon manufacturer REC Silicon after acquiring an additional 4.67% stake from Aker Horizons, increasing total investment to $204 million and ownership share to 21.34%.

-based U.S. polysilicon manufacturer REC Silicon after acquiring an additional 4.67% stake from Aker Horizons, increasing total investment to and ownership share to 21.34%. The acquisition is a part of Hanwha's efforts to rebuild the U.S. solar value chain and supply customers with 'Made in America' products. It aims to create well-paying jobs for American workers and secure the supply chain for clean energy technology.

Key to achieving this ambitious goal is the implementation of a comprehensive manufacturing policy in the U.S., including the landmark Solar Energy Manufacturing for America Act (SEMA). Once implemented, Hanwha will implement a multi-phase, multi-billion-dollar expansion across the full solar energy supply chain.

SEOUL, South Korea, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The United States solar industry is at a critical juncture. Despite long-term efforts to decarbonize the electric grid with clean energy, the prospect of doing so with American-made products remains uncertain. Most domestic solar manufacturing facilities have shuttered after decades of struggle, prompting calls across the country to revitalize U.S. businesses dedicated to clean energy manufacturing.

Hanwha Solutions, the Korean energy-to-material company that owns complete energy solutions provider Q CELLS, has ambitious plans to address this. Hanwha announces today a plan to secure capabilities across the full solar technology supply chain, with the goal of creating well-paying jobs, addressing climate change, and strengthening U.S. energy security. Operating the largest module production plant in the United States, Q CELLS is the number one module supplier in the U.S. residential and commercial solar markets and a leading player in the utility sector.

Hanwha launches this effort by becoming the largest shareholder of REC Silicon, a major U.S. manufacturer of polysilicon, the key raw material used to produce solar panels. This investment will help American businesses secure the raw material critical to the solar supply chain as global competition over clean energy sources intensifies in the coming years.

Moving forward, in tandem with the Biden administration's efforts to incentivize solar manufacturing in America, Hanwha intends to implement a multi-phase, multi-billion-dollar investment plan across the full solar value chain from, polysilicon to solar modules.

"Our commitment to the U.S. is more serious than ever before," said Justin Lee, CEO of Q CELLS. "We plan to make investments to secure capabilities across the entire solar supply chain, with the goal of supplying our partners with 'Made in America' products that will help the U.S. regain its leadership in clean energy solutions."

Hanwha becomes the largest shareholder of REC silicon to produce "clean polysilicon"

Following its initial $160 million acquisition to acquire a 16.67 percent stake in REC Silicon in January 2022, Hanwha will now become the largest shareholder of REC Silicon by acquiring an additional 4.67 percent stake from Aker Horizons, a sustainability investment firm that had been co-owner of REC Silicon with Hanwha Solutions. The deal is valued at around $44 million.

REC Silicon operates two polysilicon manufacturing facilities in the US: Moses Lake, Washington; and Butte, Montana. Their combined annual production capacity totals 18,000 metric tons (MT), including 16,000 MT of granular, solar grade polysilicon at Moses Lake, and 2,000 MT of electronic grade polysilicon at Butte.

Using hydropower-based clean energy, REC Silicon produces low-carbon polysilicon without emitting greenhouse gases. Compared to carbon-heavy polysilicon manufactured overseas that often relies on coal power, REC Silicon's "clean polysilicon" is expected to draw more demand in the coming years as international scrutiny over industrial emissions and carbon footprints grows.

Besides solar grade polysilicon, REC Silicon also manufactures other high-value materials such as electronic grade silicon and silane gas, which are essential for producing hi-tech devices including semiconductors, smartphones, flat screen televisions, laptops, and hybrid electric vehicles.

"Increasing energy market turbulence tells us why securing key raw material production is so critical," said a Hanwha Solutions spokesperson. "Given upward pressure on oil prices and scrutiny over the environmentally damaging impacts from fossil fuels, we believe that strengthening the renewable-based energy supply chain is important  and producing low-carbon solar material is a good starting point to achieve the goal."

Rebuilding the U.S. Solar Energy Supply Chain

The acquisition of REC Silicon is only the prelude to Hanwha's larger ambition of rebuilding the full U.S. solar supply chain.

Having secured a stable supply of key raw materials for photovoltaic panel production, the company intends to follow up with subsequent investments in virtually every sub-sector of the domestic solar manufacturing industry, ranging from key raw materials like polysilicon to fully assembled solar modules.

Currently, Hanwha operates the largest module production facility in the U.S. through its solar panel business unit, Q CELLS. The Georgia-based factory can produce 1.7 gigawatts of solar modules per year, accounting for nearly 20 percent of total module production capacity in the United States.

Combining low-carbon polysilicon with premium solar modules, Hanwha aims to create a comprehensive and fully domestic solar supply chain. The initiative aims to support the Biden administration's efforts to decarbonize all electricity by 2035 and increase solar-based power generation to 40 percent.

The investment is also expected to add a substantial number of well-paying, renewable energy jobs across America. Hanwha already employs up to 750 staff in Georgia at its module production facility. The company's intention is to create many times that number of new jobs with its planned investments.

"We imagine a Moses Lake factory brought back to life with local workers clocking in and operating the plant," said a Hanwha spokesperson, referring to the currently idle REC factory, which is planned to reopen in 2023. "Together with our module factory in Georgia and new planned investments, we will fulfill our pledge to create quality clean energy manufacturing jobs across the United States."

Enactment of SEMA Critical to Boosting Solar Manufacturing in U.S.

Crucial to achieving this goal are durable, long-term policies to attract and sustain domestic solar manufacturing in the United States. Policies aimed at rebuilding supply chains for renewable energy are becoming more important, with countries around the world looking to strengthen their domestic energy capabilities in their efforts to address climate change.

The Biden Administration has suggested a comprehensive, "whole-of-government" approach for achieving this, inclusive of smart trade policy, strengthened Buy American rules, and durable tax incentives. All are critical to facilitating investment. Applied in concert, they can create a scaled, globally competitive U.S. industry.

SEMA, introduced by Senators Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock of Georgia, is one such effort to reshore the solar supply chain and build a clean energy future. The bill was included in the House of Representatives' clean energy and climate tax package and passed by the lower chamber of Congress last year.

Once passed by the Senate and signed into law by President Biden, the legislation will boost America's panel manufacturing capacity and create massive job opportunities in the solar industry. In a letter to President Biden, the SEMA Coalition, representing American solar manufacturers supporting the legislation, said that the bill would add more than 30 GW to domestic solar manufacturing capacity in the U.S. by 2025, creating 18,000 direct and 60,000 indirect manufacturing jobs.

"Enacting SEMA is key to fulfilling our pledge to rebuild the U.S. solar supply chain with fully 'Made in America' products," said the Hanwha Solutions spokesperson. "With a long term plan to support domestic solar manufacturing, we can help America lead the clean energy revolution and win the fight against climate change."

For more information, visit our website http://hanwhasolutions.com/en/ or contact [email protected]

About Hanwha Solutions.

Hanwha Solutions aims to deliver sustainable solutions for the planet through smart energy solutions and customer-focused materials. The Company operates its business through five divisions: Q CELLS, Chemical, Advanced Material, Galleria and City Development. The Q CELLS Division offers total energy solutions from photovoltaic module manufacturing, power plant operation to electricity retailing service. The Chemical Division, the first in Korea to produce polyvinyl chloride (PVC), manufactures various petrochemical products and eco-friendly plasticizers. The Advanced Materials Division produces high-tech materials for automotive, photovoltaic and electronic devices. The Galleria Division, an operator of premium department store chain, provides premium fashion and food services. The City Development Division is a leading real estate developer specializing in industrial complexes. With its innovative technologies for sustainable growth, Hanwha Solutions strives to become a global leader in bringing a better future for humanity.

SOURCE Hanwha Solutions
NEW YORK, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Technology entrepreneur, Michael Koch, is recognized as the 2022 Artificial Intelligence Entrepreneur of the Year Award for Machine Learning by the Business Intelligence Group. "It's an honor to be recognized for leading the forefront of artificial intelligence technology and machine learning. As the CEO of my latest venture, HubKonnect, we've developed a robust, innovative AI-enabled local marketing platform that enables franchise restaurants to understand local consumer data and our AI brain develops marketing tactics and assets that drive real world business results," Koch said.

Michael Koch, AI Tech Entrepreneur HubKonnect CEO, Michael Koch, Awarded the Artificial Intelligence Entrepreneur of the Year Award for Machine Learning

Business Intelligence Group recognizes the best organizations, products, and entrepreneurs who bring AI to life and apply it to solve real business problems. "Over the course of my career, I have successfully built, scaled, and exited four innovative technology companies on a global scale. My relentless dedication to pushing innovation forward in the AI technology sector has made HubKonnect the No. 1 AI-enabled local store marketing platform in the multi-unit retail space today," said Koch.

As one of the originating pioneers of AI technology, Koch continues to push the industry forward with his AI research arm. "As the Chairman of QSR AI Research Lab, we are continuously developing innovative AI technology that is critical to business success in the restaurant industry. From marketing to supply chain, to operations and human resources, we are continuously developing AI algorithms that synthesize data and identify, enhance, and optimize nearly every part of a business, creating real business growth," Koch said.

HubKonnect's award-winning proprietary AI-enabled local store marketing platform is unlike anything in the market. "We firmly believe that HubKonnect is on the trajectory to be the Salesforce for the restaurant industry. In today's fast changing landscape, it has never been more important for restaurants to engage with their community quickly and intelligently at the local level. As CEO at HubKonnect, I have developed our platform to synthesize local consumer data, and then instantly develop and deploy localized marketing programs for franchise restaurants across the U.S.," said Koch.

Under Koch's leadership, passion, and tenacity, he has pushed AI innovation forward. "My sole focus over the past four years has been developing and delivering powerful artificial intelligence to top global brands in the multi-billion dollar quick service restaurant industry. I'm proud to say that no other technology platform in the market does what HubKonnect offers. Under my direction, we will continue pushing the industry forward to keep our clients on the cutting edge of AI," Koch said.

ABOUT MICHAEL KOCH

Michael Koch is an artificial intelligence technologist, entrepreneur, and an originating pioneer of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and SaaS industries. As the Co-founder and CEO of HubKonnect, he has grown the company to quickly become the No.1 data-driven, AI-enabled local store marketing platform for the quick service restaurant industry in the U.S. He is also the Chairman of the QSR AI and CEO of Koch Global Ventures, a venture capital firm focused on leading SaaS, AI, Big Data, Machine Learning, and early-stage emerging startups that have high growth potential. To learn more about Michael Koch, please visit https://michaelkochceo.com or https://hubkonnect.com

ABOUT BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE GROUP

The Business Intelligence Group was founded with the mission of recognizing true talent and superior performance in the business world. Unlike other industry award programs, these programs are judged by business executives having experience and knowledge. The organization's proprietary and unique scoring system selectively measures performance across multiple business domains and then rewards those companies whose achievements stand above those of their peers.

MEDIA CONTACT

Samantha Savory

305.582.5997

www.Savory-PR.com

[email protected]

SOURCE HubKonnect
Illinois manufacturers can now access unbiased economic forecasts, education, and best practices to gain and maintain a competitive advantage in today's shifting economy.

PEORIA, Ill., March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Manufacturers spent the last two years forging strongly though a global pandemic, and if that wasn't enough, now they face economic uncertainties. How they navigate the next few months of projected economic instability is crucial to their survival. To be a guiding light though the challenges ahead, IMEC announced its new partnership with ITR Economics, an economic forecasting firm that will provide Illinois manufacturers with additional economic intelligence to drive practical and profitable business decisions.

Established in 1948, ITR Economics has earned its reputation for being First in Forecasts Worldwide. Their unique forecasting methodology sets them apart from the rest of the industry, empowering them to achieve an unmatched accuracy rating of 94.7%, four quarters into the future.

"It is important for manufacturers to stay abreast of what's happening in the economy so they can plan accordingly and make wise business decisions to not only influence profits, but also help their communities. This new IMEC - ITR Economics collaboration will equip Illinois manufacturers to lead with confidence through economic volatility." David Boulay, President - IMEC

Through this partnership, Illinois manufacturers have access to several new resources, including:

Monthly articles providing ITR Economics' data-driven, non-affiliated perspective on current events will clear away the noise and allow organizations to truly understand what is going on in the economy.

Pilot Programs with subscription services:

Insider empowers subscribers with the most accurate economic data, enabling them to mitigate upcoming risk and make profitable decisions for their companies. The Insider subscription includes the ITR Advisor, monthly Leading Indicator updates, a three-year US Economic Outlook Dashboard, and topical webinars.

empowers subscribers with the most accurate economic data, enabling them to mitigate upcoming risk and make profitable decisions for their companies. The Insider subscription includes the ITR Advisor, monthly Leading Indicator updates, a three-year US Economic Outlook Dashboard, and topical webinars.

Trends Report provides the economic forecasts, insights, and strategy to give businesses the edge. Subscribe to this industry-leading forecasting publication and receive updated forecasts throughout the month, covering the complete spectrum of US and world economies.

provides the economic forecasts, insights, and strategy to give businesses the edge. Subscribe to this industry-leading forecasting publication and receive updated forecasts throughout the month, covering the complete spectrum of US and world economies.

DataCast Essentials was designed for the entrepreneurial CEO who wants a near-term view of where the business is headed, as well as actionable intelligence  with this forward view in mind, what actions should be considered?

was designed for the entrepreneurial CEO who wants a near-term view of where the business is headed, as well as actionable intelligence  with this forward view in mind, what actions should be considered?

DataCast Pro was designed for the business leader or market analyst who wants a deep dive into market trends driving the business. The tool enables you to find areas of opportunity, spot sectors that could pose a risk to the business and incorporate its analytical output into your own internal forecasting processes.

was designed for the business leader or market analyst who wants a deep dive into market trends driving the business. The tool enables you to find areas of opportunity, spot sectors that could pose a risk to the business and incorporate its analytical output into your own internal forecasting processes. Exclusive discounts on all online subscriptions and non-subscription services.

Learn more about the IMEC-ITR Economics partnership by contacting Kristy Johns at [email protected]

About IMEC

IMEC is a team of improvement specialists and technicians dedicated to providing organizations in Illinois with the tools and techniques to create sustainable competitive futures. The experienced hands-on team at IMEC works closely with its clients to plan critical business improvements in the areas of Leadership, Strategy, Customer Engagement, Operations, and Workforce. IMEC, Illinois affiliate of the U.S Commerce NIST Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) National Network, has demonstrated a return on investment that exceeds 19:1. This is made possible as organizations become more effective and efficient - and together with IMEC - excel toward enterprise excellence. For more information, visit www.imec.org.

SOURCE IMEC
"Our partnership with Toyota is underpinned by a shared desire to make gaming more accessible and show up for our community," said Brett McGrew, Vice President of Partnerships & Activation for Immortals. "This new program will take us all over SoCal and San Diego this spring and summer, giving fans a chance to interact with our players and creators while enjoying unique gaming experiences."

Through the partnership, Toyota SoCal and Immortals will bring the following exciting community activations to life, both digitally and in-person:

San Diego County Fair Gaming Lounge: This summer, Immortals and San Diego Toyota will host a gaming lounge for SD County fair attendees. The co-branded exhibit will be located at the Toyota Booth featuring gaming stations with family-friendly games. Immortals players and influencers will also visit the booth to meet fans.





This summer, Immortals and San Diego Toyota will host a gaming lounge for SD County fair attendees. The co-branded exhibit will be located at the Toyota Booth featuring gaming stations with family-friendly games. Immortals players and influencers will also visit the booth to meet fans. Free Boba Stand: Immortals and Toyota SoCal will have a co-branded popup boba stand providing free boba tea at local gaming events. Follow Immortals Twitter, @Immortals , for information on where and when this activation will debut.





Immortals and Toyota SoCal will have a co-branded popup boba stand providing free boba tea at local gaming events. Follow Immortals Twitter, , for information on where and when this activation will debut. Local Touchpoints: Players for Immortals' LCS and Wild Rift teams, along with creator AriaSaki, will hit the town in the team-branded vehicle for several Toyota activations across SoCal and San Diego . Content will include vlogs and interactive social campaigns, building on the successful series from 2021 .

About Immortals

Immortals is a U.S.-based professional esports organization representing the Great Lakes Region, with a mission to serve as the region's gateway to all things gaming. Immortals is dedicated to using gaming as a connective force linking its players, influencers and creators, fans, staff and the broader gaming community. Immortals competes across multiple premier esports titles, including League of Legends (LCS), Wild Rift and VALORANT. Visit immortals.gg to learn more.

About Southern California Toyota Dealers Association

The Southern California Toyota Dealers Association is comprised of 59 dealerships. For more information about our full line-up of cars, trucks and SUVs please visit https://www.toyota.com/ or follow us on Twitter ( @ToyotaSoCal ) for updates on our promotions and products.

About San Diego Toyota Dealers Association

The San Diego County Toyota Dealers Association is comprised of 11 dealerships. For more information about our full line-up of cars, trucks and SUVs please visit https://www.toyota.com/ or follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook ( @SDToyotaDealers ) for updates on our promotions and products.

MEDIA CONTACTS

Immortals

Anne Polkinghorn

Senior Director of Communications & Digital Marketing

[email protected]

Southern California and San Diego County Toyota Dealers Associations

John Papadopoulos

Senior Vice President, Director of Media Strategy

[email protected]

SOURCE Immortals
BEIJING, March 22, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- InnoCare Pharma (HKEX: 09969), a leading biopharmaceutical company focusing on cancer and autoimmune diseases, today announced 2021 annual results as of 31 December 2021.

Dr. Jasmine Cui, Co-founder, Chairwoman and CEO of InnoCare, said, "We are delighted to announce 2021 results on the occasion of our 2nd anniversary of listing on Hong Kong Stock Exchange. We have witnessed an unusual year 2021, in which we overcame tremendous difficulties and challenges and achieved many significant milestones. We have achieved satisfactory results in the first year of commercialization. The inclusion of orelabrutinib in the National Reimbursement Drug List (NRDL) at the end of 2021 will help access to more patients. We have made major breakthroughs in internationalization by reaching license-out and license-in collaboration with Biogen and Incyte respectively. We have deepened our efforts in innovation and accelerated the progress of our global multicenter clinical trials so as to further advance our drug candidate to benefit more patients"

Financial Highlights

The revenue increased sharply from 1.4 million for the year ended 31 December 2020 to 1.043 billion for the year ended 31 December 2021 , due to sales of orelabrutinib and upfront payment from Biogen.

to 1.043 billion for the year ended , due to sales of orelabrutinib and upfront payment from Biogen. The research and development expenses increased from 402.8 million for the year ended 31 December 2020 to 721.6 million for the year ended 31 December 2021 , primarily due to the upfront payment of tafasitamab license-in, etc.

to 721.6 million for the year ended , primarily due to the upfront payment of tafasitamab license-in, etc. The cash and cash equivalent increased from 3.9696 billion by the end of 2020 to 6.5505 billion by the end of 2021.

The loss for the reporting period decreased from 391.9 million for the year ended 31 December 2020 to 66.7 million for the year ended 31 December 2021, mainly due to the increase of revenue, etc.

(Note: Currency: RMB)

Key Highlights and Milestones

Bruton's tyrosine kinase (BTK) inhibitor orelabrutinib

Commercial achievements

InnoCare successfully launched the first prescription of orelabrutinib in mid-January 2021 . InnoCare's commercial team about 250 experienced members rapidly covered over 1000 leading hospitals in more than 260 cities all over China by the end of 2021, generating a gross revenue of RMB 241 million .

. InnoCare's commercial team about 250 experienced members rapidly covered over 1000 leading hospitals in more than 260 cities all over by the end of 2021, generating a gross revenue of . In December 2021 , orelabrutinib was included in China's NRDL to help access to more patients in 2022 and beyond.

, orelabrutinib was included in NRDL to help access to more patients in 2022 and beyond. Business development

In September 2021 , InnoCare received the upfront payment of US$ 125 million from Biogen based on the license-out agreement for orelabrutinib for the potential treatment of multiple sclerosis (MS). In addition, InnoCare is eligible to receive up to US$ 812.5 million in potential development milestones and commercial payments should the collaboration achieve certain development and commercial milestones. The Company is also eligible to receive a tiered royalties in the low to high teens percentage rate on potential future net sales resulting from the collaboration.

, InnoCare received the upfront payment of from Biogen based on the license-out agreement for orelabrutinib for the potential treatment of multiple sclerosis (MS). In addition, InnoCare is eligible to receive up to in potential development milestones and commercial payments should the collaboration achieve certain development and commercial milestones. The Company is also eligible to receive a tiered royalties in the low to high teens percentage rate on potential future net sales resulting from the collaboration.

Currently, the global Phase II trial for MS is ongoing in US, Europe and China .

and . R&D development

Orelabrutinib for the treatment of Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE)

Orelabrutinib Phase II trial for the treatment of SLE was completed at the end of 2021.



The Phase II results showed that oral orelabrutinib was safe and well tolerated in patients with mild to moderate SLE. A dose-dependent efficacy was observed in all treated evaluable patients. The SLE Responder Index (SRI)-4 response rates at 12-week were 35.7%, 50.0%, 61.5% and 64.3% in patients treated with placebo, 50 mg/day, 80 mg/day and 100 mg/day of orelabrutinib respectively.



Treatment with orelabrutinib led to a reduction in levels of proteinuria, and improvements of immunologic markers, including reduced immunoglobulin G, increased complements C3 and C4.



Further clinical development of orelabrutinib in SLE patient is warranted and planned.

Orelabrutinib for the first-line treatment of MCD DLBCL

A Phase III, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, multicenter study evaluating the efficacy and safety of orelabrutinib plus R-CHOP versus placebo plus R-CHOP in first-line treatment of patients with MCD subtype diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) is ongoing.

ICP-B04 (Tafasitamab)

In August 2021 , InnoCare entered into a Collaboration and License Agreement with Incyte for the development and commercialization of tafasitamab, a humanized Fc-modified cytolytic CD-19 targeting monoclonal antibody, in Greater China . Tafasitamab in combination with lenalidomide was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and European Medicines Agency for the treatment of eligible patients with relapsed or refractory (R/R) DLBCL.

, InnoCare entered into a Collaboration and License Agreement with Incyte for the development and commercialization of tafasitamab, a humanized Fc-modified cytolytic CD-19 targeting monoclonal antibody, in . Tafasitamab in combination with lenalidomide was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and European Medicines Agency for the treatment of eligible patients with relapsed or refractory (R/R) DLBCL. The strategic collaboration with Incyte will not only offer a good opportunity to explore the potental clinical benefit to combine tafasitamab with orelabrutinib and InnoCare's other assets for the treatment of B-cell malignancy, but also enhance InnoCare's strength in the field of hematology and oncology.

Tafasitamab in combination with lenalidomide was approved by the Health Commission and Medical Products Administration of Hainan Province , under the early access program in Boao Lecheng International Medical Tourism Pilot Zone for the treatment of eligible DLBCL patients.

ICP-192 (Gunagratinib)

Gunagratinib is currently undergoing several Phase I/II clinical studies in China and the U.S. In China, in the dose-escalation part of Phase I/II trial, gunagratinib demonstrated safe and well-tolerated profile across all dosage cohorts ranging from 2 to 26 mg with no dose-limiting toxicities (DLT) observed.

Head and neck cancer

In the dose-escalation trial, anti-tumor activity of gunagratinib was observed in head and neck cancer patients carrying FGF/FGFR gene aberrations. Among nine patients with FGF/FGFR gene aberrations who have completed at least one tumor assessment, the overall response rate (ORR) was 33.3%.

At the beginning of 2022, InnoCare initiated a clinical trial of basket solid tumors focusing on head and neck cancer patients with FGF/FGFR gene aberrations.

Cholangiocarcinoma

In the Phase II trial, 20mg gunagratinib showed preliminary efficacy in cholangiocarcinoma patients. As of 13 January 2022, among the patients who have completed at least one tumor assessment, the ORR was 60.0%. The disease control rate (DCR) was 100%.

International progress

In June 2021, gunagratinib was granted the Orphan Drug Designation for the treatment of cholangiocarcinoma by the U.S. FDA. In the U.S. and Australia, Phase I/II dose escalation trial in cholangiocarcinoma and head & neck cancer is ongoing.

ICP-723

As of 11 February 2022 , a total of 17 patients in Phase I dose escalation trial were treated with ICP-723 at doses of 1 mg to 8 mg once daily. ICP-723 was safe and well tolerated with no DLT observed. Five of 17 patients were considered as NTRK gene fusion positive. Among the five patients, the ORR was 80%, and the DCR was 100%. The ORR was 100% in dose groups of 4mg and above.

, a total of 17 patients in Phase I dose escalation trial were treated with ICP-723 at doses of 1 mg to 8 mg once daily. ICP-723 was safe and well tolerated with no DLT observed. Five of 17 patients were considered as NTRK gene fusion positive. Among the five patients, the ORR was 80%, and the DCR was 100%. The ORR was 100% in dose groups of 4mg and above. In the U.S., InnoCare got the IND clearance in August 2021 for the treatment of NTRK fusion positive cancers and will start the Phase I clinical trial in the U.S. in 2022.

ICP-332

ICP-332 is developed for the treatment of various autoimmune disorders. The Phase I clinical trial of the novel tyrosine kinas 2 (TYK2) inhibitor was completed. ICP-332 demonstrated dose proportionality of the PK parameters in the range of 5 mg to 320 mg. No significant food effect was observed. ICP-332 was safe and well tolerated and the maximum tolerated dose was not reached.

(TYK2) inhibitor was completed. ICP-332 demonstrated dose proportionality of the PK parameters in the range of 5 mg to 320 mg. No significant food effect was observed. ICP-332 was safe and well tolerated and the maximum tolerated dose was not reached. ICP-332 also avoided certain adverse effects associated with non-selective JAK inhibitors.

ICP-B05 (newly disclosed)

ICP-B05 is an anti-CC chemokine receptor 8 (CCR8) monoclonal antibody, a potential first-in-class drug co-developed by InnoCare and KeyMed as a monotherapy or in combination with other therapies for the treatment of various cancers.

CCR8 has been shown to be selectively overexpressed on immunosuppressive regulatory T cells (Tregs) in tumor microenvironment (TME). ICP-B05 binds to CCR8 on Tregs and eradicates immunosuppressive Tregs through ADCC to augment the anti-tumor immunity in TME while preserving peripheral homeostasis. ICP-B05 has the potential to deliver optimal tumor targeted Treg depletion and be more specific in anti-tumor activity than other immunotherapies.

IND application is expected to be submitted in the second quarter of 2022.

By now, InnoCare has built a robust pipeline. In addition to the two approved indications, InnoCare is conducting additional six registrational trials with orelabrutinib. Besides, there are nine clinical stage assets and multiple other IND enabling stage candidates. Over 30 clinical trials are ongoing globally.

Orelabrutinib's Other Clinical Development

Liguid Cancer

Orelabrutinib was included in the 2021 CSCO Diagnosis and Treatment Guidelines for Malignant Lymphoma and is recommended as a Class I treatment for R/R chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL)/small lymphocytic lymphoma (SLL) and R/R mantle cell lymphoma (MCL).

R/R WM: The New Drug Application (NDA) for R/R waldenstrom's macroglobulinemia (WM) was accepted by Center for Drug Evaluation (CDE) in March 2022 .

The New Drug Application (NDA) for R/R waldenstrom's macroglobulinemia (WM) was accepted by Center for Drug Evaluation (CDE) in . R/R MZL: A multicenter, open-label study to evaluate the safety and efficacy of orelabrutinib in patients with R/R marginal zone lymphoma (MZL) is ongoing. The NDA for R/R MZL is expected to be submitted in China in the first half of 2022.

A multicenter, open-label study to evaluate the safety and efficacy of orelabrutinib in patients with R/R marginal zone lymphoma (MZL) is ongoing. The NDA for R/R MZL is expected to be submitted in in the first half of 2022. R/R CLL/SLL: At the 63 rd American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting, orelabrutinib showed a significant higher CR/CRi (complete response / incomplete marrow recovery) rate in R/R CLL/SLL in comparison with other BTK inhibitors at a similar median follow-up period with ORR of 93.8% and CR/CRi of 26.3%.

At the 63 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting, orelabrutinib showed a significant higher CR/CRi (complete response / incomplete marrow recovery) rate in R/R CLL/SLL in comparison with other BTK inhibitors at a similar median follow-up period with ORR of 93.8% and CR/CRi of 26.3%. R/R MCL: In the U.S., a Phase II registrational trial for R/R MCL is expected to complete patient enrollment in 2022. In June 2021 , U.S. FDA granted Breakthrough Therapy Designation (BTD) to orelabrutinib for the treatment of R/R MCL.

In the U.S., a Phase II registrational trial for R/R MCL is expected to complete patient enrollment in 2022. In , U.S. FDA granted Breakthrough Therapy Designation (BTD) to orelabrutinib for the treatment of R/R MCL. 1L CLL/SLL: A Phase III registrational trial for first-line treatment of CLL/SLL is conducted in China , comparing orelabrutinib monotherapy versus rituximab plus chlorambucil. It is expected to finish the patient enrollment in 2023.

A Phase III registrational trial for first-line treatment of CLL/SLL is conducted in , comparing orelabrutinib monotherapy versus rituximab plus chlorambucil. It is expected to finish the patient enrollment in 2023. 1L MCL: In China , a Phase III registrational trial for first-line treatment of MCL is conducted, comparing orelabrutinib in combination with R-CHOP versus R-CHOP.

In , a Phase III registrational trial for first-line treatment of MCL is conducted, comparing orelabrutinib in combination with R-CHOP versus R-CHOP. InnoCare is exploring the combinational therapy of orelabrutinib with obinutuzumab (Gazyva), an anti-CD20 antibody, for the treatment of B cell lymphoma.

Autoimmune Diseases

In addition to the above-mentioned updates of orelabrutinib in MS and SLE, InnoCare is also exploring orelabrutinib for the treatment of primary immune thrombocytopenia purpura (ITP) and neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorder (NMOSD).

ITP: The IND application for orelabrutinib for the treatment of ITP was approved by CDE in August 2021 and the first patient of the Phase II clinical trial was dosed in China in February 2022 .

The IND application for orelabrutinib for the treatment of ITP was approved by CDE in and the first patient of the Phase II clinical trial was dosed in in . NMOSD: In February 2022 , InnoCare received the IND approval of orelabrutinib by NMPA for starting Phase II clinical trial in NMOSD in China .

Highlights of Other Pipeline Projects

Liquid Cancer

ICP-B02 (CM355): A CD20xCD3 bispecific antibody co-developed by InnoCare and KeyMed for the treatment of lymphoma. In preclinical studies, it demonstrated stronger T-cell-dependent cellular cytotoxicity (TDCC) activities with less cytokine release. The dosing of the first patient was completed in January 2022 .

A CD20xCD3 bispecific antibody co-developed by InnoCare and KeyMed for the treatment of lymphoma. In preclinical studies, it demonstrated stronger T-cell-dependent cellular cytotoxicity (TDCC) activities with less cytokine release. The dosing of the first patient was completed in . ICP-490: A highly potent orally bioavailable next-generation CRBN modulator that modulates the immune system and other biological targets. The IND application is expected to be submitted in the first half of 2022.

A highly potent orally bioavailable next-generation CRBN modulator that modulates the immune system and other biological targets. The IND application is expected to be submitted in the first half of 2022. ICP-248: A novel, orally bioavailable B cell lymphoma-2 (BCL-2) selective inhibitor. It can be developed in combination with orelabrutinib for hematological malignancies. The IND application for ICP-248 will be submitted in China in the first half of 2022.

Solid Tumor

ICP-189: A potent oral allosteric inhibitor of SHP2 (Src Homology 2 domain containing protein tyrosine phosphatase) developed for the treatment of solid tumors as a cornerstone therapy in combinations with other antitumor agents. InnoCare has received the IND approval of ICP-189 from the NMPA in October 2021 and the IND clearance of ICP-189 by the U.S. FDA for starting clinical trial in the U.S. in November 2021

A potent oral allosteric inhibitor of (Src Homology 2 domain containing protein tyrosine phosphatase) developed for the treatment of solid tumors as a cornerstone therapy in combinations with other antitumor agents. InnoCare has received the IND approval of ICP-189 from the NMPA in and the IND clearance of ICP-189 by the U.S. FDA for starting clinical trial in the U.S. in ICP-033: A novel multi-target Receptor Tyrosine Kinase (RTK) inhibitor, which will be used potentially as monotherapy and/or in combination with immunotherapy and other targeted drugs to treat liver cancer, renal cell carcinoma, colorectal cancer and other solid tumors. The IND application for ICP-033 was approved by the CDE in June 2021 and Phase I clinical trial is ongoing.

A novel multi-target Receptor Tyrosine Kinase (RTK) inhibitor, which will be used potentially as monotherapy and/or in combination with immunotherapy and other targeted drugs to treat liver cancer, renal cell carcinoma, colorectal cancer and other solid tumors. The IND application for ICP-033 was approved by the CDE in and Phase I clinical trial is ongoing. ICP-915: A highly potent, selective small-molecule inhibitor against the G12C mutant form of Kirsten Rat Sarcoma (KRAS) viral oncogene homologue. It will be developed in combination with ICP-189 to treat various types of solid tumors.

A highly potent, selective small-molecule inhibitor against the G12C mutant form of Kirsten Rat Sarcoma (KRAS) viral oncogene homologue. It will be developed in combination with ICP-189 to treat various types of solid tumors. ICP-B03: A tumor-conditional pro-interleukin-15 (IL-15) targeting and changing immune cells inside tumor microenvironment. IL-15 is a cytokine that stimulates important anti-tumor immune cells, such as CD8+T cells and Natural Killer (NK) cells.

Autoimmune Diseases

ICP-488: A potent and selective TYK2 allosteric inhibitor, binding to the TYK2 JH2 domain, developed for the treatment of inflammatory diseases such as psoriasis and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). The CDE has approved the clinical trial of ICP-488 in March 2022 .

Other Corporate Development

Financing

In February 2021, InnoCare brought in Hillhouse as a strategic investor and Vivo Capital increased its shareholdings, raising a funding of US$393 million;

From December 2021 to January 2022, two substantial shareholders of InnoCare purchased an aggregate of about 13 million shares of the Company through on-market transactions;

In September 2021, InnoCare's application for listing on the STAR Board of Shanghai Stock Exchange was accepted.

Manufacturing

Guangzhou: InnoCare Guangzhou has completed Phase I project covering 50,000 square meters by the end of 2020 and obtained a drug manufacturing license for the facility. InnoCare Guangzhou also finished the technology transfer process from its CMO and is ready for orelabrutinib commercial production in the first half of 2022.

Beijing: At the end of 2021, InnoCare obtained a land of over 70,000 square meters in Beijing next to the Company's headquarter inside the Life Science Park to build a landmark R&D center and large molecule production facility. Currently, InnoCare has finished the conceptional design and expect the construction to be completed in 2025.

Talent

Dr. Sean Zhang and Dr. Davy Ouyang joined InnoCare as Chief Medical Officer and Biology Vice President, respectively, in the first half of 2021,

Mr. Nan Gao and Ms. Jessie Wang joined InnoCare as Chief Operation Officer and General Counsel, respectively, in the second half of 2021.

"Looking forward into 2022, we will continue our hard-work to further enhance our R&D strength, accelerate clinical trials, improve commercialization capabilities, bring in more international business development opportunities... so as to propel the Company to a new level," added Dr. Cui.

To know more about the detailed financial data and business update of InnoCare 2021 annual results, please log in https://cn.innocarepharma.com/en/investor-relations/ .

Conference Call Information

InnoCare will host a conference call on March 23, 2022 at 9:00 a.m. Beijing time. Participants must register in advance of the conference call. Details are as follows:

Registration Link: https://goldmansachs.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_JKhYhUVYS1W8HrlfBjzWsg

The call will be conducted in Mandarin.

Forward-looking Statement

This report contains the disclosure of some forward-looking statements. Except for statements of facts, all other statements can be regarded as forward-looking statements, that is, about our or our management's intentions, plans, beliefs, or expectations that will or may occur in the future. Such statements are assumptions and estimates made by our management based on its experience and knowledge of historical trends, current conditions, expected future development and other related factors. This forward-looking statement does not guarantee future performance, and actual results, development and business decisions may not match the expectations of the forward-looking statement. Our forward-looking statements are also subject to a large number of risks and uncertainties, which may affect our short-term and long-term performance.

About InnoCare

InnoCare is a commercial stage biopharmaceutical company committed to discovering, developing, and commercializing first-in-class and/or best-in-class drugs for the treatment of cancer and autoimmune diseases. We strategically focus on lymphoma, solid tumors, and autoimmune diseases with high unmet medical needs in China and worldwide. InnoCare has branches in Beijing, Nanjing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, New Jersey and Boston.

SOURCE Innocare
ROME, March 22 (Xinhua) -- Improving school ventilation systems can help reduce COVID-19 cases among students, an Italian study released on Tuesday showed.

The study, conducted by the Hume Foundation, an Italian think tank, involved 10,441 classrooms in Marche in central Italy, of which 316 classrooms were equipped with mechanical ventilation systems while the other 10,125 were not.

In the 316 classrooms with mechanical ventilation systems, there were far fewer cases of COVID-19, and the number of infections reduced in step with the quality of the school's ventilation system, according to the study.

Compared to levels in classrooms with no ventilation systems, COVID-19 cases were reduced by 40 percent when classroom air was completely replaced every 25 minutes.

When the air was completely replaced every 15 minutes, cases were lower; and in cases where the air was replaced every 10 minutes, reported COVID-19 cases were much lower, the study showed.

Most schools in Italy lack mechanical ventilation systems, according to local reports. Italy's COVID-19 safety rules require teachers to open classroom windows when feasible.

The study, carried out between September 2021 and January 2022, said that cases in schools could drop from 250 per 100,000 students to 50 per 100,000 students by installing efficient ventilation systems.

The news came as COVID-19 infections started to rise in Italy after a lull from early February to early March. Italy recorded 96,365 new cases Tuesday, the highest daily new cases since Feb. 8. 
Approved by the Florida Board of Nursing, the Jacksonville University Practical Nurse Program is designed to give students real-world, hands-on instruction to prepare them to sit for the National Council Licensure Exam (NCLEX). Upon graduating from the program and passing the National Council Licensure Examination for Practical Nursing (NCLEX-PN), students are eligible to become a Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN) and will have the opportunity to earn a work-promise agreement from Baptist Health. Baptist Health will provide a $2,000 scholarship to each student in the program.

"Our university's thoughtful, future-focused discussions with longtime partners such as Baptist Health never stop; we stay close to them so we can be an agile partner in higher education," said Jacksonville University President Tim Cost. "We are proud to partner with Baptist Health once again to create a program that responds to critical workforce needs and aligns with the strategic focus of regional healthcare providers."

The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts a 9 percent growth in LPN positions in the next decade. No prior clinical experience is required for the program, making it ideal for those looking to break into the nursing field or seeking a career change. Health systems are seeking to hire more LPNs as an effective way to improve patient-to-nurse ratios, quality of care and patient safety.

"Licensed practical nurses play a critical role on our nursing team and are a vital part of our future. We look forward to working with JU to help grow and educate the future workforce for Baptist Heath and beyond," said Tammy Daniel, DNP, MA, RN, NEA-BC, senior vice president and chief nursing officer for Baptist Health.

Starting in August of 2022, the Practical Nurse program will comprise a mix of premier classroom instruction, 45 hours in Jacksonville University's cutting-edge, collaborative Healthcare Simulation Center located on Beach Boulevard, and 585 hours of real-world clinical practice in a local healthcare facility.

The 31,443-square-foot, state-of-the-art Healthcare Simulation Center resembles a hospital emergency room and allows students to train on high-fidelity medical manikins that breathe, blink and respond like real patients. It provides learners with invaluable experiential learning that complements an interdisciplinary course curriculum.

Baptist Health is Magnet-designated, which is considered the gold standard among health care organizations that meet American Nurses Credentialing Center standards for quality patient care, nursing excellence, and innovations in professional nursing practice. The 20-year partnership between Jacksonville University and Baptist Health dates back to 1982 when the two organizations collaborated to establish what is now the Keigwin School of Nursing. In 2021, JU and Baptist Health partnered to create Florida's only 12-month Accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing, receiving overwhelming demand for a limited number of student spots.

The Florida Board of Nursing granted approval for the program in March, and Jacksonville University will seek Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC) approval for the program.

Jacksonville University is hosting a Virtual Information Session for the Practical Nurse (PN) program at 6 p.m. on Monday, March 28. Attendees will learn more about the program, the admissions process, and the JU Healthcare Simulation Center from JU faculty and staff. Applications for Jacksonville University and Baptist Health's Practical Nurse program are open now for the first cohort until April 15. To apply for the program or register for the Virtual Information Session, visit ju.edu/lpn.

About Jacksonville University

As northeast Florida's premier private institution of higher education, Jacksonville University is consistently recognized by U.S. News & World Report as one of the Best Regional Universities in the South, with back-to-back Top 30 rankings in 2020 and 2021. Founded in 1934, the University offers more than 100 majors, minors, and programs, including in-demand degrees in Nursing, Business, Marine Science, Engineering, Finance, and Psychology, as well as those in the highly specialized fields of Aviation, Communication Sciences and Disorders, Film, Animation, and Healthcare Administration. With its four colleges, eleven schools and two institutes, Jacksonville University's 235-acre riverfront campus is minutes from downtown and from beautiful area beaches.

About Baptist Health

Baptist Health is a faith-based, mission-driven system in Northeast Florida comprised of Baptist Medical Center Jacksonville; Baptist Medical Center Beaches; Baptist Medical Center Nassau; Baptist Medical Center South and Wolfson Children's Hospital  the region's only children's hospital. All Baptist Health hospitals have achieved Magnet status for excellence in patient care. Baptist Health is part of Coastal Community Health, a highly integrated regional hospital network focused on significant initiatives designed to enhance the quality and value of care provided to our contiguous communities. Baptist Health has the area's only dedicated heart hospital; orthopedic institute; women's services; neurological institute, including comprehensive neurosurgical services, a comprehensive stroke center and two primary stroke centers; a Bariatric Center of Excellence; a full range of psychology and psychiatry services; urgent care services; primary and specialty care physicians' offices throughout Northeast Florida; and Baptist Home Health Care by BAYADA. The Baptist MD Anderson Cancer Center is a regional destination for multidisciplinary cancer care, which is clinically integrated with the MD Anderson Cancer Center, the internationally renowned cancer treatment and research institution in Houston. For more details, visit baptistjax.com.

Contacts:

Laura Phelps

Sr. Director of Communications

Jacksonville University

[email protected]

Cindy Hamilton

Executive Director, Corporate Communications

Baptist Health

[email protected]

SOURCE Jacksonville University
FORT WORTH, Texas, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Kimbell Royalty Partners, LP (NYSE: KRP) ("Kimbell"), a leading owner of oil and natural gas mineral and royalty interests in over 16 million gross acres in 28 states, today announced that it will release its first quarter 2022 financial results on Thursday, May 5, 2022, before the market opens. In conjunction with the release, Kimbell has scheduled a conference call, which will be broadcast live over the Internet the same day at 10:00 a.m. Central (11:00 a.m. Eastern).

By Phone: Dial 201-389-0869 at least 10 minutes before the call. A replay will be available through

May 12th by dialing 201-612-7415 and using the conference ID: 13728189#.



By Webcast: Connect to the webcast via the Events and Presentations page of Kimbell's Investor

Relations website at http://kimbellrp.investorroom.com/. Please log in at least 10 minutes in advance to register and download any necessary software. A replay will be available shortly after the call.

About Kimbell Royalty Partners

Kimbell (NYSE: KRP) is a leading oil and gas mineral and royalty company based in Fort Worth, Texas. Kimbell owns mineral and royalty interests in over 16 million gross acres in 28 states and in every major onshore basin in the continental United States, including ownership in more than 122,000 gross wells with over 46,000 wells in the Permian Basin. To learn more, visit http://www.kimbellrp.com.

Contact:

Rick Black

Dennard Lascar Investor Relations

[email protected]

(713) 529-6600

SOURCE Kimbell Royalty Partners, LP
Team Successfully Deploys Electronic Health Record to 14 Additional Commands

RESTON, Va., March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The Leidos Partnership for Defense Health (LPDH) today announced it successfully delivered the MHS GENESIS electronic health record to an additional 15,000 clinicians and providers as part of its largest double Wave deployment to date, spanning 14 Military Treatment Facility Commands and five states.

"We are extremely proud to have remained on schedule and on budget during this pivotal healthcare crisis we are facing as a nation," said Liz Porter, Leidos Health Group president. "This system is continuing to provide advanced capabilities to clinicians and providers at a time when they are needed most."

LPDH designed and developed MHS GENESIS, the Military Health System's new electronic health record, and has been providing program management and technical expertise to the Program Executive Office Defense Healthcare Management Systems (PEO DHMS) since 2015.

The MHS GENESIS system is now operational at 1,360 locations with over 92,000 total active users  approximately 50% deployed.

"This latest deployment includes hospitals and clinics in Oklahoma, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, and North Carolina," noted Holly Joers, PEO DHMS. "The team continues to gain efficiencies and improved clinical outcomes with each deployment and is on track to complete nine additional deployments through the end of 2023."

MHS GENESIS is being deployed across the continental United States and overseas through a total of 23 waves. Each Wave will target a specific region over one year, with an average of three hospitals and numerous physical locations for each Wave. This approach enables the DOD to take full advantage of lessons learned from prior Waves to maximize subsequent Waves' efficiencies. Full deployment of MHS GENESIS is expected by the end of calendar year 2023.

About Leidos

Leidos is a Fortune 500 technology, engineering, and science solutions and services leader working to solve the world's toughest challenges in the defense, intelligence, civil, and health markets. The company's 43,000 employees support vital missions for government and commercial customers. Headquartered in Reston, Virginia, Leidos reported annual revenues of approximately $13.7 billion for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2021. For more information, visit www.Leidos.com.

About LPDH

The Leidos Partnership consists of four core partners - Leidos, Cerner Corporation, Accenture and Henry Schein One - along with approximately 30 supporting businesses. Together, they deliver an integrated, modern, secure health information system that includes an electronic health record system, a dental system, identity management capability, Cybersecurity, and other supporting components. MHS GENESIS will serve as the system of record, providing a single, integrated solution for managing the health and military readiness of the force for DOD and the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Certain statements in this announcement constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the rules and regulations of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). These statements are based on management's current beliefs and expectations and are subject to significant risks and uncertainties. These statements are not guarantees of future results or occurrences. A number of factors could cause our actual results, performance, achievements, or industry results to be different from the results, performance, or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. These factors include, but are not limited to, the "Risk Factors" set forth in Leidos' Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2021, and other such filings that Leidos makes with the SEC from time to time. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date hereof. Leidos does not undertake to update forward-looking statements to reflect the impact of circumstances or events that arise after the date the forward-looking statements were made.

Contact:

Melissa Duenas

(571) 526-6850

[email protected]

Thomas Doheny

(571) 474-4735

[email protected]

Brandon VerVelde

(571) 526-6257

[email protected]

SOURCE Leidos
Podcast Guest Michael Paolucci Delves into the Cultural Importance of Exploring Space

VIDEO PODCAST

AUDIO PODCAST

NEW ORLEANS, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- On the new episode of the Let's Talk STEM with Dr. Calvin Mackie podcast, the host talks about the importance of astronomy and exploring space with his special guest Michael Paolucci, founder and CEO of Slooh. The company's gamified education platform teaches students to explore space via a network of 12 online telescopes located on mountaintops in the Canary Islands and Chile.

Paolucci created The Online Telescope, the world's only scalable solution for astronomy education. Slooh makes real-world, real-time space exploration accessible for students by providing access to online telescopes in the classroom that students can personally control and use to capture their own photos. It's a remarkable invention that brings access to space to schools and students, who don't have the resources to obtain it otherwise.

"Our innovation makes it possible for an unlimited number of students to explore space just like professional astronomers," says Paolucci, noting that students in urban settings and under-resourced communities are largely blocked from exploring space because of the high cost of telescopes and the "light pollution" in cities that now encloses 80% of the world's population.

The conversation explains the importance of allowing children to vastly expand their imaginations, to search beyond their immediate environments and enjoy a component of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) that is too often off limits because of their socioeconomic status and geographical location. The Online Telescope is enabling students to explore new worlds as if they were part of the crew on the Star Trek Enterprise or Discovery by becoming the new Guardians of the Galaxy as they follow a game-like learning progression, earning badges and scoring Gravity Points along the way.

"The whole idea of being able to do it on your computer and have it be scalable and not be a solitary experience, but rather a social experience where you're actually looking up at the night sky with everyone from around the world in real time with live views, makes the experience more compelling and very enriching," Paolucci says. "People have the opportunity to exchange ideas with one another while using the platform and really celebrate our commonality, our place here as earthlings, looking up into outer space."

Dr. Mackie adds, "Everybody deserves to have that opportunity. And I think what you are doing with Slooh and bringing space to everyone via computer is definitely beneficial."

Further, Paolucci sees social benefits in providing students with opportunities to expand their comprehension of the universe. "When you get out away from light pollution, you get to see the majesty of the Milky Way, and you feel this deep, fundamental connection as human beings. What is our place in the cosmos? What are we all doing here? And you can't help but be curious about it. A lot of kids growing up in urban environments don't have the wherewithal to travel, to go out to dark mountain tops, and to actually see the night sky every single day. They're really losing that connection as people."

Enjoy the entire enlightening conversation by clicking HERE.

ABOUT STEM GLOBAL ACTION

In 2013, Dr. Calvin Mackie founded STEM NOLA, a New Orleans-based, non-profit committed to expanding STEM education at churches, community centers and schools, particularly in communities of color. His goal is to make STEM education available in ALL communities. In July 2021, Dr. Mackie launched STEM Global Action, a campaign and network of affiliates that pursues STEM education for children, parents and communities across the U.S., and abroad. His initiatives have impacted more than 100,000 students, 20,000 families and 2,150 schools across the U.S., and in five other countries.

Contact:

Michael K. Frisby

[email protected]/202-625-4328

SOURCE SGA
New LG Energy Solution factory for cylindrical batteries to be built with KRW 1.7 trillion investment

investment Construction to begin in the second quarter of 2022, with mass production to start in 2024 with production capacity of 11GWh

SEOUL, South Korea, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- LG Energy Solution (LGES; KRX: 373220) today announced that the company is investing KRW 1.7 trillion for the construction of a new cylindrical battery factory in Queen Creek, Arizona. The newly announced plant will be the first ever cylindrical-type battery manufacturing plant in North America, solely invested by the Korean battery manufacturer.

The construction of this 11GWh capacity site is set to begin in the second quarter of this year, with plans for mass production slated in the second half of 2024. Batteries produced from Arizona plant will be supplied to EV manufacturers including prominent startups and electric tool companies based in North America.

LGES's investment decision comes on the back of growing demand of cylindrical-type batteries in the North American market. New EV startups using cylindrical batteries are on the rise in the region, while demand for applications that use cylindrical-type batteries, such as electric tools, increases in line with the wireless trend.

"With the establishment of our new Arizona plant, LG Energy Solution aims to deliver unparalleled consumer value in the rapidly growing cylindrical battery market," said Youngsoo Kwon, CEO of LG Energy Solution. "LGES will provide the most dependable, competitive and advanced products to rise as the best business partner that our clients value and trust."

The cutting-edge Arizona plant aims to establish LGES's presence in North America cylindrical battery market while actively considering additional production in the future.

The company's brand-new manufacturing facility will utilize a state-of-the-art smart factory system boasting remote support, manufacturing intelligence, logistics automation and more. This one-of-a-kind technology, along with its expertise in the mass production of batteries, will allow LGES to meet consumer demands in a stable manner and secure the company's leadership in the North American battery market.

About LG Energy Solution

LG Energy Solution (KRX: 373220) is a global leader delivering advanced lithium-ion batteries for Electric Vehicles (EV), Mobility & IT applications, and Energy Storage Systems (ESS). With 30 years of experience in advanced battery technology, it continues to grow rapidly towards the realization of sustainable life. With its robust global network that spans the US, Europe, Asia, and Australia, LG Energy Solution is more committed than ever to developing innovative technologies that will bring the future energy a step closer. Under its ESG vision "We CHARGE toward a better future," LG Energy Solution is doing its utmost to prioritize environment, fulfil social responsibilities and shape sustainable future. For more information, please visit https://www.lgensol.com.

SOURCE LG Energy Solution
UDINE, Italy, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Limacorporate S.p.A., leading global orthopedic manufacturer, is proud to introduce L.E.A.R.N. - LimaCorporate's Education and Resource Network. L.E.A.R.N. is a new and unique medical education experience, platform and network supporting surgeons in restoring the eMotion of Motion for their patients. Surgeons will be able to set up their own customized pathway for an improved learning experience according to their personal academic needs and expectations.

Since its foundation, the company has always believed in the power of medical education. Events like SkillsLABs, Surgeon 2 Surgeon meetings, Focus Sessions, Factory Tours where surgeons interact on a one-to-one basis with engineers behind design and manufacturing, and Lima Online Education, have established a strong base to take Medical Education to the next level and to build a network of surgeons that can rely on one another for sharing their experience and know-how.

With the support of a dedicated website and the local teams, surgeons can design their own program, choose virtual or in-person training and establish a new network. L.E.A.R.N. represents a global initiative where surgeons can connect and create their unique educational experience based on their needs.

"We feel that as a company it is our responsibility to favor the creation of a positive environment where surgeons can choose what's best for them and their patients, while also engaging with leading surgeons from around the world to address specific pathologies." said Luigi Ferrari, CEO of LimaCorporate. "Favoring collective intelligence is the only way to move forward in the business and transform orthopedics for better outcomes in patients and restore the eMotion of Motion. Let's L.E.A.R.N. together, let's L.E.A.R.N. from each other."

About LimaCorporate

LimaCorporate is a global orthopedic company, focused on digital innovation and tailored hardware, which advances patient centred care. Its pioneering technological solutions are developed to empower surgeons, and to improve patient outcomes from joint replacement surgery. Its primary focus is on providing reconstructive and custom-made orthopedic solutions to surgeons, enabling them to improve the quality of life of patients by restoring the joy of movement.

Headquartered in Italy, the company operates directly in over 20 countries around the world. LimaCorporate offers products ranging from large joint revision and primary implants, to complete extremities solutions, including fixation.

For additional information on the Company, please visit www.limacorporate.com

t: +39 0432 945511

e.: [email protected]





Contacts:

Stefania Antonutti (Marketing and Communication Manager - +39 366 6163444)

Elena Feresin (Social Media Specialist - +39 377 529 2473)

[email protected]





SOURCE Limacorporate S.p.A.
Funds multiply impact in disaster relief, rebuild efforts, and international services

LOS ANGELES, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Team Rubicon today announced receipt of a seven million dollar donation from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott to support the organization's global humanitarian, disaster relief, and rebuilding initiatives.

Since launching in 2010, Team Rubicon, a veteran-led humanitarian organization, has responded globally to disasters and crises big and small - those that have been in the headlines and those that didn't even make local news. In an effort to bring equity into disaster and humanitarian response, Team Rubicon focuses on three areas of impact: disaster services - from mitigation to immediate response, rebuild services - rebuilding safe and resilient homes, and humanitarian services - providing medical aid and assistance to people around the world.

"We are incredibly grateful to MacKenzie Scott for investing in Team Rubicon's mission," stated Art delaCruz, CEO of Team Rubicon. "As disasters and crises have changed, our response to them must also change. The tragedy in Ukraine, the increase in the severity of tornadoes and hurricanes, and the ongoing pandemic shine a light on the increasingly urgent needs of vulnerable populations. Ms. Scott's donation will have a tremendous impact on our ability to say yes where we are needed most, stay until the job is done, and leave a community stronger than ever."

Trust-based philanthropy empowers organizations to focus gifts in areas where they see the ability to make the greatest impact. This is especially crucial for an organization like Team Rubicon because it provides the resources necessary to rapidly respond whenever and wherever disaster and humanitarian crises occur. With this investment, skilled saw teams and heavy equipment teams can be on the ground working within hours of a storm passing through Louisiana. It will allow volunteers to conduct fire mitigation in wildfire prone areas in Colorado. Medical professionals can travel to meet the needs of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Ukraine. Skilled tradesmen can travel to Selma, AL to rebuild safe and stable homes. Finally, the organization can invest in training its 150,000+ volunteer base to build community resilience across the country.

Team Rubicon's actions and investments are driven by the humanitarian principles in the relentless pursuit of alleviating human suffering. The organization believes in investing in the right places to drive impact in vulnerable communities, being accountable to donors and survivors, collaborating with local partners, and leveraging cutting-edge technology to accomplish the mission.

To donate, visit www.teamrubiconusa.org.

About Team Rubicon

Team Rubicon serves communities by mobilizing veterans to continue their service by leveraging their skills and experience to help people prepare, respond, and recover from disasters and humanitarian crises. Founded following the Haiti earthquake in 2010, the organization has grown to over 150,000 volunteers across the United States and has launched over 1,000 operations both domestically and internationally. Amidst the COVID-19 outbreak, Team Rubicon has not only pivoted to be able to continue to deliver disaster response and rebuild services in core mission areas but has also expanded their scope of missions to meet community needs brought about by COVID. Visit www.teamrubiconusa.org for more information. Visit www.teamrubiconusa.org for more information.

Contact:

Melanie Klausner

[email protected]

SOURCE Team Rubicon
Innovative new partnership will provide nursing coverage and flexibility to help schools care for students

AUGUSTA, Maine, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The Maine Department of Education, Maine Department of Health and Human Services, and Avel eCare have partnered to deliver telehealth nursing services to school districts throughout the state, enabling access to nursing services in communities that are struggling with staffing and workload pressures caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the nationwide school nursing shortage.

To expand these school nursing services, the state of Maine used a portion of its COVID-19 federal relief funding to pilot a program with Avel eCare. The eCare School Health program, which has been an Avel service line since 2015, delivers school nurse services virtually via a secure, two-way video mobile unit. The service is being offered at no cost to schools.

"Our school nurses have been on the frontlines throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, caring for students and providing critical support to keep students, staff and schools safe. They are absolute heroes," said Education Commissioner Pender Makin. "We also know they are exhausted and stretched so thin and that many schools have not been able to find the experienced school nurse staff they need. This partnership with Avel eCare, made possible with federal funds, offers additional nursing support to help fill shortages in our schools and expand the care we provide to our students."

"We're pleased to partner on this important effort to provide telehealth school nursing services to Maine schools as part of strengthening Maine's school-based health programs," said Health and Human Services Commissioner Jeanne Lambrew. "This model bridges gaps in school nursing coverage, helps schools maintain safe and healthy environments, and reduces barriers to learning by providing effective preventive care. School nurses have been invaluable during the COVID-19 pandemic and are a trusted resource for their students, school staffs, and communities."

According to a recent U.S. CDC report, school nurses help students improve their academic outcomes and can also make a significant impact on the broader community. For example, every dollar invested into school nursing program results in society saving $2.20 because of a reduction in emergency room visits and parents taking time off of work to care for their sick children.

"Even before the pandemic, the lives of school nurses were busy. Now, their jobs have expanded to include public health, and that work is too simply too big to do alone. We're thankful to have the support of Avel eCare to help our nurse provide the daily health services that our children need," said Tara McKechnie, Principal at Deer Isle-Stonington Elementary School in Maine, which was among the first schools to implement the virtual school nurse program.

The program is currently accepting applications, and eligible schools are urged to apply today to take advantage of the available grant funding. K-12 schools, once they fill out an online application, will then receive direct support from the eCare School Health team, at no cost to schools, until June 2023.

CONTACT:

Maine Department of Education Communications Director Marcus Mrowka at

[email protected]

Maine Department of Health and Human Services Communications Director Jackie Farwell at

[email protected]

Avel eCare

[email protected]

SOURCE Avel eCare
CHATHAM, N.J. , March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Mallika Murali, DDS is being recognized by Continental Who's Who as a Top Pinnacle Dentist for her impressive career in the dental field and her exceptional contributions to the Chatham Center for Cosmetic and Family Dentistry.

Dr. Malika Murali is an experienced dentist with four years of demonstrated knowledge in caring for her patients' dental needs. She came to love dentistry after an accident in college caused her to break her front tooth and was mentored by the doctor who treated her shortly after. Since then, she has been highly committed to providing quality work and service at her private practice.

Located in Chatham, NJ, Chatham Center for Cosmetic and Family Dentistry offers Esthetic and Functional Crowns, Porcelain Crowns, Veneers, Full/Partial Dentures, and more. Dr. Murali and her expert professional team strive to keep their patients well informed on their dental health with each visit and ensure that they have a peaceful dental experience.

To achieve her education, Dr. Murali completed her undergraduate degree from George Washington University and earned her Doctor of Dental Surgery degree at New York University College of Dentistry. She also completed her Master's degree in Biomedical Sciences from The University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. In pursuit of her love of dentistry and serving others, Dr. Murali received additional training at the Montefiore Medical Center before working in private practice.

To remain abreast of the latest industry advancements, Dr. Murali is a member of the New Jersey Dental Association and the American Dental Association.

On a personal note, Dr. Murali enjoys dancing and singing in her spare time. She and her husband also enjoy cooking meals and spending time outdoors.

To read more about Dr.Murali, please visit https://www.chathamdentist.com/our-practice/meet-the-team/.

SOURCE Continental Who's Who
CLEVELAND, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Thomas Lampman has joined the Cleveland office of McDonald Hopkins as an associate in the Litigation Department, adding his experience to the firm's Commercial Litigation team.

Lampman focuses his practice on commercial litigation and general litigation matters, with specific experience when it comes to state/federal appellate litigation, administrative law, environmental law, and election law. Lampman's litigation experience stems from serving as Assistant Attorney General and Assistant Solicitor General for the Office of the West Virginia Attorney General prior to joining McDonald Hopkins. In addition to litigating a wide variety of matters, he provides strategic guidance to clients, having advised numerous heads of state agencies. He also has experience organizing and advising multi-state coalitions on federal regulatory and litigation issues.

Lampman earned his J.D. from The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law and his Master of Arts from The Ohio State University John Glenn College of Public Affairs. He earned his Bachelor of Arts, cum laude, from John Carroll University

He can be reached at 216.348.5744 and [email protected].

About McDonald Hopkins

Founded in 1930, McDonald Hopkins is a business advisory and advocacy law firm with locations in Chicago, Cleveland, Columbus, Detroit, and West Palm Beach. With more than 50 service and industry teams, the firm has the expertise and knowledge to meet the growing number of legal and business challenges our clients face. For more information about McDonald Hopkins, visit mcdonaldhopkins.com .

SOURCE McDonald Hopkins
LONDON, March 22 (Xinhua) -- As Britain moved to lift all COVID-19 restrictive measures, vulnerable communities in Britain feel that relaxing restrictions this much will cost even more lives.

Helena Briggs, in her 50s, told Xinhua that she was very concerned.

"It's so bad that restrictions have been lifted and it makes me so nervous to go out. I have a disability so I can catch the virus quicker than anyone else. I think that people are being selfish so the masks should be kept," she said.

Last month, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced the end of all domestic COVID-19 restrictions in England. British Travel Secretary Grant Shapps recently announced all COVID-19 travel restrictions are to be removed, prompting further concern regarding transmission of the virus from overseas.

More than 91 percent of people aged 12 and above in Britain have had their first dose of vaccine, more than 85 percent have received both shots and more than 67 percent have received booster jabs.

But these measures have not been reassuring for people like Briggs. It is estimated there is up to 3.7 million people who are classed as clinically extremely vulnerable in Britain.

"I have always been cautious about leaving my home and have had very little contact with the outside world. My shopping is delivered, and I only leave my house to take the bin out. Now the government have lifted all restrictions many of us feel helpless," Briggs told Xinhua.

"Even with the vaccine cases are still going to increase if we continue to allow tourists into the country without passenger locator forms or testing/quarantine requirements. It is a let-down considering the progress this country has made," she said.

Official figures on Tuesday showed Britain added 592,459 COVID-19 cases and 836 deaths over the last seven days. Britain has so far reported 20,413,731 cases with 163,929 deaths. 
VIDALIA, Ga., March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- McLain Farms, was named the 2021 "Grower of the Year" and long-time Director of Markets for the Georgia Department of Agriculture Bob Meyer, was inducted into the Vidalia Onion Hall of Fame during the Vidalia Onion Committee 2021 awards banquet.

"Our congratulations to McLain Farms and Bob Meyer on being selected to receive our industry's top honors," said Bob Stafford, Manager of the Vidalia Onion Committee. "We enjoyed one of our strongest seasons in 2021, and we are looking forward to a good harvest this year."

McLain Farms is certainly no stranger to this award. They received this award in 2014 as well as 2018. McLain Farms is very proud to be part of ensuring the future of this specialized industry for the next generation. Maintaining the integrity of this industry by providing a quality onion is the goal that McLain Farms strives for every day.

The McLain brothers were both extremely humbled about receiving the award for 2021 Grower of the Year. Brett expressed his thanks to everyone involved and stated, "It's truly an honor." He wanted special recognition to his wife, Kim, who's been serving this farm and family for over 30 years. Brett also expressed the importance of his farm managers, Casey, and Lee, who work tirelessly day in and day out.

Rusty expressed his gratitude to his shed manager, Chris, along with all supervisors and staff. Lastly, he thanked his wife, Jess, for her dedication to him and this farm. He says, "We couldn't do this without each one on this team, from seeds to shipping, everyone plays a vital part of this operation and I feel like we have the best team out there! Blessed is an understatement."

Bob Meyer was presented the award which honors a person who has significantly and positively impacted the Vidalia Onion Industry.

Upon receiving this award, Meyer commented on the honor. "It is a very humbling and surprising that I am here receiving this award today. I have seen from the inside out what you all have done with this industry, and I don't know if you realize, but you have one of the most unique products in the world. I don't think there is another state or Department of Agriculture in the country that enforces trademark laws and protects its product like the state of Georgia does your product."

About the Vidalia Onion Committee

Because Vidalia onions are sweetly unique, farmers united to seek legal protection for their crop and its name. Federal Marketing Order No. 955 was established in 1989, to stipulate where the crop can be grown and help with research and promotion of Vidalia onions. The Vidalia Onion Committee administers FMO No.955 and authorizes production research, marketing research and development and marketing promotion programs. This federal program along with Georgia state laws that protect the Vidalia trademark have provided a legal framework for the industry. So, you can try to grow a sweet onion elsewhere, but you cannot call it a "Vidalia," unless it is from Georgia! For more information, visit VidaliaOnion.org.

For more information contact:

Bob Stafford

912-537-1918

[email protected]

SOURCE Vidalia Onion Committee
WINNIPEG, MB, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ - Medicure Inc. ("Medicure" or the "Company") (TSXV: MPH) (OTC: MCUJF), a company focused on the development and commercialization of pharmaceuticals and healthcare products for patients and prescribers in the United States market, today reported that Chief Financial Officer David Gurvey (CPA, CMA, B.Sc.) is resigning, effective March 25, 2022.

Albert D. Friesen, PhD, CEO and Chair of the Board of Directors, stated, "On behalf of everyone at Medicure and our Board of Directors, we thank David for his contributions to our Company and we wish him well in his future endeavors."

The Company has initiated a search for a new Chief Financial Officer with the capabilities and qualifications to accelerate Medicure's growth and business strategy. Dr. Neil Owens, Chief Operating Officer of the Company, will assume the role of interim Chief Financial Officer upon Mr. Gurvey's resignation.

About Medicure Inc.

Medicure is a pharmaceutical company focused on the development and commercialization of innovative and affordable therapeutics for the U.S. market. Medicure's sales force markets to physicians and other healthcare professionals and now with E-Commerce integration, will be offering patients and providers direct online ordering and home delivery. Our vision is to become a leading pharmaceutical company within the U.S, offering a growing portfolio of products that improve patients' lives. The present focus of the Company is the marketing and distribution of AGGRASTAT (tirofiban hydrochloride) injection and ZYPITAMAG (pitavastatin) tablets in the United States, where they are sold through the Company's U.S. subsidiary, Medicure Pharma Inc. Medicure also operates Marley Drug, Inc. ("Marley Drug"), a pharmacy located in North Carolina that offers an Extended Supply drug program serving all 50 states, Washington D.C. and most territories, including Puerto Rico. Marley Drug is committed to improving the health status of its patients and the communities they serve while reducing overall health care costs for employers and other health care consumers. For more information visit www.marleydrug.com. To learn more about The Extended Supply Generic Drug Program call 800.286.6781 or e-mail [email protected]. For more information on Medicure please visit https://www.medicure.com/. For additional information about AGGRASTAT, refer to the full Prescribing Information. For additional information about ZYPITAMAG, refer to the full Prescribing Information.

To be added to Medicure's e-mail list, please visit:

http://medicure.mediaroom.com/alerts

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Forward Looking Information: Statements contained in this press release that are not statements of historical fact, including, without limitation, statements containing the words "believes", "may", "plans", "will", "estimates", "continues", "anticipates", "intends", "expects" and similar expressions, may constitute "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian and U.S. federal securities laws (such forward-looking information and forward-looking statements are hereinafter collectively referred to as "forward-looking statements"). Forward-looking statements, include estimates, analysis and opinions of management of the Company made in light of its experience and its perception of trends, current conditions and expected developments, as well as other factors which the Company believes to be relevant and reasonable in the circumstances. Inherent in forward-looking statements are known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors beyond the Company's ability to predict or control that may cause the actual results, events or developments to be materially different from any future results, events or developments expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements, and as such, readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Such risk factors include, among others, the Company's future product revenues, expected results, including future revenue from P5P, the likelihood of receiving a PRV, expected future growth in revenues, stage of development, additional capital requirements, risks associated with the completion and timing of clinical trials and obtaining regulatory approval to market the Company's products, the ability to protect its intellectual property, dependence upon collaborative partners, changes in government regulation or regulatory approval processes, and rapid technological change in the industry. Such statements are based on a number of assumptions which may prove to be incorrect, including, but not limited to, assumptions about: general business and economic conditions; the impact of changes in Canadian-US dollar and other foreign exchange rates on the Company's revenues, costs and results; the timing of the receipt of regulatory and governmental approvals for the Company's research and development projects; the availability of financing for the Company's commercial operations and/or research and development projects, or the availability of financing on reasonable terms; results of current and future clinical trials; the uncertainties associated with the acceptance and demand for new products and market competition. The foregoing list of important factors and assumptions is not exhaustive. The Company undertakes no obligation to update publicly or otherwise revise any forward-looking statements or the foregoing list of factors, other than as may be required by applicable legislation. Additional discussion regarding the risks and uncertainties relating to the Company and its business can be found in the Company's other filings with the applicable Canadian securities regulatory authorities or the US Securities and Exchange Commission, and in the "Risk Factors" section of its Form 20F for the year ended December 31, 2020.

SOURCE Medicure Inc.
WASHINGTON, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- MedStar Washington Hospital Center has achieved Pathway to Excellence redesignation from the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC). The coveted national designation recognizes hospitals committed to creating a positive nursing practice environment where nurses can flourish and feel empowered. The designation identifies MedStar Washington Hospital Center as a best place for nurses to work and thrive. MedStar Washington remains the only acute care hospital in the nation's capital with the Pathway designation.

"This was a huge accomplishment, particularly since all the preparation and documentation for the designation took place during the COVID-19 pandemic," said Tonya Washington, MSN, RN, chief nursing officer at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. "Despite the obstacles, our nurses went the extra mile to show their commitment to maintaining their Pathway practice focused on safety, quality, wellbeing, professional development, shared governance, and leadership. We could not be more grateful to each one of our extraordinary nurses who helped attain this prestigious achievement."

To earn the Pathway to Excellence distinction, each organization undergoes a thorough review process and be able to demonstrate the integration of the facility's practices, policies, and culture. Nurses then validate whether their organization meets the Pathway practice through the completion of a survey.

In 2016, MedStar Washington Hospital Center made a commitment to create a nursing culture of sustained excellence. It embarked on a journey to nursing excellence and a positive practice environment using the ANCC Pathway to Excellence framework. In 2017, MedStar Washington achieved its first Pathway to Excellence designation and immediately went on sustaining the Pathway culture thereafter.

The 2022 redesignation for MedStar Washington Hospital Center will remain in effect until 2026. Only 205 hospitals in the United States are currently Pathway designated.

MedStar Washington Hospital Center is a not-for-profit, 912-bed, teaching and research hospital in the nation's capital, and is a major referral center for treating the region's most complex cases. Its cardiology program is highly acclaimed, and its cardiac surgery program has consistently earned the highest national ratingthree starsfrom the Society of Thoracic Surgeons. MedStar Washington operates the region's first Comprehensive Stroke Center and the District's only Cardiac Ventricular Assist Device program, both certified by The Joint Commission. The hospital is also home to MedSTAR, a nationally verified level I trauma center with a state-of-the-art fleet of helicopters and ambulances, and also operates the region's only adult Burn Center.

SOURCE MedStar Health
New Contract to Bring Company's Track-and-Trace System to Support the Regulation of the State's Medical Cannabis Market

LAKELAND, Fla., March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Metrc , the most trusted and experienced provider of cannabis regulatory systems in the U.S., announced its new contract with the state of South Dakota to support the regulation of the state's medical cannabis market. This marks Metrc's 20th government contract to date nationwide for the implementation of its cannabis track-and-trace systems.

Metrc's robust track-and-trace platform will help facilitate the South Dakota medical cannabis program's data collection and regulatory oversight, enabling licensed operators to easily track all activities impacting the status of a plant or the creation of cannabis-based products. When plants are harvested and packaged or combined with other plants in the production of oils, edibles, concentrates, and other CPG cannabis products, the origin, testing results, handling and chain-of-custody information will be conveniently visible and traceable through Metrc's proprietary RFID tag model. This information is accessible to state regulators as well as operators to provide the ultimate transparency and safeguard the health and well-being of South Dakota medical marijuana patients.

"As South Dakota continues to ramp up their recently implemented medical cannabis market, we are thrilled to have the opportunity to spearhead the state's first-ever track-and-trace program," said Jeff Wells, CEO of Metrc. "Our team at Metrc is looking forward to working closely with the Departments of Health and Revenue, state regulators, and licensed operators to implement a strong regulatory framework that will effectively guide South Dakota's newly emerging medical market down the path to success."

Metrc now holds exclusive government contracts in every region of the United States, including Alaska, California, and Washington, D.C. While these areas may have diverse regulatory frameworks, each jurisdiction shares the common goal of ensuring a safe legal cannabis market. Metrc continues to be the favored partner of regulators and businesses in serving their unique needs and goals.

About Metrc

Metrc is the most trusted and experienced provider of cannabis regulatory systems in the United States. Our solution combines advanced software, radio-frequency identification (RFID), a dedicated customer-support team, and a secure database to track cannabis from growth, harvest, and processing to testing, transport, and sale. Metrc is engaged in 20 government contracts and serves more than 250,000 users, including growers, testing facilities, dispensaries, state regulators, and law enforcement officials. We are proud to play a leading role in ensuring the safety and security of the nation's legal cannabis market.

Media Contact:

Justin Bernstein

Mattio Communications

[email protected]

SOURCE Metrc
We are thrilled to expand our reach in California, a core state since our organization's inception decades ago. Tweet this

Mindpath Health has a deep expertise in providing telemedicine and in-person care; its providers form close working relationships with primary care physicians to ensure patients receive high quality coordinated care. With a focus on clinical excellence, providers can offer patients a range of treatments and modalities, including psychiatry, medication management, psychotherapy/counseling, family therapy/counseling, relationship/marital counseling, group therapy, psychological testing, and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) therapy.

"We are thrilled to expand our reach in California, a core state since our organization's inception decades ago," said Christopher Brengard, CEO of Mindpath Health. "With the acquisition of respected mental health leader Psychiatric Centers, we are now able to increase access to care in greater San Diego communities, allowing them to thrive. We also look forward to further empowering and investing in our incredible roster of top-quality clinicians in the region."

The Psychiatric Centers acquisition comes on the heels of MindPath Care Centers and Community Psychiatry uniting under the new brand and name Mindpath Health. Since its inception more than 20 years ago, the organization has continually delivered on its mission to increase access to high-quality, in-network mental health care by creating cooperative relationships with patients, physicians, hospitals, and insurance providers.

About Mindpath Health

Mindpath Health is a leading, independent U.S. provider of high-quality outpatient behavioral health services that blends human connection with science-based care, to help guide people on their mental health journey and uplift the communities around them. With a team of more than 650 mental health clinicians, Mindpath Health provides a broad spectrum of psychiatry, including psychotherapy and TMS to more than 97,400 patients annually. We offer telehealth and in-person visits and coordinate care with primary care physicians and referring providers to ensure a focus on the total health. Mindpath Health is in-network with most major health insurance providers and has more than 90 locations across California, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Texas, Ohio, Arizona and growing. Please visit mindpath.com to learn more.

All trademarks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.

SOURCE Mindpath Health
VANCOUVER, BC., March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ - Deep-South Resources Inc. ("Deep-South" or "the Company") (TSXV: DSM) reports that at the hearing held on March 22, 2022, the judge has ordered the legal counsel of the Ministry of Mines and Energy of Namibia ("Ministry") to file its defense affidavit at the latest on April 22, 2022. Deep-South attorneys will have until May 13, 2022 to file their reply to the defense of the Ministry.

The judge has also drawn the attention of the parties to the Part 6 of the Rules of High Court. Part 6 deals with sanctions for failure to comply with the rules, directions or court orders. Sanctions could be applied for failure to respect delays or undue request of extensions.

The Court will hold another hearing on May 18, 2022, to define the further procedures with regards to the review of the decision of the Minister to deny the renewal of the exploration license Haib Copper EPL 3140.

The Company will provide regular updates in this regard and any other matter concerning this situation.

About Deep-South Resources Inc

Deep-South Resources is a mineral exploration and development company Deep-South growth strategy is to focus on the exploration and development of quality assets in significant mineralized trends and in proximity to infrastructure in stable countries. In using and assessing environmentally friendly technologies in the development of its copper project, Deep-South embraces the green revolution.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Caution Regarding Forward-Looking Information

Information contained in this news release which are not statements of historical facts may be "forward-looking information" for the purposes of Canadian securities laws. Such forward-looking information involves risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results, performance, prospects and opportunities to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward looking information. The words "believe", "expect", "anticipate", "contemplate", "plan", "intends", "continue", "budget", "estimate", "may", "will", "schedule", "understand" and similar expressions identify forward-looking information. These forward-looking statements relate to, among other things: the Minister's refusal to renew the Company's Licence, the Company's intention to contest the Minister's decision before the Courts of Namibia and the outcome of such proceedings.

Forward-looking information is necessarily based upon a number of estimates and assumptions that, while considered reasonable by Deep-South, are inherently subject to significant technical, political, business, economic and competitive uncertainties and contingencies. Known and unknown factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking information. Factors and assumptions that could cause actual results or events to differ materially from current expectations include, among other things: political risks associated with the Company's operations in Namibia; the failure of the Namibian Government to comply with its continuing obligations under the Act to allow for the renewal of the Licence; the impact of changes in, or to the more aggressive enforcement of, laws, regulations and government practices; the inability of the Company and its subsidiaries to enforce their legal rights in certain circumstances. For additional risk factors, please see the Company's most recently filed Management Discussions & Analysis available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

There can be no assurances that forward-looking information and statements will prove to be accurate, as many factors and future events, both known and unknown could cause actual results, performance or achievements to vary or differ materially from the results, performance or achievements that are or may be expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements contained herein or incorporated by reference. Accordingly, all such factors should be considered carefully when making decisions with respect to Deep-South, and prospective investors should not place undue reliance on forward looking information. Forward-looking information in this news release is made as at the date hereof. The Company assumes no obligation to update or revise forward-looking information to reflect changes in assumptions, changes in circumstances or any other events affecting such forward-looking information, except as required by applicable law.

SOURCE Deep-South Resources Inc.
WASHINGTON, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- As NASA makes strides to return humans to the lunar surface under Artemis, the agency announced plans Wednesday to create additional opportunities for commercial companies to develop an astronaut Moon lander.

Under this new approach, NASA is asking American companies to propose lander concepts capable of ferrying astronauts between lunar orbit and the lunar surface for missions beyond Artemis III, which will land the first astronauts on the Moon in more than 50 years.

Built and operated according to NASA's long-term requirements at the Moon, new landers will have the capability to dock to a lunar orbiting space station known as Gateway, increase crew capacity, and transport more science and technology to the surface.

"Under Artemis, NASA will carry out a series of groundbreaking missions on and around the Moon to prepare for the next giant leap for humanity: a crewed mission to Mars," said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. "Competition is critical to our success on the lunar surface and beyond, ensuring we have the capability to carry out a cadence of missions over the next decade. Thank you to the Biden Administration and Congress for their support of this new astronaut lander opportunity, which will ultimately strengthen and increase flexibility for Artemis."

NASA's plans call for long-term lunar exploration and include landing the first woman and first person of color on the Moon as part of future Artemis missions. The agency is pursuing two parallel paths for continuing lunar lander development and demonstration, one that calls for additional work under an existing contract with SpaceX, and another open to all other U.S. companies to provide a new landing demonstration mission from lunar orbit to the surface of the Moon.

In April 2021, NASA selected SpaceX as its partner to land the next American astronauts on the lunar surface. That demonstration mission is targeted for no earlier than April 2025. Exercising an option under the original award, NASA now is asking SpaceX to transform the company's proposed human landing system into a spacecraft that meets the agency's requirements for recurring services for a second demonstration mission. Pursuing more development work under the original contract maximizes NASA's investment and partnership with SpaceX.

To bring a second entrant to market for the development of a lunar lander in parallel with SpaceX, NASA will issue a draft solicitation in the coming weeks. This upcoming activity will lay out requirements for a future development and demonstration lunar landing capability to take astronauts between orbit and the surface of the Moon. This effort is meant to maximize NASA's support for competition and provides redundancy in services to help ensure NASA's ability to transport astronauts to the lunar surface.

This upcoming second contract award, known as the Sustaining Lunar Development contract, combined with the second option under SpaceX's original landing award, will pave the way to future recurring lunar transportation services for astronauts at the Moon.

"This strategy expedites progress toward a long-term, sustaining lander capability as early as the 2026 or 2027 timeframe," said Lisa Watson-Morgan, program manager for the Human Landing System Program at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. "We expect to have two companies safely carry astronauts in their landers to the surface of the Moon under NASA's guidance before we ask for services, which could result in multiple experienced providers in the market."

After the new draft solicitation is published, NASA will host a virtual industry day. Once comments and questions from the draft solicitation process have been reviewed, the agency plans by to issue the formal request for proposals this summer.

Astronaut Moon landers are a vital part of NASA's deep space exploration plans, along with the Space Launch System rocket, Orion spacecraft, ground systems, and Gateway. NASA is committed to using a commercial astronaut lunar lander to carry the astronauts to the surface of the Moon, expanding exploration and preparing humanity for the next giant leap, human exploration of Mars.

For more information about this procurement, visit:

https://go.nasa.gov/3twqf6g

SOURCE NASA
WASHINGTON, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- NASA will host a media teleconference Friday, March 25, following the agency's flight readiness review for the Axiom Mission 1 (Ax-1), the first private astronaut mission to the International Space Station.

This media briefing will focus on the readiness of the Ax-1 flight to visit the space station, including arrival, docking, in-orbit, and undocking operations at the orbital complex.

The briefing time, currently scheduled at 6 p.m. EDT or one-hour after the review ends, will be updated on NASA's space station blog at the completion of the meeting.

Briefing participants include:

Kathryn Lueders , associate administrator, NASA's Space Operations Mission Directorate

, associate administrator, NASA's Space Operations Mission Directorate Dana Weigel , deputy manager, NASA's International Space Station Program

, deputy manager, NASA's International Space Station Program Angela Hart , program manager, NASA's Commercial Low-Earth Orbit Program

, program manager, NASA's Commercial Low-Earth Orbit Program Michael Suffredini , president and CEO, Axiom Space

, president and CEO, Axiom Space Derek Hassmann , operations director, Axiom Space

, operations director, Axiom Space William Gerstenmaier , vice president, Build and Flight Reliability, SpaceX

This event is a teleconference only, and media must register to participate in this briefing. For the call-in details, please contact NASA's Johnson Space Center newsroom at: 281-483-5111 or [email protected] no later than noon Friday, March 25.

Ax-1 launch is targeted for no earlier than Sunday, April 3, from Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, pending range availability.

The Ax-1 crew members, Commander Michael Lopez-Alegria of Spain and the United States, Pilot Larry Connor of the United States, and Mission Specialists Eytan Stibbe of Israel and Mark Pathy of Canada, will travel to the space station on the SpaceX Dragon Endeavour spacecraft after launching on the company's Falcon 9 rocket.

During the 10-day mission, the crew will spend eight days aboard the International Space Station conducting scientific research, outreach, and commercial activities.

For more information about NASA's low-Earth orbit commercialization activities, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/leo-economy/

SOURCE NASA
ALBANY, N.Y., March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic schools across the nation have offered meals to students at no cost, ensuring they have access to a healthy breakfast and lunch each school day, even when remote learning was in place. However, federal waivers that gave schools the ability to do so are set to expire in June and the federal government has failed to extend the waivers or provide additional funding. With the issue left to states to remedy  at least on a temporary basis  the New York School Nutrition Association has launched a comprehensive statewide campaign to urge state legislators and Gov. Kathy Hochul to include the Healthy School Meals for All proposal in the FY2023 state budget. More than 300 state education associations, anti-hunger groups, child nutrition advocates, and school districts have joined NYSNA in the fight to continue providing free meals to students.

The members of this group will be reaching out to their members and constituents to increase grassroots pressure on their elected officials, including Gov. Hochul, to address this critical issue. "We are confident that this diverse statewide coalition will be able to activate the tens of thousands of New Yorkers in their networks to raise the visibility of this need and how important it is not to take a step back," said Jennifer Martin, executive director NYSNA.

School meals are among the most effective anti-hunger programs and are proven to reduce food insecurity; improve mental and physical health; support students' ability to thrive academically; and bolster education, health, and economic equity. In schools with universal meals, students had improved results on standardized tests, attention and learning retainment, and overall tardiness. Participation in school nutrition programs also have been shown to result in decreased rates of mental illness, depression, disruptive behavior, and obesity, and improved rates of overall behavioral health. Free meals for all also reduce stigmas related to free or reduced-price meals.

"In a hunger-free school, kids come through their lunchroom doors as equals, with everyone entitled to the same meal and no one needing to provide that they are paid up or sufficiently poor to eat for free," said Martin.

"We cannot go back to an inequitable, inefficient, and stigmatizing tiered eligibilty system that leaves many behind," said NYSNA Board President Donna Riviello of the Clyde-Savannah Central School District in Wayne County. "To allow this benefit to expire in the wake of the pandemic, when families and communities are struggling to recover, will have disastrous consequences on our school communities, creating a hunger cliff for the estimated one in five New York kids experiencing food insecurity."

Advocates for Healthy School Meals for All are calling for the establishment and funding of a permanent, statewide program to ensure students have access to a healthy breakfast and lunch each school day. In addition to all the health and academic benefits, the investment would help schools by eliminating school meal debt, which is a major burden on school district finances and staff time; streamlining administration of school meal programs so the focus can be placed on serving nutritious meals; and improving school nutrition finances as increased participation allows schools to benefit from economies of scale.

"We bus children to school, we provide them with technology to learn; nutrition is another important factor in their success," said Martin. "We need to ensure that our students are ready to learn by providing them with free nutritious meals. Not doing so is a real disservice to our children."

NYS Senator Michelle Hinchey said, "For thousands of children in New York State, the meals they receive at school are the only meals they will receive that day. Our young people learn better when they can focus on their lessons instead of the hunger in their bellies, and our young people are successful when they are fueled by healthy food. It is incumbent upon us as a state  especially as a leading agricultural state  to fund universal school meals so that every student, whether they live in a rural town or in a city center, has access to free, nutritious, and locally sourced food while they are in school. Healthy school meals are an investment in the development of our young people, in the future of New York agriculture, and set the stage for a shift toward expanding real food access in communities statewide. As chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee, I will continue to fight for the inclusion of this critical funding in the final budget."

"In June, 2,000 schools and 800,000 students will lose access to healthy school meals across our state and in districts that were in high need before the COVID-19 pandemic and now find themselves in greater need of resources. Not feeding children is a policy choice if we do not invest in sustaining this program in our state budget. California and Maine have done this, and now we need New York State to do so. We urge our legislature and Governor to fund universal school meals for all students in our FY 23 Enacted State Budget because no child should ever have to go hungry," said Assembly Member Jessica Gonzalez-Rojas.

Assemblyman Fred Thiele said, "The USDA-supported School Meal Program has been nothing short of a lifeline for children and families facing food insecurity in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, and as the program's expiration date looms closer, New York must act to ensure no child goes without a reliable source of nutrition. I strongly urge my colleagues in government to include Universal School Meals in the enacted budget and support the health and growth of our kids. "

"Every school in this state should offer healthy school meals at no cost for their students  regardless of income," said Assembly Member Harry Bronson. "Our students deserve equal access to a nutritious breakfast and lunch at school to support their health and well-being. There is a direct link between academic performance and healthy school meals. The future of New York State is our children and we must do everything we can to ensure our education system is one that promotes equity in our schools. I will continue to fight for the dignity and opportunity of every student in this state."

"As a lifelong educator, principal, and board of education president in the Yonkers Public Schools, I know firsthand the importance of a well-nourished child," said Assembly Member Nader Sayegh. "Providing no-charge breakfast and lunch means all of our students are ready to learn. That thousands of New York school children would go without breakfast and lunch is unacceptable and I strongly support funding Healthy School Meals for All."

"Every student deserves access to a free and nutritious meal during school hours regardless of their family's income," said Assembly Members Demond Meeks. "Free and quality meals for all children promote a more equitable learning environment. By providing nutrition to young minds, we also reduce the severe impacts of poverty, illness, and hunger within our community. It is essential now more than ever that we support our students with every resource possible. This is why we must expand access to school meals by providing Healthy School Meals for All in New York State."

About the New York School Nutrition Association:

The New York School Nutrition Association is a cohesive group of school nutrition employees, managers, directors, registered dietitians, nutritionists, and industry members in New York State committed to ensuring that all students have access to healthy meals. NYSNA provides information, services, and continuing education to school nutrition and food service professionals in New York State. For more information: https://www.nyschoolnutrition.org/

SOURCE New York School Nutrition Association
New report by independent research and advisory firm identifies Nintex as a market leading software provider of advanced Digital Transaction Management (DTM) solutions

BELLEVUE, Wash., March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Nintex, the global standard for process intelligence and automation, today announced it has been named a leader in The Aragon Research Globe for Digital Transaction Management, 2022 based on a review of 20 major providers in the market by the independent research and advisory firm.

To download the report, visit https://www.nintex.com/resources/the-aragon-research-globe-for-digital-transaction-management-2022/

In the report, Aragon recognizes the increasingly important role of digital transaction management in helping enterprises successfully navigate the COVID era. With many employees still working remotely, the firm says, "Paperless transactions are the way that business gets done, and DTM providers have been a key reason for enterprise success during this time."

"Meeting the digital demands of customers and employees to transform the way people work is just as critical today as it was at the start of the pandemic," said Nintex CEO Eric Johnson. "Nintex is honored to be named a Leader for the second consecutive year, and our ongoing commitment is to help the global Nintex community of customers and partners turn paper-based and repetitive processes into fully digital experiences with our easy-to-use, intelligent automation platform."

Within the report, Aragon Research examines the complete capabilities of the Nintex Process Platform to eliminate paper and automate end-to-end processes. With Nintex's acquisition of DTM market leader AssureSign in June 2021now integrated into next-generation Nintex Workflow Cloud and leveraging advanced document automation capabilities in Nintex Drawloop DocGen for Salesforcecustomers can automate the assembly and digital distribution of documents across various industries and use cases.

"As a leader in The Aragon Research Globe for Digital Transaction Management 2022, Nintex is well positioned to sustain its growth trajectory," said Aragon Research Lead Analyst, Jim Lundy. "Now with nearly $300 million in annual revenue, Nintex continues to add solutions and capabilities into its suite of process intelligence and automation tools that Center of Excellence (COE) groups need to consider."

Nintex's most recent acquisition in February 2022 of process discovery innovator and RPA leader Kryon will further Nintex's position in the intelligent process automation market and as the process system of record for commercial enterprises and government agencies.

Industry leaders like Zoom, AstraZeneca, and Coca-Cola Beverages Florida, LLC, as well as government agencies and municipalities like the City and County of Denver and the City of Garland, Texas, all report significant results and customer/stakeholder satisfaction leveraging Nintex to easily manage, automate and optimize simple to complex business processes and workflows.

To re-imagine your own business processes and put automation to work - from workflow to document or robotic process automation (RPA) - within your organization, request a Nintex demo at www.nintex.com/request-demo.

Media Contact

Laetitia Smith

Nintex

[email protected]

+64 21 154 7114

About Nintex

Nintex is the global standard for process intelligence and automation. Today more than 10,000 public and private sector organizations across 90 countries turn to the Nintex Process Platform to accelerate progress on their digital transformation journeys by quickly and easily managing, automating and optimizing business processes. Learn more by visiting www.nintex.com and experience how Nintex and its global partner network are shaping the future of Intelligent Process Automation (IPA).

Product or service names mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

Aragon Disclaimer

Aragon Research does not endorse vendors, or their products or services that are referenced in its research publications, and does not advise users to select those vendors that are rated the highest. Aragon Research publications consist of the opinions of Aragon Research and Advisory Services organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Aragon Research provides its research publications and the information contained in them "AS IS," without warranty of any kind.

SOURCE Nintex
MOSCOW, March 23 (Xinhua) -- The Pentagon's interest in biological laboratories in the former Soviet republics requires clarification, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday.

"U.S. biological laboratories are all over the world and we are most concerned about the presence of these laboratories and the continued creation of new ones in the former Soviet republics," Lavrov said during a meeting with students and teachers of Russia's MGIMO University.

"The fact that the Pentagon expressed interest in the former Soviet laboratories, with the aim of modernizing them and creating new facilities, needs to be clarified," he said.

During a special military operation in Ukraine, the Russian military has found that U.S.-funded biological laboratories conducted research with dangerous viruses, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.

The Russian side has repeatedly urged Washington to explain the purpose of these facilities to the international community.

Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin criticized "the unacceptable nature of the military-biological activities of the United States in Ukraine." 
SAN FRANCISCO, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The global non-destructive testing market size is anticipated to reach USD 34.1 billion by 2030, registering a CAGR of 7.7% over the forecast period, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. The market is anticipated to witness significant growth over the forecast period. The growth is ascribed to the increasing manufacturing in the developing as well as developed nations.

Key Insights & Findings from the report:

The market is expected to exhibit a CAGR of 7.7% over the next eight years owing to a rise in manufacturing-related activities globally.

The services segment accounted for the largest revenue share of over 75.0% in 2021. The high upfront cost of non-destructive equipment coupled with technical complexities involved in their deployment/installation is the major reason influencing end-users to outsource their non-destructive testing operations.

Rapid industrialization, especially in developing economies has significantly contributed to the growth of the market.

The ultrasonic testing segment is expected to witness a significant CAGR of 8.3% over the forecast period owing to the benefits such as ease of handling and precise results.

The automated ultrasonic testing (AUT) segment is expected to witness a significant CAGR of 10.5 % over the forecast period owing to the aggressive efforts being pursued by NDT equipment and service providers to devise innovative inspection technologies and serve their customers more efficiently.

The manufacturing vertical segment was the dominant segment in 2021 and is expected to witness a healthy CAGR of 9.0% over the forecast period owing to the increased manufacturing activities, primarily in Asia Pacific .

. North America dominated the market in 2021 and accounted for the largest revenue share of more than 36.0%, owing to the extensive adoption of NDT techniques in the region.

Request a free sample copy or view report summary: "Non-destructive Testing Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report By Test Method (Traditional NDT Method, Digital/Advanced NDT Method), By Offering, By Vertical, By Region, And Segment Forecasts, 2022 - 2030", published by Grand View Research.

Non-destructive Testing Market Growth & Trends

The use of non-destructive testing (NDT) helps detect the faults precisely, reducing the product/component failure probability as well as costs incurred in the repairs of the components. The use of NDT also speeds up the process of manufacturing as the possible faults are eliminated beforehand. The key factor expected to drive the growth of the market is the technological advancements in non-destructive testing methods. Improvements in the techniques have ensured deviation-free fault detection and have reduced the complexity involved in the testing procedures considerably.

The ultrasonic testing segment is expected to witness significant growth over the forecast period. This growth is ascribed to the ease of handling the equipment, availability of skilled technicians, and precise fault detection. The manufacturing segment is expected to deploy NDT techniques extensively over the forecast period owing to the increasing awareness regarding their use.

Non-destructive Testing Market Segmentation

Grand View Research has segmented the global non-destructive testing market based on offering, test method, vertical, and region:

Non-destructive Testing Offering Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2017 - 2030)

Services

Equipment

Non-destructive Testing Test Methods Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2017 - 2030)

Traditional NDT Method

Visual Testing



Magnetic Particle Testing



Liquid Penetrant Testing



Eddy Current Testing



Ultrasonic Testing



Radiographic Testing

Digital/Advanced NDT Method

Digital Radiography (DR)



Phased Array Ultrasonic Testing (PAUT)



Pulsed Eddy Current (PEC)

(PEC)

Time-Of-Flight Diffraction (TOFD)



Automated Ultrasonic Testing (AUT)

Non-destructive Testing Vertical Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2017 - 2030)

Oil & Gas

Manufacturing

Aerospace and Defense

Construction

Automotive

Power Generation

Others

Non-destructive Testing Regional Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2017 - 2030)

North America

U.S.



Canada

Europe

U.K



Germany



France

Asia Pacific

China



Japan



India

Latin America

Brazil



Mexico

Middle East & Africa

& Saudi Arabia



South Africa

List of Key Players of the Non-destructive Testing Market

Ashtead Technology

Eddyfi

Fischer Technologies Inc

General Electric

Nikon Corporation

Mistras Group

Olympus Corporation

Sonatest

Yxlon International

Zetec, Inc

MME Group

TWI Ltd.

Check out more related studies published by Grand View Research:

U.S. Self-checkout Systems Market - The U.S. self-checkout systems market size is anticipated to reach USD 2.97 billion by 2028, expanding at a CAGR of 11.3% from 2021 to 2028. The strong emphasis retailers are putting on providing self-checkout solutions as part of the efforts to improve purchase efficiency, enhance the consumer experience, and serve a larger customer base is expected to drive the growth of the market over the forecast period. The blend of cash and cashless features offered by the latest self-checkout solutions, which can potentially allow retailers to tailor their checkout experience to the changing consumer preferences, also bodes well for the growth of the market.

The U.S. self-checkout systems market size is anticipated to reach by 2028, expanding at a CAGR of 11.3% from 2021 to 2028. The strong emphasis retailers are putting on providing self-checkout solutions as part of the efforts to improve purchase efficiency, enhance the consumer experience, and serve a larger customer base is expected to drive the growth of the market over the forecast period. The blend of cash and cashless features offered by the latest self-checkout solutions, which can potentially allow retailers to tailor their checkout experience to the changing consumer preferences, also bodes well for the growth of the market. Industrial Refrigeration Systems Market - The global industrial refrigeration systems market size is estimated to reach USD 22.65 billion by 2028, registering a CAGR of 3.9% from 2021 to 2028, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. The growth of food retail chains worldwide is expected to boost the demand for industrial refrigeration systems over the forecast period. Moreover, increasing initiatives taken by governments to improve and strengthen the cold chain infrastructure are expected to drive market growth.

- The global industrial refrigeration systems market size is estimated to reach by 2028, registering a CAGR of 3.9% from 2021 to 2028, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. The growth of food retail chains worldwide is expected to boost the demand for industrial refrigeration systems over the forecast period. Moreover, increasing initiatives taken by governments to improve and strengthen the cold chain infrastructure are expected to drive market growth. Circuit Protection Market - The global circuit protection market size is expected to reach USD 71.64 billion by 2028, expanding at a CAGR of 6.7% from 2021 to 2028, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. The market is expected to benefit from the growing need to upgrade power transmission and distribution networks and establish renewable energy connectivity. The rising demand for advanced circuit protection equipment in the automotive, electronics, and telecommunications sectors can be attributed to growing safety concerns related to short circuits and damage resulting from power fluctuations.

Browse through Grand View Research's Electronic Devices Industry Research Reports.

About Grand View Research

Grand View Research, U.S.-based market research and consulting company, provides syndicated as well as customized research reports and consulting services. Registered in California and headquartered in San Francisco, the company comprises over 425 analysts and consultants, adding more than 1200 market research reports to its vast database each year. These reports offer in-depth analysis on 46 industries across 25 major countries worldwide. With the help of an interactive market intelligence platform, Grand View Research Helps Fortune 500 companies and renowned academic institutes understand the global and regional business environment and gauge the opportunities that lie ahead.

Contact:

Sherry James

Corporate Sales Specialist, USA

Grand View Research, Inc.

Phone: 1-415-349-0058

Toll Free: 1-888-202-9519

Email: [email protected]

Web: https://www.grandviewresearch.com

Grand View Compass | Grand View Pipeline

Follow Us: LinkedIn | Twitter

SOURCE Grand View Research, Inc.
LONDON, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Consumer tech company Nothing today confirmed plans to launch phone (1), its first and highly anticipated smartphone product. Powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon mobile platform, Nothing phone (1) is the second device in the company's product ecosystem built for seamless connectivity and defined by iconic design. Further details including phone (1)'s summer launch and operating system Nothing OS, were revealed by CEO and Co-founder Carl Pei during the Nothing (event): The Truth livestream on 23 March.



The company also announced a $10M allocation for an upcoming equity-based community investment round at the same valuation as its Series B fundraise co-led by EQT Ventures and C Ventures. This follows Nothing's first community round which raised $1.5M in a record-beating 54 seconds last March. Investors have access to Nothing's private community through which they will get exclusive benefits and insights into the company. Pre-registrations for early access are now open, and the investment round will go live on 5 April. Terms and conditions will apply. For further details please visit: nothing.tech .



"Having raised $144M, built a team of over 300 people and secured support from trusted partners like Qualcomm Technologies, Inc, we are ready for phone (1) to mark the start of change for the sleepy smartphone market," said Carl Pei. "We are also doing a new $10M round of community investment, so that our supporters get the chance to be part of our journey going head to head against the giants of the industry."
Automated lead nurturing, resident referral platform integration provides transparency, personalized engagement to prospects

PHOENIX , March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Nurture Boss , a premier lease conversion automation tool that provides marketing solutions for the multifamily industry, announced it has partnered with Rentgrata to integrate its automated lead nurturing pages with Rentgrata's resident referral platform.

Rengrata, headquartered in Chicago, is a messaging platform that connects prospective renters with current residents of apartment communities to provide transparency and trust in the leasing process. The Rentgrata and Nurture Boss platform integration streamlines the customer journey for renters and provides a more informative leasing process with referral rewards for current and new residents.

"This partnership is redefining the customer journey for modern renters by providing an unprecedented level of transparency and trust," said Jacob Carter, CEO of Nurture Boss. "Nurture Boss and Rentgrata share a common goal of personalizing the customer journey and helping operators convert more leases. Rentgrata has transformed resident engagement, and this partnership enables operators to not only reach a larger segment of customers earlier in the leasing journey, but also to ease the decision-making process and establish meaningful relationships with residents."

Through Nurture Boss' lease conversion automation tool, prospects are contacted during the early touchpoints in the leasing process with personalized information pertaining to their individual needs. Prospects can access Rentgrata's messenger chat functionality directly from communication sent by Nurture Boss. This means prospects can connect with current residents and ask questions. The messenger window offers a list of residents that prospects have the opportunity to chat with asynchronously.

With Rentgrata's resident referral platform, Nurture Boss automates personalized content to prospects with the opportunity for organic, genuine testimony from residents who live within the community. Modern renters not only desire more personalization in their shopping experiences, but a higher caliber of transparency when it comes to a new apartment. It streamlines the apartment search while making a decision to lease much easier.

"We saw an increase in the number of new conversations between prospects and residents after integrating Nurture Boss with Rentgrata," said Ben Margolit, co-founder and CEO of Rentgrata. "Nurture Boss reaches more customers earlier in the leasing process, and when prospects are afforded that additional transparency through speaking with current residents, they have the confidence needed to move forward with signing a lease."

The personalized communication each customer receives in the early stages, combined with the ability to get an authentic sense of what it's like to live in a particular community via peer-to-peer conversations, is an innovative way to improve the leasing process. It attracts more customers and leads to greater lease conversions and increased resident satisfaction. Additionally, the increased sense of community boosts the likelihood that residents who participate renew their lease, increasing resident retention.

"Consumers seek authentic testimonials from somebody who has experienced a community firsthand," said Claudia Giannetta, director of marketing at Fore Properties. "We had a traditional resident referral program in place, but the combination of utilizing the Nurture Boss and Rentgrata services helps us reach the consumer earlier on in their journey, convert more leases and build better relationships with residents. It's been a real game changer for us."

About Nurture Boss

Nurture Boss operationalizes CRMs with data-powered Lease and Renewal Conversion Automation and helps apartment operators orchestrate marketing efforts into a cohesive strategy. Lease and Renewal Conversion Automation means automating all follow up and communication with prospects and residents to ensure each customer receives the right message at the right time. Nurture Boss identifies hot leads, schedules more tours, gets more applications and signs more leases with Lease Conversion Automation. Nurture Boss' Renewal Conversion Automation creates a better move-in experience, drives more resident referrals, captures more online reviews and achieves more renewals. For more information, visit nurtureboss.io .

About Rentgrata

Rentgrata is the first renter insights platform that creates connections and builds community for multifamily properties. As the only messaging platform for prospective and current residents to connect and share feedback, Rentgrata facilitates real conversations, while delivering data that helps multifamily professionals better understand renter needs. By helping apartment buildings feel more like communities, Rentgrata reduces resident turnover and increases NOI, while offering residents the chance to capitalize on referral incentives and connect in new ways. For more information, visit rentgrata.com .

SOURCE Nurture Boss
Nuuday is Denmark's largest telecommunications service provider

largest telecommunications service provider Nuuday to deploy Dubber recording and AI for mobile and Unified Communications (UC)

Nuuday to migrate existing recording users to Dubber platform

Builds Dubber footprint across Nordics

Service launching in Dubber Q4 FY2022

MELBOURNE, Australia, March 22, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Dubber Corporation Limited (ASX: DUB) (Dubber) is pleased to announce that its Unified Call Recording (UCR) and Voice AI platform has been selected by Denmark's Nuuday for unified call recording and voice AI for mobile and unified communications (UC) customers.

Nuuday is Denmark's largest telecommunications service provider, part of the national carrier TDC Group/ TDC Holding A/S. Dubber services will be available for TDC Erhvervs (a Nuuday brand) customers on their mobile and Unified Communications (UC) solutions in the first half of 2022. The deployment will also provide for the migration of all existing on-premise call recordings to the Dubber cloud platform, maintaining or exceeding compliance standards under legacy customer agreements.

Dubber UCR services will also be immediately available on TDC Scale, Nuuday's Unified Communications solution for enterprise customers, while migrating existing recording services, and call recording data to the Dubber platform. This implementation will enable Nuuday customers to seamlessly add Dubber products to their existing Nuuday UC services while allowing for the rollout of additional Dubber solutions onto the TDC Scale service.

John Henriksen, CEO, TDC Erhverv: "Our new partnership with Dubber will provide a scalable and secure solution to meet our customers' call recording requirements, across their mobile and Unified Communications services. Dubber's solutions will easily integrate with our existing infrastructure and service offerings for all Danish businesses, reinforcing our ambition to constantly innovate to meet customers' needs. With UC transforming the way businesses communicate, solutions like Dubber provide much-needed, secure and compliant functionality."

Steve McGovern, CEO, Dubber: "Nuuday is a recognised industry leader and one of the most progressive carriers in the European unified communications sector, with one of the largest customer bases on its Cisco/Broadworks UC network. We are delighted to be upgrading Nuuday's existing recording installed base to the Dubber platform. These legacy services will now have all the inherent benefits of Dubber's cloud platform, including fully compliant storage, search, transcription, and sentiment analysis - providing Dubber with an accretive increase to our ARR. Provisioning of the Dubber Platform across a broad addressable market will also enable Nuuday to utilise AI to transform data into valuable insights, driving revenue, retention, and differentiation. In addition, Dubber's cloud-native, simple-to-deploy call recording platform provides Nuuday with an infinitely scalable solution that will grow as their customer needs grow."

"Our agreement with Nuuday is another important milestone in establishing Dubber as the defacto call recording and conversational AI service for a telecommunications service provider. Through our innovative technology and partnering approach, we can deliver scale, carrier-grade performance and integration in the cloud, and the partnering model to enhance revenue for our service provider customers significantly," added McGovern.

The Nuuday agreement will provide an accretive revenue stream for Dubber, with additional revenues determined by uptake of the services by Nuuday customers. This ASX announcement has been approved for release to ASX by Steve McGovern, CEO & Managing Director.

About Dubber:

Dubber is unlocking the potential of voice data from any call or conversation directly from the network. Dubber is the world's most scalable Unified Call Recording service and Voice Intelligence Cloud adopted as core network infrastructure by multiple global leading telecommunications carriers in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. Dubber allows service providers to offer recording from virtually any source - turning them into AI-enriched insights for compliance, revenue, customer and people intelligence. Dubber is a disruptive innovator in the multi-billion-dollar call recording industry. Its Software as a Service offering removes the need for on-premise hardware, applications or costly and limited storage.

For more information, please contact:

Investors:

Simon Hinsley

[email protected]

+61 (0) 401 809 653 ANZ Media

Terry Alberstein

[email protected]

+61 (0) 458 484 921 EMEA Media

Annabel Clementson

[email protected]

+44 7951 786435

SOURCE Dubber
Around 2.6 billion people lack access to clean cooking solutions, with the lowest access rates in sub-Saharan Africa. Indoor air pollution from the use of traditional fuels for cooking causes millions of deaths every year. The estimated cost worldwide from the use of traditional fuels for cooking is US$ 2.4 trillion each year, while finance for clean cooking solutions remains far below the estimated US$4.4 billion required annually to ensure universal access by 2030.

Damilola Ogunbiyi, CEO and Special Representative of the UN Secretary General for Sustainable Energy for All and Co-chair of UN-Energy said: "I'm pleased that through this partnership, SEforALL and OPEC Fund will continue to provide support for countries to advance clean cooking as a critical component of their integrated energy plans. Through the Energy Compact process, unlocking much-needed finance, and providing data and analysis, we will accelerate progress on Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 7 and ensure a just and inclusive energy transition that leaves no one behind."

OPEC Fund Director-General Dr. Abdulhamid Alkhalifa said: "We are very pleased to expand further our cooperation with SEforALL with the aim to unlock much-needed investments for clean cooking. Innovative planning and finance mechanisms can unleash the significant global potential of clean cooking and provide safer, cleaner and more efficient use of energy resources in households. Going forward, the OPEC Fund and SEforALL will scale up our efforts with a joint action plan."

African Agency for Integrated Development (AAID) recognized for its clean cooking work in Uganda

The OPEC Fund's 2021 Annual Award for Development, which focused on clean cooking solutions, was presented to the African Agency for Integrated Development (AAID) during the event today.

The organization was chosen for its community work in promoting clean cooking technologies, training and advocacy for women and youth in the Kyaka II refugee settlement in Western Uganda. AAID is working with the local government to lead awareness and training sessions and aims to create a ripple effect to encourage women and youth in the settlement to switch to more efficient, safe and cleaner cooking practices.

Kisembo Asuman, the President of the AAID said: "In Uganda, displaced communities heavily rely on open fires and polluting fuels for cooking. This is not only unhealthy, but also means that our forests are vanishing to support the cooking needs of the refugee settlements. We thank the OPEC Fund for prioritizing the energy challenge in Kyaka II settlement and recognizing our efforts to promote the use of clean energy and cooking resources through supplies, training and awareness."

Now in its 15th year, the OPEC Fund Annual Award for Development recognizes individuals and organizations for their outstanding work in, and contributions to, development. Previous winners include Earthspark International for scaling-up energy access in Haiti; Vida Duti in recognition of her work in striving for sustainable water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services in Ghana; Bangladesh-based BRAC for its support of Rohingya refugees; and the Bolivian Confederation of campesinos, indigenous and native women "Bartolina Sisa".

About the OPEC Fund

The OPEC Fund for International Development (the OPEC Fund) is the only globally mandated development institution that provides financing from member countries to non-member countries exclusively. The organization works in cooperation with developing country partners and the international development community to stimulate economic growth and social progress in low and middle income countries around the world. The OPEC Fund was established by the member countries of OPEC in 1976 with a distinct purpose: to drive development, strengthen communities and empower people. Our work is people-centered, focusing on financing projects that meet essential needs, such as food, energy, infrastructure, employment (particularly relating to MSMEs), clean water and sanitation, healthcare and education. To date, the OPEC Fund has committed more than US$22 billion to development projects in over 125 countries with an estimated total project cost of US$187 billion. The OPEC Fund is rated AA+/Stable outlook by Fitch and AA/Positive outlook by S&P in 2021. Our vision is a world where sustainable development is a reality for all.

About SEforALL

Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL) is an international organization that works in partnership with the United Nations and leaders in government, the private sector, financial institutions, civil society and philanthropies to drive faster action towards the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG7)  access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all by 2030  in line with the Paris Agreement on climate. SEforALL works to ensure a clean energy transition that leaves no one behind and brings new opportunities for everyone to fulfil their potential.

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1772572/OPEC_Fund_SEforALL_1.jpg

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1772520/OPEC_Fund_SEforALL_2.jpg

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1584526/OPEC_Fund_Logo.jpg

SOURCE OPEC Fund for International Development
Packaged Bread Market by Nature (Organic and Conventional), Product Type (Sandwich Bread, Rolls & Buns, Tortillas, Pitas & Wraps, Frozen Breads, Crisp Breads, Dough & Crusts), Application (Bakery Products, Confectionery Items, Frozen Desserts) & Region - Forecast 2022 - 2032

DUBAI, U.A.E, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The global packaged bread market is set to witness growth at a CAGR of 4.6% and top a valuation of US$ 66.5 Bn by 2032.

Packaged Bread Market Size Value in 2022 US$ 42.4 Bn Packaged Bread Market Forecast Value in 2032 US$ 66.5 Bn Packaged Bread Market Growth Rate (2022 to 2032) ~4.6% CAGR Forecast Period 2022-2032 Collective Value Share: Top 3 Countries (2021A) 55.7%

Bread packaging has not been quite same as before as consumers are looking for more shelf stable products without harsh packaging. When visitors of Green Week in Berlin were asked regarding this, almost 2/3rd of them responded to quit breads with low quality packaging.

Request a Sample to Obtain Authentic Analysis and Comprehensive Market Insights at- https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-14408

However, German consumers prefer different kinds of bread in different packaging, such as frozen breads are preferred in cardboard boxes, while uncut loaves in shrink-wrapped, and sliced bread in plastic bags.

Since millennials, who prefer small portions of packaged bread, wrapped for immediate consumption, manufacturing units are incorporating new machineries to allow inexpensive products packaging without compromising the quality of packaged bread and launching packaging solutions where the product shelf life can be extended. Traditional or passive packaging only focused on protecting the bread from oxygen and molds by wrapping them with synthetic polymers and low gas permeability.

However, a new concept has developed recently, named intelligent packaging or active packaging, in which the packaging is done with functional materials which can interact with bread deliberately for monitoring and extending its shelf life. Nano-packaging is also being researched on by the front runners by using edible and biodegradable films to accomplish environmental requirements which can increase packaged bread shelf life up to 60 days.

Another recent technological development in the market is implementing 3D for exact sorting using Vision-system, an innovative 3D scanner, which can easily handle the image recognition issue on conveyor belts while bread packaging is going on, which can be missed out quite often in an automatic sort resulting into low-contrast unidentified objects and small crumbs in packaged bread which is undesirable.

Feel Free to Ask an Analyst- https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/ask-question/rep-gb-14408

Key Takeaways from Market Study

The packaged bread market is worth of US$ 42.4 Bn sales in 2022.

sales in 2022. The packaged bread market is expected to expand at CAGR of 4.6% through 2032.

Global packaged bread demand is projected to grow year-on-year (Y-o-Y) growth of 4.8% in 2022.

The packaged bread market is growing with a notable boost towards the production to reach US$ 66.5 Bn by 2032.

by 2032. Easy availability raw materials, healthy packaging, and improved quality and taste to be the influencing factors among consumers, which is driving sales of packaged bread across global markets.

Demand for packaged bread grew at 3.7% CAGR between 2017 and 2021.

Associated British Foods Plc, DuPont Danisco, Fuji Baking Co. Ltd, Angel Bakeries, and Allied Bakeries (Kingsmill) are expected to be the top players in the industry.

Organically packaged and sandwich bread are in heavy demand from bakery industry carrying a notable market share.

"Extended shelf life of packaged bread by means of intelligent packaging solutions over passive packaging is helping to protect the bread quality with no spoilage by oxygen and molds, using biodegradable and edible polymer films with low gas permeability while including a provisional safety evaluation, which perfectly maintain the taste and flavour of the product for as long as 60 days, boosting demand and ramping up in sales worldwide," says a Future Market Insights analyst.

Contact Sales for Further Assistance in Purchasing This Report- https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/checkout/14408

Competitive Landscape

Key brands associated with packaged bread are focusing on sustainable product developments, while also extending the product lines with several modifications and extensive research procedures to boost the industry growth and to capture more market share in global arena.

On June, 2021, Delifrance announced partnership with trend consultants Harris & Hayes to arrange a UK-wide retail study in order to explore the wants and needs of British consumers from packaged bread and pastry industry, and encourage them to buy quality products for both at home and out of the home purposes.

In the year 2020, the brand La Brea went for twin objectives which were aimed at keeping supermarket shelves stocked while also keeping consumers engaged to broaden up the brand share. For instance, the extended product line of the brand featured of French baguettes with improved hydration and flour dusting.

Several other products also improved in features, such as Italian round (increased hydration, flour dusting, darker bake), French loaf (darker bake, lighter interior, flour dusting), whole wheat grain loaf (grains and seeds toppings), and sourdough loaf (darker bake).

Packaged Bread Market by Category

By Nature:

Organic

Conventional

By Product Type:

Sandwich Bread

Rolls & Buns

Tortillas, Pitas & Wraps

Frozen Breads

Crisp Breads

Dough & Crusts

Others

By Application:

Bakery Products

Confectionery Items

Frozen Desserts

Others

Request [email protected] https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/customization-available/rep-gb-14408

Key Questions Answered in the Report

How big is the packaged bread industry?

At what CAGR is the packaged bread market poised to expand through 2032?

How was the performance of packaged bread market over the past half-decade?

What will be the packaged bread market size in 2032?

Who are the key players operating in the packaged bread market?

Which are the top countries driving the packaged bread demand?

What are the three popular types of packaged bread?

Is fresh packaged bakery bread better than store bought?

Top Reports Related To Food and Beverage Market Insights

Butter Market: The global butter market is estimated to reach US$ 17.8 Bn in 2022 and is projected to surpass US$ 28.7 Bn by 2032, at a CAGR of 4.9% during the forecast period of 2022 to 2032.

Non-Alcoholic Beer Market: The non-alcoholic beer market size is projected to reach US$ 20.4 Bn in 2022, growing at a CAGR of 7.8% from 2022 to 2032.

Beer Market: Beer Market is estimated at US$ 665.1 Bn in 2022 and is projected to reach US$ 920.2 Bn by 2032, at a CAGR of 3.3% from 2022 to 2032

About Future Market Insights (FMI)

Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading provider of market intelligence and consulting services, serving clients in over 150 countries. FMI is headquartered in Dubai, and has delivery centers in the UK, U.S. and India. FMI's latest market research reports and industry analysis help businesses navigate challenges and make critical decisions with confidence and clarity amidst breakneck competition. Our customized and syndicated market research reports deliver actionable insights that drive sustainable growth. A team of expert-led analysts at FMI continuously tracks emerging trends and events in a broad range of industries to ensure that our clients prepare for the evolving needs of their consumers.

Contact:

Future Market Insights,

1602-6 Jumeirah Bay X2 Tower,

Plot No: JLT-PH2-X2A,

Jumeirah Lakes Towers, Dubai,

United Arab Emirates

For Sales Enquiries: [email protected]

For Media Enquiries: [email protected]

Website: https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/

Report: https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/packaged-bread-market

SOURCE Future Market Insights
LONDON, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- In the last month the tragic events unfolding in Ukraine have of course overshadowed and influenced events across the globe, a fact reflected in our Q1 edition of 2022. Further to this, Pan Finance continues to shine a spotlight on leading examples of best practice across the world of finance. Established to be a true measure of excellence, the awards look beyond the realm of the balance sheet alone, measuring success through innovation, stewardship of the environment and positive impact on society.

Anders la Cour, CEO of Banking Circle Group commented, "At Banking Circle, we are committed to substantial investment in the integration of a vast network of local clearing and payments schemes to build a unique super-correspondent banking network. This network allows us to do 'the heavy lifting' for our Bank, Payments business and online marketplace clients. To have been recognised by Pan Finance for the significance of the platform we have built is confirmation that we are making a real difference to the B2B cross-border payments landscape."

Anatoly Crachilov, Founding Partner and CEO of Nickel Digital Asset Management told us, "The digital asset ecosystem continues to grow at a rapid pace with adoption reaching unprecedented levels. At Nickel Digital, we are laser-focused on building institutional-grade solutions for investors wishing to explore this new asset class. Our flagship fund, running for nearly 3 years, harnesses the extreme levels of volatility within the crypto markets to deliver our investors consistent, high Sharpe, low volatility returns. This is complemented by a suite of other crypto funds which cater for all degrees of investor risk tolerances. Nickel is thrilled to win the Best Digital Asset Manager Europe award and would like to thank Pan Finance for recognising our continued commitment to deliver best-in-class investment solutions in the digital assets space."

Lambros Lambrou, Co-founder and Managing Director of Exclusive Markets said, "We are sincerely pleased and honoured to receive this prestigious award which is a testament to all the hard work and dedication of every team member of Exclusive Markets. We will keep building on our foundational core values of innovation, trust, and customer-centricity while making exclusive investment opportunities accessible to traders worldwide."

Jason Blick, CEO of EQI Bank commented, "EQIBank is extremely happy and proud to be voted HNWI Digital Bank of the year by Pan Finance. As the world's fastest growing digital bank, this award solidifies our commitment to our clients, and serves as recognition of the entire team's hard work and dedication."

Viktor Madarasz, Founder and CEO of Exclusive Capital said, "It's a great honour for myself and all of us here at Exclusive Capital to receive the "Best Multi-Asset Services" award. This distinguished recognition from Pan Finance is a testament to the love and dedication we put into providing our customers with exceptional service. This award also acknowledges all the hard work we put into creating long-lasting relationships, driving sustainable growth, and providing a reliable and utterly secure investment environment."

Pan Finance is delighted to announce the following award winners in the Q1 2022 edition:

Banco Promerica - Digital Banking Services of the Year - Dominican Republic 2022

Banco Promerica - Excellence in Financial Inclusion - Dominican Republic 2022

Banking Circle - Best Cross-Border Payment Platform - Europe 2022

BitForex - Crypto Exchange of the Year - 2022

EQIBank - HNWI Digital Bank of the Year - 2022

Exclusive Capital - Best Multi-Asset Services - 2022

Exclusive Markets - Best FX Broker - 2022

Garanti BBVA - Private Bank of the Year for Digital Innovation - Turkey 2022

GoldenVisas.io - Best Golden Visa Resource Platform - 2022

ID Finance - Fintech Company of the Year - Spain 2022

ID Finance - Best New Neo Bank (Plazo) - Spain 2022

McNamara Citizenship Services - Best Citizenship Services - Caribbean 2022

MultiBank Group - Best Global Broker - 2022

Nickel Digital Asset Management - Best Digital Asset Manager - Europe 2022

Regtank - Best Compliance Solutions - Singapore 2022

Stripe - Best Payment Solutions for StartUps - UK

TradingView - Social Trading Platform of the Year - North America 2022

WorldRemit - Most Secure International Transfer App  2022

XTrend - Best Forex Trading App  Asia 2022

Zenith Bank Plc - Digital Transformation of the Year  Ghana 2022

To learn more about our winners, pick up the latest issue of Pan Finance magazine, available now:

Pan Finance Magazine Q1 2022

Featuring articles from: Ban Ki-Moon, former secretary-general of the United Nations and Gordon Brown, former UK Prime Minister; Nick Butler, visiting professor and chair of the Kings Policy Institute at Kings College London; Joseph E.Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics and former chief economist of the World Bank.

About Pan Finance

Each quarter Pan Finance delivers key information through time-sensitive financial news covering world markets, industry analysis and c-suite level interviews. Content from renowned academics and leading professionals provides an accessible view of global trends, with a focus on finance, economics, infrastructure, technology and sustainability - www.panfinance.net

Contact information

Pan Finance

Olu Emmanuel

Head of Research & Awards

+44 (0) 208 090 0874

[email protected]

[email protected]

SOURCE Pan Finance Magazine
CHICAGO, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- On May 12, 2022, Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas will begin the sale of unpaid 2019 property taxes that were originally due in 2020.

Property owners can avoid the Annual Tax Sale by paying the delinquent taxes and interest before the sale begins.

To see if your taxes are delinquent  and to make a payment  visit cookcountytreasurer.com and select "Avoid the Tax Sales." You can search by address or by Property Index Number.

About $219 million in unpaid 2019 property taxes is due on 44,741 homes, businesses and land.

"Unpaid taxes are found in all communities, but almost 79% of the taxes offered for sale are for properties in Black and Latino communities," Pappas said.

"Property owners should visit cookcountytreasurer.com to see if they are receiving all possible exemptions to pay only what they owe," Pappas said.

Tax buyers interested in participating in the sale should visit cooktaxsale.com to register for the sale or purchase a list of properties with delinquent taxes. Registration will be open from March 25 to May 2, 2022.

SOURCE Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas
BEIJING, March 23 (Xinhua) -- It's uncanny and surreal to see "the worst human rights violator in the world" sanction others on unfounded grounds of human rights violations.

It's like a thief crying "stop thief."

The latest sanctions imposed by the United States against Chinese officials for so-called human rights violations are ideologically and politically driven. By maligning and smearing China, the U.S. move contravened international law and basic norms governing international relations and grossly interfered in China's internal affairs.

Arbitrary sanctions are one of the commonly used tools in the U.S. foreign policy arsenal. Such political and economic leverages, overused and abused, always backfire, bringing hostilities rather than solutions and even constituting a systemic violation of human rights.

The Chinese people can tell better than anyone else how the human rights conditions in China are. A country that has lifted millions out of absolute poverty and upheld a "life first" philosophy in battling the pandemic best knows what human rights are.

Regarding human rights, the United States is in no position to pass judgment. The country, which should repent for butchering the Native Americans and inflicting sufferings on people in countries that it aggressed, is itself in the position to reflect on its own human rights deficit.

Instead of trampling on human rights in other countries in the name of safeguarding human rights, the so-called "beacon of democracy" should address its own systemic and chronic issues. If the United States ceases being a lecturer of human rights, the situation in the world will improve.

The China-U.S. relationship, instead of getting out of the predicament created by the previous U.S. administration, has encountered a growing number of challenges. The direct cause for the current situation is that some people on the U.S. side have not followed through on the important common understanding reached by the two Presidents and have not acted on President Biden's positive statements.

The current arbitrary sanctions against the Chinese officials are the latest proof.

The U.S. move defies logic and common sense when Washington on the one hand repeatedly and publicly presses China to work with it on international hotspot issues while on the other hand damages the bilateral relations intentionally.

The United States should view China's human rights situation in an objective and just manner and immediately revoke its so-called sanctions. Otherwise, as China's Foreign Ministry has warned, the Chinese side shall take reciprocal countermeasures in response. 
Two separate transactions allow repeat Pembrook borrower to acquire and renovate a 143-unit, seven-building complex in Long Beach while recapitalizing a 109-unit portfolio in South Los Angeles

LOS ANGELES, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Pembrook Capital Management LLC ("Pembrook"), one of the nation's leading bridge lenders for affordable housing, announced $20.4 million in preferred equity financing in the Los Angeles market, comprised of the following two new transactions:

$12.2 million preferred equity investment to acquire and renovate a 143-unit apartment complex located at 5565-5700 Ackerfield Avenue in Long Beach .

$8.2 million preferred equity investment to recapitalize and renovate a 109-unit portfolio of residential apartments known as the Golden Bee II portfolio in South Los Angeles .

The sponsor in both transactions is Golden Bee Properties, an experienced Los Angeles developer and repeat Pembrook borrower.

"Pembrook shares Golden Bee Properties' dedication to improving affordable housing communities within the Southern California market," said Stuart Boesky, CEO of Pembrook. "We are pleased to once again work with this quality developer and provide financing that will help boost their growing portfolio while allowing them to also provide needed upgrades to these apartments that will improve the standard of living for residents."

5565-5700 Ackerfield Avenue in Long Beach

Pembrook's $12.2 million preferred equity investment allows the sponsor to purchase and renovate a nearly fully occupied 107,000-square-foot residential complex in Long Beach consisting of seven two-story walk-up apartment buildings featuring 143 units with an average size of 748 square feet. With the financing in place, the borrower plans to acquire the property, perform exterior renovations, remodel 81 of the units, and add three new apartments to the complex. At least 51% of the units will rent for no more than 30% of 80% of the household area mean income in order to preserve affordability.

Golden Bee Portfolio in South Los Angeles

Pembrook's $8.2 million preferred equity investment allows the sponsor to recapitalize and partially renovate a 98,504-square-foot portfolio of residential apartments consisting of seven two-story walk-up apartment buildings featuring 109 units with an average size of 904 square feet. The portfolio is currently over 95% occupied and all located in South Los Angeles, within a 15 square mile radius. The sponsor intends to use the financing to refinance the existing loans on the portfolio and perform renovations on 27 of the apartment units.

Pembrook is a real estate investment manager that provides financing throughout the capital structure. The firm has originated or participated in investments totaling over $1.5 billion since it began investing in 2007.

About Pembrook Capital Management, LLC

Founded in 2006 by Stuart J. Boesky, Pembrook Capital Management invests in a variety of commercial real estate with a core emphasis on impact investing and affordable housing across the country. Since its launch, Pembrook has invested approximately $700 million into affordable/workforce multifamily rental housing, equating to over 12,000 units housing an estimated 31,000 tenants, 70% of which were located in predominantly minority neighborhoods. The firm's strategy involves commercial real estate debt, including first mortgages, mezzanine, bridge loans, note financings, and preferred equity. Please visit http://www.pembrookgroup.com.

Media Contact

Great Ink Communications

Tom Nolan [email protected]

Eric Waters [email protected]

(212) 741-2977

SOURCE Pembrook
Peraton hires experienced advocacy and appropriations experts to bolster new team

Establishes employee-funded political action committee

HERNDON, Va., March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- In support of the company's growth and policy objectives, Peraton has announced advocacy and congressional affairs leadership appointments within its Government and Customer Relations team. Additionally, the company has established its first employee-funded PAC.

Scott Cooper has been appointed vice president, Strategic Advocacy. In this role, Cooper will be responsible for the development, direction, and management of Peraton's external engagement strategies with think tanks, federally funded research and development centers, and advocacy organizations. He will report to Mara Motherway, senior vice president, Government and Customer Relations.

A U.S. Marine Corps veteran who served five tours in Iraq and two in Afghanistan, Cooper is a recognized expert in national security. He is also a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council and most recently served as an agent with the Charles F. Bolden Group where he provided leadership expertise in space and aerospace exploration, national security, and technology. He has worked at the intersection of national security, technology, academia, and policy, including co-authoring the definitive book on no-fly zones.

Joe DeVooght has been appointed vice president, Federal Congressional Affairs. He will have responsibility for implementing and overseeing Peraton's legislative affairs strategies with a focus on expanding the company's strategic engagement with Members of Congress and key committee staff, ensuring the alignment of Peraton with the national security objectives of policymakers.

DeVooght most recently served as senior director, Government Relations at Honeywell. Prior to that, he served for nearly 17 years in the House of Representatives in a variety of staff leadership positions with former U.S. Representative Pete Visclosky, including a decade as deputy chief of staff, as well as legislative director. He also served as the Associate Staffer for the Chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, whose jurisdiction includes the majority of the Department of Defense and many elements of the Intelligence Community.

Peraton has also established and registered its first political action committee, Peraton PAC. Peraton PAC is one of the national security industry's newest employee-funded PACs and will focus on supporting candidates who share Peraton's business and policy priorities. Peraton PAC will be directed by Elisabeth Drabkin, an industry expert in PAC management, compliance, legislative and regulatory affairs, and employee engagement. She most recently served as manager, Government Affairs and Voluntary Political Action Committee at SAIC. Drabkin is an active member of the National Association of Business PACs (NABPAC) and previously served as co-chair of the Defense PAC PALS.

"The addition of these world-class leaders in government affairs and advocacy further demonstrates Peraton's commitment to proactively engage with Congress and other policymakers on issues important to our business, our employees, and our national security," said Motherway. "Scott, Joe, and Elisabeth each bring a unique and proven set of skills to the company that will ensure Peraton's mission impact to national security is well-understood on the Hill and within the administration and that our nearly 18,000 employees' voices are heard."

About Peraton

Peraton drives missions of consequence spanning the globe and extending to the farthest reaches of the galaxy. As the world's leading mission capability integrator and transformative enterprise IT provider, we deliver trusted and highly differentiated national security solutions and technologies that keep people safe and secure. Peraton serves as a valued partner to essential government agencies across the intelligence, space, cyber, defense, citizen security, health, and state and local markets. Every day, our employees do the can't be done, solving the most daunting challenges facing our customers. Visit Peraton.com/News and follow Peraton on LinkedIn for news and updates.

SOURCE Peraton
The partnership is funded through the Franklin P. and Arthur W. Perdue Foundation and the Perdue family, and aligns with the company's Delivering Hope to Our Neighbors  initiative focused in part on alleviating food insecurity.

From its Rhode Island production facility, the Edesia Nutrition team manufactures nutrient-dense, ready-to-eat foods that are serving more than 2.5 million children worldwide annually. Perdue Farms supplies Edesia with heart-healthy high-oleic soybean oil for some of its products. The Perdue funding enables Edesia to purchase a co-branded new truck to transport its nutrient-dense products to warehouses and a New Jersey port for export, providing more timely humanitarian responses.

"Over the last year, many of our shipments encountered severe delays due to backlogs in the New York shipping terminals. Perdue's truck donation is an absolute game changer in how we can now transport our products from our warehouses to the ports to the malnourished children around the world who depend on us to deliver life-saving food," said Edesia Nutrition CEO and founder Navyn Salem.

Following its initial commitment of $100,000, Perdue Farms surprised the non-profit with an additional $25,000 donation today during a segment on The Drew Barrymore Show, highlighting the two organizations' shared value of providing wholesome nutrition to those in need.

"At Perdue Farms, we are keenly aware of the enormous challenges of food insecurity at home and abroad and are honored to support and help raise awareness about Edesia Nutrition's noble mission," said Randy Day, CEO of Perdue Farms. "As a food company, we are committed to fighting hunger. We're proud to know that our heart-healthy oils are a key ingredient in producing such life-saving food."

About Edesia Nutrition

Edesia is a non-profit social enterprise on a mission to end hunger and malnutrition worldwide. From its Rhode Island factory, a diverse team of 110 humanitarians make over 1.5 million packets of lifesaving foods each day for UNICEF, the World Food Programme, USAID, USDA, and others working to create a better world for all children. Founded in 2009, Edesia has shipped its innovative foods to over 60 countries worldwide, reaching over 16 million children. To learn more and participate, please visit: www.edesianutrition.org.

About the Franklin P. and Arthur W. Perdue Foundation

The Franklin P. and Arthur W. Perdue Foundation , the charitable giving arm of Perdue Farms, was established in 1957 by company founder Arthur W. Perdue and is funded through the estates of Arthur W. Perdue and Frank Perdue. As part of our belief in supporting the communities where and with whom we do business, the Foundation provides grants on behalf of Perdue Farms in communities where large numbers of our associates live and work. At Perdue Farms, we believe in responsible food and agriculture.

About Perdue Farms We're a fourth-generation, family-owned, U.S. food and agriculture company. Through our belief in responsible food and agriculture, we are empowering consumers, customers, and farmers through trusted choices in products and services.

The premium protein portfolio within our Perdue Foods business, including our flagship PERDUE brand, Niman Ranch , Panorama Organic Grass-Fed Meats , Coleman Natural , and Yummy , as well as our pet brands, Spot Farms and Full Moon , is available through various channels including retail, foodservice, club stores and our direct-to-consumer website, PerdueFarms.com .

Perdue AgriBusiness is an international agricultural products and services company.

Now in our company's second century, our path forward is about getting better, not just bigger. We never use drugs for growth promotion in raising poultry and livestock, and we are actively advancing our animal welfare programs. Our brands are leaders in no-antibiotics-ever chicken, turkey, pork, beef, and lamb, and in USDA-certified organic chicken and beef. Learn more at Corporate.PerdueFarms.com .

SOURCE Perdue Farms
This generous gift comes at a time when access to sexual and reproductive health care is under attack like never before, especially access to abortion

WASHINGTON, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- On March 23, 2022 Planned Parenthood of Metropolitan Washington, DC (PPMW) received a transformational $9 million gift from MacKenzie Scott. This generous gift, the largest in PPMW's history, comes at a time when access to sexual and reproductive health care is under attack like never before, especially access to abortion.

In the press release announcing this gift, Ms. Scott noted that her "aim has been to support the needs of underrepresented people from groups of all kinds. The cause of equity has no sides." Each of the non-profits chosen by Ms. Scott "was selected through a rigorous process, and has a strong track record of serving under-supported needs."

This gift is an investment in PPMW that acknowledges our work and recognizes our shared commitment to collective health equity. It will enable us to take our work to provide high-quality, compassionate health care to new heights.

"For over 80 years, PPMW has provided high quality, supportive reproductive medical care for families in the DC metro area," said PPMW President and CEO, Dr. Laura Meyers. "Now, access to abortion is facing an uncertain future. At the same time, the need for our programs and services is more critical than ever. We are humbled by Ms. Scott's support of PPMW, our expertise, our deep and trusted connections with communities, and the important roles we play in the public health, sexual and reproductive health care, equity, and justice. This generous, unrestricted donation will enable us to realize our mission of providing high-quality, compassionate health care, including reproductive care; promoting sexual health; and advocating for reproductive rights and health equity for all."

With health centers in Washington, DC, Prince George's and Montgomery Counties, Maryland, PPMW serves as a beacon of non-judgmental, equitable care where we meet patients where they are and, through our services, empower them to cultivate the fullest version of their lives. No matter what.

PPMW's mission is to provide high quality, affordable reproductive health care; promote education programs that empower all individuals to make informed and responsible reproductive choices; and to protect the right to make those choices. PPMW is the oldest and largest provider of family planning services in Metropolitan Washington, serving DC, Maryland and Northern Virginia.

SOURCE Planned Parenthood of Metropolitan Washington, D.C.
This important company milestone comes amid concerns that the United States has fallen behind Russia and China's hypersonics capabilities. Additionally, much of the rocket propulsion in the U.S. has previously come from Russia or Ukraine and Russia recently announced that it would no longer sell its engines to the U.S.

"Delivering Hadley engines to customers who will use them for very different purposes shows the Ursa Major business model in actionhigher performing engines, more of them, delivered quickly at less than half the cost," said Joe Laurienti, founder and CEO of Ursa Major. "By freeing launch companies from the expense and difficulty of building their own engines or buying sub-par technology from other countries, Ursa Major will accelerate the number and frequency of successful launches across sectors."

Phantom Space, a space technology and transportation company, will use Hadley to power its two-stage expendable rocket, which transports satellites and other space cargo into Earth orbit and beyond. Stratolaunch, an aerospace vehicles and technology company, will use Hadley to power its reusable hypersonic testbed vehicle, which is designed to reach Mach 6, or six times the speed of sound.

By making flexible rocket engines that can be used for multiple purposes, Ursa Major helps customers get to launch three times faster at a low price and without the development cost of building engines in-house. By supporting other aerospace startups, Ursa Major is helping shape the modern space economy with entrepreneurial thinking and innovation.

"Hadley's greatest strength is that she simply exists," said Silas Meriam, senior test operations engineer, Ursa Major. "No one else is making engines with 5,000 pounds of thrust at this level of reliabilityand they're available now."

Because Hadley is mostly 3D-printed, Ursa Major can make data-driven design improvements and manufacture them essentially in real-time.

Hadley highlights:

Can be used in first stage, upper stage, and hypersonic applications

More than 30,000 seconds of run-time at Ursa Major's own facilities

Sufficient engine life to support pre-flight ground testing or static-fire testing, as well as flight, without additional modifications or inspections

Wide range of customizable throttle levels and thrust profiles to meet customer needs

Seven-degree thrust vectoring provides more control and maneuverability for typical flights, and may also enable vertical landing and return-to-launch-site burns, among other capabilities

The commercial availability of Ursa Major engines allows customers to develop flying hypersonic testbeds, which minimizes the need for large, expensive, and notoriously scarce wind tunnels. Without the testing bottleneck created by wind tunnels, hypersonics companies can conduct more tests and generate more data, which significantly accelerates the development process and fuels innovation. Further, this test data is more representative of the actual flight environment and less expensive than ground-based wind tunnel testing. The cumulative result is higher performing, more reliable hypersonics technology, produced quickly and efficiently at a lower cost.

"Ursa Major and its peers are driving significant advancements in many sectors across the new space economy," continued Laurienti. "Our propulsion systems and proprietary testing platform are already empowering Ursa Major commercial customers to reach their goals. We stand ready to support our government's efforts to reestablish U.S. global leadership in space technology as well."

On February 4, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III held a meeting with top Pentagon leaders and several large defense company CEOs about the country's lagging hypersonics technology. The meeting focused on lack of sufficient testing infrastructure in the U.S., specifically wind tunnels.

Read more about Hadley and other Ursa Major engines here.

About Ursa Major

Ursa Major is America's only independent pure-play rocket propulsion company, bringing high-performance, oxygen-rich staged combustion engines to market for space launch and hypersonic applications. Ursa Major customers, ranging from "new space" startups to enterprise-level aerospace leaders and the U.S. government, get to launch faster, more reliably, and cost-effectively. The company employs the most sought-after engineers from top space programs and universities and is backed by world-class investors including XN and Explorer 1 Fund. Headquartered in Lafayette and Berthoud, Colorado, Ursa Major was named one of the best places to work by Built in Colorado for two years in a row. For more information, visit www.ursamajor.com.

Media Contact

Jani Strand

[email protected]

206-669-4204

SOURCE Ursa Major
Quest to employ its comprehensive menu of COVID-19 antibody test and data analytics services to support population health research across 45 states and Puerto Rico

SECAUCUS, N.J., March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Quest Diagnostics (NYSE: DGX), the world's leading provider of diagnostic information services, today announced that it has been granted a contract by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to perform testing and provide laboratory data analysis to help identify patterns in SARS-COV-2 seroprevalence on a multistate basis. The goal is to aid the CDC in assessing the proportion of the population that has been infected by or vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

Quest was awarded the contract following a competitive bid. The total contract value with all options is valued at up to approximately $19.5 million.

The new agreement extends and broadens the scope of the company's contributions to the CDC's seroprevalence research, which includes participating in the SARS-CoV-2 Sequencing for Public Health Emergency Response, Epidemiology and Surveillance (SPHERES) consortium. Quest will utilize serum specimen remnants from clinical testing for a range of non-COVID-19 conditions to identify immune response to SARS-CoV-2 using its comprehensive menu of COVID-19 serological tests. The company's serological tests are authorized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for emergency use and aid in identifying antibodies produced in response to recent or prior infection and/or vaccination. Quest will provide the data analysis to the CDC in a HIPAA-compliant manner to support public health analysis and reporting.

"From the earliest days of the pandemic, public-private collaboration has been essential to effective response to the COVID-19 threat," said Catherine T. Doherty, Senior Vice President, Group Executive  Clinical Franchise Solutions & Marketing, Quest Diagnostics. "Quest Diagnostics has a powerful combination of quality COVID-19 serological testing, national reach and robust data analytics to deliver insights to inform public health strategies. We are proud to bring these assets to the CDC's efforts to track the nation's vulnerability to COVID-19."

Quest and the CDC have collaborated on several initiatives to improve population health analysis based on insights from Quest's national testing data. In January 2021, the company formed an agreement to provide SARS-CoV-2 variant sequencing to help identify and track new variants. Quest and CDC have also collaborated on research to assess the pandemic's impact on nonprescribed fentanyl use in individuals with opioid use disorder and hepatitis C screening and diagnostic trends.

About Quest Diagnostics

Quest Diagnostics empowers people to take action to improve health outcomes. Derived from the world's largest database of clinical lab results, our diagnostic insights reveal new avenues to identify and treat disease, inspire healthy behaviors, and improve health care management. Quest annually serves one in three adult Americans and half the physicians and hospitals in the United States, and our nearly 50,000 employees understand that, in the right hands and with the right context, our diagnostic insights can inspire actions that transform lives. Learn more at www.QuestDiagnostics.com or follow us on social media: LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. For information on our COVID-19 testing, visit: newsroom.questdiagnostics.com/COVIDTestingUpdates

SOURCE Quest Diagnostics
Realthy is a one-of-its-kind recommendation platform for real estate professionals that enables real estate brokers and agents to earn commissions by referring their clients to a wide range of homeowner services. Users can expect to earn an additional $4,000 to $5,000 per year to supplement the commissions they earn on real estate transactions and make their income more diversified and predictable.

The bulk of current Realthy users are mainly located in California, Texas, Georgia, New York and Florida. Affiliate services currently available on Realthy include nationwide moving and storage services, interior design, furniture, alarm installations and more. Realthy is fully compliant with the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA).

"Given the crowded market for real estate marketing services, we couldn't be happier about the initial response from the U.S. real estate community," said Tadas Cekavicius, CEO of Full Reach. "The funding we've received enables us to continue expanding our platform, hire additional staff, and increase our visibility in the U.S. real estate industry."

According to Cekavicius, the latest funding will prepare Realthy for a seed round of funding being planned for this summer, which will be used to significantly increase the number of platform users. The company plans to attract 200,000 real estate brokers to Realthy by 2024.

The ultimate goal of Realthy is to become the leading source of predictable secondary income for brokers and agents and to build a community of real estate professionals who are dedicated to providing a higher level of service to homebuyers.

In addition to providing brokers and agents with additional income through recommendations, Realthy also provides users with special business offers, including a $600 discount on 3D cameras to showcase homes, the ability to create their own website at no cost, and many more.

"After conducting extensive market research, we noticed that there are almost no marketing platforms for real estate brokers to generate a consistent source of extra income," Cekavicius said. "Furthermore, we realized that buying the right equipment, marketing resources, or other services to grow their business is expensive, especially for those agents who are just starting out. Realthy solves both of these problems, which is why we aren't surprised by the great response we've received."

According to Algimantas Padegimas, CMO and co-founder of Realthy, Full Reach plans to continue to build out Realthy's global staff.

"Our goal is to build and maintain a team that can work remotely under any conditions," Padegimas said. "We have already proven that our people are able to work remotely and productively from anywhere they live, including the United States, Spain, Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Lithuania."

For more information about Realthy or to join, visit realthy.io .

About Realthy.io

Realthy is a RESPA-compliant recommendation platform for real estate professionals that enables real estate brokers and agents to earn commissions by referring their clients to a wide range of homebuyer services, including U.S. moving and storage services, interior design, furniture, alarm installations and more. Real estate professionals can use the platform to share valuable services with clients and obtain special business offers. Realthy is based in Oakland, California. For more information visit realthy.io .

About Full Reach Inc.

Full Reach Inc. is a digital marketing technology company that uses data and creativity to help brands start meaningful conversations and gain new customers. The company specializes in building unique commission-based solutions for self-employed professionals. Full Reach was incubated by Launchpad Capital and is based in Dover, Delaware. For more information, visit www.fullreach.io .

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1772554/Full_Reach_Inc.jpg

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1728833/Realthy_Logo.jpg

SOURCE Full Reach Inc.
It's incredibly meaningful to us to have brought clear vision to 20 million individuals. Tweet this

"It's incredibly meaningful to us to have brought clear vision to 20 million individuals who didn't have equitable access to the vision care and glasses they needed," said Executive Director Dr. Pelin Munis. "In just six years since we first announced this goal, and despite a global pandemic, we have scaled our impact from 5 million to 20 million people served through our vision and glasses delivery programs."

Munis attributes the organization's success to its unique model and its Global Access Program, which was created in 2015 to bring its vision programs to the largest global health and humanitarian organizations. "We are extremely proud to have incorporated our programs into the work of over 2,500 NGOs and government social service agencies in 144 countries to date. We now have plans to accelerate our impact to reach even more people living in poverty, including refugees and other marginalized populations."

"We celebrate this milestone with the many visionaries who have made this moment possible, including our board members  past and present  as well as our corporate donors and partners," said Kevin Hassey, Board Chair. Corporate donors include FGX International, National Vision, Inc., Warby Parker, Jimmy Fairly and others who have made significant contributions as have project partners including Americares, Management Sciences for Health Peru (MSH Peru), Eyes on Africa and many more.

RestoringVision has partnered with Americares, a leading global health organization, since 2016 providing glasses to more than 3.6 million people affected by poverty or disaster. "We are so grateful for their continuous support and are incredibly proud of the work we've been able to achieve together to reach even more people in need," said Americares Chief Medical Officer Dr. Julie Varughese.

National Vision, Inc. has supported RestoringVision since 2007. "We are proud to work with RestoringVision and celebrate being part of their enormous milestone of positively impacting the lives of 20 million people," said National Vision CEO Reade Fahs, also a RestoringVision board member.

Sherry Grigsby, Eyes on Africa founder, reflected on RestoringVision's milestone, recalling people helped through the organization's work. "I think about the woman in Uganda who was thrilled to thread the needle wearing her new glasses. I think about the elderly Masai gentleman in Tanzania who didn't read or write but wanted to cut his fingernails safely. I think about the farmworker in Ghana who said she could finally see the difference between the coffee seedlings and the weeds," Grigsby said. "Each one of those fortunate people has had their life opened up to unimagined productivity and joy."

"Milestones like this are only possible through partnerships. We're incredibly grateful for the people and organizations, past and present, who have helped us reach 20 million people around the world with clear vision," said Munis.

About RestoringVision

RestoringVision is a leading global nonprofit dedicated to addressing the unmet need for eyeglasses in impoverished communities across the globe. Each year, the organization helps millions of people living on less than $2/day gain clear vision to increase productivity, continue working and earning an income, learning, and performing everyday tasks. Since 2003, RestoringVision has reached over 20 million people in 144 countries with its programs. For more information, visit restoringvision.org.

Media Contact: [email protected]

SOURCE RestoringVision
INDIANAPOLIS, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ --Russian Cyber Attacks Highly Likely To Target American Businesses

As the war in Ukraine continues to rage on, there is a looming fear that Russia might turn its sights on American business. There is already a heightened focus on cyber security here in the US but now more than ever business leaders are specifically preparing for increased cyber attacks that might be targeted from Russia.

Sanctions on Russia have devastated their economy and a retaliation of Russian cyber attacks on US businesses is a counter move that many experts believe is on the table for Vladimir Putin.

What Business Leader Can Do To Prepare For Russian Cyber Attacks

At this time, it's best that US business leaders prioritize their cyber security defenses and start taking a look at their attack surfaces and the edges of their networks.

The work environment has changed a lot over the last few years with the adoption of a remote work strategy. It's unfortunate but most businesses haven't evolved their cyber security measures to adapt to the drastic changes in how they operate. This right now is one of the leading causes of being hit with cyber attacks like ransomware.surve

The Time To Invest In Cyber Security Is Now

Recently the United States President, Joe Biden, has issued a warning to US business leaders urging them to take action securing their cyber defenses. Time could be running out on potential Russian cyber attacks so connecting with experts, like at Firewalls.com , is a swift and decisive response to looming threats.

Our expert consultants and engineers have experience implementing customized cyber security solutions aimed at combating modern cyber attacks.

About Firewalls.com

Firewalls.com is a leader in providing cyber security equipment, software, and services in the United States.

SOURCE Firewalls.com
LONDON, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Samanah Duran, British Entrepreneur, TV & Media Personality is now making a foray into the world of health and wellness for parents and parents to be.

Earlier this month, BEYOUROWN announced plans to launch a sister company Baby Bloomberg off the back of its own venture within the media industry. Since the launch of BEYOUROWN back in 2016 as a Global media company, BEYOUROWN have since amassed a community of 17,000, worked with experts from 167+ industry sectors, served in 40+ countries to date and partnered with 2300 agencies and companies to bring insightful content.

Having already leveraged partnerships with big brands within many industries including Retail, STEM and Lifestyle through BEYOUROWN such as Pukka, Freshbooks, METTLE, SWOOP Funding and Starling Bank to provide insightful useful content for Entrepreneurs and SMEs, Samanah is promising to do the same with Baby Bloomberg. By securing a great trusted partner network with the likes of ASDA Money, Monese, Childs Farm and Babogue, Samanah is set to launch the Baby Bloomberg App later this this Spring along with a Podcast during the Summer of 2022

Since the launch of babybloomberg.com, Samanah's weekly newsletter of parenting tips, wellness hacks and heart-felt diaries has seen growth of a community under a subscription based business model, Samanah mentions she has learned a lot about what it it truly takes to growing a company to a scalable size first hand through the experience of BEYOUROWN.

Tackling the thought of sceptics, Samanah addresses head on "I am only doing what I know best, which is to unearth new learning for those that are in search and need of it, I've launched Baby Bloomberg with a team of award-winning journalists and credible expert industry leaders, so that our Baby Bloomberg community feel supported, empowered and reassured throughout their pregnancy and parenthood journey.



NOTES TO EDITORS

PRESS CONTACT: [email protected] [email protected] | IMAGE BY NIC DONOVAN

Twitter: @samanahduran

Instagram: @samanahduran

Website | WWW.BABYBLOOMBERG.COM

SOURCE BEYOUROWN COLLECTIVE
Ongoing collaborations will seek to protect millions of patient records using

sophisticated encryption technology

NEW YORK and PALO ALTO, Calif., March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Sandbox AQ, an enterprise SaaS company leveraging quantum tech and AI, announced today a collaboration with Mount Sinai Health System to launch Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) solutions, a broad security technology solution to protect patient data against current and future cybersecurity threats.

Sandbox has developed SaaS-based enterprise modules that incorporate the latest encryption protocol standards recently ratified by NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology). Through Sandbox AQ, Mount Sinai Health System will incorporate PQC protocols into its network to provide increased security for millions of customers and their sensitive data.

"Our collaboration with Sandbox AQ propels our security and technology strategies forward, enabling us to deliver advanced, secure cutting-edge products to our patients," said Kristin Myers, Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Mount Sinai Health System and Dean for Information Technology at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. "Protecting patient data against cyber threats is incredibly important to us."

"Quantum technology will quickly render today's RSA-based encryption obsolete, which is why it's imperative that we protect the world's sensitive data now against the next generation of cyberattacks," said Jack D. Hidary, CEO of Sandbox AQ, which officially launched today. "Mount Sinai is one of the first healthcare systems planning to implement PQC protocols into its health network to protect its customers and transform its business. We look forward to collaborating with them on this project."

About SandboxAQ

Sandbox AQ is an enterprise SaaS company delivering solutions at the nexus of quantum tech and AI. Based in Palo Alto, the inspiration for Sandbox AQ and some of the team originated at Alphabet Inc. in 2016. Sandbox AQ launched as an independent, venture-backed entity in 2022. For more information visit www.sandboxaq.com.

About Mount Sinai Health System

The Mount Sinai Health System is New York City's largest academic medical system, encompassing eight hospitals, a leading medical school, and a vast network of ambulatory practices throughout the greater New York region. We advance medicine and health through unrivaled education and translational research and discovery to deliver care that is the safest, highest-quality, most accessible and equitable, and the best value of any health system in the nation. The Health System includes approximately 7,300 primary and specialty care physicians; 13 free-standing joint-venture centers; more than 410 ambulatory practices throughout the five boroughs of New York City, Westchester, and Long Island; and more than 30 affiliated community health centers. The Mount Sinai Hospital is ranked in U.S. News & World Report's "Honor Roll" of the top 20 U.S. hospitals and among the top in the nation by specialty: No. 1 in Geriatrics and top 20 in Cardiology/Heart Surgery, Diabetes/Endocrinology, Gastroenterology/GI Surgery, Neurology/Neurosurgery, Orthopedics, Pulmonology/Lung Surgery, Urology, and Rehabilitation. Mount Sinai Kravis Children's Hospital is ranked in U.S. News & World Report's "Best Children's Hospitals" among the country's best in four out of 10 pediatric specialties. New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai is ranked among the Top 20 nationally for ophthalmology. The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai is one of three medical schools that have earned distinction by multiple indicators: ranked in the top 20 by U.S. News & World Report's "Best Medical Schools," aligned with a U.S. News & World Report "Honor Roll" Hospital, and No. 14 in the nation for National Institutes of Health funding. Newsweek's "The World's Best Smart Hospitals" ranks The Mount Sinai Hospital as No. 1 in New York and top five globally, and Mount Sinai Morningside as top 20 globally, and "The World's Best Specialized Hospitals" ranks Mount Sinai Heart as No. 1 in New York and No. 4 globally and the Division of Gastroenterology as No. 3 globally, and the Division of Pulmonary Medicine as No. 6 globally. For more information, visit https://www.mountsinai.org or find Mount Sinai on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

SOURCE Sandbox AQ
The Federal Government has allocated over $121B for schools to improve ventilation and indoor air quality, (IAQ). Tweet this

The recently announced planned acquisition of Boston Solar continues to be one of the Company's primary focuses as the Company and the Boston Solar senior leadership team are committed to completing this transaction and completing of the FY2021 Audit which will allow for immediate incorporation and consolidation into the SinglePoint Inc. financials. On December 21, 2021, the Company announced via an 8K that the Company's independent registered public accountant, Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) certified Turner Stone & Company ("Turner Stone") completed a full two-year (2019 and 2020) audit of Boston Solar. Turner Stone audited the financial statements of Boston Solar, which comprised the balance sheets as of December 31, 2020, and 2019, and the related statements of operations, of members deficit and cash flows for the years then ended, and the related notes to the financial statements. Additionally, the Company's independent auditors completed a review of the Boston Solar through September 30, 2021 and are now ready to complete the FY2021 full year annual audit.

As previously announced and upon completion of the acquisition, the CEO and Co-Founder of Boston Solar, Daniel Mello Guimaraes will join the SinglePoint team and spearhead the Solar-Centric EPC acquisition strategy focused on ensuring that future acquisitions are directionally and geographically aligned and substantially meet the defined acquisition criteria.

Mr. Mello Guimaraes will continue to oversee the day-to-day operations of Boston Solar in addition to identifying accretive tuck in acquisitions facilitated by SinglePoint that would benefit Boston Solar. In addition, there are efficiencies and operational synergies within SinglePoint's current solar assets, when combined with the demonstrated expertise of Mr. Mello Guimaraes and the Boston Solar team, that should be accretive and enhance overall margin as we grow revenue and strategically expand our renewable energy and storage footprint.

Over the past 10 years, Boston Solar has been providing premium residential and commercial solar installations to the communities it serves. The company has been able to achieve scalable, consistent growth, expecting to surpass $25 million in revenue in 2022.

"Our team has done a phenomenal job demonstrating the daily consistency and persistence necessary to make significant progress executing against the strategic goals and objectives that I created to diversify the business, growth of top-line revenue while being mindful of profitability within our business units. I continue to reaffirm my expectation that all SinglePoint core business units are targeting substantial increases in revenue in FY2022 and expect that each unit will be operationally profitable on a stand-alone basis. Corporately our accounting team has been enhanced which in turn is having a tremendous impact on our financial reporting and processes. Our active organic solar business units continue to collaborate and are well-positioned to address the growing demand for residential and small commercial solar and energy storage solutions in the markets we serve. FY2021 was a challenging year for our legacy solar business as we were faced with the difficult decision to restructure and rebuild our solar business based on the historical financial results, lack of profitability, and our waning confidence level in the existing leadership team's ability to deliver bottom line results. Our historical solar business was forced to consolidate staff resulting in a more streamlined focused business unit that has the ability to grow revenues and most importantly deliver profitability as it adds back selective strategic partnerships and vendor relationships, and I am proud to announce the changes that have been implemented are now delivering the intended results. Lastly, the Company's decision to enter the emerging and growing market around Indoor Air Quality "IAQ" could eventually prove to be the most valuable acquisition as evidenced by the total market size and the recent sales announcements by Box Pure Air in Q1. BOX Pure Air's completed delivery of over 1,000 AirBox() Portable Air Purification Units to a small school district of less than 20 schools in North Carolina. According to the national Center for Education Statistics in 2020 there were over 130,000 K-12 schools in the United States of America. The Federal Government has allocated over $121B for schools to improve ventilation and indoor air quality, which is now being distributed and deployed throughout the country to school districts. Based upon a conservative average sale of $100K (less than the average in North Carolina) per school if Box Pure Air was successful in penetrating 1% of the addressable school markets it would equate to over $130 Million in Sales.

In addition to the $121B available to schools there is a massive opportunity as we focus on creating safe indoor air environments as we return to work. This month (March 2022) the EPA announced and published its Clean Air in Buildings Challenge that provides basic principles and guidelines to improve indoor air quality (IAQ) and reduce the risk of airborne spread of viruses and other contaminants. Infectious diseases can spread through the inhalation of airborne particles and on average North American's spend over 90% of their time indoors. As stated in the EPA's Clean Air Buildings Challenge, funds from the American Rescue Plan and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law can be utilized to supplement ventilation and IAQ in public settings.

The recent successes show that our plan is working and has energized the entire organization. Each of our active core subsidiaries have the ability, this calendar year to surpass the historical annual revenues of SinglePoint individually," adds Wil Ralston CEO SinglePoint, "If we continue to execute and are not impacted further by geopolitical or global health events, Fiscal Year 2022 should be a record year for SinglePoint, its stakeholders and most importantly, its shareholders."

Subsidiary BOX Pure Air records first quarter revenue surpassing previous annual revenue. Having outfitted an entire district in North Carolina as well as many small orders throughout multiple states, BOX Pure Air continues to solidify itself firmly as an emerging leader in the growing indoor air purification market. Clean indoor air is an essential right as we return to work and school. Box Pure Air is well-positioned with exclusive territories throughout the America's (North America, Central America, South America). The interest in BOX products and services continues to rise as federal funding is deployed through the nation. $121 Billion dollars of the available $180 Billion has been allocated for schools to improve the indoor air quality and ventilation.

The relaunch of subsidiary Direct Solar America is continuing to develop and establish its place in the solar market as the customer experience standard for solar sales. In the solar lead arena, Energy Wyze is growing their clientele and expanding their service offerings for scaled growth in addition to adding subscription based recurring revenue clients to its proprietary solar CRM system that is just emerging from its Beta version.

The Company has also substantially completed their audit and it is scheduled to be filed prior to the end of the month. They are waiting on final results from commissioned reports, required by our auditing firm, related to any adjustment to goodwill or impairments, if any, related to acquisitions and ongoing business units. A third-party firm specializing in valuations has submitted reports and they are being reviewed by management and the auditors.

SinglePoint continues to push forward with their acquisition strategy, Boston Solar is still in the process of closing. On behalf of Boston Solar, the Company initiated the remainder of the 2021 audit for targeted acquisition. Previous audits had been completed for 2019 & 2020 with a review of 2021 up to Q3, with this final step the Company will have fully consolidated financials for the completion of the acquisition. Acquiring Boston Solar with fully consolidated financials prepares SinglePoint for the uplist application process.

"We are making every effort we can to make this acquisition accretive and raise the capital to close on terms that are beneficial for shareholders and the Company," William Ralston, SinglePoint CEO continues, "Our team continues to identify additional targets and has started negotiations with various opportunities. We will continue to find great companies that align with SinglePoint's core vision. We believe both renewable energy solutions and indoor air purification are markets that are poised for incredible growth as these become top priorities across the Nation."

Solar has grown exponentially over the past 10 years; estimates place the growth at about 33% year over year. Throughout that time, there have been a multitude of advancements in the efficiency and performance of these solutions. With ever rising gas and energy costs the time to go solar is now. Solar has become top of mind for millions and a recent survey suggests that over 67% of households want solar energy. Houses with solar spend 13% less time on the market and are 24% more likely to sell over asking price. Currently, solar only provides 4% of our electricity and the goal is to increase that number to 30% by 2030. Over the next 10 years it is expected that solar will add an additional 300GW, 10 times more than what was installed in 2021. It would seem that '100 Year' storms are occurring much more frequently, between natural disasters and consistent price increases for energy; turning to solar energy and energy storage is a smart choice for resilience and financial predictability. If you could have locked in gas prices, even as early as the beginning of March, you probably would have done so. Similar concept with solar energy, you are locking in your energy costs for the foreseeable future. As our population grows and the electrification of everything expands, energy consumption will continue to rise which ultimately will result in prices increasing.

SinglePoint is building the next generation company that will deliver a solution for your power generation, storage and transmission. From the solar panels on the roof to the electric vehicle (EV) car in the garage, SinglePoint will deliver the required equipment.

About SinglePoint Inc (SING)

SinglePoint Inc. is a renewable energy and sustainable lifestyle company focused on providing environmentally friendly energy efficiencies and healthy living solutions. SinglePoint is initially focused on building the largest network of renewable energy solutions and modernizing the traditional solar and energy storage model. The Company is also actively exploring future growth opportunities in air purification, electric vehicle charging, solar as a subscription service, and additional energy efficiencies and appliances that enhance sustainability and a healthier life. For more information, visit the Company's website (www.singlepoint.com) and connect on social media for the latest updates.

Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements in this news release may contain forward-looking information within the meaning of Rule 175 under the Securities Act of 1933 and Rule 3b-6 under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and are subject to the safe harbor created by those rules. All statements, other than statements of fact, included in this release, including, without limitation, statements regarding potential plans and objectives of the Company, the use of proceeds, anticipated growth and future expansion, are forward-looking statements that involve 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. Technical complications, which may arise, could prevent the prompt implementation of any strategically significant plan(s) outlined above. The Company undertakes no duty to revise or update any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this release.

Investor Contact:

Tra-Digital IR

[email protected]

(212) 389 - 9782 ext. 107

SOURCE SinglePoint Inc.
Increase in tobacco consumption among men as well as women in developed countries and higher risk of exposure to indoor air pollution are expected to increase the prevalence of respiratory disease equally among both men and women, which drive the growth of the global smart inhalers market.

PORTLAND, Ore., March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Allied Market Research published a report, titled, "Smart Inhalers Market by Product (Inhalers and Nebulizers), Indication (Asthma and COPD), and Distribution Channel (Hospital Pharmacies and Retail Pharmacies): Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 20212030". According to the report, the global Smart Inhalers industry generated $118 million in 2020, and is anticipated to generate $1.1 billion by 2030, witnessing a CAGR of 25.1% from 2021 to 2030.

For Right Perspective, Download Sample PDF at: https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/request-sample/1715

Prime determinants of growth

Increase in tobacco consumption among men as well as women in developed countries and higher risk of exposure to indoor air pollution are expected to increase the prevalence of respiratory disease equally among both men and women, which drive the growth of the global smart inhalers market. However, the risk of data leakage hinders the market growth. On the other hand, various collaborations, partnerships, and acquisitions between pharmaceutical companies and smart inhaler manufacturers present new opportunities in the coming years.

Covid-19 Scenario

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has had a positive impact on the growth of the global smart inhalers market.

Hospital and clinical visits increased significantly, due to surge in the number of cases related to chronic respiratory diseases. This in turn, led to increasing demand for inhalers and nebulizers, thus augmenting the market growth.

The asthma segment to maintain its leadership status throughout the forecast period

Based on indication, the asthma segment held the highest market share in 2020, accounting for more than half of the global smart inhalers market, and is estimated to maintain its leadership status throughout the forecast period, owing to increasing cases of asthma patients. Moreover, the COPD segment is projected to manifest the highest CAGR of 25.4% from 2021 to 2030, owing to increasing cases of patients suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

Do You Have Any Query Or Specific Requirement? Ask to Our Industry Expert: https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/purchase-enquiry/1715

The retail pharmacies segment to maintain its lead position during the forecast period

Based on distribution channel, the retail pharmacies segment accounted for the largest share in 2020, contributing to nearly three-fifths of the global smart inhalers market, and is projected to maintain its lead position during the forecast period. Moreover, the same segment is expected to portray the largest CAGR of 25.4% from 2021 to 2030, owing to ease of availability of wide range of inhalers in the retail pharmacies.

North America to maintain its dominance by 2030

Based on region, North America held the highest market share in terms of revenue 2020, accounting for nearly two-fifths of the global smart inhalers market. This is owing to rise in respiratory diseases, rapid adoption of advanced technologies and presence of key players across North America. Moreover, the Asia-Pacific region is expected to witness the fastest CAGR of 27.4% during the forecast period, owing to rapidly growing patient pool, increase in publicprivate investments, and rise in number of strategic developments among the key players.

Leading Market Players

Adherium Limited

Aptar Group Inc. (Cohero Health Inc.)

AstraZeneca, Inc.

Cognita Labs, LLC

GlaxoSmithKline Plc

Novartis AG

OPKO Health Inc.

Philip Morris International Inc. (Vectura Group Plc)

Resmed Inc. (Propeller Health)

Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd.

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.

Request for 14 days free trial: https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/avenue/trial/starter



"We have also published few syndicated market studies in the similar area that might be of your interest. Below are the report title for your reference, considering Impact of Covid-19 Over This Market which will help you to assess aftereffects of pandemic on short-term and long-term growth trends of this market."

Trending Reports in Healthcare Industry (Book Now with 10% Discount):

Smart Syringes Market - Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 20202028

Smart Pulse Oximeters Market - Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2020-2028

Smart Insulin Pens Market - Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2020-2028

Smart Pills Technology Market - Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 20202028

Smart Home Healthcare Market - Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 20202028

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:

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

UK: +44-845-528-1300

Hong Kong: +852-301-84916

India (Pune): +91-20-66346060

Fax: +1(855)550-5975

[email protected]

Web: https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/reports-store/life-sciences

Follow Us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/life-sciences-industry-research/

SOURCE Allied Market Research
New commerce content creation tool offers publishers complete control to customize the shopping experience and increase affiliate revenue

BOULDER, Colo., March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Sovrn , a publisher technology platform that empowers content creators to remain independent and thrive on the Open Web, today announced the release of the Shopping Galleries tool to its growing //Commerce product suite, empowering commerce content creators to easily curate unique shopping experiences.

With //Commerce Shopping Galleries, editors can build a personalized carousel of products by theme or product type or showcase a range of products from one or more merchants, with full control of the products featured. Editors can deliver a better shopping experience to readers and enhance their site in minutes, not hours, with the ability to quickly select from products and merchants in one place, pick the ones with the lowest prices, and easily add them to their site. In addition, the customizable "Sponsored" header gives editors the freedom to highlight a featured merchant or editor's pick while offering an opportunity to earn more from merchants desiring premium placement. Editorial recommendations like "Best Buys," "Deals of the Day," and "We Recommend" can be created with just a few clicks.

"Having ecommerce content on our site has been a growing revenue source for us," said Philip Brown, Head of Affiliates at Reach plc. "Being able to curate unique, engaging content quickly for our readers will drive more engagement and boost our affiliate revenue. We're excited to add Shopping Galleries to our commerce content strategy."

To demonstrate how Sovrn //Commerce Shopping Galleries provides a flexible solution for editors and content creators to create rich, customizable content, the company is hosting a webinar on Wednesday, April 13, "Secrets to Quickly Creating Commerce Content That Drives More Revenue," at noon Eastern Time.

Shopping Galleries is just one of several Sovrn //Commerce solutions designed to help publishers grow their affiliate revenue, whether from a commission or a click:

Content : Publishers can partner with Sovrn and jumpstart, supplement, or diversify their monetized editorial lifestyle content.

: Publishers can partner with Sovrn and jumpstart, supplement, or diversify their monetized editorial lifestyle content. Affiliate link monetization : One interface that displays all the publisher's affiliate revenue efforts  from link creation to editorial tools  and provides access to over 30,000 merchants.

: One interface that displays all the publisher's affiliate revenue efforts  from link creation to editorial tools  and provides access to over 30,000 merchants. Comparisons: Automatically identify an existing product URL or product keywords and display alternative retailers selling the same product, driving up to a 200 percent increase in click-through rates.

"Ecommerce represents a huge opportunity for publishers to drive additional revenue and get closer to their readers," said Nicola Ghezzi, Sovrn managing director of //Commerce solutions. "Shopping Galleries delivers the editorial control for our customers to quickly, easily, and flexibly create quality ecommerce content and deliver a rich customer experience.

About Sovrn

Sovrn provides products and services to thousands of online publishers to help them understand, operate and grow their business. Sovrn is headquartered in Boulder, Colorado, with offices in New York, London and San Diego.

With thousands of customers deploying advertising, affiliate marketing, and data products across 50,000 websites, Sovrn reaches over 400 million active consumers across more than 20 billion page views every day. Sovrn has been a leader in online publisher technology since its founding and has been recognized by IAB, JICWEBS, and TAG for its role in combating fraud and promoting pro-transparency initiatives. Sovrn is dedicated to helping content creators do more of what they love, and less of what they don't. www.sovrn.com

SOURCE Sovrn Holdings, Inc.
Stellantis N.V. and LG Energy Solution (LGES) today announced they have executed binding, definitive agreements to establish the first large-scale, domestic, electric-vehicle battery manufacturing facility in Canada. The joint venture company will produce leading edge lithium-ion battery cells and modules to meet a significant portion of Stellantis' vehicle production requirements in North America.

The joint venture company will invest more than $5 billion CAD ($4.1 billion USD) to establish operations, which will include an all-new battery manufacturing plant located in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. Plant construction activities are scheduled to begin later this year, with production operations planned to launch in the first quarter of 2024.

The plant aims to have an annual production capacity in excess of 45 gigawatt hours (GWh) and will create an estimated 2,500 new jobs in Windsor and the surrounding areas. Each of the municipal, provincial and federal levels of the Canadian government have agreed to fully support the successful operation of the joint venture company.

With the battery manufacturing plant located in Windsor, Ontario, home to Canada's largest automotive cluster, Stellantis and LGES expect the plant to serve as a catalyst for the establishment of a strong battery supply chain in the region. Canada is committed to establishing a broad, local battery ecosystem by leveraging, among other things, its leadership in the generation of electricity from renewable sources.

"Our joint venture with LG Energy Solution is yet another stepping stone to achieving our aggressive electrification road map in the region, aimed at hitting 50% of battery-electric vehicle sales in the U.S. and Canada by the end of the decade," said Carlos Tavares, Stellantis CEO. "We are grateful to the municipal, provincial and federal levels of government for their support and commitment to help position Canada as a North American leader in the production of electric-vehicle batteries."

"Through this joint venture, LG Energy Solution will be able to position itself as a critical player in building green energy value chains in the region," said Youngsoo Kwon, CEO of LG Energy Solution. "Creating a joint venture battery manufacturing company in Canada, recognized as one of the leading nations in renewable energy resources, is key for LG Energy Solution as we aim to power more electric vehicles around the world."

"Today's announcement of a world leading facility to build electric-vehicle batteries in Windsor is an investment in our workers, our communities and our future. Partnerships like these are critical to creating new jobs and putting Canada on the cutting edge of the clean economy. By working together, we are creating thousands of new jobs, making a difference in the lives of people now and making sure that future generations have a clean environment to live in," said Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau.

"Attracting this multi-billion-dollar investment will secure Ontario's place as a North American hub for building the cars and batteries of the future. As we secure game-changing investments, we're also connecting resources, industries and workers in northern Ontario with the manufacturing might of southern Ontario to build up home-grown supply chains. Every region of Ontario will benefit with thousands of jobs being created and a stronger economy that works for everyone," said Ontario Premier Doug Ford.

"Stellantis is Windsor's largest employer and has a rich history in this community. Chrysler began operations in this community in 1925 and has employed generations of WindsorEssex workers at its facility. With this announcement, we are securing the future for thousands more local workers and securing Windsor's strategic location as the home of Canada's electric vehicle future. As the world pivots to EVs, Windsor will soon be home to the battery manufacturing facility that powers it all," said Mayor of Windsor Drew Dilkens.

As part of the Dare Forward 2030 strategic plan, Stellantis announced plans to have global annual battery-electric vehicle sales of 5 million vehicles by 2030, reaching 100% of passenger car BEV sales mix in Europe and 50% passenger car and light-duty truck BEV sales mix in North America. Stellantis also increased planned battery capacity by 140 GWh to approximately 400 GWh, to be supported by five battery manufacturing plants together with additional supply contracts. LG Energy Solution, with this latest announcement, has now solidly secured production capacity of over 200 GWh in North America annually, translating into production of 2.5 million high-performance electric vehicles. The battery manufacturer has previously announced plans to invest approximately $4.6 billion (USD) into battery facilities in North America. Globally, LGES is on course to expand its international production network in multiple continents, including countries such as Canada, U.S., Poland, Indonesia, China and South Korea.

The closing is subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals.

LG Energy Solution

LG Energy Solution (KRX: 373220) is a global leader delivering advanced lithium-ion batteries for Electric Vehicles (EV), Mobility & IT applications, and Energy Storage Systems (ESS). With 30 years of experience in advanced battery technology, it continues to grow rapidly towards the realization of sustainable life. With its robust global network that spans the U.S., Europe, Asia, and Australia, LG Energy Solution is more committed than ever to developing innovative technologies that will bring the future energy a step closer. Under its ESG vision "We CHARGE toward a better future," LG Energy Solution is doing its utmost to prioritize environment, fulfil social responsibilities and shape sustainable future. For more information, please visit https://www.lgensol.com.

Stellantis

Stellantis N.V. (NYSE / MTA / Euronext Paris: STLA) is one of the world's leading automakers and a mobility provider. Its storied and iconic brands embody the passion of their visionary founders and today's customers in their innovative products and services, including Abarth, Alfa Romeo, Chrysler, Citroen, Dodge, DS Automobiles, Fiat, Jeep, Lancia, Maserati, Opel, Peugeot, Ram, Vauxhall, Free2Move and Leasys. Powered by our diversity, we lead the way the world moves  aspiring to become the greatest sustainable mobility tech company, not the biggest, while creating added value for all stakeholders as well as the communities in which it operates. For more information, visit www.stellantis.com.

SOURCE Stellantis
MLOps Leader Eligible to Participate in the Data Readiness for Artificial Intelligence Development Program

AUSTIN, Texas, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Striveworks , a leader in MLOps for highly regulated industries, announces its award of a basic ordering agreement (BOA) for The Data Readiness for Artificial Intelligence Development (DRAID). The award, which has a $242 million ceiling across its recipients, was made by the U.S. Army Contract Command on behalf of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC).

The BOA is a contract vehicle established for decentralized ordering and will remain active for Striveworks for five years. Through this award, Striveworks' proven MLOps capabilities will be readily available to support the agile delivery of AI data readiness capabilities for the DoD, including:

Data Science

Data Engineering

Data Architecture

Synthetic Data Generation and Data Anonymization

Software Development, Modification, and Configuration

Cloud Integration and Alignment

"We look forward to a partnership through the JAIC DRAID BOA with the Chief Digital Artificial Intelligence Office," said Striveworks Executive Vice President, Quay Barnett . "Striveworks seeks to leverage our tactical data team expertise through the JAIC DRAID BOA to accelerate the delivery of AI-enabled capabilities, scale the Department-wide impact of AI, and synchronize DoD AI activities to expand Joint Force advantages."

Striveworks has an extensive record of positive performance in delivering software and data science products and services within DoD operational environments. The firm's pioneering work in delivering data science and software solutions to DoD customers inspired the creation of Chariot, a cloud-agnostic MLOps platform designed to address the unique challenges of operational data science in a cost-effective and scalable manner.

ABOUT STRIVEWORKS

Striveworks is a pioneer in operational data science for national security and other highly regulated spaces. Striveworks' flagship MLOps platform is Chariot, purpose-built to enable engineers and business professionals to transform their data into actionable insights. Founded in 2018, Striveworks was highlighted as an exemplar in the National Security Commission for AI 2020 Final Report.

Follow Striveworks on LinkedIn and request a demo .

ABOUT THE JAIC

The Department of Defense (DoD) Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC) was established in 2018 to be the focal point of the DoD Artificial Intelligence (AI) Strategy to accelerate scaling AI and its impact across the Department. Working closely with the Services, Combatant Commands, and other Components, JAIC helps identify appropriate use cases for AI across DoD, develops capabilities, and scales impact across our enterprise with the goal of transforming the DoD through AI.

Media Contact:

Tracy Shank

Marketing Director

[email protected]

805-874-2650

www.striveworks.us

SOURCE Striveworks, Inc.
EDMONTON, AB, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ - Alberta Investment Management Corporation (AIMCo) is pleased to announce the appointment of Suzanne Akers to the role of Chief Risk Officer. Ms. Akers will join the organization effective April 19, 2022.

"At AIMCo, effective and integrated risk management practices are critical for us to meet clients' investment objectives," said Evan Siddall, Chief Executive Officer, AIMCo. "To further strengthen AIMCo's risk culture, we knew we needed an individual with demonstrated performance in assessing and balancing risk along with proven investment experience. Suzanne offers just that and I look forward to working with her as she continues to develop our risk management team and program."

"AIMCo is a purpose-driven organization that recognizes how important it is to achieve effective integration of the risk and investment functions. It is a distinct honour to join the organization, and to have the opportunity to lead AIMCo's risk management team," said Ms. Akers, incoming Chief Risk Officer. "I look forward to meeting with AIMCo's pension, endowment and government fund clients and to better understand their unique objectives, so that we can collaborate to meet their goals."

As Chief Risk Officer, Ms. Akers assumes responsibility for leading AIMCo's Investment Risk Management and Investment Risk Analytics functions, ensuring the pursuit of each client's investment objectives is aligned to their risk appetite. She is also responsible for AIMCo's Enterprise Risk Management function, ensuring there is broad recognition of all risks impacting the organization, with appropriate mitigants in place. In addition, she will oversee AIMCo's Compliance function, serving as Chief Compliance Officer, ensuring complete integration of all AIMCo's risk functions. Ms. Akers will report to Mr. Siddall and will be a member of AIMCo's Executive Committee.

"On behalf of the entire organization, I want to extend my gratitude to Andrew Tambone, who joined the organization at a critical inflection point in the evolution of our risk culture," added Mr. Siddall. "Drawing upon his diverse background and range of experience, Andrew deftly navigated the implementation of our new risk system."

Ms. Akers assumes the role of Chief Risk Officer following the retirement in December 2021 of Mr. Tambone.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

Suzanne Akers, Chief Risk Officer

Suzanne Akers most recently served as Co-Head of Franklin Templeton's Investment Risk Management Group, responsible for FT Equity, Balanced, and Fixed Income strategies globally.

Since joining Franklin Templeton in 2002, Suzanne has held leadership positions in the separately managed accounts division, institutional sales and alternative strategies. Previously, she worked at Morgan Stanley, where she held risk, operations and technology roles in New York and London.

Ms. Akers holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering from Princeton University, and an MBA from Stanford University where she was an Arjay Miller scholar. She holds the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation, is a Certified Financial Risk Manager (FRM) and currently serves as Vice President for the Buy Side Risk Managers Forum of the Global Association of Risk Professionals.

ABOUT ALBERTA INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT CORPORATION

AIMCo is one of Canada's largest and most diversified institutional investment managers with more than $160 billion of assets under management. AIMCo was established on January 1, 2008, with a mandate to provide superior long-term investment results for its clients. AIMCo operates at arms-length from the Government of Alberta and invests globally on behalf of 32 pension, endowment, and government funds in the Province of Alberta.

For more information on AIMCo please visit www.aimco.ca or follow us on LinkedIn.

SOURCE Alberta Investment Management Corporation
These two states are among several holding actions on way to June 18th Mass Poor People's and Low-Wage Workers' Assembly and Moral March on Washington and to the Polls

MADISON, Wis., March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival continues its march toward Washington with in-person marches and rallies in North Carolina and Wisconsin, the home states of the co-chairs on Monday, March 28.

This joint stop of the Mobilization Tour will start at 5pm ET in Raleigh, North Carolina, and at 5pm CT in Madison, Wisconsin, as the PPC:NCMR demands that this nation adopt policies that lift from the bottom.

The programs will be live streamed here.

Impacted people and faith leaders from Virginia and South Carolina will join the Raleigh stop while the Wisconsin stop will include those from Illinois, Iowa and Minnesota.

The co-chairs of the PPC:NCMR have deep connections to these states, and each will join the march and rally in their state. Bishop William J. Barber II, who was born in Indianapolis in 1963, moved to his father's hometown of Roper, North Carolina, in 1968. He is pastor of Greenleaf Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Goldsboro, North Carolina, and president of Repairers of the Breach.

Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis was raised in Milwaukee, in a family dedicated to social justice. Her mother was a faith based peace and justice activist. Her father - who passed away this past summer - broke open the FBI during the era of Director J. Edgar Hoover. He served as a professor and was active on voting rights and defending our democracy.

The Poor People's Campaigns in Wisconsin and North Carolina will march and rally as part of a Mobilization Tour stop on the way to the Mass Poor People's & Low-Wage Workers' Assembly and Moral March on Washington and to the Polls .

The priorities and demands of poor and low-wealth residents of North Carolina and Wisconsin will be front and center as they take on the lie of scarcity and put forward a Third Reconstruction agenda that demands, among other things: updating the poverty measure to reflect the real cost of living; enact a living wage and guarantee the right of all workers to form and join unions and guarantee quality health care for all.

Poverty is not a personal choice but a policy choice and even before COVID, these policies were killing and hurting people, with 250,000 dying from poverty each year in the US.

The actions will call attention to the needs of the forty four percent of poor and low-income people in North Carolina and the thirty five percent in Wisconsin and the 140 million people nationally who were poor or low-income before COVID . It begins at 5pm ET at Bicentennial Plaza in North Carolina and at 5pm CT on State Street and South Carroll Street in Wisconsin.

In Madison, they will proceed down State Street around the Wisconsin State Capitol, then hold a rally at First United Methodist Church, beginning at 6pm.

The Mobilization Tour will make at least 10 stops nationwide to Mobilize, Organize, Register and Educate people for a movement that votes. Our study tells us that poor and low-income do vote. In the 2020 presidential election over 35% of the voting electorate, or 58 million people, identified as poor and low-income.

Speakers will demand that this nation do MORE to live up to its possibilities:

MORE to fully address the interlocking injustices of systemic racism, poverty, ecological devastation and the denial of health care, militarism and the war economy and the false moral narrative of religious nationalism.

MORE to change the narrative and build the power of those most impacted by these injustices.

MORE to realize a Third Reconstruction agenda that can build this country from the bottom up and realize the nation we have yet to be.

The reality of 140 million people who are poor or low-wealth and just one $400 emergency away from being poor  and who represent every race, color, creed, religion, sexual orientation, ability and political party and account for 43.5% of the people living in the richest nation in the world  is a moral crisis.

Other cities on the tour include: Cleveland,DC, New York City, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Memphis and the Delta of Mississippi.

The June 18th assembly in DC will be a generationally transformative declaration of the power of poor and low-wealth people and our moral allies to say that this system is killing ALL of us and we can'twe won'twe refuse to be silent anymore!

"It is NOT just a day of action. It is a declaration of an ongoing, committed moral movement to 1) shift the moral narrative; 2) build power; and 3) make real policies to fully address poverty and low wealth from the bottom up."

Bishop William J. Barber II and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis. co-chairs of the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival

SUBJECT LINE: Moral Monday returns to NC with program in WI on same day

SOURCE The Kairos Center
New customer-centric brand identity, name and tagline to reflect the brand's growth to a global travel distribution platform

DUBAI, UAE, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- TBO Group, a leading global travel distribution platform with over one million hotels on its platform and 100,000 buyers across more than 110 countries, is unveiling its new expression of customer-centric brand name - TBO.COM, logo and tagline - "Travel Simplified."

As the world prepares for the resurgence of travel demand, TBO.COM is opting for a new distinctive identity with colors that reflects the brand's core values. The new positioning marks a pivotal moment for the brand looking to simplify the complex business of travel for buyers and suppliers, by bringing a comprehensive suite of travel products and services on one platform.

From an updated look and feel to expanded product offering, TBO.COM is looking to multiply its efforts to deliver on travel buyers and suppliers wants and needs in an ever evolving world.

A wide variety of hotels, destinations and packages are now available at competitive prices. With booker incentives and rewards, costs and related complexities are reduced while dynamic pricing, 56 available currencies and cross-border payment further ease the booking experience.

Moreover, suppliers have instant access to more than 100,000 buyers across over 110 countries. With access to the rewards program, TBO+, and the knowledge sharing platform, TBO Academy, supply partners can seamlessly achieve marketing objectives and promote their brands and destinations.

On this occasion, Gaurav Bhatnagar, Joint Managing Director, TBO.COM said, "We are happy to introduce our new identity as part of the evolution of our company's brand. We hope the new Travel Simplified proposition will enhance our position as a leading global travel distribution platform and further drive business growth to our partners."

He added, "Travelers around the world are now looking to maximize their time and to get the most out of their overall travel experience. By combining the benefits of ease of use, convenience and speed, we are focusing on connecting buyers and suppliers and simplifying travel's complex ecosystem for enhanced experiences."

By building towards creating one of the easiest booking journey possible, TBO.COM aims to become a travel partner that simplifies travel for everyone, and deliver memorable and enjoyable experiences across the world.

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1772428/TBO_Logo.jpg

SOURCE TBO.COM
"Using the input from TEDCO's Task Force for Women Entrepreneurs to develop the course foundation, we were able to create a one-of-a-kind program focusing on mitigating challenges Black women entrepreneurs face," Linda Singh , executive director for TEDCO's Women Entrepreneur Leadership.

The leadership program kicks off with a pilot program in Howard County at the Maryland Innovation Center (MIC). The Open Institute for Black Women Entrepreneur Excellence will convene a cohort of 25 women entrepreneurs, with the goal of developing a network of peer advisors and creating a collaborative community. The HBCUs will determine the needs of these entrepreneurs at the intersection of research, tech transfer and education. Maryland's HBCUs include Bowie State University, Coppin State University, Morgan State University, and the University of Maryland Eastern Shore.

"Recent numbers show the continued challenges faced by early-stage women entrepreneurs 2.3% of venture funding went to women in 2020, down from an all time high of 2.8% in 2019, yet 42% of all business are women owned," said Troy LeMaile-Stovall, TEDCO CEO. "TEDCO recognizes the need to ensure all Marylanders, especially women, given that the state has the highest rate per capita of women-owned businesses, are provided the proper opportunities and exposure to realize their dreams. This pilot with our friends in Howard County represents our commitment to ensure our dreams become reality and access to wealth inclusion and expansion opportunities are realized."

To be eligible for the cohort, applicants must be a founder, co-founder, or CEO whose company is at a minimum of pre-seed to growth stage and a maximum of pre-series A. Watch the webinar to find out more about the program by visiting https://youtu.be/LmUSLXU8Egc.

The new program builds on past work by TEDCO as it works to support women and underrepresented entrepreneurs.

In 2016, TEDCO commissioned a study into the demographics of those start-ups applying for funding and support from TEDCO to try to identify underserved entrepreneurs. As a result of that study, TEDCO launched the Minority Business Pre-Seed Fund, which eventually became the Builder Fund for start-ups run by entrepreneurs who demonstrate economic disadvantage.

In 2019, TEDCO went further by convening its Task Force for Women Entrepreneurs. The 12 thought leaders in the Maryland entrepreneurial ecosystem were tasked with identifying and implementing concrete actions to drive outcomes for women entrepreneurs in the state. The task force came to a close with the recommendation of implementing these programs into the state's entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Learn more about the Women Entrepreneur Leadership Programs and view the request for applications by visiting the website at https://www.tedcomd.com/women-programs.

About TEDCO

TEDCO, the Maryland Technology Development Corporation, enhances economic empowerment growth through the fostering of an inclusive entrepreneurial innovation ecosystem. TEDCO identifies, invests in, and helps grow technology and life science-based companies in Maryland. Learn more at www.tedcomd.com.

Media Contact

Tammi Thomas

Chief Marketing & Communications Officer, TEDCO

[email protected]

SOURCE TEDCO
Key Highlights Offered in the Report:

Information on how to identify strategic and tactical negotiation levels that will help achieve the best prices.

Gain information on relevant pricing levels, detailed explanation of the pros and cons of prevalent pricing models.

Methods to help engage with the right suppliers and discover KPI's to evaluate incumbent suppliers.

Fetch actionable market insights on post COVID-19 impact on each product and service segments. Click Here

Some of the Top Telecom Tower suppliers listed in this report:

This Telecom Tower procurement intelligence report has enlisted the top suppliers and their cost structures, SLA terms, best selection criteria, and negotiation strategies.

GTL Infrastructure Ltd.

American Tower Corp

Helios Towers Plc

Fetch actionable market insights on post COVID-19 impact on each product and service segments:

www.spendedge.com/report/telecom-tower-sourcing-and-procurement-intelligence-report

Top Selling Report:

1. Asset Recovery Services - Forecast and Analysis: The asset recovery services will grow at a CAGR of 9.49% during 2021-2025. Asia Asset Recovery Pte Ltd., TES-Amm Singapore Pte Ltd., and Iron Mountain Inc. are among the prominent suppliers in asset recovery services market. Click the above link to download the free sample of this report.

2. Vulnerability Management Sourcing and Procurement Report: Vulnerability Management Procurement Market, prices will increase by 4%-6% during the forecast period and suppliers will have a Moderate bargaining power in this market. Click the above link to download the free sample of this report.

3. Outplacement Services - Sourcing and Procurement Intelligence Report: This report offers key advisory and intelligence to help buyers identify and shortlist the most suitable suppliers for their Outplacement Services requirements. Click the above link to download the free sample of this report.

To access the definite purchasing guide on the Telecom Tower that answers all your key questions on price trends and analysis:

Am I paying/getting the right prices? Is my Telecom Tower TCO (total cost of ownership) favorable?

How is the price forecast expected to change? What is driving the current and future price changes?

Which pricing models offer the most rewarding opportunities?

Register for a free trial today and gain instant access to 1,200+ market research

reports.

SpendEdge's SUBSCRIPTION platform

Table of Content

Executive Summary

Market Insights

Category Pricing Insights

Cost-saving Opportunities

Best Practices

Category Ecosystem

Category Management Strategy

Category Management Enablers

Suppliers Selection

Suppliers under Coverage

US Market Insights

Category scope

Appendix

About SpendEdge:

SpendEdge shares your passion for driving sourcing and procurement excellence. We are the preferred procurement market intelligence partner for 120+ Fortune 500 firms and other leading companies across numerous industries. Our strength lies in delivering robust, real-time procurement market intelligence reports and solutions.

Contacts:

SpendEdge

Anirban Choudhury

Marketing Manager

Ph No: +1 (872) 206-9340

https://www.spendedge.com/contact-us

SOURCE SpendEdge
MELBOURNE, Australia, March 22, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Telix Pharmaceuticals Limited (ASX: TLX, Telix, the Company) announces it has made significant progress in advancing the Company's glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) therapy candidate TLX101 into the next stage of clinical development.

TLX101 (4-L-[131I] iodo-phenylalanine, or 131I-IPA) is one of the Company's lead therapeutic clinical programs and has been granted orphan drug designation in the US and Europe. TLX101 targets L-type amino acid transporter 1 (LAT-1), typically over-expressed in GBM.

The IPAX-1 Phase I study, which completed recruitment in 2021,[1] established a favourable safety profile for TLX101 and promising preliminary disease stabilisation with evidence of anti-tumour responses in a second-line (refractory) disease setting.[2]

Building on this experience, Telix has now been granted Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC) approval to commence a Phase I dose escalation study (called "IPAX-2") to evaluate TLX101 in combination with post-surgical standard of care comprised of external beam radiation therapy (EBRT) and temozolomide in newly diagnosed GBM patients. Twelve patients are expected to be recruited to evaluate whether the observed safety and drug interaction profile remains suitable in this setting before progressing to a Phase II study.

Professors Hui Gan and Andrew Scott, of the Olivia Newton-John Cancer Research Institute at Melbourne's Austin Health, are the Principal Investigators for IPAX-2. TLX101-CDx (18F-FET PET[3]) will be used for imaging in the study to identify participants with over-expressed LAT-1 as suitable candidates for 131I-IPA therapy, and to provide baseline and follow up information on tumour response and progression.

In addition to the Company-sponsored IPAX-2 study, Kepler University Hospital in Linz (Austria) has received ethics approval to commence an institution-led Phase II study of TLX101 (called "IPAX-Linz", or "IPAX-L") in combination with EBRT in patients with relapsed-glioblastoma. This provides an opportunity to continue to study the benefit to patients in the recurrent (second line) setting, building on the experience of the IPAX-1 study at this leading neuro-oncology site in Europe.

The IPAX-L study will commence enrolling patients as early as March 2022. IPAX-L is being led by Dr Josef Pichler and will supplement the experience obtained from Telix's IPAX-1 study in which Dr Pichler was also a Principal Investigator. Telix is supporting IPAX-L through the contribution of investigational product and funding.

Dr Colin Hayward, Chief Medical Officer of Telix Pharmaceuticals stated, "Running these concurrent studies will build on the promising data generated in the IPAX-1 study, supporting our goal to expedite the development of a potential new therapy in an aggressive cancer with limited therapeutic options. With IPAX-2 Telix is taking the development of TLX101 into the front-line setting for the first time. Following the promising insights from the previous IPAX-1 study we are excited to see the potential impact of targeted radiation in patients after their initial surgery.

"We are also very pleased to support Dr Pichler and his team at Kepler University Hospital, to continue the important clinical research into TLX101 in the second-line setting and build on the IPAX-1 experience to explore new therapeutic options for glioblastoma patients."

Dr Josef Pichler, Kepler University Hospital, Austria, Principal Investigator in the IPAX-L study added, "Based on extensive experience with this asset in the IPAX-1 study, I am convinced that TLX101 should be further investigated for the treatment of brain tumours. The first clinical data has shown encouraging results with a good safety profile. IPAX-Linz will gather additional data on safety and preliminary activity results."

About Telix Pharmaceuticals Limited

Telix is a biopharmaceutical company focused on the development and commercialisation of diagnostic and therapeutic products using Molecularly Targeted Radiation (MTR). Telix is headquartered in Melbourne, Australia with international operations in Belgium, Japan, Switzerland, and the United States. Telix is developing a portfolio of clinical-stage products that address significant unmet medical need in oncology and rare diseases. Telix is listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX: TLX). For more information visit www.telixpharma.com and follow Telix on Twitter (@TelixPharma) and LinkedIn.

Telix's lead product, Illuccix (kit for preparation of gallium-68 (68Ga) gozetotide (also known as 68Ga PSMA-11) injection for prostate cancer imaging, has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA),[4] and by the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA).[5] Telix is also progressing marketing authorisation applications for this investigational candidate in Europe[6] and Canada.[7]

This announcement has been authorised for release by Dr. Christian Behrenbruch, Managing Director and Group Chief Executive Officer.

Legal Notices

This announcement may include forward-looking statements that relate to anticipated future events, financial performance, plans, strategies or business developments. Forward-looking statements can generally be identified by the use of words such as "may", "expect", "intend", "plan", "estimate", "anticipate", "outlook", "forecast" and "guidance", or other similar words. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause our actual results, levels of activity, performance or achievements to differ materially from any future results, levels of activity, performance or achievements expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on the Company's good-faith assumptions as to the financial, market, regulatory and other considerations that exist and affect the Company's business and operations in the future and there can be no assurance that any of the assumptions will prove to be correct. In the context of Telix's business, forward-looking statements may include, but are not limited to, statements about: the initiation, timing, progress and results of Telix's preclinical and clinical studies, and Telix's research and development programs; Telix's ability to advance product candidates into, enrol and successfully complete, clinical studies, including multi-national clinical trials; the timing or likelihood of regulatory filings and approvals, manufacturing activities and product marketing activities; the commercialisation of Telix's product candidates, if or when they have been approved; estimates of Telix's expenses, future revenues and capital requirements; Telix's financial performance; developments relating to Telix's competitors and industry; and the pricing and reimbursement of Telix's product candidates, if and after they have been approved. Telix's actual results, performance or achievements may be materially different from those which may be expressed or implied by such statements, and the differences may be adverse. Accordingly, you should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, Telix disclaims any obligation or undertaking to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements contained in this announcement, whether as a result of new information, future developments or a change in expectations or assumptions.

The Telix Pharmaceuticals name and logo are trademarks of Telix Pharmaceuticals Limited and its affiliates (all rights reserved).



[1] ASX disclosure 21 June 2021. [2] ASX disclosure 20 October 2021. [3] Positron Emission Tomography. [4] ASX disclosure 20 December 2021. [5] ASX disclosure 2 November 2021. [6] ASX disclosure 10 December 2021. [7] ASX disclosure 16 December 2020.

SOURCE Telix Pharmaceuticals Limited
To perfectly complement Ghetto Gastro's ever-popular Cigar and Waffles, a tantalizing ode to the classic chicken & waffles, Joly created A Bronx Cocktale featuring a delectable balance of Tequila Don Julio Reposado, rhum vieux, lime, mango, coconut and honey. The simple yet tasty drink will provide a cooling, fruit-driven balance to the food's savory and spice-forward flavors  a delightful combination that will satisfy even the most refined tastebuds.

In anticipation for Hollywood's biggest night, Joly and his team of experts have worked unremittingly to prepare over 6,000 specialty cocktails for the special evening including the Limelight Margarita, Picture Perfect Paloma, Old Hollywood Fashioned and The Class Act. These distinctive cocktails will require approximately 12,000 picked mint leaves, 2,000 sherry-poached mushroom slices, 10,000 edible flowers to garnish, and 5,000 mists of orange flower water for an elegant essence. Hollywood's elite will also be able to toast to the moment before they reach their seats with Tequila Don Julio mini cocktails.

If you're celebrating at home, you can still mix up signature Tequila Don Julio cocktails to sip like the stars with your viewing party (for those 21+). The Old Hollywood Fashioned offers an elegant balance of earthy and savory flavors that feature Tequila Don Julio Anejo as the star of the show, while A Bronx Cocktale provides a beautiful harmony of tropical fruit and Tequila Don Julio Reposado.

OLD HOLLYWOOD FASHIONED

Ingredients:

1 oz Tequila Don Julio Anejo

 oz Dry Oloroso Sherry

 oz Barrel-Aged Truffled Maple Syrup (cut 3:1 syrup:water)

3 Dashes Truffle Bitters

Preparation:

Combine Tequila Don Julio Anejo, dry oloroso sherry, truffled maple syrup and truffle bitters over ice in a mixing glass Stir well to chill and dilute Strain over a large ice cube in a rocks glass Garnish with fresh rosemary sprig

A BRONX COCKTALE

Ingredients:

1 oz Tequila Don Julio Reposado

 oz Rhum Vieux

 oz Fresh Lime Juice

 oz Mango Juice

 oz Coconut Milk

 -  oz Honey Syrup (2:1 ratio)

Preparation:

Combine all ingredients in a shaker with ice Shake well and pour into a small tasting glass Garnish with a small edible flower and gold dust

Tequila Don Julio is proud to donate in support of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Governors Ball for the fifth consecutive year. As Mexico's original luxury tequila, Tequila Don Julio is meant to be enjoyed during true moments of genuine celebration. Founder Don Julio Gonzalez lived a life devoted to tequila making to revolutionize the industry, and now 80 years later, Tequila Don Julio is still crafted with the meticulous process and passionate spirit he instilled. Whether celebrating on the red carpet or tuning in from the comfort of your couch, Tequila Don Julio encourages genuine and responsible celebration.

ABOUT TEQUILA DON JULIO

Founded on the pioneering agricultural principles of Don Julio Gonzalez and his personal pursuit of perfection, Tequila Don Julio revolutionized the tequila industry and set the standard for ultra-premium tequila. The original luxury tequila of choice in Mexico, Tequila Don Julio uses only the highest caliber, fully matured and ripened Blue Agave that has been hand-selected from the rich, clay soils of the Los Altos region of the state of Jalisco. The Tequila Don Julio portfolio includes Tequila Don Julio Blanco, Tequila Don Julio Reposado, Tequila Don Julio Anejo, Tequila Don Julio 70, Tequila Don Julio 1942, and the limited-edition Tequila Don Julio Primavera. For more information on Tequila Don Julio, please visit www.DonJulio.com.

ABOUT GHETTO GASTRO

Ghetto Gastro is the Bronx-born culinary collective from Jon Gray, Pierre Serrao, and Lester Walker. The group has notably defined its own lane, merging food, fashion, music, art, and design. Claiming both the beauty and grit from the streets with the aspiration and aesthetics of the finer things, Ghetto Gastro's interdisciplinary approach celebrates the Bronx as a driver of global culture. The crew masterfully blends influences from the African diaspora, Global South ingredients, and the pulse of hip hop to create offerings that address race, identity, and economic empowerment.

Since launching in 2012, Ghetto Gastro has gone from hosting underground parties to spearheading large-scale brand campaigns and events with leading fashion designers, artists, and entrepreneurs. Their collaborators and partners include figures like Virgil Abloh, Nike, Cartier, the Serpentine, the Museum of Modern Art, and many more.

During the onstart of the pandemic in 2020, Ghetto Gastro prioritized Bronx grassroot initiatives and mutual aid. In recognition for feeding their community, the group was nominated for the Basque Culinary World Prize. In 2021, Ghetto Gastro launched its namesake consumer goods brand of pantry items inspired by ancestral ingredients. The collective released a custom line of kitchen appliances, CRUXGG, across Target stores nationwide. This spring, Ghetto Gastro launches their cookware line with Williams Sonoma. Their first cookbook, Black Power Kitchen is forthcoming from Artisan Books in Fall 2022.

SOURCE Tequila Don Julio
TOKYO, March 22, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Drone and Urban Air Mobility (UAM) technology company Terra Drone Corporation announced today that it has raised $70 million (8 billion Japanese yen) in Series B funding with investments from Mitsui & Co., Ltd., SBI Investment Co., Ltd., Tokyu Land Corporation, Kyushu Electric Power T&D, and Seika Corporation. The round also saw the funding by Japan Overseas Infrastructure Investment Corporation for Transport & Urban Development (JOIN)  a public-private infrastructure fund by the Japanese Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT)  to the newly established joint venture, as well as participation from existing investor Venture Lab Investment.

"Our airspace is going to get more crowded than ever, but most companies today are concentrating only on hardware development," says Toru Tokushige, founder and CEO of Terra Drone. "There's an urgent need for a global air traffic management solution to enable safe and efficient drone and UAM operations, and Terra Drone aims to be the leading player building the digital infrastructure in the sky."

To that end, Terra Drone has been working with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to coordinate flight management of both crewed and uncrewed aircraft.

Meanwhile, in the drone inspection vertical, Netherlands-based group company Terra Inspectioneering is serving Oil and Gas production and processing companies such as Shell, BASF, and Bunge. In Southeast Asia, Terra Drone offers survey, inspection, and surveillance services through group company Terra Drone Indonesia whose clients include Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and AECOM.

The company is further enhancing safety and efficiency in many other industries by implementing drone-based solutions worldwide.

"A focus on increasing recurring revenue through the sale of survey-grade hardware and cloud based software such as Terra LiDAR; providing specialized solutions such as ultrasonic thickness (UT) measurements and non-destructive testing (NDT) using drones through Terra Inspectioneering; and a strategic consolidation of overseas business has made us well-positioned for success. With this latest round of funding, we will be able to scale up operations and innovate faster," Tokushige says.

Terra Drone will continue with its commitment of "Evolving the world from the sky".

About Terra Drone

Founded in 2016, Terra Drone is a leading drone and Urban Air Mobility (UAM) technology company providing drone hardware and cloud-based software for survey and inspection such as Terra Lidar and thickness measurement by ultrasonic NDT. Also, in the field of UTM for drones and UAM, we have completed several projects with JAXA in Japan.

We are the world's largest provider of industrial drone solutions, with offices throughout Japan, including its Tokyo headquarters, and overseas operations primarily in Europe and Southeast Asia. We've been ranked No. 1 in the world in the "Drone Services Companies Worldwide Ranking 2020" by Drone Industry Insights, a global drone market research organization, for two years in a row and and raised Series B funding in March 2022, bringing total funding to $83 million.

SOURCE Terra Drone Corporation
SAN JOSE, Costa Rica, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- If you want to light up the poker tables, then you need to head to Americas Cardroom this April. The US-facing poker site is running their next High Five Tournament Series from April 8th to 27th with $6 million in guarantees.

"Grab your buds and get ready to smoke the competition once again," stated Chris Moneymaker, Team Pro for Americas Cardroom. "This time around, we have $6 million guaranteed and you don't even need to be a lover of 420 to take part."

The High Five - Our 420-Friendly Tourney Returns with $6 Million GTD - April 8th to 27th

The High Five features exactly 100 tournaments, which is broken down into five per day for 20 days. It includes prize pools and buy-ins suitable for every player type, from newcomers to seasoned veterans.

The highlight of the High Five is the two Main Events. The first is a multi-flight $420,000 GTD ($55 buy-in) with its Day 2 on Sunday, April 17th. There's also a $1 Million GTD ($420 buy-in) with a Day 1 on Saturday, April 23rd and Sunday, April 24th. Day 2 is then on Monday the 25th.

And the High Five wouldn't be the same without the daily 10-minute "courtesy break" at 4:20pm ET. This give players the chance to grab some munchies, have a bathroom break or take part in any other activity they deem fit.

More information on the High Five Tournament Series is available at AmericasCardroom.eu.

About Americas Cardroom

Americas Cardroom joined the Winning Poker Network in 2011. The Winning Poker Network has one of the longest and trusted online names in the industry and has been in existence since 2001. Americas Cardroom accepts players from the US market and the rest of the world. Rated first place for payment processing and cashout reliability repeatedly over the last few years, Americas Cardroom offers outstanding customer service and a friendly environment for all poker players around the world.

Media Contact:

Dylana Reyes

[email protected]

1-877-314-4195

SOURCE Americas Cardroom
"ViewSonic is fundamentally committed to transforming global digital education and leading educational innovations. We have developed a total EdTech solution by integrating hardware and software. We created the myViewBoard education ecosystem, which currently has more than 5 million global users," said Bonny Cheng, COO of ViewSonic. "Our innovation didn't stop there. ViewSonic embraces emerging technologies and implements them into our education solutions. We observed the issues our users faced with open formats for digital teaching and learning, and from there, we created .olf in hopes that it will be available to all and beneficial to the education industry."

Better Engagement and Wellness with AI Technology

myViewBoard Sens can help schools gain insights into student engagement and foster an active learning environment. It detects students' attentiveness by analyzing human pose and environmental factors that may affect students' focus. These data help teachers make adjustments to their lessons.

As the pandemic continued, student wellness became an increased area of focus. Schools faced challenges with ensuring health and safety in classrooms. With myViewBoard Sens, schools can accurately measure wellness compliance. The data includes temperature, humidity, occupancy rate, audience masking, and close contact index.

To help schools monitor and manage classrooms easily, a dashboard shows these indexes and calculates the engagement and compliance levels in all rooms. If the ratings are not as expected, measures can be taken using the tailored suggestions on the dashboard, such as adjusting lesson plans or teaching environment.

Open Learning Format: Driving Openness in EdTech

The company's myViewBoard platform is cloud-based and operable across multiple operating systems, which includes Windows, Android, and, in the latest update, iOS.

ViewSonic's development of .olf is an extension of the company's open-ecosystem approach. It is an open standard file format that works on any device or digital whiteboarding software. It provides a common and extendable file format that is simple to open, edit, and save. By solving file-conversion and compatibility issues, .olf represents a major breakthrough in the digital learning industry.

Universe: Forging the Future of Learning

Universe By ViewSonic, an interactive 3D world for education, is ViewSonic's latest innovation in education technology. The development started in the first quarter of 2021 when the world was largely impacted by COVID-19, to address the challenges of using incumbent remote learning tools and applications.

Universe is a fit-to-purpose meta-learning space that provides transformative education technology to forge the future of learning. ViewSonic is exploring ways of co-creating with schools across the US, Europe and Greater Asia, such as the School of Education, University of Wolverhampton in the UK to bring this vision to life.

Comprehensive Digital Education Experiences

ViewSonic's products range across the EdTech spectrum, suitable for all kinds of learning setups, whether it is in-class or outside the confines of a traditional classroom.

For in-class engagement, ViewSonic's ViewBoard series of interactive display panels offer an incredible degree of flexibility, ranging in sizes from 24" to 100". Besides the 100" ViewBoard interactive displays, which are usually used for larger venues, ViewSonic's All-in-One Direct View LED Displays range from 108" to 216", and are designed to deliver amazing visual performance. Going even larger, the company's projectors can display images at a scale of up to 300" in a single projection. For remote and hybrid learning setups, ViewSonic offers portable devices such as pen displays and the 16" TD1655 touch monitor, which can be connected both to laptops and mobile devices.

To help assist school administrators in managing digital learning setups, ViewSonic has developed myViewBoard Manager, which allows IT departments to oversee and control their institutions' devices remotely. Using this software, schools can effectively manage their digital learning setup, including remote broadcasting of tailored messages, scheduling device operations, and gathering insights.

Visit ViewSonic at BETT 2022, ExCel London, booth No. SF40. To find more info please visit https://www.viewsonic.com/uk/bett2022.

To learn more about how Universe by ViewSonic can impact your students' learning, please visit https://universe.viewsonic.io/.

About ViewSonic

Founded in California, ViewSonic is a leading global provider of visual solutions and conducts business in over 100 countries worldwide. As an innovator and visionary, ViewSonic is committed to providing comprehensive hardware and software solutions that include monitors, projectors, digital signage, ViewBoard interactive displays, and myViewBoard software ecosystem. With over 30 years of expertise in visual displays, ViewSonic has established a strong position for delivering innovative and reliable solutions for education, enterprise, consumer, and professional markets and helping customers "See the Difference."

To find out more about ViewSonic, please visit www.viewsonic.com.

This news release contains forward-looking statements that reflect the Company's expectations with regard to future events. Actual events could differ significantly from those anticipated in this document. Program, pricing, specifications, and availability are subject to change without notice. ViewSonic and the ViewSonic trademarks are trademarks or registered trademarks of ViewSonic Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. All other corporate names and trademarks stated herein are the property of their respective companies.

SOURCE ViewSonic Corp.
DUBLIN, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Insurance Analytics Market: Global Industry Trends, Share, Size, Growth, Opportunity and Forecast 2022-2027" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The global insurance analytics market reached a value of US$ 9.87 Billion in 2021. Looking forward, the publisher expects the market to reach US$ 21.78 Billion by 2027, exhibiting a CAGR of 13.30% during 2022-2027. Keeping in mind the uncertainties of COVID-19, they are continuously tracking and evaluating the direct as well as the indirect influence of the pandemic. These insights are included in the report as a major market contributor



Insurance analytics refers to the process of collecting, analyzing and extracting insights from data sources for minimizing the risks associated with underwriting, pricing, rating, claims and marketing of insurance policies. It utilizes a software platform integrated with data analysis tools, artificial intelligence (AI) and big data solutions to generate leads and identify market trends.

The software enables the organizations and individuals to track insurance payments, liquidity and other financial operations. Insurance analytics also aids in reducing the overall operational costs, preventing fraudulent activities, optimizing client relations and utilizing predictive analytics in insurance models. These solutions can be deployed on-premises or on the cloud and are widely used by insurance organizations, third-party administrators, brokers and consultants



Insurance Analytics Market Trends:

Significant growth in the banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) industry across the globe is one of the key factors creating a positive outlook for the market. Large and medium-sized organizations are widely adopting insurance analytics tools integrated with cloud computing, application programming interfaces (APIs), data analytics, robotic process automation (RPA), chatbots and machine learning solutions for enhanced operational efficiency. Insurance analytics aids in preventing internal frauds, rate evasions and underwriting and cybersecurity fraud committed by applicants, policyholders, third-party claimants and professionals.

Moreover, the increasing number of fraudulent activities, such as insurance padding, inflated claims, staged accidents and submission of inaccurate information evidence, is also providing a thrust to the market growth. Additionally, the widespread adoption of big data and predictive modeling-integrated insurance analytics solutions is acting as another growth-inducing factor. These solutions can collect information from internal and external sources, such as telematics, agent and customer interactions and social media platforms and develop countermeasures to mitigate losses and risks. Other factors, including the implementation of stringent government policies to prevent cyberattacks, along with the increasing requirement to reduce claim management time, are anticipated to drive the market toward growth

Competitive Landscape:

The competitive landscape of the industry has also been examined along with the profiles of the key players being Applied Systems Inc., Hexaware Technologies Limited, International Business Machines Corporation, LexisNexis Risk Solutions (RELX PLC), Microsoft Corporation, MicroStrategy Incorporated, Open Text Corporation, Oracle Corporation, Pegasystems Inc., Salesforce.com inc., SAP SE and Sapiens International Corporation



Key Questions Answered in This Report:

How has the global insurance analytics market performed so far and how will it perform in the coming years?

What has been the impact of COVID-19 on the global insurance analytics market?

What are the key regional markets?

What is the breakup of the market based on the component?

What is the breakup of the market based on the deployment mode?

What is the breakup of the market based on the enterprise size?

What is the breakup of the market based on the application?

What is the breakup of the market based on the end user?

What are the various stages in the value chain of the industry?

What are the key driving factors and challenges in the industry?

What is the structure of the global insurance analytics market and who are the key players?

What is the degree of competition in the industry?

Key Topics Covered:



1 Preface



2 Scope and Methodology

3 Executive Summary



4 Introduction

4.1 Overview

4.2 Key Industry Trends



5 Global Insurance Analytics Market

5.1 Market Overview

5.2 Market Performance

5.3 Impact of COVID-19

5.4 Market Forecast



6 Market Breakup by Component

6.1 Solution

6.1.1 Market Trends

6.1.2 Market Forecast

6.2 Service

6.2.1 Market Trends

6.2.2 Market Forecast



7 Market Breakup by Deployment Mode

7.1 On-premises

7.1.1 Market Trends

7.1.2 Market Forecast

7.2 Cloud-based

7.2.1 Market Trends

7.2.2 Market Forecast



8 Market Breakup by Enterprise Size

8.1 Small and Medium-sized Enterprises

8.1.1 Market Trends

8.1.2 Market Forecast

8.2 Large Enterprises

8.2.1 Market Trends

8.2.2 Market Forecast



9 Market Breakup by Application

9.1 Claims Management

9.1.1 Market Trends

9.1.2 Market Forecast

9.2 Risk Management

9.2.1 Market Trends

9.2.2 Market Forecast

9.3 Customer Management

9.3.1 Market Trends

9.3.2 Market Forecast

9.4 Sales and Marketing

9.4.1 Market Trends

9.4.2 Market Forecast

9.5 Others

9.5.1 Market Trends

9.5.2 Market Forecast



10 Market Breakup by End User

10.1 Insurance Companies

10.1.1 Market Trends

10.1.2 Market Forecast

10.2 Government Agencies

10.2.1 Market Trends

10.2.2 Market Forecast

10.3 Third-party Administrators, Brokers and Consultancies

10.3.1 Market Trends

10.3.2 Market Forecast



11 Market Breakup by Region

12 SWOT Analysis



13 Value Chain Analysis



14 Porters Five Forces Analysis



15 Price Analysis



16 Competitive Landscape

16.1 Market Structure

16.2 Key Players

16.3 Profiles of Key Players

16.3.1 Applied Systems Inc.

16.3.1.1 Company Overview

16.3.1.2 Product Portfolio

16.3.2 Hexaware Technologies Limited

16.3.2.1 Company Overview

16.3.2.2 Product Portfolio

16.3.3 International Business Machines Corporation

16.3.3.1 Company Overview

16.3.3.2 Product Portfolio

16.3.3.3 Financials

16.3.3.4 SWOT Analysis

16.3.4 LexisNexis Risk Solutions (RELX PLC)

16.3.4.1 Company Overview

16.3.4.2 Product Portfolio

16.3.5 Microsoft Corporation

16.3.5.1 Company Overview

16.3.5.2 Product Portfolio

16.3.5.3 Financials

16.3.5.4 SWOT Analysis

16.3.6 MicroStrategy Incorporated

16.3.6.1 Company Overview

16.3.6.2 Product Portfolio

16.3.6.3 Financials

16.3.6.4 SWOT Analysis

16.3.7 Open Text Corporation

16.3.7.1 Company Overview

16.3.7.2 Product Portfolio

16.3.7.3 Financials

16.3.7.4 SWOT Analysis

16.3.8 Oracle Corporation

16.3.8.1 Company Overview

16.3.8.2 Product Portfolio

16.3.8.3 Financials

16.3.8.4 SWOT Analysis

16.3.9 Pegasystems Inc.

16.3.9.1 Company Overview

16.3.9.2 Product Portfolio

16.3.9.3 Financials

16.3.9.4 SWOT Analysis

16.3.10 Salesforce.com inc.

16.3.10.1 Company Overview

16.3.10.2 Product Portfolio

16.3.10.3 Financials

16.3.10.4 SWOT Analysis

16.3.11 SAP SE

16.3.11.1 Company Overview

16.3.11.2 Product Portfolio

16.3.11.3 Financials

16.3.11.4 SWOT Analysis

16.3.12 Sapiens International Corporation

16.3.12.1 Company Overview

16.3.12.2 Product Portfolio

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/5pz96w

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
SYDNEY, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The new U.S. Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposal to require companies to disclose their climate risk, including the physical impacts of storms, drought and heat waves, marks a major step towards more transparent reporting, according to climate risk expert Rohan Hamden.

Under the SEC proposals, adopted on a 3-1 SEC vote, public companies would have to report on the risks to revenue impairment from severe weather, climate change and fossil fuel transition.

"This proposed SEC requirement sends a strong signal to all companies that they need to take climate risk seriously," XDI Systems CEO Rohan Hamden said today.

"XDI System's recent analysis of 1,300 companies across eight indices, including the S&P 500 shows that many companies underestimate and under-report both the current and projected financial impacts of climate change."

"U.S. companies' operational facilities are increasingly at risk from extreme weather events and, coupled with business continuity impacts, revenue impacts are set to increase by 90% by 2050 under the current emissions trajectory," Hamden said.

"Measuring your climate risk, in particular risk to physical assets like commercial properties, productivity loss and the proportion of high-risk properties, is not only good governance but makes a positive point of difference for investors."

"The reality is that many companies are already experiencing losses as a result of extreme weather events caused by climate change," Hamden said.

"The proposed SEC rules are a step towards making climate risk reporting mandatory. We believe this will mean companies will be more inclined to properly understand their climate risk and invest in resilience to reduce costs and avoid disruption to core operational assets."

The XDI 1000, released this week, ranks more than 1,300 public companies by level of risk across the ASX 200, CAC 40, DAX, FTSE 350, HSI, NI 225, S&P 500 and STI, by quantifying the projected impacts on owned or leased operational assets of each company and its subsidiaries. The data has been published by physical risk experts, XDI, using a like-for-like methodology across 2.1 million commercial properties globally.

The new data suggests climate change has already increased annual average damage by 36% in Europe and 45% in Asia since 1990, and that under current emissions trajectory those impacts will increase up to threefold by 2050. Companies listed on the Nikkei are most exposed, followed by companies listed in Hong Kong, Singapore, France and the UK.

Assets highly exposed to disruptive events like floods, forest-fires and coastal inundation have been identified in the analysis, and are projected to double over the course of the century.

Analysis of productivity losses across eight indices reveals companies listed on the ASX and the Hang Seng are currently most at risk but will be overtaken in the decades to come from the impact of sea level rises for companies listed on the Nikkei and FTSE.

XDI CEO Rohan Hamden said the XDI 1000's sobering insights demonstrates the importance of independent and comparable analysis, alongside Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) reporting.

"We published the XDI 1000 to show that an objective and globally consistent approach to physical climate risk reporting is not only possible but that it provides a desperately needed like-for-like comparison for regulators, shareholders and companies," XDI CEO Rohan Hamden said.

"We should prepare for these impacts to worsen in all markets but some companies and indices will be harder hit than others. The S&P 500 is not immune to these risks."

XDI 1000: https://xdi.systems/xdi-1000-benchmark/

XDI Insights: https://xdi.systems/xdi-1000-insights/

XDI 1000 media release (including image): https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-data-quantifies-significant-risk-to-global-indices-from-physical-climate-risk-301504144.html

SOURCE XDI
SensOre Ltd (ASX:S3N) has teamed up with Unico, a dedicated arm of global IT and business consulting firm CGI, to further commercialise SensOres mining exploration technology platform.

The project is an opportunity to expand SensOres current client services to a cloud-based software as a service (SaaS) product.

Together, the ASX-lister and Unico will use SensOres AI-driven technology to create a digital twin of the Earths surface, enhancing the way exploration companies identify and analyse mineral exploration targets.

Shares higher

The news has seen the company's share price increase as much as 8.75% in the first half-hour of trade to a new record high of A$0.87.

SensOres new partnership is the latest in a string of collaborations this week that will prove up the companys exploration profile.

On Monday, the artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning technology company teamed up with a German natural resources firm to target, explore and acquire lithium prospects in WA.

SensOre also announced its working with South Australias premier gold explorer on the hunt for precious and base metal mineralisation.

Empowering targeted exploration

Speaking to the partnership, SensOre CEO Richard Taylor said the companys expertise lay in creating and deploying technology and software that generates exploration targets using AI.

While we have previously focused on Western Australia, a key objective of the Unico partnership is to enhance the pace of our data expansion across the globe, he explained.

This project is a massive opportunity to use our technology to build a model that we believe will be in demand from mining exploration companies around the world.

We are excited about the prospect of a global relationship with CGI to help expand our technology offerings into new markets.

In a market announcement today, SensOre said the contract marked an important step in its technology development roadmap.

The companys existing, proprietary, AI-enhanced technology is designed to advance the way companies integrate, interrogate and analyse geoscience data and increase the potential for mineral discovery.

SensOre hopes that developing and deploying its platform will open the door to scale its products, thereby expanding its capacity to service mineral exploration companies in Australia and overseas while reducing the companys unit cost per engagement.

About Unico and CGI

Unico is an established Australian technology services business that was recently acquired by CGI, one of the largest technology consulting businesses in the world with more than 80,000 staff.

CGI has a long history of offering products and services to the oil, gas and mining sectors. Their team will help develop SensOre's technology roadmap and growth plan, including expediting plans to expand into North America and other key mining markets.

Unicos director of Innovation Evan Harridge said: Imagine being able to analyse an MRI scan of the Earth: SensOres AI-driven analysis tools will be able to see what is underground in great detail, similar to how medical imaging technology can accurately see inside the human body.

This technology would enable exploration to be more targeted and limit the overall environmental impact.
Extremadura New Energies CEO Ramon Jinimnez, CarEX president Tomas Sanchez and Infinity Lithium CEO Ryan Parkin at the signing of the collaboration agreement in Madrid.

Infinity Lithium Corporation Ltd (ASX:INF)s Spanish subsidiary is set to collaborate with local business clusters on a lithium-ion battery training and development program.

INFs wholly-owned subsidiary, Extremadura New Energies, has inked a deal with whats known as the Group of Innovative Companies  a collective founded by Spains Extremadura Electric Mobility Cluster (CarEX) and business association LOABRE.

Together, the parties will advance skills and training across the industrial energy storage, electric mobility and renewable energies sectors under the framework of the European Battery Alliances (EBAs) Battery Academy.

What is the EBA?

The EBA is an arm of the European Commission designed to address the mass migration from fossil fuels to electric energy.

This burgeoning market is estimated to be worth 250 billion from 2025 and Europe is determined to establish a complete domestic battery value chain to support the clean energy transition.

In late February, EBA vice-president Maros Sefcovic announced the organisation would allocate 10 million to accelerate training and development in the lithium-ion battery value chain.

He also established the EBA Battery Academy  a program designed to address a skills shortage across the continent as part of Europes mission to lead sustainable battery innovation.

The program will train, reskill and upskill roughly 800,000 workers by 2025.

Where does INF come in?

As part of the deal announced today, the Group of Innovative Companies has reinforced its support for INFs subsidiarys integrated industrial lithium processing project in Caceres.

The group will also work with Extremadura New Energies to lead and support business initiatives within the lithium-ion battery value chain, as well as promote the economic development of industrial projects in Caceres.

In addition, Extremadura New Energies and the Spanish business collective will work to offer specific training within the energy storage, electric mobility and renewable energy sectors.

CarEX president Tomas Sanchez stated: Signing this agreement today brings me great satisfaction. The true industrialisation of Extremadura begins here.

Extremadura New Energies CEO Ramon Jinimnez Serrano welcomed the opportunity to establish new skills to support the lithium-ion battery value chain and the move to eMobility.

This will turn Caceres into a training hub for a sector that is only going to grow in importance, he explained.

It will provide young people from Caceres with the skills and employability they need for the future.

Ramon went on to say that Extremadura continues to build connections with the local community to ensure that companys lithium processing project brings the widest possible benefits for Caceres and Extremadura.

Why Spain?

European Commission president Ursula von de Leyen recently highlighted Spains leading position to play a major role in providing energy independence for Europe.

Earlier this month, she stated: The EU must get rid of its dependency on fossil fuels. Spain is a frontrunner here, with its large renewables share and LNG capacities.

Spain can and will play an important role in supplying Europe.

Extremadura is poised to capitalise on Europes move to accelerate sustainable energies (which are currently producing close to one-quarter of Spains total photovoltaic generated electricity).

The collaboration with Loabre and CarEx provides the first step in developing the necessary skills and capabilities for energy transition industries in Caceres.
The Royal Mint said it will introduce the use of recycled gold to its exchange-traded commodity (ETC), under a partnership with Quintet Private Bank.

The Royal Mint Physical Gold ETC (LSE:RMAU), which is already listed on the London Stock Exchange, will then be backed, in part, by bars made from recycled gold, making it the worlds first gold ETC or exchange-traded fund to be backed by recycled gold bars, according to research conducted by HANetf.

HANetf also said it would be the first financial product to be sponsored by The Royal Mint and the first gold ETC to be launched in partnership with a European sovereign mint.

Investors in RMAU will be able to redeem the gold ETC for physical gold bars or bullion coins, a feature unique to RMAU. Each ETC is equal to 1/100th of a troy ounce of gold at launch, equivalent to about US$19 per ETC based on the current gold price.

The Royal Mint previously announced it would extract gold from electronic waste, such as laptops and smartphones, as the 1,100-year-old institution continues to diversify.

Quintet has allocated about US$170mln to RMAU.
Load and haul activities at the box cut at Pyrite Hill deposit within the Broken Hill Cobalt Project.

Cobalt Blue Holdings Ltd (ASX:COB, OTC:CBBHF) has begun underground development work at the Broken Hill Cobalt Project (BHCP) in Far West New South Wales to provide bulk ore samples to support the operation of a large-scale demonstration plant.

The company has successfully established the development site at the Pyrite Hill deposit at the mine project west of Broken Hill with the first blast completed and excavation of the box cut well advanced.

Underground development will provide 3,500-4,000 tonnes of ore from Pyrite Hill to support 20 weeks of continuous operation of the Demonstration Plant which is being established in Broken Hill and follows a successful pilot plant operation.

Installation of the decline portal at Pyrite Hill will begin shortly. This will extend about 80 metres and intersect with the ore body approximately 40 metres below surface.

Initial blast to advance excavation of the Pyrite Hill box cut.

Two underground development drives will provide access laterally to the cobalt-pyrite mineral resource and allow representative samples to be obtained.

This is important to ensure that unbiased engineering data is generated from the Demonstration Plant for the BHCP Feasibility Study.

Demonstration Plant progress

The Demonstration Plant will provide proof of project and high-quality production scale samples for potential offtake partners around the world.

It is designed to complete two main activities. Firstly, mined ore will be crushed, milled and treated to produce a cobalt-pyrite concentrate at the mine site. Secondly, the concentrate will then be trucked to the processing plant in Broken Hill for extraction and recovery of cobalt as mixed hydroxide precipitate and/or cobalt sulphate.

Milling and concentrator equipment is being commissioned in Broken Hill ahead of being relocated to mine site, with first ore processing on target for late April.

Large-scale samples a game-changer

Demonstration Plant activities are coming together nicely with mining underway and processing equipment being received, Cobalt Blue CEO Joe Kaderavek said.

Last year, our successful Pilot Plant opened the door to new partners.

These large-scale demonstration plant cobalt samples are a game-changer for COB, providing operating proof for project equity/debt funders and simultaneously providing high-quality production scale samples for commercial partners.

Well done to the COB team.

Shares higher

This update saw COB's share price increase as much as 15.4% to A$0.90 intraday, a new high of almost four years. Recent newsflow and strong cobalt market fundamentals have seen the company's share price increase from $0.43 at market close on February 24 while the market cap is approximately A$267.47 million.

Commissioning of the demonstration plant float cell.

COBs 2021 Pilot Plant is being upgraded from 40 kilograms per hour capacity to 125 kilograms per hour.

Key equipment is arriving at site  larger leach vessels, oxygen and nitrogen plants, and kiln and sulphur recovery equipment  to be installed across March and into April, with the plant expected to be ready in early May.

Trials and commissioning of individual processing circuits are ongoing. Recent work has focused on optimisation of the solvent extraction separation of cobalt as part of the refining of Mixed Hydroxide Precipitate (MHP) into high purity cobalt sulphate.

Cobalt solvent extraction.

Market strategy

Cobalt Blue has designed its strategy around maximising payable cobalt while participating in the growth of the lithium-ion battery market.

Unlike traditional methods, COBs integrated refinery model is capable of delivering an intermediate mixed hydroxide product, which can then be further refined into battery-grade cobalt sulphate. The flowsheet is shown below:
Eclipse Metals Ltd (ASX:EPM)s recent grab sampling at its Ivigtut (or Ivittuut) and Grnnedal-Ika prospects in southwest Greenland returned elevated lithium concentrations of up to 430ppm lithium oxide.

These new results further highlight the polymetallic nature of the historic Ivigtut cryolite mine and the adjacent Grnnedal-Ika carbonatite complex.

The grab sampling marks the first lithium evaluation undertaken at Ivigtut. Its Greenlandic multi-commodity project, previously mined for cryolite at Ivigtut, has never been explored for lithium.

Eclipse Metals is planning systematic sampling and drilling to better constrain Ivigtuts lithium potential.

Recognising the significance of this for EPM, investors have sent shares as much as 23.1% higher this morning to $0.032.

Exciting step

Eclipse Metals executive chairman Carl Popal said: Our grab sampling program at Ivigtut has identified cryolithionite, a lithium-bearing fluoride mineral that was first identified at the historic Ivigtut mine in the early 1900s.

While cryolithionite was known to exist at Ivigtut, previous operators had no interest in lithium and, therefore, did not assay for it.

The recognition of highly anomalous lithium is an exciting step in our work and provides us with a greater understanding of the complex, multi-commodity mineralisation at Ivigtut."

Highlight polymetallic character

Anomalous lithium concentrations at Ivigtut are known to be associated with cryolithionite, jarlite, muscovite, biotite and zinnwaldite.

The Ivigtut samples represent cryolite-fluoritesiderite mine dump material with lithium most likely occurring in cryolithionite (Li3Na3Al2F12), a globally rare lithium-bearing fluoride mineral first described from Ivigtut.

Further work is required to determine which mineral, or minerals, carry the anomalous lithium identified in an aplite dyke cutting the Grnnedal-Ika carbonatite complex.

Eclipse Metals new lithium assay results further highlight the polymetallic character of the historic Ivigtut cryolite mine and adjacent Grnnedal-Ika carbonatite complex, offering the potential for defining rare earth element (REE), precious and base metal and industrial mineral resources in this highly mineralised project area.

Cryolithionite at Ivigtut is known to occur as crystals, up to 19 centimetres long, in massive cryolite and sideritecryolite, cryolite veins and fluorite-cryolite breccia.

In addition to Ivigtut, the type locality for this fluoride mineral, cryolithionite has also been reported from the Gasbergs topaz-cryolite mine in Russia and Zapot pegmatite near Hawthorne, Nevada.

Lithium concentrations in 268 cryolite samples from the Ivigtut mine were reported in an academic paper in 1986 and it shows lithium concentrations ranging from 78 to 153ppm lithium.

Additional lithium-bearing minerals identified at Ivigtut include jarlite (400-800ppm lithium), muscovite (111-315ppm lithium), biotite (5,812ppm lithium) and zinnwaldite (16,710ppm lithium).

Whilst these new findings are encouraging, a more systematic sampling approach and drilling are required to better constrain the lithium potential at Ivigtut.
Tempus Resources Ltd (ASX:TMR, TSX-V:TMRR) has signed a key exploration agreement with the Stswecem'c Xgattem First Nation (SXFN) for future exploration work at the Blackdome Gold Project, in southwest British Columbia, Canada.

Blackdome is within SXFN Traditional Territory about 230 kilometres NNW of Vancouver and 30 kilometres north of Tempus Elizabeth Project. The mine produced approximately 230,000 ounces of gold at an average mill head grade of 22 g/t gold during the period from 1985 to 1991.

Tempus president and CEO Jason Bahnsen said, The recognition of the traditional territories and rights of First Nations is paramount to the success of our mineral exploration projects.

Tempus is delighted to have executed this important agreement that provides certainty for the company and a variety of cultural heritage and environmental protections as well as commercial benefits for the Stswecem'c Xgattem people.

Mutually beneficial exploration

As TMR ramps up exploration, the Exploration Agreement between Tempus and SXFN will ensure that all exploration activities at Blackdome are conducted for the mutual benefit of the Stswecemc Xgattem First Nations and Tempus shareholders.

TMR recognises the importance of the environment and cultural heritage within the Stswecemc Xgattem Traditional Territory and thus, the Exploration Agreement includes business, employment and training opportunities for Stswecemc Xgattem members.

The company understands the requirements and necessity for these types of agreements, having executed an exploration agreement with the Xwisten First Nation in 2020 in relation to the ongoing exploration program at the Elizabeth Gold Project.

More about Blackdome

The Blackdome project includes a permitted 200 tonnes per day process plant and associated tailings storage facility.

A metallurgical review completed by Tempus, has shown that the Blackdome process plant will achieve high recoveries (up to approximately 95%) processing Blackdome and Elizabeth mineralised material.

In 2020, Tempus completed an initial 5,000 metre exploration drilling program at the Blackdome mine.

An alteration study completed in August 2021 has indicated that historical mining and previous exploration drilling was restricted to the upper portion of the paleo epithermal system and there is strong potential for identifying additional mineralisation below historic mined stopes and to the west of known vein sets.
Cooper Metals Ltd (ASX:CPM) has signed a heads of agreement for the acquisition of tenement EPM27537 in the prospective Mt Isa Inlier of northwest Queensland, adjacent to the companys tenement EPM27700, which holds the Python and King Solomon copper-gold prospects.

The new tenement will form part of CPM's Mt Isa East Project and is prospective for copper-gold. It sits within the Mary Kathleen Domain, part of the Inlier within the broader Mt Isa region that has hosted highly productive copper-gold projects for many years.

This domain is home to Round Oak Minerals Barbara Deposit and was also recently highlighted by Carnaby Resources Ltd (ASX:CNB)'s copper-gold discoveries at Nil Desperandum and Lady Fanny.

Investors appear to support the acquisition, pushing CPMs share price as much as 18.31% to $0.42 intraday.

Enhances value of the Mt Isa East

This new tenement acquisition continues to significantly expand the companys footprint in the highly prospective Mary Kathleen Domain, a part of the Mt Isa Inlier which hosts Carnaby Resources copper-gold discoveries at Lady Fanny and Nil Desperandum just south of Coopers existing tenure, Cooper Metals managing director Ian Warland said.

The acquisition of EPM27537 is consistent with the companys strategy to explore and discover copper-gold deposits in the highly prospective Mt Isa Inlier and further enhances the value of the Mt Isa East project as a bolt-on tenement to the district-scale exploration program currently underway.

Cooper firmly believes the tenement geology has all the right attributes to host copper-gold mineralisation. The tenure is close to existing infrastructure, with potential for third-party processing options.

Cooper is rapidly building exploration momentum in the project area with a planned regional airborne electromagnetic survey and RC (reverse circulation) drilling at Python and King Solomon prospects scheduled for the June quarter.

Five historical copper-gold prospects have been recorded within the new tenement area, including shallow workings at Scorpion prospect and Magna Lynn prospect.

Cooper is quickly becoming a major landholder in the Mt Isa region. Once the acquisition of EPM28087 and EPM27537 are secured, the company will hold 1,575 square kilometres around the Mt Isa Inlier.

Aside from its land acquisition activities, Cooper has also just completed a heritage clearance over the Python and King Solomon prospects, and is organising track access in readiness for maiden RC drilling in the June quarter.

About Cooper Metals

Cooper Metals is an Australian-based mineral exploration company focused on the discovery of copper and gold.

The company has three highly prospective projects in Queensland and Western Australia:

The flagship Mt Isa East Copper-Gold Project currently covers about 1,300 square kilometres of tenure with numerous historical copper-gold workings and prospects already identified for immediate follow-up exploration.

The Mt Isa Inlier is highly prospective for iron oxide copper-gold (IOCG), iron sulphide copper-gold (ISCG) and shear hosted copper-gold deposits.

The Yamarna Gold Project has an extensive length of untested Dorothy Hills Shear Zone that was important in the formation of Gruyere gold deposit about 10 kilometres to the southeast of Coopers tenements.

The Gooroo copper and/or gold project covers newly identified greenstone belt some 20 kilometres from Silver Lakes Deflector mine.

The 26-kilometre expanse of covered greenstone belt has had almost no exploration and was only added to government geology maps in 2020 after reinterpretation of geophysical data.
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 Ironbark Zinc Ltd named herein, including the promotion by the Company of Ironbark Zinc Ltd in any Content on the Site, the Company receives...
Critical Resources Ltd (ASX:CRR) executives are on-site at the Mavis Lake Lithium Project in Canada to engage with key stakeholders.

Managing director Alex Biggs and non-executive chairman Robert Martin have made the trip and will visit with First Nation partners, the Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation, as well as with Volt Carbon to discuss CRRs recent investment and synergies moving forward.

The final meeting in Canada will be with key personnel in Thunder Bay, Ontario, who will manage activities in Canada and who have already assisted in the development of the upcoming drill program at Mavis Lake.

Mavis Lake is 19 kilometres east of the town of Dryden, Ontario, and in close vicinity 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 boasts excellent infrastructure with hydro-power located a few kilometres to the southwest of the project. The region is a well-established lithium province with multiple projects.

Previous drill programs have yielded high-grade Li2O intercepts including:

55.25 metres at 1.04% Li2O from 80.75 metres in drill hole MF18-53; and

26.30 metres at 1.70% Li2O from 111.9 metres including 7.70 metres at 2.97% Li2O from 130.5 metres in drill hole MF17491.

These results present significant exploration potential.

From Canada, the pair will move to New York where they will look to further develop relationships with potential investors and financiers.

It is fantastic opportunity for us to finally be able to visit the Mavis Lake project and our key stakeholders and partners, Alex Biggs said.

With our upcoming drill program at Mavis Lake, it is important for the company to be on the ground ensuring we establish a presence in-country that will facilitate an efficient modus operandi that will lead to successful outcomes for our work.

We are also looking forward to visiting key potential investors in New York and begin to inform the North American investment markets of our strategy.

Work has begun to establish a presence on the ground in Canada including sourcing of appropriate office space that will allow for ongoing works on CRRs Canadian assets.

In the Volt

On March 15, CRR announced that it had invested C$1 million in Canadian battery technology company Volt Carbon Technologies (VCT).

Read: Critical Resources invests C$1.0 million in Canadian battery technology company Volt Carbon Technologies

Volt Carbon is focused on high performance solid-state lithium-ion battery development and scalable air classification technologies for natural graphite beneficiation.

VCT, through its wholly-owned subsidiary Solid Ultrabattery Inc., is developing a solid-state battery that exceeds current battery performance in key areas of energy density, charge rate, safety and cost.

In addition, the new-generation battery is designed to have a lower carbon footprint and higher recyclability.

Solid Ultrabattery was founded by Professor Zhongwei (Wei) Chen, a global leader in battery and fuel cell technologies, with more than 380 scientific papers published and holder of 30+ patents/provisional patents.

VCT has developed a proprietary air classification system for separating out large-flake graphite, leveraging the difference in the aerodynamic properties of flake graphite and the denser, more spherical surrounding material.

The result is an effective, energy-efficient and mobile means of extracting natural graphite after the initial primary crushing processes.

VCT also owns 100% of the Lochaber Graphite Project in Quebec, Canada.

The companys visit with Volt Carbon is designed to begin discussions on developing further synergies that will add value to both businesses.
Talon Metals Corp Vice President of Geology Etienne Dinel joined Steve Darling from Proactive to share news the company has released more assay result from drilling at its Tamarack Nickel-Copper-Cobalt Project in central Minnesota.

Dinel telling Proactive the new results from drilling outside the main resource area of the Tamarack are again showing shallow high-grade nickel-copper mineralization.

That includes Drill hole 21TK0355 at 15.09 meters grading 4.88% Ni and 1.68% Cu (5.96% NiEq1, 15.89% CuEq2).
Kingfisher Mining Ltd (ASX:KFM) has returned high-grade rare earths from the discovery hole at the 100%-owned Mick Well Rare Earth Elements (REE) Project in the Gascoyne Mineral Field in Western Australia.

Analysis of the 1-metre samples from discovery hole MWRC004 has returned 4 metres at 1.84% total rare earth oxides (TREO), including 1-metre at 3.87% TREO within the previous broader interval of 12 metres at 1.12% TREO.

Strong Nd and Pr values

Also providing strong encouragement for the company are that these samples contained high values of neodymium (Nd) and praseodymium (Pr).

The results are:

4 metres at 1.84% TREO with 0.34% Nd and Pr from 41 metres, including 1-metre at 3.87% TREO with 0.70% Nd and Pr from 41 metres; and

1-metre at 2.39% TREO with 0.47% Nd and Pr from 49 metres.

High-grade light REEs

Kingfishers executive director and CEO James Farrell said: The analysis of the 1-metre samples from the rare earth discovery drill hole at Mick Well has revealed high-grade light rare earth elements within the previously reported interval.

The company has commenced mineralogy studies on the mineralisation which is now known to consist of the REE-bearing minerals allanite and monazite.

"Follow-up drilling has been scheduled to commence mid-April and will target the high-grade rare earth element mineralisation intersected in MWRC004 as well as a number of other high-priority targets in the immediate Mick Well Area.

The drilling program at Mick Well was designed to test targets that were identified from a Versatile Time Domain Electromagnetic (VTEMTM Max) airborne survey.

Location of the Arthur River, Kingfisher and Mick Well projects in the Gascoyne Mineral Field showing the extents of the Durlacher Suite and Halfway Gneiss.

Mineralogy studies

Mineralogy and petrography studies by Richard England and Diamantina Laboratories on samples from the REE discovery at Mick Well are underway.

Initial results from sample MWRC0312 (MWRC004, 41 to 42 metres, 3.87% TREO) which is in fresh rock show the REE mineralisation occurs as allanite and monazite in rocks that dominantly consist of apatite, potassium feldspar, quartz and calcite.

Laboratory analysis for total rare earth content has been completed using Laser Ablation Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry and also by Inductively Coupled Plasma (ICP) Mass Spectrometry for all of the raw 1-metre drill samples that have been analysed.

The laser ablation method used a lithium nitrate flux to form a fused bead in a furnace and is considered to have completely liberate all rare earth elements.

The ICP method uses a four acid digest which may result in refractory minerals not being completely liberated.

High recovery potential

The results from both analytical methods are remarkably similar, highlighting that all rare earth-bearing minerals have been completely liberated by the acid digest.

The company considers this to be an encouraging result as it highlights the potential for high recoveries of the neodymium and praseodymium.

Data review

Kingfisher has completed reviews of past exploration work on its new application tenements.

During 1999 and 2000, Cameco Australia Pty Ltd explored an area that partially covers the western extents of the companys current tenure for unconformity-related uranium mineralisation.

A diamond drill hole completed by Cameco intersected anomalous REEs, with 3.4 metres at 0.14% TREO from 2.6 metres downhole. The drill hole is about 25 kilometres west of Mick Well and is in Kingfishers target shear zone for REE mineralisation  a shear zone that extends for 54 kilometres in the companys extensive exploration tenure.

The company considers the results to be extremely encouraging for the exploration potential of the entire 54-kilometre structural corridor.

Upcoming exploration

Kingfisher has planned extensive and targeted exploration programs for its Gascoyne projects for 2022.

The planned exploration is designed to be cost-effective and aims to develop and test drill targets from ground-based work including mapping, rock sampling and radiometrics.

It also plans to simultaneously develop a pipeline of exploration opportunities through integrating regional and airborne geophysical surveys with geological knowledge from the companys breakthrough REE discovery at Mick Well.

Drill programs are planned for Mick Well, Kingfisher and Arthur River, with an initial follow-up program at Mick Well expected to begin in mid-April and a larger program planned for the September quarter.

The upcoming drill program will test five targets, including follow-up drilling at the MW2 and MW3 targets as well as another target that has a similar geophysical response as MW2, with a conductor identified from the VTEM MaxTM survey and a coincident magnetic low.

The Kingfisher and Mick Well projects are about 230 kilometres east of Carnarvon, in the Gascoyne region of Western Australia.

KFM holds exploration licences covering 969 square kilometres and has recently increased its interests in the Gascoyne Mineral Field by nearly 40% through the targeted pegging of additional tenure interpreted to be prospective for rare earth elements.
In all of the excitement surrounding battery metals, there is one essential ingredient that often gets overlooked.

Manganese is a hard, brittle metal that is usually found in combination with iron. It functions as a transition metal with multiple industrial alloy uses, most notably in stainless steels by improving strength, workability, and durability.

But it is the increasingly important role that manganese is set to play in the battery metal revolution that is getting investors more excited, and even more so after electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla announced its plans to lower the cost of its battery production by eliminating cobalt in favour of higher manganese concentrations.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has outlined plans to produce a battery with a cathode chemistry mixture of two-thirds nickel and one-third manganese, which could allow the firm to make a more accessible, $25,000 car.

Producing manganese for a giant like Tesla wont be an easy task, particularly in North America. China currently dominates global production, and any company trying to produce the metal outside of China will have to compete on cost.

Canadian firm Manganese X Energy Corp (TSX-V:MN, OTCQB:MNXXF) is aiming to be a provider to the electric vehicle (EV) battery space. The groups unique purification process has produced 99.95% purity of manganese sulfate from its Battery Hill project in New Brunswick. Its ultimate goal is to be a provider of battery material to the North American supply chain.

In an interview with Proactive, CEO Martin Kepman shared his insights into the future of the battery metals space and why being a North American supplier is so important in the current climate.

Proactive: Can you give us a quick introduction to the company and the Battery Hill project?

Martin Kepman: Sure. In 2016, we purchased a manganese property strategically located in Woodstock, New Brunswick, Canada. Battery Hill consists of 1,228 hectares with 55 claims and is one of the largest manganese carbonate properties in North America. It is strategically located five kilometres (three miles) from the TransCanada highway and 12 miles from the Maine border, with access to the St Lawrence Seaway and Great Lakes shipping channels. It has excellent access to railways and electricity.

We were forward-thinking, definitely ahead of the curve, as we envisioned that a high purity, low contaminant manganese EV cathode product would become an integral part of the upcoming EV revolution, noting at the time that manganese was the forgotten battery mineral. Taking this all into consideration, we developed our mission statement of striving to become the first publicly traded mining company in Canada and the US to commercialize EV high purity manganese. Our vision was, and still is, that manganese is vital to the future of EV cathodes, and its use will help protect the planet, as manganese is carbon-free and environmentally friendly.

Lets shift focus to the battery metals space. Youve said that manganese has the potential to disrupt the lithium-ion battery space. How? Why should we replace lithium-ion batteries?

Manganese is a candidate for disruption in the lithium-ion battery space. Manganese is a great stabilizer and has elemental qualities that have the potential to improve density, capacity, rechargeability, safety and battery longevity.

The timing for establishing a North American manganese resource could not be better. With the global push for greener technology and lessening the carbon footprint, Manganese X is poised for leadership in providing a domestic supply of manganese for the rechargeable battery industry, everything from the small consumer batteries in electronic devices, smartphones and energy storage power reserves, to the EV and hybrid electric vehicle industry.

Can you expand upon the purification process Manganese X has developed? What makes it particularly unique?

Over the past five years of extensive research and development, along with our research contractor Kemetco Research, we achieved a milestone of producing a 99.95% high purity manganese sulphate monohydrate, with EV compliant contaminant levels. This product is in demand as a precursor to the cathode in battery construction. It is important to note that our manganese ore is a carbonate as opposed to manganese oxide ore, utilized by the majority of world producers. The carbonate process, which we use, is more environmentally friendly when compared to the oxide process. The metallurgical extraction methodology is a very intricate process as the technical specs for EV battery usage are extremely stringent. There are few other manganese companies able to achieve this high purity standard. We are committed to produce an end product that is environmentally green, one that will contribute to the containment of climate change.

We have also developed a game-changing extraction process, which means major cost savings and innovative flow sheet processes integral to our upcoming preliminary economic assessment at Battery Hill. This process means we process and convert our manganese carbonate directly into a high purity compound chemical product powder called high purity manganese sulphate monohydrate, which is Selenium-free.

The majority of the other manganese producers firstly produce an EMM metal either with 99.7% or 99.9% purity, but Selenium is very toxic to the environment. They then convert that metal into the end product high purity manganese sulphate monohydrate. We have streamlined and reduced integral processes and costs.

We know that China is the dominant producer of manganese globally. How can North American companies develop its own supply chain and have its product compete in the battery metals space?

A dominant 90% of high purity manganese sulphate monohydrate precursor to the cathode (which we have already successfully prototyped in bench tests) is produced by China. It is obvious that there are major supply problems with China that will most likely continue. Containers from China have increased in price by three to four times with major delivery delays of six months or more, and predictions are that these major shortages will continue for some time.

It is important to note that our end product, high purity manganese sulphate, will potentially be in high demand with a supply deficit anticipated within the next year. Not surprisingly, there has been a major price increase. Experts are predicting this supply deficit to reach a five-times supply shortage to meet demand by 2030.

Im sure investors are wondering what can we expect to see in the upcoming PEA on Battery Hill?

The PEA is nearing completion. We are very optimistic from the preliminary results as indicated from our previous news releases and hopefully  upon successful completion of our PEA  will move rapidly towards a pilot project and either pre-feasibility or feasibility study.

Finally, who is the team behind Manganese X?

Im the CEO at Manganese X. I have 34 years of consulting experience, having worked on a wide range of projects ranging from software, soft goods, printing, food to mining. Ive become an expert in identifying the strengths and weaknesses of corporations for strategic business plans, and become something of a specialist in turnarounds.

Im proud of assembling key people to minimize risk thus resulting in maximizing return on investment. Some of the key members of our team include Roger Dahn, our chairman, who has over 30 years of experience in the mining and exploration industry with Noranda and Hemlo, most recently with Tri-Star Resources. Roger was previously our vice president Exploration and has worked on Battery Hill since 2016; he continues to assist our current vice president Perry Mackinnon on all drill programs.

Perry has been involved in all of our drill programs since 20116. He is an accredited professional geologist with over 30 years of experience in the mining industry, particularly in the East Coast of Canada. Dr Luisa Moreno also assisted us with her expertise in our material processing and metallurgy; Robert Tjandra brings along his vast experience about the development of EV and energy storage including sustainable mining development on the board, and Jay Richardson serves as our chief financial officer. His marketing and financial expertise will help bring our projects to fruition.

Contact Angela at angela@proactiveinvestors.com

Follow her on Twitter @AHarmantas
Non-executive chair Henk Ludik (second from right), CFO Bojan Bogunovic (second from left) and COO Marty Helean (middle) with the Pittong team.

Suvo Strategic Minerals Ltd (ASX:SUV) is sending non-executive chairman Henk Ludik to conduct a site visit to its 100%-owned Pittong Hydrous Kaolin Plant in Victoria.

The visit will enable Ludik to familiarise himself with the Pittong operation and meet the team overseeing the now fully funded plant expansion.

This comes just a week after the Australian kaolin producer and silica sand exploration company started an executive and board transition to facilitate its expansion plans, as well as the recent the recent $7.5 million capital raise, with funding to go towards accelerating the expansion of the Pittong plant.

Read: Suvo Strategic Minerals unveils executive and board transition to support expansion plans

Its great to be able to get over here and have a look at the Pittong plant first-hand, Ludik said.

We are excited to build on the already strong relationships with the community here and ensure that funds raised from the recently completed capital raise are put to good use, having a direct correlation to the bottom line.

Work at Pittong has begun

Work in relation to accelerating the expansion of the Pittong hydrous kaolin plant capacity to ~60,000 tonnes per annum from ~25,000 tonnes has started.

Tour of the existing press decks that currently produce ~25,000 tonnes per annum.

As Australias only hydrous kaolin producer, the expansion of capacity will be completed in parallel with current production and will not impact the existing operations.

Commissioning of the new facilities is expected to finished in early 2023.
Radiopharm Theranostics Ltd (ASX:RAD) has agreed commercial terms for services in a signed Letter of Intent (LOI) with global oncology provider GenesisCare, a critical factor in helping Radiopharm begin its Phase 1 trial in Australia.

RAD is developing a world-class platform of radiopharmaceutical products for both diagnostic and therapeutic uses.

The phase 1 therapeutic trial will involve Radiopharms proprietary nanobody from its Nano-mAbs platform, which targets the PDL1 expression in non-small cell lung cancer, the most common type of lung cancer.

This treatment has the potential to be the 'first in class' radiopharmaceutical therapy targeting PDL1.

We are proud to have entered an LOI with GenesisCare, Australias largest provider of integrated cancer care, to support a trial for our innovative radiopharmaceutical therapy targeting non-small cell lung cancer, pending ethics approval from Australian authorities, Radiopharms CEO & managing director Riccardo Canevari said.

This is currently an area of high unmet need, and we are hopeful of bringing a first in class treatment to the market that will greatly improve patient outcomes.

The phase 1 trial is an important milestone on the path to making this a reality.

Hope for cancer patients

GenesisCare is a leading provider of integrated oncology care globally, with more than 440 locations in Australia, UK, USA and Spain. Its global innovation programs aim to bring novel therapies and precision medicine to more cancer patients in need to achieve the best possible life outcomes.

GenesisCare senior vice president of Research and Insights Kris Barooshian said, GenesisCares Contract Research Organisation and Site Research Organisation are delighted to be partnering with Radiopharm Theranostics on this clinical trial that may bring hope to thousands of Australians living with non-small cell lung cancer.

That company's nuclear medicine physician and group clinical director of Theranostics, Professor Nat Lenzo, said, To date, radiopharmaceutical treatments have predominantly been utilised in the treatment of prostate cancer and neuroendocrine tumours, so it is exciting to be expanding the nuclear medicine treatment paradigm to new therapeutic areas.

The LOI is not a binding agreement, however, work has already started under the LOI and a corresponding services agreement is also being negotiated.

The term of the initial project is anticipated to be 18 months. The overall cost of the services under the LOI is not considered material and is included in existing budgets and funding.

Under the LOI, Radiopharm will deploy its novel radiopharmaceutical (RAD204) targeting PDL/1-positive lung cancer in patients at Australian clinical research centres secured by GenesisCare.

It is likely that this will be the first-ever human clinical trial exposure to this Radiopharm compound and, if successful, will set the stage for expanded development in lung cancer patients whose cancer is sensitive to treatment with this type of immunotherapy.
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 Alto Metals Ltd named herein, including the promotion by the Company of Alto Metals Ltd in any Content on the Site, the Company receives from...
Polymetals Resources Ltd (ASX:POL) has further strengthened its in-country team in Guinea through the appointment of William Pountney as project manager.

This appointment, along with that of Nana Asante as lead exploration geologist earlier this year, enhances the companys in-country capability and local knowledge as it advances its portfolio of gold exploration assets.

Both appointees have previously worked together in Guinea, on the Tri K Gold Project to the south of Polymetals Alahine and Mansala licences.

Highly experienced

Polymetals Resources CEO Alex Hanly said, We are delighted to welcome a highly experienced project manager of William Pountneys stature to Polymetals.

"[He] has spent his 20-plus-year career as a geologist working in Africa and importantly, has significant field and operations experience in the Siguiri Basin where Polymetals is advancing exploration programs at the Alahine and Mansala gold projects.

Pountney has more than 20 years of experience in greenfield and brownfield exploration in West Africa, most recently, as exploration manager with Owere Mines Limited at the Konongo Gold Project in Ghana.

During his three-year tenure as exploration manager at the Tri K project, Pountney managed the growth of gold resources from 1.80 million ounces to 3.22 million.

The Polymetals' board views the appointment of both experienced and credentialled geologists in Asante and Pountney as an important step forward for the company and a solid endorsement of the potential of its Guinea exploration projects.
Rooster Talk Episode 54 is with Brad Valiukas, managing director of Aurumin Ltd (ASX:AUN).

The time has come for Aurumin Ltd (ASX:AUN) to step up and deliver on its aspiration to become a mid-tier gold miner.

We know where the ounces are, we are going to try and deliver a result. - Brad Valiukas.

In this episode, we get an update from Brad on the path forward for Aurumin after completing the acquisition. We spoke about how management was going to plan the work that will be happening over the next 12 to 18 months.

Mt Dimer, Mt Palmer and Johnson Range are still core projects for the company. However, with this acquisition, the Sandstone project is a step up. In saying that, Brad assures us that there is a lot of work still to be done with the existing projects.

There is no question that the acquisition is a big value add to the company. However, markets do have a mind of their own when it comes to valuation. Personally, if you look at what is in the project with the Two Mile Tonalite, if management can make this work, it will be a game changer.

This is a good groundwork for investors and I strongly encourage those investors who have done their own research to seek out Brad. Talk to him and ask him what his thoughts are and his reasons for acquiring Sandstone.

Chapters:

00:00 Start

00:25 Introduction

00:53 Brad discusses Sandstone acquisition.

01:08 How will the new Sandstone project fit into Aurumin.

02:12 How is the Mt Dimer project going?

04:49 How does Aurumin plan the exploration?

07:40 Does exploration change depending on results?

09:35 The Two Mile Tonalite - The Prize.

11:16 The Pegasus Story - The Hidden Jewel of Sandstone.

12:24 The news ahead for Aurumin.

15:04 The Ultrafine Sampling Success.

16:17 Reasons to look at Aurumin.

17:23 Conclusion

PODCAST

About Brad Valiukas - managing director

BEng (Mining), GradCert (Econ), Member AusIMM

Mining Engineer and experienced executive with over 20 years operational, management and executive experience covering underground and open pit operations across multiple commodities around Australia and internationally.

Brad's most recent position is that of Manager  Technical Services for Northern Star Resources. He was previously COO at Focus Minerals (ASX:FML), COO at ABM Resources and held senior roles at Mincor Resources.

About Aurumin Limited (ASX: AUN)

Aurumin Limited (ACN 639 427 099) (Aurumin or Company) is an Australian company incorporated on 28 February 2020 in Western Australia as a mineral exploration company to allow the reorganisation of projects held by Aurumin Mt Dimer Pty Ltd (formerly Acertim Resources Pty Ltd).

In particular, the company was established to enable the restructure of the Mt Dimer, Mt Palmer and Johnson Range projects into separate project entities and further consolidate additional tenements, and to progress these gold exploration projects in the Southern Cross and Kalgoorlie regions. Since incorporation, the Company has acquired 100% legal and beneficial ownership of Aurumin Mt Dimer and Aurumin Mt Palmer Pty Ltd (formerly Mt Palmer Gold Pty Ltd), and has entered into a further 3 tenement acquisition agreements and applied for further tenements such that it now has an interest in 29 tenements across 4 projects.

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.
East Star has four licences in the country

East Star Resources Plc (LSE:EST) said it remains committed to Kazakhstan and is keen to carry on doing business there.

The gold and copper explorer has four licences in the country, which is one of Russias closest allies, held in a joint venture with the Kazakh state mining company.

In a statement accompanying its latest final results, East Star said: We believe equally now in doing business in Kazakhstan as we did when we first reviewed the prospectivity of the region.

East Star added it accrued its projects due to the rich mineral endowment of the country and its relatively low level of exploration in comparison with other major mining jurisdictions with the added potential for significant discoveries using modern exploration methods.

Sandy Barblett, non-executive chairman, said: "2021 saw the company's shares being admitted to the London Stock Exchange Main Market. Shortly after the listing, we secured an agreement to acquire DVK, a company which has secured highly prospective licences in Kazakhstan - a country which has ideal conditions for mining.

The board believes that 2022 will be a year of significant growth for the company as we look to advance our strategy and create value for shareholders.

Losses for the period to end November 2021 were 421,000.

East Star resumed trading on the standard section of the main market in January after a reverse takeover of Discovery Ventures Kazakhstan Ltd.
The price of muriate of potash has risen significantly in recent months, broker Liberum noted in market commentary released on the morning of 23 March.

The big producing areas in Eastern Europe, one of the worlds potash powerhouse regions, are all either directly in the firing line of the Russia-Ukraine war, or else impacted negatively by sanctions.

Canada produces the most potash per year out of any country, at 22mln tonnes, or just under 32% of world production, according to figures compiled for 2020.

But the next three countries in the production rankings are enough to give any policy-maker or potash buyer pause for thought.

Russia is the second biggest producer, Belarus is the third biggest producer, and China is the fourth biggest producer. Between them, this block of countries, now firmly aligned against the Western economic bloc, to put it mildly, accounts for 48% of world production.

Will that production be available to Western markets?

It doesnt look like it.

Because, for the first time in several generations, it looks like policy is getting the better part of economics as far as the western world is concerned.

Western companies have until 1 April to stop buying Belarussian potash, according to edicts issued by the US State Department, and although the Belarussian president seems disposed to continue selling to anyone willing to bust the sanctions, it seems likely that a significant component of world supply is about to come off the market with no ready source of replacement.

Markets have already anticipated the impact to some extent. Granular MOP delivered to Brazil spiked earlier this month to an eye-watering US$1,100 per tonne.

To compound the issue, a rail strike in Canada is negatively impacting supply chains there. Major Mosaic is now expecting that the amount of potash it will be able to ship will be at or near the low end of its last guidance.

Peer Nutrien is likely to be similarly impacted.

China, meanwhile, is releasing potash from reserves, and has said it will actively import potash to support spring planting.

All of which means that conditions for smaller potash and fertiliser companies with assets outside of Eastern Europe are becoming increasingly favourable.

Among the notable examples of these are Emmerson PLC (AIM:EML), which has assets in Morocco, Australian Potash, Highfield Resources, which has assets in Spain, the major Anglo American PLC (LSE:AAL), which is developing the old Sirius Minerals project in the north of England, Kore Potash, which has a project in West Africa, and South Harz Potash, which has a project in Germany.

Also worth looking at is Harvest Minerals Ltd (AIM:HMI, OTC:HMIFF), shares in which have just about tripled since the start of the year.

Harvest is at the point where long-held promises to ramp up fertiliser production are starting to come good in one of the worlds biggest fertiliser markets, at a time when fertiliser supply is greatly curtailed. Storms dont come much more perfect than that.
The orders are part of the SEWP V program and fall within Plurilocks goal of expanding its government and defense portfolio

Plurilock Security Inc. (TSX-V:PLUR) has announced that its wholly-owned subsidiary, Aurora Systems Consulting Inc has received a US$1.85 million purchase order from the US Department of the Navy as part of the National Aeronautics and Space Administrations (NASA) Solution for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP) program, a US Government-Wide Acquisition Contract Vehicle (GWAC).

The company said under the terms of the contract, Aurora Systems will provide the US Department of the Navy with hardware and maintenance support services.

The orders are part of the SEWP V program and fall within Plurilocks goal of expanding its government and defense portfolio, the cybersecurity solutions firm added.

READ: Plurilock Security is locked in to rapid organic and M&A growth

All contracts and orders announced since January 1, 2022, by Plurilock and its subsidiaries, including the latest orders, represent a combined total of about US$3.29 million in sales, it noted.

The US Department of the Navy is a military defense agency that works to keep the seas open and free, and to protect and defend Americas interests.

According to Cybersecurity Ventures, the government sector is one of the most cyber-attacked industries in the last seven years, alongside healthcare, manufacturing, financial services, and transportation, underscoring the need for government entities to work with experienced cybersecurity and IT service providers.

The Plurilock family of companies enables organizations to operate safely and securely while reducing cybersecurity friction. Plurilock offers world-class IT and cybersecurity solutions through its Solutions Division, paired with proprietary, AI-driven and cloud-friendly security through its Technology Division.

Contact the author at jon.hopkins@proactiveinvestors.com
BioHarvest Sciences has started the process to obtain a production license in Israel for its cannabis products to complement the R&D license it has used to date

BioHarvest Sciences Inc. (CSE:BHSC, OTC:CNVCF) said it has produced cannabis biomass in large-scale industrial bioreactors, representing the completion of the company's cannabis R&D program.

On December 8, 2021, BioHarvest Sciences became the first-ever company to announce that it could produce cannabis biomass without growing the plant itself. The company has made significant progress since, producing cannabis in large-scale industrial bioreactors, marking the start of the transition to commercial-scale manufacturing.

"I am elated and proud of this achievement. The R&D team has relentlessly pursued this moment, which marks a new era for the cannabis industry. Our proprietary and unique amalgamated trichome structure has proven resistant to shear forces applied during the cell growth process in liquid media and it will demonstrate more advantages when it comes to the medicinal application of our products," Dr Yochi Hagay, BioHarvest Sciences CTO, said in a statement.

I have never doubted our ability to use our CELLicitation technology to produce cannabis without the need to grow the plant itself and we have broken biological barriers to grow high-performance trichomes in liquid suspension. We are now ready to bring our first unique cannabis compositions to the world. We will of course continue to invest in cannabis R&D to add more cannabis products to the portfolio, appreciate the IP assets and drive even further manufacturing efficiencies," he added.

The Canada-listed biotech company has started the process to obtain a production license in Israel for its cannabis products to complement the R&D license it has used to date for the cannabis development program.

The company plans to bring its first cannabis products to market in 2022 and will be converting the current VINIA two tons/year facility in Rehovot, Israel to produce cannabis. This is happening in conjunction with the transition of all VINIA manufacturing to the new 20 tons/year facility in Yavneh, Israel, which will support the scaling of successful sales of VINIA in the US and beyond.

Ilan Sobel, BioHarvest Sciences CEO, added: "Our unprecedented achievements present a great opportunity for the cannabis industry. Consistent, clean, and efficacious cannabis that is produced with the highest ESG credentials and capital efficiency with significantly lower manufacturing costs is the revolution this industry needs to gain further market traction and trust by the regulators worldwide."

"Our CELLicitation platform technology is a true market disruptor, cementing BioHarvest's position as a leader in plant cellular biology. With the completion of the initial cannabis R&D program, more focus can now be applied towards achieving the desired scale for our two business verticals, Polyphenols/Antioxidants and Cannabis," Sobel said.

Contact the author at jon.hopkins@proactiveinvestors.com
Canntab also said it has received approval to sell its oral dose products to wholesale and provincial stores in Saskatchewan

Canntab Therapeutics Ltd (CSE:PILL, OTCQB:CTABF) announced that it has entered into an affiliate agreement with OnPharm-United, a 600-plus network of independent pharmacy owners throughout the Province of Ontario.

The company said all member pharmacies will have access to educational information on medical cannabis, Canntab's exclusive hard tablet medical products including cannabidiol (CBD) and tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and all necessary tools to permit the pharmacists to refer patients to the Canntab.ca website to fulfill their prescriptions for medical cannabis.

This important relationship, with a large network of highly respected pharmacists, is a testament and recognition of the importance of the health benefits of medical cannabis as well as Canntab's key role in delivering true pharmaceutical grade THC and CBD to those medical patients in a trusted and precise dosage format, Canntab Therapeutics CEO Larry Latowsky said in a statement.

As an example, many pharmacies are either in proximity or often affiliated with pain clinics and therefore providing both the pharmacist and patient with ease of access to the necessary information required to access medical cannabis and the Canntab solid oral dose offerings, Latowsky added.

Canntab noted the agreement is just one of many other affiliate deals which Canntab hopes to enter into with other pharmacy networks.

As well, the company reported that it has received approval from the Province of Saskatchewan to sell the entire portfolio of Canntab solid oral dose products to the provinces wholesale and provincial stores effective immediately.

Canntab Therapeutics is a Canadian phytopharmaceutical company focused on the manufacturing and distribution of a suite of hard pill cannabinoid formulations in multiple doses and timed-release combinations.

The firm's proprietary hard pill cannabinoid formulations provide doctors, patients and consumers with medical-grade solutions which incorporate all the features one would expect from any prescription or over the counter medication sold in Canadian pharmacies.

Contact Sean at sean@proactiveinvestors.com
Southaven Rotary Club celebrated its 50th anniversary on March 21 and recognized founding member Al Gilless for his club service.
Of the first six holes (286 meters) drilled at Ivana Central, two hit anomalous uranium, noted the company, including 120 parts per million (ppm) U3O8 over 1m in one hole

Blue Sky Uranium Corp. (TSX-V:BSK, OTCQB:BKUCF) said it has completed its drill program at the Ivana deposit at its Amarillo Grande uranium-vanadium project in Argentina in a bid to boost the resource, with 3,255 meters (m) in 350 holes sunk.

"We are very pleased to complete this program, which represents an important next step for advancing the Ivana deposit towards a pre-development phase," Nikolaos Cacos, Blue Sky's CEO told investors in a statement.

"Our next plan for drilling will include a return to the Central target, some ten kilometers north of Ivana, as part of our regional program to identify additional resources at Amarillo Grande and build the project into a multi-deposit uranium district," he added.

As previously reported, the reverse circulation (RC) program was designed to test the potential expansion of the Ivana deposit and add holes to aid in upgrades to the resource, which will support advanced engineering studies.

The company is currently continuing its exploration drilling to assess the potential of the Ivana North and Central target areas, which lie north of the Ivana deposit.

Of the first six holes (286 meters) drilled at Ivana Central, two hit anomalous uranium, noted the company, including 120 parts per million (ppm) U3O8 over 1m in one hole.

"Approximately 1,200 meters of the program remains to be drilled at Ivana Central for completion of the first stage of drilling at this target; an additional 1,500m of follow-up drilling is also planned to vector towards and define targets for new resources," the company said.

Blue Sky's wholly-owned Amarillo Grande asset in Rio Negro province is a new uranium district controlled by Blue Sky.

The Ivana deposit is the first part of the district for which both a resource estimate and a preliminary economic assessment (PEA) have been completed.

Contact the writer at giles@proactiveinvestors.com
Marvel Discovery is evaluating several scenarios that will be advantageous to stakeholders regarding the formation of New Marvel Gold and New Marvel Energy

Marvel Discovery Corp. (TSX-V:MARV) has announced the formation of two new subsidiaries - New Marvel Gold Corp and New Marvel Energy Corp - to streamline its Canadian project portfolio.

The announcement follows Marvels successful spinout of Power One Resources Corp, which focuses on nickel and rare earth elements. Power One is now finalizing its listing application, the Vancouver-based resource company said.

"Marvel is setting up for a very busy 2022, CEO Karim Rayani said in a statement. In preparation for this growth, we are setting a strategy to finance our portfolio with minimal dilution while maximizing shareholder value.

The company told investors it is evaluating several scenarios that will be advantageous to stakeholders regarding the formation of New Marvel Gold and New Marvel Energy. One possible scenario would be to have its Newfoundland assets transferred under the New Marvel Gold subsidiary, Marvel said, while New Marvel Energy would focus on energy and technology.

If that scenario were to take place, Marvels Key Lake asset in Saskatchewans Athabasca Basin would fall under New Marvel Energy. Key Lake is a prospective project located 70 kilometres southwest of the former Key Lake Uranium Mine in the Basin, which is home to some of the worlds highest-grade uranium deposits.

New Marvel Energy's focus in conjunction with this strategy will be technology, Marvel said, adding that it is in the process of completing a design study for standardized nuclear fuel for small modular nuclear reactors (SMR) for use in land and energy, including long-range space flight.

The opportunity at Key Lake has tremendous potential and Marvel was fortunate that we could take this on. It is near impossible at this stage in the uranium cycle to find a project like this, Rayani said.

Marvel's timing could not be better as we work towards a common goal of a Tier 1 Discovery not just in gold but now in energy, he added.

Contact Angela at angela@proactiveinvestors.com

Follow her on Twitter @AHarmantas
Mednows patient count increased substantially quarter-over-quarter to 19,000, from around 16,000 in the fiscal 1Q

Mednow Inc (TSX-V:MNOW, OTCQB:MDNWF), a healthcare technology company, has posted fiscal second-quarter results that saw its revenue jump 1,400% year-over-year on the back of strong sales from the company's retail pharmacy segment.

For the period ended January 31, 2022, the Toronto-based company, which provides virtual pharmacy and telemedicine services as well as doctor home visits, reported revenue of C$1.89 million compared to C$124,200 in the fiscal first quarter of 2021.

Significantly, Mednows retail pharmacies in British Columbia, Ontario, and Nova Scotia collectively generated C$1.41 million in revenue, while doctor services revenue totaled C$422,770 and C$62,100 in revenue came in from the firms pharmacy agreement with Mednow East Inc.

READ: Mednow launches Total Health personalized plans to counter consumer confusion about supplements

Mednows adjusted EBITDA, or earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization for the quarter amounted to a loss of C$4.16 million as the company grew its technological and logistical infrastructure, increased headcount, marketing, and built out its internal teams to scale and grow its businesses.

Meanwhile, Mednow noted that it is well capitalized with a cash balance of C$16.4 million.

Mednows patient count increased quarter-over-quarter by nearly 20% to 19,000, from around 16,000 in the fiscal 1Q.

In the 2022 calendar year, Mednows revenue is forecasted to range between C$42.5 million and C$47.5 million, with its pharmacy services contributing C$42 million to the revenue pie, while around C$3 million is likely to come from its doctor services.

The company even offered a forecast for the 2023 calendar year, which put forecasted revenue in the range of C$105 million and C$110 million, with pharmacy services contributing the lions share of the revenue.

"I am so fortunate to work with a gifted team of Mednow employees who have tirelessly committed their time and skills to building out Mednows vision of leading the digital health evolution, to redefine pharmacys role in holistic care," Mednow co-founder and CEO Karim Nassar said in a statement.

"Over the last quarter, we have continued to accelerate revenue, while enhancing our technology applications, growing our tuck-in acquisitions, and increasing our uniquely differentiated product offerings. We are thrilled to be able to service customers coast-to-coast by summer 2022, and we will now embark on a significant national marketing campaign."

On November 24, 2021, Mednow closed a C$500,000 investment in Doko Medical Inc, a virtual and telemedicine healthcare provider operating across the U.S. currently servicing 38 states.

Meanwhile, Mednow has acquired the license and distribution rights of TruDiagnostic for a two-year term and a cash payment of US$150,000. Mednow said its customers will be able to order the epigenetic test in the second calendar quarter of 2022.

Mednow.ca provides virtual pharmacy and telemedicine services as well as doctor home visits through an interdisciplinary approach to healthcare that is focused on the patient experience. Mednows services include free at-home delivery of medications, a specialized PillSmart system and doctor consultations.

Contact the author Uttara Choudhury at uttara@proactiveinvestors.com

Follow her on Twitter: @UttaraProactive
Emmaus Life Sciences Inc (OTCQX:EMMA) has announced the approval of its application for marketing authorization of its Endari sickle cell treatment from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Ministry of Health after a five-month review.

During the review period, Endari was available in the UAE on a named patient, or early access, basis only.

Emmaus said it estimates that as many as 600 sickle cell disease patients live or work in the UAE and that there are about 225,000 patients throughout the Middle East-North Africa (MENA) region who could potentially be treated with Endari.

"We are grateful to have received the Ministry of Health's approval of Endari for the treatment of sickle cell disease patients in the UAE and will move as quickly as possible to reach this population," said Dr Yutaka Niihara, CEO of Emmaus, in a statement.

Adding: "This is the first of several full marketing approvals we hope to obtain in Gulf Cooperation Council states, which represent a very important market, given that there are more than double the number of sickle cell disease patients within these areas than there are in the United States."

George Sekulich, senior vice president of Global Commercialization of Emmaus, commented: "After the extensive review by the Ministry of Health, the approval to market Endari is an important step forward for Emmaus in the MENA region. We look forward to working with our distribution partner to make Endari available to sickle cell disease sufferers in the UAE."

Emmaus is a commercial-stage biopharmaceutical company and leader in the treatment of sickle cell disease. The company currently markets the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Endari to reduce the acute complications of sickle cell disease in adults and children five years and older.

The company is also engaged in the discovery and development of innovative treatments and therapies for certain rare and orphan diseases as well as those affecting larger populations, such as diverticulosis.

Endari, Emmaus' prescription-grade L-glutamine oral powder, was approved by the FDA in July 2017. Sales of Endari began in the US in 2018.

Contact the author: patrick@proactiveinvestors.com

Follow him on Twitter @PatrickMGraham
The DOE patent is an advanced direct lithium extraction process for the extraction of lithium from natural brines, rapidly generating lithium carbonate

One World Lithium Inc. (CSE:OWLI, OTCQB:OWRDF) said it has signed a new license agreement with the US Department of Energys National Energy Laboratory to research and commercially evaluate the DOE's lithium-related patents.

The agreement covers the Selective Lithium Recovery as Lithium Carbonate from Natural Brine and any patents stemming from them, according to Vancouver-based OWL.

During the initial one-year option period, OWL may enter negotiations for an exclusive license within the agreed field of use, which are naturally occurring brines with the exception of sea water and geothermal brines.

The option period began on March 2, 2022, with extensions available for an additional period of time.

OWL told shareholders that the DOE patent is an advanced direct lithium extraction (DLE) process for the extraction of lithium from natural brines, rapidly generating lithium carbonate. The method uses unique carbon injection-mixing techniques to directly precipitate lithium carbonate in brines.

OWL added that the process does not require solvent, electrodes, and membranes, but only uses carbon dioxide which can be sourced from industrial waste streams or ambient air. It significantly reduces capital and operation costs, process time, energy requirements, and overall carbon dioxide emissions.

The process is fully operational at the brine source, eliminating transportation of brines to a chemical processing facility to form lithium carbonate. If the technology is deployed, it could reduce dependence on foreign lithium sources, the company said.

"This license agreement will allow OWL to work closely with the DOE which may enhance the company's ability to find lithium properties of merit that may benefit from using the company's commercialized Separation Technology from DOE and NETL, OWL CEO Doug Ford said in a statement.

OWL intends to license or joint venture its technology to current and future lithium carbonate producers.

Contact Angela at angela@proactiveinvestors.com

Follow her on Twitter @AHarmantas
United Nations, March 23 : UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called for the sustainable use of groundwater for future generations.

"On this World Water Day, let us commit to intensifying collaboration among sectors and across borders so we can sustainably balance the needs of people and nature and harness groundwater for current and future generations," the UN chief said in his message for the international day, which is observed annually on March 22 and highlights the importance of fresh water.

The secretary-general underscored that humanity's demand for water is growing and pressure on water resources is increasing due to overuse, pollution and climate change, Xinhua news agency reported.

"Droughts and heatwaves are becoming more intense and more frequent. Sea-level rise is driving salt-water intrusion into coastal aquifers. Groundwater aquifers are being depleted," he said.

The top UN official said that water can be a source of conflict but also of cooperation. "It is essential that we work together to provide better stewardship of all water sources, including the world's supply of groundwater." On the situation of groundwater, the secretary-general said that it is "out of sight, but we cannot afford for it to be out of mind." "Stored in rocks and soil, groundwater is our biggest source of liquid freshwater," the secretary-general said, adding that "it sustains drinking water supplies, sanitation systems, farming, industry and ecosystems. Yet, some 20 per cent of the world's aquifers are being overexploited." "In many places, we simply do not know how much of this precious resource might exist. We need to improve our exploration, monitoring and analysis of groundwater resources to protect and better manage them and help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals," the UN chief noted.
Lucknow, March 23 : The nomination papers of three Samajwadi Party (SP) candidates have been rejected for the MLC (local bodies) elections for two seats in Etah-Mathura-Mainpuri and one in Lakhimpur Kheri.

The papers of an independent candidate were also rejected along with the papers of two SP candidates for the two MLC seats of Etah-Mathura-Mainpuri, paving the way for unopposed election of BJP candidates.

The BJP candidates are likely to be declared winners on March 24, the day for withdrawal of nominations in Etah.

For the Lakhimpur Kheri seat, nominations of SP candidate Anurag Verma and independent Navneet Shukla were rejected on technical grounds, leaving only two candidates in the fray - BJP's Anoop Kumar Gupta and independent Nar Singh.

Gupta had complained to the returning officer that Verma's affidavit had been notarized by a notary whose licence had expired.

In Etah, ADM (additional district magistrate administration) Alok Kumar told media persons here that the "nomination papers were scrutinised and three papers, including those of Samajwadi Party candidates Udaiveer Singh and Rakesh Yadav, were rejected. Singh and Yadav's nominations were rejected due to incomplete affidavits." Meanwhile, Udaiveer Singh has alleged that the district administration and police were in collusion with the ruling party and thus gave a free ticket to BJP candidates. He also accused BJP candidates and their supporters of attacking the SP candidates and supporters with administration and police support.

"They attacked us, pelted stones on our vehicles and tore our clothes on Tuesday after doing similar acts on Monday. We are here to contest elections on the direction of our party, but the local administration and police placed all possible hurdles in our way so that BJP candidates could be declared elected unopposed," said Singh.

He has also complained to the election commission about all "these unfair tactics" in the MLC elections.

ADM Alok Kumar, however, denied the charges and said the candidates were present in Collectorate and their nominations were rejected because of incomplete affidavits.

"On getting information about the ruckus in the Collectorate area, police rushed there and restored peace. Police is registering a case in the matter on its own," said the ADM.

Later, a case was registered by sub-inspector at Kotwali police station of Etah against unidentified accused.

The SP candidates said they would move court to seek justice in the matter.
Maharajganj, March 23 : Former secretary of BJP's youth wing and lawyer Gaurav Jaiswal, 35, has been allegedly shot dead by unknown assailants in Maharajganj district.

According to the police, the assailants shot Jaiswal in the head and fled from the spot after committing the crime.

An FIR was lodged against the unknown assailants in connection with the crime and further probe was underway.

Jaiswal, who was a nephew of Maharajganj municipality (Nagar Palika) chairman Krishna Gopal Jaiswal, belonged to a reputed family. He was an active BJP worker and co-convenor of party's cleanliness campaign.

His death has triggered panic in the area and as soon as the news spread, the markets closed on Tuesday in protest against the incident even as BJP workers demanded arrest of those involved in the crime.

Maharajganj Superintendent of Police (SP) Pradeep Gupta said that the crime was committed when Jaiswal was sitting at a Biryani shop near Chiuraha crossing under Sadar police circle.

He said some eyewitnesses told the police that the assailants opened fire on Jaiswal after confronting him over some issue. Jaiswal was immediately rushed to the district hospital where doctors declared him dead on arrival, the SP added.

Further, the SP said that the initial investigation revealed that Jaiswal was at his home when he received a call from an unknown caller after which he left the home. He said although Jaiswal's family members said he had no enmity or rivalry with anyone, the circumstances suggested that the murder was committed in a pre-planned way.

"A devoted team had been deployed to work out the case and trace the assailants. The police were scanning video footages of CCTVs installed at the liquor shop just opposite the Biryani shop where the incident took place." Besides, a team of electronic surveillance experts was scanning mobile call details of Jaiswal to identity the unknown caller who called Jaiswal out of his home.
New Delhi, March 23 : Global Water Partnership (GWP), established in the 1990s, is a global action network with over 3,000 partner organisations in 179 countries to advance integrated water resources management.

Earlier in March, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a major new report, showing how increasing weather and climate extreme events have exposed millions of people to reduced water security. Over half of these events since the 1970s involved water, with an estimated 44 per cent being flood-related and a further seven per cent drought-related.

IANS spoke to Senior Network Specialist at the GWP, Julienne Roux, on integrated water resources management (IWRM).

Excerpts from the interview: Q: Year 2021 witnessed several worst flood situations in western countries, as the poor countries have suffered almost every year. Many in the developing world would be keen to know what kind of action for mitigation (or even adaptation) is the EU taking to lessen the damage? A: GWP was established with focus mostly on supporting low- and middle-income countries, so we don't proactively work in Western Europe. We do however have regional water partnership and country water partnerships in Central and Eastern Europe. Some of the ideas as to how to do better with flood management originated from richer countries, more advanced economies and the institutional systems.

The philosophy in our network is that we are extremely de-centralised and a lot of the work we do in countries is actually carried out by people from the country and by entities established by the partners of GWP. But we try to adapt it and have it very contextualised, to rely as much as possible on national and local expertise. There is a huge capacity in terms of hydraulics management, hydrology in many countries like India.

Q: So, the focus would be on infrastructural solutions? A: Our focus is water management in water governance, but infrastructure is part of the solutions, especially for flood management. The work on flood management is called integrated flood management.

The pillars of integrated flood management include, first, reducing the hazard with landscape management, restoring wetlands, peatlands, and doing green infrastructure upstream are some of the measures to limit how much water gets in the risk area.

Second pillar is infrastructure for flood protection measures such as flood barriers, some embankments with knowing limitations that once in a 1,000 years' flood or one in 10,000 years will go beyond the protection measures. At the same time, reducing human exposure, avoiding people settling in flood prone areas with urban planning and land management.

Then, are there monitoring systems and modeling systems for early warnings. There are huge data gaps. The last pillar, of course, is emergency responses.

Q: You mean, there are data gaps even in the Western European countries, a problem common in the developed world? A: There are fewer gaps, but it still remains a huge area of work and an area in which we need to keep on investing, keep on working; we need early warning systems. So, definitely, richer countries need to continue investing, the only difference is they have a much better starting point than a lot of poor countries.

Q: One of the topics in GWP's Water Strategy 2021-2025 deals with 'Climate resilience through water'. Does GWP plan to introduce the steps mentioned for resilience-building water projects in Europe? A: Starting in the year 2010, a lot of focus in the climate space was on climate mitigation like trying to reduce Greenhouse Gases, how much climate change we're going to be facing. But the climate is changing already... It's going to get worse and a lot of the impacts of climate change will be felt through water - not enough water, too much water, whether or not at the right time for human needs etc. The water lens is very important to that.

A lot of our work focuses rather on low- and middle-income countries, so we haven't been directly active in Western Europe. But we also engaged a lot in the global level discussions. For example, we always participate in the climate COPs.

We do have activities in Central and Eastern Europe, but Western Europe, (we are) not directly working there on climate adaptation.

Q: Are there some examples from other parts of the world that can be replicated for Western European countries as you say you have expertise from other parts of the world? A: That's an interesting question. There is no directly one practice, one way of doing it specifically, but we're definitely trying to bring up the good practices from the countries where we support actors. For example, two years ago, with many international partners and national partners, some strong works in actions that people have taken in the countries and brought a change were brought together.

Q: Maybe now it's time, GWP starts work in Western Europe A: There's been a lot of really good work done on water resources management in Western Europe and some other organisations are doing it. But yes, it's not a done deal. You have to continue working, you have to continue investing.

Also, when it comes to the government support, if we spin it positively, they also respond to what the population says, what voters argue, what the civil society advocates.

Q: But do the voters have environmental or climate change on their minds? In India, it's not the scene, environmental issues are nowhere on the voters' mind.

A: Unfortunately, I think too often water is not a priority until there is a really big crisis. Like, when there is suddenly a massive flood impacting people, or suddenly there is a drought or even sometimes pollution issues, like when people can't drink their water at home anymore, (only) then it becomes this huge crisis.

But, especially with the younger generation, there is more attention to the topic of climate change to natural resources.

Q: How does the GWP Toolbox for designing and implementing integrated water resources management (IWRM) work for any given country? A: You need some generic frameworks and ways of looking at things to be able to engage people to say what we need to do and follow these pillars like integrated flood management. But you also need people absolutely on ground actually engaging with these frameworks and bringing them to life that makes sense for the country or for the watershed. And also, for example, through the work on the Sustainable Development Goals. SDG 6.51 is about integrated water resources management.

Countries need to work on enabling the environment, on institutions and participation, on management instruments, on financing.
New Delhi, March 23 : Vice President M. Venkaiah Naidu and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday paid tributes to socialist leader and thinker Dr Ram Manohar Lohia on his 112th birth anniversary.

Remembering Lohia, Naidu tweeted, "Remembering the great socialist leader and eminent freedom fighter Dr Ram Manohar Lohia on his birth anniversary. He was a pathbreaking thinker and a devout nationalist who worked for eliminating social evils. His emphasis on social equality & unity continues to inspire us all." Prime Minister Modi shared some interesting nuggets from the pages of history consisting a letter from Lohia to Lord Linlithgow. The Prime Minister also shared correspondence between the socialist leader and his father.

In a series of tweets, the Prime Minister said, "Remembering Dr Ram Manohar Lohia on his birth anniversary. He was at the forefront of many historical events and played a key role in our freedom struggle. He is widely respected for his principled politics and intellectual prowess." "Some interesting nuggets from the pages of history... a letter from Dr. Lohia to Lord Linlithgow and correspondence between Dr. Lohia's father and him," the Prime Minister added.
Berlin, March 23 : Security staff at most of Germany's major airports again went on strike, leading to cancellations and delays across the country.

The labour union Verdi on Tuesday called for renewed strike action after no agreement was reached in the fourth round of negotiations. The union is seeking to increase wages for around 25,000 security staff employed nationwide.

Frankfurt airport, the largest in Germany, closed all security checks outside the transit area. It was therefore impossible to board any flights, airport operator Xinhua news agency reported citing Fraport.

"To seriously disrupt air traffic throughout Germany again within a very short time is completely disproportionate," said a spokesperson for Fraport, appealing to partners to negotiate an amicable solution.

Meanwhile, at Cologne Bonn airport, security checks were completely closed for passengers. Airlines had already cancelled most flights in advance, the airport said.

Labor union Verdi is not satisfied that according to employers' latest offer, hourly wages of less than 13 euros ($14.34) would only rise by 38 euro cents per hour.

Aviation security staff in Germany are demanding a wage increase of at least one euro per hour over a twelve-month period. Negotiations are set to continue in Frankfurt on March 24.
Islamabad, March 23 : Leader of the Pakistan Opposition in the National Assembly Shehbaz Sharif believes Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan had knowingly tried to delay the extension in the tenure of the Pak Army chief Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa, and has claimed that while his party always respected the military, the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) was behind a social media campaign targeting the armed forces, Dawn reported.

The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) president recalled that when Prime mInister Khan tried to extend the army chief's tenure, the notification had to be redrafted three times.

While Sharif admitted he had no solid information to back up his claims, it was his considered opinion that the Prime Minister intentionally tried to make the process of extension 'controversial'.

"The matter eventually went to the Supreme Court...in the past army chiefs have been awarded extensions in service... all they had to do was copy-paste (from the previous summary). No, this was all done as a deception, it was a fraud perpetrated by Imran Khan Niazi. He wanted to delay it, make a controversy out of it," the opposition leader said.

Separately, while addressing a press conference on Tuesday, Sharif forcefully refuted the allegations that his party was behind an ongoing social media campaign against the army.

Instead, he accused the ruling PTI of maligning the armed forces, saying that video clips featuring Prime Minister Khan and his party members speaking out against the institution were available on YouTube, Dawn reported.

Accompanied with senior party leaders at the news conference, the PML-N president said a video clip of a PTI MNA had recently surfaced where she could be heard "spewing venom" against the Pakistan Army.

Sharif said that one could watch videos on YouTube that featured Khan using the "derogatory" language against the army. "Nawaz Sharif never talked like this," he added.
New Delhi/Kohima, March 23 : In a crucial development vis-a-vis the 25-year-old protracted Naga peace talks, Nagaland Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio on Tuesday (March 22), mooted "fresh mandate" and lamented that "if solution does not come and insurgency continued, it will be a big question for our state and its people".

Replying to a debate on matters of urgent public importance on "Naga political issue" in the Assembly, Rio said there is a very clear that his government (opposition less dispensation) would give the last push for the solution.

Rio maintained that if Naga political settlement could not be arrived at, then there ought to be a "fresh mandate" by the people on how to pursue the Naga political issue.

The Chief Minister said that "negotiating parties" failed to share a common platform and also not able to accept agreements. In the process, people's expectations, especially that of the youth have not been fulfilled.

Rio's statement is in tune with the top priority being given by the Modi government and the Union Home Ministry for an early solution and signing of the final Peace Accord and bring an end to the peace talks that commenced on August 1997.

Observers understand that a clear mandate in favour of BJP in Manipur - which houses substantial Naga population including Tangkhul Nagas - has only strengthened the resolve of the central BJP leadership and the Government of India to take the peace talks to its logical end. In 2018 Assembly polls, the BJP's slogan for campaigning was 'Election for Solution'.

The NSCN (IM), which has a substantial base in Manipur, has yet again raised the bogies of separate flag and Constitution for Nagas - a demand which has been categorically rejected by the Centre.

Even during the debate on Tuesday, Nagaland unit of BJP, Temjen Imna Along said a separate constitution and flag was out of question and such a demand would not be accepted even after 400 years. "We will not get a constitution and the flag", he said and quoted Union Home Minister Amit Shah on the same.

"The public should give a clear mandate", the Chief Minister said but also maintained that while trying to hammer out a solution, the issue should be pursued through non-violence.

Rio said the Union Government has recognised the 'uniqueness' of Naga history and tradition and it is based on this fact that the Naga peace process is underway.

The Chief Minister also said that since 1960s when statehood was given to Nagaland, the State Assembly has passed 17 resolutions on Naga political issue. This present state Assembly also passed three resolutions to ensure an early solution final agreement.

During the debate other legislators, including Imkong L. Imchen, a former Home Minister, said perhaps imposing President's Rule would be best way out to facilitate speedy solution. He suggested that the House can be kept under animated suspension or even dissolved and President's Rule imposed so as to conduct speedy negotiation in order to bring about a negotiated settlement at the earliest.

The continuous delay in coming towards a negotiated settlement has resulted in frustration among the Nagas, he said.

Another legislator Zhaleo Rio said both Framework Agreement and Agreed Position inked between the Government of India and NSCN (IM) and Naga National Political Groups are under the ambit of the Constitution of India and these have laid the foundation of pursuing the peace process.

He urged all the 60 members of the House not to shy away from playing an active role to facilitate the peace process and lead it towards a solution.

The Centre is keen for an early solution and things are being monitored at various levels including Home Ministry and other central agencies.

It is understood that veteran Naga politician S C Jamir, who is the only living personality among the 1963 Statehood agreement, is also in touch with concerned stakeholders in Delhi. In November, Jamir had called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The latter had termed the Naga leader - who was also Governor in Gujarat - a statesman.

Naga National Political Group (NNPG) leader, N. Kitovi Zhimomi told a group of youth that the new peace accord should offer 'win-win situation for all' and that 'the rule of law' must be upheld.

The influential Naga Tribal Council (NTC) has said in a letter to PM Modi on Feb 16 that - "The only task left at the moment is for the Government of India to take a call for signing the Agreement...".

(Nirendra Dev is a New Delhi-based journalist. He is also author of books, 'The Talking Guns: North East India' and 'Modi to Moditva: An

Uncensored Truth'. The views are personal)
London, March 23 : Russian troops occupying the Chernobyl nuclear power plant have "looted and destroyed" a laboratory at the site, Ukrainian officials claim, BBC reported.

The State Agency of Ukraine for Exclusion Zone Management said the Russians had damaged their Central Analytical Laboratory -- which processed a lot of radioactive waste.

The Ukraine agency said that the laboratory had "highly active samples and samples of radionuclides, which today are in the hands of the enemy", BBC reported.

The lab, which cost about six million euros to set up, had also contained "valuable analytical equipment" that were not available elsewhere in Europe, the agency said.

Chernobyl -- the site of the world's worst nuclear accident in 1986 -- is not a working power station but still requires constant management.

The Russians captured it in the first few days of the war last month, and had kept workers there for weeks before some were released.

The former nuclear site remains a great concern, and earlier this week Ukraine's Parliament reported that forest fires had erupted in the vicinity of the plant, which were picked up in satellite images.
Kanpur, March 23 : A 14-year-old girl from Uttar Pradesh's Kanpur was kidnapped and gang-raped by two brothers.

The two men abducted the girl on Tuesday when she was feeding animals outside her house and later raped her.

The accused brothers have been identified as Chutkan and Badkan.

The victim's family lodged a complaint with the police when the girl went missing for hours. The whole village searched for the girl, but could not find her.

One of the relatives received information that the girl was lying unconscious in the bushes tied with a rope and her mouth gagged with a cloth.

The family informed the police and a team was sent to the crime scene to investigate the matter. The girl has been sent to a hospital for medical examination.

The police arrested one accused while the other one is on run.
Moscow, March 23 : Emily Cariou, a member of the French National Parliament, asked for an assessment of the country's stocks of iodine tablets in the event of an "incident" at nuclear power plants in Ukraine.

According to her, the transfer of Ukrainian nuclear power plants to Russia "causes concern".

The deputy asked to evaluate the existing stocks of iodine tablets and how much France has reserved for deliveries abroad, RT reported.

She also asked about how long these doses can be produced in the event of a serious incident on European territory and what logistics are going to be used to distribute them among the French as quickly as possible," the document says.

As Cariou noted, the territories of Ukraine, where nuclear power plants are located, came under the control of Russia as a result of a special operation, and this "causes concern".

At the same time, the parliamentarian clarified that, according to the French Institute for Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety, the level of radioactivity has not increased. The absence of an emission is also confirmed by the monitoring organisations of the countries bordering Ukraine.

In this regard, at the moment in France there is no need to use iodine tablets, she added.
Thiruvananthapuram, March 23 : A cross-section of lawyers on Wednesday protested in front of the Palakkad court in Kerala against Judge Kalam Pasha for allegedly stopping a classical dance performance which was held near his house.

"We have no qualms saying that the emperor has no clothes. We feel it's our duty to say it," said an office-bearer of the protesters.

The incident happened on Saturday when renowned Mohiniyattam artist Neena Prasad was performing her dance recital around 8.30 p.m. at an event organised by Friends' Collective (Souhruda Kootayma) of the Sekharipuram library at the Government Moyan L.P. School. The police had intervened and asked the organisers to stop the performance.

The judge lives near the place where the dance recital was being performed and despite the pleas of the organisers, the police did not let the artists perform.

The artist expressed her disapproval on what had happened through Facebook, and said she and her team had practised for long hours to make the presentation and it was the troupe's first presentation after a two-year break.
Abuja, March 23 : At least 34 people were killed following coordinated attacks by gunmen who invaded four villages in Nigeria's northwestern state of Kaduna, the government said.

Seven persons were injured while over 200 houses and 32 shops were burned during the Sunday night attacks on Tsonje, Agban, Katanga, and Kadarko villages in the Kaura local government area of Kaduna, said Samuel Aruwan, the state's commissioner for internal security and home affairs, at a press conference in Kaduna city, on Tuesday.

Aruwan said three vehicles and 17 motorcycles were also vandalised by the gunmen whose motives for the attack remain unknown, Xinhua news agency reported.

A 24-hour-curfew has been imposed on the local government area in the wake of the attack, the local official said, adding that the curfew would remain in force and was essential to check the further breakdown of law and order in the affected villages.

Armed attacks have been a primary security threat in Nigeria's northern and central regions, leading to deaths and kidnappings in recent months.
Thiruvananthapuram, March 23 : Amid public outrage against the Kerala government's proposed K-Rail project, the Congress on Wednesday alleged that "money" was the only "motive" behind the project for Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan.

Speaking to media, State Congress president K.Sudhakaran said that "commission" was the "driving force" behind all such major infrastructure projects in the state for the chief minister.

"For K-Rail, Vijayan is eyeing 10 per cent commission and so is the case with all new major projects. On TV, we only get to see innocent people worrying that their land and house where they lived all these years will be gone for this project," said Sudhakaran.

"Let the Vijayan government conduct a survey for this project. If the people want it, we will also support the project. Nowhere in the country is there a more arrogant Chief Minister than Vijayan," he added.

He asked the Kerala unit of the BJP to prevail upon Prime Minister to see that the project is not given the clearance.

"They should do that and not engage in protests because they can use the service of Metroman Sreedharan to prevail upon the Centre," said Sudhakaran.

As in the past, Wednesday also witnessed angry protesters pulling out the marking stones being laid as part of the project in few places.

CPI-M state secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan said that it's not a necessity that marking stones have to be laid as even without doing that things can go forward.

"This project will go forward as planned," said Balakrishnan.

At the weekly cabinet meeting this meeting, there was no discussion on K-Rail and the ongoing protests, as per sources.

If completed, it will see a 529.45 km corridor connecting Thiruvananthapuram to Kasaragod with high speed trains covering the distance in around four hours.

As per NITI Aayog, it might cost Rs 1.24 lakh crore when it nears completion in 2025, while the detailed project report on this published by the Pinarayi Vijayan government says it will cost ARs 63,940 crore K-Rail project.
New Delhi, March 23 : With the BJP getting re-elected in Goa, the call for resuming mining operations in the state has grown louder. It has been four years since mining was stopped in Goa and industry associations claim that the ban has severely hurt the state's economy, along with adversely affecting people's livelihoods. According to a recent survey, nearly two in five Goan households have been impacted by the mining ban in some way or the other.

Despite several appeals by different stakeholders to the government in the past, no action has been taken on the ground. In a fresh set of recommendations, CII Goa State Council and Goa Chamber of Commerce & Industry (GCCI) have urged to immediately resume sustainable mining to revive the state economy.

Last week, the Goa Mining People's Front (GMPF) too urged the state and central leadership to act in the matter. In February 2018, the Supreme Court quashed 88 mining leases in Goa, bringing the local iron ore industry to a standstill. The decision affected the livelihoods of over 3 lakh mining dependents in the state.

Recommendations have been made by CII Goa to the Centre and State to resume mining in the State. CII as an apex industry body strongly recommends the resumption of sustainable mining to bring Goa's economy back on track. Though great efforts have been put in by various industry bodies in the state, very little has been seen on ground.

Since the mining concessions which were given in perpetuity under Portuguese Law were converted into Mining Leases by the Abolition Act 1987, it is only fair that the benefit of a tenure of 50 years from date of grant which is available to leases throughout the country as per the 2015 MMDR Amendment Act, be made available to Goan leases. Though the leases came into being in 1987, the tenure was made effective retrospectively from 1961 to protect the revenue collected by the state government from 1961-1987.

This retrospective application of the Act has been struck down by the High Court and the issue is pending before a 9 judge bench of the Hon'ble Supreme Court. The Ministry of Mines has even filed an application before the Hon'ble Supreme Court urging that the matter be expeditiously heard since till then, no further action can be taken with respect to the leases. Under the circumstances, a legislative cure as suggested above is the only option for a swift resumption of mining which is a source of revenue not only to the government but also to many secondary and tertiary industries in Goa.

It's also relevant to point out that almost 30 per cent of the sale price of ore produced goes to the State exchequer in the form of royalty, contribution to District Mineral Fund, Iron ore Permanent Fund etc. "There is an urgent need for the authorities to take necessary decisions in the interest and growth of the state" said Swati Salgaocar, Chairperson, CII Goa State Council.

Voicing similar concerns, Ralph De Sousa, President, Goa Chamber of Commerce & Industry (GCCI), said, "Mining is the lifeline of Goan economy. Mining is going on normally all over the Country except goa. It's up to the Central Govt to restart Mining with proper checks & balances. GCCI strongly feels that the State's Commerce and Industry needs a boost to get over the current economic lull that is caused due to mining closure for the last 4 years and further worsened with Covid pandemic. The Ukraine war may further affect the business some way or the other. Need of the hour is that both these sectors have to jump start to tide over the economic crisis for overall socio-economic development of the state. We have already represented to the state Government for its immediate attention to resolve the mining matter in a sustainable yet quickest possible manner. GCCI membership is awaiting the opportunity to benefit from mining which will in turn address the unemployment crisis of the state." Glenn Kalavampara, Secretary, Goa Mineral Ore Exporters Association said, "The Wealth of the Minerals are meaningless unless they are extracted, processed & converted into goods, meant for the benefit of mankind. It's rather unfortunate that despite generating valuable economic returns as well as providing livelihood to many, mining in Goa had been under a constant suspension since Mid-March 2018. Concerned Stakeholders have repeatedly been raising concerns & hopeful of a solution since long. Post 4 years, the stakeholders dependent on the mining operations have only undergone endless pain, depression and anxieties." The industry associations have said that mining activities should be immediately resumed in the state to undo the livelihood and economic deadlock and allow Goans to earn a stable income and work for a better future.
Sydney, March 23 : In the aftermath of what is likely to be Australia's most costly and devastating flood, tens of thousands of residents have lost their homes and lack the proper insurance to rebuild.

Insurance data provided to Xinhua by the Insurance Council of Australia, the nation's representative insurance body, showed that as of Wednesday insurance claims related to the floods in the states of New South Wales and Queensland had reached A$2.39 billion (about US $1.78 billion).

Nearly 80 per cent of the nearly 160,000 individual claims were for property damage, Xinhua news agency reported.

Professor Michael Sherris from the School of Risk and Actuarial Studies at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Business School told Xinhua on Wednesday these numbers paint only part of the full picture.

"Insurance premiums were revised after the last flood in 2021. And a lot of people found them too expensive, and decided just to take the risk." In Lismore, the worst-hit area in NSW, residents have returned to over 4,000 homes rendered uninhabitable by the record-high floodwaters that engulfed the small town.

One such resident is Harley Nelson, who told Xinhua that many people in the town are on low incomes and have no way of rebuilding their homes which were underinsured and still in the process of being paid off.

"It's easy to move away when you're young and renting, but imagine you're halfway through paying off a five hundred thousand dollar house and it's just been destroyed," said Nelson.

As natural disasters, primarily bushfires and floods become more severe, the worst-affected residents will continue to be priced out of insurance. Sherris said that this will make it harder and harder for large numbers of people to rebuild.

"Insurance really works on the principle where not a very large group of people have claims at the same time," said Sherris.

He said it is becoming more and more necessary to provide financial assistance at the national and state levels in the form of a disaster relief fund.

"Much better, organised and funded schemes would make a lot more sense for these catastrophic risks." An Australian think tank, The Australia Institute, proposed on Wednesday a National Risk Assessment and a National Adaptation Plan that would place a levy on fossil fuel exports to provide public funding to those impacted by natural disasters.

"So-called once in 100-year disasters like the devastating recent floods and the catastrophic Black Summer bushfires are becoming all too frequent," said Richie Merzian, inaugural Climate and Energy Program Director at the Australia Institute.

A survey of over 1,000 Australians conducted by the institute found that 74 per cent agreed that the country needed a national fund for disaster relief.

"There is clear support for a national climate disaster fund, so that those profiting from fossil fuels help contribute to the climate impacts, rather than disaster-stricken communities who are currently bearing the brunt." Apart from the economic cost of the floods, as residents return to destroyed homes and towns that have spent weeks underwater - the social and human cost has been brought into sharp relief.

A survey from the University of Sydney has shown that temporary or extended displacement following natural disasters left up to one in five of those impacted with some form of mental illness, such as anxiety or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

Despite this urgency, the sheer number of people who have had residences destroyed in the floods means it will likely take weeks or months to receive insurance payments, and even longer to rebuild.

Sherris said as climate change worsens, people and governments across Australia would have little choice but to stop development in areas that are continually hit by natural disasters.

"The outcome of that building in flood-prone areas is regular, quite substantial losses people are bearing, and it just doesn't make a lot of sense to allow development and building in these kinds of areas."
New Delhi, March 23 : The Delhi High Court on Wednesday refused to regularise the allotment of government accommodation to a Kashmiri migrant, who was retired from service, observing that the government does not have "unlimited accommodation".

Petitioner Sushil Kumar Dhar, a Kashmiri migrant who was retired on March 31 last year, had challenged an earlier court order which dismissed a batch of similar pleas filed against the eviction orders issued by the central government.

The pleas were seeking regularisation of government quarters by charging normal license fees for three years referring to the Supreme Court order dated October 7, 2021, in the Union of India vs Onkar Nath Dhar case. The division bench of Acting Chief Justice Vipin Sanghi and Justice Navin Chawla was hearing the appeal of Dhar who had stated that the state is unable to give him proper security to re-establish his village in Kashmir.

During the course of the hearing, the petitioner's counsel said his client feels safe in Delhi. "As a Kashmiri migrant, pandit, I'm unable to go back," he said.

After the submissions, the court said it is not that the government authorities are discriminating against the appellant, asking what will be the plight of other people waiting in queue for government accommodation if it permits this plea. "Govt doesn't have unlimited accommodation," the bench said.

As per petitioner Dhar, he was transferred from Jammu and Kashmir to Delhi. He had joined in National Sample Survey Organisation in Udhampur in 1983. In the earlier verdict, the bench of Justice Kameswar Rao had noted that the petitioner was transferred to Delhi in January 1993, that is after four years from 1989, and refused his claims on security issues.
Ferozepur : , March 23 (IANS) Fulfilling one of the major promises of the AAP government to make Punjab a corruption free state, Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann on Wednesday released a WhatsApp number of anti-corruption action line from the pious land of great martyrs with a vow to completely eradicate the menace of corruption within a month.

After paying glowing tributes to legendary martyrs Shaheed-e-Azam Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev here at state-level function in Hussaniwala, the Chief Minister unveiled the anti-corruption number -- 950 120 0200.

"If any Minister, MLA, officer or official demands bribe or commission from you for any work, don't say no to him but also make an audio/video clip of this and send that to anti-corruption action line. The government will enquire into it and if anyone found guilty, he/she will not be spared at any cost," said the Chief Minister.

Mann said he made a promise to the people of Punjab to root out the menace of corruption, which is being kickstarted towards corruption free Punjab. The fullsome cooperation and wholehearted support of Punjabis is also being solicited for this noble cause, which would be the real tribute to great martyrs, he added.

The Chief Minister said it is now "our bounden duty to fulfil the dreams of independent India, which were dreamt by our great martyrs".

He mentioned that "we had made a commitment with the people to ensure clean and transparent governance, which would be delivered at all cost. Our government will take the message of martyrs to each and every house so that the dreams of martyrs could be realised", he added.

Referring to initiatives of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) being taken in larger public interest, Mann pointed out that the AAP government had taken decision to provide government jobs to unemployed youth, besides regularise the services of contractual employees.

He said some other major welfare decisions would also be taken shortly.

After paying tributes to martyrs, the Chief Minister noted in the visitor's book, "Bowing head before the memorials of Shaheed-e-Azam Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev, gave me immense solace. Bringing the independence of their dreams to every nook and corner is call of the day. Praying for betterment of Punjab and Punjabis as desired by the martyrs." The Chief Minister also paid tributes at memorials of Rajmata Vidyawati and martyr B.K. Dutt.
Moscow, March 23 : Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that what is happening in the world at the moment is "not only and not so much about Ukraine", this is an attempt to create a new world order.

He said this during a speech at MGIMO.

"What is happening now in the world, of course, is not only, and not so much about Ukraine, it is about attempts to form a new order," Lavrov said, RT reported..

He added that the West "in a narrow circle" writes rules that "pass out as the ultimate truth and require everyone to comply with these rules." Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Ukraine was made a tool to contain Russia.

And in terms of the Russian direction of NATO policy, Ukraine was chosen as an instrument for suppressing Russian independence... For this Ukraine to be an effective instrument of deterrence, it had to become anti-Russia, as our president recently formulated, and in this sense, neo-Nazism was planted and encouraged there," Lavrov said at a meeting with students and teachers of MGIMO.

According to Lavrov, the ultimate goal of the West is the revival of a unipolar world, Izvestia reported.

"There is no doubt that one of the rules that the West wants to implement is the containment of any competitor. Now here is Russia, China has been declared next, or all this will happen in parallel. And the goal of this rules-based world order is nothing less than the complete revival of the unipolar world," Lavrov summed up.

Latest updates on Russia-Ukraine War

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Khatkar Kalan : , March 23 (IANS) Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann on Wednesday said the state government would make strenuous efforts for getting martyr status for Shaheed Bhagat Singh, Shaheed Rajguru and Shaheed Sukhdev.

Interacting with family members of martyr Bhagat Singh, including Teji Sandhu, the wife of his nephew, Abhay Sandhu, the Chief Minister assured them that all efforts would be made to get status of the martyr for the legendary hero of Indian freedom struggle, who laid his life at a tender age.

He bemoaned that it was unfortunate that even after more than 70 years of Independence this status has not been bestowed to him. Mann said the entire nation would ever remain indebted to this great martyr for steering the country out of the clutches of British imperialism.

Seeking fulsome support of people to realise the dreams of Shaheed-e-Aazam Bhagat Singh, the Chief Minister said the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government is committed to cherish the aspirations of Bhagat Singh and carve out a harmonious and egalitarian society.
Mumbai, March 23 : Actor Arshad Warsi will be seen playing a double role for the first time in his career in his next film titled 'Jeevan Bheema Yojana'.

The film is a quirky crime comedy and is helmed by 'Dolly Ki Doli' director Abhishek Dogra, who is also making his debut as the Producer of the film.

Arshad confirmed all this as he revealed excitedly that he found the script insanely funny.

"I was cracking up every now and then during the narration. And the cherry on cake was the double role. The director has his vision and I am following that. I am playing two individuals who look the same, but are completely different personalities. The script has a good balance of humour and drama." The actor will be seen playing two extremely different but same looking people, Jeevan and Bheema, in the film. While one of them belongs to the world of white-collared professionals, the other is involved in the world of crime, and what happens when their paths cross forms the crux of the story.

The film went on floors a few days ago in Mumbai and will be shot at different locations in the city.

The actor goes on to talk about how he has prepped for these two different characters.

"As for the prep, the mind is a very powerful tool. Like I was Ajay Kumar in 'Sehar' and Circuit in 'Munnabhai' - now imagine them in one film! It's that simple. It has been about 10 days since we went on floors, and we've been having a lot of fun. Vijay Raaz, Sanjeeda Sheikh, Pooja Chopra and Bijendra Kala are my co-stars and you can't imagine the kind of fun we have off camera. Improvisation toh apne aap ho jaati hai," he insists.

Abhishek is a happy director who is also loving working with this wonderful team.

"'Jeevan Bheema Yojana' has a lot of humour packed in with some drama. Arshad is one actor who can look innocent and cunning at the same time, he's really underrated and I have been an admirer of his work. It's his first ever double role, with two contrasting characters. As a director when you have actors like Arshad and Vijay Raaz in the film, it makes your work easy. Their timing is impeccable."

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Hyderabad, March 23 : Supporters of Telangana's ruling party TRS on Wednesday staged a protest in front of the state BJP office in Hyderabad triggering tension as the saffron party workers also came out to counter them.

Leaders and workers of various frontal organisations of Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) staged a sit-in in front of BJP office in Nampally to protest against the Centre for misleading the Parliament on reservation for Scheduled Tribes.

Demanding the sacking of Minister of State for Tribal Affairs Er. Bishweswar Tudu, the protesters raised slogans against the BJP government at the Centre.

The BJP workers also came out of the office and tried to counter the TRS men. The two groups almost came to blows but the police intervened to control the situation.

Police detained the TRS men and shifted them to different police stations in the city.

Those detained include TRS student wing president G. Srinivas Yadav, youth wing leader P. Praveen Reddy and tribal leader Rambabu Nayak.

They alleged that the central minister misled the Parliament by stating that no proposal was received from Telangana for increasing the quantum of reservation for Scheduled Tribes (STs).

They said the minister has uttered a lie as the State Legislature passed a Bill in 2017 for increasing the reservations to STs from 6.8 per cent to 10 and sent it to the Centre.

The TRS leaders alleged that the Centre's stand amount to insulting the tribals.

The TRS and ST groups also organised protest at Suryapet and other places on Wednesday. At Suryapet, the protestors, including women, set afire the effigy of the Central government.

The leaders said the Centre's statement was shocking as the Ministry of Tribal Affairs had written back to the state government that it has no objection to raising the quantum of ST reservation.

They said instead of giving its nod to increase the ST reservation, the Centre misled the Parliament.

The TRS on Wednesday gave a notice for moving a privilege motion in Lok Sabha against Bishweswar Tudu for misleading Lok Sabha while answering a question.
New York, March 23 : White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said that she has tested positive for Covid-19.

Psaki, in a statement, announced that she took a PCR test in the morning as part of the preparation for travel to Europe with President Joe Biden.

"That test came back positive, which means I will be adhering to CDC guidance and no longer be travelling on the President's trip to Europe," she said.

Biden tested negative on Tuesday via a PCR test, according to the statement.

Psaki also revealed she had "two socially-distanced meetings" with Biden on Monday and that she's sharing the news of her positive test "out of an abundance of transparency".

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines close contact as someone who is less than 6 feet (1.8 metres) away from an infected individual for more than 15 minutes.

"Thanks to the vaccine, I have only experienced mild symptoms," Psaki continued. "In alignment with White House Covid protocols, I will work from home and plan to return to work in person at the conclusion of a five-day isolation period and a negative test." The White House chief spokesperson previously tested positive for Covid in October ahead of Biden's trip to Europe for a climate summit.

The latest positive result for her came one day before Biden is set to leave for Brussels for meetings with NATO and European allies to discuss the Ukraine situation.

The US has reported more than 79 million Covid cases and 972,000 deaths, both the highest in the world, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

Public health experts have warned that the US may see another rise in Covid cases in the next few weeks, as the new Omicron subvariant continues to spread across the nation while restrictions are being lifted in states and cities.
New York, March 23 : New York City Mayor Eric Adams on Tuesday said the mask mandate for children under five years of age in schools and day-care facilities would be removed on April 4 if current low levels of risk sustain.

"If we continue to see low levels of risk, then, on Monday, April 4, we will make masks optional for 2-4 year old children in schools and daycare settings," said Adams in a press conference, Xinhua news agency reported.

Adams added that masks would continue to be available to children and school staff members who wish to continue to wear them.

New York City dropped its school mask mandate on March 7 for students aged five and over.

It was reported that parents and students staged a protest against the mask mandate for younger students on Sunday at the City Hall Park.

Children under the age of five are still not qualified to get Covid vaccine, according to the latest rules.

The seven-day average percentage of positive Covid test results ending Sunday stays at a low level of 1.45 per cent within New York City, according to data issued by the New York State government.
Chennai, March 23 : The Dalit Christian liberation movement, an organisation working against the discrimination of Dalits in the Catholic church hierarchy, has strongly criticised the appointment of a non-Dalit as the Archbishop of Puducherry and Cuddalore.

Francis Kallat, Archbishop of Meerut, was recently appointed by the Pope as the Archbishop of the two regions.

Mary John state president of Dalit Christian Liberation Movement (DCLM) said that even though Archbishop Francis Kallat was born in Kanniyakumari district, it was rare for a Bishop serving in North India to be moved into this region. He said that the move was to prevent the appointment of a Dalit Archbishop.

The organisation has been spearheading the appointment of a Dalit as Archbishop in the two regions of Puducherry and Cuddalore and the post was lying vacant for the past year.

The DCLM leader while speaking to IANS said: "Even though the Dalit population is three-fourth of the Catholic population in the region, never in the history of the diocese since its formation in 1955 has a Dalit been made the Archbishop of the region." He said that only one of the 17 Catholic dioceses in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry had a Dalit as Archbishop even though the Dalit community accounts for 75 per cent of the Catholic population of the state.

Mary John said: "The Dalit population constitutes 64 per cent of the total Catholic population in the country and still the percentage of Dalit Bishops in the country is less than 10 per cent of the total strength." He said that the office-bearers of DCLM had met the Vatican representative in India, Apostolic Nuncio to India, Archbishop Leopoldo Girelli last month to highlight the issue.

Notably, the Apostolic Nunciature had following the meeting of the DCLM leaders in a statement said: "The Apostolic Nuncio does not discriminate in the episcopal selection of candidates and in the appointment of Bishops. The responsibility of the Apostolic Nuncio is to verify the priestly integrity of the candidates in order to establish their suitability for the office of the Arch Bishop and makes no distinction based on ethnicity, caste, language or social status."
New Delhi, March 23 : The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) has asked the West Bengal Police to file an action taken report within three days in connection with the violence that has been reported from Birbhum area of the state.

The Commission has asked the West Bengal police to ensure the safety and security of women and children living in the violence effected area.

The commission has written to Nagendra Nath Tripathi, the Superintendent of Police, Birbhum, West Bengal. A copy of the letter is with IANS.

As per the letter, the NCPCR received a complaint after which it took cognisance of the matter under sections 13(1) of CPCR Act.

"The Commission is in receipt of the complaint in which it has been brought to the Commission's notice that during this Socio political civil war started at the behest of the political party at the helm of power in West Bengal, women and children have been the worst affected. As per the complainant, TMC extremists in the Rampurhat area under Birbhum District, West Bengal set ablaze multiple houses and as a result of which around 10 women and children were charred alive," read the letter of NCPCR.

The Commission asked the police to conduct an investigation in the said matter and ensure the safety and security of these children.

It further said that an action taken report on the matter should be shared with the Commission within 3 days.
Patna, March 23 : In wake of a string of deaths across four districts purportedly due to consumption of poisonous liquor, legislators of opposition parties arrived in the Bihar Assembly wearing black bands.

The opposition leaders brought adjournment motion on the issue and due to huge uproar, the Assembly was adjourned twice in the day.

In a jibe at Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, RJD member Mukesh Raushan, wearing a black black over his eyes, introduced himself as "Sushashan Babu" of Bihar.

"I am Sushashan Babu of Bihar and I have completely turned blind. I am unable to see so many deaths due to poisonous liquor.

"In Bihar, liquor is completely banned. Still, a large number of people are dying due to poisonous liquor. Brazenly, the government officials are declaring these natural deaths due to illness. Who is responsible for it? The state government is suffering from a disease called blindness. When they (NDA leaders) become ill, they used to go to Delhi for treatments," Raushan said.

"The liquor ban in Bihar has completely failed here. The nexus of mafias, bureaucrats and ruling party leaders are earning in the cover of the liquor ban. This is the real agenda of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. When liquor is banned in Bihar, how it is available in every locality, and villages. People are consuming it and dying," he added, As many as 42 persons lost their lives since Holi (March 18) in four districts - 22 in Bhagalpur, 12 in Banka, three in Madhepura and five in Siwan. However, the state police and Excise Department claims that the deaths happened due to illness in the majority of the cases.

"Shockingly, state police failed to recover dead bodies of the victims from the hospitals to conduct autopsies. Hence, their relatives cremated the dead bodies," the RJD lawmaker said.

Bhagalpur police only confirmed that three persons of Sahebganj died reportedly due to the consumption of poisonous liquor.
Chennai, March 23 : Tamil Nadu government will set an example as to the manner in which a sexual assault case is handled and punishment is secured for the accused, Chief Minister M.K.Stalin said on Wednesday.

He was referring to the sexual assault by a DMK official and others in Virudhunagar district.

Speaking in the Assembly, Stalin said the Virudhunagar sexual assault case will not be handled in the way Pollachi sexual assault case was handled by the earlier AIADMK government.

He said the Virudhunagar sexual assault case will show the country how his government secures maximum punishment to the accused quickly.

Stalin also said he had ordered the state Director General of Police (DGP) to handle the Virudhunagar sexual assault case as a model case and exercise direct supervision.

According to Stalin, within 24 hours of sexual assault, on a complaint of a 22-year-old woman, four persons have been remanded to custody and as many sent to juvenile home.

The case has been transferred to the Crime Branch-Crime Investigation Department (CBCID), he added.

He assured the House that a charge sheet will be filed in 60 days in a special court.

A 22-year old Dalit woman was sexually assaulted by eight persons, including four juveniles, for several months. The accused threatened to share her assault video on social media.

The woman and DMK Youth Wing member Hariharan were friends. The latter acted as if he was in love with the woman and promised to marry her. Both had sexual relationship in a warehouse.

Hariharan had recorded their intimate moments and started blackmailing her and went back on his promise of marrying her. He also shared the video with his friends - Praveen, Junaid Ahmed and four juveniles.

The DMK party has suspended Hariharan and Ahmed from the party.

During the earlier AIADMK rule, a group of young men blackmailed women in Pollachi and indulged in sexual assault which led to wide protest.
Srinagar, March 23 : While the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) summit is taking place in Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) top-drawer business delegation arrived in Srinagar on March 20 to further solidify the relationship with the Union Territory and gauge business opportunities in the region at the invitation of Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha.

The beginning of the year saw a trade momentum destined to result in a monumental business pact between the two nations.

The UT received $2.5 billion (approximately Rs 18,568 crore) in investments, indicative of the region's potential in January 2022. The LG has indicated that the UT was expecting to attract Rs 70,000 crore worth of investment in the following six months; this is a huge number versus the total of Rs 15,000 crore investment in the last 75 years of Independence.

After LG visited Dubai this year, a 40-member delegation from the UAE representing 33 companies from UAE, Hong Kong, and Saudi Arabia is participating in a four-day (March 20-23) visit.

Century Financial's CEO, Bal Krishen is heading this delegation of Gulf businessmen along with Saudi CEOs. The delegation includes prominent businessmen in the real estate and commercial trading industries and it is for the first time, an investor from Saudi has taken interest in J&K.

Jammu and Kashmir is gaining pace, transitioning fast from a doormat commercial tourist destination to the land of investment and opportunity. J&K administration will be displaying investment opportunities to the delegation with a focus on Hospitality, Tourism, and Entrepreneurship sector. The delegation includes industrialists involved in the manufacture of cement, textile, pharmaceuticals, and fiber & cables. Hospitals, Hotels, Agro-industry, IT, and Horticulture growth are high on the delegation's list.

UAE delegation is meeting the Lieutenant Governor along with Principal Secretary Industries and Commerce, and J&K Administration's top officials to assist the UT with its recent evolution of the global business landscape and industry. After the reading down of Article 370, investors are feeling comfortable travelling to the UT and take business decisions. GCC's attitude, especially the Emirati investors' keen interest in capitalizing on the investment potential of J&K will increase confidence and open gateways for European, American, and Japanese investments.

UAE's intentions in J&K are evident through their genuine interest in UT's growth compared to Pakistan's terror ideology which operates in the undercurrents of all militant schemes in the Valley. This meeting will destabilize Pakistan's efforts in vilifying India at the OIC on the Kashmir Issue. Now Pakistan's acts against Kashmir will place them in the court against the UAE businesses, who are also Pakistan's allies.

A dinner and a visit to Pari Mahal in Srinagar were organized by the LG for the CEOs on Monday. The group is visiting all corners of Kashmir as per their choice to clear the misconception that Kashmir is an unsafe place. An interaction with local businessmen at Sher-i-Kashmir International Convention Centre (SKICC) was held on Tuesday to get a taste of the business climate. Talks on private investments for tourist places like Pahalgam, Gulmarg, and Sonmarg are underway. South Kashmir's Pulwama and Pampore are other gold mines where 5,000 kanals of government land will be offered to the investors.

Not long before Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented a Rs 1.12 lakh crore (13.33 billion US dollars) budget for J&K for the year 2022-23 in the Lok Sabha directed at rebuilding the economy and creating jobs in the region. In the same news, the annual budget of Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir (PoK) in 2021-22 was 141 billion Pakistan rupees, amounting to just 78.55 million US dollars. This means New Delhi allocates about five times more money to J&K than Islamabad grants to PoK.

Ironically while Islamabad, as we speak, is maligning India's image concerning the Indian Administered Kashmir at the OIC summit, it is treating PoK as its mere colony with no visible signs of development, but only a breeding ground for training camps and launchpad for terror organizations. PoK's 4 million residents lack basic human amenities and have never been allowed to express political and socio-economic grievances.

Just at a stone's throw distance from PoK, the J&KUT has already sanctioned industrial investment proposals worth over Rs 26,000 crore so far and is hopeful of getting an investment of over Rs 70,000 crore in the next six months. Pakistani propaganda narratives have always deceived people, particularly Muslims and the rest of the world about the fictional bad situation in Kashmir.

India is the second-largest trading partner for the UAE, while UAE is the third-largest trading partner for India. In 2019-20, the foreign trade between the two was about $60 billion (Rs 4,45,602 crore). In the next 5 to 8 years CEPA (The Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement) is predicted to boost commerce between the two countries from $60 billion to $100 billion. This is a testament to the deep-rooted relations between the two states.

At the Dubai Expo 2020 J&K signed six agreements to bring investments Territory's real estate, infrastructure, tourism, and healthcare, manpower employment sectors among others in January, 2022.

Dubai ports giant DP World has proposed to build an inland port in the UT as their commitment to invest in J&K. These organizations paired with industrious youth of the state will have a catalytic effect in driving trade and commerce growth of J&K.
Kiev, March 23 : Ukrainian representatives are seeking to establish new humanitarian corridors in four regions in negotiations with Russia, the presidential press service said on Wednesday.

Quoting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the press service said that Ukraine seeks to establish new routes for evacuation of civilians in the Kiev region in central Ukraine, Kharkiv and Lugansk in eastern Ukraine, and Zaporizhzhia in the southern part of the country, Xinhua news agency reported.

A total of 7,026 people were rescued from the besieged city of Mariupol on Tuesday, where the active hostilities between Ukrainian and Russian forces were underway, it added.
Mumbai, March 23 : A Mumbai court on Wednesday rejected a notice of motion filed by Bollywood megastar Salman Khan seeking a gag order to restrain his NRI neighbour from the US, Ketan R. Kakkad from posting any content on social media.

In the notice of motion, Salman had sought an injunction barring Kakkad from posting or uploading any content about the alleged violations of laws being committed at the actor's 100-acre farmhouse in Panvel, Raigad.

Sessions Judge A. H. Laddhad heard the lawyers of both siders at length at the online and in-person hearings for nearly two months and passed the much-awaited order on Wednesday.

Kakkad's legal team comprising Abha Singh, Aditya Pratap of Aditya Pratap Law Offices and Salman's battery of lawyers including P. D. Ghandy and D.S.K. Legal, argued over the matter for several weeks.

Singh and Pratap raised the plea of justification, submitting that there was "substantial truth" in the allegations levelled by Kakkad pointing how Salman had carried out substantial constructions on his Panvel farmhouse which falls within the Matheran Eco-Sensitive Zone Notification.

In mid-January, a massive row erupted between the two neighbours - Salman and Kakkad - over the latter's social media comments, sparking huge controversies in Bollywood and political circles - as reported by IANS in "Retired NRI, 'Dabangg' neighbour Salman Khan lock horns" (January 16).

Salman hit back with a civil defamation suit against Kakkad and dragged in Google YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other social platform content creators as parties and also sought a gag order to restrain his neighbour from posting objectionable statements till the outcome of the suit.
Lucknow, March 23 : Akshay Pratap Singh Gopal ji, a member of the UP legislative council, has been sentenced to seven years imprisonment after being convicted by a MP/MLA court in a case of cheating and forgery registered against him under IPC sections 420, 468 and 471.

Akshay Pratap is said to be a close aide of Raja Bhaiyya and a candidate of Jansatta Dal Loktantrik in the upcoming MLC elections.

The MP/MLA court, which found Akshay Pratap guilty of obtaining arms (revolver) licence on a fake address, announced the quantum of sentence on Wednesday.

Akshay Pratap is a resident of Jamo area in Amethi. According to reports, he obtained the revolver licence by showing his address as that of Pratapgarh.

The then police station in charge had filed a case against him in 1997 at Nagar Kotwali. The case was going on in the MP/MLA court.
Mumbai, March 23 : Actor Akshay Oberoi recently started dubbing for a series titled 'Feels Like Home'. Created by Sahir Raza, the series follows the lives of four boys in their 20s who move into their first house away from home together.

The series will mark the third collaboration between Sahir and Akshay, their earlier projects being 'Hum Tum' and 'Illegal 1'.

Akshay spoke about his bond with the director and his eccentric character in the series. He also remarked that Raza's storytelling sensibilities match with his own and so his decision to work on the series was driven by creative hunger.

The actor said "It is exciting to be able to collaborate with creators, who perceive things the way you do. Sahir is one of them. The part I play is that of a lovable Punjabi guy, who's loud and obnoxious. He does drugs and also sells them; he sells exotic animals too." He continued further, "I did crazy things for the part, like sporting tattoos, paint and silver teeth. My hair extensions were painted. The styling was super fun and wild. For me, acting is the first love strategizing a career is not. So anytime I get an opportunity to do something amazing and fun like this, I jump at it." About his bond with Sahir, the actor remarked, "Sahir and I have worked together for 'Hum Tum' and 'Illegal' Season 1, and coming together for the third time is another joyful experience. It's all about sensibilities and wavelengths a director and actor share." He added, "My bond allows me to bring a better version of my craft. Our sensibilities match and dubbing for a loud character for him was fun." Akshay will be next seen in 'Cold' penned by Mahesh Bhatt and directed by Vikram Bhatt and in Pawan Kripalani's 'Gaslight'.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
New Delhi, March 23 : The British Council, in partnership with BFI Flare: London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival, will make available five LGBTIQ+ themed short films to watch online for free, over an 11-day period.

Between March 16 and 27, a collection of stories from countries such as India, China, the UK, Croatia and Panama will be presented in #FiveFilmsForFreedom.

Through these films, the audience will get to know more about the emerging LGBTQI+ cinema across the world and understand the life and challenges faced by the community with themes including immigration, intimacy and isolation.

In India, the British Council has partnered with The Queer Muslim Project, South Asia's largest virtual network of Queer, Muslim and allied individuals, to celebrate and amplify the films.

In addition to the films being shown online, they will be screened across various cities such as Delhi, Chennai, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Kharagpur, Kolkata and Guwahati.

The offline screenings are being co-hosted with some of the largest LGBTQIA+ student-led groups across three premier Indian universities. The curation also includes a series of reels and Instagram Live with popular Queer creators and youth media platforms, such as 'Yuvaa' and 'We the Young India and Gaysi Family', along with roundtable discussions featuring renowned filmmakers, and open mics.

Over 17 million people from more than 200 countries have viewed the #FiveFilmsForFreedom programme since its launch in 2015. This continues to include online engagement in countries where homosexuality can be prosecuted and, in some cases, punishable by death. The campaign further addresses the language barrier typically associated with international content, by providing subtitles in local languages such as Hindi.

Mumbai filmmaker Arun Fulara's debut short film 'Sunday' is part of this year's #FiveFilmsForFreedom selection. The film, which has already travelled widely to more than 50 world festivals, examines the desire and loneliness of a middle-aged man on his weekly visit to the barbers.

Speaking about 'Sunday', and the #FiveFilmsForFreedom campaign, Arun Fulara said, "'Sunday' is a deeply personal film that came out of my own experience of loneliness and lack of intimacy in the urban sprawl that is Mumbai. To see the film transcend borders and touch so many people across the world is a testimony to how similar we all are, whatever culture and nationality we may belong to.

"The film started its journey just as the pandemic began and has, therefore, I feel, touched a raw nerve in these times of forced isolation and distancing. Being a part of the #FiveFilmsForFreedom campaign is a huge honour and deeply gratifying for our small team. While I am extremely glad that people across the world will now be able to see our film, I hope there comes a time when stories like this cease to be a reality." Other films include British-Nigerian Director Joy Gharoro-Akpojotor's short film 'For Love', which focuses on illegal immigrant N. Kechi and the unique challenges she faces due to her sexual identity; Croatian comic artist and animation-director Marko DjeAika's animation film 'All Those Sensations In My Belly', which follows the story of trans gir Matia's transition and her quest for love; Panamanian Director Judith Corro's first film as scriptwriter and director, 'Birthday Boy' (Vuelta al Sol), a story about parents denying their son's identity as a young trans man; and Chinese Director Hao Zhou's 'Frozen Out', an experimental short film that combines scenes from rural Iowa and rural China to explore anxiety, dislocation and self-exile.

Jonathan Kennedy, Director-Arts India, British Council, said, "Throughout the world, #FiveFilmsForFreedom presents diverse and unique stories from some cutting edge LGBTIQ+ filmmakers. With our partners in India and the UK, we aim to achieve greater empathy for and solidarity with the LGBTIQ+ community with thought-provoking short dramas on film."
New Delhi, March 23 : The Delhi High Court on Wednesday sought the response of the Centre on a plea against a rule which makes the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) mandatory for admission to homeopathy courses.

Issuing notice to respondents -- the Ayush Ministry, the National Commission for Homoeopathy, the National Testing Agency, and others, a division bench headed by Acting Chief Justice Vipin Sanghi and Justice Navin Chawla slated further hearing on the matter on March 30.

The plea, filed by a group of homeopathic colleges, contended that the nature of the courses -- modern scientific medicine and homeopathy are poles apart and subjects taught in these courses are distinct from each other.

It also challenged the legality of Section 14 of the National Commission for Homoeopathy Act, 2020 and Information Bulletin NEET (UG) issued last year.

In a related plea on per centile criteria of NEET, the High Court last week had observed that there is a dearth of doctors, whether MBBS or specialists. Further, it observed that people have to go to places like Ukraine because of this situation.The score corresponding to the NEET percentile varies each year depending on the number of students to qualify and the seats available. SC, ST, and OBC students have to score within the 40th percentile, while general category students must score within the 50th percentile.
Chennai, March 23 : Migrant workers in Tamil Nadu's Tiruppur district are turning to alcohol, leading to absenteeism from work in textile units which in turn is causing garment production loss.

Simran Ray, wife of migrant labourer Arjun Das from Uttar Pradesh told IANS: "My husband is only 28 years of age and we have two children. He was earning around Rs 600 per day and we were provided a family room and gas connection and water supply by the textile company owner. However, of late, my husband turned alcoholic and life has become miserable. He is not attending factory regularly and is now on the verge of losing his job." Tiruppur Exporters and Manufacturers Association President Muthurathinam told IANS: "The workers from northern and eastern states are hardworking and have a finesse in their profession. They were not having any bad habits like local people and were always on time for duty, but of late, they have slowly but surely become alcohol addicts." Migrant workers working as tailors earn around Rs 4,500 a week and most of them being single, slowly turn to alcohol on their holidays and gradually become alcohol addicts, he added.

Powerloom Unit owners association president R. Velusamy told IANS: "Workers from North are preferred as they don't bargain for wages. A large number of migrant workers are employed in powerloom units in Palladam, Mangalam, and Thekkallur." Both Muthurathinam and Velusamy said that the absenteeism of migrant workers and their lack of interest has led to a lull in the production at these units. This has affected the export of materials from Tiruppur which is the hosiery capital of of the country.

Muthurathinam said: "The garment export industry was limping back to normalcy after Covid -19 pandemic but this lack of enthusiasm among our majority labourers, who have migrated here, has affected us."
Patna, March 23 : An ex Indian Army man was killed and his son sustained serious injuries after a group of people attacked them in Bihar's Bhojpur district on Wednesday morning over a property dispute.

The deceased is identified as Ram Prakash Singh, 50, a native of Karisath village under Udwant Nagar police station of Bhojpur.

The police said that Singh had a property dispute with two persons named Baldev Singh and Hari Om Singh. They were involved in a quarrel on Monday.

"On Wednesday, my father Ram Prakash Singh was about to go to Patna, when 10 persons including Baldev and Hari Om arrived at my house and attacked my father. One of them pulled out a fire arm and shot him from close range. I tried to save my father but they also thrashed me brutally," said Rohit Singh, son of the deceased who has also sustained injuries in the attack.

The family members rescued both the injured and took them to the nearby health centre where Ram Prakash was declared brought dead.

"On the statement of Rohit Singh, we have registered an FIR under relevant IPC sections of murder, attempt to murder and criminal conspiracy. The accused are on the run now. We are conducting raids to arrest them," said Chandan Kumar, SHO of Udwant Nagar police station, Bhojpur.
Mumbai, March 23 : Chennai Super Kings' all-rounder Moeen Ali will miss the first match of Indian Premier League 2022 against Kolkata Knight Riders as he is yet to secure his visa to travel to India, club confirmed in a official statement on Wednesday.

"He has still not got his visa. We have also got in touch with BCCI. BCCI is also working on it. We are expecting that it will be done in a day or two. This is the position as of today. I cannot say that it will be done today. But we are expecting that it can be cleared today," CSK Chief Executive Officer KS Viswanathan said in a release.

"How many matches he will miss depends on when he comes in. Right now, he will miss the first game. Even if he comes tomorrow, he will not be able to play the first game. That is the position as of today. He is packed and ready. The minute he gets the visa, he will board the next flight to India," he added.

Latest updates on IPL 2022
Thiruvananthapuram, March 23 : Unfazed by the growing opposition to his government's ambitious K-Rail project, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan will, on Thursday, call on Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the national capital to get preliminary approval for the project.

For the past more than a week, the state has been witnessing massive protests when K-Rail officials were moving around trying to lay the marking stones to conduct a social impact study and wherever it was laid, the protesters have pulled it out and thrown it away.

Against the backdrop of such protests, Vijayan will call on Modi and seek his nod for the project. Apparently, the senior K-Rail officials who are in Delhi, have already met the Railway Board officials ahead of PM-Vijayan meet.

If completed, it will see a 529.45 km corridor connecting Thiruvananthapuram to Kasaragod with high speed trains covering the distance in around four hours.

As per NITI Aayog, it might cost Rs 1.24 lakh crore when it nears completion in 2025, while the detailed project report on this published by the Pinarayi Vijayan government says it will cost Rs 63,940 crore K-Rail project.

Last week, the Lok Sabha witnessed a chaos when the entire Congress-led UDF MPs from Kerala strongly opposed the K-Rail project and the lone CPI-M MP defending it.

A delegation of the state BJP leaders led by Metroman E.Sreedharan had called on all those who matter in Delhi recently and said that at no cost should permission be granted as it is not "feasible".
Amaravati, March 23 : The row over alleged sale of cheap brands of liquor in Andhra Pradesh has triggered a war of words between YSR Congress Party (YSRCP) government and main opposition Telugu Desam Party (TDP).

While the TDP has been attacking the government for promoting consumption of liquor, the ruling party has hit back saying the brands available now were the same introduced by the previous TDP government.

The TDP, which has been protesting over the issue both in the legislature and outside, on Wednesday threatened a public stir while the YSRCP government rubbished the allegations and launched a counter-attack.

Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy on Wednesday categorically denied that his government is promoting cheap liquor brands in the state and alleged that the brands in circulation now were the same introduced by the previous TDP government.

Replying to a debate on liquor policy in the Assembly, he slammed the TDP for holding his government responsible for the brands which were introduced during the TDP regime headed by Nara Chandrababu Naidu.

Denying the sale of cheap liquor, he said the TDP was making baseless allegations over the recent deaths in Jangareddygudem town of West Godavari district. He reiterated that the deaths were natural and not related to illicit liquor.

The TDP has been staging protests in both the Assembly and Council for more than a week, demanding debate on the deaths of 19 persons. The opposition legislators are getting suspended every day for stalling the proceedings. They have been staging protests outside the Legislature complex and two days ago they even poured liquor on a portrait of the Chief Minister as part of their protest over what they call 'J-brands' of liquor.

The TDP leaders have also made it a major issue by targeting Jagan Mohan Reddy for going back on his election promise to enforce total prohibition.

With the main opposition also mounting pressure by taking the issue to the streets, the Chief Minister spoke in the Assembly on Wednesday, denying the allegations and launching a counter-attack.

Jagan Mohan Reddy said that the brands which the TDP is now talking about were all introduced during its own rule. "Our brands are Navaratnalu and all liquor brands belong to Chandrababu Naidu," he said referring to a host of welfare schemes being implemented by the YSRCP government under Navaratnalu.

Alleging that 254 new brands of liquor were introduced by Chandrababu Naidu government, he said brands like 'President Medal', 'Governor Choice', 'Boom Boom Beer', 'Powerstar 999', and 'Russian Romanov' were all Naidu's gifts. He also remarked that Chandrababu Naidu's surname Nara should be changed to 'Sara' (liquor).

He said his government did not issue permission for a single new distillery while the previous government issued permission for seven distilleries between 2014 and 2019.

The Chief Minister also stated that the tests at SGS lab have established that there are no hazardous contents in the liquor available in the market. On the TDP's contrary claims, he said the samples given by them might have been tampered with.

Meanwhile, the TDP legislators vowed to continue their agitation both inside the Assembly and outside till the YSRCP government stopped hazardous cheap liquor brands as well as illicit liquor.

The TDP lawmakers took out a protest rally led by party General Secretary Nara Lokesh outside the House holding placards and raising slogans against the ongoing liquor deaths in the state. They said there were unpermitted chemicals in 'J-brand' liquor that were killing the people and destroying lakhs of families.

The TDP members held Jagan Mohan Reddy totally responsible for the liquor deaths, which were nothing but 'Government murders'. For the sake of easy money and hundreds of crores of commissions, the Chief Minister was using benamis to manufacture and sell aJ-brands' of poisonous liquor. Urea and ammonia present in liquor brands were causing drinkers to suffer from multiple organ failures, they alleged.

Nara Lokesh said when they were fighting on behalf of the people, the ruling party members were using abusive language against them. The Deputy Chief Minister has not tendered any apology in the House for using unparliamentary words, he said.

The TDP lawmakers took strong objection to the house arrests of their party leaders all over the state just for trying to register their protest. The ruling party was not ready to debate illicit liquor and J-brands even for a minute in the House. Was the Chief Minister afraid that his benami liquor empire would get exposed if there was debate in the Legislature?, they asked.
New Delhi, March 23 : Irregularities in paddy procurement in Maharashtra's Gondia and Bhandara districts of Maharashtra has prompted authorities to refer the matter to Central Bureau of Investigation for detailed investigation, the Parliament was informed on Wednesday.

BJP Lok Sabha member Sunil Baburao Mendhe had sought to know whether cases of alleged fraud and irregularities in paddy procurement centres in those two districts were reported and if the Centre proposed, or was likely to conduct, a CBI inquiry into these cases of irregularities.

In response, Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution Minister Piyush Goyal, in a statement tabled in the house, said: "Some complaints like delay in paddy procurement, procurement of paddy from middlemen, corruption in paddy procurement, etc. for the period of 2020-21 were received from public representatives of Maharashtra. Looking at the seriousness of the issue, the matter was referred to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for detailed investigation." However, he did not provide any further details about the case.

To Mendhe's query whether paddy was not being procured from the farmers on minimum support price (MSP) through paddy procurement centres for the last one year in the Bhandara-Gondia districts and was being procured from the traders in the name of farmers, the Minister said: "Maharashtra has adopted Decentralised Procurement (DCP) Scheme for procurement of paddy under which, the state government itself undertakes direct purchase of paddy from farmers." According to the statement, paddy procured in Bhandara district during last two and current Kharif Marketing Season (KMS) was 4,57,212.20 in KMS 2019-20, 5,59,101.20 MT in 2020-21, and 3,80,659.70 MT for 2021-22 (up to March 15).

In Gondia, in KMS 2019-20, procurement was 7,61,388.10 MT, in 2020-21, it was 7,20,739.20 MT, while in 2021-22 (as on March 15), it was 4,41,066.00 MT.
Mumbai, March 23 : Actor Ravi Bhatia, who rose to fame after he essayed the role of Salim in Ekta Kapoor's 'Jodha Akbar' wishes to essay the role of freedom fighter Bhagat Singh.

He says: "I'm a great fan of Bhagat Singh. I enjoyed reading books written about him, his biographies. And also watch many movies and recordings that are on the Internet about him. I'm waiting for the opportunity to essay him onscreen someday. Be it for a television show or web, I'm keen on essaying his part." He also featured in shows such as 'Raja Ki Aayegi Baraat', 'Hamaari Beti Raaj Karegi', 'Do Dil Bandhe Ek Dori Se', 'Ishq Subhan Allah' among others. The actor recalls the great freedom fighters Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev Thapar, and Shivaram Rajguru on Martyrs' Day which is celebrated on March 23 every year in India to honour their sacrifices and remember their contribution in the Independence.

Ravi adds: "Our martyrs will keep inspiring us for years to come and the occasion of Shaheed Diwas will keep us motivated to always keep our country first. It is the time to celebrate the courage with which our soldiers lived their lives.

"Let us pray for our martyrs and their families as they are the ones who give India so much strength. We need to learn how they always choose their country over comfort, patriotism over convenience. And salute to our soldiers who never thought about themselves but always thought about the country."
Chennai, March 23 : A Congress district president in Tamil Nadu has moved the Madras High Court against granting bail to Nalini Sriharan, convicted for the assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.

Nalini moved the Madras High court on Tuesday for bail.

M.A. Muthalagan, Madras South district president of the Congress party in his plea said that Nalini was not only convicted in the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi but also involved in a conspiracy that had direct bearing on the sovereignty, security, and political independence of India.

He also said that granting bail to a person who had conspired with international terror organisations like the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) would give a wrong message to the society.

The Congress leader in the petition said that the Rajiv Gandhi assassination convicts had moved court several times on one or the other pretext for commuting of sentence as well as to get parole.

Muthalagan said, "it is needless to say that once the person is convicted and the same is confirmed by the apex court, the remedy lies only with the government and in this case it lies with the Union government." He also said that the concept of a convict seeking bail was alien to the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC). The Congress office-bearer also said that while considering the case of A.G. Perarivalan, the court had not assigned any reason for consideration but had granted bail only with the special power conferred upon the court.

The impleading petition filed by Muthalagan is likely to be taken up for hearing by the first bench of the Madras High Court represented by Chief Justice Munishwar Nath Bhandari and Justice D. Bharatha Chakravarthy on March 24.

The Madras High Court on Tuesday had told Nalini to approach the Supreme Court for bail.

Pointing out that the provisions of the law do allow bail in case of registration of a case or arrest or suspension of sentence, the bench asked as to what provisions provide for granting of bail to a convict when there is no special leave petition pending.

The advocate of Nalini, Radhakrishnan referred to a particular judgment of the Supreme Court allowing bail to convicts if mercy plea is pending. However, he was not able to provide a copy of the order when the high court bench sought it.
New Delhi, March 23: In a first ever Chinese presence in the the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) conference hosted by its "Iron brother" Pakistan, the Chinese foreign Minister Wang Yi thanked "Bhai Jan", Pakistani foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, for facilitating his face-to-face interaction with the members of the largest organistation of Muslim countries.

In his speech, as a special guest, Wang underlined that his presence at the OIC event reflects the strong desire of China and the Islamic world to further deepen their cooperation.

"The cooperation between China and Islamic countries enjoys huge potential, complementary advantages and broad space," Wang said.

While raising the issue of Palestine and Kashmir in his speech, he did not mention the issue of Uyghur Muslims in China.

But it was Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu brought up the plight of the Uyghurs at the OIC session leaving the guest and host uncomfortable.

"In China, Uyghurs and other Muslims, have difficulties protecting their religious rights and cultural identity," the Turkish foreign minister Cavusoglu asked the members of the OIC if it was right to ignore the situation of the Uyghurs.

"We do not want Muslim countries to have problems with these countries, on the contrary, we want our good relations with those countries to improve the situation of Muslims," Cavusoglu said. "We know that we are here on one mission with the OIC, the OIC only exists because we have the same mission, its duty is to be the collective voice for the Muslim World." Hidayet Oghuzkhan, a Turkey based activist wrote in his post that, "At the Islamic Cooperation Organization Islamabad summit, only our foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu , expressed the troubles of Uyghur Turks in East Turkestan. Despite China's genocidal policies against Muslims in East Turkestan, we strongly condemn the participation and the speech of the Chinese FM in OIC Islamabad summit. It is a great scandal and misfortune".

World Uyghur Congress (WUC),a Uyghur rights advocacy group, urged the OIC, an intergovernmental organization of 57 member states that serve as the "collective voice of the Muslim world," to condemn the genocide of Uyghurs and others in Xinjiang.

"The presence of a Chinese government representative at the OIC Council of Foreign Ministers reflects China's coercive influence amongst Muslim-majority governments", WUC President, Dolkun Isa said. "If the OIC strives to be a trustworthy voice of the Muslim world, it cannot continue to close its eyes to the suffering of millions of Uyghur and other Turkic muslims in East Turkistan" Dolkun said in his statement.

Though China has not participated in the OIC events before, it has maintained friendly relations with the OIC member states. At the conference, Wang pushed Beijing's narrative on how well the Communist Party of China (CPC) treats its Muslim minorities.

"This just further shows that the vast majority of Muslim countries do not fall into the trap set by Washington, and know that it was the US who brought chaos and disaster to their lands," says The Global Times, a China state affiliate media.

At the conference, Wang pushed Beijing's narrative on how well the Communist Party of China (CPC) treats its Muslim minorities.

"This just further shows that the vast majority of Muslim countries do not fall into the trap set by Washington, and know that it was the US who brought chaos and disaster to their lands," says The Global Times, a China state affiliate media.

After attending the OIC meeting and bilateral talks with Pakistani leadership, Wang will be reaching New Delhi on March 24 for a two day visit. This will be the first visit by any minister from Beijing here since the pandemic and the Galwan killings with an eye to end the two-year old standoff along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Ladakh. The request was made by Wang himself which was accepted by India. According to analysts, Wang's visit is to gauge the mood of the Indian leadership towards China and the Ukraine crisis. At the OIC Wang had said that, "on the Kashmir issue, we have once again heard the call of many Islamic friends. China shares the same aspiration." And this will certainly not go down well in New Delhi.

(The content is being carried under an arrangement with indianarrative.com) --indianarrative
Kochi, March 23 : Two more Kerala Police officers have courted trouble after a preliminary probe by the Crime Branch into the case of now arrested fake antique dealer Monson Mavunkal found that they had received money from the conman.

The probe found out that the two inspector-ranked officers had taken Rs 2.80 lakh from Mavunkal, which the duo claimed they took from the trickster as loan.

Following the preliminary investigation, the state police have decided to launch a department probe into the matter.

The Kerala Police are already under heavy duress after an IG-level officer, G. Lekshmana, was suspended for his alleged close links with Mavunkal.

When the case first surfaced in September last year, pictures of then state police chief, Loknath Behra, and serving ADGP, Manoj Abraham, visiting a 'museum' of Mavunkal at Kochi had gone viral.

And during a hearing in the Kerala High Court on Mavunkal, the court had asked how come these top police officers never thought as to how a museum like this can function, as the rules are very clear. It also pointed out how come the police set up a daily beat box at Mavunkal's house and the museum.

Mavunkal (54) use to take all his high-profile guests into his fold by showcasing antiques in his collection which he claimed included the 'staff of Moses' and 'two of the 30 silver coins that were taken by Judas to cheat Jesus Christ'.

The police said that he had showcased these 'rare' items -- a throne said to be used by Tipu Sultan, a huge collection of old Qurans, Bibles (Old Testament and New Testament), and old handwritten copies of Bhagavad Gita.

Mavunkal used to invite several VIPs to his palatial residence, a part of which was converted into a museum to house his 'precious' antiques.

Mavunkal is presently under judicial custody.
New Delhi, March 23 : The National Commission for Women (NCW) on Wednesday took cognizance of the incident of 'brutal violence' in West Bengal's Birbhum where 10 people, including women, were burnt to death after the murder of a deputy Panchayat Pradhan.

"It is a matter of grave concern and the commission has taken serious note of the lapse on the part of the authorities to take adequate safety measures of the women in those areas," NCW chairperson Rekha Sharma said in a letter to West Bengal DGP Manoj Malaviya.

At least 10 people died and several others were injured on Monday in violence that allegedly broke out after the murder of a deputy Panchayat Pradhan at Baguti village in West Bengal's Birbhum district. While 11 people have been arrested, both police and the ruling Trinamool Congress have denied political motives behind the incident.

The state government has formed a special investigation team under ADG, CID, Gyanwant Singh, DIG, Western Range, Sanjay Singh and DIG, CID, Operations, Miraj Khalid to probe the Baguti incident.

The NCW chief said that the commission is deeply disturbed by the brutality meted out to the people including women from the state of West Bengal. "Keeping in view that women and children are most vulnerable in such crisis times it becomes extremely pivotal that safety and security of women is ensured," Sharma said in the letter.

She asked DGP Malaviya to personally intervene in the matter and demanded swift action against the perpetrators of the brutal violence. It also asked the Commissioner to intimate the action taken by them within the next 24 hours.
Gandhinagar, March 23 : President Ram Nath Kovind will address the Gujarat Assembly on Thursday as part of the 'Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav' celebrations during his two-day visit to the state.

During his visit, Kovind will also present the Indian Naval Ship (INS) Valsura with the prestigious 'President's Colour' on Friday.

The Budget session for the 2022-23 fiscal is presently underway in the Gujarat Assembly.

Informing the House about the President's visit, Assembly Speaker Nimaben Acharya said, "Ram Nath Kovind will address the Assembly between 11 am and 12 noon on Thursday.

"All the members of the state Assembly must be present in the House before 10:30 am, as the President is expected to arrive by 10:50 am." On Friday, the President, who is also the Supreme Commander of the Indian armed forces, will honour the INS Valsura with the prestigious 'President's Colour' at Jamnagar.

The Indian Navy has arranged for a ceremonial parade with a 150-man 'Guard of Honour' to be presented to the President on Friday.

Gujarat Governor Acharya Devvrat, Admiral R. Hari Kumar, the Chief of Naval Staff, Vice Admiral M.A. Hampiholi, along with other senior civil and military dignitaries will be attending the ceremony.
Mumbai, March 23 : In a key development in one of the most avidly watched pre-trials, a Mumbai court on Wednesday rejected a notice of motion filed by Bollywood megastar Salman Khan seeking a gag order on his NRI neighbour Ketan R. Kakkad from posting any content on social media.

Salman, vide the notice of motion, sought an interim injunction barring Kakkad from posting or uploading any objectionable content about alleged violations of laws being committed at the actor's 100-acre farmhouse in Panvel, Raigad.

Mumbai Sessions Judge A.H. Laddhad heard lawyers from both sides at length during the online and in-person hearings for over six weeks before passing the much-awaited order.

Kakkad's legal team comprising Abha Singh, and Aditya Pratap of Aditya Pratap Law Offices and Salman's battery of lawyers including P.D. Ghandy and D.S.K. Legal, argued over the matter for nearly six weeks.

Singh and Pratap said that Kakkad and his wife Anita had returned to India to lead a retired life at their Panvel plot - adjacent to Khan's Arpita Farms - purchased in 1996.

Though the families enjoyed cordial relations for years, the situation suddenly changed after 2014 when the elderly couple returned from the US for good to build an eco-friendly Lord Ganesha temple, small cottage, and an ashram at their plot.

Owing to certain "encumbrances" and obstacles like a massive gate created by Salman, the Kakkads were allegedly prevented from accessing their own plot for the past few years.

They said prior to 2014, the two families regularly hosted each other, went for jogging and even fishing at a nearby rivulet, but now the Kakkads have not been able to visit their land for several years, even to pray at their small temple and the electricity connection to their land was snapped by certain local officials.

Stung by the unexpected change in the Khans' stance, the Kakkads approached all departments concerned like Revenue, Forests, the local police and even the local courts seeking justice, besides venting his ire in public.

Singh and Pratap said that later, Kakkad took to social media platforms to highlight how alleged illegal constructions were carried out in the eco-sensitive area, violating provisions of the Matheran Eco-Sensitive Zone, causing great harm to the environment.

Arguing in the courts, Kakkad's lawyers said that the videos or statements on social media platforms like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter were "not obscene", did not use "foul language" but were merely the plea of a hapless couple seeking access to his land, electricity and "darshan at his tiny temple".

Salman's lawyers put up Kakkad's purported statements on "child trafficking, drug trafficking, graveyard, girlfriends", and sought to gag him to the point of not speaking about the actor's Panvel farmhouse.

However, Singh and Pratap denied the accusations and argued that these utterances were actually made by others, circulated widely in the print, electronic, and social media, wherein Kakkad was quoted out of context, causing damage to his own reputation and portraying him in a bad light.

"Salman Khan has blatantly restricted Kakkads from using his own land. He is more 'infamous' than famous, has not come with clean hands and suppressed material facts from the court, hence he (Khan) cannot demand equity. The case should be dismissed with costs," argued Pratap.

The pre-trial matter - which evoked massive global interest in view of the big names like Google, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter involved - has sowed the seeds for a future expose, tentatively titled "The Panvel Files" - though the Kakkads declined to comment.

In mid-January, after Kakkad's social media comments sparked a massive row, Salman hit back with a civil defamation suit dragging in global media giants as parties, triggering bubbly controversies in Bollywood and political circles - as reported by IANS on January 16: "Retired NRI, 'Dabangg' neighbour Salman Khan lock horns.

(Quaid Najmi can be contacted at q.najmi@ians.in)
New Delhi, March 23 : Two-wheeler major Hero MotoCorp on Wednesday said the visit of Income Tax officials to its office premises was for "a routine inquiry, which is not uncommon before the end of the financial year".

Officials from the Income Tax department visited two of the company's offices in Delhi and Gurugram and the residence of its Chairman and CEO Pawan Munjal on Wednesday.

In a statement, the company said: "We have been informed that this is a routine inquiry, which is not uncommon before the end of the financial year. We reassure all our stakeholders that it continues to be business as usual." "We at Hero MotoCorp are an ethical and law-abiding corporate, and maintain the highest standards of impeccable corporate governance. In keeping with this philosophy, we are extending our full cooperation to the authorities." On Wednesday, the company's stock on the BSE, fell to Rs 2,395.40, down Rs 25.90 or 1.07 per cent from its previous close.
Wings India 2022 all set to take off in Hyderabad Image Source: IANS News

Wings India 2022 all set to take off in Hyderabad Image Source: IANS News

Wings India 2022 all set to take off in Hyderabad Image Source: IANS News

Hyderabad, March 23 : The stage is set for Wings India 2022, Asia's largest event on civil aviation, beginning at Begumpet Airport in Hyderabad on Thursday.

The four-day biennial event is being organised jointly by the Ministry of Civil Aviation and Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Indian Industry (FICCI).

The best of the aviation industry would be showcasing their innovative technology and aircraft machinery at the event on commercial, general and business aviation.

Wings India will bring together buyers, sellers, investors, and other stakeholders on a common platform to discuss various aspects of the aviation industry.

While the first two days are for business discussions, the remaining two days will be open for the general public.

As part of the 'Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav', the theme of the event is "India@75: New Horizon for Aviation Industry". The focus will be on new business acquisition, investments, policy formation, and regional connectivity.

The show will have exhibition, discussions, demonstration, exhibition and flying display by the Sarang team of the Indian Air Force, roundtable/panel discussion on helicopter industry, business aviation, Krishi UDAN, golden age of drones, India-US Roundtable with AMCHAM, drone demonstrations, Global CEOs Forum, and the Wings India awards 2022 ceremony.

Several foreign dignitaries, ambassadors, representatives from various sectors of aviation like airlines, airport operators, airport agencies, civil aviation authorities, consultants, engineering, flight/simulator training, flight operations/transportation, maintenance, repair & overhaul (MRO) agencies, pilot/instructor, sales, service or support will be taking part in the event.

Wings India awards will also be conferred on the aviation-related companies/ institutions/organisations that have created benchmarks and made notable contributions in the area of civil aviation in India.

Minister of Civil Aviation Jyotiraditya Scindia will be formally inaugurating the event on Friday.

In his message on the eve of the event, he stated that Wings India 2022 epitomizes the government's commitment to transform India into the world's top civil aviation hub.

"I am confident that the forum that Wings India provides, will serve to synchronise policy formation, with concerns of the stakeholders in the civil aviation sector. Hence, it will consequentially bring unprecedented investment and business acquisition opportunities, thereby creating millions of jobs for those looking to enter this industry," he said.

"Our new Helicopter Policy, Drone Policy, MRO Policy and Flying Training Organisation Policy stand as testimony towards our commitment to streamline and promote the entry of Indian industry into opportunities that the civil aviation sector has to offer," he added.

Minister of State for Civil Aviation V.K. Singh noted that the aviation sector acts as a growth multiplier including economic output, jobs and trade enabled through better connectivity and has proved to be one of the largest contributors to the 'Make in India' initiative.

Aircraft maker Airbus has announced it will showcase Airbus A350 at the event. Airbus A350, the undisputed leader in sustainable long-range air travel, will be on a static display along with its portfolio of world-class products and services that are fostering the growth of commercial aviation in India, the company said.

Airbus will also display a scale model of its single aisle A220 aircraft, purpose-built for the 100-160 seat market that can prove to be a game changer for regional connectivity in India.

Airbus Helicopters will showcase scale models of the ACH130 from its corporate portfolio and the multi-role H160.

On the public days on March 26-27, Airbus will host a "Meet-and-Greet" recruitment event at its stand. Company executives will meet candidates for prospective positions in digital and engineering streams.

Embraer will display its largest commercial aircraft, the E195-E2 at Wings India. Showcasing a stunning 'TechLion' livery that covers the entire aircraft's fuselage, this aircraft is the largest member of the new generation E-Jets family, the E-Jets E2, and is designed to seat up to 146 passengers in its signature two by two seating, the Brazilian aircraft maker said.
Wings India 2022 all set to take off in Hyderabad Image Source: IANS News

Wings India 2022 all set to take off in Hyderabad Image Source: IANS News

Wings India 2022 all set to take off in Hyderabad Image Source: IANS News

Peshawar, March 23 : The first public school for Sikhs in Pakistan is nearing completion in Peshawar as "90 per cent construction work" has been concluded, media reports said.

The work on the project practically started two years ago after a piece of land was purchased in the Jogan Shah Mohalla situated in the old city, Express Tribune reported.

A woman living outside Pakistan had donated Rs 20 million from which the community purchased eight marlas of land. After the purchase of land, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government started construction work.

The project will be the first of its kind and provide an opportunity for the children of the Sikh community and other minorities to get an education in a better environment. A school in Peshawar had been a long-standing demand of the Sikhs from the province and the tribal areas, Express Tribune reported.

Previously, about 300 children from the Sikh community were studying at an NGO-run school in Dabgri. The school operating in a rented house had to be shut down after the landlords asked the administration to evacuate.

However, after demands by the Sikh community for a new school, Atif Khan, the former provincial Education Minister and current Food Minister, announced the project for the first government school for the Sikh community.

The government tasked the Sikh community with purchasing space to make the construction of the school practical. After the purchase of land, the K-P government started work on the site six months ago.

Rory Kumar, a member of the Standing Committee on Minority Affairs in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Assembly who belongs to the Hindu community, said that Pakistan's first Sikh government school was a long-standing demand of the community.

Baba Gurpal Singh, a committee member of the first Sikh school in Pakistan and a social worker, told The Express Tribune that IDPs from Orakzai, Khyber and Kurram districts were forced to move to Peshawar.

Their children left their homes in the tribal areas and dropped out of school and education, he said, adding that children could not be sent to other areas due to security. He expressed gratitude to the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa government for providing Rs 23 million for the school.

The school will have 15 classrooms where about 500 children will be able to study from nursery to middle school. Gurpal Singh further said that children of any minority community including Sikh, Hindu, and Christian communities will be able to get education at the public school, Express Tribune reported.

In addition, the doors of the school will also be open for Muslim children. The educational facility will be open to everyone, he said.
Srinagar/New Delhi, March 23 : Union Home Minister, Amit Shah, concluded his recent 2-day visit to Jammu and Kashmir by declaring that security forces have gained decisive control over terrorism, and it is one of the biggest achievements after abrogation of Article 370. He made it explicitly clear that entire nation stands behind the brave hearts in their final assault against Pakistan sponsored terrorism in the Himalayan region.

Post August 5, 2019 when the Centre announced its decision to scrap J&K's so-called special status and bifurcated it into two Union Territories -- the security forces have eliminated 439 terrorists, the networks of the over ground workers stand smashed and scores of militant modules have been busted.

Fighting ultras, 109 security forces personnel have laid down their lives and 98 civilians have also been killed in the terrorism related incidents during the past 30 months.

Security forces by their hard work and dedication have foiled the nefarious designs of Pakistan and the terrorists sponsored by it to prevent J&K from marching on the path of peace, prosperity and development. Besides neutralizing ultras, the security personnel have succeeded in getting back the local youth into mainstream by facilitating surrenders and by making them understand that gun won't take them anywhere except to the graveyard.

The political leadership has stood like rock behind the security forces by providing them with all the possible support to wipe out terrorism from Jammu and Kashmir.

Since the day Amit Shah has taken over as the Union Home Minister his first priority has been the families of slain J&K policemen. He has ensured that the families of brave hearts, who laid down their lives for the country, get all the possible assistance from the State.

Hands over appointment letters Soon after landing in Jammu on March 19, Shah handed over the appointment letters to the kin of four personnel of Jammu and Kashmir Police who sacrificed their lives fighting terrorists in Kashmir.

Pooja Devi, wife of late selection grade constable Rohit Kumar, was handed over the appointment letter to join as a panchayat secretary. Her late husband had joined the J&K Executive Police in June 2011 and remained associated with counter-insurgency. He was given an out of turn promotion as selection grade constable six years later for his brave efforts. On January 12 this year, a police party along with Army carried out search operations at Sehpora Pariwan village in south Kashmir's Kulgam district. When civilians were being evacuated, the terrorists opened fire on the police personnel resulting in injuries to three army jawans and constable Rohit Kumar. The constable succumbed to injuries. However, a hardcore Pakistani terrorist Babar was eliminated in the operation.

The Union Home Minister handed over the appointment letter to Ifra Yaqoob, daughter of head constable Mohammad Yaqoob Shah. She was appointed as the orderly cum chowkidar in the Industries and Commerce department. Her father had joined the J&K Armed Police as the constable in February 1992. On August 13, 2014, Mohammad Yaqoob Shah was on his way to his company headquarters in Anantnag's Bijbehara when his Police Gypsy was attacked by terrorists in Pampore in Pulwama. The constable died fighting the terrorists.

Aabid Bashir, now a follower in the Jammu and Kashmir Police is the son of constable Bashir Ahmed Sheikh. During the intervening night of January 30, 2000, terrorists attacked a police party at Rabitar Bridge in Ganderbal in which constable Bashir Ahmed Sheikh lost his life.

Home Minister Amit Shah also handed the appointment letter to Mohsin Mushtaq as the new follower in Jammu and Kashmir Police. He is the son of follower Mushtaq Ahmed. On May 9, 1993, the terrorists had fired on a BSF patrol party in North Kashmir's Bandipora district. During the retaliatory action, a terrorist was killed. Mushtaq Ahmed also lost his life in the gun battle.

The Union Home Minister after handing over the appointment letters to NOKs of the slain J&K policemen assured the security personnel that the Government of India led by Prime Minister, Narendra Modi is committed to their welfare.

Shah's message was clear that the entire nation is proud of the courage and commitment shown by the brave security personnel of Jammu and Kashmir Police and the country stands by them.

Attends 83rd Raising Day celebrations of CRPF Amit Shah attended the 83rd Raising Day celebrations of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) as the Chief Guest in Jammu on March 20. This was for the first time that CRPF celebrated its Raising Day outside New Delhi.

He observed that the CRPF has kept the security of the country and countrymen above itself and even the youngest citizen of the country appreciates its spirit of dedication and sacrifice.

He praised the paramilitary force for its capability to handle any situation and lauded it for playing a pivotal role in Naxal affected areas, fighting Pakistan-sponsored terrorists in Kashmir and restoring peace in the Northeast.

Shah put it on record that since the inception of the CRPF 2,340 of its personnel have lost their lives in the line of duty and it will be written in the annals of history in golden letters.

Thanks CRPF on behalf of nation He thanked the CRPF on behalf of the entire nation for first protecting the country's borders and later the country's internal security, fighting Naxalism and terrorism and dealing with riots.

Shah assured the families of CRPF men having received posthumous honours that the sacrifices of their kith and kin will never go in vain and the nation will remember them for ages to come.

The Union Home Minister drove home the point that the entire nation supports the security forces and acknowledges their sincerity, dedication and sacrifices.

Shah's gesture was a morale booster for the security personnel, who are working 24x7 to end the 32-year old Pakistan sponsored insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir.

J&K transforming at a fast pace After Narendra Modi took over as the Prime Minister of India in 2014 the Jammu and Kashmir has gone through rapid growth and transformation. The grassroots democratic setup stands established for the first time in decades. More than 30,000 public representatives have become part of the democratic system. Panches and Sarpanches in every village of J&K are taking the villages on the path of development.

Abrogation of Article 370-a temporary provision in Indian Constitution-and introduction of new progressive laws have led to the commencement of the era of all-inclusive development in J&K, connecting women, pahari and downtrodden sections of society to the mainstream.

The J&K Government has received investment worth more than Rs 33,000 cr on the ground and many more proposals are being finalized.

The Prime Minister package which includes, water, electricity, toilets for all households has received a major push.

Distribution of Ayushman Bharat cards to every beneficiary; creating infrastructure and facilities to rebuild J&K have been the major focus.

For the first time since 1947 a mass movement has been initiated in the Himalayan region to curb corruption and bring transparency in every sector. During the past five years road construction in J&K has broken all records since country's independence.

Seven new medical colleges, 2 AIIMS, initiation of 21 hydroelectric projects and many more such projects aimed at the betterment of the people of J&K have taken off.

Ek Nishan, Ek Vidhan, Ek Pradhan The abrogation of Article 370 has led to the country achieving the most important milestone i.e. India now has one symbol, one constitution and one Prime Minister (Ek Nishan, Ek Vidhan, Ek Pradhan). Prior to August 5, 2019, J&K had a separate constitution and a flag.

The Centre has sent a clear message to all the adversaries that time to preach sedition and separatism in Jammu and Kashmir has ended.

Amit Shah's message was clear that besides empowering common man in J&K, the government is committed to the welfare of the security forces and their families, and no power on earth can snatch J&K from India.
Chandigarh, March 23 : Vikramjit Sahney, international president of the World Punjabi Organization, on Wednesday announced the setting up of Shaheed Bhagat Singh International Skill University in Punjab with support from the state government.

It will impart job-related skills like electrician, welder, fitter, air-conditioning and refrigeration mechanic, information technology, web designing, coding, graphic designing, solar panel technician, junior nurses and hospitality.

The students will be provided jobs in Punjab and the UAE, Canada, Europe, Japan and other countries.

Sahney is already running two World Skill Centres in New Delhi and Amritsar, providing free skills and jobs to thousands of youth.

He said he has invited Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann to give away job letters to 1,000 youth from Punjab trained by Sun Foundation on Baisakhi.

He is also running Swami Vivekanand Drug De-addiction and Rehabilitation Centre in Amritsar and further announced that his NGO will set up drug rehab and skill centres in various districts of Punjab in collaboration with the state.
New Delhi, March 23 : A Delhi Court on Wednesday granted regular bail to former Union Minister P. Chidambaram and his son Karti Chidambaram in connection with the Aircel-Maxis case filed against them by the CBI and the ED.

Earlier in 2019, Chidambarams got the anticipatory bail in the same case on a personal bond of Rs one lakh and surety of like amount following the direction to join the probe.

A detailed order of the verdict is expected to be released later.

The case, which is being probed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and Enforcement Directorate (ED), relates to alleged irregularities in the grant of Foreign Investment Promotion Board approval in the Aircel-Maxis deal.

The probe agencies say the approval was granted in 2006 when P. Chidambaram was the Union Finance Minister.

According to rules and the foreign direct investment policy in force at that time, Chidambaram was allegedly empowered to give approval to proposals involving foreign investment only up to Rs 600 crore.

It is alleged that Chidambaram withheld Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) clearance of the deal until his son, Karti Chidambaram received the five-per cent share in the company.
Patna, March 23 : The Bihar government has refused to give compensation to the families of the people who died after consuming illicit liquor in the state.

Liquor prohibition department minister Sunil Kumar clarified on Wednesday that there is no provision to provide compensation to the families of the people who died due to the consumption of liquor.

"Liquor is banned in Bihar. If any person consumes liquor, it is an illegal and criminal act. Hence, how could the state government compensate the deceaseds' families after their deaths due to the consumption of liquor," Kumar said.

The clarification from the cabinet minister comes after opposition leaders demanded adequate compensation to the families who lost their loved ones in liquor tragedies. The legislators of both the Houses in the Vidhan Sabha raised the issue. Due to the huge uproar, both the Houses were adjourned twice on Wednesday.

Kumar pointed out that the deaths had happened in Bhagalpur, Banka, Madhepura and Siwan districts since Holi but the police are suspecting only two deaths due to probable consumption of poisonous liquor in Bhagalpur district. The viscera reports of the victims are still awaited.

"Bihar government is not hiding facts. Whenever deaths due to liquor consumption take place in Bihar, we are taking action against the culprits. In Bhagalpur, we have arrested 5 persons and acted against the accused in Gopalganj as well. We are also taking departmental action against the police officers as well," he said.

"The opposition leaders generally work in their own way and level allegations against the state government. As far as deaths due to the consumption of so-called poisonous liquor are concerned, it is absolutely baseless. We are waiting for the viscera reports of two cases of Bhagalpur. Apart from that, the district administrations of Bhagalpur, Banka, Madhepura and Siwan have already submitted their reports to the home department and all of them died due to illness," Kumar said.

"The opposition is also blaming us for not conducting a postmortem. I want to point out that if the families of the deceased cremated the bodies before the arrival of the police, how could we do postmortems," he said.

In Bihar, 42 persons have lost their lives due to liquor consumption since Holi (March 18) including 22 in Bhagalpur, 12 in Banka, 3 in Madhepura and 5 in Siwan district.
New Delhi, March 23 : The consequence of any possible nuclear disaster due to the Russia-Ukraine conflict is not envisaged to have any radiation impact in India, the Parliament was told on Wednesday.

Responding to Trinamool Congress Lok Sabha member Sougata Ray's query as to whether the government has taken precautionary measures to counter the nuclear radiation caused by the nuclear disaster, if any, due to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Science and Technology Minister Jitendra Singh said: "The consequence of any possible nuclear disaster due to the Russia-Ukraine conflict is not envisaged to have a radiation impact in India. The Indian Environmental Radiation Monitoring Network (IERMON) established across the country continuously monitors the background radiation level to give early indications of any increase in the radiation level." "In an unlikely scenario of radiation level exceeding acceptable limits within the country, a radiation emergency response plan is available to handle the situation," he said.

The Minister replied in negative to Ray's other questions, whether the Russia-Ukraine conflict will impact the safety and security of Kudankulam reactor in Tamil Nadu, and whether any demand has come up to scrap the Kudankulam reactor due to the threat of nuclear radiation.

Latest updates on Russia-Ukraine War
New Delhi, March 23 : A man was held at Indira Gandhi International Airport by CISF for allegedly smuggling 1,78,000 Saudi Riyals worth Rs 36 lakh concealed under the false bottom of his bags.

A CISF official said that he was identified as Saif Ali Khan. He came to the IGI to board a flight for Sharjah by Air Arabia.

"On the basis of behavioural detection, CISF surveillance and intelligence staff of the IGI airport noticed the suspicious activities of Khan who was standing in a row in check-in area of Terminal-3, IGI. On suspicion, he was diverted at random checking point near departure gate no 5 for thorough checking of his luggage," said a CISF official.

The official said that during x-ray screening through X-BIS machine of his bags, they noticed suspicious images inside his baggage. Thereafter, Khan was allowed to complete the check-in process but was kept under close watch through physical and electronic measures.

"The matter was informed to Senior Officers of CISF and Customs Officials. As the passenger cleared his check-in and immigration formalities, he was intercepted and enquired by CISF. On thorough checking of his two baggages, 1,78,000 Saudi Riyals worth approximately Rs 36 lakh were found concealed under the false bottom of his bags," said the CISF official.

On inquiry, Khan could not produce any valid document to carry such amount of foreign currency.

Later, Khan along-with the recovered high volume of foreign currency was handed over to Customs Officials for further action.

A case in this respect has been lodged.
Bengaluru, March 23 : The ruling BJP in Karnataka quoted the rule book on Wednesday to blunt the opposition attack over the calls to ban Muslim traders from Hindu temple premises and religious fairs in the state's coastal region.

During a discussion on the issue in the legislative assembly on Wednesday, Karnataka Law Minister JC Madhuswamy referred to The Hindu Religious Institutions And Charitable Endowments Act and Rules (2002).

"As per the rule number 12 of Act, leasing out space near a Hindu religious institution to a person of another faith is prohibited. If the instances of Muslims being banned from doing business have taken place outside the temples' premises, we can examine. However, within the premises, the rules don't permit people from other communities to set up shop," Madhuswamy stated while pointing out that the Congress government of the time had framed these rules.

With instances coming to light of Muslim traders being barred from setting up shops and stalls in some temple premises and religious gatherings in Karnataka's coastal districts, the issue was hotly discussed in the legislature on Wednesday.

During Zero Hour, Congress members UT Khadar and Rizwan Arshad focused attention on the banners being displayed at religious fairs and temples, prohibiting Muslim traders from setting up shops and stalls at local Hindu fairs. They alleged that such banners are being displayed in public areas too.

Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai said that the applicability of the rules has to be examined.
New Delhi, March 23 : Adherence to NDPE (No Deforestation, No Peat, No Exploitation) policies is not mandatory for import of palm oil into India, the Parliament was told on Wednesday.

To a question by Lok Sabha members Vinod Kumar Sonkar and Rajveer Singh alias Raju Bhaiya whether the palm oil imported into India conformed to the environmental norms, Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal said that at present, the government had not made mandatory the NDPE policies for import of palm oil into India.

"However, both Malaysia and Indonesia, which are the major suppliers of palm oil to India, have certification schemes to promote sustainability in palm oil production. It is mandatory for palm oil produced in Malaysia to be certified under the Malaysian Sustainable Palm Oil (MSPO).

"In addition, Roundtable Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) certification is also gaining importance in Malaysia. Indonesia has also adopted the Indonesian Sustainable Palm Oil (ISPO) standard to promote sustainability in palm oil production. The Government has not received any quality-related complaints in palmolein imported from Malaysia and Indonesia," he added.

The Minister also said that India is the largest importer of edible oils i.e., palm oil, in the world with import of edible oils during the last three financial years at 1,50,19,308.54 tonnes in 2018-19, 1,47,22,123.78 in 2019-20, and 1,35,40,020.94 in 2020-21.

In order to reduce dependence on imports, the government has launched the National Mission on Edible Oils - Oil Palm (NMEO-OP) with the aim to augment the availability of edible oil in the country by harnessing area expansion and increasing crude palm oil production.
New Delhi, March 23 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday urged the people of Bengal to never forgive the perpetrators of incidents like Birbhum violence and those who encourage such criminals.

Speaking after virtually inaugurating 'Biplobi Bharat Gallery' at Victoria Memorial Hall, the Prime Minister expressed condolences for the victims of violence in Birbhum and expressed hope that the state government will ensure punishment for the perpetrators of such a heinous crime.

Assuring all the cooperation from the Centre, Prime Minister Modi said, "I would also urge the people of Bengal to never forgive the perpetrators of such incidents and those who encourage such criminals." At least 10 persons were charred to death in the violence that allegedly broke out after the murder of a deputy Panchayat Pradhan at Baguti village in West Bengal's Birbhum district on Monday night.

Remembering the martyrs on the Shaheed Diwas, the Prime Minister said that the tales of sacrifice of Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev inspire all of us to work tirelessly for the country. "The legacy of our past guides our present, inspires us to build a better future. Therefore, today the country sees its history, its past, as a living source of energy", he said.

The Prime Minister said, New India is bringing back the heritage of the country back from abroad where ancient statues used to be smuggled with impunity. In the decades before 2014, only a dozen statues could be brought to India. But in the last seven years, this number has increased to more than 225," the Prime Minister said.

He informed the audience that work on renovating the iconic landmarks of the state like Victoria Memorial, iconic galleries, Metcalf House etc is almost over. "Let these symbols of our culture, civilization continue to inspire the present and future generations of India, this is a great effort in this direction," Modi said.

The Prime Minister mentioned that a nationwide campaign is going on in India to increase heritage tourism which is being given impetus through several schemes like 'Swadesh Darshan'.

Referring to the young age of revolutionaries like Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, Rajguru, Azad and Khudiram Bose, the Prime Minister said that the youth of India should never consider themselves any lesser. "There is nothing which the youth of India cannot do. There is no such goal which the youth of India cannot achieve," he said.

The Prime Minister underlined the thread of unity that ran through the freedom struggle where different regions, languages, resources were united in the fervour for serving the country and patriotism. The Prime Minister noted that this eternal feeling of Bharat Bhakti, unity, integrity of India should be our top priority even today.

"Whatever may be your political thinking, you may belong to any political party, but any kind of compromise with the unity and integrity of India will be the biggest betrayal to the freedom fighters of India. We have to move forward with a new vision in New India. This new vision is of India's self-confidence, self-reliance, ancient identity and of future upliftment. In this, the sense of duty is of paramount importance," the Prime Minister added.
New Delhi, March 23 : A day before the Uttar Pradesh BJP legislative party meeting, caretaker Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath reached the national capital on Wednesday evening to discuss government formation in the state with the party's Central leadership.

Sources said that a meeting will take place at Union Home Minister Amit Shah's residence here to discuss the names to be appointed as ministers in the new Adityanath-led government in Uttar Pradesh.

"After attending the swearing-in ceremony of the Pushkar Singh Dhami government in Uttarakhand, Adityanath reached Delhi on Wednesday evening to discuss and finalise the names of ministers for his new cabinet," sources said.

It is learnt that BJP chief J.P. Nadda and the party's national General Secretary (Organisation) B.L. Santhosh will be present during the meeting at Shah's residence.

"The names of ministers will be discussed after reviewing the performance of the existing ones. There are over a dozen vacancies as some sitting ministers lost the elections, while a few left the party before the polls. While finalising the names, social engineering and regional balance will be also considered," a party insider said.

The Uttar Pradesh legislative party meeting will be held in Lucknow on Thursday, before the swearing-in ceremony of the new Adityanath-led government takes place on March 25.

Central observers Shah and former Jharkhand CM Raghubar Das will be reaching Lucknow on Thursday for the meeting.
Hyderabad, March 23 : Two days before the release of the much-awaited movie "RRR", its director S. S. Rajamouli and heroes Junior NTR and Ram Charan participated in the Green India Challenge in Hyderabad.

They, along with Rajya Sabha MP J. Santosh Kumar, planted seedlings in Gachibowli on Wednesday "RRR", which stands for Roudram - Ranam - Rudhiram, is scheduled to hit the screens on March 25. The movie team is touring across the country for its promotion.

On the occasion, Rajamouli said that nature and the environment are their favourite activities and whenever it is possible, they will participate in the greenery enhancement programme along with the crew. They recalled the participation of the "Baahubali" team in the Green India Challenge.

Junior NTR said that every citizen should be aware of the changes in the environment and work for enhancing the green cover by planting saplings.

Ram Charan said he was excited to participate in the Green India Challenge again. He said he feels every time he plants the saplings.

The "RRR" team lauded Santosh Kumar for instilling a green spirit across the country with the goal of social good.

The MP felt that the medium of cinema is the most powerful and inspires the heroes who give a nice green message to the society.

Green India Challenge co-founders Karunakar Reddy, Raghava and others participated in the event.
New Delhi, March 23 : There is no vacant seat in government engineering colleges across the country, the Parliament was told on Wednesday.

Responding to the question of BJP Rajya Sabha member from Karnataka, K.C. Ramamurthy on the number of vacant seats, Minister of State for Education Dr Subhas Sarkar said that there was a continuous increase in the number of approved seats in government engineering institutions from 2019-20 to 2021-22.

"The AICTE has started a portal named National Educational Alliance for Technology (NEAT) aimed to bring the best technological solutions in education technology to enhance youth employability. These solutions use Artificial Intelligence for personalised and customised learning experiences for better learning outcomes and skill development in niche areas," he said.

Sarkar also said that the government has been able to provide education in all corners of the country with equity, quality, affordability, and accessibility.

Responding to a supplementary question, he said that the placement of engineering students has not declined in the country despite the Covid-19 induced lockdown.
Bhopal, March 23 : Amid the debate over the movie 'The Kashmir Files, a parallel controversy has erupted over a senior IAS officer here for his continuous statements on the same subject through his social media account.

For his statements on director Vivek Agnihotri's Hindi movie'The Kashmir File', IAS officer Niyad Khan who is currently serving as deputy secretary of the PWD in the Madhya Pradesh government, was reminded by a cabinet minister that he is crossing the line. The minister demanded action against Khan, who has written seven novels and is busy with his eighth one.

On Wednesday, Home Minister Narottam Mishra reminded the officer that he is violating the norms of public service and a show-cause notice will be issued to seek his reply. "I have seen Khan's tweets. This is a serious issue. He (Khan) is crossing and violating the lakshman rekha (limit) set for (government) officials. The state government will issue a show-cause notice to him and seek his reply," Mishra said on Wednesday.

In his defence, Khan has maintained that he has made statements on a movie using his constitutional right of expression and alleged that he was being attacked for his religious identity. "I have been a victim of my name, especially my surname Khan. As soon as they hear my name, they label me as a Muslim - and it doesn't matter that I am as secular as anyone can be," Khan had stated on Tuesday.

Khan started making statements on his Twitter account soon after the movie was released. The controversy over Khan gained momentum after one of his statements on his Twitter account, which reads, "I am thinking to write a book to show the massacre of Muslims on different occasions so that a movie like Kashmir Files could be produced by some producer, so that the pain and suffering of minorities could be brought before Indians." Among several tweets, he pointed directly or indirectly at various people including The Kashmir File's director Vivek Agnihotri, Bollywood actor Aamir Khan and MP and president of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM), Asaduddin Owaisi.

On March 20, Khan had pointed at Owaisi saying, "Owaisi ji is silent on the issue. Please speak on human issues, not only during elections. We have to make a strong country joining shoulders with Hindu brothers. Arab is not our model, India is our model and this land is our motherland." In another statement he had appealed to 'The Kashmir Files' producer to transfer all earnings from the movie for the education of the children of Kashmiri Pandits and construction of homes for them in Kashmir.

However, controversy is not new to Niyaz Khan, who has written seven novels. He has been embroiled in controversies either due to his thoughts on various subjects or for his literary subjects.

He has written seven novels titled -- Destiny of Drug, Love Demands Blood, Talaq, My Untold Story of Ashram, Once I Was Blackman and Be Ready to Die. Earlier he had claimed that his novel 'Love Demands Blood' is based on the love story of gangster Abu Salem and his girlfriend Bollywood actress Monica Bedi. Once he had demanded special leave and permission from the government to allow him to meet Abu Salem in Tihar Jail so that he could find out more for his novel.
New Delhi, March 23 : The government on Wednesday informed the Rajya Sabha that it has initiated a process for bringing comprehensive amendments to criminal laws -- the Indian Penal Code (IPC), 1860, the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), 1973, and the Indian Evidence Act, 1872 -- in consultation with all the stakeholders.

It also said that the process has been initiated with an aim to provide affordable and speedy justice to all, and to create a people-centric legal structure.

Responding to a question in the Upper House, the Minister of State for Home Affairs, Ajay Kumar Mishra, said that a committee had been constituted under the chairpersonship of the Vice Chancellor, National Law University, Delhi, to suggest reforms in criminal laws.

"The Ministry of Home Affairs has also sought suggestions from Governors, Chief Ministers, Lieutenant Governors (LGs) and Administrators of Union Territories, Chief Justice of India, Chief Justices of various high courts, Bar Council of India, Bar Council of various states, various universities/law institutes and all Members of Parliament regarding comprehensive amendments in criminal laws," Mishra said.

He also informed the House that the department-related Parliamentary standing committee on Home Affairs, in its 146th report, had recommended that there is a need for a comprehensive review of the criminal justice system in the country.

Earlier, the Parliamentary standing committee in its 111th and 128th reports had also stressed upon the need to rationalise the criminal laws of the country by introducing a comprehensive legislation in the Parliament, rather than bringing about piece meal amendments in the respective Acts, Mishra said.

The government is committed to bring out a comprehensive legislation taking into account the recommendations of the committee and the suggestions received from all the stakeholders, the minister added.
Jaipur, March 23 : A few days after Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot said that he had lobbied for Sachin Pilot as Union Minister in UPA-2, the latter on Wednesday said that he had ensured a ticket for his son Vaibhav Gehlot in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

"The high command was not very much in favor of this ticket, because a single name had come from Jodhpur, whose father was the sitting Chief Minister, so at that time I advocated Vaibhav's case. I told Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi that Vaibhav has worked in my executive, he should get a chance.

"As a state party President at that time, I did not want that Ashok ji, being the new Chief Minister, gets hurt, his morale should not be hurt, so I lobbied the CEC (Central Election Committee). I also told the CEC that Vaibhav should get the ticket. He got the ticket but we could not win the election. We lost the election by a huge margin," he said in a media interaction after attending a cultural programme at Maharani College.

A few days back, Gehlot had said: "I had lobbied for Pilot for a minister's post in the second term of UPA. Pilot called and requested cooperation in making him a minister, then I said that I have already given your name to the high command. At that time, this was not told to anyone." Pilot also said that the Congress government will be formed in Rajasthan after the next polls, noting that the time has come when the trend of alternate parties coming to power in Rajasthan should change.
Hyderabad, March 23 : Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao has written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, asking him to direct the Food Ministry to procure entire paddy from the state during the current Rabi season.

He also urged him to convene a meeting of agriculture experts and Chief Ministers to formulate a suitable national procurement policy.

KCR, as the Chief Minister is popularly known, wrote the letter to the Prime Minister at a time when a delegation of ministers and MPs from the state is camping in Delhi to meet Food Minister Piyush Goyal to demand that the Centre procure entire stocks of paddy from Telangana as it is doing in the case of Punjab.

He said the Centre should procure entire quantity of paddy after meeting the state's PDS requirements, as per the MoU entered with the state government.

While this has been the practice in the past, the Ministry of Food and Consumer Affairs has been declining to procure paddy since the last two years, he said, adding that if the entire marketable surplus of paddy is not procured, it will have an adverse effect on the farming sector and on the overall economy and will adversely affect the goal of national food security.

KCR said there should be a national food grains procurement policy, which should be uniform throughout the country and cover all food grains. Further, such policy should have suitable statutory backing to ensure its implementation.

The Chief Minister wrote that there is no uniform national level food grains procurement policy. "For example, the government of India procures entire marketable surplus of paddy and wheat in some states like Punjab, Haryana but not in other states like Telangana. There should not be different policies of the union government for different states within the country," he said.

"Such inconsistent and uncertain policies of the government of India are causing a high degree of frustration and dissatisfaction among the farmers. Our country has witnessed the fury of our farmers in the last two years when the government of India enacted anti-farmer laws. Farmers were feeling helplessness and aggrieved. Bowing down to the farmer's agitation, the government of India had no option but to repeal those laws," KCR added.

He also reminded Modi that the overall implementation of National Food Security Act (NFSA) enacted by the Parliament in 2013 is the responsibility of the Centre. "State governments do not have wherewithal like storage capacity, interstate movement of food grains etc because of which the NFSA 2013 has put the onus on the GOI to procure and supply food grains throughout the country," he wrote.
Islamabad, March 23 : Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan said on Wednesday that he still holds the trump card on the situation that emerged after the opposition submitted a no-confidence motion against him, and when he reveals the card the opposition leaders will be surprised, Samaa TV reported.

Speaking to a group of senior journalists after he held a key political meeting, the Prime Minister said that the "surprise" would be revealed a day before or on the day of the vote on the no-confidence motion.

The opposition leaders cannot imagine how few members will be left with them, he said.

Khan also said that his coalition partners are not leaving him and they will take into account the public opinion before making a final decision.

In response to a question, the Prime Minister said there is no gulf between him and the Chief of the Army Staff.

He also said that no one should malign the army to advance their political goals, because if the army had not been there, Pakistan would have been divided into three parts.

Khan then ruled out the possibility of him stepping down as the Prime Minister, saying that he would not be pressurised by "thieves".

He said if the no-confidence motion against him succeeds, he would not sit at home and people will see how big a storm is kicked up, Samaa TV reported.

Khan said that he could have bought the loyalties of MNAs by using about Rs 15 billion from the exchequer as the PTI has four governments - one in the centre and three in provinces - but he would not do so.
New Delhi, March 23 : The Centre has no plans for disinvestment of state-owned telecom player BSNL, Minister of State for Communications Devusinh Chauhan informed the Parliament on Wednesday.

"There is no plan under consideration for disinvestment of BSNL," he told the Lok Sabha in a written reply.

In 2019, the Centre had approved a revival plan for BSNL which included measures to reduce the staff cost through a 'Voluntary Retirement Scheme' (VRS) for employees of age 50 years and above.

The plan also included administrative allotment of spectrum for providing 4G services with funding through budgetary allocation, monetisation of non-core and core assets to generate resources to retire debt and meeting capex and other requirements along with debt restructuring by raising of Sovereign Guarantee Bonds.

Chauhan, in his response to another question, said: "As a result of these measures, BSNL has become EBITDA positive (operating profit) in 2020-21." To a question regarding the impact of the VRS scheme on services provided by BSNL, he said: "There is no delay or deficiency in services provided by BSNL due to implementation of VRS.

"Current strength of employees is sufficient for operation of BSNL." The telecom player had a domestic market share of 9.90 per cent for mobile subscribers and 15.40 per cent for wired broadband subscribers as on December 31, 2021.
Islamabad, March 23 : The Election Commission of Pakistan, concerned over Prime Minister Imran Khan's repeated violations of its code of conduct, has served another notice on him after he failed to respond to the allegations, Friday Times reported.

The ECP has contended that the Prime Minister's multiple political rallies held in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa during the lead-up to the province's second phase of local body constituted a code of conduct violation.

It first issued show cause notices to the Prime Minister, KP Chief Minister Mehmood Khan and others for violating its code of conduct by holding a rally in Malakand district.

Prior to the latest notice, the poll panel wrote to the PM three times in a week, asking him not to defy the code of conduct.

"It was conveyed to you that public office holders, including the Prime Minister, cannot participate in election campaign or canvass in any local council or announce any development scheme after issuance of election schedule," the ECP's first notice to the Prime Minister read, Friday Times reported.

Due to the continued breach of conduct by the Prime Minister and his team, the ECP had reportedly considered postponing the second phase of elections in the province.

"In continuation of this office notice issued on March 20, you were required to appear in person or through counsel before the undersigned today on March 22, 2022, to explain your position regarding violation of code of conduct. However, despite service of notice, you have failed to do so," the second notice read.
Colombo, March 23 : At Sri Lanka's All Party Conference (APC) held in a bid to come out of one of worst economic crises in its history, a former President and an ex-Prime Minster insisted that Sri Lanka should take the help of India and other friendly nations.

Presenting his solutions to the current crisis, former Premier Ranil Wickremesinghe said, "The only way for us now is to make an agreement and get closer to the selected friendly nations. They include India, Japan, China and European Union." Meanwhile, former President Maithripala Sirisena, who had initiated the idea of an APC, too suggested that Sri Lanka should get the support of India and other friendly nations.

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who invited all the political parties to rally around the APC to find solutions to the present economic crisis, led the APC on Wednesday, but the main opposition -- United People's Power led by Sajith Premadasa -- and the Marxist outfit Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna refused to join it, claiming that the government was not genuine with its intentions and the APC was just an eyewash for the present crisis.

Government affiliated and Tamil represented Ceylon Workers Congress (CWC), parties representing the Muslim community and a number of other outfits too boycotted the APC.

However, the United National Party (UNP) represented by its only MP and leader Ranil Wickremesinghe, Sri Lanka Freedom Party led by former President Maithripala Sirisena and the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), the country's main Tamil national party based in the North and the East, joined the APC.

Forwarding TNA's proposals for economic recovery, MP M.A. Sumanthiran stated that Tamil diaspora funding to support ailing economy could be a real possibility and assured that the party could act as a bridge to negotiate with the Tamil people abroad, who are willing to bring in their funds and invest in the country.

However, MP Sumanthiran representing the former war-torn Northern peninsula claimed that there should be power devolution to the ethnic issue.

"There is no development without devolution. That needs to be done and we can move forward," he stated.

As suggested by several parties, Finance Minister Basil Rajapaksa announced that a new budget with concessions to financially-burdened people would be presented by next month.
Srinagar, March 23 : A CRPF trooper was injured in a grenade attack in Srinagar city on Wednesday evening, police said.

Police sources said militants hurled a grenade towards a bunker of 82 Battalion of the CRPF in Rainawari area.

Selection grade constable, Mohammed Amin was injured in the incident, and has been taken to a nearby hospital for treatment.

Meanwhile, the area has been cordoned off for searches, sources added.
Patna March 23 : All three MLAs of Mukesh Sahani's Vikassheel Insan Party (VIP) on Wednesday met Bihar Assembly Speaker Vijay Sinha and informed him that they have officially joined the BJP.

The development took place after the proceedings of Vidhan Sabha ended for the day at around 6 p.m..

The three MLAs - Mishri Lal Yadav, Raju Singh and Swarn Singh - went to the chamber of the Speaker, along with the two Deputy Chief Ministers Tar Kishore Prasad and Renu Devi, but waited outside till state BJP chief Sanjay Jaiswal came.

Then, they went inside and shared their joining letters, while also announcing that they have no official relation with the VIP.

The three legislators said that the VIP has only three MLAs in the house and all of them have joined the BJP, hence, the anti-defection act is not applicable on them. As per the act, if two-third legislators of a party join another party, they cannot be penalised under it.

Raju Singh accused Sahani of having "no political knowledge".

"He is working like a businessman in politics. He does not have any political sense. We have taken the decision in the interest of the state and the country," he said.

Yadav also expressed similar views.

Jaiswal said: "The three MLAs of VIP have given the joining letter of the BJP to the Speaker on Wednesday. They were basically BJP workers in the past. After the agreement with the VIP during the 2020 Bihar Assembly election, they joined the VIP to contest the election. Now, it is a Ghar Wapsi for them today." He and Prasad and Renu Devi offered saffron turbans of BJP to them to officially welcome them into the partya.

With this, VIP has no MLA in the Assembly. Hence, the Nitish Kumar government is likely to sack Sahani, who is the Animal Husbandry and Fisheries Minister, any time. He is currently an MLC and his tenure is ending in the next two months.

Sahani has been on the radar of the BJP ever since he contested against it in the recently-concluded Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections. BJP top sources claimed that he openly asked voters to defeat the BJP despite being an alliance partner in Bihar.

The sour relation between Sahani and the BJP were also indicated after the former's move in the upcoming MLC elections. The BJP is contesting in 12 seats out of 24 and Sahani has given his party tickets to candidates in all these 12 seats.

Sahani seemed aware of the fact that the BJP would gun for him after the Uttar Pradesh polls. Hence, he had met Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and JD-U parliamentary board President Upendra Kushwaha for a patch-up with the BJP but it has already given an indication that it would not talk on Sahani.
New Delhi, March 23 : India on Wednesday rejected Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi's remarks on J&K, terming them "uncalled" and stressing other countries have no "locus standi" to comment on its internal matters.

In a statement, the Ministry of External Affairs said" "We reject the uncalled reference to India by the Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi during his speech at the Opening Ceremony (of the OIC meet in Islamabad)." "Matters related to the Union Territory of Jammu & Kashmir are entirely the internal affairs of India. Other countries including China have no locus standi to comment. They should note that India refrains from public judgement of their internal issues." Attending the OIC meet - in China's first presence at the OIC, the Chinese Foreign Minister said that "on the Kashmir issue, we have once again heard the call of many Islamic friends. China shares the same aspirations".

Wang said that China believes that the Kashmir "dispute" should properly and peacefully addressed in accordance with the UN Charter, Security Council resolutions and the bilateral agreements.
New Delhi, March 23 : One person has been arrested in connection with the case of murder of two people, whose bodies were found in a drain near the India International Centre, Delhi Police said on Wednesday.

The accused was identified as Atik, 24, a resident of Trilokpuri in east Delhi while the deceased were identified as Khurshid, 31, and Sajjad, 34, both residents of Bihar's Araria district.

Deputy Commissioner of Police, New Delhi, Amrutha Guguloth said that they had received a PCR call at 6.17 p.m. on Tuesday stating that two dead bodies were lying in a drain outside the India International Centre, Lodhi Estate.

"As the police reached the spot, the relatives of the deceased people were already there, and also identified the bodies," she said.

Police registered an FIR under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code, including murder, and launched investigations.

"We examined all the CCTV cameras in the area. As per our preliminary investigation, accused Atik's involvement in the said crime came to the fore and we arrested him," the DCP said.

Atik has been previously found involved in a case of Arms Act registered at Sarita Vihar police station, while police revealed that one of the deceased, Khurshid, also had a previous involvement in a theft case.

Meanwhile, it was learnt that the people came to know about the dead bodies lying in the drain as there was no lid over the manhole. However, the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) clarified that the manhole from where the corpses were recovered belonged to MTNL.

The NDMC also said that the drains which comes under their jurisdiction are not cleaned manually by NDMC employees/workers, but by mechanical means.
Moscow, March 24 : The US would not like to see a rapid completion of the Moscow-Kiev peace talks but hopes that Russia is mired in prolonged hostilities, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said.

"It is unprofitable for Americans that this (negotiation) process will be completed quickly. They want to continue to send weapons to Ukraine," Lavrov added on Wednesday during a meeting with students and teachers of Russia's MGIMO University.

"Apparently, they (Americans) want to keep us in a state of hostilities for as long as possible," he said.

The Russian Foreign Minister expressed concern over the delivery of MiG fighter jets and US Stinger man-portable air defense systems to Ukraine, which will pose "an enormous threat, because they will surely spread all over Europe." Lavrov stressed that the US has used sanctions on Russia as an instrument to maintain its dominance in the world, Xinhua news agency reported.

"These sanctions are aimed at removing Russia as an obstacle on the way to building a unipolar world ... This is not about Ukraine. This is about the world order in which the US wants to be the sole sovereign," he added.

Latest updates on Russia-Ukraine War
Moscow, March 24 : US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will meet this week with a bipartisan group of Senators to discuss the opportunity of freezing Russia's $132 billion in gold reserves, Axios reported.

"Secretary Yellen regularly meets with members of Congress to discuss legislation. Additionally, Treasury staff frequently provide technical assistance on sanctions bills," the department spokesperson said.

Maine Senator Angus King claimed the legislation could pass the Senate as early as this week. The initiative is meant to deprive Moscow of the opportunity to mitigate the effects of Western sanctions on its economy by monetising its large gold reserves, punishing the Kremlin for its military action in Ukraine, RT reported.

"Russia's massive gold supply is one of the few remaining assets that Putin can use to keep his country's economy from falling even further. By sanctioning these reserves, we will further isolate Russia from the world's economy and increase the difficulty of Putin's increasingly --costly military campaign," King said.

The American politicians behind the initiative believe that Moscow is using gold to hinder the devaluation of its national currency, the ruble.

Washington, D.C. is concerned that vast gold reserves allow the Kremlin to purchase high-value currencies on the international market.

On March 8, the same group of US Senators introduced a bill designed to close this loophole in the sanctions that allow Russians to trade gold. The bill is titled "Stop Russian GOLD", which stands for "Stop Russian Government and Oligarchs from Limiting Democracy".

If adopted, the legislation will allow the US government to apply secondary sanctions to anyone selling or buying the gold that belongs to Russia's central bank, RT reported.

Latest updates on Russia-Ukraine War
Phnom Penh, March 24 : Cambodian Foreign Minister Prak Sokhonn, the Special Envoy of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), concluded his three-day visit to Myanmar with meaningful outcomes, said a Foreign Ministry's statement.

Sokhonn concluded his three-day visit to Myanmar on Wednesday, Xinhua news agency reported.

"The visit was undertaken amicably and productively with meaningful outcomes, which reflects Myanmar's support for Cambodia's efforts in moving forward the implementation of the Five-Point Consensus (5PC), and serves to strengthen regional stability as well as the credibility, unity, and centrality of ASEAN and its community building process," the statement added.

The Cambodian Foreign Minister expressed appreciation for Myanmar's support for the special envoy's missions, including this first visit and subsequent ones, it said.

"All parties involved looked forward to positive development regarding efforts to resolve the current crisis in Myanmar, including the implementation of the 5PC," the statement added.

During the visit, Sokhonn paid a courtesy call on Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, Chairman of the State Administration Council of Myanmar, the statement said, adding that their discussion covered the current situation in Myanmar and the importance of effective and timely implementation of the 5PC, including trust and confidence building, inclusive dialogue, and humanitarian assistance to Myanmar.

"The special envoy called for the implementation of three priorities, namely the cessation of violence, continued provision of humanitarian assistance to Myanmar and dialogues among all parties," it said.

The special envoy also met with Myanmar's Foreign Minister U Wunna Maung Lwin and Lt. Gen. Yar Pyae, Chairman of the National Solidarity and Peacemaking Negotiation Committee, among others during the visit, the statement added.

Cambodia is the Chair of ASEAN for 2022. ASEAN groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
Aden : , March 24 (IANS) A massive explosion caused by a booby-trapped vehicle hit a security checkpoint in Yemen's southern port city of Aden, killing and injuring a number of security members, a security official told Xinhua news agency.

The explosion took place on Wednesday, Xinhua news agency reported.

"Unknown assailants detonated a booby-trapped vehicle near a security checkpoint in the northern parts of Aden, causing a massive explosion," the local security source said on condition of anonymity.

Witnesses confirmed to Xinhua that an exchange of gunfire occurred following the explosion that was heard in various neighbourhoods of Aden.

Security vehicles and ambulances rushed to the bombing site that was surrounded by soldiers.

Local authorities are trying to maintain security and stability in the strategic Yemeni port city. However, sporadic bombing incidents and drive-by shooting attacks still occur in Aden.

Yemen has been mired in a civil war since late 2014, when the Houthi militias seized control of several northern provinces and forced the Saudi-backed government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi out of the capital Sanaa.
Moscow, March 24 : The Pentagon's interest in biological laboratories in the former Soviet republics requires clarification, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said.

"US biological laboratories are all over the world and we are most concerned about the presence of these laboratories and the continued creation of new ones in the former Soviet republics," Lavrov added on Wednesday during a meeting with students and teachers of Russia's MGIMO University.

"The fact that the Pentagon expressed interest in the former Soviet laboratories, with the aim of modernising them and creating new facilities, needs to be clarified," he said.

During a special military operation in Ukraine, the Russian military has found that US-funded biological laboratories conducted research with dangerous viruses, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.

The Russian side has repeatedly urged Washington to explain the purpose of these facilities to the international community, Xinhua news agency reported.

Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin criticised "the unacceptable nature of the military-biological activities of the US in Ukraine."
Campbell & Company appoints Marian DeBerry, Mark Smith, and Tracy Till to its Board of Directors We are delighted to welcome Marian, Mark, and Tracy to the Board, said Kate Roosevelt, Campbell & Companys Co-President. Together, they will bring their extensive leadership experience and knowledge to provide strategic guidance that will drive growth and enhance the value of the firm.

Campbell & Company, an employee-owned national consulting firm, announces today that it has appointed Marian DeBerry, Senior Counsel, Executive Search at Campbell & Company; Mark Smith, Founding Member of Summit Business Advisors; and Tracy Till, President at T4 Verge, Inc; to its Board of Directors.

We are delighted to welcome Marian, Mark, and Tracy to the Board, said Kate Roosevelt, Campbell & Companys Co-President and Board Member. Together, they will bring their extensive leadership experience and knowledge to provide strategic guidance that will drive growth and enhance the value of the firm.

Campbell & Companys philosophy of collaboration and inclusion extends to its entire business operation. The firm is entirely owned by its employees through an Employee Stock Ownership Plan, giving each team member a personal stake in the success of every firm client. Our cultural values of integrity, candor, rigor, partnership, inclusion, and creativity inspire innovation for the good of the firms clients and the nonprofit sector.

About Marian DeBerry

Marian brings over three decades of corporate experience and has recruited over 200 exceptional candidates in leadership positions for nonprofit organizations. She joined Campbell & Company in 2006 to lead the firms Executive Search practice and now serves as Senior Counsel.

Prior to joining Campbell & Company, Marian was a vice president with two retained executive search firms and an independent executive search consultant. In addition to her executive search work, Marian has experience in the nonprofit sector as an education administrator and in the corporate sector in commercial banking and treasury administration, as well as management consulting.

She holds a Bachelor of Psychology and Sociology from Duke University and a Master of Business Administration from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. She also studied at the London Business School. She is a frequent speaker on career development in nonprofit organizations achieving a diverse and inclusive workforce.

About Mark Smith

Mark is an award-winning financial expert with more than 30 years of providing financial solutions for corporate expansions, new market territories, and acquisitions. He founded Summit Business Advisors in 2008 to provide financial and organizational strategies for mid-market business owners and acquired an established real estate brokerage and vacation rental business in 2010. In addition, Mark has developed a board director practice over the last 14 years in the West and Midwest states and is active in the National Center for Employee Ownership. He holds a degree in Business Administration.

About Tracy Till

Tracy is a corporate leader, innovator, culture builder, collaborator, and co-founder of the Rochester, NY-based marketing agency Butler/Till. Leveraging her experiences as a business founder, CEO, marketer, board governance, and strategic planning professional, Tracy developed and executed a succession plan to become a 100% ESOP ownership to provide an equitable means for employees. She is a proven visionary with a passion for institutionalizing effective processes for other privately-owned companies in the United States.

She is a Board member of the EOX, the Employee Ownership Expansion Network; an Advisor to the CEO, Rutgers NY/NJ EO Center, and shes a member of the Private Directors Association (PDA) and the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD). She holds a Bachelors degree in Journalism and Business from the University of South Carolina (Columbia).

The appointment of these new Board members will bring new perspectives and expertise to Campbell & Companys business strategy to meet the demands of the changing landscape in the nonprofit sector and sustain a strong employee ownership culture, said Julia McGuire, Campbell & Companys Co-President and Board Member.

Campbell & Company is committed to advancing diversity, equity, inclusion, and access that inspires action. Our team reflects the rich diversity that contributes to the communities we serve, and we advance our beliefs through our employment practices. We strive to create a culture of trust and belonging where everyone feels accepted, respected, and valued for who they are as individuals.

#####

About Campbell & Company

Campbell & Company is a national consulting firm that helps organizations create greater impact through fundraising, executive search, communications, and strategic information services. Since 1976, Campbell & Company has helped shape the evolution of fundraising as a practice in all sectors, including human services, arts & culture, education, healthcare, environment, associations and membership organizations, and civic and public affairs.

Underlying all our work is a shared focus on the Campbell & Company mission: to collaborate and innovate with people who change lives through philanthropic vision and action. Visit us at http://www.campbellcompany.com and connect with us on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.

For media inquiries, please contact Lola Banjo, Director of Marketing, at lola.banjo@campbellcompany.com or call 312.896.8893.
Sun Woo Kim, the CEO of Deep Bio said, "we will continue to endeavor in novel researches using our deep learning technology to bring innovations in cancer medicine.

Deep Bio, a pioneer in medical AI for pathologic cancer diagnostics, announced five research studies at the 2022 United States and Canadian Academy of Pathology (USCAP) held during March 19th through March 24th in Los Angeles. These deep learning-based pathology algorithms demonstrated their potential utility as cancer diagnostic support software.

The studies explore how deep learning can be utilized in cancer diagnosis, prognosis, and prediction of multiple cancer types, including prostate, breast, lungs, etc. In particular, novel research studies such as "Deep Learning-based Automated Detection of Prostate Cancer Lesions in Hematoxylin Only Visualized Images" and "Breast Cancer Survival Analysis through the Extracted Feature from the Prostate Diagnosis Model" drew attention from the USCAP attendees.

It is especially meaningful for us to share the studies that are conducted for the first time in the field of cancer diagnosis and survival analysis at this years USCAP annual meeting. Notably, the fact that our current deep learning-based algorithm, trained with histomorphological features of prostate cancer, accurately predicted the prognosis of breast cancer suggests that the model can be applied to diagnosis, prognosis, and prediction of other types of cancer, said Tae Yeong Kwak, the CTO of Deep Bio.

Deep Bio continues to focus on not only AI diagnostics but also R&D and presenting the results in various international conferences and events. The company also continues to build its market presence in the global market through overseas digital pathology solution providers in the US, Europe, and India, as well as conducting research cooperation with Stanford Medical School, Harvard Dana-Farber Cancer Center, and other top research institutions in the US.

Sun Woo Kim, the CEO of Deep Bio said, "with growing interest in digital pathology, we are proud to present meaningful research results on deep learning-based cancer diagnostics at the world's largest pathology society which weve participated in every year since 2018. We will continue to endeavor in novel researches using our deep learning technology to bring innovations in cancer medicine.

Abstracts Presented Included:



Deep Learning-based Automated Detection of Prostate Cancer Lesions in Hematoxylin Only Visualized Images

Considering Uncertainty Improves Deep Learning-based Lung Cancer Subtyping

Ki-67 Index Regression Using Fully Convolutional Regression Network and Cancer Area Segmentation Network

Automatic Histological Grading of Breast Cancer Resection Tissue

Breast Cancer Survival Analysis through the Extracted Feature from the Prostate Diagnosis Model

About Deep Bio Deep Bio Inc. is an AI biotech company with in-house expertise in deep learning, pathology, life sciences, and pharmacotherapeutics. As the countrys first to obtain Koreas MFDS (Ministry of Food and Drug Safety) approval of an AI-based cancer diagnostic support solution, Deep Bio envisions a suite of AI-based IVD SaMDs (In Vitro Diagnostics Software as a Medical Device) for diagnosis and prognosis of multiple cancers. Deep Bio is actively engaged in the research space and participating in ongoing collaborations with top US medical centers. To learn more, visit http://www.deepbio.co.kr.

DeepDx Prostate is a clinically-validated AI for prostate core needle biopsy tissue image analysis. Whole-slide images (WSIs) of H&E-stained biopsy tissue specimens are analyzed for prostate cancer, Gleason scores, and grade groups. Extensively tested at US CLIA labs (> 500k cores in 2021), DeepDx Prostate can alleviate the shortage of pathologists and the resultant increase in workload, while reducing diagnostic subjectivity and variability. To learn more, visit http://www.deepbio.co.kr.
The Top 50 Private Equity Innovator Awards were created by BluWave to recognize private equity firms for exemplary innovation and leadership.

BluWave, a private equity-focused B2B Intelligent Marketplace, announces today the recipients of the inaugural 2022 Top 50 Private Equity Innovator Awards. The awards were created by BluWave to recognize private equity firms for exemplary innovation and leadership. The BluWave 2022 Top 50 Private Equity Innovator Awards recognizes firms that represent the top 1% in the private equity industry as determined by BluWave for innovative practices in due diligence, value creation, PE firm operations, and ESG.*

The BluWave Top 50 Private Equity Innovator Award recipients were selected based upon a rigorous assessment in consultation with leading limited partners, investment bankers and other thought leaders in the private equity ecosystem. BluWave partners with more than 500 leading private equity firms and has a unique perspective that enables the company to understand best practices and innovation in the private equity industry.

The private equity firms considered for this recognition were assessed across the following criteria:



Proactive Due Diligence Practices

Transformative Value Creation

Progressive Private Equity Firm Operations

ESG

Private equity is a driving force in the economy, supporting the growth and development of virtually every type of business and providing more than 11 million jobs in America, says Sean Mooney, Founder and CEO, BluWave. We congratulate these top 50 private equity firms that are taking uniquely innovative approaches to building businesses and creating sustainable value for a wide range of stakeholders.

BluWave also recognizes Lexington, Kentucky headquartered MiddleGround Capital with the Innovator of the Year Award due to the companys achievements across due diligence, value creation, PE firm operations, and ESG. MiddleGround makes control equity investments in B2B industrial and specialty distribution businesses. The firm was founded by John Stewart, Lauren Mulholland, and Scot Duncan in 2018. MiddleGround partners with small and mid-sized businesses, providing extensive operational resources to help them build and grow. The firm is a signatory to the United Nations-supported Principles for Responsible Investment, which provides a framework for investing responsibly and integrating ESG practices into investment practices.

The BluWave 2022 Top 50 Private Equity Innovator Award recipients are the following firms:

 Accel-KKR

 Advent International

 Align Capital Partners

 Altamont Capital Partners

 Aterian Investment Partners

 Avance

 Bain Capital

 Bertram Capital

 BPOC

 Blue Sea Capital

 Clairvest Group

 Cortec Group

 Council Capital

 Cressey & Company

 Crest Rock Partners

 DFW Capital Partners

 Encore Consumer Capital

 Francisco Partners

 Gemspring Capital

 Genstar Capital

 Great Hill Partners

 Great Range Capital

 GreyLion Capital

 GrowthCurve Capital

 GTCR

 The Halifax Group

 Heartwood Partners

 Hellman & Friedman

 Hidden Harbor Capital Partners

 Housatonic Partners

 ICV Partners

 Industrial Opportunity Partners

 Inverness Graham

 Juggernaut Capital Partners

 LLR Partners

 Long Ridge

 Main Post Partners

 MiddleGround Capital

 MidOcean Partners

 Nautic Partners

 New Harbor Capital

 New State Capital

 Pamlico Capital

 ParkerGale Capital

 Periscope Equity

 Serent Capital

 Sun Capital Partners, Inc.

 The Riverside Company

 Trivest Partners

 Water Street Healthcare Partners

For further information on the BluWave 2022 Top 50 Private Equity Innovator Awards, including the selection process, selection criteria, and recipients, please visit https://www.bluwave.net/awards/.

About BluWave

BluWave is an innovative B2B Intelligent Marketplace that uses technology, data and human ingenuity to connect more than 500 leading private equity firms and thousands of proactive businesses with best-in-class, pre-vetted, third parties for critical due diligence, value creation, and preparing for sale needs. BluWaves invitation-only Intelligent Marketplace includes private equity-grade service provider groups, independent consultants, and interim executives. Visit http://www.BluWave.net for more information.

*BluWave, LP has not received investment capital from and holds no ownership interest in the PE firms evaluated or recognized under the Top 50 PE Innovator awards program. BluWave received no compensation from any of the PE firms in connection with this awards program. However, BluWave may otherwise provide services to the PE firms and/or portfolio companies, but BluWave confirms that its assessment of the PE firms was independent of any such service arrangements. Top 1% in the PE industry is based on BluWaves review of the more than 5,000 PE firms in the U.S. and Canada from which 50 PE firms were selected as award recipients.
Puerto Ricohad no other destiny than that of liberating herself from those people who did not deign to consult her at a historic moment, the end of the United States war with Spain.

In this brilliant retelling of Albizu Campos formative years in Harvard and beyond, the author provides a fresh look into the insurgent education Albizu received from Irish nationalists known as Fenians, and how it seeded the nationalist revolution against the US occupation of Puerto Rico.

However, it would be a hybrid FenianismAlbizuista Fenianismthat produced the greatest movement to rouse the people against foreign occupation and point a way to liberate Puerto Rico. And according to Albizuista Fenianism, congressional bills are nonstarters.

Puerto Ricohad no other destiny than that of liberating herself from those people who did not deign to consult her at a historic moment, the end of the United States war with SpainAt the time Albizu already had the feeling that the struggle would be long, hard  Yet he spoke with such enthusiasm about the example of Ireland, which in those years waged such a heroic battle against England. Jorge Manach

The Quickening sheds light on the one Puerto Rican figure who has been vilified, but occasionally honored in the naming of schools by educators who fear that the remarkable movement Albizu led, and his consequential role in history, will be erased. With this book a missing piece of the puzzle to Albizu Campos is placed, and a clearer picture emerges of the standard-bearer known as the conscience of his people.

###

Aoife Rivera Serrano is a literary translator and independent researcher. She is the publisher of two controversial authors: Antonio Pedreira and Anthony McIntyre. With The Quickening of Albizu Campos, she adds her voice to a series of unique insights that connect two complex countriesIreland and Puerto Rico.

The Quickening of Albizu Campos: How Fenianism Galvanized the Last American Liberator

by Aoife Rivera Serrano

Publisher: Ausubo Press

On sale: August 15, 2022

Price: USD 35.95

Pages: 264

ISBN: 978-1-932982-00-8
We are honored to be recognized as a leader in workforce management through these impactful awards, said Sanish Mondkar, CEO and founder at Legion.

Legion Technologies, the pioneer in AI-powered workforce management (WFM), today announced its recognition for three respected industry awards, building on its momentum as a leader in the WFM space. The companys recent wins include CB Insights Retail Tech 100, which highlights the most promising private startups in the retail space, Business Intelligence Groups Artificial Intelligence Excellence Award for Automated Planning and Scheduling, and JMP Securities Hot 100 best privately-held software companies.

We are honored to be recognized as a leader in workforce management through these impactful awards, said Sanish Mondkar, CEO and founder at Legion. The labor shortage has made many industries like retail, hospitality, and more rethink their workforce attraction and retention strategies. By leveraging Legions AI-powered WFM platform, employers in these industries are able to enhance the employee experience with more flexible schedules, digital communication tools, and instant access to earned wages, while simultaneously optimizing their labor efficiency with data-driven forecasts, schedule automation, and actionable insights.

The 2022 Retail Tech 100 cohort highlights startups reimagining the retail experience across 13 categories. Through an evidence-based approach, the CB Insights research team selected the Retail Tech 100 from a pool of more than 7,000 companies. The selection was based on factors including patent activity, business relations, investor profiles, news sentiment analysis, proprietary Mosaic Scores, market potential, competitive landscape, team strength, and tech novelty.

By almost any measure, this has been a breakout year for retail tech. Weve seen skyrocketing funding across the industry, powering companies involved in every aspect of retail from instant grocery delivery to supply chain technology, said Brian Lee, senior vice president of CB Insights Intelligence Unit. As the retail landscape evolves, were excited to see how the companies on the Retail Tech 100 continue to revolutionize how consumers shop.

The Business Intelligence Groups 2022 Artificial Intelligence Excellence Awards Program recognizes organizations, products, and people who bring Artificial Intelligence (AI) to life and apply it to solve real problems.

We are proud to name Legion as a winner in our inaugural Artificial Intelligence Excellence Awards program, said Maria Jimenez, chief nominations officer for Business Intelligence Group. It was clear to our judges that Legion was using AI to improve the lives of their customers and employees. Congratulations to the entire team!

The JMP Securities Hot 100 list highlights the best privately-held software companies, based on criteria such as financial growth, products and services, quality of leadership team, and market potential.

Details for the awards are listed on the Retail Tech 100, Artificial Intelligence Excellence Awards, and JMP Securities websites.
Island Brands offers a line of beers that appeals to a wide variety of tastes, and their success throughout the Southeast is proof of that.

Island Brands USA, a family of superpremium beers enjoyed by active, socially conscious consumers, expands its Gulf Coast distribution into Mississippi this month with wholesale partner Southern Beverage.

Major retailers in the Magnolia State like Kroger, Walmart, Piggly Wiggly, and others will receive the full portfolio of Island Brands American-made, American-owned beers. That includes best-selling flagship brands Island Coastal Lager and Island Active, as well as popular extensions of those lines: Island Lemonada, Island Southern Peach, and the newly released Get Active Pack featuring Island Active Mango, Island Active Lime, and Island Active Watermelon.

We at Southern Beverage are excited to bring Island Brands products to Mississippi and are looking forward to hearing our customers feedback about this fantastic brand, said Heath Bennett, Sales Execution Coordinator at Southern Beverage. Island Brands offers a line of beers that appeals to a wide variety of tastes, and their success throughout the Southeast is proof of that. So, look out, Mississippians, because theres a little taste of island life heading your way.

Island Brands kicked off its Mississippi launch with two on-premise, waterfront events outside Jackson. The first was March 7 at Pelican Cove Grill, 3999 Harborwalk Dr. in Ridgeland, where Island Brands was on special all night, and brand reps were there from 5 to 7 p.m. pouring samples. The next night, March 8, the Island Brands crew was at Shaggys on the Rez, 1733 Spillway Rd. in Brandon, with samples from 5 to 7 p.m. and specials all night.

In addition to new distribution territories and product-line expansions in 2022, Island Brands is furthering its mission to give back in meaningful ways. It recently joined 1% for the Planet, pledging to donate at least 1% of its annual sales directly to approved environmental nonprofits worldwide. And it is close to completing a successful, $5 million crowdfunding campaign. The innovative beer company  the first to effectively build and scale a non-craft beer business in the 21st century  is just under $750,000 away from its goal, a tremendous raise that began just a year and a half ago.

We love beers ability to bring people together, and thats why we wanted to open up a crowdfunding campaign  to build a community around Island Brands, said CEO and Co-Founder Scott Hansen. Were so proud to see the response its gotten so far, and we cant wait to raise a cold Island Coastal Lager with everyone when we hit that $5 million mark.

For more information about investing in Island Brands, visit startengine.com/islandbrands.For the latest updates, follow Island Brands on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Spotify, and other social media platforms.

ABOUT ISLAND BRANDS USA

Headquartered in Charleston, S.C., Island Brands is the first company to effectively build and scale a non-craft beer business in the 21st century. Its superpremium, American-made beers are currently available in seven Southeastern states, with expanding international distribution and fleetwide service across Carnival Cruise Lines. Founded in 2016, the innovative company has a growing portfolio of clean, better-for-you beers that cater to active, socially conscious consumers. Part of the companys mission is to give back in meaningful ways, including pledging a portion of its annual sales to environmental charities through 1% for the Planet. Island Brands is proudly American-owned, and its products are always all-natural, GMO-free, and contain zero artificial flavors. For more information, visit islandbrandsusa.com.
"Building headless storefronts from scratch was capital and resource-intensive for brands." - Cory Cummings, CEO and Co-founder of Pack

Pack, the low-code front-end platform for headless commerce trusted by direct-to-consumer (DTC) and omnichannel brands, raised $3 million in an oversubscribed seed round led by Alpaca. Additional participation came from Anthemis Group, Anorak, Space Station, Anti-Fund, SuperAngel.Fund (Ben Zises), Irrvrnt VC, and Mana Ventures. Pack will use the funding to further develop its front-end platform and expand its partnerships, engineering, sales, and marketing teams.

Angel investors who contributed to Packs funding round include Dylan Whitman, Kyle Widrick, Blake Pinsker, Steven Borelli, Jake Kassan, Nick Guillen, Nick Ajluni, Geoffroy Woo, Andrew Gluck, and others.

Building headless storefronts from scratch was capital and resource-intensive for brands, said Cory Cummings, CEO and Co-founder of Pack. Over the years we have been building tools for developers and marketers that make these storefronts easy to implement and manage. This capital will accelerate the delivery of our low-code platform to allow brands, agencies, and freelancers to build powerful front-ends that allow brands to communicate with their customers."

The round comes after the bootstrapped startup grew year-over-year revenue by more than 100 percent for the last two consecutive years.

I wanted to jump into the headless space, but I wasnt excited about anything that I was seeing for the longest time, said Aubrie Pagano, General Partner at Alpaca and eCommerce veteran. It was a lot of smoke and mirrors. But when I came across Pack, it was a platform that I wished I had when I was growing my brand and it was clear the team had a roadmap that was going to win.

Cuts Founder and CEO Steven Borrelli explained, I can not express enough the value of having Pack as a partner to power our headless infrastructure. The day we partnered with them is the day we officially became a real eCommerce brand. Great platform. Great people. Top talent. Amazing work.

Packs platform simplifies and de-risks headless commerce for merchants by providing an end-to-end infrastructure to help them create and control unique customer experiences in a low-code environment while integrating with existing backend commerce tools. Ecommerce agencies signed up to create headless storefronts for brands on Packs platform including eHouse Studio, Corra, and Coldsmoke Creative. Prima, Liquid-I.V., and Beekeepers Naturals recently chose Pack to launch their headless storefront experiences.

Solving Pain Points Packs Team Felt For Years

In late 2021, Pack released their Product Groupings and Product Bundling feature that allows brands to have more control over their product merchandising strategy without having to re-architect their backend data. These features are all accessible through the Pack API and pre-integrated into the platform's page builder to allow merchant agility and development flexibility.

About Pack

Pack is a low-code front-end platform for headless commerce, giving merchants Cuts Clothing, Liquid-I.V., Truff, and others the freedom to build and manage flexible storefronts without dev teams. Headquartered in San Diego, Pack offers DTC and omnichannel brands a low-code platform that helps close the developer talent gap. To learn more, visit http://www.packdigital.com and follow Pack on LinkedIn.

About Alpaca

Alpaca is a multi-stage venture capital firm led by former founders who invest at the intersection of the digital and physical worlds. Were an all-grit, no B.S. team that operates with an entrepreneurial mindset. We share our opinions, take a methodical and detailed approach to deal diligence and ultimately win and lose together with a One Herd mentality. We drive deal flow through intentional, thesis-driven investing rooted in deep research conducted by our team, helmed by General Partners Ryan Freedman, David Goldberg and Aubrie Pagano. Founded in 2013 (fka Corigin Ventures), we invest in sectors we know best across the U.S. and Canada, including Proptech, Consumer, Web3, Commerce Enablement, Supply Chain, FinTech, and Marketplaces. For more information, visit http://www.alpaca.vc.
"As a proud women-owned company, were dedicated to delivering groundbreaking product innovation and value. This new facility is a one-stop-shop for all packaging needs from concept to production, and will provide our customers a powerful competitive advantage."

Apackaging Group (APG), the international leader in cosmetic packaging, is announcing the opening of a new facility in Defiance, Ohio. APG is expanding operations beyond California and Asia with a new, fully integrated establishment that will offer everything from R&D, compounding, and formulation to manufacturing (bottle blowing, dispenser & cap manufacturing, and custom molding), filling, and outer-package labels.

With this expansion, APG is expected to hire 135 employees with support from the state of Ohio. The new plant will reduce the 25% tariff associated with China production and production lead times by 5+ weeks. It will also create a more sustainable end-to-end supply chain, with significant logistic improvements such as automated controls, assembly, palletization, and material handling. The new location will have a dedicated rail spur to optimize raw material transportations.

Apackaging Group was founded by Helga Arminak, a veteran in the cosmetic and beauty packaging industry with more than 25 years of experience. With factories in the US and Asia, APG offers quality products at unrivaled production speed, with costs below market standard.

As a proud women-owned company, were dedicated to delivering groundbreaking product innovation and value. This new facility is a one-stop-shop for all packaging needs from concept to production, and will provide our customers a powerful competitive advantage, says Helga Arminak, CEO & Founder of APG. Over the past 20 years, APG has developed a reputation for providing customers with a broad range of high-quality products, sustainable solutions, and an unparalleled level of service and responsiveness.

The new facility is located in Harmon Business Park, Defiance, Ohio. You can find more information at ApackagingGroup.com.

About Apackaging Group (APG)

APG is the international leader in the design, development and manufacturing of packaging and containers for cosmetics, toiletries, skincare and fragrances. The California-based company has been at the forefront of innovation for almost 20 years, offering design patents unavailable to any other manufacturer. With factories in the US and Asia, APG offers quality products at unrivaled production speed, with costs below market standard, and prides themselves in their breadth, depth, and quality. APG has developed products for key players including Bath & Body Works, Sephora, ULTA, Unilever, 3M, Target, Estee Lauder amongst others.
Singapore has become a lightning rod of customer growth for SoftIron and as a globally distributed, locally embedded company, its to our advantage to make a commitment in this region that can be leveraged as part of our overall strategy for company growth.

SoftIron Ltd., the leader in purpose-built and performance-optimized data center solutions, today announced that it has established SoftIron Singapore Pte Ltd, an additional wholly-owned subsidiary of SoftIron Limited, and has established a dedicated corporate facility located in Singapore city. The newest SoftIron office, located in the Central Business District (CBD) of Singapore will enable SoftIron to provide support for its regional customers in a high-growth region for the company. The new facility will also serve as an anchor point as the company explores plans to launch a dedicated supply chain tower facility to support its globally distributed manufacturing operations.

Singapore has become a lightning rod of customer growth for SoftIron and as a globally distributed, locally embedded company, its to our advantage to make a commitment in this region that can be leveraged as part of our overall strategy for company growth, said Jason Van der Schyff, Chief Operating Officer of SoftIron. A substantial portion of our customers have operations in the ASEAN territory, one of the fastest-growing regions in the world for data infrastructure. The immediate need is to provide regional support for our local customer base in the short term. This will include solution architects, technical sales, and product development roles being sourced locally. The strategic position of Singapore provides SoftIron with an ideal location for the establishment of our supply chain tower to support our existing and future manufacturing facilities - especially as we add critical mass with new facilities coming online. We look forward to using Singapore to develop an asymmetric advantage in the countries in which we engage.

Singapore has quickly become a point of strategic importance for SoftIron, with a growing number of our customers being located there, along with the technological leadership happening in the region as ASEAN nations drive toward digital transformation, said Phil Straw, CEO of SoftIron. We are excited about the advantages that having a Singapore presence provides for SoftIron and look forward to leveraging Singapore for the skills and supply chains needed to promote long-term sovereign resilience both in Singapore and surrounding regions where SoftIron operates. As ASEAN countries continue the path of Industry 4.0 leadership, SoftIron will be there to help build transparency and resilience into the way IT products are developed and produced.

SoftIron operates from a number of geographically dispersed facilities, employing a mostly remote workforce to service its global customer base. SoftIron currently operates across the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Germany, the Czech Republic, Australia, and New Zealand. SoftIron Limited, established in 2012, the group's parent company is headquartered in London.

About SoftIron

SoftIron is the world leader in task-specific appliances for scale-out data center solutions. Their superior, purpose-built hardware is designed, developed, and manufactured in-house. They are the only manufacturer to offer auditable provenance through the product lifecycle. SoftIrons HyperDrive software-defined enterprise storage portfolio runs at wire-speed and is custom-designed to optimize Ceph. SoftIron simplifies the deployment of open source-based architectures by delivering an enterprise-class user experience yet free from software and hardware lock-in. For more information, visit http://www.SoftIron.com.

Media Inquiries:

Isaac Lopez

OmniScale Media

360-576-5475

isaac@omniscalemedia.com
Mad Monkey Gili Trawangan, Indonesia Mad Monkey is a great example of real estates continued shift towards new economy business models that combine real estate, hospitality, and technology. They have organically built a business anchored on strong values while staying aggressive with expansion plans."

The sun is slowly setting over the Cambodian capital. So much has changed in the uber-fast developing city in the past 10 years since the Mad Monkey team opened the first hostel in the heart of Phnom Penh. High-rises mount over pagodas, SUVs are passing slower tuk-tuks, mobile phones have become the primary payment method. But some things remain the same  the charm and soul of the entire region, inviting young adventurers back to explore its colorful streets, dreamy beaches, and magical sites, now that the pandemic-stricken world has started showing signs of recovery.

Early evenings are a time when the music starts getting louder by the pool in Mad Monkeys hostels and the party is slowly starting. But right now, there is a different buzz; the Mad Monkey team is hard at work preparing rapid re-openings of its existing locations, inviting domestic and international travelers back to its world. In the past decade, Mad Monkey has earned an iconic status in Southeast Asia and has opened hostels in 6 countries, delivering unforgettable, sustainable, and culturally immersive travel experiences to an ever-growing segment of young digital nomads & other experience-driven travelers who are hungry to travel, build friendships and experience new cultures.

But reopening seems like a small task amidst a much bigger ambition now turned into an accelerated action plan. The Mad Monkey team is poised to open up to 50 hostels in the next 3 years in Asia and Australia, cementing their status as the region's biggest player in experience-driven hospitality.

To help achieve this goal, Mad Monkey has now partnered with EXS, a Singapore-based private equity firm focused on real estate businesses & platforms, through EPIC, which is focused on New Economy Real Estate across Asia including co-working, co-living, student housing, new hospitality, and modern fitness models. EPIC has successfully completed a US$4.6M investment into Mad Monkey to drive the companys near-term growth and reinforce its position as Southeast Asias leading hostel operator.

Mad Monkey is a leading player in Southeast Asia and a great example of real estates continued shift towards new economy business models that combine real estate, hospitality and technology to deliver unique experiences. The Mad Monkey team has organically built a business anchored on strong values, with social and environmental responsibility at its core, while staying aggressive with expansion plans, maintaining profitability, and developing a stable team over the past decade. We are proud and excited to enter the next phase of driving Mad Monkeys growth across the region, stated Eric Solberg, Chairman & CEO of EXS.

EXS plans to contribute its expertise in building leading Asian real estate platforms to Mad Monkey. As a specialized private equity firm with a track record of investing successfully across Southeast Asia, EXS is a strong believer in the growing trends driving new business models across real estate. Through EPIC, EXS plans to play a major role in helping the Mad Monkey team to accelerate growth and take advantage of the rapid return in tourism across the region, creating value for both Mad Monkeys operations as well as the underlying real estate.

Mad Monkey was founded in 2011 by a team of passionate serial entrepreneursand, at the time, avid backpackersAlex, Steve, Tom, and Oliver. Driven by the desire to have a good time while also doing good, Mad Monkey was built on providing superior customer experience, anchored on travelers passion points and ever-changing demands, while empowering local communities, through initiatives with a positive societal and environmental impact thus immersing travelers in these local cultures responsibly and sustainably.

Mad Monkey has always had a strong ESG focus, delivering 10 years' worth of impactful community projects ranging from clean water initiatives to beach clean-ups and education projects. With the EPIC investment, the team will continue their strong focus on building local communities while enriching Mad Monkey as a global experience-based hospitality platform.

Moreover, supported through the crisis by EPIC, the team has used the downtime of Covid to innovate and digitalize, building a fully integrated tech platform with its own booking engine, utilizing marketing technology to create intuitive and personalized digital interactions with its customer at all stages of their trip.

We are excited to transform how our guests interact with Mad Monkey at all times and provide effortless digital journeys to them, anchored on their preference and their need to manage their trips and experiences seamlessly with only their smartphone in their pocket, Steve Vaile, Chairman of Mad Monkey explains.

In line with digitization efforts, the team is preparing to launch the Mad Monkey Experience mobile app that will further enhance the holistic, culturally immersive experience for travelers and will ensure they can seamlessly book their travel between Mad Monkey hostels, while scheduling adventures, trips, and experiences, all in one app.

While providing better experiences to their customers, Mad Monkeys digital platform will also enable the team to better understand and anticipate travelers needs and further enhance the real-time feedback loop to ensure agile and immediate adaptations to strategy and experience provided.

The pandemic has affected tourism more than any other industry and only businesses able to adapt to trends are surviving. Mad Monkeys successful Golden Tickets program enables travelers to book a long-term flexible, risk-free travel plan they can use whenever they want.

New tech and new flexible travel models, added to Mad Monkey's signature community and culture-focused experience, are the recipe for success the team is betting on to satisfy thousands of young travelers, eager to hop on the plane after a two-year Covid hiatus.

As the business grows, Mad Monkey is also working with EXS and advisors to raise substantial further funds, both for continued expansion of the business as well as a dedicated property vehicle, with the ability to expand through both leasehold & freehold properties. Together with EXS & EPIC, Mad Monkey plans to continue establishing its position as one of the leading experience-driven hospitality players in the region.

____

About Mad Monkey

Mad Monkey is a leading Southeast Asia-based hostel operator, creating meaningful and sustainable travel experiences for travelers. The purpose of every Mad Monkey hostel is to provide the best customer experience in the most sustainable way for the benefit of the customers, team members, and the communities where we are located. More than just accommodation, Mad Monkey is the home-away-from-home base for travelers craving immersive cultural experiences, adventures, trips, educational activities, events and meeting like-minded individuals, and forming communities.

Find out more about Mad Monkey: https://madmonkeyhostels.com/

About EXS

Founded in 2007, EXS is an independent investment & fund management firm with offices in Hong Kong & Singapore and dedicated to the Asia Pacific region. EXS and its team are licensed & registered with the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission, the Hong Kong Estate Agents Authority, the Monetary Authority of Singapore, as well as the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority.

EXS partners with expert management teams across Asia with the goal of building high-valuation market leaders. EXS' highly differentiated, counter-cyclical approach allows for closer long-term partnerships with management teams, longer-term multi-stage investments, and ultimately higher expected returns. Since its inception, the team has led over US$1 billion of successful private investments for institutional, family office, and high-net-worth investors. To date, all of EXS Capitals deals have been strongly profitable for both investors and management.

For additional information, please visit EXS website at http://www.exs.com.
Renaissance, a global leader in pre-K12 education technology, today released the latest edition of https://www.renaissance.com/how-kids-are-performing/How Kids Are Performing, a report detailing the academic impacts associated with COVID-19 school disruptions.

The report compares performance and growth data for the first half of the 20212022 school year with data from the same period last year. This snapshot is a useful tool to document the extent to which the disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic continue to affect student achievement in grades K12 in reading and 112 in math.

The new reports findings confirm that the pandemic has had a profoundly disruptive effect on education that continues to be felt today. While student performance in the second year of the pandemic is lower than during the first year, there are encouraging signs in many grades that fall-to-winter student growth rates in 20212022 are stronger compared to the same period in 20202021.

Key findings include:



Performance: Overall, students are performing lower in 20212022 compared to 20202021, suggesting that the pandemic continues to have a compounding effect on student achievement.

Growth: Fall-to-winter growth in 20212022 was stronger than growth during the same period last year, although it remains below typical growth in most grade levels.

Results by Group: Although performance and growth vary between student and school groups, most follow this same overall pattern of lower performance but stronger growth compared to the prior year.

Pre-readers: Concerning results were observed for pre-readers in grade 1, where school disruptions may have interrupted the development of foundational literacy skills.

All signs suggest that this is going to be a multiyear recovery, said Dr. Gene Kerns, vice president and chief academic officer at Renaissance. We can reset instruction back to where it was pre-pandemic, but that isnt going to instantly move students up to where they would have been had the pandemic not occurred. For example, if you worked out every day and then stopped for two years, you arent going to be in the same shape as before the break when you return to the gym. We know what to doand educators are rising to meet this great challengebut its going to take time.

The Monroe County School District in Florida has consistently monitored student progress before and during the pandemic, and district leaders are encouraged by the data they see this school year. For me, the growth score has the most meaning, said Superintendent Theresa Axford. What we are seeing is that our teachers are being effective and supporting the kids in the exact ways they need to be supported, and that is reflected in the student growth data.

To ensure a fair comparison, the report restricts its analysis to schools using the same computer-adaptive Star Assessments for early literacy, reading, or math during both the 20202021 and 20212022 academic years. The analysis includes 4.4 million early literacy or reading assessments at 19,046 schools and 2.9 million math assessments at 12,754 schools. The sample covers K12 students from schools from all 50 states plus the District of Columbia.

Renaissance is providing additional resources to support educators, schools, and families this spring and summer:

Summer Learning Toolkit, which includes a variety of free resources: Student and Family Engagement Kits, summer funding information, and guidance on designing an effective summer learning program;

Focus Skills in English and Spanish, so educators can target the most important learning at each grade level;

Trip Steps for Reading, showing the most difficult reading skills for students to master across grades K12

Trip Steps for Mathematics, showing the most difficult math skills for students to master from pre-K through Algebra 1.

The full How Kid Are Performing report is available at Renaissance.com/How-Kids-Are-Performing.

About Renaissance

As a global leader in assessment, reading, and math solutions for pre-K12 schools and districts, Renaissance is committed to providing educators with insights and resources to accelerate growth and help all students build a strong foundation for success. Renaissance solutions reach more than 40% of US schools and more than a half million students in other regions across the world. The Renaissance portfolio includes Star Assessments, for reliable, accurate insights into K12 student learning; myIGDIs, for accurate assessment of early learning; myON, to increase students access to high-quality reading materials; Accelerated Reader, to support independent reading practice; Freckle, for teacher-led differentiated instruction; Schoolzilla, to give educators actionable insights into trends in student attendance and achievement; Lalilo, to develop critical foundational skills; and Nearpod, for teacher-facilitated instructional delivery. For more information, visit Renaissance.com.
Ian Duncan Steinger, Greene & Feiner has built a reputation for fighting for the maximum compensation for our clients throughout Florida and Tennessee, says Steinger. With this aggressive expansion plan, we are bringing that philosophy to injury victims in Texas.

Steinger, Greene & Feiner now offers their legal services to injury victims throughout the great state of Texas. The firm simultaneously launched four office locations throughout Texas, in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Austin, signifying the firms commitment to continued growth.

Michael S. Steinger, Founding Partner of Steinger, Greene & Feiner, says the partners, lawyers and employees of the law firm are eager to take on the challenge of expanding into the competitive markets of Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Austin, Texas.

Steinger, Greene & Feiner has built a reputation for fighting for the maximum compensation for our clients throughout Florida and Tennessee, says Steinger. With this aggressive expansion plan, we are bringing that philosophy to injury victims in Texas.

Ian S. Duncan, Partner, who has more than 15 years of experience as a trial attorney and leader of the firms West Palm Beach, Florida office, will be leading the Texas division. The opportunity in Texas is truly an exciting one, says Duncan. We are a firm with tremendous vision, people and strength. I am proud to be forging new ground for the firm, and proud to bring Steinger, Greene & Feiners legal services to the residents of Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Austin.

This expansion comes less than a year after the firms announcements of opening offices in Orlando, Florida and Memphis, Tennessee. Furthermore, the firm is looking into additional markets in 2022.

The law firm offers free, no-obligation consultations 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Call directly to speak to someone now about your personal injury case.

Dallas Personal Injury Lawyer: 512-271-4969 https://www.injurylawyers.com/dallas/

Houston Personal Injury Lawyer: 469-405-2718 https://www.injurylawyers.com/houston/

San Antonio Personal Injury Lawyer: 713-565-0485 https://www.injurylawyers.com/san-antonio/

Austin Personal Injury Lawyer: 210-405-0815 https://www.injurylawyers.com/austin/

About Steinger, Greene & Feiner

Founded in 1997, Steinger, Greene & Feiner is one of the nations leading plaintiffs law firms, representing individuals who have been injured due to the negligence of others. A law firm with more than 60 attorneys, across offices in Florida, Tennessee, and Texas, Steinger Greene & Feiner has recovered over $1 billion dollars for clients. Steinger, Greene & Feiner represents accident victims in personal injury cases, such as automobile, motorcycle and truck accidents, workers compensation, slip-and-fall, and wrongful death. Learn more about the law firm at http://www.injurylawyers.com.
Academy of Adoption & Assisted Reproduction Attorneys Children waiting to be adopted deserve every opportunity to be united with safe, loving families, said AAAA President Genie Miller Gillespie. Especially as we watch the horror of the invasion of Ukraine unfold, we should do everything we can to help these children.

Today, 73 Members of Congress, led by the co-chairs of the bipartisan Congressional Adoption Caucus, U.S. Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Roy Blunt (R-MO), and Representatives Adam Smith (D-WA) and Robert Aderholt (R-AL), wrote to Secretary of State Antony Blinken urging the Biden Administration to take action to help Ukrainian children currently in the adoption process with American families. The full text of the letter is available HERE.

The Academy of Adoption and Assisted Reproduction Attorneys (AAAA) is represented by over 500 attorneys from the United States and abroad who specialize in adoption law, assisted reproductive technology law (ART) or both. AAAA provides a credentialed presence in the law of family formation and is the largest professional organization of its type dedicated to advancing the security of children through permanent adoption, the protection of children through safe and secure foster care with appropriate permanency planning, and the recognition of intended parents as legal parents for those using modern medical technology to build families through assisted reproductive technology.

AAAA Attorneys or Fellows have been working with many of the families who are seeking to bring the approximately 300 children in Ukraine who are currently involved in the adoption process to the United States to be united with host families. AAAA Fellows have shared with Members of Congress the situation these children are faced with and appreciate the Members of Congress expressing the urgency of this matter to the Administration in their letter.

Children waiting to be adopted deserve every opportunity to be united with safe, loving families, said AAAA President Genie Miller Gillespie. Especially as we watch the horror of the invasion of Ukraine unfold, we should do everything we can to help these children.

Unfortunately for many of these children, the adoption process will take even longer because Ukraine is not in a position to continue the legal process while defending itself from an invasion, said Kelly Dempsey, Co-chair of the AAAA Committee on Intercountry Adoption. As an Adoption Attorney and AAAA Fellow, I am working closely with many of the families seeking to bring these children into their homes. These children in Ukraine or elsewhere in Europe should not be forced to wait longer to be united with safe, loving families when the United States has the ability to provide relief and allow them to travel to the United States now.

AAAA urges the State Department to act swiftly to help unite these children with American families, and to ensure that the adoption process between Ukraine and the United States can be quickly reestablished at the soonest possible time.

AAAA is headquartered in Greenwood, Indiana. For more information, visit us at adoptionart.org.

###


As our corporate partnership network continues to grow, more and more working professionals will have greater and lower-cost access to higher education opportunities to further their careers, and more employers will be able to fill critical skills gaps," said Joe Diamond, CEO of AllCampus

AllCampus, which partners with leading, traditional higher education institutions to grow online enrollment and maximize market share, today announced the addition of NYC Health + Hospitals and the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services to its corporate partnership network as the company continues to expand its university partners certificate and degree offerings to organizations and their employees nationwide.

NYC Health + Hospitals and the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services are well-known and well-respected organizations that are incredibly dedicated to their employees growth and development. Our university partners wide range of degree and certificate programs will ensure a high quality of continued learning and upskilling opportunities for all workers, said Joe Diamond, CEO of AllCampus. As our corporate partnership network continues to grow, more and more working professionals will have greater and lower-cost access to higher education opportunities to further their careers, and more employers will be able to fill critical skills gaps.

The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services has more than 85,000 employees and 25,000 contractors that will be able to take advantage of 130+ certificate, associate, bachelors and masters level-degrees as part of AllCampus corporate partnership network. As the largest public health system in the United States, NYC Health + Hospitals has over 35,000 employees, all of whom will have access to AllCampus university partners programs  including degrees and certificates from over 25 highly ranked institutions and 10 of the top 50 in the U.S.

This announcement comes on the heels of AllCampus recent expansion of its internal corporate partnerships team with the addition of Kevin Schembri as Director of Corporate Partnership Development and Eugene Chan as Corporate Partner Channel Manager.

Our corporate partnership network has grown extensively over the past year in particular, in terms of expanding our university partners and their program offerings, as well as the number of corporations with which were partnering to provide these educational opportunities to their employees, said Schembri. Im looking forward to growing our internal corporate partnership team at AllCampus, as well as our offerings from university partners and for our corporate partners and their workforces.

Launched in 2015, AllCampuss corporate partner network comprises over 4,000 companies, representing 60 industries  including engineering, financial services, healthcare, IT and more  and reaching over 20 million working professionals with online degree and certificate programs from AllCampuss partner institutions, including the University of Florida, Purdue University and Vanderbilt University. Current corporate partners featured within the network include Amazon, Goldman Sachs, IBM, JP Morgan Chase, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, Pfizer and United Healthcare.

To learn more about or join AllCampuss network of corporate partners, please visit: https://www.allcampus.com/for-companies/. For more information on how the network benefits universities, please visit: https://www.allcampus.com/online-program-management/corporate-partnerships/.

To learn more about AllCampus and its services and university partners, please visit: http://www.allcampus.com.

About AllCampus

AllCampus creates value for leading universities by expanding their reach and cultivating relationships with students who seek to advance their lives through education. It offers comprehensive, tailored online program management (OPM) services, powered by industry-leading technology  all with the universitys unique identity and brand top of mind. It has built its reputation on delivering measurable results, being an honest broker, and providing high levels of service to its two primary constituencies: prospective and enrolled students, and university administrators. AllCampus deep research, powerful insights and understanding of current job market and employer needs helps its partners tailor their offerings to optimize student outcomes and return on investment. The companys flexible payment and service options include bundled or unbundled offerings and fee-for-service management or a customized low and sustainable revenue share plan.
Amica Insurance, the countrys longest-standing mutual insurer of automobiles, today announced it has partnered with Rocket Mortgage, Americas largest mortgage lender, to offer Amica policyholders savings on their next home loan. Amica customers can now receive a $2,000 credit on their closing costs when they obtain a mortgage for a home purchase or a refinance through Rocket Mortgage.

This is a perfect partnership because both Amica and Rocket Mortgage are focused on providing an exceptional experience. Our clients can expect the same award-winning service theyre used to when working with Rocket Mortgage, said Tory Pachis, Vice President of Marketing at Amica. In a hot housing market, this benefit can make a big difference for Amica customers looking for their dream home.

Rocket Mortgage has ranked highest in the country for customer satisfaction in mortgage servicing by J.D. Power for the past eight years, 2014-2021. Additionally, Amica ranked highest in customer satisfaction for homeowners insurance in the 2021 J.D. Power study  the 19th time in the last 20 years that Amica has landed in the top spot.

This partnership is part of a larger effort by Amica to provide additional value to its customers through strategic partnerships.

About Amica Insurance

Amica is the longest-standing mutual insurer of automobiles in the U.S. A direct writer, Amica also offers home, life, marine and umbrella insurance, as well as annuities.

Founded on the principles of outstanding service, Amica creates peace of mind and builds enduring relationships with its customers. That mission is shared and supported by thousands of employees across the country.

Amica.com
RTHK: Taliban orders girls' high schools to remain closed

The Taliban on Wednesday backtracked on its announcement that high schools would open for girls, saying they would remain closed until a plan was drawn up in accordance with Islamic law for them to reopen.

The u-turn took many by surprise, leaving students in tears and drawing condemnation from humanitarian agencies, rights groups and diplomats at a time when the Taliban administration is seeking international recognition.

Teachers and students from three high schools around the capital, Kabul, said girls had returned in excitement to campuses on Wednesday morning, but were ordered to go home. They said many students left in tears.

The last time the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, from 1996 to 2001, they banned female education and most employment.

The international community has made the education of girls a key demand for any future recognition of the Taliban administration, which took over the country in August as foreign forces withdrew.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the Taliban's decision was "a profound disappointment and deeply damaging for Afghanistan".

"The denial of education not only violates the equal rights of women and girls to education," Guterres said in a statement. "I urge the Taliban de facto authorities to open schools for all students without any further delay."

The Ministry of Education had announced last week that schools for all students, including girls, would open around the country on Wednesday after months of restrictions on education for high school-aged girls.

On Tuesday evening a Ministry of Education spokesman released a video congratulating all students on returning to classes. However, on Wednesday a Ministry of Education notice said schools for girls would be closed until a plan was drawn up in accordance with Islamic law and Afghan culture, according to Bakhtar News, a government news agency.

Suhail Shaheen, a senior Taliban member based in Doha, said the postponed opening of girls' schools was due to a technical issue and that the Ministry of Education was working on standardised uniforms for students around the country.

"We hope the uniform issue is resolved and finalised as soon as possible," he said. (Reuters)

This story has been published on: 2022-03-23. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Your browser does not support the video tag.
H. Segal M.D., a neurosurgeon in San Luis Obispo, California, and blues guitar musician, has completed his new book Judy the Magic Rocking Horse: an engaging story of Otto the woodcutter who plans to build a special gift out of magical wood.

Writes Segal, One night, as Otto lay asleep, he dreamt that a baby was on the way to him and his wife. He kept this dream as a secret and vowed to name the child Lucy. He would make

the baby a most special toy.

In the forest, he searched for the finest woods to fashion the toy, but he was not satisfied! The toy was to be a rocking horse, and he would call her Judy. He had heard over the years about an enchanted forest to the north of his village, where strange trees grew to magical heights. In another dream, he saw himself going to this forest and bringing back wood to make Judy. Otto told his wife he must go on a journey but kept the secrets to himself. Mrs. Otto packed him food and clothing, and he set off to the enchanted forest.

Published by Page Publishing, H. Segal M.D.s adorable tale follows Ottos journey as he makes for the enchanted forest, determined to make the finest gift he can for his future child: a wooden rocking horse. Accompanied with colorful illustrations, Judy the Magic Rocking Horse is sure to delight readers of all ages.

Readers who wish to experience this amusing work can purchase Judy the Magic Rocking Horse 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.
James (JB) Bert Stewart, a retired airman who believes in freedom and God, has completed his new book Things to Think About: a collection of thoughts and anecdotes touching on a broad range of topics.

The author shares, I am told that my book is very interesting and inspirational. I wrote it for people in general. I hope you enjoy it!

Published by Page Publishing, James (JB) Bert Stewarts engrossing book is a thoughtful choice for avid readers in any phase of life.

Readers who wish to experience this engaging work can purchase Things to Think About 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 understands that authors should 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
Having more diverse teachers helps close both the achievement and opportunity gaps for students of color, and over the past two years teachers of color went through the most challenging time by having navigated through the pandemic and the racial reckoning in the country.

DonorsChoose, the largest crowdfunding nonprofit for public school teachers, released today a new report, Unique Impacts, Unique Burdens: Insights into the Black Male Educator Experience, that highlights the backgrounds, motivations, and experiences of Black male teachers at U.S. public schools. Approximately 5,000 K-12 educators were surveyed for the report, including nearly 1,700 respondents who identify as male teachers of color  the largest such cohort of any national survey.

Among the key findings, the survey shows that:



Black male teachers spend more time with students outside of class time than teachers of any other demographic. Black male teachers reported spending an average of 4.6 hours per week tutoring students, spending 5.4 hours per week mentoring or counseling students, and hosting an average of 10 students per week in their classroom outside of school hours.

Black male teachers are most likely to have entered the profession because they wanted to teach a curriculum that affirms the identities of students of color. 52% of Black male teachers agreed that affirming their students identities helped motivate them to become a teacher. Educators who began teaching after 2010 were the most likely to report choosing the profession because they see teaching as social justice, with male teachers of color more likely to report this than White male educators.

Black teachers of all gender identities experience the "invisible tax" much more intensely than other teachers of color. Black teachers are three times more likely than other teachers of color to report that, because of their race, they are expected to discipline students of color.

Having more diverse teachers helps close both the achievement and opportunity gaps for students of color, and over the past two years teachers of color went through the most challenging time by having navigated through the pandemic and the racial reckoning in the country, said Sharif El-Mekki, CEO of Center of Black Educator Development. These findings will help draw attention to some of the urgent needs Black male of teachers of color have in our public schools system.

Today's report is both timely and urgent, said Travis J. Bristol, PhD, a University of California, Berkeley professor and leading researcher on Black men in the teaching profession. Understanding Black men teachers' school-based experiences will allow policymakers and practitioners to (re)design schools that allow these teachers to teach as well as allow their students to learn.

To celebrate the release of the report, DonorsChoose and several backers of the survey funded all of the classroom requests from Black male teachers on DonorsChoose. The funding supported 550 projects from 411 teachers, totaling $590,595 in support. John Legend, a supporter of the survey, also joined several teachers in a webinar on Wednesday to review the survey findings and discuss the impact Black male educators have in the classroom.

Black men make up two percent of teachers nationwide, and we know through this survey that they play invaluable roles in schools and communities across the country, said Kristina (Steen) Lyles, Vice President of Equity & Impact at DonorsChoose. This survey offers insight into some of the experiences of our Black male teachers and other male teachers of color. We hope that by sharing their stories we can uplift their voices, empower them in their work, and help keep them in the classroom.

When a student sees a teacher who looks like them standing at the front of their classroom it is a powerful, life-changing experience, said New York City Schools Chancellor David C. Banks, who was provided a preview of the survey findings. A diverse workforce of educators supports both the academic and social growth of our students, and educators who are deeply rooted in the communities they serve often go above and beyond to support young people. This survey confirms what we already know to be true about educators of color and we look forward to working with Donors Choose to increase diversity in our workforce.

DonorsChoose conducted the survey to amplify the voices of male teachers of color and help inform the national conversation surrounding race and equity in K-12 education. The survey is part of the nonprofits data-inspired Equity Focus, which emphasizes support for students of color in low-income communities, as well as equity in crowdfunding support among teachers of all identities.

For a deeper look into the insights found by this survey please visit http://www.donorschoose.org/black-male-educator-insights.

About DonorsChoose

DonorsChoose is the leading way to give to public schools. Since 2000, 5.2 million people and partners have contributed $1 billion to support over 2 million teacher requests for classroom resources and experiences. As the most trusted crowdfunding platform for teachers, donors, and district administrators alike, DonorsChoose vets each request, ships the funded resources directly to the classroom, and provides thank yous and reporting to donors and school leaders. Charity Navigator and GuideStar have awarded DonorsChoose, a 501(c)3 nonprofit, their highest ratings for transparency and accountability. For more information, visit http://www.donorschoose.org.
Steve has been instrumental in our success in Atlanta and Im confident hell build on BluSkys exceptional customer experience in Tampa. ~Jeff Thornsbury, BluSky CHRO

BluSky Restoration Contractors, LLC, a leading national property restoration company in the U.S., today announced the promotion of Steve Lindstrom to vice president of the firms Tampa, FL, office.

We strive to promote leaders from within the BluSky ranks, said Jeff Thornsbury, the firms chief human resources officer. Steve has been instrumental in our success in Atlanta and Im confident hell build on BluSkys exceptional customer experience in Tampa.

Lindstrom joined BluSky in 2019 as a project director in the firms Atlanta office.He has been actively working in the construction and renovation industry for nearly 20 years. He also has extensive sales and sales management experience and has won several company awards for consistently exceeding goals. He earned a bachelors degree from Fordham University and holds several certifications specific to the restoration industry, including IICRC Fire & Smoke Restoration Technician, Water Restoration Technician, and Certified Healthcare Restoration Technician.

Lindstrom will lead his teams in operations, business development, customer relationships, and project management. He reports to Kelley Brown, regional vice president of the firms southeast region, which oversees offices in North Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, and Florida.

###

About BluSky Restoration Contractors, LLC

Denver, Colorado-based BluSky Restoration Contractors, LLC is a full-service national restoration, renovation, environmental and roofing provider for properties damaged by water, fire, storms and other disasters across the nation. For more information about BluSky Restoration Contractors, please visit GoBluSky.com or call (800) 266-5677.
Century Public Adjusters Help Homeowners with Hail Damage Claims

A fast-moving storm affected parts of Orlando two days in a row with National Weather Service issuing a hail alert. Home and business owners may have found themselves with substantial damages to their property including their roofs. A Severe Thunderstorm Watch was issued for Brevard, Lake, Volusia, Osceola, Seminole, Flagler, and Marion counties.

Hailstorms can be extremely destructive to homes causing thousands of dollars in damages. If you experienced a hailstorm in your area, Century Public Adjusters advise to do the following:



Inspect the surroundings of your house

Inspect the roof

Take photos of the damages

Contact the team at Century Public Adjusters

Century Public Adjusters urges home or business owners who have suffered from hail damage to reach out today at (888) 585-8010.

More About Century Public Adjusters

Century Public Adjusters is proud to provide home and business owners throughout Florida with services to recover after property damage occurs. Their team of experienced adjusters is happy to provide free inspections to examine any damages.

Common Residential and Commercial Damages Include:

Fire

Mold

Storm

Water

Sinkhole

Four locations can be found throughout Central Florida to better serve clients, including offices in Miami, West Palm Beach, Orlando, and Tampa, FL. Century Public Adjusters will fight the insurance company to ensure that their clients get the fair compensation that they deserve for their losses.

Contact Century Public Adjusters today to schedule your free inspection and learn more about how to make your home safe after a disaster.
Cybereason, the XDR company, today announced that Frank Koelmel has been named EMEA Region General Manager. He had spent the past two years as the companys Central Europe Vice President, where he oversaw record sales growth and expansion. Koelmel will now be overseeing Cybereasons EMEA operation and leading future growth and expansion. The company also announced Reiner Dresbach has been promoted to Regional Vice President, Central Europe.

Since joining Cybereason last year, Dresbach has been Central Europe Sales Director. As Regional Vice President, he will be responsible for further accelerating the companys partner and customer base. He is looking to hire top sales and engineering talent. Prior to joining Cybereason, Dresbach spent five years as Sales Director, DACH, for Tenable Networks. Before Tenable, he held sales leadership positions at FireEye, Brocade and Huawei. Dresbach previously spent more than 12 years at Cisco and three years at Otelo and Meganet.

Franks drive, vision and never-quit attitude drove DACH sales to new heights over the past two years. His ability to grow successful sales teams and an ecosystem of partners makes him the perfect person to lead our EMEA operation, said Lior Div, Cybereason CEO and Co-Founder.

Central Europe Growth

Central Europe is one of Cybereasons fastest growing regions and over the past 12 months, the company has doubled its staff and customer base. The growth is due in part to the companys talented sales team, but also its cutting-edge solutions and services. The companys newest offering, Cybereason XDR powered by Google Cloud, better protects organizations against sophisticated cyberattacks.

Cybereasons DACH growth is validated by the number of new customer engagements we have closed in the past 12 months. There is a high level of interest in Cybereasons products and services and with the recent launch of Cybereason XDR powered by Google Cloud, we are delivering unprecedented protection for endpoints, user personas, cloud and application workspaces at record-setting speed and planetary scale. With Reiner at the helm in Central Europe, our talented team will continue to take Cybereason to new heights, said Koelmel.

"Today, many organizations know that cybersecurity is an essential part of business continuity. With the number of sophisticated cyberattacks increasing, along with continued global unrest and divisiveness, more pressure is mounting on security professionals to protect critical corporate assets. At Cybereason, we provide our customers and all Defenders with the foundation to return to higher ground, protect their proprietary data, and secure supply chain connections to customers and partners. In the months ahead well continue to accelerate our business so that more organizations of all sizes can reduce cyber risks, added Dresbach.

Central Europe Channel Success

Cybereason's Central Europe success is also due to strong partner relationships across the region with many partners, including Bechtle and Omni-IT. Cybereason recently named Bechtle its DACH Partner of the Year at a partner sales kickoff. With Cybereasons launch of its Defenders League in 2021, the company will continue to reward its most trusted advisors and solution providers by increasing their margins and profitability.

In Central Europe, I am focused on growing our partner base and expanding to mid-iter organizations that also face challenges protecting their most critical assets. With the help of our partner ecosystem, we will expand our business further across the DACH region, said Jens Palmer, Cybereasons Senior Director of Partnerships, Central Europe.

About Cybereason

Cybereason is the XDR company, partnering with Defenders to end attacks at the endpoint, in the cloud and across the entire enterprise ecosystem. Only the AI-driven Cybereason XDR Platform provides predictive prevention, detection and response that is undefeated against modern ransomware and advanced attack techniques. The Cybereason MalOp instantly delivers context-rich attack intelligence across every affected device, user and system with unparalleled speed and accuracy. Cybereason turns threat data into actionable decisions at the speed of business. Cybereason is a privately held international company headquartered in Boston with customers in more than 40 countries.

Learn more: https://www.cybereason.com/

Follow us: Blog | Twitter | Facebook

Media Contacts:

Bill Keeler

Senior Director, Global Public Relations

Cybereason

bill.keeler@cybereason.com

(929) 259-3261
Dr. Winsome E. Jackson, Recipient of the Hayward Award for Excellence in Education My vision for Sierra College is to align resources to its action plans which will demonstrate a true commitment to removing systemic and institutional barriers so we can close equity gaps and improve overall student success.

Sierra College political science professor Dr. Winsome Jackson was honored with the 2021-22 Hayward Award for Excellence in Education for the California Community Colleges. Sponsored annually by the Foundation for California Community Colleges, this award honors community college full-time and part-time faculty who demonstrate the highest level of commitment to their students, college, and profession.

In receiving the award, Dr. Jackson thanked her colleagues for their nomination, the academic senate for their support, and the selection committees and Board of Governors for their recognition. She then shared, My vision for Sierra College is to align resources to its action plans which will demonstrate a true commitment to removing systemic and institutional barriers so we can close equity gaps and improve overall student success. Dr. Jackson also stated that she has been involved in equity work for over 35 plus years in education, and its been her goal to dismantle structural and institutional racism and close equity gaps to allow each and every student the best opportunity for success."

Award recipients, nominated by their college academic senate and selected by representatives of the Academic Senate must have a record of outstanding performance of professional activities, as well as a record of active participation on campus.

This honor is a testament to Dr. Jacksons commitment and dedication to Sierra College. During her career she has dedicated herself in the service and empowerment of historically underrepresented students, said Willy Duncan, Sierra Colleges Superintendent/President. Her commitment to their success has made her a beloved faculty member and her colleagues have expressed the same appreciation for her. She has mentored countless faculty in her department, and I know firsthand that she never turns away a student or faculty member that is in need.

Award recipients, nominated by their college academic senate and selected by representatives of the Academic Senate must have a record of outstanding performance of professional activities, as well as a record of active participation on campus. The award may be presented to four (two part-time, and two full-time) faculty members per year. Three were recognized this year and as remarked by Dolores Davison, president of the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges, during Womens History Month, all this years recipients were women.

Dr. Jackson, who will be retiring at the end of the academic year following 25 years at Sierra College, was honored at a California Community Colleges Board of Governors meeting on March 21, 2022 and concluded her remarks with, I encourage more members of the community to not treat equity as a garnish, but to recognize that it is the main ingredient in everything we do, not only for students but all employees.

About Sierra College

Sierra College District is rising to the needs of our community. Sierra College serves 3200 square miles of Northern CA with campuses in Roseville, Rocklin, Grass Valley, and Truckee. With approximately 125 degree and certificate programs, Sierra College is ranked first in Northern California (Sacramento north) for transfers to four-year universities, offers career/technical training, and classes for upgrading job skills. Sierra graduates can be found in businesses and industries throughout the region. More information at http://www.sierracollege.edu
With next level automation, machine learning, and AI solutions for e-commerce brands, FlavorCloud is well-positioned to continue to solve complex cross-border shipping and trade hurdles, leading to an increase in international sales for brands," Said Rathna Sharad, co-founder and CEO, FlavorCloud

FlavorCloud, a leading global e-commerce shipping, and logistics company, today announced it has ranked No.19 on the third annual Inc. 5000 Regionals: Pacific list, the most prestigious ranking of the fastest-growing private companies based in Alaska, Hawaii, California, Oregon, and Washington. Born of the annual Inc. 5000 franchise, this regional list represents a unique look at the most successful private companies within the Pacific region economy generating sustainable growth and jobs.

Im excited and honored to be number 19 on Inc. Magazines Regional Pacific list, alongside the best and brightest companies in the region, said Rathna Sharad, founder and CEO of FlavorCloud. Its awesome to see recognition of our amazing team and what we are building together at FlavorCloud.

FlavorCloud is the largest cross-border carrier network, and the technology that powers cross-border e-commerce across 200+ countries. Utilizing its AI algorithms, FlavorCloud automates complex, antiquated, and manual shipping processes and is able to provide the best rates and delivery options worldwide, including a fast-track service to prioritize packages through customs. DTC e-commerce brands, anywhere in the world, can plug into FlavorClouds service and offer an easy and seamless international shipping and trade compliance experience to its customers.

The Global e-commerce and trade landscape is going through such a tremendous transformationgrowing 100% year-over-year. said Sharad. With next level automation, machine learning, and AI solutions for e-commerce brands, we believe FlavorCloud is well-positioned to continue to solve complex cross-border shipping and trade hurdles, leading to an increase in international sales for brands

The companies on this list show exceptional growth across all industries in the Pacific. Between 2018 and 2020, the 150 private companies had an average growth rate of 195% percent, and, in 2020 alone, they added 10,252 jobs and $5.1 billion to the Pacific regions economywhile the broader American economy declined 1.2 percent.

This years Inc. 5000 Regional winners represent one of the most exceptional and exciting lists of Americas off-the-charts growth companies. Theyre disruptors and job creators, and all delivered an outsize impact on the economy. Remember their names and follow their lead. These are the companies youll be hearing about for years to come, says Scott Omelianuk, editor-in-chief of Inc.

Complete results of the Inc. 5000 Regionals Pacific, including company profiles and an interactive database that can be sorted by industry, metro area, and other criteria, can be found at inc.com/pacific.

About FlavorCloud

FlavorCloud is an end-to-end cross-border logistics platform for direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands, ecommerce retailers, and marketplaces. Headquartered in Seattle, Washington, FlavorCloud makes international shipping and returns easy, affordable, and friction-free, enabling brands and 3PLs (Third Party Logistics Providers) to go global in any part of the world. FlavorCloud's algorithm and technology auto-optimizes the best rates and services through the largest global cross-border network as well as automating the complex world of global trade and regulatory compliance.

For more information, please visit http://www.flavorcloud.com.

More about Inc. and the Inc. 5000 Regionals

Methodology

The 2022 Inc. 5000 Regionals are ranked according to percentage revenue growth when comparing 2018 and 2020. To qualify, companies must have been founded and generating revenue by March 31, 2018. They had to be U.S.-based, privately held, for-profit, and independentnot subsidiaries or divisions of other companiesas of December 31, 2019. (Since then, a number of companies on the list have gone public or been acquired.) The minimum revenue required for 2018 is $100,000; the minimum for 2020 is $1 million. As always, Inc. reserves the right to decline applicants for subjective reasons.

About Inc. Media

The worlds most trusted business-media brand, Inc. offers entrepreneurs the knowledge, tools, connections, and community to build great companies. Its award-winning multiplatform content reaches more than 50 million people each month across a variety of channels including websites, newsletters, social media, podcasts, and print. Its prestigious Inc. 5000 list, produced every year since 1982, analyzes company data to recognize the fastest-growing privately held businesses in the United States. The global recognition that comes with inclusion in the 5000 gives the founders of the best businesses an opportunity to engage with an exclusive community of their peers and the credibility that helps them drive sales and recruit talent.

The associated Inc. 5000 Conference is part of a highly acclaimed portfolio of bespoke events produced by Inc. For more information, visit http://www.inc.com.

Media Contact

Elise Oras, Wheels Up Collective, 610.724.5172, elise@wheelsupcollective.com


Golden Bridge Awards by GLOBEE Accepting entries from all over the world from large, medium, small, and startup companies for the 14th Annual 2022 Golden Bridge Business and Innovation Awards.

The Globee Awards organizer of the worlds premier business awards programs and business ranking lists is now accepting nominations and entries for the 2022 Golden Bridge Business and Innovation Awards. To celebrate achievements Globee Awards has introduced new commemorative items.



The coveted annual Golden Bridge Awards program recognizes and honors the worlds best in organizational performance, products and services, innovations, executives and management teams, women in business and the professions, case studies and successful deployments, public relations and marketing campaigns, product management, websites, blogs, white-papers, videos, advertisements, creativity, partner programs, and customer satisfaction programs from every major industry in the world.

Learn more about the 2022 Golden Bridge Awards and how to nominate here: https://globeeawards.com/golden-bridge-awards/

People | Innovator, Lifetime Achievement, Maverick, and Women Awards Categories Group

People | Entrepreneur Awards Categories Group

People | Executive, Management, and Professionals Awards Categories Group

People | Professional and Staffer (non-executive) of the Year

New Product & Service Innovation | AI, Information Technology & Cyber Security Awards Categories Group

New Product & Service Innovation | Content Technologies and Information Management Awards Categories Group

New Product & Service Innovation | Education Awards Categories Group

New Product & Service Innovation | Energy/CleanTech Industry Awards categories

New Product & Service Innovation | Health Care Awards Categories Group

New Product & Service Innovation | Industry and Vertical Markets Awards Categories Group

New Product & Service Innovation | Best New Product or Service Awards Categories Group

Product & Service Development | People Awards Categories Group

Product & Service Development | Campaign, Outstanding Achievement, Project or Initiative, and Team-Department Awards Categories Group

Company | Innovative Company of the Year Awards Categories Group

Company | Best Company Awards Categories Group

Company | Startup Awards Categories Group

Corporate Communications and PR | People Awards Categories Group

Corporate Communications and PR | Campaign, Outstanding Achievement, Project or Initiative, and Team-Department Awards Categories Group

Creative | App & Mobile Website Awards Categories

Creative | Live Events Awards Categories

Creative | Publications and Print Awards Categories

Creative | Digital and Online Campaign Awards Categories

Creative | Video, Commercial, Advertising, and Film Awards Categories

Creative | Web, Social Media, and Online Presence Awards Categories

Creative | Campaign, Outstanding Achievement, Project or Initiative, and Team-Department Awards Categories Group

Customer Service & Support | People Awards Categories Group

Customer Service & Support | Campaign, Outstanding Achievement, Project or Initiative, and Team-Department Awards Categories Group

Customer Success of the Year Awards Categories Group

Human Resources | People Awards Categories Group

Human Resources | Campaign, Outstanding Achievement, Project or Initiative, and Team-Department Awards Categories Group

Information Technology Users | People Awards Categories Group

Information Technology Users | Campaign, Outstanding Achievement, Project or Initiative, and Team-Department Awards Categories Group

Marketing | People Awards Categories Group

Marketing | Campaign, Outstanding Achievement, Project or Initiative, and Team-Department Awards Categories Group

Milestone of the Year Awards Categories Group

COVID-19 Business Response Awards Categories Group

Winners of previous years are listed here: https://globeeawards.com/golden-bridge-awards/winners/

Stay posted and read success stories of organizations by subscribing to the Globee Newsletter: https://globeeawards.com/subscribe/

A worldwide judging panel of executives and professionals representing a wide spectrum of industries will determine the winners. Winners will be presented and honored in a virtual ceremony attended by the finalists, winners, judges, and industry peers from all over the world. Industry experts and end-users or consumers of products and services can participate in the judging process. More details to register as an industry expert and help as a judge are available at https://globeeawards.com/golden-bridge-awards/judges/

The Golden Bridge Awards is the worlds premier business awards program honoring achievements in every industry around the world. Everyone deserves commendation for job well done. Identify, recognize, and nominate executives, professionals, and employees for their achievements no matter how small or large. There are many categories in which your organization, products and services, and the people behind their success can be nominated. Categories are classified under the following groups:

About the Globee Awards

Globee Awards are conferred in ten programs and competition: the American Best in Business Awards, Business and Communications Excellence Awards, CEO World Awards, Cyber Security Global Excellence Awards, Disruptor Company Awards, Golden Bridge Awards, Information Technology World Awards, International Best in Business Awards, Sales, Marketing, & Service Excellence Awards, and Women World Awards. Learn more about the Globee Awards at https://globeeawards.com

All trademarks belong to their respective owners.
Lisa Culp Taylor Most importantly, Lisa values her clients time and understands that every client deserves and will receive her one-on-one, personalized attention.

A second-generation Nashville area Realtor, Lisa Culp Taylor has earned the respect of her clients and peers and is consistently ranked top or Favorite Realtor in the Middle Tennessee area by Nashville Lifestyles magazine and other media outlets. She knows the high-end luxury areas of Nashville, Franklin, Brentwood and Williamson County extremely well-helping clients navigate the fast-paced and competitive market with an enthusiastic outlook and unwavering commitment. Shes able to quickly evaluate the current housing market, communicate and negotiate effectively and employ high-level marketing tactics to her clients benefit. Most importantly, Lisa values her clients time and understands that every client deserves and will receive her one-on-one, personalized attention.

In addition to building a solid reputation amongst homebuyers and sellers, Lisa serves the larger real estate community as an active member of the Williamson County Association of Realtors. In 2014, she served as president, helping to guide the association through the burgeoning growth that is a hallmark of our countys real estate landscape. Lauded for her expertise in residential resale, new construction, lot sales and development, Lisas sense of professionalism and dedication to excellence ensures her clients receive the best service possible.

Lisa lives near historic downtown Franklin with her family, including a gaggle of fabulous rescue pups, Oompa, Betsy Bug, and Little Man and a rescue cat named KitKat. She is an active supporter of several charities helping animals including Snooty Giggles dog rescue. Additionally, a portion of each commission is donated to Snooty Giggles or the Make a Wish Foundation.

Visit Lisa Culp Taylor's Haute Residence Profile: https://www.hauteresidence.com/member/lisa-culp-taylor/

ABOUT HAUTE RESIDENCE

Designed as a partnership-driven luxury real estate portal, Haute Residence connects its affluent readers with top real estate professionals, while offering the latest in real estate news, showcasing the worlds most extraordinary residences on the market and sharing expert advice from its knowledgeable and experienced real estate partners. The invitation-only luxury real estate network, which partners with just one agent in every market, unites a distinguished collective of leading real estate agents and brokers and highlights the most extravagant properties in leading markets around the globe for affluent buyers, sellers, and real estate enthusiasts. HauteResidence.com has grown to be the number one news source for million-dollar listings, high-end residential developments, celebrity real estate, and more.

Access all of this information and more by visiting http://www.hauteresidence.com
3E & College Now Greater Cleveland are hosting a FAFSA How-To Workshop in the metaverse on March 23, 2022. Hosting this FAFSA How-To via the metaverse helps us engage more families in a more substantive way than we otherwise could. Were eager to make an impact for these students as they make their plans for this fall.

3 Enrollment Marketing, Inc. (3E), a national leader in modern, agile enrollment marketing solutions, and College Now Greater Cleveland, a non-profit provider of college and financial aid guidance and support, are bringing support to students, where they are, by sponsoring a free FAFSA How-To workshop in the metaverse.

According to the National College Attainment Network (NCAN), by the end of the last school year five percent fewer students submitted the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), the form that all colleges and universities use to determine aid eligibility, than the year prior. 3E and College Now Greater Cleveland have teamed to change that trend.

Students and their families can struggle with misconceptions and complexities inherent to the FAFSA process. Even more, the resources available to overcome these barriers have become scarcer as counseling staff remains stretched and COVID disruptions caused a greater shift to remote learning. Complex processes, misperceptions regarding eligibility, and fewer support resources are driving innovation in how colleges and families can work together to solve financial aid issues.

Described by Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, as the next chapter for the internet, the metaverse presents new opportunities for higher ed to better engage students and their families at all stages of the college search journey. For Zuckerberg, the focus is on building technology so people can interact with each other," rather than focusing on how people interact with technology. Applied to the higher education realm, this innovation can carry distinct advantages that can help increase FAFSA completion rates while bolstering college attendance and completion.

3Es Senior Vice President of Product Strategy, Nicole Focareto, is optimistic about how the metaverse can improve student experiences and outcomes: 3Es mission is rooted in building a path for more people to pursue higher education, and financial aid is critical to making that possible. The metaverse presents an immense opportunity to democratize access to high-quality resources before, during, and after enrollmentbringing support to students on their terms, in a space they already are.

College Now Greater Cleveland has been providing students support and guidance in their own mission to help students prepare for and graduate from college. This metaverse extends College Nows commitment and helps scale their assistance abilities. This event will help College Now reach more students with our expertise in FAFSA, financial aid, and enrollment assistance, said Lee Friedman, College Now CEO. We know that the FAFSA is often a huge hurdle for students to overcome when thinking about postsecondary education, but that it is one of the most important forms they can complete to be eligible for federal, state, and institutional aid and, in turn, make postsecondary education a more affordable venture. We are pleased to be partnering with 3E on this event to continue supporting students with this challenging but extremely vital part of the college-going process.

The free FAFSA How-To Workshop, held on March 23, 2022, from 8-9:30 pm ET, begins with a 30-minute FAFSA overview, followed by one-on-one assistance and an interactive session with counselors and staff. The goal is to ensure that families and aspiring students have a better understanding of financial aid offerings and the knowledge and resources to complete their FAFSA application process.

Online access is the only requirement for this metaverse workshop: participants can enter the 3D virtual space with a computer, mobile device, or VR headset.

Registration is required and space is limited. For more details on the workshop, go to: https://www.tickettailor.com/events/3enrollmentmarketinginc/661511

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

About 3 Enrollment Marketing, Inc.

3 Enrollment Marketing Inc. is a national leader in modern agile enrollment marketing solutions, built for higher ed and delivered by experts. Our comprehensive, tech-enabled solutions are designed to break through the noise and drive action from digital natives (i.e., high school students, adult learners) and their influencers (i.e., parents, counselors). Utilizing 3Es 360 experience campaigns that are retail-inspired, personalized, and interactive, higher ed institutions of all sizes can successfully compete, and win, in todays complex environment and meet their enrollment goals year after year.

https://3enrollment.com/

https://twitter.com/3Enrollment

https://www.linkedin.com/company/3enrollment/

About College Now Greater Cleveland, Inc.

College Now provides Greater Cleveland students with guidance and access to funds to prepare for and graduate from college. For more than 50 years, our goal has been to help students pursue educational opportunities that empower them to embark on rewarding careers and strengthen our community. College Now assists more than 30,000 students each year, delivering college and career access advising, financial aid counseling, and scholarship and retention services in Greater Cleveland schools, in the College Now Resource Center and through community-based programs.

http://www.collegenowgc.org


Upon His Wings: a delightful story of a beautiful butterflys journey of faith. Upon His Wings is the creation of published author Kathleen Finkbeiner, who resides in Western Pennsylvania with her husband, two teenage sons, and a myriad of pets, both furry and feathered. She is passionate about Jesus, family, sewing, and creating. For twenty years, Finkbeiner has been honing her upholstery and sewing skills and has a small business called Roomscapes.

Finkbeiner shares, Imagine being a fragile butterfly on a blustery day. It would seem as if no one was in control and danger was all around. Travel along with this little butterfly as he learns to cling to God and trust in His direction.

Published by Christian Faith Publishing, Kathleen Finkbeiners new book features vibrant illustrations by Makayla Stoliker.

Finkbeiner shares an important spiritual lesson paired with engaging imagery for the encouragement and motivation of young minds.

Consumers can purchase Upon His Wings at traditional brick & mortar bookstores, or online at Amazon.com, Apple iTunes store, or Barnes and Noble.

For additional information or inquiries about Upon His Wings, contact the Christian Faith Publishing media department at 866-554-0919.
Lawrence Hoffman, a middle-aged native American with a little European descent, has completed his new book Resilience: 40 Years: a poignant read that commemorates a variety of emotions, situations, and people. The poems are helmed from the place of empathy, compassion, and wisdom.

Wertz shares, Resilience: 40 Years is a collection of poems that describes to the reader the different daily emotional aspects of different life situations of the author, such as thinking the worse in a bad situation or the best in a good situation. There are some poems with far-reaching depth and others with lighthearted daily lifeall describing the emotional impact of said situations.

Published by Page Publishing, Lawrence Hoffmans sublime piece mirrors the authors observation of life.

Its a read that knows how to keep ones attention.

Readers who wish to experience this significant work can purchase Resilience: 40 Years 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.
The recent growth of our team in the Frederick office solidifies McNees expanding presence in the Mid-Atlantic market with a Clients First mindset and continued focus on high-quality service," McNees Chair Brian Jackson said.

McNees Wallace & Nurick LLC today announced land use attorney Noel S. Manalo and commercial litigator Derek P. Roussillon joined the firms Frederick, Md., office, doubling the number of legal professionals based there within four months.

As a member of the McNees Real Estate Group, Manalo works with commercial and residential real estate developers in Frederick County and its municipalities, representing clients in all aspects of land use, zoning, development and general real estate matters. He appears before government entities and often serves as outside general counsel to his clients.

Manalo is a lifelong Frederick-area resident who builds on his nearly 20 years of professional experience and relationships to assist clients and their development teams in navigating a sometimes confusing and unpredictable regulatory environment to effectively meet the clients goals.

I take pride in serving the community and taking part in its continued growth. By joining McNees, I continue that work with the support of a firm and legal professionals I admire, Manalo said. McNees has an established and respected land use practice in Central Pennsylvania, and I am excited to be a part of expanding that success into western Maryland.

In his practice, Roussillon represents a diverse group of clients  ranging from small businesses to Fortune 500 companies  in complex commercial, business and employment-related disputes. The 19-year veteran has significant experience litigating disputes in federal and state courts, as well as in arbitration forums.

I am excited to be joining McNees and am extremely impressed with its vision to expand into Frederick, Md., Roussillon said. McNees has a highly regarded litigation practice that I am looking forward to contributing to.

Located less than an hour from Baltimore and Washington, D.C., in Marylands second largest city, McNees office in Frederick has become an integral part of the firm in the last five years. The attorneys based there have longstanding reputations in the community as thought leaders who consistently meet their clients multifaceted needs related to real estate, land use, construction, energy regulation and supply, litigation and corporate business, among other matters.

These clients also benefit from McNees full bench of legal talent  including nearly 150 attorneys  and multiple subsidiary companies, all working together to not only solve legal issues but also devise and implement creative business solutions.

We are excited to welcome Noel and Derek to McNees and know that our clients will benefit from their great reputation, capabilities and community relationships, McNees Chair Brian Jackson said. The recent growth of our team in the Frederick office solidifies McNees expanding presence in the Mid-Atlantic market with a Clients First mindset and continued focus on high-quality service.

McNees Frederick team also includes:



Paul D. Rose, Jr., solves problems for businesses, business owners and executives as a member of the Construction & Procurement Law, Real Estate and Litigation Groups. His area of practice is commercial business litigation and he has 20 years of experience representing clients in disputes relating to construction, real estate and general civil litigation matters.

Robert A. Weishaar, Jr., is co-chair of the Energy & Environmental Group and member of the McNees Management Committee. Focusing primarily on matters involving the state and federal regulation of electricity supply and delivery, natural gas supply and delivery and petroleum products pipelines, he has appeared before numerous state regulatory commissions  including those in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, West Virginia, Virginia and Ohio  as well as before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and various state and federal appellate courts.

Andrew Drew F. Murphy works with businesses ranging from sole proprietorships to middle-market companies as an of counsel in the Corporate & Tax Law Group. He represents clients in matters pertaining to business formation, mergers and acquisitions, venture capital and private equity formation, corporate reorganization, commercial real estate transactions and development, and business succession planning. He also provides estate planning for individuals and families.

Kelly E. Lynch is a litigator practicing in McNees Construction & Procurement Law Group. She represents clients in real estate, land use, construction and general commercial and business litigation matters and has undertaken large and small litigation matters in state and federal court.

Since January 2021, McNees announced a series of significant additions and expansions aimed at enhancing the firm's broad range of client services. It added 45 attorneys from diverse backgrounds to its bench of legal talent; expanded into markets at each end of Pennsylvania, in Devon, Chester County, and Pittsburgh, Allegheny County; hired its first Chief Practice Officer; and launched three new subsidiary companies in public relations and strategic communications, municipal consulting and auto dealership transaction services.

McNees is a full-service law firm with nearly 150 attorneys representing corporations, associations, institutions and individuals. Headquartered in Harrisburg, Pa., McNees serves clients worldwide from 10 offices in three states and Washington, D.C. Other offices include Devon, Lancaster, Pittsburgh, Scranton, State College and York, Pa.; Columbus, Ohio; and Frederick, Md. McNees is a member of the ALFA International Global Legal Network.
After debuting in the neighboring state of Texas in 2018, the Members Health Plan (MHP) will soon be available in Arkansas as well.

The MHP is an association-based, multi-employer, self-funded health benefits trust exclusively for law firms. Through the MHP, participating law firms pool their risk as one large multiple employer group to help manage the cost of health care benefits, lower their administrative costs, and to gain access to a wider variety of benefits. A key benefit of the MHP is that any surplus created by the program goes back into the plan for the benefit of the participating members.

Law firms in Arkansas will be able to start requesting group health quotes for this new plan in April 2022. There will be an anticipated 10 medical plan options to choose from, including traditional copay plans and high-deductible health plans with varying deductibles and coinsurance. HSA-compatible options are included. A complimentary online benefits enrollment and administration platform is also available to allow for paperless enrollment and easy management of benefits.

We are excited to offer the MHP to Arkansas law firms in our ongoing effort to serve Arkansas Bar members and help lawyers attain quality healthcare solutions for themselves and their employees. The MHP is a significant step in creating unique offerings and providing additional options in the marketplace, said Nicklaus Trefry, Member Benefits CEO.

We are continually striving to enhance the value of benefits for our members. The MHP is an important addition to our existing lineup of offerings on the ArkBar Insurance Marketplace, added Karen Hutchins, executive director of the Arkansas Bar.

The MHP is regulated and compliant in both Arkansas and Texas, as well as with the U.S. Department of Labor.

Law firms located in Arkansas and Texas can learn more about Members Health Plan at membershealthplan.com.

About the Arkansas Bar Association

Founded in 1898, the Arkansas Bar Association is the premier legal association in the state. As a voluntary organization of more than 5,000 members, the Associations primary mission is to support attorneys; advance the practice of law; advocate for the legal profession; foster professionalism, civility, and integrity; and protect the rule of law.

About Member Benefits

Member Benefits, the administrator of the Members Health Plan and the ArkBar Insurance Marketplace, is a leading third-party administrator and provider of insurance benefit programs to member-based organizations. The company specializes in the design, marketing, and administration of programs for employer groups, associations, affinity groups, and franchises. Member Benefits operates throughout the U.S., with office locations in Jacksonville, Florida and Austin, Texas. memberbenefits.com.
With the right investments in training and education, companies can create their qualified workers ready to mentor the next generation. - Bill Stoller, Express Employment International CEO

Struggling with a depleted applicant pool, nearly 2 in 5 businesses (39%) report hiring someone they otherwise would not have in order to fill an open position, according to a new survey from The Harris Poll commissioned by Express Employment Professionals.

This statistic increases with company size to 47% of companies with more than 500 employees, 46% of companies with 100  499 employees, 47% of companies with 50  99 employees, 29% of those with 10  49 employees and 25% of those with 2  9 employees.

Of those who have hired a candidate they would have traditionally overlooked, roughly 3 in 5 (63%) say they have overlooked soft or hard skills, while 45% have overlooked an applicants ability to pass a background check or drug screening.

More optimistically, however, there may be an end in sight for hiring woes with nearly two-thirds (66%) of hiring decision-makers believing the tight labor market will end before 2023.

As for what skills job seekers are lacking, Nancy Reed, Express franchise owner in Texas, says employers are looking for problem solving skills, critical thinking, ability to be a team player, adaptability, flexibility, dependability and technical skills.

Businesses are willing and have been overlooking traditional hiring requirements, she said. They are having to make critical hiring decisions due to the lack of available workers and growing demands.

A lack of recent work history and skillsets are two of the biggest challenges in Washington for Express franchise owner Stacey Snodgrass.

So many people exiting the workforce during COVID has left a large gap, and employers are wanting people with recent work history, she said. We have job orders for higher-level skilled trades positions that are hard to fill in our offices.

One of the more controversial traditional hiring requirements modified or eliminated to fill positions has been drug testing.

Some companies dropped this pre-employment requirement during COVID to onboard people faster, and while a few have changed the process to drug test now, you will still have to complete one when hired, as required by law, Snodgrass added. We have not seen this requirement dropped for any positions that are safety-sensitive.

Instead of making subpar hires, companies should create their own qualified workforce through training.

Companies are constantly battling high turnover due to market conditions, Reed said. It makes more sense to give an opportunity to a loyal employee and invest in them directly versus hiring someone experienced who will leave for another job. We are seeing businesses investing more in training and are going back to the concept of building your own to create a strong workforce from within.

And Reed is encouraged by the potential for the labor pool to grow in the next year if COVID-19 continues to subside.

The workforce that was waiting to return are now searching for new professional opportunities, she said. I see it in our offices and applicant tracking every day. Job seekers are now accepting positions more frequently and starting to get back to work.

Eliminating barriers to employment is pivotal to pulling workers off the sidelines, according to Express Employment International CEO Bill Stoller.

However, careful considerations for the safety and health of colleagues must be taken into account when waiving employment requirements, he said. With the right investments in training and education, companies can create their qualified workers ready to mentor the next generation.

Survey Methodology

The survey was conducted online within the United States by The Harris Poll on behalf of Express Employment Professionals between Nov. 10 and Dec. 2, 2021, among 1,009 U.S. hiring decision-makers (defined as adults ages 18+ in the U.S. who are employed full-time or self-employed, work at companies with more than one employee, and have full/significant involvement in hiring decisions at their company). Data were weighted where necessary by company size to bring them into line with their actual proportions in the population.

***

If you would like to arrange for an interview with Bill Stoller to discuss this topic, please contact Sheena Hollander, Director of Corporate Communications and PR, at (405) 717-5966.

About Bill Stoller

William H. "Bill" Stoller is chairman and chief executive officer of Express Employment

International. Founded in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, the international staffing franchisor

supports the Express Employment Professionals franchise and related brands. The Express franchise brand is an industry-leading, international staffing company with franchise locations in the U.S., Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand.

About Express Employment Professionals

At Express Employment Professionals, were in the business of people. From job seekers to client companies, Express helps people thrive and businesses grow. Our international network of franchises offers localized staffing solutions to the communities they serve across the U.S., Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, employing 586,000 people globally in 2021 and 10 million since its inception. For more information, visit ExpressPros.com.


Weve seen a significant increase in demand for data center and network capacity inside of the UK, explains Mark Mahle, Chief Engineering Officer for NetActuate.

NetActuate has just finalized a round of upgrades to their London data center, adding infrastructure and connectivity capacity that will ensure the company is well equipped to continue its expansion within the UK market and provide reliable, high-performance services to customers.

Weve seen a significant increase in demand for data center and network capacity inside of the UK, explains Mark Mahle, Chief Engineering Officer for NetActuate. The upgrades weve just completed provide our customers additional bandwidth options, as well as provide our local customers same-country failover and redundancy with a soon-to-be-announced second data center.

Situated in the heart of Europe's financial center with access to over 30 European markets and exchanges, NetActuates London data center has a rich interconnection with a vast array of service providers, financial services, enterprises and digital media companies. Customers in this location can also benefit from direct access to LINX (the London Internet Exchange).

This facility offers industry-leading power resilience from two separate 33kV supplies, from two independent grid substations, and features multi-factor security and fully redundant cooling for a total incoming feed capacity of 9.6 MVA. NetActuates London data center is also certified compliant for ISO 9001, ISO 14001, ISO 27001: 2013, OHSAS 18001 and PCI DSS.

Providers can easily deploy and expand their global presence on NetActuates anycast delivery platform, built on one of the largest peered IPv4 and IPv6 networks in the world. Purpose-built to deliver low latency and high reliability across diverse global markets, NetActuates anycast platform is available with simple, predictable monthly pricing in London and over 30 US and global locations. This is part of NetActuates global footprintcustomers can deploy their hybrid environments into these locations without having to manage multiple vendors for their infrastructure and low-latency network services.

To learn more about NetActuates services from Miami, please schedule a call with a solution specialist by calling +1-919-381-5400 or visiting netactuate.com.

---

About NetActuate

Operating one of the 10 largest IPv4 and IPv6 peered networks in the world, NetActuate helps providers get closer to their end users  no matter where in the world they are. Available from over 30 locations worldwide, our managed network and infrastructure services simplify and accelerate the global distribution of online applications and SaaS platforms. Learn more today at +1-919-381-5400 or at netactuate.com. To learn more about BGP anycast and how it can help reduce latency across diverse global markets, visit NetActuate's anycast information resource site at anycast.com.


New Havis Lockable Under-Seat Storage Box for Chevrolet Trucks With its high-strength 14-gauge steel frame and an installation time that takes just a few minutes, the new Havis Lockable Under-Seat Storage Box for Chevrolet Trucks is a great mix of reliability and convenience," said Sam Barall, Havis National Sales Manager for Enterprise

Havis, Inc., a leading designer and manufacturer of in-vehicle mobile working solutions for the public safety and utility sectors, is pleased to introduce the new Lockable Under-Seat Storage Box for Chevrolet and GMC trucks.

The C-SBX-105 for the 2019-2022 Chevrolet Silverado and the 2019-2022 GMC Sierra crew cab pickups offers secure storage and a low-profile fit that is perfect for any demanding environment.

Were taking advantage of mounting points already in the vehicle so theres no drilling required, said Sam Barall, Havis National Sales Manager for Enterprise. With its high-strength 14-gauge steel frame and an installation time that takes just a few minutes, this is a great mix of reliability and convenience."

These rugged storage solutions also feature dual lids with low-profile and lockable latches that align with the 60-40 split in the rear seat. End users can mount an adjustable divider to pre-drilled holes or add holes of their own to set the ideal spacing for their drawer solution.

Brett Young, Havis National Sales Manager for Public Safety added, This storage box can handle heavy-duty gear but its still versatile. For users storing electronics, there are provisions for mounting fans, ventilation holes, and knockouts that make it easy to route cables.

For more information, contact media@havis.com, or visit http://www.havis.com.

ABOUT HAVIS

Havis, Inc., is a privately held, ISO 9001 certified company that manufactures in-vehicle mobile office solutions for public safety, public works, government agencies, and mobile professionals. For more than 80 years, the Havis mission has been to increase mobile worker productivity with industry-leading products that are built to the highest safety and quality standards and are designed with comfort in mind. Havis is dedicated to responsible intellectual property management, and fosters ongoing innovation. Havis's patent and trademark portfolio demonstrate a commitment to consistently researching and developing unique products and solutions for mobile industries around the world. With headquarters in Warminster, PA, and an additional location in Plymouth, MI, Havis currently employs more than 300 people. For more information on Havis, please call 1-800-524-9900 or visit http://www.havis.com.
The Prem Rawat Foundation's humanitarian aid will help people in Ukraine and those seeking refuge in neighboring countries. Photo courtesy of Cesvi. A plate of food is more than just nourishment; its hope and a sign that someone cares.

Thanks to an outpouring of generosity from supporters across the globe, The Prem Rawat Foundation (TPRF) is helping supply food, water and other humanitarian aid to those suffering from the war in Ukraine.

TPRF has initially provided $250,000 in grants to World Central Kitchen and Cesvi. Both are proven nonprofit partners who are in strong positions to help people in Ukraine and those seeking refuge in neighboring countries.

Supporters are continuing to donate toward the effort, enabling TPRF to provide more aid in the weeks ahead. Donate here to increase the amount of aid that TPRF can give for Ukraine relief.

Prem Rawat and all of us at TPRF are deeply concerned about the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Ukraine. Friends of TPRF have offered exceptional support to provide critical aid for people suffering from this tragic war. Continued donations will increase the amount of humanitarian aid that TPRF can provide, says Linda Pascotto, TPRF Board Chair.

The TPRF grant of $125,000 to World Central Kitchen (WCK) will help provide nutritious meals and water to thousands of people at border crossings, shelters, and in refugee camps in 20 cities in Ukraine, Poland, Hungary, Romania and Moldova. To date, over 1.7 million meals have been served and the TPRF grant will help further scale up the effort.

World Central Kitchen is grateful for TPRFs support and belief in our mission. They share our belief that a plate of food is more than just nourishment; its hope and a sign that someone cares, said Jason Collis, WCKs Vice President of Relief. Their support will allow us to continue to provide fresh and comforting meals to Ukrainians fleeing their homes as well as those staying in the country.

The TPRF grant of $125,000 to Cesvi will also help provide vital necessities to refugees including water, food, hygiene kits, medical supplies, sleeping bags, mattresses, insulated tents and psychological support for those who are traumatized.

Thank you to everyone at The Prem Rawat Foundation for your generous support. We are honored by your partnership and happy for the help that together we will be able to bring to the field where thousands of people are suffering, says Roberto Vignola, Cesvi Deputy General Manager.

Since Prem Rawat founded TPRF in 2001, it has given over 160 grants totaling over $5.1 million to a variety of partner NGOs in 40 countries to help victims of natural disasters, COVID-19 and other traumas.

The humanitarian grants are just one of the ways that TPRF fulfills its mission of advancing dignity, peace and prosperity across the globe.

TPRFs Food for People program has provided over 4.5 million nutritious meals, clean water and educational opportunities to underserved children and elderly adults in India, Nepal and Ghana.

TPRF also offers the Peace Education Program, an innovative series of video-based workshops that have helped over 230,000 people in over 70 countries discover their own inner strength, hope and peace.

Registered as a U.S.-based 501(c)(3) tax-exempt nonprofit organization, TPRF has earned the highest rankings from independent evaluators Guidestar and Charity Navigator for transparency, fiscal responsibility, results and management.

Learn more about The Prem Rawat Foundation here.
Loosed Shackles: Living in the Freedom of Christianity: a potent reminder of the importance for an active life of faith. Loosed Shackles: Living in the Freedom of Christianity is the creation of published author Rosemary Abram, a devoted Christian and loving wife who began pursuing a writing career after raising a family and retiring from the corporate world.

Abram shares, More than anything, I feel that a personal relationship with God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit (the Holy Trinity) is the only true goal of Christianity. It is out of this belief and my experience of professing Christianity (but not truly grasping its true goal) that this devotional emerged.

One enters salvation with a happy overflowing heart. Then, as we begin to travel this life choice journey, we find ourselves confronted with the trappings of misdirected religion.

To understand religion, lets look at its definition at http://www.thefreedictionary.com:

a. The belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers, regarded as creating and governing the universe: respect for religion.

b. A particular variety of such belief, especially when organized into a system of doctrine and practice: the worlds many religions.

c. A set of beliefs, values, and practices based on the teachings of a spiritual leader.

It is c above where we can get off course and into those nonbiblical dos and donts, the rules and regulations, pomp and pageantry, the placing of the Christian leader on a pedestal, things that are constructed on human frailty. It is to these confining and restrictive attitudes that I say enough!

In this fifty-two-week devotional, I am sharing some of the truths God has revealed to me in his Word that helped free me and put me on the path to attaining my own more personal relationship with him, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit.

I hope that you too will find sound doctrine in the Word of God that is presented in these weekly inspection and reflection writings. May the Scriptures and principles enable you to walk free in the liberty that we have in Jesus Christ (Gal. 5:1). It is my desire that they will help you recognize and overcome any aspects of religious thinking currently preventing you from attaining a more fulfilling and free relationship with the Holy Trinity.

Live out your salvation in victory, breaking the shackles that can bind!

Published by Christian Faith Publishing, Rosemary Abrams new book will encourage believers both new and established.

Abram shares in hopes of promoting the importance of living a life of freedom through dedicated faith in and connection to the Holy Trinity.

Consumers can purchase Loosed Shackles: Living in the Freedom of Christianity at traditional brick & mortar bookstores, or online at Amazon.com, Apple iTunes store, or Barnes and Noble.

For additional information or inquiries about Loosed Shackles: Living in the Freedom of Christianity, contact the Christian Faith Publishing media department at 866-554-0919.
"Dean Smith is a strategic leader with a sterling reputation among colleagues here and in the global diplomacy community," said Dr. Katia Passerini, Provost and Executive Vice President.

Seton Hall University is pleased to announce that Courtney B. Smith, Ph.D. acting dean of the School of Diplomacy and International Relations, has been appointed to the role of Dean. To foster collaboration among the Universitys schools and colleges  a key priority of Harvest Our Treasures  Dean Smith also will serve as vice dean of Seton Hall Law, where he will assist with budget management and related matters.

In making the announcement, Dr. Katia Passerini, Provost and Executive Vice President, said, Dean Smith is a strategic leader with a sterling reputation among colleagues here and in the global diplomacy community. He has displayed exceptional devotion to the school and University over the past 23 years, including an ongoing commitment to empowering students to help build the school together. I am confident his vision for the school and tireless work ethic will advance diplomacy and international relations at Seton Hall to new heights.

Chairman of the schools Board of Advisors, Richard Gannon, J.D. 91, said of the appointment, Dean Smith shepherded the school and University through several transitions. His steady leadership is greatly appreciated. The schools momentum has continued to rise during this interim period, thanks to Dean Smiths leadership. Not to mention, he has guided the school successfully through the pandemic. I look forward to working closely with him, as I have done for many years, to continue the schools forward progress.

One of the School of Diplomacys founding faculty members, Dean Smith began his academic career in 1999. He earned tenure and was promoted to associate professor in 2005. That year, he was appointed associate dean and subsequently became senior associate dean in 2014. He managed many aspects of the schools operations, from student recruitment to budget management, and agreed to serve as acting dean in August 2019. He has worked with the schools faculty and administrators on several key initiatives, including the World Leaders Forum and partnership with the United Nations Association.

Since he assumed the role of acting dean, the school has launched a Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Justice Coalition comprised of 45 students, alumni, faculty members and administrators. The coalition developed three new graduate and undergraduate courses on race, gender and religion in international affairs, and launched the Black Diplomacy Student Organization, which was honored by the SGA as the outstanding new student group last year.

Additionally, the school is developing new collaborative programs with international partners, including an online mid-career graduate degree focused on international affairs and diplomatic practice with the United Nations Institute for Training and Research. Other programs include a combined B.S./M.A. program that joins an undergraduate degree from Seton Hall with a graduate degree from the Graduate Institute in Geneva.

Also during his tenure as acting dean, the school diversified its Board of Advisors with new members, including Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Leymah Gbowee. It launched an ambitious fundraising plan anchored by a new Diplomacy Campaign Committee whose members have pledged personal gifts and opened their networks to build further support for the schools programs and initiatives.

I feel very fortunate to be offered the opportunity to serve as Dean of the School of Diplomacy. From the moment I arrived at Seton Hall in 1999, I have found the Diplomacy community to be a special place. We have always been blessed with student leaders who have played a key role in building our school, guided by an accomplished and dedicated team of faculty and administrators, and supported by a strong network of alumni, Board members, and other friends of the school. We have done great things together, and I am excited to continue our work preparing students for meaningful careers in a challenging international environment.

Dean Smith has served as a Faculty Consultant for the Secretariat of the United Nations Year of Dialogue Among Civilizations. He has likewise represented the school at the UN Department of Global Communication as part of its NGO affiliation. He has served on the Governing Council of the International Studies Association as its representative to the United Nations, and as treasurer of the Academic Council on the United Nations System Board of Directors. He has an active research agenda, including his book, Politics and Process at the United Nations: The Global Dance, along with more than 20 articles, book chapters and other publications.

An online version of this release can be found here.
There Once Was a Man Called Adam: a helpful resource for juvenile readers seeking a deeper understanding of Adams importance. There Once Was a Man Called Adam is the creation of published author Susan Greer, a native of Chicago who has been a Sunday school teacher for over fifty years.

Greer shares, All things were perfect in every way. It was a world happy and carefree, full of innocence and love. Then one thing happened, stealing Adams innocence, making this world a harsh place. Read and find how the Father made a way to restore what was lost.

Published by Christian Faith Publishing, Susan Greers new book will delight and inspire young minds as they explore the life of Adam.

Greer offers young children of faith a compelling opportunity to learn about an important aspect of scripture.

Consumers can purchase There Once Was a Man Called Adam at traditional brick & mortar bookstores, or online at Amazon.com, Apple iTunes store, or Barnes and Noble.

For additional information or inquiries about There Once Was a Man Called Adam, contact the Christian Faith Publishing media department at 866-554-0919.
The Web3 Law Conference - Sponsored by Bracewell and the Web3 Law Center. The transition to Web3 will take time, and it is important that lawyers, law firms, business owners and developers understand the benefits and risks.

The Web3 Law Center is proud to announce the 1st annual Web3 Law Conference taking place April 7-8, 2022 in Austin, TX. The inaugural event will feature legal and industry experts discussing a variety of topics related to web3.

The transition to Web3 will take time, and it is important that lawyers, law firms, business owners and developers understand the benefits and risks. The Web3 Law Conference is a perfect opportunity to get started.

Speakers lined up for the event include Commissioner Dawn DeBerry Stump, Federal Judge Alan Albright, and legal experts from the Web3 Law Center, Bracewell LLP, Littler Mendelson, P.C., and the James Street Group. These speakers will focus on topics relevant to the legal industry and web3 technologies such as blockchain technology, Smart Contracts, business formation, cryptocurrencies, the metaverse, regulatory and legal issues, and much more.

The Web3 Law Conference is being held in Austin, Texas at The Line Austin hotel. For those who cant make it to Austin, the conference will also be available remotely. The conference kicks off on April 7th and includes two full days of exciting speakers, panels, roundtable discussions, and even a fireside chat.

Conference attendees (in-person and remote) will have access to exciting opportunities including:



Expert Q&A Sessions

Web3 Law Center Membership

9+ Hours of Anticipated CLE for Lawyers

A Conference NFT

There are also amazing opportunities available for university and law school students. Students have the opportunity to attend the Web3 Law Conference at a discounted rate, or free if they qualify for a scholarship. Students will also have access to career assistance and networking with industry leaders. This is an exciting opportunity for students interested in web3 to learn more.

Learn More about the Web3 Law Conference

You can learn more about the Web3 Law Conference by visiting https://austin22.web3law.center/. The website includes a list of speakers, a current schedule of events, and frequently asked questions about the event and venue. To join the web3 discussion now, visit the Web3 Law Center website.
We presented Woolpert with this award to honor their diverse and innovative products and services delivering actionable insights and value to civil government agencies and entities.

Planet has selected Woolpert for its Civil Government Partner of the Year Award. The award recognizes Woolpert for its ongoing efforts in helping Planet achieve growth in the state and local market, while providing the subject matter expertise and established quality that ensures government clients receive the solutions they need.

Woolpert has a rich history and expertise in delivering geospatial, aerial and satellite data solutions in civil government. They are one of the first partners within the Planet partner ecosystem to be vetted and certified as a Planet professional services provider, said John Atkinson, vice president of Channel Sales at Planet. We presented Woolpert with this award to honor their diverse and innovative products and services delivering actionable insights and value to civil government agencies and entities."

Woolpert Solutions Scientist Matt Hutchinson said Planet and Woolpert have been addressing the need for last-mile integration of Planet data into specific client tools, analyses and workflows. Last year, the companies expanded that partnership and aligned Planets Professional Services team with Woolperts geospatial innovation team so that they can work together on client projects.

Hutchinson said that because Woolpert is a global architecture, engineering and geospatial (AEG) firm, it has a deep understanding of what products and services will provide the most benefit to clients.

Were currently building a prototype to simplify differential tax assessment of agricultural lands for local governments, Hutchinson said. The app utilizes multiple sources of data and imagery to assess value based on what farmers are growing, with the goal of saving time and effort for local government staff, while improving efficiencies and transparency for the farmers benefit. We believe it will be a game-changer for local governments, and it is something that we could not execute without this partnership with Planet.

Woolpert is also integrating Planets high-frequency satellite data with Woolperts high-resolution aerial data and imagery within the Google Earth Engine platform to benefit federal, state and local governments. Woolpert has been a Google Premier Partner since 2016.

Hutchinson lauded Planet, which images the entire Earths land mass each day, for steadily augmenting resources for its partner program to assist its value-added resellers, integrators and professional services providers around the world.

We are truly honored to receive this award because it validates the benefits of our partnership and confirms that we are fulfilling our shared goal to provide current and high-quality imagery and data to all levels of government, he said. We want to thank Planet not only for this honor and support but for continuing to be an outstanding partner in our collective efforts to provide the vital data and imagery needed to support informed decisions.

About Woolpert

Woolpert is the premier architecture, engineering, geospatial (AEG) and strategic consulting firm, with a vision to become one of the best companies in the world. We innovate within and across markets to effectively serve public, private and government clients worldwide. Woolpert is an ENR Top 150 Global Design Firm, has earned six straight Great Place to Work certifications and actively nurtures a culture of growth, inclusion, diversity and respect. Founded in 1911 in Dayton, Ohio, Woolpert has been Americas fastest-growing AEG firm since 2015. The firm has 1,900 employees and more than 60 offices on four continents. For more, visit woolpert.com.
Summary: When it comes to police traffic stops, the context in which police officers operate is important. New research covering tens of millions of U.S. traffic stops found that Black drivers were more likely than White drivers to be stopped by police in regions with a more racially biased White population.

Traffic stops, which happen approximately 50,000 times each day in the United States, are the most common interaction between law enforcement and the public, according to data from the Stanford Open Policing Project. These stops can result in nothing more than a friendly warning or can escalate into an arrest using force. All other factors being equal, however, Black drivers are more likely than White drivers to stopped by police. Uncovering the reasons for this discrepancy is essential to understanding and combating discrimination and racial disparities in the criminal justice system.

Two independent articles published the journal Psychological Science shed new light on how countywide attitudes toward race correlate with local policing. Both papers reveal that the greater the racial prejudice against Black people is in a county, the more often state troopers tend to stop Black drivers relative to White drivers.

Were not the first to show that there are racial disparities in police stops, said Pierce Ekstrom, a researcher at the University of Nebraska and lead author on one of the papers. What we found, however, is that these disparities are related to regional variance in racial attitudes. They are more pronouncedto Black drivers disadvantagein counties where, according to our estimates, the population shows a preference for White people relative to Black people.

Research published in a concurrent paper by another team, led by Marleen Stelter from the University of Hamburg, found similar results.

We were surprised to learn that racial prejudice was more closely linked to racial disparities in police traffic stops than racial stereotypes. Marleen Stelter, University of Hamburg

Video News Release: Traffic Stops and Race

Both teams analyzed data from two existing research projects. The first was the Stanford Open Policing Project, which collected records of tens of millions of traffic stops made by law enforcement agencies across the United States.

The second was the Project Implicit website, which contains multiyear survey data on racial attitudes and threat-related stereotypes associated with White and Black people. This data set revealed how consistent counties were in their racial attitudes. According to Ekstrom, though individual respondents varied greatly, for every county in their data set the average White respondent showed at least slightly pro-White and anti-Black explicit attitudes and at least moderately pro-White and anti-Black implicit attitudes.

I dont want to downplay the importance of individuals diverse attitudes, said Ekstrom, but that consistency at the county level, I think, speaks to how pervasive a cultural problem racial bias can be in the United States.

Each research team found statistically significant differences in the rates at which White and Black drivers were stopped by police. After accounting for percentages of the population in each area, police operating in counties identified as having higher measures of prejudice and stereotypes were more likely to stop Black drivers than White drivers.

On the basis of these data, the researchers were also able to use their estimates of counties racial attitudes to predict the proportion of Black and White driving-age residents who were stopped in each county.

We were surprised to learn that racial prejudice was more closely linked to racial disparities in police traffic stops than racial stereotypes, said Stelter. This finding deviates from previous research. We found instead that liking for White people and dislike for Black people were stronger predictors of racial disparities in police traffic stops.

Ekstrom and his colleagues do acknowledge that the data used to measure racial attitudes are from a so-called convenience sample, albeit a large and widely used one. Their analyses assume that individuals who participated in Project Implicit hold similar views to other people of the same race, gender, and age in the same area. Using the same data, previous studies have accurately predicted other outcomes associated with racial attitudes, including disparities in health, school disciplinary practices, and police use of lethal force.

In an accompanying commentary on the two papers, lead author Keith Payne, a researcher at the University of North Carolina, noted: These findings are part of a larger trend in many studies in recent years, showing that regional differences in measures of race bias are associated with important real-life disparities. It has long been predicted that such associations would be expected based on small-scale laboratory experiments. It is both validating for theories of modern prejudice and concerning for society that those predictions are being borne out.

We should bear in mind that racial discrimination and inequality are pervasive cultural problems, not a handful of weird outliers that only pop up in this or that corner of the country, said Ekstrom. If racial attitudes really are the reason for the disparities we see, it would take large-scale changes in cultural attitudes and norms to shift them in a manner that would impact disparities as well.

In addition to considering the psychology and behaviors of individual officers, policymakers and the public should consider whether or how norms and institutional practices shape police officers behavior, said Stelter.

Feedback on this article? Email apsobserver@psychologicalscience.org or comment below.

References:

Stelter, M., Essien, I., Sander, C., & Degner, J. (2022). Racial bias in police traffic stops: White residents county-level prejudice and stereotypes are related to disproportionate stopping of Black drivers. Psychological Science. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/09567976211051272

Ekstrom, P., Le Forestier, J., & Lai, C. (2022). Racial demographics explain the link between racial disparities in traffic stops and county-level racial attitudes. Psychological Science. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/09567976211053573

Payne, B. K., & Rucker, J. (2022). Explaining the spatial patterning of racial disparities in traffic stops requires a structural perspective: Further reflections on Stelter et al. (2022) and Ekstrom et al. (2022). Psychological Science. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/09567976211056641

Psychological Science, the flagship journal of the Association for Psychological Science, is the leading peer-reviewed journal publishing empirical research spanning the entire spectrum of the science of psychology.

Journalists may request a copy of this article by contacting the APS News Team at news@psychologicalscience.org.
Do peoples personality traits reflect when they were born? In a recent article in Psychological Science, Naemi D. Brandt (University of Hamburg) and a team of researchers from Germany and the United States examined how adult Big Five personality traits changed across generations of people in the United States. The traitsconscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, extraversion, and openness to experiencemake up a well-established framework that captures individual differences in how people act, feel, and think, which can influence life outcomes such as longevity, income, and happiness.

To investigate how personality traits develop with age and across generations, Brandt and colleagues used data from the Seattle Longitudinal Study, a large study that collected data from individuals of various ages in the Seattle area every seventh year between 1956 and 2012. Specifically, the researchers used personality data from 4,732 individuals born between 1883 and 1976 (1991 years old) who completed at least two personality assessments.

Brandt and colleagues measured three types of variables: intraindividual change (how much an individuals personality changed during the study), age-related differences (how age might impact changes in personality traits), and cohort-related differences (how different generations might show different traits and patterns of change).

Overall, the results fit with previous findings. Women on average were more agreeable and less extraverted than men. But some findings contradicted previous findingsfor example, women had less neuroticism than men. The new analysis also found that individuals with more years of formal education tended to score higher on openness and that older individuals were, on average, more conscientious and agreeable and less extraverted and open than their younger counterparts.

Personality change across generations

Using different growth models, Brandt and colleagues found that peoples conscientiousness and agreeableness tended to increase as they aged, whereas neuroticism and openness tended to decrease. Extraversion remained more stable across the lifespan. Thus, as in previous research, individuals maturity-related traits and agency-related traits changed across time: That is, people became more conscientious, more agreeable, less neurotic, and less open. In this study, older age brought steeper declines in openness and shallower decreases in neuroticism.

We found that later-born people were less agreeable and neurotic but more extraverted and open than their same-age, earlier-born peers. Later-born people also experienced steeper increases in agreeableness across time.

Brandt et al. (2022)

Besides age-related differences, the researchers found cohort-related differences in all personality traits except conscientiousness. At age 58, members of later-born cohorts were less agreeable and neurotic and more extraverted and open than earlier-born cohorts. Later-born cohorts showed steeper increases in agreeableness across time, steeper age-related decreases in neuroticism, and age-related increases in agreeableness and openness. Interestingly, accounting for sex and education attenuated some of the cohort-related differences (especially in agreeableness and openness), suggesting that some of these differences might be related to historical changes in education and gender-related social roles.

The importance of history

Societal changes might play a role in some cohort-related differences. For instance, among later-born cohorts, women, but not men, reported higher levels of conscientiousness, which might reflect changes in womens social roles across cohorts, such as greater participation in the workforce and increases in the relative importance of work-related goals. Similarly, increases in extraversion across cohorts might be related to the well-established finding that later-born cohorts perceive themselves as having more control over their lives and goals and thus have stronger beliefs in the possibility of change. Historical improvements in living conditions and accompanying changes in what people value and desire might also explain cohort-related differences in maturity-related traits, such as agreeableness.

But do generations really differ in their personality development? The answer is mixed, Brandt and colleagues explained. People born at different times indeed differ, on average, in how conscientious, agreeable, neurotic, extraverted, and open they are. These differences were more pronounced in younger than older people for maturity-related traits, but the opposite was true for agency-related traits. We found little evidence that the rates by which personality changes differ across historical times.

Overall, the results obtained hinted at delayed social-investment and maturity effects in later-born adults compared with those born earlier. The researchers also noted the need to further explore whether these findings generalize to other locations and countries, especially because differential change trajectories between cohorts are assumed to be shaped by the socio-historical context in which development takes place.

Feedback on this article? Email apsobserver@psychologicalscience.org or comment below.

Reference

Brandt, N. D., Drewelies, J., Willis, S. L., Schaie, K. W., Ram, N., Gerstorf, D., & Wagner, J. (2022). Acting like a baby boomer? Birth-cohort differences in adults personality trajectories during the last half a century. Psychological Science. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/09567976211037971
When some 4,000 public librarians gather in Portland, Oregon for the biennial Public Library Association conferencethe first major library conference since the pandemic lockdowns began in 2020they will have abundant local, indie bookstores to visit. Known for store-specific, unique curation, Pacific Northwest bookstores are flavored by their local environs.

The biggest insight Pacific Northwest indie booksellers learned from pandemic lockdowns? That their customers and communities are loyal, and committed to buying local. Many stores we reached out to increased capacity for online ordering during the pandemic, which has persisted beyond the lockdowns and made shopping local even more accessible. Another big insight: indie bookstores anchor local small business districts. Help from other small business through shared promotion and word-of-mouth foot traffic helped these indie businesses understand better what draws people to shop in-person.

Below is a selection of Pacific Northwest booksellers, a number of which are in Portland, and a little about who they are and how they've come through a challenging two years.

Annie Blooms Books

Well-loved in the hilly neighborhood in outer SW Portland, Multnomah Village, Annie Blooms is known for its great curationand the cat that sleeps on the cash register. Customers will often hike (or sometimes ski!) into the Village.

Before the pandemic, Annie Blooms would typically get a few online orders a day. During lockdown, that instantly changed to dozens per day, with frequent trips to the post office and employees delivering books to nearby homes, says Michael Keefe, director of publicity. Purely in terms of sales, weve done well over the past two years, thanks to our devoted and supportive customer base, who chose to shop locally during a time when ordering online was a greater temptation than ever before.

At the store, Covid-19 greatly impacted operations. Like so many businesses, we had significant turnover, with several longtime staff members retiring, sheltering in place, or cutting back hours, says Keefe. Also like so many businesses, our doors were closed to the public for an entire year, and we adapted to being an online retailer with curbside pickup. Now, of course, we're largely back to normal, with customers browsing in the store again.

Ashland Book Exchange & Hermeticus Books

In Ashland, Oregon, the pandemic was only part of the new normal challenging booksellers. Another aspect: the extended fire season and smoke associated with it that can drive tourists away and keep local people indoors. For Ashland Book Exchange, that has become a chief concern more than fifty years into the bookstores existence.

Ashland Book Exchange sells mostly used and antiquarian books, and some new books. And with its well-known Shakespeare Festival closed for the last two seasons, the store has relied on local customers in south-central Oregon and northern California. We adapted our business model to the new reality, says co-owner Roy Laird. Were very proud of the amount of support we and other local businesses have received from the community.

Down the street, Richard Miller, owner of Heremeticus Books, had to relocate his bookstore after the 2020 wildfire destroyed his original store in nearby Talent, Oregon. Miller reopened Hermeticus on B Street in Ashlandand customers appreciate his excellent selection. Customers call Hermeticus Books a rare find and praise the stores diverse offerings.

Beach Books

At a quiet remove from the convention center, boardwalk, and bumper cars of Seaside, Oregon, locals and tourists amble into Beach Books. Owner Karen Emmerling opened the store in 2005 and moved the shop to its corner location in 2014. On most days, in-person sales account for close to 80% of our business, she says. However, online is definitely growing. There are days, especially in the winter, that it exceeds in-person.

Beach Books specializes in fiction, kids books, and YA, and experiments with new categories in response to reader demand. We added a metaphysical section after receiving many requests for tarot cards and books on crystals, says Emmerling. We found we were reordering it regularly, so we expanded with books like Microcosm Publishings Little Bit of series. Similarly, the shop added a shelf of horror titles, with Catriona Wards The Last House on Needless Street becoming a staff favorite. Beyond genre categories, Emmerling is also excited to hand-sell Jamie Fords The Many Daughters of Afong Moy, Shelby Van Pelts Remarkably Bright Creatures, V. E. Schwabs Gallant, and Holly Black's Book of Night.

With help from manager Alexa Butler, Emmerling expanded Beach Bookss social media presence on Instagram and BookTok. This visibility kept the shop on customers radar over the past two years dealing with Covid-19, and drove sales of popular fiction like Emily Henrys Beach Read and Adam Silveras They Both Die in the End. Our sales in 2021 were approximately 54% above 2020 and 49% above 2019, Emmerling says.

Emmerling and Butler envision Beach Books as a community hub as well as a destination for vacationing bibliophiles. And with social spaces now reopening, Beach Books hosted an in-store event for Jill Busby, author of the PNBA Award-winning Unfollow Me, and supported Seaside Public Library events for Portland author Juhea Kims Beasts of a Little Land.

Bookloft

The Pacific Northwest is huge into supporting small businesses, says Becky Wyland, co-owner of The Bookloft in Enterprise, Oregon, a town of 2,000 people fifty miles west of the Idaho border. We live in a special part of the world that has taken care of us during a very difficult time. It wasn't always easy, Wyland concedes, acknowledging that the store's mask mandate, for example, was not been popular with customers who hold differing "opinions on how to deal with Covid.

Co-owners Wyland and Katy Madrid bought the store in March 2020, right at the start of the pandemic. Madrid had retired in March of 2020, and she worked with the previous owner to purchase the Bookloft to fulfill a long-time dream of spending her retirement surrounded by books and coffee. Wyland says she is insanely proud of being able to keep the store going, having taking over a beloved store that had existed for so many years and ushering it through the uncertainty of Covid-19: Having to move, getting ingrained in a new community, going through Covid. Its a lot to ask of a little independent bookstore.

With so few other bookstores within hundreds of miles, its not just a store to most of our customers, its part of their family. I love that I've been able to create that environment for people, Wyland says. It makes me so happy that we are still going, she says, taking special pride in keeping the local flavor of their tight-knit if geographically broad rural community.

Broadway Books

The paper bookmark you get when you buy a book at Broadway Books has a quotation from beloved Portland-area author Brian Doyle: Bookstores are story ambassadors. They are hope agents. They are imagineers and dream merchants. It perfectly captures the spirit of this bookstore, founded in 1992 by women and still owned by women.

Broadway Books has proven resilient in the face of the many challenges of Covid-19: the need to invest in masks and additional safety supplies; the cost of an upgraded HVAC filtration system; an uptick in the citys crime rate; and the lack of in-store author events. But despite it all, Broadway Books did not close the store, even at the very beginning of the crisis, when the store had to shut its doors to customers. We switched to online sales and curbside pick-up and we were able to keep all of our employees, and in fact gave them raises, notes owner Kim Bissell, adding that online sales are becoming an increasingly important part of the stores business.

Browsers Bookshop

Although independent Browsers Bookshop in Olympia, Washington, was forced to close for two months at the start of the pandemic, they felt the local love for their small business. We did at least a thousand home deliveries as well as mail-outs, said owner Andrea Y. Griffith, so we were a resource during the main part of the pandemic for our entire community, especially when the libraries were closed and online retailers deprioritized mailing books.

While Griffith says she worries about the health and safety of her employees as well as supply chain disruptions, Browsers Bookshop emerged intact from the stressors of 2020 and 2021. Were lucky that our community takes Covid-19 seriously and supports things like mask-wearing, she says.

The resilience of her staff and the community has Griffith cheering for the audacity of what independent bookstores do. In a world that is constantly consolidating to maximize profit, and in a nation that seems to consistently devalue thought and conversation, we're trying to be a beacon, Griffith says.

Green Bean Books

Childrens book shop Green Bean Books keenly felt the love and support of the Portland community during the pandemic. The community bought books from the store, helped with deliveries, and wrote encouraging messages on chalk boards outside the store.

Green Bean Books founder Jennifer Green also notes that authors and illustrators also offered their services, including free illustrations for us to use to get the message across about what we were offering. Creators made comic strips about the store that were featured in the New York Times, donated original artwork to give to customers, and made a thank-you support song that was shared with the American Booksellers Association nationally. It was super heartwarming and incredible to feel how much our community valued us, Green notes.

While the Pacific Northwest weather proved a challenge for curbside pickup, the covered patio of the store helped keep books out of the rain. Portlanders are dedicated to local, value-based buying, and Green Bean Books attributes the local support they received as crucial to their pandemic survival.

Jans Paperbacks

In 2018, after nearly four decades in their old space in Aloha, Oregon, new owner Lori Carroll moved Jans Paperbacks to its new home in Beavertonand despite the challenge of the pandemic, the store continues to thrive. Because Im a small store with no employees, I was able to stay open, Carroll, said, adding that her ability to stay open during the pandemic actually helped her business grow.

[The store] had a lot of exposure through news outlets and introduced me to a lot of people that didn't know about me, she explains. Small businesses in downtown Beaverton even started a daily Live Instagram program to help promote and share each other, which made a big difference, as collaboration among small business owners amplified their reach.

Without the community I would never have made it, Carroll says, adding that Jans Paperbacks prides itself on supporting the local community and authors. We love our authors, she said. Supporting authors by holding events and allowing readers and authors to meet and mingle is a great joy.

Orca Books Co-op

In April 2020, Olympias Orca Books became Orca Books Co-op, a member-owned and worker-run space. We transitioned from a traditional single-owner small business into a cooperative work structure, said business manager Fiona Vogel. Were one of a few cooperative bookstores in the country, and were incredibly proud of this accomplishment.

Switching to a collective model required trust among stakeholders, amid the already-rampant uncertainties of the past two years. We had to close for multiple months due to Covid-19, and we have a firm policy of paying workers who are absent due to Covid-19, so managing our finances during has been challenging, Vogel explains. She also expresses concern about the future of retail businesses given other destabilizing factors in the Pacific Northwest resulting from climate change. Unprecedented snowfall, flooding, wildfires, and smoke cause us to close up shop on the regular, losing precious retail business income, Vogel says.

With pandemic financial aid packages and the strong support of their customers Orca Books Co-op has sustained small brick-and-mortar business. And it all comes back to community, Vogel says, acknowledging the power that retailers like Amazon and Barnes & Noble hold. Theyre able to reach deals with publishers on pricing and availability that any individual bookstore simply cant match, says Vogel. But were doing our best to attract customers to a traditional bookstore instead of ordering online.

Powells Books

The iconic indie bookstore that takes up an entire city block, Powells Books has anchored Portlands downtown for some five decades. But the Covid-19 pandemic and its aftermath have made this an unsettling time.

Powells is rebuilding their business and adding resources one day at a time, says Kim Sutton, director of marketing. Sales are about two-thirds of pre-pandemic numbers. And after tension around the sudden, massive layoffs in March 2020 (an estimated 85-90% of employees were let go) Powells is now back to more than 350 employees again, although not without union grievances over re-hiring.

Sutton said that Powells is grateful that the State of Oregon maintained the highest level of safety standards in the country. Their approach to making public spaces as safe as possible matches our values, Sutton says, and it has been helpful to have that support when we uphold safety protocols.

Meanwhile, the business is changing. Though Powells actually beat Amazon to book e-commerce, beginning its program back in 1994, until the pandemic e-commerce remained a small portion of the business. As Covid-19 forced Powells retail stores to remain fully or partially closed for several months, depleting revenue, employees instead scrambled around the warehouse to fulfill online orders. And that flip to fulfilling orders exclusively through Powells.comin an unprecedented volumehas not been without its challenges.

With Covid-19 numbers dropping, life is getting back to some semblance of normal. And with it, people are returning to bookstores.

Bookselling is a unique form of retail in that it really is an experience, said Emily Powell, the third-generation owner and president of Powells in an interview with Oregon Business. It is a place you go with your friends, family, where you wander, and maybe have a coffee and a snack. I am not worried about the future of brick-and-mortar retail. It is going to have a robust future. We all need a place to be. As Powells shoppers can now move nimbly between online and in-store experiences, the store is a technology company as well as a book company with planned renovations both to its website and its legendary building.

Third Eye Books

Founded in 2019, Third Eye Books is a Black-owned bookstore in Portland, Oregon focused on Africa-centered books. In 2020, Third Eye was named in Oprah magazine as one of the 117 most inspiring Black-owned bookstores. The store has since endured multiple hardships. Forced to vacate their storefront at the beginning of the pandemic, co-owners Charles Hannah and Michelle Lewis raised $25,000 to fund the re-opening of their brick-and-mortar location. The Black Resilience Fund and Black Equity Giving Circle helped to keep the store afloat during the pandemic as well.

Third Eye recently launched a new app for purchasing through the store, and has been busy establishing partnerships with various organizations, such as Self Enhancement Inc., Campfire of Portland, Friends of the Children, Catholic Charities and local Portland schools. These partnerships have allowed us to serve a multitude of children and families with diverse books, Hannah says.

The local business community came together to look out for and protect each other in the wake of the pandemic. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the community members who have helped us these past two years, Hannah says. "Not just the ones who purchased books every month, but also the ones who attended bookstore pop up sales during the pandemic and told their employers, friends, and family to stop by our shop.

Return to the main feature.
The Ukrainian Book Institute, now with the support of the Federation of European Publishers and the Bologna Childrens Book Fair, has reiterated its request for help from the global publishing community to raise money to publish and distribute Ukrainian-language books for the several million refugees who have fled Ukraine after Russias invasion nearly a month ago. Donations can be made online.

The call for action came as part of an improvised panel discussion during the book fair on Tuesday morning, one that featured Anne Bergman of the Federation of European Publishers; Jacks Thomas, guest director of the Bologna Book Plus program; Yulia Laktionova, publisher of Yakaboo, a publishing house in Kyiv; Elena Pasoli, Bologna Childrens Book Fair director; and Natalia Mospan of My Bookshelf, a publishing house and bookstore in Kyiv.

As part of the presentation, Mospan showed her recently published book, The War: The Children Who Will Never Get to Read Books, written by Masha Serdiuk and illustrated by Tetyanan Kalyuzhna. The large format, nonfiction childrens book was published in just nine days and depicts the war and documents the deaths of numerous children, including infants. Our hope is that this book will help people understand very clearly the impact of this war on Ukrainian families, Mospan told PW.

Mospan fled to Croatia, from which she was able to organize the printing and publication of the books. Laktionova left Kyiv and after three days, was able to escape to Poland, and described how a friendship with Jacks Thomas encouraged her to make the trip to Bologna. I was communicating with Jacks and realized how important my presence would be to helping tell the story of what has happened in Ukraine.

Mospan is already in discussions with Hewlett-Packard, which may assist with future print runs of the book financed through its foundation. HP, which has a booth in Bologna to display its printing technology, is already working with Old Lion Publishing in Ukraine and Enchanted Lion Books in the U.S. to print 10,000 copies of How the War Changed Rondo by Ukrainian husband-and-wife author-illustrator team Romana Romanyshyn and Andriy Lesiv, and help distribute them through the Packed with Hope initiative, organized by U.K. publishers Little Toller Books and Bluemoose Books. Under the program, the book will be published in a dual-language Ukrainian/English edition and included in a backpack with other essentials, including numerous other books, to be distributed to Ukrainian refugee children in the coming months.

As noted yesterday in PW, Enchanted Lion Books is donating 100% of the proceeds from online sales of How War Changed Rondo to UNICEFs Ukraine relief funds. The picture book, released in fall 2021, tells the story of three children whose peaceful life is disrupted by war and ultimately offers a message of peace and hope. The book must be ordered from the publishers website (donations are only made for books purchased through the company website).

For her part, Laktionova said she is prioritizing collecting photographs of the war to compile into an anthology she hopes to be able to publish soon. We cannot believe that there are still people in Russia supporting the war, and people who do not believe it is real, even though we see it with our own eyes, she said. Yakaboo author Tatiana Kremen has already started work on a graphic novel depiction of the first days of the war, one that shows the before and after from the point of view of an artist who watches the war begin in Kyiv from the vantage of her apartment and the point of view of her pets. Speaking of Kremen, who has not yet fled Kyiv, Laktionova said, She started off with one dog and four cats and now, because she is taking care of other peoples animals, has four dogs and nine cats.

Yakaboo has opened up its popular online reading app for phones to more than 50 Ukrainian publishers to upload and offer books. When the war started, we set it up so that anyone with a Ukrainian phone number can register to use and read all the books on the app for free, said Laktionova. The app is being used by 50,000 people a day. And we are also seeing people from outside Ukraine register on the app. Its only five euros a month for them, but it is a welcome show of support.

Yakaboo is also one of the largest book distributors in Ukraine with some 250 employees in all. Laktionova described for PW the challenges the company has faced in trying to evacuate nearly a million books from its warehouse in Ukraine, a project that has been thwarted by fuel shortages and Russian bombardment of the city. We know that we wont be able to print any books for a long time  Kharkiv, which is destroyed, was the printing center of Ukraine  so we are trying to save as many books as possible.

Both publishers PW spoke with in Bologna were visibly shaken by the events of the past few weeks. Each described their own harrowing, fortunate journeys out of Ukraine and their anger and sorrow at seeing towns destroyed and countrymen killed.

We know, with the war happening, that publishing books may not be the highest priority, but focusing on our work, work that we love, gives us something else to think about, it reminds us of our purpose, said Laktionova. Perhaps it gives us something even more important  it gives us hope for the future.
Marchs picks bring a slew of sci-fi scenarios that warn of future consequences, histories with more backstory than meets the eye, and dramas that just cannot be kept in the family.

Ameries Book Club

The book: The White Girl by Tony Birch (HarperVia)

Recommended for: When Columbus Day rolls around and you want to learn more about everything Indigenous peoples have had to deal with due to a long history of colonization.

Our reviewer says: Australian writer Birch makes his U.S. debut with a sad yet heartening tale of cruelty and prejudice against Indigenous people. Read more here.

The Audacious Book Club, Roxane Gays Book Club with Literati

The book: How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagmatsu (Morrow)

Recommended for: Those with strong stomachs who are interested in what the fallout of human civilization as we know it might bring.

Our reviewer says: Nagamatsus ambitious, mournful debut novel-in-stories offers a mosaic portrait of the near future, detailing the genesis and fallout of an ancient alien plague reawakened from a Neanderthal corpse thanks to the melting permafrost in the Siberian tundra. Read more here.

Barnes & Noble Book Club

The book: One Italian Summer by Rebecca Serle (Atria)

Recommended for: When youre mad at your mother and wish you could meet her younger self to understand why she is the way she is.

Our reviewer says: Serle sets up another time-warp conceit with a touching story about a woman grieving her mother. Read more here.

The book: Loveless by Alice Oseman (Scholastic Press)

Recommended for: Fans of Heartstopper and coming of age movies like Love, Simon and The Half of It, which finally have a romantic love interest that isnt the heteronormative straight couple.

Our reviewer says: Combining the plotting of a college sex romp with a queer sensibility that foregrounds aro-ace identity, Osemans frank, kindhearted novel follows Georgia Warr, a white British college freshman curious about finding romance of the sort she reads about in fan fiction. Read more here.

The Beach & Beyond, the Elin Hilderbrand Book Club with Literati

The book: The Admissions by Meg Mitchell Moore (Doubleday)

Recommended for: Those moments when youve been feeling burnt out and nothing seems to be going your way, even though as a Virgo (or, uh, any other high-achieving person) you forget how much you have already accomplished.

Our reviewer says: Moore's stellar follow-up to So Far Away concerns the beleaguered Hawthorne family, whose eldest daughter, Angela, is furiously working to get into Harvard, her father, Gabe's, alma mater. Read more here.

Black Men Read Now Book Club

The book: Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler (Abrams ComicArts)

Recommended for: Fans of the 1993 novel of the same name, people who gravitate toward post-apocalyptic stories, and those who arent afraid to dive into the grittier consequences of climate change and social inequalities.

Our reviewer says: This nimble graphic adaptation of Butlers 1993 novel of capitalism-ravaged California feels alarmingly prescient and relevant. Read more here.

Books and Boba Book Club

The book: Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki (Tor)

Recommended for: Asian Americans who love reading science fiction but never really found a character they could relate to amidst the cool space-hopping, time-traveling questionably non-POC characters of the future.

Our reviewer says: Aoki draws from her own experiences as a queer Japanese American woman to craft a dark but ultimately hopeful sci-fi exploration of the threats faced by queer people of color. Read more here.

BTS Book Club

The book: Circe by Madeline Miller (Little, Brown)

Recommended for: People whose favorite movie growing up was Hercules, current Percy Jackson fans who looked forward to studying Greek and Roman history in grade school, and graphic novel/webcomic fans of Lore Olympus.

Our reviewer says: Miller follows her impressive debut with a spirited novel about Circes evolution from insignificant nymph to formidable witch best known for turning Odysseuss sailors into swine. Read more here.

Fearless, the Malala Book Club with Literati

The book: Lost & Found by Kathryn Schulz (Random House)

Recommended for: When youre going through some of lifes most tumultuous times, such as falling in love or grieving a loss.

Our reviewer says: Just as every grief narrative is a reckoning with loss, every love story is a chronicle of finding, writes Pulitzer Prize winner Schulz in this stunning memoir." Read more here.

Finding Wonder, the Atlas Obscura Book Club with Literati

The book: Gory Details by Erika Engelhaupt (National Geographic Society)

Recommended for: The friend who you would call to help you get rid of a body, listens to an unsettling amount of true crime podcasts, and casually mentions all the ways they wouldve gotten away with the murder when watching crime documentaries together.

Good Housekeeping Book Club

The book: Chorus by Rebecca Kauffman (Counterpoint)

Recommended for: When youre one of many siblings as dramatic as the Louisa May Alcott's March sisters.

Our reviewer says: Kauffmans luminous latest showcases her knack for delving into the hearts of her characters. Read more here.

Good Morning America Book Club

The book: The Love of My Life by Rosie Walsh (Viking/Dorman)

Recommended for: When youre convinced youve found the love of your life but then one day they casually say their favorite drink is strawberry soda and all this time you thought it was orange soda, so you slowly realize you never actually knew them at all.

Our reviewer says: Set in London, this heartbreaking thriller from bestseller Walsh explores the complexity of secrets in marriages. Read more here.

Goop, Gwyneth Paltrows Book Club

The book: Other Peoples Clothes by Calla Henkel (Doubleday)

Recommended for: That one person in your life who youre convinced is the Main Character because of how often they get themselves into wildly entertaining situationsand perhaps an inspiration for your own thrilling novel.

Our reviewer says: Henkels engrossing debut stages a cat and mouse game between a novelist and two art students in which art bleeds (literally and profusely) into life and vice versa. In 2008, NYU art student Zoe travels to Berlin for a year abroad in search of European dignity and reason after her friend, Ivy, is murdered. Read more here.

Jewish Book Council

The book: The Netanyahus: An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family by Joshua Cohen (New York Review)

Recommended for: When youre ready to settle in for the night ,expecting your guest in the morning, but instead are now the host of your guest and their very interesting family.

Our reviewer says: Cohens stinging comedy explores Jewish identity and campus politics in a fictional imagining of the current Israeli prime ministers family and their time spent in the U.S. in the early 1960s. Read more here.

The book: People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present by Dara Horn (Norton)

Recommended for: When youre tired of reading glorifying accounts of harrowing events and want a less candy-coated look at Jewish history.

Our reviewer says: In this searing essay collection, novelist Horn delves into the many strange and sickening ways in which the worlds affection for dead Jews shapes the present moment. Read more here.

The Joy Collective, the Kelly McGonigal Book Club with Literati

The book: Ghost Forest by Pik-Shuen Fung

Recommended for: People who wish their relationship with their dad was a little less complicated than it is.

Our reviewer says: Fungs moving debut follows an unnamed protagonist whose family immigrated to Vancouver from Hong Kong when she was three, right before the 1997 handover to Chinese rule. Read more here.

Marie Claires #ReadwithMC

The book: The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley (Morrow)

Recommended for: Fans of Only Murders in the Building who need a new apartment complex mystery to tide them over until the next season.

Our reviewer says: Jess Hadley, the gutsy heroine of this well-paced mystery from bestseller Foley, arrives at the swanky Paris apartment building of her aspiring journalist half-brother, Ben Daniels, after fleeing her latest unpleasant job in England. Read more here.

Mocha Girls Read Book Club

The book: Lady Sings the Blues by Billie Holiday (Three Rivers)

Recommended for: Fans of the blues and powerful women in the music industryor if you want to step into the opulence of the sparkling world of the 1930s.

Noname Book Club

The book: Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi (Holt)

Recommended for: When youre desperate for just a for bit of magic in your life and maybe feel like starting a revolution for fun.

Our reviewer says: Eleven years ago, King Saran cemented his grip on the throne by banishing magic from Orisha and slaughtering the realms majiZelie Adebolas mother included. Read more here.

Private Collection, the Susan Orlean Book Club with Literati

The book: Trust Exercise by Susan Choi (Holt)

Recommended for: People whose lifes mantra is trust the process because, well, as the title suggests, this is a...

Our reviewer says: Chois superb, powerful fifth novel, after 2013s My Education, marries exquisite craft with topical urgency. Read more here.

Read with Jenna, the Jenna Bush Hager Book Club

The book: Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson (Ballantine)

Recommended for: When the holidays and family gatherings feel like distant memories, and you need some familial drama to spice up your next weekly check-in phone conversation with your mom.

Our reviewer says: Wilkerson debuts with a shining family saga that stretches from the 1960s Caribbean to present-day Southern California. Read more here.

Shelf Love, the Nicole Laeno Book Club with Literati

The book: It Ends with Us by Colleen Hoover (Simon & Schuster)

Recommended for: When youre fantasizing about that really cute doctor after a recent visit (charming, intelligent AND looks particularly enticing in scrubs? say less.) but your first love is still very much on your mind.

Well-Read Black Girl

The book: Yinka, Where is Your Huzband? by Lizzie Damilola Blackburn (Viking/Dorman)

Recommended for: When the cute new coworker is looking extra snazzy, so you muster the courage to ask them to some after-work drinks (hoping that, if all goes well, theyll agree to be your date at that wedding in 3 months).

Our reviewer says: Blackburns comical debut chronicles a Nigerian British womans quest to find a date for her cousins wedding. Read more here.
Investigative journalist Anthony Summers, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for History for The Eleventh Day: The Full Story of 9/11 and Osama bin Laden, has updated his 1985 book Goddess: the Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe, with significant new material. The content will be featured in a Netflix documentary, The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe: The Unheard Tapes, which will hit the streaming service April 27. The book is being published in the U.S. by Open Road Media and is available now.

PW spoke with Summers about the revised edition, what new things the public will learn about Monroe and the Kennedys, and more.

What are the most newsworthy aspects of this revised edition, and why are they newsworthy?

By naming names, previously withheld, and publishing long-censored documents, the new Goddess delivers clear answers to long-simmering questions about Marilyn Monroes death. That President Kennedy and his brother Attorney General Robert Kennedy were compromised by their relationships with Monroe, and, when she died, sought frantically to cover up, should now become historical fact.

How does what you add to the prior edition clarify what actually happened on the day Marilyn Monroe died?

The tick-tock through Marilyns final day had been missing vital events. There had always been a gap in the chronology around 9:30p.m., a gap I came to believe could be explained by the celebrated Hollywood hairdresser Sidney Guilaroffa man trusted not only by Marilyn but, not least, by Ava Gardner and Elizabeth Taylor. Of some 650 people interviewed for my book, Guilaroff was one I was sure was holding something back about the last night. At last, after my book was published, and before he died, he opened up. Marilyn, he said, had phoned him in despair, rambling on about betrayals by men in high places. She told Guilaroff that Robert Kennedy had been at the house, had told her he was ending their relationship, and that she had threatened to go public.

What do you now think happened that night?

I do not indulge the fevered speculation that she was murdered. Because, contrary to what some authors have suggested, there is no evidence to support that theory. Marilyn had abused sleeping pills for years. She had taken pills that last day, her psychiatrist said, and her voice sounded slurred on what may have been her final call on the night she died. The autopsy finding would be that her death was suicideprobable. From my work in a tangle of information, I think Marilyn Monroe was overwrought about her relationships with both President Kennedy and his brother Robert, felt rejected by both men, had a heated argument with Robert when he visited her house, and thenwhether as a cry for help or intending to kill herselfswallowed too many pills. Strong testimony, from multiple source including a renowned electronic surveillance expert, and a senior FBI agent, named now for the first time, firmly establishes two facts. Criminals, under pressure from the Kennedys, had collected substantial information about the Kennedys involvement with Monroe. And when the actress died, the Kennedys moved ruthlessly to hide the evidence of that involvement. The cover-up has gradually unraveled.

Had you been continuing your investigation since the books first publication, or did something recent prompt you to take another look? That is, what led to this revised edition?

I was not so much continuing the Monroe work as doing what I always do, keeping the file openin the same way good law enforcement doesand tracking developments. It was time to bring the book up to date. And the impetus to do so was when Netflix decided to do a 90-minute special based on the evidence in the bookwhich launches next month. J. Edgar Hoovers FBI kept a large running file on Marilyn Monroe, not least after her marriage to the playwright Arthur Miller, who was seen by the Bureau as a dangerous left-winger. When my book was being readied for original publication, my Freedom of Information attorney sought the release in particular of two 1962 documents headed tantalisingly MARILYN MONROESECURITY MATTERC (C for Communist). They remained, then, totally blanked out by the censors pen.

At a special briefing, however, an FBI official told my attorney that the report quoted Marilyn, just weeks before her death, as saying she had attended a lunch with one of the Kennedy brothers and that the conversation had included talk about the morality of atomic testing. Today, that document has been released, with only a few deletions, under the Freedom of Information Act. The report of a discussion about atomic testing came from two people close to Marilyn who had been funnelling information on the actress to the FBI for some time. It is troubling that either Kennedy brother should have discussed nuclear mattershowever innocuouslywith the talkative Marilyn. For, if the conversation occurred, it took place just months before the Cuban Missile Crisis.

How did you do the research for this book?

AS: The original work for Goddess involved old-fashioned diggingbefore the days of the Internet. It meant a long stint in Los Angeles and activating a web of researchers across the United States and beyond. Many of the people authentically close to the star had been close-mouthed in the period right after her death. By the time I got to work, though, lips were looser. A few key people, especially those with information about her death, insisted on anonymity. They in turn have now mostly died, and are identified in the new edition. The authenticity of the interviews on Marilyns last days derives not least from the fact that virtually all interviews have been preserved on audiotape. Their voices come dramatically to life in the Netflix documentary soon to be aired. All in all, I think, what we have nowafter all these yearsis a credible account of the last days of Marilyn Monroe, a valid record for history.
Brock Harpur, assistant professor of entomology, will use a Purdue AgSEED grant to conduct a study that will provide insights into the genes and gene networks that regulate reproductive variation in honey bees. He hopes to better understand the mechanisms underpinning drone male fertility as an important first step to incorporating genomic selection into bee breeding.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. The Purdue University College of Agriculture has awarded more than $800,000 in grants to support 15 research projects designed to advance Indianas leadership in plant and animal agriculture, human health and rural development.

The grants are integral to a program called AgSEED  Agricultural Science and Extension for Economic Development. Since the Indiana General Assembly first funded AgSEED in 2013, $7.5 million in AgSEED grants have enabled researchers to secure more than $21 million in additional funds.

The states investment in these innovative projects has had an impactful return on investment, says Bernie Engel, senior associate dean of agricultural research and graduate education. This competitive internal grants program enables researchers to design cutting-edge experiments, lay the groundwork for greater funding from federal sources, and address the needs of Indiana through Extension specialists and educators applying the gained knowledge in their outreach in all 92 counties.

Faculty and staff in the colleges of Agriculture, Health and Human Sciences, and Veterinary Medicine may apply for grants to fund basic research or applied research and Extension. Award amounts are $50,000 for one-year projects or $75,000 for two-year projects. Project leaders are encouraged to build teams representing diverse specialties and disciplines to strengthen collaborations across the university.

The grants to date have also resulted in 93 publications and three patents; funded 168 graduate students and postdocs; and involved 320 undergraduates in AgSEED research.

The 15 projects funded in 2022 span a broad range of challenges in both basic and applied science, from exploring whether vocalizations in the poultry barn could indicate flock welfare; to using genomics to predict the reproductive quality of male honey bees; to producing a succession toolkit to help farmers plan for the future.

Cezanne Elias, clinical assistant professor of human development and family studies  Families tackling tough times together: Empowering family resilience in Indianas at-risk families.

Gregory Fraley , the Terry and Sandra Tucker Family Endowed Chair of Poultry Science  Vocalizations as a flock welfare indicator and behavioral control in the poultry barn.

, the Terry and Sandra Tucker Family Endowed Chair of Poultry Science  Vocalizations as a flock welfare indicator and behavioral control in the poultry barn. Nilupa Gunaratna, associate professor of public health  Hoosier Latino farmworker youth: Labor demands, basic needs, resources, and opportunities.

Brock Harpur, assistant professor of entomology  Using genomics to predict reproductive quality: Why are there so many low-quality male honey bees?

Yuan H. Brad Kim, associate professor of animal sciences  Identifying muscle-specific microbial ecology though novel meat purge analysis to improve beef freshness and safety.

Jianxin Ma, professor of agronomy  The effects of a shoot-to-root mobile microRNA on nutrient use and symbiotic nitrogen fixation efficiences in soybean.

Maria Marshall, the Jim and Lois Ackerman Endowed Chair in Agricultural Economics, and Renee Wiatt, family business management specialist, agricultural economics  A farm succession toolkit: Defining successful strategies for exit and entry.

Michael Mickelbart, professor of botany and plant pathology  Improving maize water-use efficiency via stomatal traits.

Nicholas Minton , beef systems specialist, Feldun PAC  Enhancing precision in nutrient delivery to grazing beef cattle.

, beef systems specialist, Feldun PAC  Enhancing precision in nutrient delivery to grazing beef cattle. Rafael Neves, assistant professor, food animal production medicine  Hyperketonemia in high-producing dairy cows: Using artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms to solve a controversial dairy science topic and aid in on-farm decision-making process.

Kathryn Orvis, associate professor of horticulture  Urban farming entrepreneurship program: Providing minority youth entrepreneurship training to increase employment and food access.

Caitlin Proctor, assistant professor of agricultural and biological engineering and environmental and ecological engineering  Rural drinking water quality: Understanding the microbiome of well water.

Maria Sepulveda, professor of ecology and natural systems  Establishing Northern leopard frogs as a model for toxicology and the global research community through reference genome assembly and annotation.

Diane R. Wang, assistant professor of agronomy  Exploring physiological variation in soybean to improve process-based models for prediction of plant performance.

Joshua Widhalm, associate professor of horticulture  Investigating chloroplast thievery in photosynthetic sea slugs to understand the "rules of life" for endosymbiosis and to guide next-generation synthetic biology.

The 2022 AgSEED project leaders and their project titles are:

Media contact: Maureen Manier, mmanier@purdue,.edu

Sources: Bernard Engel, engelb@purdue.edu

Agricultural Communications: 765-494-8415;

Maureen Manier, Department Head, mmanier@purdue.edu

Agriculture News Page
Bickley (pictured left) initially joined the Beyond Rights team in November last year as SVP sales, responsible for both the Nordics region and for the digital exploitation of the companys catalogue. Stepping into her new role on 1 April to lead the team at MIPTV, she will now see her working more closely with CEO David Smyth to drive overall programme sales for the business and explore new strategies for maximising revenue from Beyonds growing catalogue of primarily unscripted and kids content which currently totals over 8000 hours.Prior to joining Beyond Rights, Bickley worked at Tin Roof Media, where she was responsible for the distribution operations of Blink Films and Outline Productions, which included helping to secure deficit funding for unscripted content. Before that, she spent more than 15 years at Hat Trick International, selling scripted, factual and formats to a variety of territories including Scandinavia, France, the US, and Canada, as well as to global SVOD platforms.Rowley (pictured right) has acted as a part-time consultant for the past three months, will be joining the business on a permanent basis from 1 May. She is an experienced television sales executive who has been freelancing as a sales consultant for the past two years. Her most recent long-term role was as executive director at Fox Networks Group Content Distribution, prior to its acquisition by Disney. Before that, she spent many years as a regional sales director for National Geographic Television International, as well as for its previous incarnation, Explore International.Commenting on the appointments, Smyth said: I am so pleased to be able to bolster the Beyond Rights sales team with these two important appointments. In a short period of time, Sarah has proved herself not only an excellent salesperson and strategist but also an incredibly popular member of the team. I knew Joanna when we both worked for Fox and was always impressed by her reputation in the industry, deep understanding of the unscripted marketplace and her wonderful rapport with clients in key territories. As a consultant, she has had an excellent opportunity to get under the skin of the business at Beyond and will now be able to hit the ground running.Bickley added: I have thoroughly enjoyed my past few months at Beyond Rights, so I am thrilled to now step up to the role of head of sales and work with David on maximising returns for the business  and of course for our incredible producer partners. I too am delighted to formally welcome Joanna to Beyond and will be proud to lead the team into its first face-to-face MIPTV since 2019, where I hope to meet as many of our existing and potential buyer partners as possible.
The official reason given for the closure of content from the leading European international news channel was its coverage of the ongoing war, in particular distributing what the authorities described as fake news.Euronews has broadcast Russian-language offer for over 20 years, aiming to be an independent source of information for millions of Russians, reaching over 30 million TV households and many more people on its digital platforms. Euronews claims to be not only the most watched, but also the most well-known and trusted international news brand in Russia.Noting that it has not received any official communication regarding the closure, Euronews said it strongly rejected the allegations of fake news and of calling citizens to protest, with the unacceptable threat of criminal liability. It added that it firmly condemned what it called an intolerable restriction imposed on the millions of people across Russia who relied on Euronews, more than ever, to get impartial fact-based news, in a context of heightened disinformation and propaganda.In response, the news service called on the Russian media authority to unblock Euronews and noted that under article 19 of the UNs Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which Russia is a signatory, Russian people has the right to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.The live TV feed of Euronews  Russian-language edition will continue to be available on its digital platforms, which can be accessed via a VPN. Further distribution solutions are currently being explored and will be communicated in due course. The channel added that traffic to its digital platforms has surged since the beginning of Russias invasion of Ukraine. Int revealed that in Russia itself, in Belarus, Kazakhstan or Ukraine  to name just these countries  Euronews digital audiences have tripled in the last month.
Based in Lima, Peru, America Television offers a wide range of programming from thematic talk shows, to reality programming and general news. Also based in Lima, Canal N i s focused on country-wide news, current affairs, and political programmesAfter decades of running the two news operations with separate editorial and archive processes, the group took the transformative step to consolidate the old, siloed media infrastructure under a new Dalet solution, bringing continuity to content management and news story development.The dual-channel operational upgrade, which was led by Dalet channel partner Connect Media, included the installation of an enterprise editorial solution that provided a centralised repository to manage news wires and content, with tools to facilitate news story planning, editing, graphics and publishing. Dalets approach builds a story around media assets, enabling, said the company, better story evolution and content transparency and access across the two newsrooms whose missions leverage the same content for different programme outcomes. Dalets news solution is designed for the way our journalists, editors, news directors, graphics, camera teams want to work, explained Javier Vasquez Mendoza, head of engineer support and operations, America Television. It is all interconnected. The centralised access to content makes it easier to evolve the story whether we are in the newsroom, in the field, or working from home as many journalists had to during pandemic restrictions. Dalets web-based tools make it easy to connect from anywhere at any point in the workflow. Its designed to support our hybrid workflow with greater transparency into how we are using the content.
By Elizabeth Kwiatkowski, 03/22/2022



ADVERTISEMENT

RELATED LINK: '90 DAY FIANCE: BEFORE THE 90 DAYS' COUPLES NOW: WHO IS STILL TOGETHER? WHO HAS SPLIT? WHERE ARE THEY NOW? (PHOTOS)

ADVERTISEMENT

Elizabeth Kwiatkowski is Associate Editor of Reality TV World and has been covering the reality TV genre for more than a decade.

: Before the 90 Days star Mike Berk has apologized to Ximena Morales for calling her a "b-tch" during their breakup argument.Following Sunday night's Season 5 episode of : Before the 90 Days that featured Ximena brutally dumping Mike during his second trip to visit her in Colombia, Mike took to Instagram Live with his friend Nelcy to apologize for his profane language shown in a preview for the next episode airing on March 27."She's a mean, evil, cold b-tch. Hija de puta," Mike says in the promo, which translates to "daughter of a b-tch" in English.Mike told his followers in an Instagram Live video posted on Monday, "Honestly, I called Ximena 'cold, calculated,' I called her that B-word -- honestly, I was just in the moment.""I was just so upset with everything going on," he said, "how I was being treated that entire trip, basically. And it was the heat of the moment, I really just want to apologize for that."Mike also said sorry to Ximena's mother, whom he also called the B-word."And I really, really want to apologize to Ximena's mom, because she's always had my back," Mike continued in the 33-minute video."She messages me here and there, asking me how I'm doing. So, she always has my back [and] her sister had my back. So I really, really, truly want to apologize to both them, to Ximena's sister and her mom, because when I said that, it wasn't intended to them. It was intended to the situation."Mike didn't want to repeat his offensive language, but he reiterated how he was just angry at Ximena and the "stressful" situation and he never meant to insult her family members."If I could do things differently now, I definitely would," the New York native insisted. "Really wish I didn't say that."In the teaser for the upcoming episode that aired at the end of Sunday night's broadcast on TLC, Mike and Ximena were shown fighting back at Ximena's apartment after she broke up with him in a pool hall."This relationship is over, no more," Ximena says in the preview."This only reinforces the fact that you were using me for money, because right now, you're cold and calculated," Mike tells Ximena."Don't send me money, don't do anything," Ximena shouts. "You're going to sleep in a hotel and tomorrow, you'll go home.""I pay the rent in this house, so I'm not leaving," Mike counters, before calling Ximena and her mother a "b-tch."During the couple's tense breakup at the pool hall in Ximena's hometown of Pereira, Mike decided to confront his then-fiancee about her change in attitude towards him and their relationship.In the few weeks after getting engaged, Mike noticed how Ximena had become guarded, distant and somewhat rude to him.And when Mike visited Ximena in-person for the second time to try to fix their relationship, she admitted that she didn't love him and thought he was "weird" and "filthy.""I just want to ask, you don't love me and you need your space. I just can't stop thinking that your feelings changed when I stopped saying 'yes' to buying everything," Mike said, referring to how he wouldn't pay for Ximena to have plastic surgery."You have things that I don't like," Ximena responded. "That's what totally changed my feelings. And you still pay my rent, so it's not that."Ximena said she felt "humiliated" by that accusation and added how Mike was "throwing things" in her face. She said if Mike thought that she was only with him for money, then he didn't know her at all.Ximena therefore determined she just wanted to be friends with Mike, and she asked him to stop sending her money because she'd pay for things on her own."So you just want to be friends? That's it, after this whole year-and-a-half?" Mike asked."Yes," Ximena replied. "You'll no longer be my boyfriend nor will I be your girlfriend. We'll be friends, if you want."Given Mike had paid for all the furniture and appliances in Ximena's apartment, he said, "Okay, then anything I paid for, I want to take back with me to New York."Ximena told Mike that he could take everything out of her house because she didn't need it."Today, our relationship is over," Ximena noted. "And I'm serious. Everything is over."Mike therefore left the bar and said he was "done," and Ximena started to cry and wondered if she'd regret this decision.Mike admitted that his mind was going crazy as he ran away from the cameras, and the episode ended on a cliffhanger.Want more spoilers or couples updates? Click here to visit our homepage!
By Elizabeth Kwiatkowski, 04/20/2022



ADVERTISEMENT

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!

Which couples are still together and which MAFS couples have broken up and divorced? And where are they now?

's first thirteen seasons featured a total of 49 couples who got married at first sight -- so which couples are still together, who broke up and divorced, and where are they all now?Each season of -- which premiered in the United States seven years ago and is based on a Danish series -- features couples (previously three couples, but four couples on Seasons 8 and 9, and five couples beginning with Season 10) being matched together by relationship experts and agree to marry when they first meet.Complete strangers become husband and wife in a matter of minutes, and the couples' lives are then documented by TV cameras over the course of the next four to eight weeks (eight weeks, in the case of 's most recent seasons).The couples typically enjoy their first night together in a hotel after exchanging vows -- with some couples deciding to consummate their marriage immediately -- and then embark on a honeymoon, move in together, and simply attempt to deal with the struggles of daily life as man and wife.At the end of the extreme marriage experiment, each couple must decide whether they'd like to stay married or get a divorce on "Decision Day."has experienced very mixed results over the years. While a significant number of couples decide to stay together and continue their new marriage at the end of their season, the real world seems to hit them hard after the cameras leave, resulting in the couple splitting up only months later.Do cast members see a different side of their spouses once cameras are gone, or do the romances naturally fizzle over time?Some couples are still together to this day and are extremely happy. Jamie Otis and Doug Hehner from Season 1, for example, have had two children.Several other couples have also had children -- including Ashley Petta and Anthony D'Amico Shawniece Jackson and Jephte Pierre Danielle Bergman and Bobby Dodd Deonna McNeill and Greg Okotie , and Jessica Studer and Austin Hurd However, there are also relationships that ended badly. Jessica Castro from Season 2, for instance, accused Ryan De Nino of alleged death threats, and she went on to file a restraining order and lawsuit against him.Some couples have also never even made it to "Decision Day" and ended their marriage prematurely, including Season 4 couple Heather Seidel and Derek Schwartz as well as Season 6 couple Molly Duff and Jonathan Francetic Are the remaining couples now lovers, friends or enemies?! What about early season couples like Cortney Hendrix and Jason Carrion, Jaclyn Methuen and Ryan Ranellone, Vanessa Nelson and Tres Russell, Sonia Granados and Nick Pendergrast, and Lillian Vilchez and Tom Wilson?And how about more recent season couples like Danielle DeGroot and Cody Knapek Sheila Downs and Nate Duhon Jaclyn Schwartzberg and Ryan Buckley Dave Flaherty and Amber Martorana , and Tristan Thompson and Mia Bally Keith Dewar and Kristine Killingsworth , and AJ Vollmoeller and Stephanie Sersen Click thelink below to see photos of each couple and find out!

BEGIN GALLERY >>

Elizabeth Kwiatkowski is Associate Editor of Reality TV World and has been covering the reality TV genre for more than a decade.
By Elizabeth Kwiatkowski, 03/22/2022



ADVERTISEMENT

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!

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

Elizabeth Kwiatkowski is Associate Editor of Reality TV World and has been covering the reality TV genre for more than a decade.

star Clayton Echard has revealed he's upset about Rachel Recchia 's suspicion he told her "I love you" just to sleep with her in the Fantasy Suite.On : After the Final Rose that aired on March 15, Rachel flat out asked Clayton if he had professed his love to her in the Fantasy Suite just so he could sleep with her, and Clayton quickly denied that was the case."That was a surprising comment," Clayton, 28, admitted to Us Weekly during a recent joint interview with his now-girlfriend Susie Evans Although Clayton had said "I love you" to three women -- Rachel, Susie and Gabby Windey -- and also slept with both Rachel and Gabby, he said he was really taken aback by Rachel's blunt question."I was shocked that she said that and it hurt that that's a question that she seriously is considering," Clayton confessed. "But you know what? I don't know. There's not much more I can say."Clayton confirmed that Rachel thinking so little of him really bothered him."It hurts because for her to feel that way -- I don't want to take that away from her. I told her, I said, 'No.' And she said, 'Well, I don't believe it.' And there's nothing more I could say besides, 'Okay,' at that point," Clayton noted.Despite the jab, Clayton apparently hopes he and Rachel can talk things out and bury the hatchet down the road."If there's one day down the road that she wants to have a candid conversation and talk more in-depth about the entire thing, I would certainly give that to her," Clayton explained."I think I do owe it to both of them -- if they would like to -- but if they don't want to hear anything else come out of my mouth... then they shouldn't feel that they need to give me that ability to explain myself."Clayton concluded, "If you don't believe me, you don't believe me. And I don't think there's anything I can say to convince you."Susie happened to be Clayton's third Fantasy Suite date of the week, and the pair mutually agreed she should leave the show in a tense and heated breakup discussion.Susie was upset about not being Clayton's one and only, and Clayton was angry Susie didn't seem willing to fight for and save their relationship.Clayton therefore introduced both Gabby and Rachel to his family, which helped him determine that he was truly "the most in love" with Susie and wanted to be with her, a "once-in-a-lifetime woman."Susie ultimately returned to the show and made an appearance at the Final Rose Ceremony, but she dumped the Bachelor instead of accepting his final rose. Susie said at the time that Clayton wasn't her person and they didn't seem meant to be.However, Susie reached out to Clayton post-filming seeking some answers, and the pair reconciled and are now dating and in love in the real world.Clayton told Us that he was truly convinced he was in love with three women during the Fantasy Suites but now he feels differently."As I've now taken the time to reflect and look back, I believe that I had gotten to the point where I was falling in love with everybody but then it got to the point where I was only in love with Susie," Clayton claimed.Clayton said he now believes you can only be in love with one person and so he must have just been "falling" for Rachel and Gabby."That's where I made a mistake. I was confused on the show," Clayton acknowledged.Clayton said the confusion came because he really changed and adapted to environment when he was filming the show, which allowed him to progress multiple relationships so quickly and meaningfully."It was unchartered territory and I did make a major, major mistake of assuming, 'Okay, this is how things have operated from what I've heard. I'm sure the women are aware of how things work here, so maybe it's a little different from the outside world,'" Clayton told the magazine."But what I came to realize is some of the women still had the mindset -- and rightfully so -- like, 'This is the way I date. I'm dating one person.' These women were dating one person and I was dating 30, so that's where I think there was a contrast."Clayton admitted he should have asked the women more questions in order to understand their point of view and approach to the unique process."We have kind of come to the conclusion that I was living with my real-world expectations, and there's nothing wrong with that," Susie agreed, backing up her boyfriend."And Clayton adapted to, I guess, the process and dating multiple women. He acted in a way that many Bachelors before have."Susie revealed the couple now agrees that "there's nothing wrong with either way we went about the process" and they both made mistakes along the way."What we could have done better was just have more empathy for each other and be able to understand the other person's perspective while we were in that moment," Susie shared."But our minds, we were living in different realities at that point, and we've since been able to come to the same reality. But when you're there, it's such a tough environment and we're just fortunate that we are able to get to the other side and be so happy and confident where we are now."Clayton is in the process of moving to Virginia to be with Susie and give their romance a real shot after quitting his job in medical sales and selling his condo.Interested in more news? Join our The Bachelor Facebook Group
Traverse City, MI (49684)

Today

A mix of clouds and sun during the morning will give way to cloudy skies this afternoon. High 66F. Winds E at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Mostly cloudy. Low around 45F. Winds ENE at 5 to 10 mph.
Traverse City, MI (49684)

Today

Clouds and some sun this morning with more clouds for this afternoon. High 66F. Winds ENE at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Mainly cloudy. Low near 45F. Winds ENE at 5 to 10 mph.
Porterville, CA (93257)

Today

A mix of clouds and sun. High 93F. Winds W at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

A few clouds. Low 53F. Winds WNW at 5 to 10 mph.
Sally Sheppard, executive director at The Cottage, shares a few words during the fashion show hosted by the University of Georgias Student Merchandising Association, an organization that helps prepare students for a career in the fashion industry, at Georgian Hall in Athens, Georgia on Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2019. Sheppard will step down from her role on April 1.
On May 24, Athens residents will be welcomed back to the polls to vote for Mayor and on a referendum to renew TSPLOST. On Nov. 8, residents will vote for Board of Commission districts 1, 3, 5, 7 and 9 as well as Board of Education members 1, 3, 5, 7 and 9.
The University of Georgia Symphony Orchestra made its return to Hugh Hodgson Concert Hall on Tuesday, March 22. The UGA Symphony Orchestra Concerto Competition Concert was originally scheduled for Jan. 27, but was postponed due to cases of the COVID-19 omicron variant being too high for ensembles to practice.
Health Editor and Athens Frontline Podcast Host

Simran Kaur Malhotra is the current health editor and a member of the D&I committee. As a pre-med student, she is majoring in anthropology & minoring in global health. Simran is the founder and CEO of UGA Doctors Without Borders. Associated: AHCJ; AAJA
People gathered in Harmony Parking lot in Brattleboro on Friday, April 22nd for a street festival and parade in celebration of Earth Day. According to Nancy Braus of 350 Brattleboro, the goal was to celebrate the ways in which the community is working towards climate justice and to empower 
Bill Anton, superintendent of Vermont's Windham Central Supervisory Union who has helped navigate multiple mergers under Act 46, is now looking to get approval to allow intra-supervisory-union school choice.
William J. Mathis served as a Vermont school superintendent, managing director of the National Educational Policy Center, vice chair of the state board of education and taught Educational Finance at UVM. The opinions expressed by columnists do not necessarily reflect the views of Vermont News & Media.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

More than a dozen firearms were seized and a Southington man was taken into custody this week in connection with an ongoing investigation into illegal ghost gun trafficking, according to authorities.

Connecticut State Police said several state police task forces worked with multiple local police departments and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives on a long-term investigation into the illegal trafficking of ghost guns in the greater Waterbury area. Police said the ghost guns were illegally sold and made without serial numbers.

On Monday, multiple search warrants were served in Shelton, Waterbury and Wolcott as part of the investigation, police said. The warrants led investigation to multiple illegally sold and possessed guns, including AR-15 variant rifles and guns, high-capacity magazines and ammunition. Police said investigators also seized narcotics and other contraband.

State police detectives arrested 36-year-old Bryan Joyce, of Royal Oak Drive, on 25 weapons and narcotics offenses as part of the ongoing investigation. Authorities said additional arrests are expected.

His bond was set at $500,000. Hes expected in court on April 6.

State police said Joyces arrest is part of law enforcements ongoing effort to disrupt weapons-related violence in Connecticut.

Its not a surprise that we are seeing ghost guns in Connecticut, nor is it a surprise that they located a source of ghost guns in Connecticut, said Jeremy Stein, executive director of Connecticut Against Gun Violence, an organization that advocates for tighter gun laws. These are intended for people who want to bypass the background and permit to purchase system, so clearly these are people who already intend on breaking the law.

It was not immediately clear how many weapons were seized, or how the alleged ghost guns were assembled. State police said Tuesday evidence is still being processed in the case.

The guns can be assembled from kits available on the internet containing the frame of the weapon that is legally considered the gun. The assembly is intentionally left unfinished so that the owner can legally finish the gun on their own as a privately made firearm. The process can involve milling or removing material from the firearm components before they can be assembled into a gun and fired.

Because the kits are considered components, rather than actual guns, the assemblies can often be purchased without going through background checks or other strict laws meant to prevent people barred from owning a gun from getting one.

State legislators passed a law in 2019 that required legal gun owners who want to build a gun at home to first obtain a serial number through the Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection.

Gov. Ned Lamont this year announced a proposal that would further tighten the states ghost gun laws, requiring home-made guns made before 2019 to be registered. The governor has also proposed measures he claims would close loopholes in the states assault weapons ban.

Stein said that while Connecticut has taken the initiative to restrict ghost guns, and while law enforcement is pursuing them, the state could strengthen its laws to ensure online sellers are prohibited from selling the kits to residents.

Its not just confiscating weapons and arresting people that are selling these things, its also making sure that online sellers that arent in Connecticut are prohibited from manufacturing the parts themselves that are then getting into the hands of these people, he said. Its just way too easy to be able to do this.

He said the intent is not to stop legal gun owners from assembling their own guns for their own use. What were trying to prevent is criminals mass-producing weapons of war and putting them in the hands of criminals and dangerous people, Stein said.
Alex Jones failed to show up for a deposition scheduled Wednesday morning in Austin, Texas, as part of proceedings in defamation lawsuits filed by the families of children killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.

A Connecticut Superior Court judge ruled Tuesday that a physicians note submitted only for the judges viewing did not provide enough evidence on its claim that Jones was confined to his home as a result of medical conditions making it impossible for him to sit for the scheduled, in-person deposition.

In her ruling, Judge Barbara Bellis questioned attorney Kevin Smith, representing Jones, over his clients doctors note suggesting he was confined to his home under a physicians supervision.

In a notice filed Wednesday morning, Smith confirmed his client conducted his broadcast during the Tuesday hearing, and that it took place at, Mr. Jones usual and customary studio in Austin, Texas, and clarified, the studio is not located in Mr. Jones home.

Attorneys representing the families said Jones defense counsel, Norman Pattis, arrived at the in-person questioning, scheduled for 9 a.m. local time, and told them Jones would not be showing up as a result of an unnamed medical condition  despite broadcasting his Infowars show from a studio outside his house the day before, according to his attorneys.

This, in our view, was a cowardly display intended to cheat the plaintiffs of their right to put him under oath and ask him questions about why over the course of many years he lied about them, attorney Christopher Mattei told reporters via Zoom.

Jones defense counsel said his, nonappearance comes upon the advice of a physician who arrived in Austin to visit him on March 20, 2022, according to a court filing.

The filings continue, stating that Jones, so alarmed the physician while being observed on Monday, that he insisted on conducting a physical examination and, immediately advised Mr. Jones to go to an emergency room or call 911.

Jones refused to call emergency services. After the episode, the physician advised him to stay home, which Mr. Jones did not do. The physician subsequently arranged for a comprehensive medical workup to be conducted for Mr. Jones on March 23, 2022.

Mattei said immediately after learning Jones, a controversial talk show host, would not be at the deposition Wednesday morning, the plaintiffs legal team asked a Connecticut court to direct Jones to appear at 9 a.m. Thursday. The court granted the request.

Pattis said in a statement that Jones missed the deposition because he was at a medical appointment. Pattis couldnt be reached for further comment but, according to Mattei, said he has, no indication that [Jones] is going to appear on Thursday.

The families legal team requested the court consider compelling Jones to appear for the deposition if he continues to defy court orders and dodge his appearance.

What we have requested is that if Mr. Jones does not comply with the courts order to appear tomorrow it should issue a capias, which is essentially the equivalent in a bench warrant that would authorize Mr. Jones arrest and production at a location to give sworn testimony, said Mattei.

The judge would only issue the capias if Jones does not attend the deposition Thursday or provide valid medical evidence of his conditions. If granted, the the order for Jones arrest would require assistance from a court in Texas.

The scheduling change represents the third date change for Jones deposition as attorneys for the families seek to question him for first time in the defamation lawsuits  frustrating an already painful process for their clients.

As the hearing took place Tuesday, Jones, a noted conspiracy-theorist radio and internet personality billing himself as a journalist, appeared to be broadcasting on his live daily show.

The issue of whether todays broadcast was from Mr. Jones studio or at his home can more easily be determined by Mr. Smith, who may have unknowingly misled the court into believe that Mr. Jones has been confining himself to his home, Bellis wrote in her order to deny the motion.

The court notice offered to provide Jones studio address if requested but would only ...do so under seal because his studio location has been subject of harassment in the past.

The deposition now scheduled for Thursday morning is part of proceedings as a result of two successful lawsuits brought against Jones by families of those killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting, and one FBI agent who responded to the scene.

Jury selection for a trial to award damages is scheduled to begin in the middle of July.

In addition to the Connecticut defamation suits, families won three others filed in Texas. All five legal wins came by default after Jones refused to comply with court orders demanding documents and financial information.

Our families have suffered a great deal already, Mattei said Wednesday afternoon. Mr. Jones has been defaulted in this case because he has already submitted false information and incomplete information.

I cant say that we are shocked that he would try this desperate ploy, but they are determined, they are persistent, and they are going to keep going, he added.

CORRECTION: An original version of this article incorrectly referred to the type of proceedings occurring in the lawsuit. Jones has been ordered to give a deposition ahead of a jury trial to award damages in the case.

Material from the Associated Press was used in this story.
Contributed / Torrington Police Department

TORRINGTON  A Connecticut man is facing multiple charges after he was accused of sexually assaulting two girls aged 9 and 12 multiple times, according to police.

Torrington police said 31-year-old Steven Lopez was charged Wednesday with one count of first-degree sexual assault, two counts of fourth-degree sexual assault and two counts of risk of injury to a minor. He was taken into custody in Waterbury by Torrington detectives and members of the Connecticut State Police Statewide Narcotics Task Force, Torrington police said.
Lebanon, IN (46052)

Today

Rain. High 59F. Winds E at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch..

Tonight

Periods of rain. Low around 55F. Winds E at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 80%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch.
Olivia Rodrigo, Foo Fighters and Silk Sonic were among the big winners at the 2022 iHeartRadio Music Awards.

The annual ceremony took place at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles on Tuesday night (22.03.22) and saw Olivia crowned Best New Pop Artist and Female Artist of the Year, while 'good 4 u' was voted as the TikTok Bop of the Year.

Camila Cabello also won Best Cover Song for her rendition of 'good 4 u'.

Foo Fighters took home a stack of prizes, including Rock Artist of the Year, Rock Song of the Year for 'Waiting on a War', and Rock Album of the Year for 'Medicine at Midnight'.

Accepting their Rock Artist of the Year prize, frontman Dave Grohl said via video: "Thank you so much for voting us Best Rock Artist of the Year, iHeartRadio thank you very much. We'd like to thank all our friends and family that we work with. Most of all, the fans and audience that like our music."

Silk Sonic - Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak - were named Best Duo of the Year and also took home R B Song of the Year for 'Leave The Door Open' and R B Album of the Year for 'An Evening With Silk Sonic'.

Arguably the biggest prize of the night, Song of the Year, went to Dua Lipa for 'Levitating'.

Lil Nas X was crowned Male Artist of the Year, and gave an inspiring speech about it being "OK to be delusional when you're chasing your dreams".

The 22-year-old megastar - who publicly came out as gay in June 2019 - said: "I wouldn't be where I am right now, in my life and my career, if I weren't delusional. Believing I could drop out of school and become an international success within a year. It's delusional!

"Believing that I could come out of the closet in the height of my career ... to think that I could do that would be delusional!"

Justin Bieber and The Kid LAROI scooped two prizes for 'Stay', which was named Best Collaboration and also nabbed the iHeartRadio Chart Ruler Award.

Elsewhere, Machine Gun Kelly won Alternative Artist of the Year, 2021 'Eurovision' winners Maneskin made Best New Alternative Artist, and Billie Eilish's 'Happier Than Ever' scooped Alternative Album of the Year.

Jennifer Lopez was this year's iHeartRadio Icon Award recipient and Megan Thee Stallion was honoured with the Trailblazer Award.

The star-studded bash was hosted by LL Cool J and saw performances from the likes of Megan, John Legend, Charlie Puth and Maneskin.

An abridged list of the winners:

Song of the year: 'Levitating'  Dua Lipa

Female artist of the year: Olivia Rodrigo

Male artist of the year: Lil Nas X

Best duo/group of the year: Silk Sonic

Best collaboration: 'Stay'  The Kid LAROI Justin Bieber

Best new pop artist: Olivia Rodrigo

Alternative artist of the year: Machine Gun Kelly

Best new alternative artist: Maneskin

Alternative song of the year: 'Monsters'  All Time Low featuring blackbear

Alternative Album of the Year: 'Happier Than Ever'  Billie Eilish

Rock artist of the year: Foo Fighters

Best new rock artist: Mammoth WVH

Rock Song of the Year: 'Waiting on a War'  Foo Fighters

Rock Album of the Year: 'Medicine at Midnight'  Foo Fighters

Country artist of the year: Luke Combs

Best new country artist: Lainey Wilson

Country song of the year: 'If I Didnt Love You'  Jason Aldean Carrie Underwood

Dance artist of the year: David Guetta

Hip-Hop artist of the year: Drake

Hip-Hop Song of the Year: 'What You Know Bout Love'  Pop Smoke

Hip-Hop Album of the Year: 'The Off-Season'  J. Cole

R B Artist of the Year: Jazmine Sullivan

Best new R B artist: Giveon

R B Song of the Year: 'Leave The Door Open'  Silk Sonic

R B Album of the Year: 'An Evening With Silk Sonic', Silk Sonic

Latin Pop/Reggaeton Artist of the Year: Bad Bunny

Best new Latin artist: Grupo Firme

Latin Pop/Reggaeton Album of the Year: Karol G

Producer of the Year: Finneas

Songwriter of the Year: Omer Fedi

iHeartRadio Trailblazer Award: Megan Thee Stallion

iHeartRadio Chart Ruler Award: 'Stay'  The Kid LAROI and Justin Bieber

Best fan army (socially voted category): #BTSARMY  BTS

Best music video (socially voted category): 'Butter'  BTS

Best Lyrics (socially voted category): 'All Too Well (10 Minute Version) (Taylors Version) (From The Vault)'  Taylor Swift

TikTok Bop of the Year (socially voted category): 'good 4 u'  Olivia Rodrigo

Best Comeback Album (socially voted category: '30'  Adele
PM Kishida visited Cambodia at the weekend to lobby for regional solutions to the South China Sea disputes.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, center, reviews an honor guard with his Japanese counterpart Fumio Kishida at Peace Palace, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Sunday, March 20, 2022.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida visited Cambodia at the weekend to lobby for regional solutions to the South China Sea disputes, potentially diluting Beijings influence in Phnom Penh.

This was his first bilateral foreign trip since taking office in October 2021.

Cambodia is the current chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nation (ASEAN) and has close relationship with both Japan and China.

China claims historical rights to most of the sea but Chinese claims are rejected by neighboring countries including some ASEAN members. An international tribunal in 2016 also rejected the legal basis of Chinas sweeping claims.

Although Cambodia and Japan are not claimant states in the South China Sea, these two countries pay important roles in mediating the South China Sea disputes, said Kimkong Heng, visiting senior research fellow at the Cambodia Development Center (CDC).

This year Cambodia chairs ASEAN so the country is in a good position to be a mediator for regional issues and challenges such as the Myanmar crisis and the South China Sea issues, Heng said.

Last week, before Kishida arrived in Phnom Penh, two Japanese naval ships spent three days at Cambodias southern port city of Sihanoukville and conducted a joint exercise with the Royal Cambodian Navy. The Japanese crew also visited the Ream Naval Base where the U.S. alleges that Cambodia has granted exclusive utilization access to the Chinese military to part of the base. Cambodia has repeatedly denied the allegation.

A spokesperson at the U.S. Embassy in Phnom Penh told RFA last week that Washington is still concerned about the intended use of the naval facility.

The U.S. Government has long expressed concerns that the Government of Cambodia has not been fully transparent about the intent, nature, and scope of the Ream project or the role the PRC (Peoples Republic of China) military is playing in its construction, said spokesperson Stephanie Arzate.

The Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force making a port call at Sihanoukville, Cambodia on March 15, 2022. They were welcomed by Defense Minister Tea Banh. Credit: JMSDF Influencing China

A joint statement issued after Prime Minister Kishidas visit said that the leaders of Japan and Cambodia reaffirmed the importance of sustaining peace, security, safety, freedom of navigation in and overflight above the South China Sea, as well as non-militarization and peaceful resolution of disputes in accordance with international law, including the 1982 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea.

Kishida on Tuesday tweeted that he confirmed with his counterpart that any attempt to unilaterally change the status quo by force cannot be tolerated in any region of the world.

We were also in agreement that precisely because of this situation it is imperative that we further promote efforts to realize a free and open Indo-Pacific, the prime minister said, referring to the concept initiated by the U.S. and its allies.

Stephen Nagy, senior associate professor at the Department of Politics and International Studies, International Christian University in Tokyo, said that Japan prioritizes maintaining stability and a rules-based approach to governing the South China Sea as its sea lanes are critical arteries for the Japanese economy.

Sovinda Po, a research fellow at the Cambodian Institute for Cooperation and Peace, said Japan has a broader strategic interest in areas surrounding the South China Sea, including the East China Sea, where it has a territorial dispute of its own with China.

The way in which ASEAN under Cambodia's chairmanship deals with China on the South China Sea issue will determine the way in which China will respond. There are some concerns that if ASEAN goes soft with China, then China will further expand beyond the South China Sea, Po added.

But Nagy said that Kishida will be challenged to get Cambodia to support Japans position. He said Cambodias close partnership with China continues to be strong and Phnom Penhs relationship with Beijing is not easily influenced.

During Cambodias last chairmanship of ASEAN in 2012, the 10-member bloc, which makes decisions by consensus, failed to issue a joint statement for the first time in its history, reportedly over Cambodian resistance to language about the South China Sea.

A file photo showing a Cambodian Buddhist nun framed by Japan's flag and her national flag as she listens to Prime Minister Hun Sen during an inauguration ceremony of a road funded by Japan outside of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, March 13, 2018. Credit: AP Tricky task

Tokyo nevertheless also has some leverage in dealing with Phnom Penh, being the latters long-time ally and donor. The two countries established diplomatic relations in 1953.

During 1991-2017, Japan provided Cambodia with grants totalled 201.5 billion yen (US$1.68 billion), according to the Japanese Foreign Ministry. It also provided technical cooperation funds worth 86.3 billion yen (US$723 million) and a loan of 140.3 billion yen (US$1.17 billion) during the same period.

Most recently, Japan donated 1.3 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine to Cambodia and provided a loan of 45 billion yen (over US$377 million) to help with the Kingdoms fight against the pandemic.

Cambodia would always be willing to open up relations with Japan to get developmental aid, infrastructure and connectivity and diversify its relations in the region, Nagy at ICU said.

Analysts say Prime Minister Hun Sen, who has been ruling Cambodia since 1985, will be trying to maintain a tricky balance between a good relationship with Japan and not offending China.

Heng said that for Japan its important to engage with Cambodia to ensure that Japans strategic interests are considered in ASEAN meetings regarding Southeast Asia and the wider Indo-Pacific.

Thats likely to be viewed with suspicion in Beijing.

Japan is also one of the four members of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, alongside the U.S., Indian and Japan. The Quad, as it is better known, is widely seen as countering Chinas weight in the region.
Yi Qiwei, a U.S. national born in China, recently joined the International Legion of Defense of Ukraine to fight the Russian invasion, alongside an estimated 20,000 other foreign nationals. Yi, a writer who grew up in a family of Chinese officials and now divides his time between the U.S. and Japan, started out helping refugees fleeing Ukraine, before signing up to fight for Ukraine. He spoke to RFA's Mandarin Service about his daily life as a soldier, and his reasons for joining the war:



RFA: Mr. Yi, where are you now?



Yi Qiwei: I'm in Ukraine now, and I don't know how to pronounce the name of this place, Szeginie, I think.



RFA: Where is this place roughly? It's on the western border of Ukraine, isn't it?



Yi Qiwei: It's a small village across the border from Medyka port in Poland.



RFA: What is the situation there now?



Yi Qiwei: It was pretty straightforward getting in [from Poland], although the line to get out [of the country] was nearly three miles long.



RFA: You entered Ukraine from Poland, right?



Yi Qiwei: Yes, it is better to enter Ukraine from Poland, because there are not many people.



RFA: There are still large numbers of refugees leaving the country, right?



Yi Qiwei: A lot, a lot.



RFA: Did you see any Chinese among them?



Yi Qiwei: No, I didn't.



RFA: Why did you go to Ukraine?



Yi Qiwei: I came here to join the army. So, we didn't go through immigration. We went first to Medyka, Poland, where there was an assembly point, where we reported for duty ... then they gave us a pass.



RFA: Can you show us your pass?



Yi Qiwei: It's in electronic form. I can't let you see it because of my personal details.



RFA: You said you came from Poland, where did you come from before that?



Yi Qiwei: I originally came [to Europe] to dance [at] the Tomorrowland Winter music festival in France. I wanted to take advantage of the spring break to come out and have a good time. I flew directly from the United States. I had been planning to go to the French Alps from the Netherlands to dance. But then this war happened.



RFA: You decided on the spur of the moment to join the Foreign Legion?



Yi Qiwei: Yes, I made an on-the-spot decision.



RFA: Why did you decide to join the Foreign Legion?



Yi Qiwei: When I went to the central square in the Netherlands, there were a lot of people demonstrating there that day, which was a big shock to me. Why? Because there were so many protests across the whole of Europe, including Poland, London, Amsterdam. All of the major cities. Ukraine started its Foreign Legion program shortly after that, in early March.



I have had a dream of being a soldier since I was a child, so there's that. Secondly, I wanted to be able to come back alive and show my daughter her handsome father who has been on the battlefield. I really thought like that at first. But when we went out there to distribute supplies and arrange transportation and accommodation for refugees, the effects of war are clearly visible. A lot of the kids are around the same age as my daughter. They're so young, and they're sleeping in a train station, sleeping in McDonalds, and in such cold weather. It's really pitiful.



RFA: You are now in Ukraine. How does this village relate to the battlefield?



Yi Qiwei: Poland and Ukraine have a total of five ports, and this is actually one of the five ports from which refugees can leave.



Yi Qiwei (C) stands in the Polish border city of Medyka in an undated photo, before crossing into Ukraine. Credit: Yi Qiwei RFA: When you saw these scenes, you said that you had a dream of becoming a soldier, but this war happened in a complex international situation. How do you view this war?



Yi Qiwei: I think this war is wrong. Everyone will say that war is wrong, or that war is bad, but why is it bad? I'm leaving soon, and I don't know where they will deploy me, whether it's to the logistics corps or the front line. I'm very scared.



I think that only when you really experience war, will you understand what it entails. That's to say, you won't want to experience it again. Only people who have never been through it go online to clamor about the happiness and interests of the people being sacrificed for the rise of a great power.



RFA: What do you think of the Chinese government's stance on the war?



Yi Qiwei: Let's just focus on people. Once we start talking about a stance, then we have to basically say whether Russia is in the right or Ukraine is in the right. But let's talk about people and about life. That should come before national interests and ideology. If a country has life, it can get stronger, and its economy can develop.



RFA: But you are actually risking your own life when you go to war. How do you square that with yourself?



Yi Qiwei: My role in this war is minimal. I am like a pebble. Even if I die, no one will care. What I want to say to everyone you can only get a better understanding of what's going on by experiencing it, as opposed to blindly believing in whatever propaganda. If China says Russia is in the right, then the [pro-CCP] Little Pinks aren't going to echo anything the U.S. says. But what about Ukraine? I have dealt with government departments, and I hail from a family of government officials, so I know that there are a lot of mutual vested interests involved.



RFA: What is people's attitude to you as a person of Chinese heritage.



Yi Qiwei: They were very moved that I volunteered to join the war at the age of 25, and with a family [back home]. Once, when I'd told them my story, someone from the church next door invited me to pray with them, so I think the power of faith helps people tend towards goodness.



RFA: What will you do ?



Yi Qiwei: I'm going to take a nap now. I've already told the military personnel that I'll report at about 2:30 p.m.



Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
The North has requested help from Chinese police to track down the missing group.

A group of 20 North Korean textile workers who were dispatched to Shanghai to earn foreign currency for the government have disappeared, and Pyongyang authorities suspect they are now on the run as refugees, sources in China told RFA.

In mid-February, an entire group of North Korean women working at a clothing company in Shanghai disappeared when they were supposed to be in quarantine, a source who lives in Dalian, in Chinas northeast, told RFAs Korean Service March 19.

The 20 female workers  and their manager were gone, and the owner of the Chinese company that hired them called the North Korean manager, but he did not answer the phone, so [the owner] went to the dormitory to find that they had all disappeared, said the source, who requested anonymity for security reasons.

Cash-strapped North Korea sends workers to China and Russia to earn foreign currency for the ruling party.

While many North Koreans flee their country by crossing the Yalu River border into China, escape by the workers dispatched to the country is rarebecause the government sends only its most loyal citizens abroad and monitors them closely.

Pyongyang has also been known to punish the family members of escapees, referring to them as defectors.

The source said that the company owner immediately reported the disappearance of the 20 women to the North Korean consulate in Beijing.

The consulate has requested cooperation from the Chinese police and is trying to track them, mainly by monitoring railway stations heading towards the border, he said.

Though the source did not specify which border, refugees typically try to escape China by traveling to Southeast Asia.

Although the Chinese government has pledged to adhere to the U.N. convention that forbids the return of refugees to their home countries if doing so would endanger their lives or freedom, Beijing claims it must send North Koreans found to be illegally within Chinese territory back home under two bilateral border and immigration pacts with Pyongyang.

The workers and the manager have not been found for a month since they went missing. North Korean authorities believed there is a high possibility that the group defected, the source said. The North Korean consulate is under a state of emergency to find if they have already escaped and are in Southeast Asia or already entered South Korea.

Another source, from Dandong, across the Yalu River from the North Korean city of Sinuiju, told RFA that Shanghai is so large that it would be hard to find the missing workers if they were still there. The city has a population of around 26 million people.

It is so large and crowded it would be easy to hide there, said the second source, who requested anonymity to speak freely.

But if they were to leave by train or bus, they would need to show ID to buy a ticket. It therefore seems this is a planned escape led by a guide, since the manager and the workers have not been caught.

An official from South Koreas Ministry of Unification on Tuesday told reporters that there is nothing to confirm regarding the 20 North Korean women and their manager after the Korean version of RFAs report was published.

South Koreas National Intelligence Service told RFA on Tuesday that it would be unable to confirm workers flight even if it knew the report was true.

There are an estimated 20,000 to 80,000 North Koreans working in China, according to the U.S. State Department's 2021 Trafficking in Person's Report.

North Korean labor exports were supposed to have stopped when United Nations nuclear sanctions froze the issuance of work visas and mandated the repatriation of North Korean nationals working abroad by the end of 2019.

But Pyongyang sometimes dispatches workers to China and Russia on short-term student or visitor visas to get around sanctions.

The companies employing the North Koreans pay much higher salaries than what they could earn in their home country. The government, however, collect the lions share, leaving the workers with only a fraction of their wages.

Translated by Claire Lee and Leejin Jun. Written in English be Eugene Whong.
One rights activist says the moves are more of the ongoing persecution of journalists.

Members of the media gather outside Kamayut Township Court in Yangon, Myanmar, during a hearing in the case of Associated Press photographer Thein Zaw, who was arrested as he covered a demonstration against the military coup, March 12, 2021.

Myanmar military regime courts have sentenced three reporters to jail this week, amid an ongoing legal crackdown on journalists and others who publicly express their opposition to the junta, relatives of those imprisoned and work colleagues said.

At least 108 journalists have been arrested since the February 2021 military coup, though many have been released. According to Reporters Without Borders, about 57 journalists remain in prison and three have been killed after the coup.

Ye Yint Tun, a reporter at the Myanmar Thandawsint (Myanmar Herald) was handed a two-year prison sentence on Wednesday a family member told RFA. Authorities arrested him on Feb. 28, 2021 while he was covering a protest in Pathein, Ayeyarwady region, and charged under Section 505A and Section 505(b) Myanmars Penal Code.

The Myanmar juntas special court in Insein Prison in Yangon sentenced Hanthar Nyein, an editor at Kamayut Media, to two years in prison with labor on Monday, while the Zabuthiri Township Court in Naypyidaw sentenced Than Htike Aung, a Mizzima editor, to two years in prison. Both were charged under Section 505A of the Penal Code.

Section 505A prohibits causing fear, spreading false news and agitating crimes against a government employee  all nonbailable offences punishable by up to three years in prison. Critics say it serves as a legal catch-all for bringing criminal charges against a broad range of individuals deemed to pose a challenge to the military regimes authority.

Myanmars State Administration Council, appointed by the countrys military after it seized power in the Feb. 1, 2021 coup, added the new section to create new offenses and expand existing ones that target individuals who speak critically of the coup and the military, and those who encourage others to support the Civil Disobedience Movement, a broad coalition of opponents of military rule.

Section 505(b) criminalizes publishing or circulating any statement, rumor or report, with intent to cause, or which is likely to cause, fear or alarm to the public or to any section of the public whereby any person may be induced to commit an offense against the state or against the public tranquility.

In Myanmar, media freedom has never been guaranteed fully. Now, the media freedom in the country is completed gone. This case is proof for that, said an editor from Mizzima who is a colleague of Than Htike Aung.

The authorities are arresting, attacking and interrogating the news media, viewing the journalists as their enemy, said the woman who requested anonymity for safety reasons.

She also said that if independent media stopped operating and broadcasting the news, the military council would fully control the narrative and publish only its propaganda.

Ongoing persecution of journalists

Court attorney Zaw Min Hlaing said the regime is charging anyone who obstructs its interest under Section 505A, accusing them of damaging reputation of the state and the military.

They are charging anyone who wrote pieces critical of the members of government, the military or the state, he told RFA.

They are charging organizations that could hinder their work under Section 505(A), he said. If the journalists report the truth and it seems detrimental to their interest, they frame it as an offense against the state.

Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch, said the military regime had no reason to charge and sentence Hanthar Nyein and Than Htike Aung.

This is more of the ongoing persecution of journalists and the efforts by the military to censor any sort of news that they dont control, he told RFA.

RFA could not reach Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun, a spokesman for the military council, for comment, though he previously said at a news conference after the coup that the junta was taking action under the law regarding people from the media.

Authorities arrested Than Htike Aung on March 1, 2021 while he was covering the court trial of the Win Htein, the then top leader of the ruling National League for Democracy (NLD), at Dekkhinathiri Township Court in Naypyidaw. Since then, he has been detained in the capitals prison.

Similarly, Han Thar Hyein was arrested on March 9, 2021 during a raid by military authorities on Kamayut Medias office in Yangon. At the time, authorities also arrested the outlets editor-in-chief, Nathan Maung, who was released in June 2021 after they found out that he is a U.S. citizen.

They were charged with dissemination of information or fake news that could agitate or cause security forces or officials to mutiny, an offence that carries a maximum three-year prison term.

Nathan Maung said that he and Hanthar Nyein had been tortured while in the detention center.

Journalists as the enemy

In March 2021, the junta cancelled the operating license of Mizzima News, Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), 7Day News, Myanmar Now and Khit Thit News. Two months later, it terminated the license of Kachin state-based Myitkyina News Journal.

Unfortunately, the Myanmar junta sees journalists as the enemy, and it is continuing to search for and hunt down journalists who are still operating in the country, arresting them, abusing them, and then sentencing them to prison, Robertson said.

Journalists in Myanmar are risking their lives to do their jobs, said an official at the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a Thailand-based rights organization.

Since Feb. 1, 2021, journalists in Myanmar have not been able to do their jobs freely, said the official who requested anonymity for safety reasons. Now, it has gotten worse. The journalists have to take huge risks to report.

Reporters and editors who remain in the country are doing an admirable job, but they not only could go to jail for their work, they also could lose their lives, he said.

Translated by Ye Kaung Myint Maung for RFAs Myanmar Service. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.
The move aims at Tibetans' further assimilation into China's dominant Han Chinese culture, sources say.

A man speaks on his mobile phone at the Jokhang Temple in Tibet's regional capital Lhasa in a file photo.

Chinese government restrictions on use of the Tibetan language have now spread to video services and other online platforms, as Beijing continues to push the assimilation of Chinas ethnic minorities into the dominant Han Chinese culture, according to Tibetan sources.

Following recent Chinese government directives, the China-based language learning app Talkmate and video streaming service Bilibili have now removed the Tibetan and Uyghur languages from their sites, sources say.

And under a government order announced on Dec. 20, foreign organizations and individuals beginning March 1 may no longer spread religious content online in China or Tibet, with religious groups inside China told they must obtain a special license to do so.

The regulation, Measures on the Administration of Internet Religious Information Service, was issued jointly by the State Bureau of Religious Affairs, the State Internet Information Office, the Ministry of Industry and Information, the Ministry of Public Security, and the Ministry of State Security and went into effect March 1.

Restrictions are now also in place on a wide range of social media platforms in Tibetan areas, a source inside Tibet told RFA this week.

Specifically, those platforms where users go live to perform and communicate with their audiences have seen more restrictions put in place, RFAs source said, speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

Tibetans are forbidden to speak in Tibetan while communicating, and if any Tibetan artist tries to represent Tibetan culture and tradition on their social media platform, their accounts are disconnected, the source said.

And if such performances go live, they are immediately interrupted by the government, he added.

Also speaking to RFA, a researcher at the Dharamsala, India-based Tibet Policy Institute named Phentok confirmed China's new restrictions had gone into effect on March 1.

"Basically, these are intended to impose firm restrictions on Tibetans regarding what they share on their social media platforms," Phentok said.

Authorities in northwest Chinas Qinghai province have already banned Tibetan social media groups tied to religion, warning group members they will be investigated and jailed if they continue to use them, sources told RFA in earlier reports.

Requirements for proficiency in Mandarin Chinese in testing and consideration for employment have meanwhile disadvantaged Tibetan students, as China seeks to promote the dominance of Chinese culture and language in Tibetan areas, sources say.

Formerly an independent nation, Tibet was invaded and incorporated into China by force 70 years ago.

Language rights have become a particular focus for Tibetan efforts to assert national identity in recent years, with informally organized language courses in the monasteries and towns deemed illegal associations and teachers subject to detention and arrest.

Translated by Tenzin Dickyi for RFAs Tibetan Service. Written in English by Richard Finney.
Uygurs and others surround Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan (C) as he visits the Grand Baazar in Urumqi, capital of northwestern China's Xinjiang region, April 8, 2012.

A Uyghur woman who spoke for an hour with a Turkish politician a decade ago during his visit to a famous bazaar in northwestern Chinas Xinjiang region was arrested for her transgression in 2017 and is serving a 20-year prison sentence, her husband said.

When then Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan paid a historic visit to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) in April 2012, he was warmly welcomed. Turkey shares linguistic and cultural ties with Uyghurs, more than 50,000 of whom have emigrated or escaped to the Middle Eastern country from Xinjiang.

Erdogans first official visit to China in his new position began in Urumqi (in Chinese, Wulumuqi), the regions capital, and drew international attention. When he visited the Grand Bazaar in the citys Dongkowruk (Erdaoqiao) area, one of Xinjiangs top landmarks, many Uyghurs surrounded him to congratulate him and speak to him.

Meryem Emet (in Chinese, Aimati), a Uyghur married to a Turkish citizen who spoke fluent Turkish, was among those at the Grand Bazaar who spoke with Erdogan at the time.

Afterwards, she was targeted by Chinese security forces for her hour-long conversation and later imprisoned, said Abdullatif Kucar, her husband who lives in Istanbul with their two children.

The mother of my children was sentenced for 20 years and is currently in a Chinese jail, he told RFA last week. Although she was born and raised in Urumqi, she was summoned to Kuchar, and they jailed her there.

Emet was arrested in 2017 amid a wider crackdown by Chinese government authorities on predominantly Muslim Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in Xinjiang. She was taken to an internment camp in Kuchar (Kuche) county in southern Xinjiangs Aksu (Akesu) prefecture.

Emets detention drew the attention of the U.N. human rights office (OHCHR) and international human rights organizations.

Even though Emet, an only child, had not been born in Kuchar, her ancestors were from there, as was her husband.

When Erdogan went to Urumqi, my wife met him, and afterwards, they [Chinese authorities] took her away many times for interrogations, said Abdullatif Kucar, who is now hospitalized with late-stage cancer.

When authorities questioned Emet about her conversation with Erdogan, she told them that she said hosgeldiniz, or welcome in Turkish. Erdogan asked Emet how she knew Turkish and invited her to a meeting room where the politician, his wife and daughter talked to her for an hour, Kucar said.

When Nur Bekri, the now imprisoned former chairman of the XUAR between 2008 and 2014, entered the room for a meeting with Erdogan, he told Emet to get out, Kucar recalled. But Erdogan told Nur Bekri, Dont interfere. She is our bride.

Later, when Emets mother became seriously ill and died, authorities confiscated Emets passport, Kucar said.

They have destroyed our family since then, he said.

They have all sorts of excuses to make in order to imprison people who have committed no crime, Kucar said about the Chinese authorities.

Xinjiang government authorities were on high alert at the time of Erdogans 2012 visit and became uneasy when accompanying Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, attended Friday prayers at the Noghay Mosque in Urumqi, exciting many local Uyghurs.

At the time, Turkish media reported that Erdogans visit to Xinjiang as the first stop in his China tour was important because he wanted to attract Turkish investors to the region to revitalize trade relations and support the economic development of the Uyghurs.

A final visit

Authorities forced Kucar to leave the country before Emet was arrested, and he went to Turkey.

After Emet was taken away, her three-year-old and five-year-old children were taken to state boarding schools in Urumqi, where they stayed for nearly 20 months.

When the Chinese government allowed Kucar to travel to Urumqi in December 2019 to collect the children to take them to Turkey, he found them malnourished and traumatized, one of his relatives said.

Before returning to Turkey, Kucar and the children went to Kuchar to visit Emet, meeting her for the first time in two years. But Emet acted like a statue and did not respond to the family, making her husband concerned about her wellbeing, said the relative, who declined to be identified for safety reasons.

The family member also said that the Chinese government sentenced Emet to 20 years for marrying a foreigner and meeting and for speaking with Erdogan.

Kucar told RFA that his children are well in Turkey, and that after receiving therapy and attending local schools, they had regained the Uyghur and Muslim identities they lost while living in the Chinese government-run orphanages.

Rights activists in Turkey familiar with the case said many Uyghurs who are now Turkish citizens have been unable to get their family members out of Xinjiang.

Hamidhan Gokturk, founder of the Uyghur News and Research Center in Turkey and former secretary of the East Turkistan Foundation, said the Turkish government has a responsibility to its citizens to help relocate their family members still in Xinjiang, regardless of the state of Sino-Turkish relations.

Turkey like other countries such as France has to bring back its own citizens trapped in China, he told RFA.

Family separations are part of the Chinese governments efforts to eradicate Uyghur culture and language, along with systematic abuse, including arbitrary detentions on trumped-up offenses, against members of the predominantly Muslim minority group, according to human rights experts.

The U.S. and the legislatures of some Western countries have declared that the abuse of Uyghurs constitutes genocide and crimes against humanity, but Chinas government rejects the accusations.

Translated by RFAs Uyghur Service. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.
[March 23, 2022] Anexinet and Veristor Earn Recognition on the 2022 CRN Tech Elite 250 List PHILADELPHIA and ATLANTA, March 23, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Anexinet Corporation and Veristor Systems, Inc ., leading providers of transformative business technology solutions, announced today that CRN  , a brand of The Channel Company , will feature both Anexinet and Veristor on its 2022 Tech Elite 250 list. The recognition comes following the announcement last month of companies merger and further restates the combined technical prowess each company brings to the newly unified solution provider organization. Both Anexinet and Veristor have each placed on the CRN list for the past 12 consecutive years, demonstrating a long-standing dedication to advancing technology training, certification and knowledge across the IT vendor landscape.

The CRN 2022 Tech Elite 250 list recognizes solution providers across the U.S. and Canada that have earned the highest level of technical certifications from leading technology suppliers such as Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Dell Technologies, Cisco and more. Companies chosen for the Tech Elite 250 list have distinguished themselves as dedicated and passionate solution providers willing to go above and beyond for their customers by ensuring they have the training and technical know-how necessary to provide expert-level service. These solution providers know their customers depend on their training and expertise to help them overcome todays IT challenges and achieve full digital transformation across the enterprise. In order to provide that expert service and care, solution providers must maintain consistently high levels of training and certification from IT vendors and achieve the highest tiers within those vendors partner programs. Being named to the CRN Tech Elite 250 list, along with Veristor, is further validation that we are among the most technically experienced partners in the industry, said Steve Johnson, Chief Revenue Officer, Anexint. Were committed to consistently demonstrating superior levels of technical expertise and are passionate about putting that knowledge to work to deliver the outcomes our customers need to transform business success. Like Anexinet, Veristor has been recognized for over 12 years for its commitment to investing in the technical training, knowledge and certifications that enable us to deliver rapid time-to-value for our customers, said Ashby Lincoln, President and CEO, Veristor. By combining the technical talent of our teams, Anexinet and Veristor are becoming one of the most experienced solution providers in the industry - with an unrivaled depth of knowledge across the entire technology spectrum. We are honored again by this CRN Tech Elite 250 placement. CRNs annual Tech Elite 250 list recognizes solution providers that have earned top-level certifications from key technology suppliers and proven their ability to consistently meet the high standards of their customers and partners, said Blaine Raddon, CEO of The Channel Company. Solution providers featured on this list have maintained a consistent focus on innovation and have built a comprehensive understanding of the ever-evolving technologies and practices that enable ongoing success in the IT channel. Were proud to honor them in this manner. Coverage of the Tech Elite 250 will be featured in the April issue of CRN Magazine and online at www.CRN.com/techelite250. About Anexinet

From intelligent, full-stack engagement strategies and solutions to modern, secure infrastructure products and services, Anexinet focuses on technology-enabled business transformation that drives value. For over two decades, Anexinet has helped companies worldwide solve their most complex challengesfrom engaging front-end interactions to dependable back-end solutions. Anexinets record of client success springs from a culture rooted in thought leadership and delivery excellence. For more information, please visit www.anexinet.com or follow Anexinet on Twitter or LinkedIn. About Veristor Systems, Inc.

A leading provider of transformative business technology solutions, Veristor helps its customers accelerate the time-to-value for the software, infrastructure and systems they deploy. We do this by harnessing deep expertise in todays most advanced data center, security, networking, hybrid cloud, and big data technologies and guiding businesses to the right solutions for their most pressing challenges. And with a full suite of design, deployment, support, and managed service offerings, we work shoulder-to-shoulder with our customers at every step of their technology journey to make technology truly work for them. ITs just who we are. Learn more at veristor.com. About The Channel Company

The Channel Company enables breakthrough IT channel performance with our dominant media, engaging events, expert consulting and education, and innovative marketing services and platforms. As the channel catalyst, we connect and empower technology suppliers, solution providers and end users. Backed by more than 30 years of unequalled channel experience, we draw from our deep knowledge to envision innovative new solutions for ever-evolving challenges in the technology marketplace. www.thechannelco.com Follow The Channel Company: Twitter , LinkedIn , and Facebook .  2022 The Channel Company LLC. CRN is a registered trademark of The Channel Company, LLC. All rights reserved. Press Contacts: Betsey Rogers

BridgeView Marketing PR for Anexinet

603.821.0809

betsey@bridgeviewmarketing.com Erin Jones

Avista PR for Veristor

704.664.2170

ejones@avistapr.com The Channel Company Contact:

Jennifer Hogan

The Channel Company

jhogan@thechannelcompany.com



[ Back to the Next Generation Communications Community's Homepage ]
But sources called the announcement overdue and urged Washington to follow up with decisive action.

Rohingya siblings fleeing violence hold one another as they cross the Naf River along the Bangladesh-Myanmar border near Coxs Bazar, Bangladesh, Nov. 1, 2017.

Citizens of Myanmar on Tuesday applauded the Biden administrations recognition of their militarys deadly 2017 crackdown on the Rohingya minority as a genocide but questioned its timing and whether it will lead to concrete action against the junta amid ongoing rights abuses in their country.

On Monday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that American investigators had determined the Myanmar military was responsible for atrocities including mass killings, gang rapes, mutilations, crucifixions, and the burning and drowning of children during its offensive in Rakhine state, and said the acts constitute genocide under United Nations definitions.

Thousands died in the raids, which forced an exodus of more than 700,000 people to neighboring Bangladesh and followed a 2016 crackdown that drove out more than 90,000 Rohingya from Rakhine.

In a statement, the juntas Ministry of Foreign affairs rejected the designation as far from reality and dismissed Blinkens comments as politically motivated and tantamount to interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign state.

The announcement also drew scorn from pro-military voices in Myanmar, including outspoken nationalist blogger Kyaw Swar, who slammed the U.S. in a post on the social media platform Telegram.

We killed them. What can you do about it, he wrote, suggesting that Washington be quiet and concentrate on dealing with Russia following its invasion of Ukraine.

Others welcomed the decision and called on Washington to take further action against the military, which has killed at least 1,687 civilians and jailed 9,773 others since seizing power in a Feb. 1, 2021, coup.

Win Aung, a resident of the commercial capital Yangon, told RFAs Myanmar Service he was pleased by the U.S. announcement, but said it was long overdue.

These Rakhine state massacres were not the only ones committed by this army. Many have occurred in other ethnic areas as well, he said.

The junta is currently embroiled in multiple conflicts with armed ethnic groups and prodemocracy paramilitaries in the countrys remote border regions and reports have emerged of troops torturing, raping and killing civilians.

But while Western governments have ostracized and sanctioned the military regime, Win Aung said it is unlikely to step down without a fight.

The whole world is now waiting to see what the U.S. will do, he said. Regardless of timing, I think this announcement will have an impact somehow. Especially at a time when the ICJ [International Court of Justice] is looking into the issue. I think it will hurt the juntas defense at the ICJ genocide hearing.

Gambia has accused Myanmars military leadership of violating the 1948 Genocide Convention in Rohingya areas in a case it brought to the Hague-based ICJ. The court is holding hearings to determine whether it has jurisdiction to judge if atrocities committed there constituted a genocide.

Su Myat, a young woman from Yangon, called the U.S. declaration the right thing to do.

But she said that the announcement should have been made long ago because this kind of brutality has not only been directed against the Rohingya.

They have committed many crimes everywhere, but these crimes only surfaced after the Rohingyas had their turn and thats because [they were documented using] modern technology, she said, noting that similar accusations of atrocities have been leveled against the military by members of the Kachin and Kayin ethnic groups.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken tours the "Burma's Path To Genocide" exhibit at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, March 21, 2022. Credit: AFP Call for further action

Prior to Monday, the U.S. government had described the crackdown in Rakhine state as ethnic cleansing  not using the genocide designation, which carries more legal weight and which the Genocide Convention defines as acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.

The new designation marks the eighth by the State Department since the Cold War, following its recognition of genocides in Bosnia (1993), Rwanda (1994), Iraq (1995), Darfur (2004) and areas under the control of ISIS (2016 and 2017), according to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, where Blinken delivered his announcement on Monday.

Htet Myat Aung, a young man from Mandalay, said that the U.S. governments declaration should mark the first step in a series of more significant and effective actions.

All our people welcome the declaration of a genocide. But we hope to see more tangible and meaningful initiatives, he said.

People are now realizing that if the military can commit atrocities in cities like Yangon and Mandalay, where we have access to the internet and media, it must have been very bad in the remote areas where the Rohingya lived. Now we can sympathize with them and  wed like to see more action on this issue.

Htet Myat Aung said that while junta leaders may think that they can elude accountability by ignoring the international community, they will have to pay for their crimes.

Rohingya refugees walk along a path at Kutupalong refugee camp in Ukhia, Bangladesh, Aug. 25, 2021. Credit: AFP Hope for the future

Myanmar, a country of 54 million people about the size of France, recognizes 135 official ethnic groups, with Burmans accounting for about 68 percent of the population.

The Rohingya, whose ethnicity is not recognized by the government, have faced decades of discrimination in Myanmar and are effectively stateless. They have been denied citizenship. Burmese administrations have refused to call them Rohingya and instead use the term Bengali.

The atrocities against the Rohingya were committed during the tenure of the civilian government of Aung San Suu Kyi, who in December 2019 defended the military against allegations of genocide at the ICJ. The Nobel Peace Prize winner and one-time democracy icon now languishes in prison  toppled by the same military in last years coup.

A Rohingya named Hla Kyaw, who has lived in Thei-Chaung Muslim refugee camp in Sittwe since the 2016 and 2017 crackdowns, told RFA that he was saddened by the losses endured by his ethnic group as well as by people throughout the country.

There are laws in Myanmar, but the laws have been ignored, he said. This should not have happened. We hope that we will enjoy freedom in the future and that life will improve for our children.

Translated by Khin Maung Nyane. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.
China blasts the move and threatens counter-sanctions against the U.S.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks after viewing the "Burma's Path To Genocide" exhibit at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, March 21, 2022.

UPDATED at 7:18 P.M. ET on 2022-03-22

The U.S. government has imposed new sanctions against Chinese officials over the repression of Uyghurs in China and elsewhere, prompting an angry response from Beijing and a pledge to respond with sanctions of its own.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday said the U.S. would restrict visas on unnamed individuals he said were involved in repressive acts by China against members of ethnic and religious minority groups inside and outside the countrys borders, including within the U.S.

We are committed to defending human rights around the world and will continue to use all diplomatic and economic measures to promote accountability, he said.

Blinken did not disclose the names of the targets of the new sanctions.

The U.S. repeated its call for Beijing to end efforts to prohibit political dissent by targeting members of emigre or diaspora communities, including attempts to silence Uyghur American activists and other Uyghurs by denying members of their families permission to leave China.

Blinken also called for the Chinese government to end the genocide and crimes against humanity in the far-western Xinjiang region, its repressive policies in Tibet, and the ongoing crackdown on individual rights in Hong Kong.

China has held up to 1.8 million predominantly Muslim Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in a network of government-run detention camps since 2017, saying that they are vocational training centers meant to prevent religious extremism and terrorism in Xinjiang. Authorities also have taken repressive measures to erase Uyghur culture, language and religion in Xinjiang.

Imposing visa restrictions on Chinese officials responsible for, or complicit in, policies or actions aimed at repressing our religious leaders, intellectuals, scholars and Uyghurs in general is a useful tool, along with other sanctions to reprimand China for its ongoing genocide, Washington-based Campaign for Uyghurs said in a statement in response to Blinkens announcement.

Nury Turkel, vice chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, commended Blinkens move

As a U.S. official who has been subject to Chinese harassment and retaliation, I commend Secretary Blinkens strong public stance and show of solidarity with Uyghurs both inside and outside of China, he said

Turkel urged Washington follow up with concrete steps to secure the release of Uyghur Americans family members from Chinas camps and prisons, to facilitate family reunification, and to continue to work proactively to halt transnational repression by the CCP on U.S. soil.

During a regular press conference on Monday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said Blinkens statement was based on ideological bias and political lies and that it maligned and smeared China.

Wang launched into a tirade against the U.S. for its own human rights violations, including what he called the genocide and ethnic cleansing of Native Americans, a botched response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and persistent and systemic racial discrimination.

We urge the U.S. to earnestly reflect upon and rectify its numerous crimes, Wang said.

In the meantime, it should view Chinas human rights situation in an objective and just manner, stop denigrating and suppressing the Chinese side and immediately revoke its so-called sanctions against Chinese officials. Otherwise, the Chinese side shall take reciprocal countermeasures in response.

On Monday, Blinken declared the Myanmar militarys 2017 deadly crackdown against the Rohingya Muslim minority a genocide that killed thousands and forced an exodus to neighboring Bangladesh.

During that speech, Blinken also accused the government of continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against predominantly Muslim Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in Xinjiang.

The more the U.S. repeats lies related to Xinjiang, the more it exposes its hypocrisy in claiming to be a defender of human rights, Wang said. He did not elaborate on what alleged lies Blinken had told.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi (L) speaks during the 48th session of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation's Council of Foreign Ministers in Islamabad, Pakistan, March 22, 2022. Credit: AFP

OIC meeting in Pakistan

Chinas Foreign Minister Wang Yi also sought to downplay allegations of genocide against the Uyghurs at a meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) on Monday in Islamabad. He said that his attendance at the session reflected Beijings strong desire to ally with Islamic countries.

The cooperation between China and Islamic countries enjoys huge potential, complementary advantages and broad space, he said.

But Turkeys Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu brought up the plight of the Uyghurs at the OIC session, which runs through Wednesday.

In China, Uyghurs and other Muslims, have difficulties protecting their religious rights and cultural identity, he said.

He asked if it was right to ignore the situation of the Uyghurs.

We do not want Muslim countries to have problems with these countries, on the contrary, we want our good relations with those countries to improve the situation of Muslims, Cavusoglu said. We know that we are here on one mission with the OIC, the OIC only exists because we have the same mission, its duty is to be the collective voice for the Muslim World.

Meanwhile, a Uyghur rights advocacy group urged the OIC, an intergovernmental organization of 57 member states that serve as the collective voice of the Muslim world, to condemn the genocide of Uyghurs and others in Xinjiang.

It is absolutely inappropriate for an organization purporting to support Muslims around the world to invite the government responsible for abolishing religious expression for Uyghur Muslims, an outright genocide and an all-out war on Islam in the Uyghur homeland, said Omer Kanat, executive director of the Uyghur Human Rights Project in Washington, D.C.

The OIC has been shamefully silent on Chinas treatment of Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples in recent years, despite expressing public concern for the treatment of Muslims in other countries, he said in a statement.

Dolkun Isa, president of the World Uyghur Congress also criticized Wangs attendance and urge the OIC to stand up for Uyghurs.

If the OIC strives to be a trustworthy voice of the Muslim world, it cannot continue to close its eyes to the suffering of millions of Uyghur and other Turkic Muslims in East Turkistan, he said, using Uyghurs preferred name for Xinjiang.

Reported by RFAs Uyghur Service. Translated by Nuriman Abdurashid. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

CLARIFICATION: The article was updated to include comments by Nury Turkel.
A Ukrainian family is mourning the loss of two sons who were killed just 10 days apart while fighting in the Ukrainian military. Vasyl Vyshyvaniy, 28, was killed on March 3 in the Mykolayiv region during Russian shelling, while his older brother Kyrylo, 35, died in a Russian missile attack on a training base near Lviv on March 13.
The European Union on May 4 unveiled a proposal to ban Russian oil imports by the end of the year as Russian forces intensified their assault in on a steel plant in the southeastern port city of Mariupol that Ukrainian forces continue to defend.

There was heavy fighting as Russian forces broke into the territory of the plant, Azov Regiment Commander Lieutenant Colonel Denis Prokopenko said on Telegram. The situation at the plant is extremely difficult, but the Ukrainian military continues to defend itself, he said in the post.

"I am proud of the soldiers who are making superhuman efforts to deter the enemy," Prokopenko said. "I thank the world for the colossal support of the Mariupol garrison."

Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boychenko said earlier there was "heavy fighting" involving artillery, tanks, and war planes at the Azovstal plant and said city officials had lost contact with Ukrainian forces inside.

David Arakhamia, a member of the Ukrainian delegation that has held now-stalled peace talks with Russia, later told RFE/RL that Ukrainian authorities have contact with the defenders at the plant.



"Attempts to storm the plant continue for the second day. Russian troops are already on the territory of Azovstal," Arakhamia said, citing Prokopenko.



Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied reports that Russian troops had stormed the plant.



Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy asked UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to help save the lives of the remaining Ukrainians trapped in the sprawling industrial complex.



"The lives of the people who remain there are in danger. Everyone is important to us. We ask for your help in saving them," Zelensky told UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in a phone call on May 4.



He called on the UN to "assist in the removal of all the wounded from Azovstal," a statement from his office said.



Moscow pledged to halt some military operations this week to allow more evacuations from May 5-7. It has, however, reneged on previous pledges to allow for humanitarian corridors.



The new EU sanctions proposed on May 4 would add more banking sanctions against Moscow and cut off some Russian broadcasters in Europe.



But the EU said at the heart of the package is a phaseout of the import of Russian crude and refined oil products by the end of the year. It was formally proposed despite pushback from EU members that are heavily dependent on Russian energy imports. Shortly after the announcement Slovakia, Hungary, and Bulgaria said they would seek exemptions from the embargo.



"We will phase out Russian supply of crude oil within six months and refined products by the end of the year," the head of the bloc's executive European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, told the European Parliament in Strasbourg.



"This will be a complete import ban on all Russian oil, seaborne and pipeline, crude and refined," she said, adding, "[Russian President Vladimir] Putin must pay a high price for his brutal aggression."



Von der Leyen, however, conceded that getting unanimity on oil sanctions will not be easy. The measures require approval from all 27 EU countries to take effect.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said EU countries blocking an oil embargo would be "complicit" in Russia's crimes in Ukraine.



Whatever their arguments are, if they oppose (the) oil embargo, it means one thing: they play on the Russian side. They share responsibility for everything Russia does in Ukraine, full stop, Kuleba said in a video posted on Twitter.



The European Union accounts for nearly a half of Russia's crude and refined oil products. But the Kremlin, in a first reaction to the EU announcement, put on a brave face, warning that the embargo is a "double-edged sword" and that the EU consumers will pay the price.



"The cost of these sanctions to the citizens of Europe will grow by the day," Peskov said on May 4.



Peskov said the Kremlin is looking at "various options" for its response to the new sanctions.



Von der Leyen also proposed that Sberbank, Russias largest bank, and two other major banks be disconnected from the SWIFT international banking payment system.



The EU will also ban three Russian state-owned broadcasters, she said, without naming the channels directly.



According to a document seen by RFE/RL, the package also contains a list of 58 individuals sanctioned over Russia's military action in Ukraine that includes the Patriarch of Russia's Orthodox Church, a close ally of Putin's.



Beyond the fighting in Mariupol, Moscow deployed 22 battalions near Izyum, an eastern city, in a bid to push into the Donbas region, the British Defense Ministry said in its daily bulletin on May 4, adding that Russia's apparent goal is capturing the cities of Kramatorsk and Severodonetsk in the east, "despite struggling to break through Ukrainian defenses."



A Russian battalion usually consists of 700-800 soldiers.



According to the British intelligence bulletin, capturing the two cities "would consolidate Russian military control" of northeastern Ukraine.



In neighboring Belarus, the armed forces began "surprise" large-scale drills on May 4 to test their combat readiness, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said.

With reporting by RFE/RL's Rikard Jozwiak, Reuters, AP, and AFP
Iran's foreign minister says an agreement to revive the 2015 nuclear accord that Tehran signed with world powers is closer than ever before.

"If the U.S. acts pragmatically, we are ready to have foreign ministers of countries belonging to the nuclear deal's joint commission gather in Vienna to finalize the agreement," Hossein Amirabdollahian told a news conference during a visit to Damascus on March 23.

"We believe that today we are closer to an agreement in Vienna than ever before," he said.

"We have given our latest proposals to the U.S. through the European Union's Coordinator to reach a final deal. We reminded the Americans that we will not cross our red lines," Amirabdollahian said.

If an agreement is reached, it would mark the culmination of nearly a year of tough negotiations between Tehran and Western powers, although previous statements on both sides have suggested that a deal was imminent only to hit further snags.

An agreement had been close weeks earlier until Moscow demanded guarantees from the United States that sanctions imposed on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine would not hurt its trade with Iran.

Inserting a bit of caution, Irans top nuclear negotiator Ali Bagheri Kani said on Twitter following Amirabdollahians statement that being "near the finish line is no guarantee to crossing that."

It requires extra caution, much perseverance, additional creativity, and [a] balanced approach to take the last step. To finish the job, there are certain decisions that our Western interlocutors need to take.

The comments come a day after the United States said it was up to Iran to make the hard decisions necessary to revive the landmark nuclear deal and ease its sanctions-ravaged economy.

"The onus is on Tehran to make decisions that it might consider difficult," State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a briefing on March 22.

Price cautioned, though, that a return to the deal was neither certain nor imminent.

Iran signed the landmark deal with the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and China in 2015. It allowed for the easing of sanctions in return for curbs on Irans nuclear programs.

But then-President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the deal in May 2018, saying the terms were not strict enough to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons and also to punish Tehran for its putative support of extremist activity in the region. Trump also reimposed tough financial sanctions against Iran.

Iran has denied it is seeking nuclear weapons, saying the program is for civilian purposes, and it has rejected accusations of support for extremists.

However, after Washington pulled out, Iran has breached limits set in the deal and has insisted that the United States lift its sanctions before it returns to the accord.

Meanwhile, a group of Republican lawmakers in the United States sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken urging him to keep Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) on the designated list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations.

Unconfirmed reports stated that the U.S. administration was considering removing the group from the list as part of compromises related to the nuclear talks.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps is one of the most dangerous terrorist groups in the world today, Representative Scott Franklin of Florida said.

Through its sponsorship of terrorism, the IRGC is responsible for the deaths of countless innocent people and at least 600 U.S. troops. It has consistently sought the destruction of our partners and allies in the region, most notably Israel, and has been an obstacle to peace in the Middle East for decades.

The Biden administration simply cannot reward this terrorist regime with any sort of legitimacy from the U.S. government.

The United States designated the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organization in 2019.

With reporting Reuters, Fox, and RFE/RL's Radio Farda
A superyacht that Kremlin opponents claim secretly belongs to Russian President Vladimir Putin shared the same construction manager and European crew members as several other yachts owned by Russian tycoons that Western governments have either seized or targeted with sanctions, an investigation by RFE/RL has found.

RFE/RL also discovered that a senior Russian crew member on the Scheherazade, which is worth an estimated $700 million, previously worked for a Russian yachting company that secured millions of dollars in contracts from the Kremlins security service, whose officers have allegedly served on the crew of the yacht.

The investigation is based on an analysis of a crew list for the Scheherazade -- whose ownership is being probed by Italian authorities -- that was published on March 21 by associates of imprisoned Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny.

The mystery of who owns the 140-meter ship, now docked in the posh port of Marina di Carrara in Tuscany, has swelled in recent weeks amid the Italian probe and an unprecedented Western sanctions campaign following Russias invasion of Ukraine last month.

Navalnys team claimed to have identified multiple crew members as officers in Russias Federal Guard Service (FSO), which is responsible for Putins security, adding to evidence of the ships possible ties to the Russian president.

WATCH: Exiled supporters of jailed Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny have released a video with what they say is evidence that a $700 million yacht anchored in an Italian harbor belongs to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The ship was even shrouded in mystery for the crew, a source who worked aboard the Scheherazade told RFE/RL. The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to security concerns, said the absence of the yachts name and port of registry was very unusual, and that crew members would refer to the vessel by a numeric code rather than its name.

It was a very big secret, the source said.

All The Oligarchs' Yachts

Construction of the Scheherazade, which was completed by the German company Lurssen in 2020, was overseen by the Monaco-based Imperial Yachts, which also managed the construction of luxury ships linked to Putin confidant Igor Sechin, head of the Russian state oil giant Rosneft, and billionaire Alisher Usmanov, whom the White House identifies as a close Putin ally.

French authorities in early March announced that they had seized the alleged Sechin-linked Amore Vero, while the United States has targeted Usmanovs yacht Dilbar with sanctions.

At least two individuals listed on the Scheherazade crew list have worked for Imperial Yachts, public records indicate, including New Zealand-born carpenter Nicholas Snooks, who also worked on Usmanovs yacht. Both he and the other crew member who public records show has links to Imperial Yachts -- a British woman named Esme Leyland -- were listed as additional workers on the crew list published by Navalnys team.

Attempts by RFE/RL to reach the ships crew members were unsuccessful.

A spokesman for Imperial Yachts told RFE/RL that the companys involvement with the Scheherazade ended with its delivery in June 2020. He said that the company was aware of the identity of the yachts owner but said as is customary in the industry, client confidentiality is considered paramount.

He said that while the company notes the recent press speculation it is not aware of any involvement [by Putin] whatsoever with the yacht.

The ships British captain, Guy Bennett-Pearce, told The New York Times this month that Putin had never owned or set foot on the Scheherazade. He said that Italian investigators have been scrutinizing the ships paperwork.

The Scheherazades first captain, meanwhile, has also worked on other yachts that have been linked to Putin associates and have been hit with Western sanctions. The captain, a U.S. national named Alexander Scherbakov, piloted the ship for two months after its construction was complete, according to his LinkedIn profile.

The profile states that in 2017-19, Scherbakov served as captain on the 65-meter superyacht Rahil, which was owned by Grigory Bayevsky, a business partner of Putins longtime friend Arkady Rotenberg, who has been sanctioned by the United States and the EU.

A 2016 investigation by OCCRP revealed that Putins daughter Yekaterina Tikhonova listed her official residence as an apartment outside Moscow owned by Bayevsky.

In the summer of 2014, meanwhile, Scherbakov worked on the yacht St. Vitamin, owned by Kremlin-linked tycoon Yevgeny Prigozhin, according to his LinkedIn profile. In 2019, the United States targeted St. Vitamin and other Prigozhin-owned assets with sanctions.

The Russian Purser

The crew list released by Navalnys team also revealed a link to a well-known Russian yachting company that has notched millions of dollars in state contracts with the FSO, whose officers are alleged by Navalnys team to be crew members of the Scheherazade.

The Scheherazades purser -- who is responsible for various aspects of a yachts operation, including financial administration -- is listed as Viktoria Kulikova. A Facebook account of a woman listing the same name and date of birth as in the crew lists indicates her place of work as Burevestnik Group. In 2017, Kulikova was listed as a sales manager for Burevestnik.

Founded by prominent Russian businessman Andrei Boyko in 2003, Burevestnik is the most prominent company in the Russian yachting world. While Boyko was arrested in 2009 on smuggling charges that were ultimately dropped, his company has benefited since from lucrative state projects.

In 2018, Russias state-owned shipping company Sovcomflot granted Burevestnik the rights to manage the Sochi Grand Marina, which was built in the southern Russian resort town of Sochi for the 2014 Winter Olympics.

An analysis of state tenders by RFE/RLs Russian Service shows that between 2008 and 2012, Boykos company that owns the Burevestnik Group trademark -- AG Marin -- won a total of 38 contracts to provide patrol boats and related supplies to the FSO totaling 507.6 million rubles, or $17.2 million according to the average exchange rate during that period.

Kulikova did not respond to requests for comment about her work as a purser for the Scheherazade. A person who answered the phone at Burevestnik Group said she no longer worked there.

Burevestnik did not respond to an inquiry about whether it had any involvement with the Scheherazade, nor did the FSO.

Changing Of The Guards

Purportedly leaked images of the Scheherazades interior were published by the British tabloid The Sun on March 22. They show a tiled dance floor that can be lowered down to become a swimming pool, as well as a self-leveling billiards table that adjusts to the yachts movement, a jacuzzi on the deck, and a workout room featuring a framed photograph of a robe for judo -- one of Putins favorite sports.

The documents released by Navalnys team show that the yacht is owned on paper by a company called Bielor Asset Ltd., an anonymous company registered in the Marshall Islands.

The spokesman for Imperial Yachts told RFE/RL that it has no business relationship with Bielor or with the FSO, as crewing the yacht would have been after Imperials involvement.

On March 23, the AFP news agency cited an unidentified source close to the probe being conducted by Italys financial police that the matter could be concluded within days.

"We are in a phase of delving deeper and it's generally more complicated," AFP quoted the source as saying. "It's not always easy to attribute ownership."

Meanwhile, both AFP and Londons The Times cited Paolo Gozzani, an official with the Italian union CGIL, as saying that a British crew had taken over for the Russians on the yacht for reasons that were not immediately clear.

The source who has worked on the Scheherazade told RFE/RL that the same type of exchange happened after the superyacht was delivered after completion in June 2020, but in the other direction: a British crew was replaced by a Russian one.
Richmond, KY (40475)

Today

A mix of clouds and sun early followed by cloudy skies this afternoon. High 77F. Winds light and variable..

Tonight

Showers and thunderstorms likely. Low 64F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%.
Written By

Joe Schulz served as the reporter of the Green Laker in 2019 and 2020, before being hired as a reporter for the Commonwealth in October 2020. He is from Oshkosh and graduated from UW-Oshkosh in December 2020 with a bachelor's degree in journalism.

|
News

featured popular urgent

Rockdale County institutes cost-saving program to assist those with behavioral health challenges

Special Photo Left to right are Rockdale ODR team member Chris Brown; Tanisha Character, the marketing consultant for the Stepping Up Initiative; ODR team members LeRoy Bryant and Teresa Carmichael; ODR trainer Nora Lott Haynes, Mary-Lou Snow, project manager for the Stepping Up Initiative; ODR trainer Bill Carruthers; and Rockdale County Post 2 Commissioner Doreen Williams.

CONYERS  Law enforcements job is to handle crime, not treat the most vulnerable citizens. To be able to assist those vulnerable citizens in staying out of jail and into treatment at a significant taxpayer savings is a bonus. The Rockdale County Stepping Up Initiative championed by Rockdale Post 2 Commissioner Doreen Williams is beginning the Georgia evidence-based Opening Doors to Recovery (ODR) intensive case management system to allow law enforcement to do the job they are trained to do and leave behavioral health to the trained professionals.

The ODR program has proven to reduce recidivism of the seriously mentally challenged through the criminal justice system and repeated psychiatric hospitalizations. Partnering with View Point Health, the Rockdale County Sheriffs Office, the city of Conyers Police Department, and the Rockdale Judicial System, Rockdale County is the first to implement this program in the state since the original study was done 10 years ago.

The current team, all employees of View Point Health, includes LeRoy Bryant, a licensed associate professional counselor, who is certain ODR will make a significant impact on the people they serve; Chris Jackson, a graduate of the Rockdale County Drug Court and now a certified peer specialistmental health, who stated, I believe the next step in my own recovery will be serving people; and Teresa Carmichael, certified peer specialistparent, who indicated that my heart is in helping people find resources that may not have been available to me as a parent.

Nora Lott Haynes, researcher, past NAMI GA president and one of the founders of Georgia Crisis Intervention Training for law enforcement, helped design Opening Doors to Recovery and obtain funding for the research of this project, which began in Chatham County. Haynes is doing the training for the Rockdale ODR team along with Bill Carruthers, who was one of the original Community Navigation Specialists in 2010. Carruthers is a person in long term recovery and works as a consultant for the Stepping Up Initiative. He recalls 10 years ago he was in this same training.

ODR impacted not only just my life but the lives of so many people and is impacting our systems in such a significant way, he said. ODR works!

A second study funded by the National Institute of Mental Health was conducted among 240 participants with serious mental health challenges being discharged from inpatient psychiatric units. The study, led by Michael T. Compton, M.D., M.P.H., a research psychiatrist at Columbia University in New York, found that those participants not associated with Opening Doors to Recovery incurred twice the amount of cost to taxpayers compared to those participating in ODR, a 50% savings with better outcomes. The group involved with Opening Doors to Recovery was hospitalized fewer days, had a lower incidence of arrests, and among those arrested, a longer time between arrests. After 12 months, Opening Doors to Recovery participants had greater satisfaction and overall improvements in housing satisfaction, job satisfaction, social satisfaction, and overall recovery.

When you stabilize a person, you stabilize a family, and then a community, said Commissioner Williams. ODR is designed to do just that, and it has proven results to support it. We are excited to begin this program in Rockdale County with the goal of helping our law enforcement, our taxpaying citizens and most importantly, those citizens who have behavioral health challenges.
The farm has an area of 40 hectares with a total investment of around $17.4 million to provide a safe and sustainable pork supply. With a scale of 24 barns and 48,000 heads capacity, Phu Rieng farm will supply more than 100,000 pigs, equivalent to more than 11,000 tonnes per year.

Japfa Vietnam launched the 48,000-head swine farm in PhuRieng

According to Arif Widjaja, general director of Japfa Vietnam, the new swine farm has been designed and built following the latest models with cutting-edge technology.

To improve efficiency, the farm is fully automated and easy to clean. It also reduces operating costs and is eco-friendly thanks to the wastewater treatment system reaching government standards.

Arif Widjaja, general director of JapfaVietnam

As one of the three strategic markets of the Japfa Group in Asia, Vietnam has been a priority in the groups global expansion.

Given its staff of over 5,000 skilled employees, Japfa is step-by-step expanding its business, contributing to animal husbandry development in Vietnam.

The opening of the Phu Rieng farm is a great stride of the company in controlling all self-contained animal husbandry supply chain processes, from genetics to breeding sources, feed, pen structures, nutrition, and biosafety.

We hope that when the project comes on stream, it will contribute actively to stabilising pig prices, changing the mindset on animal husbandry and structure of pens, as well as improving Vietnams animal husbandry standards, said Arif Widjaja.

The swine farm in Phu Rieng is designed and built with modern technology

As Asias leading agri-food company, Japfa entered Vietnam in 1996 through a joint venture with state-owned Vietnam Livestock Corp. In 1999, the company became wholly foreign-owned under the name of Japfa Vietnam, with headquarters in Huong Canh town, Vinh Phuc province.

The company is now operating six feed factories, more than 1,000 poultry and swine farms, and a network of more than 40 stores for meat and processed foods under the brand Japfa Best.

Given its staff of over 5,000 skilled employees, Japfa is step-by-step expanding its business, contributing to animal husbandry development in Vietnam.




Inspired by an Olivenhain girl who loved music, a group of accomplished young musicians are set to perform in a once a year musical program to raise money for music therapy for hospitalized kids.

The Heart of a Child Concert on April 28, which benefits the Ariana Miller Music with Heart Program, features 17 acts (solo and group) from classical, pop, rock and country music by vocalists and instrumentalists in kindergarten through college. Many have won music awards and some have performed at Carnegie Hall, on TV and Broadway.

The money raised at the concert will go to providing music therapy at Rady Childrens Hospital, where Ariana Miller had six open heart surgeries. It will also fund music therapy for local children who are not in the hospital, but are facing major illness.

After Ariana died in 2008 at the age of 13, awaiting a heart transplant, Jeff Miller and his wife, Anita, wanted to provide music therapy for other children, who like their daughter might find joy in music as they fight illness.

Advertisement

When Ariana began music therapy, it was as if a switch in her soul was flipped to the on position and she was able to regain some control over at least this one aspect of her life, said Anita Miller.

Ariana played the piano and sang and produced two albums for friends and family. The couple has a recording of Ariana singing Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star at 18 months old, and recalled that a day rarely went by when Ariana wasnt singing something.

Arianas health struggles had zapped some of her joy, and music therapy allowed her to once again create and experience something that had been such an integral part of her soul since birth, Anita Miller said.

The Olivenhain couple partnered with local nonprofit Resounding Joy to provide free music therapy for children with heart disease. They later expanded the program to include children fighting other significant illnesses and disabilities, in the hospital or at home.

Since it was established in 2010, the Ariana Miller Music with Heart Program, under the guidance of Resounding Joy, has raised more than $230,000, mainly through the annual Heart of a Child fundraising concerts.

The program has provided free music therapy to more than 1,500 children at Rady Childrens Hospital.

The benefit concert will be hosted by San Diego TV personality Pat Brown and Emmy-nominated television director Hal Grant.

The celebrity guest performer is Merrick Hanna, a reality television and YouTube sensation who competed on Americas Got Talent, and is known for his freestyle hip-hop flo-bot popping and animation-style dancing. He was featured on the prime-time hit So You Think You Can Dance making it to the Academy Week Round at age 11.

The lineup of performers includes Anne Liu, who has performed at Carnegie Hall; Isabella McCormick, an award-winning harpist with the San Diego Civic Youth Orchestra; Sadie Duca, a vocalist who has been on Americas Got Talent; and Nikki Castillo, who is known for her role as Patty Logan in CBS Scorpion and Akina in Disneys K.C. Undercover along with more than a dozen other young musicians.

If you are feeling down on the world, this will reinforce your faith in humanity and our youth, Jeff Miller said.

The event begins with a reception and silent auction at 5:30 p.m. at the Irwin M. Jacobs Qualcomm Hall, 5775 Morehouse Drive in Sorrento Valley. Food trucks will arrive at 5 p.m. and the concert starts at 7 p.m.

Tickets are $25 for general admission; $100 VIP (includes guaranteed preferred seating and unlimited beverages); VIP Ticket Packages (6 for $550 or 10 for $900).

Tickets are available at resoundingjoyinc.org/event/7th-annual-heart-child-concert


 

  .

,      .


London, KY (40741)

Today

Mostly cloudy skies. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 81F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Showers and scattered thunderstorms. Low 63F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
California has more Medi-Cal patients than any other state, but it pays less than almost all of them for ambulances to carry the low-income, disabled or older adults to where they need to go.

On Tuesday, an unusual alliance of ambulance workers and their bosses announced they will urge the governor and California lawmakers to raise the reimbursement rate for Medi-Cal, the states version of the national program, Medicaid, which pays for medical assistance to Californians in need.

The low reimbursement rate means that many needy patients get put on the back burner while waiting for nonemergency medical transportation, ambulance owners told The Chronicle. The owners say they can rarely raise pay for first responders and are forced to hike up the price for privately insured patients.

Ambulance owners call it cost-shifting, which means charging private customers far more for ambulance rides than they otherwise would if they werent losing money on Medi-Cal patients.

In San Francisco, an ambulance charge could be $2,000, $3,000 because you have such a high portion of Medi-Cal patients, said Jimmy Pierson, who runs a company in Solano County and is president of the California Ambulance Association.

The situation has left ambulances short-staffed, as many paramedics and emergency medical technicians quit, according to the California Emergency Medical Services Coalition, the new alliance. Too few people are ready to take their places because the pandemic shut down training facilities for so long, the group says.

Our emergency medical services system is on life support, ambulance owner Melissa Harris, who serves on the board of directors for the California Ambulance Association, said Tuesday.

Nick Otto / Special to The Chronicle

Roughly a third of all ambulance rides in the state are Medi-Cal customers, who dont pay for their rides themselves, Pierson said. Instead, the state pays ambulance companies $111.48 per ride  the same amount its paid since 2013, when California cut the reimbursement rate by 10%, Harris said.

North Dakota, the most generous state, reimburses ambulance companies at a rate five times higher than California for similar patients in the nations Medicaid program, according the 2019 American Ambulance Association State Medicaid Rate Survey, which the coalition shared with The Chronicle.

Only four states pay less than California: Kentucky, North Carolina, Rhode Island and Delaware, according to the survey. Ohio, just above California in reimbursement rates, pays 11% more, or $125.09 per ride.

The California Emergency Medical Services Coalition, including unions up and down the state, is asking the Legislature to pay $350 a ride  a rate they say the state can afford, now that its reported a $46 billion budget surplus.

It takes a special type of person to work in the emergency medical field, said Shelly Hudelson, a spokesperson for the International Association of EMTs and Paramedics, noting that the first responders often miss meals, work mandatory overtime, and are required in some circumstances to spend hours waiting with patients in emergency rooms until a bed can be found for them.

If the patient has Medi-Cal, the state wont reimburse for those hours sitting around in what the industry calls wall time.

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 a starting salary of $15 to $17 for EMTs, theyre leaving in droves for fast-food jobs, Hudelson told a news conference announcing the groups grassroots lobbying effort, which includes a petition.

California lawmakers are in budget season now, planning for the 2022-23 fiscal year and considering where to spend the states resources.

No one from the Assembly Budget Committee responded immediately to a request for comment about whether a higher Medi-Cal reimbursement rate for ambulances is on the table.

A spokesperson from Gov. Gavin Newsoms Department of Finance declined to comment but said that in January, Newsom proposed rescinding the 10% cut to Medi-Cal reimbursements for providers of medical air transportation and nonemergency medical transport  but not for ambulances.

Nanette Asimov is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: nasimov@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @NanetteAsimov
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 2 1 of 2 FBI Show More Show Less 2 of 2 FBI Show More Show Less



A Mill Valley man on the FBIs most wanted list who is accused of assaulting law enforcement officers during the Capitol riot has been granted asylum in Belarus, according to reports.

Evan Neumann, 51, was indicted in December on 14 criminal counts, in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021 riot by President Donald Trump supporters, including engaging in physical violence with a deadly or dangerous weapon, civil disorder, and assaulting, resisting, or impeding law enforcement officers, according to the FBI.
After a year in which shootings and homicides in Oakland surged to levels not seen in nearly a decade, the citys anti-violence program is ramping up efforts to prevent gun violence and repeat offenses, officials said.

Oakland Ceasefire, a collaborative strategy among law enforcement, local clergy and community organizations to bring down violent-crime rates in the city, has been credited with reducing gun violence since it started in 2013. But the program was hamstrung by the pandemic, and Oaklands homicide rates climbed.

On Tuesday, officials announced that the program is boosting its community outreach and increasing the number of officers available with the hope of providing more services, more support and more law enforcement in the coming year.

The heartbreaking loss of life, the harm, the trauma, that Oakland families endure as a result of gun violence is wholly unacceptable, Mayor Libby Schaaf said at a news conference Tuesday, surrounded by Oakland police officials and religious leaders from across the city. We believe that this holistic strategy is going to return Oakland to a place of peace and safety.

Ceasefires resurgence from the challenges of pandemic will be led by an increase in outreach to residents who are identified by community leaders as being at risk of becoming involved in or returning to gun violence. This year, officials said, Ceasefire outreach workers will be doing more call-ins  group meetings between local leaders and at-risk residents  and more custom notifications, which include one-on-one meetings between outreach workers and those believed to be at risk to connect them with services that could make them less likely to resort to gun violence.

Our  objective is really to develop trust within the community, to build relationships with our community that allow us to actually flourish together. But some people have not accepted the message, said Oakland Police Chief LeRonne Armstrong. Some individuals have chosen to continue to drive gun violence in the city of Oakland.

Oakland recorded 134 total homicides in 2021, up from 109 in 2020 and 78 in 2019, Armstrong said. So far this year, shootings and homicides in the city are down 21% compared to this time last year, Schaaf said.

Ceasefire has added more police officers to the program to help with law enforcement, Armstrong said. The Police Department has 26 officers assigned to Ceasefire and will have 32 officers  the maximum number currently authorized  in the program by the end of the summer, Armstrong said.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

Law enforcement is not the main crime-reduction tool in Ceasefire, he said, but a necessary component that can step in when outreach and support strategies are not enough. The added officers will increase the number of investigations the Police Department can take on, officials said.

Once everything else has failed and we have exhausted all other options, enforcement will be prepared to move forward, Armstrong said.

Tuesdays announcement came after a weekend in which gun violence in Oakland left at least two people dead and four others injured. The shootings occurred at a sideshow and two separate incidents in East Oakland, officials said.

Andy Picon (he/him) is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: andy.picon@hearst.com Twitter: @andpicon
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

With California still in the midst of a deepening housing crisis, some would-be homeowners facing insurmountable barriers to buying a traditional dwelling are turning to tiny homes  with a smaller footprint and a smaller price point to match.

Over the last few years, there has been an increasing interest  and demand for  tiny home living, particularly across the Bay Area, real estate agents say. To keep up with that demand, the marketplace has gotten hotter, and is churning out new manufacturers and sellers everyday.

Some sellers offer plots where people can live after buying their tiny home. Others require them to be shipped or trucked to land that the buyers own.

But with that demand also comes supply issues. Companies like Pacifica Tiny Homes, which builds and sells a variety of model tiny homes that ship to customers nationwide, say theres a six month wait time for one of their custom-built homes.

This is in part whats spurring a lot of buyers to look into direct buyers through websites like Tiny House Listings, where a 324-square foot redwood cottage can sell for upwards of $300,000.

So whats available in the Bay Area when it comes to tiny home living? Here are a few properties that illustrate the sheer scale of how the market is growing.

Provided by Marisa Rosas, W Real Estate

129 Katherine Pl, Unit 59, Windsor

 1 bedroom, 1 bath

 192 square feet

 Listed at: $95,000

 Price per square foot: $495

In the eight days this tiny home  which is actually a manufactured home on wheels  has been on the market, listing agent Marisa Rosas says shes already received more than 30 phone calls about it and has given 15 showings.

Most of the people interested are older than 65, and are looking to downsize or move the property to land they either own or can otherwise live on. But if a buyer doesnt have that option, they can stay on this lot, which is zoned specifically for a tiny home and rents for $631 a month at Royal Mobile Manor, the all age RV park in Windsor.

The solid 2x4 wood throughout, in-unit laundry, butcher block countertops and yard space are just some of the elements drawing so many customers to her listing, Rosas said. But at nearly $100,000, Rosas knows that their asking price is high  though, she says, its never been a better time to roll the dice.

I told my client, this market is a really interesting one right now, and that if (they) wanted to try a number, they could try it now.

Provided by Pacifica Tiny Homes

Pacifica Tiny Homes

 1 bedroom - 2 bedroom, one bath

 211-363 square feet

 $39,900 - $80,900

Having just started in 2018, Pacifica Tiny Homes is one example of the types of companies emerging to the meet the growing demand for simpler and more affordable living. While based out of Pacifica, their factory operations are in Corcoran (Kings County), and the custom-built trailer tiny homes have been shipped all over the Bay Area, said co-owner Crystal Serrano, who started the company with her husband. Theyre also the first tiny home company to have their plans approved by the state of California for their homes to be used as accessory dwelling units, Serrano said.

They offer more than 30 different design and 120 color and material options, and the tiny homes can range in length from 18 to 30.

Each of their three models come furnished with a smart TV, a AC/Heating unit, and an Ikea queen sized sofa bed. Some can accommodate up to three sleeping spaces.

Provided by Marisa Rosas / W Real Estate

On the highest end, their 2.0 Tiny Victorian model  which is named because of its gabled-style roof  comes with two loft sleeping or storage spaces, and a propane tankless water heater.

Serrano says Bay Area customers make up at least 50% of their overall sales, and though many of their buyers are older and looking to downsize, many of them are also younger and building families.

When COVID hit, we saw a bit of a lull and we didnt know what was going to happen, said Serrano. Its just skyrocketed since then, because there is obviously a high need for housing in the state and this has become an affordable way for a lot of people, young and old.

Unlike the Windsor property, people are on their own when it comes to finding a place to live in the tiny home, but Serrano says many of their customers have found luck finding rental spots on Craigslist, finding RV parks that are accepting tiny homes, or joining tiny home communities like one in Delta Bay in Isleton.

And because the company handles all of the design and construction, customers are also able to customize the models even further, said Serrano, adding that one buyer, a nurse who worked long hours, requested her tiny home be built with a bathtub.

Provided by Harmony Communities

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.

Harmony Communities

 Studio - 2 bedroom

 220-400 square feet

 $67,500-$99,950

Like Pacifica Tiny Homes, Harmony Communities  one of the largest tiny home purchasers in the state  offers a few different models for their customers to choose from, though theyre not as customize-able.

The company, which is based out of Stockton, works with two factories in Lindsey (Tulare County) and Corona (Riverside County).

They cannot get us homes fast enough, said President Matthew Davies. We are six to nine months out on our orders.

The reason, he says, echoes a narrative that has come to explain the tiny home craze: affordability, at least by Bay Area standards.

Its impossible (here), said Davies, referring to the Bay Areas housing crisis. These are your bread-and-butter, blue collar workers who are buying these ... these are the workers who dont have telecommuting jobs.

For many white-collar workers, and especially those able to tele-commuting, the defining trend over the pandemic was to find more space, not less. But for working class Bay Area residents finding themselves increasingly priced out of cities they are tied to, tiny home living has become one of their only options for home ownership, said Davies.

The company sells about four properties a month to Bay Area buyers in three different park communities: Gilroy Garlic Farm, Bayshore Commons in San Leandro, and Creekside Village MHC in San Pablo. The properties are fairly austere, but sometimes include some added flourishes, like a wrap-around porch and additional loft units that can accomodate families of up to 4, sometimes 5 people.

The model works best for the Bay Area, he said. Because land is scarce and prices are already high.

Annie Vainshtein (she/her) is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: avainshtein@sfchronicle.com
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

The San Francisco school board hit the reset button Tuesday, meeting for the first time with three new mayoral-appointed members following a contentious recall and years of controversy.

The meeting largely lacked the divisiveness and lengthy board member monologues that punctuated many 7-to-10-hour meetings in previous months.

New President Jenny Lam set the tone, ensuring public speakers stayed on topic, although the meeting bogged down during a budget discussion, as board members considered what they would do if the state gives them more money in May rather than discussing the budget plan on the agenda.

The reconstituted school board is a chance for district leadership to restore community faith following the upheaval created by a pandemic punctuated by a series of controversies, lawsuits and the recall. Lam has said the top priorities are addressing the districts financial tailspin, including stemming ongoing enrollment declines and selecting a new superintendent while ensuring a prepared school board committed to civility.

Early in the meeting, community members urged the board to stay focused.

Parents are ready for a boring Board of Education, said Meredith Dodson, executive director for the San Francisco Parent Coalition. After two years of being ignored and treated with contempt, parents could not be more ready for a school board that is ready to effectively govern and focus on educating our children.

The new board members, Ann Hsu, Lainie Motamedi and Lisa Weissman-Ward, eagerly jumped into the job, questioning staff and offering thoughts on the direction of the district.

That included some harsh words regarding the districts payroll debacle. The board unanimously adopted a restitution plan to address hundreds of errors and missing funds in educator paychecks following the switch to a new software system.

The district will be required to pay 15% interest for late payments and reimburse penalties or late fees associated with bank overdrafts or non-payment on credit cards or mortgages.

The cost of the agreement with the teachers union could reach $300,000, adding to the districts ongoing budget woes, which includes an estimated shortfall of $125 million next year and $140 million the following year.

District officials said they will present a more in-depth analysis of how the errors occurred to the board at a future committee meeting.

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.

I hope this is a very hard lesson we are learning and I hope future projects will be handled much better than this one, Hsu said.

The board also adopted an update to a budget balancing plan, which includes $15 million in cuts to school sites based on declining enrollment  down from $50 million in reductions to classrooms and schools in earlier budget plans  as well as additional cuts to the central office and other reductions in spending.

The cuts are necessary to prevent additional state oversight. Theres already a fiscal expert appointed to oversee district spending.

The vote on the interim budget indicates the district is still on track to stay solvent and pay its bills this year.

Also Tuesday, the board elected board member Kevine Boggess to be vice president, replacing Lam, who stepped up into the presidents seat after the recall of former President Gabriela Lopez, as well as board members Alison Collins and Faauuga Moliga.

Jill Tucker is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jtucker@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jilltucker
A couple who worked in some of San Franciscos top Michelin-starred spots are opening their dream restaurant in a sleepy Northern California locale: Carmel.

Jonny and Monique Black are behind Chez Noir, opening this summer at 5th Ave. 2 NW San Carlos St., a few blocks from the beach.

The restaurant is a hyperlocal ode to the seafood and produce of the Central Coast. A foie gras terrine will get topped with boquerones made from local herring, red heirloom celery from Watsonvilles Mariquita Farm and pickled mustard seeds. Jonny Black will forage mussels in Big Sur  hes also big on free diving and spearfishing on the coast  which might get cooked with braised baby artichokes from Pezzini Farm in Castroville. Desserts like Basque cheesecake and flan will include dairy from the longtime Schoch Family Farmstead in Salinas.

The Blacks want Chez Noir to feel like a special dining experience, but not so precious that locals cant dine there a few times a week. Still, a meal here will be pricey  between $85 and $150 per person, ranging from snacky dishes and things on toast to dry-aged steak and proprietary caviar made with salt from Big Sur.

We want it to be a neighborhood restaurant that could also be worth a journey for somebody whos coming out here to eat or driving from Los Angeles to San Francisco, Jonny Black said.

Carmel is better known for its beaches than as a cutting-edge dining scene, but the Blacks think thats changing. Theyre excited about newer businesses in the region, like nearby cafe the Stationaery, Monterey cocktail bar Pearl Hour and Cella Restaurant. They hope Chez Noir will push that change further.

We want to be the next generation of restaurants here, Jonny Black said.

Courtesy Joseph Weaver

The Blacks are banking on their experience to make that happen. Jonny Black has cooked for the culinary worlds top fine-dining names, including as a cook at Thomas Kellers Per Se in New York, chef de cuisine at the three-Michelin-starred Quince in San Francisco and as Dominique Crenns first executive chef, overseeing all of her San Francisco restaurants. Jonny Black considers himself a Francophile and said he deepened his love of all things French while working for Crenn.

Chez Noir will be French-inspired but will likely veer into other cuisines (a recent preview pop-up focused on Basque cuisine). His obsession with sourcing, meanwhile, comes from Michael Tusk, chef-owner of Quince in San Francisco. Jonny Black said he would often get excited, late-afternoon texts from Tusk, sharing a find at a local farmers market and requesting it be put on that nights menu. Black doesnt like writing menus ahead of time, so expect the Chez Noir dishes to change frequently.

Monique Black, meanwhile, will help oversee the front of house. She got her start as a line cook in New York, and previously worked front-of-house positions at Quince and Coi in San Francisco.

We want it to feel fancy and special but no fuss, she said.

Food Guide Top 25 Restaurants Where to eat in the Bay Area. Find spots near you, create a dining wishlist, and more.

Part of the draw of opening a restaurant in Carmel is a better work-life balance for the Black family. Theyve found a healthier pace of life there, with weeknight beach bonfires and many other young families, compared to the 90-hour workweeks they were used to at San Francisco restaurants.

Chez Noir is located on the first floor of a new, two-story craftsman cottage-style building that doubles as the familys home. The Blacks will live above the restaurant. The dining room seats 40, plus theres outdoor seating around a fire pit in a courtyard.

Before Chez Noir opens, the couple are hosting pop-ups at notable Bay Area restaurants including Snail Bar in Oakland and Octavia in San Francisco. Next months Octavia dinner ($120 per person) will include dishes like a Dungeness crab tartlet and local lettuces with whipped ranch and crispy anchovies.

Chez Noir. Opening summer 2022. 5th Ave. 2 NW San Carlos St., Carmel. cheznoircarmel.com
COVID-19 is, for the moment, in retreat, and public health measures are loosening accordingly: Every state has dropped or will soon end its mask mandate; major employers like Starbucks and major cities like Boston, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco are dropping vaccine requirements; countries around the world are reopening to travelers. But relaxing the measures that protect us against viral spread only makes sense if we can also be confident that less virus is spreading.

How do we gain this confidence? By getting ahead of the virus.

Throughout the pandemic, weve largely been playing catch-up. Much of what public health officials have been tracking  cases and deaths, for example  are lagging indicators, snapshots from the past, which are already out of date by the time the data is disseminated. The lag time that comes with such metrics means they are not the best indicators to inform public health policies meant to curb the spread of the fast-moving virus that causes COVID-19 and its many subvariants.

Far more useful are leading indicators  data that shows where the virus is headed, not where it has already been. One such data set comes from an unexpected and decidedly low-tech place: our wastewater.

Wastewater functions as a true community-level picture of near-real-time disease spread: The data stream is continually created, pooled and anonymized. For years, medical experts have used wastewater to track the spread of diseases such as polio and norovirus. At the start of the pandemic, some municipalities began using the technique to track the level of COVID viral material in their wastewater. Last fall, such tracking in major cities like Houston and New York allowed public health officials to detect the omicron variant as early as 11 days before anyone in the U.S. tested positive for the variant. That extra lead time is critical because it can allow public health officials to adjust their strategies to help prevent a surge. Its for that reason that counties like Santa Clara and Los Angeles, for example, have routinely monitored their sewage for coronavirus.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recognized the value of wastewater surveillance early on and launched the National Wastewater Surveillance System in September 2020. The system is a coordinating tool for building the countrys capacity to track coronavirus in wastewater samples. And while data from the system was recently added to the CDCs COVID Data Tracker, nationwide coverage from it is still quite sparse, with only clusters of sites in a handful of states, according to recent reporting.

Expanding the system might be a game changer for public health agencies across the U.S., but the transition from lagging to leading indicator isnt always smooth.

In the early 2010s, excitement ran high about social media and other, similar digital exhaust  the wastewater equivalent of our online data. Google Flu Trends was a tool built to capitalize on web searches for flu-related symptoms. The idea was that patterns in those searches would predict clinical reporting of flu symptoms  someone searching Google for common flu symptoms, for example, might indicate that they or members of their household had the flu.

If it had worked, Google Flu Trends would have accurately shown where flu was spreading  a sea change that would have allowed health departments and hospitals to prepare for specific waves of disease well in advance. But Google Flu Trends was no better at predicting flu cases than the CDCs reporting, and it also failed a major test: It didnt see the H1N1 pandemic coming. It turned out that online behaviors, like social media posts or web searches, are, at best, indirect measures of the real world. As of 2015, Google Flu Trends was no longer being updated.

Fortunately, unlike web searches, wastewater is a leading indicator that is a direct measure of whats actually happening on the ground. There is also another key difference: While our digital data is mostly captured by and captive to private companies, our wastewater data is collected by government agencies that are by and large eager to make the data available for public benefit.

In order to realize the CDCs aims, the system will need more data from areas of the country not currently tracking their wastewater, metrics will need to be standardized so trends can be compared across communities over time and public health workers will need to be trained or provided guidance on how to use the metrics. Properly executed, this information would provide policymakers with specific and understandable indicators to inform when to reinstate or relax COVID safety measures like mask mandates.

Building up the robustness of a surveillance system will take financial support. But its not clear Congress will provide it. COVID-19 funding was recently pulled from a $1.5 trillion measure after Republicans and Democrats couldnt reach an agreement on where the funding would come from. While there is bipartisan support for the Prevent Pandemics Act that is working its way through Congress, the bill only includes an additional $2 billion in spending. A bipartisan group of health officials has called for allocating $10 billion to biodefense.

The National Wastewater Surveillance System has the potential to significantly change the way we fight not just COVID-19, but future pandemics and any other viruses or bacterial diseases that could be circulating in populations, too. Getting ahead of disease in this way is something of a holy grail for public health. And to think, its just from the stuff we flush.

Douglas Yeung is a behavioral scientist at the nonprofit, nonpartisan Rand Corp. and a member of the Pardee Rand Graduate School faculty.
Amazon said Tuesday it will pause work on a proposed last-mile warehouse in San Franciscos Showplace Square after the Board of Supervisors unanimously passed legislation that placed an 18-month moratorium on all new parcel delivery services in the city.

In a statement a company spokesman said, We will continue to evaluate our long-term use of the site, and in the short-term we will work with our neighbors to look at ways to use the location to serve the community.

The companys announcement came after the board voted 10-0 to back the moratorium, which was crafted in part as a response to Amazons plan to build a 725,000 square foot warehouse at 900 7th St.

Supervisor Aaron Peskin recused himself from the vote because he owns stock in Amazon.

While the board didnt discuss the legislation at Tuesdays meeting, the vote was preceded by a fiery rally in front of City Hall at which organized labor, environmental watchdogs, and residents of San Franciscos southeast neighborhoods denounced Amazons expansion plans.

With an 18-wheeler emblazoned with a Teamster banner as a backdrop, Jason Rabinowitz, president of Teamsters Joint Council 7, said the type of jobs we dont need to have are the Amazon style poverty jobs that are underpaid, unsafe, include no rights at work.

Good jobs uplift our community, he said. Amazon style poverty jobs drag us all down.

Yalonda M. James/San Francisco Chronicle

Board of Supervisors President Shamann Walton, who represents the neighborhood where the logistics center would be located, said that if Amazon wants to build in the district it will have to negotiate a community benefits package similar to deals struck with major waterfront developers.

You can go and ask Pier 70. You can ask the (Potrero) Power Station. If you are going to come into our neighborhoods you are going to talk to the people in the neighborhood. You are going to provide them with community benefits, he said.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

The legislation passage is a big win for a broad coalition of organized labor, including the Teamsters, the United Commercial Food Workers, Service Employees International Union and the Building Trades Council.

Jim Araby, strategic campaign director with the United Food & Commercial Workers, said the legislation would Create the process necessary to hold large corporations like Amazon accountable to the community, the workers and the elected officials.

This legislation is the first step to make sure there is an actual process, that you cant just plop down a 700,000 square foot in the middle of a community and say we are going to buy you off with five dollars and an ice tea, he said.

J.K. Dineen is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jdineen@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @sfjkdineen
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

The Transamerica Pyramid is getting the biggest makeover in its 50-year history.

Owner Michael Shvo and his partners have hired world-renowned architect Norman Foster to redesign the iconic towers interiors and plan to invest $250 million to renovate the 1972 building and expand its Redwood Park. The owners also plan to roughly double the size of neighboring 545 Sansome St. and add a new facade to create a modern office building at the cost of around $150 million.

The plans amount to not only the largest investment in downtown San Francisco since the pandemic began, but one of the largest building redesigns in the citys history  and to one of the citys most recognizable landmarks.

We want to make this place a focal center of downtown, and make sure people come here not only to work, said Shvo. It will not only transform the interior of the building but the landscape and the exterior and bring life to the entire site.

Tourists and residents often take pictures of the 853-foot pyramid from afar, but the site itself is sleepy, particularly since the pandemic began. When you come to the site, theres not much to do there, Shvo said. We want to change that.

Foster + Partners

Mark Twain Street, now a barren alleyway connected to Redwood Park, would get rows of cherry blossom trees and new shops under the plan. Open space would be expanded around the block. On the ground floor of the pyramid, Shvo hopes to bring in multiple restaurants, a bookstore and flower shop  all open to the public.

The renovations are expected to take a year to complete. The city has approved a temporary construction barricade, and work is scheduled to begin this week. The expansion of 545 Sansome St.  which is being rebranded 3 Transamerica  to 100,000 square feet of office space would follow and require additional city approvals.

Shvo sees the pandemic as a temporary era, and that peoples reluctance to leave the house can be overcome by making compelling destinations. And hes bullish on the future of downtown.

I believe, long-term, San Francisco is one of the most important cities for business in the United States, Shvo said. I dont believe everyone is moving out, and I dont believe everyone is working from home.

Shvo has partnered with luxury hotel and condo companies like Mandarin Oriental and Four Seasons on other projects, and hes taking a similar hospitality approach to the workplace.

I strongly believe the office experience should be at the same level as luxury residential and hospitality, Shvo said. In the last two years, weve made our homes into our offices, now its time to make our offices feel like our homes.

Foster + Partners

A vacant 48th-floor penthouse space would be turned into a bar and lounge exclusively for office tenants at the cost of $201,836, according to a building permit filed this month that is awaiting city approval. Upper floors would include conference rooms, a spa and gym. Office tenants would be able to order food and beverages to their desks.

Separately, New Yorks high-end Core club has leased three bottom floors in the pyramid to build a luxury, members-only facility with three restaurants and three bars.

Shvo said he ran a design competition with world-renowned architects before selecting Foster, who designed Apple Park, the Bay Areas most valuable property, and Londons Gherkin Building.

Foster has a history of reimagining prominent historic buildings, including designing a new glass dome atop the Reichstag, Germanys lower house of parliament. He also designed the Manhattan headquarters of Hearst, owner of The Chronicle, a glassy diagonal grid constructed in 2003 atop a six-story structure built in 1927.

The architect has been expanding his work in San Francisco, designing a 1,066-foot tower proposed on the site of the former PG&E garage that would exceed the height of the pyramid. Another super-tall tower, Oceanwide Center, is stalled after its Chinese owners financial turmoil.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

The pyramid design approach seeks to enhance and reveal the towers historic elements. For instance, the current lobby ceiling blocks the buildings lattice-like structure, which Shvo wants to restore.

Foster + Partners

Shvo and his partners are only the second owners of the tower, after buying it in 2020 for $650 million from Transamerica Corp.s parent, Aegon. The group, which includes Germanys biggest pension fund, Bayerische Versorgungskammer, beat out over 40 other bidders.

They thought we would be the best steward of their brand, he said of Aegon.

Aegon had previously proposed redevelopment of 545 Sansome St. but hadnt received approval. Shvos plans will result in the relocation of 37-year-old Vietnamese restaurant Sais from the site. The developer is currently assisting the restaurant in finding a space nearby.

Shvo said the prospect of renovations has already paid off, with multiple leases over $100 per square foot annually, some of the highest in the country. Shvo declined to identify the tenants.

Were really seeing tenants are willing to pay an almost unlimited premium for quality product, Shvo said. Tenants today want top-of-the-line product. They want to be in the best buildings.

Roland Li is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: roland.li@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @rolandlisf
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

For more stories like this, check out The Chronicles weekly Travel newsletter! Sign up here.

On Saturday morning, an 83-year-old Japanese yachtsman will climb aboard his aluminum sailboat in Sausalito and cruise through the Golden Gate, pointed toward the horizon with the hopes of reaching his home country by early June.

It wont be Kenichi Hories first venture into the Pacific alone  or his second or third.

The celebrated sailor has traversed the mighty ocean by himself on small craft several times, beginning in 1962 when, as a 23-year-old amateur seaman, he piloted a small plywood sloop from Osaka to San Francisco, subsisting on canned food and rice for 94 days. That successful voyage, which has been characterized as a one-man olive branch of postwar diplomacy between Pacific rivals, exalted Horie as a national hero in Japan and lionized him as a figure of nautical lore.

Even in the States, yachtsmen are inspired by his story, said Morgan Smith, manager of interpretation, education and volunteers at San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park. He took a huge chance, being a young man alone on the ocean.

As the story goes, Horie traveled without a passport or currency and was promptly arrested upon arrival in San Francisco, then released by Mayor George Christopher who later awarded him a key to the city for his bravery.

On Tuesday evening, Horie appeared at the museum, which overlooks Aquatic Park and the bay northward, to commemorate his impending departure. He met fans, autographed books and posed for photos beneath the vessel he sailed in 1962  the Mermaid, which lives in the museums foyer.

When I first came here 60 years ago, I never imagined Id be back here 60 years later, Horie told a crowd of about 100 people, through a translator.

The Mermaid is the museums superstar attraction among its collection of 120-plus historic vessels, said John Muir, the museums curator of small craft. It was once displayed as a landmark on a nearby pier, and when the museum removed it for restoration in 2014, visitors pleaded to bring it back, Smith said.

In the past six decades, Horie has completed several Pacific voyages in an assortment of unusual, eco-minded vessels, including one powered by foot pedals and another made from recycled aluminum cans and propelled by dozens of solar panels. In 1999, Horie sailed from San Francisco to Japan in a catamaran built from welded-together beer kegs; for a 2002 trip back across the ocean, he swapped out the beer kegs for a hull made of whiskey barrels.

His new boat is a 2,182-pound sailboat of pale aluminum, 19 feet long and tailored to Hories frame. He is a compact man, standing about 5 feet tall, with silver-white hair who says he doesnt physically train for these adventures.

Carlos Avila Gonzalez/The Chronicle

Im always fine, always in shape, he said through a translator. No overeating, no overdrinking.

Asked whether he harbors any specific concerns for this passage, he replied, Nothing at all. Maybe just being old.

As to why he has pegged San Francisco for so many of his journeys, he said, Of course, there are other ports  Seattle, Los Angeles  however, you guys have the most beautiful bridge in the entire world, so Id like to make it my start.

Gregory Thomas is The San Francisco Chronicles editor of lifestyle and outdoors. Email: gthomas@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @GregRThomas
When The Godfather was released on March 24, 1972, The San Francisco Chronicles review was buried on the ninth page of the newspapers features section  behind the TV listings, bridge column, a Dennis the Menace comic and a full-page advertisement for waterbeds.

But readers who made it there a half century ago saw an unqualified rave of Francis Ford Coppolas film, coupled with the headline The Best Gangster Movie Ever Produced.

It was written by one of the best critics The Chronicle ever produced, Paine Knickerbocker, a film and live theater critic from 1955 to 1974 who dressed immaculately (not a usual film critic trait), walked to work from his Cow Hollow home and had a courtly manner  but still championed films that went against the mainstream.

Its always a treat during archive research when I run into his reviews, which have a live theater critics eye for actorly details. (The San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle still has a Paine Knickerbocker Award given to organizations that contribute to Bay Area theater.)

Knickerbocker died in 1985 at age 73. You can read more about him in my 2009 profile that included an interview with his daughter.

Heres his 1972 The Godfather review in full:

By Paine Knickerbocker

The Godfather, opening today at the Coronet, is an intelligent labor of love, a masterful action picture, a shrewd look at American values, and an artful period piece. The combination is unquestionably the best gangster film ever produced.

Based on the best-seller by Mario Puzo, it is directed with both a flair and a keen eye for detail by Francis Ford Coppola, who joined Puzo in writing the script.

Chronicle archive

Holding it all together, and crowning it with distinction as well, is Marlon Brando in the title role. Brando has never been uninteresting on the screen, although hes been in many second rate pictures, but here hes continually superlative.

He uses a quiet, rasping voice, pitched rather high; the slow near-shuffle of an elderly man, and a magically made-up face, the top half of which is extremely flexible because of the extraordinary muscular control he has of his eyebrows, the lower half with its twisted mouth almost immobile. His chin is an alien feature to Brandos face, and exactly right for that of the aging Don.

He is old when the picture begins, and after being shot and a long convalescence, when he appears along with the mafia chieftains, his hair has been slightly dyed in order to look younger. It is an almost imperceptible touch, but an indication of how resourcefully this three-hour-long production is staged.

The novel has been trimmed with care; the Las Vegas parts have been largely cut away, the Hollywood scene abrupt and telling. Thus most of the action is in the New York area, preventing the story from sprawling, or from losing its momentum. This is achieved partly by the deftness of Coppolas editing, which at times achieves a fascinating quality when certain episodes are being reported simultaneously, and at other times to make an unmistakable comment on business ethics, and still again to demonstrate how dramatically satisfying are both surprises and deceptions.

The world described in The Godfather is a closed arena, with its own interesting protocol, its own often electrifying decisions.

The Mafiosa are imprisoned within their own fortresses, their power structures and their political maneuvers. Respect and dignity are demanded for one to retain his power and the fear of others.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

But in addition, the attacks and counterattacks are not merely bloody and murderous; they reek with suspense. Coppola is a wizard when it comes to packing so long a movie. It never lingers, but also is not incessant, which makes it engrossing, although violent and grim.

Duke Downey / The Chronicle

The casting is admirable, for the players are skilled and largely unfamiliar. It is not of the 1930s gangster film school, which seemed to require the presence of Eduardo Ciannelli for authenticity. (Only Richard Conte seems like such a veteran, but he fits in well here.) There are a few new and fascinating faces (Richard Castellano, Al Lettieri, Lenny Montana) bringing a special vitality to the drama.

Salvatore Corsitto opens the film learning a lesson from the Godfather; Abe Vigoda, formerly of the Actors Workshop, lends a new presence; but there are many others. The old stunt of showing headlines of sensational newspapers hot off the press reveals an affectionate recollection of films of that other era.

Al Pacino, playing Michael, the Ivy League son who attempts to stay out of the familys business, leads the most interesting life of anyone in the film; for he is forced into certain responsibilities, but also demands that he accept certain jobs of retribution. He changes through the years of The Godfather convincingly becoming a different sort of man, eloquently demonstrating why en route.

He portrays a man who is cautious while learning, but whose eventual authority is undoubted. Although Coppola deals with many killings, the picture he ends up with is persuasive, chilling and ironic rather than harsh.

Peter Hartlaub (he/him) is The San Francisco Chronicles culture critic. Email: phartlaub@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @PeterHartlaub
The San Francisco District Attorneys Office has charged two adults connected to an alleged armed robbery just blocks away from the Chase Center.

Alex Clarks, a 19-year-old Vallejo resident, and Gabriel DeSouza, an 18-year-old Richmond resident, were both charged by the DAs Office with second-degree robbery, three separate counts of second-degree automobile burglary and three misdemeanor charges, according to a complaint obtained by SFGATE. Clarks was separately charged with possession of an unregistered firearm, or ghost gun, while DeSouza was separately charged with the concealed possession of a ghost gun.

On March 18, just blocks away from Chase Center at Francois and Mission Bay boulevards, the suspects allegedly struck a man on the head before they fled the location in a dark gray sedan, according to a statement from San Francisco police. The man sustained a non-life-threatening injury and was treated at the scene.

Later that evening, a dark gray sedan was spotted in the Embarcadero area  and after police attempted a traffic stop, the sedan engaged in a high-speed pursuit that ended on the 200 block of Pine Street, police said.

The four individuals arrested on-scene were believed to be connected to the robbery and two auto burglaries earlier that evening, San Francisco police said. Three ghost guns, among them Glock 9mm semi-automatic pistols, were found in their possession during a search of the sedan.

Ghost guns remain a significant issue in San Francisco, with 164 seizures by San Francisco police in 2020 compared with six just four years earlier.

Last December, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously voted to ban these unlicensed guns. Earlier in 2021, the District Attorneys Office filed a civil suit against three corporations believed to be vending ghost guns in California.

Both Clarks and DeSouza are booked in San Francisco County Jail, according to San Francisco police.

"We are committed to preventing violence before it happens and to holding those who endanger our communities accountable," Rachel Marshall, the director of communications for Boudin's office, said in a statement to SFGATE.
[March 23, 2022] Connect IT - the #1 European IT Event of the Year - Returns to Amsterdam Headliners include Kevin Gaskell, former CEO of successful world-class brands such as Porsche and Lamborghini and Dex Hunter-Torricke, former communications exec with Facebook and Google DUBLIN, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Kaseya , the leading provider of unified IT management and security software for managed service providers (MSPs) and small to medium-sized business (SMBs), announced today that Connect IT Europe  the much-anticipated premier IT conference  returns live and in person to the Netherlands, Sept 13-15 at the Amsterdam Grand Hotel Krasnapolsky. The pandemic put a pause on the annual event, but finally, after two long-awaited years, the conference is back with in-demand speakers Kevin Gaskell and Dex Hunter-Torricke, all new training and certifications and an M&A Summit to jumpstart the event. "It will be great to see you again, Amsterdam! We are excited to come home and be able to bring Europe's IT community together for three days of learning, networking and fun," said Fred Voccola, CEO, Kaseya. "We've totally revamped our training to reflect the new reality brought on by the pandemic and help our customers adapt and thrive in the new marketplace." This year features keynotes by Kevin Gaskell, former CEO of successful world-class brands such as Porsche, BMW and Lamborghini and Dex Hunter-Torricke, a past communicaions exec with companies like SpaceX, Facebook and Google. Gaskell will talk about business transformation and delivery, how to get out of your own way and leading ordinary people to extraordinary success. Hunter-Torricke will guide attendees through the tech trends anticipated over the next two decades, how it will impact the industry and what organisations need to do to prepare. Kaseya CEO Fred Voccola will share his vision for the evolving marketplace in the region, while Kaseya CISO Jason Manar, formerly with the FBI, will offer his unique perspective on the state of cybersecurity and what organizations need to be doing to protect themselves from ever-evolving cyber threats. Additionally, the conference will include all new training with content specifically tailored to the European market and new sought-after certifications like the IT Glue Administrator Training, which will be offered in Europe for the very first time. There will also be a pre-day dedicated to an M&A Summit to help MSPs better understand the mergers and acquisitions process and the importance of sales and marketing. It will include informative sessions by industry experts such as transaction advisors, private equity managers and successful sellers and buyers who will discuss evaluating opportunities, preparing for an exit and avoiding common pitfalls. Connect IT Europe would not be possible without generous sponsors such as Bitdefender and Cisco. Get your Connect IT Europe tickets today and the most up-to-date info on programming, key announcements and news from our partners at connectit.com/europe/. About Kaseya Kaseya is the leading provider of unified IT management and security software for managed service providers (MSPs) and small to medium sized businesses (SMBS). Through its open platform and customer-centric approach, Kaseya delivers best in breed technologies that allow organizations to efficiently manage, secure, and backup IT. Kaseya IT Complete is the most comprehensive, integrated IT management platform comprised of industry-leading solutions from Kaseya, Unitrends, RapidFire Tools, Spanning Cloud Apps, IT Glue, ID Agent, Graphus, RocketCyber and TruMethods. The platform empowers businesses to command all of IT centrally; easily manage remote and distributed environments; simplify backup and disaster recovery; safeguard against cybersecurity attacks; effectively manage compliance and network assets; streamline IT documentation and automate across IT management functions. Headquartered in Miami, Florida, Kaseya is privately held with a presence in over 20 countries. To learn more, visit? www.kaseya.com.

[ Back to the Next Generation Communications Community's Homepage ]
Dusty Pixel photography/Getty Images

One of the most evocative spots in Hawaii, Puu Kekaa, also called Black Rock, is located along the north end of Kaanapali Beach on the island of Maui. It offers stunning views, snorkeling and a nightly cliff diving ceremony.



But Puu Kekaa may also have the highest rate of snorkeling-related drownings per year. Yet there are no lifeguards, no warnings.



Locals are familiar with its strong currents, but visitors, who are not aware, can get caught in its waters, panic and drown. Earlier this year, a 52-year-old California man drowned at Puu Kekaa.



By far, its the No. 1 drowning capital in Hawaii, former Maui Fire Department battalion chief of ocean safety Colin Yamamoto told SFGATE. He managed all Maui County lifeguards from 2014 to 2017. Now retired, he is a strong advocate for a lifeguard station at Puu Kekaa.



According to a drowning and aquatic injury trends report covering 2009 to 2018 by the Hawaii State Department of Health, the leading cause of fatal injuries for visitors in Hawaii is ocean drowning  ahead of car accidents and falls  and snorkeling is the leading cause of those ocean drownings.

The island of Maui had the highest number of snorkeler drownings with 94 deaths, followed by the island of Oahu, which had 70 snorkeler drownings during the same time period. And of all the beaches on Maui, Puu Kekaa is the single location with the highest number of snorkeling-related fatal drownings, with 18 visitor deaths.



Hanauma Bay on Oahu had 28 visitor deaths due to snorkeling during the same time period, but Puu Kekaa is still suspected to have the highest rate of death.



Hanauma Bay has got to have 10 times the number of people than Black Rock, Daniel Galanis, injury epidemiologist for the Hawaii State Department of Health, told SFGATE. When you translate it to incidents per given number of people there, its a pretty good assumption that the rates are higher for Black Rock.



Hanauma Bay received an average of 3,000 visitors per day up until 2019. There are no official counts of how many people visit Puu Kekaa, but Yamamoto estimated it at about 500 to 700 per day.



Another disturbing trend is how quickly the number of snorkeling deaths in Hawaii have increased over time. In the 5-year period of 1994 through 1998, there were 19 snorkeling deaths in Hawaii. That number grew to 103 from 2014 to 2018.



Galanis thinks the increase of deaths due to snorkeling could be because the amount of visitors has also increased through the years  and snorkeling is an easily accessible activity.



You dont need a lot of equipment, Galanis pointed out, and the equipment you do need can be purchased for $20 to $30 bucks, and then you just get yourself to a beach and walk into the water.
In the wake of Russias devastating invasion of Ukraine late last month, scores of San Franciscans have stepped up to support fleeing refugees. Recently, local chef Michelle Polzine (of now-shuttered 20th Century Cafe) raised $17,000 in relief funds from sales of her famous 10-layer honey cake, a network of groups including the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department held a free benefit concert at Golden Gate Park, and more than 1,000 people gathered at City Hall to protest the war, while Russian spa Archimedes Banya offered free spa passes to anyone with a Ukrainian passport.

Now, controversial San Francisco street artist fnnch has joined the fold, unveiling a new blue-and-yellow honey bear design in the likeness of the Ukrainian flag that he sold in the form of 30 signed plywood paintings, costing $500 each, and 300 window decals for $30 each.

In a post shared on Instagram on Tuesday morning, he said 50% of the proceeds will go to Nova Ukraine, a Palo Alto-based nonprofit group providing emergency aid to Ukrainians. Hell take his own cut for most of the prints and decals, keeping 50% of those sales. One of the 30 prints is currently up for auction on eBay, and 100% of proceeds will be matched by the auction site and go toward relief funds.

This is challenging to talk about because the issues are many, and I am not an expert, fnnch wrote in the caption of his post. But I believe that fighting a war of aggression to capture territory is heart breaking and totally unacceptable, and purposefully targeting civilians is even more so. We need to find a way to live in a world in which these are lines that one does not cross.

Fnnch told SFGATE he came up with the idea for the new design after he was approached by a Ukrainian-born chef I know [who] suggested I do something.

She said that her country needed some beautiful art and extra attention. I agreed, he said in an email to SFGATE on Tuesday night.

Raymond Boyd/Getty Images

Its not exactly a new model for fnnch, who has conducted similar fundraisers for local arts organizations during the pandemic including the San Francisco Ballet and the Roxie Theater. The artist told SFGATE he raised about $320,000 for various non-profits last year, most of which were local to San Francisco, while he has stated in past promotional material that he raised another $293,000 in 2020.

But in the context of the current crisis, some of his critics perceived his efforts as not wholly charitable.

San Francisco-born cartoonist Ricky Rat, who has long been among one of fnnchs more outspoken critics, said that the design looked like it was marketed  and I use that word heavily  toward helping a nonprofit organization that aids [Ukrainians].

Which seems cool on the surface but then when you dig a little deeper and you find out only 50% of the funds are actually going to this organization that helps [Ukrainians], which makes you wonder if the artist is just pocketing the remaining 50% as profit, Ricky Rat continued via email. Which some could argue is in poor taste because youre technically profiting off of innocent people dying.

Fnnch said that the responses that hes seen from the project have been uniformly positive, and hes received kind notes from several Ukrainians.

Not everyone seemed to be convinced, however.

Congrats on being a war profiteer! Lead gentrifier wasnt enough for you ey? read one reply to his announcement on Twitter.

The criticism comes after fnnch received citywide backlash last year. What started as a casual disdain for the oversaturation of his art culminated in one of his murals at the SF LGBT Center getting painted over and a subsequent confrontation filmed by street artist DoggTown Dro, who told the artist his work was synonymous with gentrification in San Francisco and the displacement of the artists that come from here. In the video, fnnch said he was from Missouri and described himself as an immigrant, which drew further criticism from the public. Ultimately, his honey bears were replaced by a mural painted by queer artists Juan Manuel Carmona and Simon Malvaez, whose work has been featured at El Rio, Blondie's Bar and next to the Painted Ladies.

It wasnt long before a guillotined honey bear appeared in the window of Artists Television Access in the Mission that August, a disparaging installation further fueled by fnnchs collaboration with Williams-Sonoma that was released around the same time.

Michelle Robertson/SFGATE

In the aftermath, the once seemingly innocuous honey bears started to disappear. Fnnch addressed this in a recent Instagram post, stating that he quietly ended the Honey Bear Hunt earlier this year. (He later clarified to SFGATE that the honey bear hunt was conceived at a time when not only museums and galleries were closed, but when we were advised not even to leave our neighborhoods, and as businesses began to reopen, he no longer felt the project was relevant.)

But now, he believes reprising it in the colors of the Ukrainian flag will help raise awareness about the struggles faced by Ukrainians.

One of several fronts on which this war is being fought is in the minds of the world. One thing I can commend Ukrainians for is working with media to keep their struggle visible to others, he wrote on Instagram. The more this can happen, the more support  financial, political or otherwise  can be lent to the cause. Putting a Ukraine Bear in your window is a way to keep this issue top of mind in your own community and to show solidarity with the Ukrainian people. I hope this can help in its own small way.

San Francisco Chronicle/Hearst N/San Francisco Chronicle/Gett

To be fair, there is an audience for fnnch's work. According to an update from the artist on Wednesday morning, the paintings sold out in two minutes, while the window bears sold out in 20 minutes, raising a total of $12,000 for Nova Ukraine. Meanwhile, at the time this article was published, the painting on eBay had a max bid of $2,025, with 33 bids. The auction ends next Tuesday.

But other street artists have taken issue with the way fnnch uses his work to address such topics. Well-known artist and muralist Sirron Norris has called out fnnch in the past for releasing a blackout honey bear, designed to resemble the black squares posted on social media to protest police brutality in light of the murder of George Floyd. The black squares garnered enough pushback on their own, but some, including Norris, thought fnnchs new bear appeared to resemble blackface.

He argued with me that it wasnt blackface, Norris told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2020. I had to be direct with him. He doesnt understand what a person of color has gone through. (SFGATE and the Chronicle are both owned by Hearst but operate independently of one another.)

Norris ended up collaborating with fnnch on a revised design including one of his own blue bears, but said he later regretted it.

He makes money off social issues. Thats the problem, Norris told the Chronicle. It fits in that internet entrepreneur mindset. Hes doing what white tech bros do.

For Norris, the same criticism seemed to apply to fnnchs latest design.

This dude constantly profits [off] others pain. His bears cant do anything else, he tweeted on Wednesday morning in response to KQED journalist Rae Alexandra, who critiqued fnnch's announcement on Twitter.

Responding to pushback, fnnch later stated on Instagram that his profit margin in 2021 was less than 50%, so he is aiming to give something near 100% of profits. He also shared a screenshot from PayPal to show his $12,000 donation to Nova Ukraine.

Fnnch said the other 50% of proceeds not going toward Nova Ukraine will cover the costs of materials and making the pieces in my studio, which employs 4 people and pays rent on an art space in San Francisco. He told SFGATE he also hopes the painting on eBay will raise a substantial amount for Nova Ukraine, and encourages people to donate to the organization directly on its website.

With the fundraiser I hope I can significantly help a few individuals, even if the benefit to the overall cause is modest, said fnnch.

With the Window Bears, my hope is to raise awareness. The more this can happen, the more support  financial, political or otherwise  can be lent to the cause, he continued via email, echoing the Instagram announcement of the Ukraine bears. Putting a Ukraine Bear in your window is a way to keep this issue top of mind in your own community and to show solidarity with the Ukrainian people.

But Ricky Rat called the nature of his work an unfortunate trend.

Tons of individuals, artists or whatever you want to call them find out what the latest hot button issue is  covid, a potential World War III, marginalized groups struggles  and then figure out a way to make a dime of it, he said. Money donations are always cool, dont get me wrong. But making a business model off of it to earn profit seems lame. And art-wise its just the same design over and over again with slight differences. Its like were in Zoolander and were all Mugatu yelling It's the same thing! I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!

He added that it "sounds like he pays people to make his 'art' ... which doesn't really sound like an artist to me but a tech start-up."
Standing in a semicircle on a green and blue patterned rug, a group of 4- and 5-year-old children in Riverside County, Calif., performed a call-and-response with their teacher.

"Who's our president?" the teacher asked in a video filmed last month.

"Biden!" the children responded.

"What do we want to do with him?" the teacher said.

"We want him out!" they chanted, swinging their thumbs back in a "get out" gesture.

The teacher, who is not seen in the video and has not been publicly identified, posted the recording to an app that staff at Turning Point Christian School, a private school in Norco, Calif., use to communicate with parents.

Christina McFadden was on her lunch break on Feb. 18 when she saw the video. She spotted her daughter in the crowd.

"My initial reaction was fear," McFadden, 35, told The Washington Post in a Facebook Messenger exchange. "Fear that this was sent to 14 families with differing views. Fear that it appeared to be a political propaganda video and that it would spread as such with my daughter front and center."

The school removed the video hours later and posted an apology message to the app.

"[The video] did not share our school and church philosophy of honoring and respecting authority including those in government positions," Linda Solorzano, the preschool director, wrote in the note, which was reviewed by The Post.

"We are sorry for any misunderstanding this could [have] created," she added. "With courtesy toward the families of our campus and the children in the classroom I am asking you to please not share with others or post the video on any social media platform."

Turning Point Christian School did not respond to multiple requests for comment from The Post.

About a month after the incident, McFadden posted the video on her Facebook page. She was frustrated with the school's response because the teacher faced no disciplinary action, she said.

"The teacher remains in the classroom because, according to the school she is 'repentant and has learned from her mistake,'" McFadden wrote in the March 12 post.

McFadden, a teacher with a master's degree in educational leadership, also said she's disappointed her daughter's teacher "was so proud of this content."

"We as Americans have the right to determine who and what we believe in," she wrote. "We as parents have the right to determine the beliefs and values we want to instill in our children. A teacher does not have the right to indoctrinate her students."

The administration has not publicly acknowledged the video, posted a public apology or commented to media outlets. McFadden said the lack of accountability for the video led her to pull her 5-year-old daughter out of the school and enroll her elsewhere.

"There are a lot of wonderful teachers and innocent children at the school," she said in a message to The Post. "The school administration's lack of response now, and at the time of the video, is a disservice to all of them."
In January, the head of a group of serving and retired Russian military officers declared that invading Ukraine would be pointless and extremely dangerous. It would kill thousands, he said, make Russians and Ukrainians enemies for life, risk a war with NATO and threaten the existence of Russia itself as a state.

To many Russians, that seemed like a far-fetched scenario, since few imagined that an invasion of Ukraine was really possible. But two months later, as Russias advance stalls in Ukraine, the prophecy looms large. Reached by phone this week, the retired general who authored the declaration, Leonid Ivashov, said he stood by it, although he could not speak freely given Russias wartime censorship: I do not disavow what I said.

In Russia, the slow going and the heavy toll of President Vladimir Putins war on Ukraine are setting off questions about his militarys planning capability, his confidence in his top spies and loyal defense minister, and the quality of the intelligence that reaches him. It also shows the pitfalls of Putins top-down governance, in which officials and military officers have little leeway to make their own decisions and adapt to developments in real time.

The failures of Putins campaign are apparent in the striking number of senior military commanders believed to have been killed in the fighting. Ukraine says it has killed at least six Russian generals, while Russia acknowledges one of their deaths, along with that of the deputy commander of its Black Sea fleet. U.S. officials say they cannot confirm the number of Russian troop deaths, but that Russias invasion plan appears to have been stymied by bad intelligence.

The lack of progress is so apparent that a blame game has begun among some Russian supporters of the war  even as Russian propaganda claims that the slog is a consequence of the militarys care to avoid harming civilians. Igor Girkin, a former colonel in Russias FSB intelligence agency and the former defense minister of Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine, said in a video interview posted online on Monday that Russia had made a catastrophically incorrect assessment of Ukraines forces.

The enemy was underestimated in every aspect, Girkin said.

The Russian forces poor performance has also surprised analysts, who predicted at the start of the war that Russias massive, technologically advanced military would make short work of Ukraine. Putin himself seems to have counted on his troops quickly seizing major cities, including the capital, Kyiv, decapitating the government and installing a puppet regime under the Kremlins control.

Take power into your own hands, Putin urged Ukrainian soldiers on the second day of the invasion, apparently hoping Ukraine would go down without a fight.

Instead, Ukraine fought back. Nearly a month has passed, and Russian troops appear bogged down in the face of relentless attacks from a much weaker, though far more maneuverable, Ukrainian military.

LYNSEY ADDARIO/NYT

There was probably the hope that they wouldnt resist so intensely, Yevgeny Buzhinsky, a retired lieutenant general and a regular Russian state television commentator, said of Ukraines forces. They were expected to be more reasonable.

As if responding to criticism, Putin has said repeatedly in his public comments about the war that it is going according to plan.

We can definitively say that nothing is going to plan, countered Pavel Luzin, a Russian military analyst. It has been decades since the Soviet and Russian armies have seen such great losses in such a short period of time.

Russia last announced its combat losses three weeks ago  498 deaths as of March 2. U.S. officials now say that a conservative estimate puts the Russian military death toll at 7,000. Russia says it lost a total of 11,000 service members in nearly a decade of fighting in Chechnya.

The failures in Ukraine have started to create fissures within Russian leadership, according to Andrei Soldatov, an author and expert on Russias military and security services. The top Russian intelligence official in charge of overseeing the recruitment of spies and diversionary operations in Ukraine has been put under house arrest along with his deputy, Soldatov said. Even Russias defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, who vacations with Putin and has been spoken of as a potential presidential successor, has suffered a loss of standing, according to Soldatovs sources.

It looks like everybody is on edge, Soldatov said.

Soldatovs claims could not be independently verified, and some independent experts have challenged them. But Shoigu has not been shown meeting with Putin in person since Feb. 27, when he and his top military commander, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, sat at the end of a long table as Putin, on the opposite end, ordered them to place Russias nuclear forces at a higher level of readiness.

The war has shown that the army fights poorly, Luzin, the Russian military analyst, said. The defense minister is responsible for this.

The battlefield deaths of senior Russian commanders also reflect poorly on the Kremlins war planning. Capt. Andrei Paliy, the deputy commander of Russias Black Sea fleet, died in combat over the port city of Mariupol, Russian officials said Sunday.

After Maj. Gen. Andrei Sukhovetsky, the deputy commander of the 41st Combined Arms Army, was killed four days into the war, the city of Novorossiysk, where he was previously based, issued a statement remembering him as a faithful comrade, a valiant warrior, a wise commander and a selfless defender of the Fatherland.

Epaulets give no protection to terrorists, Ukraines military intelligence service said in its statement announcing Sukhovetskys death.

There was also Maj. Gen. Oleg Mityayev, among the Russian militarys most seasoned commanders. He had led Russias largest foreign military base in Tajikistan and was second in command of Russias forces in Syria. When Putin ordered his troops to invade Ukraine, Mityayev was tapped to lead the storied 150th Motorized Rifle Division, whose soldiers helped take the Reichstag building in Berlin precipitating Nazi Germanys defeat in 1945.

According to Kyiv, he lasted less than three weeks in Ukraine. After he was killed in battle, either Russian forces left his body behind, or it was captured by the far-right Azov Battalion, which posted a photo of the bloody corpse on Telegram with the caption, Glory to Ukraine.

Russian officials have not confirmed his death  or those of another four generals that Ukraine claims to have killed. But even accounting for the fog of war, experts say that Russia has suffered a damaging death toll among its military leaders on the ground in Ukraine, which could soon erode Russias military effectiveness.

The deaths reflect operational security failures as well as the challenges of the Russian militarys top-heavy command structure in the face of a much nimbler Ukrainian fighting force.

In modern warfare, you dont have a lot of generals getting knocked off, said Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, the former commander of the U.S. Army in Europe. But this is a very lethal battlefield.

Gen. Joseph L. Votel, the former commander of U.S. Central Command, said that the deaths could reflect Russias challenges on the ground  and reports that some Russian units did not understand the mission at hand and had even abandoned equipment. As a result, he said, military leaders appeared to be operating closer to the front to supervise and keep their troops in the fight, by personal example or intimidation.

Continuing to lose senior leaders is not good, he said in an email. Eventually, loss of leadership affects morale, fighting prowess and effectiveness.

For Russias generals, part of the problem is that many of them have spent recent decades fighting a different type of war. In Chechnya at the beginning of the 2000s, Russia succeeded in pacifying a separatist uprising in a small territory by resorting to scorched-earth decimation of entire cities. More recently in Syria, Russias operations have been driven by airstrikes against a population that lacks sophisticated weapons or even a regular army.

Ukraine, while far weaker militarily, has been learning from its eight-year war against Russian-backed separatist forces in the countrys east  a similar war, in miniature, to the one being fought now. Ukraine has its own air force, which remains largely intact, and modern anti-aircraft systems. As convoys of Russian armor have lumbered along Ukrainian highways, Ukrainian forces have deployed drones and highly maneuverable infantry units to devastating effect, leaving abandoned and burning vehicles.

Throughout Ukraine, Russian forces have now largely stalled. But analysts caution that the military setbacks will not deter Putin  who has cast the war at home as an existential one for Russia, and is increasingly signaling to the Russian public to prepare for a long fight.

The question is whether heavy losses and the pain of Western sanctions could force Putin to accept some kind of compromise to end the war  and whether President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine would be prepared to offer concessions to satisfy him. On Tuesday, Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlins spokesperson, played down any hopes of an imminent cease-fire, describing talks with Ukraine as going much more slowly and less substantively than we would like.

The Russian leadership cant lose, said Andrei Kortunov, director-general of the Russian International Affairs Council, a research organization close to the Russian government. No matter what, they will need to end this whole story with some kind of victory.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
A U.S. citizen wanted by the FBI on charges including assaulting police officers at the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, has been granted asylum in Belarus, state media for the repressive Eastern European country announced.

Evan Neumann, a former California resident whom prosecutors in Washington have accused of more than a dozen crimes, including striking police officers and using a metal barricade as a battering ram, left the United States soon after the riot last year.

After crossing into Belarus near the southwestern city of Pinsk in August, Neumann formally applied for asylum, according to state media. Belarusian authorities confirmed Tuesday that the request had been granted, airing footage on Belta, the state news agency, that appeared to show Neumann, 49, formally signing an immigration document.

Now you are completely under the protection of the Republic of Belarus, said an official identified by Belta as Yuriy Brazinskiy, an immigration official in Brest, the city where Neumann is living. The status was valid for an indefinite period of time, Brazinskiy said.

Neumann said he was grateful but called the experience bittersweet, like eating cranberries.

But, he added, I feel safe in Belarus, especially compared to my compatriots in America.

The FBI said in an email that Neumann was still wanted but declined to comment further.

The small Eastern European nation has been headed for almost three decades by Alexander Lukashenko, who has wielded his power to violently crack down on thousands of people protesting an election in 2020 that many Western nations called rigged. His main political opponent was forced to flee the country, and human rights groups have criticized the government for its impunity in persecuting journalists and opponents.

Last year, Lukashenko ordered the interception of a Ryanair flight over Belarusian airspace carrying a prominent dissident journalist, an act that some European countries denounced as a state hijacking.

Neumann, who owns a bag-making company and had resided in Mill Valley, California, according to prosecutors, said in previous interviews with Belarusian state media that friends had warned him that he was on the FBI's most wanted list.

In documents filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, prosecutors said that body camera footage from police officers showed Neumann verbally abusing police officers.

Im willing to die, are you? he apparently said to one officer.

He also used his hands and fists to strike a police officer through a metal barricade before using the barricade as a battering ram aimed at officers, the documents said. And he resisted orders to leave the Capitol steps, the complaint said, and used expletives to refer to police officers.

Neumann has denied striking officers, or committing any crimes, and has said in interviews with Belarusian state media that he traveled to Europe in February 2021 on a business trip, passing through several European countries before settling in Ukraine, a country he had previously visited, for four months.

But he felt that the Ukrainian authorities were tracking him, he said, and decided to go to Belarus, which he described as against the West.

He said that his new status in Belarus meant he was now able to travel to other parts of the country, including the capital, Minsk, but that he would settle in Brest.

I have started a life here, he said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
A man on the FBI's wanted list for his alleged role in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot has been granted asylum in Belarus, the country's state media reported Tuesday.

Evan Neumann, a 49-year-old from Mill Valley, Calif., fled to Europe after the attack on the U.S. Capitol. He lived in a rented apartment in Ukraine for four months before crossing into Belarus on foot through the Ukrainian swamps of Pripyat, near Chernobyl, late last year, Belarusian state television said at the time. He said he thought Ukrainian security service agents were pursuing him, and that he encountered snakes and wild boars on the journey.

In a video posted by state-owned television network BelTA on Tuesday, Neumann is pictured signing a migration document and shaking hands with a police official, who, according to English subtitles posted with the video, says: "Now you are completely under the protection of the Republic of Belarus."

"Thanks a lot," Neumann says, in accented Russian, waving the document and turning toward the camera and other officials in the room, his face clean-shaven and unsmiling.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko and his close ally, Russian President Vladimir Putin, have frequently referenced the Capitol riot, calling the prosecution of those involved an example of "double standards" by the United States because it frequently criticizes crackdowns on anti-government protests abroad.

"Today I have mixed feelings," Neumann told BelTA in the report aired Tuesday. "I am glad Belarus took care of me. I am upset to find myself in a situation where I have problems in my own country."

He appeared to be thinner than in his last appearance on Belarusian state television in November, in a segment titled "Goodbye, America," and was wearing the same blue plaid shirt.

Neumann fled the United States in February last year. He was charged in D.C. a month later with participating in numerous violent acts against law enforcement officers, based on footage from body cameras. An arrest warrant was issued in December.

The FBI alleges that he not only used his hands and fists to strike the officers but also used a metal barricade as a battering ram. About 140 police officers were injured by the mob falsely claiming President Donald Trump had won the 2020 election, and more than 225 people have been charged with assaulting, resisting or impeding officers or employees in the riot, Justice Department records show.

Neumann was identified from the body-cam footage by an anonymous tipster identifying themselves as a family friend, according to the criminal complaint. Investigators also compared the footage to a 2018 TV news report in San Francisco on his arrest for violating orders not to enter a disaster area after a wildfire. Neumann was interviewed during the report.

Neumann has previously said he does not think he committed any crime at the Capitol.

- - -

The Washington Post's Isabelle Khurshudyan and Mary Ilyushina contributed to this report.
"What we do know is a number of times as we have mail-in ballots, if there is not a chain of custody that goes from the voter to the ballot box, mischief can happen."

- Then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, in an interview on ABC's "This Week," July 26, 2020

- - -

Three months after this interview, on Oct. 26, Mark Meadows's wife, Debra, appeared at the Macon County community building in Franklin, N.C., and filled out a one-stop voter application to cast an early ballot in the 2020 presidential election. She also dropped off an absentee ballot that she had requested for her husband, then the White House chief of staff, an election board official said.

On her one-stop application, provided this week by the North Carolina Board of Elections to The Fact Checker, Debra Meadows certified that she had resided at a 14-by-62-foot mountaintop mobile home for at least 30 days - even though she did not live there. At the top of the form is a notice that "fraudulently or falsely completing this form" is a Class I felony.

This form is the latest in a string of revelations concerning the former chief of staff - who echoed President Donald Trump's false claims of election fraud in 2020 - and his wife. The New Yorker first reported that Mark and Debra Meadows submitted voter registration forms that listed as their home a mobile home with a rusted metal roof that sold for $105,000 in 2021, even though they had never lived there. North Carolina officials announced last week that Mark Meadows is under investigation for potential voter fraud.

The Fact Checker's reporting shows that in 2020 Debra Meadows signed at least two forms - a voter registration form and the one-stop application - that warned of legal consequences if falsely completed and signed.

Debra Meadows also is listed as submitting an absentee ballot request for her husband. The signature on the form is redacted but Patrick Gannon, a spokesman for the North Carolina State Board of Elections, said Wednesday that the signature says "Mark Meadows," even though the section of form saying it was a request from Debra Meadows was also filled out. He said it was unclear why that was done.

The statement by the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation made no mention of Debra Meadows, and officials declined to say whether the probe would also examine her actions.

"We are early into the investigation," said Anjanette Grube, the SBI's public information director. "As the investigation continues, information will be shared with the prosecutor who will make a determination as to whether any additional persons could be subject to the investigation."

Ben Williamson, a spokesman for Mark Meadows, declined to comment. Debra Meadows did not respond to emails sent to her email address at Right Women PAC, where she is executive director, or to several personal email addresses. She also did not respond to a text message.

The voter registration form asks for a residential address - "where you physically live" - and is signed "under penalty of perjury." According to the New Yorker's reporting, Meadows and his wife have never lived there - and Meadows himself may have never set foot in the house, which is located four miles north of the border with Georgia.

To register to vote in North Carolina, a citizen must have lived in the county where they are registering and have resided there for at least 30 days before the date of the election, according to the state's board of elections. Both Mark and Debra Meadows listed a post office box in a town about 70 miles away from the mobile home, near Asheville, as the mailing address. Both voter registration forms, filed Sept. 19, 2020, list the move-in date as the next day: Sept. 20.

Six months earlier, in March 2020, Meadows sold, for $370,000, a house in Sapphire, N.C., meaning the couple no longer had a place of residence in the state. Instead, they lived at the time in a condominium in Old Town Alexandria in Virginia. Debra Meadows used the old Sapphire registration to cast a ballot in a June primary runoff election for someone for whom she had done fundraising.

Under North Carolina law, a person ordinarily loses the right to vote in a county if they had moved out of it more than 30 days before the election. But Gerry Cohen, a North Carolina elections official, said that under a law in place until this year, anyone eligible to vote in the first primary could vote in the runoff primary without an updated registration. Under the new law, a person can no longer vote in a runoff months after he or she moves.

Under North Carolina law, a "near relative," such as a spouse, may both request an absentee ballot for a voter and also then return that ballot. Mark Meadows's absentee ballot request shows that Debra Meadows submitted it on his behalf Oct 1. The mobile home is listed as his North Carolina residential address, with the form saying he had moved there on Sept 20. The ballot was requested to be sent to the Alexandria condo.

This form also notes that "fraudulently or falsely completing this form" is a Class I felony.

Then Debra Meadows traveled to Macon County to cast her ballot, bringing along Mark Meadows's absentee ballot. The state's electronic records suggested this was the case, and a North Carolina State Board of Elections spokesperson said the Macon County election office confirmed that Mark Meadows's absentee-by-mail ballot was returned in person by his wife at a one-stop early voting site Oct. 26.

On the early-voting application, Debra Meadows signed a document in which she certified she was eligible to vote. The document has pre-checked eligibility statements, with the first a declaration that the voter has lived at least 30 days in the county. Before signing the document, she should have been "directed to review these qualification and eligibility statements on the ATV [authorization to vote] form or One-stop application" by a poll worker, according to the state election manual.

There is precedent in North Carolina for seeking a severe penalty for someone who put false information on an early voting application.

Latisha Bratcher Jones, a North Carolina resident, in 2016 also filled out a one-stop application, believing she was able to vote even though she had served time in prison for felony assault and was out on probation. A section of the same form asked whether someone who had committed a felony had completed their probation. A grand jury in 2020 indicted her for making a false affidavit regarding the fact she was on probation - and also for saying she resided in a different county than the one in which she voted.

North Carolina officials later acknowledged that the state did not have a standardized process for informing people on probation they couldn't vote. Indeed, documents obtained by the Guardian in 2019 showed that state officials concluded Jones may have illegally voted unintentionally.

But a prosecutor still brought felony charges that could have resulted in 19 months in prison. Her attorney argued that the probation prohibition stemmed from a 19th-century law designed to disenfranchise Black voters.

Jones said in an interview that she eventually settled the case by entering an Alford plea for a misdemeanor crime - related to the charge that she resided in a different county than one from which she voted.

"I did not know what I was doing," she said. "All I did was try to vote."
There has been a lot of talk recently among politicians about a gas rebate for people living in California, where prices at the pump are the highest in the country.

On Wednesday, Gov. Gavin Newsom unveiled the latest proposal. In a nutshell, Newsom proposed an $11 billion relief package that includes $400 gas rebates and free rides on public transit.

Under Newsom's proposal, registered vehicle owners could receive up to $800 in gas rebates. The plan is to send $400 debit cards to vehicles owners for up to two cars. People who own electric or other vehicles that don't use gasoline would qualify for the rebates.

"Eligibility will be based on vehicle registration, not tax records, in order to include seniors who receive Social Security Disability income and low-income non-tax filers," the governor's office said in a statement.

Newsom said the rebates alone would cost the state about $9 billion.

That direct relief will address the issue that we are all struggling to address, and thats the issue of gas prices, he said.

Regular grade gas is a state record-breaking $5.88 per gallon in California, about $2 more than a year ago, according to AAA.

For people who don't have cars, Newsom wants the state to pay for their bus or train fare for three months. His proposal would give $750 million to transit and rail agencies, which Newsom said would be enough to give free rides to 3 million people per day.

Another $600 million would pay for a pause for part of the state sales tax on diesel fuel for one year, plus another $523 million to halt a scheduled increase in the state's gas tax this summer.

To go into effect, Newsom's plan must be approved by the Legislature.

Lawmakers have been debating for weeks what to do about the skyrocketing prices. Last week, a group of California legislators unveiled a similar plan for a gas rebate that also put $400 into people's pockets, but under this proposal even those who don't own a vehicle would qualify. The proposal was pitched as an alternative to suspending the state's gas tax. Republicans in the state have argued for cutting the gas tax entirely.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.
Her brother died immediately when a land mine exploded by the car. Her 14-year-old nephew survived just long enough to cry for help as he burned in the wreck.

For 19 days this month Anastasiia Maltseva lost contact with her family after their Ukrainian city was severed from the outside world, deprived of food, water, medicine, heat and mobile communications. Finally she was getting news of them again.

But on what should have been a day of relief - the day her family drove out of Mariupol - the nightmare had only deepened.

"Your dad's fingers are moving; that's a really good sign," her former sister-in-law told Maltseva from a Russian-controlled hospital in eastern Ukraine, speaking about six hours after she watched her son and ex-husband die. Six thousand miles away in Florida, Maltseva sobbed and wondered what would happen to those who survived.

"Are they going to be kept in Russia forever? Are they captives?" the 39-year-old asked in an interview this week, speaking in Ukrainian while a friend translated. "No one knows what is happening."

"I never wish anyone - anywhere, ever - a day like today," said Maltseva, who moved to the United States with her husband nine months ago.

The Post has not spoken to Maltseva's surviving relatives, and Maltseva did not want to publish their names, worried about their safety in Russian territory. She shared images of messages and call logs with her mother and a Ukrainian friend that corroborated her account.

Like so many others, Maltseva has watched the war in horror from afar, struggling for the most basic information. Like millions of Ukrainians, her family faced awful choices: Staying in key cities like Mariupol was dangerous, but so was leaving. Ukrainian officials have repeatedly accused Russian forces of violating cease-fires meant to allow safe passage through "humanitarian corridors," while a leader at the International Committee of the Red Cross warned recently that a path out of Mariupol appeared to have land mines.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video address Tuesday that about 100,000 people remain in Mariupol under "inhumane conditions," a fraction of the more than 400,000 who once lived there. Ukrainian leaders say thousands flee the city each day as Russia's weeks-long siege gives way to street fighting and, according to the Pentagon, shelling from the sea.

It's the place where Maltseva was born, where she lived "24 beautiful years" and loved to spend time by the water. Now it was on the news every day - a strategic target for Russia, a "humanitarian catastrophe" for those trapped in the blockade. Strikes hit a maternity hospital, an art school, and a theater-turned-mass-shelter where the word "children" was written large enough to show up on satellite images.

On March 9 - the day of the hospital strike - Maltseva learned her brother was alive by spotting him in a video online. He seemed to be on a road near the medical center, she said, and wondered aloud: "Is this really a bomb?"

"People couldn't believe that that happened," Maltseva said. "The people were just in shock."

A cousin near Kyiv was able to make contact with their relatives in Mariupol. She heard her family was boiling snow for water and spending freezing nights without heat. But still, they were out of reach.

Then, last week she got a message from her mother's account on Telegram, telling her what she already knew: Mariupol was destroyed.

Her mom was typing unusually fast. Maltseva had a hunch. "Timur?" she asked.

Behind the keyboard was her nephew, a bright teenager who dreamed of becoming a programmer or a graphic designer. He had found some Internet service on the ninth floor and said the family was OK.

Early one morning this week, Maltseva sat awake in Boca Raton, Fla., waiting for news as her family attempted to evacuate west. She asked a friend in the western city of Lviv to call her mother for updates, hoping someone located in Ukraine would have better luck getting through.

The friend called shortly after 5 a.m. while running to a bomb shelter and gave a quick, cryptic warning: "You'll have to hold yourself together." He had overheard an explosion. At 5:38 a.m., Maltseva said, her mother called - but she was sobbing, speaking to someone else. It seemed like an accidental dial.

"Can you help him?" Maltseva says her mother cried. "Can you save him?"

It took several hours to learn what happened.

Maltseva said her surviving family recounted trying to push the car when it got stuck; another vehicle tried to go around, driving slightly off the road, setting off a mine. The blast sent one car flying into the other, and Timur and his father, 41-year-old Dmitry, were pinned as a fire raged. Russian soldiers took the others to the hospital in Russian-controlled territory, Maltseva said.

Maltseva said she is grateful to the Russian doctors treating her family but angry at their country. "They're destroying our nation. They mine our fields. They kill our people," she said. "They're not saving us."

She said it was not clear what will happen when her family's treatment ends.

One person was physically unharmed in the mine explosion: Maltseva's mother. But Maltseva said she sounds "like a different person" on the phone. "Her son and her grandson became char in front of her eyes," Maltseva said.

Her friend in Florida, Vera de Chalambert, struggled to speak after translating the mother's ordeal.

"I don't even know what to say," de Chalambert said.

She also has family in Ukraine, and so far they have stayed in Kyiv as Russian forces close in. It's a dangerous place - early this week a missile turned much of a shopping mall to debris, killing at least eight people. But "where am I going on go?" her uncle in the capital asked her. "You want me to become a refugee at 75?"
Russian climate envoy Anatoly Chubais has stepped down and left the country, citing his opposition to President Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine, according to two people familiar with the situation, becoming the highest-level official to break with the Kremlin over the invasion.

Chubais, 66, is one of the few 1990s-era economic reformers who'd remained in Putin's government and had maintained close ties with Western officials. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Known as the architect of Russia's 1990s privatizations, Chubais gave Putin his first Kremlin job in the mid-1990s and initially welcomed his rise to power at the end of that decade. Under Putin, Chubais took top jobs at big state companies until the president named him envoy for sustainable development last year.

Chubais announced his resignation in a letter to colleagues and friends Tuesday, according to people who saw it. Last week, he hinted at a darkened outlook, saying in a post on Facebook on the anniversary of the death of Yegor Gaidar that the fellow economic reformer "understood the strategic risks better than I did and I was wrong."

In his 2006 book, "Death of Empire," Gaidar warned of the temptations of imperial nostalgia for the Soviet Union he saw growing under Putin. "It's not difficult to convince society that a state that collapsed so suddenly can be just as quickly rebuilt," he wrote. "That's an illusion, a dangerous one."

Since the war, the government has stepped up pressure on domestic critics of the invasion. Putin warned on March 16 that he would cleanse Russia of the "scum and traitors" he accuses of working covertly for the U.S. and its allies. Facing economic meltdown, the Russian leader accused the West of wanting to destroy Russia.

"Any people, and particularly the Russian people, will always be able to tell the patriots from the scum and traitors and spit them out like a midge that accidentally flew into their mouths," Putin said. "I am convinced that this natural and necessary self-cleansing of society will only strengthen our country, our solidarity, cohesion and readiness to meet any challenge."

Last week, Arkady Dvorkovich, who was senior economic adviser to Dmitry Medvedev during his presidency and a deputy prime minister until 2018, stepped down as head of the state-backed Skolkovo technology fund after condemning the invasion. Dvorkovich, who's also president of the International Chess Federation, is one of only a few former senior officials to speak out against the war.
KABUL, Afghanistan  The Taliban on Wednesday abruptly reversed their decision to allow girls high schools to reopen this week, saying that they would remain closed until officials draw up a plan for them to reopen in accordance with Islamic law.

The move is likely to deal a significant blow to the credibility the Taliban had been trying to build with international donors in recent months. And it could threaten the billions of dollars of humanitarian aid that have helped keep millions of Afghans from famine as the country grapples with a devastating economic collapse.

The news was crushing to the over 1 million high school-aged girls who had been raised in an era of opportunity for women before the Taliban seized power in August  and who had woken up thrilled to be returning to classes Wednesday.

One 12th-grade student in Kabul said the decision had stamped out her last bit of hope that she could achieve her dream of becoming a lawyer.

Education was the only way to give us some hope in these times of despair, and it was the only right we hoped for, and it has been taken away, said the student, Zahra Rohani, 15.

On Monday, the Ministry of Education had announced that all schools, including girls high schools, would reopen Wednesday at the start of the spring semester. The following day, a Ministry of Education spokesman released a video congratulating all students on the return to class.

Across the capital, Kabul, many girls had arrived at high schools Wednesday morning excited to return to the campuses, and some schools did open, at least briefly. But as news spread that the Taliban had reversed their decision, many left in tears.

Mehrin Ekhtiari, a 15-year-old student in 10th grade, said she and her classmates were shocked when a teacher announced the news to the classroom Wednesday morning.

My hope was revived after eight months of waiting, she said, adding later that the announcement had dashed all my dreams.

In recent months, the international community has made girls education a central condition of foreign aid and any future recognition of the Taliban. Under the Talibans first rule, from 1996 to 2001, the group barred women and girls from school and most employment.

Aziz-ur-Rahman Rayan, a spokesman for the Ministry of Education, said in a phone interview that Taliban officials had decided Tuesday not to allow girls above the sixth grade to return to school yet. He attributed the decision to a lack of a religious uniform for girls and the lack of female teachers for girls, among other issues.

At an hourslong news conference at the Ministry of Education on Wednesday morning to note the start of the spring semester, Taliban officials did not mention the last-minute reversal and did not take questions from journalists present about girls high schools.

Many principals and teachers said they only received the new instructions from the ministry after students had already arrived for classes Wednesday.

The move came a little more than a week before a pledging conference where the United Nations had hoped donor countries would commit millions of dollars in badly needed aid, as Afghanistan grapples with an economic collapse that has left over half of the population without sufficient food. It is unclear whether donors will be willing to contribute following the Talibans reversal on the key commitment of girls education.

It creates a lot of challenges in terms of how is the world going to engage with them and try to stop Afghans from starving when theres no space to negotiate and convince the Taliban to shave off even the sharpest edges of their rights abuses, said Heather Barr, the associate director of womens rights at Human Rights Watch.

The United Nations and the United States condemned the decision Wednesday.

Im deeply troubled by multiple reports that the Taliban are not allowing girls above grade 6 to return to school, tweeted Ian McCary, the chief of mission for U.S. Embassy Kabul, currently operating out of Doha, Qatar. This is very disappointing & contradicts many Taliban assurances & statements.

Many Afghan girls had waited for months to hear whether they would be allowed to return to school, after the Taliban seized control of the country. When schools reopened in September for grades 7 through 12, Taliban officials told only male students to report for their studies, saying that girls would be allowed to return after security improved and enough female teachers could be found to keep classes fully segregated by gender.

Later, Taliban officials insisted that Afghan girls and women would be able to go back to school in March, and many Western officials seized on that promise as a deadline that would have repercussions for the Talibans efforts to eventually secure international recognition and the lifting of at least some sanctions.

In recent months, the Taliban had also come under mounting pressure to permit girls to attend high school from international donors, aid from which has helped keep Afghanistan from plunging further into a humanitarian catastrophe set off by the collapse of the former government and Western sanctions that crippled the countrys banking system.

At one girls private high school in Kabul, more female students had arrived for classes Wednesday morning compared to previous years, the schools principal said in an interview. But the excitement that had filled the hallways early was soon replaced with a sense of devastating disappointment when they learned that the school would have to close.

They came to my office, crying, said the principal, who requested to remain anonymous for fear of Taliban retribution.

The decision doesnt make sense at all, and it has no logic, the principal added, noting that the new government has had over seven months to design a new uniform and address the teacher shortage.

But even as girls high schools sent students away in Kabul, they were able to return to classes for the start of the spring semester in at least two northern cities, Kunduz and Mazar-i-Sharif, according to teachers and education officials there.

That geographic discrepancy is indicative of the new governments largely erratic policymaking and its struggle to adopt a uniform, nationwide approach to key issues.

As an insurgency over the past two decades, the Taliban operated on a decentralized basis with local leaders empowered to make independent decisions in their provinces. Since seizing power, the Taliban have been reckoning with the need for consistent policies while struggling to tread a delicate line that satisfies their more moderate members, their hardline base and the international community.

For months, Taliban delegations have been meeting with EU, U.N. and U.S. officials, appealing for funding and recognition. So far, no country has recognized the Talibans government, and many donors remain skeptical of its promises to meet human rights obligations.

The sudden reversal on the girls secondary schools seemed to validate existing concerns among Western donors that, despite assurances, they are dealing with much the same Taliban as the 1990s.

It is also the latest sign that increasingly the groups ideological views are taking precedence over international engagement, according to Ibraheem Bahiss, an International Crisis Group consultant.

The Taliban have been solidifying their position and becoming hardline on a lot of issues, Bahiss said.

In recent months, the new government has issued restrictions on local media and cracked down on peaceful protests. Taliban officials have also issued new restrictions on women, including a ban on traveling farther than 45 miles in a taxi unless they are accompanied by a male chaperone.

If the Taliban continue to restrict womens movement, the policies could effectively confine women to their homes, advocates say  a move reminiscent of the groups repressive rule in the 1990s.

You cant exercise your other rights if you cant leave your house to attend your job or attend education classes, Barr said. Its a really alarming sign of what may be to come, its likely to herald further crackdowns on women.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Sharon, PA (16146)

Today

A mix of clouds and sun early followed by cloudy skies this afternoon. High 68F. Winds light and variable..

Tonight

Showers this evening, becoming a steady rain overnight. Low around 55F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall around a quarter of an inch.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

NEW HAVEN  The city soon will have new leaders for its 911 emergency telecommunication operations and the Department of Elderly Services, following Mayor Justin Elickers appointment of Kevin Stratton to oversee 911 Public Safety Answering Point operations and Tomi Veale to oversee senior services.

New Haven residents will be well-served by these two experienced and dedicated public servants who are stepping into critical roles in our administration, said Elicker.

Statton begins March 28 and Veale begins April 11, Elicker said.

While very different jobs, both roles often serve at-risk individuals and vulnerable populations and we need strong, experienced leaders like Kevin Stratton and Tomi Veale to help ensure New Haveners needs in these areas are responded to in an effective, efficient and thoughtful way, Elicker said.

The jobs are not easy, said Elicker, a former EMT. He said he had a Public Safety Answering Point, or PSAP dispatcher, talk him through the birth of one of his two children years ago while he was at home

Strattons duties will include coordinating, managing and participating in the activities of the citys telecommunications center and its personnel, including fire, police and ambulance responses.

As a former EMT, I know first-hand that when there is a medical, fire or public safety emergency, every second counts, Elicker said. Im grateful that an experienced public safety professional like Kevin Stratton will be at the helm of our 911 telecommunications center so that New Haveners emergency calls are received and responded to in a professional and timely manner.

Chief Administrative Officer Regina Rush-Kittle called Stratton a true worker and a great peer that well enjoy having here in New Haven.

Stratton, who has had positions in law enforcement for 20 years, said he comes from a family of New Haven firefighters. Im looking forward to it, he said of the new job.

Stratton most recently served as chief of staff for Shelton Chief of Police Shawn Sequeira. He previously served for 23 years on the Connecticut State Police, working his way up from trooper to sergeant to master sergeant. With the state police, he supervised 100 subordinates, including dispatchers.

Stratton also served in the Marine Corps in administrative and intelligence capacities with deployments stateside and overseas, Elickers office said in a release.

I am very excited to serve in Mayor Elickers administration, Stratton said. ... Being a resident of New Haven for over 15 years, this position allows me to work alongside our first responders and in the community I live in to provide timely and effective public safety responses to all emergencies.

Im committed to providing the professional emergency response services that our residents need and deserve, while building strong relationships with the community, he said.

Veale currently is program coordinator for the citys Youth@Work initiative, which helps provide 14- to 21-year-olds with summer and year-round employment and career exposure.

She will be acting director of the Department of Elderly Services, supervising the citys community education, activities, programs and support services for senior residents. Her duties will include case management and assistance referral services for residents with financial, medical, nutritional, legal and housing needs. The department operates three senior centers in New Haven: Atwater, Dixwell/Newhallville and East Shore.

We want our senior citizens to live healthy, happy and fulfilling lives, and the Department of Elderly Services helps makes that possible in the city of New Haven, said Elicker. Im grateful that Tomi Veale is willing to lead the citys efforts and Elderly Services team as acting director in providing our seniors with enriching activities, meaningful programs and high-quality support services that provide help and assistance when critical needs arise.

Dr. Mehul Dalal, the citys community service administrator, said hes looking forward to her addition on our already-strong elderly services team and Veale provides the kind of leadership the city needs.

Veale, born and raised in New Haven, served as acting youth services director in 2013. She is an adjunct sociology professor at Gateway Community College. Prior to working for the city, she was alumni college dean at Amistad Academy and Childrens Program Director at LEAP.

Veale also is board chair for Phenomenal I Am, a female mentoring program serving girls in the New Haven area, and a member of the board of directors for Citywide Youth Coalition and The Childrens Center of Hamden. She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in sociology from Central Connecticut State University and her masters degree in public administration from the University of New Haven.

I am very excited to be stepping into this role, Veale said, adding that shes looking forward to making sure that our senior centers have what they need.

The three senior centers, which largely have been closed during the COVID-19 pandemic, will be reopening April 4, she said.

Its an honor to be appointed as acting director of Elderly Services and work in partnership with Mayor Elicker and the staff of Elderly Services to continue providing high-quality care and support services to New Haven seniors, Veale said in a release. I am excited for this opportunity and look forward to continuing servicing the New Haven community in this new capacity.

mark.zaretsky@hearstmediact.com
The city and the owners of a property on Blacks Hill Road that is essential to extension of Constitution Boulevard remain far apart on sale terms and Mayor Mark Lauretti is saying condemning the property is the next step.

Lauretti has so far declined to say what the city is offering, but said the owners of 55 Blacks Hill Road have offered to sell the 5.1-acre property to the city for $1.7 million.

A $1.7 million counter (is) hard to even respond to, said Lauretti, adding that the city still plans to condemn the property and let a judge decide the final price.

This comes after Lauretti told Hearst Connecticut Media last week that he planned to condemn the property because the city had made an offer to which the owners never responded.

Attorney Patricia Sullivan, who represents the propertys owners, refuted that claim, saying that more than a week ago her clients offered to sell the property to the city at a price commensurate with what had been approved by the Board of Aldermen for the purchase of the property across the street at 56 Blacks Hill Road.

At the citys request, they permitted representatives from the city to visit the 55 Blacks Hill Road property this past Friday (March 18), Sullivan said.

In a letter dated March 11 to the city corporation counsel Fran Teodosio, Sullivan, on behalf of the owners, wrote that the city first offered to purchase the land for $215,000, to which she stated the owners were insulted.

The next offer, after an updated valuation of the land, was $345,000, Sullivan wrote.

The Board of Aldermen, at a meeting last month, approved the citys purchase of 56 Blacks Hill Road for $590,000, with the cost being covered through use of American Rescue Plan funds.

Sullivan, in her letter, says the 56 Blacks Hill Road property is three small parcels which in total amount to approximately a third of the acreage of the 55 Blacks Hill Road property. The 56 Blacks Hill Road parcels have far less development potential than the 55 Blacks Hill Road parcel.

Sullivan said a well-respected real estate professional had estimated the propertys value at well in excess of $1 million.

Simple math would suggest that a tripling of the price paid for 56 Blacks Hill Road would be appropriate for the purchase of 55 Blacks Hill Road, she wrote.

Lauretti has said he first contacted the owners of 55 Blacks Hill Road  which the mayor says has been vacant for several years  before onset of the pandemic. He said the city made an offer to the owners, which was rejected.

Sullivan said the property, on which sits one house, has been in her clients family since the 1940s.

brian.gioiele@hearstmediact.com
Another successful ShipShape Day is in the books, thanks to more than 225 volunteers who came out Saturday morning to help clean up the town.
Some details of a fire that claimed the life of a Sheridan Township man were released during a press conference Wednesday morning at the Mason County Sheriffs Office.

Jeffrey Grant, 57, died in a fire on Monday, Nov. 22, 2021, as did two dogs at his residence. Hope Lynn Snyder was arraigned last Friday on several felony charges including murder and arson in relation to the fire.

Snyder, 41, of Kincheloe, faces a felony count of homicide open murder, homicide murder in the first degree, first-degree arson, two counts of killing/torturing animals in the second degree and a count of habitual offender supplemental warrant, third conviction. She was arraigned in 79th District Court by Magistrate Glenn Jackson III.

There is no bond, and she is lodged at the Mason County Jail.

The defendant has a presumption of innocence.  It is a fascinating case, said Mason County Sheriff Kim Cole. It showed a great deal of work and patience that went into it. I know were talking five months since this fire took place. These events sometimes take a lot of time.

Patience proved fruitful for our investigators in this matter.

Cole spoke to the family, too, thanking them.

I cannot imagine the pain you have gone through, and for that, I am truly sorry, he said. But you were patient with us. During those times when social media was abuzz with various theories and rumors, you allowed us to work at the pace that best served the investigators.

For that, I am grateful.

Cole said near the end of the press conference that it took a lot of work.

I hate to say it, but this could have been written off as a fatal fire, he said. But there things that were just not adding up.

Investigators conducted 18 interviews, Cole said, and picked up 23 search warrants including eight on electronic devices. The investigation went through five other counties besides Mason  Saginaw, Osceola, Tuscola, Lapeer and Mackinaw  plus it took investigators to Alaska.

This trip was crucial in tying evidence gathered in Mason County and to validate statements that were made, Cole said, adding that the trip to Alaska was well worthwhile.

Mason County Prosecutor Lauren Kreinbrink and Cole declined to state the nature of Grants death, only adding that he was alive on the second floor at the time the fire was set at the residence. Kreinbrink said the fire started on the first floor.

My preference would be to release that information in the course of the proceedings, Kreinbrink said, particularly at the preliminary examination.

Cole said Grant and Snyder were acquaintances.

Miss Snyder had visited Mr. Grants residence on at least one other prior occasion before the fire. As to the particular details of their relationship, that will come out as evidence is presented to the court, Kreinbrink said.

Snyder drove a 2003 Chevrolet Avalanche that belonged to Grant to the Saginaw Bay region. It was recovered on Friday, Nov. 26, 2021, in a parking lot in Saginaw at a childrens hospital, but Cole didnt know Wednesday morning the exact hospital where it was recovered.

When investigators notified the media of the missing vehicle, Cole said an individual contacted them from Osceola County about Snyder.

That put us on a course going east from here. Our detectives worked with the authorities from those counties as mentioned after tips were received, investigative tips were received in those areas, Cole said.

Cole said Snyder took a flight from MBS International Airport near Freeland that Friday to Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport in Romulus, and she was arrested by Detroit Metro Airport Police as she was coming off of her plane from Freeland. She was apprehended without incident.

Kreinbrink said Snyder intended to board a flight for Anchorage, Alaska.

I reached out to Sheriff (William) Federspiel over in Saginaw County and (asked) can you get to the airport and get a hold of her for us, Cole said. They just missed her. She boarded a flight. At that time, our detectives were heading across U.S. 10, heading to Saginaw to try to get her.

When our detectives learned she hopped a flight, our detectives hopped on (I-75) southbound and started heading to Detroit. We made a phone call to the Detroit airport police, and they got her getting off the flight in Detroit, he said.

Early on in the investigation, we knew there was a tie to Alaska. We didnt know what that really was or how significant it was. Through the execution of search warrants and information, I felt it was prudent to get our detectives to Alaska.

Not that I dont trust the detectives in Alaska, but our authorities had information that had not been released that needed to be communicated to a person in Alaska. I thought that it was important that the people she was communicating with in Alaska saw Mason County detectives in Alaska. I think it sends a message that were very serious about this.

Snyder pleaded guilty to a count of attempted unlawful driving away an automobile earlier this year as it was related to the fatal fire, and she was scheduled to be sentenced Tuesday to the crime. She was initially charged with unlawful driving away an automobile. The sentencing hearing was adjourned because she has a different attorney representing her.

She was a very significant flight risk, Kreinbrink said. I think there was a mutual concern about an individual being sentenced and leaving our community or being out and about in our community without the proper repercussion, so to speak. My office  together with the sheriffs office, worked diligently to make sure that these charges were levied prior to the sentencing.

There was an enormous amount of pressure put on our detectives, Cole said. As an elected official, and a person who has worked in law enforcement for 37 years, this is an incredible case. It is a case like Ive never seen in my career. I had inside information from our detectives that there was no way  if the prosecutor was going to levy these charges  there was no way we could allow her on the streets and face our public knowing what I knew.

I appreciate the detectives working at a break-neck pace to put what they knew on paper to get it to the prosecutor so the prosecutor can bring charges.

Snyder previously was convicted of two prior felonies, Kreinbrink said. On Jan. 25, 2001, she was convicted of larceny of a building in a case from 11th Circuit Court in Mackinaw County. She also was convicted of a felony of theft $1,000 to $24,999 in superior court in Alaska.

Cole said that he wouldnt characterize people as helping Snyder in November after the fire, but added that all options are on the table.

If there are people that have information or there have been people who have been dishonest with our detectives, they need to understand that this is a serious matter, Cole said. Were talking about the death of a citizen. Were talking about the death of a member of our community.

Were trying to give hope and closure to one of our families.

Cole was thankful for fire departments  Fountain, Branch, Custer, Free Soil-Meade, Scottville and Pere Marquette  that assisted at the scene of the fire. He thanked the Anchorage Police Department and the Alaska State Police. He thanked the fire marshals division of the Michigan State Police as well as detectives: Det. Sgt. Tom Posma, Det. Mike Kenney and Det. Steve Hansen.

Cole said the investigation remains open. Kreinbrink said she was not aware if Snyder was facing other charges in other counties.

We review the facts and evidence before us, Kreinbrink said. I dont want to make a statement saying that we definitively are not going to have other charges, but we are reviewing the actions of those individuals or individuals who may participated with or assisted Miss Snyder and (will) issue charges accordingly, if appropriate.
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.
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!
TaxChat is really intuitive. It will actually guide you through a process. If you tell the app that you have an investment property, it will ask you for all the extra deductions that you potentially might not otherwise have thought youd able to claim, says Jenni Nash, a partner at EY Australia.

The app allows online or smart phone returns. The user logs in and provides some details, then EY provides a quote for the price of completing the tax return.

Then users are asked to upload information that will assist with lodging the tax return. As the user proceeds, they are asked follow-up questions around deductions and things that they might be entitled to claim and ultimately end up with a tax return thats ready for lodgement, Nash says.

Jenni Nash, a partner at EY Australia Credit:EY

One of the most frequently asked questions is about tax deductions available to people who worked from home during the COVID-19 lockdowns, for expenses such as electricity, phone and household cleaning.

TaxChat asks users what their expenses were and compares them with their overall business expenses and with the hourly rate the ATO allows, and then does an analysis to work out the best possible outcome.

Once it has the taxpayers permission, the TaxChat app can access all of the information the ATO has about that individual and pre-fill them into the return.

For instance, the taxpayer wont have to dig around to find how much bank interest they received, because banks are required to report this to the ATO and the information can then be used in tax returns.

Some taxpayer questions have straightforward answers which the app can answer without human intervention, but in many cases the chats are provided by EY tax professionals, particularly where they concern an individuals personal tax situation.

There might be questions that require some further analysis, so theyll go to our TaxChat team and someone will come back and provide the response, Nash says.

Nash says many taxpayers are unaware that EY assists with personal tax, including through the TaxChat app, which it introduced to Australia about a year ago.

While individuals can sign up to the service themselves, EY is also promoting it to major employers to sign on to and to provide to their staff.

We want to help people simplify their tax in a time efficient way, Nash says.
Russia has not defaulted on its sovereign debt after all. Nor is it likely to do so under the current sanctions regime, and as long as Europe continues to finance Vladimir Putins military state with purchases of gas, oil and coal.

The Kremlin is already sufficiently confident to reopen the Moscow stock exchange for bond transactions. The US Treasurys sanctions office (OFAC) has made life easier by leaving a loophole for sovereign debt repayments, concerned that there might otherwise be a Lehmanesque shock to global finance.

The Wests sanctions on Russia are not having the desired effect. Credit:AP

The uninterrupted flow of fossil revenues - at windfall prices - is enough to cover interest service costs and redemptions. Goldman Sachs even thinks that the central bank will be able to relax capital controls gradually.

The rouble has not collapsed. It has stabilised after a 40 per cent devaluation, a manageable drop for a semi-autarkic economy. We are facing the failure of Western sanctions. Calibrated half-measures are not enough to change the Kremlin calculus or to dissuade Putin from a policy of attrition against civilian targets.
Everyone I spoke to, on that side of the [police] fence, believe she was murdered, says Ford. Which fascinated me, because I didnt expect that an overwhelming number of people would come to me and say, We think she was involved with somebody dodgy. And I couldnt see that she would kill herself. I struggled with that for a long time because it just didnt seem like her. So I was trying to explore the three main theories  that she had cut her foot off and done a runner and escaped; the other theory that kept coming to me was shes involved with some dodgy people and theyve killed her; and then, of course, the third theory was simply that shed gone over [notorious suicide spot] the Gap. Colin Friels plays the invented character of dodgy associate George. To do this, Ford and Miller turned Caddick (played by Kate Atkinson) into her own unreliable narrator. As she says in the opener, If you believe that story [referring to the three theories], you will believe anything. Then again, I found most people will believe anything. Thats how I got rich in the first place. Says Ford: She seemed like the perfect person to do [an unreliable narration] with because if shes going to be telling you the story, then you can bet that the storys going to have whole bits of it that arent true, because thats what she was.

The next thing was to invent someone who could be the mysterious dodgy type Caddick could have become involved with. Enter Colin Friels. The veteran actor plays George, an invented character who Caddick befriends with the intention of adding to her Ponzi scheme. George, however, turns out to have plans for Caddick too. Caddick (Kate Atkinson) and George (Colin Friels) each have their own schemes. Hes in there for the audience, says Friels. To let them in. And you get a perspective on Caddick from him because hes detached from it all. Hes an outsider, hes not a victim, hes a fairly straightforward crook. Friels also saw Caddicks story as a very Sydney tale  Melbourne has the mob and Sydney has rich white ladies ripping off their friends and family.

Since its inception its always been a place of greed, he says of Sydney. Its a pretty divided city  if you look at the eastern suburbs compared to the west, its a pretty big divide. It seems when you go to the eastern suburbs, its a foreign land sometimes if youre from the west. I think Sydneys always been based on, I guess, the accumulation of status and wealth. The great sadness at the heart of Underbelly: Vanishing Act is how the pursuit of that status and wealth impressed no one Caddick cared about. After attending her best friends suburban backyard birthday barbecue, Caddick grumbles about no one appreciating how expensive her dress was. What that came from was talking to a couple of friends who were like, We didnt really care, we werent that impressed, says Ford. One of the stories I learnt early on, which interested me, was that when she went to places like Aspen, she didnt go out that much because she was terrified of being found out by the rich people that she wasnt one of them. But she didnt want to hang out with people who werent rich, who werent eastern suburbs type people, either. She was trapped in nowheresville.

The show was filmed around the street where Caddick lived with her teenage son and Koletti, who drove past them a few times while shooting, says Ford. Did Ford talk to him? As a producer of the show, I did not feel that I wanted to get involved, he says. People were like, Are you going to use his music? Are you gonna do this?, but having hung out with the victims, I didnt really feel like I wanted to open those doors, out of respect for the people who lost their livelihoods. Maya Stange as Angie, the character inspired by Melissa Caddicks childhood friend Katherine Horn. Out of all the people Ford spoke to in writing Underbelly: Vanishing Act (including Caddicks neighbours, who were convinced she hitched a ride on a garbage truck to disappear), he says the one who left the biggest impression was Caddicks childhood friend Katherine Horn, who inspired the fictional character Angie in the show.

Loading She blew my mind completely, says Ford. It was a real turning point in the writing process because Id seen the people who went on TV and said theyre victims, but she was a different kind of human. I walked out of the house knowing that Id found the moral centre of the universe I was about to create. Before that, the story was about an unethical person doing terrible things. Then I found this whole other side of the universe, which was, wow, you can be totally ripped off by someone youve known for 50 years, and she just sat there going, Well, Ive still got my family, my friends and I still have my health. And wheres Melissa? Shes just nothing now. Underbelly: Vanishing Act screens on April 3-4 on Nine at 8.45pm. Nine is the owner of this masthead.
There are three crucial Australian contracts that pay-TV provider Foxtel possesses. The first allows it to broadcast every AFL match played, the second allows it to broadcast every NRL match played, and the third allows it to broadcast every episode in which a 50-something real estate expert named Andrew Winter attempts to sell an unwanted house. Its a toss-up as to which deal draws the most passionate fans.

An English expatriate who lives on the Gold Coast with his wife and three children, Winter is the crown jewel of Foxtels Lifestyle channels. His shows  Selling Houses Australia, which begins a 14th season next week after considerable change, and Love It or List It  are spread across the viewing year, so there is Winter to watch in every season. No renovation rates better for Foxtel than his, nor is an appraisal of a disastrous decor more keenly anticipated.

Hes our most popular talent and our most loved talent. Hes synonymous with Lifestyle, says Wendy Moore, general manager of Foxtel Lifestyle and now co-host of Selling Houses Australia, having replaced Shaynna Blaze as the shows interior designer.

Andrew Winter (centre) with Selling Houses Australias new presenters Wendy Moore and Dennis Scott. Credit:Foxtel

If you could put a huge value on me, and please let everyone know, that would be fantastic, says Winter, whose observations on his career tend to employ charming self-deprecation. Pulling out of Hobart Airport in a rental car, Winter speaks as he drives to Launceston to shoot the concluding makeover reveal of an episode. Selling Houses Australia is a tightly framed format  a house that wont sell, and owners who cant deal with that, are knocked into shape each episode  but Winters enthusiasm never wavers.
Protesters who disrupt any bridge or tunnel across Greater Sydney will face penalties of up to $22,000 or two years jail after climate change activists caused chaos at Port Botany for a third consecutive day.

The state government on Thursday said tougher regulations were needed to deter protesters after emergency services were forced to remove a man suspended from a pole across a container railway blocking all trains in and out of Port Botany.

In a further escalation, federal Immigration Minister Alex Hawke exercised his power to cancel the visas of two German nationals involved in the protests this week.

Mr Hawke said he had cancelled the visas of both men on good order grounds and said they would be removed from Australia as soon as possible.
Former NSW deputy premier John Barilaro has said he was shocked and surprised to be asked during a defamation case about the truthfulness of evidence he gave to the Independent Commission Against Corruption last year, believing the topic defamed him further.

Mr Barilaro sued Google, which owns YouTube, and political commentator Jordan Shanks in the Federal Court last year over two videos published on the Friendlyjordies channel in 2020 titled bruz and Secret Dictatorship.

John Barilaro pictured in October. Credit:Dominic Lorrimer

The case against Mr Shanks was settled in November last year when he provided an apology to Mr Barilaro and edited the two videos.

Google initially offered a range of defences in the case, however they have now withdrawn all defences and conceded the videos defamed Mr Barilaro. The tech giant is liable as a publisher because they were asked to take the videos down and refused.
Two climate activists blockaded Sydneys main port late on Wednesday afternoon, the third protest at Port Botany in two days.

Blockade Australia, the organisation behind the protests, said the activists blocked Penrhyn Road in Port Botany.

Blockade Australia activists Helen and Dom disrupt traffic at Port Botany on Wednesday afternoon. Credit:Blockade Australia

The activists, who identified themselves as Dom and Helen, parked two trucks across the road, a key entry and exit point for trucks carrying cargo. Footage showed one person sitting on the roof of the truck.

Police attended but on Wednesday night a NSW Police spokeswoman was unable to say whether the protesters had been arrested.
The state government has ruled out mandating a third dose of a COVID-19 vaccine for adults and children, despite experts pushing for the directive.

The state recorded 11,018 cases of coronavirus on Thursday, a further jump from the 10,476 cases recorded on Wednesday, which was the highest figure for nearly two months.

There were six deaths also recorded in Thursdays figures released by Queensland Health, while the hospitalisation rate had risen slightly to 271 people, 11 of whom were in ICUs with severe COVID-19 symptoms.

There are now concerns case numbers will multiply into a fresh wave much earlier than expected, as the more infectious BA.2 strain of Omicron spreads rapidly among schoolchildren and those who have not received three doses of vaccine.
Victorias environmental regulator has slapped a business with a remedial notice after a detergent spill killed thousands of fish in a creek system in Melbournes west.

The spill, which happened on March 6, has resulted in Melbourne Water hauling about 13 tonnes of dead fish from Cherry Lake and Cherry Creek at Altona so far.

The Environment Protection Authority says 13 tonnes of dead fish have so far been hauled from the lake and the creek. Credit:Jason South

The Environment Protection Authority named the business at a community forum on Tuesday night as Laverton North company Melbourne Transport and Warehousing.

In a statement on Wednesday, the business said it had spoken with local residents at the community forum to express its deep concern following the spill.
A 26-year-old Perth woman has died overnight in what West Australian Police Commissioner Chris Dawson described as a very violent and tragic incident.

Police were called to a Nollamara house on Monterey Street around 10.30pm Tuesday where emergency crews located a seriously injured woman who was rushed to hospital.

Police and detectives outside a Perth home in Nollamara, after a 26-year-old woman was found seriously injured. She later died in hospital. Credit:Nine News Perth

The canine section later located a 40-year-old man known to the woman hiding at the front of a neighbours property and took him into custody.

Mr Dawson told Radio 6PR the death was a tragedy.
Western Australias top cop has voiced concern that decisions to take guns out of the hands of violent offenders are often reversed by the courts, as the state government announced an overhaul to firearm laws on Tuesday.

Police Commissioner Chris Dawson said there were powerful firearms in the community, such as 50-calibre sniper rifles, which he had tried to argue should not be in the possession of civilians.

WA Police Commissioner Chris Dawson. Credit:Hamish Hastie

Theres just over a dozen of these ... I objected to them being licensed, he said.

Regrettably, the [State Administrative] Tribunal saw fit to see that they should be licensed. I dont agree with that ... they are designed for military use, they are lethal.
Planning an election campaign and wrangling the dozens of journalists, photographers and camera operators is a logistical nightmare for any leaders office.

Holding a federal election in the era of COVID-19 adds a whole extra layer.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese have different COVID-19 rules for media on their campaign buses. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

An election is anticipated to be called in the next three weeks  it has to be held by May 21  and the offices of Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Labors Anthony Albanese are working with campaign headquarters to be ready whenever the PM heads to the Governor-Generals residence in Yarralumla.

The major parties have largely agreed on the need to follow health advice and how best to stem outbreaks over the two years of the pandemic.
Another Labor local said the decision was an example of structural racism. They have an absolute right to be angry, Ms Owens says. But their anger shouldnt be at Andrew. Who, if offered this opportunity, would knock it back? Ms Owens said the party should have held a rank and file pre-selection but its too late for that now anyway. The former professional pianist has former Labor leader Mark Latham to thank for her preselection.

The Labor higher-ups didnt want her, the outgoing MP says, but Mr Latham insisted on a rank and file preselection, and the branch members did want her. There is something nice about Mark Latham, Ms Owen says, laughing. She won from opposition in 2004 and has held the highly marginal seat for the 18 years since, buffeted by swings against her. Labors internal polling is always wrong on Parramatta, she says. They said I was going to lose at four of the last six elections. With an election to be called imminently, Labor has left it late to endorse a candidate for Parramatta and the Liberal Party doesnt have one yet.

Ms Owens says this is indicative of how hard it is to find someone willing to work hard enough to win and hold the seat. She door-knocked, stood outside train stations and phoned households for a year before she was elected. How many people will do that, for a 50-50 chance you will win, and a slim chance you will hold it after that? she says. Mr Charlton has a maximum of about eight weeks to win over hearts and minds in Parramatta. Ms Owens says the 42-year-old former economics adviser to then-prime minister Kevin Rudd is ministerial material, and having a person in the ministry would potentially be extraordinary for Parramatta.

Loading The seat is home to Greek, Vietnamese, Italian, Sri Lankan, African, Indian and Chinese immigrants, as well as thousands of asylum seekers. There are extremes of wealth and disadvantage, a large tradie population, many professional health workers and frontline workers. Its not as if you have a homogenous group that all swings in one bloc, Ms Owens says. You put all that together, and its always going to net marginal.
The NSW Parliament will support a government motion to suspend Liberal turned independent MP Gareth Ward from parliament until a jury verdict is returned on multiple criminal charges against him including sexual assault.

Acting Premier Paul Toole on Wednesday moved the motion to suspend Mr Ward after he was charged with indecently assaulting a 17-year-old boy in 2013 and sexually abusing a 27-year-old man in 2015.

Mr Toole said the motion would not be debated to protect the rights of alleged victims. It followed advice from the Crown Solicitors office that the member for Kiama could not be sacked over the charges and that the parliament could not discuss the matter because it could prejudice a future trial.

Kiama MP Gareth Ward. Credit:Louise Kennerley

This house acknowledges the need to ensure the alleged victims in this matter have their day in court and therefore cannot debate the alleged misconduct of the member for Kiama, Mr Toole said in question time.
Queensland Water Minister Glenn Butcher has hit out at the Morrison governments embarrassing $5.4 billion pledge for a new dam in the states north without a final business case or environmental approvals.

The latest move in a quasi-campaign by Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who has called on the state government to get out the big stamp and approve the project, has also upset north Queensland MP Bob Katter, who says the proposal would kill off any Bradfield Scheme hopes.

Once touted as a potential solution to drought in western Queensland, the highly engineered irrigation scheme was the brainchild of Sydney Harbour Bridge engineer John Bradfield in the 1930s and would redirect water from the tropical norths major rivers to the dry interior.

In 2020, the Palaszczuk Labor government established an independent panel, headed by economist Ross Garnaut, to advise on the viability of a Bradfield-like scheme estimated to cost $15 billion. Pandemic travel rules hampered stakeholder talks and the reports completion.
Singapore/Jakarta: Indonesia is facing a test of its ambition to be a global player as the United States and allies discuss the prospect of expelling Russia from the G20 group of major economies.

Moscow has signalled that Russian President Vladimir Putin intends to attend the summit of world leaders in Bali in November but his presence at the Indonesia-hosted event has the potential to trigger a boycott by other countries.

Russia President Vladimir Putin wants to come to the G20 summit in Bali in November, according to Moscows ambassador in Jakarta. Credit:Kremlin/AP

The push to throw Russia out, reported by Reuters, comes as a former Indonesian foreign minister urged traditionally neutral Jakarta to take a tougher stand against Putin following his invasion of Ukraine.

While Indonesia supported a United Nations General Assembly resolution condemning the invasion, President Joko Widodo and ministers in his government have refrained from directly criticising Russia for its aggression and have called for dialogue and negotiation rather than sanctions.
Lviv/Kharkiv: Russian forces bombed areas of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv on Thursday AEDT, a month into their assault, while Western leaders gathered in Brussels to plan more measures to pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin to halt his campaign.

The capital of Kyiv is still under fire. A barrage of shelling rocked the city on Thursday AEDT, with rockets slamming into a shopping mall and high-rise buildings in the districts of Sviatoshynskyi and Shevchenkivskyi.

A volunteer cleans the broken glass at a shop which got damaged as a result of shellfire in Kyiv. Credit:Anastasia Vlasova/Getty Images

Destruction was extensive and fires from the shelling injured four residents, city officials said.

From a public park in Kyiv, mayor Vitali Klitschko said Russian bombardment had so far killed 264 civilians in the capital, including four children. As he spoke to reporters, explosions and loud gunfire echoed across the city.
Above, Lilly's website displays a compassion that ex-workers say wasn't evident when they resisted its vaccine mandate on scientific, religious or other grounds. They lost their jobs.

By Clayton Fox, RealClearInvestigations

March 23, 2022

Mandy Van Gorp was confident that her employer of 18 years, Eli Lilly and Company, would treat her fairly when she objected to its company-wide COVID-19 vaccine mandate. The pharmaceutical giant had promised to exempt employees with valid health or religious objections to the policy and she believed she had had both.

Despite presenting a doctors note in support of her exemption, citing an auto-immune disease, the company denied her request for a medical exemption. To add injury to the insult she felt, she tested positive for COVID-19 the day after receiving her rejection letter. She then appealed for a six-month deferral on grounds of the positive test. Lilly also denied that request. When she then raised her religious concerns, Lilly said she had missed the application deadline  a deadline that had lapsed several weeks before Lilly replied to her initial accommodation request.

Mandy Van Gorp: One of numerous Lilly employees who lost their jobs over its vaccine mandate.

The toughest night was when we were sitting at the dinner table and my 12-year-old was sobbing, hysterically begging me to get the vaccine so I could keep my job, recalled Van Gorp, a 42-year-old sales representative and mother of three. I had to explain that my choice was not about money and that I felt God was leading me not to follow a mandate. Its hard to explain that to a 12-year-old.

Van Gorps experience was echoed by more than a dozen other former Lilly employees who recounted to RealClearInvestigations how the companys vaccine mandate and its strict enforcement pushed them out.

Not only did they lose their jobs and health insurance, but some lost out on stock options and severance packages. Others struggled to collect unemployment, claiming Lilly misrepresented their dismissals to state offices. Salespeople who won exemptions said they too were effectively dismissed as the company pushed them toward roles in which they wouldn't have direct contact with the public -- jobs for which they often had little or no training and which would require them to relocate in some instances. When presented with a series of questions regarding its vaccine mandate policy and many of these claims, Lilly responded with a statement in support of vaccination as "guided by science."

Lilly is just one of many major corporations that have publicly announced vaccine mandates for their employees. But specific policies have been imposed in private. The accounts of the former Lilly employees, including their never-before-disclosed allegations of unfair treatment, open a window on a largely secretive process that has roiled the American economy.

The objections of some also illuminate a trend seen across the healthcare industry: resistance to vaccines rooted in science and professional training, beyond objections solely based on religion or ideas of personal liberty. In this instance, those affected were in the business of manufacturing and selling drugs, including monoclonal antibodies used to treat COVID-19.

Lilly announced its vaccine mandate in August 2021, declaring that those who do not meet this requirement or do not have an approved religious or medical accommodation in place by November 15th will be separated from the company. The company had told its salespeople, who had worked remotely throughout the pandemic and then were allowed back in the field by March 2021, that those who received an exemption would remain secure in their jobs. They were instructed to follow the direction of the customer and/or healthcare facility they are visiting, which could require mandatory vaccinations, masking, negative test, etc. after Nov. 15th, as they had been doing since March.

Above: A Lilly Q&A released with its vaccine mandate. It was misleading, say workers forced out.

While some employees approved of the mandate, others immediately pushed back. In a company-wide online forum discussion, the text of which RCI obtained, objectors raised various concerns ranging from the ethical  What happened to individual liberty?  to the scientific.

Even though Im vaccinated, prefaced one participant, I think that as a company who makes medicine and is fully aware of the amount of time it generally takes to get even non life-saving drugs tested and approved, this move makes no sense and goes against the safety and quality commitment Lilly tries to instill in its employees.

Another employee questioned why the policy ignored evidence of protection provided by previous infection, writing: The science of immunity from natural infection is being ignored, which is super disappointing considering we are a science-based company who developed an antibody treatment from those recovered.

Lilly's latest COVID-19 monoclonal antibody treatment.

The employee was referring to the fact that Lilly had produced multiple monoclonal antibody treatments, which aim to neutralize active infections of COVID-19, as opposed to COVID-19 vaccines, which aim to protect patients from infection and severe illness.

Robin Clark, a former Lilly process engineer, was one employee who sought an exemption from Lilly. RCI reached Clark through a Telegram group of 85 ex-employees who have bonded over their shared outrage at how Lilly let them go. Unlike Clark, most members had been sales representatives. RCIs investigation indicates the company may have subjected them to more onerous requirements in pursuing accommodations than non-customer-facing personnel.

Clark claims her opposition to vaccination was based on a sincere and long-held religious objection  one she did not want to disclose to her employer because theres a lot of discrimination against people who hold my beliefs.

But Clark also had a pre-existing autoimmune disorder, so this was the basis on which she filed her initial exemption request.

In that request, she noted she had not received any vaccines since she was diagnosed with her condition in 1986, and quoted the Centers for Disease Controls website, noting: People with autoimmune conditions may receive a COVID-19 vaccine. However, they should be aware that no data are currently available on the safety of COVID-19 vaccines for people with autoimmune conditions.

Clark also appended a letter from her doctor, provided to RCI, stating, My medical professional assessment of this patient is that she not be immunized with the COVID-19 vaccine, as the risk of harm and medical injury to the patient outweigh the benefits.

Robin Clark, ex-Lilly process engineer: Medical exemption denied, despite her doctor's plea.

She also indicated she had contracted COVID-19 in November 2020 and that she still had antibodies, confirmed by a test conducted internally by Lilly for a study it was running on the previously infected.

The companys HR department denied Clarks request, while informing her that there were many ways for her to receive vaccination should she so decide.

In the rejection email sent to Clark, Lilly noted: This decision was made utilizing the most up to date CDC definition of true medical contraindications to COVID vaccination  with this evidence-based guidance, there are very few scenarios that meet the criteria for medical accommodation.

Several ex-employees told RCI they had heard Lilly granted few if any medical accommodation requests. Lilly did not respond to questions from RCI aimed at verifying this claim, nor any other questions concerning accommodations.

Like Mandy Van Gorp, Clark said Lilly denied her subsequent request for a religious exemption on the ground that she had missed the application deadline. Internal documents provided to RCI do not reference any appeals process for those seeking leniency from the mandate, and they say nothing about whether an employee could have applied for both a medical and religious accommodation up front.

With her requests rejected, and having refused to get vaccinated, Clark was fired for "misconduct  insubordination."

Salespeople seeking an exemption from Lilly faced other challenges. Scott, a nearly 20-year Lilly veteran in his mid-50s who asked that his last name not be used because he is looking for a new job, sought a religious exemption based on his long-time opposition to abortion and the fact that cells believed to be from aborted fetuses were used in the testing or development of the COVID-19 vaccines. He wrote a six-page letter detailing his objection, and included a letter from his pastor. He also provided proof that he had COVID-19 antibodies from a previous infection.

To Scotts surprise, and to the surprise of colleagues who received the same demand, Lilly asked him to send proof that fetal cells had been used in vaccine development, including documentation of which fetal cell lines were used. The company also asked other follow-up questions to which several employees with whom RCI spoke objected.

One such email from Lilly HR obtained by RCI required self-identified Catholics to explain why they opposed official Church policy.

If Catholic, please ensure the documentation addresses the determination of the Vaticans doctrinal office (the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) that it is morally acceptable for Catholics to receive COVID-19 vaccines.

Ohio native Amy Schultz, a sales rep whose religious exemption from getting vaccinated was approved, says that there was another issue at play. She claims the accommodation process itself wasnt handled consistently, noting that some people were asked for a letter from their pastor. I wasnt.

Lilly reportedly sent follow-up questions to some seeking religious exemptions, questions they resented.

Scott was granted a temporary religious accommodation. Then Lilly threw him several curve balls. First, Lilly HR told him in an email that due to the in-person nature of sales, management ...

... has determined this accommodation creates an undue hardship for the company and the customers we serve. At this point, you may choose to post for a remote-based role  If you are unable to secure a different non-customer facing position or should you choose not to receive the COVID-19 vaccine by November 15th, you will be terminated from the company.

The non-customer-facing roles to which Lilly directed Scott were for scientists, engineers, and office staff, and many of those, he claims, were based at corporate headquarters in Indianapolis, far from his home out west. Despite having worked at the company for nearly 20 years, he would be treated like any other job applicant. Scott said he applied for six positions  four of which would require him to report to headquarters, and all of which would have resulted in significant pay cuts  and failed to receive an interview for any of them.

Lilly further pressured him by strictly enforcing the terms of a relocation agreement to which Scott had become party two years before. It stipulated that Scott remain employed by Lilly through November 18, 2021 or else be liable for $43,000 in costs the company had incurred to move him and his family. Due to his vaccine-related circumstance, Scott would be terminated two days shy of that date and therefore be on the hook for those moving costs.

Lilly HR offered a solution, but one that Scott felt left him little choice: Accept the severance plan offered to people like him who couldnt find an acceptable alternative job at Lilly, and the company would waive his repayment obligations. With three kids in college, and the $43,000 bill coming his way, Scott signed the severance agreement and applied for unemployment as he sought a new job.

But Lilly was not done with Scott. The state unemployment office rejected his claim for benefits, asserting, You were discharged from this [Lilly] employment for violation of company policy. Scott appealed and received another letter stating he was ineligible because he had quit the company. He appealed again, provided all relevant severance documentation, and explained in a hearing before an unemployment court exactly what had transpired. He asked the Department of Labor representative, What did Lilly specifically tell you about my employment? Scott claims that the representative grew dead quiet, then said, They checked the box that you quit. Ultimately, the Labor Department approved his benefits.

Other former Lilly sales representatives also reported problems in obtaining unemployment compensation. Two residing in the same state provided letters to RCI from its unemployment office indicating that they were initially denied benefits due to voluntary leaving  what they saw as clearly an inaccurate account of their separation from Lilly. One of the two ultimately received benefits, the other did not.

Several former employees left the company over its mandate citing safety concerns with the vaccine rooted in their professional experience. One expressed concern over adverse events. By late 2021, he said, he had been observing the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System co-managed by the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration and watching and noticing the staggering amount of AEs [adverse events] reported from seizures, death, myocarditis. I told my manager, If this was our product and I was seeing these kind of reports, wed be pulled off the shelves immediately.

Of all vaccine "adverse events" logged in the U.S., most followed COVID-19 vaccination.

As of Aug. 12, 2021, the date of the Lilly mandate announcement, the vaccine reporting system had collected over half a million reports. It presents users accessing the data with a disclaimer noting its limitations, including that adverse events may not be attributable to vaccines; that the reports themselves may be incomplete, inaccurate, or otherwise flawed; and that since they are voluntary, they could be subject to biases.

The former salesperson was particularly sensitive to this issue given his position as a pharmaceutical rep, a role in which he says he was obligated to report any and all adverse events encountered in connection with any Lilly drug.

Amy Schultz, ex-Lilly salesperson: "Where there is risk, there should be choice."

Schultz added: Where there is a risk, there should be a choice and clearly there is a lot of risk here with this thing and Lilly didnt care, [about] any of our personal beliefs, it didnt matter. Its all about money. Its all about control.

Several other sales representatives expressed reservations about taking a vaccine they felt had been hastily brought to market. Van Gorp said, Its kind of an oxymoron to be fired for not taking a vaccine that doesnt have enough information and enough safety data for me to take it myself and give it to my children.

Another former rep, Amber Nikolai, a military veteran, made a similar point:

Being new to pharma I only knew the training that they had put me through and they put us through so much training that is saturated in understanding the clinical trials  we really had to understand every in and out of the clinical trial and the product info sheet and we had to make sure we could answer every question to be able to help that doc to identify appropriate patients for that medication and to feel good that it had been thoroughly tested and [to] gain their confidence  When this [Lilly imposing its mandate] started happening I thought this is exact opposite of what you teach us. An experimental therapy?

Those interviewed who expressed concerns over risks associated with the vaccines, and their rapid development and launch, cited varying reasons for their caution: Some referenced growing adverse-event figures. Others noted Israeli studies on waning vaccine efficacy. Still others leaned on anecdotal evidence from friends and family they claim had suffered adverse reactions to the jabs. How those issues should be weighed against a once-in-a-century pandemic went unstated.

Lilly, in a Q&A document obtained by RCI that was delivered to employees in conjunction with its Aug. 12 vaccine mandate announcement, noted:

From a safety standpoint, more than 4 billion doses of coronavirus vaccines have been administered worldwide. In the U.S. alone, more than 347 million doses have been administered. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) launched the largest vaccine adverse event tracking system in history for the COVID-19 vaccines. Since the vaccines became available, reported severe side effects have been uncommon. As a science-based company, we have thoroughly reviewed all the data and options available to us. We believe this decision helps keep our employees, families and customers safe and healthy, and ensures we can continue making life-saving medicines for people around the world.

Lilly also referenced a sense of urgency to get employees vaccinated, rooted in science: Were making this decision ahead of the anticipated full approval of the vaccines by the FDA, which is imminent, because we believe every day counts. Science tells us that the current vaccines are effective in slowing transmission and reducing severe illness and deaths.

For the salespeople who left the company, another twist awaited them: The day the mandate went into effect, Lilly reported to employees that a small portion of unvaccinated customer-facing employees would be given permission to work virtually, acknowledging that experts now believe that fully vaccinated individuals with COVID can transmit the virus at the same rate as those who are not vaccinated.

On that date, Lilly HR reported in an email to employees that 99% of U.S. employees met the vaccination requirement or have an approved medical or religious accommodation in place.

Amber Nikolai, ex-Lilly salesperson: Says she rejected a severance and is now engaged in a long-shot lawsuit against the company.

Today, COVID-19 restrictions are easing across the country, and some employers are following suit. United Airlines, for example, is allowing unvaccinated employees who had been out on approved accommodation requests to return to the office.

For his part, Scott said he would not go back to Lilly if given the opportunity. He wrote a letter to his colleagues on his final day: An employer that thinks they have the right to tell you what to put in your body with no liability is not a company that I want to work for.

Nikolai, who was granted a religious accommodation but did not pursue a non-customer-facing role and was separated from Lilly, turned down a severance agreement. For me, my religion cant be bought. My freedom cant be bought. There have to be some people that are willing to stand.

She is now pursuing legal action against the company.

Am I going to win against a multibillion dollar pharma company who is insulated five ways from Sunday? No, their pockets are deep. But someones gotta stand and say this is wrong, if we dont try, where does it end?
London: An emotional Stella Moris has married Julian Assange in Britains maximum-security prison HMP Belmarsh.

Moris eyes filled with tears as she alone cut a vegan elderflower sponge wedding cake outside the prison in front of around 200 supporters and a large media pack.

Stella Moris cuts her wedding cake outside Belmarsh Prison. Credit:Latika Bourke

Im very happy, Im very sad, the 37-year-old said. I love Julian with all my heart, and I wish he were here.

You know what we are going through is cruel and inhuman. The love that we have for each other carries us through this situation and any other that will come.
PHILIPSBURG:--- Gerardus Theodorus Benedictus Maria van Veen died peacefully in his sleep on March 13, 2022, at St. Maarten Medical Center, Cay Hill. He was 88.

Better known as Gerard van Veen or Mr. van Veen, and often as Opa, Oom Gerard, and Uncle, Gerard leaves his beloved wife Bernadine (St. Martin); his dearest sister Catherina Tiny van Veen and family (The Netherlands); his adopted children, nieces, nephews, and cousins dear to his heart, too numerous to mention, and his 16 godchildren.

He is survived by five brothers-in-law and six sisters-in-law and their families, aunt-in-law Carmen Carrington Hodge and family; his St. Martin of Tours Parish family; friends and colleagues of the Risen Christ Church Choir, House of Nehesi Publishers, the Rehabilitation Office, Prison, Court of Justice, The Daily Herald, and the University of St. Martin, among family members and friends in St. Martin, Aruba, Curacao, Saba, USA, and The Netherlands.

Born in 1933, in Alkmaar, The Netherlands, to Annie and Dick van Veen, Gerards childhood was a family-centered, happy, and adventurous one as described in his autobiographical Schoolboy in Wartime  Memories of My Early Life (2018). He was related to the Van Veen, Smorenberg, Smorenberg-de Graaf, Van Veen-Ranzyn, Richardson, Koopman, Duzanson, Williams, Arnell, Gumbs, Holiday, Ras, Javois, Reiph, Christian, Lake, Blijden, Chance, Portegies Zwart, Simon, Flanders, Stewart, Haselager, Bute, Kock, Hogevorst, Hosford, James, and Carty, among other families.

Gerard received his early schooling in Alkmaar, where he was an altar boy during World War II. By the early 1950s, perhaps guided by a sense of his calling, his college years found him at St. Dominic College in the city of Nijmegen. He was already contemplating becoming a priest. The Dominican motto Contemplare et contemplata aliis tradere (Contemplate and what you have contemplated, pass it on to others) appealed more to me after all.

So I intended to join the Dominicans rather than the Benedictines by now. It was a good decision because it made me very happy and I am thankful that for 30 years I could be a member of the Dominican Order. I thought it was my mission to develop my spiritual life and to pass it on to others, wrote Gerard in his autobiography.

In 1960, Gerard has ordained a priest in the Dominican order. He was already dedicated to what would become a life-long love: Traveling. He left Europe for the Caribbean in 1961, taking up his priestly duties in Curacao that same year. Gerard would go on to play an active role in pastoral, social, educational, and cultural fields, particularly in Aruba and St. Martin.

In Aruba, Father Gerard published his first books, St. Theresas, San Nicolas (1971), Savaneta, Antes y Awor (1974), and Tur Cos a Cambia (1975).

In 1983, Gerard made a milestone decision to leave the priesthood. On July 20 of that year, the former priest and Bernadine Richardson were married. Before the years end, the newlyweds moved to St. Martin. Gerard would immerse himself in the home island of his beautiful bride; and continue his work as a good shepherd, as one niece phrased it last weekend.

It was still in 1983, when Leo Chance, minister for the island territory St. Maarten in the Netherlands Antilles government, discussed with Gerard a government plan to open the first rehabilitation office in the territory to work with prisoners.

For the next decade, Gerard was the lone probation officer. The challenging bureaucracy, his dedication to inmates and their families are chronicled in Ten Years of Struggle (1994). He was also a member of the Committee of Supervision of the House of Detention until 2013.

Between 1994 and 2009, Gerard taught Dutch language and sociology at the University of St. Martin and gave religious instructions and reading assistance to students at the St. Dominic School and Sister Magda Primary School respectively. He served as a St. Martin of Tours Parish lector and extraordinary minister of the eucharist.

Gerard participated in about 20 plays, recalled Bernadine, and was an Adult Drama Workshop member. In fact, Gerard was one of the most captivating actors directed by Ian Valz during the heyday of St. Martin theater in the mid- to late-1980s, and well into the 1990s.

Gerard was an author, actor, and a gentleman. My first close engagement with him was directing him in Derek Walcotts classic Pantomime, along with Ian Valz, in 1987. Walcott saw the duo in a command performance in 1988 and was very impressed. He also took to the stage in Mixed Couple with the Qualichi Players, said writer Fabian Adekunle Badejo.

Gerards own passion for writing never let up. His earliest articles and columns in St. Martin appeared in the Newsday and Chronicle newspapers. But the column that he might be best remembered for, Church News Bits or Church, has been appearing in The Daily Herald for over 20 years. On March 18, 2022, his last Church article, On the way to maturity, was published posthumously in the dailys supplement The Weekender.

House of Nehesi Publishers (HNP) is home to six of the 10 books written by Gerard van Veen. While he was at times discouraged from working with the indie press by potential financial contributors to his book projects, Gerard remained steadfast as a senior St. Martin author.

From 1999 and 2018, the following titles by Gerard van Veen were published by HNP: Colorful Religion, Lambee & The Road that Couldnt be Built, Hakuna Matata & Other Travel Stories, Soualiga Catholica (18412016), and Schoolboy in Wartime.

Awards and honors include a Paul Harris Fellow/Rotary International (1993), Member in the Order of Oranje-Nassau (2005), and representative of the St. Martin writers at the St. Martin Book Fair (2016). Swimming at Great Bay Beach was Gerards hobby, which he did daily up to 2019, said Bernadine.

The funeral service for Gerardus Gerard Theodorus Benedictus Maria van Veen will be held at the Risen Christ Roman Catholic Church, South RewardThursday, March 24, 2022. Viewing and tributes begin at 1 pm; the Holly Mass for Gerard, presided by Fr. Adam Oleszezuk, SVD and Fr. Yohanes Bally, SVD, begins at 2:45 pm. A private cremation will follow.

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made in memory of Gerard van Veen, to the probation and rehabilitation foundation Stichting Justitiele Inrichtingen Bovenwinden (Windward Islands Bank, ANG Account number: 21622503).

Farewell, Gerard.
The Dutch naval ship HNLMS Friesland executed a second and third drug raid in a short time. It also helped salvage a suspicious fishing boat which the Caribbean Coast Guard in Aruba, under the direction of the Public Prosecution Service, will continue to investigate. The patrol ship has forced four so-called go-fasts to stop in the last month and a half.

The second and third contact was discovered by maritime patrol aircraft of the Dutch Caribbean Coast Guard and the United States Coast Guard (USCG). The Friesland sent the FRISC both times, a fast speedboat, with a combined team of the ship's crew, the Fleet Marine Squadron and embarked US Coast Guard, to intercept the go-fast. During the pursuit, the suspected smugglers surrendered. All packages have been seized and the people on board the go-fasts were detained.

Approximately 500 kilograms of drugs were seized during the second interception. Three days later, during the third interception, approximately 350 kilograms of drugs were found and confiscated. The suspicious boat that was forced to stop was by HNLMS Friesland was towed to Aruba and handed over to the Caribbean Coast Guard in Aruba for further investigation. A large number of packages with suspected narcotics were found there.

HNLMS Friesland has been stationed in the Caribbean area since January 2022 and is active both in Counter Drugs operations on open seas and in support of the Dutch Caribbean Coast Guard. A total of approximately 1075 kilograms of contraband have been seized.
~ Shareholder submitted several questions to Holding Board~

PHILIPSBURG:--- Prime Minister Silveria Jacobs said she has recused herself regarding matters relating to Princess Juliana International Airport and the dismissal of his Chief Operating Officer. Jacobs said she did not attend the urgent meeting called by the shareholder that was held on Tuesday.

When asked by SMN News if the shareholder took any actions regarding the two members of the Supervisory Board of Directors. Jacobs said while she did not attend the meeting on Tuesday, she was informed that several questions were presented to the Holding Board of Directors relating to the two members of the Supervisory Board. Those two members are Clarence Derby whose name has been mentioned in the Ennia and Central Bank verdict. Jacobs said the government cannot say if the person was convicted or not even though his name is mentioned in the verdict as receiving money while not working for either party.

The other SBOD member is Helma Etnel who was the Chief Financial Officer of TELEM and eventually resigned and now working for the same company as a consultant.

SMN News learned that the Holding Board of PJIAE represented by its recently appointed Managing Director Keith Franca presented the Airports case against its COO along with three legal advice from different law firms, all of which advised the airport to terminate the COO. Asked if the government of St. Maarten sought legal advice prior to entering the meeting on Tuesday the Prime Minister said she could not answer the question since she was not in the meeting.

The Acting Minister of TEATT Omar Ottley said he would take the question to the Minister of TEATT Roger Lawrence who did not attend the press conference on Wednesday.

SMN News further learned that the Minister was busy seeking external legal advice on Wednesday morning since a meeting of parliament is scheduled to take place.
PHILIPSBURG:--- For 374 years, the people of St. Martin; North and South, have lived peacefully as neighbors commemorating a unique and successful legacy on one territory, with a shared history, culture, and family ties. Every year, on March 23rd, we recognize this day when officials signed the Treaty of Concordia, a day in the height of the colonial era, in the midst of many disputes for our beloved sweet St. Martin. Focusing on this arrangement, it has been the very basis of the free movement of persons enjoyed today by the people of the northern and southern sides of the island.



Today, we continue to remain connected by so much both formally and informally, fueled by the need to work together for the betterment of all the people of these 37 square miles. This responsibility encompasses the collaboration of leaders, communities, departments, organizations, and individuals on both sides of the island with full awareness of how decision-making on either side may impact the entire island.



We are now living in unprecedented times and like other countries around the world, have faced several challenges in the last few years. In the face of adversity, we continue to strive to move forward together and have found many ways to collaborate. Thus far, we have a history of collaboration in the areas of law enforcement, health, culture, education, youth, sport and the enhancement of our tourism product. Nonetheless, there is much more to be done as we continue to collaborate for the sustainable development of the island.

As we continue to work on establishing a platform between both Governments of each side of the island, we recognize the need for such a political tool to allow us to further unify and solidify our collective actions. We must never forget as a people, with shared values and family ties, that WE ARE ONE, also sharing an economy, geo-location and so much more, which makes us in many ways codependent in seeking opportunities to achieve collective goals and ultimately prosperity for all in our society.



My vision remains to tackle our issues together as one island, setting aside the complexities of international relations- the French state and our position within the Dutch Kingdom  as well as local competencies and move towards the adaptation of the treaty to reflect the realities we face today. On our special day, I recommit, on behalf of the Government of St. Maarten, to continue to dialogue with our French counterparts, not just in times of adversity or shared celebrations but in our day-to-day living as we continue to seek solutions for our shared challenges.

I take this time to congratulate the people of French St. Martin on their decisions made in the first round of the territorial elections held last Sunday and wish them much success in choosing the right team to lead them over the next five years in the second round. It is for this reason that we are not able to officially celebrate together as you remain in transition, however, I look forward to continued forward movement in collaborating with the newly elected government once it has been established.



On behalf of the Council of Ministers, I hereby congratulate the people of St. Martin, 37 square miles strong, on 374 years of peaceful living, working, and sharing this paradise, and pray for many more decades of peace and collaboration to come.
PHILIPSBURG:--- In her capacity as President of the Parliament of Sint Maarten, Member of Parliament Mrs. Grisha S. Heyliger-Marten has scheduled several courtesy visits to various entities on Sint Maarten.

The courtesy visits which commenced during the week of March 7-11, 2022, continued throughout the week of March 21-25, 2022.

Upon her election as President of Parliament on November 26, 2021, the Hon. Mrs. Grisha S. Heyliger-Marten deemed it necessary to meet with various entities on the island for an introductory visit.

On Monday, March 21, 2022, the Chairlady of Parliament met with the head of the Representation of the Netherlands in Sint Maarten, Mr. Chris Johnson, and the Chairman of the Electoral Council, Mr. Richard Gibson jr. and other members of the Council. On Tuesday, March 22, the Chairlady met with the President of the Joint Court of Justice of Aruba, Curacao, Sint Maarten, and Bonaire, Sint Eustatius, and Saba, Mr. M.J. de Kort.

During her visits the President of Parliament discussed among others, the working relationship between the Parliament of Sint Maarten and the various entities visited and any relevant legislation that may require amendments and how Parliament could assist.

The Chairlady also paid a courtesy visit to His Excellency the Governor, drs. Eugene B. Holiday.

The President of Parliament was accompanied by the Secretary-General of Parliament Mr. G.J. Richardson, and Public Relations Officer of Parliament, Ms. J.K. Peterson.
ALKMAAR/SABA:--- A four-person delegation of the Public Entity Saba paid a visit to the Municipality Alkmaar on Monday, March 21. Saba and Alkmaar already have a good working relation and this visit served to further strengthen these ties.

Focal areas during the one-day visit were organizational development and several projects in execution, but there was also time for an introductory meeting with Alkmaar Mayor Anja Schouten. The visit was hosted by Secretary of the Municipality Alkmaar Wim van Twuijver, who has worked on Saba for a year in 2014/2015 as interim Island Secretary until the appointment of current Island Secretary Tim Muller.

The Saba delegation, consisting of Commissioner Bruce Zagers, Island Secretary Muller, Head of Finance Maureen Hassell, and Senior Policy Advisor Nicole Johnson, was welcomed at the City Hall by Van Twuijver and Unit Manager Human Resources of the Municipality Alkmaar Sonja Moolenaar.

Moolenaar gave a presentation on the municipalitys organizational development, after which Mayor Schouten joined the group. Schouten spoke about Alkmaars rich history as one of the eldest cities in the Netherlands and showed great interest in Saba, its history, culture, people, and life on a small island. Besides giving general information about Saba, Commissioner Zagers explained the challenges that Saba faces such as the high cost of living/doing business, the limited connectivity and the governments financial struggles. He also touched on the COVID-19 pandemic and the balance between growth and sustainability.

The group visited the Alkmaars Kanaal project where in the area along the channel the municipality will construct 15,000 homes. A meeting was also held with the project team that is supervising the phased construction of the new hospital in Alkmaar of the North West Hospital Group.

Alkmaar and Saba have had a working relation since 2016 which started after Van Twuijver worked on the island. The two governments want to use their network, experience, and know-how to further strengthen each other, to learn from each other, and to connect people. As part of this collaboration, Head of Finance Hassell is participating in an orientation program this week in Koggenland, a small municipality nearby Alkmaar.
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
Enterprise, AL (36331)

Today

Sunny. High 89F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Partly cloudy skies early will give way to cloudy skies late. Low 68F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph.
News

spotlight

Northfield Global Studies students learn about civic engagement at local meetings

There are a lot of reasons why Northfield teacher Sarah Swan McDonald asks her Global Studies classes to attend one public forum each semester, but the main one is to promote civic engagement.

Social Studies teacher Sarah Swan McDonald hopes that by assigning her Global Studies students to attend a city meeting in Northfield and reflect on the experience that shes planting the seeds of future civic engagement. (Pamela Thompson/southernminn.com)

Swan McDonald, who has taught seniors in Global Studies at Northfield High School for eight years, said she read one study that showed youth who were exposed to civic engagement before the age of 18 were more likely to pay attention to current events that impact local matters as an adult.

Many studies have shown that participation in civic engagement activities can help youth become better informed about current events as they age.

Global studies is human geography, she explained. It helps us understand how we are all connected and how the decisions that are made affect the public.

One of the key assignments each semester in Sarah Swan McDonalds Global Studies class at Northfield High School requires each senior to attend a city event and write a paper reflecting on the experience. Here are seniors attending a recent Northfield School Board meeting. (Pamela Thompson/southernminn.com)

Each semester, she assigns her students to attend one public meeting or event in Northfield and then write a reflection using three essay prompts. She said, although attending in person is preferred, the pandemic forced some to attend online only.

For some students, she said, they are nervous about going to a meeting, sitting and listening to complex subjects for one hour they may not know anything about.

Just walking in a public meeting takes courage, she said.

For others, finding transportation to and from the meeting could be a challenge  so too was was finding a friend or family member to go with.

I love to hear when a student takes a mother or a brother to a meeting, so they can keep the conversation on the topic discussed at the meeting going at home, Swan McDonald said.

Global Studies students at Northfield High School Kamalie Nieves, Hannah Kotek and Christopher Rosas Bermudez, all seniors, recently attended three different city meetings in Northfield. All three said the experience was valuable and offered them a personal perspective on the meaning of civic engagement. (Pamela Thompson/southernminn.com)

During the strict COVID-19 years, students wrote about the conflict they witnessed between adults who were on opposing sides of the mask mandate.

Some wrote about the rude, inconsiderate behavior adults were exhibiting at public forums, she said. I think students learned how not to behave in public, as much as they learned about budgets and leadership.

She added, All Im doing is planting seeds. I hope this assignment is useful to them later in life.

For some students, being exposed to local government for the first time is a real eye opener.

Christopher Rosas Bermudez said, before he attended last Tuesdays City Council meeting, he didnt know what to expect. When I walked in, the first thing I saw was all the cops in the room, he said. Then, when the new police officer took the oath of office, I felt part of something bigger  a community of people.

Members of the Arts & Culture Commission, including youth member Kamalie Nieves, gather on the steps of the Northfield Public Library. (Courtesy photo)

When Natalie Draper, Northfield Public Library director and liaison to the Arts & Culture Commission, gave her presentation on the progress behind the 1% for the Arts plan, Bermudez said he enjoyed learning what public art had already been placed around the city and what was still planned for the future.

I really felt like I was more a part of Northfield, he said.

Later in the meeting, when the City Council discussed the Maple Place development and asked questions about a stop sign, crosswalk and trees, Bermudez said he felt like he was behind the scenes. They seemed to be looking out for everyones safety.

Hannah Kotek said she attended last Mondays School Board meeting. At first, she said she didnt understand the financial report or the health care benefits review presented by Val Mertesdorf, director of finance for Northfield Public Schools. But gradually, when the discussion came around to funding special needs students and how that impacted the overall school budget, the facts reported began to make sense.

Students in Global Studies class need to attend a city event like a Northfield School Board meeting. (Pamela Thompson/southernminn.com)

It was nice to sit in there and understand those issues, Kotek said. I wish I could go to more meetings to see what will happen next.

Kamalie Nieves, who is a youth representative on the Arts and Culture Commission, said she regularly attends commission meetings. At many of the meetings, Mayor Rhonda Pownell or City Administrator Ben Martig are in attendance.

As a youth member, I like knowing the backstory behind public art projects, Nieves said. I also like being able to have a voice. I cant change whats going on around the globe, but maybe in a small way, I can make an impact on the city.

All three seniors said they appreciated their teachers passion for civic engagement, global studies and frank class discussions.

I often tell my parents about what were learning in Miss Swans class, said Kotek. This class has given me confidence to know that I can have my own opinion.
News

spotlight

Lead for Minnesota announces fellowship applications in Waseca

Where there is a desire to learn and grow, profound change is destined to follow. All it takes is the right set of leaders.

As part of the Lead for Minnesota fellowship experience, fellows will serve full-time with a local Minnesota nonprofit or government entity, city or county level, to address a critical community challenge alongside the mentorship of a local leader. They will also partake in a premier training program throughout the fellowship.

Lead for Minnesota has announced its 2022 fellowship application for Minnesota. Those who apply will address Minnesotas most pressing challenges at the local level, and join a national cohort of other leaders committed to supporting the communities they call home. The fellowship application closes on April 15, 2022.

Lead for America, the parent agency of Lead for Minnesota, is a national service program building the next generation of leaders for the country and communities across all 50 states. Through Lead for Americas flagship Hometown Fellowship, fellows serve in a paid, full-time AmeriCorps Fellowship alongside a local leader in their hometown or home state for one year, before advancing into positions of community, state and national leadership for decades to come.

Since 2018, Lead for America has placed over 215 fellows across 35 states, including 11 Lead for Minnesota fellows that started in 2021. Past Minnesota fellows have served to address the states most pressing challenges, from rural broadband to public health and economic development in communities like Warroad and the Twin Cities.

According to the CEO and co-founder of Lead for America, Joe Nail, the country has rarely been more divided than it is today and from public health to the economy and foreign affairs, America is facing significant challenges, but reform has often arisen from the local level and a new generation of leadership.

Lead for America aims to build a leadership force of the nations most outstanding young leaders, committed to serving the places they call home and stitching the country back together.

Strong communities and states are the foundation of our country, said Kathleen Herding, director of programs of Lead for Minnesota. Being deeply connected to a place is an essential prerequisite for healthy communities.

According to Herding, Lead for Minnesota is able to bring together local governments, community and business leaders, and dedicate fellows to ensure that the local community or state has the full leadership force it requires to address its most critical challenges.

The country continues to face a number of challenges, from the opioid epidemic to poverty and the economy. According to Herding, key institutions are near an all time low in national history. The vast majority of college-educated millennials live in just 50 cities across the country, meaning many leaders and potential leaders leave their communities and never come back. All of this leads to the lack of investment and commitment to the communities that they were raised in.

As part of the fellowship experience, fellows will serve full-time with a local Minnesota nonprofit or government entity, city or county level, to address a critical community challenge alongside the mentorship of a local leader. They will also partake in a premier training program throughout the fellowship. They will begin with Lead for Americas 12-day Summer Institute in Washington DC , where they learn about American history, the most significant challenges facing the country today, how to build relationships across lines of difference and how to be an effective local leader in the community they call home. Fellows continue this training with trips to Lead for Americas headquarters in Kansas and visiting other fellows in their home communities.

Benya Kraus is the executive director and co-founder of Lead for America. Kraus gives a presentation on public service, localism and philanthropy during the training sessions for future fellows. (Photo courtesy of Kathleen Herding)

Waseca opportunities

During the fellowship, fellows will take time to learn from residents about the challenges and opportunities in their community and are tasked with creating a project to address one of their learnings. Overall, the fellowship serves as a launching pad for a lifetime of leadership and service to country and community.

Lead for Minnesota fellows will tackle critical challenges facing the state, like community technology innovation and housing affordability, in communities from Appleton and Red Lake to Waseca.

Waseca Chamber and Arts Center is looking for a Community Arts and Culture fellow, Waseca Public Schools is looking for a Student Career Pathways fellow and Waseca County Government and Waseca Library are looking for a Broadband fellow.

The applications close April 15. Fellows will begin their one-year commitment to service in Aug. and finish in July 2023. After graduating, fellows will continue to be a part of Lead for Americas network of local, state and national leaders.

Eligibility requirements include being a U.S. citizen, national or lawful permanent resident, high school diploma or GED, able to make a full-time commitment, not enrolled in a full-time undergraduate or professional degree program, maintain full healthcare coverage, serve four or more AmeriCorps and/or VISTA terms and will not hold full-time employment during fellowship.

Molly Byron, a former member of Lead for Minnesota, encourages people to apply.

Byron

It was so valuable. Anyone, especially residents of Waseca looking for a way to give back to the community, should apply, Byron said. Lead for Minnesota gives people that opportunity.

Byron said its a great opportunity for Waseca to have four potential fellows hosted in Waseca, and as she herself worked in Waseca, its a great way for fellows to further their careers.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

GREENWICH  The Greenwich Economic Forums annual conference, one of the financial services industrys premier events, will return this fall for a fifth edition.

The GEFs organizers announced this week that the 2022 conference will be held Oct. 11-13. The first two days of programs will take place at the Greenwich Delamar hotel, and the final day will consist of virtual events.

At the same time, the organizers confirmed the attendees will include Ray Dalio, the founder of Westport-based Bridgewater Associates, the worlds largest hedge fund. Dalio, a Greenwich resident, was a keynote speaker at all four of the GEFs previous annual conferences.

Our speaker faculty continues to be world class, and because of this it becomes easier each year to recruit new A-list speakers and delegates, GEF co-founder and co-chairman Bruce McGuire said.

About 400 people are expected to attend this years conference. With the exception of the 2020 edition, which was held entirely online because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the conference has been held every year at the waterfront Delamar.

Were proud of the Greenwich Economic Forum, Greenwich First Selectman Fred Camillo said. Were excited to see it grow each year.

In addition to the annual conference in its hometown, GEF has been organizing other events. On March 14, it held its first conference in Miami, with the speakers including former New York Yankee Alex Rodriguez, City of Miami Mayor Francis Suarez and Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan.

Our Miami event is a good example, McGuire said. Our brand is now recognized as one of, if not the, top conferences for the private market and alternative investment industry.

pschott@stamfordadvocate.com; Twitter: @paulschott
Some Disney employees walked off the job on Tuesday in protest of the company's response to Florida's controversial Parental Rights in Education Law, which restricts discussion of gender and sexuality in schools.

Employees have urged Disney to stop making political donations to certain Florida politicians, including governor Ron DeSantis, and to back a plan to shield LGBTQIA+ staff from such legislations, among other demands, NPR reports. Disharmony within the company has continued to mount, and earlier this month, Disney CEO Bob Chapek apologized for not taking a stand against the bill more quickly, admitting he should have been a "stronger ally in the fight for equal rights." He also said he called DeSantis to share his concerns about the bill and that Disney would reevaluate political donations in Florida, where Walt Disney World is located.

At a Monday town hall meeting, company executives informed employees that Chapek would take part in a "listening tour" in an attempt to alleviate concerns about the company's response to the bill, but for many employees, it was too little too late. According to CNBC field producer Steve Desaulniers, hundreds of employees marched out of the company's Burbank, Calif. headquarters Tuesday morning in a show of support that followed several smaller walkouts during their 15-minute breaks as they called for Disney to take a firmer position against what critics have dubbed the "Don't Say Gay" bill.

Hundreds of Disney employees walking out at company HQ in Burbank #DisneyWalkout pic.twitter.com/n9QpNmAHIf  Steve Desaulniers (@steve_desaul) March 22, 2022

Supporters of the protest took to Twitter to express their solidarity.

With the Disney walkout participants. people gathered outside the Disney Animation Building in Burbank to protest the companys handling of the Florida bill. Theyre walking around the lot perimeter now pic.twitter.com/rfzonRdJtf  Ryan Faughnder (@RFaughnder) March 22, 2022

Employees also turned to the platform to spread the word, with some pointing out the impact that Disney's relocation of thousands of employees to Florida would have on those employees and their families.

me & my entire Disney subsidiary writers room are walking out today. Half of us are LBGTQ+. All are not happy Disney gave $300K to supporters of the "Don't Say Gay" bill & are now forcing 1000s of employees to relocate to a state that doesn't protect them/their kids #DisneySayGay pic.twitter.com/Y0hrBfy9Tt  Claire "Keech" Kiechel (@clairekiechel) March 22, 2022

As the walkout unfolded, Disney Parks posted a statement of support (echoing Walt Disney's speech on the park's opening day in 1955) on its Instagram page, saying, "To ALL who come to this happy place, welcome. Disney Parks, Experiences and Products is committed to creating experiences that support family values for every family, and will not stand for discrimination in any form."

Disney brand ESPN also displayed its solidarity with the LGBTQIA+ community.

ESPN believes in inclusivity and denounces legislation and actions across the United States that infringe on any human rights. We stand with our LGBTQIA+ colleagues, friends, families, and fans.  ESPN (@espn) March 22, 2022

Florida's Republican-controlled Senate and House have passed the legislation, and to become law, it needs the signature of DeSantis, who has expressed his support and called Disney a "woke" corporation for its opposition to it.

Copyright 2022 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Steve Hackett served as lead guitarist for Genesis from 1971 to 1977, arguably the bands most glorious rock n roll years. Over his time with Phil Collins, Mike Rutherford and company, Hackett contributed to six studio albums, three live albums, seven singles and one EP before he left to pursue a solo career.

Hes been quite successful as a solo artist, with dozens of hit records and charting singles, including fan-favorites such as Fifty Miles from the North Pole, Waters of the Wild and Twice Around the Sun.

Still, his contributions to the band are long remembered, and he was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Genesis, also returning to the group for several special reunion tours over the years.

On April 4, Hackett will be heading to the Ridgefield Playhouse where he will perform the Genesis live album, Seconds Out, which was recorded from the bands concert at the Palais de Sport in Paris, France in June 1977.

Its a double album and were going to do the whole thing, which is about three hours long, Hackett said. Ive been touring this set since last year. This is one of my personal favorites from the Genesis cannon.

Hackett last played the Playhouse in 2019, performing the entirety of Spectral Mornings and Selling England by the Pound, as well as some gems from his other work as both a solo artist and with Genesis.

I wouldnt do every album from my past as I dont consider every album to be an absolute classic, although there are great tracks on all of them, but I feel Seconds Out is so strong because it contains some favorite tracks from various albums, all of which prove to be live favorites, Hackett said, singling out tunes like Dance on a Volcano, The Carpet Crawl and Los Endos.

It was a summation in 1977 of all the best of that era of Genesis, and I am very happy to be playing them all, he said.

Contemplating why these songs have stood the test of time and are still so beloved today, Hackett noted that they were well written and Genesis was harmonically superior to a lot of what was out at the time.

These are songs that were designed to be played live in a pre-MTV era, he said. It feels great to be back in the saddle with such a great audience response to these songs and fronting a fantastic band.

That band consists of Roger King (keyboards), Jonas Reingold (bass), Rob Townsend (sax/flute), Nad Sylvan (vocals) and Craig Blundell (drums and percussion).

Although Hackett had to stop touring when the pandemic hit, the guitarist still stayed plenty busy with his music. He mixed a live album, recorded two albums called Under a Mediterranean Sky and Surrender of Silence and found time to write his autobiography, A Genesis in My Bed.

Although I couldnt play in front of people, I did a ton of lockdown videos with peoples favorite songs from the past and also some other upcoming work, Hackett said. We tried to stay in touch with people the best we could.

By the time he was able to get in front of a live crowd, which happened in August of 2021, he knew that he never wanted to leave the stage again.

From the moment we came on, something special happened, and weve had some great, great shows and audiences, Hackett said. Were seeing people of different ages, children too, and its fantastic to see so many coming out.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 3 1 of 3 Julia Bergman / Hearst Connecticut Media Show More Show Less 2 of 3 Julia Bergman / Hearst Connecticut Media Show More Show Less 3 of 3





HARTFORD  The anti-abortion movement in Connecticut has been reenergized by the likelihood that the national right to abortion will be significantly curtailed in the coming months, even as Democratic lawmakers here move to protect abortion providers and expand access to the procedure.

As lawmakers in the General Assembly are set to begin debate on whether to enshrine a persons right to choose into the states constitution, about 2,000 anti-abortion supporters descended upon the Capitol grounds Wednesday for the first March for Life rally ever held in Connecticut. The event was scheduled to take place in 2020, but was rescheduled due to the pandemic.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

More than a half-century ago, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Connecticuts ban on contraceptives  a case that has garnered renewed attention this week after Sen. Marsha Blackburn, of Tennessee, called the decision constitutionally unsound.

Blackburns comments came as the Senate began deliberations this week over the nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson to the U.S. Supreme Court, during which some Republicans  including Blackburn  have become increasingly critical of the courts decisions involving social issues.

While much of that criticism has revolved around the issues of abortion and same-sex marriage, both of those precedents stem from the 57-year-old case out of New Haven known as Griswold v. Connecticut.

The Griswold case centered around an 1879 Connecticut state law, which stated that "any person who uses any drug, medicinal article or instrument for the purposes of preventing conception shall be fined not less than forty dollars or imprisoned not less than sixty days.

The law was one of many Reconstruction-era state statutes known as Comstock laws due to their similarity to federal acts that aimed at prohibiting obscene or immoral materials from being sent through the mail.

The plaintiff in the case, Estelle Griswold, was born in Hartford and later became the executive director of the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut, where she led the groups campaign against the states anti-contraception law.

Women and families were moving eagerly to adopt birth control across the country, Planned Parenthood spokesperson Susan Lloyd Yolen told Yale in 2007. The birth control pill came out in 1960, but Connecticut was a hold out on birth control at that point.

In 1961, Griswold and C. Lee Buxton, a gynecologist from the Yale School of Medicine, opened a clinic on Trumbull Street in New Haven that offered counseling services and prescriptions for birth control in direct violation of the law. The pair were promptly arrested and each fined $10, which began their legal battle.

Their case was eventually appealed to the Supreme Court, where Griswold and Buxton were represented by two Connecticut attorneys and Yale graduates, Thomas Emerson and Catherine Roraback.

In 1965, the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 in favor of Griswold, finding that the Connecticut law violated the various amendments of the U.S. Constitution, which the court determined for the first time had created a right to marital privacy.

Would we allow the police to search the sacred precincts of marital bedrooms for telltale signs of the use of contraceptives? The very idea is repulsive to the notions of privacy surrounding the marriage relationship, Justice William O. Douglas wrote for the courts majority.

The Griswold case and the courts determination that a right to privacy exists in the constitution would later be cited by the court in Roe v. Wade, which granted all women the right to access abortion services, and later in Obergefell v. Hodges, which granted same-sex couples the right to marry.

Griswold and her attorney, Roraback, were both later inducted into the Connecticut Womens Hall of Fame. Emerson was later cited by Justice Douglas as the nations leading First Amendment scholar.

In 1981, Griswold died at the age of 81 in Fort Meyers, Fla.
A Maine man pleaded not guilty Tuesday after he was charged with embezzling more than $1 million from a Berlin-based business, according to federal prosecutors.

A federal grand jury in New Haven returned a 27-count indictment last week charging 63-year-old Edward Ziegler with fraud and tax offenses related to the embezzlement scheme. The Bridgton, Maine, resident was arrested March 16, a day after the grand jury returned the indictment, and he appeared in federal court in Hartford Tuesday. Ziegler was released on $100,000 bond, according to Leonard Boyle, the United States attorney for the District of Connecticut.

Ziegler, a former resident of New Britain, was employed as the office manager for a Berlin-based small business for about 25 years. While employed, Ziegler opened a bank account in his name and said he was doing business as the company, Boyles office said.

For several years, Ziegler sent invoices to the business customers through the U.S. mail and email, received checks from the customers for services provided and deposited checks into the secret bank account. In all, it is alleged that Ziegler deposited more than 400 checks totaling more than $1 million into the account, according to court documents.

Court documents state Ziegler used these funds to pay off a car, a credit card and personal insurance payments. He also withdrew the funds through an ATM and transferred funds to other bank accounts held in his and his spouses names.

At one point, one of the approximately five employees at the small business inquired about a missing check or invoice. To cover his tracks, Ziegler took money from a personal account and deposited funds back into the actual companys bank account, according to court documents.

Boyles office said Ziegler failed to pay $173,600 in federal income taxes on his embezzled income from 2015 to 2019.

Ziegler also made fraudulent entries in the companys books and record-keeping system to cover up the fact that he had diverted checks and used the funds for his own benefit, Boyles office said.

The indictment charged Ziegler with 22 counts of wire fraud affecting a financial institution and five counts of tax evasion. Each count of wire fraud carries a maximum prison term of 30 years, while each count of tax evasion carries up to five years in prison, according to Boyles office.
Judging from the poses being struck by Gov. Lamont and state legislators of both parties, Connecticut might think that happy days are here again in what just happens to be a gubernatorial election year. Among other things, the governor and legislators are plotting property tax relief, increasing the earned income tax credit, suspending gas and sales taxes, and spending more on popular programs.

And yet, as the Connecticut Mirrors Keith Phaneuf reported the other day, state government is becoming more indebted than ever. How come?

First, it is because Lamonts administration and that of his predecessor, Dannel P. Malloy, repeatedly refinanced the states debt, stretching out its duration, thereby reducing near-term payments at the expense of long-term payments so that the present generation may spend more and future generations will have to pay more for spending that benefited their ancestors.

Second, it is because state government recently was shamed into reducing from 8 percent to 7 percent its estimate of the average annual growth in its pension fund investments over coming decades. Both estimates are wishful thinking that presumes there will never be a serious decline in the stock market. But even that small step toward realism greatly inflates the calculation of the states pension liabilities, which are largely unfunded and therefore debt.

So Connecticuts total state government debt, now estimated at $95 billion, is 30 percent higher than it was six years ago.

Thats not progress but regression, and Connecticut is now the most indebted state in the country on a per-capita basis, with each residents share of the state debt estimated at $62,500  more debt than most residents have incurred for their personal purposes.

About a quarter of the state budget already goes for government employee pensions and debt repayment and thus is unavailable for the services state government is expected to provide.

Of course, this isnt entirely the fault of the people in office now. It is more the negligence and opportunism of those who preceded them. But the goodies being plotted by the people now in office to improve their election chances represent the same irresponsibility that their predecessors committed, the irresponsibility that has made Connecticut so expensive and unattractive to new residents and businesses.

Meanwhile ...

So much political discussion in Connecticut is pious posturing, as with the frequent declarations that people shouldnt have to choose between medicine and food or between a job and taking care of a sick relative.

Yes, everything desirable should be free, or at least someone else should pay for whatever you want. But as has been noted by politicians who have painfully graduated to statesmanship, to govern is to choose, and indeed, life itself is always a matter of choosing.

So last week at a hearing of the General Assemblys Planning and Development Committee, Alan Cavagnaro, 20, a member of the Planning and Zoning Commission in South Windsor, made himself part of the tedium. He was supporting legislation to force more housing into towns with exclusive zoning, noting that the high cost of living in Connecticut is driving the states own young people away.

Whereupon he was challenged by state Rep. Kim Fiorello, R-Greenwich, a ferocious defender of exclusive zoning. She demanded of him: Is housing a right? Are you entitled to the housing you want?

When the young man took the bait and affirmed that housing should be a right, Fiorello rebuked him nastily. Housing is not a right, because housing is built by other people, Fiorello said. You dont have a right to other peoples labor.

True, but not true enough. For while housing is not a right, it is a necessity, and a responsible government must facilitate the production of necessities to increase the prosperity of its people.

After all, the young man wasnt asking to live in Fiorellos town, where residential property typically costs $3 million. Essentially he was protesting the devastating explosion of housing prices in Connecticut, where exclusive zoning sharply restricts supply.

Fiorello cynically evaded this bigger point. She may not realize that property is respected and safe only where it is reasonably distributed. If its not, Fiorellos own constituents may have the most to lose.

Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer in Manchester, where this first appeared.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

WEST HARTFORD  Gov. Ned Lamont visited the GastroPark food truck park Wednesday to discuss how the proposed state gasoline tax break would impact residents and small businesses.

A lot of costs are going up, Lamont said. Inflation is heavy. If youve got a food truck, think about what the price of gasoline - up over a dollar just over the last few months  what that means if youre doing 500 miles a week or plus.

AAA reported on Wednesday that the average gas price in Connecticut was $4.35. The national average on Wednesday was $4.23.

The bill, which the Connecticut General Assembly is expected to vote on Wednesday, would eliminate Connecticuts 25-cent per gallon tax from April 1 through June 30. The bill could also include at least a month of free bus rides and add an additional tax-free week on clothing and shoes this spring.

Well be probably the second state in the country to offer almost immediate gas tax relief, Lamont said. Thats a good start. Were trying to do everything we can to provide a little bit of relief to people, at least a bridge until July 1 when we have more significant tax cuts. As we speak, the legislature is voting, starting with the house, on a 25 cent cut on the gasoline tax. I hope that passes. I think it will make an extraordinary difference.

Tate Norden, the owner of the GastroPark, said he sees the proposed gasoline tax cut helping his industry. The GastroPark serves as a site for food trucks to visit and park their trucks for service.

Were very excited to see something happening thats going to further empower food trucks who obviously rely on their livelihood to use gas to move around and to make money, Norden said. Thats going to be right in line with the GastroParks mission in terms of empowering small businesses who own their businesses locally and operate them here locally and need to be able to move around to make a livable income.

Eric Stagl, owner of the Craftbird food truck, said the gasoline tax cut would be beneficial.

Latelys its been tough filling the tanks with the gas prices, Stagl said. Any little bit helps.

Lamont said that if the bill passes it would take him just about 10 minutes to sign the bill, but the gas tax wouldnt go into effect until April 1. Lamont explained that this is because gas station owners already have supplies of gas theyve paid taxes on.

Were going to try and sign it really quickly, Lamont said. Were working with the gas station owners because theyve got a fair amount of gasoline underground that theyve already paid for. We want to make sure that gets out before they have to put in the 25 cent cut. I think that will be within a week.

The governor said he expects to bring more tax cuts in July in an effort to make the state more affordable.

If we can give people a $100 to $300 tax credits on their property tax, that makes an enormous difference, Lamont said. If we can have that person on fixed income, maybe theyve got a pension, maybe theyve got a 401k, make that income tax free. These are the little things were trying to do to make Connecticut just a little more affordable and little easier for you to stay in the state. I want the very best young people to stay in Connecticut.
Ashtabula, OH (44004)

Today

Areas of patchy fog early. Partly cloudy this morning, then becoming cloudy during the afternoon. High 56F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Rain showers early becoming a steady light rain overnight. Low 49F. Winds ENE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%.
Blog Archive Apr 2010 (22) May 2010 (25) Jun 2010 (8) Jul 2010 (12) Aug 2010 (18) Sep 2010 (19) Oct 2010 (29) Nov 2010 (30) Dec 2010 (18) Jan 2011 (13) Feb 2011 (21) Mar 2011 (23) Apr 2011 (19) May 2011 (31) Jun 2011 (36) Jul 2011 (46) Aug 2011 (26) Sep 2011 (12) Oct 2011 (15) Nov 2011 (17) Dec 2011 (7) Jan 2012 (18) Feb 2012 (4) Mar 2012 (12) Apr 2012 (18) May 2012 (10) Jun 2012 (21) Jul 2012 (8) Aug 2012 (15) Sep 2012 (7) Oct 2012 (17) Nov 2012 (20) Dec 2012 (10) Jan 2013 (58) Feb 2013 (59) Mar 2013 (60) Apr 2013 (98) May 2013 (135) Jun 2013 (204) Jul 2013 (293) Aug 2013 (351) Sep 2013 (363) Oct 2013 (348) Nov 2013 (374) Dec 2013 (442) Jan 2014 (547) Feb 2014 (476) Mar 2014 (526) Apr 2014 (527) May 2014 (471) Jun 2014 (408) Jul 2014 (472) Aug 2014 (522) Sep 2014 (443) Oct 2014 (472) Nov 2014 (497) Dec 2014 (536) Jan 2015 (539) Feb 2015 (520) Mar 2015 (582) Apr 2015 (658) May 2015 (679) Jun 2015 (673) Jul 2015 (728) Aug 2015 (803) Sep 2015 (923) Oct 2015 (924) Nov 2015 (802) Dec 2015 (791) Jan 2016 (782) Feb 2016 (835) Mar 2016 (929) Apr 2016 (866) May 2016 (947) Jun 2016 (1044) Jul 2016 (882) Aug 2016 (1035) Sep 2016 (967) Oct 2016 (918) Nov 2016 (854) Dec 2016 (885) Jan 2017 (879) Feb 2017 (777) Mar 2017 (896) Apr 2017 (872) May 2017 (850) Jun 2017 (851) Jul 2017 (971) Aug 2017 (1040) Sep 2017 (998) Oct 2017 (1144) Nov 2017 (1046) Dec 2017 (838) Jan 2018 (873) Feb 2018 (769) Mar 2018 (885) Apr 2018 (808) May 2018 (827) Jun 2018 (820) Jul 2018 (840) Aug 2018 (854) Sep 2018 (844) Oct 2018 (851) Nov 2018 (870) Dec 2018 (912) Jan 2019 (919) Feb 2019 (827) Mar 2019 (957) Apr 2019 (913) May 2019 (1007) Jun 2019 (935) Jul 2019 (950) Aug 2019 (936) Sep 2019 (910) Oct 2019 (920) Nov 2019 (874) Dec 2019 (908) Jan 2020 (941) Feb 2020 (849) Mar 2020 (898) Apr 2020 (848) May 2020 (822) Jun 2020 (789) Jul 2020 (819) Aug 2020 (858) Sep 2020 (841) Oct 2020 (873) Nov 2020 (812) Dec 2020 (780) Jan 2021 (765) Feb 2021 (716) Mar 2021 (819) Apr 2021 (805) May 2021 (815) Jun 2021 (824) Jul 2021 (830) Aug 2021 (832) Sep 2021 (791) Oct 2021 (754) Nov 2021 (683) Dec 2021 (693) Jan 2022 (694) Feb 2022 (654) Mar 2022 (740) Apr 2022 (745) May 2022 (115)
Romania is currently the member state that can play a decisive role in increasing the supply of grains and vegetal protein of the European Union (EU), but for this it needs a reasonable flexibility in the application of greening conditions on access to technologies and tools for innovation in agriculture, as well as short- and medium-term measures to ensure access to agricultural inputs, according to representatives of the Alliance for Agriculture and Cooperation, who paid a working visit to Brussels.

According to a press release issued by AGERPRES on Wednesday, the focus of the talks in the Belgian capital focused on the context of the crisis caused by the Russian-Ukrainian war, the measures needed to ensure food security and safety by relaxing the provisions of the new Common Agricultural Policy.At the end of the working visit in Brussels, the Alliance announced that it would undertake, with the support of the COPA - COGECA team, all the necessary steps to make known the needs of the Romanian farmers, at the level of the European political decision makers; Romania's agricultural potential cannot be neglected, especially at this time.The four professional organizations in agriculture, food industry and related services, informally brought together in the Alliance for Agriculture and Cooperation, total about 3,500 farmers working a total area of 2.5 million hectares, plus 1.5 million hectares.The alliance also includes members who work in the food industry and have a turnover of 24.2%, respectively 15.95% employees in the total Romanian agri-food sector.
Deposits of non-governmental resident clients have increased in February 2022 by 0.5% over the previous month, up to the level of 481.34 billion RON, as well as by 12.6% (3.7% in real terms) over February 2021, according to data published on Wednesday by the National Bank of Romania.

Deposits in RON by residents, with a share of 63.7% of total deposits made by non-governmental client deposits, have decreased by 0.2% over January 2022, up to 306.843 billion RON, and going down by 10.4% (1.7% in real terms) over February 2021.

Deposits in RON by households have gone down by 0.4% over the previous month, up to 164.759 billion RON, and recorded a 6.4% increase over February 2021 (-1.9% in real terms).

On the other hand, deposits in RON from other sectors (non-financial companies and non-monetary financial institutions) have gone up by 0.2% (up to 142.083 billion RON) from the previous year, and comparing with the same month of 2021 it registered an increase of 15.4% (6.3% in real terms).

Deposits in foreign currency made by residents, expressed in RON, representing 36.3% of the total volume of non-governmental client deposits, have increased by 1.7% over January 2022, reaching the level of 174.497 billion RON (expressed in euro, they rose by 1.7%, up to 35.266 billion euro). Compared to the month of February 2021, the indicator expressed in RON increased by 16.6% (14.8%, if the indicator is expressed in euro).

Deposits in foreign currency made by households, expressed in RON, have increased by 1.3% over January 2022, up to 121.542 billion RON (similar evolution when expressing in Euro). Compared to the same period of 2021, the increase of this indicator expressed in RON was 12.9% (11.2% in case the indicator is expressed in euro).

Deposits in foreign currency from other sectors, expressed in RON, have registered an increase of 2.8% from January 2022, to up to 52.954 billion RON (2.7% if expressed in Euro). Comparing with February 2021, the indicator expressed in RON has gone up by 25.9% (24%, when expressed in Euro), Agerpres informs.
The Government approved, on Wednesday, by emergency ordinance, the possibility for Romanians who have hosted or are hosting refugees from Ukraine to benefit on request for refunding expenses, respectively 20 lei / day for food and 50 lei / day for accommodation for each person accommodated, Agerpres reports.

"I would also like to point out to you the adoption of the emergency ordinance that allows natural persons hosting foreign citizens or stateless persons in special situations from the area of armed conflict in Ukraine to benefit for refund from the budgets of the County Inspectorates for Emergency Situations of food and accommodation expenses in the amount of 20 lei / day for food for each person accommodated and another 50 lei / day accommodation. By this ordinance, the Government enables Romanians who made this gesture to be able to continue or, at least, to diminish the effort they have made so far, both in terms of ensuring food and accommodation," Government's spokesman Dan Carbunaru declared at Victoria Palace.He added that the refunding mechanism and the period of application will be established by a government decision.At the same time, he specified, in the context, that the Government allocates 100 lei / day for a refugee from Ukraine accommodated in a hotel, and for the spaces provided by the Romanian state the amount is 50 lei / day."As we have seen that there is some speculation about the beneficiaries of the amounts allocated by the Government for those who, including in the private sector, have hosted and are hosting refugees from Ukraine, I can confirm that amounts are still allocated, including for hotels or other accommodation areas where there are Ukrainian refugees, the amount provided being 100 lei / day for a accommodated refugee. Also, for the spaces provided by the Romanian state, the amount is 50 lei / day for each hosted refugee," Carbunaru explained.
Establishing new restrictions in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic "is beyond the competence and power of the Ministry of Health", minister Alexandru Rafila, said on Tuesday evening, for the private broadcaster Romania TV.

"We are referring to the professional side, which is tied to ensuring the diagnostic, evaluation, treatment and information of the population regularly. We have a daily informative bulletin with many details. Everyone can understand, to see what the evolution is. We are continuing in a constructive way to recommend people when they are in closed spaces, crowded, on the bus and other means of transportation, to try to use their mask, to distance themselves when they can and to wash their hands. I do not believe that these are restrictions, they are just elements of individual safety. (...) This is not about someone opposing, we simply did not extend this state of alert through a Government decision and implicitly all elements that we had at our disposal simply disappeared. We will keep relying on responsibility, information. Maybe we will be more successful, because sometimes measures that can seem coercive are harder to apply then those that invite an individual responsibility," the Minister of Health said.

Asked if reintroducing restrictions in the context of the growing number of cases would be possible, Rafila replied that he is not excluding anything, but removing restrictions, step by step, would have slowed down the transmission of the virus.

"We are now at an infection reproduction rate of around 1 and we will probably go beyond this number, so we are expecting an upward trend. (...) It is important to keep it under control, so that this increase will not cause concern," Rafila said.
A MiG-21 LanceR and a IAR-330 aircraft crashed on March 2, most likely "due to a combination of human and environmental factors," the Defence Ministry said in a statement on Wednesday that unveiled preliminary results of an investigation into the incident, Agerpres reports.

The technical investigation teams have drawn preliminary conclusions about the probable causes that led to the crash of a MiG-21 LanceR plane and a IAR-330 helicopter on March 2 in Constanta County that left eight soldiers dead."From the information gathered from the measurements and evaluations performed, the analysis of data extracted from the system that recorded the flight parameters and operation on board the aircraft, the hearing of radio calls, the examination of the condition of aircraft wrecks, the study of existing meteorological maps at the time of the two air disasters, the teams concluded that both events were most likely due to a combination of human and environmental factors, the share of which is to be determined at the end of the investigation procedures."Investigations to establish the final causes and conclusions are continuing under the coordination of the Military Prosecutor's Office with the Bucharest Military Tribunal.In accordance with the procedures for the operation of military aircraft, based on preliminary findings, the Air Force Staff has taken the necessary measures to resume flight missions with such aircraft: operating procedures have been reviewed and updated, theoretical and practical training modules have been completed by all categories of aeronautical personnel operating these aircraft, and technical checks have been performed on all MiG-21 LanceR and IAR-330 aircraft, all versions.Following the application of these measures, the resumption of flight missions onMiG-21 LanceR and IAR-330 aircraft, all versions, was authorised.On March 2, a MiG-21 LanceR of the 86th Air Base, carrying out a patrol mission over Dobrogea, lost its radio connection with the control tower and at 20:03hrs it fell off the radar in an area between Cogealac and Gura Dobrogei.Search-and-rescue operations were launched as a matter of urgency, and a Puma IAR-330 helicopter took off to the area of possible impact.The helicopter lost its radio connection with the base around 20:44hrs and crashed in the area of Gura Dobrogei, Constanta County, nearly 11 km from the airfield.The eight people on board the aircraft were killed in the crash - the LanceR MiG-21 pilot and seven soldiers aboard the helicopter.
Carbon monoxide concentrations will not be high above Romania in the coming days, according to data provided by the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS), informs the National Meteorological Administration (ANM).

The ANM analysis regarding the carbon monoxide concentrations in the Romania's area between March 23 and 25, 2022 states that, according to the simulations of the numerical models run within the Administration, on Wednesday, in eastern and southeastern Romania, atmospheric circulation will predominantly occur from the north and northeast to the south, and the wind will be light and moderate, with intensifications in eastern Dobrogea and in the north, center and east of southern Muntenia, where the gusts will generally be 45-55 km/h. In the rest of the territory, the atmospheric circulation will predominantly occur from the north-west and west, and the wind will be light and moderate, with isolated intensifications, especially in the central regions.

"From Wednesday evening March 23], atmospheric circulation will predominantly occur from northwest - north to southeast - south. During this period, no precipitations will be reported in the area of interest, except on March 25 when they will occur on limited areas," underlines the ANM, Agerpres informs.
The candidate of the opposition for the position of Prime Minister of the Government of Hungary, Peter Marki-Zay, stated, on Wednesday, in Targu Mures, that Budapest should not determine the policy in Targu Mures, but the Hungarians in Targu Mures, adding that he is convinced that the Hungarian Democratic Union of Romania (UDMR) will cooperate with the Hungarian government, regardless of its political color.

Peter Marki-Zay said, in a press conference, that in a decent and honest country, "our brothers across the border shouldn't fear that they will lose financial support because they don't support the party in government [in Hungary - e.n.]."

Peter Marki-Zay added that the policy of the current government in Budapest had grave consequences in regards to the instigation of Hungarians one against the other, the political differences showing also at the level of families. He also emphasized that the political formations that will support him want to tear down this enmity, rejecting autocracy and accepting political pluralism.

The opposition candidate in Hungary is on an electoral tour in cities in Transylvania, participating Tueday evening in a political meeting in Cluj-Napoca. Several UDMR leaders, among whom the chairs of the County Councils of Harghita, Covasna, Satu Mare and Mures, as well as the mayors of Miercurea Ciuc, Sfantu Gheorghe, Satu Mare and Targu Mures have signed a recently published open letter accusing the opposition in Hungary of lack of involvement in the matters of the Hungarian community of Romania and manifested their refusal to meet with Peter Marki-Zay during the electoral visit he is conducting in their area, Agerpres informs.
Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca will attend a special NATO summit in Brussels on Thursday, along with President Klaus Iohannis, according to government spokesman Dan Carbunaru, Agerpres reports.

"The summit's agenda will focus on the situation in Ukraine, the aftermath of the Russian invasion, strong support for Ukraine and strengthening NATO's defence and deterrence posture. The participation of US President Joe Biden has also been announced," Carbunaru told a news conference on Wednesday at the Government House.
Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca had on Wednesday, at Victoria Palace, a meeting with as delegation led by the CEO of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), Ariel Zwang, which was also attended by the President of the Jewish Communities Federation in Romania (FCER), Silviu Vexler. Addressed in the meeting were issues related to the situation of refugees from Ukraine, the development of Jewish life in Romania and the Government's support for projects initiated by Jewish communities, Agerpres reports.

According to a Government's release, JDC's CEO congratulated Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca on the way in which Ukrainian refugees are received and supported at all border checkpoints."An in-depth discussion took place on the Siret border checkpoint, respectively the JDC-FCER-organized refugee reception center and the measures implemented to help refugees transiting Romania. The situation of the over 200 orphans from Ukraine, brought to Romania by FCER, with the support of the Government, was particularly highlighted", the release reads.In the context of the discussion on the situation of the Jewish communities in Romania and the development of the Jewish life, Prime Minister Ciuca underlined his firm position in favor of concrete measures to prevent and combat anti-Semitism, xenophobia, radicalization and hate speech. He congratulated FCER for the success of the programs implemented so far and welcomed the constant collaboration between the Government and the Jewish Communities.In their turn, the members of the delegation thanked Prime Minister Ciuca for the support provided by the Government to the programs carried out by FCER, especially those of social and medical assistance dedicated to Holocaust survivors, but also for supporting the rehabilitation and promotion of the Jewish community."On this occasion, a series of projects unfolded by the Jewish Communities Federation in Romania, such as the creation of a Memorial dedicated to Jewish heroes who fought in World War I for Romania but did not have the country's nationality, were also reviewed", the release also mentioned.
President Klaus Iohannis will take part on Thursday in the extraordinary sitting of heads of state and government from NATO member states, organized at the Alliance's Headquarters in Brussels, the Presidential Administration informed on Wednesday.

The summit is called in the context of the "illegal" military aggression made by the Russian Federation against Ukraine and the significant increase of risks and threats towards regional, European and transatlantic security, according to a press release.

During the meeting, the allied leaders will analyze the impact of the current crisis towards the security situation on NATO's Eastern Flank, including in the Black Sea, as well as for the entire Euro-Atlantic space.

According to the source, president Klaus Iohannis will highlight that the response of the Euro-Atlantic community towards Russia's military aggression against Ukraine needs to be "firm", "coordinated", "unified" and "substantial".

"The President of Romania will reiterate, especially during this grave security context, the need to constantly consolidate the allied posture of deterrence and defence on the Eastern Flank, especially in the Black Sea," the press release highlights.

The head of state will reaffirm our country's support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, for its right to make its own decisions regarding foreign policy and security, as well as the need for NATO to continue support and assistance for the neighboring country.

President Iohannis will also highlight Romania's support for cooperating with partners and the importance of granting political and practical support to them, given the current security situation, Agerpres informs.
President Klaus Iohannis will attend the European Council meeting in Brussels on Thursday and Friday, the Presidential Administration informs.

Invited to attend the meeting is also the President of the United States of America, Joe Biden, as a reconfirmation of the transatlantic unity and coordination in the current security context generated by the Russian military aggression against Ukraine.

The European Council's discussion agenda approaches security developments in Ukraine, with a focus on the European Union's political, financial, material and humanitarian support to this country. The high officials will also address ways to support Ukrainian refugees at the European level, by using the temporary protection mechanism.

The heads of state and government will agree on the Strategic Compass, an instrument that will provide strategic guidance for the next decade on security and defence actions at EU level.

Following talks at the Versailles Summit, the European leaders will discuss issues related to ensuring security of energy supply at the European level, amid measures to reduce dependence on Russia. Based on the European Commission's communications, the situation of energy prices, measures to support the most vulnerable and to support, in the short term, the business environment will also be addressed.

They will also discuss economic issues related to the strengthening of the Internal Market, the management of the COVID-19 pandemic and the external relations of the European Union, with a focus on the relationship with China and the political situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

President Klaus Iohannis will also attend a special meeting of NATO heads of state and government at the Alliance's headquarters in Brussels on Thursday.

On Monday, the Romanian head of state attended a coordination meeting, in videoconference format, organized by the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, with several European leaders in preparation for the European Council.

According to the Presidential Administration, during his speech, President Iohannis informed about the efforts that Romania continues to make for the management of the refugee flow from Ukraine, as well as about the direct support given to Ukraine through the humanitarian hub located in Suceava, which benefits from support from the European Commission and the Member States.

President Klaus Iohannis underscored that this support must continue to be given, highlighting the difficulties faced by the population remaining in Ukraine and emphasizing the urgent need to reach a ceasefire and to protect the civilians in Ukraine.

"The President of Romania has called for the adoption by the European Union of additional sanctions against Russia, which will have a relevant impact on this country," the Presidential Administration states.

The head of state reiterated the importance of diversifying sources and routes of energy supply in the European Union, but also the need to develop interconnectivity between Member States, in the context of the Union's major goal of reducing energy dependence on Russian Federation.

In what concerns the topic of high energy prices, President Iohannis reiterated the need to identify convergent solutions at the European level as soon as possible, while drawing attention to the difficulties posed by the link between rising gas prices and electricity prices, which is having an unwanted impact on the market.

"President Klaus Iohannis has indicated that the major goal is to find efficient short-term solutions that protect European citizens and the EU's economic competitiveness, so that industrial production and jobs in European economies are not affected in the long run by the current energy crisis," the Presidential Administration also showed, Agerpres informs.
Romanians who want to support the civilian population affected by the war in Ukraine can donate online using Ghiseul.ro, without having to log in to the platform, the Romanian Digital Transformation Authority (ADR) reported on Wednesday, Agerpres reports.

"Starting today, Wednesday, March 23, Romanian citizens who want to support the civilian population affected by the war in Ukraine can do so by donating online, using Ghiseul.ro, without having to log in to the platform. With just a few clicks, those who want to help the refugees fleeing the armed conflict in Ukraine to Romania can contribute online to mitigating the effects of the war on the civilian population. There is a button 'Donatii pentru cetatenii Ucrainei' (Donations for the citizens of Ukraine) available on the main page of the platform www.ghiseul.ro, in the section 'Plata fara autentificare' (Payment without registration)."ADR head Octavian Oprea says that the amounts donated via the Ghiseul.ro platform will be collected by the General Emergency Management Inspectorate and used for providing humanitarian support and assistance to people seeking refuge from the armed conflict in UkraineFor other activities in support of the people affected by the conflict in Ukraine, you can access the portal "Impreuna ajutam mai mult' (Together we help more), managed by the Romanian government - https://www.gov.ro/ro/ucraina-impreuna-ajutam-mai-mult.Ghiseul.ro is the official online payment platform of the Romanian government administered by the Romanian Digital Transformation Authority and supported by the Association for Electronic Payments in Romania (APERO).
As many as 4,521 new cases of people infected with SARS-CoV-2 were recorded in the last 24 hours in Romania, by 619 fewer than on the previous day, on almost 37,000 RT-PCR and rapid antigenic tests performed, the Health Ministry informed on Wednesday.

Of the new cases, 552 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 - 1,502, and in the counties of Cluj - 365, Timis - 351, Hunedoara - 214.

As of Tuesday, 2,827,936 cases of people infected with the novel coronavirus were confirmed in Romania.

- Hospitalisations -

As many as 2,783 people with COVID-19 are hospitalised at specialist care facilities across the country, by 75 fewer than the day before; 213 of this total are children.

Out of the total number of hospitalised patients, 431 - including three children - are in ICUs, up by one from the previous day. Of the 431 ICU patients, 385 are unvaccinated for COVID-19.

- Deaths -

According to the Ministry, another 40 Romanians infected with SARS-CoV-2 - 18 men and 22 women - were reported dead in the last 24 hours.

Out of the total 40 fatalities, 35 were unvaccinated. The vaccinated patients were aged between 60 and 85 and suffered from underlying conditions.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, 64,789 people diagnosed with the SARS-CoV-2 infection have died in Romania, Agerpres informs.
Six Ukrainian citizens crossed the Tisza River to reach Romania, being discovered by the border police, Maramures County Emergencies Committee spokesman Dan Buca informed on Wednesday, Agerpres reports.

"On March 22 this year, the Maramures Border Police found six Ukrainian citizens, aged between 18 and 59, who crossed from Ukraine to Romania, through the Tisza River, on March 22 this year. All Ukrainian citizens have requested a form of protection from the Romanian state, which is why specific procedures have been initiated in such cases," said Dan Buca.
Tourism is recovering, after two years of pandemic, in the context in which the number of those who booked this year is approaching the level of 2019, reads a release of the National Association of Travel Agencies (ANAT) sent on Wednesday to AGERPRES.

Events in Ukraine affected bookings in late February and early March, but tourists realized that this was a non-Romanian conflict and that it was time to live a normal life."The fact that Romania has completely removed the restrictions since March 9 has greatly contributed to the increase in tourist demand. Tourists are opting for both foreign destinations and Romania, which they consider a safe destination. In fact, we all know, including Ukrainian refugees were very well received and felt safe in our country and the ANAT team contributed to their support," underlines Dumitru Luca, ANAT president.At present, in Romania, vacations can be carried out without problems, the restrictions being eliminated both for domestic tourism and for Romanians returning from other countries or for foreigners arriving in our country. More and more countries have given up or are about to drop their restrictions altogether, such as France, Spain, Italy (as of April 1), Greece, the United Kingdom, Israel and Jordan.Tourists can still enjoy special offers, such as early booking type, until March 31. As usual, these offers are promoted for hotels in Turkey, Greece, Egypt, Bulgaria, Spain, Malta, Cyprus but also on the Romanian coast.Planes fly normally to Egypt, the United Arab Emirates or to exotic destinations such as Zanzibar, the Maldives, the Dominican Republic or Sri Lanka.
ST. LOUIS  A vendor advertising home-grown delta-8 cannabis products Saturday at Soulard Market will not be allowed to return until the city can learn more about what was being sold, officials said Wednesday.

Greg Hayes, director of St. Louis parks department, said he made the decision Tuesday not to allow the vendor to return after seeing photos of the stall that showed an uncertainty of what was being sold last weekend. The parks department oversees the city-owned farmers market.

The vendor told the city it was going to sell CBD products. It did not say it was going to sell delta-8 products, Hayes said.

Benny Asta, the vendor, told the Post-Dispatch on Wednesday that his product was totally legal.

Both CBD and delta-8 are made from hemp, a botanical cousin to marijuana, and are legal in the United States. Retailers and customers say these products are used to help with sleep and ease pain, not to get high.

Industry boosters say the incident raises concerns over a lack of state and federal consumer protections in the hemp industry.

That, for us as a state, causes undue harm and risk, said Tyler Morgan, president and chairman of the Missouri Hemp Trade Association. We cant have an industry that doesnt have a focus on consumer protection.

The 2018 federal farm bill allows for the production and sale of hemp products, though the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has yet to evaluate or approve delta-8 or CBD products.

Cannabis is legally defined as hemp if it contains 0.3% or less of THC, the compound thats associated with the high of marijuana products. Cannabis that contains more than 0.3% is considered marijuana.

Laws are mixed across the U.S.

The district attorney in Kansas Johnson County, which sits on the border with Missouri, ordered businesses to stop selling delta-8 products by March 20 after the state attorney general issued an opinion last year that determined delta-8 is a Schedule 1 controlled substance and unlawful to possess or sell to in Kansas.

Even in Washington state, which was one of the first states to legalize recreational marijuana, officials have barred the sale of delta-8 products.

Marijuana is legal in Missouri only for medicinal use, though efforts are underway to legalize recreational use.

But unlike medical marijuana, which is overseen by the states Department of Health & Human Services, hemp falls under the Missouri Department of Agriculture.

Growers and sellers must be registered and have permits. Hemp crops have to be tested to ensure they contain 0.3% or less THC.

Hayes said his department consulted with the city counselors office to ensure compliance with state law prior to approving the vendor, whom he did not name, to sell CBD in October. Hayes described the vendor as a sporadic seller who usually came to the market on some Saturdays. It is unclear whether the vendor has previously sold buds at the market.

At Soulard Market on March 19, handwritten signs that said Home-grown delta-8 and Jumbo Buds $100 hung over four black, 19-gallon Sterilite storage tubs filled with buds.

No other information, including where the product was grown, was posted. Asta and another man packaged customers orders in plastic zip-close bags.

Asta declined to be interviewed Saturday but told a reporter then that their fields are in Washington, Missouri. He provided a business card that said VE CBD, which said it is a CBD grower & main supplier. Asta was listed as owner on the card.

On Wednesday, he said he was selling a strain of CBD from a company called Healthy Hemp, which he said is based in Jefferson City. Asta said Healthy Hemp is registered with the state Department of Agriculture. He said VE CBD was a name he used to register with the city to operate at Soulard Market.

He declined to identify the owner of Healthy Hemp.

Asta said the tubs at the market contained hemp with delta-8, which he likened to flavoring barbecue with hickory smoke. He said the delta-8 sign was there as a spark to entice customers.

We are trying to do the right thing, but this went viral, Asta said.

The state agriculture department had no records of registrations or permits for either Benny Asta or VE CBD. A list of companies registered to grow hemp in Franklin County, where Washington is situated, did not have a record of VE CBD. The state of Missouri also had no business incorporation documents for VE CBD.

Morgan, of the trade association, described photos of the Soulard Market stall he viewed as upsetting. The vendor, he said, did not appear to follow the industrys best practices, which includes labeling and age warnings. His group is advocating for established guidelines and says it has a strong coalition of legislators behind it.

Morgan said the states hemp industry generates in excess of $30 million a month.

Missouri is in a unique position to have one of the most vibrant and dynamic hemp industries in the entire country, Morgan said. But we also have to take responsibility and make sure that stuff like that doesnt happen.

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  Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri has received its largest single donation  $9 million  from author and philanthropist MacKenzie Scott, the abortion and reproductive health care provider announced Wednesday.

The gift to the Planned Parenthood regional affiliate is part of $225 million Scott gave to the Planned Parenthood national office as well 21 other Planned Parenthood affiliates across the country.

The gifts come at a time when efforts to limit abortion access have increased in anticipation of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling this year that could overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision in 1973 that legalized abortion.

Missouri and other GOP-led states have laws ready to ban almost all abortions if Roe v. Wade is overturned.

The fight for our rights and freedoms sit squarely in the states and Ms. Scotts gift helps keep that work going at one of the most challenging moments in our generation, said Yamelsie Rodriguez, president of the St. Louis regions Planned Parenthood.

Last week, Missouri Rep. Mary Elizabeth Coleman, R-Arnold, proposed a bill to make it illegal to aid or abet abortions outlawed in Missouri, even if they are performed in other states.

The mounting abortion restrictions in Missouri  including two appointments 72 hours apart and a pelvic exam for medication abortions  have largely ended the medical procedure in the state.

Missouri has just one abortion provider in St. Louis, so many patients seeking the procedure cross state lines to Planned Parenthoods clinic in Fairview Heights.

Last month, the Missouri Legislature approved a plan that prevented Planned Parenthood from being reimbursed for services covered under the states Medicaid program known as MO HealthNet.

The services include birth control, cancer screenings, sexually transmitted testing and treatment and other reproductive care. Abortion is not covered by the program.

That plan has prompted a lawsuit by Planned Parenthood regional affiliates, arguing that it violates federal Medicaid law, which allows patients to choose any provider for family planning care.

Planned Parenthood said its 11 health centers across the state will continue caring for Medicaid patients at no cost for as long as they can.

Rodriguez said the St. Louis regional affiliate is in the process of planning out how to best put the $9 million gift to use.

The timing of this historic investment will set a foundation for the health care complexities (the affiliate) is working to solve  whether its absorbing MO HealthNet patient costs since the Legislature defunded us or navigating patients who are traveling from farther away than ever before, she said.

A Texas law that went into effect Sept. 1 has sent women needing abortions across state lines, trips that are more difficult for those who cant miss work, have less money or no child care. The law allows private citizens to sue abortion providers or anyone who helps a woman obtain an abortion.

In the first month, the Planned Parenthood facility in Fairview Heights reported a 47% increase in patients coming from outside its normal service areas  including Louisiana, Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee and Kansas  as states struggled to handle the influx of women from Texas.

In late January, the Fairview Heights clinic announced it will create a first-of-its-kind regional logistics center using private money to help pay hotel, child care and travel costs for patients coming to the clinic from other states.

The staff will also help patients connect with community organizations providing similar assistance and resources.

The Planned Parenthood Federation of America estimates that if Roe v. Wade is overturned, some 35,000 more woman each year will turn to Illinois for an abortion, including 14,000 to southern Illinois.

In the past year, the St. Louis region affiliate also launched Missouris first transgender care program for patients regardless of their ability to pay. Meanwhile in Texas, the governor and attorney general have interpreted gender-affirming care as child abuse and ordered child protective services to investigate families with trans children.

In the rapidly changing reproductive health care landscape, our work reaches far beyond the state lines in which were located, Rodriguez said. Ms. Scotts gift will have a ripple effect across countless communities in our region, including the seven states from which patients regularly travel.

After Scotts divorce from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in 2019, she pledged to give away much of her wealth. Her portion of the divorce settlement left her with 4% of Amazon shares, which have soared in value.

Each was selected through a rigorous process, and has a strong track record of serving under-supported needs, Scott wrote.

Her giving team, she shared, has focused on supporting diverse groups of underrepresented people.

Teachers, administrators, parents, and students. Incarcerated people, crime survivors, police officers, and the family members of them all. Veterans and refugees. Kids enrolled in public schools as well as charters. Rural students as well as urban ones. Affordable housing and job training for people in any geography. Healthcare for people with circumstances and beliefs of every kind, Scott wrote. Very few solutions gain universal agreement. I dont know the best outcome of each debate, but theres heartening evidence that supporting the capacity of all people to be heard leads to better outcomes for all.

Build your health & fitness knowledge Sign up here to get the latest health & fitness updates in your inbox every week! Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
A barrage of abortion restrictions rippling across the country, from Florida to Texas to Idaho, is shrinking the already limited training options for U.S. medical students and residents who want to learn how to perform abortion procedures.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommends standardized training on abortion care during medical residency, the training period after medical school that provides future physicians on-the-job experience in a particular specialty. But the number of residency programs located in states where hospital employees are prohibited from performing or teaching about abortion  or at Catholic-owned hospitals with similar bans  has skyrocketed in recent years, an overlooked byproduct of anti-abortion legislation taking root in the American South, Midwest, and Mountain states.

Danna Ghafir, a born and bred Texan and third-year medical student in her home state, will leave Texas when the time comes for residency training.

How does legislation inform my approach to preparing for residency applications? It informs every decision Ive made in the last year, said Ghafir, who asked that her school not be identified. What if I match at a program in a state that is hostile to abortion and has a trigger law that would automatically ban abortion?

Since Texas passed a six-week abortion ban, Ghafir said, some students and teachers at her school have become more vocal about advocating for abortion education. But she also has witnessed students who want to practice complex obstetrics having difficulty finding mentors.

I am going to go where I can get the training I need, said Ghafir. But I will return to Texas.

Increasingly, aspiring OB-GYNs who want training in abortion procedures are seeking out teaching hospitals and universities that champion that training as a vital skill in womens health care, creating a crush of qualified applicants for prized spots in Seattle, San Francisco, and New York, according to medical residency directors and students.

The Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Washington in Seattle used to reserve a handful of spots for residents who wanted to opt out of learning abortion care. But two years ago, as access to teaching hospitals offering abortion training narrowed, UW decided to admit only residents committed to providing abortion care.

If we live in a state where abortion care is legal, we need to recruit medical students into our program that want to provide abortion care, said Dr. Alyssa Stephenson-Famy, an associate professor of maternal-fetal medicine in the department. We should not waste our spots on people not willing to provide abortion.

Teaching hospitals and universities that train future obstetricians and gynecologists are required, as part of the accreditation process, to provide abortion training or allow medical residents to go out of state for clinical training.

In Missouri, medical students in St. Louis typically travel to nearby Illinois, where there are fewer restrictions. But an amendment to a Missouri state health bill introduced by Republican Rep. Mary Elizabeth Coleman would make it illegal to perform an abortion on a Missouri resident, even in another state, and administrators believe medical students traveling across state lines would be at risk of prosecution.

Another Missouri bill, sponsored by Sen. Mike Moon, a Republican, would tax the endowment of universities affiliated with medical faculty who perform abortions or facilitate abortion training for medical students. Moon has said the bill, introduced in 2021 and again this year, targets Washington University in St. Louis.

Washington University is a premier institution which trains students to perform abortions, Moon told the Christian publication The Pathway. These students are then hired to murder developing human babies across our nation. They wont stop on their own. This will place a financial hardship on their ability to train these students.

In Idaho, a proposed bill would bar state employees, including University of Idaho physicians, from teaching about abortion. In anticipation, University of Washington professors based in Seattle taught a class about contraception and abortion to students in Idaho via Zoom last fall.

The anti-abortion movement knows its important to abortion rights advocates to maintain the pipeline of providers, and thats why theyre focused on travel bans, said Pamela Merritt, executive director of Medical Students for Choice, which works with student volunteers across the country to advocate for abortion training. Merritt counsels medical students to train in abortion refugee states while people try to undo the catastrophic, slow-moving car crash that is about to happen.

The accrediting agencies are not going to change the standard of care just because the Supreme Court strikes down the constitutional right of abortion, Merritt said. We have to have physicians who know what theyre doing.

The clinical skills used in abortion procedures are often the same used to clear the uterine lining after a miscarriage or end a pregnancy in demise that is causing hemorrhaging and other complications that can lead to maternal death. Clinicians who arent familiar with abortion procedures are often less skilled at performing these lifesaving procedures, experts said.

Any obstetrician who says there is never need for abortion care is not telling the truth about obstetrics, said Dr. Eve Espey, a professor in the department of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.

In the nearly seven months since Texas ban on abortions after embryonic cardiac activity is detected (at about six weeks of gestation) took effect, Espey said, she has seen an increase in patients arriving from Texas seeking to terminate pregnancies, in some cases with serious pregnancy complications.

We have patients getting on airplanes with ruptured membranes, she said. Because physicians in Texas may still be able to detect cardiac activity using an ultrasound, some fear prosecution for ending pregnancies that are in demise.

Providers in Texas are afraid to take care of them, she said. That is directly endangering a womans life.

The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule later this spring on whether to uphold a Mississippi statute that bans most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, a decision that could overturn or weaken federal protections for abortion. If Roe v. Wade is overturned, 26 states are likely to ban abortion, and physicians say clinics in states that endorse abortion rights  including California, Oregon, New York, and New Mexico  will be overrun with patients, affording little time to train medical residents.

Were all really worried about the future of safe abortion care because of the impact on training, said Espey.

Medical students caught up in the shifting legal landscape are left weighing whether to alter methodically plotted career paths.

Already, half of the medical schools in the U.S. include no formal training or offer only a single lecture on abortion-related topics, according to a 2020 study by Stanford University researchers, leaving medical residents who may want to incorporate the procedure into their future practice starting from square one, or nearly so.

I dont want to spend another four years not getting abortion training if I already didnt get any in the last four years, said Jasmine Chan, 26, a fourth-year medical student at Texas Tech University in Lubbock.

Chan co-founded the Medical Students for Choice chapter on her campus but said she often hesitates to discuss her practice goals with classmates, many of whom oppose abortion.

Given her Texan roots, Chan wanted to stay in the state for her residency. But her academic advisers warned her away from certain programs because her resume included abortion advocacy and training, which she sought out of state.

Late last month, just days before the deadline to submit her list of top choices for residency, she made a sober assessment of the political momentum in Texas and abruptly upended her plans. I was starting to spiral, she said. I realized I would end up in a state without abortion training.

She switched her specialty area from OB-GYN to family medicine to broaden her training site options. And on Friday  the famed Match Day for medical residencies  she learned she had been matched with Cooper University Health Care based in Camden, New Jersey, a state that enshrined abortion rights into state law in January.
Editor's note: The following story ran in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch the day after the death of KSDK weatherman Bob Richards on March 23, 1994.

The story of a court order against Bob Richards moved from back-page obscurity to drive-time talk radio this week in a sequence that raises questions about what constitutes news.

The story broke on Friday afternoon with a short, subdued dispatch from The Associated Press: A judge in Farmington had ordered KSDK weatherman Bob Richards to stay clear of a woman who said he had been harassing her. The story went to 41 newspapers and 100 broadcast stations in Missouri and the Metro East area. KTVI (Channel 2) and KPLR (Channel 11) broadcast the story Friday.

The Post-Dispatch published a similar story Saturday. Later that day, the city's remaining television stations aired brief reports.

By Wednesday morning, with news of Richards' death in his Piper Cherokee at Spirit of St. Louis Airport, the story was transformed into grist for talk radio and television tabloids.

At the center are Steve Shannon and D.C. Chymes, the morning drive voices of WKBQ-FM. Tuesday morning at 6:30, they took a call from Donna L. Henry, the 34-year-old Farmington woman who had got a restraining order against Richards last week.

She described a love affair that she said began in March 1992 with Richards' appearance at the veterans home where she works. In July 1993, she tried to break off the relationship, she said. That's when she said Richards began flying over her house and making frequent phone calls. On the radio, she played taped messages from her answering machines. In them, a man she identified as Richards pleads for reconciliation.

Asked why she called the station, she said Richards had angered her by describing her in news interviews as a disgruntled viewer.

"My name is plastered everywhere, and he has almost weasled out of it, " she said.

The interview itself was straightforward, without satire or mockery. It was replayed during peak drive hours. The station extended offers to Richards for a reply; he didn't respond.

The station also aired a short, satirical segment including the sound of an airplane engine and an accordion, the instrument which Richards played at some public appearances.

Late Tuesday night, Richards made his last weather forecast, then drove to the airport. His death in a fiery plane crash - which authorities were investigating as a possible suicide - triggered a round of name-calling on the air Wednesday morning.

Guy Phillips of KYKY radio called Steve and D.C.'s show Tuesday "an unforgivable sin."

Frank O. Pinion of KSD radio called the show "cruel and vicious."

J.C. Corcoran of WFXB said Shannon and Chymes are "clearly partially responsible" for Richards' death.

Listeners lit the switchboards at the stations.

Shannon said he had tried to play the story straight. He said he would never have run it if he believed that it might have contributed to a suicide. Shannon said he'd had no malicious intent in airing the Henry interview. He said he wanted to let her tell her side of the story.

"Are we responsible? No. Do we regret doing the interview? No. We regret the loss of a life. You have to feel that way."

Ratings are due out soon, Shannon said. He said his detractors are trying to gain more listeners by criticizing Steve and D.C.'s handling of the Richards story. And given the chance, he said, any of his competitors would have run the Henry interview.

The St. Francois County judge who ordered Richards to stay away from Henry called the media attention to the order "totally unwarranted."

Associate Circuit Judge James E. Pennoyer said he issues such orders routinely. Last year, the Legislature amended the law to allow the orders even when there is no evidence of physical abuse.

Pennoyer predicted the case would continue to draw attention. He said he has already turned down a request by "Inside Edition" for an interview.

"I've issued thousands of these orders over the years and never saw one of them in the newspaper. What's newsworthy about this one? Maybe because it's a public personality. Is that newsworthy? I ask why?"

Post-Dispatch Editor William F. Woo said he posed the same questions before authorizing publication of a story.

He said the paper held the story out of Friday's editions because gaining such court orders requires little proof, while a story based on the order could damage Richards' reputation.

By Friday, further reporting had assured editors that Henry's application for a court order was "not malicious, " Woo said.

"We were in the midst of these discussions when the story was broken by The Associated Press, one of the most responsible news organizations in the United States. At that time, the facts of the order were known to his family and employer, news of the order was on the air. So we published seven inches subordinated on an inside page of an inside section."

"That was a difficult call, even so, " Woo said. "I think, and I hope, that it was the right one."
Joe Holleman Joe Holleman is a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Follow Joe Holleman 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

A Kansas City engineering firm will need to find another legislator-swayer, now that the company and former state legislator Mike Talboy have parted ways.

Talboy, until recently the government affairs director for Burns & McDonnell and a registered lobbyist, also has served as an adviser to St. Louis Mayor Tishaura O. Jones on two committees.

Talboy was a member of Jones transition team when she was elected mayor in April 2021. He later was appointed to the mayors stimulus advisory board that was created to offer guidance on how to spend $517 million in federal aid.

As to whether a replacement would need to be named to the stimulus board, a spokesperson for Jones office said the board has been inactive since July 2021.

Talboy could not be reached for comment. A company spokesperson said Tuesday that Talboy was no longer employed by the firm and declined to further discuss a personnel matter.

Talboy served from 2006 to 2012 as a Democratic state representative from the Kansas City area. Jones was elected as a Democratic state representative in 2008.

He and Jones made news in 2010 when Talboy, who is Hispanic, and Jones, who is Black, became the House minority leader and assistant minority leader, respectively.

Talboy left the Legislature to join Burns & McDonnell, which has headquarters in Kansas City and offices in Chesterfield and OFallon, Illinois.

Your weekly capsule of local news, life advice, trivia and humor from Post-Dispatch columnist Joe Holleman. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
MADISON COUNTY  A Belleville nurse pleaded guilty to charges connected to allegations that she failed to perform CPR on a nursing home patient, leading to their death in 2017.

Illinois State Police investigators said Christy McCall, 45, was alerted by her coworkers at Collinsville Rehabilitation and Healthcare Center that a resident was unresponsive.

However, police said McCall did not enter the residents room to provide the necessary medical aid, ultimately contributing to the residents death.

McCall pleaded guilty to reckless conduct, a Class A misdemeanor, in Madison County on March 14. She was sentenced to 12 months of probation and must pay $1,039 in fees and fines.

By pleading guilty, prosecutors agreed to dismiss McCalls original charges of criminal neglect of a long-term care facility resident resulting in death and criminal neglect of a long-term care facility resident resulting in injury.

The Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation suspended McCalls nursing license due to the investigation.

The case began on Aug. 1, 2017, when the administrator of the Collinsville Rehabilitation and Healthcare Center notified the Illinois State Police Medicaid Fraud Control Bureau of the allegations.

People are encouraged to call the ISP Medicaid Fraud Hotline at 888-557-9503 to report suspected fraud or abuse of medical providers involved in the Medicaid system.
Citing the citys refusal to provide legal defense, a former St. Louis police officer has reached a $100,000 civil settlement in a lawsuit accusing him of stealing from a person he detained.

Kevin M. Baroni, 35, was acquitted in December on charges that he held Richard E. Brown and searched him for drugs without consent in 2019.

A judge heard testimony on Nov. 10 about the allegations that he stopped and held Brown, a construction worker who lived in St. Louis at the time, on Nov. 5, 2019.

Baroni served in an undercover drug unit at the time.

Brown filed a lawsuit in February 2021 seeking compensation for what he deemed as an unreasonable strip search under Missouri law and for allegedly stealing $220 from him during that stop.

A settlement agreement filed Tuesday did not require Baroni to admit to any wrongdoing or liability.

What led to (the settlement) is the city denied to defend him and indemnify him, Baronis attorney Brian Millikan said. So he was left with the choice of trying to fund litigation, which can be very expensive in federal court, or entering into some sort of agreement like we did.

Millikan represented Baroni in both this lawsuit as well as the criminal case.

Browns lawyer, W. Bevis Schock, noted while the Missouri Legislature has passed a law requiring the city to indemnify Baroni in his capacity as a police officer, the city of St. Louis is currently in court challenging that law.

(The city) has various legal reasons and that is in the process, so thats going at legal speed  which is slow, Schock said. But whats interesting about these matters is that we have an administration of the city who claims they are interested in solving problems with police misconduct and ... there has been significant police misconduct and the city tells the victim to go jump in the lake. We dont think thats right.

Schock said his team has asked the city to indemnify Baroni, but the administration has refused to do so thus far.

A city spokesman did not immediately return a call for comment.

Baroni was a St. Louis police officer from June 2010 through Sept. 7, 2020, about one month before the criminal charges were filed. St. Louis police at the time would not specify if he was fired or resigned, but according to court testimony, he was the subject of an internal affairs investigation.

Schock said he hopes the citys challenge to the law fails and they pay Brown the settlement money.

We are not trying to get the money from the officer, we are trying to get the money from the city, he said. We take the view that the city employed this guy, they ought to indemnify him.

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.
ST. LOUIS  A former FBI agent who investigated Missouris governor in 2018 pleaded guilty Wednesday to misdemeanor evidence tampering, thus avoiding a perjury trial that could have included testimony from St. Louis top prosecutor.

William Don Tisaby, 69, admitted concealing documents and interview notes during his invasion of privacy investigation of Gov. Eric Greitens. Specifically, he admitted hiding, through false testimony, documents provided to him by St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kimberly M. Gardner and notes he took during witness interviews.

Tisabys plea agreement replaces an indictment of seven felonies: six counts of perjury and one count of evidence tampering.

Tisaby, who was hired by Gardner to investigate Greitens, was sentenced to probation for one year will be required to pay court costs.

Circuit Judge Bryan Hettenbach said hed discharge Tisaby from probation after 90 days if Tisaby complies. If he completes probation, he wont have a conviction, and his case wont be publicly accessible.

My entire life, Ive been dedicated to doing justice, Tisaby told the judge. Theres no malice in my heart.

His lawyer, Jermaine Wooten, said in court that Tisaby is a very honest man who thought he was doing everything right and was ready up until Tuesday to defend the charges against him.

However, because of Tisabys age and declining health, Wooten said Tisaby doubted being able to withstand the physical and emotional toll of a jury trial.

After Wednesdays hearing, Wooten blamed Tisabys conduct on negligence, not malice, saying Tisaby went into that deposition, really, just not prepared.

No one instructed him to conceal anything, Wooten said.

Johnson County Prosecutor Robert Russell, who was appointed special prosecutor, said the misdemeanor count is for Tisabys false testimony about not receiving documentation about Greitens case from Gardner and taking no notes while interviewing Greitens accuser and another witness in January 2018.

Greitens was accused of taking a photo of a semi-nude woman without her consent in the basement of his Central West End home in 2015. Investigators never found the photo Greitens was accused of taking.

Russell said he amended the evidence tampering charge to a misdemeanor because the felony invasion of privacy charge against Greitens required evidence that the alleged photo was transmitted.

The plea deal, he said, is justice.

If theres anybody who has an obligation, a responsibility and certainly an understanding that they need to be truthful under oath, its a person whos a part of law enforcement, Russell said. If we let that go, then I think we kind of lose the whole system.

Russell said his investigation did not conclude whether Gardner knew Tisaby was concealing the documents, some of which were her notes from her solo interview with Greitens accuser. Russell wouldnt say whether Gardner had a duty to correct Tisabys false statements or if his guilty plea casts a shadow on ethics charges pending against Gardner.

Im not going to put myself in her shoes, Russell said. I can say I believe prosecutors have an ethical obligation to correct and make sure the record is clear as to what documents exist or dont exist and to correct a witness if you know that witness is not testifying appropriately or accurately as to whats going on.

Indicted 2019

Tisaby was indicted in 2019 stemming from his sworn statements about his investigation of Greitens. Jurors would have been asked to decide whether Tisabys false testimony during his March 2018 deposition in the run-up to the Greitens invasion of privacy trial were material to the central issues of the Greitens case.

Gardner was subpoenaed to testify next week at Tisabys trial. Scott Rosenblum, one of Greitens lawyers, also was called to testify.

Tisaby testified that he changed many of his answers but never gave false information. He refused to answer some questions, saying certain aspects were privileged.

Gardner dropped the invasion of privacy charge against Greitens during jury selection when faced with possibly having to testify in the case. Gardner later dismissed a computer tampering charge alleging Greitens misuse of a charity donor list in a deal brokering the former governors resignation.

Greitens is currently seeking the Republican nomination for a U.S. Senate seat.

Circuit attorney case

Next month, Gardner will face a disciplinary hearing on charges of professional misconduct that closely mirror the original charges against Tisaby. The outcome of an April 11 hearing could decide the fate of her law license and political future.

She was charged last year by Missouris chief disciplinary counsel with concealing details about the Greitens investigation from her own team regarding notes taken during interviews with witnesses.

Gardner is also accused of failing to disclose evidence to the defense and misrepresenting evidence to the court, defense lawyers and ethics investigators. She stands charged with failing to correct false and sworn statements by members of her team about the existence and disclosure of notes taken in interviews with Greitens accuser.

Gardner has denied misconduct charges against her.

The Greitens investigation began in January 2018 after news broke that Greitens had had an affair with his hair stylist as he was preparing to run for office.

The hair stylists ex-husband claimed Greitens had threatened to release a photo of the nude or semi-nude woman if she exposed their affair. Greitens denied that.

In an affidavit released this week, Sheena Greitens alleges Eric Greitens admitted to her in January 2021 that he had taken the photo that led to an invasion of privacy indictment against him during the 2018 scandal.

Sheena Greitens alleges that after Eric Greitens admitted taking the photo, he said she would be exposed to legal jeopardy if she ever told anyone, even family members or a therapist. Sheena Greitens said she believed him because of the extent of his influence in Missouri.

Gardner first interviewed Eric Greitens accuser without Tisaby. Five days later, Tisaby interviewed the woman, with Gardner present. That February, a grand jury indicted Eric Greitens on one felony count of invasion of privacy.

Greitens defense team deposed Tisaby with Gardner present. She frequently objected to questions about Tisabys investigation of other matters involving Greitens but unrelated to the invasion of privacy case.

Tisaby gave inconsistent and incorrect testimony about his investigation, specifically about having documents, taking notes and asking questions during witness interviews.

Eric Greitens lawyers, who claimed Tisaby had committed perjury and that Gardner let him do it, then filed a complaint with police that sparked a contentious, monthslong grand jury investigation into Tisaby and the circuit attorneys office.

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.
ST. LOUIS  The former FBI agent investigating whether Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens committed a felony invasion of privacy with his mistress also was once accused of a crime  bigamy  and lying to FBI investigators about it.

William Don Tisaby, now 65 and head of Enterra LLC, was demoted and suspended after his 1998 marriage, court documents obtained by the Post-Dispatch show.

The nearly 20-year-old case could spark attempts by defense attorneys to attack Tisabys credibility when hes under oath again, either in a deposition or during the trial.

Cristian Stevens, a former federal prosecutor now with Armstrong Teasdale, said the information about Tisaby would not be a fatal blow to the prosecution of Greitens, but its certainly not helpful.

In any case, youre looking for material for cross examination on any witness, he said. But a judge would have to rule that the information was relative and probative enough before it was used in court.

Greitens attorneys already have criticized the use of Tisabys out-of-state firm and the firms contract, which says employees report only to St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner. Theyve also challenged the law being used to prosecute the governor.

A longtime former St. Louis prosecutor also criticized Gardners use of Enterra in an online post Wednesday, both for passing over the experienced investigators in her office and for the costs of outside personnel.

A Harvard law professor is one of the outside personnel assisting. The Post-Dispatch obtained on Wednesday Gardners contract with him, which showed he will be paid $12,000 a month, up to a maximum of $120,000. Gardners spokeswoman said that because the trial is set for May, the total should be $30,000 to $40,000.

Post-Dispatch coverage of the Greitens affair scandal From Greitens' initial statement to the legal battle, read the Post-Dispatch coverage of the governor's scandal.

Gardners office said it sought an out-of-state firm after St. Louis police and federal investigators rebuffed a request to investigate Greitens, who has been accused of taking a photograph of his then-lover and threatening to release it if she spoke about their affair. Greitens has admitted the affair but denied blackmailing the woman. His attorneys have said the law being used to prosecute him doesnt apply.

The St. Louis police chief says that his department was not asked to investigate. Federal officials declined to comment.

Tisaby could not be reached by email or phone for comment Wednesday.

In an email, Gardner spokeswoman Susan Ryan wrote, Enterra came highly recommended by a number of current and retired FBI agents around the country. We have been satisfied with the work they have performed to date.

Bigamy in the FBI

Tisaby worked for the FBI in 1979-90 and 1993-2002, his LinkedIn page says.

He was an inspector in the senior executive service at the FBI when investigators learned that he had remarried in 1998 before his divorce was final, according to a letter from the agencys deputy director to Tisaby.

The letter says Tisaby claimed he believed that his divorce was final. But the director concluded that Tisaby had lied under oath to internal investigators, in part because of considerable evidence in the divorce documents that contradicted your claims.

The letter also says that Tisabys acceptance of a loan from a former subordinate at the FBI reflected poor judgement (sic) and a brief absence without leave after learning of the internal bigamy investigation displayed a remarkable lack of judgement (sic).

Tisaby violated the FBIs Bright Line policy that prohibited lying under oath, a potential firing offense, but the letter says Tisabys actions were mitigated by the fact that it did not directly involve the performance of your official duties.

It says Tisaby was never criminally charged with bigamy, he had no prior disciplinary record and had a positive record of years of service and job performance.

His actions also were not widely known, he had suffered a tragic situation within his family and was considered to have good potential for rehabilitation.

Tisaby was demoted and suspended without pay for 60 days. His pay dropped to $78,000 from $125,000.

The disciplinary matter became public in court documents in Virginia after Tisaby sought to reduce his child and spousal support payments commensurate with the drop in pay. But a judge in 2000 refused, saying the pay cut was due to Tisabys misconduct.

Tisaby filed for bankruptcy in 2002, but those records are too old to be available online.

In 2007, while working for Laclede Gas in St. Louis, he owed nearly $107,000 in spousal support, court records show.

Police dispute refusal to Help

Gardners office said last month that it unsuccessfully sought help on the Greitens investigation from police, the FBI and the U.S. Attorneys office.

Both federal agencies declined to comment.

Stevens, the former federal prosecutor, said that based on media reports, he did not think the allegations appeared to rise to a federal case.

St. Louis police Chief John Hayden disputed claims by Ryan that he declined to investigate. Hayden told the Post-Dispatch that he had one hypothetical conversation with Gardner on the day after news broke about Greitens. There was no complaint to police from the victim, who had not been named.

I told her the feds would probably be interested because it involves a sitting governor, he said.

And that was the last time Hayden heard from Gardner.

It makes me frustrated because its as if shes saying I failed to do something Im supposed to do here, and thats not the case at all, Hayden said. To date, nobody has tried to report this to the police department.

I didnt know Kim Gardner had identified this person until she said (in media reports) shes conducting her own investigation, Hayden said.

In his more than 30 years with the department, Hayden said he was unaware of a prosecutor using a private firm to investigate a local crime.

This has all been oddly done to me as far as Im concerned, Hayden said. She has to explain why she did what she did.

An outside investigation

Ryan said that after being rebuffed by local and federal investigators, Gardners office went with an out-of-state firm to avoid any possible outside influence.

Enterra is based in Rochester, Mich. But Tisaby worked for Laclede Gas, now known as Spire, and lived in St. Louis for years.

The Laclede entry on Enterras website under case studies says, Operating in the role of the companys Director of Corporate Security, Enterra CEO William Tisaby moved swiftly to identify and address multiple points of vulnerability, developing and implementing a comprehensive security enhancement plan.

Spire spokeswoman Jenny Gobble said the company had never hired Enterra, but confirmed that Tisaby worked for Laclede in the security department in 2005-07. Gobble said in an email two weeks ago that the company had contacted Enterra to let them know this is not accurate and needs to be updated on their website. On Wednesday, she wrote that the continued listing of Laclede on the Enterra website as one of the companies we help wrongly implied a business relationship with Enterra and implied that relationship was ongoing.

After leaving St. Louis, public records show Tisaby in Alabama and Michigan. He founded Tisaby and Associates in 2010, his LinkedIn page says.

The Global Alliance of Security Professionals LLC was incorporated in Delaware and Michigan in August, 2016, and the name changed to Enterra LLC a month later.

Enterra owes $575 in LLC taxes to Delaware. A Delaware Department of State spokesman said in an email Wednesday that Enterra is scheduled to be voided June 1 unless taxes and penalties are paid.

Chuck Raasch of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.

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.

Robert Patrick Robert Patrick is a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Follow Robert Patrick 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
UPDATED with mugshot, additional information on Robinson

ST. LOUIS  St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kimberly M. Gardner on Wednesday charged a man with pointing a gun at St. Louis police officers and said the evidence doesn't support the officers' claim that they were nearly carjacked last weekend in a marked patrol car.

Police had sought charges Saturday, but none was issued for days. Police had wanted the man, Allen Lee Robinson, charged with two counts of first-degree robbery, armed criminal action and resisting arrest.

Gardner's office refused those charges and instead settled on a weapons charge: unlawful use of a weapon.

Gardner said she is limited to the evidence provided by police and said the case doesnt warrant more serious charges.

Any suggestion that the evidence provided by SLMPD supports charge of robbery 1st/carjacking in this incident is an unfortunate and inaccurate characterization, Gardner said in a statement.

Investigations take time, Gardner continued, and we should wait until the facts are submitted and reviewed.

The charge of unlawful use of a weapon is a Class E felony, the least severe felony in Missouri. It is punishable by up to four years in prison or one year in jail and a fine of up to $10,000.

Robinson, 27, is charged with pointing a black Taurus G2c handgun at the head and torso of an officer. Robinson lives in the 1100 block of Hornsby Avenue in north St. Louis. He was being held Wednesday in the Jefferson County Jail in an unrelated case.

Gardners spokeswoman, Allison Hawk, released Gardners statement to reporters on Wednesday, two days after the Post-Dispatch first inquired about any decision not to file charges. Hawk on Monday had said the case was still being investigated.

Police sought the warrants for robbery, armed criminal action and resisting arrest against Robinson on Saturday, but the prosecutor refused to file charges.

The head of the police officers' union did not return a call seeking comment about Gardner's statement Wednesday.

On Wednesday, St. Louis police denied a public information request by the Post-Dispatch for available dashcam or body camera footage of the confrontation. The department cited an open investigation as the reason for not releasing the footage to the public.

About 3 a.m. Saturday, the two officers were driving to Chouteau Avenue and Seventh Street to check on a report of gunfire in the area. The officers saw a man run from a nearby bus stop and stand in the middle of Chouteau, in the citys LaSalle Park neighborhood.

Robinson stepped in front of their patrol car on eastbound Chouteau near South Tucker Boulevard, preventing the police car from moving, police Officer Randal Welsch said in court documents.

Robinson walked to the passenger side and pointed a gun directly at the torso and head of Officer Ricardo Williams as he sat in the patrol car, according to court papers and a police incident report.

Police called it an attempted carjacking and said Robinson ran off once he realized the car was a marked police car. No one was hurt. Police didnt say if the patrol cars lights had been activated when the man stopped the car.

After the gunman ran off, the St. Louis Police Department issued an officer in need of aid call. Other officers showed up and helped search for the man. Police arrested Robinson, who had a handgun in his waistband, court documents said.

Robinson does not have an attorney listed in online court documents. He was being held Wednesday in Jefferson County, and the sheriff's office there released his mugshot. His Jefferson County pending cases are for property damage in Festus from May and violating an order of protection twice in June. He lived in Festus at the time.

He also has an unrelated case pending in the city of St. Louis, a misdemeanor charge of fourth-degree domestic assault from January 2020.

Joel Currier and Erin Heffernan of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.

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.
FRANKLIN COUNTY  Two men have been charged in connection with the drug overdose death of a 13-year-old during a sleepover in Washington, Missouri, in August, police said.

Thomas R. Noonan, of Washington, and a second man each were charged this month with endangering the welfare of a child resulting in death and endangering the welfare of a child resulting in serious physical injury, the Washington Police Department said in a statement Tuesday.

The Post-Dispatch is not naming the second man because the charges against him have not shown up in Case.net, Missouri's online court records system.

The charges stem from the Aug. 29 death of Zackary A. Foster, a Washington teen who had spent the night at the home of a 12-year-old friend in the 600 block of West Seventh Street in August.

Police said the two boys experimented with drugs found at the home. Around 9 a.m. the next day, Zackary was found unresponsive in an upstairs bedroom. The 12-year-old boy and his 7-year-old sister were taken into protective custody and to a hospital for medical evaluation.

Three adults  the two men and a 46-year-old woman  live in the home, police said. Two of them, Noonan, 62, and a 59-year-old man were charged and are in custody, police said. Bond for both was set at $250,000.

Additional charges are possible in the case, police said.
JEFFERSON CITY  Missouri governments and businesses would have to suspend contracts with Russia under a proposed state law moving through the Legislature.

Rep. Dean Plocher, a Des Peres Republican who serves as floor leader in the House, outlined a plan Wednesday requiring state entities and businesses receiving public funding to suspend contracts with Russia or other countries attacking members of NATO, as well as Ukraine, Finland, Sweden and Georgia.

Plocher said many businesses have already halted their operations in Russia in response to its unprovoked attack on Ukraine.

They are taking this on themselves. This would codify that, Plocher told members of the House Homeland Security Committee Wednesday. I think NATO members are feeling rather nervous right now.

The proposed law is among a handful of initiatives borne out of Russias decision to wage war with its neighbor to the west.

Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe, for example, has asked all Missouri businesses to stop selling Russian products in solidarity with Ukraine.

Other states also are stepping forward with plans.

In Indiana, lawmakers have approved legislation to block Russian-controlled businesses and nonprofits from acquiring property in Indiana for one year.

Pennsylvania lawmakers are mulling legislation requiring state pension funds to pull investments connected to the Russian government and its critical supporters.

Pension funds, including those covering public sector workers in Missouri, have shed Russian investments in recent weeks.

It is not clear whether Plochers legislation will have any immediate effect on Russia or Missouri businesses. In 2019, the U.S. imported an estimated $1.8 billion in Russian goods, including fuel, precious metals, iron, steel and fertilizers, according to U.S. trade figures.

Plocher said the prohibition is designed to work in conjunction with federal sanctions on Russia.

Rep. Bridget Walsh Moore, D-St. Louis, said cutting off the flow of money will help stop Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

We can all get behind this. The Russian people dont want this war, Walsh Moore said.

Rep. Mike Haffner, R-Pleasant Hill, said he wants all 50 states to join with Missouri in backing the Ukrainian people.

It sends a strong signal to Europe, Haffner said.

We have to be very delicate in times like this, said Rep. Ron Hicks, R-Defiance. We have a country over there standing up for themselves.

Originally posted at 1 p.m. Wednesday, March 23.

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.
CLAYTON  The St. Louis County Council on Tuesday gave preliminary approval to a measure that would relax recent requirements forcing some property owners to add electric vehicle charging stations to parking lots.

Those requirements, adopted late last year, drew sharp criticism from developers, small-business owners and others, who said they were too onerous and costly, discouraging new investment.

Councilwoman Kelli Dunaway, the 2nd District Democrat who had championed the requirements, conceded Tuesday that they were getting in the way of businesses opening and moving and operating in the way they want to be.

The council in October required the addition of EV charging stations into most new construction and major building or parking rehabs in unincorporated areas. The ordinance, approved by a council majority of Democrats in a 4-3 vote, was meant to prepare properties for an expected increase in the use of electric vehicles and incentivize their use as environmentally friendly alternatives.

But the county ordinance had the unintended effect of also requiring businesses that changed ownership  without any new construction or remodeling  to add electrical charging stations, Dunaway said.

She introduced a new bill that would narrow the application of the law to new construction or renovations of parking lots of 31 spaces or more, with exemptions for restaurants and other businesses visited by customers for a short window of time.

The current EV legislation is hurting people and hindering small businesses and because that is not what I ever wanted or intended, Im proposing some changes, Dunaway said. I know how to admit when Ive made a mistake and Im willing to work just as hard to fix it as I did to make it in the first place.

The council voted 5-1 to give the bill first-round approval.

Councilman Mark Harder, R-7th District, said Dunaways new bill was better than the current requirements but voted against advancing the measure, saying he preferred a competing bill he has introduced to repeal the requirements entirely.

There is a bill that I have that would just make this whole legislation go away so that we can better look at the future of this whole project, he said.

Councilman Ernie Trakas, R-6th District, said he was willing to give the bill first-round approval pending more review but that in no way guarantees that I will vote for final passage.

Council Chair Rita Days, D-1st District, urged Dunaway and Harder to work on a compromise.

County and state Republicans have said they did not want to support a government requirement for charging stations, saying the market would respond as demand for electric vehicles increased. Earlier this month, the GOP-controlled Missouri House gave first-round approval to a plan by Rep. Jim Murphy, who represents parts of south St. Louis County, that would dump the county ordinance and similar laws approved last year in St. Louis, Brentwood and Richmond Heights.

Walker honored

The council on Tuesday also adopted a resolution honoring Cora Faith Walker, former county policy chief and state representative, and offering formal condolences to her husband, Tim, and their families. Walker, of Ferguson, died March 11. She was 37.

Walker represented Ferguson and other parts of north St. Louis County in the Missouri Legislature from 2017 to 2019, when she resigned to lead policy direction for County Executive Sam Page. In that role, she guided the countys response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including the distribution of federal pandemic aid for critical services.

The council began the Tuesday meeting with a moment of silence for Walker. A resolution honoring Walker remembered her as a fierce advocate, a bright policy maker, whip-smart, and committed to the broad scope of diversity, a protector and friend leading with an iron fist in a velvet glove.

Dunaway, a close friend of Walker, said she had lost someone I talked to every day, someone who I relied on more than I ever knew, for policy, friendship and advice.

I am a better person because of you, Cora, Dunaway said.

Councilwoman Lisa Clancy, D-5th District, another close friend of Walker, said she had been comforted over the past week at the outpouring of condolences from local government officials, nonprofit leaders and advocacy groups.

Walker was a friend, colleague and mentor, Clancy said, who shared a passion for social justice and a penchant for good, evidence-based policy.

She was the mentor I always wanted and she came just at the right time, Clancy said. She always left me with a mantra that rings true every day: Good policy is good politics.

Councilwoman Shalonda Webb, who joined the council in early 2021, said she and Walker had a sharp disagreement about communication between the council and Pages office in her first days on the council. Afterward, Webb said, Cora left her a gift of a Barbie doll set representing Black women in elected office.

Even though we had a hard conversation, we still respected each other, said Webb, a Democrat who represents the 4th District. It wasnt about policy, it was just her as a good person.

Days said Walker and she were aligned in their backgrounds as Black women in government and their support for health care and womens reproductive rights.

I am only asking that she rest in peace knowing that many of the issues she championed, many of the causes she worked so hard for, we will carry them on in her absence, Days said.

Walker was pronounced dead at a hospital after collapsing outside her hotel room at Loews Hotel at Ballpark Village in downtown St. Louis.

Interim Public Safety Director Daniel Isom said Monday that there is no evidence of foul play in Walkers death and the St. Louis medical examiners office previously reported that it found no signs of trauma or injury. A full report is pending toxicology results.

The hotel Walker stayed at was the site of an after-party for some people who had attended a 50th birthday party for St. Louis Mayor Tishaura O. Jones, a close personal friend of Walker.

Councilman Tim Fitch, R-3rd District, has called for the council to adopt a nonbinding resolution calling for the Missouri Highway Patrol to investigate Walkers death, arguing that her friendship with Jones creates a conflict of interest for city personnel.

Fitch, who said he was returning from travel in Ireland on Tuesday, was not in attendance at the meeting.

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.
You know who benefits the most from liberal media bias? Conservatives.

I spent much of the last 25 years writing about liberal media bias. Heck, I grew up on the stuff. My father, a longtime editor, used to joke that he worked behind enemy lines. Hed often tutor me about the likes of Walter Duranty, the New York Times Moscow correspondent who whitewashed Stalins crimes and won a Pulitzer in the process, or Herbert Matthews, the reporter whose Cuba coverage inspired the famous cartoon of Fidel Castro saying, I got my job through the New York Times.

Dan Rather, a CBS News institution with some well-documented biases of his own, used to say liberal media bias was a myth. Suffice it to say, I think he was wrong, and continues to be wrong.

But something has changed. The modern conservative movement began in the mid-20th century, and for most of that time the media referred to three TV networks, two newspapers and a few newsmagazines  all located within walking distance of each other in Manhattan. Rounding out the list were The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and a handful of similarly liberal big city newspapers. During this era, the media had incredible power to set the agenda. Disagree if you wish, just know that for conservatives this was an article of faith.

Irritation at this center-left conventional wisdom, which dominated not just the media, but academia, created the pearl of modern conservatism. When he launched National Review, William F. Buckley proclaimed that his journal (where I worked for 20 years) would stand athwart History, yelling stop. The talk radio revolution pioneered by Rush Limbaugh and the rise of Fox News can only be understood as a rebellion against the hegemony  real or perceived  of the liberal media.

The story of how that hegemony was shattered by cable news and the internet is by now familiar. But whats interesting is that even as the reigning journalistic gatekeepers were dethroned, conservative rage against the media intensified. In 2008, Sarah Palin, John McCains running mate, became a right-wing darling in large part because the mainstream media hated her. In 2012, Newt Gingrichs presidential campaigns early successes stemmed almost entirely from his relentless focus on attacking the destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media.

Whatever you make of his broadsides, its worth noting they were delivered well after Fox had become a ratings behemoth and a slew of right-wing news and opinion outlets had been launched.

Its almost impossible to exaggerate how much of Donald Trumps candidacy and presidency were entwined with the rights animosity for what Gingrich had called the elite media. Trumps war on fake news  his contribution to right-wing rhetoric  was so total he felt perfectly free to dub the press the enemy of the people, praise a politician who physically attacked a journalist and rail against the First Amendment.

Ignore the substance of the criticisms. As an objective matter, this obsession with the elite medias alleged monopoly has intensified in tandem with the unraveling of that monopoly. Republican politicians dont need the elite media to get their messages out anymore. Indeed, often the best thing that can happen to a Republican politician is to earn the scorn of such outlets.

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida understands this better than most. Hes made media hostility central to his brand. If the corporate press nationally isnt attacking me, he says, then Im probably not doing my job. (Oddly, his definition of corporate press doesnt include Fox News, where he appears so often he should probably have his mail delivered to the green room.)

If Republican voters havent gotten the news that the monolithic media isnt nearly the monolith it once was, neither has the media itself. When 60 Minutes did a shoddy piece on DeSantis, it was tantamount to an in-kind donation to the governor.

Much of the news media is caught in a kind of Baptists and bootleggers loop, in which opposing forces become symbiotically codependent. Thanks in part to the blurring of reporting with partisan punditry, particularly on cable news and social media, not to mention the larger trends of tribal polarization, attacks from the left often benefit their right-wing targets (and vice versa). Weirder still, favorable coverage is often no favor. Right-wing denunciations of defund the police  a fringe position among elected Democrats  did far less damage to Democrats than the coverage the idea got from sympathetic media.

There are no easy answers to the problem, but one thing that would help is more skeptical tough love for politicians and political causes from the outlets most inclined to help them. Because the help isnt helping.

Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. On Twitter: @JonahDispatch
The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment is clear about forbidding Congress from passing laws that mix the business of the state with matters of religion. Yet Republican lawmakers, many of whom are lawyers and constitutional scholars, seem intent on delving into matters of religion anyway from their Capitol Hill and statehouse pulpits.

A major warning sign of Republicans refusal to honor the Establishment Clause was when Missouri Gov. Mike Parson listed sharing his own Christian values as a requirement for his nominee as state health director. Now comes Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina questioning Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson about her faith during this weeks Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings.

Graham launched into a series of rapid-fire questions that started with this one: What faith are you? Jackson seemed, quite appropriately, taken aback. Aside from being none of Grahams business, it had nothing to do with decisions she would make on the Supreme Court.

She responded tersely that she is Protestant, adding: non-denominational.

Could you fairly judge a Catholic? he responded. Before she could answer, he interrupted with another question: How important is your faith to you?

Graham was trying as hard as he could to establish a litmus test of faith upon which to judge Jackson. It was inappropriate by any standard, including Grahams own. But this was his payback moment for a quip that Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein made during the 2020 confirmation hearings of now-Justice Amy Coney Barrett about her well-known conservative Catholic faith.

The dogma lives loudly within you, Feinstein said  also inappropriately.

It should have been irrelevant during Barretts confirmation hearing, and it should be irrelevant during Jacksons beyond serving as a water cooler topic of discussion. So, what is the point?

The goal seems to be, somehow, to entrap or embarrass Jackson, or find ways to trip her up, so Republicans can explain to their constituents that this isnt a question about her race or gender but rather about her judicial philosophy. Shes not making it easy for them.

In response to Grahams intrusive question about her faith, Jackson said simply, Personally faith is very important. But as you know, theres no religious test in the Constitution under Article Six  to which Graham interjected, And none with me. Then he persisted with the religion questions, including asking her to rate on a scale of one to 10 how faithful she is.

Senator, she responded with a quiet sigh, I am reluctant to talk about my faith in this way just because I want to be mindful of the need for the public to have confidence in my ability to separate out my personal views.

In other words, judges are supposed to filter out personal biases  including their religious beliefs  when interpreting the law. If only members of Congress could do likewise.
More than 30 Senate Republicans recently voted against a measure sought by President Joe Biden to increase military aid to help Ukraine resist Russias invasion. Now, most of those senators are excoriating Biden for not doing enough to help Ukraine. Whats wrong with this picture?

Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley is, as usual, among the leaders of this parade of hypocrisy, accusing the administration last week of dragging its feet and hounding Biden to step up on the issue. He was specifically referring there to the administrations reluctance to send Polands MiG jet fighters to Ukraine  a position this newspaper has criticized as appearing too timid  but Hawley is the wrong messenger for even the right message on this topic.

Not only did Hawley vote against last weeks omnibus spending bill that included $13.6 billion in new aid to Ukraine, he also was an early voice against substantial U.S. involvement at all. He wrote to Secretary of State Antony Blinken in early February that aggression from China, not Russia, should be Americas primary focus. He also called for the administration to drop its support for Ukraines entry into NATO, essentially demanding the appeasement of Russia on that issue.

Now, no doubt inspired by polls showing Americans overwhelmingly support Ukraine and condemn Russia in the conflict, Hawley is suddenly that besieged nations best friend.

Other Republicans are similarly casting Biden as being insufficiently supportive of Ukraine, ignoring the old adage about politics stopping at the waters edge. What an interesting conversion for a crowd that, almost to a person, voted against holding then-President Donald Trump accountable in 2019 for his impeachment-worthy betrayal of this U.S. ally in service to his own political motives.

Recall that Trump suspended military aid that Ukraine needed to fend off Russia, then told Volodymyr Zelensky  the same Ukrainian president now hailed as a hero by Republicans and Democrats alike  that hed see about restoring it, but needed a favor in return: an investigation by Ukraines government designed to embarrass Biden as he challenged Trumps reelection bid.

This was a betrayal of U.S. interests that bordered on treason, yet in Trumps impeachment proceedings that year, Hawley and almost every other Republican in Congress voted to let it slide. Now these same meek enablers of Trumps abuses are blasting Biden over what amounts to a difference of opinion as to how far Russian leader Vladimir Putin can be pushed without risking nuclear war.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell  who also voted against convicting Trump back them  joined the pile-on last week, chiding Biden for not doing nearly enough quickly enough to help the Ukrainians, adding: Comparing Zelensky to Biden is depressing. But not as depressing as comparing these Republican hypocrites rhetoric to their actions.
DGAP-News: Majorel Group Luxembourg S.A. / Key word(s): Miscellaneous/Miscellaneous

Majorel Group Luxembourg S.A. : Majorel included in the FTSE Global Small Cap Index



23.03.2022 / 08:00

The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.





News Release

Majorel included in the FTSE Global Small Cap Index

Luxembourg, March 23, 2022 - Majorel Group Luxembourg S.A. ("Majorel'' "the Company"), a leading global provider of next-generation end-to-end customer experience (CX) solutions for digital-native and vertical leading brands, is pleased to announce that it has been included in the FTSE Global Small Cap Index (GEISSC), the small cap segment within the FTSE Global Equity Index universe.

Following FTSE's semi-annual index review, it announced on February 23, 2022 that Majorel will be included in the FTSE GEISSC. The inclusion became effective after the close of business day on March 18, 2022 (i.e. as of March 21, 2022). According to FTSE Russell, the FTSE GEISSC includes companies that represent approximately the smallest 10% of the total market cap of the global investable equity universe.

Otmane Serraj, CFSO (Chief Financial and Shared Services Officer) of Majorel, said: "We are very pleased that we are now included in the FTSE Global Small Cap Index which, in addition to our recent inclusion in the Amsterdam Small Cap Index (AScX), will further raise our visibility with investors."





ABOUT MAJOREL

We design, build and deliver next-generation end-to-end CX solutions for many of the world's most respected digital-native and vertical leading brands. Our comprehensive east-to-west global footprint in 36 countries[1] across five continents, with around 69,000 team members[2] and 60 languages, allows us to deliver flexible solutions that leverage our expertise in cultural nuance, which we believe to be essential for true excellence in CX. We have deep domain expertise in tech-augmented front to-back-office CX. Additionally, we offer Digital Consumer Engagement, CX Consulting, and an innovative suite of Proprietary Digital Solutions for industry verticals. We are a global leader in Content Services, Trust & Safety. We believe the 'Majorel difference' to be our culture of entrepreneurship.

Following a private placement, in which shares of Majorel were offered to institutional investors, Majorel's shares were listed on the Euronext Amsterdam stock exchange on September 24, 2021.



CONTACT

Investor Relations

Insa Calsow

EVP, Investor Relations

ir@majorel.com



Media Relations

Andrew Slater

SVP, Global Marketing & Communications

media@majorel.com



[1] As of March 22, 2022

[2] As of December 31, 2021
Explosive Ordnance Disposal technicians set off a controlled explosion during a demonstration at Travis Air Force Base, California, March 15, 2022. Trained to detect, disarm and dispose of explosive threats in extreme environments, EOD technicians serve as the Air Forces bomb squad. (U.S. Air Force photo by Heide Couch)

X

0 20

Help Keep Us Soaring





We need your help! Our subscription base has slowly been dwindling. We need your help in reversing that trend. We would like to add 20 new subscribers this month.

Each month we count on your subscriptions or contributions. You can support us in the following ways:
Career Lessons from Little Steven

If you're a Bruce Springsteen fan or a Sopranos fan, you've probably already read Unrequited Infatuations, the autobiography from Little Stevenaka Silvio Dante, aka Steven Van Zandt, aka Miami Steve (shown above with Bruce Springsteen in 2003). It's a rollicking, uproarious recounting of his half-charmed, half-cursed life from growing up in New Jersey and helping Springsteen realize his artistic identity, then leaving the E Street Band just before Born in the U.S.A. to pursue his own musical and political vision at the expense of his commercial viability, through his acting roles up to his current gig running two SiriusXM stations, his own record label, and a foundation that brings rock 'n' roll education to schools.

Along the way, he takes credit for too many achievements to possibly countor to be true, for that matter, although he was indeed absolutely crucial in bringing down apartheid in South Africa with his Sun City project and clandestine negotiations with all of the major opposition parties. My father-in-law likes to say, "God writes in crooked lines," and Little Steven's life progression has been crookeder than most. But his Forrest Gump-like fortune, along with a deeply analytical mind inside a guitar player's body, has found him in the middleor at least behind the scenesof more of pop culture's moments over the last 5 decades than you probably realize. Even better, the book is loaded with his lessons and wisdom on all manner of matters musical, sartorial, and political.

Now that streaming media is easing into its fourth decade, our industry boasts its own fair share of personalities who've always managed to be in the right place at the right time. It's not a matter of luck either. People like Darcy Lorincz, Ralf Jacob, and Michelle Munson (to name a few) have always skated where the puck is going, to quote Wayne Gretzky. Itinerant, to be sure, but always in pursuit of not just the next big thing, but the next important thing. As we head back into trade show seasonin person this timewe'd all do well to seek out the folks who've been pushing our industry forward for the past few decades. And don't get too comfortable in one place.

Photo credit: Anthony Correia via Shutterstock

[Editor's note: This article originally appeared in the Nov/Dec 2021 issue of Streaming Media magazine under the title "I Don't Wanna Go Home."

Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.

Related Articles
FILE PHOTO: Representations of virtual currency Bitcoin are seen in this picture illustration taken taken March 13, 2020. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo

SAN SALVADOR (Reuters) - El Salvador is seeking support from cryptocurrency exchange Binance for its implementation of bitcoin as legal tender and the issuance of bitcoin bonds, the Central American country's ambassador to the United States said on Wednesday.

Binance Chief Executive Officer Changpeng Zhao is visiting El Salvador and plans to meet President Nayib Bukele on Thursday, ambassador Milena Mayorga told reporters.

Mayorga said Zhao's visit was a vote of confidence in Bukele's decision to adopt bitcoin as legal tender last September, as well as its plan to issue bitcoin-backed bonds.

Zhao praised El Salvador for taking on a pioneering role in the adoption of bitcoin and said Bukele's presidency would be remembered in "heroic" terms for its bold bet on the future.

The country's adoption of bitcoin has been beset by public skepticism about the cryptocurrency, which has depreciated substantially since hitting a record high in early November.

On Tuesday, the government said it was delaying its planned issuance of bitcoin bonds.

(Reporting by Nelson Renteria in San Salvador; Editing by Matthew Lewis)
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg speaks during a news conference on the eve of a NATO summit, amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine, in Brussels, Belgium March 23, 2022. REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - NATO warned on Wednesday against Russia's war in Ukraine sliding into a nuclear confrontation between Moscow and the West.

"Russia should stop this dangerous irresponsible nuclear rhetoric," NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told a news conference. "But let there be no doubt about our readiness to protect and defend allies against any threat anytime."

"Russia must understand that it can never win a nuclear war," he said on the eve of a summit of the Western military alliance's national leaders in Brussels. "NATO is not part of the conflict ... it provides support to Ukraine but isn't part of the conflict."

"NATO will not send the troops into Ukraine... It is extremely important to provide support to Ukraine and we are stepping up. But at the same time it is also extremely important to prevent this conflict becoming a full-fledged war between NATO and Russia."

(Reporting by john Chalmers, Gabriela Baczynska)
Mexico's Original Luxury Tequila Returns with Charles Joly For the 94th Oscars  This Time, Featuring an Exclusive Collaboration with Ghetto Gastro

NEW YORK, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- In celebration of Hollywood's biggest night, Tequila Don Julio is partnering with the Governors Ball, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' official party following the 94th Oscars ceremony on March 27, 2022, to serve up a superstar bar experience curated by globally acclaimed mixologist Charles Joly. For the first time this year, Governors Ball attendees will also be able to enjoy a custom, imaginative food/drink pairing served up by Joly in collaboration with Bronx-based culinary collective Ghetto Gastro. Merging food, fashion, music, art and design, Ghetto Gastro's work masterfully blends influences from the African diaspora, global South ingredients and hip-hop to create offerings that address race, identity and economic empowerment.

Experience the interactive Multichannel News Release here: https://www.multivu.com/players/English/9028651-tequila-don-julio-celebrates-hollywoods-biggest-night-ghetto-gastro-collaboration/

To perfectly complement Ghetto Gastro's ever-popular Cigar and Waffles, a tantalizing ode to the classic chicken & waffles, Joly created A Bronx Cocktale featuring a delectable balance of Tequila Don Julio Reposado, rhum vieux, lime, mango, coconut and honey. The simple yet tasty drink will provide a cooling, fruit-driven balance to the food's savory and spice-forward flavors  a delightful combination that will satisfy even the most refined tastebuds.

In anticipation for Hollywood's biggest night, Joly and his team of experts have worked unremittingly to prepare over 6,000 specialty cocktails for the special evening including the Limelight Margarita, Picture Perfect Paloma, Old Hollywood Fashioned and The Class Act. These distinctive cocktails will require approximately 12,000 picked mint leaves, 2,000 sherry-poached mushroom slices, 10,000 edible flowers to garnish, and 5,000 mists of orange flower water for an elegant essence. Hollywood's elite will also be able to toast to the moment before they reach their seats with Tequila Don Julio mini cocktails.

If you're celebrating at home, you can still mix up signature Tequila Don Julio cocktails to sip like the stars with your viewing party (for those 21+). The Old Hollywood Fashioned offers an elegant balance of earthy and savory flavors that feature Tequila Don Julio Anejo as the star of the show, while A Bronx Cocktale provides a beautiful harmony of tropical fruit and Tequila Don Julio Reposado.

OLD HOLLYWOOD FASHIONEDIngredients:

1 oz Tequila Don Julio Anejo

 oz Dry Oloroso Sherry

 oz Barrel-Aged Truffled Maple Syrup (cut 3:1 syrup:water)

3 Dashes Truffle Bitters

Preparation:

Combine Tequila Don Julio Anejo, dry oloroso sherry, truffled maple syrup and truffle bitters over ice in a mixing glass Stir well to chill and dilute Strain over a large ice cube in a rocks glass Garnish with fresh rosemary sprig

A BRONX COCKTALEIngredients:

1 oz Tequila Don Julio Reposado

 oz Rhum Vieux

 oz Fresh Lime Juice

 oz Mango Juice

 oz Coconut Milk

 -  oz Honey Syrup (2:1 ratio)

Preparation:

Combine all ingredients in a shaker with ice Shake well and pour into a small tasting glass Garnish with a small edible flower and gold dust

Tequila Don Julio is proud to donate in support of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Governors Ball for the fifth consecutive year. As Mexico's original luxury tequila, Tequila Don Julio is meant to be enjoyed during true moments of genuine celebration. Founder Don Julio Gonzalez lived a life devoted to tequila making to revolutionize the industry, and now 80 years later, Tequila Don Julio is still crafted with the meticulous process and passionate spirit he instilled. Whether celebrating on the red carpet or tuning in from the comfort of your couch, Tequila Don Julio encourages genuine and responsible celebration.

ABOUT TEQUILA DON JULIO Founded on the pioneering agricultural principles of Don Julio Gonzalez and his personal pursuit of perfection, Tequila Don Julio revolutionized the tequila industry and set the standard for ultra-premium tequila. The original luxury tequila of choice in Mexico, Tequila Don Julio uses only the highest caliber, fully matured and ripened Blue Agave that has been hand-selected from the rich, clay soils of the Los Altos region of the state of Jalisco. The Tequila Don Julio portfolio includes Tequila Don Julio Blanco, Tequila Don Julio Reposado, Tequila Don Julio Anejo, Tequila Don Julio 70, Tequila Don Julio 1942, and the limited-edition Tequila Don Julio Primavera. For more information on Tequila Don Julio, please visit www.DonJulio.com.

ABOUT GHETTO GASTRO Ghetto Gastro is the Bronx-born culinary collective from Jon Gray, Pierre Serrao, and Lester Walker. The group has notably defined its own lane, merging food, fashion, music, art, and design. Claiming both the beauty and grit from the streets with the aspiration and aesthetics of the finer things, Ghetto Gastro's interdisciplinary approach celebrates the Bronx as a driver of global culture. The crew masterfully blends influences from the African diaspora, Global South ingredients, and the pulse of hip hop to create offerings that address race, identity, and economic empowerment.

Since launching in 2012, Ghetto Gastro has gone from hosting underground parties to spearheading large-scale brand campaigns and events with leading fashion designers, artists, and entrepreneurs. Their collaborators and partners include figures like Virgil Abloh, Nike, Cartier, the Serpentine, the Museum of Modern Art, and many more.

During the onstart of the pandemic in 2020, Ghetto Gastro prioritized Bronx grassroot initiatives and mutual aid. In recognition for feeding their community, the group was nominated for the Basque Culinary World Prize. In 2021, Ghetto Gastro launched its namesake consumer goods brand of pantry items inspired by ancestral ingredients. The collective released a custom line of kitchen appliances, CRUXGG, across Target stores nationwide. This spring, Ghetto Gastro launches their cookware line with Williams Sonoma. Their first cookbook, Black Power Kitchen is forthcoming from Artisan Books in Fall 2022.

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/tequila-don-julio-raises-a-glass-with-oscar-worthy-cocktails-to-celebrate-hollywoods-biggest-night-301509383.html

SOURCE Tequila Don Julio
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.

(Tribune News Service)  Brig. Gen. Janeen Birckhead is commander of the Maryland Army National Guard and deputy commanding general of reserves affairs at the U.S. Army War College. A decorated military officer, Birckhead was commander of the Task Force Capitol Grounds, where she led 14,000 troops from the Mid-Atlantic region deployed to secure the Nation's Capitol for the 59th presidential inauguration in January 2021.

Gov. Hogan appointed Birckhead to lead Maryland's COVID-19 Vaccine Equity Task Force in February 2021, tasking her with coordinating the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine in communities with under-served and vulnerable populations. In her civilian life, Birckhead serves as a senior advisor in the Bureau of Trust Funds Administration at the Department of the Interior.

During CHOSEN Community Development Corp.'s second annual Women's History Month Recognition Program last week in Aberdeen, Birckhead spoke on the theme of providing healing and promoting hope. Her mother, Fannie Birckhead, who died a month ago, was her example of this, she said. Fannie was a larger-than-life figure to her family who instilled her hope and healing qualities in her children, Birckhead said.

The Aegis spoke with Birckhead after the event to discuss women in the military, her experience leading the Maryland Army National Guard's all-female command team, her efforts in combating COVID-19 on the home front, and what's next for her.

Q: What was your experience as a woman coming up in the military?

A: As you know, the military is primarily male focused in most of history. As I commented before [during the CHOSEN program], I talked about Harriet Tubman being a soldier. I actually refer to her as general. If you think about all that time until now, it's upward of 200 years.

It's only recently that women in the military have come to the forefront, and [now] we have women in all ranks. It was so difficult to enter into infantry, for instance. Now, we have women in the infantry.

Times have changed, and we are more inclusive. The one good thing about the organization, it realizes it has to change, and it changes itself.

Q: What was your biggest challenge?

A: To get to the highest ranks in the military, you have to command at every level. Command is the epitome of the job you want to do when you are captain or lieutenant. You want to move up the ranks.

Proving yourself as a leader and that you can lead soldiers is probably the hardest thing. To implement plans and analyze and do that in an environment where youre leading hundreds of people many times is the most difficult thing.

As I reflect on women getting into infantry, we are looked at like, can we do that job. Is she able to lead men? Or is she able to tell men what to do? The only way to overcome that bias is to be successful at it.

Q: How much pressure was it to be the first all-female command team and be successful?

A: It was pressure to be successful, but it was also an understanding that to get there we were already successful. So this is just another stepping-stone to demonstrate to others what women can do. We were confident in ourselves that we did all the jobs we needed to do.

We have been successful in the jobs we need to do. We can lead soldiers. We can lead the general public. We have done all those things.

We just have to make a point to be out there and make ourselves visible, so anyone who looks like us who wants to aspire to be like us can do it.

Q: What was the experience like having all females around you as a team?

A: It's funny that in this case we are all females, and we are all mothers. It came out in some of our personalities. But, being able to tell mom stories about juggling this job and juggling our job as mom.

I think that knowing and understanding when I say I have to do something is automatic. I think that this should be pertinent for people to watch. It should be positive until we are at a time where we don't have to make it such a big deal. We have to continue to tell the story.

Q: What's it like being a part of the vaccination task force? How difficult has it been to work with the community and the government?

A: On the day to day, it is not difficult because the team is phenomenal. We have professionals who can plan, organize and execute. If we could clear out all the other distractors and get into the community to have these one on one conversations, we can be really successful at our job.

Having the governor clear the way and say this equity task force has 100% support. There is a reason why we have an equity task force because we need to get into under-served communities. This is my team that is doing that. Move out the way and let them do their job.

When you have that kind of support, it's easier to be successful.

Q: What would your advice be for young women trying to go into the military or make something out of themselves?

A: I am consistent with this. You have to have a plan and a change of plan because things do not go in a straight line. You can be going along and things are fine like I was, then my mom gets killed. That was something I was not planning on happening in my life and it certainly has changed my plan. Then, I had to rethink the next steps.

So have a plan and a change of plan. Also, seek out mentors to help you with this plan. Speaking of healing and hope, you can't do it by yourself. Who are the people you lean on when you need healing and hope? You have to have that.

Q: What are the next steps of your plan?

A: The next step to my plan is to ensure my daughter gets through high school. She is a senior in high school, so we've got to graduate and get her to college in September. That's foremost in my mind.

My mom was her primary caregiver, and they were really close. This is a big change for her, so I want to make sure she is in a good place mentally. That's my number one right now.

(c)2022 The Aegis (Bel Air, Md.)

Visit The Aegis (Bel Air, Md.) at www.baltimoresun.com/explore/harford/publications/the-aegis

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
BARDUFOSS, Norway  The Marine Corps top officer said Wednesday that its still too early to tell whether more Marines will be sent to reinforce NATOs eastern flank amid Russias war in Ukraine.

Commandant Gen. David Berger made the comment as the number of U.S. troops on the Continent recently reached 100,000 for the first time in nearly two decades.

Berger spoke to reporters in northern Norway, where he was on hand for the 27-nation Cold Response exercise.

There are Marines deployed in response to the conflict in Ukraine in many of the same countries (to which the Army has deployed soldiers) in a complementary role, Berger said.

The number of Marines sent to Europe in that role was unavailable Wednesday. The service does keep about 1,500 Marines stationed in Europe, including a crisis response force stationed in Spain that works with U.S. Africa Command.

About 3,000 Marines and sailors are on hand for Cold Response, the largest military exercise Norways hosted since the end of the Cold War. It has brought together some 30,000 troops from NATO and partner countries for land, sea and air drills that will continue until the beginning of April.

Russias full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which began Feb. 24, sparked the deployment of thousands of U.S.-based service members for temporary missions in Europe. Many of those troops were sent to eastern Poland, which shares a border with Ukraine.

The personnel have been deployed to reassure allies, train with host-nation forces and contribute to contingency plans, U.S. European Command said in a statement last week.

Berger said there are no plans to permanently deploy troops to Norway, which shares a roughly 120-mile border with Russia and has condemned the Kremlins war on Ukraine. But he said the situation remains fluid.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin looks at the posture of all the U.S. military forces, where we are now and where we need to be in the future, Berger said. I dont know how much the war in Ukraine might impact his thinking on that.

Berger also thanked allies for helping to recover the bodies of four Marines who were killed Friday when their Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft crashed about 25 miles south of Bodoe during training.

Norwegian, British, Dutch and Italian forces sent out search and rescue operations in severe weather to recover the Marines, Berger said, adding that Norwegian special operations forces had moved overland to recover the bodies despite avalanche threats.

I cant adequately express how grateful I am to all those nations and their military forces, Berger said.
Russian officials claimed Wednesday to have fired long-range naval cruise missiles into Ukraine. If confirmed, that would add to the roster of weapons the Russia has used in its invasion, some new or cutting edge, that have drawn the attention and concern of analysts.

Some Western experts worry that Moscow, amid pressure to escalate in the face of mounting losses, could go even further, using chemical weapons or even so-called tactical nuclear weapons.

But Ukraine has its own weapons, many of which its Western allies have supplied. Antitank weapons, including the Javelin missile sent by the United States, have become a symbol of Ukrainian resistance. Drones made by Turkey have not only hit Russian targets, but footage of the strikes have become a win on the social media battlefield.

Here are some the weapons in use, or that experts fear could come to play a role in the conflict.

- What missiles are being used by Russia?

On Monday, President Joe Biden confirmed Kremlin claims that they had used hypersonic missiles against Ukraine. These weapons, which can travel faster than five times the speed of sound, have not been used in conflict before.

In theory, a fast-moving, maneuverable missile such as these could be used to devastating effect, potentially even at long range. However, U.S. officials have downplayed the threat posed by Russias hypersonic technology. The United States and China also have advanced hypersonic programs, though neither has gone beyond tests.

Russias weapon is named Kinzhal - Russian for dagger. A modified version of Russias ground-launched Iskander missile, it is an air-launched ballistic missile that can be maneuvered to hit a target or dodge defenses. Russian officials say the missile was used last week to hit an ammunition depot in western Ukraine.

On Wednesday, Russia said that it had also used a long-range cruise missile called Kalibr in an attack on Ukrainian forces earlier in the week. The missile, which can be launched from sea, was first used by Russian forces in Syria. U.S. officials said Tuesday they could not confirm that the weapons had been used.

- What about cluster and thermobaric vacuum weapons?

Russia has also been accused of using or preparing to use cluster munitions and thermobaric weapons, often called vacuum weapons.

Cluster weapons refer to rocket, bombs or other projectiles that scatter small bomblets. As they end up hitting a wide area indiscriminately, they can pose a large risk to civilian populations, even if they are not specifically targeted.

Rights groups have documented use of cluster munitions by Russian and Syrian force in the Syrian civil war. Early accounts from Human Rights Watch and others suggests that they have been used in Ukraine too.

Though an international treaty bans the use of cluster munitions, Russia is not a signatory to it - and neither are some other large counties, including China and the United States. Ukraine was accused of using cluster munitions against Russia backed separatists in 2014 and 2015; it has denied it used them.

Thermobaric weapons are designed to cause intense heat and pressure. Typically launched from tanks, the missiles explode in two stages, first distributing an aerosol before a second charge ignites the cloud. The ensuing explosion produces an extreme blast and burns up oxygen in the area.

They are often called vacuum weapons because of how they suck up oxygen, though the idea that they can suck air out of peoples lungs is mistaken. They are infamous, as they are nearly impossible to escape, as the flammable gas can seep into enclosed structures.

Lets say you have people hiding, maybe civilians, in a basement, Dan Wasserbly, head of Americas news at Janes, an open-source defense intelligence agency, told The Washington Post. That doesnt protect them against something like this, because the aerosols get into the basement and catch fire and everybody dies a pretty awful death.

Russias thermobaric launch system is called a TOS-1A launch system, though troops call it a flamethrower for obvious reasons. British officials have said that Russia admitted to deploying them to Ukraine, despite official Kremlin denials.

- Has Russia used chemical or biological weapons, including white phosphorus?

Russia has made allegations about U.S. biological weapons laboratories in Ukraine, which the White House has denied. But the Kremlin has its own lengthy history of developing and using similar chemical weapons itself.

Some experts point to the use of a nerve agent called Novichok to target a Russian ex-spy living in England as evidence of their willingness to use such tactics.

Russia used chemical weapons, in peacetime, in a foreign country. The thought that they might now use chemical weapons in Ukraine is entirely rational, Andrew C. Weber, a top nonproliferation official for the Pentagon during the Obama administration, told The Post.

Russia was also allied with Syria in that countries civil war. There, forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad repeatedly used chlorine gas to force rebels out of their hiding spots in urban areas, despite the risk posed to civilians.

Both Russia and Syria joined the United States and 190 other countries in signing the Chemical Weapon Convention, which was drafted in 1992 and became effective in 1997. But U.S. officials have said that Russia has been in noncompliance with the convention for years and could pursue an attack using chemical weapons in Ukraine.

Ukraine has also accused white phosphorus munitions when attacking the city of Kramatorsk. A controversial substance that some military analysts consider a chemical weapon, it is often used to create smokescreens by militaries, as it creates a thick white cloud; U.S.-led coalition forces used the munitions against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria in 2017 according to rights groups.

However, the substance can cause severe chemical burns if it touches flesh and its smoke can also poison humans and animals.

- Could Russia use nuclear weapons?

Given the high stakes that Russian President Vladimir Putin has placed on the conflict, some experts have said they are worried about the possibility, however slim, that the Ukraine war could escalate to the point that Russia uses nuclear weapons.

Of particular concern are the smaller nuclear weapons developed by Russia and other countries in recent years. These weapons are dubbed tactical nuclear weapons as they are designed for battle use rather than for devastating attacks like those dropped by the United States on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II.

Tactical nuclear weapons are not regulated by any arms control treaty. They have never been used in a conflict before, but Russia is thoughts to have around 2,000 of them. They are small enough that they could be fitted onto a missile - perhaps even a hypersonic one like those already used by Russia in Ukraine.

Using such a weapon would allow Russia to show off its nuclear might, but could avoid the prospect of mutually assured destruction if used in a relatively cautious way.

But even this would carry with it large risks of sparking a broader nuclear conflict. U.S. senators have said that if nuclear fallout were to drift over into a NATO ally, it could well be considered an attack.

- What about the missiles and drones going to Ukraine?

Though much of the focus remains on Russias weapons, Ukrainian forces have also made use of technology that, if not new, is new to them - most notably antitank missiles and drones.

Shoulder mounted Javelin missile systems supplied by the United States have been used to target Russian vehicles that emit heat, including tanks, to great effect. The high tech weapons are what are known as fire-and-forget missiles, as they lock onto their target and do not require further guidance from the gunner.

Other countries have supplied similar weapons, including British-made NLAWs, or Next Generation Light Anti-Tank Weapons, which stand out for being less sophisticated but lighter and cheaper than U.S.-made Javelins. The United States has also supplied Stinger missiles, another type of human-portable weapon designed to take out low-flying aircraft.

For Russian vehicles, the threat comes not just from these weapons however but up above. The Bayraktar TB2, a Turkish-made unmanned aerial vehicle, has proved particularly useful. These drones use lasers to guide bombs onto unsuspecting Russians, in part because Moscow has not been able to set up air defense systems in Ukraine. Aerial footage of the destruction both filmed and caused by the drones has proven a key tool in Ukraines information war.

The United States has also supplied Switchblade drones to Ukrainian forces. There are two variations of these small unmanned aircrafts - one, the 300 model, weights up to five pounds and flies up to 15 minutes at a time. The 600 model, meanwhile, weights around 50 pounds and can fly for up to 40 minutes and can target armored vehicles.

These drones are known as kamikaze drones as they fly into their targets themselves.
Joe Biden was keen to revive the Iran nuclear agreement long before the war in Ukraine began, but the rise in oil prices it has caused may have tipped the presidents eagerness into desperation. Reports from Washington suggest the administration is about to cave to Tehrans most outrageous condition for returning to the deal: the removal of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps from the State Departments list of foreign terrorist organizations, or FTOs.

The designation makes the IRGC subject to sanctions that Tehran says must be lifted before it agrees to abide by the terms of the 2015 agreement, which was designed to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. It is currently enriching uranium to levels far in excess of any peaceful purpose. The IRGC oversees the nuclear program, as well as Irans foreign policy and security apparatus.

The FTO designation has been the stickiest of sticking points during the latest round of negotiations in Vienna between Iran and the signatories of the agreement, which is known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Its not hard to see why Tehran wants the designation dropped: It depends on the IRGC, known to Iranians as Pasdaran (Persian for guards), to suppress dissent at home as well as terrorize its neighbors. These tasks would be made easier if American sanctions didnt put financial resources and the latest weapons out of the regimes reach.

Now the Biden administration is hinting that delisting the IRGC is one of the difficult decisions it may have to make in order to revive the JCPOA. But this is hard to believe. After all, the original deal was struck without a commitment to take Iran off another of the State Departments lists, as a state sponsor of terrorism, a dubious distinction it has held since 1984, and which it currently shares with Syria, Cuba and North Korea.

As the principal instrument of the states terror, the IRGC has certainly earned its place on the FTO list. It is, in the words of Gen. Frank McKenzie, head of the U.S. Central Command, the centerpiece of Iranian bad behavior in the Middle East.

Whats more, the Pasdaran have American blood on their hands: Operating mostly through proxy militias, it is responsible for the deaths of more than 600 U.S. service personnel in Iraq. Those militias have kept up attacks on American targets, including military bases and the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

Tardy though it was, the IRGCs designation as a terrorist organization in April 2019 was welcomed in countries across the region that daily live under the menace of the Pasdaran and its proxies. This network of peril includes nodes in Lebanon and Gaza, where the IRGC operates through Hezbollah and Hamas, respectively, both FTOs of longstanding; in Iraq, home to Iran-backed FTOs Kataib Hizballah and Asaib Ahl al-Haq; and in Yemen, where Tehrans catspaw, the Houthis, were on the list until Biden dropped them shortly after his inauguration last year.

The delisting of the Houthis may represent the perfect prefiguration of what will likely happen if the IRGC is removed from the FTO list. The Biden administration imagined the gesture would make the Yemeni rebels more amenable to peace with the Arab coalition that has been trying to restore the government the Houthis overthrew in 2015. Instead, the Houthis have kept up a daily barrage of rocket and drone attacks against Saudi Arabia - and occasionally against the United Arab Emirates. (The munitions are supplied by Tehran.)

Unsurprisingly, Irans neighbors are alarmed by the prospect of Biden repeating his mistake with the IRGC. The loudest protests have come from the country that the Pasdarans commanders routinely vow to annihilate: Israel. Unfortunately, there is determination to sign a nuclear agreement with Iran at almost any price, including saying that the worlds largest terrorist organization is not a terrorist organization, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said at a cabinet meeting last week. That is too high a price.

This is also the view of many Republicans - and not a few Democrats - in Washington. Bipartisan complaints that Congress is being kept in the dark about the negotiations in Vienna have led to anxiety that the White House may be willing to make too many concessions to the Iranians in order to reach a deal - and potentially allow Iranian oil and gas into a global market to replace sanctioned Russian exports.

Administration officials who have briefed the media say the IRGC would only be delisted if it promises not to attack Americans and commits to curtailing its destabilizing activities outside Iran. If it doesnt keep its word, it can be redesignated an FTO. This might have been reassuring but for the fact that Biden is currently ignoring requests, from members of Congress as well as from U.S. allies, to put the Houthis back on the list.

If he unshackles the Pasdaran, the president will open the proverbial Pandoras box. Enhanced by unrestrained access to money and state-of-the-art weaponry, the IRGCs capacity for violence and terror may require a whole new State Department designation.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Bobby Ghosh is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering foreign affairs. A former editor in chief of the Hindustan Times, he was managing editor of Quartz and Time magazines international editor.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine is the immediate concern for global leaders, but the United States will continue to focus on China and the Indo-Pacific as its most important competitive arena, international relations experts told Stars and Stripes on Wednesday.

The conflict in Eastern Europe poses a significant and more immediate threat, but it wont deter the U.S. or its allies from focusing on China, said Brad Glosserman, deputy director and visiting professor at the Center for Rule-Making Strategies at Tama University in Tokyo.

Events in Ukraine have demonstrated in many ways the centrality of China to strategic considerations around the globe, he wrote in a March 17 op-ed for Asia Times. China will continue to be the center of U.S. and Western concern.

The Defense Department routinely refers to China as its pacing threat and the Indo-Pacific as its priority theater. So far this year, before and after Russias first moves against Ukraine, the Biden administration has continued to reaffirm its commitment to shifting more attention to the region.

However, the conflict in Eastern Europe may complicate the matter, Glosserman wrote. He compared todays situation to one that faced President George W. Bush, who also endorsed a focus on Asia, only to turn toward a war on terror that began with the 9/11 attacks.

Glossermans sentiments were echoed by James Brown, an international affairs expert at Temple Universitys Japan campus. Russias invasion of Ukraine could tie up U.S. strategists time and U.S. military infrastructure, but it wont inherently impact Americas interests in the Indo-Pacific, he told Stars and Stripes by email Wednesday.

The United States has long seen China as the primary challenge in the Indo-Pacific, and Russia as the primary challenge in Europe, Brown said. Russia's invasion of Ukraine has complicated matters, but it does not fundamentally alter this situation.

Russias ambitions in Ukraine have also drawn comparisons to Chinas stated goal of bringing Taiwan back into its fold, but Glosserman cautioned against too direct a comparison. Beijing is also learning from the situation in Ukraine, he wrote in his op-ed.

Nevertheless, the lesson the U.S. is drawing from the Ukraine crisis is that perceptions of weakness invite attack, Glosserman said.

Taiwan and Ukraine are democracies threatened by larger authoritarian states, but the United States response to a crisis in Taiwan would differ starkly from its response to Ukraine, according to Brown.

The major difference is that the U.S. has a much stronger commitment to upholding Taiwan's security than it does to Ukraine, Brown said. I fully expect that, if China were to attack Taiwan, the U.S. would respond, including with the use of military force.

The U.S. and its allies have learned the value of unified sanctions against Moscow, which may take Russia generations to recover from, Glosserman wrote.

But China is a harder target due to the size of its economy and the global economic power the country wields, Brown said.

Added to this, China itself will learn from the current Ukraine-Russia conflict. As a result, Beijing will be seeking to insulate itself from potential Western sanctions, including by further developing its own financial infrastructure that is independent of systems such as SWIFT, the worldwide banking transfer network, Brown said. This means that Western sanctions may not be so effective next time.
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.

TOKYO  The coronavirus omicron phase may be declining in Japan, but Okinawa prefecture is still riding a wave of new COVID-19 cases and wants the U.S. military to help curb them, according to the prefectures Public Health Department.

On Tuesday, the prefecture asked Marine Corps bases on the island to rescind an order that did away with the mask mandate at U.S. installations on Okinawa.

The U.S. military is part of our community, and it is necessary to continue working together to prevent the infections, said an email provided to the media from Masahito Tamari, the prefectural deputy director general for military base affairs, to Col. Neil Owens, assistant chief of staff for government and external affairs at Marine Corps Installations Pacific. Therefore, Okinawa prefecture requests the U.S. military to take measures in line with Okinawa prefectures prevention measures, which include wearing masks both on and off base.

Marine Corps bases on Okinawa, along with other large U.S. installations in Japan, dropped their base mask mandates March 14 after U.S. Forces Japan eased its mask requirement in most cases. Other U.S. installations followed suit so that masks are no longer required indoors or outdoors for anyone on U.S. military bases regardless of vaccination status.

USFJ patterned its protection order on guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for communities with low or medium spread of COVID-19 and on Japans own measures, a spokeswoman said at the time.

Anyone affiliated with the U.S. military is still required to wear a mask off base and in some indoor settings on base, including medical and dental facilities. Individuals testing positive for COVID-19, who have had contact with a positive case or who are suffering COVID-19 symptoms are also expected to wear masks.

Base commanders have discretion to increase coronavirus protection measures on their installations, based on conditions in their local communities, U.S. Forces Japan spokeswoman Lt. Col. Brooke Brander told Stars and Stripes by email Wednesday.

Each installation continues to review its individual COVID-19 situation to decide if increased measures are required, she wrote. In addition, USFJ will continue to monitor and adjust COVID-19 mitigation measures in coordination with [government of Japan] counterparts as we have done since the start of the pandemic.

Brander referred Stars and Stripes to the installations command for further comment.

Marine Corps Installations Pacific follows the force protection order laid out by USFJ, a spokeswoman for the command, 1st Lt. Ashleigh Fairow, told Stars and Stripes by email Tuesday. She did not comment on what response, if any, the command provided the prefecture.

New case numbers in Okinawas communities fall and rise week to week and sometimes day to day. After posting 802 new cases on Saturday, the prefecture reported 300 on Monday and 326 on Tuesday, according to the prefectural Department of Public Health and Medical Care.

On Wednesday, the department reported 913 new cases, along with 27 cases from the U.S. military population. Okinawa between March 11 and Wednesday reported 8,010 new cases of the coronavirus respiratory disease, just shy of the 8,131 reported in Tokyo on March 13. The city reported 6,430 on Wednesday, a sharp drop from 10,221 reported a week earlier, according to metro government data and public broadcaster NHK.

Although case numbers on Okinawa have fallen this month from 1,029 on March 1, the 913 posted Wednesday still exceeds the highest daily number of the fifth wave, 805, on Aug. 25. Okinawas one-day record is 1,827 new cases on Jan. 15.

Stars and Stripes reporter Mari Higa contributed to this report.
Russias Foreign Ministry, in a statement issued Monday, said it will suspend peace treaty negotiations with Japan. As Russia has unilaterally refused to continue the talks, the road toward improving bilateral relations, including with regard to the issue of the northern territories, has become more difficult.

The Japanese government has in recent years tried to build trust with Russia by advancing economic cooperation, hoping to thereby encourage Russia to compromise. With no tangible results thus far, prospects for seeing any progress in bilateral negotiations under the administration of Russian President Vladimir Putin have become dimmer than ever.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida spoke to reporters at the Prime Ministers Office on Tuesday evening, stressing, To fully defend the foundation of global order, Japan will take resolute actions in solidarity with the international community.

The suspension of peace treaty talks with Japan is a retaliation against sanctions Japan imposed on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, in line with European countries and the United States. The Putin administration has put pressure on Japan by linking the sanctions with the peace treaty talks.

When Russia annexed Crimea, a southern region of Ukraine, in 2014, Japan did not impose sanctions as harsh as those implemented by the United States and countries in Europe. Russia likewise did not take any conspicuous, retaliatory actions against Japan back then.

The latest sanctions imposed by Japan are believed to have exceeded Russias expectation, with the country likely to have taken them gravely.

Russia has apparently become more resentful of Japan, as Kishida criticized Russias aggression in Ukraine during his talks with the leaders of India and Cambodia, both of which he recently visited.

The statement issued by Russias foreign ministry said of the treaty negotiations, We have no intention to continue under current conditions. However, this can be interpreted as leaving some room for the talks to be resumed in the future.

There is also a possibility of Russia calling on Japan to lift the sanctions as a condition for resuming the talks, assuming that Japan may ask Russia to restart negotiations.

Meanwhile, as Russia put Japan on a list of unfriendly nations, the prevailing view on the Japanese side is that Japan has already taken Russias retaliation into account, as a high-ranking government official put it.

Former Foreign Minister Taro Kono, a member of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, said in the partys online program on Tuesday that the government was prepared for the suspension of the talks when it imposed its economic sanctions on Russia. Then he said, We have no choice but to hold talks once again after the Putin administration falls.

The Japanese government had been using a strategy of pushing forward with negotiations on territorial issues by using economic cooperation as leverage. During the summit talks in December 2016 under the administration of then Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the two countries agreed to start talks on implementing economic activities jointly on the northern islands. In September 2017, the two countries agreed to embark on five business projects, including sightseeing and garbage treatment, at an early date. An experimental sightseeing tour for Japanese was carried out in 2019, but it did not lead to any full-fledged operations.

While Japan has piled up results in the sphere of economic cooperation, it has not eased its attitude toward Russia, as Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi said that the present state of affairs is such that Japan would not move ahead with cooperation.

Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Koichi Hagiuda, who is also in charge of economic cooperation with Russia, said, I will devote myself to dealing with the latest developments, including the sanctions against Russia.

There was a time when Japan and Russia, with Chinas rise in mind, tried to get closer to each other in the sphere of security, through such means as holding a two-plus-two dialogue involving their foreign and defense ministers for the first time in 2013. But the environment has completely changed.

The Japanese side has been on alert, assuming that Russia may reinforce its military buildup in the Far East. Following its invasion of Ukraine, and since the start of this month, Russia has strongly stepped up its military activities, conducting high-performance ground-to-air missile firing drills in the northern territories and elsewhere and repeatedly sailing its naval vessels in waters near Japan. An aircraft believed to be Russian also entered Japans territorial airspace above Hokkaido.

When questioned on Tuesday as to the likelihood that Russia would escalate its provocative acts, Kishida told reporters, We must pay close attention to the situation so that we can respond to various changes.
A Ukrainian effort to acquire the powerful Pegasus spyware system was blocked by Israeli defense officials out of fear that such a move would upset Russia, which in 2014 had seized Crimea and fomented separatist fighting in Ukraines eastern region, according to people familiar with the decision.

Ukraines efforts to bolster its surveillance capabilities, like its efforts to strengthen its military, had support from the United States, Israels closest ally.

But Israeli officials balked at any move that might provoke a confrontation with Russia, whose military at the time was aggressively helping Syria combat a rebellion beyond Israels northeastern border. The countrys Defense Exports Controls Agency rejected a possible license that would have allowed the NSO Group to offer Pegasus to Ukraine, said the people familiar with the decision, who included Western intelligence officials. These people believed this action happened as far back as 2019, but the exact timing was unclear.

Concerns about Russian reaction also affected NSOs dealings with Estonia, a member of NATO, say people familiar with those actions. According to these people, NSO had licensed Pegasus to Estonia, which achieved independence from five decades of Soviet rule in 1991 and is known for its aggressive counterintelligence measures against Russia, but the company later imposed restrictions on the spywares use. The exact nature of those restrictions is not clear, though Estonia does not have the ability to target Russian phones, according to people familiar with its Pegasus license.

Though NSO is a private company, Israeli officials have for years sought to align its distribution of Pegasus with national diplomatic priorities. The website for the Defense Exports Controls Agency, which is part of the nations defense ministry, says it has worked to protect Israels national security and defense interests through its licensing responsibilities in relation to defense equipment, know-how, counter-proliferation, and in terms of preventing damage to Israels international relations and national strategic interests.

NSO officials have long said that Pegasus, which can turn almost any smartphone into a spying device, cannot be used by foreign governments against U.S. +1 numbers or to spy on phones with foreign-based numbers if they are inside the United States. More recently, the company began blocking the ability of foreign governments to use Pegasus against phones linked to British cellular networks in August 2020, according to people familiar with company operations.

But the extent of Israels efforts to avoid upsetting Russia by limiting the use of Pegasus has not previously been reported. This article was jointly reported by The Washington Post and Britains Guardian newspaper.

The Pegasus Project, a global investigation consortium including The Washington Post, The Guardian and 15 other partners, last year found widespread abuses, with politicians, journalists, human rights workers, diplomats and government officials targeted in numerous countries. The investigation, led by Paris-based journalism nonprofit Forbidden Stories, also found that government operators of Pegasus often use it as an intelligence gathering tool to surveil targets outside their own borders, in neighboring countries and beyond.

In the nearly four weeks since Russia invaded Ukraine, Israels efforts to limit the distribution of a powerful spying tool seem newly relevant. Israels current prime minister, Naftali Bennett, has taken a softer stance toward Russia than other American allies and has sought to mediate between Russia and Ukraine. Israel also reportedly refused to sell its Iron Dome missile defense system, developed with U.S. financial support, to Ukraine last year, according to Israels Ynet News.

The Israeli Defense Ministry, which Bennett once headed, on Tuesday acknowledged in a statement that it considers a wide range of factors when granting a license for Pegasus. Policy decisions regarding export controls take into account security and strategic considerations, which include adherence to international arrangements, the statement said.

It did not directly address most of the questions posed by The Post and The Guardian. U.S. officials did not reply to questions about this story posed on Tuesday.

Ukraines desire to acquire Pegasus and Israels reluctance to allow the move was previously reported by Israels Channel 12.

The NSO Group, presented with a detailed list of questions, said in a brief statement, NSO continues to be subjected to inaccurate media reports regarding alleged clients, which are based on hearsay, political innuendo and untruths.

Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraines deputy prime minister who oversees digital technology for Ukraine, declined to confirm that his nation had sought to acquire Pegasus, but he acknowledged the country has been seeking Israeli technology.

The government of Israel is at this time not participating in any discussion or facilitation regarding offensive tech, but we have ongoing conversations with a lot of the Israeli companies in the market and theyre at various stages, he said. But again, let me say this: We have enough capability to continue winning and were adding new tools, including emerging tools, every day.

Russia, whose embassy in Washington did not respond to a requests for comment, has treated Ukraine with increasing hostility since the Maidan Revolution of 2014 pushed the country toward Europe and the West. Russia seized the strategically important Crimean region that year and fomented a separatist movement in the eastern Donbas region that continued up until Russias full-scale invasion of Ukraine last month.

Estonian Ministry of Defense spokeswoman Susan Lillevali declined to comment about the use of Pegasus in her country, which has not been previously reported.

Pegasus can infect almost any smartphone, whether made by Apple, Google, Samsung or other companies, through a malicious link embedded in a text message or through whats called a zero-click attack. Such attacks require no action by the phones user and begin without any kind of alert.

Once Pegasus infection starts, operators of the system can do anything its owner can do - access files, contacts, passwords, photos and videos, or track the current and historic locations of targets. Operators of Pegasus also can remotely activate cameras or microphones to listen directly to conversations, make video or eavesdrop on calls.

The NSO Group has repeatedly said that Pegasus is intended for use against terrorism and major crimes such as drug trafficking, and that the company investigates reports of abuses and cuts off nations that misuse the system. The company has said that there are dozens of countries to which it will not license Pegasus because of human rights or other concerns.

After the Pegasus Project was published last summer, it was also discovered that Pegasus had been used to target the telephones of American diplomats in Uganda. The Biden administration in November blacklisted NSO Group, depriving it of access to American technology.

Craig Timberg is a Washington Post technology reporter. Stephanie Kirchgaessner is a Washington-based investigative reporter for The Guardian. Souad Mekhennet, Ellen Nakashima and Shane Harris are Washington Post national security reporters. Post technology reporter Cat Zakrzewski contributed to this report.
Kremlin nuclear saber-rattling, further reinforcement of NATO in the east and the imposition of additional sanctions on Russia will be among the issues confronting President Joe Biden on Thursday, when he arrives in Brussels for emergency talks.

Biden and other NATO heads of state attending the meeting will make official the formation of four new multinational battlegroups, which NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on Wednesday called a first step in a long-term restructuring of forces.

The battlegroups will be formed in Romania, Slovakia, Hungary and Bulgaria, and they will resemble similar units in the Baltic countries and Poland.

NATO also is preparing longer-term plans for major increases of forces along the eastern flank as the alliance adapts to the Russia threat, Stoltenberg said. Those decisions are expected to be finalized in June.

Allies are convening for the emergency summit as the 30-nation pact contends with the long-term security implications of Russias war on Ukraine, which is expected to change how NATO operates in Europe for years to come.

Biden, who also will meet with U.S. troops deployed to Poland during his swing through Europe, is expected to unveil tighter sanctions on Russia during talks with European Union officials.

The NATO meeting, meanwhile, comes one month into Russias full-fledged invasion of Ukraine, where its forces have met stiff resistance by Ukrainian troops armed with an array of weaponry provided by the U.S. and other allies.

Between 7,000 and 15,000 Russians have been killed during the first four weeks of fighting and thousands more injured, a NATO official said Wednesday on condition of anonymity.

A senior U.S. defense official told reporters Tuesday that Russia continues to face logistical problems as it struggles to get supplies to troops. Russian morale also could be sinking, the official said.

Some Russian soldiers developed frostbite because they lacked cold-weather gear and had to be pulled from the battlefield, the official said, adding that food and fuel also appear to be in short supply.

They are having continued logistics and sustainment issues, and again because the Ukrainians have done a good job frustrating their efforts to resupply, the official said.

Still, concerns remain that the war could escalate in unpredictable ways.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov appeared Tuesday on CNN and repeatedly declined to rule out the use of nuclear weapons.

If it is an existential threat for our country, then it can be (used), he said.

Stoltenberg on Wednesday condemned such remarks.

Russia must stop its nuclear saber-rattling. It is dangerous and it is irresponsible, he said.

U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Tuesday that Russias rhetoric about nuclear options will be a discussion topic for NATO allies in Brussels.

Meanwhile, Biden will work with allies on longer-term adjustments to NATO force posture on the eastern flank, he said.
VICENZA, Italy  The commander of the U.S. Army garrison in Italy has warned Americans to think twice before offering Ukrainian refugees a place to stay.

I feel a professional obligation to make sure you understand there are some legal issues and risks, Col. Matt Gomlak said in a videotaped message posted Sunday afternoon on the garrisons Facebook page.

Gomlak said that would-be good Samaritans living in quarters leased or owned by the government would need the garrisons permission to house refugees and that residents of private rentals would need their landlords permission.

That might not be forthcoming, he said, because of Italian laws that favor renters and can make evictions difficult. In addition, Gomlak said security clearances might also be affected by hosting Ukrainians.

I just want to make sure that were thinking through the long-term effects of being temporary residents here in Italy, not property owners, and opening our doors to foreign nationals, he said.

Garrison spokesman Rick Scavetta said on Tuesday that there had been no formal requests to host a refugee but that at least one person had made a phone inquiry.

Scavetta said Gomlak had decided to make his remarks after noticing a social media discussion about whether people were able to take in refugees, with some of them suggesting, just do it, Scavetta said.

Its unknown whether any American associated with the garrison had in fact taken in a refugee.

Also, the mayor of Montegalda, a small town near Padua, had asked whether this is something Americans might be interested in doing, Scavetta said.

He said the most effective means of helping Ukrainian refugees is through donations to established entities such as Army Community Services.

Some 60,000 Ukrainian refugees have come to Italy since the Feb. 24 start of the Russian invasion, most of them women and children, according to Italian news agency ANSA, citing figures from the Italian interior ministry on Monday.

The most common destinations declared upon entry are Milan, Rome, Naples and Bologna, ANSA said.

Nearly 3.6 million Ukrainians have fled so far, streaming into Poland, Moldova and other neighboring countries, according to the UN Refugee Agency. An additional 6.5 million are internally displaced, the UN said.

U.S. European Command said there are currently no Defense Department programs for transporting or housing Ukrainian refugees at overseas military locations.

Members of the U.S. military community in Europe, however, may provide assistance in their personal capacity, EUCOM said Friday in a statement. Any assistance provided must comply with host nation laws and local installation guidance.

On Tuesday, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi lauded the heroic resistance of the Ukrainians against the Russian ferociousness and said Italy would offer continuing humanitarian, military and refugee assistance, according to The New York Times.

Italy can expect up to 900,000 refugees in total, the Italo-Ukraine Cultural Association estimated based on the figure of roughly 250,000 Ukrainians living in Italy before the crisis whose relatives will seek to join them, according to ANSA.

Settling refugees in Italy has been mostly a regional effort so far, often with online forms for prospective hosts to fill out. Veneto, in which Vicenza is located, set up its online system earlier this month.

To be effective, the reception effort needs to be organized, regional president Luca Zaia said, according to news website The Locals Italian edition. He added that Veneto residents have big hearts and a generosity that knows no bounds.

Stars and Stripes reporter Jennifer Svan contributed to this report.
KABUL - Fatima and Khudija arrived at their school in central Kabul early Wednesday, eager to see their exam results from the previous year, but after just a few minutes inside their old classrooms the deputy principal reluctantly ordered them off the premises immediately.

While thousands of schools reopened for the first time since the Taliban takeover in August, a last minute ruling from the group banned classes for girls beyond the sixth grade, according to a statement from the Ministry of Education.

At that moment all we felt was sadness, said Fatima, 15, who like Khudija, 19, spoke on condition that only her first name be used for fear of reprisals. We suffered for a long time to get an education and faced many difficulties. So when we finally returned, and it was taken away... it was overwhelming, all we could do was cry.

The future of girls education and womens rights under the Taliban has been central to discussions with the international community where Taliban officials have pressed for international recognition, the easing of financial sanctions and increased aid money. But female students and teachers say they fear Wednesdays order signals the group is unwilling to provide access to education for all Afghans regardless of gender.

If they (The Taliban) dont reconsider this decision, I fear they will take more steps against women, Fatima said.

Across town, at an all-boys school, Taliban officials gathered at a ceremony marking the reopening of schools. Uniformed male students holding Taliban flags stood at attention and chanted God is great, as the event began and concluded.

We assure our Afghan sisters that they would be allowed to attend school once our leadership makes a decision. Aziz Ahmad Rayan, a spokesman for the Ministry of Education, said at the ceremony. He said the Talibans acting cabinet needs to consider some cultural and religious obligations first. The Ministry of Education statement said it hasnt designed a school uniform for female students that is in accordance with sharia [Islamic] law, Afghan culture and customs.

Mawlawi Noorul Haq, a senior Taliban official, who also spoke at the ceremony pushed back against claims the Taliban are anti-education.

In reality, the basis of the Taliban is knowledge. We fought against ignorance, he said.

The Taliban closed all schools after taking control of the country over seven months ago, stating the group needed time to develop national education policies. But pledged all Afghan children - boys and girls - would be allowed to return to class this week, according to Rayan, the Education Ministry spokesman.

But school officials, like Muhammad Ibrahim, the principal at Ayesha Durkhanai girls school in Kabul, were not informed of the reversal until Tuesday night when he received a WhatsApp message in a group chat for his education district.

How do you think I felt, he said. He and his colleagues had already prepared curriculums and schedules assuming all their students would return. It was heartbreaking, to tell the older girls they were not allowed through the school yard gates and had to go home. This is something unprecedented.

Social media was flooded by images and videos, some broadcast by local media, of young women and girls crying outside the schools they were barred from entering.

We are also humans. Why should we not be allowed to go to school? Our hearts are crying tears of blood, one woman told an Afghan television network, not identifying herself by name on camera. Why? What did we do? What are we guilty of? she asked.

The Taliban banned girls from education beyond elementary school in the majority of the Afghan territory it controlled before the group took over the entire country last year. In many Taliban-controlled districts, there was not a single functioning school for girls for years.

Since taking control of Afghanistan, the group issued vague statements when asked about the future of education for women, especially beyond the elementary-school level. Generally, Afghan students are 13 years old when they enter secondary school in the seventh grade.

Residents in provinces outside Kabul described similar scenes Wednesday morning when they sent their daughters back to school, only to have their older girls sent home.

Noorullah Stanakzai, 45, from Logar province was informed all his daughters could return to school Wednesday, but those in seventh grade and above would be required to wear a head to toe covering, gloves and black shoes. Despite wearing the new uniform, he said the principal sent them home, saying the school did not have enough female teachers.

Even before Wednesdays ruling, Stanakzai said his daughters were not as eager to go to school as they used to be. They told me my future is no longer clear, and they worry that soon it will not be possible for women to go to university in Afghanistan.

They have lost interest in school is because they are not optimistic about the future, he said.

Wednesdays ruling will likely be seen as a setback in the eyes of Western governments that have been pushing the Taliban to be respectful of the rights of women and allow access to education for all Afghans regardless of gender.

Rayan, the Education Ministry spokesman, said ultimately the decision regarding access to education for Afghan women and girls needs to be made by top leadership.

Reopening of girls schools above the sixth grade is beyond the mandate of the Education Ministry, he said. But he added the ministry will work closely with Taliban leadership to secure permission for the reopening of all girls schools.

In a sixth grade classroom at Ayesha Durkhanai girls school in Kabul nearly all the students raised their hands when asked if they had an older sister barred from attending class Wednesday.

12-year-old Shahnaz Nasrati said her sister was sad and anxious after she was turned away from class that morning.

We want the officials to allow the older girls to also attend school, because otherwise none of us will be able to go higher, she said, referring to advancing to the next grade. If shes barred from school next year, Nasrati said we will have to start demonstrating!

The rest of the girls in the classroom laughed, but when asked who would participate, everyones hand shot up.

The Washington Posts Aziz Tassal in Houston, Texas and Haq Nawaz Khan in Peshawar, Pakistan, contributed to this report.
SEATTLE (Tribune News Service)  They lined up at the doors of Southern Heights Elementary in Burien, momentarily subdued as they waited for their first glimpse of American school. Awais, 9, in a sharp black blazer and white shirt, led the way, followed by Fazilat, 10, in sparkly pumps and a bright pink headscarf, and 7-year-old Mirwais, his fathers hands resting on his shoulders.

The three Afghan siblings, among one of the largest waves of refugees to come to the U.S. in decades, had waited for this moment since flying out of Taliban-controlled Kabul in August. They spent four months on a Texas Army base and arrived in the Seattle area in December. Were so excited youre here! principal Andrea Smith told them, giving a tour in advance of their first day. She had them choose from an array of donated backpacks, showed them a room where they could pray and told a class of students: I know you guys will be there to help.

The little school, with just over 200 students, including a large number of native Spanish speakers, did not have an interpreter on hand. But a custodian who emigrated from Afghanistan in 2019 surprised them by saying hello. Speaking a mixture of Pashto and Dari, Afghanistans primary languages, Abdul Bakhshi reassured the childrens dad that they would learn English as his own kids did.

As the siblings hit the playground, Ally Nguyen, part of a group of volunteers helping the family resettle, told the principal the children hadnt consistently attended classes in two years. Their school in Afghanistan largely shut down when COVID-19 hit.

Well get them where they need to go, Smith said.

Its a shared mission among schools seeing an influx of Afghan students  and which may soon see a whole new group of refugees arriving from the war in Ukraine. Schools are having to quickly think through what these kids need, which means understanding not only their academic background but what theyve gone through to get here.

You have children coming with more trauma than we can ever put words on, said Emelie Coffman, manager of the children and families program for the resettlement agency World Relief Seattle.

The Seattle area is one of the top destinations for families fleeing the Taliban after the fall of Kabul last summer, drawn by a sizable Afghan community already here. Roughly 6,000 people born in Afghanistan lived in Washington as of 2019 census data, many given special immigrant visas because of their work for the U.S. government. About 2,900 more have come since late September after a stay on American military bases, according to state Refugee Coordinator Sarah Peterson.

Many got separated from loved ones  spouses, parents, children and siblings  in the chaotic crowds at the Kabul airport. Family members left behind are inevitably on the minds of newly enrolled Afghan students.

They are arriving with varying levels of education. Some, especially those who lived in cities, attended school fairly regularly while others literally not at all. If their fathers worked with the U.S. military, leaving home could be dangerous.

Local schools have welcomed these students enthusiastically. Some districts have also been hiring or expanding the work of Pashto and Dari interpreters, adding after-school and other extended-learning programs for refugees, buddying new Afghan students with ones who have lived here for a while, and training staff about the needs and experiences of these students.

Its been necessary for us to really mobilize, said Peter Lamb, a coordinator of multilingual programs for the Auburn School District. While the district has had an array of refugee students come in the past, including from Somalia, Kenya, Iraq and Afghanistan, whats different now is having many such students, more than 100, come virtually at once, noted his colleague, Maeghan Bowman.

In the Kent School District, an interpreter who has taken on a larger role has even helped Afghan families get food stamp cards, said Kinder Garcha, the districts refugee service liaison. Some refugees have resettlement agency caseworkers and others, having opted to leave bases on their own, dont. They may need extra help either way, the district is finding, because resettlement agencies, scaled back during the Trump years, have been overwhelmed by the mass arrival of Afghan refugees. And large numbers of refugees from the war in Ukraine havent even arrived yet.

For all the effort, many schools dont have enough resources for these kids, such as interpreters and mental health support, said Coffman of World Relief. The students get English-language instruction, but generally not by someone who speaks Pashto or Dari, and they also take regular classes where they cant understand a thing, she said. Districts that have Afghan-language interpreters tend to have just a few, working with families.

Given what these kids have been through, Coffman said the unmet need is absolutely heartbreaking.

In a World Relief training for teachers, she heard about a Kent middle schooler who would freak out when a fire alarm drill went off. The student would run to a younger brother and refuse to go, or let his brother go, to a field where everyone was supposed to gather.

He got in trouble for that, Coffman said. What school staff didnt realize at the time was that the alarm, to a child raised amid war, signaled trouble and he had been taught not to go onto fields because of land mines.

We have an opportunity now

A couple weeks after starting school at Carl Sandburg Elementary in Kirkland, two Afghan siblings, a 9-year-old boy and 6-year-old girl, were in some ways doing well.

I just want to say what a sweet and observant girl [she] is and how eager she is to learn, the girls teacher wrote to a volunteer who has been helping the family and acting as a liaison with the school. (The childrens mom, like many Afghan refugees, asked that she and her children not be named because of risks to family members back home.)

Im seeing that she is quick to pick up on what the other students are doing, especially if its something she can copy or imitate. Naturally, when I am giving direct instruction and the students are sitting and learning about a new concept, that is where I see [her] want to get up and go do something else.

The boy has made a friend and has a special handshake with the physical education teacher. While there are no Afghan language interpreters at school, a Farsi-speaking staffer has been able to communicate some with the family. (Farsi and Dari are both Persian dialects.) In the sleeve of a school library book the boy brought home one February day, the staffer tucked a note in Persian script explaining the book must be returned.

Asked how he likes school, though, the boy talks instead about his dad, who had been beaten and pulled away from his family at the Kabul airport. Save yourself and save our children, he told his wife. I will find a way to get out. But the father is still in hiding, awaiting a humanitarian parole visa he has applied for.

On this day, the boy said through an interpreter he had dreamed the night before that the Taliban were killing my dad.

When he woke up, according to his mom, the 9-year-old asked if they could all go back to Afghanistan. At least well die together, he said.

The children cant concentrate at school because day and night, their father is in their heads, their mom said, weeping at times.

An Afghan mother of eight who now lives in Burien has already lost her husband. He was the victim of a suicide bomb last summer while working with U.S. forces. His work put the children at risk too, with kidnapping common. School was a long walk from their home on the outskirts of Jalalabad. So the children mostly stayed home. Even the oldest, 15- and 13-year-old girls, have never been to school, and have not learned to read.

I really want the kids to go to school, said their mother, who herself had only a few years of schooling because the education system in Afghanistan has been unstable and because the Taliban restricted education for girls when she was growing up. They have wasted their life, she continued. We have an opportunity now.

In the view of Ismail Khan, who was interpreting for her, it was taking too long to get the children enrolled. They had been in the Seattle area for a month and a half. Like many new arrivals served by overworked case managers in one of the most expensive housing markets in the country, the family was still in temporary housing, albeit a nicely furnished rambler. That meant they didnt know what school district they would be in long-term.

The family moved to a permanent home in Auburn a couple weeks later and the kids started school, according to Khan, who emigrated from Afghanistan in 2014 and recently founded Afghans of Puget Sound Alliance to help those coming now. Yet, other Afghan children remain in limbo, he said.

Khan acknowledged school wasnt going to be easy for children with limited or no education, and he plans to recruit volunteer tutors.

The results from just a couple months of tutoring can be seen around the corner from the widows home, where Fazilat, Awais and Mirwais live, along with their parents, baby sister and older siblings.

The family is one of eight from Afghanistan that are being resettled by groups of volunteer sponsors affiliated with Viets for Afghan, a largely Vietnamese-American organization that also includes Afghan immigrants like Khan. The U.S. government rolled out a sponsor circle program last year, meant to take some of the load off agencies, although this particular family is not part of the official program.

In addition to enrolling the kids in school, taking them to doctors visits and many other tasks, Nguyen, part of the group supporting the family, has been working with the children on English and basic math. In notebooks, the children have copied English words from a book in neat handwriting and spelled out their names. When a guest comes to their home, in the bottom floor of a split-level where the kids share a room decorated with a big American flag and tea is served at every opportunity in a sitting room encircled by cushions, the children eagerly respond when asked in English for their names.

The children attended school before COVID hit, but the instruction was not good, the teachers frequently absent and classes noisy and crowded with as many as 100 students, according to the kids and their father, Sahibzada. After their first day at elementary school the week after their tour, Fazilat and Awais said they were struck by the quiet.

The school is better, Fazilat said through an interpreter. I like everything, Awais said.

I know the first year will be a little challenging, their father acknowledged, but added he was confident after that they will be OK.

In educational circles, there is an acronym for students who have had little schooling  SLIFE (students with limited or interrupted formal education)  but little data on how they do once they start going regularly, according to Chris Chang-Bacon, an assistant professor in the University of Virginias School of Education and Human Development. What data there is suggests such students have a high dropout rate.

We do find that their success is largely determined not by the students themselves but (by) how well the school is set up to receive them, Chang-Bacon said. Strategies that help, he said, include access to bilingual staff and community members, ideally ones who speak the students language; support in English; teachers used to working with students at different levels; and flexibility to allow students to learn in different ways, for example by allowing them to research projects in their own language.

An after-school program for refugee students at Mill Creek Middle School in Kent, run by World Relief, offers hope. Two students from Afghanistan said they were earning mostly As and had been moved from English-language learner classes into mainstream ones for English-language arts.

Tawqir, a seventh grader who has lived in the U.S. for three years, said he didnt understand much at first. We find Afghan friends and they tell us what to do, he said. With Kent a center of Afghan-American life, the district has as many as 1,000 such students from Afghanistan, estimates Garcha, the refugee service liaison.

Eighth grader Hadia, only six months in the U.S., praised her kind teachers, one of whom uses his phone to translate words she doesnt know. She appears to know a lot, though. An activity this afternoon involved students looking at pieces of cloth and saying what it reminded them of.

Afghanistan, Hadia called out, looking at a red cloth speckled with green flowers. Green is peace, she said. Red is like the war.



2022 The Seattle Times. Visit seattletimes.com .

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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.

(Tribune News Service)  An emergency public school program established in January by New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham to fill gaps in a statewide crisis-level teacher shortage amid a surge in the coronavirus pandemic will continue after this month, despite a dramatic drop in COVID-19 cases.

The Governor's Office said Monday there are no plans to end what was expected to be a temporary initiative, in which state workers and New Mexico National Guard members have been encouraged to help in classrooms as substitute teachers, and application fees for all prospective substitute teachers have been waived.

Between Jan. 19, when the program was first announced, and Feb. 1, the state Public Education Department received 559 substitute teacher license applications. The number continued to grow and includes 227 applications from state employees and Guard members.

Nora Meyers Sackett, the governor's spokeswoman, wrote in an email school districts "continue to find the program helpful. We will keep working with districts around the state to evaluate schools' needs."

When Lujan Grisham announced the program, dozens of districts were shutting down schools and turning to remote learning, largely due to staff absences tied to the spread of the omicron variant. The governor warned authorizing state employees and Guard members to teach in schools was not a permanent solution to the teacher shortage. She indicated the initiative would end in March.

Since the start of the program, COVID-19 cases have plummeted. While Santa Fe Public Schools reported 549 cases contagious on campus in January, just 33 have been recorded so far this month.

Only three districts and one charter school have reported 5 percent or more of their staff and students have tested positive for COVID-19 in the last 14 days  a rate that could trigger remote learning.

Santa Fe Public Schools, which has struggled to fill vacant positions throughout the school year, saw its substitute teacher rolls grow after the governor's announcement of the program easing access to substitute licenses; 13 of the subs are state employees.

The district has not had any National Guard members in its classrooms.

District spokesman Cody Dynarski said some of the state employees eligible to substitute teach have not taken a job at the district, and many who have agreed to help are limited in how many shifts they can cover for absent teachers or vacant positions. Earlier this month, Superintendent Hilario "Larry" Chavez said about 60 teacher positions remain unfilled.

The state employees are among more than 210 substitutes at the district, which started the year with about 120, Dynarski said.

About half of the 90 substitutes who signed up since the start of the year have done so in the months since Lujan Grisham announced the new program, he added.

The program also has piqued local interest in substitute teaching at the West Las Vegas School District.

Superintendent Christopher Gutierrez said Monday just one plainclothes National Guard member is participating in the governor's program, filling in for a middle school science teacher.

The district, which employed just under 100 teachers last year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, has only two vacancies. But its pool of substitute teachers shrank during the pandemic from 75 to a low of five, Gutierrez said. That number is slowly climbing back up.

"What I've noticed is after the National Guard and everybody started up," he said, is that "we're getting more and more people coming back ... and even new people."

(c)2022 The Santa Fe New Mexican (Santa Fe, N.M.)

Visit The Santa Fe New Mexican (Santa Fe, N.M.) at www.santafenewmexican.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
(Tribune News Service)  U.S. Rep. Mike Turner, R-Dayton, Ohio, signed a letter with 22 fellow members of the House Intelligence Committee urging American spies and intelligence-gatherers to document and preserve facts about "potential" Russian war crimes in Ukraine.

Citing what it calls "the apparently intentional targeting" of Ukrainian civilians, the committee urges Avril Haines, the U.S. director of national intelligence, to continue "maximizing intelligence sharing with our Ukrainian and international partners and declassifying intelligence that reveals Russia's malign intentions and actions, including potential war crimes."

Russian attacks in its latest invasion of Ukraine, which began Feb. 24, have included missile strikes and shelling against apartment buildings, at least one mall, a theater, health care facilities and other locations where civilians have congregated or sought shelter, according to the World Health Organization, international observers, American officials and locals.

"Intentionally targeting civilians is a war crime," U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said last week. "After all the destruction of the past three weeks, I find it difficult to conclude that the Russians are doing otherwise."

Last week, President Joe Biden called Russian President Vladimir Putin a "war criminal."

The Intelligence Committee's letter, which was dated Monday but released Tuesday, notes that 39 nations referred the invasion of Ukraine to the International Criminal Court "due to numerous allegations of serious international crimes by Russian forces, including war crimes and crimes against humanity."

The letter urges the community to protect its "sources and methods" as it documents and publicizes possible crimes.

Though the possibility of accountability appears distant today, we have a responsibility to bear witness," the lawmakers wrote. "The present moment tests our collective resolve to defend human rights and freedoms."

Questions were sent to Turner's office Wednesday.

In January, Turner was appointed to serve as ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

At the time, Turners office called the appointment historic because it was the first time ever that a congressman for Wright-Patterson Air Force Base had assumed a leadership role for a national security committee.

(c)2022 the Dayton Daily News (Dayton, Ohio)

Visit the Dayton Daily News (Dayton, Ohio) at www.daytondailynews.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
(Tribune News Service)  Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown joined other senators and representatives in urging the Supreme Court to protect the full civilian income of members of the military Reserves and National Guard.

The politicians filed an amicus brief urging the the top court to consider Adams v. Department of Homeland Security, a case related to differential pay support for reservists.

Recently, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled that Bryan Adams, a human resources specialist with U.S. Customs and Border Patrol and a member of the Arizona Air National Guard, was not entitled to differential pay unless his service was connected to a national emergency, the brief supporters noted.

The Omnibus Appropriations Act of 2009 was meant to prevent federal employees who serve in the National Guard and Reserves from losing income when they are called to active military duty, those involved with the brief said in a statement this week.

Federal law provides that federal agencies are to provide differential pay, or the difference between a federal employee's military and civilian pay, when that employee is on active duty. Reserve or Guard pay is often less than the full-time pay for federal (or other) workers.

The petition before the Supreme Court could affect about 200,000 federal employees who serve as members of the Reserves and Guard, reports indicate.

"Both contemporaneous statements by the law's authors and other legislative materials confirm that Congress did not intend to limit the application of the law by the kind of service the reservists rendered or the provision of law under which the reservists were call to active duty," the lawmakers said.

They added: "If allowed to stand, the federal circuit's decision would severely burden a significant number of Americans solely because they wear the nation's uniform."

Other supporters of the brief include Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn, and U.S. Reps. Carolyn Maloney, D-NY, Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-Washington, D.C., Anthony Brown, D-Md. and former representative Robert Wexler, a Democrat from Florida.

(c)2022 the Journal-News (Hamilton, Ohio)

Visit the Journal-News (Hamilton, Ohio) at www.journal-news.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
(Tribune News Service)  Military spouses unemployment rate is roughly three times the national joblessness percentage, and Sen. Tim Kaine thinks a tax break might be the way to help.

Hes leading a bipartisan group introducing a bill to add military spouses to the list of 10 groups who can win a work opportunity tax credit for firms that hire them.

That tax credit is equal to 40% of first year wages.

Congress has a responsibility to take care of our service members, veterans, and their families, Kaine said.

That means helping Americas talented military spouses, who consistently make enormous sacrifices for our safety and security, access a wide range of work opportunities.

Some 12% of the nations roughly 480,000 military spouses are unemployed and actively seeking work, the National Conference of State Legislatures estimates. The national unemployment rate is 3.8%.

Since members of the active duty military move frequently  sometimes as often as every two years  military spouses can have a hard time finding work. Landing in a new town is one challenge, while some employers are nervous about hiring individuals who might not be able to stay indefinitely.

The military spouse unemployment rate has remained too high for too long. When military spouses cant find work, its a problem for their familys financial stability and wellbeing, said Besa Pinchotti, executive director and CEO of the National Military Family Association.

The work opportunity tax credit is meant to encourage employers to take a risk and hire members of groups that often struggle to get jobs, including parents in welfare-to-work programs, veterans, people with disabilities and ex-felons.

Retired Air Force Lt. General Dana Atkins said the challenges military spouses face in the job market is a national security issue, too.

More than a third of military families cite spouse employment challenges as a reason for leaving active duty, said Atkins, who is president and CEO of the Military Officers Association of America.

Military spouses make tremendous sacrifices for our country yet continue to face significant burdens when it comes to employment opportunities, he said.

Joining Kaine in introducing the tax credit bill are Senators John Boozman, R-Arizona, Maggie Hassan, D-New Hampshire, and Mike Rounds, R-South Dakota. Rep. Antonio Delgado, D-New York, is introducing a companion bill in the House of Representatives.

dress@dailypress.com

2022 Daily Press.

Visit dailypress.com.

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
WASHINGTON  Russias stalled invasion of Ukraine is causing China to rethink the prowess of its own military and how an attempt to conquer Taiwan would play out, Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., said Wednesday.

The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee said he believes China is collecting data on the real-time example of a major conventional power taking on a lesser power and reevaluating whether its military could successfully retake the island that it claims as its own.

I think the Chinese leadership has the suspicion that their military has not been involved in a major conflict since the late 1970s and early 1980s, when China invaded northern Vietnam, Reed said during a roundtable discussion with reporters. It has not been tested and they might be getting second thoughts about how powerful their forces will be.

Russia dwarfs Ukraine in troops and military equipment but the struggle of Russian forces to capture major Ukrainian cities in a war that is now entering its fifth week has likely given Beijing pause, Reed said.

There were 120,000 Russian troops along the border with tanks, with missile systems, with sophisticated aviation and I was, you know, scratching my head because Ukraine forces were not as well-equipped, he said. Were not just looking at the Russians, China is too and theyre beginning to ask questions.

The U.S. had assumed Russia would launch an overwhelming attack on Ukraine and make a very fast run on its capital of Kyiv partly due to Russia's successful annexation of Crimea in 2014, Reed said. But the conditions that facilitated that swift operation  a small area, existing Russian naval bases on the peninsula and a Russia-friendly population  do not exist now.

You look at [Crimea] and you think wow, that is a very well-trained [military], Reed said. Now you look at a general, conventional assault on a significant level and you see fractures in the Russian forces.

Russian troops have been bogged down by logistical problems, connectivity issues between forces, intelligence failures and top-down leadership that leaves small units unable to carry on fights without instructions from headquarters, he said.

The U.S. is helping Ukraine exploit those weaknesses with vast shipments of military aid and the same assistance could be expected in the event of a Chinese incursion into Taiwan, Reed said. China is taking note of how crucial that aid, now totaling $2 billion, has become to Ukrainian resistance, he said.

Reed reiterated the White Houses position that U.S. forces would not become involved in Ukraine, but he said the U.S. would need to reevaluate if Russia employs nuclear weapons or launches a cyberattack on the U.S. that causes significant casualties. Any use of a chemical, biological or nuclear weapon that affects a neighboring NATO country could trigger a direct military conflict between the alliance and Russia, he said.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday that Russia would only launch nuclear weapons if it faced an "existential threat."

Chinas well-documented ambitions to join the U.S. and Russia as a strategic nuclear power is quickly changing the national security landscape and will put the U.S. in uncharted territory, Reed said. The Pentagon reported last year that Beijing could have up to 700 deliverable nuclear warheads by 2027 and likely intends to have at least 1,000 warheads by 2030.

This is an extraordinarily historic moment, Reed said. We will for the first time in the history of the world have trilateral nuclear competition. We have to start thinking about whats the strategy and how do we do this?
Congressional lawmakers who represent Colorado want President Joe Biden to consider Russias invasion of Ukraine when making a final decision about a permanent headquarters for U.S. Space Command.

Delaying the commands establishment with a move from Peterson Space Force Base, Colo., to Redstone Arsenal, Ala., could threaten national security, nine lawmakers wrote Tuesday in a letter to Biden.

As you are well aware, space has become an increasingly critical and contested domain that is central to our economy, communications, and national security. [Russian] President [Vladimir] Putins lawless, reprehensible aggression against Ukraine in violation of international rules and norms, underscores the urgency for America to maintain superiority in the space domain, the group wrote.

The letter is signed by the entire Colorado delegation to Washington, including Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper, both Democrats, Democratic Reps. Jason Crow, Diana DeGette, Ed Perlmutter and Joe Neguse, and Republican Reps. Ken Buck, Lauren Boebert and Doug Lamborn.

Space Command now operates out of a temporary headquarters at Peterson Space Force Base, formerly Peterson Air Force Base, near Colorado Springs.

However, during the final days of former President Donald Trumps administration, former Air Force Secretary Barbara Barrett in January 2021 announced a decision to move Space Command to a permanent home at Redstone Arsenal.

Space Command, which first operated from 1985 to 2002, was reestablished in 2019 just months before the newest military service branch, Space Force, was founded. It is a joint combatant command that oversees the militarys various space-based infrastructure and operations.

After concerns were raised that the decision to move the command was politically motivated, the Government Accountability Office and the Defense Department inspector general agreed to review the decision. Those reports are expected soon, according to the letter to Biden.

We remain deeply troubled that the decision to relocate [Space Command] undermined the two most important factors for any critical basing decision: protecting national security and minimizing cost. At a time when threats in space are rapidly increasing, particularly from Russia and China, [Space Command] cannot afford any operational interruptions and must achieve full operational capability as quickly as possible, the lawmakers wrote.

Moving Space Command from its temporary headquarters, which is located with several other military space activities, would take additional time and money, according to the letter. In that time, Americas adversaries will waste no time enhancing their space control operations, the lawmakers wrote.

Meanwhile, the command is still about two or three years away from full operational capacity, Gen. James Dickinson, commander of Space Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee during a March 8 hearing about upcoming authorization requests for the command.

During Dickinsons testimony, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., said the idea of moving the command was puzzling, given the urgency. Even if the decision to move to Alabama is confirmed by the pending reports, Shaheen said it would take until 2026 to move the headquarters.

For me, it is not necessarily about the location. It is about the decision. So, in other words, I need a decision as soon as I can possibly get one so that I can build to full operational capability as quickly as possible, Dickinson said. I need a decision and, based on that decision, I will do whatever I need to do to make sure that I can achieve my mission.

Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., countered Shaheens concerns and presented an Air Force study to the committee that found Redstone Arsenal to be a better choice for Space Command.
As World War II escalated, Romay Johnson Daviss five brothers enlisted, despite segregation and profuse discrimination both within the armed forces and society as a whole. Davis yearned to join them.

In 1943 when the Womens Army Corps was created, she finally saw her chance.

She joined more than 850 Black women in a specialized Army unit that deployed overseas. The women sailed to England, where they were tasked with duties such as sorting an enormous backlog of mail for overseas troops.

Today, only six of the women are still alive. At 102, Romay Johnson Davis is the oldest.

She vividly remembers the day she enlisted in the Womens Army Corps.

It was one of the proudest days of my life, said Davis, who is from Montgomery, Ala. I was honored to serve, and if I could do it again, I would.

The National World War II Museum plans to honor Davis in June as the oldest surviving member of the Six Triple Eight - the U.S. Army 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion. President Joe Biden signed legislation March 14 to present Davis and the other five surviving members of the battalion with the Congressional Gold Medal.

Ms. Daviss story is inspirational, said Col. Peter Crean, vice president of education and access for the National World War II Museum. At a time when both women and African Americans were segregated and discounted in the military, she and the women of the U.S. Army 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion volunteered to serve and contribute to the war effort.

While processing mail isnt a task that necessarily stands out during wartime, he said, the mail was terribly backlogged and causing frustration among the troops.

They lived up to their units motto of No Mail, No Morale,  Crean said. But more importantly, through their example of professional service despite all obstacles, they helped change the military and the nation.

Davis said that while there were certainly obstacles, she looks back at her days in the 6888th as the most exciting of her life.

She and the women in her battalion didnt know what their jobs would be until they arrived, she said. She recalled that while crossing the ocean from New York to England her ship was targeted by German U-boats.

Once she found out what her assignment was, she was happy to dedicate herself to organizing the unruly piles of unsorted envelopes and packages, she said. The women wore extra layers under their coats as they worked in dim, chilly warehouses, and giant rats scurried around looking for packages filled with spoiled baked goods.

Davis and her battalion lived in segregated housing with a separate mess hall and chapel. The racism and sexism they faced at home followed them overseas.

The locals were skeptical at first, as many white American soldiers spread racist misinformation about African Americans, according to a history of the battalion on the website of the National Museum of the United States Army. The women of the 6888th soon put those rumors to rest with their dignity and class. In many instances, the local populace treated the women better than they were treated back home.

When the women returned home in late 1945 and early 1946, there were no awards or honors for them as they went on with their lives. It wasnt until 2018 that a monument was dedicated at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., to honor the Black female battalion.

Davis said she looks back proudly on her service.

I enjoyed every minute that I was in the service, Davis said. Like everyone during that time, I was happy to do my part. Everyone worked together - its a lesson I wish more people would take to heart now.

She said one great disappointment is that she no longer has her uniform because it was stolen upon her return.

As soon as I came home from the service at the end of 1945, somebody stole my duffle bag and uniform out of my car, she said. I didnt even get a chance to unpack, and I never saw it again.

Davis grew up in King George County, Va., and was working for the U.S. Mint in D.C. when World War II broke out and her brothers enlisted, she said.

Once she enlisted as well, she and her battalion sorted and redirected more than 18 million pieces of backlogged mail. Some of the undelivered correspondence dated back two or three years.

The Army wanted to get the mail delivered in six months to boost morale, said Davis, so they assigned the women of the 6888th to work in shifts around-the-clock.

We got the job done in three months, she said. We knew how important those letters were for the soldiers. They were homesick and tired, and letters from home would really boost their spirits.

Once the mail was sorted in England, Davis and her battalion were assigned the same duty in France. Davis also worked as a chauffeur for U.S. officers stationed overseas.

There were a lot of undelivered Christmas packages that had piled up besides the letters, Davis said, noting that there was a shortage of soldiers to work in the postal unit. Allied troops were also on the move across Europe, making it difficult to deliver the mail, she said.

Postal warehouses were packed with mail up to the ceilings, and the windows were blacked out to offer protection during nighttime air raids, Davis recalled.

It was a lot of work, but it was efficient and purposeful work, she said, noting that her battalion sorted about 195,000 pieces of mail a day.

Yes, we were segregated, but the people in England and France treated us well, she said. They were extremely grateful for what we were doing, and I think we did a good job.

After the war ended, Davis returned home in November 1945 and received an honorable discharge from the Army. She said she then moved to New York City to attend fashion school and work as a tailor. She also married Jerry Davis, a carpenter for the New York City subway system.

I followed him to Alabama after he retired, and this has been home ever since, Davis said. When her husband died in 1999, she said it was important to her to remain active.

Davis earned a black belt in taekwondo in her 70s, and when she was 80 she got a job at a Winn-Dixie grocery store in Montgomery, where she organized the shelves. But there was one job she didnt excel at.

I actually did a little bit of everything there, but I wasnt good at running the cash register, Davis said with a laugh. Because I talked to too many people, I held up the line.

She worked part-time for 20 years at the store until after her 101st birthday, she said.

Davis, who doesnt have children, now has many friends to keep her company. One of them, Stacia Robinson, 60, looks in on Davis regularly since she recently lost her ability to walk and now uses a wheelchair.

Romay is a remarkable woman - you can still hear the strength and determination in her voice, Robinson said. Every time I learn something new about her life, I go away impressed and inspired.

For her 101st birthday in 2020, the city of Montgomery held a parade and issued a proclamation for Romay Davis Day, she said.

It was an honor - I was very appreciative of it, Davis said of the parade last November.

Shes now looking forward to her next birthday: I really dont know what Ill be doing to top that on my 103rd.
(Tribune News Service)  "He was an incredible man."

Jerry "Butch" Parks starts to choke up when talking about his grandfather, Abraham Smith. Now a resident of the West Chester, Ohio, area, Parks found himself in the Somerset, Ky., offices of Congressman Harold "Hal" Rogers on Tuesday. Among the family joining him were Smith's daughter Alice Parks and her husband Raymond, both of Williamsburg, Ky., and Jacob Losekamp, Smith's great-great-great grandson.

They were there to receive the awards that Whitley County native Smith had earned for his outstanding actions in the heat of battle  earned in 1918 but never claimed.

Smith, a private first class in the U.S. Army, had fought valiantly for his country in World War I, earning numerous awards: The Silver Star, the nation's third-highest decoration for valor in combat. The World War I Victory Medal, meant for those who served on expeditions in Russia and Siberia during the first "Great War." The WWI Bronze Victory Button.

And Smith never received any of them by the time he passed away in 1969. That was by his choice.

"When he came home, he was done with war," said Butch. As he tried to continue speaking, he found himself overcome with emotion, describing what his grandfather had gone through. "What he'd seen, what he'd done, it appears that he'd had all that he could do, and he wanted nothing more to do with it. So he got rid of everything.

"When he received a citation (to be awarded in 1921), he never followed up on it," he added. "He didn't want it. ... He never talked about it, and we never knew about it. We knew that he was in World War I."

Smith left a strong legacy of military tradition after him. Sons Jody and T.J. fought in World War II in the U.S. Army  T.J. was one of the few survivors of the SS Leopoldville, sunk by a German U-boat  while son Jarvis was in the Air Force and son Glennis Howard served in the Marine Corps. Grandson Jody was in the U.S. Army, and Butch retired out of the Air Force.

Butch was doing research on his other uncles when he happened to come across Smith's records, which showed that he went to England ... and then his records stopped. Butch turned to historical society resources, which revealed that Smith was a "Polar Bear," the 339th Infantry regiment that General John J. "Black Jack" Pershing sent into Archangel, Russia and in Siberia during World War I.

"During the cruise (transporting there), the Spanish Flu broke out in the middle of it," said Butch. "So they were fighting disease and the cold. They were placed under British command, which would eliminate their Americans and (have them) start using British weapons, which they did not appreciate at all."

While war must have taken its psychological toll on Smith, his actions while in service were those of a hero. Smith and another man were in the middle of an artillery attack, according to the records Butch discovered. They saw wounded soldiers in the field, and Smith ran out with a partner to start pulling in the injured; while doing so, Smith's partner was killed.

In another case, a company was cut off by the Bolsheviks and needed to be told to pull back, but they weren't going to receive any support. Smith volunteered to go through enemy lines  "The snow at that time was apparently almost waist-deep, and temperatures were well below zero," said Butch  to tell the company that they needed to pull back before they were overrun.

It was for these actions that Smith earned his Silver Star. Instead, "He came home ... and never mentioned it again," said Butch.

"He told us Russia was cold," added Alice. "That's all he would say."

So the family contacted Rogers' office for assistance in getting the awards that were due Smith, first reaching out about three years ago. It took some time, but on Tuesday, Rogers was able to present Butch, Alice, Raymond and Jacob with the awards  and they were extremely grateful for his efforts.

"We appreciate what Congressman Rogers did for us," said Raymond. "He helped our nephew accomplish what we got as a reminder of what (Smith) did and where he was at. ... This means a lot of the family.

"(Rogers) was patient with us, and we really appreciate him putting up with us," he added. "Not many would do that. ... To him, we were precious and special. I'll never forget what he did for the family."

Butch called Rogers' office "gracious" in working with the family to get them everything they needed and following up constantly, never allowing the family to feel like they were being ignored.

"The important thing to me is, I know how good of a man (Smith) was," said Butch, who recalled Smith as an "attentive" grandfather who stressed the value of a strong work ethic. "He deserves to be remembered. Trying to find these records was very difficult. That's why I enlisted the help of Congressman Rogers, and I'm so thankful that he took it on, to verify and to document the things that (Smith) deserved to be remembered for. ... (Rogers) and his staff are just incredible."

Chimed in Rogers, "It was the least we could do."

It was a "complicated process," said Butch  "Records were lost, verification had to be done; the Silver Star is an important award, and they wanted to make sure they got it right, and we wanted to make sure they got it right"  but is pleased that things turned out the way they did.

"We're very proud (of Smith)," said Butch. "I have a lot of family members to be proud of. They're all really good people."

Rogers told the family that the southeastern Kentucky area, from which Smith rose up, is famous for volunteers in the service, leading the nation in the percent of volunteers for both World Wars. Rogers quipped that members of this region "love to fight," but Smith did much more than fight  he risked his own life to save the lives of others. And for that, with Rogers' help, Smith has finally received the recognition he earned so long ago.

"This man is a hero," said Rogers of Smith. "He fought for our country and therefore he deserves anything we can do to keep that memory alive."

(c)2022 the Commonwealth Journal (Somerset, Ky.)

Visit the Commonwealth Journal (Somerset, Ky.) at somerset-kentucky.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
WASHINGTON  The Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in Spokane, Wash., had numerous complaints including incorrect patient information and medication orders long before its new electronic health records system crashed three weeks ago and affected services for hundreds of patients, according to three reports released by the VA inspector general.

VA Inspector General Michael J. Missal said in a video last week that his office received wide-ranging complaints to its hotline and from Congress members since the Cerner Electronic Health Record launch at Mann-Grandstaff VA Medical Center in October 2020. Complaints included unauthorized and inaccurate medication orders, errors in patients' name and genders, issues in scheduling primary care appointments, misdirect links to VA Video Connect appointments, and lost referrals.

The VA signed a contract with Cerner Corp. in May 2018 to overhaul its health record system and make it compatible with the Defense Department. At the time, lawmakers expressed concerns about the project because of previous failed attempts by the VA and DOD to merge their systems.

The inspector general reports released last week focused on the complaints and failings within medication management, care coordination, and the ticketing process, which the staff utilizes to request help and report issues. Officials for the inspector general reviewed the allegations between January 2021 to June 2021, many of which Missal said the reports confirmed.

"We found serious deficiencies and failures in the implementation of the system, which increase the risk of patient safety and made it more difficult for clinicians to provide quality health care," Missal said.

The problems with the new records system at the Spokane VA hospital reached a fever pitch March 3. The computer system encountered an outage amid a routine software upgrade, which caused a jumbling of patient data, according to Paula Paige, director of communications of the VA's Electronic Health Record Modernization Integration Office.

The outage limited veterans' service and affected more than 200 patient records. For example, when a VA employee received a patient's record, the system occasionally provided information from a different patient. The system returned online the following day, but employees at Mann-Grandstaff said they were still unable to access some patient records.

The inspector generals reports have Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., asking the VA to stop its electronic health system rollout Saturday in Walla Walla, Wash.

"After hearing from the VA Office of Inspector General, it's clear to me that VA is not ready for go-live of the EHR system at the VA Medical Center in Walla Walla and we need to put a pause on this rollout right now," Murray said in a released statement. "Here is my message to VA: stop the rollout before there is another catastrophic failure  get this right and get this fixed in Spokane first. Patient safety and the quality of care our veterans receive must come first."

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., had called for a halt to the system rollout two weeks ago.

"If the new electronic health record delivers anything short of the gold-standard, timely care our veterans deserve, then it is not ready to serve the Walla Walla community  not until any and all outstanding issues are resolved," McMorris Rodgers said.

In the medication report, the inspector general found issues within the electronic health record system, including discontinued future medication orders, medications ordered without a medical provider's review or approval, pharmacy staff unable to process outpatient orders, and changes staff or providers made that did not carry over or go into effect.

In the care coordinator report, issues include alert failures for staff about patients at high risk for suicide or disruptive behavior, errors in patient's information such as name and gender, delays in appointments, failures in VA Video Connect appointments, lost or unaddressed referrals, and errors in laboratory orders.

In the ticketing process report, Cerner's service desk had support staff issues that included being unable to view and replicate reported issues, closure of tickets before issues could be resolved, and lack of communication with users on ticket status. This resulted in staff creating workarounds instead of requesting assistance.

While the VA concurred with many of the findings, the agency said it had already addressed many of the issues since the time that the records system was reviewed in 2021. Nevertheless, the VA said it will continue to evaluate the problem resolution processes mentioned in the report.

Last July, the VA promised a new approach for the project to overhaul its health record system, following concerns from federal watchdogs and employees who used the program.

McDonough testified in July before the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee about the challenges and the department's plan moving forward. He vowed a "surge of activity" in the coming weeks and months to correct the problems.
Changes to the SunCommercial's back end processing means the e-edition is getting a facelift. The biggest change is the e-edition, by default, is now presented in Text view.
Nigel Tutt

Chief Executive of Priority One

The decision announced a couple of weeks ago to extend Tauranga City Councils Commission is one that will be welcomed by the business community. The decision was made to extend the Commissions term and return to Local Body Elections in July 2024.

At Priority One we think that this is a sensible decision. We support democracy and the path back to elections. We also need to recognise that this city has significant problems that need a strong and speedy hand to fix; and these problems are not solved yet. The problems that led the previous council to be relieved of their duties mainly relate to inability to provide the city with the future plan it needs. In short, that means increasing investment in infrastructure for housing and transport and investing in facilities for our community.

For democracy to be effective it must be trusted; more time will help progress plans to fix our problems and it will also help to attract quality candidates for the next election. TCC is a big organisation, with around $3 billion in assets and spending $4-600 million per year looking after a growing city. Strong governance skills and experience are required alongside a great understanding of the community.

Feedback from the business community towards the commission has been very supportive. They respect action and know that our city needs to work hard to reduce the gap in infrastructure and facilities. Businesses have seen substantial rates rises under the Commission but are supportive because they recognise that investment is needed. Good infrastructure is needed to provide efficient transport systems and for better living standards via housing and facilities. The ability to attract staff is critical, with housing affordability  Tauranga is the least-affordable in NZ  the main detractor. In future we will need more nurses, teachers and healthcare workers to support our population as well as our economy; it is essential that we can house them.

One of the topics that frequently comes up around local council is the relationship and input from government. This is especially the case with the Commission, where the relationship with Wellington is clearly closer and expected to pay dividends. Local rates and investment have increased, we should rightly expect this to be understood and matched by government; we cant do it all on our own.

Attention therefore turns to an area where we do get to vote this year, in the by-election for Simon Bridges now vacant position. This provides voters with an excellent opportunity to support those who understand our community and can support it the best. Lack of government investment in this area, particularly for infrastructure in a fast-growing city, has long been a bugbear for residents. Is this by-election the chance we need for our community to be listened to?
Amalgamation - its a word that has been bandied about in the Western Bay of Plenty and Tauranga for three decades.

Is it time to take the conversation seriously, and look at the future of the regions two councils?

Western Bay of Plenty District Council mayor Garry Webber thinks it is.

We're like Siamese twins, he says. Were welded together, not just at the head and the hip, but right the way down.

The sooner we understand we need to join together and overcome the stupidity of what we have, the better off well all be.

I believe over the next five years, 10 years at the latest, we should be one organisation.

There was crossover between the areas water supply, wastewater and infrastructure, he says.

Omokoroas wastewater is processed by Tauranga and the Waiari Water Supply Scheme that started in Te Puke provides water to Papamoa, are examples he gave.

Webber says the kiwifruit and forestry industries and the Port of Tauranga are drivers of the local economy. Freight goes through Western BOP to get to the port in Tauranga, so the two regions rely on each other.

Former Tauranga City mayor Stuart Crosby agrees Tauranga is a huge beneficiary of the Western Bays economy.

He says this is in the area of agriculture, horticulture and manufacturing, but the port is in Tauranga as is a lot of the service industry.

We rely on each other to grow our economy, says Crosby. And our economy has been part of one of the fastest regional economies in New Zealand.

Stuart Crosby was Tauranga's mayor for 12 years. Photo: LGNZ.

Despite this, the Tauranga mayor from 2004 to 2016, says it is a little premature to amalgamate as there is currently a review into the Future for Local Government.

It may well be a reasonable model, but we need to go through the process first, says Crosby.

Future for Local Government

The independent ministerial review is looking at a new system of local governance in response to the changing nature of New Zealand.

There are currently 67 local councils and 11 regional councils.

Webber, who started as a councillor in 2010, says there is a hell of a lot of things local government could do better.

Project management in local government is tardy to say the least, it takes us far too long to build stuff, he says.

It takes us far too long to work out what we want to do. And then when we work out what we want to do quite often we get it wrong, because democracy is not a skill test.

So, we have people making well intentioned decisions, but they haven't got the business background or the technical background, says Webber.

A lot of the decisions become political decisions and it's around, in many instances, will this get me re-elected?

When you're in local government, you need to have a strategic focus because you're there to do things for future generations, says Webber.

Webber, who is not standing in the October election, does not believe the Future for Local Government review would change much.

The fundamental change is councillors will become far more accountable, he says.

Crosby says if local government takes on a new form and role through the review it could be quite exciting.

He says local government could have a stronger role in the delivery of health, social housing and employment in partnership with the government.

The review will be the first change in the local government framework in 30 years.

In 1989 local government underwent a restructure. It was proposed the Mount Maunganui Borough Council, Tauranga City Council (TCC) and WBOP amalgamate. Only Tauranga and Mount Maunganui did so.

Crosby says this was in part because the rural sector didnt want to join the city and it was a lost opportunity.

Don Thwaites. Photo: John Borren/SunLive.

Western Bay District councillor and mayoral candidate, Don Thwaites says he is not fully opposed to amalgamation but wants to see projects in the Western Bay achieved first.

These include the Katikati Bypass, a secondary school in Omokoroa and building a community centre in Maketu.

As well as work with Tauranga on projects of interest, like stage two of the Takitumu Northern Link (TNL), the State Highway 29 Tauriko West bypass and the Omokoroa interchange between Omokoroa Road and SH2.

I'd like to get a few things done before we consider joining with the 50,000 ratepayers in Tauranga.

If we get swallowed into Tauranga, I can just see a big museum being built and lots of stuff and down in the CBD.

Critical Infrastructure

The TNL and Omokoroa interchange have been in the planning stages for close to two decades.

Last year work started on the first stage of the TNL, a 6.8km four-lane expressway between Tauranga and Te Puna, but the Omokoroa to Te Puna section was delayed by the Government.

Webber says in 2004 a SmartGrowth roading structure plan for the sub region was agreed on and WBOP Council have met their capital requirements for the plans over the years.

The SmartGrowth committee was formed in 2004, it provides a unified vision, direction and voice for the WBOP.

Representatives from WBOPDC, TCC, Bay of Plenty Regional Council and tangata whenua make up the leadership group.

The reason Western Bay is indebted and has high rates in comparison, is because we did what we agreed to at SmartGrowth, says Webber.

We put the capital requirement in and went ahead and did it.

Tauranga City for many, many years failed to put the capital requirements in to meet those plans in their long-term plans.

They haven't had the intestinal fortitude to make the hard decisions.

Crosby and fellow former mayor Greg Brownless dispute this, and both say the lack of investment in state highways is a government failure not a council failure.

We [TCC] definitely pushed the boundaries within our balance sheet, as hard as we could both in rates and debt, says Crosby.

Where the governments of the day constantly failed is on our state highway network and that's going back 30 years.

We had to have toll roads here and do it ourselves or in partnership with the government since 1988.

Tauranga has two of the countrys three toll roads, the Tauranga Eastern Link and Takitimu Drive, and the Tauranga Harbour Bridge had a toll from 1988 until 2001.

The real reason why there's been a lack of government input here is because it's a safe national seat, says Crosby.

Throughout the years the government has changed the rules for investment with some prioritising bus lanes others freight, he says

Governments can't agree for the long term on a transport system, and it cost this country billions of dollars of wasted time and money.

Governments, and it doesn't matter what colour, they are kept changing the rules.

Former Tauranga mayor Greg Brownless. File image/SunLive.

Brownless, the mayor from 2016 to 2019, agrees with Crosby.

Councils are not required to pay for state highways, he says. That is the governments responsibility.

This government has delayed, dithered and downsized, the state highway improvements at Bethlehem.

It has no plans whatsoever for state highway [29] through Tauriko. And it is hugely behind and way over budget for the Bayfair to Baypark link.

Webber says now is the time to start looking at amalgamation to create a thriving sub region in the future.

We didn't get stuff done 20 years ago, but if we don't do it now, were creating a district for future generations, that's going to be impossible.

-Local Democracy Reporting is Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ On Air
Bay of Plenty

Our client is starting a new project out in Waihi/Katikati area and needs to bring on a crew of candidates to see the project...



View or Apply on GoodWork.co.nz
Bay of Plenty

Our client has plenty of work in the pipeline and as such they are in need of hammerhands for an immediate start.The successful...



View or Apply on GoodWork.co.nz
Atlantic, IA (50022)

Today

Cloudy early, then off and on rain showers for the afternoon. High 54F. Winds ENE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 40%..

Tonight

Showers early, then cloudy overnight. Low 48F. Winds NE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 50%.
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.
Current Print Subscribers will be prompted to either login to their current site user account or to create a new one. A confirmation email will be sent when a new user account is created, which must be confirmed within three days in order to provide uninterrupted online access through your Print Subscription.

Once the email address is confirmed please provide your Account Number to activate your Print Subscription Service.
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.
Thank you for Reading!

Please log in, or sign up for a

new account and

Purchase a Subscription

to continue reading.
GRANGER  Mitchell Shirocky watched the horizon closely for about eight minutes as he saw a tornado  later confirmed as an EF-1  that travel
Before submitting an Obituary to the Temple Telegram, please review our Obituary Policy.

View Obituary Policy
In 2017, the old Chancellor's residence was renovated for its new purpose, housing the Gregg Museum of Art & Design. Along with a new addition of over 15,000 square feet, the museum has multiple galleries along with spaces for classes and private events.
What just happened? Tesla's first European manufacturing plant officially opened yesterday, just over two years after it was announced, and CEO Elon Musk was there to celebrate with an obligatory dance. The first thirty Model Y vehicles manufactured at the $5.5 billion Grenheide Gigafactory rolled off the production line, watched by the buyers and their families.

"This is a great day for the factory," Musk said, describing the occasion as "another step in the direction of a sustainable future," writes Reuters. He added that Tesla would likely launch a test version of its new Full Self-Driving software in Europe next year, assuming it gets approval from regulators.

"It's quite difficult to do full self-driving in Europe," he told factory workers on Tuesday, citing the difference between the US and Europe, where roads and rules vary drastically in each country.

Haha sure :)  Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 4, 2022

Musk promised a Twitter user that he would break out the dad-dancing at the opening ceremony, which he lived up to. He appears to enjoy showing off his moves; the world's richest man did an equally awkward jig at the opening of the Shanghai Gigafactory in January 2020. Maybe he's keeping in shape for his fight with Vladimir Putin.

Tesla is planning on the factory outputting 5,000 to 10,000 vehicles per week by the end of this year, with an eventual production capacity of 500,000 units per year and 50 gigawatt hours (GWh) of battery power.

Although the factory was only announced in 2019, its completion hasn't been without problems. Environmentalists have campaigned against the projecttwo protestors at the opening blocked traffic for hoursand a German court ordered groundwork to be temporarily stopped over the environmental impact. Tesla has also had to deal with licensing delays from German authorities.

Tesla said the new owners received the Model Y Performance configuration, which cost 63,990 euros ($70,500) and offers a 320-mile range. The company added that new orders from the plant could be delivered from April.

Videos courtsey of Bloomberg, CNBC
What just happened? While cryptocurrency continues to see more widespread adoption, not every country embraces the likes of Bitcoin and Ethereum. Thailand, for example, will ban the use of digital assets for the payment of goods and services as of April 1.

The move follows earlier discussions between the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Bank of Thailand (BOT) over the need to regulate such activity by digital asset business operators as it could impact the country's financial stability and economy, writes the SEC.

The SEC added that digital asset business operators, including crypto exchanges, would have 30 days to comply with the new rules from the effective date. In addition to not providing the services, businesses are also barred from encouraging or promoting the use of digital assets to pay for goods or services.

The good news for crypto fans in Thailand is that the restrictions don't extend as far as China's. The SEC confirmed that the rules would not affect trading or investments in digital assets.

The regulator writes that its decision took into account the inherent risks associated with cryptocurrencies, including its volatile price, the potential for hacking and personal data exposure, and it being used for money laundering.

Blockchain.News reports that Thailand in January said it was already planning to regulate the use of cryptocurrencies, which have become increasingly popular in the wake of the country's economic slowdown. Neighboring Indonesia, meanwhile, has warned businesses not to offer and facilitate crypto sales following an increase in its usage.

Despite the country's long intention to ban it as a payment method, Thailand is reportedly considering allowing Russian and Ukrainian tourists to pay with crypto after Mastercard and Visa suspended the use of Russian cards abroad due to international sanctions.

Bitcoin's price has dropped by around $1,000 since its peak yesterday but remains at a near three-week high.

Image credit: Rodnae Productions
In brief: Microsoft has confirmed claims made earlier this week by hacking group Lapsus$ that it was the victim of a cybersecurity incident. Redmond seemingly dismissed the matter as no big deal, noting it was already looking into the issue before the group went public and downplaying the importance of secure source code.

A blog post addressing the matter notes that Microsoft's investigation uncovered a single account had been compromised, which granted the attacker "limited access." According to Microsoft, their team was already investigating the compromised account when Lapsus$ publicly disclosed the intrusion.

If you recall, the group released a dump earlier this week containing around 37GB worth of Microsoft data. The haul reportedly included portions of source code for Bing, Bing Maps and Cortana.

Microsoft Security has been tracking criminal actor DEV-0537 (LAPSUS$) targeting organizations with data exfiltration and destructive attacks - including Microsoft. Analysis and guidance in our latest blog: https://t.co/gTMXJCoPY5  Microsoft Security (@msftsecurity) March 22, 2022

Microsoft said it "does not rely on the secrecy of code as a security measure," adding that viewing source code does not lead to an elevation of risk.

Microsoft also touched on some of the group's preferred tactics, many of which aren't all that common among threat actors. Examples include phone-based social engineering, SIM-swapping, accessing personal e-mail accounts and even paying employees, suppliers or business partners of target organizations for access to credentials or multi-factor authentication (MFA) approval.

Redmond additionally provided tips that organizations and individuals can use to protect themselves, including using MFA, avoiding phone-based MFA methods and leveraging passwordless authentication like Windows Hello, Microsoft Authenticator or FIDO tokens.

Lapsus$ has been extremely busy this year, having already hit big tech targets including Nvidia, Samsung and Vodafone. Authentication firm Okta has also fallen victim, with the company updating its statement to confirm that around 2.5 percent of its clients have potentially been impacted and whose data may have been viewed or "acted upon."

Image credit Aktar Hossain
Keeping growth curves in check and offering value to your customers is challenging, but retail analytics makes it happen in one go. Budget and resources are always limited, and creating the right mix of tactics for success is always a problem, but smart retail solutions make it possible.

But to get their business off the ground, Dayta AI successfully raised $1.8M for Grosvenor, XCEL NEXT Ventures, EC healthcare (2138. HK), and Abacus PropTech for their pre-A round funding. The proceeds will be poured into optimizing overseas expansion but most importantly, to fuel research and development to further help you ace your business decisions.

Today, Dayta AI provides retail data analytics through Cyclops to help you transform data into actionable insights. In return, allowing you to strategize your data and use it to gain enticing returns. We couldn't stress enough how important retail analytics is for your business. So here is a brief run-through of its basics.

Why Is Analytics Important in Retail?

First, several retail sectors are becoming digital. Thus, eCommerce retailers also shift to the digital way of outsmarting competitors. As a result, the traditional way of developing business decisions will leave you running behind.

To keep up with the competition in a digitized space, most successful eCommerce retailers rely on accurate retail analytics and use it as a foundation for making informed business decisions.

With the help of retail analytics software, you can use retail analytics to make shopping more meaningful, convenient, and personalized. Doing so can improve sales and increase consumer loyalty.

How Is Data Analytics Used in Retail?

Retail analytics compress large volumes of diverse data into a few details, so you won't have to spend time categorizing every aspect of your retail business. With retail data analytics, you can analyze your strength and weaknesses and strategize them.

However, it's not just about smart retail analytics making data more interpretable. It is also the way it can forecast outcomes with supplied data so you can implement actions to succeed. These make it essential in running a retail store.

Best Retail Analytics Software Tools

Besides collecting relevant data, smart retail solutions let you understand customer habits and find ways to attract new customers. You will need retail analytics software to collect data effectively and to guide you. Dayta AI's Cyclops is one of the best options to date.

Dayta AI's Cyclops

Dayta AI dedicates itself to being the all-in-one smart retail solution for operators to collect, analyze, and interpret big data. So far, it has attracted a large amount of support from renowned Hong Kong investors and organizations, indicating their credibility in the field.

As your trusted partner, Dayta AI made Cyclops and offers insightful retail analytics using only your camera. Cyclops is a cloud-based SaaS solution that connects to almost all video cameras to gather, analyze, and shed light on newfound in-store data.

In addition, Cyclops analyzes more than thousands of videos every day, collecting store visitor data in real-time to evaluate and interpret later on through retail analytics. This smart retail solution works by transmitting video footage via the internet throughout the day, providing valuable data and insights about store visitors.

Cyclops is also a single tool applicable to a range of sectors, such as marketing, operations, strategy, leasing, and more. The actionable insights acquired by Cyclops can benefit others within your organization.

Features

Supports over 95% of cameras: Cyclops supports any RTSP-compatible camera, so you can use your existing video cameras without replacing any equipment or incurring any upfront costs. Cyclops is a plug-and-play solution that can be deployed remotely without the need for additional expenses in setup.

Guarantees privacy; no facial recognition: Cyclops does not store faceprints to ensure privacy in compliance with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Cyclops only capture the demographics and behavior and the in-store visitors but never their identities.

Traffic data: With this retail analytics software, you can monitor people who are only passing by, entering specific locations, or entering a zone defined by the user. It also tracks the number of people engaged in a user-defined zone.

Behavioral data: Cyclops can gather data on a visitor's average time spent browsing and staying at a store and the average time spent at the queueing area. Additionally, the retail analytics software can monitor a customer's engagement stint and behavior when entering your store.

Demographic: Cyclops determines the average percentage of females and males and the average percentage of different age groups.

KPI analysis: Cyclops' smart retail solution allows you to examine and compare your sales, traffic, and engagements using applicable metrics widely adopted in your industry.

Heatmap analysis: An in-store heatmap plots the number of times customers spend at each store section. Warmer colors indicate areas where customers spend the most time, and cooler ones are where they spend the least time.

Executive report: Along with detailed retail analytics, you can also produce executive reports in just a click to summarize your data every month. This will let you evaluate your performance easily.

All in all, Cyclops features smart retail software that protects consumer privacy and ensures seamless operation since it is built on cloud technology. It is also ready to scale for your specific needs.

Apart from that, it provides predictive analytics in retail where you can figure out why visitors engage. You can also evaluate their experience through the state-of-the-art in-house algorithm.

Cyclops is also IP-camera compatible, mounting an extra layer of intelligence to your existing infrastructure. Its proprietary AI algorithm is also trained using retail data gathered from retail stores. In other words, you can be assured with nothing but the highest level of accuracy.

Pros

Easy to operate SaaS solution for your retail needs

100% cloud-based

Supports most cameras most retail stores already have

GDPR compliant to ensure data privacy and security

Collects every data that you will need

Generates report so you can summarize, compare, and evaluate

Cons

No freemium version

Using Dayta AI's Cyclops, you can quickly and easily gain better insights about your retail store using the cameras you already have. Now equipped with the data you've collected, you can develop more effective business strategies and use the information efficiently to make better decisions.

Make sure to upgrade your business strategies now and generate the best business decisions ever with smart retail solutions like Dayta AI's Cyclops! Enjoy a FREE 14-day trial here.

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
If you constantly get text notifications from people trying to sell you something, or people who want to offer you deals, you may be a victim of spam texts.

Spam texts are irritating and a waste of time, but unfortunately, there is no one solution to prevent it from happening. However, there are some things that you can do to minimize the number of spam texts that you get.

Do Not Answer Spam Texts

One of the most important things to remember in spam texting is not replying to them. Also, never click on a link within a spam text.

If you are not sure if the text is legitimate or if it is spam, do not reply until you've done your research. This is to ensure that your personal information is protected, as hackers frequently use spam messages to gather your information for illegal purposes.

Also Read: Facebook Is Using Your Two-Factor Authentication-Info To Send You Spam Messages

Active the Spam Filter

iPhones have spam-filtering features that you can activate to help you sort out your texts. To activate Apple's spam blocking, open the "Settings" app and select "Messages." Under "Messages," select "Unknown & Spam." Activate "Filter Unknown Senders."

The spam blocking feature of iPhones are more basic than Androids because it blocks phone numbers that you do not have saved in your contact list and you have not been in contact with before, and this could be an issue because it can affect the numbers that you are expecting a call from, according to The Verge.

Block Specific Texts

When you receive a spam text, you can block that person's number from contacting you again. To do this, open the spam text and choose the user icon located on top of the page, according to Apple.

Next, tap on the "info" icon and choose "Block this Caller." If you wish to report an iMessage that you received as spam, look for the "Report Junk" link under the message, tap it, and choose "Delete" then "Report Junk."

Remember that this does not automatically block the phone number. You need to do that separately.

Forward the Spam Text to 7726

If you are using one of the major telecommunications carriers such as AT&T, Verizon, or T-Mobile, you can report a spam text by forwarding it to 7726. This may also work with other telecommunications carriers. You can check with your carrier to find out if it is possible.

Those who live in the United Kingdom and are using Ofcom can forward spam texts to 7726, according to PCMag.

Block Spam Texts Using the Carrier's Services

Most carriers offer spam-blocking services for phone calls, which can carry over to spam texts. Carrier sites will give details about free and for-pay security services provided by AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile. If you use a different carrier, check their website for more information about it.

Use Third-Party Spam-Blocking Service

If the strategies stated above are not working, you can try using a third-party anti-spam service. You can use RoboKiller for $4.99 a month or $39.99 a year after a 7-day trial. You can also go for Nomorobo for $1.99 a month per device after a 14-day trial.

Take advantage of the trial before you choose the service, so you know which one works for you best.

In 2018, Android released a feature to fight spam messages.

Related Article: WhatsApp To Show You Frequently Forwarded Messages To Avoid Spam, Fake News

This article is owned by Tech Times

Written by Sophie Webster

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
China Tiangong space station will soon accept tourists. This announcement was made by the first Chinese astronaut named Yang Liwei.

Liwei, who is also a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), said that people, even without formal astronaut training, can soon visit the Chinese space module once it is completed.

"It is not a matter of technology but of demand. And it can be realized within a decade as long as there is such demand," said the pioneering taikonaut via ECNS Wire, a Chinese media.

China Tiangong Space Station's Tourism

According to Space.Com's latest report, the Chinese space station is expected to accept tourists within a decade. This effort is a part of the Asian country's planned space tourism.

Right now, other space companies, such as Blue Origin, have already conducted their own commercial flights. But, the individuals who participated still underwent formal astronaut training.

But, China's plan is quite different since people who want to visit the Tiangong space station are no longer required to go any astronaut training.

As of the moment, many commercial spaceflight options are being developed to make commercial visits to the Tiangong space station possible.

These include the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) space rides, which are expected to be operational around 2025.

Meanwhile, Space Transportation is also working on new spacecraft with wings. The space plane agency said that their new rockets will soon have their suborbital flight as soon as 2025.

Tiangong is Still Incomplete

As of the moment, China still hasn't completed its giant space station. But, the Chinese government said that six launches are expected to happen this year as part of Tiangong's construction.

The upcoming space missions include the two crewed flights, Shenzhou 14 and Shenzhou 15. Aside from these, a pair of cargo supply missions are expected to happen.

Right now, the exact completion date of Tiangong is still unpredictable. But, some space experts claimed that the Chinese space station will start its operations by the end of 2022.

In other news, the NASA Hubble Space Telescope captured a spiral galaxy using two different cameras. Meanwhile, ESA's Gaia observatory was able to take a photo of NASA's JWST.

For more news updates about the China Tiangong space station and its upcoming activities, always keep your tabs open here at TechTimes.

Related Article: Space Race 2022: China Seeks Dominance by Presenting Three-Step Lunar Exploration and Other 2030 Missions!

This article is owned by TechTimes

Written by: Griffin Davis

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Crypto dystopia might, as claimed by Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum. He claimed that if the blockchain space is implemented incorrectly, there could be various issues.

As of the moment, the cryptocurrency market's value is still rising as more people invest in Ethereum and other popular digital coin brands.

However, the blockchain industry is still unstable, given that governments across the globe do not regulate it. Now, Buterin said that some trends could further affect the dystopia potential of the rising crypto space.

Crypto Dystopia: Ethereum CEO Now Worried

According to CNBC's latest report, Buterin said that one of the crypto trends he is worried about is the sudden rise of NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens).

Also Read: Australia Gives Green Light to Crypto Exchange Approval Through a Verification Badge

Right now, the NFT market is seeing more investors and digital artists. Many of the popular digital artworks already generated millions of dollars after they were sold from one buyer to another.

But, Buterin is worried about this since he believes that NFTs can prevent Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies from reaching their full potential.

"If we don't exercise our voice, the only things that get built are the things that are immediately profitable. And those are often far from what's actually the best for the world," said Vitalik via The Time Magazine.

Although this is the case, the ETH founder clarified that Ethereum is being used for important projects like urban planning, voting systems, universal basic income, public-works projects, and other programs.

Other Issues in Crypto

Aside from the NFT trend, Buterin also said that the anonymity of cryptocurrencies could be used for illegal activities.

These include evading taxes. Right now, cryptocurrencies are not really under the taxes implemented by government officials since they are still unregulated.

Because of this, many individuals use these digital coins to earn as much money as possible without settling their taxes.

Aside from taxes, sanctions can also be evaded using cryptocurrencies. The U.S. government has already seen this in the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict.

If you want to see more details about Vitalik's concerns regarding the crypto space, you can visit this link.

In other news, Prince Philip of Serbia praised the current top cryptocurrency, which is Bitcoin. Meanwhile, Australia's crypto regulation movement will soon create a new infrastructure for safer and easier blockchain investment and transactions.

For more news updates about cryptocurrency and other related business tech topics, always keep your tabs open here at TechTimes.

Related Article: UK Watchdog Sends Notices to Over 50 Crypto Firms Because of Misleading Ads

This article is owned by TechTimes

Written by: Griffin Davis

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Microsoft Translator is now receiving a new power with its AI translation from the Project Z-Code Mixture of Experts that introduces new machine learning techniques. The translations would focus on improving its services, including its new focus with large numbers of language pairs to help its system deliver its feature.

Microsoft Translator: Project Z-Code Focus on Giving Better AI Translation

Microsoft Azure's Cognitive Service, the Translator, is getting a significant upgrade to its systems and how it will fulfill its service with the Project Z-Code Mixture of Experts. The new tool would help in giving a better AI translation to the Microsoft Translator, and it borders on the project to expand more of its services for the public.

Project Z-Code will help by utilizing its new Mixture of Experts (MoE) architecture to support its model learn various new tasks to expand the service. It will specialize in optimizing the subset of parameters during its training, with the hopes of giving the Translator a better output that brings it to the users of the tech.

Read Also: Microsoft Likely Hacked by LAPSUS$! Tech Giant Investigates After Sensitive Leak

Project Z-Code: What is It?

Project Z-Code is from Microsoft's XYZ initiative that combines AI models for text, language, and audio. It also helps create AIs that will focus on giving outputs like speaking, talking, seeing, and hearing to improve the features of its systems. The Z-Code will help ensure the adoption of deep learning for its pre-trained models.

Z-Code's contribution to the Translator focuses on translating multiple different languages at the same time.

Microsoft's Features

The Redmond-based giant focuses its development on many software features that bring massive access to its many offers for the public to improve their use of its system. One of the many features that help accessibility is with the new Microsoft Edge that focuses on providing an alternative text for people challenged with vision.

Microsoft also focuses its features and services center on security, particularly with the new anti-malware feature it will soon launch to focus on combating its effects. The company also explained why TrickBot is one to target the MikroTik routers available in public, saying that the service is rid of access from hackers.

The software company has been in the industry long enough to understand its system's many trends and improvements that focus on bettering its services. The likes of the Project Z-Code aim to expand more of its services to machine learning and many code-building features, with an example of the Microsoft Translator.

Related Article: Unlimited 'League of Legends' RP? Players Can Now Have Limitless Free Riot Points, Thanks To Microsoft

This article is owned by Tech Times

Written by Isaiah Richard

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Apple ends the case with WiLAN regarding a patent dispute that focused on voice-over LTE (VoLTE) that the Canadian firm claimed that the Cupertino giant violated. The case was reviewed over at court, with the judge putting Apple to pay as much as $85 million to the company over the patent issues.

The lawsuit dates back to 2014 when WiLAN first brought the case against Apple.

Apple Settles WiLAN with $85 Million over VoLTE Dispute

Apple faces its fate by settling as much as $85.2 million to WiLAN over its dispute over the VoLTE patent that the Canadian firm brought to the courts. The new development, in this case, is that Apple signed a license agreement with WiLAN, but it will not excuse them from the settlement against the firm, especially for the tech.

The initial cost of damages that Apple is to settle was $145.1 million, that got reduced to $85.2 million as per the court's decision over WiLAN's miscalculation of the settlement. The Canadian firm got what it wanted and won the case for this conflict, focusing on the initial focus of the lawsuit regarding the use of its technology.

Read Also: Apple Watch Series 3 Will be Allegedly 'Phased Out' This Q3 2022, Says Kuo

Apple and WiLAN's Conflict

WiLAN claimed that there were two patents that Apple violated, and it started in 2014 when the tech was present on the iPhones released approximately eight years ago. According to Engadget, the cases WiLAN and Apple had focused in the United States, Canada, and Germany, and this recent settlement by the Cupertino giant ends it all.

Apple and its Lawsuits

Apple faces many lawsuits and cases in its operations, and it happens from external and internal elements present from the company's regular function. One of the most known cases on Apple's list right now is the employee that defrauded the company from 2008 to 2018 that got as much as $10 million from the Cupertino giant while working.

The company also faced disputes from lawmakers in the different branches of the government, with the famous antitrust case from the FCC being the center of it all. There is one case that involves Apple in the present, and these are the lawmakers that ask for more transparency from the tech company as part of the discoveries from NSO's Pegasus Spyware.

Apple's case with WiLAN is finally coming to rest with the settlement, but this will not be the only lawsuit that Big Tech would face on its career and existence. Nevertheless, Apple handles it by showing up on the court and accepting their fate regarding its deliberations and many decisions from higher authorities, involving the many techs it releases.

Related Article: Apple's Shazam to Roll Out New Features Including One that Recommends Upcoming Concerts

This article is owned by Tech Times

Written by Isaiah Richard

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Microsoft confirmed it has been hacked by LAPSUS$ shortly after the extortion group, which previously targeted Nvidia and Samsung, released 37GB of stolen source code allegedly from the software tech giant.

The tech giant has earlier begun its investigation of a potential hacking incident involving its cloud platform, Azure.

On top of that, before Microsoft started its investigation LAPSUS$ claimed to have hacked the tech giant. It simultaneously leaked some screenshots of sensitive data supposedly belonging to the Windows maker.

Microsoft Confirms LAPSUS$ Hack

As per a news story by The Verge, the extortion group behind the recent massive hacking incident involving Samsung and Nvidia has posted 37GB worth of files, which the gang claims to be source code for the search engine of Microsoft, Bing, and its virtual assistant, Cortana.

This time around, upon the investigation of Microsoft, it now confirms that "a single account" got compromised, allowing the hackers, dubbed by the tech firm as DEV-0537, to steal some source code of its services.

However, the giant firm said that the said account only granted the hackers "limited access." It also added that its cybersecurity team had already contained the compromised "single account," preventing further hacking activities.

What's more, the software tech giant went on to assure the public that both the code and data of its customers are not part of the recent hacking incident based on the investigation of the firm.

Microsoft also explained that exposing its source code to the public eye does not carry any risk, noting that it "does not rely on the secrecy of code as a security measure."

Microsoft and LAPSUS

It also turns out that the tech behemoth has been tracking the LAPSUS$ hacking group for weeks already, The Verge noted in the same report.

In fact, Microsoft has already learned some of the ways of the extortion group in infiltrating its targets. The tech firm even disclosed it in its recent security blog post.

Read Also: Microsoft Likely Hacked by LAPSUS$! Tech Giant Investigates After Sensitive Leak

Microsoft LAPSUS$ Hack

According to a recent report by Bleeping Computer, the source code that LAPSUS$ has posted online includes various products and services of Microsoft, such as Bing Maps, Bing, and Cortana.

The hacking extortion group claimed that the leak includes a whopping 90% Bing source code, along with around 45% of Cortana and Bing Maps source code.

Related Article: Microsoft Explains Why TrickBot Commonly Targets MikroTik Routers-Launching New Anti-Malware Tool

This article is owned by Tech Times

Written by Teejay Boris

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Blue Origin, the space firm of Jeff Bezos, lost its lead rocket engine engineer amid the nearing deliveries of its BE-4 rocket engine to the United Launch Alliance.

Blue Origin Lead Rocket Engine Engineer Leaves

The CEO of Blue Origin, Bob Smith, has notified the employees of the space firm that its senior vice president of Blue Engines, John Vilja, is departing the company, as per a news story by ArsTechnica.

The memo seen by the news outlet explained that the departure of the engineer leading the charge for the rocket engine program of Blue Origin comes as Vilja seeks to pursue both his hobbies and interests.

The Blue Origin CEO highlighted some of the contributions of VIlja to the space firm, noting that he "led the team to support eight New Shepard missions," which were all powered by the BE-3PM engines.

On top of that, the Blue Origin boss also said that the stint of Vilja leading the Blue Engines also "made progress on multiple engines' development programs."

Not to mention that the departing Blue Origin exec also established a team for the rocket engine program of the firm that included the best talents out there.

Blue Origin BE-4 Rocket Engines

The sources of ArsTechnica said in the same report that the departure of the lead engineer of Blue Engine comes as the BE-4 rocket engines are already in their final production.

The BE-4 flight engine is already nearing its deliveries to the testing site to ensure that it could already be used in real-life flying.

Despite that, a spokesperson from the space firm told ArsTechnica that even if the lead engineer of Blue Engines is leaving, it does not affect the production of the BE-4 engines.

Read Also: Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin Lead Engineer Leaves Company in Favor of Elon Musk's SpaceX

Blue Origin Finds Pete Davidson Replacement

Meanwhile, according to a recent report by CNN, Bezos' space firm has already found its replacement for the Saturday Night Live star, Pete Davidson, who was previously supposed to fly to space.

Davidson is supposed to fly in the New Shepard rocket of Blue Origin, along with five other paying customers as part of the space tourism project of the firm.

However, when Blue Origin announced a delay for the said flight, it also revealed that Davidson will no longer be in the upcoming space tourism journey.

Instead, the SNL star will be replaced by the chief architect of the suborbital rocket of Blue Origin, Gary Lai.

Related Article: Blue Origin Confirms Pete Davidson Will Not Longer Be in the Next Space Flight, Launch Moved to March 29

This article is owned by Tech Times

Written by Teejay Boris

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Google Maps recently spotted a clumsy moment featuring a young boy holding some fruits on the street in Estonia. The brief clip was discovered thanks to the Street View cameras.

What happened to the boy who was carrying a bag full of apples?

Google Maps Sees a Boy Crossing a Street

Google's mapping application has been used by a lot of people to track their locations on a particular map. When you want to go to a nearby restaurant, you can refer to this app.

This week, Google's Street View cameras spotted a random boy who happens to be traversing the road while carrying a bag. Before it went viral on TikTok, it previously trended online on other social media platforms.

According to @googleearthguy, a prominent figure on TikTok who regularly posts his so-called "daily earth moments," there's something unexpected that happened to the boy in the picture.

Moreover, the post which shows the boy in Estonia has already garnered over 60,000 views since its release last March 11.

For a close look at the Google Maps image, the cameras from the search engine giant happened to snap the image of a boy in a very unexpected part.

From its looks, the young lad appeared to be scooping up the apples that fell from the bag he was holding a while ago.

Related Article: Google Maps Outage Now Fixed After Technical Issues Surface Worldwide

What TikTok Fans Said About the Boy in Viral Photo

According to The Sun, several TikTokers have commented on the boy who had suffered from an untimely mishap. One user from the video-viewing platform assumed that the boy's mother would be mad at him when he went home.

Furthermore, there's another person who commented that the poor guy just wanted to get his apples.

In another reply, the source spotted that one commenter likened the situation to him holding some eggs that his mom requested to buy.

Weird Google Street View Photos

Last December, Tech Times reported that Google Maps managed to snap a strange photo of a stealth bomber that is supposed to be undetected by any radar.

At that time, the publication wrote it was indeed an image of a fighter jet called a B-2 stealth bomber. When it went viral on Reddit and other social media sites, some users said that it would be taken down soon because of its controversy.

Speaking of a bomber, one person said that these stealth aircraft have "photobombed" the picture.

For more bizarre images caught on Street View, Daily Record listed some of the stuff that you might want to see in Scotland. From a Fife streetside brawl to a hanging tiger in Glasglow, there's a lot more to discover on Google Maps.

If you're looking for another list to read about creepy Google Earth moments, you can check our previous report about it.

Read Also: Useful Google Maps Tricks That Are Often Overlooked on Android

This article is owned by Tech Times

Written by Joseph henry

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Tehachapi, CA (93561)

Today

Partly cloudy. High 77F. Winds NW at 15 to 25 mph. Winds could occasionally gust over 40 mph..

Tonight

A few clouds. Low 51F. Winds WNW at 10 to 20 mph.
Prosecutor Deltan Dallagnol committed several irregularities in the judicial process against Lula, since he acted in collusion with the then judge Sergio Moro.

On Tuesday, the Brazilian Superior Court of Justice (STJ) decided that Deltan Dallagnol, the former prosecutor of the Car Wash anti-corruption operation, must pay a US$15.000 compensation to former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva for moral damages.

As a result of Dallagnol's improper actions, the Workers' Party (PT) leader remained in jail for 580 days accused in several trials whose charges were later annulled.

The matter that gave rise to the compensation was Dallagnol's display of a graphic in which Lula appeared as the "chief" of a criminal organization. This happened at a press conference held in Sept. 2016, when the former Brazilian president was only being investigated for suspected corruption.

After that happened, his defense lawyers denounced Dallagnol's presentation as clearly intended to "turn the work of prosecutors into a spectacle of political persecution." This argument was accepted by the Supreme Court judges.

Lula isn't just a politician he is a stadist like Mandela. With Lula 36 million brazilians left extreme poverty and another 42 million ascended to the middle class. Rihanna is coming to deliver her baby in Brazil because we have SUS and Lula is the men behind the SUS. Our legend! pic.twitter.com/8cJh2PZxeS  Camila  (@aquinocamila13) March 23, 2022

"The spectacularization of this episode does not seem compatible with the seriousness that an investigation demands," Judge Luis Felipe Salomao said, adding that Dallagnol used expressions that affected Lula's public image and honor.

His lawyers interpreted the ruling as "a victory for the rule of law and an incentive for any citizen to fight the abuse of power. The compensation is just a symbol of historical reparation."

The "Car Wash" prosecutor also committed other irregularities in the process against Lula, since he acted in collusion with the then judge Sergio Moro. For these and other reasons, the Supreme Court annulled the sentences against Lula in 2021 and ordered to restart the trials in Brasilia-based courts, which have already filed all the processes.

With the decision of the Supreme Court, Lula recovered his political rights and the possibility of running in the October presidential elections, in which he is the favorite to win.
Since 1939, Finland had remained a neutral nation and committed not to send weapons to countries in conflict. This diplomatic tradition, however, was broken in February.

The armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine is about to be a month old without any signs of a short-term solution. Below are the main events as they happen.

EU intends to jointly purchase gas to reduce dependence on Russia

European Union leaders are planning to reach agreements on joint gas purchases at a two-day summit beginning Thursday in a bid to reduce dependence on Russian fuel, media reported, citing sources.

The European Commission said Wednesday it is ready to review and identify the amount of collective gas needs of EU countries, including liquefied natural gas (LNG) and hydrogen, to buy the fuel jointly, modeled on the purchase of vaccines against COVID-19.

Brussels intends to take advantage of U.S. President Joe Biden's presence at the summit to negotiate additional U.S. LNG supplies for the next two winters.

European Council President Charles Michel, in an invitation letter to EU leaders for the summit, wrote, among other things, that events in Ukraine pose various challenges within the EU, not least in terms of energy policy.

"At our meeting in Versailles (March 10-11 - IF) we agreed to end dependence on Russian gas, oil and coal as soon as possible. Now we must take immediate measures to protect our energy resources for the coming winter," Michel stressed.

The media forecast that the summit will discuss Moscow's demand to switch to paying for gas in rubles. This, as noted by media sources, could undermine the EU sanctions by effectively unfreezing Russian assets.

At the same time, the EU countries are still divided on the issue of imposing an embargo on Russian oil and gas imports.

Consensus is needed for a decision to be made, but Germany and Hungary are opposed, citing the economic damage that refusal of imports would cause.

Russian National Wealth Fund down by $6.8 bln in February 2022, says ministry

Russias National Wealth Fund (NWF) decreased by 675.16 bln rubles ($6.8 bln) in February 2022 to around 12.9 trillion rubles ($131 bln) as of March 1, 2022, the Finance Ministry said in a statement.

"As of March 1, 2022, the National Wealth Fund amounted to 12.935 trillion rubles, or 9.7% of GDP projected for 2022," the statement said.

As of February 1, the National Wealth Fund amounted to 13.6 trillion rubles ($177 bln). Its liquid part stood at 7.3% of GDP, or 9.73 trillion rubles ($116.5 bln), as of February 1.

As much as 38.561 bln euro, 4.178 bln pounds sterling, 600.304 bln Japanese yen, 226.702 bln Chinese yuan, 405,708 tonnes of gold in impersonalized form, and 142.1 bln rubles were deposited with the Bank of Russia. Moreover, 531.37 bln rubles were deposited with VEB.RF development bank.

Some $3 bln were invested in debentures of foreign states, 294.846 bln rubles and $2.363 bln were invested in securities of Russian issuers related to implementation of self-sustained infrastructure projects, and another 278.992 bln rubles - in preferred shares of credit organizations.

A total of 138.433 bln rubles were deposited with VTB and Gazprombank for financing self-sustained infrastructure projects, as well as 1.475 trillion rubles and 30.7 bln rubles were invested in ordinary shares of Sberbank and Aeroflot, respectively.

Renault announces suspension of activities at Moscow plant

Frances car producer Renault has suspended the operation of its Moscow plant and it is assessing available options regarding the stake in Avtovaz, the companys press service said in a statement on Wednesday.

"The Board of Directors of Renault Group met today and approved the following items: Renault Group activities in its manufacturing plant in Moscow are suspended as of today. Regarding its stake in Avtovaz, Renault Group is assessing the available options, taking into account the current environment, while acting responsibly towards its 45,000 employees in Russia," the statement said.

Fitch will withdraw ratings of Russian issuers by April 15

The international rating agency Fitch will withdraw the ratings of all Russian companies and their subsidiaries in accordance with sanctions imposed on Russia by the European Union.

As part of the fourth package of sanctions adopted by EU countries on March 15, 2022, European agencies are banned from rating Russia and Russian companies, as well as providing rating services to Russian clients.

"The ratings will be withdrawn by April 15, the deadline set by the EU," Fitch said in a press release.

Earlier this month, Fitch announced it would cease commercial activities in Russia.

Another international rating agency, S&P Global Ratings, this week also announced its intention to withdraw the ratings of Russian issuers by April 15.

China regrets UN Security Council's failure to reach a humanitarian agreement on Ukraine

Explanation of Vote by Ambassador Zhang Jun at the UN Security Council on the Draft Resolution on the Humanitarian Issue of Ukrainehttps://t.co/tP6MhkhjEO pic.twitter.com/QV4NHrWJey  Chinese Mission to UN (@Chinamission2un) March 23, 2022

China described as "regrettable" the failure of the United Nations (UN) Security Council to reach an agreement on the draft resolution submitted by Russia on the humanitarian situation in Ukraine.

"It is regrettable that the council was not able to reach as much agreement as possible," the Chinese envoy to the UN Zhang Jun said.

Russia expels U.S. diplomats. On Wednesday, the Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry sent a list of "persona non grata" to the U.S. embassy in Moscow. This action was taken in response to the President Biden's decision to expel Russian diplomats who were assigned to the permanent U.N. mission.

Serbia supports the Russian stance. The Serbian Parliament spokesperson Ivica Dacic assured that his country is undoubtedly on the side of Russia. "Serbia does not want war, but there is no dilemma as to which side its sympathies are on," he stressed.

This politician, who is running for Prime Minister in the April 3 elections, stated that Russia is the only country that truly supports Serbia. Meanwhile, the European Union is "hypocritical" because, no matter how much Serbia meets its demands, Brussels "will always ask for more and more."

The European Union "will demand the independence of Kosovo. We should look at our interests," Dacic said.

Ukraine will respond to the expulsion of its diplomats from Belarus. Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson Oleh Nikolenko said his country will respond to Belarus's "hostile" expulsion of some of its diplomats from the Ukrainian embassy in Minsk.

"The Belarusian side announced the reduction of the Ukrainian embassy in Minsk and the closure of the Ukrainian consulate in Brest. Twelve Ukrainian diplomats were ordered to leave Belarus within 72 hours," Nikolenko said, adding that some diplomats will continue to work at the embassy to provide assistance to Ukrainian citizens.

Russia prepares response to expulsion of 45 diplomats from Poland. The Polish government spokesman Stanisaw Zaryn announced the expulsion of 45 diplomats on the grounds that they "work for the Russian intelligence service."

Previously, on March 1, the Russian ambassador to Poland, Serguei Andreev, denounced the "deterioration" of diplomatic relations between both countries. He stated that those relations "have never been simple", but they have "worsened even further" after the "hysteria" that has been taking place since the beginning of the military operation in Ukraine.

Sweden will send 5,000 anti-tank rocket launchers to Ukraine. Swedish Foreign Affairs Minister Ann Linde said that her country decided to make a second shipment of weapons to Ukraine, after having authorized on February 26 a first shipment worth 37.7 million euros.

Defense Minister Peter Hultqvist confirmed the news and stated that "it is extremely important to continue to actively support Ukraine."

Since the Soviet invasion of its territory in 1939, Finland had remained a neutral nation and committed not to send weapons to countries in conflict. This diplomatic tradition, however, was broken in February.

Biden To Visit Poland Amid Raging War: Will His Visit Bring Relief? | Russia-Ukraine Stand-off: As Russian forces continue to rain missiles on Ukrainian cities, US President Joe Biden will travel to Poland at the end of the week. He will first travel to Brussels to attend Nato's pic.twitter.com/ivS83WUSaN  World News 24 (@DailyWorld24) March 23, 2022

Russia warns of consequences of sending of "peacekeepers." On Wednesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov warned that a possible deployment of peacekeepers from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Ukraine would be dangerous.

"A special operation is underway in Ukraine and a hypothetical clash between our military and NATO troops could lead to dire consequences," he said.

In mid-March, Poland's Deputy Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski suggested sending a NATO peacekeeping mission with an armed contingent to Ukraine. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov did not rule out that with this initiative Poland wants to control western Ukraine.

Joe Biden will travel to Europe for several days. The U.S. President will take part in international summits organized by NATO, the Group of Seven (G7), and the European Union.

Besides trying to convince his allies to impose new sanctions on Russia, he plans to work with allies on long-term adjustments to NATO's presence in Eastern Europe. Another of the his goals is to get Western countries to speak with "one voice" against China.

Russia will require "unfriendly" countries to pay for gas in rubles. Russian President Vladimir Putin said that his country will refuse to pay for Russian gas in dollars and euros and that he will collect supplies from "unfriendly" countries only in rubles.

Over 1,200 residents of DPR, LPR, Ukraine granted temporary asylum in Russia in past month: The majority of those who obtained temporary asylum are staying in Western Russias Penza Region: More than 1,200 residents of the peoples republics of Donetsk and https://t.co/glxZ39XfPI pic.twitter.com/cXSIvkb4fy  World News 24 (@DailyWorld24) March 23, 2022

Russian forces destroy major weapons depot. The Russian Defense Ministry spokesman said "high-precision, long-range, sea-based weapons" helped destroy a major weapons storage site in Rovno City.

"The attack destroyed the depot containing a large amount of weapons and military equipment of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, including those supplied by Western countries," he said.

Since the military operation in Ukraine began on Feb. 24, Russia has managed to destroy 184 Ukrainian aircraft and helicopters, 246 drones, 189 air defense missile systems, 1,558 tanks and other armored fighting vehicles, 156 multiple rocket launchers, 624 artillery campaign and mortars and 1,354 motorized military vehicles.

U.S. dislikes quick success in Russia-Ukraine peace talks. The United States would not like to see a rapid completion of the Moscow-Kiev peace talks but hopes that Russia is mired in prolonged hostilities, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Wednesday.

"It is unprofitable for Americans that this negotiation process will be completed quickly. They want to continue to send weapons to Ukraine. Apparently, they want to keep us in a state of hostilities for as long as possible," Lavrov said during a meeting with students and teachers of Russia's MGIMO University.

He expressed concern over the delivery of MiG fighter jets and U.S. Stinger man-portable air defense systems to Ukraine, which will pose "an enormous threat, because they will surely spread all over Europe."

Ukraine sets up nine humanitarian corridors. On Wednesday, Ukraine established nine corridors, enabling civilians to leave the conflict-torn areas and the delivery of aid. These corridors were set up to evacuate civilians from three towns in the southern Zaporizhzhia region and four villages in the central Kiev region, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said, adding that people will be also evacuated through the humanitarian routes from Mariupol city in the southeast and Rubizhne town in the east.
A day at the children's shelter... Even if there is a lot of work and lack of support, "it is worthwhile to heal"
Madisonville, KY (42431)

Today

Cloudy early, then thunderstorms developing this afternoon. High near 75F. Winds SSE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%..

Tonight

Scattered thunderstorms this evening becoming more widespread overnight. A few storms may be severe. Low 63F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%.
ADA [ndash] Memorials services for Clifford Brent Hall, 63, of Ada are 10:00 A.M. Thursday, May 5, 2022 at Trinity Baptist Church, Doug Brewer will officiate. Mr. Hall passed away Monday, April 25, 2022 at a local nursing home surrounded by family. He was born August 8, 1958 in Shawnee, OK t
Simone Champagne retiring Youngsville CAO poses for a photo in from of Youngesille City Hall on Monday, January 4, 2021 in Youngsville, La.. Champagne, who was the first woman to serve District 49 of the Louisiana House of Representatives and ran for city-parish president last year and also was involved in a serious car crash over the summer.
Lawmakers took their first steps Wednesday toward reining in how property insurers do business in Louisiana, advancing out of committee a series of proposals that regulate how insurance companies respond to policyholders in the aftermath of a catastrophe.

Following two years of devastating hurricanes, lawmakers said the No. 1 complaint theyve heard against insurers has to do with the seemingly endless churn of adjusters assigned to assess damage. With each new adjuster, the claims process essentially starts over.

Its absolutely maddening, said state Sen. Jeremy Stine, R-Lake Charles, who spoke of a friend now on his thirteenth adjuster.

Louisiana lawmakers want to strengthen bad faith penalties against insurers. That has industry worried. From Lake Charles to Houma to New Orleans, storm-battered communities across south Louisiana are fed up with insurers  and so too are their l

To address the issue, lawmakers advanced Senate Bill 198, which would require an insurer to send a written progress report  and provide a primary point of contact  to policyholders once a third adjuster is assigned within a six-month period.

I think theyll look at this and realize they need to be judicious on who they appoint on a claim, said Warren Byrd, deputy commissioner at the Louisiana Department of Insurance.

Another proposal that passed out of committee, Senate Bill 163, would require insurers to send a fact sheet to policyholders, explaining the ins-and-outs of the claims process, after a catastrophe. Its author, Senate Insurance Chairman Kirk Talbot, R-River Ridge, admitted that even for him, the claims process is confusing.

The disclosure form, which would be promulgated by the commissioner of insurance, would also explain how to file a complaint with state regulators and detail the rights and protections a policyholder has under state law.

We think it can make claims go a lot smoother, said Benjamin Albright, a lobbyist with the Independent Insurance Agents and Brokers of Louisiana.

Another measure, Senate Bill 212, authored by Stine, would establish a voluntary mediation program for policyholders and insurers to resolve their disputes. The legislation is modeled after a program set up by the Department of Insurance following Hurricane Ida designed to mediate disputes on residential property claims of up to $50,000.

Top stories in Baton Rouge in your inbox Twice daily we'll send you the day's biggest headlines. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up

On the other side of the State Capitol, lawmakers advanced out of committee House Bill 692, from state Rep. Ed Larvadain, D-Alexandria, which would create a 21-member board to investigate instances of fraud after a major weather event.

We all hear these complaints about bad actors, we all hear these horrible stories, but what we dont have right now is an entity at the state level that is focused on tackling this issue and trying to enforce the fraud laws that we have on the books, said Eric Holl, executive director of Real Reform Louisiana.

Insurance Commissioner Jim Donelon, a Republican, spoke against the legislation. He said his office already pays 12 employees to do fraud investigations, providing two recent examples in which the department levied penalties against an insurance agent and policyholder.

Under questioning from lawmakers, Donelon said he didnt know how many fraud complaints had been referred to State Police or the Attorney General's Office for criminal investigation or prosecution.

+6 Louisianans face endless insurance adjusters in Ida's aftermath: 'I feel like I have PTSD' Peggy Honore paid her insurance premiums on-time, every month for more than a decade, but in the months after Hurricane Ida tore the roof off 

In his closing remarks, Larvadain jabbed Donelon for failing to offer an example of fraud committed against a homeowner.

He couldnt say exactly one example of him dealing with fraud with homeowners, Larvadain said. He gave the perfect example of why you need it.

Much of the legislation that advanced Wednesday did so with the support of insurance industry lobbyists.

I think its a good thing to see that insurance companies have come with some proactive legislation, said state Sen. Louie Bernard, R-Nachitoches.
Homes and businesses on the east coast are facing the threat of gas shortfalls from 2024, prompting the competition watchdog to warn the nations liquefied-gas exporters are failing to live up to a promise they would maintain sufficient local supply.

While the market was likely to have enough supply this year, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) describes the outlook as finely balanced and forecasts shortages in southern states within two years that could hike costs for households with gas heaters and intensify pressure on gas-reliant manufacturers already struggling to remain viable.

ExxonMobil operates the Bass Strait oil and gas fields in a joint venture with BHP.

The longer-term outlook was even more concerning, said ACCC commissioner Anna Brakey, as gas shortages threatened to spread across the whole east coast market by 2026.

Commercial and industrial users are feeling the impact of this, she told the Australian Domestic Gas Outlook conference on Tuesday. They have told us they are receiving limited offers.
If it sounds like I have a special connection to Sizzler, its because I do, and not just because I am fat and like to eat food. I grew up in Toowoomba, in regional Queensland. Sizzler was an institution in that city for an extremely long time. From as early as I can remember, seemingly every single time we would drive by, the car park would always be full, the long line into the restaurant always out the door.

Sizzler had been overlooked and neglected and left behind by this country for a long time before its demise. It was the Garden of Eden with its green and white panelling, a beautiful cornucopia of trays full of pretty okay food. And we let it fade away, not taking the opportunity to gaze and graze when we could.

First established in Brisbane in 1985, and keeping an unexplainable yet unmistakable Queensland vibe throughout its expansion to other states, the last Sizzler store in the country shut up shop during the pandemic in 2020. However, the blame does not lay at the feet of COVID-19. Yes, the pandemic may have delivered the final blow, but we delivered all the serious blows before that.

There are so many things the pandemic has taken away from us. Many things we didnt appreciate enough when they were within our filthy unsanitised grasp. For me, one of the main ones is the all-you-can-eat buffet restaurant, Sizzler. The best restaurant in the world. The restaurant that Australia forgot.

Most famous for its cheese toast, which would arrive at your table piping hot soon after you sat down, Sizzler was the place you would eschew the regular menu that had dishes like steak and seafood, in favour of a spin around the iconic Salad Bar. Those two simple words Salad Bar evoke so much. To my mind, its the most beautiful phrase in the English language. The Salad Bar is where you had unlimited access to pasta, soup, salads, delicious crispy potato skins, plates of fruit (never touched this), and a dessert bar, including an ice cream machine. What could be better? What more could you people want? What more could they have done?

For my family, Sizzler was the fanciest place in town. It was the pinnacle of fine dining, and it was for special occasions only. I clearly remember the feeling of going to Sizzler for my 14th birthday, my parents finding enough money for me to bring along three friends. Sitting at the head of a long table, excitedly strategising our approach to the meal, knowing that for a couple of hours we were free from the constraints of everyday life. I felt like a powerful mob boss. Rules were flipped on their head, and we were allowed to start our meal at the ice cream machine, swirling it into little plastic bowls. Then, we would carefully decide what 10 different kinds of toppings and sprinkles to adorn our ice cream with until it was one disgusting sweet mushy soup you would leave half of on the table, before heading off to create another combination. That was our right, as Sizzler patrons. And it was glorious, just as Sizzler was.

In recent years Ive realised that people outside of areas where Sizzler held on, such as Toowoomba, or Caboolture, or Western Sydney, all viewed Sizzler in a much different way.

As a working-class kid in the country, it was always an extremely exciting event. In retrospect, I think some of it must have been about the experience of indulgence, which is not something we got to feel very often. The food might not have been out of a fancy French restaurant, but there was so much variety, there was so much possibility. I (shamefully) hadnt been to a Sizzler for a long while before they shut, my last experience coming at the Toowong sizzler in Brisbane, which was infamous for being the location where a woman put rat poison in the salad bar. Instead of turning me away from Sizzler for good, the rat poison incident being in the news reminded me about how much I missed Sizzler and the obviously too-accessible buffet. Where were the rest of you? At home, eating food that definitely didnt have rat poison in it? Pathetic.
Warning: this story contains major spoilers for the first season of And Just Like That...

Whether you liked it, loathed it, or tuned in purely out of nostalgic obligation, And Just Like That... achieved precisely what HBO Max wouldve hoped for: it got us talking.

It may not have been the perfect reboot (does such a thing exist?), but as far as dominating the cultural conversation, its hard to deny the enduring influence of the Sex and the City universe.

And Just Like That... the Sex and the City reboot is back for a second season. Credit:Binge/HBO

According to HBO Max, And Just Like That... posted the strongest debut in viewership numbers. So, it should come as no surprise that the series (which airs here on Binge) has been green-lit for a second season.
That particular staff member was obviously upset by that and felt awkward and I think responded to that. The woman later came back and asked for compensation because she was struggling to get a job as a result of what had happened to her and the church agreed to pay her a few months salary, which Mr Houston later reimbursed, Pastor Dooley said. The church said in a public statement that Mr Houston was dependent on sleeping tablets at the time, which he later overcame with professional help, and that he had immediately apologised to the recipient of the messages. The 2019 incident occurred at the Pullman Hotel in Sydney Olympic Park, and involved a member of the church who had been drinking in a group including Mr Houston earlier in the evening. Mr Houston is said to have been disoriented from a mixture of alcohol and anti-anxiety medication beyond the prescribed dose, when he lost his room key and knocked on the womans door. The truth is, we dont know exactly what happened next, Pastor Dooley told the meeting. This woman has not said that there was any sexual activity. Brian has said there was no sexual activity. But he was in the room for 40 minutes.

Neither of them had a clear or coherent recollection of what happened next, Pastor Dooley said. This particular woman then felt, obviously, a whole lot of conflicting emotions. She later reported the incident to a member of staff and it was brought to the attention of the global board, which set up an integrity unit of four people to deal with it. Loading The church said in a statement last week that although parts of the womans complaint were not sustained by the integrity unit, important elements were sustained and Mr Houston was found to have breached the Hillsong Pastors Code of Conduct. The church also agreed to refund the woman her previous donations, which Mr Houston, who was extremely remorseful, had insisted on repaying to the church, the statement said. Pastor Dooley told staff that after this incident it was determined that Mr Houston should take three months off ministry work and abstain from alcohol.

Unfortunately he didnt abide by that, Pastor Dooley said. He did conduct some ministry, I believe, on three separate occasions. And he also did, as he would say, consume some alcohol. Loading Once the board became aware of these transgressions in late 2021, it was decided that Mr Houston would take more time off and Pastor Dooley would be appointed acting global pastor, but to keep the matter discreet, Pastor Dooley said. The decision was made to offer, I suppose, what I would call grace, and not to cover up but to not expose. Instead, it decided to release a statement that Mr Houston had decided to take some time off, but it appeared that some senior members of the church had not agreed with the statement and decided to leak elements of the investigation, Pastor Dooley said. The board acknowledged in its statement on Wednesday that change was needed in the organisation and that much work was yet to be done.

We have committed to an independent review of our governance structure and processes, understanding that this is a time of humble reflection, and we are committed to doing what is necessary to ensure God is honoured, and our eyes are fixed on Jesus, the statement said. Mr Houston, 68, founded the evangelical church in Baulkham Hills in 1983 with Bobbie, and it has since grown into a global empire that rakes in $80-100 million in annual revenue, supplemented by bible training colleges, books, CDs, DVDs, a rock band and the Hillsong Performing Arts Academy. Loading He was a personal friend of Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who put forward his name to the Trump administration in 2019 to attend a dinner at the White House. The suggestion was knocked back. Former Hillsong member and author of People in Glass Houses, Tanya Levin, said the claims against Mr Houston would be devastating to those who had been shunned by the church after falling foul of its moral code.
Acting Premier Paul Toole has called for the deportation of a German national and climate change protester who was arrested and charged after allegedly climbing a pole to halt traffic at Port Botany for the second consecutive day.

In a note given to 2GBs Ray Hadley, Mr Toole  who is also the NSW Police Minister  said he would be speaking to the federal government to determine the status of the activists visa.

I want him gone. If he cant abide by our laws, he can go back to Germany because he isnt wanted here, Hadley read on air in a statement from the Acting Premier.

Protesters have caused major delays in the area for a second day in a row. Credit:Blockade Australia

On Tuesday morning, the 23-year-old man who lives in Victoria was charged by police after he climbed a pole in Port Botany and blocked off an intersection. He was charged with obstructing a driver's path as a pedestrian and disobeying police direction and released on bail.
This non-ideological pragmatism made me feel comfortable working as a media adviser for Newman during this period, despite having no ties to what was then the Liberal Party. I saw a lot of this Can Do ethos first hand. Many a conversation during a journey through Brisbanes suburbs would be interrupted by a quick call to the councils call centre to arrange, say, grass-cutting at a park we had just driven past. That pragmatism also saw Labor premier Peter Beattie famously endorse Newmans re-election for a second term, just after he reflected on his fractious relationship with former Labor lord mayor Jim Soorley on the floor of the Queensland Parliament. I think Brisbane is well served by having a Labor majority in the council and a Liberal lord mayor, Beattie said in October 2006. I think that is what is best for this city, having a Liberal lord mayor with whom we can work and a Labor majority at the council is a great outcome.

I urge the people of Brisbane to keep the balance  keep it exactly as it is. But that changed when the newly merged Liberal National Party rolled the dice and selected Newman as its leader, despite not being in Parliament. He entered the big leagues. Party matters at that level of politics, and Newman became the biggest cog in the party machine. No longer was he seen as a political outsider. (Of course, he was never a political outsider  both his parents served as ministers in federal Coalition governments  but perception is everything.) For many observers, the brutal 2012 election campaign changed Newman. Labors intensely personal campaign, which went after the Newman familys financial interests, deeply affected the LNP leader.

The negative campaign backfired on Labor and Newman was elected with more political capital than any premier in living memory. He saw [the Labor campaign] as vindictive, Beattie told me in 2016. ... He never forgave the Labor Party for it and I think it consumed him, so what he did then, he wanted to get even and I think that he overplayed his hand in every way. Politics became very nasty, they became excessive. Labor insiders quietly concede they might have gone too far, especially given the beast it unleashed.

And premier Campbell Newman was indeed a different beast to lord mayor Campbell Newman. While still a shrewd politician, lord mayor Newman largely stayed above politics in the eyes of the public (Labor councillors would disagree), while premier Newman was fighting spot fires everywhere. Stoushes with the media, stoushes with the judiciary, stoushes with the community at large. 1043 days later... Credit:Glenn Hunt Not every opposition voice was a Labor plant. The Newman government was one of missed opportunity. It did not govern from the middle, instead letting the LNPs ideologues run roughshod over policy, shifting Queensland further to the right than it was prepared to go.

Certainly, further to the right than the Campbell Newman Queenslanders thought they knew. Civil libertarians argued parts of his legislative agenda were authoritarian and his purging of the public service, despite telling public servants they had nothing to fear before the election, broke many voters trust. The perceived threats from within the government, levelled at private companies and not-for-profits, of consequences if they employed former Labor political staffers showed the big end of town just how vindictive the government could be. Premier Newman spent all his political capital and, ultimately, had little to show for it. He could not  or would not  bring the hubris on display throughout his supermajority of MPs to heel. And so it was, exactly 1043 days after he triumphantly declared victory at Brisbanes Hilton, that Newman faced an altogether more sombre election-night gathering across town at the Convention and Exhibition Centre.

He didnt learn the lessons of defeat. No self-reflection; it was the medias fault he lost. Loading Even now, more than seven years after returning to government, Labor is pointing to the LNP failures of the Newman era to justify its own performance in power. Palaszczuk clearly still sees mileage in the anti-Newman sentiment, even if the former premier has now distanced himself from the LNP. These days, Newman has taken on new political stripes, and he is almost unrecognisable from the man who wore the mayoral chains.

As the Liberal Democratic Partys lead Senate candidate for Queensland, Newman has thrown in his lot with the far-right fringe of Australian politics. He is a regular on Sky News and has buried the hatchet with Clive Palmer, who once called him a little Hitler, agreeing to a preference deal with the mining magnates United Australia Party on a mutual platform of opposition against COVID-19 vaccination mandates. Just last month, he spoke alongside One Nation Leader Pauline Hanson, and others, in front of the Red Ensign. Newman is a well-read man, with a keen eye for politics. He ought to have known what that flag has come to represent.
Hannah Clarkes estranged husband expected sex every day, would not allow her to wear shorts to work, and she was convinced he had tapped her phone for months before her death.

Ms Clarke also told a colleague a few weeks before her death that she feared he was going to kill her, but she did not believe he would ever hurt their three children.

Rowan Baxter died from self-inflicted wounds at the scene of Ms Clarke and their childrens deaths. Credit:Integr8 Functional Training

Ms Clarke, 31, and her children  Aaliyah, Laianah and Trey  were burned alive by her estranged husband, Rowan Baxter, 42, when he doused the inside of the familys SUV in petrol and ignited it in Camp Hill, in Brisbanes south on February 19, 2020.

A coronial inquest that started in Brisbane this week is investigating the contact Ms Clarke and Baxter had with domestic violence support services and police in the months before the tragedy. Whether more could have been done to keep the three Clarke children safe is a focus.
Mr Robert said the solution to improved classroom discipline would come from teachers. We arent going to use academics and self-appointed experts to advise on what teachers do, he said. Were going to ask teachers to share their expertise and their experiences and their proven methods to make sure our classrooms are safe and supportive. The Age editor Gay Alcorn with Education Minister James Merlino on Wednesday. Credit:Joe Armao Mr Robert announced that the Australian Education Research Organisation would get $3.5 million to help schools develop training materials through a series of podcasts with experts. The focus of materials will be on classroom management, student engagement, safe and supportive classrooms for all, and the challenges and opportunities arising from returning to classrooms this year after disruptions caused by the pandemic, Mr Robert said.

Loading The minister also defended his comments last week that a bottom 10 per cent of teachers who cant read and write are a key reason for Australias plummeting international performance. Mr Robert had said dud teachers worked only in state schools because non-government schools could hire and fire, and there was no way they will accept a dud teacher in their school, like, not for a second. We know that 10 per cent of students in teaching degrees fail LANTITE, which tests whether a person has the foundational literacy and numeracy requirements to be an effective teacher, Mr Robert told The Ages summit, which brought together education experts to discuss the big issues facing the sector. Collectively we have to ask ourselves some difficult questions. How is it that one-in-10 prospective teachers are failing foundational literacy and numeracy?

Loading Victorian Education Minister James Merlino described Mr Roberts comments about teachers as outrageous and disgraceful. Weve had this revolving door of federal education ministers, and each one is worse than the last, Mr Merlino said. He couldnt be more wrong. Mr Merlino said it was a tragedy that the teaching profession was not viewed as positively as medicine or law. The professions new enterprise bargaining agreement in Victoria paid leading teachers up to $130,000 a year, he said. Dr Marcia Devlin, chief executive of the Victorian Academy of Teaching and Leadership, told the panel she was tired of teacher bashing, and said Mr Roberts comments were unhelpful and disrespectful. Professor Joanna Barbousas, the dean and head of school education at La Trobe University, said the commentary could make people reconsider becoming a teacher.

Loading Mr Merlino said the biggest challenge for Victorian schools this year was keeping schools open amid high COVID cases as staff and students battle the exhaustion caused by lockdown and remote learning through the pandemic. Nikki Kirkup, principal of The Knox School, said staff burnout was a real concern for schools. I think right now, and reasonably so, staff are on their knees. Its been a long slog ... and unfortunately theres no quick fix. Meanwhile, David de Carvalho, chief executive of the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority said he was heartened by community interest in the authoritys controversial proposals to revamp the national curriculum, and he hoped it would be approved by education ministers in April.

Under the changes, the Australian curriculum would give greater weight to the nations diversity and to First Nations culture, although the Morrison government insisted it must not downgrade Australias liberal democratic foundations. However, the federal government and the McGowan government in Western Australia have raised concerns about the proposed curriculum, and asked the authority for further changes to mathematics, humanities, arts and social sciences. The history curriculum must be balanced, must properly teach students about the origins of Australias liberal democratic institutions and promote a strong understanding and pride in who we are as a nation, Mr Robert told the summit. Mr Merlino, who has been Education Minister for almost eight years and oversees the countrys best-performing school system according to NAPLAN results, said he hated the culture wars and he was concerned that the history curriculum would pander to the lowest common denominator. He said there were great things in Australian history as well as things that were quite terrible and the proposed changes would dumb down the curriculum.

Loading To be great citizens of our country, you need to know the good and the bad of our country, Mr Merlino said. Questioned whether Victorian schools would switch to systematic synthetic phonics over the more established balanced literacy approach, Mr Merlino said phonics was already embedded in Victorian schools. Were also looking at what more we can do. Ive personally met with the education department of South Australia, the education department of NSW to look at what other jurisdictions are doing and based on those discussions weve got trials happening in Victoria. Loretta Piazza, principal of Meadowglen Primary School in Epping, said some of her disadvantaged students had to be taught how to hold books.
Richard Pusey, who was jailed for filming four dying police officers after a road crash, has criticised prosecutors and prison staff over claims Pusey has not been given documents in a separate ongoing case and was nearly put on a bus before a scheduled court hearing.

Richard Pusey is charged with using a carriage service to menace and other offences.

Pusey wore a face mask and what looked to be a towel wrapped around the top of their head when they appeared by video link from prison before Sunshine Magistrates Court on Wednesday regarding allegations Pusey posted a photo of a dying police officer in an online review for a Porsche dealership.

Towards the end of the hearing, Pusey made the unprompted claim that they almost missed the court appearance because prison staff were about to put Pusey on a bus.

I had discussions with some clinics in Melbourne in relation to my gender reassignment surgery, and I was two seconds away from being put on a bus to spend the day running around at hospitals in Melbourne, Pusey said. The left hand in this place [prison] doesnt speak to the right hand, and Im just trying to do the best I can.
This was followed by a front page report in Perths Sunday Times that quoted a dumbfounded and frustrated Labor source as saying the Prime Minister now had beautiful pictures of he and the Premier smiling and laughing with which to campaign. A source close to the Premier bit back on Sunday, telling me: You would struggle to find a bigger bunch of petulant sooks than WAs lower house MPs. Embarrassing. There is apparently some history here. In 2019, when McGowan was merely popular rather than adulated in the west, Labor research clearly showed he could be an electoral asset. Ignoring the political truism that voters differentiate between state and federal issues, the federal campaign team sought to exploit McGowans popularity, putting him side-by-side with then-opposition leader Bill Shorten in the campaign against Morrison.

McGowans face was even blown up to gigantic size and plastered alongside Shortens on the so-called Bill Bus which did the rounds of campaign events in WA. In that election, as in this one, the goal was to win Pearce, Swan and Hasluck but as in previous elections the efforts came to naught. Mark did everything that was asked of him at the 2019 campaign, put his face on the freaking bus, used up a lot of political capital in the process, the source said. Not one federal MP thanked him, not even Shorten. Beyond that, there is a belief that  politics aside  this WA Labor government has done very well out of the Morrison government, securing big federal contributions to Metronet and other road projects, first through former senator Mathias Cormann and now through Special Minister of State (and Morrison confidante) Ben Morton.

When Barnaby Joyce returned as infrastructure minister last October there was a brief moment where he went on the attack against McGowan, calling him arrogant and asking whether, behind the closed border, he planned to get his own air force and really turn yourself into a hermit kingdom like North Korea. Premier Mark McGowan and Prime Minister Scott Morrison in Perth, March 2022. Credit:Getty Images Joyce was quickly pulled into line, a source said, by his Liberal colleagues in the Coalition. A federal Labor source said on Tuesday the Premier was in a tough spot and really had no choice but to appear alongside the PM, given the big money contributions on the table to join projects, and pointed out Morrison had made a similar announcement alongside Queensland Labor Premier Annastacia Palasczuk this week. McGowan will campaign alongside Albanese in future visits once the campaign proper begins but the source close to the Premier said it was doubtful he would help Right-aligned lower house MPs Matt Keogh in Burt or Madeleine King in Brand (neither seat is considered in any doubt for Labor).

Despite the frustrations of the federal campaign team and despite a sense Morrison is on the nose, leading to optimistic assessments Mortons seat of Tangney could be in play, the absolute priorities for Labor remain Pearce and Swan, where incumbent Liberals Christian Porter and Steve Irons are departing. These have been Labor losing battles for the past three elections and if they won only these two seats in WA in May, the campaign would feel enormously satisfied that they had done their job. Loading The view is that Hasluck will remain a struggle as long as incumbent Liberal and minister Ken Wyatt runs again (and he intends to). Labor efforts directed to Mortons seat of Tangney, in the middle-upper class band of the riverside southern suburbs, are as much about trying to force the PMs chief strategist off the national campaign plane and back home to defend his turf, robbing Morrison of a key lieutenant.
Conway, AR (72032)

Today

Variable clouds with thunderstorms - possibly severe this afternoon. Damaging winds and large hail with some storms. High 67F. NW winds shifting to SSE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%. 1 to 2 inches of rain expected..

Tonight

Scattered thunderstorms during the evening. Partly cloudy skies after midnight. Low near 55F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60%.
Van Buren, AR (72956)

Today

Rain showers this morning then thunderstorms with heavy rainfall arriving during the afternoon hours. High 67F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Localized flooding is possible..

Tonight

Partly to mostly cloudy skies with scattered thunderstorms during the evening. Low 54F. Winds W at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
An "I voted" sticker accompanied 2020 election ballots sent out by official election mail in Maricopa County.
Associate Editor

Brent Addleman is an Associate Editor and a veteran journalist with more than 25 years of experience. He has served as editor of newspapers in Pennsylvania and Texas, and has also worked at newspapers in Delaware, Maryland, New York, and Kentucky.
In this aerial photo, people walk amidst destruction Wednesday, March 23, 2022, from a tornado that struck Tuesday night in Arabi, La.
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)
Towanda, PA (18848)

Today

A mix of clouds and sun during the morning will give way to cloudy skies this afternoon. High 68F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Cloudy this evening with showers after midnight. Low 49F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 50%.
Towanda, PA (18848)

Today

Clouds and some sun this morning with more clouds for this afternoon. High 68F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Cloudy with occasional showers overnight. Low 49F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 50%.
Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at cflowers1961@gmail.com.
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
News

Russell's Fort finds new life overlooking Lake Lure

scarpenter / Contributed Photo The original Russells Fort cabin, which once sat within the Pumpkin Center house, now stands overlooking Lake Lure. James Sciandra, standing far right, spearheaded the project to preserve the structure, originally built in the 1700s. James is pictured with the Barnwood Builders team, his son, Vincenzo, and local craftsman Harold Harper. scarpenter / Contributed Photo The original Russells Fort logs were transported back to Rutherford County from the Barnwood Builders headquarters in West Virginia.

LAKE LURE  The cast and crew from the reality television show Barnwood Builders, were in Rutherford County last week. Mark Bowe, and his Barnwood Builders team came to Lake Lure, to reassemble the Russells Fort cabin on White Oak Point.

James Sciandra owns the property, and is thrilled to have a part in saving not only a piece of Rutherford County history, but American history.

The old cabin was originally built in the 1770s. The building was later expanded and became known as the Pumpkin Center of the South, as it was surrounded by pumpkin fields.

Sciandra is a history and preservation buff, and was given the old house by Brad and Jaimee Peters on the condition that it be moved, and preserved.

Sciandra embraced the idea of preserving the house for future generations to learn about, and enjoy.

Bowes company specializes in restoring old buildingsoften pioneer-era cabins and barns. The Barnwood Builders were in the area last fall, to disassemble the inner cabin portion of the old Pumpkin Center house. At that time, they carefully took the cabin apart, tagging each piece of lumber. The disassembled structure was loaded onto moving trucks, and transported to Bowes headquarters in West Virginia. There, the wood that could be saved, was treated and prepared to be re-used.

Reassembly of the cabin, at White Oak Point on Gentle Winds Lane in Lake Lure began last Wednesday. Film crews were there to capture it all, and at least two episodes of Barnwood Builders are expected to air sometime in the next several months on the Magnolia Channel.

They were great, Sciandra said.

He was on site with the team, along with his youngest son Vincenzo who is almost 7.

They were all down to earth, friendly guys, James said. The entire process was filmed, and really none of it was scripted. Even when they would want to talk to me on camera, I was never told by anyone, what to say. What was filmed, was reality.

Friendships were forged last week, as they worked together on the cabin. During one of their breaks, Bowe took some time to show Vincenzo how to use a slingshot. They often shared meals, and laughs. One day James prepared homemade pizza for the crew.

James says episodes that will air, featuring this project, will explain a lot of the history of Russells Fort and the entire area. They will also showcase the Lake Lure/Chimney Rock area.

After the Barnwood Builders team, and the film crew left town, local craftsmen led by Harold Harper are finishing the project, and completing the inside of the structure. They will also add some elements including a 12-foot addition on the back side of the structure. The additional work will utilize most of the Pumpkin Center lumber that was salvageable.

The finished structure will not look exactly like the old Pumpkin Center house that sat off Chimney Rock Road, which completely concealed the 1700s-era cabin that was in the middle of it. The original cabin, Russells Fort with the exposed timbers will be visible from the outside and inside.

As Russells Fort once stood on the edge of the frontier, James says it will now stand guard overlooking Lake Lure.

James is a student of history. He also holds family ties close to his heart. This is reflected in the project.

James is based primarily in Florida, and he spends a lot of time in Lake Lure. He also maintains family connections to New York, and in Sicily.

According to James, his beloved grandfather, Charlie Sciandra often said, We should get a cabin in the mountains.

Charlie would also talk about the fresh mountain air.

Charlie Sciandra died in 2011, but James never forgot his wish. He searched in many areas to find the perfect spot, including other locations in North Carolina, the Midwest, and even Canada.

A family member who had vacationed in Rutherford County, suggested he check out Lake Lure. James loved this area, the beauty and the history.

In 2018, he bought property on the lake that included a 1930s-era cabin that was badly in need of rehabilitation. James took on that project, and when he and his family arent occupying it, it is available for rent.

Extended family members including his grandmother, aunts and uncles were the first to stay in the refurbished cabin. With the addition of the Russells Fort structure, there will be more room for larger family gatherings.

I want the building to pay homage to the history of both Russells Fort and Pumpkin Center, James said.

He made sure that as much material as could be salvaged, was used in the new location. Besides the wood, foundation stones from the old site are now being incorporated in the new location.

There arent many cabins remaining in the United States, that were built in the 1700s, James said. Some of those original logs, were as much as 200 years old when they were cut. And now, this is 250 years later.

James feels a sense of responsibility for preserving this bit of history, for future generations to experience. Russells Fort at White Oak Point, will be available as a rental property this fall.

I think its cool that Russells Fort, and the old Pumpkin Center house, have a new lease on life, James added. I love that.
A police officer walks through a damaged gas station along Chef Menture Avenue after a tornado ripped through the eastern part of New Orleans on Feb. 7, 2017. (Sean Gardner/Getty Images)

1 Confirmed Death After Tornado Plows Through New Orleans: Officials

At least one person has been killed after a large tornado ripped through New Orleans on March 22, officials have confirmed.

The death occurred in Arabi in St. Bernard Parish, which borders New Orleans proper. The area was hit hard by the tornado, which destroyed homes and knocked down power lines.

Theres widespread damage from where it touched down, St. Bernard Sheriff James Pohlmann said in a news conference at 10 p.m. local time. Theres heavy damage to multiple structures in the area, they have multiple injuries in the area.

Pohlmann did not provide further details regarding the death.

St. Bernard Parish President Guy McInnis confirmed to CNN that at least one person had died in the Arabi neighborhood but also offered no further details. He said that parish officials have several reports of residents being hospitalized following the tornado but were unsure of the specific number of injuries that had been sustained.

Some homes were picked up off their foundations and are lying in the street, he said.

The tornado struck shortly after 7 p.m. local time and traveled through parts of New Orleans and into the Arabi area of St. Bernard Parish.

Video footage posted to social media shows the large dark funnel cloud plowing through Arabi and appearing to take out power lines.

Damage was reported in the communities of Arabi, Gretna, and St. Bernard Parish, according to local reports. While the extent of the damage is not yet clear, images shared online show a vehicle completely overturned and buildings that appear to be badly damaged.

Photos shared online show emergency responders conducting rescue efforts and assessing the damage to homes, some of which appear to have been completely destroyed.

State agencies are assisting local officials as needed as they assess the damage and impacts of these tornadoes, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said on Twitter. My prayers are with you in Southeast Louisiana tonight. Please be safe.

The Louisiana Office of State Fire Marshal (SFM) said that more than 100 responders from search and rescue teams from the New Orleans and Baton Rouge areas have been dispatched to the areas affected by the tornado.

SFM staff is already on-site in Arabi providing teams with intel and direction for response, they said.

According to PowerOutage.us, there are currently 2,284 in St. Bernard Parish without power and 1,316 in Orleans, although more than 10,000 had been left without power shortly after the tornado hit, CNN reported.

New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell said late on Tuesday that the New Orleans Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness has activated the Emergency Operations Center in response to the tornado, which she said touched down in the Lower Ninth Ward and New Orleans East communities shortly before 8 p.m. local time.

As of now there have been no reports of casualties or significant damage to Orleans Parish, Cantrell said. Residents should avoid all travel, that isnt essential, to provide an opportunity for the professionals to handle this situation.

The National Weather Service said late Tuesday that the line of storms that caused damage earlier this evening in the New Orleans area continues to progress to the east. While the severe threat has ended everywhere west of Gulfport, it will continue for Jackson County, Missouri until around midnight.

The latest weather event comes as much of southern Louisiana is still recovering from last years Hurricane Ida, which struck in August and caused widespread damage to rural communities to the south of New Orleans and killed more than 100 people in the South and Caribbean.
Alcohol bottles, with their contents replaced with colored water, sit on a shelf in the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism in Bethesda, Md., on Dec. 19, 2014. (Cliff Owen/AP Photo)

Alcohol-Associated Deaths Surged During First 12 Months of CCP Virus Pandemic: Study

The number of Americans who died of alcohol-associated causes throughout the first 12 months of the COVID-19 pandemic has increased dramatically, according to a recent study.

The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) on March 18, revealed that 99,017 U.S. citizens died of alcohol-related causes in 2020a 25.5 percent increase from the 78,927 deaths documented in 2019.

Researchers noted that the most significant increase in deaths was among the 35 to 44 age group, amounting to nearly 40 percent of all deaths. The second age group that suffered most from lethal alcohol use were Americans aged 25 to 34, with males and females having a similar mortality rate.

The study analyzed data from the same year when there was a reported 54 percent increase in national sales of alcohol in March 2020 compared with the same period in 2019. Online alcohol sales for the week ending March 21, 2020, were also 262 percent higher in 2020 than in 2019.

Anxiety and pressure induced by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus pandemic contributed to the increase in drinking to cope with stress, researchers said. Other key factors include more emergency department visits for alcohol withdrawal and delays in treatment.

The assumption is that there were lots of people who were in recovery and had reduced access to support that spring and relapsed, Aaron White, one of the authors of the study, told The New York Times.

Stress is the primary factor in relapse, and there is no question there was a big increase in self-reported stress, and big increases in anxiety and depression, and planet-wide uncertainty about what was coming next, he said. Thats a lot of pressure on people who are trying to maintain recovery.

Most alcohol-related deaths were in people with an underlying liver condition or disease, followed by overdoses from alcohol, along with opioid overdose deaths that involved alcohol as a contributing cause.

Meanwhile, alcohol-related deaths among adults younger than 65 outnumbered CCP virus deaths in 2020. Approximately 74,408 Americans ages 16 to 64 died of alcohol-related causes, compared to 74,075 individuals under 65 who died of COVID-19, according to The New York Times.

Increasing Trend

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) National Centers for Health Statistics (NCHS) said in an October 2020 report that there was a 43 percent increase in alcohol-related deaths from 2006 to 2018.

Rates overall and rates for males and females increased over the period. While rates were higher for males than females for each year, the rate of change was greater for females, resulting in a narrowing of the differences between male and female rates, the report read.

For men aged 25 and older, the rate decreased slightly from 2000 to 2005 (17.5 to 16.9 per 100,000 people). Then from 2006 to 2018, the rate increased from 16.9 to 22.6 per 100,000 peoplea 34 percent increase.

The rates for women at and over the age of 25, however, saw an increase from 4.9 per 100,000 people in 2000 all the way to 8.6 per 100,000 people in 2018. Thats a 76 percent increase from 2000 to 2018.

White noted in the latest report that researchers are concerned whether the numbers next year will decrease or could become even worse.

If you or someone you know is struggling with addiction, call the Al-Anon and Alateen hotline line on 800-356-9996 for support from a counselor. In case of an emergency, call 911.

Paula Liu contributed to this report.

From NTD News
Anthony Ray Selected as Interim Sheriff of San Diego County

SAN DIEGOThe Board of Supervisors unanimously chose Anthony Ray on March 22 to serve as the interim sheriff of San Diego County.

Ray, an assistant county sheriff who oversees courts and human resources, will fill the role previously held by Bill Gore, who stepped down last month after serving a dozen years in the position. The 74-year-old Gore announced last summer that he would not seek re-election this year.

I am extremely honored and humbled to be appointed as the interim sheriff of the San Diego County Sheriffs Department and am grateful to the Board of Supervisors for affording me this opportunity to lead our department, Ray said. I will continue to serve our communities, expand our partnerships with local advocacy groups, continue the improvements to our jails and keep public safety at the forefront of our daily operations.

Anthony Ray (Courtesy San Diego County Sheriffs Department)

Ray will serve until the winner of the November election takes over. Before formally assuming the interim sheriffs post, he will have to undergo a background check.

I believe Im uniquely qualified to the job, as Im already inside the department, Ray said in an opening statement to the board, which made its decision after an hour-long forum that included asking candidates questions and hearing from the public.

Ray said his goals include improving recruitment, striving for more accountability, and expanding community engagement. While 9 to 10 months is not a long time to serve as interim sheriff, I think I can drive our department to a high level, Ray added.

Supervisors chose Ray over two fellow county law enforcement veterans, Michael Barletta and Edwin Brock. Audience members applauded after the announcement.

Congratulations, Mr. Ray, said Nathan Fletcher, board chairman. Welcome to the sheriffs role.

In a written statement, Fletcher said he and his colleagues selected an interim sheriff who has demonstrated a commitment to reducing violent crime, improving the conditions in our jails, and embracing law enforcement best practices, along with a commitment to racial justice.

Early in the meeting, Fletcher noted that each man brings a lifetime of service to our community and later credited them for handling the selection process with grace and dignity.

In a written statement, Supervisor Jim Desmond said public safety is the No. 1 responsibility of government and that hes confident Sheriff Ray will continue to keep San Diego County one of the safest in the country.

While all candidates were well-qualified this was the most seamless transition, until the voters choose their next sheriff, Desmond added.

His colleague, Terra Lawson-Remer, said in a statement that it is critical that the future leadership of our Sheriffs Department take meaningful corrective actions to stop deaths in our jails, and added that shes committed to working with the department to advance policy reforms that protect public safety.

In a statement, board Vice Chairwoman Nora Vargas said that Tuesday and going forward, I believe we need partners committed to reforming our Sheriffs Department to better protect our communities. Sheriff Anthony Ray will complete the remaining term with professionalism and experience until our residents decide who will be our next sheriff in November.

Supervisor Joel Anderson described Ray as well-suited for the job. I look forward to supporting his efforts, Anderson added. His steady hand is what we need at this time.

Barletta, Brock, and Ray answered questions on how they would improve jail conditions, handle recruitment and training, boost outreach to the homeless and mentally ill, and work to rebuild community trust.

During public comments, social justice activists proposed that the state take over running county jails. A recent state audit of in-custody fatalities at the countys jails criticized the Sheriffs Departments safety record, which recorded 185 deaths between 2006 and 2020 in the seven detention centers it oversees, among the highest totals in the state.

Were not asking for anything that hasnt been done before, said Yusef Miller of the Racial Justice Coalition of San Diego. Just last week we lost two lives [in custody], Miller added.

Eric Garcia, vice president of Deputy Sheriffs Association of San Diego County, said Ray is a well-respected official whos approachable, open-minded and experienced.

Officially seeking the sheriffs post so far in the run-up to Novembers election are Undersheriff Kelly Martinez, former sheriffs Commander David Myers, Assistant San Diego City Attorney John Hemmerling, and sheriffs Deputy Kenneth Newsom.
The Google logo adorns the outside of their NYC office building in New York on June 3, 2019. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Aspiring Quantum Computing Firm Sandbox AQ Spun Off From Alphabet

Quantum computing aspiring firm Sandbox AQ. spun off from Alphabet Inc., procured nine figures of funding, and signed several clients for its cybersecurity services, Reuters reports.

Sandboxs investors include Schmidt, Breyer Capital, T. Rowe Price funds, and Salesforce.com Inc. founder Marc Benioffs TIME Ventures.

Sandbox would use cloud computing from Google Cloud and others.

Sandbox AQ, backed by Google CEO Eric Schmidt as its Chair, is a leading startup pursuing software that would operate partially on quantum computers.

Sandbox also neared deals to sell quantum simulation software to accelerate the development of drugs and materials potentially,

Sandbox could commercialize projects over the next three years, including using AI to analyze data from quantum-based sensors to improve medical imaging and enable navigation by tracking magnetic fields.

By Anusuya Lahiri

 2021 The Epoch Times. The Epoch Times does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
Australia Announces $5.4 Billion Mega Dam to Shore up Water, Food Security

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has pledged $5.4 billion to build the Hells Gate mega dam in Queensland as he tours the state promising the project will provide jobs, water, and food security for the region ahead of the federal elections expected by May.

Hells Gate Dam is expected to be four times the size of Sydney Harbour and is hoped to capture the countrys seasonal monsoonal rains and open up 60,000 hectares of agricultural lands in North Queensland.

This is one of those projects that transforms the nation, Morrison told Sevens Sunrise program on March 23.

The 2,100 gigalitre dam is anticipated to provide irrigation across three agricultural zones in the Burdekin, and bolstered by three downstream irrigation weirs.

Touting a jobs boom for the region, with several thousand during construction and 3,000 ongoing once operational, the prime minister said the dam will turn North Queensland into an agricultural powerhouse, enabling farmers to stock supermarkets and feed Australians.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison at a press conference after a National Security Committee meeting at Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, on March 1, 2022. (AAP Image/Mick Tsikas)

We need to build more dams in Australia. Building dams makes our economy stronger by supporting our agricultural industries to realise their true potential, Morrison said in a release. Water is a precious resource and we need more dams to better use that resource.

Hells Gate is anticipated to inject up to $1.3 billion of Gross Regional Product (GRP) into North Queenslands economy during construction. Once operational, the project is anticipated to generate $6 billion of GRP.

The federal government will fund the project entirely and called on the Queensland government to cut the green tape and approve the project.

Were not going to require a cent from the Queensland Government because frankly, we dont think that they would put in anyway. So were going to do it 100 per cent, Morrison told Sevens Sunrise program. All we need them to do is get the big approve stamp out, approve it and lets get on with it.

Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce, who is the minister for infrastructure and regional development, said the project will move Australia closer to taking agricultural production to over $100 billion a year by 2030.

The sooner water flows in the west, the sooner we can sell more products to the world and earn the money that will help make Australia as strong as possible as quickly as possible, he said.

Scott Morrisons announcing Hells Gate Dam again? Must be an election on.  Terri Butler MP (@terrimbutler) March 22, 2022

While supportive of the project, Katters Australian Party state MP Robbie Katter had doubts about the current proposal.

I hate being negative all the time when it comes to government, Katter told 4BC radio on March 23. I like the fact that they put money towards it. Thats great. But it would really amaze people when youre in the world of politics just how ignorant people are when they talk about issues.

He said the dam has been part of the first stage of the Bradfield Scheme for 80 years.

The Townsville Port in Townsville, Australia, on May 4, 2019. (Ian Hitchcock/Getty Images)

Everyone throws it around as a catch phrase  before an election. But what they dont realise is the proposal thats tabled at the moment will kill the Bradfield scheme forever.

So theyre funding to build a dam thats not big enough to raise the water high enough to put pressure to send it across the Great Dividing Range onto the black salt plains, which was the sort of the whole plan from Bradfield in the first place, he said.

Exports would flow through the Townsville Port and is expected to have a flow on effect for the northern city, according to federal MP Herbert Phillip Thompson.

Weve backed this project right from the start because it is something that will create jobs and drive the economy forward, Thompson said.

The Townsville Port is well-placed to handle exports from the region, especially after our forward planning and investment into the channel widening project.
Australian Government to Approve Cryptocurrency Platforms

The Australian government has set its sights on the countrys cryptocurrency market, in what is expected to be one of the most significant sets of reforms to the countrys payment system in more than 25 years.

The government is seeking industry feedback to develop a tick of approval for cryptocurrency exchangesthe platforms responsible for connecting consumers with their digital cash.

The aim is for Australians to have more confidence in these platforms, allowing those interested in investing in cryptocurrencies to do so safely and securely, Digital Economy Minister Jane Hume said.

The Morrison government wants to make sure that consumers can trust the exchanges that they use to buy crypto, Hume said at a Blockchain Australia event, ZDNet reported.

Trust in cryptocurrency exchanges waned in 2021, after two Australian companiesmyCryptoWallet and Blockchain Globals ACXcollapsed in the span of two months, taking with them millions of dollars in customer funds.

As a result, approved platforms will need to abide by new custody requirements for crypto assets, allowing investors to maintain access to their money at all times.

However, Hume cautioned that the governments role didnt include safeguarding Australians from the ebbs and flows of crypto markets.

In particular, bitcoin and ethereum, reaching all-time highs of about AU$92,500 (US$69,000) and AU$6,500 (US$4,900) in November 2021, respectively, have since fallen in value by nearly a third, to around AU$56,600 (US$42,200) and AU$4,000 (US$3,000).

Crypto values will go up and down sure as eggs, and the government will not be protecting consumers from market volatilityand nor should they, Hume said. But Australian investors will be sure that if they use a licensed Australian exchange that they can trust that exchange will deliver on its commitments to customers and have appropriate protections.

Minister for Superannuation, Financial Services, and the Digital Economy Jane Hume at Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, on Mar. 18, 2021. (Sam Mooy/Getty Images)

This will be a uniquely Australian stamp of quality. The healthy heart tick of approval for your crypto exchanges.

A spokesman for Swyftxone of Australias largest cryptocurrency exchangessaid that while the move would likely turn out to be a net positive for the industry, many ill-equipped platforms could end up being culled in the process.

We see this as an important step forward. Australia has one of the largest crypto adoption rates in the developed world. It makes complete sense for us to lead on regulation, the spokesman said. But it isnt going to be bloodless. Were expecting collateral damage when the new licensing arrangements come into place.

There are around 600 digital currency exchanges in Australia at the moment. Lawmakers are estimating that you could end up with just 20 to 30 depending on the final design of any capital adequacy and fit and proper person tests.

The spokesman noted that while the regulation didnt rule out the possibility of collapses similar to myCryptoWallet and ACX, the new custody requirements will give confidence to customers that their assets will be shielded from such events.

A new regulatory regime wont be able to prevent badly run businesses from going under, but should enhance the prospects of customers assets being protected, he said.

The federal government is also seeking to address widespread de-bankinga phenomenon where banks refuse to do business with cryptocurrency exchanges because of concerns of risk and other factors.

Swyftx is just one of many platforms blacklisted by major banks.

Time will tell what impact regulation has on de-banking, the spokesman said. Our expectation is that the clarity of regulation will not just reduce the customer risk that banks see, but also encourage them to enter the market.

Early signs of major financial institutions adopting cryptocurrencies had already been seen in November 2021, when Commonwealth Bank became the first and only Australian bank to allow customers to buy and sell crypto assets.
People's miniatures are seen in front of an Okta logo in this illustration taken on March 22, 2022. (Dado Ruvic/Illustration/Reuters)

Authentication Firm Okta Says up to 366 Customers Potentially Hit by Hack

WASHINGTONHundreds of customers of digital authentication firm Okta Inc. have possibly been affected by a security breach caused by a hacking group known as Lapsus$, the company said on Tuesday.

The breach has sparked concern since the cyber extortion gang posted what appeared to be internal screenshots from within the organizations network roughly a day ago.

In a series of blog posts, Chief Security Officer David Bradbury said the maximum potential impact was to 366 customers whose data was accessed by an outside contractor, Sitel.

The contractor employed an engineer whose laptop the hackers had hijacked, he added.

The 366 number represented a worst case scenario, Bradbury cautioned, adding that, in any case, the hackers had been constrained in their range of possible actions.

Okta, based in San Francisco, helps employees of more than 15,000 organizations securely access their networks and applications, so a breach at the company could lead to serious consequences across the Internet.

Bradbury said the intrusion would not have given god-like access to the intruders as they would have been unable to perform actions such as downloading customer databases or accessing Oktas source code.

Okta first got wind of the breach in January, he added, while the Miami-based Sitel Group only received a forensic report about the incident on March 10, giving Okta a summary of the findings a week later.

Bradbury said he was greatly disappointed by the long period of time that transpired between our notification to Sitel and the issuance of the complete investigation report.

Sitel did not immediately return a message seeking comment early on Wednesday.

By Raphael Satter
Naomi Irion, 18, of Fernley, Nev., makes a purchase shortly before authorities say she disappeared before dawn, on March 12, 2022. (Lyon County Sheriff's Office via AP)

Authorities Renew Plea for Help to Find Missing Nevada Woman

FERNLEY, Nev.Family members and sheriffs officials in Nevada renewed pleas Tuesday for help finding an 18-year-old woman last seen before a man wearing a mask and hooded sweatshirt was shown on surveillance video getting into her car outside a Walmart store 10 days ago.

Lyon County sheriffs Detective Erik Kusmerz told reporters in Fernley that Naomi Christine Irions car was found, but sheriffs officials and the FBI havent detected any signal from her cellphone since shortly after they believe she was abducted in the small town east of Reno before dawn March 12.

Kusmerz said Irion was active on social media and her cellphone until 5:23 a.m., a minute before the man entered her car. The phone has not been found and is no longer active, the investigator said.

We believe theres some information out there that hasnt reached us yet, Lyon County Sheriff Frank Hunewill said.

Irion was at the Walmart parking lot to catch an employee bus to work at a Reno-area Panasonic facility. She lives nearby with her older brother, Casey Valley, who reported her missing when she didnt return home by the following day.

Valley told reporters last week that Walmart surveillance video showed the man forced his way into his sisters car and drove away.

Photos distributed by the sheriffs office showed Irion making a convenience store purchase shortly before she disappeared.

Irions car was found three days later near a paint manufacturing facility in an industrial park not far from the Walmart and Interstate 80.

Kusmerz did not disclose what investigators found in Irions car, but said authorities are looking for a man he called a suspect, along with a distinctively large vehiclea dark late-model half-ton Chevrolet 2500 High Country pickup truck.

If you know somebody who drives this vehicle or had access to this vehicle during this (predawn March 12) timeframe  were asking you to come forward and speak with us, the detective said. He did not immediately say how investigators believe the pickup is connected with the case.

Family members including Irions mother, Diana Irion, said a candlelight vigil was planned Tuesday evening.

Please save my daughter and bring her home, Diana Irion said. We need this word to be spread nationwide.

The mother said she arrived in the Reno area Monday from the South African capital of Pretoria, where she said she and her husband, Herve Irion, a U.S. State Department official, are assigned to the U.S. foreign service.

Fernley is a 30-minute drive from Renoat transcontinental crossroads including Interstate 80 and U.S. 50, and state highways including State Route 447.

Valley thanked hundreds of volunteer searchers who fanned out during the weekend on horseback, ATVs and on foot in the desert east of where Irions car was found, looking for evidence about her disappearance. He said he was continuing to coordinate volunteer search efforts.
Chimp caretaking experts at Oklahoma City Zoo discovered a mother chimpanzee was not caring for her newborn the way she should. They put their heads together and decided to remove the baby chimp from her biological mother. The baby was introduced to a new chimp family further east, at the third-oldest zoo in the United States.

Baby Maisie left her mother, 12-year-old Nia, and arrived at Maryland Zoo in Baltimore in late September 2020. There, the zoos Chimp Forest animal care team took charge of her wellbeing and development. They introduced her to a new chimp family, which included Abby, her new monkey foster mom, who already had a stellar track record as a surrogate parent.

Although Maisie was born a healthy chimp at the end of summer that year, the potentially disruptive move raised lingering concerns and uncertainty of how she would adapt to her new family and new environment at the Maryland facility out east.

(Courtesy of The Maryland Zoo in Baltimore)

According to Oklahoma City Zoo primate caretaker Pace Frank, it was not an easy decision to separate Maisie from her biological mom, but it was necessary. It was quickly apparent that Nia was not adapting to motherhood, Frank said.

He and other chimp experts cooperated to ensure she found a new, more suitable home, one that offered a nourishing environment for her to develop in healthily.

Before the move, she was hand-reared, at first, and eventually matched with a promising surrogate mom, Abby, at Maryland Zoo.

After being hand-raised since she arrived, this was a delicate process that took a lot of thought and strategy from our chimp care team, said staff involved in Maisies care in Maryland.

Pam Carter, manager with Maryland Zoos Chimp Forest team, commented at the time on the zoos website that Maisie was fed every three hours and got sufficient playtime, so as to keep her muscles in shape. She added of Maisies developmental program planned by her carers: We also wear a shirt and blanket that have fringe material sewn on that helps her learn to grip.

They kept her in the public eye, so that others might follow her journey, through video footage captured and shared on social media.

The baby chimp has adapted very well to her new environment with little trouble, bonding marvelously with her new troop of as many as 15 chimps. Now having a nurturing surrogate mom and circle of playful young monkeys, Maisie is growing normally. Her two closest friends are young chimps Lola and Violet, who play with her at every turn. They can be seen adorably hugging one another.

Thus, Maisie is thriving and is expected to continue doing so.

The Maryland Zoo, as well as other zoos in the country, who are aware of chimpanzees endangered status, have acted in a timely, concerted manner to protect the species. Such facilities are proud stewards of the primates, which hail from Africa, where loss of habitat, poaching, and disease have diminished their numbers.

Share your stories with us at emg.inspired@epochtimes.com, and continue to get your daily dose of inspiration by signing up for the Bright newsletter at TheEpochTimes.com/newsletter
Beijing Tells Chinese Businesspeople to Fill Void in Russian Market Amid Ukraine Crisis

Chinas ambassador to Russia has called on Chinese businesspeople in Moscow to expand their enterprises by leveraging the Ukraine crisis as severe international sanctions have crippled Russias economy in the wake of the invasion.

Ambassador Zhang Hanhui urged Chinese businessmen in Moscow to make good use of the current RussiaUkraine war as he met with representatives earlier this week. According to a March 21 social media post by the Russian Confucius Culture Promotion Association, the ambassador told business heads to waste no time and fill the void in the Russian economy.

The current international situation is complex. Big enterprises are facing great challenges or even disruptions in payment and supply chains, he said at the meeting, according to the post.

The conference summary made no mention of the Western sanctions, yet Zhang said it was the right time for the private, small-, and medium-sized enterprises to make a difference.

In response to a question about the ambassadors remarks, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said during a daily briefing in Beijing on March 22 that the two sides have long been in normal economic and trade cooperation, without mentioning the meeting in Moscow.

In a bid to force an end to the Ukraine crisis, the West has pushed to isolate Russia from the global economic and financial system, including cutting off a number of Russian banks from SWIFT, the main international payment system. Yet concerns remain that China would aid the sanction-slammed Russian economy.

Despite seeking to portray a neutral stance amid the conflict between Russia and the West, Beijing is widely viewed as tacitly supporting Moscow and has vowed to trade with Russia as normal. Russian banks have switched to Chinas state-owned UnionPay as an alternative to Visa and Mastercard, which announced their suspension of credit card services to Russian banks in early March.

However, analysts at research firm Gavekal Dragonomics said earlier this month that China wont ride to Russias rescue.

Even though Chinas government probably wishes to assist Russia, it cannot shield its companies from the potentially crippling punishments for violating sanctions, the analysts wrote.

Most large institutions in China are not willing to take the risk of falling afoul of U.S. sanctions, Martin Chorzempa, a research fellow at the Washington-based think tank Peterson Institute for International Economics, told The Washington Post. And so any sanction busting is likely to be done by smaller institutions that have less to lose.

Officials at the Chinese Embassy in Moscow and the Russia Confucius Culture Promotion Association didnt respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.

Avaaz members, demonstrators, and Ukrainian activists stand in front of signs reading Stop Putins oil during a vigil for Ukraine near the European Union headquarters in Brussels on March 22, 2022. (Valeria Mongelli/AFP via Getty Images)

The United States and many European Union countries have imposed unprecedented sanctions on Russia, including a ban on Russian oil and gas by Washington, which could further boost Russian energy giants presence in China. Beijing also announced a lifting of import restrictions on Russian wheat, just hours after Moscow launched the war in Ukraine on Feb. 24.

In a two-hour video call with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on March 18, U.S. President Joe Biden warned Beijing of unspecified implications and consequences if it were to provide material support to Russia.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a March 7 press briefing that Moscow cant backfill the effect of Western sanctions by relying on China.

Its just not possible, she said. Weve also seen China abide by the sanctions that have been put in place.
Evan Neumann, 49, who is facing 14 counts related to the Jan. 6 Capitol breach, has received refugee status in Belarus. (FBI supplied image)

Belarus Grants Refugee Status to Jan. 6 Capitol Breach Accused

A California man charged with assaulting police and using a metal barricade as a battering ram in the Jan. 6, 2021 breach of the U.S. Capitol has been granted refugee status by Belarus, according to Belarusian state-owned television BelTA.

The Belarusian Telegraph Agency reported on Twitter that Evan Neumann, received refugee status in the country.

The document was handed to him in the Department of Citizenship and Migration of the Internal Affairs Directorate of the Brest Regional Executive Committee on March 22, 2022, the agency wrote.

Neumann fled the United States and took refuge in Belarus on Feb. 16, 2021. He was indicted in December on 14 criminal counts in the Jan. 6 breach, expanding on charges originally contained in a criminal complaint filed against Neumann in March last year.

A federal arrest warrant was issued for Neumann in December. Charges against him include engaging in physical violence in a restricted building or grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon, civil disorder, and assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers.

Today I have mixed feelings, Neumann told BelTA on Tuesday, CNN reported. I am glad Belarus took care of me.

I am upset to find myself in a situation where I have problems in my own country, he told the state-run media outlet. Court records indicate he does not have a lawyer and has been considered a fugitive.

Neumann, of Mill Valley, California, near San Francisco, was seen in video footage donning a gas mask while standing near police in front of barricades set up at the base of the West Front of the Capitol Building, U.S. prosecutors said in December.

According to documents filed in the case, Neumann later removed his gas mask and shouted at the police, Im willing to die, are you? before he physically assaulted several officers and rushed into them using a barricade as a battering ram.

Neumann also appeared to have remained on restricted grounds late into the day and evening, continuing to resist repeated orders by law enforcement to leave such areas, according to the FBI.

The 49-year-old is one of more than 245 individuals charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement in the Jan. 6 breach of the Capitol building. According to the Department of Justice, more than 775 people have been arrested in nearly all 50 states for alleged crimes related to the breach.

Reuters contributed to this report.
President Joe Biden speaks about Ukraine in the South Court Auditorium of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, next to the White House on March 16, 2022. (Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images)

Biden: Russias Hypersonic Missiles Consequential and Almost Impossible to Stop

President Joe Biden deemed Russias alleged firing of hypersonic missiles in the Ukraine conflict earlier this week as a consequential move.

If you notice, theyve just launched their hypersonic missile [in Ukraine], because its the only thing that they can get through with absolute certainty. Itsas you all know, its a consequential weapon, Biden remarked this week, adding that its almost impossible to stop it. Theres a reason theyre using it.

Russias Ministry of Defense claimed its military used hypersonic missiles against an ammunition warehouse and a fuel depot in Ukraine, making it possibly the first time such a weapon has been used in combat to date.

However, other White House officials downplayed the development as a diversionary tactic.

I would not see it as a game-changer, Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin told CBS News this week. I think the reason he is resorting to using these types of weapons is because he is trying to reestablish some momentum. And again, weve seen him attack towns and cities and civilians outright, [and] we expect to see that continue.

Meanwhile, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Monday that its not clear if Moscow actually used hypersonic missiles, which are said to travel many times the speed of sound, in the conflict.

Look, weve seen the Russian claim that they used a hypersonic missile, he told reporters. Were not in a position to refute that claim, but were also not able to independently verify it.

Russias Ministry of Defense asserted that Moscows forces used Kinzhal missiles last Friday and Saturday in south-central and western Ukraine.

Kinzhal aviation missile systems with hypersonic ballistic missiles destroyed a large storage site for fuels and lubricants of the Ukrainian armed forces near the settlement of Kostyantynivka in the Mykolaiv region, the ministry said in a statement.

Biden, meanwhile, embarks Wednesday on a four-day trip that will test his ability to navigate the continents worst crisis since WWII ended in 1945. Biden also expressed fears that Russia could use chemical or nuclear weapons as its invasion becomes bogged down in the face of logistical problems and fierce Ukrainian resistance.

Jake Sullivan, Bidens national security adviser, said the president would coordinate with allies on military assistance for Ukraine and new sanctions on Russia.

This war will not end easily or rapidly, Sullivan told reporters at a White House briefing on Tuesday. For the past few months, the West has been united. The president is traveling to Europe to make sure we stay united.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
U.S. President Joe Biden delivers remarks at the Business Roundtables CEO Quarterly Meeting in Washington on March 21, 2022. (Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images)

Biden Says Russian Chemical Attack Is Real Threat as He Leaves for Europe

President Joe Biden warned on March 23 that theres is a real threat that Russia could use chemical weapons against Ukraine, as he left the White House for Europe, seeking to further unite NATO allies in opposition to Russias invasion and war in Ukraine.

The president is traveling to Brussels to attend an emergency NATO summit, meet with Group of Seven (G-7) leaders, and attend a European Council summit. The stated goal is to coordinate the next phase of military assistance to Ukraine and impose further economic sanctions against Russia.

Biden is set to make announcements alongside allies on long-term adjustments to NATO force posture on its eastern flank, further U.S. humanitarian aid to Ukraine, and new efforts to reduce European dependence on Russian oil.

Biden will then visit Poland to meet with leadership there as that country deals with a flood of more than 2 million refugees from Ukraine.

To date, the United States has committed billions of dollars in military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine while coordinating with its allies in an effort to isolate Russias economy. This has included sanctioning Russian financial systems and individuals in Russian President Vladimir Putins inner circle. The United States also has banned the import of Russian oil and, along with other G-7 nations, moved to end Russias normal trade status.

As he departed from the White House, Biden indicated to reporters that he would say more on the potential for chemical warfare directly to the leaders hell meet with in Europe.

All I have to say, Im going to say it when I get there, he said, adding that he will be happy to talk to you guys when I get back.

Biden has also warned that Russia is exploring options for a potential cyberattack against U.S. critical infrastructure, with the president issuing a call to action on March 21 to the U.S. private sector to shore up its cyber security.

Biden and top administration officials have conceded that the war in Ukraine, which is now almost a month old, will not end easily or rapidly. National security adviser Jake Sullivan assured reporters on March 22 that Russia wont successfully subjugate Ukraine, enhance Russian power and prestige, or divide and weaken the West.

Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin announced on March 23 in a government meeting that Russia will now accept payment for gas exports to unfriendly countries in rubles only.

Russias Ministry of Foreign Affairs told the U.S. ambassador in Moscow earlier in the week that Biden referring to Putin as a war criminal has strained ties between the two countries to the verge of breaking.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on March 21 that he was prepared to discuss a commitment from Ukraine not to seek NATO membership in exchange for a ceasefire, the withdrawal of Russian troops, and a guarantee of Ukraines security.

Its a compromise for everyone: for the West, which doesnt know what to do with us with regard to NATO, for Ukraine, which wants security guarantees, and for Russia, which doesnt want further NATO expansion, Zelenskyy said in an interview with Ukrainian television channels.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A piece of the wreckage of a China Eastern passenger jet which crashed onto a mountainside in Tengxian county, Wuzhou city, in China's southern Guangxi region, on March 21, 2022. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

Black Box of Crashed China Eastern Plane Recovered, Cause Unclear

A black box containing the flight recorder was recovered Wednesday from the wreckage of a China Eastern passenger plane that crashed earlier this week, officials said.

The flight recorder from China Eastern Flight MU5735, a Boeing 737-800, was found, Liu Lusong, a spokesman for Chinas aviation authority, told reporters. State media outlets later claimed that the recorder was badly damaged.

Boeing 737-800 planes are equipped with two flight recorders. Officials are still looking for the other recorder.

At present, it is unclear whether it is a data recorder or a cockpit voice recorder that was located, said another Civil Aviation Administration official, Mao Yanfeng, during a news conference, according to the AFP news agency.

Previously, officials said that all 132 people on board the plane were killed in the crash. No survivors were found during a search of the planes wreckage.

The search for clues into why a Chinese commercial jetliner dove suddenly and crashed into a mountain in southern China had been suspended earlier Wednesday as rain slickened the debris field and filled the red-dirt gash formed by the planes fiery impact.

Flight 5735 was carrying 123 passengers and nine crew members Kunming in Yunnan province to Guangzhou, located on Chinas southeastern coast, when it crashed on Monday afternoon outside the city of Wuzhou. Following the crash, video footage uploaded online purportedly showed the plane diving at a steep angle.

So far, investigators have not revealed what likely may have been the cause. Boeing 737-800 jets are generally said to have a stellar safety record.

The plane, which made its debut in 1998, is an earlier model than the Boeing 737 Max, which was grounded around the world for several years following two crashes in 2018 and 2019.

Flight data suggested the plane plunged more than 26,000 feet in the span of about 95 seconds, according to Flightradar24, although some experts have said the websites data is preliminary.

The crash [is] very odd, Jeff Guzzetti, the former accident investigation chief for the Federal Aviation Administration, told Bloomberg News.

Its an odd profile, aviation safety consultant and former Boeing 737 pilot John Cox said in reference to video footage showing the plane plunging at a steep angle into the ground. Its hard to get the airplane to do this.

You need something to hold the nose [of the 737-800] down, former National Transportation Safety Board investigator Benjamin Berman noted.

Other aviation experts explained that once jetliners reach a cruising altitude, they are difficult to crash.

Once theyre at cruising altitude, generally aircraft dont crash. Most accidents occur on the landing and take-off phase of flight, Paul Hayes, director of air safety and insurance at aviation consultancy Ascend by Cirium, told the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday.

As for the cause, Cox told the WSJ that everything is on the table right now.
Burma's military ruler Min Aung Hlaing presides over an army parade on Armed Forces Day in Naypyitaw, Burma, on March 27, 2021. (Stringer/Reuters)

Burmese Military Says US Rohingya Genocide Declaration Politically Motivated

Burmas military junta said Tuesday that it vehemently rejects the United States declaration that the military committed genocide against the Rohingya minority, claiming that the declaration was politically motivated.

The Ministry of Information said in a statement that the Min Aung Hlaing-led military harbored no genocidal intent to destroy any minority groups and denied that genocide had even occurred in Burma, also known as Myanmar.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinkens declaration that the military junta committed genocide against the Rohingya was based on false allegations and amounted to political interference with the internal affairs of a sovereign state, the ministry added.

Blinken declared Monday that the Burmese military committed genocide against the Rohingya in a widespread and systematic manner, saying there was clear evidence of intent to destroy the minority group in whole or in part.

Ten Rohingya Muslim men with their hands bound kneel as members of the Myanmar security forces stand guard in Inn Din village Sept. 2, 2017. (Handout via Reuters)

The Rohingya have been denied citizenship in the country since a Burmese citizenship law was enacted in 1982. The United Nations said that more than 700,000 Rohingya fled to Bangladesh due to a military clampdown in 2017.

Citing a 2018 State Department report that surveyed more than 1,000 Rohingya refugees living in Bangladesh, Blinken said that the findings demonstrate that the Burmese militarys violence against the Rohingya were not isolated cases.

Three-quarters of those surveyed claimed to have witnessed the military kill someone and more than half witnessed acts of sexual violence. One in five witnessed a mass-casualty event, killing or injuring more than 100 people in a single incident.

The National Unity Government (NUG), which considers itself as the legitimate civilian-led government of Burma, welcomed the U.S. determination.

NUGs acting president Duwa Lashi La said the group acknowledges that discriminatory practices and rhetoric against the Rohingya also laid the ground for the atrocities in Burma.

The impunity enjoyed by the militarys leadership has since enabled their direction of countrywide crimes at the helm of an illegal military junta. Those crimes against the Myanmar people continue until today by the military, Duwa said in a statement.

John Sifton, Human Rights Watchs Asia advocacy director, also backed the United States declaration but said that its condemnation against the Burmese military regime should come with action.

For too long, the U.S. and other countries have allowed Myanmars generals to commit atrocities with few real consequences, Sifton said in a statement.

The same military junta ousted an elected civilian government led by Aung San Suu Kyi in February last year, sparking widespread anti-coup protests in Burma. At least 1,600 people have been killed and more than 12,500 people detained since the military seized power, according to the United Nations.

The U.N. on March 15 urged the international community to take immediate measures to stop the Burmese military juntas systematic human rights violations, which it said amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Canadian soldiers wait to meet Minister of Defence Anita Anand in Adazi, Latvia, on Feb. 3, 2022. (Gints Ivuskans/AFP via Getty Images)

Canadian Defence Strategy More Important Than Increased Spending, Experts Tell Committee

Canadas defence spending has come under the spotlight with Russias invasion of Ukraine, but experts say the issue is more complicated than simply meeting the NATO benchmark of 2 percent GDP to solve the issue.

For the experts testifying before the Standing Committee on National Defence on March 21, increasing the budget without a defence review and an articulated strategy will not solve Canadas military deficiencies.

Its not really a question of increasing the defence budget per se, said professor James Ferguson of the Centre for Defence and Security Studies at the University of Manitoba.

The question is how much, over what period of time, and particularly dedicated to what acquisitionsindependent of operations and maintenance, and independent  to the problems of recruitment. If you want to punch this money into or funnel it into expanding the Canadian Armed Forces, recruitment and retention is a big problem, and youre probably in a real difficulty.

Ferguson said that as much as governments want to avoid it, a defence review is needed to address the issue.

With the purpose of the committee meeting being to address threats to Canada and the ability of the Canadian Armed Force (CAF) to meet those threats, Ferguson said in his opening remarks that Canada has a low capability to defend against Russian missiles due in part to an obsolete North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD) warning system.

Its very clear in my mind that what was committed in 2017, in the absence of any funding commitment to NORAD modernization and North American defence modernization, that thats the key area you want to go.  Whether thats the case, I think its important that the government makes this clear.

Defence Minister Anita Anand told the Ottawa Conference on Security and Defence earlier this month that a robust package for NORAD modernization would be announced shortly.

The Liberal government has also hinted at increased defence spending since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24. Canada currently commits 1.39 percent of its GDP to defence spending, well below the NATO target.

But experts testifying before the defence committee said that target is not really relevant.

Lets recognize that the 2 percent increase when it was created by NATO is a political target, said Robert Huebert, political science professor at the University of Calgary.

We need to have an ability to go beyond just simply saying, OK, 2 percent, 1.9. Those are numbers, they dont mean anything. But if you have a strategic knowledge within the ongoing ability at the highest levels to understand the types of threats that were responding to, and to be able to respond nimbly, that in many ways actually goes further than just setting artificial numbers in terms of what you are doing.

Anessa Kimball, political science professor at Universite Laval, also said that the 2 percent target is clearly political.

[It] does not come from any sort of quantitative analysis. It doesnt come from any sort of strategic analysis or anything like that, she said, indicating this assessment is based on extensive research on NATO burden-sharing policy.

As some of my other colleagues have said, [the 2 percent] doesnt really say very much about what youre actually doing.

Canadas ability to respond to crises and to support allies came into question recently when Anand said her department had exhausted the weapons it could provide to Ukraine after making some military equipment contributions.

An increased focus on defence was until recently not an objective of the government.

Defence is not mentioned in the speech from the throne in November that highlighted government priorities after the last election.

The closest theme appears in the last segment of the speech with the sentence: In the face of rising authoritarianism and great power competition, Canada must reinforce international peace and security, the rule of law, democracy, and respect for human rights.
Service members of pro-Russian troops are seen atop of a tank during Ukraine-Russia conflict on the outskirts of the besieged southern port city of Mariupol, Ukraine, on March 20, 2022. (Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters)

Canadians Support More Sanctions Against Russia, but Hesitant to Go to War: Poll

Canadians are highly supportive of imposing additional sanctions on Russia even if it means paying the price at home, but are cooler to the idea of directly going to war against Russia, a new poll suggests.

A total of 82.4 percent of Canadians surveyed by Nanos Research said they support or somewhat support increasing economic sanctions and actions against Russia, even if it resulted in a prolonged series of price increases in Canada for staples like gasoline and groceries.

When it comes to an escalation of conflict in Ukraine by the imposition of a no-fly zone or by Canadas direct involvement in fighting Russia as part of NATO, less than half of respondents are supportive, suggests the poll commissioned by CTV and The Globe and Mail.

The overall support (support or somewhat support) for a no-fly zone, which would very likely draw NATO into war, is at 47 percent, while the overall opposition (oppose or somewhat oppose) is at 44.7 percent. A little over 8 percent said they were unsure.

Overall support for Canada going to war as part of NATO is at 46.8 percent and overall opposition is at 45.5 percent.

The support for Canadas involvement in the war increases drastically when the variable of Russia invading another country than Ukraine is added, with a total of 65.5 percent saying they would support or somewhat support it.

Russias invasion of a neighbouring NATO country would almost certainly trigger the alliances pact of collective defence under Article 5, where an attack against one ally is considered an attack against all allies, but it is unclear if Canadians would want to go to war with Russia if it invaded a non-NATO country.

The poll surveyed the country by region, including Atlantic Canada, Quebec, Ontario, the Prairies, and British Columbia.

Quebec generally had less interest than other regions in an escalation of the conflict, or of Canada going to war.

Only 32.8 percent of Quebec respondents said they would support, or somewhat support, Canada going to war with Russia over Ukraine. The Atlantic region is the most bellicose with 62 percent supporting war.

The survey also queried Canadians on humanitarian measures, such as what number of Ukrainian refugees Canada should accept, and whether taxpayer resources should be used to airlift Ukrainian refugees to Canada.

The overall support for using Canadian tax dollars to airlift refugees is at 84.9 percent and that number is somewhat consistent across regions.

When asked what number of Ukrainian refugees Canada should accept compared to Syrian refugees resettled in Canada (70,000), 85.6 of survey respondents said Canada should accept the same amount or more Ukrainian refugees.

The telephone survey was conducted with 1,000 Canadians aged 18 and older from March 18 to 20, and the margin of error is 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, Canada has imposed a number of sanctions on Russias economy and officials, along with providing financial, military, and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine.

The federal government has also streamlined the immigration process to make it easier for Ukrainian refugees to come to Canada. So far, 9,000 Ukrainians have arrived since the war broke out, reported CTV News.
Raindrops hang on a sign for Wall Street outside the New York Stock Exchange in Manhattan in New York City, New York, U.S., on Oct. 26, 2020. (Mike Segar/Reuters)

CCP Strategy Is to Buy Off US Elites With Lucrative Deals in Chinas Markets: Author Peter Schweizer

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) relies to a large degree on a strategy of luring powerful figures in American politics and business to extend its influence and avoid the consequences of its misdeeds, according to Peter Schweizer, author of the book Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China.

The strategy is to buy off the elites in the United States by giving them lucrative deals and special access to the Chinese market, Schweizer told NTDs China in Focus program on March 21. NTD is an affiliate of The Epoch Times.

It involves political figures, but it also involves corporate executives. And its a very effective strategy, and it hamstrings our ability to deal with the threat posed by the Beijing regime.

The breadth and depth of the cross-section of American policymakers and businesspeople caught up in this web of influence is scary, he said. It encompasses the presidents family and the biggest names on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley, he added. Nor can the amounts of money involved be dismissed.

Were not talking about small sums of money, were talking about deep financial ties, whether its the tens of millions of dollars that the Biden family has received from CCP-linked businessmen, or whether its the billion-dollar deals, or more, that some firms on Wall Street or in Silicon Valley have received, Schweizer said, referring to Hunter Bidens, President Joe Bidens son, alleged links to Chinese executives and companies.

The Tesla Factor

As an example of a powerful figure wooed by Chinese officials, Schweizer cited the case of Elon Musk, who although born in South Africa is currently CEO of Palo Alto, California-based Tesla.

In the past, Musk was a vocal critic of Beijing over its human rights record, Schweizer said. All that has changed now that Tesla has a factory in Shanghai and reportedly has plans to build another, to which the company plans to outsource high volumes of work from the United States.

In Schweizers view, Musk has become very supportive of Beijing. Musk, he said, even goes on podcasts to argue that the regime is more responsive to the needs of the Chinese people than the supposedly representative democracy in America is to its own constituents.

Hes praised the Chinese Communist Party, he talks about the efficiency of the Chinese dictatorship. Of course, its very easy to be efficient when you dont have property rights, human rights, civil rights, those sorts of things, getting in the way, Schweizer said.

The fact that Tesla now conducts such critical operations in China raised serious concerns about technology transfers, the author argued.

Beijing has control over Tesla operations in China, which means they have access to Tesla technologies, and they also now have SpaceX secrets as well, he said, referring to the aerospace and communications firm that Musk founded. Schweizer said he believes that the Chinese regime is in a position to leverage its control over Tesla to gain access to SpaceX technological secrets that will prove immensely valuable as the technology race with the United States progresses.

Musk has tempered his criticisms of CCP human rights abuses because he knows that being too vocal will endanger his own commercial prospects, said Schweizer.

Hes very outspoken on lots of issues, but hes not going to be outspoken on China because of this leverage that Beijing has over him, Schweizer added. If you look at the statements that are made by Tesla to shareholders, Chinas the future of this company.

The Epoch Times has reached out to Tesla for comment.

Schweizer sees a highly similar dynamic at work in the political realm. Elected members of the Senate and the House of Representatives are required to disclose any financial deals they make with a foreign government, Schweizer noted. But rather than preventing any undue foreign influence, this requirement results in what he calls corruption by proxy, whereby a politician will rely on a family member not subject to the disclosure rules to undertake dealings in China.

It matters little to the CCP whether a U.S. politician is a Republican or a Democrat, as long as the politician in question is in a position to give or facilitate access to U.S. capital markets or technology. CCP officials dont mind too much if American leaders criticize them for their treatment of the Uyghurs of western China as long as those officials are able to get what they want, Schweizer said.

Higher Education

The CCP also exerts influence over higher education in America by deploying large amounts of cash, Schweizer said.

Were seeing a large rush of money from individuals linked to the Beijing regime, who are making donations to Americas colleges and universities, and they are attaching strings to those donations, he said.

Schweizer cited the example of Joe Tsai, a co-founder and executive vice-chairman of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. The massive success of that company, he said, is largely related to the fact that many of its early investors were relatives of top CCP officials.

Nowadays, Tsai, whose net worth Schweizer estimates to be anywhere from $15 billion to $20 billion, makes huge donations to Yale University and other schools, Schweizer noted. At the same time, Tsai makes a practice of going to U.S. campuses and making a case that Americans misunderstand the Chinese regime, which is allegedly responsive to peoples needs.

To further his positive view of the communist regime, Tsai sponsors research and the launch of facilities like Yales Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking, which takes its name from Tsais father. Schweizer said that the research backed by Tsai counters the negative picture presented in much of the Western media and is decidedly supportive and friendly toward Beijing.

When you look at what they produce, in terms of scholarship, much of it is apologetic, making excuses for the regimes misconduct, praising the government for being more lawful, when what weve actually seen under Xi Jinping is quite the opposite, he said.

Institutions like the Tsai Center do not present students with a full and objective picture of what is going in China, and barely any discussion goes on about human rights abuses or the plight of the Uyghurs, Schweizer said.

The Epoch Times has reached out to Alibaba and the Tsai Center for comment.

A further problem is what Schweizer calls self-censorship and the bullying of people who dare to speak out about CCP abuses.

As an example, Schweizer mentioned the case of Nathan Law, a veteran of Hong Kongs democratic movement who has been jailed for his protest activities, who went to Yale University to pursue a masters degree in Asian studies in the fall of 2019. Laws reception at Yale left him stunned, Schweizer said, adding that students from mainland China had heckled the Hong Kong activist.

In many cases, universities fail even to disclose that the money supporting research and institutions on their campuses comes from China, Schweizer noted. Federal law requires such disclosures.
Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) and Chinese leader Xi Jinping pose for a photograph during their meeting in Beijing on Feb. 4, 2022. (Alexei Druzhinin/Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images)

China Bought Twice as Much Russian Liquefied Natural Gas in February

China doubled its import of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Russia in February from a year earlier, amid deepening relations between the two countries that continued even after Moscow invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24.

Beijing bought nearly 401,000 tons of Russian LNG last month, Bloomberg reported on March 21, citing data from Chinese customs officials. That volume made up 8 percent of Chinas total LNG imports in February.

Overall, China imported 12 percent less liquid natural gas last month compared to February 2021, according to Bloomberg.

Meanwhile, China imported a total of 12.67 million tons of crude oil from Russia in the first two months of this year, according to Chinas customs data.

Chinas continued energy purchases from Russia are providing important revenue for Moscow, as its energy sector has become increasingly isolated after being hit with sanctions and other retaliatory moves over its aggression in Ukraine.

On March 8, President Joe Biden announced the United States would ban imports of Russian coal, liquefied natural gas, and coal. The very next day, the UK announced that it would phase out imports of Russian oil by the end of this year.

On March 15, the European Union announced another package of sanctions against Moscow, among which is a ban on new investments in the Russian energy sector. Additionally, the bloc introduced a comprehensive export restriction on equipment, technology, and services for the energy industry.

China, however, has criticized sanctions imposed by Western countries. During a daily briefing on March 2, Wang Wenbin, one of Chinas foreign ministry spokespersons, said Beijing and Moscow will continue to conduct normal trade cooperation.

On March 9, a day after Bidens announcement banning Russian energy products, Zhao Lijian, Chinas foreign ministry spokesperson, said the two neighbors always maintain sound energy cooperation and will continue to conduct normal trade cooperation including on gas and oil.

Some U.S. lawmakers are calling for secondary sanctions against Russia, including Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee.

To cut off Mr. Putins oil and gas sales globally, the administration and Congress should impose secondary sanctions on the entirety of Russias financial sector, Toomey wrote in an op-ed published on March 21 in The Wall Street Journal.

He added, These penalties would effectively prohibit foreign banks anywhere in the world, under the threat of U.S. sanctions, from making payments to Russian banks, including for oil and gas.

Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho), ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, took to Twitter to express his support for Toomeys suggestion.

Secondary sanctions would seal off #Russia from the rest of the world, prohibiting foreign banks, like those in #China, from doing business with #Putin & inadvertently funding the #UkraineWar, Risch wrote. This is the next step the Biden Admin must take.

Beijings effort to cast itself as a neutral party has drawn criticism. On March 15, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg called on Beijing to condemn Russia over what he called Moscows brutal invasion of Ukraine.

Andriy Yermak, head of the office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, said on March 22 that China should play a more noticeable role in ending the war, during a virtual news conference organized by London-based think tank Chatham House.

So far weve seen Chinas neutral position. And, as I said before, we believe that China  should play a more noticeable role in bringing this war to [an] end and in building up a new global security system, Yermak said.

Weeks before the war, Beijing and Moscow updated their bilateral relationship to a no-limits partnership, following a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping. The two leaders also said there would be no forbidden areas of cooperation between their nations.

Reuters contributed to this article.
The Canadian Coast Guard's medium icebreaker Henry Larsen in Allen Bay during Operation Nanook in Canada's Arctic in a file photo. (The Canadian Press/Sean Kilpatrick)

China Identified as Greater Threat Than Russia in the Canadian Arctic

Arctic at an inflection point and more strategically important than ever before: Defence official

China and Russia were identified as the two main military threats in the Arctic, but despite the latters devastating invasion of Ukraine dominating news headlines, two military experts perceive the threat from Beijing as being more dangerous and enduring for Canada.

Many of the Chinese activities in and around the Arctic have dual-use purposes and could be used to advance Chinas strategic and military interests. [China] views itself erroneously as a near-Arctic state, said Kevin Hamilton, director general of international security policy at Global Affairs Canada.

He and other defence professionals and Arctic specialists were testifying before the Senate Standing Committee on National Security and Defence on March 21 at a hearing to examine and report on issues relating to security and defence in the Arctic.

Major-General Michael C. Wright, commander of the Canadian Forces Intelligence Command and chief of defence intelligence, said there are many areas of convergence [between China and Russia], but I would say there are also areas of divergence and it is an unequal partnershipRussia very much the junior partner, and that will be increasingly so over the coming years.

Beijings calculus amid the Ukraine crisis has been under close scrutinynot just with regard to its evolving relationship with Moscow and threats against Taiwanbut also for its designs on the Arctic and accompanying menace to Canada.

Regarding Russia, the defence panellists agreed that there is a distinction between that country invading Ukraine and the threat it poses to Canada in the Arctic.

Hamilton said the situation in Russia and Ukraine is not analogous from a geographic perspective to the security challenges we face in the Arctic. But it is a factor when it speaks to the psychology of the Russian regime.

He added that the Ukraine invasion is a function of geography and the expansionist Putin regime.

But defence analysts have long been saying that Canada cannot rely on geographic isolation for protection.

At the Ottawa Conference on Security and Defence from March 911, Christopher Sands, director of the Canada Institute at the Washington, D.C.-based Wilson Center, reminded participants of the threat of missiles that can fly at least five times faster than the speed of sound.

In an age of hypersonics, and other kinds of attacks, we cant think of North America as protected by the oceans anymore at all, he said.

Russia has fired hypersonic missiles at Ukraine. They are harder to detect as they can fly at lower altitudes and outmanoeuvre missile detection systems, such as the antiquated North Warning System in the Arctica joint Canada-U.S. network of radar built in the 1980s. China also possesses such weapons.

Upcoming Arctic Investment

While it was acknowledged at the Senate committee hearing that Canada has not kept pace with the growing threat level from China and Russia, Jonathan Quinn, director general of continental policy at the Department of National Defence, said that decisions have been taken on additional investments in the Arctic and that details will soon be forthcoming.

I would just flag that its certainly recognized that the investments that have been made today in the announcements made to date are not sufficient to meet the evolving threat environment. There is more that is planned, Quinn said.

Defence Minister Anita Anand had already spoken of a robust package to modernize NORAD [North American Aerospace Defense Command] at the Ottawa defence conference on March 11.

Quinn referred to the Canada-U.S. joint statement on NORAD modernization, issued in August 2021, which laid out four key areas for shared investments between the two countries.

This is specific to NORAD, but a lot of the investments from the Canadian perspective that are identified there would be focused in the Arctic, Quinn said.

He shed some light on what upgrades might be in the works. We dont necessarily anticipate  a one-for-one replacement of the North Warning System, he said.

Were facing new challenges across a number of domains. So what we would likely be looking at is a surveillance system and systems that incorporate various elements to provide adequate warning and tracking of aerospace threats to the continent.

Quinn also emphasized the increasing overall significance of the Arctic today.

We view the Arctic to be at an inflection point where strategic competition, climate change, technological advancements, and economic interests are coming together in a way that makes the region more strategically important than ever before.

Ideally Keep Ahead of China, Russia

Wright emphasized that theres a major difference between the relationships authoritarian regimes have with each other and those that Canada has with its democratic allies.

What I really want to perhaps drive home here is the importance of relationships with our allies with NORAD, but also with NATO, because an attack on a NATO country such as Canada would be an attack on NATO. So this is really the strength of the rules-based international order and of the allies, he said.

The topic of raising defence spending to meet the NATO target of 2 percent of gross domestic product has garnered plenty of attention since Russia attacked Ukraine, and defence analysts have said that Canada can no longer be a laggard.

The view of Global Affairs Canada is [that] investing in our domestic defence and Arctic capabilities allows us to engage more effectively, globally, Hamilton said.

Quinn added that China and Russia are investing heavily in modern capabilities and that Canada needs to keep up with them and ideally keep ahead of them, but also to keep up with our key allies in terms of the investments that theyre making.

Death of Arctic Exceptionalism

Another development that signals an inflection point in the Arctic came from the eight-member Arctic Council, the leading intergovernmental forum that promotes cooperation in the region.

The council, which is currently chaired by Russia and has a mostly environmental focus with no military component, announced on March 4 that it is pausing all official meetings of the Council and its subsidiary bodies until further notice.

At the Ottawa defence conference on March 9, Lindsay Rodman, a global fellow of the Wilson Centres Canada Institute, said the idea that global geopolitics will not actually pervade the national organizations and institutions that have been created in the Arctic can no longer really be the case.

When I saw Russia massing troops on the Ukrainian border, I started saying Arctic exceptionalism just died. I think its been dying a slow death [since 2014], she noted, referring to Russias invasion and subsequent annexation of Crimea.

China, though not a member of the Arctic Council, has participated in its work since 2007 and formally became an observer to the council in 2013.
A landscape in Altay Prefecture, Xinjiang Uygur region, China, on Sept. 18, 2007. China's new G216 highway starts from the international border with Mongolia at Hongshanzui Port in Altay County and goes all the way through the Xinjiang desert till the south to Tibet. (China Photos/Getty Images)

China is Building a New Strategic Road Linking Tibet and Xinjiang That Should Concern India: Experts

NEW DELHIChina is working to link the regions of Tibet and Xinjiang with a new road named G216 thats set to bring the greatest strategic challenge to India since the 1950s, according to experts.

The G216 highway is rarely mentioned in the Chinese media; it is one of Chinas most secret projects, Claude Arpi, an author and expert on Tibet, wrote in a March 15 op-ed in First Post.

[T]he new road will one day link the two restive regions of Xinjiang and Tibet and become an alternative for the G219 (or Aksai Chin) Road, which was built on Indian territory in the early 1950s.

The G216 is set to cut through the disputed territory of Aksai Chin, a region administered by China as part of the Hotan prefecture in Xinjiang. It is claimed by India as part of its Ladakh region.

The construction of the new road, which would give an alternative to the current G219 road that connects Tibet and Xinjiang, will be a concern for India due to the advantages it would provide to the Chinese military, the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA), according to Frank Lehberger, a Germany-based sinologist.

When fully operational, G216 will provide easy and fast access from the east to PLA, in case G219 (running closer to the Indian border, i.e. Aksai Chin) is disrupted or occupied, Lehberger told The Epoch Times.

PLA can quickly resupply units from garrisons in Xinjiang to the north, which previously was only possible via G219, the highway which takes a huge detour west, he added.

This advantage presents a particular challenge to India in light of heightened border tensions between the two countries in recent years. In 2020, Indian soldiers engaged in a bloody clash with the PLA in the disputed Galwan Valley region over the construction of border infrastructure by Beijing. India lost 20 soldiers in the conflict.

A place called Hongliutan, north of Aksai Chin on G219 in Xinjiang just before the Galwan clash between India and China on June 15, 2020. The Chinese trucks are all traveling in the direction of Tibet. The screenshot of the video posted by a Chinese netizen was taken by Frank Lehberger then. The video was later deleted. (Courtesy Frank Lehberger)

In early summer 2020 just days before the Galwan clash, huge PLA military convoys clogged the G219 section near Aksai Chin for days which prompted angry Chinese civilian motorists, who had been forced off the road, to post pictures and videos of the convoy on Chinese social media, according to Lehberger.

This was a sure sign that the PLA was planning a major military operation somewhere on the [disputed border] in Ladakh, Lehberger said.

Based on this publicly available material, I was able to warn people in India via my social media page that something major was about to take place on the [disputed border], he added.

With G216 fully operational, it would be much more difficult for anyone to spot future war preparations by China.

New G216 Road

Arpi said in his article that he was able to confirm the existence of Beijings construction of G216 from clues from captions used in a pictorial article posted by Chinese Communist Party (CCP) mouthpiece Peoples Daily showcasing Tibets natural landscape.

The pictorial article described the beauty of the Ngari prefecture, the westernmost region of Tibet that borders India.

The article depicts breathtaking sceneries, snow-capped mountains, vast grasslands, unpolluted lakes, with wildlife adding to the winter beauty of the area, Arpi wrote.

Two small captions attracted my attention: Tibetan antelope by National Highway 216 in Rutok (or Ritu for the Chinese) County of Ngari and Wild Yaks beside National Highway 216 in Rutok County,

The construction of G216 was an old dream of the first CCP leader Mao Zedong who considered it a national priority to discover a route between Tibet and Xinjiang. The plan was however dropped after a large number of workers building the road were killed en route when a volcano in the region erupted in May 1951.

But Chinese leaders never forget the dreams of their predecessors. Today, one of the most secret projects of President Xi Jinping is to open a new link between Xinjiang and Tibet, Arpi wrote.

The Chinese highway G216 in Aksai Chin in the Xinjiang region (Wikimedia Commons)

The new road G216 will run south from the international border with Mongolia at Hongshanzui Port in Altay County, located at the northern tip of the Xinjiang region. Itll cross the Xinjiang desert to the south at the border with Tibet.

Then in Tibet, it will run south through several countries and end at the Nepal border, according to Chinas National Highway Network Planning (2013-2030) document.

Lehberger said G216 is already operational at some places and cuts through the Tarim Basin, a desert region in Xinjiang, as well as the north Tibetan area known as the Chang Tang, a high-altitude plateau known for its harsh quasi-Arctic climate.

Chang Tang occupies basically the entire north of the Tibetan region, about 900 miles from east to west until the border with Xinjiang. The western tip of Chang Tang extends into Ladakh in India.

The highway cuts travel time from Xinjiang Urumqi to Western Tibet  and the Nepalese border, but not the border with India, said Lehberger, adding that it could give the Nepalese direct access to Central Asia and Russia.

Arpi had said earlier in a 2018 op-ed that G216 could bring immense economic repercussions for India because it could become a conduit of a new trading route linking Central Asia with Nepal and South Asia.

He added that the Chinese regime was furthering its economic development plans for Tibet, which included increased tourism traffic to its Ngari prefecture and the construction of a new airport in western Tibet.

This implies that the Tibetan region could become a major economic as well as tourism hub, and also a strategic center for Chinas defense of its borders, Arpi said.

Lehberger said the Indian territory of Ladakh and Galwan, where the soldiers of India and China clashed in 2020, is farther west and not in the immediate range of G216. However a future east-west highway, not yet built, that would link G216 from Tibets Gerze directly west to G219 in Tibets Rutok, could change that situation.

Between Minfeng county in southern Xinjiang and Gerze country in western Tibet is the deserted Chang Thang nature reserve, there G216 seems still unfinished. This is due to the difficult high altitude terrain, consisting of large tracts of swampy ground or thawing permafrost, he said, adding that he isnt aware of the specific progress on the project.
Delegates take part in the closing session of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on March 10, 2022. (Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

Congress Reauthorizes EB-5 Investor Visa Program, Opening Door to Wealthy Chinese Immigrants

Wealthy Chinese nationals looking to obtain a U.S. green card may see their chances improve after President Joe Biden and Congress recently resurrected the EB-5 investor visa program.

The program, which started more than two decades ago but lapsed in June of last year, allows immigrant investors to secure a conditional green card in exchange for investing at least $500,000 in U.S. geographic areas with high unemployment rates, known as targeted employment areas (TEA). The amount was $1 million for non-TEA regions.

Regardless of where the investment goes, the project they invest in must create 10 new U.S. full-time jobs.

For years, China has accounted for the bulk of EB-5 applicants. Chinese nationals received 46 percent (4,327) of total EB-5 visas in the fiscal year 2019, followed by Indian and Vietnamese nationals each at 8 percent, according to data (pdf) from the Congressional Research Service.

There have been concerns that the visa program could be exploited by the communist Chinese regime, according to a 2020 report (pdf) by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Concerns have been raised regarding Chinese state-sponsored nationals seeking U.S. residency through this program as a means of extending surveillance and intelligence gathering, the report said.

As other avenues of immigration have closed, EB-5 is likely to be exploited more systematically by the Chinese government.

When Biden signed the omnibus spending bill into law on March 15, included within it was the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022, a bill that reauthorized the program. The program will now be in effect until Sept. 30, 2027.

There are a number of changes under the new legislation. For example, the minimum EB-5 investment has been raised to $1.05 million, or $800,000 if in a TEA region.

The legislation also put in place a number of integrity measures to prevent fraud and deter bad actors from exploiting the program. One such measure involves the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, who is required to audit each EB-5 regional center at least once every year. The audit involves looking over the centers transactions, books, ledgers, records, and other documentation.

There are more than 600 regional centers approved by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, offering investment projects that EB-5 applicants can select from to fulfill the investment requirement and other aspects of the visa program.

Chinese EB-5 investment from 2010 to 2019 totaled $10.2 billion, with most of the money going to California, New York, Texas, Pennsylvania, Florida, Nevada, Georgia, Washington state, Illinois, and Maryland, according to data from Chicago-based think tank MarcoPolo.

Chinese real estate money, including that from the EB-5 program, has transformed the San Francisco Bay Area, with money going to poor neighborhoods from Oakland to Treasure Island, according to a 2017 article by MarcoPolo.

A notable related criminal case in recent years involved Zhao Shilan, the ex-wife of a former Chinese official. In 2017, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that she pleaded guilty to committing EB-5 fraud by submitting false documents to federal authorities.
Tesla cars are seen parked at the construction site of the new Tesla Gigafactory for electric cars in Gruenheide, Germany, on March 20, 2022. (Hannibal Hanschke/Reuters)

Dancing Musk Hands Drivers First Teslas From New German Gigafactory

BERLINElon Musk was cheered as he oversaw the handover of Teslas first German-made cars at its Gruenheide plant on Tuesday, marking the start of the U.S. automakers inaugural European hub just two years after it was first announced.

Loud music played as 30 clients and their families got a first glimpse of their shining new vehicles through a glitzy, neon-lit Tesla-branded tunnel, clapping and cheering as Tesla Chief Executive Musk danced and joked with fans.

This is a great day for the factory, Musk said, describing it as another step in the direction of a sustainable future.

Musk said that Tesla is likely to launch a test version of its new Full Self-Driving software in Europe, possibly next year depending on regulatory approval.

Its quite difficult to do full self-driving in Europe, he told factory workers on Tuesday, saying much work needs to be done to handle tricky driving situations in Europe where roads vary a lot by country.

Although German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who also attended the event, lauded the gigafactory as the future of the car industry, it has faced opposition and some environmental activists blocked the factorys entrance while displaying banners flagging its high water use.

Two protestors abseiled from a motorway sign near the factory, blocking traffic for hours after the event.

Musk had hoped to begin output from the factory eight months ago, but licensing delays and local concerns around the plants environmental impact held up the process.

Tesla was forced to service European orders from Shanghai while it awaited its German licence, adding to rising logistics costs at a time when it was struggling with industry-wide chip shortages and other supply chain disruptions.

It got the final go-ahead from local authorities on March 4 to begin production in Germany, provided it met conditions ranging from its water use to air pollution controls.

The plant opening came on the same day as the top U.S. securities regulator urged a federal judge not to let Musk back out of an agreement requiring that his Twitter use be monitored.

Tesla shares ended up 7.9 percent at their highest level in more than two months on Tuesday.

Race With VW

The new owners received the Model Y Performance configuration, a vehicle costing 63,990 euros ($70,500) with a 514 km (320 miles) range, Tesla said, adding that new orders from the plant could be delivered from April.

Tesla said that around 3,500 of the plants expected 12,000 workers have been hired so far.

At full capacity, the plant will produce 500,000 cars a year, more than the 450,000 battery-electric vehicles that German rival Volkswagen sold globally in 2021.

It will also eventually generate 50 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of battery power, surpassing all other plants in Germany. Tesla is expected to initially import batteries from China for its German-made Model Ys before it starts local battery production.

Musk said on Tuesday that battery production will be a challenge next year and will be the limiting factor in the coming years, as Tesla aims to aggressively boost vehicle production.

For now, Volkswagen still has the inside track in the race to electrify Europes fleet, with a 25 percent market share to Teslas 13 percent. Musk has said ramping up production would take longer than the two years it took to build the plant.

JPMorgan predicted Gruenheide would produce around 54,000 cars in 2022, increasing to 280,000 in 2023 and 500,000 by 2025.

Volkswagen, which has received 95,000 EV orders in Europe this year, is planning a new 2 billion euro EV factory alongside its existing facility in Wolfsburg and six battery plants across Europe.

But its timeline lags Teslas, with the EV factory due to open in 2026 and the first battery plant in 2023.

By Victoria Waldersee
Deep Demonstrations of Private Charity

Commentary

The war in Ukraine notwithstanding, normal life has to continue, albeit with a faint feeling of guilt because so many millions of people have been displaced, abducted, killed, or turned into refugees a couple of hours flight away. In the circumstances, it seems almost callous to go about ones petty business as if nothing extraordinary and terrible were happening. But what else can one do?

Yesterday, for example, despite the dramatic rise in the cost of fuel, I drove for my own pleasure 50 miles to a small town on the Welsh border, Hay-on-Wye, set in the loveliest of countryside. Hay was the first town in the world to devote itself to the sale of second-hand books, and though the shop trade is past its zenith, thanks to the internet and the declining importance of books in most peoples lives, there are still sufficient sellers to make a visit always worthwhileat any rate for book-fanatics such as I. As an aficionado of both poetry and crime, I always visit the shops devoted to those subjects.

I was astonished en route to see how many Ukrainian flags and banners were to be seen in the unlikeliest placesremote farmhouses, pharmacy windows, antique shops, petrol stations, dentists offices, ordinary homes.

Usually, Im averse to easy demonstrations of solidarity because theyre generally so cheap, shallow, and fickle or changeable. Yet somehow I felt that this was different from the general run of such demonstrations, that the demonstration was more deeply felt than usual. Certainly, I have never seen anything quite like it before: a real and spontaneous outpouring of genuine sympathy for a victim people, and dismay at the appalling destruction wrought by a dictator quite properly (for once) designated as neo-fascist.

No doubt it was a frivolous thought as I saw the Ukrainian flags fluttering from so many flag-staffs, but I couldnt help but admire the speed with which they had been manufactured and distributed, even if the Ukrainian flag is one of the simplest of all flags (and most tasteful). After all, not long before one would have been hard put to buy a Ukrainian flag in a provincial English or Welsh town; now they were everywhere to be seen. I could only hope that they were not manufactured in China like almost everything else, including the computer on which I write this: selling to both sides in a conflict being one of the most lucrative forms of commerce known.

That the feeling accompanying the display of the Ukrainian colors is deeper than is usually the case is demonstrated by the reaction to a proposed government scheme by which private citizens will be paid a modest monthly subvention if they will welcome Ukrainian refugees into their homes. A hundred thousand people signed up for it in a week, though one couple whom I know who did so remained skeptical as to whether the government would ever be sufficiently organized (or motivated) to allow the entry of such numbers of refugees. There is no overstating the inconstancy and incompetence of Johnsonian Britain.

The idea of asking private individuals to open their homes to Ukrainian refugees was immediately criticized because of possible abuses by those individuals. The subvention offered (about $460 a month) was not so large that anyone, or at any rate many people, would open their home simply to receive it; but, since most of the refugees will be females or children, they might be open to sexual predation or other forms of exploitation.

This, alas, is true: In a hundred thousand people, all types of human being are probably to be found. But I, who having spent years as a prison doctor am not starry-eyed about the possibilities of evil inherent in human nature, am not so misanthropic as to suppose that any but a very tiny and insignificant proportion of those who have offered to open their homes to Ukrainian refugees are motivated by the opportunity for sexual or other exploitation. The overwhelming majority, surely, are motivated by a laudable desire to relieve the appalling suffering that has been made evident to them by television, newspapers, social media, and the internet.

Its also possible that those who offer their homes to refugees might come to regret it, as people who buy a puppy for Christmas come to regret having done so once the responsibilities of dog-ownership become clear to them. Moreover, its a certainty that among so large a number of refugees there will be some undesirable, ungrateful, demanding, exploitative, or even criminal characters: for again, in any such large number of human beings, all types are to be found. But they will be a small minority.

Another objection I have seen to the scheme is that its revelatory of hypocrisy. Why should we be so concerned by the plight of Ukrainian refugees when we are not similarly exercised by that of Sudanese or Yemeni refugees? Are not all people of equal worth or cause for concern? Is there not in our concern for Ukrainian refugees an implicit racism, a belief that people who resemble us physically and culturally are more valuable than others?

It would, unfortunately, take a long discussion of philosophical anthropology to show why this was wrong.

But I suspect (though as in most such questions I cannot prove) that the real objection to the scheme, whether or not it ever comes to pass in practice, is that its a scheme of private charity, relying on charitable feeling, that doesnt pass through the state. It isnt that those who object to the scheme dont want any Ukrainian refugees to be admitted to the country: they dont want the potential of real solidarity as exemplified by human beings who have not made of doing good a lucrative, pensionable career to be illustrated in this powerful fashion. They would far rather that the government set up barracks for refugees in which they received such cold charity as the state would allocate them, attended no doubt by an army of social workers, counselors, psychologists, trauma therapists etc., etc., in an alleged attempt to undo their misery, than that they should receive non-state human warmth from volunteers in scattered communities. For such people, all human solidarity must be expressed through taxation and the redistribution of taxation.

Incidentally, Poland and Hungary have reactedso far at least, things may yet changewith exemplary humanity toward Ukrainian refugees, thus showing the hollowness of the charge against them that they are xenophobic. Their governments, unlike some others I could name, can tell the difference between refugees from war seeking immediate safety and economic migrants who have paid people smugglers large sums of money to get them not into the first safe country, but into the country of their dreams.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
DOJ to Produce Large Volume of Classified Materials in Steele Dossier Source Case: Special Counsel Durham

The Justice Department is set to produce a large volume of classified materials this week in the case against the main source for former UK spy Christopher Steeles dossier on the 2016 Trump presidential campaign, according to special counsel John Durham.

The Steele dossier contained allegations that then-presidential candidate Donald Trump colluded with individuals linked to the Russian government to help him win the 2016 presidential election against Hillary Clinton.

In a filing, Durham asked a judge in federal court in the Eastern District of Virginia for a deadline extension on the production of the classified discovery, citing the Classified Information Procedures Act, which establishes procedures to protect classified information in criminal cases.

He also cited the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine as a reason for the extension.

The deadline was initially set for March 29, and Durham asked for an extension until May 13.

To date, the government has produced over 60,000 documents in unclassified discovery. A portion of these documents were originally marked classified and the government has worked with the appropriate declassification authorities to produce the documents in an unclassified format, Durham said in the filing submitted to federal court in the Eastern District of Virginia.

However, recent world events in Ukraine have contributed to delays in the production of classified discovery, he added. The officials preparing and reviewing the documents at the FBI and intelligence agencies are heavily engaged in matters related to Ukraine. Nevertheless, the government will produce a large volume of classified discovery this week and will continue its efforts to produce documents in classified discovery on a rolling basis, and no later than the proposed deadlines set forth below.

Igor Danchenko, a Eurasia political risk, defense, and economics analyst, was identified in July 2020 as the primary source for the Steele dossier.

Former UK intelligence officer Christopher Steele in London, on July 24, 2020. (Tolga Akmen/AFP via Getty Images)

The analyst provided information to Steele, who was hired by Fusion GPS, a Washington-based research strategic intelligence firm, to conduct opposition research on members of the Trump campaign during the 2016 election.

In turn, Fusion GPS was retained by law firm Perkins Coie on behalf of the Democratic National Committee.

Danchenko previously told the FBI that he obtained the information that was published in the dossier by word of mouth and hearsay from a network of sub-sources in Russia. He was charged in November 2021 with five counts of making false statements to the FBI in 2017 when he misled officials about the sources of the information he provided to Steele.

According to the November indictment, all of Danchenkos alleged lies were material to the FBI because  the FBIs investigation of the Trump Campaign relied in large part on the dossier to obtain warrants to surveil former Trump aide Carter Page.

The FBI ultimately devoted substantial resources attempting to investigate and corroborate the allegations contained in the dossier, including whether Danchenkos sub-sources were reliable, the indictment states. The dossier and information provided by Danchenko played a role in the FBIs investigative decisions and in sworn representations that the FBI made to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court throughout the relevant time period.

Igor Danchenko is seen at a federal courthouse in Alexandria, Va., on Nov. 10, 2021. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Danchenko has pleaded not guilty.

In December, he signed a waiver agreeing to be defended by the same law firm representing members of Hillary Clintons 2016 presidential campaign even though that could pose a conflict of interest, The Washington Examiner reported.

Trump had repeatedly denied accusations that he colluded with Russia in an effort to win the 2016 presidential election, claiming he was the target of a witch hunt designed to discredit his presidency.

The dossier has been exposed as a collection of lies and made-up stories, prompting a number of criminal, congressional, and inspector general investigations into how the reports were used as the basis for surveilling Trump campaign officials.

Durham also made a similar request for an extension earlier this month, again citing delays due to recent events in Ukraine, in a separate case.

Jack Phillips contributed to this report.
SpaceX's first orbital Starship SN20 is stacked atop its massive Super Heavy Booster 4 at the company's Starbase facility near Boca Chica Village in South Texas on Feb. 10, 2022. (Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)

Elon Musk Says SpaceXs Starship Orbital Likely in May Despite Pending Regulatory Approval: Heres Why

Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk said on Monday SpaceXs orbital debut for the Starship rocket from the Boca Chica launch site in Texas is likely to take place in May.

What Happened

The billionaire entrepreneur said SpaceX is currently building 39 flight-worthy Raptor 2 engines that will be ready by next month, following which it will take another month to integrate them with the reusable, 400-foot tall Starship rocket.

First Starship orbital flight will be with Raptor 2 engines, as they are much more capable & reliable. 230 ton or ~500k lb thrust at sea level, Musk said on Twitter.

SpaceX began making the Raptor 2 engines in December. Musk had then said the engine generates more than 230 tonnes of thrust at sea level, up from Raptor 1s 185 tonnes, and said further improvements are expected.

Regulatory Approval

Musk, who dreams of colonizing Mars and making life multi-planetary, needs to secure approval from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to launch the Starship flight.

The FAA is expected to complete a key environmental assessment by March 28, the second delay since December to account for further comment review and ongoing interagency consultations.

Musk last month said the fully reusable Starship rocket the space company is building would reach orbit before the end of the year and that he hoped to secure the key FAA approval in March.

By Rachit Vats

 2021 The Epoch Times. The Epoch Times does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
A fire truck is seen on the roadside in this file photo. (Ringo Chiu/AFP via Getty Images)

Explosion, Fire Rock Business in Sherbrooke, Que, Fire Chief Says Three Injured

Firefighters in Sherbrooke, Que., are battling a blaze at a food complex in the citys west end after witnesses reported an explosion.

Sherbrooke fire Chief Stephane Simoneau told reporters today that three people were injured and taken to hospital, but he did not have an update on their condition.

A huge plume of smoke was visible several kilometres away from the Centre de Valorisation de lAliment de lEstrie, a business that promotes locally produced food and is located in a mainly industrial and commercial area of the city, about 150 kilometres east of Montreal.

The biggest issue, Simoneau says, is that the complex is massive and contains many combustible items inside.

He says the building is very unstable due to the explosion, further hindering efforts to bring the fire under control. Many firefighters, police and paramedics were on scene.

The business describes itself on its website as a food hub that includes 24,000 square feet of space, with industrial kitchens for food production and processing, storage space and a local grocery store.
Facing Unpleasant Facts: What You Arent Supposed to Say About the War in Ukraine

Commentary

Having been lied into war in Iraq in 2003, the American public swore it had wised up. Sure, it went on to drop the ball by supporting the Libya intervention, itself prefaced by lies, and supported the governments intervention in the civil war in Syria (or at least didnt mind it), even though the United States sided with the very Sunni extremists it had been fighting a few years before in Iraq. But these were admittedly obscure conflicts, made all the more so by the blatantly biased coverage of events by Western media, which parroted obvious lies about impending massacres and staged chemical weapons attacks.

But in Europe, where the United States had extensive military alliance commitments under the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the U.S. population should ostensibly have been more informed and less prone to beguiling, it has been disappointing to see the American public once again so easily led down the path to supporting a war that never had to benever would have beenbut for the policies enacted by our government.

And just as with the baseless rush to war with Iraq, which every outlet of mainstream media loyally supported, those who refuse to repeat slogans of Ukrainian democracy or Russian aggression are denigrated, either as cowards or as apologists for the heinous actions of others, for which they are obviously not responsible. Besides being inaccurate, the latter accusation is particularly perfidious because it effectively makes reasoned dissent impossible.

But by pretending that history started with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the story is made simple, a clear case of right and wrong. And while it is true that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine and so is responsible for the present war, such a Manichean telling of the story does little to further informed policy discussion. Indeed, that is precisely the point: to ignore the decades of declared Russian security interests in the orientation of states directly at its border, as well as to obscure a history of U.S. meddling in Ukraine.

So unless you think context is irrelevant, that recent history is unimportant to understanding current crises, here are four things you arent supposed to say about Ukraine but that are absolutely true and that all Americans should be aware of before forming a hasty opinion regarding a deadly serious matter that until a few weeks ago most knew nothing about.

The Revolution of Dignity Was a US-Backed Coup

The 2014 ouster of slightly Russian-leaning Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, who drew his support primarily from the ethnic Russian-dominated eastern parts of the country, was spun by Ukrainian nationalist and Western media as a revolution of dignity. It was in fact, in the words of Western security analyst George Friedman, the most blatant coup in history. In case the obvious nature of events on the ground werent enough, this was confirmed by the leaked phone call between then-assistant secretary of state Victoria Nuland and Geoffrey Pyatt, then the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, during which they picked their favorites for the new Ukrainian leadership and plotted how to prevent the meddlesome EU from screwing it all up by moving too slowly, potentially allowing Russia a chance to interfere in the obviously illegal ouster of an elected government through a street putsch.

The proximate cause of the coup was Yanukovychs taking of what was essentially a large Russian bribe to eschew an EU association agreement. In a country ranked 122nd in corruption, literally the most corrupt country in Europe, none of this was a surprise. But what was a surprise was the U.S. move to sweep in and take Kyivsomething U.S. foreign policy insiders publicly bragged about in the immediate aftermath.

There Is a Significant Neo-Nazi Problem in Ukraine

This is something that until a few years ago the mainstream media reported seriously on; of course, that was before they knew they were going to have to try and lie us into another war. Now any mention of what was taken to be an obvious problem just a year ago is decried as Russian propaganda!

The empowerment of far-right extremists since the 2014 coup, a significant number with openly Neo-Nazi affiliations, is reflected in the dramatic rise in attacks on Jews, feminists, and the LGBTQ and Romany communities. It has further led to the banning of books that question Kyivs nationalist propaganda, which itself features the whitewashing of Nazi collaborators.

What are we to think when at the same time that public witch hunts for supposed white nationalists are carried out domestically with something near hysterical zeal, state-of-the-art shoulder-fired antiaircraft and antitank weaponry is shipped in great volumes to extremist white nationalists in Ukraine that would make the top of any of our own domestic terrorist watch lists?

We arent supposed to think about it all, at least not criticallyjust like we arent supposed to think critically about anything else.

The Russians Always Objected to NATO Expansion Into Ukraine

For example, how about the fact our government always knew the Russians vigorously objected to any NATO involvement in Ukraine but downplayed or dismissed the obvious steps they were taking in that directiondownplayed it to themselves, to the American public, and tried to downplay it to the wider European community. Of course, Germany and France knew better and refused to grant a membership action plan to Ukraine despite Washingtons intense pressure. And though blocked from de jure absorbing Ukraine into the alliance, Washington was taking de facto steps to that effectconducting joint military exercises in Ukraine at the same time that it was shipping the U.S.-coup-installed government sophisticated heavy weaponry whose only obvious use was against Russia. Since at least 2014, when Putin ordered Russian forces to seize Crimea to protect the only warm water port of the Russian navy after threats by Kyiv to evict them despite Moscows legal lease, Washington has known Putin feels particularly threatened in Ukraine. Even in the years since then, Washington has rejected repeated attempts by Moscow to establish an officially neutral Ukraine, including in the weeks leading up to the invasion.

Biden Could Have Prevented the War

Yes, even at that late date in January 2022and all it would have taken was agreeing to Putins minimum terms: Ukraine could never join NATO, and new missiles could not be deployed in eastern European NATO member states. Outrageous and rightly rejected? Not according to Joe Biden, who claimed NATO membership for Ukraine was not on the table nor a serious priority at any point in the foreseeable future. Taking him at his word, why wouldnt Biden simply agree to put it on paper and prevent what he himself repeatedly said were imminent Russian plans to invade and destroy Ukraine? What were told, and have been told since NATO expansion began, is that keeping the door open to alliance membership is a sacred principle.

Perhaps it should be made public exactly how many Ukrainian lives the State Department and the Pentagon reckon this principle to be worth and how such calculations are made.

Conclusion

Really, what this looks like is a tragic combination of the brief 2008 Russo-Georgian War and the decade-long Soviet-Afghan War. In the first instance, U.S. encouragement of actions by Tbilisi directly contrary to Russian interests led directly to a Russian military intervention; in the latter case, the leading U.S. policy maker at the time, Zbigniew Brzezinski, admits precipitating that war on purpose: provoking the USSR into fatally overreaching in an attempt to protect an allied government from being undermined by the United Statesin this case by funding the proto-Taliban mujahideen in Afghanistan from bases in neighboring Pakistan.

As Poland gets set to potentially play Pakistan to Ukraines Afghanistan, serving as a staging area and training ground for rebel fighters slipping back and forth across the border to Ukraine, thereby further threatening war between NATO and Russia, we should recall that this all, in a sense, happened because the local governments in Donetsk and Luhansk could see the obvious: what had happened in Kyiv in 201314 was a coup, and they refused to recognize the new government. Further, we should remember that it was only when the Ukrainian military attempted to retake these regions by force that Russia intervenedand that since the Minsk Two peace accords failed to bring about a durable ceasefire, over 80 percent of those killed have been ethnic Russians living in the breakaway regions, and they were killed by the government in Kyiv.

With Democrats and Republicans fighting about who supports intervening in Ukraine more, and with uninformed and misled people increasingly calling for even more disastrous interventionist measures, the American public needs to be reminded that it is entirely possible for us to have a foreign policy that keeps us perfectly safe while not getting large numbers of people killed elsewhere, and further, that most of the various crises around the world that we are told the United States needs to play a direct and integral part in solving are themselves the direct result of previous U.S. interventions in those places.

From Mises.org

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Joseph Solis-Mullen Follow A graduate of Spring Arbor University and the University of Illinois, Joseph Solis-Mullen is a political scientist and graduate student in the economics department at the University of Missouri. A writer and blogger, his work can be found at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, Eurasian Review, Libertarian Institute, and Sage Advance. You can contact him through his website JSMWritings.com or find him on Twitter @solis_mullen.
FBI Director Christopher Wray speaks at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, Calif., on Jan. 31, 2022. (Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images)

FBIs Wray Warns of Possible Russian Cyberattacks

FBI Director Christopher Wray says the bureau is concerned about the possibility of Russian attacks on critical U.S. infrastructure targets.

Wrays comments came Tuesday during an appearance before the Detroit Economic Club and echoed President Joe Bidens warning a day earlier.

We are, of course, concerned about the possibility, as the president said, of the Russians, whether its their intelligence services or cybercriminal groups working with them, targeting U.S. critical infrastructure, either in retaliation for our sanctions or for some other means, Wray said in Detroit.

President Joe Biden on Monday urged U.S. companies to make sure their digital doors are locked tight because of evolving intelligence that Russia is considering launching cyberattacks against critical infrastructure targets as the war in Ukraine continues.

The federal government has been warning U.S. companies of the threats posed by Russian hackers well before the invasion of Ukraine last month.

And Wray doubled down on those warnings Tuesday, saying: The reason were concerned about it is not just based on our longstanding understanding of how the Russians operate, but its actually the product of specific investigative work and surveillance work that weve been doing altogether.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has launched a Shields Up campaign aimed at helping companies strengthen their defenses and has urged companies to back up their data, turn on multifactor authentication and take other steps to improve cyber hygiene.

The United States and its allies have put a slew of sanctions in place aimed at crippling the Russian economy, and Biden recently announced the U.S. is sending more anti-aircraft, anti-armor weapons and drones to help Ukraine.

Russia is considered a hacking powerhouse but its offensive cyberattacks since it invaded Ukraine have been muted compared to what some feared. Russia has carried out significant cyberattacks against Ukraine in years past, including the devastating NotPetya attack in 2017 that spread far and wide and caused more than $10 billion in damage globally.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is seen at a Customs and Border Protection processing facility in Donna, Texas, on May 7, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)

Federal Judge Blocks Biden Administration Memo That Narrowed Scope of Deportations

An Ohio federal judge partially blocked the Biden administrations mandate to limit the scope of deportation to certain groups of immigrants, thereby siding with the three Republican-led states of Ohio, Montana, and Arizona that had mounted the legal challenge against the mandate.

In September 2021, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Alejandro Mayorkas, had issued a memo to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), asking its officers to narrow their focus on arresting immigrants who pose a threat to public safety or national security as well as immigrants who illegally crossed the American border recently. This contradicted the policies under the Trump administration which allowed ICE officers a broader latitude when it came to arresting and deporting illegal immigrants.

In his ruling, Judge Michael Newman sided with the three states which argued that such directives should come only from Congress and not the executive.

By issuing a nationwide injunction, Newman prohibited federal agents from making custody decisions based on the September 2021 DHS memo. He also banned using the memo for releasing or delaying the deportation of immigrants who have received final orders of deportation.

The States sue because they believe DHS skirted Congresss immigration enforcement mandates when it issued a policy that prioritizes certain high-risk noncitizens for apprehension and removal. DHS contends that seemingly mandatory statutes must be read flexibly to permit efficient law enforcement, the ruling stated.

At bottom, that is what this dispute is about: can the Executive displace clear congressional command in the name of resource allocation and enforcement goals? Here, the answer is no.

While issuing the memo in September, Mayorkas had argued that the sole fact of someone being a removable noncitizen should not be the only basis of an enforcement charge against them.

However, Judge Newman pointed out that certain laws impose a mandatory duty on DHS to detain certain noncitizens and deport them. The memo neglects these commands and arbitrarily disregards the harms of nonenforcement, the ruling said.

Republican officials welcomed the court decision. The ruling is a victory for those who want the executive branch to be the one enforcing laws, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, said in an interview with The Washington Post, while adding that the court decision makes it clear that ICE does not have the authority to release immigrants who Congress already decided must be deported.

VICTORY: A federal judge just blocked the lawless Biden Administration policy that halted nearly all deportations after our office challenged this guidance. Our office has been at the forefront of the fights for the rule of law this past year. Arizona deserves nothing less, Mark Brnovich, the Attorney General of Arizona, said in a tweet on March 22.
Feds Mum on Next Step in Fighter Jet Competition

Federal procurement officials wont say when Canada will take the next step in the years-long process of selecting a new fighter jet.

The federal government announced in December that it had narrowed its search for a replacement of the militarys aging CF-18s to Lockheed Martins F-35 and the Swedish Saab Gripen.

The government said at that time a decision would be made in short order on whether the government would engage in another round of negotiations with the two companies, or select a winner outright.

Yet nearly four months later, no announcement has been forthcoming, leading to concerns about even further delays in replacing Canadas CF-18s at a time when Russias invasion of Ukraine has underscored the importance of modern military capabilities.

Public Services and Procurement Canada assistant deputy minister Simon Page said Tuesday the process is very active, very live as he was grilled by a parliamentary committee over the lack of a decision.

Yet while Page and other federal officials expressed optimism that a contract with the winning bidder will be signed by the end of the year, they declined to provide any details on the reasons for the delay or when a decision on the next step could come.

Answering the question would have us lean one way over the other, Page told members of the House of Commons government operations committee. And I just dont want to answer that at this time, to protect the integrity of the process.

It also wasnt immediately clear who will ultimately decide whether to move ahead with another round of negotiations with Lockheed Martin and Saab, or the selection of a final winner.

Conservative committee member Kelly McCauley expressed concern about the lack of clarity around what is happening with the fighter procurement, particularly given the numerous delays that have dragged the search for a new fighter out over a decade.

The federal government is planning to buy 88 new fighter jets at an estimated cost of up to $19 billion, with delivery of the first plane expected no earlier than 2025. The final aircraft was supposed to be delivered in 2032, but that has since moved to 2033.

The Boeing Super Hornet was also in the running, but was kicked out of the competition in December.

The successful selection of a new fighter jet this year would mark the culmination of more than a decade of stop-start efforts marked by mismanagement and political controversy under two successive federal governments.

By Lee Berthiaume
Pachinko arcade-style games offer the lowest gambling stakes legally available in Japan. Given its associations with vice, it is not a very prestigious business, but Solomon Baeks Korean-Japanese family could never afford snobbery.

Yet, his father was only able to make a modest success in the pachinko business, and only succeeded at all because of the sacrifices Solomons grandmother made. Sunja is the matriarch of the Baek family and the source of their resiliency. Her strength in the face of poverty and hardship drives the family saga of Min Jin Lees novel, Pachinko, which Soo Hugh has adapted as the eight-episode series.

Family Saga

It all starts with Sunjas unfortunate mother in Korea, who accepts an arranged marriage with the sickly Hoonie, after her family is left destitute by the Japanese occupation. Young Sunja loves her doting father, but his premature death forces her to work long hours assisting her mother. Rather fatefully, she catches the eye of the new fish-broker, Koh Hansu, who has returned to Busan after making good in Japan. He has a reputation for ruthlessness, but also for integrity. Even when he loses Sunja, through his own rigidity, he secretly keeps tabs on her, even when she emigrates to Japan.

Kim Min-ha and Lee Min-ho in Pachinko. (Apple+TV)

Sunjas story intercuts with that of her grandson, Solomon Baek, from her second son Mozasu, the pachinko parlor proprietor. By 1989, the grandson has attained respectability as a dealmaker for a top American investment bank, but to secure a plum promotion, he must return to Japan to close a deal, by buying a critical parcel of land needed for an ambitious development. As fate would dictate, the last holdout is a Korean-Japanese woman very much like his grandmother.

Although Lees novel proceeded in linear chronological order, Hugh constantly flashes backwards and forwards, from the early events from Sunjas life in Korea and her hard times as a recent arrival in Osaka, and back to the 1989 timeline.

However, the series adaptation considerably truncates the final third of the source novel, largely jettisoning the storyline involving Sunjas first son, Noa. Frankly, the sixth and concluding eighth episodes both feel choppy, like Hugh was struggling to cram in all the necessary plot to conclude the story. However, the flashback seventh episode, which explains Kohs origins is quite notable for its harrowing depiction of the 1923 Tokyo-Yokohama Earthquake and the anti-Korean scapegoating that followed.

It is too bad the series so rushes to conclude, because the first five episodes are quite masterful. Indeed, the best scenes, directed by either Justin Chon (Blue Bayou) or Kogonada (After Yang), are allowed to patiently unfold. Honestly, Sunjas initial courtship meeting with her future husband, pastor Baek Isak, will leave many viewers teary-eyed. Likewise, a boardroom negotiation scene involving Solomon and the holdout granny represents some genuinely smart and tense drama.

Tough Grandmother

Throughout it all, Youn Yuh-jung (last years Oscar winner for Minari) gives the film great depth of soul as the elderly (but still forceful) Sunja. She personifies toughness, but she also has some keenly sensitive moments with her family. Likewise, Kim Min-ha believably passes for the younger Sunja and she is nearly as powerful on-screen. In fact, she has the aforementioned standout scene opposite Steve Sanghyun Noh, as her soon-to-be husband.

Youn Yuh-jung stars in Pachinko. (Apple+TV)

Jin Ha is also quite charismatic as Solomon, the privileged grandson. Even though Soji Arai does not have a lot of showcase scenes as Mozasu, he still brings a sly energy that frequently lifts the series. Lee Min-ho is also terrific as the ambiguous villain Koh. It really is a strong ensemble, with memorably poignant supporting turns coming from Bomin Kim and Yeji Yeon, as Donghee and Bokhee, the two destitute sisters working at the boarding house owned by Sunjas mother.

Pachinko can also claim the coolest opening credit sequence of any show this year, featuring the cast members dancing down the aisles of the pachinko parlor, dressed in the costumes of their era. Yet, the accompanying song, the Grass Roots Lets Live for Today, adds an ironic note, considering how many pleasures of life Sunja will defer, for the sake of her familys future benefit. Indeed, music is always used in thoughtful and effective ways, especially Nico Muhlys lithe minimalist score, which perfectly highlights and underscores the dramatic moods.

Grand Micro-Tale

The decades-spanning Pachinko is a much grander macro-tale than the micro-focused Minari, but both are very definitely immigrant families stories (that each happen to star Youn). Faith also plays an important role in each film, especially for Sunjas Christian in-laws (who hail from Pyongyang in the North, which might strike viewers as a further irony, in retrospect).

Theatrical ad for Pachinko. (Apple+ TV)

The best episodes are absolutely heartbreaking and even spellbinding. Arguably, Hughs adaptation really should have had a second season to fully resolve Lees narrative and her characters fates, but three-quarters of the episodes delivered are really quite accomplished.

Recommended for fans of historicals and family dramas, Pachinko starts streaming on March 25 on Apple TV+.

Pachinko

Directors: Kogonada, Justin Chon

Stars: Youn Yuh-jung, Lee Min-ho, Kim Minha, Jin Ha, Soji Arai

Running Time: 8 episodes

MPAA Rating: Not rated

Release Date: March 25, 2022

Rating: 3.5 out of 5
A Nokian tire is on display at a tire assembling center and shop in Moscow, on Aug. 8, 2014. (Maxim Shemetov/Reuters)

Finlands Nokian Tyres Defends Move to Retain Control of Russian Factory

HELSINKIFinlands Nokian Tyres PLC said on Tuesday it would continue production in Russia to retain control of its local factory, at a time when many companies are halting operations in protest at Russias invasion of Ukraine.

By continuing to operate the passenger car tyre factory in Russia we want to make sure that the factory is operated and controlled by Nokian Tyres also in the future, it said.

The company also said this would also help ensure its products were not used for military purposes.

Before the Ukraine war, Nokian produced about 80 percent of the 20 million tires it makes a year in Russia. It makes passenger car tires in Russia, while tires for heavier vehicles are made in Finland or elsewhere.

Shares in Nokian fell as much as 13 percent on Monday, after Helsingin Sanomat daily and other Finnish media reported that the company had seemed to tell analysts in a call last week that it would seek to win market share from rivals that are exiting Russia, such as Michelin, Continental, and Bridgestone, or those curtailing activities there, such as Pirelli.

Nokian denied this on Tuesday. On Sunday Nokian Tyres was in the spotlight in the media regarding an analyst call, it said, saying it was now making a correction to the media.

Nokian Chief Executive Jukka Moisio told Helsingin Sanomat in an interview published on Monday that the company did not want its Russian factory to end up in wrong hands to avoid its Russian factories being used to make tires for the military.

In our opinion it is better that the factory is in our control than in someone elses, Moisio told the paper.

Russias ruling party said this month a government commission had approved the first step towards nationalizing assets of foreign firms that leave the country.

Nokian said it would seek to boost capacity more swiftly at its factories in Finland and in the United States and would look for additional capacity elsewhere.

It said all tires sold in the Nordic countries in future would be made in Finland and tires sold in North America would be made in the United States or Finland. It added that it aimed to make its manufacturing more geographically diversified.
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee on her nomination to serve on the Supreme Court, on Capitol Hill in Washington on March 23, 2022. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)

5 Key Takeaways From Judge Jacksons Hearing

Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Joe Bidens pick to replace retiring Justice Stephen Breyer, fielded over a dozen hours of questions during three days of her confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Here are some of the key takeaways from those hearings:

Jackson Backs Off From Committed Judicial Philosophy

On various occasions during the hearing, Republicans on the Judiciary Committee pushed Jackson to elaborate on her judicial philosophy, but Jackson backed away from these pronouncements.

Many liberal Supreme Court justices express belief in the idea of a living Constitution, a theory that holds that the Constitution is an evolving document that adapts to the issues of the time while leaving intact the spirit of the document.

Conservative justices tend toward originalismwhich says that the Constitution should be interpreted as the Founders interpreted itand textualism, which calls for a relatively strict interpretation of the text of the Constitution itself.

Jackson didnt commit herself to either, citing instead a methodology that she would use on a case-by-case basis to make her decisions.

The vague answer left lawmakers on both sides of the aisle unsatisfied.

Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) told Jackson she was very intelligent and very articulate, but said he was left still a little uncertain about how you think, how you approach cases, deciding cases.

I want to get an idea of what kind of judge youd be, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said, admitting she also wanted to know five or six years from now, how will we see you.

I want to be the kind of judge like the one Ive been for the past decade, Jackson replied.

She said that if confirmed to the Supreme Court, she would stay in [her] lane while interpreting the law. She also said she would [rule] consistent with Article III of the Constitution, which delineates the powers of the federal judiciary.

Jackson said on March 22 that she was acutely aware that, as a judge in our system, I have limited power, and I am trying in every case to stay in my lane.

While Republicans were dissatisfied with Jacksons lack of a specific judicial philosophy, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) suggested it was actually a good thing.

I didnt know you needed to have [a judicial philosophy], he said.

The Constitution gives you the guide, he said. Jacksons lack of a philosophy doesnt bother me a bit. A judicial philosophy can be a screen for a predisposition.

One of the problems with a judicial philosophy is selective adherence, Whitehouse said, suggesting that justices with judicial philosophies apply them selectively in areas where theyre convenient.

Jackson Questioned on If She Would Overturn Precedent

Jackson also indicated that she would give some deference to precedent, and would use several factors in deterring when to overrule precedent, but said that she couldnt give specific answers outside of the context of a specific case.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the committees ranking Republican member, asked Jackson at one point in the hearing whether the Supreme Court should overrule a precedent when its clear to justices that precedent was wrongly decided.

Jackson said she would honor the doctrine of stare decisis, which she called the principle that the Supreme Court uses at the outsetthe sort of background rule of judicial maintenance or precedence, in order to have predictability, stability in the lawis the kind of principle the court begins with, if its asked to overrule or revisit a precedent.

She said she would consider several factors in determining whether or not to reverse a precedent, including the view that the precedent its reconsidering is wrong, whether there has been reliance on that prior precedent, whether the precedent has proven workable, whether the cases in the area have shifted such that the precedent itself is no longer on firm foundation, and whether there have been new facts, or a new understanding of the facts that give rise to the need to revisit the precedent.

However, Jackson made clear that she wouldnt apply the standard to the landmark abortion rights case Roe v. Wade.

That case, which has faced challenges from GOP states, is the settled law of the Supreme Court, and Jackson made clear that, if faced with the decision to overturn it, she would rely on the precedent established in Roe v. Wade.

On March 23, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) pushed Jackson on the point, asking her whether the viability standard established in Roe v. Wade is arbitrary.

Im not a biologist, Jackson replied. I havent studied this. I dont know.

What I know is that the Supreme Court has tests and standards that its applied when it evaluates regulation of the right of a woman to terminate their pregnancy, she said.

Cornyn continued, Is it your understanding under the current precedent of the Supreme Court that there is a right to abortion up to, and including, the time of delivery of the child?

Jackson demurred, saying shes not aware of the court having made a pronouncement about whether or not regulation can extend all the way up until birth. Im just not aware of that.

Im Not a Biologist: Jackson on What Is a Woman

When asked by Republicans to give her personal opinion on heated social issues related to gender, Jackson also demurred, saying on various occasions that it would be inappropriate for her to give her opinion, or saying that she couldnt answer the question.

In one section on March 22, Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) asked Jackson, Do you believe that our schools should teach children that they can choose their gender?

Senator, Im not making comments about what schools can teach, Jackson responded.

Later, citing an opinion by liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who wrote that the physical differences between men and women are inherent, Blackburn asked, Do you believe that there are physical differences between men and women?

Respectfully, I am not familiar with that particular quote and case, so its hard for me to comment, Jackson said.

Do you interpret Justice Ginsburgs meaning of men and women as male and female? Blackburn asked.

Again, because I dont know the case I dont know how Id interpret it, Id need to read the whole thing, Jackson responded.

Can you provide a definition for the word woman? Blackburn asked.

Can I provide a definition? Jackson said. No. I cant. Im not a biologist.

Pushed further, Jackson said, Senator, in my work as a judge, what I do is I address disputes, if theres a dispute about a definition, people make arguments, and I look at the law and I decide.

Jackson Pressed on Child Porn Sentencing

During each day of the hearing, Republicans pushed Jackson to explain her track record on giving lighter sentences than guidelines called for on those convicted of possession of child pornography, as part of their claims that the nominee is soft on crime.

The issue, which was raised as part of a March 16 Twitter thread by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), was a major line of questioning throughout the hearing.

On March 22, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) pulled out a graphic displaying the outcomes of several cases overseen by Jackson.

In cases where she had no discretion due to mandatory minimum sentencing laws, Cruz noted, Jackson gave the recommended sentence because she had no choice.

But in several cases where she wasnt subject to mandatory minimums, Cruz showed that Jackson gave sentences well below state recommendations.

In one case, United States v. Chazin, prosecutors asked for a 78- to 97-month prison sentence, but Jackson ultimately gave the defendant a 28-month sentence. In another, U.S. v. Hawkins, prosecutors requested 24 months in prison, but Jackson only gave the defendant three months. In U.S. v. Stewart, the defendant received a 57-month sentence, far below the 97 months requested by the state.

On average, Cruz said, Jackson gave 47.2 percent less time behind bars than prosecutors asked for.

Do you believe the voice of the children is heard when 100 percent of the time youre sentencing those in possession of child pornography to far below what the prosecutors asked for? Cruz asked.

Yes, senator, I do, Jackson responded.

Earlier on March 22, Jackson made an effort to defend herself against the charge.

Jackson noted that sentencing guidelines for child porn possession were originally based on child pornography received by mail, but the advent of the internet has created challenges to the old policies.

The guideline was based originally on a statutory scheme and specific directives by Congress at a time when more serious child porn offenders were identified based on the volume, based on the number of photographs that they received in the mail, she said.

That made total sense before  the internet, when we didnt have distribution. But the way the guideline is now structured, based on that set of circumstances, is leading to extreme disparities in the system because its so easy for people to get volumes of this kind of material now by computers.

So its not doing the work of differentiating who is a more serious offender, the way that it used to. So the commission has taken that into account, and perhaps even more importantly, courts are adjusting their sentences in order to account for the changed circumstances. But it says nothing about the courts view of the seriousness of this offense.

However, many Republican lawmakers, including Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) were dissatisfied with the response, and questioning on the issue continued well into the March 23 session.

During a line of questioning on March 23, Graham opined that Jackson had failed to properly punish offenders in a way that would deter others, although Jackson insisted that she gave sentences on the basis of the totality of circumstances in the case, including deterrence.

Democrats and the White House defended Jackson, saying that the sentences she has handed out were consistent with federal sentencing guidelines, and called the GOP line of questioning demagogic.

Dems Emphasize Jackson Would Be 1st Black Female Justice

Throughout the hearing, Democrats emphasized that, if confirmed, Jackson would be the first black woman to sit on the Supreme Court. Several Republicans, however, criticized this as hypocritical in view of treatment given by Democrats in the past to GOP federal court appointees such as Janice Rogers Brown.

Not a single justice has been a black woman, Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said. You, Judge Jackson, can be the first.

Its not easy being the first, he continued. Often, you have to be the best. In some ways, the bravest. Many are not prepared to face that kind of heat, that kind of scrutiny, that ordeal and the glare of the national spotlight.

If Jackson is confirmed, We can be confident that the court, its role, and its decisions will be more understandable to the American public.

The appointment of the first black woman to the Supreme Courtlets be honestshould have happened years ago, said Sen. Dick Blumenthal (D-Conn.). Her nomination is a giant leap into the present for our country.

Your service will make the court look more like America.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) agreed, saying the nomination of a black woman is far past time.

Meanwhile, Republicans accused Democrats of two-faced attitudes toward would-be black justices.

Graham noted that then-Sen. Joe Biden twice filibustered the confirmation of Brown, President George W. Bushs nominee to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, a possible stepping stone to move into the Supreme Court.

Cruz also attacked Democrats for blocking Rogerss nomination.

Reminder, Cruz wrote in a tweet. Democratsincluding Joe Bidenhappily filibustered Judge Janice Rogers Brown.

And they did so precisely because they wanted to prevent Judge Brown from becoming Justice Brown, the first African American woman [on the Supreme Court].
Former Union Boss Jerry Dias Accepted Money From Supplier, Unifor Alleges

Former national president Jerry Dias accepted $50,000 from a supplier of COVID-19 rapid test kits that he promoted to employers of Unifor members, several of whom purchased those test kits, Unifor alleged Wednesday.

After an internal investigation, Unifor national secretary-treasurer Lana Payne said Dias stands charged with violating the code of ethics and democratic practices of the Unifor constitution.

What youre about to hear will be distressing, but I remind you all that no one member is above our constitution, not the highest ranking elected officers, no one, Payne said. We are all equal under that constitution.

The unions executive board will now hold a hearing into the matter.

Unifor did not identify the companies who bought the kits or the supplier.

None of the employers had knowledge of this. As such Unifor will not be identifying them. The supplier was not a participant in the investigation. So we wont be identifying them either, Payne said.

The union alleged that at some point before Jan. 20, Dias accepted $50,000 from the supplier.

It said Dias gave a Unifor employee what he said was half of those funds, $25,000, on Jan. 20, telling the employee that it had come from the supplier. The employee subsequently filed a complaint under the Unifor code of ethics and delivered the money to Payne.

In a separate statement to union members, Dias said he is entering a residential rehabilitation facility and stepping away temporarily from all of his advisory positions due to his use of pain killers, sleeping pills and alcohol to deal with a sciatic nerve issue.

He said these factors have impaired his judgment in recent months and is seeking treatment at the advice of his doctor.

My physician has told me, straight up, that I need help, Dias said.

The union said Dias was asked to participate in the investigation, however he said, on the advice of his doctor, he has not been able.

My medical leave was approved by the union in February and a detailed report from my physician has been provided to the investigator. I would have no issue with it being shared with the national executive board, he said.

The news comes roughly a week after Unifor announced Dias would retire because of ongoing health issues that had already prompted him to take a medical leave.

A day later, Unifor revealed that it had received a complaint about Dias on Jan. 26 that alleged he had breached the unions constitution.
Madeleine Albright is seen speaking at the 2016 Concordia Summit - Day 2 at Grand Hyatt New York in New York City on Sept. 20, 2016. (Paul Morigi/Getty Images for Concordia Summit)

Former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright Dies at 84: Family

Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who was a central figure in the Clinton administration, died at age 84, according to her family in a statement released Wednesday.

We are heartbroken to announce that Dr. Madeleine K. Albright, the 64th U.S. Secretary of State  passed away earlier today, her family said. The cause was cancer. She was surrounded by family and friends.

Albright, who was secretary of state between 1997 and 2001 under then-President Bill Clinton, was a major champion of NATOs expansion eastward into former Soviet countries as well as the NATO campaign in 1999 to halt ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. She also served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 1993 to 1997.

We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future, and we see the danger here to all of us, she told NBC News in a 1998 interview. I know that the American men and women in uniform are always prepared to sacrifice for freedom, democracy, and the American way of life.

A day before Russias invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, Albright wrote that Moscow would be making a historic error by escalating the conflict, warning that the invasion would trigger massive sanctions.

Former President Bill Clinton smiles after signing the US-China Trade Relations Act of 2000 in October 2000. (Mario Tama/AFP via Getty Images)

What is sure to be a bloody and catastrophic war will drain Russian resources and cost Russian liveswhile creating an urgent incentive for Europe to slash its dangerous reliance on Russian energy  That has already begun with Germanys move to halt certification of the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline, she wrote for the New York Times.

And such an act of aggression would almost certainly drive NATO to significantly reinforce its eastern flank and to consider permanently stationing forces in the Baltic States, Poland, and Romania, Albright continued.

In June 2018, Albright, however, conceded that the Chinese regime is a larger threat to the United States than Russia.

The new [National] Defense Strategy of the United States has now said that Russia and China are our major adversaries. I think that is a gift to [Russian President Vladimir Putin], because they are not the equivalent of China, said Albright, China is really a power that is evolving in a big way, penetrating various places. The Russians are not there.

Early in the Clinton administration, she unsuccessfully advocated for a quicker, stronger response in Bosnia. But she backed a United Nations war crimes tribunal that eventually put the architects of that war, including Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic and Bosnian Serb leaders, in jail, James OBrien, a senior adviser to Albright during the Bosnian war, told Reuters.

During efforts to press North Korea to end its nuclear weapons program, which were eventually unsuccessful, Albright traveled to Pyongyang in 2000 to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, becoming the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit the secretive communist-run country.

Reuters contributed to this report.
French Member of Parliament Buon-Huong Tan arrives at The Elysee Palace in Paris on Feb. 16, 2018, where he was invited by French President Emmanuel Macron to celebrate Chinese New Year. (Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images)

French Politician Has Extensive Links With CCP Influence Agencies, Report Says

A member of French Parliament Buon Tan has maintained extensive links to the Chinese Communist Partys influence agencies, a recent report by Czech-based think tank Sinopsis detailed.

The report found that Tan, who is a member of the ruling La Republique en Marche (LREM) party, has links to six organizations managed by the Chinese Communist Partys (CCP) United Front system, a body charged with overseeing the regimes overseas influence efforts.

The report also found that Tan has consistently acted in Beijings interest, saying that the politician has the closest relationship to the CCP of any French MP [Member of Parliament].

Tan is a prominent figure in French politics, whose many roles include acting as the current president of the France-China friendship commission in the National Assembly, French Parliaments lower house, as well as secretary of the Foreign Affairs Commission. His position in the commission gives him oversight of matters related to China and Northeast Asia.

Moreover, Tan has launched and co-directed an information mission tasked with analyzing the China policy of France and European nations generally.

In the reports analysis, Tan has also aided the Chinese regimes state-backed technology transfer efforts, programs which have received growing scrutiny in the West for their role in facilitating the flow of foreign intellectual property and know-how to China.

Acting in CCPs Interests

In February, a parliamentary report commissioned and co-authored by Tan himself was marred by sharp differences during its research phase. Tan and co-rapporteur Berengere Poletti agreed on so little that they considered releasing their own separate sets of recommendations rather than doing so jointly. Poletti came to hold the view that Tan viewed Frances relationship with China more in economic than in political terms, the report stated.

The document that the two co-rapporteurs produced called for rebalancing Frances relationship with China and for not acting in concert with the United States on China-related matters, particularly Taiwan and competition with China, because, America is engaged in a fight of its own that need not involve France. The report produced by Tan and Poletti did not address security or human rights issues in any of its 48 recommendations.

The Sinopsis report described Tan as a politician who walks a fine line, advancing CCP interests without parroting communist propaganda too closely.

Buon Tan refrains from overtly taking up CCP talking points, but his behavior is largely aligned with Beijings interests on issues the CCP views as highly sensitive, it stated.

The report noted that in January, Tan was the sole French MP who voted against a motion declaring Beijings conduct toward the Uyghur minority of western China to be genocide.

In November 2021, when a bill calling for Taiwan to participate in international organizations came to a vote on the National Assembly floor, Tan abstained. Later when playing host to Chinas ambassador in the National Assembly, Tan described the Taiwan bill, which bore the signatures of nearly 200 parliamentary representatives, as the work of a few members.

Moreover, when Beijings response to COVID-19 and the CCPs possible role in the outbreak was under discussion in April 2020, Tan and another LREM representative Pierre Person praised China for active international cooperation and control of the pandemic, the report noted.

Technology Transfer

The report emphasized Tans role as chief advisor of Developpement France-Chine (DFC), which it described as an organization devoted to promoting Beijings efforts to transfer technology and recruit talent from abroad.

DFC has a close relationship with the Conference on Overseas Chinese Pioneering and Developing in China, according to the report, which described the conference as a tool with which local Chinese governments identify and seek to lure technologies and investments from abroad. The report cited the official conference website, whose figures indicate that nearly 20,000 overseas ethnic Chinese took part in the 2018 conference, at which participants signed 2,300 contracts for technology projects or the onboarding of new talent.

As recently as 2020, the DFC opened an office in eastern Chinas Hangzhou city and entered an arrangement whereby it would help a local Chinese government lure talent from Europe.

While governments often seek to attract talent from abroad, the Chinese governments talent-recruitment efforts are strongly associated with misconduct and opaque technology transfer, the report stated.

Unified Front

Tan has been a member of major United Front groups since 2008, and his affiliation with these groups has continued to expand after his election in 2017, according to the report. The United Front Work Department (UFWD) is a powerful agency within the CCP that oversees the regimes efforts to expand its influence abroad, both overtly and covertly.

Around the world, the Partys united front system, a grouping of Chinese Party and other state agencies, builds networks among ethnic Chinese communities and seeks to lean on its associates to advance the Partys interests abroad, the report stated. These associates act on the CCPs behalf while ostensibly representing the interests of people in free democratic states who voted them into office.

As examples of this tendency, they cite the activities of Christine Lee, whom British counterintelligence services in January warned played a role in political interference on the part of the UFWD.

The report also noted that near the end of 2018, Australian officials canceled the visa of Chinese real estate magnate Huang Xiangmo after allegations arose that he acted in Australias political realm on behalf of CCP interests.

Tan, Lee, and Huang are cut from the same cloth in the sense that all hold membership in United Front organizations, including the China Overseas Friendship Association (COFA), the report noted. Tan has been a member of COFA since at least 2008 and is currently an executive council member.

In 2019, Tan visited Beijing to attend a COFA meeting and another meeting of representatives of many overseas Chinese communities, the report noted. During the latter meeting, Tan occupied a position of honor in the first row of the representatives assembled to meet Chinese leader Xi Jinping, and footage of the two men shaking hands aired on a primetime program of state broadcaster China Central Television, it said.

In September 2018, after his election to Frances National Assembly, another United Front group All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese (ACFROC) appointed Tan as one of twenty overseas committee members based in France. According to the report, AFROC is heavily staffed with figures who have served as CCP cadres active in United Front organizations and functions like a Party organ.

These united front ties are markers of involvement in the CCPs activities, but the mechanisms of Party control over such individuals may be clandestine and lie outside of the united front system, the report stated.

For all his ties to CCP-linked bodies, the reports account of Tan described a figure who has carried out his political activities without much suspicion or scrutiny. For example, IRSEM, a think tank affiliated with the French Ministry of Defense, published a report of its own in September 2021 dealing with CCP United Front activities in France, but making no mention of Tan in all its 600 pages.

The Epoch Times has reached out to Tans office for comment.

In the Spotlight

While Tans ties to the Chinese regimes overseas influence network have not drawn too much scrutiny, his activities have not gone entirely unnoticed. Some are skeptical of his seriousness as an LREM representative and have noted his taste for self-promotion.

The general view is that he doesnt do much in the way of hard work, but always turns up for the photo. There isnt much evidence of constituency work, nor does he seem to have much support from within the community or the constituency, says Paul Smith, a professor at the University of Nottingham and the author of a blog on French politics.

Whether Tan will continue to be able to advance Beijing friendly policies in French parliament may depend, to some extent, on the outcome of next months presidential election, where the incumbent President Emmanuel Macron will face off against challengers including Eric Zemmour, a staunch nationalist whose campaign emphasizes national security and curbing foreign influence.

For Macron this is not a central issue, though it is for Zemmour, who keeps doubling down on his key political message as the candidate who will fight le grand remplacement [the great replacement]. In essence, he is playing the nativist card, much more even than [Monique] Le Pen, who might once have claimed that mantle, Smith said.

Zemmours message resonates with many French voters concerned about foreign influence. But this is a double-edged sword, because certain nationalist politicians, including Zemmour and Le Pen, have had connections in the past with the regime of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Le Pen turned to a Russian bank to fund her campaign in 2017, Smith noted.

The reflex among French voters since the [Ukraine] war began is to rally to the flag around the incumbent, sending his opinion poll ratings for the first round over 30 percent and his approval ratings generally to levels he has hardly seen during his term in office, Smith said.

So the moment may not yet be propitious for a nationalist such as Zemmour who might bring about concerted action to curb the influence of United Front-linked figures like Buon Tan in French politics.
A GMC logo is displayed on the front grille of a vehicle at the New York International Auto Show, New York, on March 31, 2015. (Mark Lennihan/AP Photo)

General Motors Recalls 740,000 SUVs; Headlights Are Too Bright

DETROITGeneral Motors is recalling more than 740,000 small SUVs in the United States because the headlight beams can be too bright and cause glare for oncoming drivers.

The recall announced Tuesday comes after U.S. safety regulators turned down a request from the Detroit automaker to avoid the recall.

The company is recalling GMC Terrain SUVs from the 2010 through 2017 model years. Documents posted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration say reflections caused by the headlight housings can illuminate some areas with too much light. The agency says this can reduce visibility for other drivers, increasing the risk of a crash.

We are still finalizing an actual remedy for the affected vehicles, spokesman Dan Flores said.

Flores did not know how long it would take until the repair is ready. GM expects to notify owners by letter starting April 23.

The company says in documents that it has only one complaint from a customer about headlights shining into trees.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivers a speech during the opening session of the Generation Equality Forum, in Paris on June 30, 2021. (Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images)

Hillary Clinton Tests Positive for COVID-19

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced Tuesday she tested positive for COVID-19.

Well, Ive tested positive for COVID, she said in a statement. Ive got some mild cold symptoms but am feeling fine.

Im more grateful than ever for the protection vaccines can provide against serious illness. Please get vaccinated and boosted if you havent already! the 74-year-old added.

In a subsequent post, the former Democratic presidential candidate said that her husband, former President Bill Clinton, has tested negative and is feeling fine.

Hes quarantining until our household is fully in the clear, she wrote. Movie recommendations appreciated!

A spokesman for the former president, Angel Urena, said in a statement: President Clinton is feeling well and will continue to be tested in the coming days.

COVID-19 is the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, also referred to as the novel coronavirus.

Clintons announcement comes after White House press secretary Jen Psaki has also tested positive for the second time.

Today, in preparation for travel to Europe, I took a PCR test this morning, Psaki wrote on Twitter. That test came back positive, which means I will be adhering to CDC guidance and no longer be traveling on the Presidents trip to Europe.

Psaki said that President Joe Biden is not considered a close contact as defined by CDC guidance after she had two socially-distanced meetings on Monday, and that Biden tested negative via PCR test.

I am sharing the news of my positive test today out of an abundance of transparency, she said.

Previously, former President Barack Obama on March 13 had confirmed he tested positive for the virus.
How Bill Barrs Silence Impacted the Outcome of an Election

Commentary

On May 18, 2020, then-Attorney General Bill Barr made a statement to the media declaring that special counsel John Durhams investigation into the origins of the Russiagate hoax wasnt focused on either former President Barack Obama or former Vice President Joe Biden, stating that I dont expect Mr. Durhams work will lead to a criminal investigation of either man.

In his new book, Barr has revealed that he made that statement in response to a series of tweets by then-President Donald Trump. A week earlier, Trump had started using the term Obamagate on Twitter, alleging that both Obama and Biden had led the charge on the FBIs phony Russiagate investigation.

Barr recounts in his book that he felt it was unacceptable for Trump to attempt to drag his presidential election opponent into the Russiagate scandal and that Barr felt that it was incumbent upon him to make a public statement.

The corporate media immediately seized upon Barrs statement, with The Washington Post running a same-day headline that Barr says he does not expect Obama or Biden will be investigated by prosecutor reviewing 2016 Russia probe. The New York Times headline went further, claiming that Barr Dismisses Trumps Claim That Russia Inquiry Was an Obama Plot.

Barrs May 18 claim is an often underappreciated statement, the fallout of which was felt throughout the 2020 presidential election. Although Barr now claims that he issued his statement from a position of fairness, what he actually did was insert himself and the Department of Justice (DOJ) into the presidential campaign, and in doing so, he set the stage for the medias whitewashing of questions of corruption that swirled around Biden throughout the campaign.

Its also worth noting that Barrs decision to make a public statement contrasts sharply with former FBI Director James Comey, who claimed that as a matter of DOJ policy he wouldnt confirm or deny if President Trump was actually under investigation in 2017.

More importantly, Barrs May 18 statement stands in stark contrast to his decision to remain silent after the second presidential debate in October 2020, when Biden falsely blamed the story about his son Hunters laptop on a Russian plot.

Barr recently recounted that he was very disturbed during the debate when candidate Biden lied to the American people about the laptop. Barr told Fox News in an interview that Biden was squarely confronted with the laptop and he suggested that it was Russian disinformation.  And I was shocked by that.  When youre talking about interference in an election, I cant think of anything more than that kind of thing.

Barrs supposed shock over Bidens claims of Russian disinformation during the debate begs a simple question: If Barr actually felt that Bidens assertions of Russian disinformation amounted to interference in an election, why didnt Barr say anything at the time?

The only discernible action taken by Barrs DOJ was an Oct. 20 written reply from an FBI congressional affairs liaison to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.). That letter, which preceded the second debate, was intentionally vague, and, rather than countering potential narratives, it allowed the media to advance Bidens claim that the laptop was a Russian plot. Crucially, the letter took pains to conceal that the FBI had physical possession of Hunters laptop at the time the letter was writtena fact that eliminated any possibility of a Russian plot.

During the second 2020 debate, Biden asserted that his claims of Russian disinformation were backed by our intelligence agencies by citing a letter written by Obama-era intelligence officials such as former CIA Director John Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and former CIA Director Leon Panetta. That letter was issued on Oct. 19, 2020, just days before the debate on Oct. 22, 2020, and was widely circulated by the media as proof of Bidens claims.

In their letter, the intelligence officials claimed that the information from Hunters laptop had all the classic earmarks of a Russian disinformation operation, and stated that this is Russia trying to influence how Americans vote in this election, noting that we believe strongly that Americans need to be aware of this.

That four different CIA directors would be willing to publicly promote false allegations about Russia in order to shield a presidential candidate from public attention is particularly troubling. These former CIA directorswhose tenure spanned more than 10 years of U.S. foreign policy activityinvoked their government positions and lied to the American public in order to protect and get their preferred candidate, Joe Biden, elected.

During his recent interview, Barr conceded that he knew that letter from our nations intelligence officials was baseless and that he believed Biden himself fully understood that it was a lie. Unlike Trump, Biden was citing published claims by intelligence officials that Barr now says he knew to be inaccurate at the time those claims were made. But, in contrast to his earlier actions regarding Trumps tweets, Barr chose to stay silent on Bidens claims.

In doing so, Barr decisively interfered in the election through his inaction.

The sharply differing stances that Barr took in those months preceding the 2020 presidential election are puzzlingly contradictory. Barr apparently felt that it was necessary to make sure that U.S. citizens were aware that Biden wasnt under investigation as a part of Durhams probe, but he didnt feel it was important to counter a false narrative from former intelligence officials, including four CIA directors, that Barr knew to be untrue.

At the time of that second presidential debate, the FBI already had Hunters laptop in its possessionand had held the device for 10 months. The FBI had also opened an investigation into Hunter Biden for multiple offensesincluding allegations of money laundering and possible violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Hunters laptop contained emails and other information that were directly connected to these allegations.

Barrs differing treatment of Biden and Trump leaves many questions unanswered. Although many in the media, along with Bidens current spokeswoman Jen Psaki, have claimed that Hunter was a private citizen who wasnt running for office, Hunters laptop directly implicated Joe Biden in a number of dubious foreign dealings. Biden repeatedly lied about these matters while on the campaign trail.

In one particularly notable instance, Biden had personally met with Hunters Ukrainian business partner only a few months before that same partner demanded that Hunter end the investigations into Burisma, the Ukrainian energy firm that was paying Hunter $1 million per year. On the campaign trail, Biden declared that he had never talked to his son about his foreign business dealings.

Not only did Barr choose to remain silent about Hunters laptop, but he had also, in fact, instructed prosecutors and senior colleagues to prevent word of investigations into Hunter Biden from becoming public and keep the Justice Department out of campaign politics, according to sources cited by The Wall Street Journal.

As we now know, Hunters emails and laptop are real. Indeed, shortly after the election, Hunter Biden suddenly released a statement acknowledging that he was under federal investigation.

The silence from Barr enabled the medias blackout on the laptop story that had direct ramifications on the 2020 election. A poll by Media Research showed that 45 percent of the Biden voters were unaware of the allegations against Hunter and Joe Biden and that 16 percent of Biden voterswell over the margin of victorywouldnt have voted for him had they known this crucial information.

In 2016, the Hillary Clinton campaign accused Russia of trying to help elect Trump. Then-CIA Director John Brennan played an important role in advancing the Clinton campaigns narrative. In an eerie parallel to those events, the Biden campaign, again with the help of Brennan and other intelligence officials, falsely accused Russia of trying to help elect Trump in 2020.

Barr argues in his book that Trumps claims about Biden required Barr to insert himself because he didnt want a repeat of the Russia collusion claims that plagued the 2016 election; that same argument, however, should have required Barr to speak out on Bidens debate claims that Hunters laptop was a Russian plot.

If Barr was truly concerned about a potential repeat of the 2016 election, it would have been incumbent on him to step forward publicly as soon as Biden made his false accusations against Russia, particularly given the involvement of Brennan, who was himself entangled in the 2016 election interference.

The national security implications from Bidens repeated invocations of Russia is another important factor that should have required Barr to act.

Russiagate was not only a despicable dirty trick that hobbled the first part of the presidents administration, but it also affected [sic] great damage to the United States, Barr acknowledged in his recent interview with Fox News. Russiagate essentially froze the Trump administration from engaging with Russia.

While Barr acknowledged the massive geopolitical damage caused by the Clinton campaigns Russiagate hoax, he inexplicably ignored Bidens false claims about his sons laptop, which has served to undermine our national security in ways that are perhaps even worse than the actions taken by Clinton.

Both Clinton and Biden recklessly leveled false accusations against Russia, jeopardizing national security for their own personal and political gain. Clinton, among other things, had her 30,000 deleted emails to contend with. However, while no one has seen Clintons emails, the emails on Hunters laptop contain a multitude of damning disclosures of foreign dealings and payoffs involving the Biden family.

Beyond the direct ramifications from the emails on Hunters laptop, Bidens fabricated accusations regarding Russia would have immediately been understood by the Kremlin as a fundamental weakness. Theres no doubt Bidens statement worsened relations with Russia and might have contributed to the current situation in Ukraine.

By first speaking out and then remaining silent, Barr very directly put his thumb on the scale, leading to material ramifications for our countryincluding the geopolitical landscape we now face.

Jeff Carlson Follow Jeff Carlson is a co-host of Truth Over News on Epoch TV. Twitter: @themarketswork.
Workers in protective suits stand near boxes outside a sealed-off area following the COVID-19 outbreak in Beijing, China, on March 21, 2022. (Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters)

Its OnChinas Economic War on the West

Lockdowns across China inflict heavy damage on Western economies

Commentary

Whats really behind Beijings zero-tolerance COVID-19 policy? Isnt the pandemic all but over, with the vast majority of variants becoming less lethal and a large percentage of populations either vaccinated or with natural immunity?

If all thats trueand it iswhats going on?

Follow the Science: Lockdowns Dont Work

Chinas lockdowns arent about saving lives.

Following the so-called science behind locking down a city of 9 million people or a whole region of 50 million people after only a relatively small number of non-lethal Omicron cases is absurd.

It was unwise and ineffective two years ago, and it remains so today.

In fact, according to the latest science, lockdowns arent a measure to contain a virus. A recent study by Johns Hopkins University shows that lockdown policies are ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument.

The Death Deception of the CCP

But wait, Chinas mortality statistics from the disease show that lockdowns do work. Based on Beijings calculations, only 4,636 people have died from the CCP virus, compared to over 825,000 official CCP virus deaths in the United States, Forbes reported on Jan. 2.

Thats an unbelievably enormous disparity. And thats precisely the point. Its unbelievable, as in not credible, or a complete fabrication by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

In a word, its a lie.

The actual death toll is much higher, as it should be.

How do we know?

Several reasons. For one, China refuses to disclose its figures of excess mortality with the rest of the world. Extra mortality numbers are how the world determines the impact of a disease.

Another reason is that Chinas mortality rate rose above the global average for the prior decade. This was due to Chinas aging population. Whats more, its reported non-coronavirus death rate between 2019 and 2021 accelerated six times faster than the preceding decade.

Why would Beijing withhold the actual data? Whats to gain?

It indeed allows the Chinese leaders to claim superiority over all other nations in containing a disease they may have unleashed upon the world.

People are queueing to undergo nucleic acid tests for the COVID-19 as it snows in Harbin, in Chinas northeastern Heilongjiang Province, on March 2, 2022. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

For example, according to the Forbes report, Beijing claims a CCP virus death rate 30 times lower than Koreas, 50 times lower than Singapores, and 73 times less than New Zealands. These nations also locked down, restricted movement, and were highly vaccinated.

Is that believable?

Of course, it isnt, unless no one in mainland China died from the virus after April 2020. Thats when Chinas deaths reports ceased.

But according to The Economist, Chinas real death rate is underreported by a factor of 17,000. The truth is that Chinas case fatality rate (CFR) is actually 4.22 percent, compared to the global CFR of 1.36 percent.

Thats right; Chinas death rate from the disease that originated in Wuhan is more than 300 percent higher than the rest of the world.

Lockdowns = Economic Slowdowns

Given that reality that Beijing is undoubtedly aware of, why lock down entire cities and regions?

As the Johns Hopkins study points out, all lockdowns accomplish is an economic slowdown. In other words, factories in China operate at a lower capacity.

The global economy, which relies on Chinese manufacturers, is negatively impacted in many ways. It starts with supply disruptions. When the flow of products from China slows, nations economies reliant upon those products slows down.

General economic slowdowns bring their effects. Companies have fewer products to sell. With lower inventories, there are fewer products to sell, and revenues fall. With falling revenues, employees are let go. At the same time, prices rise because of scarcity, while increasing unemployment puts additional strain on social safety nets.

Hitting Advanced Economies Hard Is an Act of War

From medical equipment to personal protective equipment (PPE), many shortages impacted the world at the beginning of the pandemic, dramatically impacting Western economies. Chip shortages followed and continue to this day, affecting everything from cars to computers and more.

In 2022, Chinas zero-tolerance policy means shutting down supply chains by closing the countrys busiest port after just one case of Omicron is reported.

Employees wearing personal protective equipment (PPE) look on by a cargo ship at a port in Qingdao, in Chinas eastern Shandong Province, on Jan. 14, 2022. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

The bigger picture is that China has significant veto power over the U.S. economy and is using it. Whats more, the CCP leadership knows or thinks it knows that China can tolerate harsher economic conditions better than the United States.

They may not be wrong. In democratic societies, political pressureif not unrestoften emerges for improving conditions. That can lead to social divisions, even social polarization, and the rising number of people undergoing economic hardship.

While the United States responds by subsidizing peoples lost income, China subsidizes manufacturing jobs. Both are debt, but subsidizing productivity makes more sense than subsidizing idleness.

In other words, Beijings lockdown policy for what is essentially a much less lethal variant doesnt make any medical sense. So why do it?

Because it does make sense in a strategic context. As the worlds leader in manufacturing with over 28 percent of global factory productivity, China has the industrialized economies of the West at a critical advantage.

The CCP knows that even with reshoring and nearshoring efforts underway since 2020, the United States cant make it happen fast enough to offset the devastation of Beijings chokehold on products that Western economies need to function and grow.

Thats entirely the point of Chinas zero-tolerance policy. It isnt a defensive measure intended to limit the spread of a virus it may have created. Lockdowns are designed and implemented entirely as offensive strikes against the Western nations economic viability.

In short, Chinas lockdown policy and the virus that gives it political cover are most accurately understood as ongoing and escalating acts of economic warfare against the West, particularly against the United States.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
In this picture taken on Oct.14, 2012 a flag of the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force (MSDF) flutters in the wind as MSDF escort ships Kurama and Hyuga make a fleet review off Sagami Bay, in Japan's Kanagawa prefecture. (Kazuhiro Nogi/AFP via Getty Images)

Japan Commissions State-of-the-Art Multi-Mission Stealth Frigate

Japans Maritime Self-Defense Force on Tuesday commissioned the JS Kumano, a multi-mission stealth frigate with destroyer capabilities and the capacity to operate with a smaller crew than previous models.

The JS Kumano was launched by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI), which was given the contract by the Japanese Defense Ministry in 2018 to build the first two of the planned four frigates for the countrys navy.

The Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force said in a tweet that the new Mogami-class multirole frigate was designed to be compact and manpower saving.

The 133-meter-long multirole frigate has a displacement of about 5,500 tons and a maximum speed of over 30 knots, with the capacity to operate with a crew of about 90, according to Naval News.

The new stealth frigate is equipped with anti-ship missiles, anti-mine sonar, anti-submarine sonar, a naval gun system, a remote weapon system, and sea mines for offensive mine warfare, among other things.

It was formally launched by Mitsui E&S Shipbuilding at the Tamano shipyard in November 2020, before MHI took over the companys naval and governmental ship business last year.

The vessel is the second ship in the class, following the lead ship JS Mogami, which was launched in March last year. MHI launched the third vessel in the class, JS Noshiro, in June 2021, and the fourth stealth frigate, JS Mikuma, last December.

22 MAR, the JMSDF held the Ship Commissioning ceremony of the JS KUMANO at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. JS KUMANO is a new JMSDF ship, both compact and manpower saving.#jmsdf pic.twitter.com/iqDvO4VQZT  Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (@jmsdf_pao_eng) March 22, 2022

According to reports, Japan plans to procure a total of 22 Mogami-class stealth frigates at an estimated cost of 48 billion yen ($396 million) per unit to replace the Asagiri-class and Abukuma-class destroyers.

The government approved a total of 5.4 trillion yen ($47 billion) defense budget in December last year, which includes 110 billion yen ($908 million) allocated for the ninth and tenth ship of the Mogami-class frigates.

By comparison, the Asagiri-class destroyer is 137 meters long and has a displacement of 3,500 tons, with a crew complement of 220. While the 109-meter-long Abukuma-class destroyer has a displacement of 2,000 tons and can operate with 120 crew members.

The Mogami-class stealth frigates may operate with a smaller crew of 90, indicating a high level of automation than the two previous models, which would allow JMSDF to cope with a shortage of personnel.

Japans declining birth rates have resulted in a shrinking recruitment pool, with the Japanese Self Defense Force unable to meet recruitment quotas since 2014, necessitating the development of new technologies to save manpower.
Pro-life activists demonstrate in front of the U.S. Supreme Court during the 47th annual March for Life in Washington on Jan. 24, 2020. (Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images)

Kansas, Kentucky Set to Be First Ballot Tests in Post-Roe America

A post-Roe world is being assembled by state legislatures across the country in anticipation of the United States Supreme Court in June or July overturning its 1973 Roe v Wade ruling that established the constitutional right to abortion.

All sides of the abortion debate expect the court to uphold a Mississippi law that bans abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy when it rules on Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organization, and to return regulation of abortion to the states.

Lawmakers in state capitals nationwide have been revising state abortion laws and regulations over the past two years to prepare for Roe, which allowed abortions up to 22-24 weeks, being struck down.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, a research and policy nonprofit that supports abortion rights, at least 531 anti-abortion restrictions were introduced in 40 states during 2022 sessions after lawmakers in 2021 adopted more than 100 laws restricting abortion, the most in any year in the past five decades.

At least 26 states are likely to either ban abortion outright or severely limit access to the procedure, the Guttmacher Institute maintains, if the Supreme Court returns the issue to states, as expected. According to Congressional Quarterly/Fiscal Note, at least 12 states have adopted trigger bans, which would instantly prohibit abortion in their state if the court overturns Roe or sends it back to the states.

Lawmakers in Arizona, Florida, West Virginia, and Idaho are among state lawmakers who have adoptedor are considering doing so in 2022 sessions15-week bans similar to Mississippis while Idaho is among Republican-controlled legislatures that had adopted bills similar to Texas 2021 law that allows anyone to file lawsuits against anyone who knowingly aids or abets an abortion after the sixth week of pregnancy.

Meanwhile, progressive-controlled states, such as New Jersey and Vermont, have gone in the opposite direction in passing measures that protect access to abortion.

On March 22, Californias Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law a bill that would make abortions less expensive for private insurance plans, the first a raft of legislation the states assembly is crafting in anticipation of Roes demise.

Abortion opponents across a handful of states have taken a different routeor a course complementary to legislative initiativesby going directly to the people with proposed constitutional amendments addressing abortion.

Voters in four states have approved ballot measures that declare there is no right to abortion in their state constitutions.

Tennessee was the first to do so in 2014 with Alabama and West Virginia voters doing so in 2018. Louisianans adopted their no right to abortion in state constitution ballot measure in 2020.

At least two similar state constitutional amendments will go before voters this year in Kansas and Kentucky, with a prospective third measure being debated now by Oklahoma lawmakers. Voters in Iowa will see a no right to abortion in state constitution ballot measure in 2024.

The proposed Kansas amendment was placed on the ballot by state lawmakers following two-thirds supermajority votes in both chambers of a resolution in January 2021. It will go before voters on Aug. 2.

A yes vote would amend the Kansas Constitution to say nothing in the state constitution creates a right to abortion or requires government funding for abortion and that the state legislature has the authority to pass laws regarding abortion.

That legislative authority is a huge issue after the states Supreme Court overturned the 2015 Kansas Unborn Child Protection from Dismemberment Abortion Act in its 2019 Hodes & Nauser, MDs, PA v. Schmidt ruling, which held Section 1 of the state Constitutions Bill of Rights protects a womans right to abortion, making Kansas one of 10 states where the right to abortion was granted by court rulings.

Kansas is in a unique position regardless what happens at the federal level, Kansans for Life director of communications Danielle Underwood said.

If the U.S. Supreme Court does anything to give states more flexibility [in June or July], that 2019 ruling would still restrict what Kansas can do in placing restrictions on the abortion industry.

In fact, she said, even the Guttmacher Institute has acknowledged the state of Kansas is about to become a destination state for the abortion industry to push women to.

Kansas is an unprotected territory, a haven for taxpayer-funded, late-term abortions. They will both be allowed regardless of the pending Supreme Court ruling unless voters adopt the Value Them Both Amendment.

Underwood said the campaign in support of the proposed constitutional amendment is gearing up with Kansans For Life joining the Kansas Catholic Conference and Kansas Family Voice in a swelling coalition dedicated to preserve our existing right-to-life laws.

Were mobilizing the largest grassroots effort in Kansas history, she said. We are working through over 1000 churches in the state and making sure we get the word out to Kansans about what is at stake.

With the measure going before voters on Aug. 2, Underwood said Kansas will be the first ballot test after the Supreme Court hands down its ruling in June or July.

The legislators did their part and now it is up to the people of Kansas to make sure we do our part to ensure Kansas does not remain a destination state for abortions, she said.

This is all hands on deck. It is such an intense battle in Kansas. It is absolutely critical that we pass this amendment.

The stakes are similar in Kentucky, where Kentucky Right to Life executive director Addia Wuchner is spearheading a growing YesForLifeKY.com coalition in supporting a November measure placed on the ballot this month by state lawmakers that would declare there is no right to abortion under the states constitution.

The time is right, she said. We wanted to bring this forward.

A career registered nurse and former seven-term Republican state House rep who chaired the chambers Health and Family Services Committee, Wuchner has been Kentucky Right to Life executive director since 2019.

In 2018, Wuchner was among the lead sponsors of The Human Rights of the Child Act, which banned an abortion method that dismembers the fetus. That bill was adopted but blocked by rulings in the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals.

We passed the bill 2018 human rights bill barring the dismemberment of abortion, a very gruesome form of abortion, and have been in the courts fighting since 2018, she said.

This is a law that is representative of the values of the people of Kentucky. It got 106 of 138 House votes. It represents the views of Kentucky.

However, then-Kentucky attorney general, and now Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear opted not to defend the law or challenge rulings that the state was legally prohibited from doing so.

Beshear in 2019 appointed Republican Daniel Cameron to succeed himCameron was elected to the post in 2020who has taken the case to the U.S. Supreme Court where, on March 3, it ruled the state could defend the law in court.

Cameron said he would fight it to the Supreme Court. He is a man of his word, Wuchner said.

The attorney general has the right to defend that bill so you can see how important that is for state courts now that are waiting for decisions on non-discrimination bills, heartbeat bills. Waiting on the courts to decide.

As the courts were starting to change, she continued, and as we looked at the Kentucky Constitution, we wanted to make sure we didnt see the same thing in Kentucky that we saw in the federal court system, in the U.S. Supreme Court, [where judges] interpret the law beyond the legislators intent.

Regardless how the U.S. Supreme Court rules, We want to make sure the state Constitution reflects the will of the people of the state of Kentucky so there is not any room for misinterpretation.

Wuchner also praised Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams for the way the ballot measure is worded. He codified our embrace of life in 30 words. It is simplevery, very simple, she said.

Before filing the proposed constitutional amendment, Wuchner said she spoke with sponsors of Louisianas successful 2020 No Right to Abortion amendment to discuss how did they organize? What was their strategic plan? What was their experience? What did they learn?

Ultimately, she said, measure sponsors decided rather than just Kentucky Right To Life, lets do something different with an extensive outreach that called on diverse groups to stand togetherlets get the measure passed [by lawmakers] and then form a strategic alliance to push the ballot measure.

The Yes for Life Alliance includes Kentucky Right to Life, Sisters for Life, The Family Foundation, the Catholic Conference of Kentucky, the Kentucky Baptist Convention, and the Commonwealth Policy Center, among other backers, Wuchner said.

We know the other side has a lot of money, she said, predicting a hard-fought battle this summer into fall. We have one candidate on the ballot, just one special candidateAmendment 2.

The response had been enthusiastic with Kentuckians unhappy that courts, not lawmakers, are legislating in their state.

On Nov. 8, Kentuckians will be able to vote for themselves on a pro-life constitutional amendment, Wuchner said. It is a pivotal time in the country and in Kentucky. This is a final piece of the puzzle to move Kentucky forward as pro-life.
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson testifies on her nomination to become an Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court, during the third day of a Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, March 23, 2022. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP) (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)

Ketanji Brown Jackson Plans to Recuse From Harvard Race-Based Admissions Case

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, whom President Joe Biden has picked to fill the Supreme Court vacancy, said Wednesday that if confirmed, she would recuse herself from a case examining Harvard Universitys race-conscious admissions policies.

The dispute over Harvards admissions policy was first raised in 2014 by advocacy group Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), on behalf of a coalition of students who claimed to have been rejected by Harvard because of their Asian ancestry. In 2020, the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit upheld a lower court decision that it is not discriminatory when Harvard considers an applicants race as one factor in its admissions process, prompting the SFFA to take the legal battle to the highest court.

Jackson, who currently sits on the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, is also a member of the Harvard Board of Overseers, the second-highest governing body of the Ivy League school. Her six-year term is set to expire later this spring.

When asked by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) whether she would recuse herself from the lawsuit challenging what he called explicit and egregious policy of discriminating against Asian Americans, Jackson responded that she plans to do so.

Youre on the board of overseers of Harvard. If you are confirmed, do you intend to recuse from this lawsuit? asked Cruz, who was a classmate of Jackson at Harvard Law School in the early 1990s and served as chief editor of student journal Harvard Law Review.

That is my plan, Senator, Jackson replied.

Before the Supreme Court nomination, Jackson had made recusal decisions due to her Harvard post. In 2016, Jackson recused herself from a case challenging the U.S. Department of Educations guidelines for how colleges should handle sexual misconduct allegations. She explained in a questionnaire (pdf) provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee that it was to avoid an apparent conflict of interest.

I recused myself from [the 2016 case] because  I was serving on the board of a university that was evaluating its own potential response to

those guidelines, Jackson wrote. After reviewing the Code of Conduct for United States Judges, I determined that my impartiality might reasonably be questioned and that this issue was incurable.

The Supreme Court will hear the Harvard case this fall. It will also hear an appeal of a ruling that the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hills consideration of race in admissions was constitutional. The two cases involve almost identical issues, except that Harvard is a private institution and therefore, unlike UNC, is not bound by the Fourteenth Amendment.

Cruz did not ask about the UNC case, although it is possible that the two cases get consolidated into one, with two schools putting up a joint defense. Jackson would still need to recuse herself in that scenario.
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson testifies during her confirmation hearing to become a U.S. Supreme Court associate justice, in Washington, on March 23, 2022. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)

Ketanji Brown Jacksons Big Lie to Sen. Blackburn Exposes Progressivism

Commentary

When Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) asked Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to define the word woman, during Jacksons U.S. Supreme Court confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, she got the response I cant.

When Blackburn responded with an incredulous You cant? Jackson replied: Not in this context. Im not a biologist.

It takes a biologist to define woman? Does Jackson think were morons?

In a way, yes. Or she doesnt care.

Shes a progressive, and progressives have been redefining languageEnglish and many othersto fit their purposes dating back to the Spanish Civil War and undoubtedly earlier. (See Davis Hunt III at The Pamphleteer.)

Jackson very well knows what a woman is. The nominee has known this all her life, as we all have. But these days, in her part of the political world, shes not supposed to.

So she lied.

She simply parsed her words in order not to offend a constituency that has become imbued with transgenderitis. By that I mean a group taking what we all knowthat a small percentage of people suffer from gender dysphoria to a degree that they seek to change sexesand extending it into absurd public policy for reasons of power and control and, ultimately, money, not to mention a completely distorted and harmful view of gender itself. (In this case, see swimmer Lia Thomas.)

Those with that form of dysphoria, as do all with serious problems, deserve our sympathy and support, but no more so than everyone else with difficulties.

Nevertheless, theyve been singled out for now and are being manipulated and exploited by the left, just as many minorities before them have been.

The transgendered are the favored class du jour. TomorrowIm sorry to tell themit will be someone else.

Meanwhile, however, considerable damage is being done. As Blackburn alluded to, children as young as 5 are being instructed in gender choice, notably at a school with which Jackson is associated.

This is, in essence, a form of child abuse masquerading as progress.

The ensuing suicide rates for this instruction (actually propaganda), is something these people will have to live with. My guess is they wont even notice.

But speaking of progressive language distortion and what it yields (see also Orwells Homage to Catalonia), Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) further asked Jackson when she thought life begins.

Jackson again demurred, as if the plain English question were incomprehensible or above the pay grade of an aspiring associate of the Supreme Court. Perhaps Kennedy should have been more specific and queried her on whether she thinks life begins at the moment of conception, that is, the uniting of sperm and egg to form unique DNA that never heretofore existed?

It would have been interesting to see how she would have parsed that.

Jackson has been paraded before us proudly as the first black woman to go on the court. Shes certainly not the first black person. Thurgood Marshall on the left and Clarence Thomas on the right were there long before her.

Both of these men had estimable legal reputations. Also arriving with a distinguished reputation was the first woman on the court, Sandra Day OConnor.

I have to confess I never heard of Jackson before her nomination. I suspect I am in the majority in this regard. Her major qualifications seem to be race and sex, something you could call racist and sexist, when looking at it with a modicum of objectivity. Its identity politics all over again.

But that shouldnt be a surprise. As Ive noted, linguistic manipulation is a hallmark of the left. Theres nothing progressive in any literal sense about the word progressive itself. It represents an ideology at least as old as Marx, and one that multiple times has proven deadly, figuratively and literally.

The word progressive, under its political use, should really be translated for what it is: reactionary.

Jackson will undoubtedly go on the court. Thats the way of the present world. But we owe a debt of gratitude to Blackburn for making it especially clear who Jackson is and the ever-changing basis on which she will be making her decisions.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Killing US With Gun Control Kindness

Commentary

After years of denouncing and defunding police, trying to release as many prisoners as possible, publicly supporting anti-cop rioters, opening the border wide to illegal aliens and drugs, and, now, even using your taxpayer dollars to buy crack pipes in the name of equity, Democrats are at last responding to the inevitable crime wavewith a call for gun control.

In particular, President Joe Biden recently went to New York City, where murder and shootings are both up 50 percent in the past year, to meet with new Mayor Eric Adams, a former police captain. His predecessor, Bill de Blasio, cut the police budget by $1 billion and entirely disbanded a 600-member plainclothes anti-crime unit.

Yet, while in the Big Apple, Biden didnt tout what he has called the 1994 Biden Crime Bill, which allegedly (but not actually) included funding for 100,000 more cops on the street. In fact, during his 2020 presidential bid, Biden claimed he got stuck writing that bill.

Instead, the White House touted the Justice Departments war on guns. It bragged about Bidens effort to exorcise so-called ghost guns, the legal but infamous unmanufactured non-firearms that he is trying to outlaw illegally with no act of Congress. Finally it took a victory lap for the presidents Comprehensive Strategy to Reduce Gun Crime, which included a call for a national red flag law that could bar Americans from accessing firearms if they were in crisis. (No word on whether the red flag would include a hammer and sickle.)

During his New York trip, Biden himself conceded that the answer is not to defund the police, which would have been good to hear while Democrats across the country were doing so. But he doubled down on the ancient trope that the gun industry is the only organization that is somehow exempt from being sued by the publica charge that even left-wing Snopes acknowledges is false.

The truth is that Americas largest cities, all controlled by Democrats, are experiencing unprecedented crime waves. Throughout the United States, murder is up 30 percent. Fatal attacks on police are up 59 percent. Almost half of these (32) were ambushes and unprovoked attacksthe most since record-keeping began. Theres a direct correlation between these unprecedented increases and Democrats refusal to prosecute crime, yet their predictable answer is, as always, gun control.

Everything Democrats are doing is telegraphing an unmistakable signal to criminals that our nations left-wing leaders have willfully traded law and order for anarchy and chaos. Consider: calls to defund police are still coming from many quarters, despite a groundswell of opposition from affected citizensdisproportionately inner-city minorities. Left-wing prosecutors refuse to enforce the law, they release career criminals from jail, and require minimalor nobond for arrestees. Vice President Kamala Harris even promoted a fund providing bail money to violent offenders, one of whom later went on to commit murder.

The Biden administrations open-border policies are allowing an unprecedented flood of illegal aliens, deadly drugs, and even suspected terrorists across the southern border. In fact, Bidens idea of confronting the drug crisis is to give out free needles and drug kits.

Yet, in response to the crisis of raging violence and discord left-wing policies have created, the one consistent message from the left is that guns are the root of the crime problem.

Thus, the now off-the-charts violence has given Democrats the best pretext they have had to push their gun ban agenda since the last time their soft-on-crime policies exploded in the crack wave that crested in the early 1990s.

The crisis of violence serves many purposes for the left. Gun control is one of the most important, because what can a government do after it has disarmed its citizens? Anything it wants.

Of course, to get to this point, thousands more of us have to die in murders that would otherwise never have happened. But its all for a good cause, you see, because it leads to gun control.

The bottom line: Defund-the-police politicos and their gun-grabbing allies are, quite literally, killing us with kindness.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
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)

Kremlin Says Russia Prepared to Use Nukes in Cases of Existential Threat

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday that Moscow is not ruling out a nuclear strike under circumstances outlined in its military doctrine, including if Russia faces an existential threat.

Peskov was responding to a question by CNNs Christiane Amanpour during an interview in which he was asked to confirm that Russian President Vladimir Putin would never use a nuclear weapon.

The spokesperson declined to rule out a nuclear strike, while making reference to Russian military doctrine that allows the use of nuclear weapons under certain circumstances, even in conventional arms conflicts.

We have a concept of domestic security, and its public. You can read all the reasons for nuclear arms to be used, Peskov said.

So if it is an existential threat for our country, then it can be used in accordance with our concept.

Peskov was presumably referring to a presidential directive on nuclear deterrence, which was published in June 2020 and specifies a number of situations under which Russia could use nuclear weapons.

Paragraph 19 of the decree stipulates the following conditions as possibilities for Russia to resort to a nuclear strike, according to a translation provided by RealClearDefense:

a) arrival of reliable data on a launch of ballistic missiles attacking the territory of the Russian Federation and/or its allies;

b) use of nuclear weapons or other types of weapons of mass destruction by an adversary against the Russian Federation and/or its allies;

c) attack by an adversary against critical governmental or military sites of the Russian Federation, disruption of which would undermine nuclear forces response actions;

d) aggression against the Russian Federation with the use of conventional weapons when the very existence of the state is in jeopardy.

Paragraph 4 of the decree fits into what some experts have described as a Russian policy of escalating to deescalate. It states that the potential use of nuclear weapons by Russia is to guarantee the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the state and to deter a potential adversary from aggression against the Russian Federation and (or) its allies in the event of the emergence of an armed conflict by preventing the escalation of military activities and ending them on conditions acceptable to the Russian Federation and (or) its allies.

The issue of a potential nuclear strike by Russia surged to the forefront when Putin put his countrys nuclear forces on high alert several days after ordering his troops to move against Ukraine.

Putin said the nuclear escalation was driven by hostile comments by leading members of NATO and by punishing Western sanctions, which he said were like a declaration of war.

The Russian president also issued an ominous warning that any attempts by other countries to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine would have catastrophic consequences for Europe and the world, a comment many analysts and officials interpreted as a threat to take the conflict nuclear.

The issue also grabbed headlines when Russian troops seized the biggest nuclear power plant in Europe after an attack that set an adjacent administrative building on fire, sparking fears of a nuclear disaster that could eclipse the one that took place in Chernobyl.

Earlier in March, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he doesnt want to believe there would be a nuclear war over Ukraine, a statement some analysts interpreted as a veiled threat.

At the same time, Lavrov accused the West of being obsessed with the theme of nuclear escalation, claiming this, and not Russias actions, was a cause for concern.

United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres said on March 14 that the prospect of nuclear conflict, once unthinkable, is now back within the realm of possibility.
Chinese-chartered merchant ship Cosco Shipping Panama crosses the new Agua Clara Locks during the inauguration of the expansion of the Panama Canal in this undated file photo. China continues its push to displace U.S. influence in the region and already has put parts of the Panama Canal under its control. (Rodrigo Arangua/AFP/Getty Images)

Latin America Moves Closer to China Amid Ukraine Crisis

News Analysis

The Ukraine crisis allows the Chinese regime to increase engagement in Latin America, expand its power, isolate Taiwan, and threaten U.S. dominance in the region.

Russia sought to increase ties with Latin America days before the Ukraine invasion, sending delegates to Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. Moscow and Caracas discussed increasing their strategic partnership with Russia, even going so far as stating that they might station military hardware and personnel in Cuba and Venezuela if negotiations with the United States failed.

This would have dramatically increased tensions between the United States and its Latin American neighbors, threatening these nations trade with the United States and the European Union. The resulting isolation would have made these countries less valuable to China, which could benefit from positioning itself close to the U.S. southern border and southern coast.

Earlier this month, Cuba and Nicaragua joined Pakistan and China in abstaining from the United Nations vote on the Ukraine invasion. As close friends of Russia, these countries were expected to vote in support of Russia but chose not to vote instead. Venezuela was also expected to support Russia but was barred from voting due to unpaid dues. The fact that Latin American countries failed to support Russia suggests a shift away from Russia and toward China.

China and Cuba were once on the opposite sides of the Sino-Soviet split, but today, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) ranks Cuba as a good brother, good comrade, good friend. The CCPs State Council Information Office published a statement condemning the U.S. sanctions against Cuba and Venezuela.

For the first four decades after the socialist revolution, Cuba depended on the Soviet Union for economic support. When the USSR collapsed, Cuba lost 70 percent of its export market and most of its financial aid, according to Chinese state media CGTN. At one point, the USSR was providing Cuba the equivalent of $11 million worth of aid per day.

In 1999, under Hugo Chavez, Venezuela became the patron of the socialist island nation. Since 2015, Venezuelan aid has diminished as Venezuelas economy descended into crisis. Increasingly, China is filling the void with financial and technological support, drawing Cuba deeper into the CCPs orbit.

Chinese Navy ship Type 054A frigate 548 Yiyang moors at the port of Havana on Nov. 10, 2015. (Yamil Lage/AFP via Getty Images)

China is Cubas largest goods trading partner, while Cuba is Chinas second-largest Caribbean trading partner. Chinese firms are expanding into a wide range of the islands industries. Chinese biopharmaceutical firms are operating in Cubas Mariel Free Trade Zone. The countrys roads are dotted with trucks from Chinese manufacturer Sinotruk and buses from Yutong. Chinese appliance company Haier Group Corporation now has an assembly plant on the island. The University of Havana hosts a Confucius Institute. And Cubas Santiago container terminal was financed by a $120 million loan from a Chinese bank.

Last year, the two nations signed a cooperation plan to promote the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI, also known as One Belt, One Road). This escalation in relations came weeks after Nicaragua switched its diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China.

Zhou Zhiwei, a research fellow on Latin American studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that the bilateral relationship is beneficial because Cuba is rich in minerals, oil, and nickel ore. At the same time, it has potential for agriculture and tourism.

According to state-run media Global Times, BRI membership aligns with Cubas development plans, including infrastructure, technology, culture, education, tourism, energy, communications, and biotechnology. The CCPs approach to Cuba is similar to its pattern in other countries, providing loans and investment capital in exchange for natural resources and geopolitical and strategic support.

Over the past decade, and notably leading up to Russias invasion of Ukraine, China has stepped up its engagement with other nations in the region. Since 2017, four Latin American countries, Panama, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic, have switched their recognition from Taiwan to China.

Currently, the CCP has numerous port operations through Hong Kong-based Hutchison Port Holdings, including seven in Mexico, three in Panama, three in the Bahamas, one in Buenos Aires, and a polar logistics facility in Ushuaia, Argentina.

Other Chinese firms are engaged in port projects in Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, and Jamaica, while the CCP discusses projects in El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, and Guyana.

CCP Activity Threatens US Interests

The U.S. militarys Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) is responsible for Latin America, south of Mexico, the waters adjacent to Central and South America, and the Caribbean Sea, including 12 island nations and European territories.

In its Feb. 24 report, SOUTHCOM expressed strong concerns about Chinas activities in the region across several domains, cyber, space, mining, and energy industries.

Twenty-one countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have joined Chinas BRI. Apart from its economic and geopolitical engagement with these nations, China increased its military exchanges. Over the past two decades, Chinas Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) has conducted hundreds of visits to the region.

Cuban special forces, called the Black Berets, pose alongside their Chinese trainers from paramilitary in a government-run training school in Cuba in an undated photo. (Courtesy of ADN Cuba)

The CCP has established a defense forum with the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), offering military education to regional military personnel. PLA troops have also attended jungle warfare training in these countries, while the CCP is increasing its arms sales, including aircraft, tanks, and other military equipment.

Additionally, Chinese scientists have aided these countries in developing satellites and ground control systems. The Peoples Liberation Army Navy has also called on regional ports, including in Cuba, just 90 miles from the United States.

The CCP is installing surveillance technology and enabling authoritarianism while positioning China to cut off U.S. shipping.

Benjamin Gedan, deputy director of the Wilson Centers Latin American Program, told Voice of America (VOA) that investment from China brings economic and technological advancement. Still, it also provides the means for these nations to restrict civil liberties.

Venezuela and Cuba already have repressive regimes of censorship and digital authoritarianism that are strengthened through their alliance with the CCP. Chinese software, used to identify Chinese citizens on social media, is now employed in Venezuela. The carnet de la patria, developed by Chinese tech firm ZTE, was introduced in 2016 and is a requirement for access to certain goods and services, including doctors appointments and government pensions.

Venezuelas Homeland cards allow the government to process large amounts of data, enhance citizen control, and track political opposition. Control measures include television camera systems, fingerprints, facial recognition, and word algorithm systems that monitor chats and conversations on the internet and phone apps.

A team of ZTE employees works at the state telecommunications company CANTV, helping to manage the homeland card database. Through the card, CANTV employees can track citizens birthdays and family information, employment and income, property owned, medical history, state benefits received, presence on social media, membership of a political party, and whether a person voted, according to VOA.

The state-controlled CGTN news said that Cuba is vital to the CCP because of its strategic location. CGTN also acknowledged that closer relations with Cuba give the CCP access to the Caribbean, where it can influence the maritime approach of the southeastern U.S.

By placing the PLA Navy in Cuba, the CCP could control the waters between the U.S. southern coast and Central America, restricting shipping through the ports of Miami, New Orleans, and Houston.

Most recently, Colombian President Ivan Duque condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine, prompting President Joe Biden to designate Colombia as a major non-NATO ally. Consequently, the CCPs influence in the country needs to be addressed. Beijing has been courting Colombia with post-pandemic economic aid and investment, financing the Bogota regional railway, 4G and 5g projects, and a gold mine in Antioquia.

The Ukraine invasion has demonstrated a shift in allegiances in Latin American countries away from Russia and toward China. As Russias influence is diminishing, CCP loans and investment are winning the friendship of Latin American countries. This expands the CCPs surveillance operations while providing the PLA a perfect launching pad to threaten U.S. freedom of navigation.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Felipe Vazquez listens as a jury finds him guilty of first-degree murder in the 2020 shooting death of a Lincoln, Neb. police investigator in Columbus, Neb. on March 22, 2022. (Justin Wan/Lincoln Journal Star via AP)

Man Convicted of Killing Nebraska Police Officer

COLUMBUS, Neb.A young man has been found guilty of first-degree murder in the 2020 shooting death of a Lincoln police investigator who was among officers serving an arrest warrant in a homicide case.

A jury returned guilty verdicts Monday on the murder count as well as assault, escape and several weapons counts against 19-year-old Felipe Vazquez, the Lincoln Journal Star reported. He faces a mandatory prison term of life, plus 194 years, when hes sentenced May 25 for the death of investigator Luis Mario Herrera.

Herrera was a 23-year-veteran of the Lincoln police department and was among several officers who went to Vazquezs home on Aug. 26, 2020, to serve an arrest warrant for the then-17-year-old Vazquez in the stabbing death of 36-year-old Edward Varejcka months earlier.

Prosecutors said Vazquez shot at officers as he and another man tried to escape the home.

Herrera was wearing plain clothes and was without a bulletproof vest. He was there, in part, as a translator. He was struck in the torso and underwent several surgeries before dying on Sept. 7, 2020.

Herrera was the first Lincoln police officer killed in the line of duty in more than 50 years, and the seventh in the citys history.

Vazquezs trial was held in Columbus after a judge determined he likely could not get a fair trial in the Lincoln area and moved the venue to Platte County in eastern Nebraska.
Minneapolis Students Left Out of School as Teacher Strike Enters 3rd Week

More than 29,000 students in Minneapolis are in their third week of no school, as the public school district and its teachers union make little progress in reaching a deal to end a prolonged strike.

Starting March 8, the strike has now cost 10 days of classes for students of Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS), who have already suffered from learning loss due to pandemic school closures. In order to meet the state requirement, at least half of these missed days must be made up either by canceling spring break or extending the last day of school.

The Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT 59) has made a series of demands, including higher pay, smaller class sizes, and other concessions from the school district. But the key obstacle that prevents an agreement continues to be pay for educational support professionals, or ESPs. The average starting salary for ESPs in Minneapolis is about $24,000 each year, and the union demands that be increased to $35,000.

In response, the MPS offered its last, best and final offer to the ESPs. This complex offer includes, among other things, a 15.6 percent salary increases on average over two years and a $3.5 million investment to cover additional hours. District officials said that would bring most of the full-time ESPs close to an annual pay of $35,000.

MPS is reaching beyond its financial means on behalf of our ESPs and will need to make more than $10 million in reductions for the next school year as a result, MPS said. The district said earlier this month that it is anticipating a $97.2 million budget shortfall for the 20222023 fiscal year.

The union remains unimpressed, with a chapter leader saying the district should be able to guarantee $35,000 for all ESP staff.

While we appreciate MPS getting to where they are, we know they can get to $35,000 for ESP, said Shaun Laden, president for MFT 59s ESP chapter. It wont take much more on their part to settle this strike and get our students and educators back to school. We believe we can get this done.

Laden also said the city can do better to recruit and retain educators of color, reduce class sizes, add mental health supports, and create stability for our students by proposing competitive pay for licensed staff.

Meanwhile, in neighboring St. Paul, the St. Paul Federation of Educators overwhelmingly voted to join the picket line alongside their Minneapolis counterparts. However, the union managed to reach a midnight deal with its school district, effectively preventing the walkout.
A health worker administers a dose of a Moderna COVID-19 vaccine during a vaccination clinic at the Norristown Public Health Center in Norristown, Pa., on Dec. 7, 2021. (Matt Rourke/AP Photo)

Moderna to Ask FDA to Authorize Vaccine for Children as Young as 6 Months

Effectiveness lower than threshold deemed acceptable by FDA, WHO

Moderna on March 23 said its clinical trial for its COVID-19 vaccine in children aged 6 months to 5 years old successfully met its primary endpoint, and plans to ask the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to grant emergency use authorization for the age group, even as the estimated effectiveness is lower than the bar set by the FDA and the World Health Organization.

Moderna, a Massachusetts-based biotechnology firm, said the phase 2/3 trial showed the safety profile in young children was similar to that seen in adults and older kids, with no cases of post-vaccination heart inflammation recorded.

The company also said the vaccine provided a similar neutralizing antibody response to that seen in adults 18 to 25 years of age, who have been cleared since December 2020 to get a two-dose regimen.

We believe these latest results from the KidCOVE study are good news for parents of children under 6 years of age, Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel said in a statement, adding that the company plans to submit a package of data to the FDA for consideration soon.

The interim data outlined by Moderna, which hasnt been released for outside review, was from about 6,700 participants younger than 6.

Children under 5 years old currently cannot get a COVID-19 vaccine in the United States, spurring calls from some parents for regulators to clear one or more options.

But the effectiveness of the vaccine in Modernas trial in terms of preventing infection from SARS-CoV-2 came in at just 43.7 percent for children aged 6 months to 2 years and even lower, 37.5 percent, in those 2 to 5 years old.

The FDA has said that vaccines should be at least 50 percent effective in preventing infection or decreasing its severity to receive emergency authorization. The World Health Organization says vaccines are required to be 50 percent effective or better to receive clearance.

The FDA and Moderna didnt respond to requests for comment by press time.

Moderna said that lower effectiveness was expected because of the dominance of the Omicron virus variant. Omicron bypasses vaccine protection more than earlier variants of SARS-CoV-2, also known as the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.

Overall, this is great that the vaccine was shown to be safe in this population of children, generated a good antibody response, and was shown to be clinically effective at decreasing risk of infection by approximately 40 percent, Dr. David Boulware, an infectious disease physician and scientist at the University of Minnesota, told The Epoch Times via email.

But some questioned the effort to get authorization.

To convince parents of children as young as six months old to allow their children to be injected with Modernas mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, the company is going to have to do a lot more than claim a woefully inadequate 37 to 43 percent efficacy when COVID disease is either asymptomatic or very mild for the majority of young children, Barbara Loe Fisher, president and co-founder of the National Vaccine Information Center, told The Epoch Times via email, adding that long-term risks of the vaccine remain unknown.

Both the Moderna and Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines are built on messenger RNA technology.

Moderna, meanwhile, was unable to peg the efficacy of its shot against severe disease in young children because no severe COVID-19 cases were observed in the vaccine or placebo groups.

The absence of any severe disease, hospitalization, or death in the study precludes the assessment of vaccine efficacy against these endpoints, it said.

But it also claimed that the immune response seen in kids predicted protection from severe COVID-19.

The young children received 25-microgram doses, a quarter of the amount adults receive.

Moderna also plans to ask regulators to authorize 50-microgram doses for children 6 to 11 and update its submission package for children 12 to 17. The FDA opted in the fall of 2021 not to decide on Modernas vaccine for the latter group because of concerns of post-vaccination heart inflammation.

Children are less likely to experience any symptoms from COVID-19, much less severe cases of the disease, when compared to adults, a fact that prompted the FDA in February to delay a decision on Pfizers vaccine for young children.

Regulators and Pfizer also said the two-shot primary regimen didnt perform well enough to win emergency authorization. The company and its partner BioNTech are currently testing a three-dose regimen, with results expected in April.
Registered nurse Emma Ahearn administers the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine to Millie Persic sitting on the lap of mother Maria Persic in Sydney, Australia, on Jan. 11, 2022. (Jenny Evans/Getty Images)

Mother Calls for Better Risk Advisory Around mRNA COVID-19 Vaccines for Kids

An Australian mother is calling for better advice for parents and for long-term health studies on mRNA COVID-19 vaccines after her 12-year-old son was hospitalised with life-threatening pericarditis within hours of getting the jab.

Nats eldest son, whose name The Epoch Times is not disclosing to protect his privacy, was a happy, healthy 12-year-old prior to being injected with Modernas pediatric COVID-19 vaccine, commonly known as Spikevax. But now, he has chosen to isolate himself from his friends and has been on strict rest to keep his heart rate down.

I knew before a doctor confirmed that he had an adverse reaction to the vaccine. Call it mothers intuition, said Nat. You know when something isnt right with your child. He has an incredibly high tolerance to pain and is an active, healthy boy.

Nat said that she chose to vaccinate her son despite being hesitant about the immunisation due to the lack of research on the long-term health risks associated with the mRNA vaccines, believing she was doing the right thing.

But within seven hours of vaccinating her eldest son, he was unable to sit or lie down without severe chest pain and complained of breathing difficulties. Nat rushed him to the hospital where the doctors confirmed the boy had an adverse reaction to the vaccine.

Nat was left angry and upset when the doctor confirmed her son had pericarditis as a result of the vaccine because she had been hesitant to give him the injection in the first place.

Pericarditis is a condition characterised by the membrane around the heart becoming inflamed and swollen. Australias medicines regulator, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), has recognised it as a rare adverse reaction to mRNA vaccines produced by Pfizer and Moderna.

The other most commonly seen adverse reaction is myocarditis or the inflammation of the heart.

I went through a range of emotionsangry and frustrated to gratitude that it wasnt worse. To see him laying in a hospital bed as sick as he was, feeling like it was my fault because I made him get the vaccine, was an incredibly hard time and a lot to process, she said.

But things got worse when Nats son was forced to return to the hospital by ambulance less than 12 hours after being discharged.

My sons health declined rapidly, and I was not taking any chances, Nat said.

The doctors ordered her son to have strict rest for four weeks and not to do any activity that increased his heart rate. He was also placed on high doses of an anti-inflammatory drug to reduce the inflammation and swelling of the heart sac.

Nat said this was extraordinarily tough for an ordinarily active 12-year-old boy.

It not only impacted him physically but emotionally and mentally. He socially isolated himself as he was concerned about putting himself in a position with friends that would jeopardise his health, she said.

Admitting that she and her husband both had concerns about giving the vaccine to their son, Nat said the wealth of conflicting advice and information on the childrens vaccine left them completely unsure what the right move was.

We were lead to believe that children were not affected by the virus on the same level as older adults, Nat said.

Nat and her husband had been worried about the potential for serious side-effects and what the long-term effects of the vaccines might be, compared to if their son had contracted the virus, noting the vaccine was relatively new and uncharted territory.

Its a case of wanting to do the right thing but unsure of what that is, she said.

Nat noted that her children had received the full slate of childhood immunisations and that she and her husband had also received the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine.

I believe vaccines have their place, said Nat. The current vaccinations on the schedule have been around for decades, and parents are more confident due to familiarity.

But after her familys experience, Nat wants the federal government to introduce better information to parents on the risks of the vaccines to help them make a more informed choice whether to immunise their children with the mRNA vaccines.

Unfortunately, Nats son is not alone. According to figures from the TGA, 200 children aged between 12 and 17 have experienced an adverse reaction to an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine as of March 13.

There have also been 1,159 cases of suspected myocarditis in Australia from the Pfizer vaccine and 153 from the Moderna vaccine.

Additionally, there have been 2,715 cases of pericarditis from both vaccines, with 178 of those being in the 12 to 17 age group.

At present in Australia 37.4 million doses of Pfizer have been given, while 3.9 million doses of Modernas Spikevax have been distributed.

The TGA said they are carefully monitoring and reviewing reports of myocarditis and pericarditis following mRNA vaccines, particularly in younger age groups. However, they also note that the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI) has said that it regards the risks associated with the vaccines are outweighed by the benefits.

This comes as the vaccination rate (pdf) for those aged 12 to 15 reached 79.7 percent and 90.5 percent for those aged 16 to 19 on March 22.

Meanwhile, Reuters reported in October 2021 that Denmark, Finland, and Sweden have stopped offering Modernas Spikevax as data revealed that they were associated with an increase in myocarditis and pericarditis.

The connection is especially clear when it comes to Modernas vaccine Spikevax, especially after the second dose, the Swedish Ministry of Health and Social Affairs said.

In a statement, Moderna said the company is aware of the very rare occurrence of myocarditis and/or pericarditis following administration of mRNA vaccines saying they were typically mild cases, and individuals tend to recover within a short time following standard treatment and rest.

The vaccine manufacturer noted that the risk of myocarditis is also increased for those who contract COVID-19, and in an analysis of 6.2 million people from the US Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD) following mRNA COVID-19 vaccination did not recognise an increased safety signal for either mRNA vaccine.

Meanwhile, Nat has called on parents to seek further health advice before injecting their child with an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine.

Please do your homework and research as much as possible and educate yourself on all the risks associated to make an informed decision, she said recommending parents wait for the childrens Novavax vaccine to become available.

Australians must consent to receive a COVID-19 vaccine during their immunisation appointment, where they are advised of the health risks.

In Australia, informed consent, whether express or implied, is regarded as a prerequisite of individual medical treatment and the administration of treatment in the absence of informed consent exposes medical professionals to both civil and criminal liability.

The notion of providing informed consent to the COVID-19 vaccines is a point of contention in Australia where many state governments have issued vaccine mandates as have many businesses in the private sector.

But according to Australian law state governmentswho are primarily responsible for public health in the countrycan, in a declared public health emergency, use coercive powers, including the ability to impose vaccinations.

One such example of these laws is section 157(1)(j) of Western Australias Public Health Act 2016, which permits the states chief health officer during the time of a declared state health emergency to direct any person to undergo medical observation, medical examination or medical treatment or to be vaccinated.
Mountain Lion Hit by Vehicle, Killed in Malibu

MALIBU, Calif.A mountain lion was hit by a vehicle and killed Wednesday in Malibu, authorities said.

The animal died at the scene of the collision, which was reported at about 7:35 a.m. in the 33200 block of Pacific Coast Highway, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department.

The motorist did not stop.

P-104, a subadult male mountain lion, was killed by a car on PCH today. He was the most recent cat to be captured as part of our puma study, the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area tweeted. He is the 25th cat & 8th collared study cat to be killed by a car and the first weve documented being hit & killed by a car on PCH.

Animal control personnel were sent to the scene to remove the fatally injured animal, the sheriffs department reported. The roadway remained open.

J.P. Rose, a senior attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity, said the lions death is a reminder that our roads are death traps for local mountain lions and other wildlife. Rose urged the state Legislature pass legislation sponsored by the center that would build 10 wildlife crossings per year on state roads, and to identify roadkill hotspots.

Wildlife crossings have to be a top priority before its too late and we lose the Santa Monica Mountains puma population forever, Rose said.

P-104, a subadult male mountain lion, was killed by a car on PCH today. He was the most recent cat to be captured as part of our puma study. He is the 25th cat & 8th collared study cat to be killed by a car and the first weve documented being hit & killed by a car on PCH. pic.twitter.com/CVytayL6wM  Santa Monica Mtns (@SantaMonicaMtns) March 23, 2022

Jack Bradley contributed to this report.
Mountain Lion Sedated After Entering Irvine Office Building

IRVINE, Calif.A mountain lion was tranquilized after entering an office building in Irvine on Tuesday.

The two-year-old male mountain lion was first spotted on the street about 1:15 p.m. in the area of Odyssey and Water Works Way, near Oak Creek Community Park, before it ran into the building, according to the Irvine Police Department (IPD).

The occupants of the building managed to exit before authorities made their way inside and sedated the mountain lion.

The animal was taken to a veterinarian by animal control units for evaluation, and will eventually be released back into the wild, according to Irvine police.

No injuries were reported.

Jack Bradley contributed to this report.
Liberal MP George Christensen (L) with One Nation Sen. Malcolm Roberts, chair of the Cross Party Inquiry into the Australian Government's Response to COVID-19, on March 23, 2022. (George Christensen/Supplied)

MPs Hear From Victims of Australian Governments COVID-19 Measures at Cross Party Inquiry

A group of Australian federal and state MPs have convened a cross-party inquiry into the countrys response to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, hearing from experts and victims of the state and federal governments epidemic measures.

Chaired by Queensland One Nation Sen. Malcolm Roberts, the cross-party inquiry includes Coalition Queensland federal MP George Christensen, New South Wales United Australia Party leader MP Craig Kelly, Queensland One Nation state MP Stephen Andrew, South Australian Coalition Sen. Gerard Rennick, South Australian Coalition Sen. Alex Antic, and more.

Among the speakers at the inquiry on March 23 was Dr. Phillip Altman, an Australian authority on clinical trials and regulatory affairs with decades of experience, who has challenged the prevailing narrative against the use of ivermectin in treating COVID-19, the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2.

In photos obtained by The Epoch Times, Altman is seen presenting slides on what he put forward as a tsunami of misinformation that flowed from officials to the public.

This included that lockdowns were useful in stopping the spread of the virus, gene-based COVID-19 vaccines were safe, children needed to be injected with gene-based vaccines, paper and cloth protective masks were effective, and that early treatment of COVID-19 was not necessary, among others.

In his presentation, Altman put forward a slide titled Masterclass in Marketing, with notes that the pharmaceutical companies that developed the COVID-19 vaccines bore no liability in Australia and that COVID-19 vaccines were given early provisional approval by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (similar to the FDAs emergency use authorisations in the United States) based on limited data.

Dr. Phillip Altman presents to the Cross Party Inquiry on the Australian Governments Response to COVID-19 virtually, on March 23, 2022. (George Christensen/Supplied)

Dr. Phillip Altman presents to the Cross Party Inquiry on the Australian Governments Response to COVID-19 virtually on March 23, 2022. (George Christensen/Supplied)

Altmans slides also noted that the vaccines were paid for with taxpayer money in confidential deals between the federal government and the pharmaceutical companies and that these inoculations were then pushed onto the public.

COVID-19 vaccines have taken a central position in the Australian governments response to the COVID-19 epidemic. For several months, at daily press conferences held by state and territory leaders, Australians have been told to get vaccinated and get booster shots.

At one stage in 2021, state leaders, particularly in Victoria and New South Wales, even refused to ease COVID-19 restrictions until 70 to 80 percent of the population was vaccinated. Then in late 2021, state governments began mandating COVID-19 vaccines for certain industries.

Since then, thousands have lost their jobs for choosing not to take what some experts have deemed experimental vaccines.

At the inquiry on Wednesday, Roberts posted a brief clip showing the proceedings to his Telegram channel on March 23. In the video, Roberts pans the camera around the table of MPs, showing a monitor featuring cardiologist and epidemiologist Dr. Peter McCullough and others joining virtually.

A huge day of presentations being made to Craig Kelly, George Christensen, Gerard Rennick, Stephen Andrew, Alex Antic and I today at my forum, COVID Questioned, Roberts wrote on Telegram.

Hearing from Dr Peter McCullough here, he said, referring to the monitor.

McCullough is a professor of medicine at Texas A&M College of Medicine in Dallas and is the editor of two medical journals. He has put his career on the line to express his views on the COVID-19 jabs in a climate in the United States where state medical boards have threatened to revoke the licenses of doctors based on the spreading of unidentified misinformation.

The inquiry comes after several months of pushback by the public and some politicians against state and federal vaccine mandates, and COVID-19 restrictions and lockdowns.

Conservative MPs Christensen and Antic have been steadfast in calling for the restoration of freedoms amidst COVID-19 restrictions, first imposed on the general public amid outbreaks, and later only on the unvaccinated.

Both MPs took to Facebook to speak about the inquiry.

We will be speaking to victims of provisionally-approved medical procedures, small business, and workers victims of pandemic policies, medical experts and many others, Christensen wrote on March 23.

Today I am participating in a cross-party scientific and medical inquiry into COVID treatments, mandates, and responses organised by [Malcolm Roberts] along with Senator Gerard Rennick, Craig Kelly, and George Christensen among others, Antic wrote on Facebook on March 23.

We are hearing from pathologists, injured people, business owners, journalists, and health care professionals such as Dr. Peter McCullough.

Roberts said on his Telegram channel that recordings of the proceedings will be released to uncensored platforms on Friday.
MTG Reignites Debate Over 2014 Ukrainian Coup Controversy

Did the U.S. government support the overthrow of Ukraines government in 2014, or is that Russian propaganda?

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) reignited debate over this 8-year-old question with her comments on March 16, when she released an anti-war statement on Ukraine.

A potential war with Russia is not comparable with Iraq and Afghanistan. This is an eight-year-long smoldering conflict, in which peace agreements have been routinely violated by both sides.  A country whose government only exists because the Obama State Department helped overthrow the previous regime, Greene said.

The last part of Greenes statement proved to be particularly controversial, with fact-checkers and pundits coming out of the woodwork to debunk Greenes claim and accuse her of spreading Russian propaganda.

White House correspondent Andrew Feinberg wrote in a column for the Independent, blasting Greene for her statements, Allegations that the U.S. fomented the 2014 Maidan Revolutionwhich toppled the government of Russia-aligned Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovychare a staple of Russian propaganda, and were a significant part of Russian President Vladimir Putins justification for invading Ukraine.

But Greene isnt the first to mention Americas role in inflaming tensions in Ukraine. Nor is her MAGA-style conservatism the only political faction to make such claims.

Indeed, a broad cross-cutting coalition of national security experts agree that the U.S. played a role in the downfall of Yanukovychfrom conservative retired Army Colonel Douglas Macgregor to the left-leaning former CIA Russia analyst Ray McGovern, as well as numerous scholars from think tanks such as the Cato Institute, Defense Priorities, and Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

According to these groups and experts, there has been a struggle for Ukraine brewing between Russia and the West for years before the war became hot in 2022.

Former Reagan White House official David Stockman has pointed out that the supposedly pro-Russia President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych actually initiated a trade agreement with the European Union in March 2012 that would have included IMF aid. But with all parties involved still struggling to recover from the 2008 financial crisis, no such deal could be culminatedwhich is why Yanukovych then turned to Russia, Stockman said.

Kiev quickly pivoted to a deal with Russia in the fall of 2013, which was willing to offer $15 billion in loans without the harsh IMF preconditions, Stockman wrote in February. Also, Moscow offered Ukraine a discount on Ukraines large gas purchases from Russia.

Western officials were angry with the 2013 RussiaUkraine deal. So were many pro-West Ukrainians, particularly the younger population residing in the western part of the country.

Top U.S. national security officials offered a public show of support as the pro-West Ukrainians took to the streets to protest in late 2013.

Sen. John McCain (RAriz.), then the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, went to Kyiv to show solidarity with the activists, dining with opposition leadersincluding members of the ultra rightwing Svoboda Party.

Not to be outdone, Victoria Nuland, then the assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian Affairs, handed out cookies to demonstrators in central Kyiv and expressed support for their cause in several visits in December 2013.

Then, in what observers view as the most compelling evidence that U.S. officials were behind Yanukovychs ouster, a phone call between Nuland and U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt was leaked online in February 2014in which the two officials discussed who Ukraines next government should be in the wake of Yanukovychs downfall.

Yats is the guy, Nuland said at the time, referring to Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who was designated as the new prime minister of Ukraine following Yanukovychs removal in February 2014.

At the time, then-State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki denied that the Nuland-Pyatt phone call was evidence of the United States meddling in Ukrainian politics, or trying to engineer a particular outcome.

It should be no surprise that U.S. officials talk about issues around the world. Of course we do. Thats what diplomats do, Psaki said in 2014, calling the Russian officials publication of the tape a new low in Russian tradecraft.

However, many foreign policy experts believe the timing of the call was too close to the regime change to be a coincidence.

You had a situation where a democratically elected, pro-Russian president was deposed in a manner that Putin could plausibly think that the U.S. was behind. I mean, we did have Victoria Nuland, a high-ranking State Department official, recorded secretly by the Russians, basically conspiring to decide who the successor government was going to be once the guy was deposed, said Robert Wright, publisher of the Nonzero newsletter.

And then suddenly you have a pro-Americanand in Putins view, American-installedgovernment in Ukraine, and all of a sudden the status of a really important Russian naval base in Crimea is in question, Wright said Dec. 17 on Crashing the War Party, a foreign policy podcast hosted by Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft senior adviser Kelley Vlahos.

Along with Nulands public signs of support and her leaked phone call, experts who believe she helped overthrow Yanukovych point to the fact that foreign aid and weapons sales to Ukraine have skyrocketed since 2014, doubling from less than $300 million before 2014 to more than $600 million in 2020.

Neither the State Department nor Nuland responded to an Epoch Times inquiry about the matter.

Russia scholar Clint Ehrlich said its narrow-minded for Westerners to view as Russian propaganda the characterization of the 2014 Maidan Revolution as a coup.

Ehrlich, who was a visiting researcher at Moscow State Institute of International Relations at MGIMO University, told The Epoch Times in January that its a deeply held belief in Russia that Yanukovychs ouster was indeed organized by the United States.

I can assure you that within Russias government, they view it as an open-and-shut case, he said at the time. So, when we negotiate with the Russians, when we talk to the Russians, its very important to understand that theyre convinced the U.S. was ultimately responsible. And so that alters the whole framework of their decision-making.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg speaks during a press conference ahead of the alliance's Defence Ministers' meeting at the NATO headquarters in Brussels on March 15, 2022. (Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP via Getty Images)

NATO Calls on China to Condemn Russias Invasion of Ukraine

NATO will meet on March 24 to discuss the ongoing war in Ukraine and the challenges posed by the Chinese Communist Partys (CCP) apparent support of the Russian invasion.

China has provided Russia with political support, including by spreading blatant lies and misinformation, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said at a March 23 press conference. For NATO, it is of particular concern that China now, for the first time, has questioned some of the key principles for security, including the right for every nation in Europe to choose his own path.

The news comes a week after Washington accused Beijing of considering providing military support to Russia for its ongoing war on Ukraine.

The Chinese regime had previously signed a treaty pledging to provide unspecified security guarantees to Ukraine in the event of the threat of a nuclear attack but appears to have reneged on that promise in this conflict. CCP leadership reaffirmed earlier this month that Russia would remain the regimes most important strategic partner.

Now NATO is concerned that the CCP will overtly support Russias invasion of Ukraine, a prospect the 30 NATO nations will discuss in Brussels on March 24.

Stoltenberg said he expects NATO member states to call on China to condemn the invasion and to engage in diplomatic efforts to find a peaceful way to end the war as soon as possible.

The Chinese regime has refused to condemn Russias invasion and has refused to join international sanctions against the country for its invasion of Ukraine. CCP officials have instead echoed Russian talking points and said NATO expansion was to blame for the war.

Ukraine wasnt being considered for NATO membership at the onset of the war, as NATO bylaws prohibit the admission of nations that dont fully control their territory, as has been the case in Ukraine since the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014.

In 2021, NATO designated Chinas communist regime as a key strategic priority in its latest strategic guidance, which outlines the alliances overarching strategic framework. Its the first time ever that China has been mentioned in the strategy.

Stoltenberg also said NATO would likely decide to increase its military presence on its eastern flank. NATO has increased its troop presence there in the past month, with roughly 40,000 troops spread from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. It isnt clear yet how many additional resources will be mobilized.

I expect leaders will agree to strengthen NATOs posture in all domains, with major increases in the eastern part of the alliance, Stoltenberg said. On land, in the air, and at sea.

Stoltenberg said the war in Ukraine has demonstrated that NATO must reassess its deterrence efforts in the long term, an issue that NATO leaders were expected to discuss at their next regular summit, which is to be held at the end of June.

NATO leaders are also set to agree on additional aid for Kyiv, including equipment to help Ukraine protect against chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear threats.

The new aid package will come as fears of a potential nuclear or biological strike from Russia mount, following the first-ever combat usage of a hypersonic missile by Russia in Ukraine earlier this week.

Stoltenberg called the tensions and NATOs response to them a defining moment for our security.

U.S. President Joe Biden will meet face-to-face with his NATO counterparts at the March 24 meeting as well and work to cement the cohesiveness of the alliance, according to White House press secretary Jen Psaki.

There is a new sense of urgency because we cannot take peace for granted, Stoltenberg said.
Residents evacuate the city of Irpin, north of Kyiv, Ukraine, on March 10, 2022. (Aris Messinis/AFP via Getty Images)

NATO Chief: Chemical Weapons in Ukraine Would Totally Change Conflict

The use of chemical weapons by Russia would totally change the nature of the conflict in Ukraine, said NATO Secretary Jens Stoltenberg on Wednesday.

Without elaborating, Stoltenberg told reporters that using such weapons would be a blatant violation of international law and of far-reaching consequences. He didnt elaborate.

Since the start of the Feb. 24 conflict, there have been no reports or evidence suggesting Moscow has used chemical weapons in Ukraine. However, in recent days, top Western officials have continually claimed that Russia is aiming to do so in the near future, although no evidence has been produced.

Ahead of a NATO summit in Brussels, President Joe Biden told reporters that he believes its a real threat that Russia would use the weapons. Meanwhile, Russian officials have made accusations that Kyiv is seeking to use or develop chemical or biological weapons against Russia.

Im receiving reports that Russia is preparing attacks using chemical weapons such as sarin, just like Syria, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told Japanese officials on Wednesday. He also did not provide evidence or details.

On Wednesday, during a United Nations meeting, Russian deputy U.N. Ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy said troops have never planned or carried out strikes against any Ukrainian facilities where toxic substances are stored or produced. He instead blamed Ukrainian nationalist groups for trying to stage a false-flag attack.

It is clear that the Ukrainian nationalist authorities, encouraged by the Western countries will stop at nothing to intimidate its own people and stage false flag attacks to accuse Russia, Polyanskiy said.

The deputy head of Kyivs police force, Oleksiy Biloshytskiy, meanwhile, wrote on social media that Russia is currently using white phosphorus bombs in Kramatorsk. Phosphorus-based weapons are not considered chemical weapons under the Chemical Weapons Convention.

Another evidence of phosphorus bombs used by [R]ussian invaders, he said.

During an interview with CNN, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that Moscow could potentially use a nuclear weapon if Russia faces an existential threat. Several days after the launch of the invasion, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced he would place his nuclear readiness forces on high alert after Western countries and the United States issued punishing sanctions against Russia.

While in Europe, Bidens first stop is Brussels, where hell attend back-to-back-to-back meetings. NATO is holding a hastily arranged emergency summit where Biden is expected to reiterate his support for Article 5 of the alliances charter, which commits all members to collective defense if any are attacked.

I think the meeting of all heads of state and government in NATO will provide us with yet another platform to demonstrate our unity, our support to Ukraine, but also our readiness to protect and defend all NATO allies, Stoltenberg told NBCs Meet the Press on Sunday. And by sending that message, we are preventing an escalation of the conflict to a full-fledged war between NATO and Russia.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Canadian soldiers wait to meet Minister of Defence Anita Anand in Adazi, Latvia, on Feb. 3, 2022. (Gints Ivuskans/AFP via Getty Images)

NATO to Approve Major Increases of Troops as Zelenskyy Says 100,000 People Trapped

NATO is likely to send more troops to the alliances eastern flank, sending battle groups to Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia, said NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg Wednesday, as Ukrainian officials warned that 100,000 people are trapped in Mariupol amid the conflict with Russia.

I expect leaders will agree to strengthen NATOs posture in all domains, with major increases in the eastern part of the alliance on land, in the air, and at sea, Stoltenberg said ahead of Thursdays NATO summit in Brussels.

Since the start of the UkraineRussia conflict, NATO has readied more than 140,000 troops across the continent, Stoltenberg added.

The alliance, meanwhile, is considering permanently stationing troops along the eastern flank, according to another NATO official.

NATO is in the process now of stepping back and thinking more about a medium and longer-term force presence in NATO territory on that eastern flank, U.S. Ambassador to NATO Julianne Smith told an Atlantic Council audience on Wednesday, saying the move will send a pretty clear message to Moscow.

Permanent stationing could be one solution or persistent rotations as another option that could be on the table. So at this point, what we need to do is have our military commanders give us the best advice that they can come to us with specific proposals and then as an alliance, look at what the security environment requires, Smith said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addresses the Bundestag via live video from the embattled city of Kyiv, in Berlin on March 17, 2022. (Hannibal Hanschke/Getty Images)

A man walks past a building that was damaged by shelling in Mira Avenue (Avenue of Peace) in Mariupol, Ukraine, on March 20, 2022. (Evgeniy Maloletka/AP)

So far, NATO and the United States have pledged not to send troops to Ukraine or establish a no-fly zone over the country, warning that doing either would significantly escalate the conflict with Russia.

The development comes as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Wednesday that more than 100,000 civilians are trapped in the besieged city of Mariupol.

As of today, there are about 100,000 people in the city, in inhumane conditions, in a complete blockade, he told Japanese officials while pleading for aid and sanctions against Russia. No food, no water, no medicine. Under constant shelling, under constant bombing.

It is not clear how much of Mariupol is still under Ukrainian control. Fleeing residents say fighting continues street by street. In their last update, over a week ago, Mariupol officials said at least 2,300 people had died, but the true toll is probably much higher. Airstrikes in the past week destroyed a theater and an art school where civilians were sheltering.

Western officials say Putins forces are facing serious shortages of food, fuel, and cold weather gear, with soldiers suffering frostbite, while Ukraines defenders have been going more on the offensive.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry looks on as Health Minister Adrian Dix speaks about the COVID-19 vaccine card during a press conference at provincial legislature in Victoria, on Aug. 23, 2021. (The Canadian Press/Chad Hipolito)

Nearly 2,500 BC Health-Care Workers Fired for Not Getting COVID-19 Shots

Nearly 2,500 health-care workers in British Columbia were put out of work for their decision not to get COVID-19 shots.

According to B.C.s health ministry, 2,496 nurses, aides, and other hospital support staff were fired, the Vancouver Sun reported on March 22.

In October 2021, Health Minister Adrian Dix announced that, unless they had a medical exemption, anyone working for or contracted to work in the provinces health authorities had to receive their first vaccination by Nov. 15, 2021, and their second dose between four and five weeks later if they want to keep their job.

The latest numbers do not include physicians and regulated health professionals who work in private settings such as chiropractors, dentists, and psychologists. These private clinic employees, however, were mandated by the province to take their first shot by March 24, and the second dose within 35 days.

On March 7, provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry issued a new order, requiring regulatory health colleges to provide personal information concerning their registrants to the Ministry of Health by March 31 in order for the ministry to verify the registrants vaccination status.

Based on the numbers released by the province, almost half of the dismissed workers were employed by the Interior and Northern Health Authorities.

The Interior Health Authority lost almost four percent of their workforce while Northern Health terminated three percent. The Island, Fraser and Vancouver Coastal Health regions, Provincial Health Services, and Providence Health Care fired about one percent or less.

Almost 60 percent of those terminated in four of the five regional health authorities were not permanent full or part-time employees but were casual employees, reported the Vancouver Sun.

Of the 908 workers terminated by Interior Health, 540 of them were casual workers. Northern Health lost 174 casual workers out of the 297 who were fired. Fraser Health lost 469 (272 casual) workers while Vancouver Coastal Health recorded 235 jobs (132 casual) lost.
A detail of an NBN sign at the Brunswick Digital Hub in Melbourne, Australia, on July 24, 2013. (Scott Barbour/Getty Images)

Australia Announces $480 Million Upgrade to Regional NBN Network

The Australian government has announced it will spend $480 million ($US358 million) to provide more than a million premises in regional and rural Australia with faster NBN (National Broadband Network) internet speeds.

The upgrade project is expected to boost the speed of the NBNs fixed wireless network and extend the data caps of the satellite internet service Sky Muster.

Apart from government funding, NBN Co, the operator of Australias National Broadband Network, will chip in $270 million from its own funds.

The federal government expects the new NBN investment to extend the fixed wireless coverage by nearly 50 percent, providing an additional 120,000 premises with access to the network.

Speaking to ABC TV, Communications Minister Paul Fletcher said that the boost would be a game-changer for Australians living in regional areas and allow existing NBN customers to access faster internet speeds.

This is about better internet for households. It comes on top of all the other changes we made to the NBN, he said.

When we came to government, barely 50,000 premises were able to connect to the fixed-line. Its now 8.4 million  This is now a focus on people in regional and remote Australia, faster internet for them.

Under the project, Australians can expect to see top internet speeds increase from 50Mbps to 100Mbs for most premises on the fixed wireless network. And nearly all of the 750,000 premises will be able to enjoy the upgrade.

In addition, 85 percent of the premises connected to NBNs fixed wireless network could get access to a top speed of 250Mbps.

This photo shows a man using a laptop computer on the street in the central business district of Sydney, in Australia, on Nov. 5, 2018. (Peter Parks/AFP via Getty Images)

Fletcher also said that the NBN upgrade project would result in higher internet speeds during peak hours for existing customers even if they did not order a higher speed plan.

This means more people can be served by NBN fixed wireless; it means higher-speed services on the NBN fixed wireless network, and it means higher amounts of data can be used by households and business customers, he said in a statement.

By using the latest 4G and 5G wireless technology, this upgrade will extend the coverage range from a tower and allow higher-speed services to everyone served by the tower.

Regarding the Sky Muster service, the communications minister said that people using satellite internet connections would get more data allowance  from 50GB to 90GB per month  in a couple of years.

Meanwhile, Finance Minister Simon Birmingham said that the new NBN investment would lead to a critical upgrade to the network.

This is another important investment in the NBN that will deliver better and faster internet to Australian households and businesses across the fixed wireless network, he said.

With faster internet and more data available, these improved services will directly benefit premises already using NBN fixed wireless and satellite services.

As of March 10, the NBN network is available to over 12 million premises across Australia, with 8.4 million already connected to the service.
A logo of the world's leading food industry group Nestle is seen at the group's Research Center in Vers-chez-les-Blanc, Switzerland, on Oct. 9, 2014. (Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images)

Nestle Suspends Sales of Many Products in Russia Amid Political Pressure

Nestle announced on Wednesday it will halt all production and sales of several non-essential goods to Russia amid political pressure from Ukrainian leaders over its presence in the country.

Going forward, we are suspending renowned Nestle brands such as KitKat and Nesquik, among others, the worlds largest food company said in a March 23 statement.

The company will continue to provide Russian nationals with essential products such as baby formula and medical/hospital nutrition, the company noted.

This approach is in line with our purpose and values. It upholds the principle of ensuring the basic right to food, it said.

Nestle had already confirmed it paused non-essential imports and exports from Russia, stopped all advertising, and suspended all capital investments. The company also noted that it is currently not making any profit in Russia and will fully comply with international sanctions.

While we do not expect to make a profit in the country or pay any related taxes for the foreseeable future in Russia, any profit will be donated to humanitarian relief organizations, the company said.

The move comes after several top Ukrainian officials, including President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, criticized the company for staying in Russia after it launched what Moscow calls a special military operation in Ukraine.

Unfortunately, he shows no understanding. Paying taxes to the budget of a terrorist country means killing defenseless children [and] mothers, Shmyhal said on Twitter after meeting with Nestles chief executive officer Mark Schneider.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmygal holds a briefing on preventive measures against COVID-19 in Kyiv, Ukraine, on March 11, 2020. (Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images)

Swiss food giant Nestle CEO Mark Schneider takes part in the Hight Level Segment session of the One Ocean Summit in the northwestern France port city of Brest on Feb. 11, 2022. (Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images)

Over the weekend, Zelenskyy also called out several companies for remaining present in Russia, accusing Nestle of not living up to its Good Food, Good Life slogan.

Amid the public pressure, Nestlewhich earned more than 165 billion Russian rubles (about 1.7 billion dollars) in 2020said it would continue to pay all Russian employees and also stands with the people of Ukraine. The company employs more than 7,000 people in Russia and about 5,800 in Ukraine.

Nestle shares were down 1.3 percent early on Wednesday after hitting a session low shortly after news broke it suspended many products in Russia.

More than 400 companies have withdrawn from Russia since its invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, leaving behind assets worth hundreds of billions of dollars in aggregate.

Nestle was not alone in saying it would continue to provide basic items for nutrition and hygiene, such as milk and diapers. PepsiCo Inc, Unilever, and Procter & Gamble have also said they would retain a presence in Russia to provide essential goods.

Reuters contributed to this report.

From NTD News
New Police Policy Could Allow Innocent People to Be Put on Facial Recognition Watchlists

Civil liberties groups have criticised new UK police guidance that could place innocent people on facial recognition systems watchlists.

The College of Policing published a guide for officers in England and Wales on Tuesday, which they said was to ensure the use of live facial recognition technology is legal and ethical.

Police said facial recognition technology can be used in operations to find people who are missing and potentially at a risk of harm; find people where intelligence suggests that they may pose a threat to themselves or others; and arrest people who are wanted by police or courts.

But Silkie Carlo, director of the privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch, said the guidance was an atrocious policy and a hammer blow to privacy and liberty in our country.

We warned about mission creep with this Orwellian surveillance technology and now we see that this new policy specifically allows innocent people to be put on facial recognition watchlists. This includes victims, potential witnesses, people with mental health problems, or possible friends of any of those people. It is an atrocious policy and a hammer blow to privacy and liberty in our country, she said.

The technology has already been used by a small number of police forces. In December, Welsh police trialed futuristic technology that will identify wanted individuals in real-time. Their facial recognition app will now enable officers to confirm the identity of a wanted suspect on their mobile phones almost instantly, even if that suspect provides false or misleading detail.

David Tucker, head of crime at the College of Policing, said: Guidance issued for police today is clear that live facial recognition should be used in a responsible, transparent, fair, and ethical way and only when other, less intrusive methods would not achieve the same results.

The technology will help police catch some of the most dangerous offenders including stalkers, terrorists, and others that the public want off our streets. It will be used overtly and unless a critical threat is declared, the public should be notified in advance on force websites or social media about its use, said Tucker.

We hope that those with concerns about this technology will be reassured by the careful safeguards weve set out as requirements for the police who wish to use it, based on a consistent and clear legal and ethical framework across all police forces, he added.

PA contributed to this report.
Peter Malinauskas, leader of the South of the Australian Labor Party, votes with his wife Annabel on polling day during the 2022 State Election at Woodville Gardens School in Adelaide,Australia on Saturday, March 19, 2022. (AAP Image/Matt Turner)

New South Australian Premier Intends to Follow Global COVID-19 Health Advice

Peter Malinauskas has begun his role as the premier of South Australia on March 21, saying he is determined to back the current COVID-19 health advice in dealing with the CCP virus pandemic.

He does not plan to change what the Liberals formerly had in place, including getting vaccinated and carrying a mask at all times, even if they arent mandatory.

Throughout the pandemic, I backed in the health advice. Thats something we were consistent on, the state Labor leader told AAP on Sunday.

We intend to continue to follow the health advice but also make sure that it is done in a way that is considered and tested against other variables.

Currently, 95 percent of South Australians over 12 years old have received their first dose of the vaccine, and 92.7 percent have received their second dose. In addition, boosters have been administered to 69.3 percent of eligible South Australians.

South Australian Labor Leader Peter Malinauskas speaks to Australian Submarine Corporation workers during a lunchtime rally about the future of 700 submarine maintenance jobs at ASC in Adelaide Monday, September 2, 2019. (AAP Image/Kelly Barnes)

Malinauskas met with senior health officials and the police commissioner on Tuesday and announced an amendment of the states Emergency Management Act, which covers measures and restrictions including mask mandates, lockdowns, and density limits.

The changes are aimed at increasing the states power and expediting the decisions it makes at meetings.

The act is not fit for purpose for a global pandemic that lasts for two years, he said.

And I dont want to chair a committee that doesnt make decisions. I seek to chair meetings that make decisions  and hence the policy change.

Malinauskas is also encouraging more people to get the COVID-19 booster, with plans to launch a new campaign for people to get the third dose after the rates became stagnant for the past few weeks at 69 percent.

Mentor to Malinauskas, Don Farrell, said he was overwhelmed and proud that he is now premier.

One of the good things about him is that when he says he is going to do something, he does it, South Australian Labor senator Farrell told Sky News.

Farrell is a former trade union leader, and he formed an early and enduring political relationship with Mainauskas through Woolworths workers unionism.

Farrells focus has been on climate change, helping businesses recover from the pandemic, and ensuring the sustainable funding of health care.
Its the second day of emergency efforts, following the Boeing plane crash in China. Rescuers have found no signs of life, despite the aircrafts 132 passengers and crew.

Russias invasion of Ukraine has NATO on high alert. But will Russia stop with Ukraine? The United States and NATO caution to prepare for the worst.

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba is scrambling to boost its share price with a $25 billion move. But the problem goes far beyond market value.

A Chinese bank seized $2 billion from real estate giant Evergrande. And with the money gone, experts say the firm wont be able to pay back its foreign debt.

Economic pain in Hong Kong is forcing authorities to loosen the regions zero-COVID-19 policy, despite the city facing its worst outbreak yet.

Have other topics you want us to cover? Drop us a line: chinainfocus@ntdtv.org

And if youd like to buy us a coffee: https://donorbox.org/china-in-focus

Subscribe to our newsletter for more first-hand news from China.

For more news and videos, please visit us on Gettr and Twitter.
NSW Minister for Families, Communities and Disability Services Gareth Ward speaks during a media conference in Sydney, Tuesday, October 29, 2019. (AAP Image/Joel Carrett)

NSW MP Gareth Ward Charged Over Rape, Sexual Assault Claim

New South Wales (NSW) Liberal MP Gareth Ward has been charged by police with the alleged historic sexual abuse of a man and a teenage boy.

Ward, the sitting member for Kiama, is alleged to have committed three charges of assault with acts of indecency and one account each of alleged sexual intercourse without consent and alleged common assault. The rape charge carries a maximum jail term of 14 years.

The 40-year-old attended Oaks Flats Police Station on Tuesday and has denied all charges. Police confirmed he has been granted conditional bail and is due to face Port Kembla Court in May.

I will be instructing my lawyers to seek to bring this matter before the courts as quickly as possible, and I look forward to demonstrating my innocence there, he said on Tuesday.

While others have already attempted to prosecute my case in the media rather than the courts, out of respect for our system of justice, I will not be doing the same.

Accordingly, I will be making no further comment at this time.

It was revealed in May 2021 that Ward was under investigation by police, and following the announcement, Ward resigned from the government and moved to the crossbench.

Detectives alleged Ward indecently assaulted a 17-year-old boy at Meroo Meadow in February 2013 and sexually harassed a 27-year-old man in Sydney in September 2015.

He was serving as Minister for Families, Communities and Disability Services under former NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian at the time the accusation was made.

Incumbent NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet on Tuesday afternoon said that if Ward did not resign, the government would move a motion to remove Ward from parliament.

Premier Dominic Perrottet addresses the media at Sydneys International Airport in Sydney, Australia, on Feb. 21, 2022. (Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images)

While Mr Ward is entitled to the presumption of innocence, as any citizen is, the standards expected of an elected Member of Parliament are not compatible with the seriousness of the charges he is facing, Perrottet said.

Following discussion with the Acting Premier, I have therefore attempted to contact the Kiama MP to seek his resignation from the Parliament with immediate effect.

Perrottet added he had also asked the Liberal Partys state director to suspend Ward from the party until the outcome of his criminal is released.

Deputy Premier Paul Toole, who is acting for Perrottet while he is on leave, noted Perrottets attempts to contact Ward have all been unsuccessful.

We expect the highest standards from our employees that are elected to come into this place. Our communities expect the highest standards. Ill make it very clear that we have asked the member for Kiama to resign, Toole said on Tuesday.
OC Supervisors to Ask Newsom to Suspend Gas Tax for 6 Months

SANTA ANA, Calif.The Orange County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously this week to urge California Gov. Gavin Newsom to suspend the states gas tax for six months.

The matter, brought forward last-minute by both OC Board of Supervisors Vice Chairman Don Wagner and Supervisor Katrina Foley in two separate resolutions, will ask the state to use its estimated $4550 billion surplus to temporarily remove the 0.51 cent gas tax at a time where gas prices have reached record highs.

The idea has bipartisan support given the struggle many Californians are facing, Wagner said in the March 22 meeting.

We are watching folks struggle at all levels of society, but especially when they pull into the gas pump and theyre seeing in our state 51 cents additional being paid  at a time when the state is running a surplus  There is no reason to continue taxing people when they are so injured, Wagner said.

I urge Sacramento to get its act together and make this happen, Wagner said.

Supervisor Donald Wagner attends a meeting of the Orange County Board of Supervisors in Santa Ana, Calif., on Aug. 25, 2020. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

The average price of a gallon of gas in California was $5.86 Mar. 22 for regular grade, according to AAA.

We are seeing unprecedented costs increase at a time when were just getting over the pandemic, Foley said, noting the increase in gas costs also impacts the costs of other goods and services. People are trying to get back to living their best lives and really families cannot endure this.

The supervisors will request an original six-month withdrawal of the tax, with an option to renew for another six months depending on market conditions.

In Foleys resolution, she asked that there be a mechanism attached that would actually hold oil companies accountable to decrease their prices, which she said is part of their greed, though other supervisors did not believe it was necessary.

I dont have as much confidence as my colleagues in the oil companies and the marketplace and them voluntarily reducing their costs, she said. I dont really see that that will happen.

There are gas stations that are admitting that theyre charging $8 a gallon because they can. And so its very important that we send them a strong message that the price gouging thats going on should stop.

Orange County Board of Supervisor Katrina Foley speaks at a Board of Supervisors meeting in Santa Ana, Calif., on Aug. 10, 2021. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

It was not immediately clear to the supervisors if the governor has the power on his own to suspend the gas tax without the legislatures approval, though Orange County Counsel Leon Page said off the top of his head, he thinks the governor does have the authority under the emergency services act to suspend any regulatory statue, including a tax.

After the motion was approved, Vice Chairman Wagner and Supervisor Foleys offices will draft a letter, which will be signed by Chairman Doug Chaffee, and sent to the governors office urging him to suspend the gas tax.
Omicron BA.2 Subvariant Accounts for 1 in 3 US COVID-19 Cases: CDC

A subvariant of the Omicron strain of the novel coronavirus, BA.2, now accounts for just over a third of daily reported COVID-19 cases in the United States, according to government data released on Tuesday.

As overall infections continue to decline from Januarys record highs, the subvariant is gaining ground across the country, data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show.

Omicron BA.2 accounted for 34.9 percent of U.S. infections for the week ending March 19, the CDC said. That compares with 22.3 percent for the week ending March 12, which was revised down from 23.1 percent, according to a CDC model that estimates proportions of circulating variants.

In the Northeast, including New Jersey, New York, and Massachusetts, Omicron BA.2 now makes up more than half the cases.

The CDC and the World Health Organization (WHO) have classified the subvariant as a variant of concern. The WHO says it is more transmissible than the Omicron BA.1 variant that caused the winter surge.

In early February, Andrea Garcia, the American Medical Associations director of science, medicine, and public health, said that the subvariant does not appear to cause more severe disease, but appears to show signs of spreading more easily.

Despite the rise of the subvariant also seen in other countries, U.S. health experts say a major wave of new infections in the United States appears unlikely.

Daniel Kuritzkes, chief of division of infectious diseases at Bostons Brigham and Womens Hospital, said there was no evidence yet that the rise of BA.2 is pointing to an increase in cases.

I think the one concern and where people need to remain vigilant is that as we have relaxed many restrictions around masking and gathering, there is a potential opportunity for BA.2 or any variant to gain a foothold, Kuritzkes said.

Most of the country is considered to be in low COVID-19 transmission, according to new CDC guidelines introduced last month that emphasized hospital capacity over case counts. And most people ware advised they no longer need to wear masks indoors.

In terms of early studies, we have not seen any studies that suggest its more severe, nor have we seen studies that suggests that it will evade our vaccines any more so than Omicron has alreadyand, in fact, that our vaccines will work just like it has with Omicron, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said last month during a White House COVID-19 response team briefing.

The WHO has said it will continue to monitor the subvariant closely. It has been reported across all 50 U.S. states and in more than 80 countries.

Reuters contributed to this report.
Three children do school work at their family home and cattle property on April 05, 2020 in Tarpoly Creek, Australia. (Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images)

Optus and TPG Refunding $6.5 Million to NBN Customers

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) announced that Optus and TPG would be refunding $6.5 million to tens of thousands of National Broadband Network (NBN) consumers for not informing them suitably of underdelivered internet speeds.

Under ACMA rules, telcos must verify maximum internet speeds when migrating customers to the NBN and notify them when speeds cannot meet what was advertised.

Optus and TPG were charging these people for internet speeds they could not get, ACMA Chair Nerida OLoughlin said.

As of March 23, Optus and TPG have both issued refunds of more than $4.4 million ($US3.28 million) and $2.1 million respectively for failing to notify more than 38,000 customers that the maximum speed advertised in their plans were not attainable on the NBN provided to them.

OLoughlin said that when telcos cannot deliver the internet speeds as advertised customers are entitled to transfer to a cheaper, lower-speed plan or leave the contract at no cost, but these customers were left in the dark and denied the option to move to a cheaper contract or walk away.

In July 2021, Optus self-reported to the ACMA that from September 2018 to December 2020 (pdf), it had failed to inform more than 34,000 customers that they were not receiving the level of service they had purchased.

In October 2021, TPG advised ACMA that from September 2018 to April 2021 (pdf) it had failed to provide more than 4,400 customers with the notifications needed.

OLoughlin said that there is a significant scale of service failure and our actions will ensure the top three telcos are more vigilant delivering the internet service their customers expect and have paid for.

ACMA has issued Optus with a remedial direction and TPG offered a court-enforceable undertaking to the ACMA, which it has accepted.

Both telcos are now required to commission an independent audit of their relevant compliance systems and implement effective systems and governance processes to ensure future compliance.

The news comes as ACMA previously issued Telstra in July 2021 with a remedial direction for failure to notify more than 49,000 customers of underperforming internet speeds with around $25 million in refunds expected to be paid.

In August 2021, the consumers watchdog, ACCC, sued Telstra, TPG, and Optus, the three largest internet telcos in Australia for making alleged false or misleading representations in their promotions of some 50Mbps and 100Mbps NBN plans.

Telstra, Optus, and TPG each promised to tell consumers within a specific or reasonable timeframe if the speed they were paying for could not be reached on their connection. They also promised to offer them a cheaper plan with a refund if that was the case.

Instead, we allege, they failed to do these things, and as a result many consumers paid more for their NBN plans than they needed to, ACCC Chair Rod Sims said.

However, all three telcos have allegedly promised the ACCC to compensate consumers before the court case is finalised.

ACMA said that it can commence proceedings in the Federal Court if Optus fails to meet the requirements of its remedial direction or TPG does not comply with its enforceable undertaking.
The International Criminal Court is seen in The Hague, Netherlands, on Nov. 7, 2019. (Peter Dejong, File/AP Photo)

Parents of Reuters Photojournalist Killed in Afghanistan Bring Taliban to Court

The parents of Reuters photographer Danish Siddiqui, who was killed in Afghanistan last year, have launched legal action against the Taliban terrorist group at the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist, 38, was killed on July 16, 2021 as the terrorist group gained control of the country. Siddiqui was accompanying an Afghan special forces unit to Spin Boldak, a town near the AfghanistanPakistan border, before his death.

On Tuesday, 22nd March, 2022, Danish Siddiquis parents, Akhtar Siddiqui and Shahida Akhtar will initiate legal action to investigate his killing and bring those responsible, including high level commanders and leaders of the Taliban, to justice, the photojournalists family said in an official statement.

Siddiqui was injured in an attack by the Taliban, and taken to a mosque for medical treatment, which also came under attack. He was then taken into custody, tortured, and murdered, the family statement said.

Danish, our loving son, was murdered by the Taliban for simply carrying out his journalistic duties, Shahida Akhtar, Siddiquis mother, said in a statement. He was subjected to barbaric levels of torture and mutilation while in their custody.

Danish always stood for honesty and integrity in his work. He always showcased the pain and suffering of the people. He was brave and courageous all along, she added.

Days before his death, Siddiqui on Twitter said the vehicle which he was travelling in with special forces was targeted.

I was lucky to be safe and capture the visual of one of the rockets hitting the armour plate overhead, he wrote.

On the same day, he posted a photograph of himself taking a short break during almost 15 hours of back to back missions.

New Delhi-based lawyer Avi Singh told an online news conference that Siddiquis parents were seeking legal action against six leaders, and other unidentified commanders of the Taliban, at The Hague-based ICC on the grounds that the group targeted and killed their son because he was a photojournalist and an Indian national.

Siddiqui was illegally detained, tortured, and killed by the Taliban, and his body was mutilated, Singh and his family said in a statement.

These acts and this killing constitutes not only a murder, but a crime against humanity and a war crime.

A commander of Afghanistans erstwhile Special Operations Corps that had hosted Siddiqui said the photojournalist was mistakenly left behind with two commandos when soldiers withdrew from Spin Boldak amid fierce fighting with the Taliban.

In August, the Taliban denied that they captured and executed Siddiqui.

Reuters contributed to this report.
Policemen work at the scene of an attack in Beersheba, southern Israel, on March 22, 2022. (Tsafrir Abayov/AP Photo)

Police: 4 Israelis Killed in Stabbing Attack, Suspect Shot

JERUSALEMA knife-wielding Arab man on Tuesday killed four people and seriously wounded two others in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba before he was killed by armed residents, police said.

Police said the attacker careened his car into a cyclist and stabbed five people across a swath of the city center. Amateur video footage posted online appeared to show armed bystanders shooting and killing the attacker at the scene.

Israel Police chief Kobi Shabtai told reporters at a press briefing at the scene that the incident was an abominable killing spree by a terrorist known to security services who had previously served prison time. He said that the attacker appeared to have acted alone.

Shabtai declined to comment further on the suspect. But Israeli media identified the attacker as a 34-year-old Arab man from the nearby Bedouin town of Hura. Reports said he was imprisoned for four years after admitting he intended to join the ISIS terrorist group in Syria in 2015.

Policemen work at the scene of an attack in Beersheba, southern Israel, on March 22, 2022. (Tsafrir Abayov/AP Photo)

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett issued a statement of condolences to the families of the victims and said we will work with a heavy hand against those who commit terror. We will pursue and reach those who assist them, too.

Palestinians have been accused in dozens of stabbing, shooting, and car-ramming attacks targeting Israeli civilians and security personnel in recent years.

Most of the alleged attacks were carried out by individuals with no known links to armed groups. It is rare for such attacks to be committed by Palestinian citizens of Israel, however.
Proud Boys members Joseph Biggs (L) and Ethan Nordean (R) with megaphone, walk toward the U.S. Capitol, on Jan. 6, 2021. (Carolyn Kaster/AP Photo)

Proud Boys Trio Plead Not Guilty to Conspiracy, Obstruction, Assault, and Other Jan. 6 Charges

Three members of the Proud Boys pleaded not guilty to a slew of Jan. 6-related charges on March 22 in U.S. District Court.

Joseph R. Biggs, 38, of Ormond Beach, Fla., pleaded not guilty to seven charges during an arraignment hearing before U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly in Washington D.C.

Charles J. Donohoe, 38, of Kernersville, N.C., pleaded not guilty to the same list of charges, which includes assaulting, resisting or impeding police; obstruction of law enforcement during civil disorder; destruction of government property; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; and three other counts.

Biggs and Donohoe were already under indictment for alleged crimes at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

A second superseding indictment of six members of the Proud Boys was issued on March 7.

Proud Boys chairman Enrique Tarrio talks with a law enforcement officer in Portland, Ore., on Sept. 26, 2020. (Jim Urquhart/Reuters)

That indictment added former Proud Boys national chairman Enrique Tarrio, 38, of Miami, who faces the same charges as Biggs and Donohoe. Tarrio will be arraigned on March 30.

The superseding indictment also added Dominic J. Pezzola, 45, of Rochester, N.Y., who pleaded not guilty March 22 to the same seven charges, and a charge of robbery of personal property of the United States.

Two other Proud Boys, Ethan M. Nordean, 31, of Auburn, Wash., and Zachary Rehl, 36, of Philadelphia, will be arraigned on seven counts each on March 23.

Prosecutors allege the men formed a new Proud Boys chapter called the Ministry of Self Defense to prepare for the Jan. 6 Stop the Steal rally in Washington and a subsequent storming of the Capitol.

The group encouraged other Proud Boys to attend the rally and obtained paramilitary gear and supplies such as tactical vests, protective gear, and radios. They planned to be incognito by not wearing the groups traditional colors or apparel, prosecutors said.

The Proud Boys are accused of dismantling metal barricades on the Capitol grounds, destroying metal fencing, breaking a Capitol window, and assaulting law enforcement officers.

Tarrio was not in Washington on Jan. 6. He was ordered to leave the day before, due to his recent arrest for burning a Black Lives Matter banner taken from a DC Methodist church.

Enrique Tarrio, head of the Proud Boys, is escorted out of the area after arguing with counter-protestors at a Stop the Steal protest outside of the Georgia State Capital building in Atlanta, on Nov. 21, 2020. (Megan Varner/Getty Images)

The criminal complaint describes a meeting Tarrio had in a parking garage on Jan. 5 with Oath Keepers founder Elmer Stewart Rhodes III.

The 30-minute meeting took place in an underground garage near the Phoenix Park Hotel, the complaint said.

During this encounter, a participant referenced the Capitol, the criminal complaint said, although it did not elaborate.

Pezzola is accused of stealing a riot shield from a Capitol Police officer and later using it to break a window.

At the top of the stairs leading from the west plaza to the Capitol, prosecutors said he shouted at police: We aint stopping! We aint [expletive] stopping! [Expletive] you!  You think Antifas [expletive] bad, just you wait!

Donohoe threw two water bottles at police, prosecutors allege. Biggs filmed a selfie-style video in which he said, So we just stormed the [expletive] Capitol. Took the [expletive] place back.

Later in the afternoon, a Proud Boys member asked on social media, Are we a militia yet? Tarrio replied, Yep, the criminal complaint said. Two subsequent messages said Make no mistake and We did this.

The Proud Boys trial was originally set to begin May 18, but with the addition of Tarrio and Pezzola to the case, attorneys said there is no way they can prepare for a trial that quickly.

Other defendants attorneys object to significant trial delays unless their clients are released from pretrial detention.
President Joe Biden headed to Europe on Wednesday for an emergency NATO summit. And Russia said a proposal to send NATO peacekeepers to Ukraine could lead to problems.

Russias deputy prime minister said global oil and gas markets may collapse if sanctions are imposed on its energy sector. And Germanys chancellor said its ties to Russian energy wont end overnight.

China has found one of two black boxes that belong to the airliner that crashed with over a hundred people on board. The cause of the unusual accident is still unclear.
Rep. Chris Smith speaks as US 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 Introduces Bill to End Chinas Trade Status as Punishment for Its Rights Abuses

Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) has introduced legislation that would strip Beijing of its trade privileges with the United States, a measure meant to punish the communist regime for its heinous human rights atrocities.

The bill, H.R. 7193, introduced on March 22 would remove Chinas permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) status, and relink Beijings trade status with the human rights situation in China, according to a statement from Smiths office. It would require annual affirmation from the U.S. president that Beijing is making marked progress in the improvement of its human rights record to achieve normal trade status.

In pushing this measure, Smith, a longtime critic of Chinas abuses, hopes to send a strong message that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) cannot continue its myriad human rights violations, including its well-documented campaign of repression against the Uyghur minority of western China, with impunity.

Joining Smith in sponsoring the legislation are Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-Wis.) and Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.).

In 2000, Congress approved legislation to give China permanent most-favored-nation (MFN) 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.

The widely-held belief at the time was that the Chinese regime was worthy of an official status within the international economic system that would facilitate meeting its trade commitments. But since that time, Beijing has routinely flouted its trade obligations and human rights abuses in China have deteriorated with help of high-tech surveillance technology.

Prior to 2000, Chinas MFN status was reviewed annually by Washington, allowing critics of the regime a yearly opportunity to advocate for its removal.

Smith also referred to a consequential decision made by President Bill Clinton in 1994 to remove the consideration of Beijings rights record from Washingtons annual MFN review.

Since President Clinton delinked trade from human rights with China in 1994and under successive administrations, including now under the Biden administrationthe Chinese Communist Party has gotten a pass for its gross human rights violations while benefiting tremendously by stealing American jobs and growing into the economic superpower it is today, Smith said in a statement.

In the aftermath of Clintons decision in 1994, Smith held a press conference on Capitol Hill in which he harshly criticized the then-president for giving a pass to the cruel realities of CCP rule.

Suozzi further elaborated on the pitfalls of the longstanding U.S. approach of conferring favorable trade status on China as part of an effort at constructive engagement with the regime

Its been 50 years since President Nixon first went to China, and we always believed that the more the Chinese government was exposed to our way of life, our democracy, and our economic system, the more they would become like us and value human rights and free markets. That simply has not happened, Suozzi said.

Now more than ever, we must stand up to Chinas crimes against Uyghurs and Tibetans, and its destruction of democracy in Hong Kong. We cannot continue to allow China to act with impunity and undermine the rules-based order by cheating at the expense of other nations, he added.
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson testifies during a Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing on her nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court, on Capitol Hill in Washington on March 22, 2022. (Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters)

Republicans Received Judge Jackson Records Hours Later Than Democrats

Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee received Judge Kentaji Brown Jacksons court records hours after Democrats received them, Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) admitted.

Since before Jacksons hearings began, Republicans have said that they were having trouble receiving the full documents of Jacksons record with the U.S. Sentencing Commission, a group created in 1984 for the stated purpose of [reducing] sentencing disparities and [promoting] transparency and proportionality in sentencing.

So far, the Sentencing Commission has refused to turn over all Judge Jacksons records from her time there, said Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) in a March 16 Twitter thread discussing Jacksons alarming pattern of leniency toward those in possession of child porn. In light of what we have learned, this stonewalling must end. We must get access to all relevant records.

During the first round of Jacksons hearings Monday, Judiciary Republicans still had not received the documents.

I was disappointed we werent able to get bipartisan agreement to ask for Judge Jacksons documents from her time as Vice Chair at the Sentencing Commission, Ranking Member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said in his opening statement.

Late Tuesday night, Republicans finally received the requested documents but received them several hours after Democrats.

Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) referenced Jacksons probation recommendation records during her questions to Jackson on Tuesday, suggesting that Democrats had had enough time to look through the documents.

Just before taking a dinner break from the hearing, which was over 12 hours long, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) renewed GOP demands for access to the records, citing Hironos use of the documents in her own questions.

To the best of my knowledge, those probation recommendations are not in the record. I havent seen them, my staff hasnt seen them, Cruz said before suggesting that the White House had given the records to Democrats but not to Republicans.

You know we completed discovery before this hearing, Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin interjected.

How did Senator Hirono get that information that Republicans have not been given? Cruz responded.

Im not gonna entertain this, Durbin said.

Do you have access to them? Cruz asked.

I dont know if I do, I really dont, Durbin responded, putting an end to the discussion by ordering the beginning of the 10-minute dinner break.

Later, Durbin seemed to admit that he did have access to the records, but only after they had been handed to Republicans as they returned from their dinner break.

As we walked [back in], Republicans were handed this piece of paper, which is the first time that any of us have ever seen [it], Cruz said.

The information that we received from the White House, Im told everyone had access to if they want it, Durbin said. And now you have it, just a matter of hours after we received it.

In a Twitter post showing the exchange between Cruz and Durbin, the Senate Judiciary Republicans page asked, Is there anything else that Democrats have access to in this case that theyre not sharing with Republicans on this committee?

GOP Judiciary leader Chuck Grassley also took to Twitter to condemn Democrats for keeping the documents from Republicans.

Throughout Judge Jacksons vetting process Ive called for non-public [documents] from both the White House & Sentencing Commission so we can have thorough review, GOP Judiciary leader Chuck Grassley said on Twitter. He continued saying that Democrats withheld relevant documents from Republicans until the 11th hour, I ask again: what [are] Democrats trying to hide?

The Judiciary Committee is onto its third day of hearings for Jackson, who has faced significant scrutiny from Republican critics over the relatively lenient sentences she gave to child porn offenders.

Because this is the first full day with both sides in possession of the previously-withheld documents, they could play an important role in determining GOP questions on Wednesday.

After Jacksons hearing wraps up, she will face a vote in the equally-divided Judiciary Committee where, due to rules worked out by Senate Democrat and GOP leadership, Jackson will need only to win a tie to advance to the Senate floor.

In the equally-divided Senate, Jacksons fate will ultimately be determined by swing-voting Democrats like Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W. Va.), whose support Democrats need to win to push Jackson over the finish line.
FBI agents remove boxes of documents from the California Investment Immigration Fund offices after serving search warrants in an investigation into an alleged $50 million high-end visa fraud scheme involving as many as 100 Chinese nationals in San Gabriel, Calif., on April 5, 2017. The scheme allegedly involved the EB-5 visa program, which offers foreign nationals legal residency in the United States in exchange for investments of at least $500,000 in U.S. businesses that create a minimum of 10 American jobs. (Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images)

Return of Troubled Visa Scheme Opens Door to More Chinese Capital

Commentary

Chinese investors once again can purchase green cards by investing in the U.S. real estate market under the aegis of a controversial immigration program that has been revived after lapsing last year.

The $1.5 trillion omnibus spending bill passed by Congress and signed by President Joe Biden earlier this month reauthorizes the heart of the EB-5 investor visa program, which awards green cards to wealthy aliens and their families in return for significant investments in the United States. Most immigrant investors hail from China.

Critics of the program question the wisdom of allowing immigrants to buy their way into the United States. The EB-5 program, intended to create permanent jobs in economically depressed areas, has also been wracked by scandals and abused by property developers to channel investment into luxury real estate projects in places like Manhattan and Beverly Hills.

The program allows visa-seekers to either invest in the United States directly or pool their investments with other immigrants via agencies called regional centers. Most EB-5 investments are directed to rural or high-unemployment zones known as Targeted Employment Areas (TEAs). Crafty developers have often manipulated the boundaries of these zones to place real estate projects in upscale neighborhoods.

Chinese visa-seekers in recent years have dominated the EB-5 program, helping fund an array of enterprises from restaurants to trophy real estate developments. Between 2012 and 2018, investors from China claimed about 80 percent of the 10,000 EB-5 visas available each year, exceeding all other countries combined, according to an analysis by attorney Winnie Ng.

By 2019, demand from China so outstripped the number of available visas for the country that new investors faced an estimated 16-year wait before receiving an immigration benefit for plowing money into the United States. More than 32,000 Chinese nationals were in line for an EB-5 visa in May 2019.

Immigrants await their turn for green card and citizenship interviews at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Queens office in the Long Island City neighborhood of New York City, N.Y., on May 30, 2013. (John Moore/Getty Images)

In November of that year, new regulations took effect, raising the minimum threshold for investment in TEAs from $500,000 to $900,000. Because of the price increase, combined with already swollen waiting lists, the level of EB-5 investment from China and elsewhere fell off precipitously in 2021, reported Robert Divine, leader of the immigration group at law firm Baker Donelson.

A magistrate judge ruled to reinstate the minimum threshold of $500,000 in June 2021. The regional center legislation expired in the same month, as the U.S. Senate failed to reach a deal to extend the program. This months reauthorization of the regional center scheme sets a new minimum of $800,000 for pooled investments in TEAs and $1,050,000 for investments outside the TEAs.

It also adds welcome integrity reforms designed to crack down on the programs notorious corruption. The package contains an impressive set of requirements for audits and investigations, reports, reviews, and on-site inspections, noted David North, a fellow of the Center for Immigration Studies, in a blog post on the new legislation.

The Washington-based think tank provides a handy map identifying the locations of some high-profile EB-5 scandals, including criminal cases, civil suits, and corrective actions taken by the Department of Homeland Security. This cartographic representation of fraud and folly does not include an ongoing federal case involving the efforts of some 88 Chinese investors to recover $50 million owed to them by the developers of an unbuilt Chicago office tower.

While the integrity measures should go a long way toward rooting out fraud and corruption, its far from clear that the new EB-5 rules will end the rampant misuse of the program to supply cheap financing for lavish real estate projects. The revised program still gives wide latitude to regional centers to decide where EB-5 investments should be targeted, North commented.

A woman pushes a stroller past a banner at a construction site project financed by the Shanghai Commercial Bank, in San Gabriel, Calif., on May 17, 2016. A massive surge in Chinese buying of both commercial U.S. real estate and residential property last year took their five-year investment total to more than $110 billion, according to a study from the Asia Society and Rosen Consulting Group, as Chinese nationals became the largest foreign buyers of U.S. homes. (Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images)

A prime example of Chinese investment being leveraged for dubious purposes is the $25 billion Hudson Yards mega-project in Manhattan, which received at least $1.2 billion in financing through the EB-5 program. The developer, The Related Companies, solicited investments from about 3,200 foreign visa applicants for the widely mocked, troubled property, which opened in 2019.

According to an investigation by writer Kriston Capps, Related raked in EB-5 funds meant for poor areas even though Lower Manhattan, where Hudson Yards is located, doesnt qualify as distressed. Thats because the boundaries of the TEA surrounding Hudson Yards were creatively drawn to include several census tracts in Harlem, where the overall unemployment rate is higher.

Regardless of where the funding goes, the reauthorization of the regional centers isnt likely to have a significant impact on overall foreign investment in the U.S. commercial property market. For all the controversy it generates, the EB-5 program is relatively small.

The regional center program has enabled some $37 billion in total capital investment since 2007, according to data cited by commercial property trade group NAIOP. That includes all types of economic development projects in the United States. By contrast, cross-border investors poured $70.8 billion into U.S. commercial real estate in 2021 alone, according to a report by Real Capital Analytics (RCA).

Chinese investors have largely retreated from the market amid pandemic-related travel restrictions and tighter capital controls imposed by the Chinese Communist Party in recent years. Last year, mainland China ranked as the 18th-largest foreign source of capital for commercial real estate investment in the United States, accounting for just $534 million of property purchases, RCA reported.

That marked a striking decline from the 2016 peak when Chinese spending totaled $18 billion.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
The Thomson Reuters logo on a building in New York City in a file image. (Carlo Allegri/Reuters)

Reuters Cuts Ties With Russian News Agency TASS

Reuters has cut ties with a Russian agency, the news agency said Wednesday.

Reuters began listing TASS, a state-backed Russian outlet, on its content marketplace in 2020.

That partnership has been revoked, a spokesperson told The Epoch Times via email.

We have decided to remove all TASS content from the business-to-business marketplace on our Reuters Connect platform, the spokesperson said.

Matthew Keen, Reuters interim CEO, told staffers in a memorandum that making TASS content available to customers is not aligned with the companys Trust Principles, according to Reuters.

Those principles, created in 1941 during World War II, require Reuters and its workers to work to fully preserve integrity, independence, and freedom of bias, and say Reuters will supply unbiased and reliable news services to its customers, which include businesses and news outlets.

Reuters says its newsroom operates independently from Reuters Connect.

TASS was no longer listed as a source inside the marketplace and none of its stories were available, according to an Epoch Times review.

Reuters announced in June 2020 that its partnership with TASS would provide customers with breaking news and exclusive video, including videos of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Reuters neglected to mention how TASS is owned by the Russian government.

Sergey Mikhailov, the CEO of TASS, said at the time that none of Russias media outlets had partnered with Reuters before. Selecting our agency as a partner highlights the reputation of TASS as a source of exceptionally verified news, he said.

TASS did not respond to a request for comment on the new development.

Getty Images, a photograph agency, stopped distributing TASS pictures earlier in March.

In order to ensure the integrity of the content we distribute, we require that partners and contributors comply with our Editorial Policy, a Getty spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email. Recent TASS content failed to meet those guidelines and ingestion of their content was suspended. We have notified them of a breach of our agreement and are terminating our relationship.

Other Russian outlets have also seen content restricted or barred by countries and businesses. Canadian broadcasters, for instance, were recently banned from broadcasting Russia Today, another state-run media.

Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, sparking widespread backlash against Russian leaders and the Russian people.

Numerous companies have stopped or curtailed operations inside Russia as a way to protest the war, including Nestle, Starbucks, and Goldman Sachs.
Rising Crime: LA Mayoral Candidates Discuss Homelessness, Public Safety

LOS ANGELES, Calif.Los Angeles mayoral candidates Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.) and City Attorney Mike Feuer said they would not support the recall of LA District Attorney George Gascon, while LA Councilman Joe Buscaino and businessman Mel Wilson said they would support the recall effort, during a United Chambers of Commerce LA luncheon on March 21.

Kevin de Leon was expected to attend the luncheon but did not show up. Billionaire mogul Rick Caruso was also not in attendance, but his campaign manager confirmed he will be attending a March 22 debate hosted at the University of Southern California.

Gascons progressive criminal justice reforms have been a hot-button issue in previous debates as candidates discuss how they plan to restore public safety in LA. According to recent polls, public safety and homelessness are the top issues for residents voting this year.

Feuer, the city attorney, said while he will not support the recall, he disagrees with some of Gascons policies, though he did not clarify which ones. Gascon made sweeping reforms when he took office in 2020 by reducing sentencing for some crimes, preventing prosecutors from seeking the death penalty, and eliminating cash bail in non-violent cases.

The DA and I will disagree where we willand we also have to collaborate to make you safer when it comes to things like gun homicides on our streets, and so for that reason, because we have to be that team when it comes to those issues where we can agree, Im not involved in the recall, Feuer said.

Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer speaks at the Warner Grand Theater in San Pedro, Calif., on Feb. 27, 2022. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

Bass concurred with Feuer and added she thinks reforms are important, but reforms should never be rigidly imposed.

They should be adjusted depending on the situation. I think the way to deal with the [district attorney] is massive public pressure, she said.

More than 30 cities in LA County, including Torrance, Santa Clarita, Lancaster, and Beverly Hills, support the recall, with more than a dozen passing votes of no confidence against Gascon. Several prominent organizations support the recall, too, including the Association of Deputy District Attorneys and the Association for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs.

Buscaino, an LA councilman and former LA Police Department officer, said we can have justice, and we can have safety at the same time.

But if youre a violent repeat offender, you dont belong back out in the streets.

Los Angeles councilman Joe Buscaino speaks at The Warner Grand Theater in San Pedro, Calif., on Feb. 27, 2022. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

Buscaino was the first mayoral candidate to back the recall of Gascon in January 2022. Caruso recently announced his support for the recalldespite supporting Gascons candidacy in 2020and donated $50,000 to the recall organizers.

Amid an uptick in crime across the city, candidates who shared the stage on Monday had a similar vision for LA: keeping Angelenos safe and getting the homeless off the streets. But a few differ in their methods.

While Los Angeles County has the highest population of homeless individuals with 66,000, the city has more than 41,000, according to the last homeless count in 2020. It is estimated that roughly 1,500 homeless people died on the streets during the pandemic.

Encampments are speckled across the city and grew during the pandemic when certain city codes were relaxed to allow homeless people a place to shelter-in-place. But two years later, many of those rules have not been reinforced.

Candidates discussed whether the homeless issue is rooted in substance abuse or affordable housing, with Bass, Buscaino, and Wilson concluding its a substance abuse and mental health issue, while Feuer argued its a housing problem.

Its clearly an issue of housing. We are hundreds of thousands of units short of housing, clearly we have an affordable housing crisis, Feuer said. Theres an open-air asylum on our streets, and vacant substance abuse beds.

Proposition HHHa $1.2 billion bond passed in 2016 to create 10,000 permanent supportive housing unitshas only created 1,142 units, according to a recent report by the citys controller, and those that have been developed have an average cost of over $530,000 each.

One project in development, according to the report, had a price tag of $837,000 per unit.

Tonight, hundreds of beds are available tonight. Its irresponsible to say homelessness is a housing issue, Buscaino said. Theres dangerous drugs that have caused paranoia  people on the streets are not in the right mind frame to say yes to help.

Wilson, a local businessman, said that when you look at the homeless are, they are mentally ill. They are on drugs and they cant seem to get off of it.

Bass said that when prisons were downsized, we didnt make plans for the people who got out. She said she would declare a state of emergency immediately and involve the federal government in providing housing and various resources for the mentally ill homeless population.

Each candidate said they would increase the LAPD and support the slated 12 percent increase in the police budget next year. According to the Los Angeles Sheriffs Department, homicides in LA are up 94 percent over the last two years and theres been a 54 percent increase in car thefts.
Georgian opposition supporters hold flags and posters during their rally in central Tbilisi, Georgia, on Nov. 15, 2014. Over 30,000 opposition supporters rallied today in the Georgian capital against the government's Russian policy and the Kremlin's backing of separatists in the breakaway Abkhazia and South Ossetia regions. (Vano Shlamov/AFP/Getty Images)

Russia Facing Exodus of Tech Workers

News Analysis

The Russian Federation may be facing yet another development in its litany of troubles since President Vladimir Putin began the invasion of Ukraine: a mass exodus of highly skilled tech workers from Russia.

Because of the prevalence of remote work in the tech industry and the often cosmopolitan values of employees, many Russian tech workers have sought relocation since the outbreak of the war. According to the Russian technology trade group RAEK, between 50,000 and 70,000 Russian tech workers have left the country since the invasion, with many more likely to follow if the conflict continues to deteriorate living standards and opportunities in Russia proper.

While flights from Russia to Western Europe and the United States have been suspended, Russian tech workers have sought refuge in the countries of the former Soviet sphere of influence, many of which do not require visas for Russian travelers, unlike the centers of Western Europe.

Preeminent among relocation sites for Russian tech expatriates is the small Caucasian country of Georgia, which has lured Russian tech workers with affordable living, liberal policies, and relative political stability. Since the outbreak of the war, a flood of Russian tech workers has deluged the posh neighborhoods of Tbilisi, causing Airbnb prices to skyrocket in the small city in the mountains.

At least since the fall of the Soviet Union, the exodus of highly educated youth has been a perennial issue for Russia, as for much of Eastern Europe. While Russia has a long history of producing scientists, technicians, and inventors, many of the nations brightest have found little opportunity for their talents in the post-Soviet nation.

A 2019 report by The Atlantic Council analyzed the so-called Putin diaspora, which it considers the most recent of six waves of mass emigration in modern Russian history. According to the reports findings, between 1.6 million and 2 million Russians had left the motherland since Putin came to power (as of the writing of the report).

While emigration is not new to Russia, the report noted, those who have been emigrating since Putins return seem to be Russias most educated, active, and independent, coming from the middle and upper middle classes.

This so-called brain drain is non-unique to Russia, and is a major concern for many developing economies throughout the world. However, the exodus of highly educated young professionals is not a universal experience for post-Soviet states: The three Baltic nations of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia have prospered since the fall of the Soviet Union, having attracted significant tech investment in the 21st century.

However, this problem could get much worse in the near future if sanctions from the West continue to isolate the Russian Federation. Due to both political and economic factors, many of the countrys technical-professional class have already begun to feel that the grass is greener on the other side of the Dnieper River. The situation is unlikely to change if the direction of the war remains the same.
Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) meets with Anatoly Chubais, at the Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow on Nov. 7, 2016. (Alexei Druzhinin/AFP via Getty Images)

Russia Sees First High-Level Official Resign Amid Ukraine Conflict

Russian President Vladimir Putins special presidential representative, Anatoly Chubais, resigned from his post, according to top Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

Chubais resigned himself. But whether he left [the country] or not  this is his own business, Peskov told state-run media on Wednesday. Its not clear why Chubais stepped down, and Peskov didnt elaborate.

Earlier Wednesday, Ruslan Edelgeriyev, Putins special envoy for climate, confirmed anonymous reports that Chubais stepped downthe highest-profile Russian official to do so since the start of the UkraineRussia conflict. Those reports claimed he departed his position and also left the country because of Russias invasion of Ukraine, although Chubais has not issued any public comments.

Indeed, representatives of Anatoly Borisovich confirmed that he is leaving the post of special representative of the president. I do not think that his decision to leave the post will in any way affect the development of the climate agenda in our country, Edelgeriyev said.

A Ukrainian serviceman walks in the area of a research institute, part of Ukraines National Academy of Science, after a strike by drones that killed at least one, in northwestern Kyiv, on March 22, 2022. (Fadel Senna/AFP via Getty Images)

Chubais was described in media reports as the architect of Russias post-Soviet privatization campaign that started in the 1990s and was also then-Rusian leader Boris Yeltsins finance minister Hes held a number of top jobs in the Kremlin over the past several decades, while he had been in the environment job since December 2020, according to the state-run TASS news agency. He rose to prominence as Boris Yeltsins finance minister in the 1990s.

Reuters said that Chubais hung up the phone when he was contacted by the news agency on Wednesday. Meanwhile, the Kommersant business daily published a photo that allegedly showed Chubais at an ATM in Istanbul.

About a week ago, Putin issued a warning to Russian officials and citizens who oppose the conflict, which started on Feb. 24.

The Russian people will always be able to distinguish true patriots from scum and traitors and will simply spit them out like a gnat that accidentally flew into their mouthsspit them out on the pavement, Putin said in a televised address. I am convinced that such a natural and necessary self-purification of society will only strengthen our country, our solidarity, cohesion, and readiness to respond to any challenges.

Several days ago, Arkady Dvorkovich, who formerly served as former deputy prime minister under Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, stepped down from his job as chairman of the Skolkovo Foundation. He also criticized the conflict.

However, there has been virtually no public opposition to Russias invasion of Ukraine from the countrys political elite, including its oligarchs. A small number of state TV journalists have resigned due to the conflict.
A satellite image shows Russian ground forces northeast of Ivankiv heading in the direction of Kyiv, Ukraine, on Feb. 27, 2022. (Satellite image 2022 Maxar Technologies/Handout via Reuters)

Russian Forces Suffering From Low Morale as War in Ukraine Drags On: Pentagon

Low morale has become a growing problem for the Russian forces in Ukraine as they have been dragged into war for almost a month, the Pentagon said.

We certainly have indications that morale is a growing problem inside the Russian forces that are fighting in Ukraine, Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby said Tuesday during a press briefing. And as time goes on, and they continue to fail to achieve the progress on the ground that they want to achieve, weve seen increasing indications that morale and unit cohesion is a problem.

Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby conducts a news briefing at the Pentagon in Arlington, Va., on March 7, 2022. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

He said Russian forces have been struggling with logistics and sustainment for a while mainly due to two reasons: they didnt properly plan and the Ukrainians have been targeting their resupply effforts.

We know that they continue to have fuel issues across their force  they are still struggling with food. I mean, youve seen the footage yourself of Russian soldiers looting grocery stores. So theyre still having trouble feeding some of their troops, Kirby told the reporters.

Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, which was described by Russias government as a special military operation.

The United Nations said that as of March 22 it had recorded 977 deaths and 1,594 injuries of civilians in Ukraine because of Russias military actions, mostly caused by shelling and airstrikes.

However, the U.N. believes that the actual figures are considerably higher.

Over 3.6 million people have fled Ukraine since the war began, United Nations data show.

A person from Ukraine (L) holds their passport while waiting near a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer before being allowed to cross the San Ysidro Port of Entry into the United States to seek asylum in Tijuana, Mexico, on March 22, 2022. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)

The Russian forces were apparently slowed down because of logistics issues and unexpected resistance from the Ukraine side.

Viktor Zolotov, head of the Russian National Guard and Putins former personal bodyguard, admitted days ago that the military 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 on March 20, adding, But we are going towards our goal step by step and victory will be for us.

Smoke rises from a Russian tank destroyed by the Ukrainian forces on the side of a road in the Lugansk region, Ukraine, on Feb. 26, 2022. (Anatolii Stepanov/AFP via Getty Images)

The Ukrainian forces were able to organize effective resistance with help from the United States and other Western alliances, including large amounts of anti-tank and anti-craft missiles and other weapons.

The Ukrainians have also carried out some counterattacks in some areas and tried to regain territory, Kirby said.

We have seen them now in places, particularly in the south, near Kherson. They have tried to regain territory. Again, we dont have great fidelity of tactical movements. But we have seen them make these efforts, he said.

The Ukrainians themselves, several days ago said that they were planning on counterattacks. And so, I think we have seen indications that they are moving in that direction, he added.

Jack Phillips contributed to the report.
Police tape is seen in this stock photo. (Carl Ballou/Shutterstock)

Six High School Students Killed in Oklahoma Crash

Six high school students were killed in a crash in Tishomingo, Oklahoma on Tuesday when their vehicle collided with a semi-truck, local authorities said.

Sarah Stewart, a spokesperson for the Oklahoma Highway Patrol (OHP), told multiple news outlets that the students, all girls, died after their small passenger vehicle struck the semi-truck in the rural city about 120 miles south of Oklahoma City at 12:30 p.m. local time.

The spokesperson said she did not have the exact ages of the students.

The condition of the semi-truck driver wasnt immediately clear. Stewart said the two vehicles collided at the intersection of U.S. Highway 377 and State Highway 22.

The girls were eastbound on Oklahoma 22 when their vehicle was struck by a rock hauler that was approaching from the east on U.S. 377, OHP Trooper Shelby Humphrey told KXII-TV of nearby Sherman, Texas.

Maps show the intersection is at the end of a 90-degree curve of U.S. 377 from east to south. The girls car was making a right turn when it collided with the truck, Humphrey said.

An official from OHP told KFOR that it was not immediately clear what led to the fatal collision.

We dont know the full nature or details of what caused the crash, only that the car at some point was at this stop sign and that in the following moments the semi hit them, the OHP official said. When we got to the scene you could see the car about 100 feet or so from the intersection completely totaled.

The roof of the students vehicle and multiple doors were torn off.

Images from the scene of the crash showed a virtually destroyed black vehicle with what appeared to be a pink steering wheel among the rubble.

Were not sure how much of that was caused by the crash or by emergency responders but the scene was heartbreaking, the OHP official said.

In a Facebook post, Tishomingo Public School Superintendent Bobby Waitman said the district has suffered a great loss today involving high school students.

Our hearts are broken, and we are grieving with our students and staff, said Waitman, noting that counselors are available to students.

Schools will be in session tomorrow at each campus, but our focus will be the emotional well-being of our students, said Waitman.

Waitman told The New York Times that the six students all attended Tishomingo High School.

This is a community that supports one another, he said. Its a very close-knit community, so the entire community will be grieving these young peoples loss.

The Johnston County Sheriffs Office said in a statement that the highway has been reopened to traffic following the collision.

Our prayers are with each of the families involved and our community, the statement said. This is an absolute tragedy which will have lifelong effects. This community and families need our support and prayers at this time.

The Epoch Times has contacted the OHP for additional comment.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
The logo of Swiss logistics group Kuehne + Nagel International AG is seen at its headquarters in Schindellegi, Switzerland, on Oct. 17, 2018. (Arnd Wiegmann/Reuters)

Supply Chain Woes Hit ChinaEurope Rail Lines Due to RussiaUkraine War

Russias invasion of Ukraine is upsetting the transportation of goods on railway lines linking China and Europe, forcing businesses to look for alternate routes.

Logistics firms and exporters are avoiding land routes passing through Russia and Ukraine due to security risks as well as payment issues stemming from Western sanctions, according to a report by Bloomberg.

Businesses are also afraid that European customers might boycott goods transported on Russian railways.

Over a million containerssupposed to be moved between China and western Europe through Russiaare now being considered for shipping via sea. One of Europes largest freight forwarders, Kuehne + Nagel International AG, has begun rejecting rail cargo to Europe from China.

The risk of sanctions surrounding Russia and Belarus has prompted the majority of Scan Global Logistics customers to turn to ocean or air freight, the company said to supply chain media outlet The Loadstar. Customers are also worried about shipments getting stuck in these countries.

In China, some nervous traders have stopped orders as they assess the risk of sanctions on payment settlements and insurance. Bookings on the weekly ChinaEurope train from Shanghai saw a 40 percent decline as of March 17, according to The Loadstar.

Nils Muller, rail manager at the Hamburg, Germany, office location of Danish company DSV Air & Sea Inc., is exploring alternative rail routes, The Loadstar reported. Some of his clients have already switched to direct sea freight or sea-air freight.

We have been using the middle corridor for the past two years already, he said during a recent webinar.

But in the end, sea freight rates are much less and the transit time to the main European ports is much faster, Muller said. The middle corridor could be a good option, but they need to invest in new infrastructure and try to avoid the reloading process because they have more than seven or eight reloading processes before arrival in Europe.

While transporting goods from China to Europe through sea freight takes a month, it only takes about two weeks through rail. However, shipping via the ocean is still the cheapest option. As cargo volume shifts to sea from rail, congestion could develop in the AsiaEurope sea trade logistics network.

Sea transportation networks have been under strain since the COVID-19 pandemic began. The latest outbreak in China and the subsequent government restrictions have affected port activities in the country, adding pressure to an already fragile transportation system.

Getting vessel capacity and getting shipping on time to destination has already been a challenge in the past six months, Glenn Koepke, a general manager at FourKites Inc.a Chicago-based information provider for the logistics industrytold Bloomberg. This is just one more thing thats being added to an already fragile network.

Railways moved roughly 1.46 million containers carrying goods worth about $75 billion between China and Europe in 2021. This accounted for about 4 percent of the total trade between the two regions.
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tony Evers speaks to supporters at a campaign event in Milwaukee on Nov. 4, 2018. (Nick Oxford/File Photo/Reuters)

Supreme Court Rejects Wisconsin Election Map Drawn by Democratic Governor

The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected Wisconsin state legislative maps drafted by the states Democratic governor and approved by the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

At the same time, the U.S. Supreme Court also declined to block a new congressional map for the state that was chosen by the Wisconsin court. Republicans currently hold five of the states eight congressional seats, while Democrats hold three.

Republicans control both chambers of the state legislature in the Badger State. Population shifts discovered after the 2020 Census forced the state to go through redistricting, a process that was hotly contested by both political parties. Republicans approved maps in 2011, when they controlled the legislature and the governorship. This time, however, Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, and the Republican-dominated legislature couldnt agree on new maps.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court was then asked to draw the maps to be used in the next elections. That court invited interested parties, including the legislature and the governor, to propose new maps consistent with the state constitution, U.S. Constitution, and the federal Voting Rights Act (VRA). On March 3, the Wisconsin court voted 43 to accept the maps drawn by the governor.

The case is Wisconsin Legislature v. Bostelmann, court file 21A471. Marge Bostelmann is a member of the Wisconsin Elections Commission. The emergency application brought by Wisconsin Republicans was addressed to Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who referred the matter to the full court.

Republicans asked the high court to throw out a state legislative electoral map drawn by Evers, which they say is racially skewed, in favor of one crafted by the Republican-controlled state legislature. Republicans said Evers shifted too many voters to form an additional majority-black district, while Democrats said the shifting had to be done in order to comply with the VRA.

Currently, six state Assembly districts have a black majority, but the map provided by Evers would have raised that number to seven.

Republicans said in the emergency application (pdf) filed with the U.S. Supreme Court on March 7 that Everss maps mark a radical redraw from Wisconsins past redistricting plans and that they make Wisconsin home to the 21st-century racial gerrymander.

They also said the race-based maps were created without sufficient justification, in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

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 U.S. Supreme Court sided with Wisconsin Republicans in an unsigned order (pdf). The case was disposed of without hearing oral arguments.

We agree that the court committed legal error in its application of decisions of this Court regarding the relationship between the constitutional guarantee of equal protection and the VRA, the March 23 opinion reads. The question that our VRA precedents ask, and the [Wisconsin] court failed to answer, is whether a race-neutral alternative that did not add a seventh majority-black district would deny black voters equal political opportunity.

According to the U.S. Supreme Court, The Wisconsin court believed that it had to conclude only that the VRA might support race-based districtingnot that the statute required it. Our precedent instructs otherwise.

When the Wisconsin Supreme Court endeavored to undertake a full strict-scrutiny analysis, it did not do so properly under our precedents, and its judgment cannot stand, the opinion reads.

The judgment of the Supreme Court of Wisconsin is reversed as to the selection of the Governors State Assembly and Senate maps, and the case is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion. On remand, the court is free to take additional evidence if it prefers to reconsider the Governors maps, rather than choose from among the other submissions. Any new analysis, however, must comply with our equal protection jurisprudence.

Summarily correcting the error gives the court sufficient time to adopt maps consistent with the timetable for Wisconsins August 9th primary election.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented from the ruling, and her dissent was joined by Justice Elena Kagan.

Sotomayor described the U.S. Supreme Courts decision as unprecedented.

In an emergency posture, the Court summarily overturns a Wisconsin Supreme Court decision resolving a conflict over the States redistricting, a decision rendered after a 5-month process involving all interested stakeholders, she wrote.
The sun rises behind the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington on Nov. 10, 2020. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

Supreme Court Urged Not to Let Chinese Firm Use U.S. Courts in German Arbitration

A Chinese manufacturer should not be allowed to use the U.S. legal system to compel production of evidence in a private arbitration taking place overseas, the Supreme Court heard March 23 in a case fast-tracked from a federal appeals court.

The Supreme Courts decision in the case may help to determine the reach of the complex civil discovery process available in U.S. courts.

The case, ZF Automotive US Inc. v. Luxshare Ltd., court file 21-401, was heard together with a similar case, AlixPartners v. Fund for Protection of Investors Rights, court file 21-518.

Livonia, Michigan-based ZF Automotive manufactures automotive parts and industrial technology.

Luxshare, a Hong Kong limited liability company, manufactures consumer electronics, communications, and automotive products. Luxshare is sometimes called little Foxconn, after Taiwan-based Foxconn, a contract manufacturer of electronics in the Apple supply chain that has a large number of Chinese supplier locations.

Luxshare is disputing the value of assets of a business unit in ZFs German parent company, ZF Friedrichshafen AG, that Luxshare purchased in 2017 for about $1 billion. Luxshare claims it was misled about the profitability of two of ZFs businesses. The deal stipulated that disputes would be resolved according to the rules of the German Arbitration Institute, which goes by the German acronym DIS.

A U.S. District Court in Detroit approved a request to subpoena ZF Automotive, ordering it to hand over the relevant documents to Luxshare.

The Supreme Court granted the petition in ZF Automotive US Inc. v. Luxshare Ltd. on Dec. 10, 2021, sidestepping the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit before it had ruled in the case. Before that, on Oct. 27, 2021, the Supreme Court also blocked the lower courts order compelling ZF Automotive to produce the documents demanded by Luxshare.

In the ZF Automotive case, the specific legal issue is whether Section 1782 of Title 28 of the U.S. Code, which allows parties to lawsuits to call upon U.S. courts to aid in the gathering of evidence to be used in a foreign or international tribunal, covers private commercial arbitration tribunals. The appellate courts for the 4th and 6th circuits have held that it does; the 2nd, 5th, and 7th circuits have held that it does not.

ZF Automotive contends the phrase foreign or international tribunal refers only to government-backed dispute resolution bodies. Luxshare takes the position that Congress intended the phrase to be interpreted broadly, saying it covers just about any dispute resolution body governed by a foreign jurisdiction. The Biden administration sides with ZF in the case.

The Supreme Court had been poised to consider the issues involved in the case last fall, but the parties in Servotronics Inc. v. Rolls-Royce PLC settled. That case had been scheduled for oral argument but was dismissed on consent of the parties.

ZF Automotive attorney Roman Martinez told the Supreme Court during oral arguments March 23 that Section 1782s text, structure, and history make clear that district courts are not authorized to grant discovery for use in purely private foreign arbitrations.

The key statutory language is the complete phrase foreign tribunal. That phrase most naturally refers to government tribunals, just like the phrase foreign leader most naturally refers to government leaders. Ordinary and legal usage confirm that interpretation.

Luxshare misreads the text and ignores the context. It cant identify a single person, not a lawmaker, judge, lawyer, scholar, anyone who ever claimed 1782 covers private arbitrations over the past 58 years, Martinez said.

Luxshares approach would flood district courts with discovery applications, undermine the goals of arbitration, and inflict asymmetric harm on American companies and American businesses, the lawyer said.

Congress didnt intend these results, Martinez said.

Congress did not force American judges to referee private discovery fights in purely private, non-governmental arbitrations abroad.

Justice Elena Kagan pushed back against Martinez, saying that years ago arbitration was not as settled a practice as it is now, but now we just commonly refer to arbitral tribunals  and we dont think anything of it.

She suggested she was perplexed by the notion that when the word foreign is placed in front of something, all of a sudden it connotes government, adding foreign language doesnt connote government.

If I say its a foreign university, I may or may not be speaking of a government-run school, Kagan said. If I say its a foreign city, all I mean is a city that happens to be in another country. I mean, it all depends, right?

Im all for  being serious about language when theres something to be serious about, but I dont know  what this language tells us.

Justice Stephen Breyer said it is probably true when the statutory language was written the drafters were thinking of government, but the language can be read more broadly, and, unlike then, now commercial arbitration is resolving lots and lots of matters that businesses used to bring before courts.

Luxshares attorney, Andrew Rhys Davies, said Congress has authorized assistance to foreign tribunals.

The best, most natural interpretation of that broad phrase includes a foreign-seated commercial arbitral tribunal. A commercial arbitral tribunal is a tribunal because its authorized to render an adjudication of the parties legal rights that is final, unless its set aside by a reviewing court.

This is consistent with Supreme Court precedent and with contemporaneous usage of tribunal to mean commercial arbitral tribunals, Davies said.

A foreign-seated commercial arbitral tribunal is foreign because its legal domicile or its juridical home is in another jurisdiction, the lawyer said. There is no basis to draw an arbitrary line at the tribunals of foreign countries.

For the third consecutive day, Justice Clarence Thomas, who is reportedly in hospital, was absent from the courtroom. Chief Justice John Roberts said that he would, nonetheless, participate in the case.
Associate Justice Clarence Thomas sits during a group photograph of the justices at the Supreme Court in Washington on April 23, 2021. (Erin Schaff/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

Supreme Court Wont Say Whether Justice Clarence Thomas Remains Hospitalized

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas on March 23 missed his third consecutive day of oral arguments after being hospitalized earlier in the month as the court refuses to provide an update on his condition.

Thomas, 73, is unable to be present today, Chief Justice John Roberts told the court, before continuing to repeat a line word-for-word about the justice participating in the decisions on all the cases the court has been hearing.

Thomas began missing oral arguments on Monday, a day after a court spokeswoman revealed he had been hospitalized with an infection on Friday.

The spokeswoman told The Epoch Times that the infection is not related to COVID-19 but declined to share more details on the justices condition.

In a statement that day, the court said Thomas was resting comfortably and his symptoms are abating. It also said he was expected to be discharged from the hospital in a day or two. It said he was being treated with intravenous antibiotics.

The court didnt respond to an email on Wednesday. Reached by phone, a spokeswoman refused to say whether the justice is still in the hospital.

She pointed back to the March 20 press release, adding, Thats the only information we have available at this time.

Ginni Thomas, the wife of the justice, has not commented publicly on his status and has not responded to requests for comment.

Sibley Memorial Hospital has declined to share details about Thomas, including whether he is still being cared for at the facility.

Thomas is the longest-serving justice on the court and the second-oldest.

Provided he remains on the court, Thomas will become the oldest when Justice Stephen Breyer retires in the summer.

Breyer is stepping down to allow President Joe Biden to pick his replacement. Biden nominated Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who has been answering questions in Senate hearings all week.
Tesla's China-made Model 3 vehicles are seen during a delivery event at its factory in Shanghai, China, on Jan. 7, 2020. (Aly Song/Reuters)

Tesla and SpaceX Are Apparently Compromised by China

A China critic may have lost his Senate seat as a result

News Analysis

Elon Musk and his companies, Tesla and SpaceX, are under scrutiny for their billion-dollar links to China and their CEOs political support for the totalitarian country. Some of that support comes in the same breath as his denigration of the United States.

While the freedom that America gives business is legendary in attracting capital and helps American soft power, Beijing does no such thing. Instead, it requires major political and technological concessions from companies that want access to the massive Chinese market. The political concessions can include opaque campaign donations that remove Chinas top critics from elected positions in the United States.

This sets up a dynamic in which American politicians and businesses have little to lose when publicly snubbing Washington and everything to gain by embracing the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), including by looking the other way while technology transfers to Chinese companies that could eventually out-compete Americans on the price of labor and depth of Chinas supply chains.

This is the China in which Tesla and SpaceX, both of which are supposed to be patriotic American companies, are operating today. Some of the technology that China seeks, which SpaceX possesses, is even classified.

The foreign suppliers upon which SpaceX relies, according to a March 20 Wall Street Journal article, could have ties to China, which would be a relatively easy way for Beijing to steal sensitive technologies that likely have major military and economic uses. Indeed, one of Chinas new rockets looks suspiciously like the SpaceX Starship.

Likewise, China seeks Teslas advanced battery technology. Tesla has developed advanced battery packets sought by the Chinese, and China has adopted a less-expensive battery technology championed by Mr. Musk, according to the articles authors, Brody Mullins and Susan Pulliam.

They note that U.S. lawmakers are concerned about Musks close links to China. They should be concerned. Musk and his two companies appear to be hiding something. They did not respond to the Journals requests for comment.

SpaceX could be partially owned by China, as was Tesla, last we heard. When Chinas Tencent bought 5 percent of Tesla in 2017, Musk tweeted, glad to have Tencent as an investor and advisor to Tesla. In other words, a CCP-controlled company is advising Musk.

A Falcon 9 rocket carrying two astronauts launches at the Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral, Fla., on May 30, 2020. (SpaceX via Getty Images)

Tencent and the Chinese embassy refused to answer Journal questions. The White House failed to respond to a Journal question about security risks from Musks ties to Beijing.

What is everybody hiding with all this silence?

The CCP has a massive lever over Musk, which is its gatekeeper power over one of Teslas largest markets: China.

According to the Journal, this is thanks in large part to support of Chinas Communist Party and Mr. Xi. Chinese authorities gave Mr. Musk low-interest loans, cheap land, and other incentives for a Shanghai facility that opened in 2019 where Tesla vehicles and battery packs are assembled.

When Tesla faced financial difficulties and manufacturing shortfalls in 2018 and 2019, Chinese banks provided two loans that included a $1.4 billion figure.

Musks pro-CCP signaling, and disdain for the spirit of American laws that support human rights, goes on and on. On the last day of 2021, Musk opened a showroom in Xinjiang, where there is an ongoing genocide against the Uyghurs. He did it weeks after President Joe Biden signed a bill into law against forced labor from the region. Musk snubbed human rights and the presidentall of America with him.

Musk has played host to Chinas ambassador in the United States, including inviting him to a Tesla factory in California. Musk fawned over Chinas supposed economic prosperity, which is lackluster compared to countries like Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.

He celebrated the CCPs 100th anniversary by tweeting, the economic prosperity that China has achieved is truly amazing, especially in infrastructure!

In July 2020, Musk did what should be unthinkable for anyone claiming to be a freedom-loving American. He praised China while denigrating America.

China rocks[,] in my opinion, he said. People theretheres a lot of smart, hard[-]working people  whereas I see in the United States increasingly much more complacency and entitlement.

Musk goes beyond what sounds like CCP propaganda, however, to ensure that America remains vulnerable to Chinas technology theft through high-paid lobbyists.

In 2019, a staunch China critic and former Senator Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) attempted to require, through a provision in new legislation, that NASA consider whether space-launch companies, including SpaceX, have financial ties to companies from China, according to the Journal. While the Senate Commerce Committee agreed to the provision, SpaceX lobbyists successfully killed the bill.

Gardner lost his seat in the 2020 election to John Hickenlooper, who called China a great nation that does not seek global dominance. Hickenlooper raised over $5.6 million in the 2020 election cycle and has close ties to the Musk family. He flew in a Musk private jet, donated to a Musk charity, and officiated at the wedding of Musks brother, Kimbal. He was, as a consequence, investigated over ethics concerns.

American legislative processes are too vulnerable to corrupting influence from China-linked American CEOs, who have billions of dollars worth of business riding on, making it easy for China to import their technologies and ultimately destroy their companies and shareholder value.

Meanwhile, there is what should be considered a criminal silence from bought politicians who are supposed to protect the interests of voters rather than rake in money from lobbyists and unpatriotic campaign donors. Theres too much of this omerta, which runs from the White House to Chinas embassy, and through businesses like Tesla and SpaceX.

Meanwhile, like former Senator Gardner, the good guys are finishing last and losing their seats.

Citizens in free societies have a right to know who owns their biggest corporations, who is donating to which political campaigns, and what technologies they are all bleeding to the enemies of democracy. Without more transparency, the CCP will continue to outpace America and destroy our freedoms.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Coast Guardsmen stand over pallets containing more than 26 tons of cocaine worth at least $715 million on the flight deck of of 418-foot Coast Guard Cutter Hamilton, Thursday, Dec. 15, 2016, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)

Border Patrol Officers Confiscate $587K Worth of Cocaine in 3 Texas Incidents

In Arizona, 2 Men Sentenced for Trafficking in Drugs Worth Over $1.3 Million

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers seized cocaine valued at an estimated $587,000 while conducting three separate enforcement actions at the Brownsville Port of Entry in Texas.

The first incident took place on March 17 at Veterans International Bridge, where border protection officers stopped a 25-year-old Harlington, Texas, man as he was attempting to enter the United States in a 2010 Chevrolet.

CPB officers who searched the vehicle allegedly discovered 10 packages that contained more than 26 pounds of suspected cocaine.

On March 19, a 22-year-old Brownsville woman driving a 2012 Nissan applied for entry into the United States. At the Gateway International Bridge, a search of her vehicle allegedly uncovered almost 27 pounds of cocaine in multiple packages.

A third confiscation was made on March 22 at Gateway International Bridge, when a 23-year-old woman driving a 2013 Chevrolet applied for entry. With the aid of a canine unit, CPB officers allegedly discovered 10 packages hidden inside the vehicle that contained almost 23 pounds of suspected cocaine.

The woman, who resides in Matamoros, Mexico, is a U.S. citizen, CBP said.

The total combined street value of the seized drugs was $587,140, CPB said in a statement.

Packages containing 26 pounds of cocaine were seized by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers at Veterans International Bridge in Brownsville, Texas, during one of three separate drug seizures in March. (CBP photo)

Our officers continue to intercept narcotics which is an important part of keeping our borders secure, said Brownsville Port Director Tater Ortiz. These significant drug seizures also keep the dangerous narcotics from reaching our communities.

All three suspects were arrested and turned over to Homeland Security Investigations agents for further investigation.

In a separate and unrelated action, two Tucson, Arizona, men were sentenced for their involvement in a large-scale drug trafficking operation in Arizona.

On March 16, a Pima County Court judge sentenced Cipriano Arturo Rojas-Armenta, 44, to three years in state prison. He pleaded guilty to one count each of conspiracy to commit possession of dangerous drugs for sale (methamphetamine) and possession of a narcotic drug (cocaine) for sale in an amount over the statutory threshold.

Both charges are class 2 felonies.

Colombias coca cultivation and potential pure cocaine production chart (DEA)

On Dec. 16, 2021, Diego Bernal-Robles, 29, was sentenced to five years in state prison, after he pleaded guilty to one count each of possession of a dangerous drug (methamphetamine) for sale and the manufacture of methamphetamine, a class 2 felony.

Both convictions were the result of an investigation that ended on Sept. 22, 2020, when police officers executed a search warrant at the defendants address in Tucson.

During the search, police recovered 230 pounds of methamphetamine, 25 pounds of cocaine, and 25 pounds of heroin, along with equipment and chemicals used in manufacturing meth.

The estimated street value of the drugs is more than $1.3 million, according to Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich.
Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson (L) meets with Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) in his office on Capitol Hill March 10, 2022 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Texas Senators Line Up Against Democratic Nominee for the Supreme Court

Texas senators on March 22, turned an otherwise normal confirmation hearing for the Supreme Court of the United States into an aggressive grilling of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson for her record on crime and terrorism.

Senator John Cornyn, at the opening of confirmation hearings on March 21, said he was troubled by Jacksons zealous defense of terrorists.

Meanwhile, Senator Ted Cruz painted Jackson as being soft on crime, especially sexual predators.

Cornyn said, Im a bit troubled by some of the positions youve taken and arguments that youve made representing people who have committed terrorist acts against the United States, and other dangerous criminals.

During March 22s questioning, Cornyn reiterated his concerns.

Why in the world would you call Secretary of Defense [Donald] Rumsfeld and George W. Bush war criminals in a legal filing? Cornyn asked Jackson.

Im talking about when you were representing a member of the Taliban, and the Department of Defense identified him as an intelligence officer of the Taliban, and you referred to the secretary of defense and the sitting president of the United States as war criminals? Why would you do something like that?

The source for Cornyns questions were three petitions filed by Jackson accusing the government of sanctioning torture, which, according to international law, is a war crime. The filings state that Bush and Rumsfeld authorized torture to interrogate prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

Cornyn drew the conclusion that since torture is a war crime, Jacksons allegations were clearly aimed at painting Bush and Rumsfeld as war criminals.

Jackson said she didnt remember the reference and added, I did not intend to disparage the president or the secretary of defense.

Cornyn jogged her memory by reading a filing she had written.

Respondents acts directing, ordering, confirming, ratifying, and/or conspiring to bring about the torture and other inhumane treatment of petitioner Khiali-Gul constitute war crimes and/or crimes against humanity in violation of the law of nations under the Alien Tort Statute, Jackson wrote.

Violations of the Geneva Conventions and laws of war constituted unlawful conduct, Jackson had argued in the filing and wrote that Khiali-Gul has been and is forced to suffer severe physical and psychological abuse and agony, and is therefore entitled to declaratory and injunctive relief, and such other relief as the court may deem appropriate.

Democrats adamantly replied in response that Cornyn had fouled up beyond recognition Jacksons legal claims about the torture of militants and the U.S. practices of interrogation.

Senator Dick Durbin, (D-Ill.), chairman of the judiciary committee said to Jackson, To be clear, there was no time where you called President Bush or Secretary Rumsfeld a war criminal.

He added, Your filing was part of your professional responsibility to zealously advocate for your clients.

Cornyn, a former trial judge and justice on the Texas Supreme Court, had said to Jackson during opening remarks, I understand the importance of zealous advocacy, but it appears that sometimes this advocacy has gone beyond the pale.

The Bush administration had maintained that waterboarding and various interrogation techniques used by the United States did not constitute torture as defined by U.S. and International Law.

Senator Cruz, who was one year ahead of Jackson at Harvard Law School, already had questioned Jacksons ability to exercise restraint if confirmed to the Supreme Court, based on her record of sentencing.

During questioning, Cruz presented a chart to show that as a trial judge, Jackson regularly handed down lighter sentences than sought by prosecutors, especially in cases involving sex offenders.

I see a record of advocacy and activism as it concerns sexual predators, that stems back decades, he said.

Reading from a note Jackson wrote in the Harvard Law Review in 1996, Cruz said that she had raised doubts about community notification [of sexual predators] and raised significant doubts that civil commitment for sexual predators is unconstitutional.

Jackson brushed aside her written comments as, good fodder for a law school note, at a time when sexual predator notification laws, were relatively new.

As for her sentencing of criminals, Jackson said, As Congress directs, judges just dont calculate the guidelines and stop. Judges have to take into account the personal circumstances of the defendant.

Cornyn and Cruz both have addressed concerns about abortion.

Not specifically mentioning Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling making abortion legal, Cornyn cited on March 22 the precedent of overturning long-standing Supreme Court decisions, despite the legal doctrine of stare decisis. That doctrine states that once an issue is decided, courts should abide by the precedent.

Cornyn brought up court precedents that upheld segregated rail cars in 1896, Plessy v. Fergusson, and the Dred Scott decision, when the court upheld slavery before the Civil War, to illustrate his point.

Thank goodness the Supreme Court has been willing to revisit its precedents, or wed still be living with them [those decisions], Cornyn said.

During opening remarks Cruz asked, Will a justice protect the rights of the people, the rights of state legislators, to enact laws protecting life, protecting unborn life, stopping abominations like partial-birth abortion? Or will a justice view her job as a super legislator, striking down all such rights?
Falun Gong practitioners take part in a parade marking the 22nd year of the persecution of Falun Gong in China, in Brooklyn, N.Y., on July 18, 2021. (Chung I Ho/The Epoch Times)

Time to Wake Up: Calls Grow for Medical Community to Break Silence on Chinas Forced Organ Harvesting

Those carving out organs from living innocents with their scalpels arent the only ones complicit in the crime of forced organ harvesting. Silence amounts to complicity, too.

That was one of the arguments raised at a March 23 virtual roundtable held on the sidelines of a U.N. Human Rights Council meeting, where a panel consisting of a UK lawmaker, doctors, lawyers, and activists discussed the decade-long lack of action concerning communist Chinas state-sanctioned organ pillaging that has resulted in the deaths of an untold number of faith believers.

Evidence of forced organ harvesting under the Chinese regimes watch first emerged in 2006. That year, multiple witnesses approached The Epoch Times attesting to the existence of the horrific practice that essentially turned the vast pool of Chinese prisoners of conscience, many of whom were adherents of the persecuted faith Falun Gong, into a living organ bank.

Falun Gong is a spiritual practice consisting of meditative exercises and moral teachings based on the tenets of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. The communist regime launched a sweeping persecution campaign against adherents in 1999, and has detained millions of practitioners in prisons, labor camps, and other facilities since then.

Bamboozled

Since the first reports of organ harvesting, 16 years have passed, and progress has been slow to stop the illicit act, while awareness has been limited. There have been resolutions from the U.S. Congress and EU parliament condemning the issue, and a few countries have shut out organ tourism. But no law is currently in place to hold the perpetrators accountable, panel participants noted.

Part of this inaction is due to a lack of understanding of the magnitude of the issue, including among those in the transplant community. Dr. Weldon Gilcrease, a gastrointestinal cancer specialist at the University of Utah, estimates that only around 5 to 10 percent in the medical community have heard about forced organ harvesting. Even among those who are aware, many appear passive about the issue, hoping the problem will somehow go away by itself, he told the panel.

When the Chinese regime said it would stop using organs from death row inmates and set up a voluntary organ donation system in 2015, the hope was that we can believe them and sort of collaborate and cooperate with them, Gilcrease said, referring to widespread thinking within the medical community.

It was the same stance the world took when China joined the World Health Organization, he said.

Our hope was to convince or to affect the Chinese Communist Party and China with our morals and our values and our medical ethics. But the reverse has happened, he said. According to Gilcreases count, nine top medical scientists in the United States have left their respective institutions due to undisclosed ties with the Chinese Communist Party.

Falun Dafa parade in Manhattan, New York City, on May 16, 2019. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

In 2020, an independent peoples tribunal found no evidence that the regimes killing for organs had stopped.

The failure of governments to investigate, the tribunal said, has allowed many people to die horribly and unnecessarily.

With regard to the international health community, the Chinese Communist Party has been playing these people along, saying, Well make the change you want, we have made the change you want, we will change the laws, we have changed the laws, and so on, said David Matas, a Canadian investigative lawyer who has been following the issue since 2006.

But theres no investigation, Matas said. Theres no transparency, theres no research, its just a kind of bamboozlement, and of course these people dont want to admit theyve been tricked.

Gilcrease and others on the panel observed that the Western medical profession has hardly done a good job policing itself. They referred to a report that between 2000 and 2017, more than 99 percent of 445 research papers published in respected English medical journals that used Chinese organ transplant data failed to show donor consent. This covered 85,000 transplants.

CCP Co-Option

The Chinese regime, the panelists said, has also been using its political and economic influence to coerce many countries to remain silent on the issue.

At one U.N. Human Rights Council event a decade ago, Spanish human rights lawyer Carlos Iglesias was set to make a three-minute speech condemning the former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin for ordering the persecution of Falun Gong in 1999.

Before the agenda could be discussed, the representative of the Chinese Communist Party went chair by chair talking to each individual country so that they would say no action right then and there, Iglesias said, referring to Beijings efforts to shut down scrutiny by the body over its rights abuses.

In 2007, a year after allegations of forced organ harvesting first came out, a dozen concerned French surgeons signed a petition that they planned to hand to the countrys top leaders. That was one year before Beijing was due to host the Summer Olympics.

But one of the doctors involved, Francis Navarro, a surgeon and professor at the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Montpellier, was instead told to first calm down and finally to be as discreet as possible, he said at a 2013 conference aimed at raising awareness about the issue. Because with China, this is not the time to put this issue on the table, said the request from the French government, according to the doctor.

In France, medical ethics groups including Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting (DAFOH) have tried at least three times to pass legislative measures combating organ transplant tourism. But each time, the government turned it down, arguing that there are not enough French people going abroad for organs, Dr. Harold King, director for DAFOHs French branch, told The Epoch Times.

Harold King, a French physician and member of DAFOH, speaks at a conference in Berlin, in this file photo. (Jason Wang/The Epoch Times)

That was despite DAFOHs discovery in 2014 of 300 French people disappearing from the countrys organ transplant waitlists each year without explanation, he said, noting it was an indicator that they might have gone instead to China to receive these organs.

Its now more than two decades since the Chinese regime began its eradication campaign targeting Falun Gong, the intensity of which, researchers say, has grown in parallel with Chinas organ transplant industry.

The Spain-based lawyer Iglesias recalled how, between 2014 and 2017, the University of Barcelona was giving training to Chinese medical doctors on organ transplantation despite having already been warned about organ theft.

It is a commercial agreement logically paid and possibly with CCP money, Iglesias, who is also the European director of the Human Rights Law Foundation, told The Epoch Times.

There are these links, these liaisons between the high-ranking medical officials and the Chinese Communist Party, he said earlier at the roundtable.

They have to stay away from this evil because they are likely being accomplices to murder.

So its time to wake up.
Undated file photo of Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, commonly known by his alias Tommy Robinson. (PA)

Tommy Robinson Faces Possibility of New Contempt of Court Action

Tommy Robinson faces the possibility of being held in contempt of court again after he failed to appear at the High Court for questioning over his finances.

Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, commonly known by his alias Tommy Robinson, was due to appear on Tuesday in connection with unpaid legal bills after he lost a libel case brought against him by a Syrian teenager last year.

However, the 39-year-old did not appear for the expected questioning, which will now be referred to a High Court judge to decide whether Robinson is in contempt of courtwhich can be punished by up to two years in prison or an unlimited fine.

Robinson was successfully sued by Jamal Hijazi after the then 15-year-old was assaulted at Almondbury Community School in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, in October 2018.

Shortly after a video of the incident went viral, Robinson claimed in two Facebook videos that Hijazi was not innocent and he violently attacks young English girls in his school, claims a High Court judge later found to be false.

After a pre-trial hearing for the libel case in November 2020, Robinson was ordered to pay more than 43,000 (approx. $57,100) in legal costs.

He declared bankruptcy about four months later, which the court heard has since been discharged.

Last month, Hijazis lawyers successfully applied for an order requiring Robinson to return to the Royal Courts of Justice to answer questions about his finances.

Ian Helme, for Hijazi, previously told the court there was information that what is stated in his bankruptcy application is not a full account of [Robinsons] assets.

After Robinson failed to appear on Tuesday, Helme said lawyers had tried various methods to bring this to Lennons attention including sending documents by post to multiple addressesincluding one in Tenerife and his ex-wifes homeand to different phone numbers via WhatsApp.

Judge John Dagnall found that Robinson knew perfectly well that he was due to attend court on Tuesday, adding that Robinson had emailed the court asking for the hearing to be adjourned.

It seems to me, at first sight, a classic situation where he has decided not to attend, he said.

Judge Dagnall said that all I can do is to refer Robinsons non-attendance to a High Court judge.

They may, if he or she chooses to do so, hold Yaxley-Lennon in contempt, he continued.

That is a matter for the High Court judge.

However, the judge added that any committal for contempt of court could be suspended.

Robinson was previously jailed after being found in contempt of court after he filmed men accused of the sexual exploitation of young girls and live-streamed the footage on Facebook, in breach of a reporting ban, outside Leeds Crown Court in May 2018.

He was sentenced to 13 months after being found in contempt of court on the day of the broadcast but served two months in jail before being freed after that finding of contempt was overturned by the Court of Appeal in August 2018.

But the case was then referred back to the Attorney General and he was jailed again in July 2019.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau smiles as he listens to a speaker at an event in Berlin, Germany, March 9, 2022. (The Canadian Press/Adrian Wyld)

Trudeau Arrives in Brussels to Address European Parliament Ahead of NATO, G7 Talks

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has kicked off a whirlwind trip to Brussels, and will address the European Parliament later today on his second visit to the continent this month.

The prime ministers plane touched down at a Brussels military base this morning.

Trudeaus speech is set to stress the importance of countries on both sides of the Atlantic working together to defend democracy in the face of Russias unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.

It will be Trudeaus second speech to European parliamentarians, following a 2017 address that was meant as a shot in the arm for a continent reeling from Britains vote a year earlier to leave the European Union amid the election of Donald Trump in the United States.

Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly says Europe can expect to hear a similar message in a new context: Canadas solidarity with the people of Ukraine as Europe confronts its biggest security threat since the Second World War.

Two weeks ago, Trudeau developed a similar theme in a speech to an international audience at the Munich Security Conference, where he called for a recommitment to democracy in the face of rising authoritarianism.

The speech was a sequel of sorts to the 2017 address the prime minister gave in Hamburg, Germany, that outlined his foreign-policy vision and his often professed faith in the rules-based international order.

Trudeau will join other NATO leaders on Thursday to co-ordinate the military alliances response to Russias attack on Ukraine and will meet with fellow G7 leaders before returning to Canada on Friday.

Trudeau toured Europe two weeks ago, where he held meetings in London, Berlin, Warsaw and Poland, and visited Canadian troops leading a NATO multinational battlegroup in Latvia.

Trudeau will face pressure to boost Canadas defence budget, which according to NATO estimates stands at 1.39 percent of the countrys gross domestic product in 2021.

Ukraine is helping to make spending on defence more palatable for Canadians, said Andrea Charron, director of the Centre for Defence and Security Studies at the University of Manitoba.

I think we need ground-based, anti-aircraft defence capabilities desperately and a replacement for the CF18s.

Prior to leaving Ottawa on Tuesday, Trudeau spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy about further international assistance ahead of the upcoming NATO and G7 meetings, the Prime Ministers Office said in a statement.

Both leaders called on Russia to stop targeting civilians, to withdraw its military forces from Ukraine, and to engage in diplomacy with Ukraine.

In a tweet, Zelenskyy said he specifically spoke about the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in the besieged city of Mariupol, and the importance of effective security guarantees for Ukraine.
Trump Rescinds Endorsement of Candidate in Race for US Senate in Alabama

Former President Donald Trump on March 23 withdrew his endorsement of Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) for a U.S. Senate seat representing Alabama.

Brooks is one of about half-a-dozen Republicans vying for the seat, which will be open because Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) is retiring after the current term.

Trump endorsed Brooks in April 2021, promoting him as courageous in part because he sparked the movement in Congress to dispute electoral results from some states in the 2020 election.

Brooks is a great Conservative Republican leader, who will stand up for America First no matter what obstacles the Fake News Media, RINOs, or Socialist Democrats may place in his path, Trump added at the time, referring to Republicans in name only.

But Trump on Wednesday pulled the support, upset over Brooks comments at a rally in 2021 about the 2020 race.

Brooks said during the rally that voter fraud was an issue in the 2020 election but also said people should put the election behind you.

Look forward. Beat them in 2022. Beat them in 2024, he said, drawing boos.

Brooks made a horrible mistake with his remarks, Trump said. If the problems that cropped up with the 2020 election arent dealt with, they will happen again in the upcoming elections, he added.

Trump then claimed Brooks was told by new campaign staffers to stop talking about the 2020 election and once he did so, his lead in the polls vanished.

Since he decided to go in another direction, so have I, and I am hereby withdrawing my endorsement of Mo Brooks for the Senate, Trump said. He plans on making a new endorsement soon.

Brooks, who recently vowed not to support Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), said in a statement he was disappointed in Trumps choice, alleging negative advertisements against his campaign were from McConnell and McConnells allies.

I repeat what has prompted President Trumps ire. The only legal way America can prevent 2020s election debacle is for patriotic Americans to focus on and win the 2022 and 2024 elections so that we have the power to enact laws that give us honest and accurate elections, Brooks said.

President Trump asked me to rescind the 2020 elections, immediately remove Joe Biden from the White House, immediately put President Trump back in the White House, and hold a new special election for the presidency. As a lawyer, Ive repeatedly advised President Trump that January 6 was the final election contest verdict and neither the U.S. Constitution nor the U.S. Code permit what President Trump asks. Period. Ive told President Trump the truth knowing full well that it might cause President Trump to rescind his endorsement. But I took a sworn oath to defend and protect the U.S. Constitution. I honor my oath. That is the way I am. I break my sworn oath for no man.

Michael Durant, a military veteran who is running against Brooks, told The Epoch Times in an email that he was not surprised by Trumps choice.

I was with the President on Monday and he shared with me personally how frustrated he was with him. I told him that I am the clear America first candidate in this race. Other candidates have refused to even mention President Trump, but I have proudly carried the America First banner in this race and always will. Ive got the momentum to beat the career politicians and send another Trump conservative to Washington, he said.

Katie Britt, Shelbys former chief of staff and another candidate, told Yellowhammer News that shed be thrilled to be endorsed by Trump.

Britt has described herself as a lifelong conservative who wants strong borders, pro-life policies, and laws that will help Alabama. Durant has said hes pro-Trump and dedicated to stopping career politicians.

Republicans hope to keep the seat in GOP hands as they fight to flip the upper chamber in the 2022 midterms. Republicans are defending 21 seats while Democrats are defending 14.
A student walks toward Royce Hall on the campus of University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) in Los Angeles, Calif., on March 11, 2020. (Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images)

UCLA to Provide Free Menstrual Products in Restrooms, Including Mens

LOS ANGELESThe University of CaliforniaLos Angeles (UCLA) will become the first school in the University of California system to provide free menstrual products in mens, womens, and gender-neutral restrooms beginning April 4, according to school officials.

The schools facility management will supply complimentary pads and tampons in restrooms located in facilities across campus, as affirming that access to these items is a matter of personal dignity and equity, according to a community letter sent to all UCLA students via email last week.

This comes after Californias Menstrual Equity for All Act of 2021 was signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom last October.

The law requires California State universities and community colleges and encourages the University of California and other higher learning institutions to make menstrual products available and accessible at no cost for all students in 50 percent of their restrooms.

UCLA is going above and beyond the recommendationmaking the products available in mens, womens, and gender-neutral restrooms, the community letter read.

Most UCLA students applauded the convenience expected to come with the program.

I think that this is a positive change, Irene Han, an applied linguistics major at UCLA graduating this year, told The Epoch Times. It means more accessibility to resources that are expensivemenstrual pads arent cheap, and sometimes people arent prepared for their cycle.

Han also said that making the menstrual products available in mens restrooms could help men become comfortable with the menstrual product.

Teresa Xu, a senior at UCLA, told The Epoch Times that the program would help women who are in unexpected situations.

I absolutely support it. Making menstrual products as essential as toilet paper will give a sense of security to female students as the menstrual cycle changes, Xu said.

Among those who applauded this new change, some have expressed their concerns about placing pads and tampons in mens restrooms.

Jacob Sayono, a fourth-year mechanical engineering student at UCLA, told The Epoch Times he believes that providing free menstrual products for women is necessary, but he questioned the need to place menstrual products in mens restrooms.

It doesnt make logical sense; men cannot menstruate. It is a waste of resources when women are already lacking these essential resources, Sayono said.

UCLA has collaborated with the commission to expand the program campus-wide, according to the letter. Since 2017, the Student Wellness Commission at UCLA has been providing students with free menstrual products.

UCLA did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

The Los Angeles City Council also voted unanimously on March 22 to provide free menstrual products in womens and unisex restrooms at five public libraries in the city beginning April.

Providing menstrual products for free in city restrooms should be no more controversial than offering soap and toilet paperits simply the right thing to do, Councilman Bob Blumenfield said.
As Britain held a minute's silence to remember the victims of the COVID-19 pandemic, on the second anniversary of the country's first lockdown, flowers are laid at Westminster Bridge in London on March 23, 2022. (Tolga Akmen /AFP via Getty Images)

UK Marks Second Anniversary of First CCP Virus National Lockdown

Britain is commemorating the second anniversary of the first national lockdown during the CCP virus pandemic.

A series of events have been organised by the end-of-life charity Marie Curie to mark the National Day of Reflection. A minutes silence was held at midday, and people are being encouraged to shine a light or display flowers in their window at 8 p.m.

Landmarks across the UK will be lit up in yellow, including the Gherkin in the City of London, the Senedd in Cardiff, Glasgow Central Station, and Belfast City Hall.

As Britain held a minutes silence to remember the victims of the COVID-19 pandemic, on the second anniversary of the countrys first lockdown, pedestrians stop to look at the National COVID Memorial Wall in London on March 23, 2022. (Tolga Akmen /AFP via Getty Images)

On March 23, 2020, Prime Minister Boris Johnson ordered a country-wide lockdown in an attempt to curb the spread of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, which was first detected in the Chinese city of Wuhan and caused the COVID-19 pandemic.

Since then, England has undergone three national lockdowns and a wave of tiered regional lockdowns, resulting in numerous job losses and the permanent shutdown of many businesses. Schools were shut for months on end, with exams cancelled for two consecutive years. For months, attending events and protests was also outlawed, as was meeting with friends and family.

Johnson, who is marking this momentous anniversary privately, offered his sympathies to everyone bereaved by the virus.

He said: Those lost to COVID will never be out of our hearts and minds, and today we reflect as a nation.

The prime minister said the National Day of Reflection is a chance to come together, mourn, and offer our collective support and sympathies to all those grieving.

He also paid tribute to the heroic efforts of medical staff working for Britains National Health Service (NHS).

Sir Keir Starmer, leader of the main opposition Labour Party, said the spirit and generosity shown by charities, community, and faith groups are exemplary examples of British values.

According to data published on Tuesday by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), a total of 188,078 deaths have occurred in the UK where COVID-19 was mentioned on the death certificate.

All COVID-19 restrictions in England were scrapped on Feb. 24, including the legal requirement for those who test positive to self-isolate. Free universal testing will end on April 1.

Lily Zhou and PA Media contributed to this report.
Tanks take part in the joint Russian-Belarusian military exercises Zapad-2017 (West-2017) at a training ground near the town of Borisov on Sept. 20, 2017. (Sergei Gapon/AFP via Getty Images)

Ukraine Claims That Russia Is Out of Money for Tanks

The General Staff of Ukraines Armed Forces claimed on Tuesday that their adversary at war, the Russian Federation, has been rendered unable to build or repair tanks, as sanctions from the West have incapacitated the nations economy and its ability to maintain its war machine.

In a Facebook post, with Ukrainian text accompanied by an imperfect English translation, representatives of the Ukrainian military claimed that leading Russian arms manufacturers had been forced to suspend operations as a result of a scarcity of foreign-made parts, as global sanctions have allegedly jeopardized their ability to continue operations to supply the Russian military.

In the fog of war, it is difficult to discern what information to trust about ongoing military developments in the invasion. However, one may speculate based on the circumstances of the Russian weapons industry and the countries that have sanctioned the suppliers of Russias armed forces.

Unlike the United States and NATO, which outsource much of their arms manufacturing to private companies, Russia depends on the state-owned Uralzavod as its sole tank manufacturer, according to the European Union. On March 15, the EU sanctioned Uralzavod along with a host of other Russian companies, following in the footsteps of the United Kingdom, Japan, and others who sanctioned the Russian tank manufacturer at the outbreak of the war. (The United States has held sanctions on the company since 2014, following Russias annexation of Crimea.)

According to the available information, due to the lack of receipts of foreign-made components, the work of the enterprises of the Uralzavod Corporation and the Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant has been suspended, reads the Facebook post. These companies specialize in the manufacture and repair of tanks and other armored vehicles for the armed forces of the russian [sic] federation.

Putin has publicly denied that Western sanctions have seriously harmed the Russian war effort, saying on March 17 that this economic blitzkrieg against Russia has failed.

According to the open-source project Oryx, Russia has lost 270 tanks during the invasion. The same reports describe only 73 tanks lost on the Ukrainian side, suggesting that armored vehicles have been a stumbling block for the larger and more powerful military of Russia.

If the Ukrainian militarys Facebook post is correct, it could have significant implications for the war, further hampering Russias ability to advance into the Ukrainian interior. After a fast and seemingly effective opening, Russias invasion has seemingly stalled in recent weeks, and the territorial map has changed relatively little in recent weeks. If Russia is unable to supply or repair a sufficient force of tanks, the Ukrainian government may find themselves in a surprisingly favorable position against the invaders, as they may find their adversary suddenly bereft of an adequate supply of tanks to continue the invasion.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks during a briefing at the State Department in Wash., on Jan. 26, 2022. (Brendan Smialowski/Reuters)

US Officially Accuses Russia of Committing War Crimes in Ukraine

The U.S. government on March 23 officially accused Russias military of committing war crimes in Ukraine.

Today, I can announce that, based on information currently available, the U.S. government assesses that members of Russias forces have committed war crimes in Ukraine, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.

Our assessment is based on a careful review of available information from public and intelligence sources, he said.

Blinken didnt provide specific evidence for the claim. Russia hasnt issued a public response, although Moscow previously denied claims that its forces committed war crimes.

As with any alleged crime, a court of law with jurisdiction over the crime is ultimately responsible for determining criminal guilt in specific cases, Blinken said. The U.S. government will continue to track reports of war crimes and will share information we gather with allies, partners, and international institutions and organizations, as appropriate.

We are committed to pursuing accountability using every tool available, including criminal prosecutions.

The consequences of such an assessment by the U.S. government arent yet clear.

Russian officials are likely to bristle at the latest accusation. Earlier this week, Russias Ministry of Foreign Affairs warned that a claim made by President Joe Biden that criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin is straining U.S.Russia relations.

Russias Foreign Ministry told Ambassador John Sullivan that such statements from the American president, unworthy of a statesman of such high rank, put RussianAmerican relations on the verge of breaking, according to a translated statement posted online.

The United States and Europe have already levied heavy sanctions against Russias economy, and the Biden administration is considering more, as the president meets with NATOs leadership in Brussels this week, officials have said. International corporations have said they will no longer do business in Russia because of the conflict.

While the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Netherlands said its gathering evidence about any potential war crimes in Ukraine, Russialike the United Statesdoesnt recognize the courts jurisdiction. The U.N. Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect separates war crimes from genocide and crimes against humanity.

The law is clear on this, it is a crime to intentionally target civilians, it is a crime to intentionally target civilian objects, Karim Khan, the ICCs chief prosecutor, told CNN earlier this month. But Khan noted that an investigation must be carried out.

Meanwhile, as of March 23, Russias invasion force has stalled in some areas and Ukrainian resistance has thwarted its hopes for a swift victory. Russian artillery and airstrikes have maintained their bombardments on several cities, while civilians who have been unable or unwilling to flee have sought shelter underground.

Putin also announced that Russia would switch certain gas sales to rubles, sending European futures soaring on concerns that the switch will exacerbate the regions energy crunch and jam up deals that run to hundreds of millions of dollars every day.

Russia will continue, of course, to supply natural gas in accordance with volumes and prices  fixed in previously concluded contracts, Putin said on March 23.

Reuters contributed to this report.
The Admiral Gorshkov frigate of the Russian navy launches a Zircon hypersonic cruise missile in the White Sea, on Nov. 29, 2021, in a still image from real-time camera footage released by AP. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP)

US Requires Space-Based Systems to Counter Chinese, Russian Hypersonic Missiles: Expert

The United States requires new space-based missile defense systems to counter the growing threat of hypersonic weapons, according to one expert.

As it relates to hypersonic or nuclear and conventional intercontinental ballistic missile or nuclear missiles, the United States must have immediately a space-based missile defense system, Brandon Weichert, a geopolitical analyst and author, told EpochTVs Forbidden News program.

Our military, knows that presently our current air defense network is not capable of stopping an incoming hypersonic attack.

Weicherts claims followed reports that Russia conducted its first-ever combat usage of a hypersonic missile in Ukraine earlier in the week, as well as a number of incidents in which the Russian military has bombed targets on the border of NATO countries.

Weichert warned of a growing strategic imbalance because the United States does not have the hypersonic weapons, capable of immense speed, that China and Russia do.

Americans  and our allies presently do not have our own hypersonic weapons arsenal in the way that Russia, China, and now possibly North Korea have, which creates a significant strategic imbalance and could potentially upend any kind of deterrence that exists between the United States and Russia, Weichert said.

Hypersonic glide vehicles like the one tested by China in July are valuable precisely because they evade current American defenses.

We just dont know how we can defend against that technology, said U.S. disarmament ambassador Robert Wood in October. Neither does China, neither does Russia.

Weicherts fears echoed sentiments expressed by then-Vice Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. John Hyten in October, who said that a runaway military bureaucracy was preventing the United States from developing new weapons systems, and that China was drastically outpacing U.S. hypersonics development.

The pace [China is] moving and the trajectory that theyre on will surpass Russia and the United States if we dont do something to change it, Hyten said.

It will happen.

There is some disagreement within the military community concerning the overall usefulness of more hypersonic weapons, however. Many professionals do not believe that investing in the same weaponry as China or Russia is a necessary pursuit given the different strategic priorities the nations would face during a war.

I would say that everything were doing in terms of the interceptors, the strike weapons, isnt going to make a difference unless we have sufficient quantities, Gillian Bussey, director of the Joint Hypersonics Transition Office at the Department of Defense, said in February.

So having a dozen hypersonic missiles, regardless of whether theyre really hypersonic isnt going to scare anyone.

China has a set of targets, and I can easily understand why they would want to field hypersonic weapons in reasonable quantities, said Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall in January.

We dont have the same target set that theyre worried about.

That being said, Kendall added that the United States ought to invest in offensive space-based capabilities to adequately counter up-and-coming technologies like orbital bombardment systems. Weichert felt similarly.

The concern now is that Russia and China have the real-world capability to put these systems in orbit and threaten any position on earth, Weichert said.

We have to look to space as a place where we can possibly intercept these hypersonic or conventional nuclear missiles, as they come into American airspace, we dont want to have to intercept them when theyre already in the atmosphere, we want to get them when theyre still in space.

Andrew Thornebrooke Reporter Follow Andrew Thornebrooke is a reporter for The Epoch Times covering China-related issues with a focus on defense, military affairs, and national security. He holds a master's in military history from Norwich University.
A Vietnamese flag flying atop Lung Cu flag tower in Dong Van district, northern province of Ha Giang, Vietnam, in an undated file photo. (Hoang Dinh Nam/AFP via Getty Images)

Vietnamese Journalist Jailed for 5 Years Over Anti-State Posts

Vietnamese independent journalist Le Van Dung was sentenced to five years in prison by a Hanoi court on March 23 after being charged with conducting propaganda against the communist regime through social media posts.

Dung, 51, was convicted of posting 12 videos on social media to defame the Vietnamese government and spread fabricated news to confuse the citizens. Five of the videos reportedly contained anti-state propaganda, according to state-run media.

During his trial, Dung admitted to posting the videos on his social media accounts but refused to regard them as illegal acts. His lawyer said that Dung did not plead guilty and will make an appeal against the verdict, Reuters reported.

Dung is a construction engineer who has been involved in protests, pro-democracy activism, and human rights advocacy since 2011. He founded the Chan Hung TV YouTube channel, which covers a wide range of social and political issues in Vietnam.

According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), he attempted to run as an independent candidate for the National Assembly in the May 2021 elections but was disqualified by local authorities.

Two days after the elections, police tried to arrest Dung for reporting on issues deemed to contain anti-state propaganda, but he reportedly fled to his relatives home in Hanoi to hide.

Dung was subsequently arrested on June 30, 2021, along with his relative, Nguyen Van Son, who was charged with hiding a criminal. The court said that Sons sentence was lowered as he admitted to the crime and because he served in the army.

Prior to the trial, HRWs deputy Asia director Phil Robertson had urged the Vietnamese authorities to immediately drop the politically motivated charges against Dung and release him.

Robertson claimed that Dung was one of more than 60 people being prosecuted in Vietnam for criticizing the government, saying that the Vietnamese penal code provision on propaganda seeks to intimidate citizens with the threat of being locked up.

International donors and trade partners of Vietnam should press Hanoi to listen to its critics instead of prosecuting them, Robertson said.

Ravina Shamdasani, a spokesperson for the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, said in December 2021 that the Vietnamese criminal code under which these charges were brought is overly broad and inconsistent with international human rights norms.

All the cases follow similar worrying patterns that raise serious issues concerning the presumption of innocence, the legality of their detention, and the fairness of their trial, Shamdasani said, urging the Vietnamese authorities to stop violating fundamental freedoms and release all detained activists.
Dr. Scott Atlas, a founding fellow of Hillsdale College's Academy for Science and Freedom, at the Hillsdale College Kirby Center in Washington on March 17, 2022. (Bao Qiu/The Epoch Times)

We Need Accountability for Failed COVID-19 Policies: Dr. Scott Atlas

The restrictive policies in response to the COVID-19 pandemic have largely been a failure and we need accountability for those destructive measures, said Dr. Scott Atlas, former special adviser to then-President Donald Trump on the coronavirus pandemic.

We need accountability of the people who got what they wanted. They got implemented the policies they wanted. Those policies failed, said Atlas, referring to restrictive measures such as lockdowns, quarantines, school and business closures, and vaccine mandates for young people.

We have 900,000 plus Americans whove died from COVID, according to the categorization, millions of families destroyed, yet the same people are in charge. I dont understand how that could possibly happen, Atlas told EpochTVs American Thought Leaders program that premiered on March 22.

According to the data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as of March 22, the COVID-19 mortality in the United States is 973,220, the highest number in the world.

When we see that proof has come in, its very difficult to proceed without having the accountability and the public airing to the public, to know that those strategies were wrong. It has to be admitted, and there has to be accountability or we can never restore trust in these agencies and even science itself until we get to that truth, said Atlas.

Atlas cited a few studies showing that lockdowns dont work.

A Spring 2021 study by Christian Bjornskov analyzed 24 countries and concluded that lockdowns did not reduce the deaths compared to no lockdowns. A Jan. 2021 study by Stanford professor Eran Bendavid and colleagues showed that severe lockdowns did not reduce the spread of the infection. A June 2021 study (pdf) by the National Bureau of Economic Research analyzed 43 countries and 50 U.S. states and found that lockdowns increased the excess deaths.

When the lockdowns were implemented, the deaths actually started to go up after they were coming down. And thats true in the United States as well, said Atlas. So when youre talking about how many people died over a non-pandemic year, the excess deaths increased from the lockdowns. Lockdowns killed people.

According to the CDC, excess deaths are typically defined as the difference between the observed numbers of deaths in specific time periods and expected numbers of deaths in the same time periods. The agency said estimated excess deaths could provide information about the burden of mortality potentially related to the COVID-19 pandemic, including deaths that are directly or indirectly attributed to COVID-19.

Atlas also mentioned a Jan. 2022 Johns Hopkins study (pdf), which found that lockdowns only reduce mortality by 0.2 percent on average. Such a standard benefit-cost calculation leads to a strong conclusion: lockdowns should be rejected out of hand as a pandemic policy instrument, the study stated.

The biggest sin of the management of COVID was the closure of the schools, Atlas said, adding school closures caused spikes of suicide attempts, psychological damage, and physical issues among children and young people. Its also most harmful and inexplicable to inject young children with an experimental vaccine for a disease they do not have a significant risk from.

Atlas said those who own the results of the policies were governors implementing lockdowns and those who could advise those governorsthe three most influential doctors on then-White House Coronavirus Task ForceDr. Deborah Birx, then-White House coronavirus response coordinator; Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; and Dr. Robert Redfield, then-director of CDC.

They had got what they wanted. They advised that, said Atlas.

With a 25-year background in academic, medicine, clinical practice research, Atlas said he was stunned by the behavior of the three influential figures mentioned above when he worked as special adviser to Trump.

What I heard and saw was the behavior of people who did not have any scientific papers with them at these meetings, they did not have a working knowledge of the published literature, said Atlas. This was a sort of behavior of a bureaucrat interested in covering other bureaucrats, and manipulating or working with the media to critique people who had a different opinion, which was myself.

During his tenure as special adviser to Trump, Atlas had been described as the often-dissenting adviser.

Atlas said when he organized a group of scientists and medical physicians to meet with Trump and then-Vice President Mike Pence, Birx pulled out at the last second. That is not the behavior of someone who really should be at the table for looking at a complicated scientific and medical policy question. Thats the behavior, in my view, of a bureaucrat, said Atlas.

Approximately a month later, Atlas said, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Dr. Martin Kulldorff, and Dr. Sunetra Gupta met with him and Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar. The three medical experts later co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration, calling for focused protection instead of restrictive government intervention.

Neither Birx, Fauci, nor Redfield responded to a request for comment.

During a Congressional hearing last October, Birx said that Atlass theories were dangerous and reckless.

Birx testified during the hearing that Atlas believed anybody who wasnt in the vulnerable group should be allowed to increase activities without mitigation because it didnt matter if they became infected with COVID.  I think he believed there was almost zero risk to anybody unless it would result in hospitalization or death.

In a February press briefing, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that the Biden administration was not pushing lockdowns. She claimed most lockdowns happened during the Trump administration.

President Joe Bidens National COVID-19 Preparedness Plan, which was released early this month, also said the administration aimed to prevent economic and educational shutdowns.

However, Fauci, Bidens chief medical adviser, recently signaled that lockdowns might still be needed in the future.

If in fact, we do see a turnaround and a resurgence, we have to be able to pivot and go back to any degree of mitigation that is commensurate with what the situation is, Fauci told CNN last week.

Accountability for Leaders in Federal Health Agencies and Big Pharma

Atlas said public health leaders and people in Big Pharma should also be held accountable for the failed COVID-19 response.

One of the biggest failures of the [National Institutes of Health (NIH)] and the [Food and Drug Administration (FDA)] here during this pandemic was a complete failure to rapidly do the clinical trials on drugs that were already FDA-approved in the spring of 2020, said Atlas.

At the start of the pandemic, some doctors claimed that hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, both FDA-approved, were effective in treating COVID-19 patients. More doctors and studies have claimed the same since then. However, the FDA hasnt approved the two drugs for treating COVID-19 patients. NIHs COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines state that existing data dont support using these two drugs against COVID-19.

Now were two years in, we still have not done these trials, said Atlas.

NIH hasnt responded to a request for comment. FDA said the agency had helped to significantly accelerate therapeutic developments during the pandemic.

As scientists began to investigate potential treatments for COVID-19, FDA sought to quickly focus its resources to support the development of new

therapies. To do so, in March 2020 we launched the Coronavirus Treatment Acceleration Program, or CTAP, an FDA spokesperson told The Epoch Times via email.

CTAPs efforts have helped drug developers overcome challenges to significantly accelerate therapeutic development during the COVID-19 pandemic. As of March 11, 2022, more than 470 clinical trials have been initiated and over 600 additional clinical trials are in planning stages. The products under investigation include antivirals, immunomodulators, neutralizing antibodies, and more.

People in Big Pharma and CDC are also responsible for not being transparent, said Atlas.

We need accountability on the people in Pharma, who didnt show fully the data, said Atlas. We dont have the full set of data from the CDC on complications from the vaccines. Why not?

Weve had hundreds of millions of doses of these vaccines [administered], we dont have a full set of data on the complications yet. Why? What kind of a scientific process is that?

The first batch of data released by the FDA in mid-November 2021 revealed that in the first three months of the COVID vaccine rollout, Pfizer documented 1,223 fatalities among 158,893 adverse effects. FDA spokeswoman Alison Hunt told AFP in December that reviews by FDA and CDC have determined that the vast majority of the deaths reported are not directly attributable to the vaccines.

Theres a confluence of interests, said Atlas. Frankly, its not one motivation. In my view, theres a confluence of interests that are different. Theres financial interest in Pharma, and people who benefit from thatadvisory positions in these companies. Power, hubris, incompetence, and perhaps even covering up egregious errors.

The Epoch Times has reached out for comment to the CDC and the three major COVID-vaccine manufacturers, Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson.

The Right Direction Ahead

There are general things and specific things to move forward in a right direction that is both proactive and positive, according to Atlas.

The general thing is to make sure to have the people in the CDC, to have the people in public health come forward and show the data that the lockdowns failed. That will not happen again. We need an admission of error. We need an explanation to the public, said Atlas. That transparency alone will reassure the public that theres some honesty present here.

One of the specific things we need to do is follow those Western European nations that lifted those restrictions.

Sweden, Norway, and Denmark eased their COVID restrictions later last year. The UK, Ireland announced in early January to end most of their COVID-19 restrictions. More countries followed their footstep soon after.

Secondly, these variants, the expectations have to be set with the public. This is a big point that I tried to get done in the White House, said Atlas. The public needs to have an expectation: this disease, this infection, this virus is not going to disappear. It doesnt magically go away. Its irrational to think that it would go away from these mitigation measures, to begin with.

We live with certain risks that have to be articulated to the public, just like we do with other diseases, just like we do with driving on the highway, just like we do with influenza, where we have 50,000 deaths per year, more or less. And we dont like those deaths. We do everything we can to protect those people and let them protect themselves. But we dont lock down. We dont mandate the flu vaccine to go to school. We dont test, test, test for a virus that is going to be mild.

However, Atlas understands those people who are responsible wont come forward to admit their mistakes.

I think therefore, the burden is on individuals to become critical thinkers, to see whos speaking the facts and the data consistently, to trust people not just on the basis of their title, but on the basis of what they say, and to learn the data to some extent themselves. I think that we need to have a more of an individually-driven response here, said Atlas. And otherwise, youre abrogating your responsibility to your family and your child if you dont do that.

Correction: Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Dr. Martin Kulldorff, and Dr. Sunetra Gupta did not meet with Trump in August 2020. The Epoch Times regrets the error.

Harry Lee Follow Harry Lee is a New York-based reporter for The Epoch Times. Contact Harry at harry.lee@epochtimes.com
Wheat Prices Soar on Ukraine Fears, but US Growers Cant Cash in

CHICAGOAfter Russias invasion of Ukraine sent global wheat futures soaring, U.S. farmer Vance Ehmke was eager to sell his grain.

Local prices shot up roughly 30 percent to nearly $12 a bushel, about the highest Ehmke could recall in 45 years of farming near the western Kansas town of Healy.

Instead of reaping a windfall, Ehmke found a commodities market turned upside down. He and his wife Louise told Reuters they couldnt sell a nickel of their upcoming summer wheat harvest for future delivery. Futures prices for corn and wheat had rocketed so abruptly that many along the complex chain of grain handlinglocal farm cooperatives, grain elevators, flour millers and exportersstopped buying for fear they couldnt resell at a profit.

Others couldnt afford an industry-wide risk-management strategy known as hedging that keeps global commodities markets moving. Missiles falling in Ukraine had rocked that system, sending middlemen scrambling to shore up positions in the futures market that were costing them millions of dollars per day.

More than anything, the market is just in a panic, Andrew Jackson, a Kentucky grain merchandiser, told Reuters.

Many of these players continue to hold back on purchases to see how the Eastern European conflict shakes out: Russia is the worlds top wheat exporter and Ukraine is a major global supplier of both wheat and corn.

While some North American millers have said they have enough grain on hand from past harvests to continue producing for several months, prolonged or repeated disruptions to grain trading could eventually contribute to already-inflated food prices.

Meanwhile, the inability to sell some of their winter wheatwhose harvest starts in Juneis putting the squeeze on U.S. farmers. Growers like the Ehmkes need cash now to pay for seed and fertilizer ahead of spring planting, as well as for land rent and tax bills coming due.

A combine drives over stalks of soft red winter wheat during the harvest on a farm in Dixon, Ill. on July 16, 2013. (Jim Young/Reuters)

Fertilizer bills alone are expected to jump 12 percent this year, after rising 17 percent last year, according to American Farm Bureau Federation and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) data. If American farmers decide to cut back, that could curb yields for the fall harvest at a time when the world may soon need more grain.

Developing countries are particularly vulnerable to supply shortages and high grain prices, said Don Roose, president of agricultural broker U.S. Commodities in Iowa.

Emerging markets like Africa could have less bread to eat, Roose said.

Shorts Vs Longs

The unusual situation that throttled the Ehmkes stems from the system of hedging that U.S. grain growers and processors have long used to insure themselves against price swings.

For every bushel of grain they commit to buy, purchasers sell an equal amount of bushels in the futures market as a hedge to protect themselves against losses.

These commercial players are the traditional shorts, or sellers, in the futures market.

On the other side are futures buyers, or longs. These players typically are speculators such as hedge funds and investment banks not involved in the physical grain-handling business.

Following Russias invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, which Moscow dubbed a special operation, speculators aggressively bought wheat and corn futures, especially the nearby May contracts. The price of May wheat on the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) jumped 54 percent in just nine trading days, from $8.84-3/4 per bushel on Feb. 23 to $13.63-1/2 on March 8.

Russia and Ukraine together supply about 26 percent of the worlds wheat exports, according to the latest USDA data. Shipments through the Black Sea have already been disrupted.

When futures shoot higher, commercial grain sellers accrue paper losses on their short positions. Thats not necessarily a disaster, as the physical grain they have purchased is rising in value too.

But until they can sell the grain and close their futures positions, they can get squeezed financially. In recent weeks, many have faced so-called margin calls from their futures brokers, forcing them to inject enormous sums into their commodity trading accounts to cover their losses.

Its a massive headache that could turn into a problem if they do not have their financial house in order, said Chad Hart, an agricultural economist at Iowa State University.

Calling the Banker

The wheat rally clobbered buyers of other crops, too.

Landus Cooperative, the largest agriculture cooperative in Iowa, briefly suspended its cash bids to buy corn and soybeans on March 9. Chief Executive Matt Carstens said Landus also tripled its credit line with CoBank, a top U.S. agricultural lender, to cover hundreds of millions of dollars in margin calls during the rally and ensure its business remained healthy.

CoBank has delivered more than $4.5 billion in loans and credit to customers to deal with margin calls and grain purchases in January and February alone, Eric Itambo, CoBanks chief banking officer, told Reuters.

Though spot CBOT wheat futures have cooled in recent days, slipping back below $11 a bushel, the futures market has not been this volatile since 2008, when food shortages worldwide sparked riots in some countries.

Back in Kansas, the Ehmkes are eyeing a worsening drought that is hurting the winter wheat crop currently in the ground.

Still, they think they might get another chance to sell wheat at $12 or more with the Ukraine conflict showing no sign of abating.

Just a whole bunch of things are telling us the price of wheat could be substantially higher than what it is right now, Vance Ehmke said.

By Julie Ingwersen and P.J. Huffstutter
U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan speaks during the daily briefing in the Brady Briefing Room of the White House in Washington, on Feb. 11, 2022. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)

White House Preparing to Unveil More Sanctions on Russia: National Security Adviser

President Joe Bidens administration is preparing to unveil another round of sanctions against Russia, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on March 22.

The sanctions will be announced in coordination with the European Union.

[The president] will join our partners in imposing further sanctions on Russia and tightening the existing sanctions to crack down on evasion and to ensure robust enforcement, Sullivan said at a White House press briefing on March 22.

Sullivan did not provide further details regarding the specifics of the latest sanctions but told reporters the Biden administration will focus on enforcing current sanctions and ensuring that there is joint effort to crack down on evasion, on sanctions-busting, on any attempt by any country to help Russia basically undermine, weaken, or get around the sanctions.

Biden is set to leave the White House on March 23 ahead of a NATO summit in Brussels on March 24, where he will be joined by the leaders of the other 29 NATO allies.

He will join the G-7 leaders and he will address the 27 leaders of the European Union at a session of the European Council. He will have the opportunity to coordinate on the next phase of military assistance to Ukraine, Sullivan said.

Biden will work with allies on longer-term adjustments to NATO force posture on the eastern flank and will announce joint action on enhancing European energy security and reducing Europes dependence on Russian gas at long last, Sullivan said.

The president will also announce new U.S. contributions to a coordinated humanitarian response to Russias war in Ukraine and help aid the growing flow of refugees.

Biden is set to travel to Poland from Brussels, where he will engage with U.S. troops who are now helping to defend NATO territory, and he will meet with experts involved in the humanitarian response, Sullivan said.

There, he will meet with Polish President Andrzej Duda. Poland has received more than 2 million Ukrainian refugees who have fled the country since Russian forces invaded on Feb. 24, according to the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

Vice President Kamala Harris has pledged U.S. support for Poland to address the influx of refugees.

Meanwhile, Duda has requested further U.S. aid and called on NATO to increase its military presence on its eastern flank as the war continues.

Poland has received additional resources from the military alliance during the war, including a Patriot missile defense system and thousands of additional troops from the United States. A British Sky Sabre missile defense system has also been deployed to the country.

Russias neighboring countries of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, and Slovakia have also called for a stronger NATO or U.S. military presence in recent weeks.

Bidens newest sanctions come as the United States and its allies have levied a string of sanctions against Russia targeting the countrys finances and exports, among other things, in an effort to weaken President Vladimir Putins position.

The United States has also imposed a ban on Russian energy imports.

While Ukraines President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said March 23 that talks between Ukraine and Russia are moving forward, the war continues to rage on.

Sullivan noted that there will be hard days ahead in Ukrainehardest for the Ukrainian troops on the frontlines and the civilians under Russian bombardment, adding that this war will not end easily or rapidly.

However, he said that the West has been united in its efforts involving the conflict and that Biden is traveling to Europe to ensure we stay united, to cement our collective resolve, to send a powerful message that we are prepared and committed to this for as long as it takes, and to advance our response by helping the Ukrainian people defend themselves, imposing and increasing costs on Russia, and reinforcing the Western alliance.
A Ukrainian evacuee hugs a child in the train station in Przemysl, near the Polish-Ukrainian border, on March 22, 2022. (Angelos Tzortzinis/AFP via Getty Images)

Who Can Cast the First Stone Over Ukraine?

Commentary

The old saying to know all is to forgive all means if taken literally, that all the evils of the world would be forgivable if we took the trouble to discover the real reasons for them. Those who actually believe this reveal themselves as optimists, generous in spirit, willing to look for the best in human nature.

But most of us, hardened by the experience of history, are inclined to be more sceptical: the brutish cruelties of a Stalin or a Hitler may be explicable, by some feat of psychological analysis, but are surely beyond excuse or pardon.

What kind of justification can we find for Putins aggression in Ukraine? Even to write that sentence is to invite an angry response from most people today, for we are all appalled by the sufferings of the Ukrainian people and disgusted by the ruthless destructiveness of the Russian military. However, to look for excuses seems like a betrayal of the innocent.

But the situation is complex. Ukraine has an ancient history of great brilliance, and Kyiv may even claim, with justice, to be honoured as the most important seat of Christian Slav civilisation.

But centuries of division and annexation followed that golden age, and Ukraine became a part of Tsarist Russia in the late 18th century. Throughout the 19th century, it was the major component of that nominally united nation, after Russia itself.

After a very brief period of independence at the time of the revolution, Ukraine was re-absorbed and subjugated with savage cruelty but remained the second most important state of the USSR until its final dissolution.

During that whole period of nearly two centuries, there was considerable population movement in both directions, and current native Russian speakers form a significant minority, particularly in the Eastern regions.

So why is Russia so determined to regain control? Is this whole campaign no more than an act of insane petulance or crazy empire-building initiated by a leader hell-bent on restoring the old federation? Is he mad enough to unleash even nuclear war on the world, as some of the western media suggest?

A Ukrainian serviceman walks next to a military emergency vehicle in the area of a research institute, part of Ukraines National Academy of Science, after a strike by drones that killed at least one, in northwestern Kyiv, Ukraine, on March 22, 2022. (Fadel Senna/AFP via Getty Images)

We may not readily forgive our enemies, but it is always good policy to understand them, to find out what makes them tick. And the first thing we have to acknowledge, which is also the hardest for us to grasp, is the deep resentment in Russian hearts towards a world apparently dominated by English-speaking nations.

This cannot be exaggerated.

It has also been a powerful motivation for the policies of many countries other than Russia: Germany in two world wars; France, from time to time; various post-colonial countries such as Zimbabwe; Libya and a great many Muslim states; China and Japan. All these have, at some stage, reacted bitterly against what they saw as the hegemony of the anglophone West.

In the quest to understand, we might also consider the mental state of people who live with ill-defined or exposed borders.

Those of us who are islanders (Australians, Britons, Sri Lankans, Japanese) tend to have a cosy view of the world: its easy to think objectively about other nations when they are separated from us by sea.

Italians have a whole peninsula to themselves. France and Spain, Canada and the United States have borders with other nations, yet they still possess large and clearly-defined areas with extensive coastlines.

To all of us, the situation and the mentality of countries like Poland, Hungary, Moldova, Ukraine, and even Russia itselftheir territory invaded, sequestered, annexed, squabbled over for centuriesis almost unimaginable.

Let me propose another example of a politically-driven military campaign from another hemisphere, one which will be deemed highly inappropriate and offensive by many who read it.

In 1861, the United States had been federated and independent for only 80 years. The defection of the Confederacy, despite its popularity within its own territory, could not be tolerated by the U.S. government, and a bitter and costly war was fought to recover it.

The goal was to retake lands that had traditionally belonged to the United States.

Engraving depicting the destruction of railroad lines and a burning bridge ordered by Union General William T. Sherman to break Confederate communications. Location unknown, USA, circa 1861. (Fotosearch/Getty Images)

Everybody knows how General William Sherman, in his devastating march through Georgia, claimed that war is hell. But what is seldom appreciated is that he meant to make it sothat he and his government considered it necessary to wreak such utter destruction on the Confederacy and its people so that the spirit of rebellion would be forever quashed.

Is this a fair comparison? Many would dispute it. After all, Ukrainians and Russians speak different (though closely related) languages, whereas in the United States, north and south both speak more or less the same English.

There was no mass exodus of refugees from the south to other countries because that was not an age of easy travel, nor were there, in any case, neighbouring countries to escape to.

Yes, the comparison falls down on a number of points, but the essential fact remains that one nation believed that there was a valid case for recovering territories that it believed belonged to it by tradition and right.

Readers who have persisted to this point may have concluded that I am defending or justifying the Russian action against Ukraine. That is certainly not true. In fact, I hope for a total withdrawal and for an immediate end to the killing. War should never be a solution to anything, and the Russian aggression is in every way unconscionable.

But if history has taught us anything, it is that human beings have a poor record and that no nation on earth has clean hands.

In our justifiable condemnation of Russia, we do well to examine our own varied histories and to ask ourselves: who, if anyone, can cast the first stone?

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Breastfeeding offers profound benefits beyond those measured in health outcomes, so why are rates so low in the US?

The day after Leslie Otts daughter, Ella, was born at Banner Thunderbird Medical Center in Glendale, Arizona, a doctor came into her room and threatened to separate Ott from her baby. The pediatrician told me I was starving my baby and would have to give her a bottle, or she was going to be admitted for jaundice and I would be sent home, Ott remembered. The baby was cooing and crying, and the pediatrician walks over to the baby and says, Oh, you must be hungry. You look like youre starving!

Literally thousands of peer-reviewed scientific articles show the short- and long-term health benefits of breastfeeding. In fact, if all babies were breastfed according to WHO guidelines, more than 800,000 infant deaths could be avoided each year.

Given how essential breastfeeding a baby is, why do physicians actively undermine women like Ott who want to nurse their babies? Why arent more women, in both America and around the world, able to meet their breastfeeding goals?

Suboptimal Breastfeeding Rates

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommend that women exclusively nurse their babies for the first six months. The World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF recommend that breastfeeding begin within an hour of birth, that babies be exclusively nursed for six months, and that the breastfeeding relationship should continue for up to two yearsor even longer. According to the World Health Organization, Breastfeeding is an unequaled way of providing ideal food for the healthy growth and development of infants  infants should be exclusively breastfed for the first six months to achieve optimal growth, development and health.

However, statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that only about 84 percent of new mothers in America initiate breastfeeding in the first place. Of those, only about 47 percent of moms are still exclusively nursing when their babies are 3 months old. By 6 months, only 26 percent of American women are exclusively nursing. To make matters worse, though exclusive breastfeeding is the best choice, a full 19 percent of breastfed infants are supplemented with formula before they are 2 days old. Yet, early supplementation of formula has been shown to decrease the odds of successful breastfeeding.

While global breastfeeding rates are not as high as they should be, babies born in some countries fare much better than others. Data from the World Bank show that in Norway, a country that has one of the highest child survival rates in the world, nearly 100 percent of mothers initiate breastfeeding. Even more encouraging, after six months, 80 percent of Norwegian women are continuing to breastfeed.

Benefits of Breastfeeding

Both the breast milk and the act of breastfeedingcuddling a baby close to your body, skin to skinoffer myriad benefits for both moms and babies. Human milk is the perfect food for human babies. Its easily digestible, it tastes delicious, and it has just the right combination of healthy fats and proteins, as well as oligosaccharides that adhere to a newborns intestinal lining to allow good bacteria to flourish. Breast milk also contains essential immune-enhancing and disease-preventing properties.

In addition, breastfeeding releases oxytocin, a feel-good hormone that promotes increasing feelings of trust, peace, well-being, and bonding. Once the breastfeeding relationship is established, nursing allows moms and babies to feel connected and relaxed.

According to the Cleveland Clinic, early breastfeeding also helps the uterus contract back to its normal size, and reduces the risk of postpartum hemorrhaging. In addition, women who breastfeed their babies reduce their likelihood of getting breast cancer, urinary tract infections, and anemia. Breastfeeding moms are also less likely to suffer from severe postpartum depression than their formula-feeding counterparts.

But the benefits of breastfeeding for the baby are even more impressive. Breastfed babies are less likely to suffer from digestive problems, flatulence, ear infections, bad breath, and respiratory tract infections. In fact, exclusively breastfeeding may sometimes be a matter of life and death. Breastfeeding is protective against SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) and necrotizing enterocolitis, an acute gastrointestinal condition, where the wall of the intestines is invaded by bad bacteria, causing inflammation, bowel destruction, and even death.

And the health benefits of breastfeeding continue for the baby long after infancy. A relatively large 2021 study, conducted by a team of scientists from Switzerland, the UK, and the United States, found that children, who were exclusively or partially breastfed, had fewer neurodevelopmental disorders at age 4, and higher IQs at age 8, than children who were formula-fed. A breastfed child is also less likely to become obese or to get childhood leukemia.

Breastfeeding is also protective against asthma, allergies, eczema, and Crohns disease later in life, to name just a few. Breastfed children also have lower harmful cholesterol levels as adults, suggesting to scientists that breastfeeding may have long-term benefits for cardiovascular health as well. As if thats not enough, one study, that followed more than 7,000 infant-mother pairs in Australia for 15 years, found that the breastfed babies were less likely to be neglected or abused by their mothers.

Infant Formula Companies Influence Doctors, Moms

The artificial milk industry is dominated by a small number of extremely powerful, multinational, multi-billion-dollar corporations. These profit-driven companies employ the best global marketing firms. According to a team of Scottish researchers, the two largest infant formula manufacturersNestle and Danonespent well over a billion dollars on advertising in 2018-19 alone.

The advent of social media has made it easier to pose as the friend and supporter of parents, the Scottish scientists explained. It is also providing companies with a rich stream of personal data with which they hone and target their campaigns. Infant formula advertising includes establishing relationships with expectant and new mothers, offering free samples to hospitals and doctors offices, and using social media (particularly Facebook) to influence moms.

In 1981, WHO and UNICEF, in an attempt to limit infant deaths, tried to prevent inappropriate direct-to-consumer infant formula advertising, by adopting an International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes. The Code, as it is often called, was aimed at governments, companies, and healthcare workersnot at parents. Partly due to pressure from the artificial milk industry, however, the United States was one of three countries (along with only Chad and Bangladesh) to vote against this voluntary international code.

Signing on to a voluntary code of conduct to protect breastfeeding moms, and adhering to it, are two different things. A 2021 study, published in March in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, found that several infant formula companies have capitalized on the fears surrounding COVID-19 to sell more formula, and discourage breastfeeding, in direct violation of the WHO Code.

Industry tactics, this past year, have included making unfounded health claims about the benefits of artificial milk for infants, and promoting misleading information about breastfeeding, in order to cultivate parental fear and uncertainty. They have also used aggressive donation campaigns to make themselves appear as supporters in the fight against COVID-19, the study found. The goodwill these companies gain by participating in the fight against COVID-19 translates into a valuable marketing asset, one that has served, ultimately, to undermine maternal and child health during the COVID-19 pandemic, wrote the researchers.

Although breast milk is a living wholesome nutrient-dense natural substance, and artificial milk is a desiccated product that includes ingredients like corn syrup solids, palm oil, carrageenan, maltodextrin, and lactose, as well as genetically modified organisms, and even glyphosate, part of the industrys advertising strategy is to promote infant formula as equivalent to breast milk. This strategy has been sadly effective.

Even though most women believe that breastfeeding is best for babies, they do not seem to understand the benefits of breastfeeding as compared to formula feeding. In one WIC survey, 64 percent of mothers did not know that breast milk would protect their babies from diarrhea. Another study found that nearly 75 percent of moms believed that feeding babies with infant formula instead of breast milk would not increase the chances of babies getting sick.

In a 2011 report about the barriers to breastfeeding in the United States, the surgeon general cited the lack of support for breastfeeding education on the part of hospitals and doctors, conflicting advice given by medical professionals when a woman runs into breastfeeding difficulties, and a lack of cultural support. As the same report explained, studies of immigrants to the United States have found that rates of breastfeeding decrease with each generation, often because bottle feeding is considered the norm, and is more acceptableand even encouragedin America than in the immigrant families countries of origin.

This summer, as reported by Fox News, Vanessa Marcum, a mom of four in Butler County, Ohio, was shamed by a lifeguard while she was nursing her 3-week-old daughter by the side of the pool, and was told, you cant do that here. Other moms, including Stephanie VandenBerg, who was nursing her infant son on an Air Canada flight in March of 2019, report being told to breastfeed in the bathroom.

Dr. Jay Gordon, a champion of breastfeeding and a pediatrician in private practice in Southern California, who has over four decades of medical experience, told me he believed pharmaceutical representatives and formula industry salespeople are a big reason why doctors end up undermining breastfeeding. Until he barred them from his office, drug reps would bring Gordon and his staff free lunches, free samples, branded pens and clipboards, and other free swag.

What they [were] doing is biasing us, and often giving us information that [was] completely inaccurate, Gordon said. Women listen to their doctors, Gordon argued, so if doctors actually recommended and supported exclusive breastfeeding, more Americans would do it.

Pediatricians recommend brands of formula,Gordon said. The formula manufacturer who buys you lunch the most often, is liable to be the one you recommend the most. It takes too much time to help people with breastfeeding. Were not reimbursed for that time. Instead of helping mothers with breastfeeding, we are telling them to use formula.

According to Dr. Bose Ravenel, a retired pediatrician who practiced medicine for 49 years, most pediatricians do not have enough knowledge about the importance of breastfeeding. Most pediatricians have had very little, if any, learning about the immune system and the benefits of colostrum [the first milk a breastfeeding baby gets], Ravenel said. They have been exposed to the idea that breastfeeding is good, but they dont have a good command of nutrition. Medical schools famously devote very little time to nutrition.

Ravenel said that while he did recommend breastfeeding to his patients, he did not make a big deal out of it. I would now, if I could do it over again, he admitted. Breastfeeding has a profound positive impact on the immune system. Breast milk is the ideal food. But I didnt know that back then.

Normalizing, Even Celebrating, Breastfeeding

Ronda Rousey, 34, a professional wrestler, actress, and martial artist, has been posting breastfeeding photographs of her new baby, Laakea Makalapuaokalanipo Browne, on Instagram. Our boys asked me the other day how Im gunna feed Po on the plane when we take her with us to Hawaii, Rousey wrote. And I was like, uhhh, same way I always do. Then it occurred to me that they probably never seen anyone breastfeed before and werent sure if it was appropriate in public.

Nursing moms like Rousey are using the grassroots hashtags, #normalizebreastfeeding and #nursingmom, to help encourage and inspire other women to meet their breastfeeding goals. Even though the formula industry wants to convince you otherwise, these moms are on a mission to let everyone know that a womans body makes the perfect food to help her baby survive and thrive.

Additional reporting for this article was done by Diane Sanny.

This article was first published in Radiant Life Magazine.
A sign bearing the corporate logo hangs in the window of a Starbucks in Denver, Colo., on April 26, 2021. (David Zalubowski/AP Photo)

Workers at Seattle Starbucks Vote to Unionize

Workers at a Seattle Starbucks on March 22 voted unanimously to unionize, giving the Starbucks Workers United, an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union, one of its most high-profile wins to date.

Starbucks is headquartered in Seattle. Of the 13 employees eligible to vote at the states Broadway and Denny location, nine voted in favor and none voted against joining the union, according to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

One ballot was challenged, according to The Seattle Times.

Workers at the branch in the Capitol Hill neighborhood previously said they were organizing the union vote as a commitment to growing the company and the quality of our work and that the desire to do so was not a reaction to specific policies, events, or changes.

We see unionizing as a fundamental and necessary way to participate in Starbucks and its future as partners, four of the employees wrote in a letter to Kevin Johnson, CEO of the Seattle-based coffee giant.

However, workers at Starbucks stores across the United States have complained of an increased workload, further exasperated by the companys mobile app and other food services which have left them overworked after a surge in mobile orders amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Employees also want more of a say on how the stores are managed and how the technology should be utilized.

Union organizers say they are seeking better training and staffing and better pay for workers which they hope to be increased over time. They also want workers to have more respect from management.

The first corporate Starbucks store was unionized in Buffalo, New York, in December 2021, followed shortly by another Starbucks store in Buffalo on Jan. 10. A total of six other Seattle Starbucks locations have filed for union elections in Buffalo, New York, and Mesa, Arizona, according to CNBC.

A Starbucks sign hangs above the entrance of one of the chains coffee shops in the Loop in Chicago, Ill., on Jan. 4, 2022. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Employees at the Broadway and Denny branch praised the move and said they were hopeful the vote to unionize would make a difference at future union votes in other Starbucks coffeehouses across the nation.

Were super excited, employee Sydney Durkin said during a news conference after the vote. This has been a long time coming. We filed three months ago [and] we have been waiting for a very long time for this moment. We knew it was going to be a victory.

Im really excited for what this means for the national movement and specifically Seattle, said Rachel Ybarra, a 22-year-old barista who has worked at the store for nearly two years. I know that this is going to make other stores more confident to contact us and make all the other stores that are working to file that more confident.

Now that the store has opted to unionize, employeesor what Starbucks refers to as partnerswill negotiate with the company for a contract.

Unionization has become an increasingly partisan issue, according to data from the Pew Research Center. As of July 2021, 55 percent of U.S. adults said labor unions have a positive effect on the way things are going in the country, with that figure remaining unchanged since 2019.

Starbucks runs nearly 9,000 stores in the United States. At least 140 more stores in 27 states have filed petitions for union elections, The Associated Press reported.

In early February, the company fired seven workers at a store in Memphis, Tennessee, in the midst of efforts to unionize company employees, claiming that the firings were the result of violated policies, although workers argued the policies were unclear.

A Starbucks spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement: We are listening and learning from the partners in these stores as we always do across the country.

From the beginning, weve been clear in our belief that we are better together as partners, without a union between us, and that conviction has not changed.

The latest union vote comes shortly after CEO Kevin Johnson announced his retirement after 13 years at Starbucks and five years at the helm of the company.

Starbucks founder Howard Schultz will return to the company as interim CEO, marking the third time he has done so, until the board finds a long-term replacement.
NORWALK  The ongoing discord between the city and school district, technology deficiencies and millions of dollars worth of school maintenance work were among the issues identified in the results of an efficiency study released this week.

The study, conducted by Evergreen Solutions, was initiated in February 2020 during budget deliberations after Common Council members raised concerns about the school districts use of funds. Evergreen Solutions was hired in June 2021 for $275,000, the cost of which was split between the city and the BOE.

In the studys findings, released by Mayor Harry Rilling and discussed during the Common Councils meeting Tuesday, the firm highlighted three main concerns: The continued need for Norwalk school building renovations, a better channel of communication between the city and schools and technology upgrades for the city.

Connecticut school funding statutes place a heavy burden on city governments, which in turn causes inherent tension between the city and their school systems, the study read. In Norwalk, the discord between the city and NPS regarding the budget is unproductive and infighting has resulted in a serious breakdown in communication and collaboration between and among the respective functional entities.

Evergreen Solutions recommended joint meetings of city and NPS officials with the specific goal of opening communication lines to bridge gaps in funding and understanding.

Norwalks technology is negatively impacting all aspects and departments of city government, according to the report. To combat the technology concerns, the firm recommended the city hire a chief information officer.

The chief information officer would oversee all technology planning and operations for the city, fill existing vacancies and staff the department to meet the city needs and conduct a comprehensive needs assessment before implementing a Citywide Technology Master Plan and upgrading or implementing new systems.

In the final, and most costly of the three issues identified by Evergreen Solutions, the study found NPS needs nearly $500 million in school maintenance.

The firm recommended the two entities assess NPS campuses to prioritize and research funding for the schools safety concerns.

Based on a March 2021 Facility Assessment, a long-term investment over the next 20 years of $429-495 million is needed for various repairs, replacements and renovations, the study read. In Connecticut, school facilities are owned by the city but the state provides some funding for facility construction and renovation. The city nor NPS have begun to address the issue.

For most departments reviewed as part of the study, the firm highlighted some accomplishments and areas of improvement and identified potential next steps. Some departments, such as human resources, received only recommendations for improvement.

Commendations for the city include maintaining the AAA bond rating, establishing high standards for the health department and developing an action plan to adequately fill school crossing guard roles, according to the study.

Areas for improvement include developing a new system for permit requests that is easier for customers to navigate, digitizing documents, developing a more comprehensive tree maintenance plan and improving design standards for streets right-of-way, among other recommendations.

NPS was commended for establishing a campus-based budget allocation process, providing each NPS student with at least one electronic device, placing registered nurses at each of the schools, its commitment to clean energy by converting its buses from diesel to propane and its strategic and organized handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and in-school precautions, according to the study.

Recommended changes to NPS include eliminating some administrative roles and grouping their tasks under the deputy superintendent, monitoring all capital assets, eliminating the $400,000 limit in the city ordinance for capital construction projects and consistently reporting total staffing numbers, including staff paid from all sources.

This study has given us a golden opportunity with tangible steps that will enhance our city and schools and help Norwalk remain one of the best places to live in Connecticut, Rilling said. I look forward to evaluating the results of this study with the Common Council, Board of Education and superintendent. Im confident that we will be able to implement some recommendations immediately, while others will likely take time, and some we may decide arent necessary.

abigail.brone@hearstmediact.com
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Students at Columbus Elementary School had the opportunity to ask questions and learn from astronaut Kjell Lindgren when he visited during a virtual Q&A last week.

Lindgren became an astronaut in June of 2009. His first mission was to the International Space Station as part of Expedition 44/45 on July 22, 2015, according to school principal Julie Matarelli.

This year, Lindgren will have the opportunity to go on his second launch to the International Space Station as mission commander of the SpaceX Crew-4 mission. The launch is scheduled for April 15 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Lindgren is Matarellis cousin, and Matarelli said she is proud to have watched Lindgren follow and achieve his dream of becoming an astronaut ever since he was four or five years old.

I wanted to bring that excitement to Columbus school and all the staff and students to inspire the younger generation so that they can have a desire to work in the science fields and to be a part of it, Matarelli said.

Ive wanted to be an astronaut for as long as I can remember and I think a lot of that had to do with reading, especially reading science fiction, but then also science fiction movies, Lindgren said. When I was in second grade, our teacher wheeled a television in to our classroom and we got to watch the launch of the very first space shuttle in 1981. And that, for me, really just kind of merged this idea of science fiction, all of those stories that had inspired me and now watching the space shuttle launch, science fact.

People actually did this and got to do this, so thats really when I was inspired and really locked into this dream of someday getting to live and work in outer space. And that dream has come true. And Im so grateful for that, but it required a lot of hard work.

Students made signs to welcome Lindgren to their school and prepared several unique questions to ask during the Q&A.

Third-grader Terrell Tate asked what the process for getting ready for bed in space is like.

The answer was good, it was pretty cool, because I thought that because there is no gravity, like he would roll all the way up or something, Tate said.

Other questions included what it takes to prepare to become an astronaut, what astronauts eat in space, if wounds heal differently in zero-gravity and, of course, how an astronaut uses the bathroom in space.

Lindgren showed the students several varieties of astronaut food that are freeze dried and prepped for travel. He said scissors, a long spoon and a straw were all the utensils needed to eat in space.

It was really cool to see the stuff that he showed us, like the food and stuff, and what he had to do when he was in space, said third-grader Andrew Terry.

Jules Richert, third grade, asked Lindgren about training to go to outer space, although she isnt interested in going herself.

Im kind of like curious about whats in space but Im scared to go in a spaceship, Richert said.

Fifth-grader Ashlyn Andre said she most enjoyed hearing about space travel from someone who has actually been to space.

Fifth-grader Miles Head said the most interesting part of the day was, learning about how he mentally prepared to go up there without family or friends.

Head said he likes learning about space and he likes mathematics, so he might like to work for NASA one day.

Fourth-grader Peter Fusaro said he liked hearing about the different jobs that are available at NASA.

Ive never really wanted to go in space but Ive always wanted to like be a rocket scientist or create something for NASA, Fusaro said.

Fusaro said he, like Lindgren, has been interested in space since second grade.

I thought it was really cool because not that many people get to talk to an astronaut and I dont think Im ever going to get to talk to an astronaut again, Fusaro said.

Matarelli will be attending the launch in April. For updates, follow Kjell Lindgren on Twitter at @astro_kjell.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

The Illinois SBDC International Trade Center (ITC) at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville is gearing up for the return of in-person trade missions.

The 2022 Southern Illinois Trade Mission to Mexico is scheduled for June 13-17 in Mexico City. This will be the centers first in-person trade mission since 2019.

The business community has expressed interested in traveling this year, ITC Director Silvia Torres Bowman said. The virtual aspect of connecting our clients with trade partners in other countries has been beneficial, but only up to a certain point.

Especially with Latin American markets, the personal connections are crucial. Traveling in-person is so important and adding the element of relieving much of the cost for our businesses is fantastic.

Only three spots are available to local businesses for the trade mission, and they will be filled in on a first-come, first-served basis.

Thanks to funding from the CARES (Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security) Act, the trade center will pay 100% of the matchmaking costs between local clients and Mexican businesses.

Matchmaking, which usually costs an average of $800 to $900 a day, includes:

Two to three days of customized , pre-arranged one-on-one appointments with prospective buyers, distributors and/or partners based on your own criteria

pre-arranged one-on-one appointments with prospective buyers, distributors and/or partners based on your own criteria Personal driver and interpreter during each meeting

Detailed information on prospective business partners

Networking event with local businesses

For the entire trade mission, thats $3,500 to $4,000 in terms of the savings for each of the three businesses that will participate in this exciting opportunity, Torres Bowman said.

The trade mission also features expert counseling, including:

Pre-trip briefings with progress updates by the International Trade Center at SIUE and its networks

In-country briefing by host country representative

Follow-up assistance to ensure business objectives are met

Preferential hotel group rates are available.

The cost for each participant includes a $150 sign-up fee, plus airfare, lodging and meals, but an additional discount is being offered.

Up to $7,500 in Illinois State Trade Export Promotion (ISTEP) funding is available for reimbursement to eligible small businesses to offset from 50 to 75% of travel costs (air/lodging). For complete details regarding eligibility and how to apply, visit https://www.siue.edu/business/itc/istep/index.shtml.

Its a total win-win for our local businesses. I tell them that an opportunity like this might not come again, Torres Bowman said.

For the past two years, Torres Bowman has been trying to overcome the challenges of COVID and continue to engage her clients within the world of commerce and foreign trade. That includes virtual meetings in a variety of formats.

We did a virtual trade mission to South America, which started in mid-September and ran through mid-November, Torres Bowman said. We utilized Zoom and our clients met virtually with potential distributors from Peru, Colombia and Chile.

The response was very positive. We did some follow-up work in December in January and its still a work in progress.

David Kniepkamp, President of Smart Controls in Fairview Heights, was among the participants in the virtual trade mission.

The opportunity to meet, collaborate and share information and experiences with new professional colleagues was the pinnacle highlight of the virtual trade mission. To establish contact and dialogue with clients and get an opportunity to see and share their needs and desires is an experience of a lifetime, Kniepkamp said.

Pure and simple, the opportunity to participate in a trade mission of this magnitude would not have been possible without the help, support and vision of Silvia Torres Bowman at the International Trade Center at SIUE. Her dedication and insight to select the team at BusinessHub Consultants to spearhead the research and effort to make the virtual meetings a success only confirms the professional attention that is always received at the International Trade Center at SIUE.

In addition, Torres Bowman made a solo trip to Peru in November 2021 to meet with local trade partners and test the waters for a possible in-person trade mission to South America in 2022.

I took my chances in the midst of the pandemic because we have small businesses who rely on us and trust their hopes with us and the trade center, said Torres Bowman, who is from Peru and has numerous contacts there. You have a sense of responsibility and youre committed to them.

We had already two previous trade missions to Peru, one in 2009 and the other in 2019. We planned to have a third trade mission to Peru and Chile in 2020, but that was when the pandemic hit, and we couldnt do it. In November 2021, I wanted to meet with our trade partners and see what the conditions were to see if we could do something in 2022.

Torres Bowman noted that the meetings with her partners in Peru were positive, but nearly all of them were held in public settings such as restaurants because people were working from home.

Everybody was wearing masks and things were very restricted, but they were all very accommodating to me being there and visiting with them, Torres Bowman said. Even though they were open to the possibility of doing something this year, I realized that the uncertainties were too many for us to put something together for this year.

With that realization in mind, Torres turned her focus to Mexico with the goal of setting up an in-person trade mission.

The mission in June will be supported by the Illinois Office of Trade and Investment (OTI) through the trade centers longtime partner Omar Mendoza, Managing Director of the Illinois Office in Mexico City as well as local private consulting firms.

With Mexico, the situation was going to be much different, Torres Bowman said. For one, on the week of June 13, the state of Illinois was already going to be at a trade show in Mexico City called Expo Pack.

There was already recruitment going on with a group of Illinois businesses to travel there. We felt that if we could recruit some businesses from our area to go there, they could benefit from that.

Mexico is a solid choice for a trade mission because it is the second-largest goods export market for the U.S. and Illinois, the second-largest economy in Latin America and the 15th-largest in the world. Plus, $700 billion in traded goods and services cross the U.S.-Mexico border every year.

With a population of 20 million, Mexico City is one of the largest cities in the hemisphere and the world.

Especially in the last couple of years with the pandemic, the government has been emphasizing woman-owned businesses, businesses in rural communities and minority- and veteran-owned businesses. I invite those groups to take this opportunity under consideration, Torres Bowman said.

The deadline to register for the trade mission is April 15. To register and for additional information, contact Torres Bowman at sitorre@siue.edu.
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)


That release could not be found.
Buildings and property worth millions of naira have been destroyed, as the ongoing land dispute between Olu Ndi Enigwe Adoration Ministry, Obosi in Idemili North Local Government Area of Anambra State and members of the community intensifies.

The land dispute, which has birthed multiple crisis and clashes between the church and the community members, has tarried for a long while and remained unresolved, despite various peace accords and the interventions of some stakeholders, including Archbishop Valerian Okeke of the Metropolitan Catholic Archdiocese of Onitsha.

It was learnt that despite all these interventions, angry youths of the community invaded the church with bulldozer and demolished the building, and destroyed other valuables and properties therein.

However, while the peaceful resolution, some youths in the community were said to have invaded the church with a bulldozer and demolished the building and destroyed other valuables.

Speaking with newsmen, the Spiritual Director of the demolished church, Rev. Fr. Jude Uche Olundienigwe, said the land where the building was sited, which was originally 23 plots, were fully negotiated and purchased from its original owners, Umuopi family.

He also claimed that the Federal Government had utilized about 10 plots of the land for the construction of the Second Niger bridge road, leaving behind about 13 plots for the Ministry.

As though that was not enough, according to him, the youths of the community constantly began to invade and claiming that the remaining portion of the land now belong to the community.

He accused the traditional ruler of the community of masterminding the constant invasions of the church by some youths who, according to him, claims that the churchs land now belongs to the community an act, he alleged, was masterminded by the traditional ruler of the community, Igwe Chidubem Iweka.

While alleging that the invasions had led to the assault, battering and molestation of worshippers and workers in the church, the cleric also noted that the church had lost over N20m to the destructive activities of the community youths.

He also claimed he put call across to Igwe Iweka when the destruction was was going on, to ascertain if he was aware of their acts, as they claimed, but he never responded to the call.

He said: The youths came with the bulldozer and as they were demolishing our church and sacred images, I put a call across to the monarch, Igwe Chidubem Iweka of Obosi, several times to ascertain whether he was the person who issued the order, as the youth claimed, but he refused to take the call.

We put a call to the President General of Obosi Community, Sir Ikechukwu Okolo, who said he could not intervene or stop the Obosi youths until he hears from Igwe Obosi. The boys had a field day threatening to shoot me if I showed up. They razed down the whole worship centre.

The documents of the 23 plots of land purchased from Umuopi family, Obosi are with us. In 2019, the Federal Government decided to construct a road leading to the Second Niger bridge through the land, which we obliged. The Archbishop of Onitsha Catholic Diocese, Most Rev. Dr. Valerian Okeke advised us to temporarily vacate the place to enable the construction company to do their job after which they utilized about 10 plots out of the property.

Since we returned to reconstruct and continue our normal worship in our property, it has been trouble. The youths of Umuopi family came destroying church structures, saying that the government compensated us, so we do not have any land left. We said no, the government only compensated us for the much it used, we still have about 13 plots left. Many times they came and beat up worshippers and artisans reconstructing the place, confiscated their work tools.

We have been trying to make peace. After about three invasions and extortion last year, we approached the President General of the community, who tried to mediate between the church and Umuopi family. The PG asked them to go and verify whether we encroached into another persons land, they said no. This fourth negotiation, which ended with another compensation of one million naira was documented as a MOU and signed by witnesses, including the PG stating that we should not be harassed again but we were surprised at this latest development and demolition.

Although the church property and structures demolished were worth over N20m, the damage incurred by the demolition of the sacred images and altar of worship on the souls of worshippers was unquantifiable. The damage is not just monetary; it killed many souls of worshippers, destroying their faith. No amount one will pay materially would be enough to pay for the damages. I call on them to repent.

However, when contacted, Igwe Iweka denied sending any group of armed youths to demolish the worship centre.

On his own part, the President General of the community, Sir Ikechukwu Okolo, in his reaction, claimed that Rev. Fr. Olundienigwe was the architect of his own misfortune, saying that all his efforts as the community leader to mediate between the adoration ministry and Obosi indigenes were frustrated by the cleric.

In his words, I did not receive any invitation from the Archbishop for any peace talk, rather Fr. Olundienigwe at a point, said he had lost confidence in the palace and refused the invitation from Eze Obosi for further dialogue.

The Igwe could not have sent people to demolish a worship centre as claimed by the church. I found out that Fr. Olundienigwe acquired property and built structures blocking other property owners around that area from having access roads to their lands.

So the original landowners  the youths simply went to recover access roads encroached by the ministry, he said.
Dakar, March 23, 2022  Cameroonian authorities should drop the prosecution of journalist Malcom Bernabe Paho and decriminalize journalism in the country, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Wednesday.

On February 22, the national gendarmerie arrested Paho, director of the newspaper Midi Libre Hebdo; opened a criminal defamation case against him; and detained him for two days in the capital Yaounde, following a complaint filed by Boba Denis, a pastor who heads the Africa Life World Mission church, an international religious organization, according to news reports and the journalist, who spoke to CPJ via messaging app.

Denis filed the complaint on January 27, after Midi Libre Hebdo published an article on November 29, 2021, alleging that Denis had sexual relations with church members, according to a letter to Paho from Cameroons National Communication Council (CNC), the countrys communications regulator, and the article, both of which CPJ reviewed. Denis claimed the article contained unfounded statements likely to damage his image, according to the CNC letter.

Cameroonian authorities should drop their prosecution of journalist Malcolm Barnabe Paho and reform the countrys laws to ensure journalism is not criminalized, said Angela Quintal, CPJs Africa program director, from New York. Cameroon should focus on ensuring that there are no journalists in jail, not look to add more.

On February 24, Paho was released on bail after paying 100,000 CFA francs (US$167), Pahos lawyer, Soumele Jatsa Augustin, told CPJ by phone. In Cameroon, defamation is punishable with up to six months in prison and a fine of 2 million CFA francs (US$3,350), according to Article 305 of the penal code.

Paho is expected to appear in court on April 14, he told CPJ.

Denis told CPJ by phone that he filed separate defamation complaints with Cameroons gendarmerie, to hold Paho criminally liable, and the CNC, which can impose sanctions on media outlets and journalists. I blame him (Paho) for everything he said in the newspaper without consulting me and making sure that what he said was true. What he wrote is extremely serious. It puts my life in danger, Denis said.

The CNC reviewed and ultimately rejected Denis complaint against the journalist, Paho told CPJ. Jean Tobie Ho, the secretary general of the CNC told CPJ by phone that the complaint was rejected over a technical issue.

CPJs calls and questions sent via messaging app to Florent Ntyam-Nkoto, Cameroons Public Prosecutor at the Court of Yaounde Administrative Center, went unanswered.

There are at least four journalists currently jailed in connection with their work in Cameroon, according to CPJ research; two have been released since December 1, 2021, when CPJ conducted its last census of journalists behind bars for their work around the world.
DSI opens office in Phuket

PHUKET: The Department of Special Investigation (DSI) has confirmed it is opening an office in Phuket as it continues its national expansion in fighting crime.

policecrimeSafety

By The Phuket News

Wednesday 23 March 2022, 11:38AM

The announcement was made yesterday (Mar 22) at City Hall during a meeting presided over by Deputy Governor of Phuket Amnuay Phinsuwan.

Mr Amunay was joned by fellow Deputy Governor Pichet Panaphong, Nikhom Suwanrungruang the Director of Policy and Strategy Division at the DSI, Akara Suwatthikul from Phuket Provincial Defense, Payungsak Kalamik from the Justice of Phuket Province, members of the DSI network, and representatives of the Phuket Information Center.

Mr Amnuay said that it is a big positive for Phuket to have an official DSI office and presence on the island that will allow a network of officials to coordinate with local communities to exchange information and improve safety within wider society when dealing with special cases.

The DSI office will make it possible to link communication and work together effectively, especially on confidential information from various sources or news sources that have been examined, Mr Amnuay said.

It will enable thorough examination and screening processes to be employed that will allow information to be clarified, understood and shared among the network, he added.

All data is examined and explored in depth in a proactive manner. Its a great opportunity for the DSI network to have a data validation driven process. Seeking information and being ready to solve problems in the right direction through cooperation in a strong volunteer network.

Mr Nikhom Suwanrungruang added that setting up an office in Phuket is part of the process of the DSIs national expansion plans and will allow the group to cooperate with local authorities and exchange information to help prevent crime.

Mr Nikhom will oversee the facilitation of the office although it was not confirmed who will be positioned in Phuket fulltime to run the office on a day-to-day basis not where the office will be based.

It was also confirmed that in addition to Phuket the DSI is looking to establish a further six new offices in Bueng Kan Province, Phitsanulok Province, Nan Province (Pua District Sub-branch), Maha Sarakham Province, Bangkok (Don Mueang District), and Surat Thani Province. (Koh Samui District).

The Department of Special Investigation is a department of the Ministry of Justice of Thailand. It operates independently of the Royal Thai Police and is tasked with the investigation of certain special cases.
Singapore Ambassador talks return of cruise tourism to Phuket

PHUKET: Kevin Cheok, Singapore Ambassador to Thailand, has paid a courtesy call on the Governor of Phuket to discuss plans to re-open cruise tourism between the two islands.

tourismeconomicsCOVID-19

By The Phuket News

Wednesday 23 March 2022, 05:34PM

Singapore Ambassador Kevin Cheok (left) speaks with Phuket Governor Narong Woonciew earlier today (Mar 23). Photo: PR Phuket

Phuket Governor Narong Woonciew and Phuket Vice Governor Pichet Panapong welcomed Ambassador Cheok at the Phuket Governors Lounge at Phuket Provincial Hall this morning (Mar 23).

Governor Narong opened the pleasantries. In 2020, I had the opportunity to meet with the Ambassador of the Republic of Singapore in Thailand to drive the opening of direct flights from Singapore to Phuket, which clearly resulted in concrete results. Therefore, I would like to take this opportunity to thank Singapore for having direct flights to Phuket, he said.

Ambassador Cheok noted that on average there are currently two Singapore-Phuket flights per day. By next week, it will increase to four flights per day, which will be similar to before the COVID-19 epidemic, when there were about five flights per day, he said.

On this occasion I would like to thank Phuket as well. I have spoken with Singaporeans who live in Phuket. They appreciate Phuket [officials] for taking good care of Singaporean tourists staying in Phuket, he added.

Amb Cheok said that the COVID infection situation in Singapore was similar to that being experienced in Phuket. About 99% of those infected are asymptomatic or suffering only very mild symptoms, he said.

We have also found that the weely infection growth rate from COVID-19 infections has been consistenly less than 1, which means cases in Singapore are declining, he noted.*

Dr Kusak Kukiattikoon, Chief of the Phuket Provincial Public Health Office (PPHO) said that the rate of infections in Phuket was likely to continue to decrease.

Most of the infected people [in Phuket] are Green patients, meaning mostly asymptomatic, which has resulted in lower rates of hospital bed use, Dr Kusak said.

Phuket has passed the peak of infections already. Phuket is well managed and the people of Phuket have adapted to live in the midst of the coronavirus situation very well.

More than 87% of people in Phuket have been vaccinated with complete doses and we have a fatality rate at the national level of only 0.7%, and in Phuket only 0.2% of those infected have died, Dr Kusak said.

Ambassador Cheok noted that both Phuket and Singapore were entering the transition to consider COVID-19 an endemic disease.

Once that happens, I can see Singapore re-opening cruise routes between Singapore and Thailand. This should help boost the tourism sector and the economy of Phuket, he said.

Amb Cheok highlighted that in 2019 about 110 cruise ships from Singapore docked in Phuket, carrying more than 250,000 passengers.

Amb Cheok proposed that Phuket and Singapore start drafting harmonized cruise standards, such as any required measures including any exemptions from RT-PCR tests before and during travel.

They can provide an ATK test from Singapore before departure instead, he said.

Passengers on board will be fully vaccinated and undergo Antigen Rapid Test** from Singapore prior to departure, he added.

Governor Narong voiced his support for the move.

Phuket is ready to take care of tourists who come to travel in Phuket. This is the intention of Thailand: to take care of the tourists who come to visit and help restore Thailands economy as best as possible, he said.

Governor Narong assigned local officials to start working on drafting the measures required for cruise tours so they would be ready to be implemented as soon as they are allowed to be used.

The draft proposal is to be submitted to the central government.

* The Singapore embassy later contacted The Phuket News to confirm that this was the accurate sentence said.

** The preferred term in Singapore for what Thais call the Antigen Test Kit (ATK).
News

Clash with Philipsburg Revitalization Corp. brings unknown status to Cruise-In event

File People milled about North Front Street in Philipsburg during last years cruise-in. The status of a cruise-in this year is unknown following action taken at a recent borough council meeting.

PHILIPSBURG  The Philipsburg Revitalization Corporation withdrew their request for a cruise-in street closure at a recent borough council meeting, leading to confusion about the status of the event.

The PRC was originally the events sponsor. The cruise-ins organizer, Eric Bordas, recently decided to no longer seek sponsorship following a disagreement. With the PRCs action, officials questioned if the event would still occur.

Bordas, in a phone interview yesterday, stated he was shocked upon discovering the cruise-in on North Front Street was no longer secured.

Im blindsided by the turn of events from last night, Bordas stated. I just actually picked up my insurance paperwork and took it to the borough only to be told that I no longer have an event, that I have to resubmit it next month.

Bordas organized a cruise-in held last year as part of a festival in Philipsburg. The festival was in response to the cancellation of Philipsburg Heritage Days last year.

The separation from the PRC was due to a disagreement regarding raffles, Bordas stated. He was originally going to do a Harley-Davidson raffle. Bordas said the money would have been split between the PRC and cruise-in. The cruise-in would use it for future raffles. Bordas then decided on a Harley-Davidson and jewelry raffle.

He said the PRC said he could only do the Harley-Davidson raffle. There was also an agreement involved. Bordas said the agreement was not beneficial to the cruise-in.

The raffle is now a partnership effort with Chester Hill Hose Co. Bordas said he already has 1,200 jewelry raffle tickets in circulation.

After the disagreement, Bordas stated that he would not move forward with the PRC. He stated he was not aware the PRC would withdraw a request for the street closure, only that the organization would pull their insurance. Bordas noted he already has insurance coverage for the event.

Confusion stems from a motion made in August for the cruise-in. At the August meeting, Bordas appeared before council. He asked if it would be possible to make the event annual and set a date for July 2 with the same setup as last year.

Council made a motion to do that. The specifics of the motion were not dictated. There is no known record of the PRC directly asking for a street closure for the event.

The event was at the time using the PRCs liability insurance, according to Secretary Shelley Walstrom. Walstrom believes this qualifies the event as a PRC event.

PRC President Eric Rusnak made the withdrawal request to council. I dont want to discourage people from going to the event. Its a good event, but he doesnt want the PRC to sponsor it anymore, he said. So we cant be the sponsor in closing the road.

Council made a motion to acknowledge the request of the PRC to withdraw their request for street closure for the cruise-in.

If Bordas returns to council, he may be asked to change the time. Kevin Conklin, representing the Rowland Theatre, raised concerns about the planned cruise-in. He stated the event could conflict with a Rowland Theatre event, an ABBA Tribute Band, set for 7 p.m. on July 2.

Conklin told council he would like it if the group was wrapped up by 5 p.m. At 5 oclock, we have to have the street open, cleaned up and gone, like nothing ever happened, he said. Because theres a lot of people coming in from out of town for that show. Its going to be a rather large show for us.

Bordas said he would be willing to clear the streets but wants to keep the location on North Front Street.

Were trying to do the right thing. Were trying to just maintain our original spot, and I dont have a problem clearing the streets and making sure everybodys gone by five oclock, Bordas said.

He plans to talk to council members about the situation. If he cannot get the spot, his backup is to move the cruise-in out of Philipsburg Borough to Chester Hill.
Get full access to our electronic edition, website and print delivery!

Note that you will need to create a site user account. If you do not already have one, to purchase an instant subscription.

Local area rates are for Randolph, Chambers, Clay and Cleburne counties in Alabama
Red Hot Chili Peppers are all set to be honoured with a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame. It's about bloody time!

The four funk rockers, Anthony Kiedis, Chad Smith, Flea and John Frusciante, will receive the 2,717th star on Hollywood Boulevard.

The ceremony will kick off on Thursday 31st March 2022 and all four band members will be in attendence, with producer George Clinton set to unveil the star.

Hollywood Walk of Fame producer Ana Martinez said:

"Our hometown Hollywood boys are finally coming to collect their star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.



"We have been waiting for them to break away from their busy schedules to dedicate their star, and we are thrilled to welcome them to our Walk of Fame family."

How good.

RHCP's 12th studio album 'Unlimited Love', which features the singles 'Black Summer' and 'Poster Child', is set for release on Friday 1st April 2022.

Related: Someone has made Red Hot Chili Peppers' 'Californication' into a video game.

Related: RHCP' bassist Flea convinced guitarist John Frusciante to rejoin the band.
THE SHORTHORN is accepting applications

for summer & fall 2022 for:



 Writing and editing

 Photo and design

 Ad sales and marketing

 Web development

 Support staff



Apply online & view job descriptions at:

www.theshorthorn.com/jobs



Current UTA students enrolled in at least six credit hours during the semester of employment and in good academic standing are eligible to apply for these paid positions. Some qualify for internship credit.


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

Sunshine to start, then a few afternoon clouds. High 17C. Winds W at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

A few clouds. Low 6C. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph.
Heber Springs, AR (72543)

Today

Thunderstorms - some locally heavy downpours are possible, especially during the afternoon hours. A few storms may be severe. High 67F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 100%..

Tonight

Scattered thunderstorms during the evening. Partly cloudy skies after midnight. Low 54F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60%.
BETHALTO  Daniel Adams has been named manager of the St. Louis Regional Airport.

The St. Louis native has worked at airports in St. Louis, Georgia and Ohio for more than 10 years.

Dans proven airport operations experience, coupled with his energetic leadership attitude, will be a huge asset for our airport and our communities, said Airport Authority Chairman Wendell Ross.

Starting April 4, Adams will succeed interim manager Robert McDaniel to oversee the airports daily operations and lead its future growth and development. Former manager David Miller retired in December after 18 years at the airport; his successor, Bob Snuck, resigned in January.

Adams is a 2012 graduate of Saint Louis University with a bachelor's degree in Aviation Management and Flight Science and holds a commercial pilot's license. He started his career as an intern at the St. Louis Downtown Airport where he helped with special events and did airfield work, including turf maintenance, airfield lighting, pavement work and hangar and building repair.

Im truly excited about the opportunity to come back home, lead the airport and become a part of the community," Adams said. "The airport is the crown jewel of the area and has tremendous potential for growth and economic development. I look forward to the challenge.

Adams worked at the Augusta (Georgia) Regional Airport from 2013 to 2015 before joining the Columbus (Ohio) Regional Airport Authority in 2015 as airport operations coordinator. In 2018 he was named senior coordinator of airport operations and, in August 2019, Adams became operations supervisor for the airport. The authority oversees John Glenn Columbus International Airport, Rickenbacker International Airport and Bolton Field airports.

The St. Louis Regional Airport provides more than 1,500 jobs with an annual economic impact of $480 million. Its operations are paid for by an airport taxation district which collects taxes from property owners in Alton, Wood River, Foster and Fort Russell townships. West Star Aviation  acquired last month by The Sterling Group, a private equity firm  has one of its major facilities at the airport.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

W.C. Fields was once quoted as saying, Never work with animals or children. In this film, Ruby whose real name is Bear steals almost every scene from the other actors. Maybe Fields knew something.

I have another dog movie for the whole family to watch.

Rescued by Ruby is a Netflix film and a true story.

Ruby is a very cute border collie mix that was adopted multiple times and then quickly returned to the animal shelter she thought of as home because of her generally "unmanageable" personality.

Rhode Island State Trooper Daniel O'Neil (Grant Gustin) needs a young dog to train to pursue his dream of joining the K-9 search and rescue team. ONeil was rejected seven times and has one last chance to qualify before he turns 30.

Ruby is hours away from being euthanized when ONeil adopts her.

Kaylah Zander plays Melissa, ONeils very patient and loving wife. Scott Wolf, a face many will remember from the Party of Five TV show in the late 90's, is Matt Zarrella, head of the K-9 Unit. I worked for Director Harry Winer when he was directing an episode of the show and had the pleasure of meeting Wolf and watching him work.

Camille Sullivan is Pat, the woman who works at the animal shelter and loves Ruby but cant adopt the dog because of the menagerie she already has at home. Tom McBeath is Seamus, a mystery man.

I enjoyed the scenes between Dan and Melissa. ust when I thought she was about to haul off and belt him one, shed do something sweet and forgiving. I would have belted him one; Im not that sweet.

Fans will recognize Gustin as the Flash/Barry Allen, a DC Comics character on television. I would like to see him in more movies. He was quite good.

Katt Shea directed Rescued by Ruby, and the screenplay was written by Karen Janzen. Although the film is very predictable, that is what you want in this story. The script is very clean. There is no foul language or sex; the film is rated G.

At the end of the film, they show the out-takes they made with the animals and children. I love out-takes; it shows just how funny we can be.

Rescued by Ruby is only an hour and 37 minutes  just enough time to make you feel good. And I promise you will want to go to the nearest animal shelter and rescue a new pet. If you are unable to rescue a cat or dog, please give a generous donation or volunteer.
Wednesday's pre-trial hearing for Robert "Bobby" J. Tarr, the Collinsville man accused of murder and attempted murder, lasted a few minutes.

David Fahrenkamp, Tarr's attorney, said he has received a memory storage unit from the State's Attorney's office that contains discovery evidence and that he's in the process of "going through it." However, the Edwardsville attorney pointed it what he has isn't enough.

"There's some data I'm going to need above and beyond that," Fahrenkamp said of the memory storage unit.

Read more: Murder suspect bond reduction motion for Wednesday's hearing

Fahrenkamp said he is still waiting for autopsy and time of death information, but added it could very well be within the discovery he has and that he has yet to come across it. In response, Montgomery County State's Attorney Andrew Affrunti said he's working on getting cell phone information of the two victims to Fahrenkamp.

Those two victims are Leslie Reeves of Troy and Chris Smith of Farmersville.

Tarr is accused of shooting both Reeves and Smith in the head at Smith's Farmersville home. Reeves, who previously dated Tarr, died. Smith spent weeks in a Springfield, Illinois ICU and is slowly working his way back learning how to walk again and going through additional rehabilitation exercises.

Read more: Accused killer left home twice the night of Farmersville homicide

Tarr is charged with three counts of first degree murder in Reeves' death and one count of attempted first degree murder in regard to Smith. He is being held on $3 million bond at the Montgomery County Jail.

The next pre-trial hearing is scheduled for 11 a.m. Wednesday, May 18.
EDWARDSVILLE  An Edwardsville man was charged with sex assault after initiating sex with sleeping woman.

Kyle E. Hickman, 42, of Edwardsville, was charged with criminal sexual assault, a Class 1 felony.

The case was presented by the Alton Police Department.

According to court documents, on March 20 Hickman allegedly attempted sexual contact with a sleeping woman who he knew was unable to give knowing consent.

Bail was set at $150,000.

Other felony charges filed March 22 by the Madison County States Attorneys Office include:

 Victor L. Smith, 32, of Alton, was charged with aggravated domestic battery, a Class 2 felony. The case was presented by the Alton Police Department. According to court documents, on March 17 Smith allegedly strangled a household or family member. Bail was set at $50,000.

 Christopher J. Loyet, 44, of Marine, was charged with aggravated domestic battery, a Class 2 felony, and domestic battery (second subsequent offense), a Class 4 felony. The case was presented by the Madison County Sheriffs Department. On March 21 Loyet allegedly strangled a household or family member. He has a 2008 conviction for domestic battery out of Madison County. Bail was set at $50,000.

 Lauren E. Semanisn, 34, of Staunton, was charged with aggravated battery, a Class 2 felony. The case was presented by the Madison County Sheriffs Department. On March 21 Semanisin allegedly kicked a Madison County sheriffs deputy in the leg. Bail was set at $25,000.

 Brian P. Schmitz, 39, of Highland, was charged with unlawful possession of a stolen firearm, a Class 2 felony. The case was presented by the Madison County Sheriffs Department. On Jan. 6 Schmitz allegedly had a reported stolen Smith & Wesson 22 pistol. Bail was set at $53,000.

 Darion C. Wren, 20, of Madison, was charged with aggravated unlawful use of weapons, a Class 4 felony. The case was presented by the Illinois State Police. On Oct. 10 Wren allegedly had a Smith & Wesson SW9VE 9 mm handgun in a 2004 Chevrolet Impala while under 21. Bail was set at $25,000.
EDWARDSVILLE  A 17-year-old Missouri youth pleaded guilty to the January 2021 murder of SIUE student Moneer Damra in what has been described as a random shooting A Missouri youth pleaded guilty to the January 2021 killing of SIUE student Moneer Damra.

Jacob S. Godoy, 17, of Woodson Terrace, Missouri, pleaded guilty during a Wednesday morning hearing before Associate Judge Neil Schroeder.

Godoy and Jimmy R. Ortiz, 20, of Hazelwood, had been charged, and Godoy later indicted, in the death of Damra.

Damra, 26, of Chicago, died at Barnes Jewish Medical Center in St. Louis about two weeks after being shot in the neck Jan. 14, 2021, on the ramp from Illinois 157 to Interstate 270 in Glen Carbon.

Damra was studying to become an Army nurse. Friends and fellow students described him as a beautiful soul, compassionate, a good motivator, and a friend they could count on for encouragement and positivity.

Godoy and Ortiz had originally been charged with attempted first-degree murder, but the charges were upgraded after Damra died in a St. Louis hospital.

Godoy was 16 at the time but he was charged as an adult because of the murder charges.

Godoy was the shooter, while Ortiz was described as one for whose conduct he is legally accountable, referring to Godoy. Court records show Ortiz has an April trial date set.

Sentencing for Godoy is set for 1 p.m. May 27.
[March 23, 2022] UJET Teams with Google Cloud to Deliver Complete AI-Powered Contact Center Platform UJET, Inc., the intelligent, modern contact center platform, today announced a broader relationship with Google Cloud, extending its Contact Center AI (CCAI) to include a native, AI-powered, contact center platform. CCAI customers can now unify their contact center technology stack with a complete cloud-native solution, managed, delivered and supported by Google Cloud, and running on Google Cloud Platform (GCP). "UJET and Google Cloud are working together to deliver customer experience innovation at enterprise standards for security, scale, and reliability - removing previous barriers to cloud adoption and digital transformation," said Vasili Triant, Chief Operating Officer at UJET. "With this unified solution, Google's customers can simplify and accelerate digital transformation and the incorporation of AI in their customer and agent experience." Through this agreement, Google is expanding the Contact Center AI solution suite, unifying the technology stack for Contact Centers. UJET and Google Cloud will partner to jointly develop and deliver the Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) roadmap, offering even further consolidation of contact center technologies and AI-powered innovation in the future. Leading brands across retail, financial services, and healthcare have invested heavily in AI, cloud, and digital transformation over the last two years. However, according to Salesforce's 2021 State of Service Report, 88% of service teams continue to see technology gaps. Data management, compliance, infrastructure upgrades and business logic integration across disparate systems continue to stal progress for both customer service leaders and their technology counterparts. As consumer demand for self-service and digital engagement continues to rise, organizations that invest in consolidated solutions across AI and customer experience will secure significant competitive advantages around consumer preference and loyalty.

"The last few years have taught us that in order for a company to thrive they must maintain customer confidence with quick and clear communication," said Andrew Moore, vice president and general manager of AI and industry solutions at Google Cloud. "Our Contact Center AI Platform has enabled our customers to leverage AI in their contact centers at scale to provide the best possible customer experience. Now with UJET, we are able to further extend our offering through a unified technology stack for contact centers to continue to cost effectively maintain a high level of customer satisfaction." According to industry analyst Sheila McGee-Smith of McGee-Smith Analytics, "Google Cloud's Contact Center AI is already a force in the contact center industry thanks to its early focus on AI for customer experience. She continued, "Through their partnerships with UJET and Salesforce, as well as these expanded capabilities, Google Cloud's Contact Center AI Platform will help define the future of customer service by powering more secure, engaging and personalized customer experiences." The announcement follows a series of agreements between Google and UJET, all designed to accelerate and scale AI-powered contact center innovation for the two companies' joint customers. Recent announcements include Google Cloud as UJET's preferred CCaaS cloud vendor, availability of UJET's CCaaS solution on Google Cloud Marketplace, and certification of UJET for Google's Chrome Enterprise Recommended program. To learn more, Google ujet.cx. About UJET UJET is reimagining the contact center for modern consumers and brands. Our one-of-a-kind architecture delivers an entirely new foundation for security, reliability, and scale across customer service operations. A full voice and digital engagement suite is complemented by powerful AI and advanced analytics capabilities, and easy-to-use, intuitive design to make life easier for everyone involved - from customers and agents to supervisors and executives - all while driving meaningful operational efficiencies. Smart device capabilities like channel blending, photo and video sharing, and biometric authentication are available to deploy for full CX transformation when you're ready. Innovative brands like Instacart, Fitbit, OneUnited Bank, Turo, and Moneylion trust UJET to deliver exceptional CX, no matter their size or location. So can you. Learn more at www.ujet.cx. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220323005633/en/

[ Back To SIP Trunking Home's Homepage ]
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

ELSAH  Early American pottery can be found right here in the Riverbend.

Crocker and Springer Salt-Glazed Stoneware and Redware, in Elsah, seems to be the best-kept secret as far as fine crafts in the Riverbend. The studios owners Jonathan Jon and Jan Wright, also live in Elsah Hills, outside the historic village of Elsah. The couple have been perfecting this craft over the last 35 years and their work is annually featured in the national Directory of Traditional American Crafts, of which its featured craftsmen are jury selected.

Weve been accepted for that every year since 1991, which is a big deal for us, Jan Wright said. Its a perfect target market for what we do. Our customers become friends over the years and come from far and wide to the studio.

The potters' studio is at 25337 Beltrees Road, about a mile east of the Principia College entrance, where its been for 35 years. Although they do not offer classes on how to make the pottery, they do offer demonstrations for the public. To schedule a visit, call or text 618-466-8624 or email jonjanwright@gmail.com.

There is an outdoor massive kiln used in the process for salt-glazed pottery and an electric kiln used for redware pottery, which is decorative only.

The business is all about cultural history and the preservation of cultural history, Jon Wright said. The salt-glaze stoneware and redware originated from the Rhine Valley of Germany in the 13th century. Early settlers who came here brought the knowledge. It was a carefully guarded secret in Europe.

He said the craft spread west during the U.S. Industrial Revolution. Glass came, and processes changed as settlers moved west where salt-glazed and redware became less popular, and less practiced.

Its not as commonly done and not as commonly known and recognized in this area and westward, Jan Wright noted. It was popular from the mid-Atlantic to New England and Eastern Ohio, but not so much farther west from there.

Weve always been interested in that historic and cultural preservation, she said. Not many people do this kind of pottery and stoneware. Its quite difficult.

The Wrights frequently travel to Northeastern Ohio markets, which is about the farthest west they physically extend their efforts.

Jon Wright built the studios building, kiln, warecarts, displays, equipment, mixers and spray booth.

Hes a jack-of-all trades, Jan Wright said. He has so many skills in addition to making pots, and skills to build the studio and everything on the property, just about.

Salt-glazed stoneware and redware require two completely different processes and kilns. Crocker and Springers salt kiln is located in a shed next to the building.

We dont fire it often, maybe two to three times a year, but it holds 300 pieces depending on the size, Jan Wright said. We fire the redware in a small electric kiln, which is much easier to fire.

Salt has a mind of its own, she said. Jon built a number of salt kilns over the years. He loves fire; another thing, if hes making pottery, he can use his fire skills, and knows how to control the fire.



Both are art majors graduates from of Principia College. They met at the college, married in 1986, and founded Crocker and Springer in 1987.

At Principia, it had a limited 3D program, and he took the two pottery courses offered, Jan Wright said. Jon Wright also did independent study in clay and woodworking; Jan Wright studied two-dimensional art.

We wanted to do something that would use both our skills, said Jan Wright, who uses her knowledge to spray, paint and carve the Crocker and Springer stoneware and redware. With pottery, he could throw the pots and I could paint, sculpt and carve the pieces.

She uses a carving process known as sgraffito, a technique of applying to an unfired ceramic body two successive layers of contrasting slip, or glaze, and then in either case scratching so as to reveal parts of the underlying layer.

The couple also spent time at the acclaimed Penland School of Craft in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, where Jan Wright is from originally.

Penland School taught any handcrafted teaching you could think of, she said.

The Wrights have collected a huge library of books they constantly read and reference.

Weve read and tried and experimented; sometimes we failed but found victory along the way, Jan Wright said. I feel weve learned a lot in 35 years.

Jon Wright is from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, north of Philadelphia, where theres a passionate love of antiques in the states eastern portion where many now-antiques were made. His mother collected antiques.

She had a beautiful collection and Jon inherited from her a beautiful salt-glazed pitcher, Jan Wright recalled. We wanted to do a craft together and saw an article in Country Home magazine in late 86, early 87. It was about Rowe Pottery in Wisconsin.

The pots were of a cold gray color with electric blue, she recalled, fired with wood instead of by a computerized kiln. They were nicely made, but looking at the antiques, those were so much more soulful. We thought we could do this, but make the pots look older.

Jon Wright built a giant wood kiln which fired their early pieces, but the pieces were unsalvageable. He tore it down and made a more manageable outdoor kiln which operates partially with propane and partially with wood.

With salt glaze the pottery is fired only once versus twice like most pottery. The kiln itself puts a glaze on the pieces, Jan Wright explained.

Salt-glaze pottery, usually stoneware, has a glaze of glossy, translucent and slightly orange-peel-like texture which is formed by throwing sodium chloride, common salt, into the kiln during the highest temperature part of the firing process. Sodium from the salt reacts with silica in the clay body to form a glassy coating, or glaze, of sodium silicate, also known as water glass or soluble glass, a compound containing sodium oxide and silica that forms a glassy solid.

The pots come out having amazing glass on the surface and I havent put a glaze on it, Wright said. The kiln itself has heated up to 2,250 to 2,300 degrees and takes about 30 hours from start to finish, a very slow 30-ish-hour period.

She gradually increases the heat or risks ruining the entire content of the kiln. When the kiln is heated, at that point its hot enough to blow salt into the kiln.

Under that high of heat, it immediately goes from solid to liquid to gas in seconds, she said. "Like snap, crackle, pop, swirling as gas in the kiln. The sodium chloride bonds with silica, which is the main ingredient of clay, and forms sodium silicate, which is the chemical name for glass.

The sodium bonds with the surface of the pots and forms glass on the surfaces. The clear glaze caused by the heat and salt being introduced to it, forms an orange peel kind of textured antique glaze. That is the mark of having been salt glazed.

The glaze may be colorless or may have shades of brown from iron oxide, blue from cobalt oxide or purple from manganese oxide.

Some might be in the cooler part of the kiln, farther from the firebox. Some may be very glossy with cobalt dripping down; wood ash can cause drips, she said. Each one tells a story about where it was in the kiln. No two ever look just alike; they might start out identical and come out totally different.

Its like Christmas every time we open up the kiln, she said. We try to help educate customers as to why its not an exact science and thats the beauty of it.

Wright said, for a while, there were several large salt-glaze potteries around the country that are not in business anymore. Rowe Pottery remains in business and makes several styles of pottery.

You have to know what youre doing to do what youre doing, Jan Wright said. Its difficult and we are happy to have visitors pick our brains. Were not shy about sharing our process.

Art classes from Principia usually visit the studio once a year when students do a clay laboratory workshop for a couple of days.

We are better known nationally than locally, Wright said. We have a small sales area but dont have walk-in traffic. We are not aggressive marketers but do spontaneous demonstrations.

The Wrights have traveled to fine craft shows in the Washington, D.C. area of Mount Vernon Square, New England and Shaker villages over the years. They also find a market from Early American Life magazine, which also provides a perfect target market.

Its like the Bible to them; people save it and refer back to it, Jan Wright said.

Currently the studio has very few pieces in its showroom, as the Wrights had a very good fall and winter season. Pieces take months to produce. Pieces available for sale can be seen on Crocker and Springer Salt-Glazed Stoneware and Redwares Facebook page. There also are a few ornaments, and sometimes the Wrights make mugs or creamers. But they like doing bigger or unusual pieces, Jan Wright said.

For more information call 618-466-8624 or email jonjanwright@gmail.com and visit escapetoelsah.com/shopping.
Cybersecurity experts have been puzzled by the absence of a major cyberattack from Russia in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine and in retaliation for crippling sanctions.

Kremlin-backed hackers have previously shut down Ukrainian electric grids and propagated malware that caused an estimated $10 billion worth of global damage. This time, barring a few issues on Ukrainian websites and the disruption of a satellite internet provider, its been quiet on the hacking front. Prevailing theories have been that Russias cyber capabilities are not that great, while Ukraine has become better at defending its networks.

A new warning from the White House suggests something more calculated: Russia has simply chosen not to do anything yet. President Vladimir Putin may well have been keeping his cyber assault on hold for the right moment.

Heres the key line in President Joe Bidens statement, published Monday afternoon in Washington: Today, my Administration is reiterating those warnings based on evolving intelligence that the Russian Government is exploring options for potential cyberattacks.

Exploring options could mean a number of things.

U.S. intelligence has been largely right in predicting Russias next moves since invading, so theres good reason to take Bidens warning seriously. Anne Neuberger, the deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technology, said on Monday that U.S. intelligence had observed preparatory activity, and that federal agencies last week had convened more than 100 companies to share new cybersecurity threat intelligence.

She added that there was no certainty there will be a cyber incident on critical infrastructure, and that Bidens warning was a call to action.

Cyberattacks have a psychological impact, hurting morale as much as actual infrastructure. They create the illusion that a shadowy group is in control and, worse, could be hiding in wait to cause even more damage. Putin, a former KGB officer who is well-versed in psychological warfare, may have been letting his missiles create the first wave of collective unease for both Ukrainians and the West.

Fortunately, there are basic things that organizations and individuals can do to mitigate potential threats. Companies can invest in running incident response simulations, disabling remote access for employees where its not critical and patching vulnerabilities they already know about. European banks operating in Russia have taken a more blunt approach by simply separating their Russian units from their main computer systems. Commerzbank AG, for instance, has designed a kill switch to make that separation possible, Bloomberg News reported earlier this month. Individuals should start using two-factor authentication, if they dont already, to log into email and social media when possible.

The prospect of an attack on the horizon can create a sense of powerlessness at organizations, but there is much they can do to limit how bad the damage gets.
Like all cultural institutions, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame has been under pressure to diversify its honorees, given the preponderance of old white guy rockers on its roster. So it turned to one of the few American figures left who is beloved by both red- and blue-state America: Dolly Parton.

Thus the 76-year-old singer-songwriter-actress-humanitarian, the pride of Sevier County, Tennessee, and the business-savvy icon of the Dollywood theme park, found herself on the ballot for membership, even though she is, of course, known as a country music singer. That genre has its own Nashville-based Hall of Fame, which elected Parton to membership in 1999.

Parton did not care for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame plan, respectfully declining the nomination on the grounds that she had never made what she considered to be a rock n roll album.

Even though I am extremely flattered and grateful to be nominated for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, I dont feel that I have earned that right, she wrote. So I must respectfully bow out.

This is not the first honor Parton has declined. In 2021, she politely asked the Tennessee General Assembly to nix a bill that would have started the process for commissioning a statue of her on the grounds of Tennessees state Capitol, part of what panicked legislators thought was a bipartisan solution to a controversy over the potential removal of a bust there of a Confederate general.

Maybe when I am dead, she said, in essence. Not now.

Good for Parton. Shes well aware of the dangers of being used by others with agendas under the guise of being honored. Shes a humble person, well aware of the downside to overexposure and the ensuing backlash, and both old and powerful enough to state her own mind.

That statue idea went away fast. Nobody messes with Dollys wishes in Tennessee. But the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame unaccountably kept Partons name on the ballot.

It put out a weaselly, defensive statement last week, defending its nomination of her by saying that rock n roll is not defined by any one genre, rather a sound that moves youth culture, which is ridiculous corporate babble. And then it whined defensively that it had already sent out 1,200 ballots.

Listen up, Hall of Fame people. Did you not hear that Parton does not want to be nominated? What you should have said was: We respect Dollys wishes. Period.

Membership in a hall of fame should not be compulsory with a process continued despite the clearly stated wishes of the honoree. And for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame to be charting this course is especially egregious; rock n roll is founded on freedom.

Parton must be free to bow out.
COLLINSVILLE  A Belleville woman has been sentenced to probation and fined for failing to administer life saving measures to a Collinsville nursing home.

According to the Illinois State Police, licensed practical nurse Christy McCall, 45, of Belleville, pleaded guilty to reckless conduct for not administering life saving measures to a resident living in the Collinsville Rehabilitation and Healthcare Center on Aug. 1, 2017.

McCalls original charges of criminal neglect of a long term care facility resident resulting in death and criminal neglect of a long term care facility resident resulting in injury were vacated as terms of the guilty plea.

Last week McCall was sentenced to 12 months of probation, with fines and fees of $1,039.

On Aug. 1, 2017, the administrator of Collinsville Rehabilitation and Healthcare Center notified the Illinois State Police Medicaid Fraud Control Bureau of an allegation that McCall neglected to provide proper care to a resident, leading to the death. The state police investigation revealed McCall failed to intervene and assess the resident's deteriorating medical condition and failed to administer cardio pulmonary resuscitation (CPR) after being alerted by other nursing home staff of the residents unresponsiveness.

State police said McCall did not enter the residents room to render necessary medical aid, which ultimately contributed to the residents death.



The case was presented to the Madison County State's Attorney's Office for prosecution, leading to formal criminal charges being filed against McCall. The Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation also suspended her nursing license due to this investigation.



The dedicated men and women of the Illinois State Police Medicaid Fraud Control Bureau are committed to conducting investigations to safeguard the Medicaid system, stated Illinois State Police Director Brendan F. Kelly. The Illinois State Police takes these types of allegations seriously and will continue to thoroughly investigate such allegations and assist in bringing to justice those who attempt to harm those in the long-term care facilities, added Kelly.



People are encouraged to call the ISP Medicaid Fraud Hotline at 888-557-9503 to report suspected fraud or abuse of medical providers involved in the Medicaid system.




Scranton, PA (18503)

Today

Some sun this morning with increasing clouds this afternoon. High 71F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Cloudy with occasional showers overnight. Low 52F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 50%.
London, KY (40741)

Today

A mix of clouds and sun early followed by cloudy skies this afternoon. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 81F. Winds light and variable..

Tonight

Showers and scattered thunderstorms. Low 63F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
IVY GOODMAN, Stonington, Girls, Lacrosse, Senior; Goodman scored 12 goals and had 13 assists in three games. Her seven assists in the Bears win over Waterford established a school record. She surpassed the 50-goal mark for the season in Stoningtons victory over Ledyard.

DEAN PONS JR., Westerly, Baseball, Senior; Pons, a senior, struck out 14 batters in the Bulldogs five-inning win against Wheeler School/Rocky Hill. Pons had an assist on the remaining out, throwing out a runner on a groundout. Pons allowed just one hit and walked only two.

KATIE PIERCE, Wheeler, Girls, Lacrosse, Sophomore; Pierce scored five goals and the Lions beat Griswold to earn their first victory of the season. Wheeler avenged an earlier loss to the Wolverines this season with the 15-4 victory.

WEEKO THOMPSON, Chariho, Girls, Track Sophomore; Thompson, a sophomore, bettered her school record in the discus at the Classical Classic meet. She finished first in the event and also won the shot put.

Vote

View Results
Port Allen, LA (70767)

Today

Sunshine and clouds mixed. High 88F. Winds S at 10 to 20 mph..

Tonight

Thunderstorms. Low around 70F. Winds SSW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 90%.
Two of Britains biggest consumer goods giants are among a string of companies facing mounting pressure to sever their remaining ties with Russia as the war in Ukraine rages.

Unilever and Reckitt Benckiser are among businesses with Russian operations that experts say have blood on their hands.

Others include the European giant Nestle, which has been blasted on Twitter by Ukraines prime minister Denys Shmyhal.

Feeling the chill: Supermodel Cara Delevingne in an advert for Unilever's Magnum ice creams

Shmyhal said: I talked to Nestle chief executive Mark Schneider about the side effects of staying in the Russian market.

Unfortunately, he shows no understanding. Paying taxes to the budget of a terrorist country means killing defenceless children and mothers.

I hope that Nestle will change its mind soon.

The Swiss giant, whose brands include Aero and Cheerios, said it is shocked and deeply saddened by the war and will stop sending some products to the country, but will still sell others such as pet foods and cereals.

Unilever chief executive Alan Jope said the war is a brutal and senseless act by Russia.

He pledged Unilever would stop investing in Russia and would not take any profits from the country.

But he defied calls to pull products from shops shelves including Carte DOr and Magnum ice creams, Dove soap and Knorr stock.

Reckitt, which makes Durex condoms and Strepsils lozenges, highlighted a duty of care to its 1,300 staff in Russia, and the need for its hygiene and health products. It stopped advertising in the country and froze capital investments, but has refused to fully withdraw.

Labour MP Chris Bryant, a member of Parliaments foreign affairs committee, said: Im just mystified that some people dont really get it.

There are people being bombed out of their homes being forced to flee Russian aggression, and some people still think its important to make a few more roubles and fund the Russian tanks. Its despicable.

Unilever boss Alan Jope (pictured) pledged the firm would stop investing in Russia and would not take any profits from the country

Bill Browder, the US anti-corruption campaigner and author of Red Notice, How I Became Putins No 1 Enemy, said: [Vladimir] Putin is murdering thousands of civilians in Ukraine.

Its our responsibility in the West to starve him of any money to continue to execute this war.

Any company that continues to support the Putin regime economically, by conducting business there, is indirectly funding his murder. What we need to do is just cut them off, isolate them economically.

There are a lot of companies that want to be seen to be doing the right thing, but have no intention of doing the right thing.

Those companies need to be called out and shamed. Any company that hasnt pulled out has blood on their hands.

Also still operating in Russia are European brewing giants Heineken, AB Inbev and Carlsberg.

They have withdrawn their flagship brands and ring fenced their Russian operations, but are still brewing and selling beer in the country.

Heineken has stopped selling its namesake beer in Russia, but still sells Lagunitas IPA and local brands. Russias ruling party issued a threat to Western companies, warning that those who leave the country face having their assets nationalised.

Danish brewer Carlsberg said it took that threat very seriously. It said: If we close our Baltika business in Russia, then it is really the same as handing over billions of kroner in assets to the Russian government, who will also benefit from the future income from the brewery.

Between the choice of leaving billions of kroner to the Russian government or continuing to operate so local employees maintain their livelihoods  while donating any profits generated to relief organisations  we believe the latter is preferable.
Troubled online retailer The Hut Group (THG) has named former ITV boss Charles Allen chairman in an attempt to shore up support among investors.

Founder Matt Moulding said the appointment of the 65- year-old City veteran meant that the company would meet the highest standards of corporate governance.

It follows serious concern in the City over the power wielded by Moulding who was executive chairman, chief executive and the largest shareholder when the firm floated on the stock market in September 2020.

Confidence: THG founder Matt Moulding (pictured with wife Jodie) has seen shares slump from 800p in early 2021 to just 89.35p

The stock listed at 500p and peaked close to 800p in early 2021. It has since fallen 90 per cent and last night closed at 89.35p.

Allen  now Lord Allen of Kensington  is charged with reinvigorating the companys management team and refining the groups strategy. He also has a mandate to refresh the board, suggesting further changes could be on the way.

Hut Group sells skincare, make-up and supplements, and its brands include Lookfantastic and Myprotein.

Its main divisions are beauty, nutrition and its tech arm Ingenuity. It was seen as the darling of the stock market when it listed and was the biggest London IPO since the Royal Mail in 2013.

But Moulding, 50, drew heavy criticism for clinging on to his dual role at the top of the company.

He was also THGs landlord and held a golden share giving him the power to block any takeover attempts in the group.

But he was forced to scrap the special share arrangement and in October THG began seeking an independent chairman.

Allen, who took charge yesterday, is currently chairman at construction giant Balfour Beatty and has held a host of high-profile roles in his 30-year career.

He was the boss of ITV between 2004 and 2007 and has been chairman of 2 Sisters Food Group and EMI Music.

City veteran Charles Allen was the boss of ITV and has been chairman of 2 Sisters Food Group and EMI Music

Allen was made a peer in 2013 by then Labour leader Ed Miliband and was a confidant of Tony Blair when he was prime minister.

He said: It is a privilege to be joining as the boards chair with a clear mandate to improve governance and transparency, strengthen the board by improving its independence and diversity, review and develop the strategy and support management as it seeks to further strengthen its talented leadership team.

Hut Group will be hoping he can inspire confidence in the City, with relations between Moulding and investors close to breaking point.

In November Moulding said he regretted listing in London, saying the process had just sucked from start to finish.

The billionaire also hinted that he could take the firm private if its share price performance did not improve.

Liberum analysts said: Following a raft of other improvements to the groups corporate governance structures last year, this appointment addresses nearly all the concerns previously raised.

They added that if the share price fails to improve the business could become a takeover target.
Business leaders have made a last-ditch plea for Chancellor Rishi Sunak to keep VAT at 12.5 per cent for hospitality.

VAT for the sector, which includes pubs, restaurants and bars, was reduced to 5 per cent in 2020 to help firms recover from the first Covid lockdown.

It rose to 12.5 per cent in October last year and is due to return to 20 per cent next month.

VAT for the hospitality sector, which includes pubs, restaurants and bars, was reduced to 5% in 2020 to help firms recover from the first Covid lockdown

But industry leaders have warned Sunak that hospitality faces devastation if the rise goes ahead in todays Spring Statement.

The industry body, UK Hospitality, said firms are already pushing up prices and cutting opening hours because of soaring energy costs.

It said: It is imperative that the Government takes action to support the sector by extending the reduced rate of VAT beyond April and working with the sector to ensure that supply is guaranteed, and that cost pressures are mitigated.

Wetherspoons pub chain boss Tim Martin said the higher level of VAT does not make economic sense.

He said food is VAT-free in supermarkets, putting pubs and restaurants at a disadvantage.

Martin said: Pubs, restaurants and cafes play an important role in the social fabric of the nation, as well as generating employment and vast amounts of taxes for the Treasury.

'The industry understands that governments need tax but there should be a sensible rebalancing, so that all businesses selling similar products are treated in the same way.

Chef Paul Askew of The Art School restaurant in Liverpool said it was crunch time for the industry.

He said: If VAT goes back to 20 per cent its only going to get worse again. The industry has been hit particularly hard by the pandemic and needs time to recover fully.

Russell Nathan, senior partner at accountant HW Fisher, said: British hospitality continues to cling on.

However, the cost of living crisis will be as harmful to the British hospitality industry as Covid-19. We urge that he considers extending VAT relief until at least the end of the year.
The London Metal Exchange (LME) is facing the threat of a lawsuit brought by angry hedge funds following last weeks nickel trading debacle.

The exchange prompted fury from firms who lost out when it cancelled trades as the price of nickel spiked.

Those hedge funds, including New Yorks AQR Capital Management, are seeking legal opinions on whether they can sue the LME.

The London Metal Exchange prompted fury from firms who lost out when it cancelled trades as the price of nickel spiked

The chaos began when Russias invasion of Ukraine prompted fears over the supply of nickel. This pushed up prices of the metal, used in electric car batteries and steel production.

Some investors were shorting nickel meaning they were betting that its price would fall. A big shorter was Tsingshan Holding Group, a Chinese producer.

As the price rose, Tsingshan had to buy into nickel  pushing the price to above $100,000 in a matter of hours, and the LME suspended trading.

It also cancelled several trades meaning funds such as AQR, which were due to make a massive profit, saw their winnings disappear.

Clifford Asness, the boss of AQR, tweeted: In legal terms Im really curious if them using their power, which I grant is likely buried in the documents, to explicitly favour one side because of flat out corruption, changes things.

Nickel is now $28,290 a ton.

LME declined to comment.
Europe could face fuel rationing amid a shortage of diesel following the invasion of Ukraine, the heads of three of the largest commodity traders have warned.

Vitol, Gunvor and Trafigura issued the stark assessment after estimating sanctions imposed on Russia could see as much as 3m barrels of oil and oil-related products lost per day.

Half of European diesel imports come from Russia while the UK relies on the country for 18 per cent of its diesel consumption.

Rationing threat: Half of European diesel imports come from Russia while the UK relies on the country for 18% of its diesel consumption

Russell Hardy, chief of Swiss oil trader Vitol, said: The thing that everybodys concerned about will be diesel supplies. That systemic shortfall of diesel is there.

Hardy, who was speaking at the FT Commodities Global Summit, also acknowledged the possibility of rationing fuel. Shipbrokers have said that Russias declining diesel exports have increased the prospect of global refineries attempting to profit from soaring prices.

Torbjorn Tornqvist, co-founder and chairman of Geneva-based Gunvor Group, said: Diesel is not just a European problem. This a global problem.

Amrita Sen, chief oil analyst at Energy Aspects, said that diesel is by far the worst affected of the products.

Jeremy Weir, chief executive of Singapore-based Trafigura, pointed towards the growing absence of Russian oil from the global market. He said: The diesel market is extremely tight. Its going to get tighter.

UK diesel pump prices have risen 40 per cent over a year to a record-high 176.76p per litre, the RAC has said.
Dignity shares tumbled today as the group warned its bottom line could be hit as the pandemic eases.

The funeral business swung back to a profit last year as the easing of lockdown restrictions meant more people could attend funerals.

A new pricing strategy meant revenues fell in 2021 from 314.1million to 312million, but pre-tax profits hit 32million, compared to a pre-tax loss of 19.6million in 2020.

Shares in the group were down 12.59 per cent or 67.00p to 465.00p this afternoon and its share price has fallen over 30 per cent in the past year.

Impact: Dignity shares tumbled today as the group warned its bottom line could be hit as the pandemic eases

Lockdown restrictions at the start of last year continued to impact the business.

The group said: 'Restrictions in client choices due to Covid-19 continued to adversely impact average revenue as clients opted for simpler funerals during the first half of 2021.'

There has been an improvement since restrictions were removed, but Dignity said easing Covid-related death rates once the pandemic subsides further could hurt trade.

The funeral sector has seen a significant spike in business due to excess deaths but has been unable to cash in on additional services because restrictions banned large gatherings.

Dignity revealed, for example, that with the end of restrictions, sales of flowers and memorials increased per funeral to 154.

The company said: 'The biggest factor affecting us is likely to be the death rate and there is a real risk that after Covid-19 passes the excess death effect of the past two years starts to reverse itself, which it will do at some point.'

With the rollout of the Covid-19 vaccine, deaths in 2021 were 14,000 lower than 2020, the company added.

Dignity spent the year implementing changes to the business ahead of new regulations introduced by the Financial Conduct Authority for the pre-paid funeral plan market.

Interim boss Gary Channon set out his plans for the companys future as Dignity saw its chairman ousted last year in a boardroom coup.

He said: '2021 was a year of great change at Dignity as we set out and started implementing the new strategy which at its core promotes a culture focused on serving families and communities in all their end-of-life needs.

'There isnt a part of Dignity that hasnt been affected by the transformation so far as we inverted the whole organisation, empowered those serving clients and organised ourselves in a more collaborative structure.'

Part of the strategy is to reduce prices to stem the fall in market share Dignity has seen in recent years.

Bosses hope this will lead to growth in the number of funerals being carried out by Dignity across its 776 funeral homes and boost profits by volume.

During 2021, 79,200 funerals were held, down from 80,300 in 2020,

Chairman John Castagno said the search for a permanent chief executive remains under way, adding he hopes to 'make an appointment soon.'

Channon was installed last year after Dignitys biggest shareholder Phoenix Asset Management urged investors to oust former chairman Clive Whiley.
SPARKS [mdash] Mrs. Mattie L. Clements Martin, 93, of Sparks, Georgia, passed away at her granddaughter's home on April 25, 2022. Mrs. Martin was born on January 17, 1929 in Colquitt County to the late Ivey Lane Hart and Ola Gay Hart. She lived most of her life in Cook County and was of the 
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)
Tillamook, OR (97141)

Today

Rain likely. High 54F. Winds SSW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch..

Tonight

Showers this evening, becoming a steady rain overnight. Low near 45F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%.
Princeton, KY (42445)

Today

Cloudy this morning with thunderstorms developing this afternoon. A few storms may be severe. High near 75F. Winds SSE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%..

Tonight

Scattered thunderstorms early, then mainly cloudy overnight with thunderstorms likely. A few storms may be severe. Low 62F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%.
Kingsport, TN (37660)

Today

Sunshine and a few afternoon clouds. High 84F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Cloudy skies early, then off and on rain showers overnight. Thunder possible. Low near 65F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 50%.
Webster Groves, MO (63119)

Today

Cloudy this morning. A few showers developing during the afternoon. High 63F. Winds E at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 30%..

Tonight

Showers this evening then thundershowers developing overnight. Low 56F. Winds ENE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%.
More than 3.5 million people have fled abroad from the war in Ukraine, United Nations data showed on Tuesday, leaving Eastern Europe scrambling to provide them with care, schools and jobs even as daily numbers crossing borders ease.

The millions who have left Ukraine since Russias invasion began have made their way on foot, by rail, bus or car to neighbouring countries such as Poland and Romania before some travel on across Europe. Most, however, have not done so.

While fewer have crossed borders over the past week, the scale of the task of providing homes to those seeking safety in the European Union is becoming increasingly apparent, above all in Eastern and Central Europe.

Poland, home to the biggest Ukrainian Diaspora in the region even before the war, has taken in more than 2.1 million people and while some plan to head elsewhere, the influx has left public services struggling to cope.

The number of children of refugees from Ukraine in Polish schools is increasing by about 10,000 per day, Minister of Education Przemyslaw Czarnek told public radio, saying 85,000 children had enrolled in Polish schools.

Czarnek said authorities were organising courses in basic Polish for Ukrainian teachers so they could be employed in local schools and teach preparatory classes for Ukrainian children before entering the school system.

With men of conscription age obliged to remain in Ukraine, the exodus has consisted primarily of women and children, many wanting to stay in countries near Ukraine to be closer to loved ones left behind.

In a video posted on Twitter, Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski said 10,000 Ukrainian students had enrolled in Warsaw schools and that a variety of options, including Ukrainian online classes, were needed to avoid a collapse of the citys education system.

We will be flexible, we will act, because we want all those young people who are in Warsaw to be able to study, whichever option they choose, he said.

More than 500,000 people have fled to Romania, the second most after Poland. Authorities there are trying to accurately size up the task at hand while seeking to recruit Ukrainian teachers from among the refugees.

Cosmina Simiean Nicolescu, head of Bucharests social assistance unit, said 60 Ukrainian children had begun classes there this week while many private kindergartens and schools had welcomed refugees.

With refugee numbers nearing breaking point in parts of Eastern Europe, Nicolescu said refugees were returning to Romania in the hope of finding a less difficult situation.

There are people we have personally put on trains to go to the west who we see back at the train station, she said.

NEW REALITY

The needs of those fleeing shelling and missile attacks across war-torn Ukraine, bearing harrowing memories and the pain of separation from family, stretch well beyond education.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) has organised psychological first aid training near the Polish border with Ukraine to help volunteers provide care for the many struggling mentally.

Paloma Cuchi, the World Health Organizations representative in Poland, estimated 30,000 of those reaching the country suffered from severe mental problems while half a million needed mental health support due to the conflict.

Children have been travelling for days without proper food, without proper water, they are tired, worried, she said.

Barbara Slowinska, a school psychologist, said staff at elementary school number 26 in Gdynia, Poland were working hard to overcome language difficulties and help the 60 children who had arrived from Ukraine integrate.

We try to talk a lot with the children, as much as we can, she said, adding that adjusting to new surroundings was the paramount concern.

They dont speak about traumatic experiences. We ought to rather calm them down with regard to their current reality in Poland, Slowinska said.

That time will come, but that lies ahead. For now they need to come to terms with the reality.

While border crossings such as Medyka in eastern Poland and Isaccea in northeast Romania have grown less busy, officials are wary that any intensification of the fighting in Ukraine could trigger a new influx.

The head of the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR), Filippo Grandi, said on Sunday the war had uprooted 10 million people, most of them still displaced within Ukraine rather than abroad.

Russia denies targeting civilians, describing its actions as a special military operation to demilitarise and denazify Ukraine. Ukraine and Western allies call this a baseless pretext for Russias invasion of a democratic country.

SOURCE: REUTERS
Newscast | Getty Images

Many companies, media outlets and organizations have made the decision to abandon or modify their operations in Russia as a result of the attack on Ukraine, which is 27 days old today. Nestle is not one of them. Although the company announced days ago that it has stopped investments, imports and exports in Russian territory, it also explained that it would continue to sell products such as baby formula and other essential foods in Russian territory.

Nestle's stance has sparked criticism on social media and even prompted a statement from Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky , broadcast on television in Switzerland: "'Good food. Good life.' "That's Nestle's slogan. The company that refuses to leave Russia. Even now, when there are threats from Russia to other European countries. Not just us. When there is even nuclear blackmail from Russia."
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

SCHENECTADY - General Electric Co. is going to play a role in the construction of electric grid infrastructure for New York's offshore wind farm projects.

Empire Offshore Wind, a joint venture between Norway's Equinor and London-based BP, is building three wind farms off the shores of Long Island under contracts with New York.

GE Renewable Energy announced Tuesday that it had been selected by Empire Offshore Wind to build the required high-voltage electrical equipment, including an onshore substation, to bring electricity from the first wind farm, known as Empire Wind 1, to New York. Bond Civil & Utility Construction of Medford, Mass., is partnering with GE on the project.

Terms of the contract were not revealed, but most of the work will take place downstate. GE and Bond intend to open a Brooklyn office to manage the project.

Empire Wind 1 will be built on 80,000 acres of ocean about 20 miles south of Long Island. It will generate enough electricity to power 500,000 homes.

Although GE Renewable Energy is headquartered in Paris, GE is merging it eventually into GE Power, which is headquartered in Schenectady, as part of a new public company that will be spun off in 2024. GE employs several thousand people in Schenectady, including a large group of engineers and scientists in Niskayuna at GE Research.

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has been urging GE to become part of the supply chain of Empire Wind 1, hoping it will create jobs in New York state.

The economic development impact from the three Empire Offshore wind farms is expected to exceed $1 billion and provide enough electricity to power 2 million homes.

Equinor, which is majority-owned by the Norwegian government, is managing the project and will be building major equipment staging and assembly port facilities in Brooklyn and just south of the city of Albany in the towns of Bethlehem and Coeymans.
TROY - Insurance agency Bouchey and Clarke Benefits, Inc. (BCB) has been acquired by Georgia-based OneDigital as the dual insurance brokerage and financial service provider pushes its footprint across New York.

Bob Simeone, managing principal of OneDigital Greater New York, said the acquisition will help the company bridge the gaps between its upstate and downstate properties.
KINGSTON - More than 540 local leaders, residents, groups and businesses have signed a letter asking the state to hold a public hearing in the Hudson Valley on New York's landmark climate plan.

New York is in the midst of devising a plan to carry out the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, the 2019 legislation seeking to decrease carbon emissions 40 percent statewide by 2030 and 85 percent by 2050.

The draft plan was released in the beginning of January, and now the public has until June 10 to submit comments. Ten public hearings were announced last week as part of the comment period - eight in-person and two virtual - but the Hudson Valley region was notably absent.

The region "deserves the opportunity to directly share our perspectives and concerns as part of the public comment process," according to the letter, which was sent to the Climate Action Committee (CAC), which penned the plan, and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, the state's energy regulator.

The letter points to the region's history of environmentalism and to its numerous disadvantaged communities -- defined by CAC as census blocks with low incomes, high minority populations, or both. Forty percent of the spending stemming from the CLCPA must go to these communities.

Forty-five percent of the census blocks in the mid-Hudson Valley region fall into this category, according to the letter, the same proportion as New York City, which has two public hearings scheduled.

Downtime is the best time Make the most of your Hudson Valley weekend, every week with our newsletter.

For those in the Hudson Valley, the closest announced hearings are in Albany or the Bronx.

The letter is signed by local elected officials, including Ulster County Executive Pat Ryan; Assemblymembers Didi Barrett and Kevin Cahill; Kingston Mayor Steve Noble; and various town supervisors, county legislators, activists and residents.

The first public hearing is scheduled for April 4 in the Bronx.
Officials are urging hikers to not wander off trails after a dramatic rescue on Saturday night in Cold Springs Hudson Highlands State Park Preserve, known for its steep overlooks of the Hudson River along popular hikes like Breakneck Ridge.

Cold Spring Fire Chief Jeffrey Phillips Jr. said his department got a call at 9:44 p.m. on Saturday, March 19 about three hikers stranded on a cliff near the Cornish Trail, a long ridgeline hike that leads to the 1,400-foot Bull Hill, also known as Mt. Taurus.

The hikers were near one of the first viewpoints halfway up Bull Hill. Park police, state police, and park staff had determined that a rope rescue was necessary. Route 9D was closed, a command post was established at the bottom of the trail, and the Orange County Technical Rescue Team, which has a mutual aid agreement with the all-volunteer Cold Spring Fire Company No. 1, was dispatched.

Using ATVs from the Cold Spring Fire Co. and the North Highlands Fire Department, the rope team reached the area where the hikers were stranded, then hiked above the stranded hikers to set up small, bright LED lighting, and rappelled down to get to the hikers. The rescued hikers were then harnessed and lowered off the cliff and hiked, along with rescuers, back to the ATVs. None of the hikers, who were evaluated by emergency medical services, or rescuers were injured.

Phillips says any call for a mountain rescue in Putnam County triggers a call to Cold Spring Fire Co. and Philipstown Ambulance. If ATVs are required, a call to North Highlands is triggered, too. Emergency teams in neighboring counties can also be called as part of mutual aid agreements.

Officials: Stay on trail

Phillips says Cold Spring is averaging about 15 such rescues per year for the past three years.

In the states eyes thats not a lot, but it becomes a challenge sometimes, because you get the same guys doing it over and over again, says Phillips, referring to the volunteer firefighters tapped to help hikers.

Phillips says there are common threads among such rescues.

Almost all of the rope rescues that were called to is because somebody wandered off the trail, he says. The trails are marked. The state parks have been doing really well  everything is marked up almost perfectly. So theres really no excuse for it.

Phillips says the most important thing hikers can do is stay on marked trails, and to go in prepared. The three hikers rescued on Saturday had no light source and were inappropriately dressed for the weather.

Rescues at the more popular Breakneck Ridge Trail, whose trailhead is about a mile north of the Cornish Trail, also often require coming to the aid of people who werent adequately dressed, or prepared, for the intensity of the hike, says Phillips.

We see a lot of people going up the mountain wearing open-toed shoes and stuff that you shouldnt be walking on the side of the road in, let alone Breakneck. Do your research. Breakneck is a very intense trail. Its a lot of climbing. Its not exactly easy.

Downtime is the best time Make the most of your Hudson Valley weekend, every week with our newsletter.

Phillips says its also important that hikers heed warnings and rules about park hours and keep their hiking to between sunrise and sunset. And if hikers do get lost or require rescue, Phillips says its important to call for help right away.

Its relatively common that people wait until the last minute to call for help, he says, noting that its his impression that people think theyll get themselves out of the jam and then start to panic when the sun begins to set. Obviously wed rather take care of the issue when the sun is out.

In a statement sent to Times Union Hudson Valley via email, a spokesperson for Hudson Highlands State Park Preserve described the conditions of the rescue wet and dangerous.

The hikers had decided to go off a marked trail and bushwhack when they found themselves unable to proceed further due to the cliff. State Parks strongly advises hikers to stay on marked trails, said the spokesperson.

In a statement on its Facebook page, the Cold Spring Fire Company No. 1 issued a strong warning to hikers in light of the incident.

This is a reminder that the terrain of the Hudson Highlands can be extremely dangerous, and that leaving marked trails is hazardous and can lead to injury and death, the statement said. Stay on the marked trails at all times and properly observe the posted rules and regulations at the trailheads. And most importantly be prepared.

Several additional departments responded to the scene to assist, including West Point Fire Department, Newburgh City Fire Department, Philipstown Ambulance, and Putnam County Battalion. Saturday nights rescue mission took several hours; all responding departments were back in service by 2 a.m.
ALBANY Attorneys delivered closing arguments Tuesday in the federal trial of former General Electric engineer Xiaoqing Zheng, leaving a jury to decide whether the Niskayuna scientist was a thief of GE trade secrets or a loyal employee simply trying to help his company.

Zheng, 59, a world expert in the field of turbine-sealing technology, sat in U.S. District Court as a federal prosecutor told jurors the defendant carried out devious and clandestine activities to steal GEs intellectual property in an illegal scheme to benefit the Chinese government.

The defendants actions were sneaky, they were devious and they were motivated by greed, Assistant U.S. Attorney Rick Belliss told the jury.

Belliss said it was a mutually beneficial conspiracy: That China wanted to transform itself from a place that made goods, such as clothes, to one that designed and innovated technology for power-generating turbines. And Zheng, he said, wanted to make a lot of money in China.

"No!" Zheng's wife, Hui Jin, yelled out from the courtroom gallery. The outburst led U.S. District Judge Mae DAgostino to ask Jin to refrain from further commentary. Observers in court are expected to remain silent during proceedings.

Bradley L. Henry, a Manhattan attorney representing Zheng, told the jury that every action his client took was to benefit GE. He said prosecutors were attempting to confuse them in what he suggested was a nearly four-year legal witch hunt.

"It's lunacy, frankly, that the government is trying to paint that picture and you should see right through it," said Henry, who was joined on the defense team by Colonie attorney Kevin Luibrand.

Henry said GE had encouraged employees to help the company, which he said his client had done in China. The defense, noting that GE was experiencing production-related issues in 2017, contends Zheng believed he would be helping GE if he could supply the company with turbine seals through a Chinese company.

Zheng, a Chinese-born U.S. citizen, has worked at GE since 2008. In that time, he has obtained more than 35 patents and been honored by the company.

Now, Zheng is charged with 12 counts that include economic espionage; conspiracy to commit economic espionage; theft of trade secrets; and making a false statement. The case, now in its third week, went to jurors about 3:45 p.m. after the panel received instructions from the judge.

In 2016, Zheng informed GE he had business interests in China. He signed a conflict disclosure form telling GE he had "brothers in China" who launched a "small company in China" that was a "parts supplier for civil aviation engines." GE told Zheng that if the circumstances changed, he needed to fill out another conflict disclosure form, court papers showed

Federal investigators later learned Zheng owned a parts supply company, Nanjing Tianyi Aeronautical Technology in Nanjing, China, and ran another company, Lioning Tianyi Aviation Technology. The first company was involved in the same type of advanced turbine sealing technology that Zheng had done for GE, prosecutors said.

On Tuesday, Belliss told jurors that Zheng disclosed his business interests in China because the defendant knew he would be unable to hide such a fact. Belliss said Zheng undertook more secretive measures to shield the scheme to steal trade secrets.

On July 5. 2018 - just before he headed for a three-week trip to China - Zheng emailed 40 files from his GE account to his private Hotmail account. It was one of seven emails Zheng sent to himself, or an alleged co-conspirator, over a two-year span that prosecutors allege was an illegal theft of GE trade secrets, according to Belliss.

The allegedly stolen files were disguised under a computer screen that, to a casual observer, showed images of a sunset and bamboo shoots. They were emailed under an encrypted password that was unknown to GE, Belliss 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.

"Why go through such steps if all of the information in all of those files was out in the public domain?" Belliss asked.

He knows what hes doing is wrong," Belliss said. "He knows what hes doing is illegal."

On the morning of Aug. 1, 2018, after Zheng returned from the trip to China, federal agents arrived at Zheng's home, interviewed him and then arrested him.

The case began more than two years earlier. FBI agents in Cincinnati, who were investigating an unrelated case, saw that Zheng delivered a presentation on July 1, 2016, at the Jiangsu Province Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics College of Energy and Power Energy Engineering in China. They learned that in 2012, Zheng was chosen to become part of the Thousand Talents Program, a government program in China designed to recruit talented researchers there. The FBI notified GE security, which later placed a monitor on Zheng's computer in June 2018.

Had GE not become suspicious and placed the monitor on Zhengs computer, Belliss said, the defendant would not have been caught.

Henry told jurors that prosecutors need to prove that Zheng knew his actions would hurt GE. He said they would be unable to do so.

.
Lawyers for Save the Pine Bush and Crossgates Mall faced off in court Wednesday over a Costco Wholesale store and a 222-unit apartment complex planned to go next door to the mall.

While Save the Pine Bushs suit against Crossgates owner Pyramid Management and the town of Guilderland had been dismissed in a lower trial court, Costco opponents are appealing.

Arguing before a panel of appellate division judges, Todd Ommen, a lawyer with the Pace University Environmental Law Clinic, contended that jurists shouldnt look at an earlier lawsuit, which was dismissed in 2021, since that wasnt focused solely on the ecological issues, which the current suit is.

We raise entirely environmental issues, Ommen said, referring to the current case. Our issues have not been decided.

In the earlier lawsuit a group of residents who live near the planned Costco site sued and a trial court judge, Judge Peter Lynch sided with the plaintiffs, concluding that the town Planning Board had made "self-serving and equally troubling representations made by the project sponsor without the support of empirical data.

That decision, though, was overturned by an appellate court last July, which ruled the board had in fact taken the requisite hard look at the project and gathered input from a variety of sources and government agencies, including Albany County, the state Department of Environmental Conservation and the Pine Bush Commission, which oversees the nearby Pine Bush nature preserve.

Ommen in his arguments referred to the nature preserve, which is home to the rare Karner blue butterfly. He maintained that the project could harm part of the preserve, and by extension, people from throughout the Capital Region who come there to enjoy the hiking trails and wildlife there.

Guilderland Supervisor Peter Barber, who is also an attorney, represented the town and argued that this latest suit is, in fact, about the decision-making procedure that led to the projects approval.

This a case about process, said Barber. A two-year review was complete and thorough.

They dont like the fact that the planning board did not adopt their experts, Barber added, referring to environmental consultants that Save the Pine Bush wanted to use.

The results are in See the winners of each category of the 2022 Best of the Capital Region contest, as determined by popular vote.

Robert Rosborough, who represented Crossgates and Pyramid, later alluded to a battle of the experts, or situations in planning board proceedings where consultants for opposing sides give differing opinions or estimates about the impact a particular project might have.

Costco wants to build an approximately 160,000-square-foot store with 700 parking spaces and a gas station. Costco is a warehouse-style membership store, like BJs or Sams Club, offering low prices on a variety of groceries and other household items.

The development also calls for two five-story apartment buildings as well as two three-story townhome dwellings, with a total of 222 units.

A decision after Wednesday's arguments is expected in the near future.

rkarlin@timesunion.com 518 454 5758 @RickKarlinTU
ALBANY  Matthew Clyne, a former Albany County Democratic Party chairman and local elections commissioner, has enrolled in the Conservative Party where he has been joined by several political allies.

Clyne switched his enrollment in recent months. A county source told the Times Union that Clyne took several dozen Democrats with him when he changed his registration.

The Albany County Conservative Party committee is chaired by Thomas Spargo, a former state Supreme Court justice and once-renowned elections attorney, who served time in federal prison for trying to shake down attorneys and solicit a $10,000 bribe. The combination of Spargo and Clyne gives the countys largest minor party two of the countys foremost experts on state election law. It also likely signals a larger role for the party in county politics as election districts are redrawn.

Clyne, who also once led the town of Bethlehem Democratic committee, was a powerhouse in county politics for years. For generations, Clyne's family name has been synonymous with Democratic politics in Albany. His father, County Judge John J. Clyne, was an influential party insider who authored the financial blueprint for the Empire State Plaza before going on to a career on the bench where he earned the moniker "Maximum John" for his stiff sentences. His brother, Paul Clyne, was a longtime Albany County prosecutor who served a term as district attorney before losing the 2004 Democratic primary to David Soares, who remains DA.

During his time as elections commissioner, Clyne repeatedly clashed with some Democratic candidates. The confrontations led to allegations within the party that he favored some candidates over others.

Clyne did not return calls or an email seeking comment.

In September 2020, Clyne was replaced as the Democratic commissioner at the county Board of Elections. Clynes exit came after he refused to wear a mask during a recount of the primary vote in the district attorney's race a few months earlier. Clyne opted not to seek another term as commissioner after County Legislature Chairman Andrew Joyce publicly said he would try to replace him.

He survived at least one earlier attempt to force him out of the commissioner's post.

Spargo declined to comment on the record on Clyne's decision to join the party, saying he needed a persons permission before speaking about them in the newspaper.

Several Democrats who know Clyne said they did not know what prompted the switch.

But one possible factor is the philosophical shift of the county Democratic Party to the left, leaving more conservative Democrats, or conservatives who registered as Democrats, out of step with their party, which remains the dominant force in county politics.

The change is especially noticeable in Clynes former political base of Bethlehem, where progressive Democrats have taken over the towns political committee.

The party is more progressive, inclusive and transparent than it previously was, said county Legislator Joanne Cunningham, who is also chair of the towns Democratic committee.

Another Bethlehem political operative quipped that Clynes enrollment finally reflected his actual political beliefs.

Jake Crawford, the county Democratic Party chair, declined to comment.

Richard Stack, the former longtime chair of the county Conservative Party said he believed Clyne was representative of many voters who don't agree with the progressive shift in Democratic politics.

"I've known Matt Clyne for a long time," said Stack, who still serves on the party's executive committee. "He's a conservative guy, he's Catholic, right-to-life. He's the lost voter the Democratic party is dying to get back and they're not getting him back."

The results are in See the winners of each category of the 2022 Best of the Capital Region contest, as determined by popular vote.

Albany County Republican Party Chair Randy Bashwinger said he had heard about Clynes move but declined to speculate on why Clyne left for the Conservatives or what impact it might have on county politics.

I have a good working relationship with Tom Spargo, he said.

Bashwinger is also the highway superintendent in the town of Berne. Spargo, a former town judge who was convicted of federal attempted bribery and attempted extortion charges in 2009, was appointed as chairman of the towns zoning board in January.

In recent years, local Conservative Party enrollment has inched upward. In November 2019, there were 3,020 enrolled Conservative voters in the county, according to state enrollment data. In February 2022, the party had 3,436 enrolled voters.

The local third party has played a role in county politics over the years, with its impact being much clearer in town races.

The Conservative Party endorsed suburban Democratic county legislators. All five Democrats who also ran on the Conservative line in their last election would have won their races without those votes, in part because three of the five were unopposed. Countywide Democratic officials County Executive Dan McCoy and Sheriff Craig Apple also ran on the Conservative Partys line the last time they sought reelection. Both men ran on the Working Families Party line as well.

A decade ago, 13 county Democratic county legislators, a full third of the legislature, ran with Conservative backing.

At the town level, the Conservative endorsement has swung key races.

In last years Guilderland Town Board race, the Conservative Party endorsement cost Republicans a spot on the board. The party chose to endorse incumbent board member Paul Pastore, a Democrat, rather than Brian Sheridan, the Republican candidate.

Sheridan came in third in the general election for two open seats, behind two Democratic candidates. Pastore ended up with 718 votes, while Sheridan received 3,414 to Democrat Amanda Beedles 3,751. Beedle also received the Conservative nod in the race.

And in Colonie, the Conservative Party endorsed Democrats who won a town board seat and town justice spot over Republican opponents.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

ALBANY  The most senior judge on New Yorks top court and three other state judges are unvaccinated against COVID-19, placing their futures on the bench in jeopardy, according to court officials and a published report.

Associate Judge Jenny Rivera, a member of the Court of Appeals since 2013 and only the second Hispanic American judge to sit on the top court, was one of 160 court employees statewide who were told Monday that they did not meet the qualifications for employment, said a report from the New York Times and a spokesperson for the court system.

Rivera's status as unvaccinated could be viewed as a major embarrassment to the court system and Chief Judge Janet DiFiore. Over the last two years, DiFiore has delivered regular updates on the court system's handling of COVID-19, often crediting the work of court system employees for successfully implementing virtual courts and other measures during a trying time.

In DiFiore's recent State of the Judiciary, the chief judge highlighted the fact that the court system became the first branch of government to mandate vaccination for employees.

"It is a distinct point of pride that our vaccination program received a near-perfect response from our judges (99 percent), and an overwhelmingly successful response from our professional staff," DiFiore said in the speech. "Now comes our reset. Our workforce is effectively fully vaccinated."

The 156 non-judge employees will be fired if they do not get vaccinated within the next 13 calendar days, said Lucian Chalfen, a spokesman for the Office of Court Administration.

"These employees have been given adequate time to either comply or submit an accepted medical or religious exemption," Chalfen told the Times Union. He said the employees are prohibited from entering court facilities and that their absences would be charged to any accruals they had built up.

Rivera, 61, and the other three judges  one in New York City, the others in the Hudson Valley and western New York  face potential removal through the state Commission on Judicial Conduct, a watchdog for the judiciary. The commission's options to discipline judges, upon a finding of misconduct, include a public admonishment; the more severe punishment of censure; and removal from the bench. Judges also can resign to resolve allegations of wrongdoing.

"They, too, are being held to account, as actions have consequences," Chalfen told the Times Union. "They are barred from entering any court facility and must work from home. Judges with criminal jurisdiction are not allowed to conduct arraignments. We had made it clear from the outset that any judge not in compliance subjects themselves to a referral to the Commission on Judicial Conduct for their determination."

Rivera could not be immediately reached.

When asked about Rivera and the other judges, Chalfen said: "As this is a personnel issue, we cannot confirm any individual names."

In 2013, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo appointed the Bronx-based Rivera, a former clerk to now-U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor and a former professor at the City University of New York School of Law, to fill the vacancy following the retirement of Associate Judge Carmen Beauchamp Ciparick, the first Hispanic American to sit on the bench.

Rivera, a graduate of Princeton University and New York University School of Law who received a master of law degree from Columbia University School of Law, is considered a liberal voice on the high court. Rivera, a onetime staff attorney at the Legal Aid Society of New York City, headed the New York City Commission on Civil Rights for five years.

Rivera is the senior judge on the Court of Appeals, which also includes DiFiore and Associate Judges Michael Garcia, Rowan Wilson, Madeline Singas, Anthony Cannataro and Shirley Troutman. DiFiore and Garcia took the bench in 2016, Wilson in 2017. Singas, Cannataro and Troutman, the newest judge on the court, have all joined in the last year.

The results are in See the winners of each category of the 2022 Best of the Capital Region contest, as determined by popular vote.

The court system recently implemented a 3-foot physical distancing guideline for participants in all trials and cases, which followed one mandating a 6-foot guideline.

"It has been a long, difficult and challenging two years for all of us," DiFiore said in her address. "Even now, we continue to navigate our way through this historic pandemic and experience the outsized stresses created in our personal and professional lives.

"But in spite of, or perhaps because of, the challenges presented, we also have experienced growth and positive change and learned a great deal about ourselves and those around us."
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

ALBANY  Cresco Labs, a multi-state cannabis company that holds one of 10 licenses to operate as a medical marijuana provider in New York, announced Wednesday it will acquire New York-based competitor Columbia Care following regulatory approvals.

Columbia Care has its own medical cannabis license in the state, and was one of the first five companies to get permission to operate in 2016. The acquisition, expected to close near the end of 2022, is set to hand one-fifth of New York's active licenses to Chicago-based Cresco Labs, which has subsidiaries in multiple states.

The transaction could impact operations in New York: currently, licensed medical cannabis companies can open up to four dispensaries, and both Cresco Labs and Columbia Care have already reached that limit.

Given the proposed transaction, "the registration held by Cresco Labs in the State of New York  will undergo a regulatory review and approval process after a complete and adequate application is submitted," said Freeman Klopott, a spokesman for the Office of Cannabis Management.

Both companies are publicly traded, and listed on the Canadian Securities Exchange due to federal restrictions that remain in place in the U.S. In a statement, Cresco Labs said they will acquire "all of the issued and outstanding shares" from Columbia Care.

"This acquisition brings together two of the leading operators in the industry," said Charles Bachtell, CEO of Cresco Labs. "The combination  accelerates our journey to become the leader in cannabis in a way no other potential transaction could."

With this acquisition, Cresco Labs would become the largest cannabis company by revenue in the nation.

The company entered the New York market when it acquired Valley Agriceuticals in 2019.

The company made headlines last week when its plans for a 380,000-square-foot facility to cultivate, manufacture and distribute cannabis in Ulster County was approved by local officials. The proposal estimates 679 employees will run that operation, which will be built on the site of the former Schrade Knife and Avnet Channel Master facilities.

Columbia Care has its own cultivation facilities in the state, with a significant footprint in Rochester and a newer acquisition in Long Island.

"I was surprised to learn of a potential merger between Columbia Care and Cresco Labs," said state Sen. Jeremy Cooney, D-Rochester. "Columbia Care is an important part of the cannabis marketplace in Rochester."

The results are in See the winners of each category of the 2022 Best of the Capital Region contest, as determined by popular vote.

"I am in active discussions to ensure that jobs stay in Rochester and our medical patients continue to have access," Cooney added.

While both companies are restricted to furnishing the state's medical cannabis dispensaries with the marijuana they grow in New York, as-of-yet unreleased regulations for the new "adult-use" marketplace promise to allow for future sales to recreational users as well.

"Since our founding, our mission has been to deliver the best outcome for our stakeholders, said Nicholas Vita, CEO of Columbia Care. In an evolving industry, the opportunities to better achieve our mission through consolidation led us to this historic moment."

Vita added that he thought the merger would make the combined company "the most investable" company in cannabis.

Columbia Care has medical dispensaries in Brooklyn, Manhattan, Riverhead and Rochester; Cresco Labs' New York outlets are in Brooklyn, Bardonia, New Hartford and Huntington Station.
ALBANY  A bipartisan coalition of lawmakers on Wednesday called for the passage of a bill that would mark March 25 as a day of remembrance for thousands of New York nursing home residents who died from complications related to COVID-19.

Friday's date is significant, they said, because it will mark two years since former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo issued an executive order in the first month of the pandemic that directed nursing homes to take in residents discharged from hospitals who were still positive for COVID-19. Many lawmakers believe the directive, later rescinded by Cuomo, contributed to the spread of the infectious disease in the facilities.

Nearly 16,000 nursing home residents died in New York from COVID-19 complications  a number that had been sharply lower until it was revealed that Cuomo's administration had issued inaccurate data about the actual number of fatalities.

Lawmakers and advocates who gathered at the Capitol Wednesday also called for the passage of legislation that would prompt another investigation into the Cuomo administration's policies and directives related to nursing homes and the cause of the fatalities during the pandemic.

State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli released a report last week that concluded that the state Department of Health did not provide the public with accurate nursing home death data. The findings echoed the findings of an investigation conducted by the office of state

Attorney General Letitia James that concluded Cuomo's administration drastically undercounted thousands of deaths in nursing homes.

Assemblyman Ron Kim, D-Queens, who had clashed with Cuomo frequently on the issue, equated the former governor's actions to "eldercide." The assemblyman lost his mother and uncle to the virus. State Sen. Sue Serino, D-Dutchess County, state Sen. Jim Tedisco, R-Glenville and Assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou, D-Manhattan, also attended the rally in support of the measures.

Family members of individuals who died in nursing homes stood outside the Capitol holding up signs and photos of their loved ones. Vivian Zayas, founder of Voices for Seniors, a non-profit organization, lost her mother to COVID-19.

She spoke about the need for the legislation to prevent catastrophic events akin to what happened during the pandemic.

"It really falls on us to ensure that all the seniors in every facility in every state, especially the state of New York, are treated with dignity and love, and that they spend their last days in the comfort of their family, treated with respect," she said. "Unfortunately, I need to admit that we're not there yet."

Dan Mathias, who resides in Clifton Park, lost his mother who had been at a nursing home in Buffalo. He said over 75 percent of the long-term patients in that facility contracted COVID-19. Most of them died.

His mother passed away alone in a hospital. "I'm asking my fellow Buffalonian, Gov. Kathy Hochul, to put the full weight of her office behind an investigation," Mathias said. "We can never bring them back, but such an investigation will enable the state to implement better protections for our nursing home patients."
ALBANY Lawmakers are continuing to press for a lengthy suspension of the state's gasoline taxes  a move they say would benefit middle-class workers and families who are struggling with spiraling inflation.

Assemblyman Angelo Santabarbara, D-Rotterdam, said that even as Gov. Kathy Hochul and other legislators consider a rebate payment plan in lieu of suspending gasoline taxes  which could reduce fuel prices more than 40 cents per gallon  he believes New York should follow the path of other states that have already put fuel taxes on hold.

Senate Democrats also introduced their "one-house" budget last week that calls for suspension of the state's gas tax.

"This is something that hits home for people. They know theres savings," Santabarbara said. "This is something that puts money back in peoples pockets. ... Everybody knows at this point that gas prices are on the rise. These are savings that would be targeted toward working, middle-class families. It affects a wide number of people."

But Politico reported Tuesday that issuing a onetime rebate to consumers is gaining traction with Hochul and some lawmakers because they fear suspending gas taxes might not result in suppliers passing on the savings.

Santabarbara, whose bill seeking a suspension of the gas tax is in an Assembly committee, noted that New York had been a "leader" on the issue as gas prices began to soar, but other states are implementing suspensions of their gas taxes more swiftly. He also said fears of price gouging by companies that do not pass along the savings to consumers is something that could be monitored and enforced.

"Companies they have rules and guidelines and regulations they have to follow and this is something they would have to adhere to.

Theres consequences," Santabarbara said. "There is a proposal on the table right now and they're talking about possibly enacting this measure for six months rather than a year; certainly, Id rather see it done for a year."

He estimates that just about 18 percent of the gas taxes are used to maintain roads and bridges, with the rest getting absorbed into the state's general fund and other areas.

"The legislation also allows the state comptroller to transfer money from the general fund to the mass transportation operating assistance fund in an amount no greater than the amount that would have been raised by the existing gas tax," the bill proposed by Santabarbara states.

Although Hochul has remained largely silent on whether to suspend taxes on gasoline and diesel fuel, former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo  who is seeking to restore his public image  weighed in last week and asserted like many state lawmakers that New York's multibillion-dollar surplus from federal aid puts it in a unique position to take action.

"Use any available money to suspend the gas tax and cut income and business taxes for working families," Cuomo said. "Use the money to help you  not the special interest few."

State Sen. Daphne Jordan, R-Halfmoon, recently criticized Democrats for not withdrawing their separate legislation proposing to increase fuel taxes by 55 cents per gallon.

"Their weak proposal only provided relief from a portion of state taxes on gasoline, while my Senate Republican colleagues and I continue pushing for the suspension of all state taxes on gasoline," Jordan said.

Santabarbara also has pushed for suspending Thruway tolls for the summer. He said the Thruway collects about $1 million a day from tolls, which he said could be offset over a period of 90 days from the surplus created by federal aid.
ALBANY  Following Gov. Kathy Hochuls proposal in January to abolish and replace New York's troubled ethics enforcement body, her idea was broached in a private caucus meeting of Assembly Democrats.

Hochul's plan  to have law school leaders appoint members of a new ethics panel  was an immediate non-starter for many of those Assembly Democrats, who control the chamber and would have to sign off on any fix. At the meeting, several lawmakers were said to have "laughed and rolled their eyes" when the idea came up, according to people with knowledge of the gathering.

That opposition was buttressed on March 14, when both the Assembly and state Senate issued one-house budget resolutions excluding Hochuls proposal and providing $5.6 million in continued funding for the Joint Commission on Public Ethics, the states much-criticized lobbying and ethics oversight body.

Although lawmakers have not shut the door on reforming New York's beleaguered ethics system, Hochuls specific plan appears dead. On March 17, a coalition including New York good-government groups sent a five-page memo outlining a new proposal to the governors office, the Assembly and the state Senate, all controlled by Democrats.

Under Hochuls plan, the Legislature would have played no role in appointing her proposed ethics commission, a major concern for many state lawmakers. Under the proposal put forward by good-government groups a week ago, the Legislature would continue to have some role in selecting members of a new ethics panel, albeit a less direct one than currently exists.

It's not clear if the groups plan is going anywhere, either, as budget negotiations come down to their final week, ahead of an April 1 deadline for an on-time agreement.

Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins on Wednesday said there is still a potential for an ethics overhaul as part of the budget process.

"We've been talking about ethics reform. Again, this is something that our conference has been extremely strong on," she said. "I've heard people say that we said we wouldn't do policy (in the budget), (but) my house has never said that we don't do policy in the budget. We do what we can, and ethics is something that we do care about, so then, if we can figure that out, we will."

In a conference call last week with good-government groups, Senate Democratic staff indicated they had concerns about the good-government groups' proposal. A top Hochul staffer responded to the groups only that the idea is "interesting." Staff for Assembly Democrats have not yet replied to the groups' proposal, and the conference had previously signaled unwillingness to include any such proposal in this year's budget.

That budget is due less than seven months after a series of controversies felled Hochuls predecessor, former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo. JCOPE was largely sidelined during Cuomos decade in power, when the panel did little to challenge the former governor or top leaders in the Legislature. That apparent imbalance in enforcement has occurred as the legislators and governor are responsible for appointing JCOPEs 14 commissioners  a setup bringing criticism that commissioners won't approve investigations into officials who appointed them.

If the ethics overhaul does not occur in the budget, it may well not happen this year. Facing her first campaign for governor this year, Hochul had hoped to run on that accomplishment ahead of a June Democratic primary.

On March 17  the same day the good-government groups proffered their ethics overhaul plan to state officials  the New York Post reported on a leaked 10-point Hochul plan outlining major proposed changes to the states criminal justice system, including its contentious bail laws.

Since then, Hochuls proposal has dominated meetings within the Assembly Democratic conference, leaving little room for lawmakers to push on other thorny issues.

"It just set off a bomb on the Legislature," an Assembly Democrat said. "Conservative fearmongers have basically drowned out everything else in the budget."



State Sen. Elizabeth Krueger, D-Manhattan, a longtime proponent of dissolving JCOPE, said Hochul hasnt determined how to effectively push some of her major priorities, whether ethics or criminal justice.



"Our brand new governor hasn't really figured out messaging for some of her priorities  a la the bail reform fiasco," said Krueger, echoing the belief that the debate over bail laws is pulling attention from other priorities.

Assembly Speaker Carl E. Heastie has long been lukewarm to reforming JCOPE. And in a conference call with good-government groups earlier this year, Assembly staff relayed that, after years of Cuomo forcing major policies through the budget, the Assembly did not want to continue that practice under Hochul; the staff declined to respond to the groups specific ethics reform ideas. Good-government groups counter that the budget is the logical place to create and fund a new ethics agency.

Under Hochuls proposal, made during her State of the State address on Jan. 5, the deans of the states 15 accredited law schools would have chosen the members of a new, five-member ethics board.

The good-government groups' proposal last week instead envisions a seven-person "selection committee" appointed by New Yorks three statewide elected officials and the Democratic and Republican leaders of the Legislatures two houses. In turn, the seven-person committee would select the new, five-person ethics commission.

The layer of insulation is meant to shield the panel from the influence of top lawmakers, who the commission is charged with regulating. Yet unlike Hochuls plan, the Legislature would continue to play some role in the appointments.

Members of the public could apply to be on the ethics commission. The seven-person selection committee would create a final list of candidates, using ranked-choice voting, with the list released 15 days before a public meeting to vote on the five commission members. Finally, the five ethics panel members would select a chair and appoint an executive director, who would hire the rest of the staff.

The coalition pushing the plan includes not just good-government groups  NYPIRG, Common Cause, Citizens Union, Reinvent Albany and the League of Women Voters  but the New York City Bar Association and the Sexual Harassment Working Group.

In October, two months after taking office, Hochul met in Albany with leaders of those groups and promised that she planned to "blow up" JCOPE. In November and December, the good-government groups proposed several ideas to her office for a replacement commission.

While the groups had not proposed the idea of using law school deans to make appointments, and did not find her plan perfect, they backed Hochuls idea after it was announced, challenging the Legislature to come up with a better one. But since her Jan. 5 speech, Hochul has been conspicuously quiet, the reform groups say.

"We probably asked the governors aides a dozen times for her to stand up for her own proposal, to call on the Legislature to come up with something better," said John Kaehny, executive director of Reinvent Albany. "The governors office, at least publicly, has not put any pressure on the Legislature."

Hochuls budget proposal also omitted a host of accompanying reforms suggested by the groups, including requiring lobbyists to disclose their campaign fundraising activities for state politicians. That proposal might be especially sensitive for Hochul, whose campaign has extensively relied on lobbyists to help her smash fund-raising records.

Over the past two months, Hochul's staff has continued to assure the groups that shes committed to reform, even as the governor remained relatively quiet during that period.

This week, Hochul's office declined to weigh in on the reform groups' recent proposal.

"Since taking office, Gov. Hochul has been clear that the current structure of JCOPE is irrevocably broken, and that she is committed to bold reforms," Hochul's press secretary, Hazel Crampton-Hays, said Tuesday. "The governor has been working with stakeholders to develop strong ethics reforms, and in the governors State of the State, she proposed establishing a new truly independent ethics oversight entity. We are continuing to work with the Legislature to deliver a final budget that restores trust in government."

As compared to the Assembly, Senate Democrats have a recent history of being amenable to reshaping JCOPE. Last year, they passed a bill package making major changes to how JCOPE operates, which the Assembly ignored.

In their budget resolution March 14, the Senate stated JCOPE had been impaired by "structural flaws" and that the chamber would "continue to review proposals to overhaul the state's ethics oversight and accountability systems." The Assemblys document said nothing except that the chamber would continue to fund the status quo.

On Tuesday, a Heastie spokesman declined to say if the speaker would commit to improving or replacing JCOPE, including in this year's budget.

"As we have said, we are always willing to look at ways to improve transparency and give people confidence in their government," said Michael Whyland, a spokesman for the speaker.

Michael Murphy, a spokesman for Stewart-Cousins, said: "No one understands more the need for real JCOPE reform and ethics reforms than the Senate. Since taking the majority we have led the way on groundbreaking reform and look forward to continuing that leadership."

Krueger said Hochuls plan faced opposition from some Democrats, though not her, because many law school deans work for CUNY and SUNY schools, which are overseen by governor-appointed boards and might not be viewed as independent.

As for the good-government groups new, two-tiered appointment proposal, Krueger said: It's a little confusing, but as I keep telling everyone, I'm totally agnostic about how we pick the ethics commissioners.



"Andrea Stewart-Cousins told me she really wants to fix JCOPE, and thinks the budget is a perfectly good place to do it," Krueger said. "Were working with the advocates, and I want it to happen in the budget."
The new board of directors for the North Eastern Pennsylvania Industrial Resource Center are (front row, from left to right) Glenn Poirier, VP of operations, MetalKraft Industries; Mark Morrison, VP, Global Operations, Weiler Abrasives; Neal Nicastro, plant manager, Amcor; (second row) Jared McTague, president, Futuristic Innovative Graphics; T.J. Eltringham, COO, Lackawanna College; Zachary Aciukewicz, MFG director  U.S. Operations, Bridon-Bekaert  The Ropes Group; Frank Joanlanne, president and CEO, Borton-Lawson; Bruce Daniels, CFO, Medico Industries; (missing) Anna Rinaldi, human resources manager, Simona America Industries, and Dustin Levy, vice president, Industrial, Gentex Corporation
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 570-724-2287 or email dtaylor@tiogapublishing.com.
The top politico in Kansas City suffers local media scrutiny in a story our blog community brought to readers FIRST.



To wit . . .

CHECK FIRST AMENDMENT COMPLAINTS LEVELED AGAINST MAYOR Q PICKING UP MAINSTREAM MEDIA ATTENTION!!!

Even better, here's a worthwhile legal opinion . . .



Attorney Bernie Rhodes from Lathrop GPM says Hand has a great case.



"Mayor Q is called Mayor Q for a reason. He's the mayor," Rhodes said Monday. "As the mayor, he's a public official, and therefore he's bound by the First Amendment."



Rhodes said that means no government censorship is allowed.

Now. . .

To be fair, there is a great deal of legal debate surrounding the implications of social media access and there are no hard & fast rules that apply to every office-holder.

However . . . There's no denying that frustration with Mayor online is mounting as his controversial tenure moves closer to election season.



Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com link . . .
Worsening crime in the suburbs is an ongoing theme in Kansas City news as the latest rash of auto break-in make metro wide news tonight.

Here's the sitch . . .



"Roughly 40 cars were burglarized between Monday night and early Tuesday morning in area apartment complexes. Police started investigating the break-ins after patrol officers discovered a stolen vehicle with its windows broken that was parked near a community center, said Capt. Ryan Sharp, a police spokesman. "



Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com links . . .

Grandview police are investigating 40 reports of people breaking into cars Grandview police said they are investigating 40 reports of someone breaking into cars. Police shared video from one of those break-ins from early Tuesday.Authorities said windows were broken and in some cases, items were taken from the vehicles.Investigators ask anyone who has additional information or has a video of any similar incidents that took place early Tuesday to call the TIPS hotline at 816-474-8477.

Grandview police investigate 40 reports of vehicle break-ins, broken windows KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Grandview police are asking for the public's help after locating a stolen vehicle believed to be connected to a string of vehicle break-ins at several apartment complexes.

Developing . . .
Tomorrow morning the Kansas City council plans to introduce a draconian crackdown against police funding that will remove funds already negotiated behind the scenes.

For those who don't know about this Finance committee hot mess . . .

Council had already arranged 33 MILLION BUCKS for police to hire more officers, maintain salaries and reequip.

Now . . .

NEGOTIATIONS HAVE BROKEN DOWN & THE COUNCIL MAJORITY THREATENS TO WITHDRAW FUNDING OVER 20% MANDATED BY MISSOURI!!!



Here's what police supporters and insiders are saying . . .



"This is one of the dirtiest tricks I've seen from council in decades. They're negotiating in bad faith and playing games with the salaries for officers. It goes beyond politics, they seem to have a vendetta against police."

A question that deserves to be highlighted . . .

"How do any of these people expect to run for reelection again after openly supporting 'defund the police' tactics long after most Democrats have abandoned that losing strategy???"



Apparently, Prez Biden's call to fund police hasn't resonated at 12th & Oak.

Update . . . Here's the MSM take and Mayor Q's role in all of this . . .

KCPD could see $269 million police budget for fiscal year



And so . . .

Kansas City is progressive but so far we haven't seen much support for cutting police funds . . . Especially given rising crime numbers and homicides trending upward at historic levels.

Now, our readers deserve a behind the scenes look at the process . . .

A new, tougher ordinance that will cut police funding is coming from Council lady Katheryn Shields.

She doesn't have to worry about reelection and insiders are hoping her ordinance is a ploy to make Mayor Q's slush fund plan seem more acceptable.

But here's the kicker . . .

COUNCIL LADY KATY IS CLEVER AND SHE ALREADY HAS THE COUNCIL MAJORITY READY TO DEFUND THE POLICE AND DOUBLE CROSS KCPD ON MILLIONS WORTH OF CASH TO HIRE MORE COPS!!!!



Again . . .

Council is playing hardball and they're ready to put police salaries and prior promises back on the table.

Behind the scenes . . . Supporters of police are raising the alarm and hoping for help from residents who are skeptical of the Mayor's slush fund and obvious anti-police tactics from council.

UPDATE: Our KICK-ASS readers helped shut this down. Click this link for our latest update on the story.



Developing . . .


Right now the latest share from hottie Lindsey inspires this quick peek at pop culture, community news and top headlines.



And here's TKC news gathering . . .

Good Times Hit Market

Big Slick returning to KC this summer; tickets go on sale this week KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Five comedians who call Kansas City home are returning for another year of fundraising. The Big Slick Celebrity Weekend and its stars will be back this summer in person, raising money for Children's Mercy Hospital. The event is scheduled for June 24-25.

COVID Stats Shared

LOCAL COVID-19 UPDATES: Missouri's positivity rate is at 3%; Kansas' is at 2.4% Here are the latest COVID-19 updates around the Kansas City metro area, and in Kansas and Missouri:KMBC 9 News is updating COVID-19 case data now once a week.MISSOURI UPDATEThe Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services announced 1,301 new confirmed COVID-19 cases over the past seven days (March 12 - March 18.)

Sporting Chance Denied

Kansas Senate passes bill banning transgender athletes in women's sports KANSAS CITY, Mo. - The Kansas Senate passed SB484 Tuesday that bans transgender athletes from competing in women's sports. In a vote of 27 to 12, the Senate passed the bill, which will now move on to the House for a vote.

Show-Me Pro-Life Crackdown

Missouri House committee passes abortion bill ST. LOUIS --A Missouri House committee has passed legislation that would ban the trafficking of abortion-inducing drugs or devices used to perform or induce abortions in violation of state or federal law, amending a bill that as originally written, also would have banned the abortion of ectopic pregnancies.

Rock Chalk Duplicity Argued

Prosecutors accuse KU professor of leading 'double life' in trial over concealing China ties Franklin Tao was arrested under the Trump-era China initiative, a federal program designed to catch spies sharing American intellectual property and secrets with China. In opening statements, prosecutors characterized Tao as deceptive and secretive about his work with Fuzhou University in China.

Cost To Be The Boss

Model with 'biggest boobs in US' to get implants removed due to 'horrific' pain Model Neyleen Ashley currently claims she has the "biggest breasts in the US". However, that is all set to change, as she is now planning to get her implants removed. The 33-year-old says she wants the implants taken out as she's currently suffering from painful migraines and back tension due to their huge size.

We're All Playing Against The Clock

Biden faces off against Putin. His other opponent is time. "The nations of the free world are more united and more deterred and more purposed than at any point in recent memory," said White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan on Tuesday, the eve of Biden's trip. But he made clear that the path ahead would not be easy.

Insurrection Aftermath Cont'd

Judge renders split verdict for 'Cowboys for Trump' founder charged in Jan. 6 riot A federal judge delivered a split verdict Tuesday to the founder of the group "Cowboys for Trump" who was the second defendant to be tried for their role in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

SAVE HILLARY!!!

Hillary Clinton tests positive for Covid-19 Hillary Clinton announced Tuesday that she has tested positive for Covid-19.

Flack Catches Case

White House press secretary Jen Psaki tests positive for COVID-19, will miss Biden trip to Europe White House press secretary Jen Psaki said she tested positive for COVID-19 Tuesday. Biden, who had two socially distanced meetings with Psaki on Monday, tested negative Tuesday. Psaki previously tested positive in October 2021 before President Biden's trip to Italy and Scotland, and returned to work after quarantining.

Push Back After Political Tantrum

Lindsey Graham mocked for storming off after ranting at Ketanji Brown Jackson South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham used his time meant to question Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson on Tuesday to air a litany of grievances before storming off in a huff, drawing mockery from attorneys and political figures.

Hack Attack Suspected

FBI advised that hackers scanned networks of 5 US energy firms ahead of Biden's Russia cyberattack warning Hackers associated with Russian internet addresses have been scanning the networks of five US energy companies in a possible prelude to hacking attempts, the FBI said in a March 18 advisory to US businesses obtained by CNN.

COVID Rebrands

A third of U.S. COVID now caused by Omicron BA.2 as overall cases fall March 22 (Reuters) - About one-in-three COVID-19 cases in the United States are now caused by the BA.2 Omicron sub-variant of the coronavirus, according to government data on Tuesday that also showed overall infections still declining from January's record highs. Despite the rise of the extremely contagious sub-variant also seen in other countries, U.S.

GET WELL SOON JENNA!!!

Jenna Jameson says she's not 'paralyzed,' but diagnosis for mystery illness still remains unclear Jenna Jameson is giving a new update on her mystery illness. The former adult film star took to her Instagram Story on Monday and clarified that she's not "paralyzed" and is "able to move her legs" after she was hospitalized. "I am just dealing with extreme muscle weakness," the 47-year-old wrote.

Double Dipping Exposed

Customer spots OnlyFans charges after visiting Kansas Dairy Queen TOPEKA, Kan. - Topeka, Kansas, police have arrested a Dairy Queen employee after a customer later noticed charges to her debit card from the website OnlyFans. The Topeka Police Department took 18-year-old Devin S. Brokmann into custody on Mar. 16. He faces charges including theft, criminal use of a financial card and computer unlawful acts; false representation with damage.

Anxious Life Lesson

William Jewell professor, who holds dual citizenship, anxiously watches war in Ukraine LIBERTY, Mo. - Dr. Yuriy Bots came to the United States from Ukraine in 2008 to continue his education. After completing his PhD in economics at Purdue, he joined the William Jewell College faculty in 2013. However, he's recently achieved another milestone here.

Family Good Deeds Celebrated

Father and son volunteering at the Ukrainian border return to Kansas City A father and son from Kearney, Missouri, have just returned from the Ukrainian border after helping desperate refugees as they flee their homes. They were also on a mission to help reunite a separated Ukrainian family they've helped take in.It was an emotional scene at the Kansas City International Airport overnight, but it wasn't everything the family had hoped for.

Royal Moves Tonight

Royals agree to terms with six arbitration-eligible players https://twitter.com/Feinsand/status/1506372318548959244The Royals agreed to terms with Adalberto Mondesi on a $3 million contract, according to reporter Mark Feinsand, avoiding arbitration. This is Mondesi's second year of arbitration, and he receives a pay bump from his $2.52 million salary last year. The 26-year old appeared in just 35 games, hitting .230/.271/.452 with six home runs and 15 steals.

Free Money Power Play

Evergy looking to gift 3 nonprofits $10K KANSAS CITY, MO - Evergy says it's working hard to spread good energy. "With the pandemic, so many places shut down, and when someone is not working, they are concerned about maybe feeding their family rather than giving money to nonprofits," Cynthia McCarvel, community relations manager for Energy, said.

Overcast Edition

FOX4 Forecast: A case of the gloomies Spring takes a back seat to blustery conditions tomorrow into Thursday morning. More rain is expected off and on tomorrow as well FOX 4 meteorologists Joe Lauria, Karli Ritter, Michelle Bogowith, Garry Frank, and Alex Countee will keep you apprised of any severe and dangerous weather in our area.

And this is the OPEN THREAD for right now.
One of the most powerful local progressive leaders hopes to strike a populist tone with her latest idea for stock market regulation.



Here's the word . . .



Davids, the 3rd District Democrat seeking re-election in 2022, said members of the U.S. House and U.S. Senate were in positions of public trust and should be held to high standards due to their extraordinary access to information not available to some outside government. She said the TRUST in Congress Act would provide necessary barriers to potentially corrupt application of insider information.



Particularly during COVID, weve seen elected officials appear to misuse that privilege for personal gain on the stock market, which is absolutely unacceptable, she said. Im in Congress to make government work for Kansans, and part of that is rebuilding trust. To that end, I support introducing new guardrails that further reduce the likelihood of misconduct by our elected officials.



Davids, who took office in 2019, said she hadnt made any individual stock trades during her tenure in Congress.

Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com link . . .
A recent disturbance at a major Kansas City comedy show is earning an increasing amount of attention.

For those who don't know who he is . . .

Hasan Minhaj is an American comedian, writer, producer, political commentator, actor, and television host of Indian descent. His Netflix show Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj won two Peabody Awards and two Webby Awards.



After working as a stand-up comic and appearing in minor television roles, he came to prominence for his work on The Daily Show as its senior correspondent from 2014 to 2018. Minhaj was the featured speaker at the 2017 White House Correspondents Dinner.



Now . .

Here's the newsworthy part of the ruckus narrative that's still live on social media . . .

"A black man was laughing loudly and enjoying the show and occasionally saying things like yup! or thats right after jokes. a white woman in the row in front of him started shhhing him repeatedly and telling him to shut up. after she did it a handful of times



"..he told her to stop, but she kept doing it, so then he got heated. security immediately went to him even though the woman was initially the aggressor. the man said, youre only punishing me because Im black, which from my perspective, was accurate...



"his white wife/girlfriend was begging for any other black people to come and help deescalate the situation, but because she was frantic/scared she sounded crazy. the cops were there by then and four or more pounced on him while the whole crowd except people nearby clapped."

Developing . . .
A simple question for loyal TKC readers as MSM attempts to dictate opinion.

The political reality . . .

Eric Greitens hurts Republicans far more than the Democratic Party.

What might be a more important question to consider . . .



ARE MISSOURI GOP CONTENDERS SO WEAK THAT THEY CAN'T BEAT SOME DUDE THE WHOLE NATION REGARDS AS A CREEPER?!?!



Here's a quick perspective . . .

"Republican leaders have opposed Greitens Senate candidacy for months because they see him as potentially vulnerable in a general election. This naturally leads to questions about whether theyre calling for his withdrawal now because of the latest allegations or because they wanted him to quit anyway."

Full disclosure . . .

If you can't tell already, TKC tends to want voters to have the final say even if campaign season gamesmanship is part of the process.

Moreover . . . If the GOP is serious about wanting Greitens out, they can always bar him from party affiliation and force him to run as an Independent.



Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com links . . .

Eric Greitens' GOP critics face difficult follow-up questions In Missouri's U.S. Senate race, Eric Greitens was already the most controversial candidate, but things took a more serious turn this week when the former Republican governor faced new allegations from one of his ex-wives. Sheena Greitens claimed in court documents that Eric Greitens physically abused her and their children.

Perjury trial nears for investigator in Greitens case Private investigator William Tisaby was indicted in 2019 on six counts of perjury and one count of evidence tampering. ST. LOUIS - Jury selection begins Thursday in St. Louis in the perjury and evidence tampering trial of the man whose investigation played a key role in former Missouri Gov.

The Latest Eric Greitens Scandal Is Surprising to ... Absolutely No One There's a bit of a "who saw that coming?" feel to the latest big developments in the Missouri Senate race. The answer is simple: Anyone who's been paying attention. To recap: Former Missouri Governor Eric Greitens, who left his post in 2018 amid accusations of sexual misconduct and campaign finance violations, is the leading Republican candidate in that party's primary to succeed retiring Senator Roy Blunt.

Developing . . .
Or . . .

I think KCPD might owe TKC readers about 33 MILLION BUCKS.

The TKC invoice will be in the mail and I'll divvy up the proceeds by way of caption contests and fart joke competitions.

More importantly . . .

TKC TOLD YOU!!! LAST MINUTE DEFUND THE POLICE EFFORTS PROVES THAT CITY HALL REMAINS HOSTILE TOWARD KCPD!!!



Moreover . . .

At first we weren't really fan of Mayor Q's ordinance . . . It's was a step closer toward council control of police that will turn this town into a cheaper and equally violent version of STL.



Also . . .

As we noted in our KICK-ASS 1st NEWS IN KANSAS CITY LEAD POST . . . We think all of this was a bit of a decoy to distract from Mayor Q's sketchy legislative gambit that has since been watered down.



A bit more on that topic . . .

The Community Policing and Prevention Fund, introduced by Mayor Quinton Lucas on March 3, was initially pitched as a way to give the city control over a portion of the state-controlled police departments spending.



That fund, which sets aside $33 million from the departments $269 million budget, will not be controlled by the city manager and its use negotiated with the Board of Police Commissioners as Lucas initially proposed.



Disagreement arose at the councils Finance, Governance and Public Safety Committee on Wednesday when Lucas backed away from his original proposal, instead introducing a new plan which left control over spending to the Board of Police Commissioners.



Meanwhile, Missouri GOP efforts to address the issue of police funding are slow but steady and too late for this year's budget process.



Now that the dust has settled on midweek slap fighting . . . Here's the best round-up of the sitch so far:



Fourth District-at-Large Councilwoman Katheryn Shields, who chairs the committee, introduced an amendment during Wednesday's committee meeting that aimed to take $33 million of Community Policing and Prevention Fund money away from Board of Police Commissioners control and place that money in the hands of the city council.

Shields summarized the amendment as placing the money in a "Police and Anti-Violence Grant Fund" where KCPD would have to present grant requests to the city to access the money, and, should the department not actively pursue the money, outside organizations could access the money with grant applications. The amendment came on the heels of Mayor Quinton Lucas announcing his proposal of ordinance 220.216, which would leave that $33 million in the hands of the police department but would require them to layout ahead of time how the money would be used. Taking control of money allocated for policing from the Board of Police Commissioners, a board appointed by the state and not locally has been a topic of contention over the past year within Kansas City.



The committee did advance Lucas' ordinance 220.216 and it will be heard in front of the full council Thursday when they meet to finalize the budget for the upcoming year.

Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com links . . .

KCMO finance committee debates police funding, accountability ahead of budget talks KANSAS CITY, Mo. - The Kansas City, Missouri, Finance, Governance and Public Safety Committee once again took up police funding in their meeting Wednesday ahead of the full council voting on the proposed budget for the new year.

Kansas City Council divided again over creating separate community policing fund KANSAS CITY, Mo. - The Kansas City Council's finance committee continues to debate pulling millions out of the police department's budget for a special fund. With budget talks ramping up, council members have choices to make to ensure taxpayer money is actually spent on putting more cops on the streets.

Developing . . .
Today, Kansas City's largest daily newspaper published what is possibly one of the most disgusting attempts at "advocacy" we've seen from any publication.

At long last, we're absolutely certain that advocating for an allegedly violent criminal signals the end of an era for this former newsprint institution.

Reality check . . . Defending an alleged school shooter whilst a congressional delegation offers praise for the bravery of gunfire victims might be the most callous and disingenuous perspective we've ever witnessed from this publication.



Here's most brazen passage . . .



Before Jaylon Elmore was charged with attempted capital murder in a shooting at Olathe East High School, he was known as a super funny guy. A driven athlete and polite student who would stay late at his former school to help his teacher.



But he was also known for his troubles. Two years ago he stole a wallet and was later convicted of robbery. He had a hard life growing up. Hed get angry at times, pick fights and threaten classmates, some friends say.



Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com link to paywall garbage . . .

You decide . . .
"Id never seen a Brown person in a dress like that on a show like this"
Police have released security camera images in the hopes of identifying two men wanted in a robbery investigation.
Bloomberg: Why hasnt the Chinese leader reached out to President Zelenskyy of Ukraine? Is there any plan to do so? The reason why I ask is because theres been a report that such a call might happen very soon. Do you have any more details on that?

Wang Wenbin: China maintains smooth communication with relevant sides on the Ukraine situation.

Chinas position on the Ukraine issue is consistent and clear. We always make independent judgement based on the merits of the matter itself. China advocates a vision of common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security. We support all parties in following the indivisible security principle and establishing a balanced, effective and sustainable European security architecture. China will continue to play a constructive role in deescalating the situation in Ukraine.

Xinhua News Agency: The COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread across the world. In this grave situation, the launching ceremony for the BRICS Vaccine R&D Center was held online yesterday, marking another solid step forward in fighting the coronavirus together. Could you brief us on this?

Wang Wenbin: On March 22, the online launching ceremony for the BRICS Vaccine R&D Center and workshop on vaccine cooperation was successfully held. Ministers of science and technology from China and South Africa, ministers of health from Brazil, Russia and India, heads of national centers for vaccine R&D from the five BRICS countries, and experts from vaccine R&D institutions attended the event to witness the launching of the Center and discuss ways to promote cooperation among BRICS countries in vaccine research and development. It is learned that at the present stage, the national centers will build Internet-based virtual centers to form a network of BRICS vaccine R&D centers. When conditions are ready, the establishment of physical centers will be started after comprehensive feasibility assessment.

As the BRICS Chair for this year, China will host the 14th BRICS Summit under the theme of Foster High-quality BRICS Partnership, Usher in a New Era for Global Development. Public health and vaccine cooperation are among the key areas of BRICS cooperation this year. At present, the pandemic is still dragging on across the world. The establishment of the BRICS Vaccine R&D Center demonstrates the determination of BRICS countries to focus on vaccine cooperation, deepen public health cooperation and build a BRICS line of defense against COVID-19. We hope that the vaccine R&D center will pool the strengths of BRICS countries, further promote scientific and technological cooperation among BRICS countries, enhance the five countries capability of preventing and controlling infectious diseases, contribute to the global fight against COVID-19 and make new contributions to international public health cooperation.

I also want to share that the official website for the 14th BRICS Summit (brics2022.mfa.gov.cn) has been launched recently. Information on related events, including the launch of the BRICS Vaccine R&D Centre, can be found on the website. You are welcome to learn more about BRICS activities under Chinas chairship on the website.

Reuters: Sources say the US and its Western allies are assessing whether Russia would remain within the G20 grouping, with one source saying G20 will become a less useful organization if Russia would remain in it. Does China have a position on whether Russia can remain in G20 and whether President Putin can attend the G20 summit in Indonesia at the end of this year?

Wang Wenbin: The G20 is the premier forum for international economic cooperation. It brings together major economies in the world, including Russia, which is an important member of the group. No member has the right to strip another country of its membership.

With the global fight against COVID-19 at a critical stage and a struggling world economic recovery fraught with rising instability and uncertainties, the G20 shoulders important responsibilities in leading global anti-pandemic efforts, improving global economic governance and promoting the steady recovery of the world economy. It should practice true multilateralism, strengthen solidarity and cooperation, jointly deal with prominent challenges in economic, financial, sustainable development and other sectors, and contribute to robust, green and sound global development.

China supports Indonesia, this years President of the G20, in advancing cooperation in various sectors according to the established agenda surrounding the theme of recover together, recover stronger.

Beijing Daily: We noticed that the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) published a volume of studies detailing Chinas policy and experience in such areas as macroeconomic and finance, industrial development, international trade and the digital economysince its reform and opening-up. It says that China has achieved remarkable economic growth and attained its main development targets, and concludes that its structural transformation provides other developing countries with an important learning opportunity that can help them progress in light of their own national realities. Do you have any comment?

Wang Wenbin: I have also noted the report you mentioned. We appreciate UNCTADs active efforts to present in an objective and comprehensive light Chinas economic structural transformation, promote South-South policy experience sharing, and enhance developing countries capability to implement the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

As the volume points out, Chinas successful economic structural transformation, industrial transformation in particular, has been exemplary in the world. China has realized fast economic growth, lifted more than 700 million people out of poverty, and upgraded its industrial structure three times. In 1990, the GDP of the primary industry accounted for 27 percent of the total. The figure has been lowered to around 7 percent. The proportion of the secondary industry remains steadily around 40 percent. Value-added by services as a percentage of the GDP increased from 32 percent to 54 percent. The digital economy has become the new driver of Chinas economic growth. At the same time, China has actively integrated into globalization and become an important participant in the global value chains and supply chains. In particular, amid COVID-19, China has played an important role in stabilizing global market supply.

The volume believes that Chinas experience since the beginning of reform and opening-up has shown that high-speed growth and structural transformation can be realized concurrently. While it may not be possible to replicate Chinas policy experience, many policy lessons can be helpful for other developing countries. For example, developing countries could follow the principle of pragmatism, flexibility and gradualism, build a macroeconomic policy framework that is public investment-led and flexible enough to adapt to changing circumstances, and maintain flexibility to react to shocks from business cycles that emerge in the global economic system.

In recent years, we have firmly promoted high-quality development, deepened reform and opening-up, advanced supply-side structural reform, built a business environment that is based on market principles and rule of law and up to international standards, actively participated in regional economic cooperation and shared Chinas new development opportunities with the rest of the world. Looking ahead, the fundamentals sustaining Chinas long-term economic growth will remain unchanged, the dividends of economic structural transformation and upgrading will continue to be unleashed, and there will be many enabling conditions for the Chinese economys sustained and sound development. Data from the National Bureau of Statistics of China show that from January to February Chinas economic development enjoyed sound momentum with major economic indicators at higher levels than expected, which demonstrates strong resilience.

China is ready to enhance communication and cooperation with all sides to jointly foster an enabling environment for the steady recovery of the world economy and inject more positive energy into its stable, sound and sustainable development.

Bloomberg: State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi is expected to visit India on Friday, according to one person familiar with the matter. Can the foreign ministry confirm this and provide additional details?

Wang Wenbin: I dont have any information to release at the moment.

Shenzhen TV: This week we observe the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC) Week of 2022. On March 23, 2016, the LMC, a new-type sub-regional cooperation mechanism, was officially launched at the First LMC Leaders Meeting in Sanya, Hainan. Today marks the sixth anniversary of the LMC. How do you comment on the progress of the LMC? What expectations does China have for the LMC going forward?

Wang Wenbin: As you noted, the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC) is a new-type sub-regional cooperation mechanism featuring extensive consultation, joint contribution and shared benefits among the riparian states. With the concerted efforts of the six countries, the LMC has achieved rapid development over the past six years with a wider range of cooperation fields, more participating departments and growing endogenous driving force. It has become the most dynamic sub-regional cooperation mechanism with the strongest potential, which has injected impetus into the development of various countries and set an example for the building of a community with a shared future for mankind.

Since last year, amid the flare-ups of COVID-19 and the sluggish world economic recovery, the LMC has continued to maintain high-level development. During the sixth LMC Foreign Ministers Meeting held in Chongqing, State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi and the foreign ministers of the five Mekong countries agreed to deepen cross-board cooperation in a wider range of areas and usher in another Golden Five Years of the LMC. The six countries have maintained close exchanges at various levels, achieved fruitful outcomes in anti-epidemic cooperation and had active interactions both online and offline. We have successfully held a variety of activities including the first Lancang-Mekong Tourist Cities Cooperation Alliance Conference, the first Forum on Lancang-Mekong Local Government Cooperation and the second Lancang-Mekong Water Resources Cooperation Forum. In 2021, trade between China and the five Mekong countries reached nearly $400 billion, registering an increase of around 23 percent and making positive contributions to promoting the economic recovery of the countries and prosperity and revitalization of the region.

The six LMC countries are close neighbors connected by mountains and rivers and natural cooperation partners. China will actively act on the Xi Jinping Thought on Diplomacy and pursue neighborhood diplomacy featuring amity, sincerity, mutual benefit and inclusiveness, work together with the Mekong countries to deepen good neighborliness and practical cooperation, actively build the Lancang-Mekong Economic Development Belt, continue to foster a community with a shared future of the Lancang-Mekong countries, and create a better future for people of all countries in the sub-region.

During the LMC Week this year, more than 20 central government agencies and over 10 provinces and cities on the Chinese side will hold over 80 diverse activities including youth exchanges, forums of think tanks, movie shows and events on rural revitalization. In this way, we will celebrate with the five Mekong countries the sixth anniversary of the launch of the LMC. You are most welcome to follow them.

PTI: Further to what you said about the BRICS vaccine research center. Eventually, where will it be located? Will it be headquartered in one of the five countries or function just as they are from different countries with effective communication?

Wang Wenbin: As I said earlier, at the present stage, the national centers will actively build virtual centers based on Internet platforms to form a network of BRICS vaccine R&D centers.

All parties will conduct joint assessment and make decisions when conditions are ready.

CCTV: On March 22, State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi attended and addressed the opening ceremony of the 48th session of the Council of Foreign Ministers (CFM) of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). We noticed this is the first time for a Chinese foreign minister to participate in the OIC-CFM meeting. Does this have any special significance? How does China plan to advance relations with Islamic countries?

Wang Wenbin: Yesterday, State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi attended and addressed the opening ceremony of the 48th session of the CFM of the OIC in Islamabad upon invitation. This is the first time for a Chinese foreign minister to participate in the OIC-CFM meeting. It demonstrates China and the Islamic worlds sincere wish to strengthen exchange and cooperation as well as the two sides growing relations and deepening mutual trust. It will surely help bring relations to a new height.

State Councilor Wang Yi pointed out in his speech that the exchanges between the two sides, which have lasted for thousands of years and withstood the test of international changes, have a profound historical heritage and a solid foundation of popular support. The two sides always respect and trust each other and support respective core concerns; always stand in solidarity with mutual assistance and strive for common development; always learn from each other and act as guardians for diversity of civilizations in the world.

State Councilor Wang Yi pointed out that China would like to develop a partnership with Islamic countries in four aspects. First, solidarity and coordination. We will firmly support each other in defending national sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity, in independently seeking a development path consistent with national realities, and in safeguarding each others legitimate development rights and interests as well as the vast developing worlds common interests. Second, development and revitalization. We will continue to stand with each other in the fight against COVID-19. China will provide 300 million more doses of vaccines to Islamic countries. We will further dovetail our development strategies and make full use of the twin engines of high quality BRI development and GDI cooperation to consolidate traditional cooperation and foster new highlights to boost shared development and revitalization and spearhead South-South cooperation. Third, security and stability. China will continue to support the Islamic countries in drawing on Islamic wisdom to resolve hotspot issues, taking the key to maintaining stability and promoting peace firmly in their own hands, and facilitating a comprehensive and just settlement of the Palestinian issue. We support Afghanistan in establishing an inclusive political structure, exercising moderate governance, and writing a new chapter of peace and reconstruction. We support Russia and Ukraine in keeping up peace talks to cease hostilities, end the fighting, bring peace, avert a humanitarian disaster, and prevent the Ukraine crisis from spilling over. Fourth, mutual learning of civilizations. We will uphold peace, development, equity, justice, democracy and freedom, which are values shared by all humanity. We will oppose acts that create division and confrontation based on ideology, oppose theories on superiority of certain civilizations or clash of civilizations, and oppose misrepresentation and denigration of non-Western civilizations. We will oppose linking terrorism with specific ethnic or religious groups, deepen preventive counter-terrorism and deradicalization cooperation, and reject double standard on combating terrorism. State Councilor Wangs remarks elicited positive responses from others attending the session.

Besides attending the session, State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi also met with OIC Secretary-General Hussein Ibrahim Taha and foreign ministers attending the session including Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry and Somali Foreign Minister Abdisaid Muse Ali. The Chinese side expressed its support for Islamic countries in safeguarding sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity, and seeking development paths suited to their own national conditions. China will continue to stand firmly with the vast number of Islamic countries, safeguard the two sides legitimate development rights, expand common voice in the international community, and enhance positive energy in the international community. Secretary-General Taha said that the presence of Chinese foreign minister at the session will further boost bilateral relations. The OIC is ready to strengthen political consultation with China, expand channels for exchanges, and deepen exchanges and cooperation in such fields as economy and trade, finance, people-to-people and cultural affairs, and inter-civilizational dialogue, thus bringing more benefits to the two peoples.

Bloomberg: The US and the Philippines will hold their biggest military drills in around three decades. This comes as the tension with China rises. Does the foreign ministry have any comment on the military drills to be held by the US and the Philippines?

Wang Wenbin: We do not oppose relevant countries military drills within their borders, but we hope the exercises will not target any third party and they will not do things detrimental to regional peace and stability. I would also like to stress that there is no tension between China and the Philippines. We hope relevant sides will not create tension.

Bloomberg: Just a question on a virtual call between former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen on Tuesday evening where they discussed various topics, including COVID, Ukraine, the CPTPP and peace in the Indo-Pacific region. Does the foreign ministry have any comment on this virtual meeting?

Wang Wenbin: First of all, I must correct you on one point. Taiwan is an inalienable part of Chinas territory and there is no president whatsoever of the Taiwan region. China firmly opposes any official interaction between Taiwan and countries having diplomatic ties with China and the Taiwan regions accession to any agreement or organization of official nature. This is our consistent and clear-cut position.

During its colonial rule over Taiwan for half a century, Japan committed innumerable crimes, over which it bears grave historical responsibilities to the Chinese people. Some political forces in Japan openly colluded with Taiwan independence forces and made wanton remarks on the Taiwan question. China rejects and deplores such moves and has lodged solemn representation with the Japanese side.

The Taiwan question and the Ukraine issue are different in nature and are not comparable at all. The Taiwan question is purely Chinas own affair and none of Japans business. It is dangerous and futile for some people in Japan to mention Taiwan and Ukraine in the same breath and incite breakthroughs in the relations with Taiwan. We seriously urge the Japanese side and certain politicians to make deep reflection on history, earnestly abide by the principles stipulated in the four political documents between China and Japan and Japan's commitments, avoid any official interaction with the Taiwan authorities, refrain from emboldening Taiwan independence elements, speak and act prudently on the Taiwan question and stop making provocations.

We have also noted that since the outbreak of the Ukraine crisis, the DPP authorities have manipulated the issue to sway public opinion and embolden Taiwan independence propositions. Such moves are futile. No matter what trick the DPP authorities play, the fact that Taiwan is part of China can never be changed, the overriding trend of Taiwan being reunited with the motherland can never be held back, and the defeat of Taiwan independence forces can never be reversed.

Beijing Youth Daily: According to reports, on March 22, Gou Zhongwen, Director of the General Administration of Sport of China and President of Chinese Olympic Committee, met with Susanne Lyons, President of US Olympic Committee, via videolink. He also received an honorary trophy from the US side. Do you have any comment?

Wang Wenbin: I noted relevant reports. For a period of time, the Chinese side has maintained close communication and cooperation with sports departments, organizations and institutions of various countries, the US Olympic Committee included, and jointly presented a streamlined, safe and splendid Winter Olympics to the world, winning wide acclaim from the international community. During the Beijing Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games, Chinese and American athletes competed with each other and also had friendly interactions, fostering sincere friendship. Also, the Chinese side received an honorary trophy given by the US Olympic Committee to Cai Qi, President of the Beijing Organising Committee for the 2022 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games. All this shows that enhancing sports and people-to-people exchanges between China and the US meets the peoples aspiration and serves the common interests of both sides. We hope that the two sides will work together to continuously advance cultural and people-to-people exchanges and cooperation, enhance mutual understanding between the two peoples, and cement public support for the sound development of China-US relations.
Toronto police are loking for this male suspect after a woman was recently sexually assaulted in North York. - Toronto Police Service photos
Toronto writer Rachel McMillan on her new book "The Mozart Code": My characters became my lockdown buddies

For her latest novel, the prolific author of historical fiction channelled her love of music and probed a real-life mystery
Brevard, NC (28712)

Today

Sunshine to start, then a few afternoon clouds. High 81F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Cloudy this evening. Scattered thunderstorms developing after midnight. Low 61F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 40%.
Acquisitions to grow Ascotts fund under management to S$9 billion when fully deployed



(TRAVPR.COM) SINGAPORE - March 23rd, 2022 - CapitaLand Investments (CLI) wholly owned lodging business unit, The Ascott Limited (Ascott) is investing in two properties in Ningbo, China and Amsterdam, the Netherlands for approximately S$190 million through Ascott Serviced Residence Global Fund (ASRGF), Ascotts private equity fund with Qatar Investment Authority. When fully deployed, the acquisitions will boost Ascotts total funds under management (FUM) to S$9 billion.

In Ningbo, ASRGF has acquired two residential towers on a turnkey basis and the project will open as the 206-unit Somerset Hangzhou Bay Ningbo in 2025. The serviced residence is located in Ningbos Hangzhou Bay New Town at the geographic centre of the Yangtze River Delta, Chinas economic powerhouse. Somerset Hangzhou Bay Ningbo is also adjacent to the districts advanced manufacturing industrial zone where many Fortune 500 companies have established their facilities, generating corporate demand for the serviced residence.

The acquisition in Amsterdam is a rare freehold asset which will be refurbished and unveiled as Citadines Canal Amsterdam in 2023. The 93-unit serviced residence is strategically located in the citys Canal District, a renowned UNESCO World Heritage site. The property is also close to several regional offices of multinational corporations.

With the acquisitions of the two assets, there will be 10 properties with close to 2,000 units held under ASRGF. The fund has five operational properties  Ascott Sudirman Jakarta, La Clef Champs-Elysees Paris, Citadines Islington London, lyf Funan Singapore and Quest NewQuay Docklands Melbourne. Properties under development include lyf Gambetta Paris, Ascotts first lyf-branded coliving property in Europe, and Somerset Metropolitan West Hanoi. Both properties were acquired in June 2021 and are expected to open in 2024. Citadines Walker North Sydney is slated to launch in December 2022.

Mr Kevin Goh, CLIs Chief Executive Officer for Lodging, said: Ascotts key differentiator is our unique position as a vertically-integrated global lodging business with a strong foothold in Asia. We have expertise across the full value chain, from deal sourcing, investment, asset and fund management, as well as award-winning hospitality operations to generate the required returns for our capital partners. We will continue to work with our capital partners to grow our FUM through investment vehicles such as ASRGF and our newly established Student Accommodation Development Venture (SAVE), adding to the fee income stream from our asset management and property management capabilities.

Mr Mak Hoe Kit, Ascotts Managing Director for Lodging Funds and Head of Business Development & Investment Asset Management, said: The acquisitions of the two prime assets through ASRGF are a testament of our proven track record in deal sourcing and origination. The operational properties held under ASRGF have remained resilient amid COVID-19, supported by their excellent location and robust base of long-stay corporate guests and a strong domestic leisure travel market. The first property that was divested outperformed our expected underwriting. As we near the full deployment of ASRGF, we are exploring new opportunities to establish more lodging funds. Leveraging Ascotts global presence and experience across different types of lodging assets, we are focused on creating the right fund to meet the needs of our wide network of partners.

Somerset Hangzhou Bay Ningbo, an asset in a fast-growing economic hub supported by transport infrastructure development

Somerset Hangzhou Bay Ningbo () is within walking distance to commercial centres, schools and shopping malls. The property is also next to an upcoming transport hub that will be completed in 2026, driving further demand for accommodation in the vicinity. A cross-sea railway line connecting Hangzhou Bay New Town to Shanghai is slated for completion in 2026, enabling guests to commute between the two destinations via a 35-minute train ride. The serviced residence will also offer a mix of two- and three-bedroom apartments as well as facilities including a gymnasium, meeting rooms, a kids area and a residents lounge. Somerset Hangzhou Bay Ningbo will also be green-certified, designed and developed to achieve the EDGE (Excellence in Design for Greater Efficiencies) certification.

Somerset Hangzhou Bay Ningbo is in the heart of Ningbos Hangzhou Bay New Town, a key hub within the Zhejiang province. From the town, it is a two-hour drive to the economic centres of Hangzhou, Shanghai and Suzhou. Guests can also easily reach four international airports, including Shanghai Pudong International Airport and Hangzhou Xiaoshan International Airport, as well as two international harbours, Port of Ningbo-Zhoushan and Port of Shanghai. Foreign direct investments in Ningbo increased by 32.7% in 2021. The positive investment momentum is expected to generate strong corporate demand for Somerset Hangzhou Bay Ningbo.

Citadines Canal Amsterdam, a freehold asset in a prime location amid strong market fundamentals

Located in the bustling and picturesque Canal District, Citadines Canal Amsterdam is a three-minute walk to Vijzelgracht Metro Station. The station is a few stops to the Amsterdam Central Station and the citys Zuidas business district. The serviced residence is also within walking distance to popular attractions such as Heineken Experience, Albert Cuyp Market, Museum Square and the Royal Concert Hall. It is also near to several cultural, art, fashion and nightlife destinations. Citadines Canal Amsterdam is expected to perform well with limited upcoming supply in the immediate vicinity.

Ideal for business and leisure guests, Citadines Canal Amsterdam will offer 93 studios and one-bedroom apartments. Facilities at the serviced residence include a bar, a breakfast room and parking. Citadines Canal Amsterdam, which will be EDGE-certified, will also have sustainable features including double-glazed windows for thermal insulation as well as energy-efficient air handling units and heating system.

Ascotts presence in China and the Netherlands

Somerset Hangzhou Bay Ningbo adds to Ascotts footprint in China that comprises more than 37,000 units in 180 properties across more than 40 cities. These include tier one cities such as Beijing, Guangzhou, Shanghai and Shenzhen. Ascott currently has over 800 units across four properties in Ningbo including Ascott Huaishu Road Ningbo and Citadines OCT Harbour Ningbo.

In the Netherlands, Citadines Canal Amsterdam will be Ascotts second property in the country. Ascott entered the Netherlands in 2019 with the opening of Citadines Sloterdijk Station Amsterdam.

###
Terre Haute, IN (47803)

Today

Rain. High around 60F. Winds E at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch..

Tonight

Considerable cloudiness with occasional rain showers. Thunder possible. Low 57F. Winds ESE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
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)


Tullahoma, TN (37388)

Today

Clouds and some sun this morning with more clouds for this afternoon. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 83F. Winds SSW at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

Variable clouds with scattered thunderstorms. Low 64F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
Almost three years after his passing, the legacy of Wayne Chance lives on. Today Vision on M
Russian and Belarusian military vehicles are actively moving within the territory of Belarus and accumulating along the border with Ukraine.

The relevant statement was made by the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on Facebook, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

Meanwhile, within the territory of Belarus, the representatives of opposition forces and concerned citizens, who are condemning the current illegitimate governments assistance to the Russian Federation in the war against Ukraine, have partially disrupted railway services between Belarus and Ukraine. The information is yet to be updated.

As of 06:00 a.m., March 23, 2022, the Ukrainian defense forces continued to conduct a defense operation in the Eastern, South-Eastern and North-Eastern directions.

In the Eastern direction, the operational groups of troops are active in such operational districts as Donetsk, Slobozhanskyi and Tavriiskyi. They do not allow the enemy to resume an offense operation towards. They are restraining the enemys advance towards Zaporizhzhia.

The combined forces are holding back Russian invaders in the direction of Popasna and Kurakhove. They are also carrying out the circular defense of Mariupol.

In the North-Eastern direction, the defense operation continues in a designated operational zone. The main efforts are focused on covering the state border, holding back the enemys offence near Malyn.

In the Siverskyi area, the Ukrainian Army is keeping the defense of Chernihiv and holding back the enemys advance towards Kyiv.

In the South-Eastern direction, the defense operation is underway, as well as the support of ground operations and individual units, the defense of bases and seaports within the Black Sea operational zone. The defense of the city of Mykolaiv and Mykolaiv Region continues.

Ukrainian defenders continue to hold back the enemy in the direction of Kryviy Rih and Novovorontsovka, conducting a stabilization operation and carrying out territorial defense tasks.

Over the past day, the enemys aviation has been actively involved in hostilities, launching missile strikes.

The Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is repelling concentrated missile and air strikes of the enemy, covering Ukraines important objects and grounding troops from the air. Over the past day, more than 17 enemy air targets have been hit (six aircrafts, five UAVs, one helicopter and five cruise missiles). Additionally, the Ukrainian Air Forces dealt devastating blows to the groups of enemy military vehicles and manpower, as well as enemy cruise missiles.

According to the General Staff, concealed mobilization is underway within the Russian Federation to replenish the personnel losses.

In certain areas, the enemy has been demoralized. In particular, in one of the special forces units involved in active hostilities near Mariupol, less than 10% of the personnel are ready to continue the war. The rest of the personnel are either killed, wounded, ill or demoralized.

mk
The European Commission has proposed that EUR 3.4 billion be allocated from the EU's recovery assistance fund, the so-called REACT-EU, to support Member States welcoming and accommodating refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine.

Ukrinform reports this with a reference to the website of the European Commission.

For all Member States, the Commission proposes to increase pre-financing from 11% to 15% of the 2021 REACT-EU tranche. Moreover, for frontline Member States (Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia) and Member States that have received the highest number of arrivals from Ukraine in proportion to their national population (above 1% between 24 February 2022 and 23 March 2022 - Austria, Bulgaria, Czechia and Estonia), the Commission proposes to increase the percentage to 45%. This total increase in pre-financing equals 3.4 billion to be paid to Member States upon approval of the proposal by co-legislators, the report says.

It is noted that the allocation of such targeted financing will speed-up Member States' access to funds to spend on infrastructure, housing, equipment and services in employment, education, social inclusion, healthcare and childcare.

As part of NextGenerationEU, REACT-EU provides a top-up of EUR 50.6 billion to the 2014-2020 cohesion policy programmes over the course of 2021 and 2022. REACT-EU entered into force on 24 December 2020 and can finance expenditure retroactively from 1 February 2020 until 31 December 2023.

Since the beginning of the crisis in Ukraine in 2014, the EU and its Member States have contributed over EUR 1 billion in humanitarian and early recovery aid to the country.

iy
U.S. President Joe Biden has said that Russias possible use of chemical weapons in Ukraine is a real threat.

He said this on Wednesday, before boarding the presidential helicopter, an Ukrinform correspondent reported.

I think its a real threat, Biden said, when asked by reporters about a threat of chemical attack.

As Ukrinform reported, the permanent representatives of the United States, Albania, France, Ireland, Norway and the United Kingdom to the United Nations issued a joint statement exposing Moscow in lies regarding the development of "biological weapons" in Ukraine.

On February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the beginning of a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Russian troops have been shelling and destroying key infrastructure facilities, conducting massive shelling of residential areas of Ukrainian cities and villages using artillery, multiple rocket launchers and ballistic missiles.

iy
The Ukrainian media community has urged foreign colleagues to avoid calling Russias full-scale invasion of Ukraine as Ukraine Crisis or conflict.

The relevant statement was made by them in the Open Letter to media professionals who cover Russias invasion of Ukraine, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

In this letter, Ukrainian media professionals are calling on foreign colleagues to not use misleading terms, which support Russias disinformation campaign.

In particular, the Ukrainian media community is urging the foreign media to not call Russias invasion of Ukraine as crisis, conflict or military operation and avoid calling it Ukrainian (Ukraine crisis or Ukraine conflict). Russias role in war must be indicated correctly with the wording Russian invasion of Ukraine or Russias war in Ukraine.

The authors of the letter are also asking the foreign media to not overuse the phrase Putins war. Even though there is a temptation to believe that this war started only because of the Russian president, several polls from diverse polling organizations (Savanta ComRes, VCIOM, the research project Do Russians Want War?) have reported that the silent majority of Russians  roughly 60 percent  support the war. During the first week of the war, public support for Putin in Russia grew from 60 to 71 percent. Russian soldiers on the ground are firing missiles and bombs, and deliberately killing civilians. Many of them do not have access to the facts and to independent media, but this does not take responsibility away from them.

The Ukrainian media community is calling on foreign journalists to clearly note that the territories of Crimea, and parts of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts, were annexed and occupied by Russian forces in 2014 and avoid reporting Ukrainian and Russian positions as two equal perspectives, since Russian positions are based on lies, propaganda and denial of the existence of Ukraine as a nation and state. Foreign media professionals are asked to include, engage and hear Ukrainian experts, or those who have lived and worked in Ukraine, in the journalism they publish about the war.

The narrative that characterizes the war as a proxy one between Russia and the West denies Ukrainian agency  something that the Ukrainian peoples resistance to invasion clearly demonstrates. NATO is an alliance based on the right of sovereign nations to collective defense, enshrined in Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations. By focusing on expansion, the media are perpetuating the Kremlins justification for war and ignoring the democratic voice of the Ukrainian people who wish to live in peace, free from Russian aggression, the Ukrainian media community noted.

The authors of the letter also mentioned that four media professionals had already been killed by the Russian military: Oleksandra Kuvshynova, Brent Renaud, Evgen Sakun and Pierre Zakrzewski. Russian forces kidnap Ukrainian journalists in order to silence them, thus a Ukrainian journalist Viktoriya Roschina and Oleh Baturin spent 6 and 8 days in captivity after disappearing. Ukrainian photojournalist Maks Levin disappeared on March 13, 2022, while reporting from the frontline near Kyiv. The publisher from Melitopol, Mikhail Kumok, and three journalists  Yevgeniya Boryan, Yuliya Olkhovska and Lyubov Chaika  had been detained for 1 day and pressured to collaborate with the Russian occupational regime in their city.

The Open Letter was signed by Internews Ukraine, Institute of Mass Information, Commission on Journalism Ethics, Ukrainian Association of Media Psychologists and Media Educators, National Union of Journalists of Ukraine, Souspilnist Foundation, Dzerkalo Tyzhnia, Suspilne, Ukrayinska Pravda, hromadske, LB.ua, Zaborona Media, Realnaya Gazeta, Glavcom, Center for Democracy and Rule of Law, Regional Press Development Institute, Detector media NGO.

Photo: Stringer, Anadolu Agency
Canada and the European Union will help Ukraine and Moldova strengthen cyber defense and counter disinformation.

According to an Ukrinform correspondent, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said this in a joint statement published after their meeting in Brussels.

"We are committed to advancing our cooperation on hybrid threats such as cybersecurity, both in response to Russias aggression and longer-term objectives. Together, we will enhance efforts to coordinate assistance to the Governments of Ukraine and Moldova related to cyber resilience and defense, Internet access and countering disinformation, working with EU Member States and other like-minded partners, and through the G7 Rapid Response Mechanism," the document said.

It says the current Russian invasion of Ukraine is "an unprecedented attack on democratic principles and the rules-based international system." "It has also underscored the need for democracies to strengthen international cooperation and coordination to stand up against authoritarianism and to develop new approaches to promote and protect democracies around the world," the statement said.

This week, Trudeau is on a several-day visit to Brussels, where he will take part in the NATO summit and hold a series of meetings with European leaders. This is Trudeau's second trip this month.
In order for freedom to not lose, it must be well armed. French companies should leave the Russian market and stop sponsoring murdering and looting.

The relevant statement was made by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during his speech in the French Parliament, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

Dear ladies and gentlemen! Dear French people! Tomorrow will be a month since Ukrainians have been fighting for their lives and their freedom, since our Army has been heroically opposing all the forces of Russia. The prevailing forces of Russia. We need greater assistance, we need greater support. In order for freedom to not lose, it must be well armed. Tanks, aviation, anti-aircraft defense systems  we need all of this. You can help us, Zelensky told.

According to him, in order for freedom to win, the world must also support the fight for it with sanctions. French companies should realize that values are more important than profit and stop sponsoring murders, rapes and other crimes committed by the Russian military.

A new package of sanctions every week. French companies should leave the Russian market: Renault, Auchan, Leroy Merlin and others. They must cease to be sponsors of Russias war machine. Sponsors of killing children, women; sponsors of rape, robbery and looting by the Russian Army. All companies must remember once and forever that values are worth more than profit. Especially profit on blood, Zelensky stressed.

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 missile strikes on Ukrainian cities and villages, killing civilians.

mk
Julienne, a Burundian refugee living in Maratane refugee settlement with her three children, in front of what used to be her house.  UNHCR/Juliana Ghazi

UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, alongside Mozambiques government and humanitarian partners, is rushing to assist thousands of families affected by Tropical Cyclone Gombe, which made landfall in Nampula province on 11 March 2022  destroying homes, flooding farmlands, and forcing people to flee in search of safety.

Gombe is the strongest storm to strike Mozambique since Cyclones Idai and Kenneth wreaked havoc in the spring of 2019, killing hundreds and displacing some 2.2 million people. Cyclone Gombe has hit Mozambique less than two months after Tropical Storm Ana, which made landfall in northern and central Mozambique on 24 January, affecting 180,869 people, injuring 207 and killing at least 38, mostly in Zambezia, Nampula and Tete provinces.

While the intensity and impact of Cyclone Gombe appear to be less severe than Idai and Kenneth, this category 4 storm brought fierce winds of up to 190km/h, intermittent rain and thunderstorms, damaging critical infrastructure and cutting power and communications in Nampula City, as well as in the nearby Maratane refugee settlement and sites hosting internally displaced people (IDPs) from Cabo Delgado province.

More than 380,000 people have been affected in Nampula province alone, according to local authorities, including tens of thousands of displaced people. They are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance, including shelter materials to rebuild homes that collapsed during the storm.

Among those affected were a Burundian refugee and single mother of three, who told UNHCR that her family had fled to a neighbours house in Maratane settlement after theirs was completely destroyed. A young man said his crops had been devastated by the storm, leaving him fearful that he would no longer be able to support himself and his family of four.

UNHCR is mobilizing urgently needed shelter and other essential items from its stockpiles to assist 62,000 refugees, IDPs and host community members.

Several basic infrastructure facilities were also damaged in the Maratane settlement  which hosts 9,300 refugees  such as the primary school, health centre, UNHCR warehouses, transit centre, and irrigation system. More funding is needed to ensure those repairs can be made so that basic services for refugees are not disrupted.

As Protection Cluster lead agency, UNHCR and partners are visiting accommodation centres that host newly displaced families to assess their needs  ranging from shelter, food and healthcare to protection from sexual exploitation and abuse (PSEA), as well as mental health and psychosocial support services needed due to the terrifying experience of the storm. In addition, we are working to provide IDPs with access to civil documentation, which many lost as they fled home.

Every region of the world is experiencing climate hazards. Cyclones and other storms are becoming more frequent and severe, floods are stronger, droughts are intensifying, and wildfires are becoming more devastating.

Human-induced climate change is accelerating, and already causing dangerous and widespread disruption to nature and people. Those with the least means to adapt are hardest hit, including refugees, internally displaced and stateless people. Women, children, older people, people with disabilities, and indigenous peoples are disproportionately affected. Over 80 per cent of refugees and internally displaced people come from the most climate-vulnerable countries worldwide.

Media contacts:
Displaced persons in Lviv are being enrolled into the multi-purpose cash support programme Photo: UNHCR/Igor.Karpenko

               . / 

Information on the cash assistance

The UNHCR is launching a collection of data for enrolment in its assistance programmes including a cash assistance programme to support the population displaced from their regions due to military actions to meet their immediate basic needs, including temporary accommodation, food and hygiene items, so they can settle down and rebuild a life in a place of displacement.

Enrollment modality

The data collection process will be conducted by UNHCR partner organizations CF Right to Protection, NGO Nehemia, NGO Crimea SOS, International Fund for Health and Environment Carpathian Region NEEKA. The data collection/enrollment process will take approximately 30 minutes and enrolment personnel will collect data on each member of the household[1] who came with you including extended relatives (grandmother/grandfather, etc). The information to be provided during the enrolment interview:

Biodata

Name spelling based on ID document

Tax number (needed for payment processing)

Card number (to be needed for payment)

Children birth certificates

All information provided is confidential and will be recorded in the UNHCR database. While providing your personal data, you are giving consent to share some of the data with the Financial Service Provider for the purpose of receiving financial assistance.

3. Amount of assistance

The transfer amount should cover 100% of the income gap based on the actual subsistence level projected for April 2022. Thus, the transfer value is UAH 2,220 per family member per month. The whole amount of the assistance will be divided into three months and transferred to one family member of the household each month by transfer.

4. Delivery modality

The whole amount for 3 months will be transferred to one member [2] of the household either:

Through transfers via FinTech Rapyd to the bank account associated with the bank card for which you will provide the number (or IBAN code).

You will be notified by the following SMS:

Hello, UNHCR sent you <amount> UAH as part of its Financial Assistance to IDPs for 3 months. The money is available in your card account. For more information, please visit: https://www.unhcr.org/ua/43231-unhcr-is-launching-a-cash-assistance-programme-for-idps-ua.html or call 800 307 711

Through Ukrposhta to families without a bank card/account or for which the card number is erroneous. The list of Ukrposhta post offices will be provided. To receive the payment this person will need to come to the Ukrposhta post office and show his/her original ID document;

You will be notified by the following SMS:

Please receive a transfer  from UNHCR in the amount of  UAH. The money is available at the Ukrposhta branch. More information about help and branch addresses at https://bit.ly/3xXZgDk or 800307711

Attention: If you have been registered for financial assistance of UAH 2,220/person/month from another UN agency/humanitarian organization, you cannot be registered for UNHCR financial assistance. This is the same type of assistance provided by different agencies.

5. Program coverage

Vinnytska, Dnipropetrovska, Zakarpatska, Lvivska, Ternopilska, Khmelnytska, Chernivetska, Ivano-Frankivska, Poltavska oblasts.

6. Complaint and Response mechanism

Should you have any query regarding UNHCR assistance or you have feedback, suggestion, or complaint with respect to the work of UNHCR and/or its partner staff you can contact UNHCR hotline 0800307711.

7. PSEA

UNHCR has zero tolerance to sexual exploitation or sexual abuse. All assistance provided by UNHCR or its partners is free of charge. Confidentially report any misbehavior of the staff on hotline 0800307711.

[1] Household means the group of relatives who came and live together.

[2] This person should stay with the household, be available, able to go to the Ukrposhta post office. Usually, this is the person who registered in proGres first and he/she is called Principal Applicant.

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter
Technology being what it is (excessive) and parents-to-be being who they are (tired already), the latest baby accoutrements include a monitor that not only hears the baby, but films the baby, even measures the temperature and humidity in the baby's room, writes Debra-Lynn B. Hook. (Kyryl Gorlov/Dreamstime/TNS)
Sonora, CA (95370)

Today

A mix of clouds and sun. High 78F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Some clouds this evening will give way to mainly clear skies overnight. Low 49F. Winds light and variable.
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
Gary Hyche, with the Utilities Board, spoke about the utilities at the locations for conditional use of Mobile Homes and displayed an ancient pipe to show the deteriorated condition of pipes.
Union Springs, AL (36089)

Today

Mostly sunny. High near 90F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Mostly cloudy. Low 69F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph.
(@FahadShabbir)

Former United States presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said on Wednesday that she had tested positive for the COVID-19, urging Americans to get vaccine shots

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 23rd March, 2022) Former United States presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said on Wednesday that she had tested positive for the COVID-19, urging Americans to get vaccine shots.

"Well, I've tested positive for COVID. I've got some mild cold symptoms but am feeling fine.

I'm more grateful than ever for the protection vaccines can provide against serious illness. Please get vaccinated and boosted if you haven't already," Clinton tweeted.

Clinton added that her husband and former US President Bill Clinton has tested negative, but still undergoing quarantine procedures.

Former US President Donald Trump declared the COVID-19 national emergency in March 2020, which was later extended by Joe Biden.
Paris, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 23rd Mar, 2022 ) :Russia's forces in Ukraine appear to be turning to a war of attrition with devastating effect on civilians, after failing to secure hoped-for swift gains when President Vladimir Putin launched the invasion one month ago.

The US government says recent days have brought more intense aerial and naval bombardment as Ukranian resistance holds up the invaders' advance on land.

Attacking forces remain 15 kilometres (10 miles) from the Ukrainian capital Kyiv to the north-west and 30 kilometres away to the east, able only to bombard it from a distance.

While US President Joe Biden has said Putin's "back is against the wall in Ukraine", US Defense Department spokesman John Kirby told CNN Tuesday that Ukrainian forces were now even "going after Russians" who were losing morale as food and fuel run out.

Capturing Kyiv had appeared the Russians' top target as they entered the country on February 24, hoping to topple President Volodymyr Zelensky's administration.

But despite mobilising a force of between 150,000 and 200,000 troops, Moscow failed to anticipate anything other than weak resistance -- likely owing to Russian intelligence failures -- and made sloppy logistical preparations.

Even now, Russia does not have complete control of the skies over Ukraine, complicating their entire offensive.

"The Russian lack a real command and control policy," a former top French military officer told AFP, pointing to lack of coordination between ground and air forces and the strikes' lack of precision.

- Siege warfare - The number of soldiers killed cannot be verified, although the Pentagon estimates as many as 7,000 Russian dead in the first month according to the New York Times.

That would amount to more losses than the US suffered in the years-long occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan combined.

"Putin's offensive is stuck despite all the destruction that it is bringing day after day," German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Wednesday.

For its part, Kyiv acknowledged 1,300 troops killed in action on March 12 -- likely well below the real figure according to observers.

With their forces bogged down, the Russians have transformed their offensive into a string of sieges apparently aimed at wearing down and demoralising the Ukrainian population.

Around 10 million people have left their homes, while the UN human rights chief says almost 3.6 million have quit the country.

"The more the Russian infantry struggles, the higher the army climbs up the scale of brutality and the disproportionate use of air power," a European source close to NATO told AFP.

"Putin needs a deal, so he needs victories." Throughout the one month offensive, Russia has only captured one major urban centre -- Kherson in south Ukraine. Mariupol to the east remains subjected to a siege that has caused international outrage.

Uncaptured northern cities like Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest urban centre, are under constant bombardment, while pressure is also growing on those in the south and east.

Mykolaiv, which blocks the way along the Black Sea coast towards Odessa, is also under artillery fire.

- Devastation - But Russia has yet to put much emphasis on diplomatic efforts and analysts warn that even if a ceasefire were agreed it could just allow Moscow to buy time and rebuild its forces.

More than 200,000 people are stuck in Mariupol, reduced in large part to corpse-strewn ruins and cut off from necessities like food, water, electricity and heat.

Russia's determination to capture the port city is in proportion to its strategic worth, potentially linking annexed Crimea by land with the pro-Russian separatist territories of the Donbas.

A firmer grasp on Ukraine's east could ultimately allow the invaders to encircle the Ukrainian defenders fighting there.

"The next chapter in this war could prove even uglier as it will likely turn into a war of attrition, with greater bombardment of civilian areas," Michael Kofman of the US-based CNA think-tank wrote on Twitter.

"Russian forces will probably try to compensate for poor performance by inflicting greater destruction." If no negotiated settlement arrives, "attrition war is the most likely path," William Alberque of the International Institute for Strategic Studies told AFP.

He warned against pushing Kyiv into accepting a ceasefire at any cost.

"The worst is, (Westerners') desire to stop the suffering of Ukrainian people could help the Russians. They rely on our desire to see peace as an opportunity," Alberque said.

"They are going to use a ceasefire to build up forces," he warned.
To celebrate the Pakistan National Day a flag hoisting ceremony was held at the High Commission for Pakistan, Canberra

Canberra (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 23th Mar, 2022) To celebrate the Pakistan National Day a flag hoisting ceremony was held at the High Commission for Pakistan, Canberra. The High Commissioner H.E. Mr. Zahid Hafeez Chaudhri raised the flag with the national anthem of Pakistan. The flag hoisting was proceeded with the recitation from the Holy Quran. Messages of the President and the Prime Minister were also read out.

Speaking on the occasion, the High Commissioner highlighted the significance of 23rd March. He paid tribute to the founding fathers of Pakistan and their vision for a separate homeland for Muslims of the subcontinent. He highlighted the various initiatives of the government to facilitate the overseas Pakistanis including Roshan Digital Account, Qaumi Sehat Card, online consular services and start of PIA flight operations from Pakistan to Australia.

He also thanked the Pakistani community for their hard work and tireless contributions especially during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Pakistani children as well as members of the Pakistani community sang national songs/ mili naghmas at the event.

The Flag hoisting ceremony was attended by more than a hundred Pakistani community members in Australia. At the end of the event, a traditional Pakistani breakfast was served to the guests.
WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 23rd March, 2022) Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov said it is irresponsible and dangerous to send weaponry and foreign mercenaries to Ukraine.

"Pumping the Kiev regime up with weapons and sending foreign mercenaries into Ukrainian territory is irresponsible and extremely dangerous. The militarization of Ukraine directly threatens European and global security," Antonov said as quoted by the diplomatic mission on Telegram.

According to Antonov, a significant part of the weapons ends up in the hands of bandits, Nazis and terrorists.

"Now, in pursuit of financial gain, the defense industry sector companies have completely lost their moral guidelines and are ready to earn money on blood.

We urge the sponsors of the Kiev regime to stop encouraging bloodshed in Ukraine and seriously think about the consequences of their activities," the ambassador said.

Russia launched a special military operation in Ukraine on February 24 in response to calls from the Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics (DPR and LPR) for protection against intensifying attacks by Ukrainian troops. The Russian Defense Ministry said the special operation, which targets Ukrainian military infrastructure, aims to "demilitarize and denazify" Ukraine. Moscow has said it has no plans to occupy Ukraine. Western nations have imposed numerous sanctions on Russia.
USM ARMY ROTC Hosts USAACE, Rucker Deputy Commanding General

Wed, 03/23/2022 - 09:45am | By: Ivonne Kawas

Pictured left to right: MAJ Eric Whetstone, BG Stanley Budraitis, Dean Chris Winstead, LTC Walker Nordan, MSG Edwin Williams.

Brigadier General Stanley Budraitis, a native of Petal, Miss. and the Deputy Commanding General of the US Army Aviation Center of Excellence and Aviation School at Fort Rucker, Ala., was welcomed by The University of Southern Mississippis (USM) U.S. Army Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC)  Golden Eagle Battalion  earlier this month on the Hattiesburg campus.

A Mississippi National Guardsman and an Army Aviator with more than 25 years of service and over 2,000 flight hours, BG Budraitis is leading the charge for leader development for the U.S. Army.

BG Budraitis addressed USMs Army ROTC cadets during class-time and Leadership Lab. He got to relay his Army story, including how much the Army has given back to him and his family over the years, and the key tenants of leaders that make them and their teams successful.

As USMs Army ROTC develops tomorrows leaders, it is essential for us to expose our cadets to successful leaders who live up to Army values and display key tenants that they can strive to emulate, said LTC E. Walker Nordan Jr., Director of the Department of Military Science and Leadership and ROTC. BG Budraitis shared life-long lessons that will help prepare our cadets for military success.

BG Budraitis also had the opportunity to meet with Dr. Chris Winstead, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, to discuss support for Army ROTC, as well as increases in mission accomplishments. In addition, he visited the new Center for Military Veterans, Service Members and Families, where he met with MG(R) Jeff Hammond to discuss Veteran outreach, services offered at the new Center, and Veteran population at Southern Miss.

We were honored to have General Budraitis visit campus and share his expertise and experience with our students. Our ROTC units are a vibrant and vital part of our Southern Miss community. To have an officer of General Budraitis stature invest his time with our Army ROTC cadets was greatly appreciated, said Dr. Winstead.

Most importantly, BG Budraitis spread his pride in being part of an organization of service, as he stated in closing during his address to the cadets, there is no greater feeling than being an American Soldier.

Among BG Budraitis previous assignments include: Senior National Guard Advisor to the Aviation and Missile Command at Redstone Arsenal, Ala., and previously, he served as Commander of the 1108th Theater Aviation Sustainment Maintenance Group.

BG Budraitis holds a bachelors degree in business administration from William Carey University and a masters degree in strategic studies from the United States Army War College. He is a graduate of the Aviation Officer Basic Course, Aviation Officer Advanced Course, the United States Army Combined Arms Service Staff School, the United States Army Command and General Staff Officer Course, and the United States Army War College.

Learn more about Southern Miss Army ROTC and scholarship opportunities.
This week on our last episode of Celebrate Today we wish all students well on their finals and end-of-semester struggles. It's a crazy time of year so good luck and may the force be with you!
A memorial on the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School ((c) Jennifer Gauthier)

The Holy See Press Office issues a brief statement giving details of the visit of several delegations of indigenous Canadian peoples to the Vatican, which will take place next week.

By Vatican News staff reporter

In a brief statement released on Wednesday, the Holy See Press Office explained that Pope Francis will meet individually with several different delegations of Canadian indigenous peoples, along with their bishops.

He will have the opportunity to listen to their testimonies, including personal testimonies of the lasting legacy of the so-called residential schools.



According to the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Pope will meet with representatives of the three major groups of indigenous peoples  First Nations, Inuit, and Metis  recognized in Canadas Constitution Act of 1982.

Pope Francis will meet with the delegations of Metis and Inuit on Monday, 28 March; and with the First Nations delegation next Thursday, 31 March.

The following day, Friday, 1 April, Pope Francis will receive all three delegations together, along with representatives of the Canadian Bishops Conference (CCCB), during which the Holy Father will address those present.

Journey toward healing

The meeting with Pope Francis was originally announced by the CCCB in November of 2021. At the time, CCCB president Bishop Raymond Poisson said, The journey towards healing and reconciliation is a long one, but we believe this will be a significant milestone in the Catholic Churchs commitment to renewing, strengthening and reconciling relationships with Indigenous Peoples across the land.

He explained, With this delegation, we hope to walk together in a new way, to listen with humility, and to discern the next steps that the Church can take to support residential school survivors, their families, and their communities.

Pope Francis meeting with Indigenous peoples of Canada was originally scheduled to take place in December 2021, but was postponed due to a surge in Covid cases in Italy.
Cardinal Michael Czerny meets with the Catholic Bishops of Senegal in Dakar, and visits a Jesuit-run centre for Islamic-Christian dialogue.

By Fr. Benedict Mayaki, SJ  Dakar, Senegal

The Bishops of Senegal visited with Cardinal Michael Czerny at the Apostolic Nunciature in Dakar on Tuesday.

The interim prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development traveled to Senegal for the 9th World Water Forum, taking place on 2126 March.

The Forumthe worlds biggest water-related eventbrings together participants from all areas to promote dialogue and facilitate access to water and sanitation.

Encouraging Senegalese Church

On the sidelines of the event, Cardinal Czerny is also taking the opportunity to meet with members of the local Church.

On Tuesday, the Jesuit Cardinal met with the Bishops of Senegal at the Apostolic Nunciature of the Holy See in Dakar.

Senegalese Bishops pose for a photo with Cardinal Czerny

Archbishop Michael Banach, the Apostolic Nuncio to Senegal, Cape Verde, Guinea Bissau and Mauritania, was also on hand for the encounter with Senegals Bishops.

Cardinal Czerny also made a 70-kilometre journey to the town of Gandigal, which lies near the city of Mbour.

A community of Jesuits there is working to set up a center for religious studies and Islamic-Christian dialogue, which hopes to also double as a Spiritual Centre.
Victoria, TX (77901)

Today

Windy with scattered thunderstorms developing. High 88F. Winds S at 20 to 30 mph. Chance of rain 40%. Higher wind gusts possible..

Tonight

Partly to mostly cloudy skies with scattered thunderstorms during the evening. Low 71F. Winds ENE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 50%.
Normal, IL (61790)

Today

Rain likely. High near 55F. Winds E at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch..

Tonight

Showers this evening, becoming a steady rain overnight. Thunder possible. Low 52F. Winds ENE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
A new report has found that Facebook failed to detect blatant hate speech and calls to violence against Myanmar's Rohingya Muslim minority years after such behavior was found to have played a determining role in the genocide against them.

The report shared exclusively with The Associated Press showed the rights group Global Witness submitted eight paid ads for approval to Facebook, each including different versions of hate speech against Rohingya. All eight ads were approved by Facebook to be published.

The group pulled the ads before they were posted or paid for, but the results confirmed that despite its promises to do better, Facebook's leaky controls still fail to detect hate speech and calls for violence on its platform.

The army conducted what it called a clearance campaign in western Myanmar's Rakhine state in 2017 after an attack by a Rohingya insurgent group. More than 700,000 Rohingya fled into neighboring Bangladesh and security forces were accused of mass rapes, killings and torching thousands of homes.

Also Monday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that the U.S. views the violence against Rohingya as genocide. The declaration is intended to both generate international pressure and lay the groundwork for potential legal action, Blinken said.

On Feb. 1 of last year, Myanmar's military forcibly took control of the country, jailing democratically elected government officials. Rohingya refugees have condemned the military takeover and said it makes them more afraid to return to Myanmar.

Experts say such ads have continued to appear and that despite its promises to do better and assurances that it has taken its role in the genocide seriously, Facebook still fails even the simplest of tests  ensuring that paid ads that run on its site do not contain hate speech calling for the killing of Rohingya Muslims.

"The current killing of the Kalar is not enough, we need to kill more!" read one proposed paid post from Global Witness, using a slur often used in Myanmar to refer to people of east Indian or Muslim origin.

"They are very dirty. The Bengali/Rohingya women have a very low standard of living and poor hygiene. They are not attractive," read another.

"These posts are shocking in what they encourage and are a clear sign that Facebook has not changed or done what they told the public what they would do: properly regulate themselves," said Ronan Lee, a research fellow at the Institute for Media and Creative Industries at Loughborough University, London.

The eight ads from Global Witness all used hate speech language taken directly from the United Nations Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar in their report to the Human Rights Council. Several examples were from past Facebook posts.

The fact that Facebook approved all eight ads is especially concerning because the company claims to hold advertisements to an "even stricter" standard than regular, unpaid posts, according to their help center page for paid advertisements.

"I accept the point that eight isn't a very big number. But I think the findings are really stark, that all eight of the ads were accepted for publication," said Rosie Sharpe, a campaigner at Global Witness. "I think you can conclude from that that the overwhelming majority of hate speech is likely to get through."

Facebook's parent company Meta Platforms Inc. said it has invested in improving its safety and security controls in Myanmar, including banning military accounts after the Tatmadaw, as the armed forces are locally known, seized power and imprisoned elected leaders in the 2021 coup.

"We've built a dedicated team of Burmese speakers, banned the Tatmadaw, disrupted networks manipulating public debate and taken action on harmful misinformation to help keep people safe. We've also invested in Burmese-language technology to reduce the prevalence of violating content," Rafael Frankel, director of public policy for emerging markets at Meta Asia Pacific wrote in an e-mailed statement to AP on March 17. "This work is guided by feedback from experts, civil society organizations and independent reports, including the UN Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar's findings and the independent Human Rights Impact Assessment we commissioned and released in 2018."

Facebook has been used to spread hate speech and amplify military propaganda in Myanmar in the past.

Shortly after Myanmar became connected to the internet in 2000, Facebook paired with its telecom providers to allow customers to use the platform without having to pay for the data, which was still expensive at the time. Use of the platform exploded. For many in Myanmar, Facebook became the internet itself.

Local internet policy advocates repeatedly told Facebook hate speech was spreading across the platform, often targeting the Muslim minority Rohingya in the majority Buddhist nation.

For years Facebook failed to invest in content moderators who spoke local languages or fact checkers with an understanding of the political situation in Myanmar or to close specific accounts or delete pages being used to propagate hatred of the Rohingya, said Tun Khin, president of Burmese Rohingya Organization UK, a London-based Rohingya advocacy organization.

In March 2018, less than six months after hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fled violence in western Myanmar, Marzuki Darusman, chairman of the U.N. Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar, told reporters social media had "substantively contributed to the level of acrimony and dissension and conflict, if you will, within the public."

"Hate speech is certainly of course a part of that. As far as the Myanmar situation is concerned, social media is Facebook, and Facebook is social media," Darusman said.

Asked about Myanmar a month later at a U.S. Senate hearing, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook planned to hire "dozens" of Burmese speakers to moderate content and would work with civil society groups to identify hate figures and develop new technologies to combat hate speech.

"Hate speech is very language specific. It's hard to do it without people who speak the local language and we need to ramp up our effort there dramatically," Zuckerberg said.

Yet in internal files leaked by whistleblower Frances Haugen last year, AP found that breaches persisted. The company stepped up efforts to combat hate speech but never fully developed the tools and strategies required to do so.

Rohingya refugees have sued Facebook for more than $150 billion, accusing it of failing to stop hate speech that incited violence against the Muslim ethnic group by military rulers and their supporters in Myanmar. Rohingya youth groups based in the Bangladesh refugee camps have filed a separate complaint in Ireland with the 38-nation Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development calling for Facebook to provide some remediation programs in the camps.

The company now called Meta has refused to say how many of its content moderators read Burmese and can thus detect hate speech in Myanmar.

"Rohingya genocide survivors continue to live in camps today and Facebook continue to fail them," said Tun Khin. "Facebook needs to do more."
Forced to flee ethnic and religious persecution in their own country, Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh are welcoming the formal recognition by the United States that Myanmar's military regime committed genocide against the Muslim minority.

"We are very happy on the declaration of the genocide; many, many thanks," Sala Uddin, a 60-year-old refugee at a camp in Bangladesh, told The Associated Press.

"It has been 60 years, starting from 1962, that the Myanmar government has been torturing us and many other communities including Rohingya," he said. "I think a path to take action by the international community against Myanmar has opened up because of the declaration."

"Rohingya nation will always remember the declaration by the U.S. on Rohingya genocide," Abdul Gafur, another refugee, told VOA's Bangla Service. "Meetings and gatherings are prohibited at the camps because of the pandemic. That is why Rohingyas are not able to observe any program to express their gratitude to the U.S."

Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday announced Washington's decision to recognize atrocities against Rohingya Muslims at the hands of the military regime in Myanmar, a country also known as Burma. Monday's formal declaration of genocide  only the eighth ever such statement by the U.S. government  followed years of investigation and review.

"The United States has concluded ... that members of the Burmese military committed genocide and crimes against humanity against Rohingya," Blinken said during a speech at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, whose Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide provided key sources that informed the legal analysis leading to the State Department's decision.

Min Aung Hlaing, who was the head of the military in 2016 and 2017 and who has led the government since the February 2021 coup, was named in Blinken's speech. Monday's declaration said armed forces under Min Aung Hlaing's direct command were responsible for killing more than 9,000 Rohingya and forcing 840,000 others to flee to neighboring Bangladesh over the two-year period.

The commander of Myanmar's armed forces has been under U.S. sanctions for his role in the atrocities since December 2019.

Myanmar's Foreign Affairs Ministry on Tuesday issued a statement saying that "Myanmar has never engaged in any genocidal actions" and holds no "genocidal intent" for any group. It called Blinken's comments "politically motivated and tantamount to interfering in the internal affairs of a sovereign state."

Various human rights groups have also documented and reported on what they have called systematic and widespread killings, rape and displacement of Rohingya minority in Myanmar, a majority of whom are displaced in neighboring Bangladesh. Muslims make up about 4.3% of Myanmar's population of 54 million.

"In 2016 and 2017, Burma's military unleashed a wave of horrific violence in northern Rakhine state against predominantly Muslim Rohingya that, at the time, the United States concluded constituted ethnic cleansing," Ned Price, State Department spokesperson, said Monday.

Accountability

Human rights activists expect the U.S. move to bolster an ongoing effort to hold perpetrators of genocide and other serious crimes accountable and deliver justice and support for the victims. But others are taking a wait-and-see approach.

"Just by saying that genocide had been committed in Myanmar against the Rohingya is not good enough," said Imtiaz Ahmed, director of the Centre for Genocide Studies at the University of Dhaka in Bangladesh. "I think we need to see what would follow from that statement."

Khairul Islam, a Rohingya refugee in Bangladesh, told VOA that "Myanmar should face trial for genocide. There should be economic sanctions to control Myanmar. Otherwise, Myanmar will not listen to anyone. They never did in the past."

The U.S. has imposed sanctions on elements of the Myanmar military and has allocated nearly $1 million in support of investigations and documentation of the most egregious crimes committed in Myanmar.

"The United States is committed to pursuing truth and justice for victims and accountability for those responsible for these atrocities and for other human rights violations and abuses across Burma," Price said.

Last month, the Netherlands-based International Court of Justice resumed its proceedings in a lawsuit accusing Myanmar's military of ethnic cleansing and genocide.

Gambia, backed by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, filed the lawsuit in 2019.

In December 2019, Myanmar's previous civilian leader, the Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, defended the military's actions in Rakhine state as a response to "militancy."

Suu Kyi, who was Myanmar's de facto leader at the time of the 2017 massacres, was arrested in the February 2021 coup. She is not named in the decree.

VOA Bangla Service contributed to this story.
A Vietnamese court jailed a prominent social commentator for five years on Wednesday for anti-state activities, his lawyer and state media said, among dozens of activists that rights groups say are being persecuted for criticising the government.

Le Van Dung, 51, was convicted of conducting propaganda against the state of Vietnam, lawyer Ha Huy Son said, in a trial that lasted only a few hours.

Despite sweeping economic reform and increasing openness to social change, Vietnam's ruling Communist Party retains tight media censorship and tolerates little criticism.

Dung was accused of making and uploading 12 videos on the internet to defame the administration and offend the honour and prestige of the party and state leaders, reported national radio Voice of Vietnam.

Dung, who goes by Le Dung Vova, regularly broadcast live to thousands of followers on Facebook and YouTube before his arrest in June last year.

He didn't plead guilty at the trial and will appeal the verdict, his lawyer said.

Vietnam last week objected to the United States granting a prize for courage to a dissident writer who was jailed for nine years last year for anti-state propaganda.

Its foreign ministry described her award as unobjective and unsuitable. Read full story

Ahead of Wednesday's trial, Human Rights Watch deputy Asia director Phil Robertson said Vietnam should drop the charges against Dung, who he said was one of more than 60 people being prosecuted for speaking out.

Vietnamese authorities persist in treating any sort of criticism of the government as a grave threat to be prosecuted with long prison terms, he said.

International donors and trade partners of Vietnam should press Hanoi to listen to its critics instead of persecuting them.
On this edition of Straight Talk Africa, host Hayde Adams and her guests discuss why so many African students were studying in Ukraine. Whats next for thousands of international students who are fleeing the country amid Russias invasion? Plus, we discuss reversing Africa's "brain drain. Our guests include former President of Mauritius Ameenah Gurib-Fakim, Abena Boaitey-Sowah, educational consultant at CW Education and Career Services, Anesu Masube, founder of Opportunities for Zimbabweans and Dr. Nesochi Okeke-Igbokwe, physician and medical media expert.
Political analysts say South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has undercut his own utility as a potential mediator of the war in Ukraine with a controversial suggestion that NATOs own actions are to blame for Russias invasion of its western neighbor.

Ramaphosa has said he prefers negotiations over weapons or economic sanctions, in reference to sanctions piled on Russia by the United States and Western allies in the aftermath of the invasion, now in its fourth week.

The war could have been avoided if NATO had heeded the warnings from amongst its own leaders and officials over the years that its eastward expansion would lead to greater, not less, instability in the region, Ramaphosa told parliament last Thursday.

But he added that South Africa cannot condone the use of force and violation of international law.

The South African president said South Africa had been asked to mediate in the conflict, but he did not mention who requested the intervention.

University of Western Australia analyst Dr. Muhammad Dan Suleiman told VOA that Ramaphosas outrageous comment is more like stoking the fire of conflict (and) projecting a paradigm of war rather than peace." He said the comment undercuts any possibility for Ramaphosa to mediate peace talks between Russia and Ukraine.

Longtime allies

Africa's most industrialized nation has long-standing relations with the Kremlin dating back to the 1960s. During South Africas apartheid regime, the Soviet Union backed anti-apartheid freedom fighters.

After majority control came to South Africa in 1994, politicians, including those of the ruling African National Congress, maintained ties with Moscow, which observers say makes it no surprise that South Africa has not condemned Russias invasion.

Suleiman said there is no historical reason that gratitude for Soviet support during the apartheid era should translate to a defense of Russias aggression against Ukraine.

''For whatever reason, (Ramaphosa) seems to be equating Russia to the Soviet Union. And that is not true, because Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union. And so, whatever help the Soviet Union gave to the ANC during apartheid also had the contribution of Ukraine,'' Suleiman said.

Prince Mashele, executive director at the Center for Politics and Research in Pretoria, said Ramaphosas position doesnt reflect the current thinking of most South Africans.

''You can't have a foreign policy that is frozen in the past. Foreign policy has to be dynamic. If (Ramaphosa) had a flexible policy, he would appreciate that the Russia of today is not the Russia of yesteryear.''

Mashele told VOA, "Ramaphosa is trapped by his own political party, the ANC, and so, the position he articulates doesn't reflect his own personal preference. In the ANC, there are relics of the old world aligned with the Communist Party of South Africa and (are) still active, Mashele said.

Mashele disagrees with some analysts assertions that Black South Africans in 2022 continue to look to Moscow for support.

''I am Black. I come from Black communities. The majority of Black South Africans are actually inspired by the West. Their culture, mannerisms, are an extension of the West, in terms of thinking.''

He added, ''Black South Africans don't even wish to visit Moscow. They wish to visit New York, or Dubai in the East, or Europe. And so, the position that is articulated by Ramaphosa on behalf of South Africans doesn't reflect the thinking of Black people. It only represents the thinking of a political clique in the ANC.
Since the Taliban have taken control of Afghanistan, many Afghan women activists have sought refuge in Peshawar, Pakistan. These women say that they are concerned about their future. Muska Safi visited some of these women in Peshawar, Pakistan and has sent this story, narrated by Nazrana Yousufzai.
The small Baltic countries, whose militaries have long been dwarfed by that of neighboring Russia, are renewing their push for NATO to establish a larger and more permanent presence on their territory following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania  with a combined population of only about six million people  have long been seen as some of NATOs most vulnerable nations. The countries joined the Western military alliance in 2004 but are connected to the rest of European NATO countries by only a narrow corridor, which lies between the heavily armed Russian exclave of Kaliningrad and Russia-allied Belarus.

The Baltics, former Soviet states, have watched with concern as Moscow tries to reassert influence across Eastern Europe. However, they have also been encouraged as Western countries fortify the NATO alliance in response to Russias invasion of Ukraine.

NATO had no forces in the eastern part of the alliance until 2014, when it decided to deploy four multinational battlegroups on a rotational basis to the Baltics and Poland in response to Russias annexation of Crimea. The NATO presence was further strengthened this year after Russia attacked Ukraine. In total, the Baltics now host about7,700 foreign NATO troops  nearly twice as many compared to earlier this year.

But even with those reinforcements, NATO forces in the Baltics likely could not defeat a large-scale Russian invasion, Baltic leaders warn. If we want to be ready from the first minute of any kind of attack to defend our citizens, and if you want to give citizens of Latvia the same feeling of security as the citizens of France, Britain, Spain, (and) Germanythen there must be this permanent presence and more firepower and capabilities, Latvian Minister of Defense Artis Pabriks told VOA in an interview.



Baltic leaders have long pushed for a permanent basing of U.S. troops, seeing it as the ultimate deterrent against a Russian invasion. Currently, U.S. troops are part of NATOs Baltic rotational battlegroups, which are led by Germany, Britain, and Canada. During a Baltics tour earlier this month, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said more permanent deployments were being considered as part of a larger review of NATOs defense posture. He did not offer details. But the United States has been reluctant to permanently station forces on Russias doorstep, fearing it would further upset relations with Moscow.

Many Baltic leaders hope a permanent NATO presence will be discussed this week when U.S. President Joe Biden visits Brussels, Belgium, for meetings with NATO and other European leaders. Asked about Bidens visit, Latvian Minister of Foreign Affairs Edgars Rinkevics told VOA he believes it is time that NATO states clearly that (its) presence in the Baltic states and Poland and Romania, in what we call the eastern flank, is permanent.



Estonian Minister of Foreign Affairs Eva-Maria Liimets also told VOA she hopes NATO leaders meeting in June in Spain will make permanent decisions about how to strengthen defense and deterrence posture in our region. Even though she conceded Estonia does not currently face a direct military threat, she said Europes security situation has changed as a whole and therefore we must continue to strengthen the defense and deterrence posture of NATO so that we would be more protected.

Its not clear what a more permanent NATO presence in the Baltics would entail in terms of weapons. During the Cold War, the United States alleviated European security fears by positioning tactical nuclear weapons in countries such as Germany, pointed out Dan Plesch, a professor of diplomacy at the SOAS University of London. Is that what is going to satisfy (Baltic) security concerns? Plesch asked in an interview with VOA.

The Baltic nations are already protected by NATOs commitment to defend its members in the event of an attack. NATO also has overwhelming air power superiority that would factor into any battle with Russia in the Baltics, Plesch pointed out. And at the moment, he added, Russias military looks even weaker than normal after sustaining significant losses in Ukraine.

The challenge is how to address Baltic security concerns while avoiding steps that would lead to a more unstable situation with Russia in the future. But with NATO and Russia each blaming the other for creating instability in Eastern Europe, that may be a difficult task.

Any NATO expansion is sensitive for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who cited the issue as a justification, among others, for his invasion of Ukraine. Putin still fumes over the Baltics decision to join NATO, seeing it as a betrayal of Western promises. Analysts say he would likely see the establishment of a permanent NATO presence in Eastern Europe as a violation of past agreements, including the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act (NRFA).

However, those agreements can be regarded in significant part as null and void given Russian actions, Plesch said. Another factor: the NRFA is not a legally binding document, added Mary Elise Sarotte, a Cold War historian and professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. This reality gives the alliance flexibility with regard to NRFAs terms, she told VOA by email.

Experts are mixed when it comes to predicting whether NATO will establish a permanent presence in the Baltics anytime soon. According to Plesch, much depends on how the situation in Ukraine progresses. Sarotte said it depends on how permanent is defined, but that it is clear that a larger NATO presence in the east will happen, and will endure.

In the view of Pabriks, the Latvian defense minister, NATOs new approach to the Baltics should mean much more capabilities, a classical strong presence in the region and also support to our national armies. If Russia does not like the prospect of a more powerful NATO, he said, then it can always choose to not threaten its neighbors.
Data from SARAO's MeerKAT radio telescope data (green) showing the odd radio circles, is overlaid on optical and near infra-red data from the Dark Energy Survey.  J. English (U. Manitoba)/EMU/MeerKAT/DES(CTIO)

Astronomy's newest mystery objects, odd radio circles or ORCs, have been pulled into sharp focus by an international team of astronomers using the world's most capable radio telescopes.

When first revealed in 2020 by the ASKAP radio telescope, owned and operated by Australia's national science agency CSIRO, odd radio circles quickly became objects of fascination. Theories on what causes them ranged from galactic shockwaves to the throats of wormholes.

A new detailed image, captured by the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory's MeerKAT radio telescope and published today in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, is providing researchers with more information to help narrow down those theories.

There are now three leading theories to explain what causes ORCs:

They could be the remnant of a huge explosion at the centre of their host galaxy, like the merger of two supermassive black holes;

They could be powerful jets of energetic particles spewing out of the galaxy's centre; or

They might be the result of a starburst 'termination shock' from the production of stars in the galaxy.

To date ORCs have only been detected using radio telescopes, with no signs of them when researchers have looked for them using optical, infrared, or X-ray telescopes.

Dr Jordan Collier of the Inter-University Institute for Data Intensive Astronomy, who compiled the image from MeerKAT data said continuing to observe these odd radio circles will provide researchers with more clues.

"People often want to explain their observations and show that it aligns with our best knowledge. To me, it's much more exciting to discover something new, that defies our current understanding," Dr Collier said.

The rings are enormous - about a million light years across, which is 16 times bigger than our own galaxy. Despite this, odd radio circles are hard to see.

Professor Ray Norris from Western Sydney University and CSIRO, one of the authors on the paper, said only five odd radio circles have ever been revealed in space.

"We know ORCs are rings of faint radio emissions surrounding a galaxy with a highly active black hole at its centre, but we don't yet know what causes them, or why they are so rare," Professor Norris said..

Professor Elaine Sadler, Chief Scientist of CSIRO's Australia Telescope National Facility, which includes ASKAP, said for now, ASKAP and MeerKAT are working together to find and describe these objects quickly and efficiently.

"Nearly all astronomy projects are made better by international collaboration - both with the teams of people involved and the technology available," Professor Sadler said..

"ASKAP and MeerKAT are both precursors to the international SKA project. Our developing understanding of odd radio circles is enabled by these complementary telescopes working together."

To really understand odd radio circles scientists will need access to even more sensitive radio telescopes such as those of the SKA Observatory, which is supported by more than a dozen countries including the UK, Australia, South Africa, France, Canada, China and India.

"No doubt the SKA telescopes, once built, will find many more ORCs and be able to tell us more about the lifecycle of galaxies," Professor Norris said.

"Until the SKA becomes operational, ASKAP and MeerKAT are set to revolutionise our understanding of the Universe faster than ever before."

ASKAP is located on Wajarri Yamatji country in Western Australia, and MeerKAT is located in the Northern Cape province of South Africa.



Please follow SpaceRef on Twitter and Like us on Facebook.
The U.N. refugee agency and partners are working with Mozambiques government to aid thousands of families devastated by Cyclone Gombe, which struck the island nation earlier this month.

Cyclone Gombe swept across central and northern Mozambique on March 11, destroying homes, flooding farmland, and forcing tens of thousands of people to flee in search of safety.

Initial relief efforts were delayed because of storm damage to many key roads. The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says about 60 people were killed, more than 80 injured and some 488,000 were affected by Gombe.

It was the strongest storm to strike Mozambique since Cyclones Idai and Kenneth wreaked havoc on the island nation in 2019.

U.N. refugee agency spokesman Boris Cheshirkov said more than 380,000 people were affected in Nampula province alone. He said the victims, who include tens of thousands of displaced people, need urgent humanitarian assistance.

"While the intensity and impact of Cyclone Gombe appears to be less severe than Idai and Kenneth, this was a category 4 storm which brought fierce winds of up to 190 kilometers per hour, heavy rain, and thunderstorms," Cheshirkov said. "It damaged critical infrastructure. It cut power and communications in Nampula City, as well as the nearby Maratane refugee settlement.

He said sites in Cabo Delgado province hosting tens of thousands of people displaced by violent armed attacks also have been badly affected. He says the UNHCR is distributing essential items from its stockpiles to help them. Those goods will assist 62,000 refugees, internally displaced people, and host communities.

"Every region in the world is experiencing climate hazardsThose with the least means to adapt are hit the hardest, including refugees, internally displaced and stateless people," Cheshirkov said. "Women, children, older people, people with disabilities, and indigenous peoples are disproportionately affected.

The United Nations says the full impact and magnitude of damage done by Cyclone Gombe is not yet known and is likely to be more serious than initial findings indicate.

Cheshirkov said the UNHCR and its partners are assessing the protection and humanitarian needs of displaced cyclone survivors. Besides basic needs for shelter, food and healthcare, he expects many will require protection from sexual exploitation and abuse as well as counseling to help them deal with mental trauma.
With the crackle of gunfire and the thud of a shell hitting in the background, a line of journalists run from a column of flames.



Lets go! Go, go, go. Move, take cover, one yells as they head for safety.



The footage shared by Reuters was shot in the Ukrainian city of Irpin in early March. But it shows a scene becoming more common as journalists report on the conflict.



Already four journalists have been killed and several wounded since Russia invaded on February 24. Others have shared dramatic accounts of close calls.



Two Associated Press journalists  Mstyslav Chernov and Evgeniy Maloletka  this week detailed their time covering the siege of Mariupol and the efforts to bring them to safety before Russian soldiers could reach them.

With risks mounting, media groups and international bodies are increasingly focusing on safety and issuing warnings to remind all sides that journalists are civilians, not targets.



Those warnings came after FOX News journalists Pierre Zakrzewski and Oleksandra Kuvshynova were killed on March 14 near the capital, Kyiv. The U.S. broadcasters correspondent Benjamin Hall was seriously injured in the same incident, with FOX saying they were struck by incoming fire.



A day earlier, award-winning American filmmaker and journalist Brent Renaud was killed and his colleague Juan Arredondo injured when their vehicle came under fire. And on March 1, Yevhenii Sakun, a Ukrainian camera operator for LIVE TV, was killed during a Russian strike on a TV tower in Kyiv.



Journalists under international humanitarian law are civilians and attacks on civilians are never acceptable, said Scott Griffen, deputy director at the Vienna-based International Press Institute (IPI), speaking with VOA.



Griffen added that targeted attacks on journalists in a conflict zone amount to a war crime.

Media support

Media watchdogs have become proactive in their response to the dangers inherent to reporting from a conflict zone.



The Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) on March 12 opened a resource center in the Ukrainian city of Lviv, near the Polish border, to support journalists in the country.



Already the center has provided personal protective equipment, including bulletproof vests and helmets, with gear provided by partners and newsrooms across Europe.



We hail the courage of journalists, the centers coordinator, Alexander Query, said when it opened. With this center, we are fighting for the independence of the media in Ukraine and beyond it.

UNESCO is supporting the efforts, providing an initial batch of 125 sets of personal protective equipment as well as training resources through the RSF center and other groups.





Every day, journalists and media workers are risking their lives in Ukraine to provide life-saving information to local populations and inform the world of the reality of this war, Audrey Azoulay, director-general of UNESCO, said in a statement last week.



We are determined to support and protect them in every way possible. UNESCO has been resolutely committed to this since the beginning of the crisis, in close collaboration with its international partners and local professionals, she added.



The number of journalists killed in conflicts in Iraq and Syria should serve as a reminder for newsrooms to conduct proper risk assessments before sending reporters to Ukraine, Griffen says.



We know that many media outlets also in the region around Ukraine and Russia have never reported from a war zone before. They may not be accustomed to it. They may not have the right equipment, he told VOA.



Obviously, that goes for Ukrainian media as well, which is one of the reasons why were trying to make sure that those media also have access to the equipment that they need, Griffen added.

Trapped by conflict

In the chaos of war, some journalists have gone missing.

In separate incidents, Victoria Roshchina and Oleh Baturyn were reportedly held incommunicado for several days while covering the war. And Ukrainian photojournalist Maks Levin has been missing for nine days.

Roshchina, a reporter covering the conflict for Ukrainian television channel Hromadske, went missing on March 15. Her channel cited local sources as saying Russian forces took her.

Media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said Tuesday that Roshchina is now free. She was held by Russian forces and ordered to say on camera that the soldiers had saved her life, RSF reported.

Baturyn, who works for the Ukrainian newspaper Novyi Den, was released Sunday after being held incommunicado for eight days.

His captors, who have not been identified, humiliated and threatened the journalists life, the Committee to Protect Journalists says.

The whereabouts of the third journalist, Levin, are unknown. The 41-year-old disappeared after heading to an area of fighting near Kyiv on March 13.

Fighting intensified in that area and a friend, Markiian Lyseiko, told local media that communication between them stopped at 11:23 that morning.

A Culture Of Safety (ACOS) Alliance, an international coalition of news organizations and media rights groups, has stepped up its efforts to provide Ukrainian journalists with support and guidance on safety.

Our work very much focuses on what can we do so that they don't end up injured, kidnapped or abducted, Elisabet Cantenys, the groups executive director, told VOA.

The alliance was set up in 2014 in response to the murders of American freelancers Steven Sotloff and James Foley by the Islamic State militant group in Syria.

ACOS Alliance generally focuses on preventative measures, but the scale of what's happening in Ukraine prompted the group to support not only its member news organizations but all journalists on the ground.

The situation is particularly challenging for many Ukrainian journalists, because covering this war wasnt their choice, but they are just being caught in this conflict, Cantenys said.

She welcomed efforts to provide equipment and other resources.

It is very important that they (local journalists) have support from each other, from the community at large, from international media organizations in providing them with the PPE that they need and giving them access to some safety advice, even if its basic, Cantenys said.

Anything can go a long way for them, she said.
The U.N. General Assembly began a lengthy debate Wednesday over two draft resolutions that seek to alleviate the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine, where millions wait for food, water and medical supplies or the chance to escape their besieged country safely.



"Thousands of Ukrainians have lost their lives over this month: young and old, women and men, civilians and military," Ukraine's U.N. Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya said of Russia's war, which began in the early hours of February 24. "They died because Russia decided to attack  attack Ukraine, attack peace, attack all of us. Every day of the Russian war against Ukraine aggravates the humanitarian situation further and further."



The numbers are staggering. In barely one month, the United Nations says, 3.5 million people have fled to neighboring countries, and 6.5 million are displaced within Ukraine. The U.N. estimates that 12 million people in the country need humanitarian assistance. The situation deteriorates daily.

U.N. member states have before them two resolutions. Both call for an immediate cease-fire and protection of civilians, critical civilian infrastructure, aid workers and medical personnel.



But there is one glaring difference: One text names Russia as the aggressor and calls on it to cease its actions against Ukraine, while the second text names no aggressor and essentially puts Ukraine  which was attacked  on the same level as its attacker.



Mexico and France, along with Ukraine, were among the 25 countries that drafted the text that names Russia, and their resolution has more than 80 co-sponsors in the General Assembly.

South Africa is the author of the second text.

"South Africa believes that the political and strategic issues pertaining to the conflict in Ukraine should be discussed but not in the context of a resolution addressing the humanitarian situation," Ambassador Mathu Joyini told the assembly. She said her government's draft resolution attempts to do that.

Wednesday's debate saw more than 60 delegations take the floor. The discussion will continue Thursday morning, and a vote is expected to follow.

Any result would not have a legally binding effect on Russia, but with strong international backing, it would express the will of the world that the hostilities should stop and people should be helped.



An overwhelming number of speakers expressed support for the Western draft, underscoring Russia's destruction of Ukraine, including its siege on the southern port city of Mariupol, and the indiscriminate shelling and bombing of civilians and critical infrastructure.

"In light of the tragedy that is unfolding, the General Assembly has to take its responsibility to address this humanitarian catastrophe and urgently call on Russia to respect the basic principles of international humanitarian law that applies to everyone," European Union Ambassador Olof Skoog said on behalf of the 27-member bloc.

U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield pointed to the humanitarian impact of the war, which is disrupting global supplies of critical items such as wheat and fuel, which was also addressed in the resolution under consideration.

"The accelerating spike of food prices, food shortages and corresponding insecurity threatens to further destabilize fragile societies, increase hunger and drive migration," she said. "And this comes at a time when the global humanitarian system was already stretched more than ever before  a time when the World Food Program is feeding more than 138 million people in over 80 countries."



Only Syria took the floor to support Russia. Moscow has provided military backing to the regime of President Bashar al-Assad since 2015 in its brutal war against its population. Even Belarus, which hosts Russian troops on its territory and is believed to be considering involving its own military in Ukraine to support Russia, did not address the General Assembly.

Also absent from the debate were Eritrea and North Korea, which round out the countries that have publicly supported Moscow at the United Nations.



Russian U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia dismissed the Western text as having "blatantly anti-Russian elements."

"Let me be clear: This scenario will make a resolution to the situation in Ukraine more difficult," Nebenzia said. "Because more likely, it will embolden Ukrainian negotiators and would nudge them to maintaining the current unrealistic position, which is not related to the situation on the ground nor to the need to tackle the root causes, which meant that Russia had to start, almost a month ago, its special military operation in Ukraine."

Isolation



Nebenzia said if countries want to help the humanitarian situation in Ukraine, they should vote for Moscow's draft resolution in the U.N. Security Council.

That draft went for a vote late Wednesday. Non-council members Belarus, Syria and North Korea were the co-sponsors.

Of the 15 council members, only Russia and China supported the text (China was not a co-sponsor, though). In a rare occurrence, 13 council members abstained from voting. Without nine positive votes and no vetoes, the measure failed.

Several council members pointed out that the resolution did not call for an immediate and unconditional end to the hostilities or name the cause of the humanitarian crisis  Russia's invasion.

Honoring Albright

On Wednesday, former U.S. Secretary of State and onetime U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Madeleine Albright died. Council members stood for a moment of silence in tribute to her. Thomas-Greenfield cited her ahead of the vote.

"Secretary Albright once warned, 'Take it from someone who fled the Iron Curtain, I know what happens when you give the Russians a green light.' And that is what we will do today if we pass this resolution." Thomas-Greenfield warned.



Meanwhile, humanitarians continue, without strong guarantees for their safety, to try to bring livesaving aid to millions of Ukrainian civilians, many of whom are stranded in areas with active hostilities.
Multiple, small earthquakes that have been rattling a mid-Atlantic Portuguese island for three days could trigger a stronger tremor or a volcanic eruption, experts said on Tuesday, as authorities urged people not to travel there.

The number of earthquakes recorded on the volcanic island of Sao Jorge in the Azores archipelago since Saturday afternoon has increased to around 1,800 from an earlier figure of 1,329, said Rui Marques, head of the region's CIVISA Seismovolcanic Surveillance and Information Center.

Only 94 of the 1,800 earthquakes, with a magnitude of between 1.7 to 3.3 registered so far have been felt by the population, Marques told the Lusa news agency.

Sao Jorge, one of nine islands that make up the Azores, is home to around 8,400 people and is part of the archipelago's central group, which includes the popular tourist destinations of Faial and Pico, which are also volcanic.

The series of small quakes, known as a swarm and which have caused no damage so far, were reported along the island's volcanic fissure of Manadas, which last erupted in 1808.

Sao Jorge's municipalities have activated emergency plans as a precaution.

"All scenarios are on the table," Marques told Antena 1 radio station. "On one hand, we could see an earthquake of greater magnitude that can cause some destruction. ... On the other hand, we have the scenario of an eruption."

'Seismic crisis'

Marques urged inhabitants to remain vigilant, although he said the earthquakes were of tectonic origin, referring to movement of the Earth's tectonic plates, rather than volcanic.

"We should not treat this as a purely tectonic crisis but as a seismic crisis that is taking place in an active volcanic system," Marques said.

CIVISA set up two additional seismic monitoring stations on the island and deployed a team to measure soil gases, an indicator of volcanic activity. Levels seemed normal so far, Marques said.

The Civil Protection authority said earlier on Tuesday it was working with other entities to prepare a response in case a big earthquake or eruption took place.

In a separate statement on Tuesday evening, it advised people to avoid all but essential travel to the lush green island to ensure authorities face no "additional constraints" if they need to help the local population.

The sudden increase in seismic activity is reminiscent of the earthquake swarms detected prior to the eruption of the Cumbre Vieja volcano on Spain's La Palma Island last year, some 1,400 km southeast of the Azores.


U.S. President Joe Biden arrived Wednesday in Brussels where he will meet with NATO and European allies and is expected to announce a new round of sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.

"He will join our partners in imposing further sanctions on Russia and tightening the existing sanctions to crack down on evasion and to ensure robust enforcement," White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said on Tuesday.

At a news conference Wednesday in Brussels, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Russia's war on Ukraine presents "a new normal for our security" and that alliance leaders are likely to announce more support for Ukraine at Thursday's NATO summit.

"I expect leaders will agree to strengthen NATO's posture in all domains with major increases of forces in the eastern part of the alliance, on land, in the air and at sea," Stoltenberg said.

"The first step is the deployment of four new NATO battle groups in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia," Stoltenberg said.

The alliance chief said NATO leaders are also set to announce an agreement to address nuclear, chemical and other threats from Russia.

"I expect allies will agree to provide additional support, including cybersecurity assistance as well as equipment to help Ukraine protect against chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threats," he said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is due to virtually address Thursday's NATO summit, and he said ahead of the meeting that he is expecting Western leaders to both add to their Russian sanctions and pledge more aid for Ukraine.

One key Russian industry that has been discussed for possible sanctions is the country's lucrative oil and gas exports, but reliance on those supplies, particularly among European Union nations which get 40% of their gas from Europe, has raised concerns about the effects of such actions.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Wednesday that his country would "end this dependency as soon as possible," but that doing so immediately "would mean to push our country and the rest of Europe into recession."

Meanwhile shelling continued Wednesday in Kyiv, including attacks that injured four people in the Ukrainian capital. In the city of Chernihiv, Russian forces destroyed a bridge that had been used for evacuating civilians and delivering aid.

The United Nations says more than 3.6 million refugees have fled Ukraine since Russia launched its invasion one month ago. Another 6.5 million people have been displaced from their homes within the country.

U.S. officials said Tuesday that in some parts of the country, the momentum in the conflict appears to be shifting.

"We have seen indications that the Ukrainians are going a bit more on the offense now," Pentagon press secretary John Kirby told reporters late Tuesday.

Stoltenberg told reporters the Ukrainian military's resilience is the result of the determination of Ukrainian people and a military that is stronger than it was when Russia invaded and annexed Crimea eight years ago.

"The Ukrainian armed forces today, it's much bigger, much better equipped, much better trained, much better commanded. They have much better logistics than they had back in 2014," Stoltenberg said.

"And, of course, all of this combined with the courage. The high morale is the reason why they are really able to push back and to stand up against the much bigger Russian invasion," the NATO chief added.

Watch related video by Henry Ridgwell:

A NATO official who was speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence told reporters Wednesday that between 7,000 and 15,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in Ukraine.

The official said Russian forces have achieved "almost none" if their strategic objectives, while noting "they are stalled" in the northern cities of Kyiv, Kharkiv and Chernihiv.

Russia is "achieving more results in the south but the price is horrendous," the official said.

On its English-language Telegram feed, Russia's Ministry of Defense portrayed a vastly different war effort, praising Russian forces as they advanced on parts of southeastern Ukraine while Ukrainian forces fled, and claiming success in taking out Ukrainian fuel depots and positions with "high-precision long-range" weapons.

A senior U.S. defense official, briefing reporters Tuesday on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss intelligence, confirmed Russian ships in the Sea of Azov had begun shelling the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, which has been under heavy fire for days.

But the official said other intelligence suggests Russia's invasion of Ukraine has become a logistical nightmare, with Russian forces still struggling to overcome shortages of fuel, food and precision-guided munitions.

The United States, meanwhile, warned Russia is increasingly taking out on civilians its inability to achieve its objectives in Ukraine.

"Clearly, there are civilian casualties, and clearly, they're mounting every day because of the indiscriminate attacks that the Russians are conducting  as they become more frustrated," Kirby told reporters Tuesday.

"We believe we should call it like we see it, and we believe that there are war crimes being conducted by the Russian forces," he added.

Russia has repeatedly rejected accusations of war crimes, even as the U.S. and other Western countries raise concerns that Russia may be preparing to use chemical and biological weapons in Ukraine, or even nuclear weapons.

"If it is an existential threat for our country, then it can be used in accordance with our concept," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the U.S.-based cable news channel CNN Tuesday when asked whether Moscow might consider unleashing some of its nuclear arsenal.

Stoltenberg said Russia "should stop this dangerous irresponsible nuclear rhetoric" and warned of "our readiness to protect and defend allies against any threat anytime."

National Security correspondent Jeff Seldin and U.N. correspondent Margaret Besheer contributed to this report.

Some information came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
The divide between Chinese authorities and the nation's Uyghur minority is playing out on the U.S. campus of Cornell University, where a debate is raging after a walkout by Chinese students over a Uyghur student's remark and a Democratic representatives response.

Democratic representative Elissa Slotkin of Michigan spoke at an on-campus event hosted by Cornell Institute for Public Affairs (CIPA) on March 10. During a question-and-answer period, Uyghur student Rizwangul NurMuhammad asked why the international community seems more concerned over Russia's invasion of Ukraine than China's treatment of the Uyghur people, which has been described as genocide. A group of international students from China booed and walked out of the event.

William Wang, a graduate student in public administration and the president of the student group Cornell Public Affairs Society, defended the walkout, saying the students left because they felt the atmosphere was not friendly and welcoming toward them.

"Specifically, after the congresswoman's series of xenophobic, Sinophobic, and American-exceptionalist comments," Wang told VOA.

According to Slotkins March 15 posts on Twitter, she responded to NurMuhammads question by pointing out what is well known about Chinese policy toward the Uyghur community: that the government has carried out imprisonment, forced labor, and forced indoctrination.

Slotkin continued, "I take no issue whatsoever with the Chinese people or the Chinese students in the class, but I won't dance around the human rights abuses of the Chinese Communist Party.

"Since then, the young woman who asked me the question has become the victim of bullying & intimidation by some fellow students. There's no excuse for that behavior.

NurMuhammad told VOA, "Uyghurs are suffering under China's genocide for the last five years and yet are not getting enough support from the international community including the U.S., I said to representative Slotkin.

"Uyghurs in diaspora like myself have also been impacted by this genocide. I, for example, have lost my brother to this genocide that China has waged against Uyghurs."

Guled Mire, a student from New Zealand who was also at the event, said Slotkin had barely begun responding to NurMuhammads question before the Chinese international students in the room stood up to walk out.

"Rizwangul asked that question among a class made up of a majority of international students from China," Mire told VOA. "Some of them even taunted and jeered at her as they left. It clearly appeared to be a coordinated, pre-meditated initiative."

Mire said the international Chinese students' behavior "derailed the possibility for a legitimate conversation" on China's treatment of Uyghurs.

Letter from Chinese students

On the same day, Wang wrote a letter to the leadership of the Public Affairs Institute saying the Chinese students left the colloquium because the atmosphere in the room was hostile toward Chinese students.

"We were not sitting in a classroom; we were crucified in a courtroom for crimes that we did not commit," Wang stated in the letter signed by 88 Chinese students. "Thus, we hope the school could formally respond to our email so that we know we made the right decision of choosing CIPA and Cornell."

The day after the event, Matt Hall, director of CIPA, sent an email to the CIPA community stating that questions "like the one asked of Congresswoman Slotkin regarding the human rights abuses of the Uyghur people, are valuable points of discussion and critical to promoting open dialogue."

"At the same time, we must also respect that walkouts are a legitimate form of protest and an appropriate expression of disapproval," Hall said in the email obtained by VOA.

NurMuhammad told VOA the university "watered down (its language in the letter from) genocide to human rights abuses, that was disappointing."

The event got the attention of Chinese state media Global Times, which published a report March 17 titled "Amidst atmosphere extremely hostile! Chinese students at Cornell University left a venue to protest Xinjiang-related lies." While the report identified NurMuhammad by name, it did not mention that her brother was in detention in China.

The following day, former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley told conservative website Washington Free Beacon that Cornell "should be ashamed for not having (NurMuahammad's) back."

Brother imprisoned

NurMuhammad, a Uyghur from China, moved to New Zealand in 2010 as an international master's degree student in international communications and later became a New Zealand citizen. She went to Cornell University as a Fulbright scholar in 2021.

In January 2017, plainclothes police in Bortala city in northern Xinjiang detained her 31-year-old brother, Mewlan NurMuhammad, who was at the time employed as an internet technician at China Telecom, a Chinese state-owned company.

Rizwangul NurMuhammad said she has been in search of her brother since. In late 2019, NurMuhammad learned from the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances that the Chinese government had told the U.N. body that her brother was sentenced to nine years in prison for "splitting the state."

"He has been imprisoned for over five years and is being punished for a crime that he didn't commit. If I were to guess, the only reason for his detention could be that he traveled to Turkey for study purposes between 2012 and 2014," NurMuhammad said.

According to a Human Rights Watch report, China's Campaign of Repression Against Xinjiang's Muslims, the Chinese government detained Uyghurs if they had traveled to any of "26 sensitive countries," one of which is Turkey.

"People who have been to these countries, have families, or otherwise communicate with people there, have been interrogated, detained, and even tried and imprisoned," the report stated.

The U.S. government has described China's mistreatment of Uyghurs and other Turkic groups in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region as constituting genocide and crimes against humanity.

China denies human rights violations in Xinjiang.

Qin Gang, Chinese ambassador to the U.S., told CBS news in a March 20 interview that "there's no such  such a so-called human rights violation" in Xinjiang.

In Wang's letter to CIPA leadership, he wrote "our heart goes to Riz's brother."

Damien Sharp, executive vice president of the Cornell Public Affairs Society, told VOA that Wang violated CPAS by-laws and acted independently in his letter and email to the CIPA administration, in which he identified himself as the president of the Cornell Public Affairs Society.

"Neither piece of correspondence represents the views of CPAS or a majority of those who sit on the executive board," Sharp said. "The walkout of some of our classmates from the room during Thursday's colloquium and subsequent discussions over email lead me to believe that there may be a need for a safe space for civil discourse on the matter."

Wang wrote in an email to VOA, "although I stated I am the President of Cornell Public Affairs Society, this statement only represented those whose signatures are on the signature page in a separate document."
Both Ukrainian and Russian leaders say some progress has been made in peace talks but striking a deal is fraught with peril, say observers. Some Western officials and independent observers are skeptical and worry Moscow isnt negotiating in good faith and is using negotiations to restrain NATO from providing both offensive and defensive surface-to-air systems and other more sophisticated weapon systems to Ukraine or intensifying Western sanctions.



Others are skeptical that even if Kyiv and Moscow can reach some firm terms the sequencing of events necessary for a deal to be implemented will be almost impossible to pull off, much as it did with the 2015 Minsk accord that was meant to end fighting in oblasts in the Donbas seized by pro-Moscow separatists with Kremlin assistance.



There is still a chasm between Ukraine and Russia after days of video talks which have been led by Ukraines defense minister Oleksii Reznikov and Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak. The Russian negotiating team is headed by Kremlin adviser Vladimir Medinsky.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reiterated again this week that he is prepared to drop Ukrainian aspirations to join NATO in exchange for the withdrawal of Russian forces and a rock-solid guarantee of Ukraines security.



Zelenskyy has also indicated he is open to future discussions on the status of Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, and on the two separatist republics in the Donbas that Moscow has recognized as independent states. But Zelenskyy wants those issues discussed later after a cease-fire and a Russian withdrawal and to complicate matters he has said any proposals on Crimea and the Donbas would have to be approved by a referendum.

Ukraines president said Wednesday talks are moving forward. Its very difficult, sometimes confrontational, he said in a video posted on social media. But step by step we are moving forward, he added.



United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also Wednesday struck a hopeful note. From my outreach with various actors, elements of diplomatic progress are coming into view on several key issues, and the gains are enough to end hostilities now, he said but refrained from divulging details.



Russia has demanded Kyiv renounce any plans to join NATO, but it also is determined to halt Ukraines tilt towards the West and according to Western diplomats is frustrated by the talk of Ukraine joining the European Union and wants watered down security guarantees for Ukraine that have little Western involvement.



Moscow is also demanding that it retains control of about a third of Ukrainian territory  the Kremlin-controlled breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk plus all the territory around them it has captured Ukraine since it invaded on February 24. While Kyiv has now indicated it could compromise on the status of Donetsk and Luhansk, it is pushing back on Russias other territorial demands.

Diversion tactics?



Britains foreign secretary Liz Truss has been the most outspoken critic of the talks, she is concerned they are being used as a smokescreen by Russia to regroup ahead of a renewed offensive and even more extreme military actions. Im very skeptical, Truss told The Times of London newspaper. What weve seen is an attempt to create space for the Russians to regroup. Their invasion isnt going according to plan, she said. I fear the negotiation is yet another attempt to create a diversion and create a smokescreen. I dont think were yet at a point for negotiation, she added.



Other skeptics point to the way Russia prolonged and used negotiations in Syria to divide Western allies and wear down and exploit splits between rebel groups fighting to oust Bashir al-Assad, Russias ally.



James Nixey of Britains Chatham House says Russia is not  at least not yet  incentivized to make genuine offers. He also judges there is not enough either side can offer which the other is prepared to accept  and to do so would be far more than just political suicide for Zelenskyy and Putin, they would be a fundamental change in the nature of both countries.



He also doubts the sincerity of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Precedent shows de-escalation and a willingness to negotiate only convinces Putin he is on the right track, while appeasement spurs him to make further demands, '' he said in an expert comment for Chatham House.



His biggest worry is that Russia will use talks to manipulate Ukraines allies.



The greater threat to Ukraine comes from the international community in many respects. And the European especially has a rather ugly recent history of successfully pressuring independent states into making concessions to Russia by accepting the inevitable, he adds.



He points to the peace deal the Europeans led by French president Nicolas Sarkozy brokered to end Russias invasion of Georgia and to the 2015 Minsk accords that France and Germany pushed Ukraine into signing despite the agreements favorable terms for Russia.
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:

10:38 p.m.: The White House in making contingency plans in case Russia uses chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, The New York Times reports. It's also looking into how to respond should the war expand to neighboring nations.

10:14 p.m.: VOA's Jessica Jerreat reports that former Russian independent Dozhd (TVRain) Editor-in-chief Tikhon Dzyadko & spouse Katerina Kotrikadze launched an independent YT channel, following closure of Dozhd. They stream from Georgia. "In times like this we can't remain without connection to our audience and keep silent."

8:09 p.m.: The French car manufacturer Renault, publicly targeted by the Ukrainian president for its activities in Russia, announced Wednesday evening it was immediately suspending the activities of its Moscow factory, according to an Agence France-Presse report. Renault said it would evaluate "the possible options concerning its participation" in its large Russian subsidiary, AvtoVAZ, according to AFP. Russia is the Renault group's second-largest market in the world behind Europe, with nearly 500,000 vehicles sold in 2021.

7:32 p.m.: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy used his nighttime video address to the country, which marked one month since Russia invaded the country, to urge people around the world to show support for Ukraine by gathering in their city centers and making themselves "visible and heard."

"That's why I ask you to stand against the war starting from March 24th, exactly one month after the Russian invasion. From this day and after them, show your standing, he said. Friends! On March 24 it will be one month of our resistance since the Russians invaded the country. The original plan of the Russian troops failed already in the first days of the invasion.

6:27 p.m.: The U.N. Security Council overwhelmingly defeated a Russian resolution that would have acknowledged Ukraines growing humanitarian needs -- but without mentioning the Russian invasion that caused the escalating crisis. Of the 15 council members, only Russia and China supported the text. The other 13 council members abstained from the vote. Without nine positive votes and no vetoes, the measure failed.

The Russian defeat came on the same day that the General Assembly started considering another draft resolution that clearly states Russias aggression is responsible for the humanitarian emergency in Ukraine. About 70 national representatives are scheduled to speak before the assembly votes on the rival resolutions on the humanitarian impact of the war. That vote is to take place Thursday.

5:44 p.m.: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reports: What happens when Lithuanian volunteer Tomas cold calls random Russians to talk to them about the war in Ukraine? "It's like North Korea here," says one. Others repeat Kremlin propaganda. Most hang up. Tomas is part of an initiative that has made 93,000 phone calls to challenge the view of the war that ordinary Russians are getting from state TV.

4:57 p.m.: Lviv Governor Maksym Kozytskyy spoke with Alhurra Wednesday, discussing the humanitarian situation in Ukraine. He said Lviv has hosted 500,000 people from eastern Ukraine. He said that humanitarian organizations are just now coming into Lviv to help, and he is asking for even more help from humanitarian organizations. He said his goal is to find food and medicine and help anyone who is in need. The interview took place over Skype, with Kozytskyy in Lviv during the interview.

4 p.m.: Multimedia art galleries in the United States and Canada are featuring a special exhibit highlighting the work of 19th century Ukrainian poet and artist Taras Shevchenko. VOAs Svitlana Prystynska has the story.

3:30 p.m. : Oksana Baulina, a Russian journalist who covered corruption for the independent news website The Insider was killed by shelling in Kyiv Wednesday, VOAs Press Freedom Editor Jessica Jerreat reported. Two people with her at the time of the attack were injured, the Insider reported. Baulina previously worked for the Anti-Corruption Foundation in Russia but had to leave her home country when Moscow designated the foundation an extremist organization. Baulina also worked as a video producer for the news website Coda.

Baulina also worked for Vot Tak TV, an independent media outlet set up by reporters from Belarus, Russia and Ukraine. She covered repression of opposition voices in Russia, interviewed with members of jailed opposition figure Alexei Navalny's team, and also reported on the pandemic and Russian surveillance.

At least four other journalists covering Russias invasion have been killed and several others wounded. Three journalists were also briefly held captive including a fixer for Radio France. Media watchdog Reporters Without Borders says the journalist, whose identity was withheld, was beaten, tied to a tree, given electric shocks, and subjected to a mock execution before finally being released.

3:19 p.m. : Around the world, young people are following a major war in Europe primarily on social media with some often-disturbing  and sometimes misleading  images landing on their news feeds. VOAs Veronica Balderas Iglesias talked to teenagers in the United States, Mexico and Poland to find out how theyre processing the bloodshed in Ukraine.

3:04 p.m. : The Kyiv Independent reported Wednesday that residents in Ukraines capital city are getting by, but that stores must work hard to supply the population under siege by Russian forces.

2:56 p.m. : What Russias war in Ukraine means for food prices around the world

2:47 p.m.: U.N. World Food Programme Executive Director David Beasley warned Wednesday that if the conflict in Ukraine is not solved quickly, there could be a global food supply shortage that could exacerbate existing supply chain issues and cause millions of people around the world to migrate in search of a way to survive.

2:31 p.m.: Russia held a funeral service for the deputy commander of its Black Sea Fleet in annexed Crimea on Wednesday, the latest in what Ukraine says is a string of high-ranking Russian military casualties since Moscow invaded on February 24. Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak on Sunday named six Russian generals who he said had been killed in Ukraine along with dozens of colonels and other officers. Russia's Defense Ministry has not confirmed any of those casualties. It has not revised its troop casualties since March 2, a week into the war, when it said that 498 of its soldiers had died. Ukraine puts the figure at 15,600. Reuters could not independently verify most of Ukraine's claims, but some have been confirmed from Russian sources.

2:26 p.m.: Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba on Wednesday condemned toxic Russian propaganda and called for sanctions against anyone who engages in it.

2:12 p.m.: Thousands of international volunteers have come to Ukraine to help in the fight against Russias invasion. Many are former soldiers and their reasons for coming to Ukraine vary. As VOAs Celia Mendoza reports from Korczowa, Poland, some are now going back home.

2 p.m. : Russia plans to resume some stock trading on Thursday after a near month-long hiatus, with 33 ruble securities to be traded on the Moscow Exchange, Reuters reported. Non-residents will have to wait, though - they will be barred from selling stocks and OFZ ruble bonds until April 1.

1:46 p.m. : BREAKING - U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday said, Today, I can announce that, based on information currently available, the U.S. government assesses that members of Russias forces have committed war crimes in Ukraine. In a public statement, he said, Our assessment is based on a careful review of available information from public and intelligence sources. Blinken added, As with any alleged crime, a court of law with jurisdiction over the crime is ultimately responsible for determining criminal guilt in specific cases.

1:35 p.m. : Simba the lion and a wolf named Akyla have been evacuated from a zoo in war-torn Ukraine and brought to safety in Romania in what an animal rights group involved in the operation says was a four-day mission full of dangers further hampered by border entry bureaucracy. The adult male lion and the gray wolf, who were fully awake during the dangerous journey due to lack of tranquilizers in Ukraine, arrived Monday at a zoo in Radauti Romania, from a zoo in Zaporizhzhia in southeast Ukraine, The Associated Press reported.

1:04 p.m. : A 27-year-old Ukrainian mother was wounded while protecting her baby during a Russian missile attack. The woman was injured as she was breastfeeding her child in Kyivs Podil district. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has the story.

12:45 p.m. : Some of Ukraines children are creating drawings to channel the trauma they experienced since Russia invaded their country.



12:32 p.m. : Well-known post-Soviet reformer Anatoly Chubais has reportedly left his post as Russian President Vladimir Putin's envoy for stable development, a move that could signal a high-profile protest inside the Kremlin against Moscow's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. News agencies Bloomberg and Reuters on March 23 quoted Kremlin sources as saying that Chubais, who was responsible for relations with international organizations, had left the country. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reports.

12:07 p.m.: The United States must increase food aid to prevent millions of people starving as Russia's invasion of Ukraine threatens global grain supplies, members of the U.S. Senate's bipartisan hunger caucus said. Democrats and Republicans in Congress need to quickly come together and approve emergency global food aid in order to prevent tens of millions of people, including millions of children, from dying of starvation, Senator Cory Booker, a Democrat from New Jersey, told Reuters. The United Nations' World Food Programme (WFP) says it is facing a $9 billion funding shortfall.

11:52 a.m.: NATO leaders meet in Brussels Thursday for an extraordinary summit on Russias invasion of Ukraine. As VOAs Henry Ridgwell reports from NATO headquarters, calls are growing for the West to take stronger military action in support of Ukraine.

11:40 a.m.: Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Wednesday no one could have predicted Western sanctions would target the countrys central bank, in the first major admission by the Kremlin that Moscow was blindsided by the transatlantic response to Vladimir Putins invasion of Ukraine, according to Politico.com.

When the reserves of the Central Bank were frozen, no one would think, out of those who made predictions, what sanctions the West might apply, Moscows top diplomat told students and staff at Moscow State Institute of International Relations, while slamming the Wests move as thievery.

Russia must be made to never again be reliant on supplies from abroad, he said, but added that Moscow would be ready to cooperate with the West in the future if they want.

11:36 a.m.: Russia will seek payment in rubles for gas sales from unfriendly countries, President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday, sending European gas prices soaring on concerns the move would exacerbate the regions energy crunch, Reuters reported. Russian gas accounts for some 40% of Europe's total consumption and EU gas imports from Russia have fluctuated between 200 million to 800 million euros ($880 million) a day so far this year. Putin said the government and central bank had one week to come up with a solution on how to move these operations into the Russian currency and that gas giant Gazprom would be ordered to make the corresponding changes to gas contracts.

11:35 a.m.: Already four journalists have been killed and several wounded since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24. Others have shared dramatic accounts of close calls. With risks mounting, media groups and international bodies are increasingly focusing on safety and issuing warnings to remind all sides that journalists are civilians, not targets, as VOAs Sirwan Kajio reports.

11:16 a.m. : The U.S. State Department spokesperson had an update Wednesday on the condition of American basketball player Brittney Griner, who is detained in Russia.

11:12 a.m.: In-between somersaults, Ukrainian circus students handed out borscht and showcased some of their country's customs in a joint performance on Tuesday night with Prague's Cirk La Putyka, which gave two dozen teenage students a new home after they fled Kyiv, Reuters reported. The Prague contemporary circus company answered a call for help from the Kyiv Municipal Academy of Performing and Circus Arts after Russia launched its invasion on Feb. 24, providing training space, lodging, food and arranged English lessons.

11:03 a.m.: Ukraine figure skaters Sofiia Holichenko and Artem Darenskyi, who traveled six days to reach the world championships in Montpellier, France, said Wednesday they undertook the exhausting trip "to show that Ukrainian athletes are fighting for their country. "We qualified for the World Championships, we wanted to come here to show the world that Ukrainian athletes are fighting, that we are there for our country and that we are strong," Darenskyi said, according to the Agence France-Presse.

11:03 a.m.: A NATO official told reporters Wednesday that the number of Russian soldiers killed, wounded, captured or missing since Russia invaded Ukraine could number in the tens of thousands. VOAs Jeff Seldin reports.

11 a.m.: German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said on Wednesday that after delays in deliveries, further supplies of Strela missiles, which had been in the inventories of the former Communist East German army, were on the way to Ukraine. Russia's invasion of Ukraine prompted Germany to stage a historic reversal of its policy of not sending weapons to conflict zones, but the Ukrainian government has been frustrated by delays.

10:45 a.m.: VOA White House Correspondent Anita Powell is outside NATO headquarters in Brussels ahead of the NATO extraordinary summit to be held Thursday.

10:25 a.m.: It has been nearly one month since Russia invaded Ukraine, and The Associated Press compiled this photo gallery depicting some of the consequences of the war so far.

9:53 a.m. : The United Nations will face three resolutions Wednesday on the worsening humanitarian situation in Ukraine. The Associated Press provides a preview.

9:40 a.m. : Poland is expelling 45 Russian diplomats suspected of working for Russian intelligence, the foreign ministry said on Wednesday. Russia said the accusations were baseless.

9:35 a.m. : U.S. President Joe Biden has left the White House for a four-day trip to Europe, where he will meet with key allies to discuss Russias invasion of Ukraine, The Associated Press reported. As he departed Wednesday, Biden told reporters the possibility that Russia could use chemical weapons in the Ukraine war is a real threat. He said he would say more on the subject directly to the leaders he was meeting with Thursday. Biden will attend an emergency NATO summit, and will participate in meetings of the European Union and Group of Seven, which includes the worlds richest democracies.

9:32 a.m. : NATO warned on Wednesday against Russias war in Ukraine sliding into a nuclear confrontation between Moscow and the West, Reuters reported. Russia should stop this dangerous irresponsible nuclear rhetoric, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told the news conference. Russia must understand that it can never win a nuclear war, he said on the eve of a summit of the Western military alliances national leaders in Brussels. "Any use of chemical weapons would totally change the nature of the conflict, it would be a blatant violation of international law and would have far-reaching consequences," Stoltenberg also said. NATO is not part of the conflict ... it provides support to Ukraine but isnt part of the conflict, he noted. But let there be no doubt about our readiness to protect and defend allies against any threat anytime, he added.

9:13 a.m. : NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg addressed a press conference Wednesday morning ahead of a NATO Extraordinary Summit to discuss Russias invasion of Ukraine. VOAs National Security Correspondent Jeff Seldin followed the event and provided live tweets of Stoltenbergs comments.

9 a.m.: A press conference by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg is streaming live at 9:00 a.m. EDT Wednesday. Stoltenberg is speaking ahead of the Extraordinary Summit of NATO Heads of State and Government on Thursday at NATO Headquarters in Brussels.

Earlier Wednesday, NATO sent a message on Twitter previewing the summit.

8:46 a.m.: Ahead of a NATO Extraordinary Summit Thursday, spokesperson Oana Lungescu tweeted a graphic representing NATOs defensive reinforcements in Europe in response to Russias invasion of Ukraine.

8:32 a.m. : Greenpeace activists on Wednesday swam in front of a vast Russian oil tanker in the Baltic Sea protesting against imports of Russian oil into the EU, which the environmental group says finance the war in Ukraine, Reuters reported. The European Union and its allies have imposed hefty sanctions against Russia, including freezing its central bank's assets, but oil and natural gas were not included. "In week four of Putin's war, there are still ships arriving into Europe from Russia, carrying oil that is financing Putin's war in Ukraine," Greenpeace said in a statement.

8:15 a.m.: Russian Olympic athletes who participated in a recent rally supporting President Vladimir Putin and the invasion of Ukraine are facing a backlash, with one losing a sponsorship deal and facing a disciplinary investigation, The Associated Press reported Wednesday. Medalists from cross-country skiing, gymnastics, figure skating and swimming gathered on stage at the Luzhniki Stadium last Friday as part of the concert and entertainment program around Putins speech.

7:45 a.m.: Russian President Vladimir Putin plans to attend the G20 summit this year, despite calls from some members to exclude Russia because of its invasion of Ukraine, reports Agence France-Presse.

7:42 a.m.: Russian forces appeared bogged down outside key cities in the face of fierce Ukrainian resistance, while strikes on cities continued to wreak destruction across the country, The Associated Press reported Wednesday. Ukraines capital Kyiv shook with Russian shelling, as rockets slammed into shopping malls and high-rise buildings in the districts of Sviatoshynskyi and Shevchenkivskyi. Russian forces were bombing Chernihiv in northern Ukraine, destroying a bridge critical for evacuations and aid deliveries. Russian and Ukrainian forces battled Wednesday for control of Izium in eastern Ukraine, while Russian warships pounded the port city of Mariupol from the sea.

7:10 a.m.: Pope Francis on Wednesday said the war in Ukraine showed that humanity had to shed a strange instinct for "self-destruction" and that buying more weapons was not the ultimate solution to any conflict, Reuters reported. Francis asked participants at his weekly general audience to remember all the victims of the war - the dead, including "fallen soldiers on one side or the other," the wounded, homeless and refugees. "May the Lord send his spirit to make us understand that war is a defeat of humanity, that we have to defeat all those who make war ...," he said. "(Making war) is a need that destroys us," he said, asking God to "free us from this 'need' for self-destruction".

7:08 a.m.: One of President Vladimir Putin's closest allies warned the United States on Wednesday that the world could spiral towards a nuclear dystopia if Washington pressed on with what the Kremlin casts as a long-term plot to destroy Russia, Reuters reported. Dmitry Medvedev, who was president from 2008 to 2012 and is now deputy secretary of Russia's Security Council, said the United States had conspired to destroy Russia as part of a "primitive game" since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union. The United States has repeatedly said that it does not want the collapse of Russia and that its own interests are best served by a prosperous, stable and open Russia. The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside usual business hours.

6:54 a.m.: Chinese state-controlled media are placing volumes of content on popular social media platforms to air the government's unique message about Russia's war on Ukraine to a Western audience, analysts say. News readers don't always know the content's origin, they add. VOAs Ralph Jennings reports.

6:47 a.m.: Russia on Wednesday condemned what it called a "reckless" Polish proposal to send international peacekeepers into Ukraine and warned that it could lead to a direct clash between Russian and NATO forces, Reuters reported. Poland said last Friday it would formally submit a proposal for a peacekeeping mission in Ukraine at the next NATO summit. Asked about the initiative, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, "It would be a very reckless and extremely dangerous decision." He told reporters on a conference call that any possible contact between Russian and NATO forces "could have clear consequences that would be hard to repair."

6:45 a.m.: U.S. President Joe Biden is traveling to Europe where he will attend NATO, Group of Seven, and European Union summits to discuss coordinated responses to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Western allies have already found what they are looking for  that all too rare sense of unity. They have Russias President Vladimir Putin to thank for that, The Associated Press reported.

6:30 a.m.: France said it was sending health and emergency equipment along with a group of fire engines and rescue vehicles to the Romania-Ukraine border for Ukraines emergency service to use.

Those efforts came as shelling continued Wednesday in Kyiv, including attacks that injured four people in the Ukrainian capital. In the city of Chernihiv, Russian forces destroyed a bridge that had been used for evacuating civilians and delivering aid.

The United Nations says more than 3.6 million refugees have fled Ukraine since Russia launched its invasion one month ago. Another 6.5 million people have been displaced from their homes within the country.

5:54 a.m.: Polands internal security agency said Wednesday it has identified 45 Russian diplomats suspected of working as spies. An agency spokesman told reporters the list of suspects was sent to Polands foreign ministry with a request that they be expelled from the country. Russian state media said if Poland expels its diplomats, Russia will retaliate.

5 a.m.: The International Committee of the Red Cross said the agencys president, Peter Maurer, has arrived in Moscow on Wednesday to resume discussions with Russian authorities on how to improve humanitarian efforts for those impacted by the conflict in Ukraine.

The devastation caused by the conflict in recent weeks, as well as eight years of conflict in Donbas, has been vast, Maurer said in a statement. There are practical steps guided by international humanitarian law that the parties must take to limit the suffering. I was in Kyiv last week and Im in Moscow this week to continue the discussion with the authorities on these steps.

4:30 a.m.: German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has reiterated that his country will not support a no-fly zone over Ukraine or send troops to intervene in the war launched by Russia, The Associated Press reported. Scholz told German lawmakers on Wednesday that NATO will not become a party to the war. We are in agreement on this with our European allies and the United States.

Still, the German leader said Ukraine could rely on Germanys help, citing the financial and military aid already provided, the harsh sanctions on Russia and the reception of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees. Scholz said Germany would not support a boycott of Russian oil, coal and gas, but is seeking to wean itself off those imports by seeking out other suppliers and ramping up the use of renewable energy.

4 a.m.: Russian foreign ministry said on Wednesday, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is planning to meet the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Peter Maurer, in Moscow on Thursday, according to Reuters.

3:30 a.m.: The small Baltic countries, whose militaries have long been dwarfed by that of neighboring Russia, are renewing their push for NATO to establish a larger and more permanent presence on their territory following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. VOAs William Gallo has the story.

3 a.m.: Escalating tensions between Russia and the West over Russias invasion of Ukraine are casting a new focus on Africa  ramping up worries about Moscows expanding influence on the continent, particularly in former French colonies. If some analysts currently dismiss another Cold War scenario, dividing Africa into Western and Russian spheres of influence, many agree on its growing strategic Importance. For VOA, Lisa Bryant has the story.

2:30 a.m.: The United Nations will face three resolutions Wednesday on the worsening humanitarian situation in Ukraine after Russia decided to call for a vote on its Security Council resolution that makes no mention of its attack on its smaller neighbor, The Associated Press reported.

The General Assembly is scheduled to start considering two rival resolutions Wednesday morning  one supported by Ukraine and Western nations that makes clear Russia is responsible for the escalating humanitarian crisis and the other sponsored by South Africa that doesn't mention Russia. The Security Council will vote on the third resolution, which is sponsored by Russia and widely criticized for not referring to its invasion of Ukraine, the AP reports.

1:30 a.m.: U.S. President Joe Biden is set to announce new sanctions against Russia on Thursday as well as longer-term adjustments to NATOs force posture in Europe. While in Brussels, Biden will also meet with G-7 and European Union leaders before traveling to Poland.

U.S. officials warn that the situation could worsen as Moscow grows increasingly frustrated and targets civilians. VOAs national security correspondent Jeff Seldin has the story.

1:15 a.m.: In an interview on CNN, Dmitry Peskov, the press secretary for the Kremlin, refused to take the use of nuclear weapons off the table in the war with Ukraine saying they could be used if it is an existential threat for our country.

Peskov also claimed that the special military operation was going as planned. He said it is being conducted strictly in accordance with the plans and the purposes that were established beforehand. He conceded, however, that Russia has not yet achieved its goals in Ukraine which we described as: to get rid of the military potential of Ukraine," to ensure Ukraine is a neutral country, to get rid of nationalist battalions, and for Ukraine to accept that Crimea is part of Russia and its two breakaway regions are independent states. The interview was conducted by CNNs Christiane Amanpour on Tuesday.

12:30 a.m.: Ukrainian authorities said late Tuesday that Russians have illegally seized the newest laboratory at the Chernobyl nuclear power. The laboratory is responsible for improving the management of radioactive waste, the State Agency of Ukraine for Exclusion Zone Management said in a statement posted on Facebook. It processes radioactive waste and contains highly active samples and samples of radionuclides. These materials are in the hands of the enemy the State Agency said.

12 a.m.: On Wednesday, U.S. President Joe Biden heads to Brussels and Warsaw to coordinate with Western allies on the next phase of military, economic and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine. VOAs White House Bureau chief Patsy Widakuswara has this report, narrated by correspondent Anita Powell from Brussels.

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse. 
Relatives of the late former prime minister of Mali say the country's military government has refused to turn over his body unless they agree not to request an autopsy.

Soumeylou Boubeye Maiga died March 21, 2022, at a Bamako hospital after seven months in detention.

Maiga served under former President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, who was deposed in a 2020 coup. Maiga was arrested in August 2021 on charges of fraud.

His health deteriorated while in jail, and his family repeatedly sought permission to get him released for treatment. For the last three months, he has been under guard at a Bamako clinic.

At Maiga's home in central Bamako on March 22, where his family gathered to receive guests, his brother Mohamed Boubeye Maiga said the military government has refused to hand over his body unless the family agrees not to request an autopsy.

He added that Maiga's family, friends and lawyers had been refused access to Maiga in recent months as his health deteriorated, so no loved ones were present when Maigi died.

Several Malian political parties, along with the head of Mali's U.N. mission and the president of neighboring Niger, have publicly reacted to Maiga's death.

The spokesperson for a group of opposition parties, Ismael Sacko, talked to VOA from Bamako via a messaging app.

Sacko said Maiga's death could have been a form of political assassination, so an investigation is crucial.

Aguibou Bouare, president of Mali's National Human Rights Commission, a governmental agency that investigates human rights abuse accusations, said that the commission monitored Maiga's case, but it was denied access to the former prime minister while he was in the hospital.

Bouare said that all prisoners, including Maiga, who had not yet been tried have the right to medical treatment and to receive visits from family. Human rights must be respected at all times, in all places, and in all circumstances, he said, especially during exceptional circumstances and periods of crisis.

VOA attempted to reach a Malian army spokesman for comment, but got no response.

The government released a short statement Monday announcing Maiga's death "after a long illness."

The military government ordered Radio France Internationale and France 24 off the air last week after RFI and Human Rights Watch reported on alleged human rights abuses by Mali's army.


Aid agencies working in East Africa warn of a massive humanitarian crisis if the coming rainy season falls short of expectations. The aid groups say persistent drought has left 44 million people in urgent need of assistance across Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and South Sudan.



Millions of people are on the move in East Africa as drought takes their livelihoods and most are forced to flee their homes in search of food and water.



Francesco Rigamoti is the regional humanitarian coordinator for Oxfam Horn East and Central Africa. He says if nothing is done, the situation is poised to get worse in coming weeks.



The crisis can actually worsen until and beyond June if the March to May rains will be average or below average," he said. "There is a concrete possibility that in Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia, only between 15 and 20 million people will be in IPC 3 phase and above and unfortunately, the experts are telling us in South Sudan already between May and July 8.3 million people will be in this situation.



The aid agencies use the IPC scale to classify households' food insecurity. IPC phase 3 means the households have food consumption gaps that can lead to acute malnutrition.



Since January, at least 13 million people in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia have been displaced in search of water and pastures for their livestock.



In Kenya, crop production has dropped by 70%.

Oxfam International head Gabriela Bucher traveled to Somali regions to witness the drought situation and what it is doing to people. She says communities are finding it difficult to adapt to the change in weather patterns.



For centuries pastoralists have had an extremely resilient and incredible coping mechanism in very harsh conditions but the current situation, the severity of the long drought extension and how many countries are affected is breaking those traditional mechanisms and in reality, we see that the climate crisis is present there and they are suffering the worst consequences of something that [they did] nothing to generate. So we know this is an issue of justice because it's us, the global community that needs to be aware and respond, she said.

The aid agencies say more than 650,000 Somalis have fled their homes due to drought, leaving almost half of the children under the age of five acutely malnourished.



Javier Rio Navarro is head of ECHO Somalia, a European Union emergency response organization. He says the country is facing famine.



Today, we face a number of hard truths in Somalia," he said. "The consequences of the drought are catastrophic and pose a very real threat of famine in the country. The other real truth is that the capacities of the partners are overstretched and the additional reality is that additional funding is hard to come by. Hence collectively, we need to recognize that the single common priority of humanitarians in Somalia today is to save lives.



In 2017 humanitarian organizations averted possible famine by getting supplies to communities in hard-to-reach areas on time and using the lessons learned during the 2011 famine which killed a quarter of a million people.



Aid agencies are appealing for more funding to reach millions and save lives.
Senior Western officials are increasingly alarmed that Russia's losses in Ukraine are making President Vladimir Putin more dangerous, some going as far as to compare him to a caged animal ready to lash out.

The warnings, from Washington and Brussels, come as new intelligence estimates suggest that up to 20% of Russian troops sent into Ukraine have been killed, wounded or captured as Ukraine fights Moscow to a near standstill.

"I don't know if you can go as far [as to say] stalemate, but it's clear that after one month, Russia has achieved almost none of their strategic objectives," said a senior NATO official, who spoke to reporters Wednesday on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss intelligence.

"They are stalled in Kyiv. They are stalled in Kharkiv. They are stalled in Chernihiv," the official said.

And in a break with some U.S. defense officials, who have declined to talk about Russian casualties in Ukraine because of low confidence in the estimates, NATO officials say the price on the battlefield has been high.

NATO on Wednesday estimated that between 7,000 and 15,000 Russian troops have been killed in battle, basing the assessment on intelligence from Ukraine and its own observations, including information accidentally released by Moscow.

When wounded, captured and missing soldiers are factored in, the number of Russian troops taken off the battlefield is between 30,000 and 40,000, the alliance believes.

But Western officials warn that rather than pull back, Putin has decided to respond to failure with even greater brutality and tactics reminiscent of a previous era.

"They are achieving more results in the south, but the price of it is absolutely horrendous," the senior NATO official said, accusing Moscow of trying to carpet-bomb the Ukrainian city of Mariupol into submission.

"What they do is World War II, 70-year-old techniques," the official said. "To reach this extreme, you need to be cornered and you need to be pushed to break all moral human rules to go to such brutality."

The official further warned that Russia's failure to quickly subjugate Ukraine is feeding into Putin's already deep hatred of Western values, increasing the chances he may choose to expand the conflict beyond Ukraine.

"The alliance is absolutely at risk," the official said.

There is growing concern that Putin may turn to weapons of mass destruction, whether they be nuclear, chemical or biological.

"Russia must stop its nuclear saber rattling. This is dangerous and it is irresponsible," NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters in Brussels Wednesday, ahead of an extraordinary meeting of alliance heads of state.

"Any use of nuclear weapons will fundamentally change the nature of the conflict," Stoltenberg said. "NATO is there to protect and defend all allies, and we convey a very clear message to Russia that nuclear war cannot be won and should never be fought."

Putin put Russia's nuclear deterrence forces on high alert just three days after Russian tanks first rolled into Ukraine, and some Russian officials have floated the idea of using tactical nuclear weapons if necessary.

"If it is an existential threat for our country, then it can be used in accordance with our concept," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the U.S.-based cable news channel CNN on Tuesday.

U.S. defense officials said earlier this week that so far, they had seen no movement by Russia that would cause them to change Washington's own nuclear deterrence posture.

But the U.S. has expressed growing concern about the possibility Russia will use chemical weapons.

"I think it's a real threat," U.S. President Joe Biden told reporters Wednesday in Washington before leaving the White House to attend the NATO summit in Brussels.

While not downplaying the danger, a senior U.S. defense official cautioned Wednesday that, at this point, a Russian attack using chemical or biological weapons does not appear to be looming.

We haven't seen any imminent signs that there's going to be a chem-bio [chemical or biological] event caused by the Russians, the official told reporters, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information.

NATO officials, however, said the alliance has reason to believe an eventual attack is not out of the question and that they are preparing for two equally frightening scenarios.

"One is what is openly called a false flag operation  this would be an accident on a chemical plant," the senior NATO official said, pointing to the large amounts of ammonia, nitrates and other agricultural chemicals in Ukraine.

"If you have a massive release of those agents, it is very dangerous for the population," the official added, warning that chemical clouds could then put other countries in the region at risk.

But NATO is also worried Russia could throw caution to the wind and use missiles or shells to target Ukraine with highly lethal neurotoxins.

"When you use them, they are so characteristic that the attribution is immediate," the official said, adding that the biggest question for Western defense officials is whether Russia is going to want to stay below the threshold of attribution for the weapons it unleashes.
The URL has been copied to your clipboard

The code has been copied to your clipboard.

NATO leaders meet in Brussels today (Thursday) for an extraordinary summit on Russias invasion of Ukraine. As Henry Ridgwell reports from NATO headquarters, calls are growing for the West to take stronger military action in support of Ukraine.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said plans to scrap some of its controversial COVID-19 vaccination mandates marked a new beginning for the country despite a recent surge in omicron infections.

Mandatory vaccinations will end next month for teachers, police officers and members of New Zealands military. Opposition to compulsory vaccine shots did provoke noisy, and at times violent, demonstrations for three weeks outside the parliament in Wellington.

Ardern said Monday in Wellington that expert advice and an expectation that the current wave of omicron cases will soon pass  and not the protests  had prompted the change in policy. However, workers in the health sector, those caring for the elderly and the prison sector must continue to be double-vaccinated.

Today, 95% of eligible New Zealanders are fully vaccinated. The government believes high rates of vaccination and increasing natural immunity to COVID-19 will help to protect New Zealanders.

Some believe the move might occur too soon. Michael Baker is an epidemiologist at the University of Otago. He said winding back pandemic restrictions, including mask mandates and increasing capacity limits for cafes and restaurants, could cause a second omicron wave.

Despite such warnings, Ardern said some vaccine mandates will end on April 4.

The government will not require mandates to be in place for education, police and defense workers, she said. We will continue their use for health, aged care workers, corrections staff and border and MIQ (managed isolation and quarantine) workers. The rationale in each case is clear. These are either workers supporting our most vulnerable or they work in high-risk environments where [COVID] spread would be rapid or the exposure to new variants is high.

New Zealands international borders, which were closed more than two years ago, will start to reopen in three weeks time.

Australians will be permitted to enter without needing to quarantine or isolate from April 13. Double-vaccinated tourists from about 60 countries, including Britain and the United States, will follow in early May.

New Zealand has a population of about 5 million. It has had some of the worlds toughest coronavirus restrictions.

The government has recorded 538,000 COVID-19 infections and 184 deaths since the pandemic began.
An official with Chinas civil aviation authority said Wednesday that search crews have discovered one of the so-called black boxes from the wreckage of a Chinese passenger jet.

China Eastern Flight MU5735 went into a sudden dive and slammed into a mountain in southern Guangxi Monday outside the city of Wuzhou. The Boeing 737-800 jetliner was carrying 132 passengers and crew during a flight from Kunming in Yunnan province to the industrial city of Guangzhou.



Data obtained from flight tracking website FlightRadar24 showed Flight MU5735 plunged at a rate of nearly 8,870 meters per minute before it crashed.

So far, no survivors have been located, but officials have yet to officially declare anyone dead.

Officials earlier Wednesday said the search for the planes flight data and cockpit voice recorders were hampered because the large crater caused by the crash was filling with rainwater, raising the risk of small landslides on the steep slopes. The recorders will play a crucial role in determining the cause of the crash.



The crash has prompted China Eastern to ground its entire fleet of Boeing 737-800 planes. Chinas civil aviation regulator has announced a two-week safety inspection across the industry.



Mondays crash was the worst for Chinas aviation sector since 2010, when a Brazilian-built Embraer passenger jet operated by Henan Airlines crashed as it was landing in the northeastern city of Yichun, killing 42 of the 96 people on board.



Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
Polands interior ministry says 45 Russian diplomats have been identified as working in Poland as spies and they have been expelled.

On his Twitter account, Polish Interior Minister Mariusz Kaminski said Poland expelled 45 Russian spies pretending to be diplomats. With full consistency and determination, we are breaking up the agents of the Russian secret services in our country.

Polish officials say Russian Ambassador to Poland Sergey Andreev was summoned to the Polish Foreign Ministry on Wednesday morning, where he was handed a note on the expulsion of 45 Russian diplomats suspected of espionage.

Andreev told reporters after the meeting he knew of no basis for the decision but They will have to go. This is a sovereign decision by the Polish side and they have the right to their own decision. He said he was not on the list of diplomats to be expelled.

Andreev later told Russias Tass News Agency Russia will take retaliatory measures and expel Polish diplomats on the principle of reciprocity.

Earlier Wednesday, a spokesman for Polands Internal Security Agency told reporters said it had sent a list of the suspects to Polands Foreign Ministry with a request that they be expelled from the country.

A spokesman for Polands special services coordinator, Stanislaw Zaryn, told The Washington Post that the 45 include individuals known to be working for Russias secret services, along with others who, while benefiting from diplomatic status in Poland, aided the work of Russian secret services.

Some information for this report was provided by the Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
An Arab assailant killed at least four people in Israel's southern city of Beersheba on Tuesday in the deadliest such attack in years, before he was fatally shot by a passerby, police said.

Police identified the attacker as an Arab citizen of Israel, a former high school teacher who had been imprisoned over alleged links to Islamic State.

Police spokesman Eli Levy said "a civilian took the initiative and shot and killed" the knife-wielding assailant, a confrontation on a busy city street that later played out in videos filmed by onlookers and broadcast on Israeli television.

Tensions have been on the rise in Israel and the Palestinian territories as the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, in April this year, approaches. It is a period when violence has erupted in the past.

In a statement, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said Israeli security forces were exercising "maximum vigilance" in the wake of the attack.

Washington strongly condemned the "abhorrent ... terrorist attack," U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price said, offering condolences to the victims and their families.

"We stand ready to provide support to the Israeli government's efforts to investigate this heinous crime," Price said at a regular press briefing.

The Magen David Adom ambulance service and police said three women and a man were killed by the assailant, who rammed his car into one victim and stabbed others at a petrol station and at an outdoor shopping center. At least two other people were wounded.

It was the highest death toll in a single attack against Israelis since 2017, when a Palestinian rammed his truck into a group of soldiers visiting a Jerusalem promenade, killing four of them. He was shot dead.

Several Palestinian stabbing attacks have occurred in East Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank in recent weeks, with some of the suspected assailants shot dead by Israeli forces.


A powerful tornado swept across Louisiana Tuesday night, causing major damage in parts of the historic city of New Orleans.

Video taken by a local television station showed a large dark funnel cloud hovering over parts of eastern New Orleans.

The storm tore the roofs off several damaged or destroyed homes and knocked out power in the citys historic Lower Ninth Ward neighborhood before traveling east across the Mississippi River and causing similar havoc in the suburb of Arabi in neighboring St. Bernard Parish, where officials say one person was killed and several others injured. Authorities both in New Orleans and St. Bernard Parish told reporters they received emergency calls of people trapped in their homes.

Both communities were devastated when Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans and surrounding areas in 2005. Many neighborhoods were flooded when the citys levee system failed, forcing thousands of people to evacuate the region.

The tornado also caused major damage in the city of Gretna, located just eight kilometers south of New Orleans across the Mississippi River.

The tornado is part of a strong storm system that hit parts of the neighboring southwestern states of Oklahoma and Texas the day before. Authorities say a 73-year-old woman was killed in the community of Sherwood Shores, located about 95 kilometers north of Dallas. The town of nearby Jacksboro sustained heavy damage from Mondays tornadoes, including the towns elementary and high school buildings.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott has issued a disaster declaration for 16 counties hit hard by the storms.

The storm system has left more than 54,000 people without power across Texas, Louisiana and neighboring Mississippi, according to the website poweroutage.us, which collects data from utilities across the United States.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
The president of the International Committee of the Red Cross is in Moscow to discuss humanitarian issues in Ukraine caused by Russias invasion last month.

Peter Maurer plans to speak with representatives of the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Defense and the Russian Red Cross about ways to alleviate suffering in the war-town country.

The devastation caused by the conflict in recent weeks, as well as eight years of conflict in Donbas, has been vast. There are practical steps guided by international humanitarian law that the parties must take to limit the suffering. I was in Kyiv last week and Im in Moscow this week to continue the discussion with the authorities on these steps, said Maurer in a press release.

He also plans to talk about ongoing humanitarian issues in Syria and Nagorno-Karabakh.

Last week, the U.N. refugee agency warned that millions of Ukrainians inside and outside their country desperately need humanitarian and protection assistance as Russias invasion of Ukraine escalates and spreads to new areas of the country.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said more than 3.2 million people have fled Ukraine in search of safety in neighboring countries. More than 2 million people are displaced inside Ukraine, and about 13 million are affected in the areas hardest hit by the war.

Those places include cities such as Mariupol and Sumy, where Russia has relentlessly bombed residential areas and destroyed civilian infrastructure.
Insurgent-driven conflict in Africas Sahel region has displaced millions of people and in the past year, for the first time, thousands are spilling into West Africas coastal states. The U.N.s refugee agency says around 7,000 have already fled from Burkina Faso into neighboring Ivory Coast. Henry Wilkins reports from the village of Moro on the Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso border.
Well-known post-Soviet reformer Anatoly Chubais has reportedly left his post as Russian President Vladimir Putin's envoy for stable development, a move that could signal a high-profile protest inside the Kremlin against Moscow's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.



News agencies Bloomberg and Reuters on March 23 quoted Kremlin sources as saying that Chubais, who was responsible for relations with international organizations, had left the country.

Russia's state news agency TASS quoted a source as saying that Chubais had left his position but did not confirm whether he was still in Russia or not.



No reason was given for Chubais's departure. He is the highest-profile official on Putin's team to resign since Russia launched its attack against Ukraine on February 24.



The 66-year-old Chubais was first deputy prime minister, finance minister, and chief of the presidential office when Boris Yeltsin was Russia's first president following the collapse of the Soviet Union.



Chubais was a key reformer and an ideologue of the privatization program in Russia in the early 1990s.



Since the start of the war, many Western countries have implemented crippling sanctions on Russia and those close to Putin.

Information from Reuters was used in this report
At least seven people were killed in two attacks Wednesday, with the militant group al-Shabab claiming responsibility for both, police in Somalia said.

At least six people are dead after two gunmen attacked Mogadishu's heavily guarded international airport. The dead include a Somali national and five foreigners, according to police.

Two gunmen were killed by security forces, according to police spokesman Major Abdifatah Aden Hassan.

Hassan said one of the foreigners was a soldier with the African Union peacekeeping mission AMISOM. He said four others were trainers helping the Somali government with explosives training.

The al-Shabab militant group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

Hassan told VOA that two men attacked the Marine gate of the airport Wednesday afternoon and were "confronted" by security forces.

The airport hosts the headquarters of the AMISOM and most of the foreign diplomats in Mogadishu.

Witnesses and security officials said the shooting took place on the eastern side of the airport, where many shops are located.

A security official who requested not to be identified because he is not allowed to speak with media told VOA the militants used small arms and hand grenades. He said at least three police personnel were injured in the attack.

Al-Shabab said its fighters shot several people and set buildings on fire. A VOA reporter in Mogadishu saw smoke rising from the area of the confrontation in the airport.

Al-Shabab has attacked the airport several times since 2009, killing dozens.

Later Wednesday, a Somali female lawmaker was among several people who were killed in two explosions in the central Somali town of Beledweyne, witnesses said.

Amina Mohamed Abdi was campaigning for reelection in her constituency.

There are conflicting reports about the explosion. According to one account, a suicide bomber ran toward her and detonated a vest, but a second account says the explosion was from a device planted at the scene.

As the wounded were evacuated, a second explosion went off. Residents say they expect the death toll to increase.

President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed sent condolences to Abdi's family, saying she was martyred by "merciless terrorists."

Al-Shabab claimed responsibility for this attack as well.

Gen. Stephen Townsend, the head of U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), told VOA in an exclusive interview last week that al-Shabab remains the "greatest threat" on the continent and has "enjoyed great freedom of movement throughout Somalia" over the last year.



"They have grown bigger, stronger and bolder," Townsend said.





The head of AFRICOM also said he suspects the al-Shabab terror group in Somalia may now have the capability to strike Americans outside of Africa, including in the United States.



"I suspect that they do. That's not widely accepted in Washington or in the intel community, but my instincts as a commander are that they do," he told VOA.



In late 2020, then-President Donald Trump ordered most of the 800 U.S. troops out of Somalia in one of his last foreign policy moves in office. In the roughly 15 months since then, U.S. forces have continued to "commute to work," flying in and out of Somalia for missions while leaving fewer than 100 troops in the war-torn country.



"I think it's inefficient, it's certainly less effective. We're not there long enough to get momentum, and then we start over," he told VOA, adding that it also increases the risk to U.S. troops who must reestablish security each time they move in and out.



Townsend told VOA that U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has provided his advice to the White House and is giving administration leaders the "time and space to make their decisions."



VOA Pentagon Correspondent Carla Babb contributed to this report from the Pentagon.
The president of Somaliland is wrapping up a U.S. visit without the formal recognition he had sought for the self-declared republic. But he nonetheless is viewing his trip as a success.

"The most important thing to us which we discuss with people is recognition" as an independent sovereign nation and not as part of Somalia, Muse Bihi Abdi told VOA's Somali Service in an interview Saturday.

He arrived March 13 for a series of meetings to court support from U.S. government officials, U.N. personnel, think tanks and civil society leaders. He plans to return to Somaliland later this week.

While the U.S. State Department emphasized the Biden administration's commitment to a unified Somalia, it also held out the possibility of stronger ties with Somaliland.

"Welcomed the opportunity to meet  and discuss strengthening U.S. engagement with Somaliland within the framework of our single Somalia policy," the State Department's Bureau of African Affairs tweeted March 14 after Bihi met with its assistant secretary, Molly Phee.

The U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee's ranking member, Republican Jim Risch of Idaho, responded by tweeting that the United States "should not limit ourselves to a 'single #Somalia' policy." He added that the administration "should explore ALL areas of engagement in the region."

Risch and two fellow committee members  Republican Mike Rounds and Democrat Chris Van Hollen  introduced a bill last week that would require the State Department to report to Congress on its engagement with Somaliland and would authorize a study on the feasibility of establishing a direct U.S.-Somaliland partnership.

Bihi  who was welcomed at a bipartisan congressional reception Thursday  has invited the United States to establish a diplomatic presence in Somaliland's capital, Hargeisa.

Somaliland projects itself as a comparatively calm and stable partner in the tempestuous Horn of Africa region, where Somalia has been battling al-Shabab militants for more than a decade and neighboring Ethiopia has been caught up in civil war since November 2020.

The breakaway state also is strategically located on the Gulf of Aden, near Djibouti  home to the only permanent U.S. military base in Africa and the first overseas base for China  the Heritage Foundation pointed out in introducing Bihi's keynote address last week at the conservative think tank's Washington offices.

Talks have faltered

Somaliland in 1991 declared its independence from Somalia, which views it as a northern breakaway region, not a separate nation. The two sides have held repeated rounds of talks, most recently in June 2020 in Djibouti, when they agreed to appoint technical committees to continue discussions. No meetings have taken place since then.

Bihi blames the stalemate on the Mogadishu government, saying it doesn't want to negotiate with Somaliland.

"Despite nine rounds of talks  the status of Somaliland never materialized," he said in his Heritage Foundation remarks.

Somaliland sees "no future in the continuation of that dialogue with Somalia and is prepared to pursue all available avenues for its international recognition," Bihi continued. "Somaliland believes that the international community has a moral obligation to support Somaliland's pursuit of international recognition."

But he noted in his interview with VOA, the United States "stood where other governments and Europe stand, which is 'this issue is for Africa'" to determine.

The African Union has not recognized Somaliland as a sovereign and independent nation, nor has any individual country.

Somali's presidential palace, the ministry of foreign affairs and the information minister did not respond to VOA's requests for comment on Somaliland.

But last June 26, three decades after Somaliland gained independence from Britain, Somali President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed expressed hope for a unified country.

"I ask Allah to realize our dream, which is the return of our unity," said Mohamed, widely known as Farmaajo. "The people in the North and South need each other. Let us come back to each other and leave out minor interests."

Relations with Taiwan

Speaking with VOA, Bihi compared Somaliland's status with that of Taiwan, an East Asian self-governing island that China has considered part of its territory since the Communist takeover in 1949.

"Taiwan and us: We have the same cause. We are two countries that are not recognized," Bihi said.

Somaliland's leader said the Taiwanese "are developed economically, successful in education. We need to learn from their experiences on how they maneuvered."

Somaliland and Taiwan established diplomatic relations in July 2020. At the time, Taiwan's foreign ministry said of the agreement to establish good relations: "We're thousands of miles apart but share a deep-seated love of freedom & democracy."

Somalia and China, which has veto power on the U.N. Security Council, condemned the move.

But Bihi said Somaliland-Taiwanese ties were not meant to antagonize any other government.

China has "no right to get angry," he said. "We are an independent country, and we can establish relations with anyone we want.

"We are ready to have good relations with China," Bihi said of Somaliland. "China needs us, we need them. We would like to have good relations. We don't harbor ill will toward them, and we hope it's the same on their side."

This report originated in VOA's Somali Service.


An Oscar-nominated Danish documentary chronicling a gay Afghan refugee's perilous journey to Europe tries to show that being a refugee is what happens to you, not who you are, its director told AFP.

"Flee," an animated film which is up for three Academy Awards, is in the spotlight ahead of Sunday's Oscars ceremony as the world witnesses another mass exodus, the millions of Ukrainians fleeing the war in their country.

"I really hope that we can give some nuance and some perspective," director Jonas Poher Rasmussen told AFP in an interview held on the eve of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. "Being a refugee is not an identity. It's a circumstance of life."

In 2015, "we had Syrian refugees on the highways here in Denmark, and all over Europe. And I felt a need to give these people a human face," he said.

The idea for the documentary stemmed from a conversation between the 40-year-old director and his childhood friend, dubbed "Amin" in the movie to protect his identity.

Amin arrived as a teenage refugee in Rasmussen's small village near Copenhagen in 1996.

"The story is told from inside a friendship," Rasmussen said. In the beginning, "I didn't think about making a political film." But his perspective changed over the 10 years between the film's conception and the start of production.

Combining 2D, sketch animation and archive newsreel footage, "Flee" is as much a reflection on the agony of a refugee's flight as the universal theme of man's quest for a place in the world.

"I think people can really relate to the universality of the story," Rasmussen said. "Most people at some point of their life look for that place where they feel they can be, honestly, who they are."

The film also evokes parallels with the Taliban's seizure of power again in Afghanistan last summer.

As a young boy and teenager in the 1980s and 1990s, Amin donned his sister's dresses and later fantasized about secret crushes, such as Hollywood muscleman Jean-Claude Van Damme.

But he was not able to freely express his homosexuality.

His situation grew even more untenable with the Taliban's seizure of power in Afghanistan in 1990s.

"It's really a story about someone who's had to flee himself all his life," said Rasmussen. It is "about looking for a place in the world where you can be who you are, with everything that entails, with your sexuality, with your past, and everything else.

Amin spent years not daring to speak about his past and his secrets, building up walls that prevented him from opening up to others.

Now married, he is thrilled that animation allowed him to tell his story incognito, without everyone he meets having to know his personal traumas and his innermost secrets, the director said.

"Flee," which won the Sundance festival's jury prize, has been nominated for three Academy Awards: best international film, best documentary, and best animated feature.

Ironically, Denmark is known for its ultra-restrictive immigration policy, even if it has eased its curbs during the Ukraine crisis.

Rasmussen said he was surprised by the success of "Flee."

A former radio documentary-maker, he has made several other films, but the success enjoyed by his Danish contemporaries Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg has thus far eluded him.

This is his international breakthrough.

"At the beginning ... our criteria for success was going to be a national TV broadcast here (in Denmark). And then the project grew and grew and grew and all of a sudden here we are with three nominations for the Academy Awards, Rasmussen said.
The Taliban reopened schools in Afghanistan after the winter break Wednesday but continued a ban on grade seven to 12 girls, saying they still need time to draw up a plan for them in line with Islamic law or Sharia.



The move swiftly drew domestic and international criticism of the Islamist group for backtracking on its commitment that all girls around the country would be allowed to return to school March 23, which also marks the start of the school year for most Afghan provinces.



"We inform all girls high schools and those schools that are having female students above class six that they are off until the next directive," said the Taliban notice.



Wednesdays last minute amendment to the earlier Taliban directive that schools around the country would open for all students left many girls in tears in the capital, Kabul, who had arrived at campuses in excitement in the morning but were told to go back home.



I was in tears of joy until yesterday after hearing the news about the reopening of my school. But today I want to cry because I was unable to enter the school, a girl told the Afghan TOLO news channel before bursting into tears.





"We all got disappointed, and we all became totally hopeless when the principal told us, she was also crying," the Reuters news agency a student as saying, not named for security reasons.

Thomas West, the U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan, urged the Taliban to live up to their commitments to their people. He said in a tweet he joins millions of Afghan families in expressing shock and deep disappointment with the decision to not allow girls to return to school.



This is a betrayal of public commitments to the Afghan people and the international community, West said. He emphasized that education is a fundamental right of all human beings, and it is essential to the economic growth as well as stability of Afghanistan.

During his news conference Wednesday in Brussels, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said it it was important not to forget Afghanistan.



It is especially important that we do not forget that education is a fundamental human right. And of course, that also applies for girls, for women. And it was one of the biggest achievements of the last 20 years that millions of Afghan girls were able to attend school and to get an education, Stoltenberg said. Any attempt to deny girls in Afghanistan an education will be a violation of what the Taliban has promised. And we have to hold them accountable for what they promised and their commitments, including on the right for education to women.

Suhail Shaheen, the Talibans permanent ambassador-designate to the United Nations, insisted the suspension of girls education was a temporary step.



There is no issue of banning girls from schools; it is only a technical issue of deciding on form of school uniform for girls. This is the cause of postponement, Shaheen said in a statement he sent to reporters. We hope the uniform issue is resolved and finalized as soon as possible, he added.



Aziz Ahmad Rayan, the spokesman for the Education Ministry in Kabul, told VOA the overnight orders to stop girls from attending school had come from the Taliban leadership and the ministry was bound to enforce them.



Tears of every Afghan sister are extremely valuable for us. But as employees of the Islamic Emirate we have no role in the decision-making process, Rayan said, using the official name of the Taliban government.



The Islamist group barred high school girls from returning to the classroom after taking control of Afghanistan seven months ago. Taliban officials have repeatedly cited financial constraints and a lack of arrangements in schools for female students in accordance with Sharia.



When they were previously in power in Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, the Taliban had banned all women from leaving home unless accompanied by a close male relative and girls from receiving an education.



The group has pledged in recent meetings and speeches at international platforms it would govern the country differently this time. But the imposition of multiple restrictions on Afghan women has raised questions and concerns about human rights abuses.

This mornings announcement that teenage girls across the country will not be able to attend secondary education until further notice casts a dark shadow on the start of the school year in Afghanistan, said Jan Egeland, Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) charity.



Our teams on the ground tell us that in places where we work, girls were excited to return to school after eight months of closure, but arrived this morning only to be then turned away, Egeland lamented.



Limiting girls schooling to primary education will devastate their future and the future of Afghanistan.



Girls secondary schools have been mostly closed in Afghanistan for the past eight months, except in 6 of 34 provinces, according to the NRC.



Qualified female teachers are scarce in remote areas, largely due to a lack of girls enrollment past primary grades, which further limits access for girls, making the issue a cyclical one, the charity says.



UNICEF estimates that four million children in Afghanistan are out of school, of which 60% are girls.



Our team has conveyed our deep concern to the Taliban and has underlined the urgency of opening schools for all children, George Laryea-Adjei, UNICEF regional director, said in a statement.



We want to see all children in Afghanistan in school, learning the skills they need for their futures.



The global community has made access to education and work for Afghan women a key demand for any future recognition of the male-only Taliban government and restoring non-humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan, where millions face hunger and poverty.



"Taliban had seven months to figure this out. If they were not able to organize in seven months, we can conclude that they are not capable of opening girls schools, said analyst Tarek Farhadi, a former Afghan government official.



It amounts to taking girls hostage in Afghanistan. Afghans and the world will not let them do so, lamented Farhadi.

VOA National Security Correspondent Jeff Seldin contributed to this report.
A Russian reporter being investigated under a new law for deliberately spreading false information about the war in Ukraine on Wednesday defended his claims on social media that Russian forces had shelled a maternity hospital.

In an open letter to Russia's top investigator, Alexander Bastrykin, the journalist Alexander Nevzorov said he was being blamed for drawing his conclusions from the international media, which had access to proof of what happened, rather than from the Russian Defense Ministry.

"I invite you to shut this ridiculous case," Nevzorov, who has more than 1.6 million subscribers to his YouTube channel, wrote on Telegram.

He also said the criminal law, which could see journalists jailed for up to 15 years for purposefully spreading false information, contradicted freedom of speech provisions in the Russian constitution and media law that gave him the right to have an opinion on the war.

The Investigative Committee law enforcement agency said it had opened a case against Nevzorov for posting on Instagram and YouTube that Russia's armed forces had deliberately shelled a maternity hospital in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol.

Nevzorov said the case against him was meant as a signal to journalists in Russia that "the regime is not going to spare anyone, and that any attempts to comprehend the criminal war will end in prison."

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov declined to comment on Nevzorov's specific case, but said the tough new law was justified by what he called the most brutal information war being waged against Russia.

Ukraine and its Western allies condemned the hospital attack as an atrocity. Russia denied bombing the hospital, accusing Kyiv of a "staged provocation."

Russia sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24 in what it called a special operation to weaken its southern neighbor's military capabilities and root out people it called dangerous nationalists.

Ukrainian forces have mounted stiff resistance and the West has imposed sweeping sanctions on Russia to pressure it to withdraw its forces.

On Tuesday, Russia's parliament passed amendments to the Criminal Code that would expand the new law to allow authorities to prosecute those deemed to have spread false information about the work of state bodies abroad.

State news agency TASS said these bodies included embassies and state institutions like prosecutors, the emergencies ministry and National Guard.
Nearly a month after Russian forces invaded Ukraine, there are growing indications Ukrainian forces are going on the offensive, targeting Russian troops and, in some cases, retaking lost ground.

Ukraine's Defense Ministry said Tuesday that its forces had retaken Makariv, a suburb of the capital of Kyiv, following heavy fighting.

Ukraine's military also appeared to launch counteroffensives in the eastern city of Izyum, 120 kilometers southeast of Kharkiv, and in areas near the city of Kherson in the southern part of the country.

U.S. officials declined to comment on the Ukrainian efforts, but they did say that in some parts of the country, the momentum appears to be shifting.

"We have seen indications that the Ukrainians are going a bit more on the offense now," Pentagon press secretary John Kirby told reporters late Tuesday.

"They have been defending very smartly, very nimbly, very creatively in places that they believe are the right places to defend," he said. "And we have seen them now in places, particularly in the south near Kherson, they have tried to regain territory."

Other U.S. officials were even more blunt about the state of Russian military operations.

"Russia has thus far manifestly failed," White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters about the Kremlin's plans for Ukraine.

"Whether Russia takes a city, takes a town or takes more territory, they are never going to be able to achieve the purpose they set out  which was to bring this country to heel," he said. "The brave citizens of Ukraine are refusing to submit. They are fighting back."

On its English-language Telegram feed, Russia's Ministry of Defense portrayed a vastly different war effort, praising Russian forces as they advanced on parts of southeastern Ukraine while Ukrainian forces fled, and claiming success in taking out Ukrainian fuel depots and positions with "high-precision long-range" weapons.

A senior U.S. defense official, briefing reporters on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss intelligence, confirmed Russian ships in the Sea of Azov had begun shelling the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, which has been under heavy fire for days.

But the official said other intelligence suggests Russia's invasion of Ukraine has become a logistical nightmare, with Russian forces still struggling to overcome shortages of fuel, food and precision-guided munitions.

Pentagon officials said Tuesday those shortages could be part of the reason Russia has "at least in one instance" used an advanced hypersonic missile to take out a Ukrainian military storage facility, a move one official described as a "head-scratcher."

Even basic supplies seem to be lacking.

"We picked up some indications that some of their soldiers are suffering from frostbite because they lack the appropriate cold weather gear," the official said. "Troops have actually suffered and [have been] taken out of the fight."

Civilians, too, are taking a toll as fighting rages across the country.

The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, said Tuesday that more than 3.5 million people are believed to have fled Ukraine, seeking refuge in Poland, Romania, Moldova and Hungary.

Those who have not been able to escape are facing an increasingly dire situation.

"There is nothing left" in Mariupol, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy declared in a video address Tuesday to the Italian parliament, a day after the government in Kyiv rejected a Russian ultimatum to surrender the city by dawn.

And hopes of reaching survivors with aid appear to be fading.

"The reality is that right now the humanitarian system is entirely broken down," Steve Gordon, the humanitarian response adviser for a Mercy Corps, said in a statement.

Cities and towns experiencing the most intense fighting "don't have more than 3-4 days' worth of essentials, like food," he added.

The U.S., meanwhile, warned Russia is increasingly taking out on civilians its inability to achieve its objectives in Ukraine.

"Clearly, there are civilian casualties, and clearly, they're mounting every day because of the indiscriminate attacks that the Russians are conducting  as they become more frustrated," Kirby told reporters at the Pentagon.

"We believe we should call it like we see it, and we believe that there are war crimes being conducted by the Russian forces," he added.

Russia has repeatedly rejected accusations of war crimes, even as the United States and other Western countries raise concerns that Russia may be preparing to use chemical and biological weapons in Ukraine, or even nuclear weapons.

"If it is an existential threat for our country, then it can be used in accordance with our concept," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told CNN Tuesday when asked whether Moscow might consider unleashing some of its nuclear arsenal.

"We have a concept of domestic security, and it's public. You can read all the reasons for nuclear arms to be used," he added.

Russian President Vladimir Putin put his country's nuclear deterrent forces on high alert, something officials at the White House and Pentagon continue to monitor.

"We are constantly monitoring for that potential contingency, and of course we take it as seriously as one could possibly take it," Sullivan, the White House national security adviser, told reporters. "We will be consulting with allies and partners on that potential contingency ... and discussing what our potential responses are."

U.S. President Joe Biden is set to travel to Brussels on Wednesday to meet with NATO and European allies.

They are expected to announce a new round of sanctions against Russia as well as longer-term adjustments to NATO's force posture in Europe.

While in Brussels, Biden will also meet with G-7 and European Union leaders before traveling to Poland.

U.N. correspondent Margaret Besheer contributed to this report. Some information came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.


Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed Japans parliament Wednesday, thanking members for their early support against Russia and urging them to do more.

Speaking to the Japanese lawmakers in Tokyo via live video link  the first such address by a foreign leader in Japans history  with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida sitting in the front row, Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi and Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi beside him, Zelenskyy said Japan was the first among Asian nations to apply sanctions on Russia in response to its invasion of Ukraine.

Japan has followed the lead of Western allies in imposing sanctions on Russian financial institutions and officials, as well as Moscow's ally, Belarus. It has regularly condemned the invasion and has offered Ukraine millions of dollars in humanitarian aid and other assistance.

In his comments, Zelenskyy also called for a trade embargo against Russia to reduce funding for the Russian army. He said it was necessary to protect the Ukrainian soldiers fighting to hold back Russian troops.

He said Russia has launched more than a thousand missiles into Ukraine, destroying dozens of cities, and, considering the number of nuclear power plants in the country, threatening a nuclear disaster.

Zelenskyy said, "There are four operating nuclear power plants on our land! These are 15 nuclear units, and they are all under threat. He said Russian troops have already fired from tanks at Europes largest nuclear plant in Zaporizhzhia. He said the shelling threatens gas and oil pipelines and coal mines.

Lawmakers applauded at the start of Zelenskiyy's remarks and gave him a standing ovation at the end.

Zelenskyy delivered a similar address to the French parliament later Wednesday. Previously he addressed legislators in Italy, the European Union, The United States, Britain and Canada.

Some information for this report was provided by the Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
The Biden administration on Wednesday accused Russia of committing war crimes in Ukraine.



"Today, I can announce that, based on information currently available, the U.S. government assesses that members of Russia's forces have committed war crimes in Ukraine," U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.



The accusations come as both Blinken and President Joe Biden head to Europe for an emergency NATO summit to address the ongoing war in Ukraine.

Blinken said he would share information with allies and partners.



"We've seen numerous credible reports of indiscriminate attacks and attacks deliberately targeting civilians, as well as other atrocities. Russia's forces have destroyed apartment buildings, schools, hospitals, critical infrastructure, civilian vehicles, shopping centers, and ambulances, leaving thousands of innocent civilians killed or wounded," Blinken said, citing ongoing attacks in Mariupol and other areas.



The U.S. government will continue to track reports of war crimes and will share information we gather with allies, partners, and international institutions and organizations, as appropriate. We are committed to pursuing accountability using every tool available, including criminal prosecutions, Blinken added.



Last week, Biden called Russian President Vladimir Putin a war criminal.



Some information in this report came from The Associated Press.
The United States on Tuesday announced an agreement with Britain to end tariffs on steel and aluminum imports imposed by former president Donald Trump.

"By allowing for a flow of duty-free steel and aluminum from the UK, we further ease the gap between supply and demand for these products in the United States," Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said in a statement.

"And by removing the UK's retaliatory tariffs, we reopen the British market to beloved American products."

The deal was the latest in a series of efforts by President Joe Biden to settle trade spats with U.S. allies, some of which were long running. Others had started under the Trump administration.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson cheered the announcement of the deal "with our American friends."

"This is fantastic news and a very welcome boost to our steel and aluminum industries," he said on Twitter.

Washington and London in January announced the start of negotiations to end the dispute, which began in 2018 when Trump imposed levies of 25% on steel and 10% on aluminum imports from Britain and other nations to protect U.S. industry.

U.S. companies for years have struggled to compete with the glut of supply coming out of China, but Trump, citing national security concerns, penalized close trade partners, which worsened relations with major U.S. allies.

The Biden administration in October reached a deal to end the tariffs on the European Union, and in early February did the same with Japan.

Ending retaliation

Under the deal announced Tuesday, Britain will lift retaliatory tariffs it imposed on $500 million in American imports, including alcohol and consumer goods, the statement said.

It also stipulates that any British steel company "owned by a Chinese entity must undertake an audit of their financial records to assess influence from the People's Republic of China government," the results of which will be shared with the United States, the Commerce Department said.

Britain's International Trade Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan, who met with Raimondo in Washington to finalize the agreement, said the deal was "good news for our steel and aluminum industries, who have been unfairly hit by these tariffs, and the 80,000 people employed across the sector."

U.S. industry was more cautious in its praise, noting the benefits the tariffs provided to aluminum and steel manufacturers.

"The Russian invasion of Ukraine should remind us all just how critical the domestic steel industry is to our national and economic security," said Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing.

"Section 232 quotas and tariffs have permitted the American steel industry to recover, invest, hire, and contribute robustly to our national defense," he said, calling for a pause in more such deals to allow the industry to adjust.

The announcement followed two days of talks between U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai and Trevelyan in the U.S. port city of Baltimore on the broader trade relationship.

In a statement, Tai said the deal to remove the metal tariffs "delivers on President Biden's vision to repair relationships with our allies while also helping to ensure the long-term viability of our steel and aluminum industries."

Free trade deal?

Trevelyan and Tai said they would continue their talks next month in Scotland.

"Hopefully we can now move forward and focus on deepening our thriving trading relationship with the U.S.," the British official said.

There was no indication of progress toward a free trade agreement between the two countries, however  a priority of Britain following its departure from the EU.

Marjorie Chorlins, senior vice president for European Affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, who took part in discussions in Baltimore on Monday, said a trade pact is not likely, "at least not anytime soon."

Trump officials seemed ready to make a new bilateral arrangement with London and had even opened negotiations, but the Biden administration has shown little indication of wanting to continue them.


WASHINGTON  U.S. optimism that a deal to restore the 2015 agreement to limit Irans nuclear developed has soured, with the State Department warning Tuesday it was headed toward Plan B if Tehran doesnt budge.

Just a week ago Washington officials were hopeful that an agreement that aimed to halt Irans march toward nuclear weapons capability, after almost one year of negotiations, was within reach.

We are close to a possible deal, but were not there yet, State Department spokesman Ned Price said on March 16. We do think the remaining issues can be bridged.

U.S. officials said they thought Tehran would reach an agreement after Sundays celebration of Nowruz, the Persian New Year.

Mood shift

But that tone suddenly changed the following day.

I want to be clear that an agreement is neither imminent nor is it certain, Price said Monday.

And on Tuesday, while refusing to say the talks had reached an impasse, Price said the United States had contingency plans if a deal could not be reached and Iran's alleged plans to develop nuclear weapons were not halted.

The onus is on Tehran to make decisions that it might consider difficult, Price told reporters.

In fact, we are preparing equally for scenarios with and without a mutual return to full implementation of the JCPOA, he said, referring to the formal name of the 2015 deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

The administration of President Donald Trump unilaterally abrogated the six-party JCPOA in 2018, accusing Tehran of violating its terms and branding it a weak deal.

Experts said Iran had mostly stuck to the terms, but months after the U.S. pullout, the Islamic republic began ramping up its nuclear program with activities that would enhance its ability to build a nuclear weapon.

Last April, three months after he took office, President Joe Biden started new negotiations to revive the 2015 agreement, promising an easing of punishing sanctions in exchange for restoring JCPOA controls.

But the talks have proceeded with the knowledge that Tehran has already moved much closer to nuclear weapons breakout, which would render the JCPOA moot.

Political choices

Both sides have said in recent weeks that the other has to make tough political choices.

And Tehran is believed to be holding out for two objectives: a guarantee of some protection if the United States again pulls out from the deal, and the removal of Washingtons official Foreign Terrorist Organization designation of the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

We are still working through a number of difficult issues, Price said, while not confirming what the specific unagreed points were.

We know that there has to be a great deal of urgency, and we know that now the onus is on Tehran to make decisions," he said.

Suggesting that Washington has not given up, Price did say Monday that it could make concessions.

We are prepared to make difficult decisions to return Irans nuclear program to its JCPOA limits, he said. But he also warned that Washington is conferring with allies on what to do if no deal is reached, without providing details.

We are preparing... for a world in which we have a JCPOA and a world in which we dont. But either way, the presidents commitment to the fact that Iran will never be able to acquire a nuclear weapon, that is ironclad.

Walk away

Yet even as the United States pressures Iran to give in, it is facing challenges from conservatives domestically against a possible deal.

After a briefing Tuesday from the State Departments main JCPOA negotiator Rob Malley, senior Republican Senator Jim Risch lashed out.

Im appalled at the concessions this administration is considering to placate the Iranian regime, he said, calling on Biden to walk away from the talks.

A deal that provides $90-$130 billion in sanctions relief, relieves sanctions against Irans worst terror and human rights offenders, and delists the IRGC does not support our national security interests, he said.

But Democrat Chris Murphy said a deal would be positive.

The intel on how close Iran is to a nuclear weapon is chilling, and we have no reason to believe that theres a pathway other than diplomacy to extend their breakout time, the senator said.

He added that the terror group designation for the IRGC can be dropped because it has no practical impact.
Western leaders meeting in Brussels about Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine are expected to spend a significant amount of time talking about China.

U.S. security officials say they have yet to see any sign that Beijing is providing Moscow with military equipment or other aid to boost the Russian forces. But Western officials warn China's refusal to condemn Russia's invasion and its willingness to parrot Kremlin propaganda are cause for concern.

"We face a fundamentally changed security environment where authoritarian powers are increasingly prepared to use force to get their way," NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters Wednesday, the day before a meeting of the alliance's heads of state.

"Beijing has joined Moscow in questioning the right of independent nations to choose their own path," he added. "So, I expect we will also address the role of China in this crisis."

So far, China has sought to avoid political conflict over the war in Ukraine, saying it recognizes Ukraine's sovereignty while also agreeing with Russia that NATO expansion has raised "legitimate security concerns."

At the same time, analysts caution that China has used social media to echo the Kremlin's talking points about the war.

Posts by Chinese officials and news outlets have "remained largely aligned with Russian messaging," according to analysis by the Washington-based Alliance for Securing Democracy, which tracks online propaganda.

" 'NATO' was the tenth most used key phrase in Chinese tweets last week, as Chinese officials and state media continue to frame potential NATO enlargement as the root cause of Russia's invasion," the alliance said, noting Beijing also repeated Russian disinformation efforts tying the U.S. to biological weapons labs in Ukraine.

But what NATO members find most concerning is Beijing's willingness to side with Moscow against core values such as self-determination, Stoltenberg said.

"China now for the first time has questioned some of the key principles of our security, including the right for every nation in Europe to choose his own path," he said. "That's new.

"I expect the leaders, when they meet tomorrow, to call on China to condemn the invasion and to engage in diplomatic efforts to find a peaceful way to end this war as soon as possible and not provide material support," Stoltenberg said.

Some U.S. lawmakers think Russia's stalled military efforts in Ukraine may be giving Chinese leadership reason to have second thoughts about using force, specifically in relation to Taiwan.

"China is looking at Russia, too, and they're beginning to ask questions," Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jack Reed told the Defense Writers Group on Wednesday, noting that China has yet to truly test its newfound military might.

"I think the Chinese are constantly thinking about their posture towards Taiwan," he said. "Now they have some more data.  They might be getting second thoughts."
The U.S. State Department has referred more than 5,000 Afghan refugees who were seeking admission to the United States to a parallel program in Canada, where waiting times for permanent residence are shorter.

State Department officials confirmed to VOA those referred to the special immigration program are not simultaneously going through the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP).

We are working with Canada to refer up to 5,000 refugees to Canada, independent of our ongoing efforts for U.S. resettlement, a State Department spokesperson told VOA.

On the Canadian side, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) said Afghan refugees referred by the U.S. are coming to Canada from third countries, where they have been located since they fled Afghanistan.

Masuma Haidari, 37 and a software engineer in Afghanistan, is one of the people benefiting from the partnership between the two countries. She was able to leave Afghanistan in August 2021 and lived in North Macedonia for more than six months.

Private organizations helped her leave Afghanistan and find her way through the program that led her to Canada.

Haidari told VOA she was about to get the keys to her first apartment in Calgary, Canada.

Its not bad, Haidari said. The government helps us with money and we (must) manage to cover all costs.

But with her background in software engineering and having worked for the Afghan government, she hopes it will be useful in her new Canadian life.

I think that the technical experiences will be useful in Canada. I will try to [transfer] my degree, my education and also I will be ready to find a job in the IT industry, she added.

Though Haidari is able to start a new life, thousands of people are still hoping to leave Afghanistan.

Rescue efforts

U.S. military veterans, former intelligence and defense officials and others have dedicated their time to rescue those still in Afghanistan through newly formed groups like Operation North Star, which is all volunteer, or Task Force Pineapple, which is a public-private partnership.

Getting people out of Afghanistan is just part of the problem.

According to the Operation North Star website, they have almost 500 Afghans in third countries and more than 2,000 Afghans in safe homes in Afghanistan. Equally challenging has been guiding the Afghans through the complex process to resettle in the United States, including finding safe homes, leaving Afghanistan, finding a third country, applying to a refugee program and arriving in a new country.

The U.S. immigration system includes a patchwork of complex laws for regulating the flow of refugees seeking to enter the United States. The U.S. manages a strict vetting process to determine who to accept for resettlement and the process can take two to five years.

Slow U.S. processing is prompting some private groups to look elsewhere for a permanent home for the evacuees, with immigrant-friendly Canada emerging as a favored destination.

So far in Fiscal 2022, which began October 1, 2021, 133 Afghans were admitted into the U.S. through USRAP. In Fiscal 2021, that number was 872. Through the Special Immigrant Visa program, which is for those who served as interpreters and translators or were employed by or on behalf of the U.S. government, the U.S. admitted 1,545 refugees in Fiscal 2022.

Jordan Kane, a volunteer at U.S.-based Operation North Star, said it has been difficult to secure U.S. refugee status for Afghans who have been recommended for relocation by the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees or a designated NGO. After the referral, it still takes at least two years for applicants to arrive in the United States.

Thousands of Afghan refugees who had secured limited referrals to the U.S. resettlement process were given an option to be switched over to the Canadian process, with women leaders fleeing Taliban threats receiving preference, Kane told VOA.

The U.S. Refugee Admissions program was dramatically cut under the Trump administration, leaving fewer resources within the government and the resettlement agencies to handle the significant increase of refugee applications and arrivals.

Resettlement in Canada

Once the U.S. identifies Afghan refugees who meet eligibility and admissibility requirements, they are then accepted for resettlement to Canada.

As government-assisted refugees, Afghan refugees become permanent residents upon arrival and have access to the Resettlement Assistance Program (RAP), according to Jeffrey MacDonald, communications officer at IRCC.

The Canadian government provides temporary housing and up to 12 months of income support.

Monthly income support levels for shelter, food and incidentals are guided by provincial or territorial social assistance rates where the refugee resides and vary depending on family size, configuration and city of residence, MacDonald said in an email to VOA.

One refugee, whose case was transferred to Canada, is identified for security reasons only as Farishta. She was a womens rights activist and prosecutor in the office of the Afghan attorney general.

The Canadian program under which Farishta is applying is unique, Kane said. Like the U.S., Canada has a program for resettling Afghans who worked for them, who are mostly male military interpreters. However, unlike the U.S., Canada also has a program for admitting other groups of Afghans targeted by the Taliban, including female leaders, which is great.

The Women at Risk Program recognizes the women and girls particularly vulnerable in refugee situations and prioritizes their resettlement to Canada.

But Canada shouldn't be the only country looking out for women like Farishta, Kane said, adding, the U.S. and other NATO allies need to copy this program to make sure we are not leaving Afghan women behind.

The Canadian government has committed to accept 40,000 Afghan refugees. Included in that number are the 5,000 people being referred through the partnership with the United States. From August 2021 to March 2022, the country has admitted 8,815 under all available refugee categories.

Canada has a biometric verification process that refugees must complete before they enter Canada, according to Oliver Thorne, who is the executive director at the Vancouver-based Veterans Transition Network.

Although these are Afghans that risked their lives to support and in many cases, save the lives of Canadian soldiers, our government policy will not allow them into Canada without biometric verification, Thorne told VOA.

Thorne said the Canadian government policy needs to align with the urgency of these evacuation efforts and allow for biometrics to be done after arrival in Canada.

Without this, evacuations will proceed at a trickle pace, leaving brave and deserving Afghans at risk of reprisals from the Taliban, he added.

MacDonald, of the IRCC, responded that the biggest hurdle is not the processing capacity of the government of Canada, its situational and environmental factors on the ground in Afghanistan. These are challenges that we are working on every day, theres no lack of effort on the part of the government of Canada.

Nevertheless, the private groups credit Canada for taking in a number of Afghans who might not be eligible for resettlement elsewhere. Most countries are offering visas to a limited number of Afghans who worked directly for them, refugee advocates said.

As for Farishta, she had hoped to resettle in the United States, Kane said.

The United States was Farishta's first choice, because she has more friends there, but she considers Canada to be a great option.  Two reasons for this: she, like many educated Afghans, speaks fluent English already. Second, Canada has more generous resettlement benefits than the U.S., Kane said
Ukraine demanded Tuesday that Russia allow humanitarian aid into Mariupol and let civilians leave the strategic city that has been heavily bombarded by Russia since its invasion of Ukraine started nearly a month ago.

"We demand the opening of a humanitarian corridor for civilians," Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said Tuesday on Ukrainian television.

Ukraine's appeal came one day after it rejected an ultimatum to surrender the southeastern Ukrainian city by dawn Monday as a condition for civilians to leave safely.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy declared in a video address Tuesday to the Italian parliament, "There is nothing left" in Mariupol.

In a statement Tuesday, a Mercy Corps official in Ukraine said the country's humanitarian aid system has collapsed.

"The reality is that right now the humanitarian system is entirely broken down," said Steve Gordon, the organization's humanitarian response adviser.

Gordon said most cities and towns that are experiencing the most intense fighting "don't have more than 3-4 days' worth of essentials, like food."

Vereshchuk said Russian forces were also preventing humanitarian supplies from reaching civilians in the occupied southern city of Kherson but did not offer details.

Russia denies involvement in repeated failed attempts to open a corridor for civilians to safely leave Mariupol and targeting civilians.

Service members of pro-Russian troops are seen in a truck during Ukraine-Russia conflict on a road near the besieged southern port city of Mariupol, Ukraine March 21, 2022.

Zelenskyy also said Tuesday he discussed the "difficult humanitarian situation" with Pope Francis and said the pope's role in mediating "ending human suffering would be appreciated."

On Monday, U.S. President Joe Biden warned of the potential for Russia to carry out cyberattacks against U.S. interests or deploy biological or chemical weapons in Ukraine as Russia's Ukrainian invasion nears the one-month point.

Biden told a group of U.S. business leaders Russian President Vladimir Putin did not anticipate the extent of unity he would face in opposition to Russia's actions and that "his back is against the wall."

"Now he's talking about new false flags he's setting up, including he's asserting that, we, in America, have biological as well as chemical weapons in Europe -- simply not true," Biden said. "They're also suggesting that Ukraine has biological and chemical weapons in Ukraine. That's a clear sign he is considering using both of those."

Biden also said Monday there was "evolving intelligence" that the Russian government was "exploring options for potential cyberattacks" against the U.S. in response to U.S. sanctions, and he urged the private sector to "immediately" harden "cyber defenses."

Russia rejected Biden's warning, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov telling reporters Tuesday that Russia "does not engage in state-level banditry."

The leaders of the U.S., France, Germany, Italy and Britain held a call Monday in which they discussed concerns about Russia's brutal tactics in Ukraine, underscored their continued support to Ukraine by providing security and humanitarian assistance, and reviewed recent diplomatic efforts in support of Ukraine's effort to reach a cease-fire, according to the White House.

Later this week, Biden will attend a NATO summit, a G-7 meeting, and a European Council summit in Brussels, all focused on the situation in Ukraine, before traveling to Poland.
GABORONE, BOTSWANA  Botswana will allow unvaccinated travelers into the country, provided they produce a negative COVID-19 test result. Thats a reversal from last month, when the nation started denying entry to travelers who were partially vaccinated or unvaccinated and not willing to get a free shot.

Botswana Ministry of Health spokesperson Christopher Nyanga said in a statement the decision to allow the unvaccinated into the country was meant to ensure smooth entry for travelers.

I wish to indicate that these changes now allow partially vaccinated or unvaccinated people to enter the country, if they comply with the required testing requirements, he said. It is only when one is not fully vaccinated and is also not willing to undergo COVID-19 testing at the port of entry, that they will be charged and fined or taken to a court of law.

There was confusion over what determined a fully vaccinated person. In Botswana, the vaccine validity period is 180 days, while Europe gives the same vaccines a 270-day validity period.

Nyanga says the vaccine validity discord was taken into consideration when dropping the vaccine mandate.

Due to discordant periods for taking booster shots between Botswana and other countries, and for purposes of smoothening international travel, the definition of being fully vaccinated in Botswana will no longer include a booster shot, he said. Having completed the primary vaccine series will be considered sufficient for one to be allowed entry, without the need to present a negative PCR test result.

Cindy Kelemi , director of the human rights organization Botswana Network on Ethics, Law and HIV-AIDS, welcomed the governments move.

We have always maintained that the response to COVID-19 does not necessarily require for criminalization to be used as a strategy, she said. And not allowing entry to those who are not vaccinated is actually a violation of peoples rights. Therefore, it was only reasonable for the government to retract its previous guidelines and remove the barring of people who are not vaccinated, into Botswana."

Since the introduction of vaccine mandates on Feb. 14, Botswanas tourism industry says, it has suffered huge losses, with canceled bookings worth $10 million.

A tour guide in the Okavango Delta, Keletso Sedume, said he expects the situation to improve now that COVID-19 entry requirements have been eased.

"It is good news as there was a drop of tourists coming to the delta in the last few weeks, he said. We heard it is because some were reluctant to vaccinate and had canceled their bookings. We hope to see them come in now."

Botswana authorities say they have vaccinated more than 71% of the adult population, which is one of the highest vaccination rates on the continent.
Citizens Coalition for Change activist Godfrey Karembera, who is facing charges of disorderly conduct, has been granted ZWL$10,000bail by a Harare magistrate.

Karembera, affectionately known as Madzibaba veShanduko, was arrested in the capital city for allegedly calling police officers dogs.

Magistrate Barbra Mateko ordered Karembera to report twice a week at Guruve Police Station and reside at his home until his case is finalized.

More details to follow 
U.S. President Joe Biden travels Wednesday to Brussels where he will meet with NATO and European allies and is expected to announce a new round of sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.

He will join our partners in imposing further sanctions on Russia and tightening the existing sanctions to crack down on evasion and to ensure robust enforcement, said White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is due to virtually address Thursdays NATO summit, and he said ahead of the meeting that he is expecting Western leaders to both add to their Russian sanctions and pledge more aid for Ukraine.

One key Russian industry that has been discussed for possible sanctions is the countrys lucrative oil and gas exports, but reliance on those supplies, particularly among European Union nations which get 40% of their gas from Europe, has raised concerns about the effects of such actions.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Wednesday that his country would end this dependency as soon as possible, but that doing so immediately would mean to push our country and the rest of Europe into recession.

On the humanitarian front, International Committee of the Red Cross President Peter Maurer traveled Wednesday to Moscow to speak with authorities about addressing those affected by the fighting in Ukraine.

"The devastation caused by the conflict in recent weeks, as well as eight years of conflict in Donbas, has been vast, Maurer said in a statement. There are practical steps guided by international humanitarian law that the parties must take to limit the suffering.

France said it was sending health and emergency equipment along with a group of fire engines and rescue vehicles to the Romania-Ukraine border for Ukraines emergency service to use.

Those efforts came as shelling continued Wednesday in Kyiv, including attacks that injured four people in the Ukrainian capital. In the city of Chernihiv, Russian forces destroyed a bridge that had been used for evacuating civilians and delivering aid.

The United Nations says more than 3.6 million refugees have fled Ukraine since Russia launched its invasion one month ago. Another 6.5 million people have been displaced from their homes within the country.

U.S. officials said Tuesday that in some parts of the country, the momentum in the conflict appears to be shifting.

We have seen indications that the Ukrainians are going a bit more on the offense now, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby told reporters late Tuesday.

They have been defending very smartly, very nimbly, very creatively in places that they believe are the right places to defend, he said. And we have seen them now in places, particularly in the south near Kherson, they have tried to regain territory.

Other U.S. officials were even more blunt about the state of Russian military operations.

Russia has thus far manifestly failed, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters about the Kremlins plans for Ukraine.

Whether Russia takes a city, takes a town or takes more territory, they are never going to be able to achieve the purpose they set out  which was to bring this country to heel, he said. The brave citizens of Ukraine are refusing to submit. They are fighting back.

On its English-language Telegram feed, Russias Ministry of Defense portrayed a vastly different war effort, praising Russian forces as they advanced on parts of southeastern Ukraine while Ukrainian forces fled, and claiming success in taking out Ukrainian fuel depots and positions with high-precision long-range weapons.

A senior U.S. defense official, briefing reporters on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss intelligence, confirmed Russian ships in the Sea of Azov had begun shelling the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, which has been under heavy fire for days.

But the official said other intelligence suggests Russias invasion of Ukraine has become a logistical nightmare, with Russian forces still struggling to overcome shortages of fuel, food and precision-guided munitions.

Pentagon officials said Tuesday those shortages could be part of the reason Russia has at least in one instance used an advanced hypersonic missile to take out a Ukrainian military storage facility, a move one official described as a head-scratcher.

Even basic supplies seem to be lacking.

"We picked up some indications that some of their soldiers are suffering from frostbite because they lack the appropriate cold weather gear, the official said. Troops have actually suffered and [have been] taken out of the fight."

The United States, meanwhile, warned Russia is increasingly taking out on civilians its inability to achieve its objectives in Ukraine.

Clearly, there are civilian casualties, and clearly, theyre mounting every day because of the indiscriminate attacks that the Russians are conducting  as they become more frustrated, Kirby told reporters at the Pentagon.

We believe we should call it like we see it, and we believe that there are war crimes being conducted by the Russian forces, he added.

Russia has repeatedly rejected accusations of war crimes, even as the United States and other Western countries raise concerns that Russia may be preparing to use chemical and biological weapons in Ukraine, or even nuclear weapons.

If it is an existential threat for our country, then it can be used in accordance with our concept, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the U.S.-based cable news network CNN Tuesday when asked whether Moscow might consider unleashing some of its nuclear arsenal.

We have a concept of domestic security, and its public. You can read all the reasons for nuclear arms to be used, he added.

Russian President Vladimir Putin put his countrys nuclear deterrent forces on high alert, something officials at the White House and Pentagon continue to monitor.

We are constantly monitoring for that potential contingency, and of course we take it as seriously as one could possibly take it, Sullivan, the White House national security adviser, told reporters. We will be consulting with allies and partners on that potential contingency ... and discussing what our potential responses are.

U.N. correspondent Margaret Besheer contributed to this report.

Some information came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
Funeral Announcements A daily list of current funeral annoucements as heard on KXRA 1490 AM/100.3 FM

News Updates The daily news, sports, and events delivered daily from Voice of Alexandria.



Sports Update This current sports headlines delivered daily from Voice of Alexandria.

Upcoming Events This email is the events of the area delivered daily from Voice of Alexandria.

Breaking News The big news. Sent only as it happens.
Pentagon experts question the veracity of the statements by the Russian General Staff of the Armed Forces to the effect that it used tactical hypersonic missiles to destroy a Ukrainian military base.

The Pentagon, which lags far behind in the development of such weapons, cannot conceive that Russia possesses them.

This is no minor issue, for if Russia is indeed sitting on them, it can hit any target anywhere in the world, without anyone being able to intercept them. These missiles can, without distinction, carry conventional or nuclear warheads. In other words, if Russia actually has hypersonic weapons, it means that the US military arsenal is de facto obsolete.

In 2018, merely four years ago, President Vladimir Putin told the world that his scientists had succeeded in mastering this technology and that his country was experimenting with both tactical and strategic hypersonic missiles [1]. The Pentagon had not deemed it necessary to seriously invest in this type of weaponry and opted instead to develop its anti-missile shield, which simply wont cut it against hypersonic speeds.
On 15 March 2022, Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau called for Russia to excluded from the G20 and to be replaced with Poland.

On 23 March 2022, the spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Wang Wenbin, stated that no one had the prerogative to exclude any of the members of the G20, under any pretext whatsoever.

The United States is in the process of extending its sanctions against Russian culture to also target Chinese culture. Washingtons game is to exploit the Ukrainian crisis to perpetuate the unipolar architecture of the world.
The obvious takeaway from this episode is to get excited about the fight that Teresa and Margaret are about to have at some ropes course in the woods, which gave me a poison-ivy rash just watching it. It is the first To Be Continued in a long time that is worth it. However, I want to focus on Melissa talking about her daughter, Antonia. Haha. Just kidding. (Melissa says, Antonia doesnt want to listen to anything I say. Yeah, sister. Welcome to parenting a teenage girl.) What Im really going to remember from this scene is Jen and Margarets meeting at the very beginning.

After their series of blowups over the first seven episodes, the two of them sit down at a bakery to hash it out. This is the perfect setting for such a discussion. I know if I were meeting my mortal enemy, I would want to make sure that there are pastries around. I dont drink coffee, but Margaret orders a black coffee and proceeds to drown it in Snickers-bar-flavored Coffee-Mate. I didnt even know such a thing existed. I was unaware that this was a possibility. Now that the high priestess of healthy dining has educated me, I think I might have to start getting my caffeine and sugar fixes from the same place, and that is fake-flavored fake milk going into my real-ass mouth.

Their discussion consists of two top-tier Housewives operating at peak capacity. As Jen explains herself, she tells Margaret, You said you didnt hurt me. Im hurt. Im devastated. Finally, the soft and vulnerable Jennifer that we see with her family shows her face to the group, and shes actually winning allies. Of course, this all stems from Margaret bringing up Bills affair at the first gathering, and after seeing how hurt Jennifer is, Margaret says that she wouldnt have brought it up. Margaret tells her she thought that everyone knew and that Jennifer would brush this off like she has brushed off so much other criticism about herself and her marriage. Margaret was wrong and regrets her choice.

Then, instead of being her antagonist, Margaret starts acting as her therapist, drawing Jennifer out and instigating why she is so hurt by Bills affair. What comes out is that Jen never really dealt with these feelings, but now she feels bad bringing it up because she was cool about it for ten years. She says she needs to know that Bill is with her. She wants him to make her feel secure and tell her and the public that he loves her and is not going to leave her, and she has not been getting that.

The scariest thing to me, something that Bill echoed the last episode, is what if they go to therapy and realize that their relationship isnt worth saving. Um, that, right there, is the reason to get yourself either to a therapist or at least on Dr. Phil at the first possible opportunity. If your relationship is like a sandcastle, ready to topple at the slightest rustle in the wind, then you might not have something worth saving. Thats the thing about sandcastles: The tide is always going to come in, and from the looks of it, Jen is up to her Capri pants in saltwater.

This is echoed later, when she is talking to Bill about their relationship and she literally tells him what she wants from him: to say to her that theyre good, that he loves her and will stand by her. Even when she gives him a script, he cant play his role. I cant tell if Bill doesnt care about Jennifers feelings, if she has inured him to her well-being by decades of being the good and amenable wife, or if hes just so embarrassed that he doesnt want to keep doing this in public. She wants him to fight for her with the group; his solution is to never see them again. That would work if it wasnt threatening Jennifers livelihood and, I would guess, the thing in this world that is most dear to her, second only to her children. If this marriage is going to come between Jen and the show, then Bill should start looking at affordable townhomes down the street from Dolores right now.

What was great about Margarets performance is she doesnt go in on Jen, she doesnt try to rehash their battle. Instead, she works on comforting her. She tells Jen that her marriage was already broken when she cheated on her husband. She tells Jen that if the two of them want to, they can fight for their marriage and get past this. She says that she feels horrible for what she did. And I believe all of that.

I have a bit harder of a time believing Jen when she says that she isnt going to be so mean in her comebacks anymore, that she doesnt want to hurt people. I want to think that this arc is about karma, about Jen learning what it felt like for all of those years when she terrorized the other women. Im hopeful but skeptical that this will really take. I do believe she meant it at the moment, but real substantive change is hard, especially with her job on the line.

The other big thing to come out of this meeting, other than the introduction of candy-bar-flavored dairy-replacement technology, is that Jennifer insinuates that when she was digging for information about Jackies husband, Evan, she was doing that at Teresas behest. She doesnt come right out and say it. Its like when youre in grade school, and you say, Sally told me I cant say who she likes, but if you guess, then I wont say no. Its shockingly subtle for Jen, something that her plastic surgeries could never say.

Before we can deal with the ramifications of what Jen says, let us explore some of the other story lines in this episode, because it is packed. Doloress mother is still in the hospital, and her ex, David, who is a doctor, is going to visit her every day. He even stops by Franks office to chat to him, but hes not talking to Dolores. She finally talks to him, and she says it went badly. I dont get why a guy who so clearly wants her back cant say that hes finally going to change and give her the kind of relationship she wants. I think she would go for it, but hes playing these crazy games instead. Even though we just hear about it and dont have to see it, I have a serious case of the heebers-bajeebers.

Jackie hears from the eating-disorder clinic, and they want her to go inpatient. Sister, if the experts tell you to check into that hospital, pack your sweats in your suitcase and call an Uber. She says no to that, so they say she should do three nights a week for three hours a night. Yes, its intensive, but if youve been suffering from this condition for 20 years, its not going to go away because you see a therapist on your own timeline. Jen says, I know what I need. Um, no, you dont. If you did, you would have done it already. But you dont. Listen to the experts. Eating disorders are so often about control, and here she is trying to control the whole situation.

Her husband, Evan, proving once again why he is a gay crush object, handles the situation perfectly, telling her that her health is the most important thing and that the family will find a way to function while she gets better. Still, shes not taking it. I know Jackie is on a hard journey, and I am impressed that she has the bravery to share that with the public. But, girl, I have never wanted to pack a Housewife in a car and send her off to rehab as badly as I want to with Jackie at this moment.

Ugh, now we must move on to the part of the recap where I just hate on Teresa for several hundred words while all of Twitter praises and extols her like shes St. Patrick and she just banished all the drunk exfrat boys from Murray Hill. Traci invites everyone for an afternoon at a ropes course, which makes sense because what are these women if not co-workers who are forced to spend an inordinate amount of time together working for a corporate overlord who earns way more than them and spends all his money on yacht trips with twinks. Before they even get there, Teresa is mad because she heard that Margaret was asking questions about Luis and that Tiki brought him at boys night because he said his wife has questions.

Heres what I hate about Teresa. She says, True friends, they dont question anyone. No. That is not how that works. Blind loyalty is not how a friend should operate. Yes, you want your friends to have your back, but sometimes that means telling you that you are making a mistake or asking you questions to make sure youre doing the right thing. She also says that Luis doesnt have to prove himself to anyone. He doesnt have to prove himself to the public or the audience, but he has to prove himself to her friends and brother. Thats what all of our partners have to do at the beginning of a relationship, prove that they are good enough. Luis, apparently, has yet to meet that threshold, and demanding nothing but blind loyalty from people is what makes you end up on the next season of Dirty John.

Dolores warns everyone at the ropes course that Teresa is coming in hot, and she shows up already making passive-aggressive swipes at people. Jackie might get upset that people say its Teresas show, but, lets face it, it is at this point. She has been enabled to think that by the producers, the suits at Bravo, and her co-stars, who kowtow to her every idiotic whim and need. So when she shows up and just decides shes not doing the group activity, no one can even tell her shes wrong. No one can make her do anything because they all know there will be absolutely no ramifications.

This is what is ultimately making her boring to watch. Nothing will stick. Nothing anyone can do will get through to her, and her justifications for why she doesnt have to behave like the other women are flimsier than the walls in one of Joe Giudices flip houses. Margaret tells all the women what Jen insinuated about Teresa digging for dirt on Evan, and she says that she called Serena from Tenafly, apparently, and she said that Jen said that it was Teresa who wanted to know. If you are confused by that sentence, you should be because there is no reason we have not seen Serena from Tenafly (who sounds like a person who asks annoying questions at the reunion). We have seen more of the Cookie Lady than we did of Serena, and she is integral to this seasons plot.

Margaret is mad not just that Teresa did the digging but that she left Jennifer out to dry when all the women came for her for doing Teresas bidding. Jennifer says, Maybe Teresa doesnt go to bat for me like I go to bat for her, but I like her company  There is a certain comfort that comes with being around her. Know what the comfort is? Job security! And until they take that away from Teresa and her flunkies, this show has lost all of its danger.

The fight starts when Teresa finds Dolores and Jackie talking about Jennifer, and she starts going in hard on Margaret and Traci. She says of Traci, I dont even know you. Why are you antagonizing my boyfriend? Its official. Antagonizing is the most complicated word that Teresa knows. She and Margaret start going hard for each other, and this is a fight in public around well-meaning men used to doing professional-development days for middle-school teachers, and, yes, as good as this episode is, I think the next one is going to be even better.
Madeleine Albright, the 64th Secretary of State, was the first female to hold the office. Albright died at the age of 84 on March 23.
Decatur, IL (62521)

Today

Periods of rain. High 56F. Winds E at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall near a half an inch..

Tonight

Rain showers early will evolve into a more steady rain overnight. Thunder possible. Low 54F. Winds ENE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 80%.
Venice hotels take action against marauding gulls.

Tourists in Venice are being armed with water pistols as part of attempts to fend off predatory seagulls intent on snatching their food while dining outdoors.

The innovative idea is among plans being discussed by the Venice hoteliers' association (AVA) which says that tourists are increasingly alarmed by the behaviour of the large birds, known as "magoghe" in Venetian dialect.

AVA has organised a seminar to discuss various means of scaring the birds away from outdoor dining areas, including electrostatic pulses and acoustic systems to keep the gulls at bay.

The Monaco & Grand Canal has equipped tourists with water guns while the historic Gritti hotel has also engaged a falconer to hunt the gulls, which in recent years have taken the place of pigeons as the dominant bird in the lagoon city.

Paolo Lorenzoni, director of the Gritti, said that calling the falconer every day was an expensive and excessive option.

The hotel has now switched to water pistols - all coloured orange - after being informed by an expert that the birds dislike the colour.

"As soon as they see the pistols, they fly away" - Lorenzoni said - "You don't even need to use them, you just need to keep them on the table.

Photo MAURIZIO TORRESAN - ANSA
Under the title "Cursus Honorum: The government of Rome before Caesar", this exhibition at the Capitoline Museums illustrates the political roles forming the backbone of the power system that governed Rome in the Republican age.

The artefacts on display, examining the life of patricians as well as plebeians, are explained to visitors by "talking statues" in each room.

The exhibition is open from 24 March until 2 October, for visiting details see Capitoline Museum website. Photo Zeno Colantoni.
Placeholder while article actions load

Joe Biden was keen to revive the Iran nuclear agreement long before the war in Ukraine began, but the rise in oil prices it has caused may have tipped the presidents eagerness into desperation. Reports from Washington suggest the administration is about to cave to Tehrans most outrageous condition for returning to the deal: the removal of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps from the State Departments list of foreign terrorist organizations, or FTOs.

The designation makes the IRGC subject to sanctions that Tehran says must be lifted before it agrees to abide by the terms of the 2015 agreement, which was designed to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. It is currently enriching uranium to levels far in excess of any peaceful purpose. The IRGC oversees the nuclear program, as well as Irans foreign policy and security apparatus.

The FTO designation has been the stickiest of sticking points during the latest round of negotiations in Vienna between Iran and the signatories of the agreement, which is known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Its not hard to see why Tehran wants the designation dropped: It depends on the IRGC, known to Iranians as Pasdaran (Persian for guards), to suppress dissent at home as well as terrorize its neighbors. These tasks would be made easier if American sanctions didnt put financial resources and the latest weapons out of the regimes reach.

Advertisement

Now the Biden administration is hinting that delisting the IRGC is one of the difficult decisions it may have to make in order to revive the JCPOA. But this is hard to believe. After all, the original deal was struck without a commitment to take Iran off another of the State Departments lists, as a state sponsor of terrorism, a dubious distinction it has held since 1984, and which it currently shares with Syria, Cuba and North Korea.

As the principal instrument of the states terror, the IRGC has certainly earned its place on the FTO list. It is, in the words of Gen. Frank McKenzie, head of the U.S. Central Command, the centerpiece of Iranian bad behavior in the Middle East.

Whats more, the Pasdaran have American blood on their hands: Operating mostly through proxy militias, it is responsible for the deaths of more than 600 U.S. service personnel in Iraq. Those militias have kept up attacks on American targets, including military bases and the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

Advertisement

Tardy though it was, the IRGCs designation as a terrorist organization in April 2019 was welcomed in countries across the region that daily live under the menace of the Pasdaran and its proxies. This network of peril includes nodes in Lebanon and Gaza, where the IRGC operates through Hezbollah and Hamas, respectively, both FTOs of longstanding; in Iraq, home to Iran-backed FTOs Kataib Hizballah and Asaib Ahl al-Haq; and in Yemen, where Tehrans catspaw, the Houthis, were on the list until Biden dropped them shortly after his inauguration last year.

The delisting of the Houthis may represent the perfect prefiguration of what will likely happen if the IRGC is removed from the FTO list. The Biden administration imagined the gesture would make the Yemeni rebels more amenable to peace with the Arab coalition that has been trying to restore the government the Houthis overthrew in 2015. Instead, the Houthis have kept up a daily barrage of rocket and drone attacks against Saudi Arabia  and occasionally against the United Arab Emirates. (The munitions are supplied by Tehran.)

Unsurprisingly, Irans neighbors are alarmed by the prospect of Biden repeating his mistake with the IRGC. The loudest protests have come from the country that the Pasdarans commanders routinely vow to annihilate: Israel. Unfortunately, there is determination to sign a nuclear agreement with Iran at almost any price, including saying that the worlds largest terrorist organization is not a terrorist organization, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said at a cabinet meeting last week. That is too high a price.

Advertisement

This is also the view of many Republicans  and not a few Democrats  in Washington. Bipartisan complaints that Congress is being kept in the dark about the negotiations in Vienna have led to anxiety that the White House may be willing to make too many concessions to the Iranians in order to reach a deal  and potentially allow Iranian oil and gas into a global market to replace sanctioned Russian exports.

Administration officials who have briefed the media say the IRGC would only be delisted if it promises not to attack Americans and commits to curtailing its destabilizing activities outside Iran. If it doesnt keep its word, it can be redesignated an FTO. This might have been reassuring but for the fact that Biden is currently ignoring requests, from members of Congress as well as from U.S. allies, to put the Houthis back on the list.

If he unshackles the Pasdaran, the president will open the proverbial Pandoras box. Enhanced by unrestrained access to money and state-of-the-art weaponry, the IRGCs capacity for violence and terror may require a whole new State Department designation.

Advertisement

More From Writers at Bloomberg Opinion:

 Putin May Finally Be Gearing Up for Cyber War: Parmy Olson

 The Bill for Six Years of Hostage Hell: $530 Million: Therese Raphael

 Biden Needs to Do More Than Talk About Democracy in Africa: Bobby Ghosh

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Bobby Ghosh is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering foreign affairs. A former editor in chief of the Hindustan Times, he was managing editor of Quartz and Time magazines international editor.

More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com/opinion

2022 Bloomberg L.P.

GiftOutline Gift Article
Placeholder while article actions load

Not since Cold War showdowns such as the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 -- when the U.S. and the Soviet Union came close to full-scale confrontation -- has the risk of nuclear warfare been as high as now. With Russias invading Army struggling and suffering heavy casualties in Ukraine, President Vladimir Putins saber-rattling about his nuclear arsenal is being taken with grave seriousness. An openness to introduce nuclear weaponry to an otherwise conventional war is a distinctive part of Russian military policy, raising fears that the war in Ukraine might lead to the first use of a nuclear weapon since the U.S. showed the world its destructive power in ending the Second World War.

1. What sparked worries about nuclear conflict?

Two days after his troops invaded Ukraine, Putin put Russian nuclear forces onto a special regime of combat duty. It was unclear how that changed the status of those forces, but it followed his warning that any nation that interfered with the invasion would suffer consequences that you have never experienced in your history. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov added a warning of his own, that a third World War would involve nuclear weapons. Most recently, a Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, said in an interview with CNN that nuclear arms could be used in the event of an existential threat for our country. Beyond the rhetoric, Russia has worked to revamp its nuclear weapons program, its military exercises frequently involve its nuclear arsenal, and Russian military doctrine contemplates introducing nuclear weapons into conventional battle if theyre considered necessary.

Advertisement

2. How does a nuclear strike fit into Russias military doctrine?

Known as escalate to de-escalate, the Russian strategy leaves open the possibility of using a so-called tactical nuclear weapon to change the course of a conventional conflict that its at risk of losing. Since 2000, according to Global Security Review, every publicly released Russian military doctrine has allowed for nuclear weapons use in response to large-scale aggression utilizing conventional weapons in situations critical to the national security of the Russian Federation. Should Russia take this leap beyond conventional weapons, experts suggest it could choose to strike in the sea or in an open area first, to serve as a warning that opposing forces must surrender. A nuclear attack against Ukraine could be an effort to force President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to immediately surrender under terms acceptable to Putin.

3. Whats a tactical nuclear weapon?

Advertisement

Broadly speaking, the term refers to a nuclear weapon with a lower-yield warhead and a shorter-range delivery system compared with strategic nuclear weapons like those the U.S. and Russia could use in an all-out nuclear war. A tactical nuclear weapon could be used in Ukraine without posing a direct threat to American soil. How the U.S. and its allies would respond to such an attack is unclear.

4. What options would be on the table?

Because Ukraine isnt a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization -- Putin has demanded that it promise never to become one -- the U.S. and its allies have no formal obligation to come to its defense against attacks. But the West would be under great pressure to respond in some fashion to a nuclear attack on Ukraine. NATO countries would most likely respond on the grounds that the impact of nuclear weapons crosses borders and affects the countries surrounding Ukraine, writes Patricia Lewis, director of the International Security Programme at Chatham House. A Western response could take the form of conventional forces attacking Russian strategic assets or a tit-for-tat use of a nuclear weapon. The U.S. has about 150 B-61 nuclear gravity bombs stationed in five NATO countries, according to Lewis: Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy and Turkey. Two other NATO members, the U.K. and France, are known to have nuclear weapons of their own.

Advertisement

5. Whats in Russias tactical nuclear arsenal?

At the end of the 1980s, the U.S. and the Soviet Union had thousands of tactical warheads deployed aboard naval vessels and on aircraft. In 1991, the two nations withdrew most of these weapons from their arsenals. Yet Russia is believed to have retained as many as 2,000 warheads, dwarfing the few hundred possessed by the U.S. Unclassified reports show that Russia has a variety of delivery systems that can carry nuclear warheads to shorter ranges.

More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com

2022 Bloomberg L.P.

GiftOutline Gift Article
Placeholder while article actions load

Alexey Navalny is Russias most prominent opposition figure, an anti-corruption investigator whose exposes have targeted President Vladimir Putin and his inner circle. His detention and subsequent imprisonment in 2021 upon his voluntary return from Germany, where he was recuperating from a nerve-agent attack he blames on the Kremlin, sparked the biggest unauthorized protests Putin has ever faced. In March 2022, he was convicted in a new case that will bring his total time in prison to about 12 years. The U.S. and EU have demanded Navalnys release without success.

1. Why has Navalny been seen as a threat?

Navalny, 45, resisted the kind of pressure -- repeated jail sentences, house arrest, physical assault -- that led many other Putin critics to flee the country. Until his poisoning though, the Kremlins seeming special treatment of him inspired speculation that he was a known quantity and therefore an acceptable threat. But that calculus changed. Navalny received a sentence of about 2-1/2 years in 2021 and most of his allies went into exile abroad to avoid prison after prosecutors labeled his campaign network as extremist. The authorities were growing increasingly intolerant of dissent, even before the Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine which led to widespread international protests and sanctions. Since the start of the war, the repression has grown even more severe.

Advertisement

2. What brought him to the worlds attention?

Navalny fell ill in August 2020 on a flight to Moscow after meeting with local activists in the Siberian city of Tomsk. His shouts of pain could be heard in a video taken on the plane, which was diverted to Omsk in a move that likely saved his life. Local doctors kept Navalny in a clinic there for two days before, under international pressure, he was transferred to Berlins Charite hospital. The Kremlin says it found no proof Navalny was poisoned. In October 2020, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, an international watchdog, confirmed that a nerve agent from the banned Novichok group had been used in the poisoning.

3. Who would want to harm Navalny?

The U.S. directly blamed the Federal Security Service (FSB) for the attack, and the EU and U.K. said it could only have been done with the spy agencys involvement. Investigative website Bellingcat said in December 2020 that it had identified members of a clandestine FSB unit specializing in poisons who had followed Navalny since January 2017. Putin later admitted Navalny was under surveillance but denied the government was behind the poisoning. French President Emmanuel Macron described it as an assassination attempt, Germanys then-Chancellor Angela Merkel visited Navalny in the hospital and in October 2020, the European Union blacklisted six people in Russia allied to Putin over the poisoning.

Advertisement

4. How did he make himself heard?

Navalny has a huge social media following, which made him a target as it allowed him to deliver his message despite an effective blackout by Russias tightly controlled television networks. After his arrest, he published an investigation into a giant Black Sea palace he said belongs to Putin. The Kremlin says thats not true, but within days it became his most-popular video ever, racking up more than 120 million views, while a billionaire friend of Putins claimed ownership of the property.

5. How did the Kremlin try to neutralize him before?

Navalny has been in and out of jail since 2011, often on charges of organizing unsanctioned protests, but never served more than a month at a time until his latest incarceration. He was barred from running in the 2018 presidential election after the Kremlin learned its lesson when Navalny was allowed to run for Moscow mayor against incumbent Sergei Sobyanin, a Putin loyalist, back in 2013 and received 27% of the vote.

Advertisement

6. Have the Kremlins tactics worked?

Navalny was arrested and jailed when he flew back to Moscow from Berlin in January 2021, sparking large-scale protests. Over 10,000 people were detained at the rallies, as demonstrators braved riot police, freezing temperatures and threats they could face charges for participation. The demographics of the protests showed why the Kremlin was worried: according to one pollster, the average age was younger than past protests and nearly half of the attendees were out for the first time. The subsequent crackdown that banned Navalnys Anti-Corruption Foundation and targeted opponents of all stripes has kept protesters off the street.

7. What has he been convicted of?

Russian police detained Navalny on charges of violating the terms of a suspended sentence when he failed to check in during his recovery in Germany. A Moscow court ordered him jailed for violating parole for a 2014 fraud conviction, in a case the European Court of Human Rights called politically motivated. The 2-1/2 year term was just a start, and in March 2022 he received an additional 9-year sentence in a high-security prison for fraud and contempt of court.

Advertisement

8. What action has been taken?

The Biden administration announced its first sanctions against Russia in March 2021. The penalties -- like those adopted by the European Union -- targeted senior Russian law enforcement officials, as well as broadly matching sanctions the EU and the U.K. imposed earlier on other Russians allied with Putin in response to the attempted murder of Navalny. But actions over the Navalny case have been overtaken by the international condemnation sparked by Russias invasion of Ukraine, and the far-reaching sanctions by the U.S. and its allies that followed.

9. Have things like this happened before?

Yes. There were high-profile poisonings of former intelligence officers living in exile in the U.K.: Alexander Litvinenko was given a fatal dose of polonium 210 in his tea in a London restaurant in 2006, while Sergei Skripal survived an assassination attempt with Novichok in 2018. The chief coordinator for Mikhail Khodorkovskys Open Russia organization, Vladimir Kara-Murza, was tailed by the same FSB team linked to Navalnys poisoning before he twice suffered near-fatal attacks, according to a Bellingcat report in February 2021.

Advertisement

10. Does the opposition have other leaders?

Navalny, who combines charisma with a sophisticated understanding of how to use social media to bypass the Kremlins blackout, is by far the most visible leader among Russias fractured anti-Putin bloc. The crackdown on dissent since the invasion of Ukraine has further marginalized the opposition, with Putin adopting the language of former Soviet leader Josef Stalin to condemn those against the war as traitors.

More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com

2022 Bloomberg L.P.

GiftOutline Gift Article
Placeholder while article actions load

Russias invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24 and its repeated attacks on civilian targets have led to calls in the U.S., U.K. and Europe to hold President Vladimir Putin and his subordinates accountable. U.S. President Joe Biden called Putin a war criminal March 16 as news emerged that a theater sheltering hundreds of civilians in the Ukrainian city Mariupol had been leveled. The International Criminal Court has opened an investigation into war crimes in Ukraine. However, its far from certain that anyone will be brought to justice under international law, especially if Russia doesnt lose the war.

1. What are war crimes?

The definition used by the International Criminal Court in the Hague is extensive. It includes willful killing, torture, rape, forced prostitution, corporal punishment, hostage taking, unlawful deportation, using starvation as a weapon and shooting combatants whove surrendered, among many other acts. War crimes can also include using banned weapons such as chemical and biological arms, deliberately attacking civilians and non-military targets, targeting hospitals and other places where the sick and wounded are gathered, looting and carrying out attacks that will cause severe damage to the environment. Russias invasion could also be considered a so-called crime of aggression.

Advertisement

2. Whats a crime of aggression?

Essentially, its an attack by one country on another where theres no justification of self-defense, according to former ICC President Chile Eboe-Osuji. The court defines it as the planning, preparation and execution by a state military or political leader of an act of aggression which, by its character, gravity and scale, constitutes a manifest violation of the Charter of the United Nations. An act of aggression means the use of armed force by a state against the sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence of another State and can include invasion, occupation and annexation by the use of force, as well as the blockade of ports. The crime applies only to the highest ranking leaders who exercise control over or direct the political or military action of a state. The ICC adopted aggression as the fourth crime under its jurisdiction as of 2018, after war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity.

3. How are war crimes prosecuted?

Advertisement

The ICC was born out of an international treaty called the Rome Statute in 2002 as the first permanent, independent arena for holding people accountable for acts of mass inhumanity. It started with 60 countries and its membership has more that doubled since then. Notable countries that have not ratified the treaty are the U.S., China, Russia and India. (The U.S. says putting its citizens under the courts jurisdiction would violate their constitutional rights.) The ICC can pursue war crimes cases when alleged offenses were committed by a citizen of a member state, or in the territory of a member state or a non-member state thats accepted the courts jurisdiction, or when allegations are referred to the courts prosecutor by the United Nations Security Council.

4. Whats this mean for Ukraine?

Ukraine is not an ICC member but it accepted the courts jurisdiction for incidents on its territory starting in November 2013. That enabled the court to consider alleged crimes committed during and after Russias invasion and annexation of Ukraines Crimea peninsula in early 2014. On Feb. 28, the courts chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, said that based on a preliminary assessment by his office conducted mostly in 2020, there is a reasonable basis to believe that both alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity have been committed in Ukraine. He said the investigation he was opening would also encompass any new offenses committed in the expansion of the conflict since Russias full-scale invasion. Dozens of countries have asked the ICC to investigate in the wake of that action.

Advertisement

5. What about prosecuting the crime of aggression?

The ICC prosecutors office can pursue crimes of aggression upon referral by the UN Security Council, upon request by a member state, or on its own initiative but only where the alleged offense was committed by a national or on the territory of a participating state. That takes prosecuting this crime off the table in the case of the Ukraine war because Russia, as a permanent member of the Security Council, can veto any of its decisions, and neither Ukraine nor Russia are ICC members.

6. What are the challenges to prosecuting war crimes?

Its easy enough to prove that Russian forces have struck civilian targets, including apartment blocks, hospitals, public squares, municipal buildings and a nuclear power plant. A flood of video recordings have been posted on social media, sometimes within minutes of such attacks occurring. And theres the testimony of Ukrainians experiencing the carnage. But such evidence doesnt tie specific strikes to specific individuals, which would be necessary for a prosecution. On the other hand, the U.S. has said it is already on the ground searching for evidence of whos culpable.

Advertisement

7. What are the prospects of trying Russian officials?

Not good. The ICC doesnt permit trials in absentia, and the court, which has no police force, is unlikely to gets its hands on Putin or his lieutenants. It relies on its member states to make arrests. But they havent always respected their obligations to honor the courts warrants. And the accused could always avoid traveling to any country that might turn them over. The ICC has mainly been able to prosecute war crimes in cases where the accused was on the losing side of a conflict and was turned in by the winning side.

More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com

2022 Bloomberg L.P.

GiftOutline Gift Article
Placeholder while article actions load

We must assume that a man like Vladimir Putin is capable of anything, even the use of nuclear weapons. The Russian President has made abundantly clear that human life is worth nothing to him unless its his own. And there are scenarios in which he might calculate diabolically that launching one or more nukes could keep him in power and save his skin.

Thats because weve entered a world that, in strategic terms, resembles Europe in the volatile early years of the Cold War more than during its relatively stable later stages. The effect is to scrap old notions of deterrence and raise the risk of accidental nuclear Armageddon.

In the years following World War II, the U.S. knew that its forces in western Europe were inferior to the Soviet Unions and probably wouldnt withstand its onslaught. To compensate, the Americans stationed comparatively low-yield (but of course still unimaginably devastating) nuclear warheads on the soil of European allies. The message was that, in case of a Soviet attack, NATO might drop a few of these on the battlefield to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

Advertisement

But as the nuclear arms race progressed, the Soviet Union caught up and strategic weapons became more prominent. These are larger bombs that can be launched, for example, on intercontinental missiles from the homeland of one side against that of the other. They would take out entire cities at a time.

Apocalyptic as it sounds, this balance of terror has so far saved us from nuclear war. In one metaphor, West and East were personified by two people standing in the same room, up to their waists in gasoline. Each had some number of matches. But neither lit up, because both would go up in flames. Appropriately, this stalemate was called Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD).

In the two decades during which Putin has ruled Russia, however, the strategic big picture has changed yet again. In a sense, it has reverted to the situation just after World War II, but with the roles reversed.

Advertisement

Now it is Russia that suspects its army is inferior to NATOs in a conventional war. Therefore, it is Putin whos compensating for that weakness by threatening the use of tactical nukes to win battles or wars that initially arent going well for him. Rather oxymoronically, this approach is called escalate to de-escalate.

For that purpose, Russia  which is roughly even with the U.S. in strategic nukes  has gained an edge of 10:1 in tactical weapons. It has roughly 2,000; America has only about 200, half of which are stationed in Europe.

Putin has already hinted several times that he might dip into his prodigious arsenal if NATO were to cross his red lines. And because he confuses his own fate with his countrys, hes apt to interpret any threat of personal humiliation or regime change in Moscow as such a line.

Advertisement

Say the Ukrainians  who are fighting heroically against the surprisingly incompetent Russian invaders  come close to winning. Or that a hypersonic Russian missile strays into Poland, a NATO member. Or that the West delivers weapons to Ukraine that could tilt the war. Any of these twists could make Putin fear his imminent demise  and escalate.

His first strike would demonstrate intent. He could drop a low-yield bomb on an empty forest or the open sea, just to show he means business. As a next step, he could nuke a specific enemy weapons depot, army base or battalion  in any case, not yet an entire city. The variable yields of tactical warheads make such fine-tuning possible  you can manipulate scenarios on this Nukemap.

Putin would thereby signal his determination to go all the way, gambling that the U.S. and its allies will not retaliate in kind. In his mind, hed be calling the Wests bluff. Cold War leaders on both sides knew they couldnt win a nuclear war. If Putin ever launches, its because he reckons he can.

Advertisement

But would he? NATO, and especially the U.S., must now prepare for harrowing decisions after a Russian first strike. Should the West detonate its own low-yield nuke, to show resolve? Where would both sides go from there?

Once these weapons  the deadliest in all of human history no matter their yield  start going off, the risk of misunderstandings, errors, and accidents soars. A limited strike by one side will still feel cataclysmic to the other. And the missiles fly so fast, the other side would have only minutes to respond. The temptation to use it or lose it would rise.

Long before the nuclear age, a bookish Prussian officer whod witnessed the Napoleonic battles opined On War. Carl von Clausewitz grasped the inherent tension between generals trying to keep war limited and war wanting to become absolute, ending in the total destruction of one or all parties.

Advertisement

The imperative, Clausewitz concluded, is to always align tactics and strategy. War is nothing but the continuation of politics with other means, he wrote in his most famous (and often misunderstood) phrase. He meant you must only fight the kind of war that makes the ensuing peace tolerable. Lets pray there are people left in Moscow who understand that.

More From This Writer and Others at Bloomberg Opinion:



Chinas Ukraine Doublespeak Is Becoming Unsustainable: Clara Ferreira Marques



Putin, His Rat and Six Ways the War in Ukraine Could End: Andreas Kluth

 Ukrainians Russian Curses Are Like Verbal Molotov Cocktails: Leonid Bershidsky

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Andreas Kluth is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. He was previously editor in chief of Handelsblatt Global and a writer for the Economist. Hes the author of Hannibal and Me.

More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com/opinion

2022 Bloomberg L.P.

GiftOutline Gift Article
People jam the hallways of the Rayburn House Building to get into a reparations hearing on June 19, 2019. (Katherine Frey/The Post)

Retroplolis The Past, Rediscovered
Washington, IN (47501)

Today

Partly cloudy early then becoming cloudy with periods of rain this afternoon. High 63F. Winds E at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch..

Tonight

Rain early...then remaining cloudy with showers overnight. Thunder possible. Low 59F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
Local

featured

WHS students highlight student-led service projects at school board meeting

Photo courtesy of Watauga Board of Education WHS students Students from nine organizations attended the March meeting of the Watauga County Board of Education to present news of a wide range of student-led service projects. Pictured are Kyle Hollars, Miriam Spaulding, Isaiah Shirley, Gresham Collins, Hannah Justice, Hailey Harmon, Grayson Elliott, Brooke Scheffler, Axel Albu, Zachary Brooks, Gwendolyn Anderson, Sidra Miller, Sophie Wampler, Mia Shanely, Brelyn Sturgill and Brooke Jones.

BOONE  Students from Watauga High School attended the March 14 meeting of the Watauga County Board of Education to share news of a wide range of student-led service projects and volunteer work completed by student clubs and organizations.

Led by the boards student representatives Isabella Sibaja and Mia Shanely, the presentation highlighted the work of nine student groups and dozens of student projects that have completed hundreds of volunteer hours around Watauga County this year.

Watauga County Schools Superintendent Scott Elliott said he was proud to have so many students back in attendance at the school board meeting, especially to highlight the worthy charity and volunteer work student clubs had performed this year.

There is so much incredible work that our students take part in across all of our schools every day, and it would be difficult to highlight it all as much as it deserves, Elliott said. These students are leaders in their school and their community, and we are proud of their amazing efforts to help those in need. For each of these projects that well hear about tonight, there are doubtlessly many more that are just as deserving of recognition. Its a mark of the quality, empathy and work ethic of these young people that theyd dedicate so much time in service to others.

The board heard from Brelyn Sturgill and Brooke Jones on behalf of Athletes for Good, a service organization of student athletes at WHS. The group highlighted their work over the past year including providing supplies and care packages to teachers across the county. The group has also aided in the Bags of Hope project for OASIS, provided chemo care packages for the hospital, nurse appreciation gifts, and worked for a food drive on behalf of Casting Bread Ministries.

The WHS Interact Club, represented by members Sophie Wampler and Mia Shanely, presented to the board on the clubs work volunteering at Bare Bones Thrift Store for the Watauga Humane Society, cleaning the Greenway and river behind WHS, packing shoeboxes at Operation Christmas Child and holding a fundraiser for OASIS. The group has also worked on projects from chopping firewood to volunteering at the Hospitality House.

The Sustainability Club was represented by Gwendolyn Anderson and Sidra Miller. They shared with the board about the groups efforts to research, write and coordinate with administration to apply for a solar photovoltaic system that will help power the football concession stand and high school greenhouse at WHS.

Cadets from the WHS Marine Corps JROTC were represented by Axel Albu and Zachary Brooks. The cadets reported their unit conducted a river cleanup that removed 500 pounds of garbage from the Watauga River. The Cadets have also conducted more than twenty color guards for various organizations in the community and have contributed more than 500 hours of community service in other areas including support for local charities and non-profit organizations.

Watauga High Schools HOSA chapter was represented by Grayson Elliott and Brooke Scheffler. The club reported theyd raised money for Kellys Cribs, made care packages for WHS Custodial Staff and packed COVID-19 supply kits for the Hospitality House. The students have also organized blanket drives for local organizations as well as two successful blood drives that will impact local health care providers. They also worked over Christmas to write and send cards to patients at the Deerfield Ridge Assisted Living Facility.

The Watauga Future Fire and EMS Clubs presentation was led by Hailey Harmon. The club is composed of students who wish to go on to careers in emergency management. Harmon said students regularly attend local Volunteer Fire Department meetings and training sessions and are even able to respond to certain calls when possible.

The board heard from WHS Anatomy and Physiology class student Hannah Justice who presented on the groups effort to operate a used glasses drive in April. The glasses collected can be repurposed and distributed to those in need worldwide.

Isaiah Shirley and Gresham Collins, members of the Watauga High School Basketball Team, informed the board about the teams Coaches Vs. Cancer basketball game that raised more than $700 for the American Cancer Society. Players collected donations during the games and made posters to hang up in the gym during games recognizing faculty members, family members and people that they know who have been affected by cancer.

The board also heard from Kyle Hollars and Miriam Spaulding from Mountain Alliance. The students reported that Mountain Alliance has completed more than 200 hours of service so far this school year. Students have served at a variety of local organizations/events including Back 2 School Fest, Todds Table, Valle Country Fair and BUMC Firewood Ministry. Students also participated in a clean-up of the South Fork of the New River on the Greenway in Boone and prepared a meal at WHS that was later brought to the Hospitality House to feed their residents and those in need.
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 chief executive of outdoors and surfwear retailer Kathmandu has warned it may have to start raising its prices in certain markets as inflationary pressures and a shortage of key materials for products such as wetsuits batter the business.

On Wednesday Kathmandu, which recently renamed itself KMD Brands to reflect its 2019 acquisition of Rip Curl, told investors it had made a loss of $NZ5.5 million ($5.13 million) for the six months through to the end of January, a decline of 124 per cent on the prior corresponding half.

Kathmandu chief executive Michael Daly said the business is hopeful trading over the current half will be better.

Chief executive Michael Daly told The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald the loss was understandable given the impact lockdowns and other COVID-related pressures had on the business during the period.

Mr Daly said two of the companys three brands - footwear business Oboz and Rip Curl - had been acutely affected by supply chain issues and the rising cost of goods in recent months, with a low availability of synthetic neoprene rubber leading to a shortage in Rip Curls popular wetsuit ranges.
The Under The Southern Stars rock festival hits Sydney this week after three postponements due to pandemic restrictions, but rejection by Australian governments is nothing new for Rick Nielsen from headliners Cheap Trick.

My wife Karen and I tried to emigrate here in 1971 or 72. Ive still got the letters from the embassy, says the guitarist from the Illinois power-poppers, known for 1970s and 80s hits like Dream Police and If You Want My Love, who will be joined at the festival by heavy 90s rockers Stone Temple Pilots and Bush.

Rick Nielsen, left, with the rest of Cheap Trick. He could have been an Aussie but for his dog. Credit:

The problem was we didnt have kids at the time, our dog was our child, and the Aussie government either wouldnt let it in, or it had to quarantine - chances are I wasnt going to see my dog again. Its too bad - I could have been in AC/DC or The Angels!

Describing himself as crazy brave, and over the American music industry at the time, Nielsen even remembers the Australian government was willing to throw free land into the deal if hed emigrated.
The 50th anniversary London revival of Andrew Lloyd Webbers hit musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat is coming to Melbourne, to add to the citys deep slate of musical theatre as the performing arts looks to leave pandemic gloom behind.

Jac Yarrow as Joseph in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at The London Palladium in 2021. Credit:Tristram Kenton

It will be the first staging of the reimagined production outside the UK, producers say. They have not yet revealed the cast: the title role has been played by stars such as Donny Osmond, Phillip Schofield and Jason Donovan (who played the pharaoh in the London season).

Loading

2022 is proving a bumper year for musical theatre in Melbourne: though Frozen has gone to Brisbane, Jagged Little Pill finished up last week and headed back to Sydney, and Moulin Rouge! The Musical moves to Sydney next month, plenty more are coming south. Hamilton opens Thursday, An American in Paris runs until late April, Girl from the North Country opens in April, Cinderella opens in June, and Phantom of the Opera runs from October to February next year.
The acting federal Education Minister Stuart Robert surely assumed he was chatting confidentially among friends last week when he told a private schools conference the sustained decline in the academic results of Australian 15-year-olds relative to their international peers is because of dud teachers in government schools.

The duds were defined as the bottom 10 per cent of teachers who graduate from initial teaching courses notwithstanding they cant read and write. But private schools are dud-free zones, the acting minister purred to his audience, because principals have the power to hire and fire and are naturally intolerant of dud educators, and if the government could only bottle the success of these schools, the nations youth would rise beyond mediocrity.

Acting Education Minister Stuart Robert took aim at the bottom 10% of teachers. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

My assumption that Robert assumed his remarks wouldnt be reported could be way off the mark. He might talk like this every day, unaware or unconcerned his comments amount to cosy sledging of the majority of Australian families in public schools. Because to my ears, Robert is not just criticising complacent education bureaucracies for protecting bad teachers; hes also slagging off parents who either dont realise duds are teaching their kids or if they do are too busy sinking their welfare payments into a slab to make a fuss.

Robert was clumsily on message for the Coalition, though. Lifting teaching standards through funding levers is central to the governments schools policy.
Paying super on taxpayer-funded parental leave is the next obvious step to further help close the gender superannuation savings gap and send a message that caring for children is valued by society.

The members of the HESTA super fund, more than 80 per cent of whom are women, say taking parental leave has left them behind in saving for their retirement, causing them concern and financial stress.

Debby Blakey, the chief executive of HESTA, says the funds members are worried about not having enough to retire on because they need to take time out of the workforce to raise children.

HESTA super fund chief executive Debby Blakey says the funds members, most of whom are women, want more government action to address the super gender imbalance. Credit:Tash Sorensen

Not paying super on government-funded parental leave is a financial penalty on women, she says.
When Angus Taylor announced a raft of new gasfields on Monday, it was imperfect timing. Just hours later, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres would have a lash at Australia for its energy imperfections.

Taylor, with his gasfields promise, was funding energy which should never be funded now. Yet saying that, even if your job is to advocate for a clean energy Australia, can get you into all kinds of trouble, as the Smart Energy Council discovered last month.

It was forced to abandon a witty campaign using stickers on wheelie bins showing the Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce holding coal with slogans that said: Bin him or Chuck them out.

The Smart Energy Council was forced to abandon a witty campaign using stickers on wheelie bins. Credit:Wolter Peeters

Precisely what youd say if you were desperate to shift Australia from its dependence on dirty coal, yet it risked the Smart Energy Councils charitable status. It received first a phone call and then an email from the Charities Commission (ACNC) which said it was in breach of charity laws. Losing that charitable status means those who donate arent eligible for tax deductions and the charity is liable to income tax, even if the organisation wasnt using those funds for the allegedly political purpose.
Australia has promised to send 70,000 tonnes of coal to Ukraine but theres currently no ship contracted to send the coal from Newcastle to the war zone, and none suitable to be commandeered to ship the fuel.

The shipping sector says this is a sign of the dire straits the industry is in, as there are only 13 Australian-flagged vessels  the only ships the government can legally commandeer  left in operation.

Australia has promised 70,000 tonnes of coal to Ukraine, but has no firm plan to get it there. Credit:Glenn Hunt

Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced on Sunday the thermal coal shipment, worth about $28 million, would be sent as soon as possible after a request from the Ukrainian leadership. The government has agreed with Whitehaven Coal that taxpayers will cover the costs of the coal and shipping.

The mining company and the government are reluctant to reveal detailed plans about the transportation of the coal for security reasons.
In the months before the invasion, the US declassified and shared information warning of Russias plans, to initial disbelief. The US and the UK revealed that Russia had already positioned operatives to stage a fake attack and to install a pro-Russian leadership in Kyiv. The US also repeatedly warned of false-flag operations to be staged by Russia as a pretext for invasion.

They have issued numerous statements forewarning of the specific lies being pushed by the Kremlin.

This unprecedented transparency has enabled the democratic world to dispel disinformation before it gets traction. It has kept Putin on the back foot and allowed space for Ukraine to advance its narrative.

Back in 2014, the Kremlin was good at convincing the global public that any talk of Ukrainian independence was destabilising, or a form of Nazism, or a proxy war waged from the West.

Eight years later, Ukraine has been able to get the message out to the democratic world about their legitimate desire for self-determination. Onlookers in the West who might have believed Ukraine was a quasi-Nazi state are now instead seeing the will of ordinary Ukrainians not to be coerced.
Kabul: The Taliban has backtracked on their announcement that high schools would open for girls, saying they would remain closed until a plan was drawn up in accordance with Islamic law for them to reopen.

The U-turn on Wednesday (AEDT) took many by surprise, leaving students in tears and drawing condemnation from humanitarian agencies, rights groups and diplomats at a time when the Taliban administration is seeking international recognition.

Students and Taliban officials attend a ceremony for the reopening of the schools at the Amani high school in Kabul. Credit:The Washington Post/Lorenzo Tugnoli

Teachers and students from three high schools in the capital Kabul said girls had returned in excitement to campuses on Wednesday morning, but were ordered to go home. They said many students left in tears.

We all became totally hopeless when the principal told us, she was also crying, said a student, not being named for security reasons.
Washington: Vaccine maker Moderna has announced its two-dose pediatric COVID-19 vaccine is safe in young children, toddlers and babies in a study and will ask regulators to authorise its vaccine for those age groups.

But the effectiveness of the shot in children 6 months to 5-years-old was more of a mixed picture because of the challenge presented by the highly transmissible Omicron variant, it said on Wednesday night (AEDT).

Moderna plans to set up a new facility in Victoria, Australia, to produce mRNA vaccines.

In a trial of the vaccine, the shot met the main criteria the company and regulators had defined for success, generating immune defences equivalent to those that protected young adults before the Omicron variant emerged, according to a Moderna news release.

But in the face of Omicron, the immune defences mustered by two doses in adults were less robust, particularly in preventing infections - and the same pattern was seen in children, with vaccine efficacy of about 40 per cent.
Salisbury, MD (21801)

Today

Generally cloudy. High 69F. Winds ENE at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Partly cloudy this evening, then becoming cloudy after midnight. Slight chance of a rain shower. Low 51F. Winds ESE at 5 to 10 mph.
Kye Parsons is the editor of WBOC.com. He came to WBOC with several years experience as an award-winning journalist on Delmarva. Prior to entering the world of multimedia, he worked as a newspaper editor and reporter. E-mail him at kparsons@wboc.com .

Follow Kye Parsons 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


remaining of Free Views

Since you viewed this item previously you can read it again.



Already a Subscriber?

Login Here

Home delivery print subscribers, activate your account for

Unlimited Digital Access and our e-Edition Here

SUBSCRIBE TODAY!

24 Hour Access
Pictured: some of the trucks on display at the 2022 Mid-America Trucking Show at the Kentucky Expo Center. The show started on March 24 and continues through March 26.
By Trend

The statement made by Russia's Ministry of Transport on the arrest of Russian planes in Azerbaijan is false and surprising, Press Service Department of Azerbaijan's Ministry of Digital Development and Transport told Trend.

According to the ministry, no aircraft belonging to Russia were detained in Azerbaijan.

"We call on the relevant Russian agencies to deny this false information," the statement said.
Pictured: an electrical substation near Woodland Drive in Elizabethtown, Ky. Police say thieves stole electrical components in the afternoon hours of March 21, 2022, causing an estimated $37,000 in damages.
Darrell Watson, Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport's vice president of strategy and innovation, demonstrates how travelers can chat live with volunteer airport ambassadors to answer questions about flights, transportation and tourism.
FILE - In this Aug. 4, 2019 file photo, David Shaw of The Revivalists performs on day four of Lollapalooza in Grant Park. The hordes of people expected to descend on Chicago's Grant Park for the Lollapalooza music festival starting Thursday, July 29, 2021, will be required to show proof that they've been vaccinated for COVID-19 or tested negative for the disease within the last three days. (Photo by Amy Harris/Invision/AP File)
Police asking for public's help to find missing 57-year-old last seen at UofL Hospital
If you are a NEW Subscriber and just made payment, your E-Edition will be available with the next issue of WestLife. (NOTE: If your payment was made after noon on a Monday or on a Tuesday, your subscription will be active the following week.)

NEW Subscribers (Print & Digital Only) will need to verify their account the first time logging in by clicking the "Current Print Subscriber" option. Complete requested information and click Claim.

If you are an EXISTING Subscriber, select the "Current Print Subscriber" option.
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
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.
We don't know if there's actually anyone on the other end of the line. It's a thought that clattered throughout the mind as Ruth Wilson, alone on stage, dragged herself through a torturous one-sided phone call  while her long-term boyfriend is apparently breaking up with her.

Ivo van Hove's adaptation of Jean Cocteau's 1930 play is a piece that gives about as much as you're ready to put into it. Is it all a fantasy? Is it an astute deconstruction of the way in which a break-up can be a destruction of the self as much as the end of a relationship? Does it matter either way?

Notably, van Hove first staged his version of the piece in 2009 (it's having something of a moment  a short film, directed by Pedro Almodovar, was released last year). Thirteen years is an artistic lifetime for a director who has since brought an award-winning performance out of news-room confined Bryan Cranston on the National stage, and radically transformed West Side Story into a video-laden kaleidoscope. That's before you mention his immense body of work in Amsterdam.

None of these technical bells and whistles are present here - Wilson is in a blank box on stage, a large, sliding French window dividing her from us. Lighting states subtly alter, but for the most part, you get what you see.

The main draw, and main success, of the piece is undoubtedly the performance from the Luther star (reuniting after their take on Hedda Gabler six years ago at the National). She performs as only she can  flickering between well-composed surety and adolescent piteousness in the flicker of an eyebrow. Cringe-worthy coos become excruciating cries. She commands the stage with what at times feels like utter disregard  as if presenting a show in spite of her audience. All that matters is the man that might, or might not, be on the other end of the line. Beyond a pair of discarded men's shoes, pristine and perhaps unused, there is no evidence he even existed.

We get very few answers in a 70-minute text that touches on a whole wealth of topics  the way in which, for example, breaking up with a loved one means they enter a paradoxical state  simultaneously known and unknowable. Unconditional love becomes unrequited love. But, reaching 90 years old, Cocteau's central thesis feels dated  a woman cast adrift by a man may not be able to find herself again  and for all of Wilson's brilliant, internalised self-reflection, that conceptual notion can be a tough pill to swallow.

Where the choices are being made, some of them are fantastic (one moment, where Wilson sits like an abandoned marionette doll for multiple minutes, is particularly audacious). Others are bewildering (we won't tarry too long on a Miley Cyrus performance). The show has been labelled monochromatic  which feels unjust  the way in which Jan Versweyveld's design brings ice-cold, desaturated white light across to a warm glow on a single canvas proves how, even in the heat of a break-up, the cold reality of the next morning can bite.
Quincy, IL (62301)

Today

Light rain early...then remaining cloudy with showers in the afternoon. High 57F. Winds E at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 90%..

Tonight

Showers this evening becoming a steady light rain overnight. Thunder possible. Low 53F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
Fishery Officer (Mariculture), Rome, Italy

Organization: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)

Country: Italy

City: Rome

Office: FAO Rome

Closing date: Monday, 11 April 2022

2200782

Fishery Officer (Mariculture)

Job Posting: 21/Mar/2022

Closure Date: 11/Apr/2022, 9:59:00 PM

Organizational Unit : NFI

Job Type: Staff position

Type of Requisition : Professional

Grade Level : P-4

Primary Location: Italy-Rome

Duration : Fixed-term: 2 years with possibility of extension

Post Number : 0023221

CCOG Code : 1H05

FAO is committed to achieving workforce diversity in terms of gender, nationality, background and culture

Qualified female applicants, qualified nationals of non-and under-represented Members and persons with disabilities are encouraged to apply

Everyone who works for FAO is required to adhere to the highest standards of integrity and professional conduct, and to uphold FAOs values

FAO, as a Specialized Agency of the United Nations, has a zero-tolerance policy for conduct that is incompatible with its status, objectives and mandate, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination

All selected candidates will undergo rigorous reference and background checks

All applications will be treated with the strictest confidentiality

FAO staff are subject to the authority of the Director-General, who may assign them to any of the activities or offices of the Organization.

Organizational Setting The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) contributes to the achievement of the 2030 Agenda through the FAO Strategic Framework by supporting the transformation to MORE efficient, inclusive, resilient and sustainable agrifood systems, for better production, better nutrition, a better environment, and a better life, leaving no one behind. The Fisheries and Aquaculture Division (NFI) is responsible for the economic, social, institutional, governance and policy aspects of FAO activities related to fisheries and aquaculture and their development, with particular emphasis on human well-being, food security and poverty reduction; post-harvest utilization, marketing and trade with due regard to the protection of the environment, food security and the well-being of fishery communities; collection, compilation, validation, trend analysis and dissemination of the best available and up-to-date fishery statistics and for the syndication of the FAO information on all aspects of world fisheries and aquaculture. The Division is also responsible for FAO activities related to the management and conservation of the living aquatic resources used by fisheries and aquaculture, including the biodiversity and ecosystem maintenance, with particular emphasis on most vulnerable and threatened species and habitats; management of responsible fisheries and aquaculture in accordance with management standards and best practices; development of fisheries technology, with due regard to the protection of the environment, food security and the well-being of fishing communities, including the safety of fishers and fishing vessels. The position is located in the Technology and Production Team (NFIAT) in the Fisheries and Aquaculture Division (NFI) at FAO headquarters in Rome, Italy.

Reporting Lines The Fishery Officer (Mariculture) reports to the Senior Fishery Officer/Team Leader of the Technology and Production Team (NFIAT) in the Sustainable Aquaculture area under the overall supervision of the Deputy Director, NFI.

Technical Focus Support the work in the Sustainable Aquaculture area in implementing policies and programmes that seek to maximize the impacts of aquaculture on Members economic, social and environmental objectives, including food security and nutrition, and help meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) targets within the FAO Strategic Framework and priority programmes, such as the Blue Transformation. The programme of work and activities should follow the FAO Common Vision for Sustainable Food and Agriculture and the FAO Code of Conduct on Responsible Fisheries and associated technical guidelines and seek to mitigate the impacts of aquaculture on climate change, while at the same time reducing vulnerability to climate change and other external stressors.

Key Results Comprehensive technical and policy expertise to support the planning, development and implementation of Divisional programmes, projects, products and services in accordance with the Divisions objectives and the FAO Strategic Framework.

Key Functions

Plans and leads components of multi-disciplinary teams, leads and/or participates in Organization-wide, cross-divisional committees, project teams and working groups and/or provides specialized expertise on technical networks and/or international technical policy and standard setting bodies.

Develops technical, analytical, monitoring and reporting frameworks and related methodologies, tools, systems and databases, etc. to support the planning, implementation/delivery and monitoring of programmes of work, projects, products and/or services.

Designs and conducts research, data collection, validation, analysis and/or reporting activities to support the development of technical standards, international instruments, innovative approaches and strategies, new tools, technologies, technical reports/publications and/or policy proposals as well as the provision of technical/policy/ specialist/advice and expertise.

Responds to country requests for technical and policy assistance; provides technical advice, assistance and solutions to Decentralized Offices and provides technical backstopping to field projects.

Collaborates in, provides technical backstopping to, and ensures the quality/effectiveness of, capacity development and knowledge sharing activities within Member countries, such as policy support, organizational development and individual learning events including preparation of related information, learning materials and on-line tools.

Promotes international cooperation/advocates best practices, supports increased policy dialogue and provides technical expertise at international/intergovernmental meetings.

Participates in resource mobilization activities in accordance with the FAO Corporate Strategy.

Specific Functions

Provides support in drafting policies and national and/or regional strategies for supporting sustainable mariculture development, including the integration of sector planning and allocation of zones to aquaculture (and/or aquaculture management areas) within the broader process of national/regional maritime spatial planning processes.

Provides support on collecting, organizing and analyzing technical and sectorial data to inform decisions at national and regional level, such as mariculture sector specific key performance indicators and to support the institutional role of the Fisheries and Aquaculture Division.

Plans and leads components of a programme of work on marine, brackish and aquaculture system designed to facilitate technology transfer, improve resource use efficiency, minimize environmental impacts, and improve social resilience, while at the same time reducing vulnerability to climate extremes and other external stressors.

Supports the design and implementation of Blue Economy and Aquaculture Plans and provides technical support, such as best management practices (BMPs), training programmes for capacity building, solutions and programmes in Small Island Developing States and other priority areas, as required.

Provides advice for the development of approaches to hatchery, grow-out and value chain associated risks management, governing mechanisms and related expertise.

Supports the development of the Divisional programme on marine aquaculture and national, regional level project documentation.

Contributes to the Fisheries and Aquaculture Divisions cross-cutting initiatives on Sustainable Development Goals, climate change, biodiversity, biosecurity, food security and nutrition, as required.

Collaborates for securing extra-budgetary funds to support the Sustainable Aquaculture areas growing programme of work, especially in relation to the Global Environment Fund and the Green Climate Fund. CANDIDATES WILL BE ASSESSED AGAINST THE FOLLOWING

Minimum Requirements

Advanced university degree in biology, marine biology, aquaculture, aquatic sciences, fisheries/aquaculture economics or related discipline.

Seven years of relevant experience in aquaculture planning and development, aquaculture technological innovations, biosecurity, aquatic environmental research and/or management, aquaculture extension or related fields.

Working knowledge (proficient - level C) of English and limited knowledge (intermediate - level B) of another FAO official language (Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian or Spanish).

Competencies

Results Focus

Team Work

Communication

Building effective relationships

Knowledge Sharing and Continuous Improvement

Technical/Functional Skills

dAttPpb Dh7qKS

Work experience in more than one location or area of work, particularly in field positions.

Extent and relevance of experience or knowledge of aquaculture and in provision of scientific support and advice to national, regional and international fisheries bodies in both developed and developing countries.

Extent and relevance of experience in planning and implementation of research and/or development programmes in aquaculture, extension or capacity building.

Demonstrated results-based management capabilities with an ability to manage programmes, budgets and human resources efficiently under shifting priorities.

Depth of knowledge of current global issues, trends, constraints, and research needs related to the aquaculture management and development.

Demonstrated ability to initiate and implement aquaculture programmes in field and community.

Ability to raise awareness, communicate effectively and mobilize resources for aquaculture programmes.

Extent and relevance of experience in different countries and regions, especially in developing countries and countries in transition.

Extent and relevance of experience in organizing international meetings, seminars and training courses.

FAO staff are expected to adhere to FAO Values of Commitment to FAO, Respect for All and Integrity and Transparency.

GENERAL INFORMATION

Extension of fixed term appointments is based on certification of performance and availability of funds

FAO reserves the right not to make an appointment.

Appointment will be subject to certification that the candidate is medically fit for appointment, accreditation, any residency or visa requirements, and security clearances. Subject to certain exemptions, vaccination against COVID-19 will in principle be required. Vaccination status will be verified as part of the medical clearance process

CONDITIONS OF SERVICE

A competitive compensation and benefits package is offered. For information on UN salaries, allowances and benefits, click on the following link: http://www.un.org/Depts/OHRM/salaries allowances/salary.htm Other benefits, subject to eligibility, include:

Dependency allowances

Rental subsidy

Education grant for children

Home leave travel

30 working days of annual leave per year

Pension fund entitlements under the UN Joint Staff Pension Fund

International health insurance; optional life insurance

Disability protection

FAO encourages a positive workplace culture to increase inclusivity and diversity within its workforce. FAO applies measures in which all staff members contribute equally and in full to the work and development of the Organization. This includes:

elements of family-friendly policies

flexible working arrangements

standards of conduct.

HOW TO APPLY

To apply, visit the recruitment website at Jobs at FAO and complete your online profile. We strongly recommend that your profile is accurate, complete and includes your employment records, academic qualifications, and language skills

Candidates are requested to attach a letter of motivation to the online profile

Once your profile is completed, please apply, and submit your application

Please note that FAO only considers higher educational qualifications obtained from an institution accredited/recognized in the World Higher Education Database (WHED), a list updated by the International Association of Universities (IAU) / United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The list can be accessed at http://www.whed.net/

Candidates may be requested to provide performance assessments and authorization to conduct verification checks of past and present work, character, education, military and police records to ascertain any and all information which may be pertinent to the employment qualifications

Incomplete applications will not be considered

Personal information provided on your application may be shared within FAO and with other companies acting on FAOs behalf to provide employment support services such as pre-screening of applications, assessment tests, background checks and other related services. You will be asked to provide your consent before submitting your application. You may withdraw consent at any time, by withdrawing your application, in such case FAO will no longer be able to consider your application

Only applications received through the FAO recruitment portal will be considered

Your application will be screened based on the information provided in your online profile

We encourage applicants to submit the application well before the deadline date.

If you need help, or have queries, please contact: Careers@fao.org

Link to the organizations job posting: https://unjobs.org/vacancies/1647882552045
Willmar, MN (56201)

Today

Cloudy. Periods of light rain this morning. High around 60F. Winds ESE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60%..

Tonight

Cloudy skies early, followed by partial clearing. Low 44F. Winds ENE at 5 to 10 mph.
Community

top story

Wilson County Commission approves $1 million loan for agricultural buildings

Xavier Smith / XAVIER SMITH Construction continued this week on the future Made in Tennessee Building at the James E. Ward Ag Center. The building will house statewide county displays during the Wilson County Fair Tennessee State Fair once completed.The building has faced construction delays and is not expected to be completed by this years event in August. Xavier Smith / XAVIER SMITH Construction continued this week on the future Made in Tennessee Building at the James E. Ward Ag Center. The building will house statewide county displays during the Wilson County Fair Tennessee State Fair once completed. The building has faced construction delays and is not expected to be completed by this years event in August.

The Wilson County Commission approved a $1 million loan to Wilson County Promotions on Monday night for the construction of three agricultural buildings after one current building project faces construction delays.

Wilson County taxpayers will not be on the hook if Wilson County Promotions  which runs the Wilson County Fair Tennessee State Fair  fails to reimburse the $1 million loan, Wilson County Mayor Randall Hutto and Ag Center Director Quintin Smith said at the meeting.

Theres just a lot going on at the (James E. Ward Ag Center) right now with the (Made in Tennessee) building, Agriculture Learning Center and some other buildings, said Commissioner Sue Vanatta, who called for a deferral of the vote about the loan. Not saying that anythings wrong with it. Im just saying there needs to be more discussion before we do this.

Theres been such discussion in (committee meetings) that I just want to make sure that everything is in there that weve been discussing without leaving anything out, Commissioner Sara Patton said.

When the Wilson County Fair merged with the Tennessee State Fair last year, a $5 million payment was made from the state to Wilson County, which was to be transferred to Wilson County Promotions.

Of the $5 million, $3.5 million was used to construct the future Made in Tennessee building that will house statewide contest winners, $300,000 for crowd control measures, $200,000 for bathrooms and $1 million for the Agricultural Learning Center.

The Made in Tennessee building, which was a part of the merger agreement, was anticipated to be open for the 2022 Wilson County Fair Tennessee State Fair but has faced construction delays and is not expected to be completed by this years event in August.

The county will loan Wilson County Promotions the $1 million earmarked for the agricultural center in order for the group to construct three smaller buildings that will be used to statewide displays during this years fair and 4-H, FFA and other uses throughout the year.

Wilson County is expected to receive another $9.5 million from the state this year as a part of the merger agreement, which will also be transferred to Wilson County Promotions. Wilson County Promotions will then reimburse the $1 million to the agricultural learning center.

We were all but guaranteed that the money was there and how the money was going to be dispersed and how the money was going to be returned back to us, Commissioner Annette Stafford said. We are responsible for the taxpayers. I respect that greatly. However, we were already told how its going to be returned back to us.

Hutto and Smith reiterated to commissioners that if the county does not receive the $9.5 million, which has been included in Gov. Bill Lees budget, that Wilson County Promotions would be responsible for repaying the loan.
Robert C. Lannes, 30, of Winchester, was charged with reckless driving after striking a Winchester police cruiser with his Nissan pickup truck at South Pleasant Valley Road and Adams Drive around 4:10 p.m. on Tuesday. Lannes and the officer were treated at Winchester Medical Center for non-life threatening injuries.
After originally announcing it in 2020, Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre was to have unveiled the comedy Calpurnia on its mainstage exactly this time last year, before the pandemic laid waste to the theatres best-laid plans.

After originally announcing it in 2020, Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre was to have unveiled the comedy Calpurnia on its mainstage exactly this time last year, before the pandemic laid waste to the theatres best-laid plans.

THEATRE PREVIEW Click to Expand Calpurnia

By Audrey Dwyer

 Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre mainstage

 Opens Thursday, runs to April 16

 Tickets from $22.25 to $82.75 at royalmtc.ca

The play surely would have been appreciated in 2021, given its examination of topical racial issues, albeit set in the cushy environs of Torontos Forest Hill. It is here aspiring Black screenwriter Julie sets her mind on a daring, confrontational fiction, rewriting To Kill a Mockingbird as seen through the eyes of Calpurnia, the Black maid who serves southern lawyer Atticus Finch and his two children.

Winnipeg-born playwright Audrey Dwyer, who is also RMTCs associate artistic director, says the delay was used for a rewrite, despite the fact the play was an unqualified hit when it premiered at Torontos Buddies in Bad Times Theatre in 2018.

The intervening years, Dwyer says, demanded a rethink.

"The timing may actually be better now," Dwyer says in a phone interview. "When the play was produced in 2018, workplaces werent taking courses in anti-oppression. There werent diversity officers in workspaces, though there were definitely needs for it.

JESSICA LEE / FREE PRESS FILES Winnipeg-born playwright Audrey Dwyer took advantage of pandemic delays to revamp Calpurnia.

"But due to the murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement and the great pause that we were in, a lot of organizations and a lot of people started really examining themselves, which led to more discussions in homes and workplaces," Dwyer says.

"So this play, while it is about To Kill a Mockingbird and mammy culture, I feel its a place for us to see all of those conversations and ideas smash into each other in a comedic way.

"There has been a real commitment, nationally or globally, to learning about anti-Black racism. So in that way, this is a great time for it."

Dylan Hewlett photo From left: Kwaku Adu-Poku as Mark Gordon, Rochelle Kives as Precy Cabigting, Arne MacPherson as James Thompson, Ellie Ellwand as Christine Charte and Ray Strachan as Lawrence Gordon.

While the original production was well-reviewed in the Toronto press, "this definitely is not the same play," Dwyer says, explaining that the work was chosen by Jillian Keiley of the National Arts Centre in Ottawa to be given the benefit of an added dramaturgical process by Sarah Garton Stanley, the RMTC shows director, "to give me time to work on the ideas and to go deeper."

The world has changed since 2018, Dwyer says, so the opportunity to workshop it with different actors and modernize it was welcome. "Even now were making updates and changes to make it more attuned to today," she says.

The plays main provocation is to challenge many of the assumptions around Harper Lees much loved 1960 novel, which, among other things provided a template for the "white saviour" trope of stories of racial conflict that still survives today.

Dylan Hewlett photo Ray Strachan (left), and Emerjade Simms

Notwithstanding the high tension that accompanies the topic, the play should yield laugh-out-loud moments, especially in Julies interactions with family Filipina maid Precy, which funhouse-mirror the dynamic between Mockingbirds heroine Scout Finch and Calpurnia.

"I love comedy. I think comedy lets us release some of that tension and its a really great way to observe social change and to also see oneself," says Dwyer. "I think things are funny because theyre true."

"This play is really good at holding up a mirror to society and our biases that we come in with and the things that we need to work on," says Toronto-based actress Emerjade Simms, who plays Julie. "I think its really good at forcing people to have really uncomfortable conversations.

Dylan Hewlett photo Kwaku Adu-Poku, left, and Emerjade Simms play squabbling siblings Mark and Jule.

"This play can make people unlearn things that they may have grown up with."

Winnipeg-born actress Rochelle Kives, who plays Precy, concurs.

"It is a brilliant play written by Audrey Dwyer, who is paving the way and creating stories that need to be told on Canadian stages," Kives says.

randall.king.arts@gmail.com

Twitter: @FreepKing

If you value coverage of Manitobas arts scene, help us do more.

Your contribution of $10, $25 or more will allow the Free Press to deepen our reporting on theatre, dance, music and galleries while also ensuring the broadest possible audience can access our arts journalism. BECOME AN ARTS JOURNALISM SUPPORTER Click here to learn more about the project.
ARABI, La. (AP)  A tornado tore through parts of New Orleans and its suburbs Tuesday night, flipping cars and ripping roofs off homes and killing at least one person in a region that was pummeled by Hurricane Katrina 17 years ago.

Debris litters the ground surrounding homes, damaged by severe storms reported as tornadoes, on Oxford Drive and Stratford Drive in Round Rock, Texas Monday March 21, 2022. (Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman via AP)

ARABI, La. (AP)  A tornado tore through parts of New Orleans and its suburbs Tuesday night, flipping cars and ripping roofs off homes and killing at least one person in a region that was pummeled by Hurricane Katrina 17 years ago.

Parts of St. Bernard Parish, which borders New Orleans to the southeast, appeared to take the brunt of the weather's fury, and that is where the fatality occurred. St. Bernard Parish officials gave no details on how the person died; they said multiple other people were injured.

Rescue workers were searching through the suburban parish for more people in need of assistance, according to Sheriff Jimmy Pohlmann. St. Bernard Parish President Guy McInnis said the tornado caused widespread damage throughout the parish.

The damage comes after other tornadoes spawned by the same storm system hit parts of Texas and Oklahoma, killing one person Monday and causing multiple injuries and widespread damage.

In New Orleans, video taken by a local television station Tuesday showed a large black funnel visible in the darkened sky looming among the buildings in the eastern part of the city.

Michael Talamantez looks at his house on Stratford Drive in Round Rock, Texas, after it was destroyed by a tornado while he was inside on Monday March 21, 2022. "I thought I was going to die," he said. (Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman via AP)

The tornado appeared to start in a New Orleans suburb and then move east across the Mississippi River into the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans and parts of St. Bernard Parish  both of which were badly damaged by Katrina  before moving northeast.

Reggie Ford was nearby in Arabia when the tornado struck. He drove from the area, only to return once it passed, to offer help to anyone who needed it. He said the streets were eerily quite, only filled with fresh devastation from the twister.

I see downed powerlines. A church is completely destroyed. Three businesses are completely destroyed. There are eight blocks of houses missing their roofs, the New Orleans resident said. Video he posted on Instagram shows debris cluttered streets and shredded buildings. A battered car was flipped on its roof.

Michael Talamantez talks to a firefighter in his house on Stratford Drive in Round Rock, Texas, after it was destroyed by a tornado while he was inside on Monday March 21, 2022. "I thought I was going to die," Talamantez said. (Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman via AP)

In the New Orleans suburb of Arabi, there was a strong smell of natural gas in the air as residents and rescue personnel stood in the street and surveyed the damage. Some houses were destroyed while pieces of debris hung from electrical wires and trees. An aluminum fishing boat in front of one house was bent into the shape of a C with the motor across the street. Power poles were down and leaning over, forcing emergency workers to walk slowly through darkened neighborhoods checking for damage.

Michelle Malasovich lives in Arabi. Initially she had been worried about family that lives in areas north of Louisiana that were also getting hit by bad weather. She was texting with her family there when, she said, All of a sudden the lights started flickering.

Her husband was out on the porch and saw the tornado coming.

A helicopter flies toward smoke from wildfires, Sunday, March 20, 2022, near Eastland County in Texas. (Rebecca Slezak/The Dallas Morning News via AP)

It just kept getting louder and louder, Malasovich said. After it passed they came out to survey the damage. Our neighbors house is in the middle of the street right now.

Malasovichs house fared relatively well, she said. Some columns were blown off the porch and the windows of her Jeep were blown out. Down the street a house was severely damaged, and parked vehicles had been moved around by the winds: This is serious for down here.

New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell tweeted late Tuesday that there were no reports of casualties or significant damage to the city and that the power utility was working to restore electricity to the 8,000 customers impacted.

Debris lines the roads as crews and homeowners work to repair properties damaged by severe weather in Elgin, Texas, Tuesday, March 22, 2022. Officials say multiple tornadoes ripped through parts of Texas and Oklahoma on Monday. (AP Photo/Acacia Coronado)

About 13,000 homes and businesses were reportedly without power in the three parishes around New Orleans after the storm.

While people in the metropolitan region are used to dealing with severe weather such as hurricanes or heavy rains, its rare that a tornado moves through the city. A 2017 tornado caused widespread damage when it touched down in the eastern part of the city.

Ahead of the severe weather, many schools closed early or cancelled after-school activities Tuesday in parts of Louisiana and Mississippi to allow students to get home before the weather deteriorated. Shelters opened for residents who needed a place to stay while the storms traveled through.

A house on Monkey Road in Elgin, Texas, on Tuesday March 22, 2022, is damaged by a tornado that struck Monday. Multiple tornadoes ripped through parts of Texas and Oklahoma, killing at least one person and causing multiple injuries and widespread damage before the storm system moved on to Louisiana and Mississippi. (Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman via AP)

Louisianas federal and state authorities reminded thousands of hurricane survivors living in government-provided mobile homes and recreational vehicle trailers to have an evacuation plan because the structures might not withstand the expected weather. More than 8,000 households live in such temporary quarters, officials said.

After leaving the New Orleans area, the system dumped heavy rain, downed trees and prompted multiple tornado warnings as it moved into Alabama Tuesday evening. The roofs of several homes were damaged in Toxey, Alabama, after a storm preceded by tornado warnings passed through the area, the National Weather Service tweeted.

Forecasters had been predicting a line of intense weather moving from Texas eastward into the Deep South, and Monday started out with some vicious weather in Texas.

Monkey Road in Elgin, Texas, was closed to through traffic Tuesday, March 22, 2022, as power companies repaired lines downed from the Monday storm. A tornado swept through Bastrop County causing major damage south of Elgin, Texas, Monday March 21. Multiple tornadoes ripped through parts of Texas and Oklahoma, killing at least one person and causing multiple injuries and widespread damage before the storm system moved on to Louisiana and Mississippi. (Nell Carroll/Austin American-Statesman via AP)

In Texas, several tornadoes were reported Monday along the Interstate 35 corridor. In Elgin, broken trees lined the rural roads and pieces of metal  uprooted by strong winds hung from the branches. Residents stepped carefully to avoid downed power lines as they worked to clean the remnants of broken ceilings, torn down walls and damaged cars.

Ready, Pet, Go! Leesa Dahl looks at everything to do with our furry, fuzzy, feathered, fishy (and more!) pet friends. Arrives in your inbox each Monday. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement.

J.D. Harkins, 59, said he saw two tornadoes pass by his Elgin home.

There used to be a barn there, Harkins said, pointing to an empty plot on his uncles property covered with scattered debris. He said the building was empty when the first tornado hit Monday, and that his family is thankful nobody was hurt.

Authorities survey damage in the Lower 9th Ward, Tuesday, March 22, 2022, in New Orleans, after strong storms moved through the area. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Homes and businesses in at least a dozen Texas counties were damaged, according to Storm Prediction Center reports. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced a disaster declaration for 16 hard-hit counties. Abbott said 10 people were injured by storms in the Crockett area, while more than a dozen were reportedly hurt elsewhere.

The Grayson County Emergency Management Office said a 73-year-old woman was killed in the community of Sherwood Shores, about 60 miles (95 kilometers) north of Dallas, but provided no details.

___

Associated Press journalists Jay Reeves in Birmingham, Alabama; Kimberly Chandler in Montgomery, Alabama; Julie Walker in New York; Ken Miller in Oklahoma City; Jill Bleed in Little Rock, Arkansas; Terry Wallace in Dallas; Janet McConnaughy in New Orleans and Alina Hartounian in Phoenix, Arizona, and Acacia Coronado in Austin, Texas contributed to this report.
ARABI, La. (AP)  A powerful tornado took mere seconds to rip off roofs and destroy homes as it chiseled a path of destruction through a New Orleans area neighborhood where one man died, residents said Wednesday as they picked through wreckage and mourned their neighbor.

A helicopter flies toward smoke from wildfires, Sunday, March 20, 2022, near Eastland County in Texas. (Rebecca Slezak/The Dallas Morning News via AP)

ARABI, La. (AP)  A powerful tornado took mere seconds to rip off roofs and destroy homes as it chiseled a path of destruction through a New Orleans area neighborhood where one man died, residents said Wednesday as they picked through wreckage and mourned their neighbor.

Tuesday night's tornado in the Arabi community of St. Bernard Parish sprung from a storm system blamed for earlier tornadoes in Texas that killed a woman north of Dallas and prompted Gov. Gregg Abbott to declare a disaster in 16 counties. It also spawned a tornado that touched down in the Lacombe area of St. Tammany Parish, caused damage in eastern New Orleans and was blamed for torrential rain and building damage in Alabama.

My neighbor died. Why did it spare us? Michael Baiamonte asked Wednesday afternoon. He, his wife, their two sons, his father and their dog took refuge in a closet under a stairwell when the tornado hit. The amount of shaking that was going on in that house for that small time frame was phenomenal," said Baiamonte.

He added that the destruction was all over in the time it took him to say four Hail Marys.

Half his roof was gone. And the house where his neighbor, 25-year-old Connor Lambert had lived, was gone. Lambert's body was found amid debris. The St. Bernard Parish coroner's office said he died of multiple blunt force injuries. News outlets said Lambert had grown up in St. Bernard Parish and was an engineer at the Stennis Space Center in nearby Mississippi.

Melodie Maher watches from a fire truck as her son, Claude Maher, along with firefighters, rescued her dog from her heavily damaged home after a tornado struck the area in Arabi, La., Tuesday, March 22, 2022. A tornado tore through parts of New Orleans and its suburbs Tuesday night, ripping down power lines and scattering debris in a part of the city that had been heavily damaged by Hurricane Katrina 17 years ago. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Gov. John Bel Edwards declared an emergency in St. Bernard, Orleans, Jefferson and St. Tammany parishes. After flying over the area Wednesday, he walked the streets in Arabi, greeting storm victims.

Its awfully sad, because the destruction is so devastating, Edwards said. The good news is most of your neighbors outside of this narrow swath  theyre able to help.

In front of her roofless home, a woman told Edwards she, her husband and their 1-year-old son took refuge in the bathroom as the tornado bore down.

Destroyed homes, illuminated by fire engine lights, are seen after a tornado in Arabi, La., Tuesday, March 22, 2022. A tornado tore through parts of New Orleans and its suburbs Tuesday night, ripping down power lines and scattering debris in a part of the city that had been heavily damaged by Hurricane Katrina 17 years ago. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

We just dropped down, and he jumped on top of us, covering our son, she said. So scary.

One of the destroyed houses belonged to Jibri Brown, who had not yet spent the night there. She had started moving her belongings into the white house Saturday and spent Tuesday having her TVs mounted. Theyre still on the walls, she says, but the house around them is mangled and knocked off its foundation.

It took me a year to find my perfect house, said Brown, an ICU nurse. She gestured toward the wreckage: This is my perfect house.

Debris litters the ground surrounding homes, damaged by severe storms reported as tornadoes, on Oxford Drive and Stratford Drive in Round Rock, Texas Monday March 21, 2022. (Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman via AP)

The National Weather Service said the Arabi damage was caused by a tornado of at least EF-3 strength, meaning it had winds of 158-206 mph (254-332 kph), while the Lacombe-area twister was an EF-1, with winds as strong as 90 mph (145 kph).

Television stations broadcast live images as the storm damaged an area about 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) long and a half-mile (0.8 kilometer) wide in St. Bernard Parish, where Ochsner Health said eight patients were treated in an emergency department.

From the air, the Arabi twisters path reflected in a tight swath of homes that were roofless or reduced to splinters, the wreckage line interrupted in spots where the tornado apparently skipped over buildings. Outside that destruction, homes appeared intact.

Michael Talamantez talks to a firefighter in his house on Stratford Drive in Round Rock, Texas, after it was destroyed by a tornado while he was inside on Monday March 21, 2022. "I thought I was going to die," Talamantez said. (Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman via AP)

Louisiana activated 300 National Guard personnel to clear roads and provide support.

Arabi is near New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward. Like that New Orleans neighborhood, it was wrecked by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and hit hard again when Hurricane Ida swept through last year.

Baiamonte said he and his family had lived in Arabi when Katrina hit. They moved away, but returned a few years ago. He said there was much new construction in the area, owing to a parish government push encouraging more development.

A house on Monkey Road in Elgin, Texas, on Tuesday March 22, 2022, is damaged by a tornado that struck Monday. Multiple tornadoes ripped through parts of Texas and Oklahoma, killing at least one person and causing multiple injuries and widespread damage before the storm system moved on to Louisiana and Mississippi. (Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman via AP)

It just kept getting louder and louder, resident Michelle Malasovich said of Tuesday's storm. Her house and Jeep were damaged. Others fared worse: Our neighbors house is in the middle of the street right now.

The couple inside that home emerged from the wreckage seeking help to rescue their daughter, who was on a breathing machine and trapped inside, neighbors and authorities said. St. Bernard Parish President Guy McInnis later said the girl was doing fine.

Lauren Neupert wasnt at her Arabi home when the tornado hit Tuesday night, but her partner and their 2-year-old daughter were, hiding in the bathroom. They emerged unharmed. But blue sky was visible Wednesday where the roof had ripped off.

Authorities survey damage in the Lower 9th Ward, Tuesday, March 22, 2022, in New Orleans, after strong storms moved through the area. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

I know it will be months before Im able to come back to my house, Neupert said.

Ready, Pet, Go! Leesa Dahl looks at everything to do with our furry, fuzzy, feathered, fishy (and more!) pet friends. Arrives in your inbox each Monday. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement.

As the storm front moved eastward, an apparent twister shredded a metal building and shattered windows east of Mobile Bay. The weather service reported more than 8 inches (20 centimeters) of rainfall in the central Alabama city of Sylacauga overnight. The roofs of several homes were damaged in Toxey, Alabama, where tornado warnings were issued.

The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency said a dozen counties had damage to homes and two injuries were reported.

Debris lines the roads as crews and homeowners work to repair properties damaged by severe weather in Elgin, Texas, Tuesday, March 22, 2022. Officials say multiple tornadoes ripped through parts of Texas and Oklahoma on Monday. (AP Photo/Acacia Coronado)

The vicious weather hit Texas on Monday, with several tornadoes reported along the Interstate 35 corridor. In Elgin, broken trees lined the rural roads and pieces of metal hung from the branches as residents stepped gingerly through the mess.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said 10 people were injured by storms in the Crockett area, while more than a dozen were reportedly hurt elsewhere. The Grayson County Emergency Management Office said a 73-year-old woman was killed in Sherwood Shores, about 60 miles (95 kilometers) north of Dallas, but provided no details.

___

Associated Press journalists Meg Kinnard in Columbia, South Carolina; Jay Reeves in Birmingham, Alabama; Kimberly Chandler in Montgomery, Alabama; Ken Miller in Oklahoma City; Jill Bleed in Little Rock, Arkansas; Terry Wallace in Dallas; Janet McConnaughey and Kevin McGill in New Orleans; and Acacia Coronado in Austin, Texas, contributed to this report.
OTTAWA - Advocates say they hope the agreement reached by the Liberals and New Democrats for a national pharmacare program will lead to coverage for some illicit substances.

A man sits on a sidewalk along East Hastings Street in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, Thursday, Feb 7, 2019. Liberal-NDP deal on pharmacare should include some illicit substances, advocates say. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward

OTTAWA - Advocates say they hope the agreement reached by the Liberals and New Democrats for a national pharmacare program will lead to coverage for some illicit substances.

Natasha Touesnard, executive director of the Canadian Association of People Who Use Drugs, said her organization has been calling for substances like cocaine, methamphetamines and heroin to be added to the list of drugs that are approved in a national pharmacare plan.

Eris Nyx, co-founder of the Drug User Liberation Front, agreed that including substances like opiates and stimulants in the pharmacare guidelines would be important, and that safe supply programs should be covered.

Petra Schulz, co-founder of advocacy group Moms Stop The Harm, said Tuesday she is hopeful that a pharmacare program would cover these types of substances if people need it.

Coverage for illicit substances would also help people access safe supply, especially among marginalized groups, such as people of colour and Indigenous peoples, Schulz said.

Nyx cautioned that she does not think these steps would meaningfully address drug overdose deaths in the community, and should only be used as interventions of last resort for people who have chaotic patterns of substance use.

"I couldn't go to my doctor and be like, 'Could you prescribe me a bottle of scotch for free that the government pays for?' If you substitute any of the narcotics for alcohol, it wouldn't make sense to put your focus on the medical system," she said by way of illustration.

Addressing the overdose crisis requires a range of models outside of a medical or prescriber-based system, Nyx said, such as a compassion club which distributes clean-tested drugs to its membership.

A medicalized model of access will be less useful to people who use drugs since many have had negative experiences in health-care settings, said Touesnard.

"Even if you have every drug available for people, they're not going to show up because of previous interactions, trauma and all these other sorts of things that happen when you're somebody that uses drugs," she said.

The Liberals and NDP reached an agreement this week that would see the opposition party support Justin Trudeau's minority government through to 2025 in exchange for progress on NDP priorities like pharmacare.

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.

New Democrat MP and health critic Don Davies said he does not see a connection at all between the proposed national pharmacare program and safe supply.

Since January 2016, almost 25,000 Canadians have died from opioid-related causes, excluding Quebec, according to the Public Health Agency of Canada.

In 2020, Health Canada funded 10 safer supply pilot projects in British Columbia, Ontario and New Brunswick. Early findings from an assessment of the pilots said people reported a reduction in their reliance on the toxic drug supply, improved quality of life and decreased overdose risk.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 23, 2022.

---

This story was produced with the financial assistance of the Meta and Canadian Press News Fellowship.
OTTAWA - NDP health critic Don Davies says he expects the Liberal government to fulfil its renewed promise to deliver national pharmacare, but perhaps not all at once.

NDP MP Don Davies speaks during a news conference on blood plasma clinics in Ottawa, Tuesday, November 15, 2016. NDP health critic Don Davies says he expects the Liberals to make good its promise to deliver national pharmacare, but perhaps not all at once. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

OTTAWA - NDP health critic Don Davies says he expects the Liberal government to fulfil its renewed promise to deliver national pharmacare, but perhaps not all at once.

The Liberals have promised in their new confidence and supply agreement with the NDP that they will pass a Canada Pharmacare Act by the end of next year.

They have also agreed to task the National Drug Agency with the development of a national formulary of essential medicines and bulk purchasing plan by the time the deal ends in 2025.

In exchange for movement on pharmacare and a host of other NDP priorities, the opposition party has agreed to support the minority Liberal government through confidence votes, which means they would remain in power for three more years.

The Liberals made universal pharmacare a core part of their 2019 election platform, but by the 2021 campaign they gave it barely a mention. Pharmacare was also missing from the last throne speech.

Davies said he doesn't necessarily expect to see a universal, national program tabled as part of the legislation, but rather see it built up over many years.

He compared the NDP's progress on pharmacare to Tommy Douglas  dubbed the father of medicare  and his road to establishing public health care in Canada in the 1960s.

"You get it started, and then you build on it," Davies said in an interview.

The Liberals' deal with the NDP lays out a specific approach to dental care, starting with kids under the age of 12 in families with an annual income of less than $90,000. But the approach to pharmacare is significantly more vague.

There is no telling what could be included in the promised pharmacare law, and Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos was tight lipped about how he plans to approach it.

"How exactly it will look like, that is going to be seen," Duclos said at a press conference Wednesday. "There is a lot more to do and we look forward to doing it with the assistance and the collaboration of the NDP."

While the government did not run on pharmacare in the last election, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's mandate letter to Duclos suggested he work toward pharmacare on a province-by-province basis.

The Liberals launched a $35-million pilot project with Prince Edward Island in 2021 to add to the list of drugs covered by the provincial drug cost assistance program and lower costs for people covered under other public plans.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said Tuesday he believes pharmacare should be universal, but added it could start small.

"We might start by covering medication that is needed for people living with diabetes, or people that need heart medication," he said at a press conference Tuesday, suggesting the formulary, or list of covered medications, could grow over time.

Duclos said the government has made steady progress toward pharmacare, with the ongoing establishment of the Canadian Drug Agency and investment in a national strategy for drugs to treat rare diseases.

A report on national dialogue around pharmacare commissioned by the Liberals in 2018 strongly suggested a universal, single-payer, public pharmacare system.

Major questions remain about how the program will work, once established. The biggest question remains, who will pay for it?

In 2017, the Parliamentary Budget Officer pegged the cost of a full-fledged pharmacare plan with a comprehensive list of covered drugs at about $23.7 billion for 2020-2021.

It would be unsustainable for the federal government to take on that cost alone without taking the money from elsewhere or raising taxes, a 2018 analysis by the Institute of Fiscal Studies and Democracy suggested.

But it also found that sharing the cost with provinces would make for a tougher sell.

Dental care may be, in some ways, easier to implement because it is a standalone federal policy while drug plans will need provincial buy-in.

Quebec Premier Francois Legault already has his back up about the Liberal and NDP alliance and any possible moves to wade into provincial jurisdiction.

There is going to be a confrontation, Legault told reporters Wednesday.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford is on the same wavelength, he said, and warned the federal leaders that the provinces would put up a very strong common front to block their way.

Ready, Pet, Go! Leesa Dahl looks at everything to do with our furry, fuzzy, feathered, fishy (and more!) pet friends. Arrives in your inbox each Monday. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement.

Quebec is the only Canadian jurisdiction that has achieved universal drug coverage by making drug insurance mandatory for all residents.

One of the challenges will be navigating the various co-pay and deductible policies across provincial and territorial governments, said Randall Bartlett, former chief economist at the Institute of Fiscal Studies and Democracy and co-author of the institute's analysis.

"What are going to be some of the basic requirements that are going to need to be satisfied in order for provinces to qualify for the funding? Co-pays (are) part of that discussion," Bartlett said in an interview Wednesday.

He said there are many moving pieces that must be worked out, but the program can be adjusted to fit the government's fiscal comfort level.

The government may even wish to offer provinces a per capita transfer of funds to handle the delivery, as it has with provincial childcare agreements.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 23, 2022.
By Trend

The expansion of the Southern Gas Corridor linking Azerbaijan with several EU member states is vital to a strategy that sees gas playing an important role in the transition to net zero carbon emissions, Trend reports with reference to an article of the EU Reporter.

According to the author of the article, after a meeting of the leaders of Italy, Greece, Spain and Portugal in Rome, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi said that they had agreed to push the European Commission to take 'incisive measures' on energy. He noted that Italy could weather a complete short term breakdown in gas supplies from Russia thanks to the Trans-Adriatic gas pipeline, the European part of the Southern Gas Corridor.

Moreover, Spain is also promoting with an Italian energy infrastructure firm the construction of a new offshore gas pipeline that would extend the supply route to the Iberian Peninsula, said the article.

"The Trans-Adriatic operating company says capacity can be doubled from 10 billion to 20 billion cubic meters of gas a year. The capacity of the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP) across Turkey, itself a major consumer of Azeri gas, will be nearly doubled in the next four to five years, from 16 billion to 31 billion cubic meters. The issue of improving the gas connection between Greece and Bulgaria is being addressed as well," said the article.

The article stressed that at a conference in Baku, EU Commissioner for Neighbourhood and Enlargement Oliver Varhelyi described Azerbaijani gas as a very valuable part of the EU's energy balance. He said it was also important to extend supplies to the EU candidate countries in the western Balkans in order to end their use of coal and reduce their emissions by 55 percent.

"Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson spoke diplomatically of a delicate moment in terms of the security of gas supplies," the article said. "She noted that Azerbaijan was a reliable and trusted partner. As well as massive oil and gas reserves, Azerbaijan has a growing renewable energy sector. President Ilham Aliyev has said that the joint energy policy goes beyond the issues of energy diversification and energy security, as it creates new links between countries and increases the level of mutual trust.
There were eyebrows raised and some finger-wagging regarding self-serving transactions but one year after Samir Manji and Sandpiper Group gained control of the board of Winnipeg-based Artis REIT investors cant feel too bad.

Opinion

There were eyebrows raised and some finger-wagging regarding self-serving transactions but one year after Samir Manji and Sandpiper Group gained control of the board of Winnipeg-based Artis REIT investors cant feel too bad.

With the release of its annual results earlier this month, the real estate company has a smaller footprint  the value of total investment properties is down about 12 per cent and total revenue was down 8.6 per cent but the REIT increased its profits by 1,706 per cent.

As promised the company sold off a lot of properties  41 in total  including a sizable portion of its industrial portfolio, the most in-demand asset class in the real estate market these days.

There are some who question the wisdom of selling off more than $700 million of industrial properties in the Greater Toronto Area when thats exactly the kind of investments many others are desiring to make.

But the sell-off allowed the company to reduce its once over-sized debt load, a major point of contention for Sandpiper to take its initial action on Artis. Debt to book value at the end of the year was 42.9 per cent, down from 49.3 per cent.

Net asset value per unit, which is an important performance indicator for REITs, increased to $17.37 from $15.03.

In a long "letter to unitholders" published on Tuesday, Manji said, "The proceeds from divestitures provided us with the financial flexibility to make significant progress in the execution of our strategy."

The idea was to then use some of the proceeds of the divestitures to invest in other REITs or publicly traded real estate companies, partner with private developers or purchase buildings that Artis believes are undervalued.

Artis established a formal relationship with Manjis family-owned business, Vancouver-based Sandpiper Group, to identify public securities investment opportunities even though it was similar non arms-length transactions undertaken by Artiss former management team led by former CEO Armin Martens that inspired the proxy battle to take over Artis.

But among other things that decision gave Artis an opportunity to partner with other funds in acquiring Cominar REIT for $5.7 billion. Cominars properties are primarily in Quebec.

When the Artis takeover was completed a year ago analysts worried that existing unitholders might wander off. But as per the plan, unit prices are up 21 per cent from a year ago helped by a healthy share buyback program.

The company has also pledged to create value with well-managed development projects. Although it sold off much of its industrial portfolio it is in the process of building large industrial development in Houston and Phoenix.

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.

Perhaps the companys highest profile development  literally and figuratively  is the 40-storey 300 Main project in Winnipeg just south of Portage and Main. Pre-leasing is now underway for the apartments on the first 20 floors of the building.

Rather than just acquiring, developing and/or managing properties, under Manjis leadership the company is also investing in other REITs where it is believed they own real estate that is mispriced, misunderstood or mismanaged.

It does not disclose those investments other than a 10 per cent stake in Dream Office Real Estate Investment Trust.

Its plan for this year includes selling off about $500 million of assets in several Canadian and U.S. markets to continue to pay down debt and "to reallocate some of the capital into initiatives that we believe will achieve the highest possible return," Manji said in his letter.

While he told unitholders that he couldnt guarantee similar performance every year, he said, "The heavy lifting in 2021 planted seeds for growth in 2022. As we move through the next year and focus on the execution of our strategy, our unitholders will see these efforts continue to bear fruit."

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca
TORONTO - Bank of Montreal is expecting to generate at least $2.7 billion in gross proceeds from a public offering to help fund the US$16.3-billion acquisition of Bank of the West in the United States.

A Bank of Montreal sign is shown in the financial district in Toronto on Tuesday, August 22, 2017. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette

TORONTO - Bank of Montreal is expecting to generate at least $2.7 billion in gross proceeds from a public offering to help fund the US$16.3-billion acquisition of Bank of the West in the United States.

The Toronto-based bank says it will issue 18.1 million shares at a price of $149 per common share, below Tuesday's closing price of $153.72.

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 offering is being underwritten on a bought-deal basis by a syndicate of underwriters led by BMO Capital Markets.

BMO has granted the underwriters an option to purchase up to an additional 2.7 million shares for $402 million, exercisable at any time up to 30 days after closing of the offering, expected March 29.

The offering is not conditional on the closing of the acquisition and shares sold will remain outstanding whether or not the deal is completed.

The bank says it expects to fund the acquisition primarily with excess capital.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 22, 2022.

Companies in this story: (TSX:BMO)
WASHINGTON (AP)  Baby formula maker Abbott failed to maintain sanitary conditions and procedures at the Michigan manufacturing plant recently linked to a cluster of infant illnesses, according to findings released Tuesday by federal safety inspectors.

WASHINGTON (AP)  Baby formula maker Abbott failed to maintain sanitary conditions and procedures at the Michigan manufacturing plant recently linked to a cluster of infant illnesses, according to findings released Tuesday by federal safety inspectors.

The Food and Drug Administration posted its initial inspection findings from the Abbott plant that's been tied to several infant hospitalizations, including two deaths, due to a rare bacterial infection. Abbott recalled various lots of three popular powdered infant formulas in mid-February. FDA inspectors have been on-site inspecting the Sturgis, Michigan, facility since late January.

Abbott didn't maintain clean surfaces used in producing and handling the powdered formula, according to the FDA inspection, which concluded last week. Additionally, inspectors found a history of contamination with the bacteria, known as cronobacter, including eight instances between fall 2019 and February of this year.

The report gives the agency's preliminary findings and is likely to be followed by a formal report and a warning to the company.

Food safety advocates who have followed the recall noted that neither the FDA nor the company has been able to explain what caused the contamination.

This sheds a little more light on what went wrong, but we still dont have all the answers, said Sarah Sorscher of the Center for Science in the Public Interest. Abbott and the FDA really need to do more work to get to the bottom of what happened so we can prevent the next outbreak.

Abbott said in a statement it is taking this very seriously and working closely with the FDA to implement corrective actions.

Abbott has not confirmed how many units have been recalled, but the companys brands include some of the best-selling baby formulas in the world, including Similac, Alimentum and EleCare. The company says it continues to produce baby formula at its other plants in the U.S. and overseas.

The recalls have exacerbated ongoing shortages of infant formula due to supply chain issues.

Infections with the cronobacter bacteria are rare but can be fatal in babies. Almost all outbreaks reported in the U.S. have been linked to powdered baby formulas, which dont undergo the same high temperatures used to kill germs in many other foods. Manufacturers have long said that its impossible to eliminate all bacteria from the formulas.

There had been little new information about the recall since last month, despite requests from Senate lawmakers for Abbott to turn over documents on conditions at the Michigan plant.

In a letter last month, members of the Senate health committee specifically asked Abbott about the amount of time it took to start the recall. According to the letter, Abbott first received a report of an illness tied to its formula from Minnesota health officials in September, with additional reports in coming months from Ohio and Texas.

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.

Its also unclear why the FDA didn't take action at the plant earlier. FDA inspectors visited the plant in late September and cited several problems, including unsanitary conditions, a lack of temperature controls, and employees who failed to sanitize their hands. But none of the problems resulted in a formal FDA warning or requirement that Abbott halt production.

The FDA released the September inspection report Tuesday evening along with another from 2019.

In addition to its plant inspectors, the FDA has scientists at its Washington headquarters who specialize in food outbreaks linked to baby food and formulas. A high-ranking FDA deputy commissioner is also assigned to oversee food safety issues.

The recalled Abbott products can be identified by examining the coding on the bottom of each container. The affected formulas all have an expiration date of April 1, 2022, or later. The company has set up a website where parents can check if products have been recalled.

___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institutes Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
OTTAWA - Statistics Canada says the number of people travelling to Canada in January was up from a year earlier, but remained a fraction of where it was before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Passengers check in at Toronto's Pearson Airport on Friday, Oct. 29, 2021. Statistics Canada says the number of people travelling to Canada in January was up from a year earlier, but remained a fraction of where it was before the COVID-19 pandemic. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young

OTTAWA - Statistics Canada says the number of people travelling to Canada in January was up from a year earlier, but remained a fraction of where it was before the COVID-19 pandemic.

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 agency says the number of trips by U.S. residents to Canada in January was 218,600, up from 86,500 a year earlier, but well short of the 1.2 million in January 2020.

The number of residents of countries other than the U.S. arriving in Canada in January totalled 79,700, up from 34,500 in January 2021, however that total was nearly 365,600 in January 2020.

Statistics Canada says Canadian residents returned from 690,200 trips to the United States in January, up from 265,000 a year earlier, but down from the 3.1 million trips in January 2020.

The number of Canadian residents returning from visiting overseas totalled 463,700 in January, up from 160,500 in January 2021, but down from 1.4 million in January 2020.

As COVID-19 cases surged at the end of last year, Ottawa advised Canadians on Dec. 15 to avoid non-essential travel outside of Canada. and, on Dec. 21, required all travellers entering Canada to provide a negative COVID-19 molecular test.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 23, 2022.
MIAMI BEACH, Fla. (AP)  Miami Beach city commissioners agreed to extend an emergency curfew Tuesday, a day after it was announced by the city manager in response to violent spring break incidents that saw five people wounded in two separate shootings.

FILE - A police officer on an ATV patrols in Miami Beach, Florida's famed South Beach, Monday, March 22, 2021. City of Miami Beach officials declared a state of emergency on Monday, March 21, 2022, and an upcoming curfew, bidding to curb violent incidents at spring break that saw five people wounded in two separate shootings. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee, File)

MIAMI BEACH, Fla. (AP)  Miami Beach city commissioners agreed to extend an emergency curfew Tuesday, a day after it was announced by the city manager in response to violent spring break incidents that saw five people wounded in two separate shootings.

The commission voted unanimously during a special meeting to keep a midnight to 6 a.m. curfew in place for the city's South Beach area through at least Monday.

The state of emergency declared Monday by City Manager Alina Hudak would have started the curfew early Thursday after midnight and run through Saturday. Besides the curfew, the commission's Tuesday vote to give the city manager the power to stop liquor stores and other retailers from selling alcohol in the area.

Several commissioners acknowledged that the city might be sued by business owners, who normally make a lot of money in March, but they all agreed that keeping residents and visitors safe was the priority.

You cannot balance public safety with revenue, Mayor Dan Gelber said.

Thousands of college students and other young people gather each year in Miami Beach for spring break, and this is the second year in a row that officials for the South Florida city have declared a state of emergency in this famed partying spot.

Three people were wounded early Sunday on a street crowded with spring breakers in the city's South Beach neighborhood, police said. Two victims wounded at the scene were taken to a hospital, while doctors at another hospital reported a third person arrived there with a gunshot wound. All were expected to survive.

Ready, Pet, Go! Leesa Dahl looks at everything to do with our furry, fuzzy, feathered, fishy (and more!) pet friends. Arrives in your inbox each Monday. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement.

Early Monday, officers were patrolling about a block from the Sunday morning shooting site when they heard gunshots, police said. The officers found two women with gunshot wounds though police said their wounds weren't life-threatening.

At the urging of some residents, city officials have been working in recent years to crack down on unruly behavior in South Beach. But moves to curb the excessive drinking and violence have raised complaints about racism, classism and business practices.

Joshua Wallack, chief operating officer of Mangos Tropical Cafe, represents one of the Ocean Drive businesses that have pushed back against attempts by city officials to ban alcohol sales after 2 a.m. instead of 5 a.m. But Wallack said he understood the need for the emergency curfew.

They're reacting to the conditions that are present and doing what's best for the city, Wallack said.

Events like the Miami Beach Live concert series have helped control crowds this year, Wallack said. The problems seems to arise when large groups of people just hang around outside with nothing to do, he said. Wallack said he hopes the city can arrange for more events in the future.

More than 1,000 people were arrested last March, when the city imposed an 8 p.m. curfew. Authorities at the time sent military style vehicles to disperse predominantly Black crowds with rubber bullets, prompting criticism from Black activists.
TORONTO - Some of the most active companies traded Tuesday on the Toronto Stock Exchange:

Toronto Stock Exchange (22,074.35, up 65.22 points.)

Canadian Natural Resources (TSX:CNQ). Energy. Down $1.16, or 1.5 per cent, to $77.61 on 16 million shares.

Cenovus Energy Inc. (TSX:CVE). Energy. Down 14 cents, or 0.7 per cent, to $20.06 on 8.7 million shares.

Manulife Financial Corp. (TSX:MFC). Financials. Up 46 cents, or 1.8 per cent, to $26.34 on 7.8 million shares.

TC Energy Corp. (TSX:TRP). Energy. Down 18 cents, or 0.3 per cent, to $70.37 on 6.8 million shares.

Bank of Nova Scotia (TSX:BNS). Financials. Up 91 cents, or one per cent, to $93.73 on 6.6 million shares.

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.

Crescent Point Energy Corp. (TSX:CPG). Energy. Up four cents, or 0.4 per cent, to $9.22 on 6.4 million shares.

Companies in the news:

Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. (TSX:CP). Up $1.63 or 1.6 per cent to $102.80. Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. rail employees are back on the job, but one labour relations expert says it could take weeks before matters are settled between the country's second-largest railway and the union representing 3,000 conductors, engineers, train and yard workers. CP Rail and Teamsters Canada Rail Conference announced early Tuesday that they have agreed to final and binding arbitration to end a work stoppage that began on the weekend. Robert Hickey, a labour and employment professor at Queen's University, said CP Rail is well aware of the importance and need to manage labour relations and bring the dispute to a quick settlement, as it waits for approval from a U.S. regulator on its merger with U.S. railway Kansas City Southern. In a statement early Tuesday morning, Teamsters Canada Rail Conference spokesperson Dave Fulton said while binding arbitration was not the preferred method, the union was able to negotiate terms and conditions that were in the best interest of its members, with wages and pensions still stumbling blocks.

Quarterhill Inc. (TSX:QTRH). Up 21 cents to $2.31. Shares of Quarterhill Inc. gained 10 per cent Tuesday after its WiLAN Inc. subsidiary and WiLAN's subsidiary Polaris Innovations Ltd. signed a patent licence agreement with Apple Inc. The deal includes the settlement and dismissal of all litigation pending between the companies in the United States, Canada and Germany. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed. In February, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled in WiLAN's favour in its dispute with Apple in a patent infringement case. The Appeal Court had sent the case back to the district court level to determine damages.

Air Canada (TSX:AC). Up 82 cents or 3.5 per cent to $24.36. Air Canada says it is acquiring 26 new extra-long range Airbus A321neo aircraft. The airline says deliveries are to begin in the first quarter of 2024 with the last aircraft to arrive in the first quarter of 2027. Fifteen of the aircraft will be leased from Air Lease Corp. and five will be leased from AerCap. Air Canada will also buy six under a deal with Airbus S.A.S. that includes purchase rights for an additional 14 aircraft between 2027 and 2030. Financial terms of the deals were not immediately available. The aircraft will be able to carry 182 passengers with 14 lie-flat seats and 168 economy-class seats. Air Canada says the new planes will have a range of approximately 8,700 kilometres and be able to operate non-stop anywhere across North America and, pending Transport Canada approval, also fly transatlantic routes.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 22, 2022.
HALIFAX - Spending for hospitals, schools and roads in Nova Scotia is poised to hit its highest level at $1.5 billion for the 2022-23 fiscal year.

Nova Scotia Finance Minister Allan MacMaster provides an update on Budget 2021-22 in Halifax on Wednesday, Sept. 29, 2021. Nova Scotias Progressive Conservative government is proposing the provinces largest ever capital budget with over $1.5-billion in spending for hospitals, schools and roads for 2022-23. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Andrew Vaughan

HALIFAX - Spending for hospitals, schools and roads in Nova Scotia is poised to hit its highest level at $1.5 billion for the 2022-23 fiscal year.

The capital budget released Wednesday by Finance Minister Allan MacMaster has the province's building plan topping the $1-billion mark for the third consecutive year.

The plan, which is subject to the legislature's adoption of the yet-to-be-tabled 2022-23 provincial budget, is highlighted by $464.6 million for ongoing hospital redevelopment projects in Halifax and Sydney. That funding envelope is a large increase compared with last year, when the two projects received $178.2 million.

This (plan) will ensure Nova Scotians have greater access to modern hospitals and medical equipment, schools, highways and other improved infrastructure, MacMaster told reporters. We have been clear from Day 1 that our government is committed to addressing health-care issues. Health and wellness funding in this years plan is $629.5 million.

MacMaster said there is also $122.6 million for the construction and repair of hospitals and other medical facilities in Pugwash, Bridgewater and Yarmouth, as well as $32 million to replace medical equipment.

Finance officials did not give a funding breakdown for the two hospital redevelopments in Halifax and Sydney, saying both projects are in various stages of tendering and construction.

The capital spending plan includes money for the estimated $2-billion redevelopment of the QEII Health Sciences Centre in Halifax. The province is planning to construct a new outpatient facility in Bayers Lake and a parkade facility and administration building near the Halifax Infirmary hospital site.

The more than $100-million Cape Breton Regional Hospital project will receive funding for initiatives including the expansion of the facilitys cancer centre.

Those (projects) are really generational builds, MacMaster said. Its intimidating to look at the price of these developments, but the investments need to be made.

The budget includes $175.3 million to build and renovate 15 schools and $80.9 million to continue work at Nova Scotia Community Colleges Marconi campus in Sydney and to start construction on new residences at two of the colleges campuses in Dartmouth and one in Pictou.

There is also $507.8 million for highway construction and improvements that were previously announced in January as part of the governments five-year highway plan.

The minister said funding for affordable housing and long-term care would be included in the Progressive Conservative governments first budget, which will be tabled next Tuesday.

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.

Meanwhile, MacMaster warned that current inflationary pressures could push up costs associated with the overall capital plan. He pointed to the price of oil, which he said could affect such things as the transport of construction materials. He said asphalt mixtures for road construction could also rise in price because they contain oil.

There are contingency (funding) amounts for a lot of these projects, he said. We dont know exactly where inflation will go  but its certainly a cause for concern.

Still, MacMaster said record capital spending continues to be possible because of historically low interest rates.

The government is regularly refinancing its debt at rates as low as two and a half or three per cent.

That is one plus when it comes to spending a lot of money right now, MacMaster said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 23, 2022.
WUZHOU, China (AP)  A Chinese aviation official said Wednesday that one of the two black box recorders had been found in severely damaged condition, two days after a China Eastern flight crashed in southern China with 132 people on board.

In this photo released by Xinhua News Agency, rescue workers search for the black boxes at a plane crash site in Tengxian county, southwestern China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, Tuesday, March 22, 2022. A China Eastern flight 5735 carrying 123 passengers and nine crew members crashed outside the city of Wuzhou in the Guangxi region while flying from Kunming, the capital of the southwestern province of Yunnan, to Guangzhou, an industrial center not far from Hong Kong on China's southeastern coast. It ignited a fire big enough to be seen on NASA satellite images before firefighters could extinguished it. (Zhou Hua/Xinhua via AP)

WUZHOU, China (AP)  A Chinese aviation official said Wednesday that one of the two black box recorders had been found in severely damaged condition, two days after a China Eastern flight crashed in southern China with 132 people on board.

The device is so damaged that investigators were not able to tell whether it is the flight data recorder or the cockpit voice recorder, said Mao Yanfeng, the director of the accident investigation division of the Civil Aviation Authority of China.

He told a news conference that an all-out effort is being made to find the other black box.

Recovering the so-called black boxes  they are usually painted orange for visibility  is considered key to figuring out what caused the crash. It wasn't clear if the damage to the recovered one would limit its usefulness.

Zhu Tao, Director of Aviation Safety, Civil Aviation Administration of China speaks during a news conference following the China Eastern plane crash, at a hotel in Wuzhou, in southwestern China's Guangxi province, Tuesday, March 22, 2022. A China Eastern flight 5735 carrying 123 passengers and nine crew members crashed outside the city of Wuzhou in the Guangxi region while flying from Kunming, the capital of the southwestern province of Yunnan, to Guangzhou, an industrial center not far from Hong Kong on China's southeastern coast. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

The search for clues into why a Chinese commercial jetliner dove suddenly and crashed into a mountain in southern China had been suspended earlier Wednesday as rain slickened the debris field and filled the red-dirt gash formed by the planes fiery impact.

Searchers had been using hand tools, drones and sniffer dogs under rainy conditions to comb the heavily forested slopes for the flight data and cockpit voice recorders, as well as any human remains. Crews also worked to pump water from the pit created when the plane hit the ground, but their efforts were suspended around midmorning because small landslides were possible on the steep, slick slopes.

The black box was found in the afternoon. The flight data recorder captures information about the planes airspeed, altitude, direction up or down, pilot actions, and performance of all key systems. The cockpit voice recorder captures sounds including conversations and background engine noise during the flight.

Relatives of passengers began arriving Wednesday at the gate to Lu village just outside the crash zone, where they, along with reporters on the scene, were stopped by police and officials who used opened umbrellas to block the view beyond.

One woman was overheard saying her husband, the father of their two children, had been on board the flight.

Relatives of passengers onboard the China Eastern Flight 5735 arrive near the crash site, Wednesday, March 23, 2022, Lu village, in southwestern China's Guangxi province. The search for clues into why a plane made an inexplicable dive and crashed into a mountain in southern China was suspended Wednesday as rain slicked the debris field and filled the red-dirt gash formed by the plane's fiery impact. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

I'm just going in there to take a look. Am I breaking the law?" she said. The woman and a companion were then escorted away and reporters told to stop filming.

Another man, who gave just his surname, Ding, said his sister-in-law had been on the plane. He said he hoped to visit the site but had been told little by the authorities.

Were just coming here to have a look," said Ding, adding, My heart sank all of a sudden," upon hearing about the crash. He too was escorted away.

China Eastern Flight 5735 was carrying 123 passengers and nine crew from Kunming in Yunnan province to Guangzhou, an industrial center on Chinas southeastern coast, when it crashed Monday afternoon outside the city of Wuzhou in the Guangxi region. All 132 people on board are presumed killed.

Investigators say it is too early to speculate on the cause. The plane went into an unexplained dive an hour after departure and stopped transmitting data 96 seconds into the fall.

An air-traffic controller tried to contact the pilots several times after seeing the planes altitude drop sharply, but got no reply, a grim-faced Zhu Tao, director of the Office of Aviation Safety at the Civil Aviation Authority of China, said at a Tuesday evening news conference.

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.

As of now, the rescue has yet to find survivors, Zhu said. The public security department has taken control of the site.

China Eastern is headquartered in Shanghai and is one of Chinas three largest carriers with more than 600 planes, including 109 Boeing 737-800s. China's Transport Ministry said China Eastern has grounded all of its 737-800s, a move that could further disrupt domestic air travel already curtailed because of the largest COVID-19 outbreak in China since the initial peak in early 2020.

The Boeing 737-800 has been flying since 1998 and has a well-established safety record. It is an earlier model than the 737 Max, which was grounded worldwide for nearly two years after deadly crashes in 2018 and 2019.

Monday's crash was China's worst in more than a decade. In August 2010, an Embraer ERJ 190-100 operated by Henan Airlines hit the ground short of the runway in the northeastern city of Yichun and caught fire. It carried 96 people and 44 of them died. Investigators blamed pilot error.

___

Moritsugu reported from Beijing. Associated Press researcher Yu Bing and news assistant Caroline Chen in Beijing; researcher Chen Si in Shanghai; and video producer Olivia Zhang in Wuzhou, China; contributed to this report.
Canadas largest private sector union alleged Wednesday that its former national president Jerry Dias accepted $50,000 from a supplier of COVID-19 rapid test kits he promoted to employers of union members, several of whom purchased those test kits.

Unifor National President Jerry Dias and the Unifor Bargaining Committee representatives announced a new tentative agreement with GM on behalf of 1700 members who work in St. Catharines, Oshawa and Woodstock in advance of tonight 11:59 pm strike deadline on Thursday, November 5, 2020 in Toronto. Unifor will provide an update this afternoon on the complaint filed that former Unifor National President Jerry Dias breached the Unifor Constitution. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Carlos Osorio

Canadas largest private sector union alleged Wednesday that its former national president Jerry Dias accepted $50,000 from a supplier of COVID-19 rapid test kits he promoted to employers of union members, several of whom purchased those test kits.

Unifor national secretary-treasurer Lana Payne said at a press conference Wednesday that Dias is being charged with violating the code of ethics and democratic practices of the union's constitution after an internal investigation.

"What you're about to hear will be distressing, but I remind you all that no one member is above our constitution, not the highest ranking elected officers, no one," Payne said. "We are all equal under that constitution."

She announced Dias will now be subject to a hearing hosted by the union's executive board as soon as April, which could result in his Unifor membership being suspended temporarily or permanently.

The allegations Unifor levelled have cast a shadow on Dias, once their tough-talking and scrappy leader, who has sparred with everyone from automakers to politicians in a bid to secure better job security, benefits and rights for workers.

The allegations have unfolded as Dias neared a decade at the helm of the union, which represents about 315,000 workers, and come as he faces health issues.

The union alleged that at some point before Jan. 20, Dias accepted $50,000 from a COVID-19 test kit supplier, which Payne declined to name and said was not a participant in the union's investigation because the company does not employ any Unifor members.

Payne said Dias then gave a Unifor employee what he said was half of those funds, $25,000, on Jan. 20, telling the employee that it had come from the supplier. The employee subsequently filed a complaint under the Unifor code of ethics and delivered the money to Payne.

Unifor would also not identify companies who bought the kits or say how many purchases might have been made because of recommendations from Dias.

No other union members are under investigation in connection with this matter, she said.

Dias was notified of an independent investigation on Jan. 29 and began a medical leave on Feb. 6, citing "ongoing health issues." About a month later, the union announced he was retiring, before adding the next day, that he had was subject to an investigation.

In a statement released just before the union's press conference, Dias revealed he will enter a residential rehabilitation facility and temporarily step away from all of his advisory positions due to his use of pain killers, sleeping pills and alcohol to deal with a sciatic nerve issue.

"These factors have impaired my judgment in recent months, and I owe it to our members to seek the treatment I need," he said.

"My physician has told me, straight up, that I need help."

The union said Dias was asked to participate in the investigation, but that Dias was advised against it by his doctor.

"I hope that he is getting the medical treatment that he feels that he needs," said Payne.

The union has paused campaigning in an election to name Dias' predecessor. Unifor Local 444 president Dave Cassidy and Scott Doherty, who served as Diass executive assistant, are both running.

Asked whether the investigation and forthcoming hearing could result in criminal charges, Payne said the union is seeking legal advice and will fulfil any obligations related to the incident.

"The reins are really in the hands of Unifor, in terms of whether or not criminal charges will be laid, because a lot of the information to support a complaint of that kind has to come from Unifor," said Sunira Chaudhri, a partner at Workly Law in Toronto.

But reporting their allegations to police means Unifor can do little to steer the public narrative, which is important to any organization facing turmoil, she added.

"If there are other instances here of corruption, of bribery, or worse, Unifor is not going to be able to control that message," she said.

Payne has said the incident was "isolated" and based on a "balance of probabilities" because evidence wasn't collected from Dias.

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.

If Unifor were to pursue this matter criminally or in a civil lawsuit, Chaudhri said suppliers, employers and even Dias could be subpoenaed and forced to provide evidence.

"It sort of gives you an opportunity to poke a bit deeper," she said.

Though there's a risk of missteps being made public, those avenues would also build credibility with union members, she said.

"I don't know that they're going to actually end up having the trust of the membership by not pursuing it beyond this transaction because, as an eight-year president with the tenure, access and reach that he's had, to turn a blind eye to what else could have happened might not go over well."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 23, 2022.

Note to readers: This story includes a correction. A previous version included remarks about Unifor's election campaign for a new president that were later clarified by the union.
OTTAWA - NDP and Liberal MPs were generally upbeat about the idea of working together as the dust began to settle following the unexpected announcement that their party leaders had reached a deal to keep the Liberal government going for another three years.

New Democratic Party Leader Jagmeet Singh speaks with the media following caucus, in Ottawa, Wednesday, Dec. 1, 2021. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

OTTAWA - NDP and Liberal MPs were generally upbeat about the idea of working together as the dust began to settle following the unexpected announcement that their party leaders had reached a deal to keep the Liberal government going for another three years.

But some experts warn of the possible ramifications at the ballot box, particularly for the NDP, who are propping up the Liberal minority government in exchange for movement on key NDP priorities like national pharmacare and dental-care programs.

The two caucuses held meetings Wednesday for the first time since they were asked by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh to endorse the confidence and supply agreement in emergency caucus meetings late Monday night.

To avoid leaks, the deal was kept to a small circle of people within both parties and not even most cabinet ministers were aware of the plan until Monday. Singh and Trudeau both pitched it as a solution to the instability and hyper-partisanship of a minority Parliament at a time when many Canadians have little patience left for upheaval.

On the whole, most Liberal and New Democrat MPs agreed.

"I think this is exciting," Ottawa Centre Liberal MP Yasir Naqvi said in an interview. "We have been living through challenging times, caused by the global pandemic and a growing international crisis. Now more than ever, it's important that we work together to develop solutions to make sure we are delivering for Canadians."

Toronto Liberal John McKay said reaction in his world is "relatively positive" and most Liberals thinking it over have likely realized this is not going to affect them that much.

"I think it's just simply a holding deal and stabilization deal," he said. "Nothing more, nothing less."

NDP MP Charlie Angus said the deal would usher in important health-care reforms benefiting Canadians but it would not mean his party would give the Liberals "a free ride in committees" or that New Democrats would be muzzled.

"I've been telling my Liberal colleagues, don't expect me to start being nice to you," he said. "I've got a job to do holding the government to account."

Many observers feel the NDP has more to lose from the deal than the Liberals.

Chris Cochrane, a politics professor at the University of Toronto, said the deal appeared to be a brilliant strategic move for the Liberals and Justin Trudeau but a very big strategic blunder for the NDP.

I really cant see what the benefit to the NDP is, he said.

Cochrane, an expert on minority governments, said the deal would not prevent Trudeau calling an election before 2025 if polls suggested he would win with a firm majority.

But he warned that the NDP-Liberal pact could prove a gift to the Tories.

The Conservatives see it as a way of painting the NDP and Liberals as interchangeable, he said.

Quito Maggi, president of the polling firm Mainstreet Research, said for the NDP the deal could mean the "worst of both worlds"  failing to gain credit for policies such as affordable dentistry they pushed for in the deal, but taking the blame if pharmacare is not introduced before the election.

The text of the agreement says a dental-care plan to cover kids under 12 will be in place by the end of this year, but is more vague on what pharmacare will look like and when.

The Liberal-NDP deal says the government will pass a Canada Pharmacare Act by the end of 2023. But because pharmacare relies on co-operation from provinces the program introducing affordable medication might not be fully realized before a 2025 general election.

"The junior partner is usually the one that gets the short end of the stick," Maggi said.

The deal would see the NDP side with the Liberals on key votes until 2025  meaning it wont bring down the government over the coming budget, for example, which is expected to be tabled in the next few weeks.

Dalhousie University politics professor Lori Turnbull says the NDP isn't getting any more power out of the plan and there is a risk the Liberals can use it to cut short debate on important bills.

"There's an obvious incentive here to take everything and jam it into an omnibus budget bill so that everything has to go through," she said.

"There is a loss for accountability if that's where this ends up."

Turnbull said while deals like this tend to be uncommon, it's fully within normal parliamentary practice for parties to work together, especially in a minority situation.

But she also said the NDP and Liberals already had a lot of common ground and questioned why a deal was even necessary. "To me, this is a bunch of political theatre."

David Coletto, CEO of polling firm Abacus Data, said he thinks it's too soon to say that the smaller party will inevitably lose out.

"Canadians, by and large in the polling I have done, want their political leaders to work together to solve problems," he said.

Coletto said while there are differences between the values of NDP and Liberal voters, both have a level of "animosity" toward the Conservative party.

"Pundits and MPs are very partisan and may see this as in conflict with their partisan views, but most Canadians aren't that partisan," he said.

"Many (NDP voters) would say their second choice was the Liberals  most of them, in fact  and that is true vice versa among Liberal voters."

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.

Conservatives have slammed the deal, saying it is about Trudeau cooking up a way to keep himself and the Liberal government in power.

Conservative MP Marilyn Gladu fears this will see the NDP take the government's side in committees as well.

"In the past, if all of the opposition parties in a minority government disagreed with the government's direction, we could influence  that is gone now," she said Wednesday.

Nothing in the deal requires the NDP to support the Liberals in committees.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 23, 2022.

Note to readers: This is a corrected story. A previous version misspelled the surname of David Coletto, CEO of polling firm Abacus Data.
As the first Black person elected to Winnipeg city council, Markus Chambers says he felt welcomed to the role but does recall, at times, being judged by the colour of his skin.

As the first Black person elected to Winnipeg city council, Markus Chambers says he felt welcomed to the role but does recall, at times, being judged by the colour of his skin.

That includes once speaking at a local gathering and receiving a "compliment" in which the speaker stated: "You speak very well for a person of colour."

"I was kind of taken aback. Its a back-handed compliment, so to speak," said Chambers.

While he stressed many community members have been quite positive about his election, including some recent encouragement he run for mayor this fall, the St Norbert-Seine River councillor said such incidents underline a continuing need to raise awareness about diversity and inclusion.

"We are in a better place (now than before), but theres still room for improvement."

MIKAELA MACKENZIE / FREE PRESS FILES Markus Chambers has become a member of the human rights committee of council and has personally championed efforts to help the City of Winnipeg attract an equitable workforce.

Since his election in 2018, Chambers has become a member of the human rights committee of council and has personally championed efforts to help the City of Winnipeg attract an equitable workforce that better reflects the community it serves.

Chambers has advocated to remove barriers to employment, arguing increasing the diversity of staff would help ensure all community members are reflected within their civic government.

His comments on race and politics come as the city offers a series of presentations aimed to help Winnipeggers understand, identify and eliminate all forms of racism. Chambers said he hopes those discussions, which are set to continue throughout this week, will increase awareness about racism and how Winnipeggers can best address it.

"I think its an important topic and sometimes, we have to feel uncomfortable about these conversations and (let them) move us past our comfort zones. Because, if were continually comfortable we wont change," he said.

MIKAELA MACKENZIE / FREE PRESS FILES Chambers said he hopes those discussions, which are set to continue throughout this week, will increase awareness about racism and how Winnipeggers can best address it.

The councillor said the presentations intend to help Winnipeggers from different backgrounds understand the culture and traditions of others.

"Ive always said that we fear what we dont know. If we can share a bit about our cultures and our heritage and bring awareness, then (others wont) necessarily fear (our differences) anymore."

The councillor said the discussion may also spark new recommendations to council from the human rights committee, which helped city staff host the events.

During Tuesdays presentation, "Friendly Manitoba: Experiences from the Muslim Community," Idris Elbakri revealed a recent survey of Muslim community members found many examples of prejudice in Manitoba.

Daniel Crump / Free Press files Idris Elbakri revealed a recent survey of Muslim community members found many examples of prejudice in Manitoba.

Elbakri, director-at-large for the Manitoba Islamic Association, said the feedback included one report a teacher questioned and harassed two Grade 6 girls who were wearing hijabs.

"He asked her and her friend what would happen if he pulled their hijabs off. He proceeded to harass them during the day, tugging on the hijabs He also pulled (one girls) hair as he walked by her desk," said Elbakri.

Another woman reported being told she would not be hired because she wears a hijab, he added.

"We heard from people experiencing physical assault, verbal assault, (being) threatened by moving vehicles and children suffering from rampant bullying in schools because of their Muslim identities."

Elbakri said the information is now being analyzed for a report, which is expected to be released in April. He said the experiences highlight a pattern of Islamophobia, which has left some Winnipeggers to fear being attacked.

We heard from people experiencing physical assault, verbal assault, (being) threatened by moving vehicles and children suffering from rampant bullying in schools because of their Muslim identities.  Idris Elbakri

He believes education, including the citys anti-racism events, should help foster cultural awareness. He suggested schools add racism and Islamophobia to their curriculum.

On a more personal level, Elbakri said Winnipeggers must avoid assumptions based on persons religion or decision to wear religious garments. He said some girls who wear hijabs complained some educators assumed they needed extra help learning English.

Elbakri challenged Winnipeggers to also find safe ways to "interrupt and defend" those they witness being harassed.

Chambers said such talks are an important step to help inspire Winnipeggers come together as a community.

"Just to have these discussions, it can build on where we are now and where we want to be as a city."

joyanne.pursaga@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @joyanne_pursaga
A recent constitutional challenge to criminal code provisions that allow police to demand roadside breath samples under any circumstances has failed.

A recent constitutional challenge to criminal code provisions that allow police to demand roadside breath samples under any circumstances has failed.

The Manitoba provincial court motion filed by lawyer (and current NDP MLA) Mark Wasyliw was believed to be the first of its kind in the province.

Current mandatory alcohol screening provisions, which were passed by Parliament and came into effect December 2018, authorize police to require roadside breath samples regardless of whether they suspect a driver is intoxicated, provided the traffic stop is legal under common or provincial law.

Prior to the provisions coming into effect, police needed a reasonable suspicion the driver had consumed alcohol to demand a sample. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association expressed concern the changes could unfairly affect racial minorities, while lawyers raised issue with the potential for baseless searches.

According to Wasyliw, thats what happened in his clients case.

At about 3 a.m. April 25, 2019, a Headingley RCMP constable stopped Brendon Day for speeding under the Highway Traffic Act.

The constable did not note any other concerns with Days driving, any signs of impairment or any suspicion he had consumed alcohol, Associate Chief Judge Tracey Lord wrote in a Feb. 3, 2022, decision, in which she dismissed Wasyliws motion.

The constable made Day submit to two breathalyzer tests at the RCMP detachment. He blew over the legal limit, and was charged with two impaired driving offences.

Wasyliw argued the mandatory alcohol screenings were in violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, including the right against arbitrary detention. He sought to have the breathalyzer results thrown out, saying the alcohol screening provision did not apply.

Lord ruled the provisions are a reasonable and justified limit on rights of citizens. She wrote although Wasyliw was correct to note no studies have been done to directly compare suspicion-based screening and mandatory screening, the studies that have been done support the idea mandatory screening is more effective than subjective evaluations.

"When balanced with the diminished right of a driver to keep private the amount of alcohol consumed in a dangerous and already highly regulated activity, I am satisfied the anticipated benefits of (mandatory screening) in Canada outweigh any harm it may cause," Lord wrote.

Wasyliw is a former Winnipeg school board trustee and current NDP MLA who has been practicing law since 2000, with significant experience representing alleged impaired drivers.

He echoed the concerns of civil rights advocates and other lawyers over the erosion of charter rights in an interview with the Free Press, noting he believes his motion was the first to challenge the provisions in Manitobas courts.

"Ive been practicing for 22 years, and over that period of time, charter rights have been getting whittled away more and more by the federal government and people are losing their protections," Wasyliw said Tuesday.

"What really needs to happen is a public interest law centre that has the resources and money and time to basically take it to the (Supreme Court of Canada), because although we were unsuccessful, there are significant problems in the law."

Wasyliw argued one of the issues is not everyone is stopped, making the process arbitrary rather than truly random.

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.

In Days case, the RCMP constable testified he consistently tested all drivers he stopped after 9:00 p.m. or when there had been a motor vehicle collision.

"There are certain demographics that are out driving at that period of time, theres certain people that are more likely going to get pulled over at that period of time, and so its not a random process and it will systematically affect (Black, Indigenous and people of colour) and the most vulnerable and young people," Wasyliw said.

"Theres nothing to say the 60-year-old town alcoholic driving around at two in the afternoon will never get stopped, will never have to go through this process. Theres something inherently unfair about it from our point of view, so we felt this law needed to be changed."

Wasyliw is winding his law practice down, but still takes some cases. He began representing Day prior to taking office as Fort Garry MLA in September 2019.

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @erik_pindera
Phil Sheegl told lawyers for the city he wasnt "a computer geek."

Thats why he said he wouldnt be able to find emails hed sent to a construction company president, with whom a judge recently ruled he conspired with to get a secret commission.

But the RCMP found those emails.

Ultimately, the hundreds of emails didnt lead to criminal charges against Sheegl, or anyone else involved in the awarding of the construction contract for the Winnipeg police headquarters.

However, the messages sent between Sheegl and the president of Caspian Construction played a leading part in last weeks finding that Sheegl was given a $327,000 bribe to award the HQ contract to Caspian.

Its just one of the key points in the 129-page decision by Chief Justice Glenn Joyal of Manitoba Court of Queens Bench.

He ruled that Sheegl, the citys former CEO, had accepted a $327,000 bribe from the president of Caspian.

Joyal also agreed to the request by the city for a summary judgment to equal not just the $327,000 alleged bribe, but also the $250,000 Sheegl was paid in severance when he resigned in late 2013.

More than a decade earlier, before Caspian had submitted an official bid for the contract, its president Armik Babakhanians, emailed Sheegl words that still resonates today: "(the project) will be your and your groups legacy for many years to come."

It began when the outer facade of the police headquarters  the Public Safety Building on Princess Street  was at risk of coming loose and falling on pedestrians and vehicles. For years, the city relied on braces to hold the facade in place and put covered walkways around the building.

The mayor and councillors debated whether they should pay to renovate the PSB or move police to another building.

Around that time, in April 2008, the city hired Sheegl, best known as the developer behind the Sky Waterfront Condominiums, but also the presiding officer of the citys Board of Revision which hears property assessment appeals, as its new director of the planning, property and development department.

Sheegl was also a friend of Sam Katz, who was mayor at the time.

Then-councillor Jenny Gerbasi questioned Sheegls qualifications and the hiring process because it was led by a policy adviser for Katz, who acted as chief administrator.

After Sheegl was hired, Katz said "to be very frank with you, when I first heard Phil was interested, I tried talking him out of it I wouldnt wish that grief and aggravation on anybody, let alone a friend. But as you can see, he didnt take my advice."

By May 2011, Sheegl was promoted to CAO, the citys top bureaucrat.

One year earlier, a few weeks before the Oct. 27, 2010 election in which Katz won the mayoral race, one of the earliest emails reveals a dinner meeting had been set up for Oct. 1 between Katz, Sheegl, Babakhanians and others to "discuss possible business arrangement."

By December, Babakhanians was saying "he (Sheegl) could be Caspians friend for a long time to come" and Sheegl was emailing another civic bureaucrat to talk with the legal department about lowering bond requirements for the police HQ so Caspian would be better positioned to get the contract. Another Sheegl email recommended the deadline for bids be extended by a month.

When the city agreed to extend the deadline for bids, Sheegl emailed Armik saying "Here you go my friend!"

Then, in January, when Babakhanians tells Sheegl they really want the contract, Sheegl responds, "I know and you know I will do everything to help us all succeed here together."

A month later, Babakhanians writes a note to himself saying Sheegl had told him he would get approval for a $126-million budget for the project and "this will remain confidential forever."

Later that year, Caspian was awarded a construction contract to build the police HQ on Graham Avenue, in the former post office. It was worth $137.1 million.

Two years later, when cost overruns took the project up to $210 million, city council ordered an external audit. The audit found the city hadnt appraised the building before buying it. Another audit determined Caspian did not even have to bid for the construction contract it was awarded.

Sheegl, who was interviewed by lawyers as part of the court action, claimed the two payments he received from Babakhanians, totalling $327,000, werent a bribe but the proceeds of a real estate deal to buy an acre of land in Tartesso, Ariz., which he and Katz owned.

But Joyal said that deal was never disclosed to the city and no evidence was even offered in court to substantiate it.

"Were I to find that Sheegls undisclosed receipt of the $327,000 payment from Armik did not constitute a breach of fiduciary duty, I would in my view be sending a preposterous message," Joyal said.

"The message would be nothing short of suggesting that high-ranking public officials can do business in secret with persons seeking contracts from the very public bodies for whom public officials work."

Sheegls lawyer said Sheegl would not commenting on the judges ruling and Katz did not return a message.

Its incredibly rare for a case of bribery to be put before the courts.

The judge said lawyers for the city not only had to rely on Canadian legal decisions, but also precedents from England. Those judgments showed he didnt have to look into the motives behind the bribe, and after an undisclosed payment has been established, "there is indeed an irrebuttable presumption that the payor intended to influence the payee, that the payee was in fact influenced, and that the principal has suffered damage in the amount of the bribe."

Then there is that deck that was built at Sheegls residence.

The city found out about it in those emails the RCMP had found.

In a note from Babakhanians to Sheegl on May 30, 2013, the subject line was "your deck" and a message said "its scheduled for June 13."

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.

After a bill was sent to Babakhanians from Deck City, asking for payment, he sent a response to the company, and blind-copied Sheegl, saying he would ask the clients who received the deck if they were happy with it.

Sheegls response? "They did a good job, it looks fabulous." Another email, from Sheegls wife to Babakhanians a year later, asked for the name of the company that had built the deck.

Joyal said that years later, Sheegl showed city lawyers a cheque for $8,534.41 he had sent to a company which was a subcontractor for Caspian.

Noting the cheque was dated, Oct. 15, 2017, more than four years after the deck was completed, Joyal said "the city asks and this court wonders, what could possibly have prompted Sheegls payment after more than four years?

"(The) city insists that it was the publicity regarding the previous payments and the RCMP seizure that suggested to Sheegl that it would be prudent to reimburse (the subcontractor)."

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca
When Alyssa Rempel saw the horrible images coming from the war in Ukraine, she wanted to do something to help. So she bought a hedgehog anti-tank obstacle.

When Alyssa Rempel saw the horrible images coming from the war in Ukraine, she wanted to do something to help. So she bought a hedgehog anti-tank obstacle.

The 43-year-old Winnipegger traces her ancestry to Ukraine. Both sides of her family came from the eastern European country; Mennonite on her fathers side, Ukrainian on her mothers.

One-hundred years ago, she said, her fathers side of the family was fleeing violence and war in that region for safety in Canada.

"And here today, people are suffering from war again," she said. "Meanwhile, we go on with our lives. We go to work, go home. They dont have any of that."

"People are suffering from war again... Meanwhile, we go on with our lives. We go to work, go home. They dont have any of that.  Alyssa Rempel

Rempel started by making donations for humanitarian relief. But she wanted to do more  especially after she learned a cousin, Dmytro Vasyuta, 21, had been killed in the Russian invasion.

"His death shocked me," she said. "He was so young."

While scrolling through Instagram a week ago, she came across Leafelle, a natural beauty products business owned by Yuliya Mykytyuk of Winnipeg.

Rempel was impressed by Mykytyuks admiration for the brave people of Ukraine, about how they were standing up to the Russians despite the bombing and shelling, and what she was doing to help people in that country.

"Just the way she wrote about it moved me," said Rempel.

What also caught her attention was an opportunity to donate to help make a hedgehog  an anti-tank obstacle built out of metal beams  in Ukraine.

Rempel realized it was a way to help defend Ukrainian towns and cities from Russian aggression in a way that didnt violate her Mennonite pacifist roots.

"Its for defence, its not a weapon," she said. "I have no qualms about supporting this."

Its for defence, its not a weapon... I have no qualms about supporting this.  Alyssa Rempel

As a bonus, Rempel learned she could put a message on "her" hedgehog. Rempel decided to use her mothers Ukrainian family name: "Vasytuas stand with Ukraine," it says.

Mykytyuk, 41, came to Winnipeg from Ukraine in 2004 with her husband Yuriy Hlukh. When the war started, they were in shock and wanted to do something to help.

They started by holding raffles through Mykytyuks business to raise funds to assist children flee the fighting, and also to buy medical supplies and tactical gear for Ukrainian defenders.

One evening, the couple was watching the TV news and saw a report about a small business in Lviv making hedgehogs  military barriers developed in the 1930s  to help defend the country.

SUPPLIED Yuliya Mykytyuk and her husband Yuriy Hlukh sent $350 from the funds raised from the raffles, enough to buy two hedgehogs  one with Winnipeg, Canada painted on it, and Friendly Manitoba on the other.

Hlukh, a civil engineer, was startled to realize he knew the business owner. After contacting him, he learned they had started making the obstacles after his regular business  repairing campers  had dried up due to the war.

What he needed, Hlukh said, was money for steel to make more hedgehogs; they were getting no government support or other outside funds.

"We decided to help him out," Hlukh said. The couple sent $350 from the funds raised from the raffles, enough to buy two hedgehogs  one with "Winnipeg, Canada" painted on it, and "Friendly Manitoba" on the other.

"It was just like putting a name on a park bench here," said Hlukh.

SUPPLIED (Pictured) Winnipeg, Canada hedgehog. Yuliya Mykytyuk and her husband Yuriy Hlukh started by holding raffles through Mykytyuks business to raise funds to assist children flee the fighting, and also to buy medical supplies and tactical gear for Ukrainian defenders.

They also posted about the effort on social media; Rempel was the first person to donate.

"If it can be used to save one town or one family, its worth it," Rempel said.

The donors dont know where the barriers are deployed, Mykytyuk said. All they know is they are sent east, "where they are needed most."

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.

While raising money and other needed items makes the couple feel less helpless, they still worry about family; Mykytyuks parents live in the western part of Ukraine.

"They are safe for now," she said, adding: "Going to bed at night is hard. Im afraid to check my phone in the morning. I dont know what to expect."

They (Mykytyuk's parents) are safe for now... Going to bed at night is hard. Im afraid to check my phone in the morning. I dont know what to expect."  Yuliya Mykytyuk

Noting bombs had fallen 12 kilometres from where her parents live, Hlukh added: "There is no place that is safe in Ukraine today."

People seeking to contribute to buy a hedgehog ($175 each) can do so by e-mail (hedgehogukraine@gmail.com).

fpcity@freepress.mb.ca
The Fort Whyte byelection went down to the wire with two former Winnipeg Blue Bombers neck and neck.

The Fort Whyte byelection went down to the wire with two former Winnipeg Blue Bombers neck and neck.

In the end, Progressive Conservative candidate Obby Khan beat his closest rival, the Liberals Willard Reaves in what had been considered a safe Tory seat.

At deadline, with all 56 polls counted, Khan had 3,050 votes to Reaves 2,853. NDP candidate Trudy Schroeder finished a distant third with 1,112 votes. Independent candidate Patrick Allard and Nicolas Geddert for the Green Party finished a distant fourth and fifth, with 101 and 55 votes respectively.

Throughout the night, most of the PC caucus was packed into Khans campaign headquarters on Scurfield Boulevard, glued to the Elections Manitoba website as updated results showed the two former Bombers jockeying for first place. Three hours after the polls closed at 8 p.m., Elections Manitobas online results were still trickling in.

At one point, the agency reported Khan had 1,953 votes to Reaves 1,921. Then Reaves was ahead of Khan. In a later update, the vote count declined for both candidates, but still reported Khan in the lead with 54 polls reporting.

The unofficial result was finally posted at 11:15 p.m. By 11:30 p.m., in front of a cheering and relieved crowd, Khan appeared with Premier Heather Stefanson at his side.

"Certainly, it was very close," Stefanson told reporters in a scrum. The byelection marked the first time Manitoba voters had been able to cast a ballot since the PC party elected her as its leader allowing her to become premier, and the first time Fort Whytes PC candidate hasnt won with at least 50 per cent of the vote.

"I think people have come out of COVID, people are really angry right now about a number of things," she said when asked why it was such a tight race. Her government has a "lot of work to do ahead in many different areas," she said. The premier was ready to savour the byelection win after a rough week of criticism and turn the page.

"Today is a new day. Tomorrow is a new day. Were going to work with Manitobans ahead of the next election and do everything we can to earn their trust," Stefanson said.

"This victory tonight is really because we have this fantastic candidate in Obby Khan, that we had our volunters out working in the community, and we never, ever took it for granted."

JOHN WOODS / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Willard Reaves watches results come in at his party HQ in the Fort Whyte by-election, Tuesday.

Khan said he stayed off the emotional rollercoaster of watching byelection updates throughout the night and waited for the final result. It was a squeaker but Khan said he was honoured and humbled to get elected, becoming Manitobas first Muslim-Canadian MLA.

"Whether you win by one point or one goal or one vote or 100 votes or a thousand votes, a wins a win," he told reporters, after thanking his supporters including his nine-year-old son Sufiyan Morrish-Khan who was up past his bedtime to see his dad win.

The newly-minted member for Fort Whyte said it was a tight race because voters were sending a message to government "loud and clear: that we have a lot of work to do." On the campaign trail he heard Manitobans frustrations with the pandemic, the surgical backlog, the economy and care for seniors, Khan said.

"All that was shown tonight in the voting. I look forward to taking those challenges forward and working to fix those."

Reaves was waiting at Centro Caboto Centre for the results. In an interview late Tuesday before the winner was known, he said his close finish in the PC stronghold was the result of his hitting the campaign trail early and hard.

The Liberals had the most to gain from winning the byelection. With just three elected members of the legislature and four needed for party-status recognition and the resources that come with it, a Reaves win would have given them official party status in the house.

Khan said Reaves called to congratulate him and the the two former pro athletes had a "great conversation."

"Elections are tough. Competitions are tough," said Khan. "When its all said and done, Willard and I have played in hundreds of football games. You always go across the field and shake hands and give the other guy a hug then you go have a drink with him," said Khan. "I look forward to doing that with Willard and the other candidates. "

Khan will be taking over the surburban Winnipeg seat vacated when former premier Brian Pallister resigned as an MLA in October.

In 2019, turnout for the affluent constituency was just over 60 per cent. Pallister received 5,619 of the 9,889 votes cast, with the NDP and Liberals finishing a distant second and third, receiving 1,757 and 1,731 votes respectively.

In Tuesdays byelection, voter turnout was 46 per cent.

On voting day outside of the polling place at Linden Woods Community Centre, most casting a ballot who were willing to talk said they voted for the candidate rather than the party and that their candidate of choice was Khan.

"Im impressed with his business experience," said a woman who would only identify herself as a business teacher.

"Obby came to our door and he talked to me about what he wanted to do," said one young man voting with a friend who appreciated the former Blue Bomber making contact.

A middle-aged man and woman said they were voting for the person, rather than the party.

"Were hoping Obby will take it," the man said.

The race was seen by many to be a report card for Stefanson and the governing Tories who polls have indicated lag behind the NDP.

Fort Whyte resident Sheri Skwarchuk said her vote was "anti-PC".

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.

"Pallister never returned phone calls and now we have a premier who wasnt elected by the people," she said.

"Im not satisfied with the government," said Skwarchuk. Much of her dissatisfaction comes from the growing surgical backlog in Manitoba, she said. "Ive got a family member waiting for surgery and thats tough." She said deciding where to place her protest vote was difficult.

"Trudy Schroeder had more experience but Willard Reaves came to my house a couple of times," Skwarchuk said. "Both of those people live in the area. Those are big selling points for me. They know what Im experiencing," she said after two terms of having Pallister  who lived in a Wellington Crescent mansion  as her MLA. In the end, she said she decided to vote NDP.

A 22-year-old man, who would only give his age, said he was likely voting for the Manitoba Liberals - not because of the candidate, but because he hoped that they would gain party status in the legislature.

Manitobans will go to the polls in another byelection in the coming months. One is due to be held on or before June 7 to fill the seat vacated in Thompson after NDP MLA Danielle Adams was killed in a highway accident in December.

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca
With a winters worth of heavy snows thawing in back alleys, people across the city are struggling to navigate through deep ruts, around blocks of ice and across pools of water.

With a winters worth of heavy snows thawing in back alleys, people across the city are struggling to navigate through deep ruts, around blocks of ice and across pools of water.

Winnipeg public works spokesman Ken Allen said there have been 1,914 calls for service in March relating to back lanes.

The demand led to a decision to plow the citys approximately 930 kilometres of back lanes in full, starting March 18 and completed as of Tuesday, he said.

However, Allen said the city will still be dealing with trouble spots throughout the next few weeks, as they arise.

CODY SELLAR / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Elizabeth Acosta said she ran out to clear the blocks of ice from behind her garage as soon as she heard the beep of the plow.

Its a tricky time of year, he said. I was out in the back lanes doing a few different interviews the last couple of days.

You can see the lane has been cleared, but its melting. That water is going back into the lane, and its freezing at night. Its that freeze-thaw cycle causing problems.

Morley Avenue resident Elizabeth Acosta thinks theres more to it than just the weather. When she heard the beep of a front-end loader clearing snow Tuesday afternoon from her back alley, she quickly ran to grab a shovel.

Im clearing out the mess that theyre making even worse, Acosta said, shovel in hand.

She said the loader had broken up the ice and left it there. However, the operator saw her trying to shovel the blocks left behind her garage, and returned to clear them away from her property.

JOHN WOODS / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS People across the city are struggling to navigate through deep ruts, around blocks of ice and across pools of water.

Acosta said she wouldnt have been able to do it herself. Anybody driving with their vehicles are going to drive over the ice and pop their tires or something. Or itll take the undercarriage out.

This year, the back lane is in the worst shape since she moved into the area 26 years ago, Acosta said, adding her daughter had got her Jeep Cherokee stuck twice in recent days.

Royal Avenue resident Cheyenne Hoplock said she was stuck in her back lane for 45 minutes March 17, as a group of about eight struggled to dislodge her car from a deep rut.

I was stopped completely. My wheels werent even spinning, I was so stuck, she said Tuesday.

Once the crew of helpful neighbours freed her car, Hoplock had to park on the street for several days, moving her car every two hours to comply with parking limits.

JESSICA LEE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS (Pictured) A pot hole in the back lane of Lockston Ave and Carpathia Rd.

Hoplock said a loader came Monday to clear the back lane, which has made it at least driveable. However, Hoplock said the equipment dumped the snow in the alley, and the path is still difficult to navigate.

I feel like it couldve been done a little better, Hoplock said, adding she understands this winters abundant snowfall may make the job more difficult.

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.

Syndicate Street resident Meghan Lisoway said shes given up parking in her driveway altogether.

Ive gone down a few times, and theres just no way you can stop. And you swerve all over the place, and its just not safe.

However, Lisoway said she doesnt feel comfortable leaving her car on the street in front of her Point Douglas neighbourhood home, as shes seen people walking along the street, testing door handles on vehicles.

Lisoway said plows have come through the area but that they did a bad job. Im very annoyed.

Residents can request snow removal or clearing of frozen catch basins by calling 311 or by filling out a form through the 311 services section of the City of Winnipeg website.

fpcity@freepress.mb.ca
The provincial government is covering $1.34 million in upcoming video lottery terminal licensing fees, in a move meant to help impacted businesses recover COVID-19 pandemic losses.

The provincial government is covering $1.34 million in upcoming video lottery terminal licensing fees, in a move meant to help impacted businesses recover COVID-19 pandemic losses.

Licensing fees of $425 each will be absorbed for the next six months for about 450 Manitoba businesses, the province announced Wednesday. The fees are charged to businesses that employ VLTs to cover the cost of inspection and compliance under the Liquor, Gaming and Cannabis Authority of Manitoba.

MIKE GROLL, AP / THE CANADIAN PRESS FILES Licensing fees of $425 each will be absorbed for the next six months for about 450 Manitoba businesses, the province announced Wednesday.

Manitoba Liquor & Lotteries Corp. has already absorbed almost $2.5 million in VLT licensing fees since 2020, president and chief executive officer Manny Atwal stated in a news release applauding the provincial announcement.

Manitobas VLT siteholders faced tremendous financial pressures and significant revenue losses during the COVID-19 pandemic, Scott Fielding, minister responsible MLL, added in the release.

By Manitoba Liquor & Lotteries absorbing the VLT licensing fees, it will help ease their financial burden and is yet another example of how our government is supporting Manitoba businesses and helping them thrive as we emerge from the pandemic.
PREDICTABLE and equitable funding are top priorities for school division leaders as Manitoba revamps how it pays for public education.

PREDICTABLE and equitable funding are top priorities for school division leaders as Manitoba revamps how it pays for public education.

Superintendents and stakeholders have submitted recommendations on how the Manitoba government should rejig its funding formula  a 20-year-old model that has long been criticized for not ensuring monies are equitably distributed to classrooms in all corners of the province.

"The (new) model should be known, predictable, sustainable," said Paul Ilchena, executive director of the Manitoba Association of School Business Officials, which represents secretary treasurers and other division operations managers.

While noting staff currently wait for an annual winter announcement to find out about exact monies and taxation guidelines to plan for an upcoming school year, Ilchena said MASBO has suggested Manitoba consider multi-year funding options that support longer-term planning.

Since 2002-03, operating funds have been allocated annually based on division population, transportation need and buildings, among numerous line items and various grants.

Divisions also rely on revenue from property education taxes within their borders, a figure that varies between regions because it reflects the assessed value of area housing and business.

The existing model has come under a microscope, as a result of the K-12 commission on education calling for an audit to improve funding equitability in its 2020 report. If all goes according to plan, there will be a new funding formula in 2023-24.

Seven Oaks School Divisions submission to the review team calls for a future of predictable funding increases that are tied to economic indicators in order to maintain Manitobas per pupil funding at one of the highest rates in Canada.

"Manitoba is a higher spending province, but it needs to be. We dont have the large metropolitan regions, we have a high degree of child poverty, weve got a lot of small schools and weve got a lot of school buses driving long distances  and all of those are factors that drive costs higher," said superintendent Brian OLeary.

The northwest Winnipeg district has called for the equalization of taxation rates to ensure no one is advantaged or disadvantaged based on where they live, as well as a shift in reporting practice so divisions report their success at improving outcomes among disadvantaged students rather than simply what they do with specific grants.

OLeary also wants all boards to purchase classroom supplies in bulk and a universal elimination of fees for lunch supervision, field trips and musical instruments, among other add-ons, to reduce barriers to participation in education.

Recommendations put forward by the Louis Riel School Division similarly emphasize the important role schools play in levelling the playing field for students from low-income households.

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.

Superintendent Christian Michalik wrote about the importance of creating a "whole community" anti-poverty strategy with an anti-racist lens, universal full-day kindergarten, and adequate funding for adult education programs  all of which, he argued, would improve learning outcomes, equity and economic prosperity in Manitoba.

The future formula is anticipated to do away with the local taxation, given the Tories have repeatedly pledged to eliminate it entirely.

An excerpt from the LRSD submission, however, states the current decentralized set-up of funding and decision-making in the education sector are powerful in allowing communities to attend to local needs while prudently managing costs.

"(The) review team should study the feasibility of general taxation revenue funding education at 80 per cent, reducing the potential for taxation inequity, while also updating and improving equalization formulas to bridge the gaps between school divisions," states the 16-page document.

Other metro divisions, including Winnipeg, Pembina Trails and River-East Transcona declined to release their submissions publicly. St. James-Assiniboia did not provide its recommendations before deadline.

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca
Winnipeg police are searching for a man after a 12-year-old girl was lured from a bus shack to a downtown stairwell and sexually assaulted.

Winnipeg police are searching for a man after a 12-year-old girl was lured from a bus shack to a downtown stairwell and sexually assaulted.

The victim was at a bus shelter at the corner of Portage Avenue and Main Street at about 3:30 p.m. Monday, when the suspect struck up a conversation and convinced her to walk with him, police said.

He took her to a stairwell at a building off Lombard Avenue and Rorie Street then assaulted her, police said.

After the assault, the pre-teen fled and reported it to police.

The suspect is described as Indigenous, with shaggy hair and dirty, unkempt clothing. He wore a black jacket and backpack and has a scar above his eyebrow.

Lindsay Lobb, senior support services manager for the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, said such crimes are "incredibly distressing."

"Its certainly strikes some fear into the community when these situations happen," she said.

Lobb said parents can help protect their children by teaching them to use the buddy system.

"Say youre walking to school, you dont just walk by yourself, youre going to the park, always bring a buddy along," Lobb 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.

She also advised parents to talk to their kids about what they should do if approached by a stranger.

"You might talk to them about strategies they might use if somebody did approach them, asking them what would you do and how would you react? Then providing the child with examples so they could practice those scenarios."

Parents can find more safety resources at protectchildren.ca.

Anyone with information about the attack is asked to call investigators at 204-986-3296 or Crime Stoppers at 204-786-8477.

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @erik_pindera
A Winnipeg Police Service officer has been charged with driving offences, after a 2021 collision between a police vehicle and a civilian car.

A Winnipeg Police Service officer has been charged with driving offences, after a 2021 collision between a police vehicle and a civilian car.

At the time, police said the unmarked WPS vehicle was headed south on Main Street near College Avenue, when it struck another vehicle at about 7 p.m. Oct. 28.

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.

JOHN WOODS / THE CANADIAN PRESS FILES A Winnipeg Police Service officer has been charged with driving offences.

A woman in her 20s (the driver of the second vehicle) was transported to hospital in stable condition with fractured vertebrae, the Independent Investigation Unit of Manitoba said when it launched a probe into the incident.

Two WPS officers were treated in hospital and released, with one suspected to have suffered a broken arm.

After a 4 1/2-month investigation, IIU civilian director Zane Tessler said Tuesday there are reasonable grounds to believe offences occurred under the federal criminal code and the provincial Highway Traffic Act.

Const. Bradley Louden has been issued a May 16 provincial court summons for driving dangerously contrary to the criminal code and misusing emergency vehicle equipment contrary to the traffic act.

The IIU said it would not comment further, as the matter is now before the courts.

The watchdog is provincially mandated to probe all incidents involving on- or off-duty police that cause serious injury or death.
Three powerful women in charge of finance, defence and foreign affairs frame the Canadian Prime Minister during press conferences. Its the first time in our history that these three top cabinet jobs have been held simultaneously by women. And in the context of the war in Ukraine, Chrystia Freeland, Anita Anand and Melanie Joly are making decisions historically made by men.

Opinion

Three powerful women in charge of finance, defence and foreign affairs frame the Canadian Prime Minister during press conferences. Its the first time in our history that these three top cabinet jobs have been held simultaneously by women. And in the context of the war in Ukraine, Chrystia Freeland, Anita Anand and Melanie Joly are making decisions historically made by men.

Individually or together, these women are proof that gender parity in politics works.

Canada doesnt have a gender quota law for elections to parliament. But Trudeau promised in 2015 that if he won the election, hed have gender parity in cabinet. Hes kept that promise, with equal numbers of women and men ministers ever since.

The career progress of Freeland, Anand and Joly show not only that women are just as competent in politics as men, but that concrete actions in pursuit of gender equality have real consequences  for the better.

Freeland and Joly were in Trudeaus initial team and Anand joined in 2019, first as minister of Public Services and Procurement, later being promoted to Defence. Freeland and Joly likewise started out in lesser posts  Freeland heading International Trade and Joly leading the Ministry of Heritage.

In committing to gender parity among ministers, Trudeau was accused of favouring gender and ignoring experience or qualifications as criteria for cabinet. The refrain But what about merit? is frequently used by opponents to gender quotas. Ive studied women in politics for 20 years, and there simply isnt any evidence that gender parity comes at the expense of quality.

More than 100 countries around the world have some form of gender quota for elected office and several leaders in recent years have publicly committed themselves to gender equality in cabinet and other high-level appointments. Those studying women in politics have compared the credentials, experience and performance of women and men in office, finding that even when quotas are used, women tend to have more extensive credentials than men.

A study of Swedish municipal governments found that quotas improved the quality of the political class because mediocre men were weeded out.

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.

In countries without electoral gender quotas, like Canada, there are no good reasons to object to them. Freeland, Anand and Joly are evidence that creating space for women in politics pays off.

Gender quotas or gender parity in politics has also been successful in other countries. Several of the worlds high-profile women reached national and global prominence after earlier decisions by leaders to ensure space for women. When pressured by women in his own political party to appoint more women to cabinet, former Chilean president Ricardo Lagos appointed five women. One of them was Michelle Bachelet, who went on to become that countrys first woman president.

Other examples include the current president of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde, and Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission. Both were first appointed to their own countries cabinets by leaders who actively created space for women in politics.

Why does any of this matter?

The outbreak of war in Europe means that people who might normally ignore politics are watching now. And they are seeing many women, from Chrystia Freeland in Ottawa to Ursula von der Leyen in Brussels, making weighty policy decisions. The claim that gender quotas undermine merit loses more force every time we hear them speak.

Susan Franceschet is a professor of political science at the University of Calgary.
THIS week, Manitoba is the scene of an important constitutional case that will determine whether Canadians with disabilities have the right to live a life free from extreme poverty, with all the risks to health, well-being and dignity this implies.

Opinion

THIS week, Manitoba is the scene of an important constitutional case that will determine whether Canadians with disabilities have the right to live a life free from extreme poverty, with all the risks to health, well-being and dignity this implies.

As of today, a single person who has worked, paid provincial and federal taxes, contributed to the Canadian Pension Plan, and subsequently is diagnosed with a disability that restricts continued employment, will be further victimized by a bureaucratic system that may best be described as political buck-passing.

In short, a person who qualifies for both Canadian Pension Plan Disability payments and provincial social assistance, in this case Manitoba Employment and Income Assistance (EIA) and Income and Assistance for Persons with Disabilities (IAPD), will see the provincial benefits clawed back dollar for dollar based on the federal amount. As a further indignity, supplemental benefits not covered by provincial health insurance such as free prescriptions that are part of EIA, are also lost.

This is the situation for a man named Paul Hutlet, but his is a story shared by many Manitobans and people with disabilities across the country. It is time to fix it.

How Canada arrived here is worthy of consideration.

In 1966, the government of Canada ushered in a program called the Canada Assistance Plan (CAP) that shared in the costs of provincial and territorial social assistance (welfare) programs at 50 per cent. The twofold purpose of CAP was to continue the process of cementing national standards among Canadas income security programs while recognizing the fiscal imbalance between provinces, territories and the federal government.

As part of the CAP agreement, the federal government stipulated  as a condition of flowing funds  that social assistance programs for persons with disabilities and others would deduct all federal income security payments from benefits paid. The rationale for this rule was that the federal government did not wish to pay twice for clients they had in common with provinces and territories: once through their own programs like CPP and again through cost-sharing.

All well and good, until the government of Canada pulled the plug on the CAP program in 1996 and now shares a much smaller percentage of social assistance payments than the previous 50-50 formula.

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.

Fast-forward 26 years later and the federal government still does not share in social assistance costs equally. Provinces and territories that had gone through a giant upheaval in the 1990s that resulted in welfare cuts in almost every sub-national jurisdiction found that clawbacks became a very convenient way to keep costs down.

In 2022, every jurisdiction in Canada continues to deduct CPP (and EI) from their social assistance payments even though the historical rationale is long gone and cost containment is the only justification.

Hutlet has the profile of someone who suffers the most from the present system. Whereas Hutlets income is now limited to the CPP Disability payment of less than $1,200 per month, the Market Based Measure (MBM) for a single person living alone in Winnipeg in 2022 is $24,552.00 annually. This does not take into account disability-related expenses, which can, and for Hutlet does, amount to several thousands of dollars more per year.

Does a person with disabilities subjected to extreme and preventable poverty amount to a violation of their rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms rights to life, liberty and security of the person?

With governments failing to act responsibly, we are about find out through the court.

Sid Frankel is an associate professor in the faculty of social work at the University of Manitoba who studies poverty reduction policy
It may come as a surprise to many that Manitoba does not have a province-wide code of conduct for police officers. Most other provinces do. Manitoba has had the authority under the Police Services Act since it was passed in 2009 to establish formal rules around policing activity, including mechanisms to respond to allegations of officer misconduct. For reasons neither the former NDP or current Progressive Conservative governments have explained, none was ever put in place.

It may come as a surprise to many that Manitoba does not have a province-wide code of conduct for police officers. Most other provinces do. Manitoba has had the authority under the Police Services Act since it was passed in 2009 to establish formal rules around policing activity, including mechanisms to respond to allegations of officer misconduct. For reasons neither the former NDP or current Progressive Conservative governments have explained, none was ever put in place.

What Manitobans are left with is a patchwork system that differs from one municipality to the next. It is neither open and transparent nor does it provide the public with an effective process to hold police officers accountable for their actions. Some allegations of non-criminal misconduct are heard by the provinces Law Enforcement Review Agency. However, most complaints made through LERA (a process that has been widely criticized as dysfunctional and ineffective), rarely receive full hearings and almost never result in officer discipline. Allegations of criminal behaviour are investigated through the provinces Independent Investigation Unit.

Manitoba bill would set policing standards JOHN WOODS / THE CANADIAN PRESS FILES Justice Minister Kelvin Goertzen said the proposed legislation is the first step towards enhancing police oversight and improving processes by which Manitobans file complaints related to police conduct. Posted: 7:14 PM Mar. 17, 2022 Police officers in Manitoba could be subject to a blanket code of conduct and set of policing standards under new legislation proposed by the Progressive Conservative government. Justice Minister Kelvin Goertzen said Bill 30 would establish policing standards for all law enforcement agencies in the province, including the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and give new authority to the Manitoba Police Commission to audit and inspect services for compliance. Read Full Story

Justice Minister Kelvin Goertzen says the province intends to create a new set of rules that will govern the conduct of all police officers in the province. The minister introduced Bill 30 last week, amendments to the Police Services Act, which among other things restates governments ability to establish a province-wide code of conduct.

The wording in the bill is similar to what already exists in the act. The difference now, at least according to Mr. Goertzen, is there is a stated intention to move forward on creating a province-wide code, although it remains discretionary under the proposed legislation.

Under Bill 30, the provinces director of policing "may" establish a code of conduct that would apply to all police officers in the province, except the RCMP, which has its own rules of conduct.

There are few details in the bill beyond that, other than a requirement that if an officer contravenes the code, the findings  including any disciplinary actions  must be reported to the provinces director of policing.

The code of conduct itself has not been established. Also, the bill does not specify a process, including how investigations would be conducted or by whom. There are no assurances in the bill that alleged wrongdoing would be investigated by an independent body, nor whether the findings would be made public.

Justice Minister Kelvin Goertzen

The expectation is those and other details would be established by regulation and approved by cabinet. It is not unusual for legislation to be written in broad language with greater detail specified through orders-in-council. However, the less detail there is in proposed legislation, the less public scrutiny it receives before it becomes law. Bills go through a public process (including public hearings for most bills in Manitoba) and are voted on by elected members of the legislative assembly. By contrast, regulations are made behind closed doors by cabinet and are subject to change without approval of the legislative assembly.

There are valid reasons in some cases for doing so, including the need to update regulations in a timely manner. Still, that should not be an excuse to deprive the legislative assembly of its primary role of examining, debating and voting on proposed laws that include as much detail as possible.

Mr. Goertzen said last week he expects progress to be made on the development of a code of conduct by 2023. However, that should not be done behind closed doors. It should be subject to an open and transparent process.

A province-wide code of conduct for police is long overdue. The public and all stakeholders should be invited into the process to determine its contents.
WASHINGTON (AP)  Madeleine Albright, a child refugee from Nazi- and then Soviet-dominated eastern Europe who rose to become the 1st female U.S. secretary of state and a mentor to many current and former American statesmen and women, has died of cancer, her family said Wednesday. She was 84.

Outgoing Secretary of State Madeleine Albright addresses the Mid-America club during her final foreign policy speech, Wednesday, Jan. 17, 2001, in Chicago. Albright said her official good-byes, stating she was pleased that the nation's first woman secretary of state will be followed by the first black secretary of state. Albright stated that her successor, Colin Powell, was up for the task and called him a "superb choice." (AP Photo/Stephen J. Carrera)

WASHINGTON (AP)  Madeleine Albright, a child refugee from Nazi- and then Soviet-dominated eastern Europe who rose to become the 1st female U.S. secretary of state and a mentor to many current and former American statesmen and women, has died of cancer, her family said Wednesday. She was 84.

A lifelong Democrat who nonetheless worked to bring Republicans into her orbit, Albright was chosen by former President Bill Clinton to be America's top diplomat in 1996, elevating her from her post as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, where she had been only the second woman to hold that job.

President Barack Obama awards Madeleine Albright the Presidential Medal of Freedom in the East Room of the White House, on May 29, 2012, in Washington. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)

As secretary of state, Albright was the highest-ranking woman in the history of U.S. government. She was not in the line of succession to the presidency, however, because she was a native of Prague. The glass ceiling that she broke was universally admired, even by her political detractors.

In announcing her death on Twitter, Albright's family said she died of cancer and was surrounded by family and friends: "We have lost a loving mother, grandmother, sister, aunt and friend," the statement said.

Outpourings of condolences came quickly.

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright speaks during the second day of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, July 26, 2016. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

"Laura and I are heartbroken by the news of Madeleine Albrights death," said former President George W. Bush. "She lived out the American dream and helped others realize it.... She served with distinction as a foreign-born foreign minister who understood firsthand the importance of free societies for peace in our world. I respect her love of country and public service, and Laura and I are grateful to have called Madeline Albright our friend."

President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken had been informed of Albright's death as they were flying to Brussels for an emergency meeting of NATO leaders about Ukraine.

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, U.S. envoy to the United Nations, honored Albright as a "trailblazer and a luminary" in remarks on the General Assembly floor shortly after news of her death emerged.

"The impact that she has had on this building is felt every single day and just about every single corridor," said State Department spokesman Ned Price, who once co-taught a class with Albright at his alma mater, Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, where Albright was a professor for decades before and after her time in government.

"She was a trailblazer as the first female Secretary of State and quite literally opened doors for a large elements of our of our workforce," he said.

In 2012, President Barack Obama awarded Albright the Medal of Freedom, the nations highest civilian honor, saying her life was an inspiration to all Americans.

FILE - Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, on Oct. 22, 2009 before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on NATO. Albright has died of cancer, her family said Wednesday, March 23, 2022. (AP Photo/Haraz N. Ghanbari, File)

Albright remained outspoken through the years. After leaving office, she criticized President George W. Bush for using "the shock of force" rather than alliances to foster diplomacy and said Bush had driven away moderate Arab leaders and created potential for a dangerous rift with European allies.

However, as a refugee from Czechoslovakia who saw the horrors of both Nazi Germany and the Iron Curtain, she was not a dove and played a leading role in pressing for the Clinton administration to get militarily involved in the conflict in Kosovo.

She also toed a hard line on Cuba, famously saying at the United Nations that the Cuban shootdown of a civilian plane was not "cojones" but rather "cowardice."

She advised women "to act in a more confident manner" and "to ask questions when they occur and dont wait to ask."

"It took me quite a long time to develop a voice, and now that I have it, I am not going to be silent," she told HuffPost Living in 2010.

When the Senate Foreign Relations Committee asked her in January 2007 whether she approved of Bushs proposed "surge" in U.S. troops in bloodied Iraq, she responded: "I think we need a surge in diplomacy. We are viewed in the Middle East as a colonial power and our motives are suspect."

FILE - President Bill Clinton confers with U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright before delivering the final statement at the Middle East Summit in the Egyptian resort town of Sharm el-Sheik, Egypt, on Oct. 17, 2000. Albright has died of cancer, her family said Wednesday, March 23, 2022. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay, File)

Albright was an internationalist whose point of view was shaped in part by her background. Her family fled Czechoslovakia in 1939 as the Nazis took over their country, and she spent the war years in London. After the war, as the Soviet Union took over vast chunks of eastern Europe, her father, a Czech diplomat, brought his family to the U.S.

As secretary of state, Albright played a key role in persuading Clinton to go to war against the Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic over his treatment of Kosovar Albanians in 1999. In her U.N. post, she advocated a tough U.S. foreign policy, particularly in the case of Milosevics treatment of Bosnia and NATOs intervention in Kosovo was eventually dubbed "Madeleine's War."

"My mindset is Munich," she said frequently, referring to the German city where the Western allies abandoned her homeland to the Nazis.

Albright helped win Senate ratification of NATOs expansion and a treaty imposing international restrictions on chemical weapons. She led a successful fight to keep Egyptian diplomat Boutros Boutros-Ghali from a second term as secretary-general of the United Nations. He accused her of deception and posing as a friend.

And she once exclaimed to Colin Powell, then the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, who would later succeed her as secretary of state: "Whats the point of having this superb military youre always talking about if we cant use it?"

Powell, who died last year, recalled in a memoir that Albrights comments almost made him have an "aneurysm."

"I am an eternal optimist," Albright said in 1998, amid an effort as secretary of state to promote peace in the Middle East. But she said getting Israel to pull back on the West Bank and the Palestinians to rout terrorists posed serious problems.

As Americas top diplomat, Albright made limited progress at first in trying to expand the 1993 Oslo Accords that established the principle of self-rule for the Palestinians on the West Bank and in Gaza. But in 1998, she played a leading role in formulating the Wye Accords that turned over control of about 40% of the West Bank to the Palestinians.

She also spearheaded an ill-fated effort to negotiate a 2000 peace deal between Israel and Syria under Syrias late President Hafez al-Assad. And, she helped guide U.S. foreign policy during conflicts in the Balkans and the Hutu-Tutsi genocide in Rwanda.

As an outspoken Democrat in private life, Albright often joked that she had her "political instincts surgically removed" when she became secretary of state. True to that, she formed an unlikely friendship with arch-conservative North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms to increase funding for the State Department and U.S. diplomacy and oversaw a radical change in Washington's handling of Cold War-era messaging.

Born Marie Jana Korbel in Prague on May 15, 1937, She was the daughter of a diplomat, Joseph Korbel. The family was Jewish and converted to Roman Catholicism when she was 5. Three of her Jewish grandparents died in concentration camps.

Albright later said that she became aware of her Jewish background after she became secretary of state. The family returned to Czechoslovakia after World War II but fled again, this time to the United States, in 1948, after the Communists rose to power.

They settled in Denver, where her father obtained a job at the University of Denver. One of Josef Korbels best students, a young woman named Condoleezza Rice, would later succeed his daughter as secretary of state, the first Black woman to hold that office.

Among current officials who worked closely with Albright are Biden's domestic policy adviser and former U.N. ambassador Susan Rice, as well as Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman and a host of others.

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.

Albright graduated from Wellesley College in 1959. She worked as a journalist and later studied international relations at Columbia University, where she earned a masters degree in 1968 and a Ph.D. in 1976.

She worked for the National Security Council during the Carter administration and advised Democrats on foreign policy before Clintons election. He nominated her as U.S. ambassador to the U.N. in 1993.

Following her service in the Clinton administration, she headed a global strategy firm, Albright Stonebridge, and was chair of an investment advisory company that focused on emerging markets.

She also wrote several books. Albright married journalist Joseph Albright, a descendant of Chicagos Medill-Patterson newspaper dynasty, in 1959. They had three daughters and divorced in 1983.

___

The late Associated Press diplomatic correspondent Barry Schweid contributed to this report.
Michael T. Osterholm, Ph.D., MPH, met virtually with Winona Countys COVID-19 Incident Command Team this week.

Osterholm is a renowned epidemiologist and director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota.

The Winona County COVID-19 Incident Command Team led the countys response to the COVID pandemic for the last two years.

Osterholm spoke to the team about the next normal of the pandemic.

Osterholm advised that COVID is not done yet. He predicts cases will continue to rise and fall. Even as one of the leaders in his field, he admitted that there is still much uncertainty with what COVID will bring next. As a precaution he encouraged the team to continue providing vaccinations and booster shots.

Osterholm thanked the team for their work on the front lines. He spoke of the difficulties the team likely faced during an unpredictable pandemic.

He stated that officials at local agencies are leading the fight against misinformation and vaccine hostility.

Osterholm encouraged the team to continue to speak the known science and continue their hard work.

The Winona County COVID-19 Incident Command Team continues to observe COVID-19s impact on the community.

Like many public health officials, the team is monitoring increases in COVID-19 cases in other countries. They will provide information and guidance if the county sees a similar rise in cases and hospitalizations.

The Team is also planning vaccine distribution to children aged 6 months to 4 years should the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Minnesota Department of Health recommend a vaccine for this age group.

For information on Winona Countys efforts, check out the Winona County website COVID-19 response tab or the Winona Countys Health and Human Services Facebook page.

If you need a COVID-19 vaccine, call (507) 457-6375. Winona County does make home visits to individuals who are homebound.

Osterholms extensive resume includes being Regents Professor, McKnight Presidential Endowed Chair in Public Health, Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Division of Environmental Health Sciences, School of Public Health, a professor in the Technological Leadership Institute, College of Science and Engineering, and an adjunct professor in the Medical School, all at the University of Minnesota.

In November 2020, Osterholm was appointed to President-elect Joe Bidens 13-member Transition COVID-19 Advisory Board.

From June 2018 through May 2019, he served as a Science Envoy for Health Security on behalf of the US Department of State.

He is also on the Board of Regents at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa.

Winona Countys COVID-19 Incident Command Team includes officials from Public Health, Emergency Management, and the County Attorneys office.
The Winona County Board voted at its meeting Tuesday to table a proposed resolution that would establish an absentee ballot board. The issue was addressed by multiple citizens in the public comment period.

The board must establish an absentee ballot board every two years. County Auditor-Treasurer Sandra Suchla was on hand to answer questions as this resolution comes from her department.

Commissioner Steve Jacob opened discussion by expressing his concerns about the amount of questions he has received from constituents addressing things such as how many people are on board and how many representatives there are from different political parties. He added that he doesnt see a plan for how ballots will be handled and seeks transparency of the entire process.

In response to those remarks, Suchla acknowledged that this is an issue that has been raised to the forefront since the 2020 election and stated that she could change or correct the resolution if needed.

The main concerns from Jacob that he reiterated throughout the discussion were that he had heard from many constituents that they were concerned about the possibility of ballots being tampered with and wanted to see something in the resolution that would address those issues, and giving the idea of a flow chart that illustrates the process of a ballot from the time it is received to the time it is opened and counted.

Jacob also voiced his support for election judges having a bigger role in the process.

Both Suchla and County Attorney Karin Sonneman acknowledged that there were many rules in Minnesota State Statute 203B.121, the sanction that covers ballot boards, that the board had to follow.

Sonneman voiced her support for tabling the motion and coming back to the board with a new resolution with further detail answering some of the concerns raised. Commissioner Marcia Ward also advocated for a flow chart of the process.

After further discussion on what the board would like to see from a new resolution as well as the language used in the state statute, Jacob moved to table the resolution until the next board meeting on April 12 and include a flow chart of the process and names of election judges that were used in 2020.

Commissioner Marcia Ward seconded the motion and it was passed unanimously with all five members of the board in favor.

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.
Photo by Chris Rogers

Advocacy Center of Winona staff member Emma Severson works as a confidential victim advocate on campus at Winona State. She's a WSU grad who previously worked as a student advocate. "Were just here to listen and support them ..." she said of survivors of sexual and domestic violence.
Winona, MN (55987)

Today

Showers early, then cloudy in the afternoon. High 64F. Winds E at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 40%..

Tonight

Cloudy skies. Low near 45F. Winds light and variable.
An employee at the BP gas station in Necedah rescued an intoxicated driver, who was allegedly four times over the legal limit, after she crashed her vehicle into a gas pump last week.

Juneau County Sheriffs Office deputies were dispatched to the station at 8:23 p.m. on March 15 after Elroy resident April Sink was driving above the legal alcohol limit when she lost control of her vehicle heading eastbound on Wisconsin Highway 21 and crashed into one of the four gas pumps at the BP, according to a report from the Sheriffs Office.

Deputies Brandon Carmody and Jay Helixon arrived at 8:31 p.m. and saw the vehicle and pump in flames, according to the report.

Ivan Ledvina stopped his shift-ending cleaning duties, called 911, and rescued the woman from the vehicle by breaking her rear drivers side window with a hammer and pulling her out before the deputies arrived.

Witness Angela J. Rattunde, who previously observed Sinks erratic driving on Highway 21, assisted Ledvina in rescuing Sink from the burning vehicle, the report said. Carmody then requested Sink be moved across the street for safety purposes, according to the report. Due to an ankle injury, Carmody issued Sink her citations but did not place her under arrest.

I was mopping the floor when it all happened, said Ledvina, who goes by the nickname Mr. Smore for the various events he makes the treats for.

I was by the front door standing and heard tires squeal. Looked up, BOOM! Saw pumps 7 and 8 get blasted off of the island, he said. There was fire, so I immediately hit All stop here on the pumps. Ran outside to the vehicle, busted the window with a hammer and pulled her out of the back seat.

Necedah Fire Department addressed the fire and Camp Douglas Ambulance transported Sink to Mile Bluff Medical Center in Mauston. This is Sinks first operating while intoxicated offense, which resulted in an OWI citation along with various other citations.

The gas station owner, Mike Zolondek, said the Sheriffs Office informed him that the drivers blood alcohol level was 0.354, a level also cited in the Sheriffs Office report.

Zolondek added that the driver missed the gas station driveway and drove into the ditch between the station and the highway before slamming into the gas pump. The car caught fire shortly after the collision.

My employee, Ivan, was here working, said Zolondek. She was pretty darn lucky he was there. A couple fire departments came out and put the fire out. Ivan took a hammer, smashed the window and got her out when the car was still on fire.

Sink claimed she had been rear-ended, according to the sheriffs report. However, Carmody listed in the report that there was no sign of rear impact on the vehicle. The report also states that Sink was unable or unwilling to finish the field sobriety test in which Carmody witnessed four cues of intoxication.

Zolondek, who estimated that the driver struck the gas pump at speeds of 35 mph to 45 mph, said the BP was closed for three days following the incident, which sent the gas pump flying about ten feet. Cement around the impacted gas pump needed to be removed and underground piping needs replacement. The canopy over the gas pumps still has soot remaining from the flames.

Were looking at well over $100,000 worth of work here, said Zolondek.
The Portage Police Department is mourning the sudden death of a K9 officer that worked with the department for seven years.

Ares  the lone dog in the department and a fixture at community events  worked closely with his handler Sgt. Ben Neumann, living with him and his family during his time with the department. The German shepherd died Tuesday at the age of 8.

He was a huge asset to our department. He did a really good job and was a well-respected member of the department in the community, Portage Police Chief Keith Klafke said. He will be greatly missed.

Klafke said Ares was involved in countless cases during his time with Portage Police.

Ares was an outstanding dual-purpose canine in his seven years with our department accredited to countless drug arrests, interdictions, and apprehensions making our community and surrounding area a safer place to live, Klafke said.

A dual-purpose canine means Ares was able to do narcotics detection and search-and-rescue.

Klafke said the department was working on a succession plan to allow Ares  the only K9 officer in the department  to retire in about two years. The department will go to the city finance committee to discuss finding a replacement for Ares as soon as possible.

Ares was often seen at community events and was well known for apprehension demonstrations with Klafke.

Last summer, Ares was the star of National Night Out held at Sunset Park in Portage. Ares and Klafke demonstrated what an apprehension may look like with Klafke playing the part of suspect.

Klafke put on the dog bite sleeve and waited for Ares to do his job. Ares charged the police chief and bit down on the sleeve while the crowd cheered for him.

We went toe-to-toe a number of times and he always won, Klafke said. He explained that those were some of his favorite memories with Ares, who once bit Klafke as he worn a full-bite suit at a demonstration at Madison Area Technical College.

We were running through a field and Ares chased me down and knocked me over, he said. He knocked me off my feet quite a few times.

Ares was not just involved in police-related events but was present at a number of community events.

He was out and about at a number of events. Kids would walk up to him and give him hugs, Klafke said. With enthusiasm, Ares truly enjoyed patrolling the streets of Portage and assisting other agencies to fulfill our agencys mission statement all the while putting smiles on the faces of many children who adored him.

Ares received regular veterinary care in Portage. He died Tuesday morning following a sudden medical illness.

We cannot thank Dr. (Michael) Cooper and his staff at the Portage Veterinary Clinic enough for the veterinary care of Ares during his tenure and the recent care provided by VCA Veterinary Emergency Service & Specialty Center in Middleton, Klafke said.

Cooper also provides support to the Columbia County Sheriff K9 units.

Klafke said the department is planning a memorial service for a later date to allow the department and community to pay respects to Ares.

We are still planning the service and will get details to the community when its all finalized, Klafke said. It will be a good way for the community to pay tribute to Ares.

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.
While the Wisconsin Dells Parkway construction project is still years away, some decisions are already being made.

During a presentation Tuesday, planners of the project, which is slated for 2025 and 2026, explained recent decisions, including choosing a layout for the two southern segments of the parkway that will include a two-way, left-turn lane.

Additionally, the Wisconsin Department of Transportation has scheduled two segments of the reconstruction to take place in 2025 and one in 2026.

The main focus of the project is to address safety concerns with the current structure of Dells Parkway, chief of which is rear-end collisions with people making left turns, said Mary Beth Pettit, of GRAEF, an engineering, planning and design firm based in Milwaukee.

She also said a goal of the project is to make Dells Parkway more conducive to bicyclists.

The blue project at the top (Broadway to County A in Wisconsin Dells) and the red project (County A to 450 feet south of Bonanza Drive), which I call the center segment, both of those will be tied together and constructed at the same time in 2025, Pettit said during the Tuesday meeting on the project. The south segment, shown in green, will be constructed a year later.

The initial announcement of the project on Dec. 14 had two options for the two southern segments, but the DOT has decided on an option.

From Adams Street to the point 450 feet south of Bonanza Drive in Lake Delton (south segment), the proposed section will feature 5-foot-wide sidewalks with a concrete buffer that will range from 1 feet to 4 feet wide along with a 12-foot-wide, two-way left turn lane and two 11-foot-wide lanes going each direction.

For the center segment of the project, the same lanes will exist. However, the sidewalk on the western portion will be 10 feet wide while the east sidewalk will be 5 feet wide. The Wisconsin Dells portion of the segment will have 4-feet-wide, grass terrace, which is the strip of land between sidewalks and road, while the Lake Delton portion will have concrete terraces.

The newly-proposed segments of Dells Parkway will require an additional estimated 6 feet on each side of the road to accommodate the left-turn lane. Temporary limited easement will also be needed during construction to give workers ample space. The DOT will work with local businesses to acquire the needed permanent and temporary real estate.

What happens is we get the plans finalized enough to know what the limits of our roadway will be, then we put together our plat and get that recorded, said DOT project manager Derek Potter. Real estate process starts with reaching out to property owners after we get an appraisal done. They would have a right to get a second appraisal done that the DOT would pay for.

The DOT will conduct a public hearing for the project in July, in which it also plans to have its environmental document approved.

With the installation of the two-way left turn lanes, the DOT will be working with businesses on Dells Parkway to close off many entries on the side of the highway. The DOT wants to avoid overlapping left turn areas from the lanes, which can cause head-on crashes. Therefore, the early plans include shutting down many of the entryways on the side of the road.

Big picture is safety, Potter said. Reducing the access points reduces conflict points. It helps to make the (two-way, left-turn lane) function better.

Anytime there is a driveway, there is a way people can turn into it from both directions, Pettit said. By having so many driveways along the corridor, we have overlapping turning movements in that two-way left turn lane. What were trying to do is reduce driveways along the corridor so that we can actually produce safe refuge for turning vehicles.

Potter said the goal is to have final decisions on closed access points and accurate estimates on real estate impacts at the public hearing in the summer.
WASHINGTON (AP)  Madeleine Albright, the first female U.S. secretary of state, has died of cancer, her family said Wednesday. She was 84.

President Bill Clinton chose Albright as America's top diplomat in 1996, and she served in that capacity for the last four years of the Clinton administration. She had previously been Clinton's ambassador to the United Nations.

At the time, she was the highest-ranking woman in the history of U.S. government. She was not in the line of succession for the presidency, however, because she was a native of Prague.

"She was surrounded by family and friends," her family announced on Twitter. "We have lost a loving mother, grandmother, sister, aunt and friend." It said the cause was cancer.

In 2012, President Barack Obama awarded Albright the Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, saying her life was an inspiration to all Americans.

Albright remained outspoken through the years. After leaving office, she criticized President George W. Bush for using "the shock of force" rather than alliances to foster diplomacy and said Bush had driven away moderate Arab leaders and created potential for a dangerous rift with European allies.

However, as a refugee from Czechoslovakia, she was not a dove and played a leading role in pressing for the Clinton administration to get militarily involved in the conflict in Kosovo. She also toed a hard line on Cuba, famously saying at the United Nations that the Cuban shootdown of a civilian plane was not "cojones" but rather "cowardice."

She advised women "to act in a more confident manner" and "to ask questions when they occur and don't wait to ask."

"It took me quite a long time to develop a voice, and now that I have it, I am not going to be silent," she told HuffPost Living in 2010.

When the Senate Foreign Relations Committee asked her in January 2007 whether she approved of Bush's proposed "surge" in U.S. troops in bloodied Iraq, she responded: "I think we need a surge in diplomacy. We are viewed in the Middle East as a colonial power and our motives are suspect."

Albright was an internationalist whose point of view was shaped in part by her background. Her family fled Czechoslovakia in 1939 as the Nazis took over their country, and she spent the war years in London.

As secretary of state, she played a key role in persuading Clinton to go to war against the Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic over his treatment of Kosovar Albanians in 1999. "My mindset is Munich," she said frequently, referring to the German city where the Western allies abandoned her homeland to the Nazis.

She helped win Senate ratification of NATO's expansion and a treaty imposing international restrictions on chemical weapons. She led a successful fight to keep Egyptian diplomat Boutros Boutros-Ghali from a second term as secretary-general of the United Nations. He accused her of deception and posing as a friend.

As America's top diplomat, Albright made limited progress at first in trying to expand the 1993 Oslo Accords that established the principle of self-rule for the Palestinians on the West Bank and in Gaza. But in 1998, she played a leading role in formulating the Wye Accords that turned over control of about 40% of the West Bank to the Palestinians.

She also spearheaded an ill-fated effort to negotiate a 2000 peace deal between Israel and Syria under Syria's late President Hafez al-Assad. And, she helped guide U.S. foreign policy during conflicts in the Balkans and the Hutu-Tutsi genocide in Rwanda. Full story here:
Utilities seeking to build a controversial power line connecting Iowa and Wisconsin are appealing a court decision blocking the Mississippi River crossing and say construction delays could leave the power grid more vulnerable to blackouts, limit clean energy production and lead to higher electricity prices.

Earlier this year, federal Judge William Conley sided with four conservation groups that sued to stop the $492 million Cardinal-Hickory Creek line, finding the environmental review was inadequate and the project is incompatible with the Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge.

Conley also ruled that a proposed land exchange cannot be used to evade Congress mandate for the refuge, which covers 261 river miles between Wabasha, Minnesota, and Rock Island, Illinois.

Attorneys for American Transmission Co., ITC Midwest and Dairyland Power Cooperative have appealed Conleys decision and asked the appeals court to suspend his order blocking the land swap, which they say will delay the December 2023 completion date.

In a court brief filed Monday, the utilities argue a delay would increase construction costs, which are passed on to ratepayers, compromise reliable operation of the Midwestern power grid, and contribute to ongoing congestion that prevents the delivery of cheap wind energy from Iowa.

The utilities also say project delays could result in the regional grid operator capping output from new clean energy projects that could power millions of homes.

Even a two-month delay, they say, would result in up to $20 million in losses for Madison Gas and Electric and the WEC Energy Group, the owners of the Badger Hollow Solar Farm in Iowa County. Both utility companies are owners of ATC.

The last of 17 transmission lines approved by the Midwest grid operator in 2011, Cardinal-Hickory Creek is needed more than ever, said Beth Soholt, executive director of Clean Grid Alliance, a renewable energy advocacy group.

This unnecessary litigation is holding up the delivery of clean, low-cost renewable energy in Wisconsin and across the Midwest, Soholt said. We cannot stand in the way of delivering the clean energy future the country demands.

The utilities argue Conley exceeded his jurisdiction when he nixed the proposed land swap because it has yet to be approved by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and that his ruling rests on a fundamentally flawed application of federal laws that are likely to be reversed.

Ruling defended

Howard Learner, the lead attorney for the conservation groups, said Conleys ruling was well grounded in law and facts and accused the utilities of using overheated rhetoric as they continue construction.

They are wasting money that they are charging to ratepayers and they are causing unnecessary environmental damage and property damage, Learner said. What they ought to be doing is pausing and stop wasting money.

Learner also noted the federal agencies that were targets of the lawsuit have not appealed and did not support the utilities request to put Conleys order on hold.

Work begins

The utilities, which have already spent more than $161 million on the project, began cutting trees last fall to make way for the Wisconsin portion of the 101-mile line and plan to begin pouring foundations this spring, according to the most recent progress report filed with state regulators. They planned to build the river crossing next winter in order to minimize harm to birds and wetlands.

After Conleys order, the Citizens Utility Board asked the Wisconsin Public Service Commission to halt construction, calling the 101-mile line between Dubuque and Middleton a bridge to nowhere.

The PSC, which unanimously approved the Wisconsin portion in 2019, has not taken any action.

Though his order does not prohibit construction outside of federal waters, Conley wrote that the ongoing construction on either side of the refuge amounts to little more than an orchestrated trainwreck at some later point in this lawsuit.

Other challenges

The case was filed by the Environmental Law and Policy Center on behalf of the National Wildlife Refuge Association, Driftless Area Land Conservancy, Wisconsin Wildlife Federation, and Defenders of Wildlife.

DALC and WWF are pursuing separate challenges in state and federal court.

One of those cases is now before the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which has been asked to decide if a former regulators personal relationships with utility executives constitutes a conflict of interest that could invalidate the construction permit.
Nearly seven years after the Dane County district attorney's office declined to prosecute the Madison police officer who shot and killed 19-year-old Tony Robinson, Robinson's grandmother is employing a rarely used state law in the hopes that a judge will authorize charging the officer with homicide.

Sharon Irwin-Henry filed a petition Monday under a section of state law that allows a judge to review evidence and approve charges in a case if a district attorney refuses to do so. Irwin-Henry wants Madison police officer Matt Kenny charged with either first- or second-degree reckless homicide in the March 6, 2015, death of Robinson at a friend's home on Williamson Street on Madison's Near East Side.

According to reports of his behavior at the time and toxicology tests, Robinson, who was Black, was high on a mixture of hallucinogenic mushrooms, marijuana and an anti-anxiety medication and allegedly assaulted two people. Kenny, who is white, was the first officer to arrive on the scene and encountered Robinson in a darkened stairwell leading up to the home's second-floor apartment.

There, he told investigators, Robinson ambushed him by punching him in the head and Kenny was left with no choice but to protect himself by firing seven times, killing Robinson.

Irwin-Henry, however, points to expert analysis and other evidence uncovered as part of a federal civil rights case filed by Robinson's mother after Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne announced on May 12, 2015, that Kenny would not be charged with a crime in state court.

She contends that evidence shows Kenny lied about what happened in the stairwell  including that Robinson hit him hard enough to give him a concussion and that he fired his weapon at the top of the stairs  and questions his decision to enter the home without waiting for backup.

"When the case reached federal court, the factual landscape changed dramatically from the initial ... investigations and charging decision," Irwin-Henry's petition states. "In the end, this case ultimately turns on one question  what happened between Robinson and Kenny in the stairwell on March 6."

Irwin-Henry's attorney, Syovata Edari, said if there was no confrontation between Robinson and Kenny in the stairwell, that removes any justification Kenny had for opening fire.

Robinson's mother, Andrea Irwin, settled the civil rights case in February 2017, with the city's insurer agreeing to pay $3.35 million  at the time the largest such award in state history  but without Kenny or the city admitting any fault. Irwin-Henry was not party to that case and said she reaped none of its financial reward.

In a statement filed with the petition Monday, she said she waited seven years to seek charges against Kenny because she wasn't aware of the state law that provides a way for her to do that and didn't have the money to hire an attorney. Edari has agreed to work pro bono but Irwin-Henry and her supporters are fundraising to compensate her, Irwin-Henry and Edari said.

Ozanne, Kenny and the Madison Police Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the filing. Kenny has long been assigned to a non-public-facing role at the department's training center.

A legal maneuver similar to the one being employed by Irwin-Henry is also being employed in Milwaukee County by the family of a 2016 Wauwatosa police shooting victim in an effort to have the officer, Joseph Mensah, charged. Mensah has said the man he shot, Jay Anderson Jr., reached for a gun after he discovered him sleeping in a park.

Special prosecutors reviewing the case said Friday that a decision on whether to file charges should come in four to six weeks.

Irwin-Henry is looking to have a judge declare there's probable cause to charge Kenny and appoint a special prosecutor with no ties to law enforcement to prosecute him.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.
R10 million for the palaeosciences

#Wits100 donation will be used to fund the Micro CT scanner upgrade to benefit palaeontologists.

Palaeontologists at Wits are set to benefit from a R10 million bequest, which will give them x-ray vision to see into solid rock, without destroying the fossil or the sedimentary material in which it is embedded.

The R10 million will be used to renew the Universitys Micro CT scanner, which enables scientists to scan a fossil-bearing rock sample using 3D imaging to examine a fossil without having to painstakingly physically remove the fossil from the rock. It uses 3D x-rays to scan inside an object, bit by bit, without having to break it open. This will save time and will also ensure the preservation of the fossil in the rock or sedimentary material.

Given that Wits is now excavating thousands of fossils from various places around the country, this technology will help scientists to save time and resources, and will greatly advance their research, says Professor Zeblon Vilakazi, the Vice-Chancellor and Principal of Wits University. Wits is a leader in the palaeosciences and the renewal of the Micro CT scanner will enable scientists to continue to scan fossils from Africa on home soil. This will also allow us to tell our stories of the origins of Earth and Life from our perspective in the Global South.

A project team has been approved and a project manager has been appointed to drive the design, procurement, acquisition, and commissioning of the new facility, and to provide a turn-key solution to Wits scientists.

We are extremely grateful to the generous benefactor who left this bequest, as an ongoing gift to the University. Her foresight and investment in science, research and development, will not only benefit scientists and students at Wits in our centenary year  it is a lasting gift that will impact on our entire society, and will benefit generations of peoples to come, adds Vilakazi.

Wits is national treasure that occupies a special place in the hearts and minds of South Africans, explains Vilakazi. It makes a significant impact on society in multiple spheres. This bequest will go a long way in helping us to realise these goals.

If you would like to learn more about how to leave a lasting legacy that will benefit future generations, contact Justine Dangor on +27 11 717 9713, or + 27 83 415 2495 or email justine.dangor@wits.ac.za or visit Giving to Wits - Wits University.
A federal judge found Couy Griffin, a founder of Cowboys for Trump and the second January 6 defendant to go on trial as part of the Justice Department's massive prosecution, guilty of trespassing on US Capitol grounds while Vice President Mike Pence was there.
In this 2020, file photo, a couple sift through what remains of their destroyed mobile home following Hurricane Laura in Lake Charles, Louisiana.
Putin spokesman refuses to rule out use of nuclear weapons if Russia faced an 'existential threat'
Former President Donald Trump filed an appeal in their fight against the New York attorney general's attempt to depose them as part of a civil investigation into the Trump Organization.
Weather Alert

...The Flood Warning continues for the following rivers in Indiana... Wabash River from Lafayette to Montezuma. White River at Elliston and Edwardsport. .Multiple rounds of rain over the last few days is bringing minor flooding along lower portions of the White River and upper portions of the Wabash River. Additional rainfall Thursday evening through Friday evening should keep portions of the White and Wabash above flood stage through the weekend. PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS... Motorists should not attempt to drive around barricades or drive cars through flooded areas. Be especially cautious at night when it is harder to recognize the dangers of flooding. Additional information is available at www.weather.gov/ind. This statement will be updated within the next 12 to 24 hours. && ...FLOOD WARNING NOW IN EFFECT UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE... * WHAT...Minor flooding is occurring and minor flooding is forecast. * WHERE...Wabash River at Lafayette. * WHEN...Until further notice. * IMPACTS...At 14.0 feet, Lowland flooding is in progress. High water affects river cabins near North 9th Street. Low county roads are nearly impassable. Tapawingo Park in West Lafayette begins to flood. * ADDITIONAL DETAILS... - At 9:30 PM EDT Wednesday the stage was 11.3 feet. - Recent Activity...The maximum river stage in the 24 hours ending at 9:30 PM EDT Wednesday was 11.3 feet. - Forecast...The river will rise to 13.2 feet early Friday morning. It will then fall to 12.4 feet and begin rising again early Saturday morning. It will rise to 13.7 feet Sunday morning. It will then fall again but remain above flood stage. - Flood stage is 11.0 feet. - http://www.weather.gov/safety/flood &&
The Miao's drum dance, a dance to drum beating, has been popular with the Miao ethnic group, inhabitants of Xiangxi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture, in Central China's Hunan Province, since ancient times. In 2006, Xiangxi Miao drum dance was among the first items on China's list of intangible cultural heritage.

Xiangxi Miao drum dance is a dance form that combines dancing and drum beating. The drum dance originated from sacrificial rituals, conducted by the Miao people, before the Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD). In ancient times, the Miao believed they could communicate with the gods through dancing. They worshipped and prayed to the gods through their dance movements.

At that time, the drum was a central instrument in sacrificial rituals. The ceremonies began and ended with the drum. It was even the totem of Miao's tribes, revealing their spirit and soul. It has often been said the Miao believe the drums contain the sleeping souls of their ancestors, who are awakened by the drum beating to protect their offspring.

Miao villages are scattered across the mountains in Xiangxi. In the past, the Miao people delivered sudden, important messages through the drum, because they lacked transportation and communication methods in mountainous areas. Whenever they heard the beat of the drum, they would understand its implicit meaning.

The Miao people do not have their own characters. Folk activities are important methods for the Miao to pass on their ethnic culture. The powerful, wild and primitive drum dance expresses the Miao's indomitable will, and their tenacious life force. The unique drumbeat and dance movements reflect the Miao's impressive history and rich culture, especially their life and farming, which are central to Miao culture.

The Miao people perform their drum dance during important occasions, including celebrating festivals (especially Chinese New Year and Miao's New Year), weddings and good harvests, and welcoming guests and worshipping their gods. While wearing their traditional folk costumes and exquisite silver ornaments, they perform dances while they beat the drum.

The connotations of the drum dance movements are divided into four categories  productive labor, lifestyle and customs, martial arts and animal behavior.

The Miao's day-to-day life and work, such as spinning, embroidering, plowing fields, sowing seeds, harvesting crops and personal grooming (like combing hair, washing the face and wearing clothes), are symbolically acted out through dance. In several minutes, daily life and work scenes of the Miao are vividly revealed.

Now, Xiangxi Miao drum dance is mainly popular in Jishou, a city in the prefecture, and the counties of Fenghuang, Luxi, Baojing, Huayuan and Guzhang.

Shi Jinqi: Promoting Miao Drum Dance to the Outside

Shi Jinqi, born in Dehang, a Miao village in Aizhai Town, in Jishou, is a prefecture-level inheritor of Xiangxi Miao drum dance. Dehang is the hometown of the Miao drum. Shi began to learn how to perform the drum dance when she was about 7. "I grew up with the drumroll. I have a fondness for the drum dance. Our Miao people are optimistic. We can forget (any worries) when playing the drum," Shi says.

In 1994, Shi wed, and she moved to Pinglang, another Miao village in Aizhai. Pinglang has beautiful scenery, and the Miao ethnic culture is well-preserved in the village. However, she was surprised to learn the Miao villagers did not play the drum. She decided to promote the drum dance in Pinglang, and so she taught the Miao drum dance to the locals  for free.

At first, Shi only taught women how to play the Miao drum during the slow seasons. Later, she began teaching left-behind children (whose parents migrated to other areas for work) how to perform the drum dance during their summer and winter vacations.

She eventually began promoting her free drumdance lessons door to door, and that was how she recruited her first students. She transformed the first floor of her house into a classroom, where she let the children practice the drum dance. "I hoped the drum dance would bring happiness to the left-behind children, and they would grow up in an atmosphere filled with love and happiness," says Shi.

At that time, the students had to share one drum. "The cost of an ordinary drum was more than 700 yuan (US $108). A drum of a better quality cost more than 1,000 yuan (US $154). The villagers could not afford a drum for their children. I asked the children to practice drum-beating movements on the wall  Anything could be a drum, and any place could serve as the stage  When I was young, I did not have a drum. So, I improvised with whatever I could find  a wooden bench or the raised path between farmlands," recalls Shi. The children beat many holes into Shi's wall.

As time passed, more and more children were attracted by the Miao drum dance. "Children enjoy happiness through playing the drum. Their achievements in performing the drum dance, and the smiles on their faces, give me the greatest sense of accomplishment," says Shi.

Shi eventually began leading her students' participation in drum-dance competitions and performances in other regions of China. Due to a lack of funding, she used bed sheets, leftover bits and pieces of cloth, discarded by tailors, and also reed leaves to make performance costumes. "It's meaningful for left-behind children to go out of the mountains and see the outside world. I always have the dream of leading these children to perform the drum dance in other areas, and helping broaden their horizons," Shi says, with a smile.

Through the Miao drum dance, Shi has enriched the children's spiritual lives, and she has lit their hopes and dreams. Under Shi's influence, some of the children hope to attend university, outside of their region, and then return after graduation to help build their hometown. Some of the children hope to become inheritors of the Miao drum dance, and to pass it on to future generations.

Throughout the years, Shi has added modern elements, and more dance movements, to the traditional Miao drum dance, so the dance movements are more suitable for the drumbeats of modern music.

Shi has made considerable efforts to promote the Miao drum dance; for example, she has established the village's drum-dance troupe. She considers it her responsibility to promote the beautiful, time-honored art form. Shi to date has taught the drum dance to more than 15,000 people.

Under her influence, the village has attached importance to protecting and promoting the Miao's traditional folk culture. The village has set up publicity boards, to introduce the history of Miao drum, and it runs an academy, where the Miao drum dance and Miao songs are taught to villagers.

Since 2014, Shi has led members of the drum-dance troupe as they have participated in many prefectureand city-level competitions and performances. Now, the team has more than 200 members. It has become the calling card of Pinglang.

In February 2021, Shi and the children were invited to perform the Miao drum dance on the stage of the second season of the reality show, Sisters Riding the Winds and Breaking the Waves. On the show, 30 established women celebrities, aged 30 or older, competed, by singing and/or dancing, for the opportunity to form a five-member girls' group. The "charming drum dance" sparked discussions among netizens.

"I hope more people will love the Miao drum dance, and I hope to become a State-level inheritor of Xiangxi Miao drum dance in the future," Shi says.

Photos Supplied by Interviewee

(Source: Women of China English Monthly February 2022 issue)
NBC's New Orleans affiliate WDSU was live on air when one of their weather cameras captured a tornado touching down near the city's Ninth Ward.
Unpaid carers across Wrexham to receive a 500 payment

Almost 2,500 unpaid carers across Wrexham will receive a 500 payment in recognition of the pivotal role they have played during the pandemic.

The payment is part of a 29m investment in unpaid carers from the Welsh Government and recognises the financial and emotional hardship many have experienced.

Unpaid carers who are receiving Carers Allowance on March 31st this year will be eligible for the payment.

An unpaid carer is someone who cares for a partner, relative or friend who has an illness of disability. Carers Allowance is paid to people caring for at least 35 hours a week, who care for someone receiving certain benefits and who earn no more than 128 a week.

Across Wales there are an estimated 57,130 people in in receipt of Carers Allowance in Wales.

2,483 of which are in Wrexham County Borough.

Deputy Minister for Social Services Julie Morgan said: Unpaid carers have played a pivotal role throughout the pandemic and we recognise the financial and emotional hardships they have experienced.

I hope this 500 payment will go some way to supporting them during these difficult times.

We are immensely proud of our unpaid carers in Wales, many of whom struggle to make time for themselves because of their caring role, and hope this 29m investment in people shows how much we value and appreciate what they do.

We understand not all unpaid carers will be eligible for this payment, as many are not in receipt of a Carers Allowance, and we will continue supporting carers of all ages in every way we can.

Unpaid carers will be able to submit their claim to local authorities later this year. Further details on how and when to register for the payment will be available shortly.

The payment is being launched after a survey of more than 1,500 unpaid carers found nearly half had to use their personal savings and give up work or study to care, while more than half had to give up on hobbies or personal interests because of their caring role.

Combined with the cost of living crisis  and the fact many of those in an unpaid carer role will be caring for individuals with complex needs who require warm homes, specialist medical equipment and certain foods  it is recognised unpaid carers will be exposed to greater financial pressures than others.

It is hoped a payment of 500 will go some way to easing these pressures, as well as recognising the value of their caring role over the last year to Wales health and social care system.

Kate Young, Chair of Wales Carers Alliance and Director of the All Wales Forum of Parents and Carers, said: The Alliance welcomes the news that many unpaid carers across Wales will be supported by this payment.

It is a positive step towards recognising the unwavering care and support unpaid carers have always given, and will continue to give, especially considering the extra challenges so many families have faced during the pandemic.

Simon Hatch, Director of Carers Trust Wales, welcomed the news: Unpaid carers have been on the frontline throughout the pandemic and this payment is recognition of the many hours of care theyve given alongside the efforts of the paid workforce.

This is a first step towards addressing some of the concerns weve heard from unpaid carers across Wales, spanning from before the pandemic, about their daily struggles to make ends meet.

Claire Morgan, Carers Wales Director said: Unpaid carers are the vital third pillar of our health and social care system in Wales and took on unknowing amounts of stress and responsibility during the pandemic.

This 500 payment is an important first step in actively recognising carers daily contribution to our society and we commend the Welsh Government for making these payments direct to carers.
Wrexham bakery on a roll as new deal announced with burger chain Five Guys

A top Wrexham bakery has clinched a deal to supply popular burger chain Five Guys.

Before it was signed off, the burger buns and rolls made by the Jones Village Bakery in Wrexham had to be approved by fast-growing American companys bakery team who flew in from the States.

The bread is made using a secret American recipe thats designed to provide the ideal accompaniment for the signature burgers and the hot dogs at Five Guys  so-called because the business was founded by five brothers.

The chain has more than 130 branches across the UK with more opening all the time  at a rate of between 15 and 20 outlets a year.

Their story started in Arlington, Virginia, in 2005 when Jerry and Janie Murrell, gave their five sons a choice of either starting a business or going to college.

Today, Five Guys has more than 1,700 locations across the globe.

According to the company, their success is based on a simple formula: Burgers and fries cooked to perfection.

They turned to the Jones Village Bakery because needed a new supplier in the UK as they are expanding so rapidly.

The timing was perfect because the Jones family have just opened a new 140,000 sq ft flagship bakery and headquarters on Wrexham Industrial Estate.

Managing director Robin Jones said: They came to see us and they were impressed with our wonderful facilities and its gone from there.

Theyre opening up branches all the time but the thing I love about Five Guys is theyre so quality focused and their burgers and fries are amazing. Their milkshakes are to die for.

Our passion for quality is shared so I am incredibly excited by this new partnership.

Were making their hot dog rolls and their burger buns. One style of burger bun is sesame topped. Its a very rich product, the best quality flour, the best quality ingredients.

Weve used their American recipe. I cant give their secrets away but its a very special bun and its absolutely delicious.

When you take a bite of that burger, the bun is just as important as the meat and the toppings.

What Five Guys are trying to do is replicate their bun throughout the world, so every time you go into a Five Guys restaurant, you have the same experience.

The brothers sent their top bakery team from the States to sign off of the buns and the rolls.

If they do not sign it off, you do not supply them. Its as simple as that. You have to have their seal of approval.

The philosophy of Five Guys is driven by their original vision and their family values shine through.

Everything is fresh, nothing is frozen and they prepare the burgers in store. The fries are hand-cut daily while the beef comes from Scotland and is grain finished for a marbled texture perfect for patties.

Were going to supply all their stores in the top half of the UK, from Birmingham upwards.

Were honoured to work with Five Guys. Were working with the best retailers in the UK, now were working with the best food service operators. So, were super happy.
Joan Didion, born in 1934, who died two days before this past Christmas, was one of the best known and most talented American essayists and journalists of her generation.

In her lengthy career she produced five novels, 14 books of nonfiction, and seven plays and screenplays (as well as anonymously rewriting many others). She worked closely with her husband John Gregory Dunne, and won the Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction in 2005 for her work The Year of Magical Thinking, about Dunnes death in 2003 and her grief in the following months and years.

Joan Didion in 2008 (Photo creditDavid Shankbone)

There are various processes reflected in Didions work. She came of age during the postwar and Cold War years. The reality and then the legacy of McCarthyism hung in the air and genuine left-wing thought was virtually criminalized or hidden from public view. These were decades when the best artists only went so far, to the limits of angry liberalism, in either understanding or depicting American life. Treating the foundations of society remained largely taboo. Didion was a year younger than novelist Philip Roth, for example, and despite their different cultural backgrounds, there is more than one similarity between their outlooks, for better or worse.

At the same time, the end of the Eisenhower years, the emergence of the mass civil rights movement and the breaking up of the Hollywood blacklist opened up new possibilities in the arts, in publishing and in the film world, a relative breath of fresh air.

Didion also belonged to the artistic intelligentsia shocked and to a certain extent set into motion by the end of the postwar economic boom in the US, the slaughter in Vietnam and the degeneration (and sharp shift to the right) of official American political life in the 1970s and beyond. She was an insightful and honest writer, a master prose stylist. Over the decades she and her husband were associated with a range of prominent artists, particularly in Hollywood but also on the East Coast, including writers Norman Mailer and Truman Capote, film director Roman Polanski, musician Jim Morrison and visual artists such as David Hockney and Robert Rauschenberg.

Didion was a native Californian, born to five generations of Sacramento ranchers in the period before the intense industrialization of the state. This certainly left a mark on her, and California was a subject to which she returned again and again. Her immediate family were upper middle-class Republicans, her father an army colonel and her mother a homemaker and supporter of the far-right John Birch Society.

She was educated at University of California, Berkeley, where her literary studies inclined toward the formalist New Criticism, which focused closely on text, under author and critic Mark Schorer. She won an essay contest to be a guest editor at Mademoiselle in New York City and returned there after graduation to work as a copy writer and later as an editor at Vogue. She lived in New York from 1956 to 1964. She wrote pieces for Mademoiselle, Commonweal and The Nation, as well as Vogue, and socialized with writers, people in the advertising industry, and various political figures such as right-wing editor William F. Buckley. She was then a supporter of the arch-conservative Barry Goldwater. It was during this period that she published her first novel, Run River (1960), based largely on her experiences growing up in the Sacramento Valley.

By 1964 she and Dunne had married and moved to Los Angeles, both writing for magazines, particularly the Saturday Evening Post .

This is the period when she and Dunne became familiar with the Hollywood scene. Dunnes older brother, Nick, was a producer and introduced the couple to filmmakers and actors. They attempted writing their first film scripts. She became acquainted with Harrison Ford, then a young actor who did construction work on Hollywood houses, journalist Tom Wolfe, and more established figures such as Gene Kelly and writers Gore Vidal and Christopher Isherwood.

Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968)

Between 1965 and 1968 she wrote the essays collected in Slouching toward Bethlehem (1968), a period she later characterized as a time when I began to doubt the premises of all the stories I had ever told myself. She was moving toward the left, in other words, under the pressure of the radicalization of the times, and the growing disillusionment with the lies that American society told about itself.

The book was a literary success and exhibited what were to become her characteristic style and sensibility: beautifully and precisely written prose that consciously drew on the work of Ernest Hemingway, prose which was contrarian, well researched and often shed important light on the history of her subjects. The collection takes its title from one of its essays, originally published in the Saturday Evening Post in 1967, which in turn takes its name from a line in the famous poem by Irish writer W.B. Yeats, The Second Coming (1919), about the Christian end-times, and, metaphorically, the marring of the human psyche in the aftermath of World War I.

The lead essay concerns Didions observations of life in Haight-Ashbury, the center of hippie culture in San Francisco. She was critical of what she saw, though also fair-minded. The essay begins:

It was not a country in open revolution. It was not a country under enemy siege. It was the United States of America in the cold late spring of 1967, and the market was steady and the G.N. P. high and a great many articulate people seemed to have a sense of high social purpose and it might have been a spring of brave hopes and national promise, but it was not, and more and more people had the uneasy apprehension that it was not. All that seemed clear was that at some point we had aborted ourselves and butchered the job, and because nothing else seemed so relevant I decided to go to San Francisco. San Francisco was where the social hemorrhaging was showing up.

Words like these struck a chord in the year of the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, the spring of the workers uprising in France and the unmitigated disaster for American military forces in Vietnam.

Another essay in the book, Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream, is about the murder of a dentist by his wife in a faked car accident, but more generally about the collapse of the dream of plenty and comfort in California (and by implication, the United States). It eloquently gives the history of the region where the murders took place, the San Bernardino Valley, and characterizes its official ignorance and philistinism, a place where, it is routine to misplace the future and easy to start looking for it in bed. Written in 1966, the essay resonates with contempt for much of what is still phony and self-deluding in American culture today.

The book was reviewed favorably and brought her into the literary establishment and is often considered one of the founding works of New Journalism, a phenomenon that tended to include more of a given journalists moods and feelings, as well as genuinely objective research and observation. Such work could dig more deeply into social realities, but also left the door open to extreme subjectivism and egoism.

Didion and Dunne began to have success as screenwriters. They adapted James Millss novel Panic in Needle Park (1966) for Jerry Schatzbergs screen version (1971), starring Al Pacino in his first leading role, an unsentimental love story set under the shadow of drug abuse. Didions second novel Play it as it Lays (1970) was made into a film (1972), for which she and Dunne wrote the script. Directed by Frank Perry, the film starred Tuesday Weld as Maria Wyatt, a model and actress, and Anthony Perkins as a film producer.

Anthony Perkins and Tuesday Weld in Play It As It Lays (1972)

Both the novel and film, about Marias emotional breakdown, are fragmented and convey an unmitigated sadness about life in the pretentious, unhappy, bitter Hollywood social set. The sense that comes across is of a world spinning out of control. No doubt the 1969 Tate-LaBianca murders, committed by the Manson Family, had an impact on Didion (Polanski and his eventually murdered wife Sharon Tate had been friends).

Certain of Didions observations in the material written in the 1970s and collected in The White Album (1979) remain startling, while others strike one as frankly dated and banal. The essay from which the title was taken describes a series of impressions of the year 1968, including an account of her life in Los Angles, a psychiatric report on her, a list of clothes for packing, but also details of meeting Linda Kasabian of the Manson family, watching a recording session with the Doors, meeting Black Panther leader Huey P. Newton while he was on trial for murder in 1968 and later encountering his fellow Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver at home, with whom she discussed the commercial prospects of his book, Soul on Ice .

In On the morning after the sixties, she discusses the social views that she embraced at Berkeley in the 1950s, that she maintained at the time she was writing, and that she seems to have kept for the rest of her life. She acknowledged belonging to a generation distrustful of political highs and growing up convinced that the heart of darkness lay not in some error of social organization but in mans own blood.  If I could believe that going to a barricade would affect mans fate in the slightest, I would go to that barricade, and quite often I wish that I could, but it would be less than honest to say that I expect to happen upon such a happy ending.

This Cold War-influenced skepticism, with its implied anti-communism, lies behind an artistic and intellectual impasse that she would be less and less able to overcome as the decades went on.

Perhaps the best essay in The White Album is In the Islands, about Honolulu (a place she and her family visited frequently). Written from 1969 to 1977, it combines several essays into one, with powerful effect as it ranges from the history of the colonial settlement of the islands to the hotels to a funeral service for the Vietnam dead. It ends with her encomium for James Jones, the author of From Here to Eternity, a novel with a generally critical attitude about the US military on the eve of Americas entry into World War II.

While she cannot find a copy of From Here to Eternity in any Honolulu bookstore, things are different when she visits Schofield Barracks, where Joness novel largely takes place. There, officers and enlisted men know the book. One soldier volunteered a certain inchoate dissatisfaction with his six years in the 25th Division. I read this book From Here to Eternity, he said, and they still got the same little games around here. She adds, James Jones had known a great simple truth: the Army was nothing more or less than life itself.

Her third novel, A Book of Common Prayer (1977), is narrated by a sick aging American woman who sits on top of the social pyramid in a fictional Central American country. She has met another, younger American woman who has fled from her famous civil rights attorney husband because her daughter has been engaged in terrorism. The dramatic situation is reminiscent of Roths American Pastoral, and like that novel, doesnt give us much more insight into the motivations of the daughter, who seems to be modeled on Patty Hearst, or lead us far into an understanding of the times.

By 1973 editor Robert Silvers, the editor of The New York Review of Books, had encouraged her to contribute to the magazine, writing not only about culture but about politics as well, new ground for Didion.

Some of her most admirable and honest journalism appeared there. Salvador (1983), is an excoriating look at the dirty war fought by American puppets in El Salvador, perhaps one of her best works for a glimpse into the sheer brutality of the American-backed regime. Such scenes have been repeated throughout the world since then, a fact worth remembering in the face of the Biden administrations current anti-Russian hysteria. In Miami (1987), she gives valuable insight to the domination of the city by fascist Cuban exile groups, but also the anti-immigrant chauvinism of pro-Sandinista liberal protesters.

Didion had been registered as a Democrat since 1974 so that she could vote for Jerry Brown as California governor, and she supported Jesse Jackson in the 1988 Democratic primary. In 1992 her and Dunnes Manhattan apartment became the unofficial headquarters for Browns efforts to secure the Democratic Partys presidential nomination.

Nevertheless, she often continued to write honestly and reproachfully about the establishment. One admirable essay is 1992s Sentimental Journeys, about the Central Park Five, the group of black and Latino youth falsely convicted of a brutal assault and rape, whom Didion strongly suspected had been framed. Unable to get a pass into the trial, she focused on the lying and hysteria of the media, not only in the context of racism but of the enrichment of the upper middle class and efforts to enforce that class divide in New York City. The city (she and Dunne had moved back there in 1988), she wrote, had the essential criminality  and its related absence of civility could become points of pride, evidence of energy.

Nevertheless, it was difficult for her to go farther. She had experienced important decades of American cultural and political history, often providing sharp insights and with a sensea vivid and evocative sensethat no one knew where the United States was going. At least no one in her circles did. But she never put her finger on the more fundamental causes of the difficulties. This of course was a feature common in one way or another to the entire postwar generation of American intellectuals and artists.

Her 1984 novel, Democracy, was an attempt to draw together and summarize some developments in American imperialism from the postwar period to the evacuation of Saigon in 1975, but the characters themselvesthe wife of a senator, a CIA manare unable to come to grips with the whole period.

She seems to have been largely impervious to the major social developments of the 1980s and after: the growth of vast social inequality in the Unites States and what it meant. No doubt, in the absence of a clearly worked out opposition to the existing order, her own personal fortunes played a role. By the 1980s, she and Dunne were wealthy people. They had done well from Hollywood, including writing scripts for A Star is Born (1976) and Up Close & Personal (1996), about which experience her husband wrote in Monster (1997).

The vast growth of American militarism under Ronald Reagan and again after the 1991 dissolution of the USSR also elicited little protest from her. Her reportage on the 2004 Democratic Convention seems simply to take for granted Johns Kerrys infamous militaristic display at his acceptance speech. Those same assumptions find expression in Political Fictions (2001), which collects many of her articles on official politics from The New York Review of Books. The terms war criminal and inequality do not appear.

Her valuable article on Vice President Dick Cheney, Cheney: The Fatal Touch (2006), indicted him for his role in the invasion of Iraq, but she could not, or chose not to, write on the deeper roots and implications of the war or its devastating impact on the Iraqi people.

The Year of Magical Thinking (2005)

Her last decades were struck by tragedy when her husband died suddenly in 2003 and her daughter, Quintana, whom she had adopted in 1966, died two years later. She wrote one of her best-known works, The Year of Magical Thinking, which explored grief and grieving. It was a mixed result. She was able to generalize about grief and find something common and human in it. At the same time, however, the autobiographical portions are alienating to anyone who does not understand or sympathize with the houses, the food, the clothes and the vacations of the top five percent of income earners in the United States.

Didions best and most honest observations, her perceptive chronicling of certain symptoms of American capitalist societys decline and decay, will endure.
The Australian Education Union in Victoria announced Monday that its draft industrial agreement with the state Labor government had been opposed by 39.3 percent of those voting through delegates' meetings. This represents record-high opposition registered against the AEUs four-year industrial agreements.

For the last regressive agreement in 2017, 18 percent of delegates voted no, less than half the current outcome. Of this years delegates votesallocated to schools on the basis of one per 20 union members1,272 were in favour and 823 against. The no vote was higher in Melbourne than in rural and regional areas, and higher again in the citys more working class areas.

The AEU is attempting to present the agreement as now in effect. Under the national industrial relations regime, however, an agreement must receive a majority vote in a separate, yet to be held, ballot of every individual covered by it, both union and non-union members. Teachers and school workers ought to vote no, with the fight for the rejection of the agreement the first step in the development of a unified counter-offensive for decent wages and conditions and for a properly-resourced public education system.

The opposition registered through the 29 delegates meetings in the past three weeks reflects the depth of hostility toward the sell-out deal from overloaded and underpaid educators and school staff in the crisis-stricken public education system under conditions of COVID surging through schools. Significantly, it demonstrates opposition to both the AEU and the state Labor government of Premier Daniel Andrews.

Mass meeting of Victorian teachers in 2012 (Photo: WSWS Media)

At the centre of the proposed agreement is a substantial real wage cut. Teachers and school staff have already had a 12-month wage freeze last year, as a result of the expiration of the previous agreement in 2020 and the failure to backdate the current proposed agreement before January. For the next four years, the AEU and the state Labor government are attempting to impose nominal wage rises of just 1 percent every six months, with the first of these each year applying to six months work, so in effect a 0.5 percent plus 1 percent increase annually.

There are some minor additional payments through annual bonus pay that does not accumulate with teachers base salaries, and salary increment changes. These do not change the fact, however, that the agreement cuts real wages. Costs of living are currently surging, with rising international oil prices flowing through to transport, power, food, and other basic necessities. Housing costs have been rising in the double-digit percentages annually over the last several years.

For many educators, the prospect of a real wage cut was the straw that broke the camels back. It came after two years of challenging pandemic working conditions, including hastily demanded and inadequately supported remote learning, followed by the premature and AEU-enforced reckless and dangerous reopening of the schools amid COVID-19 community transmission. This led to thousands of educators and students being infected with COVID-19, with 18,825 students and 1,934 educators infected in the first two weeks of this term.

The public education system was already in crisis before the pandemic hit, with schools, especially those in working-class communities, deprived of the necessary resources and staffing, while successive Labor and Liberal governments funnelled vast public monies into private schools.

AEU misinformation

The AEU was only able to secure its 59.7 percent majority in the delegate vote through a calculated disinformation campaign.

After blocking industrial action and refusing to hold a mass meeting during the negotiations with the state Labor government, the union bureaucracy declared on February 4 it had won a historic agreement, on the basis that face-to-face teaching hours would be reduced by 1.5 hours a week over the course of the agreement. The AEU appeared to have anticipated accolades for this. In fact the measure received short shrift from teachers. Various concessions were agreed to by the union to offset state government costs, including a phased reduction of professional practice days, i.e. time allocated to teachers to focus on non-teaching work, from four days a year to just one.

Nothing whatever was done to reduce the enormous administrative and standardised testing related workload that has caused escalating unpaid overtime and widespread workplace stress and burnout.

The AEU bureaucracy mobilised the unions resources to ram the agreement through. This included glossy vote yes posters sent to schools, and editorials written in favour in union publications mailed to the AEU membership, with no space provided to opponents of the deal. The union quickly deleted and blocked comments on its Facebook page in an effort to prevent any discussion between teachers and school workers.

In an information session held before the delegates' meetingsin which no-one other than AEU officials were permitted to speak, union state secretary Erin Aulich (annual salary and benefits $246,000) lyingly insisted that the social media censorship was aimed at blocking trolls violating the union pages protocols. Similar misinformation and censorship dominated the delegates' meetings themselves. Union officials dominated the discussion from beginning to end, with individual opponents of the agreement permitted just three minutes to speak.

The close outcome of the delegates vote has clearly alarmed the AEU bureaucracy. Union state president Meredith Peace (annual salary and benefits $244,000), sent a lengthy email to AEU members on Monday on the outcome. She declared in bold print: Now that union members have endorsed the in-principle agreement, every member must support the majority position taken by members and vote YES for the agreement in the ballot of all employees.

This is falseno teacher and school worker must vote yes. Everyone covered by the proposed agreement, union and non-union, has the opportunity and responsibility to consider the situation and make up their own mind.

The AEU is facing increasing membership resignations, with teachers letters describing the behaviour of union officials as undemocratic, bullyish and using outrageous strong arm tactics. In response, the AEU has contacted school branches offering to participate in branch meetings. Desperate to halt the opposition, and fearing a no vote from other staff employees, the union bureaucrats have suggested that delegates call meetings inviting non-members, with the aim of explaining why they should vote yes and of signing up new members.

Pseudo-left organisations have lined up behind the AEU, refusing to advocate a no vote on the upcoming state-wide ballot on the basis that union democracy must be respected. This reflects the pseudo-lefts lockstep complicity with the AEU bureaucracy. As far as union democracy goesthat which does not exist cannot be respected. The AEU has flouted basic democratic norms in its fight for a wage-cutting agreement, and educators and school workers have every right to strike down the deal.

An alternative perspective

In fighting for a rejection of the proposed agreement, teachers and school workers need to strike out on a new road. Every effort to pressure the AEU bureaucracy has repeatedly proven an abject failurewhat is required is a new political perspective. This has been advanced only by the Committee for Public Education, which has led the fight for a no vote.

As we raised in our February 7 statement: This opposition now needs to be organised and politically led. The Committee for Public Education (CFPE) urges the formation of rank and file committees in every school, independently of the AEU. These need to link up, exchange accurate information on the proposed agreement as well as on the situation in the schools, including on the COVID-19 crisis. Every effort of the union to stifle and censor discussion must be opposed. The closest connections must be established with teachers in Australia and around the world who have entered into struggle.

The statement continued: The fight against the agreement is above all a political fight. Decent wages and working conditions cannot be secured under conditions of mass COVID-19 infection, nor amid the continued degradation of the public education system. Teachers, education support staff, and students and families must fight to develop the widest movement against the entire political establishment, turn out to other sections of the working class confronting similar attacks and, on this basis, establish the social right for every child to receive the highest quality, freely provided public education and the social right of every educator to receive the proper wages, conditions, and resources to be able to do their job properly.

This program is incompatible with an education system subordinated to the market and the dictates of big business. The entire political establishment, Labor, Liberal, and the other parliamentary partiesserve the interests of the major corporations and the ultra-wealthy. Teachers and other workers need to turn towards a socialist and internationalist perspective that aims to harness the enormous productive capacities and technological resources of the world economy in the interests of the social needs of the vast majority, rather than the narrow interests of the wealthy few.

We urge all educators and school workers to fight for the broadest no vote on the state-wide ballot, and to contact the CFPE to take forward the necessary political fight.

Contact the CFPE today:

Email: cfpe.aus@gmail.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/groups/678929646894212

www.facebook.com/commforpubliceducation

Twitter: @CFPE_Australia
US President Joe Biden arrives today in Brussels for two days of meetings with the European Council of European heads of state and then the NATO military alliance. His visit aims to ensure that NATO recklessly escalates military operations against Russia, despite the rising danger of nuclear war.

Asked yesterday about Bidens trip, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan stated that the war would continue indefinitely, dismissing reports of successes in Russian-Ukrainian talks on ending the war begun by Russias February 24 invasion of Ukraine.

This war will not end easily or rapidly, Sullivan said. For the past few months, the West has been united. The president is traveling to Europe to ensure we stay united, to cement our collective resolve, to send a powerful message that we are prepared and committed to this for as long as it takes.

Biden is to discuss plans for a ground invasion of Ukraine by NATO member states during his subsequent March 25 visit to Poland, which has championed plans for NATO troops to deploy to Ukraine as peacekeepers.

President Joe Biden on March 18, 2022, in Washington. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield denied that US troops are now in Ukraine but gave a green light to other NATO states to invade. I cant preview what decisions will be made at this NATO conference and how NATO will respond to the Polish proposal [to deploy peacekeepers in Ukraine]. What I can say is American troops will not be on the ground in Ukraine at this moment, she said, adding that other NATO countries may decide that they want to put troops inside of Ukraine.

Thomas-Greenfields denial of US military involvement on the ground in Ukraine is misleading and false. US private military contractors like Academi (formerly Blackwater) and CIA paramilitaries are aiding Ukrainian nationalist militias and army units against Russia. However, a major escalation is being prepared: retired US military officers have said the Pentagon may double its current force of 100,000 troops in Europe.

Conditions are emerging for NATO to launch a land war against Russia in Ukraine that could escalate to global nuclear war. The Russian army has an estimated 1 million regular troops. Of those, around 150,000, largely drawn from elite armored units, are bogged down in bloody fighting in Ukraine. NATO armed forces, at about 3.3 million, enjoy overwhelming numerical superiority on a world scale and are publicly preparing to launch military operations in Ukraine.

Yesterday, CNN interviewed Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov and provocatively asked him about Russian willingness to use nuclear weapons.

Peskov emphasized that Russia may use nuclear weapons if the Kremlin believes it faces a threat to Russias national survival. We have a concept of domestic security and it's public, you can read all the reasons for nuclear arms to be used. So, if it is an existential threat for our country, then it [the nuclear arsenal] can be used in accordance with our concept, he said.

Peskov also gave CNN an account of the bankrupt calculations that led the Kremlin to invade Ukraine. He said it was concerned about an invasion of separatist Russian-speaking areas of eastern Ukraine such as the Donbass by the current far-right Ukrainian regime in Kiev. Moreover, he added, the Kremlin was increasingly frustrated with NATOs treatment of Russia in the decades since the Stalinist bureaucracy dissolved the Soviet Union in 1991.

President [Vladimir] Putins intents are to make the world listen to and understand our concerns, Peskov said. We've been trying to convey our concerns to the world, first to Europe, to the United States for a couple of decades, but no one would listen to us.

Russian desperation mounted as US and NATO weaponry and support poured into Ukraine, which became a heavily armed NATO base directly on Russias borders. Moscow was hoping that Ukraine will never get prepared for a strike against Donbass, Peskov said, and counting on Normandy Format talks between Berlin, Paris, Kiev and Moscow. However, Peskov added, No one would warn Ukrainians not to do that [attack the Donbass]. No one would push Ukrainians towards the solution within a framework of Normandy process. No one did.

Peskov indicated that the Kremlin concluded that to reach a deal with the NATO imperialist powers, it had to intimidate them militarily. After Ukraine amassed about 120,000 troops on the front lines in the Donbass, Peskov said, it become perfectly clear for us  for our military specialists, that Ukraine was going to launch an offensive against Donbass. Moscow decided, he stated, that no one would listen to our concerns until Russian military operations began.

The extreme danger of a global military conflagration is rooted in the disastrous consequences of the Stalinist bureaucracys dissolution of the Soviet Union. Over 30 years, NATO absorbed countries across Eastern Europe, moving ever closer to Russias borders, while rampaging across the Middle East and Central Asia, attacking countries including Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria. Now, it is now deploying troops directly on Russias borders in Poland, the Baltic republics and potentially in Ukraine.

Peskovs comments lay bare the reactionary conceptions of the leaders of Russias post-Soviet capitalist regime, trained on false Stalinist theories of peaceful coexistence with imperialism. Constantly disappointed in their attempts to negotiate a settlement with NATO powers they call their Western partners, they gambled, according to Peskov, that a credible military threat would force NATO to negotiate. This gamble is visibly failing.

While the Kremlin fired the first shot, it is the NATO imperialist powers that have goaded Russia into the conflict. Now they are reacting to Putins invasion of Ukraine, and to Moscows nuclear threats, simply by escalating their operations. Even as Peskov stresses that the Kremlin is looking for a negotiated settlement, the NATO powers are recklessly pressing ahead, risking nuclear war.

As the American and European media demonize Russia for its military operations in Ukraine, NATO military and intelligence officials appear to be drawing the unsubstantiated and extremely dangerous conclusion that Moscow will be reluctant to use heavy weaponry in a war.

Yesterday, military correspondent William Arkin wrote in Newsweek an account of Russian tactics in Ukraine, based on US intelligence sources. It emphasized Moscows relatively limited use of air power and artillery causing large-scale damage to Ukrainian cities. After nearly a month of war, Arkin wrote, Russian aircraft flew some 1,400 strike sorties and delivered almost 1,000 missiles. By contrast, he noted, the United States flew more sorties and delivered more weapons in the first day of the 2003 Iraq war.

The heart of Kyiv has barely been touched. And almost all of the long-range strikes have been aimed at military targets, a senior US Defense Intelligence Agency official told Arkin. I know it's hard  to swallow that the carnage and destruction could be much worse than it is. But that's what the facts show. This suggests to me, at least, that Putin is not intentionally attacking civilians, that perhaps he is mindful that he needs to limit damage in order to leave an out for negotiations.

In Europe, official circles are clearly calculating about the increased likelihood of nuclear conflict, which could rapidly destroy any or all European countries. Yesterday, Professor Benoit Pelopidas, a nuclear weapons expert at the Political Science University in Paris, spoke to France Info to stress Frances vulnerability to nuclear attack.

Frances military and political elites bet on nuclear deterrence, Pelopidas said. However, under extreme political conditions, Frances possession of nuclear weapons may no longer be sufficient to deter Russia or other powers from using nuclear weapons, leaving France open to annihilation if Russia and NATO fire ever-larger salvoes of nuclear bombs.

Pelopidas explained, Already in the 1950s, a National Civil Protection Service report indicated that 15 thermonuclear bombs would be enough to destroy France.

France is the largest Western European country by surface area, meaning that it would take less to annihilate other countries. While building masses of underground shelters might protect the population, Pelopidas said, Faced with anything more than a very small number of [nuclear] explosions, it has been shown that these shelters offer only illusory protection.

Workers across Europe and around the world must be warned: As the NATO powers press ahead with military escalation in Europe, nuclear war is now a clear and present danger.

Appeals to reason on the part of the NATO ruling classes are falling and will fall on deaf ears. The only way to avert a catastrophic conflict is to politically alert the international working class of the mounting danger of world war and mobilize it in a powerful, socialist anti-war movement.
Are you a CP Rail worker? Contact us to let us know what you think about the Teamsters decision to sell out your struggle by agreeing to binding arbitration.

***

The World Socialist Web Site has received a growing number of letters from CP Rail workers over the past week protesting the horrendous conditions of exploitation to which they are subjected by the combined efforts of a ruthless employer, the pro-corporate Teamsters union and the NDP-backed Liberal government.

Canadian Pacific Railways locomotive number 2303, in Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada, this year (Credit: Wikimedia user J73364)

In a wide-ranging interview, a conductor from British Columbia described his shocking experience following his involvement in a train derailment last year, and expressed his views on the current struggle for wage and pension improvements. The interview was conducted prior to Tuesday mornings sabotage of the CP Rail struggle by the Teamsters, who agreed to binding arbitration and thereby robbed the workers of any legal rights to strike or take action to fight for their demands.

WSWS: Where are you based out of?

Conductor: Ive been with CP Rail for four years and Im based in BC. I used to work for government liquor distribution before a friend convinced me to apply to CP Rail.

WSWS: What does your job entail exactly?

C: I am a conductor, but when you are new and you do not have a lot of seniority, you are on a spare board. How it works for me is that I cover holes for when people call in sick or book time off. So, as spares, we do not work as much. Sometimes you can only work 12 hours. Sometimes you could be clear for the evening, but other times you are called in for midnight because someone called in sick. Sometimes, when it is really slow, you do not work for 4-5 days. When you do work you can only book 12 hours rest. You are allowed to book more than 12 hours rest but it is counted as a penalty if you are on the spare board.

The funny thing is that I can book zero rest on the spare board. Rests are voluntary. Some guys work all day and all night and book zero rest, and then go back out again with almost no gap between shifts. Even truckers are mandated to have a 10-hour gap between shifts. There are guys here that just do not sleep. I dont know how they are able to do it. CP loves these guys because they will always make money for the company.

There is a lot the public does not know. Its not just about money. CP is an evil corporation. They pay well, and theres a pension, but they held back the pension cap from 2013. The old-school guys can retire with maybe $80,000, but I can work the same amount of time but will retire with $60,000, a $20,000 difference.

WSWS: What has your experience been at CP Rail? Can you describe your working conditions?

C: Because I am on the spare board, normally there are 15 of us. We cover yard shifts mainly. They start at different times. I have to cover days off and sick days for regular employees.

There have been times that I have worked nine hours straight without a break, no matter how cold or hot it is you have to work through it. When you do get a break, you get one 20-minute break a day. The supervisor often carries a stop-watch and he is timing you. Sometimes they come in at 15 minutes to let you know how much time you have left, which is a breach of our right to a 20-minute uninterrupted break.

There are no places in the yard to go to the bathroom, and they do not let you go to the other end of the yard. The bathroom break is incorporated into your 20-minute break.

We get watched on cameras while working, supposedly for our own security. We are watched like a hawk and listened to on our radios. There is always someone listening and watching. They do not give you the freedom to just work, they dictate everything you do. They are an evil corporation.

Our lineups are not right. The other night I was first out at 7:30 p.m. and the trains were delayed to 12:30 a.m., so that is five hours of just waiting for work. At 9:30 p.m. I booked in as unfit.

I know of a railway manager who was given just two days notice that he was moving to Sudbury. You do not have a life. For this reason, the company is geared towards hiring young single males who do not have a family or other commitments yet. A lot of workers quit after the first training day; we only keep about a third of the people we hire.

WSWS: I hear you were involved in a workplace accident. Can you tell me about that experience?

C: Last summer I was involved in a derailment. I was on the cars when six cars and one unit [engine] came off the track and crashed. And I jumped off. The whole thing happened so quick. Normally with an accident you are meant to be taken out of service and they do an investigation. But this was the summer and they had fewer crews. I called the superintendent and asked what was going to happen with me, and he would not take my texts, phone calls, emails. I could not sleep for days. I booked off sick. I was so stressed out. My life had flashed before my eyes. I tried to talk to a local boss, told him I am mentally unfit to run trains right now and no one is answering my calls or emails.

I needed a doctors note because I was off for more than 72 hours. I explained I had not slept in four days, I am not mentally fit, and then CP told me I had to make a WCB (Workers Compensation Board) claim. But then CP fought my claim by telling WCB that my lack of sleep was due to the forest fires in BC and not due to the fact I was riding cars when they crashed! This went on for four months while my claim was in dispute. I was given no pay during this time. Not a single manager reached out to see if I was okay. CP made it worse and tried to bully me into quitting so they would not have to pay out my claim.

The psychologist deemed I had acute trauma stemming from work, so I got a cheque from CP through WCB. They made it really hard to come back to work. The town where I live has a doctor shortage, so when this all started, I told them I do not have a regular doctor. The four months I was off were terrible.

The guys that died in Field, BC got onto an unsafe train and CP covered that up because of money. [ Three railroaders died in a train derailment near the community of Field along the British Columbia-Alberta border in February 2019.]

WSWS: Are you aware of any workplace safety violations?

C: Workers go over the 10-hour maximum shift length a lot. The company does not care. I have been on a train for 13 hours before. The calculation for pay is based on miles travelled and car length, not based on hours worked. After the 10 hours, you are paid a flat rate of $80, no matter how many extra hours you have worked. I have heard of guys working an extra 6-7 hours because of delays and all the company has to pay them is an extra 80 bucks.

The hot shot trains [that haul consumer goods] are given priority, and so if you are on a coal or grain train that is much slower, you may have to wait for the hot shot to pass before continuing. So, you are sitting there for three hours while you wait for a more important train to pass.

WSWS: What are your thoughts about the CP Rail lockout/strike?

C: The strike is pretty crummy. CP does not want to give us anything we have asked for. For example, one of the things I wanted was secure vacation time. Currently, before our vacation kicks in at 10 p.m. on a Sunday, we can still get called in for a trip right up until 9:59 p.m. So, you could go 30 hours into your vacation time. But if you book in sick or unfit, it is on a computer showing you are on vacation. When you get back you can be suspended or penalized. CP said no to this demand.

The only way to secure the vacation time is by using earned days off. Every month you do not book time off due to sickness or vacation, you earn one day off. We are punished for time off and incentivized to work non-stop.

The current contract that was offered by CP Rail has no signing bonus, no change in the current pension cap scheme, just a two percent raise this year, and 2.5 percent the following year. CP had money to buy a new railroad but cannot pay into our pension or up our wages. They make record profits. Keith Creel, CEO of CP, was railroader of the year in 2021 and 2022, and he is a big reason why things are the way they are. Hes a piece of trash!

WSWS: What do you think of the Teamsters union?

C: The Teamsters just passes the buck, too busy to help. My union grievances are just ignored and passed on to another disinterested bureaucrat.

I bought a house two years ago. My move-in date was on a Sunday and I had to be at the apartment for a walkthrough. So, I applied for a personal day to move but the response from management was no, not approved. I tried the union, and they told me to just call in sick and if I get in trouble the union would use me as an example.

WSWS: Do you have any demands regarding your working conditions? What do you think workers actually need to work in a safe environment?

C: I think we should be able to take as much rest as we want without a penalty. Twelve hours is not a big gap between work shifts. There should be up to 24 hours rest without penalty, and there should be more than one 20-minute break during a shift. We are called the backbone of Canada but our industry just makes up its own rules. We are the only industry that is not given time off to vote. We do not even have a legal right to vote, that is how messed up transport is.

I can guarantee Trudeau will force us back to work for the sake of the economy without even thinking about the workers lives. He will force us back regardless of our strike demands.

About a year and a half ago, Transport Canada (TC) recommended new rest rules, more like those in trucking, with a 10-hour gap in between shifts. But CN and CP are fighting it and want zero rest. TC want us home two nights in a row once a week, but CN and CP are fighting this too. These rules were meant to be put in place last May but they were never implemented.

We are expected to jump on the train within 30 seconds to a minute. Something could be off by one number in the paperwork and if you do not catch it you could be fired. But its go go go, rush rush rush. It is dangerous but they do not care. You are just a number, you are expendable. They want to hold you ransom until you retire.

They seem to have it worse at BNSF. There, if you call in sick on a Friday, they ding you 25 points in order to scare employees off of taking any time off for any reason.

They move the stuff so quick now. I heard that a long time ago the training process was a much longer process. Now it is only three months. There is so much to learn, but they throw you out to the wolves. You could have zero experience and the next thing you know you are running a two-mile train full of jet fuel along a cliff and they do not care because you are just a number that is making them money.

After my initial training, I did not have a day of work for the next four months. When I was put on the schedule finally, my first job was as a foreman on a job. I had to tell people what to do even though I knew very little about the job myself!

I do not think the public knows about our working conditions. I think the public needs to know what is going on.
The trade union-sponsored New Democratic Party (NDP) has entered into a formal governmental alliance with Canadas Justin Trudeau-led, minority Liberal government. Under an agreement negotiated in secret and announced Tuesday morning, the NDP has pledged to sustain Trudeau and his Liberals in office through June 2025, by voting with the government on all budgets, spending bills and confidence motions.

The Liberal-NDP Supply and Confidence Agreement is underpinned by a series of mechanisms through which the two parties can determine their priorities and reconcile differences. These include regular meetings between, respectively, Trudeau and NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, the two parties house leaders and their party whips, and a monthly meeting of an oversight committee comprised of a small number of top party leaders and senior staff.

As part of a joint commitment to no surprises, the Liberals will forewarn the NDP of any issues they want to make matters of confidence so as to rapidly implement them. The NDP, in turn, has pledged to privately inform their Liberal partners in advance of how they would vote were the Liberals to so proceed and thereby risk defeat in parliament.

The new governmental partnership between the Liberals, the Canadian ruling class traditional preferred party of national government, and the social-democratic NDP falls just short of a coalition government with NDP cabinet ministers.

Left: Jagmeet Singh at the OFL Convention in 2017 (Wikimedia Commons/OFL Communications Department), Right: Justin Trudeau speaks during a media conference at the end of an EU-Canada summit at the European Council building in Brussels, Tuesday, June 15, 2021. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

Under conditions where the COVID-19 pandemic has enormously exacerbated an already systemic crisis of world capitalism; the US, Canada and their NATO allies have goaded Russia into a war that is rapidly becoming a global conflict; and there is a growing upsurge in class struggle around the world, the NDP and their trade union allies have for all intents and purposes joined the Trudeau government.

In announcing their government alliance at separate press conferences Tuesday, both Trudeau and Singh stressed the need for political stability, under conditions of a pandemic and war. Trudeau said the agreement means that during this uncertain time the government can function with predictability and stability, present and implement budgets and get things done for Canadians. Both leaders, but especially Singh, also touted the agreements promise of a series of modest social spending initiatives, beginning with the staggered introduction of a dental care program for low-income Canadians later this year. Most of these initiatives are vaguely worded and lifted from the 2021 Liberal election platform.

The real aim of the Liberal-NDP agreement is to shore up Canadas national government so that it can withstand mounting working class opposition as it lurches sharply further to the right.

Like its counterparts in Europe and the United States, Canadas capitalist ruling elite is using NATOs proxy war with Russia to implement longstanding plans to more aggressively pursue its imperialist interests on the global stage, dramatically increase military spending and poison the political environment with nationalism and anti-Russia and anti-China chauvinism.

The Trudeau government has rushed lethal weapons to Ukraine, expanded Canadas military deployments to the NATO states bordering Russia, and placed more than 3,000 additional troops on standby for deployment to Europe. In close partnership with Britains neo-Thatcherite Conservative government, it has spearheaded the push within NATO for an economic blitzkrieg against Russia, including sanctions, the seizure of Russian central bank assets, the cutoff of all oil imports and the imposition of 35 percent tariffs on Russian imports.

The Liberal government has also reaffirmed the commitment it made in an agreement with Washington, signed last August, to modernize NORAD, the Canada-US aerospace and maritime defence command, for strategic conflict with Russia and China.

Reckless imperialist aggression abroad has been and will be accompanied by intensified class war at home. Even as 6,300 more Canadians were killed in January and February of this year by the Omicron-driven fifth wave of the pandemic, the Liberal government was bowing to the demands of the far-right Freedom Convoy by greenlighting the dismantling of virtually all anti-COVID mitigation measures and declaring the end to all pandemic relief programs for workers.

Already NATOs war with Russia is exacerbating the global price surges and shortages created by capitalist governments ruinous profit before lives pandemic policy and their pumping of trillions of dollars into the financial markets to bailout big business, the rich and super-rich.

As the war continues to interact with the economic crisis, the ruling class will act ever more ruthlessly to place the full burden of both on the working class.

According to the CBC reporter who on Monday night broke the story of the impending Liberal-NDP alliance, the agreement came together in discussions over the preceding 10 days among a very narrow circle of Liberal and NDP leaders and was above all driven by the concerns about the impact of the war over Ukraine.

The specific task of the NDP and their union allies will be to suppress worker struggles, while providing the Liberals with left cover as the government pursues imperialist aggression and pivots to renewed austerity and growing the economya euphemism for a raft of pro-business policies from deregulation to privatization.

It is no accident that the Liberal-NDP governmental alliance was announced the very same day that the Teamsters union shut down the struggle of 3,000 Canadian Pacific railway workers and agreed that a government-appointed, pro-big business arbitrator will dictate their terms of employment.

Unsurprisingly, the trade unions hailed the Liberal-NDP alliance. A statement from the countrys largest labour federation, the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) began by saying Canadas unions celebrate todays historic agreement. It went on to cite CLC President Bea Bruske as saying the CLC and its affiliates look forward to working with the Government and New Democrats in implementing a progressive policy agenda. In congratulating the two parties on their anti-working class alliance, Unifor, the countrys largest industrial union, noted that it has long been urging them to form such a partnership.

Over the past four decades, the unions have systematically suppressed the class struggle, enabling the ruling class to impose round after round of austerity and capitalist restructuring, while integrating themselves ever more fully into management and the state. But this corporatist partnership has reached a qualitatively new level over the past two years. The unions and NDP supported the placing of unlimited funds at the disposal of big business and the financial aristocracy at the beginning of the pandemic; policed the ruling class drive to keep non-essential businesses and schools open amid successive waves of mass COVID-19 infections and deaths; then last month backed the Trudeau governments use of emergency powers to put an end to the far-right Freedom Convoy. Now as the capitalist crisis reaches a new stage with the eruption of war in Europe a war in which Canadian imperialism is a major belligerentthe unions and NDP are strengthening their partnership with the Liberal government and the ruling class.

The NDP, while professing to be pro-peace, has given its full-throated support to the NATO proxy war against Russia. At yesterdays press conference, NDP leader Singh was repeatedly pressed to commit the NDP to support a hike in Canadian military spending from the current 1.4 percent of GDP to at least 2 percent ($35 billion) in the coming federal budget.

This is in line with the clamour from the corporate media and various think-tanks for a massive, permanent hike in military spending, and Defence Minister Anita Anands recent announcement that she has provided the cabinet with multiple aggressive options for raising military spending to 2 percent of GDP or higher.

Singh dodged the questions about NATOs minimum 2 percent defence spending target. Yet he reiterated the NDPs longstanding support for increased military spending, including on the purchase of new fleets of warships and fighter jets. He made clear that the NDP will vote for the coming budget, irrespective of how much military spending is hiked, as long as the Liberals move forward with providing some of the help for Canadians outlined in the Liberal-NDP agreement.

Trudeau, who left Tuesday for the war summit of NATO leaders to be held Thursday in Brussels, bluntly told a press conference that his government will not be deterred by any qualms the NDP caucus may have about implementing the demands of big business. Where there is not agreement, he declared, we will continue to do the things that the Liberal Party was elected to do and will look for support from other parties as necessary as we move forward.

Anxious to counter the insinuations of some reporters that the NDP is little more than a Liberal lapdog, Singh repeated ad nauseam that his party will never stop fighting for Canadians. He emphasized, in particular, that the NDP would not support ending labour disputes with back-to-work legislation, even if the Liberals chose to make it a confidence vote. This is bombast of the worst kind. Everyone knows that if the Liberals had failed to prevail on their allies in the Teamsters union to impose binding arbitration on the CP Rail workers and been forced to use a back-to-work law against them, the Conservatives would have immediately provided the government with the requisite parliamentary support.

Yesterdays announcement of a union-backed Liberal-NDP governmental alliance must serve as a salutary lesson. It highlights that the working class struggle against war, the pandemic, capitalist austerity and the ever-widening assault on democratic rights can only develop in direct struggle against, and through a political and organizational break with, the corporatist unions and their NDP allies.
By this evening, the official COVID-19 death toll in the United States will surpass 1 million, according to the Worldometers tracker. Due to the absence of uniform data, the exact death toll from COVID-19 and the moment it will pass 1 million on other data trackers is unknown, but by the end of April every tracker will likely surpass this horrific milestone. Estimates of excess deaths caused directly or indirectly by the pandemic place the true US death toll at over 1.2 million.

The catastrophic loss of life and broader societal impacts of the pandemic are unprecedented in American history. Entire families have been wiped out. One out of every 100 people above 65 years old has been killed by COVID-19. Over 200,000 children have lost a parent or primary caregiver to the disease.

In the span of two years, more Americans have died from COVID-19 than the cumulative death toll of every war fought by the United States in the 20th century. On average, 2,735 Americans have died from this preventable disease every two days over the past two years, close to the total of 2,977 people killed in the September 11 terror attacks.

In the first year of the pandemic alone, life expectancy in the US dropped by an astounding 1.8 years, the largest decrease since World War II. At this point, the cumulative total decline in life expectancy is likely approaching five years.

Ventilator tubes attached to a COVID-19 patient at Providence Holy Cross Medical Center in the Mission Hills section of Los Angeles, Nov. 19, 2020 [Credit: AP Photo/Jae C. Hong]

Lost among the statistics of mass deaths are countless individual tragedies. Parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, sons, daughters, the elderly, people in the prime of life, youth who had hardly even begun to live, have all been struck down by COVID-19.

In response to this monumental social catastrophe and the approaching milestone of 1 million deaths, everywhere there is massive official indifference.

One would imagine that a series of solemn memorials, tributes and serious discussions on the pandemic would be held in the days and weeks leading up to this milestone. Nothing of the sort. The pandemic is now all but ignored by the entire political establishment and the corporate media, as a potential new surge of the more infectious, vaccine-resistant and virulent Omicron BA.2 subvariant looms in the background and all federal pandemic funding has completely dried up.

While the 1 million needless deaths are the most tragic element of the pandemic, millions and possibly tens of millions more Americans now suffer from Long COVID as a result of their illness. These include a myriad of symptoms that can affect nearly every organ in the body, including the lungs, brain, heart, kidneys and immune system.

Seroprevalence studies indicate that likely upwards of 200 million Americans have been infected with COVID-19. Studies on Long COVID estimate that at least 10 percent of infections lead to long-term symptoms, with comparable rates among breakthrough infections in vaccinated people, meaning that upwards of 20 million Americans are likely experiencing some form of long-term ramifications.

Further, there is a growing body of evidence proving that those infected with COVID-19 face increased risk of brain damage, heart disease, kidney disease, diabetes and more. The overall long-term societal impact is incalculable.

The overwhelming majority of COVID-19 infections and deaths have befallen the working class and lower-middle class. Comprising the bottom 90 percent of income earners, they have been compelled to return to unsafe workplaces and send their children into unsafe schools, which have been the primary centers of viral transmission.

By September 2021, according to CDC estimates, roughly 25.8 million children had already been infected with COVID-19 in the US. The full reopening of schools since that time likely pushed the figure above 40 million, with millions infected or reinfected with Omicron.

For the capitalist ruling class, the pandemic has been an unprecedented bonanza. This Sunday will mark two years since the CARES Act was signed into law by Donald Trump after passing with near-unanimous bipartisan support. This initiated the greatest transfer of wealth in US history, with US billionaires amassing a staggering $2.1 trillion through October 2021.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who violated California state law and forced his employees back to work in May 2020, went unpunished by state Democrats and has amassed over $200 billion in the past two years. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who has overseen mass COVID-19 infections and numerous deaths at his workplaces, has garnered $75 billion since March 2020.

Under both the Trump and Biden administrations, as well as Republican and Democratic state and local governments, public health has been continuously subordinated to the economic, social and political interests of the corporations and financial oligarchy. The pretense of Biden and the Democrats that they would follow the science and maintain efforts to stop the pandemic was exploded during the surge of the Omicron variant.

On December 15, 2021, as Omicron infections started to skyrocket, White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Jeff Zients (net worth over $90 million) stated, We know how to keep our kids in school and our businesses open, and were not going to shut down our economy in any way. This set the tone for the subsequent three months, which became the second worst wave of the pandemic, as over 170,000 Americans died from COVID-19.

During the Omicron surge, the Democrats embraced the herd immunity strategy pioneered by Trump, based on the lie that COVID-19 is now endemic and a new normal has been reached. The same process unfolded in Canada, across Europe and internationally, with almost every world government outside of China abandoning all public health measures to slow the spread of the virus.

Worldwide, the official death toll now stands at over 6.1 million, while excess deaths are estimated to be roughly 20.2 million. This will only intensify in the coming weeks and months as the Omicron BA.2 subvariant continues to spread uncontrolled throughout the world and as new variants evolve.

More so than any other event, the pandemic has made clear that the capitalist ruling elites are willing to accept any level of death in the population. The Biden administration is not concerned with how lives can be saved from COVID-19. Quite the opposite. He has flown off to Europe to partake in war councils with the other NATO powers and stoke up the conflict with Russia over Ukraine. Rather than call on the world to unify in the fight against COVID-19, Biden aims to unify NATO to oppose Russia.

Were the US-NATO imperialist powers to engage in a direct confrontation with Russia, this could quickly spiral out of control and unleash a nuclear war that could permanently destroy human civilization.

All the belligerents in the war, including Russia, Ukraine, the United States and all the NATO powers, have in common that their countries have all experienced a massive loss of life from the pandemic. But if one contrasts the resources that exist to what has been done to stop the spread of COVID-19, America leads the way for sheer indifference to its population.

The acceptance and even promotion of mass sickness and death from COVID-19 indicate that a certain psychological barrier has been crossed in ruling circles in relationship to the use of nuclear war. If they are willing to sacrifice the lives of 1 million Americans, what qualms do they have about the deaths of millions abroad?

The US pandemic policies implemented over the past two years, as with those throughout much of the world, amount to a series of monumental social crimes. The Global Workers Inquest into the COVID-19 Pandemic, initiated by the World Socialist Web Site, is uncovering the impacts of the pandemic and identifying all those responsible for this needless suffering and death.

The Inquest aims to provide the international working class with a political and historical understanding of the pandemic, while arming workers with a scientific understanding of the Zero-COVID strategy that must be implemented worldwide to stop the pandemic and save millions of lives. Even now, a change in policy could bring the pandemic to an end.

The intersecting crises of world capitalism, above all the pandemic and the growing danger of World War III, can be resolved only through the building of a powerful mass movement of the international working class aimed at the socialist reconstruction of society.
In a calculated provocation staged for the media, the head of the US Indo-Pacific Command, Admiral John Aquilino, on Sunday flew in a Navy reconnaissance plane deliberately close to Chinese-controlled islets in the Spratly group in the South China Sea.

Aquilino used the occasion to denounce China for militarising the islets and ominously warn that his mission was to be prepared to fight and win should conflict with China arise.

The unprecedented publicised flight by the Pentagons top commander in the region has a wider significance. Even as the US and its NATO allies escalate the conflict with Russia in the Ukraine, the Biden administration is deliberately heightening tensions with China over dangerous flashpoints in AsiaTaiwan and the South China Sea.

Aquilino pointed to the construction of missile sites, aircraft hangers and radar systems on Mischief Reef, Subi Reef and Fiery Cross Reef, saying it appeared to be completed, and speculated as to whether China would construct military infrastructure elsewhere in the South China Sea.

Admiral John C. Aquilino, left, Commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM), arrives at Clark Air Base, Pampanga province, northern Philippines on Sunday March 20, 2022. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila)

The function of those islands is to expand the offensive capability of the PRC [Peoples Republic of China] beyond their continental shores, Aquilino claimed. They can fly fighters, bombers plus all those offensive capabilities of missile systems. The missile systems posed a threat to military and civilian aircraft, he said. They threaten all nations who operate in the vicinity and all the international sea and airspace.

According to Associated Press, As the P-8A Poseidon flew as low as 4,500 meters near the Chinese-occupied reefs, some appeared to be like small cities on screen monitors, with multi-storey buildings, warehouses, hangars, seaports, runways and white round structures Aquilino said were radars. Near Fiery Cross, more than 40 unspecified vessels could be seen apparently anchored.

The two Associated Press reporters on board breathlessly reported the Chinese radio messages to stay clear of the islets that were ignored by the US aircraft. Neither they nor the media outlets that published their report in any way challenged Aquilinos remarks or even questioned what they were looking at on the screen monitors.

In fact, Aquilinos comments stand reality on its head. While accusing China of aggressive intent, the Indo-Pacific commander was flying in a military aircraft within view of Chinese-claimed territory and thousands of kilometres from the nearest American territory. The South China Sea is immediately adjacent to the Chinese mainland and sensitive Chinese military installations, including key submarine bases on Hainan Island.

Over the past decade, the US has deliberately inflamed tensions in the South China Sea as a means of sowing divisions between China and neighbouring countries. In 2010, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told a regional forum of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) that the US had a national interest in the South China Sea.

Having previously largely ignored the various territorial disputes, Clintons remark signalled an aggressive intrusion into the region and the onset of an intensifying US confrontation with China. The following year, Obama formally announced the pivot to Asia to challenge China diplomatically, economically and militarily across the region. On the pretext of ensuring freedom of navigation and flight, the US has repeatedly sent warships and warplanes into waters and airspace claimed by China.

US preparations for war with China have proceeded apace. The Pentagon has completed repositioning 60 percent of its air and naval forces to the Indo-Pacific, and restructured and expanded its military bases. US military alliances and strategic partnerships aimed against China have been beefed up throughout the region.

Given the three decades of US wars of aggression in the Middle East and Central Asia, China is bolstering its military position in the strategic South China Sea. American military strategists regard US control of key waters close to the Chinese mainland, such as the South China Sea, as critical in any US war with China.

In congressional testimony last year, Aquilino warned that war with China was much closer than most think. His predecessor Admiral Phil Davidson had only days earlier told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the US could face conflict with China, particularly over Taiwan, within six years.

Speaking on last weekends flight, Aquilino claimed that Washingtons main objective in the region was to prevent war through deterrence. However, the real intent of the US military build-up throughout Asia is precisely the opposite, as was indicated in Aquilinos threat: Should deterrence fail, my second mission is to be prepared to fight and win.

The Indo-Pacific commander accused Chinas military expansion of being destabilising to the region, saying: I think over the past 20 years weve witnessed the largest military build-up since World War II by the PRC.

The threat posed by China is simply the pretext for the US preparations for war. The US military budget not only dwarfs that of China, but is larger than the military budgets of the nine next largest military powers. The Pentagon has been expanding its anti-ballistic missile systems in the Pacific and, following the US abrogation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty with Russia, is stationing offensive intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe and preparing to do the same in Asia.

In its historic decline, US imperialism is determined to use every means, including its massive military, to maintain its global hegemony and regards Russia, and particularly China, now the worlds second largest economy, as its chief threats. The provocative flight by Aquilino in the South China Sea once again underscores the sheer recklessness of Washingtons foreign policy.

Having provoked a war in Ukraine aimed at miring Russia in an Afghanistan-type quagmire, the Biden administration is also inflaming tensions with China. Top White House officials, including Biden himself, have warned China of consequences if it provides material support to Russia in the Ukraine conflict. While consequences have been widely interpreted as punitive economic sanctions, US imperialism has a long track record of resorting to military provocations.
Images of people being tied to poles and subsequently beaten and humiliated have spread on social media in recent weeks as far-right vigilante forces run amok throughout the country now entering its fourth week of a disastrous NATO-provoked war with Russia.

In several videos the tying up and beating of Ukrainian citizens is performed by regular Ukrainian Armed Forces members, suggesting that legal and civil rights have been effectively abandoned in a country that is supposedly a pinnacle of European democracy compared to the totalitarian Putin regime.

Ostensibly, the victims of such vigilante justice are looters or Russian agents and saboteurs. However, no evidence is presented of their guilt, and the allegations against an individual often change in disparate postings of the same video.

Shocking videos of this flogging have been shared widely by far-right social media accounts in Ukraine. Victims include children, as well as members of the Sinti and Roma minorities.

In addition to being wrapped in plastic wrap and tied to a pole, the victims of such dehumanizing abuse regularly have their pants pulled down and are subsequently beaten by passersby or members of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Some also have their faces painted in green or blue.

The same Western media, which is engaged in a frenzied propaganda campaign against the Putin regime and its war crimes, has largely maintained silence on these horrific acts of violence by Ukraines far right. One of the exceptionsan article in the UKs Daily Maileven excused them as justified and even as a humorous response to Russias invasion, writing of proud Ukrainian civilians fighting back with a unique punishment.

This kind of vigilantism in Ukraine predates the beginning of the war on February 24 and was previously used by Ukraines various far-right and neo-Nazi groups following the US-backed coup that overthrew the pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014.

In 2018 in the city of Chernihiv, members of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion tied a man to a pole for supposedly damaging a memorial dedicated to those killed during the Maidan protests of 2013-14.

The video of the mans illegal detainment was uploaded by Azov Battalion member Oleksandr Tarnavskyi and showed police arriving but leaving the man tied up for another 20 minutes.

As an Azov member, Tarnavskyi was known for posting racist content against Roma people, as well as a photo of himself raising his arm in a Nazi salute.

Such vigilante movements were officially supported by the Ukrainian government and integrated into the state. In 2018, the Poroshenko government formed a National Militia in 2018 and tasked them with patrolling the streets and rooting out criminal behavior.

In reality, such groups acted as political gangs persecuting and attacking anyone perceived to be opposed to Kievs militaristic anti-Russian and pro-NATO orientation.

In addition to Azov and the officially created National Militia, the neo-Nazi C14 movement was known for carrying out acts of vigilantism following 2014, particularly against Ukraines ethnic minorities.

In 2018 C14 carried out several raids of Roma encampments throughout the country killing at least one young Roma male. In an attack in Kiev, C14 members burned the homes of Roma families after driving them out.

In early February the leader of the neo-Nazi group C14 Yevhen Karas told his audience at a political seminar named after the Ukrainian Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera that killing Russians was fun and cool. Karas also bluntly stated that it is precisely because neo-Nazis like him loved killing Russians that the West had supplied them with weapons.

The racist attacks on Roma previously led by C14 are now being carried out under the auspices of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Recent photos from Lviv show Roma women taped to a pole with their faces painted green. The photos clearly show Ukrainian Armed Forces members in the background, proving such attacks are being carried out either directly by Ukrainian soldiers or under their supervision.

Image of Roma tied to a pole in Lviv that was shared on social media.

The Ukrainian Armed Forces are also explicitly encouraging war crimes, such as the murder of captured Russian soldiers.

While the flogging appears to inflict relatively few physical injuries, the recent kidnapping and torture of a Jewish anti-war MMA athlete make clear that such attacks by the far right can easily end in serious injury and killings. The reactionary vigilante campaign against supposed looters, suspected Russian agents and ethnic minorities is a direct consequence of the right-wing militaristic policies of the Ukrainian government.

Following the 2014 US-backed coup, both governments of former President Petro Poroshenko and current President Volodymyr Zelensky steadily moved to curb civil and democratic rights while building up fascist forces.

This campaign is now being escalated under wartime conditions. On Sunday, Zelensky outlawed the activity of 11 political parties for supposed Russian collaboration.

The pro-Russian Opposition PlatformFor Life party was Ukraines second largest political party and held 45 seats in the countrys 450-seat parliament.

None of the parties banned have called for a Russian victory or supported the disastrous invasion, and no evidence of collaboration or sabotage has been presented by the Ukrainian government.

Their main crime, rather, was supporting a negotiated peace with Russia, something which is opposed by Ukraines right wing and which Zelensky and his representatives are actively attempting to prevent.

The official banning of oppositional political activity is the culmination of an orchestrated political campaign of terror being carried by Ukraines security service (SBU). On March 6 the SBU arrested Mikhail and Alexander Kononovich of the Ukrainian Communist Youth on charges of pro-Russian views and pro-Belarusian views.

The vigilante campaign currently being carried out throughout Ukraine is a crude expression of the political environment fostered by the imperialist war drive against Russia and its proxy, the Zelensky government, as it has dispensed with free speech, the right to a free trial and other democratic rights.
On Monday, over 100 students from Franklin, Chief Sealth International, Roosevelt, Lincoln, Nova, and Center high schools staged a walkout to protest against the decision by the district to lift its requirement for students and staff to wear masks. The Seattle Student Union, which had just recently been formed, sent a letter to Seattle Public Schools (SPS) Superintendent Brent Jones demanding that mask rules be reinstated and informing him that students would take action if stronger safety protocols were not set in place.

Students have been demanding more protections from COVID-19 since January, staging a rally at district headquarters, the John Stanford Center, to urge Superintendent Jones to reconsider the policy change. Nova High School senior Eridon Stewart told the Seattle Times, Every time we try to get hasty and toss our masks off, we have another spike and another thousand people die. Stewart and her mother have asthma and are immunocompromised, adding to their risk of severe illness and death from COVID-19.

The student walkout is part of a broader movement of workers and youth internationally. It began the same day 600 oil workers in Richmond, California, struck Chevron demanding better wages and more protections against the pandemic. More than 70,000 transportation workers in India have been striking for 20 weeks for similar reasons, defying back-to-work orders and threats of government repression.

Students walkout at Seattle Public Schools on January 14, 2022 (Photo by Twitter user @ElectGallardo)

Franklin High School sophomore Marigold Wong also told the Seattle Times, Its absolutely maddening we have to take time away from our education to fight for safety and health.

Aderyn Kee, a Roosevelt High School sophomore, said she has lost three family members to COVID-19 and that wearing masks could prevent more from dying.

Luna Crone-Baron's father is a cancer survivor, and said now that masks are not required, she and her younger brother are risking his life every day due to his being immunocompromised. She explained to the Seattle Times, It is not fair that I have a teacher who is immunocompromised and has to take care of her elderly grandmother and now she has to be scared every single day coming into the building to teach us and nurture us and do what she loves. That is injustice.

Luciana Lovik, a Lincoln High School sophomore, told King 5 news, Its really important to recognize the immunocompromised and other people so we kind of dropped everything because this was really big news.

In a statement on behalf of SPS on Monday, Assistant Superintendent of Public Affairs Bev Redmond said that the district lifted its mask requirement in alignment with guidance from the Washington State Department of Health and Public Health. Redmond added that SPS supports student voice on the issue of health and safety. However, SPS will still mark as unexcused absences any student who misses class due to the walkout.

The Seattle Education Association (SEA), which has sponsored rallies by educators against the dropping of COVID-19 mitigations issued a statement saying, We watched as students in our classrooms grappled with the implications of this change on their lives and the lives of their families and friends who are immunocompromised or unvaccinated. Students were not given any voice in this change or how it would be implemented. SEA union officials said that the district had promised to bargain over mask requirements, claiming that the district violated a memorandum of understanding when the mask mandate ended without their involvement.

Such statements are at best crocodile tears. The SEA, along with its parent National Education Association and partner union the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), have played a leading role in ensuring the success of US President Joe Bidens homicidal back-to-school campaign through successive surges of the pandemic. Just two weeks ago, AFT President Randi Weingarten visited striking teachers at three separate Chicago-area districts and refused to unite the struggles, instead keeping them isolated and increasingly worn down.

Last week, the SPS reported 67 new COVID-19 cases, all of whom were students. Although the district says that cases had been cut in half since late February, students are seeing fewer of their classmates wearing masks and are concerned about the Omicron BA.2 variant that is spreading globally, which could cause another spike in cases in the US after the latest lull.

To date, King County as a whole has suffered at least 2,658 deaths from the pandemic, more than 21 percent of all deaths in Washington state.

The danger of the death toll spiraling even higher is very acute. Scientific studies of the BA.2 sub-variant of Omicron suggest that it is both more transmissible and more lethal than the Omicron BA.1 subvariant that preceded it. BA.2 is quickly becoming the dominant strain of COVID-19, and these findings directly contradict what governments around the world are saying about Omicron being mild.

One particular study at the University of Tokyo compared BA.1 and BA.2 and determined that BA.2 has so many mutation differences that it should be assigned its own Greek letter as a full-fledged variant. This study concluded that BA.2 is the most dangerous variant yet in the 27 months of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The slew of studies highlighting the danger of BA.2 are either ignored or downplayed by the media and the ruling elite. The continuing claim is that Omicron is mild and that it is perfectly fine for all public health measures to be dropped and students forced back into pandemic infected classrooms. Any mention of the death toll of the Omicron wave, about 200,000 since it began, is taboo.

The struggle by the Seattle students is a microcosm of the social conditions faced by workers and youth the world over. It must be unified with existing walkouts and strikes against the homicidal pandemic policies of the Biden administration, expanded to every section of the working class, and must be informed with a political perspective against both the pandemic and the underlying cause, capitalism.
Dan Chappel, an FBI informant known as Big Dan, testified for a third day on Tuesday in US District Court in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in the trial of four men accused of plotting to take Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer hostage and execute her in the spring and fall of 2020.

Top from left, Brandon Caserta and Barry Croft; bottom from left, Adam Dean Fox and Daniel Harris. These four stand accused in a plot to abduct Michigan's Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, right, in 2020. (Kent County Sheriff, Delaware Department of Justice, and AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

Chappel was cross-examined by defense attorneys on Monday and Tuesday and asked about his work inside the Wolverine Watchmen, a militia group that the defendants used to plan and train for the kidnapping, and about communications with government handlers during his FBI surveillance work.

A 35-year-old truck driver for the US Postal Service and army veteran, Chappel said he became a member of the Wolverine Watchmen in March 2020 because he supported the organizations stance on the Second Amendment. When other members began discussing acts of violence against law enforcement, Chappel said he reached out to a friend who was a police officer to express his concerns. He was shortly thereafter contacted by the FBI and agreed to stay inside the Wolverine Watchmen and monitor member activities.

The four men on trial are Adam Fox, 38, Daniel Harris, 24, and Brandon Caserta, 33, from Michigan, and Barry Croft Jr., 46, from Delaware. The defendants were arrested on October 8, 2020, on felony conspiracy to kidnap charges along with several other weapons-related charges. They are facing life sentences if convicted. Two other Michigan defendants, Ty Garbin, 25, and Kaleb Franks, 27, were arrested at the same time, but have accepted plea deals and are expected to testify for the prosecution during the trial.

Attorney Julia Kelly, representing Daniel Harris, questioned Chappel on Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning. She pressed the defense strategy that the four defendants were entrapped by the government and had no intention of acting on their recorded statements threatening violence against the tyrant Whitmer to achieve their goal of forcing the state government to lift the lockdown that had been imposed in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic.

Kelly has been focusing on the evaluation made by Chappel and his two FBI contacts that the group of men had no clear objectives and were wasting the informants time. Kelly asked Chappel if he recalled agreeing with his FBI handlers that these guys dont have a plan, to which he replied, yes.

Earlier in the day on Monday, when asked by a prosecutor about a group chat that was being used by the Wolverine Watchmen, Chappel acknowledged that he received the messages from the groups leader Fox, which rallied the members to act against the governor.

After the Michigan Supreme Court struck down a law that permitted Whitmer to use her executive authority to impose restrictions on businesses and implement a stay at home order, the jury was shown a chat message from Fox that read, Whens the lynching, and She should be arrested now, immediately. Who wants to roll out?

During the cross-examination on Monday, Chappel testified that he had bought beer for the group and that Fox and several others smoked marijuana while they were surveilling the governors summer home in Elk Rapids, Michigan. In one instance, Chappel said that during one training session that he led members on, the group fired high-powered rifles from a huge-caliber, belt fed machine gun mounted on a tripod.

Although his FBI contacts instructed him not to participate in the tactical planning for the kidnapping, Chappel testified that he did at times make suggestions that were aimed at deescalating the actions being discussed by the group. Among these were proposals to fire a shot through the window of the governors empty summer residence and mailing her the empty shell casing.

The informant told defense attorney Kelly that he sent text messages to his FBI contacts and called them regularly, especially after meetings with militia members. In one text message shown to the jury, FBI Special Agent Henrik Impola praised the informant for bringing people together.

Chappel also testified that he was concerned about being identified as an FBI informant. His handlers told him to blame another militia member who others had already referred to as fed boy for being a government agent.

In his earlier testimony, Chappel said the group had purchased an infrared light and night vision goggles so that they could see one another. According to another FBI informant, Mark Schweers, their plot included shooting the governors security detail, seizing her from her home and transporting her to a boat waiting on Lake Michigan where they would take her out into the middle of the lake and desert her.

Chappel said that defendant Caserta was pushed to the breaking point when the COVID-19 vaccines were announced, and he talked about bombing vaccine plants and killing police officers, doctors and lawyers who supported a vaccine mandate. During a recorded conversation, Caserta said, Buildings that manufacture vaccinesblow them up.

Caserta also denounced pandemic contact tracing as constitutional trampling, and said during a meeting in August 2020, We create a dynamic where no one wants to be a contact tracer because they might fucking die. Caserta also said in the recordings captured by Chappel, Doctors who advocated mandated vaccinesbullet to the face, and, Buildings that manufacture the vaccines, blow them up. Im not even kidding. Any lawyer that supports a vaccine mandate, decapitate them in their own home.
With the announcement of an agreement last Friday to end mandatory masking in Los Angeles schools, virtually every school across the US West Coast has now made masks optional on campuses as COVID-19 deaths continue to mount among school-aged children.

These new directives arrive as evidence makes clear that mask optional polices lead to escalating incidences of coronavirus infections at both schools and workplaces. One such study conducted by Duke University, and which was published on March 9 in the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, found that mask-mandatory schools had 72 percent less within-school spread than their mask-optional counterparts. The study was conducted using 61 school districts across nine states and involved more than 1.1 million students and 150,000 staff members.

Another study recently conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Arkansas found that schools there had a 23 percent lower incidence rate of coronavirus infections in fully masked schools versus those that were not.

According to the Burbio website, which tracks school reopenings and mask mandates, however, only 31 percent of the countrys largest 500 school districts now require masks compared to 60 percent just one month ago. On a statewide level, Hawaii is the only state remaining in the country to require masks in all schools.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom holds a face mask during a news conference in Rancho Cordova, California

In the United States alone there have been 1,656 pediatric deaths from COVID-19 as of March 12, with 616, or 37 percent of the total, occurring since the start of 2022. Not only have pediatric deaths continually increased but the death rate itself has been accelerating. This is due to the full reopening of schools for in-person learning last year along with the recent lifting of mask mandates and other mitigation measures on campuses. The January 2022 pediatric death rate stood at 5.7 per day followed by 7.5 per day in February and 18.8 per day thus far in the month of March.

These numbers are poised to increase as the BA.2 subvariant of Omicron continues to spread across the US.

According to the CDC, infections of BA.2 have doubled each week for the past month and thus far has primarily been concentrated in the Northeast and the West Coast. In the week ending March 5, 14.2 percent of positive coronavirus cases were due to BA.2; in the week ending March 12, that number increased to 23.1 percent.

Under conditions of an ever-escalating public health catastrophe, the rational response would be the implementation of aggressive and consistent measuresincluding lockdowns and the closure of schools and nonessential businessesto contain the spread and eliminate COVID-19. The fact that masking, the last remaining public health measure in the US to try and slow the spread of COVID-19, is being completely abandoned, speaks to the utter contempt the US ruling class has for workers and their children.

The Los Angeles teachers union, the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) has gained an undeserved reputation as a defender of public health, as the district was among the last of the nations largest school districts to keep mask mandates in place.

However, the UTLA has long since abandoned any measures to stop the spread of COVID, agreeing to reopen schools while the Delta variant surged last year. While the lifting of school mask mandates occurred several weeks after the state of California and Los Angeles County dropped mask mandates in indoor spaces, the district had already dropped mandates in outdoor school areas. Furthermore, far from opposing the lifting of mandates as a basic public health measure, the UTLA simply retreated behind contract legality while working with the district to remove the mandates.

Similar actions were taken by teachers unions throughout the West Coast, including in the large districts of Oakland, San Diego, Portland and Seattle.

In the San Diego Unified School District, the second largest in the state of California, mask mandates are to be lifted on April 4 after students return from spring break. The initial announcement, however, was made on March 4, just three days after California Governor Gavin Newsom announced that mandates would be lifted throughout the state. The San Diego Educators Association, for its part, cynically claimed that the measure enjoyed widespread support among teachers. It claimed that the vote teachers had taken the previous July to put mask mandates in effect was not motivated by a desire to keep students and staff safe but instead to follow state public health directives regardless of efficacy. To make matters worse, on March 7 the district stopped sending out notification letters to parents after a student tests positive for COVID-19.

Speaking on the ending of the mask mandate, one San Diego parent wrote on Facebook, Having it go away after spring break is ridiculous. After everyones out on vacation and gathering for a week, lets bring them back with no masks. Sigh!

In Oakland, California the Oakland Education Association announced the dropping of outdoor mask mandates with the expectation that indoor mask mandates will be dropped altogether on April 15. The move comes after a student strike in late January protesting inadequate protections on school sites. The student strike was quickly shut down by the Oakland Education Association which reached an agreement with the district that only included voluntary testing and masking. Now, the union is working to abandon even these limited measures as soon as possible.

None of the moves to abandon mask requirements enjoys widespread support among teachers, students or parents. In Los Angeles, to cite only one example, a poll taken by the UTLA found that nearly 60 percent of members opposed abandoning the mask mandate. Among LA voters as a whole, 68 percent approved of mandatory vaccines in school while 71 percent approved of mask requirements according to a February poll conducted by the University of California Berkeley and the Los Angeles Times.

In Seattle, Washington, students walked out of class on Monday to protest the ending of mask mandates after the district put the measure in place last week. Every time we try to get hasty and toss our masks off, we have another spike and another thousand people die, said Eridon Stewart, a senior at Nova High School to the Seattle Times .

The Seattle mask mandate was lifted on March 14. Previously, the Seattle Education Association had promised to keep the mandate until May to bring a sense of normalcy but nonetheless caved to the districts demands two months earlier.

Portland Public Schools in Portland, Oregon, with nearly 50,000 students, also had announced that mask mandates would be lifted on March 14.

The World Socialist Web Site spoke to a student at a charter high school in Oakland, California about the lifting of mask mandates on her campus.

Some [students] are happy about that, but a lot of other students are saying this isnt safe. We shouldnt even be here, the student said. Some are asking if we can at least wear masks until the end of the school year. There is only a month and a half left in the school year.

The school has also capitulated on its vaccine mandate, the student explained, They also pushed back the vaccine requirement to August. It was initially going to be required by early February. There will probably be unvaccinated, unmasked people at school when the mask mandate lifts. Without the mandate, there will probably be students who get pressured to take their masks off even if they dont want to.

Theres one class we were in where almost everyone agreed [about keeping the mask mandate]. There is some talk about organizing something. This requires collective action. People are still getting COVID. People are still dying.
Weather Alert

...The Flood Warning continues for the following rivers in Indiana... Wabash River from Lafayette to Montezuma. White River at Elliston and Edwardsport. .Multiple rounds of rain over the last few days is bringing minor flooding along lower portions of the White River and upper portions of the Wabash River. Additional rainfall Thursday evening through Friday evening should keep portions of the White and Wabash above flood stage through the weekend. PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS... Motorists should not attempt to drive around barricades or drive cars through flooded areas. Be especially cautious at night when it is harder to recognize the dangers of flooding. Additional information is available at www.weather.gov/ind. This statement will be updated within the next 12 to 24 hours. && ...FLOOD WARNING NOW IN EFFECT UNTIL TUESDAY AFTERNOON... * WHAT...Minor flooding is forecast. * WHERE...Wabash River at Montezuma. * WHEN...Until Tuesday afternoon. * IMPACTS...At 18.0 feet, Montezuma agricultural levee is overtopped. Fourteen hundred acres of low bottomlands flood. * ADDITIONAL DETAILS... - At 9:45 PM EDT Wednesday the stage was 13.1 feet. - Forecast...The river is expected to rise above flood stage late tomorrow evening to a crest of 18.0 feet Saturday evening. It will then fall below flood stage early Tuesday morning. - Flood stage is 14.0 feet. - http://www.weather.gov/safety/flood &&
BOONEVILLE, Miss. (WTVA) - Emergency management agencies are always preparing for when the chance of severe weather approaches, like on Tuesday.

WTVA reporter Keaundria Milloy spoke with Prentiss County EMA Director Bud Lindsey before Tuesdays severe weather swept across north Mississippi.

Watch the interview in the video above.
By Azernews

By Vugar Khalilov

Azerbaijani servicemen have taken part in a military parade held on the occasion of Pakistan Day on March 23, the Defence Ministry has reported.

Parade squad of the Azerbaijan Army represented our country in a military parade attended by the representatives of the armed forces of different countries, the ministry stated.

The Azerbaijani military delegation led by the Defence Minister Col-Gen Zakir Hasanov observed the military parade. Hasanov attended the parade as a distinguished guest, the ministry underlined.

It should be noted that the Azerbaijani delegation is on an official visit to Pakistan.

As a part of his official visit, Hasanov discussed military cooperation and mutual ties with Pakistani political-military leadership.

The sides exchanged views on military, military-technical, and military-educational cooperation between Azerbaijan and Pakistan, issues of combating terrorism and security, as well as other issues.

During the 44-day war with Armenia in 2020, Pakistan was among the first countries voicing political support for Azerbaijan. Pakistan also supports Azerbaijan in the restoration of the country's liberated territories.

In September 2021, the Azerbaijani, Turkish and Pakistani special forces conducted Three Brothers - 2021 joint international drills in Baku.

Under the drills plan, the special forces units carried out practical shootings using small arms and grenade launchers, the report added.

The drills aim to improve the coordination among the special forces units of friendly and partner countries during combat operations, prepare for operations in peacetime and wartime, exchange knowledge and experience.

In the winter of 2014, during the fifth meeting of the working group on military cooperation between Azerbaijan and Pakistan in the city of Islamabad, the countries signed an agreement on mutual military cooperation.

Over the past decade, Pakistani military experts trained about a hundred Azerbaijani military units.

Azerbaijan is holding talks with Pakistan to purchase JF-17 Thunder multirole fighter aircraft. In October 2016 President Aliyev and PM Sharif confirmed plans to carry out joint military exercises.

Furthermore, the parliaments of Azerbaijan, Turkey and Pakistan have signed the Baku Declaration on cooperation. The document was signed following the trilateral meeting held by speakers of the three countries parliaments on July 27, 2021.
Pictured is the entrance to the Walt Disney Co. Studios international headquarters building in Burbank, California, in December 2010. Some of Disney's biggest brands are showing support for the LGBTQ+ community.
Apple today announced that Arizona will become the first U.S. state to offer residents the ability to digitally store their driver's license or state ID in Apple's Wallet app. The company had already said last fall it had secured the state to be among the first to offer the new feature. With the launch, Apple device owners will be able to tap their iPhone or Apple Watch to present their ID, starting at select TSA security checkpoints in Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport.

To get started, Arizona residents will tap the plus "+" button at the top of the screen in the Wallet app on their iPhone, then choose "Drivers License or State ID," and follow the on-screen instructions to start the setup and verification process, Apple explains. The person is verified by taking a selfie, then by scanning both the back and front of their existing drivers license or state ID card. (In other words, this is not a replacement for getting an ID or license from the DMV to begin with.)

There's also an additional fraud prevention step that asks users to complete a series of facial and head movements during the setup process. The app will present a camera view where the user will need to turn their head to the side as a means of ensuring that they have not, for example, held up a photograph to the camera in an attempt to commit fraud.

These scans and the user's photo are securely provided to the issuing state for verification. Apple additionally sends a numeric indicator of its confidence that the person presenting the ID is the owner of the ID. It does not send the video of the person moving their head, as had been requested during verification.

The approval process generally takes just minutes and users will be notified when the ID is available in Wallet, as they are when adding credit cards.

Image Credits: Apple

Once the ID or license is added to Wallet, users will be able to access it for use at supported TSA checkpoints. Users can see what information is being requested, then consent to provide the information with Face ID or Touch ID. This works similarly to Apple Pay -- meaning users don't have to unlock their iPhone to use the feature. The information is then sent to an identity reader through encrypted communication, after consent is provided.

Story continues

Because the information is shared digitally, users won't have to hand over their physical ID card nor will they have to hand over their device, Apple says. The TSA's reader will also capture a picture of the traveler for further verification. (This is the digital equivalent to how TSA agents will look at a person's license then back at their face to determine if they are, in fact, the same person.)

Image Credits: Apple

Apple says that, soon, other states will offer the feature as well, including Colorado, Hawaii, Mississippi, Ohio and the territory of Puerto Rico. And it had previously announced seven states were planning to come on board, including Connecticut, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Oklahoma and Utah, in addition to Arizona.

Apple first introduced its plan to support driver's licenses and IDs in Apple Wallet at its developer conference last year. But in an update published on the iOS 15 website in November, Apple quieted disclosed the feature would be delayed until early 2022. The company, of course, is at the mercy of state governments to get such a feature off the ground, given they have to verify the user's ID.

Image Credits: Apple

Use of the feature requires users to consent to Apple Wallet's terms and conditions, and any additional terms and conditions that may be required by the state. What those terms are, however, will be determined at the state level.

Some people may be wary of storing their ID on their phone, but Apple assures customers the ID data is encrypted when sent off to the state of Arizona for verification, and it never sits -- even temporarily -- on Apple's servers. When the ID is added to the device, it's encrypted there, as well.

There, it's encrypted and protected by the hardware keys associated with the device's secure enclave processor, which means it's encrypted and protected while at rest. Only the customer using Face ID or Touch ID, or someone who has the customer's passcode to access Wallet, can view the ID's details.

There are also hardware keys associated with the secure element that are used at the time the user is presenting their ID to the TSA via the Apple device. The device then signs the driver's license or ID data, so that the relying party (the TSA) can cryptographically verify this is a valid state ID by examining the signature of the state as well as the device signature. This means is that if someone was able to get the ID information off the user's device, they could not present it because it's tied to the device hardware.

The new feature is supported in iPhone 8 or later devices running iOS 15.4, and Apple Watch Series 4 or later running watchOS 8.4 or later. For the time being, only select TSA checkpoints will support the feature, starting with the Phoenix airport, with more added over time. Apple says it's also working on other use cases in the future, including those with law enforcement partners.

Editor's Note, 12:00 PM ET -- Updated shortly after publication with additional information from Apple.
Correction: A previous version of this article misidentified who was elected to the Colorado House of Representatives in 2018. David Sirota's wife, Emily Sirota, was elected.

A former spokesperson for U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, who advised Sanders and wrote speeches for his 2020 presidential run, is up for an Academy Award this weekend for screenwriting.

David Sirota, a spokesperson for Sanders in the early 2000s, is nominated with Adam McKay for Best Original Screenplay for their work on Dont Look Up. The satirical film that tackles climate change stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence and Meryl Streep.

Dont Look Up is competing Sunday against screenplays from the films Belfast, King Richard, Licorice Pizza and The Worst Person in the World. Dont Look Up is nominated for four Oscars, including Best Picture.

According to the biography on his website, Sirota is the founder and editor of The Daily Poster, an editor-at-large at Jacobin Magazine and a columnist at The Guardian. He lives in Denver, where his wife, Emily Sirota, was elected to the Colorado House of Representatives in 2018.

David Sirota

Sirota talked about his connection to Dont Look Up for the news program Democracy Now! He said he and McKay, who directed the film, are longtime friends, and Sirota told interviewer Amy Goodman he needed to use his superpowers of mixing comedy with politics for a movie about climate change.

More: Longtime Vermont resident Luis Guzman cast as Gomez Addams in Netflix series 'Wednesday'

More: Netflix documentary series 'My Love' puts Williston couple in the spotlight

More: Now streaming: 'The Flight Attendant' by Vermont author gets star turn with Kaley Cuoco

I sort of said that, you know, Climate change, it sort of feels like an asteroid is headed towards Earth, and nobody really cares, Sirota told Goodman in the interview published Feb. 9 on the Democracy Now! website. And he said, Wait a minute. Maybe theres an idea there. Maybe theres a movie there. And so we started spitballing scenes about the president and what would actually happen if a comet was headed towards Earth.

Story continues

Jonah Hill, from left, Leonardo DiCaprio, Meryl Streep and Jennifer Lawrence in a scene from Dont Look Up.

Sirota said, there is a pent-up demand for content about the climate crisis, which is why Dont Look Up became one of the most-watched Netflix movies ever.

This is an allegory for how were dealing with  or, really, not dealing with  the climate crisis, Sirota told Goodman. And I think people, on the screen, they see this movie showing them how ridiculous and destructive our world has become when it comes to dealing constructively with science  in particular, climate science.

Leonardo DiCaprio, left, and Jennifer Lawrence try to warn people about a deadly comet in Netflix's "Don't Look Up."

If you watch

WHAT: 2022 Academy Awards ceremony

WHEN: 8 p.m. Sunday, March 27

WHERE: ABC

INFORMATION: www.oscars.org

Contact Brent Hallenbeck at bhallenbeck@freepressmedia.com. Follow Brent on Twitter at www.twitter.com/BrentHallenbeck.

This article originally appeared on Burlington Free Press: Bernie Sanders' ex-spokesperson, advisor nominated for Academy Award
Tyreek Hill decided that it was time to get paid.

After unsuccessful attempts to secure a contract extension with the Kansas City Chiefs, the six-time Pro Bowl wide receiver is on the move in a trade that will send him to the Miami Dolphins, the Dolphins announced Wednesday.

In return, the Chiefs will receive a first-round pick, a second-round pick and a fourth-round pick this year as well as fourth- and sixth-round selections in 2023. Meanwhile, Miami has agreed to give Hill a four year, $120 million contract extension, which includes roughly $72 million in guaranteed money.

Hill's departure and payday represent a continued changing of the landscape in an NFL offseason that has seen five quarterbacks traded, with a marquee wide receiver also being dealt and paid handsomely. It was the Green Bay Packers trading of Davante Adams to the Las Vegas Raiders and the five-year, $140 million contract that the five-time Pro Bowl pass catcher received that set the wheels in motion for the deal between the Chiefs and the Dolphins. Frustrated by the lack of progress on talks, Hill made it known that he wanted to be traded, according to people with knowledge of the situation, who spoke to USA TODAY Sports on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the talks. Now, Hill has received his wish.

The three-time All-Pro was an instrumental figure in helping the Chiefs win the Super Bowl in 2019 and reach four conference championship games.

But he found himself faced with the question of whether to continue on his current contract or whether to capitalize on the market now.

TRADE WINNERS, LOSERS: Dolphins, Chiefs change complexion of AFC

NFL FREE AGENCY: 10 most regrettable contracts in 2022 offseason

MORE: Tyreek Hill trade sends Chiefs in reverse  for now  as rest of AFC West revs up

Kansas City Chiefs wide receiver Tyreek Hill (10) carries the ball past Buffalo Bills cornerback Levi Wallace (39) during the fourth quarter of the AFC Divisional playoff football game at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium.

Hill also had to ask himself which carried a higher premium, playing alongside perennial MVP candidate Patrick Mahomes, or getting paid, even if it meant teaming with an unproven quarterback.

Story continues

He chose the latter.

"It's hard to put into words what Tyreek has meant to Chiefs Kingdom over the last six years," Chiefs general manager Brett Veach said in a statement. "He's a special player, one of the best in franchise history. He's been a large part of our success, including our Super Bowl championship run. This decision was incredibly difficult, but we felt it was a necessary move in the best interest of the team, and also for Tyreek. We wish him the best as he continues his career."

Said Chiefs coach Andy Reid: "I am happy for Tyreek, he has grown as a man and player here in Kansas City. Myself, my staff and our organization appreciate all he did for our team. This move will also benefit the Chiefs, we now have cap space and additional draft picks to grow as a football team. I wish him well as he moves forward."

Now, Hill becomes the leagues highest paid wideout while catching passes from third-year pro Tua Tagovailoa and taking direction from first-year coach Mike McDaniel.

The Jets also made a run at Hill but lost out to their divisional foe.

With the addition of the 28-year-old Hill  who is regarded as one of the fastest players in the NFL and a pre-eminent deep threat  the Dolphins have now further bolstered a talented collection of weapons, which could help expedite Tagovailoas development while also helping pave the way for a smoother transition for McDaniel as head coach. Hill will team with 2021 first-round pick Jaylen Waddle, who last season set the NFL's record for receptions by a rookie with 104.

This offseason, Miami also brought on three-time Pro Bowl left tackle Terron Armstead and left guard Connor Williams to fortify the team's front. Skill-position support was added in running backs Chase Edmonds and Raheem Mostert and wide receivers Cedrick Wilson Jr. and Trent Sherfield.

The Chiefs, meanwhile, must find another weapon to complement tight end Travis Kelce. Kansas City signed former Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster last week and is now armed with a collection of draft picks, including four of the top 62 selections, and additional cap space.

Follow USA TODAY Sports' Mike Jones on Twitter @ByMikeJones.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Tyreek Hill trade: Chiefs deal star wide receiver to Dolphins
Ollie Robinson has been ruled out of Englands series decider in the West Indies after another fitness setback.

The Sussex seamer had been earmarked for a key role in the Caribbean after senior bowlers James Anderson and Stuart Broad were left out of the squad, but has now failed to complete a single appearance on tour.

Robinson suffered a back spasm during the warm-up match against a CWI Presidents XI and was confined to the sidelines during drawn games in Antigua and Barbados.

England were hopeful that he would be ready for action in time to line up in Thursdays winner-takes-all third Test in Grenada, but were forced to make alternative plans after the 28-year-old struggled to reach 100 per cent during a dedicated net session on Tuesday.

One change to our XI for the third Test  More here: https://t.co/jkF389rplK  #WIvENG  pic.twitter.com/yBed2izH3J  England Cricket (@englandcricket) March 23, 2022

Craig Overton also missed out at the Kensington Oval due to illness but he came through the workout strongly and replaced Matthew Fisher in the only change to the England XI.

Robinsons lifestyle and conditioning were publicly questioned during this winters Ashes, mirroring private concerns within the management group, but it is understood things have been improving since Australia.

Unfortunately, he has not been able to get match ready and spent Wednesdays final practice session doing one-to-one drills with strength and conditioning coach Phil Scott.

Ollie wasnt as good as we would have liked or he was expecting himself, said captain Joe Root.

Its just frustrating for him as it is for me. Hes working very hard but theres something thats nagging away at him. Im not sure exactly of the medical prognosis.

Story continues

Chris Woakes, pictured, had been set to miss out if Ollie Robinson had been fit for the third Test (Darren England/AAP)

Hes just got to keep on doing what hes doing and trust in time that hes going to get himself back.

We all know how effective he has been and how good hes been in his short career up to now so the sooner we can get him back the better.

Had Robinson been available, England may have chosen to stand down Chris Woakes after two long, hard and ultimately disappointing outings for the all-rounder.

He now gets one more chance to make an impact overseas, with Saqib Mahmood retained after an impressive debut and Overton reclaiming his place from Fisher, who stepped in to debut at late notice last week.

Craigs ready to play. Over a long period of time hes been knocking the door down and has never let us down, said Root.

Hes not express pace but hes got that extra bit of height, he gets the ball moving around and hes a really good all-round package.

He gets stuck in, is desperate to do well and always fronts up. He puts in a really strong shift for the group and thats really admirable.

The prospects of a second spinner, in the shape of Lancashire leggie Matt Parkinson, receded once England saw the pitch in St Georges, with an encouraging smattering of live grass.

Root said: I think were looking forward to a wicket with a bit more grass on it, as all of our seamers will be. By all accounts thats what were expecting here.
PETERSBURG  Even though it was less than three months ago that Lashrecse Aird's time in the General Assembly officially ended, the decision to jump back into the political fray actually was a bit difficult.

"It really was a hard decision," Aird said in a phone interview Wednesday morning, the same day she announced she would run for the Democratic nomination in the newly created 13th Senate District. "It's easy for leaders to pursue these roles for their own self purpose. I wanted to take the time to be really sure that the voters think I am the right person to represent them."

Aird, 35, becomes the first candidate to officially enter the race for the new Senate district. She is starting her campaign 15 months before the party primary and 20 months before the scheduled 2023 general election.

The reason? The district is far different than the one she knew last year.

The Virginia Supreme Court signed off on a new redistricting plan that drastically changes the look of not only Petersburg's Senate district but also its House of Delegates district. Instead of the current 16th District, which stretches from south Richmond to Petersburg, the new 13th crescent-moons around Richmond. It starts in eastern Henrico County, swings southward into the counties of Charles City, Surry and Sussex, then takes a sharp right turn into Prince George County. The district then picks up the cities of Petersburg and Hopewell before ending in Dinwiddie County near DeWitt. At it widest and longest points, the district is around 75 and 70 miles, respectively.

"I don't have the advantages I had earlier when I was representing a district where everyone knew who I was," Aird said. However, she began informally canvassing the district last month with a focus on the areas she had not represented before, and she said she will spend the next several months continuing that canvass.

More: USA TODAYs Women of the Year: Meet the woman who helped Virginia ban no-knock warrants

Story continues

Aird was first elected to the House in 2015, becoming, at 28, the youngest woman to serve in the House. She lost her re-election bid last November to Republican challenger Kim Taylor of Dinwiddie County, who rode the strong conservative leanings of the district's rural parts to offset Aird's victory in traditionally Democratic Petersburg.

Even though she was out of public office for the first time in six years, her name was always being circulated for other offices. When the Petersburg Senate district was redrawn, she immediately became a likely candidate to run.

More: Aird leaves office this week, says 'not ruled out' possible run in new Senate district

"It's a very exciting time, the right time to jump back in," Aird said.

The 13th Senate District technically has no incumbent. Democratic Sen. Joe Morrissey, who currently lives in Richmond, has said he plans to move into the 13th and run. Morrissey owns residential property in both Petersburg and Henrico County.

Morrissey, a former Richmond prosecutor and state delegate, defeated Sen. Rosalyn Dance in a hotly contested 2019 Democratic primary where he focused most of his attention on Petersburg's blighted neighborhoods and business areas. Aird once worked for Dance as a legislative aide.

Should she be successful, Aird would be one of the youngest members of the Senate, a chamber where many senators are in their 60s and 70s now. She would be 37 at the time of the election, two years younger than current GOP Sen. David Suetterlein of Roanoke, who would be 39 then.

More from The Progress-Index: Divers are back out at Roslyn Landing in Colonial Heights looking for reported river jumper

More: Virginia tenants facing increased evictions as end to COVID-related protections nears

Bill Atkinson (he/him/his) is daily news coach for USA TODAY's Southeast Region-Unified Central, which includes Virginia, West Virginia and central North Carolina. He is based in Petersburg, Virginia. Reach him at batkinson@progress-index.com.

This article originally appeared on The Progress-Index: Former Petersburg lawmaker will run for state Senate in 2023
Civil rights attorney Ben Crump filed a racial discrimination lawsuit against Google this week claiming there has been a pattern of racial discrimination toward minority employees.

"Former Google employees came for their dream job that turned into a nightmare because of bigoted, discriminatory, racist culture that exists within Google," Crump said at a press conference Monday.

The lawsuit, which alleges a pattern and practice of racial discrimination, was filed on behalf of April Curley and other former and current Black employees at Google. Curley said she was unlawfully terminated from her position after she told managers she was creating a report on Googles "discriminatory" practices, a press release stated.

MORE: Disney employees plan walkout to demand action against 'Don't Say Gay' bill

"These women tried to sound the alarm," Crump said, later adding that the company "retaliated against these victims of the racist culture that exists in Google."

ABC News has reached out to Google for comment on the lawsuit.

PHOTO: Signage is displayed in front of a building on the Google campus in Mountain View, Calif., Oct. 21, 2020. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images, FILE)

Curley worked at Google as a diversity recruiter for six years to recruit prospects from historically Black colleges and universities. She said she was hired at an entry level position even though she held a master's degree and had five years of experience.

"April Curley was an exceptional employee at Google. She was hired to a position well below her qualifications and was consistently wrongfully passed over for promotions," Crump alleged. While Google claims that they were looking to increase diversity, they were actually undervaluing, underpaying and mistreating their Black employees, leading to high turnover."

Curley said she was able to recruit more than 500 Black students to become a part of the company. But ultimately, she alleges, she began noticing "white dominant policies in practice within Google."

Crump and law firm Stowell & Friedman, Ltd. alleged in a press release that Black employees at Google are "steered toward lower-level roles with less pay and fewer opportunities for advancement" and face a hostile working environment and retaliation if they "oppose the companys discriminatory practices."

Story continues

"After dedicating so much of my life to ensure Black and brown students had access to opportunities in tech, and at Google, after being restrained to an entry level classification for six years, after being blocked for promotion because, I quote, 'Google had no budget to pay me,' Google decided that right next step in my career was to unjustly terminate me," Curley said at the press conference.

Google has not commented publicly on Curley's termination.

MORE: Students demand action after Penn professor's 'racist' comments about Asians

According to Google's annual diversity report published in 2021, the company said they "recognize" a need to do better.

"We recognize our responsibility to meet this moment and believe the greatest contribution we can make to changing these structural inequities is sustained action within our company, our communities and the world," the report stated.

Crump and his team are pursuing a class action suit. The lawsuit filed by the firm requests that employees get their positions back and be awarded the full compensation and benefits that they not only lost but may also lose in the future.

"Google, we are here to encourage you to do the right thing," Crump said.

Crump said investigations have been opened by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing and the California Assembly. ABC News has reached out to both for comment.

Black former employees sue Google for racial discrimination originally appeared on abcnews.go.com
Photo credit: Dr. Christena Cleveland

Who makes history? Who writes it, and who features in it? For womens history month this year, Oprah Daily wants to honor women who have played roles outside the spotlight: grandmothers, resistance workers, and professors. We also are taking another look at figures we thought we knew, including the familiar faces of the Black Madonnas of France. One of the essays in this collection quotes Virginia Woolf, who said, We look back through our mothers if we are women. Look back with us at the remarkable women who made our history.



When I walked to Vichy, France, to visit its 12th-century Black Madonna, whom I lovingly nicknamed She Who Cherishes Our Hot Mess, I sublimely stood before a sacred walnut wood statue of a holy woman who looked like She could be my mother. Though I was alone in a cavernous, dimly lit church, I instinctively knew I was safe in the presence of the Black Madonna of Vichy, who is especially known for welcoming the needy. As I spoke to Her of the internalized shame I carried as a Black woman, I joined a powerful, centuries-long lineage of peasants, African migrants, abused women, and neglected children who traveled by foot across the Auvergnes Chaine des Puys volcanic mountain range to speak to Her of their need. Her Black and female body assured me that She cherished my Black and female need as I laid it on Her altar.

Photo credit: Dr. Christena Cleveland

But my journey didnt start in France. As a child in Sunday school, I learned that questioning the goodness of a God who murdered the entire world in a flood would not be tolerated. At home, I learned that asking why Dad was the head of everyone, including Mom, was a punishable offense. As a young adult, I received death threats when I published an article questioning why, despite its historical inaccuracy, we rarely challenge the image of a white Jesus. So I buried my questions deep under the soil of my soul, promising to return to them when it felt safe. There were deeper questions:

Why does white patriarchy get to create God in its own image?

Story continues

If God is white and male, then how can a Black woman like me ever be truly sacred?

Are there any spiritual icons that unapologetically affirm my Blackness and femaleness?

But as the time passed, I never asked them. To be certain, my experiences invariably led me to more progressive beliefs and action. For example, my experience as an unmarried Black woman led me to reject the conservative gender roles my parents handed down to me and adopt more liberal ones within my faith tradition. In this way, I was able to create enough wiggle room to work within the patriarchal religious system. Indeed, I found meaning and joy in my faith-based justice efforts as I advocated for women, for people of color, and for myself. But as the time passed and I moved on to my 30s, I never felt fully free, and the deeper questions remained untouched.

The moment I met Her, everything changed. It was in the wake of Donald Trumps 2016 election, and I was desperate for a divine being that spoke directly to the pain I carried as a Black person and a woman. I was vaguely aware of the Black Madonna, an uncommon dark-skinned version of the Virgin Mary, so I ordered a slew of books on the little-known Catholic figure. To retrieve the shipment, I had just braved a rainy gauntlet between my porch and the cavernous mailbox at the end of my long gravel driveway and was drying off with a cup of cinnamon cardamom tea in the nest of blankets on my kitchen couch. Before studying the text, I casually flipped to the illustrations of the uncommon dark-skinned version of the Virgin Mary within. Before I even read anything, my soul immediately recognized that these photos and drawings of ancient Black Madonnas affirmed my questions about the Divinequestions that first surfaced when I was a young girl and were quickly buried. I learned that there are over 450 Black Madonnas around the world, most of whom are over a thousand years old, with names as illustrious as Our Lady of the Good Death, Slave Mama, and Dear Dark One. Though they are often housed in Catholic churches, many are believed to be modern-day versions of the ancient dark goddesses, such as Isis, Demeter, Cybele, and Artemis. In fact, the Black Madonnas draw seekers of all religions and creeds and welcome all who need healing and empowerment.



Photo credit: Ashley Green of Elizabeth Ashley & Co.

The thousand-year-old Black Madonnas depicted in the books in front of me liberated my questions with the force of a cork popping off a thousand-year-old bottle of Champagne. The late bell hooks experienced a similar freedom when she encountered the Black Madonna. She later lamented, Unfortunately, African Americans have not been interested in reclaiming representations of black Madonnas. And this is a sensitive point, because most constructions of Black femaleness are tied to representations that are hateful and ugly, so the idea of an icon that can stand in resistance becomes further and further away.[i]

The images of a loving and beautiful Black female God showed me that my questions are not only valid but are harmonious echoes of questions heard around the globe and across time. Over the following months, I devoured every book I could find on Her.

But my soul longed for more than book knowledge; I longed to gaze into Her mysterious and kind eyes, to witness Her unyielding clutch on Her precious Black boy, to run my fingers along Her centuries-old dark, wooden body, and to stand before a sacred image of Black femininity. So I embarked on a solo, physically demanding yet soul-soaring five-week walking pilgrimage across Auvergne, a mountainous region in central France. There, I walked over 400 miles to visit 18 Black Madonnas in remote village churches. During my pilgrimage, I powerfully experienced that the Black Madonna represents a loving and beautiful Black female divine that can absolutely stand in resistance to all the ways that the white patriarchal world had denigrated me.

Photo credit: Dr. Christena Cleveland

During the French Revolution, insurgents stole and decapitated the Black Madonna of Vichy. However, the oppressed people who loved Her tracked Her head down, built Her a new walnut body, and pieced Her back together. When I visited Her on my pilgrimage, I knew I could tell Her that as a Black woman living in a white patriarchal world, I had been decapitated, too. I knew I could tell Her that even after years of trauma therapy and mindfulness meditation, it still often feels like my body, emotions, and heart are miles away from my overdeveloped, overeducated, over-linear brain. I knew She understood because She, too, had been severed and She understood that the process of being pieced back together is a sacred weaving that cannot be rushed. Her story of healing was proof to me that my healing does not have a deadline and that every step in any direction belongs. In She Who Cherishes Our Hot Mess, I encountered a God who unapologetically affirms my Blackness and my femaleness.

In Her company I also experienced unconditional acceptance, what Clarissa Pinkola Estes described when she wrote, The Black Madonna, in all her representations, is known as the healer of crippledness, the healer of harmed women, hurt men, and injured and abused children. She is mother mild and tender, mother most alert and tending to, mother most fierce and protective, and mother who heals the worst of the wounded.[ii]

Though bell hooks has joined the ancestors, its not too late to follow her guidance as Black women and reclaim Black Madonnas. If we look to the Black Madonna, She will show us how Shes always been right here welcoming our need, showering us with love, and affirming the sacredness of our Black femaleness.

[i] bell hooks, Homegrown: Engaged Cultural Criticism (2006)

[ii] Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Untie the Strong Woman (2011), p. 145.

Christena Cleveland, PhD, is a social psychologist, public theologian, author, and activist. She is the founder and director of the Center for Justice + Renewal as well as its sister organization, Sacred Folk, which creates resources to stimulate peoples spiritual imaginations and support their journeys toward liberation. Her book God Is a Black Woman was published in 2022.

You Might Also Like
The U.S. Capitol is seen from the Supreme Court on Tuesday, March 8, 2022.





Senators are struggling to reach an agreement that could let them quickly end normal trade relations with Russia.

The House passed legislation in a sweeping 424-8 vote last week to cut off permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) with Russia and Belarus in the latest escalation of the country's response to Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine that is in its fourth week.

Despite the overwhelming vote - a rarity in an increasingly polarized House - Senate leaders haven't yet figured out a path forward and are facing sticking points that could slow down or block its journey to President Biden's desk.

Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) is pushing to pass legislation this week.

"This should pass quickly. Republicans in the past have complained we don't do things quickly enough. ... We should pass this with a strong bipartisan vote this week while the president is at NATO," he said.

Biden is traveling to Europe on Wednesday for meetings on the Russian war in Ukraine.

The bill passed by the House raises tariffs on goods from Russia and Belarus and sets up strict guidelines for when the president can restore normal trade relations with Russia and Belarus based on the state of the war. The Biden administration will additionally be obligated to push for Russia's removal from the World Trade Organization.

The House bill also reauthorizes and expands the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act, which sparked some grumbling on the House side of the Capitol.

The House bill comes after Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) and Reps. Richard Neal (D-Mass.) and Kevin Brady (R-Texas) said earlier this month that they had reached an agreement on a path forward for legislation that would ban the import of Russian oil, end normal trade relations with Russia and apply new sanctions.

In the end the House separated the two issues, passing one bill that bans the import of oil and the separate bill ending PNTR for Russia and Belarus.

Story continues

But key Senate Republicans want to relink the two issues. That would require either changing the House bill, offering a Senate alternative or striking an agreement to move the two pieces of legislation in tandem.

Asked if he could support the House trade bill as is, Sen. Mike Crapo (Idaho), the top Republican on the Finance Committee, said "not if it doesn't include the ... oil and gas ban."

"It needs to be amended," Crapo said.

There's broad bipartisan support on Capitol Hill for ending normal trade relations with Russia, which would hand the Biden administration another win after Congress also recently passed a sweeping funding bill that included new aid related to Ukraine.

Lawmakers are eager to show that they are being tough on Russia, with the invasion eating up much of the political oxygen on Capitol Hill. Senators are expected to get another closed-door briefing from administration officials on Russia and Ukraine next week, an aide told The Hill.

But Senate Republicans want to codify the oil ban in part to give Congress more of a say on how it might ultimately get lifted. The Senate hasn't taken up the stand-alone bill passed by the House on the import ban.

"I just think that there's a concern that the administration might decide to change their minds on that," Thune said, asked why Senate Republicans want to pass the oil ban.

Crapo and Wyden are in talks with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who spearheaded oil ban legislation with Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), to try to come up with a quick agreement. But Manchin has also questioned the need for legislation codifying the Russian oil ban in the wake of the administration's actions.

Thune noted that there's broad bipartisan support for ending normal trade relations with Russia. And while he acknowledged that the House bill could get bipartisan support, he said senators are interested in offering their own bill.

"I think there's clearly ... a bipartisan desire to do all of those things, the preference obviously over here for the Senate version," Thune said.

Making changes to the House bill, or swapping the Senate's language into the House legislation, would slow its trip to Biden's desk by forcing the House to pass the legislation for a second time. The House is out of town until Monday - days after Biden's trip.

Wyden said that he wanted to pass the House legislation as it is currently written, questioning why they would overcomplicate the bill's path forward. "I want to pass what the House passed. ... Why make it complicated? Let's do it this week," Wyden said.

Under the Senate's rules, any one senator could slow down quick passage of a bill ending normal trade relations with Russia. That could push Senate action on the bill into at least next week.

"I think there's a preferred way to do this," Thune said, "and the fast way to do it."
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Mark Mitchell - Pool/Getty Images

New Zealand said it is introducing first-of-its-kind legislation to impose further sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.

The sanctions would ban Russian oligarchs' luxury yachts and planes from its waters and airspace.

Under the bill, sanctions can be imposed on "people, services, companies, and assets related to those in Russia."

New Zealand on Monday said that it is introducing unprecedented legislation to impose further sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.

"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," New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said in a statement.

Under the bill, which New Zealand's government said "will pass under urgency this week," the country would bar Russian oligarchs' luxury yachts and planes from its waters and airspace.

Ardern said sanctions can be imposed 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."

The sanctions also would allow the government of New Zealand to freeze assets in the country and those sanctioned "will also be prevented from moving assets to New Zealand or using our financial system as a back door to get around sanctions increasingly imposed by other countries," Ardern said.

The prime minister added, "Sanctions could also apply to trade, and financial institutions as well as stopping the likes of Russian super yachts, ships and aircraft from entering New Zealand waters or airspace."

The bill also allows for sanctions to be implemented against other countries supporting Russia's invasion of Ukraine, like Belarus, she explained.

New Zealand Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta noted that New Zealand has historically supported sanctions through the United Nations system.

Story continues

"However, with Russia using its veto as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council to prevent any action, even in the face of overwhelming opposition to Russia's war, New Zealand has decided that a targeted sanctions bill is required to show our condemnation in the strongest possible terms," Mahuta said.

Meanwhile, New Zealand's government on Monday published a list of more than 100 Russian officials and others associated with the Russian invasion of Ukraine who are now banned from traveling to the country.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is at the top of the list, followed by Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Vladimirovich Mishustin and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

Read the original article on Business Insider
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has accused the Austin school district of breaking state law with Pride Week activities that he characterized as attempts to indoctrinate students with liberal attitudes on sexual orientation and gender identity.

"Liberal school districts are aggressively pushing LGBTQ+ views on Texas Kids!" Paxton said Tuesday night on Twitter, where he announced his campaign against the district's "immoral and illegal" Pride Week celebration, which began Monday.

Austin school officials fired back, accusing Paxton of launching a misguided attack designed to score political points at the expense of students.

"I want all our LGBTQIA+ students to know that we are proud of them and that we will protect them against political attacks," Superintendent Stephanie S. Elizalde replied on Twitter.

Ken Paxton

A social media-fueled backlash to this year's Pride Week also resulted in death threats against Doss Elementary School teachers and prompted the school to move Wednesday's pride parade indoors, with police present, "because we were actually worried that this political controversy could possibly threaten the safety of these kids," district spokesman Jason Stanford said.

The Pride Week clash underlines increasingly sharp divisions over issues of sexual identity  a battle that has spilled into the courts over Paxton's opinion that gender-affirming medical care for transgender adolescents constitutes child abuse and into school libraries, where conservatives are pushing to eliminate books that they believe contain obscene sexual content, many of them with LGBTQ themes.

Grumet: Texas families with transgender kids are 'refugees in their own country'

The Austin district has celebrated Pride Week for at least 14 years, with 2022 activities to be determined campus by campus along broad themes, such as "Differences are awesome" for Tuesday and "Know your rights" on Wednesday.

Story continues

Paxton and other conservatives have focused much of their ire on Doss Elementary's published Pride Week agenda, which included the use of "community circles"  guided conversations on topics such as family and respecting differences.

One of the rules for engaging in a circle, according to the agenda for prekindergarten to second grade, is this: "Respect privacy: What we say in this room stays in this room."

According to Paxton and conservative media outlets, that sounds like students are being encouraged to keep details confidential from parents.

"The Texas Legislature has made it clear that when it comes to sex education, parents  not school districts  are in charge," Paxton said in a letter sent to the Austin district late Tuesday.

State law, he added, requires districts to obtain written consent from parents "before a student may be provided with human sexuality instruction."

"By hosting 'Pride Week,' your district has, at best, undertaken a weeklong instructional effort in human sexuality without parental consent. Or, worse, your district is cynically pushing a weeklong indoctrination of your students that not only fails to obtain parental consent, but subtly cuts parents out of the loop," Paxton wrote.

"Either way, you are breaking state law," he concluded.

Austin school officials rejected Paxton's claim, saying he mischaracterized and misunderstood Pride Week events.

"Community circles are confidential in the sense that makes students feel trusted and respected for their privacy when sharing in the conversations  it does not mean don't tell your parents," the district said in a statement, adding that circles are often used in social-emotional learning to foster discussions on a range of topics such as test anxiety and world events.

In addition, Paxton was wrong, legally and factually, to equate Pride Week with sex education, which requires parental consent for student participation, district spokesman Stanford said.

"Pride is about celebrating who people are, particularly members of the LGBT community who are bullied much more than the community at large, who experience suicide at much higher rates, who skip school at twice the rate of straight kids because of worries about their safety," Stanford said.

"In Austin, it's really important to us to let all these kids know that we love them and they're welcome and they're safe," he said. "It might surprise the attorney general to find out that this is a pretty normal idea here in Austin, that we love everybody."

In his letter, Paxton advised the district to "rectify this situation," noting that state law lets parents file complaints with the Texas Education Agency alleging that they had not given approval for student participation in "human sexuality instruction."

The Austin district will not take that advice, Stanford said, disputing the conclusion that Pride Week activities fall under the legal definition of sex education.

"This is nothing our lawyers are taking seriously at all because he's so wrong about the law," Stanford said. "We thank the attorney general for his interest, but we will continue to celebrate Pride."

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: AG Ken Paxton, Austin ISD clash over LGBTQ+ Pride Week events
Workers from the Bucyrus plant operated by GE Lighting, a Savant Company, gather outside the plant Wednesday morning before boarding a bus for Columbus to deliver petitions to U.S. Sen. Rob Portman's office.

Employees gathered outside the Bucyrus GE Lighting, a Savant Company, plant Wednesday morning as they prepared to head south for a rally in Columbus  another effort to save their jobs.

On March 9, GE Lighting, a Savant company, informed its Bucyrus employees it intends to close the plant this fall as part of a restructuring effort. The move would eliminate all 174 jobs at the plant, which opened in 1942.

Union leaders at the plant have vowed to fight the planned closure.

"Were wanting just to show a sign of solidarity and strength, with the community here in Bucyrus and keeping jobs in Bucyrus and in Ohio," said Will Evans, president of IUE-CWA Local 84704, which represents workers at the Bucyrus plant.

Around 8:30 a.m. Wednesday, about two dozen employees were joined outside the 1250 S. Walnut St. plant by about a half-dozen Bucyrus firefighters, who said they'd come to support the union's efforts. They brought two ambulances and a firetruck to escort the union workers' bus as it headed out of town for the Columbus rally.

Workers want Portman to support 'Buy American Light Bulb' amendment

In Columbus, workers delivered petitions at U.S. Sen. Rob Portman's office, urging him to back an legislation that would help keep manufacturing jobs in America, said Ashley Snider, a representative of the IUE-CWA  the Industrial Division of the Communication Workers of America  who attended both rallies.

A Bucyrus fire truck escorts a bus carrying workers from the Bucyrus plant operated by GE Lighting, a Savant Company, to Columbus on Wednesday morning. Members of IUE-CWA Local 84704, the union representing workers, delivered petitions to U.S. Sen. Rob Portman's office, then held a rally and news conference.

"Were just trying to highlight the fact that legislation shouldnt be a partisan issue." Snider said. "Portman should support Buy American Light Bulb legislation. It helps ensure American companies act to increase our workforce, bringing hundreds if not thousands of jobs back from China, right here to Ohio where they belong.

"He should join his fellow Republicans in the U.S. House as well as Democrats in the Senate to help protect these good-paying union jobs and have stuff made in America, by America."

Story continues

Evans said the petitions had been signed by about 130 employees of the local plant.

"It went really good; it was great," Snider said. After dropping off the petitions at Portman's office, the group gathered on the sidewalk to listen to a series of speakers  Carl Kennebrew, president of IUE-CWA; Tim Burga, president of Ohio AFL-CIO; Evans; and Barb Basore, a worker at the Bucyrus plant, she said.

Community members can show their support for the effort by calling Portman's office, 800-205-6446, or emailing the senator using a link on his website, portman.senate.gov, Evans said.

Decision bargaining process has begun

"Our main goal is we want to keep our jobs here, and we want to have support from the community," Evans said. "Because you know what our jobs mean to this community alone, just Bucyrus alone."

Will Evans, president of IUE-CWA Local 84704, which represents workers at the Bucyrus plant operated by GE Lighting, a Savant Company, stands in front of a tour bus bound for Columbus on Wednesday morning. Workers delivered petitions seeking to keep the plant open to U.S. Sen. Rob Portman's office.

Under terms of the collective bargaining agreement between the company and IUE-CW the union can request a decision bargaining period in an effort to save the jobs.

Evans said union leaders and company officials have begun that process, which is scheduled to conclude on April 22. He said he couldn't comment on what is being discussed.

"Most of the workers at this point have been there for years," Snider said. "Its going to be devastating to the town of Bucyrus, and we just feel like their representative should be mindful of what theyre doing to their constituents."

ggoble@gannett.com

419-559-7263

This article originally appeared on Bucyrus Telegraph-Forum: Bucyrus GE Lighting workers ask Rob Portman to help save jobs
A KLM airbus in flight

Courtesy of KLM

Countries across Europe are easing COVID-19-related border restrictions and Dutch airline KLM is celebrating with a spring sale that will have travelers saying welkom.

To take advantage of the sale  which has fares to Amsterdam starting at only $679 round trip and tickets to other popular European cities and beyond for a steal  travelers must book by March 30.

"You can't pass on these wonderful destinations we've selected for you," KLM wrote as part of the sale. "All you have to do is book your deal with maximum flexibility and visit your dream destination this spring let's go!"

Fly from New York to Copenhagen for only $689 round trip, or from San Francisco to Edinburgh for only $670 round trip. Travelers can also fly from several cities, including Washington D.C., Los Angeles, and Houston, to Amsterdam for less than $700.

Or head on an epic safari adventure with flights from Los Angeles to Nairobi starting at only $665 round trip.

Each sale ticket is available for economy class and must be booked at least 14 days in advance with a stay of at least 7 days. There is a weekend surcharge for trips on Thursdays to Sundays, and several blackout dates apply, depending on the city and the destination, from April 12 through April 29.

The sale comes as the Netherlands dropped its pre-arrival testing for international visitors on Wednesday, the latest country to ease pandemic-era border restrictions and make it easier for international tourists to visit. Travelers to the Netherlands must still be either vaccinated or have contracted COVID-19 and recovered to enter.

The government also eliminated the requirement to wear face masks on public transportation, but will still require them on airplanes and in airports.

However, KLM  the world's oldest airline  has since vowed to stop enforcing its mask policy, telling local news outlet RTL News it was "disappointing that the use of face masks during boarding and during the entire flight is still being considered by the Dutch government, while this has been abandoned everywhere in the Netherlands."

Story continues

"Due to the increasing number of 'unruly' incidents on board, KLM no longer monitors wearing face masks on flights to countries that do not make this mandatory. KLM urgently advises these passengers to wear a face mask," a representative from KLM told Travel + Leisure. "The Dutch government has indicated that KLM does not have to maintain on board if there is a threat of conflict."

The Netherlands joins several other European countries in easing border restrictions for tourists, including Iceland, Ireland, and the United Kingdom, which have all eliminated restrictions altogether.

Alison Fox is a contributing writer for Travel + Leisure. When she's not in New York City, she likes to spend her time at the beach or exploring new destinations and hopes to visit every country in the world. Follow her adventures on Instagram.
Russia have confirmed their interest in hosting Euro 2028 or 2032 despite clubs and national teams from the country being banned from international football over the invasion of Ukraine.

Turkey also entered their candidacy for 2028 and 2032, meaning one way or the other the UK and Ireland will face a contest for the right to host the continental finals in six years time.

Here, the PA news agency takes a look at the issues.

How can Russia even bid?

 UEFA has received declarations of interest to host the 2028 and 2032 editions of the UEFA EURO from four potential bidders following today's deadline.  The appointment of hosts for both tournaments will be made in September 2023.  UEFA (@UEFA) March 23, 2022

UEFA and FIFA banned Russian clubs and national teams from their competitions on February 28, but crucially not the Football Union of Russia. For that reason, the bid cannot be rejected at this stage. However, the unions status may be reviewed at future meetings of UEFAs ruling executive committee. The first of those is scheduled for April 7.

Why would Russia want to bid?

Russia had been reported to be interested in a bid for Euro 2028 prior to the invasion of Ukraine. With UEFA expected to want to increase the mens Euros from 24 to 32 teams in 2028, Russia have a proven pedigree for hosting a finals of that size having staged the 2018 World Cup.

What opposition might Russia face?

Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries has expressed her opposition to Russia being able to legitimise itself through sport (James Manning/PA)

UEFA is expected to come under political pressure almost immediately. British Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries is working with her counterparts in other countries around the world to form an international coalition to prevent Russia using sport as a means to legitimise Vladimir Putins regime in any way.

What about the UK and Ireland bid?

Though the five nations now face opposition, they remain overwhelming favourites for 2028 and submitted their formal expression of interest on Wednesday. Turkey have tried and failed many times in the past to win the right to stage a major tournament and Russias bid could be rejected by UEFA so the UK and Ireland bid represents a safe bet for UEFA. Despite the chaos surrounding the Euro 2020 final last year the UK, and Wembley, remains a go-to destination for UEFA.

Story continues

What happens next?



UEFA will announce the hosts for 2028 and 2032 in September next year (Jamie Gardner/PA)

According to documents published by UEFA last October, bidders for Euro 2028 and 2032 will receive the bid requirements on March 30. Final bid dossier submissions must be handed over to UEFA by April 23 next year, with the decision on hosting to be taken in September 2023.
Steve Clarke has challenged Scotland to pick up where they left off at the end of 2021 as they prepare to return to action in Thursdays friendly against Poland following more than four months without a game.

The Scots finished last year on a high as they surged into a World Cup play-off with six consecutive victories.

Clarke acknowledges the break may have interrupted his teams flow, but is hopeful they can start rebuilding momentum with another victory at Hampden against a Polish side preparing for their World Cup play-off final against Sweden or Czech Republic next week.

Some new faces joining us in the squad #SCOPOL pic.twitter.com/zni2DmLbbp  Scotland National Team (@ScotlandNT) March 22, 2022

The Scots, meanwhile, will face a second friendly on Tuesday away to the losers of the play-off semi-final between Wales and Austria.

I dont know how Poland will approach the game because theyve got a massive game on Tuesday, said Clarke. For ourselves its just about trying to pick up where we left off last November and try to find that feelgood factor and continuity we had.

The way we played against Denmark was good so we want to continue that. Its nice to get the boys back after four months. Its been a long time so its nice to see them. Its nice to have a couple of good friendlies to look forward to.

Its a case of trying to pick up that momentum. If we were going into a more competitive game, there would be a different feel to it. Its a little bit relaxed, its a nice sunny day, but the mood around the camp feels like it did in November and hopefully the performance on the pitch will be just as positive as it was in November.

I know the term friendly is used but every single game when you represent your country, you want to win. This group of players have shown they want to do that and hopefully it continues in the next two games.

Story continues

Ross Stewart is among the new faces in the Scotland squad (PA)

Clarke has three new faces in his squad this week in the shape of Hearts defender Craig Halkett, Sunderland forward Ross Stewart and Bologna left-back Aaron Hickey. He has been impressed with the way they have settled into a tight group.

First and foremost I tell them (the new players) theyre in the squad because theyve impressed me so they dont need to run around like crazy on the training pitch trying to impress me even more, he said. They have to come and fit in and feel part of the group, thats a big thing.

Weve spent the last three years trying to build that feeling round the camp. We want the lads to come knowing theyre going to have good facilities, good training, good preparation for the matches and also a feelgood factor about mingling with each other and catching up with each other again. Thats something weve worked hard at building and we want to keep that going.

With captain Andy Robertson missing through Covid, it looked like Hickey might be in line to start at left-back. However, illness has rendered the 19-year-old doubtful for Thursdays match.

Aaron Hickey is a doubt for Scotland through illness (PA)

Aaron woke up feeling a bit unwell (on Wednesday) so weve left him out of training and will see how he is, said Clarke. Aaron made a really brave decision as a young man to move abroad and hes grown up pretty quickly. Hes fitted in with the squad and comes across as a really confident guy and I look forward to seeing him on the pitch.

I was always thinking with Aaron Id just let him settle into the squad and see how he goes. Weve got two games so its not a case of rushing him in. I was undecided about that one anyway (starting him against Poland) but the fact hes a bit under the weather probably makes my mind up.

Clarke refused to confirm who will captain the team in the absence of Robertson, with Callum McGregor, John McGinn, Scott McTominay, Grant Hanley and Craig Gordon among an array of possible contenders.

I havent decided yet, he said. Ive got so many candidates. Ive got loads of captains. Its fantastic, I love it.
Anthony Elanga has had a breakthrough season at Manchester United (Manchester United via Getty Imag)

Zlatan Ibrahimovic has praised Anthony Elanga as a great talent and told the Manchester United youngster that he must keep striving for more to continue his success.

Elanga has earned a first call-up to the Sweden national team ahead of the international break and could make his debut for the country in their World Cup qualifying play-off semi-final against the Czech Republic.

He has enjoyed a breakthrough season at Old Trafford, flourishing in an expanded role under interim Manchester United manager Ralf Rangnick.

Born in Malmo, Elanga moved to the United Kingdom as a child and was eligible for England, Cameroon or Sweden.

But having made the decision to play internationally for the country of his birth, Elanga has an admirer in new squad-mate Ibrahimovic, who also offered the 19-year-old some advice to ensure he makes the most of his talent.

A great talent, we are proud and happy that he comes from Sweden, Ibrahimovic, who made his Sweden debut more than a year before Elanga was born, said of the winger. That he can represent Sweden now makes it even bigger.

He has all the future ahead of him, and if he continues just as he has done, it looks positive.

Its just fighting, never being happy, striving for more. It depends on him, how far he can develop.

The former Manchester United striker, now at AC Milan, is suspended for the Czech Republic tie.

Poland await the winners of the Stockholm encounter in the final play-off round to determine who will earn a place at Qatar 2022.

Manager Janne Andersson has suggested that Elanga will not be an immediate starter with stiff competition for places in Swedens forward line, but indicated that he felt he would be a useful bench option.

Elanga described the chance to represent Sweden as a dream ahead of his potential debut, and insisted that he never harboured any thoughts of switching allegiance having come up through the age-group system in the Scandinavian nation.

I was born in Sweden, I spent 75 per cent of my life here and Sweden means a lot to me, Elanga said of his decision.

Everyone knows that I could have represented Cameroon and England but, for me, it was always Sweden.

It is a dream to represent Sweden at this level.
FILE -- Marci Whitney, a paraeducator with the Yakima School District, left, opens the gate for JJ Wilks, 6, on April 1, 2020, at Discovery Lab School in Yakima, Wash., when the school was used as a child care center at the beginning of the pandemic. The school district will close the lab school and open an early learning center on the campus next school year.
Submit An Obituary

Funeral homes often submit obituaries as a service to the families they are assisting. However, we will be happy to accept obituaries from family members pending proper verification of the death.

Go to form
 deeper dive into the ways Russia is prosecuting its propaganda war against Ukraine reveals startling similarities with how former President Donald Trump waged his propaganda campaign regarding U.S. election integrity. Trump made no secret of his admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin, so it should come as no surprise that the two share the same level of contempt for facts when it comes to advancing their political goals.

Both started by introducing a lie as if it were an indisputable fact. Both leaders repeated their baseless assertions so often, joined by complicit aides and political allies, that the assertions wound up as regular topics of discussion on social media and in news broadcasts. Trumps principal propaganda-circulation outlet was Fox News. Among his loudest cheerleaders was, and is, commentator Tucker Carlson. Putin, who has annihilated independent news coverage in his country, also relies on Carlson to advance his propaganda.

After the 2016 election, Trump established the myth that the U.S. election system was tainted with fraud  all because he couldnt accept the fact that Hillary Clinton received nearly 3 million more popular votes than Trump. Even after becoming president, Trump persisted and formed a commission to investigate vote fraud. The commission disbanded after turning up nothing to substantiate Trumps claims, but Republican llegislatures passed laws to root out fraud that didnt exist. Before the 2020 election, Trump revived his fraud claims. His followers were so fooled that they stormed the Capitol to halt Congress confirmation of Joe Bidens election.

For Putin, back in 2014, the myth was that Ukrainians were crying out to be unified with Russia. On that basis, he ordered his military to back separatists in eastern Ukraine. He seized control of Crimea, then annexed it. Now Putin is using his propaganda machine to advance the myth that Ukraine is overrun by Nazis, and that only a Russian special operation (invasion) can save the Ukrainian people.

Film star and Republican former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has recorded a nine-minute video, with Russian subtitles, specifically designed to debunk Putins propaganda. In the video, he scoffs at the de-Nazification pretext, noting that Ukraines president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is Jewish. A Jewish president, I might add, whose father and three brothers were all murdered by the Nazis, Schwarzenegger says. Its doubtful Putins government will allow the video to be viewed in his country.

But Carlsons commentaries are cheered by Russian state television. In fact, Russia went so far as to hire a voice-over actor who mimics Carlsons delivery style in a dubbed Russian version of his pro-Putin Ukraine commentaries.

Just as Carlson advanced Trumps election-fraud propaganda, he is now helping Russia by advancing a Putin assertion that the United States helped Ukraine develop biological weapons. Its a truly sad day when some Americans prove no better than Russians in realizing that theyre being played for fools.
Greensboro, NC (27407)

Today

Sunshine and clouds mixed. High 78F. Winds E at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Partly cloudy early followed by cloudy skies overnight. Slight chance of a rain shower. Low 63F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph.
Mothers are special. They give us life. They nurture us. And, they shape the way we think an
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.
Hungarian Gripen fighter jets were scrambled on Monday afternoon due to an unidentified aircraft crossing into the countrys airspace from Ukraine, the defence ministry said on Monday evening.

The NATO joint air operations command ordered the jets into the air after an aircraft appeared on the radar in the eastern part of the country heading in the direction of Slovakia.



The Gripens patrolled the area before returning to their base in Kecskemet, having ascertained security of the airspace in question, the ministry said in a statement. This was the third time Hungarian jets have been alerted since Saturday.





MTI Photo
Budapests Andrassy German Language University will play an important role in research and innovation in future, Innovation and Technology Minister Laszlo Palkovics told a celebration marking the 20th anniversary of the university on Tuesday.

Palkovics noted that Hungary was the only country apart from German-speaking states to offer a full cycle of education in German from kindergarten to university. Andrassy University focused on education in its first twenty years, while research, innovation, and development will be in its focus in the next twenty, the minister said.



Palkovics noted that in 2021 some 30,000 Hungarians were employed in R&D, twice as many as earlier, adding that 1.6% of Hungarys GDP was spent on the sector, twice as much as in 2016.



He also pointed to the crucial position of German firms in the Hungarian economy, which in turn could increase the universitys role in vocational training.



Zoltan Pallinger, the rector of the university, said that Andrassy was a European pilot project, an international university in Budapest with a strong European focus.



He said the university was committed to its purpose of serving as a bridge between old and new European Union states, between theory and practice, between university and labour market, a bridge within the scientific community and between citizens.





MTI Photo: Zoltan Mathe
HENDERSON  The 60th annual Heartland Smorgasbord drew a huge crowd to the school this past week and more than 1,000 people (a number estimated to be greater than the towns actual population) were able to enjoy special German/Mennonite ethnic foods which are a rarity on a regular day.

The featured foods are special  near and dear to the hearts of Henderson area residents, many of whom grew up with these foods as part of their German/Mennonite heritage and family traditions.

For visitors coming into the event, first-timers were educated by regulars/experts as they waited in the long-winding line from outside the front door, through the school and into the lunchroom area.

No one ever minds standing in line for the Smorgasbord  because everyone knows the wait is worth it, as is the cause.

When diners reached the long buffet line, servers were able to explain each of the specialty foods (if needed)  which were also labeled with written signs. The names were proclaimed as verenika (cooked and fried versions, a highly controversial choice in the German circles of Hendersonites), Pluma Mos, Prieshke, Zwieback, Plautz, Schnetya, Kielke, Kumpstborscht and Partzilke (just to name a few).

The secrets to creating these special dishes are handed down from generation to generation. The techniques of making them are as fascinating as the many ways to eat them  some families add sugar to certain delicacies, others do not (just as an example).

The annual feast, which started back in 1956, has only had four interruptions in its long history. Two of those interruptions came in the last two years, as the unprecedented decisions to cancel in 2020 and 2021 were necessary due to the pandemic.

The purpose of the event has been the same since it started  to raise money for the schools exceptional band program. The parents and grandparents of band students (and other volunteers who are experts in this line of cuisine) make and serve the food.

And following the feast, a band concert is always held. This year held true to tradition and band instructor Royce Schweitzer also introduced members of the 1956 band who were in attendance, as well as the many, many people who have helped with the event over the years.

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.
B Ravi Pillai, chairman of RP Group of companies, became the first Indian to own the Airbus H145 helicopter. The helicopter got delivered to its new owner in Kovalam. It is worth around Rs 100 crore. As per the reports, the helicopter took its first from Kovalam to The Raviz Ashtamudi with the 68-year-old billionaire onboard. It is to be noted that B Ravi Pillai is worth $2.5 billion and employs about 70,000 people in his company.

The helicopter he bought is not only the first Airbus helicopter in India, but it also holds the title of being the first five-bladed H145 helicopter in the Asian continent. The addition of the new helicopter is supposed to increase tourism and will also be used by his guests to travel to the tourist destinations.

Also read: IndiGo most punctual airline in India, leads on-time-performance at THESE airports

The new helicopter can seat eight passengers in its standard configuration and is operated by one or two pilots. The new machine is capable of landing and taking off from even the height of 20,000 feet above sea level. It is to be noted that the new helicopter comes with the latest safety features.

The helicopter is a small-sized machine, as per the company, it gets a small footprint and flexible cabin making it ideal for multiple purposes. The H145 is the most recent addition to Airbus' four-tonne-class twin-engine rotorcraft lineup.

The H145 family of helicopters include BK117, EC145 and the H145; it has close to 1,500 helicopters in service worldwide and has clocked more than six million flight hours.

With inputs from IANS

Live TV

#mute
China is one of the world's largest aviation markets, ranking third behind North America and Europe in terms of air travel. Several catastrophic crashes in the 1990s and 2000s resulted in a considerable boost in safety, and since 2010, there hasn't been a commercial jet crash in the country with more than five fatalities. After years without major air disasters, a China Eastern flight crashed on Monday with 132 people aboard, including 123 passengers and 9 crew members.

During the flight from Kunming in Yunnan's southwest to Guangzhou's industrial center, a Boeing 737-800 crashed near Wuzhou in the Guangxi region. China is the world's second largest economy just behind the USA. Economic growth and rising incomes across the region have fueled unparalleled growth in business and leisure travel. Here's what you need to know about the Chinese aviation market:

Read also: Airbus delivers India's first Rs 100 crore H145 helicopter to THIS billionaire

CHINA EASTERN AIRLINES CORP

China Eastern is, along with Air China, China Southern Airlines and HNA Group, one of four major carriers in China, all state-owned. Founded in 1995, the airline is headquartered at Shanghai's Pudong International Airport. Its fleet of 749 aircraft includes 291 from the Boeing 737 series, according to its mid-2021 interim report. The carrier has 79,913 employees, mostly in China. It carried 44.3 million passengers in the first half of 2021. China Eastern reported a loss of $850 million in the first half of 2021.

CHINA'S AIRLINE INDUSTRY

Carriers have suffered heavy financial losses as the government tries to eliminate COVID-19 with a zero tolerance strategy that bars most foreign visitors from China and has disrupted travel by suspending access temporarily to major cities. Passenger numbers within China exceeded the United States in 2020 for the first time, according to Boeing Co. That was partly because populous China reopened to domestic travel relatively quickly after the initial coronavirus outbreak. Boeing forecasts 5.4% annual traffic growth and says China should account for one-sixth of future added airline capacity.

State media reported all 737-800s in China Eastern's fleet were ordered grounded. Aviation experts said it is unusual to ground an entire fleet of planes unless there is evidence of a problem with the model. China has more 737-800s than any other country - nearly 1,200 - and if identical planes at other Chinese airlines are grounded, it could have a significant impact on domestic travel, said aviation consultant IBA.

CHINA'S LAST BIG CRASH

An Embraer ERJ 190-100 operated by Henan Airlines and carrying a total of 96 passengers and crew hit the ground short of the runway on Aug. 24, 2010, while landing in the northeastern city of Yichun. The crash killed 44 people after the fuel caught fire, while 52 people survived. Investigators blamed an error by the pilot, who was landing at night and in reduced visibility.

China Eastern's last fatal crash was in November 2004, when a bombardier CRJ-200 plunged into a frozen lake just after takeoff from the Inner Mongolian city of Baotou, killing 53 people on board and two on the ground. Regulators blamed ice that had collected on the wings.

The Civil Aviation Administration of China and China Eastern have sent officials to the crash site. The US National Transportation Safety Board said a senior investigator was chosen to help, and the US Federal Aviation Administration, which certified the 737-800 in the 1990s, said it was ready to help if asked.

CHINA'S AIRCRAFT MARKET

China is one of the most important markets for Boeing and its European rival Airbus Industries. They want Chinese carriers to drive sales as U.S. And European demand flattens.

The ruling Communist Party wants to compete with them by making its own jetliners and eventually exporting them.

State-owned COMAC, or the Commercial Aircraft Corp. Of China, has released a short-range jetliner, the ARJ21, for up to 105 passengers, and the larger but short-range C919 with up to 190 seats. The company says it is working on a long-range, twin-aisle plane, the C929, for as many as 290 passengers.

With inputs from AP

Live TV

#mute
NEW DELHI: Actress Deepika Padukone woke up to a sweet surprise on Wednesday (March 2) and the actress thanked the team of the upcoming Abhishek Bachchan starrer 'Dasvi' on her social media for the same.

Everyone across the world truly loves Deepika Padukone and seems like team 'Dasvi' agrees. The super viral and successful trailer of 'Dasvi' released today morning and one dialogue from it seemed to catch everyone's attention.

In one of the scenes in the trailer, Abhishek Bachchan is heard saying, "Everyone loves Deepika" referring to the Indian superstar.

Taking to her social media, the actress reacted to the same as she shared the trailer to her story and wrote, "Thank you team #Dasvi for the LOVE! Wishing you guys the best!".

The Pathan actress has been making headlines ever since the release of her latest 'Gehraiyaan' for the outstanding and relatable performance she had delivered in the film.

On the work front, the reigning Queen of Bollywood has massive projects like 'Pathan', 'Fighter', 'Mahabharata', 'Project K', 'The Intern' remake and another Hollywood project.

Live TV
Mumbai: Bollywood actor Arjun Kapoor, who recently wrapped 'Ek Villain 2', is now all geared up to start shooting for filmmaker Ajay Bahl's 'The Ladykiller'.

Arjun will start filming in the first week of April and sources suggest that the actor will be heading North for about a month to shoot this gritty suspense drama.

"Arjun is not taking any breaks after wrapping Mohit Suri's 'Ek Villain 2'. He has started prepping for Ajay Bahl's 'The Ladykiller' that will start in the first week of April. The team is definitely heading North to shoot this film as the setting too plays a prominent element in heightening the plot point," the source revealed, adding that Arjun "has started an intense 3-4 hours of prep per day for this film."

'The Lady Killer' chronicles the story of a small town playboy who falls in love with a 'self-destructive beauty' as they embark on a whirlwind romance.

Bahl, who previously helmed movies like 'BA Pass' and 'Section 375', will be directing this film that is being produced by Bhushan Kumar and Shaailesh R Singh.

Meanwhile, apart from 'The Lady Killer' and 'Ek Villain 2', Arjun's future projects also include Aasmaan Bhardwaj's dark comedy 'Kuttey'.

Live TV
New Delhi: On the occasion of Shaheed Diwas, actor Randeep Hooda surprised his audiences with a film announcement. Set to pull off yet another interesting and remarkable role, producer Anand Pandit and Sandeep Singh's backed venture Swatantra Veer Savarkar, the unsung hero of Indias freedom movement will see Randeep in the lead role.

The film announcement has been made on Shaheed Diwas, also known as Martyrs' Day. The day honours the valour of all the freedom fighters who sacrificed their lives for the country. On this day, Shaheed Bhagat Singh, Shivaram Rajguru and Sukhdev Thapar were hanged to death by the British rulers of India in 1931.



After the great success and critical acclaim of Sarabjit, producer Sandeep Singh reunites with internationally acclaimed Indian actor Randeep Hooda on his ambitious motion picture Swatantra Veer Savarkar.

Randeep will be essaying the role of controversial freedom fighter Vinayak Damodar Savarkar. The film is expected to go on floors from June 2022 and will be shot across various locations in London, Maharashtra and Andaman & Nicobar Islands.

Producer Sandeep Singh feels, There are very few actors in India who can create magic with his talent, and Randeep is one amongst them. Considering Veer Savarkar as one of the most controversial characters from Indian history, I could only think of Randeep. Veer Savarkar's contribution cannot be ignored, I wonder why our history books never mentioned Veer Savarkar?



The film will highlight India's freedom movement from a different spectrum. This untold story of Veer Savarkar will be directed by National Award-winning filmmaker Mahesh V Manjrekar.



Producer Anand Pandit from Anand Pandit Motion Pictures says, Cinema is a creative medium that celebrates different thought processes. Films like Swatantra Veer Savarkar will help create a far more engaging public dialogue. With Mahesh and Randeep at the helm, I am sure, we will create something memorable for audiences.



"This is the right time to tell the stories which we had ignored. Swatantra Veer Savarkar will be an edgy cinematic narrative that will force us to revisit our history. I have been wanting to collaborate with Sandeep Singh, and I am glad that we are doing this film together," said director Mahesh V Manjrekar, who has been working on this subject for almost a year with his research team.



Randeep Hooda feels elated that he has been chosen to play the most influential yet forgotten hero of India's freedom movement.

"There are many heroes that have played their part in getting us our independence. However, not everyone has got their due. Vinayak Damodar Savarkar is the most misunderstood, debated and influential of these unsung heroes and his story must be told. I am delighted to collaborate with Sandeep after Sarabjit, for Swatantra Veer Savarkar. It will be yet another challenging role to portray," said Randeep Hooda.



Swatantra Veer Savarkar is produced by Anand Pandit from Anand Pandit Motion Pictures and Sandeep Singh from Legend Studios and is co-produced by Roopa Pandit and Sam Khan.
New Delhi: A TCS-led consortium with C-DoT has developed indigenous 4G and 5G network technologies which will be deployed in BSNL network by August 15, a top official of the government-run telecom research firm, said on Wednesday.

Speaking at the Convergence India event, Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DoT) Executive Director Rajkumar Upadhyay said that the consortium has developed the technology at a cost of around USD 30 million indigenously while global telecom giants invest billions of dollars in the technology development.

"I am happy to report that soon you will hear good news that we are going to complete this job, and soon this network will be deployed in BSNL network. It will not be 4G alone. 5G NSA (non-standalone access) will be deployed by the Independence Day this year," Upadhyay said.

BSNL Chairman and Managing Director P K Purwar at an employee event had also said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants BSNL to deploy 4G services by August 15.

The Standing Committee on Communications and Information Technology has recommended that the BSNL should be allocated spectrum for rolling out 5G services at par with private telecom operators in the country.

BSNL has been conducting trials for 4G networks with a TCS-led consortium which includes C-DoT as a technology partner.

"This consortium is led by TCS which is a software power in itself. What was preventing us earlier was the hardware. Today my 4G core is totally virtualised," Upadhyay said, adding that the technology developed by the consortium runs on a standard personal computer (PC).

"If you want to run a small network you can run it on a PC. If you want to run it for a carrier like BSNL, it will require 30-40 servers. Because of softwarisation, now companies like TCS have a much bigger role," Upadhyay said.

The government has made a provision of Rs. 45,000 crore for BSNL to roll out the 4G network. Also Read: Petrol price to cross Rs 100 mark again? Daily revisions could hit vehicle owners next week

Upadhyay said that C-DoT is now opening up its technology development details for Indian companies, and it will also fund start-ups for the development of technologies. Also Read: Instagram starts product tagging feature; check how it works

Live TV

#mute
New Delhi: The Income Tax Department is conducting raids on multiple premises of Hero Motorcorp as part of a tax evasion investigation against the country's largest two-wheeler automobile company.

Offices and residential premises of the promoters including chairman and CEO of the group Pawan Munjal in Gurugram, Haryana, Delhi and few other locations are being covered, news agency PTI quoting officials has reported.

Income Tax department conducting searches at multiple premises of Hero Motocorp. The office and residence of promoter Pawan Munjal and premises linked to the top officials of the company are covered in this search. More details awaited: Sources  ANI (@ANI) March 23, 2022

A team of officials of the department are looking at financial documents and other business transactions of the company and the promoters, they told PTI.

The company has not yet responded on the matter. This is a developing story, further reports and updates are awaited.

Hero Motorcorp has presence across 40 countries spanning Asia, Africa, and South and Central America. The company continues to have a leading position in the domestic two-wheeler segment.

Live TV

#mute
New Delhi: Hailing the country's success in achieving its goods export target of USD 400 billion this fiscal, Prime Minister Narendra Modi asserted on Wednesday that this is a key milestone in India's 'Aatmanirbhar Bharat' journey.

The highest ever goods export target was achieved nine days ahead of the March 31 deadline.

Exports increased by 37 per cent to USD 400 billion during April-March 22, 2021-22 against USD 292 billion in 2020-21.

For the first time ever, India's merchandise exports have crossed USD 400 billion in a fiscal. In 2018-19, the outbound shipments had touched a record of USD 330.07 billion.

"India set an ambitious target of USD 400 billion of goods exports and achieves this target for the first time ever. I congratulate our farmers, weavers, MSMEs, manufacturers, exporters for this success. This is a key milestone in our Aatmanirbhar Bharat journey. #LocalGoesGlobal," Modi tweeted.

He also posted graphics of India achieving the highest-ever export target.

According to those graphics, the government approach with closer interaction with states and districts; engagement with exporters and faster resolution of their issues; and actively engaging with different export promotion councils, industry associations and other stakeholders have helped in reaching this milestone.

On average, goods worth about USD 33 billion were shipped every month and about USD one billion every day.

The key export sectors, which contributed to record healthy growth include petroleum products, electronic goods, engineering goods, leather, coffee, plastic, ready-made garments of all textiles, meat and dairy products, marine products and tobacco.

Commenting on the data, Federation of Indian Export Organisations (FIEO) Director General Ajay Sahai said crossing USD 400 billion is a remarkable achievement as exporters have added over USD 110 billion in one year to reach here despite huge logistics challenges, including container shortage, skyrocketing freight and liquidity constraints.

"What is more important is to build on it, as we will have benefits of new free trade agreements and the PLI scheme (production linked incentive) backing us," he said.

FIEO Vice-President Khalid Khan termed the achievement as a "landmark" and said that despite the COVID-19 pandemic exports have "done so well".

Live TV

#mute
Tesla has handed over the first batch of Model Y cars made at its 5 billion euro ($5.5 billion) Gruenheide plant to clients. The EV carmaker launched its first European production hub with the biggest investment in a German car factory in recent history. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz attended the ceremony alongside Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk.

Musk had hoped that the factory would open eight months ago but local authorities say has come comparatively quickly for a project of its size. The opening comes as Musk has flagged Master Plan Part 3 for Tesla, which he said will map out scaling Tesla to "extreme size."

First Model Y deliveries at Giga Berlin pic.twitter.com/JCneGrBJRA  Tesla (@Tesla) March 22, 2022

With plans to hire 12,000 workers, the German gigafactory and adjacent battery plant will become the biggest employer in the German state of Brandenburg, where it is based.

At full capacity, it will produce 500,000 cars annually - more than the 450,000 battery-electric vehicles that main rival Volkswagen sold globally in 2021 - and generate 50 gigawatt hours (GWh) of battery power, surpassing all other plants in the country.

For now, Volkswagen holds the upper hand in Europes electric vehicle market, with a 25 percent market share to Teslas 13 percent. Musk has warned that ramping up production will take longer than the two years it took to build the plant.

Also read: Exclusive: Investment in India's EV sector can boost both climate and wealth

JPMorgan predicted Gruenheide would produce around 54,000 cars in 2022, increasing to 280,000 in 2023 and 500,000 by 2025.

Volkswagen, which has already received orders for 95,000 battery electric vehicles in Europe this year, is planning a new 2 billion euro EV plant alongside its Wolfsburg factory and six battery plants across Europe.

But its timeline lags Teslas, with the EV factory to open in 2026 and the first battery plant in 2023. Tesla received the final go-ahead from local authorities on March 4 to begin production, provided it met several conditions on issues including water use and air pollution control.

(With inputs from Reuters)

Live TV

#mute
The ongoing economic crisis in Sri Lanka, the worst-ever in the history of the island nation, is putting its citizens through extreme hardships. From school exams being cancelled owing to a shortage of paper and printer ink, a cup of tea costing Rs.100 (Sri Lankan Rupees) and even senior citizens dying while waiting at fuel stations, the situation is deteriorating with every passing day. Now, a group of Lankan nationals have even fled the island nation, which is nearing bankruptcy, and have reached Indian shores illegally.

Six Sri Lankan nationals took the extremely risky step of undertaking a roughly 50 km long, illegal boat ride from Pesalai, Mannar in the northwest of Sri Lanka to Rameswaram in India's Tamil Nadu. According to the Indian Coast Guard, they had received an input about illegal migration of six Lankan nationals to India. Accordingly, the Coast Guard had launched a Hovercraft in the morning hours of Tuesday to patrol the area.

After two hours of search, the craft's crew spotted six persons on the fourth island of Rameswaram, Tamil Nadu. Investigation revealed that the group comprising a man, two women and three children are residents of Jaffna and Kokupadaiyan, in Sri Lanka's northern tip. They had embarked on a fishing boat in the night hours(10:30pm) of Monday and had landed on Fourth island Rameswaram in the wee hours of Tuesday, around 1:30am. They had taken the illegal, risky boat ride at sea, across the Palk Strait, in order to escape from the excessive rise in prices of essential commodities in their country.

Coast Guard brought all six persons to the Mandapam Hoverport safely and conducted a joint interrogation on arrival, following which they were handed over to Coastal Security Group, Mandapam for further legal actions.

The cash-strapped Indian ocean littoral state of Sri Lanka is home to nearly 22 million people is faced with a crippling economic crisis, caused by a severe shortage of foreign exchange reserves that are required for essential imports. This has caused shortages of food, fuel and even medicines, in addition to this, the country is also witnessing severe electricity blackouts. Recently, the Indian Government agreed to provide a USD 1 billion credit line to buy food and medicines on top of a $500 million facility granted earlier. Sri Lankan authorities announced last week that the country will seek an IMF bailout. It is also reported that Sri Lanka has sought a new loan as well as buyers credit from China for USD2.5 billion. This sum is in addition to the USD 2.8 billion that China offered to Sri Lanka, since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
New Delhi: A day after eight people were killed in a village in West Bengal's Birbhum district, the Calcutta High Court has registered a suo moto case in the incident and will hear the matter today (March 23, 2022).

The bench headed by Chief Justice will hear the matter today at 2 pm.

It is noteworthy eight people, including three women and two children, were charred to death as nearly a dozen houses were set ablaze in a village in the Birbhum district early Tuesday in a suspected fallout of the murder of a ruling TMC panchayat official Bahadur Shaikh.

Altogether 11 people have been arrested so far, and the West Bengal government has constituted a Special Investigation Team (SIT) headed by Additional Director General (CID) Gyanwant Singh to probe the incident.

The residents of Bogtui village on the outskirts of Rampurhat town were jolted out of sleep by the deafening sounds of bomb explosions. They tried to douse the flames and called the police and fire brigade for help, as flames leapt from one thatched house to another, killing seven people including two children, while another person who was rescued died later in a hospital.

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar went for each other's jugular over the incident, while the Union home ministry has sought a detailed report from the state government.

A 9-member delegation of BJP MPs including the party's national vice president Dilip Ghosh, Locket Chatterjee and Arjun Singh met Home Minister Amit Shah in the national capital and sought his intervention to punish the perpetrators of the incident.

BJP president JP Nadda has also constituted a five-member committee, which includes four MPs, to visit the site of the tragedy.

(With agency inputs)

Live TV
As many as eight people - including two children - were burnt to death in the Rampurhat area of West Bengal's Birbhum on Tuesday (March 22) after a mob allegedly set houses on fire following the killing of Trinamool Congress leader Bahadur Shaikh. But the sad thing is that for many opposition leaders of our country and a section of the media neither the constitution nor democracy is in danger and there is complete silence in the country. The reason behind this is that both the victims and the killers in this massacre are from a minority community.

In today's DNA, Zee News Editor-in-Chief Sudhir Chaudhary analysed the silence in the country over the killing of eight people in West Bengals Birbhum.

Had the same incident taken place in a BJP-ruled state, by now the leaders of the opposition parties would have reached the house of the victim's family and demanded the resignation of the Chief Minister of that state. But despite such a big incident in West Bengal, a section of the liberals, intellectuals and media of our country is silent on this.

If the murderers were not from a particular religion, perhaps this news would have been discussed the most in our country today. And the opposition parties would have declared India's democracy in danger by now. But nothing like this happened because the killers belong to a particular religion. West Bengal Police has constituted an SIT in this case, which has arrested 22 people so far.

In this matter, the Union Home Ministry has sought complete information from the Mamta government about this incident in the next 72 hours. Apart from this, it has also been said that a Joint Secretary level officer of the Ministry of Home Affairs will visit the spot to gather information about the entire matter.
New York: State Department Spokesperson Ned Price has acknowledged that India developed defence ties with Russia because the US was not ready for such a relationship when the Soviet Union and India drew close.

But he said on Tuesday that despite India`s historical relationship with Russia, the US is a "partner of choice" for New Delhi and the ties with Washington, including in defence and security evolve.

Price made the observations when asked by a reporter at his briefing about President Joe Biden`s statement on Monday that among the Quad partners India was "shaky" in isolating Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.

"You raised an interesting issue of history versus where we are now," Price said. The ties began with the Soviet Union and continued with Russia after the communist mega-state disintegrated.

#WATCH | Responding to ANI's question on whether or not all QUAD partners are in sync with India's historic relationship with Russia, US State Dept Spox Ned Price said, "We're a partner of India when it comes to shared interests...US is a partner of choice for India now." pic.twitter.com/z8g5ybnCOi  ANI (@ANI) March 22, 2022

He referred to Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland`s statement in New Delhi on Monday that India had a historic defence relationship with Russia. Price said, "It was a very different time, different considerations, but those times have changed."

"They`ve changed in terms of our willingness and ability to be a strong defence and security partner of India," and has deepened over the past 25 years or so with bipartisan support, he said. He credited Republican former President George W. Bush for boosting the closer relationship with India.

"It is a legacy in large part of the George W. Bush administration, where we have seen this bilateral relationship between the United States and India evolve and change for the better and deepen in a number of ways, including in our defence and security relationship," he said.

"Historical relationships notwithstanding, we are a partner of choice for India now, as are many of our partners and allies around the world," he said. He explained that the closer relationship with India is centred around the shared interests in the Indo-Pacific.

"In terms of our relationship with India in the Quad context and the bilateral context, we know that India is an essential partner for us in realising our shared vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific,` Price said."That is really at the heart of the Quad`s goals," he said.

The Quad made up of India, the US, Japan and Australia is united in the opposition to Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific region.

During their interactions with India and the Quad, Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken have reaffirmed their "commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific in which the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all states are respected, and countries are free from military, economic, and political coercion," he said.

Those principles were again affirmed by Biden and Prime Ministers Narendra Modi of India, Scott Morrison of Australia and Fumio Kishida of Japan at their summit on March 3, he said.

"They also reaffirmed their dedication to the Quad as a mechanism to promote regional stability and security," he added. While answering another question about US relations with countries in the Middle East, Price spoke of the cooperation with India there.

He referred to the "trilateral relations" between the US, India and UAE and said, "It`s a relationship, a trilateral relationship that we will continue to invest in and continue to develop."

In fact, in what could be the seed of another Quad, India`s External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Foreign Ministers Yair Lapid of Israel and Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed of the UAE held a virtual meeting while the Indian minister was visiting Israel in October and agreed to cooperate in maritime security and discussed future cooperation regionally and globally.

The India-US Civil Nuclear Agreement reached in 2005 between Bush and then-Prime Minister Manmohan Singh sealed the new chapter in relations between the two countries.

Improvements in ties that began before the agreement that set the stage for the virtual recognition of India as a nuclear power entitled to international nuclear cooperation in civilian fields, took off under subsequent Republican and Democratic administrations.

Although the US had come to the aid of India following its defeat in the 1962 China War, as a member of a military alliance with Pakistan, the Central Treaty Organisation (CENTO) Washington was lukewarm towards India and turned definitely hostile to India during the Bangladesh War of Independence in 1971.

While US arms poured into Pakistan, India turned to the Soviet Union and in 1971 signed a treaty of friendship with it incorporating mutual strategic cooperation.

While India`s relations with the US and its allies have grown since then, New Delhi is still dependent on Russia for a major portion of its defence needs making a break with Moscow -- or riling it up -- almost an impossibility now.

Without the continued Russian defence supplies, India would find it difficult to stand up to China`s aggression -- the driving force behind the Quad and the US Indo-Pacific strategy.

Live TV
India's Naval Air Station INS Parundu inducted two made-in-India Advanced Light helicopters of the Mk3 variant to boost surveillance, search and rescue capabilities. Situated in the Ramanathapuram district of Tamil Nadu, the base is strategically placed near the Palk Strait, a narrow strip of sea that connects India and Sri Lanka. The two choppers were accorded a water cannon salute, in the presence of civil and naval personnel, while Vice Adm Biswajit Dasgupta, Flag Officer Commanding-in-Chief of the Eastern Naval Command, presided over the event.

The ALH Mk3 being stationed at this base would enable enhanced surveillance of the Gulf of Manner, Palk Bay and Comorin region and provide extended range for Maritime Search and Rescue operations, during day and night. This variant of the chopper can be used for operations from both naval bases and also from on-board ships. The choppers can be used to undertake Armed patrol missions, casualty evacuations, among other roles, while providing round-the-clock vigil over the region.

Manufactured by the state-run Hindustan Aeronautics Limited(HAL), so far 16 of these choppers have been conceptualized, produced and inducted into the Naval fleet. The Naval Base INS Parundu(which refers to the bird Kite), operates Heron drones and Chetak helicopters. The base is situated in close proximity to the International Maritime Boundary Line(IMBL), between India and Sri Lanka.
New Delhi: The Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) granted permission on Wednesday (March 23) for conducting the phase-3 clinical trial of Covid-19 vaccine Covovax as a booster dose in adults, official sources said. The Subject Expert Committee (SEC) on COVID-19 of the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) had, on March 5, recommended permission for conducting the phase-3 clinical trial for Covovax as a booster dose in adults who have been fully vaccinated with either Covaxin or Covishield at least three months ago.

The DCGI approved Covovax for restricted use in emergency situations in adults on December 28 last year and for inoculating the beneficiaries in the 12-17 years age group, subject to certain conditions, on March 9. The vaccine has not been included in the country's inoculation programme against Covid-19.

Director, Government and Regulatory Affairs at the Serum Institute of India (SII), Prakash Kumar Singh, submitted an application to the DCGI in February, seeking permission to conduct a phase-3, observer-blind, randomised, controlled study to evaluate the safety and immunogenicity of Covovax for booster doses in adults who had received primary vaccination either with Covishield or Covaxin at least three months ago, an official source had said.

Singh had stated that many countries were administering booster doses to their citizens, considering the uncertainties of the pandemic.

"We are sure that your approval for conducting this clinical trial will ensure early availability of Covovax for booster-dose use for the people of our country as well as the world at large, in line with our prime minister's vision of 'Making in India for the World'. "Our firm is committed to providing world-class life-saving vaccines at an affordable price under the visionary leadership of our CEO, Dr Adar C Poonawalla. We request you to kindly grant us permission to conduct a phase-3 clinical trial for booster dose of Covovax in Indian adults," he had stated in the application.

Covovax is manufactured by technology transfer from Novavax and is approved by the European Medicines Agency for conditional marketing authorisation. It was granted emergency-use listing by the World Health Organization (WHO) in December 2020. In August 2020, US-based vaccine-maker Novavax Inc. Had announced a licence agreement with the SII for the development and commercialization of NVX-CoV2373, its COVID-19 vaccine candidate, in low-and-middle-income countries and in India.

Live TV
Srinagar: Jammu Kashmir police spokesman on Wednesday (March 23) said, at about 8 pm terrorists hurled a grenade upon joint deployment of police and CRPF at Zindshah chowk Rainawai area of Srinagar. He said, "In this terror incident, Police personnel and CRPF jawan got splinter injuries and were shifted to nearby hospital for the treatment of their injuries. Senior Police officers immediately reached the terror crime spot."

The area has been cordoned and a search has been launched. The police have registered a case in this regard under relevant sections of law. The investigation is in progress.

A police official said, "Grenade was lobbed towards CRPFs 82 battalion bunker in Rainawari. The CRPF and police soldiers were on duty standing outside the bunker and received splinter injuries, both are shifted to hospital and their condition is stable with minor injuries."

Live TV
In a big setback, the Election Commission of Pakistan has slapped a Rs 50,000 fine at Prime Minister Imran Khan for holding a rally at Khyber Pakhtunwa province's Lower Dir. Imran Khan has been asked to submit a challan in the matter. Imran Khan conducted the said rally on March 11. The Pakistan election commission has also slapped Rs 50,000 fine on Khyber Pakhtunwa Chief Minister's assistant Wazir Zada.

Apart from the KP rally, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has issued a second notice to Prime Minister Imran Khan over violation of the election code of conduct and asked him to submit a reply why he attended the Malakand public gathering ahead of the second phase of local government (LG) polls in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP).

Ahead of the no-trust motion against PM, the district monitoring officer Malakand of the ECP issued notice to PM Imran Khan for submitting the clarification on attending the public gathering, reported ARY News.

In addition to the PM, the second notice was also issued to the federal ministers Ali Zaidi, Murad Saeed and others.

This is the second such notice been issued to Imran Khan as earlier on Monday, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) had served another notice to the premier for participating in a public gathering in Malakand district ahead of the second phase of LG polls.

Amid the controversy surrounding the horse-trading of Pakistani lawmakers, the ECP earlier responded to criticism from the country`s Prime Minister Imran Khan by stating that the poll body has nothing to do with the no-trust motion against him.

A number of dissident lawmakers from the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) have said they would vote on the no-confidence motion tabled against Imran Khan in "accordance with their conscience".In response to this, Cabinet ministers of the Imran Khan government asked Pakistan`s top electoral body to play its role over reports of floor-crossing of the members of the national assembly (MNAs), under Article 63-A.

Live TV
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday expressed grief on the violence in Bengal's Birbhum, and said that people should not forgive violent people. "I hope the state government takes strict action against the culprits, and those who encourage such criminals should not be forgiven too," he added.

As many as eight people - including two children - were burnt to death in the Rampurhat area of West Bengal's Birbhum on Tuesday (March 22) after a mob allegedly set houses on fire following the killing of Trinamool Congress leader Bahadur Shaikh.

Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury wrote to President Ramnath Kovind requesting him to invoke Article 355 in view of the killings in Birbhum. In view of the deteriorating law and order situation in West Bengal, I request you to invoke Article 355 of the Constitution to ensure that the Government of West Bengal is carried on in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution, The Lok Sabha MP from Berhampore wrote in the letter.

Earlier, Chowdhury had said that the states law and order is worsening day-by-day. The SIT is of no use. I will meet the President of India over the Birbhum incident, and will suggest to him that he considers (imposing) Article 355 of the Constitution in the state. Law and order is getting worse. People feel unsafe in Bengal, he was quoted as saying by news agency ANI.

Meanwhile, the Union Home Ministry sought a report from the West Bengal government. The move came after a nine-member delegation of BJP MPs from West Bengal met Union Home Minister Amit Shah and sought his intervention and action against the perpetrators of the crime.

Sources said a fact-finding central team may be sent to the state soon to assess the situation, but there was no official confirmation about it yet. The delegation included Sukanta Majumdar, Dilip Ghosh, Locket Chatterjee, Jagannath Sarkar, Raju Bista, Arjun Singh and others. The delegation also handed over a letter to Shah over the matter. Sukanta Majumdar said, "Mamata Banerjee should be held accountable. She is the Chief Minister. She should resign from her post."

Live TV
NEW DELHI/ CHANDIGARH: Shaheed Diwas 2022 is being observed across the country on Wednesday (March 23, 2022) to pay homage to the legendary freedom fighters Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev who made supreme sacrifices for the motherland on this day in 1931.

March 23, which is also known as Shaheed Diwas or the Martyrs' Day, is observed every year on this day in remembrance of India's three young revolutionaries who were hanged to death in the Lahore Central Jail (now Pakistan) by the British Raj in 1931.

These three revolutionaries who fought against the tyrannical British Empire and laid down their lives for 'Mother India' are regarded as youth icons and remain extremely popular among the masses, especially the youths in India.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi also paid tributes to Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru on the occasion of Shaheed Diwas on Twitter.

          ,     -                 !  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) March 23, 2022

Holiday declared in Punjab on Shaheed Diwas

Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann has declared a holiday on March 23, the martyrdom day of legendary freedom fighters Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev. CM Mann made the announcement on the concluding day of the Punjab Vidhan Sabha session here on Tuesday.

Punjab assembly to have statues of Bhagat Singh, Ambedkar, Maharaja Ranjit Singh

The House also passed a resolution to install statues of Bhagat Singh, Dr B R Ambedkar and first Sikh ruler Maharaja Ranjit Singh in the Vidhan Sabha complex.

Announcing the holiday on the martyrdom day of the freedom fighters, Mann said earlier it was declared only in Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar district to facilitate people from nearby areas to pay tributes at the martyr's memorial in Khatkar Kalan.

Now, the state government has decided to declare a holiday on this day across the state so as to enable the maximum number of people from across the state to pay their tributes to the great martyrs at Khatkar Kalan and Hussainiwala, said Mann.

"As an indebted nation, we can never forget the contribution of Shaheed-e-Azam Bhagat Singh, who laid down his life for the freedom of the country. Likewise, Dr B R Ambedkar shaped the destiny of the country in pre and post-independence era as the chief architect of the Indian constitution," said Mann.

Describing them as great leaders, Mann said they will always remain a source of inspiration for millions of people. Hailing Mann's proposal, Congress legislator Partap Singh Bajwa urged that the statue of Maharaja Ranjit Singh be also installed. Thereafter, the House passed a resolution on installing statues of Bhagat Singh, Dr B R Ambedkar and Maharaja Ranjit Singh in the Vidhan Sabha.

Launch of the anti-corruption helpline in Punjab

Punjab CM Bhagwant Mann had also announced the launch of an anti-corruption helpline in the state from March 23 - Shaheed Diwas. The helpline number will be "Bhagwant Mann's personal mobile number", his office said.

"On March 23, Shaheed Diwas I'll launch helpline that'll be my personal WhatsApp number. In Punjab, if someone demands a bribe from you, don't refuse, make a video/audio recording and send it to that number. My office will investigate & no culprit will be spared," Mann was quoted as saying by news agency ANI.

Delhi govt's Armed Forces Preparatory School renamed after Bhagat Singh

Meanwhile, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has announced that an upcoming school of the city government to prepare students for the armed forces will be named after freedom fighter Bhagat Singh.

The school will come upon a 14-acre campus at Jharoda Kalan with state-of-the-art facilities. It will be affiliated to the Delhi Board of School Education, a government official said.

On the eve of Bhagat Singh's death anniversary, the chief minister said, "March 23 is the day of martyrdom of Shaheed-e-Azam Bhagat Singh. It was on this day in 1931 that our great freedom fighters -- Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev -- were hanged to death by the British. All three sacrificed their lives for the country, to fight for the freedom of our people."

(With Agency inputs)

Live TV
New Delhi: Ahead of Himachal Pradesh Assembly polls slated for later this year, Congress president Sonia Gandhi has asked the state party leaders to stay united to avoid a Punjab-like situation in the recently concluded Assembly elections, according to sources. Sonia Gandhi is quoted by ANI as saying, "You all are sitting together right but otherwise you don`t even talk to each other."

Having lost Punjab to Aam Aadmi Party, Congress leaders briefed Sonia Gandhi about the present position of AAP in Himachal Pradesh. Congress' Himachal Pradesh in-charge Rajiv Shukla, who was also present in the meeting, reportedly stated, "AAP is not an issue in Himachal Pradesh. Only those people who will not get tickets from BJP or Congress will contest from AAP`s ticket."

The Congress chief deliberated on the AAP position in the state with the party leaders and asked them to prepare a poll strategy to take on rivals. "All leaders from Himachal Pradesh promised Sonia Gandhi that they will remain united and a situation like Punjab will not be repeated there. Party leaders assured AICC president that state leaders will accept whatever decision the central leadership takes," sources told ANI.

Sources further said the state party president and legislature party leader can also be changed if the situation demands, adding "Central leadership is not changing any officer bearers right now but the option is open."

In the by-polls held in Himachal Pradesh last year, the Congress had won the Mandi Lok Sabha seat along with three assembly seats, therefore, it is trying to repeat the same in the upcoming assembly polls.

The meeting reportedly decided that the results witnessed in the Mandi Lok Sabha seat and three other assembly constituencies will be repeated only if the party moves ahead together with a full proof strategy to take on the BJP.

After Virbhadra Singh's death, Congress is witnessing a vacuum in the top leadership in the state despite the attempts made by several leaders trying to take the position of party`s face in the hilly state.

Anand Sharma, who is part of G-23, is reportedly being seen as a frontrunner to fill up the vacuum created after the demise of Virbhadra Singh. He, however, might be deprived of the position to lead the Congress in Himachal Pradesh, where the Assembly polls will be held in October this year.

(With ANI Inputs)

Live TV
New Delhi: It was Congress president Sonia Gandhi who was not only marshalling the members of her own party in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday (March 23) but was also seen instructing the MPs of other Opposition parties to refrain from participating in the Question Hour to register their protest against the rising petroleum prices.

Gandhi was unusually more proactive and practically led the Opposition protest against the rise in the prices of petrol, diesel and LPG cylinders during the Question Hour.

As a result, the Congress MPs were louder compared to the members of other Opposition parties while protesting in the well of the House.

When National Conference (NC) MP Hasnain Masoodi stood up from his seat to ask a supplementary question to the question listed against his name, Gandhi was seen instructing him to sit down and he did so.

A similar scene was witnessed when the name of ET Mohammed Basheer, a leader of Congress ally Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), was announced by the speaker to ask his question and Gandhi ensured that he raised the issue of petroleum prices, instead of asking the question.

She was also seen giving instructions to the leader of the Congress in the Lok Sabha, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, and other party MPs who were protesting in the well. The Congress president continued to sit in the House even after the Question Hour.

Live TV
UP Board Exams 2022: The Uttar Pradesh Madhyamik Shikha Parishad (UPMSP) on Wednesday (March 24, 2022) will begin the UP Board Exam 2022 for Classes 10th and 12th. According to the Uttar Pradesh Secondary Education Council (UPSEC), over 51 lakh students have registered for UP Board Exams 2022 for Class X and Class XII.

While as many as 27,81,654 students have registered for UP Board Class 10th Exams 2022, a total of 24,11,035 students have registered for UP Board Class 12th Exams 2022.

A total of 8,373 examination centres have been set up for the purpose and the students will have to appear for their examination at these centres.

According to the UP Board timetable 2022 released on UPMSP's official website (https://upmsp.edu.in), Class 10th exams will be completed in 12 working days and Class 12th exams will be held over 15 working days.

UP Board timetable 2022: Class 10th complete date sheet

Hindi, Elementary Hindi - March 24

Pali, Arabic, Persian, Music (Vocals) - March 25

Home Science - March 26

Drawing, Computer - March 28

Sanskrit, Music (instrument) - March 29

Commerce, Sewing - March 30

Agriculture - March 31

Science - April 4

English new and old course - April 6

Social Science - April 9

Gujarati, Bangla, Marathi, Kannad, Malayalam, Tamil, Sindhi, Urdu, Punjabi - April 11

Mathematics - April 12

UP Board timetable 2022: Class 12th complete exam schedule

Defence Studies, Hindi/General Hindi - March 24

Music (instrument and vocals), Dance - March 25

Gujarati, Bangla, Marathi, Kannad, Malayalam, Tamil, Sindhi, Urdu, Punjabi, Accounting (new course) - March 26

Geography, Home Science - March 28

Drawing, Arts, Economics, Commerce, Geography (old course) - March 29

Pali, Arabic, Persian, English new/old course - March 30

Mathematics, Elementary Statistics (old course), History - March 31

Psychology, Education, Biology, Mathematics - April 4

Computer - April 6

Economics, Physics - April 7

Sanskrit - April 9

Chemistry, Sociology - April 11

Civics - April 12

Earlier in 2021, the Yogi Adityanath-led government had cancelled the two crucial examinations due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

UP Board Exams 2022: UP govt to slap NSA against those involved in copying racket

The Uttar Pradesh government has said that action under the National Security Act (NSA) will be taken against those involved in organised copying racket in high school and intermediate exams conducted by the UP Board of Secondary Education. The directives were given at a meeting held by Chief Secretary Durga Shankar Mishra with all divisional commissioners, police commissioners, district magistrates and SSPs through video conferencing.

He directed that zonal and sector magistrates should be deputed in districts to conduct copying-free examinations and they should regularly inspect and supervise the examination centres.

Action under the NSA should be taken against those involved in organised copying racket, the officer said, adding that special attention should be paid to those spreading rumours.

CCTVs have also been installed in each examination hall.

(With agency inputs)

Live TV
New Delhi: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Wednesday said he is challenging the BJP to conduct MCD polls on time and added that the BJP is scared of losing the polls. Attacking BJP over the "postponement" of municipal elections, Kejriwal said that Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) will quit politics if the saffron party gets these polls conducted timely and wins them. His remarks came after the Union Cabinet on Tuesday approved a bill to unify the three civic bodies - North, East and South - in Delhi.

"We (the AAP) will leave politics if BJP gets the MCD polls held (timely) and wins them," Kejriwal told reporters outside the Delhi Assembly. He added, "The BJP says it is the biggest political party in the world but it got scared by a small party and a small election. I dare the BJP for timely MCD polls."

Later, Kejriwal took to Twitter and said that deferring the elections is an "insult to martyrs". "Postponement of Delhi Municipal Corporation elections by BJP is an insult to the martyrs who had made sacrifices to establish democracy in the country by driving the British out of the country. Today they are postponing the Delhi Municipal Corporation elections due to fear of defeat, tomorrow they will postpone the elections of the states and the country," Kejriwal tweeted.

The Delhi CM and AAP supremo also said that if due to fear of losing minuscule MCD polls, BJP postpones elections, "then it'll muzzle people's voices". "We all know BJP will be wiped out in the MCD elections," insisted Kejriwal.

(With Agency inputs)

Live TV
Jammu: Amid a call for the reopening of cases related to the killing of Kashmiri Pandits in 1990s, Jammu and Kashmir Director General of Police (DGP) Dilbag Singh on Tuesday said if there is "something specific", the force will definitely look into it.

Asked whether cases against former terrorist commander Farooq Ahmed Dar, alias Bitta Karate, over the killing of Kashmiri Pandits will be pursued, the police chief said, "All cases of terrorism and against terrorists are being pursued and will be pursued. Cases of terrorism will be not be allowed to be left out. They will be dealt with sternly."

Asked by a journalist regarding the demand for the reopening of cases related to the killing of Kashmiri Pandits , he said, "If there is something specific, we will definitely look into it."

The demand for the reopening of the cases has grown following the release of 'The Kashmir Files', a film based on the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits from Kashmir Valley in the 1990s.

Advocate and social activist Vineet Jindal has written to President Ram Nath Kovind seeking a direction to reopen all cases pertaining to the "massacre" of Kashmiri Pandits and for the constitution of a special investigation team.

Live TV
Shaheed Diwas 2022: On the occasion of 'Shaheed Diwas' or Martyrs' Day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate Biplobi Bharat Gallery at Victoria Memorial Hall in Kolkata today (March 23, 2022).

The video conferencing event will begin at 6 PM, during which, the Prime Minister will also address the gathering.



The Gallery, according to the Prime Minister's Office, displays the contribution of the revolutionaries in the freedom struggle and their armed resistance to British colonial rule.

"This aspect has often not been given its due place in the mainstream narrative of the freedom movement. The purpose of this new gallery is to provide a holistic view of the events that led up to 1947 and highlight the important role played by the Revolutionaries," the PMO stated.

23rd March is a special day for us all as we observe Shaheed Diwas. At 6 PM tomorrow, will inaugurate the Biplobi Bharat Gallery at Victoria Memorial Hall, Kolkata via VC. It will showcase the contributions of those who devoted their lives for our freedom. https://t.co/DTu1bWR6mL pic.twitter.com/q7LX72WuCi  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) March 22, 2022

"Biplobi Bharat Gallery depicts the political and intellectual backdrop that triggered the Revolutionary movement. It showcases the birth of the revolutionary movement, formation of significant associations by revolutionary leaders, spread of the movement, formation of Indian National Army, contribution of Naval Mutiny, among others," the PMO added.

Prime Minister Modi also paid tributes to freedom fighters Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru on Martyrs' Day and said that their passion to die for the motherland will always inspire the countrymen.

"Tributes to the immortal sons of Mother India, Veer Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru on Martyrs` Day. Their passion to die for the motherland will always inspire the countrymen. Long live India!," PM Modi tweeted in Hindi.

          ,     -                 !  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) March 23, 2022

Why is March 23 observed as Shaheed Diwas or Martyrs` Day?

March 23 is observed as Shaheed Diwas to pay tribute to Indian revolutionaries Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev, who were hanged by the British Government in 1931. The trio was found guilty of the murder of deputy police superintendent JP Saunders in 1928, to avenge the death of Lala Lajpat Rai.

While Bhagat Singh and Sukhdev were 23, Rajguru was 22 when they were hanged to death at Lahore Central Jail.

Public holiday in Punjab on March 23 on occasion of Shaheed Diwas

Meanwhile, the newly-elected Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government in Punjab has declared Bhagat Singh's death anniversary on March 23 as a state holiday. Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann had declared about the state holiday in the Assembly on Tuesday and had requested people to visit his ancestral village Khatkar Kalan in Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar district.

On the martyrdom day of Shaheed-e-Azam Bhagat Singh, there will be a public holiday in Punjab. On this occasion, people of Punjab can pay their tributes to Shaheed Bhagat Singh by visiting his village of Khatkar Kalan. pic.twitter.com/BMpfQsxlaI  Bhagwant Mann (@BhagwantMann) March 22, 2022

It is notable that the swearing-in ceremony of CM Mann had also taken place at Khatkar Kalan on March 16.

Live TV
NEW DELHI: Ranbir Kapoor and Alia Bhatt are currently in Varanasi shooting for their upcoming film Brahmastra. Every now and then, there videos from the ghats are shared by the fanpages on their social media accounts.

On Wednesday, another video has been doing the rounds on social media where Alia can be seen shooting with his boyfriend Ranbir for the Ayan Mukerji film.

The duo can be seen sailing on one boat while the crew follows them with a camera on another boat and in the third boat, some RRR fans were seen holding a promotional flag of the film.

After seeing Alia on the boat, the fans started screaming and cheering for her upcoming film RRR which stars Junior NTR and Ram Charan in lead roles.

Showing a sweet gesture to her fans, Alia also screams at the top of her voice and says RRR to show her excitement.

Recently, on the occasion of Alias birthday, she released her look and teaser on her social media account and her look from the film was highly appreciated by everyone.

The teaser shared by Alia, introduces her as Isha, the female lead in the astraverse fantasy film. We see Alia in Ranbirs arm in one frame and in another we see her in a beautiful red saree. The actress is seen in a never before action avatar where she is running amidst grey smoke.

For the unversed, the film is directed by Ayan Mukerji and will see Ranbir and Alia sharing the screen space for the first time in a movie together. Bramhastra has been in the making for a staggering five years and is director Ayans dream project.

The film will be in three parts and is a new original cinematic universe inspired by deeply rooted concepts and tales in Indian mythology but set in the modern world, with epic storytelling of fantasy, adventure, good vs evil, love and hope; all told using cutting edge technology and never-seen-before visual spectacles.

Coming back to RRR, interestingly, setting another benchmark, Indias biggest action drama, S.S Rajamoulis RRR is the first Indian film to release in Dolby Cinema and 3D format.

The multi-lingual includes a star-studded lineup besides lead actors Ram Charan and Jr. NTR. Ajay Devgn, Alia Bhatt, Olivia Morris will be seen in pivotal roles while Samuthirakani, Ray Stevenson, and Alison Doody join in as supporting roles.

RRR is all set to hit the theatres on March 25.
By Trend

Minister of Defense of the Republic of Azerbaijan, Colonel General Zakir Hasanov met with Chief of Army Staff of Pakistan Army, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, Trend reports citing the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry.

The meeting discussed issues of development of bilateral relations, military cooperation, as well as strategic partnership between Azerbaijan and Pakistan.

Moreover, the sides held a detailed exchange of views on the work done to expand bilateral and trilateral joint military cooperation with the participation of Azerbaijan, Pakistan and Turkey.

In the end, the sides emphasized the need to further develop cooperation in the military, military-technical, military-educational and other areas.
NEW DELHI: B-Town actors Katrina Kaif and Vicky Kaushal dated each other for almost two years before they decided to take a plunge. The two left their fans surprised after they exchanged vows in a grand yet intimate ceremony at Six Senses Fort Barwara in Rajasthan on December 9, 2021. Since then, the lovely couple has been grabbing headlines for their love-filled pictures and social media posts for each other.

Now, almost three months after their lavish wedding, the couple recently got 'legally' married. As per Pinkvilla, the duo visited a court in Mumbai on March 19 (Saturday) and completed the process of marriage registration in the presence of their family members.

After completing all formalities and getting their marriage registered, VicKat headed for a dinner outing in the Mumbai suburb the same night and were joined by their family members, including Katrina's mother Suzanne Turquotte, Vicky's mother Veena Kaushal, father Shyam Kaushal and brother Sunny, the report added. The newlyweds were captured by the shutterbugs as soon as they stepped out of the restaurant.

Just a day before they registered their wedding, Katrina and Vicky attended the star-studded birthday bash of Karan Johar's Dharma Productions CEO Apoorva Mehta, held in Mumbai.

Meanwhile, there has been no official confirmation of Vicky and Katrina registering their marriage yet.

Katrina Kaif seems to be enjoying her married life with bliss. The actress's Instagram account is filled with photos of her 'new' life post tying the knot with Vicky Kaushal.

Earlier in January, the actress gave a glimpse of her 'mangalsutra' to her fans as she posed in her bedroom at her sea-facing bungalow in Mumbai. She also prepared her first sweet dish for her husband and in-laws.

Katrina has also shown her hidden photography skills when her muse happened to be none other than her husband, Vicky.

The duo recently celebrated their first Holi as a married couple, with his parents and brother, and pictures from the celebrations were all over the internet.

As soon as Katina shared her Holi photos, her friends and fans showered their love on her in the comment section. Amitabh Bachchan's daughter Shweta Bachchan wrote, Happy Holi. Katrinas BFF and fitness trainer penned a sweet note for her that read, Happy Holi Katy, may your life be filled with the colours of love and happiness always. Director Zoya Akhtar also wished the couple a happy Holi.

Live TV
NEW DELHI: A Mumbai court on Wednesday rejected a notice of motion filed by Bollywood megastar Salman Khan seeking a gag order to restrain his NRI neighbour from the US, Ketan R. Kakkad from posting any content on social media.

In the notice of motion, Salman had sought an injunction barring Kakkad from posting or uploading any content about the alleged violations of laws being committed at the actor's 100-acre farmhouse in Panvel, Raigad.

Sessions Judge A. H. Laddhad heard the lawyers of both siders at length at the online and in-person hearings for nearly two months and passed the much-awaited order on Wednesday.

Kakkad's legal team comprising Abha Singh, Aditya Pratap of Aditya Pratap Law Offices and Salman's battery of lawyers including P. D. Ghandy and D.S.K. Legal, argued over the matter for several weeks.

Singh and Pratap raised the plea of justification, submitting that there was "substantial truth" in the allegations levelled by Kakkad pointing how Salman had carried out substantial constructions on his Panvel farmhouse which falls within the Matheran Eco-Sensitive Zone Notification.

In mid-January, a massive row erupted between the two neighbours - Salman and Kakkad - over the latter's social media comments, sparking huge controversies in Bollywood and political circles - as reported by IANS in "Retired NRI, 'Dabangg' neighbour Salman Khan lock horns" (January 16).

Salman hit back with a civil defamation suit against Kakkad and dragged in Google YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other social platform content creators as parties and also sought a gag order to restrain his neighbour from posting objectionable statements till the outcome of the suit.
New Delhi: Shah Rukh Khan and Gauri Khan's darling daughter Suhana has a massive fan following on social media. She is a popular star kid and has several fan pages dedicated to her online. Recently, she tried to hide her face from being papped as her car drove out of Mannat.

Suhana was accompanied by a mystery friend in the car as he too hid his face from the prying cameras. Suhana Khan wore a checkered shirt with her hair tied up. Looks like the star kid and her friend didn't wish to be clicked at that point and that explains why they were hiding their faces from the shutterbugs.

(Pic Courtesy: Viral Bhayani)

SRK and Gauri Khan's darling daughter Suhana Khan headed to New York University in 2019 where she studied acting. She completed her graduation from Ardingly College in England.

Speculation of her making her starry entry into the movie business has always been around and now that she is studying acting as a course, looks like very soon the pretty girl will be making her big-screen debut. She has acted in several plays and also in a short movie.

The buzz however is strong that she will be making her debut in Zoya Akhtars Hindi adaptation of popular comic Archie along with Khushi Kapoor and Agastya Nanda. But no formal announcement has been made so far.
New Delhi: Is your current mobile number not linked to your Aadhaar card? If yes, then you probably must be facing troubles in availing several services, especially related to banking and finance. For instance, while applying for a credit card, you need to verify Aadhaar card details via an OTP, which is sent to the mobile number registered with the document. Missing out on such services because your number isnt linked to your current mobile number could be infuriating. But the good news is that you can easily change the phone number linked to your Aadhar card in a few simple steps.

The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), the authority managing the issuing of Aadhaar cards and handling update requests of residents, allows cardholders to update the phone number linked to Aadhaar. You can change your Aadhaar linked phone number whenever you switch to a new number.

However, you will need to visit an Aadhaar Enrollment Centre to make changes related to the phone number registered with the 12 digit unique identity number provided to Indian residents.

Besides your phone number, you can also change your name, address, e-mail ID, and biometric details, among others, on the Aadhaar card. For most changes, you have to visit a nearby Aadhaar Enrollment Centre.

However, you can make a few changes completely online, right from the comfort of your home. All you need to do is visit the official UIDAI website and apply for an Aadhaar update request.

Heres how to change the mobile number on Aadhaar Card:

Step 1: Visit the official UIDAI website at https://uidai.gov.in/ to book an appointment at your nearby Aadhaar Enrollment Centre.

Step 2: Select your location from the dropdown menu and tap on the Book an Appointment at Aadhaar Seva Kendra option.

Step 2: You need to take a printout of the Aadhaar Update/Correction Form.

Step 3: Visit the Aadhaar Enrollment Centre on the date of the appointment and provide the form to the Aadhaar executive.

Step 4: You will need to pay a small fee for the Aadhaar Card photo change service.

Step 5: The executive will give you an acknowledgement slip with the update request number (URN).

Step 6: You can use the URN to check the status of the number change request. Also Read: Sensex declines by 304 points as HDFC twins, Infosys succumb to profit taking

Step 7: It will take up to 3 months to change the number on Aadhaar card. Also Read: India's exports cross $400 billion for the first time, announces PM Modi

Live TV

#mute
NEW DELHI: Newly appointed Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann on Wednesday paid tribute to legendary freedom fighter to Bhagat Singh on the occasion of Shaheed Diwas 2022 in the latter's ancestral village Khatkar Kalan.

With this, the Chief Minister also formally launched an anti-corruption helpline across the state. "We are launching the anti-corruption helpline number today where you can lodge complains and we will take action on that," CM Mann said after paying tributes to Bhagat Singh.

Punjab CM Bhagwant Mann pays tribute to Bhagat Singh in Khatkar Kalan, on the occasion of #ShaheedDiwas "We are launching the anti-corruption helpline number today where you can lodge complains and we will take action on that," he says pic.twitter.com/Odp2Vi4NhJ  ANI (@ANI) March 23, 2022

The helpline number will be "Bhagwant Mann's personal mobile number", his office has said earlier. "On March 23, Shaheed Diwas I'll launch helpline that'll be my personal WhatsApp number. In Punjab, if someone demands a bribe from you, don't refuse, make a video/audio recording and send it to that number. My office will investigate & no culprit will be spared," Mann was quoted as saying by news agency ANI.

Punjab Chief Minister has already declared a holiday on March 23, the martyrdom day of legendary freedom fighters Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev. CM Mann made the announcement on the concluding day of the Punjab Vidhan Sabha session here on Tuesday.

According to CM Mann, the Punjab assembly will also install statues of Bhagat Singh, Ambedkar, Maharaja Ranjit Singh. The House has passed a resolution to install statues of Bhagat Singh, Dr B R Ambedkar and first Sikh ruler Maharaja Ranjit Singh in the Vidhan Sabha complex.

Announcing the holiday on the martyrdom day of the freedom fighters, Mann said earlier it was declared only in Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar district to facilitate people from nearby areas to pay tributes at the martyr's memorial in Khatkar Kalan.

Now, the state government has decided to declare a holiday on this day across the state so as to enable the maximum number of people from across the state to pay their tributes to the great martyrs at Khatkar Kalan and Hussainiwala, said Mann.

"As an indebted nation, we can never forget the contribution of Shaheed-e-Azam Bhagat Singh, who laid down his life for the freedom of the country. Likewise, Dr B R Ambedkar shaped the destiny of the country in pre and post-independence era as the chief architect of the Indian constitution," said Mann.

Describing them as great leaders, Mann said they will always remain a source of inspiration for millions of people.

Hailing Mann's proposal, Congress legislator Partap Singh Bajwa urged that the statue of Maharaja Ranjit Singh be also installed. Thereafter, the House passed a resolution on installing statues of Bhagat Singh, Dr B R Ambedkar and Maharaja Ranjit Singh in the Vidhan Sabha.

(With Agency Inputs)

Live TV
Jaipur: Sirohi MLA Sanyam Lodha, one of the advisors to Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, has made a shocking statement describing himself and other Congress leaders as "slaves of the Gandhi-Nehru family" on the floor of the House during the ongoing Assembly session.

During a debate on the Haridev Joshi University of Journalism and Mass Communication (Amendment) Bill, 2022, Lodha got up during the middle of the discussions on Tuesday and said, "Yes, we are slaves. We will do slavery to the Gandhi-Nehru family till our last breath because this country has been built by the Gandhi-Nehru family".

As soon as Lodha termed the Congressmen as slaves, Deputy Leader of Opposition, Rajendra Rathod, said, "Oh, slaves! This comes as a new culture. Congratulations to you for slavery."

Soon there was a ruckus in the House, with BJP MLA Kalicharan Saraf saying that "even after so much slavery, the Congress did not give you (Lodha) ticket". Lodha had contested as an Independent candidate in the 2018 Assembly elections and later supported Congress. Recently, he was appointed as an advisor to the CM.

Rathod also took another dig at Lodha by saying that 'ghulams' (slaves) cannot speak their mind. Later, the Assembly passed the Haridev Joshi University of Journalism and Mass Communication (Amendment) Bill, 2022, by voice vote.

Live TV
KOLKATA: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday said that she will be visiting the violence-hit Birbhum district soon where at least eight people, including two children, were charred to death and nearly a dozen houses were set ablaze on Tuesday in a suspected fallout of the murder of a ruling TMC panchayat official.

Will be going to violence-hit Birbhum district on Thursday to take stock of the situation....have also postponed visit as other political parties huddling there, Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee was quoted as saying by news agency ANI.

The Chief Minister also promised to take strict action against those found guilty in the Birbhum violence. Action will be taken against perpetrators of violence in Birbhum, irrespective of their political colours, the Bengal CM said at a programme.

"The government is ours, we are concerned about people in our state. We would never want anyone to suffer. The Birbhum, Rampurhat incident is unfortunate. I have immediately dismissed the OC, SDPO. I will go to Rampurhat tomorrow,'' CM Mamata Banerjee said.

She added that such kinds of incidents have happened in Gujarat and Rajasthan too. "I am not justifying the incident in Rampurhat. We will take action in a fair manner, '' the West Bengal CM said.

"This is Bengal, not Uttar Pradesh. I had sent a delegation of TMC to Hathras but we were not allowed an entry. But we are not stopping anyone from coming here,'' the West Bengal CM said.

This is Bengal, not Uttar Pradesh. I had sent a delegation of TMC to Hathras but we were not allowed an entry. But we are not stopping anyone from coming here: West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee pic.twitter.com/R9FW8Jox45  ANI (@ANI) March 23, 2022

At least 20 people have been arrested so far in connection with the violence in West Bengal's Birbhum district, a senior police officer said on Wednesday. Eleven people were arrested the same day for their involvement in the incident. "With nine more arrests, the number of those who have been nabbed in the case rose to 20. We are grilling them to find out if there were more people involved in the incident. Some accused seem to have fled the village. We are trying to trace them," the officer said.

He also stated that forensic experts were examining the ravaged houses to get an idea about the "nature of the mishap". The West Bengal government has constituted a Special Investigation Team (SIT), headed by Additional Director General (CID) Gyanwant Singh, to probe the incident.

The Union Home Ministry has sought a detailed report on the incident from the state government. BJP National Vice President Dilip Ghosh on Wednesday termed the incident ''inhumane'' and said that his party BJP will take up the matter in the Lok Sabha.

Speaking to ANI, Dilip Ghosh said, "At least eight people, including children, were burnt alive in Birbhum district. This is an inhumane incident and such incidence do not happen in a decent society."

"We narrated this incident to Amit Shah and party president. The Union Home Ministry will take stock of the situation. We are also going to take up this issue in the Lok Sabha so that the people get to know about the incident", added the former Bengal BJP chief.

Meanwhile, the Calcutta High Court also took suo moto cognisance of the violence in West Bengal's Birbhum district that claimed eight lives. A bench comprising Chief Justice Prakash Srivastava and Justice Rajarshi Bharadwaj is slated to hear the matter after 2 pm on Wednesday.

Live TV
New Delhi: As the threat of the fourth wave of Covid-19 looms large in India, New Zealand on Tuesday (March 22, 2022) reported 20,907 new community cases of coronavirus.

According to the country's Ministry of Health, among the new community infections, 4,291 were in the largest city Auckland. The rest of the cases were identified across the nation, including 3,488 in Canterbury.

There were also 34 new infections at the New Zealand border, the ministry stated.

There are currently 1,016 Covid-19 patients in New Zealand hospitals, including 25 people at the intensive care unit or high dependency unit.

The ministry also reported 15 fatalities from Covid-19, taking the total number of publicly reported deaths in the country to 199.

New Zealand has now recorded 5,17,495 confirmed cases of coronavirus since the beginning of the pandemic.

New Zealand lifts most Covid-19 vaccine mandates as current outbreak nears peak

Meanwhile, New Zealand's government has said on Wednesday that it would lift vaccine mandates for a number of sectors including teaching and police from April 4 as the current Covid-19 outbreak nears its peak.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said at a news conference that only those working with vulnerable people such as aged care and health sectors and border workers would need to be vaccinated from April 4.

Vaccine passes would also no longer be mandatory to visit restaurants, coffee shops and other public spaces, she added.

"With more tools and one of the most highly vaccinated populations in the world we are able to keep moving forward safely," Ardern said as she announced the lifting of most mandates.

Over 95% of New Zealand`s population over the age of 12 have now received two vaccinations.

Ardern said with the peak of the outbreak in New Zealand`s largest city Auckland now passed and the rest of the country expected to see infections peak before April 5 mandates could soon be lifted.

"With our cases coming down its time to take our next steps with confidence in the collective immunity and protections we have built up," she said.

The move comes a week after the government announced it would be opening the borders for Australians from mid-April and those on visa-waiver programmes from May.

(With agency inputs)
Islamabad: In a big blow to Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan ahead of the no-confidence vote, three major allies of the ruling government have decided to join the opposition alliance, local media reported.

Three major coalition partners of the ruling government, Muttahida Qaumi Movement Pakistan (MQM-P), Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) and Balochistan Awami Party (BAP) have decided to stand with the Opposition, Geo News reported citing sources.

The sources said that all three allies of the ruling government will soon (expectedly till March 25) announce to join the Opposition in the campaign to oust Imran Khan.

Imran Khan`s Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf facing internal revolt

Imran Khan`s party is facing an internal revolt, with several members of the National Assembly (MNAs) deserting the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) and joining the opposition ranks.

Earlier, around 24 lawmakers announced to vote in favour of the no-trust move and dissociated themselves from the Imran Khan-led government.

The Opposition parties in Pakistan had submitted the no-trust motion in the National Assembly secretariat on March 8.

While the PTI government has exuded confidence to defeat the no-trust motion, the Opposition is sure that they will oust Khan.

Moreover, Khan has warned the opposition that he would be more dangerous for them if ousted from power. He has also called for a rally in the capital on March 27 to mobilise his support base or whatever is left of it.

Notably, in the 342-member National Assembly, the loss of dissident lawmakers has left Khan with over a dozen seats less than the minimum of 172 needed for a majority.

With parliament set on Friday to take up the motion filed this month by opposition parties, the nuclear-armed nation now faces constitutional and administrative crises that threaten political turmoil.
New Delhi: UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Tuesday (March 22, 2022) spoke to his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi and the two leaders discussed the 'grave' situation in Ukraine.

The British readout of the call said that the pair agreed that Ukraines integrity and territorial sovereignty must be respected.

"The leaders discussed the grave situation in Ukraine, and the Prime Minister said he believed the actions of (Vladimir) Putins regime were deeply disturbing and disastrous for the world," a statement issued by Johnson`s office following the call said.

Today @narendramodi and I spoke about the grave situation in Ukraine and agreed its sovereignty must be respected. The UK-India relationship continues to go from strength to strength, and we'll build on our trade, security & business ties in the coming weeks and months.  Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) March 22, 2022

Johnson-Modi also said that Russia needed to adhere to the UN Charter and both agreed that respect for international law was the only way to ensure global peace and prosperity.

The leaders welcomed India and the UKs strong and prosperous relationship and agreed to continue to build on trade, security and business ties in the coming weeks and months.

"They looked forward to meeting in person at the earliest opportunity," the British readout added.

It is noteworthy that Russia's invasion of Ukraine has created a rift between India, which imports arms from Russia, and its Western allies, who have called on New Delhi to condemn Russian President Vladimir Putin in stronger terms.

Live TV
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday said sending peacekeepers to Ukraine could lead to a direct confrontation between Russia and the NATO military alliance.

Poland said last week that it would formally submit a proposal for a peacekeeping mission in Ukraine at the next NATO summit.

"I hope they understand what they are talking about," Lavrov told staff and students at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations.

"This will be the direct clash between the Russian and NATO armed forces that everyone has not only tried to avoid but said should not take place in principle."

Moscow has accused Kyiv of stalling peace talks by making proposals unacceptable for Russia. Ukraine has said it is willing to negotiate but will not surrender or accept Russian ultimatums.

Lavrov said Ukrainian authorities were backing away from their own proposals at the talks, making it difficult to achieve a breakthrough.

"The talks have started, they are difficult because the Ukrainian side... constantly changes its mind and backs away from its own proposals," Lavrov said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said earlier on Wednesday that the talks with Russia were tough and at times confrontational.

Russia sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in what it called a special operation to degrade its southern neighbour`s military capabilities and root out people it called dangerous nationalists.

Ukrainian forces have mounted stiff resistance and the West has imposed sweeping sanctions on Russia in an effort to force it to withdraw its forces.

Live TV
Brussels: Any use of chemical weapons in Russia's war on Ukraine would have far-reaching consequences, NATO head, Jens Stoltenberg warned on Wednesday (March 23). "Any use of chemical weapons would totally change the nature of the conflict, it would be a blatant violation of international law and would have far-reaching consequences," Stoltenberg was quoted by Reuters.

Stoltenberg also spoke about the dangers of Russia's "nuclear rhetoric". Stoltenberg told a news conference, "Russia should stop this dangerous irresponsible nuclear rhetoric." He added, "But let there be no doubt about our readiness to protect and defend allies against any threat anytime."

"Russia must understand that it can never win a nuclear war," he said on the eve of a summit of the Western military alliance's national leaders in Brussels. NATO leaders are all set to agree on extra support for Ukraine to deal with chemical and nuclear threats as it battles Russia's invading forces, Stoltenberg said. "Tomorrow, I expect allies will agree to provide additional support, including cybersecurity assistance as well as equipment to help Ukraine protect against chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threats," Stoltenberg said ahead of the Brussels summit.

Stoltenberg, however, made it clear that NATO is not a part of the Ukraine-Russia conflict. He said, "It (NATO) provides support to Ukraine but isn't part of the conflict." Stoltenberg added, "NATO will not send the troops into Ukraine... It is extremely important to provide support to Ukraine and we are stepping up. But at the same time, it is also extremely important to prevent this conflict from becoming a full-fledged war between NATO and Russia."

According to the United Nations, almost 3.6 million refugees have fled Ukraine so far, with more expected as the conflict with Russia showed no sign of abating. About 6.5 million are internally displaced within the country. Most chose to stay in eastern Europe, where a public outpouring of support and volunteering has helped the relief effort.

Earlier, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday said sending peacekeepers to Ukraine could lead to a direct confrontation between Russia and the NATO military alliance.

(With Reuters inputs)

Live TV
London: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will marry his long-term partner Stella Moris inside a high-security prison in southeast London on Wednesday (March 23) at a small ceremony attended by four guests, two official witnesses and two guards.

Assange is being held in jail while US authorities seek his extradition to face trial on 18 counts relating to WikiLeaks` release of vast troves of confidential US military records and diplomatic cables more than a decade ago.

The 50-year-old Australian, who denies any wrongdoing, has been in Belmarsh prison since 2019 and before that was holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy in London for seven years.

While living at the embassy he fathered two children with Moris, a lawyer more than a decade his junior, whom he met in 2011 when she started work on his legal team. Their relationship began in 2015.

The registrar-led ceremony will take place during visiting hours at the prison, where some of Britain`s most notorious criminals have served sentences, including child murderer Ian Huntley.

The prison has refused permission for journalists or a photographer to be present as witnesses on security grounds.

"I am convinced that they fear that people will see Julian as a human being," Moris wrote in an article for the Guardian newspaper. "Not a name, but a person. Their fear reveals that they want Julian to remain invisible to the public at all costs, even on his wedding day, and especially on his wedding day."

She said she was marrying the "love of her life" whom she described a wonderful, intelligent and funny.

Moris`s wedding dress and Assange`s kilt - a nod to his family ties to Scotland - have been created by British fashion designer Vivienne Westwood, who has previously campaigned against his extradition.

Assange suffered a blow earlier this month when he was denied permission to launch an appeal at Britain`s Supreme Court against a decision to extradite him. However, he could still challenge the government`s ratification of the extradition.



Live TV
Moscow: While refusing to rule out the use of nuclear weapons, Russian President Vladimir Putin`s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that if there is an existential threat for Russia, the country can use the nukes.

In an interview with CNN`s Christiane Amanpour on Tuesday, when asked under what conditions Putin would use Russia`s nuclear capability, Peskov replied, "if it is an existential threat for our country, then it can be," reported CNN News.

Moreover, when asked what Putin thought he had achieved in Ukraine so far, Peskov answered, "Well, first of all, not yet. He hasn`t achieved yet," adding the special military operation was, "going on strictly in accordance with the plans and the purposes that were established beforehand."

During the interview, Peskov stated what Russia desires to achieve from the war in Ukraine. He said, "main goals of the operation" are to "get rid of the military potential of Ukraine," to ensure Ukraine is a "neutral country," to get rid of "nationalist battalions," for Ukraine to accept that Crimea is a part of Russia and accept the breakaway regions of Luhansk and Donetsk.

Notably, Crimean was annexed by Russia in 2014 and also accused Ukraine of committing genocide in the regions of Luhansk and Donetsk. On February 24, Russia began a special military operation in Ukraine after the Donetsk and Luhansk people`s republics requested help in defending themselves.

What followed the military operation was a slew of sanctions imposed by the western countries targeting the Russian economy.

Live TV
By Trend

Given the escalation of the conflict in Ukraine, continued attacks on Ukrainian educational institutions, as well as a number of Ukrainian schoolchildren, students, and educators seeking asylum in Romania, the Institute for Advanced Studies in Levant Culture and Civilization and the Nizami Ganjavi International Center (NGIC) are organizing an emergency international conference to discuss environmental solidarity, Trend reports citing the center.

According to the NGIC, the event will take place on March 23, 2022.

The meeting will be attended by former Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Bosnia and Herzegovina Zlatko Lagumdzija (Sarajevo University), Deputy Prime Minister of Georgia, former Minister of Foreign Affairs Eka Tkeshelashvili, Secretary General of the Nizami Ganjavi International Center Rovshan Muradov, former President of Romania Professor Emil Constantinescu, Rector of the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration (SNSPA) Remus Pricopie, former Prime Minister of Romania Petre Roman, former President of Bulgaria Petar Stoyanov, former President of Croatia Ivo Josipovic, and CEO of the World Academy of Art and Science Garry Jacobs.

The conference will also provide an informative report on the measures taken at the national level to integrate Ukrainian refugees into Romanian education systems, both at university and pre-university levels.

Towards the end of the event, participants will call for enhanced cooperation between European and Ukrainian academic institutions, as well as will visit refugee centers affected by military conflict in Ukraine.

The meeting is organized jointly by the World Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Nizami Ganjavi International Center, the National University of Political Science and Public Administration in Bucharest and the Institute for Advanced Studies in Levant Culture and Civilization.

Furthermore, members of the Nizami Ganjavi International Center will hold meetings with special representatives of the President and Prime Minister of Romania.
By Trend

The second Karabakh war has given armor supporters and detractors a lot of talking points, the article published by the Washington Post said, Trend reports.

In an opinion-based article named Russian tanks are taking a beating. Do they still have a place on the modern battlefield? the author writes that with the Russia-Ukraine conflict still raging in all its fury it is much too early to draw any definitive judgments about lessons learned.

But what we have seen to date is already offering fresh evidence for the continuing debate in military circles over the future of warfare  and in particular over whether the tank can continue its eight-decade reign as the king of land warfare, the author said.

According to the article, the combination of TB2 drones and Israeli-made loitering munitions proved highly potent for Azerbaijan in its victorious war against Armenia in 2020.

The article noted that the Armenia-Azerbaijan war has given armor supporters and detractors a lot of talking points. Depending on the take, the destruction of tanks by precision drone strikes either spelled the end of armor as we know it or served as an example of what unprotected, poorly deployed armor would face.

The author points out that already some are rushing to claim that tanks & armored personnel carriers have become obsolete. They are too expensive & are easily destroyed with manifold light anti-tank weapons or drones.
By Trend

Europe has no new plans for Ukrainian refugee redistribution quotas, European Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson said, Trend reports citing UNIAN.

"What we have established now is the solidarity platform, we meet twice a week where member states and the commission discuss things together where member states pledge where people can come, where there are reception capacities available and other member states say what needs they have", she said.

I think really what we are seeing now, is unprecedented solidarity from the EU member states, from the EU citizens, towards Ukrainian refugees, Ylva Johansson added.




According to Bazan, 33 signatures have been collected from the following political parties represented in Congress: Avanza Pais, Renovacion Popular, Accion Popular, Juntos por el Peru, Alianza para el Progreso, Somos Peru, and Accion Popular.





Non-grouped lawmakers Carlos Anderson, Enrique Wong, Susel Paredes, Flor Pablo, and Edward Malaga also put their signatures on the document.





Only three political groups have decided not to participate in the legislative initiative: Peru Libre, Fuerza Popular, and Peru Democratico.





The document states that Condori "was exercising his profession inappropriately by promoting the sale of Cluster X2 ('agua arracimada'), attributing to it medicinal properties that have not been verified or certified by any official or academic authority.





The minister is also questioned on why he promoted a one-minute diagnostic service to detect cervical cancer, bearing in mind that he does not have a specialty in gynecology or oncology.





The motion also shows that the appointment of Hernan Condori "provoked unanimous rejection across the country's medical community," referring to the criticism by the Peruvian College of Physicians of the government official.





(END) GDS/CVC/RMB

Avanza Pais Party legislator Diego Bazan has presented a censure motion against Health Minister Hernan Condori , a few days after the latter attended a Congress' plenary session to reply to various questions as part of an interpellation.Published: 3/23/2022
??? Premier Anibal Torres coordina con diversos sectores para la reunion del Acuerdo Nacional de este sabado 26https://t.co/jcBXCtcBvC
YEREVAN, MARCH 23, ARMENPRESS. The government-authored bill on banning the use of wild animals in circuses was adopted by parliament at second reading.

60 lawmakers voted in favor while 27 voted present.

The bill, among other changes, bans the use of wild animals in circuses. The list of wild animals which are protected by the law will be defined by an authorized body.
YEREVAN, MARCH 23, ARMENPRESS. The government of the United Kingdom donated more than 25,000 doses of AstraZeneca vaccine against COVID-19 to Armenia, the Armenian Ministry of Healthcare said.

We strongly believe that vaccination remains the only effective tool in fighting COVID-19 pandemic. Im very glad that UK has extended a helping hand to our friends in Armenia as part of UK Govts commitment to help countries across the world to tackle the pandemic, UK Ambassador to Armenia John Gallagher said.

First Deputy Minister of Healthcare of Armenia Lena Nanushyan thanked for the donation, noting that the ministry would be happy to cooperate with the UK in other spheres of healthcare as well.

In turn the Ambassador expressed readiness to continue the cooperation with the Armenian Ministry of Healthcare.
YEREVAN, MARCH 23, ARMENPRESS. As many Russian businesses struggle to cope with the new sanctions, many are looking at Armenia as a potential destination for relocation.

938 Russian citizens have registered in Armenia as Private Entrepreneurs in between February 24 and March 22, while another 268 limited liability companies were registered in the same period which consist of Russian citizen legal or natural persons, the Ministry of Justice Head of the State Registry Agency for Legal Persons Tatev Mkrtchyan told ARMENPRESS.

She said that most of the abovementioned Russians are from the IT sector.

Some of the Russian citizens required legal consultation upon registration because they were unaware of technicalities and required paperwork. However, lawyer Lilit Karapetyan says the process is very easy.

Anyone who wants to relocate their business to Armenia should simply take their passport and come to Armenia, translate the passport in a notary office, go to the registry, she said, adding that the registration will only take 30 minutes.

Karine Terteryan
YEREVAN, MARCH 23, ARMENPRESS. There is nothing unacceptable for Armenia in the 5-point proposal of Azerbaijan, and Armenia supplemented the entire agenda of the potential talks over a peace treaty with its proposals, the Armenian Minister of Foreign Affairs Ararat Mirzoyan said in parliament when asked by MP Arusyak Julhakyan whether Armenia received a response from the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairmanship over the request to organize negotiations.

You also mentioned that Armenia responded to the five-point proposal by Azerbaijan and I am asking you to once again present the details of Armenias response, and I am also asking you to inform us whether or not we have a response from Azerbaijan around our response to their proposal, MP Julhakyan asked the FM.

FM Mirzoyan said these questions require additional clarifications.

After we said that we responded to Azerbaijan there were some comments, part of which were inaccurate comments because the assessments claimed as if Armenia rejected Azerbaijans proposals. Essentially there is nothing unacceptable for Armenia in Azerbaijans proposals, but it is another matter that these proposals werent entirely addressing the entire agenda of possible negotiations. And thus for a comprehensive peace we amended, supplemented the agenda and submitted it to the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairmanship. I have been notified from OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairing countries that these proposals have been handed over to official Baku. We dont have a response from Baku so far, Mirzoyan said.

The FM reminded that the Armenian proposals were published in ARMENPRESS.
YEREVAN, MARCH 23, ARMENPRESS. Vice President of the National Assembly of Armenia Ishkhan Saghatelyan received French Ambassador to Armenia Anne Louyot and the First Adviser of the French Embassy in Armenia Christophe Katsahian.

Welcoming the guests, Ishkhan Saghatelyan highly appreciated the Armenian-French friendly relations. France is one of the most important and friendly countries of Armenia in Europe. We have permanently seen the support of France to the Republic of Armenia, and we are concerned about developing the bilateral relations, Vice President of the National Assembly underlined.

Ishkhan Saghatelyan presented the situation created in Armenia and in Artsakh in the post-war period, noting that both Armenia and Artsakh have the most serious security problems at this moment. After the ceasefire Azerbaijan continues its threatening rhetoric, aggression and the policy of evictions of Armenians from Artsakh. In this context Ishkhan Saghatelyan noted that the Azerbaijani armed forces invaded the sovereign territory of Armenia in two directions on the previous year and continue remaining there.

Touching upon the Artsakh problem and the processes going on around it, Ishkhan Saghatelyan informed that a few days ago they exploded the pipeline from the Azerbaijani side in Artsakh, putting about 100.000 Artsakh residents before the humanitarian disaster. And plus, to this there are various threats also directed to the residents to leave the villages. We greatly highlight the response of the international community and the distinct assessment to what is happening. The problem of Artsakh should be resolved within the framework of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairmanship, the National Assembly Vice President stressed, adding that this format should be able to be kept despite the wish of Azerbaijan. Our position is that Artsakh can never be part of Azerbaijan, the opposition deputy underlined.

The Ambassador inquired about the relations of the opposition with the authorities, not nominating candidate for the President of the Republic by the opposition, the issues of signing a peace treaty with Azerbaijan, the Armenian-Turkish relations, etc. In her turn, Ambassador Anne Louyot underscored the Armenian-French high level relations, emphasized the meetings with the parliamentary opposition. The Ambassador has informed that France attentively follows the actions happening on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border.

Regarding the issue of the NK conflict settlement, Anne Louyot assured that France maintains its positions within the framework of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairmanship in order to be able to help both sides to establish peace and stability in the region.
By Trend

Four Israelis were killed on Tuesday in a terrorist stabbing attack at a shopping center and gas station in Beersheba, with a number of others injured in the attack, Trend reports citing The Jerusalem Post.

The terrorist was identified as Muhammad Alab Ahmed abu Alkiyan, a Bedouin-Israeli from the town of Hura who had served time in Israeli prison. He was arrested in 2015, along with a number of other suspects, for supporting and promoting ISIS to students at the school where he was a teacher.

According to police, the terrorist ran over a man riding on a bicycle before driving to a gas station, exiting the vehicle and stabbing a woman. He then returned to the car, drove to a nearby shopping center, exited the car and stabbed another man and a woman. He then returned to the vehicle, drove away and crashed into another vehicle, exiting the vehicle and stabbing another person before being shot and killed by a civilian passerby.

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett expressed condolences to the families of the victims, saying "the civilians who shot the terrorist showed resourcefulness and courage and prevented further casualties." Bennett added that security forces were on high alert and that the state would operate with a heavy hand against terrorists and those assisting them.
YEREVAN, 23 MARCH, ARMENPRESS. The possibility of Armenia paying for Russian gas in rubles is being discussed, ARMENPRESS Deputy Prime Minister of Armenia Mher Grigoryan said during the question-answer session with the members of the government in the National Assembly, referring to the question of Sergey Bagratyan from the "Civil Contract" faction.

Referring to the expected ecoomic hardships, the MP asked what steps the Government takes to meet them.

We had a session of the EEU Council, this issue has been discussed for quite a long time, because it will not be possible to solve all the problems only with local production, it is not possible objectively and physically. No matter how much we think, no matter how much we change the configuration of reserves, however, the movement of goods must take place, at least in the EEU, in order to fully solve these problems. And it does not refer only to Armenia. There is a clear agreement that by March 25, the Commission must calculate the mutual balances, determine the quota flow that will be necessary to ensure food security of the EEU countries," Deputy PM Grigoryan said.

According to him, all possible incentives should be applied to stimulate local production, particularly in terms of basic necessities and food. According to the Deputy Prime Minister, it is obvious that there will be a shortage in the region, not due to production shortages, but due to logistical and transport problems. "But I think that the problem is manageable and solvable, and at the moment I can say with confidence that the EEU countries are discussing this issue in a very consolidated way," Grigoryan said.

Sergey Bagratyan also inquired whether there is an opportunity to discuss with Russia a certain period of payment in rubles for gas.

"Yes, it is being discussed, because the issue of the currency of the EEU customs duties is also being discussed. The countries also present their proposals on the agenda of the discussion. And, of course, the countries first of all make proposals that, in parallel with the solution of this issue, to also solve the issue of instruments exporting foreign currency in exchange for the largest imports. Now I can not promise that the issue will be solved, because there are objective reasons, but today this issue is being discussed in the public sphere, and at some point it will come to the agenda," the Deputy Prime Minister stated.

Referring to the food problem, he said that there is no shortage of goods in the EEU.
YEREVAN, 23 MARCH, ARMENPRESS. We were obliged to support the resolution "On the destruction of cultural heritage in Nagorno Karabakh" adopted by the European Parliament on March 10. Remaining indifferent would mean to "share an unacceptable responsibility, ARMENPRESS reports this is the opinion of Italian MPs, representative of the Five Star Movement Fabio Massimo Castaldo and member of "Lega" party Susanna Ceccardi, who supported the resolution.

According to Agenzia Nova, Castaldo noted that in Nagorno Karabakh "Azerbaijani authorities are trying to forcibly uproot the cultural heritage of the indigenous Armenian people."

"Monuments, medieval monasteries, churches, tombs. There is no respect for the alive or the dead. By erasing the past, the Azerbaijani authorities want to justify their future for the region, but we can not allow that to happen. The European Parliament must be clear and ask the Azerbaijani authorities to immediately end this barbaric vandalism, to start a constructive, inclusive dialogue in the region," representative of the Five Star Movement Fabio Massimo Castaldo said.

He noted that they support the UNESCO mission, condemning Baku's actions to hinder that mission. "History cannot be rewritten to justify expansionist ambitions. It was our responsibility to support this resolution, which was passed by an overwhelming majority and has great significance," Castaldo concluded.

Ceccardi noted that the damage done to the Armenian cultural heritage in Artsakh - churches, museums, as well as cemeteries - is aimed at erasing the centuries-old memory of an entire nation. The member of the European Parliament stated that it is inadmissible to accept a cultural genocide of this scale.

"Armenian culture has already seen the systematic erasure of some episodes of its history in recent years, as in 2005, when the Nakhichevan Jugha cemetery was destroyed with a pneumatic hammer. In the Middle Ages, thousands of khachkars (cross-stones) delicately carved on tuff were removed once and for all. As stated in our resolution, UNESCO is obliged to visit the region, inventory and preserve the heritage. Indifference is an unacceptable joint complicity," Ceccardi said.
The United States has stepped up military support for Saudi Arabia over the past few months following Houthi missile attacks on the kingdom, suggesting Washington is trying to mend its strained relationship with traditional allies in the Persian Gulf, Reuters reported.

March 23, 2022, 12:14 Riyadh receives US military aid as Washington tries to make contact

STEPANAKERT, MARCH 23, ARTSAKHPRESS: The drive to improve relations has been made even more pressing by the Ukraine crisis, which has led to economic sanctions against Moscow by Washington, the European Union and others. The United States and other Western countries are trying to convince Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil exporter, to increase oil production to make up for possible losses in Russian supplies.

Even before the crisis escalated on Feb. 24, US officials were paving the way for Riyadh as Russia built up its troops on the border. The Saudis' initial reaction was lukewarm.

Prior to this, their traditionally strong alliance had fallen on hard times, in part due to the role of Saudi Arabia in the war in Yemen and the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul by Saudi agents in 2018.

Shortly after taking office in 2020, Biden withdrew support for the coalition's offensive operations in Yemen, initiated a review of Saudi arms sales, and directed a special envoy to pressure Riyadh to lift its blockade of Houthi-held territories and broker a truce with the movement. Biden also refused to deal directly with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Since then, the Gulf state has hosted a series of difficult meetings between the US and Saudi Arabia, including between US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Prince Mohammed last September. Another senior US adviser, Brett McGurk, was in Riyadh last week to discuss oil supplies and Yemen.

But faced with new geopolitical realities, Washington approved the sale of missiles and missile defense systems, including 280 air-to-air missiles, worth up to $650 million to Saudi Arabia.

Two people familiar with the matter said Washington has sent Patriot missiles and other equipment to the kingdom over the past three months.

A US State Department spokesman said the United States has been working with Saudi Arabia and its neighbors in recent months to help them bolster their defenses through overseas military and direct commercial sales.

With US support, Saudi Arabia is currently intercepting roughly 90% of these [Houthi] air attacks, but we need to aim for 100%, the spokesman said.

Unconfirmed footage posted on social media by pro-government Saudi commentators shows Patriot missile batteries intercepting missiles aimed at the Red Sea city of Jeddah on Sunday as the Houthis launched a flurry of strikes on energy facilities, part of a wide-ranging attack on Saudi infrastructure.
More than 1,200 residents of the peoples republics of Donetsk and Lugansk (DPR and LPR), as well as of Ukraine, were granted temporary asylum in Russia in the past month, Tass informs.

March 23, 2022, 11:17 Over 1,200 residents of DPR, LPR, Ukraine granted temporary asylum in Russia in past month

STEPANAKERT, MARCH 23, ARTSAKHPRESS: "Between February 18 and March 16, 2022, a total of 1,515 residents of DPR, LPR and Ukraine filed requests for temporary asylum on the territory of the Russian Federation," the press service said, answering to a TASS request for a comment.

"Temporary asylum was granted to 1,204 people," a spokesperson said.

The majority of those who obtained temporary asylum are staying in Western Russias Penza Region (149 people), and in the Central Russias regions of Nizhny Novgorod (130 people), Lipetsk (91 people) and Ryazan (85 people).

On February 18, the heads of the Donetsk and Lugansk Peoples Republics, Leonid Pasechnik and Denis Pushilin, announced the evacuation of the republics residents to Russia, in particular to the Rostov Region, due to the growing threat of hostilities. On February 21, Russian President Vladimir Putin recognized the sovereignty of the DPR and LPR. Subsequent treaties on friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance were signed with the republics leaders.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on February 24 that in response to a request by the heads of the Donbass republics he had made a decision to carry out a special military operation in Ukraine, stressing that Moscow had no plans of occupying Ukrainian territories. Putin said that the goals of the operation are demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine.
The idea of deploying NATO peacekeepers to Ukraine is "reckless and extremely dangerous," Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters, TASS reported.

March 23, 2022, 16:36 Kremlin castigates extremely dangerous idea of deploying NATO peacekeepers to Ukraine

STEPANAKERT, MARCH 23, ARTSAKHPRESS: "It would be a rather reckless and extremely dangerous decision," he said, commenting on the initiative.

Peskov emphasized that a special military operation was taking place in Ukraine. "The consequences of a possible engagement between our troops and NATO forces are quite clear and they would be hard to mend," the Kremlin spokesman noted.

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki earlier stated that Ukraine had the right to invite "whomever it wishes" to enter the country, including NATO peacekeepers.
NASA will be giving another company a chance to send a lander to the moon, nearly a year after the agency announced that SpaceX beat out competitors including Blue Origin and Boeing for the opportunity.

Under the new plan, the agency will be opening up a second competition for a lander system for all American companies other than SpaceX, with the aim of having a second lander prepared to fly by 2026 or 2027. The winner of that second contract, dubbed the Sustaining Lunar Development contract, along with SpaceX "will pave the way to future recurring lunar transportation services for astronauts at the Moon, NASA said.

This isnt just good news for competitors. The agency also said that it is expanding its existing contract with SpaceX for yet another lander, which will fly an additional crewed demonstration mission in the latter part of the decade.

NASAs announcement Wednesday marks a major expansion for the Artemis program, the agencys ambitious series of planned missions to return humans to the moon for the first time since the Apollo days.

It's also something of an about-face. The agency came under fire from both private industry and Congress after it awarded a single $2.89 billion contract for a landing system to SpaceX last April, with Blue Origin going so far as to sue NASA in federal court. (This was after the company and defense contractor Dynetics filed an objection -- which was subsequently dismissed -- with a government accountability watchdog.) But this time around, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said the agency was all about fostering competition.

We think, and so does the Congress, that competition leads to better, more reliable outcomes and benefits everybody, he said. It benefits NASA, [it] benefits the American people. It is obvious, the benefits of competition.

The agency will release a draft request for proposals at the end of the month, HLS program manager Lisa Watson-Morgan told reporters Wednesday. That will be followed by a final request for proposals later in the spring, which will be open to all American companies besides SpaceX.

Story continues

So far, NASA is staying mum on how much all of this is likely to cost, beyond that it will be a fixed-price contract -- which is significant, as the agency said the reason it selected only one bidder for the landing system last year was partly due to budgetary constraints. Further details on the value of the contract will be coming next week, after President Biden announces the fiscal year 2023 budget, Nelson added.

"We're expecting to have both Congress['s] support and that of the Biden administration," he said.

Update: A Blue Origin spokesperson told TechCrunch, "Blue Origin is ready to compete and remains deeply committed to the success of Artemis. We will continue to work with NASA to achieve the United States goal to return to the Moon as soon as possible."

The story has been updated to reflect that SpaceX was selected for one additional mission, not two. That will be a crewed mission.
The state Department of Environmental Conservation and Adirondack Mountain Reserve plan to bring back a pilot reservation-based parking system in the AMR parking lot this year.

The system will open on May 1, with slots available to book as early as April 17.

The online reservation system, HikeAMR, was launched last May in an effort to mitigate safety issues and traffic problems on a stretch of state Route 73 near the entrance to the AMR lot, which boasts several popular trailheads to the High Peaks Wilderness.

In the past, when the parking lot would get full, there was no way for hikers to know it was full before they arrived. Upon arrival, some hikers would choose to park illegally along the roadside and walk along the road to their desired trailhead. Tested in the AMR parking lot last year, the system gives High Peaks visitors the opportunity to register for a parking spot in advance. The pilot system is expected to operate through next year.

People can start booking spots for the upcoming peak hiking season on April 17, and reservations can be made up to two weeks in advance on a 24-hour rolling basis.

The reservation system will be open this year through Oct. 31. Reservations will be required to access the AMR parking lot, trailheads and trails on the 7,000-acre AMR property, according to a news release from the DEC. AMR has a conservation easement with the DEC that allows the public to hike there.

Reserving a parking spot at AMR is free, and people can reserve a spot for a single day or for overnight use. People who are camping could reserve a spot for up to three nights. People getting dropped off or picked up in the AMR lot, or arriving by bicycle, would also need to register with the system. There are 70 reservations, including overnight reservations, available per day. Reservations will also be required for access to Noonmark and Round Mountain trailheads, which are on the AMR property.

AMR wont allow people to walk in without reservations, except people who have a Greyhound or Trailways bus ticket from within the past 24 hours.

Initial success

More than 21,000 hikers signed up to use the new Adirondack Mountain Reserve pilot parking reservation system last summer, according to the DECs release. The department said that 14,000 of those registrants were New Yorkers, while 6,600 came from outside the state and 138 people came from other countries. Only 113 Canadians registered with the system last year; the U.S.-Canada land border was closed for most of the summer due to the pandemic. The DEC expects reservation numbers to rise this year as pandemic-related restrictions are lifted.

DEC and AMR made a few tweaks to the reservation system after it launched last year. One of those changes was installing an automatic gate so hikers could return to their cars and exit the AMR lot at their convenience. Previously, there was a manual gate that employees shut at 7 p.m. nightly; some hikers expressed concern that they might not have enough time to descend to their cars before closing. Hikers can also now make their parking reservations just 12 hours in advance, as opposed to the original requirement of 24 hours in advance. Other changes included starting an email reminder system to reduce no-shows, increasing the number of people allowed per reservation to eight, and moving the start time for the rolling two-week opening of future dates from midnight to noon.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
The author of a 2012 biography of William H. Seward will come to Auburn to discuss his relationship with another politician, and the subject of the author's latest book.

Walter Stahr, author of the New York Times best-seller "Seward: Lincoln's Indispensable Man," will discuss the Auburnian's relationship with Salmon Portland Chase on Thursday, March 24, at the New York State Equal Rights Heritage Center. Chase is the subject of Stahr's "Salmon P. Chase: Lincoln's Vital Rival," which was released in February.

At the event, Stahr will discuss how Seward and Chase met through their work to advance Black rights while collaborating on a Supreme Court case attacking the Fugitive Slave Act. Their rivalry with Abraham Lincoln for the 1860 presidential nomination, their roles in Lincoln's cabinet and their divergent paths after Lincoln's assassination will also be discussed.

The event will take place at 7 p.m. at the center, 25 South St., Auburn. A members-exclusive reception with Stahr will be held at the Seward House Museum beforehand.

Tickets to the event are $20.

For more information, or to purchase tickets, visit sewardhouse.org or call (315) 252-1283.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
To live in a foreign country is to discover new things, especially food. Food is hard to avoid! Learning to eat in France, for example, is an education in new smells, tastes and textures  even sociology. You also learn that some of your favorite American foods are not available in France.

At home, I always had orange juice for breakfast. Even today I always make sure we have enough OJ in the fridge to last several days! But in France, nobody has orange juice for breakfast. There was a drink called Orangina that people drank between the acts in the theater, but not for breakfast. Orangina was expensive and came in a small bottle. So, for three years, I had no orange juice to start the day. How I avoided scurvy, I dont know.

In France, there is no peanut butter. I can take or leave peanut butter, but most of the American students missed it. So when Betsy, a fellow student, received a shipment from home, the word got around: Betsy has peanut butter! When Betsy left Paris to study at Montpellier, people wrote to her offering to pay for a jar of peanut butter. Smooth or chunky? I forget.

My single biggest discovery was garlic. At home, we never used garlic. But on a trip to the Midi I saw our hostess, with a sharp knife, making incisions in leg of lamb and forcing something into the layer of fat. "Quest-ce que cest?" I asked. She looked as me, worried that I would not like the dish. The "something" was garlic cloves, and the scent was wonderful.

Garlic was also used in snails. In restaurants in those days, you got a full dozen  not a paltry six  in their shells, and sealed in with garlic/parsley butter that melted when the dish was heated. You got lots of slices of bread to soak up the butter. It was  almost  a meal in itself, along with a glass of dry white wine.

Another discovery was tripe andouille sausage, a working-class dish. You grimace at the word "tripe? But you have probably eaten tripe if you have eaten sausages of any kind. On a dish you had a large, browned sausage, piping hot, a side of fries and a pot of hot mustard. The tripe was not finely ground and tended to ooze out of the sausage casing when you cut into it. The taste was hearty, the mustard had a healthy bite, and you washed it all down with ... dry white wine.

And then there were calves' brains, sheep cheeks, frogs legs and yogurt. Gently fried golden brown, accompanied by capers, calves brains are a light appetizer. Frog legs taste like delicate chicken wings. In French, sheep cheeks are "tete de veau" ("head cheese" in American) and the mother of a French friend made them in a dark brown sauce. Yogurt I discovered in student restaurants served in little gray clay crocks.

So how did I get along without orange juice for breakfast? I ate some form of bread and rolls and butter, and a steaming bowl of cafe au lait. Sometimes I ate croissants. One summer I ate breakfast regularly in a small cafe near the Bastille, the kind where you sit at a zinc counter. The cafe au lait was fine, but the croissants came out of a factory. They were large and tasteless, basically dough and lots of air. For good croissants, you have to find a pastry shop that does them with enough butter! Sadly, mass production has made inroads into the French artisanal tradition.

Garlic, I found out, was shunned by upper class people, who dont like strong ("trop forte!") smells. As for three-star restaurants, I couldnt afford it. A Frenchwoman told me it was du vol  thievery. So why bother? In the '50s and early '60s, there were mom-and-pop restaurants where you could eat well for about a dollar, but that couldnt last in the postwar prosperity.

Alas, French cuisine has fallen on hard times. There is more competition these days, and years ago French chefs shot themselves in the foot with cuisine nouvelle: small portions and big checks! But well always have steak frites. And onion soup. And creme brule. And the croque-monsieur (toasted ham-and-cheese sandwich). And the croque-madame (the same, with a fried egg added). And profiterole (a pastry shell filled with vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce, served hot)!

Ed Rossmann lives in Aurora and has been an educator most of his life, including 17 years in high school.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
By Trend

President of the Republic of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan will hold a meeting of the country's National Security Council on March 23, Trend reports referring to Turkish media.

The Russian-Ukrainian issue will be discussed on the eve of President Erdogan's participation in an extraordinary meeting of NATO.

Moreover, Turkey's struggle against terrorist organizations such as the PKK, ISIS and FETO both inside and outside the country will be a subject of discussion.

The situation in the South Caucasus will also be addressed as part of normalizing relations between Turkey and Armenia.

A written statement to the press will be provided at the end of the meeting.
Small businesses in Auburn that were negatively impacted by the coronavirus pandemic may apply for financial assistance being made available through the federal American Rescue Plan Act.

The Cayuga Economic Development Agency announced this week that is has been contracted by the city of Auburn to administer $500,000 in funding to businesses in the city whose operations and financial condition were adversely impacted by the COVID-19 emergency.

A small business can apply up to $40,000 in grant funding for costs incurred after March 3, 2021. To be eligible, businesses must have no more than 500 employees or, if applicable, the size standard in number of employees established by the Administrator of the Small Business Administration and have a negative economic impact, or an economic harm such as loss of earnings or revenue.

Businesses may apply until 4 p.m. Saturday, April 30, at auburnny.gov/planning-economic-development/bids/coronavirus-state-and-local-fiscal-recovery-funds.

Applicants will be required to create an account before completing the online application. When applying make sure to have an active email account to receive updates.

Anyone needing assistance with completing the online application should contact a CEDA specialist to set up an appointment. Danielle Szabo may be reached at dszabo@cayugaeda.org or (315) 252-3500 x 231; and Julia Foster may be contacted at jfoster@cayugaeda.org or (315) 252-3500 x 232.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
ALBANY  Long postponed discovery proceedings in lawsuits filed over the October 2018 Schoharie limousine disaster which killed 20 people are expected to finally move forward over the coming months.

A 180-day stay in any legal proceedings involving Global Liberty Insurance Company of New York was ordered in state Supreme Court in Suffolk County after the insurer of commercial vehicles was placed into liquidation under state Insurance Law on Oct. 13.

The insurer agreed in court filings to be liquidated by the state after it was determined to be insolvent, owing over $30 million as of December 2020.

The distribution of the companys assets is being overseen by Adrienne Harris, superintendent of the state Department of Financial Services.

Days after liquidation was ordered, Global Liberty deposited $481,756 with the state Supreme Court in Albany to discharge its liability in the Schoharie limo accident.

The sum to be split among the surviving relatives of the 20 victims represents the companys $500,000 policy limit for bodily injury accidents less $18,243 in attorneys fees.

Global Liberty was the insurer for claims against Nauman Hussain, the operator of Prestige Limousine.

Prestige was the company hired to transport a group of 17 friends to a birthday celebration in Cooperstown.

All 17 passengers, the limo driver, and two bystanders in the parking lot of the Apple Barrel Country Store were killed at the intersection of routes 30 and 30A in Schoharie when the vehicle suffered catastrophic brake failure on Oct. 6, 2018.

The victims included Moravia resident Brian Hough, 46, who was a SUNY Oswego professor, along with his father-in-law, James Schnurr, 70, of Kerhonkson. They were standing in the parking lot where the limo crashed.

Nauman Hussain has been accused of failing to maintain the vehicle and pleaded guilty to 20 counts of criminally negligent homicide as part of an agreement that avoids prison time.

However, he is now compelled to provide sworn depositions and testimony in civil litigation filed against him and several other defendants by surviving families of the victims in state Supreme Court in Albany.

The stay in legal proceedings involving Global Liberty is set to expire on April 10, allowing discovery to finally move forward for lawsuits over the Schoharie limo disaster.

State Supreme Court Judge Denise Hartman on Thursday proposed depositions in the lawsuits be scheduled beginning in July through October.

Despite the ongoing stay order, Nauman Hussain already gave a limited deposition in the civil cases on Feb. 11 authorized by the state Supreme Court in Suffolk County with the consent of Harris and the New York Liquidation Bureau.

The 90-minute videotaped deposition was limited to testimony from Nauman Hussain on the involvement of his uncle, Malik Riaz Hussain, in financing or operating the limo business.

The proceeding followed attempts by attorneys for Malik Riaz Hussain to have their client dismissed as a defendant from the civil suits. Nauman Hussain stated that his uncle did not operate Prestige and had no financial interest in it.

Malik Riaz Hussain previously claimed he had no interest in Prestige or a motel operated by his brother Shahed and his sons, Nauman and Shaher, in a deposition conducted remotely from Pakistan on May 27.

Shahed Hussain, the owner of Prestige, was in Pakistan at the time of the crash and has not returned to the United States. He is named as a defendant in the lawsuits.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs filed letters stating they had no opposition to the dismissal of Malik Riaz Hussain from the lawsuits with the court earlier this month. On Thursday, Hartman granted the motion dismissing cases against Malik Riaz Hussain.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
A possible 2.5% tax levy increase is currently a part of the 2022-23 Auburn Enlarged City School District's proposed budget, but that number could go down if the state continues to follow through on its plan to fund its school aid formula.

Lisa Green, the district's business official, gave a summary of the current spending plan at a board of education meeting Tuesday night, ahead of Gov. Kathy Hochul's finalized state budget.

The district's tax levy increase is currently set to be 2.5%, or $835,795, but Green noted the levy boost will be reduced if Auburn gets additional aid from the final state budget.

The district is currently expected to receive a total state aid increase during an ongoing state effort to fully fund the district's foundation aid formula over a three-year period. The district has long argued it is owed millions more per year if the foundation aid formula was fully funded.

Despite expressing optimism for the district's budget shortly after Hochul announced the proposed state budget in January, Green said in an email before the meeting that increased salaries, benefits and BOCES costs "are still more than what our increase in state aid is," which is why the current proposed 2.5% tax levy jump is necessary and why a fund balance would be needed to balance the budget.

At Tuesday's meeting, school board president Ian Phillips said "if we are successful in this years-long journey of getting our fair share from New York state, we will lower our tax levy (for this year.)

"If our elected officials do that they should have done 10 years ago and they decide to do it this year and we're all hopeful for it, then we will adjust that," Phillips said.

Auburn's total spending amount for the 2022-23 year is estimated to be $90,286,532. The district plans to use its fund balance to cover a preliminary deficit of $2,520,544. Green said before the meeting the district's spending increase is currently estimated to be $6.4 million.

Green said during the meeting the district has $9,129,714 in its current unassigned fund balance, which is 10.1% of the budget. She said while that is higher than the state real property tax law's legal limit of 4% of unrestricted fund balance, using that estimated $2.5 million to cover the deficit would bring the district's unassigned fund balance down to 7.3%.

Noting "there has been talk at the state level" of increasing that level to 8%, Green said if that happened, the district would be in compliance.

"In the event that doesn't happen, then we are lowering our fund balance toward that 4% limit," Green said.

The board is expected to adopt a finalized budget at its April 5 meeting at the Auburn High School Library, with an interactive budget conversation at 6 p.m., where the budget will be explained and members of the public can ask questions.

Staff writer Kelly Rocheleau can be reached at (315) 282-2243 or kelly.rocheleau@lee.net. Follow him on Twitter @KellyRocheleau.

Love 1 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 5

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.
With an increase in COVID-19 cases among faculty, students and staff, Moravia Superintendent John Birmingham wanted to take a proactive approach to ensure in-person classes aren't affected.

In a letter released on Tuesday, Birmingham notified families in the Moravia school district that they are recommending "additional mitigation strategies" due to the uptick. Those strategies include a recommendation, not a requirement, that students wear masks when they cannot maintain social distancing. The district also plans to use more rapid tests to detect COVID cases.

Birmingham told The Citizen on Wednesday that the letter followed conversations with the Cayuga County Health Department and the district's nursing staff. Instead of ignoring the spike, he said, he wanted to determine how to preserve in-person learning while preventing the spread of COVID in school buildings.

"The letter I put out was my best effort to just say to people that we're going to focus on things that worked in the past," he said. "We're going to increase disinfection and recommend students to wear masks if social distancing is compromised. We're saying masks do work  our local numbers support that. Although they are not ideal in other ways, if we have an uptick, it's one way to mitigate how impactful that is."

Since the statewide school mask mandate was lifted on March 2, Moravia has more COVID cases (121) than any other Cayuga County school district. A vast majority of the cases (114) have been reported in the last two weeks, with a bulk of the positive cases (92) among students. Thirteen teachers and nine staff members have tested positive during that period.

The total in three weeks accounts for nearly one-quarter of all COVID-19 cases in the district since the school year began in September. Birmingham thinks that while there could be exposures happening outside of school, there may be some spread occurring in school.

"I don't have any superspreader event or anything like that," he added. "I just know that in (three weeks) since the masks have been off, we've had a lot more cases. That would tell me that some of that is happening in school."

Moravia has protocols in place for positive cases and anyone who is exposed to the virus. For those who test positive, they must isolate for five days. They can return to school after the isolation period ends, but must wear a mask for five days.

Anyone who has contact with a positive case must wear a mask for 10 days after the exposure. It could be extended to 15 days if it's a household exposure, according to Birmingham's letter, because they would be considered exposed until the fifth day of the positive case's isolation period.

Birmingham said they have taken other actions to address the uptick in COVID cases. KN95 masks have been distributed to staff and rapid tests have been provided to students and their families.

Based on student enrollment, Moravia is the fourth-largest school district in the Cayuga-Onondaga BOCES system behind Auburn, Jordan-Elbridge and Skaneateles. Yet, the southern Cayuga County district has the most cases. While Moravia has more COVID-positive cases in the last few weeks, other districts haven't avoided their own upticks.

Auburn, the largest school district in Cayuga County, has 79 cases in the last two weeks, according to state Department of Health data. Union Springs has 41 cases. Cato-Meridian (16) and Weedsport (10) were also in double digits. A handful of districts  Skaneateles (seven), Jordan-Elbridge (six), Southern Cayuga (six) and Port Byron (three)  reported low case totals in the last two weeks.

Birmingham thinks that their focus on reporting "what we know to be the best data" is one reason why the numbers might be higher than other districts.

What's happening in Moravia aligns with a local trend. The Cayuga County Health Department reported a 221% increase in active COVID cases (from 52 to 167) over a five-day period last week. The noticeable rise in cases led the department to ask residents to submit at-home test results so they can monitor the spike.

Politics reporter Robert Harding can be reached at (315) 282-2220 or robert.harding@lee.net. Follow him on Twitter @robertharding.

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 through on a promise the Cayuga County Legislature Chairman made earlier this month when the Ukrainian flag was first raised outside the Cayuga County Office Building, county lawmakers unanimously approved a resolution backing the western European nation that's defending itself from Russia's military invasion.

The Cayuga County Legislature closed out its voting on monthly resolutions Tuesday by approving a statement that supports Ukraine and condemns Russia.

After providing background information on Russia's troop buildup in the months ahead of the February invasion, the resolution describes the impact of Russia's actions.

"Russian military forces unwarrantedly attacked civilian facilities such as residences, schools, hospitals, and memorials causing catastrophic damage including civilian casualties and forced displacement of the people of Ukraine," it said.

The UN General Assembly's recently passed resolution, criticizing Russia's action and calling for withdrawal of troops of Ukraine, was referenced next in the resolution before the county Legislature's stance was stated.

"The Cayuga County Legislature condemns the invasion and unwarranted attacks by the Russian Federation and military forces, and urges for an immediate peaceful resolution of this conflict between the Russian Federation and Ukraine; further be it RESOLVED, that Cayuga County Legislature expresses their support and stands with the people of Ukraine as well as the Ukrainian Americans in Cayuga County and New York State."

In early March, Cayuga County Legislature Chairman David Gould issued a public statement announcing that the Ukrainian flag had been raised at the county's main downtown Auburn office building, and he said a resolution would be drafted for this month's Legislature meeting.

According to U.S. Census estimates, there are about 1,780 Cayuga County residents with Ukrainian ancestry, or 2.3% of the population  the highest percentage of any county in the state.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
When Kerry Smith bid to buy Locust Meadows, a seized mobile home park in Fleming, it wasn't his first attempt to purchase the property.

Three years ago, Smith learned of the troubling situation at the mobile home park. Residents were under a boil water order because the water supply wasn't being monitored, the park wasn't providing drinking water and adequate water pressure, and the electricity was shut off because the now-former owner, Sharon Hitchings, did not pay the energy bill.

Seized Cayuga County mobile home park to be auctioned off FLEMING  A Cayuga County mobile home park will be auctioned off after its owner failed to p

Smith, who is the town highway superintendent in Fleming, wanted to do something. He intended to buy the 7.8-acre mobile home park and met with Hitchings. After that initial conversation, Hitchings never met with him again to sign the purchase agreement. It remained under her ownership until the county seized the park last fall because Hitchings failed to pay more than $63,000 in fines for not offering residents drinking water and failing to monitor the water supply.

Once the property was seized by the Cayuga County Sheriff's Office, an auction was scheduled for March 10. There were 13 bidders, but Smith's bid of $160,000 was the highest. The sheriff's office confirmed on Tuesday that Smith has paid the full amount to buy the park, a portion of which will cover the unpaid fines levied against Hitchings.

"This is what it came to and this is how we got it," Smith said.

Kathleen Cuddy, the county's public health director, said at the Cayuga County Board of Health meeting on Tuesday that Smith has been having conversations with the health department's environmental health division about his plan to bring the mobile home park into compliance. The new ownership will prioritize the water system and make necessary upgrades, according to Cuddy.

Seized Cayuga County mobile home park sold A mobile home park in the town of Fleming has new owners.

Smith told The Citizen that one of those upgrades is connecting the park to public water. He also addressed other concerns raised by residents, including the lack of trash pickup. He said the trash "will be taken care of."

"That's what our intentions are and getting everything in shape and getting it all cleaned up and in compliance," he said. "It's just something that can be done and it's got a lot of potential. It's going to stay that way and it's going to go forward."

One of the other improvements to the park is a new name. Smith said the property will now be known as Mapleton Grove.

The board of health is pleased that the mobile home park is under new ownership. Cuddy noted that the health department put a lot of time and effort into the matter, and county funds were used to pay the electric bill when the park's power was shut off.

Keith Batman, the health board's president, is hopeful that there are better days ahead for the park.

"If somebody buys it and they actually operate it, that's the gift to us," he said.

Politics reporter Robert Harding can be reached at (315) 282-2220 or robert.harding@lee.net. Follow him on Twitter @robertharding.

Love 4 Funny 1 Wow 1 Sad 0 Angry 2

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.
Minister of Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari has said that the government is targeting a pace of 50 km per day for the construction of national highways in the country.

Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari has assured that India's road infrastructure will be at par with those in United States in just two years time. Gadkari, who was replying to a debate in Lok Sabha, said a good road network will help bring down cost of logistics and boost the economy. The minister had earlier said that India is aiming to build 50 kms of national highways every day this year, improving its previous best of 38 kms per day, which itself is a world record.

Referring to former US President John F Kennedy, Gadkari said, To make India prosperous, I will ensure that before December 2024, India's road infrastructure will be like that of America." Kennedy had said that American roads are not good because America is rich, but America is rich because American roads are good.

Gadkari said his ministry had brought down the cost of some projects with the help of innovative use of technology. Prioritizing road safety, we have done away with the outdated system of DPR. Incorporating the world's best practices, we have replaced it with PMC system. It is our endeavour to reduce the cost of construction and improve quality of construction by incorporating world-class technology. We have brought down the construction cost of Majauli Bridge built over the Brahmaputra from 6000 crore to 680 crore."

Highlighting his ministry's achievements in improving highway connectivity and road infrastructure, Gadkari said that it now takes only 40 minutes to travel to Meerut from Delhi via Delhi-Meerut Expressway.

Gadkari has also said that the upcoming Delhi-Mumbai Expressway, which will reduce travel time between the two cities to just 12 hours, will be completed within this year. "From Ladakh, Leh to Srinagar we will go to Mumbai.... before the end of this year, we will try that from Srinagar you are able to reach Mumbai in 20 hours," Gadkari said. Work is on in full swing for the Zojila tunnel in Kashmir as well and is expected to be completed by 2024.

Gadkari had earlier said that the government is targeting a pace of 50 km per day for the construction of national highways in the country. In 2020-21, the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) constructed a record 37 kilometre of national highways per day.

First Published Date:
Lexus knows it is a niche, a rather exclusive brand in India. It doesn't mind the tag. But that's no reason for not appealing to a larger section of Indian luxury car buyers.

The luxury passenger vehicle space in India may be small but it is also one that is hotly contested by a number of very strong players. From Mercedes-Benz and BMW ruling right at the top to Audi registering a solid comeback in recent times, it is a good time to be competing for numbers here. But while the competition may be fierce, Lexus has remained a very niche brand with its appeal limited to a select group of buyers. Having only made its India debut in March of 2017, the Japanese brand can't really boast of a long-standing connection but just because there hasn't been one may not been there cannot be one. Enter the updated 2022 Lexus NX 350h that clearly aims to find favour among a larger group of buyers and, more importantly, help the brand establish a more firm foothold here.

The latest NX 350h is brought in via the CBU route and pricing starts at 64.90 lakh (ex showroom). It gets very catchy styling updates on the outside, plenty of features to keep occupants engaged and a hybrid motor as well. But while the product offering on its own appears strong, it is the intention of the SUV laying a foundation that is more significant. For Naveen Soni, Lexus India President, it may be a tricky walk between the brand remaining exclusive while still appealing to a wider audience. But Soni isn't all about increasing sales volumes just yet. It is not just about the number of vehicles we sell but also about the kind of customers, they are design connoisseurs," he tells HT Auto in during an interaction. They are looking at a car that expresses their uniqueness. So from that point of view, our customers have been supporting us all this while. What we are now looking at is a sustainable growth phase."

Naveen Soni (L), President, and Maharaj Mukherjee, Executive Vice President at Lexus India with the updated NX 350h.

Lexus currently offers a number of sedans and SUVs in the Indian market where, Soni says, there is clearly a demand revival. It is for us to kind of capture this, how much we want to capture. So from that point of view, we will be enhancing our channel also. And we would like to expand the number of vehicles that we have in this table," he explains.

The NX 350h, of course, will have to bat on the front foot in this regard.

Soni says that the updated NX 350h has been well received by customers - he however doesn't share bookings' numbers - and adds that the task at hand is to get units delivered in the shortest possible timespan. I do not want my customers to wait, it isn't fair. We'd now like to shorten this by increasing our allocations," he explains.

But what about the possibility of localizing? A critical mass is required. Because on one side, yes, if you do local assembly, the duty structure does come down. But what goes up if you don't have volumes is the part prices for localization. So it is a balance."

Will all of these efforts then help mount a credible challenge to the Germans in India? Lexus doesn't exactly appear overextending its confidence just yet but is sculpting its priorities to perfection to play a bigger role. And with a move towards electric mobility, the company has also started conducting feasibility studies for its UX electric vehicle. We know there are expectations from customers to go fully electric. For this reason, we are now testing the UX here which will be assessed at customer clinics and for market acceptance," says Soni.

First Published Date:
Beijing (Gasgoo)- On March 23rd, Hyundai Motor Group disclosed its target to sell 520,000 vehicles annually in China by 2025 via its Chinese joint venture, Beijing Hyundai.

CUSTO; photo credit: Beijing Hyundai

According to the Korean auto group, Beijing Hyundai will introduce a refreshed product lineup consisting of four sedan models, four SUVs, and two electric vehicles. The two exclusive battery-electric vehicle models will be on the Chinese market no earlier than 2023. The automaker is gradually pivoting to a new energy-focused strategy through its new product system.

Additionally, Beijing Hyundai also plans to reinforce its export strategy and realize an export volume of 100,000 vehicles. Specifically, the joint venture will branch out to Taiwan by selling its CUSTO MPV model to the region.

In fact, Beijing Hyundais performance has gone on a slippery slope since 2017. In 2021, Beijing Hyundai sold a total of 360,565 vehicles annually. According to the joint ventures financial report of the year, it saw a net loss of RMB4.995 billion ($$784.38 million) in 2021.

So, it makes sense that on March 18th, BAIC Investment and Hyundai Motor signed an agreement to jointly inject $942.2 million in Beijing Hyundai. The capital increase shall help Beijing Hyundai improve its working capital level and strengthen its market presence.
Shanghai (Gasgoo)- On March 22, SAIC Motor celebrated the ground-breaking for the second phase of its engine manufacturing base in Zhengzhou city, the capital of China's Henan province.

Photo credit: SAIC Motor



The project is managed by SAIC Motor Zhengzhou Powertrain Branch, which was founded in May 2019 to work on building manufacturing facilities for SAIC Motor's new-generation efficient and energy-saving engine GS6.

As publicly disclosed, the first phase of the Zhengzhou engine production base involves a total investment of 1.476 billion yuan ($188.6 million) and covers a floor area of around 40,000 square meters. With a yearly production capacity of 300,000 engines, it will possess four automated lines for engine assembly and processing of cylinder blocks, cylinder heads and crankshafts respectively.

For the time being, the first phase has gone into the trial production stage and is scheduled to start volume production at the end of April this year.

Involving a total investment of 850 million yuan ($108.61 million), the second-phase project will have three automated lines dedicated to engine assembly and processing of engine blocks and cylinder heads. When it becomes fully operational, SAIC Motor Zhengzhou Powertrain Branch will see its total production capacity increase to 600,000 engines per year and be able to output a yearly production value of 5.4 billion yuan ($690 million).

Upon completion of the entire project, the Zhengzhou engine factory will serve as SAIC Motor's biggest domestic engine manufacturing base. The GS6 series engines it produces will not only be supplied to SAIC Motor's car plants in Zhengzhou, Nanjing, Shanghai and Ningde, but also be exported with SAIC's expansion of global businesses.
By Trend

The negotiations between Russia and Ukraine are proceeding slowly, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said while delivering a speech at Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO), Trend reports citing TASS.

According to him, Russia is not against the mediation role of Western countries in negotiations with Ukraine, however Moscow has its own well-defined red lines.

So, it's a fact that the West hopes to keep Russia in the military conflict with Ukraine as long as possible, Lavrov said.




Birmingham CASE Automotive Research and Education Centre held its first Webinar and networking as an inauguration event on 21 March 2022 at the University of Birmingham. Chaired by Professor Hongming Xu, this event marked the formal kick-off of this new establishment. Professor Clive Roberts, Head of School of Engineering, and Professor David Bailey of Business Economics delivered their talks respectively. The audience participated in the Webinar by attending in person or online. It was attended onsite by managers from industry companies including AVL Powertrain UK, MAHLE Powertrain, Lotus Group, We Predict, Ecobat and UBIPOS UK with several other industrial partners online. The event was watched by more than 23 thousand online through the live streaming service provided by Gasgoo.

In a brief introduction to the CASE Automotive Research and Education Centre, Professor Xu provided the vision of the Centre that since Birmingham is near the heart of the UK motor industry with strong background in almost all the subjects in relation to automotive areas, Birmingham University should play a leading role in contributing to achieving carbon neutrality in the UK by 2050. The objectives of the Centre are to establish cross-disciplinary internal collaboration and promote external collaboration collectively with relevant industry and international community. The major expertise and research of the Centre can be found from the website https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/activity/mechanical-engineering/vehicle-technology/case-v-centre/index.aspx. The Centre has over 20 research pillars classified in 4 areas: autonomy and sensing; business and strategy; impact on the Environment; sustainability and circular economy, and it involves over 200 people including academic staff, research fellows and PhD students.

Following Professor Xus opening address, Professor Clive Roberts introduced the background of the School of Engineering and activities in the Birmingham Transport Research and Education Centre. He highlighted the strong expertise of the Centre and a number of remarkable achievements in developing future railway operation & control, data integration & cybersecurity, smart monitoring & autonomous systems, and decarbonisation of the railway transports. He emphasised that the University of Birmingham is a global leading university that is capable of providing technical leadership and strategy development in the field of future low-carbon and intelligent transportation.

Professor David Bailey, Chair of the Regional Studies Association Europe Foundation (a think tank and policy forum based in Brussels), introduced his recent study into big trends in the motor industry from the perspective of policies, economics, politics, and business. His presentation analysed the impacts on vehicle electrification by some recent global events including COVID-19 pandemics, Brexit, and other developments in recent international situations. Several business models were proposed and an outlook about the future automotive market was provided. His views and visions of the automotive industry were well received by the audience with great interest.

The question and answers time was very stimulating. Questions were given to the two speakers for more elaborations of the current challenges and future development trends of the auto industry and the responses and demand of the public. It is believed that both the legislation from government and the market demand will be the key factors shaping the profile of research and development of future product in the auto sector. The industry will expect to have a new generation of graduates from universities, to prepare for the transition to vehicle electrification.

It was announced at end of the Webinar that the Birmingham CASE Automotive Research and Education Centre will hold the Webinar and Networking Series regularly. The 2nd Webinar & Networking has been scheduled to take place on 11th of May at the same time (11:00 UK time). Professor Marina Gashinova will give a talk about review and perspectives of sensors research, and Professor Emma Kendrick will talk about sustainability in batteries, which are expected to demonstrate the relevant leading development in the UK in the areas of for autonomous and electric cars.
Shanghai (Gasgoo)- On March 23, XPeng saw the 100,000th P7 sedan roll off the production line at its Zhaoqing plant, the first all-electric model owned by a Chinese NEV startup to hit this milestone, the automaker announced via its twitter-like Weibo account.

It took only 695 days for XPeng to hit the production outputs since the P7 went on sale on April 27, 2020.



The 100,000th P7; photo credit: XPeng



Notably, the cumulative deliveries of the P7 reached 50,000 units only 15 months after the scale delivery kicked off in July 2020, making XPeng the first Chinese NEV startup to achieve such delivery milestone for a single model.

The 100,000th P7 is a special edition dubbed the P7 562E Black Label Edition. According to XPeng, the significant edition is built on the P7's four-wheel-drive performance version with additional features like the black-painted car body, the black-themed smart music cockpit, and rear private windows.

Moreover, the special edition also carries the XPILOT 3.0 intelligent driver assistant hardware system that allows NGP (Navigation Guided Pilot) for highways, memory parking, and other functions.

According to the data compiled by Gasgoo Auto Research Institute, cumulative registrations of the P7 had amounted to 85,642 units on the Chinese mainland, 10,258 units of which were registered in the first two months of 2022.
CHATSWORTH, Calif.Adult industry's mental health non-profit Pineapple Support welcomes OTR Models as a new supporter-level sponsor. The webcam community, consultancy and agency joins over 60 adult businesses and organizations in committing funds and resources to the organization.



"Having worked in the adult industry for seven years and with hundreds of models to look after, we understand the importance of mental health and understand the challenges models can face," says Camilla, Model Mentor for OTR. "Pineapple offers a fantastic array of support and a safe space for those in the industry. We are incredibly excited to be a sponsor and to work closely alongside them. This is a first for webcam agencies and a huge step in the right direction."



Pineapple Support was founded by British performer Leya Tanit in 2018, after a string of losses in the adult industry from depression and other mental illnesses. The organization, which is a qualified 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization in the United States, has so far connected over 5,000 adult performers to mental health services, including free and low-cost therapy, counseling and emotional support.



"Ensuring cam models have access to mental health services is vital for the future of the industry," says Tanit. "I'm so grateful to the OTR Models team for helping to expand Pineapple Support's reach while we work to accelerate and expand our schedule of events and services this yearour most extensive to date."



To find out more about becoming a sponsor of Pineapple Support, visit pineapplesupport.org/ sponsorship. Details about additional ways to support, as a company or individual, can be found on the organizations website pineapplesupport.org.
Flagstaff Unified School District (FUSD) will be holding a job fair at Coconino High School on March 26 to fill its open certified positions.

The hiring event will take place from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Appointments are not necessary, though pre-applications are encouraged. Job seekers are asked to bring resumes, three reference letters, a cover letter, certification and IVP fingerprint card.

Current openings include elementary art, high school science, middle and high school math, elementary Navajo as well as special education, school nurses, instructional specialists and substitutes. A full list of open positions can be found at fusd1.org/jobs.

According to a press release, FUSD offers competitive salaries, health insurance, dental and vision insurance, Arizona State Retirement with employer matching, paid holidays and professional growth with salary advancement options. Recruiters will be available to answer questions at the event.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
Local resident and public health professional Matt Eckhoff has announced he will seek a Flagstaff City Council seat as an advocate for a healthier and more sustainable Flagstaff.

Eckhoff, a father of four and a small business owner, has lived in Flagstaff for 11 years. He has a masters degree in public health and if elected, he said, would like to see a wide lens used to evaluate the health of the Flagstaff community.

That includes affordable housing, economic and educational opportunity, sustainable practices, social justice, transportation options, community safety and much more, Eckhoff said. They're all connected in creating a vibrant and healthy community.

Eckhoffs business  Kominote Community Counseling  assists a range of organizations with development. Its goal for clients is not only bringing in funds to support their missions, but to support building programs that really reflect and respond to needs of a variety of communities across Arizona, and beyond, Eckhoff said.

Hes proud to have served over two dozen nonprofits since the company founded in 2014.

Now, hes got his eyes on a different form of public service.

Civic engagement has always been really important to me, he said. City council has been on my radar for a long time.

Eckhoff would like to see Flagstaff make smart investments from a data-driven source. Hes interested in addressing the housing crisis, and applauds the research and strategy that has gone into the city's 10-year housing plan.

We're definitely not starting from square one, he said. I think there's creative ways to continue that conversation as new builds and new communities come about.

One creative way to approach workforce housing could involve the downtown campus soon to be vacated by Flagstaff Medical Centers move toward Fort Tuthill, Eckhoff said.

It would be really interesting to look at using that existing facility to outfit the community with resources that we don't have today," he said.

When asked how he would improve the current council, Eckhoff put emphasis on alternative response programs.

I would really like to see the current and future city council continue to engage the alternate response program, he said.

He also noted that he would like to be part of maintaining a high level of civil discourse, within the city council chambers.

We can see, at every level of politics in this day and age, divisiveness, Eckhoff said. But I think coming to the table, especially at the council level, makes sense because we are neighbors. This is where the rubber meets the road.

The April 4 qualifying deadline for city candidates is rapidly approaching. So far Eckhoff will be running alongside nine other candidates for city council if they supply the requisite signatures: incumbent Austin Aslan, Kevin Dobbe, Lori Matthews, Alexander Sheedy, Sean Golliher, Sydney Shevat, Deborah Harris, Livandrea Knoki and Rose Cisek.

The mayoral seat currently has four candidates: incumbent Paul Deasy, current Vice Mayor Becky Daggett, Councilmember Regina Salas and Daniel Williamson.

Candidates are required to have at least 1,602 signatures to qualify for the ballot.

Sean Golightly can be reached at sgolightly@azdailysun.com.

Love 6 Funny 1 Wow 0 Sad 2 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.
The median home price in February for Flagstaff was more than $600,000, according to local real estate estimates.

That kind of price makes it difficult -- or impossible -- for many families in the area, or for those wanting to move to Flagstaff, to purchase a home.

But Habitat for Humanity of Northern Arizona has a plan. Theyre called Starter Homes, and the first two have been approved to be built on a city-owned parcel on the corner of OLeary Street and Butler Avenue.

To me, this is a really exciting opportunity to help a wider variety of families in our community, said Kim Murdza, president of the HFHNA Board of Directors. This gives us the potential to build more than our one or two homes annually -- which is especially needed in our current times.

Eric Wolverton, executive director of HFHNA, said the concept of the starter home is to help young families get into the home-ownership game so they can begin to build enough wealth that they can either move up to a larger home as a family grows, or they can use that earned wealth for a business venture and more.

We want to try to serve as many people as possible to get them into the American dream of home ownership, Wolverton said. Were trying to allow people stay in Flag and to build wealth in Flag. We need affordable homes to function as a savings program to provide a hand up into conventional housing and lending.

The concept of a starter home is this, Wolverton said: they are 400 square feet placed in partnership with the city or with other organizations that have land on which to build, with room for two adults and one child. HFHNA sells the home for $100,000 to an income-qualifying family. The family puts up a $1,000 down payment and pays $833 a month toward their principal with a mortgage that has 0% interest. Therefore, if the family is ready to leave after five years and wish to sell the home, they have amassed $50,000 in savings toward the purchase of a larger home -- which HFHNA keeps in a bank account ready for the family to cash out.

As part of the deal, the family must sell the home back to HFHNA so that the it may be sold to another family wishing to enter the homeownership game. The hope is to continually offer the same starter home repeatedly to new families entering the market -- a significant departure from building one home for one family.

Wolverton added that by the time a family has outgrown the start home model, it will have built up enough equity to afford to purchase a larger home in Flagstaff. The family must stay at least three years to build sufficient equity to ensure success.

Murdza acknowledged the concept is a departure from the HFHNA standard of building three- or four-bedroom homes for low-income families. HFHNA has built one or two such homes each year in partnership with city government, and there are more than 20 located throughout Flagstaff. Although HFHNA will continue to build homes of the standard model, the need has far outgrown such a standard.

As we look at our community development and the variety of people who need affordable housing, historically its been a very standard model, Murdza said. There is a larger group of people who need affordable workforce housing in Flagstaff. Our workforce in Flagstaff is being forced out, and were having fewer and fewer options for them to enter homeownership.

Wolverton said housing prices have made an equity-poor middle class that put them out of the loop of homeownership.

Affordable housing in Flagstaff has always been a problem, Wolverton said. But in the past 18 months of inflated housing values, a huge segment of our middle class is priced out of homeownership now.

Priced out: The faces of Flagstaff's housing crisis The only people who seem to be able to afford to live here anymore are rich people, said a

Murdza said starter homes are an opportunity to create more affordable housing options for many different family types. The design of starter homes considers environmental impact and energy efficiency, but beyond that, theyre ... affordable.

Wolverton added: Like all mountain towns catering to tourists, we need to create housing for workforce development and retention. We are already seeing many businesses cut their hours of operations or close their doors as our workforce is moving out of Flagstaff for cheaper options.

According to the standard HFHNA model, the nonprofit gathers the funds and material to support a build, then uses homeowners and volunteer support to build the home. The selected homeowners provide sweat equity to contribute to the building of the home, and the Starter Home program will be the same.

As for the volunteer support, Wolverton and Murdza said HFHNA has partnered with Coconino Community College to offer the colleges Construction Technology Management students, as part of the requirements for degrees and certificates, valuable skills training by constructing Starter Homes for HFHNA.

Wolverton added that the first starter home will be completed this summer, and the plan is to continue to partner with the city and other organizations -- like schools and churches -- to build more of them throughout Flagstaff communities. He said hes currently in talks with the City of Page, which also has a deep need for affordable housing.

There cannot be enough of these homes to support our ever-growing need for Flagstaff families to have a strong savings plan that will be impactful enough to buy conventional homes, Wolverton said. This way, those families that would like to call Flagstaff home can see that dream come true.

Love 13 Funny 0 Wow 1 Sad 0 Angry 0
Northern Arizona University's Center for Service and Volunteerism (CSV) has received $341,000 to launch a new AmeriCorps program focused on environmental literacy.

The Environmental Literacy Corps will engage AmeriCorps members to serve with local agencies and organizations to promote environmental literacy in northern Arizona and beyond," according to a release.

AmeriCorps members receive a living stipend and education award as part of their national service term.

Environmental Literacy Corps members will work with sites including the National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service, City of Flagstaff, Flagstaff Unified School District and NAU.

Environmental education has been shown to have a breadth of positive impact, ranging from improved passion and interest in learning to growth in confidence, autonomy and leadership, the release read.

The program is funded by the Governors Office of Youth, Faith and Family.

CSV had previously been awarded a planning grant to assess environmental literacy efforts and needs. The effort also created a launch team made of local experts in several disciplines to write the grant for this award and develop partnerships and the approach.

CSV plans to train 8,000 people, engage 23 members of the Environmental Literacy Corps and partner with 16 local organizations.

CSV is thrilled to build upon our decades of experience managing effective AmeriCorps programming and education expertise to bring attention and support to environmental literacy in northern Arizona. Working with a robust partner network and dedicated members who are passionate about both service and the environment, we cannot wait to see the positive impacts that ELC has on our community, Erin Kruse, CSV director, said in the release.

CSV has hosted national service programs since 1985, including the foster grandparent and senior companion programs, Arizona Ready for College and Career and Alternatives to Managing Pain and Prevention.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
The US should revoke its visa restrictions on Chinese officials immediately, or China will react with reciprocal countermeasures, Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said on Tuesday.

Wang made the remark at a daily news conference after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement on Monday that the US is imposing visa restrictions on Chinese officials who it believes to be involved in "repressing" religious people and ethnic group members.

Voicing China's absolute objection, Wang said the statement violates international law and basic rules for international relations, and is brutal interference in China's domestic affairs.

The US slandered China, and suppressed Chinese officials groundlessly with the statement "filled with ideological bias and political lies", Wang said, adding that the US is unqualified to point fingers at China's human rights situation.

"China's human rights situation is at its best in history, which is for all of the international community to see," the spokesman said.

The Chinese government has adhered to the people-centered idea of human rights and implemented conscientiously the principle of respecting and protecting human rights as stipulated in the Constitution, Wang said.

The government deems the rights to survival and development as the primary basic human rights, he also said.

The US, on the other hand, is "the largest human rights violator in the world", Wang said, adding that its "all-around and systemic violation of Native American people's human rights has constituted de facto genocide".

"In more than 100 years since the founding of the US, the country had been purging systemically the Native American people, a population that plunged to 250,000 in the early 20th century from 5 million in the late 15th century," Wang said, adding that the US government's assimilation policies led to the extinction of Native American culture.

Wang went on to cite the US failure to tackle COVID-19, which claimed more than 970,000 US people's lives, the "long-term and systemic racial discrimination" in the country and its invasions of other countries.

"Even so the US is clamoring all day and threatening sanctions on other countries under the pretext of protecting human rights," Wang said. "Such a trick is doomed to fail."
A group of Beatrice women came together with a plan 60 years ago.

Some ministers wives and doctors wives felt like people who were at the then Martin Luther Home needed some help and assistance, Carlyn Koenig, the marketing manager at Bargain Box, said. To begin with, they each brought clothes of their own to sell.

The clothes piled up. And those mounds of fabric became the foundation for the Bargain Box Thrift Store. This year marked the 60th year of business, and the store presented Mosaic with a $86,000 to celebrate.

Earlier in March, Bargain Box held its annual luncheon and presented representatives of Mosaic, an organization that assists people with disabilities, mental and behavioral health needs and autism, as well as aging adults.

We were started as a club to help Mosaic, Koenig said. Weve been Mosaics left hand for 60 years.

Bargain Box gets its funding through revenue from store sales. Its sale items primarily come from donations.

The community supports us by brining in lots of items, and we sell them, she said. Were so grateful for that support.

Right now, Bargain Box has a group of 54 volunteers who help sort items and run the store. Together, they racked up more than 11,000 hours of service in the community.

Koenig said Bargain Box and Mosaic both do invaluable work for the community.

We help a lot of people who cant afford a lot of stuff, she said. Our items are all cheaply priced, and that helps people here.

Koenig said the money Mosaic gets from Bargain Box helps it to pay for things beyond its normal operating budget.

They use it for things the budget doesnt allow for, she said. They use it for transportation. They use it to help decorate some of the new homes. They use it to make improvements. Just special things thats not in the states program as far as what they can do It goes completely to the Beatrice campus.

Bargain Box, open on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, will be holding a sack sale this weekend. Anything you can fit into a paper sack will be $4.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
By Trend

Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan on Sunday lauded India for following an 'independent foreign policy', saying New Delhi imported crude oil from Russia despite American sanctions on Moscow, Trend reports citing Rediff.

Khan, a fierce critic of the ruling National Democratic Alliance government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, spoke highly of the Indian foreign policy.

Addressing a public rally in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, he told his supporters that he would like to praise the neighbouring country India as it was having an 'independent foreign policy'.

Khan said that India, which is a part of the Quad grouping, has imported crude oil from Russia despite American sanctions on Moscow.

The Quad grouping has the United States, India, Japan and Australia as its members.
Five candidates in Nebraskas Republican primary for Governor spoke at a forum in Beatrice on Tuesday.

Theresa Thibodeau, Breland Ridenour, Lela McNinch, Charles Herbster and Michael Connely answered questions in the Beatrice Country Club Classics Bar and Grill. Brett Lindstrom and Jim Pillen did not attend the event, which drew around 150 people.

Ashley Mason, who helped organize the event with other members of Patriots of Beatrice and Gage County, said she was happy with attendance. She said people came from all around the area, even from Lincoln and Omaha.

Jefferson County District 2 Commissioner Gale Pohlmann was one such area attendee. Pohlmann said he enjoyed the event, but he would have also liked to see Lindstrom and Pillen speak.

I wish all of the candidates could have been here, Pohlmann said. That would have made it more complete.

Candidates started with their introductions and moved on to answering questions. Bob Tiemann moderated the forum, transitioning from one question to the next. Each candidate had 2 minutes for each question.

I think the night went very well, Tiemann said. There was a very good turnout, and the candidates had some really good ideas. I think the information they presented are really going to help people who havent made up their minds. I think there were a number of people here who already had their minds made up, but there are some who were probably pushed in one direction or another tonight.

Questions ranged in subject matter from property taxes to policing. Some topics held only threadbare relationships to Nebraskas gubernatorial politics, including one about the first transgender woman to win an NCAA swimming title.

Candidate forums typically offer the chance for hopefuls to distinguish themselves from each other, but despite the races unusually crowded field, that seemed like a chance most candidates were unwilling to take.

Few disagreements flared between candidates. One issue, discussion over the EPIC Consumption Tax, brought out only subtle disagreement. Pohlmann said that lack of disjunction made it harder to decide who to support.

It would have been good to see more differences between them, Pohlmann said. Most of the questions were pretty easy to answer, and they focused on things that everyone already agreed on.

But Tiemann said the differences between the candidates were clear enough in the way they discussed the issues.

The biggest difference is the presentation approach, he said. A lot of the times when you make up your mind for who youre going to vote for, its not just their positions The difference comes in on their approach, on how theyre going to tackle the issues once they get in office.

A candidate forum will come to Sterling this Sunday. The GOP primary candidates for Governor will face each other on the May 10 ballot.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
KEARNEY  A murder warrant has been issued for an Omaha man sought in connection with the Jan. 16 shooting of Jared Shinpaugh in Kearney.

Romeo Chambers, 24, of Omaha is charged with seven felonies, including three counts of using a firearm to commit a felony, possession of a firearm by a prohibited person and assault.

The murder charge alleges Chambers killed Shinpaugh with malice, but without premeditation.

Shinpaugh, 31, and Joseph Garcia, 29, both of Lexington, were shot in the Jan. 16 incident. Shinpaugh died, while Garcia was treated at CHI Good Samaritan for his injuries and released.

At the request of Buffalo County Attorney Shawn Eatherton, court records detailing the murder are sealed because of the sensitive nature of the investigation and because it could jeopardize the safety of witnesses.

At about 8:30 p.m. Jan. 16, Kearney Police responded to the 800 block of West 23rd Street to investigate a report of gunshots. The investigation revealed one person was killed and two other had been shot in an attempted robbery.

It later was discovered that a resident, Joshua Morris, 18, of Kearney, also was shot during the attempted robbery.

Morris and Mariah Chamberlin, 19, also of Kearney, were later arrested.

Also arrested in connection to the murder/armed robbery are:

* Garcia, 29, of Lexington, and Chenoa Snow Lemburg, 22, of Grand Island, both charged with felony attempted robbery of Morris and Chamberlin.

* Morris and Chamberlin both face charges of possession of a defaced firearm, possession of a stolen firearm, possession of marijuana with the intent to distribute while in possession of a firearm and possession of more than one pound of marijuana  all felonies.

Court records detailing the allegations against all those charged in connection to the murder/armed robbery also are sealed.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
These are some of the most luxurious homes on the Billings market.
First responders work on a ledge below the top of the Rimrocks while responding to a report of a person who fell in Billings on Thursday, Apri
Finding enough firefighters to staff seasonal Montana crews is difficult, compounded by experienced personnel transferring to other agencies offering higher pay.

It is an absolute challenge every year, said Sonya Germann, Forestry Division administrator for the state Department of Natural Resources and Conservation.

She made the comment while addressing the Environmental Quality Council during its meeting in Helena on Wednesday.

We have never really been able to fully staff all of our positions, she added.

Germann said shes pleasantly surprised by the number of applicants so far this year, yet there are probably state fire engines that will be unstaffed.

Its hard work. Its low pay. And not a lot of people want to come and fight fire because it is so incredibly hard and the hazards associated with that, she said.

Its also mentally challenging. In a survey answered by 1,841 federal firefighters, the advocacy group Grassroots Wildland Firefighters found 73% were regularly worried about the possibility of an accident. Sixty percent said their partners have been impacted by an incident at work that resulted in mental health challenges.

Extended absence physically and/or emotionally was the number-one stressor, the survey found.

We especially lose people who are highly qualified, Germann added. It takes a particular thing for somebody to want to stay working for DNRC. I think they stay because of our organization, but that same qualified position can make a lot more money going elsewhere. And we often see that. So we have seen a trend of losing our highly qualified people. And weve seen issues with recruitment.

Germann complimented Gov. Greg Gianforte for raising the hourly wages for wildland firefighters in the face of another dry summer with much of the state in drought conditions. In January, the governors office announced an increase of $1.70 an hour in pay, bringing the minimum base pay to $15.50 an hour in order to compete with other states for personnel.

Also in January, the Biden Administration announced it was raising the base pay for federal firefighters to $15 an hour with recruitment and retention bonuses.

Even this raise pales compared to what California pays state crews. According to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who wrote in an August Los Angeles Times opinion article, Cal Fire was paying around $66,336 for entry-level employees compared to the Forest Services $28,078.

Feinstein also noted the Forest Service was 730 employees shy of its total goal of 5,000 firefighters in 2020 while Cal Fire hired 3,000 additional temporary firefighters.

The Idaho Legislature just approved hazard pay of up to 25% above hourly wages for its firefighters, something the DNRC is also examining as a possible proposal to the Montana Legislature, Germann said.

In honor of former West Yellowstone smokejumper Tim Hart, Grassroots Wildland Firefighters is backing a bill with his name. Hart died last June, 11 days after sustaining injuries in a hard landing while parachuting into the Eicks fire in New Mexico. Hart lived in Cody, Wyoming.

Wildland firefighters deserve to be recognized and compensated for the grueling conditions in which they work and for putting their lives on the line every day, Michelle Hart, Tims wife, said in advocating for the bill. This legislation is a major step forward in achieving that goal.

The Tim Hart Wildland Firefighter Classification and Pay Parity Act was introduced in the House in October. It would raise base pay to no less than $36,163 with cost of living adjustments each year, guaranteed hazardous duty pay when conditions warrant, a housing allowance when 50 miles from home and recruitment and retention bonuses.

So far this year Montana has already had 49 fires burn across 74 acres, compared to last year at this date when 134 fires had burned 9,000 acres, Germann reported.

The states current fire account contains $50.9 million with a projection that $49 million will be needed in the 2022 fiscal year, Germann said.

She went on to praise the partnerships the DNRC has in responding to fires in cooperation with tribal and county fire agencies, the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management.

Wildfire doesnt recognize boundaries or fence lines, neither does smoke, neither do insects or disease, Germann said. We have to be working together, and we have to be doing a lot more of it. Thats the whole premise of the [Montana] Forest Action Plan. We have massive issues. We have 9 million acres of the  forested land out there that is facing significant wildfire risk and forest health issues.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 2 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 federal judge has ordered the shuttered Bismarck photography studio Glasser Images to pay nearly $1 million in a lawsuit related to clients credit card disputes.

The order arrived by default after Glassers legal team did not respond to the complaint filed by PayJunction, a company that provided merchant card payment processing services to the studio. PayJunction sued Glasser in November 2021 after the studio abruptly closed the month before. Owner Jack Glasser had told clients he would be unable to refund them if they had already booked photography services and put down money.

The announcement prompted numerous clients to dispute the charges with their credit card companies. Glasser Images did not have sufficient funds to cover the disputed charges, which made PayJunction liable, according to the complaint.

That liability has grown to over $900,000, according to the order issued March 3 by U.S. District Judge Clay Land of the Middle District of Georgia, where PayJunction filed suit.

The photo studio and its lawyer initially agreed to provide information to PayJunction but have since essentially been nonresponsive to PayJunctions attempts to address the chargeback issues, resulting in PayJunctions continued accrual of damages every day that Glasser Images does not timely and properly respond, Land wrote.

A copy of Lands order was filed Tuesday in South Central District Court in North Dakota, where PayJunction has brought a separate legal challenge against Jack Glasser related to the sale of his Mandan home, which the company says may be the only asset available to satisfy PayJunctions claim.

Land also awarded PayJunction attorney fees, bringing the total damages against Glasser Images to $977,241.

He wrote that many of the disputed charges relate to the delivery of photographs and videos for weddings and other once-in-a-lifetime events that have already taken place, adding that disputing the charges only allows a consumer to obtain a refund of the amount paid by credit card, but consumers would prefer to have the photographs and videos that were taken at these events delivered to them.

Glasser's attorney, Tim O'Keeffe, said in a statement to the Tribune that, "We are grateful nearly all Glasser Images customers have been made financially whole in the wake of our going out of business. We will continue to work with our vendors -- including credit card-related operators like PayJunction -- as we figure out our next steps forward."

He did not elaborate on how Glasser Images has made its customers financially whole. The photo studio has been working with a company called ShootProof to edit images and release them to clients. That process is ongoing, according to updates posted to ShootProofs website.

The disputed charges issue mark just one of a number of legal problems that have emerged for Glasser.

The North Dakota Attorney Generals Office began investigating the photo studios closure last year to determine whether any fraud occurred, and the office said Wednesday that the investigation is ongoing. The attorney generals office took Glasser Images to court last year to secure an order requiring the studio to preserve its websites, which are part of the investigation.

At least a dozen people have brought cases against Glasser Images or Jack Glasser in small claims court in recent months, and hes faced several other legal matters related to the studios closure.

Glasser founded the studio in 2005. Its headquarters were in Bismarck, and it also operated in neighboring states photographing weddings and other events and milestones.

Glasser has blamed the businesss closure on the coronavirus pandemic, which hurt the wedding industry.

Reach Amy R. Sisk at 701-250-8252 or amy.sisk@bismarcktribune.com.

Love 0 Funny 4 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 4

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 North Dakota man who has been behind bars for 30 years and is seeking a sentence reduction testified Tuesday that he tolerated years of abuse before he shot his father, and then entered a sort of tunnel vision in which he shot three more family members.

Michael Neugebauer was 15 in 1992 when he shot and killed his parents, brother and sister at the familys home east of Bismarck. Law enforcement caught up with him and his girlfriend two weeks later in Florida.

Neugebauer pleaded guilty to one count of murder in October 1993, and in January 1994 he pleaded guilty to the other three. He was sentenced to life in prison on each count.

Neugebauer on Oct. 5, 2020, filed a motion for a sentence reduction. A Nov. 10 hearing date was placed on the court calendar that year, but on Oct. 9 South Central District Judge Bobbi Weiler issued an order denying the motion and canceling the hearing. Neugebauer appealed to the state Supreme Court, arguing that the lower court was wrong to deny his motion without a hearing.

Burleigh County States Attorney Julie Lawyer in a brief to the justices agreed that court rules require a hearing, but she argued that the district court did not have jurisdiction to hear the motion because Neugebauers sentence was final some 23 years earlier when he did not appeal.

The justices ordered a hearing, saying Weiler abused her discretion in denying the motion without a hearing.

Weiler on Tuesday asked defense attorney Steve Balaban and Assistant Burleigh County States Attorneys David Rappenecker and Tessa Vaagen to submit written arguments by April 5. She will rule later.

Neugebauer during the hearing outlined details of a home in which arguments and screaming were common, and a father who he said beat him on a weekly basis. Neugebauers girlfriend once confronted the man about the abuse. He told Neugebauer hed kill him if she intervened again, then took a hammer, killed the girls dog and threw it in the trash as Neugebauer watched.

The next day, Neugebauer ran away from home, only to be brought back to the same abuse, he testified.

I couldnt stay in that situation, he said.

He got a gun from his grandmothers house, which was in the same farmyard. He loaded it and went back to get some personal belongings from his room. His mother tried to stop him, and once he was inside family members wouldnt let him out. His father saw the gun and said he was going to get one too.

I just wanted out. I couldnt get out, Neugebauer said. He turned and I shot.

His father fell straight down, and everything was like looking into a tunnel, instantly, Neugebauer said. His sister appeared, and he shot her almost on reflex. His mother grabbed him and the gun went off again. He chased his mother outside and shot her, then came back in the house. He reloaded the gun and shot his brother twice.

He attempted aid to his brother to no avail. He moved his mothers body from the front yard, then drove west. He spent the night by the river, picked up his girlfriend the next morning and left for Florida, he testified.

Neugebauers attorney, Steven Balaban, asked if he planned any of that.

No, Neugebauer said. I wanted to leave. Period.

Rappenecker said Neugebauers story was more detailed than what Neugebauer told authorities in the early 1990s. Vaagen pointed out discrepancies between early court transcripts and Tuesday's testimony.

Two psychologists testified about evaluations of Neugebauer. Shannon Weisz and Michael Vitacco agreed on many points but disagreed on whether Neugebauer suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and generalized anxiety.

Neugebauers PTSD and anxiety were Weisz primary concerns. He said Neugebauer may have suffered from PTSD at the time of the shootings. The disorder can make a persons fight or flight response more sensitive, and possibly produce the tunnel vision experience Neugebauer described, the psychologist said. He added that Neugebauer doesnt have any personality styles -- anti-social behavior, substance abuse, lack of remorse -- that would be of any concern.

Vitacco said the question of Neugebauer committing another crime if he was released was tricky. People who have committed such offenses often do well, he said, but he wasnt sure Neugebauers actions on the day of the shooting were all that reactive.

He became upset, but he also walked, got a firearm, loaded it, fired it, loaded it again as I understand, Vitacco said.

But because Neugebauers family was deceased, the psychologist felt it would be unlikely Neugebauer would engage in that level of offense again. Very unlikely.

Reach Travis Svihovec at 701-250-8260 or Travis.Svihovec@bismarcktribune.com

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 5 Sad 8 Angry 4

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.
North Dakota is challenging the federal governments awarding of lucrative mineral rights under a Missouri River reservoir to the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation, otherwise known as the Three Affiliated Tribes. The state attorney generals office said Friday that it notified the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., that it plans to intervene in the tribes lawsuit against the federal government. The Interior Department ruled in February that the tribes own the rights, in what has been a long-running dispute. At stake is an estimated $100 million in unpaid royalties and future payments certain to come from oil drilling. The government dammed the river in the 1950s, flooding more than a tenth of the tribes' reservation and creating the reservoir.
Advocates for legalizing recreational marijuana in South Dakota have submitted thousands of petition signatures to the secretary of state. They say they've collected enough to place the initiative on the November ballot. South Dakotans for Better Marijuana Laws has scrambled in recent days to gather the nearly 17,000 petition signatures required to place a proposed law on the ballot. The signatures must come from registered South Dakota voters. Matt Schweich, campaign director for the organization, says the campaign evaluated the petitions and estimates it has at least 19,250 valid signatures.
Not all landmark Supreme Court decisions are admirable. Some are frankly infamous, including Plessy v. Ferguson. In 1896, in Plessy, the court constitutionalized racial segregation in the South. The courts opinion plundered Black Americans newly confirmed rights guaranteed by the 13th and 14th Amendments, relegated them to second-class citizenship and imposed a legal stamp of inferiority, denying their humanity and assuring anguish and humiliation.

So much for the myth of wise, dispassionate Supreme Court justices, atop Mt. Olympus, upholding the rule of law while dispensing justice in opinions that reflect unassailable, rigorous reasoning that persuades the reading republic and distinguishes the High Tribunal. The Plessy decision, rather, reflected the widespread racism of the day and the animus toward blacks harbored by many Americans.

Plessy v. Ferguson was a test case designed to challenge the Jim Crow transportation law in Louisiana, which required railroad companies carrying passengers in the state to have equal but separate accommodations for white and colored persons. Homer Plessy was an octoroon  one-eighth black  who boarded a railroad car in New Orleans and sat in a car reserved for whites. He was arrested when he refused to move to the black car.

Plessy was convicted by a state court and appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, asserting violation of his 13th and 14th Amendment rights.

The 13th Amendment, ratified in 1865, had abolished slavery and involuntary servitude. The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, prohibits states from making or enforcing any law that deprives any person equal protection of the laws, due process of law and the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States and the state in which they reside.

Justice Henry B. Brown wrote for an 8-1 majority, which left Justice John Marshall Harlan as the lone dissenter. Justice Brown stated that Louisiana did not violate the 13th Amendment. He said, It is too clear for argument that the statute implied merely a legal distinction between blacks and whites and thus had no tendency to destroy the legal equality of the two races, or reestablish a state of involuntary servitude. Justice Harlan, in dissent, wrote that compulsory racial segregation constituted a badge of servitude and therefore violated the 13th Amendment.

The principal issue in the case involved the question of whether the segregation law abridged the 14th Amendments Equal Protection Clause. Justice Browns opinion was grounded on feeble reasoning. He conceded that the purpose of the amendment was undoubtedly to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before the law, yet added  in the same sentence  but in the nature of things it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based on color.

In fact, the historical record demonstrates that the object of the 14th Amendment was to abolish legal distinctions based on color. Browns opinion can make sense only if the reader assumes that the court believed that segregation was not an exercise in racial discrimination and that segregation would violate the Equal Protection Clause if it were discriminatory.

Justice Brown conceded that a statute implying a legal inferiority in society, diminishing the security of the right of the colored race would be discriminatory, but he declared that the state-mandated segregation did not necessarily imply the inferiority of either race to the other.

Brown and his colleagues in the majority may have been the only white men in the United States who believed that segregation did not imply the inferiority of blacks. If this be so, Brown wrote, it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction on it.

Evidence of societys imputation of the racial inferiority of Black Americans was everywhere to be seen in the Jim Crow South. Indeed, Jim Crow laws formed the linchpin of white supremacy: For Colored Only represented a label that captured the public disparagement of blacks. Such laws reflected state sanction of civil inequality. The feebleness of Browns reasoning was seen in his own acknowledgement that state acts requiring racial segregation were unconstitutional if inferiority was implied or discrimination intended.

The Plessy ruling justified the separate but equal doctrine as a legitimate and legal exercise of the state police power, that is, the authority of the state to pass laws to promote the health, safety, morals and welfare of the citizenry. While the court stated that such laws must be reasonable and enacted in good faith to promote the public good," such statutes clearly humiliated and oppressed black citizens. There was nothing reasonable or good about Jim Crow laws unless the measuring stick was that that they served the interests of racists and white supremacists.

Justice Harlan, in his masterful dissent, summed up the harms of segregation. It permits the seeds of race hate to be planted under the sanction of law. Racism at the founding of America, in the form of slavery, was our nations original sin. The racism of Jim Crow perpetuated racial tensions. Racism remains an enduring tragedy.

David Adler is president of The Alturas Institute. This "We the People" series is provided by the North Dakota Newspaper Association and Humanities North Dakota.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
By Trend

Kazakhstan Railways (KTZ) NC JSC continues the policy to reduce emissions of pollutants into the atmosphere and consumption of energy resources, Batyr Kotyrev, chief engineer of KTZ, director of the technical policy department, told Trend.

According to Kotyrev, for this purpose, work is being carried out to reduce the carbon footprint together with Samruk Kazyna JSC. So, the Energy Transition Concept and the draft Action Plan until 2060 were developed.

"For the development and introduction of low-carbon technologies at KTZ NC JSC, its planned to develop a project for a battery shunting locomotive, a working group has been created, and draft roadmaps and terms of reference have been developed," he said.

Besides, according to him, its planned to introduce a pilot project for the use of liquefied natural gas on mainline locomotives, a roadmap has been developed and approved for the implementation of a pilot project for the transfer of diesel locomotives to gas motor fuel.

"The project envisions use of modernized diesel locomotives of the TE33AS series, which will be the first to run on liquefied natural gas with the use of a cryogenic capacity (tender railcar) for storing and transporting gas," the JSCs representative said.

During the period of operation of locomotives running on LNG, the cost of purchasing diesel fuel is expected to decrease by 50 percent, Kotyrev stressed.

At the same time, the volume of LNG is 600 times less than in the gaseous state, which creates a real opportunity to use this type of fuel over long distances. The planned reduction of atmospheric emissions is up to 40 percent, the replacement of diesel fuel with gas is up to 70 percent, he noted.

"To achieve these goals, a special working group has been created with the involvement of representatives of KazMunayGas NC JSC and scientific centers," added Kotyrev.




My long series on Oscar movies is coming to an end with angry words about Hollywood. To summarize, I liked Wes Anderson, loved Paul Thomas Anderson, was amused by Ridley Scott, disappointed by Steven Spielberg, and disgusted by Guillermo Del Toro. Of course, this is of no importance to the artists themselves, who have fame to worry about rather than my opinionsbut for thoughtful conservatives, understanding arts place in our democracy and the reflections of artists on whats wrong with America today is of some importance, I daresay.

American art is one thing, however, and Hollywood another. The darling of the Oscars12 nominationsis an utterly contemptible movie called The Power of the Dog, a Western made by New Zealander Jane Campion (The Piano), who has no idea about America, no love for the Western, and who suffers from bad taste to boot. If I may offer my bid for a preemptive cancellation in our ongoing culture war madness, I can say that the big lesson I learned watching this movie is that women who fashion themselves progressive shouldnt make Westerns. I also learned another lesson: Such women seem to hate Americas past and power because they really hate American men. Its no doubt couched in a protest against toxic masculinity, but I would argue it goes deeper. A Hollywood so feminized is not worth anyones attention, and Oscar recognition for such ideologically infused fare doesnt have anything to do with honoring excellence.

The Power of the Dog was made according to the principle that, if you have talent, you should be willing to mutilate your soul; thats the path to acting success in Hollywood. The films actors, led by Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock, The Imitation Game), accordingly torture themselves and bore the audience. Cumberbatch plays the least convincing cowboy in history, something on the order of watching John Wayne play Genghis Khan. But why single him out? All the characterizations mistake caricature for seriousness, yet they were richly rewarded with Oscar nominations for their performances.

Cumberbatch is supposed to be a rancher in Montana in 1925a middle-aged man, cruel, abrupt, trying too hard to come up with vulgarities. The ranch hands all look up to him, perhaps because hes pretty; he beats a horse, so you can tell how evil he is. Unfortunately, he neither is truly imposing nor possesses the genuine toughness that would befit someone in his vocation, and ends up looking like he merely enjoys parading around in chaps. Had he been asked to play a good guy rather than a baddie, his character would have been of absolutely no interesthe simply cannot bear the burden of all the sentimental cinematography and music (again, Oscar nominated for cheap pretension).

As you can probably imagine, when a liberal makes a Western these days, you know the dude who plays the tough-guy manly man is secretly gay but cant come out of the closet, because in the past they didnt have tolerance and inclusivity and diversity. Potentially, he was also sexually abused, which traumatized him for life and thats why hes taking his anger out on others. After all, men are nothing but scared boys. You can imagine what it says about progressive women that they like to think this way about men, not to mention what it says about Hollywood that it desperately wants to believe this to be true, and also what it says about artists whose grasp of the cosmic problem of mankind reduces men to such now-stereotypical nonsense.

So with the oppressor, now with the victims. Kirsten Dunsts character runs a local diner, and Jesse Plemons (her IRL husband) ranches with the evil Cumberbatch. They play the sweet, soft couple who want to make a nice life in Montana but find themselves blighted by all this spectacle cruelty. Life has been one unending series of misfortunes and miseries, but their hearts are puretheyre able to communicate with each other and trust themselves. These people are both very traumatized but, apparently, not in the least defensive.

This is a characterization that even by the lights of liberal psychotherapy makes no sense except for wishful thinking. They are supposed to be weak, in order to be innocent or pure, but also incredibly strong, so that suffering doesnt in fact make anything worse for them. They must further have a fanatic faith in their own purity or else they would be tempted to blame themselves for their own helplessness. But these problems turn out to be easily solved by the supposition that the oppressed will overcome the oppressor because hes more self-destructive than destructive. The true nature of power, according to the artists lights, is key here. If you were to take seriously what this story suggests, youd conclude it is impossible for any tyranny long to endureor at least not once the fashionably forward-thinking come along. Ideology, apparently, cures all ills. Thats obviously not trueits mad even to think itbut to offer it as a story of the transformation of America from evil men to soft, unmanly goodness, in face of all the evidence, is bordering on the neurotic, if not psychopathic.

So with the victims, now for the better America Kirsten and Jesse will make by their marriage. See, Plemons is the evil ranchers brother; they have worked together all their lives, but where one has become corrupt, the other remains patiently enduring. So he marries this woman who may be the widow of a suicideyes, its a very morbid story, where the sordid stands in for the human confrontation with evil. But she becomes what in those days would have been called a drunkard because of the evil man, until her effete son, an aspiring artist with a fascination for the morbid, brings everything to a happy end, or at least an end to the nonsense.

The boy is the only one who will not endure the suffering, the insults, the vulgarity. But confronting the evil man involves the artist in a terrible corruption. Precisely to the extent that leftist ideology requires that victims overthrow their oppressors, such confrontation forces victims to become like their oppressors, and the movies conclusion, in a unique moment of self-awareness, suggests that, indeed, liberal sentimentality about softness and hatred of men has poisoned the hearts of a supposedly buoyant, artistic future. The boy, it is suggested, loves death, too, and has a lot of hatred in him. The movie certainly helps along that corruption for its loving audience. This is Hollywood in 2022.

Lest you think my critique overly harsh, tendentious, or downright bigoted, I give you an assessment of the film by a much-loved character actor who has appeared in many a Western himself, Sam Elliott (Tombstone, The Ranch). Here are some choice quotes from an appearance he made on Marc Marons podcast, as captured by Yahoo News:

What the [expletive deleted] does this woman from down there know about the American West? Why the [expletive deleted] did she shoot this movie in New Zealand and call it Montana? And say this is the way it was? The 1883 star compared the cowboys in the Netflix film to Chippendales dancers as he stated: Thats what all these [expletive deleted] cowboys in that movie looked like. Theyre running around in chaps and no shirts. Theres all these allusions of homosexuality throughout the movie. Wheres the western in this western? I mean, Cumberbatch never got out of his [expletive deleted] chaps.

Oh the intolerance!
Two security officers at the Sea Pines Resort on Hilton Head Island in South Carolina have been arrested for allegedly trying to poison their boss. The two gentlemen, Andrew Doty, 47, and Hunter Howard, 30, were accused of spiking their supervisor's coffee maker with eyedrops, which can cause "serious toxicity and even death," according to the National Capital Poison Center. Fortunately, a co-worker found out and spilled the beans, as it were, saving the supervisor from a potentially deadly cup of joe.

From NBC:

Authorities were contacted, and Doty and Howard were arrested Friday. They were charged with tampering with a human drug product or food item, a felony, the sheriff's office said.

Eyedrops can be dangerous when they are overused or taken inappropriately. An ingredient in eyedrops causes sleepiness, low blood pressure and a dangerously slow heart rate when it is used in high amounts or ingested, according to the National Capital Poison Center.

Doty and Howard were released later Friday on $5,000 personal recognizance bonds, meaning they did not have to post any money, Bromage said.
Gov. Kathy Hochul's budget proposal touted a $10 billion, multiyear plan to bolster New York's pandemic-battered health care industry, calling it "the largest investment in health care in state history."

State legislators want to spend even more.

In releasing their one-house budget proposals this month, the Assembly and Senate plan major spending on wage increases for the state's home care workers, some of the industry's lowest-paid professions.

Legislators also plan to convert some of the health care worker bonuses pitched by Hochul into permanent wage increases, seemingly taking what was a one-time cost and making it recurring.

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.

Both houses also included money to provide health coverage for undocumented immigrants and an additional $1 billion to assist some of the state's most financially strained hospitals.

"Overall, this is a frenzy," said Bill Hammond, senior fellow for health policy at the Empire Center for Public Policy, a fiscally conservative think tank in Albany.

"Hochul wrote a very generous budget. She has lots of money to spend. Some of it is state revenue, some of it is temporary aid," he said. "She wrote a very generous budget, and the Legislature just piled an awful lot on top of it.

This all, of course, is subject to intense negotiations underway now as the governor and legislators aim to iron out the state budget ahead of the April 1 deadline.

Looking at the entire budget, Hochul, a Democrat from Buffalo, pitched a record $216.3 billion proposal, with the state flush with cash from federal Covid-19 relief dollars and higher-than-expected tax revenues last year.

"Gov. Hochul's executive budget includes bold initiatives to embrace this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to invest in our future, and we look forward to continuing to work with the Legislature to finalize a budget that serves all New Yorkers," Hochul spokesperson Avi Small said.

In an election year, Hochul proposes big spending hikes, tax breaks The governor proposed a total spending plan of $216.3 billion, up from the $208.9 billion budget enacted last April, and it includes enormous increases in education and health care.

The Assembly proposed spending that is about $8 billion more, or 3.6% higher than Hochul's budget, with big jumps in funds for child care, education and health care.

Bea Grause, president of the Healthcare Association of New York State, which represents nonprofit and public hospitals, nursing homes and home care agencies, said the group appreciates the Legislature's proposals to bolster the industry's workforce, infrastructure and finances.

The association, however, hopes to see greater improvements in the final budget to Medicaid payment rates, which many health care facilities rely on for a significant chunk of revenue. The one-house budgets agreed with Hochul's proposal in planning a 1% increase in Medicaid rates.

"We continue to urge state leaders to go further," she said.

A major boost for home care wages

When Hochul released her budget proposal, some legislators said there was one glaring omission: funding to boost the pay of home care workers.

As it is, a home health care worker's median annual salary is just $22,000, according to a recent report by the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies.

Those low wages, industry officials argue, will make it difficult to meet a seemingly endless need for more home health and personal care aides, whose total employment in New York is projected to increase from 440,000 in 2018 to more than 700,000 by 2028, the report notes.

Both state houses included funding in their proposals for the Fair Pay for Home Care Act, which calls for home care aides to be paid 150% of the regional minimum wage.

In Western New York, that means home health care workers would make a minimum of $19.80 an hour  which, based on a 40-hour workweek, is about $41,200 annualized.

The proposal isn't cheap: The Assembly is proposing to spend $2.5 billion for Fair Pay for Home Care.

The proposal has backing from major labor unions, trade associations and key legislators.

Hammond, of the Empire Center for Public Policy, is worried about the ripple effects.

He points out that plenty of positions at nursing homes and hospitals pay less than what a home care worker would make under the proposal. For instance, a certified nursing assistant at a Western New York nursing home makes anywhere from $15 to $18 an hour.

"The dedicated staff who work in long-term care deserve better pay across all settings," said Jim Clyne, CEO of LeadingAge New York, which represents nursing homes across the state. "Raising wages for one type of provider and not the others will make staff shortages even worse for those providers that are left out."

That's why, LeadingAge New York argues, the state needs to increase the Medicaid reimbursement, which can help support the higher wages necessary to compete for workers.

Tweaks to health care worker wage proposals

The Assembly rejected Hochul's proposal to provide $1.2 billion in bonuses for health care workers, instead pitching a plan to use that money for permanent wage increases in the Health Department and various human service agencies.

"Instead of giving people a one-shot bonus, we're proposing to provide funding for permanent wage increases for the same workers," said Assemblyman Richard N. Gottfried, a Manhattan Democrat who has chaired the Health Committee since 1987.

Hochul's health care proposals: Worker bonuses, increased Medicaid rates and millions for Roswell Park "One hard lesson we learned about what happens when there's a lack of investment is how our health care system crumbled under the stress of the pandemic," Gov. Kathy Hochul said.

The Assembly accepted Hochul's proposal to provide $120 million for bonus payments to state health care workers whose base salary is subject to collective bargaining.

The Assembly's proposal also provides $250 million to support wage increases for health care workers making less than $125,000 annually who would not be included in the Fair Pay for Home Care Act.

Health care for all

Gottfried said most of the arguments between the chambers and the budget division at this point revolve around cost.

One of the areas where the budget division argues the Assembly and Senate have underpriced their proposal is the plan to provide $345 million to include coverage for undocumented immigrants under the state's Essential Plan, which provides health benefits with no monthly premium for qualified low-income people.

"This is an important step in furthering the goal of achieving universal coverage, " said Eric Linzer, president and CEO of the New York Health Plan Association, which represents 29 health plans across the state.

The Health Plan Association also applauded the Senate and Assembly for rejecting Hochul's proposal to reduce the number of Medicaid managed care plans. The proposal envisioned a competitive procurement process that would have resulted in anywhere from two to five Medicaid plans in each region.

In Western New York, for instance, there are seven mainstream Medicaid managed care plans and eight managed long-term care plans, covering a combined 470,000 residents, the association said.

Hochul's plan would have eliminated a couple of those plans locally, potentially leading to job losses and fewer choices for residents, the association said.

Under the proposal, the state was projecting $100 million in savings in fiscal year 2024, which would have grown and recurred at $200 million in following years.

More money for health care facilities

Erie County Medical Center burned through $79 million of cash during the pandemic, with elective surgery restrictions and escalating Covid-related costs chipping away at its balance sheet.

So the safety-net hospital is optimistic about additional funding included in the budget proposals from the Assembly and Senate.

Both houses propose an additional $1 billion in assistance to financially distressed hospitals: $750 million for safety-net hospitals and $250 million for major public hospitals.

The "funding proposals for safety net providers like ECMC and creating a pool of funding for public hospitals are essential to our ability to continue to provide the services our patients need," ECMC spokesperson Peter Cutler said. "Without this critically important funding, we will not be able to reinvest in staff, patient care and improved technology. In fact, cuts to vital services and other hospital-related functions will be inevitable."

Billions for health care construction tucked in Hochul's budget The governor's budget proposes making $1.6 billion available to fund capital improvements for health care facilities and nursing homes, as well as to build out ambulatory care infrastructure for struggling hospitals.

The Senate also includes an additional $400 million for the statewide Health Care Facility Transformation Program. Both houses also aim to increase the allocation within that program for community-based providers.

Hochul's budget proposed making a total of $1.6 billion available to fund capital improvements for health care facilities and nursing homes. That funding would be on top of the $3.8 billion the state has appropriated for those purposes since 2014  $2.1 billion of which has not been spent, according to the Empire Center.

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.
For the past eight years, Stephanie Speaker has fought harder than almost anyone to expand transportation services for people with disabilities across New York State.

The Depew resident, who has epilepsy and asthma and describes herself as mentally challenged, has pushed, prodded and cajoled much of the State Legislature's Western New York delegation to require agencies like the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority to provide paratransit services for those customers within three miles of a bus line  significantly more than the current 3/4-mile stipulation.

But as the state's April 1 budget deadline approaches, she and other advocates for people with disabilities may face another year without success. Despite widespread support, the bill faces uncertainty this year. It is pushed in the Senate by Transportation Committee Chairman Timothy M. Kennedy of Buffalo but appears mired in the Assembly.

Still, it could pass or emerge in compromise form.

"I've been working on this for eight years when we got it started back in 2014, and we can't allow it to not get passed because that would make it nine years," Speaker said Tuesday, adding that the bill will help prevent people with disabilities from "being stranded in their own homes."

Democrat Kennedy credits Speaker and others with bringing enough pressure to move it beyond his Transportation Committee and into the key Finance Committee of the Senate.

"We remain dedicated to getting this to the Senate floor because we firmly believe in increasing accessibility to transportation services and opportunities within the disability community," he said.

Democrat Phil Steck of Albany County, who sponsors the bill in the Assembly, says its need stems from national transportation policy that undermines the original intent of the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act.

"As political leaders we must take into consideration the needs of people with disabilities," his bill reads. "Because many people with disabilities do not have the option to drive cars, lack of access to other modes of transportation disproportionately harms them."

Steck said Tuesday his original bill proposed service five miles from the nearest bus line, while Kennedy's Senate version suggested 1.5 miles. They compromised on three miles. But he says even though Kennedy's bill allocates $20 million for the expanded service, his version notes the need to fix a cost.

"The difficulty is that no one knows how much it will cost statewide," Steck said. "It may be that we have to do a pilot program to determine that, and I would be amenable to it taking place in Buffalo.

The bill will not move until we have a realistic ability to measure the cost, and we might if we do a pilot program," he added, while also noting the possibility of a separate bill after the budget is adopted.

Meanwhile, Assembly Transportation Committee Chairman Bill Magnarelli of Syracuse said the bill in its current form remains stalled because it lacks a price tag.

"I won't be doing anything with the Steck bill today, and without the money my Assembly colleague's bill does not make a lot of sense," the assemblyman said, "but it's part of the budget discussions going on right now."

Democrat Magnarelli added that he would not oppose including the concept in the budget, and that compromises in money or in a pilot program are possible.

"Now I think we will all try to move the ball down the field," he said.

Though expanding paratransit service areas will cost money, the NFTA says it is not opposed.

"Anything that will add to mobility for the disabled community we very much favor," said authority spokeswoman Helen Tederous, adding it also will seek "more clarity in the language" of any proposed legislation.

She explained that after meeting requirements, paratransit commuters pay $4 for a ride aboard 85 specially equipped vans for approved activities like doctor's appointments or grocery shopping. The authority's PAL (Paratransit Access Line) service recorded 13,827 trips in January and 15,708 in February. She said the NFTA looks forward to participating in anything that would improve service.

"We will work on solutions," Tederous said. "We just want to be sure we are able to serve this population correctly and the funding is sustainable."

Speaker noted that her efforts began with the help of Michael P. Kearns, the former Buffalo assemblyman who is now Erie County clerk. He said this week that many people with disabilities can work but often encounter problems "getting to and from."

"She's doing all the things she needs to do as an advocate," Kearns said of Speaker. "The public need to know how important it is."

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 Buffalo firefighter who was seriously injured in an incident at a South Buffalo restaurant Saturday remained in critical condition Wednesday and a second Buffalo firefighter was suspended without pay.

A Buffalo firefighter is in the hospital, and no witnesses will say why A Buffalo firefighter was in critical condition at ECMC after a mysterious incident at the Blackthorn Restaurant and Pub on Saturday.

No charges have been filed in connection with the incident , but police are conducting an investigation and a separate fire department investigation is underway.

A source confirmed the names of the injured firefighter as Derek Rose and the suspended firefighter as Richard Manley. Those names were first reported by Eyewitness News.

It is not clear exactly what happened at the Blackthorn Restaurant and Pub on Saturday.

According to police, emergency responders were dispatched to a "rescue call" at the restaurant on Seneca Street in South Buffalo shortly before 5:30 p.m. that day.

A firefighter who was in uniform after marching in the Old Neighborhood St. Patrick's Day parade was found badly hurt and taken to Erie County Medical Center, where he remained Wednesday.

Manley was suspended without pay for 30 days in connection to the Saturday incident, according to a statement from Buffalo Fire Commission William Renaldo on Wednesday.

Tuesday at a news conference, Erie County District Attorney John J. Flynn Jr. criticized those at the Blackthorn who witnessed what happened but haven't come forward to authorities.

There were numerous other firefighters in uniform at the bar, Flynn said, along with other St. Patrick's Day revelers, Flynn said.

"Let's just say that the cooperation is lacking," he told reporters.

It is possible that a crime wasn't committed, but there's no way to know that until witnesses provide information, Flynn said.

In the meantime, a friend of Rose's started a Gofundme campaign to help the injured firefighter's family. He wrote that Rose suffered a head injury and has undergone multiple surgeries.

"Those who know Derek also know that he would give the shirt off his back for a stranger and risks his life daily for the safety of his fellow man. The family needs all the support we can give at this time," the friend wrote.

The page shows a picture of Rose with a woman and two young children.

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.
Blumer Dairy Farm owners Valerie and David Patten were in bed when the doorbell rang at about 10 p.m. Friday, March 11.

One of their employees was at the door, and he had an urgent request: Call 911, because there was a problem at the worker bunkhouse on the Genesee County property.

"He had been able to get out of the trailer, but not before he knew that there was something very bad going on," Valerie Patten said. "He didn't witness any of the violence, but could hear things occurring in the trailer that concerned him, and so he slipped out of the trailer and was able to get down to us."

The Pattens called the sheriff's office, hurriedly got dressed and asked the employee who rushed to their front door to wait in the farm office, where he'd be safe.

As the Pattens were walking out of the house, a sheriff's deputy had arrived, and then another did, as well. As they approached the trailer, they could smell the fire, and then they noticed the front door was open.

Inside, they saw the bodies of two of their workers, Ivan Morales, 30, and Marcelino Gomez Hernandez, 29  both stabbed to death. Working with the sheriff's deputies, the Pattens used a hydrant near the trailer to extinguish the blaze before firefighters arrived.

With the fire out, the search began for answers about what had just occurred at the longtime 450-cow farm in Alexander, which the Pattens have owned since 1988. Within a day, authorities had arrested Raul Cruz, 18, of Warsaw, and Prince N. K. Wilson, 23, of Albion, in connection with the double homicide, charging them with second-degree murder.

Details have trickled out slowly since then. Genesee County District Attorney Kevin T. Finnell told The Buffalo News on Monday that there was no indication of forcible entry at the trailer, and it appears the two suspects "were there upon the invitation of one or more of the people in the trailer."

"The sheriff's department has a good idea of what happened and how it happened," Finnell said. "They are still conducting interviews and following up on leads to ensure that their initial beliefs turn out to be accurate."

DA: Investigators have 'a good idea of what happened' in double homicide at Genesee County dairy farm Genesee County District Attorney Kevin T. Finnell said Monday there was no indication of forcible entry at an employee trailer at an Alexander dairy farm where two workers were stabbed to death earlier this month.

The Pattens referred comments about the investigation to the sheriff's office, which has declined to provide further information.

Valerie Patten called the situation a tragedy. She said Morales and Hernandez were established, hardworking, respectful employees. The farm's other workers also have had a difficult time since the incident, having lost two of their friends, she said.

"Everyone was deeply impacted, and I assure you that none of us have gotten over it or will ever totally get over it," Patten said. "It's just not something that happens in a rural setting."

Her dairy farm, like the rest of the agricultural industry, has relied on Hispanic employees for many years. She said Morales and Hernandez, both born in Mexico, were two of the five employees living in the trailer, which has five individual rooms. Since two people are always working, usually that means three workers are in the trailer at a time.

"It's like losing a member of the family when you have anything like that happen to an employee, and we can't help but think about their families and loved ones and the loss that they've suffered," Patten said.

As they await answers, friends of victims in double homicide at Genesee County farm raise funds for their families "My friend's not here to have a voice, and me and my friends are going to be his voice, and we're not going to stop until we get justice," Patricia Hurd said of Ivan Morales, who along with Marcelino Gomez Hernandez was found stabbed March 11 at Blumer Dairy Farm in the Town of Alexander.

She's also aware of the ongoing efforts to raise money to send their bodies to Mexico for burial, which she understands can be a complicated process.

But, Patten noted, she's had other farmers and neighbors reach out to see how they can help.

"We're certainly  both ourselves personally, and then also from the ag community  going to be assisting and financially assisting in trying to make sure that occurs," she said.

Jon Harris can be reached at 716-849-3482 or jharris@buffnews.com. Follow him on Twitter at @ByJonHarris.

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.
On an early winter morning more than four years ago, Nicholas Altemoos saw his sister's longtime boyfriend walk in the back door of the house and head upstairs toward her bedroom.

He heard some loud noises from the second floor, Altemoos testified Tuesday, like things falling to the floor. Then he heard his then-7-year-old niece scream.

As Alternoos got to the back stairs and started walking up, he saw the boyfriend coming down the stairs "fully engulfed in fire."

"His jacket, his jeans, his everything," Altemoos told jurors. "I got out of the way and threw dishwater on him from the dishpan."

The man in flames coming down the stairs, Frank J. Bredt Jr., caught fire after dousing Elisabeth Bell in gasoline and setting her ablaze in her bedroom, according to Erie County prosecutors.

Firefighters found Bell, 27, dead on the second floor of her Manhattan Avenue home, prosecutors told jurors as Bredt's murder trial began. Bredt, 33, faces two counts of second-degree murder in Bell's death.

Bredt and Bell had a toxic relationship with a lot of arguments, often fueled by alcohol, and they were in the middle of breaking up, according to prosecutors.

In the hours before the alleged attack, Bell had been putting Bredt's belongings, including his power tools and his motorized bicycle, out to the curb, Assistant District Attorney Rebecca Schnirel said. Bell posted about it on Facebook.

"That is what set him off," Schnirel said.

The home, where Bell lived with her mother, two brothers and her daughter, also was Bredt's home for about three years, but he stopped sleeping there about two weeks prior, Altemoos testified.

Bell loved animals and worked at the SPCA, her brother said.

Bredt's defense told the jury they won't see proof from prosecutors during the trial that Bredt is the person who started the fire.

The investigators' "sole focus" was to blame Bredt for the fire, defense attorney Brian Parker told jurors. Parker characterized the investigation as like putting together a puzzle, but in reverse.

"They started with their picture. Their picture was Frank Bredt, the arsonist," Parker said. "And what didn't fit, they brushed it aside. If it didn't match their theory, they ignored it."

A 911 caller reported the fire on Manhattan, in the city's Central Park neighborhood, at about 3:30 a.m. Jan. 11, 2018.

Inside the two-story house, Bell collapsed about 25 feet from her bed, Schnirel told jurors. Bell's daughter, Isabella, who suffered burns to her feet, ran past her mother's burning body in the chaos, she said.

"Make no mistake. This was not an accident, this was calculated," Schnirel said. "This was intentional. This defendant wanted Elisabeth Bell to suffer and he made sure that she did."

Before he went to the house, Bredt called his boss and told him what was happening with his belongings at Bell's house, Scnirel said. He told his boss he was going there and if he didn't find his things, he would burn her whole family down, the assistant district attorney told jurors.

Firefighters at the scene told police there were reports someone had run out of the back door of the house, said Buffalo Police Officer Brian Griffin, who took the stand Tuesday as the prosecution's first witness.

Griffin said he followed footprints in the snow through some backyards on Manhattan and encountered a man with burns in a driveway nearby on Leroy Avenue. It was Bredt.

Officers called for an ambulance and brought Bredt to the front stairs of the house next door. Griffin said Bredt appeared badly burned, and he was trying to keep him calm.

"He just stated to me that he was cold and sorry that he ran, and he was just scared," Griffin told the jury.

At one point, Bredt spontaneously said, "motive and opportunity," Griffin testified.

Bredt was in the driveway outside that Leroy Avenue home because the husband and father who lived there beat him up and threw him there.

Leroy Avenue resident Neal Hicks, who had ejected Bredt from his house, told the jury that Bredt had broken in through a first-floor bedroom window and was hiding in a walk-in closet. Police were already outside the house when he found the intruder.

When he discovered Bredt kneeling in his closet, Bredt stood up, put his finger to his lips and said. "Ssshhh, them boys out there. Them boys out there," Hicks testified.

Investigators found a gallon-sized plastic juice bottle  with Bredt's DNA on it  that had contained gasoline on the floor of Bell's bedroom, as well as two lighters near the staircase between the first and second floors, said Schnirel, who is prosecuting the case with Assistant District Attorney Ryan Haggerty.

Bell's mattress had gasoline on it, too. The only piece of clothing left on Bell's body when she died, her bra, also had gas on it, Schnirel said.

Bredt suffered burns to about half his body, said Parker, who is representing him along with attorney Daniel DuBois. Bredt sat in a wheelchair at the defense table in State Supreme Court Justice M. William Boller's downtown courtroom.

Bredt's trial is scheduled to continue Wednesday.

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.
By Trend

The U.S. exporting every molecule of liquefied natural gas (LNG) that it can to alleviate supply issues in Europe, Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said during an online press briefing, Trend reports.

Already, we have coordinated a series of releases of Strategic Petroleum Reserves to help stabilize energy markets. And as Ive told our fellow IEA members, the U.S. is exporting every molecule of liquified natural gas that we can to alleviate supply issues in Europe. The Biden administration is urging the U.S. oil and gas industry to ramp up production to meet demand and to help lower prices for working families everywhere. And at the same time, as we can see, the tragic flooding along Australias east coast reminds us that the threat of climate change grows larger each day, she said.

Granholm pointed out that the world is sending clear signals.

We have to do everything in our power to address the immediate needs of our people, but the truth is, only clean energy offers us a viable medium- and long-term solution to these kinds of challenges. Clean energy is reliable. It is diverse. It is affordable. Solar, for instance, is cheaper than fossil fuels in most parts of the world. It is the key to greater energy security, to greater energy independence. Its the answer to both climate change and autocrats who are weaponizing fossil energy, noted the energy secretary.

Granholm went on to add that the urgent need to speed up the clean energy transition obviously has never been clearer, that this meeting of the IEA is going to reflect that urgency.

Our theme is the Year of Implementation: Accelerating Global Action on Clean Energy and Energy Security. And our conversations are going to center on immediate actionable steps that IEA members can take, both individually and collectively, to raise our ambitions, to advance our goals, and to create millions of good-paying jobs in the process, she added.
OLAF FUB SEZ: According to social psychologist Erich Fromm, born on this date in 1900, The task we must set for ourselves is not to feel secure, but to be able to tolerate insecurity.

. . .

HOLIDAY RECIPE  Learn the art of making Pisanki, decorated Polish Easter eggs, in classes offered by the Am-Pol Eagle Polish Cultural Enhancement Series on Saturday and April 2. Sessions are at 10 a.m., noon, 2 and 4 p.m. Seating is limited. Fee is $25. To register, call Michelle Kisluk at 716-983-5084.

. . .

HIDDEN HISTORY  Professional archaeologist Douglas Perrelli will talk about how history is uncovered from underground in a program entitled, The Archaeology of Lewiston and Western New York in a program sponsored by the Historical Association of Lewiston at 7 p.m. Thursday in the Lutheran Church of the Messiah Fellowship Hall, 915 Oneida St., Lewiston. Admission is free.

The role of the Black community in the development is highlighted in a free Niagara County Historical Society program at 11 a.m. Saturday in the History Center, 215 Niagara St., Lockport. Speakers will focus on the contributions of Lockports African American Methodist Church. For more info, visit niagarahistory.org.

. . .

TUNED UP  Spring Strings is the theme of the Buffalo Chamber Players concert at 7:30 p.m. Thursday in Asbury Hall, 341 Delaware Ave., with works by Bach, Prokofiev and BCP resident composer Caroline Mallonee. Tickets are $25. Steaming option available. Visit buffalochamberplayers.org.

. . .

FILL THE FREEZER  Beef, chicken, turkeys, chicken, pork and seafood are offered at the fifth annual meat raffle Saturday evening in the Dale Association, 33 Ontario St., Lockport. Doors open at 5 p.m., drawings start at 6. Tickets are $12, $10 pre-sale. Call 716-433-1886 or visit daleassociation.com.

The Tonawanda Lions Club also holds a meat raffle Saturday evening. Doors open at 6 p.m. at Gratwick Hose Company, 110 Ward Road, North Tonawanda, with first draw at 7. Tickets are $10.

. . .

HAPPY BIRTHDAY  David Milch, Jack Trachtenberg, Bob Kaprove, Arthur Eve, Margot Shoemaker, Jim Ranney, Les Greenbaum, Nick Sinatra, Calvin College, Philomena Gallagher, Nick Sinatra, Kelly Barrett, Linda Morrisette, Annie Reese, Mia McCabe, Nick Carone, Arlene Kranz, Paula Weekley, Peter Fiorella, Pat Lerch, Don Jaehn, Ryan D. Smith and Cynthia R. Kelly.

AND THURSDAY  Pat Rasmus, Bonnie Besmanoff, Dave Gillen, Barbara Pieterse, Megan Giambra, Lynn Skubish, Lisa Pupo, Leah Clare Ernst, Rosemary Fehr, James Cellotto Jr., Gabriel Mediak, Noemi Bichler, Woody Miller; Alden Schutte, Madeline Elminowski, Dan Zehler, Liz Merrick, Bud Anderson and Kat Zawodzinski.

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.
Actions typically speak louder than words.

But when it comes to the touchy topic of race, honest but painful dialogue often is necessary to change attitudes before the really hard work of confronting systemic inequity can begin.

That kind of dialogue is going on  again  within and between some churches in Western New York, as well as in other forums.

Sparked by the deaths of unarmed Blacks like Trayvon Martin and George Floyd and the reactions to those homicides  including the 2016 killings of five white Dallas police officers by a Black gunman  it comes amid whats been dubbed the nations racial reckoning. It also comes amid the backlash to any efforts to honestly confront Americas history.

That makes the initiatives going on now both necessary and perilous.

On April 5, Clarence Presbyterian Church will take its yearlong internal effort to better understand the Black experience public with a forum based on Isabel Wilkersons The Warmth of Other Suns, the bestseller that chronicled the Great Migration of nearly 6 million Blacks from the South to the North through the stories of three of them. The 7 p.m. session in the Main Street church also will be livestreamed at clarencepresby.org.

Over the past year, the all-white suburban church has used the PBS series The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross as a guide for monthly discussions that included speakers on topics like Reconstruction and area KKK chapters as well as a trip to the Niagara Falls Underground Railroad Heritage Museum.

Everybody in the program has heard things they didnt know before that they should know, said Robert Poczik, who will lead the April 5 presentation. Anything that opens your mind to something you didnt know is an important learning experience.

Poczik, like many, knew only a little about the Great Migration before delving into the book.

Its something we all should know, he said, which is one reason the church is opening the session to the wider community. Its our history. Its American history.

That recognition of Black history  both the triumphs and the atrocities  as not an add on, but as an integral and inseparable component of U.S. history is still a challenge for too many.

Poczik, who is white, will be the main presenter in the PowerPoint presentation, giving information on the slave trade that predated the book's 1915-1970 timeline, as well as statistical data on African Americans today. In a recorded presentation, his daughter-in-law Brandi, who is Black and lives in the Albany area, will talk about her grandparents migration from Mississippi to New York's capital starting in 1948.

It took a lot of courage to do that, she said of the Blacks who left everything they knew and came North to escape racial violence, second-class citizenship and limits on their opportunity to pursue the American dream.

Understanding those challenges, and how they continue to impact African Americans today, is one of the goals of the Clarence Presbyterian effort. It's also a goal of the cross-racial #Onebody initiative launched by three Catholic churches: the predominantly Black St. Martin de Porres on Northampton Street in Buffalo, and the nearly all-white parishes of Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mother on Harris Hill Road in Clarence and St. Lawrence on East Delavan Avenue, near the Buffalo-Cheektowaga border.

On April 23, from 12:30 to 3:30 p.m., #Onebody will present the documentary On These Grounds at St. Martin De Porres, followed by a discussion of the issues raised by the film. The documentary stems from the 2015 viral video of a white South Carolina school resource officer pulling a Black girl from her desk and slamming her to the floor and the historical context that made such an incident possible.

#Onebody grew out of an effort to share resources among Catholic parishes facing a priest shortage and other challenges. While the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops talked about intercultural competencies, St. Martin De Porres Marianne Partee knew there needed to be a much more direct focus: race.

Wed already lost Trayvon, she said, recalling her feelings as a Black mother when the teen was shot to death in 2012 while armed with a bag of Skittles and an iced tea. That, she said, was when African Americans embraced the need to make Black Lives Matter.

When the Dallas officers were killed in an ambush four years later, it got whites to recognize the need to get on board.

Still, such conversations are not easy. There was trepidation on all sides. The first meeting among the parishes was held at St. Aloysius Gonzaga, a neutral site, said the Rev. Ronald Sajdak, Nativity pastor.

Partee, a SUNY Erie Community College social sciences professor who will co-facilitate the April 23 discussion, said they needed to create a comfort zone for both Blacks and whites to open up because white affinity groups cant do this alone, even though they need to do the work.

Professional Blacks shared stories of fear of police and of disrespect that Sajdak thought never happened in Buffalo today, but it does. Whites talked honestly of their fears of Blacks and of urban areas.

Partee said shes seen changes since the effort began in 2016, with friendships formed, acknowledgement of prejudices people never had dealt with and whites recognizing that their avoidance of bringing Blacks into their spaces was a result of their own biases and fears.

Thats progress. But she and others in the effort recognize that change is slow.

They also recognize that acknowledging bias still is short of taking action to change systems that privilege some and disadvantage others on the basis of race.

How do I talk about this without paying any price whatsoever and without breaking white solidarity, is how Robin DiAngelo framed the challenge Sunday.

DiAngelo, author of the 2018 bestseller White Fragility, talked about such issues in an online forum hosted by Buffalo writer Nanette D. Massey, who uses the book when presenting workshops on talking honestly about race. (Disclosure: Massey and I belong to the same media organization.)

In advising whites who want to have such discussions, DiAngelo said they should reframe the question from if theyve been shaped by white supremacy to how have they been shaped by white supremacy because, even though she grew up poor, her experience was shaped by my whiteness.

How did being white shape how you grew up in poverty  because I wasnt also dealing with race, DiAngelo said.

But once whites start asking those questions, it raises the obligation to follow up by asking what systemic changes need to be made  changes much of this country is retreating from rather than embracing, if court decisions and laws on everything from affirmative action to voting rights are any indication.

Those questions are a tough ask for people not ready even to learn about the experiences of others.

There are people who left our congregation because they didnt like what I was saying publicly, said Sajdak, the Nativity pastor.

Yet those questions  which involve dismantling structures that create white privilege  need to be posed at some point if the dialogue is to result in more than just talk.

The #Onebody effort, which started with three churches but has influenced others, began with an interracial dialogue and already has seen some change. For example, Partee said, one participant who worked in real estate became much more conscious of how the firms agents were directing potential homebuyers to neighborhoods.

At Clarence Presbyterian, pastor Greg Hall said he has been talking with a Black church in Buffalo about how to move beyond his churchs internal dialogue.

We live in a monochrome community, so we dont have the opportunities to discuss things, he said.

To me its very apparent, Poczik, a retired state Education Department job trainer, said of the need for such dialogues to eventually progress to tackling concrete issues like redlining and other manifestations of systemic racism. But its a very sensitive topic to people.

Hes right. Perhaps thats why it seems like weve been here before, particularly for those who remember the talking circles and Buffalo conversations of the 1990s.

While dialogue alone is hardly sufficient, it is a prerequisite. So its encouraging that churches and workshops have again begun the conversation. Against a backdrop of Black death that has created a new sense of urgency, maybe this time will be different.

Maybe confronting race is like a spiral staircase: We keep coming back around to the same point, but on a higher plane.

That is, if we have the courage to do it right.

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.
A knife-wielding man shot by Buffalo police on March 14 outside a North Buffalo apartment building was arraigned Tuesday at Erie County Medical Center and charged with two counts of menacing a police officer, while the two officers who shot him were cleared of any wrongdoing.

Erie County District Attorney John J. Flynn said it was "crystal clear" the two police officers had reason to shoot Dominique Thomas, 30, who was shown on an officer's body camera video footage lunging at the officers with a knife.

"I'm not here to hurt him," Flynn said of Thomas. "I'm not here to persecute him. I'm here to prosecute him."

Video shows police officer screaming 'Why?' after shooting man who ran at them with a knife Buffalo police on Wednesday released a 3 minute 44 second video from a body-worn cameras of one of the police officers who shot a man armed with a knife who was having a mental health crisis early Monday morning.

Flynn dismissed complaints from some that social workers or mental health professionals alone should have been left to respond to Thomas' call without the presence of police officers. Mental health workers, he said, might have been harmed without the presence of police.

"Sending them alone would have been a recipe for disaster," Flynn said.

Flynn said a 911 call Thomas made to police was not a mental health call.

"It was not a mental health call," Flynn said. "It was a 911 call in which the person on the other end of the line said, 'Someone is trying to kill me.' "

Robert Thomas, the brother of Dominique Thomas, became emotional Tuesday when talking about what transpired when police were dispatched to the call at about 4:30 a.m. on March 14.

Its a tough situation because I never ever thought that myself, my brother or anybody in my family would be going through something like this, you know," Robert Thomas said at a news conference outside City Hall. "It hurts. I couldnt watch the video twice, he said, breaking down in tears.

Dominique Thomas has schizophrenia and a history of mental illness, said Dominique Calhoun, an organizer of Tuesdays news conference. Community members gathered to talk about less lethal measures police could have used to subdue Dominique Thomas, such as Tasers and BolaWraps.

They also advocated for the Police Departments behavioral health team to operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week but said they would settle for two eight-hour shifts for now.

The team, created in September 2020, pairs specially trained officers with mental health clinicians, and it operates weekdays on a 10-hour shift from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.

According to police, those are the hours when the majority of mental health calls occur, said police spokesman Michael J. DeGeorge.

Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia said Tuesday that the department plans to expand the teams hours using federal aid and grants.

We have and will call them in depending on the circumstances and the situation, Gramaglia said of the team.

The department began issuing Tasers earlier this month. In the last two weeks, about 170 officers have received the required 10-hour training.

The officers who responded to the March 14 call involving Thomas did not have Tasers, the commissioner has said.

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 previously said.

The question is, why wasnt this already done? Calhoun said. Saying youre deploying them now is a little too late for the young man who lies in a hospital bed with metal plates in his face when all he did was call the police for help.

Prosecutors charged Thomas with intentionally placing the officers, Phillip Edwards and Michael Ramos, in reasonable fear of physical injury or death by displaying the knife and refusing their multiple orders to drop the weapon, said Flynn.

Flynn said four officers responded to the call and attempted to talk to Thomas in the stairwell of the apartment building on the 1900 block of Hertel Avenue where Thomas pulled out a knife. Officers continued to talk to him while retreating from the building and into the street. Flynn said video footage from the body camera of one of the officers captured the entire incident.

"The police officers were clearly saying, 'Let's resolve this,' and 'How can we help you?' " Flynn said.

Police shooting on Hertel brings focus to new kind of health care facility If the person wants help in Buffalo, options are few. But after Monday's shooting of a man on Hertel Avenue by Buffalo police officers, another option is getting some attention: the crisis stabilization center, a 24-hour operation that provides a comprehensive array of services that take a holistic approach to helping a person in need.

Flynn said the body cam footage showed Thomas, armed with a knife, making the initial lunge toward the officers who were pleading with him before Edwards and Ramos fired their weapons, together striking Thomas six times, including in the jaw, upper shoulder, neck area and foot. Thomas is recuperating at ECMC.

A forensic examination of the incident is pending, Flynn said.

"While I am sensitive to his mental health issues, I still have to abide by the law," Flynn said, regarding Thomas' purported mental health condition.

Flynn noted that on Aug. 4, 2020, Thomas allegedly threatened to kill his doctor after being treated at ECMC. A warrant was issued for Thomas' arrest after he failed to appear for a previously scheduled arraignment.

Thomas is scheduled to return on both cases on April 6. A forensic examination was ordered by the court to assess Thomas mental health.

If convicted of the highest charge, Thomas faces a maximum sentence of seven years in prison.

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.

Harold McNeil Follow Harold McNeil 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 could all be very innocent. Indeed, it wouldnt be the least be surprising if it was  most of it, anyway. Nevertheless, the three Western New York school districts cited for financial mismanagement need to fix their problems and let their taxpayers know theyve done it. And other school districts should take note.

In audits of school districts in Holland, Albion and Frewsburg, State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli cited significant problems with fiscal oversight, including inadequately documented payments, untrained financial administrators, careless budgeting and improper use of funds. Each costs local taxpayers.

Except in the states largest school districts, school board members are volunteers. They have some kind of passion for public education, but may have little experience in overseeing any large organization, let alone one that deals in millions of dollars and is subject to public rules of accounting. They need their own training and they need to hire the right people for key positions, whether they involve classroom work or use of public funds. In those districts, something went wrong.

Worst was Frewsburg. There, auditors concluded that poor financial oversight allowed the districts former treasurer to misuse funds, including those donated for scholarships, concealing misappropriated and missing money. The review found that $6,982 is either missing or was improperly withdrawn from two fund accounts. Also, collections were not deposited in a timely manner or properly supported, and records were not properly maintained.

In Holland, auditors say the School Board failed to ensure that financial claims were adequately supported and properly audited. It also found that the districts claims auditor was not properly trained for the responsibility, raising the risk that improper payments would be approved.

In Albion, the audit cited unrealistic budgets and poor management of its fund balance reserves. School officials couldnt even explain the finance committees role in budgeting or identify other financial processes. As a consequence, it said, the district dunned residents with higher-than-necessary property taxes, exceeding the legal limit on the size of its fund balance.

These are all serious deficiencies. All take money from taxpayers pockets. With the notable exception of misuse of funds, all may be related to the problems that can arise when public-spirited volunteers take on the task of running an operation whose complexity and importance demands a high level of professionalism.

Leaders of these school districts owe their residents a forthright explanation of what went wrong and how they plan to address the weaknesses exposed. And other school districts should review their own processes and fix any problems before DiNapoli turns on the lights.

  

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.
I would like to respond to the recent letter in The Buffalo News calling the Green New Deal a fraud. A plan to save the planet and prevent the extinction of the human species is not a socialist progressive fraud. True, it will do nothing to stop China, India or Russia from emitting greenhouse gases, but it will stop the United States.

It would be fitting that we lead the world in this endeavor and set an example.

The idea that we will be cutting good union jobs by not drilling is laughable.

The writer accuses us of fawning over and selling our nations soul to dictatorial regimes for oil. Dictatorial is always the word used against any duly elected socialist to demonize socialism. It has nothing to do with oil. He also demonizes Iran for chanting Death to America without taking into account that the CIA actually did death to Iran by fomenting a coup and installing the pro-western shah so that British and American oil companies could steal their oil.

The problem with the Green New Deal is not because of the things the writer mentions. It is because its nowhere near enough to stop the march to our extinction, which is happening faster than most people realize or want to admit. Our extinction doesnt matter, as long as money is being made.

Spencer Lingenfelter

Alden
Spring has arrived on the calendar, but someone should have told Mother Nature. Rain and less-than-average temperatures have hampered angling efforts a bit, but things are about to explode. Maybe after this weekend. New freshwater fishing regulations go into effect April 1. Be sure to check them out at dec.ny.gov.

Lake Erie and tributaries

Fishing has been great in the tributaries as of late, according to local guide Justin Warriner of North Tonawanda. Trout are eating beads and jigs, typical for spring fishing. Water has been up and down, pushing new fish into the streams. Warriner said he expects fishing will stay steady and pick up the next couple of weeks and then start to slow in mid-April. Warriner had a special offer in March to take kids fishing for free in the streams, and it was such a success that he is extending his offer through the end of the spring trout fishing in the tributaries. Seeing the smiles of the kids is enough pay for me, Warriner said. Call him at 716-946-6514 for details. Only a few reports coming from other tributaries such as 18 Mile and Walnut creeks, according to Shub Stevens at Catt. Creek Bait and Tackle in Irving. Both creeks were producing fresh steelhead before the rain hit. Olive and gold marabou jigs have been a hot color combo. Nightcrawlers are also working well, Stevens said. Walleye season will open May 1.

Niagara River

The bite on the Niagara River has been really tough, according to Capt. Matt Yablonsky of Wet Net Charters. The trout only seem to want minnows. A couple of bites a day have been the norm for most boats. Some lakers are still in the river that are willing to bite. There has also been quite a bit of ice in the river from the wind pushing it over and under the boom. At last report, the boom could be considered for removal starting next week. However, there must be less than 250 square miles of ice remaining in Lake Erie before that can happen. The Bar has been adequate, Yablonsky said, but with the wind and ice, you must have the right conditions to get out there. We are in the March lull right now. Capt. John DeLorenzo, of Niagara River Guides, agrees. Fishing has been slow for the most part. Minnows are best baits to use while drifting. A lot of bait is in the river. DeLorenzo did catch a few fish on pink sacs. The Niagara Bar and lower drifts hold a few browns. Capt. Ryan Shea, of Brookdog Fishing, took John Jarosz of Lakeview and his sons, Matt and Dave, from Elma to explore a bit in the lake with spoons off the riggers. They managed to catch some lake trout. Tommy Ortolano, of Lake Effect Bait and Tackle in Tonawanda, reports some anglers are catching perch around Beaver Island; rainbows and lake trout are being caught from Ferry Street all the way up to the bridge; and perch are being caught around the Ontario Street lighthouse and near the sand piles along Tifft Street near the Skyway. On April 1, the NYPA fishing platform in Devils Hole, as well as the NYPA reservoir and water intakes access sites, are scheduled to open, if the weather is agreeable. Trout are still cooperating in the gorge from shore, according to Mike Rzucidlo of Niagara Falls, casting No. 4 spinners. Beads or other egg imitations will also work. He had 4-5 feet of visibility Tuesday.

Lake Ontario and tributaries

Capt. Rich Hajecki, of Crazy Yankee Sportfishing, has started to venture out into Lake Ontario for some early season trolling action out of Rochester. Water temperatures were just less than 40 degrees and his focus was inside of 20 feet of water. He found a great mix of year classes, using a typical spring brown trout spread. They ran six flat-lined sticks off their inline boards about 70-120 feet back. The downriggers fished spoons down 5 feet with 30-foot leads. Lastly, their Chinook divers pulled spoons back 10 feet. Both natural and colored lures caught them as they trolled in and out of dirty and clean water pockets. The top producers were Bay Rat lures in Ayu and Can't Afford It. Best spoons were UV Green Jeans and UV Black and Silver Bay Rat 3.5. Pier action is starting to take off, too. The West Pier in Olcott is open as is the Wilson pier. Casting with Little Cleos or stickbaits will catch fish, as will minnows and worms. Some perch are around, too. A stocking of coho salmon took place last week so be careful to release them quickly and unharmed. Tributary action is fair, with Rzucidlo saying he caught some brown trout up to 10 pounds. Burt Dam has been producing a few fish, too. Rain is in the forecast so that could impact the tributaries heading into the weekend.

Chautauqua Lake

The ice has really started to come off the lake the last day or so, according to Leah Stow, at Hogans Hut. Wind and rain last weekend helped. Mike Sperry with Chautauqua Reel Outdoors said the lake is open now and there are some nice perch and a few crappies running in the canals. This crappie bite should really kick in soon. Emerald Shiners, tubes, and Mini Mites are working. Remember that the minimum size for crappie will be 10 inches starting April 1.

Stocking updates

Last weeks Fishing Beat gave out Region 9 stocking numbers from the Randolph hatchery for the month of March and this week we will dish out stocking dates and locations for the first week of April. They are:

On the opening day of the inland trout fishing season (April 1), Chautauqua County will receive trout stockings at Bear Lake Outlet, Canadaway Creek, Conewango Creek (West Branch) and Mill Creek. Cattaraugus Countys Five Mile Creek also will receive stocking in the Town of Allegany.

On April 4, Allegany County creeks Canaseraga, Black, and Vandermark will receive a mix of browns and rainbows. The same for Chautauqua Countys Clay Pond.

April 5 stocking sites will all be in Cattaraugus County, targeting the South Branch of Cattaraugus Creek, Forks Creek, Great Valley Creek, Mansfield Creek and Wrights Creek.

On April 6, the Genesee River in Allegany County at Wellsville will receive trout stockings, as well as Quaker Lake and Red House Lake in Cattaraugus County.

On April 7, additional plants will take place in Allegany Countys Genesee River at Amity, as well as Cattaraugus Countys County Pond A and B, and Paisley Park Pond  all in Randolph. To find out stocking numbers and locations, call the Randolph Hatchery Hotline at 358-2050.

Capt. Bobs Outdoors Derby Results

Steve Hawk Hawkins of Capt. Bobs Outdoors in Clarence has finalized the results in his winter fishing derby. Participation was good this year, through the ice and in soft water. Here are the winners for the eight species categories:

Steelhead  Andrew Wengender (Rochester) with a 33-inch Oswego River fish he caught on a Power Minnow; Brown Trout  Josh Delaney (Hornell) with a 28.25-inch trout he caught in Johnson Creek using a VooDoo jig tipped with a Power Minnow; Walleye  Andrew Wengender (Rochester) with a 28.5-inch walleye he caught in Long Pond west of Rochester on a shiner; Northern pike  Freddie Simmeth, 9, (Cheektowaga) with a 33.25-inch pike from Wilson Harbor on a shiner.

Yellow Perch  Greg White (Alden) with a 13-3/8-inch fish that he caught on a spike from a private pond; Rudd  California Joe Pavalonis (Buffalo) repeated as winner with an 18-inch Niagara River fish he caught on a jig; Crappie Brandon Wagner (Cheektowaga) with a 15.25-inch fish from Cuba Lake on a jig tipped with a plastic; Bluegill/sunfish  Walter Hribik (Corfu) with 11-inch bluegill from Cuba Lake caught on a Z-Viber tipped with a wax worm.
By Trend

President of India Ram Nath Kovind will pay a state visit to Turkmenistan on April 1-4, 2022 at the invitation of the head of Turkmenistan, Trend reports with reference to the Business Turkmenistan information center.

During the visit, Ram Nath Kovind will meet with President of Turkmenistan Serdar Berdimuhamedow to discuss various issues of bilateral and regional cooperation, as well as to address follow-up to the India-Central Asia summit held in January 2022.

A number of agreements and memorandums of understanding are also expected to be signed.
Fortune Business Insights

Companies Profiled in Thermoplastic Pipe Market AreWienerberger (Austria), Advanced Drainage Systems (U.S.), Baker Hughes (U.S.), Georg Fischer (Switzerland), National Oilwell Varco (NOV) (U.S.), Magma Global (U.K.), KWH Group (Finland), Exxon Mobil (U.S.), Sasol (South Africa), Sibur (Russia), Uponor Corporation (Finland), Simtech (U.S.), Topolo (China)

Pune, India, March 23, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The global Thermoplastic Pipe Market size was valued at USD 3.09 billion in 2020. The market is expected to grow from USD 3.29 billion in 2021 to USD 4.65 billion by 2028, exhibiting a CAGR of 5.1% during the forecast period. The rising popularity of the pipe for oil & gas extraction and strong demand from the non-corrosive pipes may foster market development. Fortune Business Insights presents this information in its report titled Thermoplastic Pipe Market, 2021-2028.

Thermoplastic pipes are made using polymer materials that are chemically processed and synthesized in substantial amounts. Its low corrosion and lower maintenance may propel its sales. Furthermore, the rising popularity of the product from the oil & gas industry is expected to foster thermoplastic pipes demand. They are an effective alternative to plumbing and piping solutions due to their advantages. Moreover, the rising demand for low corrosion pipes is likely to incite industry growth.

Request to Sample PDF Brochure: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/enquiry/request-sample-pdf/thermoplastic-pipe-market-106497

Companies Profiled in Thermoplastic Pipe Market Report

Wienerberger (Austria)

Advanced Drainage Systems (U.S.)

Baker Hughes (U.S.)

Georg Fischer (Switzerland)

National Oilwell Varco (NOV) (U.S.)

Magma Global (U.K.)

KWH Group (Finland)

Exxon Mobil (U.S.)

Sasol (South Africa)

Sibur (Russia)

Uponor Corporation (Finland)

Simtech (U.S.)

Topolo (China)

COVID-19 Impact:

Supply Chain Disruptions to Impede Market Development

This market is expected to be negatively affected during the COVID-19 pandemic because of supply chain disruptions. A sudden spike in COVID infections led to stringent lockdown restrictions. As a result, many industries came to a complete halt, resulting in massive supply chain problems. Further, the lack of transport resulted in a lack of raw materials. However, despite lockdown, the adoption of automated production machinery, reduced capacities, part-time shifts, advanced sanitization methods, and social distancing enabled companies to function normally. The factors may propel market development during the pandemic.

Story continues

Click here to get the short-term and long-term impact of COVID-19 on this market.

Please visit: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/thermoplastic-pipe-market-106497

Segments

By product type, the market is segmented into thermoplastic composite pipe (TCP) and reinforced thermoplastic composite pipe (RTP). As per polymer type, it is classified into polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF), polypropylene pipe (PP), poly vinyl chloride (PVC) pipe, and polyethylene (PE) pipe. Based on application, it is categorized into utilities & renewables, mining & dredging, waste & wastewater, and oil & gas. Regionally, it is clubbed into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and the Middle East & Africa.

Report Coverage

The report provides a detailed analysis of the top segments and the latest trends in the market. It comprehensively discusses the driving and restraining factors and the impact of COVID-19 on the market. Additionally, it examines the regional developments and the strategies undertaken by the market's key players.

Drivers and Restraints

Rising Demand in Renewable Energy and Oil & Gas Sector to Foster Market Progress

Rising focus on developing renewable energy resources may boost their demand for thermoplastic pipes globally. Its flexibility, lightness, and anti-corrosive properties boost consumers reliance on the product. It enables the companies to lower costs and boost production activities. Further, the rising pipe adoption from the oil & gas industry is expected to facilitate industry growth. For example, Strohm acquired a contract with the oil & gas industry in Western Australia.

Moreover, its lower maintenance costs and longer lifespan are expected to surge its popularity among several manufacturers. In addition, the pipes ability to withstand extreme pressures and heat is expected to increase its adoption. These factors may drive the thermoplastic pipe market growth.

However, concerns regarding safety and piping materials nature may impede the industrys growth.

Ask for Customization: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/enquiry/customization/thermoplastic-pipe-market-106497

Regional Insights

Rapid Urbanization and Smart Cities Development to Fuel Market Progress in Asia Pacific

Asia Pacific is expected to dominate the thermoplastic pipe market share because of rapid urbanization and the development of smart cities. The market in Asia Pacific stood at USD 0.99 billion in 2020 and is expected to gain a considerable market share. Further, the rising adoption of cost-effective transportation methods facilitates industry development.

In Asia Pacific, increasing potable water and sewage systems access initiatives is expected to nurture the demand for the product. Furthermore, India has raised safety concerns and sustained demand for polyvinyl chloride (PVC). These factors are likely to foster market development.

In North America, rising demand for the adoption of thermoplastic pipe to eliminate steel pipe drawbacks such as fatigue, weight, and corrosion is expected to fuel product demand. For example, the U.S. Department of Transportation (U.S. DOT) announced the final rule in November 2018 to amend the adoption of plastics in natural gas transportation pipes. These factors may bolster market growth in the upcoming years.

In Europe, the rising adoption of renewable energy and achieving a neutral climate till 2050 may propel market development.

Competitive Landscape

Major Players Opt for Novel Product Launches to Boost Brand Image

Prominent players operating in the market launch novel products to attract consumers and boost their brand image. For example, Baker Hughes launched its next-generation Onshore Composite Flexible Pipe in January 2021. Through this launch, the company shall focus on developing solutions to eliminate costs of ownership and corrosion in industrial, oil and gas, and conventional steel pipes. Its anti-corrosive, lightweight, and flexible property is expected to boost its brand image. Further, companies adopt research and development strategies to develop better products and boost their market position.

Quick Thermoplastic Pipe Market Research Report: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/checkout-page/106497

Industry Development

August 2021: Petrobras awarded Prysmian Group a new contract worth USD 75.2 million for the supply of 200km high-end deep-water electro-hydraulic umbilicals that use Thermoplastic technology and Steel Tube. In addition, the company shall also offer specialized logistic and offshore services for green and brown field projects in Brazil.

Major Table of Contents:

Introduction Research Scope Market Segmentation Research Methodology Definitions & Assumptions

Executive Summary

Market Dynamics Market Drivers Market Restraints Market Opportunities

Key Insights Key Emerging Trends  For Major Countries Latest Technological Advancement Insight on Regulatory Landscape Industry SWOT Analysis Porter Five Forces Analysis

Qualitative Analysis  Impact of COVID-19 Impact of COVID-19 on the Thermoplastic Pipe Market Steps Taken by the Government to Overcome the Impact Key Developments in the Industry in Response to COVID-19 Potential Opportunities and Challenges due to COVID-19 Outbreak

Global Thermoplastic Pipe Market (USD Billion) Analysis, Insights, and Forecast, 2017-2028 Key Findings Market Analysis, Insights and Forecast  By Product Type Reinforced Thermoplastic Pipe (RTP) Thermoplastic Composite Pipe (TCP) Market Analysis, Insights and Forecast  By Polymer Type Polyethylene (PE) Pipe Poly Vinyl Chloride (PCV) Pipe Polypropylene (PP) Pipe Polyvinylidene Fluoride (PVDF) Others Market Analysis, Insights and Forecast  By Applications Oil & Gas Water & Wastewater Mining & Dredging Utilities & Renewables



TOC Continued..

Speak to Analyst: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/enquiry/speak-to-analyst/thermoplastic-pipe-market-106497

Have a Look at Related Research Insights:

Solid Oxide Fuel Cell Market Size , Share & COVID-19 Impact Analysis, By Application (Stationary, Transport, Portable), By End-User (Commercial, Data Centers, Military & Defense, and Others), and Regional Forecast, 2021-2028

Circuit Breaker Market Size , Share & COVID-19 Impact Analysis, By Voltage (Low, Medium, and High), By Installation (Indoor and Outdoor), by Rated Voltage (Upto 500V, 500V  1kV, 1kV  15kV, 15kV  50kV, 50kV  70kV, 70kV  150kV, 150kV  300kV, 300kV  600kV, 600kV  800kV, and Above 800kV) and by End-user (Industrial, Commercial, Residential, and Utility) and Regional Forecast, 2021-2028

Recloser Market Size , Share & Industry Analysis, By Phase (Single-Phase, Three-Phase, Others), By Control (Electric, Hydraulic, Others), By Voltage (Low Voltage, Medium Voltage, High Voltage), By Interruption Type (Oil, Vacuum), and Regional Forecast, 2019-2026

Saudi Arabia Offshore Support Vessel (OSV) Market Size , Share & COVID-19 Impact Analysis, By Vessel Type (Anchor Handling Tug Supply Vessel (AHTS), Platform Supply Vessel (PSV), Crew Vessel, Tug Boats, and Others), By Water Depth (Shallow Water, Deep Water, and Ultra-Deep Water), By Application (Oil & Gas, Offshore Wind, Offshore Desalination Plant, Patrolling, Research & Surveying, and Others), and National Forecast, 2021-2028

About Us:

Fortune Business Insights delivers accurate data and innovative corporate analysis, helping organizations of all sizes make appropriate decisions. We tailor novel solutions for our clients, assisting them to address various challenges distinct to their businesses. Our aim is to empower them with holistic market intelligence, providing a granular overview of the market they are operating in.

Contact Us:

Fortune Business Insights Pvt. Ltd.

9th Floor, Icon Tower,

Baner - Mahalunge Road

Baner, Pune-411045, Maharashtra, India.

Phone:

US:+1 424 253 0390

UK: +44 2071 939123

APAC: +91 744 740 1245

Email: sales@fortunebusinessinsights.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fortune-business-insights

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FortuneBusinessInsightsPvtLtd

Twitter: https://twitter.com/FBInsightPvtLtd




One thing is certain as President Joe Biden heads to Europe for meetings on Russia's invasion of Ukraine: more sanctions are coming.

The West has already hit Russia with sanctions on everything from international banking access to the yachts of Russias oligarchs  largely severing the 11th-largest economy by GDP from the rest of the world.

Biden and his allies say they have further to go. Bidens top economic adviser, Brian Deese, told Yahoo Finance on Tuesday the measures to come overall will be wide-ranging.

I think weve surprised markets and President Putin in terms of the resolve of our allies and partners, Deese said. He added that leaders will discuss adding new sanctions to the overall effort to make sure that the intended goal of imposing maximum pain is actually continuing as we need to sustain this effort.

To add to that pain, Biden plans to announce new sanctions on Thursday on most of the more than 300 Russian lawmakers who make up Russias lower house of parliament as well as other Russian elites, the Wall Street Journal reported.

WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 23: U.S. President Joe Biden walks towards members of the press prior to a Marine One departure from the White House on March 23, 2022 in Washington, DC. President Biden is traveling to Europe to meet with NATO and EU leaders to discuss Russias invasion of Ukraine. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said during a briefing with reporters that the Biden administration has already pursued three avenues to assist Ukraine since tensions began to heat up: supplying weapons, imposing sanctions, and fortifying NATO. The trip will involve further actions all three fronts, he says.

Sullivan says the overall mission is to cement our collective resolve as the fighting continues.

Thursday will be key on the sanctions front, with Biden scheduled to meet with a constantly reshuffling cast of world leaders for NATO and G7 and European Union summits all stacked back to back.

We have identified a broad set of oligarchs

In addition to the new sanctions on Russian lawmakers, further restrictions will likely target oligarchs  wealthy individuals in Russia who also wield political power.

"We have identified a broad set of oligarchs and we are looking actively at expanding that list," Deese said when asked about Roman Abramovich, a Russian billionaire widely known for owning the Chelsea football club. You can certainly anticipate that when the president heads to Europe and talks about additional sanctions measures that will be one of the topics on the agenda.

Story continues

Director of the National Economic Council Brian Deese during a briefingat the White House in January. (NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP via Getty Images)

European and Canadian authorities have already imposed sanctions on Abramovich, which include barring him from selling tickets to Chelsea matches, operating his team store, or otherwise generating revenue from his team. His U.S. assets could be next, including a $50 million estate near Aspen.

In addition to the new sanctions on oligarchs and others, White House aides plan to "tighten existing sanctions to crack down on evasion and to ensure robust enforcement," Sullivan said.

Joint action on oil

Russian oil has tested Western unity from the beginning. After some initial hesitation, the U.S. and U.K. banned imports of Russian oil, but other European nations didn't follow suit.

Germany, for one, has continued to import energy but recently signed a deal with Qatar to pivot at least some of the demand. Other countries like Hungary have been clear they want to wean themselves off of Russian oil eventually.

We will be talking about measures that we can take collectively to support European energy security and European economic relief, as well as making sure we're doing everything to help American consumers and the American economy through this effort, Deese says.

For his part, Sullivan promises that a joint action is coming this week on the oil issue while acknowledging that some nations may not be in a position to ban Russian oil.

After his time in Brussels, Biden will visit Warsaw Friday and Saturday to meet with U.S. troops deployed to the region as well as for a bilateral meeting with Polish President Andrzej Duda. White House officials say Biden has no designs on visiting Ukraine itself as the prime ministers of Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovenia recently did.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken briefly stepped briefly onto Ukrainian soil a few weeks back, but for now the White House says Biden's travel will focus on Warsaw, roughly 170 miles from Ukraine.

Ben Werschkul is a writer and producer for Yahoo Finance in Washington, DC.

Read the latest financial and business news from Yahoo Finance

Follow Yahoo Finance on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Flipboard, LinkedIn, YouTube, and reddit.
S Korean Market Regulator Wants to Label Upbit, Bithumb Large Conglomerates

Source: Adobe/PRANGKUL

South Koreas biggest crypto exchanges are set to be regulated by the nations conglomerates regulator  a sign they have grown from relative obscurity into mega-companies in the space of just a few years. But the regulatory move would also ramp up scrutiny on what is already a heavily policed industry.

The Kookmin Ilbo reported that the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) is looking to classify Bithumb and Dunamu  the operator of the market-leading Upbit exchange  as large conglomerate firms, due to the fact that they represent a massive combined 90% of the national crypto market.

The FTC is set to officially announce its new classifications on May 1.

Classification as a large business group or conglomerate requires firms to abide by stricter regulatory compliance, and would entail closer scrutiny. South Koreas business landscape is dominated by family-run business groups  the likes of Samsung, LG, CJ, Hyundai, and SK. Known as chaebol in South Korea, these business groups have been accused of wielding disproportionate amounts of power  and several governments have attempted to tackle this by breaking companies up and imposing strict regulations on the companies.

The FTC, thus, has been doing the kind of work done by a monopolies commission in other nations.

Large conglomerate firms must abide by additional financial disclosure requirements, and must post regular reports on the status of their stock holdings.

Company directors and their family members are also obliged to abide by strict expropriation rules and the company must observe. Certain blocks are also placed on investment and cross-holding  whereby publicly-traded companies hold significant quantities of shares in other stock exchange-listed firms.

A wrinkle has presented itself, however. In order to prove that a company should be classified as a large business group, the FTC must prove that its total assets are worth some USD 4bn. However, the report pointed out that the FTC had counted client assets as well as exchange funds in its calculations.

Unnamed crypto industry officials were quoted as warning that further regulatory pressure would likely stifle growth.

And the results of the recent Presidential election could provide a further roadblock. President-Elect Yoon Suk-yeol has spoken in positive terms about the domestic crypto industry, and is minded to promote growth in the sector. Yoon will be sworn in on May 10  just nine days after the FTC announces its decision.

But the prospect of running into bother with a new President may be off-putting for the FTC, particularly as Yoon (who met with Bithumb and Upbit officials prior to the election) wants to increase the crypto markets size by applying market-friendly policies and taking a softer regulatory touch on the crypto market, Kookmin Ilbo noted.

Regardless, the FTC appears determined to act. An official was quoted as stating:

It would be difficult for us to create exceptions that only apply in the case of crypto exchanges.

Bithumb was founded in 2014 and Upbit in 2017. The former has recently unveiled plans to expand into the metaverse with a subsidiary named Bithumb Meta, while Upbits blockchain subsidiary Lambda256 recently raised some USD 60m in a Series B funding round that reportedly valued the company at over USD 300m.

___

Learn more:

- South Korean Gaming Firms Looking to Emulate Axie Infinity P2E Crypto Gaming Success

- Big Four S Korean Crypto Exchanges Hired 600+ Employees in 2021  And Theyre Not Done Yet



- Upbit Operator Posts Record Profits, Eyes US Expansion

- Japans Crypto Exchanges Set to Speed Up and Simplify Crypto Listing Process
After a two-year hiatus due to COVID-19, the 30th Empty Bowls event hosted by Carlisle Arts Learning Center and Dickinson College returned Monday to raise funds for Project SHARE.

Becky Richeson, CALCs executive director, said after the event that CALC will present a check to Project SHARE for about $4,000 that will support the 1,600 families in the community who face food insecurity.

She said the event was a huge success.

First, it was the 30th anniversary and we were all together again  coming together as a community is wonderful in and of itself, Richeson said.

The fundraiser was held at Project SHAREs headquarters at 5 N. Orange St. in Carlisle from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. In previous years, it was held at the Holland Union building on Dickinson Colleges campus.

We reformatted the event and held it in the Project SHARE distribution room so that we could showcase the work of Project SHARE, Richeson said. They are an important resource in our community. By holding it there, more Project SHARE staff and volunteers were able to be involved and community members could see where their good work happens.

Richeson said around 200 people attended the event, including ticket-holders and volunteers. Each attendee purchased a $25 ticket for the evening and selected a handmade bowl to fill with soup and later take home as a reminder of the event and the meaning behind it.

CALC officials said in a news release that they coordinated the creation of about 300 bowls for the event, each handmade by local artists of all ages and Dickinson students.

Once attendees had selected a bowl, they could fill it with homemade soup from Sage Cafe, Spoons Cafe, the Project SHARE kitchen, Radish & Rye and Red Tomato Farm as well as bread from the Wholesome Loaf, and eat at tables that filled the event space. The band By The Way performed during the meal.

The modest meal of soup and bread represents a common meal for many community members, CALC said.

Its a great message to the community because its a very simple meal, Bob Weed, CEO of Project SHARE, said in a news release. It really makes people think of those less fortunate who struggle with food security.

Richeson estimated that in the past 29 years, the Empty Bowls fundraiser has raised about $85,000 for Project SHARE. This years donation puts that total closer to $90,000.

This is our community coming together to put the arts into action, Richeson 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 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.
Information is from police reports and may be incomplete depending on the status of an investigation. Phone numbers are nonemergency.
Wisconsin coach Greg Gard opens practice Thursday at Fiserv Forum in preparation for of the NCAA Tournament game against Colgate.

MADISON  Wisconsin freshman forward Matthew Mors, one of two frontcourt players who redshirted this season, has decided to transfer.

Mors informed the UW staff Monday.

According to head coach Greg Gard, Mors has been homesick and wants to be closer to his family in South Dakota.

He just wants to go home. Gard said. That is the root of it. How do you dispute that? I cant.

We talk about family and all that kind of stuff. Im not going to say that thats not important.

We talked about the long game of being here and what this does for you educationally and culturally. But the family component has weighed on him.

More: Who will be back? Who will step up? Wisconsin men's basketball team has several questions to address before next season

"He is a great kid."

The impending departure of Mors will open a scholarship and the Badgers are expected to be active in pursing transfers.

Two names to watch are guards who faced UW this season, Nelly Cummings of Colgate and Antonio Reeves of Illinois State.

Both players have entered the transfer portal.

Cummings had 20 points, six rebounds and six assists in Colgates 67-60 loss to UW in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.

Reeves had 25 points, four rebounds and four assists in Illinois States 89-85 loss on Dec. 29 at the Kohl Center.

The Badgers added two transfers last season  center Chris Vogt and guard Jahcobi Neath  and the staff was pleased with both.

The game has changed so much, Gard said of using the portal to fill voids on a roster.

Vogt played in all 33 games and averaged 2.9 points and 3.1 rebounds per game helped ease the burden of sophomore Steven Crowl.

We dont win the Big Ten without him, Gard said.

Neath missed time because of illness and battled a left knee injury all season. He averaged 1.6 points and 1.5 rebounds per game. His role could change if he is fully healthy next season because he has the ability to score near the basket and defend multiple positions.

Story continues

THANK YOU: Subscribers' support makes this work possible. Help us share the knowledge by buying a gift subscription.

DOWNLOAD THE APP: Get the latest news, sports and more

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Wisconsin basketball freshman Matthew Mors enters transfer portal
Safe and sound. Miley Cyrus plane made an emergency landing after it was struck by lightning on March 23, 2022, on its way to the Asuncionico festival in Asuncionico, Paraguay.

Miley announced the news in an Instagram post that morning, which included a video of a severe storm outside her plane window and the area of the plane where the lightning struck. Cyrus, who was on the plane with her crew, band, friends and family, also confirmed that everyone on board were safe after the incident. To my fans and everyone worried after hearing about my flight to Asuncion. Our plane was caught in a major unexpected storm and struck by lighting. My crew , band , friends and family who were all traveling with me are safe after an emergency landing. We were unfortunately unable to fly into Paraguay.  I LOVE YOU, she wrote in the caption.

More from StyleCaster

After Mileys emergency landing, the Asuncionico festival announced on its Twitter that it had cancelled the event due to adverse weather conditions. Along with Miley, the festival was also set to include performers like Doja Cat, Machine Gun Kelly and Foo Fighters. After the cancellation, MGK performed a set for fans outside his hotel. Videos of the performance showed fans swarming the entrance of MGKs hotel as a sound system was set up for him to perform.

Miley isnt the first star to be involved in a plane emergency. In September 2008, Travis Barkers private plane crashed after a concert in South Carolina. Travis was aboard the plane when the tires blew out during takeoff and the jet overran the runway and hit an embankment, which caused a fire. Though Travis survived the crash, those killed in the accident were his security guard, Charles Che Still, his assistant, Chris Baker, the pilot, Sarah Lemmon, and the co-pilot, James Bland. Barkers friend, Adam DJ AM Goldstein, also survived the crash but died from a drug overdose a year later, which left the Blink-182 member as the only living survivor of the accident.

Story continues

Click here to read the full article.

When he escaped the plane, Travis was seen covered in jet fuel and on fire. Goldstein helped to put out the flames on Travis body, but the rocker was left with third-degree burns on 65 percent of his body. He spent three months in the hospital and underwent 26 surgeries and numerous skin grafts.

In an interview with Mens Health in May, Travis revealed his desire to fly again after the deadly plane crash. I have to, he said. I want to make the choice to try and overcome it. Since the accident, the musician has been diagnosed with PTSD and traveled only by car, train and boat, including transatlantic cruises to Europe. He told Mens Health about imagining the day he would fly again.

If I do it, and the angels above help me in my travels and keep me safe, I would like to come back and [tell my kids], Hey, I just flew here, and then I flew home. And everything was fine. I have to tell them, because I almost left them, he said. Thats a perfect day.

Travis first flight since the crash came in August 2021 when he and his fiance, Kourtney Kardashian, boarded Kylie Jenners private jet, from Los Angeles to Cabo, Mexico. Travis tweeted about his plans to get back in the air in June 2021. I might fly again , he wrote. Since he and Kourtney started dating in January 2021, the two traveled by car to Las Vegas, Montecito, California, Canyon, Point Utah, and Park City, Utah. A source told E! News in Augus 2021 that Kourtney had been helping Travis overcome his fear of flying since they got together.

This has been something that Travis has been working on for some time, the insider said. Its something hes wanted to do and to overcome. Kourtney has been incredibly loving and supportive and it is through her love, help and confidence in him that he was able to finally do this. The people that have been close to Travis since his crash are so very excited for him.

The insider continued, His life has completely changed since he has been with Kourtney and he feels ready to do anything. Shes helped him overcome this fear and he feels like he can do anything with her by his side. He has been wanting to fly for awhile and he felt like finally the time was right.

New Entertainment Newsletter

Best of StyleCaster
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain will provide Ukraine with about 6,000 new defensive missiles and almost 30 million pounds ($40 million) to support the BBC's coverage in the region and pay Ukrainian soldiers and pilots.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson will announce the new package of support on Thursday at the NATO and G7 leaders' meetings while also signalling a willingness to bolster Ukraine's defence capabilities further, his office said on Wednesday.

"The United Kingdom will work with our allies to step up military and economic support to Ukraine, strengthening their defences as they turn the tide in this fight," Johnson said.

"One month into this crisis, the international community faces a choice. We can keep the flame of freedom alive in Ukraine, or risk it being snuffed out across Europe and the world."

As part of the package, the UK will provide 6,000 missiles and 25 million pounds in financial backing for the Ukrainian military. It will also provide 4.1 million pounds for the BBC World Service to help support its Ukrainian and Russian language services, and tackle disinformation.

Britain said with the new commitment it will have provided up to 10,000 missiles and that the additional funds come on top of 400 million pounds committed in humanitarian and economic aid.

Thursday's NATO summit in Brussels is expected to unlock additional aid for Kyiv including equipment to help Ukraine protect against chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threats.

($1 = 0.7571 pounds)

(Reporting by Kate Holton; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
Bahrain offers an attractive environment for real estate investment, especially with the solid legal coverage that this sector enjoys to keep pace with the best practices, said Deputy Prime Minister Shaikh Khalid bin Abdullah Al Khalifa.

He was speaking after inaugurating the trio of exhibitions - Gulf Construction Expo, Gulf Property Show (GPS) and Interiors Expo - at the Bahrain International Exhibition and Convention Centre (BIECC).

His Royal Highness Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, Crown Prince and Prime Minister, had deputised Shaikh Khalid to inaugurate the exhibitions.

Shaikh Khalid bin Abdullah Al Khalifa extended sincere thanks and gratitude to HRH the Crown Prince and Prime Minister for deputising him to inaugurate the exhibition, pointing out that HRHs patronage of the annual show, which is organised by Hilal Conferences and Exhibitions (HCE), confirms the support accorded to the specialised exhibitions industry, said a Bahrain News Agency report.

He also praised HRH the Crown Prince and Prime Ministers interest in the real estate sector, it being one of the main non-oil sectors that has a positive impact on the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and which is witnessing a steady growth under the comprehensive development march spearheaded by His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa.

Private sector encouraged to invest

He stressed that the growth of the real estate development companies and their quality projects all over the kingdom reflects the efforts made by the government to provide the necessary facilities to encourage the private sector to invest in this activity that provide various options for citizens and residents for investment and housing alike, said the report.

Shaikh Khalid pointed out that the demand for investment in the real estate sector was accompanied by a steady increase in the number of construction licences issued by 21.4%, an increase in the construction area by 55.8%, and a rise in the number of real estate transactions registered with the Survey and Land Registration Bureau by 29%, as shown by the economic indicators monitored by the Ministry of Finance and National Economy during the year 2021.

The Deputy Prime Minister pointed out the partnership between the public and private sectors to provide social housing options and solutions for citizens through the existing cooperation between the Ministry of Housing, the real estate development companies and banks.

Expos help establish partnerships

Within the same context, he stressed the importance of the specialised real estate exhibitions in exploring the available investment opportunities in Bahrain and bringing together real estate developers from Bahrain and the GCC countries to exchange experiences and establish partnerships.

Shaikh Khalid bin Abdullah Al Khalifa expressed thanks and appreciation to all officials in charge of the show whose efforts further boosted the reputation of the exhibition over the past years.

HCE Chairman Anwar Abdulrahman extended his deepest thanks and gratitude to HRH the Crown Prince and Prime Minister for patronising the shows, thanking the Deputy Prime Minister for inaugurating the exhibition.

He commended HRH the Crown Prince and Prime Ministers support to the exhibition and convention industry, given its contribution to supporting the economic recovery plan and providing promising opportunities for citizens and the business sector.

He pointed out that the showcased projects at GPS are worth around $15 billion, which underlines the good reputation gained by the show as one of the main promising platforms of the real estate sector.

The exhibitions are being organised from March 22 to 24.
FESTUS  When Michael and Molly Herrell moved into Oak Knoll Apartments here in late 2019, there were good vibes. They had a 2-bedroom unit on the ground level for $460 a month, close to family.

We thought this was great because of our ages, Michael, 67, said Tuesday from their living room.

But the taxpayer-supported complex hasnt worked well for them.

Within the first year, they noticed water getting into their bedroom, which borders a communal laundry room. Michael said maintenance recommended setting up a fan, which they did.

About one year later, Michael said, more water came in. At the time, Molly was in the hospital, being treated for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and other illnesses that make it hard to breathe. When she came home, something in the bedroom seemed to make her feel worse.

I dont know what it was, she said Tuesday, oxygen machine humming. I couldnt breathe.

They said a relative paid to have the indoor air tested. According to an Oct. 15 copy of the report, four different types of mold were identified in their bedroom. Theyve been keeping the bedroom door closed and sleeping in their living room recliners ever since.

Michael said he shared a copy of the mold report with the front office.

On site Tuesday, Regional Manager Chris White told the Post-Dispatch that she wasnt previously aware of the report. She questioned the objectivity of the test results if the company also does cleanup.

She declined to visit the apartment in question with a reporter but said she would send maintenance there. She said most maintenance issues at the complex dont take more than 48 hours to remedy, when parts are available.

We try to do the best we can with what we have to work with, she said.

A few random interviews with tenants signaled thats not the case.

My oven has been out since October, said Karen Meador, 51, who is disabled. Every time I tell (the office manager) she acts like its the first shes heard of it.

Wires hung from her ceiling where a smoke alarm was supposed to be. She said the toilet tank top has been missing since she moved in four years ago. Standing next to the broken oven, she easily pulled the faucet handle off the kitchen sink.

They dont do much around here, said Meador.

In another building, Sylvia Siebert, 59, had a similar story.

I went all summer without air  with no A/C. They finally fixed it in October, she said.

Oak Knoll Apartments has 48 units supported by $3.3 million in state and federal low-income housing tax credits awarded and overseen by the Missouri Housing Development Commission.

Over the past decade, Oak Knoll triggered 93 records of noncompliance with the commission. According to a database, five of the records described unresolved issues from inspections. The remainder were administrative, including failure to submit monthly occupancy reports, annual budgets and quarterly utility allowance information.

Nye Management is the general partner of the complex; Doe Run Partnership LLC is the limited partner, according to the commission.

Oak Knoll is one of five complexes mainly in Jefferson County that have been tied up in a lawsuit stemming from the attempted sale of the properties. The Post-Dispatch reported in late February that the lawsuit petition remains sealed from public view.

Later asked about the lawsuit, the Missouri Housing Development Commission said it doesnt comment on pending litigation.

The commission was expected to do a round of inspections at Oak Knoll on Wednesday. Tenants have also been notified of a 7% rent increase.

White, the regional manager, said its the first rent increase in five years. She said the price of everything has gone up.

Michael and Molly said they welcomed inspectors.

If there is mold, I want the carpet removed, or if there is anything dangerous in the walls, Id like to get that fixed, Molly said.

A woman across the hall from them said she was so scared of mold in her central heating and cooling system that she stopped using it. For peace of mind, she relies on a window unit and space heaters.

Jesse Bogan  314-340-8255 @jessebogan on Twitter jbogan@post-dispatch.com

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 2 Angry 2
David and Sally Giltinan enjoyed knocking on doors and visiting Bible students as part of their volunteer ministry. That abruptly changed in the spring of 2020 when Jehovahs Witnesses suspended their in-person public ministry, meetings and large conventions.

Two years later, the Charlottesville, Virginia, residents are busier than ever. David Giltinan, a retired businessman since 2015, said, It has been a challenge to be involved in the ministry virtually. However, we have been able to reach more people than ever before. He spends three mornings every week making phone calls, writing letters and conducting free Bible study courses.

With this historic change, the number of Jehovahs Witnesses grew 3% in the United States in 2021 alone, matching the most signicant increase for the organization over the past decade and the second-largest percentage increase since 1990.

Staying active in our ministry while remaining safe has had a powerful preserving effect on our congregants and communities, said Robert Hendriks, U.S. spokesman for Jehovahs Witnesses. The wise decision not to prematurely resume in-person activities has united us and protected lives while comforting many people in great need. The results speak for themselves.

For congregants like the Giltinans, the virtual pivot has meant trading their bookbags for a new computer and adapting to new technology. Their tools and techniques have changed, but their message is the same. Sally Giltinan, a real estate agent, conducts four Bible studies each week. She said, We are all in need comfort and hope now more than ever before. Locally, people are still very concerned about the pandemic and what it has done to their lives. Those I study with are very grateful to learn about the Bibles practical message of better times to come.

Last year, the international organization reported all-time peaks in the number of people participating in their volunteer preaching work, increased attendance in Zoom meetings and more than 171,000 new believers baptized. In the past two years, more than 400,000 have been baptized worldwide.

Some whose ministry or attendance at religious services had slowed because of age and poor health said they feel reenergized with the convenience of virtual meetings and a home-based ministry.

Like many octogenarians, Sarah Fuoco, 88, deals with memory loss and diminished energy. Yet she and her 81-year-old husband, Joseph, have been given the nickname the dynamic duo.

The Fuocos use Zoom to worship twice a week with their Hollis, New Hampshire, congregation and regularly join online ministry groups to comfort neighbors and family through phone calls, letters, texts and email.

What could have been quite a disadvantage, weve made into an advantage, Joseph Fuoco said. The fact that we can work right from home is a great advantage. Im happy with it.

By sharing the Bibles hope remotely, the fewer than 3,000 Jehovahs Witnesses in Alaska can rapidly preach across the 586,000 square miles of their sparsely populated state. Were talking to more people in a day than we did in a month, said Marlene Sadowski of Ketchikan.

The official website of Jehovahs Witnesses, translated into more than 1,000 languages, has also leveraged the organizations outreach.

After starting a free self-paced Bible course on jw.org in December 2019, Lisa Owen requested a free, interactive Bible study over Zoom. She was one of nearly 20,000 baptized as one of Jehovahs Witnesses last year in the United States in private settings, including backyard swimming pools, tubs and even rivers.

JW.ORG gave me somewhere to learn, somewhere to land, and to start living the way God wants me to. It taught me so much, said Owen of Moriarty, New Mexico.

To start an online Bible study course, receive a visit or attend a virtual meeting locally, visit jw.org.

If your local church or ministry leader is interested in submitting a story that shares messages of hope and perseverance within our wonderful community during these trying times, please contact kborrelli@greene-news.com to potentially be featured in an upcoming church page of the Greene County Record.
Members of the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors on Wednesday approved new magisterial Districts and a voting precinct map.

The board formally adopted a map, called Option Two, which includes new District boundaries and voting precinct changes. It will become effective April 22, ahead of any June primaries.

Earlier this month, Supervisors seemed to all generally support a map called Option One that would have affected the fewest number of currently registered voters, at around 1,700. But on Wednesday, Supervisor Diantha McKeel said she was given large versions of the maps and was able to see how the proposed changes affect her District more closely.

I am very concerned about Option One in that it really further changes the socioeconomic balance of the Jack Jouett District and, what I would say, is it exacerbates the socioeconomic balance that already exists, she said.

Option One would have moved some voters from Agnor Hurt precinct in the Rio District to Georgetown precinct in the Jack Jouett District and voters from Jack Jouett precinct in the Jack Jouett District to East Ivy precinct in the Samuel Miller District.

Option Two moves some voters from the Free Bridge precinct in the Rivanna District into the Mountain View precinct in the Scottsville District. Other voters will move from Northside precinct in the Rio District on U.S. 29 to Baker-Butler precinct in the Rivanna District.

The new map also moves some voters from the Porters precinct in the Samuel Miller District into the Scottsville precinct in the Scottsville District.

Option Two also moves some voters from Brownsville precinct in the White Hall District to Yellow Mountain in the Samuel Miller District; moves others from Mechums River precinct in the White Hall District to Yellow Mountain precinct in the Samuel Miller District; and still other Mechums River precinct voters to the Brownsville precinct in the White Hall District.

To conform to the new House of Delegates District boundary lines, all three of the maps presented to the board had some commonalities. Free Bridge precinct was extended north along the Rivanna River to conform to a new delegate district boundary line, moving some voters from Pantops precinct into Free Bridge precinct.

The new extension of Free Bridge stays in the Rivanna District.

The approved plan extends the University precinct in the Jack Jouett District southward, sending some voters from the East Ivy precinct and the Samuel Miller District into the University precinct and the Jack Jouett District.

It also moves some voters in the Scottsville District from the Stone-Robinson precinct into the Mountain View precinct for the same reason.

The new map and ordinance will now be published with a plain English description of the changes. Voters will be notified of changes that will be effective for the June primaries.

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.
When the public was invited to tell the Charlottesville City Council what it thought of the proposed 2023 budget, it wasnt the real estate tax rate or rising taxes but the citys funding priorities that concerned those who showed up.

The city council has advertised a potential 10-cent real estate tax increase, but councilors are wary of raising the rate that high in light of tax increases expected from rising real estate assessments. While individual taxes will vary, the average residential owner could see between a 10% and 12% increase in real estate taxes, even if the tax rate remains the same, according to the city tax assessors office.

In a meeting held Monday, Interim City Manager Michael C. Rogers recommended the council raise the real estate tax by two cents, which would be put in a capital projects fund earmarked for the schools reconfiguration project.

City officials have said that a 10-cent real estate tax increase would be necessary to fund the $76 million schools project.

Despite the expect hike in tax bills, some people who spoke to the council called for a real estate tax increases to fund city projects. They noted that the citys low real estate tax rate, which is charged against the assessed value of a property to determine a tax bill, is low in comparison to other localities across the state.

Our community is undertaxed at the real estate tax rate, said resident Chris Meyer. I do think we should raise taxes in order to make those investments that we need to and so that we dont have to live in suboptimal infrastructure.

Elizabeth Stark, president of the Charlottesville chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, suggested the city come up with creative solutions to counteract the effects of a tax increase on low income residents.

I ask that the city use all levers in their power to generate income, though all tax options are regressive. An increase to the property tax coupled with tax relief for low wealth neighbors, and an increase to the lodging tax seems to be the best solution to me, she said.

The city is looking at other options and has advertised a potential meals tax increase of 0.05%.

Others want the city council to reevaluate the police department budget, which is proposed to increase more than $1.3 million. Some members in the community have called for decrease in the law enforcement budget and put the funds toward mental health and risk reduction services. The police budget increase includes a 7.1% raise in salary expenditures. Last year, community members and councilors, including current Mayor Lloyd Snook, were critical of a lack of transparency on the line item budget from the police department.

On Monday, resident and Charlottesville DSA member Brian Campbell cited Snooks past criticism of the police budget.

The police budget is, in Mayor Snooks words, a black box, Campbell said. Its clear that CPD suffers bloat and inefficiency. Council should scale police funding down to a level comparable to other nearby localities. Right now when theres a high vacancy rate is the perfect time to do it. This is an easy way for the city to fund other priorities at no cost to the community.

Theres no reason council should be considering or approving an increase in the police budget when vital areas [such as affordable housing] continuously suffer. [Police] funding should not be a priority during any budget season, especially when police funding is unfortunately available and at state and federal levels, said Ang Conn, a community activist.

Some community members said the police department should have to submit a budget proposal that is as detailed as the school system budget proposal.

I ask that you use your position to demand a detailed police budget. The city schools release a detailed budget every year that clearly states how and why funds are spent and they have metrics that measure efficacy. The police budget is a single spreadsheet with vague and duplicative listings, said Stark.

Community members also called for increased funding for affordable housing and programs from the Public Housing Association of Residents and the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center.

City Council will continue to discuss the tax rate and budget at its upcoming budget work sessions. The next one will be held March 31. There will be a community budget forum Wednesday night at 6 p.m., where community members can ask city staff and councilors questions about the proposed budget.

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.
Growth is coming to Scottsville, whether the community likes it or not.

Scottsville Town Council voted 4-3 Monday night to approve a special-use permit that will allow 36 houses on Bird Street. The approval came after more than 10 meetings involving the proposal.

The request to build houses on about 12 acres of a property next to the former Hyosung Tire plant has divided factions of Scottsville residents and surrounding community members. They worry about the areas small-town character if the community grows, or if it continues to lose population.

With the approval, Scottsville will see its first substantial housing development in the towns modern history.

Scottsvilles Mayor Ron Smith cast the tie-breaking vote, saying this is the change we need.

This is for the greater good, this is for the future of the town and I think we will be making the right decision to have those homes up there, he said.

Charles W. Hurt, a local real estate entrepreneur, developer and founder of Virginia Land Co., bought the plant property for $600,000 in 2011. The plant sits on 41 acres and is adjacent to an empty nearly 20-acre parcel, both owned by Hurt through limited liability companies, or LLCs.

The special-use permit allows for the houses to be built on about 12 acres of the nearly 20-acre property, which the town voted 4-3 in June to rezone from Industrial to Village Residential, with Smith again casting the tie-breaking vote.

The council also voted at that time to add incentives for cluster development to Village Residential-zoned land where public water and sewer service is available. With a special-use permit approval, the town council can allow for a cluster development of up to four units per acre when a third of the project area is left as open space.

The council also approved conditions for the Bird Street permit, which include requiring the final site plan to conform generally to the concept plan shown in the application; building at least six  and no more than 10  duplex homes with the remainder being detached single-family houses; a phase two environmental impact study on the site; trails; sidewalks; and native plants used in the development.

The two newest councilors, Meredith Hynes and Alex Bessette, joined Councilor Eddie Payne in voting against the permit.

The biggest impediment to better development in many small towns is a fear of saying no to anything, Payne said. The communities that will not say no to bad development will get the worst of everything. If they say no to bad development, they will get better development in its place.

Councilor Stuart Munson, who seemed to be the swing councilor vote, said he thought this was a very well thought out compromise.

I dont think that anyones gonna get everything they want here  Im not getting everything that I want  but I think its the best thing for the town, he said. Weve all agreed that we need to have some growth here if were going to be able to mulch the parks and maintain the police and we are struggling now to find a way to balance our budget with the taxes that we receive.

The towns population in the 2020 census was 524, a decrease of 42 residents from the 2010 census. The town currently does not receive property tax revenue. The core of its local revenues come from taxes on local businesses and those who patronize them  meals taxes, cigarette taxes, business licenses and bank franchise taxes. The recommended fiscal year 2023 budget, which starts July 1, is $1,200,558.

Currently, the towns meals tax is 4.5%. The recommended budget includes raising it to 6%. The council will be discussing the budget at its next few meetings and will hold public hearings in May.

These [revenues] are not providing the structural growth to keep up with the increased cost of doing the basic services that we do, Town Administrator Matt Lawless said later in the meeting. So the basic question for council and the community as we review this budget and discuss tax rates is, do we feel like were at a ceiling for services?

During public comment, six people spoke in favor of the permit, while two spoke against it.

Sarah Woods, who has spoken out against the project since it was proposed, said council should make considerations based on town supporting documents. She noted that the towns Comprehensive Plan mentions the entire former factory site as one 61-acre property.

We should wait for the studies that have grants, that are items that people have requested and will help provide answers and build community support, she said.

Frank Ballif, the president of Southern Development Homes, and Keith Lancaster, a land planner with Southern Development, were on hand to answer questions from council and confirm that they had a contract to build homes on the property.

When asked about prices for the homes, Ballif said it is hard to give specific price ranges when there is not yet a site plan. He did not offer a price range at the meeting.

As yall can imagine, as a home builder today with lumber costs and supply chain issues, everythings all over, he said But I think one of the ways we were trying to at least adopt more of a variance were those couple of duplexes that were mixed in, which would certainly be at a lower price point than the singles.

Ballif said they would start work immediately on the site plan. In Scottsville, site plans are reviewed by the Planning Commission, and can take several months. When that is approved they will start putting in the infrastructure.

That time frame for review did not faze Ballif.

I dont think Ive seen a site plan in Albemarle County approved in less than a year, he said.

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.
Habitat for Humanity of Greater Charlottesville is receiving a $5.75 million grant from writer and philanthropist Mackenzie Scott to help fund the nonprofits efforts at building homes.

Local Habitat President and CEO Dan Rosensweig said the grant will help maintain the organizations home building pace and continue its redevelopment of Southwood Mobile Home Park.

To say I was overwhelmed by the gift would be an understatement, Rosensweig said in a statement. Not only does Ms. Scotts gift validate the incredible work that the team has done, the courageous spirit of our board, the brilliant vision of the community, the generous contributions of funders and the hard work of partner families and Southwood community members, but it will help us offset the COVID Deficit.

This month, Habitat started construction on the first two new homes in Southwood and is preparing lots for the next 68 homes. According to the organization, it is nearing the end of a successful $15 million capital campaign and has sold 100% of the market rate lots in the first phase of the project to cross subsidize the affordable homes.

Habitat has received roughly $6 million in public funding commitments for the first phase of development and is working to seek approvals from Albemarle County for the second rezoning needed for the project.

Habitat for Humanity International, along with 84 U.S. Habitat affiliate organizations, received $436 million in unrestricted giving from Scott, the organization announced on Tuesday.

According to the Associated Press, it is the largest publicly disclosed donation from the billionaire philanthropist since she pledged in 2019 to give away the majority of her wealth.

Aside from an occasional blog post, Scott, an author and philanthropist, doesnt discuss her donations, which exceeded $8 billion in the past two years after her divorce from Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder, who was then the richest person in the world.

As part of the divorce settlement, Scott received 4% of Amazons shares.

Associated Press contributed to this report.
Tina Kotek and Tobias Read differed little on the issues brought forth during their first joint appearance for their partys nomination for governor.

But the most widely known of the 17 Democratic candidates offered differing experience to achieve similar goals in front of a mostly friendly audience Friday night, March 18, at the Oregon AFL-CIOs annual convention in Portland.

No other candidate in this race  has delivered more results for working Oregonians, said Kotek, who just ended 15 years in the Oregon House from a district in north and northeast Portland and a record nine years as its speaker. Among the bills passed during her tenure were paid sick leave (2015), advance job scheduling (2017, with a full 14-day notice taking effect in 2020) and paid family and medical leave (2019, scheduled to take effect in 2023).

Whether it is homelessness and housing, recovery from the coronavirus pandemic or a response to climate change, she said, I am not going to play games or make promises I cannot deliver on. My door will always be open to make sure the voices of workers are heard and listened to.

Read spent 10 years representing Beaverton in the Oregon House, including two legislative cycles as majority whip, before he was elected state treasurer in 2016. He said his recent position gives him the edge if he is elected governor.

What we need is executive experience and the ability to deliver on promises, he said.

Weve got to be clear  about the fact that what we are doing right now is not working. But weve also got enormous potential in droves. If we are willing to focus on execution to try to match our good intentions and follow through, we can rebuild confidence in government and in ourselves.

Oregons largest labor federation has made no endorsement in for the May 17 primary, although according to a survey published Feb. 18 by the Northwest Labor Press, Kotek has amassed support from a dozen unions that have  including Local 503 of Service Employees International Union, which represents the largest group of state workers.

President Graham Trainor told the audience that only Kotek and Read responded to a lengthy questionnaire from the federation, plus a request for how they plan to win this year, so they were the only candidates invited on stage at the Hyatt Regency/Oregon Convention Center.

Working people have a high set of expectations for Oregons next governor with a rigged economic system that is leaving too many workers behind, Trainor said afterward. We are looking hard at all the candidates to ensure that working people are front and center on the next governors agenda.

Democratic incumbent Kate Brown is barred by term limits from running again after having served almost two full terms, succeeding John Kitzhaber in February 2015. Democrats have held the governorship for 36 years, a state record; Vic Atiyehs re-election in 1982 was the most recent victory by a Republican.

A test for both

Kotek and Read are the only two of the 17 Democrats in the field who have held state elected office.

For Kotek, 55, it will be a test of whether one of the Legislatures former presiding officers can win Oregons top executive office. The only one in recent years to have done so was Democrat Kitzhaber, who led the Oregon Senate for eight years as president  but was out of office  when he was elected governor for the first time in 1994.

For Read, 46, it will be a test of whether a state treasurer can be elected governor. The most recent one to do so was Democrat Bob Straub, who was elected in 1974  two years out of office  after losing to Tom McCall in 1966 and 1970. Two others were elected treasurer after losing bids for governor: Republican Clay Myers in 1976 and Democrat Ben Westlund in 2008. Democrat Jim Hill made two losing bids in 2002 and 2006 after his eight years as treasurer.

Both candidates responded to written questions put forth by a panel, and then from the audience.

Both offered similar approaches to homelessness and housing. Both supported greater efforts to find shelter and services, but also more construction, particularly housing for all incomes.

We have a humanitarian crisis, Kotek said. I see it here in Portland, and anywhere you live around this state, we have people who dont have homes. We need to fix that.

She referred to the 111,000-unit gap in housing units that has occurred in the past decade  half of them sought by households earning less than the areas median income  and that it will take an annual average of 36,000 for the next decade to catch up. (Current housing production in Oregon averages 20,000 to 25,000 units, according to the Oregon Office of Economic Analysis.)

We havent been doing very well at that lately, Read said. We are losing confidence among voters who have supported money mechanisms. we have got to do more to cut through the delays and reduce costs. That is the difference between passing legislation and execution.

Black Lives Matter

Asked what Black Lives Matter means to them, both said Oregon must confront a legacy of injustice to Black residents and other racial and ethnic minorities that re-emerged during protests in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.

We have to have a hard conversation in this state about the history of racism in our country and what that means for how people of color feel and are treated by law enforcement, how they experience our schools. For me, it means making sure how we truly live up to our values as Americans, Kotek said.

Im not sure I have a lot to add to that, Read said. We are long overdue for a conversation about unfinished business that exists in Oregon. We are not making sure that Black Oregonians have the same opportunities that other people have and everyone should.

Essential workers

Both said they would work to improve conditions for essential workers  defined as those in education and health care, plus farms and retail trades  who often bore the brunt of exposure during the coronavirus pandemic of the past two years.

Beyond pay, benefits and working conditions, Read said, we need to make sure that people are treated with the respect they deserve and that young people see the work as a career that is attractive to them for the life they want.

Kotek said that in addition to direct state aid for health care, housing and other programs, she worked to make it easier for such workers to obtain workers compensation benefits during the pandemic. (A state agency rule makes benefits easier to obtain by some health care workers with direct care or indirect support of patients. However, 2021 session bills died that would have shifted the presumption for COVID-19 coronavirus illnesses onto employers.)

But there are more challenges ahead, Kotek said. I want you to know, no matter what those challenges are, I will continue to be on your side and every Oregonian should have a path to opportunity and success.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
Fears of harming the environment and being trapped by wildfire or a natural disaster dominated a public hearing for a proposed Corvallis housing development on land currently outside city boundaries.

Following a lengthy staff report and an applicant presentation, Corvallis City Council heard public testimony from a dozen people on the topic during its meeting Monday, March 21. A number of the speakers said their comments echo that of a community group that opposes the development, which the Corvallis Planning Commission approved on Feb. 16.

No action was taken by the council following the hearing, though councilors raised a number of questions for staff to answer at a later time. The record was held open until March 28 for additional written testimony. The council is expected to deliberate on May 2.

The barriers to the development, known as The Preserve, are layered. Located at the north end of Northwest Goldfinch and Northwest Bunting drives near Chip Ross Park, Timberhill Natural Area and McDonald Forest, the land requires annexation into the city boundary. It also requires a zoning change and subdivision approval.

The risk of wildfire has greatly increased in recent years with accelerating effects of climate change, resident Megan McClelland said. Those risks are especially evident in the Timberhill neighborhood, which has inadequate evacuation routes. My biggest fear is that I wont be able to evacuate with my children and family when the next wildfire occurs.

Corvallis developer Jim Boeder hopes to divide the property into 41 lots for single-family homes and five wildland preservation tracts. Boeder is a Planning Commission member, but has participated in past meetings about the project as a private citizen. The development's future homes would likely be in the $500,000 range.

The opposition group, Saving Open Space, has raised concerns about losing green areas in Corvallis as well as possible delays in emergency responses in the event of fire or other catastrophes. The group retained a land use attorney for advice and is considering a community poll to highlight community viewpoints.

Boeder told city councilors hes taken steps to address issues of density, traffic, McDonald Forest access, and vegetation removal. Staff has recommended the City Council approve the annexation, zone change and subdivision with conditions, including getting signoff from the state lands agency and Army Corps of Engineers.

The annexation of this property is strongly conflicting with the Imagine Corvallis 2040 vision statement and the citys comprehensive plan. The disadvantages far exceed the advantages, said James Ryan, a Saving Open Space organizer who lives next to the proposed development site.

We feel as though the Planning Commission staff report simply reflects the opinion put forth by the developer and an independent review is lacking, Ryan said.

Cody Mann covers Benton County and the cities of Corvallis and Philomath. He can be contacted at 541-812-6113 or Cody.Mann@lee.net. Follow him on Twitter via @News_Mann_.

Love 1 Funny 1 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.
Emirates Central Cooling Systems Corporation (Empower), one of the world's largest district cooling services provider, has awarded a contract worth AED193 million ($52.55 million) to build a new generation district cooling plant.

The construction of the project has already begun and its capacity will reach 23,500 refrigeration tonnes (RT) on completion of the first phase, which is scheduled to be operational by the first quarter of 2023.

The plant will provide the Dubai Land Residence Complex (DLRC) region with the companys environment-friendly district cooling services in line with international standards.

Highest international standards

The company also announced that the total production capacity of the new plant will reach 47,000 RT upon completion of all construction phases of the project.

The design of the new plant meets the highest international construction and design standards, especially those related to sustainable green building standards and considered the distinctive modern architectural identity of Dubai in general and the DLRC region in particular.

The DLRC project is a unique freehold project being developed by Dubai Holding, as it is suitable for families and efficiently meets the needs of its residents through innovative and brilliantly executed housing units.

This project also provides the highest standards of modern living and includes mosques, schools and healthcare facilities. Strategically located, the DLRC offers convenient access to the Trade Centre, Academic City, Meydan Racecourse, and Dubai International Airport and others.

Modernisation and development

As part of its commitment to modernise and develop its facilities and technical staff, Empower is moving forward on a well-thought-out methodology to grow the company's infrastructure in order to raise its performance to unprecedented levels and make timely investments to expand its operations in Dubai, especially as Empower's share in the Dubais district cooling market accounts for 79.5%," said Ahmad bin Shafar, the CEO of Empower.

"Empower is keen to continue providing high-quality, environment-friendly and sustainable district cooling services to support the Dubai's leading role in reducing carbon emissions in line with the directives of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai," he concluded.-- TradeArabia News Service
Oregon had the nation's 13th highest suicide rate across all ages in 2020, a slight improvement the year before when the state was ninth in suicide deaths, according to suicide mortality data recently published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Part of the decline was a reduction in suicides by young people, the Oregon Health Authority said on Tuesday. The decrease placed Oregon 18th highest in the nation  an improvement from 2019 and 2018, when Oregon ranked 11th highest in the nation for youth suicides.

"While we are encouraged by 2020's downward trend that shows our work with partners to address youth suicide is helping in some counties, we still have a long way to go to improve outcomes among all Oregon communities," said Oregon Health Authority Behavioral Health Director Steve Allen.

State health officials cautioned that Oregon suicides are still well above the national average, however. And preliminary data for all ages combined indicate an increase in the number of suicides in 2021.

"Racial and economic inequalities impact the overall health of many of our communities and we have much work to do to alleviate this injustice. Our hearts grieve alongside the Oregon communities and families that have experienced suicide loss."

Oregon was one of seven states that showed a decrease in suicide rates between 2019 and 2020, according to the CDC data released in February. The state had 18.3 deaths by suicide per 100,000 people in 2020 with a total of 833 deaths. In 2019, the suicide death rate was 20.4 per 100,000, which amounted to 906 total deaths.

As documented by the recently released Youth Suicide Intervention and Prevention Plan annual report, the number and rate of suicides for youth age 24 and younger decreased in 2020 by nearly 14%, from 118 deaths in 2019 to 102 deaths in 2020.

Preliminary 2021 data for Oregon indicate a three-year decreasing trend in suicide numbers for youth age 24 and younger. While Oregon's youth suicide deaths have decreased, it must be noted that Oregon's youth suicide rate was much higher than the national average for the years preceding the decrease, state health officials said.

Health officials also said that call volumes to Lines for Life, a regional substance abuse and suicide prevention nonprofit that operates several crisis helplines, has increased annually since 2016. Of the crisis calls staff answered, roughly the same percent of callers reported thinking about suicide in 2020 as in 2019.

The officials said it is also important to note that the number of youth suicide deaths in 2021 did not decrease in every county in Oregon. Last week, Lane County Public Health declared a public health emergency due to an increase in youth suicides since November 2021. In response to this increase, additional resources and supports are being made available to Lane County schools, healthcare providers, and community members.

Oregon Health Authority responds

OHA works together with other state agencies, counties, Tribal partners, communities and advocacy groups across the state to prevent suicide in Oregon. State health officials said that since March 2020, Oregon's suicide prevention team has met weekly to analyze data, plan prevention efforts, and bolster the state's ability to respond to emerging needs.

OHA has invested heavily in several suicide prevention, intervention, treatment, and "postvention" programs, collectively referred to as Big River programming. Each of the programs is available statewide, has a coordinator to support local efforts, and has seen robust growth since they became available in 2020.

State health officials have also:

 Launched the Remote Suicide Risk Assessment and Safety Planning phone line and created a tool to support school administrators, school counselors and other school based mental health services.

 Created the Oregon Behavioral Health Support Line, which offers live support.

 Developed the Youth Suicide Assessment in Virtual Environments (YouthSAVE) training, created specifically for mental health professionals who serve youth. This training equips school- and community-based mental health professionals to use virtual tools to reach youth who have thoughts of suicide. More than 700 youth-serving providers in Oregon have taken YouthSAVE since its launch in December 2020.

 In collaboration with the Oregon Department of Education, set up a School Suicide Prevention and Wellness team to provide support to school districts for suicide prevention planning and implementation.

Before then, Oregon launched the Safe + Strong Helpline and website at the beginning of the pandemic to provide support for those struggling with the loss of loved ones and lifestyle changes. The Safe + Strong Helpline, 1-800-923- HELP (4357), is available 24/7. More help and resources are available in multiple languages on the Safe + Strong website.

Additional resources include:

 24/7 Suicide Prevention National Lifeline number: 1-800-273-8255

 24/7 Spanish Lifeline: 1-888-628-9454

24/7 Crisis Text Line: Text "OREGON" to 741741

 24/7 Crisis Line for Veterans: 1-800-273-8255 and Press "1" or text 838255

 Senior Loneliness Line: 503-200-1633 or the organization.

 YouthLine for teen-to-teen crisis help. A phone line and a texting support line are offered through Lines for Life. Trained teens respond from 4 to 10 p.m. Monday through Friday, PDT. Adults are also available 24/7. Call 1-877-968-8491 or text teen2teen to 839863.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
Fundraiser for the Corvallis Sister Cities Association's Uzhhorod (Ukraine) Refugee Fund. Earl Newman, an artist and screen printer who lives in Summit, has created and donated a screen-printed poster illustrating support for Ukraine. Two hundred numbered posters will be printed; several framed posters will be available. The prints will sell for $100 each to be donated to the refugee fund; framed prints will cost extra. Information: caroltrueba@gmail.com.

Fundraiser for Ukrainian refugees, through March 31, New Morning Bakery, 219 SW Second St., Corvallis. Owner Keara James will donate 20% of sales off six-packs of Hamantaschen to the Corvallis Sister Cities Association's Uzhhorod Refugee Fund. Hamantaschen are triangular cookies; New Morning's cookies have apricot, marionberry and poppy seed fillings.

Rally to support Ukraine, noon to 2 p.m. Saturdays, Benton County Courthouse, 120 NW Fourth St., Corvallis. All are invited to come show solidarity with Ukraine in an event that is not antiwar or anti-Russia but pro-Ukraine. Those attending can bring Ukrainian flags, sunflowers and signs showing support. Updates on the humanitarian aspect of the war will be given. Information: 7442117@gmail.com.

Love 1 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
Denton

featured

Denton passes its first nondiscrimination ordinance

Jeff Woo/DRC Two supporters of the citys newly ratified nondiscrimination ordinance celebrate outside Denton City Hall on Tuesday night after the ordinance passed in a 5-2 vote. Jeff Woo/DRC Denton Mayor Gerard Hudspeth listens while George Ferrie, a local business owner and activist, argues for the passage of a nondiscrimination ordinance Tuesday night. Jeff Woo/DRC People filled many of the seats in City Hall for the Denton City Council's public hearing to discuss the adoption of a nondiscrimination ordinance Tuesday.

The Denton City Council adopted a long-debated nondiscrimination ordinance Tuesday after it repeatedly stalled.

Council member Jesse Davis and Mayor Gerard Hudspeth were the sole dissenting votes.

Protected classes under the ordinance, which does not supersede state or federal law, are race, color, national origin, age, religion, disability, sex, sexual orientation and gender identity.

That last protected class was the subject of the most ardent opposition among locals and some elected officials alike.

The ordinance applies to housing, employment and public accommodations, and it was written to mirror existing state and federal statutes as much as possible.

Complaints of discrimination filed under the ordinance must be filed within 90 days of the offense and will be referred to state and federal agencies wherever possible.

Ordinance

At this time, all complaints related to employment or housing on the list of protected classes could be referred [to other government agencies], according to the presentation given to council members ahead of their Tuesday vote.

For all other valid complaints, the city would investigate the alleged breach and attempt conciliation with the offending party.

If found to be in violation, a guilty business, for example, could be charged with a Class C misdemeanor.

Opposition to the criminal aspect of the ordinance was one of Davis main stated reasons for voting against the ordinance.

Nondiscrimination ordinance first draft pushed along by Denton City Council Dentons first draft of a potential nondiscrimination ordinance came before City Council members for the first time Tuesday.

We will see fewer prosecutions because this is a criminal offense  not more, Davis said Tuesday before voting no.

He leaned on his experience as a prosecutor in saying that proving intent is incredibly difficult and will bog down the ordinance.

Davis said he has been shocked by discriminatory things he has witnessed and heard of in town over the years, and that nothing within his faith required him to oppose the ordinance. In fact, he proposed a narrower nondiscrimination ordinance to council members years ago.

He also claimed there are valid, non-bigoted reasons to exclude certain people from bathrooms, locker rooms and other similar facilities. He proposed an amendment to the ordinance Tuesday night that would have removed requirements for businesses to allow people to use the restroom that conforms to their gender identity.

That amendment failed for want of support from any other council member.

Mayor Hudspeth was the only council member not to explain the rationale of his vote before casting it.

The council chambers at City Hall were nearly full Tuesday evening before the public hearing to discuss the nondiscrimination ordinance began. Six people submitted cards showing their support for the ordinance but did not speak publicly Tuesday.

The first two speakers staged performances to display their opposition. The first gave what audience members clearly saw as a hyperbolic parody of a family member concerned about discrimination in various forms.

He was heckled with calls of troll and get a new hobby by audience members after his performance, and Hudspeth called a break before the second speaker was allowed to take the mic.

Can we get a five-minute break to wipe that all down? he asked staff members.

Before the second speaker, who was wearing a tiger-striped blazer and carrying a guitar, approached, Hudspeth told the audience to hold it together or give me a wink if [your comments] are for a YouTube page.

That speaker performed a couple of minutes of a song parody disparaging female athletes who are transgender set to the tune of the Backstreet Boys I Want It That Way.

A chorus of trans lives matter briefly muffled his song until a Denton police officer told people to simmer down.

What followed were 14 speakers who urged council members to pass the nondiscrimination ordinance. Appeals to morality, Christian virtue, compassion and economic sense were leveled at council members for roughly the next hour.

Among the 14 was George Ferrie, a local business owner who twice ran unsuccessful bids for a place on the City Council.

Ferrie spoke as a local who has fought for a nondiscrimination ordinance in Denton, and campaigned on its passage, for years.

Today is a good moment, and I dont want to let the first two speakers take that away from me, he proudly said as he urged others to keep their chins up.

The five council members who voted in favor of the ordinance similarly spoke of the long process that built up to Tuesday nights vote, but Deb Armintor said this was only part of the protections activists hope to eventually pass in the city.

After the vote, ordinance supporters gathered outside City Hall to celebrate the victory. Rainbow-striped masks bobbed above the cold bricks. Hugs, pictures and flag-waving spread in the happy huddle.

Among them was Kathleen Hobson, who is a former member of the steering committee for OUTreach Denton, founding executive board member of PRIDENTON and director of the Pride Alliance at the University of North Texas.

Im feeling euphoric and really, I think, kind of in disbelief because even though we were hoping that this is the way that it would turn out, this is something that has been such a long time coming, Hobson said.

As for whats next, Hobson said they would support a push to ban conversion therapy in Denton.

Carmen Cruz, a founder of OUTreach Denton and PRIDENTON, was with the joyful crowd Tuesday night celebrating and looking to whats next.

She said the first serious talks about what would become the citys nondiscrimination ordinance happened after an OUTreach Denton meeting roughly six years ago.

I am feeling extremely satisfied and seen in the community, Cruz said.

She spoke to the work of so many people that culminated in Tuesday nights 5-2 vote.

It truly takes a village, she said.

Council member Armintor first proposed a nondiscrimination ordinance in 2018, but talks repeatedly stalled. The most recent iteration began in June 2021 when council members asked for a work session to take up the issue again.

Members pushed along a draft of the current ordinance in November that included much of the current framework. A revised version came back to the council on Jan. 4.

A public comment window was open from Jan. 18 until Feb. 15, and a public hearing was held on Feb. 15.

The ordinance will officially take effect 120 days after the citys vote Tuesday. That delay is intended to give city officials time to bring affected entities up to speed on the ordinance.

Earlier estimates placed an annual cost to the city somewhere in the $30,000-50,000 range to carry out the ordinance.
Your morning rundown of the latest news from overnight and the stories to follow throughout the day.

Sign Up View all of our newsletters.
Ruling Democrats at the Capitol are about to debut a long-awaited bill addressing our states deadly fentanyl epidemic.

Judging by an advance draft of the pending legislation  its a colossal copout.

Such a disappointing outcome after months of dithering by lawmakers  as Coloradans, especially our youth, continue to die from the drug  is unconscionable.

Gov. Jared Polis, who called for action on fentanyl at the outset of the 2022 legislative session, owes it to every Coloradan to send lawmakers back to the drawing board. He should demand a real response to the crisis  and a real fix for the disastrous legislation Democrats enacted three years ago decriminalizing possession of fentanyl and other hard drugs in the first place.

The governors mandate to our feckless, weak-kneed legislative leadership should be to authorize a late bill truly reversing the effects of the 2019 legislation. Foremost, they must make it a felony to possess any amount of fentanyl, which the legislation as it now stands does not. If lawmakers fail to deliver  and fail Colorado yet again  call them back in a special session.

As a result of the 2019 legislation, possession of up to four grams of fentanyl  which could kill up to 2,000 people  now warrants only a ticket from police. Law officers hands are tied.

The pending bill as drafted, as of press time Tuesday, at best moves the ball a few inches down the field. It only restores felony status for possession of four grams or more of any substance containing fentanyl. But if its less than that  even if its pure fentanyl  it would remain a misdemeanor. Thats absurd.

It amounts to a reprieve for fentanyls death merchants in China and Mexico. They have been flooding our state with the ultra-potent opioid and lacing it into a host of other illegal drugs. How comforting it must be to them that our justice reform-minded legislative majority supports unlimited second chances for criminals.

Assuming the bills chief provisions remain in place by the time it is officially introduced, probably this week, it also will be a slap in the face to the grieving loved ones left behind by the skyrocketing number of fentanyl victims across our state.

As of the end of 2021, our state had suffered 1,578 fentanyl-related deaths since 2015. That's a stunning, 1,008% increase in just six years. Since 2019, the increase in fentanyl deaths in our state has outstripped that of every other state but Alaska  surging 382% in that time. Nationally, overdose deaths from opioids of all varieties exceed homicides by 307%.

The point of making fentanyl possession a felony is to let police make an arrest so they can get the drug off the streets. It has been likened to a weapon of mass destruction. Even a trace is a public menace. And someone in possession of two or three grams of it isnt carrying it for personal use. Even those who arent peddling it share it at parties, concerts and even at school. Like the Colorado Springs high-schooler who died in December after friends gave her some, and she used it in a school restroom.

The legislative leadership has abdicated responsibility. It has caved in to a fringe of Democrats who confuse justice with coddling cold-blooded criminals. Its now up to the governor  who unwisely signed the 2019 legislation  to make amends. His first step is setting lawmakers straight.
In this undated photo, Colorado Republican Party Chairwoman Kristi Burton Brown addresses a meeting of local Republicans in Westcliffe, a small town in the Wet Mountain Valley in southern Colorado's Custer County. Burton Brown visited all 64 of the state's counties in the roughly 11 months after she was elected GOP chair, fulfilling a campaign promise.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has started a pilot project at Delhis international airport where street furniture like traffic signals, light poles, billboards, etc will be utilised for the deployment of telecom infrastructure, to fasten the roll-out of 5G networks.

Apart from Delhi airport, similar pilots are being initiated at Kandla port in Gujarat, Bengaluru Metro Rail Corporation, and Bhopal smart city.

"In order to expedite the availability of digital infrastructure for a quick roll-out of next-generation networks, TRAI has started a pilot study at GMR International Airport at Delhi," the regulator said in a statement.

The regulator explained that the purpose of the pilot is to ascertain how street furniture can be used to fasten the roll-out of telecom networks, especially 5G. Street furniture is a generic term for pieces of equipment installed and deployed along streets and roads for various purposes. The findings from the pilot will enable the formulation of a regulatory and policy framework in this regard.

"As 5G services will also be rolled out in higher frequency bands which has lower coverage penetration, it will become imperative to deploy a large number of small cells to cater to coverage and capacity requirements," TRAI said.

Accordingly, small cell deployments are considered essential elements of next-generation networks. However, there are certain challenges in small cell deployment like access to the right of way, procedural simplification, provision of high capacity backhauls, and availability of stable power that need to be addressed.

According to the regulator, the study will help in understanding these issues and ironing them out through proper planning, regulatory support, and cross-sectoral collaborations. The Pilot is therefore in sync with PM Gati Shakti initiative as it will help in the co-creation and sharing of Infrastructure.
Ghana has extended its deadline for citizens to register and link their details to SIM cards, admitting it will not be able to register all SIMs within the original timeframe.

In a statement, the Ministry of Communications and Digitalisation has said there was a number of factors to not meeting its original March 31 deadline, a key one being people have yet to obtain their national identity cards.

The SIM registration order began on October 1 last year but as of March 17 only 14 million SIM cards have been linked to Ghana Cards, and over 7.5 million citizens have yet to obtain their ID cards. The deadline has been extended to July 31.

It is clear that the deadline for completion of the registration of the remaining active SIM cards cannot be met, said minister of communications Ursula Owusu-Ekulful.

The processing for ID cards has been reportedly slow with some citizens waiting for hours in line to process their details. More time is also required to facilitate diplomats and residents that are abroad.

We commend all Ghanaians and foreign residents in Ghana for their support in ensuring that through this exercise, we develop and build a credible SIM database with integrity, which will help address issues of cyber fraud and promote secure SIM Card based transactions as part of our efforts to digitally transform the economy, said Owusu-Ekulful.

Ghana's decision to implement a national ID card scheme has seen pushback from citizens concerned with data privacy.
A private community of digital and technology leaders from the top organisations around the world are working to shape the global digital future at the 142nd Gartner Global CIO Research Board Meeting in Dubai

Taking place from March 22 to 24, the event marks the first time the prestigious meeting is taking place in the Middle East. The meeting topic is Gaining Competitive Advantage from Tomorrows Risk Strategies.

Since 1973, the Board has enabled the most influential global executives in the worlds largest organisations to turn challenges into opportunities and outcomes. Members vote for and commission proprietary Gartner research and meet privately throughout the year to share insights, learnings, and proven practices with peers.

Lead Dubais digital transformation

Hamad Obaid Al Mansoori, Director General of Digital Dubai, said: Digital Dubai was the first Gartner Research Board government member in Middle East. This recognition from a world-leading organisation underlines our mission to lead Dubais comprehensive digital transformation and applauds the progress we have made to digitise every aspect of life in the emirate, establishing Dubai as a world-class smart city and a bastion of the digital revolution.

Robert Dye, Senior Vice President of Gartner Research Board, said: As Gartner Research Board celebrates its 50 years next year, we are proud of the growing global representation of our membership. We are pleased to have our first meeting in the Middle East here in Dubai as we provide a true global experience for our members.

Defining the future

The agenda set for the visiting members includes a session by Digital Dubai, a visit to World Expo 2020, a tour of the Roads and Transport Authoritys EC3  Dubais state-of-the-art command and control centre  and a visit to the Dubai Future Foundation and the newly opened Museum of the Future. This showcases how Dubai is defining the future of the city pioneering citywide digital transformation.

The meeting will feature prominent local guest speakers, namely, Omar Al Olama, UAEs Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence (AI), Digital Economy, and Remote Work Applications; Hamad Al Mansoori, Director General of Digital Dubai, UAE Chief of Digital Government, and Chairman of the Board at the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre; Khalfan Belhoul, Chief Executive Officer of the Dubai Future Foundation (DFF).-- TradeArabia News Service
Moscow, ID (83843)

Today

Periods of rain. High 56F. Winds W at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall around a quarter of an inch..

Tonight

Cloudy with showers. Low 43F. Winds WSW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 50%.
Each semester, the faculty, staff, and students at the Baptist College of Florida (BCF) in Graceville hosts a Preview Day/Open House event. The Spring Preview Day was held on March 7.

Registration began in the BCF Wellness Center at 9 a.m. where guests received bags filled with information regarding campus life and degree opportunities.

During registration, they visited exhibit booths that provided additional information on specific degree programs, mission opportunities, collegiate disaster relief, financial aid, student life activities, intramural sports, and other resources available to students such as the library, writing center, and computer lab.

In addition to registration and visiting the exhibit booths, there was a virtual photo booth where visitors could take photos with friends and family members to creat visuals to go with their memories of visiting campus.

After registration, guests were welcomed by BCF President Thomas A. Kinchen and Director of Student Life and Marketing Sandra Richards.

Kinchen presented a $500 scholarship to one prospective student, Madeline McCalla, that had attended Preview Day multiple times and already admitted for the fall.

He also presented $500 scholarships to several students that traveled a great distance to attend.

Guests then went to the R. G. Lee Chapel for a time of praise and worship that showcased BCF musical groups and a message from Kinchen.

In an unprecedented turn of events, before Kinchen brought the chapel message, he asked all of the prospective students to stand up, and offered them a scholarship when they did.

Immediately following chapel, guests made classroom visits available in music, education, psychology, business, missions and theology, dual enrolled, and financial aid.

The meetings were designed specifically to provide detailed information relating to academic interest or career choice and explore possibilities for financial assistance, school officials said.
Florida Power and Light threw a party to mark the powering-up of its 400-acre solar field off Americus Road in Jackson County, Blue Springs Solar Center. Its one of three FPL solar fields here, the third still under construction.

It is capable of generating enough energy to power 15,000 homes, according to FPL spokesperson Kimberly Blair.

Its first, Blue Indigo Solar Energy Center near Jacob City, became operational in spring of 2020 and FPLs Apalachee Solar Energy Center is under construction off Reddoch and Hollister roads.

Several small local businesses had booths at the party. Some were giving away product and promotional items under arrangement with FPL, and letting the crowd find out more about them and their operations. Lazy Acres Family Farms was there, Panhandle Produce, Martins Harvest were among them.

The Marianna K-8 FFA was there, along with other organizations.

FPL brought some drones to display and a bright yellow robotic dog to demonstrate informally from time to time as the crowd arrived. The robot is used to monitor, and sometimes take pictures of, certain assets in the field and relay information.

Jackson County has supported our solar development and the community BBQ was way to celebrate the commissioning of the Blue Indigo Solar Energy Center and say thank to the neighbors of all three of our projects, and to thank the community as FPL brings a cleaner, more sustainable energy future to Northwest Florida., Blair said.
While 84 U.S. affiliates of Habitat for Humanity will receive some of the $436 million donated by philanthropist MacKenzie Scott, Wiregrass Habitat for Humanity in Dothan was not among them.

While we are so grateful to MacKenzie Scott for her donation to the Habitat organization and (84) affiliates, we did not and will not receive any of that donation, a statement from Wiregrass Habitat for Humanitys Executive Director Donna Clemmons read.

Habitat for Humanity has more than 1,000 affiliates across the U.S., and in Alabama there are more than 20 different affiliates. Habitat for Humanity of Tuscaloosa is the only Alabama affiliate set to receive money from the Scott donation. There are 36 affiliates in the South receiving money.

Chipola Habitat for Humanity in Marianna is among seven Florida affiliates designated to receive funds and is set to receive $1 million.

Habitat affiliates independently fundraise, and Wiregrass Habitat for Humanity has received calls and emails from donors and others about the Scott donation.

We continue to be blessed by our local community and plan to work hard on raising funds to build as many houses as possible in our area, Clemmons said in statement. Ms. Scott has done a wonderful thing to help some Habitats and should be commended for her generosity.

Of the $436 million donation, $25 million goes directly to Habitat for Humanity International, which plans to use that money over the next three to four years to further its advocacy for more affordable housing and increasing Black home ownership.

The remaining $411 million goes to 84 U.S. affiliates located around the country. A complete list of Habitat affiliates receiving money can be found at www.habitat.org/mackenzie-scott-gift-affiliates.

According to reports from the Associated Press, Scott doesnt discuss her donations, which exceeded $8 billion in the past two years after her divorce from Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder, who was then the richest person in the world. As part of the divorce settlement, Scott received 4% of Amazons shares.

There was no application process for affiliates.

Chipola Habitat Executive Director Carmen Smith said she is grateful for the gift and that it has intensified Habitats commitment to the community.

Smith said she hopes the donation inspires other donors and that the large amount shows the significant need there is for affordable housing in this country. Unlike many grants, the Scott gift is unrestricted, which Smith said gives the local affiliates the flexibility to put the money where its most needed.

For decades our organization has worked hard for families in our community, Smith said. This support provides an opportunity to catapult our current plans while making provisions towards operational excellence for years to come.

Peggy Ussery is a Dothan Eagle staff writer and can be reached at aussery@dothaneagle.com or 334-712-7963. Support her work and that of other Eagle journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today at dothaneagle.com.

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 worker is seen inside a garment factory in Tan Binh District, Ho Chi Minh City on October 21, 2021. Photo by VnExpress/Quynh Tran

Vietnamese lawmakers Wednesday decided to increase the monthly overtime cap of a worker from 40 to 60 hours.

All members of the National Assembly Standing Committee approved the decision, which would take affect from April 1 till the end of the year.

The decision also increases the annual cap for overtime from 200 hours to 300 hours for almost all sectors.

Currently only sectors that the government prioritizes for economic growth have an overtime cap of 300 hours.

The latest decision follows a proposal made by the Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs to increase the monthly overtime cap from 40 hours to 72 hours as companies reported rising pressure to meet buyers orders.

It was reported that the need for increased productivity had employees and employers coming to "secret" agreements to work more than the allowed overtime. This could mean that employees might not have received all the benefits that they are legally entitled to, such as a double-pay on their usual day off.

The Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) also made a similar proposal to that of the ministry, saying that many workers had contracted Covid-19, resulting in a drop in productivity.

The lawmakers, however, did not agree with such proposals.

National Assembly Chairman Vuong Dinh Hue said that he did not receive any proposal from business associations to hike up the overtime to 72 hours per month.

Some lawmakers have emphasized that the overtime hike only applies to this year because of Covid-19.
Hiding "taboo" knowledge from children fuels their curiosity. This is not rocket science. The question is: Why do Vietnamese parents still shy away from sex and gender issues?

Recently, after checking her son's smartphone and finding out that the boy was accessing websites with sexual content, a mother posted the entire thing on Facebook for everyone to see, warning parents to check their children's social media accounts as well.

The incident became controversial, with many people saying the mother's actions would negatively impact the child's mental health and development.

Let's get this straight: children being curious about gender and sex is natural and inevitable. While the West seems to have accepted it as such, in several Asian countries, including Vietnam, it is still considered taboo, and parents prevent their children from discussion or learning about such topics.

The parents should know, from their own experiences, that keeping children away from knowing or learning about something as natural as sex only fuels their curiosity; and in this digital age, they access dubious websites with age-inappropriate content.

However, instead of sitting down with their children and discussing sex and other sensitive things in an educational manner with them, many parents are still choosing to stay silent. Shutting such topics out of conversations has the effect of preventing children from learning sensibly about them.

When I studied in Canada, our university had free condoms available in the medical ward. Any student could simply take them whenever they wanted. There, they have had sex education even in primary schools, and this continues till they turn adults. Therefore, most adults have solid knowledge about gender, safe sex and related issues.

It was when I was about to get married that I started to learn more about contraceptives and realized that things like intrauterine devices and contraceptive implants have already been taught to Canadian children since they were 16 or so.

Meanwhile in Vietnam, when I went to the hospital to ask about having an intrauterine device while unmarried, the employees gave me utterly bemused looks.

I work with online systems and social media, so I understand that children have all kinds of ways to gain access to sexual content if they want to. Parents won't be able to do much about that. The more they try to ban it, the more curious their children will get. The only choice left is to teach our children early on about sex and gender as a natural part of human development.

There is nothing wrong or ugly about sex, per se. Either we teach them or risk our children finding things out behind our backs and possibly ruining their future one day.

We're in the digital age now. Smartphones and the internet have become integral to our lives, and so has access to all kinds of knowledge as well as misinformation. We do not need to lose more time in changing our social perceptions of sex education. We have to direct the flow of curiosity into correct paths, neither cutting it loose nor jamming it up.
The transformative power of blockchain innovations and the transition to mass adoption of cryptocurrencies are being discussed at the 22nd edition of the World Blockchain Summit (WBS) in Dubai.

Being held at the Atlantis, The Palm, Dubai from March 23 to 24, WBS is back with an action-packed agenda to connect blockchain and crypto leaders, innovators, policymakers, and investors.

One of the names associated with WBS Dubai 2022 is Bybit, the world's fastest growing cryptocurrency exchange. Established in 2018, Bybit offers a professional platform where crypto traders can find an ultra-fast matching engine, excellent customer service and multilingual community support.

The company provides innovative online spot and derivatives trading services, mining, and staking products, an NFT marketplace as well as API support, to retail and institutional clients around the world. With offerings for traders of all skill levels and a knowledge centre, Bybit Learn, the intuitive trading platform strives to be the most reliable exchange for the emerging digital asset class.

Elite panel to discuss crypto

Among the world's elite speakers in the panel discussion will be Igneus Terrenus, Head of Communications at Bybit. He will share his insights on and Bybit's mission in an increasingly crypto-friendly world.

"It is our pleasure to support WBS here in the UAE, at a time when everyone in the region can feel the charge in the crypto space. Bybit is dedicated to backing meaningful innovations that empower their users and exploring use cases for blockchain technologies across verticals, and the summit brings together the best thinkers and makers that the industry has to offer," said Terrenus.

Mithun Shetty, CEO Trescon commented: "Bybit's core ethos is to support the next level of innovation, talent, and technology development. This is perfectly aligned with our vision to exist at the forefront of technological innovation."

"We appreciate the support of Bybit, and all the great work we will be able to do because of this partnership," he added.
The United States and Bahrain have maintained a strong relationship for decades. In 2002 the U.S. designated Bahrain a Major Non-NATO Ally.



In March, the two countries conducted the second U.S-Bahrain Strategic Dialogue, which coincided with the visit to Washington by Bahraini Crown Prince and Prime Minister Salman bin Hamad al Khalifa. U.S. and Bahraini officials met to advance key priorities, such as peace and security, deepening professional educational and cultural ties, enhancing prosperity by strengthening economic cooperation, and countering terrorism and transnational threats.



When U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin welcomed the Crown Prince to the Pentagon March 2, he praised Bahrains generosity in hosting the U.S. Naval Forces Central Command and the Fifth Fleet, as well as for the kingdoms invaluable support to last years historic Afghan evacuation mission. Secretary Austin noted strong partners like Bahrain are especially important given the threats that we face today, including Irans support for terrorism and its illicit supply of weapons across the region. He also hailed Bahrain for taking the courageous step of establishing a lasting partnership with Israel. That, he said, is a momentous decision that will make the region more secure.



Vice President Kamala Harris met with Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad on March 4. The Vice-President reiterated the Biden-Harris Administrations support for human rights in Bahrain. She also welcomed Bahrains joining the Artemis Accords, a set of rules and norms to guide international cooperation in space.



Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with the Crown Prince March 2 and participated in the Strategic Dialogue. At the conclusion of the Dialogue, the United States and Bahrain issued a joint statement. The two countries reiterated their commitment to regional and global peace and security. They noted that a constructive dialogue had taken place to advance human rights in Bahrain. The two countries recognized the importance of bringing peace and humanitarian aid to Yemen and discussed how to further expand Bahrains ties with Israel after the signing of the Abraham Accords. They also discussed their mutual commitment to tackle the climate crisis under the Paris Agreement.



With Bahrain and the United States continuing and expanding their historic partnership, the region and the world are safer and more prosperous.
ELKO  A Spring Creek man accused of attempting to break into vehicles in Elko last summer has been sentenced to jail time and to pay restitution to the owners.

Police were called to a Seventh Street neighborhood around 3 a.m. Aug. 29 on a report of someone breaking into vehicles. Residents said the front passenger window on a 1998 Dodge pickup was smashed, and the drivers side window on a 2020 Ford Super Crew was broken. A third vehicle was also struck, according to a witness.

Jaden J. Roberts, 20, was later located by police at Fifth and Railroad streets.

He was originally arrested on two felony counts of attempted burglary of a motor vehicle. A criminal complaint filed Sept. 2 formally charged him with one gross misdemeanor count of willful injury to or destruction of property.

Roberts pleaded guilty in February to one count of conspiracy to commit burglary and two counts of conspiracy to commit burglary of a motor vehicle. District Judge Mason Simons sentenced him to 540 days in jail, suspended, and placed him on probation for one year.

He was also ordered to serve 30 days in jail and pay $1,500 restitution to the victims.

Love 2 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 2
ELKO  Employees of Elko Motor Company recently presented a check for $858 to the Elko Animal Shelter, according to shelter Director Karen Walther. The employees were given the choice of where to donate the funds.

Human Resources Manager Daisy Nyberg said the sales team always puts in a couple bucks if they want to wear jeans to work. They put the money in an envelope and at the end of the year, the owner, Chuck Bierbach, matches the funds they have raised.

This is the second year in a row they have chosen the Elko Animal Shelter as one of their recipients.

I gave them a quick tour and we took a quick picture with a couple of staff members, said Walther about the day the team dropped off the cash.

Love 3 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.
ELKO  Two sheriffs deputies, one former deputy and a Wells businesswoman are challenging incumbent Aitor Narvaiza for Elko County Sheriff.

Narvaiza, who is seeking a second term, responded to claims made by challenger John Gaylor last week regarding inmate deaths, staffing and the Sheriffs Office budget.

One claim made by Gaylor was that seven inmates have died during Narvaizas first term.

Narvaiza corrected the number of deaths to five, stating four were suicide by hanging in their cell  two shortly after he took office  and one more is under investigation but believed to be a medical issue.

Five is still a lot, its way too many, Narvaiza said.

Inmates are interviewed regarding their mental health when they arrive at the jail. Those who express suicidal thoughts are placed on a 15-minute watch, but some do not express their intentions, even in phone calls with family and friends, which are reviewed after an incident occurs.

Were trying very hard to change things, Narvaiza said.

He also refuted the claim about high turnover, stating that all but one position had been filled with 32 people who have applied to work at the jail. There is wage competition from the mines, he said.

He also explained that during his term, 10 employees retired after 21 to 30 years of service. Theyre not leaving just to leave, but they retired, Narvaiza said, adding that three others transferred to work as courthouse security.

Another issue Narvaiza addressed was Gaylors claim that the Sheriffs office had low morale. Youre going to get disgruntled employees, but theyre everywhere whether youre at the sheriffs office, at the mines, or ranching, he responded. Youre going to get those people that are disgruntled.

Since Narvaiza took office, he has worked to maintain the budget. His first year, when the fiscal year ended six months after he was sworn in, the budget was over by $488,618. However, the next year, the office was under budget by $733,532.

The Sheriff explained Covid-19 pulled the budget back into the red by $116,672, mostly due to overtime for deputies covering shifts for co-workers who either tested positive for the virus or were quarantined for 14 days if they were exposed to a positive case. That was unexpected. We managed through it, but it was expensive.

This year, Narvaiza said with more than three months left in the fiscal year the budget seems to be trending under by $800,000 to $900,000.

Touching on training, Undersheriff Justin Ames said a Detention Response Team of four deputies has been training for the past couple of months. He explained the Washoe County Sheriffs Office would certify deputies as instructors to maintain training for the team.

Most inmates interact with the deputies, but some detainees may have served time in a state penitentiary or be involved with gangs. Its basically riot control in our facility, he said.

Following is a summary of all the candidates, in alphabetical order:

Bella Cummins

Bella Cummins has owned Bellas Hacienda Ranch in Wells since 1985. Defending the brothel industry, she has spoken out on issues related to her business, most recently emergency directives set forth at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.

In 2020, she spoke to Sierra Nevada Ally about the closure of brothels by Gov. Steve Sisolak after they were classified as nonessential businesses. The status delayed her application for emergency Covid-19 funding. She was eventually approved for $70,000 from the Paycheck Protection Program.

In her initial statement after filing for sheriff, Cummins said she would run on the constitutional platform.

I am the peoples choice for a constitutional sheriff, she wrote. Our county became a constitutional county during Covid. Now it is time to stop just talking about it and implement the rights and benefits of the constitution into law enforcement so our citizens may realize them.

Cummins said if elected, she would enforce the rights we are given under the great Constitution of the United States and see they are guaranteed to the citizens of our country.

I will lead and protect all the people of our county, she said. I represent freedom, fairness and accountability.

Additionally, Cummins said her administration would be fair and equitable for all citizens.

I cant be bought. I detest hiring practices, management and law enforcement by back door tactics and good old boy methods, she explained. We should all benefit by the tenants of the constitution and regulations should be enforced fairly and equitably.

Speaking to the office of sheriff, Cummins stated, I stand for law enforcement that follows the letter and spirit of the law for all people. And that includes opportunities for law enforcement personnel based on fair hiring and retention policies.

She explained her business had given her a knowledge of the legal system suited to the office of Elko County Sheriff.

I run legal businesses in this county and have done so for over 30 years, Cummins said. I understand the laws and no one is better equipped to serve the citizens of our county as sheriff.

John Gaylor

John Gaylor is a native of Elko County, growing up and attending schools in Spring Creek. He lived in Utah and Idaho before returning to the area and joining the Sheriffs office as a deputy.

Gaylor started in the jail before he was assigned to Wells and Jackpot. He later patrolled Elko and Spring Creek before becoming a plainclothes narcotics detective with the Elko Combined Narcotics Unit. He left law enforcement and now works as a site safety supervisor for a construction company.

He said running for sheriff is an opportunity to give back to the community because I feel like Elko County deserves better.

Training staff is an area Gaylor wants to work on, if elected. He explained he wanted to provide more education in substance abuse and addiction, looking at all aspects of the problem and how you can combat it. It would also help the legal and judicial aspects of the criminal justice system.

I think we may have bit of a gap there where deputies and peace officers need a little bit better training on articulation to better specify certain types of crimes or the actual incident that occurred, he explained, which takes place through reports and evidence collection.

I think the more educated your workforce is and the more enabled they are to do their job, the better prosecution rates we would have overall.

Gaylor said he wants the public to know that he plans to make training and education cornerstones of his leadership. You see throughout our nation, 90% of the time when we have a bad officer involved incident, it typically comes down to training and education and what we could have done different prior if we had the right values.

I stand by the things I say; you can ask any guy Ive ever worked with in or outside of law enforcement, and theyll tell you Im upfront, Im honest, Im not afraid to work hard to make sure we get the results that are needed, he said.

Gaylors focus would also be directed to the communitys response to how the justice system is working.

[Its] not only for the officers but for Elko County and to help appease the citizens when they feel like were getting too many plea agreements and things of that nature, he said.

I love this community, and I firmly believe we deserve better out of law enforcement, specifically at the Sheriffs office, he said.

Sheriff Aitor Narvaiza

Narvaiza arrived in Nevada from Spain when he was 8 years old. His father worked as a sheepherder until he could send for his family.

It is his father who Narvaiza credits for inspiring him to run for sheriff after serving 23 years in law enforcement and rising to the rank of sergeant in the Elko County Sheriffs office. I promised him I would before he passed away.

Elected in 2018, Narvaiza said he has worked hard to serve the community during the past four years. Pointing to the efforts of Undersheriff Justin Ames and Lt. Doug Fisher, Narvaiza discussed new technologies introduced to the Sheriffs office, including mobile dispatch terminals for real-time communication with Elko Interagency Dispatch installed in each vehicle, resulting in faster response times; and a new community app.

He also pointed to areas the Sheriffs Office is looking at for better fiscal responsibility, such as a four-year lease for vehicles that comes with a maintenance program. Patrol vehicles can also be rotated out if they reach 125,000 miles.

Narvaiza listed procedures for better public safety. One, a less lethal program, is being implemented to give deputies another option when they are in a situation that may not require the use of a firearm. Also, a restraining order program was developed for victims of domestic violence against offenders arrested on related charges, which is served to the detainee before they are released from jail.

Looking back on his four years in office, Narvaiza explained his decision to approach the Elko County Commissioners and become a Second Amendment sanctuary county, which he said was in response to Red Flag laws and mask mandates issued by Sisolak, and falls in line with my job to protect the people of Elko County.

Were not out to break any laws, but let me reassure you, as law enforcement throughout the county, my job is to follow the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the state of Nevada, Narvaiza said, adding that Red Flag laws are based on an allegation by a citizen, and they ignore due process set up by the Constitution.

Were making sure there is a process set in place before we act, Narvaiza said. And us going into your home and taking your firearms is not right.

Narvaiza said he has always had a passion for law enforcement and serving the community, and has enjoyed being sheriff the past four years. I want to be a sheriff for the people. I feel Im that guy and I can keep going.

Were going to keep doing what the people want us to do and thats keep working hard, he concluded.

Deputy Shawn Sherwood

Elko County Sheriffs Deputy Shawn Sherwood moved to Elko from Arizona in 1998. Mining brought me to the community and after being here for a few years, I figured out law enforcement is where I wanted to focus.

Originally, his goals included working with local youth, and he was employed at the Nevada Youth Training Center for two years. I found myself not really helping the youth there as much as they were already in trouble. So I tried to find different avenues for that.

After working at the Carlin Police Department, Sherwood worked for the Combined Narcotics Task force for a couple of years. Twelve years ago he became a deputy and formerly served as a School Resource Officer.

If elected, he said he would bring equity and equality to the community. I think equity is something we need to work on with our citizens and our youth in this community and show that were putting it into citizens and into this department. By doing that we spread equality throughout each and every person.

Sherwood explained that education would serve to fulfill the equity piece by holding workshops for the public on topics such as identity theft, fraud and phone and internet scams. Especially with drugs, with what those things are doing.

Additionally, Sherwood said he plans to continue his investment in the community, stating it would become stronger with him as sheriff, partnering with other law enforcement agencies and first responders.

I know that is something weve struggled with in the past and something we can gain here and move forward with, he said.

Ive invested a lot into our community as far as children and education and helping people out, Sherwood continued. Its part of the job and I think as the Elko County Sheriff Id be able to expand on that and help other people in this community and partners.

Running for Sheriff is something Sherwood has had in mind since he was first hired by former Sheriff Jim Pitts. I told him one of these days I plan to be in your shoes where youre at.

Sherwood added he was inspired by Narvaizas run for Sheriff four years ago to launch his own campaign this year, and said he believed this is the right time. I feel like Im the right man and its the right job for me, and hopefully Ill be the right choice.

Id love to have your support, Sherwood said.

Sgt. Mike Silva

Entering the military at 19 years old, Mike Silva began a two-decade career that eventually transitioned into law enforcement.

He served in the active Army. During the Gulf War, he was shipped out to Germany and then deployed to Iraq in Operation Desert Storm. Later he served two tours of Iraq and one tour of Afghanistan. Today, he is retired from the Army National Guard.

Silva joined the Elko County Sheriffs Office as a deputy in 2003, serving as a corporal, and lieutenant of the jail division throughout his career.

He said he found ways to merge his military training with his law enforcement duties, specifically using communication and planning skills to keep things running in an orderly manner.

But it is his desire to bring mentorship and training to younger deputies, among other reasons, that prompted Silva to file for sheriff.

Its time to run, he said. I want to pass on my leadership abilities and mentorship to the new generation of deputies, and know I left the County in a better light.

If elected, Silva said he would focus on training deputies, making them experts in various fields such as search and rescue, diving, traffic stops, commercial vehicles and trafficking. He would also make empowerment, trust, respect and being listened to a primary focus to staff and deputies if elected.

[Its about] building a well-rounded department rather than separate divisions, he explained.

Another area that would receive is focus for improvement is the jail division, where Silva has served most, if not all, of his career. He said he would emphasize safety and security for deputies and inmates, for what is a very dark, negative part of the Sheriffs office.

Although he is in a crowded field for sheriff, Silva wanted to reassure voters they can trust me.

I respect the community greatly, the deputies and even the inmates, I respect them. The administration, the County. I respect those who are doing their job, Silva said.

Primary Election

Elko County voters will see all five names on the ballot for the Primary Election scheduled for June 14, which will determine who will run for Sheriff in the General Election.

According to state law, NRS 293.400, the two candidates who receive the highest number of votes in the primary, will appear on the November ballot, unless one candidate receives the majority of votes cast.

----

This article has been updated to reflect Deputy Shawn Sherwood's status as a former School Resource Officer.

Love 2 Funny 4 Wow 1 Sad 0 Angry 2
Who are we as a nation? While the answer may lead to policy debates, a serious consideration of who and what we are about is critical to getting out of ideological silos and actually making coherent policy that helps solve some of our many problems.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, asking in desperation for our help, called on us to recall our nations motivating ideals. I remember your national memorial in Rushmore, he said to Congress. The faces of your prominent presidents, those who laid the foundation of the United States of America as it is today. Democracy, independence, freedom, and care for everyone, for every person, for everyone who works diligently, who lives honestly, who respects the law. We in Ukraine want the same for our people.

In New York, we celebrated St. Patricks Day with the customary parade, rejoicing in a return to normal. But people in Ukraine and elsewhere have no hope of a life that involves peace and security anytime soon.

In Iraq, Christians and other religious minorities know that no one really wants them there  or cares that they are there, relatively speaking. Thats why Pope Franciss visit to that country a year ago this month was so important to them.

When ISIS was waging genocide on Iraqi Christians, they had to beg us to notice. Perhaps the one mercy for Ukraine is that we are not looking away. But Ukrainians need more than that. As do the Iraqis. Our lack of follow-through is a bipartisan problem.

Zelenskyy, in asking for our help  in English  is calling on our better angels, imploring us to help our neighbor  anyone who supports human rights, and freedom, for the right to live decently; and the right to die when your time comes and not when its wanted by someone else.

Zelenskyy, who is Jewish, was reminding many Christians about their duties to their neighbor. But it does mean doing more, caring more, pouring oneself out for our neighbors. As a country, we obviously cant do that for every nation on Earth, but we should offer more than words, and help those whose very existence is under threat. We have been stingy in recent years about true refugees  the victims of ISIS have stories to tell.

In his book, The Disappearing People: The Tragic Fate of Christians in the Middle East, Stephen M. Rasche, an American who works for the Archdiocese of Erbil, writes: We had spent years of critical human and financial resources trying to bring help and positive change while there was still time, and everywhere, we were being undermined, misled or outmaneuvered.

During the Cold War years, people knew were we stood. Im not sure thats the case now. We cant have a coherent Ukraine, refugee or any other policy without knowing who we are. The Catholic high school I attended has dropped AP European History. If we dont understand where we came from, with both the good and the bad, how can we go forward?

William F. Buckley Jr., the founder of National Review, the magazine I work for, said in a speech called What Americanism Seeks to Be that: The Constitution of the United States, and in particular the Bill of Rights, is essentially a list of prohibitions; but it is a list of things that the government cannot do to the people. He went on to say: It grew out of a long, empirical journey, the eternal spark of which, of course, traces to Bethlehem, to that star that magnified man beyond any power of the emperors and gold seekers and legions of soldiers and slaves: a star that implanted in each one of us that essence that separates us from the beasts, and tells us that we were made in the image of God and were meant to be free.

What we are watching in Ukraine and in our own country is not reality TV but a reality check. Do we still value true freedom and human rights? Are we still a beacon for others in that way?

Love 1 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
Headlines

- Russian forces surrounded northwest of Kyiv by Ukrainian forces.

- Ukrainian forces push back eastern forces to 34 miles from center of capital putting Russians on defensive footing.

- US secretary of state, Antony Blinken: "Members of Russias forces have committed war crimes"

- President Biden lands in Brussels for meetings with NATO and G7 members

- Ukrainian leaders accuse Russia of taking food delivery and aid workers hostage as they were entering Mariupol

- Military experts report Russian forces could run out of supplies within the next three weeks.

- Small Ukrainian cities have fended off Russian forces, knowing that many will see greater forces return after regaining strength

- President Zelensky reports that 100,000 people still remain trapped in Mariupol, drone footage captures the destruction.

- European leaders will discuss the resettlement of the more than 3.5 million Ukrainians that have fled to the block since the invasion began.

Russia-Ukraine: Conflict Background

- Foreign fighters like "Wali" are targets of the Russian army.

- What is the FSB?

- Sanctions on Russia begin to impact the cost of living around the world.

Related News
The United States military has bases in over 900 confirmed bases in over seventy countries. The country with the highest number of US bases, 120, is Japan, followed by Germany with 119.

After World War II, the US began to establish military bases in these countries to ensure peace during the reconstruction era. In the years following, both countries became ego-strategically advantageous to the US during the Cold War, which is explains why the number of bases is so high.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the US has also increased its military presence in Eastern Europe, especially as many of the former republics that made up the USSR became NATO members.

After the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, the NATO alliance has come together to provide defense, in the event that a member becomes directly involved in the conflict. While the vast majority of members have sent weapons to Ukraine, some offensive weapons like fighter jets have been harder to get into Ukrainian airspace. The sending of this sort of military equipment teeters on a careful line, as Russia has said that the ongoing military assistance to Ukraine and economic sanctions are being considered serious acts of hostility.



 UPDATE 



We face a new reality for our security due to #Russias illegal invasion of #Ukraine.



In response, #NATO has reinforced its defensive presence in the eastern part of the Alliance with more troops, planes & ships.



Heres the overview  pic.twitter.com/nrAVDOGtJj  Oana Lungescu (@NATOpress) March 22, 2022

Bulgaria

Bulgaria, which became a NATO member in 2004 has four co-operated military bases with the US. For the US these bases, particularly the Bezmer Air Base in the Yambol Province are strategic because of the their proximity to the Middle East.

How many US troops are stationed in Bulgaria?

All in all, around 2,500 US military personal are scattered across the four bases which include an additional air base, a logistics center, and a military training center.

While Bulgaria does not border Russia or Ukraine, it does lie on the Black Sea, and thus is a serves as a critical military ally of NATO. Tensions on the Black Sea have rapidly increased since the invasion.

On 19 March, Bulgarian Prime Minister Kiril Petkov announced that the US had agreed to send a "contingent" of troops would be sent to the country. The news came as US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin visited Sofia to discuss the ongoing conflict with Bulgarian leaders.

Estonia

Estonia, which also joined NATO in 2004, became one of the first members to share a border with Russia.

Through collaboration with NATO, the US supports the existence of the Amari Air Base in Harjumaa, Estonia. The base is staffed by military professionals from various NATO countries.

In early February as Russian troops moved closer to Ukraine, Estonian Prime Minster Kaja Kallas to send forces to the country. Troops have been sent, but exact numbers are not currently available. However, as a whole NATO has sent 2,000 troops to the county.

Poland

In 1999, Poland became a NATO member and during this conflict has been reassured that should an attack on Polish soil take place, Article 5 of the treaty would go into effect. NATO is a collective defense agreement, meaning that an attack on one member is considered an attack on all. Article 5 of the treaty details this component and has never been activated.

While Poland does not border Russia directly, but it does border Belarus which has been Russia's largest ally during the invasion. Before the invasion the US sent 3,000 troops to Poland, and since Russia launched its attack hundreds more have been moved to the country. The White House is keenly aware of the threat Poland faces from Belarus, with National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan saying, "Poland has to contend not just with the war in Ukraine but with Russias military deployments to Belarus, which have fundamentally changed the security equation there."

During President Biden's trip to Europe this week, he will make a stop in Poland to meet with President Andrzej Duda. Poland is the only country, aside from Belgium, that the president will visit.

President Biden is on his way to Europe to meet with our allies and partners in response to Putins brutal war in Ukraine. Amanda Sloat from @POTUSs National Security team previews his trip: pic.twitter.com/MlsGPIs13l  The White House (@WhiteHouse) March 23, 2022

Jake Sullivan said that a visit to Poland is critical because the country "has taken the brunt of the humanitarian impact outside of Ukraine in terms of the refugee flows."

"Poland is where the United States has surged a significant number of forces to be able to help defend and shore up the eastern flank," added Sullivan.
Amid profound changes unseen in a century, the global economy is experiencing a weak and uneven recovery, and the world is calling for practical actions to re-energize the global economy and drive it forward.

Under the guidance of "Xiconomics," the economic philosophy of Chinese President Xi Jinping, China has been working steadily to prop up the real economy, strengthen its innovation capacity and enhance practical cooperation with the rest of the world, which has further consolidated the foundation of the country's economy and improved its anti-risk capacity.

China's solid growth has not only served as a stabilizer and a driving force for the world economy, but has offered other countries inspiration for reviving economies, boosting development and achieving strong and sustainable growth.

With a strong focus on production, manufacturing and innovation, Xi's economic thought injects impetus into global growth that is wrestling with numerous uncertainties.

Strong support for real economy

"The real economy is the foundation of a country's economy and source of wealth. Advanced manufacturing is one key area of the real economy and the economic development cannot be separated from the real economy at any time," Xi said during his inspection tour of China's southern Guangdong Province back in 2018.

The Chinese president, on many occasions, has highlighted the importance of supporting the real economy, setting a clear direction for China's economic development and enlightening the international community about global growth. His thoughts bear a special significance against the backdrop of the ravaging COVID-19 pandemic.

In the early months after the onset of the pandemic, many Chinese companies, including carmakers and energy enterprises, have transformed their businesses to cater to the surging demands both at home and abroad for anti-virus products including masks and disinfectants, contributing to the stable operation of global supply chains.

These have reflected the different roles the real economy plays in China and Western countries, overseas observers have said.

As the world's largest manufacturing country, the top trader of goods, as well as the second largest consumer of goods, China has contributed over 30 percent to global economic growth in recent years, and withstood the tough test brought about by the pandemic.

Under Xi's leadership, China has emerged as the only major economy with positive growth in 2020, a demonstration of the vitality and resilience of the country's economy amid the global public health crisis. In 2021, China's gross domestic product saw a year-on-year increase of 8.1 percent, exceeding 110 trillion yuan (17.3 trillion U.S. dollars) and beating most market expectations.

Being estimated to account for over 18 percent of the global economy in 2021, China's economy is in an increasingly prominent position in world development.

Wichai Kinchong Choi, senior vice president of the leading Thai bank Kasikornbank, told Xinhua that China has played a crucial and irreplaceable role in supporting the global supply chain.

"China's comprehensive advantages, such as the vast and promising market, abundant human resources, sound infrastructure and complete industrial facilities, all make it attractive to foreign investment," the banker said.

Enhancing innovation capacity

"A new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation is gathering pace, and science and technology are playing an even more significant role in boosting social productivity," said Xi while delivering a keynote speech via video at the APEC CEO Dialogues in 2020.

Thanks to Xi's deep insight into the changes in different stages of development, China has been firmly implementing its new development philosophy featuring innovative, coordinated, green, open and shared growth, and working to shift its growth model, contributing China's wisdom and strength to global economic transformation and development.

Located on a hill-surrounding steppe near the city of Zhanatas in the Zhambyl Region in southern Kazakhstan, a Chinese-built wind farm, the biggest one in Central Asia, stands as a living embodiment of how Chinese innovation has improved the lives of local people. The project have not only alleviated Kazakhstan's power shortage, but also increased local tax revenue.

From "made in China" to "created in China," the country is stepping up its pace toward the middle and high-end of industrial and value chains. In February, China's Hualong One, a domestically designed third-generation nuclear reactor, was confirmed adequate for use in Britain, which is of vital importance for the island country to make up for its energy shortage and shore up its economy.

Meanwhile, China is taking the lead in the field of integrating digital economy with the real economy. Relying on such new technologies as cloud computing, e-commerce and fintech, China is playing an active role in facilitating regional and global trade.

In Southeast Asia, the joint construction of "a digital Silk Road" keeps gaining fresh momentum as China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have been expanding their cooperation in such emerging fields as smart city, 5G and big data.

According to ASEAN Secretary-General Lim Jock Hoi, with the thriving digital cooperation between China and ASEAN, the regional bloc's digital economy is projected to increase from 1.3 percent of its gross domestic product in 2015 to 8.5 percent in 2025.

China, a country striving to step up its innovation and pursue high-quality development, will for sure create more opportunities for cooperation and bring about more tangible benefits to others.

Strengthening practical cooperation

Looking at the newly-built bridge spanning across the Mekong River, Da Danuch, a 31-year-old civil servant in Cambodia, could hardly hold back her excitement.

"Previously, it took at least one hour to one hour and a half to cross the river by ferry, but it's convenient now because we have the bridge, and it takes less than five minutes to cross the river," she said.

The Chinese-built Stueng Trang-Kroch Chhmar Cambodia-China Friendship Bridge came into service in late 2021, which has largely facilitated transportation and businesses between the two sides of the river. It is an important achievement within the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative, and also exemplifies China's commitment to deepening practical cooperation with the rest of the world for joint development.

Cooperation between China and its partners has not only upgraded local infrastructure and improved the skills of workers, but also advanced cultural and people-to-people exchanges.

In a classroom in Guinea-Bissau in West Africa, students raised their hands, competing for chances to answer questions from Chinese agricultural technicians.

It was an agricultural machinery skills training class taught by a team of Chinese technical experts. Over the past two decades, Chinese expert teams have trained more than 22,000 people there with technical skills, in a big boost to the country's agricultural development.

"China will promote high-quality Belt and Road cooperation so that more countries and peoples will benefit from its development opportunities and real outcomes," Xi said at the opening ceremony of the fourth China International Import Expo in November 2021. His remarks demonstrated China's sincere readiness to share the fruits of development with countries around the world.

Under the guidance of Xiconomics, China is pursuing growth while ensuring stability, and expanding practical cooperation with its partners to bring benefits of its development to countries across the globe, which has injected confidence into the world economy.
Prime Minister visited female workers at Dinh Hoa social housing area, Thu Dau Mot City, on March 19. (Photo: VnExpress)v

The project is in the second phase of Becamex IDC's social housing project, with a scale of 120,000 apartments, serving the needs of more than 300,000 people. Most of the apartments are about 30 square meters, with preferential prices from VND100 to VND200 million. In addition, there are more advanced apartments priced from VND200 to 500 million, or VND750,000 a month for rent. Previously, the first phase of the project built more than 47,500 apartments. Reasonable selling and rental prices attracted tens of thousands of workers and low-income people.

According to Binh Duong Provincial People's Committee, there are currently about one million workers outside the province, of which more than 480,000 people have stable housing. In addition, there are about 200 businesses building their own housing for workers, for about 50,000 people. The remaining about 470,000 workers have to rent houses.

At the groundbreaking ceremony, when visiting a worker's family in Dinh Hoa Ward, Thu Dau Mot City, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh said that the current social housing in Dinh Hoa basically meets the living needs of small families. However, in the future, the province needs to pay attention to expanding the area of apartments with better living conditions, investing in infrastructure in health, education, environment, culture and society.

"The construction needs to be more synchronous and complete, meeting development requirements and the wishes and needs of workers," the Prime Minister said.

The Prime Minister said that the Government is implementing the socio-economic recovery and development program for the period 2022-2023, including policies directly related to promoting the development of social housing and housing for workers.

Previously, on the morning of March 19, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh attended the groundbreaking ceremony of Vietnam  Singapore Industrial Park 3 (VSIP 3), with an area of 1,000 hectares and a total investment of VND6.4 trillion, in Hoi Nghia Ward, Tan Uyen Town.

VSIP III is designed to integrate smart technology from energy use, water, waste, transportation and security. The industrial park also built a 50-hectare solar farm to supply electricity to large customers.

According to the Binh Duong Provincial People's Committee, up to now, there are 31 domestic and foreign corporations and companies in the high-tech field exploring the possibility of production development in the industrial park, equivalent to 176 hectares of industrial land, and USD1.8 billion in investment capital.

In Binh Duong, VSIP was formed in 1996 based on the cooperation relationship between Vietnam and Singapore. In addition to VSIP 3, in Binh Duong there are also VSIP 1 with an area of 500 hectares in Thuan An City; and VSIP 2 phase 1 covering more than 2,000 hectares and located in 4 areas of Thu Dau Mot City, Ben Cat Town, Tan Uyen and Bac Tan Uyen District. In addition, this joint venture also cooperates with many provinces to open industrial parks./.
Saudi Araia's Public Investment Fund (PIF) has announced that five leading Saudi Arabian businesses have each signed separate non-binding memoranda of understanding (MoU) to become the first potential partners of the MENA regional Voluntary Carbon Market (VCM).

The partners are Aramco, Saudia, ACWA Power, Maaden, and Enowa, a subsidiary of NEOM.

The news follows the announcement of the VCM initiative by PIF and Tadawul in September 2021, where His Royal Highness Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Crown Prince, Deputy Prime Minister, Chairman of the Council of Economic and Development Affairs and Chairman of Board of Directors of PIF, highlighted Saudi Arabias leading role in contributing to the reduction of the impact of climate change, said a Saudi Press Agency report.

HRH the Crown Prince has also announced during the Saudi Green Initiative Forum Saudi Arabias aim to reach Net Zero by 2060 through the Carbon Circular Economy approach, in line with its development plans and enabling its economic diversification.

What will Voluntary Carbon Market do?

As part of the agreement, the partners will support PIF in the development of the VCM through the supply, purchase and trading of carbon credits as the market is expected to be established in 2023. Additional partners will be announced in the coming months ahead of an initial round of auctions expected in the final quarter of this year.

The VCM will connect the supply of carbon credits with demand from investors, corporates and institutions wanting to reduce their carbon footprint by offsetting carbon emissions they generate. While corporates internal decarburisation targets should remain the priority, the VCM can effectively complement their efforts until and when they reach net zero. The VCM will seek out carbon credits possessing the highest integrity and quality. Saudi Arabias companies and institutions are uniquely positioned to be carbon credit suppliers of choice as well as buyers of high quality, certified carbon credits. By connecting buyers and suppliers, the establishment of a VCM will enable investors and companies across the region to meet their ambitions to reduce and potentially neutralize their carbon footprint, said a statement.

Support demonstrates potential

Yasir Al-Rumayyan, Governor of PIF, said: We would like to thank our partners for their commitment to the Voluntary Carbon Market, the first of its kind in the MENA region. The support of Saudi businesses, which are world leaders in their fields, is a strong demonstration of the exciting potential of this market.

PIF contributes to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabias efforts through driving the investment and innovation required to address the impact of climate change and achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2060.

President & CEO of Aramco Amin H Nasser said: We are excited to be part of this groundbreaking initiative by PIF to establish a regional carbon market, which aligns with our net-zero ambition. Carbon credits complement our wider emissions reduction strategy and represent an important tool in the energy transition, as we continue to play our part in meeting the world's need for secure, affordable and ever more sustainable energy."

Director General of the Saudi Arabian Airlines Corporation Eng. Ibrahim Al-Omar, said: Saudi Arabias national flag carrier, Saudi Arabian Airlines (Saudia) has a pivotal role in carbon off-setting and contributing to environmental sustainability.

"The participation in the voluntary carbon market for the Middle East North Africa region is a landmark occasion in the national airlines history. With great anticipation, we look forward to collaborating on the Voluntary Carbon Market, an innovative future-forward new initiative created by PIF.

ACWA Power Mohammed Abunayyan said: To meet global net-zero targets, considerable action must be taken in order to reduce carbon emissions. The launch of the MENA Voluntary Carbon Market will play a critical role in achieving this target and solving climate change challenges while allowing private investors, businesses, and NGOs to offset their emissions and ultimately position Saudi Arabia as a global hub for carbon trading. As a company that is driving the energy transition through the expansion of renewable energy, desalination, and green hydrogen, we have an important role to play. As such, we are privileged to be one of the first partners to be driving this visionary roadmap forward and help the Kingdom in realizing its ambitious efforts to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2060.

Helping to solve climate change challenges

CEO of Maaden Robert Wilt said: The plan to establish the MENA region carbon market is an important step toward enabling Saudi Arabia and the region to contribute to solving global climate change challenges. As the Kingdom of Saudi Arabias national mining champion, MaAden will actively cooperate with PIF and support the Voluntary Carbon Market by supplying carbon credits in support of Saudi Arabias broader climate ambitions and purchasing carbon credits to deliver on our goal to achieve net zero emissions from Maaden operations by 2050.

Peter Terium, CEO of Enowa, said, NEOM was established with the promise to follow principles of environmental sustainability that promote regenerative and sustainable practices. Using today's technologies to reduce emissions has a high price tag, especially where certain sources of emissions cannot be fully eliminated in the near term, so a medium-term solution is needed. At NEOM, we are working to accelerate the progress of carbon reduction and removal technologies and support the Kingdoms transition to a more carbon-conscious market with limited to no impact on the environment.

"NEOM's recently announced its subsidiary, Energy & Water company Enowa, which is taking the lead here. Today's announcement of the first Voluntary Carbon Market partnership in the MENA region is a natural fit with our business and sustainability objectives. We look forward to seeing how this pioneering initiative will inspire other regional leaders to support our efforts.

Carbon markets have grown rapidly in recent years across the world, with a CAGR of 30% to reach a value of more than $1 billion of traded value as of November 2021, and could grow another 15x by 2030 according to the Taskforce on Scaling Voluntary Carbon Markets.
Wang Yang, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, visits Xinjiang Normal University in Urumqi, northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, March 19, 2022. Wang Yang made an inspection tour in Xinjiang from March 18 to 22. (Xinhua/Rao Aimin)

URUMQI, March 22 (Xinhua) -- China's top political advisor Wang Yang has stressed the importance of maintaining a clear mind when it comes to the overall targets set for Xinjiang, and the need to view them as long-term, arduous, complex tasks with a focus on deep-seated problems concerning the region's long-term stability.

Wang, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, made the remarks during a research tour of northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region from March 18 to 22.

During his tour, Wang visited areas of Urumqi, Kashgar and Hotan, and had heart-to-heart talks with Party and governmental officials. Wang also presided over a forum to seek opinions on related issues.

For more than five years in a row, Xinjiang has not reported any cases of violent terrorism, said Wang, who also applauded Xinjiang's achievements in winning the fight against poverty as scheduled.

Despite impacts of major changes and a pandemic both unseen in a century, Xinjiang has nurtured an atmosphere in which people can enjoy social stability, the harmonious co-existence of different ethnic groups and religions, and happy and comfortable lives, Wang said.

He stressed the importance of securing happy lives for the people of various ethnic groups in Xinjiang as a way to counter the rumors, slanders and attacks from hostile forces.

Wang also emphasized that the people's enthusiasm and initiatives should be fully mobilized to achieve the long-term stability of the region.

Xinjiang should further adapt Islam to the Chinese context, and ensure healthy, orderly, harmonious and stable development in the religious sector, Wang said.

Wang Yang, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, visits the ancient city of Kashgar, northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, March 20, 2022. Wang Yang made an inspection tour in Xinjiang from March 18 to 22. (Xinhua/Rao Aimin)

Editor: WRX
Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi (2nd R) meets with Secretary-General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Hissein Brahim Taha (1st L) in Islamabad, capital of Pakistan, on March 22, 2022. (Xinhua/Ahmad Kamal)

ISLAMABAD, March 23 (Xinhua) -- Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said here on Tuesday that China stands ready to elevate the solidarity, friendship and cooperation with the Islamic world to a new level.

Wang made the remarks while meeting with Secretary-General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Hissein Brahim Taha in Pakistan's capital Islamabad, where Wang attended the 48th session of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the OIC.

China and the Islamic world shared a long tradition of relations, and the two sides supported each other on issues involving each other's core interests, Wang said.

He said China is willing to take attending the session as an opportunity to elevate the solidarity, friendship and cooperation with Islamic countries to a new level.

Wang said the OIC, which represents the Islamic countries' solidarity and independence, serves as a bridge for the development of the relations between China and Islamic countries.

China supports Islamic countries' safeguarding sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity as well as exploring a development path suited to the national conditions, and China will continue to firmly stand together with all Islamic countries, Wang said.

He said China will provide an additional 300 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine to Islamic countries and support the OIC's member countries in Africa fighting against the pandemic.

Wang also said that China will enhance bilateral cooperation in the education and training sector, and jointly hold the fifth seminar of the Chinese and Islamic civilization dialogue.

Taha welcomed Wang on behalf of the OIC's more than 50 member countries, saying Wang's attending the session will further boost bilateral relations.

Taha said the Islamic world appreciated China's efforts in helping Islamic countries fight the pandemic, providing assistance to least developed Islamic countries and the Islamic Development Bank, offering training to thousands of students from Islamic countries in Africa, and helping Africa enhance capacity for independent development.

Taha said Islamic countries hope to enhance dialogue and communication with China, promote mutual understanding and work together to meet challenges.

The two sides also exchanged views on Palestine and Afghanistan, among other issues.

In his meeting with Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, Wang said China and Egypt enjoy profound friendship and solid mutual trust.

Last year, two-way trade between China and Egypt increased by 37 percent despite the pandemic, which fully demonstrates the highly complementary nature of the two economies, Wang said.

The two countries have worked together to build Africa's first production line of COVID-19 vaccines, which demonstrated their traditional friendship and enriched the concept of their comprehensive strategic partnership, Wang said.

China has always viewed relations with Egypt as a diplomatic priority in the Middle East and Africa, he added.

For his part, Shoukry said Egypt will host the 27th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 27) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at the end of this year.

Egypt attaches great importance to China's crucial role and contribution and looks forward to strengthening coordination and cooperation with China in helping developing countries achieve their greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets, he said.

Wang said China has always taken part in the global action on climate change with a responsible attitude and has made important contributions to reaching the Paris Agreement.

China supports Egypt in making COP27 a success and ensuring that the global response to climate change moves in the right direction, Wang added.

The two sides also exchanged views on the Ukrainian issue and agreed to respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries and commit themselves to a comprehensive solution to the current crisis.

Shoukry said Egypt opposes some countries putting pressure on China and stands for strengthening cooperation rather than exacerbating conflicts.

In a meeting with Somali Foreign Minister Abdisaid Muse Ali, Wang said Somalia is an important country in the Horn of Africa. China supports various parties in Somalia to strengthen their coordination, and is willing to continue to contribute to peace, stability and development in Somalia, Wang said.

China stands ready to continue to contribute its wisdom and strength to peace and stability in the Horn of Africa, Wang added. 

Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi (2nd R) meets with Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry (2nd L) in Islamabad, capital of Pakistan, on March 22, 2022. (Xinhua/Ahmad Kamal)

Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi (R) meets with Somali Foreign Minister Abdisaid Muse Ali in Islamabad, capital of Pakistan, on March 22, 2022. (Xinhua/Jiang Chao)

Editor: WRX
Photo taken with a mobile phone shows the ceiling of a bookstore in Beijing, capital of China, Feb. 28, 2022. (Xinhua/Meng Tao)

Photo taken with a mobile phone shows the National Stadium, also known as the Bird's Nest, in Beijing, capital of China, March 13, 2022. (Xinhua/Zhang Chao)

Photo taken with a mobile phone shows an interior view of Beijing Daxing International Airport in Beijing, capital of China, Feb. 22, 2022. (Xinhua/Zhang Chuanqi)

Photo taken with a mobile phone shows people visiting the Palace Museum in Beijing, capital of China, Feb. 12, 2019. (Xinhua/Ma Xiaodong)

Photo taken with a mobile phone shows the National Stadium, also known as the Bird's Nest, and the National Aquatics Center, also known as the Ice Cube, in Beijing, capital of China, Feb. 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Xing Guangli)

Photo taken with a mobile phone shows a residential house in Beijing, capital of China, Sept. 27, 2021. (Xinhua/Meng Tao)

Photo taken with a mobile phone shows an architecture in the Universal Beijing Resort, in Beijing, capital of China, Feb. 13, 2022. (Xinhua/Tian Chenxu)

Photo taken with a mobile phone shows a turret of the Palace Museum in Beijing, capital of China, Feb. 3, 2022. (Xinhua/Ding Hongfa)

Photo taken with a mobile phone shows the Beijing Olympic Tower in Beijing, capital of China, Feb. 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Tu Ming)

Photo taken with a mobile phone shows the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing, capital of China, Jan. 27, 2022. (Xinhua/Meng Tao)

Photo taken with a mobile phone shows an architecture of the Temple of Heaven in Beijing, capital of China, Feb. 12, 2022. (Xinhua/Du Xiaoyi)

Photo taken with a mobile phone shows a man taking photos in the Palace Museum in Beijing, capital of China, Feb. 22, 2022. (Xinhua/Li Xin)

Photo taken with a mobile phone shows people visiting the Prince Kung's Palace Museum in Beijing, capital of China, Feb. 9, 2022. (Xinhua/Meng Tao)

Photo taken with a mobile phone shows the National Aquatics Center in Beijing, capital of China, March 6, 2022. (Xinhua/Ren Chao)

Photo taken with a mobile phone shows people visiting the Art Museum of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, capital of China, April 21, 2021. (Xinhua/Cui Bowen)

Photo taken with a mobile phone shows an architecture of the Temple of Heaven in Beijing, capital of China, Feb. 3, 2022. (Xinhua/Chu Jiayin)

Photo taken with a mobile phone shows a visitor taking photos at the Phoenix Center in Beijing, capital of China, Aug. 23, 2019. (Xinhua/Cui Bowen)

Photo taken with a mobile phone shows a pavilion at the Xishan National Forest Park in Beijing, capital of China, Feb. 14, 2022. (Xinhua/Yin Dongxun)

Photo taken with a mobile phone shows the Yongdingmen in Beijing, capital of China, March 12, 2022. (Xinhua/Meng Tao)

Photo taken with a mobile phone shows skyscrapers in Beijing, capital of China, May 26, 2020. (Xinhua/Tu Ming)

Photo taken with a mobile phone shows the Beijing Olympic Tower in Beijing, capital of China, Feb. 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Tu Ming)

Photo taken with a mobile phone shows skyscrapers in Beijing, capital of China, Feb. 20, 2022. (Xinhua/Chu Jiayin)

Photo taken with a mobile phone shows people visiting the Palace Museum in Beijing, capital of China, Feb. 13, 2022. (Xinhua/Li Xin)

Photo taken with a mobile phone shows the Galaxy Soho in Beijing, capital of China, Feb. 21, 2022. (Xinhua/Chu Jiayin)

Photo taken with a mobile phone shows the National Speed Skating Oval in Beijing, capital of China, Jan. 19, 2021. (Xinhua/Tian Chenxu)

Photo taken with a mobile phone shows the Central Radio &TV Tower in Beijing, capital of China, Dec. 4, 2021. (Xinhua/Ren Pengfei)

Photo taken with a mobile phone shows walls of the Beijing Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) City Wall Relics Park in Beijing, capital of China, March 16, 2022. (Xinhua/Zhang Chuanqi)

Photo taken with a mobile phone shows a winding staircase in Xicheng District of Beijing, capital of China, Aug. 30, 2021. (Xinhua/Meng Tao)

Photo taken with a mobile phone shows skyscrapers in Beijing, capital of China, Sept. 21, 2021. (Xinhua/Tu Ming)

Photo taken with a mobile phone shows a turret of the Palace Museum in Beijing, capital of China, Feb. 3, 2022. (Xinhua/Ding Hongfa)

Photo taken with a mobile phone shows the skyscrapers of the Central Business District (CBD) in Beijing, capital of China, Oct. 10, 2021. (Xinhua/Tu Ming)

Photo taken with a mobile phone shows the Beijing Olympic Tower in Beijing, capital of China, March 13, 2022. (Xinhua/Zhang Chao)

Photo taken with a mobile phone shows the National Aquatics Center in Beijing, capital of China, March 6, 2022. (Xinhua/Ren Chao)

Photo taken with a mobile phone shows the city view in Beijing, capital of China, Feb. 16, 2022. (Xinhua/Tian Chenxu)

Photo taken with a mobile phone shows people visiting the Palace Museum in Beijing, capital of China, Feb. 22, 2022. (Xinhua/Li Xin)

Photo taken with a mobile phone shows the New Shougang Bridge in Beijing, capital of China, Feb. 9, 2022. (Xinhua/Ding Hongfa)

Editor: WXY
BERLIN, March 22 (Xinhua) -- After the pandemic-related slump of Chinese company investments in Europe in 2020, the number of transactions rose again and reached 155 in 2021, according to a study published by consulting firm Ernst &Young (EY) Germany on Tuesday.

Total transaction volumes even increased eightfold to 12.4 billion U.S. dollars, according to the study. The largest single investment by a Chinese company in Europe was the acquisition of Philips' home appliances division, headquartered in Amsterdam, which was sold to Hong Kong-based investment firm Hillhouse Capital for 4.4 billion U.S. dollars.

The second-largest transaction was Tencent's acquisition of the British video game developer Sumo Digital, followed by China International Marine Containers' takeover of the Danish reefer container manufacturer Maersk Container Industry, each for 1.1 billion U.S. dollars, according to the study.

In 2021, Britain replaced Germany as the busiest market for Chinese investments with 36 acquisitions and company participations. Germany recorded 35 transactions, followed by the Netherlands with 13 transactions, according to the study.

Traditional industrial companies still accounted for the majority of deals as 30 of the 155 transactions in Europe took place in the industrial sector, according to the study. However, the number was slightly lower than in 2020.

"There is still interest among Chinese investors in European automotive suppliers or mechanical engineering companies -- but now more in the subsectors of electromobility, autonomous driving and high-tech materials," said Yi Sun, partner and head of China business services in the Europe West region at EY.

In Germany in particular, there were "some very large investments in startups last year in which Chinese investors played a major role," Sun said. In addition to German engineering skills, "e-commerce expertise is increasingly in demand."

Editor: WXL
People sit on a bench near the bombed Command Building of Yugoslav Air Force in Belgrade, Serbia, March 21, 2022. In Belgrade, there are many scars left by the NATO bombings. The NATO bombings of Yugoslavia started on March 24, 1999. During the 78-day military attack, 2,500 civilians were killed, and around 25,000 objects were damaged, including airports, hospitals, schools, cultural monuments and road infrastructure, according to the Serbian government. (Xinhua/Zheng Huansong)

A woman passes the bombed Command Building of Yugoslav Air Force in Belgrade, Serbia, March 21, 2022. In Belgrade, there are many scars left by the NATO bombings. The NATO bombings of Yugoslavia started on March 24, 1999. During the 78-day military attack, 2,500 civilians were killed, and around 25,000 objects were damaged, including airports, hospitals, schools, cultural monuments and road infrastructure, according to the Serbian government. (Xinhua/Zheng Huansong)

A man passes the bombed Command Building of Yugoslav Air Force in Belgrade, Serbia, March 21, 2022. In Belgrade, there are many scars left by the NATO bombings. The NATO bombings of Yugoslavia started on March 24, 1999. During the 78-day military attack, 2,500 civilians were killed, and around 25,000 objects were damaged, including airports, hospitals, schools, cultural monuments and road infrastructure, according to the Serbian government. (Xinhua/Zheng Huansong)

The bombed Command Building of Yugoslav Air Force is seen in Belgrade, Serbia, March 21, 2022. In Belgrade, there are many scars left by the NATO bombings. The NATO bombings of Yugoslavia started on March 24, 1999. During the 78-day military attack, 2,500 civilians were killed, and around 25,000 objects were damaged, including airports, hospitals, schools, cultural monuments and road infrastructure, according to the Serbian government. (Xinhua/Zheng Huansong)

A man with a flower in his hand passes the bombed Command Building of Yugoslav Air Force in Belgrade, Serbia, March 21, 2022. In Belgrade, there are many scars left by the NATO bombings. The NATO bombings of Yugoslavia started on March 24, 1999. During the 78-day military attack, 2,500 civilians were killed, and around 25,000 objects were damaged, including airports, hospitals, schools, cultural monuments and road infrastructure, according to the Serbian government. (Xinhua/Zheng Huansong)

The bombed Radio Television Serbia (RTS) building is seen in Belgrade, Serbia, March 21, 2022. In Belgrade, there are many scars left by the NATO bombings. The NATO bombings of Yugoslavia started on March 24, 1999. During the 78-day military attack, 2,500 civilians were killed, and around 25,000 objects were damaged, including airports, hospitals, schools, cultural monuments and road infrastructure, according to the Serbian government. (Xinhua/Zheng Huansong)

The bombed Radio Television Serbia (RTS) building is seen in Belgrade, Serbia, March 21, 2022. In Belgrade, there are many scars left by the NATO bombings. The NATO bombings of Yugoslavia started on March 24, 1999. During the 78-day military attack, 2,500 civilians were killed, and around 25,000 objects were damaged, including airports, hospitals, schools, cultural monuments and road infrastructure, according to the Serbian government. (Xinhua/Zheng Huansong)

The Hotel Jugoslavija, which was bombed and now is open for business, is seen in Belgrade, Serbia, March 21, 2022. In Belgrade, there are many scars left by the NATO bombings. The NATO bombings of Yugoslavia started on March 24, 1999. During the 78-day military attack, 2,500 civilians were killed, and around 25,000 objects were damaged, including airports, hospitals, schools, cultural monuments and road infrastructure, according to the Serbian government. (Xinhua/Zheng Huansong)

Editor: WXY
Photo taken on Mar. 21, 2022 shows border police conducting a routine patrol in the bitter cold to safeguard the security along the border in Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture, northwest Chinas Xinjiang. (Wang Pengfei/Guangming Picture)

Disclaimer

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author's, GMW.cn makes no representations as to accuracy, suitability, or validity of any information on this site and will not be liable for any errors, omissions, or delays in this information.
Photo taken on Mar. 18, 2022 shows farmers harvesting white tea in Taijiang County of southwest Chinas Guizhou Province. It is white tea harvesting season right before Qingming Festival, where farmers are busy harvesting white tea to meet market demand. (Ouyang Guanglin/Guangming Picture)

Photo taken on Mar. 18, 2022 shows farmers harvesting white tea in Taijiang County of southwest Chinas Guizhou Province. It is white tea harvesting season right before Qingming Festival, where farmers are busy harvesting white tea to meet market demand. (Ouyang Guanglin/Guangming Picture)

Editor: JYZ
Special Communication Service sees no serious risk of seizure of Ukrainian IT assets by Russian military

The State Service of Special Communication and Information Protection does not assess as "high" the risk of a possible seizure of data and Ukrainian IT assets by Russian troops.

"We mainly focus on moving data and backups. We respond quickly when Ukrainian IT assets are in serious danger to prevent possible data capture by Russian troops. But since most of our IT assets are located in Kyiv, we do not assess these risks as very high," deputy head of the service Viktor Zhora said during an online press conference on Wednesday, asked about the state of evacuation of state server capacities.

He stressed that the process of moving state IT assets began even before the war, taking into account all possible risks, and continues to this day.

At the same time, he noted the procedure itself depends on the situation in each specific agency or company.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba called on customers and businesses around the world to boycott the Renault Group, which refuses to leave Russia, thereby supporting a brutal war of aggression in Europe.

"Renault refuses to pull out of Russia. Not that it should surprise anyone when Renault supports a brutal war of aggression in Europe. But mistakes must come with a price, especially when repeated. I call on customers and businesses around the globe to boycott Group Renault," Kuleba said on Twitter on Wednesday.
In a shelling by Russian invaders, the buildings of the Svyiatoshynsky and Shevchenkivsky districts of Kyiv were damaged, four people were wounded, the press service of Kyiv State City Administration has reported.

In particular, it is known that "a shopping center, houses of the private sector and high-rise buildings were shelled. The fire was extinguished, no victims were found. The premises of the shopping center and two private houses were damaged."

It is also reported that "Shevchenkivsky district was shelled in the morning." "Rescuers and doctors are working on the site. Several private houses and a high-rise building are on fire now," the press service of the administration said on its Telegram channel.

On Wednesday morning, a message appeared on social networks that the occupiers fired at the area of Nyvky from Grad multiple launch rocket systems.
Stanton Healthcare Applauds Gov. Little for Signing Texas-Inspired Heartbeat Bill to Ban Abortions After 6 Weeks

NEWS PROVIDED BY

Stanton Healthcare

March 23, 2022

BOISE, Idaho, March 23, 2022 /Christian Newswire/ -- Stanton Healthcare is celebrating Gov. Brad Little's signing of Senate Bill 1309 which amends the Fetal Heartbeat Preborn Child Protection Act that was passed last year. The new bill includes a private enforcement mechanism modeled after the Texas law which has already withstood several federal court challenges, including not being blocked by the U.S. Supreme Court or the state of Texas' Supreme Court.

Stanton Healthcare launched the Stanton Public Policy Center in 2020 to create awareness and to advocate for the women Stanton serves in the state of Idaho and beyond, as communicated by Stanton Founder and CEO, Brandi Swindell:

"When our Stanton medical team and staff testifies in support of legislation that protects preborn babies, we are bringing the hearts and voices of our Stanton clients, the mothers and their preborn babies, to the Capitol to work hand-in-hand with our lawmakers. "We are thankful to Gov. Little for signing this important piece of legislation which will begin saving the lives of Idaho babies and placing limits on abortion in our state. However, there will still be women facing unexpected pregnancies and there will still be children in the womb that need support. Stanton is prepared to provide quality care to the women who will need the support, resources, and life-affirming care provided through our trained medical staff. "Idaho is part of a group of states in the nation leading the way to protect preborn babies by passing this legislation. It is incredibly important to create a post-Roe world. We believe God has raised us up for this very purpose  to ensure there is never a woman or a family facing an unexpected pregnancy that doesn't have the resources, support, and quality healthcare they deserve."

Stanton's Physician Assistant, Samantha Doty, testified before the Senate State Affairs Committee, and said the following:

"At Stanton we believe that abortion is wrong at any point in the pregnancy because from the moment of conception a uniquely distinct human being is created. Although our desire is to see abortions completely outlawed in the state of Idaho, we believe enacting SB 1309 would a huge step in the right direction."

Stanton's Director of Community Outreach, Linda Thomas, testified during the House State Affairs Committee hearing, and stated:

"Abortion is not women's healthcare. Abortion regret is real. However, even if a woman feels relief immediately after, or seems to never be negatively impacted by having an abortion, it doesn't mean it was a right choice. "Abortion is wrong and must end because it causes the violent death of the most vulnerable human beings  on purpose  for profit. Babies, and their mothers, deserve far better than abortion. Stanton stands ready to offer the professional, quality care women are seeking  at no charge."

Stanton Healthcare, based in Boise, has life-affirming clinics in Idaho and affiliates across America and internationally. Stanton provides compassionate and professional women's healthcare along with holistic services to clients experiencing an unexpected pregnancy.

SOURCE Stanton Healthcare

CONTACT: Linda Thomas, Director of Community Outreach, 208-803-1646

Related Links

www.StantonInternational.org

www.StantonHealthcare.org


Zanani Masjid was built 350 years ago in the Mughal period. Many Muslim girls and women gather at Zanani Masjid to study the Quran and Hadees.

Kamran Shaikh | TwoCircles.net

Support TwoCircles



AURANGABAD  There was a time when Muslim women in India not only prayed in mosques but also got them built. Many mosques in medieval India were built by royal women. The wives of the Mughal Emperors played an important role and supervised the construction of mosques, madrasas, and sarais in many parts of India. Historians say that they also adorned the mosques on special occasions such as Eid.

In medieval India, several mosques are said to have been frequented by women from royal families or noble families. Historical evidence does not support the prohibition of women entering mosques.

The Muslim Personal Law Board has also acknowledged that Islam allows women to join congregational prayers. Yet most mosques in India do not accommodate women. An exception is Aurangabad which has three mosques where women offer prayers and also learn recitation of the Quran along with other Quranic courses.

One such Masjid is the Zanani Masjid which was built 350 years ago in the Mughal period by Aurangzeb. Many Muslim girls and women gather at Zanani Masjid to study the Quran and Hadees. These courses are offered for free and taught by qualified women Qaaris.

Girls studying in a nearby government college used to offer namaz in this dilapidated mosque in the afternoons. Gradually other women in the vicinity began gathering in a park near the mosque for prayers. And recite the Quran after their morning walk.

When people objected, these women started visiting the Zanani masjid.

They assessed that they would need around Rs. 20,000/- to get the mosque repaired. They approached a builder for the same but he did it without taking money from them. This was in the year 2012.

In 2013, Afsari Begum, a senior citizen who lived close by joined the group of women to teach and took the initiative to mobilise funds for the mosque. Soon, the small masjid was repaired, electricity and water connection were also given after which it was ready for full-fledged classes. A bore well was dug with support from a generous donor who also connected pipelines so there was flowing water.

What had begun with ten women soon increased to close to 40 women showing an interest in learning to read the Quran with tajweed, learn the Hadith and memorise them.

These classes are going on for the last 7-8 years and very recently we have also built toilets and places for ablutions. Every morning I and two other alimas teach the women for two hours. And we are happy we have our masjid now Afsari Begum, popularly known as Afsari Baji, told TwoCircles.net. The first batch is for the women and then the second batch is for adolescent girls who are taught the basics of namaz, good mannerisms and Islam.

Most of the women who come here regularly are above 30 years and belong to BPL (Below Poverty Line) families.

The presence of Zanani Masjid and its activities has inspired other Muslim management schools and masjids to provide Arabic education in Aurangabad city to promote Islamic values.

The women students at this mosque appear for the tajweed exam at the Darul Qirat Kalimiya, a seminary in Aurangabad.

On passing this exam, they are awarded certificates that qualify them to become a qaari and teach others. These certificates are beneficial for women who are looking for an alternate source of livelihood.

About five of them are currently teaching at various institutes, said Afsari Baji.

Two women apart from Afsari Begum, who have passed the tajweed exams, are Shakeela Begum and Nilofer. I have been teaching here for the last five years and after finishing classes here, I go to another institute to teach. and teach the children there. I do not take any fee because I am doing it for Allah, said Begum.

Rizwana, 32, one of the women who learn Qirat at this mosque said, Earlier I did not know the right way to perform namaz or even read Arabic. I am grateful to my ustada for helping me to walk on the right path of Islam.

While many of the girls here have studied up to 10th or Intermediate there is also one lecturer from the Dr Zakir Hussain Junior college named Nasira who comes on weekends to learn to read the Quran with tajweed.

In addition to the Zanani Masjid in Aurangabad, there are a few other mosques like Totiki Masjid and Mohammadiya Masjid in this historical city that allow women to pray and study Islam as there is a space allotted for women. However, the zanani masjid is the only one that is exclusively for women.
The Russian aggressor continues to conduct strategic offensive operation against Ukraine, the press service of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine reports.

Also, the enemy has moved to the complete destruction of critical infrastructure  carrying out artillery shelling and inflicting air strikes.

In cities and villages where there is peaceful resistance to enemy troops, the occupiers resort to looting and violence against the civilian population.

In Donetsk and Luhansk directions, the enemy tried to advance and gain a foothold, but was defeated.

There is a possibility of involving the Armed Forces of the Republic of Belarus in the war against Ukraine on the side of the Russian Federation. But a large number of personnel and some commanders of Belarus refuse to participate in military operations against Ukraine.
Russian invaders destroyed the bridge over the Desna River in Chernihiv, Suspilne has reported, the information was confirmed by Head of Regional Military Administration Viacheslav Chaus.

"In Chernihiv, the Russian military bombed the road bridge across the Desna River, which connected the city with Kyiv. Air bombs were dropped on the bridge, one of the spans fell. Evacuation flights moved along this bridge from Chernihiv and humanitarian aid was brought to the city," Suspilne said in its Telegram channel.
Metallurgical enterprises of Mariupol will never operate under Russian occupation, businessman Rinat Akhmetov has said in a commentary to the American newspaper The Wall Street Journal.

"Russian troops are turning Mariupol into rubble, killing Mariupol residents and bombing the plants," he said. "Under no circumstances will these plants operate under Russian occupation," the businessman said.

He said that now both Azovstal and the Illich Iron and Steel Works are under Ukraine's control, thanks to the heroic efforts of the Ukrainian army.

Both Azovstal and the Illich plant, which employed about 40,000 people, are under Ukrainian control, but the plants are temporarily shut down.

Akhmetov said earlier that he is in Ukraine and all his businesses, as well as the charitable foundation, are doing everything possible for the victory of Ukraine and helping the civilian population.

"I am sure that the time will come when we will rebuild Ukraine, and I will invest all my strength and resources so that Ukraine can recover and become a strong and prosperous country," he said.
The administration of U.S. President Joseph Biden is preparing sanctions on most members of the State Duma of Russia, according to U.S. officials and internal documents viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Biden intends to announce the sanctions on more than 300 members of the Russian State Duma as soon as Thursday during his trip to Europe. The sanctions will be announced in coordination with the European Union and members of the Group of Seven industrialized nations. As reported, Biden will visit Brussels, where he will take part in NATO, EU and G-7 summits, and will also pay a visit to Warsaw.
Biden in Europe to discuss further western response to Russian invasion of Ukraine

During a trip to Europe this week, U.S. President Joe Biden will discuss further Western reactions to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, including assistance to Kyiv and pressure on Russia, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said during a press conference.

"The President is heading to Europe tomorrow to reinforce the incredible unity we built with Allies and partners in response to Russia's brutal invasion of Ukraine and to consult on next steps," he said.

"He will attend an emergency NATO Summit, joined by the leaders of the other 29 NATO Allies. He will join the G7 leaders. And he will address the 27 leaders of the European Union at a session of the European Council," Sullivan said.

In particular, these events will discuss topics such as military assistance to Ukraine and putting pressure on Russia with the help of sanctions, both through the development of new measures and the tightening of existing ones.

"He will announce joint action on enhancing European energy security and reducing Europe's dependence on Russian gas at long last," Sullivan said.

From Brussels, Biden will travel to Poland, where he will meet with U.S. military personnel, as well as with humanitarian experts. In Poland, he will also meet with Poland's President Andrzej Duda.
Over the past 24 hours, Kharkiv was shelled 32 times, as a result of which the Northern Saltivka area suffered the most, Kharkiv Regional Military Administration Head Oleh Synehubov has said.

"The invaders lost the war for Kharkiv, so the only thing left for them is to strike from long distances. There were 32 such strikes in one day. The defense headquarters noted the increased activity of the enemy in the use of multiple rocket launchers (MLRS) - 280 times and tank strikes - nine times," Synehubov said on his Telegram channel.

He said that on March 22, the invaders launched rocket attacks on Lozova for the first time, as a result of which at least 8 civilians were injured (of which 4 were in grave condition).

According to Synehubov, the Armed Forces of Ukraine are not allowing the enemy to advance in the direction of Izium.

"In the latest attacks, the enemy lost about 400 personnel and dozens of pieces of equipment," he said.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky has warned of the danger of radioactive and chemical contamination during the ongoing hostilities in Ukraine.

Speaking via video link to the Japanese parliament on Wednesday, he recalled that thousands of tonnes of contaminated materials were buried in the exclusion zone of the Chornobyl nuclear power plant. "On February 24, Russian armored vehicles drove across this land, raising radioactive dust," he said, adding that Russia uses a 30-kilometer zone to prepare attacks on Ukraine's territory.

Zelensky also recalled the shelling of Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe. "The other day, Russian troops fired on a chemical plant. There was an ammonia leak. "We are being warned about possible chemical attacks, in particular, with the use of sarin, as was the case in Syria," the President of Ukraine said.
Under the leadership of Father Patrick Desbois, the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center and the Yahad-In Unum organization have launched an investigation into the war crimes of the Russian Federation committed in Ukraine, the press service of the Memorial Center reports.

It is noted that this initiative was launched with the aim of identifying and fixing the horrendous mass crimes committed day by day against the civilian Ukrainian population in Mariupol, Kharkiv, Mykolaiv and throughout Ukraine.

"Almost 20 years ago, my organization Yahad-In Unum and I began to investigate the crimes of the 'Holocaust by bullets' committed in Ukraine and then in other countries, in every village occupied by Nazi units. We developed a special methodology and interviewed more than 8,000 witnesses of the 'Holocaust by bullet's. I never thought that in 2022 I would again have to investigate war crimes in these most suffering lands," chairman of the Academic Council of the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center, president and founder of Yahad-in Unum Father Patrick Desbois said.

The Holocaust Memorial Babyn Yar and Yahad-In Unum decided to collect as many video evidence of the victims of Russia's crimes as possible. This testimony will be presented to the International Criminal Court, as well as the leadership of countries such as Germany, which have already launched an investigation.

"Everyone knows that an eyewitness is the key to justice in countering objections from Putin and his aides. The voices of the witnesses must be preserved in order to counter the crimes committed by the Russians," Father Patrick Desbois said.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias agreed that sanctions against Russia should be even tougher.

"In our call, Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias and I agreed that sanctions on Russia must be further elevated. Russia must pay the price for its ongoing war against Ukraine," Kuleba tweeted on Wednesday.

The Minister also expressed gratitude to Dendias for his personal efforts to provide humanitarian assistance to Mariupol and its Greek community.
The Ministers of Transport of the Baltic States and Poland called on the EU to ban the transport of goods by road to Russia and Belarus, as well as the transport of goods from these countries.

According to Lithuanian Minister of Transport Marius Skuodis, the appeal also calls on EU countries to ban Russian and Belarusian ships from entering ports throughout the EU.

"Today, I signed a joint appeal by three Ministers of Transport of the Baltic States and Poland to the EU authorities and other colleagues calling for a pan-European ban on road transport to / from Russia and Belarus, while prohibiting ships from entering EU ports," Skuodis said on social networks.

"EU action is needed here and now. We hope that the heads of state and government of the EU, who met in Brussels on Thursday, will not hesitate," Skuodis added.

Earlier, activists in Lithuania and Poland protested against the transport of goods by road between the EU countries and Russia. Lithuania is coordinating with other countries in the region an initiative to ban Russian and Belarusian ships from entering their ports. However, Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte said it would be better to take a decision as a whole in the EU, as this would close the possibility of legal disputes.


The remarks made by the regions top administrator in a fact-finding report by Press Council of India (PCI) has caused worry among the journalists community.

TCN Correspondent

Support TwoCircles



SRINAGAR  A recent report by the Press Council of India (PCI) on the state of media in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir has come as a shocker for the journalist community in the region who have been working in a restrictive media atmosphere post abrogation of article 370 in 2019.

In the report, the Lieutenant Governor of Jammu and Kashmir Union Territory Manoj Sinha is quoted as saying that the administration suspected that a large number of local Kashmir journalists were sympathizers towards the cause of militants and have anti-national persuasion.

The fact-finding team of PCI visited twice in October and November last year to the violence-hit region to investigate the allegations of harassment and intimidation of journalists in Kashmir following communication from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) president and former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Mehbooba Mufti.

The committee met a cross-section of journalists across the region who shared their concerns and apprehensions.

Shocking comments

The comments by the regions top administrator have come at a time when journalists have accused the government of increased harassment against them.

This is absolutely shocking. LG should clarify the comments. We arent militants but journalists, said a journalist, who works with a local newspaper, requesting anonymity.

He further said that the administration is trying to criminalize journalism in the state which is not healthy for a democratic society.

Journalism is not a crime. Questioning the government and its policies is the job of the journalists. We cant be labeled as militant sympathizers, he added, wishing not to be named.

The comments from the top administrator came a week after Jammu and Kashmir police accused detained Kashmiri Journalist Fahad Shah of having a radical ideology right from his childhood in its dossier, a copy of which lies with TwoCircles.net.

Shah who was booked under JK Public Safety Act (PSA) on March 14 was accused of misguiding the common masses by circulating fake news against the government and its policies.

Prior to Shah, a reporter Sajad Gul was booked under PSA and is incarcerated at Kot Bhalwal jail in Jammu, which is nearly 330 kilometers away from his home in Bandipora.

Steven Butler, Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)s Asia program coordinator, in Washington, D.C told TwoCircles.net that the comments are dangerous perception from an administrative head to brand journalists as anti-national in a blanket statement like this.

Its irresponsible for a government leader to say things like this, Butler said, adding that, It just serves to generate suspicion and make it easier for police to arrest or otherwise harass journalists who are just doing their job of reporting the news.

Geeta Seshu, the founder of Free Speech Collective, a rights advocacy group, sees the comments as an attempt to undermine and delegitimize journalism in the valley.

To label and demonize journalists in this fashion is deplorable. It sanctions blanket punitive action under repressive laws without any shred of evidence, she said, adding that, Journalists have a responsibility to gather and disseminate news in the public interest and hold those in power accountable.

Likewise, the state has a responsibility to ensure freedom of the press and safety of journalists. Even in the best of times, this is an adversarial relationship and must be governed by mutual respect, she said.

According to J&K police from 2016 till mid-October, 2021, 49 cases had been registered against journalists. Eight of these journalists were charged under the stringent Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA); 17 for criminal intimidation and 24 journalists were booked for extortion and other crimes.

A number of journalists were summoned to the dreaded Cargo Centre for questioning  a location reserved for interrogation for armed militants and their associates.

The journalists in Kashmir said the comments from the administration to the PCIs fact-finding team indicates that there is an attempt to blur the line between the militants and journalistswho are now seen as the only threat in Kashmir to national security.

Post abrogation of article 370, every institution was taken over and controlled. The independent media was difficult to bow down to, so there is an attempt to criminalize journalism, said another journalist, wishing not to be named fearing reprisal from the government.

Widening gap between govt and journalists

The gap between the government and the journalist community has widened ever since a group of scribes allegedly backed by the government attempted a coup at the Kashmir Press Club (KPC)  the umbrella body of Kashmiri journalists.

A day before the coup, the Jammu and Kashmir government suspended the registration of the KPC citing adverse reports by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of J&K police.

Several journalists have left the valley following the closure of KPC and increased perception of harassment among them and started taking refuge in different parts of the country, while many who are still working avoid bylines and have stopped tweeting.

Reportedly, local newspapers have fired many of their staff members, citing no advertisements from the government while many journalists are working on low wages.

I am thinking of leaving journalism and doing something else, which will at least fulfill my daily needs, a journalist said.

He added that the situation in Kashmir is not conducive for journalists to work freely.
Russian troops, having destroyed the bridge across the Desna River, have turned Chernihiv into their hostage, and they plan to "evacuate" local residents to Kursk region, Liudmyla Denisova, Commissioner of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine for Human Rights, has said.

"Today, Chernihiv has remained completely cut off from the Ukrainian capital. The invaders bombed the bridge across the Desna River, which transported humanitarian aid to the city and evacuated civilians. There is no electricity, water, heat and almost no gas in the city, the infrastructure has been destroyed," Denisova said on Telegram on Wednesday.

She stressed: "According to information from local residents, the occupiers are compiling lists of civilians for "evacuation" to Lgov (Kursk region of the Russian Federation). The Russians, having cut off Chernihiv from the capital, turned it into their hostages."

Also, according to the Ombudsman, in Trostianka, Sumy region, captured by Russian troops, there is no way to get to the hospital, get medical care, women give birth at home.

"The hospital was shelled repeatedly. The occupiers stole the last emergency medical car and it is simply physically impossible to provide medical assistance to people who cannot get to the hospital on their own," the report says.

Denisova stressed that the fire that broke out at night in Trostianka cannot be extinguished, the invaders do not allow firefighters to reach the fire.

Denisova said villages of the Krasnopil community in Sumy region are also under siege.

"The occupiers go from house to house, take away mobile phones, things and food, occupy schools, houses and drive people right out into the street. The invaders force people to go to Russia on foot, but the locals refuse under threat of reprisals," the she said.

"Terrorizing civilians is a war crime, defined by the statute of the International Military Tribunal and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, a violation of the norms of the Geneva Convention for the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War," Denisova said.
The Belarusian authorities have decided to expel some Ukrainian diplomats and close the Consulate General of Ukraine in Brest, the Belarusian Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday.

"The Ukrainian embassy will continue to work in Belarus in the 1+4 format, that is, the ambassador and four employees," the BelTA state agency reports with reference to press secretary of the Belarusian Foreign Ministry Anatoly Glaz.

Earlier, Minsk said that eight out of 19 employees of the Ukrainian embassy were "cadre members of the national intelligence services."

Spokesperson for the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry Oleh Nikolenko refuted the information that "scouts worked under the guise of the Ukrainian embassy in Belarus."

He also stressed that such statements "increasingly complicate bilateral relations" between Ukraine and Belarus.
Kyiv not to leave unanswered staff reduction of Ukrainian embassy in Minsk, closure of Ukrainian consulate in Brest  MFA

Ukraine will not leave unanswered the reduction of the staff of the Ukrainian embassy in Minsk and the closure of the consulate of Ukraine in Brest, Spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine (MFA) Oleh Nikolenko has said.

"We consider such actions of Belarus as another unprovoked unfriendly step towards Ukraine. Ukraine will not leave Belarus's actions without a proper response, which we will report additionally," Nikolenko told Interfax-Ukraine on Wednesday.

He said that after the withdrawal of certain Ukrainian diplomats, the Ukrainian Embassy in Minsk will operate in a reduced staff, headed by Ambassador Ihor Kyzym.

"Our diplomats will have enough opportunities to continue providing consular assistance to Ukrainian citizens in Belarus," the spokesperson said.

As reported, the Belarusian side announced a reduction in the staff of the Ukrainian embassy in Minsk and the closure of the Ukrainian consulate in Brest. Some 12 Ukrainian diplomats were ordered to leave the territory of Belarus within 72 hours.
First Lady Zelenska: More than 300 Ukrainian children with cancer sent for treatment to Europe, USA, Canada

More than 300 Ukrainian children have been sent for cancer treatment to clinics in Europe, the United States and Canada, First Lady of Ukraine Olena Zelenska has said in an interview with the French edition Le Parisien.

"Rescue of Ukrainian children with cancer is an unprecedented action, which has not been in the world medical practice. Thanks to the joint efforts of doctors from Ukraine and abroad, public and charitable organizations, international partners and volunteers, it was possible to organize 'flights of life' ... Six groups have already been sent patients, several more flights are planned. More than 300 children were able to continue treatment in clinics in Europe, the United States and Canada," Zelensky's press service said.

She added that the organization of the rescue of children with cancer takes place in coordination with the first ladies of Poland and France. Zelenska thanked international partners and citizens of European countries for the support and assistance provided to Ukrainians.

She also called on the OSCE, the Red Cross, UNICEF and other organizations to provide real humanitarian corridors in Ukraine.

The First Lady also announced the start of providing Ukrainian hospitals with incubators for newborns. The first two have already been delivered to the Mykolaiv Regional Children's Hospital. Next in line is Kharkiv.
Over half of Ukrainians do not work during war, less than quarter work remotely or partially - opinion poll

More than half (53%) of Ukrainians who worked before the war are currently unemployed, 22% work as usual, 21% work remotely or partially, and only 2% have found a new job, according to a nationwide survey "Adaptation of Ukrainians to the conditions of war", conducted by the Rating sociological group on March 19.

As noted in the results of the study, most of all the loss of work affected the residents of the east of the country (74%), young people under 35 years old (60%) and those who left their city (66%).

The economic situation as a result of the war did not change only for 18% of citizens, for 52% it deteriorated significantly, for 28% it rather worsened.

Some 40% of respondents believe that their savings will last only a month. However, the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic taught Ukrainians how to save money and the percentage of those who increased their material security during the crisis grew: the Rating reminded that during the first quarantine in April 2020, 55% believed that they had enough savings just for a month.

In the course of the study, 1,000 respondents over the age of 18 were interviewed using the CATI (Computer Assisted Telephone Interviews) method in all regions, except for the temporarily occupied territories of Crimea and Donbas. The sample is representative in terms of age, gender, and type of settlement. The error of the representativeness of the study with a confidence probability of 0.95: no more than 3.1%.
Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Ruslan Stefanchuk appealed to the Belarusian people not to allow Russia to drag Belarus into the war in Ukraine.

"War criminal Putin, already up to his elbow in blood from the war he unleashed with Ukraine, wants to draw you into this crime. He wants to bind you with the blood of innocently killed Ukrainians, Russians, Belarusians and deprive you of the future," Stefanchuk stressed in his appeal, published by the press service of the Verkhovna Rada on Telegram.

He recalled that Russian troops entered Ukraine from the territory of Belarus, raising radioactive ashes in Chornobyl, shelling Kyiv and bombing Ukraine from planes that take off from the Belarusian territory.

"Now Putin's criminal regime wants to throw your sons into the meat grinder of war. Don't let this happen! Don't be silent. You know what to do. Don't sacrifice the best you have - the lives of your sons and daughters!" he said.
As a result of missile strikes by invaders in Sviatoshynsky and Shevchenkivsky districts of Kyiv, two people were wounded, high-rise buildings, residential buildings in the private sector, a kindergarten, and a commercial premises were damaged, the Prosecutor General's Office (PGO) said.

"According to the investigation, on March 23, 2022, the Russian armed forces, using means of warfare prohibited by international law, shelled residential areas and civilian infrastructure of the capital. As a result of missile strikes on the territory of Sviatoshynsky and Shevchenkivsky districts, high-rise buildings, residential buildings in the private sector, a kindergarten, and a commercial premises were damaged. According to preliminary information, there were no deaths, two people were wounded," the PGO said in a Telegram channel on Wednesday.

The PGO said in the statement that rescue work is currently ongoing.

"Under the procedural leadership of Sviatoshynsky and Shevchenkivsky District Prosecutor's Offices in Kyiv, a pretrial investigation has been launched into violations of the laws and customs of war (Part 1 of Article 438 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine)," the Prosecutor General's Office said.

The pretrial investigation in criminal proceedings has been entrusted to the investigative departments of the relevant district police departments of the Main Directorate of the National Police in Kyiv.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky, in an address to the French Parliament, said that Ukraine expects leadership from the French state and politicians, which will lead Russia to seek peace.

"We are grateful to France for the help. We are grateful for the efforts of President [Emmanuel] Macron, who has shown real leadership. We are constantly communicating with him, coordinating some of our steps. Ukrainians see that France also values freedom, as it has always been. And you protect it. You remember what freedom, equality and fraternity are. Each of these words is filled with power for you. Therefore, we expect from you, from France, from your leadership, that you can make Russia look for peace, to end this war against freedom, against equality, against brotherhood, against everything that made Europe united," Zelensky said.

He said the Ukrainians expect the French leadership to restore territorial integrity and adopt "a long overdue historic decision on Ukraine's full membership in the EU."

"If among those present there are those who doubt, then your people are already confident, like all other peoples of Europe," the president said.

Zelensky also asked the French Parliament for more help and support for Ukraine.

"We need a lot of help and support so that freedom does not lose. It must be well armed: tanks, anti-tank weapons, aviation, air defense. We need all this. You can help us. I know you can. So that freedom does not lose. Peace should support it with sanctions against the aggressor. Every week a new package of sanctions. French companies should leave the Russian market, Renault, Auchan, Leroy Merlin and others, should stop being sponsors for the Russian military machine. Human values are more expensive, than profit on blood," the head of state said.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky, addressing the French Parliament, said that on February 24, after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the dialogue in the Normandy format was destroyed.

The head of state said that in 2019, when he took over as president, the Normandy format already existed and its goal was to end the war in eastern Ukraine.

"Four states took part in the Normandy format: Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France. Four, but the whole world was represented through them. The positions of the whole world. Someone supported, someone tried to delay the process, someone wanted to disrupt everything. But it seemed important that the world was always present at this Normandy table, the table of peace, and when the negotiations gave results, when we managed to free people from captivity in December 2019, it was like a breath of fresh air or a glimmer of hope that talking with Russia can help that Russia's leadership can be convinced with words so that Moscow chooses peace," Zelensky said.

However, on February 24, the day of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the dialogue in the Normandy format, according to him, was destroyed.

"The day that crossed out all those efforts. Crossed out the old meaning of the word 'dialogue.' Crossed out the European experience of relations with Russia. Crossed out decades of European history. All this was bombed by Russian troops. offices, so now we have to look for it and win it back on the battlefield," he said.

Nevertheless, as the president said, Ukrainians still have their values, unity and determination to defend their freedom.

"Joint freedom. One. For Paris and Kyiv. For Berlin and Warsaw. For Madrid and Rome. For Brussels and Bratislava. And
Some 44% of Ukrainians were forced to temporarily separate from their families during Russia's further invasion of Ukraine, according to the results of a nationwide survey "Adaptation of Ukrainians to the Conditions of War," conducted by the Rating sociological group on March 19.

Most of these are in the east of the country (54%), the least - in the west (39%). Among young people, 50% is the largest indicator by age.

Some 72% of citizens now constantly communicate with relatives and friends, 48% with friends, 38% with neighbors and 28% with work colleagues.

In addition to separation from the family, 19% of citizens left their city/village for the duration of the war (most of them left from the east). At the same time, the vast majority (93%) of them plan to return home after the war. Only 58% of those who left know that everything is in order with their housing, 10% know that their housing is damaged, and 9% are destroyed. The rest do not know what their housing is.

In the course of the study, 1,000 respondents over the age of 18 were interviewed using the CATI (Computer Assisted Telephone Interviews) method in all regions, except for the temporarily occupied territories of Crimea and Donbas. The sample is representative in terms of age, gender, and type of settlement. The margin of error of the representativeness of the study with a confidence probability of 0.95 does not exceeding 3.1%.
The leaders of the NATO member states at an extraordinary summit to be held in Brussels on March 24 will reaffirm their support for Ukraine.

This was announced at a press conference in Brussels on Wednesday, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said.

"Tomorrow, NATO leaders will reaffirm our support to Ukraine. Ukraine has the right to self-defense under the UN Charter. And we are helping Ukrainians to uphold this fundamental right," the Secretary General said.

Stoltenberg believes that NATO leaders "will meet at a pivotal moment for our security." "And I look forward to welcoming President Zelensky who will address us during the meeting (via video link)," he said.

The Secretary General also said that "Putin must end this war, allow aid and safe passage for civilians, and engage in real diplomacy."

"President Putin's brutal invasion of Ukraine is causing death and destruction every day. Allies stand united. In support for the brave people of Ukraine and against the Kremlin's cruelty," Stoltenberg said.

In addition, he said that the summit will take further decisions to strengthen NATO's posture in all domains with major increases to forces in the eastern part of the Alliance on land, in the air and at sea.

"The first step is the deployment of four new NATO battlegroups in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia. Along with our existing forces in the Baltic countries and Poland, this means that we will have eight multinational NATO battlegroups all along the eastern flank from the Baltic to the Black Sea. We face a new reality for our security. So we must reset our deterrence and defense for the longer-term," Stoltenberg said.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg calls on Belarus to stop helping Russia in its war against Ukraine.

On Wednesday in Brussels, at a press conference, the Secretary General said that Belarus "has been an accomplice to this invasion from the start."

"Actually before the start, because Belarus allowed its territory to be used as a ground for mobilizing massive troops that invaded Ukraine. Belarus continues to enable the invasion by providing the territory, airfields, military infrastructure, bases but also by allowing Russia to use Belarusian airspace to launch attacks every night, every day against Ukrainian cities, civilians, the Ukrainian nation. So, Belarus is already heavily involved in a way that it has been an accomplice and has support the Russian invasion. We call on Belarus to stop this involvement and not be used by Russia to conduct this brutal war against its neighbor, Ukraine," Stoltenberg said.
Syria fails in attracting militants to the war against Ukraine on the side of the Russian Federation, the preliminary promises of the Syrian authorities on the systematic supply of mercenaries for the Russian army are not being fulfilled, the Defense Intelligence of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry reports.

"On March 22, a meeting was held between the commander of the 8th brigade in the southern Syrian province of Daraa and General of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation Alexander Zhuravlev (acting as commander of the Russian group in the southern provinces of Syria). During the meeting, the Russian general demanded to form and provide a list of names and personal information of militants from the Syrian units and the Syrian Defense Forces, who are ready to participate in the war against Ukraine. The Syrian colonel did not give a clear answer," the report on Facebook said.

According to the Defense Intelligence, the Syrian colonel promised to get in touch after consultations "with other representatives of the leadership of the 8th brigade." So, to date, the preliminary promises of the Syrian authorities on the systematic supply of mercenaries for the Russian army are not being fulfilled.

"The promised "easy walk" was changed by reports of stubborn fighting and high losses of Russians. Most of the Syrian military are not ready to risk their lives for the sake of an illusory monetary allowance," the report says.

Russian operatives are also trying to negotiate the recruitment of mercenaries from the 16th brigade of the Syrian Arab Republic.
Enemy troops fire at mall's parking lot in Podilsky district of Kyiv, one killed, two wounded

On Wednesday evening, Russian troops shelled the parking lot of a shopping center in Podilsky district of Kyiv, as a result of which one person was killed and two wounded people were hospitalized, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko has said.

"Friends! Dear people of Kyiv! The enemy continues to shell the capital. Just recently, the parking lot of a shopping center in Podilsky district was shelled. One person killed, two victims were hospitalized," he said on his Telegram channel.
Sweden to additionally supply anti-tank weapons to Ukraine

Sweden will give Ukraine an additional 5,000 anti-tank weapons, European media said, citing Swedish Defense Minister Peter Hultqvist.

The head of the Swedish defense department also said the country would supply mine clearance equipment to Ukraine.
President of the European Council Charles Michel announced that he had invited President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky to address the members of the European Council with a speech.

"I have invited President Zelensky to address the members of the European Council. Courageous Ukrainians are fighting for freedom and the EU is strong in support of Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity. We stand with Ukraine," he said on Twitter.
Losses among civilians from February 24, 2022, when Russia started the war against Ukraine, to 24.00 on March 22, 2022 amounted to 2,571 civilians (2,510 in the report a day earlier), including 977 killed (953), the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said on Wednesday.

"OHCHR believes that the actual figures are considerably higher, 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," it said. in the document.

According to it, this applies, for example, to Mariupol and Volnovakha (Donetsk region), Izium (Kharkiv region), Sievierodonetsk and Rubizhne (Luhansk region), and Trostianets (Sumy region), where there are allegations of numerous 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 multiple-launch rocket systems, and missile and air strikes," the UN said.

According to confirmed UN data, some 196 men, some 144 women, some 27 boys and 12 girls died, while the gender of 42 children and 556 adults has not yet been determined.

Among the 1,594 injured, 24 are girls and 20 boys, as well as 64 children, whose gender has not yet been determined.

Compared to the previous day, according to the UN, three children were killed and the same number were wounded.

OHCHR says that in Donetsk and Luhansk regions, as of midnight on March 23, there were 224 (216) killed and 621 (611) wounded in government-controlled territory, and 55 (55) killed and 202 (196) wounded in territory controlled by self-proclaimed "republics."

In other regions of Ukraine (the city of Kyiv, and Cherkasy, Chernihiv, Kharkiv, Kherson, Kyiv, Mykolaiv, Odesa, Sumy, Zaporizhia, Dnipropetrovsk and Zhytomyr regions), which were under Government control when casualties occurred: 1,469 casualties (698 killed and 771 injured).

According to the Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine, as of 08:00 on March 23, some 121 (117) children were killed and 167 (155) wounded.

In addition, OHCHR notes the report of the National Police of Kharkiv region, according to which, as of 18:00 on March 21, some 286 (280) civilians, including 15 (15) children, were killed in the region.

An increase in figures in this update compared with the previous update should not be attributed to civilian casualties that occurred on 22 March only, as during the day OHCHR also corroborated casualties that occurred on previous days, the UN said in the document.
Datagroup resolves more than 350 DDoS attacks on Ukraine's telecom network during one month of war

Datagroup, a provider of fiber-optic infrastructure and digital services, resolved more than 350 DDoS attacks on the country's telecommunications network during the month of the war.

According to the company's press service on Wednesday, the largest attack was 103.6 Gbps, 28.0 Mpps; the most powerful attack was 27.6 Gbps, 43.0 Mpps; the longest attack was 24 days.

"Despite all the hacker attacks and attempts to undermine the country's information security, they were all resolved. All the company's services are provided as usual. In addition, we always quickly respond to the growth in the power of DDoS attacks and improve our service of protection against them," the press service said.

According to the State Service for Special Communications, since the beginning of hostilities, Ukraine has experienced more than 3,000 organized DDoS attacks. The record was 275 DDoS attacks per day. The most powerful at their peak exceeded 100 Gbps.
Cairo governorate started on Thursday the operation of new automated garbage trucks in an experimental phase in southern Cairo, replacing traditional manual collection methods.
Russia said its forces would cease fire at the Azovstal steel plant in the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol and open a humanitarian corridor for civilians for three days beginning Thursday.
Slovakia and Hungary said Tuesday that they will not support sanctions against Russian energy that the European Union is preparing over the war in Ukraine, saying they are too reliant on those supplies and there are no immediate alternatives.
Russian ships in the Sea of Azov have been shelling Mariupol from offshore over the last 24 hours, a senior US defense official said Tuesday.

The official said that there are about seven Russian ships in that area, including several warships, a minesweeper and a couple landing ships.

By contrast, the official said the US did not see indications that ships in the Black Sea were firing on Odesa, as they had done days ago.

The officials said the US assesses that the Russians have about 21 ships in the Black Sea, including about a dozen surface combatant warships and some landing ships that carry troops.

According to the official, Russian ground forces are still largely stalled outside Kyiv - with troops still about 30 kilometers (19 miles) northeast of the city, and 15 kilometers (9 miles) northwest of the city.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity to provide the US military assessment.

More broadly, the defense official said the US continues to see Russia struggling to get food and fuel to its force, and has been seeing indications that some troops don't have proper cold weather gear and are suffering frostbite.

The food and fuel shortages have been persistent logistical and supply problems since the early days of the war.

The official said there also are indications that Russia is exploring ways to resupply troops and is considering bringing in reinforcements, but so far there has been no active moves seen to do either.

There also are indications that Russian has used a significant number of its precision guided munitions, particularly its air-launched cruise missiles, and is exploring ways to resupply those weapons, the official said.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday talked with both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky about the terms of a potential ceasefire, according to the French presidency.

They reached ``no agreement,'' the statement said, but Macron ``remains convinced of the need to continue his efforts'' and he ``stands alongside Ukraine.''

The Kremlin confirmed that Putin and Macron had a call in which they exchanged views about the situation in Ukraine, including the talks between Russian and Ukrainian negotiators. It didn't give further details.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Russia would only use nuclear weapons in the context of the Ukraine conflict if it were facing an "existential threat," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told CNN International Tuesday.

"We have a concept of domestic security, and it's public. You can read all the reasons for nuclear arms to be used," Peskov said. "So if it is an existential threat for our country, then it can be used in accordance with our concept."

Peskov's comment came as interviewer Christiane Amanpour pushed him on whether he was "convinced or confident" that President Vladimir Putin would not use the nuclear option in the Ukrainian context.

Days after Russian troops invaded Ukraine, Putin announced on February 28 that he had put the country's strategic nuclear forces on high alert in a move that sparked global alarm.

Asked about Peskov's statement, and Russia's nuclear stance more broadly, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby called Moscow's rhetoric on potential use of nuclear weapons "dangerous."

"It's not the way a responsible nuclear power should act," he told reporters.

That said, Kirby stressed that Pentagon officials "haven't seen anything that would lead us to conclude that we need to change our strategic deterrent posture."

"We monitor this as best we can every day," he added.

Russia maintains the world's largest stockpile of nuclear warheads, and has earned minimal support around the world for its attack on its ex-Soviet neighbor.

Western defense officials said following Putin's February announcement that they had not seen any significant sign of mobilization of Russia's nuclear forces -- its strategic bombers, missiles and submarines.

But Moscow has also warned that if the United States and NATO allies supplied Ukraine with fighter jets, it could escalate and expand the war, potentially putting Russia in direct confrontation with nuclear-armed rivals in the West.

Earlier this month Beatrice Fihn, who leads the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, warned Putin is using nuclear "blackmail" to keep the international community from interfering in his Ukraine invasion.

"This is one of the scariest moments really when it comes to nuclear weapons," she said.

Questioned further about Russia's offensive in Ukraine, Peskov said it had no intention of occupying its neighbor and asserted his country was not attacking civilians.

The main goals of the "operation," he said, are "to get rid of the military potential of Ukraine."

"This is why our military are targeting only military goals and military objects on the territory of Ukraine. Not civil ones," he said.

Widespread photographic and video evidence supports human rights groups' allegations that Russian forces have attacked numerous civilian targets in the ex-Soviet state.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Al-Assads visit to the UAE raised many eyebrows, with questions about the reasons and timing of the visit, Al-Ahram Weekly reports from Damascus

Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad visited the UAE on 18 March, his first trip to an Arab country since the revolution against his regime began in 2011. In the UAE, Assad met with several senior Emirati officials, most notably Mohamed bin Zayed and Mohamed bin Rashed, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi and the ruler of Dubai. The UAE and Syria issued separate statements about the visit.

The Syrian side focused on economics and investments, while the Emiratis focused on political and strategic issues. But whether in the Arab world or beyond, the statements do not plausibly justify the unexpected move which counters the Gulf states opposition to normalising relations with the Syrian regime. For a long time the Arab boycott of the Syrian regime demanded the overthrow of Al-Assad regime, but this was met with brutal violence by the state. Al-Assad only visited his allies Russia and Iran.

The UAE visit comes at a time when the global balance of power has tipped, what is more, and new political and military maps are being drawn in the Middle East and Europe. Al-Assads allies in Moscow are facing international sanctions as they seek to bolster their Syrian military presence by land, sea and air. Russia was the foremost supporter of Al-Assads visit to UAE. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow believes in reviving efforts to return Syria to the Arab League. Lavrov thanked the UAE for its recent steps towards Damascus, especially a visit by the UAE Foreign Minister to Syria in October 2021.

The UK was quick to criticise any country that wants to normalise relations with the head of the Syria regime. London condemned Al-Assads visit to the UAE and urged all parties to uphold Security Council Resolution 2254. It also called on the Syrian regime and its supporters to immediately halt all their grave violations of human rights and international humanitarian law.

Josep Borrell Fontelles, high representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, said that during a meeting with UN Special Envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen, EU foreign ministers reiterated the position of the EU: no normalisation with the Al-Assad regime; no reconstruction; and no sanctions relief until a political solution is reached in compliance with Security Council Resolution 2254.

The US State Department also condemned Al-Assads Gulf visit, saying it legitimises the regime. State Department Spokesman Ned Price said Washington is profoundly disappointed and troubled by this apparent attempt to legitimise Bashar Al-Assad. He remains responsible and accountable for the death and suffering of countless Syrians, the displacement of more than half of the pre-war Syrian population, and the arbitrary detention and disappearance of over 150,000 Syrian men, women and children.

And yet UAE seems to have started on a path that will distance it from the US and brings it closer to Russia. This could upset the balance of power in both the Gulf and the Middle East at large.

Meanwhile, the Syrian opposition, represented by the Syrian National Coalition (SNC), described the UAEs reception of Al-Assad as a grave precedent that violates the decisions of the Arab League and international sanctions, and rewards [Assad] for his crimes. It also disregards the blood of one million Syrian martyrs. The SNC urged the UAE to revise its position and uphold the overall Arab and international position of isolating the regime, not normalising relations or salvaging it.

When the Syrian crisis began in 2011, the Arab League suspended Syrias membership and most countries severed ties with Damascus, including the UAE. Since last year, however, there have been reports of normalising relations between Damascus and Arab countries. Some believed this was linked to Russia trying to bring the Al-Assad regime back into the Arab fold. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Lavrov went on several trips to Arab countries during that time, and discussed the need for Syria to return to the Arab milieu.

But the real reasons behind Al-Assads recent trip remain a mystery. Some claim the UAE is pursuing this route to lure the Syrian regime away from Irans clutches. But this is unlikely since major powers were unable to achieve this, even the US, Europe and, more recently, Russia.

Some Syrian and Arab analysts believe Al-Assad went to the UAE to ask for immediate food aid in the form of wheat, rice, cooking oil and sugar, since stockpiles in Syria will only last another three months after which millions of Syrians will suffer a serious food crisis.

One member of the oppositions negotiation committee told Al-Ahram Weekly, It is unlikely that there is a message from Israel via an Emirati middleman that needed to be delivered, since there are direct contacts between the Syrian regime and Israel. In any case, Russia is a more reliable mediator than any other.

It is more likely this is about economics and investments because the Syrian regime fears that the US and Europe will freeze or confiscate the assets of key figures in the Syrian regime around the world, as the US had done, especially since Washington said this month will be one of accountability for the Syrian regime regarding its wealth and sources of funds. The regime may be thinking of transferring funds to the UAE, which could be a safe haven where funds will not be seized or confiscated.

Moheeb Salha, a writer, said, US-Gulf relations usually cool down when Democrats are in the White House, and improve when Republicans are in power. The UAE was unresponsive to requests by Bidens administration regarding punitive measures against Moscow, because the UAE has economic, military and security relations with Moscow. It is also an opportunity for the UAE to play the two sides off against each other to serve its own oil and geo-strategic interests.

Opposition writer Nabil Al-Alie told the Weekly: What the UAE did is cause for concern, strategically. Warmer relations with Damascus is a diplomatic victory for Moscow and comes at a moment when Al-Assad expressed support for Russias war on Ukraine. It is also a move that distances and defies the US and Europe, which creates the impression that the UAE wants to become a key player and decision-maker in the Middle East. The only setback is that the UAE is relying on a dictator [Assad] who destroyed his country, to achieve this goal or send this message.

The US may be angry with the UAE for receiving Al-Assad, and Russia may be relieved by this move. Iran, meanwhile, will be cautious and suspicious, and the Syrian opposition is despondent and disappointed. It is difficult to decide if the visit benefited Al-Assad; it was not an official visit and did not have the trappings of a head of state visit. There were no ceremonies, receptions, official dinners or prior announcements. It is certain, however, that a new picture of the Middle East is being drawn and will be finalised later.

*A version of this article appears in print in the 24 March, 2022 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Gunfire erupted near Mogadishu's airport Wednesday as security forces clashed with armed men attempting to storm a heavily fortified area of the Somali capital, witnesses said, with Al-Shabaab insurgents claiming responsibility.

"There is gunfire inside the airport vicinity, and we are (hearing) this is an ongoing attack involving gunmen, we don't have details so far but the security forces are engaging them now," said Mohamed Ali, who works for airport security.

Witnesses reported hearing heavy gunfire while the nation's public broadcaster Somali National Television (SNTV) said on Twitter that "security forces are attending a terrorist incident at one of main gates of Mogadishus Halane compound".

The airport complex houses the UN, aid agencies and foreign missions and contractors, as well as the headquarters of the African Union military mission, AMISOM.

"The movement of transport along the road inside the airport is stopped," Ahmed Dahir, an employee at a hotel inside the complex, said.

Al-Shabaab, which has been waging a violent insurgency against the country's fragile government for over a decade, said it carried out the attack.

The Al-Qaeda-linked militants frequent target civilian, military and government targets in the capital and outside.

The jihadists have previously claimed responsibility for mortar attacks on the airport complex, including in March last year when six rounds landed within its perimetre.

In 2020, the UN said several mortar rounds had landed in the vicinity of the UN and AMISOM compound near the airport.

Nine people, including three AMISOM soldiers, were wounded in a similar mortar attack targeting the complex in 2019.

Somalia, particularly Mogadishu, has seen a spate of attacks in recent weeks as the country hobbles through a long-delayed election process.

The president and prime minister have been at loggerheads over the vote, which is more than a year late and has been marred by violence.

After countless delays, the lower house election is now due to be completed on March 31, paving the way for lawmakers to pick a president.

The impasse has worried Somalia's international backers, who fear it distracts from the fight against Al-Shabaab.

Somalia's key foreign backer, the United States, has already imposed travel sanctions on key political figures for undermining the electoral process.

The jihadists controlled Mogadishu until 2011 when it was pushed out by AMISOM troops, but it still holds territory in the countryside.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Egypts Armed Forces, under the directives of President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi, has launched a nationwide campaign to provide low-cost food commodities to help reduce the burden of hiking prices on Egyptians ahead of the holy month of Ramadan.

The food commodities are available for purchase at 1,200 mobile outlets, 212 fixed outlets and 62 major outlets across the country, especially in areas in the vicinity of field army and army-related institutions, the Armed Forces said in a video released on Wednesday.

The Armed Forces distributed 1.5 million food ration boxes in the market with a discount reaching up to 60 percent as part of their continued efforts to supply basic food commodities at reasonable prices to meet the demands of the Egyptian people, according to the video.

Ramadan  which will start in early April  typically witnesses an increase in the rate of consumption of food products, leading to a price surge.

The National Service Projects Organisation (NSPO) is also working to increase its commodity supplies.

The initiative is part of the countrys efforts to tighten control on the market to maintain price stability and secure the availability of goods amid the global developments.

El-Sisi has earlier mandated the government to prepare an emergency plan to mitigate the repercussions of the global crisis, resulting in part from the Russia-Ukraine conflict, by curbing prices and preventing food shortages, while penalising those who exploit the crisis to raise prices unjustifiably.

Minister of Supply and Internal Trade Ali Moselhi said his ministry will continue to provide meat in various outlets at pre-crisis prices and will ensure that food commodities are available in the market throughout Ramadan.

The supply ministry is also launching the Ahlan (Welcome) Ramadan initiative nationwide this week, offering food ration boxes, and giving out coupons for food commodities for the neediest groups.

The ministry will also distribute 500,000 Ramadan boxes and 800,000kg of meat, 500,000kg of which will be disbursed in Ramadan.

Moselhi added that the We are All One initiative was launched on 16 March as part of efforts to prevent vendors from manipulating prices.

The initiative will run through the end of Ramadan.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi said on Wednesday that Egyptians should rationalise food consumption during the upcoming holy month of Ramadan, which is usually characterised by increased consumption.

However, El-Sisi stressed this does not mean Egyptians should eat less.

No, eat and do what you want... there is no problem with goods inside Egypt, and [will not be] during the month of Ramadan, he said.

El-Sisi made the remarks during a ceremony to honour Egyptian women held on Wednesday in celebration of Mothers Day.

The president said that he himself rationalises consumption.

People think [because I am a president] my dining table looks different, [but] I am responsible before God, he said, indicating that balanced rationalisation is important regardless of the amount of money one has.

There is no problem in our needs, and [by the grace of our Lord] there is abundance thanks to the states effort and yours, he said, citing the role of the states national projects in increasing strategic stockpiles.

"We are dealing with challenges and demands with a country of 100 million [citizens], this is not simple and requires planning, from the wheat shipments to the availability of bread to the people; it is a chain.

He said that the Russian-Ukrainian war is a major crisis with economic impacts on the whole world, expressing his wishes for the war to come to an end.

Had it not been for the implementation of the economic reform program, our situation in light of the current global economic crisis would have been very difficult, he pointed out.

Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly said on Monday that Egypt is capable of overcoming the current price hike crisis as well as the repercussions of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and is ready for all scenarios, even the worst-case scenario of a prolonged crisis.

Moreover, the Ministry of Finance approved on the same day a package of financial and social protection procedures, worth EGP 130 billion, to address the ongoing global economic challenges and their repercussions.

Ahead of Ramadan, which set to start in early Arpil and typically sees an increase in the rate of food consumption, Egypt has been calling for the rationalisation of consumption to ensure that food commodities are secured in the local market throughout the whole month.

Egypt formed a crisis committee earlier in March to confront the impacts of the Russian-Ukrainian crisis, similar to committee formed when the coronavirus pandemic hit the country in 2020, with the aim to continuously assessing the repercussions of the crisis, especially on the countrys strategic commodities.

The emergency plan aims to curb prices and prevent food shortages, while penalising those who exploit the crisis to raise prices unjustifiably.

Egypts Armed Forces has launched a nationwide campaign to provide low-cost food commodities to help reduce the burden of hiking prices on Egyptians ahead of Ramadan.

Nearly 80 percent of Egypts consumed wheat comes from Russia and Ukraine, whereas the latter recently announced that it will no longer be exporting commodities.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


The International Prize for Arabic Fiction revealed on Tuesday, its shortlisted novels for the 2022 Prize including six novels. All six authors in the shortlist have been shortlisted for the prize for the first time.

The shortlist included Egytptian writer Tarek Imam for his novel Cairo Maquette for the first time.

The list also included Roses Diary by Reem al-Kamali, Dilshad by Emarti writer Bushra Khalfan, The Prisoner of the Portuguese by the Moroccan Mohsine Loukili, The White Line of Night by Kuwaiti writer Khaled Nasrallah and Bread on the Table of Uncle Milad by Libyan writer Mohamed Alnaas.

Each of the six shortlisted authors will receive $10,000, with the winner announced on 22 May receiving an additional $50,000.

The shortlist was revealed online by this years Chair of Judges Shukri Mabkhout alongside Fleur Montanaro, the prizes Administrator. They were then joined in a live press conference by Yasir Suleiman, Chair of Trustees.

The shortlisted authors for IPAFs 15th edition range in age from 34 to 52 and represent six countries. Collectively, the writers address a range of important issues including identity, access to education, poverty, gender roles, fear, revenge and freedom of expression.

The shortlist was chosen by a panel of five judges chaired by Tunisian novelist, academic and previous IPAF winner (The Italian, 2015) Shukri Mabkhout. Joining him on the judging panel are Libyan doctor, poet and translator Ashur Etwebi, Lebanese writer and PEN International board member Iman Humaydan, Kuwaiti poet and critic Saadiah Mufarreh and Bulgarian academic and translator Baian Rayhanova.

Author Title Country of origin Publisher Tarek Imam Cairo Maquette Egypt Al-Mutawassit Reem al-Kamali Rose's Diary UAE Dar al-Adab Bushra Khalfan Dilshad Oman Takween - Iraq Mohsine Loukili The Prisoner of the Portuguese Morocco Dar Mim Khaled Nasrallah The White Line of Night Kuwait Dar Al Saqi Mohamed Alnaas Bread on the Table of Uncle Milad Libya Rashm

Shukri Mabkhout, Chair of the 2022 Judges, commented in his speech: The six novels represent a strikingly diverse range of topics and forms around identity and freedom. Some of them took us on a journey to the past, inspired by the aspirations and struggles of people living in various regions across the Arab world. They depicted the endeavours of marginalized, oppressed or forgotten individuals throughout history, as they sought to forge and change their destinies. Other novelists on this shortlist portrayed freedom from various angles, such as the freedom of imagination to reconstruct a reality in which fantasy and truth intertwine, the freedom of expression and creativity in the face of visible or hidden oppression, and the freedom of individual identity.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Al-Ahram weekly looks at the vocational training being provided for young people from poorer villages as part of Egypts Decent Life initiative.

Some 120 km south of Cairo in the Nasser village in the Beni Sweif governorate and the Ministry of Manpowers vocational training centre, Rasha Abdel-Salam, a young woman in her 30s, is attending a sewing and garment-making workshop along with 20 other women from other villages as part of a training programme sponsored by the Directorate of Manpower under the umbrella of the national project for the development of the Egyptian countryside, or the Decent Life initiative.

Abdel-Salam, the mother of four whose oldest child is in secondary school, has spent four weeks on tailoring and sewing. She has only one week left before the end of the training.

I was looking for a project to supplement my familys income, and so I began a project making simple household linens. I was working from home, but by participating in this sewing workshop I have learned how to fully design ready-made garments including the most difficult step, which is making the pattern. Now I can add clothes to my products as well, she commented.

In the second week of training, Abdel-Salam and her peers were trained in entrepreneurship and personal and social skills, which will help them market their products, study the market, and present themselves as professionals. They were also trained in resume writing.

The workshops are the product of cooperation between the World Food Programme (WFP) and the Ministry of Manpower as part of a project to develop the countrys most-needy villages or the national project for the Egyptian countryside known as the Decent Life initiative.

The programme began by providing the workshops with raw materials, modern sewing machines, interactive displays, laptops and high-speed Internet connections, according to Somaya Samir, field coordinator with the WFP.

The Decent Life initiative was launched in January 2019 to improve the standard of living and quality of life among the neediest groups in rural communities across the country by unifying the efforts made by state institutions, civil society, private-sector companies, and partners inside and outside Egypt on sustainable development.

The aim is to end multidimensional poverty in 4,658 targeted villages and communities serving more than 58 million people, with investments estimated at LE800 billion in 2021.

Multidimensional poverty is measured not only by income, but also by the extent to which people may be deprived of services such as healthcare and education and lack benefits such as an appropriate job and an unpolluted environment.

The workshops, despite their short duration, were long enough for Abdel-Salam to form a complete conception of her new project, which she will launch after the last week of training.

I have rented a place as a sewing workshop and have started to prepare it, she said. I have also rented a shop to display my new products. I will make womens clothes as well as linens. Thanks to the training, I made my first five skirts from start to finish. I also created a group on WhatsApp and Facebook. With Gods help, I have been able to sell them all. I will now teach two of my neighbours what I have learnt about sewing and tailoring, so I can start my project soon.

The concept of multidimensional poverty goes beyond a lack of money for the individual or family concerned, since families whose income is above the poverty line are still considered poor if they lack clean water and sanitation. Only 20 per cent of the countryside in Egypt has access to water and sanitation networks.

People can also be considered poor if they lack education and healthcare services. If people have high incomes, but live in areas without good roads and transportation, they can also be considered poor in terms of multidimensional poverty.

The existence or otherwise of Internet connections and landline networks is another factor.

Mohamed Anwar, director of the Manpower Department in the Beni Sweif governorate, said the ministrys policy is to provide vocational and professional training for everyone who applies for it between the ages of 18 and 35.

The governorate hosts several large industrial areas close to the Red Sea ports and is connected to the Mediterranean ports and the capital by road, making it home to industrial complexes run by international companies.

Khairiya Shaaban, director of labour research and training at the governorate, said that it has a long waiting list to train technicians in refrigeration, air-conditioning, and mobile-phone repair. There is great demand for such workers in the governorate, she said.

Shaaban explained that the governorate plans to train between 125 and 250 people throughout the year, with the targeted professions determined by reports on the labour market and applications by trainees. The data is gathered, the required professions are tallied, and workshops determined to meet the demands of the applicants and the market.

Allocations for social security programmes have also been gradually increasing since 2016, with major leaps in recent years to counter the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and climate change.

In its draft budget for 2021-22, the government allocated subsidies worth LE283.4 billion for social security, compared to allocations of LE200 billion in 2019-20, a 41.5 per cent increase.

The money funds programmes such as the conditional and unconditional cash-transfer programme, the relief programme for individual and national catastrophes and disasters, and the social security and pensions programme.

It might be thought that those attending vocational training workshops have intermediate or lower education or have not completed their education. However, Mahmoud Mohamed, a graduate of Beni Sweif University in commerce, was attending the workshop on refrigeration and air-conditioning with a view to gaining certification.

I want to open a maintenance centre in my village for all types of air-conditioning and refrigeration repair, he said. The Nasser village has many customers waiting for these services, including hospitals, pharmacies, pharmaceutical warehouses that store medicine and serums, banks, and frozen and refrigerated meat sellers and distributors. Also, there are people with home air-conditioners.

Launching my own business to serve the community is better than looking for a job in the public or private sectors, Mohamed said.

Ahmed Kamel Adli, coordinator of the Decent Life initiative in the Nasser village, said that government agencies were intensifying efforts to target the most-needy villages.

The Decent Life initiative includes more than 400 projects, all working in tandem, he said. Villages are prioritised based on low income and high population density and then higher income and lower density. The population of the Nasser village is 400,000 people.

The initiative has accomplished a breakthrough in the services provided to the most-needy villages, with mobile training workshops travelling to target them. Young men and women receive training in plumbing, electricity, and sewing skills. In my 14 years of experience in community work, I believe mobile training centres are the most successful way of delivering training, and there is huge demand for them along with long waiting lists.

We hope we can provide training for everyone who is interested, because the centres only have limited capabilities with a capacity of 10 trainees each and training lasting for four to five weeks, he said.

Anwar said that the ministrys training programmes in Beni Sweif have succeeded with flying colours, adding that there has been coordination between the workshops for sewing and clothes design with garment factories in the governorate. 28 young women signed work contracts at two factories after the training programmes.

Although mobile-phone repair is not in high demand among companies, it is popular among young people in Beni Sweif as a choice of job. Mohamed Mustafa, an engineer leading a workshop on mobile-phone maintenance, said this was because smart and regular phones are as widespread in villages as they are in cities and because of the expansion of government, banks, and mobile companies in financial services.

Tablets, iPads, and mobile phones are found in every Egyptian home, and anyone in this profession must learn the newest trends in technology. This creates high demand in any workshop in this field, whether for beginners or professionals wishing to improve their skills to work on the latest models. It is a service that is sorely lacking in the countryside, Mustafa said.

Despite the flexibility and solidarity between state agencies and UN programmes in implementing the objectives of the Decent Life initiative, more still needs to be done, however.

Doaa Arafa, head of the WFPs Social Protection Programme, said during a press tour of villages in Beni Sweif that a major challenge facing development projects was population density, adding to the challenges of providing appropriate vocational training for those wishing to benefit from it.

*A version of this article appears in print in the 17 March, 2022 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Talks between Russia and Ukraine on Monday resulted in no tangible progress. Officials on both sides said there had been a relative breakthrough regarding some points of contention, but the end result does not appear to provide an applicable solution at present, especially since the talks seem to have been sidetracked into providing humanitarian for the people trapped in conflict areas.

Meanwhile, the Russian military continues to advance into Ukraine. The Russian forces sealed their grip on the Sea of Azovs major port of Mariupol, with only a few hundred Ukrainian fighters remaining in the port. Moscow gave them an ultimatum to hand over their weapons to spare their lives, an offer Kyiv has so far rejected.

Russia has also advanced on Kyiv, taking control of some of its suburbs and one of its airports. According to a Western news agencys reports, what is more, Lviv, Ukraines cultural capital, is closer than ever to the fighting. But according to Ahmed Al-Khamisi, a professor of literature and Russian studies speaking to Al-Ahram Weekly, negotiations are the only way forward.

There are no prospects for the war to expand. Any step in this direction would mean an all-out war between Russia and the US, and this is not realistic, Al-Khamisi, who worked as a correspondent for a large number of Arab newspapers, radio stations and TV channels in Moscow from the late 1970s until early 2000s, said. The US is prepared for the Russia war until the last Ukrainian soldier  not the first US soldier.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly criticised NATO and the European Union for not helping his army out in the war against Moscow.

But it is unlikely Russia will back down, Al-Khamisi says. The majority of Russians are united behind President Vladimir Putin. They regard the current events as their third war. Al-Khamisi is referring to the Russians defeating Napoleon in 1812 and then Hitler in World War II. The war is driven by NATOs repeated attempts to lay siege to Russia, as happened in Chechnya, Georgia and now Ukraine.

Since the Napoleonic wars, when it joined the UK, Prussia and the Austro-Hungarian empire in the royal alliance against France, Russia has been an essential component of European security. The Tsarist empire was a major player in World War I and decisive factor in the Nazis defeat. That is not to mention Europes dependence on Russian gas and minerals. There is no Europe without Russia.

European capitals like Berlin and Paris are far less keen on a war with Moscow due to deeply rooted and intertwining relations. Russia supplies Europe with 35-40 per cent of its natural gas needs, and together with Ukraine it provides a third of the wheat, 60 per cent of the sunflower oil and more than 25 per cent of the corn used by the world at large. According to economic reports, Chinese imports of Russian gas and oil have hiked, and dozens of African and Middle Eastern countries rely heavily on energy, food, and weapons from Moscow.

The only way to end the war is by reaching a political agreement that answers the Russian demands, whether it is signed by the current president of Ukraine or following a change of government, Al-Khamisi says. The way the war is headed confirms Russias desire to change the government in Kyiv. Moscow was able from the outset to enter the Ukrainian capital, but it has been pressuring the army in Ukraine to move to change the political leadership.

Ashraf Al-Sabbagh, a Moscow-based writer and political analyst, told Al-Ahram Weekly that this war is one of many stages meant to ensure Moscows security by creating a wide range of buffer states between Moscow and the West.

Europe was divided twice since World War II, once between NATO and Warsaw, another time after the fall of the Soviet Union. Now Moscow wants what it thinks it deserves of the continent. Moscow wants to control its immediate neighbours, or what were once the USSR states, such as Belarus, Ukraine, as well as the Caucasus, such as Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Armenia.

Russia is putting pressure on countries such as Finland and Sweden to prevent them from joining NATO. In addition, its influence in the Islamic countries of Central Asia is undisputed. This was evident with the recent breakout of protests in Kazakhstan, when Moscow sent forces to help the authorities in Nur-Sultan to suppress demonstrations.

Russia started the war, but it is not certain it can end it, Al-Sabbagh said, referring to the Moscow-Kyiv negotiations.

The first round of negotiations took place on Ukraines border with Belarus on 28 February, four days after the start of the war, with demands set at their highest. In the second round of talks on 3 March in Brest, Belarus, on its border with Poland, negotiations took a more realistic path. The stronger party, Russia, stated five demands  that Ukraine form a de-Nazified government, cease military action, change its constitution to enshrine neutrality, acknowledge Crimea as Russian territory, and recognise the republics of Donetsk and Lugansk as independent states  while Ukraine insisted on full Russian withdrawal, providing solid security guarantees that Russia will not attack again, European protection, and joining the EU.

During the third round of talks on 7 March, the Russian delegation said the forces are ready for immediate withdrawal should Kyiv answer Moscows five demands. Kyiv declined. The Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba met in Antalya, Turkey, on 17 March. The demands focused on opening humanitarian corridors to evacuate civilians and the wounded in fighting zones. Until the present moment, a few humanitarian aid paths were created in some Ukrainian cities that were seized by Russia.

If the West continues to punish Russia, Moscow could invade all of Ukraine and start negotiations on the basis of the status quo, said Al-Sabbagh. Imposing sanctions on Russia, nonetheless, will harm all the countries of the world that depend on Moscows wheat, weapons, and energy sources. How can developing countries, which number more than 100, meet their needs of wheat, oil, weapons, and fuel without Russia, and more importantly, how can they pay for the commodities they imported now that Russian banks have been taken off the SWIFT system? Russia is waging this war armed with the worlds need for it, said Al-Khamisi, and this, more than the Russian forces victory on the ground, is what will end the war.

*A version of this article appears in print in the 24 March, 2022 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly

Search Keywords:

Short link:


The Gulf Cooperation Council has put forward a new initiative to end the war in Yemen, though this has been rejected by the countrys Houthi rebels

The first Gulf initiative on Yemen in 2011 aimed to facilitate the transfer of government from the regime of former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh to a newly elected authority. Some 25 political parties and numerous political figures, including Saleh, took part in the initiative, which resulted in the election of President Abd Rabbu Mansur Hadi in February 2012.

The initiative also aimed to produce a new constitution for Yemen, but it did not live long enough to produce a new political order. Instead, the new government was obliged to engage in crisis management since after his return from a hospital stay in the US Saleh withdrew his support for the transition and allied himself with the Ansarullah (Houthi) Movement.

As the tensions escalated, the newly elected president fled to Saudi Arabia and the Houthis marched into the capital Sanaa. Following the assassination of Saleh in December 2017, the Houthis embarked on a full-scale effort to take over the rest of the northern provinces, especially Mareb, a goal that still eludes them.

It is important to bear this background in mind in the light of the Gulf Cooperation Councils (GCC) call for a new initiative to end the war in Yemen. It has invited all the Yemeni parties to take part, including the Houthis, but not only have they turned the invitation down, but they have also escalated strikes against vital economic and civilian targets in Riyadh.

Their message is clear: they are not interested in a project that would end the war and lay the foundations for peace. They have also made it clear that if talks are to take place, certain conditions have to be met first. The Saudi-led Coalition would have to lift the restrictions it has imposed on the Houthis and the venue would have to be moved to any other Gulf capital but Riyadh.

The GCC has affirmed that the initiative will proceed on schedule from 29 March to 7 April. Turki Al-Maliki, spokesman for the Saudi-led Coalition to support the internationally recognised Yemeni government, said that the coalition reserved the right to respond to the strikes, adding that Saudi Arabia wanted the initiative to succeed while the Houthis were working to undermine it.

A Houthi boycott will not keep the new Gulf initiative from proceeding, something which may draw on the precedent of the first initiative. Six months after this began, Saleh was forced to come to terms with it in order to resolve the Yemeni crisis.

Just as this process rallied a consensus and offered a way out of the crisis, the new GCC initiative could also show the Yemenis a way out from the gruelling war that has entered its eighth year and driven three-quarters of the population to the brink of starvation.

One Yemeni source speaking to Al-Ahram Weekly from Riyadh said that certain political forces dominate decision-making within the internationally recognised government, above all the Al-Islah (Reform) Party. By giving all the participating parties a say, the GCC initiative would breathe new life into the legitimacy of the government, he said.

The Yemeni armed forces also need to be restructured in order to contend with the Houthis. This will enable the coalition to oversee any military efforts and back them politically after it unilaterally withdraws from the war, strengthening its members own defences.

Another main facet of the war involves the Southern Movement with its secessionist ambitions. Efforts made in the framework of the GCC initiative will focus on bringing the Southern Transitional Council (STC) on board, the dominant faction in the movement.

It is hoped that the failure to implement the Riyadh Agreement signed by the STC and the government in November 2019 will be addressed, since according to some the longer this failure continues and the more the mistrust between the STC and the government is allowed to fester, the greater the momentum the Southern Movement will acquire and the greater will be the chances that the South will secede in the long term.

The UN is also working to promote the new Gulf initiative. UN Special Envoy to Yemen Hans Grundberg has met extensively with the countrys political forces in recent weeks and has proposed a humanitarian truce for Ramadan and the relaunch of relief efforts that had ground to a halt due to the war and the lack of international funding, scaled down against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine.

According to UN emergency relief coordinator Martin Griffiths, 23.4 million Yemenis now need assistance. Of these 19 million will go hungry in the coming months, an increase of almost 20 per cent from 2021, while more than 160,000 will face famine-like conditions. Only a third of the $4.3 billion that aid agencies seek this year for Yemen has been collected so far.

International support is crucial to ending the war in Yemen, and the US ambassador to the UN stressed this dimension in her remarks to the UN in mid-March, saying that her country welcomed Grundbergs launch of a consultative process and urging unified support for his efforts.

The GCC/UN efforts may also be part of a broader international drive to end other Middle Eastern wars. In Libya, the US along with other international and regional powers involved in that crisis are working to forestall a slide back into armed conflict. In Syria, there are international efforts to persuade the regime to accommodate the opposition. The common denominator in all these conflicts is foreign involvement, especially on the part of non-Arab parties such as Iran and Turkey.

Tehran appears to be unwilling to abandon its proxy-war strategy for expanding its regional influence, and it refuses any linkage between its policies in the negotiations to renew the 2015 nuclear agreement. But there may be other ways of countering the Iranian influence in Syria. An Arab rapprochement with Damascus could go a long way to reducing Syrian reliance on Iran, and the recent Emirati initiative to invite the Syrian president to the UAE, as well as the efforts of other Arab governments to promote Syrias return to the Arab League, could work towards this end.

International developments related to the Ukraine crisis combined with international pressures to salvage the political process in Libya might compel Turkey to relinquish its militarising of the Libyan crisis. Guarantees of its economic interests in the country might offer Ankara further incentives.

While it is assumed that boycotting the GCC initiative would severely weaken the Houthis, the initiative could also throw them a lifeline. Demonstrations have begun to increase in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen, with the protests driven by economic difficulties, tax hikes, deteriorating public services, and shortages of fuel and gas. Civil-service salaries have not been paid for years, while Houthi elites amass fortunes.

If the main impulse behind an impending march of the hungry against Houthi rule is economic, there are also signs that it could acquire political and ideological dimensions.

A number of Zaidi imams have reportedly distanced themselves from the Houthi project, which suggests that this movement could gradually lose its religious base. It is also difficult to imagine that the Houthi leaders will be able to hold out against the combination of economic and popular pressures and simultaneously continue to cling to their military option out of the belief that this will force their adversaries to give in to their demands.

The new GCC initiative may be the last chance they have to survive, but this time as one party in a larger political project for Yemen and not as one that wants to impose itself on the country as a whole.

*A version of this article appears in print in the 24 March, 2022 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly

Search Keywords:

Short link:


The battle for Ukraine's cities thundered across its suburbs Tuesday, with the Ukrainian military saying it forced Russian troops out of a strategically important Kyiv suburb, while Russian forces took partial control of three northwest areas where there's been fighting for weeks.

A senior U.S. defense official said Tuesday that Russian ground forces were still largely stalled outside the capital city, but Russian ships spent the past day shelling the already devastated southern port city of Mariupol from offshore.

Thousands of civilians made the dangerous escape from Mariupol on Tuesday. Some described fleeing through street gun battles and past corpses as Russian forces tried to pound the city into submission. One woman who made it out said planes flew overhead ``and dropped bombs everywhere.''

There was no word of a diplomatic breakthrough. Ukraine's President described negotiations with Russia as ``step by step, but they are going forward.'' The U.S. intends to announce new sanctions against Russia this week. Meanwhile, more than 3.5 million people have fled Ukraine since the war began Feb. 24, and millions more have been displaced within the country, the United Nations said.

Here are some key things to know about the conflict:

WHY ARE SUBURBS IN UKRAINE TURNING INTO BATTLEFIELDS?

The suburbs could be a barrier to Ukraine's cities or a doorway for Russian troops, particularly around the capital of Kyiv, believed to be Moscow's primary military objective.

After a fierce battle, Ukrainian troops regained control of the suburb of Makariv on Tuesday, allowing Ukrainian forces to retake a key highway to the west and block Russian troops from surrounding the capital from the northwest, Ukraine's Defense Ministry said.

But the ministry said Russian forces were able to partially take northwest suburbs of Bucha, Hostomel and Irpin, some of which had been under attack for weeks.

John Kirby, the Pentagon's spokesman, said the U.S. was not in a position to confirm that Ukrainian troops regained Makariv, but said, ``we have seen indications that the Ukrainians are going a bit more on the offensive now.''

WHAT'S BEEN HAPPENING IN MARIUPOL?

The Russian assault has turned life in Mariupol into a fight for survival.

Electricity, water and food supplies have been cut off, as well as communication with the outside world.

During his nightly address to the nation, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russian forces of blocking a humanitarian convoy trying to bring desperately needed supplies to Mariupol and seizing what another Ukrainian official said were 15 of the bus drivers and rescue workers on the aid mission. Zelenskyy said the Russians had agreed to the route ahead of time.

Although people continued to evacuate Mariupol in droves, Zelenskyy said about 100,000 remain in the city in ``inhuman conditions''and under constant shelling and bombardment. The prewar population of the port city was 430,000.

Many attempts to leave have been thwarted by Russian efforts to pound Mariupol into submission. On that, Moscow has not succeeded, Britain's defense ministry said Tuesday. But Russia now controls the land corridor from Crimea, the peninsula it annexed in 2014, and is blocking Ukraine's access to the Sea of Azov.

Those who have made it out of Mariupol described a devastated landscape.

``They bombed us for the past 20 days,'' said Viktoria Totsen, 39, who fled to Poland. ``During the last five days the planes were flying over us every five seconds and dropped bombs everywhere _ on residential buildings, kindergartens, art schools, everywhere.''

WHAT HAS THE AP DIRECTLY WITNESSED OR CONFIRMED?

Explosions and bursts of gunfire shook Kyiv, and heavy artillery fire could be heard from the northwest, where Russia has sought to encircle and capture several the capital's suburban areas. Black smoke could be seen at a distance in the north.

In Lviv, families exchanged tearful farewells as women and children boarded trains to Poland while men of fighting age stayed behind, barred from leaving the country. An air raid siren could be heard blaring over the city.

WHAT ARE RUSSIA'S LATEST MILITARY MOVES?

A senior U.S. defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to provide the U.S. military assessment, said Tuesday that Russian ships in the Sea of Azov have been shelling Mariupol from offshore over the last day.

According to the official, Russian ground forces were still largely stalled outside Kyiv. And, the official said, Russia is struggling to get food and fuel to its troops. There are indications that some troops don't have proper cold weather gear and are suffering from frostbite.

A Western official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters, said Ukraine's resistance has slowed Russia's advance almost to a halt, but Russian troops have not retreated. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied that Russia's invasion has stalled. He instead insisted that the military operation was going ``strictly in accordance with the plans and purposes that were established beforehand.''

A day after U.S. President Joe Biden reiterated accusations that Putin is considering use of chemical or biological weapons, saying Putin's ``back is against the wall,'' Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, said the U.S. has seen no evidence to suggest that such an escalation is imminent.

In a separate worrying development, Russian military forces destroyed a laboratory that is responsible for improving management of radioactive waste at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The laboratory contained ``highly active samples'' that are ``now in the hands of the enemy,'' the Ukrainian state agency responsible for the Chernobyl exclusion zone said in a statement Tuesday.

WHATS THE LATEST ON SANCTIONS AGAINST RUSSIA?

Biden plans to announce new sanctions against Russia on Thursday while he is in Brussels for meetings with NATO and European allies, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said. He declined to provide details.

Several major corporations have been cutting business ties with Russia in recent weeks. French energy giant TotalEnergies said Tuesday that it will halt all purchases of Russian oil and petroleum products by the end of 2022. The company said in a statement that it will ``gradually suspend its activities in Russia'' and stressed ``the existence of alternative sources for supplying Europe'' with oil.

HAVE THERE BEEN NEW DIPLOMATIC TALKS?

Talks have been ongoing, but Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has not been granted a direct meeting with Putin, as he has requested.

Zelenskyy has said he would be prepared to consider waiving any bid by Ukraine to join NATO _ a key Russian demand, in exchange for a cease-fire, the withdrawal of Russian troops and a guarantee of Ukraine's security.

The Kremlin is demanding Ukraine disarm and declare itself neutral. Russian presidential spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday that he could not share details of ongoing talks, saying that making them public would damage negotiations.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said ``elements of diplomatic progress are coming into view on several key issues.'' He said the gains are enough to end hostilities now. He gave no details.

French President Emmanuel Macron talked with both Putin and Zelenskyy on Tuesday about a potential cease-fire, according to a statement from the French presidency. They reached ``no agreement,'' the statement said, but Macron ``remains convinced of the need to continue his efforts'' and he ``stands alongside Ukraine.''

Search Keywords:

Short link:


A senior NATO military officer says the alliance estimates that Russia has suffered between 30,000 and 40,000 battlefield casualties in Ukraine through the first month of the war, including between 7,000 and 15,000 killed.

This is NATO's first public estimate of Russian casualties since the war started on Feb. 24.

The military officer, speaking on condition of anonymity under ground rules set by NATO, said the estimate of the number killed is based on a combination of information from the Ukrainian government, indications from Russia, and open-source information.

The US government has largely declined to provide public estimates of Russian or Ukrainian casualties, saying available information is of questionable reliability.

The NATO military officer, in a briefing from the alliance's military headquarters in Belgium on Wednesday, said the estimate of 30,000 to 40,000 Russian casualties is derived from what he called a standard calculation that in war an army suffers three wounded soldiers for every soldier killed.

The casualties include killed in action and wounded in action, as well as those taken prisoner or missing in action, the officer said.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


US Secretary of State Antony Blinken says the Biden administration has made a formal determination that Russian troops have committed war crimes in Ukraine.

Blinken said the assessment was based on a ``careful review'' of public and intelligence sources since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine last month.

America's top diplomat said the United States would share that information with allies, partners, and international institutions tasked with investigating allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Blinken made the announcement Wednesday in a statement released as he was traveling to Brussels with President Joe Biden for an emergency summit of NATO leaders.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday accused the United States of seeking to hinder Moscow's talks with Ukraine aimed at ending the almost month-long conflict.

"The talks are tough, the Ukrainian side constantly changes its position. It's hard to avoid the impression that our American colleagues are holding their hand," Lavrov told students in Moscow.

He added that "the Americans simply see it as disadvantageous for them for this process to finish swiftly," claiming "they are counting on continuing to pump up Ukraine with weapons".

Lavrov referred to "provocative statements" about Soviet-era MiG fighter planes -- apparently referring to Poland's offer to send its MiG-29 fighter jets via a US air base, which the US rejected -- and Ukraine's pleas for sending extra Stinger missiles.

The United States "apparently wants to keep us in a state of military action as long as possible", the Russian minister said.

Lavrov said that Russia needed to "stand firm".

"Western countries want to play some kind of intermediary role but we have red lines".

Search Keywords:

Short link:


President Vladimir Putin plans to attend the G20 Summit later this year in Indonesia, Moscow's envoy said on Wednesday, dismissing suggestions Russia could be excluded from the group over the war in Ukraine.

A day earlier, the United States indicated it would consult allies over Russia's membership in international forums to increase pressure over the invasion of Ukraine, which has prompted a refugee crisis in Europe and roiled global markets.

Russian Ambassador to Indonesia Lyudmila Vorobieva said that G20 host Jakarta had invited Putin to the November heads of state summit in Bali.

"It will depend on many things, including the Covid situation that is getting better. But, so far yes, the intention is [for Putin] to come," she told reporters on Wednesday.

Vorobieva said there have been attempts by western countries to expel Russia from many world organisations, including the Group of 20 major economies, calling it a "disproportionate" reaction.

Russia, she added, appreciates Indonesia's "firm position", after Jakarta repeatedly said the forum was for resolving economic situations.

Indonesia, which currently holds the rotating presidency of the G20, has said it will keep the forum focused on the initial objectives, implying it was planning to keep Russia's invasion of Ukraine largely off the agenda.

"Of course, the expulsion of Russia from this kind of forum will not help these economic problems to be resolved. On the contrary, without Russia, it will be difficult," said Vorobieva.

"We really hope that the Indonesian government will not give in to the horrible pressure that is being applied to not only Indonesia, but so many countries in the world by the West".

White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan had said Washington would consult with allies about Russia's G20 membership.

"We believe that it cannot be business as usual for Russia in international institutions and in the international community," he told a press briefing Tuesday.

Russia was previously indefinitely suspended from the smaller Group of Eight major economies in 2014 over the annexation of Crimea from Ukraine. The grouping was renamed the G7.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has spoken by telephone with Russian President Vladimir Putin and inquired about the current status of efforts by Russia and Ukraine to find a diplomatic solution.

Government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit said in a statement Wednesday night that the chancellor urged Putin to achieve a ceasefire and an improvement of the humanitarian situation in Ukraine as quickly as possible.

After his conversation with Putin, Scholz spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and asked about his assessment of the current situation and the negotiation process. Scholz and Zelenskyy agreed to remain in close contact.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Ukraine's UN ambassador is urging all nations that stand against Russia's invasion to vote for a UN resolution on the humanitarian consequences of its aggression, saying this will send a powerful message aimed at helping people caught in the conflict and ending Moscow's military action.

Russia's UN envoy countered that the UN General Assembly, which is considering the resolution, is just ``another political anti-Russian show, set this time in an allegedly humanitarian context'' and urged its 193 member nations to vote against it and support a rival South African draft resolution that focuses solely on humanitarian issues with no ``political assessment.''

Ukraine's Sergiy Kyslytsya and Russia's Vassily Nebenzia spoke at the start of Wednesday's emergency special session of the General Assembly to consider the rival resolutions on the humanitarian impact of the war, which will mark its one-month anniversary on Thursday.

Russia has also called for a vote later Wednesday in the UN Security Council on its own humanitarian resolution, which has been widely criticized for not referring to its invasion of Ukraine.

Kyslytsya said the Ukraine-backed assembly resolution, drafted by two dozen diplomats from all parts of the world and co-sponsored by nearly 100 countries, focuses on ``the urgent need to elevate the humanitarian suffering on the ground and immediate cessation of hostilities by the Russian Federation.''

Nebenzia warned that adoption of that resolution ``will make a resolution to the situation in Ukraine more difficult.

'' That's because it will likely embolden Ukrainian negotiators and ``nudge them to maintain the current unrealistic position, which is not related to the situation on the ground, nor to the need to tackle the root causes'' of Russia's military action, he said.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


With the future of Europe hanging in the balance, President Joe Biden will huddle with key allies in Brussels and Warsaw this week as the leaders try to prevent Russia's war on Ukraine from spiraling into an even greater catastrophe.

Biden embarks Wednesday on a four-day trip that will test his ability to navigate the continent's worst crisis since World War II. There are fears that Russia could use chemical or nuclear weapons as its invasion becomes bogged down in the face of logistical problems and fierce Ukrainian resistance.

Humanitarian challenges are growing as well. Millions of refugees have fled the fighting, mostly by crossing the border into Poland, and the war has jeopardized Ukraine's wheat and barley harvests, raising the possibility of rising hunger in impoverished areas around the globe.

Jake Sullivan, Biden's national security adviser, said the president would coordinate with allies on military assistance for Ukraine and new sanctions on Russia. He added that Biden is working on long-term efforts to boost defenses in Eastern Europe, where more countries fear Russian aggression. The president is also aiming to reduce the continent's reliance on Russian energy.

``This war will not end easily or rapidly,'' Sullivan told reporters at a White House briefing on Tuesday. ``For the past few months, the West has been united. The president is traveling to Europe to make sure we stay united.''

Sullivan said Vladimir Putin's references to nuclear weapons at the beginning of the conflict are ``something that we do have to be concerned about,'' adding that Biden would be talking with allies about ``potential responses'' if the Russian leader takes that step.

Sullivan's description of Biden's trip was another sign that the crisis is entering a new and uncertain phase.

After the initial invasion failed to topple Ukraine's government, the war has become a grinding endeavor for Putin, who is relying on airstrikes and artillery that are devastating civilian communities. Negotiations between Ukraine and Russia have not produced a cease-fire or a path to ending the conflict, and the U.S. continues to rush weapons like anti-tank missiles to Ukrainian forces.

The war's ripple effects are also spreading. Biden warned that Russia could be planning cyberattacks that would affect U.S. companies, and he spoke to Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday to warn him against backing Russia with military or financial assistance. Meanwhile, a top State Department official visited India this week shortly after that country decided to purchase more Russian oil.

``This is one of those decisive moments for an American leader that defines their legacy internationally,'' said Timothy Naftali, a presidential historian at New York University.

Biden's first stop is Brussels, where he'll attend back-to-back-to-back meetings.

NATO is holding a hastily arranged emergency summit, where Biden is expected to reiterate his support for Article 5 of the alliance's charter, which commits all members to collective defense if any are attacked.

``I think the meeting of all heads of state and government in NATO will provide us with yet another platform to demonstrate our unity, our support to Ukraine, but also our readiness to protect and defend all NATO allies,'' NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told NBC's ``Meet the Press'' on Sunday. ``And by sending that message, we are preventing an escalation of the conflict to a full-fledged war between NATO and Russia.''

Biden will also participate in meetings of the European Union and the Group of Seven, which includes the world's richest democracies.

He'll then travel to Warsaw on Friday to meet Polish officials to discuss the enormous humanitarian strain caused by the Ukrainian refugee crisis. Biden is scheduled to meet with Polish President Andrzej Duda on Saturday.

Duda, whose country suffered a brutal Nazi occupation during World War II, compared Russian actions in Ukraine to Adolf Hitler's infamous SS forces. Visiting Bulgaria on Tuesday, Duda said Putin's army ``is behaving in exactly the same way.`` He said he hoped that those responsible for attacks on civilians would be brought before international courts.

Polish leaders have pressed for a Western peacekeeping mission to intervene in Ukraine, a step that the U.S. and other Western allies worry could lead to a broadening of the war. The Polish leadership also wants an increased military presence along NATO's eastern flank.

Sullivan said Biden's trip to Poland is an important opportunity to ``meet with a frontline and very vulnerable ally.'' Poland is also host to a growing number of U.S. troops, and Sullivan suggested Biden may visit them as well.

Last week, at NATO's Brussels headquarters, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and his counterparts weighed what defenses to set up on the organization's eastern flank, from Estonia in the north through Latvia, Lithuania and Poland down to Bulgaria and Romania on the Black Sea.

The aim is to deter Putin from ordering an invasion of any of the 30 allies, not just for the duration of the war in Ukraine but into the future.

Putin has demanded that NATO withdraw its forces on its eastern flank and stop expanding.

Sullivan said that Biden, during his talks in Europe, ``will work with allies on longer-term adjustments to NATO force posture.''

Biden's visit to Poland follows on Vice President Kamala Harris' visit to Warsaw and Bucharest earlier this month. While Harris was in Poland, Duda called on the Biden administration to expedite visa procedures for Ukrainians who have family living in the United States so that they could resettle in the U.S. at least temporarily.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Several European countries, including Germany, France, Italy and Britain, lifted their Covid curbs too brutally and are now seeing a rise in cases likely due to the more transmissible BA2 variant, the World Health Organization said

WHO Europe director Hans Kluge told a press conference in Moldova that he was optimistic but vigilant about the pandemics development in Europe.

Covid is on the rise in 18 out of 53 countries in the WHO European region, he said.

The countries where we see a particular increase are the United Kingdom, Ireland, Greece, Cyprus, France, Italy and Germany.

He said the main reason behind the increase was likely the BA2 variant, which is more transmissible, but not more dangerous than other variants.

But in addition, those countries are lifting the restrictions brutally from too much to too few, he said.

According to the WHO database, the number of new Covid cases in Europe fell sharply after a peak at the end of January, but has been on the rise again since early March.

Over the past seven days, more than 5.1 million new cases and 12,496 deaths have been reported in the WHOs European region.

That brings the number of cases since the start of the pandemic to almost 194.4 million and the number of deaths to more than 1.92 million.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Happy thoughts and a healthy lifestyle are key to preventing or slowing the onset of dementia, doctors say.

Some 1.66 million Koreans over 65 suffer from at least mild cognitive impairment, and the number keeps growing.

Kongju National University in a report based on 2017 government data said elderly people score higher in cognitive tests if they exercise, do not smoke and drink less alcohol.
Chinese state-controlled media are placing volumes of content on popular social media platforms to air the government's unique message about Russia's war on Ukraine to a Western audience, analysts say. News readers don't always know the content's origin, they add.

The official Xinhua News Agency, the English-language newspaper China Daily and the English website of China Global Television Network (CGTN) are placing multiple spots daily on Facebook and Twitter to share Beijing's take on the news. CGTN runs a special Facebook account for its European audience plus another for the Americas.

Messages run the gamut of China's views on the nearly month-old Russian invasion of Ukraine. China, an ally of Russia, through its various state media outlets, has argued for Beijing's neutrality, disputed any claims that China is backing Russia in the conflict, and extolled the search for peace through dialogue.

Many posts are linked to popular hashtags such as #Ukraine or #UkraineConflict. "China's ambassador to the United States said Sunday that allegations that his country is providing military assistance to Russia in its conflict with #Ukraine is 'disinformation,'" China Daily noted in a one-sentence Facebook post on Monday.

Beijing's outreach will pay off, said Danny Levinson, a China-based technology and cybersecurity expert. "You say something enough times, and it becomes true," Levinson said. "China plays a long game and has always had a very keen ability and drive to push out its messaging both internally and externally."

China's government owns or closely monitors all news outlets in the communist country -- a sharp contrast to Western social media.

"And its external communication methods have gotten a lot easier with the rise of Western-based social media platforms that do not have the same content restrictions and moderation policies that Chinese firms have inside China," Levinson said. "This provides fertile turf for Chinese messaging to latch onto the zeitgeist du jour."
Zelenskyy also said Tuesday he discussed the "difficult humanitarian situation" with Pope Francis and said the pope's role in mediating "ending human suffering would be appreciated."

Vereshchuk said Russian forces were also preventing humanitarian supplies from reaching civilians in the occupied southern city of Kherson but did not offer details. Russia denies involvement in repeated failed attempts to open a corridor for civilians to safely leave Mariupol and targeting civilians.

In a statement Tuesday, a Mercy Corps official in Ukraine said the country's humanitarian aid system has collapsed. "The reality is that right now the humanitarian system is entirely broken down," said Steve Gordon, the organization's humanitarian response adviser. Gordon said most cities and towns that are experiencing the most intense fighting "don't have more than 3-4 days' worth of essentials, like food."

Ukraine's appeal came one day after it rejected an ultimatum to surrender the southeastern Ukrainian city by dawn Monday as a condition for civilians to leave safely. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy declared in a video address Tuesday to the Italian parliament, "There is nothing left" in Mariupol.

"We demand the opening of a humanitarian corridor for civilians," Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said Tuesday on Ukrainian television.

Ukraine demanded Tuesday that Russia allow humanitarian aid into Mariupol and let civilians leave the strategic city that has been heavily bombarded by Russia since its invasion of Ukraine started nearly a month ago.

On Monday, U.S. President Joe Biden warned of the potential for Russia to carry out cyberattacks against U.S. interests or deploy biological or chemical weapons in Ukraine as Russia's Ukrainian invasion nears the one-month point.

Biden told a group of U.S. business leaders Russian President Vladimir Putin did not anticipate the extent of unity he would face in opposition to Russia's actions and that "his back is against the wall."

"Now he's talking about new false flags he's setting up, including he's asserting that, we, in America, have biological as well as chemical weapons in Europe -- simply not true," Biden said. "They're also suggesting that Ukraine has biological and chemical weapons in Ukraine. That's a clear sign he is considering using both of those."

Biden also said Monday there was "evolving intelligence" that the Russian government was "exploring options for potential cyberattacks" against the U.S. in response to U.S. sanctions, and he urged the private sector to "immediately" harden "cyber defenses."

Russia rejected Biden's warning, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov telling reporters Tuesday that Russia "does not engage in state-level banditry."

The leaders of the U.S., France, Germany, Italy and Britain held a call Monday in which they discussed concerns about Russia's brutal tactics in Ukraine, underscored their continued support to Ukraine by providing security and humanitarian assistance, and reviewed recent diplomatic efforts in support of Ukraine's effort to reach a cease-fire, according to the White House.

Later this week, Biden will attend a NATO summit, a G7 meeting, and a European Council summit in Brussels, all focused on the situation in Ukraine, before traveling to Poland.

 Negotiations

Peskov said Tuesday that Russia would like to see "active and substantive" talks with Ukraine.

Zelenskyy said Monday he is prepared to discuss a range of issues with Putin, including a commitment for Ukraine to not join NATO, as part of efforts to achieve a cease-fire.

 Humanitarian Crisis

The UN refugee agency said Tuesday the number of refugees who have fled Ukraine since the Russian invasion began surpassed 3.5 million people. More than 2.1 million of the refugees have gone to Poland, 543,000 to Romania, 368,000 to Moldova and 318,000 to Hungary.

This week, the UN General Assembly is expected to resume an "emergency special session" to vote on a draft resolution prepared by France and Mexico demanding an immediate stop to Russia's hostilities against Ukraine, especially attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure.

The text also demands the full protection of civilians -- including humanitarians, medical personnel, journalists and foreign nationals -- and people trying to flee the conflict.

War Crimes

The Pentagon on Monday accused Russian forces of committing war crimes in Ukraine. "We certainly see clear evidence that Russian forces are committing war crimes, and we are helping with the collecting of evidence of that," Pentagon press secretary John Kirby told reporters in response to a question by VOA.

Kirby also accused Russian forces of carrying out "indiscriminate attacks on civilians" that were "intentional" in many cases. He said the U.S. would wait for ongoing investigative processes and contribute to those investigations into Russian war crimes.

In Moscow, Russia's Foreign Ministry said Monday it had summoned U.S. Ambassador John Sullivan, citing "unacceptable statements" by U.S. President Biden about Russian President Putin, an apparent reference to Biden calling the Russian leader a "war criminal" last week. "Such statements from the American president, unworthy of a statesman of such high rank, put Russian-American relations on the verge of rupture," it said.
A Korean marine on furlough has made an unauthorized dash to Poland with the aim of fighting in war-torn Ukraine against the Russian invasion.

The man told friends before departure that he wanted to "join the foreign legion" in Ukraine, but he was caught at the border with the help of Polish authorities before he could do any damage and will be sent home, military authorities here said Tuesday.

The soldier flew from Incheon to Warsaw on Monday. That means he technically went AWOL since he was not allowed to leave the country without authorization from a senior officer.

His family alerted authorities when he did not return to his barracks by Monday, the last day of his furlough.

"I can no longer stand by as a soldier in a situation where civilians continue to be killed," friends quoted him as saying.

"We found he had gone AWOL and took him into custody with the help of a concerned agency and the Korean Embassy in Poland," a marine officer added.

Earlier, Rhee Keun, a former Navy special warfare officer who attracted a following as a YouTuber sharing combat experience, also flew to Ukraine to help the fight against the Russian invasion. Travel to Ukraine is currently banned.


KYODO NEWS - Mar 23, 2022 - 22:43 | All, Japan, World

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday asked Japan to ban trade with Russia to stop what he called the "tsunami" of its invasion into Ukraine, as he stressed the need to ramp up sanctions to punish Moscow.

Speaking to Japanese lawmakers by video link, Zelenskyy underscored the "extremely dangerous" state of all nuclear power plants in his country after Russia took control of the site of the Chernobyl nuclear accident. Russia is also said to be preparing to use chemical weapons, he said.

"Japan is the first Asian country that applied pressure on Russia. We want this to continue," Zelenskyy said in the first virtual address to Japanese lawmakers by a foreign leader, thanking Japan for its assistance since the crisis unfolded.

"To stop the tsunami of invasion in Ukraine, it is important to introduce a ban on trade with Russia," he said.

Zelenskyy appeared on large screens in a packed conference room in parliament at around 6 p.m. as around 500 lawmakers gave him a round of applause. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and other Cabinet members were among the participants who listened to his roughly 12-minute speech that led to a standing ovation.

The address came just hours before Kishida was set to leave for Brussels to attend a Group of Seven summit on Thursday on the fringes of an emergency leaders' meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

"I was moved by the strong determination and courage exhibited by President Zelenskyy to protect his country and its people even in an extremely difficult situation," Kishida told reporters afterward.

"We will consider additional sanctions against Russia and more humanitarian assistance (to Ukraine) on top of the $100 million already pledged," Kishida said, adding that Moscow's "reckless" act should not be tolerated.

Japan, a member of the Group of Seven advanced countries, has expressed solidarity with the people of Ukraine, extending humanitarian assistance.

Tokyo has begun accepting people fleeing the war-ravaged nation in a rare move for a country whose immigration and refugee policy is often criticized as too strict.

Japan has also imposed sanctions on Russia over its aggression in tandem with other G-7 members, hardening its stance toward Moscow. As a result, Russia said this week it will suspend negotiations over a decades-old territorial dispute that has prevented the two nations from signing a postwar peace treaty.

Russia's attacks, including more than 1,000 missiles fired, have brought destruction to Ukrainian cities, killing scores of civilians and leaving many Ukrainians to flee their homes for safety.

"No one is certain or confident about the future," Zelenskyy told the Japanese lawmakers through an interpreter.

"We must ensure that each one of those people who have been evacuated can return to where they used to be," the president said. "I'm sure people in Japan understand how it feels, the yearning to go back home."

The northeastern part of Japan was devastated by an earthquake and tsunami that caused the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl in March 2011.

Zelenskyy has been pushing for direct talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the war. But he warned on a recent CNN program of a Third World War if negotiations fail.

"Russia's attack on Ukraine has made the world an unstable place," the Ukrainian leader said Wednesday. "To aggressors who want war, we need to send a very strong warning. We need to send them a strong message that peace should not be destroyed."

Ukrainian forces continue to resist the Russian invasion launched Feb. 24, putting up stiff resistance in cities such as Mariupol -- a key area that links the Donbas region containing pro-Russian separatists with Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014 -- as they come under heavy Russian bombardment.

The humanitarian crisis has been deepening day by day, and over 10 million have fled, either displaced inside Ukraine or as refugees abroad, Filippo Grandi, the U.N. high commissioner for refugees, has tweeted.

Among the responsibilities of those who wage war, everywhere in the world, is the suffering inflicted on civilians who are forced to flee their homes.



The war in Ukraine is so devastating that 10 million have fled  either displaced inside the country, or as refugees abroad.  Filippo Grandi (@FilippoGrandi) March 20, 2022

Zelenskyy has been rallying global support for his country's fight against Russia. In recent speeches addressed to lawmakers in Britain, Germany and the United States, Zelenskyy has sought to put the ordeal faced by the people of Ukraine into a historical context that would strike a chord with his audience.

In Britain's House of Commons, Zelenskyy vowed to fight to the end using language echoing the famous "We shall fight on the beaches" speech by Winston Churchill, who was British prime minister at the time of his country's struggle against Nazi Germany during World War II.

Zelenskyy asked for German help to destroy what he called a new wall set up by Russia to divide Europe, a nod to the Berlin Wall, a symbol of the Cold War era in which Germany was divided between communist East Germany and West Germany until the former's 1989 collapse.

"Remember Pearl Harbor," the Ukrainian president told U.S. lawmakers last week, referring to the 1941 Japanese assault on the harbor in Hawaii. He also touched on the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the United States in 2001.

Related coverage:

Japan begins accepting war-fleeing Ukrainians without guarantor

Ukraine seeks more aid in war, urges Biden to be "leader of peace"

Zelenskyy approaches Japan over possible virtual speech to parliament
KYODO NEWS - Mar 23, 2022 - 22:27 | All, Japan, Coronavirus

A Japanese health ministry panel approved on Wednesday the administration of third booster shots of U.S. pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc.'s COVID-19 vaccine to children aged between 12 and 17.

The ministry will decide Thursday on the details of the rollout, including offering the booster shots free of charge, as with the first two shots, with vaccinations to begin as early as next month.

The ministry's panel last November approved Pfizer booster shots for people age 18 and over, but did not include those aged between 12 and 17 due to a lack of clinical trial data available for the age group at the time.

It decided to lower the age for third shot recipients after studying data from countries such as Israel and the United States, which have already begun giving additional protection to children with boosters.

The data showed that the frequency of side effects was comparable to, or less than, the first two shots, and that there were no major safety concerns.

The third shot also boosted the vaccine's effectiveness that has been found to wane over time following the second shot, according to the data.

The ministry expects a certain degree of effectiveness against the highly contagious Omicron variant of the coronavirus, which was included in the reviewed data.

Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine was first approved in Japan in February last year for those aged 16 and over, with the rollout subsequently expanded to children aged 12 to 15 in May.

While it remains unknown what percentage of those aged 12 to 17 are fully vaccinated in Japan, government data shows that the double-dose vaccination rate for those between 12 and 19, including Moderna Inc.'s COVID-19 vaccine, stands at around 75 percent.

Currently, individuals aged 18 or older can receive booster shots at least six months after receiving their second dose.

Related coverage:

Japan begins COVID-19 vaccination for children aged 5-11

Japan to buy additional 10 million COVID vaccine shots from Pfizer

Japan to begin COVID booster shots for general public sooner
KYODO NEWS - Mar 23, 2022 - 14:22 | All, Japan

Mizuho Financial Group Inc. said Wednesday it has entered into a strategic collaboration with tech giant Google LLC to accelerate the Japanese company's digital transformation.

Mizuho said in a statement it partnered with Google Cloud Japan G.K. to utilize Google's data analytics technology to generate real-time insights about clients' preferences and increase customer satisfaction.

The Japanese group, which has suffered repeated high-profile system failures at its key banking unit, also said it will tap Google's security engineering expertise and development processes to modernize its systems.

Mizuho has lagged in its digital transformation after it was forced to shift its focus to stabilizing its banking systems and implementing preventative measures against further issues after Mizuho Bank suffered a series of major system malfunctions since February last year.

According to the statement, the financial group also aims to change its corporate culture by working closely with the tech firm, saying it wants to adopt "Google Cloud's innovative approach to product development and problem-solving."

Mizuho Financial is hoping employees can take training sessions at Google Cloud or have them ask for advice, officials of the group said.

Google eventually aims to support the digital transformation of Mizuho's client companies, the officials said.

Related coverage:

Mizuho Bank suffers ATM system failure, 11th since Feb. 2021

Trouble-hit Mizuho Financial names senior exec Kihara as new president

Mizuho hit by system failure despite pledge to improve operations
KYODO NEWS - Mar 23, 2022 - 21:30 | World, All

Russian President Vladimir Putin intends to attend the summit of the Group of 20 economies in Indonesia in November this year, the Russian envoy to Indonesia said Wednesday amid a reported attempt from some G-20 members to expel Russia from the group following its invasion of Ukraine.

Russian Ambassador to Indonesia Lyudmila Vorobieva told reporters in Jakarta that Putin "has been invited" by Indonesia, this year's rotating chair of the group, to the summit to be held on the island of Bali, stressing the reaction from the Western countries to Russia's military operation in Ukraine is "disproportional."

"It (Putin's attendance) will depend on many, many things, including the COVID situation that is getting better. So far, the intention is to...he wants to come," Vorobieva said.

The United States and its allies have been assessing whether Russia should remain within the G-20 following its invasion of Ukraine, a Reuters report said citing sources.

Vorobieva downplayed the reported move to exclude Russia, saying the G-20 should be a forum to solve economic problems and "without Russia, it would be difficult to do so."

Indonesia should not give in to such pressure from Western countries, she said.

While the Indonesian Foreign Ministry has not responded to calls on the expulsion of Russia, the ministry last week said that the G-20 has always been a forum to discuss global economic issues, while organizations such as the U.N. General Assembly provide a place for debate on war and other issues.

Indonesia has not taken any punitive measures against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, which started on Feb. 24. But the United States, Britain and EU member nations as well as Japan have imposed a series of sanctions against Moscow, including revoking Russia's "most-favored nation" trade status and freezing Putin's assets.

Related coverage:

Zelenskyy calls for sanctions on Russia to stop "tsunami" of invasion

Russian author calls Ukraine invasion "stain" on country's history

Biden warns Russia could use chemical weapons in Ukraine
KYODO NEWS - Mar 23, 2022 - 13:10 | World, All

Myanmar's government has rejected the United States' labeling of the Southeast Asian nation's military repression of the Rohingya ethnic minority as genocide, saying the country has "never engaged in any genocidal actions."

"The narratives mentioned in the speech of the secretary of state are found to be far from realities and references made were also from unreliable and unverifiable sources," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement released late Tuesday.

The remarks came after U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced the designation on Monday while describing the atrocities against the mainly Muslim minority as "widespread and systematic."

The decision to categorize the incident as genocide was reached after reviewing detailed documentation compiled by human rights organizations and other impartial sources and through the government's own fact-finding efforts, according to Blinken.

The ministry said it "categorically rejects" Blinken's remarks, describing them as "politically motivated and tantamount to interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign state."

In 2017, when the country was ruled by a civilian government that was later overthrown, the military conducted a campaign against Rohingya who were mostly living in the country's western Rakhine State. Over 9,000 were killed in the violence and more than 740,000 forced to flee to neighboring Bangladesh.

The International Court of Justice in 2019 started hearings on the alleged persecution and genocide against the Rohingya minority. The following year, the ICJ issued a provisional order for Myanmar to take "all measures" to end the persecution of the Rohingya.

Hearings aimed at determining whether genocide was committed continue in The Hague.

Under a U.N. convention, genocide constitutes actions such as killing and causing serious bodily or mental harm, "committed with "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group."

Related coverage:

U.S. labels Myanmar military's repression of Rohingya "genocide"
KYODO NEWS - Mar 23, 2022 - 14:06 | All, World, Japan

Japan's Ground Self-Defense Force and the U.S. Marine Corps on Wednesday disclosed to the press some detail about an ongoing joint exercise in which the defense of remote islands is being drilled.

As China becomes increasingly assertive in regional waters, the GSDF's Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade and the Okinawa-based U.S. 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit have been conducting drills over three weeks since March 4 at a GSDF facility in central Japan.

During the disclosed portion of the exercises, an F-35 stealth fighter jet belonging to the U.S. Marine Corps for the first time participated in an exercise with the GSDF.

The drills assume the training site in Shizuoka Prefecture is an island held by enemy forces and Wednesday's programs included the Japanese amphibious brigade passing on information to the Marines to help the fighter jet locate and engage targets.

The participation of the F-35, which did not actually open fire, is a sign that the bilateral security alliance has deepened since Japan's new security laws took effect in 2016.

The laws enable Japan, under certain conditions, to exercise the right to collective self-defense or defend allies even when the country is not directly attacked.

"We are committed to our enduring foundation and to building interoperability," Col. Masashi Hiraki, commander of the Japanese unit, said at the training area near Mt. Fuji.
KYODO NEWS - Mar 23, 2022 - 21:10 | All, Japan

U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will visit atomic-bombed Hiroshima this weekend, a Japanese government source said Wednesday, amid growing fears Russia could use nuclear weapons in its ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

Emanuel, once a top aide to former President Barack Obama, who visited Hiroshima in 2016, and Kishida, a lawmaker representing a constituency in the city, will offer prayers and flowers to those who suffered the U.S. atomic bombing in 1945, at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park on Saturday, according to the source.

They are expected to underscore the unity of the two countries in opposing any move by Russia to use nuclear weapons in its invasion of Ukraine since Feb. 24, as Russian President Vladimir Putin has hinted at using them in the face of Ukraine's resistance and severe economic sanctions from Western nations.

Emanuel expressed his desire to visit the western Japan city when he first met Kishida, an advocate of a world free of nuclear weapons, in February as the envoy to Japan.

As a foreign minister, Kishida played an active role in realizing Obama's historic visit to Hiroshima as the first sitting U.S. president to do so. Emanuel and Kishida will also go to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum.

Minoru Terada, a special advisor to Kishida on nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation, whose mother endured the atomic bombing, is planning to accompany them during the visit, according to the source.

Kishida is also considering exchanging views with young people who have been promoting efforts toward nuclear abolition in Hiroshima, the source said.

Their visit to Hiroshima was initially scheduled for Feb. 26 but was postponed following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which necessitated that Kishida remain in Tokyo.

In January, the Japanese and the U.S. governments issued a joint statement in which they urged world leaders to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the other city destroyed by a U.S. atomic bomb in World War II, to "raise and sustain awareness."

Related coverage:

Mayors request Biden visit Hiroshima, Nagasaki

PM Kishida to forgo Hiroshima trip with U.S. envoy amid Ukraine crisis

U.S. ambassador to Japan arranging visit to Hiroshima next week
BEIRUT, March 17 (Xinhua) -- The new chief of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) on Thursday called for solutions to disputes between Lebanon and Israel along the Blue Line through enhancing communication and coordination and the tripartite mechanism, according to a statement by Lebanon's Presidency.

"This would reduce tension, build confidence and secure a space for negotiations to reach a cease-fire and a lasting peace between Israel and Lebanon," Aroldo Lazaro Saenz said during his first meeting with Lebanese President Michel Aoun.

Noting the UNIFIL's commitment to secure stability and promote peace in Lebanon and the region, Lazaro hailed the Lebanese Armed Forces as UNIFIL's "primary partner" in performing its tasks.

For his part, Aoun also highlighted the importance of continued cooperation and coordination between the Lebanese army and UNIFIL in maintaining calm and stability in south Lebanon that sees continued Israeli violations of Lebanese sovereignty by land, sea and air.

The Blue Line is a demarcation line between Lebanon and Israel as well as Lebanon and the Golan Heights published by the United Nations in 2000 for the purposes of determining whether Israel had fully withdrawn from Lebanon. The line, stretching for 120 km along Lebanon's southern frontier, is a key to peace in the region. 
BEIJING, March 23 (Xinhua) -- Amid profound changes unseen in a century, the global economy is experiencing a weak and uneven recovery, and the world is calling for practical actions to re-energize the global economy and drive it forward.

Under the guidance of "Xiconomics," the economic philosophy of Chinese President Xi Jinping, China has been working steadily to prop up the real economy, strengthen its innovation capacity and enhance practical cooperation with the rest of the world, which has further consolidated the foundation of the country's economy and improved its anti-risk capacity.

China's solid growth has not only served as a stabilizer and a driving force for the world economy, but has offered other countries inspiration for reviving economies, boosting development and achieving strong and sustainable growth.

With a strong focus on production, manufacturing and innovation, Xi's economic thought injects impetus into global growth that is wrestling with numerous uncertainties.

STRONG SUPPORT FOR REAL ECONOMY

"The real economy is the foundation of a country's economy and source of wealth. Advanced manufacturing is one key area of the real economy and the economic development cannot be separated from the real economy at any time," Xi said during his inspection tour of China's southern Guangdong Province back in 2018.

The Chinese president, on many occasions, has highlighted the importance of supporting the real economy, setting a clear direction for China's economic development and enlightening the international community about global growth. His thoughts bear a special significance against the backdrop of the ravaging COVID-19 pandemic.

In the early months after the onset of the pandemic, many Chinese companies, including carmakers and energy enterprises, have transformed their businesses to cater to the surging demands both at home and abroad for anti-virus products including masks and disinfectants, contributing to the stable operation of global supply chains.

These have reflected the different roles the real economy plays in China and Western countries, overseas observers have said.

As the world's largest manufacturing country, the top trader of goods, as well as the second largest consumer of goods, China has contributed over 30 percent to global economic growth in recent years, and withstood the tough test brought about by the pandemic.

Under Xi's leadership, China has emerged as the only major economy with positive growth in 2020, a demonstration of the vitality and resilience of the country's economy amid the global public health crisis. In 2021, China's gross domestic product saw a year-on-year increase of 8.1 percent, exceeding 110 trillion yuan (17.3 trillion U.S. dollars) and beating most market expectations.

Being estimated to account for over 18 percent of the global economy in 2021, China's economy is in an increasingly prominent position in world development.

Wichai Kinchong Choi, senior vice president of the leading Thai bank Kasikornbank, told Xinhua that China has played a crucial and irreplaceable role in supporting the global supply chain.

"China's comprehensive advantages, such as the vast and promising market, abundant human resources, sound infrastructure and complete industrial facilities, all make it attractive to foreign investment," the banker said.

ENHANCING INNOVATION CAPACITY

"A new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation is gathering pace, and science and technology are playing an even more significant role in boosting social productivity," said Xi while delivering a keynote speech via video at the APEC CEO Dialogues in 2020.

Thanks to Xi's deep insight into the changes in different stages of development, China has been firmly implementing its new development philosophy featuring innovative, coordinated, green, open and shared growth, and working to shift its growth model, contributing China's wisdom and strength to global economic transformation and development.

Located on a hill-surrounding steppe near the city of Zhanatas in the Zhambyl Region in southern Kazakhstan, a Chinese-built wind farm, the biggest one in Central Asia, stands as a living embodiment of how Chinese innovation has improved the lives of local people. The project have not only alleviated Kazakhstan's power shortage, but also increased local tax revenue.

From "made in China" to "created in China," the country is stepping up its pace toward the middle and high-end of industrial and value chains. In February, China's Hualong One, a domestically designed third-generation nuclear reactor, was confirmed adequate for use in Britain, which is of vital importance for the island country to make up for its energy shortage and shore up its economy.

Meanwhile, China is taking the lead in the field of integrating digital economy with the real economy. Relying on such new technologies as cloud computing, e-commerce and fintech, China is playing an active role in facilitating regional and global trade.

In Southeast Asia, the joint construction of "a digital Silk Road" keeps gaining fresh momentum as China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have been expanding their cooperation in such emerging fields as smart city, 5G and big data.

According to ASEAN Secretary-General Lim Jock Hoi, with the thriving digital cooperation between China and ASEAN, the regional bloc's digital economy is projected to increase from 1.3 percent of its gross domestic product in 2015 to 8.5 percent in 2025.

China, a country striving to step up its innovation and pursue high-quality development, will for sure create more opportunities for cooperation and bring about more tangible benefits to others.

STRENGTHENING PRACTICAL COOPERATION

Looking at the newly-built bridge spanning across the Mekong River, Da Danuch, a 31-year-old civil servant in Cambodia, could hardly hold back her excitement.

"Previously, it took at least one hour to one hour and a half to cross the river by ferry, but it's convenient now because we have the bridge, and it takes less than five minutes to cross the river," she said.

The Chinese-built Stueng Trang-Kroch Chhmar Cambodia-China Friendship Bridge came into service in late 2021, which has largely facilitated transportation and businesses between the two sides of the river. It is an important achievement within the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative, and also exemplifies China's commitment to deepening practical cooperation with the rest of the world for joint development.

Cooperation between China and its partners has not only upgraded local infrastructure and improved the skills of workers, but also advanced cultural and people-to-people exchanges.

In a classroom in Guinea-Bissau in West Africa, students raised their hands, competing for chances to answer questions from Chinese agricultural technicians.

It was an agricultural machinery skills training class taught by a team of Chinese technical experts. Over the past two decades, Chinese expert teams have trained more than 22,000 people there with technical skills, in a big boost to the country's agricultural development.

"China will promote high-quality Belt and Road cooperation so that more countries and peoples will benefit from its development opportunities and real outcomes," Xi said at the opening ceremony of the fourth China International Import Expo in November 2021. His remarks demonstrated China's sincere readiness to share the fruits of development with countries around the world.

Under the guidance of Xiconomics, China is pursuing growth while ensuring stability, and expanding practical cooperation with its partners to bring benefits of its development to countries across the globe, which has injected confidence into the world economy. Enditem

(Xinhua writers Wu Changwei and Mao Pengfei in Phnom Penh, Song Yu in Bangkok, Zhang Jiye in Nur-sultan, Wang Zizheng in Dakar, Sun Xiaoling in London and Wang Jiawei in Beijing contributed to this story.)
* Over 40 percent of the EU's natural gas and 25 percent of its oil consumption come from Russia, and there has been a consensus among European countries that the EU's dependence on Russian fossil fuels should be reduced.

* The EU unveiled a plan to reduce energy imports from Russia, which is striving for independence from Russian fossil fuels well before 2030.

* As the bloc is far from reaching energy self-sufficiency, it appears to be a daunting and almost unattainable goal to reduce its reliance on Russia.

BRUSSELS, March 23 (Xinhua) -- The European Union is under mounting pressure from Washington to ban Russian energy imports as European leaders and U.S. President Joe Biden are set to meet and discuss deterrence measures against Russia at a summit here on Thursday.



However, member states of the bloc have not reached an agreement yet on whether a ban would be slapped on Russian energy in the EU.

"Europe's supply of energy for heating, mobility, electricity and industry currently cannot be secured in any other way," German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said at an EU leaders' summit in France earlier this month.





UNBEARABLE BAN

Over 40 percent of the EU's natural gas and 25 percent of its oil consumption come from Russia.

Germany has been holding on to its rejection of an abrupt ban. The country's Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock argued that the proposed oil embargo was a "question of how much we depend on oil" from Russia.

Other German leaders echoed Baerbock's concern. Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Action Robert Habeck warned on Saturday that his country would not have enough gas to heat homes and keep industry going next winter if it does not obtain more gas and if deliveries from Russia are cut off.

Photo taken on March 18, 2022 shows diesel and gasoline prices displayed on a board at a gas station in Frankfurt, Germany. (Photo by Armando Babani/Xinhua)

Other EU members, such as Austria and Finland, have also warned against hastily banning energy imports from Russia.

The sanctions imposed by the United States and Britain on Russia's energy sector in response to Russia's military operation in Ukraine have already sent shockwaves across the world's energy markets.

"The implications of a potential loss of Russian oil exports to global markets cannot be understated," the International Energy Agency said in a report released last week.

According to the agency, Russia's oil production disruptions could lead to the biggest supply crisis in decades.

The prospect of an EU ban on Russian oil imports has already stirred the global energy market. On Monday, the crude price jumped more than 7 percent to 115 U.S. dollars a barrel as European diplomats were debating a possible ban on Russian energy imports.

Surging oil prices have pushed transport companies to the brink of bankruptcy in Spain, where truck drivers started a national strike a week ago.

Cars wait to be refueled at a gas station amid rise of fuel prices in Madrid, Spain, March 12, 2022. (Photo by Gustavo Valiente/Xinhua)

As the strike enters its second week, the disruptions to transport are causing food shortages, and certain areas in northern Spain are even at the risk of running out of tap water.

The knock-on effect of energy price spikes has sent the prices of many other items skyrocketing in Germany. The German Farmers' Association said that the price of fertilizer is five times that of the same period last year.

Association President Joachim Rukwied said he was convinced that food prices would climb because farmers and food processors would have to pass the inflated costs on to customers.

The European Central Bank has already lowered its projection for economic growth in the eurozone to 3.7 percent this year.





UNATTAINABLE INDEPENDENCE

There has been a consensus among European countries that the EU's dependence on Russian fossil fuels should be reduced, if not ended altogether.

The EU unveiled a plan on March 8 to reduce energy imports from Russia. According to the plan called REPowerEU, the EU is striving for independence from Russian fossil fuels well before 2030.

By diversifying gas supplies, speeding up the rollout of renewable energy, and replacing gas in heating and power generation, the EU is attempting to reduce its demand for Russian gas by two-thirds before 2030.

In a post on social media, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen proposed that the EU should phase out Russian fossil fuels by 2027.

Considering that the bloc is far from reaching energy self-sufficiency, it appears to be a daunting and almost unattainable goal to reduce its reliance on Russia, which supplies around 10 percent of the world's oil demand.

Closed pumps are seen in a petrol station in Manchester, Britain, March 17, 2022. (Photo by Jon Super/Xinhua)

Even if the two members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries -- Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates -- with the largest spare capacity on standby are willing to beef up production, the shortfall in supplies in the event of the loss of Russia cannot be filled, according to analysts.

European officials have recently tried to convince some Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia and the UAE, to increase their production to tame the soaring price of oil.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE have enjoyed a windfall from the oil price spikes since the Russia-Ukraine conflict erupted and categorically rejected calls to raise oil production. Instead, they made it clear that they would stick to the "OPEC Plus" commitment, under which OPEC members and Russia would increase oil production at a controlled pace. (Video reporters: He Xiyue, Li Jizhi, Kang Yi, Alex Wright; Video editors: Li Ziwei, Cao Ying, Jia Xiaotong, Zhang Yuhong)
Pakistani President Arif Alvi (R) meets with Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Islamabad, Pakistan, March 22, 2022. (Xinhua/Jiang Chao)

ISLAMABAD, March 23 (Xinhua) -- Pakistan and China are ready to strengthen bilateral relations and boost cooperation in the emerging fields such as information technology, e-commerce and digital economy.

In a meeting with visiting Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Tuesday, Pakistani President Arif Alvi said that Pakistan and China have enjoyed friendly relations in the past decades featured with solid unity, mutual support and mutual assistance, with bilateral cooperation increasingly enhanced in all fields.

Pakistan will, as always, unswervingly pursue the one-China policy, support China's positions on its core interests in the issues of Taiwan, Hong Kong and Xinjiang, the president stressed.

Pakistan and China have identical views on international and regional issues, and Pakistan opposes any attempt of all external forces to contain China's development, he said.

The building of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor has yielded fruitful results which have significantly improved the livelihood of the Pakistani people, the president noted.

For his part, Wang said that the China-Pakistan friendship has withstood the test of evolving international landscape and is rock-solid, noting that mutual trust and mutual support are the most distinctive features of the all-weather strategic cooperative partnership between China and Pakistan.

Stressing that China has always been a long-term and most reliable strategic partner of Pakistan, Wang said the Chinese side firmly supports Pakistan in safeguarding its sovereignty, security and national dignity.

Wang added that China also staunchly supports Pakistan's development, revitalization and prosperity, and firmly supports Pakistan in playing a more important role in the international and regional arena.

China stands ready to work with Pakistan to advance cooperation in traditional fields, expand cooperation in emerging fields such as information technology, e-commerce and digital economy, increase investment in social and livelihood projects in Pakistan, and carry out more "small but beautiful" cooperation projects, he said.

China is willing to encourage more qualified Chinese enterprises to invest and start businesses in Pakistan as well as help Pakistan improve its capacity for independent development so that Pakistan can embark on a development path that suits its national conditions, Wang said.

Wang stressed that due to the centennial changes, the once-in-a-century pandemic and constant spillover of the Ukraine crisis, peace and development in today's world are faced with more insecure and instable factors.

China is ready to strengthen strategic communication, unity and coordination with developing countries including Pakistan and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation so as to inject more stability into the region and the world, and make more contributions to world peace, security and development, he added.

Appreciating China for upholding justice and fairness in the international arena for a long time, the Pakistani president expressed willingness to work with the Chinese side to safeguard the basic norms of international relations such as mutual respect, non-interference in internal affairs and good neighborliness. 
JERUSALEM, March 23 (Xinhua) -- ISDEF Expo, Israel's largest international defense, homeland security and cyber exhibition, is running its 11th edition in the country's coastal city of Tel Aviv, where hundreds of participating defense companies are showcasing their latest military technologies.

The three-day event, which will conclude on Wednesday, has attracted dozens of military delegations and thousands of visitors, mostly professionals, from Israel and abroad to focus on the automation or remote control of the modern weaponry and military equipment, especially at a juncture when the Russian-Ukrainian conflict is raging on, according to Avnon Group, organizer of the ISDEF Expo.

Tamir Pardo, former director of Israel's intelligence agency Mossad, told Xinhua that the use of the right technology is needed as human spirit and capability is not enough alone to deal with all global challenges.

"We have today many things that come out of hard R&D work, which will enable us to solve homeland security problems," said Pardo, a keynote speaker at the expo convention.

The exhibits at the defense expo include remotely controlled or fully automated air, land, and water machinery that can carry deadly weapons and different kinds of cameras, remotely controlled armed vehicles able to cross harsh terrains, climb up obstacles and drive through bodies of water, and unmanned helicopters equipped with firearms that can gun down a target 300 meters away.

It is worth noting that some of the vehicles on display have strong batteries or use solar energy to support longer hours of operation, while some others are big enough to carry on them smaller machines such as a major drone for a manageable mission.

The robot dog performing somersaults and other moves is also a highlight of the 2022 ISDEF Expo.

"We brought the dog behind me as a teaser for something we're starting to develop. The idea is to have some kind of a reconnaissance UGV (unmanned ground vehicle)," said Hadar Sommer, head of operation at TAR Ideal Concepts, a subordinate company of Avnon Group.

The robot dog "could get into ... less convenient locations or scenarios and make recommendations for soldiers ... and even carry out missions and tasks ... that risk soldiers' safety and health," Sommer told Xinhua.

Anat Hochberg-Marom, an expert on international security and geopolitical crisis, told Xinhua that the world is seeing more budgets going to security areas, "specially and specifically for the defense of the countries."

"The best solution for global threats is to collaborate between states and between global powers," noted Hochberg-Marom, another keynote speaker at the convention. "This is time to be friends and put aside all frenemies options." 
NAIROBI, March 23 (Xinhua) -- Kenya's Ministry of Health in partnership with the World Health Organization (WHO), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations on Wednesday launched an initiative to hasten an end to tobacco farming in the country.

The Tobacco-Free Farms project, launched in the western Kenyan county of Migori will support local subsistence farmers' shift to the cultivation of alternatives like legumes that are less harmful to the environment and human health.

Mutahi Kagwe, the cabinet secretary in the Ministry of Health, said that a gradual phasing out of tobacco farming at the smallholder level will boost food security and attainment of health-related sustainable development goals in the country.

According to Kagwe, Kenya has become a trailblazer across Africa in accelerating a switch from tobacco farming to nutritious and eco-friendly alternatives such as beans. He said that despite contributing about 1 percent to the country's gross domestic product (GDP), tobacco had worsened the burden of respiratory diseases in the country, besides harming vital ecosystems such as watersheds. Tobacco farming had also escalated gender inequality, rural poverty, deforestation and soil degradation in the country, prompting the need to shift to alternatives that guarantee better incomes, improved water and soil quality.

The Ministry of Health statistics indicate the country loses more than 6,000 people annually due to tobacco-related diseases while an estimate of 2.7 million adults and 220,000 children consume tobacco products daily.

Juliet Nabyonga, the acting WHO representative in Kenya, said that reducing tobacco production and consumption in the country will boost health outcomes and transform rural livelihoods.

Nabyonga said that Kenya was among the first countries to ratify the legally binding WHO framework convention on tobacco control in 2004, adding that the country had also enacted progressive legislation and policies to facilitate the adoption of alternative crops by smallholder farmers.

Carla Mucavi, the FAO representative in Kenya, said the Tobacco-Free Farms initiative aims to strengthen the resilience of local subsistence farmers through the adoption of healthy, nutritious and environmentally sound alternative crops. 
HAVANA, March 23 (Xinhua) -- Miguel Jorge Menendez heads digital start-up El Guajirito, one of Cuba's small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), created in September amid the government's efforts to revitalize the local economy.

Six months after newly passed laws in Cuba allowed him to launch his company, things are going well, the 32-year-old told Xinhua.

El Guajirito develops software, promotes e-commerce, and helps Cuban tourism businesses maintain an online presence.

"It has been a huge challenge for us to become a medium-sized enterprise," Menendez told Xinhua. "Although it is a very competitive scene, we can make a substantial contribution to the local economy."

The number of digital start-ups has been growing since authorities gave the green light to the creation of SMEs, which had been banned in 1968.

At present, 97 out of the country's nearly 2,500 SMEs operate in the field of telecommunications and informatics.

Carlos Miguel Perez, president of Cuban firm Dofleini Software, explores new business opportunities during the COVID-19 pandemic.

"We have started to export some of the software we have developed here in Cuba," Perez said. "Although we came late to this competitive sector, there is huge potential in our human resources."

Some 7.5 million Cubans, nearly 70 percent of the country's population, have internet access, according to the Cuban Ministry of Communications.

And Cuba's telecommunications company has extended 4G coverage to most of the island's districts.

"The private and public sectors are working together to seek solutions to improve our society. We are forging work alliances," Ivan Barreto, director of state-run SME Cinesoft, told Xinhua.

Digital start-ups can provide the public with high-quality services, Communications Minister Mayra Arevich said.

"Small and medium-sized enterprises are indispensable for digital transformation in Cuba," she said. 
A participant hugs a spectator during an annual celebration of Juneteenth in Evanston, Illinois, the United States, on June 19, 2021. Two days ago U.S. President Joe Biden signed into law a bill making Juneteenth a federal holiday commemorating the end of slavery in the nation. (Photo by Joel Lerner/Xinhua)

Though enactment of the anti-lynching act might be "mostly symbolic," "it is important that this country make clear that the lynching of Black people is not -- and never was -- acceptable."

NEW YORK, March 23 (Xinhua) -- Nearly 6,500 people -- mostly Black men, Black women and Black children -- were brutally murdered between 1865 and 1950 by White Americans who saw it as a way to terrorize, control and subjugate them, reported The Washington Post on Tuesday.

"Local, state and federal officials ignored, tolerated and even approved the racial violence. Lynching's stain will never -- can never -- be cleared away," said the article titled "Opinion: Why did it take so long to make lynching a hate crime?"

However, now there will be no more looking away, with a bill making lynching a federal crime finally headed to the White House to be signed into law, according to the report.

The Senate this month gave unanimous consent to legislation that would designate lynching a hate crime punishable by up to 30 years in prison. U.S. President Joe Biden promised to sign the bill, which was approved earlier by the House.

Though enactment of the anti-lynching act might be "mostly symbolic," said the report, "it is important that this country make clear that the lynching of Black people is not -- and never was -- acceptable." 
Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi (R) meets with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, on Sept. 13, 2021. (Egyptian Presidency/Handout via Xinhua)

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett wrapped up his first-ever trilateral summit with the Egyptian and United Arab Emirates' leaders amid increasingly complicated regional and international situations, implying Israel's frustration towards the United States when the Iranian nuclear deal is approaching a solution.



by Xinhua writer Wang Zhuolun

JERUSALEM, March 23 (Xinhua) -- Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett on Tuesday wrapped up his first-ever trilateral summit with the Egyptian and United Arab Emirates' leaders amid increasingly complicated regional and international situations, implying Israel's frustration towards the United States when the Iranian nuclear deal is approaching a solution.

Bennett's visit to Egypt's Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh was unannounced beforehand while its significance turned out to be pronounced. It was the second trip of the Israeli prime minister to Egypt in six months and his second meeting with the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan in four months.

His last meeting with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi in September 2021 marked the first such summit between Israeli and Egyptian leaders in more than a decade. He also held talks with the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi last December, during the first trip by an Israeli prime minister to the gulf country.

Now, this unprecedented meeting took place as Iran and world powers were reportedly close to agreeing on the revival of the 2015 nuclear deal in Vienna, with the United States indirectly involved, which Israel is fiercely opposed to.

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian (3rd L) meets with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi (2nd R) in Tehran, Iran, on March 5, 2022. (Iranian Foreign Ministry/Handout via Xinhua)

Slamming the U.S. decision to remove Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) from the terrorist organization blacklist, Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said the United States and Israel "have a complex dialogue ... We don't hide the fact that we have differences of opinion with the (Biden) administration."

"We believe that the United States will not abandon its closest allies in exchange for empty promises from terrorists," Bennett and Lapid said in a joint statement on Friday, viewed by local media as "their most strongly-worded statement on the Iran talks so far."

"The timing of the summit is intended to present a united front against the West's steps to secure a nuclear deal with Iran," said Jonathan Lis, deputy director of the think tank British Influence.

The summit was part of an effort "to forge a coalition with American backing among countries that in the past were considered adversaries of Israel, including Egypt, the Gulf states and Turkey," Lis added.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum (2nd R), vice president and prime minister of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and ruler of Dubai, and Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan (1st R) attend the opening ceremony of the Expo 2020 Dubai in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, Sept. 30, 2021. (Xinhua)

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have been repeatedly targeted by the Iran-backed Yemeni Houthi militia in recent months, and "were disappointed with the U.S. response, which they view as too restrained," said Lahav Harkov, senior contributing editor of The Jerusalem Post.

"They are also concerned that the Iran nuclear deal the United States is involved in negotiating does not address their security needs," she added.

The UAE established diplomatic ties with Israel in 2020, while Egypt was the first Arab country to forge diplomatic relations with Israel in 1979, after decades of conflicts.

While Israel strongly opposes a joint U.S.-Iran return to the 2015 deal, Egypt and the UAE are both seen as more amenable to the deal's revival, said Israeli diplomatic commentator Lazar Berman.

"Both are concerned about Iran's support of proxies throughout the region, but they have maintained that Iran is able to race toward a bomb if there is no deal," he explained. 
A flight of Egypt's flagship carrier EgyptAir lands at Ben Gurion Airport outside Tel Aviv, Israel on Oct. 3, 2021. (Photo by Gil Cohen Magen/Xinhua)

Egypt and Israel have agreed to launch a new flight route and a new gas pipeline between the two countries, which are expected to deepen their economic cooperation and ties.



Egypt is the first Arab country that signed a Camp David peace deal with Israel, but the "cold relations" were only concentrated on security and limited economic cooperation.



by Marwa Yahya

CAIRO, March 23 (Xinhua) -- Egypt and Israel have agreed to launch a new flight route and a new gas pipeline between the two countries, which are expected to deepen their economic cooperation and ties.

The new flight route, from Ben Gurion Airport in Israel's Tel Aviv to the Egyptian city of Sharm el-Sheikh, is expected to start operation ahead of the Jewish Passover holiday when thousands of Israelis would flock to Egypt, the Red Sea resorts in particular.

The two countries also agreed last month to construct a second pipeline that will export the liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Egypt via Jordan.

"Cooperation between Israel and Egypt is expanding. Israel is opening up to the countries in the region, and this is another important step in warming up the peace agreement between Israel and Egypt," tweeted Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.

"Developing Egypt-Israel relations is normal in light of the ongoing peace between the two countries for more than 40 years," said Tariq Fahmy, chairman of the Israeli Studies Unit in the Cairo-based National Center for the Middle East Studies.

Photo shows a seaside view in the Red Sea resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, Nov. 12, 2021. (Xinhua/Sui Xiankai)

Egypt is the first Arab country that signed a Camp David peace deal with Israel, but the "cold relations" were only concentrated on security and limited economic cooperation, he said.

Gamal Bayoumi, head of the Cairo-based Arab Investors Union said that the new flight route will attract more Israeli tourists to the Red Sea resorts in a country that relies on tourism as one of the main sources of foreign currency.

With Russia and Ukraine being the main exporter of tourists to Egypt, the Russia-Ukraine crisis can present a serious blow to the Egyptian tourism sector.

The new cooperation activities are steps for warming the peace agreement between Israel and Egypt at the economic level, Fahmy said, noting that exporting gas to Egypt via Jordan could double Israel's gas export capacity and help Egypt's ambition to be a regional energy hub.

The gas running offshore before crossing the north of Arish city on the Sinai Peninsula can be liquefied at Egyptian plants of Idku and Damietta and re-exported to Europe or Asia, he said.

Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi (R) meets with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, on Sept. 13, 2021. (Egyptian Presidency/Handout via Xinhua)

Israeli gas export through the new route is expected to reach 2.5 to 3 billion cubic meters (bcm) in 2022, and may increase to 4 bcm in subsequent years, according to the Israeli Ministry of Energy.

In 2020, nearly 2.17 bcm Israeli LNG were exported to Egypt, according to Egypt's official sources.

On Monday and Tuesday, Egypt hosted the first summit meeting with leaders of Israel and the United Arab Emirates in Sharm el-Sheikh.

During the meeting, the three leaders discussed "recent developments in energy, markets stability, and food security," and talked about the ways to enhance trilateral ties "on all levels" under current circumstances. 
Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari speaks at the commissioning ceremony of the Chinese-assisted airport terminal at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos, Nigeria, on March 22, 2022. (Photo by Emma Houston/Xinhua)

ABUJA, March 22 (Xinhua) -- Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari on Tuesday commissioned the newly-built international terminal at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport in the economic hub of Lagos.

The Chinese-assisted project was designed to handle 20 million passengers in a year while creating 3,000 direct and indirect jobs, Buhari said at the commissioning ceremony in Lagos.

"With the delivery of this project, a new era of safety, security, and comfort has been ushered into the Nigerian aviation industry," the Nigerian president said.

He expressed confidence that the new terminal "would go a long way in contributing to the socio-political and economic prosperity of the country."

The facility is one of the four new international airport terminals built in the country's major airports to modernize operation and passenger facilitation. It consists of 66 check-in-counters, 16 immigration desks at arrival, 28 immigration desks at departure, and eight security screening points, among others.

Chinese ambassador to Nigeria Cui Jianchun told Xinhua that the project was very critical to the China-Nigeria cooperation and that infrastructure was of "paramount importance" to the most populous African country.

The project was executed by the China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC), which has been involved in many ongoing infrastructural projects, including rail and road construction in Nigeria.

It was done in partnership with the Chinese government, involving a loan of 500 million U.S. dollars from the Import-Export Bank of China and 100 million dollars in funding from the Nigerian government. 

Photo taken on March 22, 2022 shows the interior view of the Chinese-assisted airport terminal at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos, Nigeria, on March 22, 2022. (Photo by Emma Houston/Xinhua)

Photo taken on March 22, 2022 shows the interior view of the Chinese-assisted airport terminal at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos, Nigeria, on March 22, 2022. (Photo by Emma Houston/Xinhua)
LAGOS, March 23 (Xinhua) -- At least 7,000 extremist militants, comprising members of Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), have surrendered to Nigerian government troops in the past one week, a senior military official said on Wednesday.

An onslaught on ISWAP and Boko Haram militants has continued to record significant successes, said Christopher Musa, commander of an ongoing military operation in Nigeria's northeast Borno state.

"This is evident as thousands of insurgents alongside their families continued to lay down their arms in different parts of Borno to accept peace," he told reporters in the northeast city of Maiduguri.

Those surrendered and their families are expected to be carefully profiled by the Nigerian army and other stakeholders before they undergo rehabilitation processes, Musa said.

The military and other security agencies will continue to devise and implement effective strategies to bring terrorism in the region to a speedy end, he said.

ISWAP has been collaborating with its sister group, Boko Haram, to establish an Islamist state in northeast Nigeria. The terror groups have also extended their attacks to other countries in the Lake Chad Basin. 
ALGIERS, March 22 (Xinhua) -- Algerian and Chinese companies on Tuesday signed an agreement to establish a joint venture for an integrated phosphates project with an investment budget of 7 billion U.S. dollars, Algeria's energy giant Sonatrach said in a statement.

Under the new deal, the Algerian group Asmidal, a subsidiary of Sonatrach, and mining firm Manal agreed with the Chinese companies Wuhuan Engineering and Tian'An Chemical to launch a joint venture Algerian Chinese Fertilizers Company, with 56 percent of the shares owned by the Algerian party and the remaining 44 percent by the two Chinese firms.

This is the first integrated mining and fertilizers production project in Algeria, with a target of an annual production capacity of 5.4 million tons of fertilizers.

The project will exploit the phosphate deposit in the Bled El Hadba and Djebel Onk mine in the easternmost province of Tebessa, transform the product into fertilizer, and establish facilities in the port of the eastern province of Annaba to facilitate export.

The project is expected to generate some 12,000 jobs during the construction phase, and 6,000 direct jobs and 24,000 indirect jobs once the project starts production. 
BERLIN, March 23 (Xinhua) -- Germany's largest carmaker Volkswagen on Wednesday announced plans to build an electric vehicle (EV) battery plant in Valencia, Spain, which could start production in 2026.

Volkswagen and its subsidiary SEAT would bid to receive subsidies from the Spanish government for this project. If successful, seven billion euros (7.7 billion U.S. dollars) would be invested in Spain along the entire value chain for the production of EVs.

"This project is highly important -- for Volkswagen, for Spain and for the whole of Europe," said Thomas Schmall, member of Volkswagen AG's Board of Management responsible for technology and chairman of SEAT's Board of Directors.

Gigafactory Valencia, which aims for an annual production capacity of 40 gigawatt hours (GWh), would become Volkswagen's second cell factory site and the first outside Germany. The first site in Salzgitter is to be constructed in partnership with China's Gotion High-Tech by 2025.

Volkswagen plans to build six gigafactories by 2030, bringing total capacity to 240 GWh per year. (1 euro = 1.10 U.S. dollars) 
Meera Khanna wants to introduce herself as a writer, but she is better known as a gender rights activist active against violence against women.

A native of India, Khanna is known across South Asia as a strong advocate of womens rights and their empowerment. Recently, Khanna was in Kathmandu to attend the South Asian Conference on Violence against Women. On the sidelines, Onlinekhabar had a long conversation with her about the status of womens rights, in particular violence against women, in Nepal and South Asia. Here are some excerpts of the conversation.

The reported incidents of rape and other kinds of violence against women and girls in South Asia is increasing day by day. So, in this context, who is more responsible for the situation: the government, society or culture?

South Asia is a patriarchal society. In a patriarchal society, womens role is devalued. They are always given secondary status. In this structure, men are superior and women are inferior. There is a tendency to look at women as objects. Even if we look at the traditional customs of marriage in South Asia, there is a ritual of kanyadan, which means the women can be gifted to the men. But, a woman is not an object who can be gifted. She is a human being. So, throughout our traditions, customs and language, womens inferior status is always being emphasised, which is why there are unequal power relationships.

However, the countries in South Asia have good laws. But, the implementation of the law is very weak here. There is a reason why the implementation is weak; the lack of awareness. The survivors of violence are not aware of the laws which can protect them. The implementation is weak also because of the lack of resources.

Yet, many societies in South Asia are in a transitional phase. Of late, there has to be great sensitisation about the issues. Hence, the number of incidents of violence that are being reported is increasing.

Do you think social values, norms and cultures are responsible to trigger the cases of violence against women and girls?

Definitely. Violence against women is not one issue, rather it has tremendous intersectionalities. You see caste, creed, gender, status, age, nationality all these intersect into the issue of violence. That is why when we are looking at violence against women, we have to look at it holistically.

Not only in Nepal, but in all the countries of South Asia, rape and other kinds of violence against women are being reported every day. What should be done to bring these kinds of incidents under control? Do you think sex education can help?

I would like to call it not just sex education. Rather, it should be relationship education. See, there is a difference. Theres a difference between sex and sexuality. Sex education is more about biological things that you give to children to understand the biological process. But, it is more important to give relationship education. You need to understand how gender relations can take. How do you deal with each other? What is a healthy relationship based on trust, respect and the idea of giving the other person space? So I think not just sex education, it should be relationship education or gender relation education. I think that is very vital that with this, men are able to deal with women as equals as human beings.

What are the right ways for the good upbringing of the children? Especially, here, I am talking about the male child to lessen the violence against women and girls?

Im going to talk about Mahatma Gandhi here. He is the best known South Asian figure in the whole world. He said (although not in exact words) be the change that you want to see The first education begins at home. It is about how we raise our sons and daughters. Are we raising them equally? For example, in South Asia, after we eat food, a girl picks up the dirty plates and takes them to the sink. But, does a boy pick it up? When he does, you say, No, no, no. Let it be. You dont do it. Why do we create that difference? If a woman can sweep the room, a man also can sweep the room. But, he immediately says, No.

We create that difference from the day a child is born. In India, we have a complete campaign in which we ask society to let boys cry. When a boy cries, you say, Dont behave like a girl. But, these small things are very important Crying is very natural.

It is important that we raise our boys to be competent, capable, educated and assertive, but more important is how do we raise our sons to respect all human beings? Not to look at them as objects, but to look at them as human beings, not to look at them as a commodity, but as a personality to respect the rights of every woman to make them free from violence

But, whether you talk about the Nirbhaya rape case in India or the Nirmala Pant case in Nepal, it seems justice has been severely delayed in serious cases of violence against women. Many people believe it is because of the political backing that the perpetrators have. Do you agree with them?

I am not aware of what is going on with the Nirmala Pant case currently, but the Nirbhaya case is settled now. The perpetrators have been charged and sentences have been given to them, except one who was a juvenile. But, more important about controlling violence against women than the Nirbhaya case is Justice Verma Commission, which sat and made the criminal Justice Amendment Act, by which India has taken gang rape as a very, very serious offence. Under the new law, the punishment cannot be less than 20 years and can be taken up to life.

Now, going back to your question, as to why, you know in South Asia, let me say that the wheels of justice move very slowly, but, of course, they move very definitely. The point is across South Asia, there is a culture of acceptance of violence. Until and unless we break the culture and say there is zero tolerance to violence, we cannot have violence even on a single woman in this region, the culture of acceptance will not be broken. And, of course, as I said, our justice system may be slow, but it is very, very strong and very, very sure. We say justice delayed is justice denied. But, hasty justice can be just as bad. So, I think we have to break this culture of acceptance and definitely put violence and crimes against women on a fast track because women do not have the resources to be a part of a system that might take years.

In todays world, the forms and structure of violence are changing. Along with the traditional forms of violence, violence against women in new forms such as cybercrime is also increasing. What kind of measures need to be taken to address these new forms of violence?

I think the first point of stopping any crime is the law, but the law cannot stop the violence. So, the first part So the first point would be to make a strong implementable law, not just a law, but an implementable law. And, also the kind of education that we give our children on the protocol of using social media is important. At the moment, there is no protocol, there is no etiquette of using social media. So, we need to educate our young people on the protocol, the etiquette.

The South Asian Regional Conference has recently concluded in Kathmandu. What according to you are the achievements of the conference?

This is the first South Asian Regional Conference on the issue of violence against women and girls. But, it is not just an issue of South Asia. There is no country that does not have any problem related to violence against women. The rich countries also have a very high rate of intimate partner violence.

All these issues were discussed here. Most importantly, at the end of the two days of the South Asian Women Conference, among all South Asian women activists who were here, I have made a public call for a global treaty to address violence against women and girls. So this is very, very important because we are making a call to the globe from the global South, from our South Asian countries. So we are making that call so that governments of our region take this call and champion this treaty.
(Adds executive quote, details of export)

SAO PAULO, March 23 (Reuters) - Brazilian meatpacker BRF SA was authorized by Vietnam to export pork meat from a Mato Grosso plant and now plans to double its shipments to the Asian country, the company said on Wednesday.

The authorization will allow BRF to grow in a strategic geographic market, in line with its plan to increase its relevance in major global consumer centers, BRF's manager for institutional relations, Luiz Tavares, told Reuters.

Vietnam was the fifth main destination for Brazilian pork in 2021, receiving more than 45,000 tonnes of the product, or 4% of total Brazilian exports, according to data from the government.

"The expectation is that meat consumption in Southeast Asia will grow significantly in the coming years and we are ready to meet this demand," said the executive.

BRF already exports pork to Vietnam from a plant in Uberlandia, in Minas Gerais State, which received the authorization required last year. The company did not disclose exports volumes.

With the authorization of the Mato Grosso unit, located in Lucas do Rio Verde, the company will sell pork cuts that include shoulder, ribs, chops, loin and ham.

BRF added that it is advancing further in the high-value pork segment, one of the important paths in its Vision 2030 project, in which the company intends to reach annual revenue of more than 100 billion reais in the next decade. (Reporting by Roberto Samora; Writing by Peter Frontini; Editing by Leslie Adler, Bernard Orr)
OTTAWA, ON, March 23, 2022 /CNW/ - The Independent Advisory Board for Senate Appointments (Advisory Board) recently launched a call for new applicants to fill current and upcoming Senate vacancies through 2022. Canadians residing in British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario and Saskatchewan are invited to apply for a seat in the Senate of Canada before April 20, 2022.

What is the Senate's role?

The Senate is the Upper House in Canada's parliamentary democracy. It unites a diverse group of accomplished Canadians in service to their country. The Senate has evolved from defending regional interests to also playing an essential role in representing historically excluded groups, official language minority communities, and identities that may be underrepresented in the Lower House.

What does a senator's work involve?

Parliament's senators shape Canada's future. They participate in debates in the Senate Chamber, review legislation or propose their own bills, manage their offices and stay in touch with the issues affecting the province or territory they represent. As members of Senate committees, they play an investigative role and undertake studies on challenges facing the country. These are important positions that provide a platform to speak out about the issues affecting everyone in Canada.

How can people apply?

Senate appointment recommendations are made based on established assessment criteria. Canadians are encouraged to apply, if they are eligible, or nominate qualified individuals year-round for membership in the Senate. Applications are retained for two years, after which time qualified candidates are encouraged to re-apply.

The Advisory Board encourages Canadians to apply at their earliest convenience to ensure they can be considered for this cycle. The dates on which the Advisory Board will start to review applications are listed on its website. More dates will be added once Advisory Boards for other provinces and territories are established.

Story continues

Quote

"The Advisory Board looks forward to assessing each application received for a seat in the Senate. We welcome applications from individuals from all backgrounds, and encourage people of all gender identities, Indigenous peoples, racialized people, persons with disabilities and members of all minority groups to apply."

 Huguette Labelle, Chair of the Independent Advisory Board for Senate Appointments

Associated Links

SOURCE Privy Council Office

Cision

View original content: http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/March2022/23/c1245.html
Vietnam suspends air route to Russia

The national flag carrier Vietnam Airlines announced on Tuesday evening that it would temporarily suspend the Hanoi-Moscow air route from March 25 until further notice.













Vietnam Airlines has announced that it would temporarily suspend the Hanoi-Moscow air route from March 25



In their statement, Vietnam Airlines said it needs to review and clarify procedures, requirements and regulations related to insurance and flight operations to Russia. The airline expressed deep regret about this force majeure.



The airline also announced that they would offer free ticket refunds or change tickets to other flights for passengers who have bought tickets. They recommended that passengers regularly monitor and update information in next announcements.



Speaking with Dantri/Dtinews about the route, Director of the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam (CAAV), Dinh Viet Thang, said that Vietnam Airlines is currently the only airline operating a regular route to Russia.



"This air route to Russia has been adjusted to avoid flying over Ukraine airspace since Malaysia's MH17 was shot down in eastern Ukraine in 2014," Thang said.



Vietnam Airlines has just resumed the regular route between Hanoi and Moscow since early this year after nearly two years of closure due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.



CAAV has recently sent documents to local airlines including Vietnam Airlines, Vietjet Air, Bamboo Airways, and Pacific Airlines on the limitation and closure of some airports in Russia and Ukraine since the war broke out.
City of Monroe logo

The City of Monroe will plant 153 trees this spring as it looks to infill areas hardest hit by the severe storm that ravaged the region last August.

On Monday, Monroe City Council unanimously approved an expenditure of up to $28,000 for the purchase of 156 trees from North Branch Nursery, Inc. of Pemberville, Ohio, for the city's 2022 Sprint Planting Program. Three of these trees are spares to be held for last-minute additions, but the rest will be planted at 126 locations across the city.

Patrick Lewis, the city's director of engineering and public services, said that 78 tree replants will occur within the neighborhood including Godfroy, Borgess, and St. Mary's Avenues due to the disproportionate effect the August 11, 2021 storm had on this area of the city.

That storm uprooted approximately 65 trees citywide and resulted in nearly 50 more sustaining fatal damage that required them to be removed due to safety reasons. This additional work led the city to scale back its 2021 Fall Planting Program, during which crews focused on infilling the areas least affected by the storm.

Work began in mid-January on the removal of an additional 101 trees across the city, including 86 silver maples, that the Forestry Division of the City of Monroe Public Services Department identified as being potentially hazardous due to factors such as trunk and/or branch damage, and peeling bark. The concern, Lewis said at the time, was that these trees wouldn't survive another storm as the area experienced last August.

Forty-seven of the 101 trees cut down over the winter were located in the neighborhood including Godfroy, Borgess, and St. Mary's Avenues.

"We're replacing the majority of areas in (this neighborhood) on this spring planting," Lewis told council Monday. "Our spring planting is a little more difficult, because the trees going into the summer and then can get stressed out by the heat. (But) in this particular neighborhood, we expect a great degree of cooperation. Some areas really love their trees, and you can tell this is one where, I'm sure, that we will be more likely to have assistance by residents in watering, as well as being able to plant in a concentrated area, which makes it easier for us to do some complimentary watering to try to get those established..."

Story continues

In addition to the effort to infill the Godfroy-Borgess-St.Mary's neighborhood, this spring planting will also address the large number of trees removed from Riverview Ave. due to water main and roadway construction that occurred last year. Lewis said that 41 trees will be planted along this roadway.

The city has selected an array of tree species, including the flowering Turkish hazelnut, which Lewis said the city has not used before.

"It's actually a very popular street tree, but we haven't used it before," he said. "We're going to try mixing and matching those (with other species)."

Lewis said that while no residents are expected to assist city crews in watering the new trees, any help is welcome in ensuring these saplings survive. The city intends to mail some species-specific instructions to residents near these new plantings, in the event they wish to assist in caring for them.

"The ones we have a better success rate with are the ones where people want the trees, they care about the trees, and if they see it looks a little dry, or it's been a little dry out and they haven't seen us come by in a couple days, they'll help us out and water it a little bit," Lewis said. "But by no means is this an obligation or requirement."

This article originally appeared on The Monroe News: City of Monroe planting 153 trees this spring
Publix is the third largest grocery chain in the United States1

BURLINGTON, Ontario, March 23, 2022--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Element Nutritional Sciences Inc. (CSE:ELMT; OTC:ELNSF; FRANKFURT:93X) (the "Company" or "Element"), is pleased to announce that the Company has received purchase orders from Publix Super Markets Inc. ("Publix") to distribute the Companys flagship Rejuvenate ready-to-drink organic plant protein beverage in 1,297 Publix locations across the United States. Element received purchased orders from Publix on March 7, 2022, shipments have begun and delivery is expected on March 28, 2022. It is expected that Rejuvenate will be available on shelf at Publix locations by April 15, 2022.

Established in 1930, Publix is the third largest grocery chain in the United States1 with retail sales reaching US$36.1 billion in FY 20212. With its largest footprint in the State of Florida through over 800 locations, Publix also operates in Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia. Publix is one of the largest food retailers in the U.S. and was recently ranked as the worlds most admired company in the food and drugstores industry by Fortune3.

This retail distribution agreement complements the Companys existing retail and e-commerce distribution footprint through which Rejuvenate products are available at over 15,600 points of distribution in the United States and 750 locations in Canada, as well as through Elements e-commerce network which includes amazon.com, amazon.ca, rejuvenatemuscle.com and rejuvenatemuscle.ca, Walgreens, Sams Club and iHerb.

Commenting on the announcement, Stuart Lowther, Chief Executive Officer, said, "The addition of Publix combined with our partnerships with CVS and Walgreens, gives us a solid footprint in the south eastern United States to support our growth initiatives. As the third largest grocer in the United States1, partnering with Publix is another major step in fulfilling our mission to deliver high value products to customers and demonstrates our teams ability to execute our growth strategy."

Story continues

About Element

Element is an innovative and research driven Canadian nutraceutical company specializing in the development of science-based products for the global consumer packaged goods market, with a portfolio focused specifically on men and women over the age of 50. Elements lead product, Rejuvenate, is a proprietary formulation that is clinically proven to assist in the rebuilding, restoration and rejuvenation of natural loss of muscle mass due to aging or other medical conditions. Element also offers JAKTRX, an elite brand of performance supplements. Element was founded in 2015 and is located in Burlington, Ontario.

To learn more about Element, visit elmtinc.com.

More information about Rejuvenate can be found at: www.rejuvenatemuscle.com

More information about JAKTRX and Promino can be found at: www.jaktrx.com

About Publix

Publix, the largest employee-owned company in the U.S. with more than 225,000 associates, currently operates 1,284 stores in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia. For 24 consecutive years, the company has been recognized by Fortune as a great place to work. In addition, Publixs dedication to superior quality and customer service is recognized among the top in the grocery business.

For more information, visit the companys website, corporate.publix.com.

Forward Looking Statements

This news release contains "forward-looking information" and "forward-looking statements" (collectively, "forward looking statements") within the meaning of the applicable Canadian securities legislation. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, are forward-looking statements and are based on expectations, estimates and projections as at the date of this news release. Any statement that involves discussions with respect to predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, assumptions, future events or performance (often but not always using phrases such as "expects", or "does not expect", "is expected", "anticipates" or "does not anticipate", "plans", "budget", "scheduled", "forecasts", "estimates", "believes" or "intends" or variations of such words and phrases or stating that certain actions, events or results "may" or "could", "would", "might" or "will" be taken to occur or be achieved) are not statements of historical fact and may be forward-looking statements. In this news release, forward looking statements relate, among other things, to: the expected number of Publix locations that will carry Rejuvenate products and availability timing.

These forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions and estimates of management of the Company at the time such statements were made. Actual future results may differ materially as forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to materially differ from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such factors, among other things, include: fluctuations in general macroeconomic conditions; expectations regarding the size of the United States and Canadian health, nutraceutical and wellness markets and changing consumer habits; the viability of the Companys products; availability of distribution channels for the Companys product offerings; the ability of the Company to successfully achieve its business objectives; plans for expansion; successful development of the Companys proposed products; the presence of laws and regulations that may impose restrictions or recalls on the sale of the Companys products in the United States and Canada; customer and distributor relations; fluctuations in securities markets; and the inability of the Company to obtain adequate insurance to cover risks and hazards. Although the forward-looking statements contained in this news release are based upon what management of the Company believes, or believed at the time, to be reasonable assumptions, the Company cannot assure shareholders that actual results will be consistent with such forward-looking statements, as there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. Readers should not place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements and information contained in this news release. The Company assumes no obligation to update the forward-looking statements of beliefs, opinions, projections, or other factors, should they change, except as required by law.

No stock exchange, securities commission or other regulatory authority has approved or disapproved the information contained herein.

1 https://www.scrapehero.com/largest-grocery-chains-in-us/

2 https://corporate.publix.com/about-publix/newsroom/news-releases/publix-reports-third-quarter-2021-results-and-stock-price

3 https://corporate.publix.com/about-publix/newsroom/news-releases/publix-ranks-number-1-fortunes-list-worlds-most-admired-companies-in-food-and-drugstores-industry

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220323005131/en/

Contacts

Stuart Lowther

Chairman, CEO and President

ir@elementnutrition.com

416-467-5229

Marc Charbin

Investor Relations

ir@elementnutrition.com

416-467-5229
RENO, Nev., March 23, 2022--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Employers Holdings, Inc. (the "Company") (NYSE:EIG) today announced that it will release its first quarter 2022 financial results after market close on Wednesday, April 27, 2022, after which these materials will be available on the Companys website at www.employers.com through the "Investors" link.

Conference Call Details

The Company will then review these financial results via a conference call and webcast on Thursday, April 28, 2022, at 11:00 a.m. EDT / 8:00 a.m. PDT.

To participate in the live conference call by telephone, dial +1 (888) 364-8443 or +1 (484) 747-6630 and use the conference call access code 6182719. The webcast will be accessible on the Companys website at www.employers.com through the "Investors" link.

An archived version of the webcast will remain on the Companys website for up to seven days following the live call. To listen to a recording of the call by telephone, dial +1 (855) 859-2056 or +1 (404) 537-3406 and use the conference call access code 6182719.

 2022 EMPLOYERS. All rights reserved.

EMPLOYERS and Americas small business insurance specialist are registered trademarks of EIG Services, Inc. Employers Holdings, Inc. is a holding company with subsidiaries that are specialty providers of workers' compensation insurance and services focused on select, small businesses engaged in low-to-medium hazard industries. The Company operates throughout the United States, with the exception of four states that are served exclusively by their state funds. Insurance is offered through Employers Insurance Company of Nevada, Employers Compensation Insurance Company, Employers Preferred Insurance Company, Employers Assurance Company and Cerity Insurance Company, all rated A- (Excellent) by the A.M. Best Company. Not all companies do business in all jurisdictions. See www.employers.com and www.cerity.com for coverage availability.

Story continues

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220323005715/en/

Contacts

Contact:

Mike Paquette (775) 327-2562 or mpaquette@employers.com

Investor Relations:

Karin Daly, The Equity Group, Inc. (212) 836-9623 or kdaly@equityny.com
BOCA RATON, Fla., March 23, 2022 /CNW/ -- South Florida Men's Luxury Custom Clothing Designer, Gent Row Inc.'s losing a $130 million contract to supply Canada with tens of millions of PPE medical gowns, won't deter its Founder and CEO Tim Beasley's from supporting Gent Row Foundation's mission to help underprivileged teenage boys.

In a lawsuit filed by The Ticktin Law Group, Beasley claims he lost out after Truist Bank there reneged on the deal from which revenues would have supported the Foundation's plans for "Tailoring Positive Change" to help under-privileged teenage boys to get a new suit on life.

The Ticktin Law Group Recently Filed Federal Lawsuit to recoup Gent Row's loss as the funds were intended to help build and advance Gent Row Foundation's plan to Tailor Positive Change for teenage boys. The law firm's founder Peter Ticktin once successfully argued a case before the Supreme Court in Canada. Also, in his first year of law practice, Ticktin got the Ontario appeal courts to disqualify the Uniform Traffic Ticket form and everyone in Ontario with traffic tickets had their case dismissed.

In the depths of the COVID-19 Pandemic, everyone wanted protection for front line workers. Gent Row responded by supplying Canada with millions of PPE medical gowns, a deal on which Truist Bank's reneged, causing it to unravel, said TransMedia Group President Adrienne Mazzone.

Available for interviews are Beasley and Ticktin, Managing Partner, The Ticktin Law Group.

Whether leading the charge in the 90s' HIV Litigation or bringing down mortgage foreclosure robo-signers to the tune of $30 billion, attorney Peter Ticktin has made a huge impact across mega industries, reining in criminals, scammers and con-artists.

The South Florida attorney's latest win in Las Vegas sends a warning to Business Identity Theft crooks and according to Ticktin and partner Jamie Sasson, it fixes what Attorney General could not by getting Andy Pham's $5 million swindle reversed and Pham's real estate returned.

Story continues

Today, Ticktin embarks on Beasley's giant Truist case for retribution of millions when he was trying to help during high point of pandemic and use monies for charity.

Interview topics:

From helping those at risk to being the person at risk!

Why so Easy for a major corporation to "change their mind?"

How little guy was trying to help, and now fighting for what's owed!

Media Contact:

Adrienne Mazzone

561-908-1683

amazzone@transmediagroup.com.

SOURCE Gent Row

Cision

View original content: http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/March2022/23/c4498.html
Good morning. Heres whats happening:

Insights: The Indian Parliament's expected passage of a finance bill that includes a high crypto tax will end a seven-week debate, but at what cost?

Technician's take: Buyers remain active on pullbacks, keeping support levels intact.

Catch the latest episodes of CoinDesk TV for insightful interviews with crypto industry leaders and analysis. And sign up for First Mover, our daily newsletter putting the latest moves in crypto markets in context.

Prices

Bitcoin (BTC): $42,464 -0.4%

Ether (ETH): $3,011 +0.1%

Top Gainers

Top Losers

Bitcoin, ether go sideways but other major cryptos shine

Bitcoin and ether were trading sideways but other major cryptocurrencies continued the largely bullish trend of the past few days.

The largest cryptocurrency by market cap was recently holding above $42,400, roughly where it perched 24 hours ago. Ether, the second-largest crypto by market cap, was about as flat over the same period. Cardano's ADA and Axie Infinity's AXS were the stars of the day, each rising about 10%. Popular meme coins DOGE and SHIB were solidly in the green, as was SAND.

Alternative coin prices veered mostly from equity markets, which lost momentum after a series of increases dating to late last week. The tech-heavy Nasdaq and S&P 500 were both off 1.2%.

While the jump in altcoins seemed to underscore at least a temporary appetite for riskier assets, investors also continue to watch macroeconomic conditions warily and are largely holding a more cautious posture.

The horror images from Ukraine showed no sign of ending as Russia continued its rocket and artillery attacks on major cities, even as it continued to suffer its own massive casualties and loss of equipment. In a statement Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken accused the Russian army of war crimes, although he did not mention Russian President Vladimir Putin by name. U.S. President Joe Biden arrived in Brussels to discuss NATO imposing even more severe sanctions against Russia, although German Chancellor Olaf Scholz seemed to reaffirm his country's decision not to boycott Russian energy products during a speech to lawmakers.

Story continues

Scholz said a boycott could spur the loss of "hundreds of thousands of jobs" and send Germany and Europe as a whole into recession.

Brent crude oil was selling at $114 per barrel, down from a March peak of $130 but up 50% from the start of 2022.

Oanda Americas Senior Analyst Edward Moya struck an optimistic note in an emailed analysis of investment assets, including crypto, describing bitcoin's holding pattern above $40,000 as "a good thing for long-term investors. Moya said bitcoin was "performing nicely given today's risk-aversion theme."

He added: "Bitcoin should remain a sideways trade until Wall Street makes up its mind as to whether equities can continue to perform well with all the geopolitical uncertainty at hand."

Markets

S&P 500: 4,456 -1.2%

DJIA: 34,358 -1.2%

Nasdaq: 13,922 -1.3%

Gold: $1,946 +1.3%

Insights

India reckons with the growing crypto industry

Is Parliament's likely yes vote on a finance bill that contains laws on crypto taxation the end of the saga? Or is it an intermediary step, albeit a big one, until India develops its own central bank digital currency (CBDC), or even beyond?

Whatever the answer, India is reckoning with the fledgling industry's rapid growth. The country is finding, as others are worldwide, that there are no blueprints on how to regulate crypto without hamstringing the innovation that makes it special or enraging its growing number of investors and advocates.

Crypto has created its own category.

It has presented legislators in India and other countries where developers and investors have established a toehold with new challenges.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modis government seems to have adopted deterrence at least until the digital rupee arrives as the cornerstone of the country's crypto policy. The passing of the finance bill without reducing crypto taxes, which is expected later Thursday, offers yet another example of India's uncompromising stance against crypto.

On Feb. 1, India announced the stiff crypto taxation proposals  a 30% capital gains tax, a 1% tax deducted at source (TDS), no offsetting of losses, and taxation of gifts  along with its plans to launch a CBDC by the end of the financial year 2022-23. Since then, the industry had pleaded with the government to tone down its taxation policy, particularly the 1% TDS.

The government said that gains from the trading of one cryptocurrency could not offset losses from the trading of another cryptocurrency. Investors and the crypto industry have expressed disappointment with the likely outcome, which came after groups had lobbied lawmakers and tried to win public support with presentations and other activities.

Brain drain

Among their criticisms, crypto advocates have said the law will cost India some of its brightest technology minds.

This report published Tuesday supported their criticism, saying there were signs of a brain drain that was likely to worsen once the bill becomes law.

***

India has viewed crypto suspiciously as it has become more popular. In April 2018, the Indian central bank effectively prohibited banks from supporting or engaging in crypto transactions, although the Supreme Court overturned the ban two years later.

As prices started to climb in late 2020 and early 2021, the government softened its stance. Proposed crypto-specific regulation evolved from prohibiting all private cryptocurrencies in India while allowing for certain exceptions to promote the underlying technology of cryptocurrency and its uses, to enabling cryptocurrency to be used as an asset but banning its use as currency or payment.

In announcing the finance bill, the government didnt introduce this crypto specific regulation. Instead, it said it was seeking global consensus to frame regulation.

Meanwhile, reports suggested that the central bank and the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), which regulates markets, would punish violators of crypto regulations with non-bailable warrants and/or fines and jail time.

The biggest signpost of whats to happen over the next few days is the opinion of the man who was responsible for the governments first position on cryptocurrencies in the form of a report.

Whatever is to come, some policy experts believe Indians have a penchant for managing or making do or coming up with the craziest solutions to the darkest circumstances. They even have a word for it  jugaad!

Technician's take

Bitcoin Holds Support Above $40K; Initial Resistance at $46K

Bitcoin four-hour price chart shows support/resistance (Damanick Dantes/CoinDesk, TradingView)

Bitcoin (BTC) pullbacks have been limited during the Asia trading day, suggesting that buyers could remain active above the $40,000 support level. There is room for additional upside, although resistance at $46,700 could stall the price bounce.

Bitcoin's trading volume remains low relative to prior highs, although a decisive breakout above $46,000 could encourage additional buying activity. For now, BTC remains in a month-long trading range and is attempting to reverse a four-month long downtrend.

Elsewhere, the recent outperformance in alternative cryptocurrencies (altcoins) such as ether (ETH) relative to bitcoin indicates bullish sentiment among traders. That means higher trading ranges are expected over the short term.

Important events

Avalanche Summit Barcelona: Conference for developers, researchers and makers building on the Avalanche platform.

10: 30 a.m. HKT/SGT(UTC): Commonwealth Bank of Australia and Markit Economics manufacturing purchasing managers Index (March preliminary)

1 p.m. HKT/SGT(5 a.m. UTC): Jibun Bank (Japan) manufacturing PMI (March preliminary)

CoinDesk TV

In case you missed it, here is the most recent episode of "First Mover" on CoinDesk TV:

CME Group on Bitcoin Futures as Premium Surges, Russia Sanctions Evasion Debate

"First Mover" considered European Central Bank Chief Christine Lagarde's accusation that crypto service providers who help Russia circumvent economic sanctions are accomplices. "First Mover" spoke with Daniel Lacalle, Tressis chief economist. Tim McCourt of CME Group shared his markets analysis. Plus, decorated speed skater and Tribe Capital Partner Apolo Ohno detailed his interest in crypto, and Regulatory Reporter Sandali Handagama provided crypto mining news from Italy.

Headlines

Indias Proposed Crypto Tax Rules Likely to Become Law Thursday: Indias finance bill, which includes proposed rules on taxing crypto, is set to be introduced in parliament on Thursday.

Ex-Polychain Partner Tekin Salimi Launches $125M Crypto Venture Fund: The new fund plans to convert into a decentralized autonomous organization, and involves Terras Do Kwon and Avalanches Emin Gun Sirer.

Crypto Lender Nexo Spins Out $150M Venture Arm for Web 3 Investments, Acquisitions: Nexo Ventures will be active in Web 3, decentralized finance (DeFi) innovation, NFTs, metaverse and GameFi.

Bitcoin's Correlation to S&P 500 Hits 17-Month High: The 90-day correlation between the top cryptocurrency and the S&P 500 has risen to its highest level since October 2020.

Ray Dalios Bridgewater Investing in Crypto Fund: Sources: Its the first signal to date the worlds largest hedge fund is taking crypto seriously with its own money.

Longer reads

What Is ApeCoin and Who Is Behind It?: A carefully coordinated marketing campaign takes great pains to distance the new token from Yuga Labs, but the firm that created the Bored Ape NFTs appears to be deeply involved.

Today's crypto explainer: What Is Cryptojacking? How to Protect Yourself Against Crypto Mining Malware

Other voices: Ethereum 2.0, Make Or Break Is Near

Said and heard

"Billions of people making their own decisions as to how they spend their time, energy and resources are the best way to allocate the worlds time, energy and resources. Bitcoin and Ethereum are tremendous new technologies that offer unparalleled opportunities to improve this allocation." (entrepreneur Eric Seal for CoinDesk) ... "I want to do everything I can in my power to stop this war. But it doesn't make a lot of sense. The average crypto user who's using some kind of centralized exchange, theyre not likely to be one of Putins oligarchs or to benefit from this conflict." (Dmitry Buterin in CoinDesk Q&A) ... I have made a decision to implement in the shortest possible time a set of measures to switch payments for  our natural gas supplied to the so-called unfriendly countries to Russian rubles." (Vladimir Putin via The New York Times)
Florida Democratic Party Chair Manny Diaz said the party is choosing "new dates and venues" for its big annual fundraiser after criticism of the event being at a property owned by Disney, which has come under fire over its response to legislation dubbed by critics the "Don't Say Gay" bill.

The Leadership Blue event had been scheduled for June 17-19 at Disney's Coronado Springs Resort in Orlando, a weekend that also includes Father's Day and the Juneteenth holiday and falls during Pride Month.

Gov. DeSantis issues proclamation: Sarasota swimmer who lost to transgender athlete 'rightful winner'

'We want action': Disney employees stage walkouts, demand more LGBTQ support

In 'solidarity and support' of Disney colleagues: ESPN announcers have moment of silence during NCAA women's basketball games to protest Florida's 'Don't Say Gay' bill

The LGBTQ+ Caucus of the Florida Democrats put out a statement Tuesday saying the group planned to skip Leadership Blue, and encouraged all elected officials and candidates to do the same.

Disney cast member Nicholas Maldonado protests his company's stance on LGBTQ issues, while participating in an employee walkout at Walt Disney World, Tuesday, March 22, 2022, in Lake Buena Vista, Fla.

Scheduling Leadership Blue at Disney during Pride Month this year is nothing but tone deaf," said Caucus President Stephen Gaskill.

Diaz announced soon afterward that Leadership Blue would be rescheduled and moved to a new location.

"We have heard the feedback regarding our Leadership Blue weekend, including conflicts with Pride Month, Juneteenth, and Father's Day events, all of which we intended to honor during the weekend," Diaz said. "Our timing was not ideal. We also acknowledge that in our fight for freedom and fairness, we can always do more. In that spirit, the Florida Democratic Party will choose new dates and venues to hold Leadership Blue. We will share information about new arrangements once we have explored available options."

DeSantis to sign 'Don't Say Gay' bill: DeSantis says he will soon sign so-called 'Don't Say Gay' bill, again criticizes Disney

Story continues

DeSantis slams 'woke' Disney: Florida's Ron DeSantis attacks Disney over company's lobbying against 'Don't Say Gay' bill

'Discriminatory legislation': Several Florida mental health professional organizations criticize so-called 'Don't Say Gay' bill

The tensions revolve around HB 1557, dubbed by supporters the "Parental Rights in Education" act and labeled the "Don't Say Gay" bill by critics.

The legislation states that "Classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards."

LGBTQ rights organizations say the bill could discriminate against gay and transgender individuals, and cause a chilling effect against students even discussing their LGBTQ families.

Disney leaders were criticized by some employees for not taking a strong stance against the bill until after it already cleared the Legislature. Company CEO Bob Chapek later came out against the legislation, saying he called Gov. Ron DeSantis "to express our disappointment and concern that if legislation becomes law it could be used to target gay, lesbian, nonbinary and transgender kids and families."

DeSantis has repeatedly criticized Disney since then. Meanwhile, some of the company's employees continue to press for a stronger response to the bill, such as stopping donations to legislators who supported the measure, stopping the relocation of workers to Florida and stopping new investments in the state until the law is repealed.

Gaskill said there is "still a long way to go for Disney to earn back the trust and loyalty of its LGBTQ+ employees and guests. We are prepared to work with them to do that.

Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, the only statewide elected Democrat and a candidate for governor, applauded the decision to move the fundraiser.

"I am grateful to Chairman Diaz and the Florida Democratic Party for hearing us, and applaud their decision to choose new dates and a venue for the Leadership Blue Gala," Fried said in a statement. "As the Party reminds us, 'Democrats are fighting every day to build the Florida we deserve.' For me, that means our brothers and sisters in the LGBTQ+ community, too, as well as the Disney workers who were brave enough to walk out in protest. Once again, I will always stand with the LGBTQ+ community."

State Sen. Annette Taddeo, another Democrat running for governor, questioned why Democrats are fighting with each on the issue.

"So let me get this straight, we are no longer holding Republicans and Ron DeSantis accountable for the hateful and bigoted 'Don't Say Gay' bill but instead we are fighting each other over who is more against the bill," Taddeo said in a video posted on Twitter. "Was the party tone deaf? Absolutely, but I'll be damned if now we are supposed to fight over who is more pro-LGBTQ among Democrats running for governor."

DeSantis said Tuesday that critics of HB 1557 are supporting sexual instruction for young kids.

Understand, if you are out protesting this bill you are by definition putting yourself in favor of injecting sexual instruction to 5-, 6- and 7-year-old kids," DeSantis said. "I think most people think thats wrong. I think parents especially think thats wrong.

Follow Herald-Tribune Political Editor Zac Anderson on Twitter at @zacjanderson. He can be reached at zac.anderson@heraldtribune.com

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Democrats ditch Disney World as venue for event after LGBTQ Caucus objects
Company Logo

Dublin, March 23, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Whole Genome and Exome Sequencing Markets by Application, Organism and Product with Executive and Consultant Guides. Includes Direct to Consumer Analysis - 2022 to 2026 " report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The COVID Pandemic has created a surge in Whole Genome Sequencing of Pathogens but cancer related activity has suffered. Find out all about it in the comprehensive report of Whole Genome Sequencing. The complete genome of the COVID virus is included as an example of the work being done.

Will all newborns receive Whole Genome Sequencing at birth? How fast will Direct to Consumer Testing grow? What sequencing technology will take the lead? What's holding the industry back? Where are the over 800 locations that have high throughput devices?

Ourfacts and support =Your success.

A plummeting of costs for Whole Genome Sequencing is creating a gold rush for market players. New consumers, new technologies, new specializations. In a situation reminiscent of the birth of the internet industry a wide range of well funded players is racing for market share on a truly global stage.

Tumor Cell Sequencing? Direct to Consumer? Gene Expression? Find out about the technology in readily understood terms that explain the jargon. What are the issues? Find the opportunities and the pitfalls. Understand growth expectations and the ultimate market forecasts for the next five years.

This research will make you the expert in your organization. Get the research team working for you by ordering all, or a portion, of this comprehensive report. All report data is available in Excel format on request. Make investment decisions and valuations with confidence using the latest data.

The report includes five year market forecasts and detailed breakouts for 14 countries and 5 regions.

WGES Recent Developments

GenomSys Gains CE Mark for New Genomic Analysis Software

WGS Finds Lung Cancers Fall Into Molecular Subtypes

Testing Distinguishes Benign Tumors From Precancerous Condition

Plan to Sequence All Newborns in UK

Clear Labs Raises $60M for Nanopore Sequencing

Variantyx Expands Into Prenatal, Cancer Testing

Whole-Genome Sequencing Aids Diagnosis in Stockholm

Variantyx Raises $20M

Nonacus WGS Service for SARS-CoV-2 Laboratories

Center to Report Risk Scores in Clinical WGS

Stanford Launches WGS for Cardiovascular Testing

Illumina and NY Healthcare Partner on Clinical WGS

Increased Adoption of WGS Needs Acceptance by Payors, Providers

Veritas Intercontinental Completes 5M Series B Financing Round

M2GEN and Discovery Life Sciences in Bioinformatics Agreement

Genomics England Adopts Quantum ActiveScale Object Storage

GenomiQa, Icon Group to Validate Genomic Analysis Platform CapeDx

NHS Wales Introduces WGS for Critically Ill Newborns

Illumina Achieves EAU for NGS-Based SARS-CoV-2 Test

C2i Genomics to Launch Trials for MRD Detection Tech

Roche Acquires Sequencing Company Stratos Genomics

UK COVID-19 Sequencing Consortium Launches

Invitae Acquires Three Companies: YouScript, Genelex, Diploid

Experience From Centralized Genomic Medicine Lab

MGI to Enable $100 Human Genome

Nebula Genomics offers $299 WGS

Team to Study Campylobacter Omics

Veritas Genetics Restarts US Business

NEOGEN, Gencove partner to advance animal genomics

UK Whole-Genome Sequencing Project Obtains 200M

WGS may help with disease outbreaks

Veritas Cuts WGS Price by 40%

Dante Labs Launches GenomeL, Long Reads Human Whole Genome Sequencing

Machine-learning system used to diagnose genetic diseases

Whole Genome Sequencing for healthy creates controversy

Nebula Genomics Offers FREE Whole Genome Sequencing

Story continues

Key Topics Covered:

Market Guides

Whole Genome Sequencing Market - Strategic Situation Analysis & COVID Impact

Selected Genetic Testing Companies Revenue & Growth

Selected Companies Growth Chart

Guide for Executives, Marketing, Sales and Business Development Staff

Guide for Management Consultants and Investment Advisors

Market Overview

Whole Genome Sequencing - Markets, Examples and Discussion

Direct to Consumer - Two Approaches

The New Age of Medical Information

Dangers in DTC-WGS - Health Costs and Regulation

Newborn and Prenatal - A Brave New World

DTC - How Many Segments?

Research Markets

Research Funding and Capital Expense

WGS Datasets Preferred

Existing research repurposed

Organism Wide Market

Service Suppliers Respond

Clinical - Understanding Germline and Somatic

Somatic - Chasing Mutations and Pharmacogenomics

Pathogen Testing

The Hepatitis C Story

Will the Microbiology Department Disappear?

AgriBio - Big Business

GMO is Here to Stay

WGS Benefits and Risks

The New Agriculture

Industry Structure

Hospital's Testing Share

Economies of Scale

Instrument Manufacturer Role

Healthcare Industry Impacts - Still Struggling

Can the Healthcare Industry Adapt?

Genetic Counselling as an Industry

WGES Adoption and Cannibalization

The Meaning of Grail

Market Trends

Factors Driving Growth

Diagnostic Factors

Interpreting the Code Otherwise

Changes in Agriculture

Fertility Technology Comes of Age

Pathogen Challenges

Factors Limiting Growth

Increased Competition Lowers Price

Lower Costs

Healthcare Cost Concerns Curtail Growth

Wellness has a downside

GMO Opposition Movement

Sequencing Instrumentation

Instrumentation Tenacity

Declining Cost Changes Industry Structure

llumina

ION

Pacific Biosystems

Roche 454

SOLiD

Oxford Nanopore

Long Reads - Further Segmentation

Linked Reads

Targeted Sequencing Adopts CRISPR

New Sequencing Technologies

RNAP sequencing

In vitro virus high-throughput sequencing

Tunnelling currents DNA sequencing

Sequencing by hybridization

Sequencing with mass spectrometry

Microfluidic Sanger sequencing

Microscopy-based techniques

Profiles of Key Companies

10x Genomics, Inc.

23andME Inc.

Abbott Diagnostics

AccuraGen Inc.

Adaptive Biotechnologies

Admera Health, LLC

Agena Bioscience, Inc.

Agilent

Akonni Biosystems

Ancestry.com LLC

Anchor Dx

ArcherDx, Inc.

ARUP Laboratories

Asuragen

Baylor Miraca Genetics Laboratories

Beckman Coulter Diagnostics

Becton, Dickinson and Company

BGI Genomics Co. Ltd

Bioarray Genetics

Biocept, Inc.

Biodesix Inc.

BioFluidica

BioGenex

Biolidics Ltd

bioMerieux Diagnostics

Bioneer Corporation

Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc

Bio-Techne

C2i Genomics

Cancer Genetics

Caris Molecular Diagnostics

CellMax Life

Centogene

Chronix Biomedical

Circulogene

Clear Labs

Clinical Genomics

Complete Genomics, Inc. - A BGI Company

Cynvenio

Dante Labs

Datar Cancer Genetics Limited

Day Zero Diagnostics

Diasorin S.p.A.

Epic Sciences

Epigenomics AG.

Eurofins Scientific

Excellerate Bioscience

Exosome Diagnostics

Fabric Genomics

Fluidigm Corp

Freenome

FUJIFILM Wako Diagnostics

Fujirebio

Fulgent Genetics

GE Global Research

GE Healthcare Life Sciences

Gencove

Genedrive

GeneFirst Ltd.

Genetron Health (Beijing) Co., Ltd.

Genewiz

Genomic Health

Genomics England

Genomics Personalized Health (GPH)

GenomOncology

Genzyme Corporation

Grail, Inc.

Grifols

Guardant Health

Guardiome

HeiScreen

Helix

Helomics

Hologic

Horizon Discovery

HTG Molecular Diagnostics

Human Longevity, Inc.

iCellate

Illumina

Incell Dx

Inivata

Invitae Corporation

Invivoscribe

Karius

Macrogen

MDNA Life SCIENCES, Inc.

MDx Health

Medgenome

Meridian Bioscience

Mesa Biotech

MIODx

miR Scientific

MNG Labs

Molecular MD

NantHealth, Inc.

Natera

Nebula Genomics

NeoGenomics

New Oncology

Novogene Bioinformatics Technology Co., Ltd.

Omega Bioservices

OncoDNA

OpGen

ORIG3N, Inc.

Origene Technologies

Oxford Nanopore Technologies

Panagene

Perkin Elmer

Personal Genome Diagnostics

Personalis

Precipio

PrecisionMed

Promega

Protagen Diagnostics

Qiagen Gmbh

Quantumdx

Regeneron

Roche Molecular Diagnostics

Roswell Biotechnologies

Seegene

Sequencing.com

Siemens Healthineers

simfo GmbH

Singlera Genomics Inc.

SkylineDx

Stratos Genomics

Sure Genomics, Inc.

Sysmex

Sysmex Inostics

Tempus Labs, Inc.

Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc.

Veritas Genetics

Volition





For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/xtzrzx





CONTACT: CONTACT: 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




IRVINE, Calif, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Golden State Foods (GSF), one of the largest diversified suppliers to the foodservice and retail industries, marks its 75th Anniversary with a year of celebrations throughout 2022. GSF associates have been engaging in the company's milestone year through a new GSF 75th Anniversary website, along with activities, contests, giveaways, and videos, plus upcoming opportunities for associate scholarships, local Associate Appreciation Week events in every facility, and more.

Golden State Foods (PRNewsfoto/Golden State Foods)

"It's a momentous year for all of us throughout GSF and our family of companies," said GSF Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Mark Wetterau in a message to the company's 6,000 associates across the globe. "Over the past year or so, GSF's 75th Anniversary Steering Committee has been planning for a special year of celebrations to make the anniversary celebrations memorable and meaningful for our associates, our customers, our community partners, and all who have taken part in shaping GSF through the years."

Since the company's founding in 1947, GSF has thrived as a leading values-driven, people-first organization. Built on a solid cultural foundation cultivated by three dedicated CEOs throughout its 75-year history, GSF today remains steadfastly rooted in its Creed and Values. During the 75th Anniversary year, associates have the opportunity to celebrate GSF's successful legacy of reliable assured supply and quality service to its customers, as well as global growth, innovation, leadership, and community involvementincluding its ongoing volunteer service through the GSF Foundation.

To share the GSF story, a new video highlights the company's significant moments, notable accomplishments, and enduring culture throughout its seven and a half decades. Now available on the newly launched GSF 75th Anniversary website, GSF75th.com, invites viewers to explore the company's past, present, and future. For more information about GSF and its 75th Anniversary, please visit GSF's 75th Anniversary website and GoldenStateFoods.com .

Story continues

About Golden State Foods

Golden State Foods (GSF), one of the largest diversified suppliers to the foodservice and retail industries, feeds 1 billion people every day! Headquartered in Irvine, California, the multi-national company is values-based with proven performance in superior quality, innovation, and customer service. Established in 1947, GSF and its family of companies currently service 100+ leading brands (125,000+ restaurants/stores in more than 50 countries) from its 50+ locations on five continents. Its core businesses include: manufacturing of liquid products, protein, produce, dairy/aseptic, and provides custom distribution services. The company employs approximately 6,000 associates and is 100 percent management-owned and run. Golden State Foods also operates a national non-profit organization, the GSF Foundation.

Media Contact:

Marline Valencia, Porter Novelli

marline.valencia@porternovelli.com

310-754-1919

Cision

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/golden-state-foods-celebrates-75-years-of-quality-service-301508129.html

SOURCE Golden State Foods
A major milestone that will create thousands of Canadian jobs for the net-zero emission economy of the future

OTTAWA, ON, March 23, 2022 /CNW/ - The future of Canada's transportation sector is green. So to create middle-class jobs and position our economy for success in a low-carbon world, the government is bringing major international investments to Canada that will secure a strong electric vehicle (EV) battery supply chain.

Today, the Honourable Francois-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, the Honourable Doug Ford, Premier of Ontario, and Drew Dilkens, Mayor of Windsor, announced that their governments are welcoming a major investment from LG Energy Solution, one of the leading battery manufacturing companies in the world, and automaker Stellantis N.V. to create a joint venture in Canada. The joint venture will see a total investment of over $5 billion CAD ($4.1 billion USD) in a facility to manufacture batteries for EVs in Canada. This will position Canada as a global leader in the EV manufacturing supply chain. The battery facility will be located in Windsor, Ontario, and will supply Stellantis plants in Windsor and across North America. The facility will be operational by 2025.

The Government of Canada has been working closely with both companies to secure this investment given that the project aligns with the government's commitment to develop a Canadian battery ecosystem that supports clean technology and industrial transformation. Today's announcement is yet another step forward. The project is expected to create 2,500 well-paying jobs.

This investment will not only position Canada as a global leader in the production of EV batteries but also support the development of a sustainable domestic battery manufacturing sector in Canada.

Quotes

"Today's announcement of a world-leading facility to build electric vehicle batteries in Windsor is an investment in our workers, our communities and our future. Partnerships like these are critical to creating new jobs and putting Canada on the cutting edge of the clean economy. By working together, we are creating thousands of new jobs, making a difference in the lives of people now and making sure that future generations have a clean environment to live in."

 The Right Honourable Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada

Story continues

"Today's announcement is great news for Canadian jobs and the future of Canada's economy. We are seeing the largest investment in Canada's auto sector, and it is clear that companies recognize Canada's strong position as a global leader for EV battery manufacturing. We will continue to work hard to attract other companies and encourage them to set up shop in Canada to help create jobs, generate economic benefits and contribute to a net-zero emission future."

 The Honourable Francois-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry

"This announcement is a great step forward for Canada's green and electric future. It shows that we are leading the way to building a robust North American EV battery supply chain, starting right here at home. Not only does this prepare us for a low-carbon future, but it will also create jobs, will generate impactful economic growth, and is a sustainable long-term investment in our communities."

 The Honourable Mary Ng, Minister of International Trade, Export Promotion, Small Business and Economic Development

"Canada has the opportunity to drive the clean energy future by building up our critical mineral supply chainsfrom production to processing, and the manufacturing of clean technologies. Today's announcement will help ensure that we continue to lead the global fight against climate change, and will put more Canadians in the driver's seat on the road to a net-zero future."

 The Honourable Jonathan Wilkinson, Minister of Natural Resources

"Through our Driving Prosperity auto plan, strategic investments across our integrated supply chains, and by reducing the cost of doing business in Ontario by nearly $7 billion annually, our government is staking Ontario's claim as a leader in the emerging North American EV battery industry. By harnessing advanced manufacturing processes and emerging technologies, and leveraging the critical mineral wealth in Northern Ontario, our province has what it takes to develop and build the car of the future, and the batteries those cars need."

- The Honourable Vic Fedeli, Ontario Minister of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade

"Attracting this multi-billion dollar investment will secure Ontario's place as a North American hub for building the cars and batteries of the future. As we secure game-changing investments, we're also connecting resources, industries and workers in northern Ontario with the manufacturing might of southern Ontario to build up home-grown supply chains. Every region of Ontario will benefit with thousands of jobs being created and a stronger economy that works for everyone."

 The Honourable Doug Ford, Premier of Ontario

"Stellantis is Windsor's largest employer and has a rich history in this community. Chrysler began operations in this community in 1928 and has employed generations of WindsorEssex workers at its facility. With this announcement, we are securing the future for thousands more local workers and securing Windsor's strategic location as the home of Canada's electric vehicle future. As the world pivots to EVs, Windsor will soon be home to the battery manufacturing facility that powers it all."

 His Worship Drew Dilkens, Mayor of Windsor

"This announcement demonstrates that Canada can attract global investment in the dynamic, growing EV industry as a result of its unique value proposition for this sector. Invest in Canada worked closely with LGES from the outset of its decision-making process, and all levels of government came together to seize the opportunityone that will help to create a truly end-to-end battery EV supply chain in Canada."

 Katie Curran, Interim CEO, Invest in Canada

"LG Energy Solution, together with Canada and Stellantis, aspires to become the world's leading battery manufacturer by powering EVs in North America. LGES will position itself as a critical player in setting up a battery value chain in the region as we provide solutions to our potential customers through our collective, unique technical skills and mass-producing capabilities. Creating a joint battery manufacturing plant in Canada, one of the leading nations in renewable energy resources, is all the more critical for LG Energy Solution as we aim to power more EVs around the world."

 Youngsoo Kwon, CEO of LG Energy Solution

"Our joint venture with LG Energy Solution is yet another stepping stone to achieving our aggressive electrification roadmap in the region aimed at hitting 50% of battery electric vehicle sales in the U.S. and Canada by the end of the decade. We are grateful to the municipal, provincial and federal levels of government for their support and commitment to help position Canada as a North American leader in the production of electric vehicle batteries."

 Carlos Tavares, CEO of Stellantis

Quick facts

LG Energy Solution is a leading global battery manufacturer delivering advanced lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicle, mobility and IT applications and for energy storage systems (ESS). With 30 years of experience in advanced battery technology, LGES is committed to developing innovative technologies that will bring the future of energy a step closer. LG Energy Solution's robust global network spans across North America, Europe, Asia and Australia, with a 23% share of the global EV battery market.

Stellantis is a leading global automaker and mobility provider that offers clean, connected, affordable and safe mobility solutions. Its ambitious electrification and software strategies and the creation of an innovative ecosystem of strategic, game-changing partnerships are driving its transformation into a sustainable mobility tech company.

In February 2021, Windsor City Council adopted an economic development strategy called Windsor Works: An economic development strategy for the city's future growth . This plan focused municipal economic development efforts on talent retention, partnerships with academic institutions and the future of the automotive sectorand electric vehicle components in particular. The implementation of Windsor Works is helping make investments like the one by LGES and Stellantis possible through a new department at City Hall focused on attracting investment and creating good jobs in Windsor.

Details of this agreement are subject to commercial confidentiality and cannot be disclosed at this time. More details will follow once due diligence is completed.

Plant construction activities are scheduled to begin later this year, with production operations planned to launch in the first quarter of 2024. The facility will be operational by 2025.

This investment aligns with the Government of Canada's strengthened climate planA Healthy Environment and a Healthy Economy.

The Government of Canada has set a target of achieving 100% zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) sales by 2035. Accelerating the ZEV target will support Canada's commitment to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 and its pledge at the United Nations 2019 Climate Action Summit.

Associated links

Contacts

Laurie Bouchard

Senior Manager, Communications

Office of the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry

laurie.bouchard@ised-isde.gc.ca

Media Relations

Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada

media@ised-isde.gc.ca

Sally Seung Yeon Lee

Global Communications Team, LG Energy Solution

lsyciel@lgensol.com

+82 2 3773 6571

Ashlee Semin Shin

Global Communications Team, LG Energy Solution

ashin0@lgensol.com

+ 82 2 3773 4381

Fernao Silveira

Global Communications, Stellantis

fernao.silveira@stellantis.com

+31 6 43 25 43 41

Shawn Morgan

North America Communications, Stellantis

shawn.morgan@stellantis.com

248-760-2621

Kwok Wong

Communications Branch, Ontario Ministry of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade

kwok.wong@ontario.ca

647-504-2774

Stay connected

Follow Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada on social media.

Twitter: @ISED_CA, Facebook: Canadian Innovation , Instagram: @cdninnovation and LinkedIn

SOURCE Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada

Cision

View original content: http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/March2022/23/c8885.html
TORONTO, March 23, 2022 /CNW/ - (TSX: CBNK) Mulvihill Canadian Bank Enhanced Yield ETF has declared a monthly fund distribution in the amount of $0.058333 per unit, payable on March 31, 2022 to unitholders of record on March 30, 2022.

For further information, please contact Investor Relations at 416.681.3966, toll free at 1.800.725.7172, email at info@mulvihill.com or visit www.mulvihill.com.

John Germain, Senior Vice-President & CFO Mulvihill Capital Management Inc. 121 King Street West Suite 2600 Toronto, Ontario, M5H 3T9

SOURCE Mulvihill Canadian Bank Enhanced Yield ETF

Cision

View original content: http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/March2022/23/c3181.html




Russian President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that Russia will insist that "unfriendly countries" pay for Russian natural gas exports only in rubles going forward, according to reports.

Putin told Russian government officials that a number of Western countries made "illegitimate decisions on the so-called freezing of the Russian assets," which he claims has resulted in a line being crossed "over reliability of their currencies" and has undermined the trust for those currencies, The Associated Press reported.

The Kremlin leader added that it "made no sense" to supply Russian goods to the European Union and the United States and receive payment in euros, dollars and a number of other currencies.

However, Russia will continue to supply natural gas in accordance with volumes and prices fixed in previously concluded contracts, Reuters added, citing Putin.

Russia provides about 40 percent of Europe's natural gas and has previously threatened to withhold the natural gas it supplies to Europe in response to Western sanctions over Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.

Russia released a list of so-called "unfriendly" countries, which include the U.S., members of the European Union, Britain, Japan, Canada, Norway, Singapore, South Korea, Switzerland and Ukraine, Reuters said.

Putin's statement comes weeks after the European Union announced a plan to cut its reliance on Russian natural gas by two-thirds this year, and get off Russian fossil fuels entirely by the end of the decade.

Putin is expected to attend the G20 summit in Bali, Indonesia, on Wednesday.
Reuters removes TASS Russian news agency from its content marketplace FILE PHOTO: The logo of Russian news agency TASS is seen on a board at the SPIEF 2017 in St. Petersburg

(Reuters) -Reuters has removed TASS from its business-to-business marketplace for customers, according to a Reuters message to staff on Wednesday, amid growing criticism of how Russia's state-owned news agency is portraying the war in Ukraine.

"We believe making TASS content available on Reuters Connect is not aligned with the Thomson Reuters Trust Principles," Matthew Keen, interim CEO of Reuters, wrote in an internal memo to staff on Wednesday.

The Reuters Trust Principles https://www.thomsonreuters.com/en/about-us/trust-principles.html, created in 1941 amid World War Two, commits Reuters to act with integrity, independence and freedom from bias.

In response to a request for comment from Reuters, TASS shared a letter that its CEO Sergei Mikhailov sent to Keen on Wednesday in which he said he was "extremely sorry to learn of Reuters' decision" and that he understood it was "influenced by the current world atmosphere.

"TASS journalists conduct their work honestly and responsibly. Any unbiased analysis will confirm that the informational work of TASS, as a state news agency, is equitable, objective and sufficiently balanced, with no room for disinformation and propaganda fakes," he said.

The Russian news agency has been accused by some Western media and press freedom groups of spreading false claims and propaganda about the war in Ukraine. Since the invasion, tech giants Google, Facebook and Twitter and pay TV services have restricted access to Russia state-owned media RT and Sputnik over concerns about spreading misinformation. RT and Sputnik have called restrictions placed on them by distributors, which include app stores and other social media services, unjustified censorship.

Early in March, photo agency Getty Images cut ties with TASS, according to a Forbes report.

A Getty spokesperson said by email: "In order to ensure the integrity of the content we distribute, we require that partners and contributors comply with our Editorial Policy."

Story continues

She added that "Recent TASS content failed to meet those guidelines and ingestion of their content was suspended. We have notified them of a breach of our agreement and are terminating our relationship." She declined to specify which content fell short of its guidelines.

The Forbes story said TASS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Reuters Connect allowed users, mostly news organizations, to access and share TASS content for a fee. Reuters Connect also offers the content of Reuters News and about 90 third-party providers, including Variety, USA Today and CNBC.

The Reuters newsroom operates independently of Reuters Connect.

The TASS partnership with the Reuters Connect platform was struck in 2020. In a June 1 press release that year, Michael Friedenberg, then president of Reuters, said having TASS join Reuters Connect was building upon our valued partnership. Mikhailov called the agreement truly a significant event.

According to the press release, the TASS partnership with Reuters Connect offered customers "access to breaking news and exclusive video; videos on the Kremlin and Russian President, Vladimir Putin, as well as feature videos and general news."

Since the invasion, the partnership has sparked sharp criticism on social media. A Politico story https://www.politico.com/news/2022/03/20/reuters-staff-partnership-russian-wire-service-00018779 published on March 20 cited unnamed Reuters journalists saying they were embarrassed by the company's partnership with TASS.

Reuters is owned by news and information company Thomson Reuters Corp.

(Reporting by Kenneth Li and Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Edward Tobin)
TORONTO, March 8, 2022 /CNW/ - Scotiabank today is proud to announce the expansion of The Scotiabank Women Initiative to Costa Rica. Currently available in North America and Jamaica, the program has built on its previous successes to deliver a tailored program designed specifically for women-led businesses in Costa Rica.

Scotiabank Logo (CNW Group/Scotiabank)

The Scotiabank Women Initiative will provide equitable access and personalized solutions and products to women-owned and women-led businesses across the country. Specially curated offers and features include:

Discounts of up to 50 per cent off on loans rates for women-led businesses that do not meet the Development Banking Law requirements.

A four-month online program for 150 women, in alliance with Grupo SET Consulting, a prestigious international chain specializing in SMEs.

An alliance with the Association for Leadership and Social Advancement (ALAS) to develop a series of informative and educational materials for our clients, focused on leadership topics.

"After successfully launching The Scotiabank Women initiative in Jamaica, we're thrilled to be expanding in Costa Rica providing the resources women need to help bolster their businesses in this country," says Ignacio Deschamps, Group Head, International Banking & Digital Transformation, Scotiabank. "By expanding the program, we're meeting a need in Costa Rica by creating opportunities for the advancement of women-led businesses. We're proud to be helping break down barriers that women face when it comes to financing their businesses."

Launched December 2018, The Scotiabank Women Initiative is a comprehensive program designed to increase economic and professional opportunities for Scotiabank clients who identify as women or non-binary by providing access to capital and tailored solutions, specialized education, advisory services and mentorship to help them succeed on their own financial terms.

The Scotiabank Women Initiative has achieved many notable milestones since its inception including:

Story continues

Deployed more than $3 billion in capital to women-owned and women-led business in Canada

Expanded into Global Banking and Markets and Global Wealth Management and launched internationally in Jamaica this year with imminent plans for Latin America.

Engaged almost 7,000 women-led entrepreneurs in Canada in mentorship sessions.

Launched The Scotiabank Women Initiative Digital Hub in collaboration with Shopify, Google Canada, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Facebook and HubSpot to deliver key resources to help women entrepreneurs adapt to uncertain economic times.

Trained 500+ employees in client-facing roles on how they can empower their women clients to take charge of their financial futures.

Integrated into several of our key business lines including Global Banking and Markets (GBM), Global Wealth Management (GWM) and International Business (IB)

On International Women's Day and 365 days a year, Scotiabank's commitment to gender equality, economic empowerment, inclusion of women across the diverse communities it serves include:

As the people of Ukraine, especially women and families, continue to be impacted by the humanitarian crisis, Scotiabank has donated to the Red Cross' Ukraine Humanitarian Crisis Appeal, to support relief efforts for those affected by recent events in Ukraine and surrounding countries.





Scotiabank is committed to increasing the representation of women in senior leadership roles as part of its efforts to build an inclusive workforce. As of January 31 st 2022, 42% of Vice Presidents and above in Canada are women which has grown 11% since 2013. Outside of Canada, Women representation in these roles has grown by 16% since 2013 to 27%. With women representing 37% per cent of Vice Presidents and above globally, the Bank continues to work towards increasing the representation of women in these roles to 40% globally by 2025.





In January, Scotiabank announced a new global standard for parental leave across its global footprint by 2025. The enhanced offering includes 8 fully paid weeks for all parents welcoming a new child and 8 additional fully paid weeks for parents who have given birth. This new standard will be introduced in 24 countries across the Bank's footprint including Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru and more.





Equal pay is part of our commitment to gender equality and discrimination-free decision-making. We annually conduct a thorough review of gender and compensation in our Canadian business to ensure we offer equitable remuneration as part of our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. We made efforts in 2021 to close the gender wage gap, including pay adjustments for select populations.





Through ScotiaRISE, Scotiabank's 10-year, $500 million initiative to promote economic resilience among underrepresented groups, the Bank is providing support to organizations committed to advancing inclusion for women including: Windmill Microlending, Groupe 3737, The Redwood, Dress for Success Canada and many more.





Scotiabank efforts to prioritize gender equality and an inclusive culture have been recognized globally.

This year, Scotiabank deepened its partnership with Catalyst by becoming a Global Expert Community Supporter. This enables Catalyst to develop action-oriented research to build inclusive cultures and address workplace issues at the intersection of gender, race, ethnicity and culture. With this support, Scotiabank receives input from subject matter experts to provide recommendations on diversity strategy, the opportunity to share and learn best practices from other Supporters and lastly, have a deeper understanding of current issues impacting workplaces. Starting this March, Scotiabank and Catalyst are delivering a series of events in Mexico, Colombia, Chile and Peru, designed to create awareness, dialogue and action around advancing women. The series will begin in Chile this month and we will conclude with Peru in July 2022.

About The Scotiabank Women Initiative

The Scotiabank Women Initiative is a signature program designed to increase economic and professional opportunities for our clients who identify as women or non-binary to be successful, now and in the future. This globally expanding, unique offering helps thousands of women pursue their best professional and financial futures by providing unbiased access to capital and tailored solutions, bespoke specialized education, holistic advisory services and mentorship. Whether supporting women to take their careers and businesses further, collaborating with inclusion-focused leaders and companies, providing women-owned and women-led businesses with equitable access to funding or helping women take charge of their finances, The Scotiabank Women Initiative breaks down barriers to empower women to succeed on their own terms. For more information, visit scotiabankwomeninitiative.com.

About Scotiabank

Scotiabank is a leading bank in the Americas. Guided by our purpose: "for every future", we help our customers, their families and their communities achieve success through a broad range of advice, products and services, including personal and commercial banking, wealth management and private banking, corporate and investment banking, and capital markets. With a team of approximately 90,000 employees and assets of approximately $1.2 trillion (as at January 31, 2022), Scotiabank trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX: BNS) and New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: BNS). For more information, please visit http://www.scotiabank.com and follow us on Twitter @ScotiabankViews.

SOURCE Scotiabank

Cision

View original content to download multimedia: http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/March2022/08/c8937.html
ReportLinker

Major players in the smart speakers market are Amazon Inc. , Apple Inc. , Xiaomi, Alibaba Group Holding Limited, Sonos. Inc. , Harman International, Bose Corporation, Sony Corporation, ONKYO CORPORATION, and Panasonic Corporation.

New York, March 23, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Reportlinker.com announces the release of the report "Smart Speakers Global Market Report 2022" - https://www.reportlinker.com/p06247523/?utm_source=GNW





The global smart speakers market is expected grow from $6.16 billion in 2021 to $6.60 billion in 2022 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.1%. The growth is mainly due to the companies resuming their operations and adapting to the new normal while recovering from the COVID-19 impact, which had earlier led to restrictive containment measures involving social distancing, remote working, and the closure of commercial activities that resulted in operational challenges. The market is expected to reach $8.63 billion in 2026 at a CAGR of 6.9%.



The smart speakers market consists of sales of smart speakers and related products that include Bluetooth-, Wi-Fi-enabled and wireless devices which are integrated with virtual assistant device powered by artificial intelligence.The smart speakers market consists of revenue generated through the sales of speakers with virtual assistant intelligence such as Alexa, Google Assistant, Siri, and Cortana, among others which are distributed through online or offline channels to personal and commercial users for smart home, smart office, automotive, commercial and more applications.



The companies involved in the smart speakers market are engaged in designing, manufacturing, producing artificial intelligence assisted speakers which are activated with one hot word using voice recognition systems to perform wide range of wireless activities.



The main intelligent virtual assistant of smart speakers are Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Siri, Cortana and others.Google Assistant is a virtual assistant powered by artificial intelligence that is primarily available on mobile and smart home devices.



The various applications of smart speakers include smart home, smart office, consumer and others that are distributed through online and offline channels. The smart speakers are used by personal and commercial end-users.



Asia Pacific was the largest region in the smart speakers market in 2021.Africa is expected to be the fastest-growing region in the forecast period.



The regions covered in this report are Asia-Pacific, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, North America, South America, Middle East and Africa.



With increasing consumer preference for technologically advanced products there is a rise in penetration of smartphones and smart devices.The enhanced personal use of smart devices points at integration of smart devices with devices such as smart lightbulbs, thermostats, and TVs.



The consumer interest in technologically advanced products has resulted in 205 million installed smart speakers in 2019 and reached 325 million by 2020.In 2019, Amazon could integrate LIDAR technology into Amazon Echo through which it will be able to recognize hand gestures, type of food, and even the clothes being worn.



In India, in 2019 the total number of smartphones users are 502.2 million and the smartphones market is expected to gain 859 million users by 2022. Regional manufacturers are being encouraged to produce innovative and advanced products with customer interest to accept and adopt emerging technology which is expected to drive the market.



Apart from increasing consumer preference for smart speakers the major drawback thats concerning the market is the data privacy and security.These devices have access to the personal information stored in Gmail like contact details, bank details, login credentials which raise security issues.



The devices of a smart home have access to sensitive data like videos, photos, personal information which can be accessed and operated from anywhere.In 2019, a survey conducted in US states that smart speaker non-users are more concerned about data and privacy reasons like hacking risk (63%), smart speakers are always listening (55%) and monitoring by government (40%).



When compared with smart speaker users, they also agreed with the above data and privacy issues similarly. These issues may hinder the market growth if appropriate development in security concerns are not addressed.



Virtual assistant devices are powered by artificial intelligence which offer ultimate luxury to the owner.They keep on listening to the command, analyze the needs and performs the task when necessary.



The Amazon Echo with smart assistant Alexa can be activated with voice command of one hot word Alexa.Siri, the Apple voice assistant provides hands-free activation with deep integration technology and high-quality virtual surround sound and exhibits features like setting timer, managing calendar events and more.



Google assistant activated with Ok Google provides instant access to all of the Google services and the data associated with the Google account.In 2019, a survey states that Amazon Alexa/Echo dominates the US market with 70% market share followed by Google home with 25% and Apple HomePod with 5% which was largely because of the high sales of entry-level devices like Google Home Mini and Amazon Echo Dot with reasonable price.



The proliferation of virtual assistance is, in turn, driving the smart speaker market.



In November 2019, Sonos a US-based leading sound experience brand which allows its customers to listen better by giving access to their favorite content by controlling as they wish announced the acquisition of Snips for $37.5 million. The deal will benefit Sonos by improving the voice experience of Sonos with the addition of Intellectual Property of Snips and benefit Snips by taking its France technologies to international customers. Snips is a US-based private-by-design voice technology company which uses artificial intelligence integrated in connected devices.



The countries covered in the smart speakers market report are Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, Russia, South Korea, UK, USA.





Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p06247523/?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




VANCOUVER, BC, March 23, 2022 /CNW/ - Zacapa Resources Ltd. (TSXV: ZACA) (DE: BH0) (OTCQB: ZACAF) is pleased to announce that it has successfully completed the cross-listing of its common shares to the OTCQB Venture Market ("OTCQB"). Zacapa's common shares are now trading on the OTCQB under the ticker symbol "ZACAF". Investors can find real-time quotes and market information for ZACAF on www.otcmarkets.com. Zacapa continues to trade on the TSX Venture Exchange under the ticker symbol "ZACA" and on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol "BH0".

Zacapa Resources Logo (CNW Group/Zacapa Resources)

Adam Melnik, CEO and Director of Zacapa commented: "Zacapa's listing on the OTCQB Venture Market, within two months post listing on the TSX Venture Exchange, is a significant milestone for the company that importantly will provide a large United States investor base with the opportunity to participate directly in Zacapa's growth as well as enhance trading liquidity and enhance outreach with the global investment community."

About OTC Market Group Inc.

The OTCQB is operated by the OTC Markets Group Inc. ("OTC") out of New York City, New York, and is recognized by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC") as an established public market providing the public with price and financial information. The OTCQB trades over 10,000 United States and global securities and is recognized as the mid-tier of the OTC for early stage and developing companies. To be eligible to trade on the OTCQB, companies must meet high financial standards, follow best practice corporate governance, demonstrate compliance with United States securities laws, be current in their disclosure, and have a professional third-party sponsor introduction.

The OTCQB provides convenience to United States investors, brokers, and institutions seeking to trade in common shares of Zacapa. Inclusion on the OTCQB enables United States investors to easily trade through the broker of their choice and allows companies to improve the quality of information available for investors.

Story continues

About Zacapa Resources

Zacapa is a copper and gold focused mineral exploration company engaged in responsible exploration for the new energy economy. Its projects are concentrated in world class jurisdictions in the southwest U.S., including Arizona, Nevada, and Idaho. The portfolio includes porphyry copper projects at Red Top, Pearl, and Dewdrop Moon, and epithermal gold projects at South Bullfrog and Miller Mountain. These assets are being advanced by a highly disciplined and seasoned professional team with successful track records of discovery, resource development and mine permitting.

For more information, please visit www.zacaparesources.com. All documents are available on Zacapa's profile page on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

On behalf of the Board of Directors,

"Adam Melnik"

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.

Forward Looking Statements  Certain information set forth in this news release may contain forward-looking statements that involve substantial known and unknown risks and uncertainties. All statements within, other than statements of historical fact, are to be considered forward looking. Although Zacapa believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results or developments may differ materially from those in forward-looking statements. Zacapa cautions that all forward-looking statements are inherently uncertain, and that actual performance may be affected by a number of material factors, many of which are beyond Zacapa's control. Accordingly, actual and future events, conditions and results may differ materially from the estimates, beliefs, intentions and expectations expressed or implied in the forward-looking information. Readers are advised to rely on their own evaluation of such uncertainties. Except as required under applicable securities legislation, Zacapa undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise forward-looking information.

SOURCE Zacapa Resources

Cision

View original content to download multimedia: http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/March2022/23/c8266.html
Gov. Glenn Youngkin on Tuesday hailed a move by a state board to formally remove a set of rules that required employers to treat COVID as a work place hazard and to put in place mitigation measures like requiring masks and ensuring social distancing.

The Virginia Department of Labor and Industrys Worker Safety Board voted Monday to remove what Youngkin said were unnecessary restrictions put in place under then-Gov. Ralph Northams administration. As expected, the board determined that COVID no longer poses a grave threat to Virginians in the workplace.

Businesses asked us for updated workplace guidance to reflect our current COVID-19 situation in Virginia, Youngkin said in a statement. We are pleased with the boards move and this vote signals that a return to normalcy in Virginia is not a partisan issue.

Were going to continue providing greater certainty and decision making power to businesses and workers in the Commonwealth as we move beyond the pandemic. With the removal of these regulations, it is undeniable that Virginia is open for business.

Virginia Democrats pushed back on the notion that the state is only now open for business, noting that Business Facilities Magazine last week honored Virginia for having the best overall business climate in 2021.

In anticipation of the state boards move, Youngkins administration last week rolled out new COVID-19 guidance for employers to replace the stricter rules. The guidance gives the private sector flexibility on how to mitigate spread of the virus in the workplace.
A Spotsylvania man was arrested after police say he crashed into a county deputys cruiser late Monday.

The deputy was not seriously injured, Sheriffs Maj. Troy Skebo said. The deputy was treated at a local hospital and released.

According to Skebo, the collision occurred about 10 p.m. at the intersection of Courthouse and Leavells roads in Spotsylvania. The deputy was in a westbound lane on Courthouse Road waiting for the light to turn green when he was struck from behind by a Toyota Tacoma, police said.

Responding deputies determined that the driver was impaired. Martir R. Salazar Berganza, 37, was charged with DUI (2nd offense in five years), reckless driving and driving revoked (DUI related). He was placed in the Rappahannock Regional Jail.

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 woman who is already serving an 81-year prison sentence will face the possibility of more time this week.

Cassie C. Crisano, 41, was scheduled to be in Stafford County Circuit Court on Wednesday to face multiple charges, including obtaining money by false pretenses and identity theft. The charges include alleged offenses that took place prior to her attempts to have a Stafford detective and others killed by a hitman.

Crisano, a former police officer in Maryland, will either accept a plea agreement that will add another four years to her active sentence or have a bench trial on the remaining charges.

Crisanos legal problems in Stafford began in 2017, when Terry Linton was caught trying to solicit what he thought was a 13-year-old girl in Frederick County. The girl was actually a police officer.

In an effort to reduce his own legal troubles, Linton told police about alleged crimes involving Crisano. Linton was a fraud investigator for Navy Federal Credit Union and told police he had been giving Crisano customers account information.

Prosecutors contend that Crisano used that information to fraudulently make about $7,000 worth of purchases.

During a subsequent raid at Crisanos former home on Cannon Ridge Drive in southern Stafford, police found property that had been reported stolen to Allstate Insurance. Police allege that Crisano staged a burglary at her home, then got $20,000 from the insurance company for property she had falsely reported stolen.

Police also found photo IDs with Crisanos picture and other womens names. Those victims were Navy Federal customers whose information had been compromised by Linton, who met Crisano when both were involved in mixed martial arts fighting.

Following her initial arrest, Crisano hatched a wild plan that included having Linton assist her in burning down the Stafford Public Safety Building. Linton testified that Crisano believed the fire would destroy evidence against her in the fraud cases.

After learning that Linton had double-crossed her, Crisano later attempted to hire a hitman to kill Linton, her ex-husband and Stafford Detective Joseph Massine. An informant was planted in her cell at the Rappahannock Regional Jail and Detective R. Mervil spoke with Crisano several times pretending to be a hitman.

Crisano sent a total of $5,800 to a Post Office box that was monitored by police. At one point, police made Crisano believe that the hit on Linton had been carried out.

During her trial, Crisano testified that she had no intentions of having anyone killed and said many of her statements were taken out of context or were simple jailhouse banter.

Crisano has been in the regional jail since September 2018.

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.
Officials in the Fredericksburg region are in the process of tallying the financial impact of the Jan. 2 storm that dumped up to 14 inches of snow, brought down hundreds of trees and power lines and crippled traffic in the area.

Some localities are eligible to apply for federal assistance through a major disaster declaration approved by President Joe Biden. Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced the designation last week, encouraging all those in affected areas to apply for grants to build back our infrastructure and alleviate the damage caused by this major snowstorm.

The declaration covers 27 counties in Virginiaincluding every locality in the region from Culpeper to Essex County. Local, state and eligible private nonprofits with infrastructure damage or emergency and debris removal costs may be reimbursed for up to 75 percent of their expenses, according to the governors office.

The Virginia Department of Emergency Management is in the process of briefing applicants about how to apply for the federal grants. April 10 is the deadline to submit a request for public assistance. The grants do not cover households or private businesses, according to the state.

But they will help local governments recoup some of their costs during the devastating storm.

I think anybody here in King George County during that week would certainly say it was a disaster, David Moody, chief of the countys Department of Fire, Rescue and Emergency Services told the Board of Supervisors last week.

Like other localities, King George was gathering its documentation for the grant submission. Moody said the county planned to submit expenses, such as almost $39,000 for overtime for county personnel including first-responders and workers with General Properties and the Service Authority. In addition, King George was looking at expenses for snow removal at county buildings and for costs to keep generators running.

King George and Stafford were the only two counties eligible for 75% of reimbursement costs for snow removal during the 48 hours of the storm, according to the state. A Stafford spokesperson said Monday that county officials are compiling costs.

Typically with presidential disaster declarations, localities can be reimbursed for 75% of their costs from the federal government and 15% from the state, Moody said. The match for local governments comes out to 10% and King Georgeprobably like many other localitiesalready absorbed that much, and more, in payroll expenses.

The localities eligible for disaster assistance are the counties of Albemarle, Amelia, Appomattox, Bedford, Buckingham, Caroline, Charlotte, Culpeper, Cumberland, Essex, Fauquier, Fluvanna, Goochland, Greene, Hanover, King George, King William, Louisa, Madison, Nelson, Orange, Powhatan, Prince Edward, Rappahannock, Spotsylvania, Stafford and Westmoreland and the city of Fredericksburg.

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  The dedication that Robert Lee Bogle showed to his family and to his community as a longtime member of the Plattsmouth Volunteer Fire Department was unmatched and his legacy will live on for years to come.

Thats how Fire Chief Mike Wilson honored his longtime friend during funeral services last Saturday at First Lutheran Church.

Lee Bogle was a good firefighter, a great instructor, a mentor, a class act and a generous friend, Wilson told the audience.

While serving on the department since 1991, Bogle was always one of the top responders, the first one at the station, Wilson said.

Bogle also served as the departments safety officer.

He would be the one at the front of the hose line, grabbing the set of Jaws of Life, or operating the truck, Wilson said.

Bogle died on the evening of March 15 after a long illness. He was 67.

Besides being a longtime firefighter, Bogle was also co-owner of Mullenax NAPA in downtown Plattsmouth.

You dont have to look far around the fire station to see his thumbprint, Wilson told the audience. He left a lasting impression on physical things that will remain around the department for many years to come.

As a way of showing respect for his years as a volunteer firefighter, a large number of fire trucks were parked along a nearby street during the services.

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 case of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) has been confirmed in Butler County.

The Nebraska Department of Agriculture (NDA), in conjunction with United States Department of Agricultures Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, made the announcement in a Tuesday press release.

According to the press release, HPAI has been confirmed in a commercial flock of 570,000 broilers.

The farm in question is under NDA quarantine and the birds will be humanely depopulated and disposed of in an approved manner. The NDA will be establishing a 6.2-mile control zone around the premises. Areas with poultry that are in the control zone will not be allowed to move birds or poultry products on or off the premises without permission from the NDA. Producers within that area should know the signs and symptoms of HPAI and notify NDA of sick or dying poultry, according to the press release.

HPAI is a highly contagious virus that spreads easily among birds through nasal and eye secretions, as well as manure. The virus can be spread in various ways from flock to flock, including by wild birds, through contact with infected poultry, by equipment and on the clothing and shoes of caretakers. Wild birds can carry the virus without becoming sick, while domesticated birds can become very sick.

Having a second farm in Nebraska confirmed to have HPAI is unfortunate, but not completely unexpected, NDA Director Steve Wellman said, in a provided statement. NDA will use all the resources at our disposal, in coordination with our federal partners to manage a quick response.

According to NDA State Veterinarian Dr. Roger Dudley, since the initial threat of HPAI in the United States, the farm has increased their biosecurity and heightened their observational testing and upon noticing a larger than normal death loss, immediately quarantined their facility and contacted NDA.

Enhanced biosecurity helps prevent the introduction and spread of viruses and diseases including HPAI. NDA and USDA have resources available to help poultry owners step up their biosecurity efforts.

Know the warning signs of infectious bird diseases like HPAI. Be on the lookout for unusual signs of behavior, severe illness and/or sudden deaths.

Restrict access to your property and poultry.

Keep it clean. Wear clean clothes, scrub boots/shoes with disinfectant and wash hands thoroughly before and after contact with your flock.

If you, your employees or family have been on other farms, or other places where there is livestock and/or poultry, clean and disinfect your vehicle tires and equipment before returning home.

Dont share equipment, tools, or other supplies with other livestock or poultry owners.

In addition to practicing good biosecurity, all bird owners should prevent contact between their birds and wild birds, making sure wild birds cannot access domestic poultrys feed and water sources.

Report sick birds immediately to: NDA at 402-471-2351; the USDA at 866-536-7593; or your veterinarian. Early detection is important to prevent the spread of disease.

Symptoms of HPAI in poultry include: a decrease in water consumption; lack of energy and appetite; decreased egg production or soft-shelled, misshapen eggs; nasal discharge, coughing, sneezing; incoordination; and diarrhea. HPAI can also cause sudden death in birds even if they arent showing any other symptoms. HPAI can survive for weeks in contaminated environments.

Poultry owners should report unusual poultry bird deaths or sick birds to NDA at 402-471-2351, or through USDA at 866-536-7593.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the risk to people getting HPAI infections from birds is low. No human cases of avian influenza viruses have been detected in the United States.

All poultry entering Nebraska must be accompanied by a VS form 9-3 or Certificate of Veterinary Inspection (CVI, or health certificate). If you are considering moving an animal into Nebraska from an affected state, please call 402-471-2351 to learn more. Nebraska poultry owners wanting to ship poultry out of state should consult the state veterinarians of the destination states for import requirements.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
Council offering scholarship

The Nebraska Loess Hills Resource Conservation & Development (RC&D) Council is offering one scholarship within its service area of Burt, Cuming, Dakota, Dodge, Thurston, and Washington counties.

This scholarship will be awarded to an individual who is going to go to a post-secondary school to further their education. This can be a 2-year, 4-year, or a certification program.

Any individual whether a high-school senior, current college student, or non-traditional student may apply.

The Nebraska Loess Hills RC&D Council is a nonprofit, grass-roots organization that works to protect and develop natural, social and economic resources in Burt, Cuming, Dakota, Dodge Thurston and Washington counties.

The Council makes communities a better place to live by developing and carrying out projects which improve area economy, environment and quality of life. RC&D Councils were established in the Agriculture Act of 1962 to provide a program which empowers rural people to help themselves.

The RC&D Councils annual projects include Scrap Tire Collections, Household Hazardous Waste Collections, E-waste Collections, Lewis & Clark Scenic Byway, MMV Weed Management Group, Area Tourism Displays, Logan Creek Recreational Canoe Access.

For more information, contact the RC&D office at 402-685-4020 or email office@nlhrcd.org for an application. The deadline is April 15, 2022.

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.
Laura England-Biggs knows a library book sale can help people build their own personal collections of books and other items. So the director of Keene Memorial Library invites the public to attend an event that starts Thursday.

After a two-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Friends of Keene Memorial Library Book Sale is set to take place at Christensen Field.

The event is scheduled from: 5-8 p.m., Thursday; noon to 7 p.m., Friday; 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday; and noon to 4 p.m. Sunday in the main arena at 1914 Christensen Field Road. Admission is free.

Thursday night is a members only night, but people can join the Friends group for $10. Its kind of a sneak-peek preview benefit of membership, England-Biggs said.

Besides print and audio books, the sale will include DVDs and specialty magazines such as those for cooking or decorating.

There will be a wide selection as the Friends group has at least three storage units full of items.

We havent had a book sale since 2019, so the Friends have been gathering books ever since. People bring them and donate them, she said.

England-Biggs said the Friends group has cut off donations for this years book sale, as volunteers are organizing the sale.

Donors still can bring books to Daves Drive-In Liquor, 1900 E. Military Ave., No. 284. Books are being sold here to raise money for the library. England-Biggs noted that the book sale is taking place earlier this year than in the past. Previously, the book sale has taken place in April.

The book sale has proven popular throughout the years.

I think Fremont has a lot of readers, who like to build their own libraries, and they like to support the Friends, because they know the Friends support their library, she said.

England-Biggs pointed out the book sales cost-savings benefit.

Its an inexpensive way to get more books for kids so they have their own personal library in their bedroom, she said, adding, We have a lot of kids books that will be in there. She pointed out another advantage.

I think people like to have their own stash in case the weather gets bad and they cant get out  theyve got something on hand to read, England-Biggs said.

Event proceeds support the programming and services of the library. England-Biggs encourages the public to attend.

We hope people attend to help us move some of these books out of our hands and into theirs  to get moved on to their next home, England-Biggs said.

More information about the library can be found at: keen.ent.sirsi.net/client/en_US/default or on the Keene Memorial Library or the Friends of Keene Memorial Library Facebook pages.

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.
LOS ANGELES  Three other politicians discovered their campaigns got dirty money from Nigerian billionaire Gilbert Chagoury and got rid of it, a process where they formally disgorge the money by donating it to charity.

The reason Nebraska Rep. Jeff Fortenberry didnt do the same right away?

A prosecutor told him not to, according to his former attorney.

Trey Gowdy, who represented Fortenberry during the investigation into whether he received foreign funds, testified Wednesday that he suggested to prosecutors that Fortenberry would return the funds to the donors, after learning that the money probably came from Chagoury.

Gowdy said Assistant U.S. Attorney Mack Jenkins, the lead prosecutor in the case, told him that Fortenberry shouldnt return it to the donors, in part because it could tip off the donors that they were under federal investigation. When Gowdy asked what Fortenberry should do instead, he said, Jenkins didnt give any suggestions.

When you hear that something is going to hurt an investigation, and your purpose is to assist that investigation, youre not going to do it, Gowdy said.

Day 5 of Fortenberry's federal trial marked the end of the government's case, and the beginning of Fortenberry's defense. As told through the first week of trial, the entire saga started with Fortenberrys support of In Defense of Christians, a group devoted to protecting Christians and other religious minorities in the Middle East.

The A, B and C of IDC were Eli Ayoub, Toufic Baaklini and Chagoury, all of whom are of Lebanese descent. Chagoury used both Ayoub and Baaklini, who are U.S. citizens, to funnel money to the campaigns of U.S. politicians, including: former presidential candidate Mitt Romney, California Rep. Darrell Issa, former Nebraska Rep. Lee Terry and Fortenberry. It is illegal for elected U.S. officials to accept donations from foreigners.

The others disgorged the money from their campaigns. Prosecutors have pointed out that Fortenberry took 2 years to do the same.

He didnt do it even after he noticed that most of the money raised at a February 2016 fundraiser in Los Angeles came from the same family. Seeing the same last name on the donor forms, Fortenberry asked Baaklini if he should be concerned  and Baaklini told him not to sweat it.

Fortenberry also didnt get rid of the money after a June 2018 phone call in which Ayoub told him that Baaklini had provided $30,000 in cash for the fundraiser and that the cash probably came from Chagoury.

He also didnt get rid of the money after the March 2019 FBI interview at his Lincoln home, prosecutors said.

Then came the second FBI interview in July 2019.

John Littrell, a Fortenberry attorney, asked Gowdy if he would agree with Fortenberrys comment in July 2019 that he was horrified at finding out that it was Chagourys money.

Asked to describe Fortenberrys reaction, Gowdy said: Shock and anger. It was shock, with a subtext of anger.

Part of the subtext of Gowdys testimony Wednesday was this: The attorney seemed to regret that he had allowed Fortenberry to be interviewed by the feds in July 2019.

A former federal and district attorney, as well as congressman, Gowdy said he believed that Fortenberry was trending toward a witness and that the government just wanted to size him up in terms of his reliability and credibility.

In reality, Fortenberry was the subject of the investigation. The FBI had taped the June 2018 phone call between Fortenberry and Ayoub. And FBI agents had taped the Lincoln interview and already had suspected him of lying.

An attorney asked Gowdy if he knew that the FBI had secretly recorded all of those events.

No, he testified, with a smirk.

Did he believe the feds were just sizing up Fortenberry as a witness?

One-hundred percent, Gowdy said emphatically.

Defense attorneys also introduced an FBI memo that they say shows the FBI had predetermined, even before the Lincoln interview, that they were going to charge Fortenberry. In the memo, agent Todd Carter wrote that he would approach Fortenberry and interview him about his conversations with Ayoub and his knowledge of the source of the $30,000 campaign contribution.

Case agents will also seek to indict Fortenberry with misprision (concealment) of felony and conduit contributions. In addition, if case agents determine from the interview that Fortenberry is making false statements, he will be charged with false statements.

A second FBI agent on the case, Edward Choe, testified that he hadnt seen that memo and that he didnt share the opinion that Fortenberry automatically would be charged.

And prosecutors argued that such memos are typical. Any criminal charges are subject to change, depending on what happens in the course of interviews and investigations, they say.

At that point, Choe said, agents had been continually checking to see if Fortenberry had gotten rid of the illegal campaign money. He hadnt.

Another memo caused a stir Wednesday. Prosecutor Jamari Buxton told the judge that he wanted to introduce a memo that Fortenberry had sent to the U.S. House of Representatives clerk just last week, seeking to vote by proxy in the House because of the ongoing public health emergency. Fortenberrys note made no mention of the real reason he can't attend: this trial.

It would counter any notion that Fortenberry is steadfastly honest, Buxton said.

Judge Stanley Blumenfeld Jr. considered it but ultimately decided against it. He said it would take too much evidence to establish why it was written and the process Congress uses during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In other testimony, Fortenberrys chief of staff, Andy Braner, testified that his boss is the countrys last great statesman and "a visionary."

The nine-term congressman is so scrupulous that, Braner said, he once made Braner replace an office-stamp on a piece of mail. Fortenberry handed him a stamp from his wallet.

Were not going to have the taxpayers pay for my personal mail, Fortenberry told Braner.

Another time in 2019, Braner said, a visitor from the Middle East tried to hand Braner an envelope of cash in recognition of all the work Fortenberry had done in the Middle East. Braner refused.

Two days later, Braner informed the congressman of the interaction.

Fortenberry was irate, Braner said. He said, Call the (House) Sergeant at Arms and get him up here. Were going to tell him everything and make sure that doesnt happen again. 

Prosecutors noted that the Middle East envoy had offered Braner cash just a month after the FBI had interviewed Fortenberry about his campaign receiving another foreigner's cash. Hence the outrage, Buxton suggested.

Another House member told the jury that she has always known Fortenberry as an honorable person.

Rep. Anna Eshoo, a Democrat, said Fortenberry came across the aisle, literally, to meet her. He wanted to talk about a cause he thought she would share.

Eshoo, a half-Armenian, half-Assyrian representative from Northern California, said Fortenberry was sincere: He wanted her input on the issue of protecting religious minorities in the Middle East.

Thats how I got to meet and work with Jeff, Eshoo said. I think he brings honor to what he does. ... Hes faith filled. Hes honest. His word is always good  I cant say that about all members of Congress.

Whether his word is always good is a question for the federal jury. Jurors are expected to begin deliberating the case Thursday or Friday. Fortenberry is charged with two counts of lying to the FBI and one count of trying to conceal his knowledge about the true source of the $30,000 campaign donation.

Fortenberrys defense team is expected to continue Thursday to put the FBI on trial for its handling of the probe. Attorney Ryan Fraser blasted the FBI for showing up unannounced to the Fortenberry home and lying to Celeste Fortenberry, the congressman's wife, about why they were there. Jeff Fortenberry had called then-Lincoln Police Chief Jeff Bliemeister to send two officers to his house to screen and monitor the FBI agents. Bliemeister is expected to testify Thursday.

When FBI agents showed up, Fraser said, Fortenberry was exhausted, having just returned from a trip to Africa where he was briefed on elephant poaching.

You would expect the FBI to warn you if you were the victim of an illegal foreign campaign donation, asked Littrell.

Oh I would hope so, Eshoo said.

She paused, correcting herself.

I would think so, she said. Not just hope.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
For decades, the abortion industry has pushed the mantra that abortion is a human right. Theyve tried their best to normalize a culture of death, where the most vulnerable among us have fallen victim to the lie that one persons so-called right to privacy trumps the right of another to live. The infamous Supreme Court decision on Roe v. Wade gave false credibility to their movement. But in less than four months, the Supreme Court could finally overturn Roe v. Wade.

Theres never been a more exciting time to be pro-life.

The Supreme Courts ruling could return the ability to regulate abortion to the states. If they do, Nebraska must be ready to protect the unborn. This week, our Legislature is considering pro-life legislation that will take effect the moment Roe v. Wade is undone.

Senator Joni Albrecht has introduced LB 933, the Human Life Protection Act, which would ban abortion in Nebraska immediately after Roe v. Wade is overturned. Many in our Legislature have recognized its importance. Speaker Mike Hilgers has made it his priority bill, and over 20 additional senators have added their names to LB 933 to show their full support of it. Even so, liberals on the Legislatures Judiciary Committee (Senators Lathrop, DeBoer, McKinney, Morfeld, and Pansing Brooks) are blocking this bill from being debated on the floor. Liberal state senators unsuccessfully tried the same tactic two years ago, in an attempt to stop Senator Suzanne Geists bill to ban the brutal practice of dismemberment abortion (LB 814).

Thankfully, the Nebraska Unicameral has a procedure senators can use to bring a bill to the floor, even when a committee is being uncooperative. Its called a pull motion. The move serves as a check to ensure the will of the people doesnt fall victim to a minority of legislators. A simple majority vote of the Legislature bypasses the committee vote thats traditionally needed to move a bill to the floor. Theres past precedent for using a pull motion to pass strong pro-life legislation. In 2020, Senator Geist successfully used a pull motion to bring LB 814 out of committee for debate. That bill eventually passed by a wide margin, and I signed it into law.

This Friday, on the International Day of the Unborn Child, Senator Albrecht will seek to use the pull motion to overcome the Judiciary Committees obstruction. Senators will have the historic opportunity to extend protections to every preborn girl and boy in Nebraska. I encourage the Legislature to get LB 933 to my desk this session so that Nebraska can uphold the right to life.

Nebraska is a pro-life state. Our citizens have repeatedly elected representatives who have enacted pro-life laws. Nebraskans support expectant mothers and young parents. They give generously to families in need. They volunteer at crisis pregnancy centers. Despite freezing cold, thousands of Nebraskans take part in the annual Walk for Life every January. They form Life Chains and hold prayer vigils. They display their pro-life convictions on license plates, billboards, and yard signs. In word and deed, Nebraskans are champions for life.

Senators can carry on this tradition in 2022. In addition to LB 933, there are two other pro-life bills in the Legislature this year.

LB 781

: Senator Julie Slama is sponsoring the Heartbeat Act. It requires a physician to perform an ultrasound prior to performing an abortion. If a heartbeat is detected, the bill would make it unlawful for a physician to perform an abortion.

LB 1086

: Senator Suzanne Geist introduced the Chemical Abortion Safety Protocol Act. Senator John Lowe has prioritized the bill, which prohibits physicians from providing any abortion-inducing drug to a woman whose pregnancy is more than forty-nine days of gestational age. And it requires abortion-inducing drugs to be provided by a physician.

In the coming days and weeks, senators will decide the fate of these bills. The stakes couldnt possibly be higher. I encourage you to contact your state senator to urge them to protect the unborn. You can find their contact information at www.NebraskaLegislature.gov.

If you have questions about my support of pro-life legislation, email pete.ricketts@nebraska.gov or call 402-471-2244. As Nebraskans, we must do our part to protect every preborn girl and boy.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
The URL has been copied to your clipboard

The code has been copied to your clipboard.

The Taliban has ordered secondary girls' schools in Afghanistan to shut just hours after they reopened, sending many home disappointed. Safa, a ninth-grade student, called RFE/RLs Radio Azadi from Kabul and described her dismay at the decision.
KABUL -- The Taliban has ordered secondary girls schools in Afghanistan to shut just hours after they reopened, sending many home disappointed while angering an international community already upset about restrictions on womens freedoms since the militants took over the country last August.

The Taliban Education Ministry had said last week that schools for all students, including girls, would open around the country on March 23 after months of restrictions on education for high-school-aged girls.

A ministry spokesman released a video on March 22 welcoming all students back to class.

On March 23, however, an Education Ministry notice said girls' schools would remain shut until a plan was drawn up in accordance with Islamic law and Afghan culture.

"We went to school today with a lot of joy and happiness. Unfortunately, we were sent back and we were told that you cannot go to school until further notice, Safa, a grade nine student in Kabul told RFE/RL's Radio Azadi.

Taliban spokesman Inamullah Samangani confirmed the validity of the order.

The surprising decision is likely to disrupt efforts by the Taliban, which pledged to rule differently than during its brutal regime of the 1990s -- which saw women confined to their homes, banned most entertainment, and employed punishments that included stoning and public executions -- to win recognition from potential international donors at a time when the country is mired in a worsening humanitarian crisis.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the move deeply damaging, and urged the Taliban to reconsider.

"The denial of education not only violates the equal rights of women and girls to education, it also jeopardizes the countrys future in view of the tremendous contributions by Afghan women and girls," Guterres said in a statement.

"I urge the Taliban de facto authorities to open schools for all students without any further delay."

The United States also condemned the Taliban action.

"We join millions of Afghan families today in expressing deep, deep disappointment and condemnation with the Taliban's decision not to allow women and girls to return to school above grade six," State Department spokesman Ned Price said.

Meanwhile, UNICEFs South Asia Director George Laryea-Adjei conveyed his disappointment over the decision in a Twitter message, calling the reversal "a major setback."

When I woke up this morning, I was hopeful that every girl and every boy in #Afghanistan would have the opportunity to go to school," Laryea-Adjei wrote. "I am deeply worried that girls from Grade 7 to Grade 12 cannot return to school. This news is a major setback -- for girls and their futures.

Even before the Taliban backtracked on its announcement, Human Rights Watch (HRW) had expressed skepticism about the Taliban's determination to allow girls to go back to school.

"The Talibans pledge to allow all girls secondary schools in Afghanistan to reopen on March 23, 2022, needs careful monitoring," HRW said on March 22.



Taliban statements are often very different from Taliban actions, said HRW's Heather Barr. No one should believe that the Taliban has stopped blocking girls from secondary education until the evidence from the ground shows that to be the case.

For Safa, questions over when shell be able to go back to school have clouded her dreams just as she allowed them back into her thoughts.

I had a lot of hope, a lot of dreams. I wanted to achieve my dreams, I had high hopes. But unfortunately, this shattered all our hopes, she said.

They destroyed all our desires. They violate the rights of girls and women. If they are saying that they are Muslims, why are they violating our girls' rights? We used to wear the hijab in the past and we are Muslims, God willing, we were Muslims and we adhere to our religion. If they are Muslims, then why are they violating our rights and not administering justice?"

With reporting by Reuters and AFP
Alan Gottlieb is editor of Denver-based public education watchdog boardhawk.org. Gottlieb covered Denver Public Schools as a newspaper reporter in the mid-1990s, worked as an education program officer for The Piton Foundation and co-founded Education News Colorado and Chalkbeat.
Q&A: PHONEPHET SOUTHICHACK

Question: What are six words to describe your food?

Answer: Unique, simple, cultural, interesting, creative, artistic

Q: What are 10 words to describe you?

A: Dedicated, passionate, focused, motivated, goal-oriented, fun, professional, skilled, down-to-earth, mentor

Q: What is your favorite ingredient?

A: Yuzu fruit which is a Japanese citrus fruit that is a cross between mandarin orange and grapefruit

Q: What is the most overrated ingredient?

A: Truffle oil

Q: What is the most undervalued ingredient?

A: Rice because some people think rice is rice, but it is important to many cultures. I was taught to eat rice with meat or vegetables instead of seeing rice as a side dish.

Q: What is one food you detest?

A: Durian fruit

Q: What is one food you can't live without?

A: Fried chicken

Q: Who is your favorite celebrity chef?

A: Anthony Bourdain

Q: What is the hardest lesson you've learned?

A: How hard it is to keep your cool in stressful situations.

Q: What is the weirdest thing you've ever eaten?

A: Bitter melon; it looks like a weird cucumber

Q: If you're making a pizza, what's on it?

A: Pepperoni, bacon, jalapeno

Q: If you're making an omelet, what's in it?

A: Bell pepper, mushrooms, tomatoes and sweet basil.

Q: Where is your after-work hangout?

A: It will be the new tiki bar, The Shrunken Head.
OUAGADOUGOU, 22 March (AFP)  The trial of the alleged killers of former Burkinabe President Thomas Sankara in 1987 resumed Tuesday after several weeks of interruption, with defense lawyers pleading for the release of their clients (Media)

The trial had been suspended since 3 March, at the request of defence lawyers who questioned the constitutionality of the charge of attacking state security.

On Friday, the Constitutional Council had rejected this request and the trial resumed on Tuesday with the pleadings of the defense.

They began with that of Me Issiaka Ouattara, lawyer of the military doctor Alidou Diebre, prosecuted for forgery in public writing for having established the death certificate of Thomas Sankara with the mention natural death.

Referring to a statute of limitations for the acts alleged against his client, the lawyer pleaded the acquittal because, he said, Mr. Diebre had no guilty intention.

Then, Me Kopiho Moumouny, lawyer of Kafando Hamadou, also prosecuted for forgery in public writing, for having produced another death certificate with the mention accidental death, also evoked the prescription of the facts and pleaded the acquittal.

Me Mamadou Coulibaly, lawyer of a third accused, Albert Belemliga, prosecuted for complicity in an attack on the security of the State, in turn asked for the acquittal of his client.

Me Coulibaly argued that no witness implicated his client, whose release is also requested by the military prosecutor.

Fourteen defendants are on trial in the trial of the murderers of Thomas Sankara and his companions in a coup in 1987.

The two main ones, former President Blaise Compaore who came to power during the putsch before being driven out by the street in 2014, and Hyacinthe Kafando, commander of his guard during the coup, are absent.

At the beginning of February, the military prosecutors office requested thirty years in prison for them for attacking state security, concealing a corpse and complicity in murder.

Twenty years in prison were requested against General Gilbert Diendere, one of the army chiefs during the 1987 putsch and the main defendant present.

He is already serving a 20-year sentence for an attempted coup in 2015.

The hearings of this historic trial began at the end of October and were suspended several times, notably at the time of the coup detat of 24 January during which Lieutenant-Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba overthrew President-elect Roch Marc Christian Kabore.
BOULDER  A year after a gunman entered Boulders south-end King Soopers and killed 10 people, the day has burrowed irreversibly into peoples memories.

On Tuesday, the city has declared March 22 a Day of Remembrance, and people remembered shopping in the store or where they were when they heard the news. Congress has renamed the downtown post office after Eric Talley, the police officer killed in the shooting.

As the Boulder community gathered to mark the anniversary, the blustery afternoon weather echoed the gray chill of March 22, 2021.

In many ways, it hits home that this is a cold spring day. Its cold because for all of us, theres loss in our heart, said Gov. Jared Polis during a community memorial.

He acknowledged the way that mass shootings shatter the safety of everyday places: how nine civilians died simply because they decided to pick up groceries on that Monday afternoon a year ago, and how a police officer was shot down moments after he charged into the store.

The people killed in the massacre along with Talley, 51, were Denny Stong, 20; Neven Stanisic, 23; Rikki Olds, 25; Tralona Bartkowiak, 49; Teri Leiker, 51 ; Suzanne Fountain, 59; Kevin Mahoney, 61; Lynn Murray, 62; and Jody Waters, 65.

Ten small white trees strung with lights twinkled on the stage of the Glen Huntington Bandshell in Central Park, where the community remembrance was held. And a flag-draped patrol car with flowers dripping from the hood sat outside the Police Department in tribute to Talley  one of the first officers to respond to the shooting  where the department held a fallen officer memorial earlier.

A string of rosary beads  Talley was Catholic  hung on his department photo next to the car.

He ran towards gunfire and entered the store," noted District Attorney Michael Dougherty. "Based on the 911 calls, he had reason to believe that he was outnumbered and outgunned, but he and his fellow officers never hesitated and immediately charged in to save the lives of Boulders community members.

Susan Gilmore has come to the Boulder courthouse on the days of each hearing in the case of the man accused in the shooting. She worries that people have returned to their everyday lives, and wants the victims families to know she hasn't forgotten them.

I want to continue to make sure  that they know they are loved and that they matter, and that law enforcement matters, Gilmore said.

Her 10-year-old son, Gil, wants to be a police officer, and he made a video with a message of support for Boulder police, knowing the anniversary would be a tough day for them.

At Talleys commemoration, Gilmore and her son stood behind a formation of police officers waving small flags.

Polis remembered kneeling for a few moments at a memorial that sprang up in the days after the shooting , and he attended many of the victims funerals.

In many ways, those funerals were just a cross-section of any of us and all of us. The lives lived  the lives of those who were young that they never got to live.

Carrie McIlvaine, who has lived in Boulder for 20 years, has spent time getting to know employees at the King Soopers on Table Mesa and in Gunbarrel when she shops and visits the pharmacy each week. Even though the shooting has given her some lingering anxiety , going back to King Soopers and not being afraid to go out has helped her process the trauma.

McIlvaine said it was nice to see community members attend the memorial at the bandshell.

The community hasnt lost its love. It hasnt lost its togetherness, she said.

County Commissioner Claire Levy has early memories of picking up baby photos of her oldest child at the King Soopers in 1989 and immediately tearing open the packets. When her daughter reached toddler age, Levy remembers her charming the deli worker for samples of cheese.

So many of my memories and milestones include that store, she said.

The public officials at the memorials also included Boulder City Manager Nuria Rivera-Vandermyde, Police Chief Maris Herold, and U..S. Reps. Joe Neguse and Jason Crow.

Legislators from Boulder, including Sen. Steve Fenberg and Reps. Judy Amabile, Edie Hooton, and Matt Gray sent a statement Tuesday:

One year ago, the Boulder community suffered a devastating tragedy when a gunman brutally cut short 10 innocent lives. Today, our hearts remain heavy for the families of the victims, and for the entire Boulder community. But faced with tragedy, our community has emerged stronger and more resilient than before. We have been profoundly moved by the myriad ways Boulder County has come together to honor the victims of this tragedy and support their families and one another.

The Rev. Daniel Nolan, Talleys family pastor, said the deaths should remind people to reflect on how they want to spend the time they have left. Few people wish they had made more money or spent more time at the office, he said.

If they could have been given one more year, how would they have used it?

What will you wish you had done? Who will you want to have forgiven? If you have any words you want to say to somebody, say them.

Levy didnt shy away from gun policy in her speech. She said shes proud Boulder is known as a place that doesnt welcome guns like the semi-automatic pistol the accused shooter used in the massacre.

Can we return to that innocence? No, we cant. Because we are in this world, and we are of this world.

Boulder Mayor Aaron Brockett said the names of the victims will be read each year on March 22 to make sure they arent forgotten. When a persons name is spoken for the last time, its like they have died all over again, he said.

Let us never allow this third death of our 10 fallen neighbors.
The ticker on a website where Marshall fire victims go to for community support registered Tuesday as the 89th day since the disaster. And after three months of legal disputes and hand wringing over when debris removal would begin, a judge threw out the one remaining lawsuit over how the multimillion dollar contract for fire cleanup was awarded.
CONAKRY, (AFP)  Guineas strongman Colonel Mamady Doumbouya launched a six-week reconciliation conference on Tuesday, hailing an opportunity to heal historic wounds, despite prominent political groups boycotting the talks.

Ex-special forces commander Doumbouya seized power in the West African state in a military coup in September, deposing the elected government after months of brewing discontent.

The strongman  who has since been sworn in as interim president  has promised to restore civilian rule, but resisted international pressure to commit to a date.

On Tuesday, Doumbouya launched the national conference, which he described as a way to achieve reconciliation and forgiveness in the impoverished country with a history of autocratic rule.

Every one of us here has suffered brutalities, the wounds are there he told the conference in the Mohammed V palace in the capital Conakry.

Its time we cleaned them up, put bandages on them, the strongman added, explaining that the conference offered a historic opportunity for Guineans to look each other in the face.

The conference is due to continue until April 29, in both Conakry and the interior, Doumbouya said.

However, several prominent political groups are boycotting the talks, including the National Alliance for Change and Democracy (ANAD), which comprises about 20 separate organisations.

Aliou Conde, a member of a leading political party that is part of ANAD, told AFP: We dont know what this is about, or what were supposed to discuss for more than a month.

The influential FNDC coalition, which staged huge protests against ex-president Alpha Conde before the army overthrew him last year, has also said that it will skip the conference.

Conde, 84, had drawn fierce opposition after he pushed through a new constitution in 2020 that allowed him to run for a third presidential term.

Many Guineans initially welcomed the military coup, however, there is growing discontent against the ruling junta in the nation of 13 million people.
Source: AFP /The Senegalese army announced on Tuesday that it had totally destroyed several rebel bases belonging to separatists in Casamance, deploring one soldier killed and eight wounded during the military operation.

The armies have totally destroyed or occupied rebel bases in several regions of Casamance (south), the Ministry of Armed Forces said in a statement.

In addition to one dead and eight wounded among the military, the clashes left several dead in the rebel camp, the army said without specifying the number, and other separatists fled abandoning weapons and equipment.

These failed criminal gangs will be hunted down to their last entrenchments, inside the national territory and everywhere else, the statement warned.

The army announced on March 13 the launch of an operation in Casamance to dismantle the bases of Salif Sadios MFDC rebel faction.

The Movement of Democratic Forces of Casamance (MFDC) has been waging a low-intensity conflict since 1982, causing several thousand deaths.

This conflict remained latent until the Senegalese army launched a major offensive against the rebels in January 2021. On 24 January, four soldiers were killed in clashes, seven others were captured and taken across the Gambian border, before being released in February.

The Gambia has recorded more than 6,000 displaced people and refugees fleeing violence between soldiers and Casamance rebels.

The Gambian government promised last week that it would not allow its territory to be used as a launching pad or anyone entering the country with weapons and ammunition.

Casamance rebels, accused of trafficking in timber and cannabis, have often taken refuge in Gambia or Guinea-Bissau, which also shares a border with Senegal.

Senegalese President Macky Sall has made definitive peace in Casamance the priority of his second term.

Casamance was a Portuguese possession for several centuries before being ceded to the French colonial empire in 1888 and then being integrated into Senegal at the time of its independence in 1960.
Displaced Ukrainians on a Poland-bound train bid farewell Tuesday in Lviv, western Ukraine. The U.N. refugee agency says more than 3.5 million people have fled Ukraine since Russias invasion, passing another milestone in an exodus that has led to Europes worst refugee crisis since World War II.
Doug Lamborn currently serves as the U.S. Representative for Colorado's 5th congressional district.
A group of El Paso County Republicans chant Vickie, Vickie to call over El Paso County GOP chairwoman Vickie Tonkins before the assembly started Saturday.
Keep U.S. Space Command in Colorado Springs.

That was the message Colorado's congressional delegation made loud and clear in a letter delivered to President Joe Biden Tuesday.

We remain deeply troubled that the decision to relocate USSPACECOM undermined the two most important factors for any critical basing decision: protecting national security and minimizing cost, the letter stated.

Democratic Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper were joined in the letter by Republican Reps. Doug Lamborn, Ken Buck and Lauren Boebert, as well as Democratic Reps. Jason Crow, Diana DeGette, Ed Perlmutter and Joe Neguse.

With U.S. Space Command, U.S. Northern Command, Army Space and Missile Defense Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command, no place in the United States can claim more strategic importance than Colorado Springs.

Colorado has the largest contingent of bases named for the new space service. It is also home to Buckley Space Force Base in Aurora, Space Operations Command and the bulk of the Space Force's 13,000 troops.

Colorado Springs is the provisional home of U.S. Space Command  which oversees all military missions in orbit  until at least 2026. Former President Donald Trump announced in January 2021 that Space Command and its 1,400 troops would be uprooted and moved to Huntsville, Ala., as soon as 2026. But the Government Accountability Office and the Pentagon's Office of Inspector General are reviewing the decision, and Congress could reverse it. Findings from the investigations into potential political influence are expected soon.

The delegation urged Biden to carefully review both reports and ensure that the final basing decision takes the findings, and national security and cost implications, into account.

At a time when threats in space are rapidly increasing, particularly from Russia and China, USSPACECOM cannot afford any operational interruptions and must achieve Full Operational Capability (FOC) as quickly as possible, the lawmakers wrote.

As you are well aware, space has become an increasingly critical and contested domain that is central to our economy, communications and national security. President (Vladimir) Putins lawless, reprehensible aggression against Ukraine in violation of international rules and norms, underscores the urgency for America to maintain superiority in the space domain.

Russia began a large-scale invasion of Ukraine Feb. 24 and has violated international law by targeting civilian populations. Ukrainians  many who have taken up arms to defend their country  has slowed Russias advance toward the capital city of Kyiv after nearly one month of fighting.

In addition to defending satellite systems and providing GPS navigation, U.S. Space Command assists with national security communications, internet and cellular services along with missile warning and defense.

We support the export controls and sanctions that you have enacted to degrade Russias defense programs, particularly in light of Russias unlawful invasion of Ukraine. Our adversaries, however, will waste no time enhancing their space control operations, and neither can we waste time in developing our space defense strategies and capabilities," the letter continued.

We must respond to rapidly advancing threats in space by building on the investments that have already been made in Colorado and to our mission in space  not squandering time, money, personnel, and additional resources by moving USSPACECOM.

The letter mentioned many of the space assets already in place in Colorado, including the National Space Defense Center at Schriever Space Force Base and the National Reconnaissance Offices Aerospace Data Facility-Colorado at Buckley . Both agencies keep an eye on space and warns against threats as part of their mission.

Over the past several decades, Colorado has also developed national security communications systems that would be extraordinarily expensive to quickly replicate elsewhere. These unparalleled missions, and existing infrastructure, make Colorado the nexus of national security space operations for the Intelligence Community and the Department of Defense, the letter state.

The intelligence community warned in its annual threat assessment that Russia continues to train its military space elements and field new anti-satellite weapons to disrupt and degrade U.S. and allied space capabilities, the letter said.

Russia performed an anti-satellite missile test last November, launching a missile that destroyed Cosmos 1408, a defunct Soviet reconnaissance satellite. The satellite was blown into roughly 1,500 trackable pieces of debris now in Earths orbit . U.S. Space Command is responsible for tracking the debris.

At the time, Gen. James Dickinson, commander of U.S. Space Command said, Russia has demonstrated a deliberate disregard for the security, safety, stability, and long-term sustainability of the space domain for all nations.
Spains backing of Moroccos Autonomy Initiative stems from a wish to contribute to settlement of the Moroccan Sahara

By backing the Moroccan autonomy initiative as the most serious, realistic and credible basis for resolving the dispute over the Sahara, Spain wants to contribute to resolving this issue that has lasted too long, Spanish Foreign Minister, Jose Manuel Albares said on Tuesday.

This decision aims to contribute to ending a conflict that has lasted for over 46 years, Albares said before the Spanish Senate, assuring that Spain has followed the lead of other world powers that have supported the Moroccan approach.

On March 18, Spain officially endorsed in a letter by the head of the Spanish Government Pedro Sanchez to King Mohammed VI Moroccos Autonomy Plan as the most serious and credible solution to end the decades-long dispute.
Erin Kane has been tapped to become Douglas County School District's next superintendent, selected by a divided school board to take the reins of the state's third-largest district.

The board voted 4-3 late Tuesday evening to direct its lawyers to begin contract negotiations with Kane, who beat out one other finalist for the job: Danny Winsor, the district's executive director of schools.

New board members Mike Peterson, Christy Williams, Kaylee Winegar and Becky Myers voted to support Kane, while the longer-serving members  David Ray, Susan Meek and Elizabeth Hanson  voted no and instead supported Winsor.

Kane, a founder and leader of a Douglas County charter school, was the odds-on favorite to become the district's next top administrator: Board President Peterson said in February that he'd asked Kane if she'd be interested in becoming superintendent before the job was vacant, and Vice President Williams, who has children at Kane's school, also said she wanted Kane to apply.

Board Secretary Myers nominated Kane on Tuesday night to become the sole finalist for the job. She praised Kane's courage and her leadership of the district during an interim superintendent stint between 2016 and 2018. She also noted that Kane had kept students in person during much of the first year of the pandemic and hadn't shifted toward the "progressive movement" or given in to fear. Winegar and Peterson also praised Kane's previous executive leadership experience.

Peterson said Kane could lead with "honor and integrity" and would support teachers but would respect the role of parents in the raising and educating of their children.

The vote came after more than 100 people spoke during public comment, most of whom spoke in favor of Kane, though a number of callers toward the end of public comment spoke in support of Winsor.

Ray, one of the more veteran board members, said supporting Winsor would bring stability to the district, and Meek said Winsor could "build a bridge the best."

Ray said he had hoped, as a "symbolic" gesture, the board could pick one candidate to support together. Peterson replied that he was voting for the candidate he thought would be best and wasn't voting to make a symbolic gesture, and Williams said the board's three other members could compromise by fully supporting Kane's candidacy.

The district is not quite seven weeks removed from firing Kane's predecessor, Corey Wise, during a contentious Feb. 4 meeting that revealed the deep fractures within the board: The board's four new members, all elected in November and with the majority needed to direct policy, all voted to oust Wise after communicating individually before the decision was made.

The board's three, longer-serving members all spoke strenuously against the decision.

The board's leaders set a rapid timeline to replace Wise, which drew further criticism from the three longer-serving members.

In any case, the district is now Kane's to oversee. A consultant who helped launch the American Academy charter school in 2009, Kane has two months of this academic year left. She'll be charged with preparing the district's likely push for a funding ballot measure in November, to make good on the board's stated priority of increasing teacher salaries.

During her public interview earlier this month, Kane said she didn't see a "role for (politics) in leading a school district," and she said she viewed the role of the superintendent as executing the school board's vision. She said she opposed a voucher program or something similar and that she supported raising teacher salaries and building more neighborhood schools.

She will also steer the district out of what is hopefully the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw further division within the district over masks and other mitigation measures. It was that disagreement  which saw the district sue the county health department to keep masks in place  that fueled the successful election of the board's new leaders and, in part, Wise's ouster.

While Kane's hiring necessarily signals a pivot away from Wise's tenure, something the board's leaders have advocated for since they fired him, obstacles remain: The board is still engaged in litigation alleging the four newcomers broke Colorado law in the run-up to Wise's termination, and they've already suffered an early setback.

Wise  whose lawyers directed the district to maintain and turn over a broad swath of records related to the board, Kane and Wise  has also indicated he will file litigation against his former employer of 26 years.
TOKYO, March 23, 2022Canon Inc. expresses deep concern for the ongoing military attacks against Ukraine and the humanitarian crisis it has created, and hopes that the people affected may soon be able to live in peace once again.

The Canon Group is making a donation of approximately one million euros (approximately JPY 130 million / USD $1.1 million) to the UNHCR refugee agency and other international humanitarian organizations. These funds will be used to provide support to the Ukrainian people whose lives have been so deeply affected. The Canon Group will strive to provide ongoing support through such measures as collecting donations from Group employees.

Canon's corporate philosophy is kyosei. It conveys our dedication to seeing all people harmoniously living and working together in happiness into the future.
The U.N. Libya mission said consultative meetings with legislators about election rules would start on Tuesday even though the eastern-based parliament has not yet named members to a joint committee on the subject.

The meetings are part of an initiative by U.N. Libya adviser Stephanie Williams, backed by Western countries, to break a standoff between two rival governments in the country.

Amid civil war, Libya split in 2014 between warring eastern and western factions. The High State Council, a legislative body that backed the western side, has named its six members to the committee.

The U.N. mission said in a statement it expects the eastern-based House of Representatives to name its representatives to the committee and to join the meeting in the coming days.

Source: REUTERS
A Sunday evening concert drew about 120 people to West Main Baptist and raised more than $3,100 for humanitarian efforts in Ukraine.

Averett University partnered with the church for an evening with a theme of peace, hope and healing. Musicians Katya Kramer-Lapin and Vyacheslav Gryaznov provided a classical piano concert not only raise money, but show solidarity with the war-torn country.

We believe that music is healingand we want to share that with you all tonight, Kramer-Lapin said.

The two Russian-born pianists felt a sense of responsibility to stand in solidarity with the Ukrainian people, a news release stated.

Its just something I feel like I should do as a musician, said Gryaznov.

As we sing in our Averett Alma Mater, Well remember now and ever, our dear blue and gold, so shall we remember tonight the blue and gold of the Ukrainian flag and all it represents, and we honor its people and send love and hope their way, said Averett President Tiffany M. Franks, who opened the concert.

The proceeds will go to the Ukrainian Red Cross to help people on the ground with needs for food, water, shelter, medical care and protection, the release stated.

Hope that art can be healing and reconciling once again in a way that words rarely are and violence never is, said West Main Baptist senior pastor Drew Herring. And hope that music can allow us to transcend our fear, our hatred, our rage, to fight for what is right, while also loving all of our sisters and brothers in this world. May it start right here and right now with us tonight.

Both groups are working on other avenues to support the Ukrainian people.

West Main Baptist is partnering with Project Ruth, an initiative of the Baptist General Association of Virginia, as they are host more than 42 Ukrainian refugee women and children, feeding and caring for them, the release stated. Donations can be made in support of this effort through the church.

American National Bank, EBI Furniture and Averett are partnering to collect items like blankets, hygiene products, bandages and kids toys.

There are boxes around Averetts campus to collect donations that will be picked up March 31.
DANVILLE, Va.  People who have learned to fly agree it is an amazing experience that never gets old.

However, theres a vast gender gap. In 2020, men comprised nearly 94% of active-duty pilots, according to Air Force Personnel Center data from October 2020. The numbers are similar for airline pilots and even drones (also known as small unmanned aircraft systems).

The Danville Squadron of the Civil Air Patrol is trying to bridge that gap.

Katherine Kit Lippert, a Danville nurse, was working in intensive care when a patient revealed her husband had experienced a heart attack and died while he was flying their airplane, and the patient landed the plane safely.

That day, Lippert decided she would learn to fly because she often flew with her pilot husband. It was an easy decision because she grew up around airplane talk.

My father flew in WWII and my mother was a flight instructor prior to getting married, she said.

She used to fly from Ohio to Missouri to go to college. One of her students, John Lane, started an airport and big training facility in Lebanon, Ohio.

Lippert has flown for decades and is now known as Maj. Kit Lippert, instructor pilot for the Danville Squadron of Civil Air Patrol, the Auxiliary of the U.S. Air Force.

She says the most challenging part about learning to fly was the studying part and attempting to understand weather.

Upset recovery flights and spinning the plane are the parts she enjoyed most.

Upset recovery is when a pilot learns how to get the plane out of inadvertent spins and unusual attitudes and get it level again, she said.

What Lippert had that most young women dont have was inspiration from others, and a female role model: a mother who was a pilot.

Encouragement

When another female pilot, Charlene Sufficool, first got to the U.S. Air Force Academy in 2012, she wanted to be an engineer or work in Intel. Her father was a mechanic for the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds flying team, but it never occurred to her that she could be a pilot.

I never really thought of it as a possibility for me, she said.

But one of her commanders kept encouraging her.

He was like, No, really, I think you could be a female fighter pilot, she said.

His insistence changed her career goals. Now, Capt. Sufficool flies A-10 jets with the 354th Fighter Squadron at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona.

It took a commander who believed in me as a woman to help me see what I could be, she said, and for me to believe in myself.

Again, confidence and inspiration from an outside source.

I feel free

Danville Civil Air Patrol Cadet Second Lt. Kayleigh Morris, a teenager, recently flew solo as a part of her flight training  a result of role models and encouragement from people who believed in her.

She had seen the squadrons flight instructor is a woman.

My Papa wanted to get his pilots license when he was in the Army, she said. But he didnt get to.

And what does this youthful pilot experience when she flies?

I feel free, she explained. Like nothing else in the world matters at that point in time. And I can just fly. Just being where the clouds are and looking down at Gods creation. And seeing how beautiful it is.

Morris also has earned a Civil Air Patrol recreational drone pilot qualification.

She also has female role model: her mother. Capt. Kristie Morris is an accomplished drone pilot who has earned multiple Civil Air Patrol drone pilot ratings as well as an FAA drone pilot license.

She is the director of operations for Civil Air Patrols drome program for the Virginia Wing and is helping move the needle in terms of using drones as a method of getting youth and adults  especially young women  interested in aviation and the STEM subjects that are involved in learning to fly drones.

Drones as entry point

Drones are a powerful entry point for getting youth interested in aviation.

Morris knows that often young women arent taught they are capable of being as good  or better  than the boys in aviation and STEM fields. In her previous experience as an apprentice coordinator for Southside Virginia Community College, Morris saw firsthand the critical need to encourage females to pursue STEM careers.

Currently Morris provides vendor support for Microsofts Girls in Engineering and Career Pathways for Women in Tech events.

Drones are  versatile and exploding with new technology  are reinventing certain areas of military tactics, delivery systems, agricultural aerial quality control, search and rescue, damage assessment after catastrophic weather events and anything else that needs to be observed lower and slower than airplanes can fly.

Females who learn to fly drones can have a rewarding career where female pilot participation is low and underestimated.

The Danville Squadron of the Civil Air Patrol uses multiple platforms to broaden teenagers knowledge and confidence about careers. They use airplanes, drones, rockets, robotic, and other attention-getting aerospace education kits that are also available to schools, including homeschool teachers.

The Squadron meets Tuesday evenings at Danville Regional Airport.

Learn more online at https://vawg.cap.gov/units/danville.
RALEIGH

How should North Carolina be governed? The same question can be asked about any other state in America, or any other country in the world. Its a critical question. It lies at the heart of every political dispute you can think of, from education reform and environmental protection to tax policy and economic development.

I have strong opinions about the subject. Perhaps you do, too. My task today is not to advocate mine or criticize yours. Rather, it is to argue for humility.

Questions about how good governments are structured and what they should do arent mere abstractions. They have a history. Past generations thought about them, struggled with them, and tried out different answers to see how they would work in practice.

Obviously, past generations have no monopoly on wisdom. They made big mistakes and often paid a big price for it. To say that history ought to inform our political thinking today is not to say we must be bound by tradition. But it would also be foolish to think modern wisdom is always greater, or to discount the lessons history can teach us about the constraints of human nature and the limits of good intentions.

Over the centuries, North Carolinians have developed governmental institutions and traditions that favor legislative over executive power, statewide consistency over local sovereignty, and fiscal solvency over grandiose plans. These preferences arent random or the product of some insidious scheme by corrupt insiders. They were constructed in stages, as the leaders of the day sought either to solve immediate problems in North Carolina or to avoid problems other states had gotten themselves into.

During the colonial era, for example, North Carolina was largely settled from north to south, not from the coast westward. Many settlers were fleeing what they saw as oppressive laws or unjust taxes. Many of my ancestors, for example, were Baptists, Presbyterians, Quakers, and other dissenters whose religious liberties were being suppressed by the established church in Virginia.

During the mid-1700s, they moved southward to the Carolina frontier. Eventually, the long arms of colonial governors found them even there, and again sought to interfere with their desire to conduct their own marriages, educate their children according to their own beliefs, and keep their own money. The backcountry rebelled. In the ensuing series of state constitutions, North Carolinians made sure to keep the executive branch divided and on a tight leash.

Much later, in the aftermath of the Great Depression, leaders grappled with a different challenge: how to ensure that basic services were provided across North Carolina, both economically and without disruption. Many localities had run up large debts and then defaulted on them. Through their lawmakers, they sought state bailouts. Meanwhile, how were courts, schools, and roads to be maintained?

Lawmakers decided to make the state the primary funder of basic services, while limiting local capacity to issue future debts. Taxpayers would pay the bill either way, of course, but a state-dominant funding system reduces inequities and manages risk.

These and other traditions of North Carolina government are hardy free from legitimate criticism. Ive challenged them myself on occasion. But they arent simply vestigial. If we thoughtlessly perform a constitutional appendectomy, we may rudely discover in the future that weve discarded something vitally important.

Georgetown University philosopher Daniel Robinson once used a wonderful image to describe the present value of studying the past. Remember the story of Theseus and the Minotaur? The former resolves to end the latters reign of terror over the Athenians. But the Minotaur resides in a labyrinth on Crete. Ariadne, a Cretan princess who loves Theseus, gives him a ball of thread. The hero ties the thread to a door post and lets it unspool so he can find his way out again after killing the beast.

North Carolina faces a range of challenges and opportunities. As we make our way through the resulting maze of choices, we may yet find value in traditions thread.

John Hood is a John Locke Foundation board member and author.
Virginia Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, has recently drawn media fire as only a conservative activist can.

And she deserves it.

Ive known Ginni Thomas since she worked at the Heritage Foundation and attended a writing seminar I was teaching there about 20 years ago. At the time, she was a sweet, eager-to-learn 40-something who happened to be married to a man who sat on the lands highest court. Not many Americans knew her name, though she sat next to her husband during his grueling 1991 confirmation hearings  led then by an imperious Delaware senator named Joe Biden.

I found her quite likable. Not so much Biden, in those days.

But something has happened to the Ginni Thomas whom I knew then. Perhaps her roots in Omaha, where she was raised by uber-conservative, Republican parents, simply grew out. Today, shes entrenched with various hard-right conservative groups that manifest some of the worst instincts of todays Republican Party.

Shes anti-feminist, anti-affirmative action, and, perhaps worst of all to her critics, pro-Donald Trump. (A Trump aide reportedly called her the wrecking ball because of her frequent lobbying efforts, which, needless to say, were tolerated in the White House for one reason only  her husband.)

A list of Ginni Thomass cross-pollinating associations, all legal, would fill this column. Suffice to say, she has not been idle in politics, advocating for issues that, importantly, could come before the court on which her husband serves. These include gun rights, affirmative action and abortion.

Some court watchers have called on Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from cases in which his wife has been active. This might seem sensible, at least for appearances sake. Already, the high court is viewed unfavorably by 44% of Americans, according to the Pew Research Center. But is it necessary as a matter of judicial ethics?

The operating presumption of some is that married folk surely discuss their work at home and, therefore, Clarence Thomas couldnt possibly be neutral on issues in which his wife had taken an interest. Ginni Thomas not only runs her own political consulting firm, but she also contracts with various individuals and groups who have at times submitted amicus briefs to the court in support of conservative arguments. This arrangement seems very close to the line.

More recently came Ginni Thomass admission that she attended the Jan. 6, 2021, pre-insurrection Stop the Steal protest on the Ellipse. This isnt itself a problem  except for the fact that the demonstrators hoped to interfere with congressional certification of Bidens election.

Its worth noting that Clarence Thomas was the lone dissenter from the decision that forced Trump to comply with the House select committees inquiry into the Jan. 6 coup attempt. More than 800 people have been arrested or charged in connection to events that day. Ginni Thomas co-signed a petition to remove Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) from the Republican conference that criticized the House inquiry as a politically motivated witch hunt, which seems dangerously close to pot-and-kettle territory.

Still, the pending case dealing with the constitutionality of a 2018 Mississippi state law banning abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy is what is most putting Ginni Thomass activism front and center. By making Ginni Thomas an issue, pro-choice advocates surely hope to undermine the integrity of her husband as the case is being decided. The audience for all this attention to Ginni Thomas is likely John G. Roberts Jr., the chief justice who speaks often about the need to protect the court from politics.

Where Clarence Thomas personally stands on abortion is no mystery. The senior justice is a devout Catholic. But when America: The Jesuit Review asked him how he handles his personal views when they conflict with the law, he said: You do your job and you go cry alone. Indeed, cases are decided on the facts of a particular case and applicable law, which is the very reason many legal scholars say that Roe v. Wade was a bad decision. There was no constitutional basis for the holding. On Dobbs, we shall see.

So, why do I say Ginni Thomas deserves the media fire?

Because she has asked for it  time and again  by being outrageous, by nurturing conspiracies, by being Stephen K. Bannons acolyte and encouraging the MAGA fringe. And by saying things such as America is at war against the deep state and the fascist left, which includes transsexual fascists. That helps no one.

But her biggest mistake is that she thinks shes important. She is not. Her husband is. By her words and actions, she has brought doubt to her husbands judicial integrity. She has diminished his hard-won gravitas.

Im sorry to have to say these things. Ginni Thomas can still be a sweet and kind person. But she never learned what wiser spouses of important men and women have known: It isnt about you. Stand down and let your better half do the job.

Kathleen Parkers email address is kathleenparker@washpost.com.
HIGH POINT  Police have arrested a High Point woman after the body of a dog that had been starved to death was found last week at an intersection southeast of downtown.

The male, dark brindle pit mix was found in a crate about 8:30 p.m. Friday at the intersection of Oakland Place and Monroe Place. High Point Police Department investigators determined the dog had been left at the edge of the road the previous night.

The dog "was partially covered in a blanket and a dirty bowl was left as well," according to a police incident report.

Police found that the dog had an implanted microchip and was recently adopted.

Fatima Jordan Bell, 46, was charged with felony killing an animal by starvation, according to a police arrest report. The arrest was made without incident, and bond was set as a written promise to appear.
At the end of Tuesday night, Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin told U.S. Supreme Court hopeful Ketanji Brown Jackson that the woman who cleans his office at night was one of the special guests who attended the confirmation hearing.

She said afterwards that it was a great moment for her to be in this room today, he told Jackson, but she asked my staff: Why are some people so mean?

Durbin said he did not think that the senators on his side of the aisle were mean. On Wednesday, however, he started out by saying some of his Republican colleagues were using the confirmation hearing as an opportunity to showcase talking points for the November election.

North Carolina's Thom Tillis was largely not one of them.

Tillis, North Carolina's junior senator since 2015, opted to switch spots at the hearing with fellow Tennessee senator Marsha Blackburn and attend Wednesday morning. In contrast to Blackburns insistence late Tuesday that critical race theory was being taught in elementary schools, Tillis opted to ask about recidivism and court packing  two things that were tame compared to his colleagues.

I look at your philosophy with respect, Tillis told Jackson during questioning. Its admirable. I said that the content of your character would be demonstrated this week and it has been.

Instead of focusing on race-based teaching like Blackburn and Ted Cruz, religious fervor like Lindsey Graham or QAnon-soaked questions about child sexual abuse sentencing, Tillis sounded level-headed even when asking about cases that his colleagues brought up the day before.

Do I read that statement to say that you felt, given the circumstances of the time, (the incarcerated) should all be released? he asked Jackson about U.S. v. Wiggins, a case Jackson heard about early releases because of potential exposure to COVID-19. In a similar question about the same case, Blackburn accused Jackson of advocating that each and every criminal defendant in D.C. Corrections custody should be released.

Jackson still noted that Tillis was not, in fact, reading the statement correctly. In the case he referenced, the incarcerated person was not granted compassionate release.

Senator, if you read two more sentences down that is precisely what I focus on, Brown responded. This is a case, United States v. Wiggins, where I was setting up my analysis as to why I would not be releasing Mr. Wiggins.

Tillis line of questioning signals that he, unlike some of his fellow senators, is taking the time to judge Jackson for her character and record instead of using her nomination to rile up his base. After all, thats the way these hearings used to work, when hearings were more about cases and less about scoring points with Fox News.

Its also easy to seem level-headed compared to the way his colleagues have questioned Jackson. Graham, for instance, interrupted her multiple times to make his points and asked Jackson to rate her faith on a scale of 1-10.

Cruz blew up photos of the book "Antiracist Baby" and asked: Do you agree with this book being taught with kids that babies are racist?

But Tillis also appeared to stand up for his GOP colleagues.

I thought it was interesting that they were ridiculing some of my colleagues on this side of the aisle for bringing up the behavior of past Supreme Court hearings, Tillis said. This is really the appropriate venue to do it.

Tillis cited the way Democrats questioned Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Justice Amy Coney Barrett. But that comparison was weak: Kavanaugh was accused of sexual assault. Barrett was rated unqualified by the American Bar Association and had her hearing rushed through by former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who had previously delayed a judiciary hearing for Merrick Garland for almost an entire year.

Maybe Tillis wants to position himself as a reasonable Republican. Its also possible that he knows he can redeem the party by simply not bringing far right extremism to the senate floor.
LOWGAP  A wildfire that started Saturday on Fulcher Mountain and spread to burn almost 200 acres is now under control, which is a relief to the handful of people whove made this remote community their home.

The N.C. Forest Service and firefighters plan to stay on the scene in hopes that expected rain will speed their task.

People in the community have been stepping up to help, too. Some made food to bring to firefighters, and a man and his son used equipment from their construction business to cut a fire line more than a mile long through the woods to protect a neighbors log cabin.

Resident Keith Bobbitt said its just that kind of community.

It is a tight neighborhood, he said. When they need to pull together, they pull together.

Forest Service officials say the fire started on the west side of Fulcher Mountain, which stretches in between N.C. 89 and Hidden Valley Road a couple miles to the southeast of Lowgap, an unincorporated community in Surry County. Someone was apparently burning debris, and the fire got out of control and spread into the nearby woods.

Fighting the fire was made more difficult by the rugged, wooded terrain around the mountain.

Forest Service officials said about 100 people, including volunteer firefighters, have been working to contain the blaze  and their efforts were a success. No houses or other structures and, most importantly, no lives were lost.

Tony Cave has his house and family construction business on the east side of Fulcher Mountain. Bobbitt, who lives in Clemmons, has a cabin that he uses on the southwest side of the mountain. Bobbitt was at the cabin when the fire started.

When Cave learned about the fire on Saturday, he told son Ethan that Keith Bobbitts house is in jeopardy, and the two men went to work. They got their equipment into the woods around 7 p.m. Ethan operated a larger piece of equipment called a track loader out front with his dad clearing the path behind with the smaller skid steer loader he was running.

There was a path through there that years ago you would have considered a logging road, Tony said. We went through and opened that up big enough to where the fire would not jump.

Bobbitt said he heard the Caves coming, then saw their lights shining eerily through the trees, like a scene from a science fiction movie, as they got close.

Ethan was on the loader taking down whole trees and moving them off, Bobbitt said. His dad had a skid steer behind doing the cleanup. There wasnt a leaf on the ground when they left.

That was late Saturday night. The Caves cut a circle around Bobbitts cabin to create a buffer. Bobbitt and his friends spent a frantic day on Sunday clearing out anything that might burn.

On Sunday night, state foresters came in and started a back burn behind his cabin.

We could see the (main) fire coming to us, Bobbitt said. It was within 100 feet of my cabin and 35 to 40 feet of my tractor shed.

About 2 a.m. on Monday, the two fires met and merged and burned out.

By Monday afternoon, it appeared that most of the fire was out, although some smoke could still be seen.

Both Bobbitt and Tony Cave have heaps of praise for the firefighters and Forest Service workers who risked their lives. Bobbitt said a fire crew stood by each house that was in harms way.

Those guys were phenomenal, Bobbitt said. It may not have been a 10,000-acre fire out west, but when it is your house in peril, it is great to see that truck coming through the woods.

Bobbitt saw firefighters using the line that the Caves cut.

I said, Tony, you saved me, Bobbitt recalled. The fire line he cut is about 75 feet behind my cabin. Behind me headed south, there are still several hundred acres of woods until you get to open fields. And on my side, there were two other homes. They were never in jeopardy because we stopped it there.

Bobbitt said hes not the kind of guy to try to ride out a fire. He was ready to clear out as the flames started burning his way.

Confidence is one thing, but you cant beat Mother Nature, he said. I made a good effort with a lot of friends.

Bobbitt noted that Cave has a nice, large barn that became a gathering place for people fighting the fire, with food inside.

Cave downplayed his role, saying he didnt want to take anything away from the firefighters who have been working so hard.

Dont take any praise from them, he said. They worked relentlessly. The fire department people have their program. They were on the other end of the mountain. We created a fire zone on the back side. Everybody was involved. People came and brought food. We have a good community.

It is really humbling to realize how many people concern themselves in a time of crisis. We are very fortunate to live where we do in this country.
Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, a one-time member of the U.S. House of Representatives for North Carolinas 11th District, has been a disappointment and an embarrassment. Hes assisted some of former President Trumps worst instincts, including his participation in the infamous phone call in which Trump pushed Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to find enough votes to overturn his loss in the state and the corrupt scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 election by throwing out legitimate state electors. Now we find that, despite his support for the Big Lie of widespread voter fraud, Meadows himself may have dipped his toe into that pool in a substantial way.

N.C. Attorney General Josh Stein has asked the State Bureau of Investigation and the State Board of Elections to look into whether Meadows violated voting laws by listing a home he never owned as his residence on his voter registration form.

Meadows listed a used mobile home in rural Scaly Mountain, about 90 miles west of Asheville, as his physical address in 2020 before casting an absentee ballot for the general election by mail.

Though members of the Meadows family did stay in the home in the fall of 2020 when they were in the area for a Trump rally  it still was not their legal residence  The New Yorker reported earlier this month that neither the current owner of the Scaly Mountain residence, the previous owner nor any neighbors ever saw Meadows there.

I looked up this Mcconnell Road, which is in Scaly Mountain, and I found out that it was a dive trailer in the middle of nowhere, which I do not see him or his wife staying in, Melanie Thibault, the director of Macon Countys Board of Elections, told The New Yorker.

The matter was brought to the attention of Macon County District Attorney Ashley Welch, who rightly recused herself because of her ties to Meadows and referred it to the attorney generals office. She, at least, is wise enough to avoid the appearance of impropriety.

As we write, Meadows has not commented on the investigation. But if hes guilty of lying on his voter registration form, its all the more hypocritical, given how vociferous and unforgiving he and other members of the GOP have been about voter fraud, even when such fraud boils down to a simple misunderstanding.

A North Carolina woman and former felon, Lanisha Bratcher Jones, was charged with felony voter fraud in 2019 after voting in the 2016 election. After entering an Alford plea, she served six months of unsupervised probation.

Others have not been so fortunate.

A Memphis woman and former felon, Pamela Moses, was initially sentenced to six years in prison after an election official mistakenly told her that she was eligible to register to vote in 2021. A Texas woman and former felon, Crystal Mason, was sentenced to five years after casting a provisional ballot with the help of a poll worker in 2016. Many of the election integrity bills being passed by state legislatures increase the penalty for those convicted of illegal voting substantially.

Should Meadows be judged any less harshly?

Meadows action also seems one more demonstration of the Trump administrations law and order for thee but not for me attitude, which was regularly exemplified by repeated violations of the Hatch Act meant to prevent the politicization of federal workers and Trumps insistence that his former staff refuse to obey subpoenas from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Then theres Trump himself, who portrayed voting by mail as unreliable and ripe for fraud while voting by mail himself; refused to preserve records as required by the Presidential Records and the Federal Records acts; took boxes full of classified information home with him after his ouster from the White House; illegally withheld defense aid from Ukraine in an attempt to extort election assistance from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy; and, as we mentioned at the start, attempted to coerce state election officials into overturning election results.

Meadows has more problems. Last week, a witness who helped plan the Jan. 6, 2021, rally told House investigators that Meadows was involved in efforts to encourage the presidents supporters to march on the Capitol  which led to the attack that Meadows, in his recent memoir, called the actions of a handful of fanatics across town.

Some may appreciate Meadows unwavering loyalty to Trump  you gotta dance with the one what brung ya  but ultimately, Trump seems to have been a bad influence. Wed prefer loyalty to the truth.
According to the information 2 soldiers from the Damascus troops were injured as a result of the Turkish bombing.

The rank of the soldiers and their health have not yet known.

A.K